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The school bell rang with a piercing shriek and this time it was Gon who surprised Killua when he jumped him from behind while the later was fishing around his locker for his geometry textbook.
“Where’re you in the mood to go today?” Gon chirped, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he waited for Killua.
“How about the arcade? I just got my allowance last night.” Killua suggested after –finally— finding the offensively thick textbook and sliding it into his backpack.
“Oh, can we play that new game they got? Green Island?”
“Greed Island,” Killua corrected as he slammed his locker shut with a lazy kick. He caught movement in the corner of his eye, someone tall with long black hair and an unblinking stare that prickled across his skin where it landed, and steadfastly focused on the brief rant Gon was going on about the level they’d been unable to get past last week: a deadly dodgeball game.
“And I think I’ve finally got a way to beat it,” Gon concluded with a cheery grin.
“Sounds good,” Killua replied, trying his best to match Gon’s enthusiasm with his own smile. It didn’t feel quite right as it stretched across his face, stiff and too small, but Gon didn’t seem to mind, or rather, he could recognize and appreciate the effort. And Killua was endlessly thankful for that.
“Killua,” a voice from behind said, but Killua pretended not to hear the flat tone over the chatter of student around them. Even though he and the speaker knew otherwise.
Once they were down the front steps, Killua tossed his skateboard onto the sidewalk and kicked off. He maintained a sedate pace as Gon trotted beside him, complaining about how completely unfair Ms. Biscuit was for giving out a pop quiz when she’d promised she wouldn’t yesterday.
After a few blocks, Killua hopped off and allowed Gon to climb onto the deck. He pushed off confidently enough but kept his arms thrown out to the sides for balance as they continued down the sidewalk. This time, with his attention firmly on remaining upright, Killua took the reigns on their conversation.
Communicating with more than monosyllabic words and enunciating what were once swallowed opinions had taken some time, and he still was learning the proper cadence of speech, like how to stress different parts of a sentence to distinguish between good humor or genuine malice. But Gon had done more than act as a representation to mimic, going so far as to ask Killua for more details or to extrapolate on points or even laugh at a comment that wasn’t delivered smoothly but carried with it the attempt to be humorous.
And Killua showed his appreciation for Gon by absorbing everything he’d learned thus far and crafting an approximation of last night’s dinner at his house: a terse affair that involved Milluki spilling the tea on Illumi’s personal relations with someone unintroduced and, therefore, unapproved of by mother and father. The nuclear fallout of which, is what indirectly allowed Killua to interject at an opportune moment to not only get his allowance a day early, but in near double amount for IIlumi’s irrevocable mistake.
Killua sensed in the same way he could feel gravity that Gon could have told the story better, but Gon nevertheless laughed and commented at just the right moments, almost making it seem like they were, somehow, telling the story together. Which made it even better.
He concluded the silly story with a wry thanks to whoever the hell ‘Hisoka’ was for causing all this trouble and making an otherwise bland dinner something to enjoy, and felt warmth spread from head to toe at Gon’s answering laughter.
They arrived at the arcade in good time. Killua leaned against the weathered brick of the building, hands deep in his pockets, and watched Gon spend the next few minutes trying to kick the end of his skateboard up and into his hand to pass it back to him. His pink tongue poked out between his pursed lips, and Killua wanted to tease him about the unintentional expression, but didn’t want to break his friend’s concentration, didn’t want that tongue to disappear.
Eventually, Gon relented with a good-natured groan and bent down to pick up the skateboard with his hands. Killua consoled him with a pat on the back, and into the arcade they went. It was dark inside, compared to the blazing afternoon sun just beyond the tinted glass, but Gon’s excitable presence filled the retro carpeted room with enough vigor to make up for the difference.
They headed straight for the Greed Island game cabinet and went to work with an intensity rarely seen inside the classroom. Gon’s plan of attack on the dodgeball level worked out flawlessly, no doubt in thanks to their inexplicable teamwork. Not even with the brothers he’d spent his entire life around did Killua ever feel as in-sync, as harmonious, as he did with Gon.
After the nerve-wracking dodgeball level, Greed Island was abandoned so they could move on to other, older titles. Having never had the chance to visit an arcade before meeting Gon that year, Killua was constantly introduced to new games every time they came. But even if it was his first time playing, Killua found that he had quite the natural aptitude for most games, perhaps derived from wherever Milluki got the same talent.
Though no matter how badly he lost, or how much Killua teased, Gon merely accepted the results with a palpable excitement. Whether he was determinedly challenging Killua to another round, or celebrating Killua’s ranking on the leaderboard, Gon seemed so genuinely happy to be there, with Killua, at that very moment.
Part of Killua squirmed underneath the attention, hesitating in the face of what had to be empty flattery. Because why else would someone be so glad to be around him?
A bigger part of him seemed to melt into a pitiful goo, relieved to finally be allowed to let go and accept that the warmth in his chest, the lightness in his heart, was real and valid. Because even someone like him had every right to know what happiness was.
And that’s exactly what he was. Happy. It was strange to think, and even stranger to admit, but Killua was happier than he had ever been, ever thought he could be.
Killua felt his phone ring in his pocket, but didn’t move to check it, having too much fun blasting asteroids with Gon and laughing about Mr. Wing’s latest random tangent in today’s history class.
When they eventually left the arcade, practically kicked out by the shopkeeper as the closing time approached, the sun was just slipping beneath the horizon. Killua still felt warm as he basked in Gon’s luminous grin; and as the minutes steadily ticked by and afternoon became twilight, and the twilight became night, he felt no change.
It may have been around 9 o’clock. He may have an angry family waiting for him at home. He may be yelled at or grounded or…Killua’s ribs ached with a phantom pain, mitigated only by the sudden burst of laughter from Gon as he failed to withhold his laughter in the middle of a joke he’d learned, and was trying so badly to recite, from Zushi.
Well, whatever his family did to him didn’t matter. Not now. Not when Gon was smiling so bright, staring at him with such wide eyes. Nothing beyond that really mattered at all. Because even though it was late into the night, it wasn’t really. It wasn’t dark. It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t lonely.
His sun was still out, warming him and keeping him company as time seemed to pass them by, leaving them alone, together, in some strange point that was a perpetual afternoon.