Chapter Text
There’s a centipede in the dining room.
When they were young, the troupe would watch nature documentaries on whatever TV they could find. Chrollo loved the ones about bugs and insects, especially spiders. Naïvely, he thought spiders had no predators.
To this day his memory plays the documentary with the centipede in perfect technicolor.
It crawled from mulch under a log, bright orange bands winding along the tops of its infinite legs, and made a horrendous clicking when it walked. If the spider stopped, so did the centipede. There was a time lapse of it staking out the spider's nest, with the narrator’s voice clear in his head: 'centipedes— they are meat eaters'.
In the dining room it skulks behind him. Even with his nen touching the corners of the room, he can't see it, but he knows it's there. Chrollo keeps his pace even to avoid being decapitated in its guillotine.
Once outside, he moves quickly to the car purring at the sidewalk. The apparition rams into the car door barrier, and it catches Pakunoda’s attention. She tips her head slightly toward Chrollo, who exhales a shaky breath.
“All right, danchou?”
He doesn’t reply to her while turning over the unexpected information from Phinks. Jobs with his two semi-estranged members have some degree of predictability in outcomes, sans this one.
Hisoka is theatrical, with no stage too small, and because the clown doesn’t work well with a team, tempers consistently flare in his presence. A dice roll decides if his selfishness is divine comedy or hellish tragedy.
On the other hand, Illumi is a parasite, always attached to Hisoka, gaining object permanence to disappear in plain sight. In the dark he moves, and the panicked flip of a light switch announces his shrill absence.
In spite of Hisoka's diverting semantics, Chrollo knows he and Illumi caught a scent on the spiders' trail. He tries to squash Illumi’s terrifying embodiment from his mind, and the attempt leaves a corrosive splatter on his skull wall. He dons a small grin.
It feels unnatural.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he waves a hand to dismiss the worry. “Going forward, we need to better calculate our interactions with Hisoka in the presence of Illumi.”
Pakunoda turns to look at him fully and Chrollo pauses. The two of them are tightly knit among childhood dreams and current day survival.
“Why only now?” she says with hesitant curiosity, dark gradients of the wilds lifting as they encroach the city boundary. He rests his head on the cool window. He isn’t sure why only now.
The troupe has known Hisoka and Illumi for more than two decades. Hisoka acting up and Illumi rectifying it isn’t new, but the unnerving feeling of something amiss tangles in Chrollo's gut. Pakunoda is graceful in giving her armored confidant to Chrollo’s turmoil as a simple courtesy.
“Are you afraid of Illumi Morow-Zoldyck?”
Saying the married surname out loud feels like a cursed calling card, to the point where Chrollo almost wishes she didn't say it. In earlier years, speculation of Illumi’s relationship trickled down through major gangs and troupes. Silva successfully shot the rumor down and it was effective for a while, but it never died, instead lying in quiet dormancy.
Years passed with nothing before the seed sprouted again: Hisoka was in bed with the most lethal and elusive hunter to date, spreading so far and so wide it had the Association meeting on several occasions.
News of Illumi’s name change on his Hunter’s license was cataclysmic, and its aftermath had the underworld ridiculing the addition of the clown’s cheap surname.
Reality painted a vastly different picture.
“I am, yes. He is a naturalborn nen user and a classically trained assassin,” he says under the brief reprise of admittance. Pakunoda’s aura flares before an immediate smoothness rolls over his honesty. All the muscles in Chrollo’s face relax, and his skin feels comfortable again. Rapidly scrolling through his messages, the colors blur names together until he finds who he is looking for. His thumb hovers over the thread.
There’s a level of trust he's breaking if he moves forward. But he has to. It’s finally happening. He’s watching it unfold in slow motion, and he’s not alone in witnessing it.
Pakunoda is special and she knows it. She wouldn’t ask that question if she didn’t already have the answer, and since the truth exists in his waking thoughts, surely she's attuned. Chrollo chuckles in his foolishness.
“We, for lack of better terms, know Hisoka quite well,” he says, revolting as it is. “He is not shy about fighting us or flaunting his abilities. We have done a myriad of jobs with him. I do believe any one of us could hold our own against him.”
Unrealistic against present day Hisoka. Impossible against present day Hisoka and Illumi.
“Illumi is shrouded. What we know of him is a superficial fraction of his whole.”
Naturalborn nen users are the incredibly scarce result of creation between nen users of great innate prowess. He doesn’t know another, and he cannot die before he wields that much stolen power.
“How do you know he’s naturalborn?” she asks while the engine purrs in the side streets of a run down area. Pakunoda cuts the ignition and the silence crackles in Chrollo’s ears, broken up with little plips that tap the screen.
“I asked Silva if he had ever met one. He laughed in my face and said 'of course, I created one’. I assumed it was his third child, but his old man's grin told me it was the first born.”
He stops halfway through the unsent message and drops his phone in his pocket. Out of the car, threads strung between his and Kortopi’s nen directs him to the right building. It takes a while for him to find it, realizing the earlier exchange with Illumi sent a disruptive vibration through their web.
Terror gifted by the patriarchal Zoldycks built its home inside him, with time tucking it neatly into the background. Chrollo’s confidence after slipping out of their multiple grasps helped pile things in front of it. All but forgotten, it waited to be found again, and when Hisoka started to bring Illumi around, a series of clicks would start.
At first it was barely noticeable.
“Illumi will only accept a troupe member liaison if it’s Hisoka. He even refuses Kalluto, his own sibling. Is that not odd?”
The clausal section next to his initials is one he could recite from memory.
‘I, the employer, hereby agree to hire Hisoka Morow-Zoldyck as the secondary entity. I understand that there are no additional fees associated with this hire. I consent to the terms and conditions and understand that under no circumstance will an exception be made to the aforementioned agreement. I, the employer, accept the consequences of contract violation and will not retaliate against the hired assassin nor the secondary entity.’
The initial request was 23 years ago, and Chrollo is pretty sure they weren’t a couple at the time. It was odd, so he agreed, and it became so frequent that Illumi eventually wrote it into his hiring contract. The first revised printing landed in Chrollo's hands right after Illumi’s official documents had been changed to reflect his married name.
Chrollo stopped reading the contracts a while ago and now simply blows through the signatures.
“Yes,” her tone is pensive as she slides the skeletal key into the brass deadbolt, pushing the door open for him. “Truthfully I didn’t think anything of it beyond personal preference.”
Personal preference and personal collateral. Threatening Hisoka makes Illumi the entomologist. Threatening Illumi makes Hisoka the Tower reversed.
It’s a pleasant surprise to find out the information given to him earlier is correct. Beyond the iron door is a long and poorly lit tunnel, and Pakunoda extends her en while they start the trek down. Even with the right information, he pulls the worn red book from his coat. A tiny blue orb ascends from the page, and he runs a loving finger around the rim. It hatches into a familiar blue fish that glows like a nightlight, illuminating the tunnel as far as Pakunoda’s en reaches.
“It’s the reason I have allowed Hisoka to remain a spider.”
Everything in her face gives away her conflict of being surprised and skeptical. Chrollo holds her stare with a hand on his docile specter, well versed in the unanimous distrust regarding Hisoka. Sometimes it’s hard to defend his choice, like right now— Hisoka is an easy keeper in jobs and that’s where it stops.
The number of years Chrollo spends trying to crack Hisoka open to get to Illumi pales in comparison to the time Hisoka spends guarding the marionette master. Any ill-prepared attempt to kill Illumi will lead to being razed into the ground by Satan's stray hellhound.
Pakunoda is at the ledge with him and he needs her on his side, so he jumps.
“I want Illumi’s power,” Chrollo says in the tunnel of his personal confessional. The indoor fish circles lazily in their dismal sky, winding itself around its owner to ward off any lingering evil magic. He stops abruptly when he realizes she’s a few steps behind him.
He doesn’t turn, but he doesn’t move forward.
“I don’t know the extent of it. If I’m correct, he has a specialist's ability, or better, he himself has become a specialist. I believe he can manipulate space and objects around him, but it's much more complex than just manipulation. Likely it extends to things outside his vision or reach and probably has a very long range.”
The last manipulator who could do something similar was highly sought after. It drove them mad and they disappeared into the Dark Continent— there hasn’t been one since.
She reaches his stride, picking up the melody of Machi’s threads in their webbed nen at the end of the hallway. Before Chrollo can even touch the handle, she pulls the door open, and quiet fury washes over them in weak fluorescent lighting.
The three of them step into a sterile room filled with medical equipment and ritualistic offerings. Machi ushers a hand to the bedside chair, but Chrollo is frozen where he stands.
Nobunaga's body is imprisoned in bed, covered in protective threads that diffuse his immobile rage. There are hundreds of gaseous disembodied hands swarming him, feeding on the rancid aura leaking from the samurai. These residuals are not as strong as their parent nen, but an identical evil trills at their edges.
Their lithe fingers caress familiar pins jammed in his aura and try repeatedly to manipulate Nobunaga’s aura into folding itself out of existence. Any resistance from Nobunaga results in a forceful tacking of previous folds, causing the capillary beds in the aura to bleed.
Rhythmic dripping mixed with tortured wailing makes Chrollo’s blood boil. He gestures to the hands, smiling at his indoor fish.
“Enjoy, my love.”
It twirls around itself in excitement before it opens its maw, revealing rows of serrated teeth that sink straight through translucent flesh. A rattling groan escapes the broken skin while the indoor fish ties itself into knots, thrashing violently to rip the hand apart.
Two fingers come together and jab the eye of the fish, forcibly detaching it. The eye isn’t bleeding but the fish squints as it recoils. Irritated, it flicks itself back and forth above Chrollo's head.
Hissing clutters the room, increasing in volume until needles erupt from the injured hand in a sickening sound. Chrollo sits at Nonunaga’s bedside with nausea climbing his throat.
They need to be vigilant— the scent of injured prey is sure to catch predatory attention.
“What Phinks said,” Pakunoda chooses her words carefully as an unintelligible rustling comes from the shades over Nobunaga. She doesn’t trust that Hisoka and Illumi aren’t listening six feet under. “Did you feel it too?”
Placing his hands in his lap, Chrollo holds them out and turns them palm side down. “It was more than just feeling. I was reading when I heard it, and when I looked back to the book, my sun hand was mirrored among words.”
The clanging sound is crystal clear in her memory: a right-handed shot shooting left-handed.
“So was mine.”
Chrollo compresses his vehement aura to keep it in. He was in the hideout and the field team was far beyond the city limits, while Pakunoda and her team were scattered in the nearby cities. The ability's range is either indefinite or it doesn't need direct target engagement. Potentially both.
Illumi is capable, whichever it is, and validity in their shared experience confirms his theory. A deluge of greed nearly drowns him. Something that powerful cannot stay Illumi’s secret.
Now comes the plausibility of theft without incurring loss. Hisoka and Illumi are an impenetrable monolith, and every time he thinks the spiders have destroyed their obelisk, he's met with disappointment as the smoke clears. The endeavor is a long one, and Chrollo has to play properly if he wants to usurp them.
He finishes the message and hits send. Three dots appear almost immediately.
[23:48] Pariston Hill: Wonderful! I’ll wire funds to the accounts provided for the information.
[23:49] Pariston Hill: It’s been a long time since we’ve had a report on Illumi Morow-Zoldyck’s ability. I was beginning to think it was a dead end.
Chrollo sets his phone face down on the end table. He puts a hand over Nobunaga’s, and with sincerity in his tone, he speaks to his second in command.
“Upon your earth-side return, we will head west.”
“I would like to try something with you.”
Hisoka looks up from his solitaire spread. Illumi is in the kitchen, ramrod straight with a gaze that pierces right through him. They’ve been in their new apartment in Yorknew for two weeks, and between Hisoka’s double dosed adderall and Illumi’s iron grip, it already feels like home.
“Oh?” Hisoka replies with the tips of his mouth turned up. “And what’s that, darling?”
Illumi’s brow scrunches the bridge of his nose. It’s cute, and it pulls Hisoka’s smile from its corners
“Now that we are married, I would like to imbue our blended nen.”
Hisoka leans back in his chair with a trained eye on Illumi, looking for any non-verbal cue he might give before Hisoka has to reach in and yank it out of him.
“I’ve only been married once, sweetheart,” the pet name drips off his tongue, and Illumi's movement becomes terse. Pulling out the adjacent chair, he sits next to Hisoka and his shit-eating grin. “You’re going to have to elaborate.”
In front of Illumi is a long rectangular box made of the softest leather Hisoka has ever felt. His eyes are gleaming with curiosity, and he swipes the cards into a deck in one smooth motion.
“My parents did something similar after they wed,” Illumi opens the box carefully to reveal a single black pin, and instantly Hisoka notices the lack of nen.
It hums regardless.
“Did they use a pin too?” Hisoka teases, leaning his body along the table to get a better look at the contents inside. The metal craft is exquisite, with purple nightshade peeking through the inky head. Directly underneath it is engraved script that circles the neck of the long shaft. Hisoka squints. He can’t read it, and he assumes it’s written in Illumi’s native tongue.
“No.”
Amusement escapes through his teeth when Illumi holds his hand out. Hisoka’s pupils dilate.
“Careful,” he jests, fingers ghosting along Illumi's palm lines. Something lewd crosses his eyes. “Pinpricks excite me.”
Illumi's glare makes dark ice look safe.
“I am serious about this, Hisoka,” he says with a tight edge. Hisoka kicks his feet, giddy with the thought of how much Zoldyck he still has to uncover. “We are creating a contingency.”
Nen oscillates between their palms and spears Hisoka’s arm with a piercing shriek, leaving a blistering feeling all the way to his gut.
Illumi is truly one of a kind. Hisoka never entertained marriage before Illumi, and won’t entertain it with anyone after. He wants to be kept only by Illumi, wants to melt the two of them down in a forge until they are indistinguishable from one another.
Rousing him from his thoughts are Illumi’s fingertips pressed against Hisoka’s. He lifts his hand away from Illumi’s to reveal a long sheet of marbled nen, stretching out it's rudimentary form like bungee gum. The homogenized power within it glistens and distorts his reflection, making him look like an unhinged psychopath.
Hisoka can only hope that Illumi doesn’t kill him before he sees himself completed in whatever this is.
“In the event we are successfully betrayed by any employer,” is all Illumi says. Hisoka raises a freshly plucked brow and stares down his former fiancé.
“Why would we be?”
Illumi’s incredulous expression pulls a laugh from Hisoka.
“Because we are powerful, and now, we are married. I would be surprised if we were not perpetual targets.”
Butterflies hatch in Hisoka’s rotten swamp, and their cocoons ripen among their predecessors in the dead peat.
“Interesting,” his excitement trembles in the crypt of Illumi’s proposal. Hisoka detaches the marbled nen from Illumi’s palm, playing with it in his hands until it resembles a balloon animal. Illumi lifts the pin carefully and doesn’t acknowledge the creation. Hisoka puts a tally under his name on their scorecard.
“Please lick the head and imbue your nen contract,” Illumi tells him, tilting the pin toward Hisoka’s face. A slow perverted swipe of his tongue across the radius is what tethers him. How appropriate.
“A little teaser for tonight,” Hisoka tries to sneak a kiss, halted immediately by Illumi’s open palm.
“I am asking you to take this seriously,” Illumi’s timbre sends a chill across Hisoka’s neck, copying the action with less perversion. “This is a binding contract. I am asking you because I trust you.”
Shy intimacy melts the tension, and Illumi doesn't look away from the balloon animal nen in Hisoka’s hands.
“I am asking you because I love you.”
It’s all Hisoka needs to hear, signing compartmentalized love into their contract.
It doesn’t matter where Illumi goes. Hisoka will be there.
“I am going to place this deep into your astral nen,” he says, perforating the center of the balloon animal with the charged pin. “I will need to put you in a trance. Please relax so I can do this quickly and effectively.”
Hisoka tries to will away every intrusive thought bombarding him, counting back from ten like Illumi asks. Seven is the last thought before he fades into a dark descent. He can barely make out Illumi's dreamy voice as it floats down.
‘You will only feel it stir in slumber if the contingency is fulfilled.’
Hisoka doesn’t remember the hypnosis, but he does remember the question he asked in his daze.
‘What are we naming it?’
Illumi gently envelops the infant aura in visceral marbled nen before withdrawing, atypical tenderness in his reply.
‘Izumi.’
Illumi stands in a puddle near the shower door with Hisoka's hawkish stare on him.
It was almost a decade before Illumi caved and started sharing his hair product with Hisoka, who’s still riding the high. Especially when the subtle floral scent frames his face, like right now.
“Are you oiling it today?” Hisoka asks from the bedroom with a pointed finger.
Illumi looks down at the wet mass of hair pasted to his upper arm. “Yes. It’s been seven days.”
Hisoka knows that. He set his circadian rhythms to Illumi’s routines, who is so habitual that Hisoka is habitual by osmosis— like knowing dates on the calendar. Hisoka is tickled by how much good it’s done them, particularly when scheming in cohabitation became seamless.
“Okay. I’m gonna go smoke this whole pack on the balcony,” he says, swiveling the little plastic bag handles around his finger. “Love you.”
Illumi doesn’t scoff, but he doesn’t have to.
“The whole pack?”
“The whole pack, aniki.”
Hisoka is still a shithead. Marriage didn’t change that.
“Don't call me that.”
His impish cackle is decapitated by the sliding glass door as he scampers out of the room. Illumi has so many buttons to push in infinite combinations, so much so that Hisoka is genuinely surprised Illumi hasn’t killed him yet. The last time he asked, Illumi said 'because you are convenient'.
It hasn’t come up again, but Hisoka knows exactly where he put it.
The cigarette is as bad as he expects and he finishes it as fast as possible.
By the time Illumi is done preening, Hisoka has only made it through the first half of the second cigarette. Initially it was fine, and the tingling relief blinking at the ends of his nerves was divine. Unfortunately it escalated from there, and he lost track of time struggling with his nen to curb his heart from exploding and his rebounding blood pressure from tanking.
This is why he's so fucking peculiar about his cigarettes. He should have told Illumi to alert his little minions to go to Yorknew and get his tin like he wanted to.
Too late now— Illumi’s hands are in the carton before Hisoka can close the lid.
“Only one?” Illumi says with a facetious tilt in his tone. Hisoka snorts in reply.
“Remember what I said to you before we left? And then again while I was patching up your beautiful prized hand?”
Illumi smiles as he kneels onto the lounge chair, and the intimacy of it seizes Hisoka’s playfulness to drag into bed. He opens his arm and rests the cigarette in the ashtray, watching Illumi fill his custom mold perfectly.
“Thank you for getting these for me,” Hisoka says sincerely, kissing the top of Illumi's head. Illumi puts a hand on his chest, tracing the tattoo of his name over Hisoka's heart. Residual needle nen shoots out of it, and he lifts a delicate finger.
Amused to see its still reactive, Illumi’s less pissed off about it these days, but he'll die with the truth before admitting anything to Hisoka.
Hisoka would get it again just to watch Illumi lose his fucking mind.
“You’re welcome,” Illumi presses a gentle kiss to the corner of Hisoka’s mouth and tucks his head into Hisoka's neck before Hisoka can peer into the abyss.
In place of it, Illumi’s umbra glides down Hisoka’s forearm to send prickling relief through his nerves. Under the star awnings, their wedding rings clink together like tiny wind chimes.
“Chrollo called you a dog.”
Of course he did, jealous bastard.
“Is he wrong?”
Illumi laughs, and his heart trills in every cell of his body.
“No, I guess not. But you're mine. Only I can call you that.”
Hisoka’s shit-eating grin hasn’t changed in the 26 years they’ve known each other.
“Maybe you should tell him he's right. I do have your name on my tag, after all.”
Illumi slaps his thigh hard, leaving a glaring red handprint, and Hisoka’s laugh entwines with pain.
"What?! It's true, even if you hate to admit it," he picks the cigarette up from the ashtray and tucks it into the corner of his leer.
Illumi ignores Hisoka's jab and snakes possession around his belly, leaving little hints of nen behind. They flood Hisoka with a feeling he could recognize in any body, any lifetime.
"You know someone is coming for us,” Illumi says, resting his cheek on Hisoka’s furnace chest.
Indeed, he’s known for a while, adjusting his cheats with Illumi to improve their payouts along the way.
“I do,” Hisoka says it like a wedding vow. “I, however, am not sorry for pissing off Nobunaga.”
A bemused smirk exposes the tips of his unnatural canines. Illumi melts into the magician as velvet nen rises from him in languid tufts, and blanketing moonlight gives it lavender hues— at home, in Yorknew, it’s a rich and beautiful violet.
“I know you're not,” Illumi counters. “You never have been.”
“He’s such an easy target,” Hisoka tips his head back for dramatic flare. Illumi is a good audience, keeping Hisoka guessing as to whether he’s listening or not. “Sometimes it feels good to take cheap shots.”
Illumi likes to flip coins, since it's almost impossible for Hisoka to cheat. He picks heads anyways, and the assassin makes a content sound through his nose before he mimics Hisoka.
“It does feel good. It’s why I have kept you around for so long.”
Heads. An orgasmic outcome that stretches his smile painfully across his face. Offhandedly Hisoka wonders what Illumi will be like after living in their hive mind for 50 years.
“Ouch,” he laughs, this time with feigned pain. “I thought you loved me.”
Illumi squeezes Hisoka’s hand and settles under his weighted exhaustion. Marbled nen swims between them in perfect harmony.
“I do love you,” he slurs against Hisoka’s neck, as close to liquid ooze as he’ll ever be. Hisoka presses a kiss to the crown of his head.
If the cosmic entities playing dollhouse really love their creations, they will guarantee that Hisoka meets Illumi in all their subsequent iterations.
“I know,” his drawl curls slowly around the ends of Illumi’s hair, watching the black strands move through his fingers like summer clouds in their endless sky. “I’ll see you in the tower, Illu.”
Silence covers the balcony and Illumi's body goes slack against Hisoka. Stars move slowly over their heads in the deepening dark of the foreign city.
“I love you too,” Hisoka says softly, resting his chin atop Illumi's head. Instinct transmutes highly defensive aura to armor his beloved spouse.
His phone vibrates twice, clacking against the patio table. Something else vibrates once, slipping around in his viscera.
[01:36] KP: association’s spotlight is turning on your husband
[01:36] KP: the rat bastard knows
"I see,” the words float off his lips as he watches his nen apparition run wild, desperate and excited to find Illumi in their dream. Illumi must be doing the same, calling Hisoka into his loving arms.
“You’re finally ready to play. ♤”