Work Text:
Illumi’s staring at the busy road below him when he hears the front door being unlocked. Knowing who’s behind the door, the raven doesn’t bother to put up his guard nor pull out his needles.
The person behind the door unlocks it and quickly enters the luxurious highrise condo.
The Zoldyck admires his boyfriend’s form from the balcony, as the jester slowly walks towards him.
“Ah, ‘Lumi I made a pit-stop to the toy store near where my mission was located before I came home and I bought you this.” Hisoka states, giving a rather medium-sized, pink box to Illumi, who just noticed it was in his hand.
‘Starters Embroidery Kit For Ages 13+’ it reads on the front with an obnoxious large green font.
“Hisoka… what is this?”
“Uh.. it says there in the front of the box. It's an embroidery kit for starters. I intended on buying only the hoop, fabric, a needle and black and white thread, but I was getting tired and noticed people staring at me while I was choosing the size of the hoop, so instead, I grabbed this box and noticed that everything needed was already in the box, so naturally, I took it a bought it,” Hisoka rambled. “Also, there are multiple hoops and thread colours, so it saved me a lot of time.”
“...what do you expect me to do with this?”
“I’m not sure, I just bought it on a whim, because I was looking through Tik Tok and saw someone showing off their embroidery stuff on my For You Page so, I did more research and took note of the things needed to do this and decided that you were much better at handling needles as opposed to I was, so as a gift… sort of, I brought this set for you.”
“I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to do this, Hisoka.”
“Well, you don’t have to force yourself to finish all your stuff in one day, you could just work on it if you want to destress or something and you could bring it with you on missions, so you have something to do while travelling to the location.”
“M’kay then, I’ll go through the contents of this box while you shower.”
With that, the red-head turned around and made his way to the bathroom to wash off all the sweat, blood and dirt accumulated on his skin from the mission.
While the other was taking a warm shower, Illumi was busy dumping everything in the box on the dining table. He quickly organized everything that was in the box and looked through the instruction manual.
The box is supposed to have 5 different coloured threads, 3 different sized hoops, 10 squared pieces of fabric and a needle.
He stares at the set, like it's gonna do some fancy magic trick the longer he stares, but he’s distracted by the bathroom door opening, revealing his, now clean, boyfriend in his pyjamas, which is a striped pink long sleeve silk t-shirt and a pair of matching pants.
Hisoka quickly assesses the scene before him and stands next to Illumi, who is now staring at the red-head instead of the contents of the embroidery kit in front of him.
“‘Lumi I’m sure you could begin this tomorrow, instead of tonight, so that you don’t strain your eyes,” Hisoka suggests.
“You are right, I will not be starting this today. However, I intend to research and pick the design today, in order to prevent wasting time tomorrow.”
“Alright then, we could start by looking up embroidery videos on youtube, so that we have a proper starting point, then we could find some basic designs you could do, to avoid getting stressed.”
They both sat on the couch and proceeded to browse Youtube for any useful embroidery videos.
They continued to do this, until Hisoka found his lover dead asleep next to him, which wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that, Hisoka had been helping Illumi fix his sleep schedule, so that he would at least get more than 3 hours of sleep a day, instead of 3 hours every 7 days, and so far, he had been following the schedule for 4 months now, which meant that sleep came to the other much easier than before.
Carefully, Hisoka turned off the television they had been using and carried his boyfriend, bridal style, onto the bed where he laid the peacefully sleeping man onto.
The redhead tucked the other in bed, before walking to the opposite side of the bed and tucked himself in, then slept peacefully.
Hisoka is brutally awakened by the TV on maximum volume, playing a youtube video with an excruciatingly loud intro. The magician stormed into the living room, where the source of the noise was and found his boyfriend on the couch with his knees drawn to his chest, intensely staring at the taut fabric in between an embroidery hoop on his other hand.
“Babe,” Hisoka calls out “Could you lower the volume please?”
“Ah, sorry, I got a bit distracted,” Illumi responds, lowering the volume.
“So… uh whatcha got there?”
“An embroidery hoop with a piece of fabric and a successfully drawn sketch on it,”
“May I see it?”
“Sure,”
Illumi holds up the hoop for the other to see the sketch and Hisoka leans in closer and finds himself face to face with a drawing of a familiar-looking black cat in the middle of the fabric, perhaps from one of the studio ghibli movies they’ve watched together.
“That looks wonderful ‘Lumi,”
Hisoka sees a faint blush appear on Illumi’s cheeks and a small smile to accompany it.
“Thank you,”
At that, the jester leaves him and heads for the kitchen not expecting an untouched plate of salmon next to a bowl of steaming hot rice on the counter.
“‘Lumi, is the food on the counter for me?” Hisoka questions.
Illumi simply nods as a response.
Hisoka moves his meal to the table, where he can only see the back of Illumi’s head, from where he’s seated on the table and starts gladly munching on the meal the raven prepared for him.
Once his hunger is satiated, the redhead moves to sit next to Illumi on the couch and the assassin wordlessly shows the other his progress on his piece. A relatively small portion of the black cat had been filled in rather neatly and the sketched flowers around it had been left untouched.
“Do you have the colors you want for the flowers?”
“I was thinking about using the colors that were part of the set, but 3 of the colors were brightly colored ones and the other 2 were black and white, so using the coloured ones on the flowers wouldn’t be too pleasing to look at,”
“Do you want to go to the craft store around the block to get more embroidery floss?”
“Okay,”
Both of them decide to change their clothes instead of going out using their wrinkled sleeping clothes.
Once they entered the store, Illumi made a beeline towards the embroidery section of the store, where they sold a copious amount of embroidery floss in different colors, and a bunch of differently sized hoops next to them. Hisoka follows behind him, grabbing a shopping basket along the way.
Hisoka was browsing the internet on his phone when Illumi interrupted him.
“Which one looks better?” Illumi asks, holding up 2 similar colored pastel pink threads. The difference between the two was that one was lighter in colour compared to the other.
“I like this one,” Hisoka answers, pointing at the thread with the lighter shade.
Illumi hummed and placed it into the basket Hisoka was holding for him.
It took approximately 1 hour for Illumi to finish shopping, and the shopping basket Hisoka was holding was significantly heavier, due to the number of colorful threads it was filled with.
They pay for the threads, which was a total of 5,000 jenny, and head out.
Upon unlocking the door, Illumi grabs the bag full of threads and heads towards the couch, most likely to resume embroidering.
It’s at 6 o’clock in the evening that Illumi decides to surprise Hisoka in the kitchen trying to prepare their dinner.
“HISOKA, LOOK!” Illumi lets out an ear-piercing shrill, excitedly jumping into the kitchen, showing off his now completed embroidery piece.
Hisoka flinches in shock and drops the spatula that he was using to stir mashed potatoes. It lands on the ground, splattering small bits of creamy potatoes on the floor. He looks at Illumi, about to reprimand him for startling him, but the look on the raven’s face prevents him from doing so. Instead, he opts to examine Illumi’s finished art piece closely, while also taking small glances at his adorable delighted face.
“It looks adorable, darling~.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you like to frame it, or keep it in its hoop?”
“I would like to keep it where it is now until we find a suitable frame that matches it.”
Hisoka forgets about the mashed potatoes he was cooking earlier, and holds the art piece, running his hands on the neatly filled flowers surrounding the cat, properly inspecting it.
“It looks truly wonderful ‘Lumi,”
“Your praise is greatly appreciated.”
At that, Illumi leaves the kitchen to let Hisoka handle the cooking and also to add more small finishing touches to his piece.
Hisoka turns to the pot with mashed potatoes, cursing at himself for not lowering the heat while he was conversing with Illumi, and discovers that a rather large amount of mashed potatoes has stuck to the bottom of the pan, effectively burning those bits. Hisoka scrapes every inch of the pan, in an attempt to salvage the non-burnt mashed potatoes and moves them to a different pan, to allow them to cook longer.
Finally, once the redhead finishes cooking their meal for the night, he prepares the table for both of them and takes out the cranberry juice from the fridge. He scans the living room for any signs of Illumi, but he can’t seem to find him.
“‘Lumi dinner’s done,”
Illumi comes out from the bedroom, his raven hair wet, now wearing a different set of matching pyjamas and is holding his embroidery hoop.
“I thought you were done with your embroidery piece?”
Illumi lifts the object and stares at it.
“...it’s done, but I was adding some small finishing touches to the piece,”
“May I see it?”
“Nope,” Illumi says, smiling cheekily “You may see it once I am finished doing the finishing touches.”
“M’kay then, let’s eat.”
5 minutes into the meal, Illumi starts embroidering again.
“‘Lumi,” Hisoka says, trying to get the others attention.
He doesn’t respond, instead, he continues embroidering.
“‘Lumi,” Hisoka tries again.
“Mhm?” Illumi answers, lifting his head from the art piece.
“You’re gonna get a headache and sore eyes if you do that at night.”
“That’s fine,”
“No, it’s not, you’re gonna be grouchy for the rest of the night, so just do that tomorrow morning,”
“M’kay,”
He sets the embroidery piece onto the table and resumes eating.
The following morning, Hisoka wakes up to his partner cross-legged on the bed, embroidering.
“Good morning, ‘Lumi,”
Illumi, utterly absorbed with his art piece, responds with a soft hum of acknowledgement.
“I see that you’re embroidering once again,”
Once again, Illumi only hums in response.
“May I see what you’re working on?”
Illumi wordlessly turns the artwork, so that Hisoka could see it clearer.
Immediately, Hisoka eyes bulge from out of his sockets, astonished at how much Illumi added to his embroidery design because, as it turns out those ‘little finishing touches’ weren’t little at all, seeing that almost half of the once empty space around the cat and original flower designs, were now filled with even more flowers and leaves.
“H-how long have you been up embroidering?”
Illumi resumes his embroidering, paying no mind to Hisoka’s reaction.
“A couple of hours or so.”
“Have you eaten?”
Illumi shakes his head side to side, indicating that no, he hasn’t eaten.
“Alright then, what do you want for breakfast?” Hisoka asks as he slips out of bed, stretching his limbs.
Without pausing to think, the raven answers, “Crepes with strawberry and whipping cream.”
“Coming right up,” Hisoka says with a smile, “I’ll call you once I’m done cooking.”
Hisoka heads for the kitchen to start cooking their breakfast, while Illumi sits in bed embroidering.
After an hour, the redhead is done cooking.
“Illumi!! Breakfast is done.”
After a couple of beats, Illumi is walking out of their bedroom, with an incredibly rare prideful smile plastered across his face, Hisoka smiles at him.
“What’s with that smile?”
“I’m finally satisfied with the embroidery piece.”
Illumi lifts his right hand to show off the art piece he just finished and what Hisoka see’s is beautiful, various embroidered flowers and leaves surround the black cat in a circle, making it less empty than it was previously. The soft colors of the flora complemented the plain black cat in the middle of the artwork.
“It looks wonderful.” Hisoka briefly kisses the other’s forehead.
“Could we hang it while it’s still in the embroidery hoop?”
“Sure, just choose an empty wall to hang it on, but we should start eating before the whipping cream melts.”
As they eat, they discuss the missions they have yet to catch up on and more embroidery designs Illumi could do.