Chapter Text
The train seemed too big and too fast for the station. The people there crowded, yet had enough space to mingle and kiss their kids, who opposed with various degrees of resistance.
Dazai was staring at the red monstrosity, trying to remind himself that it growing teeth and eating you had no reason to happen in the station. It didn’t curb most of his worries though. Thankfully, none of those worries showed up on his face.
The bad half was that they didn’t need to show for the man behind him to know they were there.
“Now now, Dazai” Mori said in the voice of someone who, in another life, might have truly cared about the children in his custody as actual humans. “Don’t tell me you grew cold feet.”
“Of course not!” he scoffed in the tone Elise was all so fond of and Mori seemed to find amusing. “I just forgot how ugly these things used to be and needed a proper second to be horrified.”
Elise rolled her eyes while Q squeezed his hand a little tighter as he looked around with eyes wide enough to swallow the place. Mori chuckled and ruffled his hair, dislodging the few locks covering his right eye in a playful manner. Dazai resisted the itch to cover it back and just vaguely shook his head in hope that they would obey.
“It’s only been a year, I hope your memory hasn’t been getting bad already.” the man ruffled his locks once again.
Dazai didn’t flinch or pull back the Dark energy clinging to the man and the devil near him all but familiar by now. Too familiar. It was his second year at Hogwarts and at school in general, although everybody else his age had been there for five. His first year hadn’t been all that great or great in the slightest, and, truth be told, the boy didn’t have any high expectation from this one either.
The whistle went on and they had to go in. Dazai took a step forward before a huge hand caught and turned him around and his face got smashed into the dark overcoat of the doctor. “Bye, Dazai” Mori said in his honeyed tone and the boy let himself get pressed into the cotton as long as he could before he walked away. Q clawed at his hand, but Mori kept them back as Dazai stepped onto the train. The familiar rush of energy faded away and the boy allowed himself to breathe a little easier without all the dark magic filling him like cotton swabs down his throat.
The boy turned around. Mori had a hand clenched around Q’s hand while the other was busy holding Elise. Dazai avoided her too old eyes for her too young body that had stayed the same since the boy arrived at the manor that first time. Dazai was just glad that he was now taller than her, although his seemingly shrinking clothes didn’t agree.
The girl waved. Dazai waved back before the fifteen year old turned and left to look for a compartment, trying not to think of the demons he had left behind.
Dazai should have been happy. He was getting away, at least for a few months, from the people that plagued his living hours since he had finally stepped back into this world. He should have been relieved.
But he wasn’t.
His right eye was throbbing with familiar energy, one he spotted in the first day and that had spoiled all the chance he would have gotten at a decent year away from pain. Even if he never talked and always avoided Chuuya Nakahara, the simple presence of the god inside him was enough to make the brunette shiver.
~O~
“Are you sure you have your coat?” The man asked, fixing his earmuffs despite it being 25 C outside.
“Yes” Chuuya tried to enter the train but Rimbaud pulled him back.
“And all your books?”
“Yes” Chuuya fixed his bumblebee striped scarf and tried to escape the clutches of his adoptive father once more, to no avail.
“And you will not forget to write” the man said in a thin voice that perfectly hid the grave one underneath.
“Have I ever forgotten to write?”
The man opened his mouth, but Chuuya used the advantage to escape and enter the train before popping up at the window. The man sighed. “Take care.”
“I will!” Chuuya snapped before the bell rang. “Love you!”
“Love you too!” he smiled and was left behind as the train left the station. Chuuya waited till he was gone from view before he allowed himself to breathe naturally. He loved his father, he really did, which is why he still allowed him those public gestures of affection, no matter how much his friends might tease him. But the man was carrying a great deal of paranoia from his times as an Auror and the missing of his partner. And it showed. He had always been very protective of Chuuya, but it was starting to get annoying.
The boy slipped fully inside the train and went to look for a cabin he could share.
Most of them were crammed full, with people sitting in each other’s laps for space, so Chuuya talked to the ones he knew well and moved forward. He walked towards the far end of the train until there was only one cabin left.
It was empty of all but some kid. He was a Slytherin, with brown hair and long limbs covered in bandages, and he was staring out the window mindlessly.
“Sorry, can I sit here, the rest of the train is full.”
The boy tenses for a fraction of a second, but then slowly nodded and kept looking out the window. Chuuya blinked. The boy was familiar, but not in the way the other kids in his year was. He was familiar in an unnatural way and his right eye suddenly started throbbing as he sat down.
“I’m Chuuya. How haven’t I seen you before?”
The boy looked at him, eyes hooded and guarded while a smile crawled up his lips. “I guess someone like you doesn’t have time to worry with the new ones, do you?”
“Oi” Chuuya crossed his arms as he was already feeling his fraying temper start to act. “Do you have a problem?”
“Not with you in particular.”
Something deep and unsettling inside Chuuya chuckled liar. The redhead clicked his tongue. “Still, why haven’t I met you before?”
“Because I haven’t been here for more than a year.” the boy answered and it felt terribly forced and terribly tired all at once.
Suddenly, it clicked. “You’re the new student, right?” he asked, feeling a smile creep up his face “You were home-schooled up until last year.”
“Congratulations on figuring it out!” he said and damn, he sounded so condescending. “Did you find that out from rumours?” He cocked his head, even thought there was something deep inside him that told him the gesture was anything but innocent. That the boy was looking for answers.
“You still haven’t told me your name.” Chuuya crossed his arms.
“Fine” the boy sighed and shook his head, like the mere act of sharing it was a blasphemy, “My name is Dazai. Dazai Osamu.”
“You’re Mori’s kid!” came out before Chuuya had the chance to stop it. Dazai’s lip curled in displeasure.
“Adopted” was all he said and the redhead got the clue that he had somehow fucked up the conversation.
They sat in silence, with nothing but the train to keep them company. Dazai seemed pretty content with staring out the window, but Chuuya was getting antsy. It was barely half an hour before he snapped again.
“So” he said, trying desperately to start a conversation and not have to spend the next five hours in awkward silence. “How has your first year here been? How do you find the spells? Hard? What subject are you good at?”
The boy eyed him once again, studying him with hidden intensity. “You really aren’t all that informed, are you?”
“What do you…?”
“Look” Dazai sighed, looking Chuuya in the eye “I get what you’re trying to do, but you’ll come up empty. Go and spent these few hours with your friends or something.”
“But what if I want to spend them with you?” he asked.
“You’re wasting your time” he sighed again, in an annoyed manner, and there was something akin to sadness under his façade “Believe me, you’ll stay away from me once you talk to the rest, so spare both of us our sanity and find someone else.”
Chuuya stood up and sat on the other bench, boxing Dazai into the window. Dazai narrowed his eyes, but he also tensed as he pulled back, curling into himself in the farthest corner of the booth. Chuuya felt offended.
“I don’t bite, you know.”
“Maybe not you, but what about him?” he said and then froze as he realised he said it out loud.
Chuuya was stunned. He was still processing, he didn’t know how to take the new influx of information, he didn’t know how to deal with the fact that this kid knew. He knew about Arahabaki.
“Sorry” Dazai sat up and headed for the exit “I gotta go.”
“Wait!” Chuuya got up to chase him, but the boy was already out of the booth.
Slamming the door to the frame, Chuuya glared at the empty corridor, but the mysterious boy was not there. Fingers curling on the wood, the redhead forced himself to let go and shuffled into the booth, mind storming.
~O~
Dazai trailed after the group of Slytherins, already making plans of how to avoid the redhead for the next three years. His house mates were throwing him nasty looks and whispering just loud enough for him to hear, but it had honestly been too long since mere words would be enough to wound him. There was only one person who could instil fear with him with nothing but a voice and he was currently miles and miles away, doing whatever he wanted with the fair haired demon. Not even Arahabaki had that impact, but Arahabaki’s words were always followed by actions and said actions would very much harm Dazai.
Don’t you think you’re trying too hard, little spark?
No, he wasn’t. As long as he didn’t have to face the god, any second was priceless.
The kids in front of him stopped abruptly and Dazai stopped too, in a movement so ingrained in his bones not even five years could erase it. The kids seemed a little pissed that he didn’t smash into them, but Dazai didn’t care. They were no threat to him magically, and physically, he had taken so so much worse.
“Attention!” Fukuzawa-sensei, the head of their house who seemed to give no fucks about the unspoken rule of wearing robes instead of kimonos and katanas spoke. “The password this year is ‘Detective’” huh, last year it had been ‘cat’. The man continued “I know a lot of the first years don’t know the magic customs and all and, as such, I want the older kid to guide them.” Dazai looked away and pulled back even more. That’s what he had told them about him last year when he had joined and everyone took the advantage of messing with him. His magical power certainly didn’t help.
At least it’s for the best. I don’t trust them so they can’t betray me.
The mass of children started moving and Dazai followed, trying to remember all the secret passages he had discovered and all the places he had yet to try.
A huge hand clamped itself on his shoulder and Dazai looked up. Fukuzawa was looking down at him with a searching for something Dazai didn’t know but he could guess. The dark magic lingered off of the man, but not the same way it hung off of Mori.
On Mori, it felt like the man was using it as perfume, covering every inch of himself in the material to use later. On Fukuzawa, it felt like the magic was lingering in his scars, on the surface of his skin the same way blood did after a fight. It was crumbling and falling away, chipping with every step, only to get enhanced once he placed his hand on his sword.
“Sensei?” Dazai asked, eager to get away from the man that threw him nothing but guarded looks since he had first stepped foot onto the cobbled hall. He could still remember the piercing glare that followed him to the table after the Hat decided to put him in the one house he had begged not to be in.
“Had a nice summer, Dazai?”
His voice was soft and parenting, and Dazai would have almost allowed himself to believe it genuine. He wanted to believe it genuine, he wanted to think that the man cared for something else other than the wizard who had taken him in custody. He knew what the man was really asking: if Mori had done something else, if Dazai was ready to spill. A lot of people suspected Mori for a lot of things, most of them for a good reason, but there was something deeper in the way his teacher and his current guardian acted around and about each other.
Dazai wanted to believe that the man cared for him as a human, even if a little, but the dark magic in his blood spoke the obvious contrary.
“Yeah,” he smiled, nice and practiced and charming. So much like Mori. “It’s great to return to school though.”
Fukuzawa had to have seen at least through the last part of his sentence but didn’t comment. “All right” he said instead “Make sure to keep up your studies.” and, with that, he pushed him inside.
Dazai sighed and headed for the room he had to share with the other fifteen year olds.
~O~
Dazai didn’t have all that high expectation for hiding himself from Arahabaki’s current vessel, but damn, he had hoped it could last at least a week. It was a big school! and heck, even when they did share classes, the redhead didn’t notice him until the very very new teacher, who went by the name of Kunikida Doppo and had been a student up until two years ago, called him out.
“Dazai.” the man said and the boy saw the Vessel whip his head from the front row to stare at him. The teacher continued. “I know you have full marks in written exams, but you have to do some practical too.”
“Why?” Dazai asked, knowing full well that his night would end in detention, but not caring. It wasn’t like he actually had anything to do besides homework anyway. Some of the kids snickered and muttered between them, but the teacher ignored them and glared at Dazai from beneath his glasses.
“Why? What do you mean why?! It’s important that you know how to use the spells, that you can do it with ease! Knowing how to knit from a picture isn’t the same thing as practicing until you reach perfection!” he waved the notebook with the word Ideal written over it. Dazai looked unimpressed before oh so slightly pointing at the vest.
“With all do respect sir you should probably give up knitting.”
The man turned a particular shade of red as some of his classmates started snickering. The Vessel frowned. Eventually, Doppo looked at Dazai with murder in his eyes. “You have five seconds to vanish that rat or you’ll have detention.”
Dazai stared at the white fluffy animal before he picked it up and hid it in his shirt. He then clapped his hands and showed the now empty desk. The blond sighed.
“Tonight, detention.”
“What?!” Dazai exclaimed fake wounded “The rat isn’t there anymore!” and, with a little slight of hand, he made the rat crawl out of the sleeve of his shirt, which prompted a series of not quite quiet snickers as the teacher popped another vein.
Yeah, they were laughing at him, but at least this time he meant them to. And, he didn’t have to perform any magic, so that was all right.
~O~
Dazai had left the classroom by the time Chuuya had barely packed up his things. The redhead dashed into the hallway, but the taller teen was already gone both from view and from presence. Chuuya didn’t know how he could tell that, but that deep dark thing inside of him thrummed whenever the bandaged boy was near and the redhead was getting more and more unsettled by the minute.
But, in the end, it was to no avail. Chuuya studied with intensity the rest of the day, but he didn’t seem to share any more of his classes with the brunette. Eventually, redhead gave up and headed towards the great hall for lunch. He studied the mass of green and silver, but he couldn’t distinguish the familiar face. Sighing, he sat down.
“Hard first day?” Tachihara asked.
“Not really” Chuuya sighed. “It’s just that I’m looking for someone and I can’t find him and it pisses me off!” he said. The redhead wouldn’t had been so adamant with anyone else, but the boy knew about Arahabaki. If he dug deeper, he might find out what happened to Verlaine and how had the Demon gotten in him. He needed to find and interrogate Dazai!
“Who is he?” Tachihara asked.
“His name is Dazai….”
“Dazai!” Akutagawa sat up from the place he was sulking in and scooted over to the two fifth years “You saw Dazai? here?!”
Chuuya blinked. Akutagawa wasn’t the most social person, so this was very very out of character for him.
“Yeah?”
The boy opened his mouth but the other redhead scoffed. “Don’t bother” he stabbed some of the sausages on his plate “You don’t want to mingle with him.”
Chuuya blinked and Akutagawa looked like he was close to an aneurism. “Why?”
“Other than the fact that he’s Mori’s son?” the boy rolled his eyes “He’s a squib” he said the word with something akin to disgust “Not only that, but magic works really bad near him. I was partnered with him last year and my wand started malfunctioning”
“Don’t you dare insult him, you….” Akutagawa stood up but Chuuya grabbed his yellow robes and dragged him down.
“Aren’t those rumours?”
“Nah,” he shook his head “Told you, trained and tested. Plus” he pointed the fork at him “He goes to the Forbidden Forest at night. At night! on his own volition.” Tachihara drank a glass of juice.
“Doesn’t Lovecraft just stop him?” Chuuya tilted his head.
“No. Apparently, Lovecraft likes him” he leaned forward “I heard he visits him and people spotted them walking together from time to time.”
The redhead involuntarily shuddered. He didn’t have anything against the age old Gamekeeper, but he couldn’t help but be unsettled. He wasn’t human, that much was certain. He was always cold and aloof, but not in a mean way. More in a way that he didn’t realise other people were there. There was this aura, way too familiar aura surrounding him, something that should not be disturbed.
To think that someone would spend time with the man willingly…
“You’re just jealous because he’s so much greater than you!” Akutagawa seethed.
Tachihara looked him in the eye “I’m glad that I wasn’t born a cripple.”
The third year growled but stomped away and Tachihara sighed. “But anyway, as I said, it’s not worth it.”
Chuuya hummed “Actually, he kinda has something of mine. I really need to talk to him but he keeps evading.”
Tachihara rubbed his chin with his fork. “We can corner him if you want? Gather Higuchi and Junou and maybe Gin and force him to talk to you.”
Chuuya felt a deep hole form into his stomach. He needed that information but he didn’t want to hold the other at wand point to get it. “Nah, that will just scare him off.”
“Dude, if he stole something from you, we need to teach him respect! We need to scare him!”
“He didn’t steal anything!” Chuuya sighed “It’s just….” he scratched his head looking for a piece of information “There are some things about a certain curse I’m researching, and I can’t find them in the library. He might know something, since he lives with Mori and all that.”
“Don’t meddle with Dark Magic, Chuuya” Tachihara warned.
“I won’t, I promise” Chuuya stood up and headed for his class.
~O~
Dazai finished his homework as Kunikida glared into him from his desk, no doubt wanting to make the boy nervous. Too bad for him, Dazai was too used to Bullshit to be affected. He waited for the hour to pass by before he packed his stuff and took them to the Common room.
The boy looked at the clock. He still had about an hour till the curfew, so he walked out of the castle.
Going to the Forbidden forest was forbidden, but no one stopped him so far. Even Lovecraft barely nodded and told him that he should value his sleep more. But Dazai didn’t really care. He was used to very little sleep anyway.
The cold air was refreshing to him. Dazai started walking towards the forest, on the paths he had memorised last year until he reached a clearing. It wasn’t empty, but there were less Thestrals than the last time. Dazai felt a smile curl around his lips, a genuine smile for the first time since the summer vacation started as he jogged towards the tall skeletal horse.
The animal bowed and Dazai handed them an apple he had swapped from dinner. “Been a long time, hasn’t it” he smiled and rubbed his head on the smooth skin.
I almost thought you forgot about us….
“How could I?” he laughed and ran his fingers over the smooth skin, bandages peeking from the end of his wrists “How could I forget about you?”
The white eyed looked at him as a bat like wing landed over him and pulled him close in something akin to a hug. Daza smiled and leaned in, when he heard the voice, then the presence and then the tone that sent chills through his bones.
“Dazai!?”