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“This is your fault,” Atsushi snaps. “If you’d just listened to me for once in your life, we would’ve avoided these guys and none of this would’ve happened.”
“Oh yes, let’s point fingers,” Akutagawa sneers. “Seems the perfect thing to do in this situation, given, firstly, that it won’t do a damn thing, and secondly, that our hands are restrained.”
But for all the venom in his tone, Akutagawa realizes, to a point, that Atsushi is right. He’d told Akutagawa that they were running straight into a trap, but Akutagawa had dismissed it, his pride too strong to allow him to sit out a fight like that.
In the end, the alleged hostage situation had merely been bait that the two of them eagerly took, but Akutagawa would sooner cut out his own tongue than admit that to Atsushi.
“Besides,” he continues, “if you thought engaging in that fight was such a bad idea, you shouldn’t have followed my lead. That was your decision. I take no responsibility for it.”
“Idiot! I wasn’t just going to sit there and let—”
But Atsushi halts, his eyes blowing wide and face flushing red.
“Listen,” he begins again, as if he hadn’t spoken before at all. “We’re wasting time arguing with each other when we should be trying to figure out a good escape plan.”
He has a point, so Akutagawa casts a keen gaze around the room, looking for any possible weaknesses to exploit. There appear to be only two doors — one at each end of the warehouse, both of them locked — and sheets of metal are soldered over what used to be the windows. That, combined with the ability-suppressing collars around both of their necks, are going to make an escape rather challenging.
And their predicament goes from bad to worse when the door on the far side of the warehouse flies open with a bang, and a tall, silent figure dressed in a long coat and leather gloves stalks into the warehouse, coming to stand in front of Atsushi and Akutagawa.
She glares down at them, eyes steely and unfeeling.
“Where’s the Book?” she demands, with no preamble.
Atsushi jumps in first.
“We don’t know. Neither one of us has any idea.”
Akutagawa merely nods, meeting their captor’s cold gaze. For all their bickering only moments before, he and Atsushi can always provide a united front when the situation really requires it.
“We have a member of the Armed Detective Agency and a high-ranking Port Mafia executive. I don’t believe for a second that between the two of you, I won’t get any information.”
“Believe what you want,” Atsushi says, steadfast and unwavering. “We don’t know anything.”
The woman quirks an eyebrow.
“You’re awfully chatty, detective. Maybe I should have a conversation with you first.”
The way she says it — conversation — makes it immediately clear to Akutagawa what’s about to happen, and he pulls against his restraints with all his strength. He won’t let them lay a finger on Atsushi.
“No,” he growls. “He doesn’t know anything.”
Atsushi looks over to Akutagawa, his expression far too soft and fond for the seriousness of their situation.
“It’s fine,” he says gently. “I’ll heal, so better me than you.”
“Not with that collar suppressing your ability, you won’t!”
Atsushi pauses, as if that reality hadn’t hit him until just now. Akutagawa wants to smack him — too busy making a noble sacrifice to use his brain for even a moment. Utterly typical.
But after a moment’s consideration, Atsushi simply shrugs.
“Still better me than you, though.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Akutagawa snarls, but he doesn’t get an answer, because the tall woman snaps her fingers, making Atsushi’s restraints fall away like magic, wrenches him out of the chair by his upper arm, and begins dragging him towards the door where she’d entered.
“Where are you taking him?” Akutagawa demands, but she pays him no mind, sliding the door closed with a menacing rumble and leaving Akutagawa alone in the large, empty room.
It’s not that he wants to watch Atsushi be tortured. Akutagawa is intimately familiar with the whole affair — the sights, the sounds, the nauseating smell -– and he would never want to witness Atsushi suffering that sort of thing. But at least if Akutagawa is present while it happens, he’ll be able to watch over him. He’ll know if Atsushi loses too much blood, or how bad his fractures are, or whether he’s taken too many blows to the head. At least if Akutagawa is present while it happens, Atsushi won’t have to be alone.
But Akutagawa isn’t stupid. No interrogator worth their salt would question the two of them together; too much opportunity for them to corroborate each other’s stories. It’s so much easier to catch them contradicting each other this way.
“Aah!”
A high, pained scream breaks Akutagawa from his reverie.
Another quickly follows, and a sick, cold weight plunges into Akutagawa’s stomach. He pulls against his restraints with all his strength, however feeble, ignoring the way the zip-ties cut into his flesh.
“Stop!” he shouts. “He doesn’t know anything! He couldn’t talk even if he wanted to!”
Akutagawa knows that their captors won’t hear him, especially over Atsushi’s ever-louder screams, but he can’t help himself.
If he stops shouting, he has nothing to do but sit and listen to Atsushi suffer.
Atsushi’s screams echo so loudly in Akutagwa’s ears that it takes him several long moments to notice when they finally stop.
His breath catches in his throat; while Akutagawa wants to think that they’re finally granting Atsushi a reprieve from the hours of torture, he knows better than to really believe it. No, he’s certain Atsushi has stopped screaming for a very different reason.
Likely just unconscious, he tells himself sternly. He can’t be losing his head now. They want information, so they want him alive. It would be a waste to kill him.
But Akutagwa’s nerves are already frayed beyond rationality, and the snatches of conversation he hears from the other side of the door do nothing to allay his fears.
“... lost too much blood…” “... won’t make it… this rate…” “... loosen it… have to… only for a second…”
Akutagawa pulls against his restraints with renewed vigor. He’ll make them suffer. Every last one of them, in ways they wouldn’t even dare imagine. They’ll pay for every drop of Atsushi’s spilled blood a thousand fold.
By now, Akutagawa doesn’t care if he severs his wrists, not if that’s what it takes to escape these damn restraints. He’s rubbed them raw and bloody already, but he’ll gladly do more. He’ll whittle away the bone bit by bit against the plastic, slice through the muscle and sinew. Just give him enough time. His useless, bloodstained hands have wrought nothing but suffering; sacrificing themselves for Atsushi’s sake would be their singular worthwhile act. He’d give them, and gladly.
But before Akutagawa can make any progress in his attempt to break free, a roar erupts from behind the warehouse door, loud enough to rattle the thin sheet metal walls.
There’s a tremendous commotion; the sound, Akutagawa thinks wryly, not unlike a wounded, rampaging tiger.
“That’s it!” he cheers. “Come on, Weretiger! Don’t hold back.”
But it’s Atsushi, so of course he’ll hold back. He won’t tear their throats out, however deserved. It’s Atsushi, and to him, mercy is as immutable a force as gravity.
But when he at last smashes through the door and bounds into the warehouse, fully transformed, Akutagawa is pleased to see that there’s at least a little blood staining the white fur near his mouth. Good — Atsushi’s captors don’t deserve to be incapacitated painlessly.
Atsushi skids to a halt in front of Akutagawa, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. His tail whips back and forth so violently and he appears so disoriented that, for only a moment, Akutagawa fears he may pounce. But he sniffs at Akutagawa and recognition dawns in his luminescent eyes, and then slowly, his whole enormous body trembling, he brings his head to rest in Akutagawa’s lap.
Akutagawa wishes once more that his hands were free; then, he might be able to stroke behind Atsushi’s large, soft ears, soothing him as he slowly shifts back into his human form. He’d like to say something calming and kind, too, if he could, but those sorts of words have never come easily to Akutagawa. He isn’t sure he could speak gently even if he wanted to.
Slowly, a bit at a time, Atsushi returns to himself. His body shrinks, his tail and ears recede, and those massive claws and teeth retract. But his head remains in Akutagawa’s lap and his body still shakes, even once he’s fully transformed. Only then does Akutagawa speak.
“Are you alright, Weretiger?”
Atsushi lifts his head, looking impossibly composed for someone who just suffered what he did.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice hoarse, no doubt from the screaming. “Yeah, I’m okay. You?”
Akutagawa nods.
“Fine, yes.”
But Atsushi still examines him with a keen scrutiny, gaze at last resting on his bound wrists.
“Like hell you are! Looks like you’ve bled more than I did!”
“Oh please. Don’t exaggerate, Weretiger. It isn’t one of your more redeeming qualities.”
“How did this happen?” Atsushi demands, removing Akutagawa’s restraints and the ability-suppressing collar from around his neck. “Did one of them come in and start in on you while I wasn’t here? Shit! I should’ve gotten out of there faster.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” Akutagawa scolds. “They tortured you within an inch of your life, and you’re concerned about some scratches?”
But Atsushi’s insistence doesn’t waver.
“It’s like I said — I can heal, you can’t. That’s how I got out of there; they loosened the collar for just a second to combat some of the blood loss so I’d stay conscious, and that’s all it takes for me to get the strength to fight back. The same doesn’t go for you.”
Akutagawa pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to avoid doing something rash, like running Atsushi through with Rashoumon out of pure frustration.
“You’re stupid,” Akutagawa manages through clenched teeth. “That’s the only explanation. It must be that you’re just fundamentally, incurably stupid.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you can drop this whole ridiculous pretense of being unaffected! I could hear you screaming, you complete idiot! I could hear every bit of it. I could hear when they started up a drill and I could hear you retching and begging and I just couldn’t bear—”
Akutagawa stops abruptly, trying to get his ragged breathing under control. Atsushi has gone pale and still, his eyes wide with panic.
“But they told me the room was soundproof…” he says, sounding as if he’s talking more to himself than Akutagawa. “They told me you wouldn’t know what was happening to me… I think they thought that would scare me, being totally isolated, but I was just so relieved.”
“And this is why you’re an idiot, Weretiger. Because you believed them.”
“So they told you the same thing, then? But you knew they were lying?”
“Jesus Christ,” Akutagawa sighs, “it’s like having a conversation with an especially dense ape. No , Weretiger. They left me alone. You suffered for hours while I simply sat here.”
Akutagawa can’t help the vitriol with which he spits that last sentence. The sheer injustice of it all makes him sick; between the two of them, he wasn’t the one who deserved to be spared.
“But your wrists?” Atsushi demands, refusing to let the subject go. “Who did that?”
“No one! Are you unable to draw even the most basic of inferences? I heard what they were doing to you and I kept trying to break the restraints so I could actually be of some help, instead of sitting around uselessly.”
Atsushi stares at Akutagawa as if he were speaking a foreign language, desperate to make meaning from nonsensical sounds.
“But you hate me,” he says slowly. “Why would you do that to yourself on account of me?”
Akutagawa pauses, speechless for several long moments.
“No… You couldn’t possibly still think… really, after everything…”
Atsushi merely looks up at him with those large, impossibly colored eyes, blinking dumbly. He really doesn’t understand, does he?
And with that, Akutagawa’s barely maintained control fails entirely. He surges forward, grabbing Atsushi by the bloodstained collar of his shirt and kissing him with an intensity that borders on fury.
Atsushi makes a shocked sound against Akutagawa’s mouth, and for an awful, drawn-out moment, Akutagawa is worried he’s going to pull away, but then he melts into the kiss with a soft, desperate sigh.
Akutagawa can taste the lingering hint of iron in his mouth, and feel the unevenness of his lips where he’d bitten them raw, and when he slides a hand into Atsushi’s hair, his fingers catch on clumps matted with blood.
It should be disgusting, but it isn’t. Instead, it reminds Akutagawa of how close he had come to losing Atsushi for good, and so he presses against his mouth with renewed vigor.
Thank you for staying alive, he thinks. Thank you for coming back to me.
When they at last part, Akutagawa can hardly catch his breath. Atsushi doesn’t look much better, chest heaving and lips swollen, eyes struggling to focus.
“In case it remains unclear, I do not hate you, Atsushi. Far from it.”
Atsushi stares, bewildered, for several long moments before he breaks into a smile.
“Say it again,” he demands.
“What? That I don’t hate you?”
Atsushi shakes his head.
“My name. I want to hear you call me by my name again.”
Akutagawa takes a deep breath, and then pulls Atsushi tight to his chest, one hand holding him by the waist and the other coming to cradle the back of his head.
“There is nothing I would not do to protect you, Atsushi,” Akutagawa murmurs into his hair. “There is no part of me I would not sacrifice. Not for you.”