Chapter Text
It had been two months since Hisoka had last seen Illumi.
He had been tempted a few times to reach out first, connection only a few taps away. But he restrained himself. These things require patience, after all.
And his patience had finally paid off.
“I thought you might never call," Hisoka said, playing with his drink. Down below, the city lights stretched like a fiery web under their blimp, the same colour as the whiskey on the rocks swirling in Hisoka’s glass. He crossed his legs, leaning his chin on his palm. “So? Where are we off to?”
Illumi stood across from him, arms crossed over the bar. “I got a contract for a kidnapping mission,” he said. ”The target is a deserter from the client’s mafia family. He’ll be tortured and executed as a warning to the other members.”
“A kidnapping? I thought you only took assassination jobs.”
Illumi hummed and shifted his weight, leaning on his palm, shoulders dropped. A mirror to Hisoka. “The client is a regular, and the pay is adequate. However, my skill set is not as suited for keeping targets alive.”
“You flatter me ♡” Their eyes met. Hisoka smiled. “It would be my pleasure to assist you, Illumi. We do make a pretty good team, don’t we?” he said, and raised his glass in toast.
Illumi ignored it.
“Hisoka,” he chided. “This is an important job.”
Hisoka sighed, and put the glass down. Illumi wasn’t out of mission mode just yet, apparently.
“You are not allowed to kill our target, under any circumstances. Do I make myself clear?” Illumi was glaring at him.
Hisoka preened under Illumi’s stare, a snake under a heat lamp.
“Yes, yes,” he dismissed with a wave. “I got it. No rogue killings,” he said, and crossed his heart like he saw heroes do in movies. “You can trust me.”
Illumi did not, in fact, trust him. Between the one-hour blimp flight, the 30 minute car ride to the location and the 15 minutes it took them to capture the target and tie him up, Illumi proceeded to repeat five more times how important it is that they don’t, under any circumstances, kill him. Hisoka counted.
“So how do you want to take him back?” Hisoka asked, leaning over Daisuke’s bound form. “We could try stuffing him in a suitcase.”
Daisuke struggled against the bindings uselessly.
“Step aside.”
Hisoka did, intrigued, and Illumi took his place, a gold pin between his thumb and forefinger. He grabbed Daisuke’s jaw to hold him still. Daisuke’s muscles tensed as Illumi’s other hand traced his nape with surgical precision, pressing into the base of his hairline until he found what he was looking for. The pin went in and the struggle left Daisuke’s body all at once, like air from a punctured lung.
Illumi removed the gag. Undid the restraints.
“You sure about that?” Hisoka asked.
“Get up,” Illumi said.
Daisuke got up. He stood before Illumi tall and perfectly still, waiting for the next command.
“Do you have to explicitly instruct him to do anything?” Hisoka wandered.
“Not aloud,” Illumi said. “But I do have to consciously make him keep his bodily functions active.”
As if on cue, Daisuke stopped breathing. Wind passed freely through the open window of the third floor, ruffling Daisuke’s hair as he got more and more purple, yet didn’t make any attempt to breathe in the fresh night air.
“Breathe,” Illumi said, and Daisuke did. Not like a man that was about to pass out, but even and mechanical like someone else was pumping his lungs for him.
“And he’s still alive?” Hisoka wondered.
“Yes. He will come back to himself and remember nothing once I remove the pin.”
Hisoka hummed in understanding. He circled Daisuke slowly, waving a hand in front of his face. No reaction. He snapped his fingers an inch from Daisuke’s nose.
Nothing.
“Can you feel this?” Hisoka asked, poking Daisuke’s shoulder.
“No,” Illumi responded absentmindedly.
Hisoka straightened, losing interest, and his gaze slid sideways to Illumi, who had turned to tap at his phone with the focused stillness of someone balancing two different mental tasks at once.
Hisoka reached over and poked his cheek.
“Fuck off,” Illumi said, not looking up.
Hisoka pouted, and his hand dropped.
Daisuke moved.
Then he walked through the open window with the heavy gait of a man with somewhere to be.
The sound that followed was short and final.
Their eyes snapped to the window.
“Ah, shit,” Illumi said, bent over the windowsill.
Hisoka joined him. He looked down at the red splatter on the concrete, then at Illumi. He pressed his lips together.
"Don't," Illumi warned.
Hisoka laughed anyway.
After Illumi insisted, demanded Hisoka not kill the target, Hisoka never would have guessed Illumi would go ahead and do it himself.
“Are you done?” Illumi asked with that infliction in his voice people have when they try to pass embarrassment for irritation. He stood straight and still, arms crossed and brows furrowed, clinging to a dissipating mirage of moral superiority.
Hisoka laughed hard enough to bend over, hands on his stomach.
Illumi sighed, an exasperated little huff of air. He moved into the study, rummaging through the drawers. He finally found what he was looking for in a low cupboard, Daisuke’s spare clothes neatly stacked inside: shirt, undershirt, pants, belt.
“Come on, don’t be like that,” Hisoka said, wiping a tear. “I didn’t mean to upset you, Illumi.”
Illumi didn’t look convinced. But he did look at Hisoka from the corner of his eye, and that was a start.
“Let me make it up to you. Knowing you, I’m sure you already have a plan to fix this.” Flattery was cheap, but it did the job. Illumi seemed placated.
“Good.” Illumi straightened, turning to Hisoka. “I do have a plan.”
Hisoka’s gaze dropped to the pile of clothes neatly folded in Illumi's arms.
“Come,” Illumi said. “I’ll explain on the way.”
—
The plan was reckless, dangerous, and nothing Hisoka was expecting from Illumi.
They would meet Tanaka, the client, at the abandoned fireworks factory at the edge of town. Takana’s insistence to meet on neutral ground ended up working in their favour in the end. Once there, Hisoka would complete the handover in Illumi’s place. Only instead of Daisuke, Tanaka and his men would get Illumi disguised as Daisuke. From there, Hisoka would convince Tanaka to let him be the one to conduct the torture session. Illumi would play the part of the insolent prisoner and take his beating, until he would ‘swipe’ Hisoka’s gun away and ‘execute’ himself. An incontestable death in front of everyone to end the charade and the mission cleanly.
“What an interesting ability,” Hisoka said, leaning into Illumi’s space. The transformation was spectacular. Long, straight hair was now short and choppy, pale skin darkened to a healthy tan. Illumi’s tall, proportionate body scrunched down and into itself into the short, uneven frame of a man who exercised his arms a lot more than his thighs, giving him a back too wide for his skinny legs. Illumi even copied some of the bruising he had left Daisuke with.
Hisoka had to lean down to look into his large, dark eyes.
“I thought his eyes were brown,” he said.
“They were,” Illumi said, and his monotone in the nasal voice of the target gave Hisoka goosebumps. “I can’t change my eye colour without using my pins, so this will have to do.”
Illumi turned to his bag. Hisoka watched as he grabbed something and held it out to him.
A gun. The murder weapon.
Hisoka’s fingers wrapped around it, assessing the weight of the metal in his hand.
He pressed the barrel to Illumi’s forehead.
“I could kill you instead,” Hisoka said. “Skip the extra steps.”
“No,” Illumi said. “I can’t trust your timing. This has to be millisecond-level precise, between the shot and the manipulation of my own body.” He swatted the gun away. The elegant way Illumi was used to moving his limbs looked clumsy with Daisuke’s muscular arms and fat fingers.
Hisoka obliged, pleased. He reached behind himself and put the gun in his waistband, like those undercover cops did in movies.
“I already let the client know you’ll be finishing the contract in my place. I also let it pass how versed you are in interrogation and torture. You just have to say it was part of the contract.”
“Was it?”
“No, but Tanaka is a greedy idiot. He’ll gladly take a service he doesn’t have to pay for, and think nothing of it.”
“Mm,” Hisoka hummed. Then he smiled, a cocky little thing. “So in the end, everything depends on me giving you the right opening, does it? Don’t worry, Illumi, I’m here to cover your shortcomings.”
Illumi’s now bushy brows twitched. “Don’t make me regret it.”