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“I feel like Dazai is fucking with us at this point.” Painstaking effort is taken by Atsushi in his self-appointed task of building a tower out of marshmallows on the dashboard. His lithe spine is curled over into a lazy ‘c’ shape as he leans forward, chin resting on the back of his idle hand. The tower is five high now, colors alternating between cloud white and cotton candy pink. “We’ve been watching this guy for four hours now and all he’s done is go to a computer cafe and the arcade. Seems like a normal high schooler to me.”
To his utter chagrin, Ryuunosuke agrees. This feels like a wild, pointless goosechase. They’d been shoved out the doors of the Agency and into this mafia-owned van that Dazai had requested Ryuunosuke bring, with absolutely no explanation as to why they’d been needed to tail the boy they’re watching besides a mischievous simper on Dazai’s face. However, he’s nothing if not contrary, so a slender tendril of Rashomon strikes out, toppling Atsushi’s marshmallow tower before he grouses, “He could be pretending. Stop fooling around.”
The indignant squawk Atsushi makes has him stifling a smirk. A split-second upwards twitch of his thin lips before they’re properly schooled back into his normal dry expression. “C’mon!” Uncaring of whatever dust and germs dwell in this shitty van, Atsushi plucks one of his fallen marshmallows up and stuffs it in his mouth. Chewing with his mouth open, and Ryuunosuke just knows that the weretiger is doing so on purpose to get on his nerves. “You know I’m right,” he garbles around the half-chewed marshmallow. Ryuunosuke cringes at the sight, white and pink merged together into a lumpy mush that flashes between large chomps.
The weretiger had developed a nasty habit of subtly picking fights with him whenever he’s bored or idle. Their relationship had long since shifted from pure vitriolic antagonism (mostly on his part, he can admit) to something resembling a… Friendship, if Ryuunosuke had to guess. A mangled, lousy, and convoluted friendship, but a friendship nonetheless. So he knows these little barbs and quips and annoyances are less hostility and more like enrichment. The weretiger stretching his legs and testing how much–how obnoxious, how bitchy, how snippy he can act with Ryuunosuke before he finds Rashomon cleaving into his ribs.
The threshold is astoundingly high, actually.
“I’m sure there is a reason we’ve been assigned this task,” Ryuunosuke says, but the speculative way he eyes their target betrays his own doubt. “Chew with your mouth closed, you oaf.”
Atsushi does not. Atsushi grins wide with gentle fangs and then sticks his tongue out, displaying his mashed-up, half-devoured snack.
An empty coffee cup bounces off the center of Atsushi’s forehead. Ryuunosuke brings his binoculars back up to his eyes casually, acting as if he hadn’t just chucked his cup at the weretiger. Atsushi snatches it out of the air before the cup can litter the van’s floor. He crushes it in a single fist and discards it in the plastic bag they’ve designated their trashcan for the duration of their mission. Which is already almost overflowing from the sheer volume of snacks the weretiger has gobbled down in the past four hours they’ve been here. “Man,” Atsushi complains, “I’m almost out of snacks.”
Ryuunosuke snorts. “You’re a blackhole, weretiger. Where does it all go?”
“I’m hungry!” Atsushi protests.
“You’ve been eating the entire time we’ve been misfortuned with such close proximity to one another. Tell me, do you always eat like such an unmannered boor?” No movement. Their target has been at the same game for almost an hour now. It’s only because of Tachihara’s influence that Ryuunosuke can infer the boy is attempting to beat the current reigning highscore.
“Misfortuned,” Atsushi repeats in a low, pompous voice. Is he trying to imitate me? Ryuunosuke wonders and the thought that indignantly and henceforth follows is, I don’t sound like that! “I’m a pleasure to be around, thank you very much. And no, actually,” the weretiger leans in, his smile beguiling his puckishness, “I don’t. I’m eating like this just as a special treat for you, Akutagawa.” Atsushi’s impishness unravels for him, completely visible with his toothsome grin, so wide that the weretiger’s nose wrinkles up and his eyes squint, squeezing at the corners.
Ryuunosuke wants to hit him. Instead he pretends to be a patient man and sighs, rolling his eyes. “You’re such a child,” he mutters.
“Maybe so. But let's take a break and get some food, yeah?” Atsushi is unlocking the van and hopping out of the passenger seat before his sentence is even completed–before Ryuunosuke can even answer his, apparently, rhetorical question.
Ryuunosuke scrambles to keep up with him, quickly killing the engine and getting out of the car, door slamming shut behind him. “Wha–weretiger!” The clip of his low heels on concrete is a steady noise as he speedwalks to catch up with Atsushi. “We’re on a mission.”
The protest falls on deaf ears.
“Weretiger–”
“I think we’re perfectly capable of watching a high school student and ordering burgers at the same time. Or are you unable to multitask?” Atsushi interrupts, swatting away the tendril of Rashomon that’d manifested without Ryuunosuke’s conscious thought, actively attempting to wrap around Atsushi’s waist.
Ryuunosuke pauses. “... Burgers are greasy,” he replies, as if that were the more pressing part of Atsushi’s statement to cling onto, “We don’t know for sure that he’s a high school student.”
Atsushi holds the door open for him. “He's a teenager in a high school uniform who has spent the last four hours messing around, playing arcade games. I’m telling you, Akutagawa, that Dazai is fucking with us.”
He knows Atsushi is making some very compelling points but there is still a part of him that, while smaller in urgency, still heels to Dazai’s orders like a well trained attack dog. “But what if you’re wrong?” There is more vulnerability in his question than he is comfortable with, bared and visible to Atsushi.
“Then I’ll take responsibility for it.”
Grilled onions are the most prominent scent filling his nostrils upon entering some American ‘50’s-themed diner. Rich and greasy. Ryuunosuke can hear burgers sizzling and oil bubbling as fries crisp. Getting in line, Atsushi counts the money in his wallet with a small pout. For some reason that swollen curl of the weretiger’s lower lip prompts him to mumble, “I can pay.” Which is stupid. He doesn’t even like burgers!
Atsushi’s eyes are more purple than gold at the moment and they snap up to meet his sullen gaze. “Really?” he asks, unable to smother the excitement in his tone.
“Really,” Ryuunosuke painstakingly agrees.
The weretiger gleefully orders four burgers. For himself. And fries, of course. Ryuunosuke just nibbles off Atsushi’s basket of fries and sips his chocolate milkshake–the only thing he’d ordered. “Seriously,” he wonders, watching Atsushi finish off two of the four burgers in record time, “where does it all go?”
“Not everyone pecks at their food like a pissy bird.”
Ryuunosuke cocks up a barely there eyebrow and opens his mouth to show off the needle-like fangs that remain where his canine teeth used to be. “Vampire,” he reminds with a petulant huff.
Another fry finds its way through those fangs. Atsushi chews slowly on a bite of burger across the thin table from him, looking more thoughtful. “Right. Do you even need to eat anymore?” He leans forward, chest curled over the table. They’re already so close, stuffed like sardines into a tiny corner booth, but now he can feel Atsushi’s breath on his cheeks. Ryuunosuke can also hear Atsushi’s lips smacking and teeth mushing bread and beef to swallowable paste in way too much vivid detail.
Placing a palm on Atsushi’s forehead, he shoves the weretiger away, ignoring his squawk. “I haven’t starved myself to verify. However my appetite does seem to be greatly reduced since I've changed.” He still has a sense of taste, however, so he can still taste how these fries are way too salty, yet he is nibbling on them regardless. Perhaps so he doesn’t appear weird while Atsushi eats his own weight in burgers. Or maybe to feel like an active participant in this collation.
“Can you still see your reflection in the mirror?” Atsushi asks next around a gargantuan bite.
“You are such a fool,” Ryuunosuke answers.
The uptick of Atsushi’s mouth is sweet, hollowing out Ryuunosuke’s vitriol, before the weretiger chucks a fry at his face. “Don’t be a dick while I’m eating dinner. It ruins my appetite.” The faux leather of the booth he’s sat on squeaks and groans as he moves, bending down to pick the tossed fry off the floor. Ryuunouke doesn’t know why he bothers; the floor is already filthy. Checkered black and white tile except the white tiles appear almost gray beneath the dim lighting and scuff marks. Testing the limits of the weretiger’s voraciousness, Ryuunosuke holds out the germ-swaddled fry for Atsushi to eat.
Atsushi bites it out of his fingers, chapped lips brushing his knuckles briefly. He mutters, “I doubt anything could quell your appetite, weretiger.”
“It was only on the floor for a few seconds,” Atsushi garbles around the half-chewed fry, rendering his words thick and wet. Justifying his gross decision to eat it. “I don’t like wasting food.”
Ryuunosuke’s lips pucker up with distaste as he admits, “We have that in common. Regardless, I have standards.” Now, at least. Take him back seven years ago and he would have been happy to eat something rotting out of the trash in the meager hopes it’d fill his tummy up for even a moment. Hoarding bread that had started to mold over or vegetables beginning to wilt had been a hard habit to break, having had to train his animal brain that his next meal would be coming with some regularity now that he had a job and money. He had broken the habit eventually, with some effort. Still, Ryuunosuke has a religious appreciation of food, having suffered the agony of forgoing it for days on end. To this day, he still takes care to never cook more than he can eat or waste his leftovers.
The wrapper is loud as Atsushi rips open his third burger but it gets lost in the static of other patrons’ conversations, a wind-tunnel fan running on high, and rock music playing at a low volume. “We had to earn points to eat at the orphanage.” Atsushi doesn’t have to share this nor had Ryuunosuke asked or expected him to, but the weretiger does anyway. “If you didn’t have enough points, you just didn’t eat. Nobody cared if you hadn’t eaten the day before or even the day before that. And, well, nobody liked me.”
“What a surprise,” Ryuunosuke quips dryly despite the morose topic.
“Asshole. Shut up.” Atsushi snatches his milkshake, taking a sip of it without Ryuunosuke’s permission. He glares as Atsushi slides the milkshake back to him. “But, yeah,” Atsushi takes another bite and chews obnoxiously, pearly teeth greedy for food but unwilling to silence conversation to eat, “I’d get blamed for a lot of stuff that I didn’t do and then the kids who ratted on me would get points. It didn’t matter if they had proof or not; their word over mine was enough. I wasn’t liked by the staff or other kids, so it was easier to blame everything on me.”
Ryuunosuke pushes his milkshake to Atsushi now, abandoning it. Visage rather blank with contemplation, not dropping the weretiger’s gaze. Their knees brush beneath the table, and the moment feels heavy and much too intimate. It’s thankfully splintered by the sound of a pan clattering on tile from the kitchen. “The weak underfoot,” he says, thinking of the first time he’d begun to understand the weretiger. Remembering a rich parasite, some righteous words, and an unlikely alliance. It’d been the pivot of his entire life. “And yet, you could still claim back then that the weak should be protected despite being the living proof that those who are weak end up castoff and battered by the world around them.” His tongue flicks over his dry lips, wetting them. Atsushi’s tenderness is still something he doesn’t know how to handle. His hands had softened but they remain unable to leave others unscathed. A sort of savage sweetness, kneading bruises into undeserving flesh.
Even the act of undeserving could summon the justification for Ryuunosuke to hurt. And it seems he might have, as Atsushi finishes off the remainder of his food in silence. Maybe that is why, as Atsushi finishes his last burger, Ryuunosuke spontaneously blurts, “Lets go to the arcade. We can watch our target more closely there and maybe playing some games will sate your damnable restlessness.”
Sulkily, Atsushi grumbles, “Don’t those things cost money?”
“Do not worry about the sorry state of your pitiful wallet, weretiger. I will pay.”
“Dick,” Atsushi calls him, “Okay.” There is another pause between words as he gathers all his burger wrappers into the fry basket, then a small admittance, “I don’t know how to play them.”
“I’ll teach you.” Ryuunosuke grabs the tray off the table, throwing away the weretiger’s mess for him. Only Ryuunosuke’s milkshake remains of their late lunch but it seems Atsushi had permanently colonized the drink, cupping it in both hands and sipping from it as they leave the diner.
“... You,” he snorts, “will teach me? There’s no way you know how to play them any better than I do.”
Rashomon whips at Atsushi’s side for that comment but not too viciously, so that Atsushi does not drop his drink. “I do,” Ryuunosuke insists, “I’ve played them before.” Not willingly, he doesn’t add. Nor does he mention that Tachihara had annihilated him in nearly every multiplayer game Ryuunosuke had been suckered into playing.
The weretiger’s shoulders unwind. Their familiar bickering is nearly a lullaby shared between the two of them. A sort of dear normalcy. Atsushi meets Ryuunosuke halfway between the chorus by scoffing, “Were you at gunpoint? You don’t,” Atsushi gestures to all of Ryuunosuke, “strike me as the type to go to an arcade.”
Ryuunosuke’s spindly hand places between Atsushi’s shoulderblades, lingering for a moment before shoving the weretiger through the threshold of the arcade. Following close behind, his ears are assaulted by synthetic explosions and gunshots, the click of coins depositing, and winning pings upon their entry. Each saturated color and neon flicker is an attack to his temper. In contrast to his pursed lips and narrowed eyes, Atsushi glances around with wonder and gaping lips. So Ryuunosuke endures the tedious environment, arguing, “I have friends, weretiger, and with those friends we–we do things. Like playing in arcades.” Only one time but he need not tell the weretiger that. More often than not the things in mention are him being goaded into testing the limits of his notoriously low alcohol tolerance.
He really should stop subjecting himself to Tachihara’s company but unfortunately Gin enjoys it, and Ryuunosuke enjoys spending time with his sister when the circumstances allow for it.
Ryuunosuke exchanges more money than he should for tokens at a machine. If the weretiger is going to doubt his ability to best him in something as childish and asinine as arcade games then he’ll deliver. When would he ever turn his head at the opportunity to crush Atsushi underneath his heel?
Strategically, he picks a random shooting game to play first. Something about a zombie apocalypse or another. The plot doesn’t matter–Ryuunosuke knows how to shoot a gun surely better than the weretiger. He’s in the mafia, for Christ’s sake. “Place the butt of the gun against your shoulder,” he instructs as Atsushi ambles uselessly with the plastic gun. Guiding Atsushi’s fingers, he leads them to the optimal position to pull the trigger. He tells himself the reason he helps is because he refuses to accept a victory against a fumbling weretiger. “You’ve shot a gun before. Why are you dallying? Is your beastly brain incapable of recalling the knowledge that surely the Agency has imparted upon you?” Atsushi has the curve of boyhood in his palm; Ryuunosuke’s metatarsal fingers sweep down the meat of Atsushi’s thumb, wondering what other hints of puerility Atsushi retains in spite of all the brutality he’d been nursed in, before they vacate touch entirely.
“Kunikida’s taught me how to use a gun!” Sure enough, in response to Ryuunosuke’s goading, Atsushi’s posture and grip suddenly appear much more confident. Chapped and picked-at lips curl into a delightful smile full of teeth, beaming at Ryuunosuke. It nearly blinds him, the utter innocence in it.
Ryuunosuke swallows dryly, unfamiliar with this sensation of his heart being flayed open and raw. Fluttering like a moth to a candle in his chest. Hardening his voice, he replies, “Well, I’ll be the judge of how adequate his tutelage truly was, then.”
After depositing the correct amount of tokens into the machine, he grips onto smooth, worn down plastic and brings it up to position, looking every bit the mafioso he was painstakingly molded into. The game boots up with a synthetic and macabre sound track before cheesy, pixelated zombies begin to ambush them. Ryuunosuke hits every kill shot perfectly but struggles to reload the faux gun, limiting how many kills he achieves. Atsushi doesn’t do terribly, either; hitting half of his targets accurately but the weretiger nearly chucks his weapon from his clumsy hands when he’d fumbled to reload his ammo.
So, Ryuunosuke wins. Obviously. (It’s the first time he’s won at one of these games but Atsushi doesn’t need to know that.) The pride that rushes him fills his expression with smarmy glee. “You should know better than to doubt me, weretiger. I told you I’ve played before.”
Sullenly, Atsushi grouses, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine, you won that one. But I’m sure I can beat you at some of the other games!”
Ryuunosuke perks up with interest, taking his hands out of his pockets and un-slumping his shoulders. “Is that a challenge?” The smirk on his mouth is adorned with barbed wire. However dampened his bloodlust, Ryuunosuke could never be gutted of his eagerness for a trial to overcome and, well? The weretiger is his ordeal through and through.
So the weretiger and him clash at game after game, keeping tallies of their respective wins. Mortal Combat, Daytona USA, Time Crisis, and so many more. Even dueling one another at skeeball, air hockey, basketball tossing, and Dance Dance Revolution. (The weretiger, to Ryuunosuke’s ire, is infuriatingly skilled at those last four. The tiger must give Atsushi the advantage in such physical games and hand-eye coordination.) In the end, Ryuunosuke won with 23 victories while Atsushi ended with 19 wins of his own.
It is… fun. Competing with the weretiger often is and Ryuunosuke no longer denies that fact to himself. But the feuding is not what Ryuunosuke is enjoying most at the moment. Neon light reflects off Atsushi’s face, illuminating a beam that no longer appears to be a stranger on Atsushi’s bitten lips. Happiness that finally comes naturally, plumping soft cheeks and wrinkling a buttoned nose. Enraptured, Atsushi slouches himself over the Pacman machine, vulnerability naked in his periwinkle eyes scintillating at the screen as he mashes buttons and wiggles a joystick frantically.
Atsushi looks helpless and hopeful; looks like the boy he should have been allowed to be all his life but simply wasn’t. Now that face looks soft and nearly fresh from the womb with its youth and it makes Ryuunosuke feel as if he is beneath the sun. The flecks of gold in Atsushi’s irises remind him of exploding stars, bursting like fireworks each time some of the game’s neon reflection catches them just right. Eyes flashing as innocent as they are bright.
Whatever emotion that swells in Ryuunosuke is a knife sinking between his ribs, scraping the bones as it carves him empty so that he may be filled with white lilies instead. “Are you having fun?” Ryuunosuke asks quietly, afraid to ruin this moment with his wicked voice.
“Yeah.” Atsushi finally gets felled by one of the Ghost Gang. “I’ve never really got to do something like this before. I mean, I played a crane game with Kyouka, but never anything like this.”
I know, Ryuunosuke thinks. He says, “There’s some crane games over there.”
Dopamine-flushed gums flash with a chuckle. “Let's go then.”
On his first try, Atsushi had managed to snag a stuffed bunny. For Kyouka, he explained. Every subsequent attempt is for some grouchy looking penguin plush. Ryuunosuke is fairly certain it’s a Sanrio character.
“This is your eleventh try, weretiger. Just give it up already.” As amusing as it is to see Atsushi lament over his own failures, Ryuunosuke thinks the penguin is a lost cause by now.
Their last token sits in Atsushi’s palm, who glares down sullenly at it with a pout. “But I want it.”
“I never took you as the type for stuffed animals,” Ryuunosuke snarks but then he swivels his head around, looking for witnesses. When he finds none, a sliver of Rashomon slithers into the crane game like a snake, coiling around the damned penguin and retrieving it. “Here,” Rashomon shoves the toy into Atsushi’s startled arms, “These games are rigged anyways.” Ryuunosuke turns cheek, attempting to keep his blush hidden beneath a veil of brusqueness.
“Akutagawa!” the weretiger chastises in a low hiss, worriedly looking around. “This is stealing.” Yet, Atsushi’s arms tightly squeeze the penguin, holding it snug against his thundering heart.
Amused, Ryuunosuke snorts. “I think you put in quite enough tokens to validate my interference.” There is no stomping out the affection that bloats inside his torso, a smile nearly taking over his lips at Atsushi’s guilty visage. “Do not fret. I’m the one who ‘stole’ it, weretiger, so you bear no crime.”
The penguin is smothered into Atsushi’s chest. With a peculiarly shy expression, Atsushi’s eyes drop down, white eyelashes appearing to brush full, red cheeks. So tenderly, he murmurs, “Thank you.”
Ryuunosuke had believed that he was born with a silent heart. A still and broken thing and perhaps that was why he’d been so emotionless for so many years of his childhood. A rabid dog had no such use for such an impractical thing as a heart, after all. But now it beats entirely too fast. Now it aches behind his breastbone. Now he feels his body pulsating as it throbs. Hot, heavy thumps. Ryuunosuke’s pupils blot out his irises as his eyes widen.
He clears his throat, playing off his momentary gawking. “It is merely a stuffed animal, weretiger.” Honesty is a terrifying thing. Ryuunosuke is simultaneously truthful to a fault and a coward desperate to swallow his own emotions. He doesn’t know the language to put words to whatever it is he is feeling. Just that he feels almost a little as if he were drowning. As if Atsushi had sucked the air out of his lungs and as if he likes this peculiar suffocation. “We can turn our tickets in for prizes.”
“Is that what they’re for? I was wondering why you were holding onto them.” The slight weight of the tickets in his palm had steadily been growing heavier with every game they had played. Ryuunosuke’s fingers squeeze around them. His head inclines slightly to the left to direct Atsushi’s attention to the booth they’d passed on the way in, housing a rather lethargic and uncaring employee chewing gum and a menagerie of prizes, from small plastic trinkets to entirely too large stuffed animals.
“You turn them in there,” he explains, “and exchange them for prizes.”
Atsushi’s lips part into a cute o. “Oh. Yeah. That makes sense.” Pocketing the final token and clutching his two prizes, Atsushi follows him to the counter. Ryuunosuke shoves the tickets into Atsushi’s already full hands as they come up to the prize counter. “Hey, but–”
“I have no use for any of these wares,” he interrupts but then pauses. Gray eyes catch onto a limp, stuffed tiger. White and black with barely any fuzz and, honestly? Quite a stupid face. Huffing, Ryuunosuke takes back the tickets and sets them a little too aggressively on the counter. “I’ll take that dopey tiger and this fool can get whatever he pleases with the rest,” he demands from the clerk.
If the clerk is bothered by his abrupt demeanor, she doesn’t show it. Blowing a bubble with her chewing gum as she grabs the tiger and sets it down. It pops. She chews it back into her mouth and says, “Cute. Kinda looks like your boyfriend there.”
There is a beat of awed silence before the weretiger and him both exclaim, “He’s not my boyfriend!” in two entirely different tones. Atsushi, high-pitched and flustered; Ryuunosuke, snarling and vicious.
Another pink bubble is blown and popped. Ryuunosuke is almost impressed by her nonchalance. Retail workers are another breed. “Sure,” she agrees blithely, looking at Atsushi, “So what do you want?”
Rather predictably, Atsushi uses the tickets to secure as many snacks as they'll buy him. Leaving his arms full with Kyouka’s bunny, his penguin, and a thin plastic bag stuffed full with single serving sized bags of chips and candies as they leave. “Why’d she think we’re dating?” he grumbles, likely more to himself than as a question for Ryuunosuke to answer.
Ryuunosuke answers anyways, “Don’t smash together your two brain cells attempting to figure it out. She was just messing with us.” Except he knows it was more likely because Atsushi and him had just spent the better part of the last two hours mucking around in an arcade together.
A boot kicks lightly at his ankle and for what is probably the fourth time today, Atsushi says, “Don’t be a dick, Akutagawa.” The little furrow between Atsushi’s brows signals he is still thinking about it even as they approach the van. “You know… We had lunch together. We went to the arcade. Isn’t that kind of like–like a date?”
Blank faced, Ryuunosuke just stares at Atsushi for a moment before unlocking the van. “No. Not like a date at all.”
Following him into the van but on the passenger side (Atsushi, Ryuunosuke has learned, is not to be trusted behind the wheel of any vehicle, ever), Atsushi yips indignantly, “You bought me lunch! And won me a stuffed animal! That is very date-ish!”
“I took pity on you due to the lamentable state of your wallet.”
“Huh. And you spent the last two hours at an arcade with me because–?”
Ryuunosuke scoffs, “Obviously to prove that I am superior to you in all regards.” Just so he doesn’t have to look at the weretiger anymore, he brings the binoculars back up to his eyes and promptly curses, “Damnit. Our target isn’t there anymore.” Which isn’t a surprise after dicking around with the weretiger for so long but Ryuunosuke does feel remiss for letting himself slack off so wholly on his duties.
“Oh, Dazai texted me about around the time we went into the arcade and told me we didn’t have to watch him anymore.” Foil crinkles as Atsushi rips open a bag of chips and, not allowing Ryuunosuke any time to process that statement, he continues pestering, “Did we just go on a date?”
A chip crackles noisily between Atsushi’s teeth as Ryuunosuke grits his own. “No. No. We did not just go on a date. Stop being ridiculous. Chew with your mouth closed.”
“Kinda felt like a date,” Atsushi says, still chewing, “I wouldn’t mind if it was a date.”
Every single one of his coherent thoughts come crashing to a halt. “W-what?” he croaks once his brain comes back online, strangling the word on its way out, “You wouldn’t have minded if it was a date?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Yes.”
Blood pounds, rushing to his head, booming in his ears with each pulse. There are so many different things he could say in response to that and for some reason he settles on, “What is wrong with you?” Because, surely, something has to be intrinsically wrong with Atsushi to want to go on a date with him.
Chips already devoured, Atsushi crinkles up his trash and shoves it back into his bag of snacks. Huffing, he leans over the middle console separating the two of them, upholding unwavering eye contact despite the flush on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. “Probably more than I’m willing to acknowledge.” Teeth suck in his bottom lip before he repeats, “I wouldn’t have minded if it was a date. I wouldn’t mind going on a date with you.”
A sudden honk causes Atsushi to flinch as Ryuunosuke bows his torso forward, letting his head thud against the steering wheel with a loud groan ripping out of his mouth. His body is the uncomfortable shape of yearning. Heat drips through his veins. “Seriously,” he rasps, sounding breathless, “What is wrong with you?”
Rather than reply with words, Atsushi hauls himself over their divide and stuffs his body onto Ryuunosuke’s lap despite his protesting, pushing Ryuunosuke back with a hand on his sternum. Atsushi stubbornly stays perched on Ryuunosuke’s thighs, even if he looks terribly embarrassed about it. “Why does something need to be wrong with me to want to go on a date with you?”
Ryuunosuke forces himself to stay completely still. Between the chair behind him and the steering wheel jamming into Atsushi’s back, any squirming would have their bodies rubbing together. “I am the last person you should want to go on a date with.” Swallowing in an attempt to get some moisture back in his throat, Ryuunosuke grasps one of Atsushi’s biceps and tries to remove the mulish cat upon him.
In response, Atsushi just plants himself even more firmly on his lap, ass flush against Ryuunosuke’s crotch. “Weretiger–”
“Tell me you don’t want to go on a date with me,” he interjects.
His name for Atsushi is lost in the dark keen of his mouth. Behind his sharp teeth. Beneath his thickened tongue, much too heavy to utter a word. The blood between his teeth is a barrier, actively trapping weretiger inside. What feels like the softest of candles flicker alight deep inside his throat, burning up all his oxygen.
He can’t, he realizes. He can’t say he doesn’t want to go on a date with Atsushi. He cannot say anything at all. Their noses brush. Breath that still smells of grilled onions from the burgers Atsushi had eaten wafts across his parted lips. Beneath the flutter of snowy eyelashes, Atsushi’s eyes meet his own. “Well?” he whispers, close enough that Ryuunosuke can feel the word against his mouth. For a moment, Ryuunosuke’s gaze averts. Looking out the window to his right, eyes catching on the yellow glow of streetlights flickering on and spilling onto concrete; the neon sign of the burger joint he’d treated Atsushi at turns on as well.
It had felt like a date.
His eyes return back to Atsushi, who still peers determinedly through the curtain of his eyelashes at him despite how red his face has gotten by now. Embarrassment sprouting in the gaps of Ryuunosuke’s silence. “It wasn’t terrible,” he amends and, forcing himself not to overthink it, leans in to kiss away whatever retort Atsushi will have to that.
Once Ryuunosuke begins, he cannot stop. He wants desperately, clawing his fingers through the wrinkles of Atsushi’s button-up, mapping a ladder of ribs. Closer still, as he traces the seam of Atsushi’s mouth with his tongue. His fangs catch a plump lower lip and he tugs, trying to peel open the weretiger like a candy wrapper.
Atsushi’s blood tastes sweet, budding in the pinpricks his fangs had left behind. He moans, sucking the flesh into his mouth, and unfurling blood onto his tongue. White hair curls around the knobs of his knuckles, too soft against his calluses, and Ryuunosuke pulls until Atsushi is gasping due to the sting on his scalp. Oxygen is shotgunned between the two of them. Atsushi exhales and Ryuunosuke swallows. Thinning the air between them until they’re both breathless and dizzy, but it seems impossible to break the kiss when their tongues are tied together like cherry stems.
A hand splays over his ribcage. Fingers clench and claws dig slits through his shirt and then into his flesh. The damned weretiger has his claws out and they rend his torso. “Watch it,” Ryuunosuke hisses and then returns to abusing Atsushi’s lips with his teeth.
The weretiger–the wretched weretiger just laughs between Ryuunosuke’s bite. A scoff is violently expelled out of his throat. Ryuunosuke is uncertain if he should continue reeling Atsushi in by his hair or wrench the weretiger away from him. His brain spins at the illogical progression of going from arguing to making out in the driver’s seat of a mafia-owned vehicle, but the weretiger often turns him irrational. The same way a scab does. He cannot stop picking and picking at the blood-crust, peeling it from his oozing wound, until the bleeding is renewed.
Atsushi is his wound that Ryuunosuke doesn’t allow to heal.
With a strange sleight of tongue, Atsushi drags the tapered tip of his tongue down the roof of Ryuunosuke’s mouth, and licks behind his teeth. Ryuunosuke’s breath catches and his decision is made: he pulls Atsushi in closer, breast to breast, heart to heart. Their heartbeats lull one another. Puckering his lips, Ryuunosuke catches the tongue invading his mouth and sucks on it.
Atsushi groans. The sound is ragged and shattered and Ryuunosuke needs to make him do that again. Bony knees on either side of him lift as Ryuunosuke surges up, heat stiffening his spine until it’s straight and then arched towards Atsushi. Their close proximity is both a blessing and a curse. The provocation of Atsushi against him makes his head fuzzy but he likes it far too much. Likes the way the weretiger melts into his covetous grappling, the way he’s panting into his mouth, the way he quivers each time his tongue brushes Ryuunosuke’s fangs. Taking a cheek in each palm, Ryuunosuke does his best to devour the weretiger while cupping his face with precious tenderness.
“Aku–” Atsushi bites back a moan as Ryuunosuke sweeps his kisses from the corner of his mouth to his jawline to his throat, nibbling the thin flesh over a racing pulse, “Akutagawa–”
“What?” he grumbles between sucks, entranced by the thrumming blood he can nearly taste. It makes his fangs ache to feed but he restrains from making the weretiger his meal.
For now.
Flesh pulls between his teeth as he concerns himself with bruising Atsushi’s neck. “As–ah–enjoyable this is, we have to stop,” Atsushi whines, barely inching his hips forward. Expression slack as he pants with an opened mouth. Eyelids heavy, half hanging over his gaze, but they still dart to look out the window. From the abandoned sidewalks to the burger joint they’d dined at. Devoid of people for now but that could change at any moment, and the very real possibility of being caught lip-locked prompts Atsushi to protest, “We’re in public.”
Ryuunosuke’s exhale cuts sharp against Atsushi’s throat, ripe with irritation. The defined jut of his chin rests on Atsushi’s shoulder as he peels his lips away from skin, a small furrow appearing between his sparse brows. Right now their only audience is a lone burger wrapper scraping across asphalt as wind blows but he understands Atsushi’s concern.
He understands it. He just doesn’t like it.
“Right,” he mutters, and stiffly adjusts his position, hips arching beneath Atsushi’s straddle. Another part of him had begun to stiffen as well and Ryuunosuke wills his overeager cock to calm itself.
At least Atsushi is in the same position, if not more. Hair disheveled from Ryuunosuke’s yanking, lips slick and swollen, cheeks the color of ignited embers, and most notably, hard enough that his pants strain against his erection.
The van hasn’t been started, the heat isn’t blasting, yet warmth seeps in through his flesh and down to his bones. Dew sticks to the lower halves of the windows. Condensation had accumulated and the fatter drops of moisture that had swelled now trickle down, cleaving paths through the dressing of mist. A chill attempting to cut through to the heart of their arousal.
Atsushi sags, his head thumping heavily on Ryuunosuke’s shoulder, turning back and forth as he nuzzles his forehead against a taut trapezius, torso bouncing with strangled laughter. His plump cheek rubs against a still racing pulse as he tips his head to the side to hide his face in the crook of Ryuunosuke’s throat and whisper, “You kissed me.”
Immediately, Ryuunosuke protests, “Don’t overthink it–”
“You kissed me,” the weretiger childishly interrupts, voice in a dulcet sing-song.
“Insufferable.”
“And yet, you just shoved your tongue down my throat.” There is barely breadth between them to breathe. Ryuunosuke can taste Atsushi’s dazed smile on his own tongue. It’s sweet and Ryuunosuke wants to bloat himself on it; he doesn’t mind gorging until he’s nauseous from all the sugar.
He can’t resist imparting one more kiss on those saccharine lips, teeth following the way Atsushi’s tongue sweeps against his mouth in a bewitching manner, like the swish of a wand. The curve of a smile doesn’t drop as Ryuunosuke nibbles with laboriously tender fangs.
His cock throbs, twitching with interest. Ryuunosuke groans, a thread of saliva keeping them connected as he leans back. It snaps when he throws his head back, letting it bounce against the headrest behind him. “Fuck.”
Atsushi laughs again. Peals of giggles that tickle within his skull. It’s a wonder that Ryuunosuke’s ribcage does not snap open with the way his heart swells inside him. The gush of whatever horrible affection the weretiger had summoned from him bleeds, his own incurable haemophilia.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he grumbles.
A beat of silence. Atsushi says, “I could be a pain in your ass–”
Rashomon sinks beneath cheap cotton, pinching flesh between her maw and twisting. Atsushi yips, jolting on his laps, but then his arms still curl around Ryuunosuke like a sanctuary. Smothering a euphoric grin by fluttering his lips against Ryuunosuke’s cheek, Atsushi hums, forehead nestling against a temple. Not letting himself cower from this warmth, Ryuunosuke takes a hand in his. Both of their hands are callused beyond their years. He curls his fingers between the empty spaces of Atsushi’s. Rashomon’s chomping shifts into a ticklish nibbling and through her, he can feel the mottled, raised lines of two scars stripped on Atsushi’s torso.
He doesn’t ask about those scars.
“I hate you.” The impact of his words sink like a knife through water. That is to say, not at all, given how Atsushi’s smile doesn’t waver. A rather halcyon expression, evoking some irritating sense of fondness from Ryuunosuke.
“Sure,” Atsushi says against his cheek, then sighs. “I don’t want this to end yet.”
The sweet sentiment kindles a hunger in Ryuunosuke and he’s never been one to deny his appetite when it becomes so prominent. “Then let's go somewhere else.”
Atsushi picks his head up. Their foreheads still brush and he gets a front row seat to how the flecks of gold in Atsushi chatoyant eyes glitter. “Yeah?” Then, full of misguided trust in Ryuunosuke, agrees, “Yeah.”
But the weight on his lap remains. “... I can’t drive with you in my lap, weretiger.”
“Right,” Atsushi agrees to that too, with a deep, bashful blush on his cheeks, and scrambles off his lap.
Cinnamon sugar dusts Atsushi’s lips. A churro in hand–the one not already taken captive by Ryuunosuke’s own as they peruse around some park that’d looked pleasant enough to squander away their time in. The food trucks parked around had reeled in Atsushi’s interest as they’d searched for somewhere to stop at. “How much are you capable of eating, truly?”
“That threshold has not been met yet.”
Hot chocolate keeps his fingers warm. The day’s heat has long since evaporated under the stars. “The amount of food you’ve eaten today alone is ridiculous. I know you’re a teenage boy, weretiger, but really.”
“Don’t say it like that!” Atsushi protests. “That makes me sound like a kid!”
Ryuunosuke pauses. “Well–”
“Shut up. How do you even know how old I am? I’ve never told you.”
Squeezing Atsushi’s hand, he retorts smarmily, “Do you think me incapable of dredging up your personal information?”
“Why would you be snooping on my personal information, you lunatic?”
“I’d be a poor excuse for a mafioso if I didn’t educate myself about my target,” Ryuunosuke replies, “Nakajima Atsushi. You’re eighteen years of age. Your birthday is May fifth. You’re one hundred and seventy centimeters tall, which is two centimeters shorter than me–”
“Oh, fuck you!”
“–and you weigh fifty-five kilograms, which is surprising considering how much you eat. You grew up in a Children’s Home located in Kamakura up until seven months ago.” The fingers between his own go stiff with tension for a moment. Nails biting into his knuckles. From the corner of his eyes, Ryuunosuke watches Atsushi bristle, shoulders hunched in towards his ears, before the weretiger lets out a long breath and lets the anger–or maybe anxiety–roll off him.
However Atsushi still sounds sullen as he mutters, “That’s not fair. I don’t know all that much about your past.
Ryuunosuke snorts. “I’d wager you have much more personal and upfront knowledge of my past.” It had only been two days post airport and their showdown with Fyodor before Atsushi had nearly prostrated himself before him, contrite for his accidental invasion of Ryuunosuke’s privacy.
Ryuunosuke had been surprised at himself by how little he’d cared, but it’s not like it was all that hard to work out the nature of Dazai and his prior relationship anyhow. He had told himself that was why he was so unbothered by how much Atsushi knew about him now.
“I know how you joined the Port Mafia,” Atsushi refutes, “and a little of Dazai’s and yours relationship. I don’t know anything before that!”
“There’s nothing to know.”
Atsushi stops walking altogether. Expression pinched up, cheeks puffed out, brows furrowed and all.
A heavy sigh falls off his tongue, as does his shoulders. “I was simply deplorable. Some rancid creature, always hungry. I’d use Rashomon to protect my sister and some other kids with us in the slums but everything also felt so pointless at the same time.”
“The slums?”
“Yes, weretiger. I’m an orphaned slum dog. Why do you sound so surprised?”
“Well,” the weretiger begins, tugging him back into their idle pace with their tied hands, “you just… sound so posh, y’know?”
Ryuunosuke goads, “As opposed to uneducated?”
“No! Well, yes b-but–”
The corners of his lips twitch up with momentary joy over flustering the weretiger so. “I know what you mean. I didn’t have anything in the way of proper schooling nor was my reading comprehension up to par. It was something I improved upon once I joined the Port Mafia.”
“So,” Atsushi’s lips pop and Ryuunosuke can already tell he isn’t going to like whatever it is the weretiger says next, “You talk so ostentatiously to overcompensate?”
Their bickering is certainly its own form of affection and flirting but that does not dampen the irritation Ryuunosuke feels at Atsushi’s retort. His jaw clenches, slivers of Rashomon coiling down his arm until they reach Atsushi’s hand. Each thread forms its own tiny serpentine head, open-mawed. They sink in and gnaw at the back of Atsushi’s knuckles.
Atsushi’s yelp soothes his annoyance.
Their clasped hands disengage so that Atsushi may shake away any of the ache left behind from Rashomon’s light mauling. Atsushi huffs. “I didn’t have much schooling either. There were classes at the orphanage, of course, but only kids with lots of points got to go to them regularly.” Knowledge was its own form of currency for kids like them. Even a child could understand the value of knowing how to read and write. “I know how to read and write and some basic math but I’m pretty bad at it. That’s about it, really.”
Ryuunosuke insists, “You don’t need more than basic math,” because math is stupid and he refuses to believe people who like math are real.
Atsushi’s giggle floods his heart. It’s a balm to the scars the organ bears. He grabs Ryuunosuke’s hand and once again the weretiger stops him by their twined fingers, but it isn’t to puff out his cheeks and pout this time. Rather, it is to catch Ryuunosuke’s gaze beneath his fluttering eyelashes, in the surgery, sticky trap of his sweet look.
He lets their hands disengage. Lifts it slowly to brush the long, choppy portion of Atsushi’s atrocious hair behind a lovely ear. Flesh learning flesh–a hand remembering how to be gentle instead of hard. It feels unfamiliar and awkward but Atsushi’s blush is a reward more than worth his bumbling.
Lips meet. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been leaning in. Always so helpless to the weretiger’s gravity, like the moon urging the sea in. The taste of cinnamon sugar masks the grilled onions that’d been on Atsushi’s breath earlier. The kiss is chaste this time. A gentle glide of their mouths together, a slight brush of tongue to lick the churro off Atsushi’s lips before Ryuunosuke leans back.
Atsushi licks his own lips, as if to taste the ghost of Ryuunosuke’s mouth on his own before clearing his throat. “So, umh,” he stammers, “was this a date?”
“No,” Ryuunosuke answers immediately but continues before Atsushi can get upset, “because I’m going to take you on a real date. Intentionally.”
A smile lingers at the corners of Atsushi’s mouth. His Adam’s apple bounces with a heavy swallow. “A date. And we,” Ryuunosuke gets the impression that Atsushi is attempting to sound suave, which is ruined by his voice cracking, “can–can finish what we were doing earlier after that date? In the car?”
“... In a bed this time, so you’re not distracted.”
Ryuunosuke’s phone flashes with an unread message. The number is unknown which means it’s from Dazai. He considers ignoring it, still irate from Atsushi’s and his pointless goosechase earlier, pleasant outcome be damned.
He unlocks his phone anyways.
You’re welcome ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡
“Motherfucker,” he curses, head shaking with disbelief.