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Whale Island is nice. Quiet. Objectively, Killua knows he has seen better; he’s visited richer harbors, seen fish with shinier scales than these. Gon’s house is humble, scrubbed with working-class care, and sits at the top of a long hill that challenges passersby with its steep grin.
Objectively, Killua knows Whale Island is only a miniscule fleck of land, housing a second-rate port and a couple of humble, gap-toothed farms. Objectively, Killua has no reason to close his eyes against the salty wind, or think blindingly one day that the sky here is bluer than anywhere else. The hoarse crowing of fishwives should grate on his ears, the sunburn he gets from playing on the pier should irritate him, and the thin, child-sized bed he shares each night should be cramped and uncomfortable, not... this.
Gon had taken him fishing today. They’d caught something that he’d called a Pike, and Killua gut, flayed, and crudely fileted it for them, a hair’s breadth under five seconds. Gon burst into praise, crowing about how fast Killua was, how well he’d done. The fish vehemently disagreed, along with Killua, red-faced and grumbling.
Killua looked down and realized the mess he’d made of himself, smeared with pink and red at Gon’s feet, and suddenly felt very dirty. There wasn’t a reason for the feeling--it didn’t come neatly packaged or labeled, like most other thinks Killua had felt (hungry, angry, embarrassed, lonely, ). It...unnerved him. It did not make sense.
The campfire didn’t take long to assemble--Killua took the opportunity to show off once more, darting back and forth with dry logs while Gon milled about, searching for tinder. When Killua dumped the wood into the crude pit they’d dug (his dirty, clawed hand working in tandem with Gon’s small, green travel trowel), Gon’s face lit with that same eye-crinkling smile he’d gotten when Killua had snagged the Pike.
The fish cooked well on their improvised spit. Gon got a stupid, sly smile on his face and tries to cheat Killua out of the bigger piece, which earns him a Ritz cracker pelted square between the eyes. Killua flushed from ears to ankles when Gon giggled and handed him his fish.
Their dining arrangement was meager. As he looked at the freckles on Gon’s bare arms, Killua felt like he was preparing for battle.Two flushed apples sat on opposing sides of the fire, mediated by a half-full box of crackers on the side, and the bright juice boxes stood proudly at their flanks, like sentinels. Gon hummed with messy, sticky lips and sucked the spiny bones of his meal. Killua forcefully averted his eyes and tore into the flesh of the pike with a ravenous speed, searching the edges of the clearing for anything but Gon’s stupid face. He doesn’t understand this feeling, this itching jolt.
--
And now, as he and Gon lie on their back, facing the sky, Killua wonders what the point of stargazing is.
It was true that the night was clear, and the prickly stars were very bright, brighter than any smudgy city sky he had ever glanced up at. He’d only ever used the stars as navigation, before. There wasn’t any reason to look up, much less lie on your back and stare at it for hours. He still doesn’t get it. Eventually his eyes drift to the left, to the little green body beside him.
The side of Gon’s face is calming for Killua. The spikey, black sedge of Gon’s hair explodes like an act of violence, and meets his soft, brown face with a crash, a wicked coastline of cowlicks. The line of his rich nose is a smudge against the darkness, and the curve of his mouth is as inexplicable as it is forbidden. Killua thinks it’s an open face, a good face, with soft cheeks that dimple generously when he smiles. Gon looks like brown sugar. A strange thought. It makes him swallow his own spit.
Killua watches Gon regard the chirping night with his dark, gentle gaze, and thinks of trust. Gon, who trusts the world, and who the world--miraculously, unbelievably--trusts back. It does not betray him. He holds himself open, like the ground has never jerked away from under his feet.
Killua has seen the people for whom it has, and he has seen Gon’s soft, round eyes worn by many of them. Often, in their final moments, round eyes look glassy, and the upturned feather of their eyebrows twists in pain, in confusion. Why? The eyes say, when the tongue cannot. Why? Why would this happen to me ?
If there is one thing that Killua knows, it is that life is painful, first, and angry, second. Killua knows that Gon-eyed people do not last very long in a life like that. It’s only a matter of time, he knows, and impractically, he braces.
But still, sure as anything, the body beside him does not suddenly combust or convulse, in fact, it does not move at all, beyond the rising and falling a skinny, adolescent chest. Against what every fiber of Killua’s being is telling him, Gon remains intact. He does not float up suddenly into the infinite sky, or curtly bury a sword in his own guts. Against all odds, he is still alive, and Killua is too. Gon’s hands are folded politely on his chest, and Killua resolutely does not think of caskets.
What is wrong with him? It never used to feel like this. A sudden hiss escapes Killua’s tight, aching chest, and it lands on just the wrong side of silent. Unfortunately, Gon’s big ears and bright eyes catch Killua before he can compose himself.
“What?” He prods slyly. Like Killua’s playing at something. He knows what goes through Gon’s thick skull when he gets that look, that stupid half-smile. It means ‘ gimme,’ it means bloodhound . Shit. Shit.
“Aw, nothin’, just, uh, thinking about what we’re gonna do after this,” he lies. Killua knows his face is impassive and open; his eyes wide but not overlarge; his mouth relaxed, no tremble, no twitch. He is very good at this, when he needs to be.
“Hm,” Gon hums thoughtfully and turns back, thinking. Killua lets himself release another quiet, tense breath. Thank God. There is nothing to tell him. There is nothing to say.
“Do you want to go back home?” Gon asks.
“ No,” Killua says firmly. Gon looks at him, kind.
“I get it, I wouldn’t want to stay at home all the time, either. I wanted to leave since I was nine, but Aunt Mito kept me.”
“I was stuck at home, too,” Killua says, “I spent all my time learning how to kill people.” He’s never quite felt ashamed of what his family does, but now it feels dirty to say aloud, here on Gon’s island, where nothing is sharp and nobody is hiding.
“You’re the first friend I ever had,” Killua admits, pretending like it’s nothing. He stares, unseeing, at the sky and tries to ignore Gon’s smug, doting smile in his periphery.
“Hmm. You have fun when you’re with me, right?” There’s something brewing on Gon’s excited little face, something Killua’s heart is picking up and running away with.
“Well...sure,” He plays it cool. Nice.
“Then let’s stay together!” Gon explodes happily. He drops it like a bomb that makes Killua’s chest feel like an overcooked marshmallow, gooey and disgusting.
“Let’s go out and see the world! It’ll be a journey for me to find my dad, and for you to find what you wanna do! It’ll be fun!” Gon’s face is bright, and soft, and sharply determined all at once. To think Gon’s hard-headed determination is entirely focused him is a heady feeling that sticks to his guts.
“Yeah, okay. That sounds alright.” Killua says, face hot, digging into the earth under him with a sharp hand. Being friends with someone like Gon requires an anchor sometimes. God.
“Alright,” Gon echoes cheerily, and turns back to the sky. Killua bites his cheek until the itch to do something stupid subsides.
He returns to the thick line of Gon’s nose and cheek, his jaw, his liquid brown eyes, and his mouth with it’s perpetual smile. Killua realizes he has allowed himself to unravel. Killua looks at Gon, and feels something slice into him like no blade ever has.
When Gon walks in a room, he doesn’t immediately catalogue the weapons within it. He hasn’t memorized the vulnerable vascular anatomy of the throat, chest and inner thigh, ideal for bleeding out. Gon is a creature who has not known what Killua has known. He has not been where Killua has been.
He stares at Gon, who in turn stares at the sky, looking only for the pleasure of the stars, not thinking of the space between them. Or maybe he does, and doesn’t care. Maybe that is the ultimate act of trust, the one that finally makes the world roll over and soften: to know that life is cruel, and random, and unrelenting, and to love it anyway.
Killua stares at the side of Gon’s head and wonders: How can you be this way? What have you seen? Who have you been before you met me?
The side of Gon’s head does not answer.
Suddenly, a thought dragged from the muddy depths of Killua surfaces, lancing him through. The shaft of the blade digs into his heart is burning. It melts him from the inside out, and Killua knows something, all at once.
It feels deadly, like the hushed, knowing second before a killing blow is dealt. It feels a bit like falling from someplace high; the swooping moment that gravity is left behind.
Killua will be here forever. Gritting, silent, forever bracing, forever gripping the point of gravity Gon provides. Killua knows he will always be here, in the silent, lovely, terrible upswing. The lurch before a fall.
He will always be with Gon. A piece of him detaches, like an archipelago from a homely island, and sticks to this moment. To this boy.
Killua knows he will hold on to Gon with two hands, until the second he is dead. It’s a grim thought, full of teeth, but they hold something soft within them, protecting. Together. He and Gon. Together.
Killua tears his eyes away from Gon to look back up at the stars. And he forgets the black space between them.