Chapter Text
The Port Mafia was like any business, and like any business, they offered up days off.
Chuuya hadn't taken a day off in almost four years, and he had built up quite the arsenal of free time.
Currently, he was headed to a wine tasting, which was nice and quiet. It was located in a cafe connected to a bookstore, so if the wine wasn't good at least he could go on the hunt for a decent gift. He was pretty sure that Higuchi's birthday was coming up, and she might enjoy a romance novel. Maybe even one that had someone looking vaguely like Akutagawa on the cover.
Even if she didn't, Chuuya could enjoy the romance novel.
But more importantly, it gave Chuuya an excuse to meet with his one friend not with work.
Atsushi was a blessing, a friend that Chuuya could talk to at the end of a long day. Sometimes, Chuuya admitted, there was a certain appeal in having a friend that he didn't have to work with. Plus, Atsushi was introducing him to some really good books, and Chuuya got to teach Atsushi about appreciating a fine wine.
They kept up their monthly book club to both their appreciation. Even if most of the time it involved getting caught up in some kind of gang issue. With any luck, Chuuya wouldn't have to use his Ability against whatever happened this time.
“Hey!” Chuuya nodded at Atsushi, who perked up and waved. “It's been a long month, hasn't it?”
“So long.” Atsushi groaned. “I've had to reorganize everything since the boss learned a more efficient system. I'd have so many papercuts if I couldn't heal them.”
And wasn't that something. Atsushi also had an Ability, but the most Chuuya could understand of it was that he healed from injuries. Whether that had an upper threshold, Chuuya didn't know and quite frankly he didn't want to know. At the very least, it meant that Atsushi could heal from someone taking a slice at him with a knife.
That poor mugger really had no clue what he was getting into, trying to rob them.
“I know what you mean. There's this one guy who managed to misfile all his cases from the last year.” Chuuya had sent the guy off to Akutagawa, and cleanly gone to work trying to find and refile all of the work. The way the Port Mafia worked was that they needed clean books so the government wouldn't place pressure on them to play by their rules, and the idiot had threatened that. Chuuya had hated every second of that, but at least he had the protection of his gloves.
Atsushi winced, leading the way into the bookstore.
“I'm glad I haven't had to deal with that yet.” Atsushi hadn't said what he worked at, but Chuuya could figure that it was an office job of some sort. Some kind of file clerk, by the work Atsushi talked about. He hadn't said anything either, but he had been careful enough in his vagueness that, at best, Atsushi thought that Chuuya had the job of an office manager.
“So what kind of book are you gonna foist on me today?” Chuuya grinned, and Atsushi matched it.
“It's a scifi novel this time. And I think you'd enjoy it.” Atsushi paused. “There's vampires though, so.”
“I told you, I don't like Dracula. I want the story direct, so I can pick it apart. If I have to do the dirty work of figuring out the story then the book ain't good.” It was half of why Chuuya didn't like detective novels. He liked stories that took him on a ride, not ones that challenged him to figure things out. He got enough of that in his daily life.
Chuuya snapped out a leg, catching a pickpocket and sending them flying. Atsushi spared the pickpocket half a glance, before sighing.
“It's not like that. I mean, it is a mystery novel, but is isn't like Dracula at all. The Strain is a lot like that zombie book you recommended.” Atsushi heard someone yelling from a nearby store, and they paused as the bank across the street blew up. Two figures flew out of the smoke, brandishing swords, and while everyone else ran away, Atsushi and Chuuya kept standing outside the bookstore.
Really, Chuuya should have seen them becoming targets of the wannabe bank robbers.
His Ability kicked in, and he jumped up out of the way of the sword, landing on it and sending it dropping down with thirty times its own weight—Chuuya could do the math, given that the average sword weighed about half the weight of the average handgun, but instead he liked the panicked and pained face that the robber made when his sword dropped down and cracked into the pavement.
It happened so fast that Chuuya hadn't realized that Atsushi had been stabbed until he heard the cough.
“Ah, hell.” Chuuya reached out, taking hold of the other guy at the same time Atsushi took hold of the sword sticking through his chest. “Don't move it.”
“It's fine.” Atsushi tried to sigh, but instead he coughed up a trickle of blood. He gave the guy who stabbed him a flat look. “You didn't want this back, did you?”
The other guy, the one whose sword Chuuya had sent into the pavement, had abandoned trying to pick the sword back up and instead had pulled a knife.
“Really?” Chuuya dodged the amateur attempt at stabbing him, catching the arm in his leg and kicking the guy back into the rubble and dust of the bank. “You can heal from that?”
“I can heal from a lot.” Atsushi coughed some more as he yanked the sword out of his chest. He groaned, rubbing at the spot before stabbing the sword down. He spat out a glob of blood, and grinned. “This isn't even the first time I've been stabbed.”
Atsushi punched the guy who stabbed him, and he stumbled back, before Atsushi's arm bulged, almost seeming to transform, growing white fur before it turned into a blur of a punch that turned the other guy into a blur, sending him flying back into the bank he'd just robbed. Chuuya took a moment to look Atsushi over, but there wasn't a sign he'd been hurt beyond the initial cut to his shirt and what little blood had seeped out of the wound.
“Well, that's annoying.” Chuuya kicked the bags of money back into the bank, one of them hitting a robber and sending him down again. He jerked a thumb down the street. “Come on. The cops are gonna make this place too loud for us to talk, and there's another wine tasting happening at the sister branch of this bookstore. We can go there.”
“Oh, will there be that Merlot? I liked that one vintage we tried last month. The '68?” Atsushi spared the bank one last look before letting Chuuya take the lead. “It had a nice aftertaste.”
“It did. We should get a bottle and split it some time.” Chuuya walked away, the sounds of sirens rapidly becoming background noise. “That way I can convince you that Dracula is a hack book and what you really should consider the height of horror literature is Coraline. Now that's a scary book.”