A/N: I've noticed I have a tendency to write a bunch of one-shots for one series and then move on. I'm not sure this is my next destination, but this is a pairing I've had in mind for a while, though not one I've ever seen a story for. Like most of my one-shots, this one aims for a particular feeling, and the avoidance of fanfic clichés.

Warnings: None.

Pairing: Kurapica/Gon, light.

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Sometimes

Sometimes when Gon can't sleep he ends up in Kurapica's room.

Sometimes he knocks and waits for an answer, and sometimes he walks in without knocking, but most often he stops in the hallway and pushes the door open just far enough to poke his head through, little black threads of hair falling into his eyes as he waits for Kurapica to look up from his book. Sometimes Kurapica looks up. But usually he just asks if Gon needs anything without looking, because there's only one person who opens his door that late.

Sometimes Gon wants something in particular, the answer to a question or a reminder of something he's forgotten. Most of the time what he wants isn't as easy to give. Sometimes when he's stepped inside and shut the door and Kurapica has put his book down he sits on the edge of Kurapica's bed and kicks his feet back and forth over the shadowy carpet, and asks Kurapica about the stars. He wants to see the constellations Kurapica knows and hear about where they got their names, especially if there's a hero in the story. He wants to stick his head out the window and show Kurapica the constellations he made up for himself when he was a little kid staring up at a deep black sky. He especially likes to tell these stories. Kurapica doesn't know if Gon embellishes on the spot or if his imagination has always been this complex—but either way sometimes Gon's stories are so long and disjointed that Kurapica can barely follow them. Sometimes Gon doesn't even finish one story before he moves on to the next.

Sometimes Gon is ready to go back to bed after swapping stories about the stars. Sometimes he wants to keep talking. He wants to talk about the place he grew up and the trouble he got into, about the time he fished up a snake on accident and the time he fell into the ocean before he could swim. He wants to know where Kurapica grew up and whether he ever fell into the ocean when he was little. He wants to know if Kurapica always liked to read or if he grew into it. He wants to know who taught Kurapica about the stars. These aren't questions anyone's asked Kurapica before, and even though he's never thought he had many stories about his childhood—except the one—sometimes when he's talking to Gon the stories just keep coming, a part of himself he didn't even know was there.

Sometimes they talk so long that Kurapica gets up from his chair and comes to sit next to Gon on the bed, leaning back on his hands, smoothing the sparse wrinkles in his blue bedspread—blue like his eyes are supposed to be. In a lot of ways, Gon is still a little kid, and he's always restless when they sit together in front of the window, listening to the night rolling by outside. Sometimes he swings his legs so that his right foot just brushes Kurapica's left, every pass whispering like the wind in the leaves. Sometimes when Kurapica's talking Gon leans against his side and presses his temple to Kurapica's shoulder. Once while Kurapica was telling him about the little creek that ran through the forest behind his house and the water-skippers he used to catch in old cracked cups Gon turned and pressed his forehead against Kurapica's chest, right over his heart. Kurapica's next inhale took forever.

"Gon? What are you doing?"

Gon had just laughed, shaking his head against Kurapica's nightshirt. "I knew it. When you talk, I can feel it in my head. It makes my brain feel fuzzy."

For the first time he could remember, Kurapica found he had nothing to say. He sat still in the silence, wondering if his heartbeat was loud enough for Gon to feel that, too.

Sometimes when Kurapica has told Gon every story he can think of and Gon has told more than a few of his own, Gon wanders back to his room on tired feet, wrapped mindlessly around one of Kurapica's pillows or the throw from the end of his bed. But sometimes Gon wants to talk even as his eyes start to droop, and he will lie back on the bed and then scoot up to the pillows and then burrow under the blankets right where he is, drawing his knees up toward his chest but keeping his eyes on Kurapica as they become thinner and thinner slivers of brown. Sometimes Kurapica will sit up without speaking as Gon drifts off to sleep, restless but usually harmless with a tendency to get wrapped up in things, the sheets and the pillows and the sleeves of his own pajamas. Sometimes even after Gon's eyes have closed the final time Kurapica will sit up watching his face to make sure his dreams don't turn into nightmares. He knows what it's like to have nightmares without anyone to wake you up.

Sometimes when he's sure Gon's dreams are safe, Kurapica will take extra blankets from the closet or the throw Gon gets tangled in and make up a bed on the floor. But sometimes, if he's watched Gon so long that his own eyes are slipping closed, he will leave the throw where it is and slide under the covers, too, and fall asleep beside his midnight visitor, putting his second pillow to use for once. He knows it's ridiculous but sometimes he thinks about rolling over and pressing his forehead against Gon's heart, because some part of him wants to count the beats, to hear what they have to say. Sometimes he swears he can feel Gon's heartbeat right through the mattress.

He has never slept so soundly as to that simple lullaby.