A phone call in the middle of the night was never a good sign. Leorio learned his lesson once before to keep the ringer on at full volume just in case of the worst case scenario. Once before, Kurapika had left a message, an unintelligible mix of Kurta curses and the sound of a car weaving through the city. When asked about it later, Kurapika would call it a butt dial, a mistake that he wouldn’t make again. But on the off-chance, Leorio’s phone was never silenced again.
Bleary-eyed, he patted around his bedside table for the source of the blaring ringtone, some song Gon had chosen a few months and Leorio had ‘accidentally’ forgotten to change.
“Hello?”
From the other end, Leorio could hear someone breathing. He hadn’t checked the caller ID, but even by breath alone Leorio knew who it was.
“How’d you get hurt?” He’d scold Kurapika’s carelessness later. Now, his friend needed help—that had to be why he called, right?
“I’m not hurt.” At least by his voice, Kurapika sounded fine—his tone as clear and sharp as it always was, the perpetual bit of annoyance and tension always threaded through his words.
Looking over at the clock, Leorio frowned. “It’s 3:26AM, Kurapika,” he continued after a loud yawn, “You wouldn’t call me at this hour unless you’re hurt.”
There was silence on the other end until there was eventually a quiet, “I’m not hurt.”
“Sure,” Leorio sighed and flung himself back down onto his bed. He rubbed at his eyes, knowing that as long as Kurapika didn’t hang up, he would sit on this line for the entire night. It was so uncommon to even hear his voice, Leorio would savor what he could get, even if for now it was just hearing the barely audible breath on the other end of the line.
Finally, Leorio couldn’t stand the silence anymore, “So what’s going on then, if you aren’t hurt?”
“Nothing.” He could hear a crack in Kurapika’s voice, “Nothing is going on.”
“You do realize that sometimes nothing is okay right?” Leorio curled onto his side, holding the phone close. After all of these years of knowing Kurapika, there were a few things that Leorio felt certain about. One of which was that the Kurta likely hadn’t ever had a time in his life since the tragedy where nothing was happening. He was a current of revenge and grief that was never-ending, no time for his sea of feelings to quiet. Leorio understood that well, having thrown himself into his medical career headfirst, a far less deadly endeavor than Kurapika’s but no less all consuming.
“Sure,” Kurapika drawled in a poor mocking of Leorio’s earlier comment. He heard Kurapiaka suck in a breath before continuing, “But to answer your question honestly, the leads have become dead ends and nothing is happening so I’m calling you.”
“…At 3:28AM?”
“You’re awake aren’t you?” He could picture Kurapika now, probably still sitting in whatever living room or kitchen he had, wherever in the world he was now, still in his suit he had been wearing for the last 20 hours. He could picture the blonde’s tired eyes, pallid cheeks, the lift of an eyebrow and quirk of his lip whenever he teased. How desperately Leorio wished that he could look simply turn in his bed and find him there.
“Well,” Leorio chuckled into the phone and forced another, clearly over-exaggerated yawn, “I wasn’t before, but I guess I’m up for you, sunshine.” He let the pet name come so casually to his lips, despite himself.
When he had called Kurapika that before, the blonde had insisted that he was nothing like sunshine. It left Leorio with the thought he would never express—If only you could see yourself the way I see you.
Kurapika was silent on the other end of the line until he spoke again with a soft, “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” Leorio kept blinking, trying to keep his eyes open, trying to take advantage of this rare moment. “So do you want to talk about anything in particular or—”
“How awake are you?” Kurapika cut him off with the sudden question. Distantly, he could hear the ding of an elevator and wondered idly where on earth the blonde was heading at this hour.
“Now? 60 or 70 percent awake, why?”
Again, Kurapika stayed silent. Leorio was about to snap if it continued on like this much longer, ask him if it was some game he was playing or why he was insisting on Leorio staying awake. Those questions all went away when Leorio heard two strong knocks against his front door.
Leorio’s heart stopped for a just a moment as he let himself imagine that it was something beyond his imagination. Because there was no world in which Kurapika was here, he was impulsive but not impulsive in any way beyond throwing himself into harm. He would never be impulsive enough to choose to drag his ass from wherever he had been here to Leorio’s door, unless there was a reason.
He was about to let curiosity get the better of him when he heard the knock again, this time more insistent and more real. No, this was certainly Kurapika.
Leorio slunk out of his bed, nearly falling as he did, and stumbled across his small studio to the door. Flinging it open he saw the sight he had expected. Kurapika looked worn—Leorio didn’t want to ask how long he had gone without sleep—-and phone still up to his ear.
The pair stared at each other for a moment before Leorio watched as Kurapika deliberately hung up and pushed past him and into the apartment. He wanted to feel annoyed that he had been ignored like that before he could even ask what was wrong. But he couldn’t, because Kurapika was alive and here with him and at the end of the day, what more mattered than that?
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Kurapika’s voice was soft as he admitted that, surveying the room before placing his small bag near Leorio’s desk.
“You’re always welcome here, Kurapika,” Leorio closed the door behind him and took a step in. He hesitated before placing his hand on the small shoulder, noticing how it shook slightly under his touch.
They stayed like that for longer than Leorio knew how to deal with it—he should say something more shouldn’t he? Or get Kurapika water or check for injuries or do something to stop the tension from creeping up in the smaller man’s shoulders, shouldn’t he?
“I don’t,” Kurapika began again and Leorio’s breath caught, waiting. He could hear a breath slowly being taken in before he spoke once more, “I don’t know what to do, Leorio.”
Oh. Leorio’s heart sunk as he realized why Kurapika was here. It for the same reason he had been distressed only moments before on the phone—the leads were dried up, and without that purpose no wonder Kurapika seemed lost.
“Well,” Leorio began and used his hand to turn Kurapika around and pull him into a tight hug. If it was an unwelcome intimacy, Kurapika didn’t show it—didn’t push him away or curse under his breath.
Leorio kept him there for a while as he tried to figure out what to say, knowing any platitudes would go unwelcome. Perhaps honesty was best, “It’s almost 3:45AM at this point, so what we do now is go to bed. Tomorrow morning we’ll figure out the rest.”
He could feel the way Kurapika relaxed in his hold at that, the way his muscles melted into the embrace, and could hear the muffled, “Fine.”
“Doctor’s orders,” Leorio dropped his face into the mess of blonde hair. That got a begrudging huff of laughter from Kurapika, which Leorio counted as success enough.
It took the pair no more than ten minutes for Kurapika to get settled, change into Leorio’s too-large pajamas, and use the extra toothbrush the med student kept ‘just in case’. And while they went to bed on either sides, by the time sunlight shone through the windows, they were tangled up in one another.
And Leorio could not have been more grateful.