Part Two/Three

Gon loses the subsequent fight over wearing the jacket because Killua puts all the stray candies down his back the second he puts it on. And laughs at him.

So that's where they all went. Damn it.

They sort of have a case at the moment, but since it mostly requires them to do what they'd be doing here anyway – run around in the woods, get into everything, hang out on the lakeshore, talk to people, and chase something every so often – it's not taking up a lot of their time. The vaguely governmental people who brought them in on this (Gon was maybe not listening to those details) are all in favor of endangered animals, he'd gathered, but not of people importing them and introducing them to environments where they don't belong, where it's too warm for them, and where they're going to run into the people who visit the resort town and the fantastically enormous lake in the depths of the wilderness park.

The vaguely governmental people (Gon has this shortened to 'people who are paying us to run around in the woods', which is not really shorter at all but covers the important details) would like to know who thinks it's a good idea to release large predators in an area that can't support them without preying on humans, and where exactly these predators happen to be right now. It is Gon's favorite sort of Hunt in that it's the sort of thing he'd otherwise be doing for fun on the weekends.

After breakfast they head up into the lakeside forest and the not-quite-mountains beyond, because there they have the freedom and the space to run and train and practice and spar without anyone complaining. People do, which is annoying, and it's much more difficult to meditate and work with people interrupting.

Gon likes this place a lot. He likes the forest and the animals in it, even the wolves that shouldn't be there. He likes the lake because it's perfect for swimming in and even fishing in once he's far enough away from the resort, and there's an island sort of in the middle of the lake that looks like a funny hat.

He likes that the two of them can do more or less whatever they want whenever they want. He loves being here with Killua by his side laughing at him to keep up as they retrace their steps from a few days ago, up to the outcropping they found high over the lake and far enough off the human trails that it would be their space alone.

He breathes in the rich summer air coming off the lake as it warms, scenting the life within it and the stray edges of smoke and humanity from the resort on the shore. He centers himself on right here and right now.

He's pretty sure that their various teachers accuse them of not practicing just to get on their nerves, rather than because they haven't been training. They have. Gon still loves it, even more so after he burned away his power and went through the long slow process of building it back up again.

It is so indescribably good to have this again.

Even he'd thought it was impossible, and Gon doesn't believe in impossible. He'd bargained for power and he'd paid, burned himself out and burned himself up and he'd felt, for a time, like his very soul was ashes.

He'd like to think that this was why he couldn't see how badly Killua was hurting and couldn't really come to terms with the lengths Killua had gone to for him. Only later, far too late, after he had been the one to walk away, had he learned that Killua had basically started a war and threatened to take apart a good chunk of the world if the world didn't give Gon back. Maybe the ashes in his core were why he'd forgotten some of the things he'd said in his madness, and why he couldn't see past both masks, the one that he'd put up to protect himself and reassure the people who cared about him, and the one his very best friend in all the world had raised against him to protect him.

"No," Killua had said, when they'd met again after only a few months apart, both knowing that they never wanted to do that again. Gon had been afraid that they wouldn't be able to hunt together anymore, with his powers all ashes and the last traces of mist. "No, I don't believe that. I don't accept that."

They started learning to do this in those days, all on their own, without being taught. Killua's idea.

Today with the sun well up over the lake Gon sits down across from his best friend and closes his eyes, ready. They started by counting each breath together, at first, but now they slip into the rhythm automatically, comfortably.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

He steadies his heart and his thoughts, and the fire settles against his skin.

Gon breathes, and reaches out without moving, feeling the fire – light – heat – warmth – life – breath - power of nen come to his command and wrap around him. He pushes it outward, gently and inevitably like a familiar stretch. It expands beyond him, and he remembers.

"I don't care," Killua had said. "I don't care if you can't remember how it feels. Somewhere inside you there's a switch that'll make it work again. I know. You just need to remember how it feels." Gon had not been bothering to protest at this point, or to say that he'd already thought of this. "Look," his friend had insisted. "Sit." Gon had sat down with him out of sheer reflex. "Give me your hands."

He had.

"Close your eyes. Breathe with me."

Nothing had happened, and nothing had happened, and more amounts of nothing had happened except that holding Killua's hands was nice, why hadn't he done this before? But then to his shock he'd felt again the warmth of aura wrapping around his hands like a favorite pair of gloves, familiar and yet not quite the same.

Just a whisper, that first time, like the touch of the breath of a kitten with its eyes shut tight and tail all ratty, still wet from the shock of its birth.

Wait, I know that, something inside him, shattered and starving, had responded. And he'd reached out, weak and clumsy and grasping, but at least beginning to remember what he was reaching for, even if he couldn't touch it, even if it could only touch the shell of his skin.

Breathe in. The green smell of sun on the lake, traces of a motor burning fuel heading out to the island, Killua's warm-fur scent. Reach. Here I am, where are you? Find me.

It had taken months, working from that sense memory, building Gon's powers back up on the scaffolding of Killua's power and Killua's faith in him and Killua's resolve to teach him how to do it from the beginning again. Part of him did remember. Part of him just couldn't stand to let Killua down.

So he'd clung to that feeling of something just out of reach, clawing his way back towards it as if they were climbing a rock face together in the dark. As if he'd slipped into a space with not even the slightest handhold or flicker of light, and Killua had reached out to give him something to hold on to while he searched for a grip on the unforgiving stone, groping blindly. Like he'd broken a limb that had withered with disuse, and was being taught to use it again as someone else manipulated the muscles to teach them all over again the way they were supposed to go.

Months, to nurture sparks from the ashes of a wildfire, and fan the embers into the warmth of flame again, where they'd used to measure the time it took them to learn things in days or weeks at most. They'd been some of the most frustrating months of Gon's life, and certainly Killua hadn't enjoyed them either. He's pretty sure the two of them slammed more doors on each other and then shouted through them during those months than any other time before or since.

And yet, it had been so completely worth it Gon doesn't have the words. Only the bone-deep, soul-deep feeling of it, of being whole again.

No one had ever taught them how to do this, but just over a year later it has become part of their training not just to build up their nen and train it to do what they want but to work on merging and balancing it between them. They've spent quite a few late nights planning what they might be able to do with this skill.

One day they might be able to work in combination, in battle even, to do things together that they can't do individually. Besides, it makes a lot of sense, they've figured out. An Enhancer used to building things up and reinforcing them, bringing out the power held within other entities as well as himself, and an Transmuter accustomed to turning one form of energy into another – why shouldn't they work together?

Given that (for all they squabble and compete and cheat and brawl and fight and argue in shouted half-sentences so that one of them can't even finish a thought without the other jumping in and trying to wrestle it to the ground) they work together so well that it feels like a blasphemy not to fight for the joy of it?

Now he breathes in unison with his best friend, and reaches out his hands because they're close enough to touch. He doesn't need to, but it's easier, setting up that connection with skin against skin, and they settle into the heart of the flame and burn together, mist like light like water like breath.

Breathe. Link with me.

And –

There you are.

Killua; his aura not conflicting with Gon's, pushing him away – merging instead, the boundary between them blurred.

Breathing, and thinking, and feeling: meditation and thought and planning are never very far apart for Gon, these days, because that's how he does things. He focuses on what he wants to achieve and never quits, and meditation and nen are tools to get him there.

Thank you, Gon thinks now. Thank you for not giving up on me.

This trick feels like gratitude, and like love –

like body heat with the space in the middle of the mattress between them, or not at all if it's cold or if they've gravitated towards each other for comfort like they did last night –

like breathing together, their life forces linked –

like peace, and security, and safety –

like listening to a story from a friend he hasn't seen in too long, knowing they've come out of the adventure alive and victorious –

like sparring when it feels like a dance he's known all his life and never had to learn –

like the warmth of Killua's hands in his, loose and relaxed but curled around his just a bit, as if to hold him there.

Gon likes that very much. He wishes, sometimes, he could do more, but… Gon is good at people; almost as good as he is with animals. Really. People are complicated, but deep inside they make sense, even if they don't know it themselves and even if they're lying with all they are.

He's spent years understanding Killua – he's never going to get bored with that – and one of the things he understands is that if he leads Killua will follow him anywhere. That he could propose a hike to the moon and Killua would roll his eyes and be scathing and tease him about it, and then walk with him anyway.

If you ask – if you lead – if I know for sure you're not just agreeing because it's what I want, then –

But this is good. This might be perfect. This might be one of the places he comes back to when he needs a breath of calm in the middle of chaos. This moment. Here and now, right alongside a night spent under the stars with a campfire guttering and the familiar incomprehensible smell of the endless sea, the night he first really understood he had a friend for life.

It's – people fuss about the word intimate, he's learned, but it is. They're good together, so good that that most unique form of energy, their very essences, their life forces, do not repel each other but attract and blend and link.

He wonders if Killua can feel any of what he is thinking and feeling, and decides he hopes so.

It's glorious to run.

Gon leaps from a rock and tries to change direction in midair with only partial success, shoulder slamming into a tree branch and using the impact to slow himself before he skids down the slope and into the bushes that will probably have something with thorns in, or a lurking stickyvine. Those are great at eating the billions of mosquitoes and midges that swarm anywhere there's shallow water, but nasty if you happen to touch them, and Gon doesn't fancy escaping from one – it'll take far too much time and the sticky secretions burn, too. He has to drop his hands to the ground to bring himself back under control, digging his fingers into the ground cover of dried-out grass and leaves and the thousand living things that go into good earth, caring nothing for the stain on his hands and dirt under work-blunted fingernails, forgetting it the moment he adjusts his course again to adapt to the more level ground.

He spots a clearing ahead and races for it, picking up his pace so he hits the open area coming up on almost full speed, with sunlight turned green and dappled and ever-changing by the canopy overhead. He gets only a glance of it as he races through, a sense of color and light and the aggrieved whistles of a bird protesting the intrusion into its territory, leaving it all behind again in a heartbeat.

Some of the landscape is familiar, since they've spent some time hunting in the park, exploring and wandering, following trails and scent and spoor and tracks, and just running sometimes, like now. There's a trail designated for humans a little ways to the east, but it doesn't lead to the makeshift finish line so it doesn't help him any. Gon maps what he knows of the area in his head unconsciously, drawing out knowledge of what lies ahead of him and how he can get to the target first. He's trying to balance what's right in front of him – a tangle of trees he'll have to detour around, sacrificing the direct path for a more roundabout one, gaining time by vaulting over the outcropping of stone and even by pausing for the instant it takes him to get a glimpse of the route just ahead of him – with the remainder of the quickest possible way to the split tree on the lakeshore.

"I'll race you," Gon had challenged happily, rising from his seat on the stone and stretching his arms over his head.

There really are very few rules to this game; it's the simplest challenge they can do over and over again. But as the challenged, Killua got to pick the finish line. He'd looked out over the lake, still kneeling on the ground – but Gon was not deceived, it was looking more and more like a runner's crouch with every second – and pointed.

"See that tree on the shore?"

Gon leaned over his shoulder, took the opportunity to enjoy doing so, and followed his line of sight without missing a beat. "The two-topped one, with the branch trailing out over the water? With the stone at its base? Okay! Go!"

And they'd run.

In step for a moment, side by side, pace for pace, the harmony between them singing in the small sounds, but then Gon had swerved one way and Killua had dodged another and by the time he'd had the chance to look around again, away from the forest flashing by, his friend had disappeared.

For now, Gon runs alone.

There's something perfect and pure about exercising a body that feels it's been sitting down and staying still for too long. Gon's power is as much in his body as in his aura; he cannot train one without the other.

He can feel his heart pounding steadily, interested and ready rather than stressed – he could go so much faster than this if he was on level ground, but level ground is no fun. Every breath tells him something about the world around him, rich and delicious and fascinating, a thousand stories and trails to follow and only a handful that matter most right now. His muscles thrum with it, rather than burning, energy well-used and so much more of it to tap, straining at the restraint he holds it behind. Releasing it is like a deep breath, a complicated trick executed perfectly after many attempts, a battle where every step slots home like his fingers folding together or magnets finding their mates.

Gon could run forever, sometimes.

It's a great game, almost a race and almost a chase and ending up as something in between.

The goal is to get to the target first, which is why it's a race.

The only real rule is…well, to get to the target first. But it's perfectly fair for Gon to use nen to slow Killua down, or vice versa – the only skill off-limits is Killua's Godspeed technique, which makes it not a game anymore. They both know Gon can't outrun that.

But everything else is allowed, and that's why it's a chase, so there are two ways to play – run as fast as possible, or waylay each other. It's almost always a mix of both, a game of strategy as much as speed.

It's a bit like Zevil Island, only just the two of them and far more fun.

Gon has lost track of where Killua is – he could be far ahead, or behind him, or setting up some trap or distraction. It doesn't matter. He's enjoying the run too much to care. He leaps a fallen tree and comes down again with his boots only a hairsbreadth away from a patch of moss that might have sent him skidding out of control and into the other dead tree, which is going to crash down for good the next time a high wind or a young Hunter hits it. So Gon hits it anyway, on purpose, not even feeling the scratch of dead rough bark and the broken-off ends of shattered wood as he shields himself with nen and knocks it down to leave an obstacle in his wake.

Some of the uncountable sparrows that live around the lake and get eaten all the time by the poorly-named fishing hawks scatter away from it, scolding him, and he laughs at their outrage and the joy of the race.

A moment later he picks up a scent that brings him instantly to a halt, coming to a stop so sudden he feels like he's humming with it, as if he can feel the reverberations running through his bones, snapped back and penned up again inside him, but racing still.

Gon can smell blood – human blood – Killua's blood.

He can tell the difference, instinctively recognizing the scent as a danger sign, and he is momentarily afraid. It's an automatic response, because that scent means someone or something has hurt his friend, and anything that can shed Killua's blood is something Gon wants crushed and dead, not just because Gon would not see Killua hurt for any reason, but because anything dangerous enough to harm him is incredibly dangerous.

Gods, what if there's another bear? The first one had been bad enough. At least they'd known she was out there. Gon had picked up her scent, heavy and rank and sullen, thick and almost blinding, the scent of milk and cubs buried in it, but no scent of cubs, so she was going to be furious, if she had been separated from her cubs when she'd been brought here. They'd tracked her together, carefully, as befit an animal that size.

Gon does not want to track another bear. She'd been mad, overheated in her thick fur, and lost, and they'd been reluctant to hurt her: it was not her fault that someone had taken her away from her babies and turned her loose here to scare tourists, far from home. Penning her in had been work, not the play that was radio-tagging wolves with the dart gun. Gon is very upset with whoever thinks setting predators loose here where they don't belong is a good idea. Whatever they're trying to achieve, this is not the way to do it. Finding these people would be a definite bonus to this Hunt. Gon knows a desert they could be dumped in, alone and lost with no tools and maybe, if he's feeling generous, a single shoe left to them; that would be justice.

He takes a deep breath to home in on the scent of blood, trying to stifle the instinctive fear and focus instead on locating the source of that jarring scent. It's like biting into metal and feeling it paint itself down the back of his throat.

Except when he locates the smear of blood it's not very much at all, just a thin stripe across a sun-warmed stone – just enough to catch his attention and make him stop, and almost certainly deliberate.

"That's a dirty trick!" Gon yells at the uncaring forest, impressed and annoyed all at once. Except there are no such things as dirty tricks in the chasing game, where anything goes. And yet, they still cheat like anything.

The blood is a new one. Gon will have to come up with something nasty to get back at Killua for that one. It's not quite as bad as the peppermint oil bomb, which had been awful – Gon had run straight into that, and it had been like crashing at full speed into a wall of searing, blinding, ice-cold stink that left him staggering and reeling, the sense he relies on more than he admits obliterated in a single stroke. Peppermint had tinged every breath he took for a week, and he may never enjoy peppermint candy again. Freaking peppermint. Peppermint oil is vile.

Gon had set up a minor avalanche the next time he'd gotten the chance, in revenge, and it was a shame he'd overlooked the metallic ore in the rock face and all over the canyon, because Killua had figured out how to channel his lightning through it, making running across the stone like walking through a maze of static charges and being zapped with every step. Not any more harmful than a pinch, but extremely irritating.

Whenever they run out of more inventive ideas, they can always just ambush each other and brawl on the ground and shout and taunt and chase each other in circles. This happens a lot.

They don't play this game in urban environments anymore, or in any space with people who aren't Hunters – at least Hunters know to get out of their way, and are usually fast enough.

Now Gon scowls at the smear of blood as if it were the best friend he currently wants to hit over the head for scaring him, and contemplates how to make up for lost time. Killua is nowhere to be seen, so that rules out the straight-up flying tackle. There would be a pretty good chance of Gon coming out on top of that and retaking the lead: as a rule, Killua is faster, but Gon is stronger. It evens out, between them. But since Killua is not within reach, Gon will have to try something else.

A breeze brings him a new scent, and Gon gets a better idea.

He closes his eyes and takes in another deliberate breath, tastes earth and the multifaceted interconnected living smell of the forest and all the life in it, and death, as well – the blood trace at his feet, the deaths of small creatures under the claws of bigger ones, rot returning bodies to the earth, a whiff of fish. If he needed to, he could take it apart and sort it out. He could distinguish sparrows from fishing hawks from the dozens of other birds that live around the lake. He could catch the trail of that clever lynx they've been chasing for almost a week now and still haven't been able to spot, much less tag. He could taste the distant traces of burning and humans that is the resort town on the other side of the lake, even the harsh ammonia smell of the island, where most of the fishing hawks nest.

But he doesn't need to. He just needs the breath, which he holds, and envisions it turning into the liquid mist of nen, infusing the breath in his lungs and the cords in his throat with power.

Gon raises his head and howls, hearing the imitation wolf cry sing out across the lake, louder than any real wolf could call.

It's the signal for "Awake! Alert!" and means "Wake up, pay attention! Something interesting is close by and you should investigate it!"

It's probably not audible all across the lake, but it's loud. If he's done it right – he's pretty sure he has, it sounds right – the wolves that were dumped over here are now all awake and curious. There are maybe two dozen of them that Gon and Killua have tagged so far, and they're practically stepping on each others' tails most of the time anyway for lack of enough space to hunt.

Forest full of wolves, Killua. So there. Take that.

Gon is not even slightly worried that the wolves will get hurt – Gon likes wolves and feels a kinship of sorts with them. He's got to love an animal that's so loyal to its friends and so fierce in their defense, and that can travel for hundreds of kilometers and bring down prey much bigger than itself, a hunting animal that works with a team. He will be very upset if Killua hurts one of them, and Killua knows that. So the other boy will have to avoid them, and he can't smell them coming the way Gon can. Maybe that'll slow him down just enough.

The idea that Killua might get hurt is just laughable, and Gon doesn't spend even a moment worrying about it as he gets his bearings all over again and races for the tree on the shore.

The sun glancing off the water as he breaks out of the woods and almost stumbles as he goes from forest to gravelly lakeshore makes him blink for only a moment, and when he can see again he has a clear path to the tree. The small stones crunch beneath his feet and he pushes himself just that little bit harder to make the leap to the old stone that the two-topped tree must have grown through, tearing it apart to reach for the sun above and the rich damp soil on the edge of the lake below.

Gon slaps a hand against the trunk and declares, "I win!"

He's just looking around for Killua, wondering how effective his wolf trick had been, when a dry and perfectly familiar voice from above says, "No you don't."

"Damn it!" Gon laughs, looking up. Killua is perched in one of the treetops like that elusive lynx, hidden by the leaves. But Gon can see that there's a long scratch down the back of one of his hands, no longer bleeding but still bright against his skin.

Killua leaps down from his hiding place, landing on the rock only a couple of steps away from Gon, with his back to the lake and ready to take off again in a mad sprint, ready for another round. He loves the game as much as Gon does. They came up with it together, after all, and it is their game alone. He's grinning with the rush and exhilaration of speed. With the sun and the race and the delight he's taking in winning an entirely pointless game – which Gon understands perfectly, he would be gloating just as much, and has done – he glows, warm and alive.

Gon remembers, sometimes, the arrogant, wary boy he met in an endless tunnel, at once confident and confused, lost and afraid, and entirely without hope – and marvels that that boy could have become this glorious partner of his, laughing in the sun.

Now Gon laughs with him, inspired to mischief. Killua may have won the game this time, but rather than challenging him to a race back as they usually would, an opportunity for the loser to claim a victory of his own, Gon admits, "You're right. Killua wins," and adds, "Killua deserves a prize."

Usually the prize for winning is to win, for the extremely short period of gloating that counts for. But there are opportunities and there are opportunities. And Gon can't resist this one.

He puts his hands into his pockets and paces forward, right up close into Killua's space, daring him to back away, meeting his eyes and holding him there with nothing more than that. Distantly, he's aware that he's dropped into a predatory slink, even though he's got one hand in his shorts pocket and the other one in the pocket of his other jacket, so he probably looks like a disoriented octopus.

But he's pretty sure Killua hasn't noticed and isn't paying any attention to where his hands are. Instead those wide blue eyes have locked on his, pupils huge and dark. He doesn't back away or move aside. They're so close that Gon can almost feel him breathing, in rapid pants that he doubts are entirely from the run.

It's tearing at him, how much Gon wants to reach out and touch, to trace his fingers across the pulse in his throat, and bury his hands in soft white hair, reeling him in and - gods. Gon wants to kiss him, here and now and to hell with it all, so badly that it hurts like there's something inside him ripping into his body, blood pulsing.

Gon has his hands in his pockets for a reason, but he's quickly forgetting why under the assault from his own desire and the emotions bleeding out through Killua's scent, something he can't hide the way he so often turns his face away. He's not turning away now. They're breathing each other's air, and Gon drinks him in like coming up for air after minutes underwater.

He clenches his hands in his pockets to stop himself from finding out once and for all if Killua tastes as good as he smells, and the small action reminds him that there was a point to this, something meaningless and silly and fun, because he's going to crush one of the things he's hanging onto if he's not careful. But it's insignificant beneath the scents he's breathing in, so damn close now.

Killua smells like the forest they raced through and just an edge of sweat from the workout, and now wound up and tense from Gon advancing on him like this, but he smells hungry, too, anticipating and longing and excited and – damn. Damn! – a little bit scared.

Not like this, Gon reminds himself, all the parts of him that are screaming at him to reach out and take what he wants, and the darker ones that know that Killua wouldn't fight him for a second. One day, please, one day – but not like this. I won't. I won't.

Back to the original plan. But the hunger in Killua's eyes is clear, and Gon will not forget.

Instead he does three things in quick succession, as fast as he can because he doesn't have long.

From one pocket, he whips out a folded-up piece of fabric, which unfolds itself even as he drops it onto Killua's head.

From the other, he pulls out his phone, already switched on and over to the camera setting.

Almost at the same time, he leaps backwards, landing on the edge of the rock, and takes a picture as quickly as the camera will focus.

He gets only a second to see that the picture is exactly as fantastic as he thought it would be – Killua, with the lake behind him, and a look of dawning comprehension in his eyes all mixed in with the edges of that hungry-desperate-wanting look in his eyes, all under an oversized off-white sunhat.

Gon is going to catch absolute hell for this, but it'll be worth it.

They'd been messing around in one of the resort park shops, for no reason in particular, just being teenagers for once, pulling things off shelves and playing with them. Killua had been trying to push a replacement for his favorite jacket on him and Gon had been having none of it, but had entertained himself by finding things for Killua to wear instead. Killua had actually liked the hat – he sunburns like anything, and hates sunscreen – until he happened to catch sight of himself in a mirror and noticed how feminine it made him look, and from then on out hated it.

Gon had bought it for him while he hadn't been looking, and hidden it much more carefully than Killua had hidden the green jacket, because Gon had loved the way he looked in it. It's just a bit too big for him and it doesn't really make him look like a girl, in Gon's opinion, not in a bad way. It just makes him look like a strikingly attractive boy, accenting the smooth clean lines of his face and making his hair all but shine in contrast with the creamy off-white fabric.

But then Gon is officially not allowed to have opinions on clothes anymore, at least according to Killua.

It takes slightly longer than Gon expected for Killua to catch up with what just happened, which is very, very interesting, because it means he wasn't the only one not thinking clearly.

"Give me that!" Killua yowls, all that fascinated wanting hunger turned to outrage like the flash of fire, and leaps for him.

Gon almost falls off the rock in his haste to retreat, and takes off running. He gets only a few steps before Killua knocks him over, jamming a foot in front of his to trip him and hip-checking him to the side so that he tumbles and brings his free hand up just in time to keep his friend away from the phone held protected against his chest, laughing.

Killua swears at him, and attacks him with the hat, perhaps in hopes of making Gon hate it too. It's not the most effective weapon, and Gon manages to use the fleeting cover of the flailing piece of fabric to brace one foot and his free hand against the ground and roll them both. It gives him the chance to leap to his feet and get away, away from entirely unwarranted attack by hat and from the bits of himself that are screaming at him to keep Killua there, to pin him down and kiss him until he surrenders, to make the fight a different kind of dance.

Instead he runs.

For a few minutes the lakeshore is filled with shouting that would be incoherent to anyone else, until Gon is laughing too hard to keep eluding his faster, lighter best friend and nothing more, not yet, and it doesn't help that he's been cornered on the branch of the tree that overhangs the water. He has to toss the phone away over Killua's head as a distraction – he doesn't see where it lands, except it didn't splash into the water – and escape by plunging into the lake.

He knows from experience that Killua has a cat's approach to water. He's willing to swim, he's a fine swimmer, but it has to be for a reason. It's not his element the way it is Gon's, while Gon has yet to meet a major body of open water he hasn't wanted to dive into.

When he surfaces, brushing wet hair out of his eyes and wondering how anyone puts up with hair that gets in their face all the time, Killua has captured the phone and is stabbing irately at the screen.

"You changed the password again!" he yells at Gon, brandishing the phone at him.

"Not deleting it!" Gon calls back, grinning widely enough to hurt.

He'll have to find somewhere to hide that picture before Killua gets hold of his latest password. He's never deleting that picture. Or the memory.

Either memory.

Also, the lake water is helpfully cold.

to be continued in part three