Work Text:
There is a tiger on Akutagawa’s couch.
He is big, and strong, and terribly imposing, and Akutagawa has to reckon with the fact that this tiger was a cub, distant days ago, small, and fragile. Akutagawa never had the urge to coddle fragile things.
“You’re going to get blood all over my furniture,” Akutagawa says, looking at the scarlet on Atsushi’s damp shirt. The wound has probably already closed up, but that doesn’t mean any liquid that splattered on impact disappears with it.
“It’ll dry,” Atsushi mumbles, dismissively, as he waves his hand.
“Yeah, dry on my cushions, making it a pain in the ass to wash,” Akutagawa points out, getting more irritated. “Get off.”
Atsushi grumbles something, but sits up nonetheless, staring down Akutagawa.
“And go where?” he raises one eyebrow. “You said you’ll let me spend the night.”
“I’m not kicking you out,” Akutagawa glares at Atsushi, wholly unamused. “Go to where normal people sleep: the bedroom.”
At that, Atsushi is slightly taken aback. He leans further onto his hands, digging into the soft plush and making little craters, his stretched out legs going limp with his heels pressing against hardwood floors. His eyes widen, and then narrow.
“It’s not that kind of sleepover, Akutagawa.”
There’s still a self-conscious twitch to Atsushi’s limbs even as he doesn’t break eye contact, and in his position he looks entirely like a doll forgotten on the sidewalk, with the stitching coming undone and clothes torn, waiting for weeks under smog and rain for some little girl who no longer exists.
It is still strange, the way their relationship’s orbit weaves itself around their lives, when they fuck and leave before the other wakes up, or play the same old, glitchy video game with pilgrim-like awe for hours and stand up before either can talk, or offer a place to stay and dig a single thin sewing needle into each other’s thighs because they’re way beyond killing but still find violence necessary to feel at peace.
Dolls are entirely out of place in a house like Akutagawa’s, mature and unbelievably old, childish only in the way unnerving things are. So are games, for that matter, and sewing needles too – the only needle Akutagawa ever felt confident to hold was one he’d plunge into skin. Usually his own.
And so, looking at this toy, battered and snarky and filled with dirt instead of cotton, that Akutagawa has to remind himself that the tiger muddying his sheets today was once a cub, a clumsy and playful and small one, and Akutagawa was never gentle with things small.
“Yes,” Akutagawa agrees, softly, opening his bedroom door with quiet care. “It is not that kind of sleepover.”
Atsushi hovers two steps inside the room but still framed from the back by the halo of the doorway like a fly fossilized in amber. Akutagawa doesn’t take his coat off, even though the tiger has seen him naked. Akutagawa sits on his bed.
Atsushi doesn’t speak as he stands there, unsure. Both of them are less creatures of habit and more animals of learnt behavior, so both stare at different parts of the level they find themselves stuck in and don’t know what to do. Their fault, for sequence breaking the game. Their fault, for fucking and leaving before the other wakes up.
Atsushi moves first, because this is a learnt behavior that has been hammered into him like a nail in the foot these past few months: he leads, while Akutagawa stalks behind, just a little bit. He runs, and Akutagawa stays. He is, while Akutagawa is left.
The buttons on his shirt fly open in a quiet rhythm, and he carefully peels the fabric off his surprisingly clean skin. He folds his off-white monstrosity, even when it’s ruined beyond belief, and the image of a scratched up button-up baked in blood being neatly put down is mildly amusing.
“Can I borrow something to put on?” Atsushi says, in a slightly raspy voice because neither of them have been saying anything for some time now, apparently.
“Top shelf,” Akutagawa responds, pointing to the closet, and his vocal chords echo with a raspiness of his own, and the raspiness of both men harmonizes into a melody of simple laughter. The owners of the rasps don’t find it nearly as funny.
Atsushi finds some old t-shirt that’s too big on him and would probably look bigger on Akutagawa. He takes off the rest of his clothes unceremoniously, even though he still takes care to fold them, and Akutagawa finds it in him to be jealous, of this boy who will take his clothes that look no more like shreds and treat them kindly, still.
Atsushi circles the bed to get to the opposite side to the one where Akutagawa is still sitting, his eyes lifelessly following the other man. Atsushi unpeels the top layer of the blanket, looking up only for one tentative second. The circuit of eye contact closes once. Then, Atsushi concludes that Akutagawa is not about to pounce on him like a rabid dog, and gets into the sheets feet first.
Akutagawa lets his muscles relax one by one, like a manual process of shutting down a complex machine because you work the closing shift and nobody’s there to help you. He leans his arms on his knees, staring into the floor as he listens to the sounds of Atsushi moving behind him, somewhere beyond the wall that is Akutagawa’s back, and he thinks, with a hint of cynicism, that most people would not be this calm with a huge tiger laying to rest behind them.
It is only after all sound ceases that Akutagawa has the courage to turn. He stares at Atsushi, his head buried in the pillow and his hands splayed out carefully in front of him, eyes closed in emotionless silence.
He looks almost like a porcelain doll in the moonlight, and yet it is not him who is terribly sharp when shattered. He is nothing when shattered, he is not better off nor more worthy, throw him against walls all you want, that is, fundamentally, not how he gets better. Perhaps that’s healthier, Akutagawa thinks with no feeling attached to it at all, and slowly, like a really big turtle, climbs under the blanket too.
Neither of them know how to go about sleeping next to another person, because when they fuck it’s a barely coherent mess of limbs that gets forcibly separated as they pass out, and then they leave before the other wakes up. This is weirdly intimate, too lucid to bear, and Akutagawa would turn away, but Atsushi laid himself facing inwards, the completely inconsiderate prick he is, and so it’s either face to face or Atsushi to Akutagawa’s back, and Akutagawa reckons most people prefer to face a beast head on.
Akutagawa is all too stiff, entirely out of place near the Atsushi that rests like an angel who just lost its wings and found itself in a renaissance painting. Akutagawa is all too stiff, and his mind isn’t helping, as all it’s doing is yelling how it is Akutagawa that told Atsushi to get in bed in the first place.
It is always Akutagawa telling Atsushi to get in bed, because Atsushi is either too shy or stupid or has more dignity, or is simply unable to be decisive so he needs just the tiniest of pushes, and Akutagawa is the one that has to provide that, as assigned by the casually cruel, mockery loving god of this universe, also known as Dazai.
And Dazai is the hurricane that brought them together, but whenever Akutagawa tells Atsushi to get in bed, it’s not about Dazai at all, and Akutagawa would call it weird, were he not staring at the tiger in his bed right now.
Of course, it is about nothing else but the tiger in his bed.
Atsushi rubs his nose in the half asleep state he occupies, and when he places his hand back down, it is ever so slightly closer to Akutagawa.
And Akutagwa is once more reminded that the tiger in his bed used to be a cub, peaceful and innocent and small, and Akutagwa never was graceful with small things, but the painful thing is, he’d try, with this cub, he’d cradle its tiny body in his own frail arms and jolt it awake, and he’d press it close to his chest, & the tiger would notice that it’s closer to his heart, & it would go for the weak point, & Akutagawa would bring it to his heart, & ask it to go for the weak point.
“Why aren’t you closing your eyes?” Atsushi whispers.
Akutagawa slowly pulls the sleeves of his long, black coat down.
“I will.”
Atsushi peeks one eye open.
“Do you always sleep in your outdoor clothes?”
Akutagawa lets his long, black coat fall down with a gentle rustle.
“I don’t.”
Atsushi sighs, or he breathes out, or he mutters something inside his lungs.
“Good night.”
Akutagawa settles his head on the soft pillow, sinks into the sheets, places his hand three centimeters from where Atsushi’s rests.
“Good night.”
Akutagawa goes to sleep next to the big tiger in his bed, its side steadily moving up, and down, and up, and down, and up.