God I love these two.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Hunter x Hunter except my OCs. Everything else belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi-sensei
Enjoy~
-x-
If Not, Then Always
Ch 2: Yes
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Gon's mouth is set wide and screaming.
Killua's a light sleeper, so it's obvious that his mind wakes up immediately to gauge the threat. The moonlight wraps itself against the parts that Gon covers with his hands. They're over his eyes, digging into skin, as if flesh can withstand the impact of a burgeoning boy's nightmares.
It doesn't take him even a second to notice that something's wrong, obviously, and Killua can pinpoint the source of the problem with a clear arrowhead.
Killua slinks down the bed and finds his way to Gon, wrapping a hand against his shoulder and shaking him until he sees stars. "Gon," he says, a bit forcefully, because you usually have to shout whenever he's concentrating too hard, "Gon."
It doesn't work because Gon thrashes around even more, gasps just a little louder; it's a long, guttural whimper that sounds more like an animal being gutted than the anguish of a fourteen year old boy.
"Kite," he whispers, arm reaching out. His head's still in the clouds, eyes screwed shut and wrinkled like the bed sheets now sprawled over the floor. Killua looks over and the pristine sheet overlaps with a severed arm and crimson red. At this point he does the only thing he can do. He takes Gon's hand and waits.
Eventually Gon's screaming wakes himself up like a thunderclap. Killua would know because of past coping mechanisms, of the first few nights of bloodletting he couldn't scrape from underneath his nail beds. It takes a while to numb the pain over with insouciance and material goods. It's nothing like that for Gon, though, who feels the loss so acutely as if he was the one who felt his tendons rip and his bones shatter and knew that casting aside the two boys who tried to help meant that he made the right choice to die alone.
Gon opens his eyes with a gasp that steals the air from his lungs. He doubles over as if he's hurt, delusional from grey-sleeved arms and a hope magnified to one hundred.
Killua, for one, doesn't believe that Kite is alive. Killua, most of all, knows when a person is about to die. But Gon won't believe that, and Killua knows that. And Killua can't fucking do anything about that except offer his arms and chase his tail when he's the one who should really be faster.
"Gon," Killua starts, gripping his hand, feels their bones grind together and fall against the pressure. "Go back to sleep."
". . .Killua?" Gon's eyes blink themselves through crusted corners and bad dreams. It flips like a switch. He looks to their hands with curious eyes, as if the nightmares were really just nightmares and the past has nothing to do with them. It makes his skin turn cold, makes him feel this indescribable sadness for this sun-streaked boy who he doesn't even know how to console - how to even discuss Gon's nightmares when he's made an active effort to avoid his own.
He snorts instead, "Yeah, idiot. You thrashed around so much you woke me up."
"That's not fair!" Gon's voice cracks, something that sounds like the result of puberty and maybe an attempt to smother something to silence. "A pillow case falling onto the floor can wake you up."
"I disagree."
"You're always disagreeable."
"It's hard to not be when you're talking to an idiot."
Gon puffs his cheeks, and two minutes pass as he falls back with a laugh. "You know, I think Kite would like this. Family."
"You? Family? He should just go to Mito-san if he wants proper love."
Gon slaps his arm playfully and smiles. "Then when we get Kite back we can take him home to Mito-san!"
"Sounds great," Killua grins, lie razor sharp in between his teeth.
"We'll get him back," Gon says. "I made a promise." He says it as if they don't have to plough through an army and raze a species to the ground. He says it like it's all the motivation he needs to drag himself into a world where sharp edges are on soft corners and the smallest things can bring gods to the ground.
Killua doesn't give a damn about any of that. All he wants to know is that this sun-drenched boy will make it out with most of him intact and functioning. It's a long shot. Hell, it's an impossible equation, more nerve wracking than the math problems he can't solve. Kite will become the scaffolding to a game where lives will end because of a boy who just wanted his friend back.
Killua doesn't want to come back to that sort of Gon. Gon, who leaves pieces of himself in every person he touches and never loses the radiance that's always made him look away. Killua carries his home with him. Killua wants to come back to a Gon who will grin and say that "Yup, everything worked out in the end".
Home is the topography of their hands, grinding together and falling against the pressure. Home is the indentations where Gon's browbone melts into honey-hued eyes and shines against the lamplight of stars.
Home is safe. Home is comfort. Home is something that Killua can offer nothing but an arm and a life for. Home is something that Killua doesn't know how to console properly.
Killua looks at the trembling corners of Gon's lips and chooses to lie next to him, back to back. It takes two more hours for Gon's breathing to even out.
Because he knows when to keep his mouth shut when it comes to Gon. Gon - who has this unwavering belief that will crush him one day but not today, never today, because Killua will make sure of it.
(But really he hates he hates he hates himself for this.)
Killua has to wake Gon again a few hours later. He waits for a few minutes before Gon grips his shoulders and buries his face against his neck and spills hot tears of frustration down his back. He doesn't wait this time to take Gon's hand and squeeze it tight.
Killua looks at the raging storm gripping his shoulders and wonders if he's doing the right thing.
A few weeks later, when Gon's words sear like knives to the heart and all Killua can do is carry his body to the nearest hospital, he still doesn't find the answer.
-x-
He never really forgives himself, but he does when Gon apologizes and past actions are fixed with all-out play-brawls and teenage name calling. He knows that things will be alright when Gon takes his hand one night and tells him that he's the bestest bestest friend in the world, and, really, what can Killua say about that?
He punches him, of course, playfully. He smiles and says idiooot when he really means me too.
Later, when they are countries apart and Alluka is safe, Gon comes to find him.
-x-
Later, they share a kiss.
It's under a night besotted by stars and a sky that blends into different shades of blue. Gon's eyes glow in the dark as he places a hand on Killua's neck, smooth and slender from spinal cord to skull.
Killua doesn't know what this is. All he knows is that he's too tired to contemplate a label to their relationship anymore because everything they've done together has always felt right.
-x-
Later, Ging is found again, and the adventures resume, and once again inexperience slaps them hard in the face. The dark continent is filled with starving things that bite and tear and rip away at the soul, and Killua knows in that moment, when Gon is unaware of black masses ready to suck him dry, that he has to be the one to do it.
Killua dies with his best friend's name on his lips and a massacre on his fingers and thinks not yet. He can't be a burden now.
Not yet.
What Killua doesn't know is that his death causes a genocide and a price paid in full and Gon will never ever ever be the same.
-x-
The last thing he remembers is of that one night, where even a storm wasn't be able to stand the destruction of a burgeoning boy's nightmares.
Killua doesn't wonder if his death will make Gon sad. Killua already knows that he's the cause of grief this time, and he's afraid that his best friend won't have anyone to call him stupid and pat him on the back and wrap his arms around him when he has nightmares and kiss him in clandestine moments.
Gon's voice fades away, and Killua is suddenly transported to the day Gon killed Neferpitou.
The battle is over. The other Killua - the Killua who watched Gon pulverize Pitou's skull and riddle their body with the anguish of a mourning boy, the Killua who is carrying his best friend on his back - looks over to him, sees the hole in his chest and the blood pooling at his feet.
"Have you found your answer?" He asks.
"Yes," Killua says. "It has always been yes."
The other Killua smiles. Killua blinks. He wheezes. The press of Gon's lips to his cooling forehead is the last thing he feels.
-x-
A/N: I am so, extremely sorry for this late update. Originally this was going to be three chapters detailing how Gon coped with Killua's death, but then this roll of sadness came along, and my plan was ruined.
I also apologize for not being active on this account since last year. Things have happened in my life, and everyday is a day filled with internal screaming and figuring out my career choice :)) . I do not plan to leave fanfiction. My story, Cacophony, will continue, and when I finish all of the bullshit that's happening right now, no matter how long it takes, I will return. Until then, please accept this chapter.
Til next time~