Archive of Our Own

On the seventh day of the seventh month, Gon catches a star.

Or more accurately, Gon goes fishing and instead of a fish pulls a boy out of the ocean. It’s been a long time since Gon was back on Whale Island, since he left to go to high school on the mainland, but even though he’s seventeen now and not a kid, the island hasn’t changed all that much. Aunt Mito’s house is still on its cliff overlooking the ocean, outside of the shadow of Ging’s planetarium he built and never came back to. The port is still small and quiet, almost deafeningly so compared to the cities on the mainland, where everything is noise and sound and light making it impossible to look at the stars on their own. The annual meteor shower still brightens a black sky, fiery rocks falling out of the moonless sky, and Gon almost can’t believe he hasn’t seen them in three years.

It had been a long shot, that Ging might come back for them too, but Gon’s not surprised. He’ll just have to look somewhere else, after this.

“Put me down!” says the boy, hook caught in his collar. He looks Gon’s age, no more than seventeen, skin pale and white hair dulled by salt and seaweed but shimmering softly in the early morning light. His clothes, made of fabric Gon doesn’t recognize and styled in patterns that do not fit with any island Gon has visited, have been soaked all the way through, and the embroidered blue outer robe flaps against his limbs like a dead fish. It’s more likely the weight has to do with the drenching rather than any bodily mass. 

“Hey!” the boy says again. “Do you have dust in your ears? Let me go!”

Gon smiles apologetically. “Sorry!” he says and sets the boy down as gently as he can, although this is quite hard to do with a fishing rod. The boy flops against the sun-bleached wood, spitting saltwater back into the ocean. One of his smooth black slippers is missing, and he tugs off the other one with a muttered curse. His toes are just as pale as the rest of him, and the little metal bangles around his ankle ring against each other as he wriggles his toes.

Gon has never seen anyone like this boy before. He may have been born here, on an island in the middle of a seemingly-endless ocean, but he’s been other places, too: other islands, other ports, places where the ocean was hidden by mountains and forests, places where his black hair and freckled brown skin sometimes stood out as starkly as a single star in the night sky. And no one he met had hair like moonlight and eyes like sunlit water. Not to mention someone who stayed underwater long enough that he has to be fished out. Gon’s almost jealous of that.

“Where are we?” the boy asks as Gon tugs his fishhook out of his ocean-cold robes. He has an odd accent, like he’s not used to speaking words he already knows.

Gon yanks as carefully as he can, only a few silvery strands being pulled out of the weave. “Whale Island.” At the boy’s blank look he adds, “We’re about a week off of the Yorubian Continent by boat, if the winds are good. In the southern oceans?”

The boy groans and drops his head into his hands. “Void and dust, I missed.”

“Missed what?”

“Missed my—” The boy’s eyes snap to Gon, vibrant and electric and alarmed, like he’s seeing him for the first time. “How did you find me?”

“You got caught on my hook,” Gon says, leaving out the idiot because it seems too obvious. “How did you end up in the ocean?”

The boy looks sideways at Gon, trying to determine if he’s serious or not. Whatever his decision, he says, “You saw the sweeping stars last night?”

Gon frowns. “Sweeping stars?”

The boy rolls his eyes hard enough that Gon worries they might fall out and tumble back into the ocean. “The bearded stars, the wanderers, the…the comets! The meteor shower! How could you miss it?”

“I didn’t!” How could anyone? The whole sky had been covered all night long, streaks of light tumbling out of the sky. Gon wonders if Ging saw them, too, wherever he is in the world. Maybe he caught one, or will find one later. Gon tucks that thought away for later. “But the bigger shower is tomorrow, so I went to bed early. Also I wanted to go fishing, so…”

The boy raises an eyebrow at Gon’s fishing rod and the nearly empty bucket of fish. “Doesn’t look like you’re very good at it.”

Gon grins. “I caught you, didn’t I?”

The boy’s mouth opens and shuts without any words coming out, and his face glimmers like the ocean reflecting the morning sunlight. The edges of his curls turn wispy and flutter around his ears in an unseen wind. “I’m not a fish,” he says finally.

“I wouldn’t eat you,” Gon says, because he wouldn’t. Just in case the other boy is wondering.

“Why would you—” A look of bemusement and annoyance flickers across the boy’s face, drawing his eyebrows together. “You can’t eat me. I’m a star.”

It’s hard not to make a face at that. “I just said I wouldn’t eat you,” he says, and reaches for the other boy. The star.

He flinches back, white curls flinging saltwater into Gon’s face. “What are you doing?” he demands.

Gon draws his hand back most of the way, out of the way of any sort of immediate response. “You said you’re a star, and stars run at least 3500 Kelvin, so I wanted to see if you were that hot,” he says.

“So you tried to touch me?” The boy—the star stares agape at Gon and Gon’s hesitant hand. “I can’t be hot once I’ve fallen, I used myself up. And if I were as hot as I’m supposed to be, the ocean would have dried up. What would it have done to you?”

“Oh, you’re right.” Gon can’t help but laugh a little. He’s always done this sort of thing, acting before he can really think about it. But he wants to know, wants to feel for himself if this star-turned-boy is what he says. “Is that why your hair’s white?”

The star tries to cover his curls with his arms and only manages to drip water all over his face again. Gon bites his lip to keep from giggling. “Shut up,” the star mutters, glaring at him from beneath his sleeves. “You’re the weird one. You don’t even know me, why do you think I am what I say I am?”

“I don’t think you’re lying,” Gon says. “What else would you be if not yourself?”

The star doesn’t say anything to that. But instead, Gon finds his hand tugged out from its resting place against the pier, the star fumbling to splay their hands together and lace their fingers. His hand feels like the surface of the ocean, rolling movement and odd pulses flowing beneath just-barely-solid skin.

And it’s cold, almost freezing to the touch, like a shadowed cave hidden from the heat of summer, but Gon doesn’t want to back away. Instead, he grabs onto the star’s hand and holds on tight. “Do you want to find some new shoes?”

The star smiles, a genuine surprised grin that lights up his whole face. “Sure,” he says, and follows Gon off the pier.

The star says his name is Killua. He fell from the sky, not as an accident or as part of his natural life but because he’s looking for something. Someone. Maybe even someones, Gon’s not entirely sure. Killua didn’t mean to end up at Whale Island. Not that many people do, not these days, when there are better telescopes elsewhere and airplanes to take travelers across the ocean without needing a break at an island in the middle of nowhere. But Killua’s here, and Gon’s here, and Aunt Mito would have him cleaning drains for the rest of his visit if he didn’t invite his new friend for dinner no matter if he were a boy, a star, or a foxbear.

Plus, she said she’s working in port until late tonight. She can’t say no once Killua’s already there.

It’s a long walk back to Aunt Mito’s home, through rocky paths up and around the cliff. It’s a path Gon used to know with his eyes shut, every errant root or broken stone memorized from a childhood of scabby knees and bruised knuckles. But Killua pauses every few moments, staring with his mouth wide and his eyes wide at the wind brushing through the trees or the tiny snakes wriggling across the brush. Gon doesn’t mind pointing out new things, crevices in tree trunks full of bird nests and poisonous flowers famed for their fragrant smell. After his time on the mainland and beyond, the island feels almost as new to him now as it is to Killua, full of surprises and secrets he never noticed when he was a kid, before he’d visited dense cities and frozen mountains and impossible forests.

He also doesn’t mind having to carry Killua on his back. The star makes it most of the way through the forest before his legs give out, limbs turning to jelly and feet covered in blisters and broken skin. “I’m fine,” he insists, even when Gon scowls at the wounds. “You can put me down. This is just dirt.”

“You’re not a ball of plasma here, Killua. Dirt hurts,” Gon says and tightens his grip on the star’s thighs. The fabric is soft, almost silky if silk were made out of mist and sand, and it seems to slip through his fingers.

Something about that makes Killua smile in a way that doesn’t entirely reach his eyes. “And you’re only skin and blood,” he says.

“Exactly! My feet are used to walking around, yours aren’t.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to carry me like a kid.”

Gon snorts. “It kind of does.”

That earns him a thwap on the back of his head, the oversized embroidered sleeve following the attack with a second damp thud. “Are we at your aunt’s place yet? If I hadn’t screwed up where I fell, you wouldn’t have to carry me and I would be able to leave.”

Gon twists his head to look at the star on his back. Killua doesn’t meet his eyes, instead staring off towards the house at the end of the path, at the sun slowly moving overhead. At anything else, really, except for the boy carrying him. “There’s a boat coming in a few days,” he says. “I’m leaving then. You can come too?”

A groan in a puff of cold air brushes against Gon’s neck, raising goosebumps. “That’s not the problem,” Killua grumbles. “I fell. You caught me. I owe you a wish. And I can’t look for Alluka until I do that.”

“Why do you owe me a wish? And who is—”

“I owe you a wish because that’s how it’s done!” Killua says, cutting Gon off before he has a chance to finish asking. “When a star falls, if someone catches them, we have to grant a wish. That’s how it works.”

That’s a weird system. “I didn’t catch you, though. I pulled you out of the ocean.”

“It’s not like I was getting out of there myself,” Killua mutters. His arms tighten around Gon’s neck, fingers claw-shaped and cold. “Besides, you’re the one who said you caught me! So I have to give you a wish. Nothing huge, but you have to ask for something for yourself.”

A wish…? Gon wasn’t expecting that. For the people on Whale Island, people like Gon’s great-grandmother bound by tradition to memorize their passing, the stars were children of the sky, younger siblings to the sun and moon and scattered across the black sky to guide the seasons and illuminate the night. Stars told people where to go, what weather the winds would bring, even perhaps what luck and chance would bring. Sometimes Gran would talk about them as though she’s met them, walk with them and listen to their stories. And when stars fall, Gon could never remember if that was supposed to be a good sign or bad. Maybe Killua would know.

Wishing means asking someone else to do something you should really do yourself. If it’s so important, something Gon wants, he wants to do it. It wouldn’t mean anything otherwise.

“But what if I don’t have a wish?” he asks.

The star laughs, a sound that rubs against Gon’s ears in shards of glass. “Everyone has a wish. Every human, every star. Even the stupid rocks that fell last night, they have wishes too.”

“I guess so.” Gon keeps putting one foot in front of another, Killua’s weight cold against his back. “Killua, what would you wish for?”

The star’s mouth twists in what should be a smile, but his eyes are impossible to read. “Nothing you can give me,” he says.

“I didn’t ask that.”

“It’s not like I can wish on myself. And you can’t grant wishes, Gon.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t wish for something and make it happen,” Gon says, both annoyed and curious. “Would you wish to find Allu—”

Killua ducks his head, and hair like mist tickles the back of Gon’s neck, making him yelp and taking the rest of his sentence with it. “Why do you keep asking? It doesn’t matter.“

“I want to know, so it matters to me!”

The only sign Killua hears him is the shudder of chilled air down Gon’s back. He says nothing for long enough that Gon twists his head back, only to find the star staring across the ocean. They’re almost back to Aunt Mito’s house, close enough to see Ging’s old observatory further up the cliffside. One side of the path drops precariously, only a foot’s width between sturdy dirt and a long drop into rock-strewn ocean. A little further up, Gon could dive straight into the water. Here, he’d probably hit stone.

“Killua?”

The star stirs restlessly, cold fingers digging into Gon’s shoulders while he props himself up to look forward once again. “Are we there now?” he asks, free hand pointing at Aunt Mito’s house.

“For a star, you’re really impatient,” Gon says.

“For a human, you’re really stupid,” Killua says.

Gon can’t help but giggle at that, and he breaks into a run, so close to his mom’s home that he can almost smell the laundry she’d set out to dry. Gulls go squawking and flapping out of the way as he careens up the path, and Killua laughs loud enough to echo off the cliff, catching Gon’s joy and carrying it away to the scattered clouds.

Aunt Mito comes home earlier than expected, at some point between Gon cleaning and bandaging Killua’s feet (to loud protests from the star, who insisted it didn’t hurt but Gon has a fresh bruise on his shoulder that says otherwise) and Killua finding new shoes in the spare clothes scattered throughout the house. Generations of Freecss have lived on this island, in one place or another, and there is a lot of stuff that has made it through the years.

And all of it is scattered around a boy and a star, who meet Mito Freecss’s exasperated sigh with identical expressions of embarrassment and nerves.

“Gon Freecss, what did you do to my house?” she demands, hands on her hips and glare on her face.

“Aunt Mito, this is my friend Killua!” Gon says before anyone can start berating or trying to run away. “Killua, this is my mom, Mito Freecss.”

“When you said you were going fishing, you should have mentioned you were also finding friends,” she says in the same tone of voice she’d had when Gon had brought home bear cubs and tried to grow poisonous plants, or stayed out all night trying to map stars to Gran’s old stories. It’s surprisingly comforting to hear it again, even as he tries to rub the awkward feeling out of the back of his neck.

She sighs and turns to Killua, taking in his strange hair and stranger clothes. Even with his robe drying on the clothesline outside, the soft shirt and trousers are more ethereal than anything on Whale Island, finer than silk despite the grimy salt dried into the fabric. “Welcome to Whale Island, Killua,” she says, open and warm. “Will you be staying for dinner?”

“I—” There’s a rustle of fabric as Killua shuffles, a thick wool blanket falling across his feet in a movement that’s almost careless enough to be an accident. “I can go,” he says.

“No!” both Gon and his mom say at the same time, and Killua rocks backwards, eyes wide. His fingers clench into dark blue wool, white knuckles going impossibly whiter.

“No,” Aunt Mito says again, softer this time. “I wouldn’t have offered if I wanted you gone. Any friend of Gon is always welcome here, wherever they come from.”

Killua’s eyes flicker between the two Freecss, hesitant. Gon tries to smile as brightly as he can, to make it feel as welcoming and hopeful as he feels. “Please stay, for a little while,” he says. “I can show you what the meteor shower looks like from here!”

The star doesn’t meet Gon’s smile. But his grip on the blanket loosens, and that’s almost good enough. “Is that your wish?” he asks.

“I don’t think so,” Gon says. “If you want to go, or don’t want to see them, that’s okay too. I won’t make you do something you don’t want to, Killua.”

A shimmer of longing and grief crosses Killua’s face before it vanishes, and Gon wonders what could could have happened that makes such emotions live just below the star’s semi-tangible skin. “I’ll come,” he says, and Gon can’t contain a small cheer.

“After you’ve cleaned this disaster up,” Aunt Mito says, the stern set of her mouth at odds with the dancing in her eyes. Killua begins to stand, but she shakes her head. “No, not you, Killua. You are our guest. I’ll show you the bath and the guest room while my idiot son takes care of the cleaning.”

“I told you it’d be fine,” Gon says in a whisper, and doesn’t manage to dodge his mom’s well-aimed attack of an old shirt that smells of mothballs and dust.

Hope lights up Killua’s blue eyes, and Gon can’t look away even if he wanted to.

Any belated fears Gon has about a star eating human food, or handling spoons, or even knowing what food is, evaporate as soon as Aunt Mito sets bowls of food on the table and Killua’s stew vanishes faster than even Gon’s. He looks almost embarrassed as Aunt Mito laughs and spoons him a second bowl, saying something about unspoken compliments getting extra dessert.

 (Killua proceeds to eat almost half of the cake she’d brought up from Nana’s bakery, and Gon can’t stop laughing even when it gets him a handful of cake shoved into his face.

“It’s as though you’ve never had cake before,” Aunt Mito says.

“I have, it’s just never been good ,” Killua retorts, and goes in for another slice.)

After all that, it’s no surprise Killua falls asleep in Gon’s bed while Gon is doing the dishes. Gon’s careful to make as little noise as possible as he gathers up Ging’s telescope and a jacket, just in case. He hasn’t gone stargazing since he was thirteen, not on Whale Island, where he doesn’t have to fight for space on a patchy hillside only to stare into clouds and smog. He may as well not need a telescope here at all.

Killua’s going to love it. And maybe he’ll find what he’s looking for.

“Heading out?” Aunt Mito says. Her voice is soft enough not to carry up the stairs to Gon’s room, but every word is clear.

Gon waves his dad’s telescope. “Yeah. Do you want to come?”

She snorts, less in amusement and more in simple acknowledgment. “I saw them last night without you, like I have the last three years.” She doesn’t bother to hide the bitterness, burning like a shot of alcohol down the back of her throat. It hurts more than Gon thought it would, and he swallows it back as best he can.

“The stars are better here than anywhere else,” he says instead.

“They are.” She glances out the window, darkened sky already beginning to flicker with light. “You come home next year, we’ll watch them together.”

“Really?” Gon asks, trying not to smile.

“Really really,” Aunt Mito says, and does smile, a mirror of Gon’s own. “You’ve grown up without me, Gon. I’m still getting used to it. You’ve never brought friends home before, either, not even when you were little.”

Gon shrugs. “Killua’s different,” he says.

She takes a long, slow sip of her drink, ice cubes clinking against the side of the glass. “Is he your boyfriend?”

All of the air in Gon’s body wooshes out at once, leaving nothing but fuzzy panic. “No! No, Killua’s… He’s my friend, I’ve only known him for—” He can feel his cheeks burning, and tries to rub the heat away. “Killua’s my friend. He needed a place to stay.”

Aunt Mito hums to herself, a grin playing across her lips. “It’s okay, Gon. We get stars here from time to time.”

Gon swallows heavily, not sure if he’s relieved Aunt Mito already knew Killua’s secret or even more worried. “How did you know?” he asks.

“He glows a little, when he’s distracted about something,” she says, smile sharpening. “Your friend’s not the first star I’ve met, and he won’t be the last.”

“You’ve met stars before?”

“Why do you think Whale Island is such a good place for stargazing? We’ve helped stars here as long as the Freecss have lived here. They led us here, or maybe we followed them, same as the rest of us on the island. And now when they fall, we help point them in the right direction in return.” She swirls a finger around the rim of her glass, leveling Gon with a look that makes him feel like he was caught playing with some of Ging’s old tools when he shouldn’t be. “You’ve met a few already, although Kite’s the only one to ever bother coming back. Even if it was for your asshole of a father.”

“Kite was—?” Gon cuts himself off. It makes sense, really, that the lanky man with pale hair and an almost otherworldly presence would be from somewhere other than Earth. Who else would still look for Ging after all these years? Besides Gon, of course. But who else could know where to start, than someone who knows the stars inside and out?

Aunt Mito watches him process this calmly. She says, “It’s tradition to tell the next generation when they turn sixteen, so you’re ready to host your first starfall. Normally it’d be Gran doing this, but she’s in town, since we didn’t expect you home this year. You didn’t catch Killua, did you?”

As though it’s Gon’s fault if he did. Gon bites his lip. “I didn’t mean to, but he fell in the ocean. I had to fish him out.”

Aunt Mito grumbles a curse or five. “They’re sticklers about that bullshit, maybe because they’re so much older than we’ll ever be. My first star fell at the base of the cliff, and she thought my helping her up was the same as catching her. Took me all night to convince her otherwise.” Her expression softens into something wistful and a little mischievous. “It’s a good thing Gran offered to babysit that night. She didn’t leave until after dawn.”

Gon turns this over as Aunt Mito takes a long, slow pull of her drink, finishing it in one go. With all of the stories he’d had growing up, the things Ging’s notebook said, there are more questions than he can count. How many stars Aunt Mito’s known, and why she never said who they were. Where stars go, when they’re not searching for someone. Why stars come to Whale Island, why Killua ended up here. If Ging knew, and if Ging knew, why he’d left.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks instead.

Sorrow and regret and a small amount of pride flash across her green eyes. “You left,” she says.

“I came back,” he protests, but the words are sour and mealy.

“And you’re leaving again.” Gon can’t protest, because it’s the truth. Aunt Mito sighs and pours herself another drink, not bothering with the ice this time. “You have so much of your dad in you sometimes. Always doing what you want in the order you want. Can’t say that’s not a little my fault, though.”

Gon’s never been sure if he should be proud of this or not. “I’m close to finding him, I think! Or at least, I know where to go next.” And after… Gon doesn’t know. He’s not sure he wants to think about that, not yet.

She frowns. “My opinion hasn’t changed. I can’t be happy about this, Gon, about you having gone to school away from here, about you leaving to find him. You’re so much more than his son. You’re my son. But I am proud of you. And if you decide what you want is here, you have a place here.”

Gon puts his Ging’s telescope down as quickly as he can, to cross back to his mom and put his arms around her. She huffs a little laugh and hugs him back. “You can always come home, Gon.”

“I know.” He gives her another squeeze before letting go. “Thank you, Aunt Mito.”

“But Gon…” Aunt Mito leans back in her chair, body turned towards the window. “Even Kite never stayed longer than he had to, and he’s come back more than once. Killua is the first one to accept the invitation for dinner. And I’ve never seen one glow quite like that, not around someone else.” She flashes him a grin, the beginnings of the star shower reflecting in her eyes. “Or maybe because of someone else.”

Gon’s ears burn as he scrambles out the door, nearly forgetting the telescope in his hurry. It’s nice to hear Aunt Mito laugh, even if it’s a little tipsy and entirely at his cost.

The meteor shower is as amazing as it was when he was thirteen, but Gon can’t stop thinking it’s not as amazing as if Killua had come along, too. He stumbles back into bed just before sunrise, face hitting his pillow almost before he realizes he’s asleep.

He’s woken up barely an hour later by Killua glowing in irritation at being half-squashed and ignored. Gon doesn’t admit he’d forgotten the star was sleeping in his bed, but to be honest, it’s worth it to see the star’s blue eyes flash in embarrassment when Gon tries to snuggle in closer and go back to sleep.

(Killua doesn’t let him, glowing brighter and brighter until he’s a misty ball of ice and Gon has to let him go, but it’s worth it.)

“So your whole family helps stars?”

Gon nods, before remembering Killua’s too focused on trying to fish to pay attention to him. The star fidgets impatiently, shaking the lure almost out of the lake. He’s wearing a green shirt and shorts borrowed from the boxes they’d upended the day before, bandaged feet dangling just over the water. Gon’s things are too broad across the shoulders and too short everywhere else, but Killua’s own clothes were stolen by Aunt Mito for proper cleaning so he didn’t have much of a choice. Gon’s promised to stop in port to see if any of the shops have anything that’ll fit. They’ll have a better chance off of the island, but it’s good enough for now.

"That’s what Aunt Mito says,” he says. “Us and the other families here on Whale Island. There aren’t a lot of people here, but I think they all try to help.”

 Killua gives a full-body wriggle again, and whatever chance he had left of catching anything slips away with the fish. Gon sighs. “You can’t catch anything like that,” he says. “Here, Killua—no, it’s okay, I’ve got it. You just hold it, and let it go. Like this. Look!”

“That’s what I was doing,” Killua mutters, and Gon bites back a laugh, because it was not at all.

“You’re too impatient,” Gon says, like Aunt Mito used to say when he was first learning how to fish. “We need enough for all three of us tonight, since Aunt Mito had to use the extra last night.”

“I’ve lived for thousands of years before coming here, I’m not impatient.” But he leans against Gon rather than try to take the rod again, comfortable and cold through both their shirts. “I’m waiting for your wish, right?”

Over the last day, Killua has been anything but patient. Gon doesn’t tell him so, but Killua seems to hear the words nonetheless. He glares, skin shimmering dully from underneath his borrowed shirt, before leaning against Gon’s back. “If you tell me, I can grant it, and then I can go.”

“Go after Alluka?” Gon asks. Killua stills, flash-frozen and tense enough that Gon can feel the tendons in his own neck stiffen. He cranes his head back, trying to get a look at the star. “Killua?”

The star ducks away from Gon’s eyes. “Why are you asking?” he mutters, quiet voice scraping across Gon’s ears in shards of glass.

“I want to help,” Gon says. “Or at least, I want to listen. Aunt Mito says we’re supposed to help stars. And you’re a star." 

Killua draws his shoulders into himself, shrinking under the cotton shirt. “I’m not—” 

“But I don’t know if that’s what I want to do,” Gon says, forging straight ahead without letting the star think about it too much. Killua thinks too much anyways. “If I want to help stars, I’d have to stay here. And I don’t want to do that. I have too much I want to do.” 

“Like what?”

“I want to find my dad,” he says, words slipping out as easy as they always have. They don’t feel complete anymore, though, missing something in the spaces between sounds. “And I want to help you. Not because you’re a star, or because you think I caught you—”

“You did catch me, dirtball.”

Gon shrugs as best he can without disturbing the lure. “I want to help you because you’re my friend. Even if we’ve only known each other a little while, I think we are.”

The cold pressure against his back shudders, ebbing and flowing up and down his spine in waves. Gon wants to glance back to make sure Killua’s alright, that he’s still there. But the tight frustration in the star’s back is still there, chilling the air around them and making Gon’s shoulders and elbows ache, so he stares over the lake instead and wishes he could make things better.

Things are quiet for awhile, or as quiet as the forest ever is on Whale Island. While it’s not the incessant honking of Yorknew or the frozen stillness of the mountains or even Begerose’s remote deserts, Whale Island hums with life, with the gentle rustling of birds overhead and the nearly overpowering stench of massive flowers filling the humid air. Killua’s tension slowly unfurls into the air, bleeding into the growing morning heat.

When Killua breaks the silence, Gon has to strain to hear his words. “I’m looking for my sisters.”

“You mean Alluka?”

He feels the star nod, misty hair tickling the back of his neck. “And Nanika. They’re binary stars. Alluka, she… Our family didn’t want her, because she’s different. They’re different. So my brother pushed both of them out and pretended like it was meant to happen, and my parents, my brothers did nothing.”

The star pushes off of Gon’s back, hot air filling the space between them in a rush. Gon’s skin prickles with sweat and goosebumps at the contrast. “I only found out because someone was making too many wishes, that whoever it was didn’t know to stop. And when I finally looked close enough to see my sisters, to see where they had ended up, I fell here instead.”

“Killua—”

The star’s breath shudders, cold and sharp. “I did nothing. I never tried to ask why my sisters fell so early. It felt wrong but I still didn’t try. And once I did find out and tried to find them, I missed completely.”

Gon wedges the fishing pole between planks of the dock, keeping it steady with one hand while the other reaches out for Killua’s. He tucks their fingers together and holds on, even when Killua tries to pull back, pale skin freezing in the sunlight. “It’s not your fault, Killua.”

The star finally meets Gon’s eyes, blue eyes glimmering with unshed tears scattering like stars in the daylight. “It’s not like I get a do-over. I fell. It’s done. Have you ever seen a star fall back into the sky?”

“You don’t need to. You’re here now, on Whale Island. With Aunt Mito and everyone else.” Gon tightens his grip. “With me. We’ll find your sisters, I promise.”

The cold hand slides out of his as smoothly as a cloud around a mountain. “Humans can’t grant wishes, Gon.”

Gon wants to insist that granting wishes is really just doing something for someone else, but maybe stars—who can survive underwater and glow brilliant colors and fall from the sky—are capable of even more impossible things. “Maybe not. But we can at least try for our friends,” he says.

The line tugs, and Gon yanks on the fishing rod. A trout flies out of the lake, flopping back and forth. “Got one!” he says, dropping it into the bucket with a splat and a grin.

Killua’s smile comes more easily now, bright as his eyes. “You did catch me, so you can’t be completely useless at it,” he says. “Can I try this time?”

Gon passes over the fishing pole, guiding Killua through the motions as best he can.

There’s a lot Gon doesn’t know about stars. It’s his fault, for not waiting to learn from Gran and Aunt Mito, for not following in Ging’s footsteps as directly as his dad would have wanted. Not that he didn’t try, at least for a while: Ging left enough behind, his planetarium and his journals and his memories, scattered across the island and beyond for Gon to find. When Gon was young, he’d memorized them all, or as much as he could outside of Aunt Mito’s watchful eye, wondering where a boat could have taken his dad. When he was older, the search drove him off the island, spending weekdays at a school in a city he didn't know and weekends traveling as far as the stars and his feet could take him. If Gon wanted to meet Ging, he’d have to find him, to learn enough to chase him across oceans. He’d done that, the first chance he got, leaving Whale Island in the face of Aunt Mito’s disappointment. Three years later, and all he has to show for it is a diploma and a constant undercurrent to get up and go, following the stars across the earth to places he won’t know until he sees for himself.

But times change. Where Gran and Gran’s gran would have used the stars to chart the waters, Ging used maps and compasses, things he found outside of Whale Island and things that were brought in. Gon started with these too, learning Gran’s stories and Ging’s maps. Now he has phones, and computers, and the digital maps he’s made on his travels. It’s not much, nothing like the resources in the mainland high schools, the cities he visited, the universities he might go when he finally decides what he wants to do. Sometimes he wonders how much they lost, between Gran’s gran and now, in between the stories and the stars, that no one knows anymore.

It is enough to decide what to do with himself, if he wants. But it’s been so long that all he’s wanted is to find Ging that he’s forgotten why he even wanted that in the first place.

And stars, it turns out, have so much more to say than the traditions tell or science speaks. Or maybe it’s just Killua, who says more in sharp eyes and flashing grins than most people do in an hour-long speech. Gon’s known Killua for only a few days, and already he’s beginning to decrypt the little looks and gestures.

But Gon thinks it’s interesting. If there’s one thing he’s always shared with Ging, at least according to Aunt Mito and Kite and all of the sailors in port, it’s his curiosity, his desire to know more than what’s in front of him, his determination to seek those answers out no matter what. It makes him selfish sometimes, because he wants to do things himself, but it usually works out. If being selfish means he gets to know the world around him better, then Gon’s glad he’s selfish. It means he gets to know Killua on his own terms.

“Am I glowing again?” Killua mutters, shaking Gon out of his thoughts.

Gon blinks, glancing to the kitchen where Aunt Mito is shuffling what sounds like every pan she owns in an effort to get Killua another bowl of curry. He has to squint to make out even the slightest glimmer in Killua’s white hair. “Only a little,” he says. “I don’t think Aunt Mito minds.”

“Then stop staring!”

Gon grins and shoves another spoonful of stew into his mouth, doing his best to not even blink. Killua turns from pale to pink until even the roots of his hair are starting to shift to the same color. “You dirtball, your mom’s gonna notice, and you’ll get in trouble.”

“What about you?” Gon asks. “Aunt Mito won’t mind, she’s had stranger visitors than ones that glow a little.”

“Stranger than stars?”

“Sailors are weird, especially ones that come here.” Just far enough off the usual routes that the port has remained tiny, the island too rocky and the weather too inconsistent that tourists prefer any of the other neighboring islands. There’s still the skeleton of a resort an ambitious company had tried to put in, perhaps a decade before, left empty and useless to whatever multinational company had put it in. It’s a terrible place for swimming or stargazing, but the perfect playground for a curious seven year old or bored sailors looking for a challenge around the bluffs. Maybe Killua would want to see it too, if he weren’t leaving so soon. If Gon weren’t leaving so soon, too.

Killua jabs his spoon across the table, and it flies out of his grasp and smacks Gon square between the eyes, little bits of fish and rice trickling down his nose. “Void, Gon, it slipped, I’m so—”

He doesn’t finish because Gon smashes a heel of crusty bread into his face, and the words turn into a puff of crumbs. Killua’s eyes go wide, aghast and appalled and electric and so blue, deeper than oceans and brighter than suns.

Gon has less than a second to think about that before he is shoved face-first into a mostly empty bowl of fish curry. It turns out stars are really good at food fights, even ones whose hair is so pale it stains with every color possible by the time Aunt Mito manages to untangle the mess they’ve made of the dinner table.

Killua doesn’t seem to like the sweater Aunt Mito bought for him, but he wears it nonetheless. Between that and the worn jeans they’d found in port, and bandaged feet tucked into sneakers, he looks almost human, if dressed terribly for the humid midsummer weather. His white hair seems duller, no longer glimmering as much as it did when Gon pulled him out of the ocean, even if his eyes still shine bright and ethereal in the dusk. Maybe he’s becoming more human the longer he’s on Earth. Maybe he can control it, act and feel and smell more human the more dirt he walks through or the more chocolate he eats. Maybe Gon’s simply more used to him.

Whatever it is, his hand is chilly in Gon’s, comfortable against the evening heat. Gon wonders if all stars feel like this, when they choose to fall, or if this is simply Killua.

“Where are we going?” Killua asks, steps hesitant. Maybe he’s nervous his feet will tear apart again, because Gon can’t imagine he’s worried about where the path will take them.

“My dad used to come up here before I was born, or maybe after. His journals say it’s the best place to see the meteor shower from any of the islands around.” Something about the height of the cliff and Whale Island’s dormant volcano, the port hidden by mountains and forest and leaving nothing but the sky.

“I don’t need to see stupid rocks falling to earth because they don’t know any better,” Killua grouses. But he doesn’t try to pull away, feet stumbling only a little in his new shoes. By tomorrow, he’ll be walking as though born on dirt, not dancing across empty space.

Gon smiles and tries to tug them both faster. They’re almost there, the soft grass already in sight. “But you’ve never seen meteors from here!” he says. “And you’ll never see them like you can on Whale Island. The whole shower is visible, for days more than anywhere else. I bet they look even better here than from the sky.”

“You bet?” Killua says. His lips stretch into a wide grin, angle sharp as his dancing blue eyes.

“Only because you’ll lose,” Gon says in a sing-song.

A laugh erupts from the star, echoes trailing behind so that they bounce off of rocks and across the cliffside, leaving traces of Killua’s voice scattered around the island. “I was one of those things. I should know. No way anything’s that beautiful.”

That gives Gon a moment of pause. “That’s true, nothing’s prettier than you,” he says.

And just like that, Killua’s hand slips out of his grasp, laughter stopping as effectively as if he’d been dunked in the ocean. “Wha—”

“But that only proves my point! You’re more beautiful from down here, at least to me.” His words catch up to him after they’ve passed through his lungs and joined Killua’s laughter in the air, and Gon turns abruptly back to the path: not embarrassed, not at the truth, but the sight of Killua with his white hair streaked with sunset, eyes the color of the ocean.

Killua is beautiful. Gon shouldn’t be surprised at this. The stars above, just beginning to glimmer as Venus rises against the sun-stained sky, are all beautiful. But Killua here, with his rolling skin and misty hair, with the way he laughs as though surprised he is capable of the sound, his curiosity for this strange world and this amazing far-away island only making Gon want to know more—

Killua is beautiful.

And his face looks like it’s about to explode, eyes wide and expression squashed into his nose. More than that, his sun-streaked hair shines softly, blue-white light expanding out through the curls and spreading into his skin. Against daylight, it’s almost unnoticeable. But Gon has a feeling that as soon as the sun sets, his friend will be as eyecatching as lanterns to moths. He doesn’t want to look away now. And later…

“You’re glowing again,” Gon says, and pokes Killua’s cheek. His finger sinks a little too far inward before the skin recongeals, leaving Gon with that odd feeling of a too-cold waterbed.

Killua swats his hand away, glaring and embarrassed. He only seems to glow more, although that could be the reflection of the sun setting further into the ocean. “Are we there yet?” he says, tucking his hands into his pockets.

“We can keep going up near Ging’s planetarium, if you want to see the stars best. But we can stop here to watch the sunset, too.”

The star flops onto the ground rather than responding, as if drawn magnetically to just that spot and nowhere else would be better. Sudden laughter erupts out of Gon’s chest, flowing from his fingers to his toes until he’s rolling in the grass and Killua’s laughing too. They’re so caught up in the ricocheting noise that they miss the moment when the sun actually sinks into the ocean.

Gon thinks that’s okay as they settle in to watch the meteor shower. There are always more sunsets. Hopefully Killua will want to watch them too.

"You still haven’t told me your wish.”

Gon glances to the fallen star at his side. Killua’s not looking at him, staring instead at the lights streaking across the sky. The glow that had been so bright at sunset has faded almost entirely from his pale skin, not even brighter than the meteors above them. Gon wonders if he’ll eventually stop glowing at all, if stars stopped glowing not out of choice but because once stars fall they’re no longer stars at all. “I haven’t really thought about it,” he says.

Killua blows a displeased noise out of his lips. “Of course you haven’t. That’d be too easy.”

“I’ve been busy!”

“We’ve been fishing. And shopping for clothes.”

“And eating cake. And cleaning the house, twice,” Gon adds for emphasis, because it’s entirely Killua’s fault.

The star just grins, blue eyes luminescent in the darkness. “You had time to think it over. And I can’t leave until you do.”

Gon sighs. “I don’t have anything to wish for. And you won’t let me wish for you.”

“I told you, I can’t—”

“Why not?”

“It’s not how it’s done!” he bursts out.

“Why not?” Gon asks again.

Killua stares at him as though he’s suggested stopping the meteors from falling or turning the night into day with words alone. “It’s—It just isn’t. My brother says—”

“Did your brother want you to fall here?”

“Void, no!” The star shudders all the way down his spine, white curls illuminated with a pale blue tint. “Illumi would follow me here if he could, but he’s too tied to whatever we’re supposed to do. He’s probably pissed now.”

There’s more than a little self-satisfied glee at that, but Gon doesn’t ask. Instead he says, “If you didn’t listen to your family about falling, why should you listen to them about granting a wish?”

“Because I’m not listening to them! Because I want to thank you for helping me!” Killua’s fingers claw through the grass, digging out little trenches of damp soil. “Void and dust, Gon, you are the most stupid, stubborn idiot I have ever met. Just tell me what you want!”

“I don’t know!” Gon sits up, fists balled at his side tight enough that his knuckles ache. “I know I want to find my dad. I know I want to find what to do after that. But I want to do it myself. To make you do it would be unfair.”

“What if I want to?”

“But I want to help you!”

Killua lurches upwards, pale eyebrows drawn in almost painfully tight. “No, I want to help you!”

They’re almost nose to nose, Gon pressing forward and Killua nearly vibrating with the refusal to back down. Gon’s skin burns, ricocheting against the chill emanating off of Killua until it feels like a storm could start between the two of them without any clouds drifting across the sky. Against the falling stars, nothing is louder than Gon’s own breath shuddering in his ears.

Killua has given up so much and he pretends like it’s easy. Gon can’t let him give up anything else. He’s not backing down on this. He’s not.

The star blinks, luminescent skin flickering as the tension in the air seems to break a little, leaving the taste of lightning in Gon's mouth. “Why do you have to be so stubborn,” he says.

“If I wasn’t, you’d get a wish and leave,” Gon says. “And then I’d never get to know you.”

Electric blue eyes snap to Gon’s and the night stills, even as the meteors keep falling and the waves keep crashing against the beach. “I wouldn’t leave you now,” the star says.

“Because you’re waiting for my wish?” Gon asks.

“Because you’re my friend ,” Killua blurts out, impossibly loud. The word friend echoes across the grass and into the vast lights above, and Gon has to squint at how brilliantly Killua’s skin shines, gone supernova right there on the cliffside of Whale Island. The burst fades almost instantly, leaving an afterimage of curly hair and blazing eyes burned into the backs of Gon’s eyelids.

There’s a thud as the star’s back hits the grass, some of the brightness of his outburst streaking behind him. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“For what? For being my friend?” Gon flops down, trying and failing to catch the star’s eyes. “And you call me an idiot.”

“Because you are,” Killua says, but there’s no heat. “But you’re my friend, too.”

Gon smiles, spreading out from his lips through his chest until it feels as warm as the sun. Maybe if he were a star like Killua, he’d glow too. “If I make a wish, can I help you? We’d be even.”

Killua’s sigh sounds almost resigned to it, reluctant and thrilled and not able to hide his grin. “Yes, fine! You make a wish, you can help.”

“Then, I wish…” Gon pauses, trying to find something that will fit all of the things Killua needs from him. Something for himself, even if he can’t think of anything. “I wish to meet your sisters.”

The star stares blankly for long enough that Gon is worried he’s said something wrong. Not that he wants to take back his wish—it is something for himself, something that he can’t do himself. But they’re Killua’s sisters, and maybe they wouldn’t want to meet a human from Whale Island. Maybe Killua wouldn’t want them to meet him, because even though they’re friends he doesn’t…

A noise like a pebble dropping into a sandpit fizzles out of the night’s quiet, followed by an avalanche as Killua doubles over in a fit of laughter. Gon tries to not laugh, but it’s hard, contagious and bubbling out of the edges where his worry had been. “Killua, you said I had to make a wish for myself!”

“And you still managed to make it about me,” the star manages between gasps of air. “How can you be so—” He dissolves back into giggles, pale hands digging into his sweater as though it will keep his sides from falling out. “Yes, I’ll grant your stupid wish. But…”

“What is it?”

“Well, I thought…” Killua’s giggles fade away, although his glow doesn’t, a pale blue-white in the darkness. “When you said you knew what to wish for, I thought you were going to wish for a kiss.”

Gon blinks. “A kiss?”

The star rolls his eyes. “Well, it’s something people want sometimes, I guess. And it’s easy to grant, since it’s just pressing lips to lips or lips to cheeks. Humans have a weird way of showing affection.”

“No, I meant—” It’s Gon’s turn to laugh, amusement spilling into the edges of his words. “I’d only ask for one if you wanted to give it, too. I wouldn’t wish for one.”

Killua pushes himself up onto his elbows, taking his eyes off of the sky to look at Gon. But all Gon can see are the stars still scattered in his blue eyes. “What if…” The star swallows heavily, one cold pale hand sketching the side of Gon’s face. “What if I wanted to?”

Gon smiles, and leans in.

After the meteors have finished falling, while the late-night sky is still a pitch black canvas covered with pinpricks of stardust, Killua points up overhead, pale finger outstretched and barely visible, at a space of darkness in the scattered stars. “That’s where I was,” he says. He moves his hand a little to the right, only a few inches on Earth but lightyears of distance in the sky. “And Alluka and Nanika were there, right next to me.”

Gon squints up, trying to match the stars to the maps in his head. “That star—she vanished a few years ago,” he says. When Gon had left Whale Island the first time. The last time he’d seen this, sitting not too far from here on the soft grass, eyes pressed to Ging’s old telescope as he watched meteors burn up in the atmosphere. He remembered that star, bright light with its impossibly dark shadow, blacker than the void around it. “Astronomers thought the star was eaten by its black hole.”

Killua’s grin is unpleasant. “Humans aren’t good at looking for the right things,” he says. “They’ll probably think I got swallowed up by Nanika too, or hidden by dust.”

“But that doesn’t matter what other people think. You’re here now!” Gon says.

His friend’s smile softens, flickering and bursting in a supernova of emotion and brilliance that almost hurts to look at. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“I’m glad you fell to Whale Island,” Gon says, and he means it from his head to his heart.

In the darkness, Gon can make out a soft white light illuminating his friend’s skin. “I’m glad you caught me,” Killua murmurs, words almost too soft to hear. But he laces his fingers with Gon’s and doesn’t let go until the sun comes up.

They leave the next morning, Gon’s backpack stuffed with extra clothes for Killua and more cookies than he knows what to do with. From how the star has been eyeing the containers all morning, he has a feeling he doesn’t need to worry about them for too much longer.

“You’re always welcome back home, no matter when,” Aunt Mito says on the dock as she releases Gon from a hug and sweeps in to give Killua the same. Gon’s never noticed before, but he’s taller than his mom now, and Killua even moreso. But the star looks boyish and small, delighted and taken aback by the movement as he moves hesitantly to hug her back. “Both of you, once you’ve found what you’re looking for.”

“I will,” Gon says.

“Promise?”

He links his pinkie finger with hers, just as he did three years ago. “Promise.”

"And you too, Killua," Aunt Mito says. Before the star can protest, his hand is caught by both Freecsses, pinkie tugged into a three-way promise. His skin feels more solid than it did last night, only a little cold left. He looks too stunned to protest, but Gon can make out the slightest shine to the ends of his hair. 

When Aunt Mito lets them go, a smile on her face and wrinkles around her eyes, Gon lets Killua pull him onto the ship, hands held firm. They'll come back eventually.

But there's so much to find first.