Chapter Text
Nikolai was enamoured by him ever since he first heard about him from Fyodor. Beautiful, clever, witty, powerful–he hadn't nearly believed it until his leader produced a set of files and passed them around to the rest of the Decay of Angels.
He saw the picture, read the information, the background, the lies and the truth and the drama and the tragedy–and he was enamoured. Call him insane but he was perfectly sane, because what human being wouldn't be enamoured by the gorgeous and talented Demon Prodigy?
He didn't know the answer to that. He was sure that there was no true answer to that. And then he met him.
Met the man in the flesh, dressed in a fluttering sand coat and wearing a fake, cheerful expression that somehow held seriousness at the same time, not unlike Nikolai's own. Met him not in any situation he had thought of, most of which involved hostages and car chases and guns, which was mostly realistic in their case, met him in an abandoned warehouse he had come to check out out of pure curiosity and boredom and found the man attempting suicide.
Blood had been gushing slowly from his thin, pale wrists, half-unwrapped bandages stained with red and when Dazai Osamu looked him in the eyes for the first time Nikolai had to say he was charmed. Even though his eyes were bemused and he was frowning and most people would be freaking out, especially considering the situation at hand, but then again Nikolai wasn't most people.
He then did the thing that anyone would do–stopped him by prying the knife from his tight, whiteknuckled grip all the while admiring the smooth curve of his hands, patched him up, had a dry and bitter yet somehow interesting conversation involving the new war and the blood and the death and Fyodor and Nice mask you've got there, can I take a guess at what's behind it? and kissed him senseless.
(He tasted like blood and citrus and coffee. To Nikolai, there was nothing that tasted better than that.)
Nikolai took him to a hotel under his own name, and maybe they didn't make love under the moon and the stars the hotel lighting but they did kiss again and again and talked more and more until the clown was sure he was in love.
(And maybe it was silly, falling for someone so broken and so desperate, and someone who is none other than the enemy, but Nikolai often fell too hard and too fast and he never regrets it, nevertheless in this time).
(Dazai smelled like lavender and petrichor, a beautiful combination that intoxicated Nikolai to the point that he pulled the other in close during their conversation and kissed the top of his fluffy head, inhaling his scent.)
When Nikolai woke up the next morning, Dazai's side of the bed was cold and all that was left of him was a kiss mark of dried blood on his own pale cheek and the faint scent of lavender wafting through the air.
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Yosano always dreamed of falling in love. She dreamed of it like every little girl, like it was going to happen and she was going to get a happy ever after, but instead of dreaming of knights in shining armor coming to save terrified princesses locked up in towers by fearsome dragons, she dreamt of lovers of war stealing blood-speckled kisses as they held gun-callused hands, being patched up by exhausted medics.
She knew that not everything was to be completely romantic and beautiful and happy, and that sometimes life was just a cold, bloody and messed-up mess, even as a child. Learned that when she barely survived the old war as the assistant to a heartless monster, learning trauma and pain and emptiness and hate.
So when she met the beautiful and intriguing man who reminded her a little too much of the heartless monster, she had little to no idea that she would be falling for him.
But it happened.
They had a rather rocky relationship at the start, as presumed by the too-fake brunette and the wary, traumatized docor, but then Yosano learned from the president that not everything was as it seemed and Dazai wasn't Mori, she was determined to make it up to him in the form of trying to get him to smile. And smile as in a real, beautiful smile no one had ever seen except for a certain deceased redhead and not like the overly bright fake smile he used everyday.
(Yosano was sure he had a beautiful smile, one that rivaled the moon and stars that graced her bedside every night. She hoped that, one day, she would get to witness his sleeping face blessed by the night sky, too.)
She took him shopping with her, bantering and bickering playfully until they fell into a comfortable and easier routine, took him to her favorite sweets shops and wooed and flirted and teased and joked with him until she realized she fell in love when he turned to her with the most beautiful smile she had ever seen, eyes soft and thankful as he seemed to glow in the sunset.
Yosano knew she fell when he smiled at her like she was the only person in the world.
(On that sunset-filled street, she was suddenly reminded of the fairy tales Elise regaled to her as a child. Maybe knights that were enamoured by beautiful princesses really did exist.)
~~~~~~~~
Atsushi never knew love.
He never knew love because he didn't remembered his parents and never knew if they loved him, and he never knew love because love didn't exist at the orphanage where everything there was just darkness and misery and hate, caused by the man who so relentlessly abused him and scarred him inside and out.
He never knew love until he reluctantly saved a drowning man from the riverbank just days after getting kicked out from the orphanage, and finding himself face to face with a peaceful and lovely face blessed with long eyelashes and a pair of reddish lips that reminded Atsushi of the goddesses he read about in picture books.
He never knew love until the man opened his eyes and revealed disgruntled chocolate brown irises that glinted in the light, until the man introduced himself to be Dazai Osamu with his hair and his coat fluttering in the wind amongst a violent sunset and that he would be forcing his work partner to buy Atsushi as many bowls of tea on rice as he wanted.
Atsushi didn't really know he was in love.
He didn't really know that he was in love with the eccentric and gorgeous man he called his mentor. He didn't know that what he felt for him was more than just admiration and reverence, that he wanted more than just reassuring words and soft pats on the head from the man who saved him from himself.
Atsushi didn't know he was in love until Dazai slapped him across the face and told him not to pity himself because if he did then life would be an endless nightmare, looking at him with sad eyes like iced honey.
(He didn't know he was in love until Dazai showed him that he was worth everything and more and that he deserved love and care just like everyone else, too.)
(Atsushi still dreams of his hair and his coat fluttering in the wind amongst a violent sunset.)
~~~~~~~~
Kunikida had no time for love.
Sure, he had his ideal woman written word for word in his Ideals, down to the texture of her hair and the way she should and would speak, but with the packed schedules he has solely for his work and his private life sees that he had no time to waste on love.
That was alright for him, though, because his Ideals said he wouldn't meet or fall in love with a woman until he was at least 26 and living a slower, steadier life that didn't quite often involve car chases, bombings and shootings.
(Though it would be very unlikely, as his Ideals told him that he would be staying a loyal member of the Armed Detective Agency as long as he could still run like a crackhead maniac.)
That was, of course, until the president welcomed a new member into the Agency and paired him up with Kunikida to have him be taught their waysm
An eccentric and highly annoying man by the name of Dazai Osamu, who slacks off so often Kunikida would have thought he didn't know how to work until he saw him in action, who's undeniably beautiful even to a blind man by the low curve of his lips, his nimble fingers and graceful movements and who messes up Kunikida's schedule more times than he can count on his own two hands.
If you told Kunikida from the past he'd be falling in love with a man who was his complete opposite, who destroyed all of his ideals and left him fearing for what would happen next in wary anticipation and who was so incredibly unpredictable that sometimes even Ranpo couldn't tell what was going on with him, the blonde would laugh and walk away briskly.
But, and excuse him for his language, fuck, he fell in love with the stupidly beautiful and stupidly unpredictable man he called his partner, and he fell so hard he didn't even know he had fallen until Ranpo turned an eye on him and called him out for it.
(Kunikida had fallen for the man when Dazai proved that he was more than just a clown-like slacker and was someone who could actually be taken seriously, powerful Ability not withstanding.)
And then, of course, his unknowingly observant partner caught up on it and began to tease and tempt Kunikida about it.
From little actions that he knew the blonde would catch up on to the questions that would trap him until he inevitably blurted out what Dazai wanted to hear, he did it all.
Subtle winks, brief brushes of their hands, offering to tie his skewed tie for him, leaning in close enough that the idealistic man could smell his cologne...
God, how Kunikida hated him.
(God, how he loved him, the man who tore through the pages of his Ideals and broke his reality.)