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The gunshot rings throughout the alleyway, loud and crisp in the silence of the night. The man slumps down to the ground with a sickening thud, staining the dirty wall behind him a sickly red.
“Clean this up,” Dazai says curtly, and the men behind him immediately spring into action, scurrying forward.
Dropping the gun into the hands of one of his flustered subordinates, he shoves his own hands into his pockets and turns around to walk out of the alleyway. The night wind is strong, perhaps a little too cold for the middle of June, and he almost wants to pull the coat tighter around his slight shoulders. He thinks better of it, a bitter expression on his face. When has that coat ever helped, anyway?
His phone vibrates in his pocket. It’s a message from Chuuya, and he deletes it without opening. Is it two in the morning? Three? He has no idea, but he’s so tired it feels like his limbs are going to fall off.
...Would Odasaku still be awake?
It’s an odd thing to be wondering minutes after he has shot a person between the eyes, the blood on his shirt not even dry yet. Or perhaps it isn’t that odd, after all. In any case, he knows he has caved even before he switches ways mid-stride. The home he hasn’t been back to in a few days has never been a source of comfort anyway. There is nothing there.
That’s because you don’t have a home.
He grits his teeth.
Shut up. I know.
Odasaku is awake, it turns out. A little too awake, apparently, if how quickly he opens the door is anything to go by.
Dazai steps inside. “Were you expecting me?”
Oda shrugs noncommittally. He’s wearing a cotton shirt over pyjama bottoms, red hair freshly washed and still slightly dripping with water, and… is that a spoon in his hand?
“I was making hot-chocolate.” he offers as some form of explanation when he sees Dazai eyeing it on his way inside, then laughs when he makes a face. “What? I couldn’t sleep, and it’s cold tonight.”
Dazai laughs, holding his hands up in mock surrender. So, it is cold. It’s kind of hard to tell when he’s always so cold, anyway.
“Come sit, I’ll be back in a second,” Oda says before disappearing off into the kitchen. Dazai discards his coat to the side and sighs before slumping down onto the couch. Leaning his head back, he runs a hand over its rough fabric, blinking slowly. It’s a deep red in colour and despite the obvious cheapness, feels warm and soft, somehow, just like everything else in Oda’s flat. Everything, from the soft overhead light to the shoddy furniture to the threadbare curtains to Odasaku himself, feels so homely for some reason. Even the dusty old turntable that Oda got at a flea market, of all places, is so awfully comforting that it fills Dazai’s chest with a feeling he doesn’t know what to do with. He feels like it’s going to burst.
True to his word, Oda returns not even two minutes later, two steaming mugs in his hands. He sets one of them down in front of Dazai before settling in beside him. “How was your day?”
Dazai looks at him, lips parted ever so slightly as he drinks in the expression on Oda’s face. Soft, serious, with the slightest hints of curiosity sprinkled throughout. Or perhaps none of those. He still stands by his original impression. Odasaku really is a mystery.
Of all the things he could have asked him (Why are you here? Why didn’t you go home? Is that blood on your shirt?), he decided to ask him how his day was. Dazai closes his eyes and leans back against Oda’s side, wrapping his hands around the mug to let it warm his frigid fingers.
“Same old.” He shakes his head, then gives him a lazy, feline grin. “You’re the one with the more interesting job.”
Oda laughs behind him, a deep, full sound that reverberates throughout his chest. Dazai leans back further into him, almost purring when Oda lightly runs a hand through his hair.
“Are you tired?”
“Mm, a little,” he says, tilting his neck back to face Oda, a smug grin making its way to his face. “Why, got something on your mind?”
That earns him a sideways smile. “Perhaps.”
Setting his half-finished drink down on the table, Oda pushes himself off the couch and lightly pads over to the turntable. He picks something up from beside it, something Dazai hadn’t noticed in his routine, reflexive survey of his surroundings. Perhaps the sleep-deprivation really is getting to him.
“I discovered an antique store downtown a few days ago,” he says, walking back over and Dazai realizes it is a music record in his hand, “and I found this.”
Taking out the disc, he hands the cover to Dazai. The boy looks at him quizzically before looking down at the object in his hand. It’s fairly old by the looks of it, faded on the sides and slightly damaged in places. It might even be classified vintage, he realizes, curiously tilting his head as the grinning face of the artist stares back up at him from the cover.
“Sinatra?”
“Yeah.” Oda smiles brightly, already setting the record up at the turntable. “Have you ever listened to him before?”
Dazai blinks unsurely, turning the cover over in his hands. “A couple of times, perhaps…” Mori is much more of a Tchaikovsky person.
Did you know, Dazai-kun, that the violin is the instrument whose sound is considered to be closest to that of a human voice?
(Yes, I know. You never let me forget.)
Besides, nothing goes quite as well with slender legs and soft satin as the wails of a violin.
(I know that too. But it hurts. Everything hurts. I can’t do this. Please, I’m so tired—)
The first notes of the melody begin to slowly trickle into the room. Dazai looks back up at Oda with a crooked smile. “I didn’t know you listened to English music, Odasaku. Full of surprises, as always.”
Oda returns his smile as he walks back over to him, just as bright and perhaps even fonder. “I have vague memories of someone in my childhood being very fond of Sinatra in particular, so I feel like I’ve listened to him forever.”
Dazai hums and tries to ignore his mind going into overdrive, trying to find out what to do with this new-found information. It all washes away in an instant, however, when Oda offers him his hand.
He stares at the outstretched arm in front of him for a long moment. Oh. So, that’s what had been on his mind. Dancing, huh? He wonders if Oda realizes what he’s asking him — offering him. Wonders what it means to him, and if it’s the same as what it means to Dazai.
I’d be holding you, and touching you, and feeling your heartbeat right next to mine, and I don’t deserve that, I don’t, I don’t, I—
“I don’t know how to dance.”
Oda blinks, then laughs as if Dazai had cracked the joke of the century. “Don’t worry, I’m sure the remarkable Dazai Osamu can get it down in no time.”
Dazai takes his hand, and Oda hauls him to his feet with the ease and fluidity of a trained professional. Of the trained assassin that he is. Dazai wonders how many of his targets he had eliminated at such close range. Did he haul them up like this too?
“Place your hands around my neck,” Oda instructs, and Dazai complies immediately, “like so.” Oda’s own hands are resting on the smallest part of Dazai’s waist, as if holding him in place. Dazai is grateful for it. He wouldn’t know what else to do.
The song that begins is a slow, smooth melody, hints of piano permeating the background. Dazai feels as if he has heard it somewhere before, although for the life of him he cannot remember where. And especially not when Odasaku is so close to him.
'Some day, when I'm awfully low
When the world is cold...'
He smells like gunpowder, cheap, dollar store soap, and something else that is so undeniably him that it makes Dazai get dizzy by its mere presence. He’s almost a head taller than Dazai, and quite a bit wider at the shoulders. Standing in his arms like this, his own slender fingers locked behind the man’s neck, Dazai is acutely aware of how completely engulfed he is. In his arms, in his essence, almost as if a comfortable weight has been put over him, soft and warm and… something else he can’t quite put his finger on. He can’t move unless Odasaku wants him to.
There is something so utterly relieving about that thought that Dazai’s knees almost buckle underneath him.
Resisting the urge to lean in closer and drop his head on Oda’s shoulder, he instead gazes up at him with wide, wonder-filled eyes, tilting his head a little. The living room’s mellow overhead light makes Oda’s eyes look closer to green than they actually are, Dazai notes, much like the ocean he’s always talking about. He wonders if the ocean beside the cabin from Oda’s fantasies is of this same greenish-blue hue.
What a beautiful ocean that would be.
This time, when Oda smiles at him, it’s even gentler somehow, although that shouldn’t be humanly possible. He doesn’t say anything, just lets the smile reach right up to his eyes and make their corners crinkle. Fondness, Dazai realizes with a start, and suddenly, his chest feels so full, he’s afraid it’s going to burst.
Fondness. For a thing so hideous?
'I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight.'
Each time Oda takes a step forward with the rhythm, Dazai takes one back, and when Oda’s feet retreat, he chases them with his own. Their bodies sway slowly, in tandem with each other as well as the melody, slotted so perfectly against each other that a bystander might wonder if they weren’t actually created with the other in mind.
“See? You’re getting the hang of it,” Oda murmurs proudly, and Dazai can feel the vibrations of his voice from where his arms are holding onto him.
He nods, more enthusiasm in that single gesture than he has had for anything in weeks. One step forward, two steps back, all the while turning almost imperceptibly. It’s really not all that hard, he realizes, partly because he has already calculated all the beats and intervals of the song. But mostly because Odasaku is holding him, guiding him by the waist and keeping him from falling.
Or perhaps making him fall. What a fascinating oxymoron.
The melody winds its way through the room and around their bodies like velvet, permeating every single one of Dazai’s senses. The room falls away around them, leaving only them, the music, and the synchronized sounds of their footfalls on the hardwood floor.
“It’s okay, you can close your eyes,” he can dimly hear Oda say, as if through a haze, and for some reason, this explicit permission causes a sigh of relief to escape Dazai’s lips. Reflexively, he closes his eyes and leans his head down to rest on Oda’s shoulder. Almost immediately, however, his breath hitches in his throat.
Because Odasaku is singing, humming softly, almost imperceptibly alongside the notes of the song. Dazai can feel the vibrations where his cheek rests, tears just barely pricking the corners of his eyes, and he swears he’s never heard anything quite so beautiful in his entire life.
'Lovely, never, never change
Keep that breathless charm.'
A musician might have described Oda’s voice as something along the lines of a slightly high baritone. To Dazai, who was neither knowledgeable nor interested in such technicalities, it simply sounded like love. Like comfort. Like coming back after a long day to the safety of the home he has never had.
Safety, it suddenly clicks in his head. That elusive thing he could never put his finger upon. Odasaku feels like safety.
His grip on Oda’s shirt tightens involuntarily, and if it were at all possible for him to nestle closer without falling over, he would be doing so.
More than anything, Dazai just wants to die. He always has. He has been dancing with death for so long now that he wouldn’t know what to do if that were taken away from him. But right now, he’s dancing with love instead of death, and love is holding him tight in his arms, whispering in his ear and telling him that it’s okay. In this particular moment, he doesn’t mind being alive.
He doesn’t want to open his eyes, too afraid that everything will disappear once he does. What if it’s not real? He can’t take that risk.
He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, swaying in the middle of the living room to the rhythm of a ghost of a song, time melting away from under their feet. He’s barely able to keep his eyes open by the time the last vestiges of the song reach his ears. Oda’s hand slides up from his waist to caress his cheek lightly, before he carries Dazai back over to the couch and lays him down on it.
He’s tired and sleepy and so utterly content that it scares him a little. For the first time in a long while, sleep doesn’t feel like it’s running to try and swallow him whole, pitch-black hands pulling him into a void. And so he lets it take him without a fight. With the very last vestiges of his consciousness, he sees Oda place a feather-light kiss right at the corner of his lips.
Won't you please arrange it? Cause I love you
Just the way you look tonight...'
The music fades out. An involuntary smile graces Dazai’s face, all of his features suddenly looking much softer.
Perhaps a home doesn't matter all that much, anyway.