Chapter Text
“Street rat” was a term he’d embraced ever since waking up on the cold grit of Suribachi City twenty-three years ago. It wasn’t a nice phrase, but Chuuya wasn’t a nice person, so it just sort of stuck in an unclean, unintentional way, like gum to the sole of his shoe. Working, living, and making something of yourself in the slums didn’t support room for growth; you had to be tough and cold to make it through the gangs and the cartels in one piece, and Chuuya learnt it the hard way. Living a life on the street forced him to scavenge, steal, and sneak, to foster maturity for the sake of his brothers and sisters who also ended up on the street just like him. That’s what it meant to be a “street rat” as Mori would’ve called it, and even if Chuuya didn’t like it, he embraced it.
Having money in his pocket and a roof over his head did wonders to alleviate the stress of being homeless and starving but it never quite took away the instinct to snatch and to steal. It’s one thing he can say the Port Mafia never quite managed to snuff out no matter how many lavish things Mori threw at him to try and get him to fit in. He never denied them but he never quite grew into the jackets and jewelry and luxury, always preferring to stick to smaller spaces and cheaper venues, if only to keep himself comfortable. He harbours the same feelings even fifteen years after joining Port Mafia; call it instinct.
At one point he knew the ins and outs of Japan’s underbelly as if they were his own veins; where the clean blood ran and where the dirty blood was being pumped out of. The heart of Yokohama had two sides: the gangs, and the cityfolk, both working within the same culture but heading in different directions, funneling down different veins and aortas to either provide or take from other parts of the city. Yokohama was a real living, breathing thing, and Chuuya remembers it as if he had never left despite the years he’s put behind him.
But, standing here in front of Yokohama’s highlife and lowlife as they funnel into the wedding’s afterparty, he wonders if he’d been wrong about the system to begin with ever since learning it at age seven. That maybe the clean and the unclean weren’t so segregated in different worlds after all, no matter how dirty he feels and always has felt.
The entire trip had been a mistake. Chuuya had known that as soon as he received the invite from Mori: a threatening little thing printed on a wax-sealed envelope and card that came through his letterbox two weeks ago with no return address marked. He felt dirty picking it up, an invasion in his own home, with its dark red ink and stiff edges of kanji, so different from the easy arches of the Latin alphabet.
What correspondence they have nowadays is never held within their own respective turf in Japan and Italy. Chuuya has traveled to Catania and Syracuse, two harbors Port Mafia hold leverage over, just to prevent Mori from setting foot in Palermo, where they base their operations out in the west. He knows it’s silly but the idea of having him just be somewhere Chuuya feels safe is enough to spoil the years of hard work he’s done into cultivating a lifestyle regulated and run entirely by himself, so he’d gone above and beyond to keep Mori out. No one, aside from himself and a few lower-ranking officials, has seen the inner workings of the operation in Palermo, and he intends to keep it that way.
Yokohama is entirely out of the question. He intends to return when hell freezes over.
And yet even though Mori wasn’t physically there with him, the space of his own home felt invaded and dirtied. Printed on the card in neat, cursive English was an invite to a wedding of the next prime-minister-hopeful; a man in his fifties with little to no politics background and a healthy history of dealing with the Port Mafia as one of Mori’s favorite shareholders. The RSVP had already been circled Yes with that same red ink as the envelope’s penmanship, glossy as if wet to the touch. It wasn’t like he was going to decline to begin with, because when you were summoned by Mori, you came. It was one of the very few things he wouldn’t bend on, even when it came to his executives.
With it, attached in the envelope, was the key to his old penthouse, polished to a shine.
Chuuya likes to pretend he’s lost count of the years--that he doesn’t look back on them, but he knows full well it’s been more than just a few and that Chuuya’s been off the radar ever since 2015, nearly six years ago.
Moving abroad had been easy enough in the beginning. Mori had been speaking about joining forces with a few independent mafioso ability-users from Italy for years ever since the incidents with the Guild and those following, saying it would offer better reach globally should anything come up in the future. It was a fail-safe plan to simultaneously bulk up their itinerary of Ability users while keeping a foothold in a hugely mafia-oriented country.
Then, in the beginning of 2015, just a few days after new-years, Chuuya triggered Arahabaki with little to no warning on the coast of Yokohama during a conflict he still struggles to fully remember. It had been a freak decision to try and put a wet blanket over a rogue ability user who had wiped out half of the docklands in a mad fit to take down Port Mafia, and it had nearly worked too, taking out a whole squadron of Port Mafia’s finest men within minutes. By the time Chuuya had arrived the entire dock had caved into the ocean. Kajii had been killed by the huge, writhing beast that reminded Chuuya all too well of Lovecraft, only bright red and oozing acid.
The night was a catastrophe and the worst Port Mafia had ever seen. Over four-hundred had been wiped out all together, including neighboring civilians, and they’d lost a quarter of their ability-led taskforce. Chuuya had taken out the person, who turned out to be part of a rising gang from the west of Yokohama, rupturing all of his internal organs in the process. He knows he’d died that night for just a few minutes and wonders what the outcome would have been had Mori not gotten to the scene quicker, and if everything would have panned out better in the long-haul.
By the summer of that year when Chuuya was twenty-five and only just learning how to walk again, Mori brought up the move over a debrief among executives, a comment-in-passing he’d made to keep the conversation trail luke-warm in people’s minds over tea and biscuits.
On Christmas Eve Chuuya flew out to the sunny island of Sicily to build Port Mafia’s European branch from the ground up. Having to scale the steps to his villa up and down the seaside and navigating the winding lanes of Palermo to the local cantinas made physiotherapy a joyful task. He found himself at ease for the first time in a long, long while, away from the radar of watchdogs and streetgangs and the street corner office he used to find himself gazing at every time he passed.
Until today.
He had been on the fence about even returning home to begin with. What had started out as a one-day trip had fallen onto a three-day excursion after Kouyou’s badgering and Mori’s appointments for dinner parties with neighboring politicians and, of course, a letter scrawled in chicken-scratch by a now nineteen year-old Kyuu for a day out at a theme park that opened up just recently. Rejecting the proposal was never an option. What Mori and he hold is a silent agreement--for the price of letting Chuuya carry on and lead operations in the west, he’s to come at his beck and call, no questions asked.
Which is what had led him to his old apartment no less than twenty hours ago. He’d arrived in Haneda airport at ten after a painful flight behind a screaming child and a couple playing footsies in the seats next to him, and had prayed for nothing more than the comfort of a bed, even if it was his old one.
At midnight he stood outside his old penthouse’s door, the only one on the top floor’s corridor, just the same as he remembered it when he left. The whole thing felt surreal and practically slapped him awake as he trudged down the carpet to the brass-plated door numbered 20 . As he pressed the key into the lock and twisted, he’d half expected the door to stay closed. After all, why wouldn’t a place so luxurious be sold on to the next highest bidder?
But it had opened, the door swinging to reveal a place Chuuya had hoped to never see again. It was as if he’d only been gone a day; a scene frozen in time, a vignette of someone trying desperately to cram their life into one small suitcase and flee. As he stepped into the genkan he reached to disable the alarm automatically, not even removing his eyes from the room to do so, the smells hit him. Shoe polish, wine corks, Chanel No.5 and the unmistakable smell that comes from the cold; that fresh, crisp scent that has his nostrils burning. It seemed not even time itself was strong enough to remove the last one.
Stepping out of the genkan his eyes flitted from corner-to-corner to draw in the mess he’d left behind. Tossed across the back of his sofa were three of his favourite fur coats, all too big to fit in his carry-on, with belts and harnesses and chokers scattered across his coffee table, left there to collect dust. He’d reached down to thumb the choker on the sofa’s arm-rest, across the cracked spine of the leather and the tarnish of the buckle, and wondered when he’d grown so comfortable without it. Almost self-consciously he’d reached up to press against the spot where the metal used to bite into, just above his Adam's apple, and felt the ghosting of pressure that used to tug it.
Two glasses of wine sat on his kitchen table, one knocked on its side, both smeared with lipstick stains from himself and someone else, wine long since soured. As he approached the table, the heels of his loafers clicking against the marble flooring, Chuuya picked up both glasses and dropped them into the bin to shatter and discard.
The toiletries in his bathroom had gone off long ago but they did the job well enough, even if the scents had faded and the lotions had congealed. He scrubbed himself raw until his skin turned pink and sat in the bath with his hair fanning the water until it had gone cold and he was beginning to shake.
As the water grew murky and the scum of the bubbles floated across the surface of his skin he remembered his very first night with his keys at age fifteen, feeling so grown and proud of himself to finally have secured a roof over his head.
He’d wandered the place like a lost soul, lost in the quiet, loneliness of living alone. The kitchen was empty and the living room was dark and vacant save the curtains and a lone, white leather couch with armrests reaching up to his shoulders. He’d ambled along until stumbling into the bathroom and realising with unbridled glee he could close the door and be alone in a washroom for the first time in his life.
He filled the bath to the brim with piping hot water and sat in it until the water grew cold, only to re-fill it and fall asleep enveloped in warmth.
Having a place so grand was nice, but it was the bathroom that sold it to him: the promise to clean him, to keep him clean, and to wash off the dirt and blood at the end of the day, something he’d never got to experience before. He knew he’d be happy sleeping in an empty room on a futon if it meant getting to experience the joy of cleanliness every night.
The bath was big enough to fit two, with gold-plated claw feet and an overhead shower jet. The lights lined both the ceiling and the floor, and could be adjusted with a knob and on the wall. His favourite feature, though, was a vanity table tucked against the furthest wall, just below a frosted-glass window and hanging mirror. It had been such a luxury to be able to sit somewhere and groom himself, to see himself in a mirror so clean and big only to realize how small he was compared to it.
Chuuya looked down to the skin of his knuckles just peeking above the water, pruned and scarred, and thought not much has changed, has it? as he pushed to stand, water rolling in rivulets to fall back into the tub. The novelty of having hot, running water had worn off a while ago but the feeling of constant grime beneath his fingernails never had.
Dried and tired at the vanity table and with a bamboo comb, Chuuya sat to tend to the mess of curls knotted into a hair tie. He cut the elastic free with a pair of old nail scissors and began parting the damp curls that had long reached mid-way down his back. He plaited them into two neat rows, bound at the base by the water; it made it easier than having to waste time brushing them in the morning. It had once been Kouyou who tended to his hair: who helped him care for it and love it, but without her he’s had to tend to it alone, and only now is he getting to grips with just how difficult having hair longer than your arm is.
The mirror had a few photos taped to the rim, ones he wasn’t quite ready to look at yet, with a Vivienne Westwood necklace hanging from the corner, tarnished at the edges.
At the rim of the polished vanity he spotted a stickman drawing scratched in by Kyuu from a pair of tweezers he must’ve left lying around during babysitting duty one day. He thumbed over the drawing, fingers oversensitive, and noticed Kyuu had drawn them both smiling and holding hands.
He slept on the sofa that night, wrapped up to his neck in brown fur and the silk lining of his favourite coat that still smelt like the cigarettes he used to smoke that had long been taken off shelves.
There had been talks of meeting up early with Kouyou for lunch, to ‘catch-up’ as she’d phrased it over the phone, but Chuuya couldn’t bring himself to get up from the sofa even as the sun rose. He wasn’t to arrive until seven but the thought of showing his face in a place he’d tried to leave behind, to escape, feels like tearing open his wounds with a smoldering knife.
The chill of the evening air draws Chuuya back to the present, still buckled into the rental car he’d picked up earlier on in the day with his hands slack around the driving wheel. “Jesus,” he grouses as the world comes into focus around him and he realises he’s been sitting in the car for the better part of twenty minutes, freezing his ass off, “I need to get a fucking grip.”
He stuffs a cigarette in his mouth and lights it before he’s even stepped out of his car. It does wonders to ease the shake in his hands and warms him up from the inside when the cold air pierces right through his jacket and blouse. The air is different here--thicker, denser, stinking of filth and overpopulation despite being so close to the sea. Not a bad thing altogether, just different. It’s difficult to shake the smell that inevitably comes with home when he’s back by the docklands in Yokohama.
He takes a drag as the car’s locks click shut behind him and leans against the bonnet to nurse his first cigarette of the evening. The venue itself isn’t anything special: St Andrews Cathedral stands as a bastardisation in the face of its virgin Mary stained-glass windows. Chuuya doubts a single thing will be committed in the name of Christ tonight other than blasphemy and drunken prayers. The spire stretches high into the overcast above, not uncommon for April, with all doors thrust open to better accommodate the sheer amount of guests invited. The lemon trees out front are neatly trimmed back and at the very centre of the winding drive stands a statue of a cherub playing a harp, spouting water from its mouth.
Chuuya rounds it with a grimace. Even if he doesn’t indulge in the proclivities of fashion like he used to, Chuuya can still sniff out bad taste from a mile away. Those concrete, beady eyes stare right back at him, like a bad omen. He tugs his leather jacket over his shoulders for good measure but it does little against the evening’s cold.
He’s wearing a skimpy piece he’d pulled out from his old wardrobe in a last-ditch search for something other than cotton blouses and vests from his carry-on. The top’s a little tight over his shoulders but it still fits, despite the way his shoulders have broadened and his waist slimmed. He’d held it up the moonlight the night before the very same way he had when he first got it, straight out of Paris fashion week back in the two-thousands, and wondered when the part of his soul that had once been so interested in fashion had died. It was pretty and looked fucking great on, and cost a bomb on top of that.
Of all things hanging inside his wardrobe it had been the least offensive; a black, finely-netted blouse with applique roses and puffed sleeves with cuffs at the wrists. Kouyou used to refer to this particular style as his ‘revenge dress phase’, which, ironically, only holds one dress; a teeny tiny satin piece he’d picked on a whim and worn once during a night out in Shinjuku. It’s all tight leather and cropped jackets with studded belts and red-bottom heels he’d bought once he became an executive and his salary quadrupled and totally inappropriate for this weather.
The leather jacket does something against the cold at least but it’s too small to zip over the front so Chuuya, albeit grudgingly, keeps it open.
“Jesus,” he repeats, trying to snap out of the daze he’s been plunged into ever since touching down yesterday. Instead of dallying any longer outside, trying to put off the inevitable, he books it across the car park, trying to move in such a way that the shirt doesn’t tear across his back.
Open bar. Just think of the open bar, he chants, ripping through his cigarette so harshly it burns as he reaches the foyer. A few curious glances look his way but it’s nothing significant enough to make him sweat. I must’ve fucking developed some kind of anxiety disorder ever since I left ‘cause I’m shitting myself, and I don’t know why. It’s just a test Mori’s got out for you. A few hours. That’s all it is.
The door is armed with a man dressed down to a simple button up and trousers so tight Chuuya can see he’s decided to forgo underwear. Most of the guests seemed to have already arrived, and the only queue near the door leads to the outside block of toilets where he spots a woman throwing up into the pan, friend in tow holding her hair back. “Name?” the bouncer asks, a huge guy in his forties with a goatee.
Chuuya runs his cigarette right down to the filter before tossing it down to the asphalt, mind half-way between the sound of the woman retching and the promise of alcohol just a few rooms away. It smells as if food’s already been cooked and plated if the scent of meat and gravy is anything to go by. He thinks he can spot a bloated spit-roasted hog some distance into the ballroom. “Uh,” he coughs, “Chuuya. Nakahara Chuuya.”
The guard’s eyes peek up over the tinted lens of his aviators. “Ah, sir,” he says, voice switching pitch immediately to something more lilted. “Sorry.”
Chuuya waves him off, as if he knows what he’s apologising for, let alone who he is. Judging by his size he’s most likely one of Mori’s goons he’s contracted in the past. “It’s nothing,” he assures, “just, can I go in? I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
The clipboard is handed off to one of the other guards as the man lifts the velvet rope and gestures for him to enter. “Right this way.”
He knows by schedule that the ceremony had finished just over an hour ago: a huge Catholic service with a priest and white doves. The place has already filled up to the brim, bustling with finely-dressed women and men of all ages and a few children here and there, chasing each other under tables and chairs. He spots the unfamiliar and the familiar: tycoons, lawmakers, socialites and tag-alongs, all mulling around the same groups with their fingers in each other’s pockets. He side-steps a drunk couple heading his way to move from the foyer into the ballroom and tips his head up to scan the crowd.
The venue itself is nothing he hasn’t seen before from the likes of people he’s had to schmooze with over the years. A huge pillar, all ornate carving and marble finish, rises up from the center of the ballroom to hold up the ceiling of the gazebo. Streams of twinkling fairy lights hang down from the pinnacle of the tent to separate off in bunches, drawing the room into a hazy sort of glow. It’s pretty, all things considered, and tastefully modern but in no way trying to hide the way it flaunts wealth and class. Chuuya knows the entire thing must’ve cost upwards of three-hundred-million yen. Hell, he’d be surprised if it even scraped that budget. Especially with the way the bride is dressed.
A huge, elevated table lines the back of the room where a man looking closer to seventy than his alleged fifty sits alongside a woman dressed in a gown twice the size of her. He’s wheezing as he talks to someone over her shoulder and she’s leaning over the table to better speak to a tall man dressed in a horrendous green suit and waistcoat.
Chuuya floats in, quietly making his way through the throngs of people, all while doing his best to avoid eye contact. Any hint of friendly conversation will have him galloping towards the hill like a betting horse. Whatever niceties involve him will be strictly after a good few glasses of wine.
As he tears through the crowd to the bar, the barmaid sets down the glass she was polishing and offers a tepid smile. If her expression is anything to go by he must truly look desperate to garner that level of pity. “What can I get you?”
“Your oldest port,” he replies, the words halfway out his mouth before she’s even had the chance to finish her sentence.
She disappears out the back as he hops up onto a leather stool next to an American man in his late fifties having an exasperated conversation on the phone, and a slim, rake of a boy with sandy blonde hair and freckles nursing an orange juice.
This is fine, he thinks, just as the bartender comes back out the side-room with a bottle of Kopke. Just play nice. “Will 1980 do?” she asks, setting the glass she’d been polishing at the spread of his palms.
He waves his answer; a noncommittal yes as his fingers itch for another cigarette. Filled and rim wiped clean, the glass is slid in front of him as she disappears around the corner to serve another customer.
He swirls it around the glass before taking a sip. It settles on his tongue and burns the back of his throat, all in all exactly what he’d been craving since getting off the plane last night, and settles in his stomach with the satisfaction of a full meal. As the blonde next to him hops off his chair to go running into the crowd as the DJ begins the Hokey Cokey, Chuuya holds his glass up to the light and watches the twinkling fairy lights streaming from the gazebo flash plum-red from behind it.
The cellar back home has recently gone from stocking only good, well-bodied reds to a few sparkling whites. Tuscany’s more than a stone’s-throw away from his villa and there’s plenty of chianti to go around the village, don’t I know it, but Marsala’s imports pass through his own little town and had taken him by surprise by just how good local, albeit different, wine could be. The port in his hand is very reminiscent of what he’d weaned himself on when he was younger to try and seem older than he was. He just ended up falling in love with the taste and hobby of it along the way, even if it started out disingenuously.
He nurses his Port as his eyes focus back on the blonde who’s taken to dancing shoe-less on the ballroom floor as horrified guests look on. Chuuya catches himself grinning around the rim of his glass at the sight. There’s something about him, he thinks, taking another sip. Where have I seen him before? He chases down the rest of his worries as he tosses the drink back.
Silently, the woman refills it on her way to pass a pint to another customer, once again offering Chuuya a pitying smile.
He draws it back across the bar and nurses the glass’s neck between the junction of his forefingers and thumbs. Do I really look that sad?
He knew he’d definitely seen better days. Sicily was a hands-on operation, literally, from re-building the local cantina from flooding to pushing all the paperwork himself until he hired an administrator months after moving. The first year was spent using For The Tainted Sorrow to such extremes he was terrified he’d accidentally release Arahabaki by accident, and with no security blanket to fall back on; no Mori, no Kouyou, no Hirotsu, he’d resounded himself to train back up again glove-free.
It still isn’t perfect. He wakes up during cold nights screaming at the phantom pains Arahabki had inflicted as it carved into his skin in jagged curls, and on his worst days, wonders if the line is so blurred between both ends of his ability that he’s no longer able to activate it at will. It’s happened before, and he knows that a skill not honed and up-kept is a skill lost.
Still, he thinks, looking down into his reflection in the glass. His freckles have spread to his forehead and neck and they’re so prominent he can spot them in the darkness of the shimmering surface below. The humidity of the room has tightened the curls around his face and gives him less of a tousled look and than it does shocking. Coupled with how he’s hunched over, in lame attempt to hide his face and to make sure the shirt doesn’t rip across his shoulders, he thinks no wonder the barmaid’s been giving me looks. She probably thinks I’ve just wandered off the streets.
But maybe no one would notice me, anyway. The hat does a good enough job of concealing his features but that aside he knows he’s changed; aged, filled out and slimmed down in different areas of his body. He’d sheared his hair back down to his cheeks before he left at twenty-four but, sitting here, it’s now brushing just above his tailbone in uneven curls and strawberry-blonde highlights. He reaches behind his neck and brings a section over his shoulder to try and tame some of the flyaway ringlets. “I’ll be fine,” he utters, reaching for his glass.
The man next to him turns to look over his shoulder with a frown. “Can you keep it down? I’m trying to have a conversation here.”
Chuuya’s top lip curls. “Get a life,” he grunts, shifting to stand up with wine-in-hand in a bid to find Mori and show his face. The room tips beneath him as he rises, tilting on its axis, but it’s nothing he hasn’t dealt with before. Two glasses of wine are child’s play to him. He steadies himself on the bar’s counter and scans the room under the guise of his fringe for any sight of Mori or, by association, Elise.
Be it instinct or just the way she’s dressed, he manages to spot Kouyou almost immediately. She’s talking with a group of men nearing retirement and dressed down to an elegant pearly-pink kimono and sherbet lemon obi. Her hair is pulled up into a French twist with a few strands framing her face, still a shocking red, sticking out like a sore thumb among the greys, blacks, and whites of the crowd, like a rose among knotweed.
Chuuya gives the room a once-over before shifting past tables of dining guests and a few stragglers to fall into her line of sight, tucking his hair behind his ear to better show himself.
It’s almost immediate; the way her face changes when he catches her line of sight. From a neutral, polite smile, her expression lights up into something of unbridled delight. She excuses herself from the group with a few hasty thank yous to meet him halfway and, to his utmost surprise, draws him into a hug.
“Jeez,” Chuuya catches himself blurting, one arm held straight so as to not tip his wine while the other reaches around to hold her steady. By the way she’s swaying, she’s already a few glasses down herself. “Good to see you too.”
“Chuuya,” she croons, drawing back. One of her hands, ice-cold but smooth to the touch, comes down to cradle his cheek and tilt it up. Her eyes flit across his face as if she’s drinking him all in, with how his hair has grown and his face has pinkened thanks to the gesture and the alcohol. He hasn’t seen her in over five years but she looks as if she hasn’t aged a day. “It’s so good to see you. You know your Ane-san has missed you.”
She’s definitely drunk, he muses, but nonetheless leans into her touch. Her wrists smell like rose-oil and her fingers still have that silky-softness to them, like flower petals. “How much have you drunk?”
“Never you mind.” Her other hand has long joined the other, smoothing over his face, thumbing over his eyebrows and beneath his eyes. She must see how tired he looks, with how her fingers pause across the thin, lilac skin beneath his lash line. Not even Chuuya can hide that anymore. Her smile wavers, lipstick worn away at the center of her mouth to reveal the pale peach-tone of her lips. “How...how are you? How have you been? You sure have a tan on you, that’s for sure.”
His hand comes up to gently cover her’s. “I’m alright,” he says, which is neither here nor there. Her eyes immediately flit down to his hands, uncovered, a little scarred but nonetheless bare. “Ah,” he says, drawing them back so he can present them awkwardly. “I ditched the gloves. Too...too warm in Italy.”
“You…” she trails off, “You don’t…?”
“Oh God, no. Not since the incident.” His smile is strained, pulling at a small cut in his lip, dry and chapped. “ What’s the point of putting them on if I need to take them off at a moment's notice?”
Her smile wavers. “Yes. Especially without…” she pauses. Her tongue wets the corner of her mouth before she smiles again. “Let’s get us something more to drink, don’t you think?”
The open bar is less of a blessing in disguise and more of a guardian angel, the balm to a rusty relationship. They meander over and find an empty but used table, speckled with glitter and a napkin with some rouge on it. Chuuya sets down his port and Kouyou her riseling, leaving behind a red ring on the white tablecloth that he reaches over and smears deeper with his thumb.
“Chuuya,” she begins, leaning forward onto her palm, “how was your trip?”
“Long,” he replies. A pause, as he skims his finger along the neck of his drink. “Cold, too. So much colder than Palermo. Did you know it was sixteen-degrees when I left?”
“Oh, Goodness. You should’ve brought some back with you!”
“If only.” He grins around the rim of his glass as he takes another sip. “How about you, Ane-san?”
“Nothing much has changed. It has been bleaker without you,” she says, tipping her head to the side. A section of her fringe follows, falling like a fan’s splay in front of her eyes as they grow unfocused on the surface of her wine. “I recently got my hands on some mulberry silk from Jiangsu. I’ve sent it off to have it woven into a matching set of kimono that I’d meant to send to you at Christmas but due to how busy everything’s been here, the trip ended up being delayed.”
“Ane-san…” Chuuya trails off. Her eyes flick up from the span of her fringe, sad, as they crinkle at the corners. Trying to hide the loneliness she’s always managed to keep at bay.
“They were really pretty things–so light to the touch you would’ve sworn they’d have torn with just a snag. Say, in the summer, we ought to go over to pick them up from Jiangsu. I haven’t been there for leisure in so long and it would be nice to get out of the country, wouldn’t it?”
The silence that follows is deafening. But, as it is, he doesn’t need to fill it.
Like a cold breeze Mori enters the room, draped in dark silks and starched cotton. He’s severe and frightening, a sight to behold, and one Chuuya finds himself looking away from while everyone else stares. He looks like cut diamond; all sharp edges and wealth, not a hair out of place on his head.
“Chuuya-kun,” Mori greets in that cold, low baritone of his. “It’s been a while.”
“Four months,” he replies, passing the ball back into his court with a razor-sharp grin and a tilt to his head. Mori practically commands attention with his aura as he sweeps his coattails back and takes a seat next to Kouyou, straight-backed and elegant. Even with the warm glow of the fairy lights he looks like a dead body, all pale skin with a slight sheen to it.
There’s a shake so violent in Chuuya’s hands he has to press his palms flat to his thighs to hide it. Kouyou’s far enough gone to not notice it but Mori’s sharp as a pin, eyes flicking downward to his knees where they press white-knuckled into his slacks, digging in so tight he can feel his nails biting through the material.
Mori’s gaze lingers a moment more before it’s up, unblinking, right back at Chuuya’s. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of people our dear friend Daisuke knows,” Mori begins, voice fraying at the edges as if he’s had a little too much dry wine. “It feels less like a wedding and more like a party, does it not?”
“Yes, the room is rather full,” Kouyou agrees. She’s not taken any notice of the tension at the table, busy finishing off her glass. “At least the children are enjoying it. I believe this may be Akutagawa’s first encounter with a chocolate fountain.” Her voice sweetens at the edges as the beginnings of a smile form. “He’s been sitting there for the better part of the hour shoveling strawberries into his mouth.”
“Children”, Chuuya muses. Akutagawa must be in his late twenties by now, only a little younger than Chuuya and not much less than Kouyou herself. What he used to think of as mothering–protecting, soothing, helping, seems to have never grown out of her, no matter how skewed her vision of love is. Years have put no dent in that side of her personality, and he isn’t sure whether he’s grateful for it or not.
He casts a glance over to the buffet table to watch Akutagawa swallow an entire skewer of raspberries and marshmallows drowned in chocolate in one bite. “He ought to watch so he doesn't get indigestion.”
“Higuchi will have that covered. I don’t think I’ve seen her let him out of her sight since they came through the doors.”
Kouyou clucks her tongue. “Poor thing.”
“Which one?”
A smattering of laughter lightens the heavy atmosphere of their table, easing the tension.
She’s been one of those affected worst in the incident at the docklands. Today, standing next to Akutagawa in the same pantsuit set she keeps in rotation for work, she’s amputated on one side below the knee and missing her left hand. It had initially been devastating on her part–he’d caught her crying herself sick more than once in the recovery ward the Port Mafia hold deep beneath Mori Corp when he’d first woken back up.
She looks a little more weathered than she did before he left. There’s a brightness missing from her eyes: healthy eagerness to please, whittled down to the urge to protect.
“So, Chuuya,” Mori prompts, turning to him with the edge of a smile curling up his face. “How has Italy been?”
Chuuya raises his glass to his mouth and it’s the wrong move: he realizes it immediately when the surface of the wine ripples with the tremble of his hand. This time, both Mori and Kouyou catch it. He swigs down a mouthful to buy himself some time to answer but it’s not enough to even begin to open up on how Italy has been .
Lonely but safe and right , so right, even if it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
He doesn’t want to explain himself to Mori, doesn’t feel that he has to, but Kouyou is here, and it’s only proper to be civil when she’s been so good to him ever since his first day in office. “It’s been…well, thank you,” he replies. “Profits have doubled over the last year. We’re looking to expand as far North as Calabria by winter, should everything go well this weekend.”
“And did you have fun?” The word pierces through his gut like a spear. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face, that the flush from the alcohol carries enough weight to hide how quickly the blood has drained from those simple words alone. “Have you gotten everything out of your system?”
“I…” Chuuya begins, but his tongue is stuck to the top of his mouth, and he can’t find the words no matter how hard he swallows. He takes a sip of wine to collect his thoughts and forces it past the lump in his throat. “I don’t think I quite know what you’re on about, Boss.”
Mori’s lips purse and his brows knit, looking less like a terrifying boss ruling the Southeast of Japan and more like a disappointed mentor. It serves its task of twisting the spear already lodged in Chuuya’s stomach, landing another sharp jab that curdles the wine in his blood.
Kouyou’s gaze flicks to Mori’s before honing back in on Chuuya’s. His gut drops when he sees the pity on her face, snatching his hands back when she reaches out and covers them with hers. Her expression falls but she continues on anyway: “Isn’t it time you thought about coming back to Yokohama? We knew it was a tough time for you, with what happened in the bay and Kyuu. We understood that when we sent you out to establish in the West–”
“And I did–”
“And you did!” she agrees, reaching out again to hold his hands. They’re ice-cold and damp at the fingertips but strong, much stronger than just a second ago, gripping onto his fingers with the intention of keeping him there. “You did, but the operation is walking on its own two legs now, and we need you back here in Japan.”
His chin wrinkles. “Is there something going on?” he presses, casting a look to both of them, because it’s odd. Of course there had been apprehension in the beginning of the move but it had been something they’d all agreed on, no matter what the emotional involvement was, so moving back home makes little sense to Chuuya without warning. With Akutagawa being promoted to an executive in his leave of absence and man-power at its largest there had never been a real need for him in Yokohama. Not unless the matter was with absolute urgency.
The cold slate of Mori’s expression darkens. “Per-se,” he answers. There it is, Chuuya thinks, watching as Mori’s eyes, shadowed by the fan of his lashes, slip to the side doors as a rowdy group of adults come stumbling in. “There’s here-say and rumors of Agatha and some of her confidants looking to purchase in the city, and we’ve reason to believe she’s taken in a few ex-Guild members.”
Immediately it makes sense. The letter and the sudden invitation, a meeting held in a place so crowded it would be difficult to track their three locations at once. Coupled with most attendees black-out drunk and an exclusive guest list it’s obvious , suddenly, that this isn’t a show of support and brown-nosing the prime-minister-hopeful, but a clever use of a meeting area with limited guests and unreliable witnesses. “Why wasn’t I informed of this?” Chuuya presses.
“The briefing is to be held tomorrow with the rest of the executives, like we planned,” Kouyou rushes to explain. She gives his hands a gentle squeeze and pleads with her gaze, leaning over the table a slight to lower her voice and keep the conversation better between the three of them. “We’ve had the word that a few invitees here tonight have close-links with Agatha and King.”
“King’s involved in this?!” Chuuya hisses. “ Jesus…”
Mori’s lips press into a thin, white line, betraying his age as his smile-lines pull.
“Jesus,” he repeats, leaning back and out of her grip so he can reach up and press his palms into his eyes. “Any…any other names?”
Kouyou casts a quick glance over her shoulder before lowering her voice a touch more and spinning back around. “They’ve called themselves the Allies. We know about as much as we’ve told you, but there’s been sightings of Orwell and Caroll in Yokohama within the last two months by our contractors.” A tremor passes through her voice. “Who’s to say the English haven’t branched out to the Welsh, Irish, and Scottish?”
“Do you see now?” Mori says. His baritone cuts through the noise of the room like a hot knife.
“I need a cigarette.”
“Chuuya–”
“I need, ” he presses, “a cigarette.”
“Let him go,” Mori says. He’s leaning his shoulders back a fraction in the chair and sports the smallest, slyest of smirks. It curls up at the edges of his lips grimly. “He can’t run forever.”
“Not fuckin’ planning to,” he mutters, cigarette already shoved in his mouth. “Might’ve been called a dog once or twice for a reason.”
“I thought you didn’t like being called that?”
“I don’t,” he says. “But I’d rather you call me a mutt than disloyal. At least do me the decency.”
Before he has a chance to see their expressions he’s gone, pushing through the crowds with the intent to go, leave, and go. If only for tonight.
The closer to the fire-exit he gets the denser the crowd grows. I shouldn’t have come, Chuuya gripes and curses as he pushes through the throng of party-goers mulling around the dance floor, cigarette still clenched between his lips. The space to move grows slimmer and stuffier as he moves closer to the fire-exit, the density of people idling by the bar getting to the point where he has to elbow his way through. He’s a few meters away when he reaches out to squeeze past a group of men, turning his body sideways, as a group of children playing tag rush past and knock him off-kilter into the person in front of him.
The wine goes sloshing straight out of his glass all over the person’s back, down their white shirt and into the waistline of their trousers with a wet slop.
It’s the one thing he’d tried to avoid: conflict, and he’d been pushed right into it. Working in Italy had been nice as the best contributing factor had been solace; away from arguments and bickering and people. As the person grows stock still in front of him, body tightly-wound like a coil, he realizes just how shit his people’s skills have become because he’s sure he’s going to be sick; throat burning, bile making its way up. The muscles in his knees almost give way as he reaches out to steady himself against a chair, setting the now empty wine glass down as the individual turns around with a look so scornful it burns holes right through him.
“I’m so sorry,” he blurts, words slurring over one another as the individual, a woman, reaches behind her to peel her shirt from her waistband. It’s soaked a deep red that looks pink underneath the twinkling fairy lights and no doubt stained beyond salvation. She lets go of her pinch on the material, shirttails dripping port onto the hard-wood flooring with quiet plip plips only Chuuya seems to hear beyond the ringing of his ears.
“You’re sorry?” she echoes. Her hair falls into her face, equally as flushed as he is from the alcohol, hiding pale skin and furious purple eyes. She’s taller than he is by a few inches, plus heels, and reeks of Jack Daniels. “I’m glad you’re sorry, but sorry won’t fix it.”
“Listen, I got bumped into,” Chuuya begins, holding out his hands in what he hopes comes across as a placating gesture, “I didn’t come over and toss wine down your shirt. I’ll pay for dry-cleaning or–whatever, I just really have to get out of here.”
“Leave?” she snarls, “I don’t fucking think so.”
She crowds into his space, bending at the waist to cower over him. With a well-manicured hand she shoves him to sit down in the closest empty chair in their vicinity, chair rocking on its back legs before landing and grounding Chuuya and his churning gut right in front of her. She sweeps her hair from her face and wow, she’s quite a bit taller than him and fucking pissed, too, if the grin on her face is anything to go by. “You gonna suck the wine out of my shirt, little man?”
The word draws him back to reality like a slap to the face. Little man? “I beg your pardon, you bitch?”
He pushes back up to stand, shoving her backwards by her shoulders. She stumbles, heels slipping in the wine, but manages to catch herself on one of the marble pillars holding the gazebo up. Beneath the dim lighting of the curtains and the cover of her hair Chuuya can just about make out the glint of her eyes, shiny with alcohol, behind her dark fringe. “What did you just call me?”
Chuuya raises up onto his toes, embarrassment be damned, and snarls: “You bitch–”
She barks a laugh and raises her hand the very second another man comes barreling over, steaming, ramming into her so harshly she goes flying into a nearby table with a crash, bang, and wallop. “Oi, you’re fighting children now?” he scorns, eyes blissfully closed and face pink from the bright-red cocktail in his hand that goes sloshing right out of his glass to land among the port.
With a flourish and a grin, the man turns around to get a better look at Chuuya. When he sees his face his expression twists, and out he barks out a laugh. “Oh!” he yelps, delighted, “Oh, Mr Fancy-Hat!”
It’s someone he’d hoped to last see years ago. Whatever hellish purgatory the mystery novel came from Chuuya had hoped Ranpo had crawled back to it: obviously not, with how he’s swaying on the spot and reaching out to give him an enthusiastic pat on the arm. He’s wearing a dapper little pink button-up with a brown waistcoat, his hair pulled back into a scrappy ponytail held together by a hair tie and bobby pins pushed in skewiff. It’s so easy to be fooled by his appearance, don’t I know it, especially when he’s leaning in for a hug with a stupid grin on his face like they’re some long-lost friends.
“ You ,” Chuuya seethes, slapping Ranpo’s hand away. He bobbs in place like a sitting duck, totally oblivious to the fury Chuuya practically spits at him. “Don’t touch me.”
Ranpo completely ignores Chuuya in favor of turning towards the woman who Chuuya belatedly realizes is Yosano, the resident doctor of the ADA. She’d crashed through the table, splitting it in half, and had risen some moments ago shirtless.
Jesus he cows, they’re all fucking crazy. Absolutely crazy. Why do I always have to bump into these people? Chuuya shifts to avert his eyes as she rolls up her dirty blouse and strides forward in nothing but a black undershirt, practically spilling out of her bra. “You idiot,” she scalds, coming around to slap Ranpo’s head with a swinging fist. “Why the hell did you do that?”
“ Ow! ” He yowls, bowing backwards with his head clutched in his hands, “I thought you were picking on kids again!”
“I do not pick on children.”
She looks a little different than the last time they’d faced-off. Yosano’s hair has been cut into a short, neat style that falls over her eyes save the section swept back in that butterfly pin she always sports, and instead of a skirt she’s dressed up in slacks and a waistcoat. His clearest memory of her is hazy, muddled by the darkness of that underground railroad when he faced both herself and that country-boy. Ah, he recalls, so that’s where I remember him from.
As she rounds on him, swaying in her spot, things begin to tick into place. His eyes flit from her flushed cheeks to Ranpo’s stupid little grin, to the blonde boy dancing on the floor, and gathers that maybe those three aren’t the only ones here from the ADA.
He doesn’t care why they’re here: he could give less of a shit, despite the looming threat of the Allies and their business in Yokohama. He knows right now would be perfect to try and squeeze some information from the both of them regarding the group , especially considering how drunk they are, but the panic is seeping in and Chuuya’s feeling less drunk than he does nauseous. He interjects with a curt: “Listen,” stopping her in her approach, “I’m sorry about your shirt, but I’ve really got to go. Like, right now..”
Yosano’s lip curls. She crosses her arms and bends back over at the waist, towering over him in a wash of sweet-smelling sweat and an undertone of bitter cleanliness. “You can’t even do me the decency of getting me a new drink after you spilled yours down me?”
Her prodding falls on deaf ears as Chuuya’s gaze hones in on a figure approaching both Yosano and Ranpo as he turns sideways to squeeze through the crowds with two glasses in his hand and a bridesmaid on his arm.
Everything in the room seems to slow for one, breath-taking moment, as if a wave is hitting the crest of its peak and Chuuya’s caught in the tumble of it. He can hear his pulse in his ears, feel it in his tongue and his eyes, as the edges of his vision blur and he’s growing deaf to everything but the thump of his heart in his chest. It aches, threatening to come up his throat and fall at his feet.
In one fell swoop the wave crashes against the shoreline and the room comes spinning back to perfect clarity.
“Jesus,” Chuuya curses, rising up so quickly his knees nearly buckle backwards with the force of it. He practically slams his glass down onto the table; it rolls onto his side and chips all the way down to the bowl as Ranpo taps the man in the green suit’s shoulder and gestures for him to turn around.
A horrific, swooping feeling nearly floors Chuuya where he stands. Dazai’s grown maybe an inch or two, towering over Ranpo with shoulders he’s finally grown into and a smile that no longer looks forced. His hair is tucked behind his ear and curled in pretty chocolate ringlets, falling into his field of vision until he makes the pointless gesture of brushing them away. It does nothing. They fall right back into his face, so he reaches up to tuck them back into his hairpin, and it’s then he notices Chuuya.
Had he not set his wine glass down earlier he knows it would have fallen to the floor and shattered; his bones turn to jelly, liquifying his legs, and it’s a wonder he’s still standing. Something shifts in Dazai’s expression; his brow draws in, like he’s trying to process what he’s seeing, before his face twists and the smile he’d been sporting for the woman just a moment ago has vanished.
He’s the reason he’d fled to Italy, leaving behind his home and his family and his life. As he shimmies through the crowd, nearing closer and closer to Chuuya, the life he’d worked so hard on building from the dying soil ground-up, crumbles. He downs an adjacent wine glass with a wince in a quick bid to flee the scene but Dazai’s there before he’s even had the chance to set the glass back down.
“Chuuya,” he greets, stepping right into his personal space and towering a good foot over his head. Jesus, he agonises, glancing up, he smells fucking incredible. Spicy and sweet like nutmeg . “What’s it been? Six years?”
“Has it really been that long?” he replies weakly, voice cracking around the edges to his mortification. Dazai’s face has gone completely unreadable, a perfect mirror-image to the same expression he’d bare during those very early days of their work in the Port Mafia when he was still seeking out suicide. “I hadn’t noticed, Shitty Dazai.”
“Of course. You notice nothing beyond that thick skull of yours.”
“Funny you should be saying that.”
A muscle Dazai's jaw twitches, right by the hinge, where his skin is at its palest. His lips are pink and look soft, heavier on top, stained darker with wine where the dry spots are. There’s some concealer beneath his eyes that’s separated with the oil of his skin, trying to cover his beauty spots. For the briefest, briefest moment his eyes flick down to Chuuya’s mouth but it’s gone the moment a chin presses into the juncture of Chuuya’s neck, grinning and snapping him from the heat that was beginning to curl its way up his spine.
“Get off me.” Chuuya spits, rounding on Ranpo with a fist. “You reek.”
“We thought you’d died !” Ranpo crows. His cheeks are hotter than boiling water and as they press against Chuuya’s, sticky with the same bright-pink drink he’d been enjoying earlier, they burn. “Especially after the whole Taka...Taka- something ordeal in the docklands. Remember that?”
“Taka shima. Jesus, Ranpo. Have some tact.” Yosano’s hand comes back down with that same whip-like motion, whalloping Ranpo right at the base of his skull. She looks just a little worse for wear than she did earlier, now sweating, with an arm tossed over Chuuya’s opposite side and a grin on her face. She jabs her thumb in Ranpo’s direction. “Get a load of this guy.”
Chuuya reaches up to unhook her arm from his shoulder with a grimace. She’s already distracted herself with the glass in Dazai’s hand to pay it much attention, and as for Ranpo, he’s taken to folding the tiny umbrellas that come with cocktails into his shirt buttons.
Be it the drink or the fuzziness of the situation itself, he finds himself sitting around another dirty table, though this time, it’s with the enemy. He still has Ranpo on one arm, slurring drunken stories to Yosano to his left with Dazai on his right.
Chuuya chances a glance up and finds that Dazai is still watching him with that unreadable look he puts on whenever he’s unsure. It’s his worst tell, almost like a deer in the headlights, but instead of going stock-still he puts up a partition to close off the outside world from his head and reverts to false smiles and left-field decisions that do nothing but spite others.
So it’s exactly what he does next. The corners of his eyes crinkle and his lips pull up at the corners but he’s not smiling. Not really. “What dragged the cat back on the streets?” he prompts, leaning his hip against the table. The bridesmaid who had been on his arm no less than five minutes ago has long disappeared, leaving just himself and Dazai’s undivided tension that sobers him up better than anything else could.
“None of your business,” Chuuya snaps, but it lacks bite. Pathetic, he grouses, I’ve become pathetic. “Good to see you still cling to women like limpets.”
“What can I say?” Dazai’s face stretches into a lazy grin. “I just have natural charm.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“I don’t see it,” Ranpo proclaims, leaning forwards over the table and sloshing his drink onto the cloth to stain it bright pink, “I don’t see it! What is it about you that has all these poor women falling over themselves? You’re a walking liability.”
Dazai tucks his hair behind his ear and flashes a dazzling smile. It springs forward immediately and hangs in a ringlet between his eyes. “Where do I begin? My charisma, my beauty, my personality … ”
Maybe it’s the sudden change in music. The live band left some time ago and now the DJ has taken to the stage, playing something too loud and too fast and had Chuuya not drank one too many glasses maybe the bass of it wouldn’t be affecting him like it is now. But coupled with the way Dazai curls his hair around his finger and keeps flicking his eyes back and forth between Ranpo and the bridesmaid a few seats away, a beautiful woman in her twenties, it proves all too much for Chuuya.
He knocks his chair with the back of his knees and takes a moment to adjust himself when blood rushes to his head. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last glass , Chuuya gripes, brushing down his blouse when the edges of his vision clear and he feels at least a little more grounded. “I’m going for a cigarette,” he announces, taking his jacket from the back of the seat and shucking it on.
“You’re leaving?”
Dazai’s voice hardly carries over the bass of the music. Chuuya only realizes he’s the one being spoken to when a hand settles over the back of his thigh, light and teasing, and just barely there Chuuya isn’t sure whether it’s the swell of alcohol in his veins playing tricks or not. I definitely needed that drink, he decides, shifting away from Dazai’s touch without meeting his eyes.
His free hand cradles his chin against the table, eyes gazing upward through his lashes to Chuuya’s standing figure. They’re a pale brown mast casting shadows over the high-points of his cheeks, shadowing a mole Dazai has just below his left eye, and it’s horrific, really, the way it has his knees nearly buckling in on themselves. “The entertainment is boring,” he decides to settle on, a weak jab at best, tucking the chair back under his table. He reaches down to finish the rest of his wine and sets it back down into a patch of moisture left from Yosano’s rosé. “Enjoy the cake.”
Dazai opens his mouth to reply but Chuuya’s already gone, dipping through the crowds of partygoers and leading with his shoulders to the fire exit. Despite it only being spring, the nights have always been nippy in Yokohama. The closer to the sea you are the worse it gets so Chuuya can only thank whoever decided to have the ceremony miles into the city instead of the seaside as he settles back near the fire exit, wrapping his arms around himself. He’s not even out the door before the filter of a cigarette is bitten between his teeth and he’s flicking the flint of his lighter.
Once outside the venue’s awning he allows himself to finally breathe, and takes a drag of his cigarette as a drunk couple opposite make their way back to their car in a stumbling heap. He watches as the man falls over his own feet and into a bed of flowers, dragging the woman behind him in a fit of giggles. At least someone’s having fun, he muses. Kouyou must still be inside, glasses and glasses heavier than he is, despite the looming threat of the Allies, most likely looking for brief calm from their work-life. The habit of day drinking is something he’d only noticed during his last few months in Japan when he’d caught her carrying around a flask full of Irish cream. He’s caught her pouring Baileys into her tea instead of milk before, just to take the edge off, maybe, and even though he knows he’s not, Chuuya feels responsible for it. It had been a one-off to begin with: a glass in the morning, then one before twelve during their dinners, that eventually bled into her mimicking him with splashes of alcohol here and there just to get through the day. And even though he knows this, neither of them speak about it. It saves the hassle.
Mori wouldn’t be any better. Chuuya knows he carries a scalpel up his sleeve, poised and ready should anyone be drunk enough to try something, and that he gets as much as three hours sleep a night. Mori daren’t allow himself to be even tipsy, discretion stronger than his subordinates, even if he has twice the amount of blood on his hands. Neither of them are happy.
As the burn fills Chuuya’s lungs in the delicious mind-numbing way only something like drugs can, he wonders if maybe it would’ve been easier to just allow his inhibitions go. If maybe he wouldn’t feel so heavy should he have chosen to just let himself be happy–that maybe he’d be the one laughing and stumbling in the carpark with a lover instead of his lonesome beneath the streetlamps above.
He’s clean. He’s been clean for years from coke and pills but in moments like this, where everything is just too much and he needs something to take the edge off, his fingers will always itch for something more. He’d regret it in the morning–always did, but being desperate is enough to blind yourself from all logic and reason.
His fingers twitch around the cigarette, sweating at the pads, as he flicks some ash to the ground.
Chuuya’s vision swims around the edges as he steadies himself using the wall behind him and realizes that he really needs to go . He wonders if Kouyou’s got a driver already organized: she’s been good that way, always thinking of who she’ll need to pick up on her way back. It saves him having to call one, having to do so much as speak any more than he already has tonight, but the idea of going back into the venue proves too much. Thirty, he broods, and too fucking scared to go back inside.
He suddenly wishes he’d at least brought out a flute to the back entrance with him. Alcohol acts like less of a crutch and more of a fifth limb to Chuuya when it comes to wallowing and the horrible, nervous heat that curls in his stomach every time he’s in Dazai’s presence. Both of them must have nearly died in each other’s arms at least a dozen times by now, Chuuya double that, and yet he still has to muster the courage to look him in the eye ever since they stopped being partners. It was always easier to get away with touches when they’d both been fighting the same battle but now that Dazai’s got his life together and sits on the right side of the law, Chuuya doesn’t think he’d be able to get away with asking for a drunken kiss.
Chuuya reaches up to push his knotted hair from his face to clear his field of vision as a church’s clock tower a few blocks over chimes twelve times, and asks himself if coming back to Yokohama for this goddamn wedding was worth dredging up painful memories.
The fire exit door to his side opens to a green dress shirt and crumpled trousers. The shoes are scuffed matte and there’s a stain on the shirt from what looks like tomato sauce or filling from the jam canapes offered out before dinner. Chuuya pretends not to notice him and Dazai doesn’t seem to care, presenting himself to the evening air with his hands in his back pockets as the door swings shut behind him. Chuuya wonders if he’s followed him out here and if he’s going to break the tension that’s been growing between them since he left Yokohama because he’s been too afraid to do it himself.
Dazai reaches over to take the cigarette from Chuuya’s lips and flicks it to the asphalt. “These’ll kill you, you know.”
“Thank fucking God.” It’s out of his mouth before he can take it back. Dazai’s brow settles heavier over his eyes so Chuuya scrambles to cover up his words; he takes a clean cigarette from his pocket and lights it up. “Wise words coming from a suicidal maniac.”
“Well, advice has always been my forté.”
Chuuya offers the packet out for Dazai but he shakes his head. They settle into thick silence that fills Chuuya’s nose and clouds his brain, proving it impossible to think beyond a few shitty conversation starters of so, the weather? , as Dazai kicks rocks out of the asphalt into the road and Chuuya smokes his way through a pack of twenty until his throat is raw.
“How long are you staying for?” Dazai finally asks, voice coming out white in the evening’s biting air.
Chuuya sucks on his teeth. “I’m here for the weekend,” he replies, “but I might head back tomorrow morning.”
A small, sad smile quirks on the edge of Dazai’s mouth. The only sign to show that he’s heard is the small nod he offers that Chuuya refuses to dwell on it for long, choosing instead to take another drag while the cigarette’s still burning. He can’t stand the taste of relit tobacco.
Across the car park a single limousine pulls in and out falls a few guests late to the party, already drunk and sweaty. Chuuya wonders if they’re like him: invitees from a friend of a friend who’re tagging along just to fill in a Friday night because they can’t face the empty, quiet of their homes. He wonders if the days blur together for them too, and if they watch the life they could’ve had slowly slip from their fingers. Chuuya remembers the casual way Dazai had thrown his head back and laughed at whatever stupid joke the bridesmaid had told him in the ballroom and wonders what would’ve happened if he’d been less of a coward and had followed Dazai once he left the Port Mafia; if he could’ve been in on the joke, too.
“You could’ve told me.” Dazai speaks to the open, cold air above instead of Chuuya. His breath fogs out into gray wisps, curling around his hair. It must be past midnight now , Chuuya thinks, with how the moon’s light from above hits the high points of Dazai’s cheeks that he’s only ever seen during early hours of the mornings. He’s always been bony; all elbows and knees with little to no fat to pinch, almost wraith-like when he’d been at his smallest, but he fills his suit now. As he shifts back under the awning to dodge a particularly cold gust of wind the shadows cross over his face; over a chilly flush and the roundness of his cheek’s apples. Chuuya has to wrench his gaze away to stop the lump in his throat from choking him.
“Told you what?” Chuuya asks, dumbfounded, three steps behind Dazai.
“That you were coming back,” he says, tucking his hands into his pockets.
“I don’t ever recall you telling me when you’d come or go,” he replies. The filter of the cigarette is growing warmer and warmer and Chuuya’s throat is already raw enough from the wine and the three cigarettes he’d had before even entering the service. He doesn’t know how much longer he can stomach being in such close proximity with Dazai without the distractions of other guests to fill the silence between them. “Not that I wanted to know, anyway.”
“You didn’t even tell me you’d gone to begin with.”
A pause. “I left years ago, Dazai.”
Dazai’s mouth twitches down at the corner. He tilts his head to the right, gazing down to Chuuya, which he knows aggravates him to no end. Even if they’re on equal-footing, both as powerful as each other, height is the one thing Dazai will always have over him. “How was I meant to know you’d fled to Europe?”
“Don’t patronize me, Dazai. Tilt your head up.”
His lips press into a thin line but he complies. “You didn’t answer my question,” he tells him.
Chuuya’s frown pulls his face into a snarl. “So it’s alright when you do it, but suddenly when I walk away it’s your business?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Well, it sure as hell sounds like it.”
“They’re different, and you know that.” Dazai’s expression sours. He’s still watching him with that curious, pitiful gaze, as if Chuuya deserves to be pitied to begin with. “At least I left you a goodbye-message.”
“You bombed my car. ”
“The sentiment still counts!”
“You are impossible, Dazai.” Chuuya drags so hard on his cigarette he practically leaves teeth marks. “Fucking impossible. Why would you care, anyway?”
The cicadas are suddenly very, very loud. The silence that follows Chuuya’s question has him turning to cast a quick glance to Dazai, only to find him looking right back at him. “...why would I care?”
“Yes, Dazai. Why would you care? ”
“I don’t think you get to decide what I care for, and don’t care for.”
“There we go again,” Chuuya spits. A laugh bubbles out through the clench of his teeth as he shakes his head, rueful, almost comedic. “Always avoiding the question. Always vague. Do you do this just to fuck me off?”
“I’m not—” He takes a step back, hands coming up to run through his fringe. Dazai’s expression is turned away, cast to the car park, but it’s easy to make out the twist of his frown. When he expresses, he expresses with his whole face, and it’s always been one of his biggest downfalls. When Dazai smiles his entire face rises with it, and when he frowns, he feels it with his body and soul. This Dazai is hunched in at the shoulders and knuckles rigid with frustration as he spins back around and pins Chuuya with a grimace. “Why are you so…”
“So what?”
“So difficult!”
Chuuya barks a laugh. “Oh, I’m the difficult one?” His hand comes up to wave to the evening air, spraying ash from the tip of his cigarette with it, gesture grandiose. “You’re the one who speaks in fucking riddles and finds it funny to do this to people?”
“Because you don’t communicate, Chuuya!”
“Oh, pot kettle, you fucking– ”
“Me? Me?--”
“Yes, you, Dazai!”
“Funny that you should be saying that, you fucking–”
“Won’t you both SHUT UP!”
The man from the bushes, pink-faced, pokes up from a throng of nettles. He has the woman’s leg thrown over his shoulder. Her heel falls off with a clatter. “ Seriously! Just shut the fuck up or get a move on!”
“Fuck you!” Chuuya barks, flipping him off with the hand holding the cigarette. “Mind your own goddamn business!”
Dazai sighs through his nose and takes a few paces back to the side, head downturned in thought.
“Pretty difficult when you’re screaming right across from me!”
“Oh, suck my dick,” Chuuya spits. He finishes off his cigarette and stabs it into the wall with enough force that the brick beneath it crumbles. Overkill, but he doesn’t care. He just needs to go.
And so he does. He doesn’t even bother casting a final look to Dazai before he’s off, trudging across the car park to the main road where the buses are still running and he can hail a cab. He doesn’t want any of Mori’s men to pick him up–he doesn’t want to be seen, or tracked, or spoken to. He wants to go home.
“You’re running away again?”
He must see the look on Chuuya’s face, because Dazai’s expression shutters. The warmth evaporates to leave a cold edge of a smile, the same one Chuuya had grown used to seeing back in Port Mafia. It didn’t suit him then and it doesn’t suit him now. It has the wine in his stomach churning over to run up his throat like bile.
“Why do you fucking care?” he spits, continuing on as if his steps hadn’t faltered to a stop at the sight of Dazai’s expression.
His hand reaches out to grab him by the elbow but Chuuya’s quicker than Dazai is and he’s practically in his face before he has enough time to close his fist. “Don’t you dare fucking touch me!”
“What’s wrong with you?” Dazai snarls in return. He tightens his hold on Chuuya’s arm and nullifies whatever force was beginning to build beneath his skin, be it Arahabaki or For the Tainted Sorrow, and draws him close with a sharp pull. “Why won’t you just look at me?”
“Just let me go!”
“No!” He’s whirled around and pressed down against the hood of a stationary limousine. Dazai leans forward, crowding into his space, giving Chuuya little to no space to breathe. His hair is freshly washed and he smells like clean soap and fabric softener with the same spicy, sweet smell from earlier. Chuuya knees quite literally give away beneath him and he ends up sliding down the hood to the ground, mortified, as Dazai looms above, expression shifting from anger to confusion.
“Why can’t you just take a fucking hint, Dazai,” Chuuya utters, defeated, “and just leave me alone?”
His expression twists. “Chuuya…”
“No, Dazai. This isn’t some double-negative of me meaning ‘yes’ when I say ‘no’. I really… really can’t do this.”
“You…you know I never meant for this to happen.”
“Meant what?” Chuuya presses. Dazai’s eyes, dark brown like damp soil, meet his, and they’re sad. His eyes are sad . “Meant what to happen, Dazai?”
The answer falls on deaf ears.
Like a drop of oil in water, a circle spans the floor of the limousine in lime green, sickly bright, spreading quicker than his eyes have time to track. The smell of burning sulfur fills the air–melting tarmac, like a hot day in the city. Both of them part with shock as the circle spans a further meter, Dazai falling over his feet into a car opposite and setting the car alarm in the process. Their eyes meet for the briefest, briefest of seconds, before the the smell of melting tarmac burns his nose and Chuuya realizes that it’s coming from beneath him and that he’s stood in the wet, sticky puddle of tarmac burning hotter than a hundred degrees.
As the circle below spins on its axis, rotating so quick he can’t count its spins, he finds himself looking up to meet Dazai’s eyes across the span of the circle with a what’s going on? but the second he opens his mouth a deafening boom fills the car park, so forcefully it shatters windshields in the vicinity and knocks Chuuya off-kilter to his knees.
The last thing he sees is the sad, loneliness of Dazai’s eyes reflecting bright green as a figure, hooded and dark, kicks the limousine into gear and with it, the circle closes.