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Gon had experienced plenty of daring adventures throughout his seventeen years of life; even so, he considered calling a number on the bathroom wall of a filthy gas station to be among his most daring.
The number one reason was because “filthy” didn’t even start to describe the sorry excuse of the bathroom he was in. From where he was standing in the doorway, he could tell there were stains on tiles that were closer to beige than white, cracked sinks lying lopsided against the wall, and cloudy mirrors that hung menacingly above the sinks like executioners with prisoners’ heads on their chopping boards. He caught a glimpse of his wiry black hair reflected in the scratched mirror, looking dull in the faint light.
All in all, it was beyond filthy. If the gas station’s bathroom had wifi, he might have been tempted to look up synonyms for “filthy” just on principle. He didn't think there was a strong enough word to describe the stench permeating the bathroom.
And Gon was by no means a neat person, but even he knew that the gleaming pink ooze dripping from the ceiling was not supposed to be there. Or anything in this god-forsaken bathroom.
Gon grimaced and let the door fall shut behind him, the hinges groaning ominously as it closed.
That would bring him to reason number two for this being among his most daring adventures; ominous groans of doors were always a factor to be considered.
Carefully, Gon took a step forward and peered over the wall blocking the immediate view of the entire bathroom.
He almost puked.
Almost being the key word; he refrained out of fear of making the bathroom even more disgusting.
Gon swallowed as his amber eyes swept across the bathroom in its entirety. Forget settling for number two on his list of daring adventures—this bathroom right here was shoving everything out of its way to go for the top.
With a slow exhale, Gon moved on from the relatively clean place by the door. Certainly, there was an absence of any sludge, goo, or slime near the door, but that was it as far as "clean" went—nothing else. No gleaming hinges of the door, or a smooth wooden surface, or even a neat paint job. Compared to the rest of the bathroom, however, it was a saving grace.
A quick glance to the right told him one of the urinals was gurgling, clogged with water and spilling discolored liquid over the sides. Another glance showed him a sort of beige sludge clung to the walls, in addition to the stains already there.
A third glance, and he stopped in his tracks. Why is there just a marker lying on the floor? Gon thought, eyes fixed on the sharpie in horrified curiosity. And why is it colored that exact shade of brown?
A shudder crawled down Gon’s spine as he quickly shook the questions out of his head. For sure, the door and everything within five inches of its vicinity were much cleaner than the rest of the bathroom.
Gon squeezed his eyes shut, fists clenching for a moment at his sides. Taking a thoughtless inhale—nope, not a good idea—he ignored the rise of bile in his throat, opened his eyes and continued what was likely the most toxic stroll of his life.
He stopped in front of the two stalls in the corner of the bathroom.
Well then.
One half of Gon was glad that the slew of numbers—so that was what the marker was for—were scribbled on both sides of the stall’s walls, just as Leorio promised him they would be. This way, his walk to literal Hell wouldn't have been in vain, since calling a number on the bathroom stall was what he came here to do. On the other hand, he also felt the pressing desire to slam his head on the nearest clean surface.
And that wouldn't be within a mile from this place.
Gon sighed.
He stared at the startling amount of vulgar invitations with creasing eyebrows, fingers tapping against the rough fabric of his jeans. His breath came out slow through gritted teeth before he pursed his lips together in a flat line. If the stench didn’t kill him, the anxiety certainly would.
Okay, focus. Breathe in, breathe out, call for five minutes, and you can leave.
Releasing another breath, Gon's eyes wandered all over the stall in search for one number in particular to call, and unbidden, his gaze moved to the slightly feminine handwriting with its own halo of clean space by the handle.
The cleanliness was the sole thing that drew him to the number. Gon guessed that was the person’s intention.
Call me for the best fuck of your life, the words read in loopy script, followed by a string of numbers right below it. Innocent in its cleanliness. Gon had to give the person credit; he could tell that they thought this through to a certain extent. He didn’t know too many people who were willing to go as far as to clean a portion of the bathroom to make their number stand out. Admirable in the strangest way.
He glanced around at the dirty bathroom for a moment, double-checking to make sure nobody had entered in the past minute. In response, the muted echoes of dripping water answered him. He could hear people talking in murmurs outside—most likely those two men had seen smoking cigarettes by the door—but between the overwhelming smell of unsanitary toilets and his pulse drumming against his throat, Gon could barely discern their voices.
His fingers began tapping against his thigh again. Did he have to do this? He could always back out, tell Leorio there was no way he was calling “the best fuck of your life” for a dare. Leorio would understand. It wasn't as if Gon had done anything to convince him otherwise—
But the image of Leorio’s deadpan brown eyes still surfaced in Gon’s mind, unwavering and almost accusing. Gon quickly changed his thoughts and suppressed a shudder.
No, Leorio really would not understand.
Gon groaned, struggling once more against the urge to slam his head against the wall. He raised his gaze back to the words, biting down on his lip hard.
Call me for the best—
Gon averted his eyes. The sentence still finished in his mind all too clearly and, not for the first time that day, he groaned.
God, he did not want to do this.
He took his phone out with trembling hands, distracting himself by watching the blue display blink every once in a while, and then directed his gaze back to the stalls. The fact that the number—the invitation—was written near toilets looking like they hadn't been cleaned since the last century didn't help matters.
Gon loved his friends, but honestly: Fuck Leorio.
Heaving a long breath, Gon glanced at the number once more before rolling his shoulders and mentally preparing himself. Now or never, he thought with a nervous swallow.
Slowly, he crouched down for a better view of the number before entering the digits one by one on his phone. Blood pounding loud in his head, Gon clenched his fists, sucked in a breath, and hit “call”.
The silence before it connected was nerve-wracking.
But the ringing afterward?
Even more so.
It seemed like a long eternity had passed before the number picked up, but Gon only counted three rings until the person's voice was speaking on the other end of the line.
“Hello?”
Rough. Low. Almost with a smoky undertone. Definitely a man.
He turned this newfound information around in his head and blinked. Somehow, Gon wasn't surprised. But there was just one thing…
Had the man been sleeping?
It might have just been Gon’s imagination, but the voice came across to him in a way that seemed lethargic, tired. Maybe it was the roughness in the voice or the way the words were slightly slurred, but a quality about it rang in his ears as if the man had just woken up. Which was strange, considering—
“It's one in the afternoon," Gon blurted.
There was a short pause on the other end of the line. Gon waited with bated breaths, feeling four heartbeats pass.
“You're a bright one,” the voice drawled a second later. A scoff. “No shit, Sherlock. I know it's one in the afternoon.”
Gon scowled at the sardonic tone. “Well, you sounded like you just got up!” he said defensively. “I wasn't sure if you knew or not.”
Another sigh. “You know,” the voice mused, “there's this thing called a clock. You might want to look into it because obviously you've never heard of it.”
Gon huffed a short breath. “Okay, so you did know. But you don't have to be so rude about it! You could say that you knew in a polite way.”
There was yet another pause, but this time, Gon just knew the man was rolling his eyes. “I was up until six AM last night finishing three essays and a lab report worth half my semester’s grade,” the man deadpanned. “I'm tired, cranky, and I need eight gallons of some goddamn coffee.” A long breath. “I'm not going to be nice about shit. Sorry.”
Gon blinked, and blinked again. “Six AM isn't night,” he said.
A pause again. He wondered how many pauses there were going to be in the duration of their conversation.
Crackling noises came over the other end of the line. An incredulous: “Fucking—are you kidding me—”
There was a stream of impressive curses flying from the man's mouth for what felt like a good, solid minute before Gon heard an aggravated sigh. “What do you want? I'm running on sleep deprivation right now, and I would really like that to change.”
Gon's frown grew even more pronounced. “You can't run on sleep deprivation.”
“Watch me.”
Gon raised an eyebrow. “We're on the phone,” he pointed out. “I can't watch anything.”
Mostly Gon was stalling, but today alone—just for five minutes—he felt like being a little brat. He didn't care how annoying he knew he was, nor the fact that the man was spent from doing assignments all night.
Gon simply didn't like the man's tone.
Not to mention, it appeared as if the man had no idea strangers were calling him because his number was written up on the bathroom wall; as sad as that was, Gon had no intention of being the one to tell him. He didn’t exactly fancy the idea of being the one to suffer a verbal lashing, especially from this person.
More crackling noises. He guessed the man was trying not to explode and a grin automatically began to spread on his lips.
“I can't believe—mother of fucking curtains—” the man swore, before he inhaled again. Exasperation and irritation came seeping through the speaker on Gon’s phone. It felt like the familiar sensation of murder.
“What do you want.”
Gon began to think about how he would answer, chewing on his lip in thought. It wasn't as if he could say the man's number was an invitation "for the best fuck of your life" in the gas station's bathroom—it wasn't his best idea, in all honesty—but in the next moment, he heard the bathroom door squeak.
Someone had just come in.
Gon froze at the realization, breath halting in his throat.
If someone saw him here, he'd probably have to explain a lot of things Gon did not want to explain. Why he was talking to someone while in the bathroom, why he was talking to someone on the phone with the stall of numbers right beside him—
"Are you still there?"
And oh yeah, there was also maybe why he was talking to someone whose number was listed on the stall as “the best fuck of your life”.
The immediate future seemed to contain many 'why's. Gon didn't like 'why's.
Gon didn't like a lot of things about this situation, actually.
And yeah, maybe person-who-just-came-in wouldn't exactly go that far in questioning him, but Gon was thinking of worst-case scenario at the moment - all logic be damned. He hadn't necessarily dealt with this type of problem before, though he could say that for most of the general population. But now he was faced with it, and there was only one question whirling around in his mind—
Fight or flight?
A split second decision that was pretty much a no-brainer.
Gon chose to run.
But before that, there was just one more thing—
“Don’t hang up,” Gon whispered into his phone. “Please don’t hang up.”
A slightly bemused, “Okay?” sounded over the receiver. Gon sighed in relief.
He had no intention to call up another number for five minutes; besides, he was already—Gon pulled the phone away from his ear—three minutes in. There were only two minutes to go. Dogs would be climbing trees before he was going to call another number or lose this dare.
But now that the person had said they wouldn’t hang up, that was one problem solved.
Only a million more to go.
In the next second, Gon’s feet moved on pure instinct. He threw open the stall door, shutting it behind him with a quiet thud, but instantly he could tell his feet would be seen underneath the stall’s walls; it wasn’t the kind that reached all the way to the floor. Gon held back a curse. And that meant...
He studied the moldy toilet with a troubled look, eyebrows creasing. He’d have to sit on the seat. Or at least, in a way that ensured his feet wouldn’t be seen.
Knowing what he had to do, Gon sighed. This was turning out to be a wonderful day.
With a nervous swallow, he stepped closer to the toilet. Took another step. Squeezed his eyes shut. Inhaled. Then cracking open an eyelid, Gon placed a foot on the seat and heaved himself up unsteadily, arms flailing wildly for a moment.
Gon released another breath, heart still thudding in his chest.
Alright. So maybe he could do this after all.
But his shoes, on the other hand....
Gon regarded his feet with a mournful gaze. His shoes would probably be ruined from the mold gunking up the toilet seat.
Sighing—he seemed to be doing that a lot these days—Gon crouched down and held his breath.
The sound of a zipper, then someone doing their business at the urinal filled the bathroom a second later, loud and echoing in the nearly-empty bathroom. Gon's amber eyes flitted around the small space of the stall, taking in any details he could—the cheap, thin toilet paper by his side, the feel of the mold on the seat pushing against the bottom of his shoes, the gleam of a puddle lying on the floor beside the toilet, and the rusted, old lock on the door—
—which was—
—crap—
—unlocked.
Gon froze.
And that meant—
The stall door could open.
Gon had never been one for swearing, but there was always going to be a time in a young man's life when he needed to throw his principles out the window. And for Gon—
—this was fucking it.
Shoving down the urge to scream, Gon sucked in a panicked breath and analyzed his situation. Okay, so he was hiding out inside a bathroom stall filled of vulgar invitations, tottering on the edge of a moldy toilet seat while trying to regain his balance after a startling realization, and praying desperately that the stall door wouldn't open as the number of “the best fuck of your life” shone on the display of his phone.
All things considered? Forget throwing his principles out the window—Gon was fucking launching them into space to orbit around the goddamn sun.
Gon bit his lip again. At this rate, they’d become swollen and bloody. He could already taste the faint metallic tang of it on his tongue. At the moment, though, he was more worried about the person in the bathroom and the man on his phone—
He was suddenly aware of the tiny, high-pitched sounds ringing from the phone.
Double crap.
Gon all but slammed the phone back to his ear, the movement sending him nearly falling to the ground.
The man’s voice came filtering through immediately. “—rotten fire logs of Antarctica, are you even listening? Fuck, are you even there? It still says you are, but I'm supposing that your brain functionality for the day's already expired, fucking hell, I swear—“
“Shh,” Gon hissed, as quietly as he could manage. “Shh. Shut up. Shh. Shut up, please. Kindly shut. Up.”
He made some more hushing sounds for emphasis and waited. His hand began stretching to the opening door.
A silence fell over the line. Then a second later—
“Did you just fucking hiss at me?”
Gon almost smacked his forehead in exasperation. He squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled. God have mercy on his poor soul. “No, I didn't," he said. "Now shut up. Please.”
He could feel the incredulity pouring in waves through his phone. “You definitely hissed at me,” the man said. “You fucking hissed at me like a cat. You're a fucking cat. Oh my god.”
Gon made an affronted noise, pausing in his movements to hold the door still. “Dogs are better. Now shut. Up.”
A short pause, then a snicker. There was a hint of amusement in the man’s tone when he next spoke. “Dude,” he said, “you’re totally hissing.“
It was unbelievable how infuriating this was. He leaned his entire body weight against the door, grimacing for a moment at the sticky texture covering it, before he whispered, “I’m not hissing. Be quiet.”
“You are.”
“Am not," Gon said. "Shh.”
“Doing it again,” the man teased.
“Am not. Shut up.”
“And there you go again—”
“I am not hissing, so shut up.”
The line fell quiet. Gon sighed in relief, slumping.
But then—
“...You were totally hissing,” the man said, and Gon could feel the smugness in his voice like nails scraping against chalkboards.
His lips gradually flattening, Gon clamped down on the urge to scream and didn’t answer.
“Hissing,” the man said with extra emphasis, as if Gon needed it.
A laugh.
“Just so you know.”
And Gon’s fuse blew.
"For the love of—just please shut up already!”
The sound of running liquid abruptly trickled to a stop. Silence.
Shit.
Then:
“I just wanted to do my business,” a voice mumbled. A zip and the flushing of the urinal a split second later. “Sorry, man.”
Gon squeezed his eyes shut and held back a groan, ignoring the cackling coming from his phone. “No, um, it’s my fault. Sorry.”
Silence. The door squeaked again before falling shut with a quiet thud.
Gon held his breath for a few seconds longer before releasing it in a groan, leaning forward to place his head on his knees. “Fuck.”
Quiet on the other end.
He lifted his head and glowered at the phone. “Oh, so now you decide to shut up? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You said you needed me to shut up,” the man said. “I shut up.”
“You couldn't have done that when I asked the first time?”
“You hissed at me,” the man reminded him. “Hissed.”
Gon breathed out. One, two, one, two.
“It's called shushing,” he snapped. “It’s what happens when people need you to shut up.”
“Yeah, no, that was definitely a hiss. Either that, or you’ve got some terrible connection.”
Gon rolled his eyes. “Well, I happen to be in a bathroom with terrible connection—what do you expect?”
“...Why the fuck would you call me in the bathroom? There's gotta be a better time for that.”
Gon’s patience all but vanished at that moment. Between the cats and the hissing, he was surprised it didn't go sooner.
He took a deep breath before he nearly shouted into the phone, “Your phone number’s written on the bathroom wall of a filthy gas station as an invitation for the ‘best fuck of your life’! So it’s not exactly the most opportune place to find a goddamn phone number; I’m sorry for being in the bathroom, but friendly reminder that you were the one who put it there in the first place!”
His voice echoed in the bathroom for a moment, words sounding brusque and—surprise, surprise—sardonic even to Gon’s ears.
Silence fell over the line again. Gon exhaled, stepped off the toilet seat and waited in the middle of the stall, counting up to nine heartbeats this time. A very long eternity passed, and then:
“What?”
Gon swallowed.
Now, that was a hiss. If he wasn’t so busy slapping himself over his unintended spill, then he might have taken the time to appreciate the catlike intensity the words were said with.
But as the situation had it, Gon was preoccupied with not causing bodily-harm.
He heard six heartbeats before the voice said quietly, dangerously—
”Which gas station.”
Half a heartbeat.
“Which. Fucking. Gas station.”
Screw heartbeats.
Gon all but ripped the phone from his ear, jabbed End Call with a viciousness he hadn’t known he possessed, and forced down the urge to throw his phone far, far away. His back slumped on the bathroom wall, head and throat and chest pulsing with the beat of his heart. He closed his eyes for a long moment.
Beep…
Beep…
Beep...
Gon cracked open an eyelid and glanced down at his phone’s display.
4:40.
He switched off his phone.
Stay on the phone with them for five minutes, rang Leorio’s voice in his mind, smug and gleeful, and Gon sighed.
“Damn.”