Work Text:
Age: 15
The first time Chuuya says I love you, Dazai’s holding roses.
The two of them are walking down the port, watching fishermen haggle prices and kids chase after each other. It’s sunny, with those clouds artists always have trouble capturing in paintings. Whispy and multiples shades of white.
They’re on breaks between two jobs, killing time.
“Chibi. Are you afraid of heights?”
“What?” Chuuya is already tired from their first intervention with the police force that had been getting a little too confident on the Port Mafia’s territory.
“Are you afraid of heights?”
“No.”
“Wanna go up?” Dazai flicks his gaze to the ferris wheel. It’s one of Yokohama’s landmarks.
“The ferris wheel?”
“No,” Dazai says sarcastically. “The framework.” Chuuya can see the exact moment Dazai realizes he does want to climb the framework. And probably try hanging a noose up there or jumping off. The velocity from the top to the port would be enough to kill him.
“Do we have enough time?”
“Yeah.” Dazai leads him to the Ferris wheel. It’s not they’re doing anything else, anyway. “We do.”
The ferris wheel is incredibly tall, reaching above skyscrapers and Chuuya knows it’s made of flexible metal so it can bend with the wind. If it had been made too brittle, it would’ve broken.
“Two tickets, please!” Dazai forks over cash to the ticket booth, with a smile that instantly makes Chuuya suspicious. Everything about Dazai makes Chuuya suspicious.
The lady behind the red counter smiles uneasily and rips off two white tickets for them. “Two tickets. The line starts over there.” She pointed to lines of people divided by ropes.
“How would you feel about a double—”
Chuuya stomps on Dazai’s foot, hard, and yanks him away by the bandages around his neck. “Thank you,” Chuuya says over his shoulder to the poor lady.
“Dazai! Stop harassing everyone you see into a double suicide,” Chuuya hisses, propping his partner back on his feet.
“Not everyone,” Dazai corrects. “Only the beautiful ones.”
“You’re so fucking shallow.”
The line for the ferris wheel is pretty long. Chuuya guesses it’s the end of a week-long festival, one for the gods of moonlight, if he’s not mistaken. There are still a few small castella and milk bread stands set up, and a handful of people wearing traditional yukatas. Yokohama’s always busy with the fishing season, one festival or another, or that the police are on strike again. It’s too much for Chuuya to keep track of.
Dazai amuses himself with guessing the height of the ferris wheel and trying to calculate his velocity if he jumped off of it. Chuuya leans over the rope railings and wonders if he could save Dazai if he attempted that. If he’d be worth saving.
They’re moving up when a lady rushes past them, trying to leave the line.
“Excuse me,” she coughs out, bumping into Chuuya. She seems to be in her early twenties, wearing a bright yukata and intricate hair braids.
Chuuya shifts to the side to let her by. She’s got a hand over his mouth, and when she peels it back, blue is sitting in her hand. Forget-me-nots and green stems dyed red.
Chuuya’s heart sinks for her, and his own chest feels heavy.
Hanahaki.
It’s a common disease at this point. Everyone’s gotten it once or twice now, because everyone’s suffered unrequited love. It’s part of being alive. Most cases only last until stage 2 or 3, and heal before hitting the irreversible stage 5.
“Are you okay?” Chuuya finds himself asking, even though she’s practically too far to hear him.
The lady turns around and nods once, hands over her mouth. Chuuya can see the blood on her lips. She nods, even though her blue eyes are sorrowful, and then keeps running away.
“Stage 4, you think?” Dazai comments.
At Stage 4, things didn’t look good for you. Generally, if your feelings were returned, or you lost feelings it happened in the early stages. Stage 4, you were in trouble. 5 led to the surgery. And there were no good outcomes from getting the surgery.
“End of Stage 3 if she’s lucky,” Chuuya says.
“She clearly isn’t.”
True.
Chuuya’s always been prone to the flowers that grow in people’s chests. He’s got hanahaki twice this year, for shitty fucking Dazai. The first time he thought it was a fluke and wrecked the training room three times over.
The second time is now.
Chuuya’s aware of the roses in his chest. It’s early Stage 2 for him. The last time they only grew to late Stage 1 and went away on their own. Dazai didn’t know, and Chuuya had thought that was it until it wasn’t.
The flowers came back a few months ago, after Chuuya and Dazai had gone on a particularly dangerous mission. When Dazai’s head was at the end of a revolver, Chuuya had desperately wished it was him in the heat of the moment. And then he felt the blooming, scratching in his chest.
When he’d finished work that day, Chuuya had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes.
“She should get the surgery,” Dazai says. The surgery could end in the victim losing their memory of the one they once loved, or their feelings completely. The deeper the victims were into the stages, the worse the risk got for the surgery.
Chuuya looks at Dazai questioningly.
“If she doesn’t want to die, at least.” How uncharacteristic of him. “Then she can die later with me.” Nevermind. How in character.
There isn't even anything likeable about Dazai. He's a stupid waste of bandages that was remarkably lazy and overall a big piece of shit. An unnecessary second season of a tv show, an expired coupon, a lone piece of lego on the floor that caused Chuuya so many fucking headaches.
Dazai’s a bad person. He’s got awful morals, he shoots corpses, he doesn’t care about if he lives or dies. He’s probably pretty indifferent about Chuuya’s own life too.
But he’s interesting. He’s unlike anyone else in the world. And he makes Chuuya give everything he has and more. More than 100%. While using Corruption, while on detective cases, while bantering with him. It’s never dull with Dazai.
And Chuuya, stupidly, loves him for that.
Chuuya coughs, shuffling up in the line. He’s not sure what type the flowers are, or what they scratch his throat so much, but he wants them gone.
There are only a few more groups until they’re on the ferris wheel when a small kid on the other side of a rope divider looks at Dazai.
“Excuse me, Mister, why are you wearing bandages?” The kid in a blue tee-shirt and holding taiyaki, looking at Dazai’s neat bandages.
“What?” Dazai leans over to the kid. “These things?” Dazai sticks out a hand as if to display them.” He’s got on his usual mafia clothes, all black with bandages around his arms and neck visible.
“Yeah, are you hurt?” The kid asks, purely out of curiosity.
“Mazuki, you can’t just ask people that. Get back here.” His older sister, presumably only slightly younger than Chuuya and Dazai, pulls Mazuki to her chest. The kid looks at her, annoyed. “Sorry about him.”
“No, not at all.” Dazai’s watching the girl now. Not in a let’s-commit-suicide-way, in an I’m-analyzing-your-every-feature-and-personality type way.
“Mazu-chan, was it?” Dazai asks. Chuuya takes a step closer, ready to chuck Dazai into the port if he misspeaks.
Mazuki nods.
“I wear them as a disguise,” Dazai says. “So people won’t know what I actually look like. I’m undercover.”
Chuuya has to look down at the ground to hide his grin.
Mazuki looks surprised, and then nods as if he understands. “Like a hero?”
“Not exactly,” Chuuya intervenes gently.
“But close,” Mazuki’s older sister says. A look of mutual understanding passes in between her and Dazai. Oh, jeez. Strong girl. Chuuya wants to stab whoever made her understand the meaning of Dazai’s bandages.
“Cool.” Mazuki grins. He turns to his capsule on the ferris wheel, tugging on his sister. “C’mon, let’s go.” The two of them get on and the girl offers them a little wave.
“Seems like all the suffering people come to the ferris wheel,” Dazai sighs as they shuffle up the line. “A hero, huh.”
Chuuya scoffs. “You’re the villain in most stories.” Both of them have ruined countless lives. Chuuya sometimes wonders if protecting Yokohama has to have such a heavy cost.
“Chuuya!” Dazai holds his hands to his chest like he’s been wounded. “How dare you! I am your prince charming.”
“If you call me the damsel in distress I’ll shoot you in the leg right now.” Chuuya puts his hand on the barrel of his handgun hidden under his coat.
“I don’t have to call you that for you to know,” Dazai says easily. He knows Chuuya won’t fire a gun in plain daylight, especially with kids around. “If you don’t want to be the damsel in distress, you could be the ugly henchman no one likes. Very realistic.”
Chuuya settles for stomping on Dazai’s foot again.
“C’mon.” Dazai steps past him with a haughty air. They’re at the front of the line. Dazai hands the lady outside the steps their tickets.
“Thank you,” she says, and opens the door for them. Their capsule is painted blue, with plastic bench seats and scratched-up windows. Chuuya slides in, Dazai on the other bench.
Painstakingly slowly, they ascend. The ferris wheel stops every few meters to let a new set of people off and new people on, rocking their compartment and making Chuuya hit the foggy windows more than once.
“Look.” Dazai points to the mafia’s headquarters. They can see it from all the way up here. They’re about three-quarters of the way up the ferris wheel. “I wonder if Ane-san can see us up here.”
“I hope not.” Kouyou is the other person who knows about Chuuya’s conundrum with Dazai. She’d find this romantic.
Dazai hums. He takes his hands out of his pockets, gesturing at Chuuya. “Behind you.”
Chuuya turns around. A couple left a rose bouquet on the backrest of his bench. It’s mostly fresh, some petals missing and another slightly wilted, but it’s pretty.
Chuuya picks it up. The half a dozen bouquet is tied together with white string. It’s a standard Valentine’s day, first date type gift.
With hanahaki, it’s better to confess in Chuuya’s eyes. After you’re sure, spit out the truth. If you’re rejected, hopefully, it helps you move on. And if your feelings are accepted, even better. Either way, facing the pain is better than dragging it out.
“Hey, Dazai.”
“Hmm?”
Chuuya unceremoniously stands up in their cart, holding out the flowers in one hand. “Here.”
“For me? Don’t you know it’s rude to re-gift presents, Chibi?” The two of them never gift or get presents, especially to each other. They don’t know the protocols or the traditional way to accept them.
Dazai takes them anyway. He picks out one of the flowers that’s more wilted and sniffs it once, then drops it on the floor.
He picks out another and holds it out. “Here, Hat rack.”
Chuuya takes it carefully, mindful of the thorns against his palm. The rose’s stem is mangled but the petals are near perfect. It smells like cheap perfume and a tiny garden.
Their capsule rocks back and forth as the ferris wheel moves a few meters up. Dazai either admires or scrutinizes the flowers as they ascend; Chuuya watching him hum. Chuuya’s found he’s been watching Dazai a lot lately.
“Dazai,” Chuuya says when they top at the top of the ferris wheel. It’s as nice a confession spot he’ll ever get. Tall silhouettes of skyscrapers and the water glittering below them.
“Yeah?” Dazai’s watching the port.
Even though it’s just Dazai, Chuuya’s nervous. It’s Dazai. His veins are speakers for his heartbeat.
“I’m in love with you, you piece of shit.”
Dazai hums. “What stage?”
So he already knew.
“Late 2. I don’t want it dipping into 3,” Chuuya says. He’s more concerned about ruining their partnership, not their friendship. Or whatever it is you want to call it, that makes them trust each other in life or death, but not with Chuuya’s hat or Dazai’s favourite set of chocolates.
“Are you going to get the surgery?” The sun is pretty over the sky. It’s too late for them to see a proper sunset, but there’s a beauty in that too.
“No.” Chuuya sighs. “I don’t think I’ll need it.”
“Aw, you don’t want to lose your memories of me that much?” Dazai teases. “I’m honoured, Chibi.”
“And getting the surgery would put me out of work for the next two weeks. We have the Shiraz job.” The mafia might need to use Corruption at the Shiraz job. Mori already warned him to not use Corruption until then because then he wouldn’t have enough time to recover.
Dazai nods. “We need you alive though.”
“I am.” Chuuya gets knocked off balance when the ferris wheel starts again and steadies himself against the window. “I’ll be fine.”
“Just to make sure—”
Dazai grabs Chuuya.
He kisses with more feeling than Chuuya anticipated, the roses caught in between their chests.
“Just to make sure,” Dazai says, his breath ghosting over Chuuya’s lips. “Okay?”
Chuuya kisses him, hands tightening on Dazai’s waist. Okay.
---
Instead of having flowers in his chest, now Chuuya gets butterflies. And he has a lover, a partner even outside of work.
Loving Dazai isn’t easy.
It’s like the top of the ferris wheel, yes, but it’s also the ditches after the suicide attempts and the long, thin scars on Dazai’s arms. It’s redoing his bandages, and being afraid of keeping even kitchen knives in their apartment. But it’s also buying mug holders on weekends when there’s a sale, and getting extra copies of their house key. It’s hosting dinner get togethers with Odasaku, and dancing to old Italian music in the early morning but because they can. It’s taking on dangerous jobs with the mafia, and without Mori’s command to keep Dazai even just a little safer, and trusting him time and time again with Corruption.
It’s working on both their issues. Dazai’s emotional manipulation and Chuuya’s tendency for physical altercations. It’s breaking each other down to rubble only to build them back up and apologize, make amends until the next day. It’s horrible, and both of them leave and break up with each other only to come crawling back.
It’s roses on every day except Valentine’s Day, it’s Chuuya chewing Dazai out, it’s Dazai waking up Chuuya to dance with him before a mission. It’s being crazy in love and hating each other all at once. It’s so much.
Loving Dazai isn’t easy.
But Chuuya hasn’t ever stopped.
---
Age: 25 - Ten Years Later
Chuuya wakes up, choking on blood and rose petals. Frantically he sits up, retching over the side of the bed. He spits the petals into the garbage can, slick blood dripping down the side.
“Chuuya?” Dazai turns their bedside lamp on. “Chuuya?”
Dazai doesn’t even sound surprised.
“Water,” he croaks, glaring at Dazai.
His husband slips out of bed and pads towards the kitchen.
Chuuya surveys the damage. Clots of blood intertwined with roses, seeping onto Chuuya’s legs through the bedsheets and dying the linen red. He should be used to the scene, it’s his third time with the stupid disease, but he’s not. It’s disturbing seeing his own blood mixed with something as pretty as flowers. And it’s much worse than before.
Dazai comes back with hollow footsteps. It reminds him of the clang on the ferris wheel he went to visit today. Dazai was right, all the suffering people visit the ferris wheel.
“Here.”
Chuuya takes the cup wordlessly. The water only gets rid of the sticky blood in the back of his throat, not the thorns digging into his sternum.
“Sit,” Chuuya says.
Dazai sits on the edge of the bed. The dim light makes his eyebags look darker.
“How long?” Dazai watches Chuuya’s hands.
“No,” Chuuya says. He knows Dazai already knows he has hanahaki. Dazai always knows. “How long?”
Dazai’s eyes lower.
“How long ago?” Chuuya asks with force. The roses buckle at the words, demanding more space in Chuuya’s windpipe.
“Six months.”
Six months.
Chuuya sighs, which descends into a cough. His knuckles turn white from gripping the glass.
“Okay.” Chuuya takes a sip of water for the disappointment, not the blood this time. His heart breaks a little more, although it had never been whole in the first place.
“I’m—”
“Don’t,” Chuuya hisses. “It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry,” Dazai forces out, and then stands up abruptly, making the bed rattle. He leaves.
Chuuya risks letting out another sigh when he hears the front door close.
Six months.
He’s been in a loveless marriage for six months. Six months ago would’ve been right before their movie night date and fort. And the first petal.
He doesn't know where it went wrong. Somewhere along the line their happily ever after went rotten. Maybe the bullets from their mafia jobs strayed into their relationship, slowly working at their trust until Chuuya couldn’t tell when Dazai wanted space or sex, until Dazai couldn’t tell if Chuuya was lying or telling the truth. Or maybe he knew Chuuya was lying and played along anyway.
Maybe it went wrong behind the expensive wine in their broken cabinet, or underneath the rolls of bandages Dazai started and never finished. Maybe it had happened right under Chuuya’s nose and he hadn’t noticed because he was so busy chasing down Dazai.
They always had fundamental issues, but Chuuya doesn’t know when it ate through all their love. When it became imbalanced and one-sided again.
Using Tainted Sorrow, Chuuya removes as many petals as he can, slowly between coughs. It feels like the thorns are climbing up his windpipe, stabbing at his vocal cords.
Once there’s a pile of rose petals staring at him from the trash can, Chuuya wipes the back of his hand against his lips. There’s smeared blood on his hand.
Chuuya can hear Dazai coming back. Clomping footsteps and then Dazai enters their bedroom again, hair messed up from the outside and bandages frayed.
Chuuya doesn’t know when that started happening either. When Dazai started disappearing without an explanation only to barely come back.
“Chuuya.”
Chuuya meets his eyes, a plateau of nothing in them.
“I’ll get you a new blanket.”
Dazai gathers up the blood-splattered sheets from each corner, and carries them to their half-functional laundry machine.
It’s cold without a blanket.
With intentful actions, Dazai smooths the new blanket over Chuuya, not touching him, but close enough Chuuya can feel how he’s shaking slightly. The gold band that fits his ring finger perfectly looks off in this light. Chuuya’s doesn’t fit perfectly anymore. It’s too big.
Dazai climbs into bed with Chuuya, back on his left, and the silence stretches until it breaks.
“Chuu—”
“Dazai,” Chuuya says.
Chuuya lies down on his side, his back to Dazai. He clutches the blanket close.
“Just hold me.”
Chuuya feels Dazai shift over to spoon him, a hand slipping over Chuuya’s stomach to hold them together. It’s warm, even though Dazai just came from outside.
“Chibi.” Dazai settles against him, cotton shirt against Chuuya’s cold back.
“Don’t say it.”
“I lo—”
“Don’t say it,” Chuuya says harshly. “I’m dying because you don’t, okay?”
The clock ticks, and Chuuya can almost feel the flower pressing against his back, trying to reach for Dazai.
“But—”
“Dazai.” Chuuya squeezes Dazai’s hand over his stomach. “Be quiet.”
Dazai’s warm breath ghosts over Chuuya’s shoulder.
“Get the surgery.”
“No.”
“But then—”
“I know.” Chuuya rolls over with effort, feeling the urge to cough stutter again. He looks up at Dazai, whose eyes seem here, instead of miles away as they have been recently. “Be quiet. I said to hold me.”
Even when he was a teenager, the surgery had been off the table. Back then it was for work, and now it was because of Dazai.
“I am.” Dazai’s arm tightens around him like that’s proof he’s holding Chuuya.
Chuuya wants to reach up and press a kiss to Dazai’s forehead.
He doesn’t.
He’d cough too much.
“That’s good enough, then.”
Dazai lets out a shaky breath.
“Hat rack.”
Chuuya hums briefly. The flowers rumble in his chest.
“What kind of flower is it?”
Chuuya feels the pull of sleep. “Roses.”
Dazai takes in a sharp breath.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” Chuuya isn’t sorry for loving Dazai.
“Can I…?” Dazai’s looking at Chuuya’s forehead.
That could kill him.
Chuuya’s eyes trace Dazai’s dangerous hands, holding his, and his familiar eyes that are half-closed. Brown and blue, blue and brown.
Ah, fuck it.
Dazai has always been able to kill him.
“Sure.” Chuuya presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth as if that would do something.
The lips on his forehead are soft and sorrowful. It’s a goodbye kiss.
“You have blood on your lips.” Dazai reaches up as if to wipe it away, but Chuuya swats his hand.
“And you have blood on your hands.”
“We both do.” That they do.
Chuuya sighs, and the coughs once. Quietly, but Dazai’s gaze flickers towards his chest with the roses nonetheless.
“Dazai.” Chuuya closes his eyes.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t say it back.”
“But, Chuuya.” Dazai knows it’s a losing battle.
“Don’t lie.”
Chuuya waits for confirmation.
“Okay,” Dazai caves with reluctance. A gentle hand is in Chuuya’s hair, wrapping gently with no goal. Just to hold him.
Chuuya nods. His hands shake.
“Thank you,” he says, and they both know that it goes beyond this moment. It’s addressing their partnership. Their past.
Chuuya’s breathing fades into sleep. He squeezes Dazai’s hand again. His partner’s hand. He feels like he’s fifteen again, and nervous. It’s just Dazai, and that’s it. But, at the same time, it’s Dazai.
“I’m in love with you, shitty Dazai.”
Dazai squeezes his hand back, and per Chuuya’s request, doesn’t say it back as Chuuya falls asleep.
The last time Chuuya says I love you, Dazai’s holding roses.