Gon was oblivious to it the way only Gon could be- happily, without reservation or consequence- the way a hog skips into a trap when lured by truffles. Though, "consequences" were eluded only because he was aware enough for both of them…

It was an ever-present ticking in his chest, half Zoldyck, half experience, something is happening, something is coming, look around, what is amiss, focus, every damn time, like a beating drum behind his eyes. He'd considered that they'd been tailed, of course, naturally that was always his first thought, but this time he'd had trouble laying blame anywhere else for the gnawing at the back of his neck. This country was peaceful, entirely neutral in the last thirty- arguably fifty, if you believe the media and the people, hah- years and the wars those years had seen. Crime was at an all-time low, its people well-fed for the duration that it would take for the government to get greedy and the inevitable collapse of society that would follow. It was, after all, hard to feel angry or sad on an open-faced island with the clearest waters he'd seen since Whale Island, sand as dusty and soft as fine powder, lighter in color than the brown of the coconuts that hung from every tree. Men in native flowers strung with beads, leaves, feathers from birds that visited in the winter, strung ukuleles and wandered during the day doing little else. There was a bar on every turn of this little round village, lit even once night fell by the statues with their chins turned, open mouths fostering flame.

This place was peaceful, would be for what he guessed was another… ten years? Fifteen if he was being generous and optimistic about human nature. But it was peaceful now, which meant that the creeping, sneaking feeling that something was wrong and one of them (it wouldn't be Gon) needed to be on alert couldn't have stemmed from the people of this country themselves. Even so, he found it difficult to believe someone would follow them here. Illumi was hardly a threat anymore, not now that the whole of the Hunter's Association had a warrant on his head, and certainly not now that he'd been honing his skills for… years. Not now that Gon had his nen back and was equally formidable, never one to lag behind if he was growing. Somebody with malicious intent would have had to have been incredibly strong- or stupid- to think that the serenity of this country would mean he and Gon were any less ready to fight on a moment's notice. So somebody with… no malicious intent? Perhaps.

But then he and Gon had checked into their hotel rooms, and the weirdness started.

Hotel staff at the front desk looked at them with awe like they were some foreign species, something aside from human, but nothing threatening. No, their eyes lit up like Alluka's in a rose garden, bright, curious, cautious but yearning to ask a million questions. Gon always looked like that, had that look the moment they'd stepped off the airship, so he'd returned it enthusiastically.

Now, Leorio said, all those years ago, that their cell phones were perfectly equipped to translate over a hundred languages. "Perfectly" was a stretch, here. He was sure, hypothetically, that the beetle could accurately translate what the people of this country were saying, given it was familiar with every word or vowel in their dictionary. Unfortunately for the beetle, and for them, the people of this island spoke their language fast, and while the beetle understood the words said, it could only translate so many, leaving most lost to translation. Not horrible, that meant he and Gon could still use it to communicate back to the natives, but it meant they'd only catch some of what would be said in response. Less good. Checking in was fairly simple, the beetle caught the most important word: check, number, name. Typical hotel-check-in stuff.

Gon chirped out check in, two rooms, Freecs, Zoldyck. They received their keys and parted ways with a wave.

The weird part was, when he checked his phone later, it'd somewhere heard the word ceremony. He'd blinked down at it, because that was ominous, and because that nearly always meant sacrificial, gut-opening rituals. But, he'd told himself, this country had no history of that sort of thing, and their rituals primarily consisted of drinking, changing the ocean's color, fire dancing, and hugging, as far as the articles online and the info the Hunter's Association's files were concerned. There were rumors of something more sexual, but it was purely speculation. He was sure these people could get freaky if given the opportunity, but he didn't plan to. Besides, it was more likely that somebody else in the reception area said it and the beetle just picked up on it as they passed.

But then he was woken up the next morning at dawn by three trumpets and a bed of the native flora- red and green dahlias, pink, purple, and blue hydrangeas, lilacs- that showered his head as he sprang up. Three women in thin, bright purple drapes (that hid nothing, he actually got quite an eyeful of the women who bent over to place breakfast in his lap) dashed around, parting his curtains, singing to him with words he couldn't understand and, upon looking at his phone, words the beetle couldn't understand, either. He almost wondered if he and Gon had accidentally checked into the wrong room, or maybe this was simply because they'd used their Hunter IDs to pay for their rooms and this was how they greeted them.

Either way, a little strange, pleasant, but it made the cogs in his brain pick up pace. He used it, and the beetle, to ask what was happening, of course, but the only words it could pick up were love, celebrate, ceremony. So maybe they'd just so happened to visit on a holiday involving romantic love, judging by all the romantic-mushy colors, maybe it was just because this was how they welcome guests who'd traveled to partake in the festivities of this holiday. They were here on work, actually, but he'd gladly have a few drinks at whatever celebration this was if it meant there'd be three practically-naked ladies strutting around his room the two days they'd be here. He wondered how Gon was dealing , if he was just as surprised and delighted by the flowers and the… flowers. Ladies did seem to like Gon.

He told himself not to be jealous, c'mon, he was eyeing them up, too.

He'd eaten the breakfast they'd set out for him, pancakes with rose extract, jam made from an unfamiliar fruit that he could taste, same as chocolate, was an aphrodisiac- and then they'd stripped the covers from his body, tore him from the bed, and started undressing him. He wasn't sure if this was a nightmare of a terribly tempting dream. He'd stuttered, waved his arms, tried to brush them off without enough force to kill one of them (probably would not have gone over well with the locals OR with Gon), until eventually he had no choice but to relent as they dragged soapy sponges over his body and splashed him with warm, steaming water. One washed his body, one washed his face, while the third held his neck in her lap- again! these women were wearing! practically nothing! this was torture!- and massaged his scalp as she worked the shampoo through his hair. The bubbles smelled like lilacs, and Gon's face flashed by his mind as he allowed himself to relax. Gon, he smiled. The idiot probably hadn't fought them at all, probably just enjoyed the company and the warm bathwater. Even now, after all these days, he could see the Gon of nine years past grinning like a cat in the sun, humming with his arms hanging over the bathtub, steam so thick they could hardly still see it seeping from the water.

They'd taken white towels, softest he'd felt since Heaven's Arena, and patted his skin until it was damp and not dripping, three pairs of hands indistinguishable from each other washing over his body with creamy lotion that seemed to just melt into his skin. They followed it with light oils, made the pink of his pale body stand out even in the low light, where the sun peeking through his balcony door couldn't reach. Only one worked on his face, rubbing calming circles into his cheeks with what smelled like hydraulic acid and rose. The other two worked the oil into his legs, back, and even his butt (which did not make him jump, it did not), while the third dipped her fingers into a cylindrical dish, then rubbed it into his cheeks, nose, eyes, chin. He wondered, again, about Gon, if he was even able to sit through all of this.

His nose twitched as she dabbed something creamy at his face- foundation? Was she putting makeup on him?

Yes, she was. In the next moment she reached… somewhere?... and whipped out a pen he could tell was filled with ink for the eyes, "H-Hey, s-stop! Stop!"

But she either didn't understand what he said, or (more likely) ignored the scandalized look on his face as she painted him like a damn doll. He'd let Alluka practice a few times, sure, but that was in the comfort, safety, most importantly privacy of whatever hotel room they'd lodged in. He'd washed his face before he'd stepped outside. Festival or no, how was he supposed to walk around in makeup like a girl? Gross. He'd have to wipe it off when they finally released him from their well-meaning clutches.

Unfortunately for him, that didn't happen. Instead they'd dressed him in soft, barely-there robes that hung from his shoulders and bunched at his ankles, though he had the sense to gather that was intentional and part of the celebratory look. He was more thankful, really, that it was thicker than whatever fabric was strewn like tied-together pieces of tissue the girls were wearing. No, the white cotton was thin, sure, but the most skin it unveiled was the v-shape where it dipped into the center of his chest. From there, they hung thick, round beads of red at his neck, and they hung to the shoulders of his neckline, layered heaviest, biggest, to the small, yellow beads at the top. He glanced down at them, toyed with them in one hand while they took the other for a reason he wasn't going to dare guess right then.

Smaller beads were celebratory in this country, that much he knew. The pictures of the country collected from traveling brochures online might not have made a point of it, but they were present near-constantly in the candid photos of foreigners and natives alike dancing round the beach. Each small, yellow bead was painted with the same flower, the acacia. He didn't know a whole hell of a lot about flower language, but he could somewhat assume it was something uniting. The men, women, children, old, new, unfamiliar and home-born alike all wore them. Larger beads, the red ones, were certainly, as he'd read, celebratory in nature just as the small yellow ones with their yellow acacias, but they were more rare. These were painted by hand, too, but the flower adorning each bead as he twisted it was the chrysanthemums. Now that was odd.

Because he could have sworn he'd only seen those at the big, fancy parties he'd sometimes had to crash in secret. Worst case first- was it a funeral flower? An indication that he'd be killed by the end of the night and this was his "last hurrah"? No, again, he hadn't heard of any ritualistic sacrifices from this country, and that was certainly something the Hunter's Association files would have noted: "Do not travel in summer time, people of this country find great joy in laying one of their own, or foreigners ideally, on a slab and driving a knife through them like an autopsy".

No, could still be a funeral, though. He wouldn't have put it past the people of this country to focus on the love this person held and the love now lost than to focus on the loss of life. A celebration of the goodness they'd brought, perhaps.

But no, thinking back, dahlias and lilacs didn't seem like funeral flowers. If he recalled, and he'd been to a few in his time, funerals preferred lilies, carnations, orchids… Sure, they had roses, chrysanthemums, and hydrangeas, too, but those were different colors than the blues, pinks, reds, yellows, and purples he'd been showered with the singular hour he'd been awake. No, whatever this event was, it was something he was more unfamiliar with. Parties in general he'd only known from shadows and auctions and Greed Island. Gon would know. He was sure of it.

They ran their fingers through his hair, combed and blow-dried it until they could gather what few strands were long enough into a tiny ponytail at the nape of his neck. The butt of them brushed his skin and made him twitch.

The girls, two taking him by the hand, one pushing against his back with the gentlest hands, led him from the hotel room to the sandy beaches outside, and the ocean air hit him like a wave. One breath in, salt, blue, yellow sun in his face with sand under his bare feet. He took it in, licked his lips and tasted the clear sky, lust of dawn, and he almost wondered why he was fighting this.

But the girls tugged at his hands, the third one pushed, and suddenly he was bumping heads and tasting blood instead of salt.

"Ow! Dammit!" He reached up and rubbed at his nose, wincing at the way the clack of teeth-against-teeth reverberated in his skull. Ugh, it made his body shiver.

"Killua!"

Ah, all right. That made sense. It took him a moment to blink himself back to reality, but when he did, he found Gon smiling back at him, a great deal brighter than the sun he'd been admiring just moments ago. It brought a smile to his face, despite the blood and discomfort. He could weather any of it for Gon, if he had to. Had more than once. If it meant seeing him beam, hearing his laugh, feeling his shoulder brush against his and the rush he got just from touching him, he would be the subject of a thousand sacrificial stab wounds, "Gon."

They'd certainly given him the same treatment, doused him in the same oils and creams, even painted his face with the same ink and mussed his hair. It was down, somehow, not sure how they'd managed that. Almost like they hadn't dried it, yet, but it was soft, not sticking in thicker bundles like wet hair tended to do, so that wasn't it. And the way that green brushed over his face with that bronze skin, the honey of his eyes, those white robes hanging off of his broad shoulders- oh no, he was salivating. The creams and oils and makeup made him look good, he was sure, but it couldn't have been as noticeable as the glow on Gon's half-bare chest. He swore the idiot had a halo over his head, the way the sun beat off his skin, like an Adonis- Killua, c'mon, be mature here, this is your best friend, you can ogle the memory of him like this later, "Were you as surprised as I was?"

"Oh, for sure! But the bath was so nice! People here are really kind!"

That's not necessarily the word I'd use. Try obtrusive, "Yeah, I can't figure out what all of this is for, though."

Gon blinked at him, lips pursing into a small circle, head tilted in that adorable puppy way he'd never, ever admit he loved, "Ah, I guess you wouldn't know, huh? I think this is their idea of a reception!"

"Reception? I figured it was part of a festival or something? They keep saying celebrate and ceremony so…" He glanced around at the three girls who'd been coddling him all morning, all three of whom were smiling so wide his own cheeks hurt. There were three women behind Gon, too, each dressed in what appeared to be green. The same green as the dahlias that'd been mixed into the flowers draped over his scared-awake head just an hour and a half ago. Now that he thought about it, he'd almost think to describe the purple of the dresses his girls were wearing as… lilac.

Gon's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile that almost seemed nervous before it turned into his usual, all-sunshine grin, "Ah, have you noticed all of the flowers? They're wedding flowers, Killua!"

Ah, they'd visited during a wedding ceremony. That made sense. His nose twitched, because something still didn't add up, "So one of the villagers is getting married. Do they get all the tourists involved like this?"

Gon shrugged, "I dunno! This is pretty fun though, isn't it?"

One of the girls over his shoulder coughed, very purposefully. Gon blinked and scratched at his cheek, clearly just as confused as he felt. There must have been something they expected them to do? "Oi, Gon, do you have your beetle? Mine's still in my room."

"Nn! Here!"

It was a simple question, spoken into the beetle to translate to the girls who were starting to really creep him out no matter how sexy they were: What are we supposed to do?

Both trios gasped, suddenly enlightened to the fact that their trapped tourists were a little confused about what, exactly, they were expected to do next. One girl to his right took his hand, and in his peripheral he could see a girl taking Gon's hand in same. He quirked an eyebrow as she tugged at his hand, pulling it towards Gon, a hand, he realized, covered in a series of rings that reflected the beads around their necks, small and thick and almost clunky-looking. Gon's stolen hand came up to take Killua's, until eventually… their joined hands rested in front of Gon's lips.

Something in his heart snapped, he swore it, because if it wasn't snapping and bleeding then he wasn't sure what to make of the pain in his chest. Gon's eyes batted back at him from behind their hands, filled with confusion, pleading for help. Ah, but he understood. He understood all too well what they wanted them to do. He swallowed hard and shook his head, taking his hand back to reach for Gon's instead, carefully plucking the one coated in beads.

Please, oh please leave us alone after this. Let there be no other traditions because I don't think I could take another one after this!

He hoped Gon didn't notice how he trembled as he pressed his lips to the rings on his hand, eyes squeezed shut, bottom lip brushing against the skin of Gon's fingers. He smelled like the dahlias and roses.

He couldn't help how he fell for him a little harder. It was exactly the kind of romantic gesture he'd always held back, bit at when it climbed in his chest, tried to claw at his throat and make him say things he couldn't take back. For just the moment, he was allowed to pretend, because he had no choice but to.

The hand under his lips tugged him forward suddenly, and he (did not) squeaked as He readjusted his feet. His eyes met Gon's, of which he found were… darker than usual, like a small ember as he realized what he needed to do. He took both of his hands this time, to which both sets of girls giggled mercilessly. Gon's eyes didn't leave his own as he pressed a kiss to the fingers with the rings, gentle, warm, purposeful, but then he turned to the bare knuckle of the other hand and kissed that, too- and he stayed there for a moment. Like he was taking his time. And that was torture, his heart beating so roughly against his chest that he feared his own instinct would be to tear it out as he had the needle. But Gon kept his gaze as he kissed the bare skin.

His lips parted, but he couldn't find a word to say, just Gon…

And then they were tugged apart with an obnoxious amount of force and giggling, pushed in two opposite directions as the ladies spoke to him in what might as well have been gibberish about the day that was about to unfold.

The realization stunned him, sent his stomach spiraling with vines, thorns, anxiety and hope all at once. He trudged along not willing, but docile, powerless.

They weren't guests swept away in the preparation of a wedding.

They were hapless tourists who somehow found themselves at the center of a foreign mating ritual.

Just in case you got a little lost in the love language, have a handy-dandy chart ~ !

Red dahlia: Perseverance even in dark times

Green dahlia: New beginnings, a big change

Pink Hydrangea: Genuine, meaningful emotion

Purple Hydrangea: A desire to know somebody inside and out

Blue Hydrangea: Apology, specifically an apology after wronging a romantic partner

Lilacs: First love

Red Chrysanthemums: Love at first sight, loyalty to your loved one

Yellow Acacia: Friendship, a love kept in secret

If you're interested in seeing the next two chapters early, they're already posted on my tumblr at iamwhelmed

Here's a preview!

She nodded, joining him in a delicate toast before raising the glass to her lips to sip. He took a sip, too, and watched in his peripheral as Gon did the same, "How long have you known each other?"

"Our whole lives," Not quite the truth, but it felt like it, more days than not.

Madam Mancuso hummed, looking not quite surprised, but the quirk of her brow read attentive, "I see. They raise you Azian children separately from the way we rear them here. You're more partial to each other's company than one might expect." Nosy, nosy, nosy.

He gestured to Gon, "It's rare to have company you know with such certainty you can trust. Surely, in your line of work, you know what it means to have a friend?"

Gon got immeasurably closer, and suddenly there was a warm, swallowing hand at his lower back. He arched into it, and Gon's fingers traced circles into his suit coat that he felt on his skin, "What's there to ask, Madam Mancuso? I think you have all the answers you need."