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There’s a bar across the street and down the block from the agency apartments, and Akutagawa doesn’t want to think about why he’s here. Why he comes here once a month or once a week. Two nights in a row that one time, when the moon was full and he couldn’t close his eyes, couldn’t quell the nervous ribbons of Rashoumon twisting around his fingers.
Keeping an eye on Dazai, he would say, if anyone asked him. Reconnaissance. But nobody knows he’s here, so nobody asks him, so he doesn’t get to give voice to the lie, doesn’t get to hear it out loud and hope he’ll believe it.
He sits at the bar, and Rashoumon tightens around his waist as if to hold him together. The backs of his teeth are sweet with blood.
The bartender slides his usual order across without asking. On usual nights, he numbs his fingertips against the glass until the ice melts. Leaves afterwards, without a drop passing his lips. He doesn’t really drink.
Tonight he swallows the liquor as if he’s rehearsed it. Slams the glass on the counter and tells the stunned bartender, “Another.”
Akutagawa killed a man half an hour ago. On usual nights this isn’t a problem. It shouldn’t be a problem tonight either. He shouldn’t care. But it is, and he does. He feels uncontrolled.
The second drink creeps more slowly into him, each little sip as sweet as a cigarette against his wrist.
He’s halfway through it when the bell chimes, and the door opens. Rashoumon tightens around Akutagawa’s wrists, then settles. Hatefully meek and passive as a familiar figure pulls up the bar stool next to him.
Self-disgust crawls through the chambers of Akutagawa’s heart. He doesn’t want to be seen today—doesn’t want to talk—and yet he came here, to the bar across the street and down the block from the agency apartments.
“What can I get you?” the bartender asks the new arrival.
“What he’s having,” Atsushi answers.
Akutagawa downs the rest of his glass, and this time it burns. He clenches his fist on the bartop, forcing down his physiological response, because he can’t cough right now. Even if every breath rasps down his throat.
A glass lands in front of Atsushi, who turns it around idly, not drinking. His fingers against the glass and the stretch of wrist under his sleeve are the only parts of him Akutagawa can see without looking over.
Atsushi throws down the gauntlet first. “You couldn’t even last a week, huh.”
“Your agency is well-informed on the Port Mafia’s minor affairs.” Akutagawa’s voice is steady, but he keeps forgetting to blink.
No tiger claws today. Just fingers whitening against the glass. “No. I’m well-informed on you.”
Atsushi lets go of the glass and snaps his fingers. Akutagawa jerks to look at him, and his vision blurs with the sudden wave of pain. Clears in time to see Atsushi’s golden eyes narrowing.
“Did you even try?” Atsushi asks.
Akutagawa tried far harder than he should have. He held back until the dead man’s knife punched through layers of armor, muscle. When he breathes too deeply, his entire torso hurts.
So he doesn’t breathe too deeply. He casts his gaze somewhere beyond Atsushi’s shoulder and says, “I never intended to reform for you.” Curls his fingernails into his palms and wishes they were claws. “You’re a fool if you thought I would.”
Breath cuts sharp through the tiger's teeth. Atsushi says, “It’s not for me.”
Who else would it be for?
Dazai taught him to confess his failures, but Akutagawa doesn’t know whether his fault is in failing or in trying. He’s too weak for either. All the times they’ve tried to kill each other, and he still has no defense against that look in Atsushi’s eyes.
The way Atsushi asks, too quietly, “Do you think it’s for me?”
Akutagawa musters all his strength and stands up from the bar stool. He leans close to Atsushi, until the scent of soap overpowers the taste of blood, until Atsushi’s golden eyes widen with something that Akutagawa flatters himself is fear.
He takes Atsushi’s untouched drink and downs it in a single swallow. Drops the glass, but it doesn’t shatter. It just rolls in a circle along the bartop.
“What the fuck is your problem,” Atsushi hisses, but Akutagawa is already heading for the door.
The night isn’t cold enough. He walks down the sidewalk, all his energy focused on not staggering with weakness. With the three quick glasses that he’s just now starting to feel, all at once. He doesn’t have enough blood left in his body for this.
That’s the tiger’s fault. Everything is the tiger’s fault.
Footsteps race behind him, and Akutagawa focuses so hard on walking in a straight line that his shoulder jars against another pedestrian’s. His side seizes in pain. The man must not know who he is, because he turns to yell at him. Akutagawa blinks, Rashoumon hissing around his legs, and tries to figure out which blurry mirage of the pedestrian to strike.
But the footsteps arrive before his vision clears. The warm arm around his shoulder drives every coherent thought from his mind. He can’t hear what Atsushi says, but the belligerent pedestrian vanishes into the night, and the two of them are alone on the sidewalk.
“You’re insufferable,” Akutagawa tells him.
Everything else in the world is blurry, but Atsushi’s face is perfectly, painfully clear. His annoyance is gone, replaced with something dangerously close to concern, and he says, “Where are you going?”
Akutagawa doesn’t know. Six months is a long time when the nights slice into his veins like this.
He sways along the sidewalk to nowhere, and Atsushi reaches for his arm. Battle instinct moves Akutagawa backwards, heels skidding in an arc across the pavement—his side ripping under Rashoumon’s binding. He chokes on blood, hunches over in pain, and he’s too drunk and dazed to resist again when Atsushi catches him.
“Are you hurt?” Atsushi says, as if he has the right to care.
Maybe he does. Maybe Akutagawa’s given him that right, in exchange for warm hands against his shoulders, holding him up. Half an embrace that he doesn’t dare want more of.
If he’s being honest, he’ll admit this hasn’t been about Dazai for a long time now. It’s about teeth in his throat. Claws between his ribs, ripping him open, stopping before they pierce his heart like he wants them to.
He clutches Atsushi’s wrists. Forgets whether he wants to shove him away, or drag him closer, so he just holds him and feels the pulse quickening under his fingers. “I’m hurt,” he says dazedly. “That’s nothing new.”
Drag him closer, he decides. This tenderness hurts so much, he can’t help but want it.
Uncertainty flashes through Atsushi’s eyes. Guilt. “Was it because you were trying…”
“It’s because I’m weak.”
And it’s because he’s weak that he leans forward. Closes his eyes in cowardice, and presses the faintest kiss to the corner of Atsushi’s mouth. He means to pull away after that, vanish into the night, but a low desperate sound breaks from one of them, and one of Atsushi’s warm hands slides against his neck. Holds him in place while Atsushi deepens the kiss.
Nothing hurts anymore when Atsushi finally pulls away. “Come back to my apartment,” he says quietly. “Let me look at your injury.”
Akutagawa snarls, “Anyone I see tonight, I’ll rip to pieces.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Atsushi says, and takes Akutagawa’s hand.
The soft, firm touch is far more painful than claws, so painful that Akutagawa’s mind blanks out, and all his defenses shatter. It’s so painful that it doesn’t hurt at all.
When Atsushi pulls his hand, he follows.