Work Text:
.09.06
A new guy moved into the house next to mine. I think his name is Leo? He just appeared and already seems to be friends with most of the locals. A charmer, apparently. His eyes crinkle when he smiles at me. Like a mischievous fox. Kinda.
Claude was never really fond of journaling. The idea of writing down any sort of experiences never crossed his mind prior to his once a lifetime therapist visit, because a therapist is a must for retired assassins, apparently. She squinted at Claude about half an hour into their first meeting and said you're surprisingly self-aware, to which Claude said yes, I know, and that was the extent of it. There was never a second meeting, but she recommended Claude to start journaling, so here he is. Journaling on evenings in a remote village where nights are so outstandingly quiet that Clawmark couldn't sleep for the first month because of it.
He spins the pen between his fingers, staring at a half empty page.
There's something both familiar and not about him.
He closes the notebook with that and turns the lights off.
I.
Claude Clawmark never thought he'd see himself getting a horse, given he had never ridden one before. But then again, Claude never thought he'd see himself retire, either, because assassins and mercenaries don't retire. Unless they're very fucking lucky. Well.
It's a former racing horse, a soldier of its own. An unwanted asset. A young mare with a tendon trauma that will hinder her ability to canter at full speed for the rest of her life, sold for a joke amount of money despite all her honorifics. She's about 16 hands tall, bleak unappealing orange in color and looks at Claude with tired, glazed over eyes that remind him of himself. Politely leans her head downwards when Claude reaches to pet her with no resistance whatsoever.
“I'll take her,” he says, brushing his hand across the animal’s neck. He has enough savings to last himself a lifetime. A horse wouldn't be much of an issue to his financial stability.
He turns to look at the seller. “What's her name?”
The man squints at Claude, then at the mare. He tears apart the horse's passport apart in his hands with a smile with cynical undertones. “She doesn't have one.”
Claude names her Luck Life for the lack of a better idea. Luck for short. He builds a small makeshift stable for her with the help of one of the village’s residents. Luck mostly is free to roam the nearby fields and forest, though she tends to be somewhere within the visible distance. She returns for dinner and for the night, a surprisingly low maintenance creature. It's an English thoroughbred, they tend to be quite temperamental, he was told. Luck seems to be anything but; just smart and quiet. Grateful, maybe.
“What a beautiful animal,” says a voice. Claude turns to look.
Leo’s eyes study him as the man hangs on the fence that separates his and Claude’s plot of land. His hair is slightly ruffled, probably after a night of on and off sleep. It's early morning. It's the first time his neighbour decided to talk to Clawmark after moving in.
“Yeah,” Claude hums affirmatively, opening the gates to the stable for the day.
Luck peeks out, immediately noticing Leo. Her ears perk up and she freezes for a while, assessing the newly occurring phenomena. After drawing a conclusion to whatever dilemma she was considering, the mare seemingly deemed Leo harmless and set off for the field with a snort.
“She doesn't think you're trustworthy enough to approach,” notes Claude. The other man sighs with what seems to be genuine disappointment.
“I mean, fair,” he shakes his head, restoring his facial expression back to what Clawmark assumed was his default smile, “I’m Leo Kuga, by the way. I just recently moved here.”
He makes an attempt to stretch out his hand for a handshake and almost falls, forgetting that he needed the said hand to hold onto the fence. If Claude knew him a little closer, he would joke about his lack of physical strength. But he doesn't know him, so he only shakes Leo's hand with an affirmative hum.
“Claude Clawmark,” he says, retracting his hand and stuffing it into his pocket, “Nice to meet you.”
“It's nice to meet you, too,” smiles Leo, then promptly jumps off the fence and disappears on his side of it.
Claude stares at the empty spot for a little while.
II.
He starts noticing Leo all over the village.
It's like he's nearly damn everywhere — he's chit-chatting with the fruit merchant at the market when Claude shows up to get groceries and waves his hand at Clawmark. He's at the forge asking the local blacksmith about different types of metal when Claude needs a new shovel or something. He's on the street playing tag with the younger kids as Claude goes on his daily morning jog around the settlement. He's laughing at something with the shepherd when Claude wanders into the field to see how Luck is doing up close.
Leo has a polite, trained laughter that passes everyone’s social cue checks except Claude’s, because Claude knows this kind of laugh. It’s a kind of laugh that was trained on purpose, instilled into a person incapable of making such a sound voluntarily. It’s breathy and soft around the edges, muted in volume. His eyes are just as empty as Luck’s, grey with red undertones. Mountain-ash with cinder. His loose and haphazardly styled green shirt is a good color match.
Sometimes Leo glances at him with a corner of an eye and waves. Sometimes he does nothing to acknowledge Claude’s presence nearby, but he definitely notices him. If Claude didn't know any better, he would suspect Leo to be a spy. But there aren't any solid reasons for anyone to be sent after Clawmark, so Claude takes it for what it truly is: curiosity. And, admittedly, Claude takes interest in knowing more about his strange neighbour, too.
He is still both familiar and not.
Claude needs to figure out why.
III.
Planting is not Claude’s strong suit.
He wrestles with tomatoes. He doesn’t even like tomatoes, but he thought that maybe growing some himself would help him get used to the vegetable. If anything, it made him hate tomatoes even more. He tried buying just seeds and failed spectacularly, but that's fine. No one can succeed at everything from the first try. The seedlings, however, did not yield any better results. Some of them did not survive the first week. Claude had his suspicions that Luck might've been tampering with some of his poor crops, but as far as he had seen the horse tended to avoid the small garden her owner was trying to make.
With a sigh, he reaches to dig out a dead seedling.
“That's not how you're supposed to do it,” says a familiar voice.
Clawmark whips around to see his neighbour’s face peeking from behind the fence, trademark glint in them and all. He looks amused. Entertained, even.
“How do you know?” Claude squints suspiciously.
“I've been learning,” sing-songs Leo in response, which is a complete non-answer.
He hops over the fence to Clawmark's side, gracefully and shamelessly. Claude almost audibly scoffs with no real offense.
Leo's been over every now and then, waltzing into the perimeter of Claude’s property as if it's his own. To be fair, Claude did say that he can come over whenever he wants to, and nothing so far has warranted him to reconsider his hospitality. Leo is a good guest. Claude just didn't expect him to show up almost every other day.
“First of all, these seedlings were doomed to fail from the start. You need to pick the ones that are more short and stocky,” explains Kuga, pointing at the poor excuse of a plant that Claude is holding like a corpse of a newborn bird, “Second of all, you're not burying them deep enough. Adding some sort of fertilizer would be good, too. You can literally just put crushed eggshells there, dude.”
“Awh,” pouts Claude, dead serious in his tone. The poor tomato seedling deserved a better fate than ending up in his hands. Leo laughs.
“I think I have a few leftover plants,” he says after a small pause, “Come over, I'll entrust them to you.”
Clawmark blinks at him. “You live next door.”
“And?” Parries Kuga. “Would it kill you to walk a dozen feet?”
It won't, so Claude obediently trails behind his neighbour, still carefully carrying an already deceased unit of flora with him.
Claude's house doesn't have much in it. Grey walls with a few misc photographs that carry no sentimental value, a simple couch, a writing table in the living room and another one in his room for his computer and other gadgets. A generic bed. A generic table. A generic kitchen. A singular small lamp he bought, colored bright red from the outside. A shelf with books that the previous owner of the house left behind. Most of the house is what the previous owner has left behind, and whoever that was they left barely anything besides the furniture and the cutlery. Claude doesn't need more than that. He's used to open empty spaces and minimalism, and any extra decor creates visual clutter that frays his nerves at the edges.
Leo’s house is different. Leo has a tacky orange carpet at the entrance and a tablecloth with a checkered pattern draped over his table. His couch is a set with an armchair, matching armrests and colors and cushions. Several paintings strewn across his walls, showcasing various scenery and landscapes. A string of star-shaped lights that is badly taped to the ceiling and the wall and is peeling off. It's like Kuga is trying to make his living space into something cozy, but he's so clearly inexperienced that it feels almost artificial. Like a man who was never allowed to have a home before. Like a man to whom comfort feels foreign.
“There they are!” A carton tray with several green seedlings is placed into his hands, snapping Claude out of his thoughts.
“Oh,” he says. “Thank you.”
Kuga shoots him another of his trademark smiles, albeit a slightly more genuine one. “Do you need help with planting those?”
Clawmark lightly shakes his head. “I'll try myself, and if I run into any issues I'll call you to help me troubleshoot them.”
“Help you troubleshoot a plant,” snorts Leo, “Sure-sure. You know where to find me if you need me, man.”
“Uh-huh,” he grips onto the cardboard a bit tighter, “Yeah.”
IV.
Claude, as a rule, doesn’t let himself keep more than two knives in his house. Or anything else that he would consider a weapon. He got rid of all of his old work equipment before setting his foot outside of the city. It wasn’t hard — he never held any particular attachments to physical things or places. It’s the action he misses.
When you spend your entire existence on the move, life gets stale really fast after you stop running.
He tags along the hunters team whenever his hands get too itchy. He tries to not overindulge in that for obvious reasons, but sometimes the trigger beckons him far stronger than his mental resolve can handle. The hunters love him. He tersely nods and goes home with an awful feeling that stirs deep in his gut, reminding, telling, gnawing, screaming there is no way they don’t know, your aim is too good to not raise suspicion. Usually Claude misses once or twice on purpose. No one really bats an eye as far as he's aware, but it's hard to chase away the feeling that just the way he's holding his rifle is giving him away as an experienced killer. Hunters are experienced killers, too. But a different kind. They're not the same, never will be.
“Wanna join the hunt this weekend?” Claude asks, cutting a glance at his neighbour.
Leo does not react, not physically. His shoulders stay perfectly relaxed, his posture is undisturbed. The only thing that gives him away is a shadow of something sweeping over his gaze for a second. It's there one moment and gone in the next.
“I don't know how to hold a gun,” he smiles.
Claude hums noncommittally, turning over a pear in his hand. It seems reasonably ripe, so he puts it into his plastic bag. “I could teach you.”
“I'm just not made for this kind of thing,” Leo shrugs, shifting his gaze to the fruit basket, “I didn't know it was peach season already, just look at these, Claude!”
Is he scared of the same thing Clawmark is, he wonders. Of being unmistakably too good at something you're not supposed to be good at as a regular human being. Does the bleak, yet persistent thought of I could turn around and kill every single person on this damn street with little to no effort chase Leo as well? Does it scare him that if he followed through with the aforementioned idea he would feel nothing about so many innocent deaths?
Is Leo Kuga scared that his hands know the feeling of the trigger too well? Clench, unclench, clench, unclench, clench, unclench, clench, unclench, clench, unclench, click, snap, reload, click, clench, unclench, clench, unclench, clang—
Claude blinks back into awareness on a sunny day in the middle of a market. Red and grey eyes study him. He just shakes his head in response.
Reasonings don't matter. Peaches it is.
V.
“That Leo of yours he seems like a nice lad,” says the locksmith on one of the days Claude is jogging past her workshop. The sky is still dark, barely touched by the rising sun. The air is crisp and cold and Clawmark’s breathing forms into small white clouds.
“He's not of mine,” he says, slightly slowing down to be polite.
“He can always be found within a twelve feet radius from you, mate.”
“We’re neighbours,” shrugs Claude.
“You two are attached at the hip is what you are,” she scoffs, albeit not in a mean way. She seems somewhat endeared, if that’s an applicable word, “Be kind to him, would you?”
“When have I ever been mean to anyone?” waves his hand Clawmark, continuing his run down the usual route.
Oh, he has been. Just not to this town.
Just not to Leo. Not yet.
(Hopefully never.)
VI.
He hears a loud crash one evening.
Not too loud, really, it's just very quiet here once the sun sets down. He hauls himself up from the couch and peeks through his half-closed curtains into his neighbour’s uncurtained windows.
Leo stands in the middle of his kitchen, facing away. There's shards of what Claude would assume is a ceramic plate at his feet. He’s mostly motionless, but Clawmark's trained eye catches a barely noticeable tremble in his shoulders.
Nothing happens for a minute or two. Then Leo suddenly bolts out of the room, and Claude belatedly recoils away from the window. Leo didn't notice him, thankfully, but some extra apprehension would be a good thing to have.
A rapid knock rattles his door. Claude whips around towards it and opens it without looking, because he already knows who that is.
Leo looks worse up close. Claude hasn’t seen him around for a day or two, but the difference is noticeable. His eyes are more bleak and dead, as if Kuga hasn’t slept for the entire time he wasn’t around Clawmark. His shirt is crumpled at the edges. He sucks a sharp breath through his gritted teeth and forces the faltering smile on his face to be a bit wider before demonstrating a bleeding arm to Claude.
“Do you happen to have an antiseptic?” His voice is the exact same controlled volume and tone it always is, “I've forgotten to restock my medical stuff.”
Claude silently holds out the door open and moves away, letting the guest in. Leo slips past him into the living room and onto the couch with a thank you.
Leo’s fingers look like he dug through the remains of a shattered plate. Nothing serious, but definitely unpleasant to a significant degree, and yet Kuga doesn’t flinch even once while Claude is disinfecting the cuts and fishing out the smaller particles of porcelain out of his wounds. Completely motionless, breathing evenly, just staring. Like he doesn’t feel any of it. Like it’s nothing.
Clawmark’s skills in handling injuries speak for themselves. Something you only develop with years of practice. Something Leo probably recognizes. His smile is gone.
Claude trades medical supplies for two mugs of hot green tea. Leo gives him another thank you and his eyes go vacant as he slumps forward a bit, seemingly disconnecting from reality, present in body but not mind. Claude settles beside him onto the couch.
“They always said I have what it takes,” He says to no one in particular.
“And I was what it takes,” Leo’s voice is barely above a whisper, hands clutching the mug with a little more force than they should. His gaze is glued to his own murky reflection in it.
Neither of them says another word after. Claude just hums in vague acknowledgment and takes a sip of his own tea.
VII.
Claude wakes up on the couch alone with his hand cramped to hell and back and his other limbs sore. Never did he expect to lose his ability to sleep on any surface unharmed, but apparently he’s getting softer. Or more comfortable in pretending I can be a normal person. He pries himself off the furniture with an undignified frustrated groan and glances outside of his window.
Leo is in his own kitchen, up to whatever usual vices he is in mornings. The shards from the floor are gone. Claude shakes his head with a fond smile, retreating into his living room away from the glass.
At least I’m not the only one.
VIII.
“I think she’s getting used to you,” Claude notes.
It’s not unusual for Leo to show up and random or just be places — Clawmark made amends with the fact that the man seems to appear out of thin air whenever he pleases — it’s just that Claude didn’t expect to meet him face to face while letting Luck out in the morning like he always does. Luck, by the way, is paying him no mind, instead of leaning her big head towards the guest as Kuga carefully scratches the middle of her nasal bone. What a traitor.
“Maybe,” Leo says.
He gives the animal a last pat on the face before turning to Claude.
“I don’t think I want to hunt anything,” anymore goes unsaid. ”But I would appreciate an advice or two on how you keep in shape. Maybe join you on a morning run or something.”
Claude pretends to do a thoughtful assessment of the offer for maybe a whole five seconds, nodding to himself twice and all that. “As long as you continue telling me how to plant things correctly, I’d call it a fair exchange.”
Not that there needs to be an exchange, not when neither of their lives is bound by work contracts and “equal trades”. But it feels familiar in some way that doesn’t seem too harmful. Comforting, almost. A tried and true mechanic and exercise in ethics that is used for something decent for the first time in forever.
Leo smiles and stretches out his right hand.
“Deal!”