Work Text:
It’s true, what they say — time does slow down in moments of utter terror.
In the time it takes the bullet to slice through the side of Atsushi’s neck, Akutagawa finds himself wondering idly whether that sense of distortion isn’t just in his head. Perhaps the world really is slowing down, preparing to cleave itself into two distinct parts — Before and After.
And then the bullet has passed, leaving a spray of bright arterial blood in its wake, and time returns to its usual pace. In an instant, shock crosses Atsushi’s face, as if it never occurred to him that he might be felled by something as simple as gunfire, and then he falls to his knees, one hand clasped to his neck as the blood pulses in time to his heartbeat.
Akutagawa has slit enough throats to know with one glance that the bullet has severed Atsushi’s carotid artery. In the half-second it takes for Akutagawa to propel himself with Rashoumon to Atsushi’s side, the blood has already soaked the entire left side of Atsushi’s shirt, staining it red.
The clamor of the pre-dawn battle fades away. The ambient sound of Yokohama’s docks — the cry of seagulls and the lapping of waves — falls silent, leaving nothing but the rhythmic pounding of Akutagawa’s pulse in his ears.
Acting on a hurried, mechanical instinct, Akutagawa tears off a piece of his own shirt and holds it against Atsushi’s neck, doing his best to slow the bleeding. Akutagawa can feel the beat of Atsushi’s heart, every pulse forcing more and more blood out from the wound. Stop, Akutagawa wants to command it. You useless muscle, you’ve always been too big and too kind. And now look at you – you’re killing him.
Atsushi’s eyes slowly focus, and he regards Akutagawa with a confused, slightly pleased expression.
“Akutagawa?” he manages, voice weak and breath rattling. “What’re you doing?”
“Shut up, Weretiger” Akutagawa scolds, but it comes out thick and unsteady. “Don’t try to talk.”
But Atsushi, never one to heed Akutagawa’s orders, continues.
“Don’t feel good. Glad you’re here.”
“Shut up,” he urges, voice cracking. He’s managing to support Atsushi’s head with the crook of one arm and holding pressure against the wound with the other, but it doesn’t seem to be doing much good. Blood covers Akutagawa’s lap and soaks his shirt up to his elbows.
Akutagawa understands the power of Atsushi’s regeneration. He understands the Agency doctor’s profound capacity to heal. And he also understands that with how quickly Atsushi is losing blood, neither of those Abilities are going to mean a damn thing.
Atsushi is going to bleed out here and now, cradled in Akutagawa’s arms, gazing up at him with the strangest expression of peace.
Akutagawa can’t bear to look at it, so he tears his gaze away, staring at the ever-dampening ground around them. Stupid Weretiger. What business do you have looking so content when we both know that you’re dying?
“Don’t cry,” Atsushi murmurs, and only when he says it does Akutagawa notice the flow of tears. He can’t recall the last time he cried, but he weeps uncontrollably now.
“Shut up,” he hisses, for the third time. “Don’t comfort me, you idiotic beast. Least of all now.”
Atsushi’s eyes are unfocused and glassy, but he refuses to look away from Akutagawa, gazing with soft concern even as he berates him. With the appearance of enormous effort, he lifts a hand to cradle Akutagawa’s cheek. His palm is cold and clammy and sticky with blood, but Akutagawa can’t help but lean into it all the same.
It can’t end like this. Atsushi has mere minutes left, maybe less, and he can’t die listening to Akutagwa’s scolding and insults. Comfort has never come easily to Akutagwa, but he has to try. Atsushi deserves that much, at least.
But Akutagawa can’t think of what to say. He can’t tell Atsushi that it’s fine, that he’ll be okay, or any of those trite, hollow reassurances. It’s not okay, and perhaps it never will be again — not without Atsushi.
In his last moments, bloody and painful though they are, Atsushi deserves better than lies. So Akutagawa instead settles on the deepest truth he knows. Perhaps, here and now, the only truth.
“You can’t die, you useless overgrown cat,” Akutagawa snarls, half-choking on a sob. “I love you, so you can’t die. Not when I love you.”
Akutagawa doesn’t know how long he holds Atsushi, murmuring the same few words over and over again, his litany against the inevitable, until members of that useless Agency at last manage to find them.
“Did you do this?” one of them demands, the tall one with the glasses. At such an implication, Akutagawa snarls, pulling Atsushi closer to his chest.
“Akutagawa, you need to let go.” It’s Dazai this time, face pale and stern. “We don’t have a lot of time to get him to Dr. Yosano.”
Some part of Akutagawa, the deepest and most frightened, is certain that the moment Atsushi leaves his embrace, he’ll be gone for good. He can’t release his hold on Atsushi. He can’t let anyone take him.
“Kunikida, help me, won’t you?” Dazai asks, and in an instant, Dazai has his arms hooked beneath Akutagawa’s, bodily pulling him away from Atsushi, who’s scooped into Kunikida’s arms and taken away.
With his Ability nullified, Akutagawa is weak, but that doesn’t deter him. He thrashes in Dazai’s grip, hands and feet colliding with anything they can reach. Snarling, Akutagawa bites Dazai’s hand with all his strength, the sharp acidity of blood flooding his mouth.
Dazai doesn’t release his hold on Akutagawa. He doesn’t even flinch. Instead, he sharply turns Akutagawa around to face him and slaps him once, hard.
The brief starburst of pain clears Akutagawa’s head, and he stops clawing and writhing in Dazai’s grip.
“You need to calm down,” Dazai orders, steely and even. “You’re no good to anyone in this state.”
Not trusting his voice to come out as anything beyond a howl, Akutagawa nods.
“I’ve seen Atsushi come back from a lot,” Dazai continues. “He’s tenacious. Don’t start grieving before you’re sure you have to.”
Akutagawa swallows hard and nods again. Dazai’s careful choice of words isn’t lost on him; nowhere did he make any promises or predictions. He, too, knows that Atsushi’s chances don’t look good.
But his point is well made all the same; Atsushi’s not dead yet. Akutagawa’s childhood spent scrounging on the streets has taught him that sometimes, not dead yet counts for a lot.
“Go home,” Dazai orders. “Wash up and change your clothes. I’ll call you as soon as we have any news.”
Akutagawa nods for a final time, and leaves like Dazai instructed him to. The ferocity from before has drained out of him entirely, leaving him hollow and dazed. He tries for several minutes to hail a cab, only to realize at last that none of them are stopping because he’s drenched in still-damp blood.
With a sigh, Akutagawa resigns himself to walking home. It’s several miles, but he’s too tired to come up with any other options.
There’s the occasional gasp or whisper as he shuffles, blood-soaked and blank-faced, down the sidewalk, but Akutagawa hardly notices. He can’t muster up the energy to care about anything right now.
Once home, he all but collapses into bed, not bothering to shower or even change out of his bloodstained clothes, before falling into a fitful sleep.
Akutagawa wakes to the chirp of a text notification, the sound incongruously bright in the darkness of his bedroom.
Vision still coming into focus and the smell of blood hanging heavy in the air, Akutagawa gropes for his phone. The text is from Dazai – a single, earth-shattering sentence.
Dazai:
He’s going to be alright
Akutagawa grips the edge of the mattress, hard. It’s the only thing that keeps him steady as the room spins around him, a swirl of relief, and, with equal intensity, regret.
Atsushi is alive. That’s the thought that drives Akutagawa out of bed and into the bathroom to strip out of his clothes, stiff with dried blood, and pushes him under the hot water of the shower. Atsushi is alive. Akutagawa has long outgrown his beliefs in things like mercy or miracles, but for perhaps the first time, he’s proven wrong. Atsushi, despite the impossibility, despite how much of his hot, sticky blood had pulsed into Akutagawa’s lap, is still alive.
Akutagawa stays in the shower until the usually ample supply of hot water threatens to run cold. The dull roar of the spray hitting the tile and the pounding of his pulse in his ears are almost enough to deafen him to a single, frantic thought. Almost, but not quite.
What if he heard me?
Akutagawa has known how he feels about Atsushi for a while now. And he’s made his peace with it. Wanting what he could never have is as fundamental to Akutagawa as his own name. He had always intended to keep his love for Atsushi held tight to his chest, cradling it like an infant and shushing it whenever its cries grew too loud.
Atsushi was never supposed to know.
He doesn’t know, Akutagawa corrects himself. Atsushi was going into shock, his speech slurred and his skin cold and clammy. He couldn’t possibly have heard and understood what Akutagawa had said to him, let alone remember it when he regained consciousness.
Atsushi doesn’t know. He can’t know. Akutagawa refuses to consider an alternative.
But for all Akutagawa’s attempts to reassure himself, Atsushi acts strangely in the weeks following his brush with death. At first, Akutagawa attributes it to nothing more than the stress of that last battle; Atsushi has had some close calls, certainly, but this one was by far the closest.
But that rationalization becomes harder and harder to maintain as the weeks go by. Atsushi won’t look Akutagawa in the eye. He hardly speaks to him, and when he does, his tone is quiet and hurried, like he’s trying to get the conversation over with as quickly as possible. During a fight, Akutagawa reaches out a hand to Atsushi to help him back to his feet, and Atsushi leaps backwards as if Akutagawa had tried to strike him.
Something happened between the two of them. Something changed. And Akutagawa only has himself to blame.
When the building collapses on the two of them mid-mission, Akutagawa is struck with the strangest sense of deja vu.
Just like when Atsushi had been shot back at the docks, time stretches and distorts before Akutagawa’s eyes. The rubble cascades like falling leaves, and the floor gives way as slowly as ice cracking over a thawing pond.
Akutagawa doesn’t know who lunges first – Atsushi or himself – but in an instant, the two of them are a desperate tangle of limbs. With a perfect, unspoken synchronicity, Atsushi maneuvers himself beneath Akutagawa to break their fall, holding Akutagawa tight to his chest, and Akutagawa releases Rashoumon to cover them, shielding them from the chunks of concrete and steel that rain down around them.
They land eventually, Atsushi cradling the back of Akutagawa’s head so protectively that Akutagawa has to land a feeble punch against Atsushi’s shoulder before he’ll release his hold. Akutagawa rolls over gingerly, but fortunately, nothing feels broken, or even sprained.
Between Atsushi’s strength and Rashoumon’s power, they managed to land in a small interstice in the wreckage. They two of them fit, but only just – they’re both forced to lie supine, without enough space even to sit up.
“Are you hurt?”
Akutagawa starts slightly at Atsushi’s voice — it’s the first time Atsushi has spoken to him unprompted since his injury. Akutagawa hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.
“Not that I can tell, no,” Akutagawa answers. “And you?”
“I think I’m okay.”
Silence, even more oppressive than the tons of concrete piled on top of them, settles heavily. Akutagawa can’t think of anything to say, or at least, nothing Atsushi would want to hear.
Beside him, Atsushi begins to tremble. It’s almost imperceptible at first, but the force of it grows and grows, until he’s shaking violently. Akutagawa turns his head to look at Atsushi — the most movement he can manage in this small space — and finds him so pale that he borders on grey, eyes wide and unseeing.
“Weretiger? What’s wrong? You said you weren’t hurt.”
Atsushi takes a deep, bracing breath.
“I’m not,” he answers, but his voice is tight and gravelly. “I’m okay. I just… don’t particularly like small spaces.”
“Close your eyes.”
Akutagawa means for it to come out as a command, but it lands too softly for that.
“It can’t help to look at all that rock right in front of your face,” he continues. “Just close your eyes and pretend you’re somewhere else.”
Atsushi nods, eyes closing and fists clenching hard at his sides.
“They’d lock me in a lot,” he begins, after a moment, “back when I was a kid. If I was lucky, it was a closet. Something with a little room to move around, you know? But if I was in the kitchen when someone got mad at me, they might just shove me into the cabinet under the sink. They never told me when they’d let me back out – it could be for a few hours, or for the whole day. Sometimes, I think they actually forgot they’d put me there. Or maybe they just liked having me out of the way for a while.”
Atsushi’s eyebrows furrow and he gnaws his lower lip, as if contemplating whether to continue. When he does, his voice is hardly above a whisper.
“The worst time was when they forced me into a storage locker. I couldn’t really move, and that starts to hurt, after a while. Holding the same position. I started crying from it, and then I couldn’t catch my breath, and then I guess I just panicked. I felt like I was running out of air, and I couldn’t calm myself down, and I hyperventilated until I ended up passing out for a bit.
“When I came to, I realized that no one even knew that I fainted. That was the worst part. Because it meant that I could die locked in a cabinet somewhere, and no one would know. Not for hours. Maybe not for a whole day. That’s what really scared me – not dying, exactly, but being helpless like that. Helpless and alone.”
Akutagawa wants nothing more than to reach out and take Atsushi’s trembling hand in his own. He wants to swear to protect Atsushi with his life. To promise that he’ll never again find himself alone in the dark, hurting and afraid, because Akutagawa will claw his way through whatever door separates them, and pull Atsushi into the light where he belongs.
“That won’t happen here,” Akutagwa says instead. “I won’t allow your distress to go unnoticed, and I certainly won’t allow you to die.”
Atsushi makes a strange noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.
“Don’t talk like that.”
His eyes are still closed, making his expression difficult to read. It’s maddening.
“What does that mean?” Akutagawa demands. “Talk like what?”
But Atsushi only shakes his head.
“Never mind,” he says, tone suddenly neutral and detached. “Look, there was no need for me to walk down memory lane like that. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
Akutagawa can feel that strange, unbridgeable chasm of the past several weeks opening up between the two of them again. For a moment, Atsushi’s frightened vulnerability had been enough to close the gap, and now that Akutagawa knows it can be done, he can’t bear to return to that stiff, awkward distance.
“Atsushi, please. There’s something I’m not understanding, isn’t there?”
Atsushi presses the heels of his palms against his still-closed eyes, and that odd note of hysteria returns to his voice.
“You just… I spilled my guts to you about something awful. Something I’ve never told anyone before. And you just had to go and say something so gallant. ‘I won’t allow you to die.’ Coming from anyone else, that would sound ridiculous, but not from you. Because I know you mean it. Because you’ve saved my life before, and you will again. And just now, you called me by my name. And you’ve never done that before. I know none of this is making any sense, but it just makes it all so hard to –”
“You don’t have to continue,” Akutagawa interrupts, and his voice comes out steadier than he’d expected. “I understand what you’re trying to say.”
And he does. Through the nervous, nonsensical babble, Akutagawa understands what Atsushi means – he remembers everything that was said at the docks. He knows how Akutagawa feels about him, and because of it, he can’t even bear to look Akutagawa in the eye anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Atsushi says softly. “I tried to play it cool, but I guess you just know me too well, huh?”
“Don’t apologize,” Akutagawa snaps. “The fault obviously lies with me. I will endeavor not to continue causing you discomfort.”
Eyes still closed, Atsushi shakes his head.
“No, it’s my fault. All of it. It started back when I got shot, a couple weeks ago —
“I remember, Weretiger,” Akutagawa snaps, not eager to relive the humiliation. “I was there, wasn’t I?”
“I know, Akutagawa. Let me finish, okay? I must’ve been going into shock, with the blood loss and everything. And you were right there. And I guess my brain just made some stuff up, maybe because I knew I was dying, and I wanted to go out with just a little comfort. And even though it was just a hallucination, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And things are weird with us now, and that’s my fault. Because I can’t get this stupid thing out of my head.”
“You hallucinated? What could you possibly have hallucinated that would account for the past several weeks?”
But as soon as the words are out of his mouth, a sharp, horrifying possibility flashes in Akutagawa’s mind.
“Did I hurt you?” he says, voice not much more than a whisper. “In the hallucination, was I the one who had injured you?”
This time, the sound Atsushi makes is unmistakably a sob.
“No, of course not,” Atsushi says, his voice bordering on hysteria. “You’re actually going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“You can’t very well expect me to divine the details on my own.”
“I guess not,” Atsushi says softly. He’s quiet for a long, lingering moment, and when he speaks again, it’s hardly above a whisper. “I, um, imagined that you said you loved me.”
“What?”
“I know! It’s ridiculous, and I’m sorry for making things weird between us, but I guess in that moment, my brain conjured up the words I most wanted to hear.”
“You wanted to hear that?” Akutagawa echoes.
Atsushi, whose eyes have been closed for the entirety of the conversation, at last opens them. Moving gingerly in the tight space, he turns his head to look at Akutagawa, his gaze one of equal parts shame and determination.
“Nothing has to change between us. Our talent as Double Black is too much to sacrifice. And as friends — ”
“Shut up,” Akutagawa interrupts. “Atsushi, stop talking for just one moment and listen to me.”
Atsushi’s eyes widen, disarmed, but he nods.
“You’re so stupid,” Akutagawa says, half-laughter, half-sob.
“Akutagawa, you don’t have to be cruel about it. Even for you, that’s a little —”
“No, keep listening. You’re stupid, but I’m just as bad. Worse, even. Now I suppose I understand why Dazai is always scolding us about our communication. Atsushi, you didn’t hallucinate anything.”
For a long moment, Atsushi is quiet.
“What?” he manages at last.
That chasm, that unbridgeable gap between the two of them, finally narrows enough for Akutagawa to reach across it and take Atsushi’s hand in his own. It’s cold and trembling, but it’s Atsushi’s. Akutagawa couldn’t ask for anything more.
“I thought you were dying,” Akutagawa says at last. “And I couldn’t bear the thought of not saying something while you were still alive. That wasn’t your mind’s last ditch effort when it thought hope was lost. It was mine.”
Together, in the tiny interstice, the two of them fall perfectly silent. Akutagawa’s pulse thunders in his ears, and he swears he can hear Atsushi’s just as loud beside him.
And then, the stillness gives way to frenzied movement. With that brutish strength of his, Atsushi scoops Akutagawa into his arms and maneuvers him on top of his chest, pulling him into a crushing kiss.
Atsushi’s lips are dry with the dust of the explosion, and the angle isn’t quite right, given the tight space, but it doesn’t matter. Atsushi’s hands, so careful not to brush against Akutagawa’s for weeks now, seem determined to make up for lost time. They’re everywhere – in his hair, along his jaw, over his pounding heart. Akutagawa’s, in contrast, are still. They come to cradle Atsushi’s face, delicate and desperate all at once, and he couldn’t move them if he tried.
Atsushi is alive, and in his arms, and kissing him with an intensity that borders on veneration. Atsushi’s heart, that muscle Akutagawa had scolded for its size and its kindness all those weeks ago, pumps his blood with such strength that Akutagawa can feel the pulse through his lips. Carefully, Akutagawa’s fingers graze beneath Atsushi’s jaw, against the very artery that had almost been the death of him, and he swears to protect it. Every soft, vulnerable part of Atsushi is now his to defend.
Beneath him, Atsushi laughs, just a low rumble from deep in his chest.
“What?” Akutagawa asks.
“It’s just funny. I don’t like small spaces, but now I can’t help but wish this one was smaller. That way I’d have an excuse not to let go of you.”
Akutagawa presses a kiss to Atsushi’s dusty hair.
“Then don’t. You don’t need an excuse. Not anymore. Not with me.”
And true to his word, when they’re at last excavated from the rubble hours later, Atsushi is still held tight in Akutagawa’s arms.