Work Text:
It’s never a normal night in Yokohama, between the ability users that roam the streets and the criminals that lurk behind high-society pearls and the daggers of passed bills and coins, and to Nakahara Chuuya, this concept is infinitely familiar.
At twenty-two, and an Executive of the Port Mafia, Chuuya thinks there isn’t anything that can surprise him anymore, not when he’s been in this business since eight years old when he was thrown in the middle of a delinquent gang meant to be their God.
He’s seen black holes brought to life, he’s seen time frozen, he’s seen kids beaten, bloody, seen kids holier-than-thou and brought up in private jets and yachts, and he’s seen magic that science can barely dare to explain; he’s been at war and he’s been at peace, and death is a familiar friend, has been for years. He’s had his ability swapped - that had been an odd week with the mackerel, of all people -, and he’s seen kids displaced from entire worlds and timelines.
Nothing can surprise him anymore.
Still, he’s startled - not surprised - when he sees a kid frantically glancing from shipping container to shipping container, dead silent despite his clear desperation. The startling part isn’t the kid, as Yokohama is full of strays the city spits out in the same way it spits out corpses and soldiers, but how long it took him to notice the child at all.
The docks are never empty, not this late at night - two in the morning, a mid-day shift for him, and the middle of the night for everyone else. There are workers unloading stolen goods from a shell company that Mori’s yet to confront, waiting for them to get their claws further into Yokohama so they can’t turn tail when Chuuya is inevitably sent out to dispose of them. The sound of the ocean, perpetual, eternal, raging as it crashes against the shore with the storm clouds above them, but he can’t see any of the workers too close.
Only two ships are at these particular docks, and the child -
Chuuya narrows his eyes, putting his hands in his pockets to appear more non-threatening as he approaches the child, who hasn’t noticed him; there’s a panicked rise-and-fall to the kid’s breathing, but he can’t hear any of it.
Dammit, it’s been a few weeks since anything too drastic has happened, he should have known. Hopefully, this isn’t another debacle where he needs to get this kid reality-hopping - maybe he’ll just take the child down to the shelter with a wad of cash. That typically solves these type of kids from wandering around here.
“Kid?” Chuuya calls out, his voice hoarse from disuse and the cigarettes he’d smoked earlier, a bad habit from boredom that he hasn’t kicked since he was sixteen. “Hey, kid, what are you looking for?”
Like a startled stray, the kid glances up, with wide hazel eyes staring up at Chuuya in something closer to exasperation than fear. “Who are you? Where am I? Where’s Naomi?”
Chuuya tilts his head, red bangs falling into his eyes from where his hat didn’t catch them; his hat chain jingles and the kid seems to take note of that, too, glancing at it curiously before the desperation clouds his gaze again. “What’s your name? You know, it ain’t safe to be out here this late.”
The kid doesn’t seem to consider the time or Chuuya’s words in the slightest, beyond giving his name. He’s around twelve or so, and he doesn’t flinch away when Chuuya walks closer, to get a better look. Ruddy red hair to match ruddy red cheeks, and a small, shaking frame, like a street rat with better clothes. “My, uh, my name is Tanizaki Junichirou. Can you - do you know where Naomi is?”
Tanizaki Junichirou… it rang a bell somewhere in the back of Chuuya’s head, but he couldn’t place it at the moment - and Naomi. A sister or something? Maybe a friend? Certainly not a mother if that’s how he referred to her… “Who’s Naomi?”
“She’s - she’s my sister!” The kid - Tanizaki - seems offended that Chuuya didn’t already know that, crossing his arms. All that does is reveal how skinny his arms are under that thin white t-shirt, doing nothing to shelter from the cold chill that perpetually encompasses the docks.
Something clicks.
Chuuya doesn’t know what yet, but there’s a faded design on that t-shirt, something that was popular some years back. And a kid who has no clue how he got here… looking for someone… “How did you get here?”
“Why are you asking so many questions?” Tanizaki asks with a frown, sticking his bottom lip out somewhat like a pout. He’s shaking - from fear or the cold, Chuuya doesn’t know.
While the cause is unclear, Chuuya does what he can, taking his jacket off his shoulders - without using Sorrow, either, in order to not scare - and draping it across the kid’s shoulders; it’s warm enough that it should help, though it ought to get a wash after Tanizaki drags it across the dirty gravel ground. “Curiosity, and all. I was wondering if I could, ah, help you.”
Helping people is not typically Chuuya’s forte; he’s a mafia executive, and he typically eliminates threats rather than helps the people affected by them. That’s usually the job of - Oh.
That’s where he knows that name.
Tanizaki Junichirou. Armed Detective Agency member. Light Snow; nearly took out the Boss during the cannibalism incident.
If Chuuya recalled correctly, Tanizaki was supposed to be a lanky, shy eighteen-year-old with confidence issues and a terrifying ability, when used right. Tanizaki was not supposed to be twelve and scared out of his mind looking for his sister, and certainly not meant to be at the docks this late without supervision regardless.
This was the work of an ability user.
Chuuya’s first instinct is to sniff out the ability user and make sure they eat pavement, but -
“Well, are you gonna help me find my sister then?” Tanizaki asks quietly, looking up at Chuuya with those damn eyes and Chuuya’s jacket held close to him, like it wasn’t drowning him, his hair a wild mess from the wind.
…The ability user can wait.
Chuuya sighs. “Yeah, I’m gonna help you find your sister. Can you tell me why you’re out here? It’ll help me search.”
The kind words are clumsy on his tongue and the only experience Chuuya has to draw from is when he’d found the spare time to visit an animal shelter some months ago, dropping to the dogs’ height so they didn’t feel threatened by him. Dogs do tend to love him, but Tanizaki is naturally more reserved.
Chuuya is, as far as he knows, a stranger. And if Tanizaki were the right age, he’d know Chuuya was an enemy.
Tanizaki doesn’t seem scared of him right now, though, even taking the hand that Chuuya offers him so he doesn’t trip over the coat fabric. “I, I don’t know. I was with Naomi and we were… running, and… then I was here.”
“Running? Where?”
“Away,” Tanizaki says with downcast eyes, tripping over his sneakers and pulling Chuuya down an inch or so before he rights them both. Intentional. He’s avoiding the question.
Between Chuuya and the detective agency, Chuuya is certainly not a genius. He isn’t an idiot, however, and this - this doesn’t sound right. There was no reason for a twelve-year-old boy to be running, really, not with his sister.
Boys tend not to get along with their sisters the older they get. Chuuya knows this because that’s when he stopped getting along with Yuan, and Shirase had to start going between them like a messenger, which Chuuya promptly shot at the time.
(He wishes he had appreciated his time with the Sheep more. He hadn’t known how fickle time was, back then, that he and Shirase and Yuan would never again be the trio they once were, that he would not be the King of the Sheep boy any longer.)
“Away, huh?” Chuuya repeats, though he hates all the questions being asked of and by him. “Well, I know somewhere safe I can get you. Your sister’s already there.”
Instead of relief dotting the boy’s face, it’s suspicion, his eyes narrowing.
He might be more of a street rat than I expected, Chuuya thinks, he’s suspicious of me, and he doesn’t even know what I do for a living.
The nice clothes, now that Chuuya looks closer, are ratty and worn, but must’ve been expensive when bought; he thinks he’s seen this brand when he was shopping for himself, but it must be three or so years worn now. Tanizaki’s shirt is untucked and covers his pants, but they’re beige, like a school boy.
Tanizaki’s bottom lip quivers, but there’s a finality of the dead to his voice. It reminds Chuuya of the fog in a cemetery on a dreary day. “Are you taking me to the police station?”
Chuuya hesitates.
Tanizaki is too young to catch it, but he still watches Chuuya’s every move, big eyes under that mop of unbrushed hair.
Half of these will garner a reaction Chuuya doesn’t want - and now he’s curious. Why on earth would a twelve-year-old Tanizaki Junichirou, shy and timid detective-to-be, be worried about Chuuya taking him to the police station?
“No, of course not,” Chuuya says eventually, easing a layer of cool collection into his voice, meant to ease the boy’s suspicion of him. “The police are quite useless fellows. They never understand why anything is done.”
“No, they don’t,” Tanizaki says, having to take big steps just to keep up with Chuuya. The kid is, obviously, underweight for his age, and rather short, and part of Chuuya’s pride is remarkably happy that someone has to struggle to keep up with him, but he tries to focus on the task at hand.
“I used to steal food, and they never understood why I did that,” Chuuya says. Based on the kid’s clothes, he’s at least a runaway at this point in time, and while he could overpower the kid and get him to the Agency that way, it feels rather rude to punch a child. “What did you do that they don’t get?”
The only time Chuuya’s ever hit a child since he turned eighteen was Q, and that’s because the kid wouldn’t wake up even after they put smelling salts under his nose and they didn’t have an ability nullifier to null the effect of Q’s ability.
Tanizaki hesitates yet again.
See, the thing with children, Chuuya thinks, walking along and realizing that Tanizaki never did let go of his hand; he can’t feel the calluses on the boy’s palm because of his gloves, but knows they’re present, is that children do not know when to keep a secret.
They can keep secrets well, but the importance of one event to another is lost on them, and for the first time in several long years -
Tanizaki surprises him.
“I killed them,” Tanizaki says brazenly, unaware of how his words echo along the docks and through Chuuya’s head, ringing out like a gunshot. “And the - the police don’t get it. They don’t know it was me but they think I’m missing. They don’t think a kid could do that, but there are - there are bad people and the bad people want to get Naomi.”
Chuuya swallows, a lump in his throat.
Tanizaki, Tanizaki, Tanizaki.
The name is still familiar.
Detective, now. The detective-to-be in front of him.
A dark look in Dazai’s eye when he first told Chuuya Tanizaki’s name, and - oh.
The Tanizaki Homicides, Chuuya thinks, recalling when Mori had sent both him and Dazai out to the Tokyo suburbs to check out a crime scene, as Mori had thought the double homicide of parents Tanizaki Kuragorou and Seki was committed by an ability user. It’d been a brutal crime scene, though he and Dazai had been paying more attention to the GameBoy Dazai had brought than the blood.
They’d been competing for some inane reason and hadn’t paid much attention to it. They’d stayed long enough to see that it was done by an ability user, and for Dazai to cackle in the policeman’s face when he - under the guise that Dazai and Chuuya were some rookie detectives - asked what they’d learned.
The policeman had told them the murder was a brutal one, which they’d seen, but that there were two young kids still missing from the household, missing entirely.
Chuuya had barely understood why Dazai laughed, but he pushed it off at the time.
Dazai knew it was the kid, that fucking bastard! It all comes full circle, to Chuuya taking the boy back to the Agency, to Dazai. Escorting a murderer is nothing new to Chuuya, though he feels an odd kinship in knowing that he was not the only one that had blood on his hands by twelve years old.
Oh, Yokohama breeds monsters. Or perhaps it is abilities that do as much, considering Tanizaki was raised in the Tokyo suburbs. Perhaps it is Yokohama the abilities flock to, but that’s philosophy for later, he supposes.
“Mister?” Tanizaki asks, tugging on Chuuya’s hand as they turn a corner to a proper street rather than the docks, the pavement far better for Chuuya’s work boots. “Mister? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Huh?” Chuuya asks, blinking, before - oh, he’d never responded to Tanizaki.
Based on how frantically the boy is shaking his hand trying to get his attention, Tanizaki is worried that Chuuya’s going to leave him now that he knows.
Instead, Chuuya takes a deep breath, before hauling Tanizaki - giant, billowing coat and all - onto his hip; it’s an awkward fit, but Chuuya’s short and this kid is underweight, so he has to bend a little but not shift further than that. “I get it,” Chuuya says, fully meaning it this time. “You do what you have to do. It doesn’t make you a monster.”
“I - I never said I was a monster.”
“But you think you might be, right?” Chuuya hums gently, shifting the child on his hip so he could walk easier, using a touch of Sorrow to keep his balance on track. They have a long way to walk, after all, as Chuuya’s motorcycle is parked a couple of blocks down. “That’s what I thought for a long time after I killed someone.”
“Why do you say it so loudly?” Tanizaki murmurs, burying his head in Chuuya’s chest. How odd - a child so afraid of the law that he was bold enough to ask if Chuuya was going to turn him in, immediately turning around and trusting Chuuya because he said he might understand.
No wonder the older version is so shy - if it’s to hide that trusting nature, it’s for the best. There are many people he knows who would like to take advantage of that, who would cut this kind little boy into pieces and eat them raw, one by one, piece by piece -
Perhaps Chuuya’s spent too long in the gutters.
Chuuya laughs. “Trust me, there’s no one around to hear, okay? And they can’t touch me.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
This kid let me pick him up and lead him somewhere without even knowing his name? And he’s killed before? Well, figures for a guy who goes on to nearly assassinate the don of the Port Mafia.
“My name is Nakahara Chuuya,” Chuuya hums, “but you can just call me Chuuya for now, yeah?”
“Okay, Mister.” Ah, so Tanizaki wasn’t going to be following that, though Chuuya supposed it’d be alright if he didn’t.
“Do you know how to ride a motorcycle, Tanizaki?”
“Junichirou,” Tanizaki Junichirou quietly corrects, as though having permission to use Chuuya’s given name means that Chuuya has to use his too. “And - and no, I don’t. I’ve never been on a motorcycle before. My mama always said they were dangerous.”
He said that with an odd amount of affection for someone who killed his parents at twelve, but Chuuya lets that be.
There’s a lot about this situation that Chuuya is actively ignoring, so he supposes that’s alright, too.
“You’re gonna learn real quick, yeah?”
The ride to the Agency is quite baffling if only because Tanizaki shrieks in fear and buries his face in Chuuya’s back, the coat fluttering in the wind but secure with Tanizaki holding it tight to his chest with his one free hand, the other wrapped around Chuuya’s waist in a death grip.
And the boy’s ability is like a livewire, clearly active with the way buildings seem to disappear around Chuuya with green snow falling gently where they’re supposed to be - Light Snow is powerful, erasing entire parts of the skyline with Chuuya none the wiser. It might be because of the boy’s fear giving him an adrenaline rush.
That might be why no one has discovered the truth of the Tanizaki murders all these years later - does the Agency know? Tanizaki’s family name is still the same, he never bothered to change it, so they must know in some capacity. Maybe not that he’s the culprit, but that he was a victim.
Chuuya arrives and thanks whatever bastard that lives up in the sky that Tanizaki hadn’t accidentally hidden the building with his ability, killing the engine and gently worming a gloved hand underneath Tanizaki’s to remove his death grip. “Hey, kiddo, we’re here. We’re here, we’re not moving anymore.”
Tanizaki shifts against Chuuya’s back, groaning, as though he’s nauseous before he releases Chuuya’s waist. “You’re sure my sister’s here?”
“Absolutely positive.” The Agency didn’t seem to have a lot of employees, so they often had the same staff on the clock all the time, and the detectives of the group, at least, lived in the dorms provided with their employment. There was a seventy-five percent chance Tanizaki Naomi was here, and even if she wasn’t, Dazai’s ability should cancel out this time-travel bullshit and they can all go home.
Chuuya does, against Tanizaki’s pride, bark out a laugh when the kid tumbles over himself trying to get back to the ground, safely pulling his leg over the seat afterward and watching Tanizaki pout about his own failed attempt to look cool.
And then Tanizaki stares at him.
“What?” Chuuya’s a bit uncomfortable with the kid’s stare if he’s being honest. Chuuya has a bit of a weakness for wide brown eyes, and hazel is close enough to make the list. If Tanizaki asked for the world right now, Chuuya might just be inclined to give it to him.
That might just be the kid inside him wishing he’d been saved, too. The Chuuya that was nine years old and thought - knew, already - that he was a monster.
“Why were you out at the docks, Mister?” Tanizaki asks, tilting his head to the side; he really does need his hair brushed, Chuuya thinks, before gently ushering him toward the building and the cafe on the ground floor. “You said no one should be out that late.”
“I didn’t say no one should be out that late. I work at night,” Chuuya shrugs. He’s explained his job to kids in simple terms far more than one would think a mafia executive would have, as adults always know who he is and shy away from him - even if he isn’t publicly the face of the mafia - but kids find him approachable, for some odd reason. “And that was the area I was protecting.”
“How are you protecting if you let me go?”
Chuuya glances down, startled, but Tanizaki’s already averted his gaze toward the ground, the guilt so prominent in his words alone that Chuuya knows it’s just a fraction of the snake that must live in his ribcage.
Being young is not a crime - it’s something that everyone goes through. Being young, however, and being forced to survive - that’s a crime, it’s always a crime, and there’s always someone who will tell you that you didn’t deserve to live after that. That what you did wasn’t forgivable.
Chuuya hopes this kid doesn’t meet any of those people.
Instead, he sighs, ruffling Tanizaki’s hair. “Because I protect people who are just trying to survive. The bad people are the ones who only ever think about themselves - they do real monstrous things. You didn’t only think of yourself, did you?”
Just from how Tanizaki had been frantically looking for Naomi, and how willing he was to get on the motorcycle with Chuuya just because of the notion he’d find his sister, Chuuya knows Tanizaki isn’t a selfish kid.
Some say that selfishness is inherently evil, and while Chuuya thinks that isn’t true, he knows the real monsters of the world are the ones who do not care that they are selfish, who don’t care to learn what kind of people they really are.
Some of the tension drains out of the kid’s shoulders, at least.
“I - I didn’t want them to hurt her anymore,” Tanizaki says, like an omission, but Chuuya is not a priest and this is not a confessional. “And it just… it happened. It was - it was so gross and I felt so bad -”
“Did you love them?” Chuuya asks bluntly.
Tanizaki blinks at him, startled, but he considers the question. “Did I love them? Er… I loved my mom, or - or I used to, but she was a different person, and she was just there, I didn’t mean to…”
He trails off like he doesn’t know how to justify it to himself any further.
Chuuya shrugs for the second time that night. “Then it’s alright. It hurts, you know. It’s always gonna hurt. But you did what you had to do and you didn’t even love them. They can’t hurt your sister anymore, can they?”
“Well… I guess not.”
Cafe Uzumaki makes an odd backdrop for this particular conversation, but the warm air must feel like heaven on Tanizaki’s skinny frame; Chuuya can barely feel the change in temperature between all of his layers, even with his jacket missing.
It’s a slow walk, one purposely slowed by Tanizaki, like he’s scared by the elevator.
When they step into the elevator, Chuuya barely jabs the button for the third floor when Tanizaki speaks again.
“Do you think I’ll ever get to go home, Mister? Did you get to go home?”
Did you get to go home? Chuuya never had a home in the first place. His home has always been moving, not from place to place, but person to person. There’s a curse over his heart, though, and each person who’s been his anchor, his home, has sent him out to see with nothing more than well-wishes to keep from drowning.
Chuuya never got to go home, and he never will.
Still, as the elevator doors close, Chuuya kneels so he’s closer to Tanizaki’s height - and that does feel nice, actually -, and pushes those ruddy red bangs behind Tanizaki’s ear.
“You deserve to find a new home,” Chuuya says carefully, each word chosen with care and consideration. He doesn’t even know if Tanizaki will remember this after the ability runs its course and he’s returned to his proper age. “One that you want to come home to each day. And you’ll find a family of people who care about you very much, about you and your sister, and they’ll do anything to keep you safe.”
“How do you know?” Tanizaki looks so lost that it takes everything in Chuuya to not ruffle his hair again; he can feel the elevator moving, knows that they’ll be at the Agency soon.
Ironically enough, they’ll be back at the place that Tanizaki, current Tanizaki, knows is his home.
“I have a feeling,” Chuuya smiles before standing once again, smoothing out any wrinkles on his vest from the movement before the rickety old elevator dings and the doors open.
The Armed Detective Agency is a bustling place, even in the middle of the night, full of movement and life in a way they share with the Port Mafia, detectives moving from here and there with piles of manilla folders and barking out for this and that and whoever to go on break, grab this, return that, have you mentioned this?
All of that stops the moment they notice Nakahara Chuuya waltzing into the office space, and he’s such a presence by himself that no one notices the child hiding behind his legs.
“Executive?” Kunikida Doppo says slowly, setting down a stack of papers - instantly on guard, as he should be.
Chuuya represses his smirk. He’d noted that neither Dazai nor that irritating super detective was here, making certain he could have his fun. “Hello, Kunikida. You know, I have a job to do, eh?”
“I’m… quite aware. Is there a reason you’ve come here? I was not informed the Agency and the Mafia had any ongoing missions that required each other’s assistance.”
“They don’t,” Chuuya says easily, waving that notion off with a single flick of his gloved hand. “You have, however, lost something.”
Without further prompting, he stops out of the way - revealing the kid behind him, curled up in Chuuya’s jacket, and avoiding the stares of everyone around him.
Tanizaki Naomi isn’t in this particular room, but Tanizaki must already trust Chuuya if he isn’t interrogating the executive as to her whereabouts or how he lied, or any of that.
“Is that -”
“Sure is. Say hi, Junichirou,” Chuuya hums, encouraging the boy to lift his head and shyly wave at those around him, so different from the demeanor he’d had when they were talking in the elevator. “I’d call Dazai if I were you. No Longer Human should reverse it with ease, and I’ve gotta get back to work.”
“Where did you find him? Ah, nevermind, I have to call Dazai -”
The office takes off into a flurry yet again, movement coming to life like a carnival first thing in the morning; Chuuya and Tanizaki are the sole unmoving status in a sea of motion, and Chuuya reaches to the jacket around the boy’s shoulders to grab a pen.
“A lot of stuff is going to happen real quick for you, and I don’t know if you’ll remember this,” Chuuya says, his words like honey and, oddly enough, not freaking the boy out.
Tanizaki nods, as though he knows precisely what Chuuya is saying, and lets Chuuya grab out a pen and the pad of sticky notes he keeps in that particular pocket.
He writes his number down and smiles, picking up the boy’s wrist and mechanically putting it in his hand. “I think we should have a chat later if you’re up to it. Give me a call when you can - I think we can have a nice chat on philosophy.”
Chuuya turns on his heel before Tanizaki or Kunikida can say anything about his absence, leaving his coat draped over the boy’s shoulders and his number clutched in small fingers.