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Leorio is furious. He doesn’t often get this angry, but when he does… Well, God help anyone who’s stupid enough to bother him right now.
“The caller you’re trying to reach isn’t available right now.” The voice on the other end of the phone is robotic and cold and nothing at all like the one Leorio wanted to hear. “Please leave a message at the tone.”
Beep . The tinny sound makes Leorio’s blood boil, coursing through his veins with a fiery sort of rage that makes him shake just a little on the park bench he’s seated on. God. What is wrong with this guy?
“Are you kidding me, Kurapika?” He’s unable to keep the rage from his voice, and it drenches his words in sharpness until he’s practically screaming into the phone. “It’s been a month since you’ve disappeared. A whole damn month . What part of you thought that would be okay?”
His shouting is starting to attract the attention of the other people in the park, and he gives them all a wave that he hopes conveys I’m fine, no need to worry. Definitely not on the verge of hiring a bounty hunter to seek out my friend.
“I know, I know. You’re busy, right? Busy seeking out revenge.” Leorio stands up, unable to contain his anger sitting down, and starts to stalk off through the park and down the street, where his yelling can be drowned out by the rush of cars and city traffic. “Well, guess what? I think you can take a ten-minute break to call back your best friend . Is that too much to ask from you? To just call me?”
A whole month since he’s last heard from Kurapika. A whole month of worrying and drinking and crying like a baby in the middle of the night because the one person he’s let himself care for won’t even return his calls. Looks like out of the two of them, Leorio’s the real idiot.
“Just pick up the phone next time, do you hear me? Or I swear, Kurapika, I’ll hunt you down to the ends of this earth!” Leorio screams the words into the receiver and presses the hang-up button so hard he chips a nail on the phone screen. “Agh, damn it!”
He’s almost to his apartment now, and he shoves his phone back into his pocket as he enters the building, his heart threatening to pound right out of his chest. This isn’t fair. This isn’t fair at all . He’s supposed to have the most soothing heartbeat in all of Yorknew City, isn’t he? Well, so much for that.
When he finally gets back to his apartment, he slams the door as loud as he can, ignoring the indignant shouts of his neighbors. All around him, the place is in disarray: books lying open on his desk, his bed, his chair, even the floor, accompanied by pens and pencils scattered across every available surface.
He doesn’t bother to clean anything up and instead throws himself onto his bed, reaching over to his bedside table and grabbing a framed photo.
It’s the four of them: Gon, Killua, Leorio, and Kurapika, bickering and laughing after their hunter exam, and Leorio hates the way his heart clenches as he stares at it. It feels like it was only yesterday when the four of them cared about nothing except getting those stupid licenses. And now look at them.
He should be studying, he knows, but he can’t think of anything but Kurapika. Why can’t he get that idiot out of his mind ? He’s so sick of drowning himself in those happy memories, those shouts of “Take that back, Leorio” and damn it, why can’t he just stop thinking about those terrifyingly breathtaking red eyes?
“Just pick up the phone next time, you idiot,” Leorio says to his pillow. “Just pick up the phone.”
“The caller you’re trying to reach isn’t available right now. Please leave a message at the tone.”
“Hey… Kurapika?”
Leorio is outside of his classroom, an exam paper clenched in his hands. His fingers shake around the paper, threatening to loosen his grasp at any moment.
“I did it. I passed.” He looks down at his paper again, as if he’s worried it might disappear in front of his eyes. “I passed the exam.” A bright red 100 stares back at him, and he’s not sure why the sight of it makes him feel like crying. “You know how you told me I could do it? Well, I did. I did, Kurapika.” A breath, a sigh, and a surrender. “When you get a chance, could you pick up the phone? I want… I need to hear your voice.”
He hangs up the call and puts his phone back in his pocket. He should be celebrating, out dancing with a pretty girl and laughing with his fellow med students, but everything just feels like it always does. Empty.
Leorio is so empty without him.
One month. Two months. Three. And then… a year.
A full year without Kurapika comes and goes in an agonizing crawl, every day slower than the last. Leorio visits Gon in the hospital, Leorio almost becomes chairman of the Hunter Association, Leorio punches that good-for-nothing Ging Freecs in the face, and he tells Kurapika all of it, pouring his heart out into his late-night messages, each a little more desperate than the last. Every single one is prefaced by that awful robotic voice, that “please leave a message at the tone.” But he does, and as the days get longer, so do the messages, each one becoming a sort of diary entry for Leorio.
“And- get this, you’d’ve hated it- that bastard seriously told me to ‘stop being such a coward and punch him’. Can you believe that?” Leorio is shouting into the phone again, sprawled out across his bed and taking up nearly the full surface of the thing. His neighbors gave up on complaining about his late-night yelling long ago. “So I did, of course, and broke his stupid little nose. By that point, he was so out of it he started knocking into tables, kinda like you that one time I made you try hard apple cider, and so I told him, I said ‘if you try to steal my drink one more I’m gonna-’”
Knock.
Leorio sits bolt-upright, the phone still pressed against his ear. No one comes to his door these days, especially not at two in the morning. It had better not be Zepile asking for more money to fund his new hot-air ballooning hobby. If Leorio has to sponsor that good-for-nothing one more time-
He shuffles to the door, half-asleep and looking bedraggled as ever. He’s wearing a pair of striped blue pajama pants and nothing else, and he holds the phone to his ear as he stumbles over to the door and grabs the doorknob, practically falling against it.
“Hold on. Someone’s at the door, sunshine, I gotta go. This is not finished, though, don’t you worry. I’ll fill you in on the rest of my big fight tomorrow.” Leorio sighs, running a hand through his tangled hair. “While we’re on the subject, pick up the phone, would ya? Just once. God, just once .” He hangs up and sighs again, opening the door with a loud yawn. “Look, Zepile, I told you last time, I’m not funding any more of these little-”
It’s not Zepile at the door.
Leorio drops the phone onto the hardwood floor, and he can tell from the crack it makes that he’s split the screen clean in two. For once in his life, he doesn’t even care about picking the phone back up.
“K-Kurapika?”
It feels like some kind of hallucination, looking at him. This isn’t one of his dreams or even one of his memories, it’s real , and somehow that’s even more haunting.
Kurapika doesn’t speak, but just stares at Leorio with an empty, hollow sort of gaze. He’s dressed in a wrinkled black suit, the sleeves of which are stained with something that looks a lot like blood. He looks like he’s been to hell and back, and even so, Leorio feels something like tears prick the corners of his eyes.
“Come- come in. I didn’t think anyone was coming so I didn’t- I didn’t clean up, but…” Leorio stumbles backward and trips over one of his stacks of books, his gangly limbs landing in a heap on the floor. He’s too shocked to even be embarrassed. “Sorry, sorry… Sit, please… Over here, maybe? Yeah.” Leorio stretches out one arm and sweeps a stack of books and papers off of a forlorn chair in the center of the room, pushing it out towards Kurapika.
“Thank you.”
It’s those words that finally unravel Leorio. Kurapika’s voice is just like he remembers it, calm and steady and warm, and his heart aches at the sound of it. How many nights has he spent wishing to hear that very tone on the other end of that damned phone?
“S-Sure. I mean, of course.” Leorio sits down on the side of his bed and watches Kurapika carefully take a seat on the chair he’s set out for him. “You could have told me you were coming. I would’ve been a more prepared host.”
“I like this place,” Kurapika says quietly, in a way that makes it clear he’s doing his best to be polite. Leorio doubts Kurapika has ever hated a living space more. “Very… cozy.”
“Thanks.” Leorio doesn’t know how to do this. How does he bridge a year of gaps, a year of unheard messages, half of which consist of him sounding practically unhinged? He’s hit by a sudden wave of sadness, then, thick and choking and all-consuming, and his face contorts in a frown.
No. Not sadness. It’s more than that. It’s anger, too, and hurt, and frustration, and suddenly it’s all coming up and he can’t really handle all this at once and now he is crying, really crying, and Kurapika’s eyes widen at the sight of it.
“Why?” is all Leorio can say. “Why didn’t you just pick up the phone?”
Kurapika is silent, his gaze unwavering, and Leorio feels the last of his anger bubble up to the surface.
“Do you know how long I spent waiting for you? I called you every day , and that’s fine, I would’ve gladly done more for you, but not once getting a call back?” Leorio stands so he’s towering over Kurapika, staring into those blank eyes. If he were a member of the Kurta clan, Leorio is certain his own eyes would be a furious shade of scarlet by now. “Do you know what that did to me? Thinking you didn’t even care? God, Kurapika, you were my everything , and then you were suddenly nothing. Apart from Gon and Killua, you were all- you were all that I had.”
Leorio sinks down to the bed and puts his head in his hands, burying his face in his fingers so he doesn’t have to look up at Kurapika.
“And now you show up here, looking for me to just pretend like it didn’t happen, like you didn’t just abandon me when I needed you most. I understand your life is centered around this revenge you need to carry out, but I was a part of that life too, once.” Leorio’s tears slip through his fingers onto his comforter. “Kurapika, I… I loved you.”
Leorio hears Kurapika's sharp intake of breath and feels his heart twist. Damn it, why did he say that? It’s true, yes, but that doesn’t make it any less stupid of a comment. Of course Kurapika doesn’t love him back, he’s made that exceptionally clear.
“I listened to your messages.”
Leorio looks up sharply as Kurapika finally speaks, but the blond isn’t looking at him. Instead, he stares out of the window, the moonlight reflected in his eyes.
“I listened to all of them,” he continues, “the ones that were just you drunk and cursing me out for thirty minutes, the ones that you didn’t mean to send. Even the ones where all you did was cry.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I need you to know that it was those messages that kept me going.” Kurapika draws in a shaky breath like he’s on the verge of tears, but his expression remains stoic. “Without them, I… I don’t know if I would’ve stayed myself. With every pair of scarlet eyes I gained, it was like I lost a part of me. Your messages were the only thing holding all my pieces together.”
Leorio can’t speak. He doesn’t know what he would say even if he could.
“I didn’t want… I didn’t want you to see me like that. So full of rage, so all-consumed by my vendetta, you- you didn’t deserve that.” Kurapika turns to him, now, their pain-soaked gazes intermingling in the darkness. “What you did deserve was a call back, and I couldn’t give it to you. For that, you have every right to be angry.”
“Why are you here?” Leorio says finally, and Kurapika’s lips twitch into something like… a smile?
“I missed you,” Kurapika says simply, like that explains everything. “And I figured it was about time I came to congratulate you on passing that medical exam. I said you could do it, didn’t I? I’ve always had every faith in you, Leorio.”
The sound of his name in that perfect, lilting voice makes Leorio cry even harder, and he crosses the distance between them in a moment, drawing Kurapika into a crushing embrace.
It feels like heaven, holding him in his arms. Leorio’s tears fall onto the shoulder of Kurapika’s suit jacket, but he finds it hard to care about anything other than Kurapika in front of him, this being who’s stolen a too-large piece of his heart.
“You can’t ever leave me for that long ever again,” Leorio says, and he feels Kurapika smile against his chest. “Who knows what trouble I’ll get into. You were always the responsible one, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” Kurapika says, and when he finally pulls away, tears have made shining tracks down his cheeks. “I’m sorry, Leorio. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s alright, sunshine.” Leorio smiles for the first time in what feels like centuries. “You had your own battles to fight. What matters is that you’re here now.”
“Would this be a bad time to tell you that I loved you, too?” Kurapika says the words tentatively, like a question, and Leorio is thrilled to see him blush a deep red. “I still do, to be completely honest. Even though I have listened to hours worth of messages of you describing some rather unpleasant medical procedures in garish detail.”
“I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to tell me that,” Leorio says, and then he’s kissing Kurapika and it is everything that has ever been right with the world, little bolts of electricity filling his mind, and there is nothing he wants more than to stay like this, forever, pulling Kurapika closer against his chest and kissing him like the world is crashing down around them.
“Hey, sunshine?” Leorio whispers the question against Kurapika’s lips and he laughs, pressing his forehead to Leorio’s.
“What is it, Mr. Leorio?”
“Next time you don’t pick up the phone, I’m giving you a first-hand demonstration of my new nen ability, you hear me?”
“I’d like to see you try,” Kurapika says, kissing Leorio’s cheek. “Besides, I think your phone is broken anyway.”
“You’re paying for a new one. You owe me that much, I’d say.”
“Mmhm.”
The two of them stand like that, Kurapika held tightly in Leorio’s arms, for the rest of the night, sharing words and promises and kisses until the sun finally fills Leorio’s apartment with its golden glow, and Leorio wonders how he ever lasted a whole year without this sunshine in his life.
He’s pretty certain he won’t be able to last without him ever again.