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Killua remembers the last time that he saw Gon.
They had both been on the edge of fourteen, hearts filled with an intensity that burnt their bones from the inside out, and neither of them an inch taller than when they were twelve. Gon’s smile was as bright as it had always been, all teeth and blinding, making Killua’s stomach wring itself out. His eyes turned up at the corners and his cheeks glowed as if he’d hidden fireflies in the pouches. Killua had wanted to capture the look on Gon’s face and keep it with him like a picture in a locket.
We’ll see each other soon, Killua.
Gon had said it with so much certainty; it was a promise that Killua was unsure he would be able to keep, no matter how desperately he wanted to.
Killua remembers when he saw Gon lying in that bed after his fight with Pitou, broken and bruised and looking like no more than the body of the boy he loved. The guilt of seeing him like that, while he was fine, alive and breathing without the help of a machine, took over his whole being, like something festering and growing and eating him until he was hollow. He’d brought him back, but he couldn’t stop him from getting to that point in the first place.
If he saw Gon again, the feeling would come back. He knew it. He could feel it there, waiting, to spring back up again and swallow him whole.
Separating was for the best for the both of them. He had told himself that so many times, in the middle of the night laid next to a gently sleeping Alluka and staring at the ceiling of another hotel room, that the words were like acid as they threw themselves into his thoughts.
Killua was the one who had said he would stay with Gon until he found his father. Until he himself found something that he wanted to do, which he had with Alluka, but now the months had turned into years, and the highness of Gon’s voice in his head didn’t match with the deepened voice in his own throat.
He could call, he supposed, to let Gon know that he was still thinking about him even now, but being sent to voicemail or hearing a voice on the other end different to the one he remembered scared him more than his brother ever could.
The soon that Gon had promised him was slipping through his fingers as if he were grabbing fistfuls of water. Some nights, he thought that it had already sunk down the drain.
That was what he had thought, until he received a call from Leorio, letting him know that he and Gon would be in town at the beginning of spring.
‘He doesn’t know I’m calling,’ Leorio said. ‘It’ll be a surprise.’
Killua didn’t say much during that phone call. Leorio suggested a time and a place and Killua said that he’d be there. He said it without thinking, like a muscle memory, and then he figured he couldn’t go back on his word. He’d expected the thought of seeing Gon again, the resurgence of that festering feeling, to fill him with a dread or a feeling like a stone in his stomach. Instead, he felt a sliver of hope.
‘What are you crying about?’ Alluka asked him after he hung up. She looked up at him with her round eyes and held her hands at her chest like a begging puppy.
‘I’m not crying,’ Killua had replied, but when he wiped his cheek, the skin was warm and wet.
Winter’s snow has melted away, giving way to bursts of sunbeams, and Killua feels like he’s going to throw up.
The sun’s only been up for less than half an hour, but Killua’s been up for longer. Even though he doesn’t sleep much on a normal day, last night was a particularly terrible one; he only managed to stay passed out for a total of eight minutes. He watches as the sun spills into the room, not quite a deadly summer ray, but warm enough to know that the season has changed. Killua’s stomach lurches and he swallows dryly.
He looks over at Alluka; her hands are tucked up beneath the side of her face like a second pillow, and her breaths come soft and slow. She’s grown a lot since she saved Gon, but she’s kept the playful side she’s had as long as Killua can remember.
Killua decided to bring Alluka along today; he isn’t ready to leave her on her own yet, but if Leorio is there, he can trust him with her.
Today.
Killua’s gut lunges again at the thought. He’s seeing Gon today.
Killua wanders over to the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror. He can’t remember how he looked at fourteen, how Gon remembers him. Now, his hair would probably reach the nape of his neck if it didn’t stick out so much, and the front falls between his eyes because he always forgets to cut it. He traces the line of his jaw with his finger, though he’s not sure what he’s looking for.
He dresses himself in a black turtleneck and grey trousers, and something about it makes him feel like that fourteen-year-old boy again. At sixteen and a half, he’s still a boy, but he hasn’t felt that way in a long time.
Alluka pops her head around the door. ‘You haven’t worn that in a while.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Killua says, putting his hands in his pockets.
‘The trousers are a little short.’ Alluka puts her hand over her mouth as she giggles. Killua looks down, and the cuffs barely reach his ankles.
Killua narrows his eyes at her, then grabs a nearby pillow and runs after her as she screams into the next room.
Killua and Alluka arrive with a few minutes to spare. The place Leorio suggested was beside a river in a park filled with trees and footpaths, but they didn’t pass anyone on their way in. Killua leans against the trunk of a tree, its top a blossoming pink, with his arms crossed against his chest, the reality of what’s about to happen not quite sinking in yet. Alluka is drawn to a gathering of wildflowers, lilies of purple and white.
She turns to Killua, ‘You should give one of these to Gon.’
‘What? No way.’ Killua sticks his nose into the air with a tone of defiance. Though, now that he thinks about it, should he have brought Gon a present? Is that what people do, at things like this? He bites his bottom lip and fixes his eyes on the swelling roots beneath his feet. He feels as though he might fall over if he lets his gaze wander.
A couple more minutes pass, and Killua is intent on counting the number of lines on the roots when he hears Alluka say Gon’s name. He looks up; her arms are outstretched and a smile is wide on her face, and she’s running. Running to Gon.
Killua swallows his breakfast for the second time.
He’s watching her run, and she’s enveloped by arms. Strong, defined arms. They swing her around and she laughs, and she’s still laughing when she’s on the ground again. There’s another laugh mixed in with hers, deep and warm and all too familiar.
‘Alluka,’ Gon says through his smile, ‘I missed you.’
‘Brother is over there.’ Alluka points behind her, and Killua feels the end of her finger like a fist to his chest.
Gon follows Alluka’s trajectory until he’s looking directly at Killua. His hair is still spiked up in that stupid way of his, and he’s still wearing that same shade of green. The smile he had for Alluka slides away for a moment that would have felt like years if Killua hadn’t already gone that long without seeing it, and returns a second later as Gon bounds towards Killua. His limbs, longer and ganglier than Killua last saw them, almost flail in the grass as he stumbles towards him. Killua’s heart rams against his ribcage; it’s him , he thinks. It doesn’t feel real. He half expects Gon to vanish into dust as he soon as he gets close enough to touch or to wake up in another bed that’s never felt like his.
Except he doesn’t. Gon crashes into him at full force, his arms wrapping tightly around his back with no intention of letting go. Gon doesn’t disappear, and neither does he. Gon’s warmth hits him like a log fire after being out in the cold, and Killua hides his face in Gon’s shoulder as a sob catches in his throat. Gon’s hands cling to his back, and Killua lets his own slide around Gon’s.
‘Killua,’ Gon says, no louder than a whisper. He never thought of Gon as quiet.
‘Gon.’ Killua’s voice is lost in Gon’s shoulder, but he hopes he felt it all the same.
They stay like that, a mess of limbs, for a few more moments until Killua says, ‘We can stop hugging now, stupid.’
Gon lets go of Killua, though Killua notices the reluctance in his movements. ‘I didn’t know you were going to be here.’
‘Leorio asked me to come, as a surprise.’
‘What—wait, hang on, you’re shorter than me!’
‘Huh? No, I’m not!’
Gon measures the difference between them with his hand, and sure enough, he has a few inches on Killua.
‘That’s impossible,’ Killua says, resisting the urge to stand on his tiptoes.
Gon laughs again; Killua feels like his insides are made of candy floss.
‘Whatever, I’m still stronger than you,’ Killua huffs. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Leorio showing Alluka something in the river downstream.
He sinks down onto the grass and crosses his legs; Gon sits opposite him. A gust of wind blows through the park, sending petal blossoms tumbling down from the trees around them, like a flurry of pink snowflakes. A petal catches in Gon’s hair, near his forehead, most likely stuck to the hair gel that’s he’s swamped his hair in. Killua reaches forward and plucks it out with his fingers; as he pulls it, a finger ghosts Gon’s skin, sending shivers across Killua nerves. Gon’s face is sharper and his cheekbones more prominent, but the spattering of freckles across his nose is still there, and his eyes still hold Killua more intensely than anyone else’s ever have.
Killua feels the niggling feeling grow in the pit of his stomach, like a worm pushing through dirt, but it’s squashed down by a surge of something like warmth. He never understood that warmth at twelve, that he first felt during the Hunter exam, and he couldn’t grasp it at fourteen either, but now he thinks he’s beginning to.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’ Gon says suddenly.
‘You didn’t call me either.’
‘I was going to!’ Gon lurches forward, his hands gripping shins. He leans back and scratches his head, looking to the side. ‘I didn’t want to bother you. You were spending time with Alluka, and I know she’s important to you, so—’
Killua blinks quickly in succession. ‘Are you an idiot?’
‘I thought I already told you I am.’ Gon says sheepishly, and the skin on his cheeks, browner than Killua remembers it being, floods red.
Killua laughs, laughs so hard he slams his fist onto the grassy ground and sends the petal blossoms back into the air again. ‘I’m an idiot, too.’
‘Huh, Killua?’
‘I’m an idiot,’ Killua says it louder this time.
Gon’s eyebrows furrow together. ‘Uh…?’
‘I didn’t call you because I was being selfish. I couldn’t bear to look at you, or even hear your voice.’ Saying his true feelings aloud feels like a foreign language on his tongue, but somehow, with Gon, it’s not painful, even though it’s the most vulnerable he’s ever felt. ‘Seeing you like that, how you were after you used up all your nen…’
‘I’m better now, Killua.’
‘Every time I looked at you, that’s what I saw.’ The words are spilling out now; it’s more than he planned to say, but he wants Gon to know , he wants him to understand the guilt that he felt. That he still feels. ‘Do you forgive me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive you for.’
‘But I let you—I let you get like that. I didn’t stop you. It was my fault you ended up in that bed.’
‘None of it was your fault. You saved me. You and Alluka.’
Killua looks up to Gon’s face and finds his vision watery. He rubs his eyes quickly with the back of his hands. ‘And Nanika.’
Gon takes Killua’s hands in his own and holds them on the grass in the gap between their crossed legs. ‘I should have stopped myself—I knew what I was doing. I didn’t want to stop.’ He pauses. ‘Do you forgive me?’
Killua blinks and a drop of water lands on his thumb. Gon’s hands are warm on his own, pleasant like the warmth of a freshly baked croissant. ‘I forgive you for being an idiot and not calling me.’
‘Then I forgive you for not calling me and being an idiot.’
Killua smiles, and when Gon smiles back at him, the feeling in his stomach, that gory mess of guilt and fear, dissipates and floats away, like the blossoms that landed on the river and sailed with the wind.
The image of Gon without his nen, though something that Killua would never forget—he knows that—isn’t something he has to focus on. Not anymore. Now, he can see what’s right in front of him. Gon’s smile, as big and chest-achingly beautiful as ever, is there, and he is alive.
‘Killua,’ Gon says. ‘You’re looking at me funny.’
‘Shut up.’ Killua rolls his eyes, but his smile is stuck on his face. Gon’s lips part to say something, and Killua’s concentration is lost on them. He’s looked at them before, but always snatched his gaze away when he caught himself looking. He allows himself to look at how his tongue moves to shine his lips, and how they press together to form certain words. Killua leans forward, their hands attached between them and not a single thought in his head until their noses are almost touching. Suddenly, Killua’s balance vanishes from beneath him. He topples forward onto Gon, their hands still pressed between them. Gon lands back onto the grass with a thud; Killua follows milliseconds later onto his chest.
Killua’s eyes widen; all he can see is Gon’s eyes and forehead, and the tops of their noses squished together. Heat rushes to his face as he stutters, ‘Gon, I didn’t mean—’
Gon’s eyelids flutter closed and Killua feels the gentlest of touches against his lips; it’s a strange sensation, like someone touching your belly button, except it’s a nice strange, and Killua wants to feel it again and again. He prises his hands out from beneath himself and splays them flat on the grass beside them. He leans in again, grasping blades of grass for stability, and presses his lips to Gon’s. This time, they stay together a little longer, and Killua doesn’t fall. Not physically, anyway.
Killua pulls away to breathe; his heart races and burns at the same time.
Gon pushes a lock of hair behind Killua’s hair. ‘Your hair’s longer,’ he says.
Gon grins up at him, and Killua wonders why soon took them so damn long.