Work Text:
🂱
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke isn't sure how he got here. Which is unusual. Sure, he isn't against going with the flow, especially in the middle of a battle, but this isn't quite like that.
He grunts at the painful awareness that he isn't just being held against his will, he's holding someone else. And that someone is Atsushi Nakajima, of all people. He can feel every inch of his clothes clinging to his sweaty body, and every corner where the weretiger's limbs press down, and it doesn't hurt. This isn't violence. He feels muscle beneath a thin shirt, beneath his hands, he feels the weight of someone's head on his shoulder. He can smell the other's hair, recently washed and already drenched in sweat, he can smell the fabric softener in the other's clothes, and he can smell blood that isn't his.
He smells blood from his enemy, and he doesn't feel proud. He shuts the thought down and pulls away aggressively, a blank look on his face.
"Akutagawa?" the weretiger stutters, looking more disoriented than the other one had ever seen him (and that's saying something). The black haired man lifts a hand up, dignified, and stops him from adding anything with a harsh "don't."
He turns around before he can catch the confusion and hurt in those golden eyes; he wouldn't have been able to bear it if he had. And for once, he doesn't have anything to say to greet the tiger off dramatically, no threat or promise, not ominous message from the boss. He just runs away.
He had felt Atsushi's warmth in a non-violent manner, and he had accepted it. Reciprocated, even. The man he swore to kill, and the man that got him to stop killing. It left him with a new kind of hunger, a hunger even more intense than that of rashoumon, and he was completely lost in the feeling.
🂲
Akutagawa kneels down in an alleyway, clutching his chest as he struggles to get the smallest bit of air possible in before coughing it out again. This isn't a regular bout of coughing, he doesn't just feel ill. He's terrified.
Soon, he's pulling at his hair, clutching at the one bit of safety left in the humid, dirty, concrete corner, spitting out blood and lashing out with rashoumon all around him, no longer in control of how his ability protects him. Turns out, having a panic attack and a lung illness is not a great combination.
Akutagawa's life has been unusual, to say the least. His brain didn't develop in a normal manner, didn't get the chance to. So emotions are shaky ground for him. Not everyone gets the chance to remember the first time they experience a specific emotion, and Akutagawa remembers his first time for each and every one of them: Hatred, respect, grief, danger, safety, responsibility, understanding, joy, affection... He could probably pin down a moment for any word on the emotional wheel and tell the tale of when he got to know it anew.
He thought by now he was done with those experiences. He liked going through them, as difficult to handle as they could get. Ryuunosuke gets high off epiphanies, relishes in the thrill of his own convictions. And today, everything he thought he knew about himself was challenged.
The weretiger had hugged him. In an impulse, probably. But Ryuunosuke hugged him back. It felt like they'd stayed for hours inside that bubble, where tenderness enveloped them both. Them, of all people, a pair created from animosity. Natural enemies. Two beasts who usually would be pouncing at each other, there they were, being so vulnerable.
It's not like he'd never felt... kinship, with anyone else. It's not like he hadn't felt affection before. His sister could testify to his attempts to show it. He could care, about people, and about things other than the gaping whole of his mentor's approval, but this is new, much more than his sister had ever told him about, much more than the books he reads had taught him.
It's impossible to tell how long it's been, but when he can finally take a semi-decent breath of air, the alleyway is filled with rubble and his hands have new injuries to clean.
🂳
Writing the report for the failed mission is jarring. Part of him wants to put the blame on his subordinates for having to resort to calling him last minute, and that's the one that comes to light. The other part of him wants to crawl into a hole and stay there until he suffocates; if he couldn't complete the job because the weretiger was in a sappy mood that day, what was he good for?
Higuchi is the first one to notice his distressed state, of course. So she brings him tea, calls in a hundred times to ask if he needs anything, knocks at the door of his office again with sweet treats, replaces his lukewarm tea three times before he even realizes it's there. He finally lashes out at her when she's asking if she can go home or if he'd like her to stay late and help him with paperwork.
Akutagawa squints as she scrambles out the door, and he waits until her defeated steps on the hallway are out of hearing range to lay his head on the table. He has spent the better part of an hour on the same paragraph and it's clear he isn't going anywhere with it.
It should be simple, straightforward; making something up to excuse his failure shouldn't be complicated. And yet there it is, that noisy fly going around in his head.
"Rotten," he concludes. Rotten head, rotten lungs, rotten heart. "Like the rats in the slumps."
He falls asleep leaning over his desk to the smell of green tea and wet ink.
🂴
He can't stand the questioning looks of his subordinates the next couple of days. They're far too insistent, even though they know how short his patience lasts. They don't need to show him they've lost respect for him, his mind has already come to that conclusion on its own.
They stare too long and shake even more than usual when his steps get heavier instead of quieter the farther back he walks into the hallway. It's gotten to the point where even Elise had to question how hard he's holding back on just tearing down the building altogether.
Mori holds back on giving him tasks beyond simple paperwork for a bit, and it only makes things worse. Akutagawa is a wildcard, a very useful one at that, he's not used to staying inside. He's made for fieldwork. And it seems the boss doesn't trust him anymore.
"Rotten," he growls to himself. "If I could just throw it away like spoiled fruit..."
But new feelings don't go away just like that. He had forgotten how uncomfortable they can get.
Golden eyes and gray hair are engraved on his mind now. Sharp fangs and sturdy claws follow the shadows edging the lamp lights wherever he walks at night. It turns out far too many people use the same fabric softener at the place where he does his laundry, so he starts sending Gin on her own with both of their baskets because he can't stand even the possibility of coming near that smell.
The weretiger had shown him a new type of trust. The weretiger got scared and ran towards him. The weretiger stood in the middle of battle, and sought Akutagawa not only for support in a fight, but for comfort.
The thought feels like slow drips of cold water, drop by drop falling right on his chest: refreshing at first, then painful, then downright fear-inducing. Akutagawa runs over the scene a thousand times in his mind, seeking the pain and the cold on his frail skin; Atsushi wasn't trying to save him from an incoming attack, Atsushi wasn't attacking him in a twist of blind anger, Atsushi got scared and turned into a little child, and Akutagawa had been his safe blanket in that moment.
The silent rabid dog is free to run all around Yokohama. He dashes blindly through the dark part of the city, until he has to make an effort to search shadows to hide behind. He ends up in front of the detective agency, just a street away from the door, dazed and only half-awake.
The lights are turned off inside, the righteous detectives (and Dazai, and the tiger-man) have turned in for the night. It is the mafia's natural schedule, late at night, when crimes are easier to hide and screams are swallowed by the black sky.
He rests his back against the wall and watches the moon's reflection on the agency's window. It is his natural hour as a predator, but an invisible hand has him grabbed tightly by the nape, and the blue and white light, the faint memory of fur beside his swollen knuckles, they make him docile.
"Just the two of us?"
"Do we need any more?"
Another drop of cold water falls on his chest. He has become loyal to the weretiger. How ridiculous.
He walks a couple of blocks away, and finds a dicentra amidst a group of plants at the park. He kneels beside it and tears off the petals from the branches, one by one, savoring the sting on the open injuries of his hand at the contact.
🂵
This morning, Hugichi messes up the plan, like usual. She couldn't hold her fire long enough, could she?
His glass finally overflows and all the liquid spills on her. When they arrive at base, the job completed and the money secured, one of her cheeks has a handprint exactly the frame and size of Akutagawa's, and her eyes are glassy and distant.
Akutagawa stares at her pitiful figure. She tenses her jaw to stop her tears from spilling, tries to stand up taller, to appear more robust. But when he gives her the order to write the report for the boss she flinches at the sound of his voice.
That would have been it any other day, but the way her fearful hands smooth down her jacket and tidy her hair, and the way she walks decidedly to her office after shaking like a leaf the whole way back, the determination etched into her scowl, it all looks way too familiar. Her pleads assuring that she was just trying to help resound in his skull, her stepping in line to defend him knowing damn well he could and would deal with the opposition on his own... The pull on his heart makes him stop on his tracks, and he scoffs bitterly. Since when had he gone soft for the pretense of strength?
A new glass starts to fill. Would he have slapped Atsushi for doing the same as her?
"But it wouldn't be quite the same. No, not at all..." He tells himself.
He finds a new name for the flower blooming in his chest: The desire to protect. It had been an unconscious impulse up to that point. Stepping in to save the tiger was as natural for him as any fighting combination Dazai had taught him.
A realization: "They'll do that for me, too."
That evening, he's the one to bring her a cup of tea before heading home.
🂶
In a rare occasion, Ryuunosuke is walking under the gentle morning sun, a bouquet of flowers in hand, jaw tensed up, teeth rubbing against each other. Even he can't believe who he's bringing flowers to.
He put the order at the shop days ago. It was specific, intentional: Agapanthus, snapdragons, and violets, and an anemone in the center.
A love letter. A sincere, loyal love, so much that it feels intrusive, coming from a fragile heart.
Even after thinking it over a thousand times to give them to someone who probably had no idea what they meant, the message fell short for the tangle of roots that took growth in Akutagawa's chest.
It took him longer to yank himself back three separate times when he tried to turn around and discard the whole plan, dry the sweat off his forehead time and time again, and resist the urge to just let rashoumon swallow the building in one bite, than it took for the detectives to activate all the preventative plans they had in the event the mafia's dog would show up at their door.
He stares blankly at the little farmer of the ADA. "Where's the weretiger?"
"He's out running an errand." The blonde kid replies with a bright smile, as if Akutagawa's very presence wasn't a threat to everyone behind him.
Akutagawa clutches the bouquet behind his back just a little tighter. "Where?"
"He's at the shopping district."
Great. All the way back where he had come from. He scowls with irritation. Kenji keeps smiling pleasantly, and Akutagawa thinks destiny itself might be possessing the kid just to mock him.
Akutagawa walks away, leaving a few careless petals on the floor.
🂷
Gin notices the bouquet on the living room table the moment she steps through the door. The air is stale in the house. Something must have happened.
She knocks at his door. "Ryuu, you there?"
A grunt.
"... I'm entering."
He's face down on his bed, like a sleeping owl. Completely defeated. Gin sighs. "who were the flowers from?"
No answer. He doesn't even move.
Shit.
"... who where they for?" She walks further inside and kneels beside her brother's bed. She waits for him, knows not to pry too hard.
He coughs into the pillow, then turns his head slowly, bloodshot eyes meet hers. "I'm a fool," he declares, and buries his nose in the white surface again. "I made him a whole letter out of flowers and still couldn't deliver it because..."
He excuses the sudden silence with another cough. He didn't want to admit to his cowardice. The truth is, he felt relieved to hear that the weretiger wasn't at the agency. Akutagawa never backs down from a challenge, and yet...
"Maybe... you need to go slower?" Gin lays her head on the bed, a small smile tugs at her lips. "Remember how long it took you to get used to receiving gifts? You used to shut down entirely every time you got one because you had no idea how to respond to it."
He turns over so he can glare at her, but he looks more lost than intimidating.
"I don't know what to do with... with..." He gestures vaguely across his torso.
"With that shirt you haven't washed in three days?" She giggles. "you'll figure it out."
He scowls like a kid who just got denied another piece of candy. So she sobers up a bit. "Treat it like a new plant on your garden. Don't let it die out, don't over water it, take time to get to know what it needs to bloom..."
He sighs and closes his eyes. "Right. Thank you."
🂸
The next time he sees the weretiger, Akutagawa is glad the flowers ended up in a vase at home, because his first impulse is to cave that adorable smile in.
Oh, he doesn't just feel unbearably heavy on the chest, he feels his hands get charged with energy and his face heat up. It isn't anger, no, he can see the world around him clearly, it's not the tunnel vision that usually overcomes him, and yet the only sight that can satisfy him right now is that of Atsushi Nakajima.
The light-haired man thanks the cashier one last time, and it doesn't matter what Ryuunosuke needed to buy anymore, because the sound of the his footsteps when he turns to leave makes his heart give out.
"Weretiger!" He blurts out before the other can cross the door.
Nakajima turns around, startled, and embarrasment from the memory of their last encounter seeps into his mind. Akutagawa's stare only makes it worse: It's sore, careful, like he just found something he'd been looking for for days.
The taller man covers his mouth with his hand, chipped nail polish stands out on his pale skin; he's in casual clothes, not as overbearing as the coat he wears for his job, and that contrast makes him appear sheepish when he turns away.
"Let's take a walk," he orders, and dashes past him and out of the convenience store, fully expecting the other one to follow.
Akutagawa leads him to a non-crowded area, somewhere quiet, where he can think clearly. His hands ache with need as he turns around, and those bright, expectant eyes welcome him in. He takes a step forward, then another, then another, and Atsushi doesn't step back. He's entralled by the way in which the -previously unknown- softness of those black eyes envelop him; but he winces anyways when they actually make contact.
"What are you- hmpf!" Akutagawa wraps his arms around him, cradling him like he's a porcelain doll, and Atsushi hates how right it feels. Akutagawa is warm, like a bonfire, not the usual raging blaze he learned to expect.
Just when his brain has had enough time to process that what is happening, is happening at all, the dog lets go abruptly, as if he would burn out entirely if he gave the man a chance to hug him back, and scoffs with irritation when the absence of touch makes him ache even more.
Atsushi raises an eyebrow, baffled at the sudden change. "Akutagawa, what is all of this about?"
"Oh, so you can hug me out of nowhere in the middle of combat, but I can't do the same on a normal day?" It comes out much rougher than he wanted to. Atsushi retreats back into himself, frame tense and small, and now Ryuunosuke wishes he had the flowers with him, because he has to drag the words out of his mouth to make the fool understand what's going through his mind.
"A few weeks ago, you... Went to me for comfort," He points out blankly, like it's just part of a document he's reading out loud. "Why?"
Nakajima blushes again, his hand finds a strand of his hair and tugs nervously at it. "I wasn't- I don't- I- hmph." A deep breath, drenched with annoyance. His voice is barely audible. "... I was scared."
Akutagawa's eyes narrow. "Yes, I'm aware. Why did you run towards me though?"
Atsushi scowls. "Why do you ask?"
He braces for a fight when the dog clenches his fists, looking genuinely distressed, but he spills over instead. He talks like this is his last day to live and he needs Atsushi to know what is going through his mind.
"I've allowed you to change me in unexplainable ways, weretiger." He spits out. "And ever since that day, I've realized I not only want to kill you, I also want to consume you, lock you up inside my chest and keep you there, but also..."
He takes a deep breath, his eyes dart away to the orange sunset falling over Yokohama; he fears looking into the tiger's face and being unable to find acceptance. The warm breeze tickles on the back of his neck, his hands shake with emotion. "You're the only person I trust. And I..."
I need you.
He hesitates for a second too long. He can't say it. But his ally understands. Atsushi knows it isn't about a murderous wish anymore, it isn't about their mentor's seemingly unnatainable approval, it isn't about the welfare of the city or peace between their organizations. It's just the two of them. The tiger and the dragon. The campfire beneath the moon.
Ryuunosuke is still as a rock, as if the sky will come crashing down on him if he makes the wrong movement. He can't untangle the knot he's twisted his veins into by himself, he concludes. Reluctantly, desperately, he needs the weretiger's help.
Atsushi tugs gently at his sleeve, then slowly slips his hand down to hold the other's. He observes the man in front of him carefully, and he appears... fragile.
"I think... overtime, I've come to think of you as..." Atsushi scrambles to find the right word. He almost has to pull it out from between his teeth and, nonetheless, it is true. "... my friend." A thoughtful chuckle. "And not just while we're saving the city, or after a job well done, but also when I want to punch you in the face." Ryuunosuke laments the loss of that gentle gaze when he turns away.
"You're important to me, too." The tiger concludes.
Akutagawa tightens his grip on his hand, making Atsushi turn around. The dog's eyes are wide, full of relief, and he smiles. A tender, genuine smile.
"... Good."