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They were strolling down the streets of a town called West Ponride when Leorio found himself very suddenly being shoved through the entrance of the closest building by Kurapika. He sputtered as he stumbled through the doorway, vaguely registering the gentle chime that resounded upon their entry.
Leorio opened his mouth to demand some kind of explanation, but Kurapika just shushed him, peering past the decorated windows, through the glass, focused on a figure across the street. Leorio followed his gaze until it rested on a rather intimidating man, who stood taller than he himself. A lengthy scar sloped down the side of this stranger’s neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his jacket.
Apart from that, there was nothing that unusual about him. Casual street wear, sunglasses on a bright day. He didn’t seem to be in any sort of hurry, ambling through the local crowd without a care in the world.
“Kurapika,” he frowned after a minute passed without comment. “Hey, Pika–”
It didn’t matter that Kurapika wasn’t the one to reply, didn’t matter that he hadn’t so much as glanced back at him. Any potential conversation between them was halted by a cheerful greeting that usurped their attention.
“Welcome!” A woman with curled blonde hair that spilled past her shoulders smiled at them, bowing. When she rose, the name tag pinned to the top of her rather elaborate black-and-white dress said Charlotte. “A table for two?”
Leorio blinked, glancing past her to the innards of the building they’d ducked in on a whim. A simple tiled floor offset the dozen or so rounded tables and chairs that took up the majority of the space; the walls, decorum, even the seating were all overwhelmingly pink.
It was the counter directly behind Charlotte that ultimately clued Leorio in on their situation, the pastel counter tops that sat just below a menu display written in elegant curling script.
A cafe, he realized, allowing himself a fleeting moment to consider why Kurapika had chosen this specific building to dip into.
Leorio returned the server’s smile, his own expression a bit sheepish as he fumbled for an apology.
“Sorry,” he started, hand at the back of his neck. “Actually, we–”
“Please,” Kurapika interrupted from beside him, a polite smile on his lips. “Would it be alright to take one of the booths over there?”
“Of course,” Charlotte clapped her hands delightedly, spinning to collect a menu from behind the immediate counter. “Right this way.”
She led them to one of the booths that sat adjacent to the entrance, where large paneled windows spanned the expanse of the wall and provided an undisturbed view of the bustling streets.
Without comment, Kurapika slid into the pastel pink booth.
Uncertain, Leorio slipped in across from him, his gaze occasionally darting to his friend, but his expression remaining civil.
“Did you need a few minutes with the menu?”
“Uh,” Leorio side-eyed Kurapika. “Yes?”
“Not a problem,” Charlotte beamed, indicating the menu’s top section. “So, this is where you’ll find all of our specialties. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask any one of the workers. If you’d like to talk to me specifically, my name is Charlotte.”
Leorio nodded, thanking her. He waited until their server had disappeared from view before he peered over the menu, leaning on the table.
“What,” he whispered, “are we doing?”
Kurapika hummed after a moment of silence, eyes thoughtfully regarding the menu.
“You like parfaits, correct?” He didn’t meet Leorio’s baffled gaze. “Ah, but not anything with bananas, if I remember right.”
“They’re not my favorite fruit...” Leorio trailed off, shaking his head. “No, no, wait. That isn’t the problem.”
“No,” Kurapika agreed with a sigh. “You’re right, the portion sizes are monstrous. We’ll be sick, even if we split most of these.”
“Not that either,” Leorio lowered his voice when a server walked by to clean a booth further down the way. “Why are we here?”
“Why?” Kurapika repeated with an owlish blink. “Didn’t you say you were hungry only a few minutes ago?”
Leorio’s felt his eyebrow twitch, but before he could respond, Charlotte was approaching their table.
“Can I answer any questions?” She flipped open her notepad, pen at the ready. “Or have the two of you decided what you’d like?”
“Now that you mention it,” Leorio sat up, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Do you do anything special for birthdays?”
Charlotte beamed, presumably over the moon.
“Whose birthday is it?”
Leorio watched Kurapika blink over at him, eyebrows furrowed, eyes narrowed. It’s a warning more than anything else, a caution to Leorio that whatever he intends to go through with, he will regret it.
Leorio knows all of this and still, in a burst of petulance, he ignores it.
“Well,” he sighed. “Unfortunately, my date’s a bit shy about these kinds of things, you see.”
Kurapika waved his hand.
“That’s not necessary,” he laughed, struggling for words. “It’s not a big deal.”
“He was going on about it earlier,” Leorio confided in Charlotte, shaking his head. “About how he wasn’t able to celebrate it properly. His schedule’s so packed, we barely had time to stop here today.”
“Leorio,” Kurapika interrupted, catching himself and pressing forward with a sugar-sweet tone. “It’s all right.”
“It isn’t,” Leorio declared, indignant. He throws his hands up in the air for effect. “Today is your birthday and you haven’t so much as had a cake! It’s outrageous.”
Charlotte stepped in.
“I think we can help,” she smiled. “We have just the thing.”
Leorio sighed, relieved.
“I’ll pay any price,” he assured. “To make this day special for him, it’s all I want.”
Charlotte clasped her hands over her heart, cooing.
“It warms my heart,” she said. “We’ll see what we can do, free-of-charge.”
Leorio offered Charlotte a smile of unabashed gratitude; she collected their menus and promised a short wait before their order.
Leorio settled back into a comfortable position, arms crossed. He grinned.
Kurapika opted to simply stare him down.
“Don’t worry,” Leorio waved a hand. “I’m still going to pay them.”
“That,” Kurapika took a deep breath. “That is not the issue and you know it.”
Leorio shrugged. It had all been in good fun and, if he was being honest, a little out of spite. He wasn’t a saint and the other had no qualms with acting so mysterious about why they were here. As though it didn’t affect him.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Leorio frowned. “We’re supposed to meet up with the others in the market, so why are we here in the first place?”
Kurapika didn’t respond and that’s getting aggravating. Leorio found his patience dwindling to nonexistent.
He rested his chin in his palm and followed Kurapika’s gaze out the window, where it’s focused on that same man. The one with the neck scar, who was talking at length with another stranger across the street.
Leorio’s frown deepened, lips pursed. He caught the glint of refracted sunlight, a handgun of some sort tucked in the inner pocket of Neck Scar’s jacket.
“Is he an ex you didn’t expect to be here or something?”
He delighted in Kurapika’s aghast expression, in the pretty pink that lights up his cheeks.
“You’re joking.”
Leorio chuckled.
“What a ridiculous assumption to make,” Kurapika sighed, brushing his hair back behind his ear. “Are you telling me you don’t recognize him?”
Leorio blinked and for a moment struggled to pull his attention away from the gentle sway of Kurapika’s earring. It caught the filtered sunlight and glowed a red as fierce and beautiful as Kurta Scarlet.
“Ah, well,” he knew he wasn’t caught staring, but sheepishness colors his face all the same. “We can’t all have a mind like yours, can we?”
Kurapika seemed to remember himself.
“You’re right,” he amended and then doubled back. “I mean, the reason I know him is because he’s in the Hunter Association’s database as a person of interest.”
Leorio blinked, knew that Kurapika intended on elaborating regardless of what he said.
“He has a number of false identities, but the association managed to trace them all back to a single person: Lucas Webber.”
Any comment that Leorio intended on making was cut off by the good-natured sound of celebratory glee that emerged from a small group of approaching café workers. He sees them before Kurapika, but only by seconds.
One glance in Kurapika’s direction confirmed the other was just barely refraining from sinking down into his seat.
Leorio felt a little bad when Charlotte and her squad performed a short, but surprisingly harmonious birthday song before one of the more brave waitresses steps forward. In spite of Kurapika’s unease, she slipped a pair of frankly adorable faux rabbit ears over his blond hair just as Charlotte unleashed upon them a handful of confetti.
And then they set down the parfait.
Leorio balked at the sight of it.
It was a striking thing, this dessert. A mountain of whip cream on top of a dozen strawberries, decorated with adorable sweets shaped like hearts and expressive rabbit faces. Twisted candy straws poke out from below, pastel and impractical, surrounded by pink and pale-yellow sprinkles. A cherry was nestled at the peak.
Everyone in the café clapped, a polite resonance of well wishes and cheers.
Kurapika’s smile was strained.
Leorio stopped short of cackling.
“Oh,” Kurapika managed. “This, uh… This is… How nice.”
“We hope you enjoy,” Charlotte chimed, clapping her hands one final time as the crowd of waitresses dispersed with polite smiles and further well wishes.
The good graces of Kurapika’s civility faded as soon as the attention was no longer on him and he frowned in Leorio’s direction.
Leorio, for his part, didn’t falter.
“Nice ears,” his smirk peaked out from beneath his fingers and he wrestled a lonely spoon free from the mound of whip cream. “Hey, do you want the winking rabbit or the smiling one?”
Leorio filled the spoon with whip cream and a starry-eyed candy rabbit and wiggled it for emphasis.
Kurapika raised an eyebrow.
“You’re really going to eat that?”
“Why not?” Leorio popped in a bite, his face twisting. “Oh.”
He carefully slid the spoon back into the parfait.
“Are all my teeth still here?” Leorio gritted his teeth, waving his hand at the dessert. “Never had a cavity in my life. That one’s all you.”
Kurapika removed the novelty rabbit ears with more grace than he should be capable of in the situation, setting them on the table. He either didn’t notice or didn't bother to comb his hair back into place, leaving upturned strands.
“I’ll pass,” he folded his hands over one another, all business all at once. “As I was saying, Webber is thought to have been involved in an elaborate smuggling ring.”
“That so?” Leorio found himself fixating on the messy strands as Kurapika’s head dipped in affirmation. “Aside from him being awful, why does capturing him matter so much to you?”
Kurapika furrowed his eyebrows.
“I’m saying,” Leorio shrugged. “We could leave a tip—we’re supposed to be on vacation, you know?”
Kurapika’s expression softened, but there’s an edge to his brow, unspoken hesitation, something unsettled. Leorio’s thumb twitched with the urge to smooth out that vexed edge.
“I’m aware,” Kurapika’s shoulders fell and he glanced to the side. “Perhaps we should leave it at that.”
Judging by the tone of his voice, it wasn’t the kind of resolution he was hoping for.
“Kurapika,” Leorio sighed, stretching a hand across the table. “Hey, what’s really going on?”
He hoped that it didn’t sound as if he’s implying Kurapika’s lying to him, only that he recognized there’s something more there. Not a lie, just not the whole truth.
“Webber’s smuggling ring centers around exotic animals,” Kurapika relented, hesitating. “I’ve heard tell he’s been trafficking creatures from the Lukso province.”
“Lukso,” Leorio repeated, pondering the location on his own mental map. “So that’s…”
“…where I’m from,” Kurapika finished and suddenly the distance in his expression, the somber mood about him made a world of sense. “Not that I wouldn’t want to help otherwise, of course, it’s just…”
Kurapika tensed and Leorio watched the inner rim of his iris begin to flood with a ruby red.
“No matter how you think about it,” Kurapika bit his lip, clenched hands quivering. “It’s despicable, for money or for infamy. People like him, like…”
He cut himself off, though Leorio understood enough.
“When I was young,” Kurapika went on. “We kept pets, valued our connection with the neighboring forest and its inhabitants. Many of the animals that lived nearby, our coexistence, it was all peaceful. Even if it hadn’t been, people like Webber—no one has a right to do as they please like that.”
“Eyes,” Leorio whispered, soft and not unkind, his fingers tentatively brushing the other’s wrist. “Pika, you’re not wearing contacts.”
Kurapika stiffened at that, his hand flying up to his eyes. He dipped his head, a curtain of blond obscuring simmering scarlet.
Leorio opened his mouth, jumping in his seat when their waitress’ voice, Charlotte’s, sounded from behind him.
“Is everything alright?”
“Oh, he got a little worked up about all of this,” Leorio waved his hand around before settling it on the hand Kurapika still had against the table, patting. “He’ll be okay, though, thank you.”
“I hope we didn’t upset him,” Charlotte frowned, by all appearances genuine in her apology. “Should I fetch your bill?”
“Not at all,” Leorio smiled. “The bill would be great, thank you.”
Kurapika sat up suddenly.
“Webber,” he hissed, darting away from the booth and out the front of the café without another word.
Leorio watched him for a moment, blinking. He sighed, fishing out his wallet and slapping down more cash on the table than strictly necessary. All of this seemed to do nothing to alleviate Charlotte’s confusion.
“Forget the bill,” Leorio stood from the booth, tucking his billfold away. “Thanks for the hard work, miss.”
With a wave, Leorio strolled to the front entrance, determined in the near future to have a word with Kurapika about the importance of proper communication.
Those conversations always went well.