Work Text:
Killua is every bit as beautiful as Gon remembers him. Or more, even.
The last time Gon had seen him, he’d been shrouded in glowing white light, like an angel. Or a star. Or lightning made flesh. And that had given Gon a certain amount of peace, knowing that his final image on earth would be of Killua, bright and shimmering and warm. That he’d pass on into whatever came next with the afterimage of Killua’s light burning behind his eyelids. Wherever Gon was going, he could take comfort in the fact that at least he wouldn’t be in the dark.
But, if it’s even possible, Killua is now somehow brighter still, standing unilluminated and wide-eyed and pale in the center of the hotel room. Brighter, because Gon’s vision isn’t going dim and hazy around the edges like it was last time. Because Gon isn’t watching him fade down a long, dark tunnel as he surrenders to the alluring pull of unconsciousness.
“Hi,” Gon says, because he isn’t sure what else to start with.
For a long moment, Killua stands perfectly still, gaze locked with Gon’s, until, all at once, his eyes fill with tears and he sinks to his knees, head bowed and trembling violently.
“Killua!”
In an instant, Gon is crouched at Killua’s side, but the moment he places a hand on his back, Killua scrambles back as if he’d been slapped.
“Don’t touch me,” he hisses.
“I— what ?”
“Don’t touch me,” Killua repeats. “Christ, Gon, are you really going to act like nothing happened? Like you didn’t spend weeks on a ventilator, one wrong move away from crumbling to fucking ash?”
Gon spends a moment in stunned silence; he hadn’t necessarily expected an easy, carefree reunion with Killua, but he certainly hadn’t expected this.
“I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Killua, I’m so, so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
That isn’t true, though—Gon knows exactly what he’d been thinking. It had crescendoed throughout his skull like an ever-mounting headache, far past the point of bearability.
It’s my fault.
A person like me doesn’t have a right to keep living.
All of it is my fault.
It hurts too much.
I can’t continue on like this.
I want it to stop.
I just want everything to stop.
Please, just make it stop.
I want to die. Please. If only to get a moment of quiet.
“We’re well past ‘sorry,’ Gon,” Killua spits, breaking Gon from his reverie. “I had to restart your heart a dozen times when I carried your mangled body to the hospital. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t really cover that sort of situation.”
Gon nods, refusing himself any self-pity. Killua’s rage is the least of what he deserves right now.
“Do you want to hit me?” he offers. “You could, if it would make you feel better.”
Killua’s face goes impossibly white, and then flushes red.
“I don’t want to fucking hit you.” Killua’s voice hardly rises above a whisper, but for some reason, it chills Gon as much as it would if he were yelling. “Talk about missing the entire point.”
“Then just tell me what you want from me.” Gon’s outright begging now, but he can’t bring himself to care. “You don’t want me to apologize. You don’t want to hit me. What do I need to do to make this right?”
Killua blinks, brow furrowing, as if he hadn’t expected to be asked so directly. But then his gaze goes hard and determined.
“I want you to swear to me, right here and right now, that you’re never going to do something like that again. I want you to promise me that the next time you get in over your head and you think that there isn’t a way out, that you’ll come to me and you’ll let me help you instead of just pulling away. I want you to promise me that, and I want you to mean it.”
Gon’s shaking violently, although he doesn’t know why. And at last, he manages a stiff, jerky nod.
“I promise,” he says softly. “Killua, I swear. It’ll never happen again.”
But before the words are even fully out of his mouth, Killua’s pulled him into an embrace, just this side of too tight.