Chapter Text
Something bad is coming. Something angry and unhinged, a cloud of toxic smog that smells like blood and rot. Illumi’s bloodlust, but wrong, roiling and twisted.
Hisoka unlocks his door in preparation, but Illumi breaks it off the hinges when he enters without even trying the lock. Hisoka stands in the middle of his living room, clutching Nen-sharpened playing cards because there is always the semblance of a chance Illumi has come to kill him.
He’s never seen Illumi like this before. Bruised and beaten, the left side of his face puffy, dried blood around a split lip. His hair has a mind of it’s own, a slithering black halo framing his head. He stands in the doorway, empty-eyed and seething.
“Illu, dear, are you hurt?” Hisoka tries, putting on his kindest smile.
Illumi seems to register the words, but doesn’t respond. His mouth just parts slightly, releasing panting breaths as he takes a staggered step forward, wincing. Hisoka has never seen Illumi react to physical pain.
“Are you going to kill me?” Hisoka asks, truly curious.
“No,” Illumi mumbles, voice dark and almost gravelly. He’s not fully there, Hisoka realizes. Something must have happened. He’s never seen Illumi in this state.
“How about you drop the pins then?” Hisoka eyes the shiny pins between Illumi’s fingers, yellow balls clenched on his palms.
Illumi growls, eyes flaring like a wild animal. Hisoka falters a bit, blood rushing south. Illumi looks fucking stunning. In a dark blur, he phases out of Hisoka’s vision, jumping upwards to tackle him to the ground, punching the air from his lungs.
Between his coughing, Hisoka can at least hear the pins clattering against his wood-paneled floors. It wouldn’t make sense for Illumi to kill him now, after all. There’s something Illumi wants from him. He doesn’t care enough to find out immediately— it’s better that way, the chase, the mystery, the back and forth.
The pregame is always the best part. Not the battle, not the aftermath. The anticipation.
“What happened, Illu?” Hisoka asks, voice soft to offset him flipping their positions, bracketing down the thrashing assassin by his wrists. He has the advantage up close, Illumi is faster, but Hisoka is stronger.
“Yeah, yeah,” Illumi breathes. He’s still not making sense, so Hisoka just watches his eyes silently. “Like this. I need it like this, punish me, I need to be hurt.”
“I’m not going to punish you,” Hisoka frowns. “I’m not your father.”
“You— I don’t think that.” Illumi finally seems to snap out of it a bit. It’s too easy. Trigger one of Illumi’s insecurities, and he wills himself competent enough to deny it.
“No? You’re not using me as a stand-in?”
A stand-in.
Yes and no. Yes, he is a stand-in. A stand-in for everyone in Illumi’s life who was supposed to love him, and didn’t. Maybe that’s yes and… almost yes.
“I don’t know.”
Hisoka smiles softly at that. Illumi doesn’t understand why he’s smiling or why it suddenly makes him feel like he’s in his safe place, huddled up under a mountain of blankets in his bed at home.
“That’s okay. You can use me.” Another thing Hisoka says that Illumi just can’t grasp. He can only wonder; what is Hisoka getting out of this? Why does he always come back to me? How can he love someone so unloveable? Someone so wretched and cursed? “I have one request.”
“What is it?”
“You’re injured. Let me take care of you.” Hisoka brushes a hand up Illumi’s side, dipping under his shirt. Illumi winces, illustrating Hisoka’s point perfectly.
“Okay,” Illumi agrees and then immediately regrets it, getting scooped up and carried into the bathroom to get washed and prodded at with antiseptic.
By the time Hisoka applies the last colorful bandaid, Illumi is drowsy and floppy enough to let Hisoka carry him again. Hisoka is elated as he gently sets him down and pulls up an extra blanket over Illumi’s body. Hisoka doesn’t like the extra blanket, but he knows Illumi does, and Illumi looks appreciative in his own subtle way.
In a soft voice, Illumi asks, “Are you not going to lay down?”
Hisoka blinks at him. He’s usually so evasive about intimacy that doesn’t directly involve sex. “Would you like me to?”
Illumi nods, all eyes with half of his face hidden under the blankets, fingers poking out to hold the blanket in place. No one could resist that, but Hisoka still slides into bed with a sense of caution. He’s always thought of Illumi much like a feral cat, and while he’s purring now, he still has claws and teeth that rip and puncture. Still, he slots the front of his body against Illumi’s back, wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him closer. Illumi just settles against him with a sigh, lets Hisoka press his nose into his hair as his breathing evens out.
***
For as long as he’s known Illumi, he’s never seen him sleep. The first time they met Hisoka had thought he was sleeping— or, knocked out, at least.
The smell of gunpowder and blood drew Hisoka into that fated warehouse. He had just turned eighteen and was sulking— it was his first time in a club, and his first time being kicked out of a club. His so-called friends (that he’d met that night) had stayed in the club, leaving Hisoka to walk the streets looking for something to satisfy the urge. The urge to fight and maim and win.
The warehouse was dilapidated, and Hisoka took full advantage: letting himself in through a hole in the ceiling rafters. That’s when he saw it, a little boy in a kimono, long black hair sticky with blood, breathing heavily against a wall with his long eyelashes pressed against his cheeks. And the five adult bodies that surrounded him, pin-struck and turning blue, prone on the floor.
One more man remained, full of pins but showing no signs of slowing down, a revolver clutched in one hand, pointed at the child. The little boy was defenseless, eyes not even open. He was going to die.
Hisoka threw a Nen-sharpened card through his throat, smiled as he watched his head slide off his body and hit the dirty floor with a plop.
Then the little boys eyes opened, wide and dark, empty pools of pain and fear and nothingness. Hisoka was immediately enamored with the pretty boy with animalistic eyes— how couldn’t he be?
“Why did you do that?” The boy hissed weakly. “Who are you?” He stumbled into a defensive position, gritting his teeth.
Hisoka just smiled kindly. “He was gonna kill you, doll.”
“Doll?” The boy narrowed his eyes a bit, tilted his head to the side.
“Yeah,” Hisoka laughed. “You look like a doll. Are you an assassin?”
The boy coughed into his fist, wiped a bit of blood off on his kimono. “Why would I tell you that?”
Hisoka pouted. “I just saved your life.”
The thing that cemented this memory in Hisoka’s mind forever was the way the boys Aura flared out around him. It was filled with bloodlust and a strange fractured elegance, a twisted regality. The boys long, blood-heavy hair swirled around him, eyes darkening even further, until the black eclipsed the whites of his eyes.
“I didn’t ask you to,” the boy growled, giving Hisoka the best kind of chills. “I owe you nothing. I’ll kill you.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Hisoka tutted at him. “I don’t think you will.” With a wave of his finger, he bracketed the boys pin-filled hand to the wall with Bungee Gum. “One day,” Hisoka started his monologue, stepping towards the boy with a wide grin. “We will fight. You’re not ready yet,” he touched the soft skin of the boy’s cheek with the back of his hand, gentle, gentle. “When you are, we will meet again. You’ll be mine, doll.”
The grimace the boy gave him made him laugh as he left the building. Once outside, he released the Bungee Gum and walked away with a skip in his step. He had a new toy.
And now that pretty boy is in his bed, he’s allowed to touch him and know him and call him baby. He’s allowed to rouse him from his sleep by kissing the forehead that’s resting on his chest.
Illumi squints an eye open, lifting his head to rest a sharp chin against Hisoka’s ribs. He doesn’t mind. “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Illumi grumbles, evidently not a morning person.
Hisoka smiles, humming as he brushes a few strands of hair from Illumi’s face. “Sleep well?“
“Yes,” Illumi yawns, sitting up to stretch.
“Hey,” Hisoka pouts, spreading his arms out and grabbing at the air. “Come back.”
Illumi blinks at him. “Why?”
Hisoka’s pout only deepens. “It’s our first morning together. I want to cuddle more.”
“We have had plenty of mornings together,” Illumi retorts with a scoff.
“This is the first time we’ve woken up together, then.”
Illumi smiles. It makes Hisoka’s heart beat faster. “You’re embarrassing me,” he sighs, settling back down anyway, slotting his body over Hisoka’s and pressing his face against his neck. “Whoever let you be so sentimental? It doesn’t suit you.”
“I let myself be whatever I want to be.” Hisoka replies, letting his fingers wander under the baggy t-shirt he’d lent to Illumi for the night, feeling up his sleep-warm skin. “And I think it suits me rather well.”
Illumi hums in response, letting his eyes close again and settling in closer. Hisoka is pretty sure Illumi is the only person he’s ever met that puts up with him, and when he humors him like he is now— it’s even better.
He’s been testing Illumi’s limits; what he’ll allow and what he won’t. Incrementally, Hisoka has gotten Illumi to the point where he’ll accept most touches— compliments, too. He accepts them in a way that is uniquely his, of course. Something in him turns a bit soft, until he eventually realizes that he’s let his guard down and builds his walls back up.
It doesn’t bother Hisoka. It’s a fun game. Illumi is a puzzle. His own personal house of cards.
So he continues his experiments; fingers teasing under the hem of his borrowed baggy t-shirt, brushing upwards over Illumi’s sleep-warm back. No response. When he feels at the soft curve of his waist, fingers nearly touching as he squeezes.
“Illu,” Hisoka mumbles. “Are you going to tell me what happened on your job yesterday?”
Illumi huffs against his neck. “I wasn’t on a job.”
“Oh?”
Illumi pushes himself up, hands holding himself above Hisoka as he stares down. “I came here—“ he averts his gaze, “—from Kukuroo.”
For the first time in years, maybe ever, Hisoka’s heart drops. “Oh.”
His parents. His fucking parents. They made him feel so broken he came to Hisoka for comfort. He must have been desperate. He always has been, Hisoka realizes, desperate for a gentle touch and sweet words. It’s sad. Hisoka never knew his parents, but he knows that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
This pieces together another part of The Illumi Puzzle. It’s not turning out to be a very pleasant picture.
“Father thinks I am hiding something from him.”
“Are you?”
Illumi scoffs at him. “You.”
Oh. Oh.
“Did you tell them? About… us?”
Whatever ‘us’ is.
“No.”
Something inside Hisoka feels wrong. He recognizes it as some offshoot of possessiveness, but not quite. Insecurity? No— no. He’s not insecure. Definitely not.
“Are you embarrassed?” He tries to tease, but his mocking voice falls short into something pathetic even to his own ears.
“Embarrassed,” Illumi swishes the word around in his mouth, a hand trailing down from Hisoka’s bare clavicle, settling palm-down right over his heart. “No,” he finally says, and something in Hisoka’s chest settles. “I was worried that they would kill you. They don’t believe I am capable of thinking for myself so they would assume you’re taking advantage of me. They’d use you against me, and me against you.”
“You care about me,” Hisoka realizes.
No response. Illumi just lays back down with a sigh.
***
With Illumi’s wounds hidden by pins, they take their seats on the airship to Padokea. It all feels like deja vu. Illumi, silent next to him, clinking ice cubes around in his glass just like their last airship rendezvous. Illumi, giving a long-winded explanation about the inner-workings of his family.
“Father will try to convince you out of this. He’ll tell you things about me that…” He trails off, biting his lip. “Disturbing things. That I’ll never love you, that I’ll never give you a child, that I am using you— manipulating you, that I’ll kill you. He’ll tell you about the curse—“
“Silva Zoldyck seriously believes in curses?” Hisoka chuckles at the very idea.
“It seems that way. He’s never told me about it, I found out on my own. A target told him before I was born that his firstborn daughter would be cursed. Born without a soul. That she would— I would only bring misfortune to those around me.”
“Sounds like some desperate bullshit. People say the funniest things before they die.”
“I believe it too.”
Hisoka blinks at him a few times, jaw gone slack. He knows Illumi has a strange naivety to him, but he’s logical above all else.
“You think you’re cursed? Doesn’t the curse kind of backfire since you’re his son?”
“Not really. I’m not a real man.”
Ah, that sinking feeling again. It’s becoming too prevalent, too common.
He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it at all.