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The smell of something metallic, the dark brown stains, and the late hours. How could Atsushi be so blind? A detective who cannot see the obvious signs, a detective who turned away from the clear and absolute, a detective who was so easily fooled.
Because he was in love.
He grips the black trench coat tightly, presses it closer to his nose and smells the underlying scent of blood that clings to the fabric. A week ago, he happily wore it around the house in the bright and early morning, and now, he holds it with betrayal and anguish.
That was when he first smelled blood, but ignored it.
But now, as he hovered over their dirty laundry, he wondered if the universe loved playing jokes that much.
He bites down on the inside of his cheek, draws blood.
4 years of marriage.
Gone.
He can only smell blood.
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Dazai has held Atsushi’s hand before.
Many times.
Whether it be to ground the younger man from a flashback that freezes him, or leading to someplace to slack off from work. Atsushi always held his hand back, a weak but noticeable squeeze that Dazai has gotten used to. He ran cold, an effect of his early malnutrition, but it was that subtle movement that assured Dazai that his mentee was alive and breathing.
Now as he holds Atsushi’s hand, it lies limp and unresponsive, a little more cold than before and forever dead.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been examining and holding Atsushi’s pale hand, and he’s lost the ability to tell if it is for the case or for some strange personal comfort that he continues holding on and tracing the dried and open wound over the young man’s wrist.
Over 6 years ago, he met a young and malnourished, hungry Nakajima Atsushi, by a riverbed. Pale and sickly, he took the boy under his wing. Watched him hone his ability, watched him solve cases with the knowledge that he gained over the days he spends with the agency, watched as he brought a girl with over 35 lives over her head into the light, and watched him get married.
Dazai remembers Atsushi’s wedding day like a film he’s watched many times over. Even if it was over 6 years ago, he doesn’t think he could ever forget it.
His mentee had pulled him aside one afternoon and showed off a hand with a pretty silver ring across the table of the booth they were at with a shy smile. Blushing and happy, he told Dazai about his new engagement to his long-term boyfriend, who surprised him with a fancy dinner and finally, the beautiful silver ring over a bridge right below the full moon.
Then, months later, he was fixing the flowers of Atsushi’s boutonniere with slightly trembling hands as his mentee was about to be married off.
He was never an overly emotional person, always able to keep his true emotions in check, but with Atsushi in white, a happy smile and a bouquet of fresh flowers. Dazai can’t help thinking back to the shaking, pale, and hungry young child he brought into the Agency. The child whose wide eyes held a constant torch of fear. The child who was treated more animal than boy. The child who, at the time, stood in a clean white suit beside the love of his life and with a light in his eyes that now has been robbed from him.
In white, Atsushi was his pride.
And now he was dead. Cold and covered by a sheet as his body is watched over and over by police and pathologists trying to find something to solve this mysterious suicide.
He was found, 24 years old, still so young, with bruises littering on parts of his body, turning colder than before, and bleeding out by his slit wrists in a locked bathroom. In the house he shared with his husband, a house of secrets that revealed a marriage seemingly on the rocks, he was left for dead in a bathtub. No note, no visible change in his personality that insulated that he was about to commit suicide in his own home on a Tuesday morning, not too chipper, not too sad.
Just his usual Atsushi-like self. Sweet, a little awkward, anxious, and caring.
And with that, soon launched an investigation for the circumstances behind his death, there was no note, nothing but violet and yellow bruises, and very shortly after, the missing husband that no one could seem to get in contact with.
Kyoka had wanted only the Agency to look over his body. Her eyes, red rimmed and glassy, had basically begged the many examiners to step away because Atsushi never liked being exposed. Eventually, they had to work out some sort of compromise when she sat dutifully over Atsushi’s body, Demon Snow hanging over her in a threatening way, and would not leave even to eat.
All while that was happening, Dazai’s mind was whirling. Pieces of a puzzle being placed and taken out in his mind. Testing out what fit and did not.
One thing was for sure, he didn’t want to picture Atsushi’s last moments. Whether his late mentee had cried or accepted his fate.
Atsushi wasn’t the type to beg for his own life.
His thumb gently runs over the deep cut over Atsushi’s wrist. So similar to the ones that lay across his own limbs, only they have been healed over as scars under his bandages over the years.
Atsushi’s will remain opened forever.
With only himself in the room, Dazai allows himself a small gesture of grief, and presses Atsushi’s limp, dead hands to his lips, and offers a small prayer into the cold skin. He never understood why people did that in movies, but it seemed like a fitting goodbye to the child who never got any love while living.
When he pulls away, the door opens, revealing a tired, and grieving, Kunikida.
His partner has been working tirelessly to solve this case. Going over every detail, seemingly 20 times over. Dazai has watched as the man poured over the files and spent his time beside Atsushi’s body, he almost took the cake beside Kyoka to be at his mentee’s side.
If Atsushi were alive, he would’ve made sure Kunikida got some rest. It was just the type of man he was. But unfortunately, no one has the energy to stop the investigation, not when the victim was their coworker for over 4 years, their coworker who was practically family, who they saw the worst and best of, and the lead suspect was someone they trusted to take care of Atsushi.
Someone that Atsushi trusted, whole heartedly.
Dazai runs his free hand over his face, “Kunikida-kun.”
“Dazai,” his partner nods.
“Any clues?”
Kunikida shook his head, despite being only in his twenties, he looked much older, “Akutagawa is still missing.”
Dazai hums, “Nothing says guilt quite like hiding.”
Over a hundred calls, mostly on Kyoka’s phone, and not a single one was picked up by Atsushi’s husband.
None of the calls came from Dazai.
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke was hard to get a hold of, but this was different. His innocence depended on him picking up the phone, and he did not. Now, no one knew where he was and it didn’t help that he was already a private man. He didn’t come by often to save things like gifts for forgotten lunches for Atsushi. When Atsushi introduced him to the Agency, much to the amusement of Dazai, he was mostly quiet and when he did talk, it was almost always to talk about him and Atsushi. How they met, how they got together, their first date, etc. No one pushed it because they thought it was romantic.
Ranpo and him had a field day with that introduction.
His partner hunches over and puts his head in his hands, the slight tremors of exhaustion, grief, and anxiety can be seen by Dazai’s trained eye, “We’ll find him. Soon.”
It felt more like words of comfort than anything, too weak to be true, too unsure to be likely, but just steady enough, so Dazai nodded. Nodded and agreed.
“You hear that, Atsushi-kun?” He whispers quietly, soft and almost like a secret, “We’ll find your killer and you can pass your judgment at the Gates of Heaven.”
There is no response save for Kunikida's soft scoff, “He’d probably forgive him. He was always good like that.”
“If it were any of us,” Kunikida continues, quiet, “He probably would’ve slaved away to solve the case-”
“But he would never allow himself that courtesy.” Dazai finishes for him, the words felt funny on his tongue.
“When is Ranpo getting back?” The detective had been on a vocational trip in America with his fiance, Edgar, when news got to him about Atsushi’s death.
“In about a day or two,” Kunikida responds, almost in pain.
Dazai hums.
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He has seen it before. He helped perfect the ability afterall. Into something dangerous, something that can be used in many ways, as the jaws of a monstrous beast, as indestructible amour, practically a second skin.
Rashomon cuts clean. It can be manipulated into many forms, but as a blade it’s as smooth as it is sharp and swift. When desired, it cuts and leaves no mistakes. It makes wounds certain, confident, and clean.
Too clean.
Taking a step in the sights of an all too familiar forest, the former Demon Prodigy awaits his former mentee.
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His hand stops at a specific tea. Cheap and homey.
Another hand, a stranger’s, paused right as they both were about to take it.
“I’m so sorry!” Their white was pulled away, and he turned his head to sunset colored eyes. Violet and yellow, swirling together like the falling sky, “I didn’t realize you wanted this as well.”
Their hair was white, their skin even more so. The only color was the rush of blood through their cheeks.
“It’s no matter,” he says, “I can find another, thank you.”
“Nonsense,” the stranger shook his head, “you can have it. I’m just trying new flavors so there isn’t any guarantee that I would enjoy this one and then it would all go to waste!”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” the stranger smiles, a pretty one that seems so genuine, “take it. I have others in stock and can find them just as quickly.”
The stranger was dressed in a white button up with a brown cardigan and simple jeans.
If Ryuunosuke could describe him in one word, it would be “gentle”. And that was a strange thought.
A very strange thought for a man like him.
The stranger walks off, shopping basket in hand, and the moonlight casts a gentle glow over his pale figure.
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They meet again, at a bookstore trying to reach for the same book. Under the warm light between shelves.
He finds out the stranger is named Nakajima Atsushi.
And he thinks he might be in love.
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Between the two of them, the forest in the slums is almost a sacred place. Somewhere many people turn a blind eye to. If they knew of it at all. But it was within these specific trees and that singular rock, where Dazai sits, then and now, that the Black-Fanged Hellhound was born from an angry and vengeful boy on the edge of 14 years with the aid of the Demon Prodigy.
When Ryuunosuke steps into the clearing, Rashomon flickering behind him, Dazai looks at him like an open book. He knows that no matter what, Ryuunosuke would listen.
When Atsushi had brought him to meet the Agency, it had taken Ryuunosuke almost every nerve in his body to not react. The sight of his former mentor, dressed in light colors, lazing on a couch in an office building, nearly sent him running. Not because he was afraid, no, he would die before being afraid of Dazai, but because he was not the Black-Fanged Hellhound when he stepped past the threshold of the Agency’s office. He was Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, a young man of nearly 22 years who was in love. Nothing close to a ruthless mafioso. Nothing close to the hellhound that was taken under the Demon Prodigy’s wing.
Throughout the meeting, he was waiting. Waiting for the moment that Dazai would call out who he really was, what he truly did, and pull open the curtains of his one-man show everyone the workings behind the stage.
But he did not. In fact, his former mentor acted as if he had never met Ryuunosuke in his life, he shook his hand, albeit a little roughly, and introduced himself with a dramatic flair and a smirk.
A knowing smirk.
And that had been enough of a warning.
“Akutagawa-kun,” Dazai greets.
“Dazai-san.”
The elder cocked his head to the side, “Where have you been?”
He can’t help but think of the way Atsushi used to tilt his head to the side when he asked him where he had been to come home so late, and Ryuunosuke, with the blood of his victims still under his nails, simply replied, “Somewhere, everywhere, nowhere, take your pick, my dear.”
His late husband always had a flair for that whimsical nature evident in so many stories. It was the easiest way he could think of swaying Atsushi, and it worked every time. Whether it had been optional or not.
“Answer me, Akutagawa." His mentor’s voice is cold and sharp. It always was.
He took a deep breath, feeling the simmer of anger and frustration grow restless under his skin, “Headquarters.”
“Hiding?”
“No.” Grieving.
Grieving his husband, grieving the love of his life, grieving his marriage of 4 years, grieving the home he managed to build outside the mafia, grieving the death of his everything.
He couldn’t stay.
And he knows Atsushi would not have wanted him to stay.
Judging from the way his former mentor looked at him, Ryuunosuke can tell that he sees right through that simple response. And he hates it.
“You know,” Dazai says, “when he brought you into the office and introduced you as a simple university student, imagine my shock when my old subordinate walks through the door.”
Ryuunosuke stays silent.
“4, 5 years is a long time, Akutagawa-kun.”
Dark brown eyes narrow into him, slicing him open to display his beating heart, “A very long time, don’t you agree?”
He nods.
“Speak up.”
Ryuunosuke sighs, “Yes, Dazai-san.”
He’s exhausted. He had spent the last couple of days lying in his bed at the Port Mafia’s headquarters, not quite living, just existing under the covers with glassy eyes that refuse to shed a single tear. Sometimes he would drift off and then he would dream of sunset eyes and white hair, a smile so genuine that it hurt.
Atsushi was good. So good. He was kind, stopped by stray animals to pet them, made sure Ryuunosuke was always safe and uninjured, he cooked dinner for them even when he was exhausted because Ryuunosuke wasn’t used to making an actual full meal, he held his bloodied hands and kissed them, and said yes to his simple proposal with tears in his eyes and allowed them to kissed away be a mouth of sharp teeth.
And it was because of that kindness, that Ryuunosuke tried to hide the Black-Fanged Hellhound away. Tried to shove that mask into the deepest part of himself, and lock it away whenever Atsushi kissed him, or held him, or even just when he looked at him.
But there was another thing Atsushi also was-
“Atsushi-kun has always had a sense of morality about him,” Dazai says, “from the first case he was given, he always wanted to protect the weak, defend the innocent, the stuff that the Port Mafia would’ve never given a second thought to.”
“So tell me Akutagawa-kun,” his mentor leaned closer, “tell me what he thought when smelled the blood on my coat.”
Rashomon strikes, swift and clean, at the tree behind Dazai. His fingers dig into his palms, drawing blood and dripping it onto the forest floor. The grief from the last couple of days felt more like anger now. Hot, simmering anger that is beginning to boil.
“You,” Ryuunosuke hisses, “made me into this. You bore me hungry and starving, selfish and greedy. I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.”
He had been selfish when he decided to continue pursuing Atsushi despite the warnings in his head, from his own sister, from the calls of his dead friends that never seemed to go away even years later, from the hanging or mutilated bodies of people who died because of their spouses' criminal sins. But the Black-Fanged Hellhound that was trained to kill for his own survival in the mafia desired a scrap of anything, and by getting it unconditionally from his then boyfriend to now late husband, it pushed him to go through with gifts, the fancy restaurants, the flowers, the dating, the silver ring, the wedding, and finally, into the house they bought away from most of Yokohama’s criminal activity that was paid fully in cash.
Yes, he was selfish when he married Nakajima Atsushi, but whose fault was that? Who gave him a reason to live, dangled it above his desperate hands, and pulled it away whenever it was convenient for him?
Who?
Rashomon cuts down another tree when he looks into Dazai’s eyes. Narrow, dark brown eyes that held a purposeful look of pity. Purposeful because he chooses not to hide the emotion that took hold of his normally empty eyes.
Why?
“It’s true,” Dazai says, his voice strangely soft, “ it was I, who planted a ravenous beast inside you and continued to nurture it until you could do so on your own.”
“Which is why,” Ryuunosuke can’t help but freeze when he sees his former mentor pull out a gun, “I will be the one to remove it.”
The gun aims directly over his heart and he feels his body relax.
Forgiveness is a quiet thing.
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Akutagawa doesn’t put up a fight. The opposite in fact, his body calms, and his ability deactivates. When he falls, there isn’t a sound.
Dazai sighs and looks up at the sky, he sees two butterflies fly from a tree.
How fitting.
He looks at the blood seeping into the dirt under Akutagawa’s dead body and wonders if Atsushi would smile at him now. Now that Dazai has taken care of the one thing Atsushi didn’t have the heart to do. Not when he loved Akutagawa dearly. Not when he carved out a family with the man, a family he had always been denied.
“Atsushi-kun has always had a sense of morality about him,” He had said earlier, “from the first case he was given, he always wanted to protect the weak, defend the innocent, the stuff that the Port Mafia would’ve never given a second thought to.”
What can one do with such information? When one finds out that the man you’ve known for over 6 years, and married for 4 of those, is the one who spilled the blood of the weak, who threatened the innocent, and who is part of the Port Mafia that one actively fights against?
What do you do?
What can you do?
Dazai doesn’t know, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be in the position to know.
But Atsushi did.
A suicide framed as a murder to bring the both of them down.
To end the suffering of them both, to clear the guilt of being oblivious.
To clear the world of the danger one had allowed to walk free.
And of course, to clear the guilt of looking into one’s husband’s eyes as he is taken away by the police and sent to death row for his crimes because Ryuunosuke loved his husband, whether Atsushi continued to believe it until his last breath or not, he would’ve allowed himself to be taken away.
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After bruising his white skin, an easy feat considering he grew up in a ruthless orphanage. He sits down at the tub and begins the process of drawing up a crime scene.
The cut across his wrist is shaky, for he is not left-handed, but Atsushi pushes through it. He leans his head against the edge of the white tub, and presses deeper. Blood spills down his arm onto the white surface below, and it continues from his other arm as well. Creating a bloody, human fountain.
He hushes the tiger within and continues to drag the blade over. Letting more blood spill down his white arm, onto the white tub. The pain is there, and there is a sick part of him that enjoys it. But this is not about him.
He needs it to work.
He needs to end it all.
For the weak.
For the innocent.
For the Agency.
For Ryuunosuke.
Atsushi needs to die.
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Somewhere up above, two figures sit across from each other on a table. Away from the grasp of the living below.