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Carrie was about as close to prom as Killua was willing to get. A blood-soaked gymnasium and telekinesis seemed approximately a thousand times more interesting than frilly dresses, stiff tuxedos, and last year’s music played to a hoard of students with an overabundance of hormones and an under-abundance of dancing ability.
With his too-heavy textbooks in hand, he regarded the gaudy, made-at-lunch posters with indignation. The season had come too soon for Killua’s liking, and he knew for the third year in a row, he’d have to come up with a reasonable excuse to avoid the night. Overzealous seniors never took kindly to his usual I’d rather not response.
Especially not Gon. He beamed at the idea of prom, eyes glowing like balefires at the mention of the dancing, the garish attire, the sugary punch—but if Killua had to wager a guess, it was the outlandish courtship of prom that really kicked Gon into high gear. Last year, Gon had sent a flurry of balloons to Killua’s home, five of them spelling out PROM?
When he had confronted Gon about it later, he fought down the color in his cheeks and choked out a demand for an explanation. Shouldn’t friends want to go together? was about as close to an answer as Killua had gotten. It wasn’t a secret—not between Killua and Gon and certainly not amongst their graduating class—that Gon could be a bit opaque at times, so when Killua explained what prom was exactly for, Gon nodded in understanding confirmation and pledged to try again next year.
On a date, Killua had reminded him, and while Gon did seem to follow, Killua wasn’t entirely confident he wouldn’t be the subject of another outrageous proposal. Hopefully not in full view of the entire school population, anyway.
So when he spotted the familiar spikes of dark hair hurdling towards him like a bullet out of shotgun, Killua ducked under the refuge of the school’s overhang and leaned against a wall of cobwebbed lockers.
“Killua!” He shouted too loudly, but by now, the school stopped collectively looking up to watch Gon run full-speed or howl across the hallway or laugh his bright, echoing laugh.
“Gon,” Killua began before Gon had reached him, voice firm. “I swear to God, if you’re about to ask me to go to prom after I’ve already said ‘no’ a thousand times, I will personally—”
“That’s not it!” He halted to a sudden stop in front of Killua, breathless, and his cheeks glowed red from his sprint halfway across the school. “But it’s related to prom!”
“I’m saying no.”
“You don’t have to be involved, Killua!” He rolled his eyes, and even that couldn’t look condescending if he tried. “I’ve got the best idea ever to fund prom this year.”
“Why do you care if prom gets funded?”
“Lots of people on the team weren’t all that excited about another year in the gym,” Gon replied, and Killua had to think hard to decode which team Gon was talking about. Football? Basketball? Swimming? “And anyway, will you just let me tell you?”
The arch in Gon’s brow and the mischievous glint in his eyes had Killua taking half a step back with troubled apprehension. He had said Killua didn’t have to be involved, but Killua had known Gon long enough to know he wouldn’t be coming to him with an idea if he wasn’t about to be roped in somehow. Warily, he nodded.
“I’m going to set up a kissing booth!”
Killua thought an anvil crashing on him would’ve felt better. But he couldn’t let the feeling sink him just yet. “And who’s gonna man the kissing booth?”
“Me?” His answer came out more like a question, and his expression shifted with unexpected self-consciousness. He drew a hand up to the back of his neck and raked his long fingers through dark hair, unsure how his idea sat with Killua. His tonal shift had Killua’s face prickling with heat, and he hoped silently it wasn’t as apparent as it felt.
Gon had told Killua a few weeks ago he hadn’t kissed anyone before. Confessed it, really, declaring the admission like he was unveiling some important, bitter truth. Killua had thought sharing his own inexperience would assuage his red-cheeked, abashed best friend, but Gon turned Killua’s confession into an invitation for interrogation. No one, Killua? What about that girl from Calculus? Hasn’t anyone ever tried?
The thought of Gon rushing—no, decidedly throwing away—his first kiss sat like hot rocks in the pit of Killua’s stomach, and he shuffled uneasily with the heavy feeling. Even as a joke, he knew Gon’s friends would gleefully take the opportunity to kiss him. If Killua was being honest, he was certain half the school would clamor at the idea of stealing kisses from Gon.
“All by yourself?” Was about as much as Killua could strain out of his mouth, scuffing the heel of his shoe against the concrete floor. He had known Gon for nearly his whole life, but knowing someone and kissing someone were two thoroughly different fields.
Gon’s first kiss would be with a faceless student from the crowd, undoubtedly all too eager to kiss Gon. The image—Gon’s hair falling in front of someone else’s face, his pink mouth locked on someone else’s lips, his hands on someone else’s neck—had Killua feeling like he was dropping off the highest point of a rollercoaster.
“That was the idea. But, Killua…” Gon’s voice softened. “Remember? I’ve never kissed anyone. What happens if I do badly? What if the first person I kiss tells everyone else how awful I was, and no one comes back? I don’t want prom to get cancelled all because of me, and—”
“We could practice,” Killua interrupted, and the voice that came out of him sounded unfamiliar and strangely confident. He caught Gon’s wide-eyed surprise, and he found himself scrambling for that stranger’s self-assured intonation. “If you want, I mean! It wouldn’t bother me, anyway.”
Gon’s expression shifted with a shade of animated excitement, like he had just stumbled upon lost treasure. “Really?” His voice was almost musical. “You’d do that for me, Killua?”
“Yeah,” Killua breathed out, happy it didn't come out shaky. “No big deal.”
Gon flashed his bright teeth in a wide smile and looped an arm over Killua’s shoulders in blithe confirmation, nearly knocking the books out of his grasp.
“By the way,” Gon began as they approached Killua’s next class. “What were you going to ‘personally’ threaten me with if I did ask you to prom?”
//
Gon’s house was a natural choice. His aunt wasn’t expected home until early evening most days, and besides, Killua’s siblings weren’t exactly respectful of privacy. If Gon wasn’t at practice and if Killua didn’t have an essay due, they’d almost always default to Gon’s home with the promise of freezer snacks and video games and takeout.
But the creaking of Gon’s aged door ricocheted across his bedroom like a trapped bird flapping hopelessly for escape. Killua acknowledged the messy state of his bed, the sports equipment occupying space in his already too-small room with something like awe, every part of his home seeming unfamiliar under new light.
“You don’t have any homework to do, right?” Gon asked, and the small talk inquiry struck Killua with the feeling that Gon really had become a stranger, somehow. But he was thankful the conversation hadn’t gone there yet.
“No, not really,” Killua responded, not sure how long it had been since he thought about anything other than the kissing booth conversation earlier that day. He found a corner on Gon’s bed and fumbled with the broken skin around his nails, uncertain of the protocol.
The space next to him sunk with Gon's weight, and the thorny quiet of the room had Killua’s palms slick with unease.
“Killua?” Gon asked, and his question felt like a touch. “Are you still okay with this?”
“Idiot,” Killua retorted with edgy sarcasm. “It’s nothing! It was my idea, after all.”
But the heat in Killua’s cheeks was budding achingly, threatening to ignite his face if he flew too close to Gon’s light, and he unconsciously positioned and repositioned himself on the twin-sized mattress. His last shift had him facing Gon, blue eyes fixed on Gon’s amber ones, and all of a sudden, the anticipation of having Gon was flooding Killua in a sea of flames. What focus he could maintain was fully directed at Gon’s pink, parted mouth, and the gap between them narrowed from an ocean into a lake and into a puddle—Killua impossibly wishing he could breathe in just once.
And when he tried, it was Gon’s air—warm and heady.
“Killua,” His name in Gon’s mouth plunged Killua leagues below the surface of the ocean. “Can I kiss you?”
Killua’s lips responded before he could, colliding into Gon with spirited want, and held the contact for a few long seconds. Gon’s mouth was fever-hot, the reciprocated heat in his skin oddly comforting. When they broke, Killua took note of the slick moisture on Gon’s lips and trembled against the pressure of Gon’s forehead against his own.
Then, it was Gon’s mouth on Killua, capturing his trapped breath and crashing teeth against one another. He took Killua’s lip between his teeth, gentle at first, and then tugged on it experimentally, delighting in the feeling of Killua’s pliable skin and sharp inhale. Killua took to mapping out the soft curves of Gon’s mouth—the down-curl at the corners, the sharp dip of his Cupid’s bow, the fullness of his bottom lip.
Breathlessness pulled them apart the second time, drawing air out of each other’s lungs and closing the gap again with hot-blooded impatience. Messiness replaced hesitation, Gon tracing a line up the roof of Killua’s mouth with his tongue and carding a hand through his cloud-white hair. The taste was like his favorite energy drink and something uniquely Gon, and all at once, Killua wasn’t drowning anymore. He had sunk fully into Gon’s kiss, into his soft mouth, unable—and unwilling—to kick up to the surface.
//
When Killua had offered initially, he hadn’t expected acceptance. He hadn’t expected to kiss Gon in his home—on his bed—and he certainly hadn't expected Gon to want to try again. But the habit formed quickly, as did Gon’s often intrusive texts. Long days of practice meant he had entirely too much free time to send Killua reminder messages while he studied away at home, anxious for another buzz from his phone.
Impatience won over, though, and Killua scrolled through the last few days of texts.
Practice is almost over. Wanna come over to practice ourselves?
Don’t let me get rusty, Killua.
I’ll probably need mints at the booth. Got a favorite?
Killua’s mouth tasted like peppermint for hours the day they experimented with mints. Testing the efficacy of them all was necessary, Gon had argued, because kissing well meant having fresh breath, and how else would he know which one worked best? They settled on Altoids quickly enough, but Killua thought it wouldn’t be an accurate experiment if they didn’t try at least a few different flavors. He had dropped by the next day with four different kinds, and the two spent the afternoon assessing and reassessing the top performers.
Buzz.
Free period tomorrow. Your place?
That early in the morning, Killua’s house was empty, but the absence of others wasn’t what had Killua’s heart flittering widely in his chest-cage. Gon was no stranger to his home, certainly not, but it had taken days for Killua to re-familiarize himself with Gon’s home after their first kiss. The foreign activity had recast his once-recognizable house under novel light.
He had done nearly everything with Gon in his house—except kiss him. He tapped out a response faster than he could think.
I’m all yours.
//
“You know, if you ever wanted to kiss someone, you could probably just pay them,” Gon joked, jogging up the spiral stairs to meet Killua at the top of the landing.
“I know. I’m such a freeloader.”
“Yeah?” Gon bounded toward Killua’s room a few spaces down, his smile too sunny not to follow.
“I should totally be paying you for your labor.”
“If you’re not careful, I’ll have to take this up with HR.”
“Don’t!” Killua barked with feigned concern. “Name your price, and I’ll pay up.”
“Valuable practice,” Gon answered, winking in Killua’s direction.
“Valuable, huh?” Killua grinned, closing the door behind them with a lock. Gon had already fully settled into Killua’s bed, clearly unbothered by the feelings of foreignness that left Killua confounded the first time they kissed in Gon’s room.
“Think of it this way. You give me the experience I need, and I give everyone the prom they want,” Killua had nearly forgotten the impetus for their practice. “I’m thinking the rose garden for a venue. Maybe the country club if I’m really good.”
Gon’s inflection struck Killua with a pang of jealousy. Gon was his now—his for the next few weeks before he intended to set up the booth—and then, he reasoned miserably, there would be no justification for keeping up their sessions. Gon would have kissed half the school by then, with many wanting a second or third or fourth helping. The promise of nameless, faceless takers rushed over Killua like a heatwave, and he found himself pulled to Gon’s side like a fish hooked on a wire.
“And you’re not really good right now?”
“I mean,” Gon cocked his head up as if the wood-paneled ceiling of Killua’s room held his answer. “What do you think, Killua?”
He hadn’t expected his question to be turned back on him. The marked difference between their first kiss and their most recent was unmistakable. Stumbling, untried lips became bold. Too-soft and too-hard bites settled somewhere in the middle, kindling an inferno that burned through Killua’s skin at the memory. Shy hands turned curious, courageous, marking each other’s necks and cheeks and jaws with trails of fire.
But the commitment to improve was a thrilling prospect, and Killua wasn’t about to let Gon settle with good enough.
“You could stand to get better.”
The impish flash in Gon’s eyes ignited Killua from the inside out, unable to retreat if he wanted. “Show me how.”
Killua’s body surged forward, nearly crushing his mouth into Gon’s, his nails instinctively finding the spot at the back of Gon’s neck that had him shuddering. Their first kiss in Killua’s room was rough, all wet tongues and competing teeth. But Killua couldn’t settle for messy kisses—set against his room, Gon was like bait, and Killua could hardly keep his lips from drifting.
He left a line of wet kisses across Gon’s jaw, stopping short of his ear, and shifting course to graze the drumming pulse of Gon’s neck with his tongue. Gon stroked a hand through Killua’s hair soothingly, encouraging him to try more.
Killua could do nothing but give in, indulging in the heat burning off Gon’s skin in heaving waves.
//
Killua brushed his teeth two times the morning Gon planned to set up the kissing booth. And then a third right before dashing out the door, nearly forgetting his textbooks in the process. School wouldn’t start for another two hours, and even then, Gon had said lunch would be the official booth opening time—but a mixture of courage and tension charged Killua onward against all logic and against the tight heat coiling uncomfortably in his stomach.
He didn’t want to admit it—not plainly, anyway—but Killua was determined to be the first in line. He wasn’t sure how many students already knew about Gon’s idea (or worse, how many had the date etched in their memories, or how many had packed mints or breath spray in preparation), so punctuality it was. After all, he did owe Gon compensation for his labor. It’d only be fair to reimburse him properly for his monopolized afternoons. Plus, he reasoned, Gon would ridicule him forever for not helping fund the prom.
You’d help me practice, but not pay? he’d surely say.
Killua scanned the perimeter of the library, looking for glitter pens and colorful paper and Gon’s wild smile. Nothing yet.
“Incoming!”
Killua could hardly recognize Gon through the mountains of craft supplies obscuring his face. He arranged the materials by the entrance of the library, stepping back to determine the ideal spot. Much of it was already pieced together, Killua noticed. A heart-shaped arch was cut into a piece of pink poster board with KISSING BOOTH written above it in big, sparkling letters. A repurposed, red-and-pink tissue box would act as the piggy bank. Finally, a cutout indicating 150 jenny as the transactional value of one kiss.
“Did you come early to help me set up, Killua?” Gon asked, smile wide and brilliant with earnest curiosity.
“Oh,” Killua hadn’t. Not really. But the real answer was lodged somewhere deep in his throat, and he figured Gon didn’t need to know. “I can, yeah.”
“Or did you come to see if all our practice paid off?”
The question, the curl of Gon’s mouth, the uptick in his voice—all ran through Killua’s ribcage with a surge of electricity. The booth was nearly set up, and Killua wondered anxiously how long he had been silent. The only response he could manage was a scoff, and he took to assembling the last piece.
Gon reveled in it proudly, nudging Killua’s side in a playful reminder he hadn’t answered his question.
“Idiot,” Killua mumbled, pulling the requisite 150 jenny out of his pocket and dropping it into the makeshift bank. He could hardly contain the flutter in his chest, the constricting feeling of his frame holding him together just barely. He nearly didn’t notice Gon position himself behind the booth—now open for business.
But Gon’s mouth so swiftly on his was like the first gulp of air after breaching the surface of the sea. The touch of Gon’s finger on Killua’s chin clouded his mind with everything and nothing, and as they broke from their chaste kiss, the live coals in Killua’s chest extinguished.
Words were gone, but another 150 jenny was in Killua’s hands sooner than he could think.
Killua felt Gon smile against his lips that time, almost giggling straight into Killua’s mouth.
On the third kiss, Killua had all but forgotten where he was, his mind filled with nothing but Gon.
On the fourth, his trajectory almost broke, and his lips smashed clumsily onto Gon’s cheek, then the soft curve of his upper lip.
He wasn’t certain when the noise started, but on the fifth kiss, Killua regained some awareness of the world around their tight bubble. The sun had risen further in the sky since he marched onto campus earlier in the morning, but his cheeks didn’t truly start to cook until the footsteps around them halted, forming a neat line behind him. A dozen people strong, at least. And growing.
Killua didn’t have a moment to counter his bad, bad plan.
He emptied the contents of his wallet in front of Gon, coins clanging against the surface and a few scattering to the ground.
“That’s at least enough for the rose garden.”
And the laugh that echoed out of Gon’s chest was melodious, one of the most beautiful sounds Killua had heard, and he committed it to memory. Gon scooped the payment toward him messily and less-than-carefully stuffed it into the too-small tissue box.
“Enough to close up shop,” Gon breathed quietly, privately, just for Killua to hear. “But Killua, if you wanted to kiss me, you could just say so. I could’ve given you a discount.”
Killua could taste the impatience on Gon’s lips when they met his again, as if he had been anticipating something, counting down the kisses to this one. His teeth found Killua’s bottom lip and pulled at the soft skin, sure to leave Killua—his Killua—pink and kiss-bruised. Killua melted into the feeling of Gon’s soft mouth and slick tongue, eyes shut in mirth. When they parted, their shared air was warm and humid and sweet.
And then, Gon’s voice roared to the line.
“Got good news and bad news, guys!” He shouted, and his voice reverberated achingly in Killua’s eardrums. “We reached our goal for prom, but we’re all out of kisses!”
The noise in response was a blend of applause and groans and hollers and whistles. But the embarrassment flooding Killua’s red-hot cheeks wasn’t due for a break any time soon.
“I'd say come back later,” Gon added, and Killua wanted so badly to fall through the earth and be consumed. “But I’ve got a very persistent customer on my hands!”
The weight in Killua’s chest and stomach bottomed out, but the sunny warmth basking the dark-haired boy’s face had Killua convinced Gon could part the sea, could pull atoms apart. And the rush of heat from Gon’s hand on his face saturated Killua with more embarrassment and fondness than he could possibly hold in his slight frame.
Gon had pulled him down for another kiss, and Killua could feel the balmy spring air swoop by and leave his spine and ribs and heart throbbing.
But when he stopped himself from plunging into Gon’s sunlight, and when the flames in his chest silenced, the one coherent thought Killua could form was best purchase ever.