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The thing that Dazai has always hated the most about himself is how little sense he makes. One might think that in a world brimming with logical physical laws, people would adapt, shape themselves into some sort of formula that makes sense, yet here he is: twenty-two years old, owner of two successful bars on two different continents, out in the daylight after a lifetime in his father’s shadow, a superhuman group of friends, a startling amount of strangers who have taken a liking to him, an apartment with a view at the Eiffel tower, in a relationship with the love of his life – and still.
Still, it isn’t enough.
It’s not like he was foolish enough to believe that living a better life would erase that invisible plague that has been making him sick for years now. But a naïve part of him sort of hoped that it would become easier dealing with it, at the very least. Everything has been lighter since he stepped out of the plane in Paris and offered Chuuya his heart on a delicate silver platter.
For the past six months, he has been a sparrow, fluttering from cherry blossom tree to beech and back again, waking up with the sun in the east and going to bed with the sun on the other side of the bed. For the past six months, Dazai has been good. High on cloud nine, on Parisian air, and on Chuuya.
Then spring came and instead of bringing allergies and inconsistent weather, it brought a Remington 870 and 10 bullets and now his wings are bleeding, his nest plunged to the ground and ruined, and he has lost the ability to chirp.
It is back, and as if trying to make up for the atypically good period of his life, it has returned with a vengeance, slurping away at Dazai’s lifeblood to leave him with dirty dishwater in its stead.
Life is good. He is not.
And it doesn’t make any sense.
So he does what he is best at: he retreats into his shameful cave of hopelessness and isolation to wait for the grey monotony to pass.
“Heyyy,” the person on the other end of the line greets him, elongating this one simple syllable into something joyful and affectionate. “I’ll be there in ten. Hopefully. I’m not sure if the trains are willing to work with me today.”
Vibrant and infectious energy clings to the mere sound of Chuuya’s voice. The thing is that Dazai seems to be immune to it. Which is why he rubs his face with one hand and says, “About that. I thought I’d be done until now but I’m pretty swamped. I’m not going to make it if I want to finish at all tonight.”
“Oh.”
Dazai cringes.
“Okay, I hear you,” Chuuya adds immediately after. Dazai’s lungs open up again, but the air remains tepid and stale. “That sucks. I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you, too,” Dazai murmurs. The worst thing is that it’s not a lie. Of course, he is going to miss Chuuya – even if they are only talking about a night out with his college friends. But even though Chuuya’s absence always hurts, Dazai’s presence tonight – or any time lately – would probably hurt the two of them more. Because Chuuya’s still floating up there with the sparkling stars, and Dazai is not, and he will be damned if he dragged Chuuya down with him. Because the thought of spending hours surrounded by people that are too loud and smells that are too strong and a world that is simply too much makes Dazai’s mind detach from his body. Because the numbness has been eating its way through his skin the entire day already and there is nothing but emptiness for him to present to the world.
“Who’ll make out with me when I’m drunk and horny?” Chuuya asks with an overdramatic, false whine in his drawl.
Dazai coughs out a quiet laugh. “I really am sorry. I… I wish I could go, make everyone around us uncomfortable.”
That’s not a lie either even if it technically is. Dazai does wish he would want that. Wishes he could. Wishes his love for Chuuya was stronger than that untamable beast of apathy gnawing at his brain. It isn’t.
“No, it’s all right. It’s not your fault that your business is so successful that it has you stuck there all night.” Chuuya grunts out a humming noise then. “Well, it sort of is, but you know what I mean.”
“So you’re going to be okay?”
“Sure. Can I still come over afterwards?”
“Please do.”
Going out feels like too much. Getting to snuggle a drunk and needy Chuuya is just the amount of energy that Dazai still has in store – and if not, he will pretend to be asleep by the time, Chuuya crawls into bed. Doable.
“Good,” Chuuya says, the smile on his face evident in his voice. “Because my parents always get pissy when I come home drunk.”
“Probably because you eat their entire fridge and then fall asleep with the TV running on the highest volume.”
“That happened one time. Let it go already.”
“Never. You were watching Hannah Montana: the Movie.”
“I was feeling nostalgic.”
“I know, I know. Very cute.”
“Shut up. Didn’t you say you’re flooded with work or something? Go and do that instead of bothering me.”
“Okay,” Dazai says, his smile already dimming. “Have fun. I love you.”
“Love you too, you ass.”
The line goes dead. Chuuya’s words echo for another blissful second or so before they fade into oblivion along with the rest of the world.
Even though skipping the night out and getting to marinate in his body heat and misery all by himself should bring relief, relief decides to stay home tonight. Instead, it’s shame and guilt that knock at his door. Loud and insistent. And then, last but not least, loneliness, the most invasive guest of the three of them. Wrapping its ivory pale arms around Dazai and squeezing him until their bodies dissolve and fuse, becoming one.
It doesn’t make any sense.
He just talked to his boyfriend. A boyfriend who told him that he loves Dazai despite canceling on him, and a boyfriend that will come home to him tonight, smelling like sugary cocktails and fruit wine and peaches and home, and who will hold Dazai like he is his little jetpack – a boyfriend who is so much stronger than that pesky loneliness.
It doesn’t make sense to have it here.
To have it at all.
Dazai is not alone. Not anymore.
He isn’t the twenty-year-old anymore who drinks until the numbness of liquor replaces the numbness of life, alone in some hotel room because he can’t stand being in the same house as his family. Or even as his friends.
He isn’t the eighteen-year-old accepting so many pills from strangers that it lands him in the hospital.
He isn’t the sixteen-year-old that watches a mother he never had to give her two children a childhood he never had.
He isn’t the twelve-year-old sitting on the floor of the bathroom and discovering that the sharp blade of a razor can cut through the oxidizing fog in his veins after years of being starved for air.
He isn’t the six-year-old boy finding his mother in the bathtub. Heavy and lifeless, just like the next fifteen years of his life.
He is twenty-two years and he is not alone anymore.
So why does his brain not believe the same?
Dazai checked his medication a few days ago, just to make sure that he didn’t accidentally forget to take it for three weeks. He didn’t. He takes it diligently. Chuuya even makes sure of it.
He tries. He has been trying so hard, and still –
Still.
Unlike what he told Chuuya, Dazai wrapped up the pile of paperwork on his desk half an hour ago. He considers staying here in Lupin anyway, to make his lie believable at least – he used to care about that once – but the barren walls of his office eat away at his skin even more, so he decides to be somewhere that will hopefully feel somewhat less lonely.
In theory and on paper, he lives alone, but the truth is that Chuuya is as much of an habitant there as him – maybe even more than him since he sometimes spends time there when Dazai is in Yokohama. The apartment is full of drawers that belong to Chuuya, full of his favorite food, printed pictures with him in it, furniture and décor that he helped Dazai pick, full of the scent of his trademark cologne, and most of all of the memories made by and with Chuuya. Every step that Dazai takes reminds him of something.
Stepping through the front door, for example, reminds him of Halloween, Chuuya ranting about the work attitude of his peers and then apologizing to Dazai as if Dazai’s mental sanity wasn’t just a poorly done patchwork.
The kitchen is where they discovered that cooking together can be fun if they put their heads together. Where they have tasted each other’s dishes and each other’s mouths. Where Chuuya forgets to drink his coffee because he is too busy telling Dazai about all the things he still has to do for his classes.
Then there is the living room. That’s where Chuuya danced for Dazai, where he took Dazai’s breath away, and where he gives him back air to breathe with every radiant smile and every snort and every word. It’s also the place that they first inaugurated by fucking on the floor like animals.
Dazai switches on the light in the bathroom, not even having to close his eyes to see Chuuya right here next to him, brushing his teeth and trying to speak at the same time because he is too impatient to wait. He lets the darkness swallow it again when he stares long enough to realize that he is, in fact, alone, Chuuya somewhere in a bar or a club, probably inhaling his third drink by now.
Stepping into the bedroom is the closest thing to coming home aside from touching Chuuya. It’s pure and dirty and raw at the same time, memories of sweat and heavy breaths and the smell of sex, and of falling asleep wrapped up in each other, of hearing Chuuya say I love you for the first time – of hearing anyone say it to him for the first time, of hot tears colliding. The bedroom is Dazai’s sanctuary, but it only takes him to lie down and blink a few times to realize that a sanctuary is only worth so much when no one’s there to save you.
By itself, it’s just a place.
Not more and not less than that.
He’s still lying in the same spot with the same clothes on when the muffled sounds of footsteps invade the ringing silence in his head. Dazai only has the time to begin prying his eyes open before a familiar weight drapes over his back. Peaches, cigarette smoke, and candy-cotton gum surround him as Chuuya swings one leg over his thighs and uses the arms that he curls around Dazai’s neck to press himself closer.
“Hey, you.”
Dazai wanted to be either asleep or at least with a believable smile on his face when Chuuya came back, but he supposes falling into bed in work clothes will sell the lie, too.
“Hi.” He lifts his head to take quick stock of Chuuya: eyes closed, cheeks dimpled, a content smile around his lips. “Missed you.”
Chuuya hums in his throat and squeezes Dazai tighter. “Swamped at work, huh?”
Dazai stills. It’s only then that he catches a glimpse of his watch – a mere hour has passed since he called Chuuya. His body and mind betrayed him once again, convincing him that it was already well past midnight and not… half-past nine. “Power nap,” he lies as his eyes squint back at Chuuya who neither moves to question Dazai’s words nor explain himself. “What are you doing here so early? Did something happen?”
“Nah,” Chuuya replies. That’s all he says.
“Chuuya?”
The wariness in Dazai’s eyes must finally convince him to open his eyes, blinking a little, his relaxed smile softening the fierce obsidian color in them. “I don’t know. It was fine. I just felt like…” He shrugs vaguely. “… coming home early and sleeping, I guess.”
“You didn’t have a fight or anything?” Dazai asks, still not entirely convinced. Chuuya sounds like he has barely even touched any alcohol tonight. For a nineteen-year-old Parisian who’s about to start his second semester of university, that’s unprecedented.
Snorting, Chuuya rolls to the side, rubbing his eyes with both of his hands. “What would I be fighting about with those people? I literally just hang out with them to get drunk and to pass time between classes. That’s it.”
“You can pick fights with anyone, love. Trust me.”
“Well, I didn’t.” His head tilts to look at him. “It was fine, really. I just… Shirase found himself a chick that he’ll suck face with all night and the other guys, I’m not that close to. It just wasn’t that fun without you there… as lame as that makes me sound.”
“Oh.” Dazai’s concern eases and makes more room for that guilt again, that shame. “Sorry.”
Chuuya’s eyes scan him like he is trying to confirm Dazai’s excuse of being swamped at work by looking for evidence. And for a second, Dazai is sure that he will spot the lie and see past the façade. Dazai might be a master at pretending, but he has his weak spots. Chuuya is his weak spot. And Chuuya has been learning the language of Dazai for quite some time now.
But then Chuuya gives him another dimpled smile and says, “It’s all right. I like this much more than a club with a thousand sweaty people anyway.”
Dazai should be relieved. He is. Being caught in a lie is not only uncomfortable but dangerous. Dazai has sworn to not tell Chuuya any lies anymore. Not after the lie that almost broke them back in Japan. But relief is a flimsy presence tonight. Everything else is so much more raucous.
The completely irrational spark of disappointment, for example. For Chuuya not seeing past the mask that Dazai puts on for both of their sake even though he should have.
It doesn’t make any sense.
It’s unfair to want Chuuya to know that he’s been doing worse again when Dazai has not even hinted at it – when he would most likely deny that he is if Chuuya brought it up.
But even though the logic fails to exist, the feeling still does.
A tiny, bitter seed of why can’t he see it? And does he not care? And he should see it. Tiny, but sometimes that’s all it takes to begin the growth of something much bigger, of something that will begin to fester like mold with time.
Too many beliefs that still dominate Dazai’s life to this day have started this way. It’s why he never bothered to ask for help from any of his friends – why he still can’t even after what they have been through last year. It’s why he grew up resenting Hayashi. She looked away. She saw but she pretended not to because it made her uncomfortable. More than anything, Dazai resents that ignorance.
But Chuuya…
Chuuya is the opposite of ignorant.
He never missed a chance to call Dazai out on his bullshit. He saw his relationship with his father and expressed how much he disliked it. He spoke up over and over, so…
So that bitter thing of a voice that’s telling Dazai that he deserves to be heard when he isn’t even speaking up is wrong.
Sure, life would be easier if a quarantine sign would pop up every time Dazai started feeling worse again. Or if he started smelling like antiseptics. Or literally, anything that wouldn’t require him to vocalize those few shameful words to let the people he cares about know that something isn’t right. It’s invisible and it’s irrational and it’s embarrassing but it’s also paralyzing.
Life would be easier, yes.
But that’s not how it works.
Dazai can’t condemn Chuuya for not crossing the lines that he drew.
So he gathers what little courage he possesses, takes a deep inhale, and speaks. “I lied. When I told you I was swamped with work, I mean.” He doesn’t want to see that trust between them, honed over the last few months and still so, so fragile, dwindle. Yet he can’t seem to tear his eyes away from Chuuya either. “I didn’t feel like going out, so I… I lied.”
Chuuya doesn’t look away either. To Dazai’s surprise, he actually reaches out to him, even if it’s just to trail his fingertips over the length of Dazai’s wrist. “Yeah? Did you manage to get some rest?” he asks eventually.
No talk about lying and making excuses. Not even a question about why. Why Dazai doesn’t feel like going on and why he felt the need to lie about it. Just… just this gentle concern.
“Some, yeah,” Dazai answers, voice thick with cotton. “I don’t… I don’t really feel like doing much of anything these days.”
“I’m sorry,” Chuuya murmurs and crawls closer while still leaving space between them. “I wish I could do something to make you feel better.”
Maybe Dazai was wrong.
Maybe Chuuya knew all along already. Why else isn’t he even remotely surprised about this revelation?
Dazai isn’t really sure how to catalog that feeling in his throat. Is it relief, after all? Comfort? Gratitude? Or perhaps just confusion?
“You do,” Dazai murmurs. “You do it all the time.”
Chuuya will never be able to take the sickness away. He’s not a pill of sertraline. He shouldn’t have to. He does, however, make everything else better – the good days, the bad days, the days before, the days after – and that’s more than Dazai has ever had before.
Chuuya’s matted lashes flutter like he’s startled to hear that before the surprise bleeds into something quiet and light, a small smile, that he plants on the corner of Dazai’s mouth after he edges even closer with a hand stroking up and down Dazai’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, too,” Dazai says then, encouraged by the acceptance that’s settling in the air like dust.
“What for?”
“For lying.”
Chuuya emits a soft snort. “You do know that I don’t expect you to bare your entire heart and soul to me every time we talk, right? Especially on the phone.”
Startled, Dazai blinks. “Yeah, but… I promised not to lie anymore.”
“You told me just now, didn’t you?” And then Chuuya sighs. “Dazai, I trust you. Of course I want you to feel comfortable enough to tell me when you’re not doing okay, but I also know that it will take time to get to that place after you’ve spent your whole life doing the opposite.”
“So. You knew?”
Chuuya’s hand comes to rest over Dazai’s heart. “I guessed. You’ve seemed more tired lately. Considering how much you’ve been working, flying back and forth, it could have been just that, but.” He shrugs. “I thought that it might have been more something else.”
“And you were okay waiting for me to tell you first?” Dazai wants to know, half-curious and half… he’s not sure what. Whether it’s that seed or something else.
“Yeah. I didn’t want you to feel pressured to talk about it.” Then Chuuya eyes him. “Should I not have?”
That’s the question that Dazai doesn’t have the answer to either.
He lets out a breath, face sagging with exhaustion. “You shouldn’t do or not do anything, Chuuya. It’s not your responsibility to deal with this.”
Maybe the truth is that there is no perfect answer.
Whether Chuuya approaches him first or lets Dazai take the first step… it will be uncomfortable either way. Maybe it’s not about finding a solution that doesn’t hurt at all, but one that hurts the least.
That makes Chuuya lift his head and brace it in his palm to squint at him, though. “Not my responsibility my ass. If I can help in any way, of course I'll do that.”
A slow smile spreads across his face. “Always so ambitious. Even now, huh?”
Rolling his eyes, Chuuya shoves the hand away that was going to pat his cheek – but he doesn’t let go of it, squeezing it tightly between his fingers. “Just… you know.” He blows out an uncertain breath. “Tell me if there is something that I can do to make it easier for you. Even if it’s giving you space. I love being here but I don’t have to be all the time.”
Dazai wishes he had enough vocabulary and enough courage to tell Chuuya just how he likes having him here. How much it helps to keep the inherent loneliness that comes attached to the plague in his head at bay.
Maybe someday he will, but for now, he settles on looping his arms around Chuuya’s chest and pulling him closer until he can keep his face buried in his abs. They’re pretty tight and hard but a little softer when a sigh leaves Chuuya.
“I like having you here. You make everything so much more tolerable.”
Chuuya lets out another breath like he’s not quite convinced that Dazai knows what he’s saying. Maybe Dazai isn’t. On some days space is what he needs. Maybe someday he will ask Chuuya for that. But it’s not what he needs or wants at the moment. Right now everything that makes the limbo feel a little less lonely and a little more finite is already here.
“Well, okay.” He hugs Dazai closer to his body and drops a kiss on the top of his head. “Just making sure.”
It’s enough. For now, it is more than enough.