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Suribachi City, an island that has become closed-off from the rest of the world.
It used to be a teeming place for humans of different walks of life, from government scientists working at the research center in the middle, to the military men who guard said facility, to the drifters that have made their way to one of the busiest port cities in the region. But then there was that explosion that had carved a hole into the land, made it mirror the tumultuous thunderstorm skies of that day.
And in the middle of it, a creature that had been at the center of the researchers’ hard work.
There have been other experiments too, but only one managed to survive the explosion. A creature born out of combining a human with various things, a complete disregard for what could be called ‘the natural order’.
Of course, such a blunder of letting an experimental subject escape isn’t something that could be left uncontrolled. However, none have managed victory in recapturing the creature.
The creature that was given the codename of—
— — —
“—Gorgon-san, I’ve come for you!”
The second breathing organism currently in Suribachi City. A man wrapped in bandages nearly from head-to-toe. He does not exude the atmosphere of a government agent nor does he have any weapons strapped onto him that would make him into someone who could go toe-to-toe with the creature.
Still, there’s a dangerous aura on him, one that can’t be erased even as he sing-songs his declaration of arrival.
Chuuya—codename ‘Gorgon’ for singlehandedly transforming the once-busy city into a grim, dreadful place—frowns as soon as he hears the man’s return. “I told you to leave me alone already,” he hisses with all the authority that he feels.
The red snakes that form his curly hair all hiss along with him, practically spitting out their venom towards the unwelcome visitor. It’s such a shame that this person is blind, brown eyes like cloudy glass marbles. Chuuya’s power to petrify someone with eye contact is therefore rendered useless against him.
…Of course, Chuuya could always just kick this person and physically send him off the island. That’s what he’s done for the past few days, but this idiot simply keeps on returning, undeterred by the blatant hostility. He suspects that his power has actually worked, it’s just that he’s frozen off this guy’s brains, which is why he’s being such a dumbass.
“It’s not my fault that you’re too interesting, okay?”
This human—something that Chuuya has his doubts on, given just how strange he is—has even introduced himself politely. Even as he does extremely rude things.
Things such as coming up to approach the crude nest that he’s made for himself out of the rubble of the island’s remains. Reaching out with his hands to pat Chuuya’s head, the one that has a nest of snakes. Of course, the snakes dislike being touched, even if they enjoy the inherent coolness of the other’s hands. It leads to them biting the human, which then leads to this shitty Dazai saying, “Ow, ow, you’re really such a dog, Gorgon-san.”
“I’m a scary, badass monster, not a dog, damn it!” He elbows the human away from him. Is it really okay to call him a ‘human’ when he doesn’t even keel over at being bitten by poisonous snakes? Just what kind of resistance does this guy possess? “I keep telling you to stay away from me!”
“And I did tell you that you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and so I wish to stay with you,” is murmured with such an earnest tone and expression. Dazai even goes to kneel in front of him, catching his hands. Definitely doing this so he can hide the way he’s grimacing at being elbowed. Someone who has such a high poison resistance, and yet he’s crumpling from a mere elbow. How utterly bizarre.
Chuuya is unimpressed. “You’re fucking blind, what the hell are you even talking about?”
It’s not as if it’s a new tactic. Befriend him, flatter him, fool him into letting his guard down. There have been too many attempts at capturing him. Some with violence. Some with malevolent, steely intent hiding behind silk. He knows he’s a monster, but he has his pride too. He simply wishes to be left alone in this tiny place that he’s considered as home. He doesn’t have plans of going out of this space, doesn’t have plans of hunting them down if they don’t make trouble for him.
“Oh, that’s true.” Dazai admits this so breezily. He stays there, kneeling. His left hand starts patting his shin. “Since you’re this small, it’s no wonder I can’t see you.”
Chuuya kicks him in the chin. Despite the fact that the other is one hundred percent blind—he’s tested it out several times—he’s still able to dodge his attack fluidly. As if he has eyes installed directly into Chuuya’s brain instead, reading his every move effortlessly.
It’s very annoying.
Amidst his grumbling, Dazai’s laughter twinkles in the cavernous cave of broken things that he’s assembled for himself.
— — —
“What do you think about a glorious double suicide, Gorgon-san?”
One more thing to add to his mental list of evidences of the other’s brain being broken. Chuuya and the snakes give the dumbass a flat stare that could, and have, petrified hundreds. Beside him, Dazai’s chest continues to rise and fall to the rhythm of the waves splashing against the scorched earth that forms the island’s coastline.
…It’s been like this for several moon-cycles now, but he can’t help but check each time, if he really can’t petrify this idiot. Once he’s certain that his ability hasn’t worked, he sighs. “I think that my life would be so much more peaceful once you finally leave me alone.”
The amount of things that Dazai has successfully annoyed him into doing could rival the amount of stars twinkling down at them right now.
Case in point: this ‘outing’.
Chuuya has always kept to cool, dark places, ostensibly for his snakes’ comfort and so he doesn’t accidentally end up turning someone into stone. Before Dazai has barged into this island—claiming that he wants to see something interesting before he ends up succeeding in his suicide attempts—one hand could suffice with counting the number of times that he’s voluntarily ventured out of his nest.
…He’s generously not counting the times that he’s had to deal with those that march into the island with the intent to encage him. Those aren’t outings; they’re simply housekeeping.
“Fufufu, don’t be so shy, Gorgon-san.” A huff of laughter that makes his messy hair shift over his face. “You know that you miss me each time I leave~”
How can someone be so confidently unkempt? Is this because he’s blind and therefore cannot see just how idiotic he looks?
Chuuya’s hand itches to comb it properly, but he still hasn’t recovered from the last time he’s accidentally touched the other’s face. It was an attempt to punch the other for being irritating, but Dazai had ended up nuzzling against his knuckle. How infuriating. Despite the colder nighttime sea breeze, his skin warms at the memory.
And warms some more, once his mind registers the rest of the other’s words. “I don’t miss you at all!” When his words don’t land on the other’s thick skin, he adds, “I count the hours that I get to myself! In peace!”
Dazai tilts his head towards him. Seaweed-like hair, grown dark and damp from their lounging on the ‘beach’, the waves lapping at them. A self-satisfied expression on his idiotic face. “See, you’re even counting the time that I’m away from you.”
“To savor it!”
“I’m so touched I could cry,” Dazai tells him, reaching out with one hand. A movement that’s telegraphed so slowly that there’s no way he could miss the other’s intention. For a moment, it almost seems as if there’s light inside the other’s brown eyes. “You really are so not honest, Gorgon-san.”
One palm curves over his cheek. His snakes hiss, but don’t raise a bigger fuss, pacified by the gentle sea waves and by the way that his heart has long stopped to see the other as an intruder that has to be eviscerated on the spot.
Though, with the way Dazai simply lays his hand like that over his face, not moving forward and not drawing him closer, he really deserves to be eviscerated. He takes a sharp breath, annoyed at the other’s antics, obviously goading him to be the one to cross the distance between them.
A snicker. “You really are not honest, huh?”
“S-Shut up!”
“You always want me to listen to you.” More soft laughter. “Now, I’m going to listen. So, what do you want me to do, Gorgon-san?”
The nerve of this idiot to accuse him of these things, to call him dishonest, when he’s so much worse. “I want you to get the hell out of this island.”
Twenty centimeters. “Do you want me to draw you closer?”
Ten. “Were you listening? I said—”
Five. “Do you want me to kiss you?”
One. “I said—”
— — —
“Chuuya, did you wear it?”
Because he’s finally gotten sick of hearing the annoying man yap at him with that ‘-san’ honorific that’s really just mocking him, he has whispered his actual name against the other’s lips. He’s regretting it now, because Dazai uses his name every chance he gets. He has a feeling that he’s going to become the first creature in the entire world to grow allergic to his own name.
“…I did.” He looks down at the sea-foam green tunic that Dazai has scavenged out of nowhere. Despite the other calling him a dog every so often, it’s really him who has dog-like instincts. His blindness isn’t a hindrance in him finding things like this, odd trinkets buried under the rubble. “What’s the point, it’s not like you can see me in it?”
As soon as he asks this, he flushes and his snakes curl up into him, as though embarrassed by his own question. “I mean! It’s not like I wore this for you!” Wait, Dazai did ask him to wear this because he lost a bet! “I mean, only because I lost that bet!”
Since they’ve been living together for a few years now, there’s none of Dazai’s hesitation in walking around. Not that he had a lot of it before, but now, he’s pretty much memorized everything in this island. So the mackerel swims to his side quickly, wrapping arms around him and pushing him down to the cushions that they’ve made out of patching together several fabrics together.
The accessories that he’s been goaded into wearing—gold choker, gold armband, gold bracelet, gold anklets—make clanking sounds as he’s smothered down. His snakes are useless, retreating to themselves, refusing to bite this human that has insisted on staying with him and never leaving. Even when there has been several representatives from the mainland wanting to capture him, and he’s had to use his full power to fend them off.
That’s exactly when he’s lost the bet.
“Mm, the bet that you definitely would be so worried about me that you’d turn away from the enemy and look at where I am to see if I’m okay,” Dazai reminds him, rubbing their noses together, before kissing him.
He knows that he lost, but… “I still don’t understand how you knew.” After all, this idiot of his really is blind. And yet, he somehow saw his attention falter away from the enemies.
“Isn’t it enough that I understood where your heart really lies?”
“Cut the bullshit,” he says with a bop to the other’s temple.
A pout. “Well, it isn’t so romantic if I say that I read it from the sound of your breathing, to the sound of your footsteps, to the sound of—”
“Never mind, shut the fuck up already.”
While there are some things that he still doesn’t understand about the details of his existence, the things that he knows are more than enough to assemble an idea of just how otherworldly he is. When he says that he’s a monster, he means and understands it to the core of his being.
Balancing a mix between humanoid beauty and supernaturally grotesque, he’s a mortal cursed to this life by the researchers who thought themselves be the god of wisdom and warfare.
And so, he’s confused as to why this dumbass is so enamored with him.
“Ah, you’re embarrassed.” Dazai reads him accurately as always. The mackerel has changed clothes too, to match his outfit change. He’s even wearing a blindfold that matches the color of his clothes. Hands move to touch him all over, paying special attention to the gold accessories that he’s put in. “I can just see how beautiful you look. You’re probably blushing so hotly now.” Palm to his hot cheek. “You wore this even though you didn’t really want to, just because I asked. That’s very adorable of you, Chuuya.”
“Only because of the bet,” he insists.
“You’d indulge me like this,” Dazai ignores his protests. “But to anyone else, you’d deal with them so decisively, not even allowing them to set one foot into our island home.” Both hands now cupping his cheeks. “You destroyed them so thoroughly.”
“I had to do so much shit just to build this new home!” A part of him knows it’s a lost cause trying to argue this point, but he just can’t help it. “I’m not going to let them disturb it just like that!”
Yet another thing that he’s been annoyed into doing: building a new abode for the two of them. Something sunnier compared to his previous nest. Of course, Dazai shamelessly claims that he’s too blind and too frail to do anything aside from lick off the sweat from Chuuya, so it’s up to him to do the actual construction.
So of course, given that the entire thing is a fruit of his sole hard work, he’s not going to let anyone cause harm to it.
“A being capable of so much destruction wanting to protect me… I’m so touched I could cry, Chuuya.”
“Cry for all I care,” he gripes, but he allows Dazai to continue kissing and embracing him anyway.
— — —
Suribachi City, an island that has become closed-off from the rest of the world.
—A world for two.
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end