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“Shouldn't we head down to the platform?” Atsushi asks.
Akutagawa’s eyes haven’t been focused since he met with him here at the station. They still don’t make any attempt to, even with Atsushi’s job-relevant question. He knows Akutagawa doesn’t care for needless small-talk, but if this doesn’t work, he’s not sure what will.
“We still have fifteen minutes,” Akutagawa answers, strangely quiet.
Atsushi bites his lip. He keeps getting more and more confirmation that something isn't right with Akutagawa. He’s just not the type to want to waste time in the train station when they could be at the platform, waiting for the train to arrive - he just isn’t that kind of guy. He’s the most no-bullshit, straight-to-business guy he’s ever met, somehow even worse than Kunikida. Probably because he’s a criminal.
“Okay…well, I'm gonna grab something to eat. You want anything? Water or something?” Atsushi decides. He already asked when they first arrived, right before he realized something was wrong with the latter, but didn’t get a clear answer anyway. He’s hoping Akutagawa will reply, or even walk in with him.
“No. You've already asked me.”
His voice is strangely quiet. Akutagawa generally speaks at the same volume all the time, never even bothering to whisper unless it’s a life or death situation, so this is strange too. Is he not feeling well? Is his throat bothering him? That’s not totally out of the question, given his lung condition, but Atsushi doesn’t think his coughs have been any worse than usual today.
Atsushi slips away to one of the little marts right near where they were standing, just with the intention of getting a water or something, but he’s so distracted with the idea that something might be wrong with Akutagawa that he forgets, and just ends up getting a pack of gum.
He doesn’t like this. Akutagawa is a very clear cut person and doesn’t do anything for no reason, so the fact that he’s acting this way is really worrying, even if he technically hasn’t done anything wrong.
He starts stress-chewing a piece of the gum the moment he’s done and paid for it, turning his head to see Akutagawa has sat down now near where they were standing, elbows propped on his knees and hands over his face.
He’s so confused. Akutagawa’s never been like this before. He hasn’t heard a single complaint from him, not one bossy remark, nothing rude or unnecessary. In fact, he’s being awfully standoff-ish and quiet for someone who talks a lot more than Atsushi expected him to. Does he ask him if he’s okay? Is he just feeling sick right now?
Atsushi walks back over, half-expecting Akutagawa to correct his posture once he realizes Atsushi is back, but he doesn’t move at all. In fact, he seems to tense up when he realizes Atsushi is nearby, like he’s putting up higher walls around himself.
Atsushi, instead of saying something right away, sits down beside Akutagawa, quietly chewing his gum. It’s already lost most of its flavor, which either says something about Atsushi’s chewing power of the quality of the random gum brand, but either way, it has lost its purpose as a distraction. Not that it was doing much of a job with Akutagawa being so strange.
“Are you okay?” he asks gently, because it’s very clear to him that something isn’t right here. Seeing Akutagawa act like this honestly makes his stomach turn with anxiety, because he’s never, ever seen him act this way.
“I’m fine,” he mumbles, his voice shaking, very obviously lying, not even bothering to lift his head to make a point. He’s fully expecting Atsushi to take that answer and go, to stop questioning his behavior, which makes him think that he’s certainly not doing any of this on purpose.
Atsushi notices that Akutagawa is breathing weird, too, and it’s different from his normal weird. It’s not tied to any coughing, but it’s weirdly forced, shallow, shaky.
Atsushi lays a hand on his shoulder to provide some sort of comfort, and to his shock, Akutagawa does nothing to push him away, which he could very easily do.
He’s not really sure what’s going on with him, because these are all signs that are new to him in this context. He could he feeling sick, he could be in pain, he could be upset about something - it could honestly be all three, knowing him, but he absolutely won’t let Atsushi know the answer voluntarily. Atsushi has to figure it out, somehow.
He feels him shudder underneath his hand as a bullet train passes through the station below them, wheels screeching against the track as they make a turn onwards to the next destination. Another weird sign, because Akutagawa has never seemed sensitive to any sort of noise, much less something as common as that.
“Loud, huh?” Atsushi says, trying anything at this point to get a word out of him, at least. Akutagawa straightens out, and Atsushi almost thinks he got it to work, but he’s never that lucky.
“Please excuse me,” he murmurs, a hand hovering over his mouth.
“Yeah…sure,” Atsushi says back, pouting as Akutagawa stands up and turns his back to him, heading toward the nearby restrooms and disappearing quickly enough to make Atsushi think it was fairly urgent.
He’s fairly certain that he’s just gone in there to throw up. Atsushi would like to know, just to confirm, but he doesn’t want to make anything worse by following him in there, since he doesn’t have a clue why he’s acting like this.
Maybe that’s all it is. Maybe he’ll feel better after throwing up, and act normal again, and Atsushi doesn’t have to lose his mind worrying.
But it’s never that easy, because even then, it still doesn’t make sense. Atsushi has seen Akutagawa throw up before, and he doesn’t act like that before it happens - not when he’s sick, not when he’s in pain, nothing. Sure, maybe the rare occasion when he saw him with a hundred and four degree fever, then he was acting about the same, but there aren’t any other signs that he’s sick. He looks fine. His cough isn’t worse. He stood up normally, too.
Should he call Dazai? Chuuya? Someone who knows Akutagawa better than he does?
The train is set to arrive at the station in nine minutes, now, and Atsushi is faced with a decision. He needs to corner Akutagawa on what’s going on with him, because they have a two-hour train ride ahead of them, and Atsushi feels like his brain is melting out of his skull from how worried he is. They have a job to do once they get there, but not one terribly urgent.
What if it’s nothing? What if he’s just overreacting?
Akutagawa comes back about five minutes later, the longest five minutes of Atsushi’s life, as if to prove his suspicion that it’s definitely not nothing. If anything, Akutagawa looks worse than before, but he sits back down on the bench like absolutely nothing happened.
Or, at least, tries to.
“Should we go down to the platform now?” he asks again, nervously. Akutagawa still looks half inclined to nearly curl up into a ball but he says sitting up, pressing a hand against his chest. Atsushi pays very close attention. He’s still breathing that very same way, but this time, it’s almost as if he’s trying to force the pattern differently. Slower. Calm.
Is he anxious?
“We don’t have to go,” Atsushi says, staring up at the sign, alerting them the train is stopping by at the platform, and Atsushi can hear it screeching to a halt.
Akutagawa doesn’t react to what Atsushi says. Not with words, his eyes, anything. He stays staring forward, looking at absolutely nothing, half-listening to Atsushi but more focused on what he’s doing right now.
“I’ll just tell Dazai we missed the train, and that it was my fault,” Atsushi insists, standing up, already firm in his decision. “He said himself this wasn’t time sensitive.”
That’s enough to get Akutagawa to look up at him.
This would be the tell. Akutagawa takes the work more seriously than he ever does Atsushi. If something is really wrong, he’ll agree, and they won’t go.
Akutagawa lowers his gaze back down with a shaky sigh. He’s not arguing or anything of the sort, Atsushi thinks that means he’s accepted his terms. He won’t worry about telling Dazai any of this right now. He decides Akutagawa is more important.
Atsushi reaches out a hand to help Akutagawa up, but he doesn’t take it. He stands, crossing his arms over his chest as they hear their train start to leave, slowly but surely out of the station, solidifying Atsushi’s decision. He looks so defensive, shoulders curled in like that.
“I’m not gonna make you talk if you don’t want to,” Atsushi says quietly as he follows Akutagawa out of the station, “but I need to at least know that you’re not like - hurt, physically?”
“I’m not,” Akutagawa answers quietly just as they cross the threshold of the entrance. It’s nice out. The weather is finally cooling down, and the sun has already started to set.
“Okay…okay, good,” Atsushi says.
He’s not sure he’s quite yet ready for Akutagawa to just disappear like nothing ever happened. He’s way too worried about him to let him get away with that. He tries to leave his feelings out of it, he really does, but he can’t.
“Have you been to that little elevated part of Motomachi Park?” Atsushi asks him just before Akutagawa decides to walk off.
Akutagawa turns to look at him, and just barely nods. Sure, probably a stupid question, it’s a big park near the Port - he’s sure everyone that lives here has been at the very least, nearby there, but it was enough to stop him from leaving, at least.
Atsushi takes his arm, and Akutagawa doesn’t have any objections - once again surprising Atsushi to the point of concern, because he’s sure in any other situation, he would have sliced one of his limbs off. “Let’s go, then. It’s really nice around this time. And there’s not many people.”
Akutagawa looks like he wants to at least verbally argue, Atsushi can see it in his face, but he lets Atsushi drag him along and never ends up saying a word about it.
The walk is fairly short, and Atsushi picks a spot right at the front do that they don’t have to walk much further, one with a nice view. He can’t be sure exactly, but something is clearly bothering him, and Atsushi knows at least that going somewhere quiet, somewhere less mentally stimulating, helps him in those situations.
Usually, he goes to Yamashita Park right by the port, but he knows Akutagawa’s lungs have a hard time right at the ocean water, so this park will do the trick, for now.
Akutagawa sits down on a bench as soon as they get there, keeping his arms crossed and guarded, the look on his face staying about the same. The breeze is nice, as the sun begins to set.
“This isn’t Motomachi Park,” Akutagawa tells him, his voice still weirdly quiet, but Atsushi is ecstatic to hear him speak unprompted.
“It’s not?” Atsushi asks. He sits in the grass right near the bench, not wanting to crowd Akutagawa. “Is it Harbor View Park?”
Akutagawa shakes his head. He looks just a tiny bit more relaxed. “Harbor View is adjacent to Motomachi. This is America Yama Park.”
“You know a lot more about where stuff is than I do,” Atsushi says, a little defeated. Akutagawa is constantly correcting him on that sort of thing - street names, landmarks, but it’s one of the few things he never sounds very condescending about. It just genuinely sounds like he wants him to know.
“It’s important we know where everything is. In the Port Mafia,” Akutagawa reminds him, and Atsushi is suddenly reminded of Kyoka’s extensive knowledge of the city landscape as well. Atsushi is technically a foreigner here, and he’s never been very good with maps. “I imagine it’s important for you to learn as a detective, as well.”
Atsushi flashes him a nervous smile. “Cut me some slack, I’m new here. Technically.”
“Right,” Akutagawa says. Atsushi watches him lower his arms, his hands crossing over in his lap, once gently laid over the other. Akutagawa has a habit of always gripping onto something, whether it’s his arms crosses, or holding onto his hands tight - he thinks it’s that way he always feels the need to be guarded, but he’s not seeing that right now. “It’s nice here.”
“You think so?” Atsushi asks. He tries not to smile like an idiot, but he’s glad his half-baked plan worked enough to get Akutagawa acting a little normal.
Akutagawa makes eye contact with Atsushi, his gaze fairly soft, looking only mildly confused, but after a few seconds Atsushi watches him tense up, like he’s remembered something.
“You need to tell Dazai we missed the train,” he says as he stands up from the bench, completely losing every ounce of progress that Atsushi thought he had made with him, “we need to make sure that -”
Akutagawa’s hand whips up to cover his mouth as he coughs into his hand, the other against his chest like before, and they sound painful enough to force him back down on the bench and nearly double over. Atsushi stands up, but he’s learned his lesson thst Akutagawa absolutely hates receiving any sort of comfort when he’s overcome with coughing fits like this, and he’ll likely only make it worse.
“I'm gonna go find a vending machine real fast. Stay here,” Atsushi tells him bolting off to the section underneath the park where he knows at the very least he can find a convenience store, and hopefully some water for him.
He’s well aware that Akutagawa’s coughing fits have everything to do with his lung disease and that sips of water won’t help that, but it’s all he can do to help. At the very, very least, the water will keep him a little hydrated.
As he presses the machine’s buttons to get it to spit out a water bottle for him, he wonders if this is some sort of manifestation of Akutagawa’s anxiety. The coughing fit, he thinks, is probably mostly unrelated, but he spent a lot of time earlier focusing on his breathing, speaking quietly, if at all, as if he thought it had something to do with his lungs - but nothing else really pointed to that. Atsushi’s worked with him enough to know the signs when his lungs are giving him a hard time. He’ll be short of breath, coughing very regularly, and awfully faint, too. This was completely different.
Atsushi makes it back, water bottle in hand, and is deeply concerned to find that Akutagawa is still sitting there, after he's been gone for at least ten minutes. He would have expected him to disappear, really. He approaches him gingerly, gripping the water bottle tight, hoping he’s okay.
Akutagawa has legs pulled up onto the bench, his head on his knees, almost obscured completely by how dark it's become outside, and he doesn’t react to Atsushi’s presence until Atsushi mumbles a very quiet, are you okay?
Akutagawa flinches at those words, slides his legs off of the bench, to correct his posture, crossing his arms and looking at Atsushi as if he’s grown a second head. There’s a deep confusion in his expression that Atsushi can’t place, not at all. Atsushi’s hearing that breathing pattern again from earlier, too. Very deliberate breaths, like he’s trying to ration out the air in his lungs.
“I should go,” Akutagawa mumbles as he stands, a little unsteady on his feet. Atsushi reaches forward in case he needs a hand, but Akutagawa steps back, making it clear that he wants absolutely no help from him. Atsushi bites his lip.
“Take this with you,” Atsushi tells him, reaching forward and handing him the water bottle. “I'm sorry you're not feeling well.”
Akutagawa, to his surprise, takes the water bottle into his hands and stares at it, brow furrowed. It’s almost like he’s confused by the gesture itself, but that can’t be, because this isn’t the first time Atsushi has done this. “It's fine.”
“Just…make sure you rest, okay?” Atsushi says. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time?”
Akutagawa only nods, and Atsushi decides to turn away first, so that he can let Akutagawa get on with his night.
“Nakajima,” he starts, quietly, and Atsushi is more than startled by Akutagawa’s use of his name, whipping his head back around.
Atsushi looks at him, still perplexed by that look on his face. He feels like there’s at least a hundred different emotions swirling around underneath a mask he’s so desperately trying to keep on - Atsushi sees through it. He can’t really make out what he’s thinking, but he knows enough to understand that Akutagawa is not himself today.
“Don’t…waste your time concerning yourself over me.”
Atsushi doesn’t think Akutagawa understands that he just can’t do that anymore. Sure, months ago, he would have dragged Akutagawa on that train with him and not spared a single thought to his feelings, but now - his stomach hurts with how much he’s worried about him, and he doesn’t quite understand why himself.
It’s not even just the concerns over his lung illness. These were really just his feelings, today.
“It’s not as easy as you think,” Atsushi says to himself once he knows Akutagawa is out of earshot.
Atsushi arrives at the station only moments before Akutagawa gets there - the same time as yesterday, except, Atsushi isn’t late.
“Hey,” Atsushi says, trying to look Akutagawa over for any sign that something isn’t right.
“Please don’t ask me about yesterday,” Akutagawa mumbles as they walk into the station together. It sounds almost like he had that ready to say to Atsushi before he even arrived.
“Oh…sure, yeah,” Atsushi says quietly, closely tailing behind him.
“Let’s go to the platform. The train leaves in ten minutes,” Akutagawa says, already on his way down that direction.
Atsushi thinks, at the very least, he’s back to normal.
The train has arrived a bit early, and Atsushi is glad that they can still use their tickets from yesterday - it’s something he didn’t consider after what he pulled yesterday, but he got lucky.
Dazai and Kunikida were both confused to see him back yesterday, when he got to the dorms and happened to run into the two of them. He tried to tell them that they missed the train, but the looks on their faces said they didn’t believe a word of that, so he had to explain himself. Atsushi told them, as honestly as he could, that Akutagawa was feeling sick and Atsushi was the one who had insisted that they go tomorrow instead. Not entirely untrue.
Atsushi had accidently gotten himself a little worked up in the midst of explaining himself, and was probably stressed enough to sound near in tears, so Kunikida insisted it was fine and he had nothing to worry about, and even said he would fork over the money for a replacement ticket if he needed one.
“Nothing to be so anxious over. We’ll get it figured out either way,” Kunikida had said to him after making a vague comment about Atsushi being too kind for his own good, looking after an enemy’s health like that.
He thinks Akutagawa really was just anxious.
“You slept okay?” Atsushi asks. He’s not sure he did. He spent most of his night wondering if Akutagawa was doing okay.
“I slept fine,” Akutagawa insists as they step onto the train.
“That's good,” Atsushi says, following close behind, “did you drink that water?”
Akutagawa pauses. “I did. Actually.”
They take their seats beside each other, Atsushi silently letting Akutagawa decide where he would sit first. He sits down by the window, hands laid in his lap, one tightly gripping the other. Atsushi can’t help but take notice of that. He wants to ask if he’s really okay, but Akutagawa speaks before he can, just as he sits down.
“I apologize,” Akutagawa says, staring at his hands.
Atsushi tilts his head. “For what?”
Akutagawa doesn’t answer right away, as if he wants Atsushi to just understand what he means so he doesn’t have to discuss this any further. “For how I behaved yesterday.”
“Oh, it’s - it’s fine, you don’t need to apologize. You say that like it was on purpose,” Atsushi says with a half smile, “I was just…worried.”
“Don’t concern yourself with such things,” Akutagawa huffs, “you’ve seen me much worse off.”
Atsushi pouts. “Well…yeah, but…”
Not like that.
It’s different, to him. It’s not the same as him being really sick or badly hurt, because at least, generally, he understands what’s going on. This time it was just as concerning to him, because Akutagawa was acting so awfully strange to him.
He won’t push to talk about it, since Akutagawa requested they don’t - but he does think it was anxiety. That’s what he’s landed on. Everything he saw him do were things Atsushi has experienced himself, even just last night, talking to Kunikida.
“You two are so interesting. Really so much more alike than you think,” Dazai had said last night, sounding so amused.
That must be what he meant.
The train starts its journey as it makes its way out of the station.
“I took some medicine for my motion sickness that will likely make me fall asleep,” Akutagawa says, still staring forward instead of out of the window, “so wake me once we arrive.”
“Okay, sure,” Atssuhi says with a nod.
A few minutes later, once the train is traveling at a steady speed, Atsushi goes back to their earlier conversation.
“I didn't know you get motion sick,” Atsushi says. He’s glad he doesn’t have to deal with something like that, but he feels bad for Akutagawa. As if he doesn’t have enough health related things to deal with.
“We haven't spent any time together on any transport,” Akutagawa insists.
“That’s just, objectively not true,” Atsushi says back, “we’ve been on…two ships, technically. A mining cart. A truck, too, and -”
“All very pre-occupied situations,” Akutagawa reminds him. Sure, Atsushi doesn’t get motion sickness, but he’s pretty sure it doesn’t work like that - he’s sure it’s just Akutagawa ignoring symptoms, like he does for any pain or illness he’s suffering. “I would have almost certainly vomited in any normal situation.”
Atsushi grits his teeth. “That bad, huh?”
“Yes,” Akutagawa groans. Akutagawa never reacts much to having to throw up, at least, but something like that would almost certainly send Atsushi into a panic attack.
He huffs, relaxing into his seat a little.
“You’re really not gonna let me ask about yesterday?” Atsushi says, his mouth speaking before he had the chance to think. Akutagawa doesn’t seem awfully combative right now. He thinks it’s a good time to talk about it.
Akutagawa looks over at him, strongly resisting the urge to roll his eyes, it looks like. “Has anyone ever told you being so nosey is bad for your health?”
“I feel like that was a missed opportunity to say curiosity killed the cat, ” Atsushi tells him, which he has certainly heard from Akutagawa himself.
Akutagawa just sighs, his grip on his hands relaxing a little.“I wouldn’t have an answer for you.”
“What do you mean?” Atsushi asks.
“I don’t know why any of that was happening,” Akutagawa murmurs quietly, not sounding entirely thrilled to be having this conversation - but Atsushi knows, at the very least, Akutagawa would tell him to mind his own business and shut up if he really was so closed off to it.
Atsushi tilts his head. “But it’s happened before?”
Akutagawa looks confused about how he knew that, but doesn’t address it verbally. “Yes, it has.”
“And what did if feel like? Like you couldn’t breathe?” Atsushi asks, trying to put together the pieces.
“Not…entirely. I’m not a stranger to that,” Akutagawa says, laying a hand over his chest instinctively. “It didn’t feel at all related to my health. It felt like…”
“A weight?” Atsushi asks, “on your chest?”
“Yes,” Akutagawa agrees, looking suspicious, “Are you playing detective with me?”
“Come on, I’m just trying to figure out what was wrong,” Atsushi groans, wishing Akutagawa would keep his attitude to himself. “But, I…I know that feeling. Like, something is sitting right here, and it’s not bad enough to scare you, or, make you feel like you really can’t breathe, but you still can’t get enough air, and it just..slowly gets worse. The longer it goes on. And that’s probably what made you get sick, too, right?”
Akutagawa nods, gingerly agreeing. “And…what else?”
Akutagawa is being so strangely receptive.
“Well…I don’t know if it’s what I think it is, but, you seemed really overwhelmed, too,” Atsushi starts, hoping he’s not heading into too-sensitive territory with him, “like, the lights were too harsh. And the sound of the wheels on the tracks.”
Akutagawa looks like he’s inclined to argue, clearly not enjoying this at all, but he’s too curious to brush it off.
“So, what was it, then?” Akutagawa asks. “You seem to know.”
“I think, probably - I mean, to me, it looked like an anxiety attack,” Atsushi tells him. Maybe that’s obvious to Akutagawa, he isn’t sure, but the look on his face tells him it’s not.
Akutagawa looks very confused by this conclusion. “But I wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Atsushi pauses, blinks, not entirely sure what he means by that, but slowly realizing Akutagawa doesn’t seem to have any idea what anxiety actually is.
“That’s not…necessarily what anxiety is,” Atsushi tells him gently. “It can just be…like, you’re tense, all the time. Your shoulders and your hands, they’re always tight. That can be from anxiety too.”
“I don’t understand,” Akutagawa says, ironically looking tenser than usual, “You’re just telling me it came out of nowhere, then?”
“I feel like I need to find a therapist for you,” Atsushi half-jokes.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Akutagawa scoffs, evidently showing that Atsushi has finally crossed the line.
“Listen, I don’t really know a lot about it. It just happens to me sometimes too,” Atsushi explains, hoping he can keep Akutagawa’s attention without making him think this is an intervention, “and, I just know that when I’m feeling like that, it helps me to go just…be somewhere quiet.”
“I spent most of my night trying to figure out what exactly it was that you were doing to me yesterday,” Akutagawa huffs, frustrated enough with the conversation that he’s crossed his arms again.
Atsushi rolls his eyes. “Being nice? ”
“Don’t treat me like a child,” Akutagawa growls. “What on earth did you have to gain from that? Were you really just playing detective after all?”
“I didn’t gain anything, Akutagawa. I was worried about you. I wanted to make sure you felt better before you left,” Atsushi tells him. The honest truth.
“You’re idiotic,” Akutagawa mumbles.
“ You’re idiotic. Listen to me,” Atsushi says, deciding he’s not going to let Akutagawa have the last word here. “Just know that you have that to try the next time it happens. Go somewhere quiet, or safe, or…whatever. I could tell it was already helping you yesterday before you started thinking about the job again.”
Akutagawa just stares at him, half offended that he was read so easily, and something else that Atsushi can’t place.
“So there’s nothing I can do to avoid it,” Akutagawa says quietly, “only…the aftermath. Is what you’re saying.”
“I’m definitely not good for advice on any of this. I’m just telling you what’s helped me before, cause I thought it helped you a little bit,” Atsushi says. Really, he would love to sit down with Akutagawa and pick apart his brain, but now is not the time or place. He doubts Akutagawa would ever allow for that, anyway.
“I see,” Akutagawa says.
Atsushi wonders for a second, if he was about to thank him - but, he thinks, he didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.
Sure enough, Akutagawa is completely out just thirty minutes into their train journey, like he said he would be.
He looks like he’s just resting his eyes, the way he’s sitting. His arms are crossed over his chest and his chin is just barely pointed down, but Atsushi knows for a fact that he’s asleep because his breathing pattern has completely changed.
Atsushi reaches over to, as slyly as possible, recline Akutagawa’s seat back. He isn’t sure why he would avoid comfort on purpose, especially when he knew he was going to fall asleep - it probably has something to do with his pride, or his constant need to have his guard up - but Atsushi is here to protect him, this time. He’s in the aisle seat and he’s not concerned about their safety, but he’s here to protect Akutagawa if he needs to.
Akutagawa doesn’t have to be the one with his guard up all the time.