"Are you okay?" Gon's voice was full of concern, and Killua wasn't quite sure how he should answer, or if he could. He didn't know how much pain speaking in this state would cause him.
"G-Gon." He managed, despite his fear, turning partially toward Gon, looking up at him with sad eyes. "I'm... I'm okay," his voice was a hoarse whisper when he spoke. "G-go back to sleep."
Instead, Gon pushed himself up in the bed and pulled Killua against him. Killua gasped at the sudden jerking movement of his body, headache throbbing. "I won't go back to sleep until you do, okay?" Gon leaned down and kissed his forehead.
"N-no. You should... you should sleep. Please just go to sleep, Gon." He said, pushing himself away. He didn't see Gon's expression, but he had a feeling that it was concerned. That Gon was worried about him.
"Tell me what's wrong." He said, and Killua felt his hand grasp the back of Killua's shirt. He didn't pull, he just held, and that pained Killua's heart more than anything else.
"It... it's worse this time. I don't know if I can do this." He dropped his head into his hands, the heels of his hands pressing into his eyes, causing the border of his vision to be tainted with grey.
"Explain it to me. I want to help you." Gon's voice was painfully soft, and Killua couldn't stand it. He cared. He cared. Killua shook his head. He wasn't used to it. He'd never be used to Gon.
"You can't help me." He said, setting his feet on the floor and sinking down until his knees were against his chest, back against the hard metal of the frame. "You can't. There's nothing you can do..."
Unconsciously, his eyes flit to the shoe box that had been kicked under the bed.
Gon couldn't help him, he knew that much, but he could help himself.
He reached slowly, but it was Gon who took his hand, leaning out from the bed and taking his gaze away from the box.
Oh. That's right.
Killua blinked a few times. He had to keep himself together for Gon. He could let this pass for Gon. He wouldn't take any more for Gon...
"You should hide the box somewhere." Gon said. "Really. If it's giving you this much trouble-"
"I can't just get rid of it." Killua interrupted. "You don't understand. I can't just get rid of it. I can't just-"
"Killua, listen to me." Gon got out of the bed and knelt down in front of Killua, hands on his shoulders and looking into his eyes. Even in the darkness of early morning, those amber eyes were powerful. "You don't need it. You just think you do. I can help you. I can be right here for you; I can make you stop when you're about to take one. I can be the reason why you stop." He cupped Killua's face in his hand. "Let me."
Killua closed his eyes so tight that furry grey bordered his vision and he could no longer see those imposing eyes.
Gon already was his reason, already so much... and so was the pain. He couldn't...
"Gon." Killua's voice was a whisper when he spoke. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He opened his eyes and saw pain reflected in Gon's. And that pain looked greater than his own. And he couldn't tell what hurt most. Gon took both of his hands and held them between the two of them.
"You're not going to do anything. I have your hands. You can't do anything if I have your hands." Despite the childish words, his voice reflected his sorrow.
Killua pulled away, ripping his hands from Gon's grasp and backing away, consequently slamming his back into the bed frame and wincing.
"Go."
"Killua..."
"P-please."
Gon backed away, and Killua put his head on his knees. "Let me hide the shoebox first."
Killua looked up, quickly, eyes wide. "No." His voice was weak.
"You were already tempted once; let me take it with me and hide it."
"No!" Killua suddenly shouted, startling Gon. He could see in the way the other's shoulders lurched. Somewhere deep inside of him, he felt a satisfaction in having surprised Gon. "Get out! I don't need your help! Let me be alone!"
Gon reached toward the box, slowly, watching Killua's expression carefully. Killua grabbed the box, shifting onto his knees and setting the shoebox onto his legs.
"Killua!" Gon reached forward and tried to take it from Killua, who turned his back to him.
"Get out! Get out!" He shouted as he opened the box.
"Killua, please!"
He took out the plastic bag and threw the shoe box behind him.
"Killua."
He felt Gon's head fall against his back, Gon's hands clutching the back of his shirt, shaking. His blue eyes examined the contents of the bag.
Four.
He pulled it open and took out two of those devious little pills.
"Killua, please." Gon's voice was a mere whisper, as Killua took down the remaining pills.
White.
All around him, a soft and puffy white. A stark contrast to the dark morning before that.
His body was soft and white too. Killua gave a smile, and leaned back into the warmth behind him.
"Killua?" The voice was sweet. Like caramel. Yeah. The voice was smooth and light orange-ish brown. Just like caramel. Killua looked behind himself, and found a man made of caramel, holding the back of his shirt.
He discarded what he held; it looked like a feather, all of the dusted white, and turned to face the caramel man.
"Oh god, Killua." The caramel man dropped his head as a show of emotion. Emotion pamotion. Killua took the caramel man's face into his hands and looked at him. His eyes were caramel, his lips were caramel. Killua found himself wondering if he would taste like caramel too.
"I'm sorry." The caramel man said, and Killua leaned forward and kissed him.
He didn't taste like caramel, and Killua was disappointed. He pulled back and pouted. The caramel man didn't look caramel anymore. He got more colors, slowly.
Black, pink, white, green, red... He took on the appearance of a person.
"Killua." The man's pink lips spoke the word slowly, and Killua found himself intrigued by that mouth. He reached forward to touch it; his soft white fingers gliding across the pink stretch.
"Soft." Killua muttered to himself, before giggling a little at the sound of his voice.
The man took his hand and pulled it away from his mouth.
"Do you know how long this usually lasts?" The man turned toward the whiteness, and Killua looked over, his attention turning to the other person. A girl, he assumed.
"He usually comes out of it after an hour or two." The girl came closer, and put a white hand on the man's shoulder.
The man looked over at the feather.
"The bag is empty."
"What?" Her voice was soft, and high when she spoke, and she walked over and picked up the feather. "He took the rest of them then?"
"You look soft." Killua muttered, but the two ignored him. 'Rude,' he thought.
"Has he ever...?"
"No, not that I know of. Might have before we got the apartment. Maybe we should call his brother."
"Illu-nii!" Killua's eyes lit up. "Illu-nii is soft. He lets me pet him."
The two nodded to each before the girl picked something out of the whiteness that looked like a chocolate bar. The man turned back to Killua.
That was when Killua realized they only had pieces of faces. He poked one of the empty parts of the man's face.
"How do you do that? It's cool! Can you teach me how to do that?"
The man's eyes narrowed and he poked Killua's face as well.
"You're speaking gibberish."
"I don't speak Finnish..."
Ill-nii appeared in the whiteness. Just as the girl had, in fact she followed Ill-nii in.
"Ill-nii!" Killua smiled.
"What did you do?" Ill-nii asked the man as he walked around Killua, going somewhere behind him. Killua thought he'd disappeared for a moment, until he felt Ill-nii's hands in his hair. He could bet that it was also as soft and white as the rest of him.
"I asked him to let me hide the shoebox." The man answered.
"Was he withdrawing?"
The man didn't answer, but the girl.
"He was on the third day of withdrawal. He must have been going through something terrible for him to slip over the edge like that." She said, and Ill-nii continued twisting Killua's hair in his fingers.
"Third day is physical pain, excruciating amounts of it. I think, when you offered to take the drugs away, Gon, he was going off because of the pain. I've seen him go through it before, a couple months ago, actually, he locked himself in the shed at the house, and he stayed there until it ebbed. He had a good idea at the time. Getting himself as far away from the drugs as possible before he was tempted by them."
"Why didn't he do that this time? Especially if he knew it was coming."
The three of them were silent for a moment, and no one spoke. The white world was now tense, and Killua didn't like it. The white world wasn't supposed to be tense. It was supposed to be happy. It was supposed to be fuzzy...
He started to feel it in his bones first. The tension. The wrought and hollow thickness that settled in his bones made him uncomfortable, and he shifted. It reminded him too much of...
"Get out!"
He looked up; in the whiteness, he saw two figures, and they appeared to be fighting.
"Please."
He saw the aggression seeping from one figure, that melted the whiteness of the room into the darkness of the early dawn.
It was five o'clock in the morning.
The little red numbers bore into him.
He started recognizing the faces around him. Senritsu, Illumi, Gon...
Killua leaned forward, falling into Gon's chest and feeling his warm arms encircle him.
"The white went away." He muttered, his voice muffled by Gon's shirt.
"He'll be falling asleep soon." Illumi said, and the bed creaked as he stood. "Once the ecstasy of the drug fades, he goes to sleep and will wake up a couple hours later. I didn't think it would be so fast, since he took four. I think the most I've ever seen him take is three." Gon's arms tightened around him. Gon's heat permeated through him, and made him more comfortable.
"Keep an eye on him over the next few days. If you don't, he might slip away and get some more." Illumi sighed and ruffled Killua's hair. "It's a good thing he took the rest that he had."
Killua remembered the first time he met Senritsu. She had been very shy at the time, both of them children, and he had been antisocial. Because of that, the two of them got along, so much that they were absolutely inseparable.
When they got into high school, that didn't really change. Since neither wanted to speak to anyone else, they took every opportunity to be together. They kept in touch after high school. Killua bought an apartment and invited her to live with him.
In whole, Killua thought it would help. He thought Senritsu could act as a boundary between drugs and himself.
But in the end, he still got high. Senritsu had witnessed it once, how he acted, and knew exactly how it would be. For Killua, when he was high, Senritsu was merely a blur of whatever color she wore at the time.
She knew, but she didn't know as much as Illumi.
But she knew more about Killua on his good days. How they would set up an outdoor theater on homecoming night and watch movies until they fell asleep. How, since neither had dates, he took her to prom and danced like dorks. But it was fun. And that was the Killua Senritsu knew and was used to. The Killua that would do anything in his power to make the people he loved happy.
He just wasn't the same when he took the pills.
Killua woke up and looked at the clock. The glaring red numbers read four. The sun beamed through the blinds and into the room.
Four in the afternoon, and all he could remember was shouting.
But he felt so warm, a little uncomfortable from the position, but warm. He grabbed Gon's shirt, which seemed to serve as his pillow.
"Gon." He whispered, closing his eyes.
"It's okay."
"No, no it's not. I hurt you. I yelled at you. I should have listened to you."
Gon kissed his forehead again. "I forgave you a long time ago."
"You deserve more than me."
"I still want you, Killua. One incident won't make me stop loving you."
