Chapter Text
Atsushi lives a quiet, fairly solitary life.
He’s a university student on a scholarship, one that has saved him from the very real, very dreadful horrors of facing homelessness at eighteen.
He has his own apartment now - a roof over his head, a place to sleep, and food on his plate.
Sure, food might look like instant ramen in a paper cup. A place to sleep might look like thrifted blankets, old and worn from years of use before they became his, on the floor. His apartment might be a bit drafty, old and worn down and mostly devoid of furniture.
Still, it’s better than anything he’s ever had in the past, and it’s his.
Nothing has ever really been his before, with maybe the exception of the clothes on his back.
Even that was up for debate.
The point is, he tries not to take it for granted.
It hasn’t always been this way, after all. The orphanage had been terribly unpleasant at the best of times.
He may have been shunned by his peers and his caretakers, but that didn’t mean that he had been granted peace and privacy and indifference. If anything, it had been quite the opposite.
At the worst of times, it had been utterly and entirely horrific.
Atsushi thinks of the headmaster, and it fills him with a bone-deep sort of cold, a dreadful, helpless kind of feeling. Something that grabs onto him and holds with a weight akin to that of drowning.
The man had been particularly unkind to Atsushi, and what an understatement that was. More accurately, he had absolutely hated him, Atsushi thinks.
And, yet, he’d still provided him with food and shelter, had still kept him from having to grow up on the streets, had given him a life that was arguably better than it could have been, and-
Atsushi tries to never let his mind wander down that path for too long. It doesn’t bring with it anything good. It feels instead like there are no satisfactory answers at all.
Instead, he brings himself back to the present, to his new life, to the opportunities that come with it. To much more productive ways of thinking.
He could never complain about the life that he lives now, and that fact in itself deserves gratitude.
Even when the novelty starts to wear off and he can feel the ache of loneliness setting in, deeper than it ever has before now that his more urgent needs of simply being able to survive without fear of pain and punishment have been met, it’s okay. He has to be grateful for what he has.
One can’t have everything, after all.
He has to look on the bright side.
It could be, and has been, much worse.
That doesn’t mean it’s always easy.
Things change quickly, in the year following Atsushi becoming an adult. It's a whirlwind, difficult to keep up with. Most days, Atsushi just feels grateful that he’s able to keep his head above water.
Along comes Dazai, and he takes Atsushi under his wing without giving him so much as a say in it.
Dazai is a senior, top of his class and close to graduation. He’s charismatic and engaging and all kinds of bizarre and, for some reason, he takes a liking to Atsushi.
“Surely you have all kinds of friends, don't you?” Atsushi is asked when they first meet, staring into dark eyes blinking wide and innocent. Deceptively wide and innocent.
In retrospect, he’s almost positive that Dazai had already known better and had simply been messing with him. Something that he was prone to do, Atsushi had learned quickly.
“Uh-um,” he’d stuttered out. “I’m.. not really, um-”
Dazai had given him a long look, a lazy smirk curling the corners of his mouth, before he waved a hand and said, “Right. Well, you will now.”
As if it was that simple. A fact.
Atsushi, utterly bewildered and entirely unsure how to interpret that, had just nervously laughed along.
He had kept his word.
Dazai descends upon him in the library like he had already known that Atsushi would be there.
Atsushi thinks that, maybe, he had. He wouldn’t put it past him.
It’s unfortunate, really. Atsushi has a test in two days and he really needs to study as much as he possibly can. Something that will be impossible to do with Dazai taking a seat across from him.
“Atsushi-kun, do you have any plans for tonight?” he asks as he leans his chair back so he can kick his feet up onto the table.
The bottoms of his shoes are littered with dirt from the walkways outside, Atsushi notices. He pulls his books further away.
Dazai’s question alone means that Atsushi has plans now, because he’s going to be dragged along regardless of what his response is. Even if he is busy and it’s for a completely valid reason.
Instead of engaging in inevitably fruitless protests, Atsushi simply shakes his head.
He'd let it slip, accidentally, a few weeks ago, the whole ‘growing loneliness’ thing.
Dazai had apparently taken it upon himself to rectify that situation, because he’s been asking Atsushi these kinds of questions ever since.
It’s kind of sweet. Really sweet, in its own odd way.
It’s also kind of annoying and inconvenient sometimes, but the idea of someone caring about him enough that he’s even in that situation at all-
He can’t think about it for too long. He’ll get too emotional.
He only allows himself to cry about it late at night, in the privacy of his own apartment.
“Perfect!” Dazai cheers. “Grab drinks with me.”
Atsushi flounders helplessly for a moment, under Dazai's steady and expectant gaze.
“I- I’m not- I’m only eighteen,” he reminds him when he recovers.
Dazai already knows as much. Atsushi knows that he knows.
Unsurprisingly, Dazai simply shrugs, unperturbed.
Atsushi heaves a heavy sigh, which Dazai apparently takes as an agreement because he grins and says, “Great! I’ll pick you up at seven.”
Absently, Atsushi wishes that Dazai didn’t know where he lived.
It’s dark and cold and there’s a crowd of people lingering outside of the building that Dazai brings him up to. It’s, frankly, anxiety inducing.
Atsushi kind of wants to go home. He really doesn’t see how something like this is supposed to help him with being lonely. It… doesn’t look like the kind of place where he would want to meet new people, anyway.
“Uh, Dazai-san,” he starts nervously. His words are a little muffled by his scarf, but it’s worth it for the extra warmth it provides his face. “This place.. it’s going to be loud, don’t you think? And will they really let me in-”
Of course, Dazai doesn’t care. He pats him on the shoulder, breezy, unbothered. It feels a bit patronizing.
“It’s fine, Atsushi-kun,” he says simply. “You worry too much.”
He’s right. It is fine.
They pass right through the doors and into the little bar without getting so much as a second glance.
It’s small and dark on the inside, with a variety of old posters in what look to be all different conditions on the walls. Atsushi is somewhat grateful that he can’t see particularly well - he can’t imagine how dirty it actually is.
It doesn’t seem like the kind of place that he thinks someone like Dazai would frequent, but perhaps Atsushi simply doesn’t know him well enough. He navigates the room expertly, after all, dragging Atsushi along by the wrist to position him near the-
The stage.
There’s a stage?
“They do live music here,” Dazai tells him, like he can read his mind.
“Oh. Right.”
Then… they stand. And they linger.
Dazai shoves his hands in his pockets and starts fucking whistling.
It’s weird and awkward and it would be embarrassing if anyone seemed to be paying attention to them at all.
A short while later, there’s a small, scattered assortment of claps, and Atsushi looks to see shadowed figures trailing out onto the stage.
Inconceivably - or perhaps expectedly, because Atsushi is growing increasingly convinced that he’s become wrapped up in some sort of scheme - Dazai actually seems interested in what's going on.
Enough to stop his whistling and everything.
There's a woman with dark hair who takes to the front, grabs a microphone down from its stand and wraps her fingers around the cord. She stands stiffly, curls in on herself just slightly. She looks a little uncomfortable about it, maybe, Atsushi thinks.
“Oh!”
Atsushi looks over, away from her, to see Dazai’s eyes trained on one of the others messing with equipment on the stage, a lanky guitarist with his instrument slung over his front.
“He's cute, isn't he?”
If Atsushi hadn’t already been suspicious before, he definitely would be now.
Especially when Dazai looks expectantly over at him, when he accompanies the question with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.
… He is cute, though.
Atsushi can admit it, even if it's a horribly embarrassing exchange to have with Dazai-san.
That's why he just won't admit it to him.
The guitarist on stage, drawn toward the back, not entirely illuminated by the harsh stage lighting- he has big eyes, a pointed nose that gives him an aristocratic kind of profile, a small mouth that’s quirked into a frown.
He’s wearing a hoodie that looks to be too big on him - or oversized, maybe, on purpose - with a fitted shirt and jeans; short, dark hair with longer wisps that frame his face, silvery white at the tips like all of the color faded out at once and left nothing behind.
He looks like he could have just walked off the cover of a magazine.
Or off the set of a music video, maybe, more accurately.
He’s… extremely pretty, really.
Atsushi finds it unfortunately difficult to keep his eyes away from him. It’s not that he can’t tear them away, it’s just that- they return, no matter how hard he tries.
He just hopes that Dazai doesn’t notice.
Judging by the way that Dazai keeps looking over at him, overt and obvious, exaggeratedly sneaky and suspicious glances that Atsushi knows he knows that he can see… he's noticed.
Not only has he noticed, but he seems to be invested.
Something that’s never really a good thing, with Dazai-san.
The performance keeps Atsushi's attention easily. The songs are creative, unique, structured in a way that's unexpected but not unpleasant.
Atsushi doesn't think that he could truly hate anything that was performed with passion, made by people who loved it so much that they devoted themselves to it for no other reason than that, but - still. It's particularly good.
He enjoys himself.
The anxiety of whatever Dazai is doing bleeds away for a bit, if only temporarily.
It really shouldn't be a surprise, all things considered, but it is.
Completely unprompted, as the show comes to an end and the band has started wrapping up their equipment to haul it off the stage, while Atsushi's sensitive ears are still ringing a little, Dazai says, “I can introduce you, if you want.”
Atsushi balks.
Dazai barks out a laugh, red-brown eyes crinkling with mirth.
Unsurprisingly, when his expression settles into a smirk, he looks all too pleased with himself.
“What?” he asks, innocently. Atsushi knows better. “I know him.”
Of course Dazai knows him.
Of course this whole evening has been.. a weirdly manipulative event.
It’s just Dazai’s style.
Atsushi just doesn’t know what the point of it all is.
If it's the loneliness thing, this.. doesn't feel like a good way to help.
“You-” he splutters. “What-”
Before Atsushi can get an actual answer out - not that it would have made a difference, he thinks - Dazai is grabbing him by the wrist to drag him around the corner and toward the steps up onto the stage.
“Akutagawa-kun,” he’s calling in a cheery, sing-song voice, maneuvering the both of them past a red-haired man who's hauling away a drum.
No one else seems to pay them any mind, but Atsushi watches as the guitarist’s head shoots up from where he’s crouched over an amp. His eyes glimmer where they hit the light, sharp like steel.
They go wide as he looks over, following the sound of Dazai’s voice.
“Dazai-san..?”
He’s small, Atsushi notices as he rises to his feet and comes to approach them. Not that he hadn’t looked as much on stage, but - it isn’t that he was simply being dwarfed by the speakers. He can’t be more than an inch or so taller than Atsushi himself, and he’s skinny and lithe, long-limbed, his wrists bony where Atsushi sees them peeking out from the sleeves of his hoodie.
“Dazai-san,” he says. “You came.”
His voice is rough, a little gravely, as if he was the one who had been singing. It’s pleasant, Atsushi thinks.
He’s even prettier up close, somehow, if that’s possible. His eyelashes are long and dark, and his pale grey eyes shimmer where they catch the light. Atsushi forces himself to look away, lest it be entirely too obvious that he’s staring.
Something complicated flickers across Dazai’s face. Atsushi notices it when he redirects his gaze to him, but he doesn’t quite know how to interpret it.
“Of course I came,” Dazai says blithely, in a tone of voice that tells Atsushi it absolutely had not been guaranteed. Then he adds, “You did well.”
The guitarist’s eyes widen impossibly further, when Atsushi sneaks a glance at him. He looks a little like he’s going to cry, actually.
Atsushi feels suddenly not only like he's definitely missing something, but also faintly concerned.
He starts, "I thought..."
Dazai cuts him off. Atsushi can't entirely tell if that's on purpose or not.
“Anyway!” Dazai continues, punctuating it with a hand clapped down on Atsushi’s shoulder. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
It has to be about the loneliness thing, then. Dazai wants them to be friends.
The guitarist looks over at him as if just realizing that he’s there.
He dips his head in greeting.
Something in his body language changes, though.
There’s something a little more stiff, suddenly, about the way that he stands, the way that he squares his shoulders, about the neutral expression that has returned to his face.
Atsushi tries not to take it personally, but the abruptness of the change is a little too obvious for him not to.
“Akutagawa, this is my friend Atsushi. Atsushi-kun, Akutagawa.”
Not knowing how else to introduce himself and antagonized by the anxiety that comes with this meeting apparently not going well for reasons completely unknown to him, Atsushi smiles and waves awkwardly - for some fucking reason, what the fuck - and says, “Uh. Hey. Nice to meet you. Er, your performance was good.”
The tension doesn't ease like he had hoped. If anything, it seems to get worse.
A complicated expression flitters across the other boy's face, thin eyebrows furrowed and small mouth setting in a tight line.
“Thank you,” the guitarist - Akutagawa - says, in a tone of voice that conveys absolutely no real gratitude. Atsushi isn't sure what it conveys at all, actually. Then, redirecting his attention to Dazai, Akutagawa continues, “I need to gather my things.”
Atsushi watches, a little bewildered, as he turns to do exactly that, without as much as a farewell.
It feels like a blatant dismissal of at least Atsushi, if nothing else.
“Uh.”
Atsushi really doesn't know how to interpret any of that interaction.
Dazai seems pleased, though, which is. Something. It’s a thing.
It's particularly confusing, because Dazai clearly knows Akutagawa well enough that he could have predicted that kind of reaction, and yet he'd.. orchestrated this whole thing regardless.
Atsushi doesn't like the feeling that he's being left in the dark.
“Is he always like that?” he asks uncertainly, his eyes following Akutagawa's retreating figure.
Dazai claps him on the shoulder again in a gesture of comfort, redirects his attention toward himself.
Atsushi does not feel particularly comforted.
“It means he likes you,” Dazai says.
Somehow, Atsushi doubts that.