Chapter Text
Dazai rarely was surprised by anything, but he didn't really anticipate that his evening would go like this.
The mafia executive just returned from an evening of drinks and pleasant chatter with Odasaku and Ango, planning to quickly check his work messages in case there were any updates on the latest weapon shipment, maybe shoot a couple cryptic texts to Chuuya to mess with him and then stare at the ceiling of his shipping container until either sleep or death claimed him. Except, once he took his seat on the singular chair, his quiet evening was interrupted by something crashing right through his wall.
Dazai blinked the dust out of his eye, staring at what appeared to be an intruder. His place of living wasn't a huge secret, but usually his reputation alone was enough to scare away any unwelcome guests or potential assassins from his home. However, what he was facing wasn't human. It was a giant white tiger, fur faintly glowing blue even in the rays of the setting sun.
A tiger just broke into his house.
Dazai was pretty sure he wasn't hallucinating - he didn't drink that much today, and only mushrooms he digested lately were shiitake. He looked the beast over - sharp claws, large fangs, bright yellow eyes - a true predator in all its glory.
Being killed by a giant tiger in the evening in a junkyard sounded like a cool death. Being killed by a giant tiger who broke into his house didn't sound too shabby, either.
Just as Dazai was imagining the news headlines and newspaper articles, the tiger began glowing. After a bright blue flash it was gone, a normal-looking human in its place. Well, relatively normal - it appeared to be a man, perhaps a few years older than Dazai, wearing light office clothes with suspenders. The relative part concerned his oddly styled white hair and his eyes - purple and gold meshed together.
No matter how odd his appearance was, this was undeniably a man, an ability user. Which threw off Dazai's dream death plans.
He couldn't help but pout, sending an intruder an offended glare.
“Darn.”
The man seemed to be taken aback by his reaction. “Pardon me?..”
“An ability user. For a second I thought you were an actual tiger.” Dazai turned his head towards a hole in the wall. Half of the shipping container’s side was gone, the rays of the setting sun pouring inside his dark and gloomy home. “Lame.”
“L-lame?!..” The weretiger’s voice cracked as he flinched, looking at Dazai as if he was completely crazy.
“And now I have to sleep with this giant hole in my wall.” Osamu just carried on with a disappointed sigh. “Perhaps I should take a walk to the pier and jump into the ocean - I would rather drown than die from the cold…”
“Waitwaitwait- what is going on in here?!” The man stepped in front of him. “What are you doing in the junkyard at this hour?”
Dazai rolled his eyes. What a stupid guy, Osamu practically spelled it out for him, and yet it seemed he still needed it to be said. “I live here.”
The weretiger blinked at him before slowly looking over the inside of the shipping container, eyes lingering on every piece of furniture Dazai had - chair, desk, fridge and bed. Then those sunset-colored eyes were back on Dazai, even wider than before. “You live here?!”
“That's what I said, tiger man.”
“Are you- do you live alone? Do you have parents? How long have you been living like this?” The man frowned, his eyes welling up with a surprising amount of worry.
“That’s a lot of personal questions from someone who just broke into my house.” Dazai squinted his eyes, unimpressed. Now this guy was turning into a nuisance.
“A- I'm sorry!” Suddenly, the weretiger started bowing, voice full of guilt. “I thought the junkyard would be a nice, empty place to train my special ability, I didn't anticipate to run into anyone- I'm so sorry to bother you! And I'm sorry about your home!” He straightened his back, staring Osamu right in the unbandaged eye. “I can't just leave a kid in the dump… Please, come with me!”
Now it was Dazai's turn to stare at him in confusion. “Pardon?”
“I can't let you sleep here, especially with that hole in the side of your… erm… home. A junkyard is no place for a teen, anyway. So you can stay at my place tonight!”
“Stranger danger?” Osamu lifted an eyebrow at the man.
“I promise I won't hurt you! Here-” The weretiger pulled out a badge with ID on it - Atsushi Nakajima, Armed Detective Agency. “My organization frequently works with the police. Now let's go, before it gets completely dark!”
Before Dazai knew it, he was pulled out of his house and practically dragged down the city streets.
Armed Detective Agency. He knew that organization, although never held much interest in it. Even as a small bunch of powerful Gifted, they held no chance if they ever went against the Port Mafia.
“I’m sorry, I don't think I even asked your name…”
Dazai toyed with the idea of giving Atsushi a fake name, given that a Gifted detective might've known his name and reputation, but decided against it. If the weretiger recognized him as the Demon Prodigy of the Port Mafia, maybe he'd end this charade and let him go and return to his junkyard misery.
“Dazai Osamu.” He stared at the profile of Atsushi's face, waiting for his reaction.
“I'm Nakajima Atsushi.” Either the deceptive didn't know his name or this was all really a deliberate plan to kidnap him. “How long have you been living in the junkyard, Osamu-kun?”
Dazai startled at such familiarity. “It's Dazai. And what if I say I always lived there?”
“All alone? How old are you?”
“Almost eighteen.”
“Do you have no one you can ask for help?”
“I do, but I don't need help.”
Atsushi sent him a familiar look of exasperation Dazai was used to receiving from other adults, but didn't say anything else.
When they finally stopped walking, Dazai actually revisited his earlier ‘he might be an assassin’ hypothesis.
“Is this actually a kidnapping?” He asked, looking between Atsushi and a very small and dingy-looking apartment building.
The detective seemed to look a tad bit ashamed, but quickly wiped that look from his face and tried to give Dazai a reassuring smile. “This is my place. You can stay here for tonight, and tomorrow we'll figure out the whole living in a junkyard situation.”
My shipping container might be better than this. Dazai thought when Atsushi led him to a sad looking apartment. It had two rooms - a small kitchen and a cramped bedroom along with a door that he presumed led to a bathroom. To Dazai's surprise, he was quickly pushed into the said bathroom.
“You really need a shower.”
“I showered three days ago!” He protested, which made the detective frown even further.
“Get in the bath.” Atsushi said, rolling his already short sleeves as if he was about to bathe a dog.
“I can bathe myself! But what about clothes? Bandages?” Dazai actually started to protest.
“I’ll bring you clothes and help you with bandages.”
“I'd like to handle that myself.” He stated in a cold and cutthroat way that seemed to snap the detective out of his mother hen mode.
“Ah- yes…” The weretiger jumped back, lifting his arms in the air. “Sorry… I'll, um, go fetch you some clothes.”
Despite Dazai's clothes being clean and way more expensive than Atsushi's, he accepted the ones the detective gave to him and was left alone in the cramped bathroom that didn't even have a lock.
Who knew that following a stranger to his house would be a terrible idea. He mentally sighed. I should've just spent the night in my office.
It was too late to complain (mentally - Dazai intended to verbally complain to the detective a lot later ) , so the mafia executive resigned himself to the bath. The pack of bandages Atsushi provided him with was unopened, but outsides were a bit darkened, like it had laid around without use for a very long time. At least there was enough to cover himself, especially since the shirt Atsushi gave him had short sleeves. He stared at his clothes before shrugging and just leaving them on the sink before slipping outside the bathroom.
To Dazai's surprise, the detective was sitting at the table that took seventy percent of the bedroom with two bowls of food.
“Have a seat. Um- sorry for the space…” Atsushi let out a nervous laugh.
“Does being a detective not pay well?” The teen asked with a polite smile, enjoying the way Nakajima pursed his lips at the question.
“This is not the best place, I admit it, but it's a roof over my head, a comfortable place to sleep in and not located in the middle of the dump.”
“It feels like the middle of a dump.”
“I hope you don't mind chazuke for dinner.” Atsushi ignored his comment, though his eyebrow twitched in irritation.
Dazai thought his dinner would contain of two glasses of whisky, so he didn't complain about that. He decided to bring up everything else. “My shipping container had more space than your whole apartment…”
“Why do you live in a shipping container?”
“Convenience.”
Atsushi blinked at him, chopsticks frozen in front of his mouth. “... convenience?”
“Precisely. It's close to my job, and there's no people around to bother me or pull me out of a noose when I attempt suicide. Well, apart from tiger-men who like to pounce on shipping containers at a dark hour.”
“Suicide?!” Nakajima looked like he was about to overload.
“My hobby.” Dazai added helpfully with a small smile, practically hearing the gears in the detective’s mind scrape together in an attempt to turn.
“Wait- did you call me lame back there because I didn't attack you as the tiger?!” It seems he did manage to connect some dots.
“Exactly! I thought the tiger would rip into me, so you being a human was an enormous letdown…” He let out a tragic sigh before shoving some rice into his mouth. The cooking wasn't half-bad - a part of him was reminded of that place where Odasaku's kids lived.
Atsushi shook his head. “You didn't seem surprised at all… do you know a lot about special ability users?”
“Hey, I want to ask questions too!” Dazai whined, pointing at Atsushi with his chopsticks. “Why do you have one singular soap in your bathroom and nothing else?”
Nakajima tilted his head in confusion. “Huh? You can get clean with soap…”
“At least get a shampoo! No wonder your hair is sticking out in every direction!”
“I can't believe I'm getting lectured by a kid who lives in garbage out of convenience...” Atsushi muttered under his breath.
“And there's only one bed! What were you planning with that?”
“Planning?.. I was planning to sleep on the floor.”
“There's barely any floor to sleep on!”
“It's not that bad when I put the table against the wall… I can sleep in the kitchen if that makes you feel better.”
“And how do I know you won't soil my chastity while I'm asleep?” Dazai hugged himself.
“What are you even talking about?..” At this point Atsushi sounded like he was done with taking Osamu seriously. “I think this is enough questions for tonight. How about we go over the rest in the morning?”
“You didn't answer my question.”
The detective sighed. “Osamu-kun, I'm not going to soil your anything, especially when you're on my bed. Now, let me put the bowls away before-”
“Is this just about keeping the bed clean?!”
“Let’s just go to sleep…”
Atsushi didn't react to his prodding anymore, and, to the brunet's surprise, did lay on the kitchen floor with just a couple pieces of folded clothing as a makeshift pillow.
To his even bigger surprise, Dazai actually fell asleep.
He woke up to a thrill of an unfamiliar alarm, followed by Atsushi's quiet grumbling. The mafia executive pulled out his phone, looking at the time.
Five thirty? Dazai winced. This was both way more night sleep than Osamu usually got and disgustingly early.
“Good morning…” The detective mumbled once he saw Dazai was awake. Osamu grumbled vague nonsense in response and headed to the bathroom to grab his clothes.
As much as he enjoys tormenting responsible adults, Dazai didn't want to answer any more questions. He pretended to busy himself with folding his clothes until Atsushi went to the bathroom, after which he swiftly slid out of the front door and into the street alleys.
Dazai thought it was an odd evening, but would make a fun little story to tell Odasaku and Ango next time they gather in the bar.