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The blood was always cleaned off before he left the bathroom. None of the red liquid stained the porcelain, and the sanitizer and bleach masked most of the smell. But Atsushi could still faintly taste copper and iron on the tip of his tongue.
He’d seen several of some of Ryuunosuke’s worse injuries. Some messily stitched up, some clean and bandaged, others still open and nearly on the verge of infection; often a result of Ryuunosuke trying to mend his wounds himself. It took weeks before he let Atsushi at least try to clean his injuries and patch him up. Now, he did so without complaint.
The coughs were different.
Atsushi once saw it as just an odd character tick. It became Ryuunosuke’s trademark when they were still enemies and felt nothing but anger when they saw each other. The closer they grew, the more concerning those coughs became.
When Gin quietly told Atsushi that he’d had that cough for years, that it’d become something chronic that Ryuunosuke had never gone to get diagnosed for, Atsushi realized that it was something far worse. She wasn’t sure of the cause; the most likely being a result of their upbringing on the streets, Ryuunosuke’s poor immune system, and the life of a mafioso. Rare was it that a member of the Port Mafia live past thirty, at most, even in the best of health. Ryuunosuke was strong, incredibly strong--- but his body was not.
A body that had known the merciless streets of Yokohama and even more brutal Port Mafia could only last for so long.
Ryuunosuke didn’t come to Atsushi’s apartment much, being that Kyouka still lived with Atsushi as his roommate. She didn’t like it when he was in their apartment and Ryuunosuke made her uncomfortable, and so she took the pains to not be around if Ryuunosuke was. Ryuunosuke did the same. The air was thick with tension and stifled if they were in the same room together. It made Atsushi’s chest tighten painfully; he hoped, one day, they could at least learn to get along and Ryuunosuke to apologize for what he’d done to her. It would be a long road to get there, but Atsushi was hopeful.
Ryuunosuke was no longer the same person who told her to kill people through a phone, using an ability she couldn’t yet control. Atsushi knew he wasn’t. Kyouka would know someday, too.
Though he didn’t stay at Atsushi’s apartment often, the smell of blood lingered. It faded with time, but it took much scrubbing and water to get it away. The smell was stronger at Ryuunosuke’s apartment.
He tried to hide it from him. Tried to downplay his coughing fits that rattled his breath and bones so, stopping them in the middle of their kisses when Ryuunosuke felt the tell-tale tickle in the back of his throat. Atsushi once stopped him from continuing on when Ryuunosuke fell into a harsh sounding coughing fit in the middle of making love. He’d been determined to keep going, claiming that that he was perfectly fine, but Atsushi put his foot down, telling him that they could continue at a later point, that he was more than willing to simply sidle up to each other while naked once Ryuunosuke had drunk some water.
Ryuunosuke did all he could to try to keep the seriousness of his condition from Atsushi.
But he heard him, sometimes.
In the bathroom, the door shut or left at a small angle, a sliver of light brimmed beneath the door. There was the sound of muffled coughs and hacks from behind it, long, slender fingers gripping the edges of the sink as Ryuunosuke heaved. Atsushi tried to ignore it, his hands trembling as they gripped the sheets.
One night, Ryuunosuke’s coughing fit was especially bad. He hadn’t even turned on the light in his rush towards the sink, the coughs so hard that his jaw hurt and his eyes were strained shut. Hunched over the sink, he hadn’t even noticed Atsushi quietly tiptoe into the bathroom.
He froze when arms wrapped around his middle. He slackened when Atsushi pressed his forehead between his shoulder blades. Ryuunosuke’s hands fell to the pair laced at his stomach as Atsushi’s body shook and his back, so heavily scarred but littered with Atsushi’s caring kisses, grew wet as Atsushi choked back on a sob.
Ryuunosuke dully stared down at the splatter of blood staining the white sink, tasting specks of it on his teeth, tongue and the back of his throat. His rattled body wanted to sag into Atsushi’s warmth.
They didn’t talk about it, before. The subject of his being a mafioso and poor health was something Ryuunosuke pretended wasn’t relevant and Atsushi was too hesitant to bring up. And so they tiptoed around it, letting the weight of that elephant in the room grow steadily bigger the more they avoided looking at it. But now, it seemed as if Ryuunosuke’s coughs were getting worse.
His coughs seemed so much more violent whenever he returned with an egregious wound from a mission. His missions were another matter Ryuunosuke never talked about, and Atsushi didn’t ask him about them, either. Not since this relationship between them started.
As he helped Ryuunosuke out of his shirt, Atsushi swallowed hard at the large stain of blood on the white fabric before quickly tossing it away. The gash was long, though thankfully not deep. Running from the middle of his ribcage to his right hip. Ryuunosuke remained still as Atsushi cleaned it, flinching none and scrunching his nose only some at the smell and sting of rubbing alcohol. Normally, Atsushi would laugh and bop his lover’s nose for such an expression.
Atsushi’s expression was somber and unsmiling as he wrapped the bandages around the wound. His fingers shook. It didn’t escape Ryuunosuke’s notice.
Thin, slender fingers covered his own and Atsushi stilled. Ryuunosuke moved his arm so that Atsushi could sidle up beside him, the other man’s arm then wrapping around his waist. Atsushi rested his head against Ryuunosuke’s shoulder, tucked just against his chin, and closed his eyes. He absorbed the warmth of Ryuunosuke’s body and raised his hand to press it against Ryuunosuke’s chest. He smiled faintly at how Ryuunosuke jumped at the touch, then leaned into it.
He could feel Ryuunosuke’s heartbeat underneath his palm.
He hoped he would feel it for years to come.
“Have you ever thought about leaving?” Atsushi murmured.
The fingers on his hip twitched, then stilled.
“..You mean the mafia?”
Atsushi sought out his hand, lowering it from Ryuunosuke’s chest. He laced their fingers together. He kept his eyes lowered, staring at the moonlight pouring out from Ryuunosuke’s apartment window.
“...Yes.”
Ryuunosuke’s silence was long.
He wasn’t angry. Atsushi’d seen Ryuunosuke when he was angry, as that hatred and rage was once directed at him. And then he’d seen Ryuunosuke angry at others, he’d seen that rage pointed towards enemies who landed a hit on him when they became unsteady partners. No, he was not angry.
Atsushi turned his eyes towards his lover and saw a lost, confused man.
A man who was resigned to his fate.
“..Before the Port Mafia, I had nothing,” Ryuunosuke began, “Before-- Before Dazai-san-- had it not been for him, I would still be on the streets. So would Gin. We would’ve died there. It’s likely neither of us would be alive today had it not been for him and the Port Mafia.”
He said it flatly, as if he were talking about the weather and not something so dire as the violent life he’d been pulled into because he had nothing. As if he were not talking about his own life as if it were garbage, tossed into a gutter once crumpled and stepped on.
It gave me a reason to live.
Atsushi hated it.
His hand squeezed Ryuunosuke’s.
“It’s not fair,” Atsushi breathed.
“Life rarely is,” Ryuunosuke said, huffing a laugh that was not mirthful. “You’d know that just as well as I do.”
Atsushi didn’t smile, lifting his head and raising his hand to cup the side of Ryuunosuke’s face, moving it to face him. Those fathomless gray eyes were tired, dark as pools of ink, eyes that were so capable of such emotion, intense and soft; the shadows beneath them were thicker now and yet the moonlight made him even more handsome under its glow.
“I know,” Atsushi said. “And I don’t care: you deserve better than this. You and Gin both. You deserved better than what you had. What you have. You deserve so much more than the life of a criminal and I wish you could see that.”
He was halfway into Ryuunosuke’s lap by the time he responded, Atsushi’s head now pressing against Ryuunosuke’s thin, lithe chest. He was half-asleep and almost missed the reply, not having expected it. He knew Ryuunosuke wasn’t the most talkative man. He’d accepted that a while back.
“How could I deserve that when I don’t deserve you?”
Atsushi sat up just to slap his uninjured side, earning an unenthusiastic ‘ow’ before he told Ryuunosuke to shut up and not say such things anymore, eyes glaring gold in the darkness. Ryuunosuke just rubbed his slapped shoulder, giving Atsushi a dour expression before Atsushi gave him a sweet kiss. It was soft, tender, but lingering.
“..Let’s go to bed,” Atsushi murmured against his mouth.
Ryuunsouke hummed.
They went to bed and did not speak of it for weeks.
But the words stayed with Ryuunosuke for the days to come.
Yosano’s eyes widened when, after the frantic knocking on her door, she saw a distraught Atsushi hoisting the man who’d become a sort of uneasy ally against his back. His clothes were covered in blood; it didn’t belong to Atsushi. The mafioso she knew only as Akutagawa was unconscious against Atsushi, barely held up by the shaking arm wrapped around his waist. She could smell the blood just as she opened the door, flooding into her home.
“Please,” Atsushi begged, voice cracking and eyes burning, “Please, Yosano-san. Help him. Help Ryuunosuke.”
It was what was supposed to be a simple mission gone horribly wrong. Ryuunosuke had been drained of energy already, and Rashomon’s shield couldn’t quite protect him this time, nor could Atsushi. Yosano kicked Atsushi out of her operation room once he helped Ryuunosuke out of his coat and shirt, closing the door with a grave expression. She didn’t let him back inside until after she was done, and Atsushi was white as a sheet.
His ears were still ringing from how Ryuunosuke screamed as Yosano used her ability on him as he sat by the resting Ryuunosuke’s side. Atsushi took his hand in his own and fell asleep like that, exhausted and sore, right at Ryuunosuke’s bedside.
When a young woman with long dark hair and gray eyes that gleamed like the finest onyx came to her doorstep, lips pulled into a severe frown, Yosano let her in with only a knowing smile and an offer of mint tea.
Ryuunosuke woke up see Gin curled up on a chair, a half-finished book in her lap, and asleep. Feeling warmth pressing into his side, he turned to see Atsushi curled up against him, head perched on his chest and silver hair tickling his chin. It was dusk, and the wind was blowing faintly against the window.
Realizing that he was awake, Atsushi stirred to see gray eyes looking at him as thin fingers stroked his cheek.
He grunted when Atsushi flung himself at his lover, landing completely on top of him and not the most gently, then paused when he felt Atsushi begin to shake against him. The trembling didn’t stop until Ryuunosuke slowly ran his hand along back. Over Atsushi’s shoulder, he saw Gin already awake, half-smile on her lips and eyes tired from lack of sleep; she was relieved.
She moved her chair to sit beside her brother and Atsushi, the latter now curled up in his lap and fretting over Ryuunosuke’s state of health, much to her brother’s half-hearted annoyance. There was no heat in it, she knew. Gathering her empty tea cup once she’d properly scolded her brother for nearly letting himself get killed (again), she left the room and the pair alone.
“You’re handy with a knife,” Yosano mused, taking the dishes from her and gesturing for her to sit or leave as she pleased.
“As are you,” Gin replied, legs crossed as she sat.
Yosano’s lips curled into a faint smirk. “I’m a doctor, aren’t I? I ought to be good with a knife if I’m to be doing my job properly.”
Gin hummed and contemplated what it would be like to work under a doctor who’d taken her brother in without a word of protest, who’d treated him with an ability that was both unsightly and miraculous, without judgement, than the doctor she already did.
“Atsushi,” Ryuunosuke said.
“Mm?”
Black and silver hair entwined together, just as their fingers did.
Ryuunosuke remembered the horrified eyes and scream of his name, ripping out of Atsushi’s throat, before he blacked out, and he closed his own eyes tightly.
He never wanted to see that again.
“Would it be okay...” he whispered, “..For me to find a different reason to live?”
Tired as he was, a smile curled on Atsushi’s lips.
“..You know the answer to that already.”
Raising their entwined hands, Atsushi pressed his lips to Ryuunosuke’s knuckles.
Ryuunosuke felt Atsushi’s pulse in his fingertips and wanted to feel them for years to come.
