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[mpregwrites]

@bsd-rarepair-valentines-week day one: bouquet | atsulucy

Atsushi wasn’t sure whose face was redder: Lucy’s as she shoved the bouquet of flowers at him, or his when he stood there like a deer in the headlights staring at them. “Um,” he started, then tried to backtrack it with, “Uh.” It didn’t look like it was going anywhere.

Whatever they were doing was still brand new, a little rough around the edges but with a promise of a smooth ending if they just worked hard and tried, but he was almost certain that this wasn’t normally how the dating thing worked. Lucy just turned a deeper shade of red and held them out further, pressing them into his chest firmly.

“Just— Just take them already,” she muttered, meeting his eyes for a brief moment before quickly moving them to a rather fascinating spot on the ground. “I felt weird showing up for a date without having something to give you, okay? And I saw these on the way here, and they were really pretty, and I figured, you know… guys don’t ever get flowers, so maybe it would be nice.”

“Oh,” Atsushi said lamely, grabbing the flowers out of Lucy’s hand. They were beautiful, pinks and purples and whites and blues. He didn’t know much about flowers, or even enough to identify most of them, but he could pick a lily out of a lineup. The bouquet had several, artfully arranged around the center with the assortment of other various flowers surrounding the perimeter. “They’re really beautiful! But… now I feel bad that I don’t have anything to give you.”

Lucy tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “It’s fine,” she replied, shrugging. “I don’t need anything.”

“I still feel bad… Oh!” He plucked a lily out of the bouquet with his free hand and rested the bouquet in the crook of his elbow for a moment, switching the lily to the hand that was previously holding the bouquet. It seemed silly to use his ability for something so mundane, but he transformed just his hand and used his claws to cut through the stem of the lily to shorten it before transforming back. “Do you mind?” Atsushi asked, motioning at Lucy.

She furrowed her eyebrows but conceded with an unsure, “No?”

Carefully, Atsushi stuck the lily stem-first into the space between her ear and her temple, trying to ignore the way her breath hitched when his hand brushed her face on accident and the way his own heart was threatening to burst. “There!” he said, pulling back almost reluctantly and fighting the waver in his voice. “Now we both have flowers.”

He felt absolutely ridiculous, but watching the smile that slowly broke across Lucy’s face was worth it.

[mpregwrites]

the art of polishing a diamond

gen skk | 3.7k | sfw

mori sends 15!skk to relationship counseling because they can’t work together. shenanigans ensue.

[mpregwrites]

Talking comes to Dazai as easily as breathing—it’s always been an easy way to fill the emptiness in the air in the hopes of distracting himself from the emptiness inside himself. He has never been without something to say, waiting in the wings with some unwanted comment nobody asked for at every turn, no matter the situation at hand. Most times, it’s unbearable; at others, it’s one of his best qualities.

But he finds himself struck dumb in the deafening silence as he works on finishing the bandaging on Chuuya’s arm.

There’s a level of intimacy to it that is alien for them, a soft underbelly to their usually rough exterior that they had never grown used to showing each other during their partnership. Dazai’s touch is light as he wraps the gauze around Chuuya’s forearm, careful not to rub it against the road rash more than necessary. It’s not as bad as it seems, just the result of a careless motorcycle mishap, but knowing that Chuuya came to him for help stirs something in Dazai that he wants to keep quiet.

He finishes the final wrap and ties the end of the gauze to itself in a tight knot.

His fingers linger a touch too long before he finally pulls them away, and Chuuya catches his wrist in his opposite hand.

Chuuya’s eyes tell a story, ask a question, give an answer, say a million things all at once and nothing at all. At one point in his life, Dazai had made it his goal to know what every little twitch and sneeze Chuuya made meant, had memorized everything about him in such minute detail he could predict everything Chuuya would do or say given a certain set of stimuli, and he had reveled in it. For years he had known Chuuya better than anyone else.

Now, he’s not really sure who’s sitting before him anymore.

“So that’s it?” Chuuya asks, and there’s anger in it that betrays the calm, even tone he’s adopted. “You’re running away again.”

Perhaps it was foolish of him to assume that Chuuya didn’t know him just as well. Chuuya had always worn his emotions plainly, kept his heart on his sleeve, showed all of his weaknesses openly and without remorse because he knew he could destroy anyone that tried to use them against him. Somehow, despite Dazai’s best efforts, he had let Chuuya in just enough to figure out how to piece together the broken parts of him into something coherent and whole, something he could decipher.

It’s terrifying. Being known. Having someone that was once close enough to him to see all of his ugly flaws and the disgusting parts of himself he regrets, someone that hated him for it but still makes a choice after years of pain to try to mend everything broken between them. Someone with a raging fire inside of him, who felt too much, who loved too easily—

Having Chuuya.

Chuuya’s hand wrapped around his wrist burns even through the barrier of gloves and bandages. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, quirking the corner of his mouth up. “You might have hit your head during that little accident harder than you thought you did. You should really have Mori check that out.”

“Dazai—”

“I’m done here,” he says, cutting Chuuya off. “You’re all patched up and ready to go back to your very important mafia work. I accept payments in cash or alcohol, top shelf only.”

They sit there in silence at a stalemate for far longer than necessary before Chuuya releases his grip on Dazai’s wrist and stands up. He doesn’t spare Dazai a glance back as he grabs his coat off the rack by the door and throws it back over his shoulders, slipping his shoes back on and only stopping when his hand closes around the doorknob.

His voice is quiet. “If you want something, then fucking go after it,” he mutters, opening the door. The last thing he says before he slams it behind him is, “But you’re a coward.”

The apartment shakes with the force of Chuuya slamming the door shut. All Dazai can do is muster a smile as he exhales deeply and lays down on his futon with his arms behind his head.

“Yeah,” he admits to the stillness, “I am.”

[mpregwrites]

Pop That Lock

rated: g/soft t for swearing words: 2302

@soukokuweek​ day one: “trial and error”

--

***

The only thing that kept Chuuya from launching his phone full-force against the nearest wall was the fact that he was a reasonable person who could control his temper when dealing with shithead Dazai and all of his stupid ass shit. Definitely not because he did that exact thing last week and had to make a very embarrassing trip to the service provider with the barely-recognizable smashed remains of an iPhone X that probably deserved better. He refused to go back for at least the next month or they were going to start worrying about him and his tendency to go through thousand dollar phones every couple of months at best.

There was still a pressing matter at hand: Kouyou’s birthday party. He had already requested leave for the rest of the day starting at noon but that didn’t do anything to mitigate the issue of Dazai most definitely showing up just to ruin it, and Kouyou deserved better. In the past year or so he had installed seven more deadbolts on his apartment door and started locking them at random in the vain hopes that it might deter Dazai from just breaking in whenever the hell he felt like it, but Dazai’s lockpicking abilities were second to none in the worst way. He could put up with having his furniture moved two inches to the left but he drew the line at crashing Kouyou’s birthday party.

He tapped his foot quickly on the ground, arms crossed over his chest. There had to be some way to keep Dazai from showing up uninvited and eating all the crab. It was rude to keep excusing himself from the festivities to re-lock the door every couple of minutes, not to mention how fucking annoying that would be. Sometimes it felt like Dazai hadn’t really outgrown all of his 16-year-old mischief.

Regrettably, though, Chuuya was far too mature these days to match all of Dazai’s nonsense blow-for-blow, and he was fresh out of teenagers to ask for tips and tricks. Maybe he could hire one for the night—

He smacked himself in the forehead. The answer was staring him in the face the whole time.

Fishing his phone out of his pocket, he opened his contact list and pressed ‘call’ on Mori’s contact info, not even bothering to hide the mania of the grin cracking across his face as it rang. Gin only raised an eyebrow at him before going back to sharpening her knife with extreme prejudice, because Gin only knew how to do things with extreme prejudice and Chuuya appreciated such an honest and straightforward approach to life.

Finally, Mori answered the phone. “Hello, Chuuya-kun. Did you need something?”

“Apologies for bothering you, Boss,” he replied, bowing slightly even though Mori couldn’t see it. “I have a, uh… peculiar request to make of you pertaining to the festivities tonight.”

“Oh? I’m intrigued.”

Chuuya shifted the phone from one ear to the other so he could grab his wallet out of his pocket and rifle through the bills in the fold. “In the interests of keeping unscrupulous characters from disturbing said festivities, I was wondering if it would be okay for me to borrow a certain asset for the night.”

Mori chuckled, amused. “They’ve been in a bit of a mood lately, you know. Are you sure you can handle that?”

“I’m sure.”

“Alright, then. I leave them in your capable hands.” And with that, Mori hung up, leaving Chuuya with a rising giddiness under his skin that thrummed warmly. Kouyou was going to have a fantastic birthday party because he was finally, finally going to be able to outsmart Dazai after ten years of knowing each other and a lot of mortifying losses taken.

Everything was going perfectly.

***

Q removed one earbud from their ear and looked Chuuya up and down from where they were perched on their bed. “I don’t want to, though.”

So things maybe weren’t going perfectly, but Chuuya wasn’t going to admit defeat to a fucking teenager. He ground his teeth together tightly and counted backwards from ten in Japanese, then French, then Russian, Italian, Spanish, and eventually English before he felt like he could open his mouth without screaming obscenities. “You will notice that it wasn’t a request and I specifically phrased it as such to avoid confusion, Kyuusaku.”

They rolled their eyes and a vein started throbbing in Chuuya’s forehead. After the heavy traumatization they received during the entire Guild bullshit three years prior it had been decided that maybe locking them up like an animal wasn’t exactly welcoming to the development of a healthy mental state, so Chuuya and Kouyou both lobbied for at least humane treatment. They were given their own room and the periodic ability to head out into the dregs of normal society, provided they behaved and were accompanied by several mafiosi.

Unfortunately, this also meant that they had the chance to develop a personality, and mixed in with the dangerous cocktail of hormones running through their pubescent veins, it meant they were kind of a snarky shithead. God, he hated dealing with teenagers.

“What do I even get out of this?” Q asked, reclining back onto their elbows and crossing their legs at their ankles. “It sounds boring with no payoff. No thanks! I’ll just read manga here instead.”

More than he hated dealing with teenagers, he hated dealing with mouthy teenagers with zero work ethic, and—holy fuck, 16-year-old Q was just a repackaged version of Dazai at 15. Chuuya wanted to scream.

“Look,” Chuuya said, trying to level with Q as best as he knew how. “I’ll give you $500 and a PS Vita with three games of your choice if you just sit by the front door and flip locks all night. A monkey could do this.”

“Then hire a monkey to do it.”

“I’m trying.”

Q frowned. “I said it sounds boring and I don’t want to do it. It’s not worth the effort.”

“I’ll give you an extra $100 for every time Dazai gets frustrated and swears.”

They sat up straight, pulling their legs in to sit cross-legged on the bed. “I guess… it doesn’t sound that bad when you put it like that.” Q tapped a finger on their chin thoughtfully, humming a long tone that only got longer the more Chuuya’s foot started involuntarily tapping out of irritation. “Okay, fine. I’ll do it. But I want one of the new Vita models. None of the crappy older ones. And let me use your Amazon Prime account to order figures.”

Chuuya sighed. “Deal.”

***

Dazai whistled a happy little tune to himself as he walked by the doorman and the person manning the front desk of Chuuya’s apartment building, waving at them. They waved back. All was right in the world.

The elevator ride was the longest part of the job every single time he came here, and he was running fashionably late to his already fashionably late lockpicking session. His lockpick set bounced against his leg in his jacket pocket as he shifted from side to side to stretch out his back for the crouching hell he was about to endure. Soon enough, the elevator slowed to a stop, dinged, and the doors opened.

Chuuya’s apartment was more than one apartment. The hat rack decided years ago that one apartment wasn’t enough for him, so he bought half a floor’s worth of apartments and had it remodeled into one massive living space, complete with multiple bedrooms for guests, an entertainment center, a full library, two different kitchens, more bathrooms than any person with one ass could ever need, and several other luxuries he definitely didn’t need. He liked to throw his fancy executive paycheck around as much as he could, and it was kind of cute.

He also refused to give Dazai a spare key to it, not that it ever stopped him. Eating all of his crackers and leaving crumbs on the couch was part of the experience of their relationship, after all.

The party was clearly a rager from what he could hear from behind the closed door. Surveying the eight deadbolts between him and Chuuya’s home cooking and absurdly expensive alcohol collection, he whipped out his lockpicking set and got to work.

The first bolt gave easily, and the next two weren’t locked. The third was, as was the fourth, but the fifth wasn’t set. The sixth and eighth were, the seventh not. It was easy enough to fiddle with the picks to get them open, and all in all it took less than ten minutes to get through all eight. He stood up, brushed himself off, and then grabbed the handle and turned it.

Or, well, he tried turning it. It didn’t budge.

He stared at his hand, still around the doorknob, and said, “What the fuck.”

***

Senbonzakura faded out and Fukagyaku Replace started up, but Q had their other ear trained on the door. Every time they heard a lock click out of place, they would either lock it back up or lock one of the ones that hadn’t been locked. It was mindless work, but at least they were going to get free food out of it once the party was over on top of the other agreed-upon spoils.

They heard Dazai swear again outside the door and added another tally to their list.

***

Three hours of hosting later, Kouyou was pleasantly tipsy and ready to go home. The consensus among the rest of the guests was much the same, and they all thanked Chuuya in turn as he escorted them to the door, undoing all the locks in one swift motion and letting them out. When the last of them had left, he stood in the threshold and looked down.

On the floor outside the apartment, Dazai sat with his knees to his chest and a pout on his face. It was equal parts hilarious and adorable. Chuuya kicked him with the toe of his house slipper. “Get up, asshole. There’s leftovers.”

“I think I’ll just sit out here until I die of starvation instead,” Dazai replied, the pout infecting even his voice. “Since you clearly don’t want me around. This is a pretty cruel method of torture, even for you.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, you were the torture specialist, Demon Prodigy,” Chuuya said back flatly, kicking Dazai again. “Stop pouting and get in here already and fucking eat something. I’ve gotta get Cinderella back before midnight.”

“I don’t want to now. McDonald’s wouldn’t treat me like this.”

Chuuya snorted, leaning back into the apartment to address Q from where they were still sitting on the stool they had been provided at the start of the party, one earbud in as they played Snake on the shitty Nokia flip phone Mori allowed them to have. “Honor system, but how much do I owe you for this one?”

Q pursed their lips and did some quick mental math. “Well, you said $100 every time he swore, so with the $500 you started with… $2000?”

“I’ll make it $3000 because he’s pouting like a goddamn child.” He pulled out his wallet and selected the appropriate amount of cash before handing it to Q. “Go ahead and grab some food before I take you back to headquarters. You’ve earned it.”

Almost immediately after the words came out of Chuuya’s mouth, Q vacated their seat with enviable speed and scurried over to the spread of leftovers on the dining room table, loading a plate up with everything they could see. With that problem out of the way, it was time to get his stupid manchild of an ex-partner to stop throwing a silent fit on the floor outside his apartment.

He put his hand on the top of Dazai’s hair and gave it an affectionate ruffle he would deny until his last breath. “I made crab. Just the way you like it.”

Dazai looked up at Chuuya, the angle accentuating the way his bottom lip was dramatically sticking out. He sniffed. “I guess if you make it up to me with a romantic dinner I can get over the pain you’ve caused my poor heart.”

“Yeah, yeah. Get in here, stupid.”

***

Q stuffed another bread roll into their mouth, glancing back and forth between Chuuya—his mouth so impressively turned down into a frown it was a wonder his lips hadn’t fallen off yet—and Dazai—currently holding his fork so tight it was threatening to bend in his hand—while chewing. They swallowed. “Are you guys gonna eat?”

“You know, Chuuya,” Dazai said, icicles forming on the words, “when I say ‘romantic dinner,’ it usually means just the two of us.”

“I don’t think they could pick up a hint if you dropped it right at their feet and literally fucking pointed at it, Dazai.”

They took another bite of the roll and chewed slower this time, more deliberately. They were pretty sure there was some kind of tension in the room over something, but knowing Dazai and Chuuya it could easily have been over just about anything under the sun. It wasn’t worth worrying about it, not when there was so much food ready to be eaten. And why would they eat in the living room when there was a perfectly good table begging to be dined on?

Chuuya put his face in his hands and sighed deeply. Dazai’s top lip twitched violently.

After about five minutes of that, Q swallowed, drank half a glass of water, and pointed at Dazai’s plate before saying, “Do you want that or not?”

The fork finally gave out.

[mpregwrites]

The words hang in the air between them as Chuuya’s lighter finally catches, and for the first time in a long time Dazai finds himself with nothing to say.

So he laughs instead.

He laughs because he can’t believe it, laughs because he doesn’t want to. He laughs because he’s known the entire time and he laughs because this is so sudden that even he couldn’t see it coming. He laughs loudly and dryly and bitterly, and there’s no humor in it whatsoever as Chuuya takes a long, hard drag from his cigarette. He just laughs and laughs and laughs because there’s nothing else he can do.

I’m in love with you.

Chuuya’s expression doesn’t change, hasn’t the entire time, and the rain beating down outside the dry sanctity of the bar awning does nothing to muffle the sound of Dazai’s laughter in his own ears. He wants to accuse Chuuya of being a cheap drunk like he usually does, wants to poke fun at his lack of tolerance, wants to say that maybe if he had a few more inches he could handle more than a glass of wine at a time without turning into an idiot and saying embarrassing things—

—but Chuuya is stone cold sober and he knows it.

His laughter dies out eventually and he wipes a tear from his eye. “Oh, Chuuya,” he says, faking mirth as easily as breathing, “you’re so funny sometimes. Saying weird things you don’t mean.”

“Lie to yourself all you want, asshole,” Chuuya replies around the cigarette, hands shoved into his pockets. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

Dazai cocks his head to the side, half a grin still in place. “Why, though? Whatever you see in me, I’m not the same person you fell for.”

They’ve known each other for far too long for any of Dazai’s usual manipulations to have any effect on him anymore. With a well-practiced movement, Chuuya plucks the cigarette out of his mouth between two fingers and flicks the butt end with his thumb to loosen some of the ashes off the tip, watching them fall onto the ground by his shoes. When he looks back up at Dazai, all he can see is the faint light that lives behind his brown eyes these days, something that even Dazai can’t fake.

He takes another drag and remembers the glimpses of humanity he used to bear witness to. All the instances of Dazai’s carefully constructed mask slipping ever so slightly, the desire to live seeping into his eyes for the briefest of moments.

He remembers being fifteen and meeting a boy so broken the only time he looked alive was taking someone’s life.

He remembers being sixteen and learning how to be a team, a partner, trusting him even through his burning hatred of everything Dazai was.

He remembers being seventeen, and he remembers a hotel bed in Moscow after a mission and an empty bottle of vodka between them.

He spent two years of his life hating Dazai and another seven until now trying to. He’s done running.

“Right now,” Chuuya says, barely louder than the rain, “you’re more of the man I fell for than you ever have been.”

[mpregwrites]

“Do you think we should get married?” Dazai asks nonchalantly as Chuuya steps out of the bathroom, turning the page in the magazine he had plucked off Chuuya’s coffee table.

Chuuya pats at his damp hair with his towel. “Stop breaking into my fucking apartment,” he replies, no bite to it. “Why? Where is this coming from?”

“Well, I was thinking—”

“Dangerous.”

Dazai frowns. “I was thinking about our… arrangement that we have together.”

It is with great self-control that Chuuya manages to keep himself from closing his eyes and sighing loudly. “Our relationship. The relationship that we are in. That arrangement.” It looks like it’s going to be one of those days where his feelings for Dazai are going to tip over into the ‘unadulterated hatred’ side of the scale. You would think that after more than a decade of knowing each other he would come to abhor Dazai even a little less, but, well. Dazai is Dazai. “Continue.”

Closing the magazine, Dazai reclines into a lazier position on the couch. At least he bothered to take his shoes off when he came in this time instead of tracking dirt all over Chuuya’s meticulously vacuumed apartment. “If it’s going to be long-term and exclusive then it makes sense to just get married. For tax reasons, and the like.”

“The hell do I care about taxes for? I’m richer than God.”

“You are a god.”

“The only thing that keeps me from killing you at this point is the satisfaction it would give you,” Chuuya grits out through his teeth, and Dazai just grins widely. It’s cute. He hates it. “I guess you’re right. Plus if you’re legally my spouse I can get you covered by my life insurance policy—”

Dazai’s grin goes from carefree to pinched. “Oh, Chuuya, there’s really no reason for that—”

“—so you can pay off your tab at the cafe.”

“I changed my mind,” Dazai says, far too quick as he crosses his arms over his chest and closes his eyes, mouth set uncomfortably close to a pout. “I don’t want to marry you anymore. Being the husband of such a nasty slug sounds terrible. Also you snore. Sleeping next to you is a nightmare.”

Chuuya balls up the now-dampened towel and throws it right in Dazai’s face, earning him an indignant squawk as Dazai falls off the couch. “Too bad. We’re going right now.”

***

“Well, look on the bright side,” Dazai says as Chuuya’s hands tremble violently, the copy of their marriage certificate—dated three years prior—the poor terrified clerk had handed him barely hanging on for its life. “At least black-out drunk we both agreed it was a terrible idea for you to take my last name.”

Social convention is the only thing that saves Dazai—Osamu Nakahara now and for the last three years as far as the Japanese legal system is concerned—from getting his ass kicked here and now, because world-class criminal or not, Chuuya has manners, but all bets are off the second he excuses himself, thanks the clerk for her assistance, and drags Dazai kicking and screaming out of the building.

(The clerk swears she hears someone scream “THIS IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE” from the sidewalk outside, but it’s none of her business.)

[mpregwrites]

The whole thing starts because Akutagawa, probably on a long-standing mission to find less fatal and violent ways to ruin Atsushi’s life, decides that eating an even halfway proper amount of food before going out on a mission is below him and passes the fuck out when Atsushi needs him most. This leads to Atsushi taking way more bullets than was agreed upon while grumbling about what a shitty partner Akutagawa is, the whole time dragging said shitty partner out of the imminent realm of lead-flavored death raining down upon them.

He sits next to the bed the entire time Yosano is pumping fluids into Akutagawa to make sure that his irritated face is the first thing the bastard sees when he wakes up.

A good half an hour later, his patience pays off when Akutagawa blinks himself back to consciousness, takes in Atsushi’s deep frown, and closes his eyes again. “Weretiger.”

“Asshole,” Atsushi replies, and he can tell from Akutagawa’s heavy sigh that it cuts him just enough to make him feel the slightest hint of guilt. “Maybe if you ate more regularly, you wouldn’t pass out in the middle of gunfights. Do you know how many times I got shot because of you?”

“Obviously not enough, if you’re still alive to annoy me,” Akutagawa snips back. “Regrettably, you’re bulletproof. Shame.”

“For the last time, I’m not bulletproof, I’m death proof. It still hurts!”

“Whatever. I’m alive, congratulations, leave. I’m tired.”

Atsushi clenches and unclenches his fists a few times, the only thing holding him back from starting shit in Yosano’s office being the fact that he doesn’t want to start shit in Yosano’s office or she’s going to use him for ‘scientific experimentation’ again like she did the last time. Instead of causing a scene, he just inhales deeply and stands up, the chair scraping the floor as he does so. “Fine. Just take this, then,” he says, then drops something onto Akutagawa’s chest before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

Akutagawa looks down and sees a granola bar. The passive-aggressiveness is almost funny.

It would be one thing if it ended there, though, but it doesn’t. The next mission they run together goes much more smoothly, and after all is said and done Atsushi tosses the last unconscious body onto the pile of them, dusts himself off, and says, “Let’s get something to eat.”

If he had any eyebrows to raise, Akutagawa would do so, but all he can offer is the general area of an eyebrow cocking upward. “No thanks,” he replies, short and gruff as always. “I’m not hungry.”

“That wasn’t a request,” Atsushi says in retaliation, the challenge obvious in his voice. “You’ll notice I specifically phrased it so it wasn’t one.”

Sometimes it’s difficult to remind himself that technically, Akutagawa is the older one, what with the way he carries himself like an overgrown petulant child. He wrinkles his nose and Atsushi thinks this man is 23 and, with a great deal of effort, Akutagawa acquiesces. “It’s not because I like you,” Akutagawa says, because heaven forbid he doesn’t remind Atsushi at least three times a week that their partnership, while functional and pretty effective, is built on the desire of Dazai to make up for all of his own fuck-ups. It’s gotten better in the time since it officially unofficially formed—they’ve even done enough Good Deeds to get Akutagawa’s arrest warrant waived!—but there’s no way they’re ever not going to get on each other’s nerves. “Let’s just make it quick. I have important things to attend to.”

Like sucking up to Dazai-san? is on the tip of his tongue, as it usually is, but he isn’t in the mood to get bisected today, so he keeps it to himself. “Alright then, lead the way.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re paying,” Atsushi clarifies, “so you’re choosing. You owe me.”

Akutagawa crosses his arms and the petulance returns. It’s kind of cute sometimes, if Atsushi can look past the shaved eyebrows and everything else going on with Akutagawa’s, er, aesthetics. “I owe you nothing.”

Motioning at his thigh, Atsushi replies, “You put Rashoumon through my leg today.”

“You were in the way of the enemy.”

“My leg, Akutagawa! That hurt!”

He clicks his tongue. “You healed just fine.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets and turns to walk away, leaving Atsushi sputtering on the sidewalk. He’s only a couple dozen feet away when he looks over his shoulder at Atsushi’s flustered face and says, “Are you coming or not, Nakajima?”

Atsushi opens his mouth and closes it a few times, feeling way too similar to a dying fish, but his feet have the right idea and he crosses the distance between them in a few strides. “Just for that, I don’t want anything cheaper than wagyu!”

(For what it’s worth, he does get his wagyu, along with a peek at the bill when Akutagawa is fishing out his credit card that makes him choke on his dessert.

“Don’t die before I kill you,” is what Akutagawa says, but it sounds more like something edging toward genuine concern. Weird.)

For the next eight months, every time they run a successful mission Atsushi invites Akutagawa out for food. It’s familiar. Almost... comfortable.

(Four months in, Akutagawa walks into the kitchen with his pants halfway up his thighs and frowns at Gin. “They don’t fit.”

She silently pumps her fist. Finally, finally he’s out of a size 0. She makes a mental note to send Atsushi a fruit basket.)

After a particularly messy outing, Atsushi surveys the state of his clothes—tattered beyond help—and sighs. He’s exhausted from the rapid blood loss and regeneration more than he usually is, and not for the first time he wishes he had an Ability that didn’t lend itself so well to being everyone’s meat shield.

Akutagawa looks beat to all hell too, so at least he’s not alone. There’s a streak of dried blood smeared from Akutagawa’s nose across his cheek from when he tried to wipe it away, and Atsushi can see the spot on his sleeve he used to wipe it when Akutagawa holds out his hand to help him back to his feet. “Good job out there today,” he says, expectant.

“Yeah, you too. Good job,” Atsushi replies, and Akutagawa preens ever so slightly. “Ugh, I’m exhausted. See you later, I guess.”

He turns to head back toward the agency dorms with the rest of the ADA, but stops after a few steps when he realizes he has a tag-along. He starts walking again and so does Akutagawa, matching him step-for-step.

Start. Stop. Start. Stop.

His eyebrow is twitching violently when he whips to the side to address Akutagawa. “Do you mind?”

“No.”

“You don’t live in this direction. Stop following me.”

“We’re getting food.”

He’s about to tear Akutagawa a new one because he’s tired and just wants to go home and sleep after the crapsack day he’s had when the full force of what Akutagawa said hits him like a train. It was just like the otsukare incident. He really is the worst kind of person.

“Oh my god,” he says, face in his hands. “I Pavloved you again.”

(It’s the best gyoza he’s ever had, at least.)