can't believe you tipped that dancer, like, eighty bucks!"

"Granted, five of that eighty was from me."

"That ten was from me."

" Ugh , you aren't making this any easier! Gon tipped that dancer sixty-five bucks and none of us stopped him! Isn't that what friends are supposed to do? Stop their friends from tipping strippers more than fifty bucks?"

"I was distracted by the concert! It's not my fault!"

Gon transcended at some point and wound up in his car, his hands on the wheel, but the four wheels outside just as stationary as his brain. He was transfixed, and every part of his mind was stuck in The Phantom wishing he had an ounce of dancing power like that . He couldn't tell what he was: turned on, impressed, or both. Sure, he could dance, but not like that .

Stripping was on another level he couldn't comprehend. He couldn't imagine being able to hoist his entire flimsy body up onto a pole like that, let alone flip upside down whilst doing so. And, sure, Gon was a trampoline master in his hayday (elementary school) but he had nothing on the stripper he just tipped sixty-five bucks to.

"Do you think we could go back sometime?" Gon asked, turning to look at Zushi, who made a point to turn once, twice, and three times to stare, dumbfounded, at Gon.

"Did... Did you not just hear the concern in my voice? Or do I need to make it more apparent?" Zushi said.

Knuckle shrugged in the back seat and slapped his hands down on his lap, saying, "Hey, you insisted on bringing the guy."

Gon rolled his eyes and, as nonchalantly as he could manage, said, "I'm just saying that it was fun . I'm not saying we go specifically to see that... stripper... but just to go to The Phantom again!"

Behind him, Uvogin slapped his hand over his face.

"Unbelievable," Knuckle said.

"I'm telling you! Classic case of Pretty Woman —man meets hooker, man buys hooker, man falls in love with hooker," Zushi said.

"I'm not in love!" Gon shrieked, voice shrill and thoroughly offended. Before they could start a toussel on the road, Knuckle cut between them, waving his hands desperately about to avoid such shenanigans from happening.

"Hey, hey, hey! Everyone, calm the fuck down! Your local voice of reason is talking here," Knuckle said.

" VOICE OF REASON! " Uvogin roared, laughing his ass off as Zushi screamed with laughter. The car was absolute chaos all the way to the front door of the dormitory where Gon parked, pouted, and watched his friends leave.

After stepping out, Zushi leant back in, a hand on the open passenger door, and said, "But seriously—that was fun. Text me when you've made it home?"

"Yeah, sure," Gon sighed with a light, cheerful smile. They said their farewells before Zushi shut the door and chased after Knuckle and Uvogin as the clock on Gon's dash ticked towards midnight.

Now left alone to his thoughts, Gon's mind was left adrift thinking about the fluid sway of the dancer's hips like Shakira had nothing on them. This was an entirely different playing field that Gon was unfamiliar and oh-so taken with. The glamor, the outfits, the sheer strength in those muscular but lean arms. That dancer could probably snap Gon's leg in half.

"Are all dancers like that?" Gon wondered aloud, reminded then that he hadn't even... really looked at the other dancers. He sighed, almost dreamily, and decided that he'd have to go back again to decide.

Gon pulled into the parking lot behind the apartment and, after shutting his car off, remembered what he was going back to—or rather, who he was going back to.

Killua.

Shit .

"He's on a date though—how long do dates go, though?" Gon wondered, because he had never been on one.

At the exact moment Gon was walking across the parking lot, Killua Zoldyck could be seen running like a banshee from the bus stop, duffle bag askew, jacket wide open, and makeup just barely smudged off. Thankfully, their apartment window was black as the pits of Hell, so Killua could only hope and dream that Gon hadn't come home to find Killua not there. He had a backup plan for that, though, but now it was just a matter of beating Freecss there.

As he raced through the front door of the apartment building, he cursed and cursed all the way up the two flights of stairs to his floor. "Fuck, shit, fucking hell, Jesus H. Christ—" he seethed, skidding onto the second floor with his lungs on the verge of collapsing.

He slid up to his door, keys in hand, just as he heard the back door on the first floor open. It was probably Gon, but maybe not? No, probably was Gon.

Killua flew inside, swung the door shut, and locked it. Panting, he waited, tense as hell and eyes wild with panic. He started to take off his boots, and as soon as he started, he flew through them and kicked them to the side just in time for Gon to put his keys into the door and start turning.

" Fuck ," Killua cursed under his breath. He flung open the laundry door, threw his duffle in, shut it, and skidded into the bathroom before Gon could see him.

Gon stepped into the pitch-black apartment just as hesitant as Killua, but for different reasons. He wasn't quite sure what to expect—How long did dates go, and would Killua bring his date through their apartment? He wasn't sure why Killua would , considering all the fuss he made about having a roommate.

Internally, Gon felt self-conscious about dating when he had a roommate around to worry about. He wanted to respect Killua's boundaries, dammit! Did that mean he just... wouldn't be able to bring his dates over? Would Gon even date?

"Of course I'll date," Gon reasoned under his breath as he sat on the step and peeled his shoes off. "I'm a handsome young man."

Behind the bathroom door, Killua had his ear to the door and bit his lip, thinking, What the fuck is this guy on? It didn't concern him, so he flicked on the bathroom light and got a frightening view of his racoon eyes in the mirror. He startled with a gasp, heart nearly escaping through his ribcage.

"Jesus Christ Almighty," he huffed, a hand over his chest. He reached for his supply of cotton balls and (discrete) makeup remover in the medicine cabinet.

Gon shuffled down the foyer hallway, his feet passing through the stretch of light from underneath the bathroom door. That confirmed that Killua was home, but did not confirm who was or wasn't in Killua's bedroom.

Gon hesitated in the living room, his eyes on Killua's door. He wanted to know... but no, he shouldn't. But should he? "No, definitely not a good idea," he told himself, crossing his arms resolutely. He would not sneak into Killua's room just to see, just to take a peek. Today was not his day to die.

Gon started towards his room, only to hesitate again.

"Just one peek," he whispered. "Just open the door, just a crack, that's it."

The living room light flicked on. "What're you muttering about."

Gon yelped and spun around to where Killua was standing with a hand on the light switch, the other on his hip. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants that sagged around his ankles and a plain hoodie but somehow managed to look stellar in it.

"I, um, nothing," Gon lied, clasping his hands behind his back. "Just got back."

"So it seems," Killua huffed. Gon's wide, childlike eyes were still stuck on him as he went to the kitchen. It reminded him too much of the wonderment Gon displayed during the main, hour-long event at The Phantom . He would have had to have been blind to not see Freecss standing there the whole damn time.

And his wallet was proof enough of Freecss' stupidity.

Killua's cheeks flushed as he opened the fridge and ducked down, out of view. He paused at the sight of the mostly-empty fridge.

"How was... your date?"

Oh, fuck, I said I was on a date , Killua realized. "Fine. Did you go grocery shopping?"

Gon's cheeks turned red in an instant. "Uh, not yet, sorry. I'm gonna go tomorrow morning."

Before Killua could admit to wanting to go with, he caught sight of Gon staring at him. Killua never straightened himself so fast in his life. Fuck, could he not do squats anymore, or would that just remind Gon of who he stared at the entire damn concert?

A headache was coming on like a goddamn semi off the guardrails.

Killua massaged his temples as Gon asked, "Is your date here or...?"

"No. I told you, I'm not bringing people through here and you shouldn't either," Killua said.

Gon put his hands up in surrender. "Alright, I won't. Geez."

Killua sighed and dropped his hands, saying, "Do you still have that twenty I gave you? I might as well just come with you to get my own groceries."

Gon grimaced and Killua thought to himself, Well, I guess he did give it back to me .

"I... might have used it at the strip club. But I can just cover twenty dollars of groceries for you! I just—I only brought cash with me and the twenty was part of it—"

"Dude, it's fine," Killua said, and when Gon visibly sighed, shoulders slumping with relief, he added, "And by the way: Twenty is way too big a tip for a stripper. Just saying."

Killua started towards the foyer archway and hesitated when Gon leapt at the chance to start a conversation over that. Killua shut his eyes and cursed internally as Gon said, "Really? How much are you supposed to tip them?"

Killua put a hand to the archway and resisted the urge to slap a hand over his face. Stupid . Not only that, but he could hear Gon's footsteps hurrying after him as he reached for the laundry door. He opened the laundry door, blocking Gon's passage through the hallway, or his view of Killua's lingerie dufflebag.

"I don't know. Like, a dollar per song? If you're forking out twenty bucks, that's asking for a lap dance or some shit," he said as he ducked down to the washing machine and started shoveling his lingerie into a mesh bag and tossing it in.

"Oh, God, really? But I never got a lap dance—"

"It was a rave , dude. There... probably weren't chairs around. And maybe the dancer couldn't leave the stage? I don't know."

On the other side of the door, Gon bit his lip, grimacing a little as he thought of the sixty-five dollars he was short of. He tucked his hands together behind his back, scuffing his feet on the wood flooring. "What if I... hypothetically speaking, what could you get with, like... sixty bucks?"

Killua could have bashed his head into the washing machine, but somehow managed to avoid doing so. He sighed through his nose and told himself that he was doing the Lord's work by shattering Gon's naiveté.

"You could get a private showing with that," he said.

The instant Killua said it, though, Gon's brain was running wild. How did Killua know this much? Only one way to find out , he thought just before asking, "How come you know so much about strip clubs?"

After a beat of silence, Gon heard the machine door shut. "Common sense," Killua said, and a moment later, the machine began to hum.

Gon didn't question it—though he should have, because no more than two paces away from him sat a washing machine full of lingerie that he would have recognized in an instant.