Chapter Text
The coffee steams. Leorio holds his mug, breathing in the warmth and scent of it. It’s black. Leorio has always taken it black, starting when he was nine years old. He’d hated it then, but he’d drank it because it made him feel older and braver.
Now he likes it strong. He likes the colour of it, and how bitter it tastes, and how strong it makes him feel still.
‘What are you thinking?’ Cheadle sits down across from him. She shrugs off her lab coat and hangs it on the back of her chair.
‘Nothing.’
Leorio is thinking about death. How hard it is. How fast, how slow, how sudden and final it is. He sips his coffee. It burns the tip of his tongue.
Cheadle butters toast. The knife scrapes across the toast and crumbs fall and scatter over her plate and onto the table around it. Cheadle brushes at them impatiently.
Leorio swallows a gulp of his coffee. The taste of it lingers in his mouth and throat and creeps up to his nose. He scratches his leg through his scrubs. His long legs bang awkwardly against the underside of the table, and his slippered feet push at Cheadle’s.
Cheadle looks up at him again. Her eyes are gentle. She has two freckles on her left eyelid and a freckle on her lips. Her lips are turned down at the corners ever so slightly.
‘Sorry,’ Leorio mumbles and pulls his feet back.
He drums his fingers against his cup. His nails clack against it, and the cup rings out a dull, plastic sound.
‘Are you angry?’ Cheadle says quietly. She rips the lid off a yoghurt.
Leorio shrugs. He’s tired and bleary and doesn’t want to think about what he’s feeling. He tilts his head back and scratches at the stubble on his neck. The florescent light above him flickers on and off. It’s agonising.
‘Any decent person would be angry,’ Cheadle says.
Leorio looks at her. ‘Mm?’
Cheadle shrugs. ‘Life isn’t fair.’
Leorio stares at Cheadle. Her hair is up in a bun on the back of her head, and her name tag is clipped on crooked to the front of her scrubs. She licks yoghurt off the back of the foil lid and then folds it neatly in half and sets it down beside her coffee mug.
‘What?’ She stares back, lips drawn into a straight line.
‘You’re just going to accept that?’ Leorio says, voice rising even though he doesn’t want it to.
‘I’m a doctor,’ she says calmly. ‘What do you think?’
Leorio grumbles and looks down at the table. He’s brimming with anger. It boils inside of him. It’s been constantly there since he was young. Back when he realised that the world didn’t need him alive and didn’t care if he died.
Didn’t care if any of them died.
Cheadle eats her toast and stares at the wall. Leorio follows her gaze. The wall is white and bland and dirty. People have started to write on it.
Leorio scratches at his neck again. He feels pent up and agitated. He doesn’t know why. Not really. He always feels like this. He never feels like this. He wants to rip his hair out.
He gulps down the hot coffee.
Cheadle looks back at him. She watches him for a few moments, swirling her spoon in her yoghurt.
‘I’m angry too,’ she says. ‘A lot of people are angry.’
Leorio balls his hand into a fist, digging his nails into his palm. He wants to scream. He always wants to scream. He wants to scream and jump and punch things and rip the whole world down and build another one up that he’ll actually feel safe in.
‘I lost my best friend,’ he says, and his voice is broken. His throat is tight.
This always happens to him. No matter how long it’s been.
Cheadle looks up again, mouth open slightly like she’s about to ask a question.
But she doesn’t.
Cheadle bites into her toast and stares at the wall again.
‘I didn’t have the money to save him,’ Leorio says into his mug. It muffles his words and makes them less true. The steam curls against his face and fogs up his glasses.
Cheadle nods and brushes at her hair. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So am I.’
Leorio doesn’t let himself cry. Cheadle doesn’t look at him. She stares at the wall and eats her yoghurt. She scratches her neck and her arm and the side of her face.
‘I hate money,’ she says finally.
Leorio licks his lip. She must have been born rich. Only a rich person could say they hate money. Anyone who grew up so hungry they had to spend afternoons lying down so they wouldn’t faint from lack of food would never say I hate money. They would want money like he wants money.
He craves it the way he craved food when he lay on his bed crying because his stomach was shrinking and it felt like he was being stabbed.
‘I never want to be weak again,’ Leorio says, teeth gritted.
Cheadle closes her eyes and takes in a slow breath.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’m sure that’s impossible.’
Leorio already feels weak. He clutches his mug and tries to remind himself that he’s made it farther than he ever thought he’d make it. He was fine with the idea of dying. He just couldn’t sit and do nothing. He’d never forgive himself for that.
‘It’s not for me,’ he says. ‘I’m never going back to that.’ His voice is strained and weak. He hates that. ‘I’m already a hunter,’ he snaps. His voice is strong now. ‘I’m going to be rich and successful, and I’m going to save the world.’
Cheadle looks him over again. ‘I like you,’ she says. ‘But I hate money.’
‘But you have to admit that it’s necessary.’
‘Not really.’
Leorio takes a gulp of coffee. It’s cooled some.
‘So a world without money?’
Cheadle nods. ‘Exactly.’
‘And how are you going to get that?’
‘I don’t know.’
Leorio cracks a cold boiled egg. He peels it, and it stabs under his fingernails.
At least what he wants is realistic, he thinks. She must have been rich. She must have pitied people like him and felt guilty sometimes when saw beggars on the streets and thought about how much more fun life would be if everyone was just as rich and as happy as her.
‘Are you angry?’ she asks. ‘At me?’
Leorio isn’t mad at her. He’s frustrated and bitter. He shrugs and scuffs at the floor with his slippers.
‘I’m tired,’ he says. He's been tired forever.