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Inviting Dazai over for Shabbat was something Chuuya would come to regret in about half an hour, when Dazai was supposed to show up. He was already starting to regret it actually. Dazai, in his house eating food that he made, with lit, burning candles.
It was a disaster waiting to happen.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to rescind his offer. Even if he did, he highly doubted that Dazai would even listen and stop breaking into his house. He’s had to replace his locks 7 times this month alone. Bastard wouldn’t use the keys Chuuya had thrown at him in an attempt to make him stop.
Dazai had to take some sick delight in picking his locks so much that he was forced to blow money on fixing it over and over, like the asshole he was. Just last week he had completely fucking broken the lock, leaving the pieces outside the front door. It was an unnecessary thing to do, considering Dazai can break in pretty much anywhere completely undetected, which meant he went out of his damn way to break it.
When Chuuya kicked open his door in agitation, he was unsurprised to find Dazai sprawled on his couch with some ocean documentary on his TV. He was too tired to completely brawl with Dazai over it, having just come back from a mission, but he did throw a knife at him. Dazai unfortunately dodged, as Chuuya knew he would. Just once he wished Dazai would surprise him in a way that wasn’t meant to piss him off.
Chuuya got back at him for that one by covering his office in copious amounts of micro glitter. Dazai was still finding it on him and his papers, and it was the best feeling to see Dazai stalking the halls with a vaguely sparkly coat. He was no doubt thinking of something worse to enact back, but it was worth it. Hopefully.
Dazai could be more than cruel when he felt like it, something Chuuya knew quite well, often being on the receiving end of it if they weren’t on a mission or if Dazai wasn’t needed in the basements or something.
Chuuya was probably going to need to reference his list of annoying to downright vindictive things to do to Dazai after tonight. One of the things he was really looking forward to having a reason to do was convincing Mori that Dazai needed to dress up as a courtesan for a mission. He had suggested it once, but no, the boss explicitly stated that Chuuya needed to be the one to crossdress as Dazai would be swaying businessmen into signing with Mori Corps.
The expression on Dazai’s face when he suggested it though was more than satisfying though, and he wants to see how Dazai would look once he actually had to follow through.
Pushing how he would mess with Dazai and how annoying the other was just on general principle to the back of his mind, Chuuya moved his attention to the complete actual meal he had prepared. He only went all out for Shabbat if he didn’t have a mission, and since the Port Mafia doesn’t sleep or rest, it was a rare occurrence for him to do much more than light the candles if he even managed to make it home before sundown.
Considering that it was highly unlikely that Dazai properly celebrated anything ever and since Chuuya was such a nice person, he took time out of his afternoon to make it a nice dinner. Well, as nice as anything involving Dazai could get.
Challah, wine, and a full meal were completely set out and ready to be served. Chuuya knew Dazai wouldn’t eat much of it even if he wasn’t being a dick and insulting his cooking, but he figured that whatever was left would be good enough to be his next few meals. If Dazai didn’t make him try to put a blade or whatever was close by through his one good eye, he might even offer to send some of the leftovers home with him.
He could not believe he was being so nice to the bastard. He had to be coming down with something. Chuuya’s mind flicked back to when he extended the offer to Dazai to come over for the holidays, the memory of Dazai looking down with what might have been the ghost of a smile.
It made him feel sick and warm all at once, and for some unknown fucking reason, he wanted to see it again. He wasn’t sure what the feeling would be called exactly, but it was disgusting.
Chuuya had just set about setting the candle holders on the table–one for each of them–when the tell-tale sound of the lock-being picked alerted him to someone at the door. He sighed, setting them down heavily on the table. By the time he turned around, his front door was already swinging open to reveal Dazai, typical annoying grin on his face.
One of these days, someone sent to assassinate him would be the one picking his lock and he would be preparing to curse out Dazai, defenses completely down, only to be met with a blade or bullet. He didn’t doubt that he could crush them easily, but it’d be Dazai’s fault entirely.
“Chuuya~” Dazai trilled, slamming the door behind him as if Chuuya hadn’t noticed his presence yet. “How has my favorite hat-rack been?” Dazai made himself at home as he always did, throwing his coat carelessly over the couch and slipping off his shoes as he sauntered inside.
“You have keys,” Chuuya pointed out, ignoring the jab at his perfectly fine fashion choices.
“Ah, are you inviting me in more often?” Dazai’s grin got impossibly wider. Chuuya blanched.
“No. No, absolutely not.”
“Chuuya’s so cruel,” Dazai shrugged, focusing his attention on the table. “A candlelit dinner, for me? I accept.”
“Can you go fuck yourself,” Chuuya snapped at him. Dazai raised an eyebrow in response. Well, he could have raised both of them, but it wasn’t as if he could see under his bandages, thankfully. He didn’t want to see more of the other than he had to.
“Are you wanting to watch?” Dazai trilled again, and Chuuya felt his face get hot. Probably in rage.
“No, oh my God shut the fuck up.”
Dazai snickered at that, but fell silent as he flit through the kitchen, hovering off and around Chuuya like a particularly annoying fly or gnat. His silence was short lived, however, and after a few minutes it was replaced by Dazai’s incessant babbling. Chuuya tuned it out easily enough, not even bothering to ask Dazai to help set the table.
If he had thought he could get Dazai to do anything helpful, he would have been a fool.
It was a dance they had done multiple times in the past: Dazai would break in and demand Chuuya feed him, refusing to help at all, instead only following him around like a lost cat. It felt a little different this time, but the basics were still the same.
Chuuya skirted around Dazai as he set the table, keeping an eye on the time so he’d be lighting the candles exactly 18 minutes before the sun set. Dazai, the bastard, did nothing to help at all. He didn’t expect him to in the first place, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. Such was the existence of Dazai.
In no time, he had set all the dishes on the table, making a circle around the candles still unlit in the center. With another glance at the clock, he dug the matches out of a drawer. Dazai and fire were never a good combination, something Chuuya was well aware of. Bastard was probably a pyromaniac or something.
Last week on a mission they razed a warehouse to the ground and lit it on fire to destroy evidence, but when Dazai dropped the first match, he looked a little too gleeful. The spark in his eyes as the building caught, courtesy of copious amounts of gasoline, was almost chilling.
Nonetheless, he invited the bastard over so he had to deal with the consequences of his willing actions. Chuuya ignored Dazai as he pulled out a match, striking it on the box and watching the flame go up immediately.
“You can light the other one,” he told Dazai as he leaned over the table and held the match to the wick until it caught. He dropped the match onto the tray the candles were on so it would go out by itself.
He handed over the box of matches, praying that Dazai didn’t decide to set something on fire that shouldn’t be. Like the time he lit Chuuya’s hair on fire because he wanted to see if it matched the flames. Asshole.
To his credit, Dazai only hummed and took the matches, having to strike it twice before it caught. Chuuya didn’t miss how his visible eye tracked the flame with something akin to hunger, leaning over the table to light the other candle.
Dazai looked as if he was considering doing something that Chuuya truly didn’t want to deal with, so he smacked his hands, causing Dazai to drop the match onto the tray, putting it out almost instantly. And then he grabbed Dazai by the back of his neck and pulled him away from the open flame.
Dealing with a house fire was not on his list of plans for the day. It never was, but Dazai was one of the worst people to have in your house.
“I was using that,” Dazai whined, staring forlornly at the two burnt out matches.
“Too damn bad,” Chuuya snapped at him, flicking him on the side of his head. “If you so much as think about touching those candles I will smash your fucking head into the wall, and make sure it doesn’t kill you. It’ll just hurt like hell.”
“Chuuya’s so mean.”
“And you’re fucking annoying.”
“You wound me. Should you really speak to your master like this?”
“I’ll talk to you however I want,” Chuuya glared at him, and realized his error when Dazai began to open his mouth again to say something else completely unnecessary. “And I’m not your fucking dog,” he hastily tacked on, eye twitching at Dazai’s laughter.
Chuuya closed his eyes for a second, questioning why he did this in the first place. What had he done for God to punish him with someone like Dazai? Other than the mass-murder. Actually, maybe that might have something to do with it. Damn.
“I hate you,” Chuuya told him simply before forcibly moving the conversation on. “Say the damn blessing over your candle,” he said, already lifting his hands to cover his eyes. To his shock, Dazai didn’t make a comment criticizing him, instead copying his movements.
Another shock was Dazai muttering the words without actual prodding. Chuuya followed suit.
“I always do this by myself,” Dazai offered up completely unprompted as Chuuya poured the wine into two glasses.
“Yeah?” Was all Chuuya said as he sat the bottle down. He wanted to pry, but had learned long ago that trying to learn anything about Dazai he didn’t offer willingly was like pulling teeth, and usually responded to with vitriol. Trying to get his favorite colour out of him took a solid week.
“Yeah,” Dazai said simply, dropping into a chair. He didn’t offer anything else, so Chuuya didn’t push. He had questions, sure, but they weren’t worth being verbally eviscerated for right now, so he only nodded at that, and began Kiddush. Challah blessings came after that, and for some reason, Dazai was subdued and quiet throughout the whole thing.
It would be nice if it wasn’t slightly unnerving.
“I made you crab, none of that canned shit,” he nodded towards two dishes, watching Dazai carefully as he lifted the wine to his mouth.
Dazai opened his mouth, no doubt to be an ass, but he shut it as fast as he opened it, and tilted his head down a little again. The one eye he could see was wide but pointedly looking away from him and the table.
Seriously, why was Dazai acting like this over fucking crab. Chuuya was about to call Dazai ridiculous when he noticed he had the faintest smile on his face.
Oh.
Oh.
He liked seeing that look on Dazai’s face.
That was a devastating realization. He didn’t like anything about Dazai, but it was undeniable that looking at Dazai as the boy smiled to himself, eyes to the side, made him feel so incredibly warm.
He liked Dazai.
In itself, that was a problem. Dazai was making him feel gooey. Major point being this was Dazai. Dazai fucking Osamu, Demon Prodigy of the Port Mafia. The guy who he fought with on a daily basis and had watched cut peoples hands off with child-like glee. The same guy who moved people like they were chess pieces.
Fuck.
He downed his wine, intent on ignoring it. By the time he looked back at the table again, Dazai was back to normal–as normal as Dazai was anyway–and was picking through the plates on the table.
This revelation did not happen, Chuuya told himself as he served his own dinner. God this was the worst thing to ever happen to him.
“You’re such a good cook, you should be a housewife,” Dazai smirked at him, lifting up a boiled crab leg. And the feeling was gone. The want to see Dazai genuinely smile again was not though.
“And you’re a piece of shit that would come home to your wife and not even look at your kids.” Maybe Chuuya was just talking, but the other thing that would have come out of his mouth would be telling Dazai to kill himself, which Dazai would try and do right then. At his table, without hesitation. Not something he felt like dealing with, and Dazai got creative. He didn’t want to see that creativeness tonight, especially if it was just because Dazai was petty.
Dazai blinked. “When did we have kids?” The fact that Dazai instantly put Chuuya in the place of his wife did not get lost on him. Normally it probably would have, but with his recent discovery it most certainly did not.
“Oh, so you forgot your own children? You’re so shitty,” Chuuya clicked his tongue at him, cutting into the crab on his own plate. It was only palatable when cooked, he had no idea how Dazai willingly ate that canned crap every day.
“We don’t have children,” Dazai stressed, and Chuuya could hear the bemused smile on his face. Fuck. Again.
“Sure, that’s what a deadbeat like yourself would say.”
“I would be the best father,” Dazai argued. No doubt he was just arguing on principle.
“No you wouldn’t,” he countered.
“How would you know, you’ve never seen me interact with kids.” Now that was a bold faced lie. That Q kid was enough to prove his point. So was his pet project, Akutagawa. Chuuya gave him a flat look, which Dazai easily returned.
Were his eyes always this pretty? He hopes they were because otherwise he’s a fool. Chuuya shook his head and looked away first. He didn’t feel like confronting that right now.
“Eat your food, I worked hard on that,” Chuuya gestured to his hardly eaten meal.
“What a loyal dog,” Dazai sighed but picked up another crab leg. There was more on his plate than he was going to eat. Way more. Chuuya will never understand why he fills his plate yet doesn’t even eat a quarter of it. He had asked once, and the verbal wounds Dazai inflicted after he pushed for the answer took a few days to heal all the way.
He didn’t learn the answer, and wasn’t inclined to ask ever again.
What he did do though, was relish the relatively calm silence between the two of them, watching Dazai’s content expression as he ate. He kind of wanted to see that every day, not just the empty glare he gave everyone.
This was the worst.
Chuuya ate everything on his plate and then some, ignoring the side-eye from Dazai. He was literally feeding himself and an actual god, so Dazai could keep his snarky comments to himself. Dazai, on the other hand, had mostly pushed around his food instead of actually eating it.
He didn’t comment on it, only clearing Dazai’s plate with his after he had finished and Dazai stopped poking his dinner, pushing forward towards Chuuya as he always did. “I’m putting some of this,” he gestured vaguely at what was left on the table, “in a box for you to take with. Although,” he glared at Dazai with his next words, “most of it will be left in my fridge because someone refuses to cook for himself.”
Dazai flashed him a grin. Bastard.
Chuuya set about clearing the table, knowing Dazai wouldn’t offer to help at all. As usual. He decided to leave the physical labor of washing them until later, only putting things in the fridge or back in the oven to stay warm, and then setting the dishes in the sink.
He could feel Dazai’s eye on him the whole time, the other boy having stood up at some point to hover around Chuuya again. At some point, Dazai tried to trip him, but only succeeded in getting kicked in the shin.
Finally, finally, the table was done, so Dazai took that as his que to fuck off to Chuuya’s couch and turn on another ocean documentary. It was an interesting habit of Dazai’s, and he had caught him on more than one occasion crouched by the river watching fish swim.
It’d be endearing if it wasn’t Dazai.
Knowing it was futile to try and kick him out, Chuuya only settled a little away from him on the couch, leaning across the coffee table to snag an old paper-back that Ane-san had gifted him. He pulled off one of his gloves and tossed it onto the table, not bothering to try and turn the pages with the leather. He ignored Dazai watching him do so.
Chuuya flicked the book open and leaned back into the plush cushions, content to fall into the unwilling routine Dazai had established months ago. The sound of water and a narrator's voice faded into the background easily, and he moved through the pages relatively quickly.
Dazai hadn’t said a word in a while though, and Chuuya had started to think he’d fallen asleep. He flicked his eyes over to the other boy, a little surprised to see him still awake, leaned back into the cushions and eyes watching the screen with no indication of moving anytime soon.
Like he thought earlier, it would be endearing if it wasn’t Dazai. The almost excited look in his eyes made him rethink his statement though. Fucking Dazai.
Chuuya himself felt his eye-lids getting heavy. With a sigh he glanced at the clock. More time had gone by than he had thought, the digital face flashing 13:07. He had no idea where the time had gone. He snapped the book closed a little louder than he had intended to, and felt Dazai’s eye flick to him for a moment to see the source of the sound before moving back to the TV.
It was prime mafia hours, but he had the next two days off, and Dazai at the very least had tomorrow off and a penchant for avoiding work. As mafia, their sleep schedules were so incredibly fucked that they take whatever chance they can to crash and try to get a few hours of sleep before throwing themselves back into the fray.
Because of that, Chuuya decided he was going to bed. Time wasn’t real. “I’m going to bed,” Chuuya stated, standing up and stretching his arms above his head. Dazai finally turned to look at him, but Chuuya spoke before he could. “I know your leech ass is going to stay here overnight, so there’s blankets in the hall closet, and the clothes you left last time you were here are also in the closet.”
“Aw, how sweet of chibikko to let me move in~”
“Fuck off,” Chuuya gave him a half-hearted glower. “Don’t leave my front door open again if you’re gone before I get up tomorrow.” Dazai made a noncommittal noise as he turned around to look at him.
“If you’re making breakfast then I won’t even put hair-remover in your shampoo,” Dazai smiled up at him as if the words tumbling from his lips didn’t make Chuuya scowl.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
Dazai only gave him an expectant grin.
“Fine. Fine, fuck you, I’ll cook.”
Dazai cheered at that, slumping back around. “Night Slug, try not to snore so loud you shake the house. I need my beauty sleep, you know.”
Chuuya didn’t deign that with a response, instead slapping the back of Dazai’s head before he left, snapping the lights off and plunging the living room into darkness. The light from the TV bathed the room in blue, and lit up the half-smile on Dazai’s face. At least it might have been a smile. Either way it turned Chuuya’s insides to goo again, seeing Dazai tucked up against the couch and watching his stupid ocean documentaries.
“G’Night bastard,”’ Chuuya called to him, and turned on his heel. He was going to spend part of the night staring at the wall miserably as his new revelations rolled around in his head. He didn’t hear Dazai say anything back, which was good. He didn’t want to hear the fuckers voice ever again.
With that in mind, he stalked to his bedroom and shut the door with a little more force than necessary.
Fucking Dazai Osamu.