Chapter Text
Atsushi Nakajima could, perhaps, admit he was in a predicament.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind of thing that could be solved by tea on rice, which was devastating in and of itself, but the kind of predicament where things were solved with violence, blood, and a bit of pleading.
The kind of predicament where he should not have let Kenji wander off while they were in the middle of a mission.
Ugh. The kid always does this, although his methods somehow work 75% of the time.
This time, however, it had left Atsushi alone when he accidentally bumped into a man who had, coincidentally, been carrying the files they needed to solve and crack this cold case the police had given them after the trail had gone dead.
(The trail had gone dead, and the investigation abandoned three weeks ago, and so it’s a throw-away case, but Atsushi doesn’t think too hard on that and it won’t bother him.)
“There’s no need to draw this out,” Atsushi huffs, ducking under a superhuman punch that would have shattered his jaw if it’d made contact. Super strength, low-level compared to Kenji’s; easy enough to counter.
Of course it was a gifted. Of course, the victim was a gifted boy, around twelve, who’d disappeared on his walk home from school, and of course, his captors are gifteds too, and it really is all a big coincidence that Atsushi had happened to see the name on the inside of the guy’s file when he’d dropped it and it fell open on the concrete.
It’s broad daylight, too, and he doesn’t want to get into a fight in the middle of the day.
(You know, considering his line of work, he’s strangely averse to the sun. Maybe he’s been spending too much time in Dazai’s world of the Port Mafia and their dealings.)
The man does not seem to care about Atsushi’s plight, as Atsushi has to dart away from a kick; he parries with a left hook, to lead the man into a nearby alley.
While the existence of giftedness isn’t exactly a secret, it also isn’t the most common knowledge, and he’d like to keep it that way.
The man doesn’t even offer good conversation. At least when he fights Akutagawa or someone from the Guild - although he doesn’t consider it the same now -, or the Port Mafia in general, he gets a good conversation out of it.
(He takes pride in being able to pick apart the pieces that make a soul human; likes to piece together what made a person make a decision, likes to say just what he knows will be able to get under their skin.)
When Atsushi twists his body away, the man ducks into the alley, as expected.
Not bright enough to be in charge of kidnapping, is he?
Atsushi sighs, not out of exertion, but the time this is taking; when the man throws another clumsy punch, he drops to the ground, sweeping his leg out.
The man is smart enough to jump, but not soon enough, tripping over Atsushi’s leg; it’s easy to take the opportunity to yank at brown hair, pull his face down until his forehead smashes into the concrete.
“Can we be done with this now?” Atsushi says, rolling over to pin the man to the ground with a knee to his back. “Who are you working for?”
The man groans, no doubt from the pressure being applied to his spine; “I’m not working for no one!”
“You’re making this harder than it has to be.” And, really, Atsushi would like to go on lunch right about now. Kenji might not since it was so early in the day and he tended to wait until later to eat, due to his ability, but Atsushi was hungry.
Skipping lunch will do that to you.
The guy does not answer Atsushi’s gentle pleas, so Atsushi stands, gripping the man’s wrists so that he still can’t twist out of his grasp; it’s easy, a bit of Tiger strength and a learned hold. This man’s ability must have some strange activation requirements because he’s not using it.
However, Atsushi is not an ability expert, so he does not care.
It’s going to be a long day.
It is a long day.
After Atsushi starts leading the strange and weak man to the station for the police to take care of, or maybe to hold him for about three hours before giving up, Atsushi runs into Kenji, who had apparently gotten into his fair share of trouble, considering he was in the middle of a ring of people who wanted to kill him.
As it always worked out for Kenji, none of them were capable of killing him, although while Atsushi stood off to the side - “You’ll get in my way, Atsushi-kun, I don’t want to hit ya!” -, a glancing blow from one of the gifted members of the little street gang.
Hey, maybe if they’re lucky, this little group is pissed off at Kenji for the kidnapping case they’re working on, and not for some other, reasonably large crime. Kenji has a nose for sniffing out new cases like no one else does.
(Except maybe Ranpo, but it’s not a new case if Ranpo solves it before the file is even opened. And it doesn’t count because Ranpo only solves interesting cases, and this one was not interesting to him.)
“Did you find anything on the boy we’re looking for?” Atsushi asks with a resigned sigh, standing with the man he still needed to take to the station as they awaited the authorities to arrive. It was always a debacle - the Agency tried to explain why and what they did, and who they are, and the authorities say, hey, aren’t you both a little young to be detectives?
At which point Kunikida usually has to be called, because, unlike Ranpo, Atsushi and Kenji are not lucky enough to deal with the same person every time the authorities and the Agency overlap.
Kenji shakes his head, blond bangs falling into his face with barely a speck of dirt in them. For a country boy, Kenji takes a lot of pride in being clean; it’s hard to imagine him covered in dirt and messing with hay somewhere. “No. I asked, but they said they didn’t know anything.”
“Did they seem like they might be lying?”
Kenji tilted his head. “Why would anyone lie?”
Ah, right.
“Are any of them gifted?” Atsushi already knows one of them is and is aware of it, like the girl who’d accidentally hit him in her rush to hit Kenji; it’d been a weak blow and it hadn’t felt like anything, but he’d still have to put in his report later.
God, he hates weekly reports.
(Maybe he’s spending too much time around Dazai. Or maybe he hates reports so much because he’s doing most of Dazai’s. He hates being a doormat.)
Kenji nods, his smile dropping for once; something darker, something that speaks far older than he actually is. It’s easy to forget Kenji is barely fourteen - the same age as Kyouka. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe the Agency would let children work with them, but a dark, ugly side of Atsushi wonders if they could survive any other type of life. “A few of them, but not all. It’s all low-level abilities.”
(Kyouka is always talking about shadows and the light, and how the Port Mafia was the darkness that trapped her, but Atsushi has to wonder - are they any better? It’s a morality question, surely, but morals are almost always pushed away in favor of whatever Dazai’s rambling about this time.)
“What was the girl’s ability?”
“The girl?”
Atsushi nods, glancing around the ring of now-unconscious people for the girl, and - she isn’t there.
She isn’t there.
How did she manage to escape without either of them seeing her? How did she manage to regain consciousness after taking on Kenji? What was her ability? Did it affect Atsushi? How much longer was this going to make his report?
Does it have something to do with their case?
“Never…mind…” Atsushi says slowly, glancing around at their surroundings, maybe to catch sight of her shadow. He does no such thing, but he doesn’t feel strange, and while Kenji doesn’t seem bothered by the sudden change in their plans, it’s certainly a rock on the train tracks.
“Let’s deal with things one at a time.” Kenji’s voice is firm, definitive. He’s definitely been doing this for longer than Atsushi has. (How long has Kenji truly been in the Detective Agency?)
Atsushi nods. They have better things to do.
Better things to do turns into a debacle on its own.
To make a long story short, it’s the middle of the night, Atsushi would really like to know why he’s currently being restrained by a bundle of bandages over his chest and arms, and Dazai is sitting across from him, on the countertop of the bathroom, cross-legged with his trench coat covered in water.
He has no scratches on him to speak of, but Atsushi, on the other hand, does. He doesn’t know how or why, but they are angry red slashes across his left arm, four parallel lines exactly, but they’re too deep to be a mere scratch.
Dazai blinks at him.
Atsushi is nearing hysterical so quickly that he can’t even yell, shout, or ask what the hell is going on - he simply blinks back at Dazai, the silence between them so heavy and stifling that it almost numbs out the pain of the slashes across his arm.
“Are you Atsushi now?” Dazai asks slowly, a glint to his eye that means he’s playing dumb on stupid. It’s something he’s made a habit of, Atsushi knows; not that it bothers him, necessarily, because Ranpo does the same thing.
“Yeah.” What else is there to stay? He’s more than certain he’s himself, but from the time he finally crashed in his bed, exhausted after a day in the sun and a day of paperwork, and how he woke up here, it’s all a blank. “Was I… not me?”
“No,” Dazai says cheerfully, dropping the end of the bandage roll he’d been holding; because they were loosely wrapped around Atsushi, they gently fall down his arms, all settling around his lap like a pathetic version of a First Aid kit. “I would love to know why, really!”
“What was I, if not… myself?”
Dazai’s smile doesn’t drop. It’s a toss-up as to whether it’s unnerving or exasperating. “It seems your ability has decided to run rampant.”
“You nullified it?” Atsushi asks, but it isn’t a question and they both know as much. When he tunes into his surroundings, he notices the little details - he’s in his Agency apartment’s bathroom, the window wide open. There’s a faint blue glow around Dazai, almost like a halo with the way it contrasts to the flickering mirror light behind him.
Atsushi himself is sitting in the tub, but the tub is dry, and there are claw marks across the porcelain. (Kunikida’s going to make him pay for that, ugh.)
“How did I end up clawing myself?” Atsushi settles on instead, finally, when Dazai allows him the time to assess his situation and ask something a little less stupid.
Really, a nicety of his.
“You didn’t. That’s the strange part.” As though sitting in his bathtub with a bundle of bandages around him, as though he’d been wrapped up like a present, hadn’t been strange.
The Armed Detective Agency sure does make for a warped sense of normalcy, doesn’t it?
“Then… how are the marks there?” While he’s aware he’s asking a redundant question, it won’t stop him; with Dazai, the man won’t actually let you into his train of thought until you ask something that reminds him to pull his thoughts outside of his head.
“I… don’t know.”
Ah. So it’s probably the work of an ability interacting with his because Atsushi hasn’t been unable to remember what he’s done under the influence of Beast Beneath The Moonlight since Fukuzawa’s ability washed over him.
And if Dazai doesn’t know either, it’s one of those situations where Dazai either decides that nothing will come of the situation, or he’ll obsess over it until he finds a solution.
“You attacked Kyouka.” So it’s of the variety where Dazai acts like nothing is wrong, from the cheerful smile on his face to his slumped-over posture.
(Still, there’s something that speaks of lost sleep, of the bags under his eyes; the way his shirt is more wrinkled than usual, and why it reeks of wine that is far too expensive for either of them to buy.)
Atsushi’s so consumed in his thoughts that he doesn’t register the sentence until the first, second, third time it repeats in his head.
In which he promptly stands up, stumbling over the barrier that served as the tub’s edge - “I did what? Is she okay? Is she safe? Oh, God, how did -”
Dazai gestured him back, stopping Atsushi before he was able to get out the door and see into the rest of the apartment. “She’s alright. Besides, you’re in my apartment right now!”
“Why am I…?” As far as Atsushi knew, Dazai didn’t have an Agency apartment. He didn’t like the barren halls or the layout, and so he was one of the few people within the Agency that had their own place.
Why he would waste his paycheck on something like that when it could be provided to him for free, he doesn’t know.
Dazai shrugged. “It was easiest to bring you in here since it’s empty. Just because I don’t live in my apartment at the Agency doesn’t mean I don’t have one that has my name on it, y’know.”
“So this is like… your spare?”
There isn’t a better word for it, at least not any that Atsushi’s frazzled mind can come up with; a dangerous slope, surely, but it makes sense.
Dazai does not flourish at the comment, but he nearly does, for some reason unknown to man and god alike, as neither of them can compare to the way Dazai’s mind works.
(There are, Atsushi thinks, two people in the entire world that can understand Dazai so well that it hurts; only two people, and one of them is their enemy, and the other is both of their enemies. Maybe that’s where Dazai’s obsession with partnerships formed out of rivalries comes from…?)
“In your incident report earlier,” Dazai says, ignoring Atsushi’s comment completely. “You said you got a passive hit from a girl who’d been fighting Kenji, and then she disappeared? Do you happen to know anything about that girl or that hit?”
Atsushi frowned, for what seemed to be the hundredth time today. (What time is it, anyway?) “No, not at all. I mean, I felt it, obviously, but it didn’t really do anything and her full attention was on Kenji, anyway.”
“Could she have possibly used her ability on Kenji?”
“No, she wasn’t able to get close to him.”
“Is there anything else today that you might be able to blame for what happened with your ability?”
“I - I don’t think so, I mean, the tiger and I have been getting along lately -”
“You have a bond with your ability?” Dazai asked, raising a brow, and wow does such a smug expression look ridiculous on him. However, it’s so commonplace that Atsushi barely has to think on it too hard.
Dazai is Dazai; smug and loud and lazy and sometimes, sometimes there’s this side of him that only appears in the shadows, the side that doesn’t care whether people live or die and the side that doesn’t care what happens to Atsushi.
Still, it’s a self-conscious shrug Atsushi gives, instead of walking back from the door to the cabinets, opening the medicine cabinet behind Dazai to see if there were bandages and hydrogen peroxide.
As expected, there were. Good thing Dazai always kept his bandages stashed away in random bundles, for when they inevitably pulled loose from his skin.
“I suppose I do,” he says. “It’s just, the tiger and I have to get along for me to control it, you know?”
“No. I don’t know.”
“...Right, I forgot.” Dazai can’t turn off his ability as Atsushi does; any ability is nullified at any time. It must be comforting, in a way, to know that unlike everyone else in the world, he is invincible in that way. In the same way, it must be terrifying. “Do we have any clue how that girl’s ability messed with mine?”
“Not at all,” Dazai said. “No clue how long it’ll last, either. This, effectively, makes you a danger to everyone at the Agency.”
Like they aren’t perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, Atsushi thinks but does not say. Underestimating the Agency is a sore subject for him - considering when he’d been new and the bounty on his head had been new and shiny and not impossible - but, still, there will always be the fear lingering under the surface of his skin.
However, this sounds like Dazai has a plan.
“What are you suggesting?”
Dazai beams, says “follow me,” as Atsushi’s in the middle of wrapping a bandage, and he does not confirm where they’re going.
Atsushi knows better than to ask, and abandons the bandage.
This is, of course, how they end up in the heart of Port Mafia territory, walking into the parking garage of a building so tall that Atsushi has to crane his neck to see the middle of; black and polished with tinted glass, floor-to-ceiling windows.
It’s far too elegant, all speaking of flaunted money gained in just the wrong way; all red-stained bills and grave-tainted residents.
The Port Mafia’s residency quarters aren’t sparse, but rather lavish; far too big for one person to live in, but too barren to be considered homes. They’re just apartments. A couple of penthouses, too.
He doesn’t think he wants to know where they’re going; the best he can figure is that Dazai is taking him to Kouyou, for some reason, but she has an Estate, and it certainly isn’t within the gigantic buildings here.
“Who are we meeting?” Atsushi says slowly, hesitantly, as Dazai flashes a smile at a camera before a little beep sounds out and the doors of one of the building’s lobby open, a flourish of black glass before them.
Even the lobby screams so much luxury that Atsushi almost asks if he should take off his shoes before coming in.
“You won’t like the answer, so I won’t answer,” Dazai says, which is an answer in and of itself. Oh, great. Who is he being forced to meet up with now?
Great.
Dazai practically dances into the elevator, smiling at the receptionist - ah, pretty woman, Atsushi understands -, but once they get there, it’s silence as they ride up to the twenty-first floor; Dazai’s grinning like a madman and Atsushi knows he isn’t going to like whoever he’s visiting -
The elevator door opens into a living room.
On the couch, with a novel in hand, and a trashy, torn-up coat tugged half under his legs and half falling onto the couch, is Akutagawa Ryuunosuke.
Atsushi turns on his heel, nearly avoiding the urge to smack Dazai. “I don’t know what you’re planning, but it’s going to be no.”
“I don’t have any clue what you mean,” Dazai says innocently, holding his hands up.
There are, at least, four emotions that flicker across Akutagawa’s face when he turns his head up from his book and sees them in the elevator; the three emotions being the following: surprise, fear, adoration, and then loathing.
In order: seeing two unexpected visitors, a weird train into fear that he didn’t understand, seeing Dazai, and finally, seeing Atsushi next to him.
“Why - why are you here, Dazai-san?” Akutagawa asks, remarkably put together given that Atsushi himself is still sort of scrambling, but he does so in a way that means he’s stock-still, even though he knows he should be doing something.
Should he be attacking? Should he be hiding behind Dazai? Should he try defending himself?
Honestly, Atsushi doesn’t quite know what to think of Akutagawa.
After all they’ve been through, with the Guild, with Dazai, it’s impossible to see him as just a villain. Atsushi knows that Kyouka sees Akutagawa as impossible to save, a man born into the shadows and treated as such, but…
Well, he doesn’t know.
Still, Akutagawa is incredibly powerful. The sheer range of his ability is massive; creates blind spots in Atsushi’s tiger ability that he despises.
(Maybe that’s why Dazai has decided they’re to be the next Double Black. Although, Atsushi had never liked the dreamy tone Dazai said it in, as though he was intentionally ruminating on past Double Black.)
Still, his guard is up; he knows he is not welcome here, although Dazai would say otherwise.
“Akutagawa, hey!” Dazai says, far too much cheer in his tone, again. He was strangely smug about this - so this was his plan.
Of course he was using Atsushi’s currently-messed-up ability to give a reason for team bonding, or whatever Dazai wanted to call it whenever he forced Atsushi and Akutagawa to hang out outside of missions.
(It had been once, a very, very awkward lunch, in which Akutagawa paid the entire bill and glared at Atsushi when he’d attempted to pay his portion, or some reason.)
“Dazai-san,” Akutagawa repeats, a bit dumbfounded if anything.
Atsushi’s gotten attuned to reading his facial expressions - while his expression is schooled and blank, like it always is after he has a moment to adjust, his finger is clutching too tightly to the spine of the novel in his lap.
(Was that one of Poe’s novels? Not a mystery one, surprisingly - Atsushi can’t quite make out the title, though.)
“We’ve been having some, ah, complications with Atsushi’s ability, you see,” Dazai starts, making a flourish of it, because he can’t help but do so.
He throws his arm out, and even from twenty feet away, Atsushi can see the way Akutagawa flinches, as though burned.
Interesting.
“And this involves me how?” Akutagawa asks.
Atsushi is starting to wonder the same thing, as Akutagawa closes the novel with long, skinny fingers, marking his place by twisting the corner of the page.
Dazai doesn’t falter. “He’ll be staying with you until we can be certain the Ability is no longer affecting him!”
Atsushi blinks and blinks again, but Akutagawa beats him to it, a stark outrage visible in the way he grits his teeth and how he jerks his head up so quickly his bangs fall into his face. “I am not allowing the weretiger into my home!”
“Can’t you just touch me and nullify the ability?!”
“He may be my partner in missions, but he is not an acquaintance suitable enough for this!”
“Are you refusing, Akutagawa?” Dazai says, but his voice - it - changes . Atsushi couldn’t tell what changed, really, but it’s colder.
Akutagawa shuts his mouth so quickly that the sound of his teeth clacking together is audible even from so far away.
Finally, after a note of tension that stretches on so long Atsushi is waiting for the elevator doors to close, Akutagawa responds. “...No, Dazai-san, I am not refusing.”
Dazai’s right back to normal. “Perfect! Good to hear, good to hear. Atsushi here will check in with me when he thinks it’s worn off, and from then, we’ll be good to go!”
With a hard shove from Dazai, Atsushi stumbles into the living room.
Coincidentally, that is exactly when the elevator doors start closing, and Atsushi off-hand notes that Dazai had been pressing the keep open button until then. Bastard.
While he shouldn’t call his mentor that, he doesn’t think, there isn’t another name that applies to the situation just as well.
As the elevator closes, Atsushi slowly turns toward Akutagawa, wondering whether he needs to dodge Rashoumon - it is a skill he’s acquired over the time they’ve known each other.
Surprisingly, he has nothing to dodge.
Instead, Akutagawa is staring at him, narrowed eyes and a glare apparent, his hands still clutching too-tightly to his novel. “I don’t like you, weretiger.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
Atsushi doesn’t say as much, instead electing to let Akutagawa continue.
“However, this is Dazai-san’s request, for an unspecified amount of time,” he continued calmly, “as such, you are allowed here. Touch anything, and I will kill you. Break anything, and I will break your bones. Wake me up before ten and I will slaughter you. Make yourself scarce.”
“Don’t you - want to know why Dazai brought me here in the first place?” He’s just letting me wander around his home?
Although, Atsushi does suppose Akutagawa did give him guidelines - touching or breaking anything would result in one very injured Atsushi, and waking him up would apparently result in a very dead Atsushi.
Still, it’s more freedom than he’d expected.
Akutagawa shrugs. “An Ability is interfering with yours and he needs you somewhere where you can be subdued without guilt in the case of an outburst. That’s all.”
“He didn’t say that!”
Akutagawa scoffs. He seems to have about three versions - homicidal, annoyed, and this, which is between homicidal and annoyed, but not close enough to have a good name for it. “It was heavily implied. After all, why else would he not leave you at the Armed Detective Agency you’re so fond of?”
And yet, he hadn’t -
I hurt Kyouka, he remembers, vividly, as the crudely bandaged claw marks on his arm remind him; I hurt Kyouka, and I don’t even remember it.
It isn’t that he doesn’t believe in the members of the Agency, because Atsushi is well-aware that all of them could beat him in a fight. (Sometimes, he has nightmares about more of Kunikida’s combat training. It was brutal, and he’s glad he doesn’t have to do that anymore.)
Dazai was right.
When Atsushi thinks about it, there’s this relief that floods through his veins; if his Ability acts up, it’ll be Rashoumon and Akutagawa with the job of restraining him.
He doesn’t like the idea of needing to be restrained at all, but if it can help him from hurting people… especially people he views as family by now, then it’s alright.
Living with Akutagawa for an undetermined amount of time is going to hurt his patience, and most likely, his pride.
“Down the hallway,” Akutagawa says, “on the right, there’s a spare bedroom. It should have no decorum and a bundle of blankets on the bed. You may grab the blankets.”
“Actually, I run pretty warm in my sleep -”
Akutagawa raises a brow, red eyes fixed on Atsushi in silence for so long that Atsushi shuts his mouth out of sheer insecurity. “The sheer room is not for you.”
“...Then… who is it for?”
“You’ll be staying on the couch.” Akutagawa, notably, did not answer the question, although Atsushi isn’t sure he does it because he doesn’t have a good reason to do so, or because the answer was something he didn’t want to share.
It was always impossible to tell with him.
“You only have two bedrooms in a penthouse?” Atsushi says, crossing his arms with accusation clear in his tone. Whatever intimidation he had, it’s lost when he takes a step forward and trips on the end of his belt.
(Look, it’s for aesthetic purposes, he doesn’t care what Kunikida says about functionality. So long as he remembers it’s there, he won’t step on it. Except right now, because he forgot it was there.)
With quiet snickers, Akutagawa hides his mouth behind his hand. (Does he hide his laugh, too? Hell, even snickering seems impractical for him, more snorting than anything.) “Were you saying something, weretiger?”
“Well - yes! You have a whole penthouse, and only two bedrooms?”
“Only two rooms were necessary,” he shrugs.
“Who would ever buy a penthouse when it only has two rooms?” Look, Atsushi may not have the mind of a rich man, but it didn’t make sense to him. And he knew the Port Mafia paid well, but there’s still a part of his head that still can’t fathom that Akutagawa has this whole floor to himself. A whole floor.
“It was commissioned,” Akutagawa says, a hum to his voice that sounds rather nice, actually - no, Atsushi is not going to continue that thought process. “A gift for my birthday.”
“From who?”
“Executive Nakahara.”
Call Atsushi crazy, but he’s rather certain that isn’t how the Port Mafia was actually supposed to work. How do you commission a penthouse?
And, wait a second, he didn’t think the Port Mafia was supposed to care about birthdays, let alone birthday presents, and from what Atsushi knows about Executive Chuuya Nakahara, he isn’t, necessarily, a kind man.
(From what he’s actually met of him, Nakahara is an anomaly; he’s got a temper to rival his pride, which is already extremely high, and he doesn’t care about casualties. He’d like them minimized, but he doesn’t care if there are any. He's almost gentle when the situation allows for it... unless Dazai is mentioned.)
“I - I don’t even know what to say to that.” At least Atsushi is honest, he thinks, glancing around.
Now that he knows it was, apparently, custom-built to Akutagawa’s tastes, he can understand a lot more of the decoration.
The floors are black marble, shiny and shimmery; whereas the walls are painted silver with a black accent wall adjacent to the door, red shelves, and red bookshelves, filled to the brim with different novels.
Huh.
He didn’t know Akutagawa liked to read.
(He’s never met him outside of work, though. Isn’t it strange - that work, to the two of them, is saving an entire city from destruction?
Well, that’s a gross over-exaggeration - sometimes it’s saving Yokohama, but most of the time, it’s finding missing persons for Atsushi, and murdering traitors for Akutagawa.)
Akutagawa glances up when he realizes that Atsushi isn’t moving, and heaves a big sigh, resulting in a cough he hides in his elbow. “Find yourself scarce.”
“What do you want me to do? I don’t have any of my things, so - I dunno.”
“Did you not hear me? Find yourself scarce.”
“That’s the issue,” Atsushi sighs. Nevermind. He should’ve known that this was going to be an insufferable week - he’s asking where they’re going next time Dazai drags him along without telling him where to go.
Still, all he’s met with is Akutagawa waving his hand, a dismissive manner if anything.
No, no, definitely a dismissal.
Atsushi slumps his shoulders, resigns himself to his fate of wandering around Akutagawa’s stupid two-bedroom penthouse, and they leave it at that.
“Do you…” Atsushi trails off, already knowing he’s embarrassing himself by this alone. His arms are crossed, to make sure his posture isn’t too insecure. Akutagawa likes to tear into his securities like a vulture to a corpse. “Do you have any clothes I can borrow?”
“They would dwarf you, weretiger,” Akutagawa says easily, not even looking up from his novel.
He’s gotten through a good chunk of it since Atsushi saw him last, which was about two hours ago.
Originally, Atsushi had intended to give himself a tour of the penthouse and circle back, but he’d ended up spending more time than he’d intended in the kitchen, glancing at the nearly-bare cabinets.
Hell, he’d seen a spider’s web in one of the cabinets. In a penthouse!
Still, he scoffs. “You’re only, what, seven centimeters taller than me?”
“That’s still seven centimeters you don’t have,” Akutagawa says smugly.
The next words are out of Atsushi’s mouth before he can stop and think whether they’re a good idea or not. “Y’know, I could say the same back to you, now can’t I?”
“Why would - ah.” Akutagawa is quiet for a minute, but his smug smile doesn’t drop. Is he capable of other expressions? Atsushi is starting to think the answer to that is no. And then, “weretiger, I didn’t know such things were of your concern.”
Atsushi’s face burns so redly that Kenji would ask if he needs aloe vera for his sudden sunburn. “That’s not what I meant!”
“That’s exactly what you meant.”
“Well - that’s not - ugh. You’re impossible. Do you have clothes I can bother or not?”
At Atsushi’s insistence, Akutagawa nods. “Yes. They’ll be in the dryer currently, I believe. Grab only what you need. I’m certain you can… call Dazai or what have you for your other necessities.”
Contrary to popular belief, it seems, Atsushi doesn’t actually talk to Dazai outside of work that often. He knows that he should, in theory, but Dazai never seems to answer his phone - if his phone is on at all - and it’s always easier to call Kunikida than to text Dazai.
“Yeah, I’ll do that.”
Silence hangs between them - and Atsushi doesn’t know why, but he feels like he needs to say something else, needs to figure out why it seems that Dazai’s name has changed the atmosphere.
Or maybe it hasn’t and it’s simply Atsushi losing his mind because Akutagawa doesn’t seem any different than he was just a few minutes ago. His fingers are still holding his page, his novel still opened; his coat still tucked underneath him. Even his expression is the same, still an echo of that smugness from earlier.
So why does the air feel like ice?
Why does the name Dazai mean so much to Akutagawa? Sure, he thinks that Dazai somewhat mentored Akutagawa in the Port Mafia, but even then, why would his validation and approval mean so much to him?
Atsushi isn’t stupid. He knows that’s part of the reason Akutagawa hates him.
Because Atsushi is still trying to convince himself that he’s earned the right to live, and he’s doing so with Dazai’s backing at every turn; whereas Akutagawa is certain of his right to live, but the where, exactly, is determined by Dazai’s word. Something entirely inaccessible to him, albeit not for lack of trying.
“That’s - uh, that’s it…”
He does not get a response, and Atsushi leaves it at that as he trails back toward the hallway.
It takes two more hours before Atsushi realizes there’s no way he’s going to handle living in the same space as Akutagawa for an undetermined amount of time.
Despite their similar stature in height, Atsushi finds that he’s right - Akutagawa’s clothes, a pair of sweatpants, and a sleep shirt, in this case - entirely dwarf him. The sleeves go down past his fingers and he keeps tripping over the hem of the sweatpants.
(The implication is that Akutagawa buys his clothing too big on purpose, as he’s shown several times what a Port Mafia salary can buy, but Atsushi can’t picture that and so he banishes the thought from his head without a second’s hesitation.)
In those two hours, Atsushi gets very, very hungry, and then he realizes that he needs to know where the first aid kit is due to the claw marks still marring his shoulder.
He checks the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet, in the vanity - neither have anything other than what seems to be old prescriptions for something.
He checks the kitchen. Under the sink, in the cupboards he’s already glanced through - nothing other than a strange drawer full of knick-knacks, some of which have blood on them in a collection that simply can’t be Akutagawa’s.
Where the hell is the first aid kit?
He hears Akutagawa before he sees him - while Akutagawa’s footsteps are dead silent, Atsushi’s gotten used to the weight of his presence; the way the shadows tend to bend in toward Akutagawa, trying to compensate for the rapid changes of his clothing around him as Rashoumon hungers.
“Why are you scourging around my kitchen?” Akutagawa’s voice is annoyed. He must not be used to company, then?
Or maybe he is, and he just doesn’t like Atsushi, which is still an incredibly likely conclusion.
“Where do you keep your bandages?” Atsushi says it point-blank, in the way he thinks Dazai would ask if it was Dazai here. Akutagawa values what Dazai has to say, and so maybe if Atsushi mimics the speech pattern, Akutagawa will subconsciously value his word, too.
This tactic doesn’t work from the way Akutagawa rolls his eyes. “Why would they be in the kitchen? Get up, weretiger.”
“I think I like it better when you don’t call me any names at all…” Atsushi mutters, clearly annoyed with the situation but not bothering to push it further. As is the constant push-and-pull of their partnership.
“It’s either bonehead or weretiger, so I’d advise you pick one.”
Atsushi lifts himself off the ground, feeling the popping of his knees before his tiger healing does as it usually does - healing the bruises before he even realizes he’s injured.
(Hey, it makes it nice for a couple of things - Er, he shouldn’t be thinking about that sort of thing. That’s the type of conversation he usually has with Yosano in the operating room. He and Ranpo are her favorites. Not because they never get injured, no, but rather because if they do get injured, it’ll be so bad they have to go to her.)
“Whatever. Where are your bandages, anyway?”
Akutagawa gestures for him to follow behind, and so Atsushi does; Akutagawa’s ratty coat doesn’t hit the ground, but it’s a near thing. It’s torn, in a way that speaks of age rather than style; Atsushi does wonder if he has an emotional attachment to the thing.
If Akutagawa is capable of emotional attachments.
After all, Rashoumon is created from cloth and fabric, right? Manipulated into shape? That means it’s most effective with a long coat, but certainly Akutagawa could afford to get a new one.
The custom-designed penthouse as a birthday gift spoke of that. (And Atsushi thought his salary at the Agency was nice. No one told him that Port Mafia members were getting paid so much.)
“Follow me,” Akutagawa says simply, redundantly, as Atsushi is already following him, but he doesn’t bother commenting on it. It’s more trouble than he feels is worth it and if he’s going to be stuck here for a while anyway, he’d prefer not to deal with Akutagawa’s temper.
The med-kit turns out to have its own shelf, a hidden alcove by the front door that’s revealed by pressing the seemingly-flat wall inward, allowing the drawer to open.
It’s extensive, from the bandages to the antiseptic to the bottled lidocaine, the scalpel and the stitch-kit and at least eight different braces and slings. Bloodstained, too, around the edges - the old stains are almost in the shape of a fingerprint, clutching desperately to the side -
That is a dangerous train of thought to follow, and so Atsushi does not follow it any further.
“What is it you’re needing, weretiger?” Akutagawa asks, boredom in his tone and his posture suggesting as such.
Atsushi gapes at him. He blinks, and blinks again, and blinks again, but even as his gaze slowly slides down to his injured arm, Akutagawa’s does not follow and so that blank expression stays the same.
“Bandages, I guess,” Atsushi says, startled that he had to say it at all. He assumes that his tiger healing is slower, but not entirely gone, based on the way the area is mostly numb to the touch and certainly not bothering him any. “And maybe antiseptic?”
Akutagawa reaches into the drawer, tossing Atsushi a roll of bandages - huh, they’re the same brand as the ones Dazai buys - and turning on his heel, immediately walking further into the penthouse.
Atsushi had explored as best he could, but he still wonders if he missed something. Maybe Akutagawa has a library. That’s something rich men do, right? Fill libraries with books they’ll never have the care to read?
Still, he’s left on his own to wrap his own wound, and for that, he’s somewhat grateful, if he’s being honest.
None of Akutagawa’s snappy commentary, or Dazai and his weird schemes - nothing other than a familiar, old routine, that he’d done when he was a child at the orphanage.
He was always getting injured back then.
Perhaps it was because he’d never manifested his tiger, or maybe because he was too young to do so, but he remembers some nasty injures - when a rock had been thrown at him so hard it split his mouth open; when his ankle got mangled after he’d fallen down two flights of stairs; when there was a slow, purple, and almost pulsing wound around his heart after the bare skin had been slapped with the sharp, corner edge of a meter stick too many times.
It’d never healed by itself, then. It’s a reality check that it isn’t healing by itself now, either.
He’ll be fine here, Atsushi thinks.
Akutagawa can’t be any worse than the death his childhood home had granted him.