Work Text:
Atsushi’s hands are shaking. It’s not as though it’s cold in the room, necessarily--if anything, he’s hot. The fabric of his shirt is clinging to the skin of his arms where it’s bunched up around the joint of his elbow, constricting where he’s put on some muscle since joining the agency and actually having enough food to eat. There’s a thin sheen of sweat under the white, stiff cotton, and oh no, what if he stains it? Atsushi swallows, feeling his throat bob under the stretched-tight skin of his neck as he shifts where he’s sitting on the floor of the closet, tucked away where nobody can see him.
His sleeve is rolled up. There’s a thin piece of metal clutched between his fingers, straight and shiny except for the fact that it’s so pitch-dark in the tiny space that Atsushi wouldn’t be able to see if not for his powers. The razor doesn’t shine. Atsushi knows that you can see blood even on black fabric from personal experience--it sits on top, the brownish-red hue once it’s started to clot up and dry. He knows that what he’s about to do will be difficult to hide. Impossible, really, except for one simple fact.
Atsushi heals fast. So, he cuts fast too. Holds his wrist out over the floor and holds his breath as he watches his skin split, feels like he’s been sucker-punched in the stomach. Watches his skin bubble up and pull itself back together. He counts the drops of blood that fall to the tatami mat of the closet, the sharp metal smell filling his senses. For one cut, deep enough to see the fluffy white but not the fat or muscle that he’s seen in wounds he’s gotten in real fights, there are only three drops of blood before he is completely healed.
The floor looks worse for wear than he does.
--
Atsushi goes to work the next day, and he almost expects somebody to notice the difference.
It’s not like there is a difference, though, and that’s why he isn’t really surprised when nobody actually does . Ranpo is out of town, for one, which makes it easier to hide. Atsushi knows he’s not the brightest, but he also feels like he’s smart enough to understand that he wouldn’t be able to hide anything at all from Ranpo, not even on his best day and on Ranpo’s worst. Maybe in a week or two, when the shock and the bright, raw feeling of this has faded some, sure, but in the early morning, it still feels like something significant. Like Atsushi has crossed some kind of line.
Atsushi works exactly as he normally does. With everything from the Guild cleaned up and all of the wounds healed, they just have normal cases. Atsushi doesn’t even actually have cases right now, just reports to write--his and Dazai’s, since Dazai has decided that writing is too much work, and it’s actually far easier to just write his reports for him than to try and coax him into doing them himself. Kunikida seems to be happy enough with receiving them at all, although he still yells at Atsushi a fair bit for indulging Dazai’s laziness. Atsushi knows that’s out of fondness more than anything, though.
That’s not what upsets Atsushi, not why it feels like he moves through the early part of his work day in a strange, fragile haze. He feels like he’s a small child again, locked in a cage with the ever-present threat of a beating should he make even a squeak, should he move too much or breathe too loudly. He doesn’t think it’s overtly obvious, as he types on his computer and flips papers over with calm hands, his face smooth, but he feels tired and small and like he could break at any moment. He feels like a raw exposed nerve.
If anything, the bustle and petty bickering of his coworkers in the background, growing steadily louder as more and more of them arrive to the office, perk Atsushi up a little more, make him feel safer. There was never this kind of noise in the orphanage--it was a different sort of chatter, that of crying children and snapping older men. Listening to Kunikida scold Kenji for his incorrect grammar on his reports, for example, is a foreign feeling. The orphanage didn’t have the time nor the care to fix the children’s grammar.
“You can’t write it like that Kenji, it’s an official report,” Kunikida says, and Atsushi knows if he turns to look he’ll see Kunikida’s face, red with frustration.
“Well, nobody ever taught me how to write like you!” Kenji says, cheerful without a hint of bitterness. When he says it, it’s a simple fact. “I’ll do it your way next time.”
“No, you’ll do it my way this time ,” Kunikida says. “Here, I’ll show you,” he says, and Atsushi tunes them out once again as Kunikida shifts into teacher-mode, walking Kenji through grammar and spelling. It’s soothing to hear, Kunikida acting as a mentor to his junior, although it doesn’t calm Atsushi down so much that he doesn’t flinch when the doors to the office are slammed open with a kick.
“Hello~!” Dazai crows as he hops into the office, a huge grin on his face. His hair is messy as always, and he looks rather tired, but it’s hard to tell if it’s more than usual. “I’ve decided to come to work after all,” he announces, striding over to his desk only to walk right past it, depositing himself onto the couch. Atsushi watches, sighing. Dazai doesn’t so much as glance at him, which is a good thing, because if anyone were to notice that Atsushi is off today, it would have been his mentor.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Kunikida growls. “You need to actually write your own reports for once,” he says, marching over to the couch. “You’ve been making Atsushi do your work for far too long, and I won’t stand for it.”
“Atsushi doesn’t mind!” Dazai proclaims with a grin, before glancing over to Atsushi, a pleasant smile on his face. His brown eyes move over Atsushi’s face. “Does he?”
“N-No, it’s fine!” Atsushi says, painting a grin on his face and holding his hands up. Kunikida sighs, and all things move on as usual. Dazai doesn’t seem to have noticed a thing, and Atsushi feels like he is at home as the bickering and prodding continues.
--
It’s too big of a risk, doing it in the closet. Atsushi doesn’t think that Kyouka will notice, but he doesn’t want to risk it, and even if her senses aren’t supernaturally elevated, they’re still better than most. In the shower that night, Atsushi watches his blood mix with the warm, running water, staining it a ruddy, metallic red as it’s washed down the drain. The smell is covered by the strong scent of his shampoo, and the three wounds he makes, deep enough to see the fat of his forearm, are healed before the blood has even washed down the drain.
--
It’s odd. Atsushi feels fine, so long as he is around other people. He thinks it’s the only way that he’s managing to get away with this, which makes it sound as if he’s committing some sort of crime or conspiracy, but he really isn’t. He’s just... doing something that he has a feeling Dazai already does, anyway. He’s not stupid, after all. Dazai’s obsessed with suicide and wears bandages all the time, after all. What else could it be?
So, Atsushi comes to work on time and stays until everyone else leaves, which he was already doing anyway. He feels fine and happy and safe when he is around Kunikida or Dazai or Yosano or Tanizaki or Naomi or Kenji or any of the others. He smiles and writes reports and helps out on the little cases they’re given, even though none of them have required any combat, so he hasn’t actually had to go on any of them. He feels wonderful.
And then he goes home. Kyouka is there, sometimes. She disappears sometimes, which makes him uneasy and unsettled until one day she comes back and he smells the whipped cream and strawberries and crepe batter on her clothes and then he doesn’t feel quite so paranoid. He just feels a strange mixture of relief and guilt for having doubted her in the first place.
Atsushi supposes that the worst is when she isn't home. She goes on a mission with Yosano--it’s something that involves stealth, and there’s a good chance of civilians being injured, and more importantly, it’s at a women's only retreat. So, Kyouka’s gone for about a week and a half, more of it for travel time than for the mission itself.
Everything is fine, until he comes home and it feels like his head is full up of something dirty and nasty and overheated. He feels sick with it, nauseous and bloated, and the only thing he can think to do to give himself any kind of freedom from it is to drag something through the flesh of his arms, drawing blood and summoning up that strange sort of clarity, that fresh-faced feeling like he’s coming out of a deep well of cool, clean water.
--
On his fifth or sixth time, maybe, about two days into Kyouka being gone, he abandons the razor. It’s a spur of the moment decision, stupid and reckless. He’s in the bathroom of their shared room, and he hadn’t brought the razor with him--hadn’t wanted to be tempted, hadn’t wanted to hurt himself. He’d had a really good day, until he’d gotten home. He hadn’t hurt himself in a few days, either, and he’d started to think that maybe, just maybe he was over this little thing. Maybe it was just the stress or something. Maybe he was free from all of this.
He doesn’t make it into the shower. He stares at himself in the mirror and thinks of all of the people that he couldn’t save and it’s all too easy to turn his right hand into the claw of a tiger and bring his claws against his own skin. The four ragged scratches that result drizzle and splatter blood into the sink that takes him half an hour to completely clean up.
--
Atsushi wonders, at a certain point, how far he could push it before he gets caught by his coworkers. It’s a very Dazai thing to think, he thinks, but at the same time, he recognizes that he can’t blame them for not noticing. It’s not as if they have nothing at all on their own plates, after all, and Atsushi has been doing everything in his own power to hide it, after all.
What Atsushi is doing does not really qualify as self-harm , after all. He leaves no marks, causes no lingering harm to himself. If it weren’t for the blood (which he cleans up anyway), there would be no proof, anyway. He doesn’t even scar.
Part of him thinks that this is proof, then, that everything he’s heard about in whispers and in manga is really just dreams. Nobody is coming to save you , he thinks to himself, drumming his fingers along the cool surface of his desk. He’s an adult, now.
You must learn to endure pain , the voice of the headmaster says to him, against his will. His fingers freeze against the desk. He glances to the side, where Ranpo is watching him with a considering glance. Atsushi swallows, directs his eyes back to the computer screen in front of him that houses his report. He endures his pain.
--
In the evenings, he starts to resent the tiger inside of him, closing his wounds and wrapping his skin back together, knitting his muscle over his bone no matter how deep he rips open his own flesh. No matter what he does to himself, he can’t even leave behind the tiniest, lightest scar. He digs his claws, black and shiny and impervious, into his flesh over and over, and all he gets for it is a headache and a bit of lightheadedness from using his power or from the blood loss.
--
“Atsushi,” Dazai says, walking over and leaning on Atsushi’s desk. Atsushi watches as he presses his palms against the metal. “Let’s go for a walk.” It’s a simple, plain request. Coming from anybody but Dazai, it’d be the least suspicious thing in the world. From Dazai, it’s far too straightforward.
“Sure...” Atsushi answers nonetheless, glancing over to where the others should be working. Ranpo’s the first one to meet his eyes, giving him a nod--Kunikida’s out on an errand for the President--and Atsushi is comforted by it, even if he knows that Ranpo and Dazai might very well be in cahoots.
Atsushi rises from his desk and lets Dazai lead him to the door to the stairs.
--
Dazai can see the slouch to Atsushi's shoulders, the one that's been there in some manner since they've met. He can also see the way the kid is dragging his feet, the way that his eyes are darting around a bit like he's afraid that Dazai is up to something. To be fair, Dazai is up to something, although it’s for Atsushi’s own good, so Dazai wouldn’t count it, personally.
It’s a cool, rainy day outside, and there’s a sort of violet tint to the sky that Dazai’s fond of. It’s the right sort of day for hanging oneself, or jumping from a bridge over the sea. The view would be wonderful, and it’d be difficult for passerby to see and be horrified by the sight, thus reducing the collateral in the death. Dazai’s thought this through, you see, and he would share this with Atsushi, but his pupil seems a bit distracted, and Dazai knows it’d be a poor choice of conversation to bring up, anyway.
“Is it a girl?” Dazai asks, opening his eyes wide and leaning towards Atsushi, hands in his pockets to give the appearance of rapt curiosity. He figures that starting off with something light should help a bit, if only to ease the line of tension growing along Atsushi’s back.
It seems to work, too, because Atsushi startles, his eyes widening as he blinks at Dazai.
“W-What?” he asks, brows twitching. Dazai tips his head to the side slightly, tapping a finger against his cheek thoughtfully.
“Well, you’ve seemed a bit down lately, and I thought it might be because of unrequited love,” Dazai starts, moving his gaze so that he’s staring up ahead, but that he can still see Atsushi just fine in his periphery. “You know, it’s perfectly normal for someone your age. Dealing with matters of the heart can be difficult,” he says, pausing to press a hand over his chest, “but I’m well-versed on this sort of thing, and--”
“No, no,” Atsushi interrupts, shaking his head. “There’s nothing like that,” he says. Dazai peers over at him, and sure enough, he has his golden gaze pinned to the pavement below. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you worry about me,” he adds, voice soft. “I’m okay, though.”
It’s simple, but effective. Dazai will give Atsushi that--it’s not a good lie, because Atsushi certainly does not appear to be okay in any sense of the word--but isn’t a terrible lie, either. Dazai wonders if that’s a testament to his own training skills or to Atsushi’s intelligence. He thinks that, maybe, it’s too easy to underestimate the boy. Compared to Dazai himself and people like Ranpo, sure, Atsushi is no genius, but he certainly isn’t stupid.
“It’s fine to talk to us if you need help with something,” Dazai says, just as simply. He doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, after all. Atsushi clearly isn’t fine , but there doesn’t seem to be anything severe going on, either. He’s getting his work done, seems to be eating and sleeping and taking care of himself, and he seems to be happy enough most of the time. It’s just in the little moments of down time that something seems to be off, in the little pauses and bits of lag time that Dazai has noticed a melancholy about Atsushi.
“Okay,” Atsushi says. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
--
Atsushi keeps it in mind, but he does not talk to Dazai about anything. At first, he doesn’t know why--isn’t this what he wanted? Someone to listen to him? To help him? But then, he understands.
Atsushi knows that the offer is meaningless. Dazai is only offering help because he feels as though he should--like it is something that, as Atsushi’s mentor, he is required to provide. Atsushi can’t accept it.
That, and any time Atsushi thinks about doing so, something strange weighs on his mind. He thinks back to what now feels like ages ago, when he’d been affected by Q’s ability and had attacked Naomi and Haruno and afterwards, had said that he didn’t deserve to live and Dazai--
Do not pity yourself , Dazai had said, and his words had stung far more than the slap to Atsushi’s face did then or the claws in Atsushi’s forearms do now.
--
Atsushi starts to sneak out at night. It’s strange, sneaking out of his own dorm room. It feels odd that he should have to sneak at all--is it really forbidden, for him to do this? He sneaks nonetheless, if only because he doesn’t want to worry Kyouka, who has long since returned from her business trip, or any of the others who live in the dorms and might overhear him leaving late at night. He also doesn’t want to explain.
It feels like it would be a very Dazai thing to do, and Atsushi briefly entertains the thought of asking his mentor for tips on it, when Atsushi uses his power to haul himself onto a rooftop in one of the quieter, more industrial parts of town. The thought occurs to him that Dazai may have even done one of his suicide attempts on this very roof, although Atsushi personally doubts it. There’s simply no way Dazai would survive a fall from this height.
Atsushi has no desire to die, however. He’s chosen this rooftop because it’s impossible for anyone to see him from the ground, at this distance. He has all the time and space and peace and quiet he wants, and he uses it to take his shirt off and carve thick, bloody lines into his ribs and between the long bones of his forearms, up his biceps and under his collarbones. The thought of death by bleeding out, exsanguination as Yosano called it once, never even occurs to him--he gets dizzy, but not enough to worry about it, even as blood pools around him on the rooftop. He’s left bloodless and breathless that night, and while he never does quite so much damage again (it completely ruined the pants he was wearing), he does get close.
--
“You’ve gotten quite pale,” Kenji says one day in the afternoon over tea, tipping his head to the side. Everyone else is enjoying onigiri , but Kenji always has his when he gets back to his dorm so that he doesn’t fall asleep at his desk and drool on his paperwork. Atsushi blinks. Kenji is talking to him .
“Me?” Atsushi asks anyways. Kenji nods.
“Have you been getting enough to eat?” he asks, before seeming to come up with an idea. “Oh, and are you sleeping enough? You look quite tired.” At his side, Kyouka nods slowly. Atsushi swallows, praying to every god that he’s heard of that she hasn’t noticed his nearly nightly trips out into the city. Although, he’s not sure that it really matters at this point, because not only has Kenji’s commentary drawn her attention, but Ranpo, Kunikida, and Dazai are all looking at him too, their conversation dying out.
“I-I think so?” Atsushi says, shrugging and trying not to look too stressed out. He supposes that it’s a pointless endeavor, though, when Ranpo is involved. He can see the detective’s eyes moving over him, taking things in. Atsushi takes a nervous bite of his rice ball. He’s not really sure why he’s pale, to be quite honest. Maybe he really isn’t eating enough.
“Maybe I should be eating more,” he says, but it comes out really muffled, and it seems to relax everybody enough, because Ranpo’s eyes only dart over to Dazai’s for a moment before the detective laughs, shaking his head, and Kunikida pushes his glasses up his nose.
“It’s because you’ve been hanging around Dazai, surely,” Kunikida says, shaking his head. “All he ever eats is crab and alcohol. It’s no wonder you’re looking sick.”
The conversation moves on. Atsushi forgets about it. Any hint of a sour mood is chased away by the laughter and comfort of his friends, and he doesn’t notice when later, Ranpo nods to Dazai, and the two of them slip into the stairwell.
--
“Do you think the weretiger is depressed?” Dazai asks, his tone far too light for the topic of conversation. He’s drumming the pads of his fingers along his lips, his head tilted back as he tips his head back to look up at the sky. Ranpo can tell he’d like a cigarette, but even if Ranpo had one of them, he certainly wouldn’t be indulging Dazai like that.
“Yes,” Ranpo answers, blunt and simple. “I’m missing something,” he adds, as much as it would be an embarrassment to a lesser detective. Dazai seems to take it as some sort of strange admission, though, judging by the way the other man’s eyes flit to the side, widening.
“You, missing something? Should I make a note of this monumental day?” he says, sing-song. The joking nature is half to comfort himself, Ranpo knows. He also does not know, not completely, what is going on with his apprentice.
“He’s not being manipulated by an outside force,” Ranpo says, simply. “We would know that. There would be more clues.” Ranpo folds his arms over his chest. It’s a cold evening. Dazai nods.
“Hm,” he says, before tipping his head to the side. “But you don’t have enough to work with, if it’s all just inside his head, right? Even you, Ranpo?” There’s a teasing lilt to his voice, but Ranpo doesn’t like the edge to his voice all the same. Ranpo gives Dazai one of his best glares.
“Even me, Dazai,” he says, then waits for the length of two even, normal heartbeats. “You probably know more about these things than I do.” Ranpo watches Dazai’s narrow slightly. Nobody else would have noticed, just like nobody else would have noticed the way that Dazai’s jokes were not jokes, when Dazai first came to the agency. Just like nobody else would have noticed that Dazai’s hands moved too steady on a certain day, after a cabinet had been shut too quietly and carefully, when that cabinet normally hung slightly open even when the chain lock was firmly in place and when Dazai’s hands normally had a slight tremor to them, almost invisible.
Ranpo had, of course, also noticed that Dazai had swapped an entire bottle of pills for candies that looked nearly identical. He had noticed, instantly, that Dazai was loud about every suicide attempt except this one, which is why, of course, Ranpo had made sure that Dazai hadn’t been able to even really attempt that one. Dazai hasn’t forgotten that, Ranpo knows, even though they’ve never really spoken about it, not since the week it happened.
Dazai hasn’t tried again, not without calling Ranpo first, anyway. And, in return, Ranpo hasn’t stopped him without pointing out how terribly obvious he’s being. It’s a symbiotic relationship of sorts. It’s also why Ranpo is frustrated about the Atsushi situation, as his brain has come to label it. There’s something terribly easy to solve about a mystery that someone is desperate to hide , Ranpo’s brain informs him, and something terribly difficult about one that simply leaves behind no clues in the first place. Ranpo feels like a blundering idiot who is missing something very obvious. It must be what normal humans feel like all of the time.
“If it were anyone but Atsushi, I would say to check his wrists,” Dazai says, almost musing. Ranpo blinks.
“Why do you say ‘if it were anyone but him?’” Ranpo asks. He knows the answer, of course, but he wants to ask. Dazai knows this. He gives Ranpo a look .
“His regeneration,” Dazai says. Ranpo nods. It’s the conclusion he hadn’t come to when Kenji had mentioned how pale Atsushi was, but it was one that he should have.
“Blood loss,” Ranpo murmurs. Dazai nods.
“I hadn’t put that together just yet, but you’re absolutely right,” Dazai says with a sigh. “Jeez, I hadn’t meant to rub off on the poor kid quite so much.” He says it with a joking tone, but Ranpo knows he’s serious.
“As if anyone could take you seriously enough to start doing that just to be like you,” Ranpo scoffs. “Stop being melodramatic. Let’s go talk to him.”
--
When Dazai and Ranpo find him, Atsushi is not slicing himself up. He is not about to do something bad, not dramatically on a windswept rooftop or in a bloodstained bathroom, crying with his claws poised over his wrist.
Instead, he’s lying on his futon, face down with his butt positioned quite embarrassingly straight-up in the air. He hadn’t been sure if he’d always been this tired and just hadn’t noticed or if Kenji bringing up how he’d looked sick had actually brought it on in some kind of weird placebo effect, but when Atsushi had returned to his dorm, he’d had a terrible headache and a spinning kind of dizziness that had told him he’d had no choice but to lie down. He’d returned earlier than Kyouka, so he’d slid the door to his closet open and laid down, not even bothering to undress, and he’s in that state of half asleep and half buried in his thoughts when he hears the rap at the door.
“Atsushi?” It’s Ranpo’s voice, followed by the door opening. That’s odd--Atsushi could have sworn he’d locked it, but he supposes not. He doesn’t hear anyone picking the lock, either, or a key turning over, so he must have forgotten. Atsushi realizes a moment later that he hasn’t replied, but at that point, it’s too late, so he just kind of groans.
“Oh, he’s asleep!” Dazai croons. “How adorable.” Atsushi blinks his eyes open. The late afternoon light, warm and golden with hints of pink and violet tells him he hasn’t been resting that long. Work couldn’t have been out for too long--Ranpo and Dazai must have come here from the agency. They’re here because they’ve figured it out , a little voice in his head that sounds an awful lot like Dazai himself says, and Atsushi imagines hitting it with a hard fist.
“Mmph,” Atsushi grunts, rolling over into a sitting position and rubbing at his eyes. A constellation of sparks fills his vision at the pressure, but it makes him feel more awake. He focuses on Ranpo and Dazai, who seem quite tall when he is on the floor and they are standing. Atsushi blinks up at them. His headache has returned.
“Did... something happen?” Atsushi asks, his brain coming online. “Is there a case?” He starts to stand up, pulling himself to his feet, but a wave of unsteadiness, knocking him to the side, sends him reeling. Quick as a whip, Ranpo’s hand darts out and grabs his bicep, steadying him.
“Careful,” Ranpo says. He’s frowning. Atsushi doesn’t like that--Ranpo doesn’t frown often, and Atsushi thinks that every time he frowns like this , it’s been a fairly serious situation. Atsushi looks away from him, but the place where his eyes land is on Dazai, who’s watching him with what can only be described as a knowing look.
“It appears that your ability doesn’t allow you to regenerate blood as well as it allows you to heal injuries,” Dazai says, his voice light. Atsushi swallows. He thinks he must go pale, but he isn’t sure. Dazai’s eyes narrow further. Atsushi doesn’t ask how they’ve figured it out, doesn’t ask how they know--it’s Ranpo and Dazai, versus him. It’s painfully, clearly obvious. The two of them could outwit him any day.
“Should I--” he starts, swallowing. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” he says, his voice quiet and high pitched but not cracking. He’s not sure if he’s in trouble. He doesn’t think that he’d be kicked out, not necessarily. He hopes that, with the two of them, as smart as they are, that they’d understand what he’s asking for here. What he needs. He just--he doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t want to be made to give this up, but he also wants to want to stop. He doesn’t want to feel that deep, heavy blanket of despair and exhaustion and creeping dread every moment he’s even close to alone. He doesn’t want to see his headmaster in every shadowed corner, doesn’t want to see himself as a wild animal in every reflective surface.
“You’re coming back to my place,” Ranpo says, suddenly, and Dazai looks startled at that, too. “Both of you,” Ranpo says, arching one eyebrow slightly before he rolls his eyes slightly. Atsushi swallows.
“What about Kyouka?” he asks. Dazai squints at him.
“You don’t think she’s noticed that you’re leaving every night?” Dazai says, chuckling. “Please.”
--
Atsushi seems like he’s afraid and comforted all at once by this. Dazai knows the feeling exactly, and he thinks that’s what’s so unsettling about it. It reminds him of himself, if he had been raised differently. Not better --just differently. For all of what Atsushi’s been through, he’s learned to hide himself in a way that’s entirely different from Dazai. Instead of cloaking what he feels in a falsehood, Atsushi is simply quiet about it. Silent. There is no facade. Atsushi does not play happy and loud and joking. He just walks, head angled down slightly, between Ranpo and Dazai.
Dazai, of course, does not miss the way Atsushi’s right hand goes to clutch at his left forearm. He suspects that Ranpo does not miss it either, but Ranpo does not openly react. It’s not an overt move to harm himself, or it wouldn’t be, if Atsushi was a normal person. Dazai suspects it isn’t conscious. Atsushi’s strength is greater than a normal person, however, so the force in his fingers is greater than in a normal person’s Dazai reaches forward, wrapping the bare parts of his fingers over Atsushi’s hand. He can see some of the strength leave the iron-tight grip immediately, along with the little jump as Atsushi startles.
“S-Sorry,” Atsushi says, pulling his hand off of his arm. He looks back at Dazai sheepishly, biting at his lower lip. It looks like he genuinely had not intended to do that, then. He looks more startled that his hand had been there in the first place than that Dazai had stopped him.
“I’d prefer if you didn’t hurt yourself, Atsushi,” Dazai simply says. It feels awfully hypocritical, coming from him, but he knows that it’s the right thing to say, and he says it nonetheless. It still feels bitter in the back of his throat. Ranpo gives no reaction, but Dazai is sure that he’ll be hearing about that later. Ranpo will surely want to drill into his head that surely, you can understand where we are coming from, if you can say that to Atsushi?
The problem is not, however, that Dazai does not understand . It is that Dazai’s thoughts do not always agree with one another. He can understand perfectly well that his friends prefer him whole and undamaged and still think that he is better sliced into ribbons and bleeding into cotton gauze.
Dazai only hopes that he can help Atsushi before he ends up the same way.
--
Atsushi likes Ranpo’s apartment. It’s small, but in a cozy sort of way. It’s in more of a Western style than the dorms are, and when Ranpo directs him to sit on the couch, it’s comfortable even though he’s starting to feel a bit melodramatic and silly. You must learn to endure pain , the voice in his head tells him, in a voice that is rather like his own rather than that of the headmaster’s. He wonders if it’s normal, for the things that people told him to slowly become things he tells himself.
“Tell us,” Ranpo says, sitting backwards in a wooden chair so that the back is pressed against his chest, his arms draped over the top, watching Atsushi carefully. Dazai is standing off to the side, arms folded over his chest. He’s staring out the window, looking at the sky at dusk. It’s another violet-pale evening, soon to be dark. It’s the kind of day that would find Atsushi normally alone somewhere quiet, where he could hurt himself.
Of course, now that he’s here, with Ranpo and Dazai, he just feels a bit stupid and childish. He feels fine . The things that torment him when he’s alone feel rather flimsy when he’s in the company of others. He doesn’t have to endure pain--he has others to rely on. Someone like you will only bring misfortune on others , his head whispers, but Atsushi ignores it. It seems stupid. He just feels like a kid who’s been throwing a tantrum. Like one of the toddlers at the orphanage, upset because playtime is over.
“It’s--it’s really not that big of a deal,” Atsushi says, looking to the side that Dazai isn’t on. He can feel his face flushing. Dazai clicks his tongue, but it’s Ranpo who speaks.
“You know that isn’t the case,” he says, voice calm. There is no accusation in it, but Atsushi feels accused nonetheless. Atsushi breathes, slow.
“Tell me what you know first,” he says, begs . He feels like he’s caught in a strange whirlwind when it’s the two of them. They’re smarter than him, better than him. They’re detectives and he’s just a kid that they’ve opted to save. He’s a planet orbiting around the suns of the detective agency. He can’t hope to compare to them, but he can only hope that they won’t discard him or think of him as lesser over something like this.
(Atsushi knows, deep down, that they won’t. Discard him, that is. He’s been thrown away before, but he doesn’t think Ranpo or Dazai would waste time taking him back to Ranpo’s place, if that was their intention. It doesn’t stop the fear. He doesn’t want to be thrown away again, now that his dirty little secret has been discovered. A beast beneath the moonlight, first as a tiger and now as this .)
“You’ve been hurting yourself,” Ranpo says. “Sneaking out to do so, although it didn’t start that way. It most likely escalated.” His eyes move over Atsushi’s body. “Probably when I was on a case.” He thinks. “A month ago. When I was gone, and Kyouka went with Yosano to the mountains. That’s when you started.”
He doesn’t have to explain how he knows. Atsushi already knows. He just nods, the movement jerky. It makes his hair, uneven and silver, bob in the corner of his vision. Atsushi is horrified to feel tears well in his eyes. He is suddenly struck with the desperate urge to dig his claws into his flesh, feel them scrape against the bones, to feel them slice through the skin and thin layer of fat, the strong, corded muscle. The white tendons, the pulsing arteries and sluggish veins. Atsushi swallows around the lump in his throat. It’s harder to breathe, but not impossible.
“You use your hands,” Ranpo continues. Dazai’s gaze moves from the window to Atsushi, lingering on where Atsushi’s hands clench reflexively into fists. “And you heal quickly enough that there’s no need to worry about hiding it, so the location doesn’t particularly matter.”
“Yeah,” Atsushi croaks out, although he knows that Ranpo doesn’t need the confirmation to know he’s right. He wishes he hadn’t asked Ranpo to say it, now, because all he can think about now is doing it, which isn’t something that had really happened to him around others, not when they were actively engaged with him like this. It certainly has happened before in the office, but only if everyone is quiet and doing their own sort of thing. Not when they’re speaking to him, regarding him with thoughtful eyes.
“Deep breath,” Dazai says, and there’s a hint of fondness in his voice that Atsushi hopes he is not just imagining. Atsushi complies either way. He sucks in a deep, painful breath around the building lump in his throat; it stings his eyes and burns his throat. It works, though, quells the desperate feeling in his chest somewhat, so Dazai must know what he is talking about. Atsushi wonders if Dazai has felt this way, or if it’s different for geniuses.
“What are you going to do?” Atsushi says. Ranpo tips his head to the side slowly.
“Going to do?” he asks, echoing Atsushi. “What would you like us to do?” He seems to be considering Atsushi carefully. Atsushi feels like a bug pinned under a lamplight, being dissected under a microscope.
He opens his mouth to reply, but he closes it just as quickly. He doesn’t know what he wants. On some level, he wants it to go like it would in the stories he’d read to the younger kids at the orphanage--easy and simple, where he tells Dazai and Ranpo he needs help and he gets it. He gets help (whatever that means) and he gets better (whatever that looks like).
On another level, Atsushi does not want to stop at all. He wants to tell Ranpo and Dazai to leave it be and let him be. He knows, on some level, that what he’s doing right now is not working. This alone is proof of that--if it was working perfectly fine, if he were perfectly functional, he would not be caught. His ability means that he doesn’t leave one mark behind, not even a scar, and if he had not been so reckless, he wouldn’t be weakened by the blood loss, either. If he wasn’t so out of it, wasn’t so mentally twisted up in knots like he is, then he wouldn’t have been found out in the first place.
“Atsushi, you’re thinking too loudly,” Dazai reprimands, but his voice is soft, sing-songy. It’s gentle. Atsushi swallows, feels his throat click.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not sure that I--that I want to stop,” he says, picking at the sleeves of his shirt. He looks down at the ground. “But I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”
“There’s no supposed to,” Ranpo says, leaning forward in his chair with a sigh. “I can tell you that you should stop, though,” he says, the green of his eyes glinting in the artificial light of the apartment. “It’ll be better for you, both physically and mentally. These things are addicting.”
Atsushi’s eyes move to Dazai without meaning to. It’s like he’s asking the question without meaning to, too, judging by the way that Dazai sighs, and slumps over before walking forward.
“Jeez,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re really gonna go there, Atsushi?” Dazai asks, his fingers slipping below the edge of the bandages on his left hand as he plops onto the couch beside Atsushi.
“You don’t have to,” Atsushi says quickly. “If you don’t want to.”
“I know,” Dazai says simply, cheerfully. He begins to unwind the bandages on his hand and wrist. “I want to.” His movements are neat, practiced. Atsushi feels almost sick watching. The scars start before Dazai’s hands end, before the wrist really begins. It is immediately obvious that many of them are self-inflicted, but at first, they are just scars--silvery and white and neat, parallel lines on Dazai’s wrist. What makes Atsushi swallow is when they get just past the part of Dazai’s wrist where the end of a normal long-sleeved shirt cuff would rest.
For one thing, there are scars that do not appear to be of Dazai’s own making. Atsushi can’t be sure--Dazai doesn’t seem like the type to balk at doing it to himself--but the neat, parallel marks do not match the haphazard wounds of battle or the cigarette-burn scars that are mostly covered by self harm scars. They look mostly old, except for a couple of scars that Atsushi swears he can recall Dazai getting in a knife fight about two months ago, just little scrapes from blocking a slash to the face. They’re minor, considering, but it’s a shock. Atsushi had almost forgotten that Dazai can scar, given how much the man covers his skin and how everyone else at the agency has the benefit of Yosano’s gift to heal them before they get the chance.
What’s perhaps more striking, though, is the fresh cuts. Not fresh , like the way wounds are right after a battle or the way Atsushi’s wounds are before his ability heals them shut, but fresh in the way that they’re not scars . Atsushi does not know how old they are--he’s always healed much, much faster than an ordinary person, he thinks, even before his ability fully manifested--but they look to be newer than he would have thought. There’s a line of them, marching down Dazai’s wrist, scabbed over but angry around the edges. They look like they’d be itchy, and the scabs are peeling off of some of them, but the ones further down look fresher, newer. There’s bruising around the margins of the wounds, yellowish and grey.
“I’m sure you already had an idea,” Dazai says as he starts to wrap the bandages back over the wounds. His voice is light, like he’s speaking about the weather. “But I thought it might be important to show you.” Atsushi nods. It feels a bit like his head is full up of helium, like he’s up in the clouds. He remembers when Kyouka nearly died for him, would have died for him, had she not gotten control over Demon Snow at the last moment. He rather thinks that he should have died, there. Akutagawa should have let him die.
“Atsushi,” Ranpo says, snapping his fingers. The sound is not loud, but it startles Atsushi enough for him to jerk in place nonetheless. “Stay focused.” Atsushi wonders if Dazai will slap him again, if he drifts off enough.
“Sorry,” Atsushi murmurs, chastised nonetheless. Ranpo just watches him. Dazai leans back into the couch, pulls his legs up into a criss-cross position. His bandages are back in place, neat as if nothing had happened.
“We aren’t going to force you to stop, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Dazai says lightly. “It’d be hypocritical, you know?” Atsushi nods. “We’re not mad at you about it, either. Again, would sort of be hypocritical.”
“It’d only be hypocritical for you,” Ranpo says, a haughty air to it. His voice is serious though when he adds, “I’m not angry at you either, Atsushi.” He reaches up, rests his cheek on the palm of his hand. “We’re concerned about you.” There’s a pause, as he thinks. “You won’t be kicked out for this, either.”
Atsushi’s face flushes. He shouldn’t be embarrassed at being read so easily--it is Ranpo, after all--but he is. He supposes that it’s straightforward to deduce, enough that he’s pretty sure that he’d figure it out too, given the same set of circumstances.
“That’s... that’s good,” he says, because he isn’t really sure what to say, and it certainly is good. Ranpo watches him. Dazai, next to him, wriggles a bit. Atsushi swallows, then continues.
“I think I... I think I’ll try to stop,” Atsushi says. It sounds stupid. Weak. You must learn to endure pain , the headmaster whispers, and Atsushi’s head twitches with the force of resisting the urge to turn to look at where the man appears in Atsushi’s peripheral vision. Ranpo’s gaze narrows. Atsushi pretends he does not notice.
“Okay,” Dazai says. “Then we’ll try to help.”
--
It does not go well, at first. Ranpo is partly convinced that he’d completely misread Atsushi, somehow--the weretiger had been, for all intents and purposes, completely genuine when he’d said he would try to stop.
The first inkling that Ranpo has that it won’t be easy is, of course, right when Atsushi had said as much. Ranpo’s seen the way Atsushi seems to see things nobody else does before, of course. He’s not blind , nor is he stupid, but Ranpo does not know the full extent of what, exactly, Atsushi sees. He suspects that Atsushi hallucinates something from his past, some form of psychosis brought on by depression. It’s something that Ranpo himself is somewhat familiar with, if only tangentially. Dazai’s issues had been more in the realm of delusion than hallucinations, but Ranpo has an idea, and that’s enough. He’s also been reading up on it, which doesn’t hurt.
The second time that Ranpo starts to think that, perhaps, Atsushi will struggle with this, is the first night after their talk. Not that night itself, when Atsushi slept in Ranpo’s spare room with Dazai not-so-subtly keeping watch from the living area, “sleeping” on Ranpo’s couch. That had gone well. Atsushi had more or less revealed that he felt fine around others, which Ranpo had already pieced together, so it didn’t surprise Ranpo in the slightest that Atsushi slept well with Dazai in his line of sight, the bedroom door open.
The next night seemed a bit soon, but Ranpo considers it a foolish oversight on his part to not have considered it. Atsushi had not only been back in his own dorm, but he’d seen Dazai’s own wounds the night prior. Ranpo doesn’t have personal experience with this, but he knows enough from Dazai to know that seeing someone else do it, seeing someone else’s wounds, brings the thought to mind. Ranpo should have predicted this, should have used Ultra Deduc--should have thought it through.
It starts simply. They have gone back to their homes for the night, except perhaps Dazai, who tells Ranpo he is going to a bar. It’s code for moping around the city, which is code for I’m not feeling well but I don’t want to do something dangerous , which is better than just doing something stupid for Dazai. Ranpo, in hindsight, thinks he’s a bit distracted by that. It’s not an unusual condition for Dazai--happens maybe about once or twice a week--but Ranpo stays alert and near his phone when it happens nonetheless.
He’s at his phone, scrolling through some story ideas Poe sent him, when he gets a text from Kyouka.
Atsushi snuck out , it reads. Ranpo breathes out. He types out a reply to Kyouka.
Thank you for informing me, he sends. She doesn’t reply, but the message is marked as read. It’s typical for her. Ranpo breathes out and dials Dazai’s number in one move, rising from his bed to tug on his shoes.
“Dazai,” he says when the other man picks up on the second ring. “Where are you?”
“Why?” Dazai answers, sounding a mixture of surprised and breathless. “Do you miss me?” It’s teasing, light, but Ranpo knows Dazai is smart enough to understand the situation.
“Kyouka texted me and said Atsushi left his dorm,” Ranpo says. “I’ll approach from the East. What side of town are you on?”
“Damn,” Dazai says. “I’ll be from the northwest,” he says, “but Ranpo, do you think that’s wise?” Ranpo can hear him moving anyway.
“Why, he might not want to be interrupted?” Ranpo asks sarcastically. “I don’t really care if it’s a little upsetting, Dazai. It’s not the same as it is with you, and you know it.” Ranpo pushes away at the frustration that builds in his chest. It won’t make him work faster or better, and it won’t help Atsushi. Dazai does not think rationally about these things. Expecting him to would be, in and of itself, irrational.
“Right,” Dazai says. His voice is firm. Ranpo relaxes. Still, he’ll have to deal with that later, although it may be better to call Nakahara and make it his problem. Or harass Kunikida, not that he’d appreciate the extra work. Ranpo’s sure that there is a way to help Dazai, even though it will take far longer than anything they could do for Atsushi.
--
Atsushi is on the roof when they find him. He doesn’t have any wounds, but there’s blood around him, on the concrete surface. The wind whipping around him smells bright-copper-sharp, like loose change or sea spray. Salty. Atsushi’s right hand is a claw, resting on the underbelly of his left forearm, his shirt discarded and pinned under a cinderblock a good distance away. His claws are warm--there’s a quick that pumps blood through them, keeps them living-hot. Once, on a mission, he’d ripped one, and it’d hurt worse than losing a fingernail. It had bled like nothing else.
“Atsushi,” Ranpo says, and Dazai moves forward quickly, like a dart flying through the air. Atsushi does not try to stop him. He’d heard them coming up the stairs. He’d heard them coming down the street, actually. This building was not far from the dorm, and he knew it would be painfully easy for Ranpo to deduce where he had gone. He thinks he had wanted them to find him, but now he’s not so sure.
Dazai’s fingers, cool and careful, wrap around his right wrist. His claw becomes human once again, and Dazai pries his hand away from his forearm, as if he could even hurt himself with his clipped-short fingernails. Atsushi does not resist. He had held off on hurting himself while they approached, so they wouldn’t see it happen. His vision blurs with tears, and he’s not sure if he feels dizzy or not.
“You should have called,” Dazai says quietly, and he pulls Atsushi up from his crouching position, into a tight embrace. It’s odd. Atsushi wonders, for a moment, if he’s dreaming. It feels like he must be; Dazai is not the type to be so affectionate, not like this. Atsushi buries his face in his coat nonetheless. He can feel himself shaking distantly, but he doesn’t think it’s from the cold.
“Get his shirt,” Dazai says, his voice directed over his head, at Ranpo. Atsushi wonders if Ranpo nods; there’s no reply, but Ranpo’s footsteps move over the rooftop, and a moment later, Dazai’s pulling away slightly and helping him tug the button-down back on, covering his arms and back. Atsushi’s skin has become covered with goosebumps, prickled up with cold or fear or something.
“Sorry,” Atsushi says. “I--” he cuts himself off. You must learn to endure pain , his headmaster tells him, whispering along with the wind. Atsushi hadn’t wanted to burden them. This pain is his to endure, and it is his alone. He thinks back to his childhood. Drive this nail through your foot , his mind whispers, and he thinks about the way that felt. He thinks about the fact that Dazai’s hands are on the fabric of his shirt now, not his bare skin.
“Dazai,” Ranpo says, and Atsushi glances over to him at the same time Dazai does. Ranpo’s mouth presses to a thin line, and Dazai’s eyes narrow before he drops one of his hands, grabbing Atsushi’s right hand with his left. Atsushi swallows, shame rising in his face along with a blush. Of course Ranpo had noticed.
“Sorry, Atsushi,” Dazai says with a shrug and a bittersweet smile. “It’s better safe than sorry, you know?” He meets Atsushi’s gaze. “Were you going to kill yourself?” he asks, tipping his head to the side. The wind whips through his hair, brushing the messy brown waves over his face. Atsushi stares at him. He feels like he’s been struck.
“What?” he asks. He feels numb.
“That’s a no, then,” Dazai says. Atsushi sees Ranpo watching, calculating.
“No, I--I wasn’t,” Atsushi says. He feels like a chastised child. He wants to wrap his arms around himself, hug his body, but he can’t do that with Dazai holding his hand. As if sensing that, Dazai gives his hand a squeeze. The pressure is grounding.
“Good,” Dazai says, and Atsushi releases a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
--
Ranpo, of course, keeps a closer eye on Atsushi after their first slip up. There are others--they don’t keep him on suicide watch or anything like that, primarily because he isn’t suicidal and also because Dazai convinces him that Atsushi needs to know that they trust him. They bring Kunikida, Yosano, and Fukuzawa into it, after that night on the rooftop. They each help in their own ways, although Ranpo and Dazai are still the ones who deal with it the most directly.
For one thing, Atsushi moves into Ranpo’s guest room. Ranpo had been against it at first, for the sole reason that he’s opposed to any sort of change in his routine or living situation, but he hadn’t voiced that opinion to anyone but the president. Fukuzawa, of course, had pointed out to Ranpo that in a few short days it would become Ranpo’s new routine and that Ranpo had given up a lot more for much less, and that had been it.
Atsushi is very quiet, and doesn’t take up much space. He doesn’t make much noise in his sleep, either, even when he’s clearly having nightmares. Ranpo knows it’s considered creepy to watch someone sleep, but that’s never stopped him. Atsushi twitches and grimaces and whimpers in his sleep, but it’s near silent. He’s clearly used to having to avoid waking others.
Ranpo does not ever see Atsushi try to hurt himself, but he knows when Atsushi is about to. He can tell by the tension that builds, the kind of desperate energy that fills the other boy, the way Atsushi seems to flinch at things Ranpo can’t hear, the way his eyes fix on things Ranpo can’t see. Ranpo tries to be in the same room as Atsushi, during those times, and it seems to work. He knows Atsushi slips up, here and there. He’s not stupid--he can smell the blood in the shower, knows that there’s no other way Atsushi would be that relaxed afterward--but he does not press the issue. Ranpo is also well aware of the fact that Atsushi knows that he knows.
Yosano gets Atsushi on a diet with more iron in it. She briefly suggests the idea of therapy to Dazai, who laughs about it to Ranpo later, although Ranpo isn’t so sure it’s such a terrible idea as Dazai thinks it is. Dazai’s brain and Ranpo’s brain are not the same kind as most people’s--Atsushi may gain some benefit. It’s ultimately dismissed because it would be difficult for Atsushi to talk about some of the classified information from certain cases, and because he does seem to be improving. Ranpo’s aware that Kunikida brought it up to Atsushi himself at one point, only to have the idea dismissed as unnecessary. Ranpo isn’t sure how he feels about that, really.
--
Dazai wonders if it’s his fault.
Surely, it isn’t--he hadn’t encouraged that kind of behavior so much as demonstrated it, right? Dazai tells himself that, anyway, just like he also tells himself that he believes that none of the fault lies with himself. Atsushi is getting better, as far as he can tell, and Ranpo believes he is as well. Dazai considers himself to be fairly intelligent, and Ranpo even more so, so he does not doubt this observation. Atsushi is improving, but nonetheless, the fact exists that such a problem was able to develop in the first place, and Dazai cannot simply ignore the fact that he is a clear influence on Atsushi’s behavior.
The color comes back to Atsushi’s skin. He stops having those moments of dull, lifelessness, of strange unease. When Dazai catches him on evening walks, he is not going to hurt himself--he seems bright, happy. He is honest. Dazai has no doubt that he has bad days. He catches the kid crying, sometimes, but it’s never alone . Sometimes, he’s the one that Atsushi texts. Usually, though, it’s a knock on his door, or Atsushi comes up to him at work, pulls him aside. Asks if they can talk, or if they can just sit in the same room.
Dazai thinks it’s enough, for Atsushi. It seems to be enough. He doesn’t show Atsushi his arms again, under the bandages, but there’s one day, over six months after that first evening on Ranpo’s couch, that Atsushi asks.
“Did you ever manage to stop?” Atsushi asks, his gaze bright even in the evening. He seems curious and bright, not apprehensive. By Dazai’s count, it’s been at least two months since his last relapse.
“No,” Dazai says simply. He does not remove the light smile from his face. “You’ve surpassed me in that regard,” he says. Atsushi regards him with a thoughtful look that, if Dazai was asked, he might say Atsushi picked up from living with Ranpo.
“You’ve been doing it for years, right?” Atsushi says, then frowns. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
“It’s okay,” Dazai says. “I have.” He looks out at the sidewalk in front of them. It’s warm, tonight. “That’s why Ranpo and I wanted to help you stop early. It only gets harder.”
“Yeah,” Atsushi says. There’s a pause. Dazai uses it to steady himself. “Thank you,” Atsushi says. “For helping me. You didn’t have to.” There’s an earnest tone to his voice that squeezes something that’s still tender deep within Dazai’s chest.
“Of course I didn’t have to,” Dazai says, chuckling. “But it’s what we wanted to do.” Dazai looks over to Atsushi. “People who care about you don’t feel burdened when you let them help you. They feel burdened when you don’t.” Dazai thinks, perhaps, that he finally understands Ranpo and why he keeps trying to save Dazai even after he’s failed so many times. Atsushi’s face splits with a soft smile and his eyes water up with tears.
“Okay,” he says, and he wraps his arms around Dazai. Dazai hugs him back, patting the top of his head, his silky soft hair, and he feels content.