Chapter Text
Kurapika is staring at his ceiling, drifting between sleeping and waking, when the knock comes.
Moonlight slants through his window, just across from his bed. What time is it? He fumbles for his phone before he remembers it’s still on the kitchen counter. He’d left it there when he’d gotten home this evening—a futile attempt to avoid feeling guilty as he let another call go straight to voicemail, listening to the endless ringing echo in his empty apartment—
Kurapika hears the knock again.
He sits up silently, suddenly wide awake. No one ever visits—he’d only just moved in last month. As quietly as he can, he gets out of bed and reaches for his bokken, the wood clinking softly in his hands. He walks quietly through the narrow hallway that leads to his living room and turns off just past the kitchen to the foyer. The knocking continues; he peers through the peephole.
For a moment, he doesn’t understand what he’s seeing.
He puts his swords in the umbrella stand and opens the door.
“Are you Kurapika?” asks a boy. The boy squints at him, as if he can’t quite see him. He almost looks like Gon, with spiked hair closely cropped at his ears and brown eyes.
“May I help you?” Kurapika says instead of answering. He’s not in the habit of giving his name away, not even to a kid. He looks young, but Kurapika knows better than most that age is no indication of good intentions or ability.
“Yeah,” the boy says. Come to think of it, he looks…oddly dressed. His clothes are way too big for him—his sleeves have been pushed up his skinny arms, and his pant legs are folded up much the same, uneven and puddled at his feet. And at his feet…
Kurapika breathes in sharply. A familiar briefcase, with an equally familiar jacket draped over its side, sits at the kid’s feet.
“Where did you get that?” He tries to keep his voice even, measured.
“This?” the boy says. If he senses the danger, he makes no show of it. “This is mine.”
Kurapika stares. He looks at the jacket, the briefcase. Looks back at the kid, at those familiar brown eyes.
Then it clicks.
“Leorio?” he says.
The last thing Leorio remembers, before he woke up on some random doorstep with a briefcase clenched in one hand and a slip of paper with a name and an address in the other, is Pietro coughing, his palms coming away red and dusty.
“That’s me,” Leorio says now to the woman—man?—in the door. He’s trying very hard not to stare. The person in front of him is the most beautiful person Leorio thinks he’s ever seen in his life—willowy, with delicate, almost too-sharp features. He’s wearing pajamas and in the pale, watery light of the doorway light of the doorway, Leorio sees that his eyes have a faint, red glow. He tries not to stare too openly; his ma always said that was rude. Leorio focuses on his face as a whole, instead—his brow is furrowed, his mouth slightly open. “You didn’t answer my question.”
It’s like a gate comes down; gone is the expression, and suddenly the man’s eyes are unreadable. “I—yes,” he says, his voice betraying his surprise. “I’m Kurapika.”
Leorio feels a wave of relief wash over him. “Oh, thank gods,” he says, craning his neck to look around the man—Kurapika. “Can I come in?”
Kurapika opens the door a little wider. “Right. Yes,” he says, still talking slowly, as if he were in a dream. Leorio doesn’t know if it’s just because he’s surprised or what, but he doesn’t wait for him to change his mind, and hurries in.
“Whoa,” he says, taking a look around the place. It’s huge for just one person, and clean too, not a speck of dust on any of the furniture or bookshelves—so many books, Leorio thinks, eyes wide. He comes to stand in the kitchen, which is just as spotless as the rest of the place, save for a mug of coffee in the sink. If not for that, and the cell phone sitting on the counter, Leorio would think that no one lived here at all. “Do you live here by yourself?”
“Yes.” Kurapika shuffles around for something in his cupboard before pulling out two glasses. “Do you…want some water?” he asks. He still looks off-balance, like he’s tripped over something.
“Uh, okay,” Leorio says, if only to make him feel better. He looks kind of weird, but not dangerous-weird. Maybe unsettled weird. Leorio is pretty good at telling the difference—has to be, in order to avoid getting smacked around back home.
Kurapika fills the two glasses from the sink. The water must be safe to drink here, Leorio notes. They’re probably in a good area. Kurapika probably has some kind of money, and if he can afford a place like this all by himself, it’s no small amount, either.
“How did you find me?” Kurapika says, sliding one glass of water across the counter. Leorio takes a sip and hands him the napkin still in his pocket. He watches Kurapika as he reads the words he knows are scribbled on the napkin.
FIND KURAPIKA. Below that is an address.
Color drains from Kurapika’s face. “This is your handwriting,” he murmurs.
Leorio frowns. “I didn’t write that,” he says.
Kurapika swiftly folds the napkin and places it in the little pocket square of his pajamas. His surprise from just a moment ago is gone, as if it’s been folded away, too. His voice is neutral, almost soothing. “I believe you may have forgotten.” He dumps his own glass of water out in the sink and picks up his phone.
In the light of the kitchen, Leorio sees a flash of red—an earring. He tries not to stare. He’s never seen a guy wear an earring before. Can guys wear earrings?
“How could I have forgotten?” he asks indignantly.
“How old are you?” Kurapika says, tapping something out on his phone, seeming not to hear him.
Leorio frowns again, this time for a different reason. Leorio has been dismissed by a lot of people recently—mostly assholes who won’t even hear him out—and he’s getting really sick of it. Please, it’s my friend, he’s dying, do you have anything I can—? “Twelve. Why, how old are you?”
“Thirty-three,” Kurapika says, without missing a beat. He puts his phone down. “Can I see your briefcase?”
“No!” Leorio cries, seizing it, and to his mortification, his voice cracks. Clearing his throat, he makes his voice go lower and tries not to look as panicked as he feels. “I mean, no. It’s okay. I can hold it.”
Kurapika looks at him, surprised. “I just want to see if you—”
“You’re not the doctor?” Leorio blurts out.
Kurapika pauses. “The doctor?”
Leorio nods. “The stuff in here is all doctor’s stuff. I thought it was yours.”
“You thought it was mine, but you don’t want to give it to me?” Kurapika asks, incredulously.
“I—well—” Leorio sputters. He doesn’t know how to explain it—how the thought of anyone rummaging through the briefcase and finding, as Leorio had found, all that stuff: medicine, a first aid kit, a stethoscope, the money (although not enough, never enough), a book, dog-eared and worn (weirdly enough, a romance novel?)—it makes him nervous, panicky. This could be his only lifeline to finding a doctor—a proper doctor, not one of those quacks who sold him short the first time, and he’s not going to just hand it over.
But he can’t say all of that, can he? Between them, the silence stretches out, awkward and stiff.
“Fine,” he sighs, resigned. He hefts it onto the counter and pushes it towards him. “But be careful.”
Kurapika nods. He opens it, his hands surprisingly gentle. He sifts through all the objects that Leorio knows are in there—he’d checked, in the taxi ride over, not realizing until he’d given the address that he’d have to pay for it somehow—and says nothing. He only pauses when he picks up the book, turning it this way and that.
“This is…” he says. He picks up the book and fans its pages, and out falls a photo.
Leorio recognizes it instantly. “That’s mine,” he says, quickly, snatching it up. But it’s too late—he knows Kurapika has seen it.
“Who is that?” Kurapika asks, his voice very soft.
“It’s my friend,” Leorio says shortly. “He’s sick. I’m looking for a doctor to see if he can be treated.”
Leorio looks at the photo—it’s more worn than he remembers it, bent at the corners and slightly yellow. How strange—they’d only taken it last year, hadn’t they? In it, Pietro is smiling, and even looking at him now—the small gap between his two front teeth, his slightly crooked nose (it never healed right, after he’d broken it playing ball in the street that one time)—Leorio feels warmth spread in his chest.
He looks up and sees Kurapika look like he’s been struck. His mouth is slightly open, and his eyes are wide. “Oh,” he breathes. “I’m…sorry to hear that. That he’s sick.”
Leorio shakes his head and puts the photo in his over-sized pocket. He doesn’t need pity; he needs help. “Don’t be. He’s going to be okay.” He peers up at him. “So, you’re not the doctor?”
Kurapika shakes his head, the movement stiff and wooden. Leorio wonders if he has a neck cramp. “No. You are.”
Leorio gapes. “Me?”
A trace of a smile appears on Kurapika’s face. “Yes.” He puts the book back in the briefcase and closes it gently. “This,” he says, sliding it across the counter back to him, “—is yours. And…” He suddenly looks a lot less sure. “You’re supposed to be a lot older, Leorio. I don’t know how this happened, but…you seem to have become a kid again.”
Leorio stares at the red and black checkers. “I…”
That’s…insane. There’s no way. “That can’t be right,” he says.
But it must be true, right? That photo of Pietro proves that this is, in fact, his briefcase. And if he did write that note…
He looks up again, confused. “Why don’t I remember? And why am I…?”
“A child?” Kurapika muses, which, hey. Leorio tries not to pout, because that would prove that he is, indeed, some dumb kid, when he’s not. “I don’t know. Your note wasn’t very forthcoming.”
“Well, I’m sorry I don’t remember how I became a kid,” Leorio grumbles. He perks up. “How old am I supposed to be?”
“Thirty-five,” Kurapika says.
“Ha! So I’m older than you.” He smiles triumphantly. “I must be taller than you, too. We’re almost the same height right now.”
It looks like Kurapika is trying very hard not to roll his eyes. “Yes, well. You were taller than me when we met, so there was no winning that.” He turns to his phone again, which is now lit up. At least, Leorio thinks it’s a phone—he stares at the little rectangle in Kurapika’s hands as his thumbs move quickly. He puts it in his pocket and turns around to rummage through a kitchen drawer.
“Here,” he says. He holds out a pair of glasses—small and circular, the kind that Leorio’s grandpa used to wear. “They’re probably too big, but we can get you new ones tomorrow.”
“I don’t wear glasses,” Leorio says, but he takes them anyway. He trusts Kurapika for whatever reason, and not just because of some note he apparently wrote. Leorio’s ma always said he had a knack for knowing whether or not someone was going to, in her words, screw them over six ways from Sunday.
Leorio knows, somehow, that Kurapika is not one of those people.
“Yes, you do,” Kurapika says as he makes his way out of the kitchen, through the living room, and into a small hallway. Leorio follows him a moment later, blinking.
Kurapika opens a closet door and starts pulling out bedsheets and blankets. “You can sleep on the couch,” he says, removing the back cushions.
“Why do you have my glasses?” Leorio asks, still blinking. He feels his steps falter—man, this is weird. The world seems to be falling towards him, suddenly clearer than he ever knew it could be—he can see the remote on the TV stand, the titles on the spines on the bookshelf. On one of the shelves is a picture; Leorio moves to get a closer look.
There’s silence for a moment behind him, then some rustling as Kurapika moves again. “You left them here,” Leorio hears him say. “The last time you visited.”
“Oh,” Leorio says, not really listening. “Hey, is this…me?”
The photo is of four people—Kurapika, a man with brown skin and spiky black hair that looks kind of like Leorio’s, another pale man with silver hair and piercing blue eyes, and someone who looks kind of like Leorio’s dad, but slightly different—or at least, the photos of him that Leorio’s ma keeps in an album back home. The man is tall, with broad shoulders and scratchy stubble and glasses that look very similar to the ones Leorio is wearing now. He has his ma’s eyes.
All four of them have their arms slung around each other, and the tanned man and Leorio are grinning ear-to-ear; the silver-haired man and Kurapika’s smiles are a bit more subdued, but they’re smiling nevertheless.
Kurapika comes to stand next to him. He’s smiling that same smile he is in the picture, close-mouthed and just reaching his eyes. “Yes. These are our friends.” He points to the man with spikey hair. “This is Gon Freeccs.” Then to the white-haired man. “This is Killua Zoldyck. We all met at the Hunter Exam.”
Leorio’s eyes widen. “The Hunter Exam?” He whirls around, giddy. “I’m a Hunter?”
Kurapika smiles a bit wider; Leorio beams. Now that he can see clearly, he notices that Kurapika’s eyes are a deep, dark gray. Leorio’s never seen that color before; he doesn’t know why he’d thought at the door that they’d been red.
“You assume you passed?” Kurapika asks.
Leorio snorts. “Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Hm,” Kurapika says, and there’s something in his tone that Leorio doesn’t like. Leorio scowls, but Kurapika is already turning back to the photo. “I’ve texted them and asked them to come. They should be able to help.”
Leorio indignation dries up immediately. He tries not to look too excited. “Gon and Killua?”
Kurapika nods. “They’ve been traveling all over, but their last Hunt was in the country. With any luck, they should be here by the weekend.”
“What day is it?” Leorio asks, excited.
“Thursday, technically,” Kurapika says. It’s only then that Leorio wonders at the time.
Ah. He’d probably woken Kurapika up, hadn’t he? He rubs his head. “Ah…’m sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
Kurapika just laughs, a light, airy sound. It immediately makes Leorio feel at ease. “I don’t get much sleep anyway,” he says, waving a hand. “But you should sleep. Kids need as much as they can get.”
“I’m not a kid,” Leorio protests, just as he feels a yawn coming on. He tries to hide it, to no avail; Kurapika looks amused. “And besides, adults need to rest, too.” He thinks of Pietro again, and his excitement dims. “Everyone does.”
None of this future stuff means anything if he can’t find a way to save him. Leorio may be a doctor as an adult, but Kurapika’s right—he is just a kid. He can’t help anyone like this, and people are counting on him—Pietro is counting on him. “I need to fix this, somehow,” Leorio murmurs, staring at the frame again. “If I’m a doctor now, that means I can help him.”
Kurapika goes quiet. He seems to be deep in thought. Leorio makes his way to the little makeshift bed, then remembers he’s still wearing clothes meant for his adult self. He turns to Kurapika. “Uh, could I get some different to wear?”
Whatever stupor Kurapika seems to be in evaporates. “Oh,” he says. “Yes. Yes, of course. I should have some of Killua’s old stuff packed away…I’ll be right back.” He disappears down the hallway and comes back a few moments later with a pair of soft shorts, a plain T-shirt, and a towel. “You can wash up in the bathroom.”
“Thanks,” Leorio says, trying not to look too excited at the prospect of having clean clothes that actually fit him and haven’t been dried to a starchy crisp by the sun. They can’t afford a dryer back home, so they always hang their clothes out of the little alley next to the butcher shop they live over.
He puzzles over the knobs in Kurapika’s shower for a few minutes, but eventually figures it out—the water is hot and stays hot, which is great. Kurapika has what looks to be a three-in-one bottle of soap, which is also great and makes washing up fast. Leorio doesn’t want to waste any water.
When he leaves the bathroom, Kurapika’s in his room, which is directly across the hallway, reading a book at a small desk beside a window.
“Um,” Leorio says, hovering in the doorway. “Thank you.”
Kurapika closes his book and smiles that same close-mouthed smile. “Of course,” he says. “Have a good night.”
It’s a clear dismissal, but…Leorio scratches the back of his head. A question—one that had been forming ever since he woke up and saw that note—emerges, finally, fully formed.
“Are we friends?” he blurts out. A blush climbs high over his cheeks, which is so freaking embarrassing—why is he getting so shy all of the sudden? For a moment, he forgets that he’s technically supposed to be an adult; he’s just some dumb kid, and Kurapika is a grown-up. Leorio’s never been one to respect someone just because they were older than him, but ever since he was little, his mother always said that everyone deserved dignity and respect, regardless of their age or where they came from.
Know that you’re worth the world, son, she’d told him once. And that the people you love deserve you at your best.
Kurapika nods. “We are.”
Relief washes over Leorio in wave. “Cool.” He smiles. “If you say we’re friends, you’re my friend now, too. Lucky you, huh?” It’s true—Leorio’s a good friend. Pietro says so all the time. You’re good at taking care of people, he said once, after the first time he’d gotten really sick and Leorio had taken care of him—spoon-fed him soup at his bedside and made up stories about all the far away places they’d go after he got better. Leorio had felt that same warmth then as he does now—like he could do anything, so long as the people he loves are alright.
“I am,” Kurapika says, and something about his voice makes Leorio’s smile fade. Kurapika’s mouth has become a serious line. He looks like Leorio has just asked him the most important question in the world. “I am very fortunate to call you my friend, Leorio.”
Leorio rubs the back of his head again, his cheeks growing warm again. “What’s up with that?” he jokes, and it’s the wrong thing to say, he knows, but he doesn’t know what else to do. He waves, which is somehow even more awkward. “Um, anyway. Thanks again. Good night.”
He turns to leave.
“Leorio?”
Leorio turns back around. Kurapika is still sitting at his desk, his hands folded in his lap.
“Yes?” Leorio says.
Kurapika opens his mouth, then closes it. Pauses. “Good night,” he finally says, his voice soft.
“’Night,” Leorio says, then goes back to the living room. The couch is soft and the blanket Kurapika gave him is fuzzy and smells of cinnamon. He closes his eyes and almost immediately slips away, into a dreamless sleep.
Kurapika doesn’t sleep.
He lays on his bed and stares at his ceiling, feeling exhausted. He’s no stranger to the exhaustion, but this feels more like panic than any of the heavy, dead things he’s been carrying for the past few weeks.
Leorio is in the living room. He’s a child, somehow.
And…
He doesn’t know. It’s not just his body—it’s his mind, his memory. He’s somehow stuck at the age when he was twelve; he still thinks Pietro is sick, is alive. He’d taken the idea that he was supposed to be an adult in stride, but really, how could anyone comprehend, truly, what that meant?
Kurapika feels sick; he’d used Gyo on Leorio, could see the residual nen radiating off him. Someone has done this to him, his friend. And Kurapika hadn’t known until it was too late.
“Fuck,” Kurapika whispers into the darkness. How could this have happened? Who could’ve done this?
He flicks open his phone to the message he’d sent Killua and Gon.
Leorio’s been attacked by an unknown Nen user. He’s been de-aged. Need your help.
As he stares at it, he sees Killua has read it. The little bubble that shows he’s typing pops up.
Kurapika runs through the facts again: Whatever’s happened to him, Leorio seems to be stuck in the mind of who he was when he was twelve. He’d asked if Kurapika was a doctor; he thinks Pietro is still alive.
He doesn’t know.
The reply comes through. We’ll be there Saturday. You guys safe?
It’s only been about a month since he’s moved in. It’s stupid, how Leorio’s presence, even as he is now, makes the place feel so much warmer, so much more like a home.
Kurapika’s thumb hovers over his phone.
Yes. Please hurry.
He puts his phone on his nightstand and falls back into bed, staring up at the ceiling.
He feels, for the first time since they really, truly talked—that awful conversation in the living room, his whole world falling apart then as it is now, again—a pinprick of doubt.