Chapter Text
Akutagawa grit his teeth as he made his way into one of Yokohama's many popular parks. He felt like the green trees buzzing with life and the chatter all around him was mocking. He really didn't want to be here, nor did he know why he was heading to this destination.
All he knows is that the weretiger called him, asking to meet at this park. An odd rendezvous, Akutagawa had thought to himself. If this was for directions of a mission, shouldn't he have just gone to the Agency's office instead?
His mood soured further as he reminded himself of how in the dark he was about all of this.
Does Dazai-san truly think that it's better for the idiotic weretiger to be a messenger than for him to just give me a simple phone call? Akutagawa scowled. Again. Atsushi had already called him in the first place to tell him where to meet— the only explanation was that the mission was too important to be discussed over the phone. Now he had to go and do all of this, on his day off of all things.
He didn't want to see the annoying weretiger today.
His heart picked up a beat.
No.
The weretiger is nothing but an albatross around my neck. The world would be more bearable if he were dead.
His heart still sped in his chest, betraying his thoughts. Thoughts that were inevitably drifting to the jinko, and his face, and his smile, and the way he talked and how he'd always tilt his head just slightly when he asked a question—
Akutagawa suddenly felt murderous. He didn't need his traitorous feelings to get in the way of today, or ever, for that matter. He took a breath, as much as his lungs resisted, and cleared his mind.
It didn't help that much, because then the weretiger came into view. Akutagawa found, as always, that just simply seeing the weretiger did something to him. A fuzzy feeling that he knew the name of but still refused to label it.
The detective was resting on a bench out of ways from the path where most people walked, in the shade of a wrinkled oak tree. His figure was slouched, and he looked incredibly tired.
"Weretiger." Akutagawa greeted curtly, hands in his pockets as he approached the bench.
Atsushi's head snapped up immediately from where he'd been resting, head down and his hands on his knees.
"Oh— Akutagawa. You're actually here."
"Of course I am." Akutagawa snapped. "Don't waste my time, jinko. What are the mission details?"
"Mission details? Oh, that's," Atsushi shook his head. "That's not why I called you here."
Akutagawa's grey eyes narrowed. "What? Then why am I here?"
"I just wanted to see you, I guess?"
The raw words tore at Akutagawa, his curiosity piqued despite how he was supposed to act around the weretiger.
Then Akutagawa really saw Atsushi's face. The weretiger had looked up at him fully and the mafioso could see the bags under his eyes, violet and tired. And his eyes, Akutagawa couldn't stand it. They were normally so light, but now they were dark and troubled and it was driving the older man insane to keep looking at them. Something was wrong.
Atsushi turned his head away from, his messy white bangs obscuring his face, falling into place like dominos. His voice was too exhausted, nothing like the persistent, headstrong tone Akutagawa was used to.
"That sounded stupid, huh? Sorry for dragging you out here."
Akutagawa kept a poker face but worry for Atsushi suddenly flooded his body. As much as he pretended he didn't care, as much as lied to himself about who his heart belonged to, he couldn't stop the worry from wrapping around his mind like a chain, rusted and locked. No matter what, it was always pulling Akutagawa into the fire, into a battlefield of blood and pasts. Secretly, Akutagawa welcomed the reckless leash.
And yet sometimes there were pockets in time with the detective that were none other than solace for Akutagawa's rotten soul, so comfortable it felt wrong.
Everything was wrong. The weretiger, this random boy who stumbled into his life as Dazai's new subordinate, shouldn't make him like this. So protective, so loyal, so utterly obsessed. So madly in love.
He sighed and took a seat next to Atsushi on the bench. The weretiger didn't move, but he didn't look at Akutagawa either. The silver-haired boy was silent, too wilted for Akutagawa's comfort. Something was bothering him, and Akutagawa could see it reflected in his eyes.
"Jinko, why the hell am I here?"
"I already told you."
"I'll reiterate. Why would you ever want my company?"
"I don't know," Atsushi shrugged. "It just feels right."
"So am I not needed for anything?" Akutagawa questioned.
"Just stay— please."
They lapsed into silence.
Akutagawa watched the weretiger carefully, out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't used to being relied on like this, being a shoulder to cry on. He never thought anyone would ever see him like that.
He filed endless words and sentences through his mind until he decided on something to ask.
And it was not that their conversations were ever lackluster. In fact, Atsushi was one of the few people who ever argued back with Akutagawa to his face, and the only person that Akutagawa didn't mind doing that. It was just that, in wretched honesty, he was terrified of losing what he and Atsushi had— whatever the fragments of their relationship was, anyway.
And he needed to tell Atsushi to get his shit together. He'd never been one for sugarcoating.
"Jinko." He spoke up after studying Atsushi's face for so long it felt wrong to stare. But he could drink up every shade of Atsushi's skin, along with every slight shine in his eyes, the soft planes of his face and his pointed nose, for years. He was a painting come to life, to Akutagawa. Not that the mafioso would ever say that out loud...
"I will not allow you to waste my only day off for the next month. I needn't be here."
"Do you really hate being here that much?" Atsushi answered, so quickly as if he had also been mapping out infinite conversations in his head.
"It isn't hate." Akutagawa clarified, propping his elbow onto the metal arm of the bench and resting his chin on his palm. "I simply do not see the importance of my presence." He spit out, wanting nothing more than to be of importance. For the weretiger to desire him as much as Akutagawa did back. His feelings were always teetering on a treacherous edge, sinking into the quicksand that the weretiger truly seemed to be.
"I can hear your heartbeat." Atsushi said suddenly. He tilted his head back— Akutagawa saw that some of the color had returned to his face— and he looked up, at the crisp, emerald leaves above the two. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the sun peeking through the leave's gaps and it sent shadows spiraling across his face. "With my tiger hearing," he continued, "it's loud when I focus on it."
"And what relevance does that have to do with anything?"
Dazai had taught him how to slow his heart, or quicken it, all that time ago. But, generally, he couldn't control how it'd race when the weretiger was there. He wondered if Atsushi ever noticed.
"It means that you're alive." Atsushi's heterochromatic eyes moved to meet his, grey gazing back into a mirror of gold and lilac. Akutagawa felt frozen, a deer in headlights.
Akutagawa understood what that meant instantly, as much as he didn't understand why that was the case.
"This is about the battle on the Boswellian ship." He stated, not a question.
"Yes— well, no. It's not about the fight," Atsushi replied, voice strung with a pain that Akutagawa didn't like to hear. He inhaled and closed his eyes, and Akutagawa pondered just how quickly the weretiger would break into tears if this conversation continued.
"It's about your death."
Akutagawa's lungs suddenly felt heavier as he breathed in, the oxygen struggling in his closed throat.
"You can hardly call that a death, jinko. I'm as alive as you are." Akutagawa pulled his mouth into a scowl.
"But that's now, Akutagawa. Not then. It was so much different when I thought you were really gone." Atsushi snapped, a wounded animal. At least he sounded more alive now, Akutagawa decided.
"You dwell on the past to the point where it's pathetic."
"Why do you always do that?" Atsushi said back. "You always act as if it was nothing!"
"Because it was nothing. It was just my choice."
"You left me."
"I saved you."
Akutagawa's eyes narrowed as their conversation furthered. Had his death really bothered the detective that much?
"Akutagawa," Atsushi's voice cracked with an unnamed emotion, things slipping through the porcelain cracks. "It didn't mean nothing to me, alright? And it's so annoying how you say that what you did didn't mean anything."
"In a thousand different worlds, jinko, I would do the same on that damned boat. I won't apologize for what I did, or regret it." Akutagawa almost barked, suddenly tired of the conversation.
Atsushi made a dissatisfied noise before turning his head, looking away from Akutagawa, with a face that made his heart squeeze in a moral vice.
"Admittedly, I was not aware that my...decision, that day, had affected you so much." Akutagawa acquiesced, and that sickening hope bloomed in him again, taking root in every one of his veins. Did the weretiger care about him that drastically, or was his heart showing him delusions?
"Was it not obvious?" Atsushi retorted, his mouth pulled tight, before he sighed. "Akutagawa, I've been having nightmares about it." He looked back at the older man, the bags under his eyes dark.
"Nightmares." Akutagawa repeated. He was far from a stranger to those. Usually, they consisted of horrific yet unrealistic situations. If not, they were his subconscious spitting his guilt and crimes back at him, regret painted in red behind his eyes, a movie only he could see.
"I guess it's more like a memory, on repeat and rewind, than a nightmare. Again and again, every single night." Atsushi's lids lowered in tiredness. "I hate it. I'd rather dream about anything else, even—" his breath hitched, "my old orphanage." He closed his eyes fully and Akutagawa saw the crease between his eyebrows as he let his frustrations out.
"You'll think it's stupid, but I thought if..if I saw you, alive and more or less well, it'd stop the nightmares, at least for a little bit." Atsushi breathed out, "I need to know that you're still here, I think."
"I am. You do not have to worry about that, jinko," Akutagawa lied, and he felt it in his lungs. Then, under his breath, "You say all this as if you didn't die yourself,"
Atsushi caught it. "That was different."
"Was it, really?"
"Yes, because, you— you didn't even remember me, okay? And I came back so much faster than you did. You didn't have time to mourn. If you even did," he mumbled out the last sentence, uncertainty laced with his words.
"I was distraught, and it was ridiculous. Weretiger, the sight of you saving me was the reason why my memories returned to me."
Atsushi stayed quiet, his eyes piercing.
"I gained you and lost you in the same second." Akutagawa couldn't keep the truth, the harshness and sorrow of it all, from his voice. "Yet I know you wouldn't have changed your course of action if you had to make that decision again, with your incessant need to be the hero."
Atsushi didn't tell him that he was right.
"And if I vow to never leave you like that again, you must uphold the same standard on your end of the deal, jinko."
"What's with you and promises?"
"You started it."
Atsushi bit his tongue. "I agree, for what it's worth."
"It's worth my sanity." Akutagawa couldn't help the tiniest smirk forming on his lips, surprised he'd smiled before Atsushi had. "I seem to be quite reckless when you're gone."
"That's a given. Actually, you're a reckless jerk whether or not I'm there."
"In the moments when you were gone and my memories had just been recalled," Akutagawa revealed, "I, in a state of madness, demanded that the Amenogozen being bring you back."
Atsushi's eyes widened, and he opened and closed his mouth, no words forming.
"You did return, in the end, but by your own endeavors and not from the powers of that cursed god." Akutagawa said casually, as if his own insanity to ask that impossible task of Amenogozen didn't matter; that's how he always was, much to Atsushi's frustration.
But anything he did for the detective he loved was worth whatever price it had.
"I've found that the battlefield feels incomplete when you're not with me," Akutagawa said, his gravelly voice as quiet as the swirl of wind in the air, but Atsushi still heard him.
"The feeling's mutual." Atsushi mumbled truthfully. "And maybe that's why I can't get that moment out of my head, Akutagawa."
"...Everyone loves you," Atsushi's head snapped up when Akutagawa suddenly spoke, "and you have that entire Agency that cares about you. I'm sure every person you've ever saved is indebted to you, and respects you."
"So?"
"You're loved. I don't see why my death would be so harrowing to someone who has everything."
A fire was lit in Atsushi's eyes. "Because I care. Ever think of that? Maybe you won't let yourself admit it, Akutagawa, but you're worth something to me."
"Don't be a fool, I care for you too, weretiger." The words were out before he could stop them, a poisoning confession slipping through his teeth.
Fuck. He should have worded that differently.
He'd said care for.
Not care about.
Was there a difference in the meaning, the romantic implications? Would Atsushi notice his mistake, his vulnerability?
Atsushi just turned his head again, his gaze distant and watching the park's glimmering lake. "So you actually like me?" There was a sudden smile in his voice.
"I tolerate you." The mafioso lied again.
Atsushi didn't say anything back for a moment, his world spinning on its axis. He'd die of embarrassment if Akutagawa knew what he was thinking.
"Akutagawa, when you died, it put things into perspective for me," Atsushi breathed out, absentmindedly carding his fingers through his starlight hair. "I realized there was a lot I didn't know about you, and...a lot I'd never told you."
"I'm here with you now, so spit it out if you're that desperate, jinko." Akutagawa put his guard up, on edge after his slip up.
"You probably don't want to hear it." Atsushi replied, feeling three special words on the tip of his tongue, searing. "But I really regretted not telling you before you had died, I had no idea you'd come back. No one ever comes back. So..."
Akutagawa studied Atsushi's features once more, taking in the sight of the weretiger effected so much by him. His eyes were misted over, and a dying confession on his lips.
If he just leaned in, he could kiss him, right on his pretty, pretty lips.
A sharp shrill brought Akutagawa back to reality, making him blink owlishly and instinctively reach into his coat pocket, his desire smoldered. For now, anyway. He lifted his phone up to his ear, sliding yes on the call and not bothering to check the caller ID. His eyes were still on his weretiger.
"Yes?" he barked into the speaker, sounding ruder than normal (if that was possible).
He waited a second, a voice answering back at him.
"Ah...yes, I'll be there as soon as possible." He didn't bother to say goodbye before hanging up.
"Who was that?"
"Chuuya-san. I need to head back to the Mafia headquarters." Akutagawa clarified, before grumbling. "There goes my day off, I presume."
"Oh." The remnants of a smile that Atsushi had left faltered, before disappearing. "Well then, you should go. Sorry for calling you out here so randomly..and maybe my nightmares will stop." The detective didn't continue, whatever he'd been wanting to tell Akutagawa dying along with their meeting.
Akutagawa sat up from the bench, brushing himself off and adjusting his cravat. Curiosity burned at him to know what Atsushi was going to say, but they'd have to save it for another time.
"You're a fool if you keep dreaming about that night, weretiger." He glanced over his shoulder, his gunmetal eyes cold. "For the last time, I am alive."
Then he was gone, his back to Atsushi and walking away, along on a path that Atsushi wanted to follow, despite everything.
Atsushi sighed to himself as Akutagawa left, his mind bereft and reeling, thoughts scattered like an upturned puzzle.
So he does care about me, after all, Atsushi felt a flutter in his stomach, the blood rushing to his cheeks unstoppable. I guess I already knew that. But when he said it out loud... Atsushi sighed once more, this time it was tinged with a type of satisfaction.
He stretched and got up, blinking as he adjusted from the shade to a glittering sunshine. Tiredness tugged at him again and he was reminded of the two hours of restless sleep he'd achieved the night before.
He prayed his talk with Akutagawa would help. It was true, after all, wasn't it? Akutagawa wouldn't leave him. Not again. And Atsushi couldn't afford to break a second time.
He remembered that day like it was a film reel before his ametrine eyes— and he remembered the mourning that followed, the silent, salt tears that only fell once, because there'd been no time. The compartmentalized pain crumbling him from the inside out, only taking form later, in things like nightmares and flashbacks, leaving him gasping at night.
Atsushi steeled himself, taking Akutagawa's advice— which, surprisingly, wasn't new for him to do.
Forget the past.
Would he be able to do that this time?