AN: Plausibility be damned! Not quite sure where this came from. I have a headcanon that Machi can do tattoos and that Hisoka has synesthesia and this one shot spurred from Nanowrimo. Me, trying to write something that's a sensory overload and kind of sexy. Hope you enjoy it!
Color Spasm
Everything is a performance with Hisoka. He revels his ploys to lavish his audience's five senses. To taste the colors as he put it.
Spicy lemongrass soup from his supper and the sharp winter-mint from the still steaming bathroom permeates the grand suite. The curtains are swept open, the window overlooking a sea of neon. In contrast, there is an amber whiskey under an amber lamp that bathes the bedroom in cozy warmth. It's overstimulating for Machi but each is an intricate piece in Hisoka's panache.
"Sah, where do you want it?" asks Machi as she opens her bag on the tea table.
He had invited her to his suite in the Heaven's Arena. He had deposited 50 million jenni into her account to do his Phantom Troupe tattoo.
She shakes her Vantablack ink against her ear, hearing a hollow worth no more than a quarter of the bottle. Plenty for Hisoka.
Hisoka acknowledges her question finally and with one hand, he wriggles out of his crop-top. He rolls his shoulders, movement rippling through hard pronounced muscle. He tousles his damp hair, layers falling playfully over his eyes. The first time she could remember seeing his hair tumble down. He had remarked on her own hair when he once caught her with it down.
Bare chest with pecs out, balancing on the balls of his feet, hair down without his usual pompadour. It is like seeing someone naked and exposed for what they are. The most naked she ever cared to see Hisoka.
"Is it too much to ask for some color?" he says, noting the only bottle of ink, black at that.
She raises a rosy eyebrow. "Black is uniform." Besides, there is already a livid splatter of purple and green on his right ribs.
He catches her looking.
"Oh," he says, tracing a long fingernail around the blotch. "It looks worse than it feels, but feel free to work your magic on it."
"That's an injury I can't sew up. I suggest ice." She motions her hands as if she were washing them. "Get on the floor."
"I prefer the bed."
"The floor is firmer since we don't have a proper chair or long enough table."
Hisoka disobeys and lies on the large bed, feet against the front board, so he faces the mirror, which is perfectly positioned so he can watch her every move. "The bed is firm enough.
She relents with a sigh. "If I spill the ink, it's your problem."
He wears white foundation, evident by how his muscular back is two shades warmer in tone—like warm milk drizzled with golden honey and stirred.
Machi uncaps her fine point marker and pungent chemical punctures the air.
The fine tip dabs his back and he squirms.
"Oi oi, ticklish," he coos.
"Hold still," she warns. "I haven't even taken out the needles yet."
"Is it going to hurt?"
She ignores the question. "How big do you want it?"
"My whole back is your canvas."
If Machi were even slightly less patient, she'd make the spider as small as a 500 jenni coin, spend two minutes and call it a day. But he had already paid her the 50 million and she isn't about to refund a penny or have him pester her more for a shoddy job. Even for pettiness Machi wouldn't intentionally muck up her work. She had been called a softie for It, but to her, truly, it was a matter of duty.
She generously slathers strong disinfectant, so strong it seems to reach through her nose all the way behind her eyes, all over his back from his shoulders, up his neck, down to the dimples on his hips.
"I didn't expect to get a massage. Color me surprised to receive such excellent service."
Machi sets her jaw to withhold a more venomous remark. "I said hold still, including your mouth."
She sketches the spider with gentle strokes, making the legs span from the valley in his spine to the peaks of his shoulder blades. She graces her fingertips, the only exposed part of her hand along the muscular grooves and hilly bone. His skin has a slightly peppered texture, unlike any human skin she has ever touched. Whatever she thinks to herself.
"I'm about to start. Taper your aura," she says. The shroud of aura dissipates and she hears from Hisoka the soft hum of an anticipating smile.
She bunches three needles together for line work. She holds her gaze on the sketch, her pupils dilate and she blinks saving the picture burned into her memory.
"Be gentle will you?"
"Hold still. Don't make me tie you down."
Even from the mirror, she catches the delighted swell of his pupils.
"Don't take that as a dare," she says, preemptively, and he whines playfully like she had smacked his hand from a cookie jar.
She leans over him, folding her legs beneath her and holds his skin taut. Only the very bottom of her thighs touches against Hisoka's hot skin-still warm from his shower. Then she remembers his full face of makeup. Did he redo his makeup after showering because of her expected visit? She banishes the thought.
A cap full of Vantablack ink beside her on the bed frame, cloth in arms reach, needles doused with ink, her hand tilted at the optimal angle, she began on the spider's left fang.
Machi heard a complex back tattoo could take twelve hours for non-nen artists. She outlines Hisoka's large spider in twelve minutes.
"Hmm, the intoxicating rush," he purrs through smiling lips.
Machi wipes the smears of ink with a cloth but notices a peculiar absence of blood.
She pokes the skin, and though Hisoka's 'ticklishness' vanished, never to reappear throughout the outlining, he fidgets at her tentative touch.
She twirls the needles between her blackened fingertips with a speculative pause.
"Something the matter?" hums Hisoka against his pillow.
She sees it. Beady whiskey eyes narrow on their joint reflection. Even the muscles beneath her fingertips tense, in a matter Machi can't decipher. Waiting for pain, thirsting for her answer or something else...
He used the word canvas earlier yet by his slip it felt like his skin really was canvas draped on his back.
"What are you made out of?" asks Machi.
He relaxes beneath her fingers.
"Surprises," says Hisoka with a voice of billowing velvet.
She knows better than to pry for a straight answer out of the clown and would prefer her current dismay over playing complacently with his game.
She refills her ink cap and gathers nine needles as a makeshift tattoo brush to fill in the spider's head and abdomen. "Sah, this will hurt."
No matter how she stabs the nine needles into his elastic skin, it bounces like plush cushions, absorbing the ink splendidly like linen dipped in dye, but no blood smears with the excess ink. The peculiar is now unnerving. A rough hand would irritate the skin and would cause profuse bleeding, wiping more blood than ink with the cloth, but even the most adept artist would see scarlet bubbles blot the surface.
"It's done," she says, closing the cap on the ink. She might as well toss the basically empty bottle. She had precisely enough ink.
He sits up and admires her handiwork, contorting his back and neck at odd angles in the mirror to gander at the twelve legged spider. "Hmmm, it's beautiful," he muses as if every sound is a labor of love on his tongue.
She explains the aftercare. "Let it heal. If it gets infected it's your problem."
He pules as he always does when she bruises him. She packs her needles in plastic wrap with a vow to sanitize them later.
She notices the imbues of blue and greenish yellow on the pillow from his facial paints.
"Do you draw on your teardrop and star every day?" She tucks the almost empty bottle in her sack, refusing to leave anything of hers in Hisoka's room, even in the bin.
"Hmmm?" He inspects the fuzzy run of color on his cheeks.
"Why don't you tattoo them on?"
"Are you offering?"
"That would be extra. But you've considered it haven't you?" She crosses her arms.
"Hmmm, I like smoothing the soft brush bristles and watching my cheeks drink the color. I mix the paints and the color is slightly different every single time, depending on what the day tastes like."
Tastes like?
He goes on.
"When I was a child, I would take colored candies, lick them, and paint on my face before eating them. They tasted so sweet." He licks his lips then, rubbing his finger against the smear of blue.
Sorry I asked.
She plucks her bag from the table and lugs it over her shoulder and bids her usual curt farewell. "Jah, bye."
The lock clicks behind Hisoka, leaving him alone with the colors. He reaches around his waist, pinches his back and peels off a layer. The tattoo Machi stabbed and prodded with her marvelous ink is now wrung in his palm.
He twirls the cloth over his finger like a ring of dough. He sticks the spider to garish urban landscape captured by the floor-to-ceiling window, his favorite kind. The buzz of neon, and streams of traffic lights shine through the spider, mimicking the impression of circulating blood, a beating heart, and animated eyes.
He admires the vibrant pops and how the spider seemed to crawl in the dance of shadows. A minor adjustment in the spider but oh how much more beautiful it looks now?
The colors intoxicate him; he tastes all and chews mouthfuls like various vibrant flavors of bubble gum.
The warmth of his finger smears the tear under his eyes and sea glass really ran down his delicate cheeks. The blue and the blots of color tastes are an aphrodisiac drug stamped on his tongue. Excitement shivers through him and prismatic stars burst behind his watering eyelids.
"Ahh, finally some color."