A/N: Booo, I'm a terrible updater! I'm so sorry, lovelies, work hasn't been letting up. Thank you for sustaining me with your reviews. They really, honestly pushed me to finish the new chapter (so keep 'em coming, please!).

For the record though, this chapter took especially long because I wrote at least two other versions of it before finally settling on this one. See, I let the story (and my readers' reviews) take me where it goes, so sometimes I have to feel through a draft and check if it's crawling in the right direction. I rewrite when I can't get myself to continue writing because I'm not quite liking where it's going.

So, on this chapter: I hope I'm not making things too fast. I tossed in someone familiar that I hope you'll like. Read and review?

Cheers.

UNTOUCHABLE

Chapter III. Runaway

Killua was not in school the next day.

Gon searched for him in between classes, wondering if the absence cancelled Gon's scheduled trip to the Zoldyck Estate — a visit over which he was still in hot water with Aunt Mito, who had been adamant in her refusal to allow him to go. More than halfway through the day, he was still receiving worried texts from her, offering to go in his stead or persuading him to come to the shop for one "urgent" case or another. Gon had since given up replying to ease her worry; besides, it was highly unlikely that the appointment would push through, and Gon did not want to infuriate Mito with news of a disrespectful client on top of her already-heightened agitation at his stubbornness.

To make matters worse, lunch period found him right beside Hisoka in the lunch line, seeing as no one else was daring to line up behind the upperclassman and thus there was a whole bunch of hungry students just hovering outside the cafeteria doors, waiting for Hisoka to finish staring at the menu before making up his mind. The lady behind the counter didn't seem to want to press him either.

Gon sighed, unable to ignore the distinct rumble in his stomach. "Do you mind if I order ahead?" he asked Hisoka, doing his best to sound something between casual and stoic.

"Hmmm?" Hisoka looked at him out of the corner of his narrow, eerily golden eyes. His lips were curled in that perpetual smirk and, seeing Gon, they crept up his left cheek even higher. "Of course."

Gon made his order — naturally the heftiest budget meal he could find that the posh cafeteria served — and began to move past Hisoka when he heard the eerie clown say, "I'll have the same thing he ordered."

Gon shook his head, not in the mood to be antagonized. "Could I get a Choco Robot to go with that please?" he asked the lunch lady, as he pulled out his wallet.

The lady lowered her head, apologetically. "Gomenasai, we're always out of Choco Robots by the first day of the week."

"What, how come? Eto... How about some chocolate balls?"

The lady shook her head again. "The Young Master Zoldyck always buys out the whole stock of chocolates by the first break."

"K — Killua?!" Gon spluttered.

"Hai." She again bowed deeply. "Gomenasai. That will be 800 jennies."

Hisoka promptly walked away, his order steaming sumptuously on the filled tray in his hands.

"Hey!" Gon looked to and from the lunch lady and the retreating school terror, but the lady showed no sign that she was about to call Hisoka back for payment. Gon sighed, deciding to favor his stomach over a petty fight, and handed the lunch lady a bill for a thousand. Unfortunately, seeing that Hisoka had finally left the lunch line, in a second, the swarm of hungry students had stampeded over, effectively screening Gon out, and he never saw his change after that.

By the afternoon break, he had a mild migraine. He took a long route to the school clinic, taking the long staircases up to the top floor so he could pause by Killua's locked access door before going back down again and making his way to the infirmary. There, a harassed-looking older man with small round glasses and a white lab coat over a rumpled suit-and-tie was screaming animatedly into a telephone.

"How many times do I have to tell you?! I'm not that kind of doctor! What good am I?! Teme, I'm a doctor, not a — oi, oi, oi! Who're you calling an old geezer, gaki!? I swear I'll report — hello?! Hello?! Oi, gaki?! K'so!" And he slammed the phone down into the cradle. The small pin on the chest of his lab coat read Paladiknight.

Gon suppressed a grin at the vigorous anger that distorted the medical professional's face into comical proportions. He rapped on the open door twice. "Konnichiwa!" he greeted, cheerfully. "Is this where I can get a painkiller?"

The doctor looked at him, one eyebrow raised, as if only just noticing his presence by the doorway. "What do you have?"

"A headache."

The doctor huffed. "At least that's something I can cure. Come over here. Hey, wait a minute — " He adjusted his skewed glasses and squinted at Gon through the pale lens. "You're the transferee!"

Gon broke into a wide grin and held out his hand. "Hai. Gon Freecs!"

The doctor took it in a warm clasp. "Leorio." He tossed Gon a pill that he took from a white bottle sitting on the table near the phone that was still not quite back in its cradle. "Here."

"Arigatou."

Leorio leaned a hip against the table and crossed his arms over his chest, sizing Gon up with mild interest. "I see what Kurapika meant when he said you're different."

"Eh? Kurapika? Kurapika talked about me?"

"Sure." Leorio replaced the phone properly in its cradle, apparently having calmed down enough to do so. "He tends to drop by. He has more headaches than you having to run this school." He smirked. "After you came here, he's been coming more often."

Gon scratched his head, sheepishly. "Gomen, I guess I really am a bit of a headache."

"Nah," Leorio shook his head. "There are a lot of rich brats in this school, Gon. Kurapika acts cold but I think he appreciates your changing things up a little. It's everyone else making a fuss about you that gets him. Plus, that Hisoka coming back isn't helping any. Geez, me personally? I think there should be more kids like you around here."

"Oh, well, that's a relief — "

"If you wanna help though, try not to stir up the Zoldycks."

Gon felt the veins in his head throb again. "Seriously, what is it about — "

"Whoa, easy." Leorio held up a hand to quell the teen's frustrated venting. "I have nothing against your making friends with Killua. I've seen you talking to that kid. Heck, I think he needs it. That gaki comes by here too often asking for horrible shit like acids, antidepressants, numbing gels — of course I never give him anything — but it's damn scary, especially since in spite of those requests, he shows no sign whatsoever of misbehavior."

Gon decided not to mention that Killua smoked on campus grounds. "So, why are you telling me to steer clear?"

"I'm not." Leorio stood up and went to the window. "I've been working in this school far longer than I ever thought I could, Gon. Where the Zoldycks are involved, there are things I don't want to see again."

- x -

Thirty minutes after the dismissal bell had rung, Gon stood in front of the massive gates of the Zoldyck Estate at the foot of Kukuroo Mountain, looking at the seemingly eternal expanse of thick, wrought metal for a ringer or a doorbell. There was no one in sight, and the gate was too tall, too wide, and too thick to suggest that there was anyone at all who would be able to hear him if he tried to shout for assistance.

Finally, he spotted a small sheet of blue glass attached to the wall on the side of the gate, similar to the access device he had seen Killua use to open the door to the rooftop. Tentatively, he placed a hand on the glass, the way he had seen the heir do, and for a brief moment the glass glowed dimly in response. There was soft buzz, then his name flickered across the screen for a few seconds before fading into a dull, blank blue again.

Gon waited, hoping that the recognition meant someone would be at the door soon. But after a minute or two of nothing, he stepped back and sighed. "Guess that's a no..." he murmured. "I'll ask Killua tomorrow then."

He turned and began to walk back down the road he had come, nibbling on his lower lip as he rehearsed excuses to tell his Aunt.

She won't be happy with this. Dammit.

As a last resort, while walking slowly home, Gon thumbed through his contacts in his phonebook, looking through the names of his new classmates and old friends, thinking which ones could possibly know the Zoldyck heir's mobile number, but his mind drew a blank. There was absolutely no one else he had seen Killua Zoldyck hang out with, and as far as Gon had noticed, he had never actually seen Killua use a phone.

Well. This had been a lose-lose situation from the start. I guess I shouldn't have placed my wages on Killua's invitation — that is, job offer. Whatever.

Gon sighed.

It was almost past sunset by the time the pet care clinic was in sight, but Gon felt like the walk was way too short. He still had no excuses to go with, only the sad truth. He tried to peek through the small glass window on the door, looking for signs of Mito and any possible indication that Gon would be lucky enough to find her in an extraordinarily good moo—

"Just go in already, Gon!"

"Ahhh!" The strangled cry rose out of Gon's throat, unbidden. Dammit, I should change that fucking ringtone! His fingers scrambled over his phone's interface, trying to muffle the sound of his aunt's loud nagging.

The number blinking on the screen was unrecognized.

Just as Gon pushed down on the green button to receive the call, chimes sounded and the door swung open. His hand froze, the phone halfway to his ear. Gon shut his eyes tightly, bracing for his guardian's blazing fury. Why didn't you reply I sent like a dozen messages I'm almost late for class where have you been how did it go you said it wouldn't take a few minutes —

In his head, she wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise.

"M — Mito-san..." I can explain! Explain what? Dammit, there's nothing to explain —

"What the fuck are you doing there?"

The voice came from in front of him and, strangely enough, crackling through the earpiece of the mobile phone hanging suspended in the air near the side of his face. It was not his aunt's voice, but it was a voice he would know anywhere.

Gon's eyes snapped open. They met cool, inquisitive ice blue, flecked reddish gold by the fading sunset. The light of the sun caught in the silver of his hair, defining the messy tips with hints of fire.

Killua snapped the mobile phone he had been holding to his ear shut, and the line in Gon's ear (well, near Gon's ear) fell silent.

From inside the store, Mito's cheerful voice rang out. "Dinner's ready! Is that Gon? Get him in here please."

Gon gaped, incredulously. What the hell?

"I met your aunt," Killua said, not at all explaining anything. "She agreed to let me stay for a while." He paused, gauging the stunned look on Gon's face. "She asked me to call you," he tried again. "She doesn't have class." At Gon's unchanging look of utter disbelief, Killua shrugged a shoulder in resignation. There was no way to clear things up without going through the requisite wave of shock.

"I ran away from home."

- x -

Gon went through dinner in a daze. He watched Killua eat the food with as much grace as anyone he had ever beheld gobbling through bowls of ramen and sushi rolls. He said things that made Mito smile and chuckle, and tossed short, boyish smirks that Gon had never seen him wear in school. Gon must have said some funny things, because most of the time the smirks were directed at him and came with some cheeky rejoinder or another. After dinner, Gon leapt at a chance to corner his aunt in the kitchen when she sent Killua off to the washroom.

"What's going on?!" Gon's voice threatened to break as he tried to hold his bewilderment at bay. "How did you — how did he — why? How!?"

"Oh, don't be too shocked, Gon. Isn't this what you wanted? Besides, you're right. He turned out to be a pretty nice kid."

"Well, yeah, of course, but what happened to 'don't mess with the Zoldycks'? I just came from their house! Why didn't you just send me a message that he's here? Wait, why didn't he just tell me not to bother going... Mou!" Gon scratched his head in hapless confusion. "Mito-san!"

"Well — " Mito cast him a devious, sideways glance " — you haven't been replying to my messages, so I thought you weren't in the mood to hear from me."

"What!? But you were so — but that — that's different!"

"Maa, maa, Gon." Mito punctuated his name with a flourish of the kitchen towel as she reached over to pick up the newly washed dishes for drying. Her eyes absorbed a pensive look. "I think I understand what you said now, about Killua needing a friend...or someone. I'm not sure what it is either. Honestly, when he came in looking for you, it became really hard to think of him as a Zoldyck." She looked at Gon sideways. "You should probably ask him what's going on though. I don't really know either."

Mito had placed Killua in a spare room opposite Gon's, a room they sometimes loaned to transient renters when their budget was in a pinch. The young heir was smoking by the window, halfway through the stick, when Gon knocked on his door. At the invitation to take a short walk through the woods behind the house, Killua threw out the rest of the cigarette and leaped up to grab a black jacket slung over the backrest of the chair in front of a small, battered study table. The jacket was the only personal artifact Killua had bothered to bring with him besides the skateboard propped against the wall near the bed.

The walk was short, filled, for the most part, with the sound of leaves crunching under their feet, the chirping of distant crickets, and the steady cycle of questions that Gon valiantly maintained in lieu of a conversation. "So. How's your dog?" he asked, his voice slightly too cheerful.

Killua shrugged. He walked with his hands in his pockets, following Gon with unexpected ease, hopping over rocks and roots like he had been born tramping through forests at night. "Mike? It's probably kennel cough."

"Doesn't he still need help?"

"Yeah, I tried to call up a different doctor, but the old geezer said there was nothing he could contribute."

Gon shook off a mental image of Leorio screaming into the phone that, for some reason, popped up in his head. He grabbed a root and hoisted himself up a slope. "What does your family do?"

"Eh?" Killua paused. "Uh. Human security."

"You mean like an agency of bodyguards and stuff? Or police work? Government operations?"

"...iie."

"Does it have something to do with spying or intelligence ops, surveillance...?"

"You don't want to know."

"Are you an only child?"

Again, a long pause. "...iie."

When they reached the low cliff overlooking a sparsely lighted spread of the forest, Gon finally decided to breach the topic that he had for too long delayed. "So..." He looked sideways at the heir. "Why here? Why me?"

Killua did not seem at all surprised by the question, but he lowered his head, as if coming up with the right words to say, the fall of his silver hair conveniently concealing his eyes in shadows. Gon tamped down the deep sadness that again welled up inside him. As he had often felt in their few encounters in school, there really was something...broken inside Killua Zoldyck, as if some dark, indefinable pain had iced over every hint of warmth there had been inside him, and frozen life and love into shards of brittle glass that, at the slightest touch, shattered into a billion tiny fragments and misted in the cold shadows of his eyes, the seemingly casual slack of his shoulders, the misleading unconcern of his stance.

"Because you're...not like everyone else," Killua whispered.

Gon lifted his head towards the stretch of stars inlaid in the blanket of indigo night. In the peace of the night air, away from the sugarcoated warnings and superficial material games of the world, he felt his heart finally calm down. Gon was not superstitious, but he trusted his instincts unconditionally, and, at that moment — a long time since he had started going to Nostrade High — he finally felt at ease. A soft smile flitted across his face.

"I can't say I'm not surprised, but..." He grinned at Killua. "I'm glad you came."

"Eh?" Wide-eyed surprise shattered the moonlit glass of Killua's features into something almost child-like.

Gon grinned even wider and raised a thumb. "Because that means we're friends!"

Killua flushed. "Wh — what are you saying? Geez, you're embarrassing."

"But we are, right?" Gon pressed.

Killua looked away from the brightness of Gon's warm hazel eyes. Zoldycks don't have friends. But, against his will, he heard his own voice say, "S — sure..."

Gon smiled in satisfaction. His turned his gaze to the distant skyline of the city, above the black shadows of the forest spread.

"Don't get me wrong," Killua said, trying to bring back the edge to his voice. "This isn't the first time I've run away." His lips curled unpleasantly into an ironic smirk. "Fuck it, this is temporary. Even now, I have no illusions that they don't know where I am — "

"I don't care that you ran away, Killua," Gon interrupted, gently. He shrugged, his wide, childish smile unwavering. "What matters is you ran to us. Ne?"

Killua gaped, stunned into silence, the flush on his pale cheeks, open and unguarded, flooding him with heat. This kid is nuts! But the intense sincerity of Gon's moon-washed smile was absolutely magnetic, and Killua found himself giving in.

Finally, he let his lips break into a slow smile.

"I guess all your stalking and waving rubbed off on me," he said.

"What!" The open embarrassment that rapidly took over the smile on Gon's face was utterly satisfying. "I never stalked you!" the raven-haired transferee declared, adamantly. "Ever!"

Killua smirked. "Yeah, sure."

"I didn't!"

"I've seen your Internet browser history."

"What!?" Finally, hints of a flush began to rise in Gon's cheeks. "But you can't — "

"You've been looking for Zoldyck news," Killua said, calmly, to prove his point. "You're never gonna find much on us online. Not any shit my mom wouldn't want you to find anyway."

"How did you — wait a second, did you hack my computer?"

"Well, I — " The smug smirk on Killua's face died abruptly when he turned to see Gon looking at him, looking absolutely ecstatic.

"So who's the stalker now?"

Killua felt the now-familiar heat — damn fucking heat! — flood his face again. The cheeky bastard.

Gon burst into a victorious laugh and Killua scowled, not bothering to explain that hacking Gon's computer was just his way of beating his family to the standard social investigation he knew they would conduct on the transferee — the new kid who had the gall to be seen walking alongside the Zoldyck heir. Instead, he simply pulled away from Gon, turning resolutely to walk back into the forest. "Come on, move it, it's late."

Gon burst into laughter again, and Killua endured the rest of the way with the raven-haired kid pealing digs at his grumpy face as they trekked back to the warmth of Gon's home.

- x -

Hisoka licked his curled lips hungrily.

Across the cafeteria, he watched Gon and Killua engrossed in an animated conversation. The duo was presently trending in the school's social networking sites, mainly due to the large female population griping with jealousy at the transferee's sudden success in grabbing the heir's attention, while they had been futilely leaving him notes, tweeting him memes, and hashtagging gif animations of him with #love, #loveme, and #iwillwaitforyou for more than a year. Nobody knew if he ever even saw any of their messages, as he never looked at them any differently (or at all) in school.

Hisoka switched on the screen of his mobile phone with a swift press at the button on its side. The reply he had been waiting for was blinking in a blue envelope icon on the top bar on his screen.

Before opening it, he relished the memory of the scheme he had just set in motion. All it took was a snapshot of Gon and Killua walking a bandaged dog in front of the little vet shop and an un-captioned MMS sent to a number based in the USA. Hisoka suppressed a giggle that rose in his throat and clicked on the little blinking envelope on his screen.

The message was short: a few letters and numbers in the combination of an airline flight code.

Hisoka's body shook with pleasure.

Across the cafeteria, the two boys burst into warm laughter.

- tbc -

A/N: Sorry, loves, no Mike — yet (wink wink, there's a promise there). I did, however, do my best to smooth over the relationships of our favorite foursome, as requested. I hope the chapter did not disappoint. Should you have suggestions for the improvement of future ones, I would be more than happy to hear them.