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embossross · 1 year ago

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From His Mind to Hers

chapter 11 >> Chapter 12 >> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

✣ Warning: 18+, minors DNI; unhealthy relationships & dark content

✣ Chapter CW: violence, discussions of torture, drugs, hanma fantasizes about anal play and ptv sex

✣ Story CWs: patient/doctor relationships; smut (oral, ptv, pta, etc.), degradation, stalking, torture (not of y/n), murder, discussions of trauma and abuse, drug use, and more

✣ Synopsis: Forced into therapy, Hanma expects to waste his time and yours, but you’re not about to let the chance of a high-profile and higher paying patient slip through your grasp. The fact that you’re both attracted to each other doesn’t hurt either.

✣ Word Count: 6k+

Hanma regrets not doing one last line to see him through tonight’s meetings. His jaw aches like the soreness of a two-day old punch, and he keeps his hands plunged into his suit pockets to cover their trembling. A little hair of the dog to ease the worst of the symptoms is just what the doctor ordered, but the nagging voice of reason in his head – an unholy blend of your voice and Kisaki’s – tells him to sober up and stay sharp.

Days of the job running him ragged have taken their toll. An hour of sleep here or there between assignments, a fitful doze in the backseat between locations, and the fortifying effects of cocaine are all that sustain him.

It will soon be well worth it. The usual irritability that comes with a cocaine hangover is nothing compared to the thrill of imagining all the delicious possibilities that await him when he confronts the Immortal Mikey.

Is it a matter of weeks or only days until their showdown? He wants Mikey to fight with the ferocity of a blood feud, but what if Mikey refuses to fight him to the death? To bring out the darkness in Mikey, Hanma can always taunt the memory of his dead siblings, maybe lay the blame for their deaths at his feet. Hanma has spent years training with fighters specializing in Muay Thai and Taekwondo in the hopes of someday facing one of Mikey’s bestial kicks. Just imagining the difference in power behind Mikey’s strikes and his usual opponents’ makes Hanma salivate. To prolong the fight, he’ll need to move strategically. Relying on his height advantage would be a mistake as Mikey can leap to nearly Hanma’s full height, so Hanma will need to hunker down to protect his core. He should get as close as possible, limit the force Mikey can draw behind each kick, deliver short, devastating punches to the organs, maybe get a grip on one of his legs to throw him off balance. Like predicting an opponent’s moves in a game of chess, Hanma wonders how Mikey will counter if Hanma pins him flat in the dirt. He’ll probably never get the chance to find out. A single direct kick from Mikey will rattle his brains. It will take superhuman powers of concentration to not lose consciousness then, to fight until the bitter end, until sweet, sweet nothing…

Rapturous, as he imagines Mikey’s potential countermoves, Hanma smiles with all his teeth at nothing.

Around him, Toman’s top brass gather around a coffee table in Kisaki’s suite on the penultimate floor of the Ritz-Carlton, waiting for tomorrow’s negotiations to begin. The atmosphere is tense. Writers would describe said tension as thick; a description Hanma finds appropriate. He likens the energy in the room to sucking in a great lungful of car exhaust and then holding it there, letting the smoke stir up the lungs and burn the eyes as you fight back the urge to choke, cough, sputter.

On the floor above, where the HKJ executives strategize and, on the floors below, where their entourages gather to get a few hours of shut eye before tomorrow’s activities begin, Hanma imagines the mood is equally warped.

Kisaki’s suite brims with the stale smell of smoke as the room’s occupants light up cigarette after cigarette before the last even has a chance to burn out. The cherries flare bright and then fade like dying stars amid the flick of titanium lighters. It is ritual, comforting, unifying. There are billions of yen at stake tomorrow. It’s the kind of money lesser men kill for, and they have done far worse than kill for a fraction of this prize.

Each man’s nerves manifest differently. From where he stands guarding the door, Hakkai switches compulsively between his cigarette and a toothpick before giving up and shoving both into his mouth on either side like a pair of mismatched fangs. Mucho fingers the knives at his side while glaring into the eyes of anyone who glances his way as if daring them to make a wrong move, reserving the worst of his ire for Smiley, newly back into the fold after his long exile – Hanma can’t guess what Kisaki was thinking allowing that – and grinning, unperturbed from his seat by the window. Kokonoi looks highly medicated where he sits on the loveseat, fidgeting with his rings and only settling when Inui places a centering hand on his shoulder.

As for Kisaki, well that is the strangest thing. Apart from a manic gleam reflecting off his glasses, Kisaki sits like an iron pillar, steady and supportive.

It is out of character. He should be pacing, glaring through his phone, like he can see beyond the screen into the heart of the device, barking at them all for breathing too loudly. The details of this deal have been meticulously ironed out over the course of months. There will be ceremonies, demonstrative displays of respect, staged misunderstandings, and finally resolution. It’s not unlike taking your school exams when you’ve already studied with the answer key. All that is needed is to show up and not tip your hand. Still, Kisaki should be nervous.

Someone knocks on the door, and for one brief moment, they all forget how to breathe.

The only men with access to the penultimate floor of the hotel tonight are already gathered here. Whoever dares knock on their door has made a fatal mistake. Yet to Hanma’s surprise, when Hakkai sees the visitor through the peephole, he nods knowingly to Kisaki, who returns the gesture, and then Hakkai opens the door.

Neither man reacts when the opening door reveals Haitani Ran, dressed in pinstripes and looking like a fucking pencil case. Hanma leaps to his feet, already fidgety hands reaching for his gun, but Kisaki nods the man inside, and Haitani closes the door behind himself. It clicks shut decisively.

“Glad to see you’ve made it, Haitani,” Kisaki greets him.

As usual, the sight of the man who has plagued his mind these last several months triggers a restless agitation in Hanma. The feeling has become a familiar one, a mix of the desire for a vicious fight that rises up whenever he sights an enemy with even halfway decent martial arts skills mixed with the enraging certainty that Haitani would see him die of something mundane like hypertension behind bars. There is no room for reactionary thinking tonight, not when his epic battle with Mikey is on the line, so Hanma swallows his impulse to attack, limits himself to a frown when Haitani waltzes right inside to stand opposite Kisaki and to Hanma’s left.

Hanma looks to Kisaki for instruction on how to react. He knows Kisaki better than anyone else living or dead. So, he knows that the grin that spreads across Kisaki’s weather-worn face signals nothing less than complete victory. Kisaki always avoids the spotlight when plotting something, sticking to the shadows, sacrificing a stooge or two, playing the double agent. If he chooses to center himself now, it signals something huge.

Kisaki begins, “Now that Haitani’s finally here, I will tell you a story. Certainly, you’ll have heard it before, the Kachi-kachi Yama, but listen carefully, and I think you’ll find much that’s applicable to what’s happened here this last year. Once there was a troublesome tanuki, who plagued a farmer’s fields. Perhaps the farmer could have lived alongside it in peace, but the tanuki was spiteful and cunning, and the farmer knew someday the tanuki would destroy the bountiful fields that he’d dedicated his life to cultivating. So, the farmer captured the tanuki, tying it to a tree and continuing about his business. He figured he could return later and kill the tanuki for his supper. That was my first mistake, I’ll admit. I am that farmer, confident that the tanuki would remain in my trap until I saw fit to gut it. Because instead of making his peace with the gods or thanking the farmer for this stay of execution, the tanuki grew rabid and vengeful. He called out to the farmer’s wife, begging to be freed. I forget that our greatest threat is not always the malice of our enemies but the stupidity of those unworthy men we call allies. The wife, a simpleton, released the tanuki, who, in thanks for her idiocy, promptly killed her. Then, he shapeshifted into her likeness and cooked the farmer a dinner of soup made from his wife’s flesh. The unsuspecting farmer shared his table with the enemy, none the wiser. Until, of course, the tanuki revealed itself and its treachery. It might have escaped justice if not for a rabbit who offered his help to the farmer, and hunted the tanuki down, and well, you know the rest. The rabbit is Haitani-san. I am the farmer. But who is the treacherous, shape-shifting tanuki?”

Theatrically, Kisaki pitches his voice down and makes heavy eye contact with each man in the room. Hanma’s brain races as he decides which man to bury beneath the weight of his suspicions, which man is marked to die. Because, though inscrutable in classic Kisaki-style, the story tells him there is a traitor in their midst, likely in this very room, and Hanma must be ready. His trigger finger itches.

“Quite the mystery…Our best clue came with the hack of Kokonoi’s computer. After all, only executives are allowed entry to that floor of the building, and despite Muto’s best efforts to compel one of the guards to snitch – and let me assure you, those efforts were remarkable in their brutality – each guard swore he didn’t let anyone else in. So, where was our clever tanuki? Hiding in plain sight?”

Kisaki nearly whispers those last words, so they all have to lean closer to hear. A rapt audience, everything Kisaki ever desired.

“The timing with the HKJ deal was suspicious, too. Someone was taking advantage of our vulnerability around the deal. I suspected Haitani, there’s no denying it, but three nights ago, he called and gifted me some critical information. Perhaps, like the simpleton wife in the story, none of our guards betrayed us. Maybe they followed orders to the letter and only let executives in.”

Everything happens very fast then.

There is rapid movement in his peripheral vision, coming from the right where Kisaki sits with the wall of windows to his back, and in the split second it takes for Hanma to draw his gun, Haitani throws a projectile past his head. Hanma knew not to trust that fucker.

A silenced gunshot shatters any remaining illusion of civility. The bullet goes wide, missing Kisaki, its intended target, by a hair’s breadth and exploding a vase.

Standing with a gun clenched in his fist, Smiley takes aim a second time.

Mucho vaults the couch, meaty fists reaching Smiley before he’s even fully cleared the obstacle. The contact throws them both off balance, and the gun falls harmlessly to the floor, where Koko is quick to pocket it. They land on the ground with a boom that rocks the furniture.

One moment Mucho is on top, and then, they roll, Smiley taking the dominant position, and then repeat. Every gun in the room trains on the wrestling duo, but there is no clean shot around Mucho’s bulk. The knives at Mucho’s waist could end the fight, but no one wants to paint the hotel with DNA, so Mucho relies on his fists, like they did in the old days, two captains of Toman, two once friends.

When Smiley’s face briefly comes into view, Hanma sees there are shreds of glass embedded there, and the meaning behind the mysterious projectile clicks into place. In the split second before Smiley could fire his gun, Haitani thew a crystal ashtray at Smiley’s head. His quick thinking saved Kisaki’s life.

As Mucho and Smiley grapple on the floor, strained grunts interrupted only occasionally by a howl of pain, they bite, aim for the groin, the eyes, anything to gain the advantage. With Mucho clocking in at easily twice Smiley’s weight, you’d think the fight would be over in a flash, but Smiley fights back with the fury of a decade fueling him. Gone are the old days when Smiley would trade blows with a carefree grin on his face, eyes screwed closed like he couldn’t be bothered to take his opponent seriously. This is life and death for him, and he knows it.

Hanma’s bloodlust sings out for him to join the fray, to test himself against the once fearsome Smiley, but there is no room between those flailing bodies, and despite Smiley’s best efforts, the fight does, inevitably, come to an end.

Delivering a winding knee to Smiley’s gut, Mucho leverages himself onto his knees, where he can wrap his arm, like an iron bar, around the other man’s throat. Both men turn bright red, one fighting to keep the chokehold and the other to break it. Staring down the barrel of his gun, Hanma watches as the power drains from Smiley’s eyes measure by measure, legs kicking helplessly before he goes limps. Inupi darts forward once he does, zip ties at the ready to restrain him. In a matter of minutes, it is over.

Typically, Hanma is the fastest to react when a threat looms but this time he was out maneuvered by Haitani and Mucho both, the way they both lunged for Smiley without a moment to take stock, like they knew who and what to suspect.

Hanma seethes.

“I think we found our tanuki,” Kisaki chuckles, signaling the second half of the night’s show, the part where he boasts in the face of his enemies. He doesn’t even turn his neck to look at Smiley, trussed up and submissive on his knees, instead addressing the group of them, “Of course, after the security breach, we fired or reassigned all of Kokonoi’s guards, which put several of them on the market. It’s only natural that several sought out Haitani’s security firm. Generously, Haitani questioned each before agreeing to hire them, asking whether they had allowed Smiley into the office, and one of them confirmed.”

“How’d he figure to ask? And while we’re at it, didn’t Smiley just get back into town when we discovered the hack? The malware was in place for months. And you had him exiled in Singapore,” Inupi asks, the first to reholster his gun and settle in for Kisaki’s victory lap.

“Ah yes, that’s why I never suspected him. I mean, Hanma had the flight logs for all international travel in and out of Tokyo-Narita. How could he have missed something so obvious?”

“He didn’t fly in or out in the last year. I checked,” Hanma snaps.

“Yes, but you’re forgetting a tanuki can shapeshift,” Haitani chimes in helpfully.

In retrospect, it’s fortunate Hanma didn’t take that last bump of cocaine because if he were high right now, he would probably throttle Haitani without any care for discretion, and then, it would be goodbye Mikey and any chance at a glorious death at their absentee leader’s hands. Instead, Hanma tries to remember all the bullshit you’ve drilled into him about mindfulness. As the hostile thoughts drift by his mind, he tries to “catch and release” them into the ether. Yes, he wants to see Haitani’s dye job ruined by congealed brown blood chunking in his hairline. He can acknowledge this desire, and then redirect his thoughts. Following your instructions, he empties his mind, pictures that pretty little plug glinting from between the cheeks of your spread ass, pictures slipping his tongue past the ring of your asshole, imagines cresting a wave twice his height and then plowing your ass on the sand afterwards.

He is surprised to discover it helps.

He doesn’t lunge for Haitani. He breathes.

“Yes, our shapeshifting tanuki,” Kisaki continues in the meantime, nodding approvingly at Haitani. “You see, Haitani learned we were looking into the flight logs and decided to do his own digging. What he found painted a clear picture. According to the logs on January third, Kawata Souya flew out of Tokyo to Singapore. He stayed for only three days before flying to Copenhagen, where he stayed for less than twelve hours before flying back to Tokyo. There, he remained forty-eight hours before flying back to Singapore. This time, he stayed less than eight hours before flying back to Tokyo. Now, what does all this spontaneous travel tell you?”

Kokonoi groans, “Fuck, they swapped places. Angry flew to Singapore, then gave his passport to Smiley. From there, he went to Copenhagen to put some distance between the flight paths so it would be less obvious. The newer guards who didn’t know Smiley was exiled probably waved him right into my office, and then he flew back to Singapore to trade places with Angry once again.”

“My mistake as the farmer was to let the rodent live long enough to become a problem,” Kisaki admits generously.

Throughout all of this, Smiley hangs limp in Mucho’s meaty arms. One wraps around Smiley’s neck, restricting his breathing, and the other pins his ziptied arms to his sides. There is disgust in Smiley’s eyes as they discuss him, but they spark to an incandescent rage when they mention his brother. They are not the eyes of a defeated man.

“So what happens now?” Smiley croaks, voice a scratch from what is surely a bruised voice box.

Kisaki bothers to turn and acknowledge Smiley for the first time. “You must know we kill you now.”

“What you’re gonna blow my brains out in the penthouse of the Ritz? Gonna drag my body through the elevator down four dozen floors? And then out through the front door for the whole world to see? Not even you have the clout to pull that off. And I’m not gonna make it easy for you to drag me out of here to my execution. I’ll fight you every step, scream and shout so loud the police will be down on your heads. Not just your heads either. The HKJ’s too. How do you think that’ll go over?” Smiley sneers, that can’t-be-bothered grin that always masked his emotions returning in a blast from the past that for one moment throws Hanma back a decade to what he always considers the best years of his life.

Smiley timed this well, Hanma admits. Given enough space, he might chop Smiley’s body into a dozen pieces and cart them out one-by-one, but disposing of a body that way is too messy. For the first time, Kisaki’s aura of well-earned triumph dims as Smiley backs them into a corner.

A tanuki is too flattering a comparison. Smiley better resembles a scheming, smiling rat.

“If I may interrupt, Kisaki-san. I have a solution,” Ran pipes up, solicitous, falsely humble.

“I’m all ears.”

“I hope you can forgive me, but I took it upon myself to prepare for the worst-case scenario before today. Right now, my brother is waiting in one of our safehouses with a few of our most trusted men and Kawata Souya. He picked him up earlier this evening.”

Hanma has seen men confront their worst fears too many times to count. Many buckle, going semi-comatose under the weight of it. Others bargain, plead, pray to gods that never cared at all. His favorites fight with everything they have, like they might bend the heavens to their will. Smiley, of course, lands in the latter category.

He howls and jabs both of his elbows into Mucho’s gut, straining forward like he might reach his brother. To keep him in place, Mucho picks him clean off the floor with an arm around his neck, cutting oxygen off until he realizes the futility of it all. It takes minutes for Smiley to accept the situation, and even then, his eyes roll like a feral animal biding its time before escaping its cage.

Kisaki beams. “Excellent thinking, Haitani.”

“I know what a man would do for his younger brother,” Haitani demurs. Watching him play the sycophant turns Hanma’s stomach, but Kisaki eats the performance up with relish.

“Well, either way, it was good thinking,” Kisaki says approvingly, and then to Smiley, “Returning to your earlier question, what happens now is you walk out of here of your own volition, and you don’t so much as signal with your fucking eyes that you’re in trouble or your baby brother dies. Slowly.”

“You’re going to kill him either way,” Smiley whispers.

Head hung low, all Hanma can see of Smiley is the mess of saffron curls. The tiniest sliver of pale white scalp peaks through. Had he remained quiet and reintegrated into Toman, or parted ways entirely, Smiley’s life would likely have still ended on the wrong side of a smoking gun. Kisaki had proven methodical in eliminating all the original leaders of Toman, but somehow the Kawata brothers had survived this long. Maybe if Smiley grinned and bore the death and imprisonment of all his friends, the same way he could smile through so much, he and his brother would have made it to thirty. Who knows?

“Your brother will survive the night and walk away from this. You have my word,” Haitani says. It is a pardon he has no authority to grant yet the quiet sincerity in his tone compels them all to keep their silence. Even Kisaki does not object.

The odds of either brother surviving the night are abysmal. And yet, the shadow of Haitani’s fraternal mercy is Smiley’s best and only hope, so he nods his acquiescence.

Hakkai, Mucho, and Inui all escort Smiley to the elevators. They take no chances at his escape. He will be tortured for information, broken until he relinquishes his accomplices and all the intel he stole from Toman, and then, finally, buried under wet concrete.

The last man standing from Toman’s old order is condemned to death. It is the end of an era.

Thirty-six hours later, the deal is done.

A breeze cools the nape of his neck where a day’s worth of sweat has collected as Hanma steps through the revolving doors and into the world for the first time in what feels like an age.

Negotiations wrapped hours ago after endless rounds of bowing that left his lower back aching and some last-minute concessions – new negotiations around when in the supply chain possession of the drugs and, therefore liability, would pass hands, a few negotiated favors leveraging the HKJ’s contacts in the CCP– so that both sides could walk away satisfied. Long after the HKJ returned to their separate floor, Kisaki kept the leaders of Toman behind to indulge in many long-winded speeches that celebrated his own genius as well as some generously poured champagne. The festive mood infected even Hanma, and he frankly didn’t give a shit about the deal one way or another beyond his promised reward of Mikey.

Still, as much as Hanma can appreciate a delicious power play or a barbed bit of double-speak, both of which were amply supplied during the negotiations, he is ultimately a man of the physical world, meant to touch, taste, fuck. He needed to get the hell out of there.

Smiling to himself at how scandalized you look whenever he mentions mixing drugs with his medications, Hanma does a celebratory bump right there in the street. The welcome headrush brings new reserves of energy, and Hanma thinks to himself that he should swing by your apartment later to keep the good times going.

He won’t admit as much out loud, but, in truth, your mindfulness techniques were a lifesaver during negotiations. The HKJ thugs there as security were delectable. A hearty temptation, all corded muscle, cauliflower ear, and thrice-broken noses. The self-sabotaging impulse to pick a fight to test their skill would beckon, but with one eye turned mindfully inward, Hanma could recognize the impulse for what it was and turn instead to one of two delicious fantasies to distract him.

In the first, he is pinned down by the weight of Mikey’s slight body, accepting punch after brutal punch to the face, the copper tang of blood hot on his tongue. In the second, your fingers curl in the sheets of your bed – the very bed you’ve guarded from him out of some bourgeois loyalty to your boyfriend – as you throw it back on his dick, doing all the work, so he can watch the jiggle of your ass each time you slam yourself balls deep. Whichever fantasy he chose, the effect was always the same: hard cock, deep breaths, and the stress of boredom dripping harmlessly from his distracted brain.

You deserve a special reward as thanks…

As he waits on the otherwise empty street for one of Toman’s lackeys to swing his Bentley around from where it’s been parked in a garage downtown, Hanma hears footsteps, the tap of Italian loafers behind him and knows it’s Haitani before he even turns.

“Tonight went well. Some congratulations are in order,” Haitani says.

Hanma grunts, briefly wonders if he can antagonize Haitani into squaring up, and then, discards the idea. No matter how much he pokes and prods, Haitani won’t play with him. A shame as Haitani would make a solid opponent excepting his character. The fundamental difference between the two men has always been that where Hanma craves the violence, Haitani wields it as a tool in the pursuit of what he really longs for, the trappings of their lifestyle: the money, the prestige, the power. Haitani will never consent to a fight without running through a league of calculations, and even then, he’s more likely to backstab Hanma at the last second.

“I was impressed by your team’s due diligence. I don’t think you could have brokered a better deal,” Haitani says.

“Yeah yeah, Kokonoi’s a genius or whatever,” Hanma agrees tonelessly.

“Kisaki-san as well.”

More of the same. Once negotiations wrapped, Haitani clung to Kisaki’s side, playing the supplicant and making sure his glass never emptied. Watching the two men bowed together, Kisaki eating up Haitani’s deference, irritated Hanma. One might expect that cleared of all wrongdoing against Toman, Hanma might forgive and forget, but truthfully, he never cared one way or another about Haitani’s treachery.

He just doesn’t like the slick fuck.

Never did.

An acrid aftertaste from the cocaine drizzles down the back of his throat, coating his words and mind in a kind of chemical haze. There is no sign of his Bentley. Whichever grunt was tasked with picking it up is in for an earful for keeping him waiting.

“I’m grateful that I learned of the HKJ deal when I did. I’ve been looking for the opportunity to do Toman a service for years. There have been favors here or there, of course, but something substantial like this is rare. Kisaki-san is so grateful for my help. In fact, Hanma, why don’t you ask me just how grateful Kisaki-san is for my help?”

The open insinuation in his voice is enough to pique Hanma’s interest, turning around to face the other man before he can think better of it. Haitani isn’t gloating any more than he does on an average day, walking around like a god among men, but Hanma knows this is yet another victory speech. He spits a gob of saliva right at his feet.

“With you-know-who out, there’s a new opening at the top, and Kisaki-san’s asked me to fill it,” Haitani purrs.

Hanma clenches his teeth.

The Haitanis’ security business will be an asset for Toman, bringing in new resources and intel on a high-status client list. Both brothers will fit into the more polished, clinical Toman that Kisaki has nurtured, one where money wins out over brotherhood. It is a natural choice, and no one will deny that Haitani earned this.

A ghost of a smile taunts Hanma, like Haitani is just waiting for him to explode, and for the first time, Hanma is sure that the enmity between them is mutual. Maybe Haitani considers Toman neither enemy nor prey, but there is malice there towards Hanma. Haitani must know and enjoy how seeing him every day, forced to play nice, will sting for Hanma like a fresh cut each time. It is with the sadistic glee of a mad scientist, playing out his twisted experiments and documenting his subjects’ reactions, that Haitani watches him now.

In this, however, the two men can be dreadfully similar. Hanma won’t grant him the satisfaction of a reaction, schools his already blank expression and waits for the next move.

“It’s a day for gratitude all around, really, which is why I wanted to thank you. I never would have known about the HKJ deal without your help. So, thank you, Hanma.”

“What are you on about?” Hanma grits out.

“Well, really, I owe it all to your girl – you know, that tight-ass doctor you’ve been hanging around – but if you hadn’t told her in the first place, she never could have clued me in. And then, where would I be? Watching from the sidelines? So, I figure I owe you a thank you as well.”

A zip of adrenaline lights up Hanma’s synapses, the effect stronger than a bump of cocaine. It feels like his very pores have been blown wide open. He smells the musk of Haitani’s cologne. The wind alights on his skin like a lash. Sensitive to the world, he notices everything. He is wide the fuck awake.

You told Haitani about the HKJ deal.

He knows this in the way you recognize a path once taken while drunk. Returning in the bright, sobering light of day, the road appears unfamiliar at first, but then as you retread those previously taken steps, your feet know to avoid the potholes and loose tiles, which turns to take and those to avoid, like unlocking a hidden piece of knowledge or a muscle memory. Hanma recognizes your betrayal for what it is immediately, perhaps always knew deep down.

Why stop at the HKJ deal? You probably told Haitani everything Hanma ever shared with you. What did he leak during cozy pillow talk, enjoying how the details of his job could impress or frighten you in equal measure?

Come to think of it…how did Haitani know he was investigating the flights out of Tokyo-Narita in the first place? Maybe three or four weeks ago, you mentioned that you’d never traveled abroad. The conversation tilted, as it so often did with the two of you, and he ended up telling you that he was monitoring international flights, making you one of only five people in the world who knew about it: that shit for brains who worked for the airport, Tanigawa, Kisaki, Hakkai, Hanma, and…you. And now that he really thinks about it, didn’t you ask quite a few questions about Haitani, pushed where you would normally let the conversation flow naturally, like you needed the answers?

Months of banter, games, and, Hanma will admit it, intimacy between you shatters as Hanma recategorizes everything you are to him, dragging you from the special position he created just for you in his brain – something of a coveted and cosseted pet and trusted advisor in turns – into the one he reserves for all of Toman’s adversaries. It is not a classification you will enjoy, not when you’ve made a fool of him and all the violence that inevitably entails.

Much louder, brimming below these thoughts, Hanma’s mind cascades through a montage of impressions, too chaotic to capture in words or phrases, something pre-language and true. These insubstantial impressions roar, pounce, spear, inflame, attack. They sabotage his every attempt to think through his next actions, to plan or reason. All is made impossible against the backdrop of his disordered inner mindscape.

Adding Haitani’s voice to the mix only makes the noise worse.

“I was surprised you’d see a shrink. Oh! But don’t worry, I’ll keep that between the two of us. I’m sure you have your reasons, and it would do you no favors if all the men found out. And, she is cute enough. I’ll admit, I started to see the appeal around the third time I met her. I won’t pretend she’s my type, but I saw a glimmer of something then. A little fear maybe behind the dead eyes? I could see you liking that sort of thing, though as your therapist, she probably shouldn’t indulge your sexual sadism,” Ran muses. “Regardless, you’ve kept her around so long though, it makes me want to find out her appeal for myself, and after putting up with you for so long, the woman certainly deserves to be shown a good time…”

A hand decked in rings on your thigh, dimpling the flesh. Wet lips mouthing along the curve of your jaw until they reach the special spot to the left of your chin, the one that makes you shake. Eyes brimming with tears while you take a cock too big for your unstretched hole.

Fleeting impressions. Imaginings. He is not the man in any of them.

Haitani is really starting to piss him off.

“You gonna sing like this if the cops ever bust you?” Hanma snaps. “Oh, Officer, let me tell you every detail of my master plan, let me give you a list of names. Or, you just scared as shit of me?”

“Can’t I want to do a favor to my new brother?”

“You’re acting like you want me to break those shiny new veneers of yours. But I don’t know what you actually want.”

As if to show those shiny new teeth off, Haitani smiles. There are no visible stars under the haze of smog, but Roppongi is well-lit even in the depths of the night, and Hanma can make out each gleaming one of them.

“See, I wouldn’t normally share my plans, but I don’t think it matters one way or another with you. You’ll just sit there with a thumb up your ass. So, cards on the table? You can expect a lot more of this. You’re the right-hand off the boss. I want your job. And, I’m gonna get it.”

In the space of a blink, Hanma unholsters his AMT Hardballer and jabs the muzzle into Haitani’s firm stomach. The other man grunts but doesn’t react further. Smart. Because Hanma is tempted to end it all here. His position as Kisaki’s righthand is cemented from a decade of partnership, not the kind of role you resign. Once you climb to the top of the mountain that is Toman, the only way down is a long fall, ending in a broken neck. If Haitani is gunning for his job, he’ll do whatever it takes to see Hanma shot through the back of the head execution style or worse, rotting away in a prison cell.

He won’t go out that way.

He won’t.

He’ll blow a hole clean through Haitani’s stomach first. Gut anyone who ever even thought about helping the bastard.

He’ll kill them all.

“We’re caught on CCTV footage, Hanma. Might want to put that away unless you want a gun charge,” Haitani warns lowly.

They’re directly outside the lobby of Midtown Tower in the center of fucking Roppongi, of course there are cameras capturing them from all angles. No one will check the footage unless he leaves a corpse to clean up.

His trigger finger twitches anyway. It would be so easy to end this all here, fuck the consequences. But then, Hanma remembers Mikey and the brilliant swan song that awaits him when he dies in a blaze of glory. If he murders Haitani here and now, Kisaki will renege on their deal, and Hanma will surely go to prison for at least twenty years. Whereas in the end, it doesn’t matter what Haitani does either way. Hanma will be dead at Mikey’s hands in only a few weeks. Once he’s in the ground, Haitani can have his fucking job.

Hanma starts to laugh, little giggles that escalate into full-blown peals of laughter that shake the gun buried in Haitani’s gut.

“You know what? Do whatever you want, motherfucker! I’m gonna burn either way! Gotta hot date with the devil coming up, ya know? Tell you what, if I somehow survive, beat the devil and live to see another day, that’ll just mean I’m immortal. So, in that case, you’re welcome to try me. Just be sure to make it interesting.”

Haitani looks more alarmed now than when Hanma first drew on him as if reconsidering for the first time that Hanma may be unstable in a way suits like Haitani can never quite figure. It only makes Hanma laugh harder.

Still laughing, Hanma reholsters his gun, thinking his one regret when he dies soon might be that he never got the chance to make Haitani eat a curb.

Knowing that Haitani must have paid off his driver to not show, Hanma turns to walk home on foot. He takes off, right down the middle of the street at a stroll, whistling a happy tune as he goes, knowing Haitani will watch his every step with that same half-frightened look that asks if he has horribly overestimated Hanma’s grip on sanity and whether that will pose a problem down the line. A stranger walking past Hanma then would see nothing but a happy-go-lucky guy, making the most of the what the city has to offer on a late night.

Inside, the tempest of impressions continues, whipping up to a frothing storm of violence and fury. He is going to die at Mikey’s hand, but before that happens, he has some business to take care of.

He walks in the direction of your neighborhood.

A/N: 100 bonus points to whoever can figure out the major clue from chapter 7 that in retrospect hints at Smiley and Angry maybe having switched places.

also, writing this, i kept humming that 'oh no' tiktok sound and 'let the bodies hit the floor.' they seem appropriate...

#hanma shuji #hanma x reader #tokyo rev smut #tokyo revengers smut #hanma smut #tokyo revengers x reader smut #tokyo revengers x reader

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