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Some waves come back to the shore late.
They don’t look like much, the pale peonies in his hands. Don’t mean much until he picks up the scissors. Farewell to their stalks, the flowers fall in chunks onto his chest. He beheads the whole bouquet before moving onto the wrapper.
It ought to be a Tuesday, unlike any other Tuesday, 45 hours and 18 minutes into his sleep fasting. Or else there won’t be a reason for his doorbell to ring.
He keeps time with the pounding in his neck: It doesn’t last long. Chuuya must be exceptionally impatient today.
As much as he can in his coat and suit still, Dazai shuffles on the couch until his bones don’t sting. He makes no move to open the door. There is no need. Walls are welcome mats and closed doors are daisies for Tainted .
Briefly, he finds half the concentration to toe-off one shoe. The floor blurs up into walls, the carpet flies off like a manta ray. Like his words, the world turns intentionally. Slowly.
“-are a menace. Do you hear me? Dazai.”
Covered with a sheet of exhaustion and a jar of what if s, Chuuya stands by him. Close and concerned, he is gentle enough for Dazai to slap his hand away.
“Did you break the door?”
He gets a show of Chuuya pursing his lips together. If his shoulders tense up as well or not, Dazai has no idea. He must be more tired than he thought. But rest is a cat’s footsteps when you’re in the presence of a predator: Faint. Dazai can barely close his eyes. Can almost think his third plan if things go south and his right-hand man gets too angry.
Like a mug of coffee gone cold, he remembers late:
Chuuya shouldn’t be here.
A hand that is neither his nor welcome settles on his shoulder. The more it anchors, the more his vision swims.
“I sent someone else to shoo them off. Because that is basically what your so-called important mission was.”
It’s a wonder as much as it is the finest of headaches, Chuuya is never without the attitude. Not in the mornings, not in the streets he walks as a detective. Not after lunches and never in the worse childhoods written upon them. Not on any page of any book- or, the book- Chuuya loses his fire. He presses down to keep him on the couch, Dazai pushes back. “Just rest, damn it-”
“Oh? Chuuya is giving orders now? Deciding what’s important for the organization and what isn’t, now? Why? Has the mafia boss died already?”
Scripted in a way Dazai has nothing to do with, Chuuya sighs. He must have changed his mind because he is now tugging up the inevitable body Dazai has to have from the couch.
This way, he is artfully looking away as he tugs his boss through his flat like he would with a drunken stranger.
“Shut up. If you cared that much of the organization, you’d make sure you’re at least functioning, first.”
A river flows in from the cracked open kitchen window. He can almost see the debris, cold and crowded with all that shouldn’t be. Tires and various junk fish die on lately float through his hallway. Or maybe that’s his shadow. Or Chuuya’s.
Funny, he never realized the scratchy carpet they walk on is nightmare length. It doesn’t only drag on, it restarts.
When they reach the bedroom, Chuuya’s exaggeration is hanging on the air already. Stale sunshine, sunken snakes, and soundless sleep staggers in the lush space. They both know Dazai is functioning. They very well know he can function more battered and less rested than this. It is a luxury, what Chuuya is giving him, his wish for Dazai to not need to fall that apart.
But they sew their own shrouds and medals in this life. Big or small, somethings push them out of the shadows to dance the day, to tick away the chore of daily life.
Then they retreat.
Strange, even after their masks go drinking, Chuuya still has enough left in him to care if Dazai slept or not.
Shuffling quietly, Dazai rolls his head on the pounding neck. He has watched Chuuya take his gloves off enough- in other lifetimes, that is. He has enough practice to look away like it is any less captivating. Any less of a hammer on his heart.
Baring his hands is the god bearer's last resort.
Perhaps Dazai judged too soon, too muddy and too tired . Maybe this isn’t for him. Chuuya probably cut open a memory with one of his particularly sharp desperations. Tangled bodies bloody to work the alcohol off his system and now he mourns he didn’t bother learning the names. Yes, that must be it. He must be craving his nightly demise.
This must be where Chuuya gets to paint himself a sheep and Dazai a butcher, himself a ring and Dazai a box, himself a pavement and Dazai a drunkard.
To save them the wrestling, Dazai surrenders to what would eventually happen. He lays down on the bed and presses the heels of his palms to his eyes. Chuuya, stubborn to his cause of punching one surprise out of him every day, takes off Dazai’s lonely shoe. Loses his jacket and hat; charms the maroon scarf away like it’s a snake. The tall, black coat needs some maneuvering, much like the title on its shoulders.
With a grunt, he’s not sure from who, Chuuya is on the bed and Dazai is dragged between open legs to rest his head on a firm torso. This all must be for Chuuya. Must be selfish. It has to be.
If he is the shepherd of the sheep, the finger under the ring, the flower sprouting from the pavement- then Dazai will have no idea how to swallow his heart back.
Cold skin settles on his temples, rubbing in grounding circles. Second by second reality flips in pages. Dazai isn’t sure anymore that the entire top floor of the skyscraper isn’t rushing down.
“Do you pity me Chuuya?”
The movement stops behind him. There’s a rustle of fabric, as distant as dreams and his hair is pushed off his face.
Chuuya sounds like a hidden letter, like bruises under makeup, like a crack in age-old ice:
“You can call this pity if it’ll ease your wicked mind.”
Quieter than he spoke, he tugs at the bandages. No helping physics nor psychology, Dazai’s hand shoots up, digging into Chuuya’s wrist like poison. If waves are stubborn, cliffs are persistent. His right-hand man waits to go back to the job no one assigned him.
It doesn’t take Dazai long to back down.
Fingers now empty, there is nothing but air to fight off the unease off his white armor slipping away.
“It is pity. Such a pity because no one will call it what it truly is.”
Silence drools over them, sickly, sticky, sad. Chuuya’s calloused hands drift over his face, digs into his hair. A tightrope walker between him and sleep, he comes and goes until Dazai’s breathing slows.
Before darkness steals his eyelids, he mumbles around a smile:
“Oh, how unlucky we are.”