Chapter Text
i)
Perhaps it begins with echoes across a coal mine and the poisoned hands of titans, with the donning of a coat and a proclamation for the future. With a folder and an umbrella and a bouquet and a ghost that won’t leave. Or with a ship, where they scream to the highest heavens for a man they both hope will hear, for values they will not change. Challenge at its highest, the twin roaring of monsters fighting for the right to be alive. With an alley, impressions like deafening gunfire and stinging palms and the crack of duty.
Perhaps it begins like this:
There is a dead prickling on Atsushi’s neck as he carries Akutagawa through the storm, coat clinging around his shoulders like something parasitic, heart thumping in his chest and blood soaking through his shirt. “Hold on,” he says, and it is so far from a command that Akutagawa learns how to breathe again. It is a hoarse, rasping thing, and in that moment there is no rain, no blood, and simply—
Or like this:
Akutagawa feels lost like a man drowning as he watches Atsushi crumble, like he is nothing but dust, like he has never been anything but, in front of a grave that does not feel real and the touch of the sky upon the earth. “I wish you did not know this man,” he says, and Atsushi brokenly turns to him with a smile like a car crash, ugly and watchable, and says in reply: “But I do not know this man.” And despite that, despite feeling like a lie, careful and jagged around the corners of his mouth, there still lies the bouquet. It is like light in a chasm Akutagawa doesn’t understand. But he understands enough: this is a man who was a mentor, and Atsushi does not know him, and now he never will.
Or maybe:
There are two men standing on a bridge with death in their eyes and hatred in their hearts, promises kept like shards of glass. “I hear you,” they say, across that bridge that feels like an eternity stretched out between them. Their voices reach, thunder strikes, and the battle begins. “I know you,” they say, and eternity ticks a little shorter.
Perhaps it begins with a request:
This bone-deep struggle that rings in their ears and pierces their veins with something raw. It begins with desperation, and in that moment, it is a kindness. That is where it really begins—a kindness, a will to keep living, and a shared grasp of suffering that yearns like something breathing.
Of course, the way it really starts looks a little more like this:
Akutagawa is in the middle of shining his shoes for a meeting with Chuuya-san and his assigned team in an hour when his infernal phone starts vibrating in his pocket. Vibrating, because he isn’t going to subject his own senses to anything that comes from the phone company’s preset ringtones (or let Higuchi suggest him some, as her music taste is equally as terrible). He sets down the polish and fishes out the phone.
From: Unknown number
Akutagawa-kuuuuuuuuun~!
Akutagawa stares.
There is only one man he knows who types like that. There is only one man he knows who dares type like that. To him, no less. Even Kajii, with his incessant misspellings and aggravating emoticons, wouldn't pull shit like this. Higuchi would rather fling herself into Black Lizard before pulling anything remotely close to this. Which leaves…
For his own sake, and possibly his sanity, Akutagawa stops staring and quickly sets on saving the number. Even if it’s pointless, because in the years between when this man had been his mentor and now, the man has grown an inexplicable fondness for throwing his mobile phones into the sea.
From: Dazai-san (23)
It’s been a while~ ヾ(☆▽☆) Answer the call you get after this, okay??
From: Dazai-san (23)
I'm not the one callign thoo hahahahsdKDUNDFIKDAIDSDAJSTSND
From: Dazai-san (23)
jkjalKMKSCAWQOPKQJAMSKAIJDKS9MCSLKMA X.A;;A;LSJD
From: Dazai-san (23)
Excuse me. That was a mistake. I will now cease contact. Thank you
Akutagawa keeps staring. There’s a new notification about thirty seconds later.
From: Unknown number
Kunikida stole my phone ┐(￣∀￣)┌
Akutagawa’s still staring.
He is so absorbed in his staring, in fact, that he almost ends up missing the call entirely. He fumbles with the slip of plastic and lapses into a good coughing fit before finally answering.
“Hello, sir,” chirps an earnest, nearly retail-sounding voice, “I was referred to this number by a peer of mine who told me that you had a request to make of the Armed Detective Agency. I offer my humblest apologies, as that peer is currently unavailable due to,” the voice pauses, “circumstances. If you would be so kind, this is the perfect time for me to hear the details of your case!”
… “Weretiger?”
As if that particular voice could belong to any other pathetic piece of scum!
Even following this realization, Akutagawa finds himself at a loss. He simply doesn't have enough time to summon the usual raw anger capable of castrating men.
Meanwhile, the weretiger lets out this choked-up sound that makes him sound like he’s dying and immediately hangs up.
“Coward,” spits Akutagawa at his phone.
When he chooses to tell Higuchi about it later, she only stares at him. It’s as if staring is the new equivalent of polite social interaction.
“You should keep answering the calls,” Higuchi tells him. Her voice has enough single-minded determination in it that Akutagawa takes it to mean she’ll take the calls for him if he doesn’t, which. Is probably something Higuchi would do, given the chance. And is also something that should not be allowed to happen. Ever.
So, in the tradition of not giving Higuchi the chance, he refuses point-blank. “No.”
“No?” She genuinely seems curious. Her determination levels are rising. Like a mildly horrifying matchmaker. “Senpai, that call was initiated by your... old mentor, wasn't it? You’re always going on about him as a person you deeply respect, and I deeply respect you, since you're a person I respect, and—I think you should listen to what he has to say about this, that is, even, and especially, if it means contacting the weretiger, which you probably should do more, considering—”
“Higuchi.”
“Yes, senpai?”
“Shut up. Stop pursuing the issue.”
Higuchi does shut up and stop pursuing the issue. The problem from then on is that someone up there has some sort of deep-seated vendetta against him, and now the weretiger keeps fucking calling him.
(It never occurs to Akutagawa the possibility that Dazai is simply fucking with him. Then again, anything associated with Dazai must be taken with Serious Reverence and Vigilant Respect, so “Dazai-san” and “fucking with people” is probably just not a sentence that occurs naturally in the mind of the Akutagawa.)
The pattern goes like this: Dazai starts texting him on various different numbers and telling him to answer the following call. The weretiger, willingly or unwillingly, is always the one calling. It’s gotten to the point where he’s memorized the number just so he can swipe “Ignore” and go about his day blowing up something in the name of the Port Mafia. It’s routine.
Of course, in the manner of Routines and All Things Akutagawa-senpai, Higuchi takes notice. A lot. And very often.
“Have you talked to the weretiger yet,” Higuchi wants to know, because Higuchi lied when she said she would stop pursuing the issue.
The question is so normal it’s stopped being oppressive. “No.”
Higuchi considers this for a moment. “Senpai, forgive me on all accounts if I do say something that offends you,” she says.
Akutagawa waits for her to get on with it.
She fidgets, and does not get on with it.
"Well?" he snaps.
Higuchi startles. “Well, you should! I was just thinking! Maybe. Perhaps. You could negotiate something with the weretiger, so you can work with him better; weekly meetings, or even training schedules! Like Black Lizard’s! Gin-chan always says it increases the teamwork between the troops!" Gin said what now? "It would do you two a lot of good, since you haven’t interacted much since your last mission together.” Briefly, alarm crosses Higuchi’s face as she realizes what she just said might be construed as her telling Akutagawa what to do beyond the normal lines of misplaced intense compassion. “Not that I’m giving you orders, senpai! I would never! I wouldn’t dare! I just think that…”
“Higuchi.”
“Yes, senpai!”
There’s a beat of silence, where both of them wait for Akutagawa to say something along the lines of "Shut up or I'll dismember you." Akutagawa surprises himself when he doesn't.
“Tomorrow’s call,” he says, feeling vaguely harrassed, “you pick up the phone for me and settle a meeting with the weretiger.”
“Of course, senpai!” And as she walks away in triumph at what she’s long recognized to be a cordial dismissal, she scrolls through her contacts list that must be about as long as some holy tome and starts making calls.
The woman and her damn earnestness.
Akutagawa puts his head in his hands. He's a dead man.
Dazai-san doesn't bother to text him this time. The weretiger just. Appears. On his doorstep.
"What," Akutagawa says, less flatly than he'd like, and makes a choking sound that is absolutely not out of discomposure. He had been in the middle of having a grocery store packed meal for breakfast when the doorbell rung, and since basically no one rings the Akutagawa door—all candidates for knowing about the place are more likely to barge in or are high profile enough to not need to—he had been entirely prepared to ignore it and finish his breakfast.
Except.
"Uh," says Nakajima Atsushi, cringing. Akutagawa can't identify what exactly he's cringing at, because the whole situation is absurd and Akutagawa is extremely tired. It's 10AM on a Saturday. Akutagawa's wearing a fucking house sweater and reading glasses. Gin took his coat to the laundromat and it's not open until the afternoon on Sundays. He is beyond the realm of caring.
Akutagawa shuts the door with Rashomon on principle.
Three seconds later, his phone is ringing. Infernally. Akutagawa wants to take a page out of Dazai's book and start chucking all of his devices into the great beyond.
"Hello," he greets without looking at the Call ID, because if he sees something like Dazai-san (42) and hear the weretiger's voice from outside his apartment door with his current mental state he'll flip his shit.
"Hello!" It's not the weretiger on the other line. It's Dazai himself. Akutagawa feels his spine straighten and his knees lock. "Would you care to let our dear Atsushi-kun in? He's waited so long~"
Akutagawa hears an only slightly muffled banging on his door. "Is that Dazai-san?!" the weretiger is yelling. He sounds on the verge of hysterics. "I knew something was off! This isn't where he told me I would be!"
Akutagawa opens the door.
Nakajima Atsushi looks at him, bewildered, fist raised, and then finds himself abruptly displaced, because then Akutagawa ropes him into his apartment with Rashomon and shuts the door.
"Done," Akutagawa says. Nakajima Atsushi looks at him again, extra bewildered. He looks like some ruffled street cat. The white cat hoodie he has on doesn't help.
"Perfect!~ Now, Akutagawa-kun, if you would be so kind as to put the call on loudspeaker, so our Atsushi-kun can hear me?"
The disturbance labelled 'Our Atsushi-kun' makes a face. "I can already hear—"
"Shut up!" Akutagawa puts the call on loudspeaker.
"Hi, you two! Sorry if your plans didn't quite match up with mine, but I'm sure we're all happy to be here now, aren't we?" ( The weretiger's face worsens. "Didn't quite match u—" Akutagawa slaps a hand over the weretiger's mouth and grunts, thoroughly ignoring any protests). "L et's get along just for today, I have an itinerary planned!"
"What the hell!" The weretiger's ripped Akutagawa's hand off his mouth, because all the strength basically left him the moment Akutagawa heard the word "itinerary". "Dazai-san, why are you making me work with him again?"
Dazai pauses for a moment. "Would you believe me if I said, the recommendation of a very good colleague?" Static crackles. They stare. "...Extracurricular credentials? Okay, maybe not. Regardless, Akutagawa-kun, tell Higuchi-chan thanks for me!~" Before Akutagawa can throw up coughing, Dazai continues. "Let's get on to the itinerary, now, shall we?"
As becomes evident over the course of the next few weeks, nothing on that itinerary involves "just for today."
Akutagawa and the weretiger glance at each other in preemptive, or perhaps predestined, (or really, Dazai'd) despair.
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, had he the opportunity to be described by literally anyone ever, would not be called "patient".
The rules are spread across the mass of low-ranking operatives through stories in bars and whispers in warehouses and careful warnings. They are stories from people who have been subordinates to the man before, stories from people who have seen other people die at his hands, and they all speak of the same things:
You will take up only the bare minimum amount of his time, say only things that are essential to the mission, allow yourself to be questioned, and promptly get lost. You will not be late. You will not fidget or squirm. You will not show any sign of incompetence. You will not make him angry under any circumstances. Only fools do, and fools never make it to the next morning fully intact.
The weretiger is different.
Of course, he's just as much of a fool as the rest of them. In Akutagawa's right opinion, he is even more of a fool than any collection of fools he'd ever had the displeasure to work with, combined. It doesn't help that the bastard's ability that makes it expressly difficult to rend him to shreds—though not, Akutagawa thinks, for lack of trying. It has also occurred to him that since six months have passed, Akutagawa can very much attempt to rend the weretiger to shreds, with interest.
It is, especially, occurring to him now.
“What are you doing, weretiger,” he snarls.
For some context: after the war ended, the Agency developed the habit of crawling all over Yokohama at any time they could, making finding people nearly impossible, completing the right paperwork an entire feat of its own, and putting an unnecessary dent in his free-time. Akutagawa has about three more missions lined up after this one, and if this takes any longer, he's going to make someone bleed.
Akutagawa carefully does not think about his own contribution to the situation. What Akutagawa does think about is the utter absurdity of him, a well known asset of the Port Mafia with several responsibilities to carry out, in his goddamn work coat, standing in the middle of a busy Starbucks waiting on what appears to be, for all intents and purposes, an overworked intern.
The weretiger doesn’t even look up, because he's bastard scum on the level of Yokohama sewage. He's been stuffing his cheeks with what looks to be the crepe from the stall outside and typing up something with a speed to rival gods of lightning the whole time Akutagawa's been here, and he wants to strangle the fucker. “Mmf?”
Revision: an absolutely infuriating overworked intern.
“An hour,” Akutagawa says. It’s a miracle he hasn’t blown the place to shreds yet.
“Mmf.” More typing. Akutagawa doesn't want to know what the weretiger is working on that's so urgent, or what sort of inefficient, bumbling mishap happened that whatever he's typing is more important than this briefing.
Akutagawa takes a deep breath and tries again. “I have spent an hour looking for you,” he says, patiently, “and you are here, several blocks away from our agreed point, in a Starbucks, wasting time, and you have nothing to say for yourself? At all?"
The weretiger finally looks up at him, widening his eyes in surprise like Akutagawa hasn't been trying to talk to him for a whole minute now. Akutagawa is about to ring up the pissy blond from the Agency if only for the lack of situational awareness, but Mr I Can Do Whatever I Want jumps to his feet before he can entertain that thought any further.
"Akutagawa!" the weretiger scolds. Scolds. “Why are you here, of all places? Weren’t you supposed to get the briefing from Tanizaki-kun?”
“Tanizaki,” he says, patiently, “was not at the bridge. Dazai-san graciously informed me that he was unavailable. You are now my contact.”
The nuisance closes his eyes and slaps a hand to his forehead. A few weeks on Dazai-san-forced semi-cordial partnership terms, apparently, have done wonders for his bullshit-tolerance scale. It's now all the way down with the best of them: gone now was the nervy zero, hello to the immediate questioning of prior life choices. “Why?”
“Because,” says Akutagawa slowly and sharply, “Dazai-san said so.”
Dazai-san, he reminds himself. It’s all for Dazai-san.
The weretiger's eye twitches. It’s a tick that almost always succeeds in pissing him off. “I’ll assume you haven’t been briefed at all, then? Where do you want me to start?”
That’s it. Akutagawa is done pretending he has any patience. He hauls the nuisance (who weighs about as much as two pieces of paper, despite all the food he's seen the weretiger ingest) by the back of his collar, laptop, crepes and all, out of the Starbucks and onto the street, and then drops the man-tiger on his behind.
“Ow,” says the weretiger intelligently. “What was that for?!”
“Your existence,” declares Akutagawa, with no small amount of vitriol. “Now, the brief, before I end it on this very sidewalk.”
(Behind them, Starbucks-goers peer curiously at the two, and decide, wisely, to ignore them. There may be a few people recording.)
“Sheesh, touchy.” The weretiger produces a file from nowhere, like all Agency people tend to do, and proceeds to sigh. The irresponsible wretch has the gall to sigh, like he’s the one forced to wait for an hour. Akutagawa has places to go to. People to blow up. (That's a lie to himself. Dazai-san picked his break from all current Port Mafia operations to call him in. It may have also been artificially engineered to ensure Akutagawa had the time to go around chasing the weretiger, but. Well.)
The brief isn't long, because the weretiger can be trained in some things. Their ensuing argument, however, takes a while. It always does.
(“So. Rogue military infestation. How do we kill them.”
The weretiger's face warps, in that telling way. Akutagawa extremely dislikes what it means. It means he's about to be told off for a perfectly reasonable line of inquisition. He starts counting under his breath. One... two...
"Lawnmower!" Look at that, it even comes on cue. "We don't! How long will it take you to understand?! We arrest them and turn them in!”
“Examples cannot be set otherwise. Prisons can be broken out of. How long will it take you to understand?”
"The Agency is on thin ice already. You can't expect us to—"
"You think too much," Akutagawa ends up saying. "Dazai-san has entrusted this case to us. If he wished to do it his own way, then he would have given us more specific orders. Enough of this. If you win against me in battle, we will do it your way. Is that acceptable?"
The weretiger slaps a hand over Akutagawa's mouth. "No! No it is n—OW! Why the fuck did you bite me?"
Akutagawa wipes his mouth. The weretiger wipes his hand against his shirt. "You deserved it.")
They end up making a compromise. It's one that conveniently sidesteps all Agency involvement in the case, kills less people than Akutagawa would like but also more than he expected, and requires a call to Tachihara, but the compromise is made. It would be a lie to say Akutagawa is pleased, but he has enough say in what happens for it not to matter. Six months have passed, but that doesn't mean the spirit of what he was doing, whatever he was doing, what he was learning, had died.
The truth is that you are here in front of me. The weretiger's view on life is just as valid as his.
He doesn't say that. Instead, he says, "Are you sure you want to do this outside of Agency policy?"
The weretiger gives him a strange look, one that Akutagawa can't parse yet, but might be beginning to. He says, "You think too much," and lets it go. Just like that.
Infuriating.
The rest of the meeting devolves into easy, insulting snipes and the eventual decision not to say anything to Kunikida or Mori about the arrangement. It's almost a routine at this point, six months solidifying... something between them. Akutagawa is of the personal opinion that he could have gone without it, and suspects it mutual on the weretiger's part.
It’s not that bad, if he’s being honest. He could get used to it.
(Something in his head that sounds suspiciously like Higuchi tells him he already has.)
So in the end, it all really starts with the combined efforts of Dazai-san and Higuchi, which is a sentence that should never cross anyone's mind, ever.
It cannot be said, however, that Akutagawa and Atsushi did not do a good portion of the work themselves.
Below an abandoned building used as a remnant base:
“Weretiger, if you do not move, I will consider moving it for you.”
“Akutagawa. This is a tunnel, and these explode. I literally cannot afford—"
“Do not underestimate my capabilities as an ass-kicker.”
“Did that actually come out of your mouth? I’m really not, just—just hold on a moment, I think if I short the blue one...”
The bomb sparks. "Fool! That’s the wrong wire—”
“Oh fuck—"
In a graveyard:
"Akutagawa," greets the weretiger.
He sounds tired. There are bags under his eyes and a tremble to his step, and he's standing in front of a grave that Akutagawa hasn't seen before. His shoulders hold something that's not quite familiar. It's not grief, that's for certain, not regret, but something close. It's still uncomfortably fragile, even for someone like the weretiger. The thought slides into his chest uneasily: when had he divorced the idea of the weretiger from fragility?
Staring at the weretiger standing slumped in a cemetery, he finds that he doesn't really want to answer that question.
Apparently, Akutagawa's silent too long. The weretiger sounds, if even possible, more tired when he says, "Go away."
"You're holding a bouquet," Akutagawa points out.
The weretiger turns around. His glare is sharp edges—good. Akutagawa is much more comfortable with the idea of an irritated weretiger than a brittle one. "I said," he growls, "go away. I don't want you here."
It occurs to him, then. Who this grave belonged to. "I thought you hated him."
Nakajima Atsushi rubs at his face and stares at the ground. "I do."
"You don't bring people you hate flowers."
"...I know that."
"You're holding a bouquet."
"I know I am! Do you think I'm stupid?! I wish—" The weretiger chokes on the force of his own indignance. He takes a moment to collect himself, but Akutagawa is an expert in weretiger language by now, and even if he wasn't, he would know enough to see that Nakajima is falling-a-fucking-part. "I wish I... that I didn't. But I bought one, and now I'm here." He's silent for a moment. He doesn't look tired anymore. He just looks lost. "I just thought that... this grave... would do with a bouquet, I think."
"You think the strangest things," says Akutagawa. "Would you rather not destroy this grave and make sure he never finds rest?"
"I wouldn't," admits Nakajima. There's something tight about the way he says it. Like he wishes he could say yes. "It's a grave. A service to a dead man. It would be disrespectful."
"You've never been particularly concerned with respect."
"Hey." It probably sounded weak even to Nakajima. "I concern myself with respect plenty."
"Is he worthy of your respect?"
"No. But I choose to be better than him. The him I knew, at the very least."
Akutagawa frowns. "The him you knew," he repeats.
"Well," starts Nakajima. "I don't think I ever really knew him at all, the Headmaster. The one who died." He says this like there is a difference. It's almost concerning. "The one living... he doesn't speak to me anymore. I don't think I knew either of them." He crouches before the grave, and he sets the flowers down. His face is blank. "There was a possibility, but that's. That's gone now."
"So you brought him a bouquet," says Akutagawa.
Nakajima nods. "So I brought him a bouquet."
In the middle of Yokohama’s warehouse district:
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not very sure setting fire to that building was the right course of action, precisely.”
“Oh, spare me. What would you propose the right course of action be?”
“...Not arson.”
“So there is no right course of action.”
“Are you even listening to me? When have you ever cared about a right course of action?"
"I will only deem listening to you worth my time when you start being coherent.”
“You're the one that's always—do you even know what the word coherent means?"
“Yes, I do. It’s the opposite of you.”
"So help me, Akutagawa, I have a lighter and I'm not afraid to use it."
"I thought that was what this was about."
"Ethics and pyrophobia are not the same thing!"
Enemy territory, near Shibuya:
“So if we get out of here less than alive," says Nakajima very seriously, "Yosano-sensei will kill us.”
Akutagawa's in the middle of tossing a bunch of goons into a pile, but he still grits his teeth and turns his head. “What?”
“I meant literally." Akutagawa still does not see the point. Nakajima punches a few more people into submission before he continues. "She'll kill us literally, see. If we get out of here less than alive, or hurt in any way, I will drag you to the Agency to get killed by her with me, and if you complain, I can flex on you. You deserve a share of my suffering.”
"I think I'll stick to the Port Mafia infirmary, if you will be flexing on me," he says, while thinking of a response. What the hell does one say to that. “Has anyone told you you make no fucking sense?"
“No? Maybe?" says Nakajima. "It’s how the Agency works, so it's got to count for something.”
Akutagawa is of the firm opinion that it does not count for something. “I have concerns."
“Wait until you meet Ranpo-san," snorts Nakajima, who is currently upending a roof onto a couple of unfortunates. "Let's see what happens to those concerns."
He lets Rashomon cut off some hands; they'll live. "Your lot is occasionally more disturbing than the mafia."
Nakajima looks at him exasperatedly, and, well, there goes more limbs. "You know, a while back I would have been offended, but now I'm just used to it. So thank you. I'll take that as a compliment."
"I've never felt such disdain towards flattery in my life."
A bridge in Yokohama, six months earlier:
"I'm going to be honest with you. I don't understand you at all. You say you've kept your promise, but you are here to kill me still."
"Your terms were to not kill anybody in those six months. Those months have finished, and you must realize that you appeared as well. For what reason is there to be here but to kill me? The truth is that you are here, in front of me..."
"Don't twist my words with that face. You're thinking of nothing but fighting me right now, aren't you? Of killing me and proving that worth of yours?"
"You seem like you understand me very well."
"No. I really don't. Why do you do that?"
"What?"
"It's like you're allergic to being a better person. You take my deal, you fight with me in war, but at the end of it all, you keep proving to me that you're just a killing machine. A monster. Why do you do that? Why do you kill?"
"...Killing gives me value. Does it look like I am good for anything else?"
"You can learn. The world is filled with people who don't kill. Every day. There's no saying you can't be one of them."
"How gratifying. I do not live in such a world."
"But you did, for a while."
"So I did. And I did not belong."
He adds the weretiger's number to his contact list. He saves it as Nakajima, because, well. No one but him will see it.
They continue to meet every 10AM on Saturday, even when Dazai stops bestowing them training itineraries. It happens gradually; one weekend Dazai just isn't available to call or be called, and Nakajima Atsushi arrives at his doorstep anyway.
"Uh," he says, the same way he did the first time, and Akutagawa finds it so damn funny he doesn't stop laughing (coughing) until they reach the car.
After they get in Akutagawa's car, the routine goes like this: Nakajima asks where they're going. Akutagawa tells him where, usually the training rooms Black Lizard rent out, or the warehouses by the port. They spend the ride in silence, Akutagawa driving, Nakajima staring out the window (possibly to make sure Akutagawa isn't driving him into a cage, but most likely because Akutagawa hates car conversation). When they're done sparring, Akutagawa either drives them back to his apartment complex for a late lunch in one of the cafes nearby and then drops off Nakajima at his dorms, or if Nakajima has extra work to complete on a Saturday, they eat at a restaurant five blocks away from the Agency building, where Nakajima will insist on walking the rest of the way to his office. Sometimes, if neither of them care for a sat-down lunch, they go to that one grocery store they'd bumped into each other at and get meals straight from the fridges there. They keep it up for a couple of weeks.
("You should really learn to drive, you know."
"Akutagawa, I'm a full-time office worker. I turn into a tiger that can leap across two roofs at once. I don't need to learn to drive."
"So can I. That's no excuse."
"Yeah, but all you do is tie people up and act intimidating all day. I have paperwork to do."
"...No talking in the car."
"But you started it??")
There has never been a stranger routine in Akutagawa's life.
Nothing really prepares him for how much stranger it gets when a routine is broken. Because, get this: if it keeps happening, you can pretend that it happens on its own, like it's something that happens to you. When something comes up, and you suddenly feel vaguely bad because you had plans with someone, it's a lot harder to pretend.
Akutagawa had been involved in a raid one late Saturday morning and had the incredibly discomforting realization that he would have to. Alert the weretiger. He's staring at his phone screen like it's an alien organism that arrived via meteor when he gets a notification.
From: Nakajima
Are you working rn
The slight mollification he gets from not having to craft the message himself is overshadowed by the realization that dear god, he's on the docks waiting to board a ship he's going to explode and he's texting someone because he can't meet them for lunch.
Regardless. He stays strong.
To: Nakajima
Yes.
To: Nakajima
Are you busy this evening?
What. Why did he send that.
From: Nakajima
No, finished up all my work at the office. Nothing extra coming in until tomorrow anyway
From: Nakajima
Your place? Or dojo? When?
Akutagawa doesn't allow himself to think about it.
To: Nakajima
No training. Can't get injured, long op coming up early tomorrow. But I can make it for dinner. 7?
From: Nakajima
Sure. Pick me up later
It's official. The world has gone insane, and Akutagawa Ryuunosuke is making dinner plans with someone he's tried to kill on multiple occasions. He tells himself it's because they're partners. Co-workers. He tells himself it's because Dazai-san would be mad if they didn't rendezvous at least once on a Saturday. He tells himself it's because Gin won't be back from her op with Black Lizard for at least five more days.
He explodes that ship with extreme prejudice.
He picks Nakajima up from his dorm building. He's dressed surprisingly well: almost reminiscent of Akutagawa on free mornings, cable knit sweater, well-fitting slacks, and proper boots. It's a sight different from how Nakajima usually looks when they have lunch together; then, Nakajima is nearly always in a variant of his work dress shirt, or a short-sleeved hoodie and a pair of shorts. Regardless of how he's dressed up, it's still not much compared to Akutagawa, who has an extensive selection of expensive coats and shirts, but considering he's dressed down for dinner, they make a good match.
...This is the weirdest dinner he's ever been to. And usually Akutagawa kills people at dinners.
"This is the weirdest dinner I've ever been to," Nakajima informs him cheerily as he gets into the car and dusts himself off. "Where are we going?"
"New sukiyaki place. It's actually not far," Akutagawa says, adjusting the mirror. "And don't get used to it, weretiger." A pause. "Also, I'm driving, so shut up."
"Car hasn't started yet. I can say anything I want."
"Don't be a joke. Get your own damn car."
"You know, that sounds a lot like what I said back when we were fighting that creepy stone guy, except a certain someone—"
Akutagawa starts the car. Nakajima doesn't stop talking, but Akutagawa makes no move to correct him.
When he's dropped Nakajima off and he's back at his apartment, Akutagawa firmly does not think about things like: his car smells like weretiger. The most regular person he's picked up and dropped off with that car is the weretiger. He just had dinner with the weretiger, who he calls Nakajima Atsushi in his head. He's been having lunch with the man for some months now.
The dinner was nice.
The real moment Akutagawa realizes that he has actually gone certifiably, irreversably insane, he's alone in his apartment with a cold cup of tea and an open window and he's wondering when Nakajima will show up. When, not if.
The prospect of that, the sheer certainty—it doesn't trouble him much at all, actually. He looks forward to it.
Well. Clearly, his subconscious has gone too far. He drops his teacup, experimentally, and watches it crash like it can alleviate some part of the screaming in his soul. He feels no better than he did a minute ago, which is concerning, considering aimless violence is one of his coping mechanisms. Right now, though, there are greater concerns: for example, calling Higuchi.
"Higuchi," he says despairingly when she picks up, "I blame you for everything."
Higuchi, on the other hand, sounds absolutely ecstatic and entirely too cheerful. "Senpai?! Does this mean—have you finally—"
Akutagawa ends the call before Higuchi can mentally scar him with her expectations.
He cleans up the mess in his living room, picks up an old war text, and settles for waiting.
He still blames Higuchi.
The dinner doesn't happen just once. Mortifyingly, it happens even when their schedules become increasingly hectic, and "10AM on Saturdays" becomes less of a guaranteed time they'd both be free and more of a definite sign of interference on Dazai's part in those early weeks to get them to meet each other at a specific time.
What this means is sometimes the lunches happen on Sunday.
Sometimes they have Monday dinners.
Sometimes Fridays.
They have a very disturbing knowledge of each other's schedules at this point. Regardless of how disturbing it is, Nakajima Atsushi starts to become one of the people Akutagawa sees the most often, and he almost certainly has no input on that except for ugh.
(Nakajima starts attempting to pay Akutagawa gas money. Akutagawa throws him out the car with Rashomon until he takes it back.)
A bridge in Yokohama, six months later:
"I'll be honest with you one more time."
"What is it."
"You've given me your answers. But they don't make sense."
"They make sense to me."
"But not to me. So I want to ask you again."
"There is no end to your questions, are there? Get on with it. Will you ask me about how monstrous I am? Why I'm nothing but a killing machine? Why—"
"Are you happy?"