Work Text:
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[rendezvous]
Summertime means that the sun prolongs its welcome up in the sky, blazing hot even though the clock ticks past six and closer to seven. His bosses follows the same concept, stretching past the usual work hours just because the day is longer. Because they’ve taken him in when he’s got nothing but the clothes on his back in his person, he doesn’t mind pouring a lot of effort into his work as payback.
Thankfully, he’s energetic enough that neither does he wilt under the bright sunshine nor does he succumb to the stupor caused by heavy humidity. It is distracting though, the way sweat builds against the back of his neck. Not enough to distract him from the fact that his boyfriend hasn’t replied yet to his question about what he’d like to eat for dinner, or about his other question as to whether the other is feeling fine.
His heels click against the pavement as he makes his way back home. His footsteps are accompanied by the sound of the Obon Festival in the background, the drumbeats for the dancers filling the air.
Since Dazai doesn’t make a request for tonight’s fare, he only makes a quick stopover upon a row of vending machines two blocks away from their apartment building. Neon colors bloom like fireworks against the stretching dark. It’s stocked with a lot of things, ranging from food to drinks to neckties to gacha toys. He does a quick sweep of the offerings and offers some coins in exchange for a new drink flavor.
It’s their ritual for the past four years, Chuuya bringing something unique with him on his way back home. Dazai’s work as an author means that he gets to spend an entire day curled up at home with his laptop. Dazai’s apathy towards the world means that it’s profoundly difficult to get him to step out of their home and think of something else aside from attempting suicide.
Lately, he’s been thinking that it’d be good if he can somehow press the energy that he feels towards the other, just wrap him in an embrace that is filled with warmth. Lately, he’s been thinking that he really should refuse the overtime requests, because he suspects that Dazai really is feeling gloomier with him spending a lot of time out of home.
And as though hearing his musings, his ringtone tick-tocks inside his pockets. A couple of meters from the entrance of their apartment building, he receives Dazai’s LINE message. Standing out like a barren twig amongst the other messages that are tooth-aching in its sweet domesticity, there’s only one line, no punctuation: sayonara
Four syllables punch his gut with the force of a four-wheeler barreling directly to his chest, pouring ice-cold water over his sweaty body.
His eyes widen as he snaps his head up instinctively. And sure enough, there’s Dazai on the fenced-in rooftop, body a squiggly line as he sways against the cooling wind that whistles directly from the night. The late sunset paints the background in the red of blood that’s being slowly tainted by the darkness. More swaying. It’s as if Dazai is going to sink along with the sun against the horizon.
Heart pounding at the beautifully tragic sight, his feet tick-tock in the rhythm of a bomb about to explode, against the remainder of the pavement, against the stairs’ steps, against the tiles that lead to the rooftop. He doesn’t think he’s managed to breathe all the way up, twelve floors plus the extra one of the roof. He probably has defeated a record, but he doesn’t feel the burn in his legs or his lungs.
He kicks the door open and he runs towards where his boyfriend is. Eyes only seeing the deep scarlet of the sunset as it threatens to devour Dazai. The dull, emotionless look thaws slightly, but it’s still obviously hollow.
“You shitty mackerel!” He screams. An ineffective one, because it’s muffled directly against the other’s thin shirt anyway. He embraces the other man with enough force to realign their ribs into an embrace of their own. His hands claw into the other’s back, fervent with the desire to tether him into place, so he wouldn’t race downwards towards the embrace of gravity and death.
Thing is, he knows that Dazai is suicidal. It’s no secret. After all, their first meeting has Dazai literally falling from the sky and landing in his arms. A fated meeting, with the other’s suicide being recategorized as an ‘attempt’ rather than a ‘success’.
And just like that first meeting, their bodies fit perfectly together. As though he’s meant to catch him. As though the other’s meant to muffle his voice using his chest.
Also just like their first meeting, when he pulls away, it’s to see a sight that’s worth more than a ten-billion masterpiece. The chapped quality of his lips doesn’t detract from the fact that they’re a shapely cherry red. The dark circles under his eyes don’t distract from the fact that even through the apathy that he feels for the world, his eyes do shine upon meeting his gaze. There are dozens of imperfections, but they only serve to make him look ever more beautiful in his eyes.
It’s love at first sight back then.
It’s still love now, four years later.
It’s still love now, which is why it hurts so much that Dazai has agreed to be his boyfriend but also continues to agree to the siren call of death.
“It’s late,” Dazai says apropos of nothing. There’s no smile on his face, but there’s a gentle look there anyway. “A long day at work, hmm.”
He comes home as soon as his job ends, but he still shrugs and explains, “My bosses like to take advantage of the late sunsets.” He isn’t hurt that Dazai comments on this. In fact, he’s gratified that Dazai seems to at least notice that he comes home later during summertime. It means that the other cares enough to notice his presence, after all.
It’s actually strange. He’s never thought that he’s the type of person who’d care so much about another person, to the point that he’d be happy just by being noticed. He’s never thought that he’s the type of person who’d actually fall in love at first sight, much less to someone he doesn’t understand. He’s never thought that he’s the type of person who’d be able to love someone who keeps on finding ways to literally throw his life away.
But his understanding of himself has gone through a massive overhaul ever since he’s met Dazai.
Maybe the other’s fall has knocked all the screws off his head, after all.
Because he only embraces him again, squeezes him, before leading him by the hand away from the fence, away from the rooftop and into their home.
—
Things are peaceful for the rest of the night. They eat together, watch television together, curl up on the sofa together. They hold hands as Chuuya gives him today’s ‘unique treat’. They kiss on their way to bed. They bask on the moonlight that seems ever so brighter from the twelfth floor. They wake up together.
Dazai doesn’t smile and only looks at him with that soft, gentle expression. Whatever the other feels for him is covered up by the ephemeral mist over the other’s eyes. Filled with loneliness and a yearning for death.
He can’t help but taste a bitter grimace as he rubs at the other’s hands over their breakfast. “You look like you’re in love with death.”
Thing is, he knows that Dazai loves him. The other man wouldn’t agree to move in with him otherwise. The other wouldn’t hold his hands with such affection otherwise. The other wouldn’t sleep with him on the same bed otherwise.
But the look in his face whenever he’s drifting off to think about death… It’s unbearable to witness. He looks like he’s yearning for some phantom figure. Like he’s in the throes of love itself.
Especially when he’s wiping bits of yolk from the corner of his mouth and then saying, “Ah, I wonder if today is the day I can die.”
Chuuya hates how beautiful Dazai looks right now, like a flower shyly blooming, all wistful dewdrops in his eyes and lips. Hates how he’s looking the most alive while pining for death. Hates how this is the closest the other’s been to a smile.
But because he loves him so much, he doesn’t lash out. He reins in his desire to yell and scream and shake the other by the shoulders. His face twitches into a smile, helplessly infatuated.
“I’ll go home early tonight and cook crab for you,” is his way of begging. He knows that the other cannot be swayed by platitudes. If the other man can’t have faith in the intangibles such as a brighter tomorrow or the meaning of life, then he’d try to keep him in this world by plying him with tangible things.
He squeezes the other’s hand. Dazai takes a long time to respond, tone dreamy like he’s fallen asleep midway the wait for a reply. “The god of death is waiting for me for such a long time already.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to smile at me for a long time too,” is what he wants to say. But because he loves him so much, he doesn’t put pressure on the other. He simply squeezes him again, and promises, “I’ll get back home early and then we can watch the sunset.”
Dazai’s eyes are dark. “Mm. I’ll wait for you.”
—
Summertime means that the drumbeats of various festivals ring through the humid air. Various stalls hawker their fare, but he only gets tempted to buy several skewers before he whisks through the supermarket’s sales to get his hands on the freshest crabs he could find. Mornings are always the best time for best produce, so it takes time before he could find crabs that match his idea of freshness. Despite the unexpected delay, his heels bounce against the ground with each step, energy overflowing even at the end of the day.
Laughter comes from several students who hang around near the market’s entrance for their summer vacation. A bunch of middle-aged men and women clap their hands as they sway to the beat of the Obon dance. Fitting for a dance symbolizing a celebration to mark the end of suffering, there are also wide smiles on their faces.
For a brief moment, Chuuya is struck with a pang of longing. He has never seen Dazai smile, never seen those lips pull up in a crescent arc. The other teases him sometimes—for his height, for his taste in clothes, for a bunch of other things—but they all happen in a rather sedate manner. He could hear lightness in the other’s voice during those times, but nothing that can be considered a smile.
He’s jealous, for that dizzying spell. He’s jealous that even the three-day Obon Festival—something solemn as it’s supposedly the moment when the living world is closest to the underworld—can elicit more laughter than him. This festival, about honoring the ghosts of ancestors and featuring folklores about hungry ghosts, is more effective at making people smile than him.
Then, he shakes his head. There’s no point in feeling depressed over it. He’s known from the get-go that Dazai has his issues. He’s known it and he’s longed for him all the same.
And as he walks back home, his phone buzzes.
sayonara
Magnetized into looking up, he spots Dazai against the fence on the rooftop. It’s almost a perfect replica of yesterday’s—and the other day’s, the other week’s, the other month’s, the other year’s—picture. The only thing that has changed is that even through the distance separating them, he can swear that he hears Dazai melodiously saying, “I’ve been waiting for so long.”
Then, Dazai sways forward.
Chuuya rockets forward too, speeding through the pavement and up the stairs, the tick-tocks of his steps doubling, quadrupling. His groceries drop to the floor as he kicks the rooftop’s door down. It’s as though his body is squeezed through a pinched space. He flings his hand out so he can grab the other back.
He’s always been rather fit, but his arm still twinges as it handles the brunt of the momentum of trying to pull back someone being tugged down by the ground’s gravity. Even if he sometimes looks like he has twigs for bones, Dazai is still a substantial enough weight that when he barrels into Chuuya’s chest, it still renders both of them momentarily breathless.
Chuuya clutches him, hard, even as he falls backward. Planting his feet on the rooftop doesn’t quite work, and he sees the red-purple sunset unfurl like a kaleidoscope above him. His back bangs against the floor, but he doesn’t feel that pain at all. Neither does he feel ache from where Dazai’s head thumps hard against his chin.
No, what hurts the most is when a few moments after, Dazai sits up on top of him. The expression on the other’s face is flooded with melancholy. Like a lost child about to cry, but knowing that there’s nobody around to wipe his tears.
“I’m here, you idiot,” he wants to say. “I’m always here waiting for you.”
He tries to mold those words into actions, holding the other close to him. But his hands are refused, brushed away with an almost-petulant energy.
“I’m already so sick and tired of this world,” Dazai then tells him. The melancholy holding hands with misery. The misty, ephemeral look in his eyes solidifies into a solid block of longing. “The death god has always been waiting for me.”
And because he’s so in love, he finds the deep sadness on the other’s visage as something unbearably beautiful still.
In his efforts to help understand Dazai better, he’s also read up on some books. The theory by Freud that humans can be categorized into two depending on their drives—the drive for life, and the drive for death. Right now, Dazai is accelerating towards that certain death. Bulldozing over his heart in the process.
It’s already so strange that he’s managed to last four years like this.
“I love you,” he says in the end. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” Simply. “And I want to keep my appointment with the god of death still.”
His feelings aren’t enough to keep him tethered. Dazai still doesn’t smile. He loves him so much, and yet he can’t do anything for him. Running away isn’t in his repertoire, but the helplessness only stirs his insides into a turbulent storm.
“…I just want to put an end to this,” Chuuya finds himself saying. His heart squeezing at how darkness has now ruled over the night. Without the sun, there’s only the moon, the stars and Dazai’s eyes to provide light.
—Dazai’s eyes that have suddenly grown bright, as though they’re aflame from inside.
And more than that, Chuuya witnesses a priceless picture paint itself right in front of him.
A smile.
It starts out small, but it soon stretches up like moonrise, curving into a crescent brighter and more beautiful than the moon haloing his head.
For the first time in four years, for the first time he can remember, he has seen the other’s smile.
Dazai drums his fingertips excitedly over his chest, on his chin, against his cheeks. Such a purely innocent happiness, making him look lovelier than ever. Even if his words are, “My beloved god of death, do you finally remember me?”
The innocuous-seeming question doesn’t trigger a deluge of memories to flood his mind. But what it does remind him is that he doesn’t have much memories aside from a misty fog from before he’s met Dazai. That the first thing he ever remembers is having the other land on his arms.
And then several details slot in his mind. Like how he’s able to always dash to wherever Dazai is, supernaturally quick each and every time. Like how Dazai always makes sure to let him know whenever he’s about to jump down, as though to tell him to stay in place so he can finally reap his life.
An appointment from four years ago.
“I kept you waiting,” he ends up saying. This time, when he raises his hand to cup the other’s cheek, Dazai leans against his touch, nuzzling into his palm.
“I’ve been waiting for a long time,” Dazai says with sparkling eyes. Pulling him up to a stand. “So don’t make me wait any longer, Chuuya.”
A kiss. A lacing of fingers together. A dance in the warm summer night breeze.
And then the two of them race into the night, tumbling upside-down in an embrace as they’re also embraced by the world’s inevitable forces.
Summertime ensures that no matter what, their embrace remains warm.
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[end]