Speak of the Devil // COMPLETED ✔

Time Of My Life Feat. Killua Removing His Belly Piercing From Claire's

Hisoka made good on his word. Seeing as Meruem found Killua's grandfather more interesting, Killua was dismissed from the house with a simple, "Very well," to Hisoka's reminder that Killua had homework to do back at the dorms.

Killua stepped over the patio grates and turned to shut the door. Hisoka was there to shut it, and Killua barely caught sight of Gon waving from the kitchen before his view was replaced by a sunny glare.

Killua spent the entire walk back to the dorms trying not to succumb to a panic attack. Trembling and out of breath, Killua ignored the worried ask from the guy at the front desk and instead stumbled to the nearest phone booth down the hall. It took him three tries to put the quarter into the slot.

He leant into the counter, head in his hand and phone to his ear. His leg bounced under the counter as he waited. His breath came a little easier by the time the phone was answered.

"Hi, Jamie from Brown again," he said, feigning a higher pitch. "Is Alluka available to chat about her essay submission?"

His mother replied, "Oh, I'm so sorry, she's still at school. She'll be back by two."

Fucking Hell, Killua thought, because of course she was at school. "Right. Absolutely. I'll call back then—let her know we called?"

"Of course! Have a nice day, Jamie from Brown."

He hung up and immediately rang his voicemail. There were messages from Alluka and his grandfather still leftover from days prior, and he sat through every last one, tears on his face.

He scrubbed his hand over his eyes, pinching his fingers over the bridge of his nose. What was he doing, what was he doing, WHAT WAS HE DOING?!

He slammed the phone on the hanger and sat there, head on his arms, for what felt like hours. He pinched his bottom lip, straightening a little, and began to think. Properly think.

With the haze of his panic gone, Killua felt more in tune with the mind he'd forgotten—before the LSD, after Gon restored him. He followed its natural curves and reassuring processes that dismantled his worries about Gon being with Meruem.

With Meruem being here.

Hisoka's threat of being dragged down to Hell.

Killua dismissed this instantly. He knew Hisoka, however vaguely, and knew that Hisoka preferred being back in Hell and to retain the status quo—of the Zoldycks going back to their normal lives. The threat of Hell was certainly a sufficient deterrent.

But perhaps it wasn't as big of a threat as Hisoka worried.

Killua relaxed under this assurance. His heart stabilized as he slumped back against his chair, a hand patting his burning chest.

He was fine. They were all fine.

Killua spent the rest of the day alone. His appetite returned in time for dinner, which came as a jarring surprise to him. He sat at his and Gon's usual table amidst the dinner crowd and realized, pathetically, that he hadn't made any friends.

And by the end of the week, Gon would be gone.

This was a melancholic churn in his mind that continued into the morning, Tuesday, when classes proceeded as if a Prince of Hell wasn't on campus feigning being a student. Killua dressed in his empty dorm room and left to join the breakfast rush at the mess hall.

When he emerged to the quad following his morning class, he observed a distinct shift on campus. He paused on the stoop of his building, watching clusters of his peers milling about the sidewalk, their breaths held and eyes on the lawn across the quad. The central focus was so eminent that Killua wondered if there was a cosmic event happening, but the sky was clear.