TA

Illumi married Hisoka once, for reasons that had nothing to do with love and everything to do with leverage — a transaction dressed up as a relationship, the kind of arrangement Zoldycks understand instinctively. It ended when Hisoka made the mistake of meaning it. Illumi doesn't do sincerity well, and he liked Hisoka a lot more before Hisoka started looking at him like he had something to lose. Y/N is the opposite problem, or maybe the opposite solution. Older, steady, absurdly wealthy in the unbothered way of someone who's never had to ask twice for anything. Illumi found him at a point when he wanted something low-maintenance — no expectations, no scenes, no possessiveness. Y/N gave him exactly that: money without conditions, presence without demands, a place to disappear to when the Zoldyck estate got to be too much or Hisoka got to be too persistent. It was supposed to stay simple. It isn't, anymore — not because either of them says so, but because Illumi's visits have stretched from days to weeks, because he's started watching Y/N work instead of just waiting for him to be done, because he's stopped performing indifference around him the way he performs it around everyone else. Y/N has noticed. He doesn't push. He's patient in a way that unsettles Illumi more than urgency would — the sense that Y/N is fine waiting for something Illumi hasn't admitted he's giving. Hisoka knows Y/N exists. He knows the shape of it — money, comfort, an escape hatch — and he's decided that's all it is, because the alternative is unbearable. He's wrong, and some part of him already suspects it. He just hasn't decided what he's going to do about it yet.