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“You really should be more careful,” Atsushi is careful to keep his fingers at the lightest feather touch against the lean muscle of Akutagawa’s arm as he stitches closed a wound as best he can. It’s no masterful work of medicine, but it keeps the blood from flowing. “Rashouman can’t always protect you, you know.”
“I’m perfectly capable of handling myself, Weretiger,” Atsushi could’ve predicted that response down to the very words he would use. It’s routine at this point, a normalcy he’s grown to find comfort in.
He ties off the stitches, restraining the urge to kiss Akutagawa’s pale shoulder in apology for the pain - even if it doesn’t show on his expression schooled to neutrality, Atsushi isn’t stupid enough to believe he’s that numb.
“Clearly not.”
“Why don’t you try providing better cover next time then,” the ever-cold mafioso chides with his usual disinterest. “If you’re so worried.”
“Of course I’m worried about my boyfriend.”
For the nth time, Akutagawa bristles at the title - less of a displeased grimace and more of a satisfied shiver, if the underscoring of a soft smile on his lips is anything to go by. It’s sweet on his eyes, fills his chest with some kind of feeling.
Atsushi has gotten used to reading the small parts of him. The way he fiddles with the tips of his fingers when he has something to say but won’t, as if he’s twisting the combination lock of his mouth, keeping them trapped on his tongue. Or the way the puts a hand over his mouth to hide his laugh, because for as beautiful as it is, it always descends into coughs and wheezes edged in pain, and he worries that the aching of his lungs with every breath may show on his face. Or how, whenever he sleeps, he has to face the door, just in case, so that he knows he has his blind spots covered.
Atsushi knows how to read him, all his hurt and heartache slipping through in the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he turns his head away if Atsushi says something too intimate, as if he can ignore it altogether.
Sometimes…he wishes he couldn’t see it.
“You should be more worried about yourself,” Akutagawa huffs, and Atsushi sees his fear, his anger, what is damn near close to hatred as eyes blacker than ink traverse the garden of blooming bruises on his skin. He’s seen it before and he knows he’ll see it again.
It’s heartwarming in a silent, unspoken, way.
“At least I’m not bleeding.”
“Technically you are,” Akutagawa jumps in, eager like a puppy to grace Atsushi with another gruesome science fact. “Bruises are just blood vessels bursting under your skin. Like tiny little hemorrhages.”
And yet Atsushi finds himself laughing, his humor all but broken at this point - Akutagawa has the honor of claiming ownership of that.
“Maybe you should join the agency,” he suggests for the millionth time, already knowing the response he’ll receive. “Wouldn’t have to worry about me there. You could be my knight in shining armor.”
Akutagawa scoffs with his usual dismissal, “Maybe you should join the Port Mafia. You could complain to me about safety all day.”
“Nah,” he inhales, silencing the inane desire to press his concern into kisses and pepper them across cold-flushed cheeks, to laugh as Akutagawa recoils in disgust. “You’d get tired of me too fast.”
Akutagawa rolls those dark, soulful eyes of his which means, in a nutshell, “No I wouldn’t.” And it’s okay that he doesn’t say it out loud, because Atsushi can glean the unsaid words from the gentle curve of his smile, or the way let’s his hair fall in his eyes, a waterfall of obsidian.
Nights like these are a blessing to Atsushi. Even if they tail-end hurt and pain and the discomfort of battle in dead-of-winter temperatures, there is safety to be found the way Akutagawa warms his tiny apartment. For most of his life, it’s always just been him.
Now he has someone to share the silence with - even if that someone is quiet and blunt and awkward at the best of times. Atsushi doesn’t mind.
He finishes up with the bandages, and spares his boyfriend a small smile which, to his utter surprise and genuine bewilderment, is returned. It’s slight and small, but it glitters in his eyes, and Atsushi adores it all the same.
But even still, a question rises in his throat.
“Why won’t you take care of yourself?”
Akutagawa looks at him like a traitor, like a treasonous snake, only for a moment, for a split second of confusion.
And then he drops his eyes, casting them to the hardwood floors, dark eyes tracing the very lines of each veneer plank.
“What is it you want from me, Weretiger?” He asks, voice uncharacteristically soft, skirting the edge of a whisper.
Atsushi swallows his uncertainty on a gulp of air, “I just want you to know how loved you really are.”
At that, Akutagawa descends into a fit of coughs as if on cue, dark hair falling into his eyes as he turns his head away. Atsushi’s fingertips burn to touch, to push his bangs from his face and stroke his fingers down pale cheeks. Because he’s never been taught another way to love.
It’s always been touch, because words are cheap and hard to digest, and actions simply don’t speak loud enough. But he can’t touch, because Akutagawa doesn’t want to be loved that way.
So Atsushi is going to adapt.
“Shut up,” Akutagawa barks in that way of his - the way that holds no heat but boasts insecurity instead. If warbles from his throat, tearing his voice apart.
So Atsushi continues, because even if Akutagawa doesn’t want to hear it, he needs to. Or at the very least, Atsushi needs him to.
“But it’s true. You are loved, I love you.”
“I said shut up, Weretiger!”
“I love you-“
And then in the blink of an eye there’s a palm pressed to his mouth, pushing him back against his bedding with a startling force. Akutagawa hovers above him, sharp features turned soft under silver moonlight.
”I told you not to say that,” he breathes heavy, hand sliding away from Atsushi’s lips as the hesitance creeps back into his voice, guilt written in the crease of his brow.
All that power and he still looks so small, sitting before Atsushi with his eyes downcast. It’s a beautiful dichotomy, and plays it so well, at once soft and sharp.
”Why?” Atsushi curls his fingers into the sheets beside him, expanding his lungs with air, though it doesn’t feel likd enough. “Because you don’t believe it?”
He doesn’t need the down turn of delicate lips to tell him that he’s spot on. Akutagawa’s eyes - eyes that people have called empty, soulless (Atsushi is a firm believer that they simply aren’t watching close enough) - travel from point to point in the small room, fleeing Atushi’s at every turn.
Atsushi nudges him with a knee, demanding his attention, “Well tough shit.”
That earns him a small grimace lined with fondness - he takes a mental picture, stores it away somewhere safe where he’ll never forget it.
“So fucking vulgar.”
He purses his lips to hide a smile but the huff of a laugh escapes him nonetheless, a prison break of the giddiness Akutagawa Ryuunosuke seems to instill him with.
“I’m not asking you to say it back. Or to let me touch you,” he solidifies - because he’s not. All Atsushi wants is to love him in a way that’s comfortable for him. “I’m…I just think you should know.”
Silence eclipses them, then, wriggling at their feet, draping itself around their necks like an old friend - Atsushi’s hardly uncomfortable with it.
When you fall in love with a quiet soul, you get used to silence. In fact, it flips the concept of silence on its very head. It becomes no longer a punishment, an awkward stutter in conversation to be pushed past, but a safe space, a comfort, a solice.
If Akutagawa were never to say another word to him again, he’d still live a happy life in his dating presence.
But the silence doesn’t stretch on forever.
“Start with one hand,” Akutagawa says in that clipped manner of his, voice a low rasp as he nods towards Atsushi’s right hand.
He takes a moment to process, “Huh?” Because is this actually an invitation? To touch, to hold, to cherish? It’s not as if Akutagawa has a hands-off policy, but physical intimacy isn’t really…his style.
Atsushi knows this, that sometimes, most times, actually, it’s too much for him to sit through and so he pushes it away, even the thought of it makes his skin crawl. Beside the brush of fingertips when Atsushi dresses his wounds, or, if he’s lucky, a kiss now and then, their relationship is built on something far estranged from touch.
But now…
“Don’t make me spell it out for you, Jinko,” there it is again, Jinko. A nickname Atsushi had destroyed for so long slowly being morphed into something else entirely, a resolution of fondness that makes his heart do backflips in his chest every time he hears it. “Just…don’t touch my face.”
And oh how quickly Atsushi nods his ascent.
Akutagawa takes a breath, visibly forcing his shoulders to relax as Atsushi reaches instinctively for his hand - it’s cold to the touch, his skin pale and soft against Atsushi’s own.
Sparks don’t fly, flames don’t engulf him, the world keeps rotating, spinning on its axis as it always has. Just now…he gets to touch his boyfriends hand, and it makes him insanely, irrationally happy. It’s no movie scene - if it was, people likely would’ve stopped watching before it even began - but his heart feels too big for his chest all the same.
Slowly, cautiously, giving Akutagawa every oppertunity to say no, he drags his fingertips along the sinewy muscle of his forearm, up past his elbow, avoiding the freshly applied bandages wrapped around his bicep, until hd traces his way to his pale shoulder. Just for the hell of it, he draws a small heart with the tip of his index finger.
Akutagawa watches him the entire time with shallow breaths and attentive eyes, tracking every movement of his hand. Atsushi doesn’t blame him - touch us a mysterious, nebulous thing to him, Atsushi knows. He’s not surprised.
Mind going soft and fuzzy around the edges, Atsushi takes more liberty, sweeping his touch across the shape edges of his collarbones, tracing the line of his neck. He drinks in every one of Akutagawa’s shallow breaths, pressing his palm to his chest and keeping the rhythm of his heartbeat trapped in his fingertips.
It’s only when Atsushi accidentially glances the edge of a knuckle against the sharp angle of his jawline that he flinches away. It’s just the smallest adjustment, a barely there tilt of his head as he shies away.
Oh shit. Of course he had to go and fuck up his boyfriend’s rare display of vulnerability by breaking the one rule he’d set in stone.
“S-sorry I can stop-“ he moves to pull his hand away but long fingers coiled tight around his wrist half his retreat. Too stuck in shock to do much else, he watches as Akutagawa pulls his palm back to cold cheeks, leaning his face against Atsushi’s palm.
And then slowly…slowly but without intent to change course, Akutagawa reaches for his other hand, delicate, barely-there in his touch but there nonetheless. He guides Atsushi’s hand to the other side of his face, eyes closed, lashes casting soft shadows on his cheeks - Atsushi’s stalls breath stalls in his chest as he commits the image to memory.
And god (if there is one), he has never wanted simply to be physically close to soemoen so bad in his life, to feel Akutagawa’s heart beating against his own in a perfect, mismatched rhythm, to press their foreheads together and curl into each other’s space.
He’s scared to ask and yet he manages,“Ryu…Can I-“
The shift is sudden - like a jump scare in a horror movie, only a hundred times less scary. Because Akutagawa wraps his arms right around Atsushi’s chest without warning, head bowing low to find refuge in the crook of Atsushi’s neck. It’s strange and new and sudden, and it makes his heart compete against his thoughts in an aimless foot race.
He doesn’t waste it, this opportunity he’s been given. He doesn’t waste his boyfriend’s vulnerability on something as trivial as internal panic.
As softly as he’s able with the urgency pervading his chest, he curls his arms around Akutagawa’s body, dipping his head to press a barely-there kiss to soft, frayed hair. His split ends are in dire need of professional help, but Atsushi is fully ready and willing to admit he likes them. Likes the frizzy appearance they bare, the way they make Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, of all things, soft. They’re a chip in his perfectly crafted armor.
He relishes the moment. Immortalizes this feeling - the fullness of his chest, the swell of his heart, the feeling of each breath being cleaner than the last.
Until a soft hiccup leaves him fumbling.
Akutagawa’s shoulders shake in his hold. Tears wet the collar of his t-shirt.
“Why are you crying, Ryuunosuke?”
“I’m not,” a most typical and predictable response from his boyfriend - Atsushi knows better.
“Yes you are.”
There is a long silence that saturates the air and curls tight around them, drawing them ever closer.
A silence that breaks when Akutagawa whispers,
“No one has touched me like this in a long time.” Atsushi expects him to call it off at that, expects him to decide it’s too much, too uncomfortable, too unfamiliar…but he doesn’t. He stays right where he is and presses their chests togehter and whispers, so quietly that the soft hum Atsushi’s AC unit nearly drowns him out,
“I forgot what it was like.”
Oh. What a different answer from what Atsushi was expecting. What a heartbreaking answer.
“I guess…I need to hug you every day then,” he decides then resolutely, tightening his grip on his boyfriend - because maybe, maybe if he holds on tight enough, nothing can take Akutagawa Ryuunosuke from him. “So you’ll never forget again.”
There’s a pause. Then a sniffle. Then a breath that stands on trembling legs. Then Akutagawa pulls away, standing with the stability of a man drunk, pale skin flushed red with the aftershocks of tears.
“I should go,” Atsushi’s heart sinks in his chest.
He doesn’t often pleased with his boyfriend - if only becasue he knows that Aktugawa is not a man so easily swayed by begging. If anything, he views it as pathetic, groveling. If you wish to ask anything of him, it must be with a strong voice and stronger will.
But Atsushi can’t muster that will at the moment. He still feels, sometimes, like the lost, lonely little boy he once was, craving love and breathing with withered lungs.
Weakly he asks, “Can you stay?”
And he knows that the chance of Akutagawa saying anything but no are slim to none. He knows becasue he knows Akutagawa, and he knows that he is neither indecisive nor slow. All he ever does is make decisions.
But…
Apparently, his decision tonight is not to leave.
He doesn’t say no. He technically doesn’t say anything at all - so maybe Atsushi’s prediction was still right in a twisted, round about way. Instead, he drops back to his knees and crawls under the comforter placed haphazardly across Atsushi’s mattress, tucking his lean frame beneath a blanket of warmth.
He looks up at Atsushi with wide, gorgeous eyes, that glitter and sparkle and ask without words, “What are you waiting for?”
Nothing worth while.
Atsushi follows suit, sliding beneath the covers so that he lays face to face with his boyfriend - up close, he’s so different. So imperfectly perfect in all the ways you don’t get to see from afar.
His lips are chapped, cupids-bow dipping slightly uneven on one side. Translucent freckles spray just under his eyes, and there’s a scar on the right side of the bridge of his nose that he got while playing cops and robbers with Gin as a kid - what a fantastic twist of fate that turned out to be.
“It will take a long time before you can touch me every day,” he interrupts Atsushi’s rambling thoughts and adorations with the declaration.
Atsushi is well aware - for as long as they’ve been togehter, he’s never once tried to push a boundary that shouldn’t be pushed. He doesn’t intent on breaking that habit now.
So he nods.
“That’s okay. I’m patient.”
Akutagawa wrinkles his nose with distaste, as if his plot to scare Atsushi off is falling flat and he hasn’t a clue what to do about it - it’s endearing. Atsushi bites back a grin.
“I’m going to have bad days.”
“So am I.”
“Some days, you’re going to hate me.“
What a lie.
“I’ll never hate you, Ryu,” he says it and he means it. Not in a thousand years of being Akutagawa Ryuunosuke’s partner would he ever tire of him, much less hate him.
Akutagawa grimaces something that is dangerously close to a smile.
“Can you let me list the terms and conditions before you just say yes to everything?” He grits, so damn cute that Atsushi doesn’t even try to stop himself this time as he grins. “This is how you get viruses and malware.”
”Yeah but you’re not a virus, you’re my Aku,” he purses his lips to stop himself from planting a kiss on his boyfriend’s nose. Either way, Akutagawa smiles - it’s soft and small but it’s there, and it straightens those translucent freckles, and it pulls at his chapped lips.
And he’s beautiful.
“Cheesy, Weretiger,” an endearment. “Does your filter really run that low when you’re tired?”
“I’m not tired, I’m sleepy,” Atsushi shakes his head, curling in closer - as close as he can without touching - to his boyfriend’s heat. “There’s a difference.”
Voice sedate and tempered, he grouses, “No there’s not. They’re synonyms.”
Atusshi let’s himself release a chuckle - it’s weary and weighed down with a little piece of his soul that escapes between his lips, but it feels nice to let out. Even nicer when he sees the fondness in his boyfriend’s eyes.
It’s only then, on the brink of sleep that he notices,
“You’re not facing the door.”
Akutagawa looks shocked for a moment, lips parting barely, eyes widening almost imperceptibly.
After a moment of thinking he justifies, “…My arm is hurt on this side, remember?”
Which is a lie, because pain has never stopped Aktugawa Ryuunosuke from doing anything before, but that’s something to unpack at a later date.
“Oh, yeah.” He murmurs, one final question leaving his lips, before he forgets. “Do you want me to give you some space?”
They’re so close Atsushi can feel the heat ebbing from his boyfriend’s body, so close he can feel Akutagawa’s breath on his lips. And yet Aktugawa shakes his head.
“No, where you are right now is fine.”
”Okay,” Atsushi says, sleep finally dragging him that last little bit down, resting so heavy on his shoulders that his eyes close of their own accord. “Love you, Ryu.”
And maybe he’s dreaming it, slipping far and fast into the land of fantasy, but he swears he hears a soft, raspy, “I love you too, Atsushi,” before exhaustion consumes him entirely.