Archive of Our Own

Dazai spends a week overseas, tracking some middling arms dealer to middle of nowhere Wichita, Kansas, enduring the obligatory meet-and-greet with, in order of increasing tedium, the embassy, a caseworker from the United States Bureau of Special Abilities (henceforth USBSA), and Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, only to return to an empty office, the air-con on the fritz again—if the single rattling fan perched in the windowsill pushing out a tepid breeze is any indicator—and not one co-worker waiting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to hear his slightly editorialized, sometimes exaggerated exploits.

Or, at least, not one co-worker that Dazai wants to tell his stories to. Tanizaki is there, drooping at his desk in a puddle of sweat. He must have pulled the short straw, left behind to greet any potential clients or, hopefully, whatever maintenance worker Kunikida called in to save them from the inevitable heat stroke.

At Dazai's entrance, he pushes himself up on his elbows and announces in a voice that suggests he'll be requesting hazard pay, "Ranpo-san replaced the Freon with cranberry juice, or convinced Kenji-kun to." He crumples back over his desk as he adds, "Kenji-kun said ecoterrorism sounded neat, and we should all do our part to heal the ozone layer."

Dazai nods like this makes perfect sense and says, "His idealism brings tears to my eyes. Everyone else jump ship?"

"No, they're all out on cases," Tanizaki says, recounting into wood grain: "Yosano-sensei and Ranpo-san are investigating a series of empty graves dug out from the inside. Kenji-kun and Kyouka-chan are running interviews at a youth volleyball tournament looking for potential Ability use. Atsushi-kun's undercover at the local university. The President is in meetings downtown and took Haruno-san with him. Kunikida-san's been here with me, but he had an errand just before you showed up." His voice grows sharper as he finishes with heavy betrayal, "Naomi left to go to the beach."

Dazai blinks.

He waits a beat, trying and failing to find reasons as to why Atsushi of all people would be undercover, and when nothing comes to him, he lies and says, "I see." He walks backwards to the doorway, casting a harried, "Keep holding down the fort," over his shoulder as he ducks out of the office, rushing down the stairs two at a time.

Predictably, he finds Kunikida taking his weekly clandestine smoke break two blocks down. His gets a funny pinch between his eyes when he sees Dazai coming his way, taking a long drag, and letting it go with an aggrieved sigh just as he skids to a stop in front of him.

"No," Kunikida says.

"Hurtful," Dazai says, hand over heart. "Anyone would think you aren't happy to see I've returned safe and sound from the wilds of America. What a poor partner you are, Kunikida-kun…"

Kunikida looks like he would very much like to close his eyes and ignore Dazai's presence, but (alas!) has too much self-preservation to actually try it. He repeats, "No." A pause, nicotine alone not enough to soften his temper, and he adds balefully, "You're lucky you weren't detained. Do you know what hoops I had to jump through to keep you from being arrested? You shot your caseworker. The USBSA—"

"Were very pleased that I discovered one of their own was involved in international arms trafficking?" Dazai smiles. "They have bigger problems than little ol' me, and we all know it—like fixing that name of theirs. Doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it?"

A vein pulses in Kunikida's temple. "Go away."

"Now—"

"Dazai," he snaps, making a sharp gesture to ward him off. "You may find ignoring social cues a passable sport, but nobody else does. Let me be clear," his voice raises, like the louder he is the more compelled Dazai will be to listen, "I don't want to see you. I don't want to speak with you. Go away."

He skitters back a step in affected shock. "How can I when you're so intent on misrepresenting me? Ignoring social cues! Do you think I ignore—?" Dazai stops abruptly to inform his partner, "Kunikida-kun, you're going to burn yourself," eyes locking onto the remains of his cigarette which has, while they've been talking, whittled down to the filter.

Kunikida flicks it to the ground, grinding his heel over it with more aggression than is necessary. Simultaneously, he brings his hand up to rub at his forehead, sighing out a bereaved, "You…"

Dazai gives him a moment. He doesn't actually want to ignite Kunikida's temper, for all he's fun to needle. Not when he's relying on him for information.

True to form, Kunikida decides that cutting to the quick of his antics is the surest way to regain internal peace, and so he asks, both looking and sounding like he's considering the efficacy of wringing his neck, "What's so damn important?"

"Such suspicion," Dazai cries, "Can't a man visit his partner after being away for so long?"

"Not nearly long enough."

"Long enough for you to start trampling over workplace safety regulations," Dazai says, knowing how very dear regulations are to Kunikida. "How cruel of you, leaving poor Tanizaki-kun in the office! When he ends up with a full body fungal infection, we'll all know who to blame!" Kunikida's jaw clenches, but he seems resolute about not being drawn into their usual back-and-forth, so Dazai has no choice but to switch gears, "Well, never mind that. I heard tell that it's been a busy week for all of you! So many active cases! Ah, but one could get the impression that our little Agency is over-burdening itself…"

That does the trick. Kunikida snaps, "Maybe if resource distribution wasn't skewed towards cleaning up your mess—"

And Dazai snaps back, affronted, "Maybe if the Americans—"

"Maybe," Kunikida speaks over him, "if wishes were horses." He rubs at his forehead again, and adds, "Dazai, enough. Just ask," hands twitching towards his pocket where he keeps his cigarette case. He must find dealing with Dazai right now especially taxing if he's even considering smoking a second.

"You need to lighten up, Kunikida-kun. At this rate you'll end up having an aneurysm, before lung disease can take you," he pokes, but then his partner starts to push away from his wall he's been pressed against and Dazai raises his hands in placation, not really in the mood to nurse a black eye, "Fine, fine, you're no fun."

He sighs, dithering for a moment as it feels suddenly unbearable to ask outright about Atsushi, to let anyone get a peak at the way his stomach's been twisting itself over, even someone like Kunikida who, for all his gruff exterior and predilection to joint locks, he knows cares about Atsushi and would never put him in harm's way without a clean way out, which is both more than Dazai can say about himself and enough to set his stomach heaving with a new sensation, an ugly tension that starts to twist itself into knots.

He smothers the feeling as best he can, and says lightly, "Tanizaki shared what everyone's been up to and I suppose I'm just the tiniest bit surprised that you've sent our Atsushi undercover."

Kunikida stares at him, eyebrows raising high above his glasses. It's a look he's well acquainted with, though this might be the first time it's actually left him bristling. "The job required someone in the usual college age range," he says, and Dazai resists the urge to remind him that, barring a few notable exceptions, all of their co-workers are in the usual college age range, "and Atsushi had no open cases. The only other option at the time was Tanizaki and…" Kunikida starts to squint in a way that means he's repressing a grimace, "Atsushi's better at steeling his nerves."

Dazai blinks. "I see we're comparing turtles and tortoises. Does the turtle crossing the finish line a fraction of a second faster suddenly make it quick?"

"You're being stranger than usual," Kunikida informs him. "Atsushi will be fine. There's no indication that the case will turn violent and, while he can occasionally fall victim to hysterics, he's more than capable of mingling with other young adults without causing a fuss. Incidentally," he continues crisply, "this is more than I can say for you."

All of this is annoying, of course, but none of it is enough to raise his hackles. That is, until Kunikida decides to say, "He's not a child, Dazai," in a voice that seems to imply this is something Dazai's forgotten.

It's ridiculous for several reasons. The very idea that Dazai's ever considered Atsushi to be anything other than he is. The idea that Atsushi's ever actually been a child. Or, maybe worst of all, the idea that Kunikida's somehow cracked Atsushi open in a way that Dazai knows isn't possible, and as if this impossible knowledge of his more slippery neurosis gives him a leg up on Dazai, some sort of moral superiority.

"Of course, Atsushi-kun is capable!" Dazai sing-songs, forcing down his frustration as best he can. "He's my student, after all! I only wonder why I wasn't consulted about him taking on something as time consuming as undercover work."

Kunikida asks, baffled, "Why would I waste money on an international call just to go over day-to-day business?"

"For shame! It's not everyday that a man's dearest subordinate is shucked away on a mission for who knows how long!" Dazai keeps smiling, but it starts to feel like a rictus as he says, "It's almost as if you didn't want me to know!"

"Why would you need to know?!"

Dazai throws his hands up. "Because Atsushi-kun is my student!"

There's a long pause, where Kunikida pushes his glasses up into his hair in order to pinch the bridge of his nose, before he says, forcing himself to remain as level as possible, "Atsushi is a member of the Agency the same as any of us. Moreover, if you bothered to ever read the interoffice memos I send out, you'd know that I'm his direct superior, not you."

A grenade with the pin pulled would land more gently than this new bit of knowledge does.

Dazai doesn't gape, but the ugly feeling in his stomach begins to roil even more, and he can't keep the tightness out of his voice when he asks, "And how long exactly have you been waiting to wave that around like a cudgel?"

Kunikida has the audacity to roll his eyes. "Don't be dramatic."

Dazai takes a breath. "How long will Atsushi-kun be undercover?"

"Until the case is resolved."

Dazai makes himself step away, spinning on his heel so he doesn't have to look at his partner anymore, not when he feels one nudge away from throttling him for a change. Somehow he doesn't think anyone else would consider he's in charge of Atsushi and I'm not! to be a valid excuse. He complains, loudly, "I can't believe he didn't call me!"

Kunikida sighs, "Dazai," and when he turns back around, his expression's transitioned into something a little too wry for comfort. "He hasn't infiltrated a crime syndicate. He's going to school. That's all. He's still in the boarding house most nights—"

"Why didn't you lead with that?" Dazai interrupts, tugging at his hair. What does most nights mean, anyways?

"Why didn't I—?" he starts to ask incredulously, but Dazai's already turned his back on him, heading back down the street, "Dazai! You fucking waste of bandages!"

He absently waves behind him, sharing a commiserating look with a family happening to pass by—the mother looking scandalized at the language—and calls out, "Nice catching up, Kunikida-kun! Thanks for not leaving me to rot in an American gulag!"

Atsushi is not at the boarding house when he arrives, though this isn't much of a surprise. It's still a few hours off from the end of the day and whatever he's doing undercover Dazai imagines it requires some level of social inclusion that darting off at the earliest opportunity wouldn't exactly help foster. Still, knowing this does nothing to stop him from pacing around his own living room, mind whirring equal parts in resentment and intrigue at this new turn in Atsushi's life.

It also does nothing to stop him from perking up a bit at each rattle of the building as the front door is thrown open, something that becomes aggravating enough that he gives up smothering his anticipation and instead balances himself on the kitchen counter to peer out the window over his sink, his only window that faces the main street, antsy as the afternoon drips into evening and Atsushi still hasn't appeared.

It isn't until the sun has set and Dazai's courting sciatic pain that his pale head becomes visible, cutting through the gloom of night. Dazai bounds out of his apartment, waiting until he hears the front door open below him, and then sets down the stairs, making it one flight, then two, and then—

"Atsushi-kun!" he cries out, nearly barreling into him, hands grabbing onto his forearms for stability he doesn't need. He beams down at him, but quickly falters, unable to stop himself from reaching a hand up to his hair, coiling a piece of it around a finger, letting it go, lingering, fingertips resting at his temple, as he asks, "What did you do to your hair?"

He's cut it, clearly, softening the familiar asymmetry. It stops below his ears in a floof, and it makes him look boyish, some bright-eyed ingenue, certainly not like a detective undercover. He tilts Atsushi's head to the side and Atsushi follows the motion easily, watching him curiously, even as Dazai starts to tug at his hair.

"Do you not like it?" Atsushi asks. "I thought it looked nice."

"Of course I like it!" Dazai laughs, letting his hand drop with one last ruffle to the top of his head. "It's just a surprise. I leave for a week and the world flips upside down." That is perhaps a bit too telling, so he pushes up on his toes and leans forward to loom over him, asking in a stage-whisper, "You haven't had any life changing epiphanies, have you?"

Atsushi pushes at his chest before he can fully unbalance himself. "Not that I'm aware." He considers Dazai for a moment. The corners of his eyes crinkle up as he smiles, bemused, "Ah, Dazai-san, what exactly—"

"You know, I was just heading out to get dinner," he lies through his teeth. "Atsushi-kun should come. My treat."

Atsushi smile sharpens. "You have your wallet?"

"What kind of man do you take me for?" he cries out, miming a knife to the chest.

"One who seems to always lose his wallet when the bill arrives," Atsushi accuses, still more fond than he probably deserves. "I'm glad you're back, Dazai-san."

Dazai starts down the stairs again, nudging his shoulder into Atsushi's, feeling nonsensically like he's getting away with something, though he can't pinpoint what. It doesn't stop him from smiling back. "I'm glad to be back."

They end up getting ramen, tucking close together at the bar as the evening rush thrums around them. Atsushi runs warm, his body a burning line pressed to his side, arm to arm, thigh to thigh, and Dazai can't help but eat his way into his space: pressing the toe of his shoe into his foot, knocking their knees together, stretching his arm around his shoulder to pull on his ear, leaving his arm there afterwards in a casual sprawl.

"So!" he chimes once the waiter leaves, dropping his chin down to be heard among all of the chatter of the restaurant. "Atsushi-kun! I heard down the grapevine that you're dipping your toes into undercover work."

"Did you?" Atsushi asks, turning just a bit, just enough that his hair brushes Dazai's cheek. "I heard that you caused an international incident."

"Ah," he says. "These things happen sometimes. Whatever Kunikida said, it's all a misunderstanding."

"Kunikida-san was furious," Atsushi tells him, which doesn't surprise him. What does surprise him is: "He told the USBSA liaison that you had more competence in your pinky nail than their entire organization put together, maybe even the entire country, if they thought they'd be able to scapegoat you so easily." Then, while Dazai's still trying to digest that, he adds, "The President's been stuck in meetings at the American embassy ever since, though. I guess, technically, he hasn't used the words international incident either, but connecting the dots… "

Dazai pulls at his ear lobe. "Is Atsushi-kun scolding me?"

"Of course not," Atsushi says, twisting his leg so he can press his foot over Dazai's. "I thought we were just stating the obvious."

He laughs, feeling charmed. "You'll make me ask?"

"I know you enjoy talking around these things, but I'm not quite clever enough to read your mind, Dazai-san." Atsushi shifts to face him head-on, and says so earnestly that he doesn't think butter would melt in his mouth, "Give me some time to work on my deductive reasoning."

"How underhanded! Appealing to me as your mentor…" Dazai shakes his head in faux-dismay. "Alright, Atsushi-kun, tell me about the case. No one's filled me in about what exactly required you to go undercover in the first place."

Of course, no one's filled him in about any of this at all, which is a separate problem to tackle.

"There's a shrine making people fall in love," Atsushi says. This rings somehow more absurd than most of the Ability-related nonsense they deal with, and Dazai finds his mind racing with the possibilities. "Supposedly," he continues with heavy skepticism. "If we believe the parent who brought it to our attention, at least."

"And do we?"

Atsushi frowns. "He's unhappy that his son started dating a girl from a working family and the shrine is an easy target, but… There have been a lot of students claiming they've found partners after leaving offerings. It's strange enough to be an Ability, I think, but not like any I've seen before."

"What's the running theory?" Dazai asks, drumming his fingers against Atsushi's shoulder. "Some sort of coercion?"

It seems most likely with the bare-bones he has to work with, but the thought curdles even as he has it, the question rancid against his tongue, something inexplicably vile about Atsushi being in proximity to anyone with such an Ability.

Atsushi turns as best he can in the negligible space between them at the bar. He hooks his ankle over Dazai's calf to keep balance, as he shakes his head, "No one seems coerced." Then he seems to realize how poor an argument this is and adds, "The relationships aren't random or sudden. If there is an Ability at play, I don't think it's making people do anything. I think maybe… I think it deals in good probabilities. Maybe it needs something to feed it, or sustain it, and that's where the shrine comes in."

He stops, a little abrupt, his face starting to go pink. "That's my theory, anyways. The school took down its last iteration and the students all seem pretty tight-lipped about it, so," he shrugs helplessly. "I'm sure the rumors aren't helping. There's all sorts of nasty ones going around about magic and curses, and the usual nonsense about gold-digging."

"Ah, there's nothing more predictable than human ugliness," Dazai says, watching as Atsushi valiantly fights against a frown. How sweet. Unfortunately, as his mentor he has no choice but to poke at the rather large gap in logic that the rest of their co-workers apparently saw no problem balancing an undercover mission on. "So, correct me if I'm wrong, Atsushi-kun, but for the foreseeable future, you're just… going to school… on the off-chance that you run into an Ability-user… who may not exist?"

Atsushi's eyebrows shoot up, like he's surprised by the question. "We're being privately funded," he says drily. "The parent who brought it to us has no second thoughts about throwing money at a problem. And it's not like it'll be forever, Dazai-san. If I can't find evidence of an Ability by the end of the semester, we'll close the contract."

"What a surprise! I wouldn't have thought that Kunikida-kun would let you go without results! Maybe he does have a heart…" he muses.

"Don't be silly, Dazai-san," Atsushi says, before adding, "He has something even more important: ethics. We're already charging the client exorbitantly. Stringing him along, too… Wouldn't that be extortion?"

Dazai pulls a face. "Semantics! You said the shrine was taken down?"

"For now," Atsushi nods. "Every time it's taken down, it pops up again somewhere else on campus. The school's added more security, but no one's been caught setting it up, yet."

"Ability-user or not, someone's awfully persistent," he says, turning this over in his head. "There aren't any identifying features?"

"The students call it Marichiko's shrine," Atsushi says after a long moment, looking like he doesn't want to share this particular piece of information, probably because, "No one's been able to explain where the name comes from, though."

Dazai laughs in delight, pushing down the little bursts of worry fissioning through him, "Ominous!" He tugs lightly on Atsushi's ear, tracing his way up the shell and pinches the cartilage between his fingers. "When it reappears will Atsushi-kun go and ask for love?"

"Just because I don't think it's coercive, doesn't mean I want to risk it," Atsushi says, rolling his eyes.

"Aw," Dazai surges forward until all he can see is Atsushi's face, his eyes going wide and his face flushing as Dazai pinches his cheek, cooing, "I knew you were a romantic at heart!"

Carefully, Atsushi reaches up to dislodge Dazai from his face, fingers warm against his hand, and he sounds just as warm as he says, "Sure."

"You're not even tempted?" he presses.

Atsushi tilts his head, brow furrowing as he looks over Dazai. "Would you be?"

He hums, "It would be nice if I could find a woman willing to go the way of all flesh…" he trails off with a shrug, "But outsourcing feels a bit skeevy."

"No skeevier than pitching a double suicide to begin with, probably," Atsushi points out.

Dazai pouts. "You lack my vision."

Atsushi nods in very solemn agreement. "And I count my blessings."

"You'll give me a complex," he complains, wanting to press his fingers into the soft, elasticity of Atsushi's cheeks, press until he feels the shape of his molars biting up, but he still has some notion of personal boundaries, dusty as it is when it comes to Atsushi, and restrains himself, winding back towards his best show of professionalism as he asks, "How are you finding the work?"

"It's not bad," Atsushi says, before his voice gets swallowed up by hesitation. He pauses for a long stretch, seemingly unsure how to elaborate on this, or maybe unsure of how to convince himself of whatever it is he's trying to say. Atsushi has many talents but unfortunately once he's aware of the reality of a thing, it's very hard for him to fall back into self-delusion. At least, he is where most things, outside of Dazai himself, are concerned.

"It's only been a few days," he continues, the words carefully slotted against one another, "But it's been a little… strange. To go to classes and to talk to other students my age, I mean—not that I haven't talked to people my age before!" he interjects, eyes flicking away as his mind starts to outpace his mouth, "Obviously, I have. I mean… I see Junichirou and Naomi every day. And Akutagawa's around, too, I guess. Which you know, so I don't know why I'm explaining it…"

Dazai knocks their knees together, wondering how Atsushi would take being shushed like a startled horse.

He takes a breath and seems to steel himself, keeping his eyes pinned somewhere over Dazai's shoulder as he says in a remarkably calm voice, "I know that our lives are weird, but I don't think it ever set in how weird until now, acting like the biggest problem I can imagine is passing a math quiz or working on a group presentation, and not getting a bullet to the head or stopping a bomb from detonating. The school stuff is just…" Atsushi struggles to find the words, "It's all so serious for them, which—is fine! I'm glad these are their biggest problems!"

He's not quite a good enough liar to have that land, but he continues, "But then… I'll be in class or studying, and I'll think about other cases we've worked, and I'll think about the Agency, and…" He bites his lip, frustrated, eyes finally returning to Dazai where he shoots him a fierce look and insists, "It's not bad. I'm just not sure…" Atsushi sighs, explosively, and says, getting to the crux at last, "I don't know how to fit."

"Atsushi-kun," Dazai begins, but Atsushi interrupts before he can get any further than that.

"I'm not looking for advice," he tells him, star-burst eyes starting to crinkle at the corners. "I just needed to complain, I think, and who else can I do that with? Kunikida-san would take it as a sign I need to sit through a remedial course on keeping my cover, but that's not really what my problem is."

Dazai doesn't think Atsushi has much of a problem at all. Of course, going to school feels strange. Of course, the character he's playing pinches at his skin. It's another world entirely, one with very little room for them without both great contortion and the economical sloughing off of parts. Dazai may not know more than piecemeal of Atsushi's childhood, but he imagines he's had more than a lifetime's worth of fitting in already.

It's for the best that he's not looking for advice, as there's very little Dazai could say apart from shrugging the feeling off as an inevitability. A little discomfort might be good in the long run. If nothing else, maybe he'll finish the job sooner and return back to the Agency where he belongs.

None of this is worth saying, however. Instead, he clicks his tongue and chides, "Kunikida-kun shouldn't be so high and mighty over anyone's undercover work. Not when he's been banned from doing his own."

That gets a smile to twitch onto Atsushi's face. "Do I want to ask?"

"Of course!" Dazai cries, throwing his hands out an nearly knocking over a rapidly cooling bowl of ramen, left on the bar at… some point during their conversation. "The real question is: should you?"

Feeling suitably placated after hearing about the case from Atsushi's mouth, Dazai is woefully under-prepared on their walk back to the boarding house for the way Atsushi's face crinkles in confusion when Dazai pokes fun about his commute to campus.

"It's not bad, though…?" he says, squinting in thought, before adding brightly, "Oh! I'm not staying here, Dazai-san. I'm renting a room to help keep my cover. Or, the Agency's renting it for me. Kyouka-chan was a little nervous about living alone, especially after… Well, after. So I've been spending the night here recently, but tonight's probably the last for a while. It'll look weird if someone catches on that I have someplace else to stay in town, never mind trying to explain why I just happen to live with a bunch of detectives…"

Dazai's sure he must say something clever in response, but direct recollection fails him.

There's something much worse about knowing Atsushi is surrendering his nights to this case in addition to his days. It's a barb, slivered beneath his skin, that he can't stop himself from prodding.

It's all a bit gratuitous, is the thing. Not only is the job ridiculous, likely not Ability-related, but that everyone else seems content to use Atsushi as the noble martyr he keeps trying to be (when, to Dazai's thinking, they should probably attempt to curb such inclinations) all so they can dredge as much money as they can out of an apparently willing checkbook is… frustrating, to attempt to put the tooth-gnashing shiver he gets whenever he glances at Atsushi's empty desk into words.

Sure, things have been a little tight, budgetarily speaking, ever since they were legally pardoned after the whole terrorist debacle and allowed to reopen their doors, but they haven't been so tight that tossing one of their own overboard seems a viable solution.

He tries to explain this to his partner, early into Atsushi's absence, but Kunikida only proclaims, "Ridiculous!" and then he scoffs, "Are you sermonizing to me about ethics? You?" and then he twists his arm behind his back in an elbow lock and snaps, "None of us are pimping out Atsushi, you bone-headed, egotistical—" and Dazai, rather than letting himself be thrown around like a scruffed cat, grinds his heel in Kunikida's foot and sends his free elbow into his solar plexus, after which they both tumble to the floor, grappling until Haruno interrupts tentatively to let them know their client has arrived.

For what are, he's sure, completely unrelated reasons, the entire office starts to walk around Dazai on tip-toes.

After their scuffle, Kunikida and Dazai are temporarily separated, presumably to keep Kunikida from finally burning through the last of his patience and putting Dazai out of his misery once and for all. For the rest of the day, little Kyouka takes on the burden of being his minder instead. It's a poor choice, because, for all that they cut their teeth in similar ways, their individual neuroticisms don't slot together so much as they further serrate, and, more unfortunately, for all they both like Atsushi discussion of him quickly devolves into an interpersonal cold war.

He's honestly surprised they make it three hours before Kyouka refuses to speak with him altogether and, by the next morning, Kunikida throws Tanizaki at him in a desperate bid to maintain his workplace productivity statistics.

This, Dazai minds less. Tanizaki is fun to wind-up, at least.

He's also far too obliging of his antics. Absolutely no sign of the backbone required to wrestle conversation away from Dazai once he gets on a roll. Usually, there's little harm in this, but then usually Dazai feels far more lenient to the world at large for all of its many, bubbling irritations. Increasingly, he finds he doesn't have the tolerance to filter his more generalized disdain; though, increasingly, he also finds he doesn't have tolerance for much of anything.

It leads to situations, such as their current client intake, where Dazai can't be bothered to act with any sort of delicacy and Tanizaki is too nervy after being thrown into the deep-end of his bad mood first thing in the morning to temper him properly. Given that their current client is a high-strung mother bewailing her daughter running off with a boyfriend she finds inappropriate, this is problematic.

"Have you considered waiting?" he asks, interrupting her, watching from the corner of his eye as Tanizaki twitches out of his slouch in the cafe booth, well-attuned to all of Dazai's tones and knowing this one means nothing good.

She blinks. "Excuse me?"

"Waiting," he repeats, drawing the syllables out. "If your daughter is a willing participant in this relationship of hers, something you've shown us no evidence to the contrary, but you find her choices unsuitable you could simply wait for her to come to that realization herself."

"That's your professional opinion?" She gapes at him, flushing in anger. "He hurts her. He uses that—that Ability of his and he bleeds her."

Tanizaki rushes to say, "Dazai-san doesn't mean—"

Dazai speaks over him with a shrug, "Pain, pleasure… If she's content, what can we do?"

"Arrest him!" she snaps, voice raising into a shout that starts to draw eyes from the rest of the cafe. He catches a flash of red hair as Lucy abandons her post at the counter to go tattle upstairs. "Stop him before he kills her!"

Again, Tanizaki tries to interject, "Ma'am—"

"Who's to say that isn't what she wants?" Dazai asks, dropping his chin onto laced hands as braces himself on elbows in order to lean across the table separating them. "Have you asked?"

Her voice lowers into an appalled whisper. "What?"

Dazai wonders if it would be a step too far to ask to see a photo of her daughter. Probably, he decides, considering the tremors that have started spasming through her entire body as she tries to burn him alive with her stare. She's aged well, in any case. He's sure her daughter must look similar.

He clarifies, "Have you asked your daughter if she'd like to die?" Then, while she's still processing that, he continues, "If she does, I can offer my contact information. You see, I've been looking for a woman to kill myself with and I assure you there'll be less mess than what she's currently—"

She flings her drink across the table. Dazai, lucky enough to be sitting on the outer edge of the booth, is able to avoid the splatter. Tanizaki is not so lucky and takes iced coffee directly to the face.

"Ah," Dazai tilts his head, stepping to the side as she stalks past him and out the door without a backwards glance. Still, he calls out, "Is that a no, then?" but it doesn't even elicit a final glare cast back.

They've undoubtedly drawn the attention of the entire cafe. The regulars, at least, are used to the eccentricities of the detectives from upstairs traipsing in and out.

Tanizaki turns to him, steadily dripping, but doesn't say anything. He only stares. Mostly in exasperated disbelief but, unbearably, Dazai can see something else peeking behind that, some clumsy pity, and it has him grateful for Kunikida's sudden appearance at his side, Lucy at his heels with a glower, because as snappish as he's been recently he doesn't actually want to be cruel to any of his co-workers.

Kunikida takes a deep, bracing breath, but otherwise does a remarkable job holding his temper. Dazai thought for sure they'd continue to give the cafe a show.

"Tanizaki," he says, grabbing Dazai's arm and pulling him away from the table, "Go get cleaned up. You can give the case to Yosano-sensei. Dazai," his eyes narrow behind his glasses, pausing in consideration, and Dazai thinks he's about to be suplexed, but Kunikida only says, "Let's go for a walk."

"Down a pier, or…?" he asks as his partner yanks him out of the cafe and then down the street.

They walk in frosty silence, Kunikida valiantly restraining himself from outright frogmarching him. Evidently, he must trust Dazai not to bolt from his side, because he lets go of his arm after a few minutes and crosses his own over his chest. A fail safe, probably, in case he decides throttling Dazai would be a more valuable use of time than attempting to talk to him, or whatever it is they're doing now.

"You're going to be benched if you keep this up," Kunikida tells him. "If what Montgomery said is true…" he trails off, less in threat and more in tired bafflement. "In what world was any of that appropriate?

Dazai groans theatrically, "Oh, please don't start Kunikida! That whole intake was a waste of our time. Her daughter flew the nest and she can't cope with lack of control—"

"You can't know that," Kunikida grinds out.

"Call it a hunch," he says. "Isn't that the job?"

Kunikida turns to him sharply. His jaw flexes and he says in a very quiet, very fierce voice, "Helping people is the job." It wavers between them, like the longer the words sit the more chance there is of Kunikida's soft heart crawling into Dazai's chest. Then, Kunikida draws back, pulls his eyes away, snaps in a passable imitation of their usual production, "Not whatever the hell that was."

Dazai doesn't feel guilty, but he does feel reproached. "We need better intake screening."

"You need to go through sensitivity training," Kunikida barks. "Again."

There's nothing worth saying to that, so Dazai doesn't say anything. They continue to walk in silence.

"Fine," Kunikida says, coming to a stop with a sudden jerk, listing off with increasing disdain, "I'm a stick-in-the-mud. Tanizaki folds like tissue paper. Kyouka refuses to speak with you." He pauses, mouth pinching flat, and has the audacity to ask, "What would Atsushi say?"

"Atsushi knows what I am," Dazai says. The worst part, he thinks, is it doesn't even taste like a lie anymore.

Kunikida opens his mouth, puffing up like he's finally going to explode, but something stops him. His mouth closes with a violent click of his teeth. He scrubs a hand over his face. His eyes are sharp on Dazai. His partner is many things: naive, set in his ways, and, by some cruel twist of bureaucratically-ordained fate, horrifically in-tune with the turbulent surface of Dazai's thoughts.

"Wait here," he snaps, shoving him by the shoulder until he's standing in an alleyway off of the street, and then turning on his heel to stalk off elsewhere.

It's all incredibly strange. By their usual standards, Kunikida's practically treating him with kid gloves. Dazai isn't sure what to do with that.

Not long after he leaves, he returns with a familiar pinch between his eyes and a takeaway coffee in hand. He shoves it at Dazai and orders, "Drink this. It should calm you down," which is mystifying in and of itself, but Kunikida's also looking at him in a way that tells him he can either go along with this bizarre mood of his or prepare to endure the indignity of being drip-fed right here in the alley.

As Kunikida has never actually wanted to kill him (permanent incapacitation is a thornier issue), he only hesitates a moment before taking a sip.

"Kunikida-kun…" Dazai ventures warily. "Are you treating me like a stray?"

"Act like a mutt…" he mutters.

He gapes at him. "Unbelievable." But, then, he does feel less frayed after being forcibly taken on a walk and then watered with caffeine, so he offers, "I may have been harsh."

"Stunning insight," Kunikida glares.

He hedges, "Perhaps someone should speak to the daughter to be safe. Not me."

"You were never in consideration," Kunikida snaps. "Now, unless you need to find a bush to piss on, let's go. Do you know how far back you've set my schedule today?"

"Ah, Kunikida-kun, I had no idea your tastes were so deviant," Dazai simpers.

A blow to the head follows duly.

Atsushi's absence continues to grate.

There's a baseline irritation he feels towards the case, towards his empty desk, towards the rest of their co-worker's who allowed him to go undercover in the first place. It sits at a simmer, boiling him from the inside as the continual lack of air-con boils him from the outside. It makes him sharp, but most of the office is sharp, the heat sapping them of patience, which is a lucky break because it means no one really cares what's making him act like a bastard, too preoccupied with the schadenfreude of poking at all his miserable melodrama.

That's not to say there aren't things that spike his temper:

The little message chime that Kyouka's phone gives when they're all walking back to the boarding house after a shift. The steady care Atsushi shows her by not calling himself, by keeping to her schedule even amid his work. The careful way she works open her phone, dials his number, puts it to her ear and says, "Atsushi-san," pink-faced with joy.

The way the Tanizakis titter together on their lunch break, heads bent close as they text Atsushi, flooding him with inane messages. Naomi crowing, "Oh, nii-sama, he's going to burn up if you say that! Not everyone is as prepared for your sweet talk as I am!" and Tanizaki screeching, "I'm not—there's no—no sweet talk!" The ceaseless ping as Atsushi responds back with apparently equal fervor.

The prompt replies to his own messages, even, as minuscule as they are. His which is more elegant: hanging from a chandelier or ramparts? sent on a whim late one night, gets a stern Death isn't elegant the next morning, a perfunctory check-in at noon: Is Dazai-san eating?

It's that text that has Kunikida sending him out with Kenji for the afternoon. Kenji, of course, is incredibly hard to be cruel to, not only because of his bone-deep resistance to letting any personal insult land, but also because, black as Dazai's blood is, unleashing any amount of disdain on a teenager who somehow still glitters with life even after all he's been through leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. He's surprised by Kunikida's wiliness.

Unfortunately, his partner's foray into social engineering doesn't expand much beyond that and the case they investigate ends up being one with levels of violence that even Dazai finds himself faintly shocked by. He does his best to keep Kenji way from the worst of it (the crime scene photos, the morgue, the witness testimonies, so, upon reflection, all of it), but he doesn't think to keep him from their very own infirmary when he brings the medical report to Yosano for a second opinion.

She considers the photos silently, clinical curiosity superseding any sort of disgust, before slipping them back into their folder with a slow, lingering interest that sets his skin crawling.

"Postmortem," she says, eyes flicking between Kenji and him. Something about her expression has his hackles raising.

"You're sure?" he asks. There's little utility in torturing someone so extensively if the victim isn't alive to endure it, but, he supposes, utility doesn't count for everything.

Yosano's mouth pinches into a line, eyes back on Kenji who sits perched on a little stool, sucking on a juice box. She sighs, but explains, "The edges of the wounds are largely non-retracted. No clotting. No inflammation." She pauses, looking like she wants to explain in further detail, but another glance at Kenji stops her. "Anything else?"

Dazai frowns. "It doesn't make sense. The nails were growing in. That's evidence of sustained trauma—"

"Her nails?" Kenji interrupts, swinging his wide-eyes in his direction.

Yosano's expression curdles. "Kenji-kun," she says, riffling over her desk until she pulls out a crinkled envelope which she holds out to him with a grave expression, "Could you do me a favor and deliver this to Ranpo-san?"

Kenji takes the envelope, but hesitates at the door. "Someone tortured her?"

"No," Yosano says.

"Yes," Dazai says.

He stares between them, chewing on his lip, but doesn't say anything else as he shuffles out of the infirmary.

The door hardly clicks shut when Yosano wheels around on him. "He shouldn't be on this case," she says, staring through him in distaste.

He'd wonder what she sees when she looks at him, but, of course, he already knows. It is, after all, the same thing he sees when he looks at her. He doesn't waste either of their time pointing out that Kunikida gave them the case. Dazai's guilt is inherited anyways, a type not so easily wicked away. Using Kenji is a little low-hanging, but, where Yosano's concerned, keeping to pretext is essential to getting through any interaction with him.

She continues, "You're being uncharacteristically sloppy, Dazai. Did he see the body?"

He blinks at her, as guileless as he can stand to make himself at the moment, and asks, "What do you take me for?"

"Nothing that's worth sharing," she bites.

It digs under his skin the way very few things can. He finds himself saying in a clipped rush, the words tripping down his tongue, hot as bile, "Nothing good will come from coddling him. Just because you wish you spent your younger years swaddled tight—"

Yosano's fingers are going white from the force she uses to keep them pressed flat on her desk. Does she want to use her hands? Or maybe she's stopping herself from twitching towards a scalpel? A dog does always return to its vomit…

"You're a fount of talent," she cuts over him. "Even now, you can open your mouth and out pours his voice. Remind me, Dazai: are you the ventriloquist or the dummy?"

It pulls a laugh from him, caustic and low, the antithesis to everything he's been working so hard to be, and he can see the way the sound rolls through Yosano, the way she's bracing herself, picking this fight because it's easier than picking the wound, and he opens his mouth, stomach churning white-hot with anger, something soft and bruised roiling below that, something cringing and hurt, and—

He stands, feet moving before he can follow the thought, consider his actions. He's going to swallow his tongue. He's going to leave the infirmary and take a walk and not take a sledgehammer to the tentative patch of common ground that Yosano and him have managed to build after years of working together. He's being abrasive. He's jamming his way into spots he knows better than to even glance. He's stupidly surprised that she'd say what she did (and, with the advantage of drunken reflection later that night, he's sure she must have been surprised that he said what he did, too).

He's nearly out the door when Yosano calls out, voice level, "There are all sorts of mundane reasons people lose their nails. Have you ever heard of familiarity heuristics?"

In a measured response, he only slams the door.

Dazai spends the rest of his afternoon holed up in the reconfigured basement of an izakaya, a shiny and new gambling joint that will stay in business for as long as they remember to pay dividends to whoever is currently in charge of racketing. He passes the time counting cards at the poker table and, when that grows boring, he lets himself get caught, throws himself into the ensuing fight. None of it makes him feel anymore put together and when he emerges from the stifling heat of the basement, stinking of sweat and cigarettes, blood dripping steadily down from his nose (lucky hit), generally wrung-out and pissy, the first thing to greet him is a heavy blanket of humidity, thick enough to chew, and its all so frustrating that he really does consider stepping into on-coming traffic.

He restrains himself. He slinks back towards the boarding house. He thinks about how wonderful it will be to strip himself down to the skin, collapse onto his sofa, and drown himself with whatever beer he's shoved in the back of his fridge.

This is, very carefully, all he thinks about. If he allows anything more substantial to pierce the film keeping his composure intact, he'll end up doing something rash, probably something that'll lead to Kunikida being called in as his emergency contact, and, as he's already had to turn his phone on silent to ignore his partners incessant calls after he jumped ship earlier, he's keen to avoid this.

He's almost in the clear, a few blocks away from the boarding house, when he turns a corner and finds himself face to face with Atsushi.

To his credit, Atsushi looks as shocked to see him as Dazai feels. His arms pinwheel in front of him for a moment, while he catches his balance, stops himself from plowing into Dazai's chest, and then his hands flutter around awkwardly, like he wants to reach out and touch him before thinking better of it. Maybe Dazai's fraying temper is writ plain across his face, or maybe there's a scent wafting off of him that screams: DO NOT ENGAGE. Whatever the case, Atsushi stumbles back a step putting more distance between them then he'd usually ever bother to. Dazai wants to say it's a relief, but in actuality it sets something ugly pulsing in his chest, and he has to dig his heels in to stop himself from stepping closer, crossing that boundary.

"Well!" he chimes, clapping his hands together and then linking his fingers tight enough to ache, "This is a surprise! What are you doing all the way out here, Atsushi-kun?"

"Naomi-kun invited me for dinner," Atsushi says, deaf to the way the world begins to fade to static around Dazai as he continues, "And since I was already around I thought I'd take the time to visit properly. I'm glad to run into you, Dazai-san."

Dazai smiles, face pulling oddly, refusing to sit. "Are you? That's nice to hear…"

That gets a pinch to form between his eyebrows, a slight narrowing of his eyes. It can hardly be called a change in expression, but to Dazai, who's made a hobby of cataloguing Atsushi's moods, it's practically a blinking sign. He keeps to placidity well, carefully wraps himself up in polite confusion, always so quick to deflect, always so quick to bend with Dazai's whims, like a bamboo shoot bowing back from the force of the wind, pushed and pushed and refusing the satisfaction of a clean snap.

"I'm always happy to see Dazai-san," he says firmly. Then, with a gutting amount of sincerity, he disengages, "But I probably shouldn't just accost you in the street after a work day."

"Atsushi-kun is very good at handling with care," he agrees, a caustic edge to his voice that he can't quite dull.

"Don't be unkind," Atsushi says.

"Maybe you've been around civilians too long," he finds himself saying, the words coming before he can think through why they shouldn't, "Playing pretend must be fun, but don't forget that's all it is. You aren't—"

"Don't do this," Atsushi interrupts, hands raised up like he's placating a wild animal. There's a brief lull where Dazai's too surprised to continue and Atsushi adds, something new in his voice, something he's not sure he's heard before, sharp and low, "It's not fair to either of us."

He might as well have gagged him, for how effectively he feels himself sputter out.

Atsushi waits a moment, eyes dragging over his face, but doesn't say anything else as he neatly steps around him and carries on his way.

The morning doesn't dawn so much as it cracks open, sharp beams of sunlight pushing through the gaps between his windows and the tatty bolts of fabric he'd pinned over them, bright enough that it feels like he's put his brain through a mincer and no amount of twisting and turning on his sofa, skin brushing uncomfortably over the tartan cover, is enough to send him back to sleep. Instead, he begins the slow crawl to alertness. It's unfortunately literal today, the world shifting below his feet, rippling with every movement of his head, motion-sickness contained to the buoyancy of his brain matter, how lovely, and even once he's done being sick, the clammy nausea remains and with it the creeping recollection of all he'd rather not recall.

It's not fair to either of us, Atsushi had said. Dazai still isn't sure what he meant. He's not sure muddling it out will be all too helpful, either. Self-flagellation is, to his thinking, rarely worth the energy spent.

It's not fair to either of us, he repeats to himself.

He'd been harsh—or he was going to be harsh, before Atsushi cut him off at the knees.

It's not like he was trying to start a fight. Not as he has been with everyone else recently, though maybe that's worse.

He wasn't after a fight because even thinking of picking one with Atsushi makes him feel a bit like he's considering the efficacy of dropping a hound into a rabbit warren, and also because Atsushi is good at listening, and, probably most damnably, because he wanted to be able to spew any of his constantly churning bile about his undercover work and maybe spew it in a persuasive enough fashion that Atsushi could be convinced to retract himself from the job and return to the office where he belongs, to work on cases that actually matter, and—

Well, perhaps attempting this line of argument with Atsushi, who can't stand being scruffed and, at most, tolerates the play-act in order to soothe the worst of Kunikida's mother-henning, was a poor choice.

He stumbles into the office, valiantly smothering down the urge to retch, only a few minutes late. Usually, he'd suffer his hang-over in the rank darkness of his room, but he's not sure he deserves such comfort right now, and karmic justice has nothing on the burden of sweating out beer in the sticky-hot air of morning while his co-workers tip-toe around him like he's a circus attraction come free of its cage.

"Dazai-san, are you alright?" Tanizaki asks when he enters, squinting at him in concern.

Somewhere farther in the room, Ranpo snaps, "Don't ask stupid questions," which means he's spoken with Yosano. Joy.

Tanizaki continues undaunted, "Do you need first-aid?"

It's all nonsensical to Dazai, not to mention so loud it sets his stomach rolling, but Tanizaki's concern is real enough to drag Kunikida over. His partner glares over at him in familiar disapproval and barks at Tanizaki, "The blood's dry. Go back to work," then, eyebrow twitching, he asks, "Who'd you pick a fight with?"

All at once, he remembers his nose had been bleeding when he left the gambling den. On instinct, he licks at his upper lip. This, he regrets immediately. Had it still been bleeding when he ran into Atsushi? What a mess…

"It doesn't matter," Dazai says, scanning the room for something to distract his partner from the lecture he's been sitting on. "Where's Kyouka-chan?"

"Downstairs," Kunikida says. There's a pause where he clearly weighs his options, but apparently his good nature and tendency to pity wins out because he decides to share, voice begrudging like he suspects saying anything is a mistake in the making, "Atsushi stayed the night. They're getting coffee before he has to return to campus."

He blinks. "I see."

Kunikida takes a deep breath. "Dazai—"

"I'll bring you back a coffee, don't worry one bit, Kunikida-kun!" he calls, already skidding backwards through the door.

He makes a pit stop in the bathroom, where he scowls at his reflection and has to admit, if only to himself, that it's a wonder Kunikida avoided saying anything about how awful he looks. He must really be worried about him. It sets something new and unbearable squirming in his chest, and he has to busy himself with wetting paper towels to blot at the dry blood on his face to avoid thinking about it. Regrettably, there's nothing to be done about his overall lank greasiness, or the deep bruises beneath his eyes, the sallow color of his cheeks.

The cafe is bustling at this hour, but it only takes a moment to spot his quarry at the booth tucked farthest back. Atsushi's preference for staying out of the way shines through even here. He crosses over and forces his way beside Atsushi, who scoots further in automatically obliging, tossing his arm out to follow the upholstered back of the bench, leaving it hovering over Atsushi's shoulders but not touching.

Kyouka stares at him with pointed irritation over her strawberry milk.

Dazai smiles, "Good morning, you two!"

"Dazai-san," Atsushi says evenly. He tilts his head slightly, bright eyes heavy on his face, but all he says is, "You're… energetic."

He's fairly sure there's an insult buried underneath the layers of Atsushi's careful tonelessness.

Kyouka doesn't even bother pretending to be pleased. "Did you need something?"

"Nothing in particular," he says with a shrug. "But I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see our dear Atsushi-kun off before he embarks on his assignment again." He shifts to face him more completely, their knees knocking, and tells him with all the sincerity he can muster, maybe all the sincerity he's ever mustered, "You do good work."

Atsushi turns faintly pink, but doesn't drop his gaze. "Thank you," he says, something strangely considering about his voice. For a moment, Dazai's lulled into complacency, unable to properly brace himself as he adds, "I'm not angry."

Dazai doesn't have to fake his puzzlement. "Atsushi-kun?"

"I just wanted to let you know," he says. "You're edgier than usual."

Fondness begins to bubble up, deeply embarrassing, and he laughs, "You really do do good work."

"I've had a good teacher," Atsushi says, letting his foot press down over Dazai's.

"Flatterer," he accuses.

"I was thinking of Kunikida-san, actually."

Kyouka presses in, voice soft as she asks, "How much longer do we have?" Her dark eyes are fixed to Atsushi, but Dazai isn't so far out of the game to assume he's out of her scope.

"Long enough to finish our drinks," Atsushi assures. "Long enough for me to get Dazai-san something to drink, too."

Kyouka's expression does something funny at that, tightens in a displeased ripple before the tension eases, and she presses, "You're meeting Hayashi-san, aren't you? He won't mind that you're late? I don't want to hurt your cover."

Dazai would wonder if that's a dig at him, but he's too distracted by the incursion of a name into their conversation, actual proof that Atsushi's time isn't his own and certainly isn't Dazai's, and all at once he wants to let his arm drop from his sprawl over the back of the booth to curl over Atsushi's shoulders, he wants to clamp down and draw him close, keep him here.

"Hayashi-kun will be an hour late at least, so there's really no rush. I'd rather spend my morning with you two, anyways. Something to keep my spirits up when I'm stuck studying integration," and then, before Dazai can begin to untangle that into sense, his mind stuck sluggishly on the Hayashi-kun of it all, Atsushi asks, suddenly brightening, "Do you think Kunikida-san would be willing to look over my homework?"

"No," Kyouka says, frowning as she thinks it over. "Kunikida-san did not include a friendship with a math tutor in your cover story."

Atsushi deflates, muttering under his breath, "Why put me in calculus then?" before he successfully shoves aside his momentary lapse of glittering goodwill in favor of prodding Dazai gently and, failing that, siccing him with those big eyes of his, mouth pulled flat in reproach, nose starting to wrinkle as it tends to when he thinks Dazai's being difficult on purpose (guilty!), and Dazai, unfortunately weak to such displays, finds himself sliding out of the booth so Atsushi can scamper over to the counter.

He sits back down before he has to watch Lucy light-up at his arrival.

Kyouka looks very much like she's skipped wanting to throttle him and jumped straight to fantasies about gouging his eyes.

Apropos of nothing, she tells him, "He wasn't angry last night."

"So he said," Dazai says flatly, not in the mood to entertain a mauling by milk teeth.

"He was sad," she continues, dark stare fixed on him. "We played cards when he got home, Atsushi-san, Kenji-kun, and I, and he used one of the marked decks. He won each round."

Just to be difficult, Dazai asks, "Kenji-kun did?"

Kyouka's lip curls and he wonders, briefly, if she'll fling her drink at him. Twice in one week would be a new record, even for him. "No," she says. "Atsushi-san won. And then when he got tired of winning he started coaching us through counting the scratches on the back of the cards, because we weren't keeping track well enough."

"Ah," Dazai says.

It is, he must admit, pretty damning.

Everyone in the Agency cheats at cards, of course. Not always intentionally, if he bothers believing Kunikida's impassioned denials about automatic statistical analysis, but it would be far stranger to play a clean game with his co-workers than the opposite.

Atsushi—in one of his more ridiculous shows of moral fortitude—makes a concerted effort to not cheat, never mind his clear ability to, and pointedly ignores marked decks, statistical probabilities, and any grasp on game rules in order to ensure scrupulous deportment. Inevitably, this pinioning of competence means he loses. A lot. Even to Kenji who, while able to follow a marked deck, is fundamentally incapable of caring about a winning hand.

Kyouka gives a mocking, "Ah," in response, and then sharpens, apparently having acquired that look of utter disdain that all teenage girls acquire at one point or another, and demands, "Stop making him sad."

Saying anything at all in response is impossible, even before he catches Atsushi returning from the counter, his presence effectively stoppering their conversation.

In the time it takes for Atsushi to leave and for Kyouka and Dazai to troop upstairs in frigid comradery, Kunikida must decide that he's too pathetic to be left to his own devices (or so bad at emotional regulation that he can't justify foisting him on their other co-workers anymore over something as dull as minor assault), because he drags him out to work a case together.

Dazai would not admit this on pain of death, but it's a relief. There's a reason their closure rate is as high as it is, annoying as he finds Kunikida's ability to read him. And, anyways, given his recent temper, no one else is able to bite back harshly enough or redirect his attention effectively enough. And while he could do without being treated like a wayward toddler, there's something strangely soothing about Kunikida's recent strategy of plying him with caffeine as soon as he wavers towards out-right cruelty.

Slowly, he begins to approach something like regular equilibrium.

The sight of Atsushi's empty desk is still frustrating. The weight of his absence grows denser and denser the longer he's gone, but it's a strange sort of weight for a strange sort of not-absence.

Atsushi texts and calls and sometimes, rarely, visits. He shares anecdotes and jokes, piecemeal of his day-to-day condensed into something palatable, something he can share in fifty words or less while redirecting conversation away from himself.

Kyouka hoards the stories she gets and the Tanizakis giggle over theirs; Kunikida listens with gruff pride; Kenji with shimmering curiosity; Haruno, a pleased smile; how Ranpo and Yosano react, he doesn't know, as neither are speaking to him at the moment.

Dazai listens and catalogues every word, slots them into place among everything else he knows and keeps of Atsushi, all the while his stomach aches with something that's like hunger, something slippery and bottomless, a faucet unable to turn.

If asked, Dazai would cry coincidence at the fact that he just so happens to be visiting a cafe down the block from Atsushi's cover-mandated apartment building.

No one would believe him, of course. Not Kunikida, who he abandoned in a police station after swearing he was just grabbing something from the car. Not Atsushi, who's too canny by far to believe fate has any sway over Dazai.

Atsushi, at least, is both too polite and too inured against Dazai just knowing things he has no business knowing to question how exactly he happens to know what cafe to loiter around at what time in order to witness Atsushi's life undercover for himself. Professionally, this is what's known as a lucky break. He's not entirely sure how Atsushi would react to spyware installed on his phone, but he imagines the answer begins with "not well" and ends with an HR-complaint.

Atsushi, for all he's lax with his personal boundaries, has something of a complex when it comes to anything he sees as potential infringement upon his professional capabilities.

Dazai waits, slouched in a side street, watching on his phone as Atsushi gets closer and closer, until the pin stops moving once he's ducked into the cafe. He gives it ten minutes, fingers drumming nonsense over his crossed arms, bandages wet with humidity and sweat under his dress shirt, and then he follows on his heels.

The cafe is quaint, he supposes. Unpolished in a way that makes Cafe Uzumaki seem positively upscale, clearly marketed towards a clientele of twenty-somethings living off of the dregs of convenience stores. He gets less than a minute to take it in, the chipped tables and torn upholstery of the chairs, city pop a hum overhead, when there's a pale blur in his peripherals, then a hand pulling on his arm, and then Atsushi, pushing his way into his orbit for once, a frown leaving his expression serrated.

"What," he begins in a hiss, more startled than upset, he thinks, "are you doing here?"

He smiles widely, free arm coming up to ruffle Atsushi's hair, as he crows in delight, "Atsushi-kun! What a surprise! Is this a new haunt of yours?"

Atsushi jolts back from his hand and says, "As if you don't know," in a voice he's borrowed from Kunikida, one that tells him he's weighing the merits of bodily harm.

"Don't be like that, Atsushi-kun," Dazai pouts, swaying forward before he can stop himself. "You'll give me the impression that you don't want to see me."

"I don't want to see you," he snaps, dropping Dazai's arm so he can press both of his palms into his eyes. "You're absolutely unbelievable. Kunikida-san is going to kill you and then he's going to kill me for not somehow predicting you'd do this."

"Ouch," he complains, carefully tugging Atsushi's hands back down before he can accidentally push his eyes out of socket through sheer stress. He tucks a stray bit of hair behind Atsushi's ear, fingers just barely glancing his skin, flushed red all over with aggravated worry, hot to the touch, and says with far too much delight to grouse properly, "You're really breaking my heart, right now."

Atsushi takes a deep, bracing breathe, but before he can say anything a tentative voice comes from behind them.

"Um, is everything alright, Nakajima-kun?"

It's a decidedly strange experience to watch as Atsushi forcibly pushes down any and all trace of volatility back beneath his skin where Dazai assumes it will simmer until evaporating under his commitment to not letting any emotion stronger than disdain seep into the world. But, even then, there's a moment where the look in his eyes is so glacial that he almost expects Atsushi to play things up so dramatically that Dazai ends up in the back of a police car for harassment. It would certainly be one way to keep him from encroaching on his case.

But, no. Atsushi does not do that.

Atsushi spins on his heel, still so close to Dazai that his upper arm is left pressed against his chest, and tells the girl who interrupted them, "Ah, everything's fine, Hasegawa-kun! I just got a bit distracted." He pauses, just long enough for Dazai to notice the way his eyes flick in his direction, and says, "This is an old senpai of mine. I wasn't expecting to run into him here."

"Oooh," the girl says, peering between them curiously. She's not so much wet behind the ears as she is drenched in afterbirth, and Dazai is immensely bemused by the way she shuffles around Atsushi like a lost duckling.

"Hasegawa-kun," Atsushi begins to introduce, voice only slightly strangled as he gestures to him as, "Dazai-senpai." The reverse goes smoother, but Dazai's higher thinking is too busy somersaulting in frankly embarrassing delight to really notice.

"It's nice to meet you," the duckling says with grave seriousness. "You should join us for coffee! Any senpai of Nakajima-kun is a friend to us all!"

Atsushi looks like he'd rather gnaw off his own leg.

Dazai smiles and says with complete and total honesty, "I'd be delighted!"

The delight lasts about as long as it takes for him to realize that while watching one hormone-ridden eighteen-year-old make cow eyes at Atsushi is entertaining, it is far less fun to watch as Atsushi's attention is eaten up by an entire table of them, the reek of baby powder and the sparks thrown whenever he so much as smiles in someone's direction is really just insult added to injury.

Atsushi sits at the approximate head of the table and takes it upon himself to introduce Dazai to each member of his ramshackle chicken coop. Dazai, having dragged a seat to wedge beside him, doesn't bother remembering their names. No, he's too preoccupied cataloguing the five faces staring at Atsushi like he's hung the moon, something unpleasant beginning to twitch in his gut and it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to keep his smile in place as conversation bubbles back up.

The ducklings, if nothing else, are self-sufficient little motor-mouths, even the lone gaijin of the flock, all of them raring to speak over the others, tittering about what Nakajima-kun must have been like in high school! Atsushi hardly needs to say a word, only blink in placid interest whenever a searching look is cast his way, which is probably for the best as his hands have gone white-knuckled around his coffee mug, the color too pale to be to his tastes, and he looks increasingly ill at ease about the speculations being thrown out (Did his orphanage even have extracurriculars? He certainly wasn't the captain of any sports team…).

Dazai sprawls towards Atsushi the way ivy grows up a wall, leaving them nearly cheek-to-cheek as he asks in an undertone, "Was your education even accredited?"

"Yes," Atsushi mutters back. Then, "Shut up."

"What did you do for gym class?"

"We farmed."

Dazai laughs, hardly a puff of air, but he feels Atsushi shiver and can't help but tease, "Does Kenji-kun know he has competition?"

"By the end, I got very good at butchering the livestock," Atsushi says sweetly. "Is my senpai asking for a demonstration?"

He considers this. "Do you have access to anesthesia?" Atsushi's elbow lands against his ribs none too gently. "Don't gripe, Atsushi-kun, you've raised an interesting idea. I hadn't considered such assisted methods of suicide before, but, thinking about, death by your hands doesn't sound too terrible." Dazai draws a finger down from his temple to his chin, which he nudges up, just slightly, just because he can. "It's a shame you aren't a woman, but you're pretty enough that I think I can make an amendment."

Atsushi chokes on nothing and then throws himself away from Dazai, coughing and sputtering, face flushing darker than he's seen before as he cries out, "You can't just say things like that! What's wrong with you?!"

This effectively snags the attention of all of the ducklings, but only one of them (baby faced even among babes, spiky red hair) dares to ask with great alarm, "Are you okay, Nakajima-kun?"

Which promptly sets off a chain reaction of: "Do you need water?" and "Here, have some of my tea!" and "I know the Heimlich? Are you choking? Is he choking?" until Atsushi is able to gather enough composure to rasp, hands waving wildly, "I'm fine! I'm fine! Dazai-senpai made a joke that startled me, that's all."

Dazai nods very seriously, "I should have known how delicate my poor kouhai's sensibilities are."

That gets a new round of tittering started, which is probably the only reason Atsushi feels comfortable enough to snap, "And I should have known that you're a pervert. It's bad enough that you keep asking strangers for a double suicide. Please don't start asking them to kill you, too."

Dazai had been joking. Mostly.

Other than Atsushi himself he can't imagine anyone he'd trust enough to take him apart so completely; to bleed him, skin him, carve him. He can't imagine anyone else would bother to handle him with care after he's dead. It's not how he wants to die, too much mess, but that doesn't mean there isn't a headiness to the idea.

Speaking of, there's something about the panic that Atsushi's spiraled into, still pink-cheeked with mortification, that makes him want to poke a little bit more. "You don't think it's romantic, Atsushi-kun? Handing someone your heart?"

"No," Atsushi says, eyes pinned away from him, looking increasingly uncomfortable with the conversation. "What good would it be if you were dead, anyways?"

Dazai swallows, feeling suddenly off-balance, and suggests, "It would be a nice keepsake."

"A keepsake," Atsushi repeats incredulously. "I carve out your heart while butchering you because you think its a romantic way to die and all I get out of it is a new paper-weight."

"Well, there's the joy of doling out my last wishes," he offers.

Atsushi stares at him for a long, long moment, and then asks with a cringing sort of hesitation that implies he regrets all of the life choices that led him to this point, "Is this a…" his voice drops to a hushed mumble as his face begins to burn red again, "a—a sex thing…?"

Remarkably, Dazai is able to keep all inflection out of his voice as he says, "What."

"Never mind," Atsushi blanches. "Forget I asked that. It's only… Doesn't Dazai-san want to experience," he flounders briefly before landing on, "… romance," with a delicacy so pointed that Dazai feels insulted, "before, well. Dying."

It doesn't even bear thought. "I'm not really the romantic sort, Atsushi-kun," he says with a shrug. "To me it's all just… hm, a means to an end." Dazai smiles, pressing the toe of his shoe over Atsushi's foot in reassurance as he adds, "I hope you don't think less of your poor senpai for that. We all can't be romantics at heart, like you."

"Right," Atsushi says, a strange look stuttering over his face, but his attention slips back to the flock of undergrads before Dazai can ask; the conversation effectively closed.

Perhaps predictably, once Dazai gets away with intruding upon Atsushi's undercover work once he can't seem to stop himself from monopolizing all of the time he can manage. He shoulders his way beside him when he's studying at the cafe. He feigns surprise when he finds him waiting in line at a takoyaki cart. He laughs upon running into him in a local park. Atsushi endures it all with exceptional patience, though Dazai would have to be blind not to pick up on the tension his little incursions send shuddering through his frame.

The problem, really, is that Atsushi is rarely alone. If he were—if Dazai was able to bask in his complete attention without fear of interruption—then he wouldn't need to show up so frequently and risk Kunikida finally snapping and putting him in a full-body cast.

Unfortunately, for both the future of Dazai's health and Atsushi's hold on his temper, it turns out calling his classmates ducklings wasn't entirely facetious.

They're everywhere. Always. Glittering with any attention that Atsushi casts them, and then greedily trying to soak up more. There are study groups and movie nights and spa days and on and on, and Dazai, frankly, finds it all a bit codependent, though whispering as much to Atsushi gets a disapproving frown and a quick, if somewhat bemused, "This is just how friendship works, Dazai-san," which is both supremely unhelpful and categorically untrue in his experience.

The worst part, he decides very early on, is how much Atsushi enjoys their clinging and fawning. He never says as much, but it's clear he finds it charming, maybe even cute in the way of small animals, because he never discourages them even at their most annoying (horrific to even conceptualize) and doesn't even seem bothered when they touch him without warning. As it took Dazai months to inoculate Atsushi against the occasional poke and prod, he takes his new carelessness with boundaries personally. Deeply so.

There is the faintest silver lining, however, in Dazai's absorption into the flock. He has heavy doubts that any of them see him as a friend, but they've become more or less resigned to his presence. Incidentally, this is how it comes to pass that he's invited to their next movie night.

Atsushi, at his side when the invitation was extended, had shot him an alarmed look, eyebrows raising high on his forehead as he tried to psychically project NO! into Dazai's head.

Dazai had ignored him blithely, tossing an arm over his shoulder and tugging until their hips pressed. "I'd be honored," he said to whichever duckling asked, somehow keeping his smile fixed in place even as Atsushi forcibly wrangled himself out of his hold, unaccountably tetchy recently.

He expects his night to be tedious, given the bulk of the company, but it certainly beats laying in the dark of his apartment as Kunikida bangs on the door, shouting about all the work he's been skipping recently. Besides, he does enjoy watching Atsushi play this half-askew version of himself.

He likes to watch as he attempts to declaw himself, the realization simmering that no matter how poorly he thinks of his own work in the Agency he's undoubtedly a product of it, sharp-edged and jaded in a way his constantly squawking chickens are too soft-bellied to ever understand. It must weigh on him, and he thinks, selfishly, it will keep him moored, keep him close, a loop of fishing line over his wrist.

Upon his arrival, he drops onto the arm of the chair Atsushi's claimed for himself, tossing his legs over his lap before he can scramble to put space between them. His trampling of boundaries doesn't warrant a scowl anymore, but he doesn't miss the slight flex of his jaw, the careful lack of expression…

That's something he hasn't been able to muddle out—yet—whatever's causing Atsushi to skitter away from him. Knowing Atsushi, he imagines it's something contrived.

"Isn't this nice, Nakajima-kun?" Atsushi's gaijin asks with a mega-watt smile. Out of the entire group, he's probably the most consistently cheerful at Dazai's interruptions, which is strange for many reasons, not least because no one's ever been so consistently glad to see him before.

"So nice," Atsushi agrees mutinously.

Dazai shifts his weight to plant himself more firmly in his lap. "Thanks for inviting me!"

"Of course! Any friend of Nakajima-kun…" One of the ducklings glitters at him, adding ominously, "And, well… You're the nicest of his friends that we've met, so."

"Haa," Atsushi wheezes, flinging his hands outwards like he means to push the words back down.

Dazai blinks. "Oh?" He turns to look at Atsushi, valiantly avoiding his stare, and says to the room at large, "I didn't know my Atsushi-kun had other friends visiting! What an unexpected social butterfly!"

"Don't," Atsushi says under his breath.

He ignores him. "Are these friends as charming as yours truly? Surely not…"

Atsushi makes a noise of inarticulate dismay, but his ducklings are quick to answer:

"I think the guy's a serial killer!" is the excited titter from the lone girl of the flock.

"He was a little… off-putting," says the gaijin sheepishly. "Sorry Nakajima-kun."

Another is quick to agree. "Very off-putting. Who wears an overcoat during this heat? That's insane."

"He was pretty brusque, too," adds baby-faced duckling.

"He said we weren't his time and that Nakajima-kun had better things to do than babysitting."

"Oooh right," the girl shakes her head. "What an asshole."

The most energetic of the bunch shifts on his bean-bag to ask Atsushi, "Hey, Nakajima-kun, what was his name again?"

There's a nearly imperceptible pause before Atsushi answers, "Akutagawa."

That causes a fresh burst of clucking to arise among the chicken coop, but Dazai is too busy turning this new bit of information around in his head to care. It doesn't spin into focus.

He can't imagine any reason Akutagawa would be skulking around Atsushi's undercover work, not when the case is far out of the scope of the Port Mafia, never mind Akutagawa's own professional wheelhouse, not when he has no business seeking Atsushi out at all, and certainly not when Dazai isn't around for him to preen in front of.

"Atsushi-kun," he begins in the careful voice he usually reserves for coaxing difficult clients. "Is there a reason Akutagawa's been dropping by?" The on your undercover mission goes without saying, though, to his thinking, the question transcends individual circumstances. The times in which Akutagawa and Atsushi exist within the same world are few and far between and, maybe most importantly, are usually contained under his panoptic gaze.

Usually.

Atsushi looks at him searchingly for a moment before a frown begins to curl its way over his mouth. "Not particularly," he says slowly. "He wanted to get a drink."

"A drink," he repeats. Then, "Why?"

Atsushi squints at him. "Well, who else is he going to drink with?"

"Don't be clever," Dazai says. He reaches out to cradle his jaw, fingers light over his skin, and he can feel the unimpressed sigh Atsushi lets out through his nose glide over his knuckles. "I'm serious. Akutagawa is…"

"I know what Akutagawa is," Atsushi says, very clearly allowing Dazai to keep him in place. It sets something warm thrumming through his veins.

Mindful of the still chattering undergrads, he says in a low voice, "He tried to kill you."

Atsushi shrugs. "I tried to kill him, too."

"That was self-defense," Dazai says in a harsh whisper, not sure what he's arguing or why, but feeling heated nonetheless, Atsushi's lack of acquiescence pressing into him like glass beneath a nail bed.

He makes a so-so gesture, before saying, "Dazai-san needs to use his words. You know I can't read your mind."

"You shouldn't be alone with him," he says.

He can feel the derisive laugh Atsushi gives right before he jerks out of Dazai's hold. "We're partners. Working alone is part of the deal."

"Is that why you went drinking with him?"

"I went drinking with him because we're friends," Atsushi says, starting to sound terse.

"You're not," Dazai says sharply.

Atsushi pauses, and then he says in a very quiet, very dangerous sort of voice, "Excuse me?"

"There's only one thing Akutagawa has ever cared about," he says, fingers twitching with frustration, feeling as if he could force the truth to soak into the dewy idealism clouding Atsushi's judgment with the barest touch. "We both know that. Atsushi-kun has a good heart, but he shouldn't—"

Atsushi stands abruptly, one hand hooking over Dazai's shoulder to keep him from toppling over at the movement, and announces, "Dazai-senpai and I are going for a smoke break. Alone," dutifully dragging him to his feet and out of the apartment before anyone can give so much as an acknowledgement.

To his surprise once they make it to the front of the building, Atsushi really does start rooting around in his pockets until he pulls out a battered pink box of Pianissimo's and a disposable lighter.

"That's a dirty habit, Atsushi-kun," he teases, eyes pinned to his hands as he lights the end, brings the filter to his waiting mouth, and takes a long drag.

Atsushi exhales explosively. "You're so—" He cuts himself off with a sharp gesture in his direction, teeth clacking together as he tries to spool his composure. "Why are you trying to start an argument about this?"

"What an accusation…" Dazai mutters, holding a hand over his heart in affected shock.

"Dazai," Atsushi snaps, expression crumbling into something he's not sure he's ever seen focused in his direction, eyes starting to gleam yellow even in the haze of night.

He asks as evenly as he can manage, "Can't your poor mentor be worried, Atsushi-kun?"

"Of course," Atsushi says tightly. "I'm only confused by what you're worried about. You're the one who decided Akutagawa and I should work together."

"That's true," Dazai agrees, voice going caustic. "I suppose I assumed Atsushi-kun was smart enough not to get his wires crossed."

Atsushi's eyes go wide with shock and his mouth twists strangely as he absorbs the hurt. His voice is all barbed certainty as he asks, "Another means to an end, right, Dazai?"

He gentles himself, tries to explain, "Atsushi-kun always sees the good in everyone—"

"And Akutagawa is what?" Atsushi interrupts, an unfamiliar sort of meanness bubbling out of him. "A tool? A weapon? Something to keep in a drawer until careful hands are ready to use him? Is he a mutt? Maybe a beast?" Atsushi shakes his head once, then turns on his heel, heading down the street, not even deigning to look at Dazai as he casts over his shoulder: "Whatever he is, he's at least nothing less than human. Not all of us can say the same."

It lands exactly how Atsushi wants it to. It rips through him with all the tenderness of a bayonet, splitting him open sternum to navel, leaving him on the street with nothing but his own bile dribbling over his feet.

It's mid-day once he drags himself to the office after a night he's just about managed to black out, his hangover turning all his most recent memories into hazy smears of sensation, scrambled so far from any notion of sense that he's almost managed to bury the sight of Atsushi's back as he walked away, almost managed to forget the precision of his cruelty, almost erased the entire episode from his mind—

Almost.

He's actually not sure he's fully hungover when he pushes open the door into the stifling heat that everyone's resigned themselves to. He might still be drunk. The world is swaying in a frankly concerning way in his peripherals, but he figures there's nothing he can really do about that, other than maybe putting a bullet in his head.

Kunikida is on him in a second. Probably. It's possible he might be losing time, too.

When his partner stops waving his hands wildly and begins to reach out like he might seize him by the collar (risky—who knows where Dazai's been?) to shake him, he feels compelled to let him know, "I'll throw up."

Or, at least, he thinks that's what he says. His tongue isn't moving quite right in his mouth, too clumsy, too dry, and it's also possible he might be slurring, "I'llsssaaup," but Kunikida must understand or approximate or whatever, because he doesn't shake him.

That's good, he thinks, which also so happens to be the last cognizant thought he has before he passes out.

He's pulled into consciousness slowly, the sticky dregs of sleep heavy on his mind, his body, and it's only the prickling awareness of physical discomfort that allows him to dig his heels in and take fuzzy stock of the situation.

He feels like a bruise. There's a deep ache radiating through his skin and muscles, burrowing through bone.

There is also a tube down his throat.

It starts in his nose so he's able to wet his lips, but even that tiny movement bumps the back of his tongue over the warm plastic and he gags convulsively.

"You're an asshole," comes a voice from his bedside. He flicks his eyes in its direction and makes out the vague, disapproving shape of Yosano.

Dazai risks an inquisitive noise, immediately regretting the attempt.

He can hear Yosano shift, and then the sound of her heels on vinyl as she stands, moving to peer down over him. She frowns and tells him, "Don't panic," which is easy enough for her to say. There's a pause. Yosano keeps frowning down at him, the bruises under her eyes a near perfect color match for the iris, a waxy cast to her skin, and were she anyone else—were he anyone else—he'd assume her worry was for him.

"I had to insert a catheter to pump your stomach. I'll remove it soon," she says, leaning over him to check on an IV line notched into the bend of his left arm, and then second feeding into the back of his right hand. Medical ethics taken care of, she retreats back to the stool she'd been perching on when he awoke.

He assumes, brain sluggish as he fights a losing battle to stay awake, that they'll sit in deadened silence until Yosano opens the infirmary for visitors and Kunikida power-walks in.

It's a surprise, then, when Yosano says, irritation clear in her voice, "You're an asshole and you're an idiot." Then she sighs, sounding suddenly tired, and tells him, "There are kinder ways to kill yourself, Dazai. Aren't you the one always going on and on about not burdening those you leave behind?"

Dazai hardly gets a moment to dwell on the question as he sinks back into unconsciousness.

It feels like no time has passed when he peels open his eyes, dusky sunlight painting the white linen he's swaddled in a riot of orange and red, to find Kunikida glaring absently at the wall as he sits at his bedside.

The tube is out, he registers first, his throat scratchy and sore. Considering sore is the prevailing feeling throughout his body, he supposes it could be worse.

Gingerly, he scoots up in bed, the movement rattling painfully through him and he can't stop himself from complaining in a groan, "What the fuck."

"You're a wretch," Kunikida informs him, as if he doesn't already know.

"Can you scold quietly?" Dazai asks. His ears aren't so much ringing as they are outright revolting, the barest sound ricocheting through his head, leaving him clammy with nausea.

Kunikida listens, and begins his rant in a hangover approved whisper, "Of all the harebrained…" he starts, continuing at great length, though Dazai zones him out, too preoccupied wallowing in his own dehydrated misery to listen, until his partner's voice fuzzes back into focus as he asks, "Do I want to know what led you to this?"

He considers the question. "Probably not, no."

"Do I need to know?" Kunikida asks, eyes narrowing.

Dazai makes the mistake of shrugging and then says, as he wards off the urge to vomit, "It won't happen again."

He rubs at his temples, but lets the topic go. "Yosano-sensei wants you on IV-fluids for the rest of the night," he tells him. Then, with an earnestness that makes his skin itch, Kunikida starts, "Dazai, if you need time—"

"I don't," he interrupts firmly. "You know me, Kunikida-kun. I always bounce back."

Dazai passing out drunk in the office doesn't even rank among the other nonsense he's pulled over the years, so there's very little fanfare to his return, apart from a brief wide-eyed look from Tanizaki and the industrial-sized bottle of OS-1 Kunikida leaves on his desk.

Normality doesn't ripple until Kunikida is running through open cases and Ranpo sends his chair careening towards them and announces in no uncertain terms that Dazai will be working with him.

As getting Ranpo to even glance at files is often Sisyphean, this sudden interest in active investigation is… concerning. At least, Dazai's concerned, well aware he's on thin ice after snapping at Yosano. Kunikida seems unbothered, relinquishing his leash with a resignation that tells the office at large that he knows his weekly analytics are inevitably going to tank.

They're supposedly investigating a triple homicide by insect, but Ranpo either doesn't care, already solved it, or finds too much sadistic satisfaction in making Dazai navigate to patisseries across the city to feel bothered about not doing his work. Knowing Ranpo, it's probably a winning combination of all three.

He's not sure what Ranpo's getting out of batting him around for the day until they're meandering across a pedestrian bridge and he suddenly stops, leaning over the railing to point to a restaurant patio in the distance.

There is, Dazai sees, a distressingly familiar figure sitting under a patio umbrella.

"Oh, look," Ranpo says, not even bothering to feign surprise, "It's Atsushi-kun." Dazai wonders, just for a moment, how Atsushi would react to him interrupting his lunch, when Ranpo clamps a hand over his arm and warns, "I really wouldn't do that."

His teeth grind together. "Ranpo-san—"

"Unless you want to start another fight," he says, closed eyes curving into a smile behind his glasses. "By all means, then."

"We didn't fight," Dazai snaps.

Ranpo's stare is distinctly unimpressed. "I guess it's just a coincidence that Atsushi called to file a complaint about you right after you passed out in a pool of your own vomit."

"There was no vomit," he denies automatically. If he had aspirated, Kunikida wouldn't have shut up about it. Then, he blinks in shock, "Atsushi-kun did what?"

"Flew into hysterics mostly," Ranpo tells him.

A strange feeling begins to wriggle in his gut, something like worry only sharper, meaner, a nauseating sort of concern. For all of the boundaries he's trampled, Atsushi's never complained, never seriously, never more than snippy grousing while smothering a rising flush. He's not sure what it means that he did over this—over Akutagawa, who Atsushi apparently considers a friend, baffling as that is.

"Don't be slow," Ranpo says, watching him with increasing and uncalled for disgust. "He didn't get around to complaining once he heard about how pathetic you are."

Dazai ignores him, squinting out at Atsushi under the umbrella, busy laughing at something one of his wretched hanger-on's said, and mutters, "Atsushi-kun doesn't seem worried…"

"You're giving me second hand embarrassment," Ranpo says.

Fair enough, Dazai thinks, but he still gestures to him with a theatrical whine, "He doesn't."

"He's undercover," Ranpo says, as if he needs the reminder. "He probably just—oh," he cuts himself off with a hum, watching as Atsushi is dragged onto his feet and into an impromptu tango around the patio, the other patrons visibly cheering. He reassess with a blasé, "No, he really is unbothered." Ranpo tilts his head towards Dazai and says without an ounce of sympathy, "Ouch. What did you two fight about anyways?"

"You haven't deduced it?" Dazai asks.

"I don't like wasting energy on you."

Considering the effort Ranpo spent setting up this public lashing, he's feels reasonably skeptical of this.

The idea of rehashing the entire argument with the added benefit of Ranpo's scrutiny and commentary is less than appealing. If Ranpo wants to twist a knife, he'd rather give him one that's already bleeding him dry.

"Atsushi-kun told me I wasn't a human being."

Ranpo doesn't bother looking surprised. He laughs a bit, peering down at Atsushi on the patio with sharp consideration, and says, "You must have pressed a nerve."

"Could you sound less happy?" Dazai snaps.

"Hmm…" Ranpo taps on his chin. "No!" Whatever expression Dazai's wearing must amuse him, because he chortles some more and tells him in a conspiratorial tone, "You know, it's reactions like that that led Kunikida to spiking your coffee with Librium. It's really done wonders for your temper."

The ensuing fight with Kunikida is seismic.

In the two business days it takes to resolve, they brawl right over top their desks, break the fax machine, accidentally set fire to a food cart, fall four stories into a pool, and spend an unforgiving amount of time cataloguing each prescription drug in the office and boarding house until Dazai has no choice but to begrudgingly listen to his partner when he says, "If I had tranquilizers, I wouldn't waste them on the likes of you, you walking waste of bandages!" not only due to lack of evidence, but because Kunikida is probably too high-strung to risk off-script benzo use anyways.

Accepting this does not make the quiet between them any less frosty when they tuck themselves into a back table at the food court of the mall in order to keep eyes on a suspect. For once, Dazai doesn't feel too keen on needling his partner, willing to endure the silence as penance for biting him hard enough that he drew blood (among other annoyances) during their little tiff.

Still, he can't stop himself from reaching out and shaking Kunikida by the arm when he sees Atsushi meandering on the other side of the food court with his usual gaggle of chicks around him. The six of them stand in a cluster, passing a phone back and forth as they argue over something. Dazai can only make out Atsushi's back, the elegant slope of his shoulders, the lean muscle of his arms on unexpected display in a black tank top.

"Why does this keep happening?" he mutters under his breath in dismay. Then, shaking Kunikida once more, he asks, "Have you heard from him recently?"

Kunikida shoots an unimpressed look between Atsushi, unaware he's being watched, and Dazai, barely restraining himself from watching some more, and sighs heavily. "He's making positive inroads on the case."

Dazai nods hurriedly, but his attention is already back on the group of them, on the red-haired eighteen-year-old slinging an arm over Atsushi's shoulder as the entire flock of them troop off deeper into the mall. "Don't you think they're too close…?"

"Sit down," Kunikida barks, yanking him into his seat when he makes a move to rise up after them.

"Why?" Dazai frowns at him. "So you can drug me?"

Kunikida starts to turn a lovely shade of purple, near apoplectic. "For the last time, I have not been drugging you. Ranpo was only trying to get a rise out of you, not that it's been particularly difficult as of late…"

"I resent that."

"What a surprise."

Dazai slumps back and asks into the vaulted ceiling, "Is he really getting work done? When he talked about the case I wasn't convinced there was an Ability at play. It sounded superstitious."

"And a man-eating tiger doesn't?" Kunikida drums his fingers on the table, voice going a little wirer, "Yes, Dazai. Miracle it may seem, but Atsushi is doing more than just gallivanting around with undergraduates all day."

"Don't say that," he says before he can stop himself. "It's not that I think Atsushi-kun is incapable."

Kunikida makes a non-committal sound. "You know, his investigation only started flourishing once you stopped occupying all of his time."

"Some mentor I must be," he says, too acidic to play it off.

"You're hopeless," Kunikida complains, pausing and then correcting himself: "You're both hopeless. Haven't you ever heard of multi-tasking?"

"No, Kunikida-kun, I'm afraid today is my very first day on planet earth. Tell me more."

Rather than biting, Kunikida only rolls his eyes.

Work continues to churn onward. Dazai's temper continues to simmer. Everyone in the office continues to tip-toe around him.

Atsushi's absence has transformed into something gaping and violent, something that hangs around his neck, tightens like a noose each time he tries to sort through their last conversation. He lives in Dazai's peripherals. He stays in contact with the rest of their co-workers: he calls Kyouka, texts with the Tanizakis, sends encrypted emails to Kunikida. He doesn't reach out to Dazai, but Dazai doesn't reach out to him either.

It's not that he doesn't want to. He does. He wants. He wants with a force that's humiliating. The longer the silence between them stretches, the tauter the silence seems and the more nauseating the twist of his stomach becomes.

Dazai doesn't know how to fix this, because he doesn't know what upset Atsushi to begin with. He could guess. He could probably even talk his way around it, paper it over with his best impression of sincerity, but… Atsushi is clever. Even worse, Atsushi knows him. It's appalling.

But he's handling it.

More or less.

Unfortunately, circumstances seem to be conspiring against him. Dazai's spending a monotonous day on his best behavior when Tanizaki swans back into the office after lunch, sun-burned and beaming, with Atsushi laughing at his heels, each of them jostling the other playfully, hands swatting and then groping and then clasping, as they collapse onto the battered couch shoved in the back corner that makes up their break room, no one batting an eye at the volume or the inexplicable presence of their current undercover agent.

Kunikida shoots him a look across their desks that says heel and, as Dazai isn't deluded enough to think forcing Atsushi into a conversation in front of the entire office would go over well, he smiles breezily and ignores the familiar cadence of Atsushi's voice as Tanizaki and him waste time yammering on about a soap opera.

He ignores and ignores until the tell-tale shuffling of a conversation drawing to a close starts to build up, and then he rummages in his desk drawer for the cigarette case he nicked from Kunikida during their previous conflict and announces, "Going for a smoke break!"

"You don't smoke," Kunikida informs him with a scowl.

"Lung disease is an awfully slow way to die," Dazai muses. "But I've been reassessing my options recently. Imagine, Kunikida-kun, if I'm infirm and in need of medical assistance, I could just seduce my caretaker and—"

His partner holds up a forbidding hand. "Leave."

He doesn't need to be told twice.

Dazai's still mulling over how to approach Atsushi, prone to prickliness even when doing his best impression of a docile stray, when Atsushi decides to approach him first, emerging from the Agency building a few minutes after him and calling out with remarkable neutrality, "I can't believe Kunikida-san let you go like that."

"He's obligated to," Dazai says, waving the cigarette case in his direction.

"Did you steal those from him?" Atsushi asks, aghast.

"I borrowed them," he corrects. "Kunikida-kun is awfully sensitive about his vices. Absolutely refuses to raise a stink when it could cast light on his more unsavory habits, which is just as well."

Dazai snaps open the case and draws out a slightly misshapen cigarette, the tobacco not distributed evenly beneath the paper. It's a little charming, he decides, that for all his ardent perfectionism, Kunikida doesn't mind rolling lumpy cigarettes.

He adds, noticing the confused furrow between Atsushi's eyes, "If he wants to sneak off for a smoke every now and then, he knows he has to give the rest of us the same courtesy."

Atsushi nods slowly, drifting to stand beside Dazai as he heads further down the street, leaving a body of space between them. He says, "Kunikida-san does hate hypocrisy," but otherwise seems content to hold his tongue as Dazai leads them to a smoking booth.

The silence makes him feel itchy, as does Atsushi's apparent ease around him after their last conversation, the weeks spent ignoring him. It digs under his skin all the way into the booth, as he lights the cigarette, places the filter to his lips, inhales.

Again, it's Atsushi who speaks up first. He's standing with his back pressed against one glass wall, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, and he can't quite get his gaze to land solidly on Dazai across from him. His eyes flick over him and then away, skittish enough to turn his stomach, but his voice is level as he says, "Whatever happened between Akutagawa and you is none of my business."

Dazai blinks. He feels suddenly off-balance.

They aren't supposed to talk more about Akutagawa and him and the vile intricacies of their shared past. It's not something he feels guilty about (Dazai isn't exactly prone to gooey fits of any emotion and, even if he were, he wouldn't waste the energy on past pragmatism), but it's nothing he wants to speak of with Atsushi—Atsushi who for some reason sees the best in him even now, even knowing—though if they are speaking about it, certainly Atsushi isn't meant to bundle it into something so easy to set aside.

Atsushi is a good person. He has a soft, modeling clay heart.

Knowing what he knows, he should be angry. He should be sick. He should not be standing calmly across from Dazai. He shouldn't be anywhere near him, in fact, and—

"I have… opinions," Atsushi continues, words coming slowly, "I can't pretend I don't. But… it's not fair for me to…" he trails off and then with a sigh stretches his arm out for the cigarette burning between Dazai's fingers. He takes a long drag and tries again, "I wasn't there. I didn't know either of you."

"Atsushi-kun…" Dazai ventures, once the quiet between them stretches.

Atsushi's eyes jump to him, his expression wrinkling for a moment as he very clearly turns something over in his head. He takes another drag, exhaling shakily before thrusting the cigarette back towards Dazai and saying in a rush, "I haven't told Akutagawa this, but when I was absorbed by Ame-no-Gozen I… I saw things. The past, or… More like Akutagawa's memories of it. I guess… I know you're not that person anymore, Dazai-san, and I know—I felt that Akutagawa doesn't—" Atsushi shifts in frustration, like he can't find the right words, settling on, "He doesn't blame you. You both talk around it the same way, and I never really got why until I saw… but I know he'd try and kill me again for—for using him, just because I was upset at you. That wasn't fair either."

Dazai is too busy trying to wind any of that into sense to say anything. Atsushi's been tight-lipped about his experience with the singularity, but even in his wildest imaginings he hadn't imagined this. The past unwound, all its little knots picked neatly apart. He finds himself genuinely surprised. He wonders what else Atsushi saw. He wonders if he should be worried.

"But Dazai-san," Atsushi continues, voice growing more confident, "I also don't think its fair to judge Akutagawa by his worst actions, not after all this time and all that's happened, and not when—"

"Not when he's only looking for meaning in life?" Dazai interrupts, the words sticking in his throat.

"He's more than an attack dog," Atsushi presses, voice very quiet.

"That's true. He's also Atsushi-kun's precious partner," he says, nausea bubbling. Dazai takes a drag and asks against his better judgement, "Does he know he's allowed to blame me?"

Atsushi stares at him for a long moment, an unfamiliar cast to his expression, before he says, "If I was Akutagawa, I don't think I'd be able to forgive you." He steps forward to pluck the cigarette from between Dazai's numb fingers for a quick drag before passing it back to him, and, casual as if he's remarking on something as benign as the weather, he adds, "But I'm not Akutagawa, and you've only ever been good to me, and I've also heard that wallowing over the past only makes the present a nightmare."

"Using my own words against me," Dazai clicks his tongue, a brittle fondness starting to creep between his ribs.

"Dazai-san is a good mentor," Atsushi tells him, with all the subtlety of a right hook.

Dazai thinks that Atsushi is perhaps the only person who believes this, but he's also too busy fighting off the crash of his adrenaline rush to properly tease him about it. He's so dizzy with relief that he can taste it, mouth swollen and buzzing with a feeling like sickness only softer, all saliva, no stomach acid. He busies himself with the cigarette, nearly down to its filter, and says, "A better mentor would ask his student how he's finding his current work."

"A better mentor would ask," Atsushi agrees.

He laughs. "And miss seeing your wheels spin?"

Atsushi rolls his eyes, but obliges him anyway. "I should be done with the case soon." He tilts his head to regard Dazai with a consideration that prickles. "If Dazai-san isn't doing anything tonight, he should come to Ken-kun's going away party."

"How could I turn down such an invitation?" he muses, a hair too earnest, before pausing to ask, "Who's Ken-kun?"

There's a beat where Atsushi stares at him like he's waiting for a punchline. "Ken," he repeats, and when it gets him nowhere he continues, pronouncing very carefully, "Kenneth Rexroth. My friend…? You've been to his apartment."

"Ohhh, the gaijin!" Dazai chirps in recognition. He turns the name over in his head, stuck on all of its many dental consonants. "Where's he going?"

"You're unbelievable," Atsushi tells him with undistilled bafflement.

"Harsh," he says, miming a knife to the chest. "Have you considered that lowered cognition is a natural part of getting older?"

"You're barely twenty-three."

Dazai shrugs. "I've always felt I had a geriatric disposition." He's rewarded with Atsushi leveling a scrunch-nosed frown his way, completely unamused. It's delightful enough that he wants to poke some more, see if he can get color to rise in his cheeks, steam to pour from his ears, but…

The realization settles that, for whatever reason, this really matters to Atsushi.

He really cares about his flock of eighteen-year-old charity cases. Even worse, Dazai thinks that this invitation might be an olive branch, an attempt to patch-up whatever hurt Atsushi thinks he caused, whatever shame he feels for gripping down into a past that isn't his, never mind all that he's been dragged into it by Dazai and Akutagawa and, apparently, the machinations of Fyodor Dostoevsky.

With this cascade of realizations comes the familiar creep of his temper, that simmering feeling below his skin. It no longer feels like he's getting ready to bubble over, though. Instead, he feels like he's being thawed out in a microwave, turning around and around in a slow loop the longer he lets himself dawdle, until he finds his mouth falling open, words he found unimaginable suddenly spilling out, as he says, "Atsushi-kun, I believe I owe you an apology."

"Do you?" Atsushi blinks at him, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. That's no surprise. He's always protecting his weak spots. There's a pause, his mind whirring furiously somewhere behind his darting eyes, and then he asks, "Do you know what you'd be apologizing for?"

It sets something ugly turning over in his stomach. "Atsushi-kun, I—"

"I appreciate the thought," he interrupts, earnest and sparkling, so terribly candid that it rattles through him, lodging into the liquid centers of his teeth where it aches and aches. "Really," Atsushi emphasizes, before stepping back, slipping away, voice a distorted buzz in his ears, "But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not hear it." He's half-turned to step out of the booth as he says, voice softening, "I'll text you the address for the party, okay?"

Dazai can only stare after him.

Atsushi has invited him to a night club.

The drum of music seeps out into the street as Dazai approaches and adds himself to the slow crawl of the line that feeds inside a nondescript building downtown: a grey facade plastered over with posters and advertisements, bracketed in by competing smoke shops. When he gets to the front of the line, he realizes there's a single plaque among all the noise that reads The Drop, the name ridiculous enough that he nearly calls Atsushi to make sure there hasn't been some mix-up, but then he's paying the cover (absurd) and then he's funneled inside with a stamp pressed to the back of his hand, and his attention shifts.

The club is already packed. Even the dimly lit lobby he enters is full of people, couches and tables swarmed with bodies, the coat-check to his left nearly over-run with movement. He sends a text to Atsushi, but when a few minutes pass without it even being read, he sighs and heads deeper inside.

There are truly unimaginable amounts of people out on the dance floor. A mass of sweating, swaying twenty-something's all churning around one another. Their writhing reminds him of maggots. The way they pulse around an open wound. The tight crawl of their bodies wriggling over and under one another, pressed tightly under taut skin, like the wrinkled folds of a brain.

It's an unfair comparison, Dazai decides as soon as he begins to shoulder his way around the edge of the throng. Maggots are cleaner.

The air rattles with the bass of whatever track is playing, something fast and slurring, and the sound pistons through his head, creeps into his eye-sockets, trembles through his fingertips. Red light flashes, then blue, then red again. The whole space is cast in shadows, the colors shrouding expression, sinking strangely into skin and fabric.

Dazai has never been a fan of clubs. Even at his worst, his most destructive and smug, wheedling whiskey from bartenders who never really had a choice about saying no, he didn't enjoy stepping foot into the casinos and card-houses, or the burlesques and brothels closer to the docks, and he left their care and handling to whatever wretched colleague of his was named manager at whatever time.

It's no moral reticence. He has nothing against indulgence, only the display of his own.

He's made it to one wall bordering the dance floor, a row of sticky cocktail tables haphazardly occupied, when he catches sight of Atsushi's pale head a few tables away, sitting as he observes the masses.

Dazai is nearly to him when Atsushi turns, his eyes dark and unreadable in the flashing lights. He calls out, "Dazai-san!" his voice pitched to rise above the pounding music, and when Dazai finally makes it into his orbit proper, he nudges the other rickety chair at the table out for him to sit.

Atsushi is Atsushi, but there's something about seeing him in this environment, the lights shrouding and sharpening his expression with each flash, that makes him seem suddenly unfamiliar. His hair is damp with humidity, frizzing around his head, a few lank strands stuck down with sweat, and he's dressed far more casually than Dazai ever sees, in jeans and a dark tank top, and it's all so foreign, so skewed from the careful etching of Atsushi that he keeps in his head, that it takes a moment for him to register that Atsushi is still greeting him.

"Thank you for coming," he's saying, leaning across the table top towards him in order to be heard. "I know I was a little… abrupt earlier."

"How could I miss out on Ken-kun's going away party?" Dazai cries, leaning closer himself, close enough that he can't miss the violent eye roll Atsushi graces him with or the yeasty smell of beer on his breath. Around them, the music shifts to something shrill and staccato, and he adds, "Though, I have to admit I was expecting something a bit more intimate."

"I think it depends on your definition," Atsushi mutters, which perhaps explains where his flock have all vanished to. "It's not my first choice, but it's also not my party, so," he shrugs, pushing away to take a sip of beer, apparently cradled between his legs, fingers loose around the neck of the bottle.

Dazai knocks his foot against Atsushi's shin as he chides, "Drinking on the job?"

Atsushi takes another sip. "Do you want something? There's an open tab. I think Hayashi-kun's parents might have Fitzgerald beat in spending."

As trying to muddle out which duckling he's talking about is a lost cause, Dazai doesn't bother. "Worrying!" he chimes.

"Probably," Atsushi agrees. "Is that a yes?"

"I'm flirting with the idea of abstinence," he tells him.

That gets a laugh, a little coarse like its been pulled from him unexpectedly, but he sounds fond as he says, "You always flirt, Dazai-san. It's the follow-through that's lacking."

It makes him swallow, thrown off-balance.

Something twitchy starts to rile under his skin and he wants to tug on Atsushi's ear, to press down into the soft skin of his cheek, to curl his fingers around his own as he raises the beer up to his mouth once again. The force of how much he wants is almost nauseating, and he shies away from it, keeps his hands pressed carefully on the grimy table and does not prod, does not poke.

"You know," Dazai says, light as he can manage when the world seems to be rippling around him, "You're meant to take these things at face value, Atsushi-kun." Then, because Atsushi's started to frown, he reaches out and snatches the bottle from him, the glass warm in his hands, and finishes it off in one quick pull. "Plying me with beer," he clicks his tongue. "For shame."

"I thought you were abstaining."

He sighs heavily. "That was before my conniving subordinate wore away at my resolve."

That gets another eye roll, but before Atsushi can say anything there's a sudden burst of motion from the dance floor, two familiar faces stumbling out of the throng to skid to a stop in front of them. Atsushi's friends are drunk, clearly, with flushed faces and glassy eyes, and they begin to chirp at him in an indistinct warble.

"Nakajima-kun!" the duckling with a baby-face cries, bouncing on his toes, "You'll never guess who's here!"

The girl picks up the thread, announcing with great feeling, "It's Kawabata-kun! I didn't think he'd show up! But he's here! You have to find him!"

Baby-face nods rapidly, "He said he was looking for you!"

"Ah," Atsushi says, smiling at them. "Good to know." The ducklings don't seem to know what to do with his lack of energy, but before they can begin to press, he asks, "Have you seen Ken-kun around?"

The ducklings exchange a look, but the girl eventually offers a lackluster, "I think he was getting a new round of shots…?"

"Dazai-senpai and I were headed that way," Atsushi says, which is news to him. He pushes to his feet, hand reaching out to hook around Dazai's arm as if there's any universe he'd rather sit and endure small talk with his current pet projects, and tells him with a significance he can't quite muddle out, "Let's go say hi, okay?"

He exchanges a few more words with the undergraduates that Dazai can't be bothered to even eavesdrop on, and then they're hurtling through the crowd, Atsushi plowing through the writhing bodies without dropping his arm, pulling him along until they're able to slip through a break in the mass, the bar humming with even more bodies several steps beyond it.

Atsushi lets him go as he begins his new challenge of finding room at the counter to squeeze against, eventually just shouldering his way through and flagging the bartender. Moments later, Dazai watches in bemusement as Atsushi holds a bottle out to him.

"I assumed beer was good," Atsushi tells him before he pauses, eyes flicking over his face rapidly. "Is something wrong?"

"You're fitting in awfully well." Dazai takes the beer, mind clicking as he considers the ease in which Atsushi's been navigating the space, the noise, the constant brush of strangers, and asks, "Could it be…" he trails off dramatically, continuing with affected shock, "Have you been going out and finding trouble, Atsushi-kun?"

Atsushi blinks at him, unimpressed. "With how much trouble finds me without trying? Are you crazy?"

"Defensive," Dazai sing-songs. When Atsushi continues to stare, he resorts to begging, reaching out to shake his shoulder. "Come on! I won't tattle!"

"There's nothing to tattle about."

"Sure there is!" he argues. "Atsushi-kun, a club rat…"

That gets a new look shot his way, all wide-eyed distaste. "Do not—" Atsushi begins, before he's interrupted.

"Nakajima-kun!" a new duckling cries out, stumbling to latch an arm around his shoulder. "Kawabata-kun is here and looking for you!"

Atsushi disentangles himself carefully. "So I've heard."

Dazai doesn't scowl, though it takes a bit of effort, and starts to ask, "So who's—"

There's a new interruption, apparently trailing at the feet of his friend, though this one Dazai has a name for. It's the man of the hour, Ken-kun, careening into their awkward huddle off of the bar. He's wobbly on his feet, steadying himself on both Atsushi and Dazai, his clammy hand skimming over his forearm, hardly a glance, but enough to set a familiar fission of sensation rippling through him.

Kenneth Rexroth is an Ability-user.

His focus sharpens and he catches Atsushi watching him from the corner of his eye. He wanted this to happen, clearly, but why?

Ken doesn't seem to notice that his Ability's been nullified, too busy cheering in drunken delight, "Nakajima-kun! Dazai! I'm so happy to see you both!" His attention swings to Dazai and he beams, "Dazai, thank you for coming! I wasn't sure Nakajima-kun would extend the invitation, but I'm so glad he did!"

"I said I would," Atsushi says with a fond smile, before his attention shifts to the dance floor. "You said Kawabata-kun was looking for me still?" he asks, turning to the other duckling who falls over himself to give loud confirmation. "I should go say hi. I'll find all of you later."

Dazai is apparently included in all of you, because Atsushi doesn't even cast a look his way as he marches off.

Ken is at his heels, crying out, "Wait, Nakajima-kun—!" with a frantic sort of desperation that Dazai suspects has to do with his Ability and its sudden sputtering.

Probabilities and match-making, he recalls, turning everything Atsushi's told him about the case over in his head. There's a suspicion building, ringing through his bloated grey matter, but it's also plain to him that he's here as a tool and not a detective, so he lets it go for now, waiting on Atsushi to resolve his work however he sees fit.

Funnily enough, this decision of his to step back lasts for all of an hour.

It's not doubt in Atsushi's capability that has him stomping across the club. No, it's Atsushi's common sense he's worried about, eyes still locked onto the sight of Atsushi and a stranger (the popular Kawabata-kun, he assumes) pressed close together, noses brushing as they talk, the stranger's hand low on Atsushi's back, and—

Someone stumbles into him, hands braced on his chest pushing him back a step, and then yelling in recognition, "Dazai!"

It's the girl Atsushi's friends with, he takes dim note of, and at her heels the baby-faced one, his red hair dripping with sweat. Both of them blink at him with big, gormless stares, unbothered by the pulse of bodies in motion around them. Neither says a thing.

Dazai doesn't bother plastering on a smile as he attempts to edge around them, "Excuse me, I need to—"

"Ah, ah, wait!" the girl cries. "I wanted to say I think it's really admirable that you're staying in such close contact with Nakajima-kun even after school, but, um…" she trails off, nose-scrunching up as her train of thought fails to materialize into words.

Dazai looks over their heads to find Atsushi still swaying with the stranger.

Baby-face takes over, "Sometimes people grow up. And they learn and change and then two—wait. I think I mixed myself up."

"No, no, it's like, ah, two trees growing next to one another," the girl continues, nonsensical.

"Fascinating," Dazai snaps. "Could you just—"

"Sorry, but no," Baby-face says, setting his shoulders. "Nakajima-kun may be hung up on you, but whatever he sees I don't."

Dazai's so baffled by this statement that he rips his eyes away from Atsushi to stare at him. "What?"

"Hiyashi-kun means, ah, well…" The girl gathers herself, announcing, "Nakajima-kun deserves to have fun tonight."

"Fun," Dazai repeats.

Hiyashi mutters, "I meant that I don't like him and you know that Hasegawa-kun."

She ignores this, and continues to tell Dazai brightly, "Without you looming."

"And does Atsushi-kun know you've taken it upon yourselves to police his life?" Dazai asks, sharpness dulled a bit by his burst of amusement at their braying.

"I think he's a bit preoccupied," Hiyashi says, far too smug for an eighteen-year-old with a bad dye job, turned away to look at something behind him.

Dazai follows his stare all the way to Atsushi and the stranger. They're still pressed close together, turned enough that he can make out both of their profiles even in the flashing lights. The stranger is holding something in front of Atsushi's face, thumb and forefinger pinched tightly, and Atsushi laughs at whatever he says, opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue, so at ease it's easy to pretend he's not dry-swallowing ecstasy openly in a club or that Dazai's not watching from the periphery like a voyeur.

"I'm going to take a shot," Hasegawa says, finally stepping out of the way, nudging Hiyashi as she goes. "Want one?"

The rest of their conversation fuzzes out as Dazai slips to the outskirts of the dance floor, slumping down into an open seat as he watches and watches and watches on.

For all he's accused of being a lecher, Dazai isn't all that concerned with sex. If he wants it, he'll have it, but his free time is not spent seducing and discarding an endless carousel of women, as has been implied before by Kunikida, and, anyways, his sex life, when it exists at all, isn't exactly passionate as much as it's brusque. Sentimentality is the last thing he needs when he's getting his dick wet. He's never been one for pillow talk and it's much easier to get what he needs if his partner is equally as apathetic about nonsense like that.

He has never, until this moment, watching as Atsushi is buoyed by the current of the dance floor, still wrapped around the stranger, hopped up on ecstasy, considered Atsushi and sex in the same train of thought.

It feels like a fault line has been set cracking through the careful hoard of knowledge he's locked away in his head, his slow piecing together of Atsushi's various quirks and habits, his likes and dislikes. He knows, of course, that others find Atsushi attractive. Lucy Maud Montgomery is far from subtle and little Kyouka's puppy crush can probably be seen from outer space. It's not a surprise that Atsushi finds others attractive, in turn.

That he's licking into a stranger's mouth, tugging him towards the bathroom, allowing him to press a hand against his ass—

That's a surprise.

He doesn't know why it's never crossed his mind before—Atsushi and sex—Atsushi wanting sex—Atsushi having sex—but as he watches him disappear in the direction of the bathroom, it's all he can seem to think about. Atsushi and the stranger, skin pressed to skin, slick mouths and slick fingers, a feverish touch trailing along a spine, down a sharp hip, and he feels light-headed and absurd under the club's flashing lights.

Dazai leaves the club before Atsushi. He returns to the boarding house in a strange mood, something unfamiliar churning low in his belly as he considers the various turns of the night: the careful consideration Atsushi gave him when extending his invitation, the fission of nullification when Kenneth Rexroth touched him, Atsushi's sharp intent in seeking out Kawabata once Ken appeared.

Coercion, he considers once, fleetingly, before discarding it. He sought him out after the Ability was nullified.

No, the more he thinks on the events of the night the more sure he is that Kawabata, for all Atsushi seemed happy wrapped around him, was as much a tool in Atsushi's arsenal as Dazai himself was.

The thought doesn't settle well. It turns around and around in his head until sleep is impossible. Instead, he stays awake, digging a container of powdered coffee out from the back of his cupboard, shoved away in time immemorial, and watches on his phone as Atsushi emerges from the club in the early morning, finally returning to his apartment around four.

He takes a sip of cold sludge, the powder not fully dissolved, and grimaces. He wonders if Atsushi returned home alone. He has a funny feeling he didn't.

He stews, stomach still churning, until the sun starts to glow around his tatty curtains, and then he makes a cursory effort to look presentable and not like he's spent the early hours of the morning grappling with the existence of Atsushi's sex life, knowing he needs to be on his best behavior in order for Kunikida to listen to him. He makes it to the office an hour before opening. When he stops at the cafe, ordering his partner a latte, Lucy gives him such a look of shocked distrust that he's almost insulted.

Kunikida's own look of shocked distrust is at least forgivable. He knows him well enough to know he'd never show up so early in the day without some ulterior motive. The coffee only adds suspicion on top of suspicion. Dazai doesn't even bother buying his own coffee.

"What did you do?" Kunikida asks, staring at the takeaway cup like it might leap from Dazai's hands and bite him.

"Don't be so paranoid, Kunikida-kun. Can't a man bring his partner a coffee?"

He stares at him. "Is it drugged?"

"Ouch," he says, placing a hand over his heart. "Unlike some people in the office, I don't condone the off-script use of prescription drugs."

"Get to the point." Kunikida scrubs at his temple. "You're already setting my schedule off track."

"You know, Kunikida-kun, the way you harp on, sometimes I wonder if me breathing is enough to set your schedule off track."

That gets a scowl. "Dazai."

He sighs, tongue feeling thick and clumsy in his mouth, "I have a…" he hesitates, "Concern. About this case of Atsushi's."

Kunikida's eyebrows shoot up, but he doesn't look surprised. "I'm sure you do."

"I'm serious," he presses, the humor dripping out of his voice. "I'm not sure this undercover work is good for him. Not," he adds, noticing the wry look creasing his partner's face, a look that he's grown unfortunately familiar with over the last month or so as Atsushi's absence has worn away his patience, "for whatever reason you're thinking, but… Well, don't mention to Atsushi-kun that I tattled on him, but… the assignment may be encouraging him to break the law."

"What," Kunikida says in flat exhaustion, staring at him as if he's started speaking in tongues.

"Illicit substances," Dazai clarifies helpfully.

Kunikida pushes his glasses up to rub at his eyes. "Give me the coffee."

Dazai does. He also says, "Ecstasy. MDMA. X. Whatever you want to call it."

"And you know this how?"

"I saw him take it," Dazai says.

"You saw him," Kunikida repeats, squinting at him. "And instead of, I don't know, stopping him, you're here at eight in the morning telling me in the hopes that I… what?"

Dazai blinks at him. "Isn't it obvious? He should be pulled off the case."

"I see," Kunikida says. There's a long moment of silence, Kunikida still staring at him, seemingly at a loss for words, but their stalemate is broken when his email chimes and his eyes flick towards his inbox on instinct. Rather than ignoring it, as Dazai would in his position, he hunches forward, bringing his glasses back down as he reads.

"Kunikida-kun!" Dazai cries when it becomes clear that his partner finds the email more interesting. "Can't that wait? The work day hasn't even started yet! If you keep this up, the President'll put you on mandatory leave for all the overtime you're collecting."

He mutters, "I haven't clocked in," as if that's any excuse, and then, looking up at Dazai, adds, "It seems that Atsushi's resolved his case. He'll be returning to the Agency later today."

"What?" Dazai gapes, scrambling around the desk to peer over his partner's shoulder.

Kunikida elbows him away with great impunity. "Atsushi did take ecstasy," he tells Dazai, like this is somehow news, "But it was part of his cover. He says that his Ability neutralizes foreign substances before absorption. He was never high." Kunikida continues to skim what must be Atsushi's mission report. "There was an Ability in use belonging to a foreign student. Marichiko," he says carefully, explaining aloud, "It allows the Ability-user, Kenneth Rexroth, eighteen, American, to influence the probabilities around love. The shrine initially reported is unrelated to his Ability use. It was established by Rexroth as a practical joke."

He reads further, Dazai tapping his foot impatiently behind him, summarizing as he goes, "It's not compulsive. It relies on existing compatibility and… " he trails off, something strange in his voice as he continues, "affection. Rexroth was attempting to help his friends and his Ability was already registered under the USBSA, but they failed to send the proper paperwork over with his visa application."

Kunikida sounds about as pleased with that as Dazai feels. A clerical error. Someone forgot to fax them the appropriate document and, just like that, months of Atsushi's time was eaten up.

"Why'd he take the ecstasy?" Dazai asks, the churning in stomach worse now that he knows Atsushi wasn't high at all, that he was in complete control of himself when he wrapped around a stranger.

There's a long beat before Kunikida replies, closing the email with a shrug, "He doesn't elaborate."

Dazai frowns, but doesn't get the chance to needle more before the door to the office opens and their co-workers begin their slow trickle in.

True to his word, Atsushi returns to work that afternoon, pushing open the door and momentarily allowing the change in air pressure to create the illusion of a breeze, breaking up the stale swelter of the office (still un-air conditioned, never mind the many, many promises Kunikida has made about his search for a handyman).

He's back in his usual work wear, even: slacks, a little too short; shirt, starched from excess bleach; his gloves are back on his hands and the end of his belt swoops behind him like a tail. It's all so perfectly familiar, but each time Dazai glances his way it's as if the Atsushi of the night before has been superimposed on top of him.

All Dazai can see is the bare stretch of his shoulders, the sheen of sweat matting his arm hair, drying sticky over the planes of his throat. He sees the ease with which he tossed his head back in a laugh, and his kitten-pink tongue stretched out, and his calloused hands clutched against a stranger's back.

Every blink reminds him of his assignment, his absence. There's the cut of his hair, familiar by now, damp and frizzy with humidity. And there's the tan burned into his skin, all the time he's spent outside, time he doesn't usually get in the office. There's the bruises beneath his eyes, probably from last night—he has a feeling Atsushi slept about as much as he did, especially if he was ready with a mission report before the workday even began.

Atsushi smiles at all of their co-workers when they greet him. His eyes crinkle. His cheeks indent like whiskers, the upper dimples bunching up the muscles of his face. Dazai feels over-heated.

Atsushi hugs Kyouka, allowing her to cling, and then he hugs the Tanizakis. Junichirou and him scuffle like little kids for a moment, before devolving into indistinct whispers and giggles up until Naomi has enough and flings herself between them, pinching at both of their cheeks. Kunikida gives him a pat on the shoulder and gruff, "Well done, kid," and Atsushi beams at him, says some nonsense about it all being thanks to his lecture on keeping a cover (though anyone with a brain between their ears knows he's lying through his teeth). Yosano heckles him about electrolytes, which Atsushi endures gracefully, and Ranpo only makes one comment about how much faster he would have solved it if it was his case, which Atsushi accepts as the praise it is. This cycle of excitement seems prepared to go on forever, when Haruno gently interrupts to let Atsushi know that the President wants to go over the case with him once, before he heads to the embassy to start a new scuffle over the bureaucratic incompetence of the USBSA.

Through it all, Dazai sits at his desk and breathes evenly and ignores the way his co-workers start to eye him as soon as Atsushi passes out of the space.

He's fine.

He's absolutely fine.

Atsushi hardly makes it a step out of Fukuzawa's office when Dazai shoots to his feet and calls, "Ah, Atsushi-kun! Come help me real quick," already half-way into the hallway.

Atsushi follows after him, hurrying at his heels as Dazai leads them into their file room, starting to say through a pant, "Dazai-san—"

Dazai speaks over him. "You look tired," he says, restless and itchy, that wretched churning feeling back in his belly, and he asks with a barbed humor, "Long night?"

Atsushi sighs, shoulders slumping. His voice drags out of him roughly as he snaps, "Do we have to do this?" It wavers in the silence between them, until Atsushi tilts his head, softens the blow, "Have pity, Dazai-san. I don't think I can read your mind today."

What a cold comfort, he thinks. Then he swallows his pride and adjusts course. "Why did you invite me to Ken-kun's going away party?"

"Why are you asking questions you already know the answer to?"

"You used me as bait," he says, a little tartly. "But by then you already had to know that Ken-kun was the Ability-user, so I suppose I'm curious about your thought process."

Atsushi crosses his arms over his chest, looking uncomfortable as his eyes dart around the room. "I did know. I queried USBSA a week before the party, so I had confirmation…" he trails off with a nervous twist of his mouth. "Ken-kun's not… He loves the idea of love. He fixates on helping people find it. And when you started poking around he…"

"He fixated on the idea of finding me love," Dazai finishes, trying and largely failing to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

"Us, actually," Atsushi corrects, flooding his head with nothing but white noise. Luckily, he continues before Dazai's expected to regain his bearings. "I could tell from how you reacted last night that he tried to use his Ability, but he was drunk enough that I couldn't be sure if he knew it had failed. That's why I made such a show of going to say hi to Kawabata-kun. Ken-kun doesn't like surprises."

He's not sure what Atsushi and Kawabata got up to last night qualifies as saying hi. Worse, he's still feeling prickly enough about it that he finds himself saying, "Quite a show to put on just for a confession."

Atsushi rears back in shock. "I didn't—" he begins, voice going high, before he stops, takes a deep breath, and continues in a clipped rush, "Ken-kun followed me onto the dance floor and started spilling his guts before I even found Kawabata-kun."

"So everything with Kawabata was…?"

"Unrelated to the case," Atsushi says lowly.

Something ugly twists in his gut. "Regardless of the risks?"

"There weren't any risks," Atsushi says. "And, anyways, I don't think this appropriate—"

"You slept with him," Dazai says, the words spilling out of him like an accusation.

Atsushi holds himself very, very still as he says, "Dazai, I'm not a child. I don't know what you're digging for here, but I don't need you to protect me from the world." They stare at each other for a tense moment, and then he sighs, lightens, "Now, if that's all, I have paperwork I need to finish."

When Dazai eventually slinks back into the office, no one bats an eye. Of course, if there's one thing each Agency member is adept at it's the careful tip-toeing around of any and all interpersonal atom bombs, so he can't really bring himself to feel much gratitude.

He collapses into his desk chair, but doesn't even pretend to get work done. He slouches back and stares at the dust mites in the air, mind whirring as he tries to get a hold of himself.

Atsushi's absence, he understood. He could catalog what he was feeling, recognize it easily enough.

Dazai was worried about Atsushi's work undercover. He worried and stewed and snapped until he couldn't take it anymore and inserted himself neatly into Atsushi's life again where he could keep him tucked close to his side. Dazai worried because, horrifically, unavoidably, he cared. It's something he doesn't enjoy admitting, but he has soft spots for all of his co-workers, aggravating as they can be, and Atsushi is no exception.

Actually, if he allows himself to dwell on it, he's not sure soft spot really covers what it is he has for Atsushi. It's not in spite of anything, the way it sometimes feels when he worries over Kunikida or the others. It's a second pulse in his veins, another artery in his heart. If he could, he thinks he would try and keep Atsushi wedged in the cradle of his ribs, curl him around all of his other most delicate parts.

Considering everything that's led to this moment, he supposes he's jumped from care to concern. Historically, concern is far trickier for him to navigate. He can never express it correctly. It jumbles up in his mouth, drips from his tongue in knots, and his inevitable frustration makes him sharp, makes him mean.

He chews on this, spinning around in his chair as the ambient noise of the office hums around him. He's been worried about Atsushi. He cares for him. He's concerned for him.

Now that Atsushi's back in the office, back where he belongs, everything should settle.

It doesn't.

His stomach still churns. His skin still itches.

Atsushi is here and Dazai can't stop thinking about the night before. Neck thrown back. Tongue stuck out. The press of his mouth to the strangers. Atsushi is back, but he's not his.

The thought won't leave once he has it. Is that what he wants? Dazai can be greedy and proprietary. He likes being Atsushi's mentor. He likes that he's the one who found him, corralled him, brought him here. He likes when Atsushi's eyes are on him. He likes when his skin begins to burn red from the force of Dazai's attention.

Is that it? he wonders to himself. It's not just Atsushi's presence he wants, but his attention too.

It makes as much sense as anything, he decides, shrugging it off as another one of his more unpalatable personality deficiencies as he boots up his computer.

The first warning sign comes minutes later when, stomach still churning, the flat disappointment in Atsushi's stare weighing heavily in his mind, he tells Atsushi, "When you're done with your paperwork, give it here and I'll digitize it for you."

Across from him, Kunikida falls into a violent coughing fit.

Atsushi blinks in surprise, but seems to take it as the olive branch he intends it to be. "Thank you so much, Dazai-san! I hate going through the conversion process," he says with great feeling, smiling at him so brightly that Dazai's fingers twitch against his keyboard.

"It's no problem," he says, something warm settling behind his sternum, never mind that he's just recently sworn off ever digitizing a file again after all the hassle it caused him last time he tried it.

Kunikida stands up abruptly, presumably to go have his fit in the hallway.

The second warning sign follows shortly after this. Dazai is stretching out his wrists, giving the room a quick scan, when his attention is caught by Atsushi, half-slouched on an elbow as he reads over his paperwork. He's frowning a little, a divot forming between his eyebrows, and he's chewing on the end of his pen, lips parted as he worries it between his teeth, a flash of pink as his tongue brushes against the plastic cap, and then he's bringing it back down to scrawl something out, the pen still shiny with spit, and—

Ah, Dazai thinks, realizing all at once why he's been so off-balance.

He has feelings for Atsushi.

For a moment, he seriously considers taking his gun and blowing his brains out right there in the office. However burdensome his death might be to his co-workers, it would remain unmatched to how burdensome living with this new knowledge is to him, now.

It's humiliating. It's absurd.

It is, he decides, watching as Atsushi momentarily gives up on his paperwork to doodle on a Post-It, utterly inevitable. Completely unavoidable. As natural as breathing.

On the walk home that night, Ranpo brushes past with a ridiculous and deliberate shoulder check, slipping something into his hand: a stout bottle of Viagra.

Fair enough, he thinks.