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Atsushi was unaccustomed to having good things in his life.
He’d been luckier than most to find his way to the detective agency after leaving the orphanage of course but even after being there for a few years, it still felt like some kind of dream he was sure to have a rude awakening from. The friends he had made there and the support he had found with Dazai as his mentor were second to none but always existed in tandem with a fleeting sensation that they were too good to be true–too good for the likes of someone like him.
Akutagawa had once told him that these fears were simply the words of his old headmaster coming back to haunt him and that he’d always lose to them until he finally decided to stop listening altogether.
Frustratingly, Atsushi couldn’t really disagree with this.
These strikingly wise words aside, Akutagawa had always been Atsushi’s enemy. The first time they met, in fact, Akutagawa cut Atsushi’s leg clean off his body and then kidnapped both him and Kyouka less than a week later. So, by all accounts, Atsushi should probably have hated that black-clad villain with every fiber of his being. And for a long time, he’d managed to do exactly that by convincing himself that Akutagawa was a heartless beast with no redeeming qualities who was only fit to carve up his victims with the mindless brutality of a sentient rusted blade. Unfortunately though, he would come to have his eyes opened throughout his tenure with the agency and was eventually forced to contend with the idea that Akutagawa was more than just a blunt instrument of the mafia.
They were made to become partners after all and this troublesome situation led him to see that there was more to his partner than what was visible on his harsh and sickly exterior.
After this, it hadn’t taken long for Atsushi’s admittedly weak and merciful heart to soften and for him to find a place for Akutagawa inside it. And ever since then, against all the odds and any of Atsushi’s first impressions, Akutagawa had actually managed to become one of those truly rare things that Atsushi desperately feared he would lose–a good thing.
–
On one particular evening, after a long day of working, Atsushi returned to the apartment that he and Akutagawa now shared and found it empty. The apartment itself, just like many things in their ever-tense but newly loving relationship, had been a compromise between them. It was located on a street that was perfectly equidistant between the Port Mafia towers and the Armed Detective Agency headquarters. They had agreed on his apartment specifically because it meant that their commutes to and from their jobs would be the same and so they would be able to leave and make it back to their small sanctuary at the same time as one another.
Even so, normally, Akutagawa still managed to beat Atsushi home by some small amount of time which was no doubt evidence of his ceaselessly competitive nature that Atsushi had learned not to mind since it meant he almost always got to walk in the door and be greeted by the aroma of dinner already cooking away on the stove.
Certainly, the cooking had been one of the things about Akutagawa that Atsushi had least expected. After all, he had hardly seemed like the domestic type when he was severing Atsushi’s limbs but perhaps that was where he had perfected the knife skills he now wielded each night when he made dinner for the two of them. He seemed to enjoy the ritual of it too and liked to be depended on and praised for his efforts which Atsushi was more than happy to do when it meant he got a hot homecooked meal out of the bargain.
However, seeing their home dark and without the usual bustle in their shared kitchen, Atsushi now realized that it was even more than that since he had at some point apparently started to just enjoy coming home to see Akutagawa there waiting for him. He did not like coming home to an empty house anymore.
“Ryuunosuke?” He called out into the lifeless apartment.
He could already tell from the lack of his boyfriend’s scent in the air that he was alone and yet he couldn’t stop himself from hoping that he’d been mistaken.
Atsushi’s lips slanted when, predictably, no one responded. He let his work bag drop to the floor by his feet with a thud as he hung his coat on a hook by the door. Carefully, he fished his cell phone out of his jacket pocket as he smoothed out the sleeves and checked to see if he’d missed some kind of message from Akutagawa warning that he would be late.
No dice.
This was most unusual not for the fact that Akutagawa was late since sometimes he was, but rather for the fact that he had not reached out with any kind of excuse or explanation as he normally might have done. What could possibly be holding him up?
No sooner than he had asked this, however, he was struck by the chilling reminder that both of them worked dangerous jobs and neither of them was a stranger to a good fight. Akutagawa could be careless in battle–always putting his mission ahead of his own well-being–and could be equally stubborn–always refusing to quit until the job was done and he had rightfully and truly won. As his partner in combat, Atsushi admired this about Akutagawa but, as the man who loved him, it also worried him more than anything else.
Any time that either of them went to work there was always some non-zero chance that they would not make it home alive. Both of them were experts in battle by now but there was no such thing as a certain victory and Atsushi knew that all too well; having already lost Akutagawa once several years ago during the vampire incursion.
He shivered at the thought and tried to shake it out of his head.
“No, no, no,” he muttered to himself, shuffling over to the coach in the living room and collapsing down onto it. “I’m just being dramatic. Maybe there was traffic. Or, maybe there was extra paperwork and he lost track of time. Yeah, it’s probably just something like that. It has to be.”
The more he talked, the more he tried to convince himself that his own words were reassuring him but he knew that they were little more than self-placation and his worry would not be so easily quenched.
He groaned and slid sideways on the couch so that he was laying lengthwise across the surface. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Atsushi tried to bring his thoughts somewhere else but found that they resisted him and demanded to stay fixed where he wanted them the absolute least.
At his side, Atsushi’s phone buzzed and lit up and his heart jumped with shock as the dark room was briefly illuminated by the small bright screen. Scrambling, he reached for the phone and saw a text from Higuchi waiting for him on his lock screen.
“Mission went wrong this afternoon,” it read. “Akutagawa will be home late.”
Atsushi couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. Higuchi usually tried to pretend that Atsushi did not exist and had never texted him an update on Akutagawa’s location like this before. Part of Atsushi was a little surprised that she even still had his number.
Still, it was some kind of explanation for Akutagawa’s absence and seemed to imply that he was at least alive and planning on returning home at some point tonight. Anyone else might have been more worried about the part remarking that their mission had gone wrong but Atsushi had survived more than a few missions gone wrong of his own and so the thought didn’t strike him with nearly as much terror as perhaps it should have.
“Everything okay? What time?” He texted back.
For a moment nothing happened but then a few small dots popped up at the bottom of the screen as Higuchi began to type out a reply.
“Bad intel. We got jumped by some armed mercenaries,” she explained. “Akutagawa took care of the lot but hit his head pretty badly during the fight. Should be back soon to rest.”
This time, Atsushi got a little bit nervous. “His head? Did he see a doctor?”
Higuchi wasted no time in texting back this time. “Are you kidding? Have you met him?”
This was fair enough. Making Akutagawa go to a doctor was downright impossible but this fact didn’t stop Atsushi from fretting. After all, head wounds could be serious, right?
“Is he alright though?”
“He says so,” Higuchi said before beginning to type another message, stopping, erasing it, and typing a new one which came through a moment after. “Just keep an eye on him. Okay?”
“Okay,” Atsushi agreed. “I will.”
As much as, admittedly, Atsushi did not love receiving this news from Higuchi instead of Akutagawa himself, he was relieved to have any news at all. It was sometimes a weight off Atsushi’s mind to remember that Higuch cared about Akutagawa deeply and was always watching out for him when they were off on a job. Once, Atsushi had even been a little jealous of Higuchi and she had probably been a little jealous of Atsushi in return but now the two of them treated each other as more of a necessary nuisance than anything else and reluctantly agreed to work together on the ever-challenging mission of trying to keep Akutagawa safe.
A few minutes later, Atsushi heard some footsteps in the hallways outside the apartment and then a set of metallic keys jingling. The door opened and Akutagawa stepped through, disheveled, and dressed in his usual all-black attire aside from some white gauze bandages wrapped around his forehead.
“You’re back!” Atsushi greeted excitedly.
Tiredly, Akutagawa turned and nodded like it took entirely too much energy to do so.
“Long day?” Atsushi surmised which returned another haggard nod. “Then, why don’t we have some dinner and call it an early night?”
Saying this, Atsushi started looking down at his phone and began scrolling through an internet search list of nearby restaurants with take-out menus. Most of them were still open but Atsushi couldn’t decide which one sounded best after a miserable day of getting attacked by assassins. None of them advertised themselves as specializing in that, worse luck.
“How about that new Thai pla–” Atsushi began before hearing the clattering of steel pans in the kitchen and looking back up to see Akutagawa rustling through cabinets in their kitchen. “Hey! I meant I’d order something not that you should start cooking. Take the night off, it looks like you’ve earned it.”
Akutagawa muttered something under his breath and waved Atsushi off with a flick of his hand. “I’m perfectly well. It is only a minor concussion but that’s nothing new to me. No reason I can’t cook like I usually do. And anyway, there’s a mountain of vegetables in the fridge that are about to go bad. Don’t make me waste food. I’ll get mad.”
Atsushi was speechless. “You really don’t have to do that,” he reminded his extremely obstinate boyfriend.
“Hmpf!” Akutagawa grunted. “Careful, you’re starting to sound like Higuchi.”
At this, Atsushi could only sigh. He knew how much Akutagawa hated feeling like others thought he was weak but Atsushi wished that he could see the difference between care and pity a little more clearly. Though, of course, this had never been a particular strength of his so Atsushi probably just needed to accept it at some point even if he didn't want to.
“Well, far be it for me to sound like the only other person on this planet capable of putting up with you,” Atsushi teased, throwing himself back down onto the couch where he had a good view of Akutagawa beginning to cut up some carrots.
“I’m making curry,” Akutagawa told him, ignoring his last comment as if it had not even been said aloud at all. An intentional redirection of the conversation topic, Atsushi figured.
“Want any help?”
They both knew it was an empty offer since Atsushi was perhaps more likely to slice his own thumbs off trying to cook than make anything even remotely edible. Still, Akutagawa gave a small smirk and shook his head.
“I’ve got it.”
Atsushi smiled and felt himself begin to relax a bit again, finally. Akutagawa seemed to be in fairly good spirits all things considered so that had to mean there was no reason to be concerned.
“What was your mission today?” He found himself asking, pulling up a little game on his phone as he often did to pass the time when he and Akutagawa chatted mindlessly before dinner. “Something super dangerous and top-secret that you can’t share with the likes of me?”
A terse chuckle from the kitchen. “Naturally. But our insurgence team got fed the wrong information and so the enemy knew we were coming in and were ready for us. It was annoying but nothing we couldn’t handle. How about yours?”
“Hmm,” Atsushi hummed, swiping away at the game on his screen. “Mine was less interesting than that. Mainly just a day to catch up on paperwork. I’m way behind on my reports cause Dazai keeps handing his off for me to do instead.”
“Is that man just allergic to doing any real work?” Akutagawa joked.
A few years ago the topic of Dazai was a much tougher subject and tended to sow the seeds of discord between Atsushi and Akutagawa but, thankfully, nowadays it didn’t seem to strike quite as many sore nerves. The fact that Dazai had acknowledged Akutagawa after their ordeals against the Hunting Dogs and the fact that Dazai had been forced to get used to seeing Akutagawa around more since he and Atsushi were together now seemed to be the perfect combination of events. Atsushi found himself wishing it could have been more like this all along. Things were easier between them these days in a way Atsushi had never deigned to imagine they’d achieve.
“Basically,” Atsushi laughed. “I swear he and Chuuya are up to something and that’s why he’s so short on time lately. He’s been disappearing around lunchtime most days for the past couple of weeks and I can’t tell if the two of them are scheming to blow something up or just fucking in the back alley again.”
Akutagawa sighed. “Alas, you have just defined the ever-indecipherable enigma that is double black. The world may truly never know.”
“It’s probably both then,” Atsushi suggested. “The exploding and the fucking, I mean.”
“Yeah, probably.” As he finished speaking, he punctuated his snide comment with a small airy groan that caught Atsushi’s attention.
Looking up from his game Atsushi saw Akutagawa’s brow was furrowed and his face looked pained. He had paused his cooking and was bent over slightly at the counter.
“What’s wrong? You okay?”
He nodded weakly. “Yeah, I just wish this stupid headache would go away. Remind me to go take an aspirin when I get the water boiling and have a second.”
“You sure you don’t want to just go lie down? I could still order in and we could do the curry tomorrow.”
Akutagawa glared at him as if he’d just suggested they make one of Dazai’s double suicide pacts.
“Fine. Fine. If you’re so sure,” Atsushi raised both of his hands in surrender. “But why don’t you get a drink of water or something now? Might help with the headache. You did hit your head pretty hard, after all, it's no surprise that it hurts.”
“You’ve been talking to Higuchi, haven’t you,” Akutagawa complained, putting together the pieces. Though, honestly, even if Higuchi hadn’t reached out first, the head bandages might have still tipped Atsushi off fairly well.
“She just texted to say you’d be home later, nothing bad. Don’t worry.”
“She’s nosy.”
“She was worried about you.” Atsushi corrected.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Atsushi’s face flattened. “You’re incorrigible, Akutagawa Ryuuosuke.”
Akutagawa pretended to cringe and cower comically behind the freshly peeled potato in his hand. “Oh no! Not the full legal-name!” He teased dramatically. “Please officer, anything but that!”
Atsushi couldn’t help but laugh at the display his usually-stoic boyfriend was putting on. “You’re not funny,” he lied.
“Well, then we have that in common. Don't we?” He turned his attention back to dicing up the potato.
“Hardy-har-har,” Atsushi deadpanned. “I’ll have you know, I am hilario-”
He stopped himself abruptly. Thanks to his ability, Atsushi had a supernaturally good sense of smell and was suddenly caught off guard by the coppery stench of blood smattering the air around him. His nose wrinkled and he did a small double take as he reeled at the metallic hue. It was a meager odor, barely more than a whiff, even with his powers, and yet alarm bells started ringing in his head since something about the smell was uncannily familiar.
“Ack! Wait, do you smell that?” He asked sourly to no reply.
Turning back to Akutagawa, Atsushi was about to repeat his questions but lost the words as he noticed the somewhat vacant look on Akutagawa’s face.
“Akutagawa?” He asked softly before asking again, “Akutagawa?!”
With a sudden blink, it was like Akutagawa had been called back to his body and winced.
“Ugh, sorry. I got lost in thought for a moment,” he explained, still a little dreamily.
Atsushi’s jaw clenched apprehensively. “A-Are you sure you’re okay?”
Akutagawa nodded slowly. “I just… slipped,” he explained, raising his hand and showing off a slice down his finger where he must have nicked himself with his knife. “Wasn’t paying attention.”
“Why don’t you wash it off in the sink and get that glass of water I mentioned before,” Atsushi suggested. “I can watch the pot on the stove if you want to go get that painkiller too.”
Something felt wrong but Atsushi couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Akutagawa kept saying he was fine but he was a known liar and would probably say the same if his entire bottom half were cut off. Still, he was up and talking so that seemed like a good sign and so Atsushi was not sure whether the uneasiness churning in his stomach was called for or not.
Akutagawa closed his eyes and let out a slow breath before taking in another just as slowly and steadying himself against the countertop. When he opened his eyes again he must have seen the worried look on Atsushi’s face since he attempted a smile and said, “I just felt a bit dizzy for a moment. I’m alright now but I think I will get that drink after all.”
Atsushi knew that the last part was probably just for his benefit but he was still happy to get some sort of indication that he had been heard and listened to. His body didn’t quite know whether to be ready and waiting for something bad to happen or trying to relax back after a close call.
Akutagawa turned his back, pulled a tall glass out from one of the cabinets, and began to run it under the faucet until it was full. Putting it to his lips, he took a long careful sip while leaving his bleeding finger under the cold stream still running in the sink.
“Better?” Atsushi hoped.
“Mhm. Perfectly alright,” Akutagawa told him. “You know, if you’d worried about my wellbeing even half this much back when we first met you’d probably be dead.”
Atsushi cracked a hesitant smile. “Maybe. But, you wouldn’t actually have killed me, would you? Surely, deep down, you must have already sensed that we were meant for each other even all that time ago, right?”
He batted his eyelashes for effect which he knew perfectly well would annoy Akutagawa to no end.
Akutagawa glanced at him sideways. “No, I definitely would have. Tried pretty hard too, actually. Luckily for me now though, you’re more durable than you look.”
“How romantic.”
Akutagawa gave an easy shrug and turned the sink off, wrapping his hand in a clean kitchen towel to stop any remaining bleeding once and for all. “Never claimed to be.”
His face was still looking pretty pale and Atsushi could tell from the tension around his eyes that his headache was not subsiding in the least even though he was clearly trying to act as if it were. He hated to see someone he cared about in this much pain.
“I’m getting you that aspirin,” Atsushi told him decidedly. “Someone has to take care of you since obviously, you have no intention of doing it yourself.”
“You’re such a worrywart,” Akutagawa rolled his eyes tiredly. “It’s an annoyance, not a death sentence.”
Atsushi didn’t let that reaction stop him though and got to his feet before making his way back into their bathroom. Inside the medicine cabinet, behind the mirror, was a small white pill bottle that Atsushi poured a couple of similarly small and white tablets out of and held in the palm of his hand.
“I’ve got them now so don’t even think about refusing to take them,” Atsushi warned in a raised voice so that Akutagawa could hear him back in the kitchen.
“Okay, mom,” Akutagawa taunted back half-heartedly from down the hall.
The aroma of frying onions was strong in the air when Atsushi came back out to the kitchen and was sufficiently covering the smell of blood from before. Walking up to Akutagawa, Atsushi dumped the pills into his hand and stood there, watching, until he swallowed them. Akutagawa had a habit of dry-swallowing all of his pills without water which made Atsushi shiver but, honestly, he was just glad to have some painkillers in Akutagawa’s system and was hopeful that his headache might diminish shortly.
Walking back over to the couch, he settled back in but elected to continue keeping a close eye on the only moderately reformed mobster from afar.
“Oh yeah,” Akutagawa mentioned casually, scraping a handful of diced potatoes into the pot and toping it off with boiling water. “Did I tell you yet that I heard from Chuuya we’ll probably be going after that European syndicate together next week? Sounds like they’ve officially been designated a threat to the agency and mafia both.”
Atsushi’s face lit up. It had been a while since they’d last been able to share a joint mission and the idea of getting to work together again and watch each other's backs filled him with excitement.
“They won’t know what hit them, then!”
Akutagawa chuckled and stifled a dry cough. “Especially after all that combat training you’ve been doing with the agency’s resident poet.”
Atsushi blinked.
Training? What training?
“I haven’t been doing any training with Kunikida recently,” he pondered, trying to imagine what Akutagawa was referring to. Surely he couldn’t mean those martial arts lessons that Atsushi had been getting up until they called off their infamous fight-to-the-death promise, right? “It's been a couple of months since we had our last session. I told you about it. Remember?”
Akutagawa was quiet for a second. “Hmm. Oh. Did you?”
“I did. We stopped training together after I finally managed to convince him that you weren’t still planning to kill me in secret.”
“Oh. Yeah… that’s right. Sorry.” The words were slightly stiff as they left his lips which perfectly resembled the rigid frown on his face.
“No need to be sorry,” Atsushi laughed hesitantly, unused to hearing anything even resembling an apology leave Akutagawa’s mouth.
“I-I think I forgot that.” He shook his head, mouth still upturned in an uneasy shape.
There was a short pause where Atsushi wasn’t entirely sure how best to respond. Akutagawa sounded uncharacteristically frustrated but Atsushi didn’t see a real reason why he should be. Everyone made mistakes.
“Easy to forget that kind of thing,” he offered. “You’ve had a busy day.”
“Y-yeah. My head… hurts.”
Now, it was Atsushi’s turn to frown. “The painkillers probably haven’t kicked in yet. Hopefully, they will soon. Want me to take over cooking? You could go lie down.”
Akutagawa shook his head and looked as though he were about to offer a derisive insult about Atsushi’s many culinary failures but stopped himself. As much as Atsushi would have liked to believe that he was doing this out of consideration for Atsushi’s feelings though, he had an unsettling suspicion that this was not the case.
“Seriously,” Atsushi said, beginning to stand up again from the couch in a hurry. “Are you okay? You don’t seem well at all.”
Nodding awkwardly, Akutagawa raised a hand to stop Atsushi from where he stood. “Fine. Just…”
He trailed off and a blank expression fell across his face.
“Just what?”
“Just… spinning.” He finally said, a numb concern occupying the final word.
Spinning?
Just then, he turned back toward the stove but stumbled on his feet. His head swung around his neck woozily and he collided chest-first into the fridge, his knife falling to the floor with a sharp dissonate rattle.
“Ryuunosuke!” Atsushi surged to his feet, adrenaline shooting through his entire body.
He reached the kitchen just in time to catch Akutagawa before he hit the floor.
A pained grimace rippled across Akutagawa’s face as his body tensed in Atsushi’s arms. He groaned and shut his eyes tightly.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Atsushi told him immediately. “Something is wrong.”
“No, no,” Akutagawa insisted, trying to sit back up but failing to on his own. “I just lost my balance and tripped. It was stupid and clumsy but I’m alright.”
“You keep saying that but even I can see that you aren’t. Just let me do this for you. Please.”
His body wilted back into Atsushi’s chest. “Fine, but, you can’t call an ambulance,” he murmured. “They’ll just call the police to arrest me once they realize who I am. I can’t go to regular doctors. You know that.”
He was trying to infuse his words with humor to reassure Atsushi but it wasn’t working. The paleness of his face looked worse than before and the tension in his muscles seemed to be melting away by the moment.
“Then we can get you to one of the mafia doctors, Higuchi will know what to do,” Atsushi promised, insisting emphatically for Akutagawa’s sake as much as his own.
This was all happening so fast and Atsushi felt completely unprepared. He’d never been the best at remaining calm and clear-headed under pressure–that was usually Akutagawa’s job–but he knew that he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes here and so he forced himself to swallow his fear; bitter as it was.
His phone was back on the coffee table by the couch but, looking down at Akutagawa’s distressed expression, he did not feel safe leaving him alone for even a second. Even so, he knew he didn’t have another choice if he was going to get Akutagawa the help he so obviously needed.
“I’ll be right back, I’m going to get my phone,” he gently slid Akutagawa off his lap and onto the floor.
Standing, he ran back to the living room as fast as possible and swiped up his phone. It turned out to be a lucky thing that Higuchi had texted him earlier since it made it easier to find her contact information in his phone. As fast as he could make his finger press the call button, a dial tone was ringing and her voice appeared on the other end.
“Jinko?” She asked, knowing discontent already saturating her words. “Why are you calling me? What’s wrong?”
“You need to call a mafia doctor, now. Something’s wrong with Akutagawa and I can’t take him to a regular hospital,” he demanded, without missing a beat.
“I should say not,” she scoffed as if that point were so obvious that he should not have even considered it. “I'll call them right now. What should I say? How is he?”
“Just send them to our apartment,” Atsushi barked. He didn’t have time to explain this all to her and was already desperate to return to Akutagawa’s side, feeling that he had already left him for too long. “He collapsed on our floor and seems confused. It must have to do with hitting his head.”
“R-Right.”
Atsushi heard a click on the other end as Higuchi hung up the call in an instant. In her last reply though, Atsushi had heard the way her voice trembled in fear and his stomach sank.
Scrambling back to his feet, Atushi sprinted back to the kitchen and slid back next to Akutagawa who was still sprawled out on the floor. His chest was rising and falling but the breaths seemed forced.
Above him, a pot began to boil over on the stove and Atsushi shut off the heat before swooping Akutagawa back up into his arms and cradling his head gently with both hands.
“You’re going to be alright,” Atsushi told him, forcing his voice to sound more confident than he felt. “Higuchi is calling the doctors now and they’ll know what’s wrong. They should be here soon.”
“I-I’m sure it's fine,” Akutagawa grumbled, eyes still shut. “The concussion was probably just worse than I thought.”
Atsushi pursed his lips and tried to nod. He prayed desperately that Akutagawa was right.
“Do you think you can sit up or do you want to stay laying down?”
“I think I can sit,” Akutagawa answered. “Help me up.”
‘Help me’ were two words that were not usually in Akutagawa’s vocabulary and so the troubled churning in Atsushi’s stomach worsened until he felt himself approach the verge of nausea.
“Okay.”
He slid an arm around Akutagawa’s back and lifted until the mobster was leaning haphazardly against the lower kitchen cabinets, legs still supine against the tile floor. A series of angry grunts and groans left Akutagawa’s lips as Atsushi hoisted him up but never once did he ask for him to stop.
“Is that better?”
Akutagawa went to nod but stopped and flinched, gasping in sharply as his body tautened as though he’d been electrocuted.
“Gah!” He cringed, reaching up and placing a hand lightly at the back of his neck and skull.
“What is it?” Atsushi surged forward on his knees just to be closer.
“Just a spasm in my neck,” Akutagawa scowled, his feet kicking faintly in frustration. “It’s so stiff all of a sudden. Hurts.”
“Alright, just try to stay still. I’m sure the doctors are already rushing to get here. You know how persuasive Higuchi can be when she wants to be.”
“Mhm.”
Atsushi’s fingers began to grip feebly at the fabric of his shirt. He felt so helpless. There had to be more he could be doing or maybe there was more he could have done before. Either way, it had been a long time since he had felt so completely and utterly useless.
“How’s your head?”
Before answering, Akutagawa just sighed wearily and pressed the heel of his other palm against the space between his eyes. “Not… great.”
Atsushi bit his lip. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, just… stay here.” He said. “Sorry about dinner. You might have to wait.”
If Atsushi had been even an ounce less restless, he might have laughed at the ridiculousness of that statement. Even thinking that Atsushi would be able to eat at a time like this was laughable in and of itself.
“I don’t mind waiting until the end of time. I just want you to be all right.”
“So sentimental,” Akutagawa teased, a new wicked edge peaking through his tone. “That’s why I’ll be the one to kill you in six months, jinko.”
Jinko? Atsushi blinked and then frowned. It had been so many months since Akutagawa had last called him that he had nearly forgotten the nickname.
“Ryuunosuke,” he said, “that promise has come and gone. We don’t have to fight anymore. You know that. You were the one that called our truce. Remember?”
“Hmm?” He hummed, unsure.
Atsushi gripped Akutagawa’s hands tightly between his and had to bite his tongue to hold back a wave of hot tears clawing away at the backs of his eyes. He knew very little about this sort of thing but was still fairly certain that none of this bode well.
“Hmm.” Soft acceptance.
His head tilted slightly to one side and his mouth slipped open.
Squeezing his hands tighter, Atsushi climbed up to his knees and pulled himself in closer.
“Akutagawa?” He asked. “You should try to stay awake. Don’t go to sleep.”
Maybe if he could keep Akutagawa talking that would do some good. That was what people in hospital dramas always said to do so maybe it would help somehow. If nothing else, it couldn’t make things worse and Atsushi was just wretched enough to try pretty much anything.
“‘M not sleeping,” he mumbled heavily. “The lights are too bright. They hurt.”
Goddamn it. What was taking these mafia doctors so long…
“I know, I know. But, can you open your eyes? Just for a second. You can’t fall asleep yet.”
Slowly, Akutagawa’s eyelids began to open and Atsushi heard a petrified gasp leave his lips as they did, the hairs on the back of Atsushi’s neck stood completely upright.
One eye looked completely normal but the whites of the other appeared to have been stained a rusty red color that made him look completely inhuman. The lid over that bloodied eye hung lower than the other too, giving his face a sort of slanted and uneven appearance that very much matched the lifeless way his torse was slowly slouching and sliding on one side lower to the floor.
He also couldn’t help but notice that the pupil of the bloodied eye seemed larger and more dilated than the other which only added to the asymmetrical look on his face.
“Ryu, your eye!”
“Eye?” He repeated softly, not really understanding. “Eye… Eye… Eye… I-”
He was losing his grasp on consciousness and Atsushi could feel him slipping away.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Atsushi whispered, tears coming free from his eyes and tracing down the curves of his cheeks. “I-I’m sorry I startled you. It’s probably fine. I just overreacted. You know how I’m always doing that.”
His one open white eye tried to focus on Atsushi and looked horribly sad. “I-”
“I know. I know.” He promised, knowing instinctively what those words would have been. “Me too.”
Akutagawa’s lips on one side curved up slightly and he might have tried to nod but it was too small to be sure.
In his back pocket, Atsushi’s phone rang. It was Higuchi.
“Where are they?!” He demanded as soon as the phone was pressed up to his ear.
“I-I’m sorry,” Higuchi’s voice whimpered on the other end. “They’re all out in the field. I couldn’t reach any of them and, even if I could, they wouldn’t be able to get to you in time.”
“Damn it!” He cursed furiously, using every ounce of control he had left not to throw his phone across the room and destroy it into a hundred tiny pieces. “Then I have no choice, I need to call an ambulance.”
“No!” Higuchi insisted. “You can’t! Even if they could help, they’d just take him away!”
Atsushi’s jaw clenched. “He is dying Higuchi!” he screamed into the receiver. “I don’t want to do it either but I can’t just let him die!”
“W-What about the agency’s doctor? Where is she?”
“I-” Atsushi was going to answer that she was probably halfway across the city at her own apartment but then remembered that she had told him just as he was leaving work that she was planning to stay late and restock her clinic. She might still be there.“She’s at the agency.”
“Call her. It’ll take her just as long as any ambulance from that distance and she probably has a better chance at helping him than those other doctors anyway.”
Atsushi knew exactly how Yosano felt about him dating a member of the Port Mafia but he prayed that she would see reason enough to at least not let Akutagawa die when she could help it. It might piss her off for a good long while but Atsushi was prepared to pay any price in the work right now just to make things right.
Without even responding, Atsushi hung up on Higuchi and immediately dialed Yosano’s number.
It rang and rang. Atsushi’s foot was tapping restlessly at his side as he tried to distract himself by stroking some of the sweat-soaked black bangs off of Akutagawa’s forehead.
Eventually, “Hello? Atsushi?”
“Doctor!” He all but yelled directly into her ear. “I need help!”
“What is it?” Urgency filled her voice. She was used to emergencies and evidently knew exactly how to respond. Maybe this was good. “Are you hurt?”
“Not me, Akutagawa.”
A pause.
“... Atsush-”
He cut her off. “I know how you feel about him, but, please. I think he’s dying and I don’t know what to do! Please, this isn’t just for him, it’s for me too. Help me.”
She sighed but he could hear a clatter through the phone as she must have stood up and started to move. “What happened? Where are you?”
“We’re at my apartment, please, hurry!”
“Fine. I’m on my way,” she told him, resigned. “Now, tell me what happened or I won’t be nearly as much help.”
Atsushi found himself nodding lamely even though he knew perfectly well that she could not see him.
“He came back late after work with a bunch of bandages wrapped around his head. Higuchi said he hit his head really hard during a job,” he explained anxiously.
“That can’t be all. What else?”
“Uh, uh,” Atsushi struggled to think. The panic he felt was making it hard to think straight. “He seemed to have a really bad headache and then got very dizzy and lightheaded at one point and fainted on the floor. Oh! And, um, his eye is like super bloody.”
“His eye?” Atsushi could hear bustling on the other end, she was already out on the streets and running toward him.
“Y-Yes, the white part, it's all red now and the pupils look weird too. I-I don’t know what that is but it looks really bad.”
“How’s his mental state? Is he awake and alert?” Atsushi was not sure whether it was good news or bad news that she did not seem to reach the information about his eye at all. She was an expert at keeping her cool so it was impossible to tell what she was thinking about each new symptom he shared with her. For all he knew, she was already thinking Akutagawa was a goner.
“H-he was but now he’s kind of going in and out of consciousness. Before, he was forgetting stuff and seemed kind of out of it. He said he thought it was the concussion though.”
“Maybe,” she said, though she did not sound particularly confident about that. “Now, Atsushi, this next part is important, okay? You need to think carefully.”
“Right.”
“As part of that headache you mentioned, did he ever say anything about his neck? Like it feeling sore or stiff?”
“Yes!” Atsushi recalled instantly. “He did. He was rubbing his neck, and said it hurt all of a sudden. It seemed like it was really bothering him.”
She went completely quiet. Too quiet and for far too long for Atsushi’s comfort.
“Um, Dr. Yosano?” He squeaked out, terrified by the eerie silence coming from the normally boisterous and fearless doctor. “A-Are you still there?”
“Yes, Atsushi,” she said, her voice unusually soft. “I’ll be there in just a minute. Try and keep him comfortable, okay?”
He went to agree but heard the line close on the other end and then just felt exceedingly cold and alone deep inside his chest.
Looking back at his boyfriend sprawled out limp and pale on the floor, Atsushi’s teeth sunk into his lip until he tasted the astringent metallic flavor of his own blood.
“R-Ryu? Are you still awake?” he was almost afraid to ask.
He received no words but rather a slight, wheezy, groan in reply.
Akutagawa’s one open eye was unfocused but seemed to be trying to look over at him. It was such a pathetic display that Atsushi had to hold back a sob.
Why was this happening to them? Sure, neither of them had been perfect people–Akutagawa most of all–but they were still both out here working to help people and trying to turn over new leaves together.
Akutagawa didn’t kill anymore and had been saving more and more people around Yokohama over the last several months. He didn’t deserve for all of that effort to go to waste in this way. It was breaking Atsushi’s heart to think about more than he could even begin to describe.
“Y-You’re going to be okay,” he promised in a miserable whisper, running the palm of his hand gently down Akutagawa’s cold cheek.
He’d always known that Akutagawa was probably going to die before him. Lack of superhuman healing and borderline suicidal combat tendencies aside, Akutagawa’s illness had been threatening to prematurely end his life since he was just a little kid scraping to stay alive in the city slums. Since the moment he had confessed that he was fatally sick to Atsushi many months ago, Atsushi had been struggling to come to terms with the idea. Still, he had been coping with it all by focusing on the fact that they still had some amount of time ahead of them, ill-defined as that quantity had always been. He had known better than to imagine it would be a long time but… fuck, he had at least thought that it would be a little more than this.
He held back a sniffle, thinking that he needed to try and at least appear strong in case Akutagawa really was still conscious but unable to respond.
There was a hurried and heavy knock at the door and Atsushi nearly slipped out of his skin in shock.
“Atsushi!” Yosano shouted from outside, “let me in or I am kicking the door down.”
He did as he was told, scrambling to his feet and rushing over to let her in.
Dr. Yosano was normally well-groomed and elegantly put together but the version of her waiting on his doorstep now could only be described as disheveled and feral.
“What room?” She ordered, pushing passed Atsushi and taking immediate control.
“Kitchen!” He answered just as she was already rounding the corner, lured in no doubt by the pair of feet sticking out into the living room.
Entering the kitchen, Atushi watched her eyes widen and her carefully manicured demeanor shift.
“Atsushi…” She breathed, horrified.
His chest began to twist and pull as though an invisible hand had reached inside and was churning his organs into butter.
“C-Can you help?”
She tensed. “I’ll certainly try but things may be… complicated.”
“What does that mean?”
Atsushi had seen her reattach missing limbs, heal bodies riddled with bullet holes, and erase stabs and cuts as though they had been from paper rather than blades. How could this possibly be more complicated than that?
“Based on what you told me over the phone, I suspected that it would be… but, now that I’m here, I’m sure that it must be a…”
Atsushi wanted to scream. “A what?!”
She pursed her lips. “The head injury earlier didn’t just leave him with a concussion, all of these symptoms suggest that the impact must have caused something much worse–a bleed in his brain. It would have started small and was probably difficult to distinguish from a concussion at first but it was never treated so it looks like it has only gotten worse since then.”
“Worse?” Atsushi whispered.
“It has become a traumatic brain hemorrhage.”
Stifling either a whimper or a shriek, Atsushi felt his knees give out under him. He hit the floor but he wasn’t sure how hard or if much else happened until he came back to his body a few seconds later.
Yosano was opening her medical bag and beginning to rustle through some items inside.
“Can’t you just use your ability?” He heard himself ask numbly.
“I will,” she promised. “But Thou Shalt Not Die heals physical wounds, not wounds of the mind. The brain is a complex organ and does not always respond to my treatment. I may be able to repair any physical wounds but he will still be left with significant brain damage that is beyond my ability to heal.”
Atsushi watched as his vision began to slowly go dark around the edges.
“B-But, there’s still a chance he could be okay all the way, right? T-That isn’t totally for sure, right?!”
He was wringing his trembling hands raw.
She stopped moving for a moment and Atsushi watched her shoulders tense.
“I really can’t say anything for sure, Atsushi. Truly, I wish I had better news to give you but I just don’t know yet.”
Swallowing hard, Atsushi nodded. He understood. He wished he didn’t, but he did.
The doctor slid over from where her medical bag lay to where the mobster had collapsed and began to examine him more closely. She poked and prodded him in a few different places and checked his pulse more than a few times which Atsushi did not find comforting since it seemed to imply that she kept expecting not to find it.
She seemed particularly troubled by the bloodstained appearance of his eye even though Atsushi had warned her about it on the phone.
“Alright,” she decided darkly. “Let’s try to sit him back up. Giving the blood somewhere else to drain to might give him a fighting chance here.”
Atsushi came over and did as he was told. Akutagawa’s boney frame was just as pointy and delicate as ever but Atsushi knew that he was even more fragile than ever before and so he moved and touched with the greatest possible caution he could muster. It was like trying to move a ticking time bomb.
Once Akutagawa was sitting up again with his back against the lower cabinets, his head swung clumsily to the side and a slow stream of diluted, watery, blood came draining out of his nose and down his face, staining the white front of his shirt a sickly ruddy hue.
As if already reading Atsushi’s horrified mind, Yosano spoke up. “Leave him. I’ll get to work.”
Normally, when Yosano used her ability, she had to all but kill her patient herself before she could heal them back to health. For even minor injuries, she was forced to bring a person to the brink of death to have a chance at restoring them–though, “forced” was not really the right word since she did seem to generally enjoy the spectacle.
But this time, she didn’t reach for any of her usual instruments of torture and instead just forced her attention directly onto Akutagawa, laying her hands on his shoulder and chest before activating her ability. This break from decorum bothered Atsushi since he knew that it meant Akutagawa needed no additional assistance to be teetering on the brink of death.
“Thou Shalt Not Die!” She commanded, a flash of white light and energy burst out from where her hands lay and Atsushi was blinded by its magnitude.
Once the light died down and his eyes began to adjust, Atsushi scrambled over to Akutagawa’s side, getting as close to his love as he could possibly be. His face looked a little pinker in the cheeks and the bleeding from his nose seemed to have been erased but his eyes were still closed and he seemed still very much unconscious. Looking over to Yosano for answers, Atsushi froze when he saw the worried expression she wore indiscreetly like a mask.
“I-Is that it? Is he better now?” He asked, his words sputtering out more than spilling.
A crease formed between the doctor’s eyebrows. “I’ve done all I can do. We’ll just have to wait for him to wake back up to assess for any brain damage or deficits.”
Atsushi hated answers like that. Watching and waiting were not his specialties, especially when it came to Akutagawa.
Turning back to the mafioso, Atsushi stared closely as one eye began to flicker slightly beneath the lid–maybe a sign that he was fighting to regain consciousness. If nothing else, that movement meant that Akutagawa was not dead yet and, for that, Atsushi could cry.
“Ryu?” He whispered softly. “It’s Atsushi, can you hear me?”
A little more movement. This time, the muscles around his eyes contracted and his face winced ever so slightly.
“Please, Akutagawa. Wake up.” If begging was what it took, Atsushi was no stranger to that.
His heart was pummeling his ribs from the inside like a boxer to a sandbag. A bead of sweat dripped down his face and landed on Akutagawa’s neck. The mobster reacted reflexively with a weak shudder and his eyes began to bat open.
The first thing that Atsushi noticed was that the redness was gone and both eyes looked just as perfect as they had ever been. There had always been a thousand strange things that Atushi had loved and found beautiful about Akutagawa but this moment made him appreciate those two silver eyes more than ever before.
“... Jinko?” He managed feebly, wheezing out the words in a breathy whisper.
Atsushi’s heart fluttered. Yes! Jinko! That was him!
“I’m here,” he promised, trying not to let the tears brewing in his eyes take hold. That would be more embarrassing than he could manage to withstand.
“W-What happened?”
The way that Akutagawa’s eyes were looking at him now, Atsushi felt his stomach drop. He felt nothing but confusion radiating out from them now and that made the tear come falling out after all.
“Don’t you remember?”
Akutagawa shook his head almost imperceptibly. “No, it’s all a haze.”
Atsushi had never considered before what brain damage or a brain injury might look like but he was suddenly struck by the fear that perhaps this was it. What if something had been permanently damaged after all? What if Akutagawa had somehow lost his memory and forgotten the last few months he’d spent with Atsushi?
Every successive outcome that Atsushi’s spiraling mind could conjure was worse than the last and he suddenly felt the urge to vomit on the floor. A small pathetic sob slipped out and Atsushi’s shoulders slumped forward but he soon felt Yosano lay a hand on his back and slide in closer to both him and Akutagawa.
“Do you feel any pain?” She asked the mafioso.
He stared at her a little dumbfounded for a moment before answering. “A bit but… wait, aren’t you…” he searched for the right word. “The agency’s doctor?”
“Mhm, your boyfriend here called me in a tizzy saying you hit your head pretty bad and then passed out on the floor.”
Akutagawa’s face went as red as a tomato and Atsushi dreaded to imagine which piece of information was most appalling to him. If Atushi was correct in his fear that Akutagawa might have forgotten some if not most of their time together, then surely being called Atsushi’s boyfriend would be more than enough to make him go that embarrassed shade of vermillion.
“You hit your head on your mission,” Atsushi explained between smothered sobs. “We both live together here and so I called for help. I was so scared, Ry-” he stopped himself, “Akutagawa.”
Again, Akutagawa gave him a weird look.
“Yeah I remember all of that, dumbass,” he snapped. “I was asking what the hell happened after that. Why am I still alive? I was sure that…”
Atsushi’s eyes widened and he clapped a hand over his mouth to hide his growing grin.
“Wait, so… you remember me?”
Akutagawa’s lip curled in, annoyed. “You’re pretty hard to forget, Atsushi.”
Hurrying to brush away his tears, Atsushi’s smile grew a hundred times.
“I-I was afraid that you might have forgotten me after hitting your head, Dr. Yosano said there was a chance she wouldn’t be able to heal your brain damage so I… I was scared.”
Akutagawa’s eyes drifted over to Yosano. “So you really saved my life?” He asked incredulously.
“I did,” she confirmed. “But your current attitude is making me regret going out on a limb for a member of the Port Mafia.”
He sighed. “I apologize. Extreme pain and fatigue often make me dull and unpleasant company.”
This made Yosano crack a smile. “Well, then why don’t you do us all a favor and take something for the pain.”
She dug through her medical bag for a moment and then tossed a white bottle of pills at him.
“Thanks but we already have some in the bathroom,” he told her. “Didn’t do me much good the last time.”
“Trust me, these are the good stuff. You’re going to want these after what you’ve been through.”
Akutagawa didn’t argue with this and just unscrewed the cap, popped a small oblong pill in his mouth, and swallowed–without water, just as before.
“So, I’ll live a while longer, then?”
Giving him a crooked smirk, Yosano shrugged. “Depends how much trouble you cause for the agency I suppose.”
This time, it was Akutagawa’s turn to give a small chuckle. “Fair enough.”
Next, he turned his attention on to Atsushi. “And you, did you really think that a traumatic head wound would be all it would take for me to forget a pain in my ass like you?”
Atsushi stifled a sniffle and laughed. He couldn’t be more relieved he tried.
This was amazing but Atsushi couldn’t help but feel hurt that the first place his mind had jumped to in a moment of uncertainty was a worst-case scenario. It had been so easy too, like an instinct that was programmed into him at birth. It made him sad that, even after all this time of living what had once been his greatest dream, he still–deep down–seemed to expect only tragedy.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I am just unaccustomed to having good things in my life.”
Akutagawa’s expression softened. He reached forward and brushed away a tear before tucking a strand of Atsushi’s hair behind one ear.
“Well get used to it,” he said, his voice brimming with love and unflinching certainty. “Cause I’m not going anywhere until you do.”