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If Killua had been a little bit smarter, a little bit more forward-thinking, he would have started studying for his Intro to Accounting final three weeks ago once the study guide was released. But, high school supplied him with the belief that he could study for about 45 minutes the night before an exam and still pull at least a 95, as validated by his Valedictorian title. So, yeah right.
However - as is a tale as old as time - college proved to be very different. Well, kind of. General requirements were a breeze since Killua had taken all honors courses in high school and knew almost all the content walking in freshman year. But now he was coming up on the halfway mark of his sophomore year, just starting to take the major-specific courses for the Finance track - a "strong suggestion" from his family so he could easily take a position in their global venture capitalist conglomerate (gag) - and he was starting to think that maybe his private high school was just too easy and not at all as preparatory as their name would have suggested.
A gifted kid in middle school - which was actually a bit counterintuitive, since the gifted group was often pulled from class and taken on day trips that had absolutely nothing to do with scholastics- Killua assumed that his natural academic prowess was enough to skate through school (literally, he finished exams early and asked to use the restroom, which really just meant he grabbed his skateboard from his locker and whipped around the parking lot until the period was up). This intelligence carried over to college for the entry-level requirements, but now he was feeling the error of his ways as he tried to dissect what the hell the difference was between credits and debits (aren’t they just two types of cards, what do you mean one of them means money in and the other means money out?).
So here Killua found himself, 11:30 PM at the campus library in the quietest section they offered, on the Tuesday before his Friday final trying to cram as much information about accounting as possible into his head that was simply not equipped to actually, seriously study for something.
“This is a colossal amount of bullshit,” Killua muttered to himself as he skimmed through Chapter 8, and you could hear the spine of the textbook crack as tonight was, obviously, the first time he had opened the book to this chapter all semester (not to mention that yesterday was the first time he had opened the book at all). “I’m not even going into accounting. What the hell do I care what a balance sheet is?” He pushed the book away from him to rest his elbows on the desk and laid his head in his hands, hoping that rubbing his palms across his eyes would will away the sleep creeping up on him. Killua reached for his third nitro coffee can of the night, cracked it open, and took a sip. He grabbed his phone and skipped ahead a few songs until he found one he could stand for the time being before standing up to do his hourly stretches (hour count: 4).
As he interlocked his fingers and stretched his arms upwards, letting out a huge - but silent - yawn, he felt his navy tank top ride up above the waistband of his deep purple pants. Normally he’d fumble to pull it down - normally, he wouldn’t even be wearing just a tank top out and about - but the library heat was on way too high, even for December, and he hadn’t seen another person on this floor since he got here, so he couldn’t particularly find it in himself to bother, nor to care several hours earlier when he peeled his black long sleeve off as soon as he sat down.
Killua bent down towards his toes, hands still joined, and heard a distinct crunch through his headphones. He froze, thinking he had pulled something, but didn’t feel any different than before. Must have just cracked my fingers, he thought to himself, before sitting back down and scooting his chair back in to return to the study session.
Crunch.
Killua grimaced, blinking hard and rubbing his eyes again. He paused his music and disconnected his earbuds from his phone before taking them out of his ears. Maybe it was my headphones, the connection shits out sometimes. I need to just buy some new ones at some point, he thought, taking a sip of his coffee before rolling back his shoulders. He ran a hand through his hair to move the bangs that had fallen away from his face and went to put his earbuds back in, but before he could, he heard it again.
Crunch.
“Ok, seriously, what the fuck?” Killua questioned, somewhere between a whisper and a mutter.
Crunch.
Crunch.
CRUNCH!
“Holy shit!” Killua said, a bit too loud to be acceptable in a library on a normal day, and pushed against the desk until his chair hit the wall behind him. He stood up and looked around, not seeing any source of the noise, and for a moment wondered if the noise was actually blood rushing through his ears and if he was just going into cardiac arrest from all the caffeine he’d consumed over the last 36 hours.
Crunch.
Killua’s head whipped towards the noise, which he finally could tell was coming from down the hall and to the left behind the whiteboard walls, and he sighed. He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, taking in a shallow breath (not from nerves, but the caffeine was seriously starting to increase his heartbeat and breathing rate) before grabbing his phone, his coffee (that he definitely needed), and any resolve he could muster before walking towards the incessant crunching.
As Killua rounded the corner, the overhead lights flickered on, indicating the first motion they’d sensed in at least 60 minutes. The lights in the far corner were already on, though, and that was where the stairs opened up into, which caused Killua to scrunch up his nose. The stairs were on the complete opposite side of the library as the elevator was, and they were on the fifth floor. Who the hell is walking up the stairs at 11:45 PM? The elevator is absolutely not backed up right now, Killua thought to himself as he walked towards the illuminated section.
Crunch.
It was almost unbearably loud now, and it was already bad when Killua was on the other side of the floor. When Killua came to the end of the hallway, his eyes narrowed in on the table in an alcove to the right just beside the stairwell doors. But they didn’t just narrow at the table, nor at the person sitting at the table - they focused in on a giant bag of chips, open, with a hand about wrist-deep inside it.
As if in slow motion (maybe it’s the cardiac arrest, Killua thought), he watched the hand emerge from the bag holding a clump of dusty chips before shoving them into the mouth of its owner.
CRUNCH!
Unbelievable.
Killua walked up to the table and the Crunch -er’s face and eyes raised up, seemingly as surprised someone else was here as Killua. A small smile appeared on his face, and Killua - through his eyes that maybe-from-cardiac-arrest-or-maybe-from-pure-rage could not stop flitting around - took notice of the movement and looked at his face. The noise machine of a boy was exceptionally tan and had a mop of black hair atop his head, so deep and dark that Killua swore the fluorescent library lighting gave it green highlights. He had thick, bushy eyebrows and a wide, defined jaw. His smile was warm, strangely so for being offered up to a stranger, and his mouth had crumbs just to the side-
Crumbs. Chips. Crunching.
Killua was all of a sudden flustered, angry, and possibly about to pass out from likely exceeding the human limit for caffeine all at once as the reason he marched over here came back to him.
“Hey,” said the stranger, tone soft. “I didn’t think anyone else was up-”
“Hey, man,” Killua started, sounding noticeably more urgent than was really necessary. “I’m really sorry about just coming up to you here because I’m sure you’re trying to study too, but we’re on the quiet floor of the library, and I know every floor of the library is technically quiet because it’s, well, a library, but this is actually the quiet floor, like the ‘so quiet your thoughts are almost too loud’ quiet floor.” Killua physically could not shut himself up and pretended to not notice the boy’s eyebrows raising higher and higher as he continued speaking. “And I have a huge final at the end of the week that I am severely underprepared for and seriously overcaffeinated trying to study for, and I can hear you eating those fucking chips from across the floor even with my headphones on, and I-” he ran a shaky hand through his hair and was getting more and more certain this guy was going to have to take him to urgent care when he ultimately collapsed from a caffeine overdose.
“I know I could turn my music louder but I’m really paranoid about hearing loss when I get older so I don’t really want to have to do that, so would you mind, like, not eating your chips? Well, actually, I mean - sorry, I didn’t mean like, don’t eat and just starve yourself, but could you maybe wait to eat them later or eat something not so ear-shatteringly loud or go literally anywhere else other than this floor and keep eating your chips there?” Killua finished his monologue, his hand still in his hair (more accurately, now at the nape of his neck), and the boy just stared back at him, his eyebrows close to his hairline and his mouth hanging open slightly.
If Killua could think of any other words to say, he’d probably keep going just out of sheer discomfort and lack of ability to shut his brain off at the moment, but he couldn’t think of anything and his mouth was dry and the stranger’s mouth just stayed open gaping at him and he wondered if that mouth was as dry as his. And then he decided, of course it was, because it’s had dusty chips shoveled into it and there was no beverage in sight.
And then the stranger laughed.
He fucking laughed. Cackled, in fact. His eyebrows descended back down his forehead and scrunched together as this guy laughed and brought a hand to his chest, just above the neckline of his black tank top, as if this was the funniest thing he’s heard in weeks.
As if Killua wasn’t mere seconds away from going on his knees to beg this guy to shut the fuck up or offering to buy him a quieter snack from the library vending machine.
Well, he was seconds away from that. Until the guy laughed.
Killua’s eyes narrowed. “Did I say something funny?”
The black-haired stranger’s laughter died down, slowly - excruciatingly slowly to Killua, who just wanted to shove his face into his textbook and (die) study and move on - but finally came to a stop.
“I’m sorry, you just,” he started before chuckling again. Killua sighed. “I’ve just never heard anyone so beaten up about some chips. I’m surprised you could even hear them on the other side of the floor - you have 20/20 hearing or something?”
Killua blinked. “One, that’s not a thing. It’s 20/20 vision. Two, I don’t know why I can hear them, maybe you’re chewing with your mouth open, or you’re eating the stalest chips you could have possibly found. Three,” he continued on for some unknown reason, “I’m ‘beaten up’ about them because I am literally going to fail my accounting exam on Friday if I don’t get some undisturbed studying time in, and the only place I can force myself to focus is the quiet floor because it’s usually empty since I guess nobody else is as masochistic as me to sit alone, in total silence, on campus this late. Well, near-total silence, besides your chips.”
“Total silence? I thought you said you had music,” the other man said, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“Don’t be a smartass,” Killua retorted, grimacing. “I like silence and music playing that I choose to listen to at a safe volume. I can’t sit somewhere with background conversations or anything that isn’t white noise, really.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have stumbled upon your private floor of solitude…?” The stranger’s sentence trailed off as he eyed Killua, clear that he was asking for a name.
“Killua,” Killua replied with a sigh. “I didn’t come over here to introduce myself, though, I really need to get back to study-”
“Killua,” the black-haired boy repeated, looking like he was intensely focusing on how the name rolled off his tongue that Killua was decidedly not looking at. He smiled. “Nice to meet you, I’m Gon! Are you in Wing’s accounting class by chance?”
Killua shuddered, even just the name of his accounting professor making him feel uneasy. He is so fucked for this final.
“Yeah, I am, but I haven’t really been going to class unless there’s a quiz or something,” Killua replied sheepishly. “I usually just look at the slides online and do the practice problems on my own, easier to focus that way.”
“Right,” Gon replied, a smirk playing on his lips. “The whole ‘nothing but white noise’ thing,” he continued, waving his hand in the air.
If Killua narrowed his eyes again, he was sure he’d have permanent crow’s feet. “Attention deficit disorders are a very real thing, asshole.”
“You have one?”
“...No, but you don’t know that.”
“I do now,” Gon replied, the smile on his face only growing. “I know at least six things about you now, actually.”
“I feel like you’re going to tell me what they are even though I literally could not care less,” Killua replied, outwardly agitated but internally entertained, frustrated, and also, yeah, also internally agitated.
“Look, you already know me so well too!” Gon chirped. Killua rolled his eyes in response. “One, I know your name - really nice one, by the way.” Gon didn’t notice - or maybe he just, kindly, didn’t acknowledge - Killua’s immediate flush cover his face. “Two, I know you’re in the same accounting class as me, but that doesn’t matter all that much since neither of us really go. Three, you care very deeply about your hearing, which is admirable.” Killua rolled his eyes again. “Four, you have trouble focusing unless you have complete silence and anything other than white noise will send you into a near-meltdown. And five, you definitely drink too much caffeine - I feel like I can see your heart beating a mile a minute from over here.”
Killua - who agreed with the last point but certainly would not be saying that out loud - stared ahead at Gon who seemed to be enjoying telling Killua six things about himself for no apparent reason at all.
Wait.
“Not like I care,” Killua started, ignoring his brain asking then why even bring it up, “but you only said five things.”
Something flashed in Gon’s eyes - a deep caramel color that Killua decided he would ignore for the time being - and a smile that refused to leave his face grew a bit bigger.
“Right. Well, six,” Gon started, making eye contact that Killua physically could not avoid, “you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.”
Killua promptly choked on a swallowed breath - though if anyone asked, it was actually the chip dust floating in the air - and Gon laughed again.
“What are you, shameless?!” Killua asked incredulously as Gon’s laughter grew. “You just met me and you say some crap like that?”
“The truth is the truth,” Gon said, finally done laughing but the smile still plastered on his face. “We just met, so what better time to say it? Would you rather me wait until we’ve been friends for years and I’ve secretly been pining after you the entire time but I don’t say anything until you’re walking out the door of our dorm for a date and I get so jealous and fed up that I spring it on you then, but you can’t actually not go to the date because you’re not rude like that, so now I’m stuck sitting in our dorm wondering if I just fucked up our friendship but your date is ruined because you can’t stop thinking about it?”
Killua was surprised someone else could ramble and spew as much nonsensical bullshit as he could. He was also surprised at how he didn’t even notice how wide his eyes had blown, how much his mouth had fallen open, or how red his face had gotten until Gon pointed it out. “You look pretty freaked - is it the caffeine or are you also hoping we can avoid all the in-between and don’t have to get ourselves into that situation?”
Once Killua could actually remember how to speak, he sputtered out, “You are absolutely insane.”
“So I’ve been told,” Gon replied, completely unphased. “Seriously, though, I do have a proposal for you.”
“Do not pull out a ring or I will force it down your throat.”
“Not a real proposal,” Gon chuckled. “Yet.” He glanced up and, noticing Killua’s mouth was opening again to likely admonish his tease, quickly continued, “I was going to say. My buddy from club soccer took Wing’s class last year and is the TA this semester. The exam’s exactly the same. I’m not sure how morally okay you are with having the answers, but if you care about cheating less than you care about your hearing, I figured I could share the notes and questions with you.”
Killua froze. Not because he cared about cheating - especially not for a class as useless to him as this one - but because he felt himself on the verge of regaining the next three days - and probably several years, honestly - of his life.
“You’d give the exam answers to someone you just met?” Killua asked, internally kicking himself for questioning such a blessing.
“Well,” Gon started, and there was that damn smirk again, “I specifically said share, not give. I only have one copy, so we’d have to review them together.”
“I have money on my ID,” Killua replied quickly. “I can just make copies on the printers downstairs.”
“Let me be more specific,” Gon replied. “One, and I’ll pretend this is the real reason for a second, I don’t want to make copies of the exam my friend trusted me with, especially if I’m handing out those copies to someone I just met.” He winked at Killua. He winked and Killua both wanted to punch him in the face for using his words against him and ask him to do it again.
The caffeine was definitely shortcircuiting his brain.
Gon continued. “Two, I want to see you again and spend some actual time together, and honestly, I figured this would be a good excuse.”
Killua’s eye twitched. He needed to go to bed.
“But”, Gon started back up after a few beats of silence that Killua hadn’t realized he had let pass, “if you really don’t want to, I guess I could show them to you now and hope you have good memorization skills, or you could copy them down in some discrete way, and you could go review them yourself-”
“No,” Killua quickly said, without actually realizing he had said it until it was already out there. He blinked.
Gon blinked right back, a confused look on his face. Killua wished he would smile again.
Killua also wished he could flick himself in the forehead for these intrusive thoughts.
“I mean,” Killua continued. “I, uh, can be pretty careless with my stuff.” Lie. “I wouldn’t want to misplace the answers or anything and get you in trouble or something.” Killua had never misplaced anything in his life. “And maybe if we review it together, we can talk through some of the topics. And stuff.” And stuff.
Gon smiled again, somehow larger than before. “Great, Killua! It’s a date! Put your number in my phone and we can meet up tomorrow. You can come to my place, I have a ton of snacks.”
“Not a date,” Killua grumbled as he grabbed Gon’s phone and entered his number. “Your place is fine. But if there is even a single chip eaten, I will-”
Crunch.
“Have a meltdown, I know,” Gon said, mouth full of chips, shoving his belongings in his bag. “I should get home and clean - I kind of have stuff everywhere - but I’ll text you the time and address!”
Killua sighed, forcing the smile playing on his lips to stay hidden. “Whatever, yeah, I’ll be there,” he replied. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Gon.”
“See you, Killua!” Gon said, pushing in his chair and heading for the stairs. Killua decidedly did not let his eyes linger on Gon’s green gym shorts and swiftly turned around to go grab his own belongings - no need to stay here anymore, then.
Killua felt a hand on his shoulder and he jumped, turning around and being met with a bag of chips being shoved into his hands.
“I can’t finish these tonight, and I will definitely eat them tomorrow if they’re in my pantry, so you take them! I can’t in good conscience throw food away so don’t tell me I should just do that! Okay, see you!” Gon ran off as quickly as the interaction had happened and Killua was left standing in the library with a half-eaten family-size bag of chips. He stared at the bag for a few seconds and sighed, wondering if the red of the bag or the red of his face was brighter.
Crunch.
They were pretty good for being the loudest snack he had ever eaten in his life. Killua decided that he would have to get some from the grocery store the next time he went.