Title: Growing Up
Author: Celeste
Rating: PG-13 for shonen-ai hints
Genre: Fluff/Romance
Feedback: (yes!)
Pairing: KilluaxGon
Summary: Killua and what it means to grow up.
A/N: First Hunter x Hunter fic, originally a drabble by request of Ann-sempai. Kind of pointless and schmoopy, but fun to write.
Dedication: Ann, because she requested it and had the confidence in me not to screw up the whole thing. ;;
Word Count: 710
Time: 32 mins (no edits)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly enough, I don't even own any HxH merchandise. Bad fangirl, bad!
Distribution: Just lemme know?
It was funny that even after all the years, and all the adventures those years had held, that Gon was still so distinctly…Gon.
Killua tilted his head at an angle and watched his friend, who looked to be in serious, scintillating conversation with a squirrel.
He smiled and leaned back against the tree trunk behind him, turning eyes skyward, just listening to the excited babble bubbling forth from the other boy.
It was a voice, a tone, he'd heard a thousand times before, a thousand times every day for the past three years. It still made him smile now the same way as it had the first day.
"Killua!!!"
The white haired boy cracked an eye towards the other hunter at the call. "Mmm?"
Gon came racing back up to him, hands outstretched. He pulled up in front of the other boy, face split apart with the most exuberant grin. "Look!"
Killua glanced down at the handful of acorns and nuts Gon was presenting him with. "A present?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Mmm hmm!" Gon turned back to wave at the squirrel he'd been talking to, offering another "Thank you!!!" as he waved at it.
The squirrel chattered and skittered off.
Killua would never stop marveling at how Gon could so easily make friends, good friends, even in seemingly impossible situations. He mused that it might have been because of the brightness behind those eyes, the way Gon's simplicity and childish innocence always shone through, despite the years, despite the battles and the horrors and the adventures.
Gon was constant, steady, dependable. He would always smile, would always laugh, would always call Killua his dearest friend as he had since they were children.
Killua on the other hand was different. He felt an unavoidable tug upon himself, the call of adulthood not far in the distance pulling him along, forcing him to awaken to things he'd been innocent of before, back when he and Gon were 12 and both in their own ways naïve.
It was something he couldn't fight, the call of growing up, this feeling that the hugs they shared and the bed they slept in and the secrets and laughter and smiles between them were still as innocent as they had been when the two of them were mere kids. Those things felt distinctly different now, far beyond anything he had felt as a mere child. Now, as a youth no longer a child but not yet a man, Killua was beginning to feel different things, to feel growth and understanding and simultaneously, the weight of what those feelings entailed.
That was perhaps, the biggest difference between he and Gon. When he looked into the other boy's eyes he saw all the same light and laughter and joy that he had seen when they'd locked gazes for the very first time, as if time itself had frozen for Gon, wanting him to remain as he was always.
Sometimes, he felt as if that put a distance between them, some sort of invisible barrier that would forever separate them no matter how close they felt to one another.
"Ne…Killua… what are you thinking?"
Snapped out of his dreary thoughts by Gon's hand waving up and down in front of his face, the other boy shook himself out of his stupor. "I was thinking about you," he responded honestly.
Gon laughed at what seemed to him, pure silliness. "Why? I'm right here next to you, Killua!"
Killua smiled at that. "Aa. You are, aren't you?"
Sometimes he felt that there was a distance between he and Gon that he would never be able to bridge, that got farther and farther as time passed.
But then again, Gon was right in his own way. He was right here, with Killua.
And simply because of that, Killua knew that despite growing up, despite this new and strange emotion that welled up in his stomach whenever he sat alongside his companion, he would have something constant too. If Gon's innocence was what he would forever retain, Killua would take something too, something to keep with him forever.
Regardless of what adulthood might bring them, Killua was absolutely certain that it would still remain he and Gon, right there together.
END