Archive of Our Own ^beta

Dazai had fallen asleep at his desk, the monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock at the far end of the room finally getting the best of him. He lies his weary head on the table and falls into the darkness that called out to him, day or night, with ready jaws and knives for teeth.

Chuuya, who had been doing paperwork at his own desk while also keeping watch of the Boss’ office doors, walks in on him. He had only meant to check up on Dazai -- make sure he wasn’t doing anything stupid again -- and then go right back, but seeing him fast asleep makes him stop in his tracks.

He comes closer, as if drawn by some invisible string. He stares at him for a moment: at that face he used to know so well and thought would know him too.

He uses Tainted to float in a warm, raggedy blanket over from a different room, dropping gently onto Dazai once No Longer Human nullifies its gravity with a tangible sigh of relief.

Chuuya turns back to shut the lights off and leave Dazai there, but that is when the man's sleeping form suddenly shifts dramatically on the desk, causing his body to slump over the table and face-plant the Port Mafia's Demon Boss onto the rough carpet floor. 

Chuuya blinks twice, then sighs exasperatedly. At another point in time he might have cackled at what just happened -- taken a picture on his phone, make Dazai regret it later -- but it's been years since he's heard himself laugh.

He doesn’t know how to do it anymore.

He resolves to pick Dazai up and carry him on his back, the way they used to carry one another to HQ when they were still kids. It was usually Dazai who would gather Chuuya's exhausted pieces in the aftermath of a fight and bring him home, dumping him in one of the underground clinics and waiting at his bedside until he woke up again, pissed as all hell that he owed Dazai now for saving him again.

Very rarely did Chuuya return the favor, even though Dazai did always get injured a lot as a scrawny teenager. He was clumsier back then.

Smiled more, too, but Chuuya can't remember what it looked like.

He carries him to the adjoining bedroom near the top floor’s office, not letting himself think too much about how warm and inviting Dazai's body is as he tucks him into the bed that used to belong to Mori once upon a time.

When they were first starting out in the mafia, they'd convince Elise to let them in here when Mori was busy, and, with Q, all four of them would play a stupid card game together on the ornately patterned carpet or watch something that was already playing on the flat-screen TV. Like the vampire he was, Mori always had the AC blasting cold air into the room through the vents, making the two younger kids shiver. It was Chuuya who suggested dragging Mori’s covers over to their spot so they could blanket the little ones. Dazai had protested, saying Mori would probably notice that his expensive silk sheets had been used as a fort by a couple of brats. Chuuya just rolled his eyes, knowing Dazai’d get his head out of his ass once Elise and Q had fallen asleep under their new fort, leaving the two of them alone to sit in the kind of silence they thought they would never run out of.

That was childhood. Their childhood.

It'll never be that way again.

When Chuuya brings the itchy comforter up to Dazai's neck, he only lets himself have one brief look at him before turning around to leave.

Something in the dark grabs his hand.

He looks back to see Dazai, wide awake yet still with that tired look he always had on his face now.

"Stay with me," he says, not asking. Not ordering either. One might even say he’s pleading.

Chuuya blinks at him again, a little surprised, but he doesn't need to be told twice. He shakes off most of his clothes and shuts the door and lights with his Ability before climbing into the bed, keeping his distance and making sure the two of them don’t touch. Dazai is still holding his hand, however, so Chuuya gently wriggles it out and flashes him an empty look before lying down and facing the wall.

"Chuuya," Dazai says, far away.

He doesn't grant him a reply and pretends to be asleep, taking steady breaths just to add to the lie he knows Dazai can see through plain as day.

His entire body freezes the second he feels familiar arms wrap around him. The chill of it is quickly forgotten once Dazai clutches him -- hard -- against his chest. So hard Chuuya can feel his heart beating underneath the bandages and fabric: like it had been locked up and told to never come out.

He remains still. Quietly, Dazai twists his smaller body so that he’s on his other side, facing him. Dull blue eyes meet bottomless black ones.

Neither of them had any light in themselves.

Chuuya gawks at him, very numb. He doesn't even blink. Or breathe. Dazai does the same, but it seems like he’s waiting with the anxious way he’s biting his lip -- something he’d always done, even as a child, when he wanted something he’d never let himself ask for.

Chuuya understands. Without a word, he leans forward to brush moppy bangs off of his ex-partner’s forehead. Before he can hesitate, he feels himself place a light kiss there, not lingering or sentimental at all. Like the lips of death. Or wind over a grave.

It's enough, despite. More than enough.

When Chuuya pulls back he doesn't know what to expect, half ready to return to the farthest side of the bed yet also bracing himself with the possibility of Dazai kicking him out of the room altogether, even though he'd only done what he used to do when they were younger. When Dazai couldn't sleep. Or had a nightmare.

Days gone by, never to return.

Since he'd become the Boss, the boy Chuuya had grown up with and trusted so blindly had vanished, replaced by this soulless husk of a man that contorted old memories and used it as cruel leverage. Everything changed then. The flames blew out. They weren't partners anymore.

Before he knew it, Dazai was gone. Worse than gone: he was their leader. And Chuuya was just his bodyguard.

He traded in what they had for a crown made of thorns. Dragged himself into hell and insisted that it was for the best.

Some days Chuuya really did want to be the one to kill him.

Most days he thinks he's the one that died first.

During the past four years, they'd never been as physically close with one another as they are now. Not unless they were in the middle of a battle or fucking each other mindlessly to pretend like there is still something between them that counted as love. Or even hate. Anything would have been a welcome reprieve -- solid proof that they were still one soul in two bodies, rather than a pair of corpses who’d forgotten how to breathe -- but of course, nothing came.

Looking into Dazai's eyes now, he can see it.

That flicker of the boy he used to be.

He can see it because that's when he understands Dazai's going to kill himself tomorrow, and there is nothing he can do or say to save him this one last time.

Chuuya feels his throat crack and dissolve atop his tongue, like pink pills melting into bright scarlet against wet blood. Tears blur his vision, along with a red-hot anger that just asked why?

Why are you leaving me again.  

Why can't I come with you.

Why would you make me live in a world where you're not there.

Fuck you.

A thousand times, fuck you.

He only cries for a few seconds, letting out a whimper instead of more tears. Very quickly his eyes run dry, and the fury seeps out as quietly as water trickled down a car’s window after a beautiful rainfall.

He's really tired.

He just wants to go to sleep.

So he lets it end. He disregards rank and history and every brutal, unforgiving fight they'd had these past four years and pulls Dazai in, willing himself to remember his warmth, his body, how easily they fit into each other -- like puzzle pieces -- even after all this time.

Almost gratefully, Dazai buries his face in Chuuya's collar, inhaling the scent he's long since memorized but had been deprived of for so long.

He thought he could go on without doing this: sleep and wake up tomorrow as if it was just another day, without Chuuya, but maybe every world -- every life -- that they’re both in knows that it matters how this stops.

It matters how they say goodbye.

When both their eyes finally close, it ends.

They let it end.

It's the last thing they'll ever do for each other. Because tomorrow, Dazai will wander away to a place Chuuya cannot follow.

He hates him so much. He's the love of his life.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you .