chaotic mess @viarikado - Tumblr Blog

May 14

creed

summary: Yakuza!Iwaizumi x F!Reader. you're stuck in an arranged marriage with iwaizumi hajime, the head of a crime syndicate allied with your family's. if he might have loved you in another life, the circumstances of your relationship definitely prevent him from loving you now. however, when you're kidnapped to be used as leverage against him, some things about your marriage end up coming to light.

word count: 9k

cw: blood & violence, minor character deaths, misogyny (arranged marriage trope and usage of "bitch" by enemy characters), handwavey yakuza depiction, kidnapping, torture, not actually unrequited love, mutual pining, angst with a happy ending, but kind of a lot of angst, at one point reader thinks she's going to be left for dead which imo is the most upsetting part, iwaizumi's guilt should be its own character, coming to terms with one's own death, obsession, they're yakuza they can't be that good at emotions/communication/healthy relationships, one threat of self-harm but it is mostly humorous, reader and oikawa have a sibling-like relationship but i use it for angst, themes of abandonment

a/n: john wick mode

You'd put up a good fight.

You really had—you'd killed six men, probably, or at least they would have a bad time for the next few months. They might even have as bad a time as you were, chained to a chair in a dingy basement and trying desperately to breathe through the pain of a sprained ankle, a busted-up face, and the steadily increasing awareness that you were going to die here.

You had gotten complacent, you had to admit. Amid the chaos of the last few months, you and your family had been less paranoid than you should have been. You hadn't even known that Iwaizumi was fielding serious threats right now; it had been a relatively calm season as your clan hashed out the politics of the wedding.

No one was brave enough to threaten the Iwaizumi syndicate, much less now that it had merged with your father's clan.

And yet, they had done more than threaten—they had taken. They had been smart about it, too; it wasn't an accident of luck that they had seized you in the months after the honeymoon, that they had watched and waited and taken you after you had shooed away your driver, nothing for a weapon but the stilettos dangling from your hand and the pocket pistol your father had given you on your thirteenth birthday.

Iwaizumi was probably at his favored bar, sitting in the backroom and saying in his serious voice that we can cut our losses; we'll hit them where it hurts next. He was probably wearing his good suit, a black so dark you could press your nose right into his shoulder and not notice the blood staining it. He'd let you cry on him once after your marriage, strong but stiff and wordless, and after that you'd never done it again. It was a comfort to think that, although you weren't going to be rescued, you were going to be avenged.

You had been friends with Iwaizumi once. You'd gone to the same schools, your districts close enough that two yakuza brats in one class wasn't out of the question. You'd gone to the same sparring gyms, where he told you to fix your form and you scowled, and the same shooting ranges, where the roles had reversed.

"If you're going to be a father someday, you shouldn't have all your power in your fists, Iwaizumi-san," you'd said teasingly once. "There's more than to strength than the strength of the body."

"I know," he'd said, voice deep and eyes full of something you wouldn't let yourself name.

That was before the arrangement had been announced.

While the men who had kidnapped you dunked your head in ice water and asked you questions you tuned out so that you wouldn't answer, you opened a space in your heart and looked inside it, determined to honor your memory. You would not die hiding from yourself.

In a world where you were normal people, classmates, childhood friends, you thought maybe Iwaizumi would have asked you out organically. You weren't stupid—you had grown up around men, just like him, though he was the best of them. You had known the darkness in his eyes when they followed you, the curl of his arm around you as he made up reasons to adjust your stance, the roughness of his voice when you called him late at night and asked him if he was busy. He never had been, never too busy for you.

But then his hand had been forced and nothing had been the same. Then he couldn't look at you and when he did there was a blankness in it, then he never spoke to you unless you were fighting him, then he was working at all hours and never came to your bed after the first night. He'd finally been given permission to touch you and he wouldn't.

You understood. You hadn't been happy about it either, the sweet and innocent romance of choice taken from you, but you were a yakuza daughter and honor and obedience had been bred as carefully into you as a show dog. Perhaps the metaphorical veil had dropped as he lifted the physical away from your face at the altar: you had never been sweet and innocent.

"How can you accept this?" He'd shaken you after a meeting with your father's men had ended in incomplete negotiations once again, Iwaizumi shouting obscenities at the stone-faced elders and you silent at your father's elbow. "I've never seen you this quiet. You're just going to let them do this to you?"

You'd only stared up at him with heartbreak filling up your throat and cheeks flushed from his closeness, even as he berated you. You knew you should be angry—any other groom would have sent you to your father's table with a scowl on your face and a vocabulary just like the one Iwaizumi had displayed that day. Instead, you waited a beat too long.

"I'm sorry," was all you had been able to manage, a pair of words so foreign to your tongue you couldn't look at him as you said them.

"Be honest with me," he said, staring into your face. "Do you want to get married to me like this?"

The curl of his lip, the disdain in his voice—you couldn't take it.

"Of course not," you said, not honest at all. "If you're so against it, I'll go to my father right away and protest. I was just overwhelmed. It's all so sudden."

He'd softened right away, his tight grip on your shoulders becoming a soothing rub of his thumbs over the dips of your clavicle. It was a rush of relief and agony at once to know that you'd given the right answer.

In the end, none of it had mattered at all. The yakuza's path had overtaken everything, as it always did, and you had married on an unseasonably warm day in September. No one in your bridal party had been smiling with anything but their teeth. When you'd given your vows, you'd had to lean in first and he had kissed you for the very first time like he was saying goodbye, nothing like you'd imagined he might have approached you in that other world where you didn't end up dying of blunt force trauma in a basement. But—he had kissed your forehead after. It was warm and soft and you'd come away from it smiling.

The photographer had captured the moment. It was the only photo among them where you looked like a real couple, his big hands bracing your arms, your eyes squinted with palpable joy. You held the feeling close as your captors left the room, your body aching but the ghost of that single moment of a happy marriage that you had experienced pulling at the corners of your mouth.

You thought fondly of other things, too, of your father, who had always been kind even when he was hardened and strict, of the women who had taught you that there was joy to find even as you followed the extreme path, of the life you had eked out on it. You thought of your home, the guard dogs who ate from your hands, the king bed you'd slept in alone.

You thought of the others. Kyōtani, who let you run your hands over his freshly-shaved head and paint patterns with dye in the stubble. Yahaba, who ran from a fight but always stitched you up with steady hands. Your heart squeezed when you thought of Oikawa, whom you hadn’t spoken to since September. You wondered if he would go on to head his own syndicate—perhaps their slow revenge would be his overtaking this one. It would've been a mercy for the survivors. He was often more kind than people thought the Angel of Death could be, layers upon layers, like a French pastry or something. He would be ruthless, too. You knew from experience.

It would make him better than a good boss someday, but lingering on that made you sad. You loved him—he was part of the family, even if you had always known he would outgrow you.

You weren't sure how many hours had passed when the boss came for you. It might have been a day. It might have been more.

You recognized him from the first time you'd awoken, dizzy from the chloroform and pain. He'd lurked some feet away from you while his goons crowded you, but your eyes were trained to see things like these, and you saw how each of them kept a wary eye on him, how he slouched when they stood straight. You knew from the look of him now that whatever had made him do this had made him a desperate man.

"Where is he, you stupid bitch," he'd snarled into your face, holding you by the hair so that you had to look him in the eye. "Don't answer that. I know you think your smart mouth is cute. God knows why he married a bitch like you."

"I told you," you said. "He's not coming."

He'd be stupid to. He'd be stupid to give them what they asked for. He'd be stupid to throw it away for you, for a wife he hadn't wanted.

"We'll see," he said, a man with a video camera coming into the room. You hissed in a breath.

He's not coming, you said, drops of water sliding down your face. He's not coming, you said thickly, your lips crimson after they'd slapped you until your teeth cut into the inside your cheek. You were only human, though; weak and hungry and afraid. Eventually, it had slipped out: Hajime, don't come, you pleaded, looking right into the camera.

Finally, they had abandoned you, your head lolling onto your shoulder, your breath coming in harsh pants that hurt your chest but you couldn't slow. Your ears ring with it, your weakness, not coming, not coming, not coming.

You finally close your eyes and succumb to a dreamless sleep.

You wake slowly, resisting consciousness as long as you can. You almost imagine the familiar sounds of home, the raucous shouting and echoing of acts of violence, before remembering where you are. Your fingers have gone numb, pins and needles poking at you from the wrist bindings, your ankle still hurts like a bitch, and you're tempted to tip the chair over and slam your head into the floor until you pass out so you don't have to feel the throbbing of it anymore.

There's ringing in your ears as you open your eyes, surrounded only by dark emptiness. It's almost the same as leaving them closed, except more depressing. You shut them again, but the voices get louder, overtaking the ringing.

It hasn't been long enough for you to start hallucinating.

"Keep moving!" Your eyes shoot open. You know that voice—Nishinoya, one of your father's former men. You shake your head frantically, praying that you're just fucking crazy, that you're dreaming.

It's a realistic dream, if it is. Your head feels like it's splitting from blinding pain as the door opens and light floods into the room, forcing your eyes shut against it but your eyelids standing out red regardless.

"Stop it, stop it," you heave against your restraints.

"Iwaizumi-san!" Nishinoya calls. You hear more footsteps, the ear-splitting bang of a gun. The wet cough of someone dying.

"Stop it," you beg. "Leave. Yū, please, you have to go."

"It's gonna be okay," he approaches you sideways, like you could lunge at him with your injuries, much less the binds. "Let's get you out of these things."

You have to be hallucinating. Maybe there was something in the water they half-drowned you in.

"Don't do this," you say, "this is fucked. Please, don't do this."

"What?" Nishinoya's face swims in your vision. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't know what's happening," you say, voice cracking badly. "Leave me alone. This is sick. I'm not telling you anything and he's not coming, okay, just let me fucking die!"

"Shit," he swears. "What did they do to you, ugh, where is—"

Your worst nightmare steps through the door.

He looks perfect, like always. His hair is lying flat on one side, the spikes melting from sweat and maybe other liquids. He's covered in blood (whose?), soaking his white shirt, smeared up his neck and across the right half of his jaw. Your brain has recreated him in agonizing detail, from his dark eyes to the roughness in his voice when he says your name.

The last time he used your name was during your vows, you think.

It hurts to look at him; you're screaming in earnest now. Your lip has split open again and the scab in your cheek is pulling hard. You're free of the binds, you realize, using your newfound freedom of limbs to curl yourself into a ball against whatever form of torture this is.

He just keeps saying your name, holding his hands out and slides his gun into its holster, as if he’s not a threat. You close your eyes against the sight; there's a look on his face that makes you feel like you're watching him in pain, not the other way around.

"This isn't real," you say as he steps closer, his breaths loud and short and panicked. "You'd be stupid to be here. You can't be here."

"Can I pick you up?" He asks quietly. You can hear the fight in his voice to be gentle.

You shake your head.

"Not real," you huff, and with your eyes closed you can pretend that it's him, slipping his strong arms under your legs and hauling you into the air, you can pretend that he is coming to take you away from this place. You don’t know if you’re accusing or confessing when you say: "Crazy, Hajime."

He barely catches the back of your head with one of those big hands as it tips back and you pass out.

When Hajime had heard that you'd gone missing, it had taken Oikawa holding a gun to his head to keep from going after you blind, by himself, then and there.

"If you try to go by yourself," Matsukawa had said, sliding up his sleeves to show off wrist shooters loaded with tranquilizers, a kinder warning than he deserved, "you'll be on the floor before you can get ten steps away. You need to think about this."

"She's hurt," he'd snarled, jerking his head to the side and accidentally butting the pistol.

“Watch it,” Oikawa had said, trying to sound soothing. “Think.”

“The longer we wait, the worse it’ll be,” Hajime snapped. “She could be dead if we don’t act fast.”

“We can act fast,” Mattsun said, “you just can’t act now.”

“It never should’ve happened in the first place,” he was already calming, stretching his hands out where they’d been curled into fists, his lungs filling with air and deflating and filling again. Still, he could feel it crawling under his skin, a cannon straining for ignition. “They took her. From our fucking house, they took her from me.”

“I know,” said Oikawa, his voice heavy with guilt. He’d seen the red rimming your eyes in the days following the wedding, the way you twisted the ring on your left finger when you thought no one was watching. He had looked away.

“Call Daichi,” Hajime said, his voice heavy. “I want as many men as he can spare.”

“Her father’s clan? You’re sure she’s not with them?” Makki’s question grated on his ears.

“That man forced his daughter into marriage with me,” he said. “She couldn't run there if she wanted to. You can put the gun down, Oikawa, I won’t do anything stupid. He wouldn’t do that just to take her back now.”

“If you’re sure,” Oikawa said. He always had too much faith in Iwaizumi.

"Call Daichi," he said again, shrugging on his jacket, patting the inner lining and the pistol he kept there. "He won't tell her father, either, not until we've recovered her. I don't want my father-in-law to think I'm not caring well for his daughter."

"Are you?" Makki asked, dancing out of the room before Hajime could punch him for it.

The truth of it was salt in the wound of your absence. He'd seen it, the way this marriage was eating at you, the sleepless circles under your eyes. He'd tried to soothe it as best he could, this suffering he had inflicted on you.

You were a daughter of the yakuza and he knew that you would chafe if he kept you as he would have liked to, safe and pampered and away from all harm, so he had let you run amok with your happy trigger finger and cleaned it all up where you wouldn't see. He didn't force you into his domestic fantasies, didn't come to your bed so that you would know you always had a safe place in his home.

Yet you hadn't been safe, he reminded himself, gritting his teeth. He'd gotten complacent, more focused on distracting himself from his ravenous need for his wife than on his primary duty as a husband. He'd forgotten that you needed protection from more than the man in your house.

He had assigned one of the men who had come with your contract to watch you because the shame of your family knowing how obsessed he was with you kept him from outright stalking you. If he'd asked Kindaichi to report to him your comings and goings, your every purchase so he could buy you tenfold more, your every glance at any man who wasn't him—well. He had prevented himself from doing so.

Look where it got you, hissed the devil on his shoulder. Look what you did to her.

He shook his head. He would silence that voice with gunfire until you were safe.

The first day is the worst day of his life until the second day comes along. The ransom request comes in a few scant hours later, carefully set up so that the money will be laundered along and Hajime won't know which gang to take revenge on. Matsukawa starts in on tracking the accounts and collecting people to squeeze crumbs of information out of; Oikawa crafts a beautiful rejection of the offer full of veiled threats much more eloquent than Hajime's proposed fuck you, I'll kill you all.

The second ransom request raises the price, as expected. They want information from a job the clan had done a month ago, certain names, certain businesses given over into their care. Hajime shoots the messenger, just to feel better.

They don't need him, anyway. The message points them in the direction of the people who want to know; only one clan, a struggling once-powerful lineage with a territory steadily encroached upon by their rivals would be desperate enough to do something like this.

It's crafty, Hajime has to admit. They had chosen a man who, for all intents and purposes, seemed indifferent to his wife's existence. They had chosen a powerful clan made more powerful by recent alliances made. They knew that stealing the boss' woman would be an insult to his power and his pride, but had assumed that he would be willing to pay for this dead-weight baggage and accept the return of his goods, slightly roughed-up but alive. It was a fairly rote power play executed precisely and skillfully.

They knew that Iwaizumi was a prideful man; that he would not be willing to leave you for dead and simply exact violent revenge for the insult and they assumed that he would not be willing to sacrifice the manpower required to brute-force remove you from your captive situation.

Hajime wonders if, despite his efforts, he'd gone soft after his wedding. He is the Unbreakable Pillar of Seijoh, the man who had destroyed the Iron Wall with his own fists, one of the most feared men in Japan. No one should have dared to steal from him, even without knowing that the man who had enacted such godless violence across territories in his youth worshipped at only one altar.

As it was, they had and he did, and so by the second day, when the video arrives, Hajime decides that everyone needs to die.

At first, the relief of seeing that you were alive nearly sends him to his knees. Still, the sight of you, bound to a chair, your beautiful skin marred by bruising, your nice dinner outfit bloodstained and torn, makes the taste of iron rise on his tongue. The video opens with a message: once again, they've upped their price. They want some of his territory and some of his men now, even as they damage their prize.

The struggle of your chest to rise and fall, the wince on your face as you bend against whatever damage had been done to your ankle as you're dragged to a basin, the sharp, angry look in your eyes as you look past the camera all hurt less than when you finally open your lips to speak.

"He's not coming," you say.

Whatever remained of Hajime's black, shriveled heart breaks in that moment. He wishes you had sold them out. He wishes you had told them exactly how to kill him. He wishes you had turned to the camera and cursed him out, that you had told him he was a worthless husband and a failed protector, undeserving of even being touched by your blade.

Hajime had loved you ever since he had known you. He had thought of no one else to go to when his father had died; he had been allowed into your bed, sobbing like a little boy into your neck until he fell asleep that last night he had had as a free man and not the godfather of hundreds. He had built a house for you out in the countryside, where no one and nothing could bother you, in the hopes that someday you would give him a sign that you would accept his courtship. He had never taken you there because your hand had instead been forced and you must have hated him; you would never be able to love him like this.

He's loved you ever since he had known you and so he knows you deeply, the quirks of your lips, each flicker of your pupils, and he knew then that you genuinely believe that he would leave you for dead.

Breathing is impossible; blackness fades into the corners of his vision. He can tell that Oikawa's looking at him, a look that knows exactly what he's thinking, that feels an echo of his pain. Hajime is the Unbreakable Pillar, but it takes Oikawa laying a hand on his shoulder, reminding him where he is and what's at stake, to keep him from crumbling completely.

He doesn't sleep that night. He watches the recording long after Oikawa snaps “turn it off, there’s no point to this anymore,” and Hajime’s grabs his wrist before he can. If you have to suffer, so will he, however he can to match the pain he inadvertently caused you. It rings in his head, the only thing you would say as they hurt you. If he tried to sleep, he knows he wouldn't have. He didn't need it, anyway; this is his living nightmare.

It rings in his head as he readies his weapons, as he speeds through the streets of Tokyo, as he leaves a trail of devastation in his wake. With each kill, he promises: I am coming. You don't know it, but safe hands, rough, reddened palms reach out closer and closer across the breaking dawn.

They ascertain your location by morning. It's only a few more hours to gather their men and penetrate the building, Hajime pacing relentlessly as he waits.

"I want to go in now," he says, stretching out the collar of his shirt, pushing his sleeves up his forearms and scratching his nails rhythmically against the dry skin there. There's still blood crusted in the nailbeds.

"You also want to eliminate the entire organization," says Matsukawa.

"And you want to lock her in a tower where she can never be found again," says Hanamaki, both of them using the same deadpan tone, a current of laughter swimming under their words. Hajime wishes he could share their blind faith that you were surviving your ordeal.

"You can't have all of those at once," Oikawa says, the only one who can share the tight knot in Hajime's chest, strangling him. "If you're patient, you can have them all today."

"I know," Hajime grits out.

"She won't let you lock her in a tower," says Mattsun.

"She's tougher than you think," says Makki, putting a hand on Hajime's shoulder. "She grew up like this. She took out half of the force they sent for her on her own. I know you want her to be, but she's not a princess."

"I don't want her to be anything but safe." Hajime revises gruffly and the men around him nod.

"Kunimi's got all the explosives in place, or close enough. We're going to have Mad Dog head in first; we'll cushion you in the middle so there'll be people on both sides to help with the extraction." Oikawa's eyes are faraway as he speaks, like he is torn between taking the conversation further and relaying the information over.

"Let me go first," Hajime says immediately.

"That's just unreasonable," Mattsun says. "You know you're taking on something like two-thirds of your big ass in dead weight. We know you'll flip your shit if something happens to her—"

"Or worse, she'll lose it if something happens to you—" Makki adds.

"Yeah. Make your own luck, hey?"

"Fine," Hajime says. "Fine. Mad Dog through the main doors, and Daichi's weasel at the same time. Whoever finds her first can have whatever's left of those bastards and their own cohort for enforcement."

"Okay," Oikawa says, sliding a wicked-looking knife into the sheath along his left forearm. "Whatever our great leader says. But you should stop scratching. Don't you want to look pretty for the boss?"

It feels good to shoot to kill.

So much of Hajime's job now is to send people out to do the dirty work for him, to watch his lackeys torture men for keys to doors they can't open, to sit and wait and wait and wait. It feels good to fight again, even if he prefers his fists. He thinks about you, your face streaked with dirt, your voice light and pulse tapping quick in your throat, telling him there’s more to strength than the strength of the body.

It's fitting, in a way, that to get to you he has to put himself one foot in your shoes.

This is why he's unworthy, he thinks, when a grin splits his face at the sight of a hallway of dead men, of the broken bones and popped-out eyeballs that characterize victims of his Mad Dog. You shouldn't suffer the love of a man who could snap his fingers and have this done to the world.

Daichi's weasel—Nishinoya—gets to you first, Kyōtani swallowed by a pile of men who were sure to regret the encounter. It would ensure Hajime a clean escape, though, and he knew that Mad Dog had made the sacrifice on purpose. A brief swell of gratitude warms his chest and he flexes his fingers around his pistol and then Nishinoya opens the door.

The screaming doesn't start until he had gotten through most of the next wave of idiots defending their bastard boss, who was probably due to suffer Oikawa's particular brand of face-to-face diplomacy at any moment. His pretty face and nice manners hid something much uglier than anything Hajime had to offer; he wore all of his sins on the surface.

"Just let me fucking die!" He hears, watching men turn the corner and reel back in shock at the sight of him, the chairman of Aoba Johsai here to retrieve a woman himself, never mind that the sun and earth revolved around her, never mind that she was in pain just a few feet away from him but all he could think was that he had made it in time.

Hajime doesn't remember the moments between hearing you cry out and walking into that awful, dark room. He doesn't remember how many people he killed or the weight of their bodies as he kicked them out of the way. He only remembers seeing you, curling away from Nishinoya, who holds his hands up, looking at Hajime helplessly like he should be the answer.

He can't help himself. He never has when it comes to you. He says your name.

When you scream at the sight of him, wordless and terrified, it feels like a knife to the chest. Before the events of the last seventy-two hours, this was the worst thing he could imagine. This is what he did by marrying you, making himself a boogeyman. He swears to himself that once you're out of here, he'll never force you to endure his presence again.

"You'd be stupid to be here. You can't be here," you say.

You sound delirious. He has so many questions, but he settles for the most important.

"Can I pick you up?"

You shake your head but lean into him, nestling your face in his chest when he does.

"Crazy, Hajime," you say. He must be high from whatever hormonal cocktail is rushing through his veins right now because it almost sounds fond. He doesn't have time to linger on it, though, because right then is when you pass out.

You wake up in your own bedroom.

The first thing you notice is that everything hurts like a bitch. Your ankle, your head, your jaw.

"The sun," you croak, the backs of your eyelids bright red. "It's so bright."

"We don't even have the curtains open," Oikawa's familiar voice says, amused. "Rate your pain compared to your twentieth birthday."

"Nothing could be worse than that," you say, cracking your eyes open to look at your friend. "This is fine. Child's play. I could run ten kilometers."

"I get it, I get it," he says. "You're so big and strong. Seriously. Should I call in Yahaba?"

"Later," you sigh, settling yourself a little higher on your pillows. "I'll live. Did you guys...?"

"Your husband went apeshit," he says flatly. "Well, we all did. The syndicate who insulted us is rubble now."

"I didn't... I don't know what the fuck he was thinking. But you should've known better if he was insisting on being a dumbass."

"There is no world," he says seriously, "where I leave you behind."

"It wasn't worth whatever it cost," you snap. There's a moment of silence, the familiar snick of Oikawa's knives coming out of their holsters and sheathed fully back in, his nervous tic ever since you were little.

"It cost us almost nothing," he says finally. "But it would've cost us everything. Even if you weren't our older sister..."

"I love you," you say quietly. "I think the last few months just really... you know."

"I know."

Oikawa wasn't born into a yakuza family like you and Hajime. He got involved after his parents died. His mousy brown hair and huge wet eyes didn't hide the fact that you had never met someone so full of vengeful rage so young. He had found his way to your father, who gained a soldier with more thirst for his enemies' blood than any other and who trained him to let it. He had assigned him to be your bodyguard, more of a mandatory playmate than anything else, and let him go when you turned eighteen in exchange for his years of service.

"You'll always be my little brother," you swore to him the day he joined the Iwaizumi syndicate, throwing your arms around him and not even trying to knee him in the balls when he squeezed you as hard as he could. That was how sentimental you felt.

"Maybe someday you'll really be my ane-san again," he said, sliding his eyes over to Iwaizumi, who looked ready to die of jealousy.

"I don't know," you said. "You're moving up the ranks so fast, you'll be the leader of your own gang before I know it, huh?"

No one had yet ruled out that the Angel of Death might still split off in a massive, bloody coup and start his own family. The closest he had come was right before your wedding.

"This is insane," he had said, sparks flying from his brown eyes. "You're going to make each other miserable like this."

"It's fine, Tooru," you said, adjusting your veil. "Does this look straight to you?"

He reached out and began to help you arrange it, still complaining about your marriage at rapid-fire speed.

"It shouldn't be happening this way! You two have been chasing each other's tails for years. It's going to ruin everything."

"I agree," you said. "There's nothing we can do, though."

"Run away with me," he said, spitting out the words like he'd been chewing on them. "He'd let me. You shouldn’t be livestock, even if you have feelings for that brute.”

"He?"

"They both would," he said. "Iwa-chan and your dad. C'mon. Everyone knows it'll happen eventually, me going off on my own, so just come with me. I thought he was better than this, that old fucking bastard.”

"Don't talk about him like that."

"Which one?" He mocked.

"Either of them! Besides, you're not ready to leave the nest. I really don't want you to start off fielding a gang war, so I won't go anywhere with you, kiddo."

You could feel him steaming with frustration at the easy way you brushed him off. It also annoyed him to be referred to as a kid; it happened less often now, the term more of a friendly in-joke, but when he was younger it had driven him up the wall considering that you weren't much older than him.

"At least have the balls to tell him you're in love with him," he said. "If you're going to let this happen, don't just let him roll over you. It’s going to eat you alive. I know you're not a coward, so what happened to you?"

"Nothing," you said tightly. "Please, drop it. I want to make the most of today."

"No! How will he know how to treat you if neither of you will say anything? I'm telling you, it's going to cause problems that are unnecesary. If you won't tell him, I will—"

"Tooru," you said, driving your fist into his solar plexus, wrinkling his suit. "If you ever talk to my husband about my feelings for him, I will never speak to you again."

Your little brother looked at you, wounded, out of breath. You bent your head and kissed his forehead, but the veil kept you infinitesimally apart.

As it turned out, you didn't talk for some time afterwards anyway. Not until you were kidnapped.

The familiar snick is audible again. When you look over, Oikawa has a hand splayed over the bedspread, a knife in the other.

“What the fuck are you doing?” You shriek.

“I’m sorry,” he says seriously, looking at you with wet brown eyes. “I’ll give you my pinky finger.”

“Put that away! What is wrong with you?” You kick at him, but he moves away, holding the blade steady.

“I abandoned you when you needed me most!” He shouts. “I—I should never have overstepped! I punished you for s-suffering and then you went and got kidnapped,” his lower lip wobbles. You gawk at him, your hands turning up as you reach out, plucking the knife carefully away and tossing it onto your nightstand. “I was a bad brother!”

You throw your arms around him, tugging him up to the bed by his shoulders, ignoring your bruised bones.

“You weren’t, you weren’t,” you soothe. “You were an asshole, but that’s what little brothers do. It’s okay, ‘Kawa. I’m okay, see?“

“I was so w-worried,” he sniffles. “I can’t believe you thought I wasn’t gonna come save you.”

“I knew you’d take revenge for me,” you offer lamely. This sets him off crying again and selfishly, you relish this feeling of being held close, of being wept over again. You hadn’t done this for him since he was very, very young, maybe before his first kill. Afterwards, he’d always held you at arm’s length.

“Are you sure you don’t want my pinky finger?” He says after some time.

“Really sure,” you say. “I haven’t eaten anything in like three days. I think I’d throw up. Oh, holy shit, I haven’t eaten in three days. Can I have food right now please?”

He almost falls over in his haste to jump up and serve you.

After you’ve eaten, taking small bites so you don't throw it all back up again and pretending that you don't see Makki and Mattsun lurking in the doorway, you slide the tray to the side of the bed that's empty. The bed is so wide that the sheets are almost perfectly flat, betraying that no one had ever occupied that space and probably never would.

"You don't have to hide there," you call out. "Actually, I. Um. I'd prefer it if you weren't hiding. It makes me feel jumpy."

"Sorry," Makki comes in first, ducking his head in apology. "We didn't think about that."

"How're you holding up?" Mattsun follows.

"I mean," you draw your knees up to your chest, tucking yourself under the blankets until only your eyes are above cover. "I thought I was going to die. I didn't, so shouldn't I be grateful?"

They wince, twin expressions that make you huff out a tiny, disingenuous laugh.

"The boss is never gonna let it happen again," Mattsun says. "You can feel safe now. Whatever that means to you."

"Great," you say bitterly. "It wasn't that I thought he couldn't—you know what, never mind. It doesn't matter."

"It does, probably," Mattsun says, cocking his right hip. You emerge a little further from your cocoon to bare your teeth at him.

"You should talk to him," Makki adds. "At least so you can know how safe you are. You could go dancing in the Red Light District right now and no one would touch you, that's how bad he fucked them up."

"Really," you say. You wait a beat to speak next, which makes it worse, because it means you thought about the words before they spilled out. "I don't know if he cares all that much. I still woke up in an empty bed, hm?"

"Don't be like that," Makki rushes out, but is interrupted by his partner's calmer, steadier voice. You envy them that closeness that's never been disrupted, the two of them cut from one bolt of cloth. They've been that way as long as you've known them; if you let Makki bum a cigarette off of you, it's Mattsun who exhales the smoke.

"C'mon, you know the boss wouldn't want to crowd you," Mattsun cracks his knuckles, then shakes out each hand mindlessly. "He told us all not to push you too hard."

"I got kidnapped," you say in disbelief. "He doesn't even want to come see if I'm alive."

"That's not true. It's fucking complicated and you know it," says Makki. "Look, beat his ass for all he's worth, he deserves it. But you're just hurting yourself trying not to see what's in front of you."

"Eat a dick," you say, your eyes fluttering shut. "He better be here when I wake up or I'm filing for a divorce."

The scene feels weirdly distorted. Hajime in his own bedroom, technically, none of his clothes in the drawers. Hajime sitting in a chair, watching you sleep in a bed you could have shared. He feels like the dragon that lies curled across his shoulders, counting your breaths greedily.

You exhale softly and wake all at once. He watches as you slide a hand under your pillow, viper-quick, where he knows you usually keep a weapon, your muscles tensing even through your injuries.

"Not too fast," he says, soft, trying not to startle you. You roll onto your side, hand still under the pillow, bracing yourself in a different way. Looking at your bedhead and sleepy eyes, he swallows heavily, hoping his face isn't doing anything strange.

"I didn't mean for them to tell you," you say.

"Well, he did."

"You can go. If you want."

"Is that what you want?" He asks. You blow out a breath through your nose.

"I didn't die, Hajime, you don't have to babysit me. I'm sure there are more important things to do."

The sound of his name in your voice makes something roll through his stomach. After the wedding, you hadn't retreated from familiarity like he had, didn't sting with the taste of false intimacy like he did.

"There aren't," he says firmly. "I just don't want to force any more of myself on you than I already do."

"Funny. I thought I was the one clinging to... fuck," you flop back onto your back. "Never mind. I'll see you. I don't know when, but I'll see you."

"Clinging?" He doesn't move from his seat, only arching a thick eyebrow.

"You know." You spit out the words quickly, trying to speak before you think about what you're giving up. Maybe hope died in that basement, even if you can remember the warmth when you pressed your face to his chest, the gentle way he spoke your name. You need to reserve whatever's left for yourself. "If you want a divorce, we don't have to live like this. I hate this."

"I hate it too," he says. A spear pierces your heart, leaving you feeling blown wide open, too vulnerable in your marriage bed. "I'm—"

"—Sorry I did this to you," you both say at the same time.

"What?" He gapes at you. You stifle a snort, despite the weight on your shoulders. Peeking through the cracks of his mask, you can see the boy you used to know, the one you loved as a friend before you loved him as a man.

"What have you ever done to me? You don't want anything to do with me."

You're sitting up now, the covers sliding down your stomach. One of the straps of the tank you'd changed into is slipping down your shoulder, emphasizing your delicate bones and the decorative ink there. Hajime squeezes his eyes shut and wills himself to be strong, to be better than he is.

"No. I want—" The look on your face, suspicious but still so sweet, kills the words in his throat. "I don't want to overstep. I failed you."

"And you came for me," you say. "I still don't understand why."

"I married you." He's sitting with his elbows resting on his knees, palms upturned. He looks like a man on death row, accepting and despairing his fate.

"It didn't mean anything," you say, and he chokes on his own breath. "It didn't have to."

"It did," he retches out. "For me. For me it did. I shouldn't have—but I wanted."

"You wanted?" You say cautiously. "Hajime, I think I'm confused. I hit my head pretty hard. Help me understand."

"See? That was my fault," he shakes his head, looking agonized. "If I could do anything for you, it should have been protect you—"

"You did," you retort. "You did everything you could have except be there—"

"Then I should have been there!" He snaps. "It wasn't everything I could. I was trying too hard not to be selfish, to protect you from this fucking bullshit sham of a marriage, and I won't let it happen again. You don't have to love me back, but please. Let me put myself between you and the world."

He says it so matter-of-factly. The world feels shaky, surreal, as you sit up in bed. He's there before you can reach for him, steadying you before you can stumble.

"Be careful," he admonishes you. "You could be—"

"I'm not hurt that bad," you push the supporting hands away but fold both of yours around one of his, wondering if you're still hallucinating. After the food and the water and the pain medication, you feel substantially more real, but the warmth of Hajime's touch after so long without it seems impossible. "You know both of us have probably survived worse. I only—I thought you thought I was dead weight."

"I never meant that," he says. "I just wanted to give you space. I know you didn't want this."

"How do you figure?"

"You looked so scared," he says, the corners of his mouth turning down as he recalls that crowded hallway, that dark basement. "When you saw me, you started screaming. I've never heard anything like it."

"I didn't want you to come," you say, voice coming out hard. "It would've—It probably did cost us more than I'm worth to you or the clan. Both. They wanted to lure you out. I thought you might die."

"Nothing is worth more than your life," he responds, tone brooking no argument. "I'd die a thousand times so you'd never have to feel afraid. But I never wanted you to see me like that. I only wanted to protect you; I'll always protect you, even if it doesn't feel like it."

The declaration is startling. So much has been opened and aired out in the day since you woke up. You don't know what to negotiate for, faced with so much opportunity. Luck seems to be spilling through your hands like water.

"The thing that scared me most was losing you," you say. "But it had already happened. That was why it was so much worse than it should have been."

Hajime's facial journey says that his train of thought is going from bad to worse.

"I'm sorry. None of it should have happened like this. I should never have given you cause to doubt me. I only didn't want you to think I was going to take more than I already have; I didn't want you to see how ugly this all," he gestures at the room, the house bought with blood money. "Has made me."

"I grew up like this, too." You scratch your nails lightly against the back of his hand. "I'm not afraid of a little red in your ledger."

"How can you say that?" He says despondently. "It's not just that I've taken the extreme path. I married you when you didn't want to marry me. What's more evil than that?"

Your next words prise themselves one by one from your throat, slow after so many months of secrecy.

"And what if I did?"

"Then I," a muscle in his cheek spasms. "I'd court you like I should have. I'd bring you flowers and take you to dinner and leave meetings early to go see you. I'd try my best to prove myself worthy. I'd hide all the ugly things and try to bring you only the best things this world has to offer."

"If that's how you think... why would you ignore me for so long? Why did you leave me alone?" The warmth of him, so close and still too far, feels like a mocking sprinkle of salt into a wound not quite stitched shut.

"I didn't know I was leaving you alone," he says. "I mean, I thought you wouldn't want to be around me. To be reminded of what happened between us."

"I loved you," you say, still too afraid to say the whole truth. "Before everything. You know that, don't you? Why would I want to feel abandoned?"

You can feel his tendons flexing from the hand you're holding.

"I didn't. I mean, I hoped," he shrugs his broad shoulders, still hunched with shame. "But I poisoned it. I never wanted you to be forced into accepting me. Please. Believe that. But your father came to me and I knew if it wasn't me, he'd hand you off to someone else and I couldn't. I couldn't watch that. I thought at least now I'd be able to give you freedom."

"And...?" You watch him, eyes narrowing the longer he speaks, leaning toward him while he shrinks away. How funny, the powerful Iwaizumi Hajime shy around you.

"And I wanted it," he admits, voice strangled. You can see a vein standing out in his neck; he's nearly formed his hand into a fist except for yours getting in the way. "I didn't want anyone else to have you like that. And I wanted to. More than anything. And I knew it was wrong and I took what I wanted over what was right, so this was my compromise, my apology."

"Holy shit," you breathe, almost in his lap as you greedily drink in the sight of the flush spreading over his nose and cheeks, the tenseness of his shoulders, the way his dark eyes dart to your mouth and away, over and over again. "You just decided this for us?"

"I—" He starts.

"You decided I didn't want you and froze me out until I thought you'd leave me to die in a fucking basement?" You breathe.

He says your name, looking confused.

"If I told you now," you say, ignoring it, "that I wanted to marry you too, that I loved you and would take what I could get however I could get it, that I fought it because you looked so fucking angry at the thought of marrying me, what would you do? If I said that I still love you, even though you're so fucking stupid it makes me want to throttle you with both hands?"

Hajime's eyes snap to yours now, no longer looking away in guilty shame or distracted by your closeness. You stare at him, trying to synthesize the two people you'd known in his face. There was the boy who had been artless in his affection and the one who had hidden it from you so deeply. You weren't a stranger to liars, but you had never been subjected to such an extended lie; you had never expected anything but truth from Hajime. Perhaps it wasn't that he had seen your ugliness and hidden from it, but that you had never blinked the sun out of your eyes (that warm day in September) to see his.

"If you don't want to—" He cuts across your sentence.

"I'd tell you I built you a house. In Kiso Valley." He rushes out. "There's a yard and fruit trees and I thought of the life we could have if you didn't hate me. I'd get on my knees and apologize to you once for every bastard I had to kill because they touched you. I'd—fuck. Whatever. Fuck this. I love you. Do you—"

You put a hand around the back of his neck and smash your lips into his. You overshoot a little and make a noise in the back of your throat at the cut of your teeth into your inner lip, but then he surges up and kisses you back, cupping your cheek and guiding you a little, just how you'd imagined he would. His lips are thick and soft and you can taste that he'd brushed his teeth before he came to your room.

"I don't hate you," you say into his mouth. You're not sure that he hears you, but you know he understands the sentiment, wrapping an arm around your waist, the other holding you steady as you balance over him. He nips your bottom lip and you know that you're alive, the light in your bedroom golden and your husband warm and solid beneath you, just as everything should be.

"I love you," he says again when he pulls away. He says it into the skin beneath your ear, to the flutter of your pulse, to the crook of your neck. He says it as he tucks you into bed, insisting that you rest, even when you complain that you've been waiting months for your wedding night, your lids heavy with sleep and words slurring together. He says it when you wake up, tangled on one side of the king bed, his suit jacket thrown onto the floor sometime during your nap, your fingers wandering up the lines of his tattoos, dipping into the holes of his tank.

"Promise?" You say when he says it again, admiring the scarlet and black dragon across his back, the scales that overlap his ribs. Almost his entire torso is covered, a gallery you'd tried to memorize every time a new piece had been added since you were a youth.

"Mhh," he responds, half-conscious, entranced by the sensation of your fingertips on his bare skin. "Always, love."

"This one's new," you say, pressing your fingers to his neck, just under the cut of his jaw. You can feel his pulse, strong and healthy.

"'S your birth flower," he says, "Thought you'd recognize it. The boys wouldn't stop making fun of me when I got it, right after the wedding."

"You're insane," you say, delighted, rolling on top of him. "Ah, you left me alone, pining, by myself, all while you were getting me tattooed on your neck? Were you just hoping I would never notice?"

"Yes, I made a lot of mistakes," he grumbles. "You didn't say anything either, though."

You make a scandalized noise and try to smack him lightly, but he catches your wrist before you can make contact.

"Go back to sleep before you start any more fights," he kisses the inside of it before releasing you. You melt into him, wriggling down so that your legs are slotted together, your head resting on his chest.

"Will you tell everyone I won against you?" You say, feeling like a cat laying in the sun, your eyes narrowed into happy rainbows, squeezing lightly at whatever parts of him you can reach.

"'Course," he says. "Then maybe no one will ever touch you again."

You look forward to watching them try.

#bless the arranged marriage tag 🙏🏻#i haven't read fanfiction in a while and i devoured this #so good #worth staying late over #iwaizumi x reader #iwaizumi hajime #loml <3 #hq!!

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