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They meet under the moonlight, as deals done between shady organizations tend to be.
“You’re a former assassin,” is the first sentence that the person in front of him ever says to him. “And yet now you’re working as my bodyguard. Isn’t that quite funny?”
Dazai Osamu. Limbs too thin—not enough to hint at malnutrition or starvation, but just this-shy of lack of personal stake in his own health. Gaze too brittle—as though he’s already seen too much of the world and is frankly unimpressed by the sights he’d lain his eyes on. Mind too sharp—this is but a teenage brat, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s also the real brains behind one of the most successful companies of this era.
He’s been hired to be this brat’s bodyguard, to murder anyone who’ll come for this brat’s head, to kill this brat if the situation is dire enough that he cannot be saved. He’s too valuable to be allowed to fall into another person’s grasp.
It’s a straightforward request for someone like him. Chuuya’s the world’s greatest assassin. Something like this is simple for him, there’s no hint of danger at all. Just one of the detours, side-quests, in his path forward in life.
So, he raises an eyebrow, matches the other’s unimpressed gaze with one of his own.
“You’re supposed to be a genius. And yet, you’re trying to piss a former assassin off. You want to die that badly?”
Dazai pauses for a brief moment, as though honestly surprised that someone dare to talk back to him. A brief moment, nothing but a blink in the march of time. He looks exceptionally young then. But then, the walls come right up, shuttering his expression with a quick snap. Apathy drips from his voice when he returns a, “A cheerful painless death is best. Think you can provide that…” Dark eyes slither up and down his form, as though to infuriate him into a reaction, “…chibi?”
To say that their first meeting is a disaster is an understatement.
To say that their first meeting did not end up with them getting affected and the slightest bit interested in each other, even more so.
-
For the most part, Chuuya settles well into his new role.
He’s turned over a new leaf, by focusing his talents into protection rather than outright destruction. Though, that’s not to say that he’s become a good person entirely. His instincts still jump immediately to killing, instead of mere incapacitation.
After killing the third person who’s sneaked into Dazai’s room in an attempt to kidnap the teen genius, Dazai’s exasperated voice tells him: “You should keep them alive, chibi. Is that concept too complex for your tiny brain to comprehend?”
Chuuya, whose dagger is still in the carotid of the assassin who’s less than a meter away from Dazai’s bed, frowns. “He’s too near your bed.”
“Gathering information is less work in the long run,” Dazai says with a shake of his head, tone dripping with conceit. “Instead of simply killing them off, I could get intel about their activities. Ah, ah, if only you use your brain a little bit more…”
They spend the next few minutes bickering about the pros and cons of letting someone come even closer hurting Dazai, to lull them to a false sense of victory. Chuuya nearly gives in—he’s stubborn, but Dazai’s whining is a different brand of torture entirely—but then Dazai ends up coughing wetly and violently, nearly folding in half over his duvet.
Chuuya drops the corpse—that he’s been searching ID cards on—unceremoniously on the floor in his haste to get to Dazai’s side. He places a hand over a hunched back, and feels as though he’s being stabbed by the thin-sharp-brittle limbs with each cough that rocks Dazai’s body.
“Y—You’re bleeding,” Chuuya murmurs when he sees droplets of blood spray from the other’s mouth, tainting his lips a sickly red. “Oi, shitty Dazai, are you—”
“It’s nothing.” Dazai lies obviously. “It’s a tradeoff, you see? There’s no such thing as a perfect person, so with my excellent looks, charming personality and sharp wit, I had to have a frail body.”
“What charming personality are you talking about,” Chuuya gripes, even though he feels his gut wrenching in cacophonies of alarm bells. Danger, danger, his instincts say. He pushes them down as he draws Dazai closer to his embrace. “You’re clearly delusional, let’s get you to a hospital.”
“You are such a silly chibi,” Dazai whispers against his neck.
It’s not until later that Chuuya notices the line of red left behind there by Dazai’s lips. It’s almost a foreboding premonition, that slice over his neck. But he battles against his instincts telling him that things are too dangerous for him. It’s going to be fine. He’s strong. This family is rich and can afford expensive treatments.
Everything’s going to be fine.
-
It isn’t fine.
It’s the furthest from fine.
The paycheck deposited in his account is gigantic, the Dazai Family thanking him for his services. They’ve only hired him to fight off the external threats to their prodigy son’s life. They’ve known all along that Dazai would eventually succumb to his sickness, so they’ve simply wanted him to work hard enough until his life is snuffed out.
Chuuya grasps Dazai’s hand—as tightly as the IV would allow, as strongly as the other’s brittle frailness could accept. Dazai’s lips are upturned in a pale crescent, his eyes and hair the only color in the stark whiteness of his hospital room that’s as somber as a grave.
He doesn’t have any other visitors.
“You shouldn’t be so conceited as to blame yourself,” Dazai tells him, in a slow, lilting voice that speaks of someone swaying under a thick fog—terrible until the very end. “This isn’t anything you can protect me from.”
Chuuya has a thousand words for him, but he can only smother them inside his throat, against the other’s fingertips.
“With you by my side… I feel quite cheerful, Chuuya.”
He doesn’t dare breathe, in case he disturbs the air, in case he doesn’t get to hear the littlest of sighs.
But then, Dazai doesn’t breathe again and the silence wraps itself around his chest and suffocates him.
By the time the nurses plead with him to let go of Dazai’s hand, his heart is already sliced into pieces—the dangerous love that his instincts have warned him against trapping him in a pain that he, for all his strength, cannot defeat.