Author's Notes:
RELATIONSHIP: Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
RATING: Teen and Up Audiences
CONTENT WARNINGS: Mentions of alcohol and cigarettes.
In a crowded pool hall stinking of smoke and blaring with the best of blues rock music, Kurapika wonders why Leorio wanted to meet here, of all possible places in Yorknew City on a sweltering July evening. Kurapika can just barely hear the occasional low rumble of his old friend's voice — hoarse from his latest 36-hour shift at the local public hospital and an increasingly dangerous dependence on nicotine — above the boisterous snatches of conversation from the sweaty bodies clustering around the billiard tables immediately adjacent to theirs.
It's not like this is the most unsavory location Kurapika has ever visited. It's far from it, in fact. One occupational hazard of helming a mafia family from one's late teens to one's late twenties is that appointments are set nearly as often in alleyways and at underground poker games as they are in penthouse boardrooms and at flesh collector conferences in five-star hotels.
Perhaps, after the years of radio silence between him and Leorio, reuniting amidst all this inebriated chaos and all these fervent cries for deities that may or may not exist to intervene and to magically align the cue sticks at the exact angles needed to sink the 8 ball or any remaining solids or stripes, as the case may be, is for the best. This way, Kurapika is spared from the sermon that he imagines has been threatening to clamber up Leorio's throat ever since their paths recrossed and their circles overlapped once more.
They're in the same city — the same district, even — where they first reconverged in their teenage years after their briefest parting.
Kurapika has rejected too many calls and has left unopened and unanswered too many letters since then. He's missed all the milestones of his dearest friends, neglected to visit them even on their deathbeds, skipped graduation parties and birthdays and funerals. Even now, his personal email address is conspicuously absent from the contacts listed on Leorio's Beatle-07. The syllables on either side of the sign are simmering on the tip of Kurapika's tongue, ready to be divulged at even the slightest whiff of a desperate entreaty, but Leorio isn't demanding his contact information tonight like he was in the wake of their twin appointments to the first-ever vacated seats of the Zodiac Twelve.
Leorio has barely even glanced at Kurapika since they met beneath the flickering glow of the streetlight by the entrance to this unassuming establishment. At present, Leorio is taking a long pull from the neck of his beer, his espresso-hued eyes squinting behind teashades smeared with clumsy fingerprints and perched precariously on the pointed tip of his long nose. The sheen of perspiration on Leorio's sun-kissed skin must be aiding in this gradual slide. Kurapika has to burrow his fists into the depths of his pants pockets lest they attempt of their own reckless accord to save Leorio's glasses from the inevitable pull of gravity or to wipe the smudged lenses with the square of microfiber cloth he's stashed alongside his oversized sunglasses in the overhead compartment of his car for whenever his irises grow weary of the eternally invasive sensation of black contacts.
Heedless not only of the intensity of his former best friend's scrutiny but also of the outburst of cheering and jeering as a nearby match concludes in the closest of calls, Leorio appears to be cognizant of nothing except the placement of the cue ball relative to the object balls scattered over the expanse of green felt.
A minute passes. Not a word is exchanged between them, while many an obscenity is muttered by the sore loser of the neighboring game.
Then, with the tip of his cue sufficiently chalked and his bottle of pale ale resting on the top rail, Leorio bends over the table to line up his next shot. Kurapika tries and fails not to notice how Leorio's body — all gangly and wiry — snaps perfectly into place as he settles into an evidently practiced stance. The razor-sharp straightness of his back. The shifting of toned asscheeks underneath tight trousers the color of gunpowder. The tension coiling in his sinewy shoulders, perceptible beneath the thin cotton fabric of his oxford shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
A cord of muscle flexes in Leorio's forearm like a cobra poised to strike its prey. A deafening crack then echoes around the pool hall as the cue stick springs forward and maple hardwood slams against plastic resin. The duo of striped balls Leorio has been eyeing since the beginning of the game zips into the called pocket as if attracted there by a neodymium magnet.
With a pumped fist that just narrowly misses knocking over his near-empty beer bottle, Leorio extricates his folded body back to its considerable height. Without hesitation, he lunges straight toward Kurapika, who barely has time to blink before he's being lifted by his waist and spun around just like a rag doll, just like a hunted animal caught between the jagged teeth of a ravenous beast. All around Kurapika now are a carousel blur of beaming faces, a smattering of applause from the spectators that have drifted from the next table to theirs, and a wild whooping coming from the same person who's sent his world careening — literally and metaphorically — out of his control.
With another violent jolt of his surroundings, Kurapika is suddenly being crushed against the diamond-cut planes of Leorio's chest and abdomen. The scratchy black stubble trailing over Leorio's jawline is prickling Kurapika's smooth cheek. An intoxicating cocktail of Leorio's scents — the salt of sweat, the malt and tobacco mingling in his breath, the subtly floral notes of his preferred laundry detergent, and the aloe vera fragrance of his shampoo — smacks Kurapika's nostrils in dizzying waves.
As soon as Kurapika's middle is mercifully unhanded and his flailing feet touch the ground again, Leorio lights up a celebratory cigarette, drains his beer, and orders another round of drinks even though Kurapika hasn't taken more than a couple of sips of his own ale. Kurapika is more of a martini man, with a shot of tequila taken now and then to keep things spicy, but he tips back his beer bottle at present and gulps its bitter contents down to its dregs. He needs alcohol — he needs anything of the mind-altering variety, frankly — to ground him as all his expectations for this long-dreaded meeting are upended in the space of a few seconds.
In the days since he's circled the current date on his calendar, Kurapika has braced himself for a decade's worth of punishment, for brows to be furrowed and for fingers to be pointed and for tongues to be wagging with accusations and for the earthy eyes that have hovered over his reclining body in more dreams than he'll ever admit to having to be slitted and sparking with malice or moisture — one or the other, and possibly both.
What Kurapika never envisioned, even with his penchant for watching all possible outcomes unfold in his mind's eye before he ventures to take a single step in any given direction or pursuant to any given plan — with the glaring exception, of course, of when his irises shimmer scarlet and all bets are thrown off instantly into the winds of change — is that Leorio would dare to dissolve the frigid distance between them not with a litany of impassioned language but with a single, bone-crushing embrace. Every detail of their brief bodily collision is bouncing around the fog freshly forming in Kurapika's skull — the rhythmic thumping of the heartbeat about which Melody is always uncharacteristically rhapsodic, the way Leorio's fingers slotted into the dips between his ribs and dug tantalizingly into his skin, the toasty warmth that radiated from Leorio's strapping chest and that conjured long-repressed memories of embers burning on the hearth of his childhood home, the only home he's ever known.
Kurapika is summoned back to earth once Leorio shoves his cue stick back into his hands. Kurapika can't recall when he dropped it or how exactly Leorio missed his last shot, but apparently his turn has arrived. He tries to pocket number 4 — the solid purple — but scratches and sinks the cue ball instead.
Any drifters who've wandered over to observe their match either amble away at this point or hasten to trash-talk Kurapika's strategy — or lack thereof — not quite inaudibly behind cupped hands. But he can't muster any desire to chase them away with his stick or even any silent indignation at their horrid manners when Leorio goes on to generously grant him another turn.
Ordinarily, Kurapika wouldn't accept an impromptu display of gallantry as an excuse to disregard the rules of any game he's playing. This time, though, he finds himself bowing dumbly at Leorio's instructions, spoken between two last puffs of his cancer stick before it's stubbed out unceremoniously on a silver ashtray.
A large palm, still smelling strongly of ash, spreads over Kurapika's nape, which must be deepening in color from cream to raspberry in response to the unexpected intimacy. For a split-second, the thumb shifts forward to stroke the topmost pivot of Kurapika's spine. The palm then eases backward to exert pressure between Kurapika's shoulder blades.
Bend lower, Leorio manages to command clearly without uttering a single word.
Kurapika is no chump. He's the kingpin of a gambling empire. He's accustomed to commandeering every social situation and transforming any source of conflict into an innovative opportunity for a career advantage. Even so, underneath this surgeon's examining gaze and his palpating hands, Kurapika feels as though he has no alternative except to submit.
Kurapika draws in a shuddering breath as the towering figure behind him leans its full breadth and weight over him. A lap is pressing flush against his bottom, while a broad chest is enveloping his trim torso within its impossible warmth. Long fingers are arranging his chained hand's grip on the cue, the jut of his right elbow, and the way his bridge hand splays over the bed of green. Heat blossoms from every single point of contact between his tutor's skin and his own.
A bluesy new track booms more loudly than any of the others thus far over the speakers. Amidst a backdrop of electric guitar riffs, Kurapika feels rather than hears the vibration of Leorio's lips against the sensitive shell of his ear.
Shoot, Leorio orders. Shoot as hard and as far as you can.
And so Kurapika does.