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The phantom-like touch of fingertips on Kurapika’s back wake him in an instant.
He lays still as they press apprehensively into the skin of his shoulder blade, holds his breath as a palm flattens against the surface of his ribcage, warmth spreading wherever it makes contact. He waits, patiently, with closed eyes, for what he knows will be an apology; most likely for disturbing him.
It comes with his next exhale, barely audible, but he would have felt it, anyway, as it brushed against his neck.
“Sorry,” the voice behind him is groggy, thick with sleep, but weighed down by something more vulnerable than what a barely-conscious mind would be capable of.
Kurapika knows Leorio well enough to know that exhaustion follows him everywhere; he rarely lets it catch up to him.
After a pause, Kurapika sighs. There is nothing to be sorry for. There never is.
This doesn’t matter, of course, because he will accept the foreseen apology just as he always does. He learned a long time ago that it is sometimes the only thing he can do to make Leorio feel any better about… everything. To make allowance for the needles guilt he carries, to let him feel responsible; he can control his obligations, how he amends and pursues them. This regulation, Kurapika has discovered, makes up for the lack thereof within Leorio’s interpersonal relationships with the people he cares for the most—who are to blame for most of his heartache—and his inability to convince them to make rational decisions, for his sake and theirs.
Consequently, Kurapika responds only by pressing back, and leans into Leorio’s still, unwavering palm. He can’t afford to acknowledge that it encompasses most of his side, so he elects not to (despite a traitorous sweep of nerves in his stomach.) Nevertheless, the touch is comforting—that is to say the very least. The reason in which the action was prompted, however, is less.
It pushes Kurapika’s respective guilt against him with its own gravitational pull, forcing him further and further down, as it intends to bury him deep in the soil, where it will suffocate him. But he knows, as he has come to know most, that it is the absolute minimum of what he deserves, for what he has put everyone through. His friends. Leorio.
He knows, he knows, he knows; he had accepted it some time ago, but the hurt is still fresh, a deep gash in his chest that lingers, infected and plunging further into him with every breath, until breathing in itself strikes him with a pain so blunt he feels like screaming, only to find there is a hand clutched around his throat to silence him. It’s only when he suffocates that he realizes the hand is his own.
The faint, cautious sound of Leorio drawing himself closer to Kurapika pulls him away from his thoughts briefly, as he finds himself wishing Leorio would be anything but. And he wants, more than most things, to voice this, to tell him he doesn’t need to take so much care, that he won’t run away—not now. He doesn’t have anywhere else he needs, or wants, to be. He yearns for the courage to admit these things, to confess that, despite all of it, here is where he wants to belong. In Leorio’s stuffy, claustrophobic apartment, overpopulated with books and bits of himself and his friends (he remembers, tenderly, photos of the four of them perched on his bedside table and his desk). At his lackluster kitchen table, complete with a wooden chair he found on the side of the street and a stool he stole from school, bickering over what to eat for dinner. Beside him in his bed, in the moonlit twilight, or golden sunrise.
The desire to scorches him, inside and out, and he only wishes that he could stay.
A lump grows steady in the back of his throat.
Words have never been Kurapika’s strongest suit, not for a long while, anyhow, so he reaches behind himself, blindly, to grasp at the first bit of Leorio he can, landing on the very tips of his gentle, slender fingers. He clings to them with a desperation he hopes Leorio can’t detect, because even in the dark, Kurapika holds onto his pride as it tethers him to the Earth.
But he knows Leorio, and so, if he takes notice, he won’t show it. He doesn’t. Instead, he sighs, and Kurapika isn’t sure if the tone blanketing it is relief, sadness, or exhaustion. He thinks it may be all three.
“I’m not...” he starts to say, both too loud and too quiet for whatever time it is—too early and too late—but stops, his tongue heavy and dry in his mouth. His lips purse as he attempts to gather his thoughts, and say something that might bring Leorio even an ounce of comfort, though he knows it’s useless. Because Leorio’s nails are digging into his skin a bit now, and his palm is a weighted presence on his shoulder blade, as if he is attempting to get as close to Kurapika’s heart without plunging his hand into his ribcage. Because Leorio is clutching onto him, because Leorio is feeling for Kurapika’s heartbeat, because Leorio is making sure Kurapika is still there, still breathing, still alive.
The thought is like a driving dagger into the most vulnerable part of soul—the very part he had put in chains—guarding it in its own way, as if for this very reason. To keep Leorio from reaching it, to prevent him from seeing what he had started to fear was no longer there, not after everything he had done and everything he would have to do. To protect him from it. He isn’t sure how Leorio will react when he finds there is nothing for him to grasp, and he never wants to find out.
So, he has to offer him solace some other way, and words are but futile devices when it comes to actually speaking them, but for Leorio, he will try. For Leorio, he will do almost anything, and perhaps that scares him more than the theorized hole in his chest, but he owes Leorio at least this much. So, he opens his mouth, and with an apologetic sigh, he tries again. For Leorio.
“I’m... still here.” Kurapika whispers, hoping it will offer him something to hold on to when he wakes up to an empty bed come sunrise.
For a while, Leorio gives no indication that he hears this consolation. He is so quiet, motionless behind Kurapika, that he would think he had fallen back asleep if not for the way his hand loosens in the slightest, fingernails no longer staking his skin. The silence is a crushing, ponderous weight. Kurapika wonders just how long it will take for the pressure of everything to bury him.
Finally, after seconds that stretch into hours, Leorio retracts his hand from Kurapika’s shoulder, leaving him much, much colder in its wake. He misses the way Leorio’s fingers reflexively twitch toward him, before he forces himself to think better of it. Then, he breaks the spell, and asks, not unkindly, “Where will you go this time?”
At this, Kurapika bites his tongue. He doesn’t want to worry Leorio with details, not now. Though, Leorio will see any reply as cause for reasonable concern. And avoiding his question is not an option. Leorio will only come up with his own response, which would either be far worse or a blatant lie to make himself feel better, in turn, doing the opposite.
“Not far,” is the answer Kurapika settles on, finally, as it is the closest thing to the truth. His destination won’t drag him halfway around the continent, but it won’t be as if he’s a few blocks away, either. Anywhere I’m not with you is too far, he thinks achingly, before he can stop himself, and he is accosted by surging emotions he easily keeps at bay in the daytime. But the sun set hours ago, and the moonlight is not so harsh, and he finds it easier to count the things he won’t say or do than to count those he will.
Leorio hums in response, sounding both tired and thoughtful. Kurapika doesn’t have to turn to confirm the frown he knows he will find if he does. But he turns anyway, and his gaze catches onto Leorio’s, steely grey meeting deep brown, and he holds it for several weighted seconds. The look in Leorio’s eyes is hardly discernible in the dark, but Kurapika is more than well aware that it is the unmistakable look of despondency. Of heartache, of sorrow, of dolefulness. A perpetual sadness that is, not entirely, but mostly, his fault.
His heart skips painfully in his chest, and neither he nor Leorio miss the way his own hand twitches toward Leorio. He pauses midway, unsure of which part of him he wants to hold, which part he’s allowed to.
Eventually, after some internal debate, he decides to place it on his shoulder. It is broad beneath his touch, and even as he flexes his hand and spreads his fingers, he just barely grasps the whole of it. The skin is warm against his own, the telltale sign that he is alive and safe, that he is here, beside Kurapika in the middle of the night, as they share an intimate space. He blinks, and thinks he might finally understand why Leorio had clung to him the same way, just minutes before.
“I shouldn’t be gone so long,” this time, he thinks but doesn’t need to say. “Maybe, when I can...” he trails off, unsure of how to finish. Maybe, when he can, he’ll stay. Maybe, when he can, he’ll never leave again. Maybe, when he can, he’ll belong here.
Maybe.
When he can.
As he looks up, he is half surprised to catch Leorio eyeing him with a soft, melancholy smile. “When you can,” he says, and Kurapika nods.
“When I can.” I’ll come home, he thinks, and hopes if he stares hard enough into Leorio’s eyes he will hear.