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The morning light slants in through the shutters, gleaming bars of honey sloping down over the arc of Killua's cheekbone, pooling in the spaces behind his ears and between his fingers, catching white-gold in his irises. For half a second Gon forgets how to breathe, loses a fragment of himself in the ethereal mirage burning brilliantly before him. He catches himself almost immediately, though; swallows hard and does his best to still the faint fluttering of gossamer butterfly wings in his chest.
Distracted as he is, Gon almost trips on thin air, the protesting creak of the floorboards making him cringe unwittingly. He flicks his gaze back to Killua, expecting him to have reacted or turned— to have done something in response, anyway. Yet the expression painted across his face like the thinnest layer of watercolor is still half-dazed, half-dreamy. He's hunched over an old copy of Gulliver's Travels, one leg dangling over the side and the other drawn up to his chest, his chin resting on his kneecap.
Gon's heart leaps into his throat and plants itself there, stubbornly refusing to budge. There's something unusual about the Killua whose hands are gentle as they turn the pages, something about the way his eyes are softer around the edges and his lips are parted just the slightest bit as though he's no idea they're open himself, something that speaks in volumes what he usually chooses not to vocalize. Maybe it's because it's been so long since they've last run bases with death that the tension has seeped out of even Killua's weary bones— maybe after all this time they're back to square one, back to first base. In the glowing embers of daybreak, dripping like molten lava from their fingertips, death is naught but a distant nightmare, a relic of sudden blights and stormy nights and passenger flights that never reached their destinations.
Killua reminds Gon of the moon, drawn in the sun’s embrace, all blurry rounded corners and muted cascades of light.
This feels like a dream—
The thought flits momentarily across Gon’s mind, as light as a butterfly’s wing beating against the shell of his ear, touch so fleeting it seems almost imaginary. It settles in his gut and spreads like fire through his insides, except it’s the good kind of warm, the kind of warm that makes him want to curl up under a fall leaf assortment of blankets in a room that’s marginally cold, the kind of warm that smells like a crackling fireplace and hot chocolate, the kind of warm that looks like
a smile, Killua’s smile, Killua’s laugh, breathy and light and sometimes— often— hesitant, like a bubbling brook or a trickling stream, Killua’s eyes, ocean blue and constellation-flecked and seemingly bottomless, Killua’s
—voice, low and smooth like ribbons of melted chocolate as he turns to face Gon, silver-edged outline flickering like a candle flame.
"What're you doing?" He asks, in that familiar mix of jaunty mockery and wholehearted sincerity.
Gon blinks once, twice, jolting out of his reverie, and the illusion falls apart. Looks down at his feet and realizes he hasn't moved from the doorway since he came in. Laughs, abashedly.
As if sensing the change in tempo, the sun slips discreetly out of view, pressing through a smoke-drop of frosted clouds and vanishing behind their too-tall backs. The shift is a subtle one, from Indian gold to cornflower blue; suddenly the shadows around them fall very differently. In a cerulean-tinted room cast in ice Gon swallows his blue-lipped wonder and replies, honestly, "looking at you."
Killua's eyes widen a fraction and his mouth drops open as if to say something, then clamps shut just as quickly. "There's nothing worth looking at here," he says breezily, and means it.
"But there is." Gon starts forward, his feet soughing against the wooden floorboards yet making no sound at all, as if he were walking on air. He stops right in front of Killua. "There is."
They are close enough now that Gon can see drops of starlight glistening on Killua's eyelashes, the bob of his Adam's apple as he swallows. Still seated by the bay window, Killua has to tilt his head back a little to look Gon in the eye. "Well, you're gonna have to show me where, then."
The firm set of Gon's eyebrows speaks of determination and seriousness and quietly simmering disapproval. He sinks into the cushions to Killua's right, and Killua swings his other leg over the edge so they are side-by-side, shoulders bumping, knees barely-touching. When he next meets Killua's gaze, his eyes say may I? and uncertainty steals across Killua's face like a scatter of midnight but he doesn't say no.
Gently, as if he were touching the fluorescent sheen of a butterfly wing, Gon's hand alights on Killua's, clenched into a half-fist by his side. He grazes the other boy's knuckles with a hand, and with nary a sign of resistance it unfurls, relaxing into his touch.
"This, here." Gon taps softly on the flesh of Killua's palm, where a single blue vein can be faintly seen. "And going down, along here." He traces the vein down Killua's wrist with the pad of his thumb, his touch careful and measured. The pathways of constellations stand out profoundly against his pale, pale skin, and Gon maps them all out— every little fork in the road, every sharp turn. He stops abruptly over Killua's pulse, lingering over the soft skin there.
"And this is Killua's heartbeat." Gon's voice is barely above a whisper. Proof that Killua's alive, and here, and mine, he doesn't say.
Killua hasn't said a single word throughout, but at this he flushes red from the base of his neck to the tips of his ears. "You've got one too! What makes mine so special?" Caught off-guard, he scrambles for familiar ground, for habitual routines, for silly Gon and snarky Killua.
(Gon thinks that Killua's skin is moon-pale, and that the way it glows where sunlight falls is enchanting. Gon thinks that Killua's laughter is like the crisp clink of wine glasses, and that he would like to keep some of it in a glass jar for mellower days. Gon also thinks that Killua's eyes are like glass marbles. Not the cheap sort you can get at souvenir shops; something exquisite and shaped from precious stone. Kyanite, maybe, or sapphire, cut clean and smooth and polished to a shine. Expensive, precious, a rarity. A one in a hundred million chance; a miracle find. Someone incredible and amazing beyond words he found in a burst of luck, a chance meeting, pure happenstance. A blessing. But he doesn't say that to Killua's face—)
Instead, Gon offers Killua a smile that's shaped like a secret, kisses the inside of his wrist, and says in three words what he doesn't think he'll ever be able to properly explain (because even he cannot fit the entire world with its kaleidoscopic colors and fantastical impossibilities into only twenty-six letters).
"Because it's Killua's."
And Killua understands without understanding, nods, somberly— accepts his words like a prayer.
Because it’s Gon.