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It wasn't like he didn't trust Gon. Of course he did. With his money and with his life and everything between, not least of which being his useless sodding heart. That made this all the more difficult to explain.
On his arse, bleeding from five scratches on his cheek and jaw that could easily have scored his neck had he not been who he was, Gon sits and stares at Killua. Killua stares right back, eyes so wide they hurt, skin coated in cold sweat, mouth dry and locked with gritted teeth.
Their fellow restaurant patrons stare, largely at the broken table and its debris between them, snapped by the force of their outburst.
Gon isn't frowning, but then he doesn't when he’s really upset. He doesn't make a move to come closer, either. Killua stares at him from the corner of the room, propped against the ceiling and holding on. Climbing the walls, literally. Gon raises his hand, slowly, palm facing outwards. "Killua?"
It’s too much. Between one breath and the next, Killua flees. Gon might have caught him, but he doesn't try. He sits on the floor of the restaurant a moment longer before standing, with difficulty, brushing most of the broken china and food from his clothes and rubbing the back of his neck with a laugh. "Could I get the bill, please?"
One minute and thirty three seconds after Killua gets back to their room, Gon opens the door. This isn't particularly surprising. Killua, conflicted, had not been trying to run faster. Instead he stands with his back to the door, shoulders and hair on his neck stiff and raised.
He feels Gon reach through the air towards him and forces himself to be still. His calloused, warm palm lands on his shoulder like an anchor.
Killua takes a deep breath and lets it go for longer than he needs to, trying to rediscover the shadows to which his eyes have long since adjusted.
Then he turns. Gon’s expression is straight and solemn. The blood on his cheek has dried but the cuts are still ragged, garish, even in the dark. Killua realises, belatedly, that his blood is on his hands. His fingers twitch.
"I frightened you." All he can hear in Gon’s voice is concern, and beneath that the faint tremor of his heart beating just a little faster than normal. Gon is doing nothing to hide, but his expression gives nothing away, and in a brief scorching moment Killua hates him for it. Instead he shrugs off Gon’s hand, leaning away.
"No, idiot. I attacked you."
Gon hums, and his eyes are sharp, watching him carefully. "Yeah, because you were frightened."
Killua’s hands clench and relax. He opens his mouth, pauses, shuts it and tries again. "It doesn't matter."
A frown finally, finally inches its way onto Gon’s features. "Yes it does."
The corner of a snarl twists Killua’s mouth. He’s still not meeting Gon’s gaze. "No it doesn't! Forget it." He stops, presses the heels of his palms to his head, rubs his eyes and takes two deep breaths. "No." He turns, looks at the cuts on Gon’s cheek. His breath leaves him in one heavy exhale and his shoulders drop. "I’m sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."
Gon blinks. Then his eyes flicker downwards, as if he can see the cuts. He raises his hand to gesture at them, vaguely. "What, these? That doesn't matter."
Killua scowls, stomping to the door to turn on the light and then back to his bed, jerking a first aid kit from the depths of his bag and pointedly telling himself that he’s not avoiding the subject. "Yes it does. Now sit down."
Gon opens his mouth to protest, but Killua glares at him across the little room and he thinks twice about it, dropping down on to the bed whilst Killua brings over antiseptic cream, gauze and butterfly stitches.
Hands steady, barely, Killua sits on the bed in front of Gon's which is close enough that their knees bump one another's, and leans forward to clean his wounds. Gon winces, just a little, catching his breath. Killua huffs. "Knew it wasn't nothing."
Despite his flinching, Gon offers a lopsided smile. "Well yeah. You're strong."
Killua narrows his eyes at the cuts and focuses on his work, fingers nimble and practiced. "Amazingly, that does little to reassure me."
It’s Gon’s turn to huff. "Aw come on. You're the one who hurt me." For less than a second, Killua’s fingers freeze on Gon’s freckled, bloody cheek. If it had been anyone other than he they wouldn't have noticed. (But it had to be Gon, didn't it? It had to be someone who could keep up.) And he does.
A warm, rough, sandpaper hand reaches up to cup his. Gon waits until, reluctantly, Killua meets his eyes, and smiles: slow, deliberate and gentle. "And I don't mind. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter." He pauses, mouth twisting, eyebrows pushing upwards to wrinkle his sun brown skin. "You're forgiven. But there's nothing to forgive."
Killua flushes pink and scowls, batting his hands away to carefully apply the adhesive stitches. "These should keep them closed. I don't think you’ll need actual stitches, knowing you, but we can check again tomorrow."
He picks up the gauze, cutting it to match the wounds and taping it gently. Gon is quiet. Their breath mixes hotly in the narrow space between their noses. Their knees and thighs rest gently against one another in the space between their beds. Gon watches Killua’s face. Killua stares at his hands and the wounds he’s dressing.
"What I'm worried about is what made you forget that I was me."
Killua has finished, he expects Gon was waiting till he was, so he sighs and leans back onto his hands, looking to the right at the plaster peeling down the wall.
"Why would you say that, weirdo?"
Gon sighs, and it's his turn to look down. "Because you said your brother’s name."
Killua goes pale. Gon presses on. "You said 'Milluki, no.' " He swallows. "You said 'brother please.' And then you attacked me." His fingers clutch the crisp sheets of his bed. "I know I frightened you." His voice trembles, and Killua stares. "But I don't know what I did. And I want to. Because I don't ever want to do it again.
I want to protect you. Not cause you more pain." Gon pauses and takes a deep breath. "Please, Killua." He looks up. "Please let me help."
Killua sighs, slowly, and closes his eyes. A faint smile touches his lips. "You’re a sap and an idiot, you know."
"You wouldn't love me any other way." His reply is a reflex, delivered with a smile. The tension that had lingered since he returned dissipates. Killua shrugs, getting up onto his bed and sitting against the headboard, staring ahead.
"There’s nothing to help. It’s in the past."
"Not all of it is."
Killua flinches, hands clenching. One is still sticky with half dried blood. "It should be."
They’re quiet for a moment. Outside, cars growl quietly down the empty streets. If they listen harder they can hear the trees sighing in a gentle breeze, and the lower whirr of insects waking for the night. But they’re too focused on one another’s heartbeats to care.
The bed creaks and sinks as Gon takes his place beside Killua. He doesn't look up, but he moves to give him space which is permission enough. Their shoulders bump, and the lines of their arms match neatly, right down to where their little fingers lie against each other. Killua has a feeling that Gon wants to hold his hand. He doesn't. He bends one leg, resting his other arm on it, and stares at the wall too. Briefly, they’re on a boat to an island in the hunter exam, wondering whether they’ll keep pushing the trust they’re building with plastic tags and secrets.
Gon brings them back. "So what happened?"
Killua sighs, pushes his hair back from his forehead, and stares at the blood just beneath his nails. He picks at it and mumbles. "Back then or this evening?"
"Both."
He shifts, readjusting himself to sit a little straighter against the headboard. Gon shifts to match. Killua pretends that the long line of warmth against his side isn't the anchor he’s making it.
"It just comes back to my training again. Sometimes, if things are similar enough, and sometimes when they aren't, which is really annoying, my brain does this thing that makes me think I’m back there, doing that, and I forget where I am now." He growls, pushes his hair back and pulls at it. "That doesn't make sense."
Gon shakes his head. "No, it does. You’re reliving it. Like a nightmare, right?"
Killua glances at him sidelong. "Yeah. Kind of. But I'm awake. And." He hesitates. Gon waits. He stares down at his hands, locking his fingers together and squeezing. "I feel like I can't breathe. My heart goes crazy. I get cold. Dizzy. Forget about my aura. I feel like I’m going to die."
"Is that the memory or the nightmare?" Gon's voice is hushed.
His reply is flat, and hard. "Both."
"It's not just with this, is it?"
Killua’s mouth flattens. He picks his words carefully. "What...makes you say that?"
Gon leans his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. A half smile curls the corner of his chapped lips. "You’re not as good at hiding things as you think you are. Not from me." He turns to meet Killua’s gaze, but he’s already looked away, flushed. Gon smiles anyway and now he does lay his hand on Killua’s, gently winding their fingers together. Killua doesn't look up, but he doesn't pull away either. "I notice you, too, you know."
"It's just part of the standard torture training." He says, with a shrug, but he can feel Gon’s surprise in the jerk of his fingers before they tighten, warm and rough around his hand.
"Force feeding. Poison." He shifts, turning to look out of the window, at the jewel strewn darkness of the city at night. "The poison I. Was taught. In various ways. Tricks. Lessons. Sometimes measured doses. Sometimes I just had to figure it out. Normally, it was poisoned food or no food, and my hunger was an added motive to figuring out a way round it. But." He pauses. Shuts his eyes. Breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“Of course I learned. I was a child prodigy. I was designed to get good at things fast and I wasn't given a choice anyway. So. I knew. I knew when it got more severe. I knew how deadly it was getting, and how much pain I'd have to bear if I ate what my mother fed me.” He presses the heel of his palm to his forehead. “I thought it was a test. I told myself that but I was just scared. I'd taken pain, but I didn't want to find the place where I couldn't bear it any more. My stomach already felt bruised. Brutalised.” His free hand moves to clench, briefly, around his shirt above the plane of his abdomen. “It had been weeks. Maybe months. I wasn't able or permitted to sleep much. And I thought I wasn't supposed to eat it. That this was my limit.” He shuts his eyes again. He’s not sure exactly when but Gon has looped an arm around his shoulder, and now he’s leaning against the solid warmth of his partner’s chest. He can feel Gon’s chin resting on his head. He's holding his left hand, now, but still tightly, thumb running gently over the back of it.
Killua breathes out, and shuts his eyes and presses into him and Gon makes no sign of noticing and he is more grateful for that than he can say.
"That was a mistake. I slept. I was so tired." Gon pulls him closer, just fractionally, and Killua lets him. "I woke in the night, strapped into The Chair." He snorts half heartedly. "Just says how tired I was. I’d learnt to beat off attackers on waking when I was 4. But I hadn't woken at all until I was there, and bound, and there was a. A tube in my throat." He swallows, convulsively. "Some people say it's sort of like. Like rape. And I can see what they mean. My brother, Milluki, held me still and my mother tipped, I don't know what it was. Something hot and bitter. Into my throat. And it hurt." He squeezes his eyes shut, batting off the memories. "I thought I’d choke, and then knew I wouldn't, but I had to swallow because if I didn't I would, suffocate on it. And I knew what it would do and they left the tube there and I kept trying to be sick but I couldn't." His breathing is accelerating with his heartbeat. His mouth is dry again and his skin cold. He stops. Takes long, slow breaths through his nose. Leans into Gon and clutches his shirt like it’ll stop him from drowning. He keeps breathing, and he doesn't know how long he needs to before he can go on. Eventually it abates.
Gon's fingers are clutching his arm hard enough to leave bruises. As Killua's breathing slows, wordlessly he pulls him into his lap. He might have complained but he's too busy sinking into the feeling of being cradled, Gon's right arm resting on his knees, his left still bracing his back, still holding his hand, loosely. He props his chin on Killua's head again and Killua wants to see his expression but doesn't dare to look so instead he presses his ear to his chest and listens to the strong, solid beat of his heart and clutches his shirt like a child holds a blanket when the nights turn cold.
“All parts of the Hemlock plant are poisonous. It causes a gradual weakening of the muscles. That weakening escalates into pain, which becomes increasingly intense as your muscles deteriorate and die. It takes several hours to kill its victims, however the symptoms begin to manifest after the first thirty minutes. No antidote currently exists, so a medical worker's first response is to extract the poison and support the respiratory and pulmonary system.” Killua stares at the wall and recites this in a monotone. Then he stops. “It was the greatest pain I had ever experienced. I tried to escape from my own body, but I couldn't. I didn't even have the freedom to flinch. I was still bound. Still had that tube stuffed down my throat and I felt like I was being eaten alive from the inside out. And my mother watched. And my brother watched. And I was dying.
I was five years old.”
He's not sure when tears began to run down his cheeks and is, vaguely, surprised. It's been so long since he cried. They're cold, and he doesn't bother to get rid of them. Instead he takes another long, slow breath, and stares until he thinks he can make out Gon's pulse leaping against the thin brown paper skin of his throat. “I shouldn't have survived. I'd barely eaten, barely slept, and if I had I shouldn't have lived, anyway. Now we know about Nen, I wonder if that was it, somehow. I don't know if my mother knew that, or if she just decided that if I died I wasn't worthy enough to live.” He shrugs. “Doesn't matter now.” His body feels light. He feels light. There's an ache in his lower back, like a knot, that he'd barely known was there and that's unwinding, slowly. He feels sort of empty and sort of tired and mostly just finished. His tears have dried but he reaches up to wipe them away anyway, roughly. Which is when one lands on his collar bone.
Killua blinks. He's sure he isn't crying, this time. Another tear lands on his ear, and then another on the nape of his neck, and his eyes go wide and he shifts, pulling back and away from Gon to look up at him. He's staring at the wall of their room and tears are breaking from the corners of his eyes, running down damp tracks already staining his cheeks. His jaw is tense and it takes him a moment to notice Killua watching him, wide eyed. Then he shuts his eyes and pulls him close, pressing his face into his hair in what might have been a kiss but which is lost, there. He holds Killua close and sniffs and chokes and Killua just clutches his shirt and stares at his hands and worries, wordlessly, until Gon runs his fingers through his hair, gently, gently cradling his skull like a child's, and nudges his head with his nose to press a kiss to his forehead. Killua blushes, still confused, swallows and starts to say “I'm sorry I didn't mean-” but Gon is shaking his head. Instead he pulls back, a little, to cup Killua's face between his calloused palms. His thumbs trace over the lines where Killua's tears had run and dried, and he shakes his head.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” When he meets his eyes they're burning, and Killua knows he couldn't look away if he'd tried. Gon offers a quavering corner of a smile, and he shakes his head, and his thumb is still stroking Killua's cheek, though the tears are long since gone. “Nothing at all.”
Killua would contest that but he realises they're having a Moment so he says nothing and stares and swallows when his throat gets dry. Gon leans forward, shutting his eyes and propping his forehead against his, he's warm and his nose fits gently beside the curve of his own, and Killua stares at his eyelashes, which are long and thick and dark and wet with tears that fall like dew onto his freckled, sunburnt cheeks. Gon smiles and it's not a smile, really, and at some point Killua has found himself sitting in his lap, legs either side of his waist, arms wrapped around him, instead, awkwardly rubbing circles on his back.
“I'm going to kill them.”
Killua smiles a little, fondly. “No you're not.”
Gon keeps his eyes shut. “I want to.”
Killua hesitates, hands pausing in their tracks, and a little pink rises into his cheeks. “Well, you couldn't.”
Gon snorts. “I could if I tried.”
Killua stares at the wall behind his back and thinks about it. Then he lets out a long, slow sigh, drawing one hand back to stroke Gon's cheek. “Maybe you could. But you won't.” Gon makes a sound somewhere low in his throat and Killua recognises it as the frustration that it is. His smile has yet to leave his lips, though it hasn't altogether reached his eyes, either. “It's ok. I buried my hatchet long ago.” He pauses. “A little literally. I don't need you to dig it up for me.”
Gon huffs a laugh, and opens his eyes to look up and meet Killua's gaze. “I wish that I'd been there for you. I wish I could have stopped them. Fuck, I wish I could do something. I just. I'm just. I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry.”
Killua's smile curls a little higher at the corner of his mouth. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” He pretends that fresh tears aren't stinging the corners of his vision and holds Gon's gaze, hand still resting on his cheek. “Just, maybe don't try to feed me, please?”
Gon shakes his head fervently, sitting back. “I won't. I swear. And. Please tell me if there's anything else?” He bites his lip and Killua worries that he's going to cry again and he doesn't know how to handle that. He nods.
“I'll try. I promise I'll try.” And then, because a little bit of him thinks he needs to and most of him just wants to, he leans forward and presses a chaste kiss again Gon's chapped lips. They're damp, and soft, and taste of salt. Gon winds his hands into his hair and holds him close, tightly, desperate. When they break apart, neither moves far. Instead, breath mingling in the space between their lips and noses, Gon looks up and offers half a smile that's a little bit amused and largely just vicious.
“Killua?”
Killua hums a question in response, raising an eyebrow.
“If we meet them again, your family are fair game.” There are knives beneath his words, naked and thirsty, and Killua laughs, hard and long, until his lips are sealed gently by a kiss. And then another. And so on.