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yinyuedijun · 4 months ago

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hi lena I hope it isn't weird that I screenshot ur tags dlvjskfks I just needed to save them forever on my blog but if it's weird just lmk 💀💀💀

TOKYO VICE | part 1

You knew that if you agreed to move in with Suo, you'd be setting yourself up for a life without autonomy. You also knew that these alarming behaviours were all signs that he desperately needed therapy to process his master’s untimely death. Living with a man in constant grief, who refused to talk about his trauma unless he was making up a lie related to the nation of China, was probably not a good decision. Doubly so when this man was clearly paranoid about losing you, and triply so when he was a high-ranking member of a violent syndicate. Unfortunately for you, you rarely made good decisions. (Or: After joining the yakuza, Suo develops the concerning habit of controlling every facet of your life. This is somehow less worrying to you than your uncontrollable lust around him.)

8.7k words. suo x fem reader. deeply unserious yakuza au. yandere suo (not abusive and reader is into it), dark comedy, a little angst, smut. warnings: borderline sex work, off-screen criminal violence. nsft – no actual smut in this chapter, but there are still graphic discussions of sex. mdni. thank you to @sleepyqinfei for beta reading and to @/cafekitsune for the banner!

this is a sequel to sincerity and this sakura/reader wip (not required reading)!

You’re not exactly sure why you and Suo have never fucked.

It’s certainly strange, given that you're pretty sure that Suo has expressed at least passing interest in you over the years, and you have felt a lot of interest in him. (By ‘interest’, you mean that you feel an insatiable lust around him that you fight to ignore on a daily basis.) You can't exactly pinpoint why nothing has ever happened despite this mutual attraction, especially given your profession and indifferent feelings toward casual sex.

You can think of a number of probable reasons, which are separate from those you classify as stupid reasons. The latter class comprises silly concerns like a fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, fear of not being pretty enough, fear of not being good enough, et cetera. All very juvenile feelings—insecurities that you had in your teenage years, the days in which Suo ran around Makochi as a delinquent while you worked an honest job at a bar. (It was a girls’ bar in the red light district, but that's neither here nor there.) Your circumstances have since changed, and those anxieties have since faded. None of them have any material consequence for your current life, so you don't see any point in thinking about them.

The stupid reasons, then, definitely don't have anything to do with why you've never fucked Suo. But you can think of a few, more concrete reasons that may explain it. For one, Suo has been your friend since childhood and it’s generally a bad idea to have sex with your long-time friends. He was also your roommate for a while and it’s an even messier idea to have sex with your roommates. And now, in your adulthood, he’s your landlord in addition to being your boss, which makes him the worst possible person you could have sex with. You could lose both your home and your livelihood if things go south—both severe, material consequences that should theoretically keep your lust at bay.

Also, he's also a member of the yakuza.

Now, strictly speaking—you're not really opposed to having sex with violent criminals. It’s definitely not a good idea, but you don't usually have good ideas anyway. But for the past several years, you’ve been pissed at Suo for joining the yakuza in the first place, which actually does keep your blatant attraction to him in check. You simply dry up when you think too hard about all the feelings of betrayal.

When Suo was on the cusp of graduating from Furin and thinking about his future, you’d grabbed him by the collar and made him promise not to join the yakuza. They constantly tried to recruit from Bofurin, and they especially wanted Sakura, Suo, and Sugishita. You were adamant about chasing them off from Suo and Sakura whenever they approached—you had no need to worry about Sugishita, as Umemiya had already said he shouldn't talk to them, so there was no chance he was going to—and you begged Suo over and over not to join. Delinquency was fine, but a crime syndicate was something else altogether.

Suo seemed serious about it when he said he'd listen to you. He even applied to colleges, talked about maybe becoming a teacher and eventually supporting you so you could stop working in the mizu shobai industry. Back then, he often teased you by saying that you should marry him and be his housewife (or he could be your trophy husband, if you so wished). You thought he was joking, but with the way he always talked about his life after his degree, you wondered if he would seriously suggest it.

Of course, it was most likely just teasing, and you were fine with that. You were simply excited that he'd found a career that would make him happy. Nirei had also been accepted to university at that point, and even Sakura had an honest job lined up on Keisei Street. The future had looked bright for everyone.

Then Suo’s master died, and he lost his fucking mind.

The two of you buried Suo’s master in a Chinese funeral. He had never had children of his own, having satisfied his paternal instincts by picking up strays, and he didn't have much in the way of family in Japan either, so you and Suo performed the shou ling yourselves. One person kept a constant vigil over his body while the other searched on Google for what arrangements should be made next. After all, while Suo’s master had immersed his foremost disciple in his culture, he had never taught Suo any funerary customs. He hadn't thought there would be a need.

Suo didn't cry nearly as much as you, but he was probably in more pain. Your master had trained you a little bit when you were a kid, and he'd taken you in for a while after your parents kicked you out, so of course you were gutted. But he had practically raised Suo, so it was naturally worse for him. More shattering.

You often think about the first night you decided you'd sleep with him in the same futon because he was crying so much. He insisted he was fine, but he didn't complain when you got under the sheets with him and started thumbing away his tears. When you took off his eyepatch, you found, to your astonishment, that he was crying from his missing eye as well. Both of you thought the tear ducts had been destroyed in either the accident or the enucleation, but it appeared that not even that prior trauma could mask his grief over this one.

Nevertheless, by the time of the funeral procession, Suo had stopped crying.

“Master supported us and taught us to stand on our own two feet,” he said as the joss paper burned. He took your hand in his and smiled. “So it'll be fine. We’ll be okay on our own. I'll make sure of it.”

At the time, you had found this very comforting. You didn’t think too much of it, as you had a bad habit of relying on Suo for your emotional stability. His master had raised him to be an emotionally intelligent person, so it had been fine, even though you had a track record of reckless decisions. He’d still exercised endless patience with you. He never once got angry with you, nor did he ever force you to do what he felt was the right thing. Instead, he gently redirected your self-damaging behaviours—not so different from the martial art that he practised.

He disapproved of the run-down and lonely conditions of your apartment, so he spent a great deal of time there and helped make it into a proper home. He didn't like how dangerous your job at the girls’ bar was, so he walked you to and from work every night until you never left without him. He worried when you started having sex with your customers, especially when you began having nervous breakdowns over it (you were, after all, still a teenager and really only interested in having romantic vanilla sex with Suo), so he staged an intervention with Nirei and Sakura. In this way, Suo convinced you that you were loved and protected and didn't need to do something you hated so much. They would get you out if you felt trapped. And you didn't feel trapped, per se, so you left on your own—but it was still only because of them. You promised them afterwards that you'd never do it again.

This was Suo’s brand of kindness as a teenager. He always taught people, guided them away from harm rather than steering them—a behaviour he’d mimicked from your master. Your master, in general, had defined all of Suo’s values and his way of living, which was honest and gentle and conscientious. It was one where he used his abilities to protect the weak and care for his friends. He even kept his spiteful and alarmingly violent tendencies under control, though sometimes he slipped when fighting genuine assholes. But he still tried. He tried because he strived to be as kind as his master—who represented everything that Suo wanted to be in his adult life.

Thus, the death of Suo’s master meant the death of his principles. It changed the kind of man that Suo wanted to be. You don't want to say that he became a worse person, but he absolutely became a worse person.

He especially became a worse person with you.

As it turned out, Suo’s idea of making sure that the two of you would be fine on your own was, well, not really fine. It wasn’t that he became cruel to you, per se. It was more that whenever he saw a problem with your behaviour, his approaches to redirecting it became—put as nicely as possible—heavy-handed.

After your master’s death, you got a job at a high end, yakuza-owned club. Two weeks later, Suo broke his promise to you and joined the yakuza. So I can stay close to you, he explained gently, wiping away your tears as you cried hysterically, but you're convinced to this day that he did it partly out of spite. So a few years later, when you started having sex with your customers again and he tried to stop you, you decided to spite him back. I need to stay on top of the rankings, you'd explained dispassionately. The mamasan said it's fine, and the manager doesn't care. He even thinks it's good for business.

Suo’s response was to simply become the owner of your club.

This move was very extreme, but also very effective. Any customer who so much as brushed against you on the premises was instantly thrown out, and the mamasan started watching you like a hawk to make sure you weren’t going to any love hotels after work. Douhan were off-limits. For the first time since your teens, you became completely celibate—not only because of your new workplace circumstances, but because you simply didn't want to find out what Suo would do if you got together with a man he despised (and he despised every man you dated).

His most absurd play was when he became concerned about your living conditions again. Your latest apartment was too plain, too small, and the area was too dangerous. It didn't even have a shower, and the other tenants behaved concerningly toward you when you went to the bathhouse at night. But the rent was cheap, and it was still an upgrade from your last place, so you shrugged it off when Suo suggested that you move. Even when someone tried to accost you at night, you were nonchalant about it. You kicked the shit out of them in a fight and continued your routine unbothered.

The next month, Suo bought a luxury penthouse and suggested you move in with him.

His offer (command) came with conditions. One of the bigger ones was that you'd let him accompany you out at night if you ever needed to run errands in dangerous places. Or—nevermind, actually. He should really just accompany you everywhere at night. Maybe during the day too. And—ah, there was no way you'd be going to work alone, nor coming back by yourself—you were now always to be driven by someone in his organisation, if he wasn't available himself. Rent was a point of contention, when you asked about it: you wanted to pay at market rate, and he insisted that there was no need to pay at all. He ended up proposing a highly discounted price, which would give you ample financial freedom, but questionable financial independence.

These were insane terms. You knew that if you agreed, you'd be setting yourself up for a life without autonomy. You also knew that these behaviours were all signs that Suo desperately needed therapy to process his master’s untimely death. Living with a man in constant grief, who refused to talk about his trauma unless he was making up a lie related to the nation of China, was probably not a good idea. Doubly so when this man was clearly paranoid about losing you, and triply so when he was a high-ranking member of a violent syndicate. Case in point—he was likely connected to the brutal accident that later befell the man who tried to assault you.

“I'm not sure what you're implying, but at least he didn't die,” Suo said cheerfully when you confronted him about it. Which really meant: At least I decided not to kill him. This was a flag bigger and redder than any other you've ever known, and you consider yourself an expert in red flags. You knew you should run in the other direction.

So naturally, you put your arms around him, tenderly said, I'm sorry I've been worrying you, and then you moved in the next day.

While Suo treats you with endless patience, you have personal limits to the patience that you exercise with him. Specifically, your patience with how he treats you.

You don't mind the lack of social freedom, nor the lack of personal freedom, nor the lack of freedom of movement. You also don't mind living with a man full of intractable trauma surrounding the death of every parental figure in his life; in fact, you'd rather be by his side than not, if he needs to cope with something so painful. And anyway, your friendship is otherwise unchanged if you ignore the heavy restrictions he's imposed on every facet of your life. So that's all fine.

But the celibate lifestyle that he's cornered you into? You simply aren't built for it. Holy shit, do you need to get laid.

Nearly two years without sex has brought you close to another nervous breakdown (there have been few better sources of entertainment or validation in your life), and worst of all, it has made your profound lust for Suo incredibly hard to ignore. Waking up every morning to him in a towel, his hair still wet from the shower and his broad silhouette exposed, tests the absolute limits of your self-control. The contours of his lean and muscled form are distracting enough; coupled with the vivid colours and lines of his irezumi, the sight of him becomes maddening. It is a horrible thing to be exposed to when you haven't gotten any dick nor strap in over a year. It gives you thoughts about him that are overtly sexual, which is bad, as you have materially consequential reasons for not wanting to fuck Suo.

Things with him must absolutely stay platonic. But with sexual frustration like yours, being platonic with him means that you need to get erotic with someone else. A boyfriend or girlfriend is out of the question; you don't want to be responsible for yet another brutal accident. So you instead decide to quit your job at his club and start working on Keisei Street. At least this way, you can start fucking your customers again.

It’s a perfect plan. Suo’s oyabun is very indulgent toward him, and everyone else in the family respects him too. He consequently has a tight grip on his organisation and the territory they control, despite his relatively young age. Not a single person is ever to touch Keisei Street—largely because Sakura is part of Roppo-Ichiza, and Suo is nearly as weird about Sakura as he is about you. Plus, many of his other fellow Furin alumni are in the gang as well. If Suo’s men ever started fucking with people on Keisei Street, it would not only have grave implications for gang relations—it would be personally upsetting for Suo. This means you can fuck all the Keisei Street customers you want, and not get a single one of them threatened or killed.

A pretty brilliant idea, if you do say so yourself.

Suo’s expression doesn't change when you break the news to him. He delicately places his teacup—custom-made from Yixing, just like the matching clay teapot—down on the mahogany tabletop, and he looks at you with a calm smile.

“Come again?”

“I'm quitting my job at Red Dragon,” you repeat. “I already gave the mamasan my resignation.”

“And she accepted it?” Suo asks, in a tone that is so carefully nonchalant that you know it means he is actually furious with her. “How interesting,” he muses. “What brought this on?”

“I've found a better paying opportunity on Keisei Street.”

“I'll give you a raise,” he says easily.

“A raise?” You cock a brow. “The pay is mostly commission-based at Red Dragon. You know that.”

“Then it would be unwise to leave. You have a loyal customer base at Red Dragon. All very rich, and”—his smile grows sharp—“very polite.”

Polite. An interesting word. It actually means: None of them will ever proposition or harass you because they know they'll be maimed if they do. An easy thought to use to your advantage.

“It's loyal but it's small. Everyone who's anyone in this part of town thinks that we’re married. Do you know how hard it is to pull new customers in when they're scared shitless of my yakuza husband? And anyway”—you frown, trying to look as pathetic as possible—“I'm lonely.”

Suo stares. He looks surprised, possibly because you absorb every minute of his free time with silly conversation, new restaurants, and skiing trips. (He likes snow, so you ask for these trips more for him to relax than anything else.) You also text him frequently on days he's working, and he very diligently replies, even if he's in the middle of something like a raid or a hit or brokering a massive deal. Suo still very strictly keeps to his rule of never touching his phone when in conversation with other people—unless he needs to text you.

So his suspicion is fair. Suo is very attentive and doesn't allow you much opportunity for loneliness. In turn, you’ve always been very happy spending time with him, even when it's only him.

“Lonely?” he repeats. “Are you, now?”

“Yes. You work so much,” you complain, which is not a lie, “and I don't have any friends to spend time with when you're gone.”

“You have friends from work.”

“No, I have competition at work. The hostesses are so cutthroat about rankings, they hate me. And each other.”

“You like Shuuhei and Hanzo,” he points out, referring to his men who most frequently chauffeur you.

“Yeah, they're friendly, and they're very funny. I like them, but I can't be their friend.” Suo stares at you, nonplussed, so you spell it out: “They're too scared of you to get close to me. What if it looks like they're trying to fuck the boss’ wife?”

“Hm…” Suo studies you, looking thoughtful. Perhaps for the first time, he's contemplating the consequences of restricting your freedoms and marking you as his. That is to say—maybe he's finally realising that you have no friends and no life.

The beads of his earrings glimmer as he tilts his head at you and frowns. Suo almost looks innocent with that confused face of his. “And how would working on Keisei Street help?” he asks.

“Because all our old friends are there!” you exclaim. “Sakura’s in Roppo-Ichiza now so he’ll definitely be coming by all the clubs. Tsubaki too. And Nirei and Kiryu visit them quite often—and even Tsugeura does sometimes, even though clubbing isn't one of his virtues.” You grab onto his arm, pull yourself close, and give him your most disarming, pleading expression. “Please, Suo?”

“Hm.” He strokes your cheek and looks at you fondly, in the way that one would do with an adorable and slightly annoying kitten. “I don’t think so. It’s not very safe there.”

He isn't wrong. Not only are you untouchable on his turf because of your association to him, Suo has also just crushed all the han-gure and petty criminals in his territory with brutal efficiency. His part of the red light district is, quite ironically, one of the safest places in the city, and certainly safer than Keisei Street.

But undeterred, you point out, “Shuuhei and Hanzo can still drive me there and back if you want. But I don't think it's necessary. Do you really think Sakura would let anything happen to me?”

This is the true brilliance of your plan: capitalising on the fact that Suo is as nearly as weird about Sakura as he is about you. He pauses as soon as you bring up the point, and you can practically see the gears turning. “Well, if it's him…”

“I even texted him about it. Look—here!” You whip out your phone, receipts ready. The corner of Suo's mouth lifts at your obviously rehearsed pitch. “He says he'd make sure I'm taken care of. And he says it'd be nice because he misses seeing us. Can you believe it—Sakura actually admitted that he misses us! Typed it with his own two hands and pressed send! I bet he was super embarrassed about it.”

“Huh. He even used a sticker. I've never seen him do that.” Suo smiles as he reads through the chat. He looks like his old self. You suddenly feel a little wistful, and also a lot bad. This started as a ploy to get laid, but it’s made you realise that you really do miss your friends—and Suo probably does too.

“If I worked on Keisei Street, then you would have plenty of reason to visit,” you point out, feeling somewhat tender.

“I guess that's true,” Suo says. Your heart aches a little bit at the look he gives you. It's a platonic ache, of course. Or at the very least, it isn't an erotic one. It doesn't really make you want to have sex with him anyway. But if you could lean forward and press your lips to his—platonically—then you definitely would.

Suo's civilian friendships are complicated by his double life. Quite unusually for yakuza, Suo’s syndicate insists on using pseudonyms and false histories to avoid anti-yakuza laws, on the off-chance that the police decide to do their jobs and actually enforce those laws someday. Lying for comedy is one of Suo’s greatest passions, so he was happy to manufacture an absurd backstory: his name is Yanzhao, and he learned kung fu in a Shaolin Temple before moving to Hong Kong and working for the triads. He wears the eyepatch because he lost his eye in an altercation with the cops, which he won. By the way, you're his criminally beautiful wife who he met in Macau. The two of you had to leave for Japan since he killed a police officer and now he's wanted by the governments of both China and Hong Kong. Also, he's a very devoted husband, so if anyone lays a hand on you, he’ll kill them too.

Somehow, everyone has bought into this story. Every criminal organisation in the red light district now fears a high-ranking yakuza known as Yanzhao, who is easily recognizable by his eyepatch and tassel earrings, and who is also homicidally obsessed with his beautiful wife.

In some ways, his infamy is convenient. No one wants to fuck with Suo, or with you by extension. But it also poses some issues: Suo has to keep a low profile in areas controlled by rival organisations, or else he might be ambushed. It also means he cannot easily go out and see his old friends. Even though he always masquerades as a civvie when he does, wearing stud earrings and a glass eye, it's still a little risky—especially since he likes to visit the strongest member of Roppo-Ichiza. While Roppo-Ichiza aren’t yakuza, they're still han-gure, so some of its more criminally entangled members might recognize him anyway.

But Sakura himself, bless him, has not put two and two together and figured out that Suo Hayato and Gui Yanzhao are the same person. This is partly because Suo lies very convincingly about his fictional career in the tea industry, but you think it's also because Sakura is so gullible it's endearing.

I use the glass eye now because it's better for networking, Suo had explained before Sakura could interrogate him too much, his voice too smooth and too quick for the other man to get in a word edgewise. My business partners find the eyepatch too silly. The tassel earrings too. By the way, would you like some Baimudan tea? I thought of you when I smelled it—I know you like fragrant things—so I picked some up for you on my last visit to China. I was there for business a couple of weeks ago.

He, of course, neglected to mention that said business involved meeting with the 14K triad.

Despite the enormity of Suo's omission (lie), Sakura is none the wiser whenever he meets with you. He thinks you're just a regular hostess who has freedom of movement and various other human rights, and that Suo’s just a regular guy who isn’t homicidally obsessed with you (a detail of Suo's fabricated life story that is unfortunately grounded in reality). All this to say, Sakura doesn't think twice about mentioning the fact that you have a routine of going to love hotels after work.

Suo, as always, remains calm in the face of unsettling information. He sets down his tea (just tea, without shochu), and politely says, “Pardon?” He's once again using the nonchalant kind of tone that suggests mortal danger.

“She's always going to love hotels after her shifts.” Sakura is frowning at you, pink but scowling. “I thought you said you were done with that stuff. You promised us you wouldn't do it anymore. Suo—are you really okay with this?”

On the one hand, you find it exceptionally sweet that Sakura, after all this time, remembers your promise and wishes to hold you to it. He was so worried about you when you started having those nervous breakdowns as a teenager, and he probably still is. On the other hand, you're shitting bricks at the fact that Suo is now aware of your activities. Because sure, he likely won't fuck with Keisei Street—but you realise, as he stares at you, that you can't be certain of this. After all, your fake yakuza husband has very real homicidal urges.

“Um,” you say. “It's just business.”

“Business,” Suo repeats.

“You don't have to do that stuff to keep good business,” Sakura grouses, unaware of Suo’s carefully suppressed rage. “You're real popular already.”

“Are you?” Suo asks, looking right at you.

“I mean—I told you the pay would be better, right?” you reply, voice oddly high and nervous, and this is when Sakura notices that something is wrong.

“Oh,” Sakura says, looking between the two of you. “Suo, you didn't know?”

“I didn't,” he says. “Actually, she told me specifically that she wasn't going to do that if she worked here.” He turns to you, still smiling. “That's the only reason why I allowed this at all, remember?”

A chill travels down your spine. You did, in fact, commit to a perpetually sexless lifestyle in order to be granted some semblance of freedom: Of course I won't sleep with any customers, you'd said. You know I don't really like doing that anyway. I promise I'll behave! I’ll be out of the clubs and right back home. Sakura said he’d make sure I’ll get to a cab safely after the bar closes and everything!

“Um,” you say again, but this time you have no follow-up.

“Wait,” Sakura demands, “what do you mean by ‘allowed her’? What, do you need to give her permission to work now or something?”

Suo smiles disarmingly at Sakura. Without missing a beat, he says, “Generally no. But we’re dating now, which complicates what she’s allowed to do with other men at her job.”

Sakura spits out his drink. You choke on your spit.

“I… um?!” Sakura’s staring at you, so you quickly recover. This is a mortifying lie, but it's better than Sakura finding out just how batshit Suo has become since his school days. “I thought we were going to keep that a secret, dear?”

“Ah, you're right. Sorry, I got too excited.” Suo gives you an endeared look before turning to Sakura. “We were going to keep it to ourselves unless we got serious about it. But we've been talking about marriage lately, so I thought it was fine to mention.”

“...”

You’re going to have an aneurysm. Why does every cover that Suo comes up with involve a marital relationship between the two of you?!

“Oh… holy shit.” Sakura’s expression is complicated—somehow, more complicated than yours, even though you’re the one getting cornered into a fake engagement. It's unbelievable how shy he still is about this kind of thing. Maybe it’s just particularly embarrassing since he's known you two for so long, you reason. Regardless, he remembers his social cues enough to say, “Congrats, guys. That's great. That's really great.”

Suo gazes fondly at you across the table. “We were thinking you could be our best man,” he adds, and you consider violently kicking his leg.

“O-oh. Uh, yeah! Sure! But what about Nirei?”

“Rather than having a maid of honour,” you say reflexively, used to lying through your teeth for Suo, “we’d like him to be our best man as well.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” Thrown off guard, Sakura completely forgets about the love hotel business. He whips out his phone. “When were you thinking of having your wedding? I'll put it in my calendar.”

“I’m not sure.” Suo turns to you. “What were we thinking again, dear?”

You're going to die. You're going to die and it's a good thing because if you survive this embarrassment, your future will be bleak. As soon as Nirei finds out about this, he’ll want to start helping you with wedding planning, and then it would just be too awkward to cancel things. You’ll have to enter a fake marriage with Suo, which will be completely sexless, because even with a vow of everlasting love, there are still too many concrete and materially consequential reasons for not sleeping with him.

Condemning yourself to a lifetime of sexual frustration, you reply, “I think we were talking about a summer wedding.”

The drive home is awkward.

Hanzo and Shuuhei pick the two of you up. Suo mentioned that he wanted to talk to you and you alone, so they bring the Rolls Royce with the privacy suite. The two of them are entirely cut off from you thanks to the soundproofing, which traps you with Suo, who’s drinking a bottle of oolong tea as the two of you sit in complete silence. You think he's waiting for you to squirm—which you do.

You stay like that for five, agonising minutes before Suo finally says, “So you're sleeping with your customers.”

You swallow. “Yes.”

“For business?”

“Yes.”

“How much do you make?”

You blink. “Huh?”

“How much do you get paid for a single night of work, including gifts that your customers give you in exchange for sleeping with them?”

You're halfway through citing your earnings when you realise where he's going with this.

“So you make less than you did at Red Dragon,” Suo concludes, “and you're very smart with your money, so I know you know that, and you probably went into this knowing that you'd end up at a net loss.” He turns to you, gives you a look so sharp that it almost scares you. All made worse by his civilian disguise, which makes him feel unfamiliar. His glass eye shines strangely in the light, and his scar tissue is hidden by the makeup you helped apply. You wish he'd taken it all off before having this conversation.

“So,” he says, “what’s the real reason you changed jobs?”

Already knowing that he’ll figure you out sooner or later, you admit, “I just wanted to start having sex again.”

Suo blinks. “You… what?”

“I wanted to have sex with people,” you repeat. “I hadn't been touched for nearly two years, okay? I needed to get laid or else I'd go insane.” You cross your arms and look away, suddenly feeling petulant. “I'm sure you've noticed that our arrangement makes it impossible for me to see people.”

He doesn't answer, because of course he's noticed. He’d designed his house rules with precisely this intent. If he accompanies you everywhere you go, then you can't exactly go on dates, and you definitely can't meet people for sex. Not unless you feel like having Suo watch as some anonymous guy fucks you, and you don't. As hot as the idea is, it’s definitely not platonic behaviour, and it would probably trigger the whole homicidal obsession thing.

“Do you like it?” Suo asks, startling you. You look at him, confused.

“What?”

“Do you enjoy having sex with your customers?” he asks. His voice and gaze are even. Unrelenting. “Does it make you happy?”

You stare at him, a deer caught in headlights. You didn't expect Suo to actually care about whether you enjoyed it or not, and you didn't really expect to care yourself either. But truthfully, you hated it. You simply weren't feeling it with most of your customers and avoided intercourse with all but one. Then in that one case you let someone earnestly fuck you, it was a complete letdown. Possibly the worst sex you'd ever had. You spent the whole time watching the clock, wondering how long it would take, and it turned out that your hookup had remarkable stamina but absolutely no technique. To pass the time, and in an attempt to feel something, you tried to imagine it was someone else who was inside you. You cycled through a whole list of people, including all of your exes, a few of your past customers, every single member of BTS, and then—finally, inevitably—your long-time friend, roommate, and landlord.

To your complete horror, when you imagined that it was Suo who had you folded in half, his cock so deep inside you that you could feel it in your throat, you came so hard that you drenched the sheets.

You lay there afterward as your customer showered, alone in the bed. Normally you'd be getting dressed at that point, but you were too distracted. You kept thinking about what it would feel like to be held by Suo after having your guts rearranged by him—embraced tenderly like you know he would do with you, kissing him platonically like you've always wanted to do with him—and you realised that you didn’t actually want to have sex with anyone else. Despite all your life experience, sexual experience, and job experience—in that moment, you felt like a lonely nineteen year old girl who wanted nothing more than to have romantic, vanilla sex with her best friend, but who was instead having impersonal, disappointing sex with various salarymen.

This was a feeling so disgusting that you’ve decided to never tell anyone at any cost.

“Yeah, it's fine. I guess I like it.” You pretend to study your nails. “Sometimes I cum, which is all I really want.”

Suo keeps staring at you. “That’s it?” he asks, voice measured and careful. You raise a brow, playing dumb.

“What do you mean?”

“That's all you want? Just to get off?”

You gaze out the window, trying not to look at his lips.

“Yes, that's all.”

No matter how batshit Suo gets, he always maintains a certain kindness and maturity in how he handles conflict with you. It's a lesson that he learned from his master, which has perhaps been distorted over time, but remains important to him nevertheless.

If you do something upsetting, Suo is never forceful about getting you to act differently. Sure, he has fucked up ways of either getting you to behave or making you understand the consequences of your actions, and perhaps he has his manipulative moments. It was probably not a good thing that he coaxed you into indefinite house arrest, for instance. But he never threatens you, and he never hits you, and he never disrespects you. In fact, more than anything, he makes it a point to never let you feel like you aren't loved.

So when Suo abandons you after that conversation in the Rolls Royce, you lose your fucking mind.

Suo doesn’t come home in the days following that evening, without any note nor explanation. For the first time in years, he stops replying to your texts. Your immediate thought is that he's been gravely injured or perhaps even killed, which sends you into a panicked spiral. But every one of his men who's come by to check on you has implied otherwise—but I'm not allowed to tell you anything else, anesan, I’m sorry, they all say. And when you realise that Suo is actually fine and he's just playing a fucked up mind game with you, one that makes you feel distinctly unloved, you feel simultaneously heartbroken and apoplectic. The man is not allowed to corner you into de facto imprisonment and then just fucking leave. In fact, if he tries, you might imprison him.

You spend a few days sitting at home and crying over this, as well as torturing yourself by thinking about useless things (fear of rejection, fear of abandonment, et cetera). But eventually, you get tired of wallowing in self-inflicted misery, and you decide to just track your fake husband down. His men have been adamant about not letting you out of their sight—presumably so you don’t fuck any more of your customers, because Suo can be spiteful like that—so you have to be strategic about your plan to find him.

You decide to do it during work. You tap out in the middle of a shift, feigning illness, so nobody bats an eye when you put on the most shapeless hoodie you own and throw on a face mask. Your chauffeurs (handlers) don't notice as you sneak off—and for the first time in years, you walk through the red light district all alone.

It feels strange not to be protected, and even stranger not to be surveilled. You marvel at the unfamiliar experience of complete freedom, and at the possibility of being able to run off and disappear if you so wished. But you don't, of course. Not only do you care too deeply for Suo to abandon him, you're also pretty sure he has your driver’s licence and ID card locked up somewhere. At least you haven't been able to find them, and Suo was oddly evasive about it when you asked. (I haven't seen them, he'd said, but I don't think you’d need either of those things immediately, anyway, do you? And you nodded in response, because it was true that you liked being his passenger princess too much to care about your licence.)

So rather than bolting for the subway, you head straight to your old workplace. The gleaming doors of Red Dragon welcome you as you cross its threshold, and you're greeted immediately by the scent of luxury colognes and expensive cigars—both evoking a strange nostalgia in you. Even the click of your heels against the marble floor feels familiar. You realise that you've missed the place despite its cutthroat culture and its owner’s authoritarian control over you, which you suppose isn't surprising. This club was more or less your home for years and, thanks to said owner, was the safest place you've ever worked.

And being that you feel you've returned to your very safe home, you don't expect it when you're abruptly stopped by the bouncer.

“Can I help you?” he asks, his arm in your way. You don't recognize him, but you see the edges of his irezumi peeking out from the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt.

“Yeah, actually,” you say. “I'm looking for Gui Yanzhao. Is he here right now?”

The bouncer—or chinpira, you guess—bristles.

“You're looking for who?”

“Yanzhao?” you say impatiently. “Eyepatch, tassel earrings? Owner of the club? Probably your boss?”

The bouncer steps forward and reaches for something in his pocket, which makes you suddenly nervous, and also makes you realise that in a hoodie and a face mask, you ordinarily wouldn't be allowed in this club, let alone into the room of its yakuza owner. You're so used to VIP treatment here that you simply forgot.

You take a step back. “Um. I think there's been a misunderstanding.” You lower your face mask, which doesn't help as you've never met this man, and he must be new. You’ll need to complain to Suo about his onboarding process later, if you aren't killed before you can find him.

It turns out that this yakuza rookie has a knife in his pocket, which is not the worst thing he could have been carrying, but is also not the best. You're getting ready to run in the other direction when a more senior member of the gang comes by. He gives you a startled look, which then turns alarmed when he sees his younger brother’s knife.

“Anesan!” he yells hurriedly, and he snatches the chinpira’s knife straight from his hand. His lunge for the weapon turns into a hurried bow. He pulls his colleague—whose face has turned very white in a very short amount of time—into an even deeper one. They look on the verge of prostrating.

“Oh, Yamashita. Hi! Is this guy new?”

“Yes! My sincerest apologies for my younger brother’s idiocy, and his insolence in raising a weapon at you.” There's a sheen of sweat on the back of his neck. “If you would like him to atone, then he would be more than happy to—”

“No, that's fine. I'd really like him to keep all his fingers.” If you have to see a rookie cut off his pinkie today, you think you might actually change your mind on running away. Fuck your documents—Suo can keep them. Surely life without proof of identity can't be that hard. “By the way,” you say, trying to change the topic before Yamashita can suggest alternative acts of atonement, “have you seen my husband?”

Yamashita hesitates at your question, looks conflicted. You feel a little bad for him, and for every other gang member who needs to worry about accidentally offending Suo. You watch him sweat for a full ten seconds before he says, “You can follow me. But anesan, you might find it unpleasant upstairs. I can find someone to drive you home instead, if you'd like.”

You give him a funny look. This was your workplace for a very long time—you can’t think of many things that would happen here that might seriously upset you. “What, is he cheating on me?” you guess.

“What? No! Aniki would never!” Yamashita seems genuinely shocked at the suggestion. “He's crazy about you!”

“Then I'm sure he’ll be happy to see me,” you say, although given that he's ignored your texts for four days straight, you aren't so sure. Regardless, this seems to be good enough reasoning for Yamashita, and you’re taken to the top floor of Red Dragon. You ponder the whole time, on the elevator ride up, just what exactly Suo’s been up to that's made Yamashita this nervous about letting you see him.

Then the door opens, and you’re given your answer in the form of several body bags—all cleanly zipped up and conscientiously laid out in front of the elevators in a single, neat row. A sight that is significantly worse than a rookie cutting off his pinkie finger.

“Oh,” you say faintly. You try not to throw up. “So this is why he hasn't been home.”

“Exactly!” Yamashita replies, beaming. “See, anesan, I told you. He'd never cheat on you!”

Suo is in the lounge of the top floor, which has been cleared of both civilians and corpses for the night. He's sitting on one of the couches, leaning back with his one eye closed, as if asleep. The golden tassels of his earrings are draped over the expensive leather of his seat, intertwined with his dark hair. A cup of tea sits in front of him, steaming. Even this far away, you recognize it by the scent alone: jasmine, probably from Longjing. One of the most expensive blends he has, and that which he saves for days he’s stressed, though he never admits it when he is.

The sight of him would almost look tranquil, except for all the blood on his knuckles and his cuffs.

Off to the side, two of his younger brothers are chatting away. One is pouring cups of some doubtlessly expensive liquor, and the other is smoking a cigar. There's karaage on the table too. You recognize all of this as part of a ritual that some of the guys like to do after a hit or a shootout, not dissimilar to getting ramen or McDonald’s after going to a club.

You catch a bit of their conversation as you approach. One of them holds up the liquor bottle (Isojiman sake, you now recognise from your girls’ bar days, one of the rarer bottles costing around nine million yen) and asks Suo if he wants to join. “No thanks,” he says predictably, “I'm on a diet.” Then he turns and looks right at you—startling you, because you had thought you were being fairly quiet—and gives you a smile so genuine that it reminds you of his Furin days. “Would my beautiful wife like to drink for me, though?”

“No thanks,” you reply, “but your beautiful wife would like to talk to you.”

The two guys clear out to give you some privacy. You’re left alone with Suo, feeling awkward after several days of resenting him for no reason. (You’d rather die than go to therapy, but the whole fear of abandonment thing is probably something you should start addressing.) You don't even know where you want to sit. Eventually, you settle for placing yourself next to him, which is a decision that Suo quickly overturns by pulling you into his lap.

A flutter erupts in your stomach as he settles you on top of him. This physiological reaction is absurd, as not even ten minutes ago, you were trying not to throw up at the line of corpses in front of the elevator. It should also scare you somewhat that Suo’s hands—delicately adjusting your body—are still covered in blood. But truthfully, you can't help but be happy when he makes you feel so loved.

You take one of the napkins on the table and start wiping at his knuckles. Tenderly, in case they're bruised or skinned.

“You didn't call or come home,” you start.

“I thought it would be too dangerous.”

You frown, thinking of all the bodies outside. “Was this a rival organisation?”

“No. They were ours.” He sighs. “A succession conflict. There are a few people who don't like how I'll run things if I take over.”

You nod. Suo is very old-fashioned in his ideals about the yakuza, which you think is an imprint of his master’s influence, and something that appeals to his current ‘father’. He values chivalry. He likes protecting the weak. His filial devotion to his deceased master has now extended to every member of his yakuza family, especially his oyassan. He’s almost certainly the top candidate for taking over after the oyabun dies, but being that part of his old-fashioned principles excludes lucrative projects such as sex trafficking, you suppose it’s natural that some people in his organisation would prefer him dead rather than in charge.

“You’ve never ghosted me during violent conflicts before though,” you say. “I was worried that something happened to you. Or that you were upset with me.”

Suo’s hand drops to your waist, pulling you a little closer.

“They knew where we live. They tried to get to you, you know.” Your eyes widen in alarm, so he cups your face with a palm. His thumb glides along your cheek, and your response is almost Pavlovian: your heart rate immediately slows at the comfort of his touch. “It’s fine. They won't bother you ever again.” The cheerful smile returns. “And if anyone else ever does, I'll handle them too.”

Your heart swells. Enthusiastic pledges of murder are not a healthy sign of affection, but after so much loneliness—whether from the past several days, or the years before that, you aren't sure—you can't find it in yourself to be disturbed. You feel and sound painfully fond when you reply, “I know.”

Suo’s expression dims a little then. “I thought you'd like the space anyway.”

“What?” You give him a confused look. You have never once given him any indication that you want even an inch of space from him. You'd crawl into his ribcage if you could. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought you felt suffocated. You left my club just so you could have sex with other people.” You blink, lingering on his wording. Other people. He continues before you can ask about it, sighing, “You didn't even ask me who I'd give permission to touch you. You just went ahead and decided on your own.”

“...”

You try not to look disturbed. Suo’s apparent wish to control your sexual decisions is news to you, and somehow more alarming than the murder pledge. And even worse—you immediately clench in response to his words. The thought of Suo dictating who does and doesn't get to touch your cunt is… well, your mind is heading in a distinctly non-platonic direction.

Trying to ignore the heat in between your thighs (but at the same time encouraging it), you ask: “Who would you have been, um, okay with touching me?”

“Sakura or Nirei,” he says immediately. “Though only Sakura would be interested.”

“What.” You gape at him, all arousal forgotten. “Bullshit. He would never.”

“Yes, he would.” Suo tilts his head. “Haven't you noticed?”

“I don't think there's anything to notice? And also—he’s so shy, I don't think he'd ever agree even if he were interested!” You give him a bewildered look. “He couldn't even look at us when we said we were getting married, he was so embarrassed!”

“Embarrassed?” Suo stares at you, an amused glint in his eye. “Is that what you thought was going on?”

“Was there anything else?”

He studies you for a moment, clearly entertained but not explaining why. “Well—it’s fine,” he says. “It doesn't matter for now. Especially since he's helping us plan a wedding and all.”

You make a face. “I still can't believe that's the cover you went for.”

“Are you upset with it?” he asks smoothly, and you huff and say yes, but from his sly look, you think he knows it's a lie.

Naturally, you deflect before he can further interrogate you. “So, given that you are now my fiancé, am I no longer allowed to work on Keisei Street and see customers after my shifts?”

You don’t expect it when Suo says, “No, you can.”

You stare. “What?”

“You can keep seeing customers if you'd like. You said it makes you happy, so why would I stop you?” Suo’s brow furrows, his usual calm replaced with concern. “Do you really think I do the things I do to make you miserable?”

Guilt gnaws at your heart. He looks so disappointed. “No,” you tell him. “I just thought it'd make you miserable that I was sleeping with people without your permission.” It is partly why you hid it from him in the first place, after all. You don't like to see him sad—you’re still haunted by the deep grief he was in, after your master died—and also, his misery tends to bring bodily harm to other people these days.

Cognizant of both concerns, you ask, “You’re really okay with me sleeping with my customers? I can stop, if you want.”

“No, it’s fine. I still don't like it, but you can continue for now if you want.”

Suo’s mouth curls—not in a gentle way, as has been his expression since seeing you walk in, but in a way that sets off your flight or fight response.

“I'm sure we’ll reach a mutual understanding soon enough.”

END PART 1

thank you genuinely if you read all that because this is a deranged au and I still can't believe I wrote it sldfkjsldfkj. please do let me know if you enjoyed my yandere suo delusions. sorry there was no smut in this chapter. I promise there is a ton in the next one (probably too much... lol. it's a 10k chapter and literally half of those words are about orgasm denial sldfkjalskdjdf). it's completely written and I hope to edit and have it up by next week!

also here is glossary of terms and world building notes if you are interested!

tagging @kweenkatsuki-fics !! <3