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Dazai had said, offhandedly, the way he said most things that lodged themselves in Akutagawa's chest like splinters: "You know, you and Atsushi could be as close as me and Chibi-kun."
Then he'd wandered off.
Akutagawa stood in the hallway for a long moment. Then he went to find Nakajima Atsushi.
The jinko was at the café near the Agency, which Akutagawa knew without having made any effort to know it. He looked up when Akutagawa walked in, expression flickering through wariness before settling into something careful and civil — they'd both gotten better at civil, these past months.
"Akutagawa-san?"
"Stand up."
Atsushi stood, slowly, with the air of someone deciding it was probably fine. They were nearly the same height. Akutagawa looked at him.
The logic was simple. Dazai-san's idea of close involved contact — Akutagawa had observed enough of him and Chuuya to know that much. So if he made contact with Nakajima Atsushi, and it was as awful as it would obviously be, he would have proof that Dazai-san was wrong. He was good at proving Dazai-san wrong.
He put his arms around Atsushi's shoulders.
Atsushi made a soft, surprised sound. Then — and this was the part Akutagawa had not planned for — he hugged back. His arms came up around Akutagawa's back without hesitation, easy and warm, like it wasn't strange at all.
Akutagawa waited for it to be terrible.
It wasn't terrible.
It was warm. Atsushi was warm, and steady, and didn't ask anything of him, and Rashomon had gone entirely still against his skin. Akutagawa became aware, slowly, that his shoulders had come down. That his grip had stopped being deliberate and become something else.
"You're really tense," Atsushi said, into his coat.
"I am aware."
"You don't have to stay if you don't want to."
Akutagawa didn't move.
Neither did Atsushi.
After a long moment, Akutagawa said, very quietly, "I don't hate this."
He felt Atsushi smile against his shoulder. "Yeah. Me neither."
He was going to step back. Any moment.
The afternoon light had gone gold by the time either of them noticed the time, and by then they had somehow ended up on the small sofa in the corner, still close, Atsushi's head tipped against his arm. It wasn't planned. It had simply happened the way gravity happened, gradual and inevitable, and Akutagawa found that he did not have the will to argue with it.
Atsushi fell asleep first. Akutagawa watched the slow rise and fall of his breathing for a while, feeling strange and warm and oddly settled, and then he closed his eyes too.
Dazai found them like that, curled together in the low afternoon light, both fast asleep.
He took the photo very quietly.
Osamu: [image attached]
Osamu: look familiar?
Chuuya: ...
Chuuya: shut up
Osamu: I'm not saying anything :)
Chuuya: we are NOTHING like that
Osamu: sure
Chuuya: Osamu
Osamu: ☆
Chuuya: ...okay they're a little cute
Dazai smiled at his phone. He looked at the photo once more — Akutagawa's face smoothed soft in sleep, Atsushi tucked in beside him like it was the most natural thing — and felt something warm settle in his chest.
He left without waking them.