Work Text:
Atsushi stretches, his still-healing limbs aching. His clothes are a ripped mess again but there’s little he can do about it.
“Akutagawa, you okay?” Atsushi calls out to his partner. Their battle with some wannabe Ability user group beat up a nice chunk of downtown Yokohama, near Chinatown. Between all the shattered concrete, smoke, and dust kicked up, even the Tiger's eyes have a hard time seeing.
He's answered by a series of hacking coughs and his heart starts pounding at the sound. Knock it off, he's fine. Remember?
Thanks to Akutagawa’s brief stint as a vampire, his lung disease is all but cured. Most likely, he inhaled a nice lungful of dust. Hell if Atsushi hasn't been able to avoid doing the same.
Atsushi uses his Tiger hearing to trace the sound back to a ruined alleyway, taking care not to trip over the hunks of concrete and cracked sidewalk. There’s a silhouette of a black trenchcoat towards the back; he must have retreated to avoid the worst of the dust.
He grabs Akutagawa’s hand and leads them both back towards the drop-off point. There’s little resistance, which would have been shocking even a month ago but has become more common since the battle with Fyodor.
They weave through the chaos while Atsushi uses his other hand to call in the incident and direct police to exactly where the unconscious Ability users are located.
Just as Atsushi snaps his flip phone closed, there’s a mumbling coming from behind him. He turns his head to face its source.
There’s a slight flush to Akutagawa’s cheeks and ears as he pointedly looks away from Atsushi. But he knows damn well what Akutagawa asked thanks to the Tiger’s hearing.
“I’d love to join you and Gin-san for tea.”
Akutagawa chokes on his spit and cackles, dodging a half-hearted Rashomon tendril in the process. “You don’t need to be so shy. We’re friends, right?”
Akutagawa sucks his teeth but doesn’t deny the claim, and Atsushi counts that as a win. Last time this happened, he made the mistake of not paying attention and Akutagawa refused to repeat himself. The stubborn bastard.
So he learned to listen more carefully, so he wouldn’t miss his chance again.