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“...You’re going to have to—”
“Shut up jinko, I know.”
Akutagawa peels away his coat, his greatest line of defense. Less so, because it is now soaked, but now there is only one layer between the world and what makes him inhuman and Akutagawa hates it. Especially hates that he has to show this to the jinko.
The job is over, their involvement should be done, but Akutagawa unexpectedly dip in the bay certainly complicated things. Every time he tried to walk away, the jinko grabbed him and pulled him back. Which he was only able to do because every time Akutagawa moved, more water leaked into his systems, shorting out things and making his movement stutter. It was only when the jinko brought up that dying like this would be the greatest disappointment in Dazai-san’s eyes that Akutagawa finally let the jinko manhandle him into an alleyway.
“...Are you going to...”
“Shut up jinko.”
When Akutagawa peels off his shirt, removing his last layer of defense as he reveals the intricate system of metal and gear that lie under his shirt, ticking and shifting with every breath that he takes. There’s not even any skin to cover it, there wasn’t enough left for a skin draft—those bastard that went after his friends were cruel, and barely left enough of himself to move. Akutagawa grits his teeth as the memory slips through a crack in his mind.
The bastards got his friend, left them strewn across the floor for the crime of simply wanting to live. But he got them back, in the end.
An eye for an eye (leaves the whole world blind).
So then you take all the eyes that you can, and spit them back at the world in anger. It will start to care. Eventually.
“Akutagawa?” The jinko breathes and Akutagawa is knocked right back out of the memories, and it slips back into the recesses of his mind. Damn glitch, projecting things, he snarls to himself. Just another thing that means that he isn’t human. He glares down at Atsushi, who doesn’t even flinch as his fingers hover over the mechanical workings of Akutagawa’s chest, the soft red glow reflecting off his bright eyes, “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing just fucking fine jinko. Just hurry the fuck up before you mess something up.” Akutagawa opens his mouth to say, but instead of saying that, the damn glitch roars back to life, and he goes, “I don’t know, Atsushi.”
Atsushi’s mouth falls open, and a gasp slips out and Akutagawa growls to cover up the sound. He squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to erase just how soft and weak his voice sounded from his mind. For several seconds, he buries the memory of just a second, shutting his eyes so tight that it nearly hurt. He didn’t know why this...glitch made him act like this, but he was doing to get rid of it.
Even if the only way of fixing it laid in the jinko’s paws, digging through his chest. Repairs were never fun—especially since Mori never shut Akutagawa down, just disconnected his pain sensors and went through the operation whistling as he pieces Akutagawa apart, only to fix him again.
But the boredom of that is preferable to this, stuck in a dark and dirty alleyway while soaking wet while Atsushi’s fingers mess with his mechanical chest.
“I’d be able to hurry up if you just told me what to do.”
Akutagawa bites his tongue, both in an effort to not snap back and to try and keep the glitch at bay, “Remove the screws and take off the protective plate. Then tell me what you see from there.”
The jinko let’s out a week chuckle as he uses his nails to start turning the screws, “It’s like I’m doing open-heart surgery, but the patient is guiding me through it.”
“Exactly.”
Atsushi stills for a moment, and the situation seems to hit him. Akutagawa knows the workings of his body like one knows their own heart—in a random, abstract sense—but there was no time to get Akutagawa to a mechanic. If they’d take him in the first place.
“...So…”
“Just get on with it.” Akutagawa snaps, and then the glitch races through his system and makes him say, “At least it’s you and not anyone else.” Akutagawa tries to force his jaws to close as Atsushi stares at him, “I wouldn’t let anyone else this close.”
Atsushi’s wide-eyed expression flattens into a smirk and before he could ask anything else and take advantage of Akutagawa’s sudden truthfulness, Akutagawa reaches down into his own chest and starts trying to rip out screws.
“Wait! Okay, okay, I’ll won’t ask.” Atsushi huffs, before using his nails to remove the screws, dropping them onto the ground one by one as the sick feeling in Akutagawa’s stomach rose. His internal systems were doing to be revealed to the world, and he remembered the repulsion he felt - covering his mouth to keep the bile from rising up - as he saw himself in that tiny, dirty mirror, most of his chest and lower part of his neck replaced with squirming, twisting wires and pumps.
“There.”
Atsushi’s probably going to feel the same.
When you see something so monstrous, what else can you do but gag?
“What next?” Atsushi asks, voice light but serious.
What?
“You aren’t disgusted?” He breathes instead. Atsushi just stares at him and then tilts his head.
“At what.”
“At that, ” Akutagawa gestures towards his chest, before casting his gaze to the sky, “To that disgusting mash of mechanics and blood and viscera.”
“...Akutagawa?”
“Don’t try to—”
“I’m sorry, but I need to know.” Akutagawa whips his head down to glare at Atsushi, but there is no malice in those sun-death eyes, rimmed with metal, “What do you think of me?”
“You are Dazai-san’s best subordinate.” Akutagawa snarls out as the words are forced from his throat. He has no idea what the glitch did to his systems at large, making his chest seize like he was a child again and removing his ability to lie, “You are his favored person, and you are human. And I am simply not.”
“Akutagawa have you ever seen me! ” Atsushi cries out, taking Akutagawa’s head in his hands and forcing him to stare.
Akutagawa wasn’t sure what the jinko thought he wasn’t seeing.
He was still looking at Nakajima Atsushi, a cyborg who had half his head, and his lower arms and legs replaced with parts.
And Dazai still thought that the jinko was more human than him.
“Yeah, and what? If it were the parts that made someone not human, then we would be beasts used for profit.” Akutagawa turns his head and forces himself to smirk at Atsushi, “Or do you not know history?”
“Shut up.” Atsushi hisses, glaring back at Akutagawa.
“Ha—” Akutagawa’s chest seizes up, and he feels more than he hears the soft sizzling that’s coming from his chest, “Atsushi hurry up.”
Atsushi springs back into motion as black spots begin to appear in Akutagawa’s vision, “What am I—”
“Take out my heart and look what you can see from there.” Akutagawa snaps, and when Atsushi stares, “I trust you with it, Atsushi. Don’t do anything weird.”
And thankfully, to save him from the embarrassment, Atsushi rips out his heart and Akutagawa stares down at the strange machine, glowing red before his vision goes black.
Akutagawa wishes that it wasn’t so comic that he starts up with the windows bootup sound, but here he was, chuckling over waking up, before the events of the last few (hours, minutes) seconds of consciousness come rushing back him and his eyes fly open.
Just to be met with Atsushi’s, glowing with the force of a sunset and just as beautiful and Akutagawa doesn’t register how long he’s been staring until his body forces him to blink.
Atsushi jumps to the other side of the alleyway like the huge metal cat that he can turn into, before quickly getting to his feet, shooting a “Okay, go see a doctor!” before he flees.
Like a coward.
And then Akutagawa stares at the spot that Atsushi just occupied, and he buries the feelings that had risen in his chest.
Like a coward.