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embossross · 2 years

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From His Mind to Yours

Chapter 4 >> Chapter 5 >> masterlist

✣ Pairing: Hanma x AFAB fem!Reader

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

✣ Chapter CW: Hanma is serving unhinged this chapter be warned; Murder; Russian Roulette; PTV sex; Slapping, biting and overall violent sexual dynamic (reader to Hanma and it is situationally very appropriate) (I didn’t intend to make Hanma Switchy, but he is now very Switchy); Bad Therapeutic practice (both unethical and inaccurate); prescription of mood stabilizers; gambling; unsafe 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: ~9k

A man lies dead on the floor. He did not die peacefully.

The autopsy will probably credit blunt force trauma to the head, but it might have been a heart attack. The human heart can only withstand so much stress.

The room is dark, curtains drawn tight to block out the sun and prying eyes. There are signs of a struggle: defensive wounds on the deceased, furniture upturned, curtains ripped, TV broken on the ground. A stampede of destruction. A staging.

When the news breaks the story, they’ll float the theory of a burglary. The deceased, Tanigawa Ichigo, was a conscientious citizen with no connections to shady business. A likeable guy in the building, always sorted his recyclables, no different than you or me, except for a couple unwise habits. Neighbors will remember that they cautioned him to bolt his door as crime had been on the rise in the neighborhood; friends will lament that he was always too loud about his future inheritance, that any burglar would be tempted. The news writes itself.

Hanma flicks his cigarette. A trickle of ash rains down. It lands on the upper life of one Tanigawa Iwao, not-so-loving brother of the dearly departed.

The man’s nose twitches, face screwed up in concentration and restraint, but it’s no use. He sneezes away the ash. A little glob of snot lands on Hanma’s shoe. The same shoe that presses into the living Tanigawa’s chest.

They stand and lie respectively in the living room of the deceased’s two-bedroom apartment. Apart from the staged chaos, the room is homey with well-worn magazines on the table, a fraying couch, and mugs of half-drank coffee on the countertops. The living room opens into a small kitchen, where dishes from the night’s dinner sit stacked and unwashed in the sink. If the curtains weren’t closed, the windows would open out to a view of a quiet suburb, the kind with trees planted by the sidewalk and more bicycle traffic than cars.

“Try not to throw your DNA around, Tanigawa. This is a crime scene,” Hanma sighs.

Distantly, Hanma pities Tanigawa Ichigo. As Hanma slammed the man’s head into the wall over and over until the crack of bone and spill of detritus, Ichigo never once considered that his fate was not the result of mere bad fortune, a robbery gone wrong, but rather a deliberate murder. He never fathomed that his younger brother might put a hit out on him. That Toman might come to collect.

Tanigawa Iwao also never once considered that he would be brought to the crime scene to witness the hulking corpse that was once his brother, but Hanma does not feel bad for him. No, watching Tanigawa shiver and cry at the outcome of his own greed is rather funny.

Babbling out a few useless apologies, Tanigawa wipes Hanma’s shoe with his sleeves. Hanma grounds down harder with his foot. It kneads into the space between ribs. He is half-compelled to test Tanigawa’s self-control, dig until the pain trumps fear and the fool can’t resist begging for mercy. Not necessary at this point. He already has Tanigawa’s submission. A bit of fun.

Fun…Hanma remembers it fondly. For the past week, he has lived like a monk, peaceful, obedient, bored. Between you and Kisaki, he is a puppet merrily dancing along to whatever tune his masters demand sung. How much longer until he cuts the strings and becomes a real boy?

He can’t afford to piss off Kisaki, not when the prospect of Mikey is dangled before him. But you are afforded no such protections. This week, he pushed your session back to Saturday since all his focus was needed for his current assignments, but as the day draws near, his body thrums with excitement.

“What do you want?” Tanigawa weeps at Hanma’s feet, the same question he’s been panting for the last half hour.

Hanma squeezes the man’s shoulder reassuringly, and says, “No need for tears! You’re going to get everything you ever wanted. It’s only fair that you give us a little something in return.”

“Anything,” Tanigawa says.

A less intelligent man might interject that he already paid Toman handsomely for their services, but Tanigawa is a sly one. He sees the trap, how he sits in Hanma’s silken pockets. He is probably replaying in his mind the condemning footage Hanma showed him earlier. Footage that showed how involved Tanigawa was in his brother’s murder. Tanigawa is a bad brother but a good son. He can’t break his father’s heart.

“You have access to flight logs in and out of Tokyo-Narita. You’re going to look up a few names for me and share any flights they’ve taken in the last year,” Hanma says. “Not too bad, eh?”

“That’s not going to be…”

“Easy? Well, neither’s getting away with murder, but we do it all the time,” Hanma says.

Here then is the reason why Hanma is slumming it, doling out a hit on a nobody. Tanigawa is a senior IT executive at Tokyo-Narita. A useful pawn if deployed right.

Currently, Tanigawa is useless, breathing heavily and eyes rapidly shifting back and forth. He has been cresting the edge of an anxiety attack for half an hour now, and Hanma is fascinated. He wonders what will finally push the man over. Not that Hanma enjoys when his associates (read: victims) descend into a messy anxiety attack. Impossible to get anything out of them. But, it certainly is interesting.

Hanma’s never personally experienced an anxiety attack.

Loud beeping sounds from the burner in his pocket. Hanma answers when he sees it’s Hakkai calling.

“It’s loud in here. Might be hard to hear you,” Hakkai shouts over a throbbing roar of noise. “How’d things go on your end?”

Hanma tells him about Tanigawa. “I just gave him the list. Anyone who’s so much as breathed air in the same room as the Haitanis, hell anyone who’s heard of the Haitanis. We’ll know where they’ve been flying.”

“Assuming they flew out of Tokyo-Narita.”

“Assuming they didn’t take a fucking boat,” Hanma concedes.

Tanigawa peers up at Hanma with big, beseeching eyes, like he might parse some useful clues from this conversation. Irritated, Hanma kicks him in the ribs – a love tap though you wouldn’t know it by the way the idiot moans – and moves to the bathroom.

The mirror reflects the struggle of the last hour. His suit jacket is crumpled, a few scratches on his wrists from where Tanigawa-the-dead fought back, a bloody lip, and hair tangled in clumps. Tanigawa was a big guy and managed to head butt him before Hanma regained the upper hand. Hanma wets his gloved fingers and runs them through his hair, carefully styling the errant curls back into place. The building’s security cameras are all disabled, and he’s already wiped the scene of DNA evidence, but there’s no need to alarm the neighbors when he leaves.

“I found one of their accounts,” Hakkai tells him. “Only got a couple hundred million yen in there though, so definitely not all of it. Koko’s digging into where they could be laundering money. They have so many rich-boy contacts though, it might take a while.”

“I still say we grab the little one,” Hanma sighs. So much roundabout espionage when the simplest solution lay before them.

“Not even you could get them to talk,” Hakkai says, which is among the rudest comments ever directed his way. Hanma sees himself bristle in the bathroom mirror. “Honestly, we should have just brought them into Toman in the early days. Wouldn’t need all this running around now.”

“Kisaki doesn’t like them,” Hanma says.

A decade out from their delinquent days, the Haitanis remain a wildcard in Roppongi. Mikey almost extended an offer for them to join as executives, bringing their vast network of intel and experience into the fold, but Kisaki cautioned against it. To Mikey, he warned that the Haitanis would never bend the knee, would plot against him; to Hanma, he admitted that the Haitanis would accept Mikey as their king but would battle him for second place.

Forced out of the fold, the Haitanis can’t be classified as yakuza. They work freelance for the city’s elite with a small gang of hired help beneath them. Mostly bodyguard work for corporate bigwigs, silencing political dissidents, making problems disappear for spoiled trust fund brats. The older one, Ran, is stylish, charming, the kind of man who puts suits at ease and gets the job done. They accrued a small fortune sucking up to the already powerful.

Partnering with the HJK would be an out of character play on their part as it would risk the little empire they curated. Neither Haitani is that stupid…

…But it might be their only chance to come out on top of the criminal underworld once again, and Hanma doesn’t doubt they are tempted.

“Well, anyway, none of this would matter if that pisspot Sendo could keep his eyes on the pretty fuckers like he’s meant to,” Hakkai gripes.

“They’re good. Hard to tail,” Hanma says.

He doesn’t add that Sendo is torn between two jobs at the moment, answering to two masters. Earlier that day, Sendo called to let him know that he is failing just as miserably at bugging your apartment. Restricted by Hanma’s order not to break the door down, Sendo hasn’t been able to force his way in. And neither you nor your boyfriend are incautious enough to open the door to a stranger.

Frustrating, the not knowing how you spend your time when he isn’t there. At least Hanma expects a debrief about your boyfriend any day now. You act like you chose your boyfriend on a whim, as if you won him at a carnival and thought you might as well take him home. But still, there might be clues to unravelling you somewhere in his background.

Unravelling you would be fun. At night, Hanma sometimes falls asleep, imagining you are like a tangled clump of necklaces, the various strands tangling and overlapping. He imagines plucking each one, testing the tangle, pushing this way and that to see if there’s any give. Find the right strand, move it in the right direction, and the whole messy thing will unwind in his fingers.

Exiting the bathroom, Hanma spots Tanigawa bent over his brother’s corpse with a look of twisted interest. One hand hovers over the pulp of the softened skull.

Hanma rolls his eyes and covers the phone for a moment. “What did I tell you about throwing your DNA around?”

Tanigawa scrambles back and starts blathering promises to run the list through the airport database first thing in the morning. Hanma waves his hand dismissively, already halfway out the door. No neighbors spot him, which is convenient. He shoots a text to some of his men to revert the building cameras once Tanigawa leaves and exits out into the dry heat.

The sun beats down cruelly, unseasonably warm for a July day. The streets are empty. Everyone with a cool office or apartment has retreated inside to escape its rays. Hanma likes the heat, likes the hot soreness on the back of his neck as his skin begins to burn, likes staining his crisp suits with streaks of sweat for someone else to wash.

“Do you have plans on Saturday?” Hakkai asks.

Hanma swings one leg over his motorbike – parked several blocks away from the crime scene – revs the engine. “Why?”

A passing grandmother stares at the incongruous image he makes with his suit and motorcycle. He smiles blandly.

“I wanna try a new restaurant in Chiba. I’ll treat,” Hakkai says.

Frowning, Hanma says, “I’m busy.”

“Oh, okay, cool. Some other time then.”

Technically, Hanma isn’t lying. You and he have a date on Saturday. And it’s long overdue. The bike takes off, leaving the scene of the crime long behind him.

- - -

The sky is a serene blue, almost spotless. Despite the lack of shade, the humidity is manageable, and the sun is low. People flock to the streets to experience a perfect summer day. Maybe that’s why you texted him to move your appointment.

Rather than meet at your stuffy office, you told him to meet you in Fuchū, at the Tokyo Racecourse. It is the offseason, so no major races today, just low-grade horses and the low-grade losers who will bet on anything.

Normally, when he comes to the track, Hanma goes to one of Toman’s reserved boxes. Kisaki loves horses, loves the process of building one into a winner, and has had moderate success. One horse even placed in the Tenno Sho a few years back. The boxes are air conditioned with staff to serve food and party favors or take bets as needed.

You were not waiting in a private box. Hanma found you halfway up the main grandstand, precisely in the center. A spot that affords you the illusion of privacy as the closest patrons sit several rows away.

Directly below the viewstand, is the track. There is a grass course that stretches in an oblong for a mile and a quarter. Then, the slightly shorter dirt track for other races. You can see the finish line and the winner’s circle from your seats. The video screen – the largest not just in Tokyo but in the world – projects a horse stamping calmly toward the starting gates where a host of retainers wait to prep it.

For the last fifteen minutes, you both have been sharing impressions and opinions about Crime and Punishment. Hanma will not admit that the story is fresh in his mind, only finished last night in a feverish sprint to get his homework done before seeing you again. Better you think him a swot than too stupid to read a fucking book.

“Did you relate at all to the reason Raskolnikov killed the pawnbroker?” you ask him.

“Do I relate? I stayed in that sad-sack’s brain for hundreds of pages, and I don’t even know why he did it.”

“Does murder always have a logical motive?”

“Suppose you’re saying it’s for emotional reasons. You really are a shrink.”

Not that you look it today. You dressed for the track in all white, loose-fitting clothes, linen pants and cotton shirt. Something a tourist might wear to the beach. It is the most casual he has ever seen you.

With his eyes, he traces the lines of fabric, how they skate over and obscure your curves. He thinks it might be intentional, a pretense put on that you don’t even have a body. Nothing there for him to lust after. Your mistake as Hanma has a vivid imagination.

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer. Some people focus on Raskolnikov’s alienation from society, how miserable the city and his circumstances are. Some people focus on the psychological, on his belief in himself as special. Both are true to me, nature and nurture and all that,” you say.

The hollow at the base of your throat throbs and deepens as you speak. He might thrust his tongue into the little hole it creates, drink the sweat from the chalice of your skin, drift lower until he mouths fabric. Your outfit leaves no openings: shirt tucked into pants, sleeves tight at the wrist, neckline flat. No way to reach your skin without undressing you entirely, without tearing something open with his teeth.

Cold biting anger creeps into his stomach as his imagination encounters this obstacle. So much time and energy spent to deny himself when he should be using those resources to fulfill his desires. Anger at your continued paltry defenses against him.

“Fine then,” he bites out. “Did I relate to the reason? On the surface, sure. Stealing when you need money is as natural as eating when you’re hungry. To be fair, I wouldn’t need to murder some little old lady to get her money – people underestimate how much this is a skilled profession – but also, sure, if I had to kill her, why not? But all that garbage he spouted about Napoleon, about being above the law because you’re such a special boy who’s going to change the world? Bullshit.”

“You never justify your actions on the basis that you’re special?”

“I never bother to justify my actions at all! Why should I?” Hanma retorts. “The worst are those guys that run around talking about the strong versus the weak all the time. You see them a lot. They’re constantly talking about survival of the fittest. They might as well wear a sign: ‘I’m insecure. Please tell me how big and strong I am.’ It’s not about the strong versus the weak. The weakest motherfucker can get the jump on you. It’s just about…about want. Do what you want, what you choose. So long as you’re prepared to live with the consequences – and I mean real consequences, not those phantoms of guilt you see in the book – then the only human thing to do is act.”

You nod, piercing eyes digging into his own. They give so little away while demanding so much from him in return.

His cock twitches. Hanma can’t decide if your eyes will hold that same power when you are on your knees for him.

“Do you believe you’re special at all? Better than other people?” you ask.

“I guess I’m different, and I don’t like other people all that much. But I don’t walk around thinking how great I am all the time either. It doesn’t matter to me if other people think highly or lowly of me. I never wanted to be number one in Toman or Valhalla or school or anything else. I don’t need respect. Don’t believe I’m going to change the world. I don’t have many opinions about myself in general,” Hanma says.

“That’s surprising,” you frown. “It’s fairly uncommon for people diagnosed with ASPD to not also exhibit traits of narcissism.”

“It’s still narcissistic, isn’t it? I don’t care what others think of me. I don’t compare myself to them. Do you think God thinks highly of Himself? Because I doubt He bothers to think about Himself at all.”

“You think you’re like a god?”

An eastward breeze blows through the stands and ruffles your hair. The strands hover above your neck for only a moment before settling, but they don’t return to their previously pristine positions. There is disgust beneath your façade.

“You’re not listening, Doc. I don’t think much of myself in general,” Hanma chastises. “But I wonder if you can say the same. All that work you put into getting your fancy degree, into becoming independent, someone worthy of respect. I bet you think pretty highly of yourself.”

The way you dress, hold your shoulders at right angles, smile pleasantly with hands folded, these are all choices. You are a construction made up of an amalgamation of choices designed to project the right message, to bolster your status, to protect yourself from demons. Nothing is left to chance, to some inherent instinct at the core that is you. How could you not think highly of yourself when you had so purposefully chosen to be this thing you call yourself?

You shake your head vehemently, a strong reaction by your standards. “Not at all. You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t think I’m anything special. I’m boring, uninspiring even.”

“Oh, come on, sweetheart. You know you’re smarter than just about everyone here,” Hanma says, gesturing around to indicate the other patrons.

“What does that have to do with anything?” you say shortly. “I’m smarter than some people. Others are smarter than me.” And now it’s your turn to gesture around, first pointing to where a jockey is walking the track. “The jockeys are more athletic than me, better with animals. You’re stronger than me, better at…whatever it is you do. And, all these people, I bet most of them go home to loved ones at night, that they touch the lives of the people around them. They’ve known love all their lives and take it as a matter of course. But me? I’m a ghost. People see me, but I can never quite touch them. What’s so special about that?”

Boisterous laughter rises above the dull crest of chatter. Hanma identifies it as coming from a group of young men, university-aged but dressed like day laborers, probably coming together on a day off. They are seated not too far from you both, though he only takes real notice of them now.

Glancing around, Hanma eyes the other patrons that he didn’t bother to observe before. On a weekday, most of the track’s clientele are lone gamblers, addicts who chase after escape. On a Saturday, however, there is more companionship, more reminders that human beings are in fact social animals.

There is a father who’s brought his kids – probably a weekday addict with weekend visitation – bribing them with jelly candies to sit quietly through the race. There is a man dressed for a date, earnestly explaining how the betting cards work to a woman dressed for the office. There is a group of old men that take up an entire row, familiar with each other in a way that suggests decades of shared friendship, surviving marriage, divorce, children, hospitalization, and all the other vagaries of life. No matter how he tries, Hanma cannot picture you joining any one of these groups anymore than he can picture himself.

In short, you and Hanma are surrounded by lives that intertwine and touch each other, while your own lives stretch on in unmeeting parallel.

“I know what you mean,” Hanma says, and he intends it kindly. Neither of you feel quite of this bustling, happy world. It makes Hanma forget he half despises you. “You know, Hakkai asked me to get dinner with him recently.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, he does that sometimes. It’s not work related. Sometimes he just asks me to…hang out, I guess.”

“He enjoys your company. I remember how he spoke about you in our interviews,” you say.

“Yeah, but…I don’t know…it’s weird,” Hanma says finally.

“Why?”

As a child, Hanma spent most days in the company of kids his age, but only because the games and entertainment available to children so often required a group. With every passing year, he grew more independent, more reclusive. He liked having people around for fights, then for fucking, or to serve as an audience, the reasons were endless; but there was no need to form bonds with people to achieve those things. Today, if Hanma wants an audience or entertainment, he merely walks into a new bar and the audience casts itself with whoever’s there. The players are interchangeable.

Except.

“Hakkai’s not the first person to want to hang out with me just because, but he’s the first person that…I suppose I could almost…maybe see myself saying yes,” Hanma admits.

Something slimy slips through his guts. Immediate revulsion. Here he is making a confession of unearthed truths, and he didn’t even barter something of equal value from you in exchange. When did he relax around you enough to misstep so needlessly?

“Try it,” you recommend. The cool tone of your voice only exacerbates his growing fury. “Something new is worth exploring, right? At the very least it will be novel. Treat it like an experiment and take him up on the offer.”

Hanma crosses his arms because if he doesn’t, he is going to touch you. Whether that touch will make you cry with pain or pleasure he doesn’t know. No mistakes. He promised Kisaki.

“He only wants to get dinner or drinks or see a movie. I’ve done all that before, Doc.”

“But you’ve never done it with him.”

“So?”

“Doing something for the first time with a new person can change it completely,” you say.

“Ya know, Doc, this sounds an awful lot like more homework,” Hanma says, sly.

A slight dampening of his palms in excitement. Such restraint he showed in waiting to bridge this topic, in letting you relax into your false security as authority and professional. How kindly he allowed you to pretend you aren’t a dripping little slut beneath it all. You don’t show half so much restraint with him as you carelessly prod his buttons, and it’s time he tears yours off completely.

“Tell me,” Hanma purrs. “Were you a good girl this week? Did you do your homework and pet that pretty pussy for me?”

Your eyelashes graze the soft curve of your cheek as your eyes flutter closed. More defensive posturing, now your eyes can’t give you away.

Two points swell against the fabric of your shirt, nipples hard enough to show through your bra. They draw Hanma’s eyes like savory targets, sweet little gum drops for him to chew and suck.

It’s time for you to pony up.

“That’s now how this works between us, and you know it,” you say.

The loudspeakers blare as the start of the race grows near. Hanma didn’t think to place a bet before, and now he regrets it. The way things ‘work between you.’ It’s boring how you insist on repeating yourself, insist on making him repeat himself.

He opens his mouth to snarl at you, almost certain it will be a sincere threat for once, but you speak before he can.

“We’ll bet on it, same as we always do. You win, and I’ll tell you in detail. If I win, you agree to try a mood stabilizer for the next three months. It should soften the swing you experience between depression and mania. This isn’t an official diagnosis per se, but you meet the criteria for bipolar disorder, and I want to see how Lithium impacts your daily experience,” you say.

“Trying to turn me into a vegetable, Doc?”

“No, we’ll monitor closely for side effects. Acute fogginess or mood swings, and we’ll lower the dosage or remove you entirely. You’ll need regular lab work as well. None of which I’ll conduct. I don’t want to diminish you, Hanma. But I do want to give you the tools to lead a better life. I’ve done the research and patients with a diagnosis of ASPD and bipolar depression often benefit from mood stabilizers. I think this could really help you stave off the worst of the boredom and help you manage your impulsivity when you can’t.”

As Hanma considers your suggestion, he stares out at the track. The horses are corralled at the starting gate, blinders around their eyes to soothe their anxiety. Skittish creatures horses, starting at the smallest disruption and requiring protection from the caprices of the world.

He will not be the blind horse. He will not dull his senses and hide from his own interiority because the reality is too frightening, too stimulating.

Though, doesn’t he do just that by his own volition already? Every time he takes a bump or drowns himself in liquor or pussy, isn’t he doing his best to escape a world that doesn’t hold anything for him? If he were to view it as just another pill…

You are an object of fixation for Hanma, not meant to be a person worthy of real judgment or feeling. He shouldn’t care enough to hate you, but in that moment he does.

He despises you. Despises the way you analyze and ascribe meaning to everything he does. Despises the way you confront his passive existence and reveal it as something cold and wanting. Despises that you pretend that there is an alternative out there for him to feeling this way.

“I win and you answer in detail,” Hanma says, each word slow and deliberate. “And you give me your underwear.”

The fingers on your left-hand flex, a little tell, but then they unwind. “That seems fair given how big my prize is if I win.”

After all this time, you still keep him on his toes. He can never predict when you’re going to fight him and when you’re going to submit so perfectly. Your lingerie has also kept him guessing. Not obsessively. But vaguely, between other thoughts, he would wonder what you preferred under your work uniform. Were you the utilitarian, comfortable type? Did you prefer soft silky fabrics or revel in the naughty secret of lace, the thought of which taunted your patients and kept them up at night?

Somehow, he has become no better than the sex pests that frequent your office, clamoring for just a peak at your panties.

He really fucking despises you.

- - -

The stands are quiet now, chatter dying out as the time for the starting bell approaches. Hope is so often silent. It’s dread that deafens you with the noise, so it’s no wonder that your ears are ringing.

The bet is simple. You divide all the horses in the race between you. Whoever chooses the winner onto their roster wins.

Hanma accepts your terms without an argument, though you fear you spot a hint of malice in his eyes. A glint of gold that menaces you.

Prior to this week, you knew nothing about horse racing, but you prepared for this session, reviewing the history of every horse in the race and reading blogs to determine your best angle to victory. Hanma shows less circumspection in his draft, choosing mostly based on name. You almost chuckle when he picks a horse with terrible odds named Smooth Criminal. Typical.

From the stands, the horses appear tiny. The jumbo screen somehow equally fails to capture the size of the beasts and how they tower over the diminutive men that ride them. You saw a horse up close only once on a middle school field trip to a farm, and you remember your dreams of sweet ponies crashing down around you at their sheer scope.

Unlike the sturdy, passive farm horses you once saw, the racehorses are agitated. Preening primadonnas that stomp their hooves and crane their necks toward the crowd, as if they know all eyes are on them in the breathless moments before the race begins.

You fold your hands before your chin. It doesn’t matter now if Hanma can see your nerves. Of course, you’re nervous. You spent the better part of a week debating the best strategy to convince him to try lithium after spending the better part of two weeks consulting with experts about its likely efficacy for Hanma’s case. Your entire treatment strategy rides on the results of this bet.

Not to mention, you are pretty attached to your panties.

The moment before the race begins meanders, as if your nerves have frozen time, as if the few seconds have somehow gotten lost, but then they are off.

It amazes you how much anticipation is built for such a short race. The first furlong is finished in twelve seconds. Two horses draw slightly ahead of the pack. Both – Mezuki and Hiro’s Hero – belong to your team. Smooth Criminal trails not far behind in third place. The gap between the rest of the pack is small but substantial.

The horses thunder around the first turn, tilting precariously. It looks like the jockeys might slide off and be trampled underfoot.

You glance at Hanma. Repeatedly, he fiddles with his glasses, like he might zoom in for an even closer look at the action. His eyes are gleaming. Like, when he raced his car through town two weeks ago, though you could barely bear to open your eyes to look at him then. It is the same manic glee, life returned to a man who walks through the world like a zombie. The only other time you can remember him looking half so alive is when…

Muzzles bent low, the horses focus singularly on the track as it speeds by. Beneath their hooves, it looks like a treadmill cranked up to the highest level, like no animal should be able to move that quickly without the ground assisting underfoot.

Around the fourth furlong, Mezuki loses steam, slowing so that four horses can careen past him. Places three through eight swap constantly as the jockeys lay into their horses’ sides, and they release their last reserves of energy, but Hiro’s Hero remains stubbornly in first place with Smooth Criminal trailing him.

The horses round the last corner, drawing clearly into the crowd’s line of sight. Everyone forgets the jumbo screen with its artificial pixels to focus on the real thing happening before them.

So close to the finish line, and now Smooth Criminal gains a second wind. He gallops tight to the rails, reduces the gap with each bound. The jockey bounces wildly on the horse’s back as he all but flies forward. A hair’s breadth from overtaking Hiro’s Hero.

The excitement from earlier twists into anxiety. You are going to lose after all your thought and research. And then, you are going to burn from the inside out as you tell Hanma in detail just how often you dipped your fingers into your pussy this week, just how impossibly he haunted your fantasies, how tremendously the first orgasm shattered you and your tremulous grasp on ethics. All while you squirm in discomfort, your panties in his pocket.

You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.

Wildly, your hand seizes Hanma’s. Anything to anchor yourself. Cold rings bite into your fingers, and you retaliate by digging your neatly trimmed nails into his flesh. You both sit so close to victory or loss. He squeezes your hand.

And then…

The race is over. Hiro’s Hero crosses the finish line 0.7 seconds before Smooth Criminal comes in second place.

After that, all the other horses thunder past in a matter of seconds. The stadium is loud as people celebrate or bemoan their bad fortune. There will be another race in fifteen minutes, and all the hubbub will repeat itself, but for now, the event is over.

You breathe heavy. Your heart palpitates, not having gotten the message that you won. The deed is done, and you are victorious. Laughter sticks in your throat, no deeper, stuck in your soul. You pat the back of your neck and collarbones with a handkerchief. The residue of sweat isn’t removed so easily.

Only then do you realize you are still gripping Hanma’s hand and release him.

He is aglow with the same exhilaration. Despite his loss, his mouth is cut into a crooked line that you believe is his true smile, not the shark-like one with all teeth that he uses to intimidate.

This is why you chose to take Hanma to the track. While you admit that you are spiraling now, drawn into Hanma’s web and making terrible choices, there is professional justification for this at least. You determined that he needs to develop a roster of high adrenaline and high reward activities. Then, you can work on replacing his impulses, so that when he’s in the depths of depression, he chooses to bet on the horses rather than take it out on his fellow man. You should also work on lessening the intensity of his mania, not just its outlet.

But you must admit that in the depths of his mania you find Hanma the most beautiful.

The two of you stay for another hour. Hanma helps you place more bets – this time for money – on a number of horses, and you win a few thousand yen, enough for tomorrow’s lunch. Between races, you discuss the dosage, impact, and potential negative side-effects of lithium. Hanma listens to you carefully and without resistance; he lost after all. He is not pleased when you inform him that he will need to reduce and ideally cut out drinking and drugs altogether but does not argue.

While you discuss his treatment, he almost feels like a typical patient, albeit one you’ve met at a horse track. You start to relax into the role within which you spend almost all your time. You feel confident.

The day is still young when you exit the racecourse. Flimsy white clouds layer on top of one another like brushstrokes to block out the sun and paint the day in muted blue tones.

There is no reason not to take the subway home. In fact, it would likely be faster. Still, when Hanma offers you a ride, you accept gratefully. You wish to share a few more ideas about his treatment.

The Bentley from your hellish drag race is gone, and you are reminded at its absence that you vowed that day to never get in a car with this man again. Today, however, he is not planning to get behind the wheel. A sleek black town car pulls up to curb, complete with a driver.

You have never been in a car like this one. The back is partitioned for privacy and there are two rows of seats facing each other, almost like the car is a shrunken limo. You nestle contentedly onto one side as Hanma stretches out on the other. The space is cramped, and your knees knock together.

“I know you’re going to make fun of me for giving you more homework, but I would like you to do one more thing. This one’s critically important, actually. Start documenting how you feel on a scale of one to ten. I have a phone app you can use. If you could log it three times a day at least, but ideally, whenever you feel your mood shifting. Whenever you fall below a four, add a few notes about what is running through your mind. We want to start identifying what your thought patterns look like so that we can replace them with something more productive.”

You show him the app on your phone, and he obediently downloads and creates an account. He even agrees to friend you, so that you can check his log in real time.

“Sometimes people struggle with the number scale because they question their instincts about what number they should choose. So, why don’t we do a test round? Hanma-san, what number would you give yourself right now in terms of mood with ten being the best and one the worst?”

Hanma doesn’t take more than a second to answer. “A two.”

A little puff of air escapes you like a burst balloon. You were having fun, you realize. You were having fun and therefore assumed Hanma was as well.

“Only a two?”

“Of course, I’m in a foul mood,” Hanma confirms. His arms stretch out across the seat, taking up his entire side of the car like some enormous bird of prey. “You’re a fucking tease, aren’t you? Getting my hopes up and then crushing them. Didn’t even give me a sniff of your panties to give me a reason to live. Fucking soulless of you.”

Sometimes, when Hanma flirts with you, your insides squirm and dance with pleasure at the attention. Your pancreas becomes the giggling schoolgirl you never were in your youth, your liver a blushing bride, your kidneys twin whores for the sound of his voice. But now there is the threat of meanness behind his words, and you find little reason to delight.

“I’m sorry that you lost our bet, Hanma-san,” you get out through a tight throat. “If you’re struggling with losing, maybe we should play another game. Is there…is there another game you’d like to play?”

Wildly inappropriate, but you vow that you will not bet your underwear or details about how you touched yourself to the thought of him, regardless of what he suggests next. You’ll let him win something to assuage his ego. That’s all.

Hanma smiles, feral and far too happy, and then he does something that drains all the color from the lovely day you were having. Something that leaves you wondering how you could ever have been stupid enough to get in a car with this man.

He pulls out a gun.

“Actually, Doc, I know just the game,” Hanma singsongs. “One round of Russian Roulette for the lady!”

You have only seen a gun once in your life, and that was a smoking gun, just shot into a man’s skull by the very man before you. It may even be the same weapon, though he probably replaced it. How did they even get guns into the country? A stupid question. Your brain is simply spiraling. Anything to avoid confronting the weapon before you. To avoid cataloguing its details, like that it looks like a plastic toy, not the shiny metal you imagined at all. It has a long, straight nozzle – is that even the right term for it? – resembling a stapler that tapers into a fat handle. Your eyes train on the trigger, unable to look away.

There’s supposed to be a safety, right? To stop it from just firing? Was it on now? What did a safety even look like.

The car jolts over a pothole, and you almost vomit.

Hanma opens the chamber, dumping the bullets out before reloading just two. Two death sentences and ten possible pardons.

“You look like you aren’t familiar with the rules, Doc. No need to worry. It’s easy,” Hanma says. “Look, I’ll even go first.”

Before you can summon the strength to stop him, to protest, the gun rises to Hanma’s temple, the little nozzle slotting right into the flesh, and he pulls the trigger.

You don’t hear the click as the gun engages. The sound is drowned out by your strangled little gasp. An image of Hanma but not Hanma blurs before your vision. It is an un-head, a space where a head should be, blood and gore and shattered bone fragments unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.

And then, you’re blinking rapidly, and the image is gone, and it is a smiling Hanma before you. His skull is firmly intact, his handsome face unblemished.

It is not the face of a man but a demon. Only a demon could laugh so maliciously as you slump bloodless against your headrest. You fixate on the cold – the car is frigid, air-conditioning pelting against your numbed legs – anything to protect your fragile psyche from the reality of the demon in front of you.

“You know, this is the twelfth time I’ve played this game. I should be dead now. Maybe next time,” Hanma says.

You stay stubbornly silent. He can playact this little drama all by himself, you won’t give him the satisfaction. Not that you can stop him as he drinks up every quiver of your body with glee. Not that you could speak if you tried through a mouth made of sandpaper.

Hanma extends the gun toward you, but you don’t move.

Sighing, he kneels in front of you on the floor of the car. It rocks as he moves, and you worry again that the gun could misfire.

“Do you need some help, baby? I’ve got you.”

Strange, but you don’t resist as Hanma puts the gun in your hand. You don’t resist as he folds your fingers around the handle and then the trigger. You don’t resist as he draws the gun and hand alike up to your own temple, positioning it for a clean shot.

And, you don’t resist as he presses his finger against yours and the gun fires.

Nothing happens. A great stirring stillness. You didn’t even scream.

You could have died. You almost died.

The realization is building up with the promise of earth-shattering destruction. Had you died, your last thought would have been of nothing, brain too numbed for regrets or memories. No, or rather, you had no memories worth remembering. Your life was a vast desert with only loneliness and missed opportunity to keep you company. You might have died without ever having lied.

You could have died.

Time must have passed while your brain sat on pause because you suddenly become aware of your surroundings. You are now spread across Hanma’s lap, the man almost purring as he strokes your hair in a mockery of comfort.

You know you must be alive because the anger that courses through your veins is too powerful for a dead woman. You slap him with all your strength – not because you want to spare him the pain of a punch but because you can’t wait the half-second it would take to form a fist. No, instead, you are striking him everywhere with an open palm. Twice heavily on his chest, so that he jostles a little against his seat. But you crave skin, so you slap him across the face again and again as the rage possesses you.

“Get it all out, baby,” Hanma murmurs quietly.

He sounds unaffected, like all this means nothing! The answering anger drives you to twist about on his lap, so that your thighs straddle him. Now, you can draw back and put more forth behind your blows. Bright red blooms on his cheek at your next hit.

“Oh, yeah, do that again,” Hanma moans.

You do. Again and again. A little harder each time as Hanma makes little noises and writhes beneath you. Somewhere in your consciousness, you are aware of the way his hips buck a little at each hit, and how they strike like a bullet between your parted legs, but you can only consider where you will hit him next, how to make him hurt.

The next slap is aimed higher, lower on the palm as you target his glasses. You want to shatter them in his eyes, blind him forever. He doesn’t deserve to even look at you. The force knocks them askew, though they remain unbroken.

Completely disheveled with hair tangled in every direction, bright red cheeks, and glasses dangling off his nose, Hanma decides he’s had enough. The next slap is stopped by his much larger hand capturing your wrist. You immediately default to the other, but he stops that one as well. Your hands are effectively disarmed. You struggle wildly, thrashing from side to side and bucking your hips to unseat him, but Hanma weathers it all. He isn’t laughing anymore, but he doesn’t look angry either, at least not as you now understand anger to be a seething beast that can’t be stopped. No, he looks alight with something else.

Hanma can pin you down all he likes, your anger still demands to be fed. It will have blood.

You throw your whole torso forward, heads knocking clumsily. Your teeth find his lower lip easily, a tender piece of meat beneath your front teeth. They close tight around it.

Iron floods your mouth and spills over both your lips. Hanma’s mouth is parted as he grunts loudly, and the noise is swallowed up by your own mouth.

Hanma releases your pinned hands but makes no effort to dislodge you. Instead, they firmly grip your ass, pull you closer into his lap. You tug cruelly at his bleeding lip, and he kneads your flesh in return.

The beast of your anger howls in triumph at every pained breath that escapes Hanma’s lips, and as it sates itself on Hanma’s blood, more feeling returns to you. For example, you acknowledge fully how large and powerful the hands on your ass are, how much territory they cover with spread fingers. Then, there’s the way his hard thigh drives into the core of you, sinful as only a demon could be. And, the hard hot length of him is there, too, pressing into your stomach.

You don’t only hunger for his blood.

Hanma spanks your ass with both hands, hard enough that you release his lip on a shallow gasp. Free for a moment, he rips at your clothes. You instinctively lift your hips to help him, step out of your pants and panties as they slide off, and scramble at the buttons of your shirt so that it slips off your shoulders. You work together to make quick work of his belt.

Helpfully, you arch upwards as Hanma busies himself beneath you. The head of his cock smears across your cunt. It collects wetness you hadn’t realized pooled between your legs, cuts a path through the heat of you.

He is utterly focused on the feel of you, on the feel of his own cock, staring down in concentration. You are more focused on his face. Chin and mouth are covered in blood. The wound is still oozing from how deeply you bit him.

The rigid cock between your legs finds the opening of you and spears through. You aren’t prepped, and it hurts. Despite the inflexible ring of muscle fighting against him, Hanma makes it fit anyway.

The sting is sharp. You lean forward and take the other side of his lower lip between your teeth. It breaks beneath your bite just as easily, leaving him with a second wound like a set of piercings on either side. Hanma hisses at the pain, and you both hover still and pierced by the other.

When the pain in your belly lessens, you relax, and gravity does its job of sinking you lower on his cock. It is large just like everything else on this giant of a man. It doesn’t just not hurt. It feels good.

A shiver starts in your toes and vibrates up your entire body. Ringing pleasure in your nipples. Soothing comfort from the hands that again knead your ass.

You part from his mouth to lift your hips. Deliberately, you ride him in a slow grind that scrapes your clit along his navel and pushes his cock against your back walls.

He touches a place so deep inside you it feels like a secret just discovered.

“That’s it. Use it, baby. Use it however you like,” Hanma moans out.

You accept his offer. You gratefully grip his shoulders to support your slick grind in his lap. He doesn’t try to lead you at all, doesn’t try to encourage you to bounce on his cock. Let’s you shift back and forth until your stomach is squirming and your eyes are watering.

“Use that cock to cum,” Hanma encourages. His helpful hands are wandering now. They squeeze a tit dangling out of your open shirt, tickle your upper thighs, and caress your sensitive sides. “Cream all over me, baby.”

The walls of your pussy clench tight, shutting Hanma up, or at least, transforming his words into stuttering groans. The last thing you need right now is him telling you what to do. No, you’ll cum when you’re ready.

You’ll just sink your weight down fully, so that he spears that heavenly deep spot inside you and circle your hips a few times so that no part goes untouched, raise your hips on each upward grind, so that your clit is rubbed raw, and then…only then…

You cum.

You cum and it is annihilation and it is rebirth in one. Your hips twitch and your muscles tighten around a burst of pleasure that is almost agonizing in its strength. Tears spring to your eyes. You are cumming, and it feels a little bit like heaven might, only it isn’t heaven at all, because this is living. You are alive. There is blood coursing through your veins and nerves lighting up throughout your body because you are alive. And you will live to cum again, and again, and again, whether that be by tongue or cock or your own hand. And you are so unbelievably grateful for it.

Limp like a doll, you slump into Hanma’s arms. His cock is the first anchor, holding firm inside you, and his shoulder the second as you tuck your chin into the crook of him. Spasmodic flinches of pleasure dance through your pussy even as the orgasm ends. Your body is so worked up, and your brain is so very very tired. It is a fog, not so different than how you felt when Hanma pulled the trigger. You hum in contentment.

Hanma lifts your hips up, so strong you don’t fear he’ll drop you for a second and begins to thrust up into the slick of you. Warm, wet breath tickles your ear as Hanma pants through his thrusting. Now that it’s his turn, he uses you hard and fast. Each thrust is a punch that forces the air from your lungs. In other circumstances, it might hurt, but now you just sink into the weight of him inside you, and how that means you are wonderfully and truly alive.

To be stretched and used so thoroughly! To be touched by another person, greedy hands roaming your back, pinching and prodding at soft flesh!

Hanma grunts out what a good girl you are, how well you’re taking him, how hot you feel. It is a kind of lullaby.

A lullaby so soothing that as Hanma loses himself inside you, hot ropes of cum making their home in your body, you have already drifted off to sleep.

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