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"Where is it?" Chuuya asks for the fourth time, patience breaking with the snap of his boot across the man's face.
He coughs out blood, red splattering across the concrete wall he's laying against, and Chuuya sets his boot back onto the man's chest as he struggles to breathe. It took almost six whole hours to track down and take out this specific cell of a Tokyo gang that Mori sent them after, even with Dazai as the brains behind the operation. All those hours spent in the middle of summer, the sun high and overbearing, rays of light beating down with whip-cracks across their red skin and burning heads. Torturous might have been a good word to describe it. Torture might also be what they have to resort to, if the man doesn't fess up already about where he’s hiding that encrypted datachip with the civilian aliases of high-ranking Yakuza members.
"Piece of shit," Chuuya spits out, while Dazai rifles through the inside of the man's shoes. The last part of his body they'd yet to check. Well, the last, apart from the—
"Inside," Dazai says, and Chuuya looks back at him from the corner of his eye.
"Inside what?"
"Him."
Dazai crawls forward until he reaches where Chuuya's boot is planted and shoves it off, a small blade slipping free from his shirt cuff to his palm. He poises the tip of it against the man's sternum. Lets it drag across his shirt, cutting through the fabric, drawing a thin line of blood.
The man gasps and thrashes. Chuuya douses him with a quick stomp to the throat. In mere seconds he's dead and still under Dazai's hands, which efficiently and ruthlessly tear him open.
It takes thirty minutes of rooting through his organs— cutting each one away from the tissues and veins and arteries it's attached to, holding it up and examining it in the sunlight, dissecting it layer by methodical, paper-thin layer of cells, then tossing it aside onto a growing pile of cruor that his partner gags at— until he finds what he's looking for. A chip as silver as his knife and as small as his pinky-nail stitched ever so carefully abreast the man's heart. No doubt the work of an ability, from how intact all his insides had looked. Well, at least until Dazai got to them.
"Thank god," Chuuya mutters once they leave the crime scene, face pale and shiny with cold sweat. He hadn't even been the one who was elbow-deep in guts, but strangers might mistake him for it with how relaxed Dazai looks in comparison. Then again, strangers might guess it correctly after screaming and running away at how gorey a sight Dazai paints. Which is precisely why they go in the backdoor of a seedy motel instead of the ritzy room they'd already booked a couple days ago, Chuuya making sure the coast is clear until they get inside their room.
"We're not gonna get picked up for...” Chuuya scrunches his face up as he stares at his phone. “That’s another 4 and a half hours, I think. Wanna do something until then? Oh, also, Boss says good job, by the way."
"Tell him it was no thanks to him," Dazai calls. He's crouched at a tiny coffee table in the cramped space, wiping the datachip clean with a disinfectant wipe from the small stash of supplies under it. "Anyway, you want to do something? Aren't you always saying how tired you are after missions?"
"Yeah, well..." When Dazai turns, Chuuya is already looking at him, expression strange. "You're the one who actually did stuff this time around, or whatever. So I'm fine— unless you're tired."
"Sleep is for the weak," Dazai announces with a smile. He grabs a Ziploc baggie from a half-empty box under the table and slips the chip inside, then stands. "Where do we want to go? It’s not like we’re always in Roppongi."
"We could go to one of those art museums, or the Hills. Wait, you know they have a hedgehog cafe in the area?“
“Oh, you’ll blend right in,” he coos. “Let’s go!”
"Hold up," Chuuya says, moving to block the door as Dazai goes to it. Dazai stares at him, unmoving. “Don’t you at least want to change so you look less...“ he waves a hand at Dazai’s whole situation.
“Hideous?”
“Like a victim of a bear mauling,” Chuuya corrects. “And there's a first aid kit in here, right? If you don’t fix your face it’s gonna scar.”
Dazai touches his cheek, reflexive, running his calloused fingertips over the thin line drawn under his eye from where one of the goons from earlier caught him in a barrage of throwing knives. Then, he shrugs.
“Remind me again which of us better knows how scars work. Also, no, I don’t think I’ll take any of your suggestions, actually. I quite like the mauled-by-a-bear aesthetic, and it’s not like I care much about my appearance anyway.”
“Sure you don’t.”
“I don’t.”
“And that’s why you avoid mirrors and only wear baggy clothes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without a giant jacket or way too many layers for fucking Yokohama of all places.”
Chuuya raises an eyebrow, and Dazai, normally so slippery, feels like a fish caught in a net. Chuuya hadn't even needed to go on after the first example, because that alone had been enough to turn Dazai to stone. He's somewhere between mortified and horrified and angry, maybe. He hates how Chuuya is the only person who can ever read him like this— how he’s the only person who cares to even pay enough attention for it and to comment upon it.
“So what,” he finally snaps back. “I don’t need to be a ridiculous peacock to do my job, at least I know enough discretion to dress like I’m actually in the underground.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes. "Fuck off."
"Eat shit."
"Jesus, it's not like I'm not showering too. Just go first, kay? I'm not the one who dug around in guts for half an hour, so I'll go and grab a change of clothes for both of us."
"Hope your card gets declined," Dazai sneers, but walks over to the bathroom as told, annoyed beyond usual to petty insults. He likes being the calm and collected one, is that 90% of the time, but every once in a while Chuuya manages to get under his skin and feel like a wriggling parasite.
Chuuya yells something back that Dazai refuses to hear, and then the hotel door slams shut as he leaves. Dazai runs the tub instead of the shower and drops his clothes onto the floor. The sleeves of his oversized jacket, the front of his white shirt, even the bandages around his head from where he'd wiped sweat away from his brow are all caked with dried blood. They rustle stiffly as they fall. He steps over them and into the bathtub, hot enough to hurt, steam curling and patterning the air as the bubbling water-level rises past his shins to his chest. He dunks his head in and holds it there.
There are things Dazai knows as list-and-file facts.
1) Chuuya is good-looking. His partner knows it too, and after two years under Kouyou, may as well flaunt it. He grows his hair out and shops for shoes and gets his ears pierced. Smiles at strangers when he sees them staring. (Dazai does that too, though his reasons are different: if a stranger stares at him it's because they're disturbed, so Dazai gives them what they want and bares his teeth.) Chuuya isn't self-conscious about how he appears to others— about the mortification of being perceived.
He’s the kind of person who has confidence in spades to waltz through life uncaring about others, and Dazai is the kind of person who is only ever confident in his own skills.
2) Dazai’s mind is a tool, and his body only exists enough to be an extension of that, as far as it can be when it’s as minimally taken-care-of as it is. It carries out his plans until it collapses from exhaustion or injury. He doesn't hate it, or resent it. Doesn't hate the scars that come with it either. He can recount every single story behind them vividly, down to the details of what he heard and even smelled during the time, whether it be gunsmoke or kerosene.
That isn't to say he likes his body either, though.
He sees the length of his torso flash in the silver of a mirror and feels unsettled. Too-long, too-gaunt, too-ghastly. The crack of his lips and heels, chapped and dry and always bordering on painful. Sunken face. Too much and never enough, the very shape of him concave where it should be convex.
Many, many a thing gone wrong.
But then again, he observes the wide knuckles of his hands and the knobs of his knees and supposes he can see the elegance in that, at least. Knows that people like thin, long fingers and veined hands. Bony wrists. He keeps them unbandaged. But beyond lock-picking dexterity, it's obvious every day that—
3) Dazai is not in sync with his body.
It's nothing to be pitied over, but it is what it is. He feels disturbed and slightly outside of himself, always, like a picture with the shutter speed slowed to create blurry afterimages. Sense of self always a little too late or too early with his actual limbs. Soul unsettled from its very form.
"Oi!" Chuuya raps on the door so hard it must hurt. "Get the fuck out already!" If he's back and shouting that must mean Dazai's been in here longer than he thought.
He sighs and stands, realizing the scalding water has turned lukewarm as it streams from his skin and leaves him freezing. Dazai scrubs himself dry and wraps the towel around his waist. A shiver racks his upper-body and suddenly he feels exposed, knowing Chuuya will see him like this when he opens the door, so he undoes the towel and wraps it around his shoulders instead, clutching the front of it closed. Maybe he's bared from mid-thigh down this way, but it's certainly better than the alternative.
Luckily for Dazai, though, Chuuya barely looks at him as he grabs a set of clothes from the giant plastic bag he's set on the bed and rushes into the bathroom instead.
The first thing Dazai sees is bandages. Far more rolls of them than he actually needs, but knowing Chuuya'd thought to buy them makes him smile, at least. Dazai gets dressed quickly, boxers and bandages and dealing with the wound on his cheek, then braves the wild west that is Chuuya's taste in clothes. He upends the bag onto the bed and what he saw in only glimpses of color and fabric in it, spill out onto the sheets. Not as bad as he feared in terms of gaudy colors and patterns, but worse than he could have hoped for in a completely different aspect.
Dazai holds the jeans up in front of him like a messenger unrolling a tapestry to present to a monarch, and stares at them blankly.
Things they are: midnight-black like ink spilled and soaked through parchment; ripped at the knees, shins, and thighs in a fashion that's probably supposed to artfully reveal skin on anyone else but on him would instead present white gauze and nothing more; and lastly, worst of all, tight and fitted to the flesh.
Things they aren't: anything Dazai is comfortable wearing.
He curses Chuuya even though he knows the other won't hear him through the roaring of the shower, and puts them on with stilted movements. They stick so tight to his skin they may as well not be there, and maybe they’re the sort of thing Chuuya would wear with combat boots and silver belts, but Dazai just feels tense and uncomfortable.
The shirt is equally quintessentially-Chuuya and anomalously-Dazai.
Short sleeves and cherry-red, English words printed across the front in thick brush-strokes and splatters: Son of the Bitch, it says, and Dazai learned English from tutors starting at age 7 so he laughs at it. Not so laugh-worthy is how tightly it clings to his torso, though. He wraps his arms around his chest and allows himself exactly 45 seconds to feel tense and uncomfortable and vulnerable in his own body, to shudder and want to squeeze into a tiny pin-point ball of matter and implode. Not 60 seconds, because one full-minute would be too much, and he stops himself at 44 anyway so he isn’t tempted for more.
Then, he unfolds and lets his hands hang at his sides, dangling awkwardly. Takes a deep breath.
The sound of the shower’s sputtered out in the bathroom, so he’ll think of new insults for Chuuya until his partner gets dressed and comes back out.
In the meantime, because he needs multiple things to occupy his mind at the moment, he checks out what else Chuuya bought. A jacket, Dazai’s size— which might have been a concession, a consideration for his comfort, but in reality is not big enough to feel like anything more than another suffocating layer tightly stuck to his skin. No hoodies, nothing oversized. A few hair ties and a comb, definitely for Chuuya himself. A brush and detangling spray, which is definitely for Dazai instead and also definitely something he will not be using. And chokers.
Packs of them bought cheap, black and gray and purple, gold clasps and gray belt-buckles. A loop and thin-linked chain on one. Velvety and satiny strips of cloth on another pack. Dazai runs his fingers over one that’s all thin lines of plastic woven together.
Chuuya comes out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam.
He’s fully dressed in an outfit that almost-but-not-quite matches Dazai’s— thankfully— in skinny-jeans and a band t-shirt that does not feature incorrect English phrases on it. His hair is down one shoulder, frizzy from the bathroom humidity, and his cheeks are pink from the heat. “You can have that if you want,” he says, nodding to the choker in Dazai’s hands while he reaches for the plastic comb and starts doing his hair.
“How many of these are you planning on wearing?” Dazai asks instead of responding. “Do you think you’re a giraffe?”
“I’m keeping them for later, dumbass.” Then, blue gaze darting down Dazai’s form and then back to his face. “Knew you’d look better like this.”
Dazai bristles. “Next time you try to prove a point, consider running it by me first.”
“Like you’ve ever done that.”
“I’ve never done anything that didn’t help you.”
Chuuya stops in his motions of twisting his hair into a bun. Stares at Dazai, like he’s a specimen he’s trying to anatomize. “I can’t decide if you’re fucked up or just stupid,” he finally says, “but you must really be pissed off if you admitted that.”
“Can’t be pissed off if I don’t care.” A lie, obviously, and not one Dazai even tries to make believable.
“I’m not proving shit, and don’t get so freaked out. I already stuck your clothes in the tub to soak, we can just take them to a laundromat and pick them up before we leave. It’s just a couple hours.” (And Dazai hates to admit it, but that really does make him feel better about all this. He won’t have to wear this back at HQ, just in front of Chuuya— and in front of the thousands of people who’ll be walking the streets of Roppongi now, gazes tactile as they stare—) “Besides, if you really hate it, I’ll give you this.”
Chuuya fastens a choker around his throat as he walks back to the bathroom, and when he emerges he has his hat balanced back on his head and his gloves are a second skin to his hands; there’s also a giant jacket slung behind one shoulder, collar hooked on his fingers and deliciously oversized. Dazai’s fingers twitch with the want to reach for it, but Chuuya just ties it around his waist, so he stills his hands and glares instead.
“No need to be so considerate,” he says, and though his lips curl up he doesn’t feel amused at all. “I think I’ll be just fine after all.”
He grabs a random choker too, a plain strip of soft black without a clasp, and ties it where his bandages end. Chuuya shrugs and takes the plastic bag to collect Dazai’s clothes in, the blood hopefully softened by now. In the spare seconds he’s gone for, Dazai brings his hands to his face and silently screams into them.
So, turns out, it’s not that fine after all.
Every time they walk down a street, Dazai’s skin crawls from feeling watched, even though objectively, no one should really be staring at him. He feels it every time they get on public transport, too, but even worse: people will knock elbows or brush his ribs occasionally, and he’ll want to jump out of his skin. It takes so much willpower not to flinch and wilt that it’s almost tiring, but Dazai remains resolute and refuses to lose this dumb bet, if that’s what it can even be called.
The only thing that manages to relax him a bit are the hedgehogs. They nuzzle into his palm and Dazai watches them with a melting heart he didn’t realize he could possess, hunched over close enough to almost get stabbed by a quill. One eye is already bandaged, he doesn’t need another to be out of commission too.
“See,” Chuuya says once they get their food. “It’s not as bad as you thought.”
And suddenly, he’s aware of and slightly outside his own body yet again.
This time when his shoulders hunch, it's not down over an adorable animal but into himself, and he stares hard at his dessert and spears it with his fork. “Can you just give it a rest already? I get it, you found out a weakness and you want payback for whenever I messed with you. You don’t need this holier than thou act to go along with it.'' He shoves chocolate cake into his mouth and it tastes like acid.
Chuuya gapes at him. “I’m not— this isn’t a weakness, I’m not trying to be a dick to you—“
“That’s certainly not what it looks like, especially after I did the dirty work for you today by practically crawling inside of a corpse—“
“Okay, shut up!” Chuuya’s paper-pale again, looking just as unsettled as he’d been during the actual events. “Don’t be so fucking loud!”
“I’ll be whatever I want to be.”
It’s childish, and a poor comeback, but he can’t bring himself to care anymore. He shoves another bite into his mouth and hopes he chokes on it.
“Fine, sorry, I just…”
Chuuya looks at a passing waitress like she holds all the answers to his problems. Dazai stares after her too, and it’s the same one who served them their refreshments.
“You don’t look bad, you know?” Chuuya’s expression is twisted in embarrassment when Dazai looks back at him. He can’t imagine why, when that wasn’t exactly a compliment. There are over 7 billion people on planet Earth, and every single one of them looks wildly different from every other, and even if people are more attracted to a central tendency of features than not, statistically, someone out there is definitely attractive to someone else. Also, looks don’t matter in his line of work, so he really doesn’t give a shit.
“Yes. I’m aware,” he replies dryly.
Chuuya blinks. “Oh. Well… what’s the problem, then?”
Daza has many problems. Shall he list them?
1) He may not make people throw up when they look at him, but he’s not that nice to look at all the same, to most people. That’s fine, but it still makes him feel subpar, occasionally, and he hates feeling subpar— he has many things to prove, after all.
2) Forgetting about looks for a moment, he feels, in his rhythm-less limbs and off-kilter soul, like the demon he’s told he is so often, in everything but for a physiological metamorphosis into a beast. He’s come to live with it and accept it, so oh well, but that doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.
3) This next point is empirical fact: he may not have done a causal experiment to determine it, but he does have many a field-study under his belt. Dazai is not good enough. The question of In what way? is neither relevant nor pondered much, because it’s something which he has absorbed and internalized into his very sense of self. This is because no one ever stays.
4) Building on the previous point, no one ever stays because Dazai is unlovable. That’s fine. That’s how it is, and honestly? Whatever. He’ll live.
5) Dazai is lonely. (This one he hates. He has a hard time accepting it, an even harder time not acting on it. The number of petty things he’s done in the name of keeping pseudo-friends— Chuuya, most often— isn’t something he’s proud of, actually, but it’s difficult to say that he’d ever be able to stop.)
Dazai is still contemplating how to pick one of these to mention in as blasé and condescending a manner as he can, meant to throw out to stun and disable like a flash-bomb in a fight, when their waitress comes over.
“Sorry for the wait, here are your drinks!” She beams as she sets the tall plastic cups down, ice swirling in them. The cafe ran out of tapioca and needed to remake another stash, apparently, so the two had to wait on getting their drinks.
Chuuya thanks her and Dazai says, “Wonderful! They look fantastic!” and smiles up at her.
She smiles back, small but pleased, and blushes a little. Her eyes glitter behind her glasses. “I’m glad! Hope you enjoy your… date?”
Dazai stumbles on a laugh and glances at Chuuya, whose expression is once again, twisted up strangely. “Oh no, definitely not a date.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I just assumed—“
“No, don’t worry about it. It’s not like you’re a bother at all.”
“Well…” She glances away briefly (at Chuuya, of course) and when she meets Dazai’s eyes again she blushes. Staring at his attractive partner and hoping he isn’t taken, probably.
“Really, we’re both very single,” Dazai says, and leans his cheek on his hand. “Just in case you wanted to know.”
She giggles, and holds a hand to her chest. Her name-tag reads ‘Ayumi-chan’ and she’s very pretty, with a sleek bob framing a soft face and even softer, endless curves. She fills out her trendy uniform so well, Dazai thinks, a little longingly. Chuuya fills out his clothes too, while Dazai looks awkward whenever he wears things that actually fit for once. Like now. He stiffens as he’s brought back into awareness of himself, yet again, and hopes this nice girl their age doesn’t notice.
“Ah, I should go,” she says, glancing back at the kitchens, “but maybe I’ll see you around?”
“We don’t live near, unfortunately, but maybe you’ll see him in the area if he has places to be.”
Dazai nods at Chuuya, but her smile drops a little. “Oh, alright then. M-maybe…” she looks like she wants so terribly to say something, but then the silence stretches long enough that her ears turn pink and she ducks her head. “Have a nice meal!” And then she’s gone.
“Okay, so like, do you just never give out your number even when people are dying for it, or was this time just to frustrate me, specifically?”
Dazai takes a sip of his drink and looks back at Chuuya questioningly. Taro milk tea with extra ice. He chews on a tapioca pearl while he watches, and Chuuya rolls his eyes.
“The girl! She was trying to ask for your number, obviously.”
Dazai laughs.
“Hey short-stack, I know the nickname alone proves how undateable you are, but she liked you.”
Chuuya scowls. “First of all, fuck you, I am so dateable. And second of all, you’re a goddamn moron. She’s been staring at you since we got here.”
So that wasn’t just his imagination. Thank you, Chuuya, for making Dazai even more uncomfortable by confirming how odd everyone thinks he looks, and that he’s drawing more attention to himself by acting so tense too. He’d love to stop being so out of synch with his own legs when he walks too, just like everyone else can naturally, but the only times he can do that are when his mind is preoccupied with a mission so maybe don’t unknowingly shove in his face your ability to be at ease doing basic tasks.
Dazai shifts in his seat and tries not to draw tight into himself, fights against the urge. Chuuya watches him like he knows exactly what he’s thinking.
“Jesus, not like that— she was staring at you because she thought you were cute, holy shit. Why did you flirt back if you didn’t know?”
“I wasn’t flirting,” Dazai protests. (Because it’s hard to figure out what to say about Chuuya’s first claim, even with his genius-tendencies.)
“Uh, no. That was flirting.”
“Fine, if it was then do I flirt with everyone I talk to? Including you?”
Chuuya stares at him with the eyes of a teenage boy who has been through far too much for this shit. “Yes.”
Dazai almost chokes on his next sip. He sucks too hard and a tapioca pearl gets launched and hits the back of his throat, and Chuuya thumps him between the shoulder blades, exactly like he’s a grandpa trying to help out a toddler but instead only making the situation worse.
“I haven’t,” he hisses once he’s recovered. “I’m just polite and vaguely charming, sorry someone with no manners like you reads too much into it. Were you disappointed when you realized I wasn’t actually interested?”
“I wish I’d decided you weren’t yet,” Chuuya mutters, and sounds long-suffering.
“What was that?” Dazai asks sharply.
“Just accept the fact that the girl liked you already, for fucks sake.”
“Who says I haven’t?”
Because Dazai is nothing if not efficient. He’s already filed that piece of information away, along with the fact that he’s apparently a shameless flirt without even knowing it, and has come to the conclusion that maybe he doesn’t care much for himself, but there still really is no accounting for taste. Like, at all.
...Maybe there’s still time to get that girl’s number before they leave—
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Chuuya drops their bill in cash on the table and stands, taking his drink with him. “Roppongi Hills. I wanna get to the observation decks before sunset, come on.”
“You planned this,” Dazai accuses.
“No shit? We only have a couple hours left before we have to pick up the laundry, let’s hurry it up.”
“How about no. If we’re going to another crowded place then I’m in no hurry.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes and then unties the jacket from around his waist. He holds it out, and Dazai stares at it for a long moment. He hadn’t been expecting a reprieve so soon, and certainly hadn’t planned to succumb to it out of pure spite, but… it looks very comfortable. Oversized and probably warm from Chuuya’s body heat, a white bomber jacket with patches sewn on, and you know what?, he may as well just accept the compromise for what it is and let Chuuya take him to Roppongi Hills.
So that’s exactly what he does.
Tokyo Tower is a beacon in the skyline as they look out over at the city, the sunset in the background painting the buildings in deep shadows and liquid gold. Everything looks warm, and pretty, and vivid. Feels like it too.
Dazai draws the zipper of the bomber even higher, tucking his chin into it, shoving his hands deep inside the pockets.
It’s still too warm for all the theatrics, but they’re essential in making him feel not so self-conscious when there are so many people crowding the observation deck. The only thing that keeps him from plastering himself to the railings to get away is the presence of someone he knows and— unfortunately— trusts, beside him. The fact that Chuuya serves as his anchor right now is sort of pathetic, but he supposes it could be worse. He could be without the jacket, or in his blood-stiffened clothes.
(He’ll finally admit they weren’t the best option to wear out, and that sending them to be laundered was the best solution given that he wouldn’t have been able to clean them properly himself. He lives in a barren waste-heap, after all, and owns exactly three of the same outfit that he changes out of every few days.
(It used to be four before one set got ripped beyond repair the last time a mission got bad enough that they’d had to use Corruption. He was deeply disappointed for all of two minutes.))
Chuuya draws near when a couple comes closer beside them, both wearing kimono and huddled close. His head bumps Dazai’s chin, and he looks up, startled, blue eyes flashing before he mutters an apology. Dazai thinks it’s in his best interest to pull away, probably, but if Chuuya isn’t then why should he? “Well this is anticlimactic,” he murmurs, and Chuuya has to lean up to catch what he’s saying. He repeats it, no louder than before.
Chuuya stands on his tiptoes to whisper into Dazai’s ear: “If you’re so bored how ‘bout I spice things up by throwing you off?”
Dazai laughs, hard enough that it even surprises himself, more than the joke’s worth. “Put on a show for all these people? Yes please. You wanna be the instigator or should I?”
“You’d let me pick the plan?”
“Only out of decorum.” Dazai grins. Chuuya shoves his shoulder, mouth twitching. “Here’s how it goes: the person on your 6 o’clock moves and I shove you that way. The crowd is disturbed. You look all broken and yell at me about how it’s not what I think. Those messages, the second bank account— they all mean nothing. Adlib wherever you want.”
“Oh? So I’m the bad guy here?”
Dazai shrugs and says, “I thought it’d be a refreshing change of pace.” And because he wants to get the last jab in today, in any way he can. To prove a point, or rather, to prove problems numbered 3 to 5. “Anyway, it’s my turn to yell at you. I’m so upset you cheated on me and our white-picket life and our 2.5 kids—“
Chuuya snorts. “Yeah, cuz people are gonna believe we’re old enough for that.”
“And I say ‘Oh Chuuya, sweetheart, how could you, after everything we had?’” He places a hand to his heart, leans down and puts a breathy air to his words. “‘I loved you.... And I thought you loved me, too.’” They’re nose to nose now, which means Dazai can see the quiver of his pupils, the waiver of his breath. “And I’m so heartbroken, you know, but I can’t do anything about it, because I always sort of knew. It’s inevitable that it’d end, one way or another. Just because the end came like this doesn’t make it any less understandable.”
“No,” Chuuya whispers, strangled. “It isn’t. It wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?”
“End like this.”
Dazai pulls back. “Awfully serious for show,” he says normally. Or as normally as he can manage, like this. “But have no doubts that this isn’t inevitable. Maybe you’re not the sort of person to cheat…”
“I’m not. Why would I?”
Dazai smiles. “Of course you’re not. But you’re playing pretend with someone who’d have it happen if they finessed their way into a relationship at any point.”
Chuuya makes a wounded noise. “You wouldn’t get cheated on— it’s not like that anyway, people don’t get cheated on because they deserve it or anything, but you wouldn’t— “ He stops, irate, mouth curled into a snarl. Because that’s what Chuuya does when he’s upset. Turns to anger instead. “Your relationships aren’t fucking doomed, dumbass. If you go in expecting that then that’s all you’re gonna get out of them.”
“Ooo, Is someone a therapist now?”
“No, I just— you’re fucking impossible to talk to!”
And that turns a few heads.
“Settle down before you turn this charade real,” Dazai murmurs, lowering his head.
Chuuya’s scowl deepens, but acquiesces. He says, furiously, lowly, “Can’t you just shut the fuck up and get it through your thick skull that some people actually like you?”
Dazai stares.
And he’s halfway to a laugh, sputtering out a puff of air with his words as he says, “You almost make it sound like you’re one of those.”
“Holy fuck—“
Chuuya pulls him down. Shoves him down, more like, by the collar of the jacket, banging their noses together and squashing their lips painfully against their own teeth. It hurts. It leaves him reeling. It makes his heart explode like a drum as Dazai stares back at Chuuya in shock.
“You— no—“
“Yes, you dumb motherfucker.”
“But why?”
“Fuck if I know!” Chuuya throws his hands up, exasperated, and Dazai sees the truth in it. Sees the truth in the actions too, and their implications. Chuuya likes him, against all odds, and all this today was because his partner has a bleeding heart and can’t take it when the person he’s crushing on is deeply dissatisfied with themself.
Well, fuck him:
This changes nothing.
Dazai will continue to be deeply dissatisfied with himself for as long as he so wants, because he knows what he knows to be true from a lifetime’s worth of observation, and none of this bullshit about someone actually finding him desirable for some god-forsaken reason is going to change that.
That doesn’t mean he’s going to ignore it when good things come his way, though, no matter how unlikely they are to last.
“Yeah, okay,” he says, and takes Chuuya’s face in his hands to kiss him again, this time properly, the sunset behind them and the gasps of others serving as a backdrop, all romance-movie-big.
Chuuya’s mouth is warm and tastes still-sweet from the sugary desserts they ate before this. His bottom lip is bruised from where it banged against his teeth, tender enough that it makes him pull back when Dazai presses too hard on it accidentally. He pulls away and Dazai gives chase, until they’re off the observation deck and down the hall instead. Someplace secluded, away from prying eyes, and more tension eases from Dazai’s shoulders than he thought he held.
Dazai leans down to kiss him again but is stopped by a hand on the chest. “So you’re not gonna push me away?” Chuuya asks warily.
Dazai looks at him like he’s crazy. “Does it look like I’m doing that now?”
Chuuya blushes. “Not now, moron, I meant later. You’re not gonna sleep on this and then wake up thinking you don’t deserve a relationship or something, right? You’re gonna let me— you’re gonna let this last?”
Dazai steps back. “I thought I already told you that none of my relationships are meant to—“
“That’s you being melodramatic. I’m not gonna fucking cheat on you, obviously, and you’re not gonna be alone with 2.5 kids.”
The unwritten words here are ‘And this whole thing ending isn’t an inevitability’.
“I would’ve thought that by now you’d realize I don’t make predictions without at least a 78% success rate.”
“You’re making me want to throw myself off this building instead,” Chuuya mutters.
“Be my guest.”
“Yeah, whatever. You know what, this relationship isn’t gonna end with me leaving you, and you know how I know? Because I’m gonna prove it to you.”
“Prove—“
“Prove it.”
“…You’re just trying to get me to give you a chance. Fine. I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t break up with you first if you don’t break up with me.”
“You sure you want that?” Chuuya asks, slowly. “Cuz that’s gonna end up with this thing going on forever.”
Dazai scoffs, like the words aren’t something he’s longed for for ages. For as long as he could long, even.
“Good luck,” he says. “I’ve been told I’m quite a handful to deal with.”
“Good thing I have two hands,” Chuuya says.
And then kisses him again.
Dazai changes back into his own clothes in an alley behind the laundromat, Chuuya standing guard and checking his watch far too often. Their pickup should be here in around 15 minutes, stopping in the parking lot of the building across the street.
Dazai finishes shoving his feet through pant legs and arms through shirt sleeves and then dumps the other clothes onto Chuuya’s head. He whips around, ready to snap, then sees Dazai still buttoning up his shirt with careful fingers and turns back around again, face flushed. “I’m not a fucking coat hanger,” Chuuya still snips, and Dazai smiles.
“You’re right, you’re far too short to be confused for one. My bad.”
Chuuya blindly shoved an elbow backwards. Dazai dodges out of the way, elegant only ever in a fight, and finishes fixing his buttons. He runs his fingers over the collar of his shirt, keeping it flat and crisp, and then finally takes his giant black jacket out of the bag all his clothes came in. It was Mori’s, of course, because all new recruits are also new recipients of secondhand apparel marking them as mentees. That’s not why it gives him comfort, obviously. What really does is the way it obscures his form and shrouds it in shadows, like maybe he's something ethereal and eerie and nonexistent, like he doesn’t have a form. He is nothing more than the swift winds of death and translucent-skinned hands that deal out pain, the demon all his enemies and allies make him out to be.
He is the unfeeling monster who thrives in death and gore, and finds pleasure in rooting through people’s dead bodies like a beast utterly unaffected by humanity.
Sounds about right.
Dazai steps out of the alleyway and back into the circle of yellow streetlight. Chuuya finally looks back at him and scowls.
“Took you long enough,” he says, shoving the old clothes into the bag. He hesitates on the jacket, though. “You want this?”
Dazai laughs. “You think I’d have a use for it? In case you’ve forgotten, my wardrobe is a cardboard box.”
“Oh for—“ Chuuya puts it into the bag and then shoves the whole thing at him. “Just take them all, they wouldn’t fit me anyway.”
Dazai grabs onto it with slipping fingers. “You’re being so pushy today,” he notes, not in protest but just to say it.
“Cuz you’re not, and someone has to be otherwise this partnership is gonna fall apart.”
“Is that how this works?” Dazai hums. Chuuya ignores him and leans back against the wall. He stares at him, and gets stared back in turn. The street is dark with night, blue and gray and blue-gray, occasional contours of black. Chuuya’s eyelashes cast diffused shadows across his cheeks and so do his bangs, the careful bridge of his nose so nice it was probably painted on with an artist’s delicate hand. His hair is more bronze than copper in this light, lined in gold.
“You forgot this,” Chuuya says, and then reaches up. He’s so very close and his hand snakes between Dazai’s shoulder blades and tangles in his hair, and Dazai feels his entire body tense as a shudder goes down his spine.
“What are you—“
Oh. The choker.
Chuuya’s feeling the soft strip of fabric where it’s knotted behind his neck, the knuckle of his thumb brushing the goose-bumped skin there. He slips a finger underneath it and the leather of his glove is rough. He tugs at it and it bites into the soft skin of Dazai’s throat.
Dazai is suddenly remembering how Chuuya finds him attractive, apparently, for some reason, and feels heat rising under his skin.
(...And he’s allowed to, now, right?
So he does.)
He leans down and presses his mouth to Chuuya’s and kisses him again. Less clumsily than before, feels the other startle then relax under him, feels a gloved hand cupping his cheek. Chuuya’s soft and warm and everything he seems like he’d be, on first look: an unforgettable experience. One that very few people get to have a chance with, and now Dazai is one of those people. Who would have thought?
When Chuuya pulls away, he’s holding the strip of satiny fabric delicately.
“Let me re-tie it for you,” he says, hoarse, and Dazai nods mutely. Stares at him while he leans up and does it, eyes half-lidded in concentration, until Chuuya pulls back and smiles up at him. Dazai raises his fingers to the choker and fingers it, and finds that it’s been tied with a little bow at the side of his neck.
He laughs, stiffly, shakily. “What am I, some sort of present? The bow doesn’t really fit the look of a mafioso, you know.” It really doesn’t. This entire day hasn’t fit the look of one either, but Chuuya’s somewhat decent at getting what he wants, on occasion— when his partner is feeling off-center and unbalanced enough. Dazai runs the pads of his fingers over the fabric and feels the softness of it sing onto his skin, and Chuuya keeps watching him without even a change of expression.
“No, but it fits in other ways. If you’re gonna wear a ribbon then you’ve gotta tie it into a bow.”
“It’s a choker, as I recall, not a ribbon.”
“It can be both, you know. Everything isn’t—“
“Mutually exclusive?”
Chuuya sighs, expression finally breaking. “Yeah, asshole. Stop stealing my lines.”
“I don’t think I will,” Dazai says. “This is your excuse to keep playing dress up with me, isn’t it?”
Chuuya’s cheeks warm. “Don’t make it weird,” he snaps.
“Weirder than it already was?”
“It wasn’t weird, I just…”
Theres the sound of a car rolling close in the edges of their awareness, and when they angle themselves better, it’s their ride coming around the bend. “Shit,” Chuuya says, like he’s on a timer. “Ugh just… I know you don’t care but I think you could pull off nicer things, sometimes, okay? I know it makes you uncomfortable but… I like it. That’s all I wanted to say.” He’s crushing Dazai’s hand as he speaks, less an intertwining of lovers’ fingers than a vice grip. Dazai doesn’t slip out of the hold.
“Fine,” he says, voice tight. “Okay.”
He kisses Chuuya again, one last time, so hard it hurts and until they can’t breathe. When he pulls back there are headlights on in the parking lot across from them.
“You’re keeping this in mind?”
“I’ll give it consideration,” Dazai says, which isn’t a concession but, more importantly, isn’t a no either.
Chuuya might smile, then, but Dazai will never know because he just marches them across the street and towards home instead, breath unsteady, face flushed, and heart fluttering.