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The worn wooden steps creak beneath his feet as he descends. The dim light from the old gas lamp, the hazy cloud of tobacco smoke, the mafia executive slumped over the bar counter. His usual haunt, his usual lie.
Oda turns toward the door at the sound of the chime and gives him a nod of acknowledgment. Ango nods back. Silent understanding. And then the silence is broken by a long, mournful sigh.
"If Ango doesn't come today, who's going to pay for my drinks? Odasaku is flat broke again, and I'm--"
"You can always put them on your tab," Ango interrupts as he pulls out a stool, lifting the legs slightly to avoid scraping them across the floor.
Dazai jolts up, his one visible eye lit up with a carefully calculated approximation of excitement. "Ango! You're here!"
"I'll pretend you're happy to see me and not my wallet."
"I welcome you both, though one more than the other. Anyway, listen to this!"
Ango only half listens to Dazai's words; he focuses more on the sound of his voice, trying to determine his mood du jour. It's light and sweet, the amused lilt of an executioner raking his victim over coals. Dazai Osamu makes even joy seem condescending.
But sometimes...
Sometimes, Ango detects genuine happiness in his words, though even that might be a lie.
Suddenly, a finger runs up his back, tracing his spine through suit jacket and collared shirt. He stiffens.
"Ango," Dazai's voice drips honey laced with cyanide, his breath warm against the shell of Ango's ear, "I thought I told you to listen."
Ango turns to face him, and Dazai draws back slowly, deliberately, lingering in his personal space seconds too long before settling back on his stool. His gaze never leaves Ango. It pins him to his seat, like a butterfly run through with needles, a specimen on display, open to examination.
He clears his throat and hurriedly pushes up his glasses as an excuse to break eye contact with Dazai's uncovered eye. "Sorry, it's been a long day."
Ah, there it is. Dazai smiles. "It'll be an even longer night."
Maybe Ango should have paid more attention to whatever he'd been saying. He glances at Oda for support, but he's polishing off another glass, oblivious to his friend's predicament.
But Dazai is never oblivious to anything. He must've seen Ango's shift in gaze, because when Ango looks back at him, his grin has gotten even toothier, sharper. More devious.
"Let's try this again, shall we?"
Not long after, Dazai and Oda are stumbling toward Ango's car, attached at the mouth and the hips and wherever else Dazai can make contact. Ango slides into the driver's seat and fastens his seatbelt; Oda manages to angle Dazai so his head doesn't hit the door frame as they roll into the backseat. Ango starts the car, and Dazai whispers, "Let's just do it right here."
"Please don't ruin the upholstery," Ango chides. He beats back the urge to look at them in the rear view mirror and drives.
Oda is whispering something, probably something soothing, something placating to keep Dazai from ripping his pants off, and then whispers dissolve into kisses, frantic and needy, and Ango loosens his tie. The city lights flash as he drives past them, as Dazai moans long and loud, as he tells Oda not to stop and Oda promises he won't.
Finally Ango pulls up in front of a love hotel and shifts the car gear to park. "We're here."
The last thing he expects is for Dazai to be right up next to his ear again as he asks, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Ango fishes around in his pockets and pulls out his wallet. Dazai plucks it out of his hand. His fingers are suspiciously slick.
"Thanks, Ango," he purrs, and Ango swallows. His mouth feels like sandpaper, it's so dry.
Oda opens the car door, and Ango takes that as his cue to finally--safely--turn around, but Dazai is still right there, dangerously close. He opens his mouth to say something but doesn't get the chance as Dazai captures him in a kiss.
It's wet.
It's deep.
It tastes like alcohol and broken promises.
He loves it.
"You should come in with us next time."
"And pay for three people? I'm not actually made of money, Dazai-kun."
Dazai laughs, and sometimes, Ango detects genuine happiness in his laughter. But then he slides out of the backseat, and the door closes behind him.
Ango is left alone with the silence and the afterimage of Dazai's body heat and a raging hard-on trapped in his pants.
So.
He sets about doing things calmly and methodically, hoping if he just ignores it, it'll go away on its own. First, he moves the car into a pay per hour lot not far from the hotel. Next, he pulls his handkerchief from the inner pocket of his jacket and wipes his brow. Then, he picks through his multitude of disposable phones and pulls out the one he uses to report to the brass in charge of his real mission.
He has to explain why so many of this week's expenditures are going to a love hotel.
Part of his report has to be on them. His usual companions. His only friends. The two people who have managed to compromise... something. He doesn't know what.
He leans his head back and stares at the blank roof of the car as if the words he's looking for are scrawled up there.
Dazai Osamu is what happens when childhood is not shed gradually and gracefully, like a cocoon slowly emerged from. He is the result of a childhood torn out like fingernails, peeled back like skin, carved out like marrow. He is an ill-formed sense of empathy, a compass with no moral north -- the forgotten, the abandoned of the society Ango fights to protect.
Ango can’t save what he’s already failed.
He glances down at the report he's hardly started typing and fills in his description of the youngest executive in Port Mafia history:
Dazai Osamu will be the death of me.