The Heartbeat Barometer

Genres: Romance, Angst

Summary: He has a debt to settle. The blue-haired girl did save all their lives, after all. / Neon x Bonolenov

A/N: I first thought of this idea after noticing Bonolenov's absence in Phantom Rouge. I wondered to myself what he could be doing during that time and decided he was hitting up Yorkshin's greatest coffeehouses with Neon. So the story takes place post-Yorkshin and contains spoilers through to that arc, and is meant to take place in the 2011 anime version in terms of the characters' color schemes and the like. Please work with me on the weirdness of the pairing, this is one of my HxH OTPs and I think they're super adorable together. I hope you enjoy the story.

The Heartbeat Barometer

Neon pouts as she looks around Basho's wide shoulders to the line slowly snaking its way to the single open register. She rocks back on her feet, counting the seconds before the woman at the register moves over and the line moves up by one. Twenty seconds. A whine escapes her throat. At her side, Basho chuckles.

She likes it when he is her guard on outings like this. Senritsu hates these types of places, where the din of voices and scraping chairs and the whirring espresso machine competes so gloriously with the smell of chocolate and coffee and whatever they've baked fresh that day. Today it's cinnamon scones. Neon loves it.

Kurapika drinks coffee, plain, but it's clear he doesn't like it. He likes tea, though, and the few times she expresses an interest in visiting a new teashop he volunteers to accompany her, to her surprise. But tea is a serene drink, and these days Neon wants something with a little more sway.

Now Basho appreciates good coffee. He likes the little hole-in-the-wall places where the menu changes daily and he knows all the baristas' names. He doesn't like Neon's trendy drinks, but he's a welcome wealth of information when she wants to try something new. And of them all, he's the only one who doesn't ask why she needs to go outside and have her coffee here, not when the staff can make or fetch it for her. Some of it is selfish, she thinks—she pays for his coffee, so he'll gladly follow her to any coffeehouse she chooses—and the rest is an epicurean snobbishness they share, that the act of drinking fine coffee is an experience, and so much greater than just the beverage in the glass.

Not that he would ever admit to such a thing, she thinks. But he relaxes in places like this, breathing in the steam of his dark roast coffee, and he enjoys the outings, even when he's shouting their orders to be heard over the clamor or the too-loud jazz music some places play.

The line moves forward another step. She whines again.

"Neon, why don't you go and get us a table?" Basho suggests. "Tell me your order, and I'll bring the drinks."

"A large vanilla latte, with the foam in the shape of a heart!" she tells him with a beaming smile. "You're the best, Basho!"

She skips out of line happily, a new purpose in mind. "Find a table, find a table…" She surveys the ones open, frowning at the unclean booths and the handful of adjoining open seats at the community tables.

"Ah! That one!" She makes a dash for it, sliding into one of the open chairs. It's a two-seat table in the middle of the shop, and she stretches out her legs beneath the table, bouncing her heels on the wooden floor as she hums to herself, pleased with her table-selection flair.

The table-selection game had been fun, but the waiting game is not, and as Neon peers through the crowd to study the line again she sees at least a half-dozen people between Basho and the register. The tables around her are filled with couples and groups of friends, and where before listening to their conversations would be fun, now it just fills her with a vague, stabbing loneliness. Her fingers itch for a pen.

Basho seems to understand it more than the others do. As she sits alone at the table, wrapping her hands up in the long sleeves of her jacket, the need for some kind of distraction becomes almost painful. When her fingers are wrapped around a coffee cup she can forget that her hands aren't twirling a pen. When she's idle, when her mind and her senses and her hands don't have something to occupy themselves, she goes through the motions, and stares at blank pieces of paper for hours.

Suddenly, the chair in front of Neon is pulled out and a voice asks, "Is this seat occupied?"

Before she can even look up the person has dropped into the seat. Neon stares at—him? them?—for a moment as they lift the plastic cup in one hand and take a deep drag through the straw.

He matches her stare, and when she finally finds her voice they end up speaking at once. "It is occupied, sorry—"

"—What, do I have something on my face?"

It's an odd but entirely appropriate comment for him to make, considering most of his face—and nearly every other bit of skin she can see—is covered with thick white bandages. She drops her gaze to his hands, also similarly covered, and frowns. He doesn't seem to have any problems holding the cup, so perhaps the bandages are not from a serious injury, like a burn…she wants to ask him about it, but it wouldn't be very polite of her, so she drops her eyes further to her hands and wrings them together inside of her sleeves.

"Well, yes," she admits. "I shouldn't have to tell you that, though…" She doesn't know how to address him, and gets a sudden spike of inspiration when she realizes just what he looks like. "…Mummy-san."

His face seems to freeze in a look that is one-quarter indignation to three-quarters embarrassment. It makes her laugh, before she realizes that that, too, is not very polite of her.

"Is that what you think I look like?" he asks.

"Um." She looks thoughtful. "Was it because of a plastic surgery mishap?"

The percent of visible indignation rises. "It was not."

"Well, err…mummy-san…if you go out like that, people are going to talk about you!" She tries smiling at him; he makes another half-strangled noise of protest at her continued use of that address. He's wearing a shiny red jacket with the hood pulled up over his head, and that alone would draw people's attention if the bandages did not. She decides it's a good look, if only because she can't remember the last time she saw anyone wearing a jacket like it.

"I am not here to talk about that!" He isn't shouting, but his voice is louder than it has been. It's got an odd sound to it; the pitch keeps changing, like he's got something stuck in his throat.

"I told you, the seat is occupied," Neon reminds him. Perhaps if she calls him mummy-san again he will leave. "What would you like to talk about, then?"

"Are you…" And then his voice changes, drops, becomes softer. There's concern in it, but it isn't genuine. Rather, it sounds like it comes from a place of obligation. "Are you alright? After what happened to you at the auction."

She stares at him again, really stares, and when she replies she is frosty and anxious and wishes for Basho. "How do you know about that?"

"Please answer the question."

Perhaps he is one of her father's associates, or one of those Hunters the mafia had hired to help protect the auction attendees. She certainly won't be answering any of his questions unless he answers a few of hers first. But the set of his jaw changes as he looks at her, and she thinks that his is a question that does not need answering.

She finds her voice. "Is that iced coffee?" Her nose wrinkles.

The ice cubes clink together as he sets the cup down. "Yes."

"You…like it?" It's never even tempted her in the slightest.

He shrugs. "It's not bad."

This sets off her own wave of righteous indignation—how dare someone choose their drink just because it's not bad—but before she can respond he stands and slides the chair back into place.

"I was hoping you would be happy. I will do what I can to make that happen. Goodbye, Neon Nostrade," he says, inclines his head slightly in her direction, and then spins on his heels and walks away from the table.

From the other direction, she can see Basho arriving, two saucers in his hands. He sets hers down in front of her and sets the other in front of the empty chair.

"What was that?" he asks, more out of curiosity than concern.

"Someone asked if the seat was available," she says, unwilling to say much more. "I told them it was not. So they left."

"Ah." They sit in relative silence, and Basho busies himself with adding a sugar packet to his coffee.

She frowns at her latte. It smells delicious, but the heart, made out of foam and chocolate sauce, is lopsided. She supposes Basho upset the cup as he carried it to the table. Still, she lifts it to her mouth and takes a drink. The scalding temperature of it does not bother her.

Confusion whirls her thoughts together like a blender, and she wishes she had tried to stammer out something to the bandaged stranger. She tilts the cup and watches the foam slide up to the rim. How dare that person prevent her from enjoying her coffee by being all cryptic and weird?

Another thought occurs to her. "Ohh, it's a disguise." She feels clever.

"What's that?" From across the table, Basho looks up.

"Oh, nothing," Neon assures him.

She wants to know how he knows her name. She wants to know his, so she can find out if this person is dangerous or not—she could ask her guards, but she hesitates at the thought, because if nothing else this person is interesting, and she doesn't want to have her newest distraction taken from her.

She takes another sip of her drink.

She wants to know what iced coffee tastes like.

Neon sits on her bed, a few books open around her. She can't seem to focus on any for long, and considers sending one of the staff to go get something markedly different from the teen romances or tabloid magazines or horoscope textbooks she has to choose from. The last are especially hard to look at. The remnants of a ream of notebook paper lie haphazardly around her feet from where she'd thrown the package earlier. She shifts her position, and a pen digs into her side.

A cup of hazelnut hot chocolate rests on her bedside table. She ignores it in favor of painting her nails, digging through the array of hairclips and lipglosses littering the rest of the table to find the bottle of bright pink polish. She hums to herself as she paints each fingernail, then starts in on her toes with a bottle of red.

She presses her heels into a sheet of paper, delighting in the way it wrinkles and creases. On a whim, she leans forward and swipes a streak of red polish across the margins. In deep concentration, she adds more lines, crisscrossing them until they form the shape of a crude flower. More swirls and stars and hearts follow until the paper is covered and the room stinks of nail polish. Suddenly she regrets it, recapping the bottle and coughing, swinging her feet off the bed and uncaring that she's probably smudging the polish. Still, she walks on her heels to the door, swinging it open and taking deep breaths of the clean air.

Down the hall, she can hear voices. They sound like Kurapika's and Senritsu's, but Neon doesn't care enough to investigate. She considers calling one of her bodyguards over so she can paint their nails, too, but decides against it. She's not a moron, she knows they don't really enjoy her company, but the selfish part of her wants to drag them along behind her just to help assuage her own loneliness. The selfish part of her usually wins out in the end, on most things. She wonders if any of them would be proud of her for refusing it and closing the door.

The nail polish smell is still strong and Neon wrinkles her nose. Serves her right for going on a bender like that. She doesn't know what had come over her.

She picks up an oversized stuffed tiger from its disordered slump against the corner of the room.

Her father had been by to see her earlier, hopeful that somehow she would have recovered her inspiration and her talents.

It shouldn't matter, Neon thinks. She shouldn't be in his favor when she is useful to him and out of it when she is not. The prior day, he had brought her a gift to try and encourage her, but today he took a different approach and coldly informed her that he was selling one of the artifacts in her collection. One per day she refuses to work, he threatened. She'd tried to throw the stuffed tiger he'd given her at his face, but it only hit the slammed door with a weak thump. She can give up that lock of the actress Sara's hair, but she draws the line at the Egyptian mummy's arm.

Thinking of mummies makes her think of her mummy friend, and she laughs to herself. How ridiculous a person he was! And an iced coffee drinker!

She takes the stuffed animal and throws it into her closet and instead studies the rows of pastel, ruffled clothes inside. A fashion party might cheer her up, she thinks, even though it's late outside and she knows she should be asleep by now. If she's not, she'll be tired and crabby tomorrow. Well, she has caffeine for that if she needs it.

Neon studies the row of accessories instead. She takes one of her scarves from her closet, something pale pink and wispy, and winds it around one arm, mimicking the folds of a bandage. The effect is silly but it instantly makes her feel better.

She moves back towards her bed, the scarf slipping down her arm, and reaches for the cup of hot chocolate. She takes a sip, and splutters.

It's cold. Disgustingly cold.

Neon sets the cup down with a sharp clunk and grimaces, trying to force the taste out of her mouth through willpower alone. She hates cold drinks—purposefully cold ones, like smoothies and milkshakes and frozen daiquiris. She hates ice. It waters everything down, until it's less of itself. Sodas and lemonades are fine slightly refrigerated or at room temperature, without ice. Her teeth are too sensitive to the cold. They still reel from just that one sip of the cold chocolate.

Neon's changed her mind. She most definitely does not want to know what iced coffee tastes like.

She grabs a lipgloss from the tabletop and smears it thickly over her lips—it's strawberry, nice and artificially sickly-sweet—and it does a good enough job of masking the taste of the chocolate.

She slumps into bed and leans her head against the pillow. She'll get lipgloss stains on it, of that she is certain, but she doesn't care. There's a lot she can't bring herself to care about, these days.

She thinks that's why she clings so fiercely to the few things she does care about.

She can't care enough to get up and turn the lights off, so she falls asleep with them on, still in that day's clothes, with smudged polish on her fingers and toes and a pink scarf clutched tightly in her hands.

Neon begs one of her bodyguards to take her to a new café the next day. She's heard it's the height of cool—that it has huge flat screen monitors to display the menu, and ultramodern furniture, and a soundtrack of the best new music. But Kurapika shuts her down almost immediately; his phone rings, and he talks quickly before turning away and accepting the call.

"We're making arrangements to return you to your home, Neon. We leave in two days. There isn't time to go on any unnecessary trips."

Senritsu's face is softer, and it's there that Neon hopes she can find the most sympathy. "But that's exactly why I want to go!" She describes the place in detail—Senritsu seems receptive enough to the idea of a café that also plays music videos, even if she doesn't share Neon's choice of artists—but Neon suspects that the other woman is just humoring her. "There's no place like it near my house! Please?"

Senritsu shakes her head, then looks between Neon and the long hallway she'd just skipped down. "Where are your attendants? Where is Eliza?"

"I've given her some time off, to grieve," Neon responds promptly, before realizing that the question was asking after Eliza's mental state just as much as to her location. "She is…not well. She'll be happy to go home, I think."

"You've been alone?" The next question comes from Basho. "You're not well, either, missy."

She would be better if only people would stop reminding her of that fact. "I'm fine!" She gives them each a beaming smile as if to prove it, but Senritsu's eyes narrow slightly and that makes Neon feel sheepish. Better to focus her attention on Basho or Kurapika now; the latter still has his back to them all, in conversation with Neon's father. Not that Neon would really call it that—there are long stretches of silence, punctuated with Kurapika's occasional no, sir or yes, sir or I can do that, sir.

They work for her; she should be able to tell them what to do. They should speak to her with that level of deference. Yes, Mistress Neon, your coffee awaits.

Not that it was really about the coffee at all. "Please, Basho?" she tries again, and sees the edge of his resolve start to crack just the slightest bit.

"How about it, Senritsu? Do you want some coffee?"

Oh no he doesn't. They've already passed the question around to each other enough, none of them willing enough to be the one to crush her request outright. Besides Kurapika, at least, but he's still indisposed, so she still has hope.

"Half of the café is a coffee bar, and the other half is a restaurant! They specialize in…nouvelle cuisine?" Neon tries desperately to remember exactly what it was she read about the place. "You can get lunch! Doesn't that sound nice?"

They both look slightly less interested. "What does that even mean?"

"Really good waffles?" There had been a picture of them in the online menu, she remembers that well enough. The strawberries in the picture had been as bright a red as the polish on her toenails.

"It's fancy-looking but insubstantial food." Kurapika has just ended the call, and answers Basho's question with a didactic steadiness to his voice. Whatever reaction he has to what her father has told him, Neon can't tell.

"If it's insubstantial, just eat more of it!" she says.

Kurapika rubs his temples, and she feels just the slightest bit sorry for how tired he looks. "Your father is leaving the city today. He wants us to move up our own plans and return as soon as possible. I told him—"

"—But I need that extra day to pack!" Neon interrupts, dismayed.

"I told him that, with just the three of us, our current plan was more secure. We leave in two days." He manages a thin smile at Neon, whose mood lightens.

"Thank you." Whether he'd done it for her or not, she's grateful all the same. "Lunch is my treat!"

"It'll have to be a late lunch," Kurapika says. "I still have some work to do before we can leave."

"Good." Neon's still in yesterday's clothes, the same ones she'd slept in, and they smell like a weird combination of sweat and watermelon body spray. And after her recent shopping sprees, she has a lot of new clothes to show off. She skips away towards her room, but hesitates just outside of the doorway when the guards turn back towards their own conversation. Something about the look on Kurapika's face worries her.

"Is something wrong?" Senritsu asks.

"It's very odd. Several of Nostrade's debts have been paid off. Including the one from the auction." Kurapika purses his lips, his fingers holding the phone in his hands even tighter. "He doesn't know how it happened. He's certainly not going to say anything about his suspicions, but he wants us to try and look into the situation, find out where the money came from."

"How much money are we talking about here?" It's Basho, now, his voice so loud that Neon has no trouble hearing it where she has to strain to make out Kurapika and Senritsu's from her position hiding behind the door.

"Millions." Kurapika's shoulders droop in an odd way, and Basho whistles. "It's possible someone's trying to bribe him, or they're payments from some past service but the accounts are unfamiliar. I can't trace them."

"How can we help?" Senritsu hesitates right after she speaks, and Neon begins to realize that the other woman has probably figured out that she's still in the hallway. Neon backs away slowly, trying to keep her footsteps quiet and even. They squeak on one of the boards about halfway back to her room, but by that time she can't hear their conversation any more so she doubts if it matters whether they can hear her or not.

Inside her room, she throws off her dirty clothes and throws open her closet doors, studying the rows and rows of ruffles and lace and coordinating pastels and plaids.

What was the point of buying all those new clothes if she couldn't wear them all? Preferably at once. The accompanying mental image makes her giggle, and she grabs for a new outfit at random.

Neon wraps the pink scarf from yesterday around her neck and ties it in a bow. It clashes only slightly with her hair—but then again, so do the pink and white stripes on her shirt and the purple ruffles of her skirt. She reaches out of habit for a pen to stick in her pocket; her fingers remember almost before her mind does and they freeze above the plastic casing. Her fingers drift away, and then curl themselves into fists. She doesn't need it. Even carrying one anymore is pointless.

One of her only opaque scarves is draped across the mirror on the back of the closet door, and she tugs it down for a moment, trying out a smile. That feels pointless, too, and it looks it, but the longer she stares and the more she stretches her mouth wide the easier it is to believe that she's looking at the Neon of a week ago instead of the one from today. That girl was happy. Stupid, but happy.

She reaches fingers up to tug at the corners of her mouth, and sticks out her tongue. Her stomach rumbles.

"Ready or not!" She exits the room, letting the door slam on her way out to give the others a little advance notice of her arrival. Her next thought is of food—strawberry cake with white icing, dainty sandwiches with the crusts cut off, parfaits of fruit and thick syrup—and drink. Coffees with hearts drawn in the foam, drinks with chai and chocolate and more artificial flavorings than she can count. Things to keep her alive. Because that was important again.

"Wow!" Neon presses her palms against the display case of pastries in the nouvelle café. The petit fours look like something out of a drawing, too perfect to exist in real life. And tiny. And expensive. Not that she really cares.

"I'll take four!" She points at the ones topped with fondant roses. Beside her, Kurapika gives her a look.

"No, no, they're for each of us! Really!" With food orders out of the way, they each give their drink order to the cashier. Neon elects to go last, mulling over the options.

"Should I get iced coffee?" She's asking it to no one in particular, but it is Basho who answers.

"You'd hate it, missy." There's laughter in his voice, like the idea is completely incredulous. It makes her want to try it, even though she knows he's right.

"Yeah, I suppose so." She orders a caramel latte this time, and practices her smile at the cashier. They smile back, as if the strange collection of people before them is nothing out of the ordinary. She wishes she had that kind of outlook, and thinks suddenly of how good it will be to go home, where everything is ordinary again. Her smile sinks into a frown. Going home won't make everything like it was. Nothing will. If there's only one thing she knows, it is that. And if she can't go back, then she must move forward.

So she takes the receipt from the cashier and steps forward with the others towards the seating area, where they take up a spot at a large table in the middle. There are six chairs, and Basho puts his feet up in one of them, and the other, besides Neon, remains unoccupied. The ensuing silence is a little uncomfortable, and Neon taps her pink-painted fingertips against the tabletop in time to the up-tempo instrumental music playing over the noise from the late afternoon traffic. Her gaze drops to the vase of wilted daisies in the middle of the table for lack of something else to look at.

The food arrives before the drinks do, which is a point against them, but everything is so delicious that it puts Neon in a good mood and she forgets herself for a moment, laughing as Basho composes a haiku about the petit fours. Her hands shake only once and she wraps them around the too-hot coffee cup and takes a deep sip, feeling it all the way to her stomach. The warmth makes them feel not quite so empty.

Everyone is almost finished with their sandwiches when Neon looks up and sees a familiar red-jacketed figure at the back of the café, passing through the glass revolving doors. She stands almost without thinking about it, awkwardly flailing her hands when the others turn to look up at her.

"Restroom! I'll just be a minute!" And she dashes off before any of them can say a word.

She's lucky the corridor to the restrooms is near the side entrance, so when she stumbles out onto the street he's only a few paces ahead of her.

"You-!" She stumbles over her words the same way she stumbles over her feet, hidden underneath layers and layers of purple ruffles. "I'm glad I got to see you again, before I leave. I still have some questions for you, you know!"

He turns, incredulity stamped across what features she can see through the bandages. "You don't give up, do you?"

Hearing that makes her heart feel lighter than she can ever remember. "I hope not!"

"That's good to hear." A pause, while he takes a sip of his iced coffee. "You're leaving? That's also good."

"Not without knowing your name. What you said helped a lot—I can't really give you all the credit, since it's my brain that's feeling better and I'm the one in control of it, but you helped, didn't you? And I want to help you too, if I can. Am I making much sense?"

"Don't worry about such things. But you can't have my name."

She tilts her head up and looks at him through the curtain of her bangs. "Why not?"

"You get everything you want." He says it with a disparaging sigh, ignoring her expectant, wide eyes and the insistent, high set of her jaw. "Maybe getting knocked down a few pegs will be good for you. I didn't like the way they hurt you. I'd rather I wasn't the cause of more of your pain. That's why I'm trying to help you, and why I'm trying to stay away. That's why I won't tell you my name. Ask for something else."

"Your drink!" Neon makes a grabbing motion with her hands, and he looks between her—she's absolutely unfazed—and the half-full plastic cup of iced coffee in his hands.

"You want…this?" She continues to surprise him at every step; he had thought he understood her, that she was a girl of simple and easy-to-understand motivations, but apparently she enjoys being contrary and difficult. He shrugs, and hands it over.

Once she has his coffee cup in her hands, she looks down at the plastic with triumph; her expression falls when she realizes she can't identify the name scribbled on the side of the cup in black marker.

"B? Bomoko—scribble…?" She pouts and whines and tries to pronounce it again to equally terrible results. "I can't read this."

He rubs the back of his head through the bandages and the hood of his jacket, sighing loudly. Is this what the people around her have to deal with all the time? Just these few interactions were exhausting him.

"It's Bonolenov," he finally says, and the bright smile she rewards him with is almost worth it. "Clever girl." She's surprised him again.

"No, no!" She shakes a finger at him. "You must call me Neon! If you don't…" She tries to think up an appropriate threat. "…I'll…I'll…"

"Don't worry yourself." He repeats it, and then says her name, as she wishes. "Neon."

"Is there anything I can do to help you? I still want to," she says.

"You already have. You…told my fortune once," he tells her. It's a white lie—even if it was not told by her hands, it was still her ability, so what was the difference? "It mentioned—"

"Stop, stop!" She flails out her arms, and scrunches her eyes closed. "I don't want to know anything about the fortunes I tell—I told." She corrects herself quickly; it's barely a slip at all, but he catches it.

"It mentioned—"

"Nonononono!" She cracks open an eye, and he's staring at her with a kind of exasperation that makes her feel very, very small. Something in her falters, and she tries to muster up a smile that only serves to make her lips tremble. "I suppose it doesn't really matter. If I can't do it anymore."

"It still matters to you." He's very matter-of-fact about things, Neon's noticed, and even when she's floating in her own emotions his never seem to crack the surface. It's all obligation with him, and she has to wonder just what it was she had done to put him in this kind of spot. "Don't worry about it."

"It mentioned me, didn't it?" The next moment she realizes just how self-important that guess was. "Or someone important to you. Something important!" That's a stupid thing to say; all of her fortunes were important. It was why they paid so much for them.

"It saved my life. And theirs. I owe you a debt I can never repay, Miss Neon. But I will try."

When she looks up at him, his eyes shine like two bright stars. Her cheeks flush at his seriousness and she fiddles with the coffee cup in her hands.

"If you weren't going to drink that, you shouldn't have taken it from me." He's looking at her like it's a challenge.

She glances down at the straw. The temptation to make a face and shove the cup back at him is strong, but she's curious, and if he can drink it then it can't be that bad, right?

She tilts the cup and watches the ice cubes settle. That straw was just in his mouth. Drinking it would be almost like kissing him. She glances back up at Bonolenov, standing with his arms folded, the posture as casual and out-of-place as the subsequent flick of his eyes, between her and the coffee cup. He doesn't think she'll do it.

She jams the straw into her mouth and sucks in a mouthful of iced coffee. The taste is instantly overwhelming and so unnatural that she coughs and splutters her way through it. The second mouthful goes down a little bit easier, and she's determined to finish it and prove him wrong—prove everyone wrong—even on such a ridiculous matter as this.

The sound of Bonolenov's sudden laughter draws her attention back towards him. Where his voice sounds like there's something perennially stuck in his throat, his laughter fares no better, and while the sound is harsh and grating the emotion behind it is anything but. And the smile! She would tell him to smile more often, if she was not chewing on the straw and trying to get the taste of plastic to cover up the taste of cold coffee.

The strangest sense of satisfaction fills her when she finally reaches the bottom of the cup. She sucks air in through the straw, delighting at the rattling sound it makes when there is no more drink to pick up. Beaming at the plastic cup, she hands it back to Bonolenov.

He stares at it, then at the trash can barely a few feet from her, and sighs.

"What did you think? Was it everything you hoped?"

"Oh no," she says. "It was awful. But thank you all the same."

Neon's heart swells with something at the deeply puzzled look on his face. It's not happiness, exactly, but it's close enough that it gives her hope that she will feel it again.

"You should get back. They'll be missing you." He pulls the edges of the hood of his jacket a little tighter around his face with one hand. "You're stronger than you realize. I should know—I'm a very good judge of strength."

They're odd parting words but entirely fitting coming from him, and as close to concern as she is likely to get. He gives her a brief smile, sucks at the last bit of melted ice and coffee left in the cup, and begins to walk away.

She thought she would find whatever she was searching for at the bottom of her coffee cup. She will find better places to search; she will never stop looking. Not while someone like him believes in her.

Neon stumbles through the door and nearly bowls over Kurapika. The sternness of his glare instantly makes her feel sheepish.

"I'm sorry! I was just getting some air." Her smile is a little watered down, but it's genuine enough that Kurapika gives her one in return. He steps around her and through the door, glancing in either direction down the street. Neon looks over his shoulder, and can just barely make out the man in the bright red jacket a full block away.

"What is it?" she asks.

He takes a while to respond, and when he does he sounds like he is miles away. "Nothing." He pulls her back inside with a hand on her shoulder. "Let's go home."

Sitting on her bed in the mansion she calls home, her coverlet strewn with books and stuffed animals and snack wrappers, Neon Nostrade holds a plain piece of paper in her hands. She sets it down and reaches for the bottle of red nail polish.

She remembers drawing hearts and stars and flowers. She remembers the lopsided heart in her coffee cup, and the wilted flowers on the café table. She remembers how Bonolenov's eyes had looked like stars.

She uncaps the polish, and paints a smiley face across the paper. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth.

End.

Notes:

1) I am not a coffee drinker (tea all the way!), so my research on the various types and preparations of coffee beverages is just that, and has no basis in my own personal experiences. Except for iced coffee. I really hate iced coffee xD;

2) Since Kuroro's ability only steals a particular Hatsu, and not the nen mastery or drive behind a particular ability, I wanted to show glimpses of Neon developing a new Hatsu, with flipped requirements—drawn instead of written, and relating to her own future instead of solely telling the fortunes of others.

3) Thank you for reading! I would appreciate and value your reviews.

~Jess