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“I’ll be careful!” Gon promised, exclaiming into the phone. “Besides, Killua is with me!” And, well, that wasn’t exactly reassuring to Beans, but he also knew Gon was growing into a young man. With his hunters’ license in hand, there wasn’t much Beans could tell him no to anymore.
“Have fun, Gon,” Beans replied. The oven made a small pinging sound from the kitchen, and Beans went to retrieve the dinner he’d been preparing. Phone held tightly between his ear and shoulder, he pulled the roast from the open.
Gon’s cheerful voice answered back, “I will! ‘Love you!”
“I love you too, Gon,” Beans told his son with a smile. “I’ll be sure to watch your matches.” Beans made sure to keep himself on the line until Gon hung up first, bursting in his excitement to head to Heaven’s Arena. Beans wasn’t exactly in approval of the action, but he also knew that Gon would be able to handle it. He’d keep an eye out, but he trusted Gon’s intuition.
Beans set down the phone, humming a light tune to himself as he began setting up a meal for himself of the roast from the oven. He frowned only a bit because he’d made too much food – once again. Well, there would be leftovers for tomorrow. Despite Gon being gone for nearly four months already on his adventures, Beans still had a knack for making just a bit too much food.
Beans had rolled his white sleeves up, about to sit down when he was startled by a voice behind him. “I thought we were getting takeout.” Beans froze at the voice, thawing as quickly as he could to turn around, faced with the back of a man standing before the oven. “Smells good.”
Twelve years, he hadn’t heard that voice in twelve years or seen that still-familiar silhouette, and the first thing he felt like saying was mentioning take-out?
“Ging?”
Ging turned around, setting a half-gallon of milk down on the counter. He took a few steps closer to Beans, and for every step he took, Beans took two back. “Hmm? You changed.”
“It has been twelve years,” Beans ground out. Now, normally Beans wasn’t one to be angry, but when your estranged husband shows up after twelve years, stumbling into your house like no time has passed, well, Beans felt like he was being rather reasonable in merely being angry and not calling for the entire building’s security team to come deal with the intruder.
“I went out for milk.” Ging’s thumb pointed behind him at the milk sitting on the counter as if that explained everything.
Beans’ eyes merely widened. “You went out for milk and it took you twelve years to make it back? Did you get lost on the way? Find some buried treasure or something?”
Because honestly, that’s always what Beans had suspected. Ging had just up and left one day, no explanation, no words of goodbye to him or their son. Beans had always thought that Ging couldn’t handle the pressure of settling down, of raising a kid, and had instead taken the easy way out of becoming a treasure seeker yet again. After so many years, he better have brought back something a bit more sparkling than milk.
Ging took another step closer, and this time, Beans didn’t move back although he felt himself stiffen a bit in apprehension. “I was testing out the Freedom Apparatus,” Ging began to explain. The Freedom Apparatus was a new nen ability Ging had been perfecting a decade ago. In theory it manifested in the form of a sailing ship with the ability to teleport the user to any place they desired. While it accomplished the goal, the timing was a bit off, and Ging had been working to make the teleportation instantaneous for both the user and the outside world. “I mean, I know it probably took me a little longer than usual, the sails weren’t cooperating right, but twelve years? No need to play jokes with me.”
Beans face-palmed.
No longer feeling entirely averse to touching his long-thought-runaway-husband, he grabbed his arm and pulled him along into the study until he could point quite clearly at the calendar. While Ging was taking it off the wall to gaze incredulously at the date, Beans pulled a picture of him and Gon off the desk before thrusting it into Ging’s hand. “There’s your son,” he said, with less anger now, more weariness.
“He’s gotten big.”
“It’s been twelve years,” Beans reiterated, because, apparently, Ging wasn’t quite getting it. “He’s a hunter now,” continued Beans, “and is trying out Heaven’s Arena.”
There was a ghost of a smile on Ging’s lips. “Good kid.” Then a scowl appeared on his face while he handed the picture back to Beans. Ging proceeded to kick at the air angrily, “Damn, boat,” he grumbled. “I leave for ten minutes to get milk and twelve years pass. I know the damn thing never liked me.”