Chapter Text
When Atsushi was pinned down by the snaking spirals of Rashoumon, gasping for air at the harm and hands of the man he loved, he knew he would rather be with him all the time than without. After all, this dance was one they had choreographed months ago, one they had etched into their minds upon their first meeting, when Atsushi’s ability, newly harnessed and controlled, had enabled him to fight against Akutagawa, and Akutagawa’s ability had proved itself to the stranger he’d just met. Hours after Atsushi had been told to turn the other way if ever seeing said man in public. He was never good at following instructions, anyway.
Atsushi felt no fear as his arms laid struck to the cold sidewalk, as his head tilted back against the stone, accompanied by the person attacking him on a simple mission. He felt no fear, because at the stage he and Akutagawa were at, this was normal. This was just a way of saying, ‘You’re annoying me. Stop that,’ in Akutagawa’s limited yet somehow extensive vocabulary.
When the spines of Akutagawa’s ability released from around him, leaving Atsushi in a daze, he stood up and brushed himself off. Even if he could easily break free whenever Akutagawa wasn’t focused enough to properly keep him down, he chose not to. Sometimes it was easier to let him get it all out of his system than fight back.
Atsushi shook his hair out a little, standing up straight, refocusing on the objective. Akutagawa stood there, knowingly, expectantly, like it was his fault he’d been garishly tackled to the ground by Rashoumon, like it was him who’d taken himself down for a simple gag.
A cough slipped from Akutagawa, “Get up, Weretiger.”
“I’m up,” Atsushi dejectedly complained. “You have serious problems. You know you don’t have to assault me every time I say something you don’t agree with-”
Akutagawa chose to grab him by the collar rather than let his ability do the job for him. Getting up close and personal with him was something he was more than used to. The very nature of their relationship was built upon the foundation of getting far too close, then having to internally ask themselves the question, ‘are we fighting, or are we flirting?’
“Such a mouth on you,” Akutagawa tutted. “So eager to whine.”
Atsushi scoffed and folded his arms, no longer fooled by his cheap tactic of spouting insulting comments to get a rise out of him. “Can we keep going?”
It was by now Atsushi had even forgotten what he’d said to upset him. That was how often this happened. That was how close they’d gotten to one another.
Akutagawa never had any real hotness or fervour to the way he berated him, tactfully slipped words of criticism into conversation, or just into the pure silence. Atsushi had learned to deal with it. It made the calmer parts, the kinder parts, the gentler parts, the sweeter parts, all the more special and stand-out. A little gift from Akutagawa to him to show that Atsushi was more important to him than the rest. That he was worthy of seeing those vulnerable, personality and mind undressed, soft, ever-changing, child-like parts of him. Even if it meant suffering through the constant back and forth that still stood between them all the time.
Atsushi felt Rashoumon grapple at his shirt from behind, latching onto the collar of his shirt and lifting him ever just a few inches off of the ground by what was his equivalent of the scruff of his neck, basically.
Akutagawa gave no reaction to the way he used his ability to manoeuvre Atsushi and toy with him like a little doll whenever he wished, because he knew it was just this sort of back and forth between them. “Yes, we can.”
Yet he did not put him down. Just stared, blankly.
“So…?”
“So, what, Weretiger?”
Atsushi grumbled. “You gonna let me go? So we can continue? And behave like adults?”
Akutagawa offered a shrug in place of agreement. “We are behaving like adults. Get yourself down if you want.”
Atsushi suddenly felt so astronomically further away from the ground than he actually was. Separated from the Earth by only a few inches, he felt wounded to the air around him, losing the effort to actually just hop away from his ability, tug his shirt free and flop to the ground. He couldn’t. It felt too far.
The ground, so out of reach, yet so simply close, dizzied him, as Akutagawa raised an eyebrow at his behaviour. Why was he acting so strange about simply activating his ability to transform his hand, grabbing the coil of Rashoumon that held him, and freeing himself like he always did? Why wasn’t he?
When Atsushi tried, he felt his arm spike with hairs, nails firming into claws, stripes painting his fur with jet, sooty black, and he reached over behind him, fumbling about near the nape of his neck before he sensed Rashoumon’s sharp, manifested existence. He reached for it, tore it away, and…
The cat did not land on his feet. Atsushi fell, his arm going limp, falling face flat on the concrete. Just as he did, it all went black, likely a concussion, the edges and corners of his vision receding-
...
Atsushi’s eyes opened at an alarming rate. All he could see around him was the off-white walls, the dark-sheeted bedding that Akutagawa had chosen, the lampshade fixed to the ceiling, and his hands, human through and through, gripping the covers as he shoved them forwards. His chest rising and falling faded into view, thumping and thrumming rhythmically in a panic. He’d never been the easiest, or lightest, sleeper. Akutagawa’s true opposite.
Next to him lay the man, a reluctant but clingy arm wrapped around Atsushi’s waist, being practically attached to him at night. He made a discomforted, annoyed, begrudging noise when Atsushi startled, shoving Akutagawa awake by accident. Though his eyes didn’t open, his body woke slightly in the darkness, curling up against the cold of the mattress cover and the heat of Atsushi’s thighs, his head buried side-on into his chest, using Atsushi as his pillow without any reservation.
Akutagawa could generally tell when Atsushi was awake. Akutagawa spent most nights in his own solitude up in his mind, but far from alone as he lay next to Atsushi. Some nights were sleepless, spent reading and squinting at pages in a novel. Some nights were spent scrolling through social media that he really shouldn’t, not really needing to know that Dazai and Chuuya went out for dinner again, or that Tachihara got really pissed again and decided it was something worth posting. Some nights, however, he managed, being lulled into a sleep with Atsushi doing little on purpose to help, but doing wonders to relax him without even realising. His presence was enough.
So, when Atsushi’s heartrate didn’t settle again, when he didn’t fall back into a deep REM state of rest, it told Akutagawa that Atsushi was thinking too much.
“Atsushi?” Akutagawa’s gravelly, sleep-mussed voice cracked quietly as he spoke his name. “Are you… okay?”
“Yes- Yes,” Atsushi said, indistinctly. “I’m fine.” A laugh caught on at the end of his words.
Atsushi took a moment to appreciate his surroundings. His familiar accommodation, the apartment he’d owned since starting his student years. He was placed in a bed that he and Akutagawa had bought together after moving in around a year ago. Covered by sheets and bedding that Akutagawa bought because he preferred the darkness, proclaiming that it suited the space better, saying he had an eye for interior design that Atsushi ‘simply lacked.’ His backpack sat propped against the wall near the door, covered in patches he’d accrued over the last few years from various friends, shops, and markets, a few gifted to him from Akutagawa. His laptop screen gently and dimly glowed with the time of 02:04, the wallpaper a picture taken from a disposable camera and uploaded that Atsushi had nervously asked a passerby to take of him and Akutagawa at a new year’s festival not long after they’d started dating. Every part of the room had little droplets of his life, little things that reminded him where he was. Little things that reminded him that there was no such thing as a ‘weretiger.’ That there wasn’t a group of people scattered across the globe that had things called ‘abilities,’ no matter how hard his dream had tried to prove it to him.
“Go back to sleep, then,” Akutagawa mused, his arm rubbing his side, trying to coax him back to sleeping. “We have to be up early tomorrow.”
“Early…” Atsushi recalled. “Right. We’re meeting Dazai-san and Chuuya-senpai for lunch.”
“We are,” Akutagawa calmly reminded him. “At twelve. So you best not complain to me if you don’t feel rested enough.”
Atsushi fell from stress to a simmering quietness in his mind, Akutagawa nearby helping ease the worries. Even if those worries were just a dream. A reoccuring one.
“Right,” Atsushi concluded, laying down to face his partner. “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologising, Jinko?”
Atsushi clicked his tongue before sheepishly shrugging his shoulders. “Not sure. For disturbing your slumber, maybe, Dracula.” Atsushi poked fun, putting on a grandiose tone pretending (and failing) to be Akutagawa in the process. He was not amused.
“Ha-ha,” Akutagawa’s voice fell monotone. “Go to sleep.”
Atsushi obeyed. He slipped into Akutagawa’s arms, returning the gesture as he pulled him close, wrapping his arms firmly around him as Akutagawa’s tightened, their legs pushing together. Atsushi always had a habit of slipping his own in between Akutagawa’s, simply because he liked being closer to him. He rested his forehead against Akutagawa’s, feeling the skin to skin generate a blistering yet comforting heat between them, heads buried in amongst pillows that surrounded them. A little corner of the world that he could share with Akutagawa, and crawl into, to escape relationships, to escape their insane friends, to escape schoolwork, to escape part-time jobs…
Atsushi tried to focus on the feeling of being tucked away here. That whatever his mind created was only a manifestation of the chasms of his conscience. Silly, made-up stories, unreal happenstances that were very obviously not reality. Atsushi couldn’t turn into a tiger. The very idea of that was insane. Akutagawa couldn’t control clothing. Chuuya couldn’t manipulate gravity, regardless of how hard he tried when drunk. Though, the third of three telling dreams was beginning to convince him that this was more than fairytale. More than a slideshow in his head. More than a behemoth of mashed together memories and aspirations, more than a creation of a day’s experiences turned into a dream.
“Akutagawa?” Atsushi whispered, his lips nearly touching his.
“Yes?” Akutagawa asked.
“Can I talk to you about something?”
“Always,” Akutagawa told him, carefully moving a hand up to Atsushi’s hair as his eyes finally pried themselves open a touch, gazing back at him. “But can it wait? It’s the middle of the night.”
“I’m not sure it can.”
Akutagawa didn’t give him any sign of disapproval. He was fine without sleep. Atsushi wasn’t. Though, if he was willing to talk, it meant he knew he was accepting a few minutes (at least) lost sleep. He would humour him if it gave him peace of mind. Instead, he kissed him, just gently closing that gap for a second before dragging slowly away, a soft reminder he was listening. “Alright.”
Atsushi has had the dream three times now. All of different scenarios, but with the same premise: that he and the people he loved and cared about had traits called abilities. Some nights it kept him up, wondering if it was some way of an alternate universe clashing with his. Though he had to quickly remind himself the idea of that was so asininely ludicrous that such a thing would never happen. After all, he was studying literature, not theology or anything that revolved around the idea of curious happenings like that. Even if he knew Akutagawa through and through, if he’d told him far worse things before, he was sure that relaying this to his face would gain the impossible from his stone-cold partner: a laugh.
“I don’t want you to make fun of me,” Atsushi fixed his eyes to Akutagawa’s lips.
Akutagawa reassured, “I’m not going to. Even if you manage to have little sense in most things you say. It can’t be that bad.”
“I keep having this dream. Well- Not the same dream, exactly, but similar ones. About the same thing.” The clock on the wall delicately ticked away whilst he spoke.
“A dream?” Akutagawa’s words came out muffled as he shut his eyes, still listening, his throat raspy. “About what?”
“Just- You gotta listen to me. Don’t cut me off before I’m finished, okay?”
“I’ll try.” He yawned.
Atsushi perked up a little and began speaking like a scientist theorising about the ends of the universe. “I keep having dreams- I just had another. It’s not really a nightmare, but I keep waking up from them. And you’re in them. You’ve been in all of them. And I’m myself, and we’re in Yokohama, and everything’s normal, except it’s… not.”
“Dreaming of me, Jinko?” Akutagawa stifled a smirk. “What do you mean, ‘it’s not normal’?”
“Like we’re- We’re not in college. We don’t live together. We’re not… dating, but we’re not not dating? I couldn’t tell you how I know that, though. I just sort of… feel it. Feels like we are together, and we- we know how we feel about each other, but… we’re not dating. Properly.”
Akutagawa hummed an mhm as he listened. His eyes came open again, and he moved a hand up to Atsushi’s silvery hair, ragged and choppy, a hairstyle he’d refused to change, or let Akutagawa change for him. His fingers curled around the strands, like liquid in his hands, soft and light, just like him.
“I’m trying to remember, hold on-” Atsushi shut his eyes for a moment, thinking. Trying to remember the parts of these dreams. They always seemed to have a timer, like other dreams, where he could only remember parts of his dreams for maybe five minutes before they disappeared forever into nothing. Into an abyss that was unreachable. Foggy, covered by smog and sheets of clouds, far away, like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Atsushi’s eyes flew open again, just like they had minutes ago when waking, and if people could emote in real life, a lightbulb would have appeared above his head. “There’s these- these things! They’re… I think they’re parts of us. Like some kind of power. Listen to me, okay?”
“Listening.”
“My power is that I can turn into a tiger. It’s- It’s white, and really powerful, and in one of the dreams I had, I was able to turn just my arm into a tiger’s arm.”
Akutagawa stared at him analytically with squinting eyes. “Should I advise you to keep going?”
“Probably not. Anyway,” Atsushi said. “I know I’m not just a tiger. Because you don’t call me my name, ever. I think you called me ‘Jinko’ a few times in the second one. But you keep- you keep calling me this thing.”
“Which is?”
“You keep calling me ‘Weretiger.’ I think it’s supposed to be insulting, but it’s the only thing you call me.”
Akutagawa continued stroking his hair with one hand, moving pieces of stray hair out of the way of his face as he talked, slowly pushing and tucking it behind Atsushi’s ear. “Weretiger?”
“Exactly! Exactly like that!”
“How vivid are these dreams you’re having, Atsushi?”
“Too vivid,” He shuddered. “It’s weird. It almost feels real. But I know they’re just dreams, obviously.”
Atsushi’s hands around Akutagawa’s back clawed lightly and gently at the fabric of his shirt, mindlessly, while he spoke. Akutagawa let his hand drift from Atsushi’s hair to his cheek, cupping his face while he looked at him. “Tell me more.”
With uncertainty lingering on his tongue, Atsushi indulged his request. “We’re still the same age, too, I think. You know how I said we’re not in college?”
“Yes?”
“That’s because we have jobs. Not the jobs you’d expect. And that’s where it loses me,” Atsushi sighed.
A condescending smile tugged at Akutagawa’s lips. “That’s where you become lost. Not when realising you’re capable of tasks at a superhuman capacity with inconceivable abilities and powers that sound like they’ve been taken from a book you read?”
“You’re so funny, it’s my favourite thing about you,” The other deadpanned.
“What’s mine, then?”
Atsushi tilted his head.
“Do I have a ‘power?’”
“I think we all called them ‘abilities,’ in my dream,” Atsushi explained. “But, yeah, you do. If mine wasn’t random enough… Yours is that you can manipulate clothing. Don’t ask me why. You have this coat, and it’s long, and- It sort of looks like that black one you have.”
It was Akutagawa’s turn to be confused as he tried to recall which coat Atsushi meant.
“The one you never take out of the closet,” Atsushi told him, “The old one you used to wear in the winter, but stopped.”
“Ah,” He nodded. “The one Dazai-san gave me?”
“That one. Now that I think about it, why haven’t you worn it in so long?”
“Too much clothing, I suppose. I always wore it when he and I went out for lunch in the colder months. I used to like it a lot. I guess I must have forgotten about it when we didn’t see those two as much anymore. It must have just ended up buried away.”
Atsushi thought it was funny how his brain had defaulted to dressing Akutagawa in clothing he hadn’t worn in an age rather than anything else. The one he wore in his dream was different, though.
“Well,” Atsushi continued. “It’s sort of like that, but you always have the collar popped, and it’s longer, and looks smoother. It’s like, the same length as you. Very… regal? Sort of makes you look like some kind of Victorian child.”
Akutagawa didn’t amuse at the statement. He looked on vacantly at Atsushi with tired, blank eyes, which only seemed to make Atsushi giggle.
“Your ability has a name. Like it was some kind of pet.”
“A name? Which is? Do you remember it?”
“Yeah, Rashoumon, ” He told him. “Not sure why.”
“It does ring a bell, I’ll admit,” Akutagawa pondered on the subject. As he thought, he let a few other things pass his mind. Was this proving to be therapeutic for Atsushi? Explaining his dream? He could only hope it was working. These late-night, secretive-feeling talks always seemed to be beneficial for the both of them, regardless. “Perhaps the name of something I wrote a few years ago. I want to say a poem, but I have no clue. Nothing important. I wonder why that appeared in your dream.”
“It feels all too specific to just be a dream,” His partner softly spoke. “Yet at the same time it’s so dumb that it can’t be anything more, right?”
Akutagawa’s thumb brushed his chin. “Maybe so.”
“Ah! I remember what I was going to say. You interrupted me.”
“I extend my sincerest apologies. Do continue.”
Atsushi rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Jobs. I’m part of this organisation, and everyone there has one of these ‘abilities,’ but I forgot the name. You’re… not in it.”
“What do I do, then? You said I was in your dream.”
“...You’re in the mafia.”
“I’m fucking what?” Akutagawa stopped himself before he could let out the laugh that resounded in his head from surprise.
“I don’t know why! Some kind of mafia. They’re bad. Really bad.”
Akutagawa scoffed. “Why am I the villain out of the two of us? What makes you so monumentally better than me that you don’t engage in things like that?”
“Chuuya-senpai’s in the mafia with you.”
“Right,” Akutagawa replied like it was the most normal thing in the world. “Makes sense, I suppose.”
Atsushi continued to relay the contents of his dreams to him. The fighting, the tension between the two of them that sparked the way a match did, the way they were drawn to one another like moths to a flame, not unlike real life. Telling him about the hits and jabs they took verbally at one another, and the slashes and grapples they took at one another with their abilities and their bare, bloodied fists.
It all seemed to make sense. As much sense as a dream could, anyway.
After a while of the back and forth flowing, gentle conversation, they lulled themselves to an end, and Atsushi stilled as he got to a state where he couldn’t figure out if it was so dark, and he was still looking at Akutagawa, or if his eyes were already closed and he was hallucinating him.
It was all a dream. That final statement took Atsushi away to unconsciousness. Would he have those dreams again? Surely not, right? The odds of having the same reoccuring vision, yet so blatantly being stared down by the thrusting truth of reality. That he lived a normal student life. With his boyfriend. With his friends. With family.
‘Weretigers’ weren’t real. Abilities weren’t real. There was no Detective Agency, and there was no Port Mafia. There was no Black Hound of the Port Mafia, and there was no Detective Atsushi Nakajima.