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“No,” Killua says, for what’s, by Gon’s count, the fourth time this conversation. “What part of that isn’t getting through your four inch thick skull?”
“The part where I don’t get why you’re refusing! You won’t have to take care of him, you won’t have to pay for any of his expenses. All I’m asking is for your permission to keep him in the house. No responsibilities, no obligations, nothing. So why won’t you agree to that?”
A flicker of something dark and vulnerable flashes in Killua’s eyes, but it’s gone as soon as it came.
“Because if I give an inch, you’ll take a mile. Next thing I know, this will be the Freecss and Zoldyck Zoological Park, and I don’t want to have so many animals that I have to clear a path just to get in the door.”
“So you’ll never let me have a pet?” Gon demands.
“As long as we’re living together, no.”
Gon leaps up from the couch, skin flushed hot.
“That’s absolutely ridiculous! You can’t even compromise with me on it?”
Killua flies to his feet as well, his face red and his chest heaving up and down with frantic breaths.
“If I compromise, that animal is going to end up dead!”
Gon reels back as if Killua had slapped him, and Killua’s eyes are as wide and horrified as if he had, too.
“Killua…” Gon begins, soft and disbelieving, and a muscle jumps in Killua’s jaw.
Gon takes a slow, bracing breath, trying to rid himself of this shocked, bewildered haze and think clearly. Killua’s complexion has gone slightly green, and he’s trembling, only just perceptibly. He doesn’t look angry and hostile. He looks terrified. And vulnerable. And ashamed. Whatever that outburst was, it certainly wasn’t a threat.
“Killua,” Gon repeats, slow and soothing. “What exactly did you mean by that?”
With the appearance of enormous effort, Killua schools his face into a scowl.
“I meant what I said. If an animal lives in a home with me, it’s not going to last long.”
Gon takes a step towards Killua, and Killua, mercifully, doesn’t retreat. And although Gon can now see how badly he’s trembling up close, he doesn’t pull away when Gon rests a hand on his shoulder.
“Killua,” he says, hardly above a whisper. “You’re not telling me everything, are you?”
“I—” Killua begins, but stops immediately. He balls his hands into tight fists at his sides and stares determinedly at the floor.
“I think I’m being perfectly clear,” he says, his attempt at detached cruelty betrayed by the crack in his voice. “I kill things, Gon. It’s as simple as that.”
Gon reaches up a hand to cradle Killua’s cheek. Killua doesn’t lean into the touch, but he doesn’t pull away, either.
“You don’t trust yourself,” Gon says, and it’s not a question. “You don’t trust yourself around something small and vulnerable. Something you have to care for.”
Killua bites his lower lip hard, blanching it white. For a long moment, he’s quiet.
“I’m not like you,” he says at last, without a trace of his earlier belligerence. Now, his voice is just small. “You’re good. You don’t hurt things, not like I do. Illumi was right—something like me isn’t capable of friendship, only of assessing threats. Sooner or later, my instincts would take over and I’d kill him.”
Gon looks hard into Killua’s eyes—arguing this point isn’t going to get him anywhere; he can tell. Instead, he’ll need to prove it with more than just words.
“Why don’t we take him out of the bedroom—“
“No!” Killua all but shouts. “No, Gon, you can’t let me near him. You can’t trust something like me, not in this situation, at least.”
“I’ll be right here,” Gon soothes. “If anything gets unsafe, I’ll be able to step in.”
Gon doesn’t give Killua a chance to argue. He heads into the bedroom, gently scoops up the small, orange kitten from where he’d be napping on the duvet, and brings him back into the living room.
The second Gon sets him on the ground, he saunters toward Killua, tail high and ears forward. Killua, to his credit, doesn’t flinch or draw back, but he does stand impossibly still, aside from the shaking, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Do you want to pet him?”
Killua’s eyes go wide with a genuine terror that Gon has only seen on him a few times before, and he shakes his head vigorously.
But the kitten is undeterred—he begins rubbing against Killua’s legs, purring like an engine dozens of times his size. Killua goes, if possible, paler still.
“I could crush him,” he whispers. “I could lift up my foot and stomp on him and that would be that.”
“But do you want to? Crush him, I mean.”
“No! No, of course I don’t!”
Killua sounds close to tears, but Gon merely smiles in a way he hopes is reassuring.
“Then you have nothing to worry about. You’re in control now, Killua. No one is ever going to force you to hurt something again. They don’t have that power anymore.”
Gon doesn’t specify who “they” are, but he knows he doesn’t have to.
Killua is still for several more long moments, but at last, still trembling, he lowers himself to the ground to sit beside the kitten.
The kitten nudges his head against Killua’s hand with undeniable impatience, clearly demanding to be pet. Killua stares down at his hand, gaze hard.
“The first time I killed someone, I was four years old. I ripped a man’s heart out with a smile.” he says, seeming to be speaking more to himself than Gon. “I can’t touch him, not with the same hands.”
Gon doesn’t press him, however much he wants to, but instead allows the kitten to do the insisting. He’s relentless, going so far as to lightly bite Killua’s wrist for his failure to comply with the demands.
And only then, finally, does Killua reach out a slow hand to stroke the kitten’s head. The kitten angles himself to encourage Killua to scratch behind his ears, which he does, making him purr, if possible, even louder.
Emboldened, Killua scratches the other ear without being prompted, and then moves down to the kitten’s chin, too.
“He likes you,” Gon says.
Killua doesn’t argue. He seems far too enraptured by the kitten, who has now crawled onto his lap.
“What should we name him?”
This time, Killua lifts his head. He’s smiling, soft and a little awestruck.
“Lux,” he says, but he’s looking at Gon as he speaks, not the kitten. “It means light.”