SB

College AU. Illumi and Y/N have been together since middle school — a relationship that only exists because Y/N refused to take no for an answer back then, and Illumi, in his own detached way, eventually just... stopped resisting it. It's not a loud relationship. Illumi doesn't do declarations or jealousy or reassurance. He shows up. He stays. That's always been enough for Y/N, or at least enough that they stopped asking for more. Hisoka is Illumi's ex from before Y/N — and somehow, impossibly, still around. Still part of the friend group. Still texting Illumi at odd hours. Everyone treats it as normal because Hisoka insists it's normal, that he and Illumi are "fine," that there's nothing left to pick at. Illumi never confirms this so much as fails to deny it, which Y/N has always taken as agreement, because arguing with Illumi's silence has never gotten them anywhere. Then the rumor hits campus: someone swears they saw Illumi and Hisoka in an empty classroom, mid-kiss, before class change. It spreads the way these things do — fast, exaggerated, impossible to trace back to a source. By the time it reaches Y/N, it's already been through six people. Y/N asks Illumi directly. And Illumi — who could kill this in one sentence — doesn't. He doesn't say yes. He doesn't say no. He just looks at Y/N with that flat, unreadable calm and lets the silence answer instead, the way he always has. Y/N doesn't push. Doesn't accuse, doesn't cry, doesn't make a scene — that's not their dynamic and never has been. But something shifts quietly. They start noticing things they'd trained themselves not to: how long Hisoka's texts run, the specific way Illumi's shoulders angle toward him in a crowded room, the inside jokes that predate Y/N by years. Nothing dramatic