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When Ryuunosuke started coughing up blood, he wasn’t in the least bit surprised. He’d almost been expecting it really; his body had been acting up in a way not dissimilar to what he’d seen growing up in the slums.
It would start with contractions in the chest, being short of breath. Ryuunosuke would never forget the particular kind of grimace the illness made you take on, face all screwed up as the mouth gasped for air it couldn’t reach, the eyes robbed of their light long ago. The skin would start bruising easily and heal at a snail’s pace, remaining black for weeks on end. It’d tear easily too, thin as a sheet. All one could do was wait in agony, drawing breaths until one couldn’t anymore.
Death was the only commodity in Suribachi after all.
Suribachi, a place so malevolent the air itself was hostile. Polluted and at night so cold it felt as though you were breathing flakes of ice. It was bound to settle in and destroy your lungs.
It was unlikely his own ailment would be taken that far, he’d concluded, since he had been free of the toxicity of the air for a while now. Still, the damage had been done. Ryuunosuke supposed he hadn’t been helping his case either. He’d been pushing himself too far for too long, he knew that very well. Didn’t need Gin to remind him. These were the consequences, you reap what you sow.
He'd always had a sneaking suspicion he was fated to die young. As long as it wasn’t Gin carrying the same fate, it’d be fine. That’s what a responsible older brother did, he took on the burden for the both of them. She’d always been the stronger one, more resilient despite the insufficient circumstances of her childhood, never quite as breakable as he was.
He was sort of content, even. He knew now exactly what would eventually kill him, and wasn’t that a comfort in his line of work? As long as it didn’t interfere with his ability to do the job, it’d be fine.
Once he started, along with droplets of blood, also coughing up flower petals, that feeling morphed into horror.
It was manageable at first.
The petals were small, unassuming. He’d cough up one, maybe two at a time. They’d have the faintest traces of red on them, subtle against the purple and stark where it faded into yellow.
Hold them between your forefinger and your thumb, observe with a carefully constructed neutrality. Have Rashomon consume them. Do the mission, don’t kill, return home and though it pains, lie to Gin. Pretend the petals never existed in the first place.
Rinse and repeat.
Even on good days, Ryuunosuke didn’t tend to sleep very well. Four, five hours a night usually, which he could only amend with an hour long nap or two during the day if he was lucky. Still chronically low. He never felt well-rested either, didn’t know if he ever had. He doubted he could, not after it’d been ingrained that he should always be prepared to fight, to run. Suribachi lingered.
Gin was already headed out for shopping, so he joined her after a failed attempt of taking a nap. It was nice outside, if slightly too warm. He could’ve gone without his coat (Rashomon could manifest from any other article of clothing just as well), but he felt safer with it, he supposed.
On the way to Seicomart they pass by a park, by this time coated in the light of the afternoon sun.
He saw Dazai first, lounging on the grass, the guy with the glasses and a ponytail yelling at him about something Ryuunosuke wasn’t close enough to hear. While he was distracted, the only actual detective and the farm boy had seemingly teamed up to steal snacks from a comically oversized basket and were doing an awful job hiding it. The rest were sat at one of the tables, chatting amicably. Their president seemed quite content with sitting in the shade and watching it all happen while drinking saké.
He supposed that was the problem with sharing Yokohama with the ADA; you constantly run into the fuckers, and now that the Port Mafia and the Agency had something of a truce going on you couldn’t even fight them anymore.
“We never have picnics,” Gin commented mournfully.
“It’d be a safety hazard. There are dozens of enemy organizations waiting for the right moment to eliminate us, we’d be putting ourselves in a lot of danger were all the executives in one place.”
“Yeah, but they try to do that anyway. At least there’d be sandwiches. And lemonade.”
“We can get sandwiches for dinner.”
“It’s not the same,” she grumbled. Ryuunosuke noted he should try cooking her something sometime. They pretty much lived off of ready-made meals.
As they walked, Nakajima came into view. He had an animated discussion with Kyouka, both seemingly content with simply enjoying each other’s company. One of the siblings, sat opposite them, said something and he smiled, fondly and genuinely.
And then he glanced over to Ryuunosuke and his smile became strained. He lifted his hand hesitantly, but Ryuunosuke had already turned away.
A week later Nakajima and Ryuunosuke got assigned to another job. Rumor had it that a man with connections to the underground (and a string of crimes under his belt) was kicking up a storm in Yokohama, searching for a very special necklace. They were to apprehend him and bring him to holding for further interrogation.
His ability allowed him to turn anyone’s internal organs into flowers as long as he knew their exact date of birth.
The irony wasn’t lost on Ryuunosuke.
Tracking him down was easy enough with the help of an ability user from the Agency, a man named Katai according to Nakajima. Then it was only the matter of a confrontation and a subsequent capture.
The ability user’s strategy boiled down to listing first every month consecutively, then numbers from one to thirty-one while carefully tracking his opponent’s facial expression and distracting with swift and concise knifework. Before he could get to five, Nakajima had already diverted attention to himself so that Ryuunosuke could disarm him and bind his body and mouth with Rashomon.
Nakajima settled to Ryuunosuke’s side and allowed his tiger to recede, limbs shrinking to their natural lanky form and eyes once again allowed a purple hue. He’d broken into a little bit of a sweat. He always seat more when he was in his were-form.
“Joke’s on you,” Nakajima said to the guy, “even I don’t know my exact birthday. I doubt Akutagawa does too.” He then turned to Ryuunosuke. “Kind of a bad ability to have against orphans, huh?”
“It would seem so.”
After they’d dropped him off at the containment facility they got informed that Dazai would be coming by later to interrogate him.
They naturally fell in step and as soon as Ryuunosuke realized it he strode ahead, feeling a bit like a black hole had opened up in his core. Nakajima caught up immediately, seemingly not even having noticed, started talking about how he and Kyouka had gone to a museum the previous weekend. Ryuunosuke risked a singular glance at him, shoulders as relaxed as they’ve ever been in Ryuunosuke’s presence, a small smile etched onto his lips as he recounted how he’d had to teach Kyouka to wait in line for an interactive game in a section about dinosaurs (she’d tried to stab a kid, apparently). A single look and he could already feel his lungs acting up. For the rest of the way he just focused on containing his coughs.
Once home, he vomited a fistful of petals. He watched Rashomon consume them with deep resentment.
It was Dazai’s brilliant idea of course, having a soukoku and shin soukoku dinner. A quadruple black dinner, if you will. Ryuunosuke would love to believe him when he said this was for Chuuya and Dazai sharing experience and passing on advice about teamwork to their successors (ironic, since Ryuunosuke was pretty sure Chuuya was blackmailed into showing up), but this was fucking Dazai, his whole existence was an ulterior motive. Still, Ryuunosuke found himself unable to say no, even after all this time.
Just dinner, he told himself. One meal and then he’d be done. The restaurant though, the one Dazai and Chuuya picked out… it was sketchy, the kind of sketchy the mafia stayed away from. They had standards, thank you very much.
“Ahh, it’s one of the few restaurants we’re not banned from,” Chuuya said upon seeing both Ryuunosuke’s and Nakajima’s expressions. Dazai nodded sagely.
“How do you get banned from a restaurant?” Nakajima asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“By setting a table on fire.”
“Or a rude waiter.”
“Planting rats in the kitchen.”
“Oh yeah, that was a good one.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
Dazai and Chuuya existed in a world of their own of course, which effectively left Ryuunosuke and Nakajima to their own devices. They couldn’t leave (Ryuunosuke had tried; Dazai promised he’d drag him back bound from head to toe if he tried again), so they were stuck picking at their food as they watched their companions fight (flirt???) their way through conversation.
Well, to be completely transparent, the only one picking at his food was Ryuunosuke. Chuuya and Dazai ate at a surprisingly normal pace, though they rarely stopped to chew, being too busy with the constant bickering and whatnot.
Nakajima though, he devoured. Food disappeared off his plate at a frankly alarming rate. It very well might’ve just been his tiger demanding more sustenance, but something told Ryuunosuke Nakajima would’ve eaten just as much regardless.
“Why aren’t you eating?” Nakajima asked, again genuinely confused.
“I’m not hungry.”
Nakajima paused at that, regarded first the plate in front of him and then Ryuunosuke himself.
“You know, back at the orphanage we didn’t have much food. Probably because the place was so poorly funded… We often had very little to eat. Now that I can finally afford to eat, I always eat as much as I can because, I don’t know.” He gestured at Ryuunosuke’s still mostly full plate, “Why waste perfectly good food?”
Ryuunosuke didn’t have much growing up in the slums either. If he wanted to eat, he’d have to steal and if he got caught stealing, he had to run. The consequences of getting caught even after running were far worse than starving. He supposed he’d sort of gotten used to it, as depressing as that sounds. Gotten good at ignoring the mortality of his own body, which included hunger cramps. Even now he often forgot to eat, and even when he had food right in front of him, he tended to drift off.
He did try a bit harder after. He even took the leftovers to go, for which he got, to his dismay, an encouraging smile. His chest twisted and he knew he had a long night ahead of him.
On their way back during one of their many verbal fights that escalated to physical violence, Chuuya flung Dazai into a dark alleyway. Instead of a brick wall he collided with a group of suspicious men in dark suits carrying an even more suspicious container. Dazai was very aggressively assured that it contained a very important artifact that shouldn’t be messed with, and warned that he shouldn’t get in their way.
Just as one of the men recognized Dazai, the other three had already joined him at his side. A fight broke out. It turned out that the men had been tasked with carrying the artifact from the port to a secondary location. Convenient that soukoku and shin soukoku were right there to intercept the shipment, splitting off into two groups, one to dispose of the men and the other to deal with the artifact, which turned out to be a necklace.
The following weeks were spent dealing with this situation that had arisen. The necklace had apparently been created by a since long deceased ability user, who cursed or blessed it with the power to grant its wearer the sight of Truth. Whatever that meant. Nobody cared to explain how exactly it worked and he didn’t care enough to ask. It all got very complicated, especially with Mori working a scheme behind the scenes because he also somehow had a stake in this. Whatever. Ryuunosuke didn’t much care for politicking.
So then he’d get so busy with missions he could almost forget, delude himself into thinking there wasn’t a fucking plant imbedded in his lungs, but then.
But then Nakajima would take a leap of faith, trusting Ryuunosuke would be there to back him up. And after all was said and done, he’d give the smallest of nods in acknowledgment of their feat, a faint smile if Ryuunosuke knew how to pretend.
And Ryuunosuke’s heart would give a painful squeeze and he’d feel the flux of color rising up his throat. They’d come far, they’ve grown, and somewhere along the way, Ryuunosuke had lost himself. He’d always known he was too much, too hard on the outside and too soft on the inside. Like a shell that had cracked, revealing mushy, runny yolk within and what was he to do now? He had no ground to stand on, not when Nakajima kept sweeping him off of it.
“Who knows how long the interlude is going to last this time,” Ryuunosuke said after they’d been finished with a particularly nasty assignment. Because apparently there was another group after the necklace, some eccentric art collector.
(The ADA’s president and Mori were busy talking it through while Gin and the farm boy from the Agency kept the necklace safe… somewhere.)
“We always seem to be running around, aren’t we? One thing ends, another begins. Can’t even have dinner without Dazai meddling.” Nakajima stared off then, a crease forming between his eyebrows. Something tickled at the back of Ryuunosuke’s throat, a threat, a promise.
“I’m starving,” Nakajima blurted, “wanna grab a bite to eat?” He looked pained, looking anywhere but at Ryuunosuke. Dazai put him up to it then. Probably spun some wonder about the team spirit and bonding moments. Ryuunosuke was going to be ill.
He went despite knowing better. They get to go to a nicer place this time since they’re not accompanied by the most destructive duo on the continent and it’s… nice. However it pained Ryuunosuke to admit that, even to himself.
Ryuunosuke was willing to admit Nakajima was beautiful. It was a gritted teeth sort of willingness, but a willingness nonetheless. Strong, too. Though his past weighed heavy, he’d learned to live with it and grow past it. Ryuunosuke envied him for that. Thought that if he had just a fraction of his light and strength, just a fraction of him, he’d be content. Not happy, he’d lost his chance at that long ago (it seemed like the ghosts of his past never were quite done with sucking the life out of him), but content.
Wishful thinking. Dreaming was for fools.
That night he woke up in the dead of night to something the shape of a small marble climbing up his throat – a green bud, a tiny bit of color peaking out from underneath the green. He held it in his hand, reeling from the intensity. For the first time he asked himself ‘Why?’ Why him, why now?
Though he knew the answer already. He was weak and these flowers were only a sign of the times.
He couldn’t fall back asleep after, not for a long time, and once he did…
Ryuunosuke wasn’t a stranger to nightmares, though he supposed they’ve never been quite so strange. Usually he’d find himself in a very dark place which he’d inevitably fail to escape as the temperature dropped below freezing, and he couldn’t move anymore.
These two were different.
In the first, he’d stand in a field of yellow and purple flowers as far as the eye could see; a breeze would blow the petals towards him and no matter how much he shielded his face, he couldn’t stop them from getting into his mouth. Though he didn’t see it, he knew Rashomon was just on the other side, devouring the field, the earth, the grass, the flowers. Knew that not a single molecule would go unconsumed until so too would he disappear.
The other is worse.
He’d be in Yokohama, somewhere unrecognizable. Nakajima would be there too. Turned the other way, just so Ryuunosuke could see him smiling, but not at him, never at him.
When he’d wake up from the latter, he’d vomit out far more flowers than he thought his lungs had the capacity to grow. The amount of blood that came along with them couldn’t have been good either. The pain in his chest never receded.
The occasional dinner turned into a weekly thing.
It was going to kill him anyway. Might as well. Fate, God, whoever strung this farce together was laughing at him. Ryuunosuke would die at the hands of the man he’d promised to kill, and he wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to end him.
He got caught eventually. He’d woken up in the middle of the night to throw up a large heap of petals and flowers and blood alike. Rashomon failed to clean up properly because of Ryuunosuke’s delirium and so Gin had seen. He knew it’d happen sooner rather than later especially now that he had multiple fits a day. Nothing could’ve prepared him for the sheer hurt on Gin’s face though. After berating him for not telling her, it morphed into murderous anger.
“Who is it.”
“Nobody.”
“Tell me so I can kill them.”
“As if that would help,” Ryuunosuke muttered.
She paused from where she’d started putting her hair up into her signature hairdo. She let go and let the strands spill back down. “That bad?” she asked, settling beside him on the bed. Ryuunosuke didn’t grace that with an answer. “What do I need to do to help you survive this?” she said, looking straight ahead. Determined still.
“I don’t know.”
Sometimes problems didn’t have a solution.
He couldn’t tell whether it was better or worse now that Gin knew. On the one hand, she now at least made excuses for his odd behavior in the mafia – mostly repeated absences multiple times a day – on the other, he must endure her pitying gaze.
He couldn’t do his job properly anymore. It seemed every time he took a breath something ruffled in his lungs, which in and of itself was becoming unbearable. Nevermind that as much as being reminded of Nakajima’s existence was enough to cause an episode.
Nakajima, for his part, had noticed Ryuunosuke slacking before, but now he had the gall to look concerned, which was many times worse than refusing to work with Ryuunosuke while he was in his sorry state. Every time he did, Ryuunosuke could feel himself spiraling, a vertigo as he found himself unable to stop flowers spilling out of his mouth.
It all came to a head soon enough. Ryuunosuke could barely function anymore, his days spent either in wait for an episode, having coughs wreck his body, or spent in recovery from it. He still made Rashomon consume the evidence on the job and every time he did, he felt a piece of his heart wither away. Which was almost comical, because now his heart would be taken by flowers too?
There’d been a problem with somebody from the art collector’s group, which had been-
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The man was in cuffs already, curtsy of Nakajima. He already felt weak in the knees, and though he’d just forcefully dragged a sheaf (the flowers were all knotted up in each other, hard to tell where one ended and another began) out of his mouth, he could feel them filling his throat already, his breath audibly wheezing.
And then Nakajima smiled at him, warm and genuine, and it tugged at Ryuunosuke’s chest. He was a fool, a damned fool. He said something too, except Ryuunosuke couldn’t hear him at all over the rush of blood, petals scratching their way up his throat, his body gearing for another episode. He clasped a hand over his mouth, eyes popping, but of course it was of no use.
He barely caught a “Akutaga-” before he allowed his legs to carry him somewhere far, far away from here. Not far enough, because his whole body shook from the effort of merely standing, much less running away. He found himself in a dark alleyway, hidden from view. Leaned against the wall to try and regain his strength, but it was no use now. He collapsed against it, limbs splayed.
This was the end of the line.
So this is how he’d die. A dog in a ditch, pathetic and hopeless.
“Akutagawa!”
“Go,” Ryuunosuke rasped and it inspired another wave of coughs. Petals and blooming buds spilled down his torso.
Nakajima did not go. In fact, he came closer. There was no hiding it now, there was too much and Ryuunosuke couldn’t even lift his hand, much less command Rashomon. He was close now, he must’ve seen.
Nakajima stilled. Ryuunosuke couldn’t bear to look him in the eyes.
“These are yours?” he asked, no longer sounding quite so alarmed, though still concerned. He crouched to pick a petal from the ground, held it between his fore- and middle finger. It was only slightly speckled with blood, not drowning in it like some of the others.
They were eye-to-eye now, and Nakajima started speaking. “We had a garden back at the orphanage. I loved it, it was beautiful, and Sister Margaret, the sister tasked with tending to it, was kind. She repeated the names of every single one of her flowers each day, though I’d forget every time.” He frowned. “I’m getting off track. This is a pansy. I forget its Latin name, but it was always my favorite. Because-” and he held it up to his face “-it was the color of my eyes.”
Maybe now he’d kill Ryuunosuke himself, free him of the misery. Or maybe he’d watch him suffer, revel in it. He deserved it.
“You could have just said something, you know.”
Of course he couldn’t have. It would have done him in. He’d gladly tell Nakajima to fuck off, let him die already, but hadn’t the air to. Darkness creeped on the edge of his vision. Something pressed against his ribcage from the inside, like the traitorous flowers wanted to burst out, robbing him of any dignity he might’ve had left. Still he was weak.
His vision suddenly came back into focus as he felt the barest of touches against his hand. “Because I do like you, Akutagawa.”
Liar. Ryuunosuke couldn’t even like himself. Could barely look at himself in the mirror even on good days, now especially since this whole debacle had started.
Was what he knew rationally. His heart, ever the traitor, swelled at Nakajima’s words and he was miraculously allowed to draw a shallow, wheezing breath.
Nakajima’s hand lay on top of Ryuunosuke’s own, both of them enchanted by the sight.
“Don’t die on me now.” His cheeks were pinched, forehead wrinkled in stress. A strand of hair slid from behind his ear. Eyes hopeful just so.
Ryuunosuke’s vision blurred again. He took in a big, gulping breath, only to start coughing again. Nakajima said something, alarmed, and of course Ryuunosuke couldn’t hear him anymore. He felt something far too big climbing up his throat, choking him.
Nakajima’s hand had moved to clamp his shoulder. He might’ve begun shaking him and if he did it was indistinguishable from the tremors wrecking his body.
“Hey, stay wi-”
Ryuunosuke coughed again, except it was less like a cough and more akin to a hack. His lungs constricted as though squeezing something out. Tears burned at his eyes.
Then, Nakajima pulled him into an embrace. ‘Get away,’ Ryuunosuke wanted to say. You’re causing this, get away from me. Yet his traitorous hands gripped Nakajima’s shirt in a vice. He was warm, a live furnace. Ryuunosuke shivered.
He couldn’t breathe. This would kill him, he realized. His eyes fluttered shut and he allowed himself to relax in Nakajima’s hold. Atsushi’s hold. Just one more time he wanted to see him fully. See his eyes.
“You’re so…” he murmured and it came out all garbled because of the fresh blood in his mouth.
His body tightened suddenly and Nakajima moved so that Ryuunosuke could double over. Blood spilled from his lips first, then petals, then buds, then blooming flowers in one continuous retch. Then came the big one, stemmed flowers tangled up in in clumps, roots and all.
He drew in one last breath, gave a few weak coughs, and promptly collapsed. Nakajima caught his lax body in his hold.
“Don’t you fucking dare-” he gritted, but Ryuunosuke was already gone. He was completely and totally drained, but he could breathe freely again. He managed one last smile before succumbing to the darkness.
Ryuunosuke woke up in an unfamiliar bed in a room he did not recognize. Sunlight streamed from the windows; it was morning. He rose carefully, grimaced when he saw he was still wearing the clothes from last night, stained with blood down the front. He might as well throw it away.
He felt someone’s eyes boring into him. Nakajima was sat and leaned against the wall, a thin sheet over his shoulders. They stared at each other. Time seemed to stand still.
“You’re at mine and Kyouka’s place. Kenji brought you here.” He glanced to Ryuunosuke’s side, to a full glass of water next to the futon. “You should drink it.”
Ryuunosuke did, hadn’t realized just how parched he was. He still felt wrung out like a wet towel, but undeniably better. He placed the glass back with a soft clunk. Then back to observing Nakajima (he supposed there was no point in hiding it anymore). There were bags under his eyes, shoulders drawn together tightly, hands twisting the sheet around his fingers nervously.
“You really should’ve said something. Yosano could’ve helped. It wouldn’t have been pleasant, but she could’ve helped.”
Yosano. The one with the ability to cure anyone of anything as long as they were on the brink of death. “They would’ve grown back.” His voice was still somewhat raspy.
Nakajima sighed in exasperation. “You’re an idiot. Going forward, I’m gonna need you to know that.” His tone wasn’t quite so pinched anymore.
Ryuunosuke’s muscles were still weak, so he sort of twisted and wiggled until he was closer to Nakajima. He reached his hand out, just shy of touching Nakajima’s own. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“You’d better be.”
This next part would be difficult, though not nearly as difficult as attempting to survive another bout of murderous flowers. “Do. Do you still.”
Any tension there might’ve been was dispersed when Nakajima looked at Ryuunosuke like he was the biggest moron in the history of ability users. “Of course, obviously, I was so obvious! You know how much shit I’ve been getting from Dazai? From Ranpo? Do you even know how terrifying they are when they team up?” His voice had reached a comical high-pitch and Ryuunosuke couldn’t help but smile. Nakajima glared at him. “I’m glad one of us is finds this amusing,” he grumbled.
Ryuunosuke couldn’t stop watching him, and it seemed like the sentiment was returned. How miraculous it was that Ryuunosuke could stare, unabashedly, at the man he’d spent so long denying himself. His hand slowly reached out to brush over Nakajima’s, who wrapped his fingers around his wrist.
“I don’t know how these things work,” Ryuunosuke confessed.
Nakajima smiled pityingly. Self-deprecatingly. “And I do?”
Point made.
Nakajima leaned in close and kissed him. It was so easy and it brought Ryuunosuke such relief. He wondered for a moment why he’d let it almost kill him when he could’ve had this all along. Nakajima helped Ryuunosuke settle against him and draped the sheet over him as well. With a warm body pressed against his side and breath mingling with his hair he couldn’t help but drift off.
He slept better than he ever had.
“I’ve been thinking of buying some potted flowers. You know, to liven up the place a little.”
“Need it be pansies.”
“They come in other colors, you know.”
Ryuunosuke didn’t, actually. Going by the incredulous expression on Atsushi’s face, he’d realized that too.
“Alright, that’s it. You feeling well? Because the florist’s closes in an hour and the library in two. We’re getting some flowers and then books on how to take care of them!”