Chapter Text
The bits of you that are broken,
the bits of you that are damaged,
donotsee them that way.
Instead see them as slowly being filled with beautiful experiences
and truths you have learned from the damage,
the equivalent of lacquered gold.
I want you to remember, you are not a broken thing,
Instead, you are a human full of incredible and wonderful experience,
made of the same things swords and diamonds are made of.
You are a survivor, my darling,
and I salute you for everything you have been through,
and for making the universe so proud,
so very proud of what you have become.
-Nikita Gill,You are a Survivor
The first spark of attraction ignites a region buried deep inside the brain called the ventral tegmental area, or VTA. Recognizing a potential reward in the making, the VTA begins producing a chemical called dopamine, often called the "feel-good" neurotransmitter.
Dopamine also plays a role in movement, motivation, mental focus, psychosis, even the production of breast milk. But it's best known for its starring role in addiction- and, well, romance.
Jumping from neuron to neuron, dopamine travels an ancient avenue called the mesolimbic pathway, priming the brain to pay attention and react to expected rewards from food, drugs, hugs, sex or other supposedly equally pleasant actions.
This network was so ancient that even worms and flies, which evolved about two billion years ago, have a similar reward highway in their primitive systems.
Dazai knew all of that. He could recite it in his sleep. Humans were no more advanced than flies and were slaves to a rush of chemicals.
He knew all of that.
And yet.
Feelings were not something that made sense to Dazai beyond chemical reactions in the brain. Because other people had chemicals in their brains that reacted to him, but his never turned on. VTA, dopamine, that rush of pure feel-good chemicals didn't apply to him. He never experienced that single defining moment that other people impressed so deeply as being completely natural for everyone to experience at least once.
And so, therefore, it seemedobviousto conclude that Dazai could not feel things and, by extension, was not a human being.
.
Or it would have been.
If not for the f*ckery that was Nakahara Chuuya.
Chuuya was possibly the most annoying person Dazai had ever met. Not in any conventional way, either, because that clearly would have been too easy.
No, Chuuya was annoying- insufferable, even- in that he noticed small shifts in the emotional state of a room with ease, even if that room was full of highly trained mafia members. That meant that, while Chuuya likely found it a bit more difficult, he caught on infuriatingly well to Dazai's moods. It only took him a few hours to catalog each shift in his expressions that he couldn't quite train away- something he'd bet againstMoribeing able to do.
Chuuya wasn't an idiot, unfortunately. He was a genius in emotional intelligence (or maybe just a genius in Dazai's few emotions), he just usually chose not to act on it. Dazai didn't like the magnifying glass Chuuya had somehow managed to pin him under. From the outside it would seem as though Chuuya was making a slug’s pace at whittling away at Dazai, but considering others had gone years without as much headway, he was blitzing through with all the subtlety of a bullet.
The first time Chuuya touched his unbandaged skin without the distraction of an injury, Dazai thought he was dying.
His fingers were tingling and it felt like a clinical rush of serotonin was shot through his veins. In a way, it resembled thedepression pills- hah- Mori had put him on before Dazai swallowed all of them and had to get his stomach pumped without anesthesia as a punishment. There was a study he’d read about that detailed the possibility of serotonin levels increasing six times during death. It made some amount of sense, because he'd never felt quite as floaty and weird before.
The second time Chuuya’s hand touched his face where’d he’d ripped his bandages off, Dazai’s next theory was that he was having a stroke.
Tingling could be a sign of an oncoming stroke, as well as the weird lightheadedness Dazai was feeling. During a stroke, if there was damage to the left brain hemisphere, then it could limit rational thought and logic. That seemed more plausible than anything else, because for some reason, when Chuuya pushed him down onto the bed withthat lookin his eyes andthat heatpressing searing kisses into his mouth, Dazai didn’t fight it. He didn’twantto, even, which definitely supported the stroke theory.
His internal temperature ran on the lower end of ‘normal’, so he shouldn’t feel nearly as hot as he did in that moment, when Chuuya took a moment to stare down at him with those powerful ocean eyes and that intense smirk. It felt weird being so warm and like his clothes and bandages were suddenly too stuffy.
Dazai had been under someone before, had been caged and caught and tied-such a pretty doll, Dazai-but it didn’t feel likethis.
He wanted to knowwhy.
Not a stroke, he concluded for certain when Chuuya pinched the inside of his wrist, but the touch sent a weird static glittering like shards of glass down his throat.
“Oi, fish-for-brains,” Chuuya snarked at him, suddenly on top of him with his legs bracketing Dazai’s hips. “You good?”
“Why can't you f*cking listen to me for just once in your gods-forsaken life?!”Chuuya had screamed at him not even a half hour ago.
And it was because Dazai had been so thoroughly stripped of shame until all that remained were his withering bones and ugly skin that he rose to the half-baked, meaningless challenge. He surged up, feeling the phantom, preliminary ache in his bones and the cold sweeping up his spine, and wound his arms around Chuuya’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss that felt awkward from the start.
Dazai didn’t like sex.
He knew Chuuya wanted him, though, because for all that he hated sex, he knew exactly what lust looked like on other people. Chuuya was attracted to him and it made him feel sick. He didn’t want sex or need it like other people did.
Chuuya couldn’t reallywanthim. He justthoughtthat he wanted Dazai, so to make the lust in his eyes that clawed unforgivingly at Dazai’s skin go away, he’d let Chuuya have sex with him. Because Dazai didn’t like pain, and sex was a painful act. He reacted to it negatively, and that had to make Chuuya reconsider having sex with him, right? Chuuya wasn’t particularly or excessively cruel, so unlike- unlikeother people,he wouldn’t want to keep having sex with Dazai once he saw how bad he was at pretending it felt good.
But Chuuya wouldn’t be satisfied unless Dazai made an effort. He didn’t want sex, but he did want Chuuya- not in any substantial or profound way, but if a partner was necessary he’d want it to be Chuuya, and this was a balancing act he couldn’t afford to fail.
“Yes,” he breathed into their lips, kicking himself internally for the way his voice flooded away from him too quickly. “Hatrack,” no, “chibi,” f*ck- “Chuuya, hurry up or I’m leaving.”
Chuuya reacted well to his name more than the other ‘nicknames’ he’d afforded his partner, so Dazai quickly categorized that mentally. It made a weird little glint shine in blue eyes and he leaned in again-
Oh.
Chuuya wasn’t bad at kissing, Dazai thought, feeling a little weird and hot and sweaty when he was pressed into the mattress by a decidedly possessive kiss. Possessiveness that made himitch,and he squirmed, and maybe his arms were shaking (could Chuuya feel it? Did he hate it? Did helikeit? Was Chuuya really so cruel?), and maybe this was a stupid idea, but Chuuya was holding his arms, holding himdown,and- and Dazai didn’twant to-and- Chuuya was moving on top of him, and weighing him down and he was leaning up, up, finally giving him a chance tobreathe-
Chuuya pulled his shirt over his head and reached down to tug at Dazai’s. Oh- he wanted to- Dazai’s mind felt a little hazy, a weird fog settling over him with barely a single finished thought.
(He needed to get a hold of himself. He needed to…. he needed to sort out his thoughts. If he couldn’t even think, then that meant Mori was right and he really was just a doll. Mori couldn’t be right. He wasn’t supposed to be right.)
“Sit up,” fingers tapped his hip and Chuuya sat back and Dazai squirmed, because-
“Sit up, Dazai,” Mori murmured into his ear, his lust deepening his voice nasally and the damp breath settling with a cold humidity on his skin where it hit the place he’d torn away bandages at. He felt exposed andhatedit. His hands settled onto his hips and squeezed, digging his nails in the longer Dazai didn’t respond, but he couldn’t- didn’t want to- “Come on, Dazai, dear,” his eyes were narrowed and he was drawing blood and ithurt-
Chuuya’s fingers rubbed over his clothing, gentle, inquiring, and Dazai felt like he’d emerged from dark, sensory dampening depths as he processed where he was and what he was doing. Gentleness. It was- it was nice, but toomuch.
It was such a sudden, shocking change that he let his body move into autopilot so that he didn’t have to think about how soft and reassuring it was, fingers moving up to struggle, work at, tear-don’t tear, don’t let Chuuya know-and undo the buttons of his shirt.
That was good, because Chuuya was smirking, looking satisfied with his actions. As long as Chuuya stayed happy, he’d stay dumb enough to not dig his hands in and make Dazai bleed the way he should, because he’d taken way too long to reply. Chuuya really was stupid, Dazai huffed unamusedly in his head, his fingers finally steadying into their trained firmness. He should’ve figured out that Dazai needed to be punished for that. What a dumb slug he’d gotten as his partner.
“Wow, mackerel,” Chuuya huffed. “Didn’t think you’d be this easy.”
“So easy, Dazai. And here I thought you said you wanted to stop.”
.
Maybe.
Maybe not so stupid,Dazai choked on air, fingers spasming. How did Chuuyaknow?
Chuuya rocked back onto his hips again, and it was so surprising that the weight hurt, and he felt so wired up that he couldn’t stop the pained moan that escaped him if he tried. And then, a second after Chuuya smirked, he was stilling, every motion and rocking and smirk-smile stopping with a screeching halt that threw him off.
What happened? Why did he-? Dazai squinted up at Chuuya, because that sound should’ve made him do it again to hear Dazai in pain again, and then he should’ve gone ahead and hurried up with whatever he wanted to do with Dazai’s body. Couldn’t he tell that he’d let him?
This was Chuuya’s chance to get back at him for all of the insults Dazai threw his way. Why was he stopping now?
(Dazai wanted him to stop, but Chuuya’s little thumb-rub thing made him pause and halt because, well,what if he did it again?It might… it might be worth the pain, then, right? He hated the way it felt, but he inexplicably wanted Chuuya to do it again.
Dazai was bad at telling when he needed people to stop. It was why he wasn’t a victim, no matter what Kouyou used to whisper. He wanted it. He did. He… heusedsex just to get Mori to balance the usual pain with praise and nice words. He hated himself for it.)
But Chuuya was moving, leaving, swinging back around and sitting beside him with a sigh that sounded too upset. What did Dazai do?
Talking couldn’t result in anything good, but with Chuuya upset already there was a chance he’d get hurt anyway. “What,” he swallowed, his voice suddenly feeling too thick and harsh in his mind and on his tongue. “What’s wrong?”
He kept himself from flinching when Chuuya’s finger touched over his pants where his dick was, but his hips still twitched and his spine bent because that didn’t feel good. “This,” he said, and- huh? Why was that an issue? Did Chuuya suddenly decide he wasn’t attracted to him? “You’re not even hard.”
.
OfcourseDazai wasn’t hard. Chuuya was the one doing sex, not Dazai, so he wasn’t hard. It was simple. Why did it matter to Chuuya? Shouldn’t he know? He’d clearly had one night stands before, so he should know what sex was like.Dazaiknew what sex was like- and- and-
“Such a shame, Dazai,” Mori’s hands roamed over him, and one of them grabbed him and stroked him and ithurt.He whimpered and begged, but he was pinned and couldn’t get him off and he didn’t know why this washappening-“You can’t even get it up. That’s fine, of course. Just be a good doll for me and lie there.” And then he was moving, and his hands- and his eyes- and he couldn’tescape-
“No, no, I am, Iwantto,” he looked up, and Chuuya was still there, still staring, and he had to begood. “Chuuya.”
He was reaching for Chuuya, tugging on his sleeves and he should feel embarrassed, and maybe he would later, but for now he needed this. If Chuuya left, if Dazai wasn’t good, then- then-
Chuuya snarled and the sound was good and familiar. The heat, the anger, that was all normal, and Dazai soaked in it. “What is it then?” His tone was sharp but he was leaning back in. “Do you need more attention here?”
Dazai wondered if Chuuya was more cruel than he originally assumed, because he reached down and ground his palm against his body, eliciting sensation so sharp that it dragged him from the recesses of his mind where he’d rather stay until Chuuya was done. It yanked him back into his body- it so sudden and startling andpainfulthat he registered that he was saying something but couldn’t make out his own words.
He was worried he begged Chuuya to stop when he pulled his hand away fully, but he was still sitting by the bed, still looking down at him (Chuuya should always be looking down at him, no matter how he teased him). Still, the sharp pain that had sent his mind into a wild frenzy had slowed at last into a murky wave.
Fingers drummed against his hip before Dazai’s worry could morph into anything substantial or real (and feeling something real would somehow be worse than the odd sense of crushing intimacy Chuuya forced). “Turn on your side.”
Oh. Right. Sex. Dazai looked up into Chuuya’s eyes for the hatred, the anger, the liquid vitriol. He found nothing. He tried to find the pure lust, the objectification, the clinical tone to what was about to happen to him. He found nothing. Chuuya and Mori were not the same, but Chuuya, normally genuine, brash Chuuya was infinitely more cruel for disguising his want so seamlessly. So seamless that it was uncharacteristic for him, a kind of flawless he’d never seen Chuuya manage outside ofCorruption.
He turned over onto his side and stuffed any feelings down into the pit of his heart for later when he had a razor and his dingy futon all to himself. They still bubbled and churned painfully when he heard a zipper and the faint rustling of clothing. They rose up to sting him viciously when Chuuya laid down behind him, almost entirely pressed against him and sending shockwaves racing up and down his body until he was forced to be aware of every inch of his skin that came into contact with the living furnace that was Chuuya.
“This okay?” He felt murmured into a thin strip of pale skin not quite concealed by bandages, making Dazai’s entire body shiver, hot and cold and awful. It was worse, worse,worsewhen Chuuya kissed his neck, the brush of his lips against bare skin eliciting tingling burns, the skin-on-skin contact so much-toomuch- to take.
(But it wasn’t painful even though his body’s reaction insisted otherwise. Chuuya wasn’t hurting him, and heknewthat.)
Still, Dazai nodded just enough that he was sure Chuuya could feel it, using the motion to move his neck a little further away from those lips. He didn’t realize he’d shuffled away until Chuuya's arms snaked around his body and tugged him back in, not particularly forcefully, but Chuuya had always been the stronger of the two. It was more cruel than anything else, but not more or less so than Dazai was accustomed to.
Chuuya’s arms encased him just like that, wrapped around his waist and loosening just slightly. It felt like a taunt- even when Chuuya wasn’t holding him tightly, Dazai could not get away. He was not and likely would never be as physically strong as Chuuya, with or without his ability, and the bitter ache in his chest at the thought of just how helpless he was hurt.
“Gonna need an answer, mackerel,” Chuuya chided, pressing another kiss into the same bit of unconcealed skin. It still burned, but the longer he stayed there, the warmer it felt. It was flat pressure, and when Chuuya wasn’t moving, wasn’t scraping their skin together, it was almost bearable. Almost, almost, almost….
“Yeah, it's fine,” he forced out, trying to inject a flavor in his tone but more than likely failing.
And Chuuya didn’t stop. He kept going, kept pushing his lips against him, no longer a flat pressure when he pushed forward and continued taking. Chuuya had always been greedy, but like this, when his greed seemed to expand to Dazai, it was weirder, different, worse. He wanted to carve away the lust that pricked against him just as much as he wanted Chuuya to never let go when he felt the same fizzle of warmth from earlier. Now that he’d centered himself, he registered the sensation beyond the reflexive label ofpainhis body kept insisting it was.
If nothing else, he was Chuuya’s right now. That was the main force driving him to stay there, encased by Chuuya’s hands and his own hubris. The second he stood up and walked away, the second Chuuya pulled away from him, he’d go back to being Mori’s.
He reminded himself that Mori would’ve already hit him for moving at all. Whether Chuuya was too dumb to realize that Dazai deserved to be punished, or if Chuuya really was not going to punish him at all, Dazai was not being hit. The pain was contained inside of his own body, his own mind, so he laid there and let Chuuya stoke the fire in his body, making him shiver, making his legs twitch, making heat pool in his stomach. He wondered if it was because Chuuya ran warm that he had started to feel too warm in his skin, a little clammy but mostly restless.
Chuuya’s lips pulled away finally and moved the arm that had been slung over Dazai's body. He slowly dragged his fingers up his torso, his fingers dancing over bandaged skin, trailing up, down, up, down, rhythmically working up until-
Oh.
Oh.
“Hah, Chuuya,” Dazai gasped, flinching further into Chuuya's chest where it was pressed against his back. Chuuya's fingers chased the motion, still rubbing small circles over his nipple and lighting up his skin in a horribly hot, sparking feeling. He’d been touched there before, but that felt weird and uncomfortable against his cold skin. Now, with the fire already stoked in the pit of his stomach, it blazed higher and higher with every movement of Chuuya’s fingers, little shocks sparking from the area, the friction of bandages dulling and heightening the sensation all at once.“Ngh.”
“Does that feel good?” The stupid, horrible asked, so smug that Dazai would’ve teased him for it if he weren’t dying.
Dazai turned his face in the pillow, hoping that smothering his face would stop Chuuya from seeing the awful, disgusting expression no doubt on his face (it felt unfamiliar, and unfamiliar meant he didn’t know how another person would react to it, whether positive or negative). “Yeah,” he answered, swallowing down the breathiness the best he could, feeling disgusting right down to his core.
Chuuya just keptgoing.He didn’t stop touching him, running his hands down then back up intermittently, never once pulling a hand away. The pain had dulled, leaving behind the heat. It wasn’t getting any hotter now that Chuuya had stopped focusing on his nipples, but it still lingered, almost gentle with each swipe of pressure up and down his body, making him lean back and forth again and again, swaying with each oversensitive motion of Chuuya’s hands. The lessened, occasional touch made his nipples both more and less sensitive, and after a few touches, he distantly noticed sounds drifting from his vocal chords, but the weight of Chuuya’s hands made it feel less and less like it mattered. The frantic energy, the insistence that what he was feeling was pain, was fading more and more the longer Chuuya touched him without even a hint of trying to inflict even a small injury.
“Still good?”
“Mmh,” Dazai nodded, arching into the fingers curling over his chest. “Ungh,yes.”
He wasn’t lying, either. Not entirely, at least. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t…. it didn’t hurt anymore, it just felt weird, a pressure building between his legs that was vaguely familiar but only happened when he had his own hand down there and forced it to happen to relieve stress. It was never so heavy, never quite as much of an ache.
“It feels even better without these,” he heard Chuuya say just as he eyes started to close.
Oh.
That…. that made sense. Sex wasn’t just about the heat in his stomach or the warmth of Chuuya’s fingers. Sex was owning another person’s body. Sex was Dazai being stripped to nothing and he felt a little off for forgetting that. A finger played with the edge of a bandage, never breaching beyond it, but it was enough to know that Chuuya, for all of his gentleness, wanted to see and carve and own.
He opened his mouth-
“You don't have to.”
-and promptly shut it as a hand landed lightly on his hip. He jolted from the words more than the sensation.
What?
Chuuya had to want to see what was under them. He had seen bits of it in the past during missions where it was unavoidable, along with moments where the chibi had to stitch him back up in the gaps between bandages, Chuuya’s hands shaking from the reminder of doctors and antiseptic, but never the whole thing.
Hehadto.
It… it didn’t make sense for him to not want to.
But Chuuya was a bad liar, almost as bad as Dazai was at knowing when to sayno.
“...you can.”
Chuuya jumped like he really was surprised, and that was, very suddenly, all that Dazai needed to know. Chuuya’s greed was as strong and vitriolic as Mori’s, but his didn’t burn. His hands didn’t burn after they settled under his skin. His lust didn’t hurt. The pressure in his belly, waned from the reminder of what they were doing but steadily heating up again, didn’t hurt. Chuuya was not Mori.
“What?”
For the first time in a while that night, Dazai's head turned to meet Chuuya, seeing how those electric eyes displayed openly his anxiety and nerves.
“...the bandages,” he said, just as quiet but more resolutely than before. “You can take them off. If Chuuya wants to.”
He could see very clearly that Chuuya did want to, from the bob of his neck as he swallowed to the twitch of his hands against his skin.
“Do you want to?” He asked again, stilling his hands against his body.
Dazai ducked his head before he could read all of the emotions crashing together in ocean blue, taking in a steadying breath-
-and promptly regretted it minutes later after the protective layer was removed his his neck.
“Are hickeys okay?” Chuuya murmured, face still tilted into Dazai’s skin, his lips moving against him with every word.
“Mmh, yeah, it’s fine,” Dazai spoke the words on reflex before he could decide if it really was fine, breathless and panting and feeling so deeply aware of every inch of scarred skin. Every scar pulsed with lingering pressure and tingling pleasure, all so striking and deep and bright that he felt like he could barely breathe. Chuuya’s smirk, curved against his neck and accented by a kiss, surged for him to recover for a moment, already feeling so much he was overwhelmed but still wanting more (Dazai revelled in the pinpricks of phantom pain, the part that knew and remembered Mori insisting that it was about to hurt but still, still,stillwanting more). “Chuuya can go back to slobbering on my neck like a dog- hngh- hah-”
Dazai would love to see the look on Mori’s face when he saw evidence that Dazai was claimed by someone else. Would he kill him for real then?
Chuuya wasted no time in sucking hickeys into Dazai’s neck, replacing white lines of scars with purpling bruises. He kept going, laving over every inch of sensitive skin until Dazai was squirming from the liquid heat of pleasure that wouldn’t stop racing up and down his body, so different from the pain he expected that he was twitching all over.
He continued going, unwrapping every inch of skin and continuing to lave his tongue over every bit of it like he enjoyed what he was seeing. Dazai knew exactly what Chuuya was looking at, so when he finally paused at his arms and stared, he figured that the slug had come to his senses.
“It’s ugly, right?” Dazai waited, but Chuuya stayed silent, just looking at him. He opened his mouth again to offer to rebandage himself-
“What the f*ck are you talking about?”
Oh.
Oh,Dazai’s eyes were wider than they should be, so much so that he was definitely giving away what he was thinking, but Chuuya’s pure, lust-filled expression felt seared into the confines of his mind along with that single, offhandedly-spoken statement.
“Yeah,” Chuuya snorted derisively, unfairly condescending when what he was doing made no sense. “You’re hot, idiot. Still just as annoyingly attractive, so don’t worry about that.”
And he proved it.
When Chuuya continued touching him, when he kissed every scar like it was something precious and not the abomination it really was, when….
When he sawit.
His birthday present for his fourteenth birthday.
Mori’s brand on him.
There was a brief, stilted moment where Dazai wanted to leave. He wanted to run, far away where no one (but most especially Mori) could ever touch his body, the body he wanted so desperately to shed behind him, again. It was followed a louder voice murmuring phantom caresses and warm lips and blue eyes and pleasure unaccompanied by substantial pain.
“Who… whohurtyou?”Chuuya asked like it mattered, the question playing on repeat, looping over and over like it was supposed to mean something.
Dazai made his choice in the way he looped his carved arms around Chuuya’s neck and tried for a real kiss.
Pleasure was an abstract concept in a lot of ways. Some fiction described it wistfully, while videos were overdone in action and reactions. Pleasure brought by someone’s own hand seemed to be (by large agreement on forums) less intense than pleasure given by someone else. The concept of org*sming for pleasure rather than a lackluster release of tension was foreign to Dazai, though he’d seen Mori do it one too many times.
It was very different when Chuuya was trying to make him cum.
“Ngh, ah,don’t stop,”he panted, his hands scrambling for purchase and finding only the black duvet beneath them. He felt so entirely out of his body, unable to control the wild tightening in the pit of his stomach, stoked higher and higher by each drag of Chuuya’s awful, amazing hand.
It was intense, it was too much, it was everything, he was floating on a high he felt like he’d never come down from as Chuuya kept going, and going, and going-
A finger circled around his asshole, teasing and dipping, each movement almost distracting Dazai, almost dragging him back to another room, another time, another place, but not nearly enough to do much of anything when he opened his eyes. It was just him and Chuuya and the fire in his stomach.
“Chu-! Ah, ha! Ngh,”Dazai shuddered and twisted through his org*sm, ropes of cum escaping the tip of his co*ck as he felt the fire dim and rise and shake and pleasure washed over him in tall, earth-shattering waves he couldn’t defend against. He didn’t know what he looked like, only that Chuuya hadn’t stopped, the pleasure wasn’t stopping, and it wouldn’t anytime soon.
Dazai teased Chuuya mercilessly for his height, but it didn’t matter much to him when he was so strong in return. The way he pressed Dazai into the mattress, unyielding, contradicted beautifully by how gentle his words were, ached. If Chuuya wanted to, he could keep Dazai there as long as he wanted, but his chibi was so stupid, too stupid to realize the power he held as he kept his touches so feathery and light every time he checked in to make sure the sensation was still wanted.
Chuuya was a greedy partner in bed.
Almost as greedy as Dazai apparently was with just about anything Chuuya would give him.
Lying in the aftermath, he focused on breathing through the field of sensations washing over his body. While Chuuya had stretched him with three fingers, but Dazai could only think that he could've dared to stretch him with a fourth. His co*ck was big and made him ache already.
He didn’t ache too badly though, since he…. with his tongue….
“What was that?” Dazai asked distantly, sounding a little airy and gone still, his thoughts coming out in bursts rather than in a linear focus, trying to collect together what had happened in some kind of sensible order and failing miserably. Each org*sm blurred confusingly into the last until he couldn’t tell where it started, only knowing with certainty how it ended.
“Rimming,” Chuuya answered, those electric eyes bright. “Thought you’d like it.”
Chuuya had guessed a surprising number of things accurately over the course of the night. It made him feel somewhat uncomfortable, as uncomfortable as he imagined Chuuya felt normally when around him. It was a natural response to something as wrong as Dazai. It made sense for Chuuya to be uncomfortable.
Almost as uncomfortable as he very suddenly was when Chuuya, after leaving the room to give Dazai a chance to get himself together and leave, returned with a washcloth and started cleaning him. That was weird, but whatever. Chuuya was acting strange in general, so he just hummed at the sensation of the too-soft cloth against him, not even setting off a phantom itch like the rest of his things usually did.
He figured that would be it, but when Chuuya left to the bathroom, he left the door open. Dazai heard the sound of water starting up and suddenly felt verytired.
Blankets, sex, kissing. All of which were delicacies Dazai had never properly indulged in until then, so the amount of things Chuuya was pushing onto him was weird, but only in a warm, syrupy way. It made him itch more than his rough blankets ever did.
When Chuuya levered his arms underneath him, Dazai startled from the daze he’d unconsciously fallen into.
“Come on, mackerel,” he heard Chuuya’s raspy, exhausted voice spoke speaking into his hair.
“I can walk,” Dazai murmured a little indignantly, knowing that he wasn’t entirely welcome anymore now that Chuuya had f*cked him, but feeling emptier than ever because of it. Chuuya’s arms tightened around him curiously in response, holding him so close he felt his broken edges might start digging into him if he wasn’t careful.
“Sure,” Chuuya said, his tone giving away the eyeroll he couldn’t see as he carried him…. not out the door, but into the bathroom and put him down on the shower stool.
It was only then that Dazai realized what was going on, his brain somehow a million years behind him in a way it’d never been before.
“I just want to sleep,” he complained at Chuuya, who leaned over to shut off the bath water. A test, a question, just to see if his mind wasn’t misunderstanding for once. It wasn’t, and a deep, tired, starved little corner of himself knew it andwantedit.
“And I wanna have clean sheets,” Chuuya snarked back, turning on the showerhead and facing it away while waiting for it to warm up, both confirming and shattering his expectations for the night. It was his own fault for having expectations at all, considering nothing ever went right when Chuuya was involved. He seemed so deeply unconcerned with how many mistakes he was making just by letting Dazai do things like stay the night and touch him.
“Is this how you treat all of the people you have sex with?” Dazai shook his head mockingly, but he knew before moving that it was weaker than usual. “Chuuya’s such a brute.”
“Shut up, dumbass.”
Dazai didn’t think Chuuya wanted him to stick around overnight. It contradicted his understanding of one-night stands but succeeded in warming his cheeks now that he’d finally processed it.
He kept his face forward to hide it. There wasn't anything to look at in Chuuya's bathroom anyway. He took showers here often enough that he knew what it looked like.
When this was over and Chuuya finally came to his senses, Dazai should get Mori to take a look at his brain to eliminate that part of his psyche. It felt like a weakness to be so easily swayed by one person. He didn’t have a chance to fake anything, so caught off guard that each reaction was coming out more genuinely than the last in a wild cacophony of emotions and feelings that felt sickeningly human.
(Dazai wouldn’t be eating anytime soon. He could tell that, more than usual, he’d only throw it back up.)
Throughout the muddled, occasional murmurings from Chuuya as his grossly dedicated chibi went about washing him, Dazai found himself- notcontentwith, but something similar- in the way Chuuya just kepttouchinghim. He almost wished very stupidly that Chuuya would take longer on his body than he did, just because the warm tingling reminded him a bit of sex even though the intent behind it was very obviously different.
It wasn’t sexual, it wasn’t demanding. Dazai wanted that more than the sex. Was this really how Chuuya would treat him after sex?Every time?
Chuuya said he’d be back after leveraging him into the bath, but Dazai not only disliked baths but had been in there long enough that the water had gone from tolerable to bone-chattering. He wanted to find out what more Chuuya would show him. That strange expression? The indulgence? The freely and stupidly given affection? He wondered if it was only sufferable because Chuuya lacked similar qualities that Dazai did, though to a far less extreme that let him retain his human qualities.
Dazai wanted to know what Chuuya would give him next, but upon standing up he realized that maybe there was a reason why Chuuya carried him to the shower, then from there to the bath. Chuuya walked in just as he was trying to figure out the best way to balance between the wall and ledge of the bath.
“You good?” Chuuya asked, his expression reeking of amusem*nt and almost grating on his nerves.
His legs shook a little bit.
Dazai flipped him off. “Just fine.”
And then he almost slipped and cracked his head open.
Chuuya helped him out after that and toweled him off, bracing Dazai against him for a moment until he got himself together. It was just long enough that Chuuya, using his shorter height to his advantage for once, reached up to do something to his hair with the towel- scrunching it?- while looking to believe that Dazai didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He let him do it anyway, because Chuuya had been weirdly patient and less tempermental since getting him on his bed.
“Get dressed,” Chuuya nudged him. “Bandages are in the top left drawer.”
Bandages?
Dazai didn’t have to ask to know who the bandages were for, but…. huh. He opened the drawer, feeling numb and cold as he did so, the feeling only enhanced by the scalding heat of emotions, because those were the nice bandages, the ones he always got when he didn’t think Mori would notice the charge.
Chuuya knew his favorite brand of bandages. Chuuya bought them for Dazai.Why?Why go to the trouble? Why bother? The aisle wasn't close to Chuuya’s usual route through stores, which he knew after stalking him. That meant that Chuuya both literally and figuratively went out of his way to do something for Dazai without Dazai ever asking or hinting to it. Chuuya just…. he just did it.
Was it for this? For sex? Dazai knew Chuuya couldn’t have possibly planned something like that. It was out of character for him, but then again the entire night had been what Dazai would consider out of character for Chuuya. There was nothing to gain from it, not like sex where at least then Chuuya was receiving pleasure, or even cleaning him and making him stay the night as Chuuya might’ve thought he was saving himself from later complaints.
What message would Dazai be sending if he wrapped himself in those bandages?
He closed the drawer and put on the clothes set out for him, hating how their softness made his eyes droop just slightly and built up pressure in the back of his throat, urging a yawn to escape when Chuuya walked back in.
“Ready?” Chuuya asked.Do you want me to put them on for you?
What a silly chibi,Dazai thought, desperately choking back the wave of questions that burned to escape. It burned almost as bad as the reminder that he’d be touching those blankets with his bare skin.
“Yeah.”It's fine.
They walked to the bedroom together, Chuuya claiming the furthest side and walking around the bed quickly while staring. He was feeling so many awful things at once while trying not to feel anything at all as he noticed very clearly that Chuuya took the side closest to the door, despite Dazai knowing after (stalking) watching him before that he normally slept on the further side.
After peeling the blanket away, he touched a hand to the sheets to brace himself and stopped the moment he did.
Oh.
His fingers spread against the sheets, just to make sure he wasn’t imagining things.
He wasn’t.
It was the softest material he’d ever felt in his miserable, disjointedly short and long life. When he slipped under the covers as though in a trance he realized that even the pillow case wasn’t Chuuya’s preferred glossy silk.
He knew he was giving away too much, but when Chuuya reached out and tugged Dazai over while he shuffled closer, bringing the both of them to the middle of the bed, he didn’t care. Chuuya was gently manhandling him into laying half on top of him while he tangled their feet together, connecting them in brushes of skin-on-skin contact that scraped pleasantly against his senses and harshly against his reservations at letting himself get too comfortable.
When Chuuya raked a hand through his hair and scratched his scalp, Dazai found himself too exhausted to care for how Chuuya was blatantly manipulating him. He’d wait for Chuuya to fall asleep and then leave.
He’d just…. he’d just have to stay awake.
Even as Chuuya grabbed his phone.
Even as his body warmed up against Chuuya’s, leaving him..,.
..
…
…leaving him warm and-
.
…and….
…..
Our nerves were frayed like ravelled sleeves,
We cherished each of our minor griefs
To keep them warm until the night,
When it was time again to fight;
But we were young, did not need much
To make us laugh instead, and touch,
And could not hear ourselves above
The arias of death and love.
-A.E. Stallings,Recitative
Since the summer of their first year as partners, Dazai had begun a habit (whether good or bad, he didn't quite know) of blaming most things to do with his unwilling partner on Chuuya and Romanee.
Chuuya, because it was easy to blame things on someone so blatantly human and uncaringly indiscreet. Romanee-conti, because it was the first wine Chuuya ever tasted that he didn’t have to pretend to like. It was also, unfortunately, the one and only wine that Dazai didn’t necessarily dislike, since it reminded him of warm eyes and soft hands before he was someone who was less than something. When Chuuya, wine-drunk and giddy at affording the atrociously priced drink, put his hands on Dazai’s face and left a sloppy attempt at a first kiss on his lips, all he could remember from then on was the phantom taste of Romanee-conti and all of the soft, horribly vague memories that came with it.
It made Dazai happy that their little rendezvous wasn’t driven by feelings. He’d tried, once and only once, too affected by the memory of wine in his system and the taste of Romanee-conti on Chuuya’s lips, to test the word ‘love’ on his tongue in passing. Chuuya’s flippant rejection solidified his belief that there would never be anything between them aside from ownership and greed.
When Dazai woke up in Chuuya's arms, triggered into wakefulness by the beginning of light filtering through the curtains, feeling warm for the first time in years, his first thought was that it was weird he’d managed to fall asleep at all. His second thought was that he wanted to kill himself. Really, honestly.
The itch under his skin was gone with soft sheets and warm arms, and without it Dazai couldn't satisfy the part of himself that knew he needed to suffer. Under his skin, the feeling of hands and writhing fingers haunted him enough to hide it with bandages, to squeeze out the sensation until it popped and left for good, but it wasgoneand he liked it but he knew that he shouldn’t. He wanted to mix medication and alcohol, or bludgeon himself on a sink, or throw himself off a roof. He didn'tcare,he just needed to feel something that wasn'tgoodto remind himself why he didn't deserve nice things.
And then Chuuya yawned.
His mind went blank for ten blissful seconds where his body stiffened to keep Chuuya asleep. It didn't work, because his hands (hot and scalding his skin like the world's best heating packs) started massaging the bare skin at his hip where the shirt had ridden up and he pulled Dazai closer and his eyes were blinking open-
“Mackerel?” Chuuya's gravelly morning voice crept out into the air. He groaned and slid his hand up and down Dazai's skin under his shirt, like it waseasyto touch someone like him. He felt exposed and needy for more but he didn'tdeserveit. Blazing, glorious blue eyes squinted at the faint morning light from the curtains and he apparently deemed it too early in that moment because he settled his chin back on Dazai's head and pulled him in a little closer until his face was pressed into his bare chest. “Mmh, go back to sleep. It's ass’o’clock.”
His arm that had been pillowing his head came around to card those devastatingly warm fingers through Dazai's hair, brushing through and twisting around random strands with small tugs that felt too grounding for his sanity. So grounding that it was almost suffocating, even, but it wasn't an iron weight. He could still move. His lungs could still take in air.
In Mori’s eyes, Chuuya was the hand that executed Dazai’s will, as though he were the god that orchestrated him. Like this, though, Dazai felt too big in his body, stuffed there by Chuuya’s hands, held together in his grasp like Chuuya had become the glue to mold him as he wished. Dazai felt malleable in his hold, and he wondered, if Chuuya ever figured out the power he had in that moment, what he would do with it. What kind of person would he sculpt Dazai to be?
And then Chuuya’s lips pressed a kiss into Dazai’s hair as he pulled the blanket up higher and dozed off again. His hold eclipsed the sun from Dazai’s view, and the blanket created a darkness he could fall asleep in, like Chuuya was shielding him from the light.
It was-
Hefelt-
Dazai’s lip trembled the tiniest bit out of his control, but he wormed himself down further into that hold and hoped Chuuya was too far gone in the throes of sleep to feel the way his breath shuddered against his bare skin.
Chuuya was wearing pajama shorts. They were old and panda-covered and had a coffee stain on the left side. They were shorter than was probably decent and the elastic hardly held up anymore. Dazai knew he’d had them since before joining the mafia because he rooted through all of Chuuya’s belongings the second he moved into the mafia apartments, and then did it again when he moved out.
Unlike Dazai, Chuuya preferred to sleep in shorts. He didn’t like the extra fabric around his body, which was why he didn’t wear a shirt to sleep in, leaving no barrier between them as Dazai settled his cheek against the oppressive warmth of his chest. It melted him.
After a few moments, Chuuya’s hand slipped back into his hair, not consciously but rather because he’d fully fallen back asleep. He should be getting up and leaving, but something weighed him down too much to even shift out of place. It wasn’t their legs tangled together, or the hand on his waist underneath his shirt, or the other hand practically cradling his head. It was some unidentifiable warmth bubbling in his chest that glued him to Chuuya’s side and convinced him that it would be okay to hide for just a bit longer, drifting off to sleep once again.
He would’ve been gone before Chuuya woke up if they didn’t have things to do later that needed the both of them like…. like a job and paperwork. That was the excuse he gave himself when he woke up to Chuuya playing on his phone and decided to indulge his slug by staying for a breakfast he’d be coughing up into the trash later.
It wouldn’t happen again, anyways.
(Except it did happen again.)
Chuuya was strange.
They’d been on a mission for a week, handling an uprising in a southeast district of mafia territory still left partially unchecked after a ‘deal’ had essentially strongholded the area’s police force under the mafia’s thumb. They killed, tortured, and blackmailed until every officer in the area was on Mori’s payroll.
It was a week and a half since they had sex and Chuuya had been staring at him a lot. Not that Dazai immediately connected the dots that it was because of the sex- odd for him but excusable since Chuuya shouldn’twantto have Dazai under him again after the first time. It didn’t take him long to figure out why Chuuya had been staring at him, though-
“Mmh, f*ck,”Chuuya hummed into Dazai’s neck as he pushed their erections together, pinning Dazai against the utility closet wall with pleasure and teeth sinking into his skin.
-since Chuuya was more interested in action than quiet deception.
Dazai tried to sink his teeth into his bottom lip when he felt that awful drag of sensation tingle up from his dick and light his head on fire, but when the slug thrust forward and squeezed them together intermittently, he ended up panting out a keening noise too loud and high to be mistaken for anything butbothered.Chuuya didn’t seem to mind; if anything the sharp smirk that curled against his skin seemed prideful. He clearly began to mind when Dazai dug his teeth into his lip, spilling blood from the pressure and sharp scratch of his canines until Chuuya was slipping his thumb momentarily between his lips to stop it.
He wondered if Chuuya would ever decide to change his mind about being gentle and finally exploit every scrap of weakness dragged out of him.
Then Chuuya was sliding his hand under his shirt, scraping softly against unbandaged slivers of skin, and the fire in the bit of his stomach was back, bringing a roar of lust from sexual attraction he rarely felt inclined towards. Dazai knew his chibi partner was aware of it after a few moments spentrollingtheir hips together, reaching around with those gloved hands to grip at his ass crudely and dragging him into the rocking motion.
“Ah, ah,”Dazai panted, quieter than Chuuya’s whimpers with every strike of friction. They were at a weird height for it normally, so it was strange they even managed to- oh, Chuuya was standing on a box. He should say something, make fun of it, or-“Ngh!”
Chuuya’s mouth latched onto his neck after bitting away a strip of bandages to muffle his squeaky whines and groans, his hand not working between them sliding back out from his shirt to slot between Dazai’s head and the wall just before he canted his head back. It prevented a headache while striking him as being odd that Chuuya cared.
It didn’t matter too much. Between the hand in his hair, the mouth on his neck, and the hand forcing Dazai to roll his hips in tandem with Chuuya’s, the heat spiked, andspiked,higher and higher until-
“Has anyone seen Chuuya?”
Kouyou.
Dazai felt Chuuya freeze against him. “The meeting,” he whispered, tone horrified.
Of course.
What happened next was a flurry of limbs and clothing as Chuuya redressed them both, tugging Dazai’s bandages back into place and smoothing them both down to appear some semblance of put together. Dazai was still aching in his pants, something tight and frustrated furrowing his brow, but he felt somewhat nice enough to turn Chuuya’s hat around the right way seconds before he opened the closet door.
Dazai stayed there, leaned against the wall, for several long moments before reaching a hand up to the fresh hickey on his neck under the bandages. After a minute of thought, he hooked a finger under the strip covering it so that it was the barest bit visible before continuing about his day.
Still high on frustration later that night and feeling the phantom warmth at the back of his head, he placed cameras in Chuuya's apartment, feeling a greedy twist to worm himself into Chuuya's space and under his ribcage to sleep next to the warm beating of his bleeding human heart to understand what made him so easily foister affection onto Dazai like it made sense. Like Dazai was worth it.
He knew Chuuya’s favorite color, his favorite brand of wine, where he spent his weekends, where he went when he got mad, and was outside his window every day for the first two weeks Chuuya spent in his new apartment, unable to relax on the luxurious bed he splurged on after years accustoming himself to the hard ground. He even knew that Chuuya swore to ‘gods’ instead of a singular one so that Arahabaki never thought that he was talking about them- Dazai didn’t know if that was how it worked, but whatever.
(Dazai only ever swore to the singular god in front of him. Whether his words were meant for the god that was Arahabaki or the deity that was Chuuya he didn’t know- both wrought calamity upon his daily life in different ways.)
He knew that while Chuuya wasn’t clinically intelligent in the way Dazai was, he exceeded in emotional intelligence. Not that it usually helped him perceive too much about Dazai, but sometimes, back when they were young and new to the mafia, Chuuya would look at his smile and whisper, something horrified on his tongue,that’s fake.Dazai would only smirk back a serpent’s smile and hiss,but you believed it for a minute, didn’t you?
He also knew that Chuuya got freckles on his face when it was warm out. Fifty-three exactly, spread across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks. Dazai knew that because he counted them personally after disguising himself as a bartender and getting Chuuya so drunk he couldn't walk, forcing his subordinates to callhimto come get the chibi, who was using his ability on a bottle of wine and two chairs. After taking him home, he used the opportunity to map out each freckle individually on his passed out slug, drawing over them with a fine tip marker and connecting each one like a line drawing.
There was a reason Chuuya didn't knock back straight vodka. It was the only thing that got him drunk enough to let his ability loose.
Chuuya would’ve been a good older brother, Dazai mused as he sunk lower into bedsheets he hadn’t yet been invited into again, less than a foot away from Chuuya, passed out after one too many glasses of wine and dragged back to his apartment with moderate difficulty. Strong, attentive, and considerate. A perfect Onee-san for a little brat to look up to and toddle after.
He supposed, in some ways, Chuuyahadbeen an older brother. He watched after the Sheep like a perfectly watchful shepherd would attend to their herd. Stupidly honest and brash but always just worrisome enough to be a good leader. He’d be awful running an organization like the mafia, but as anExecutive….
Well.
If Dazai lived long enough to see the hat passed on to himself, then maybe he’d consider it. It would be fun to see Chuuya kneeling at his feet (even though Dazai was the one who should and in part wanted to be forever on his knees in the wake of Chuuya’s overarching presence).
Sleep will find you, no matter who you be.
Holding your truth like antiquated media of social pleas.
Glance at the reflection, knowing that it's you...
that ewe were the one split away my sweet, longing adieu.
-Michelle Lee,Adieu a You
Dazai’s speech tick of referring to people in the third person had been broken viciously by Mori. One too many uppity whines of“Mori is so mean~!”had landed him with a fractured jawbone after the man shoved his co*ck down his throat for the first and last time, long enough to make him lose his voice for a week.
It was a comfort thing. A way to voice and organize his thoughts out loud that he slipped into in moments of childishly misplaced safety. He thought he’d been done with the habit until he slipped into it only two months into his and Chuuya’s official partnership.
Chuuya never commented on it aside from a weird look and a few brief, snide comments that filtered out over time. In fact, sometimes, when he used to respond to Dazai’s teasing of“Chuuya is such a loyal pooch”with words like“well Chuuya isn’t a dog,”it almost felt like he was encouraging it.
Eventually, he stopped even commenting on it at all. Dazai assumed that meant he’d gotten so used to hearing it that it barely registered. It said some uncomfortable things about their relationship.
It was just something they did, he guessed. Dazai had never had an actual long-lastingpartnerbefore, but he supposed this was their way of working together off the field too. Dazai packed extra socks for every mission knowing Chuuya never remembered to bring his, and Chuuya didn't bring up Dazai's millions of flaws that should've been beaten out of him.
It wasn't equal, could neverbeequal with how monumentally greedy Dazai was by nature, but that was fine. Chuuya was clearly too dumb to raise hell over it like he should.
Even when Chuuya was groomed by Kouyou to perfection, became one ofhersand thus too well versed in mafia politics to not run to Mori with a list of transgressions against Dazai, he didn't. He was put in charge of the jewel industry, got over whatever morals that marked him as a sheepdog for life, and still kept his mouth shut.
Dazai didn't need to wonder if he'd have done the same if their positions were reversed in any way. He would've tattled in a heartbeat, far too tainted by a deep pit inside himself that Mori called ‘loyalty’ to hold his tongue.
(Or so he thought)
Chuuya was not infallible.
During their early days of the mafia, his training had gone quickly as he was placed under Kouyou. She had a more delicate, refined touch that she passed onto Chuuya (though one would never guess with his attitude and temper). It wasn’t much of a surprise he was eventually handed a good portion of the jewel trade and later shoved onto the Flags.
He was good, but not perfect. A single oversight in the mafia had the tendency to snowball into a larger clusterf*ck of nonsense, which was why matters were usually handled at the head by a single person. Chuuya’s portion of the trade was not as large or vital as he and the rest of the mafia were generally made to believe, instead being a test from Mori.
(Everything in the mafia went easier when one naturally assumed it was a test from Mori.)
Still, it wasn’tgood.He’d miscounted a sum by ninety thousand yen and signed his name when he shouldn’t have on a single document. Neither issues were that bad, since in the mafia a signature could be erased with a bullet put in the right brain and the amount misplaced wasn’t too bad, all things considered. The issue was that failing a test from Mori, no matter how minor the screw-up was in retrospect, could end up with Chuuya’s head on a stick.
While that issue had been handled, if not neatly then quickly, it was not the last mistake Chuuya would ever make. At fifteen, he was far less trusting and thus hadn’t mentioned the mistake to Dazai (though he had found out anyway), but at freshly eighteen, Chuuya’s walls had fallen down to some degree, so when he ran into yet another problem, it was inevitable that Dazai would find out one way or another.
It didn’t help that Chuuya ended up panicking and very stupidly ended uptellingDazai about the issue after already telling Kouyou, which, while still stupid, was the best possible mistake he could’ve made.
Which led to them standing there, in the flickering lamplight of a Yokohama street a block away from Chuuya’s apartment and nowhere near where Dazai should be spending his nights. Chuuya had seemed nervous the entire time they’d ended up walking together and eventually stopped and spilled everything in a rambling mess.
“I told Ane-san,” Chuuya hurried to say after finishing his explanation just as Dazai suspected, as though that meant anything (it did, more so for Chuuya than for anyone else as one of her favorites- a title that meant things worlds apart from being Mori’s favorite).
“Kouyou-san could tell him herself,” Dazai said even as he knew it wasn't necessarily true. She was supposed to, but Ane-san (a title he didn't deserve to call her out loud because he didn'tneedher, not like Chuuya did) wouldn't. She would cover for what was hers, and the way she loved Chuuya was fierce with all the gently firm aggression of a provoked mother bear.
He could see that he'd planted a seed of doubt in Chuuya's eyes as he spoke and wished for a second that he could steal back his words and assure him he was lying. But he couldn't and would never be able to, because he was not someone who belonged to himself, so instead he watched Chuuya, ever so expressive and bright, flit through a dozen different things to say in response to that.
“Just…. don't tell Mori,” Chuuya begged, something clear in his eyes insisting that he had run out of options and while it killed him to ever be so vulnerable with his wants, there was a spark in his eyes that foolishly believed in Dazai.
“I won't,” Dazai lied, because that was all he was good for in the face of that blazing light.
It was a Tuesday just as dreary as every Tuesday came around when Dazai entered Mori’s office like clockwork, head turned down and eyes cast aside as he drummed his fingers against his thigh before tittering to a stop.
“Ah, Dazai-kun,” Mori said with perfectly crafted faux-surprise as though he hadn’t seen when Dazai walked in five minutes prior. His eyes flit down and he sighed, almost disappointed. “You know you’re not supposed to touch Elise as soon as you walk in. How old are you now?”
Dazai had been too in his head to notice whether or not he’d touched Elise. He hadn’t seen her, so it was possible she hadn’t been in the room to begin with and Mori was just looking for areason.Still, “seventeen.”
Almost eighteen, almost an adult, almost old enough that he wondered if Mori would stop their ‘sessions.’
Mori raised an eyebrow and shuffled documents they both knew did not need to be moved if only to enhance the image of a disappointed and testing father, still with that ever-indulgent smile curved on his face. “And yet you still act solittle.You might as well be eleven or twelve, don’t you think? Do you need to be punished that way as well?”
He knew the conversation already had a decided ending that would not change regardless of what he chose to say to that, so he found it in himself to be just as petulant as ever. “For what?”
“That tone, for starters,” Mori tittered like he really was anyone’s parent. “Hmm, and then for this past mission. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice Akutagawa-kun’s lack of control?”
Not for a moment,Dazai thought internally. He hadn’t been on that mission, and furthermore wasn’t the primary lead for Akutagawa’s training after he’d advanced enough to lead a small squad under Hirotsu’s off-handed guidance, half handled by the Guerilla Attack Squad’s leader.
The Guerilla Attack Squad was not under his division, either. The only name attached to his was Akutagawa’s from his initial training. Akutagawa killed the target, which was good, but also the commissioner, a tavern employee slipping them information about politicians that visited under-the-radar, and a civilian.
With so many skilled hands in the mix, Dazai should not be the one taking the fall for it, but he had heard about it and knew he’d be the one to do so anyway.
I should’ve been harsher.
“No, boss,” Dazai gritted out.
He was not Mori. When it came to training someone else, he found himself lacking the resolve to be as deeply scarring as Mori so often was. It was his mistake.
Mori didn’t say a word as he sighed with a deeply disappointing hum. He pivoted on his heel, silently waving his hand in a cue Dazai recognized all to well. He swallowed a bit and shrugged off his coat. His fingers lifted to the first button of his collar, paused there, spasmed, and dropped. The long, corded whip in Mori’s hands meant he’d rather try to keep it on unless Mori ordered him otherwise.
It was a simple matter kneeling on the floor, in the middle of it, just beneath the stained glass window. It was a dance he’d been taught in phases, the swell of unplayed music marked by each motion of his body, preparing himself to be used in whichever way Mori required. His teachers were electric strikes, bruising hands, waltzing knives, the beats of a tango marked by each crackling affliction of a whip. He breathed and braced himself as he heard the minute whistle of the strike before it landed, rocking forward before the sensation registered properly.
Dazai bit back the reflexive flinch of his body as Mori brought his whip down in an objectively painful strike before the first had fully dulled. He’d been getting more and more violent in moments like this ever since he showed up to a ‘session’ with a different shirt on under his coat, taken from the chibi after he’d forced Dazai to spend the night playing video games, drinking just enough to be tipsy but not drunk as he ended up spilling wine over Dazai’s usual shirt. Dazai had several copies of it by proxy of not being permitted to wear anything not provided by Mori. They were all tailored perfectly to him, so much so that it was very obvious by the looseness of the shoulders and the shortness of the hem that the shirt was not his.
He knew Mori would ask as soon as he saw it, knew when he did by the way his nails unflinchingly sunk into the soft underside of his jaw, raking across his skin. Still, he found himself hesitating to say whose it was- for some reason- and paid the price in violently red welts like the ones Mori seemed intent on leaving now.
Dazai couldn’t hide his small smirk.
Mori was always just a little bit jealous of Chuuya and Dazai knew it. Or maybe he was jealous of theirSoukoku,of the way they bent without breaking, of the way they didn't need endless repairs to meshjust sothe way he and his time-tested and time-broken partner never quite managed.
Either way, sometimes, on the days when his eyes shadowed the way Dazai's so often did and his lighter, brighter, moresalvageableother half wasn't there to pull him out, Mori popped some pills, called Dazai to his office, and made it his problem. Sometimes he'd make him scream for Chuuya. Sometimes Mori would say someone else's name too, but Dazai didn't care for the way Mori was broken when he was hell-bent on making himshatter.
(Maybe that was the reason for his decision.)
He wondered if the day would come when Mori would realize that torturing Dazai would not accomplish the complete ownership he craved (because now that he knew Mori hated seeing traces of Chuuya on his skin, he felt more inclined to seek out his slug and see which ways he could make Dazai break, if he could taunt Chuuya just enough to make himwantto). He wondered, if that day did come, if he’d call Chuuya up to his office, as nonchalant in his orders as he called on Dazai with. He wondered which tool he’d use to ruin Kouyou’s hard work.
…
If he were to call Chuuya up for the jewel trade, would he take his punishment further because of Dazai?
Would Chuuya’s eyes lose their blazing spark? How long would the welts stay on his body? His healing was much faster than any normal person, so how long would Mori go to see the same vibrancy in the red slashes? Would Mori…. would Moritouchhim afterwards? After breaking him down to the speck of nothing Dazai so permanently was? He wasn’t sure he wanted to see it.
But it would be Chuuya’s own fault. Failure garnered consequences. That was how the mafia worked- one would always reap what they sowed.
His head was swimming with each objectively painful strike, but he found his mind cleared entirely the second they stopped. Blood was dripping wetly down his back, no doubt drenching the white shirt he had a dozen carbon copies of, tailored to him and paid for out of Mori’s pocket.
He had to say something. Mori noticed.
“Hm? Dazai-kun, did you have something to say?”
His mouth opened to speak, but the words lingered heavily in his throat.
If Mori found out about what happened and that Dazai knew about it, he would torture him in every way but one, until he'd broken him down to a numb little puppet. And then he'd unzip his pants and Dazai wouldburn.
The silence stretched on for a beat too long.
“Are you sure there's nothing else, Dazai-kun?”
“Yes.”
So why wasn't he saying anything?
It was undeniable that he was saving Chuuya. For what reason? Why now? When did he take back enough of his own words, his ownemotions,to do something sostupid?Was this why Mori took them away in the first place? Because Dazai did dumb things when he had his own will?
(He was leaving the office before he could ask to be dissected yet again to burn out the smudge of hesitation. He was so flawless from years of systematic training that even Mori never suspected a thing even when he made Dazai stand still as a doll for a hug that left crescent nail marks in his arms.
It was his second mistake of many, the first being the day he allowed Dazai to warm his bone deep chill in the blazing light that illuminated the ground Nakahara Chuuya walked on.)
Mori never called Chuuya into his office except to congratulate him a week later once he and Ane-san (and maybe Dazai in the shadows, but nothing except for Kouyou’s quietly knowing stare would ever call him out for it) fixed the mess he'd made. The congratulations was only for the succession of the deal and a perfect record throughout the trade process. His reward was a hefty paycheck and more work.
Dazai pointedly did not dignify Chuuya's slow-growing grin throughout that week with a response, aimed towards him and piercing him cruelly with misplaced thankfulness for his silence, divine blue dancing with scintillating electric little sparks that winked at him teasingly. He poured out Chuuya's newest bottle of wine to make it go away, but they still inched ever closer as partners.
Sometimes Chuuya was annoying in simple ways, too. Like when he made Dazai eat annoying things like fried bread filled with jelly too sweet and gross and greasy, so much so that it got on his face and there weren’t napkins for another mile since Chuuyainsistedon picking them up as a snack on their way back to headquarters no matter how much Dazai insisted hewasn’t hungryand-
“Is this your first time eating a jelly donut?” Chuuya asked, a single, stupidly judgemental eyebrow raised in a way that looked almost out of place on his face if it weren’t for the lack of malice that accompanied it. The sun shone against his hair as he flopped his head to the side, looking a little too comfortable considering they were out in public with people walking at their sides.
Dazai stared at him.
“Oh my gods, here,” Chuuya groaned in exasperation, leaning forward with his thumb. Dazai naturally swayed away from it, but Chuuya was stubborn as ever and followed the motion. His bare thumb swiped across the top of Dazai’s lip and then the crease of his lip and chin. “Okay, now lick your lips.”
“I’m not going to hang my tongue out like a dog,” Dazai huffed. “It wouldn’t be out of character for a mutt like you-”
“Gods f*cking dammit,” that pretty face pulled into an annoyed scrunch and he was using his outstretched arm to pull Dazai in instead. He tried to pull away but Chuuya was persistent until their lips touched (in public!). Chuuya licked across his lips and once Dazai was sure the cream was gone, he was being pulled in again for a firmer kiss that lasted only a second before it was over.
…in public. Chuuya kissed him. In public. Like it wasn’t even a choice he had to make or something he had to consider for longer than half a second. He just… and then….
Ah.
If he had less control, he could tell the creeping heat would’ve had him blushing stupidly. As it was, he firmly looked away from Chuuya with a scowl, crossing his arms and trying for annoyance. “Did Chuuya have to slobber all over my face?”
Chuuya was unfair, because his only response was to laugh, his shiny red curls (damn Kouyou for instilling a deep sense of self care into the annoying mutt) bouncing lightly from the shaking of his shoulders. “Is that all you got?”
Having been called on his defensive words, Dazai rolled his eyes at Chuuya and stuck out his tongue, something he knew riled Chuuya up deliciously. It didn’t fail him in that moment as he was shoved none too lightly to the side, dropping the rest of the strawberry donut and leaving it to the ants.
The day Dazai met Chuuya, there was a burst of color so vibrant it almost hurt to look at him. He was such a bright person that it burned through the darkness in the mafia and enclosed a nebula of chaos and humanity swirling beneath his tacky sense of fashion and loud words and inability to even pretend to be subtle.
Dazai didn't consider himself someone who felt awed by many things. Maybe it was fitting, then, that the first time he could remember feeling a vicious, cutting spark ofemotionswrithing under his skin was when watching the carnage Chuuya brought upon the battlefield, with or withoutCorruption.
The sight wasbeautiful.True beauty in the unhinged grin, claws of swirling red, and sprays of blood that decorated Chuuya's form. Each splattering drop glittered like rubies in the glow ofTainted,ofCorruption.
Chuuya was destruction contained in human form, a being of pure force and vicious existence and life that breathed the air around it and thieved vitality from anyone who dared lay witness. The echoes of his fury and might rang through his being and orchestrated a melody in the metered beating of his heart, an unconscious and unstoppable sway of force that swept Dazai's being to ring in time with it.
It didn’t make sense to Dazai how Chuuya thought he wasn't human. A5158, Nakahara Chuuya, Arahabaki’s vessel; he was so human it was almost disgusting. But he constantly bordered on the tolerable side of humanity, never quite tipping the line Dazai could never forgive him for crossing.
When he cancelled his ability after watching him destroy all those around him, he had a single, overarching thought:
Chuuya was so human he wasdivine.
It only made sense that Dazai would ruin him with every glancing touch, but even that simple truth did not keep him from reveling in his hypocrisy. No one else was allowed to ruin Chuuya.
Dazai killed the first person to put their hands on Chuuya after that night.
It was suggestive, a whisper that begged for touch and lusted after the power lurking deceptively in Chuuya's skin.
Chuuya turned the stranger down.
Dazai didn't care.
Because Chuuya had one night stands before, but after having Dazai he realized that there shouldn't be another person to feel the entirety of Chuuya's never ending grace. Dazai didn't deserve it himself, but no one did anyway, so he felt free to covet him.
She died with her head dashed against an alley wall. The sight and act was brutal and she didn’t die for two hours afterwards. It was still more than she deserved. He made sure to corner her in an alley close to a popular mafia bar so that her death was visible to as many mafioso as possible without making it overtly obvious that it was mafia business.
Even that much, that warning, however discreet it may have been, wasn’t enough to keep other hands and eyes off of Chuuya.
They were at a bar post-mission.
Dazai didn’t like post-mission drinking for the simple fact that the bars were always crowded and overly filthy in a way that only a place crammed with blood-stained people could be. It was very different from the quiet, amber-warmed ambiance of Lupin. Chuuya wanted him to go, though, so he did.
-Ah, well, Chuuya didn’t specifically ask him, but he knew that a chibi willing to go out after a mission was a chibi ready to get absolutely sh*t-faced. It was why he didn’t drink too heavily unless he was by himself or with Dazai; when he drank the hard stuff his ability could get a bit out of hand, causing collateral damage until some particularly brave or disillusioned subordinate called Dazai to come in and get him.
Success-high Chuuya lost the ability to be picky about only drinking wine (which usually just made him pass out, unlike other liquors that made his ability go haywire) and control over how much he was having.
So Dazai went to the bar.
Chuuya was having fun. He was the kind of leader that was as willing to toast over a victory with his subordinates as he was to get right down in the trenches with them. He focused on comradery rather than intimidation.
In some ways, that made thecommentsless surprising from where he was sitting at the bar counter. In a lot of ways, it just made them more deeply annoying.
By the time Chuuya was back in his stupidly expensive bed, Dazai was slipping out the door (ignoring the drunk whines for him to come back to bed) and back into the bar. It was too early for a significant number of people to have left, including the bravest of them, still chatting loudly enough that Dazai could hear them before getting near that part of the bar as he swept past them towards a group of his own subordinates.
They jumped as he appeared with a light, teasing smile edging the corners of his lips, purposely tightened.
“Sir!” Ryoma stood at attention first. He was older, so much older that his reaction was amusing in a special sort of way. The rest followed suite.
“I need you to gather these men and bring them to storage room 3C,” Dazai said lightly, holding up five photos. Before he could say another word, the photos were out of his hand as they hurried to obey.
It was laughably easy to order around his minions. The well seasoned ones, at least. Some were still new enough that they still had enough audacity to refuse him. Dazai skipped his way to the storage rooms, admiring dully how the slight crowd parted easily for him.
The storage rooms in this particular bar weren’t as disgusting as he let himself expect, but also dirtier than Lupin’s. The one he’d picked out wasn’t as busy as the rest, which was partially why he chose it. A single sharp glance at an employee had him walking past them without question.
He perched himself on a few boxes until the door swung back open.
“Sir,” Ryoma greeted, apparently the appointed spokesman of the group, “we brought them.”
Dazai grazed his eyes across the group of five, noting how none of them met his eye. That was good. They all knew who he was. “Why do you think you’re here?” It was one of his favorite ways of messing with people. It let them tattle on themselves. Still, they shook their heads. Boring. “Well,Iknow why you’re here, so that means there’s a reason. Any guesses?”
He hopped off of the boxes just to see all of them flinch.
“The job?” A brave one proposed with hesitance, his eyes drawn to the gun Dazai drew at a moment’s notice. He fingered it methodically. The bravery made sense considering his earlier comments.
God, what I wouldn’t give to get my hands around that waist. Think he’s a screamer? Bet he’d squeeze if I got my hand on his throat.
His grip tightened around the gun. “You guessed wrong.”
Three gunshots rang out, one for every disgusting comment. One to each of his hands, the third to his head. Dazai wished only that he had the patience to have drawn it out longer.
“A-Ah, if it wasn’t the job, then-”
“Oh… oh my god…”
He dragged his eye away from the corpse, distantly noting the smile stretching his lips as it faded. His stare cut off any residual guesses.
“The three of you should think twice before ever daring to say Chuuya’s name again,” Dazai intoned lowly, one of the men stumbling back from the vitriol dripping from his tongue, another one of them stumbling over the body still bleeding sluggishly onto the laquered flooring. He definitely sounded jealous, but that wasn’t it; Dazai didn’t care if other people looked at Chuuya, it was only natural, but scum should stay in their lane when it came to talking aboutactingon their desires.
“There are four of them?” Another particularly brave (or perhaps sad*stic) subordinate of his pointed out, flinching but not falling to the ground when Dazai aimed him with a sharp look.
His glare melted into a stupid, doe-eyed expression and he nodded eagerly. “Right you are!” He lifted his gun without looking, and without a second thought shot the man to his left who’d been going on aboutexactlywhat he’d do to Chuuya’s mouth. He clapped his hands together immediately after as he bled out, pressing his hand against the gun haphazardly and nearly setting it off again, triggering more violent reactions from his shocked-frozen subordinates. “I want to see Chuuya, now. Toodles~!”
Dazai skipped out of the room blood splattered with his gun in hand, in a wholly better mood than before and ready to ruin what was left of Chuuya’s night by beating him at video games after waking him up with water and a few freshly-dumped wine bottles.
He stopped, pivoted, and popped his head into the room again.
“Tie up those bodies outside the bar. Feel free to make a show out of it.”
Chuuya touched him a lot.
It wasn't a conscious or overbearing action, just enough to anchor himself from his ability. Dazai would bet his life that Chuuya didn't even know he was doing it half the time, but he'd catch his partner reaching out and letting his fingers brush over his hand or he'd stand closer than usual and let their bodies naturally sway into each other every few seconds.
It was odd, because most people said that his ability felt like a shot of ice or a particularly uncomfortable stifling of air. Most people never wanted to touch him after the first time experiencing the involuntary activation ofNo Longer Human.
It was a stroke of luck that Chuuya was just as insatiably greedy as Dazai himself. Attention, belonging, a sense of worth and usefulness- all of which were easy to feed him until he’d do anything for the mafia. It was just unfortunate that in doing so, he’d miscalculated and swayed Chuuya to go beyond simply ‘anything’ when it came to Dazai.
Chuuya was truly the ultimate gun amongst ability users. One shot can destroy nearly anything; whether it kills anyone depends on who is firing it. To have his finger be the one flirting with the trigger at any given moment was simultaneously the best and worst mistake Dazai had ever made.
His partner was not invincible unless orchestrated to be so by Dazai’s hands.
(Chuuya was fifteen when he first used corruption. He was also fifteen when he experienced his last moment ofpeaceby himself. The second he acknowledged Arahabaki andusedit, it lingered under his skin waiting for an invitation to take over completely and tear through him mercilessly.
Dazai's ability gave him the silence he craved in his own head. Sleeping with him, holding his hand, brushing arms, and eventuallykissinghim would be Chuuya's safe haven, a moment of quiet in his body.)
However, that meant that Chuuya had grown attached to him in a way that he shouldn’t have. Before meeting Chuuya, standing on the edge of a building was serene, in a way. Because if Dazai wanted to, he could jump. In suicide, he was the only one that could make that choice- when it came down to it, the world,hisworld, was in his hands and his hands only and he could do it…. he could, whenever he wanted. He had the choice. Not Mori, not anyone. Him.
That was before Chuuya’s dependency ravaged him and left him without that peace of choice and chance and risks he’d always take. Now, when Dazai felt tempted to teeter over the edge and let himself die, Chuuya was always there. He ripped bottles of medication out of his hands, forced him to cough up drugs, dragged him away from too-low edges and took knives away from him. It wasannoying.
Chuuya never shied away from jokes that some might consider insensitive, poking fun at his suicidal nature. He never pretended that Dazai was a better person than he was. He never tried to make him be better in any way. It wasn’t a bad thing, having Chuuya as his partner. It just also happened to simultaneously be the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
But even Chuuya’s overbearing nature couldn’t stop him when he was out of the country on a mission.
The book wasn’t something Dazai had bothered using before (in his timeline, of course, but that was a deja vu understanding-misunderstanding of an eon far beyond being rooted in realism and the chains that held down the bulk of humanity).
Hehadit, of course, in that it stayed firmly under the original book cover ofThe Complete Guide to a Successful Suicide,which he easily replaced with another copy’s cover that he found in an occult-themed library across Yokohama in the shopping district (it was a self-published book banned in eighty-seven countries worldwide for its grim nature, which really just made it more fun to own). Dazai would hesitate to settle any one of his cards as the most valuable- they all had their distinct charms, after all- but if he had to say, the book may very well have been it.
Even in a world with abilities and gods that could level entire continents at their strongest, the book was a whole other monster in and of itself. More of a monster than Dazai; more artificial than Chuuya.
Dazai considered himself to be a clinical person. With possession of the book came necessary understanding of just how big of a clusterf*ck he could make of the world with it. It would be enough to make Mori shake with fear- a beautiful sight. He was intelligent and had sociopathic tendencies, so if he so desired, there was little holding him back- littlehumanityholding him back from doing whatever he wanted. But with the understanding and rationality, rationality of a person too smart for their well being and an executive too young for their position, Dazai kept the book, abandoned any manipulative whispers that begged him to write by nature of the book being imbued with an ability-esque makeup (which was part of the reason he’d discovered the book in the first place), and succumbed to going about his miserable day-to-day life.
When Odasaku died- wasmurdered-Dazai didn’t bother with rationality.
Dazai saw the moment the life left Odasaku’s eyes, catalogued it, memorized it, would never forget it- and he spent a moment that felt like eternity with his corpse, just watching him.
Odasaku touched his face so that…. so that he didn’t have to see the moment he died. Flawless was a cruel ability, but maybe Odasaku was more cruel, using his last bit of strength to use Dazai to nullify his ability. He thought that if there were any warmth left inside of him that hadn’t been swallowed by the gnawing hole in the pit of his chest, it would stem from being useful to Odasaku one last time.
“There’s something I want to tell you.”
“No!” Dazai had screamed at him. What did Odasaku think he was doing? “You might still make it-” he was lying, he knew…. He knew the injury, the entry point, the amount of blood- if he had tools, surgical tools, maybe…. but Dazai didn’t, so not even Mori and his cruelty was useful now. Dogs and fighting and trauma failed him, leaving just Dazai. Just Osamu. Osamu and Odasaku, lying in his arms. “You can tell me about it later,” he lied to himself desperately, clutching him tighter. “So don’t talk like…”
Odasaku slid his hand into Dazai’s hair, nullifying his ability with that skin-to-skin contact and tugging him a little bit closer. “Listen to me,” he spoke, and with his eyes so serious, so firm, so unlike him, Dazai couldn’t help but fall silent. “You told me you might find a reason to live for if you lived in a world full of violence and bloodshed.”
“Yeah,” Dazai’s lip trembled, something hot bubbling in his chest, “I did but who cares about that now?!”
“You won’t find it.”
Man fears death and yet, at the same time, man is drawn to death.
“Deep down you absolutely realize that whether you’re on the side that kills people-”
There’s nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering.
“-or on the side that saves people-”
Death is endlessly consumed by men in cities and in literature.
“-nothing beyond what you would expect will appear.”
It is a singular event in one’s life that none may reverse.
“If it’s all the same to you-”
That is what I desire.
“-then be on the side that saves people.”
Dazai stopped breathing.
“If both sides are the same to you,” Odasaku nearly hissed out, his eyes so fierce and compelling, “become a good man. Protect the vulnerable, and help out some orphans. Neither good nor evil means much to you, I know…. But at least that’d make your life a little bit brighter.”
His lip was trembling. How could he- what was he supposed to- “How could you possibly know that?”
Odasaku’s last smile was the same one he gave to the orphans, gentle and knowing, the one that felt like he knew the world like the back of his hand. It only registered now that it was the same way he always looked at Dazai. How did he never notice?
No, he did, he always did. He just didn’t….
“Of course I know. I know better than anyone. Because… I’m your friend.”
Evil expects evil from others.
There’s nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering.
Everything he wanted was lost the moment he obtained it.
(But he’d suffered for so long, hadn’t he? What difference did a few days, months, years make?)
He felt something click.
It wasn’t a big shift, but it had an effect- like something slipping, a gear falling just slightly out of place and preventing it from turning properly.
Ever since he was a child (though he couldn’t say for sure that he ever really was one) Dazai had been prone to moments of dissociation. His mother, his father, his doctor, all vague memories that he knew, in some respect, he met, but all passed in an unfeeling blur. He couldn’t reasonably place certain events or associate certain atrocities with himself, despite recognizing that they must have occurred to him.
When things felt off in an entirely uncontrollable way, he slipped out of place and became an observer of his own life. Less human than the inorganic soul that already occupied the shell of his body.
Dazai watched himself put down Oda’s body, walk out of the building, traverse the streets- shoot someone? They were yelling, but he was moving, and then they were lying down with a bullet wound. Huh- turn a corner, and-
A safe house on the edge of the city was what Mori had called it originally, but it was just a secluded spot for him to be tracked constantly. It was a compromise- either stay in the shipping container or go back to spending nights warming Mori’s bed until he came calling.
Dazai stood outside of the steel entrance for a long time before pivoting on his heel, logic and impulse at war for an undeterminable period of time (though it must’ve been for a while, because the sun rose before he decided) before logic won.
He had to stop Chuuya from coming after him.
He was the only one who would notice so soon. Mori…. Mori would definitely not expect him back for a while, but Chuuya was pushy and annoying and- and- and he’d notice if Dazai was gone. Because he was a clingymutt.
(Dazai wasn’t sure what he’d do if he had to see Chuuya before defecting.)
Dazai blew up his car.
It was easy for a port mafia executive to get access to explosives. It hardly took much, because even while dissociating heavily, no one stopped him on behalf of his ‘strange behavior’- Dazai was easily described as eccentric on his milder days anyway. He set them under chibi’s car and… and he watched, and then he moved, took the chip out of his phone, some of his belongings, thetrenchcoat,and….
And then he was holding the book, sitting in a safe house, and he had the pen in his hand. Maybe a day later, maybe a week? He’d check his calendar later (maybe) and try to regrasp time as a linear concept again (definitely not).
It would be so simple.
A different world, a different life, a new Odasaku- alivingone, a happy one, and they’d leave together, and…. He could try being happy, just like Odasaku wanted. Just like Odasaku never thought him capable of. He was right, wasn’t he? Dazai was never… he was never like Odasaku, who found happiness and peace within himself. He had no room left to be happy. His heart was rotten, his blood mafia black. He didn’t know what could possibly make himhappy-
The pen clicked loudly as his thumb slipped.
.
“What was with that picture?” Odasaku asked him the second he walked into the bar.
Dazai wasn’t easily embarrassed, but at those words, coming from Odasaku, he did feel a molten heat spread to his face, something that had Ango chortling from his seat. “Gimme-!” he snatched Odasaku and Ango’s phones from the bar counter easily.
“Hey-!” Ango squawked. “You don’t even have my password-”
Dazai unlocked his phone and showed him the screen cheekily. Ango’s eye twitched in irritation, but his complaints were easily tuned out as Dazai flipped to their groupchat on his phone first, deleted the photo, then looked to his camera roll to see if it had been saved- it hadn’t- then tossed it back, not caring to check whether or not Ango caught it-
“Hey, hey, hey!”
“Ah-!”
“...nice catch, Odasaku.”
-then opened Odasaku’s phone to do the same. Neither of them saved the photo in the end. He closed the phone and slid it across the counter back to Odasaku instead of tossing it. Dazai had already saved it to his own camera roll (as evidence of Chuuya’s cruelty and for future blackmail, of course) so the problem was wrapped up entirely.
“Why did you throw my phone and then treat Odasaku’s so nicely?” Ango pouted, clutching his phone to himself like a lifeline.
Dazai grinned at him, catching the flickering light in a far corner of the bar in the corner of his eye, lighting dull brown up with glittering mischief. “Because Odasaku talked to me the second I walked in! He pays attention to me, unlike you.”
Ango’s mouth dropped open. “Ah- he was interrogating you! I would’ve asked how you’re doing first at least!”
“Huh, that’s right,” Dazai blinked, waving at the bartender for his usual whiskey. “That’s another reason then- Odasaku doesn’t waste time with useless pleasantries.”
Odasaku turned to him to talk over Ango’s grumblings over silly things like ‘blatant favoritism’, his fingers twitching towards and then away from his coat pocket where Dazai knew a box of cigarettes laid. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot.”
He never smoked when Dazai was around, but the faint smell of smoke and slight discoloration on his teeth betrayed him. He asked about it several months prior; it turned out that Odasaku’s reasoning stemmed to him being underaged, like that somehow made a difference in his health when compared to their nights out drinking (though he was always subtly cut off and ushered towards a glass of water before he could finish a second glass of whiskey). Despite the way he sighed heavily like he needed one, Odasaku didn’t pull out a cigarette as he talked.
He had other habits like that. His eyes always seemed to be drawn to the bandages. Once, and only once, Odasaku tried to change the bandages on his arms, saying they were dirty. Dazai couldn’t place exactly what happened, but he remembered breathing quick and shallow, huddled in a corner and protecting his arms as he and Ango tried to run damage control on his reactions.
Dazai was glad Odasaku never asked again. It was humiliating enough to change his own bandages, much less having someone else see them.
“Odasaku can do what he wants,” Dazai waved it off to Ango’s audible huff of disagreement. “What do you want to know? The juicy details~?”
He hoped not. While Dazai had come to terms with the fact that that night was not some fever dream concocted in the cold, dark loneliness of his bed from one too many pills from one too many different bottles (yet never enough at the same time), he hadn’t fully processed through what had happened in its entirety. There was a lot to unpack, from the night, to the morning, to finding the picture and the receipts indicating that Chuuya had the photo on his own phone (the slug fended off his attempts to grab the phone, leading to it breaking, so he’d have to wait for him to transfer his memory card to his new phone before deleting it once and for all).
But Odasaku leveled him with a deeply understanding stare instead, one that had seconds of silence stretching into a minute. “Are you okay?”
.
Ah.
No one asks that question in real life,he thought,not to someone like me, at least.
He was reluctantly amused with a twinge of coldness spreading from the center of his chest. He felt himself suddenly wishing that Odasaku wasn’t so flatly and genuinely considerate because his tone gave no indication of what he wanted to hear, his expression perfectly patient.
Not that he didn’t know.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He chirped, taking a sip of his drink to avoid saying anything else.
As per usual, Odasaku did not seem convinced even as Ango relaxed into his first sip of tomato juice, the glass he'd ordered without touching it before Dazai arrived. “Nakahara Chuuya, huh?” Ango asked, something tight lacing his voice.
Dazai’s grip on his glass tightened incrementally. “Yes?”
Ango looked over, his gaze trailing up and down. “Ah, nothing, we were just worried about you, with his temper I guess.”
“You know Chuuya?”
“Not personally.”
Good. That was good. Dazai put on a pout, preparing to complain about Chuuya until their ears bled, but Odasaku cut in again, his firm stare imploring him to answer without evading. “So he treated you well?”
Right. Right, yeah, Odasaku did care about things like that. He was an anomaly- proven by Ango’s faux gagging sound. He was so strange, yet so well-meaning, yet so…
So very Odasaku.
Dazai sighed. “Of course not~” he whined, leaning forward forlornly onto the bar counter. “Chuuya really is just like a dog! He wouldn’t stop slobbering all over my neck,” he shuddered despite how his skin tingled almost pleasantly from the phantom memory, “I swear I can still feel it. And he put me in the bath without asking!”
There was a long moment, during which Ango was complaining about the extra information, where Odasaku just stared at him again, like he was piecing things together slowly but surely. Finally, he smiled a bit and, slowly, always moving so slowly around Dazai whenever possible, lifted his hand and rested it on Dazai’s head.
“I’m happy he’s good to you, Dazai. You need more people like that.”
Right.
Dazai was addicted to the way Odasaku looked at him. He didn’t look at him like he was desirable, rather acting like Dazai was another one of his orphans, valuable and salvageable. They were both lying to themselves when Dazai acted as childish as he could to lean into that expression, but Odasaku indulged him.
Despite the sexual, wanting nature of it, he was just as addicted to the way Chuuya made him feel. It was such an odd parallel going from one to the other, like there were a million worlds between Odasaku and Chuuya.
Yet the undertones of that expression were the same. The caring stayed the same. The overwhelming affection was the same.
It was only around Odasaku and Chuuya that when Dazai didn’t know what to say, he stayed quiet. The vulnerability of it burned.
With one last shouldering sigh, Odasaku murmured softly, “it’s nice seeing you happy.”
He wanted to leave. He was going to leave. He was going to leave by himself, without Chuuya-
.
Thump.
Dazai’s breathing came out short, like something was lodged in his windpipe- dust? Gunpowder? He gripped the pen, put it to the page again to write a new ending-
Th-Thump.
He clutched as his chest, breath coming heavy. Ithurt.His heart- it felt like it was squeezing and aching. It felt cold.
He felt like he was dying.
I can leave without Chuuya,he insisted internally again, but his heart felt ripped open and bleeding.
Dazai scrambled at the ground, tearing at his arms next, trying to tear out the pain in his chest, blood coming up in rivers. It needed to stop. He wanted it to stop. His fingers dug into his bandages and tore, trying to get to the source, tearing open the upper half of the white, blood-stained button up and digging, digging, trying to find the source. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt!
It hurt even worse when, in a fit to stop the way his heartbeat pounded all the way to the blood vessels in his wrists, he latched his teeth around the appendage andbit-
“No, I…yes,but not now. This,” Chuuya’s miserably gentle fingers brushed against the scar. The second he made contact, he knew exactly what he was talking about, even if his own memory of that night was melted into wax and crescent moons waning and a swirl of drugs and some kind of pain reliever to dumb him. “It’s abite mark.Am I… Is this not-"
Chuuya didn’t like seeing the scars on his body. Dazai knew that, he guessed it- after all… Chuuya must only want to see scars made by his own teeth, right? Mori was like that too. He was like that, and so he did something about it, and now Dazai was undesirable and ruined and….
And Chuuya never said anything about him being ruined. He was only gentle in a cruel way.
Dazai breathed against the out Chuuya was imploring him to take with his eyes, blue and expansive. He didn’t want to stop. He hated touch and yet craved it from Chuuya’s hands.
-his teeth relaxed against his skin, the dizzying view of the world stabilizing and narrowing down to a single focal point.
Chuuya. He needed Chuuya. He didn't know what the slug did, but the thought of him managed to quell some of the overarching pain long enough to think. There was some distant, gleaming irony in the idea of Chuuya both causing and stopping the terrible amount of pain seizing his heart until it burst.
He’d leave, for Odasaku. But would there be another Chuuya in that world? The book had its limitations, though time and age were not included.
Rationally, it was better to take Chuuya.
Finding the light? Becoming a better person? Both were arbitrary goals that Odasaku had left him with. He… he thought that maybe, just maybe, Odasaku would approve of Chuuya, no matter how much they would’ve disliked each other.
Maybe Chuuya was a step towards Odasaku’s ideals.
Dazai put down the pen.
(For now,he tried to convince himself)
