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They didn't always work together on missions. In fact, Chuuya found it downright concerning how much more frequent those missions together were becoming because in a good month, he only had to worry about how annoying Dazai was in passing or in underhanded manipulation, not up close, in person, nattering on about how annoying Chuuya was, how small he was, how terrible his hat was.
Chuuya reached for that scrawny neck to strangle it, but Dazai danced out of the way, his cheerful tone turned jeering, not even stopping for a breath.
It seemed it was turning into a regular occurrence and Chuuya grumbled about it every step of the way—Mori throwing them together, almost like a parent telling his children to run off and play, without any regard for their feelings on the matter.
They finally came to a stop at their destination.
"It kind of looks like hell, don't you think?" Dazai commented as they regarded the aftermath of a rival organization's ability user having set the Port Mafia's warehouses aflame. There were dead, burnt carcasses in the midst of the lingering ash.
Chuuya clenched his fists and growled beneath his breath.
Dazai opened his mouth to say something and never got it out. The sound of a gunshot, a wheezing breath— Chuuya shot his gaze to Dazai, name on his tongue, and barely caught him with one arm.
Blood leaked from Dazai's chest as Chuuya laid him down. Dazai's face was stricken with pain. They thought they'd been smart to shoot Dazai, the one who could be shot. It was like a bell going off. Time to enter the ring.
Chuuya grimaced and stripped off his gloves.
"Don't do anything stupid, hat rack," Dazai wheezed out, one ragged word at a time.
He hadn't done this in front of Dazai yet, hadn't done it at all. It hadn't been necessary, and a part of Chuuya had been afraid of losing what hard won self he had gained.
"Grantors of dark disgrace," he murmured, drawing Dazai's startled gaze, "do not wake me again."
Dazai could admit, he'd had expectations. He'd expected black flames. He'd expected something like the fires of hell, burning heat that could melt the air itself—everything Rimbaud had once described.
Strange shapes, red and black bruises spreading under Chuuya's skin, his eyes gone white as his own personality receded into something so powerful, it almost flattened Dazai to the ground. It felt more like the lash of wind and gravity Chuuya put into his generalized attacks against an entire group than the furious rush of divine wrath but multiplied exponentially.
Chuuya flew into the air like a guided missile, great red-black spheres rising in his palms. Dazai stared at them, trying to determine exactly what they were. Then Chuuya flung the first and the entire city block shook as everything in the vicinity was flattened and crushed. The likely location of the sniper was nothing more than a crater in the ground. There were times when Dazai stared at gravity in action and thought he didn't quite understand everything Chuuya did with it, but this was one time he was fairly certain he was staring at a miniaturized black hole.
More were growing in Chuuya's hands. He was bleeding.
It was Chuuya's blood.
What did it take to contain an entire god?
Dazai stumbled to his feet and plowed forward in wide-eyed panic, forcing himself to move despite the blurry vision and blood-soaked weakness he felt until he could just reach to wrap his hand around Chuuya's wrist—No Longer Human activated before he even made contact. Something in him told him there was absolutely no time to waste.
Chuuya felt like he was groggily waking up against every effort of his body to immediately pass out. He had to be dreaming. Dazai never looked down at him with worry in his eyes.
They were both bleeding, both a little broken now, practically collapsed on top of each other, but, "You've annihilated the enemy, Chuuya. Rest now." Dazai had his phone out. He'd be calling for backup or extraction.
Chuuya just grinned up through the blood between his teeth and the ache in his flesh and heart, the roar of destruction inside him sated for a time. He hadn't wholly lost himself, not in the way he'd feared. He could see now why Rimbaud thought Arahabaki's lack of personal desire hadn't mattered, that the power itself was enough.
Arahabaki hadn't truly lacked desire. He had Chuuya for that.
"I won't die, mackerel," Chuuya said when Dazai ended his call. "If you and I ever go down," he huffed out between each painful breath, "it'll be in flames." And take the whole world with them.
He tried to stay awake, but sank anyway into sleep, his body no longer willing to make the effort.
Not in water, for Dazai would never be allowed to drown. Not by hanging or drinking metal or whatever other horrors were written in that ridiculous book. Flames. Black flames.