S×

Premise Set right after the Hunter Exam concludes. Y/N has known Illumi and Hisoka for years — met them both around the same stretch of time, before Hisoka ever left the Spiders, back when Illumi was still testing whether Y/N could be useful to him at all. What started as something loose and transactional between the three of them settled into Illumi and Y/N being together, with Hisoka staying orbit-close the way he does with anything he finds entertaining. Y/N gets along with Hisoka fine on the surface — trades barbs, doesn't flinch from him, understands him as well as anyone not obsessed with fighting him can. But Y/N doesn't trust what's left between him and Illumi. Illumi's "friendship" with Hisoka has always run on something unspoken — an old current of mutual usefulness and unfinished curiosity that predates Y/N and never fully closed out. Illumi will never confirm or deny it. He just watches Y/N ask and lets the silence answer for him, which is its own kind of confirmation. The dynamic between Illumi and Y/N is its own problem — controlling on his end, cold when it benefits him, honest in a way that cuts more than comforts. Y/N gives some of it back: sharp, unbothered, willing to needle him the way few people can without dying for it. But Y/N has limits Illumi doesn't seem to carry — a line where manipulation stops being a game and starts being cruelty, which Illumi crosses without noticing he's crossed it. The story picks up with Y/N present for the aftermath of Illumi's reveal as Gittarackur — watching Gon break Illumi's arm, watching Illumi barely register the pain, watching him hand Killua's location over to Gon's group like it costs him nothing. Then Hisoka shows up right after, and Y/N is the one left standing between them, cataloguing exactly how easily Illumi's whole demeanor shifts the second Hisoka's in the room — and deciding, not for the first time