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Kurapika has, on one or two occasions, been accused of melodrama. It comes part and parcel with the lone survivor and avenger of his entire murdered family gambit he’s got going and he will admit, when pressed, that he’s maybe had more than his fair share of dramatic showdowns. So, accusations of theatrics in mind, it’s a near thing that Kurapika avoids clutching a hand to his chest to ward off the impending heart attack when he confirms with the third well-meaning and vaguely concerned neighbor that yes, Leorio does live in that goddamn trainwreck of a house at the end of the street.
Instead, Kurapika tightens his grip on the scrap of paper in his hand—scribbled on the back of a receipt a month ago, faded to almost nothing from all the times Kurapika’s traced the handwriting and shoved it back in his pocket—as he glares up at the house like it’s personally offended him. And it has. It’s only barely a house at best—a cottage if anything, with half the roof shingles stacked neatly by the porch and a half-built chimney and a hanging tarp where the door should be, with a nen-ward on it so strong it makes Kurapika’s teeth ache.
This can’t be Leorio’s new place.
But as Kurapika checks the address, glances up at the house, checks again, and glances back at the pleasant little grandmother watching from her porch and giving him an encouraging wave, it comes to pass that this is where Leorio has—against all odds and human sanity—settled down for medical training. He’d been told only about a dozen times over the phone that this unassuming village, sandwiched between tall hills and taller mountains on an island (“The second-largest island,” Leorio insists, and Kurapika tries very hard not to roll his eyes) just west of Leorio’s home country, is a hotbed for medical research into whatever killed Leorio’s friend. But as Kurapika picks his way up the not-entirely-stable stairs to knock on the door, he wonders exactly how much of it was really Leorio’s compulsive need to save money that he settled in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and decided to commute into the city instead of renting an apartment near the hospital-proper.
But wait. There isn’t a door. Kurapika grits his teeth, slides his fingers against the crackle of the nen-laced fabric, and shows himself inside.
Inside turns out to be marginally better than out, in that almost all of the walls were completely intact and at least none of the exposed wiring was spitting sparks. There was even what looked like a fresh coat of paint drying on the ceiling. Or at least it certainly smelled like it.
The nen-ward hadn’t burned Kurapika on the way in or sent him careening back down the porch, but it must have alerted Leorio to the presence of someone in his home. Kurapika hears him before he sees him, clattering down what must be a staircase just off the main room, yelling something in the local language—which is, of course, different than the official language of Leorio’s homeland that Kurapika already speaks, because obviously he just needs the extra headache even when he’s on vacation. When Leorio comes into view around the corner, Kurapika is struck by how good he looks. Drywall dust in his hair and smudged glasses notwithstanding, Leorio looks comfortable and well-rested for probably the first time Kurapika’s ever seen in all their adventures together. His classes must be going well.
Leorio stumbles to a stop just inside the living room and scrambles to shake out his hair and fix his glasses. He looks happy to see Kurapika, which is baffling all on its own, and Kurapika probably doesn’t help matters by deadpanning, “What the hell have you done?” instead of starting with hello.
Leorio wipes his glasses on the hem of his shirt, says primly, “I acquired a property.”
Neon had demanded Kurapika have some time off just as Leorio happened to invite him for a visit (Kurapika isn’t totally sure Senritsu didn’t have a hand in influencing their employer, but he’s not the one who can read heartbeats and Senritsu is stoic in her denial), but somehow in the entire conversation they’d had, Leorio had never mentioned his property looked like it had been scooped from Ryūseigai and transplanted to the scenic middle of nowhere. Kurapika tells him as much and Leorio shrugs.
“It’s quaint,” he says, “the neighbors think I’m wholesome and adorable, and it’s a good investment.”
“It doesn’t have a door.”
Leorio looks over Kurapika’s shoulder in surprise like he’s just been made aware of that fact and finally has enough common sense to be embarrassed. He ducks his head, mutters, “The upstairs looks a lot better.”
“I’m sure.” Kurapika toes off his shoes and clutches tighter to the bag’s strap across his chest as he and Leorio just, sort of, watch each other. Kurapika blinks and Leorio scowls and they both step forward at the same time—Kurapika extends his hand and Leorio moves in for a hug. He ends up jabbing Leorio right in the sternum just as Leorio’s arms settle, heavy but not unwelcome, across his shoulders. With one hand sandwiched between them, Kurapika awkwardly wraps his other arm around Leorio’s waist.
The hug is just this side of too long when Leorio moves away, and Kurapika has only a moment of blessed personal space to recover his sense before Leorio is grabbing his squished hand and pressing his fingers into the spots twinging from being caught between them. Blood rushes to Kurapika’s cheeks when Leorio then doesn’t let go, bodily pulling him into the kitchen instead and cheerily saying something that Kurapika can’t hear over the roaring in his ears. It doesn’t fade until Leorio drops his hand to gesture grandly around a kitchen that is, actually, in one piece. Kurapika tunes into the end of Leorio’s sentence as he pats an appliance more affectionately than it probably deserves. “—you must’ve met him when you walked by, he’s always on his porch, he helped me fix all the wiring in here.” Leorio chuckles absently. “We haven’t had time to start on the living room because I’ve been busy with my rounds and he’s—well, I’m not certain what he does all day.” Leorio is practically giddy when he turns to look at Kurapika again. “Well?”
Kurapika takes a moment to look around the room while he cooks up something to say—the last few years sleeping in a tent or on the dime of one of the richest families in the world has left him practically feral when it comes to appreciative small talk. He notices the kitchen table first, a giant rustic thing that looks like it may have cobbled itself together in the woods and weathered the elements long enough to have this house built up around it, though Kurapika’s more concerned by what he finds waiting patiently on top of it.
“When you invited me to ‘break bread and bake bread’ and then laughed at your own joke,” he tells Leorio as he sets his bag down by the table, eyeing the flour and eggs and yeast, “I didn’t think you were serious.”
Leorio smacks a hand to his chest and pouts, and they call Kurapika dramatic. “How little you must think of me.”
Kurapika stares at the bowl and wooden spoon resting just within reach and says, “I don’t know how to bake bread.”
“Aren’t you in luck, then?”
Kurapika arches an eyebrow. “Is this part of the medical school curriculum now?”
Leorio arches an eyebrow right back. “I’m discovering my full potential as a Gourmet Hunter, I’ll have you know!” He gestures vaguely at the view out the massive kitchen window in the direction Kurapika assumes is the rest of the town. “Besides, the village currently doesn’t have a bakery, which is how you know civilization has utterly abandoned you.”
This is, of course, something Kurapika knows. “Obviously.”
Leorio nods, more pleased that Kurapika agrees with him than concerned that Kurapika has no idea what the fuck he’s talking about. “And did I mention I bought this house for the price of six months’ rent in the city?”
He had mentioned it, more than once, but Kurapika decides to let that lie. He shifts from foot to foot instead, unsure if he should sit in one of the mismatched and terribly cozy-looking kitchen chairs or if it would be rude to sit while Leorio—stood and baked? Would he sit too? Kurapika has only the vaguest memories of his mother baking, fuzzy with how hard he’s tried not to remember it, her, them, anything that would make him nostalgic and weak. Distracted, Kurapika barely feels it when Leorio brushes past him. Something in his bag clinks when Leorio jostles the table it’s leaning against, like vials knocking together.
Kurapika freezes. He can see it on Leorio’s face because he obviously remembers now, remembers what Kurapika is taking a break from, why he’s doing this, remembers that he’s the sort of person who carries around vials of eyeballs and has blood enough on his hands—Leorio’s entire career is cleaning up the aftermath of monsters like him.
Leorio pauses, hand halfway to his face to push his glasses up his nose, and looks at the bag for a long moment. “I don’t want to know what you have in your bag,” he says finally.
“You don’t want to know what I have in my bag,” Kurapika confirms. He waits, for Leorio to say something more, to scold him or nag him or shake his head and start the same argument they’ve had for months, the only one they always have—but instead Leorio looks consideringly down at the packet of yeast and reaches for the bowl.
Kurapika watches the dough form like it’s witchcraft, Leorio first mixing the yeast and warm water with a bit of sugar and letting it work itself into a froth before adding more water and cracking a whole egg into the bowl. He separates out the yolk from more eggs and adds it in, humming something soft under his breath that Kurapika thinks he may have heard him hum before, during the Hunter Exam late at night or in Yorkshin before everything went to shit. After a brief debate about whether a bread with egg in it was a bread or a cake (“It’s just an egg bread,” Leorio decides succinctly and Kurapika, not having experience enough with one or the other, agrees), Kurapika becomes the designated hander of things, passing Leorio the oil, salt, and flour. The flour takes the longest and Kurapika loses track of how many spoonfuls he scoops, just watches Leorio work the dough from a thin batter to a hefty weight that sticks to the wooden spoon and pulls at Leorio’s knuckles when he finally gives in and mixes it with his hands.
There are enough egg whites left over that Kurapika decides he’s going to make himself more useful than as an appreciative gawker as Leorio scatters flour onto the table and flips the dough out onto it to knead. A rummage through the fridge yields onions, peppers, and a lone sausage, so Kurapika sets about chopping them and tossing them into a skillet with the eggs while Leorio manhandles the dough back into the bowl and covers it with a damp cloth to rise. There’s flour on his nose and he licks a bit of stray dough off his finger. Kurapika can’t look away from when he turns to the sink to wash the knife, and it isn’t until he feel the ice-hot flash of cold water on split skin that he realizes he’s cut himself. “Shit!”
Leorio is at his back faster than Kurapika remembered he could be, one hand already wrapped around his wrist and the other fumbling in a drawer for the most expansive medical kit Kurapika’s ever seen. He whistles through his teeth and pulls Kurapika’s hand closer. “Kurapika, here, let me fix that.”
His skin prickles and Kurapika tries to yank his hand back, face red. “No—it’s fine, Leorio, let go—”
Leorio’s grip doesn’t budge and he tears open an alcohol wipe with his teeth. “I’m literally a doctor.” he mumbles around the foil.
“Not yet.”
Leorio presses the wipe to Kurapika’s cut with more vehemence that Kurapika thinks is strictly necessary and he hisses. Leorio clicks his tongue, brows furrowed, but he’s smiling when he responds. “Oh, ouch, so cruel!” He finally lets go of Kurapika’s wrist to open the bandage with both hands, and in another moment Kurapika’s finger is patched and he scuttles back to the stovetop to check on his eggs. Leorio sighs and rolls his eyes. “Who taught you to wash dishes?” he asks as he packs up his kit. He leans over Kurapika’s shoulder to look at the pan of eggs. “Or to chop onions, for that matter?”
Kurapika freezes, spatula scraping loudly against the bottom of the pan. “No one.”
The press of Leorio at his back is gone at once. Kurapika can see him reflected in the backsplash, shoving his kit into the drawer and checking at the dough. “Right. I—I’m sorry.”
“It’s alright.”
“You’re sure?”
“Leorio. It’s fine.” Kurapika pulls two plates from the cupboard and splits the eggs between them. They crowd around the kitchen table, conversation stopping and starting while the dough rises—they have another brief debate over whether rising and proofing are the same thing or two different processes entirely, but that’s where Leorio’s baking knowledge is at its unfortunate end—and Kurapika can’t help but wonder if it was always this awkward without Killua and Gon as their buffers. He isn’t sure if he and Leorio have changed too much, diverged too severely, or if they never really knew each other at all.
“—think it’s ready.”
Kurapika jerks his head up, startled, drops his fork with a clatter. “What?”
Leorio takes his empty plate and Kurapika’s and dumps them in the sink. He’s cautious now, like Kurapika is barely-wrapped glass. “The dough. I just need to punch it down and let it rise for another ten minutes, and then it’s ready for the oven.” Leorio starts to say something else but pauses with his mouth half-open, reconsiders, and says instead, “Unless you want to?”
Kurapika arches an eyebrow. “You want me to punch your dough?”
“Yeah!” Leorio all but hauls him to his feet and pushes the bowl his way. “Just give it a few good smacks to get the air out so it doesn’t bake as one big bubble. And not with your chains, obviously. Keep those snakes in their cage.” Leorio chuckles to himself. “The eels in their cave. The—”
Kurapika pinches him. Very hard. Leorio yelps, and courteously moves the hell out of the way so Kurapika can take a turn at punching the dough. It’s cool and damp and clings a bit to their fingers when Leorio helps him flip it out onto the baking pan and coat it with a bit of egg and water. Leorio clearly doesn’t get the hint and spends the next ten minutes making more despicable innuendos for what Kurapika offers to demonstrate are very scary and terribly efficient weapons. By the time the dough is ready again, Leorio’s resorted to defending himself with the wooden spoon and flicking flour at Kurapika, and only just calls a truce before he’s shoved into the oven along with the dough. Kurapika takes a seat instead, ceasefire navigated, and watches Leorio struggle with the baking pan in one hand and the over door in the other. Finally, Leorio shuts the oven door and sinks into the chair Kurapika slides out for him with a groan.
With its own scratchy growl, the over door slams right back open, lambasting the two of them with too-hot air.
Silence reigns as Kurapika and Leorio look at each other, at the oven, and back at each other. Leorio reaches with his foot and kicks the door shut, and he’s barely pulled it away before it clanks open again. “The door won’t stay closed,” Leorio says, like Kurapika doesn’t have eyes.
Kurapika is starting to sweat as the oven grumbles menacingly. “I can’t believe you didn’t get a place in the city.”
“We both know that with my frugal tendencies and savvy money sense, you can absolutely believe I didn’t get a place in the city.” With a grunt, Leorio props the door closed with his foot and casts around for a solution. “We can—tie it?”
“With what?” Kurapika looks around, finds nothing. “To what?”
Leorio is silent for just a beat too long, just long enough for Kurapika to get suspicious when he notices that Leorio is, in fact, looking at something just behind him. “Leorio, what are you—?”
“Okay, Kurapika.” Leorio raises a placating hand and grimaces. “This might sounds like a bad idea.”
“Not like I haven’t heard that before.”
“Shut up, I’m not the one who wore a wig and sunglasses to murder the head of the happy-murder-fun-time gang.” Kurapika opens his mouth to comment on happy-murder-fun-time gang but Leorio keeps talking. He points to a sack in the corner of the kitchen, tossed haphazardly in between the kitchen proper and the living room. “You see that bag? We can tie the end of it to the oven door handle and then put the bag on top so the weight will keep it shut.”
“What’s in the bag?” Kurapika asks.
“Does it matter?” Leorio runs a hand through his hair. “My foot hurts and I’m not sitting like this for another half hour while the bread bakes.”
The bag is heavier than Kurapika expects, and he has to drag it over. Whatever’s inside clanks and stumbles over itself and even Leorio looks confused. Kurapika rips open the bag and throws Leorio the most disparaging look he has in his truly impressive arsenal. “Why do you even have these?”
Leorio’s foot drops from the oven and the door clanks open again, blasting Kurapika right in the face with hot air. “Are those—?”
“Doorknobs?” Kurapika snaps, brandishing one. “Yes, Leorio. You’ve got a sack of doorknobs in your kitchen.” He sinks back on his haunches and rubs a hand over his face. He’d never thought a person could angrily tie a knot, but as he slings the bag onto the top of the oven and the door slams shut, Kurapika demands, “Do I want to know why you have these?”
Leorio scowls. “I don’t even know why I have these!”
“It’s your house!”
“It’s under construction! I told you the upstairs looks better!”
Kurapika throws his hands up in frustration. “I hope so! The last thing I need is your bed to fall through the floor in the middle of the night and kill us both!” The kitchen is small enough and quiet enough that Kurapika can hear exactly how awkward that sounded even over all of the blood in his body making a beeline for his face. “I—um, well.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, clears his throat. “Or I can find a place to stay. In town.”
“No!” Leorio lurches forward and immediately thinks better of it, pulls his hand back from where he reached. “You can sleep with me.” He cringes, turns as red as Kurapika. “Sleep here. With me. In the same house, not in the same—”
Kurapika skirts around the table and pulls out a chair, moves it closer to Leorio than is maybe strictly necessary. The kitchen is small enough that their knees knock together. “Yes. I—I get it. Thank you.”
“I mean unless you want to, but i might just be reading into it and you’re totally welcome to correct me as swiftly and violently as you want—”
“No, no,” Kurapika mumbles, “I do. Want to, I mean.”
“Oh.” It would probably be rude of Kurapika to laugh at the stunned expression on Leorio’s face. “Oh.”
Kurapika ducks his head. “Yes.”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
“So,” Leorio starts, pulls at his collar—he’s working on his home on his day off and baking bread and he’s still wearing a button-up, gods, Kurapika can’t handle how much he loves this ridiculous asshole, ”do you—I mean, should we—?”
In any other situation, Kurapika would die laughing when he realizes that Leorio is propositioning him. Instead, he jerks a thumb at the oven. “The bread?”
“The what?” Leorio scowls darkly at the oven like it was doing exactly what it was supposed to solely to spite him. “Oh, the fucking bread.” He twists his fingers together and bites his lips and looks altogether like he’s lost in thought, which is why it catches Kurapika completely by surprise when he’s hauled out of his chair and onto the table. Leorio sweeps an arm out to knock the bowls and spoons out of their way as he sets Kurapika down and now it’s Kurapika’s lip he’s biting, slotting their mouths together and drawing his bottom lip between his teeth. Kurapika fist his hands in the front of Leorio’s shirt as Leorio pulls back and chuckles. “The bread can wait.”
The tabletop is less than comfortable and the kitchen is still too hot but Leorio’s hands are everywhere, hooking under Kurapika’s knees to pull him closer, running through his hair and brushing it back from his face, tracing the divots of his spine through his shirt. They finally settle on Kurapika’s own hands as Leorio stands between his spread legs. He skims his thumbs across Kurapika’s knuckles and presses a kiss to his palm. “I don’t know if you noticed,” Leorio murmurs lowly against Kurapika’s skin, “But I really like your hands.”
Kurapika laughs. “You don’t say.”
In the end, the bread’s so burnt they could shingle the roof with it and they nearly set the house on fire.
Kurapika decides it’s perhaps the best thing he’s ever made.