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Though Atsushi would never admit it to himself--let alone out loud --he was beginning to… worry for Akutagawa.
The fight had started off the same as any other (death threats aimed at Atsushi, snarky insults shot back, a confused target trying to make a run for it while they were “distracted;” this is followed quickly by a vicious two-on-one take down that really only served as the background to Atsushi and Akutagawa’s banter), but shortly after the criminal (that wasn’t Akutagawa) was apprehended and left for the police, his partner began acting strange.
Well, strang er than usual anyway.
“Akutagawa,” Atsushi called to his partner, lacing his voice with as much annoyance as he could muster in a bid to hide his growing concern. “What are you doing ?”
The
monster
man in question was currently hiding in the corner of the alley they had been using as a shortcut back to their respective offices, hunched over and hacking violently into his arm.
Akutagawa coughing was nothing unusual--in fact, he did it often, though Atsushi didn’t know if it was an actual affliction that caused it or if it was some sort of metaphor for Akutagawa’s sick personality. However, Atsushi had had the misfortune of getting to know his reluctant partner somewhat well over the several months they had been taking joint missions together. And he knew that this wasn’t the typical coughing-fit.
For one, Akutagawa wasn’t even trying to be casual about it. Typically, any coughs were made discreetly into the back of his hand. Atsushi can only assume this is for the aesthetic . After all, Akutagawa may be a mass murderer with a fuse shorter than Nakahara Chuuya, but he dressed and spoke like a gentleman . So of course the only polite thing about him would be the way he coughs.
Another red flag was the fact that the fight had been neither long nor dangerous for either of them. He actually suspected that Dazai had made the two of them pair together for this mission solely to make Atsushi’s life harder, as the criminal had been laughably easy to take down.
(Really, does a tax-evader with the ability to do complex math in milliseconds require two of the most dangerous ability-users in the city to arrest him? No, Dazai. No, it doesn’t.)
Yet, despite the ease of the fight and his lack of injuries, Akutagawa appeared to be gasping for air the way he did after one of their fights. The ones where one or both of them required immediate medical care afterward.
The coughs also sounded incredibly wet , as opposed to his usual dry rasp, which could be considered concerning.
Now, Atsushi may not be the brightest detective at the agency, but even he could tell that something was wrong with Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. The only problem was, he couldn’t figure out how to make the idiot tell him what it was without acting like he cared.
Because he definitely did not .
The only reason he was even bothering to ask was because it could impact their future missions together. Probably.
Maybe.
“Okay, seriously ,” Atsushi finally snapped after Akutagawa elected to ignore him and stay huddled in his shadowy corner like the little edge lord he was. “What is wrong with you? ”
Atsushi’s hand landed on Akutagawa’s shoulder, jerking him up and out of his slouch to face him. Wide gray eyes met
worried
annoyed heterochromatic orbs as the two members of shin soukoku stared at each other silently.
The silence dragged on, neither one of them quite willing to acknowledge what the other saw in the other, until Atsushi couldn’t stand the tension any longer.
“ Dude ,” he breathed.
It was enough.
“Let go of me,” Akutagawa snapped, tone acidic as he tried to discreetly wipe his blood-covered hand on his shirt, as though Atsushi had somehow missed it. “I’m very busy, and do not have time to fraternize with you further.”
“Akutagawa,” Atsushi called after his partner, no longer worried about showing his concern after he had seen the level of the damage. “Enough. If your illness--or whatever it is--is this bad, it’s time to see a doctor. I’ll bring you to Dr. Yosano myself. Just stop acting like this isn’t happening. It isn’t a weakness to seek medical treatment.”
The look Akutagawa shot him over his shoulder said he disagreed. “Do not be a fool, Jinko. This isn’t from any sort of illness, and I do not require a doctor. So, cease your incessant mothering and run along back to your beloved Agency. I do not need your concern.”
Akutagawa spun on his heel, apparently believing that to be an fine-enough answer to get Atsushi off his back. He should have known better.
Atsushi jumped on his back, tackling him to the ground.
They rolled around on the ground, neither even bothering to activate their abilities as they fought for dominance like sixth graders on a playground fighting over the last bowl of chazuke. Atsushi found himself on top, though he didn’t give himself any time to gloat about it.
“ You will go to the doctor--”
“ Get off of me!”
“ And you will tell her what is wrong with you-- ”
“Why do you even care?!”
“ And you will accept medical treatment--”
“I’ve already told you! I don’t need a doctor!”
“ Or I will tell Dazai that I beat you in a fight !”
Silence rang loudly in the alley as the boys stared at one another, eyes narrowed dangerously and lips curled back in snarls.
In hindsight, Atsushi should have seen Rashoumon coming. It was only a matter of time.
The beast pierces his shoulder, yanking him off of his partner, and (gently?) throws him into the wall to their right. Once Atsushi’s feet are back on the ground and he is no longer attacking its master, Rashoumon releases him. His wound heals only seconds later.
Akutagawa is not as lucky.
Atsushi really should consider things more thoroughly before he tries to forcibly speak wellness onto someone who may well be dying.
His partner is struggling to stand, one hand planted firmly on the pavement while the other is raised to his lips, catching the blood as it splatters out of his mouth amidst his wracking coughs.
Atsushi can only stare, all ideas for helping his not-friend spent.
Akutagawa finally rises, though he is not exactly steady on his feet. He spares Atsushi only a glance before turning in the direction of the Port Mafia headquarters. “I already told you, Jinko. I am busy. I have no time to see your doctor. Besides,” he says, voice weak though he stands as tall and rigid as possible in an effort to hide any weakness, “I am not sick.”
“Akutagawa,” Atsushi half-sighs, half-growls in exasperation.
“I accidentally ate glass.”
Atsushi freezes. Akutagawa won’t look at him. Neither of them move.
“You what?” Atsushi finally manages to say, voice deadpan and face expressionless. He must have heard him wrong. There’s no way he--
“Please leave me alone.” Akutagawa has given up all pretense of wellness, his shoulders slumping and his voice lowering to a barely-there rasp as he says, “I ate glass.”
“I--You--” Once it is confirmed that his partner and rival is the biggest idiot to ever walk the streets of Yokohama, Atsushi loses all ability to maintain his calm aloofness. “How do you accidentally eat glass?!”
Akutagawa, unsurprisingly, chooses not to answer him, merely huffing as he turns in the opposite direction and starts walking. And were it not for the fact that the idiot was dying and that he was pretty sure he was the closest thing said idiot had to a friend, thereby making him responsible for his dumb ass, Atsushi would have walked away too.
However, as all of these things are true and Atsushi did not fancy the idea of being partnered with a corpse for any future missions, he decides that it was time to put an end to this insanity.
Akutagawa did not even notice the weretiger sneaking up behind him until it was too late.
.:.
When Akutagawa next opens his eyes, he is in a blindingly white room and there is a woman standing over him. He is so distracted by her wide, frenzied violet eyes and the way she was licking her lips as though she were about to eat him , that he does not notice the chainsaw in her hands until it is being lowered towards his body.
“Hmmm, it’s Akutagawa-kun, right? Ah , it's so rare that I get to play with anyone outside of the Agency these days; it’s nice to have some fresh meat on my table. I’ll have to thank Atsushi-kun for bringing you to me later. In the meantime,” she purrs, leaning over him as she rips back the cord on the chainsaw, making it whir to life, “you may want to relax. This will only hurt for a moment. Or two. If you’re lucky.”
Akutagawa does not get the chance to scream before the chainsaw is brought down.
.:.
“ Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.”
“...Do you think he’s okay in there, Dazai-san?”
“With any luck, no.”
“....”
.:.
The next time Akutagawa opens his eyes, the nightmarish doctor is gone, though he is still in a room with too-bright fluorescent lights and headache-inducing white walls. The scent of antiseptics and over-sterilization that seems to permeate all hospitals surrounds him, and he doesn’t have to investigate further to know where he is.
The Armed Detective Agency .
His annoyance with the weretiger, while always present, spikes unpleasantly. It is only as he turns his head to the right, searching for the bane of his existence so that he may yell at him for knocking him unconscious and dragging him to this hellish place against his will that he realizes he has been stripped of his coat.
The shock prompts him to inhale deeply without thinking, and Akutagawa is immediately bracing for the pain that always follows such an action. He is surprised to find that for the first time in quite a while, no pain follows the flow of sweet oxygen to his aching lungs. He sucks in another breath greedily, testing this newfound freedom, Rashoumon momentarily forgotten.
“Here,” a voice to his left says.
He whips his head around to find the weretiger sitting next to his bed, his black overcoat held out to him.
Of course he would be in the opposite direction of where Akutagawa expected him to be, the bastard . Couldn’t he do anything right?
He snatches the coat from his hands without hesitation, flinging it over his shoulders haphazardly. He can’t help but note the ease of the action when he had felt like he was choking on glass earlier that night.
...Likely because he was , though Akutagawa would rather pretend that had never happened.
“Why did you bring me here?” he demands harshly, though he is careful to keep his face smooth and unreadable, the way Dazai-san always did. “I told you I was busy.”
The weretiger snorts, and Akutagawa is filled with visions of his head on a spike. “Busy dying you mean? Well, tough. Whether we like it or not, we’re partners .” Atsushi spits the word out, looking as though he had just sucked on a lemon. Akutagawa would be offended if he didn’t feel much the same. “So that means that you can’t just die when I have it in my power to stop it.”
“But it wasn’t your power, now, was it Jinko?” Akutagawa sneers. He cannot explain why, but he feels this is an important point that must be made. “Certainly, you assaulted me in an attempt to bring me here against my will, but it was the doctor that healed me. You had little to do with it.”
Atsushi stares at him, face blank. Akutagawa stares back. He foolishly believes he has won.
“If you’d like, I can call Dr. Yosano back here so you can thank her properly. Since you’re so grateful .”
Akutagawa pales. Atsushi smirks. Akutagawa realizes that Atsushi has been spending far too much time with Dazai. He does not like it.
He gets the feeling the weretiger knows this, as his smirk only widens.
“... I am grateful,” he says softly after several long seconds of continued silence. He cannot say what makes him spit the words he so rarely uses out--whether it be that he can finally breathe easily for the first time in years , because the doctor likely did save his life (even if he hates to admit it), or that despite what the weretiger says, he knows that Atsushi brought him here because he didn’t want him to die.
He remembers the worry in his mismatched eyes when he saw the blood on his hand, and Akutagawa cannot remember the last time someone other than his sister cared whether he made it back home alive. He cannot say for sure there ever was anyone else.
But he would never say any of this out loud, so a half-hearted thank you will have to suffice. Even if even that much makes him want to gouge his own eyes out.
Or, if given the option, the weretiger’s.
Atsushi considers him with narrowed eyes before nodding once, sharply. Decisively. “Good.”
Akutagawa nods back before closing his eyes and slowly relaxing back in the uncomfortable bed, considering the conversation to be over. He expects the weretiger to leave, but does not comment on it when he stays.
It’s strange. In the quiet of the room, with their breathing ( he can finally breathe ) the only thing filtering in and out of his hearing, he would almost call this moment peaceful . An anomaly in Akutagawa’s abysmal life. Especially where the weretiger is involved.
He would never admit it, even to himself, but it's during these moments of quiet camaraderie that he almost thinks he and the weretiger could one day be fr--
“... So, are you going to tell me how you accidentally ate glass ?”
Akutagawa’s eyes snap open and he is filled with the overwhelming urge to skin the weretiger alive and turn his pelt into a warm winter coat for Gin.
But he nobly resists as a sign of (incredibly minor) gratitude for the boy’s part in sort of (not really though, he would have been fine ) saving his life. “Get out. Now.”
They will never be friends.
.:.
When Atsushi exits the infirmary, his face still twisted with both amusement and irritation, he is unsurprised to find Dazai waiting for him.
“Soooooo, how did that go?” his mentor sings, sweeping forward to drape himself over Atsushi’s back as the boy tries to immediately walk down the hall to put as much distance as possible between himself and that asshole .
“The usual: I saved his life and he repays me by threatening to take mine. I don’t even know why I bother.”
“Oh, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai sighs, and though Atsushi cannot see him from where he is clinging to his back in an effort to delay his escape, he can feel him shake his head in exasperation. “It’s just like it says in the song.” His mentor’s voice has become strangely dreamy as he leans more heavily on his subordinate, and Atsushi is not afraid to admit that it makes him incredibly nervous.
“Do I even want to ask what you’re talking about?”
“Why, of course~ Don’t you know it?”
When he only shakes his head, Dazai inhales deeply and Atsushi knows that he is about to regret everything that has led up to this moment.
“When a boy eats glass and another beats his ass... that’s amore,” Dazai croons (horribly) directly into his ear, swaying them both back and forth from his position behind Atsushi. As he opens his mouth again, presumably to sing another nauseating verse, Atsushi throws his mentor off of him and continues his way down the hall.
“Not even as a joke, Dazai-san,” Atsushi growls, slamming the door behind him. He pretends he can’t hear the deranged detective’s laughter following him.
He and Akutagawa may be partners, and Atsushi may suspect that he’s the closest thing that idiot has to a friend, but that doesn’t actually make them friends. So to imply that their relationship would ever extend beyond reluctant partnership is pure insanity. Probably.
Maybe.