Author's Notes:

PAIRINGS: Leorio/Kurapika (Leopika); Hisoka/Kurapika (Hisopika); Hisoka/Illumi (HisoIllu); Hisoka/Illumi/Pariston/Kurapika

RATING: Mature

NOTE: To read this story's missing scenes with sexual content, check the uncensored version on Archive of Our Own (AO3 username: lemonpika).

CONTENT WARNINGS: None.

Chapter 5: Always on the fringes, out of reach

Kurapika adjusts the crooked necktie of Pairo's school uniform. He slots in his cousin's shiny new tortoise-shell eyeglasses as carefully as he can. He knows how easily this boy's skin bruises.

Kurapika grins. "Perfect. They're all going to love you."

Pairo appears unconvinced. "I really don't look like a nerd?"

"What's wrong with being nerdy? Besides, there's nothing cooler than taking care of yourself! The last thing you want to do is bump into every blurry object on your first day of school!"

They bid goodbye to Kurapika's parents then commence their journey to Lukso High. With Pairo's arms wrapped around his waist, Kurapika cycles all the way to the far edge of town. His legs are aching by the time they arrive.

Pairo stumbles on his dismount, which causes passers-by to snicker. Kurapika glares at them as he's chaining his bike to the rack. His cousin, however, calls his name in a deadpan tone — a warning for him not to lose his temper.

"Fine," Kurapika sighs. He reaches for Pairo's hand so they can walk in together. But his cousin shifts away from his grasp.

"Not here," Pairo mutters, then moves ahead to join the throng of students entering the school building.

Because Kurapika takes the time to get Pairo settled, he has to rush to reach his own classroom before the first bell rings. In his haste, he smacks face-first against a rock-hard set of abs. The muscles belong to a giant who's ducking through the doorway on his way out of classroom 1–A.

"Watch where you're going, shrimp!" the giant yells. He throws a look over his shoulder and points a meaty finger at a random student in class 1–A. Coarse black hair covers the back of the giant's hand, as if he's already a full-grown man despite his high school uniform. "You there! Name?"

"L — Linssen," the boy in 1–A meekly replies.

"Well, Luh-Linssen." The giant's tone crassly mocks the boy's scared stutter. "Help this latecomer get up to speed about the way things work at Lukso High! I don't wanna waste my last working brain cells starting over from the top! See you losers later!"

Once the giant leaves, the entire classroom erupts in agitated whispers.

Kurapika sets his messenger bag on the unclaimed desk next to Linssen's. "What was that all about?"

"Here in Lukso High," Linssen explains, "there's a gang of upperclassmen called the Spider. Apparently, the gang members made a point of visiting the first-year classrooms to debrief all the new students about the rules of the school."

"I presume they're not referring to the official student handbook?"

"You presume correctly. The Spiders are this school's self-declared royalty. They unilaterally dictate the rules and expect every last student to get in line."

Kurapika scowls. "What bullshit! How old are these Spiders anyway? Sixteen? Seventeen? And the first thing they do — on the first day of school — is attempt to intimidate the freshmen? Why don't they pick on someone their own size? I'll bet, deep down, they're more immature and frightened than anyone else in Lukso High!"

Linssen shakes his head. "You didn't hear that humongous guy when he was here laying down the law. He sounded like the real deal."

The boy sitting across the aisle leans in to contribute to the conversation. "Everyone in the Spider is the real deal. Especially their leader, Chrollo. There's a rumor going 'round that he knifed somebody back in Meteor City."

"Squala," the girl behind him chimes in, "weren't those charges dismissed? I mean, the police let him go, and he roams around freely like he owns this town!"

"Not the point, Eliza! Point is that Chrollo and his kind are trouble with a capital T! They've committed crime after crime and gotten away with each! Everyone in 1–A should steer clear of the Spider to survive. We should keep our heads down and blend in as much as possible. If you stick out like a sore thumb, you'll be the prime target for the Spider to come and hammer you down."

Everyone listening to Squala's spiel nods sagely.

Kurapika, however, offers his own perspective. "If you want to bend to their will, no one's stopping you. But I won't do the same, especially not for the entire four-year duration that I'll be attending this school. Personally, the prospect of making myself smaller to accommodate the inflated egos of those bullies is anything but palatable."

Silence follows this declaration. Then, without a word exchanged among them, everybody in the vicinity shifts their desks an inch farther from Kurapika's. They turn away, pretending he no longer exists. It's as if they've already marked him as a dead man.

Pairo has agreed to meet him by the school library during lunch break. Once Kurapika sets his eyes on his cousin, he leads him to the first deserted location he can find. He needs a place to rant and rave where no one can judge him. So there, amidst the dusty shelves and the musty smells of a broom closet, he painstakingly recounts everything that's occurred since they separated this morning.

"The kids in my class are being ludicrous! All it took was a single visit from this gangbanger, and the whole lot of them bowed their heads and cowered with their tails between their legs! They were acting like freshly neutered dogs! Am I going to be the only one with the balls to fight back if one of those Spiders comes around again?" Kurapika gives a groan of frustration. He waits for Pairo to get heated on his behalf, but his cousin doesn't say a word. Kurapika prompts him with a question. "Did someone from the Spider harass your class too?"

Pairo's answer is immediate. "No."

"No? Maybe somebody paid a visit before you got there."

"No one visited class 1–F, Kurapika."

As Kurapika wonders why that might be, he belatedly notices something. "Pairo, where did your glasses go?"

"I decided not to wear them anymore."

Upon closer inspection, Kurapika detects a minuscule cut on the bridge of his cousin's nose. The faint beginnings of a bruise are spreading out from the broken skin. "Did you bump into a post or something?"

"Yeah, it just came out of nowhere. I headbutted the post so hard that my glasses snapped in half. Don't worry. I'll be doubly careful from now on."

"They broke? But you just said you decided not to wear them."

"I decided not to wear them because they were broken," Pairo amends.

"So where are your glasses now? I can take them to the shop to have them repaired."

"Too late. I threw them away."

"What a waste!" Kurapika exclaims. "They were a pricey pair! Oh, I just remembered. I stashed band-aids in my wallet for this very purpose."

Kurapika selects a checkered red strip. Pairo's favorite color. He cups his cousin's cheek to hold him still. But before he can apply the band-aid, Pairo spins around to grab the handle of the door. In the cramped space, this drastic movement knocks Kurapika toward the wall. Brooms and mops go crashing down the floor.

"Pairo, wait!"

But Pairo has already escaped, leaving Kurapika to rearrange the cleaning tools. When Kurapika manages to catch up, his cousin's hobbling halfway down the stairs.

"Pairo, what's gotten into you today?"

Pairo jabs a finger toward his chest. "You're the one who's acting strange!"

"What? What did I do?"

"You're acting like we're back at home even though we're at school! Don't you get that you're behaving in a way that's sure to give people the wrong idea?"

"The wrong idea?" Kurapika echoes, uncertain about what his cousin is trying to tell him.

They've reached the end of the steps. Pairo waits for a freshman girl to scurry past before facing Kurapika with a somber expression. "I can't ride the bicycle with you anymore. You take the bike to school, and I'll walk."

"I can walk with you," Kurapika volunteers. "There's nothing like a daily stroll to appreciate the scenery we might otherwise take for granted."

"You're hearing me, but you're not listening. I don't want to walk with you or ride with you anywhere. From now on, nobody in school should see us alone together."

Kurapika freezes as these words sink in. It's barely been a day and Pairo is already refusing to be seen with him? Has word gotten around so fast that Kurapika's a surefire target for the school's so-called royalty? Kurapika already expected some measure of punishment for daring to speak out against their regime, but he didn't foresee getting struck exactly where it would hurt the most.

No matter what, protecting his cousin is his number one priority. So even though every part of his body screams in protest, he swallows back his selfish words. "If that's what you want, Pairo, then I won't object. But if you ever need anything, you know where to find me. I'll drop everything to help you, all right?"

Pairo walks off without bothering to reply.

Over the following months, Kurapika waits for the gang members to crack down on him. But no one comes.

Was he ever in any danger in the first place? Perhaps his defiant speech has never even reached the Spider's ears.

He tries repairing the rift he's made between himself and class 1–A on the first day, but apart from receiving an occasional nod of acknowledgement from his seatmate, everyone else treats him with icy indifference.

He spends lunch and study breaks poring over every book that snags his interest in the library. Occasionally, he raises his eyes from the page to see Pairo always on the fringes, out of reach. Wandering between the shelves. Squinting at the gold-lettered spines. Setting down one title at a time on the check-out counter.

What pains him the most is the way the distance persists even at home. At the dinner table, Pairo is all pleasantries as usual. Please pass the salt. The potatoes were cooked to perfection. Why yes, the sky smells like it will rain very soon. But once the plates have been cleared away, Pairo locks himself in his bedroom and doesn't emerge for the rest of the day.

Neither does Pairo travel through the thicket anymore. The golden ages they spent at their secret base may as well have been a reverie that Kurapika conjured when he could no longer endure the magnitude of his loneliness.

One evening, Kurapika summons up the courage to knock on his cousin's door. Just once, he'll ask Pairo if he wants to spend some time with him at Piko. If Pairo declines, then that's fine. At least he's tried.

But before his knuckles can rap against Pairo's door, he hears a high-pitched cry from within the room. His cousin whimpers like a snared animal. What's hurting him? How can Kurapika make his suffering end? Despite all these distressing questions, Kurapika's body has, for some strange reason, stiffened from head to toe.

Pairo continues to moan. "Ah. Nn. Ungh."

Then Kurapika's mind catches up to what he's truly hearing. The realization activates his flight response. In a flash, he's raced down the hallway and leapt out the front door. He hurtles down the sloping path and launches himself straight into the thicket. He welcomes the thorns as they graze at every exposed area of his skin.

Having spent less and less time at the secret base, he hasn't had the chance to hack at the climbing vegetation with a machete. Consequently, a patch of weeds catches his ankle just as he comes to the clearing. He falls, belly-first, onto the bristly grass.

He lies there. He doesn't stir, even though his face is nestled against the dirt. He allows the wild waves of emotion to rampage through his body, permits his thundering heart to transmit a message to the earth's core. The soil will surely seal his secrets before they ever reach the light of day.

When rain starts to slash against his back, he makes himself get to his knees, but he doesn't leave. He huddles there in the clearing and waits out the storm. Perhaps, in perfect stillness, the deluge will have mercy on him, sweep him away, and carry him somewhere where everything will make sense again.

Is Kurapika imagining it or is Pairo shrinking further with every passing day? It's as if he's taking periodic sips from a bottle labeled drink me from one of those fantasy books they used to read. Kurapika can only conclude that the reversal agent is a cake or some other sort of food. And if he's no longer allowed to confront his cousin face-to-face, he has to make do with assisting through other avenues.

If his father's eyebrows go any higher, they're going to disappear behind his dark hair. "Increase Pairo's pocket money but not yours? Whatever for?"

"He needs all the sustenance and strength he can get amidst this wet weather," Kurapika answers.

His mother claps her hands. "Ah, you have no idea how happy I am to hear you say such things! You're so concerned about your cousin, still!"

"Of course I'm concerned about him. He's my — " Kurapika has to swallow the lump that's suddenly risen in his throat. "He's my best friend."

His mother's voice is wistful. "I thought I sensed some tension between you two. But you can see past your squabbles with him to worry about his well-being. Despite everything, you have a big heart, Kurapika."

His father smiles. "He gets his kindness from you, Mama. Be that as it may, I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to increase Pairo's meal allowance without first consulting your auntie and uncle abroad. Any money I give him or set aside for his benefit is clearly earmarked for specific purposes in accordance with his parents' wishes."

Kurapika pauses to consider how he can convince his father to change his mind. He brightens as a solution comes to him. "Then let him take my lunch money! Tell him Auntie doubled his allowance or whatever you want! Just don't mention that the extra jenny's coming from me because there's no way he'll accept it!"

Taken aback, his parents both stare at him.

"I hate the cafeteria food anyway," Kurapika adds to sweeten the deal. "So I end up always blowing my money on luxuries that could be better spent for Pairo's nourishment. Listen, I promise to always finish breakfast and supper at home from now on! That way, you won't have to worry about me keeling over from starvation or anything!"

His mother folds her arms over her chest. "Even the cruciferous vegetables you always try to hide under your plate or in your pockets?"

"Especially those," Kurapika assures her. "I'll devour them all without making a single face."

His father chuckles. "Well, aren't you committed to your cause? Fine. I'll transfer half of your daily meal allowance to Pairo. That's my final offer. Contingent, of course, upon your dutiful consumption of all the cruciferous vegetables your mother heaps on your plate."

Kurapika shakes his father's proffered palm. "Done!"

Buoyed by this victory, Kurapika tries to maintain a winning streak over the weekend. He heads toward Pairo's bedroom. As a precaution, he presses his ear against the door before he knocks.

It's well past noon, but Pairo's still sporting bedroom hair when he shows his face. Kurapika has to resist the urge to smoosh down the fluffy tufts of his cousin's hair like he would've done before.

Pairo rubs the sleep from his eyes. "What do you want?"

Kurapika flashes a wide smile. "I was missing you more than usual today. So I thought, why not push past all the awkwardness and give this a shot? Let's hang out!"

"Can't. I've got to catch up with tons of schoolwork."

Before Pairo can shut him out, Kurapika takes a swift step forward. The swinging door promptly crushes Kurapika's foot against the jamb. Pairo's maroon eyes go wide as he hears a shriek of agony.

Before Kurapika knows it, Pairo is pulling him inside the room and pushing him down the bed. Settling on the floor before him, Pairo shucks off Kurapika's right sneaker and strips off his sock to examine his injured foot.

"Pairo, you don't have to —"

Pairo pinches his toes, one by one. "You can feel that, can't you?"

"I can."

"Try flexing your foot for me."

Kurapika does as he's told. He winces as pain shoots up the flat of his foot.

Pairo furrows his brows. "Does it hurt?"

"Yeah, but it's not unbearable. I'm sure it'll pass if I take it easy for a bit."

Kurapika's just about to move his foot off Pairo's lap, but all of a sudden Pairo is leaning in, shoving his scrunched-up face against Kurapika's knee. His shoulders are shuddering.

"Pairo, please don't feel bad. I know you didn't mean to hurt me. It was just an accident."

Pairo's murmuring thickly, but Kurapika has known him long enough by now to effortlessly discern every word. "Just an accident? An accident can change everything in an instant! I almost — I could've cursed you — could've made you the same as me, and —"

"Don't, Pairo. Don't say such sad things. Cursing me is impossible because you're not cursed either. How can you be, when you're the greatest person I know?"

Cautious not to exert any extra pressure on his sore foot, Kurapika slides off the bed. He gets on the floor so that he can hold Pairo close. He rubs his cousin's quivering back and lets his tears soak his shirt.

Pairo sobs for what feels like hours. How long has he been reining in this ceaseless sorrow? While waiting for the bawling to abate, Kurapika looks around the bedroom he's been banned from entering for many months.

Half his cousin's clothes are dangling, unironed, from the mouths of drawers. The rest is strewn, unwashed, all over the filthy floor. The rumpled bedding behind Kurapika emits a sour stench. Everything's a mess. Nobody should live like this. Especially not someone as special as Pairo.

When Pairo finally meets his eyes again, Kurapika tenderly thumbs away the tracks of tears from his flushed face. "Hey, let's get out of here."

"Where are we going?" Pairo asks, his voice still shaky. "To the clinic in town? Maybe if you get a check-up —"

"Pairo, I'm fine," Kurapika insists. "The only way you can make me feel better is by agreeing to go somewhere — anywhere — with me."

"To Piko?"

"You read my mind. But we'd better head to town first to borrow a couple of books."

It's been so long since a golden day like this. Of course, there's no way that Kurapika can know that it will be the last one. Ever.

On their way back from town, Kurapika has a collection of fairy tales in his right hand and Pairo's warm palm in his left.

Then Pairo's fingers, interlaced with his, suddenly tighten their grip. His cousin's picking up the pace of their walking. He's practically towing him along.

"Pairo?"

Pairo's eyes periodically dart backward. At first, Kurapika presumes his cousin is impatient with his slow steps. Then it hits him that Pairo isn't looking at him, but behind him.

"Kurapika, there's no time to waste." Desperation drips from every syllable of Pairo's words. "We've got to run for our lives."