Work Text:
It’s three-o’-seven in the morning, and a pleasant, warm looseness has spread through every limb. The streetlights blur across your vision in beautiful streaks, regular patterns of white-blue interrupted by neon signs and zipping taillights. The gentle rain pitter-patters from above as you press yourself against a wall under a not-very-sturdy canopy – you think it’s that one sandwich shop, but it’s closed and dark and your normally photographic memory is a little bit slippery right now. You are giggling in a way that you haven’t since you were about seven years old. And right next to you, sharing your fit of giggles, hunched over because he can’t quite fit under the low canopy, is the bane of your existence. Leorio Paladiknight.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It all started the eighth day of med school – your university has a fast-track program designed to let promising young students, or just those with enough money, burn themselves out into withered husks – you mean, concurrently earn a bachelor’s and an M.D. over six years. It’s a smallish program – less than two-hundred students at a time. Well, technically, there are five-hundred freshmen, but a quick glance on the very first day told you in seconds that barely one in five would make it through the first year.
That’s not particularly important to you. The people who are going to drop out are going to drop out – they’re not stupid, you’d never say that, they’re just not ready for such an accelerated course of study. The thing to watch out for are the ones who are smart enough to keep up – the university only awards thirty fast-track MDs a year. On average, the sixth-year class is forty strong. You understand as well as anyone – better than anyone, really – that separating the wheat from the chaff is vital. Besides, the ones who take an extra year or two to switch to a regular MD almost always graduate – it’s not the end of the world for them. It’s just that you don’t have time to wait another year. As a result, you pick out the people who you should politely turn down when they ask to study together, and the people who you can outright sabotage without a trace of remorse – the ones who can and will try to do the same to you. Try being the operative word.
But everyone here, you can tell from the first day, is at least ready to make a valiant effort – and whether a person is too stu – not academically-minded enough, or a saboteur, or an idiot who thinks that working together is a good idea in a class full of the most ambitious rising medical professionals in the world – whether a person is set to fail by birth, choice, or naivety, you respect the honest effort that everyone is bringing to the class. You can tell that this is a good environment – one where every single person is pushed to the breaking point. Just like home.
The first seven days of classes – Accelerated Anatomy and Physiology, Graduate Biochemistry, Accelerated Organic Chemistry, Honors Medical History, Medical Law, and Observation – go exactly the way you like. Everybody shows up five to ten minutes early, and pens and pencils fly. Reading assignments are tackled methodically, highlighters and reference texts at the ready. Observation is a treat – it’s relaxing to listen to the doctors and nurses calmly explain what they’re doing, especially compared to the hyper-specific questions Father and Mother would bark at you without warning in the middle of their work. It’s perfect.
And then, on the eighth day, all Hell breaks loose. Three minutes – three minutes – after the lecture begins, the door bursts open and a heavily sweating man in a suit – he’s got to be in his late twenties, what in the world is such a late starter doing in a fast-track program – pants out a rough “sorry I’m late,” then flops into the nearest open seat. Now, you’re a reasonable person. Three minutes late to lecture is bad. Awful, in fact, but it’s not unforgivable. But this is the fifth lecture in Advanced Organic Chemistry, and this man has not appeared for any of the previous four – or any of the other classes, for that matter. By your mark, that means he is seven class days and three minutes late. That’s – beyond unforgivable. You can practically feel your pupils contracting with cold fury as you level a glare at the back of his head and – is that – it is. In a room full of organized binders and open textbooks, this sorry excuse for a student is writing in a beat-up spiral notebook – half the pages bent – with a pink glitter pen in the worst print you have ever seen.
This man is a joke. You breathe in, out, feel the air rattle through your sinuses. Clowns have their place. In the most prestigious medical program on the continent is not that place. Is this idiot some idle rich brat too stupid to take this seriously, or is he just trying to throw everyone off? That must be it. He’s clever, you realize all at once. Insidious, in fact. But he tipped his hand too early. The act isn’t believable. You bet he’s been reading ahead since four weeks before classes – practically memorizing the lectures before they happen. A smirk begins to light on your face – you can’t help it, because an actual rival is something that part of you has always wanted to have –
“Excuse me, professor.” A rough voice cuts through the surgical precision of the lecture. The “excuse me” sounds as foreign in his mouth as “fuck off, asshat” would in yours. “What’s a nucleophile again?” The chalk snaps and whispers rise up all around as a light dusting of red covers the man’s face. “Sorry, I – I was busy and I tried to do the reading, but you know how it is!” His voice becomes accusatory near the end, angry, as he notices the pointing and stifled giggles.
He’s serious. Nobody would risk this kind of embarrassment to set others off guard. This man is – he is actually the biggest fucking moron you have ever seen.
You feel a headache coming on.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You learn that his name is Leorio Paladiknight. You do not learn this by choice.
After class, he approaches you, and while you want to pretend to not notice him and walk away, you aren’t going to give this kind of clown the satisfaction of being avoided – no. You’re going to treat him like anyone else and laugh behind your hand when he crashes and burns.
“Yo. I’m Leorio. Paladiknight. Tough class, huh?” He chuckles at the end of it, like he’s already forgotten the way that the professor said “the answer to your question is in the textbook” in the kind of tone normally reserved for “you are a worthless worm and I hope you die.” “I was wondering if you could help me out a bit. I need to catch up on the reading and a study buddy would be nice. I have cold beer and I’ll order a pizza.” He gives you an open grin, and you find your hackles settling a little. He’s an idiot, and an embarrassment, but at least he has the humility to match.
“I’m not of legal drinking age.” That doesn’t mean you’re going to let him off easy, though. “Do you really think offering a minor alcohol is a professional thing for a potential” just enough emphasis on potential “future doctor to do?”
To your surprise, he just laughs. “I mean, we might be underage, but it’s important to have fun, yeah? Besides, if we’re old enough to learn the horrors of alcohol inside and out, we’re old enough to partake in them.” We? How old is this man?
“I’m sorry,” you say, and you’re horrified to find that part of you actually is, “but I’m very busy. I don’t have time to catch you up.”
Leorio Paladiknight grumbles something along the lines of “didn’t have to be rude” as he shoves his hands in his pockets and stalks away. You don’t really get that – you used very formal language, you think, and he’s the rude one for being so late – but as he leaves, he calls over his shoulder, “let me know if you change your mind on the pizza. Or the beer. I know it isn’t easy to make friends in a new place.”
And with that, having successfully renewed your fury, he finds some other unremarkables and asks them for help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leorio manages to catch up – just barely. He and a ragtag little band of people with – good enough and certainly not “substandard” because you would never say that but not necessarily quite cut out for this program – brains form a study group and actually manage to keep afloat, and Leorio is still late every so often but now it’s usually down to one or two minutes. Sure, he interrupts lecture with a question sometimes, but occasionally it’s even a half-decent question. There’s no doubt in your mind he’ll drop out by the end of next year, but Leorio Paladiknight eventually becomes a minor nuisance rather than a distraction. You decide he’s good practice for having a pathologically late colleague someday and leave it at that. Hell, he has half a chance of being a very, very junior member at your own clinic one day (yes, it’s Father’s on paper but you’ve known it was your birthright since you were five and playing with the hypodermic needles and stethoscopes and saw your future reflected in the stainless steel tools all around you) if he manages to finish a non-fast-track MD after he inevitably flunks.
Eventually, he melts into the background, and that’s a good thing, too, because you are having to work harder than you are used to – just a bit – to maintain the top ranking in the class. And with that on your mind, Leorio Paladiknight fades from your consciousness as anything other than a slightly obnoxious, otherwise unremarkable fellow student.
Then you see him at the gym.
A future doctor can’t be a hypocrite – if you are going to put patients on diet and exercise, you have to be as fit as is reasonable for somebody with a career outside of fitness. You are strong and toned, as healthy as an ox, with low blood pressure, hale and supple lungs, and just the right amount of body fat. That means plenty of green vegetables, very little red meat, biking to class, and visits to the gym at 5 AM sharp every other day. However, you have decided to mix it up a bit this week – variety is important for adaptability – and have switched the order of your morning readings and gym visit, which brings you to the gym at 8 AM (sharp, naturally).
Leorio is there. He’s not unhealthy looking when you see him in his suit, but he is a little lanky. And pizza and beer are hardly the diet of an Olympian. Judging from the amount he sweats when he’s particularly late to class, running winds him. Again, you didn’t think he was unhealthy. Fit, though? Not particularly.
But Leorio Paladiknight is shredded. You gain a little respect for him as you see him in his gym clothes – he might not have as much brain as you, but he does have more muscle mass, and it’s not just overwrought bulk either. If he can maintain that figure on the sandwiches you’ve seen him cram into his mouth as he enters the classroom, then more power to him. Although that time would be better spent studying, you can respect the dedication to exercise he must have.
You get some stretches done – pulling a muscle is unacceptable – and then notice that Leorio is loading up a bench press bar. He’s buff, sure, but he’s put six hundred pounds on it. Without a spotter present. You start to stand, because you might not like his style but you know proper gym etiquette and you’re sure as Hell not beating another student (no matter how low-ranking) because of something as stupid as them getting injured. But then Leorio takes a good long look at the bar and shakes his head, before stalking off. Even if the idiot did leave the plates on, you’re glad he’s not going to get his ribs smashed – no. No way in Hell. Leorio Paladiknight is returning with another four-hundred pounds of plates piled in his arms – the moron is going to throw out his back – and he slides each plate onto the bar as he mutters something about “not gonna take it easy today.”
He’s going to die. Leorio Paladiknight is actually going to die, and a weird pang hits your chest as you imagine never seeing another meatball sub half-hanging out of a late asshole’s mouth as the lecture is just starting. You think about never seeing some dumb, boorish thug scribbling in a wrinkled journal with a pink glitter gel pen that’s practically become his brand – the ones that the members of his little study group gift him left and right, making him rattle with loud and raucous laughter in the library, heedless of the noise complaints every time he receives the predictable present – and you realize that at least Leorio Paladiknight is interesting. Leorio Paladiknight is a break in the monotony, and your break in the monotony is about to commit suicide by bench press.
You feel a cry of “stop,” or “don’t,” or “what the fuck is wrong with you” bubbling up to your lips as Leorio reaches out to the sagging bar, wraps a hand around it, and – curls it.
Your jaw drops as Leorio Paladiknight curls one thousand pounds. You wait for the inevitable ripping of muscle fibers or pop of displaced joints or screams of searing pain but none of those noises come. Instead, Leorio gives a steady exhale with each flex of his arm, finishing twenty neat curls with perfect form before passing the literal half-ton to his other hand. Your warm-up wears off as you sit, transfixed, watching Leorio Paladiknight go from curl to overhead press to shoulder press to every other dumbbell technique in the book, meticulously working out every muscle in his arms and chest. And then a hundred one-ton squats, rapid-fire.
You’re not even surprised anymore when he finishes a set of a thousand hundred-pound-plate sit-ups in ten minutes flat.
One of the girls from his study group walks past you, notices your vacant stare, and says, “oh, yeah, Leo’s a licensed Hunter,” as if that’s at all an adequate explanation for someone whose brain is short-circuiting, and then asks her friend if he wants to join her for a jog. You try to tune out his response, but your traitorous brain can’t help but process the phrase “let me get my weighted clothing first.”
What the actual fuck?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leorio Paladiknight vanishes for a week in September. You catch yourself watching his study group – he’s clearly the leader of the merry little band, and they’re struggling a bit without him – and wondering if you should step in. They’re not smart enough to sabotage you. They would appreciate the help. It might be – nice – not to work on your own for once.
You quash those thoughts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You notice that Leorio takes calls, and he takes them whenever he gets them. He has dropped a perfectly good salad, an incredibly greasy slice of pizza, three of his favorite meatball subs, and an ice cream cone on the ground in between classes. He has bolted upright from his six-hundred-and-seventy-third (he’s a loud man, and that extends to counting during workouts) handstand pushup in a perfect flip and crossed the entire gym in seconds. He has raced out of lecture five times. He even ran out of a test once, yanking his phone out of his pocket where it was ringing on full blast.
Naturally, he was expelled.
Very briefly.
You don’t know exactly what happened, is what you tell everyone else – is what you would tell everyone else but you are very good at being unapproachable and nobody talks to you, exactly as you like it – but the truth is that you were walking through the building in which his trial was being held, and that Leorio Paladiknight’s voice carries, and that you heard more than you should have.
You heard snippets. “My best friend.” “Phantom Troupe.” “Could have been dying.” “Those kids need me.” “I don’t care, I’m doing what I have to.” “Do you want me to bring the Association into this? Because I will.” “The fucking Phantom Troupe wants him dead.” “Have you heard of the Zoldycks?” “I can and will get the Hunter Association involved. Don’t make me.”
He was pardoned and the mark withdrawn from his record.
You even overhear several calls.
“I’m proud of you, Gon.” You see his eyes that time, and they’re shining. “You’re going to find him soon, I know it.”
“Shut up, shitty brat. The fuck do you know?” And you can’t help but think he sounds an awful lot like your older brother used to, before the accident, the way he would tease you just before buying you ice cream – mint chocolate chip, your favorite flavor before Mother had you stop eating processed sugars.
“You’ve got to stop by sometime, Zep! I’ll show you a few tricks that might help you through the exam. Then we’ll drink ourselves stupid.” A pause, then a cackle. “No, you’re already stupid, asshole!”
“Jeez, Melody, you’re not my mom.” A soft chuckle. “Okay, you are kind of his mom.” A moment of sad rumination as a gentle voice on the line says something like “I can’t replace that for him.” Leorio swallows, and then says, “Next time you see him, can you play him a song for me? Just so – just so that he knows that we still care.”
You hear him murmuring in a gentle, lilting language, stumbling and uncomfortable with the foreign tongue – it sounds like a greeting, and you hear a light gasp on the other end. You remember him reading a book on some provincial language or another in the library, practicing clumsy phrases a week ago – you think it was called Kurta.
It’s unprofessional, that he is willing to drop what’s important in order for kids to talk his ear off or friends to babble plans or once to even listen to what sounded like a strained “hello” on the other side and nothing else before the other person hung up – but even if it’s unprofessional, you can’t help but be a little jealous of his friends.
You redouble your study efforts.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leorio comes in second in the class at the end of the third semester.
He’s still late once about every three days. He still shouts in the library. He still shows up in the gym and loads up inhuman amounts of weight – he’s had special weights commissioned out of what must be lead wrapped in iron, because now he’s up to gigantic dumbbells that are proudly labelled “4 tons” and a bar that weighs 20. He still takes calls when and where they come and has screamed at professors more distinguished than even Father to shut up – those exact words – when they tell him to put the damn phone away, Paladiknight. He is still Leorio Paladiknight.
But now he is second in the class. And you are not ahead by nearly as much as you are comfortable with.
You corner him after class – this time, Advanced Pharmaceuticals, in which Leorio has had no less than three arguments with the highly respected professor over the price of drugs – and sort of shoo him into a hallway. An empty hallway with nobody around. It dawns on you that this was not the smartest move to pull on a man who towers over you, let alone one who can – you can’t stop thinking about the time that Leorio glared at a car that had hit a dog before parking and then, after the driver had left, levelling a single remorseless glance at the mangled body and shrugging, picked the offending vehicle up and crumbled it into a ball like a fucking soda can. While crying. Various images of what has happened to people hit by trains flash through your mind, but your indignance and anger carry you through.
“Mr. Paladiknight,” you grit out, “no offense, but how in the world have you become second in the class?”
Paladiknight grins and preens, clearly misinterpreting your comment as a compliment, “well, you know.”
“I don’t.” You are glaring daggers into a man who could literally javelin toss you across the campus. You can’t bring yourself to care. “I do not know, Leorio Paladiknight.”
Leorio draws back – draws back from your pointing finger, when he could probably just ignore you kicking him in the groin full-force. “Well,” he says, sweating and rubbing the back of his neck, “I can’t afford to make a mistake.” It’s said quietly.
“None of us can. That’s med school. We’re all vying for the top spot. What makes you different?”
Leorio fixes you with a quizzical look behind his small, round glasses. “Wait, what does that have to do with vying for the top spot?”
You are well aware that you are looking at him like he’s an idiot. Maybe being second is a fluke. You speak slowly, just in case. “We’re all here to succeed. To be the best. So everyone is working hard. To be the best. Mistakes mean that you’re not the best.”
Leorio’s face morphs from annoyance at your look to fury as you speak, and you wonder if this was a bad idea. It’s a rhetorical question, really, because you never wanted to hear Leorio shout – not only is he scary, but he’s loud. “You’re working this hard to be the best? Losing sleep over mistakes for success? For what? Money? Power? A cadre of assholes to jack you off for the rest of your life?” And now you’re the one who’s pissed. Because that? That’s what Father wanted. That’s what Mother wanted. You’re different. You’re better than them.
“Of course a low-minded boor would think of it that way. Being the best has nothing to do with that. It’s about –”
And that’s when the building gets a new window, as Leorio’s arm slams into the wall behind you with a resounding crash. “I’m here to save lives.” He’s not shouting anymore, and somehow that is a million times more terrifying. “If you want to be the best, go to law school – no, on second thought, keep your slimy hands away from the courts too. Be a fucking banker. Being a doctor is my dream,” spits Leorio, “and when I fail, when I didn’t pay enough attention, when a patient fucking dies on me – that’s my fault.” He looks at the hole in the wall and seems to choke. “Shit! Sorry! Fuck, I’m gonna have to pay for that.”
You look up at Leorio in terrified confusion. “What the fuck?” you chuckle nervously – the first time you’ve sworn aloud in months.
Leorio Paladiknight flips you off as he stalks away, and calls over his shoulder, “You know what? I don’t give a shit why you want to be a doctor. You’re smart, and if you’re as psycho about fucking up then as you are now, you probably won’t kill any patients by mistake. Do what you fucking want. I don’t have any special secret, if that’s what you wanted to find out.”
He conceded, didn’t he? You can’t figure out why it feels like he won.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s the first week of the fourth semester when it happens. You’ve known it would, in the pit of your stomach, in the shadow cast by your heart, in the lobes of your brain that you to ignore.
Paladiknight does better than you on a test.
You got 98% on a test where the curve makes a 72% an A. A wonderful job, by all accounts – nearly flawless. Paladiknight? Paladiknight got every single question right. Full marks. And every single person in his charade of a study group made an A.
You’re ready to do – something. You don’t know what. It’s such a small thing. It’s just a fluke. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Isn’t Paladiknight a freak of nature? You’ve stopped going to the gym when you think he’ll be there, but from the glimpses you’ve caught he is curling 5 tons and benching 30. How could you feel bad about losing to something like that? Besides, it’s a statistical anomaly over one question that you would have gotten correct if you just hadn’t misremembered one little detail – a Latin name that was such a misnomer and should have been different in the first place, so in a way hadn’t you gotten it more correct? Didn’t that make you not just more right than Paladiknight, but more right than the scientists who had discovered some stupid fucking bacterium?
He’s practically a bacterium! God, Father would hate him. Some idiot without any regard for the proper way of doing things – showing up late to class even now, spilling meatballs out of his sandwiches when he bites down on the end too hard (you’ve finally caved and tried a meatball sub from Buccellati’s. It was delicious, better than any of the perfectly arranged meals Father had the cook make for you, and that infuriated you so much that you nearly cried), and still taking personal calls in the middle of whenever, wherever, no matter what! You’ve caught him leaving messages that sound like desperate pleas for attention from an ex. Doesn’t he know this Kurapika person surely hates him now? You’ve caught him crying in a stairwell, clung to by his entire study group. Don’t they know that without their fearless leader, they’ll drop back down the ranks one day? One memorable time, you even caught him drinking his ass off and taking a swim in the campus fountain.
Leorio Paladiknight is an idiot. He is a dumb fuck who is being shown blatant favoritism because he is a Hunter. He is not worthy of your respect. He comes from the middle of nowhere, has negative etiquette and tact, and is – he’s so – he’s so much better than –
“Hey.” A hand lands on your shoulder. “You did damn well on that test. Really, I’m surprised you didn’t beat me! I have no idea how I managed to pull ahead.”
“Here to gloat?” you spit it out like you are tearing chunks out of the dictionary with your teeth to form the sentence.
“What? No!” His face falls as he realizes his tactlessness. “I just – you’ve been down. And you did a really good job. Especially studying on your own.”
“What?” Forget the swirling, sickening bitterness in you right now. Paladiknight said something so foreign – so alien to you that you need him to repeat it. “What do you mean especially?”
“Er…” Says Leorio, “because it’s harder to work on your own?”
“What.” Is Leorio stupid or smart? You honestly cannot tell. “The more people you have to help, the more split your attention will be.” You look up to him with honest confusion, eyes wide and shaky with enough coffee to kill a small horse (yes, you preach health, but the top spot matters more than a little hypocrisy. Right?).
“That’s not how it works.” Leorio is looking at you like you are the alien in this situation, which, needless to say, is rich.
“It’s basic arithmetic.”
“Y’know,” says Leorio, looking at you with – oh God, that’s pity. “I’m not the only one giving help in that group. I probably would have flunked the test without my friends.”
Realization hits you like a truck. “You’re cheating?”
“What? No! What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway?” He pinches the bridge of his nose, which is rather infuriating because you are relatively certain this man is the source of the headache here and very much not the other way around. Then his eyes sharpen and he glares into your face like he’s sizing up prey (is this what you have to become to pass the Hunter exam?) and you run cold as he goes for the kill.
“You look like shit.”
“What.”
“You,” repeats Leorio, “look like shit. You want the top spot? Take it. I don’t give a damn. I’ll be a doctor no matter what my class rank is. But this? It’s killing you. You’re going to die if you keep doing this. So it’s yours. Just lay off a little.” He’s shaking his head, like he’s talking to an ornery child.
“I don’t want your pity!” You are, in fact, doing this. You are actually starting a screaming match with Leorio Paladiknight in the middle of a crowded hallway, and you are not going to back down. You think about what Father would say about your actions and then you tell him to fuck right off.
“You’re sick.” Leorio is looking at you with the most obvious pity you have ever seen and you have quite literally never been this angry.
“Me? I’m the sick one? I’m not the one leaving messages for somebody obviously not interested!” And now you know you’ve hit home, because Leorio goes completely pale, and if he rips your skull out that’s good because that means you broke him, you won, you got what you deserved.
But Leorio doesn’t draw back, and he doesn’t kill you, and he doesn’t even yell at you. Instead, he says, quietly, honestly, with the most infuriatingly gentle voice you have ever heard come from this loud, boisterous, fuck, “Do you even want to be a doctor?”
You vomit in public. That’s all that needs to be said about that.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Actually, you probably need to confront this. But maybe not in detail.
Paladiknight helped you up from the pool of your own sick that ruined your forty-thousand Jenny slacks, getting his own cheap suit covered in the stuff in the process. He could pick you up with one hand and carry you overhead like a fucking pizza, but instead he stooped and looped your arm around his shoulder and helped you to the infirmary.
And then he talked to you.
“I meant it literally, you know.”
“Huh?” It’s been about half an hour since you got to the infirmary, and Leorio hasn’t left you alone, and you haven’t said anything in that time. You’re half too furious to talk, half too embarrassed.
“That you’re sick. You’re not a monster or an asshole.” You snort. “Well,” he amends, “maybe kind of an asshole. But I’m going to be a doctor. My job is to help people who are sick. If you really need the number one spot that badly, I don’t want to fight you for it.”
“I don’t need your pity.” It’s quieter now, because not only do you know you’re wrong about that, part of you has accepted it as well.
“It’s not pity. I want the smarmy cock who kept getting top grades back. The rude fucker who didn’t have a problem walking up to people and telling them exactly how many minutes their lunch was shaving off of their lifespan. You might have been annoying, but you were fun to be around, in your own way.” He looks at you over his glasses. “You’re not acting like yourself anymore. This number one thing is going to destroy you.”
“It doesn’t matter if you give it to me.” Might as well admit it, after he’s gone to so much trouble. “I have to beat you. I have to do it honestly.”
“Then join my study group, asshole. We help each other. “You’ve been basically handicapped, dumbfuck. Or, at least,” he grins at you, “that’s the way guys like you always see it.”
“Maybe.” It crawls out of your mouth. “Maybe now and then. Once or twice. When things are really hard. If I need it.” You breathe in. “I’m sorry about bringing up that Kurapika person. That was unfair of me.”
Leorio waves a hand. “Eh, if I answer a call from someone during a test, I can’t blame people for knowing about them.” Despite the light tone, he looks impossibly sad.
You breathe very, very deeply in. “I don’t say this to just anyone. So, listen well. I’m sorry. I was wrong about you.”
It’s the shittiest, stupidest gesture that you’ve ever given. Apologies are 24 karat gold, or getting a perfect grade on the next test, or adding another extracurricular and surging to the top, not – not words.
But the way that Leorio smiles at you and holds out his hand to shake?
As you move your arm up and down and feel the warm, strong, solid grip of the real top medical student in your year, you feel forgiven in a way that Father and Mother never let you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You do go to the study group. Very rarely. But not never. That’s when you notice that Leorio learns by teaching.
The others aren’t your friends – Hell, you’re not even sure that Paladiknight is. But they ask you questions, point out things in the book that confuse them, and it feels good – just a little – to clear things up for them. But Leorio?
He thrives on it.
When he’s teaching, he’s a whirlwind – connecting concepts, coming up with the most idiotic rhymes and inane songs (he blushes when you confront him and admits that it’s how his mother taught him the times table), and guiding people to the answer in the most paradoxically elegant ways, even when he himself doesn’t know it very well. He’d honestly make a better professor than most of your actual professors.
And he learns from it. Faster than you would have imagined. Something about sharing knowledge solidifies it in Leorio Paladiknight’s brain in a way that is alarmingly fast and thorough.
Then you start to notice other things.
Out and about (Leorio quietly told you that maybe you should get outside more often), you happen to notice Leorio walking on a parallel street, and he hands a thousand-Jenny note to an obvious panhandler. You write it off as a fluke, but then you happen to see it again. And again. It’s always the same amount, and he always points and says something – you realize that it’s the price of a special at that sandwich shop he loves so much.
You notice that everybody in your class likes Leorio – or maybe just depends on him, somehow. On the rare days he doesn’t make it to class, it seems like everyone is a little more sluggish without a three-minute-late idiot to jumpstart the day, sweating like a stuck pig and calling out a ridiculous apology.
You notice him practicing what looks like tai chi in the courtyard, but you could swear that you can feel the energy rolling off of him, and you get roped into doing it with him – some odd meditation exercise, and then he does his learn-by-teaching thing and whispers “I’ve got it” and then you hear a crack and when you open your eyes a large rock a few dozen meters away has split cleanly in two.
You notice Leorio makes the stupidest fucking faces for selfies.
You notice that he will always stop and help out crying, lost kids.
You notice that he can haggle a used textbook from 10,000 Jenny down to 2,000 in one minute flat.
You notice that he blushes like an idiot when there’s any hint a girl might be interested in him.
You notice he has trouble staying with them for long, and it always seems to hurt him more than it hurts them when it ends.
You notice that he watches kid’s movies with his study group and pretends he’s not crying.
You notice that he doesn’t care about his grades as long as they’re good – and they’re really good, but the occasional B doesn’t seem to bother him even a little – but he’ll slap his study group members – or even just people he seems to happen to know – on the shoulder hard enough to knock them off-balance when they do well.
You notice that he is Leorio Paladiknight.
And then, one day, you realize that you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live under the thumb of your parents.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s only seven weeks into the fourth semester when Leorio asks if you want to get a drink. “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m not really expecting a yes. But you’re beating me in the rankings again and I thought that was worth celebrating.” He grins sheepishly. “And I promise I’m not losing on purpose.”
Almost everything inside of you wants to say no. Your future wants to say no. Your parents want to say no. Your dignity wants to say no. But that small spark of hope that you felt when Leorio sat you down and talked to you after you basically attempted verbal murder, punctuated with literal vomit? It manages to speak first.
“Sure. I’m guessing your Hunter License can get us in?” Judging by Leorio’s expression, he’s almost as surprised by your answer as you are.
He corrals his face into a less shocked expression, winks at you, and says, “you betcha.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You go to a small bar. It’s a comfortable place with progressive rock playing in the background (“the kids always call it ‘dad music,” he grumbles) and the bartender seems to know him well. He orders two whiskey sours, and holds his up for you to toast. “To the number one student.” He grins at you.
“To the number two student,” you reply.
The clink of glasses sings in your ears the way that Mother and Father’s praise never did.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“So, get this – this fucker was a literal clown. And he decked me with one fucking punch! I was never as scared in my entire life as that moment – and all I could think was, “I’m going to die –”
“Uh-huh,” you say, nodding and a few drinks in,
“And the killer is wearing pointy-toed shoes!”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Mother and Father,” you choke, “I don’t know if they really loved me. I think that I was just a thing they liked to show off. A – a fucking trophy.”
Leorio nods, and you think he somehow really does get it.
“I – I try so damn hard. All the fucking time.” You think you might be crying.
Leorio’s arm bumps you. “You know what?” he growls, and there is fire in his eyes. “You do try hard. Damn hard. You work so fucking hard. And you’re gonna succeed. Your name’s gonna be plastered all over every major journal. And you – you’re gonna see them finally ready to be proud of you, for real, and you’re going to tell them – FUCK YOU!”
Passerby turn to stare at the shout, and you don’t even care.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I just love those kids so much. They’re the best thing that ever happened to me. Killua’s a fucking brat, but he’s so much better than he thinks he is. He’s got the biggest heart. He just – he just needs someone to tell him what he’s worth. And Gon – the kid is made of sunshine, and I swear to God, if I ever meet his deadbeat-ass dad, I am going to punch him in the face so fucking hard –”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Professor Tillerson – have you noticed how – how he –” you are wheezing so hard you can barely speak.
Leorio is biting his lip to keep from laughing halfway through your joke.
“He – he fucking – he looks exactly like – he – he looks just like if – if Chairman Netero fucked the entire 80’s!”
Leorio howls.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I gotta introduce you to Zepile sometime! That guy knows how to have a good time!”
“What’s he – who – what’s he do?” You hiccup so hard it shakes you.
Leorio chuckles. “He’s a forger.” You stare, gobsmacked, and he continues, “what, ready to go on a high-and-mighty tangent?” He’s grinning.
“No, I jus’ – my parents have this fucking painting. It’s gotta be worth – I don’t even fucking know. I’ve wanted to steal it since I was a little kid. Just some stupid – some stupid fantasy. How good is Zepile?”
Leorio shoots you a look that is knowing and just a little wild.
“Oh, this is gonna be fun.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The massive man – dear god, is that Franklin Bordeaux of the Phantom Troupe – catches Leorio’s sloppy punch as the impact wave cracks your glass in your hands. “Hey,” he rumbles, “you’re lucky that I’m not a fan of killing when I’m not on the job. You’re a nen user. You gotta know who I am.” He raises a single eyebrow, almost lazily.
“I – you – you hurt him. You hurt him. So badly,” Leorio chokes. “I don’t know if he’s slept peacefully in years. You did this to him.”
To your bewilderment, Franklin nods. “I’m not Uvo,” and sadness crosses his face. “I don’t have any desire to kill or be killed over grudges. What’s done is done.” He sighs. “Just go on your way.”
Leorio rears back, and you know it’s suicide, but you pull him back anyway.
If he threw the punch, it would probably rip your arm off. The shockwave might pulverize your organs.
Somehow, a part of you deeper than rationality knew before you grabbed him that it would be safe.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You listen to Leorio belt Plastic Love into the cheap microphone as the tinny speakers play a stripped-bare backing track.
You’re not surprised that he sounds amazing.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Good?” asks Leorio as you tear into you mint chocolate chip cone.
You think you might be crying. “The very best.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And that brings you to the now. A night on the town, getting drunk as a skunk with Leorio Paladiknight, and you don’t know if you’ve ever been happier.
“Thank you, Leorio.”
You say it under your breath, but somehow, here in the pouring rain with no umbrella at three-o’-seven AM on a weeknight, squished against the best sandwich shop in town and in a mad fit of laughter, you know that your friend heard you.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A week later, Leorio vanishes for a week only to nearly be voted chairman of the Hunter Association.
What the fuck, Paladiknight?
(You’re never going to stop calling him Chairman now)