Work Text:
It’s the summer heat, Akutagawa surmises. It’s always the summer heat.
It is always the summer when things begin to crack and fester. Wilt would be a better word, she supposes, for Akutagawa knows not how to crack when she has held herself together violently enough that even the cracks merge. It had been a summer day when she had taken a hand shrouded in bandages, and it had been a summer day when she had taken her first life.
Her apartment is empty with Gin on a mission and her bones melt under the heat, her mood worsening till the familiar itch for a fight begins to pick at her skin. Akutagawa huddles beneath her coat, knees tucked beneath her chin as some romance drama drones on, and wishes summer would end already.
Mid-evening Yokohama shows no signs of cooling down as Akutagawa drowses on her settee and she desperately wishes she could be anywhere else besides her stifling apartment.
She hates the summer, even more, she decides, when Chuuya-san bursts through her apartment door unannounced. Akutagawa blinks in surprise at this, instinctively tucking her knees further into her chest. Chuuya-san is respectful, doesn’t make a habit of bursting into her home and so this behaviour is surprising.
“The fuck kind of wood is your door made of rookie,” Chuuya-san snarls, looking frazzled, and Akutagawa realizes she must not have heard Chuuya-san knocking. She flushes at that, the tips of her ears burning in embarrassment, and fails to notice the way Chuuya’s gaze softens.
“My apologies, Chuuya-san, but what are you doing here?” she asks instead, and only then truly notices what Chuuya-san is wearing — a cropped yellow hoodie, basketball shorts, and even a baseball cap, it’s most definitely not what she usually wears for missions. Akutagawa has never seen Chuuya-san dressed so casually and she wonders if the heat is making her go mad; that must be the only reason she cannot tear her eyes away from Chuuya-san’s legs. If she notices, however, Chuuya-san doesn’t comment on it and merely sighs in response, Akutagawa braces herself for impact.
“Akutagawa, we’re going to the sentō!” she says instead
“No”
“Yes”
“No, Chuuya-san” Akutagawa begs.
“It’s Port Mafia mandated,” she replies, hands on her hip and chin jutted out like she intends to fight Akutagawa over it. She probably does.
“Is it?”
“Come on, rookie,” she says at Akutagawa’s dubious look, “you don’t look like you’re faring very well over there anyway. It would do you some good,” and Akutagawa knows she has already lost.
—
Akutagawa knows all about Chuuya-san’s ways of checking up on her. She had heard of Chuuya-san upon joining the Port Mafia, of course — the gravity manipulator who could fell entire cities, the ability user who commanded her subordinates like a war general, Dazai-san’s partner — and she had not cared. It had only been after Dazai-san’s desertion that Chuuya-san had managed to infiltrate Akutagawa’s life and that the syllables of 'Nakahara-san' had forcibly replaced themselves with that of 'Chuuya-san'; she could never really drop the honorifics like Chuuya-san insisted.
Akutagawa doesn’t understand why Chuuya-san bothers, doesn’t understand how she has garnered the attention of one of the Port Mafia’s strongest executives and doesn’t understand how she is able to bask in such trust and respect without having earned it. She never asks why, though, even as she seethes and grits her teeth at what she had previously construed to be pity. She never asks, even as her stomach roils at the unfamiliar experience of being cared for, even as she grudgingly enjoys it.
She never asks, and Chuuya-san is never subtle about the way she casually checks up on Akutagawa. She hadn’t been when Dazai-san had first deserted them, and she isn’t now, four years later. The invitations to dinner, to a drink at the bar, to tea at one of Ozaki-san’s teahouses. The invitations to train. The sporadic hair ruffling.
Akutagawa had accepted at first, out of deference, out of an inane wish to glean some information about Dazai-san but soon began to decline all invitations except for training, and the ones she couldn’t wrangle herself out of.
Which is how she finds herself holding onto Chuuya-san as they race through the sprawl of Yokohama on her hot pink motorbike, to a fucking sentō.
—
It isn’t the first time she’s been forced on a trip to a bathhouse. The Mafia’s employee benefits package occasionally involves onsen trips, specifically with Akutagawa in mind, it appears, and every time, every single time, she detests it.
This time, she is thankful that it is just Chuuya-san but even as she thinks that, she feels the entire length of her body burn at the thought.
It is a blessed relief that the sentō is empty, suspiciously empty. There is not a single soul in the public bathhouse and Akutagawa wonders if Chuuya-san had anything to do with it. When she glances over, however, Chuuya-san is bending down to take off her shoes as per etiquette and Akutagawa can’t help it when her eyes drift to the way those basketball shorts ride up. She wants to die.
She follows Chuuya-san inside, eyes glued to the places where the tiles meet. She does not look at Chuuya-san’s bare feet, does not look at the curve of her calf muscles and she doesn’t dare lift her head till she feels the heat in her face subside.
The moment they are inside, Akutagawa rushes to the changing rooms, ignoring Chuuya-san’s look of concern. She’s grateful for the sliding doors that separate the changing rooms from the bath, grateful to be separated from the starburst burn of Chuuya-san’s presence.
She doesn’t understand what this feeling is, why she feels like this. It isn’t an unfamiliar feeling around Chuuya-san but it eats away at her till it threatens to dissolve her very bones. It doesn’t boil in her chest like anger or sit at the bottom of her stomach and corrode away at it like bitterness. Her instincts — honed to the sharpness of a blade’s edge, to the strength of a carnivore’s canines — do not tell her what to guard against here.
Akutagawa takes off her clothes, folds them, unfolds them, and folds them again. She places them in their designated area, and, even after all this time, hesitates.
She detests baths, detests having to divest herself of her last bastion, detests having to break down her fortresses, but this is not the first time and she does not want to act a child. She detests herself, most of all, for having such a weakness, for depending on Rashōmon so much, for knowing that her fear would disappoint Dazai-san, and yet being unable to do anything about it.
“Oi Akutagawa, are you coming or not?” Chuuya-san shouts, successfully breaking her out of her reverie and she hurries out of the changing rooms before she can change her mind and leave altogether.
The sentō is much larger than normal sentō’s and the bath sits at the very centre of the room and sprawls in the shape of a lotus flower, the petals of the supposed flower narrowing out to form secluded alcoves of sorts. The incandescent light bulbs that hang around the bathhouse in equal intervals are a dim gold and Akutagawa can see how the Port Mafia must profit from a sentō as grand as this.
She’s glad though, that Chuuya-san’s back is turned to her as she makes her way to the bath. She can’t imagine what she would do if Chuuya-san were to look at the lines of her bones and the scars on her skin, can’t imagine what she would do if she were to look at Chuuya-san’s face lined in gold, dripping the ichor of gods and her hair tied up. Akutagawa thinks she’d run for her life.
Despite herself, Akutagawa sighs as she enters the bath, the cool water soothing away the summer heat and the burn of self-consciousness. Chuuya-san must hear her, for she smirks loudly and Akutagawa politely ignores it.
“Isn’t this nice? Aren’t you glad I came, rookie?” Chuuya-san asks as she reclines with her head against the stone platform behind her, turning slightly to address Akutagawa.
It truly is nice and Akutagawa is glad she came but she cannot admit to finding this, a bath, more agreeable than the silent heat of her own home and so, “I am no longer a rookie,” she says.
“Hmm, I suppose you’re not, it’s been four years after all,” Chuuya-san replies, soft, like she knows this is a knife that she must not twist any deeper, for either of them.
Four years, it’s been four years since Dazai-san’s desertion, four years since Dazai-san left her behind, left Chuuya-san behind as well. The power vacuum she’d left behind had been disastrous and bloodthirsty, much like the Port Mafia itself. Internal assassinations and ambitious coup d'états, all crushed by the Boss and the executives in his support but it had left them bloody and bruised, all to honour Dazai-san’s goodbye.
“Chuuya-san,” Akutagawa begins, hesitant. These are waters she does not want to step on, and at the same time, desperately wants to tread. “What was being partners with Dazai-san like?”
It’s cheating, she knows, to ask about Dazai-san like this. To learn about her mentor from the mouths of others, but Akutagawa has always been single-minded, always the arrow that looks for the shortest path towards its mark, and so she doesn’t regret asking it.
Chuuya-san doesn’t answer, and Akutagawa wonders if she went too far. When she glances a look at her side, Chuuya-san’s eyes are closed in contemplation. There’s a crease between her brows that can only be at the memory of Dazai-san and the water laps at her collarbones like a hungry dog.
The exposed bronze of Chuuya-san’s neck, of her collarbones, of the peek that Akutagawa is allowed of her breasts, fills her with a strange heat, a dangerous warmth that promises death and pleasure both.
“Being with Dazai, that bastard, was like running after an enemy that only she could see,” Chuuya-san sighs at last. “It was infuriating, I wanted to kill her all the time.”
And it is so very Chuuya-san to say that and so very Dazai-san to have that said of her, that Akutagawa snorts a laugh that morphs into a surprised, unannounced giggle. Akutagawa did not even know she could make such a sound.
When she has stifled her laughter behind her fingers, she notes that Chuuya-san has turned to properly face her, eyes half-lidded as she stares and Akutagawa cannot help but wonder what it is that she sees.
“Why do you ask, Akutagawa?” Chuuya-san asks, something bright and dangerous in the blue of her eyes. It glints, Akutagawa thinks, like light reflecting off of a metal surface, like the glimmer of a shark fin beneath the surface of still waters. Akutagawa shivers.
“I-I just wanted to know more about Dazai-san,” she admits, gaze averted, shame-faced at having been caught cheating. It is as true as it is not, and Akutagawa wonders distantly if maybe she had simply wanted to hear of a Dazai-san that did not affect them so deeply, that did not affect Chuuya-san as much as she did.
“And why would you want to know more about that shitty bandage-wasting machine?”
“Because Dazai-san says you need to know everything about your mission, about your target,” Akutagawa replies, still staring at the water. Even under perusal, even under Chuuya-san’s strange scrutiny, Akutagawa absurdly does not wish for Rashōmon.
“And you’ve decided that earning Dazai’s approval is your mission? Why?” Chuuya-san asks. Akutagawa looks up at that and immediately regrets it, for Chuuya-san is far closer than she previously was and water droplets cling to the slope of her shoulders, kissing the gold of her neck. They cling to her eyelashes as well, as a lover would, and Akutagawa is but a prisoner to Chuuya-san’s gaze, to the uneven thudding of her pulse.
“Because that is my reason to live,” she admits in a whisper. Chuuya-san’s eyes are impossibly bright as they look between hers and Akutagawa wishes she could curl up, escape this scrutiny, this violence of gentleness.
“Is the fact that you are alive, that you are human, not reason enough to live?” Chuuya-san snarls against the skin of her ear. The question is soft, and Akutagawa remembers, inexplicably, how soft the soil would feel before a landslide.
And for all of Dazai-san’s casual cruelty, she has never made Akutagawa tremble like this; without fear
—
When Chuuya-san takes her chin, Akutagawa tilts her head willingly, and when Chuuya-san crowds impossibly closer, pushes her against the stone platform of the empty bath, she goes just as willingly. She does not fear this helplessness, for before her is no god or demon and Chuuya-san has never looked so disastrously, blindingly, terrifyingly human.
She sees it coming — the natural disaster — with the way Chuuya-san’s eyes are half-lidded and hungry. She knows this hunger. It has made its place in the very marrow of her bones, and it is a different intimacy to see it reflected back at her. She sees it coming — landslide, tsunami, volcanic eruption — with the way Chuuya-san’s hands find her waist, the way they dig in slightly. She sees it coming — bells tolling and alarms ringing, evacuation drills in place — as Chuuya-san slips her thigh between Akutagawa’s legs and brushes their breasts together.
Akutagawa sees it all coming, and she is paralyzed. She has never known such intimacy, never known such gentleness at the hands of another. She has never known such freedom from fear.
“What are you waiting for?” She wants to scream, “why don’t you simply take?” but her lips are no longer her own to speak with.
But it is just like Chuuya-san to breathe against the seam of Akutagawa’s lips, to caress the soft of her thigh, to touch the back of her hand to Akutagawa’s burning cheek, and whisper: “Live, Akutagawa”, the ‘for yourself', going unsaid but understood nevertheless.
And Akutagawa remembers then, that she is not one to submit to natural disasters — that she would fight the sun if she could, make him swallow the core of his self — and pushes forward to capture Chuuya-san’s lips between her own.
She feels Chuuya-san gasp in surprise against her lips and fights a smirk at the reaction, but there is only so long that Akutagawa can revel in her minor victory before the chasm of their experience swallows her.
And swallow her, it does.
Chuuya-san kisses her till Akutagawa feels as though her lips will melt off. She licks at the seam of Akutagawa’s lips, at the roof of her mouth, and bites at the plush bottom of her lower lip until she’s swallowing Akutagawa’s open-mouthed gasps. Chuuya-san sucks at Akutagawa’s tongue, digging her fingers into the skin of her waist, and Akutagawa can’t help but arch into the touch, a startled moan escaping her.
“Akutagawa, what do you want?” Chuuya-san asks, separating with a wet smack, and Akutagawa feels dizzy. Her head spins and the tips of her ears have been charred meat for hours.
“Everything,” she says, for she does not know how to answer such a question when she is only just catching her breath, for she has, after all, always been a creature of greed, of instinct.
“Oh?” Chuuya-san breathes, smile going wolfish, and Akutagawa trembles. “Very well, then.”
This time, Chuuya-san hoists Akutagawa up, and Akutagawa gasps, clutching at Chuuya-san’s shoulder and wrapping her legs around the other's waist. She hears a low laugh at the base of her throat before Chuuya-san descends, and then, a scrape of teeth against her jugular.
Akutagawa moans at the sensation, her back arching. She had never known she could make such sounds, never known someone could pull them out of her. Chuuya-san bites behind her ear and Akutagawa’s voice goes high-pitched, Chuuya-san palms the curve of her ass, and Akutagawa begs wordlessly.
“Chuuya-san—” she gasps when the other rolls her hips and Akutagawa wants to die with all this feeling.
She lets out a noise she will never admit to making when Chuuya-san stops the roll of her hips and looks at her in question.
“Akutagawa, drop the honorifics,” she orders and this, here, is the Port Mafia executive and her word is absolute. Akutagawa’s thighs clench absently around Chuuya at the order and all she can do is whisper a “yes, yes, Chu-Chuuya” and then Chuuya begins the sinuous roll of her hips once again.
Chuuya’s fingers clench around the skin of Akutagawa’s bare ass, grinding them against one another until Akutagawa gets a hold of the rhythm and moves her hips in time. The sound of their skin is silenced by the lapping of water, their reflections distorted by the movement of the water until they are both one, warped around the other. Akutagawa’s gasps and Chuuya’s low groans, the only evidence of their crimes.
Akutagawa cries out helplessly, digging her fingers into Chuuya’s bare shoulders when Chuuya grinds down particularly hard. She’s bursting at the seams, spilling with all the fervor she only uses to sate her bloodlust and she shakes when Chuuya sucks a breast into her mouth, trembling at all her cracked corners when Chuuya bites down.
“Akutagawa, fuck, look at you…” Chuuya breathes, looking up at her with one of Akutagawa’s nipples between her fingers, and Akutagawa’s burning up from the inside out, at the attention, at the adoration. Her body is a conflagration and Chuuya worships it like the devout flood of a natural disaster.
“Ah, Chuuya please,” she gasps instead, and she thinks she should probably be ashamed at her begging, ashamed of her tight-fisted grip on Chuuya’s hair but it is as though something has awakened; a different beast entirely.
“Okay, come here,” Chuuya says, hoisting Akutagawa onto the lip of the lotus-shaped bath, and the simple strength with which Chuuya lifts her thrums a chord of nebulous heat within her. The cold air causes goosebumps to erupt on her skin and she shivers beneath the incandescence of the gold lamps and looks out at their island. The sentō is no longer a bathhouse but a shrine.
“Akutagawa, lay down,” Chuuya orders, and it is so very easy to obey, no chafing at the teeth. Akutagawa believes in no god but she prostrates herself anyway. She lays down and lets herself be eaten, whole and bloody.
And for once, Akutagawa is glad they both share this hunger, this yawning maw within them, for Chuuya is immediately relentless.
Chuuya swivels her tongue through the wet of Akutagawa’s cunt and is rewarded with the scrape of nail down her shoulder and a muffled gasp. She teases Akutagawa, tongue licking at her labia, at her folds, poking at her entrance, but deliberately avoiding the clit and Akutagawa’s legs shake where they are held over Chuuya’s shoulders.
When she pulls on Chuuya’s hair, demanding satisfaction, Chuuya only smiles up at her, mouth wet with the taste of Akutagawa, and bites at the skin of her thigh, sucking at the pale skin and marking that which had never before been marked. Akutagawa howls, the rabid dog of the Port Mafia begging for her scraps and Chuuya finally relents.
She slides a finger through the wet of Akutagawa’s cunt and, all at once, pushes inside till the first knuckle. Akutagawa, back arched on the stone of the bathhouse, on the floor of this temple, gasps wordlessly at the feeling. It should be an intrusion, for all intents and purposes, it should feel like an intrusion, but Chuuya’s finger inside of her merely feels like an inevitability.
It feels just as inevitable when Chuuya twists her wrist and at the same time sucks viciously on her swollen clit and Akutagawa moans helplessly at the stimulation, jolting and clawing at the floor. She thinks she was made for this violence. She locks her ankles behind Chuuya’s head at the nudging of a second finger and bucks her hips in desperation. She is all but consumed by this feeling, by Chuuya, this desecration of her hunger as she begs for satisfaction, for the feeling of being full.
Chuuya, however, ever the tease, withdraws both fingers from her cunt and only sucks languidly at Akutagawa’s clit till she writhes.
“Fuck, Chuuya—” she gasps, unable to complete her sentence, unable to catch a single breath.
“Hm, what is it?” Chuuya replies, nonchalant and teasing, releasing Akutagawa’s clit from the furnace of her mouth. The pink of her lips is smeared with the gloss of Akutagawa’s cunt and she colours at the sight, at the obscenity of it.
“You know what” she growls instead, attempting to grind down on the fingers holding her legs open.
“I do, yes, but I want to hear you say it,” Chuuya says, holding Aktuagawa in a vice-grip. Chuuya is not an executive here, not a demon, or a force of nature, or a god, not Dazai-san’s partner but just Chuuya, and Akutagawa has always found it so painfully hard to refuse.
“Please, Chuuya, make me come,” she submits, silk-soft and petal-thin, all jasmine water on burning skin, and watches the instant of Chuuya’s restraint shattering.
It is only as Chuuya bends her knees towards her chest that she understands her true predicament, only as Chuuya bends to lick at the warmth of her cunt and suck at the head of her clit, only as Chuuya fits two fingers in their entirety that Akutagawa understands the true appetite of desire.
Chuuya doesn’t look up, even as Akutagawa pulls on her hair and wraps her ankles around her neck, doesn’t stop even for breath as she pumps two fingers steadily inside Akutagawa and swirls her tongue alongside them, doesn’t stop even as Akutagawa writhes beneath her and grinds against her face.
Chuuya is relentless even against the onslaught of Akutagawa’s sounds, a broken dam of moans and gasps, relentless until Akutagawa finally comes, shaking wordlessly and trembling through the aftershocks.
Akutagawa only comes to when she feels Chuuya against her lips, the kiss a gentle exchange of peace between their lips, an exchange of affection
“Chuuya-san, Chuuya, let me—” she starts, fumbling against the urge to reciprocate, the desire to see pleasure break across Chuuya’s face.
“It’s alright Akutagawa, lay back,” Chuuya replies, and Akutagawa obeys, watching as Chuuya clambers out of the water to straddle her hips. She feels the hot wash of blood rush to her cheeks as she stares at Chuuya’s breasts, slick with water and gleaming a dull gold underneath the lights. She feels herself blush harder when she dares to look down Chuuya’s body, at the slim curve of her waist and the swell of hips, at the undeniable slick of her cunt against Akutagawa’s body.
“Like this,” Chuuya gasps as she rubs furiously at her clit with one hand, the other placed beside Akutagawa’s head. Chuuya is bent over her, the flames of her hair tumbling from her bun, and Akutagawa wonders if she dares to touch, if she dares singe her fingers like this. The answer does not need any pondering, for Chuuya herself takes Akutagawa’s wrists and places her palms on her hips, burning her hands to dust.
Akutagawa cannot help but stare wide-eyed at Chuuya, at her closed eyes, at the bottom lip she bites, at the hypnotic roll of her hips and the delicate bones of her wrists, at the way Chuuya likes to rub her clit, circular and fast.
Akutagawa lays prone beneath Chuuya, a devotee at this altar of desire, and can only breathe a “Chuuya, please”, and open her mouth in a plea. This is her offering.
Chuuya opens her eyes and squints at Akutagawa, at the wet of her open mouth, and understands.
Akutagawa can only sigh when Chuuya bends over her further, their breasts touching, and pushes two fingers into her mouth. She swivels her tongue around Chuuya’s fingers as she’d watched Chuuya do earlier and presses the flat of her tongue against hardened calluses, and dares to slip a hand between them and squeeze Chuuya’s breast. She feels rather than sees the frantic roll of Chuuya’s hips and feels rather than hears the desperate gasps pressed against the skin of her neck.
It is like the cracking of a foundation, she supposes, or rather the making of one when she realizes that Chuuya is close. The desperate release of air, the frantic “ah, ah, ah’s” that scrawl countless iterations of desire on Akutagawa’s skin, the way Chuuya trembles, the pinch of her face at what would be pain if it were not clearly pleasure and the final gasp of “Ryuu—”, as she comes, all serve to unmake Akutagawa and fit her back into her skin like the settling of a god on her throne.
Chuuya slumps over Akutagawa, spent from her release, and Akutagawa cannot help but hide a smile in her hair. She cannot possibly hate this sentō now, cannot possibly detest this summer when it has given her such a gift.
“This enough of a reason to live?” Chuuya asks, still slumped against Akutagawa and head tucked into the crook of her neck. Akutagawa may not be able to see Chuuya’s face or the intent in her eyes, but the threat is explicit enough, rumbling through the syllables of her question, and Akutagawa shivers.
“Yes, Chuuya,” she breathes against her arson of a mane and it is as true as the instinct she has cultivated from her childhood, as true as the bloodthirst of Rashōmon, and as true as the howl of emotion of a silent rabid dog.
—