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When Atsushi’s eyes meet theirs, Osamu wonders how much he knows.
Atsushi has always known too much. There was a time when he kept his eyes scrunched shut and his scraped nose pressed to the pavement, and as much as he used to credit Osamu with prying his palms from cracked asphalt, and as much as Osamu used to laugh it off with a boast or a joke or a smile on the days they couldn’t manage anything else, it was never true.
Atsushi chose when to look up. Osamu counts the fact that they were the first to see the way yellow-violet eyes gleamed beneath the sunlight as yet another blessing that their soul is too irreparably tarnished to weigh in bloodstained hands. It was only two years into Atsushi's employment with the Agency—when Atsushi clung to Osamu's hands with a broken nose and the adamant declaration that what mattered were their choices now, not those in their past—that Osamu finally saw it for the curse the universe surely intended it to be.
Everything that they have ever wanted to keep they’ve lost, after all.
And Atsushi is too good to ever stay by Osamu’s side. They would be a fool for thinking otherwise. Atsushi is Daedalus and Icarus in one—he’s fierce idealism and reckless bravery knotted together by an intellect understated. There is no doubt that Atsushi will collapse in a blaze; he weighs the truth in scarred palms while the rest of the world trembles with the weight of the lies that slip underneath locked doors, film the top of polluted water, and spark along each and every radio wave. He’s righteous. Kind.
There’s ever been a place in this world for anyone like that.
But Atsushi is a fighter, so sometimes Osamu lets childish daydreams flicker across their whiskey, smoke on the water, before they down it all with a grimace. It fills his mouth with the grimace of salt and iron, blood and gunpowder; the rotted-out memory of another man who was always better than Osamu could ever be. Even with the bitter aftertaste, sometimes Osamu imagines pulling Atsushi aside after one of their missions, truth burning between their teeth and longing richocheting in the cavity where their heart was. Is.
Sometimes, when they’ve had too much to drink, they clutch their phone in bandaged fingers as the world spins. They hover a finger over Atsushi’s number, but they never press the button. Because Atsushi is a fighter—twilight eyes, bloody claws, unbroken spine—so even when the sting of sobriety lingers only in daydreams at the edges of their mind, Osamu doesn’t say a word. Atsushi is righteous. Atsushi is kind. Atsushi is good. Osamu will not weigh him down.
There was a time that they dreamt of it, when Atsushi was twenty and Osamu was a monster, when Atsushi peered into the clouded eye Osamu once kept bound in bloody bandages and still stayed. When Osamu stumbled over broken platitudes that tasted like ash. When Atsushi watched them practice apologies into the skeptic, flickering hatred of the lamp that leered above the coffee table branded with blood and black coffee. Osamu dreamt of it until Fyodor mentioned lovesickness was a particularly nauseating look on them, and, well.
He wasn’t wrong—
Osamu is twenty-five, now, and Atsushi is a hero. He still looks at Osamu with a comfort that burns away to a hangover when he’s gone, but it’s different than it used to be. Osamu used to joke about Atsushi’s blind trust in them; now it’s founded, and Osamu trusts Atsushi just as much. They’re not partners, not quite, but they’ve seen each other at their worst. Atsushi knows Osamu best out of anyone else, and though that would have been a terrifying thought seven years ago, now it veers far more towards a comforting one.
Osamu is twenty-five, now, and the ghost of a monster pleads for redemption in the hollows of their collarbones. The adage remains, however, that the misfortune of their enemies is that they are Osamu's. Osamu knows the footsteps of their enemies before they even consider moving their feet. In just the same way, Osamu knows that that Atsushi waits. He waits, and it terrifies Osamu, sometimes, that Atsushi can shelter a flame of righteous hope with scarred hands despite everything Osamu has done. Despite the person that Osamu is.
It is a righteous hope, though, because Osamu would raze the earth to keep Atsushi safe, and they are ten years too old to lie to themself. Ten years too old to call it anything but love. Ten years too old to throw someone else away.
It’s true that life within the Agency harbors a warmth that Osamu could have only dreamed of at fifteen. It’s coffee-stained counter tops and the heat of printer-fresh ink; it’s papers crumpled in the trashcan and the scent of half-melted candles with the labels peeled off. On Osamu’s best days, the warmth that lingers along shag carpet and poorly-painted walls is nearly enough to forget choices weighed in the midst of gunpowder-stained fingers and the illusion of half-shut blinds. Only nearly, though, because as much as they like to pretend that their past was forgotten the very moment they untangled their bloody ankles from Mori’s snare, nightmares still mumble under their skin seven years later. Even now, the curve of their fingers twitch with the phantom weight of mangled bodies as the pistol in their grasp warms.
As much as Osamu pretends to be, they are not a hero. Perhaps if they truly were a good person, they would know how to offer Atsushi something other than silence. Something befitting the sort of often-exasperated affection that has always had the ability to illuminate the parts of them that they would much rather leave buried underneath cracked stone and rotting bouquets of white chrysanthemums.
So whenever Atsushi goes quiet, waiting for the words Osamu can’t say, Osamu breaks the silence with a jab at Kunikida. Atsushi scolds them with a taped-over sigh and disappointment he’ll patch over with a smile, and they’ll both pretend they don’t know what lingers in the silence between them.