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The first time Gon had ever experienced romantic attraction was with Kite.
Gon idolized Kite and wanted to be like him and to not be a burden. Gon also realized about half way while traveling with him that the grown man was unbelievably attractive. His long arms and legs and sharp angles, his super silky hair, piercing eyes. Once when Gon had accidentally seen his bare chest he had to take a few minutes desperately trying to erase the image from his mind and stop his heart from beating so fast.
Gon knew that this was a stupid crush. To start off Kite was way older than him and secondly Kite would obviously never have any interest in Gon in that regard. So Gon put his emotions aside as best as could and tried to live up to any and all of Kite’s expectations as best as he could. The whole point he was here was for training anyway.
The effort was moderately successful as he was able to control fond reactions to Kites existence to the most part with minimal staring and as much minimal daydreams of holding hands or of Kite liking him back as he could (he couldn’t help when his mind strayed but as soon as he was aware of the daydream he always shut it down as fast as possible). Gon absolutely didn’t want Kite to know because he thought that it would make him a burden or that it could make Kite respect him less. Also Gon didn’t want Kite to know because it would hurt his own feelings with the inevitable rejection
All of these thoughts and slipups would be completely imperceptible for pretty much everyone, even those that call Gon their friend. Well everyone except Killua who pretty much has been glued to Gon’s side for the past two years straight. And so Killua notices.
Killua doesn’t really necessarily understand; he just knows that his friend is acting strange, that it’s mostly to do with Kite, and that he doesn’t really like it.
The whole thing puts Killua’s entire body on edge. Killua is scared and the voice of his brother in his head is telling him to run, run, run. Killua is scared that he and Gon are going to die. Killua is scared that he’s going to abandon Gon because of his fear. Killua is scared because he feels this rift between the two of them growing and he’s scared of Gon changing.
Killua is insecure.
Killua kind of resents Kite. He respects the hunter a lot, but he resents him and blames him. But Killua likes staying with Gon. And Killua is getting good training. And logically Killua knows that it’s not Kite’s fault (it’s always his own fault after all, muddy dark and bitter).
When Kite’s arm goes flying Killua feels horrible. So does Gon. Their feelings towards Kite multiple and accelerate in that split second and Gon feels like his chest is being crushed and Killua hates Kite for being so stupid for protecting them.
Pitou’s nen is like poison.
Killua does what his bodies been aching to do since they got there (for months, years, his whole life maybe, run with his tail between his legs like the fucking coward he is).
Gon has a dream of Kite screaming at him, he’s small in his dream, small and bleeding and stupid. Then he’s big and Kite’s arm is flying and all he hears is idiot, idiot, idiot.
Killua has nightmares of Gon dying over and over and it’s all his fault.
They wake up and they both hate themselves.
The second time Gon felt romantic attraction was strange and upsetting. The whole thing which had lasted a total of a day had made him sick to his stomach.
It had been an entire year since the chimera ants and Gon had gotten over his crush on Kite completely. Gon felt stupid and childish from the whole thing and in generally preferred to not think about it at all.
Gon had been living on Whale Island catching up with school and was doing his best trying to get his nen back while training on the down low. Mito-san had somehow gotten more protective of him since he had returned and didn’t want Gon doing anything excessive after hearing a fraction of the stories of Gon’s adventures. She did however permit him to help around on the docks which Gon tried his best to his to use advantage.
Growing up on Whale Island Gon was used to the different people that passed through, was accustomed to dealing with the tourists to fishermen to cougars and sometimes make an extra jenny out of it for Mito-san.
It was unbearably hot that day and a young sailor, fair hair, fair skin, and a sardonic twist to his jaw, got off the boat and asked Gon for directions, Gon’s brain sort of malfunctioned for a second.
Gon’s stomach churned at the familiar feeling. He had no idea where it came from or why this guy in particular dug it up from the depths Gon had buried any and all feelings like this.
Gon stuttered but quickly recovered. He showed the guy around, got paid, left, and tried very hard not to think of him for the rest of the day. His hands were sweaty and he felt so much regret for not talking with the man more but also a severe sense of self-preservation paralyzing him.
Gon never learned his name, and the next day when he was working at the docks he heard how much an asshole he had been to some other islanders any and all attraction to the man was stampeded by disgust.
Still when Mito-san was joking about one of the towns young fishermen getting married and having a kid soon Gon realized that he would probably never have a kid. He wasn’t fully aware due to how much he aggressively ignored these feelings but he was starting to become aware that he had a preference and that he would probably never have a wife. Which to a certain extent relieved him because fears that he would be a father like Ging was that he didn’t even know he had ebbed away with this sudden certainty.
Gon didn’t really think he would have a husband either though. He didn’t think he would ever be in a relationship with anyone. The idea scared him. Romantic feelings scared him. They turned a part of him sour in a way that he was uncomfortable with.
Killua and Alluka and Nanika had saved his life and there wasn’t a mare on his body as evidence to what had happened. Sometimes Gon wishes he had scars from this. Wishes because he still hates himself and because he feels scared. There’s a dissonance between his interior versus his exterior and it’s becoming an itch.
The first crush Killua ever had was on a girl he killed. They were both seven and he was supposed to pretend to be her friend at the playground, gain the watchful parents trust, lead her astray, and murder her.
She had laughed brightly at Killua’s sandcastle making skills. Killua was caught off guard and was angry in a way that wasn’t homicidal, which was a strange feeling for him.
She smiled wide with a missing tooth in the same place that Killua was missing a tooth. They both got excited over it, she said they were twins, and held his tiny hands. Their reasons for missing teeth were grossly different but for the first time Killua felt normal. He smiled and laughed like how he did around Alluka and all but forgot his mission until Illumi’s eyes met his.
With a blank face Killua mercilessly destroyed the girl.
He was blank as he looked at her barely recognizable corpse.
Killua didn’t feel anything until he tried to go to sleep that night. Killua had felt normal for the first time in his life earlier and now he feels more disgusting and dirty than ever before.
Killua didn’t cry about it not because he didn’t want to but almost because he felt like he couldn’t. He was too scared to cry. Killua pretended for years that it hadn’t bothered him deeply.
It was three days since he ran away five years later before he felt safe enough to cry. It was still fretful and insecure even though he was countries away from his family. It was so hard to maintain because any sound that disturbed him in the slightest brought him back into apathy and it wasn’t until he felt safe enough again that he could continue.
It was a few weeks later he joined the hunter exam.
She was five years old and infatuated with Gon in every single way. She had been born shortly before Gon had decided to take the Hunter exam and here she was speaking and walking and giving Gon flowers and candies from her pockets. Everyone thought it was the most adorable thing ever. Gon even thought it was cute.
She had bright eyes like the sea and a toothy smile. She looks at Gon and sees the world. She seeks him out, follows him, laughs and laughs, and shares as much as she can. She shared her candy and her hand and her toys and her laughs and her drawings and rocks and seashells she had found.
On her sixth birthday she tried to give him her presents and that’s when Gon had to sit her down and explain why she shouldn’t be giving away her gifts. She pouted and looked like she was about to cry. Feebly she asked if he didn’t want her gifts. Gon asked why she kept giving everything to him. She said that it was because she loved him. She said that she wanted to share everything with him. She stuttered and tried to put together feelings and thoughts she couldn’t understand.
Gon realized that giving was the only way she knew how to express her love. Gon felt stupid and slower than ever before. There were many different ways to show love and how to act upon it.
Gon tried his best to explain to her she shouldn’t give everything away just because she loves someone. Gon explains that her selflessness is admirable but not very healthy. Gon tells her she should try to love herself as much as she loves Gon if not more. Gon is pretty sure he wasn’t able to explain any of it properly. Gon feels like he’s talking to someone else, flustered by his inability to express what he needs to before he’s snapped back into reality by her bursting into tears.
She doesn’t talk to Gon for a week but when she does it’s behind her mother’s leg. Gon is more relieved than he’s been in a while and didn’t realize how much he valued this little girl until she was ignoring him. She gave him flowers and mumbled into her mom’s dress shyly. Gon gently asked her to repeat herself as he crouched down to her eyelevel. She reached over and whispered in his ear that she still loves him very much but she’s decided that she loves herself more and she’s number one in her own heart. Her feet shuffle in the dirt and Gon despite all efforts starts to cry.
Alluka loves Killua.
Killua loves Alluka.
Alluka loves Nanika.
Nanika loves Alluka.
Nanika loves Killua.
Killua loves Nanika.
Alluka’s first crush is a devastating blow to Killua. She won’t stop talking about the girl excitedly babbling about how pretty she is and how she wants to hold her hand or something and she laughs bashfully and tries to hide how insecure she feels all of a sudden.
Alluka is pretty sure nobody but Killua will love her. She’s fine with that because she loves Killua. But Alluka feels like no one else will ever like her and that hurts sometimes. She doesn’t care if people she doesn’t know like her. But she wants people she likes to like her back.
Killua feels disgusted with how insecure this makes him feel. How he feels like he resents Alluka’s crush more than he’s happy and proud about her first crush. Killua obviously doesn’t feel any romantic feelings towards his sister but he loves her dearly and purely. He feels like Alluka is going to leave him one day and he’s scared about how alone in the world he will be.
Killua is scared of being alone because Killua hates himself. He doesn’t want to be stuck with someone that hates him his whole life. He loves Alluka with everything he has, because she’s his sister, and because she is important to him, and because she makes Killua feel loved. Killua feels like he’s starving and Alluka is the equivalent of three meals a day that he’s never experienced before. Alluka loves Killua and it’s so, so, so important to him.
Killua is good at hiding what he feels. He teases Alluka and encourages her to ask the other girl out. Alluka is flustered at the idea and rejects it vehemently. Killua says she’s going to be a hit with the ladies when she grows up, Alluka tries very hard to beat up her stupid brother flushed and with steam coming out her ears. Killua laughs.
That night Killua is awake and scared and Nanika’s eyes are on him. She puts a hand on his cheek and says she loves him. She repeats this over and over as if trying to communicate something different but can’t find the right words. Killua doesn’t understand but cherishes every last moment putting his own hand over Nanika’s and saying he loves her too.
Nothing comes out of Alluka’s first crush. Soon they have to ditch this town, this country, this continent and Alluka said bye without even being able to exchange email addresses with the other girl. As she cried on the plane ride to another foreign land to a bunch of new strangers that had no idea who they are Killua felt like he was taking away her freedom in their journey for it. Killua hated himself bitterly as he was sure the two girls would never be able to meet again and it would all be his fault.
Alluka cries because she’s heartbroken and wishes she had been braver or had tried harder. She feels secure in her brothers arm and lets herself feel and grieve the death of something that never started.
Afterwards she’s glad and grateful that she was able to experience any of this at all. Her world is expanding one step at a time as she stays by her brothers’ side. Her existence feels bigger and bigger with each place they go to, every person they meet, and all the new things she’s experiencing and living in a world that’s not four inescapable walls of fake blue.
Gon has always had this weird feeling that he’s never let himself dwell on long. Mito-san and his great grandmother both raised him with so much love. The villagers all seemed to care for Gon. So Gon didn’t like to think about how he probably doesn’t deserve this. That he has this feeling like he’s someone intruding in a place he doesn’t belong in.
He tries to be as polite and well-mannered and happy as possible. Because these people love and care for him. And he loves and cares about all of them too. He doesn’t want to be a burden to Mito-san. He doesn’t want to cause trouble for the villagers. In return everyone calls him a good boy. Gon tries to find solace and peace in everyone’s praises.
But in a place that he really tries never to think about is how he knows Ging abandoned him. Gon wants to know why. He doesn’t however want to focus on how it makes him feel small sometimes, how it makes him feel like he’s someone who’s not wanted or that he feels like he’s bothering others by his existence.
He never expresses these insecurities because he knows they would only upset the people he loved and things were much better when he ignored them. It’s the start of a long string of nagging emotions he chooses to ignore. Gon smiles bright because he loves the world. Gon is pretty sure he loves himself despite his doubts and fears. Gon leaves home and people that love him because he’s selfish and also because he feels like he’s stayed for too long, damaged their ecosystem enough, and that the responsible thing would be to leave. He decides to chase after his father and secretly hopes that maybe when he does he’ll find a way to feel like he belongs.
As Ging said it was what he found along the way to his goal that was so much more important than when he finally met Ging. In the two years since he left whale island a lot of crazy, stupid, and scary things happened to Gon but he found something incredibly precious to him along the way. When Gon climbs down the world tree he realizes that Killua is miles and miles away from him now and Gon feels incredibly homesick.
He’s confused when he reaches Whale Island and the homesickness doesn’t go away.
It takes him a few months to realize that it’s because for the past two years Killua was his home.
Gon feels stupid.
The first and only time Gon fell in love with someone was when he met Killua again.
No that’s wrong, Gon’s pretty sure it was when Killua did that really cool skateboard trick when they first met.
No that’s probably wrong too. There’s so many times Gon’s positive that’s when he fell in love with Killua that it’s a kaleidoscope inside his head.
But when he meets Killua again he heart lurches in that painful way he associated with things he didn’t want and it’s hard to breathe and he’s sure this is the first time he’s fallen in love with Killua like this. He grew out his fluffy hair just enough that it’s in a ponytail now, keeping the hair off his neck, pulled back into a puffball on the back of his head. He’s taller now and his voice is deeper and he jaw is more pronounced. Gon’s mind short-circuits at how beautiful he realizes Killua is.
Killua is grinning and being a mischievous piece of shit towards Alluka and she’s pouting and of course she’s beautiful too, but Killua’s cat like curve to his spine and the happiness on his face is something Gon wants.
Killua always seemed to pull out the worst selfish part of Gon. Gon is so scared by this application of want to romantic attraction that he wants to run away instead of making his presence known and reuniting his best most important friend in the whole wide world. He’s terrified of Killua and terrified of his emotions and he wants to run and not deal with this. Gon loves Killua dearly but he feels like he’s not allowed to love Killua like this. That this will just turn himself thoroughly sour and make Killua sour too.
He hurts and his heart aches and yells at him to go to the stupidly beautiful white-haired boy and his adorable sister but his mind screams hateful things at himself.
Gon remembers little hands giving him flowers and unconditional love.
He realizes how she was probably scared that Gon hated her after he had scolded her on her own birthday. That she had confessed to him her love even though before it had been painfully obvious.
Gon wants but he also wants to give Killua everything he can too. He wants to dedicate himself to Killua. He hates the him who selfishly took and took from Killua in the past, the him who said Killua didn’t care, to the him that alienated his best friend.
He wanted to give Killua flowers and his time and candy and his smiles and laughs and every last shred of happiness that he could possibly give to another person. Gon realized that he had a new goal. It was a shining gift in front of him that made him want to cry and laugh.
In the end it was Gon’s homesickness and gave him the courage for his first step. Killua noticed him almost immediately, lightning eyes widening.
The first time Killua loved a person was when he was three. He was holding baby Alluka and her tiny baby hands reached up and grabbed his nose.
He knew that he would love Alluka forever from that moment onwards.
The first time Killua fell in love with someone was probably when Gon brought him to Whale Island. Killua loved Gon preciously since he had been picked up at Kukuroo Mountain but it wasn’t until Gon shared his world so openly and happily with Killua that he fell in love with the other boy.
Killua and Gon matched and it made Killua happy. They were both twelve, they were both mischievous together, they trained and grew stronger together, they wore matching clothing a lot. Even with how they were different made them into a set, their dichotomy creating a sense of comfort in Killua. A sense of belonging right there next to this other boy. White hair versus black, innocence versus skepticism, the sun versus the moon.
It made him happy, but.
Being twelve this was confusing and a bit overbearing.
Killua fell in love with Gon in fragments and each time he was scared at how his feelings seemingly multiplied.
When Gon said Killua didn’t care he felt betrayed. He was scared and desperate and cared so damn much he was giving himself migraines with it all. He cared so much that he knew he would and have almost died for Gon.
Killua gave and gave because he loved Gon. He didn’t really expect much in return because the fact that he loved Gon was enough for him to want to give everything to him. So Killua gave. Killua wanted to stay with Gon so when Bisky said he would leave Gon to die Killua tried even more to protect Gon, dedicated more of his existence to him.
When Gon had said it had to be his hands that got ripped to shreds by that stupid dodgeball Killua felt important. It was an addicting feeling for him. Killua didn’t care if he got hurt if he was important to Gon.
Gon said Killua didn’t care.
Killua didn’t really believe Kite was alive but he believed in Gon so he followed Gon into certain death. Killua cared about Gon. Killua cared about Gon staying alive because he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to handle a world that existed without Gon.
Killua felt like he had been spit in the face. He hurt.
Killua followed Gon into certain death because Killua loved and he dragged Gon’s corpse away from certain death because he loved.
Killua left Gon.
There was this time Killua and Alluka and Nanika were at the beach. Alluka was excited to wear a bikini and Killua took a bunch of pictures of her and helped tie up her hair and the flung sunscreen at each other and ate watermelon.
Killua has never been fond of his hands. They’ve been purposed into weapons of murder since he was born. They’re lanky and deformed for death.
When Gon destroyed his hands he had been more than eager to get rid of his hands, caring more about his importance than them.
When Killua cuts the watermelon with his deformed hands with precision better than if he were to use the knife they had forgot to bring it was the first time he liked his hands. Alluka and him laughed as they liked watermelon juice from their fingers.
Killua realized that he could like his hands, he could learn to like himself, for the first time.
He took a photo of the perfectly sliced watermelon.
He looked at it when he hated himself the most.
He never told anyone because he thought that it was stupid and embarrassing. It’s just a watermelon, it doesn’t clean his hands, not really. But for once it’s not about whether his hands deserve redemption it’s about liking a part of himself.
Killua has always been confident, especially in his skills. He knows when he’s stronger than others and he knows when he’s weaker and he uses this knowledge to his advantage.
Killua has never ever liked himself.
Nanika says watermelon sometimes when Alluka is asleep and Killua can’t sleep. It’s a new word and it scares Killua at first with how unexpected it is. She smiles wide and goes to sleep.
Killua thinks he understands what Nanika was trying to say now.
It’s a weird sort of dance he does with himself but he’s starting to figure it out. One small step at a time and with a weird crazy spin every once in a while Killua starts to find happiness.
Gon is right in front of him and they’re both stalled.
They had kept in contact over emails for the past two years. Each learning bits and pieces from each other’s adventures. They never asked to meet up again, like it was some unspoken taboo subject. Killua had kept making excuses to himself about why they shouldn’t but in the end it’s because he wasn’t brave enough to reach out for Gon again. Gon didn’t because as much as he wanted to reach out for Killua he felt like he didn’t deserve too. He was pretty sure Killua didn’t want him to be near him anymore and he didn’t want to intrude.
Gon and Killua were stalled in front of each other. Each and every thought they thought they could turn into words short circuited before they were able to say a thing.
Killua was holding Alluka’s hand and Alluka was holding his. Only Alluka could feel how sweaty and how tightly Killua was holding onto her. Alluka felt relied upon and also worried for her brother and was pretty sure she might punch Gon if he said something wrong.
Killua has spent a long time getting along with himself. Killua’s goal is to be okay even if he’s by himself. To like himself and be with himself even if no one wants to be with him. After protecting Alluka this is the most important thing to him right now.
Gon is trying his best to understand his emotions and act on them properly. He has been for quite a long time. He’s trying to be more responsible and he’s trying to be someone he respects. He keeps finding endless reasons to dislike himself but that’s also about coming to terms with his emotions and he’s learning how to deal with that too instead of burying and suppressing.
Both of them are half done and half way better than they were before.
Both of them feel normal for the first time in years.
There’s a spark of hope and whole lot of love and they just need to take their first steps.
They both start speaking at the same time.
Killua is reminded of matching teeth.
Killua smiles brightly, eyes shining and cheeks hurting. He squeezes Alluka’s hand and breathes.
“Yo, Gon.”
Gon bursts into tears.