#izana imagine

“Oh yeah?” Izana questioned, touching his face. “You’re right... Maybe I should get a cut tomorrow.” Y/n hummed at his words. The room fell silent again as Y/n’s hand ran through his platinum hair, a content smile on her face.

“Should I give you a shave, baby?” y/n asked her boyfriend who shot up at her words. “You can?” the surprise was evident in his voice.

Y/n let out a small giggle. “Of course I can.” Izana was quiet for a moment maybe contemplating the offer when finally, he said “Okay,” got up from their bed carried Y/n, and set her down on the bathroom counter.

Y/n sat there happily on the counter, swinging her legs as Izana arranged all the things required — the blade, a towel, and shaving cream. Izana wetted the shaving brush and handed the brush and shaving cream to the girl who gleefully accepted and began lathering her boyfriend’s face, humming happily.

“You look so happy, hmm?” Izana smiled, caressing her hair. “And why shouldn’t I be? It's been a fantasy of mine that I’ll shave my boyfriend’s face, just like this.” She smiled, her eyes sparkling in a childlike innocence.

“And I get the honor to fulfill my girl’s fantasy? I’m truly the luckiest man alive.”

Y/n did not answer this time as she carefully set the blade, she held the tool before his face and spoke in a somewhat stern voice. “Hmm. Now be quiet, and don’t move. I don’t wanna cut your pretty face.”

Izana listened, keeping quiet all the while her blade ran through his face. It didn’t hurt at all. Honestly, Izana was ready to have a few cuts and band-aids on his face as this was the first time that y/n had helped him shave. He was ready to be bloody if that meant his girl was happy.

As Y/n cleaned his face with the towel, Izana asked another question. “Baby, do you mind if I ask where you learned to shave?” Y/n smiled, pinching his cheek.

“I’ve seen other men shaving their faces, ‘Zana. I observed them and learned. That’s all.”

While her answer was a simple one, Izana couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy hit his chest. With Y/n being as pretty as she is, it's given that she’s been in a relationship with other men. But the bond the two shared in the present, was so close. Izana often thought they were already a married couple, nagging and bickering with each other like they’d been together for more than thirty years. Izana truly believed that the two were special, more than any other couple. Maybe that wasn’t true.

Seeing Izana grow quiet, Y/n caressed his face and brought the man back to reality. “You’re overthinking, aren’t you, ‘Zana?” She declared in a hushed tone. She pulled him against her for an embrace, wrapping her legs around his waist.

“Those men, ‘Zana, were my older brother and father, dummy,” she said as her fingers played with his hair. Listening to her say those words, Izana let out a heavy sigh.

“I’m sorry for being so childish and immature,” he mumbled against the crook of her neck, pulling her closer to him by the waist.

Y/n let out a small giggle. “It's okay, ‘Zana. I’m gonna assure you of us as many times as you need, my love.”

You swallow before nodding. “Good morning, Kurokawa-san.”

His lips curl into a small smile. He’s amused. The wheels in your head turn quickly already; you place your clipboard down and decide that you won’t need to take notes for the session.

Izana also seems to take note of this and leans slightly backwards in his chair, crossing his arms. You notice that he doesn’t put his feet up onto the table before him, demonstrating that he has some form of decorum. He’s not a man who is loudly arrogant, and somehow that makes him even more authoritative.

“What would you like to know about me?” He asks, again beating you to the punch. The fact that he seems to be directing the interview so soon annoys you slightly and mild irritation wins over the small tinge of apprehension that you’d started with.

You also adjust yourself in your chair, crossing your legs and placing your forearms flat on the table as you clasp your hands. While you know not to demonstrate any aggression on your part, a little assertiveness is always warranted.

“Let me introduce myself first. My name is Dr. ___, and I assume you understand why we’re here today, but just to reiterate, I am here to learn as much as I can about you so that we can better serve your needs while you…,” you trail off because his eyebrow is raised in curiosity, then push through, “complete your sentence.”

“Hm.”

He scoffs a little bit and looks away and then back at you. Your expression remains neutral.

“Everything you tell me here is confidential.”

You truly mean that.

Izana points at the corners of the room lazily.

“And these cameras are for?”

“Safety,” you reply quickly. There is no need to mince words. He’s killed people either with his own hands or by proxy.

Your extremely professional expression doesn’t crack, and he takes another moment to truly scrutinize you before he starts laughing, throwing his head back.

“Do you really think these cameras will stop me from hurting you if I really wanted to?” 

He grins as he leans forward now, his head tilting ever so slightly and you can’t pretend he doesn’t intimidate you at all. But thankfully, your voice remains steady as you reply.

“If you choose so, I suppose I couldn’t do anything to stop you,” you admit. 

You can tell Izana doesn’t exactly expect this answer and his smile fades ever so slowly to neutral.

There is a slight pause where your heart pounds but you remain as stiff as a board.

“... Would you like to proceed with the interview?” 

This time, your voice is small at the beginning and you mentally berate yourself. Showing weakness will get you killed.

Izana’s gaze is now turned, and he’s looking at a fixed point at the wall. His mind seems elsewhere. His arms are still crossed.

“Sure, whatever.”

You wonder if you’ve already lost his attention. You clear your throat, then begin.

“We can start with where you were born,” you offer. He gives you a hard look.

“Don’t know.” His lips are pressed in a thin line. You nod sympathetically. 

“Where did you grow up?”

“Don’t remember.”

You pause and look at him meaningfully. Izana is now examining his fingernails, pretending not to pay attention to you. This isn’t going well but you’ve dealt with tough clients before.

“Tell me about your childhood.”

Izana lowers his hand as though he’s satisfied with the way it looks and shifts his attention back to you. The smile is back on his face and he leans in, propping his chin up with one hand and tapping his finger on the table with the other.

“Will you feel sorry for me?” He asks. When you don’t respond, he laughs again, and the sound of him laughing alone resonates in the room.

“I was happy for a couple of years as a kid, I would say. Then I found out none of my family gave a shit about me and made my way on my own.”

You took this statement in stride.

“Would you say your gang was your found family?” You asked, not missing a beat.

“No,” he replied bluntly. Knowing that he had surrounded himself with people for so long and had kept their trust just as well, you were genuinely surprised to hear this. Usually gangs with no sense of familial bond did not last as long as his did.

As though sensing your muted surprise, he elaborated.

“Family is a useless concept to me. I only ask that those I associate with are devoted to me.”

When he says this, he moves slightly forward, just enough that for once, you find yourself planting your feet firmly on the ground. Was it a recoil out of fear? This sudden pressure you feel coming from him as he looks at you, eyes blazen, is unsettling.

Is he demanding your loyalty right now? That’s bold, even for someone like him. Does he not know where you are? 

It’s a challenge, you think, and you won’t lose.

---

“I need more sessions,” you say the moment you step out of the room, the heavy sound of the door resounding behind you.

Your supervisor observes your stance then raises his eyebrows. You don’t seem to be shaking. In fact, you are surprisingly steadfast.

“If he’s not talking, you can make a rudimentary diagnosis,” he begins, his eyes running over you carefully to see if you’ve been rattled at all. That’s not the problem.

“I just need a little bit more time,” you insist. The senior lets out a sigh and rubs his temples.

“You don’t have to give him therapy, it’s just an evaluation.” He replies.

You’re already walking down the hall, your mind made up. The click, click, click of your heels is not as loud as your thoughts.

---

“Kurokawa-san, have you ever thought of harming yourself?” 

Izana gives you a look that is the closest to off-guard as you’ve seen him, but still not seriously taken aback. Rather than answer your question, his eyes slide downwards to your hands. There’s a ring on your left fourth finger that he settles on in particular.

“You didn’t strike me as the married type.”

The hand that was now scribbling notes - yes you’d decided to take notes - stopped, and you looked up at him carefully.

“What do you mean?”

The question genuinely pisses you off, but as usual, you remain professional. 

“You don’t give me the appearance of a married woman,” he says, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I don’t know what kind of man would let you work in a place like this, around people like me. What if I took you all to myself, huh?”

You clench your jaw ever so slightly. You’re not going to tell him that he’s right, and you’re not married, and you simply like to have this band on your finger to deter exactly this sort of conversation, the one about your availability. 

Plus this very explicit pass at you doesn’t even truly seem lascivious, so it’s both annoying and confusing. Not to mention the implication that you’re interested in men.

You smile neutrally.

“Would you answer my question, sir?”

He deflects your deflection.

“Did you pick the ring yourself?” He asks.

“Have you ever felt that life was not worth living?” You reply as though you cannot hear what he’s saying. You have to keep on track.

Izana’s teeth flash, white and straight. Knowing that he won’t get more out of you short of beating answers out of you, he leans forward, resting his cheek on the table as though he’s terribly bored.

“I can always come up with something to live for if need be,” he says. His eyes look up at you and you realize they’re settled on your chest.

You scribble an additional note to dress differently next time you see him.

Today, the interview drags on but not because he refused to talk but because he’s not focused,  which makes it hard for you to decide on a stopping point. Hunger seems to strike the two of you at the same time, your stomach growling loudly in response once he loudly complains that he’s famished.

“If they’d let me out of this damn place, I know a couple of places we could both go,” he murmurs.

You furrow your eyebrow at him and he raises an eyebrow.

“What? I thought you wanted to know everything about me. I’ll talk over sushi,” he says. His voice is almost whining as he says this, eyes closed and head against the table, and for a moment you wonder if you’re finding him… endearing?

For once, you shake your head at him and pause.

“We can break so you can have dinner. I’ll talk to you at our next session.”

---

“Men, women, both or neither?” You ask. Your pen taps at the desk rhythmically as you await his answer.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Izana asks, slyly. Despite the fact that he’s dressed in the same prison jumpsuit every other inmate is, there’s something about his face that looks different. His grin is no longer mocking but somewhat teasing. You watch the swing of his earrings as he tilts his head to the side. You wonder if he’s allowed to have those in here. Then you wonder if someone will tell him no.

“Answer the question, please.”

“Whatever you identify as,” he replies. 

Rolling your eyes at him is incredibly unprofessional, you think, but so is the warmth on your cheeks, and neither the action nor the blush is missed by him. It’s a particularly vulnerable time for you - the truth is you’ve thought of him, maybe once, maybe twice, in the comfort of your own bed as a free woman. 

It’s nothing you can’t file away in the recesses of your mind. You’ve imagined him as a child, devouring a letter from a trusted older brother. You’ve imagined a teen who found out he never had a mom or a dad who truly cared, whose one source of secure attachment seemed to have picked someone else over him before dying. You’ve imagined an adult that is terribly angry, and equally as efficient, that has resorted to taking what he needs as opposed to waiting for those things to be provided to him. 

You’ve thought far too much about him, you think, as you finish up your clinical note.

---

Your supervisor gives you a quizzical look as he reviews the file you’ve handed back to him before taking a seat in his office. 

“This is… a long note,” he replies.

You shrug somewhat noncommittally, and suddenly the dark circles below your eyes seem suspicious. 

“Did you spend all night writing this?” He finally asks. Your eyebrows furrow, confused about the implication of his question, insist on shaking your head initially, then nod. 

“I had to consider a few more things,” you thought, running idle fingers through your scalp before resettling yourself in your chair. “It’s the first time I’ve actually struggled with figuring out a rehabilitation plan,” you admit. 

“Rehabilitation?” He repeats.

“Of course.”

There’s a pause, and he leans back into the mahogany chair, rubbing his chin for a moment, before laughing harder than he ever has in a moment.

“You think we’d bother with a rehabilitation plan for someone like this?”

The man is laughing to tears in front of you, as you remain perfectly still, offering a quiet smile. You expected this. There were multiple times in fact, that as you wrote out your evaluation of Izana’s psyche, meant to be neutral but reread multiple times to reveal that there was a slight bit of sympathy for him in your assessment, you realized that you were wasting your time.

This is exactly the type of person the public prefers to have rot in jail.  

“Did you bother to read my assessment?” You say, your voice sweet. The condescension in his voice gets to you, but he’s always been kind of patronizing hasn’t he? You’re young and pretty and he’s in a position of power over you after all. You couldn’t possibly know what you’re talking about.

“I just needed you to write a couple of lines so we could say he’s insane and give him an appropriate sentence, and here you are writing his autobiography!” He exclaims, and his voice is less jovial, but he isn’t yelling yet. 

But the yelling comes as expected.

This is prison. This is not a teen youth crisis center. These are hardened criminals. All of them deserve to be here. Stop assuming you can help everyone! Just give them a diagnosis that says they are competent and move the fuck on.

It’s all you can think about as you lay your head to sleep.

That and Izana’s smile. 

---

“How much time do you have left?” He had asked in your last session, the fifth in total. 

This particular day you had requested something odd - the ability to evaluate a patient as they mingled in the general public. So the two of you, rather than face each other in a brightly lit room surrounded by white walls and overhead cameras, and a panic button within reach, now stood within the prison courtyard, in a semi-secluded corner, as the sounds of other inmates, some of which were very intrigued by your meeting and stealing glances at the two of you. 

The feel of the natural sun lent you some more comfort for whatever reason, and seeing Izana sigh in relief and stretch out in the warmth actually brought a smile to your lips. 

But his question was unclear.

“Left doing what?” You asked. You took another mental note as he stared back at the onlookers who quickly diverted their gazes, apparently for the rest of the hour you had together.

He sat down as you sat down and offered a piece of a candy bar he’d gotten at the prison commissary on the way down here. You shook your head no and he shrugs, finishing the rest of the chocolate in a few bites.

“Examining me,” he answered. For once, he looks away while speaking to you and it’s not a dismissal. It’s as though he’s worried about you dismissing him. Your brain flips through several notes about his childhood and his attachments. 

Is this transference?

“This will be our last session,” you answer.

He then looks at you directly and he’s unreadable.

“Okay.”

There’s a very short silence that’s broken up by an onslaught of questions. He’s malleable this time, polite and with answers the appropriate length and you’re in a good groove until he interrupts abruptly. 

“Will I ever see you again?”

You freeze for a split second. Another set of pages flip in your head and you think about the boy who has been denied intimacy, friendly, platonic, romantic, his entire life. You shake your head, but it’s not just to reply but to remove the thought from your head.

“Will you still work here, just not with me?” He asks. The directness of his questions is hard to avoid.

“I-I’m actually going to work somewhere else,” you find yourself lying automatically. “I’ve been looking for different sites to work at… possibly at-risk high schools.”

It’s not a lie, but it’s too much information.

There’s another pause and you consider ending the interview here. You’re making all the mistakes. Is the problem him or you?

“Thank you for listening to me,” he says, and you realize the problem is definitely you. You part ways shortly after, and he adds, “I think I want to see you again… but differently.”

---

It’s near midnight.

You’re typing up your resignation letter and with every word you type, you consider slapping the shit out of your boss. There’s a myriad of things that have led you to make this decision - first, the fact that you lied to a patient who also turns out to be a gang leader, two, that you were mocked after submitting your work, three, that you’re not exactly sure if you’re running away before you make a big mistake. You’re furious that you’ve been put in this position because it proves everything that has been said about your type. Soft-hearted, easily manipulated, unrealistic, naive… you name it.

But still, you know a mistake is being made somewhere in the case of you and Kurokawa. It’s better to retreat and re-center before you become a laughingstock.

You finish your letter and let out a deep breath. It will be Monday morning in a couple of minutes and you hope this will be the first thing on that man’s desk. Then, you’ll spend the week looking for another job. This is a plan that makes total sense, you tell yourself. 

You press print, then get up to walk over to the printer, only to hear a knock on your door. 

Maybe you should be startled, but you live near the end of the hall and it’s a non-negligible number of times where people have accidentally knocked on your door, especially if they’re drunk.

Sunday night is an odd time to be drunk, but maybe they’re just confused. This high-rise apartment building is terribly safe, so you have very little concern opening the door.

For someone who works in the prison system, you’re not very prudent. 

“Sorry, this is probably the wrong-” you start, until you look up, and find yourself almost screaming. 

Izana’s face is barely shrouded by a large hoodie and you recognize his eyes despite the face mask. He grins and steps forward to invite himself in before you can stop him, and incredulously, you’re staring at an escaped convict in the middle of your doorway.

While you are at a loss for words, he repeats again - 

“I said I wanted to see you again.”

The door seems to nearly slam itself shut behind him. 

“So you escape from prison?!”

Professionalism has flown out the window. Here you are, in pajamas, bunny slippers, a tank-top and a shawl wrapped over your shoulders to keep warm, in no way resembling a trained clinical psychologist, and here he is, in jeans and a hoodie, now sitting comfortably on your couch as though he lives there.

“You’re loud,” he says, disaffectedly.

“I’m loud?!”

Your hand reaches for your pocket and you pull out your phone, your thumbs trembling as you immediately consider alerting the authorities, only to freeze once you notice the hard look he’s had fixated on you. He’s no longer smiling.

A chill runs through your spine.

He reaches out his hand wordlessly and you toss the phone in his direction. You swallow hard as he throws the phone to the far reach of the couch. He pats the space beside him, bidding you to sit, and you move terribly slowly, your head starting to spin as you try to come to terms with what is happening. You wonder if it’s some combination of too little sleep, too much coffee and bad food that has you hallucinating, or if you’re in a terribly lifelike dream. You pinch yourself trying to wake up and he notices and laughs.

“I’m definitely here, Dr.” 

With that, he turns towards you and pats you on the head. “Who’s the crazy one now?”

---

Izana never actually explains how he escaped or how he found his way to you, at least not in any way more enlightening than I was never there because I had to be, but because I wanted to be.

Not that night, even though he leaves shortly after scaring the very heavens out of you, and not the next night, where he knocks again but actually bothers to ask politely if he can come in. 

What you do know is that somehow the police do not mention his escape. You suspect they haven’t realized he’s gone, and this is only proven months later when you hear them document his escape on the television you keep on as you teach Izana to cook a family recipe.

You raise his eyebrows at him as he stirs a boiling pot with a wooden spoon. He turns, tapping a bit of warm soup onto the back of his hand and licking it off as a cat licks its paw.

“Needs salt,” he replies, before he meets your gaze. “What?”

This is wrong, you think now and nearly constantly, and yet you think differently over time as your relationship deepens further past a tense, almost nonconsensual friendship into a completely consensual partnership.

Izana talks with his hands when he’s excited, you realize, even though his stories are often extravagant, violent and to be honest, preferably not told to you with such joy. He also talks with his hands when he stays the night, letting his fingers roam every inch of your skin from the tips of your toes to the ends of your hair.

You never stop learning about him - you learn that he’s fucked but he’s never made love because he actually does run out of words when he’s inside you, stuttering the moment he sheathes himself inside you, a groan and a curse slipping here and there as he buries himself as far as he can go.

You learn that he crumbles if you pull on his white locks or scratch lines into the muscles of his back. He crumbles if you call him when you’ve had a bad day and ask to hear his voice and especially so if you hold him in your arms when he’s feeling particularly empty. 

This is not the rehabilitation plan you’d intended.

Maybe he’s making you worse, you think.

You didn’t know you liked your ass spanked or your hair yanked nearly clean out of your scalp or to be tied up shibari style while he ate your pussy to overstimulation.

What you especially didn’t know was how easily you could get drunk on power as you followed him into his world, the underworld, where he called the shots and you reaped the benefits. Sometimes you were the voice of reason, other times you turned a blind eye to his insanity. Once in a while you prevented messes, other times you covered them up. 

In wanting to fix him, you’d corrupted yourself. But maybe you cleansed him in part, too. You’re not exactly sure. 

Somewhere in your therapeutic relationship, something went awry. Transference, countertransference, whatever.