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If anyone else had called him relentlessly at two in the morning until he was forced to wake up and answer, Leorio would have shouted at them until their eardrums burst. Then he would’ve gone right back to sleep. As it was, the caller ID shocked the anger right out of his system. He was so surprised that he nearly let it go to voicemail again, staring at the name on the screen. On the last ring, he pulled himself together and scrambled to get the phone to his ear.
Leorio felt his voice croak with sleep. “Kurapika?
He heard music on the other end of the line, loud and heavy on the bass, mixed with the sound of people talking over each other. It sounded like a bar, or maybe a block party. Were there block parties in Yorknew City? He wasn’t sure. Then a laugh, high and kind of breathy, like it was unsure of itself, came through the phone.
Leorio knew that laugh.
“Kurapika?” he said again, more urgently. “Are you there?”
“Oh! Leorio, you picked up!” came Kurapika’s voice, cheerful and a bit slurred. “Le-or-i-o,” he sounded out slowly, like he was rolling the name around in his mouth, and then he giggled.
For a moment, Leorio just sat there and blinked at the wall across from his bed. He pinched his arm and winced. Nope, he was definitely awake.
“Leorio!” Kurapika said again. “What’s up!”
“Are you drunk?” Leorio demanded.
Another laugh. No, sorry—another giggle. From Kurapika. Leorio’s eyebrows began to explore how far up his forehead they could go. “I don’t know!” Kurapika said brightly, a slight tremor in his voice. “Don’t have anything to compare it to! But I also didn’t have anything to drink, so how could I be?” He laughed again. It was starting to sound a little hysterical.
Leorio’s spine felt ice cold. Fighting to keep his voice measured, he asked, “Kurapika, where are you right now?”
A hum. “A club called, I think. Um—excuse me, what’s the name of this place?” The last bit was muffled and distant, like Kurapika had leaned away from the phone. Then he was back. “Club Aura, Leorio. Oh, that’s fun! Le-aura-io.” He laughed again.
Leorio chose to ignore that, too busy throwing on whatever clothing was nearest and digging his shoes out of the closet. “Okay, fine. Stay there, I’m coming to get you.” The tie and blazer he’d worn a few hours ago lay next to his glasses on the nightstand. Might as well, he figured, and threw them on top of his haphazard outfit.
“Wait, wait, wait!”
“What?” He paused, balanced precariously on one foot, a sock halfway up his ankle.
“This isn’t a normal nightclub!” Kurapika lowered his voice. “It’s a Nen nightclub. So be careful!” Somehow, he still managed to convey exclamation marks even at a whisper. Leorio wasn’t sure he’d ever been warned so cheerfully.
He had never heard of a Nen nightclub, but he could venture a guess as to what it might be. And why Kurapika might end up at one. He finished pulling on his sock and sighed. “You followed a pair of eyes there.” It wasn’t really a question.
There was silence, and then a small, much more melancholy laugh. “I think I really need your help, Leorio.”
Leorio shut his eyes briefly, heart squeezing. “Stay put,” he said. “I’ll be right there.” Then he hung up, tied his shoes, and ran out the door.
Club Aura wasn’t hard to find. He’d been worried that an establishment associated with Nen (whatever that even meant) might try to keep itself hidden. It wouldn’t have surprised him to find a Nen nightclub in the back room of a restaurant like the entrance to the Hunter exam, or behind an invisible door that could only be discovered using gyo.
Instead, he found himself outside of an exceedingly normal nightclub, sandwiched between several other clubs and bars down the block in both directions. A sleek black sign with AURA in giant white letters hung above a frosted glass door. There were windows, but they were small and high enough up on the wall that Leorio probably wouldn’t be able to see through them even on a stepladder. Private, but that wasn’t particularly strange in this part of the city.
A red velvet rope blocked the door, guarded by a woman dressed in all black. She was at least a foot shorter than Leorio and could not have weighed more than a hundred pounds, even with the giant chunky black boots she wore, but Leorio knew better than to underestimate her based on her appearance. He stepped forward cautiously, ready to present his Hunter license or answer her riddles three or whatever.
To his shock, the woman simply looked him up and down, glared into his eyes for a few seconds too long to be entirely comfortable, and nodded once in approval. She stepped aside and withdrew the velvet rope, gesturing toward the door.
Leorio gaped at her in astonishment, but when she remained silent, he decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Taking a moment to steel himself, Leorio straightened his tie, squared his shoulders, and stepped inside Club Aura.
It was loud. It was also dark, hazy, and crowded enough that Leorio realized it would take hours to find Kurapika in this place. Nothing immediately stood out to Leorio as being that different from a normal club, except that everyone was either in ten or zetsu, which marked them as Nen users. He threw his head back and groaned in frustration. If Kurapika had been drugged, Leorio did not have time to go around and get close enough to every single group of people to spot whether he was among them.
A hand tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled around, ready to Watch it, buddy! his way into a cathartic screaming match. Instead, he found himself nose-to-nose with none other than Kurapika himself.
Hearing laughter over the phone was one thing. Watching a smile spread across Kurapika’s face right in front of him felt like time travel. Leorio was so overwhelmed he almost forgot their situation entirely.
“Leorio! You’re here!” Kurapika said. He grinned so widely the edges of his eyes crinkled. Maybe the expression should have looked wrong, considering that Leorio highly suspected his friend’s mood was merely an artificial layer of cheer, but it didn’t. The smile looked exactly the same as it did in his memories.
Kurapika’s hand was still on his shoulder. All of Leorio’s nerve endings were on fire with the knowledge of it.
He cleared his throat. “Um. Yeah. Well. Yes.” Smooth.
With a laugh, Kurapika said, “Dance with me,” put his other hand on the small of Leorio’s back, and pulled him toward the middle of the room.
Leorio’s brain short-circuited.
By the time he was able to start processing his surroundings again, they’d started dancing. In the middle of the nightclub. And Kurapika was leading.
Leorio was pretty sure his face was redder than his tie, and possibly also steaming. “WHAT—”
Kurapika cut him off, leaning forward to talk directly into his ear. “The bartender has—" But he couldn’t finish, another laugh bubbling up to throttle his sentence. Did it sound a little more strained this time?
“I am not buying you a drink,” Leorio said, his face hot.
“Not that,” Kurapika said. He sounded calmer the way he had on the phone, like he was trying to force the giddiness down. “The eyes. The bartender has the eyes.” Then, leaning back a little to look Leorio in the face, he said, “You’re really here!” Back to bubbly.
It was definitely some kind of drug. Or, more likely, the effect of someone’s hatsu. Leorio looked over his shoulder at the bartender; a tall but ultimately average-looking man wearing all black and mixing a drink. The fact that there was only one bartender working on such a busy night was odd in itself, but Kurapika must have had his own reasons to be suspicious.
“Where’s he keeping ‘em?” Leorio wondered. “With the house liquor?”
Another painful-sounding laugh. “I don’t think he has them here with him.” Kurapika was sporting a huge grin again, but this time Leorio thought it looked more out of place. With a shake of his head, Kurapika took a deep breath and said, all at once, like he was forcing the words out, “I got an anonymous tip about the bartender at Club Aura earlier today so I came here to find out his name or address but then he told me to smile and hit me with his hatsu so I—so I called you.”
Kurapika gasped out a laugh and leaned more heavily on Leorio’s shoulder, his explanation apparently finished. Leorio helped him regain his balance.
“Okay, we’re leaving,” announced Leorio. Terror flashed across Kurapika’s face so quickly he almost didn’t notice it. Sighing, Leorio tightened his grip on Kurapika’s arm. “We know what he looks like, and he’s the only one working tonight. It’ll be simple enough to figure out his name tomorrow.” Kurapika started shaking his head again, seemingly unable to verbally protest, but Leorio knew he was in the right about this. “You’re incapacitated,” he said firmly. “I came here to help you and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“The eyes,” Kurapika whispered.
“We’ll find them,” Leorio promised. He was pretty sure Kurapika mouthed the word we then, but he decided that was a rabbit hole this conversation did not need to go down and pretended he hadn’t seen. “But right now we need to get you your permanent frown back.”
The responding laugh sounded marginally more genuine, which made Leorio feel a little better.
Since Leorio had no clue where Kurapika was staying, and Kurapika had fallen asleep the second they’d gotten into a taxi, he resigned himself to spending the rest of the night sleeping on his hotel room floor. If it meant letting Kurapika catch a break, Leorio didn’t really mind.
Luckily Kurapika had been lucid enough to walk to the room on his own. While Leorio would have carried him if he had to, he figured they’d both had enough mortifying encounters for one night.
As Leorio lay in his makeshift pallet of blankets on the floor next to the bed, he heard Kurapika shifting in his sleep a few feet away.
“Leorio,” he whispered.
Leorio startled out of his half-sleep daze. “Kurapika?” It was too dark to make out his friend’s face, but he faced the direction of the bed anyway.
“Thanks for helping me,” Kurapika said. “I missed you.”
Leorio blinked. His shoulder tingled where Kurapika’s hand had been earlier.
“Any time,” he said back. “I missed you too.”
Leorio fell asleep with a smile on his face.