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i.
"Do you love me? Is that why you did it?"
He is angry the first time he says it. The words spew from his mouth like acid, plunging them into painful silence; biting, sarcastic, with the intent to injure. It is just like Dazai to twist something as beautiful as love into an unforgivable accusation.
Chuuya stares at him. "What?"
Bodies are littered around them, victory scarlet and pooling at their feet. Sweat beads at the choker around Chuuya's neck. His fists are still clenched, like he doesn't realize the fight is already over.
"You saved me," Dazai says. He steps over a fallen hitman, stopping right in front of Chuuya.
His partner tilts his chin up. "Yeah, well, that doesn't sound like a thank you."
"You shouldn't have," Dazai snaps. "I specifically told you not to go after me. You're more of an idiot than I thought you were— "
"What the hell was I supposed to do?" Chuuya shoots back. "Let you die?"
"I had them!"
“Bullshit.” Chuuya grabs Dazai by the collar and pushes him against the wall. "You were two seconds away from lying in a puddle of your own blood!"
Dazai stares back at him, forcing his voice steady. He vaguely realizes how blue Chuuya's eyes are. "You ruined this entire mission."
Chuuya snarls and Dazai just narrowly dodges his fist. “I saved your fucking life!”
And that wasn't in the plan. Dazai expected to be captured at gunpoint and had mapped out all the steps after. He wasn't counting on Chuuya to abandon the mission and risk his life — risk their victory — for Dazai's safety. Chuuya's actions were hazy with desperation and panic and concern, leaving destruction that was more collateral than necessary, and now a perfect plan has fallen apart because of one miscalculation. Dazai isn't used to being wrong.
"We could've lost!"
"But we didn't," Chuuya answers, and oh, sometimes Dazai wishes he could be that ignorant. "So what the fuck is your problem?"
Dazai's fucking problem is that the mission could have failed and then Mori would have had their throats. Chuuya doesn't know what it's like, living with someone like Mori, who is good with a scalpel and even better with blood. How could he? He’s never seen Mori angry. Soukoku is the apple of Mori’s eye right now; they're riding a dangerous winning streak that only means more room to fail. Dazai can handle it, but if Mori so much as touches the tiny slug...
"I hate losing!" Dazai bursts out. It rings throughout the empty warehouse, a lie as loud as his heartbeat. All energy drains from his body.
Chuuya catches him like it's nothing, as if he wasn't about to crush Dazai's windpipe a moment ago.
"But we didn't," Chuuya says, "and now you're being a brat about it."
Dazai pushes him away, out of arms that feel too warm and too kind and too right, and suddenly he can't breathe and his vision is filled with black spots and his knees crash into the cold hard floor.
"Shit, you're hurt," Chuuya realizes, putting his arms back around Dazai like they're supposed to be there.
"Get off,” Dazai grits out. Nobody should see him like this — vulnerable, human. Chuuya could kill him with a snap of his fingers right now. He takes a deep breath. "It was part of the plan."
"Well, it’s a shitty plan," Chuuya replies. His grip tightens, and Dazai lets out a cry as he pries himself away.
"Hey, I won't hurt you!" Chuuya snaps.
Dazai flinches. He hates how Chuuya sees, how he softens and offers his arm.
"I'm your partner,” Chuuya says, palm open, hand outstretched. “I have a duty of care."
Dazai eyes him wearily. "I had no idea slugs could be so honorable."
"Quit calling me a slug."
Dazai gets up and wobbles along with Chuuya at his side. It's a curious thing for him to be wrong. Mistakes can ruin everything, tip the entire world off its axis. Uncertainty is fatal; to be wrong is to jump off a burning building without knowing where he will land.
Dazai Osamu is many things: demon prodigy, genius, mafioso. But he is not wrong, uncertain, or so blindly trusting.
Yet he feels Chuuya, and this strange tension in his chest that he can't name, and all the self-hatred and anger melt away.
He feels safe.
The revelation forces itself down Dazai's throat. The sun is just beginning to rise when they leave the warehouse, blues and oranges seeping into the sky like watercolor across the tufts of clouds.
“It’s a beautiful view, huh?” Chuuya says off-handedly.
Dazai looks at the boy beside him, at how he puts the sunrise to shame, at how he looks like he is on fire. The dawn sets him alight in the most beautiful way possible, soft and gentle along the slope of his face, and Dazai imagines warmth where Chuuya is holding his arm. “It’s unfortunate I have to share it with you.”
ii.
"Nice doing business with you!" Dazai calls, waltzing backward with the USB in hand.
A collective click echoes in the room, and suddenly Dazai is staring down the barrel of twenty guns. A draft from the open window breezes in, ruffling Dazai's hair as he sways along.
"Not so fast," the head goon says. "Do you really think we would let you get away with all that?”
“Oh, with all your assets, confidential information, and incriminating data?” Dazai pouts. “Obviously! And then I was hoping we could all go out for drinks and have brunch on Sunday.”
The goon sneers. "Smartass." He raises his arm to signal.
"Ah! I don't think you want to do that."
The men freeze.
Dazai giggles a little. "Well, if you insist on doing it the hard way, I should tell you that I set a bomb to kill you all in two minutes and counting! And oh, look at that… You're on the third floor with no way out, so you'll never make it in time!"
The men waver, but every gun remains pointed at him. The boss scowls. "You're here too. You'll doom yourself."
But his words are only a flimsy argument. Everyone in the room knows: Dazai Osamu is a ruthless brat with a death wish.
Dazai grins. "Ooh, twenty seconds. Sorry gentlemen, but my dog might get impatient!"
He dances out of the open window and laughs at the shocked faces of the men. It is less than a second of free fall until he's yanked by the collar into a loud, ugly motorbike.
"You're cutting it real close," Chuuya growls.
"Aw, did you miss me that much?"
The motorbike arcs almost gracefully through the air before hitting the ground upright, engine running. Dazai nearly misses the building behind them bursting into flames.
"You need to work on your landing," Dazai says just to get on his nerves.
"My landing is fucking perfect," Chuuya shoots back. "Did you get it?"
Dazai dangles the USB in front of him. "My scheming is perfect."
"Get it out of my face! You're going to make me crash."
The motorbike swerves into a street with low-hanging lanterns at the perfect height to smash into Dazai's face. Dazai ducks easily. "Tch."
"I should've left you in that burning building," Chuuya mutters.
"But Chuuya! Don't you love me?"
"Where the hell did that come from?"
The motorbike skids vengefully down some stairs, an ideal angle for Dazai and his long limbs to tumble off. Dazai tchs again and clings onto Chuuya tighter.
"Get off," Chuuya repeats.
"Chuuuu-yaaa," Dazai says slowly, extending every ugly syllable of his partner's name. It's taking a long time for Chuuya to process this. The bike must be compensating for how slow his brain is. "We did it. We took them down."
An entire organization that's been giving Mori hell for months, and Dazai and Chuuya brought them down just like that.
Dazai waits for it to sink in.
"Holy shit," Chuuya says. "We actually did it."
"And it was fucking easy too," Dazai adds smugly.
Chuuya laughs, stomach rumbling beneath Dazai’s touch. Dazai winds his arms around his waist tighter and laughs too.
"You and me – we're pretty good, huh?" Chuuya says. Dazai can hear the pride in his voice, the melody of a grin that he has come to know so well.
Dazai buries his face into Chuuya’s nape. He pretends he does not notice the rapid pulse in Chuuya’s neck. The rhythm of Chuuya’s heartbeat thrums against the corner of Dazai’s lips, mirroring the dizzy euphoria Dazai feels now.
His cheekbones ache right along with Chuuya’s. "The best."
At seventeen, victory after victory as soukoku makes them feel invincible. It's a dangerous feeling, but Dazai doesn't care right now.
The wind whips his face relentlessly. Yokohama blurs in his peripheral vision, and they're going so quickly he feels like he's flying. He never wants this to end.
"So stay," Chuuya says, like it's the simplest thing in the world.
iii.
Perhaps it is the hero's decision to save the weak and escape the mafia, but it is a coward's decision to leave his partner without a good-bye. It is the same coward who creeps back into the shadows one last time, toeing dangerous lines out of habit and selfishness. This is a coward who drains all the salt from the sea and pours it into a bullet wound.
"You were reported missing last week. They declared you a fugitive today."
Chuuya doesn't even look surprised when he finds Dazai in his room. Getting in was as easy as it was the past thousand times, except back then they were stupid teenagers and partners and maybe even friends. It's funny how much can change in a few weeks.
"So that's it? You're really leaving?"
"I left," Dazai replies. "It's done."
"I could report you."
"You won't."
"I should. "
"So do it," Dazai challenges him.
Chuuya has never backed down from a challenge.
Their stances are trained toward each other, tense, trying to read the person they understand the most.
They wait.
Chuuya switches the light on, the movement like an exhale as the tension loosens but doesn’t leave. Dazai blinks to adjust.
He takes in the sight of Chuuya in full color, bright red and bright blue and an angry flush of pink in his cheeks. He's painfully tangible and straight out of a dream.
Dazai wants to touch, just to assure himself that he is real.
"What are you doing here?" Chuuya asks.
"I left something behind," Dazai replies. He steps forward.
Chuuya steps away. "It must not be that important if you forgot about it in the first place."
"But I came back." It must count for something, that Dazai is here now. "Come with me."
Chuuya stares at him, as if he's measuring the heart on Dazai's sleeve, and Dazai feels so terrifyingly human under the gaze of Arahabaki's vessel. There is a pause for a single breath in honor of everything that could have been.
Chuuya turns around.
"Get whatever the fuck you left and then get out," he says, his back to Dazai. He begins rifling through his cupboards as if Dazai is already gone.
"Chuuya," Dazai begins.
"I am a Port Mafia executive," Chuuya warns. "And you're a traitor." He yanks out a wine bottle, strangling it at the neck. A threat. As if Dazai cannot see the hurt in his wounds.
"Do you love me?"
Slam. The wine bottle almost cracks against the granite of the kitchen counter. Chuuya looks down, breathing hard, fists clenched and trembling.
Then he looks up. His grip loosens, and he sounds tired. "Does it matter?" he asks.
Would you stay, is unspoken, deafening.
Dazai steadies himself, levels his gaze, weighs everything between them. The desperate rescue attempts. Hefty promises. Euphoric touch. "All these moments, given reason and pattern, mean you love me."
"...But I don't?" It's a question, and Chuuya says it with disdain he doesn't even try to hide.
"But you don't," Dazai agrees.
Chuuya snorts. "You're pathetic. Keep telling yourself that, if it makes this easier."
"You were always the more honorable one," Dazai says – teases, not that he has any right to anymore. "What are you going to do when I'm gone?"
Chuuya uncorks the bottle with a pop. One wine glass floats into his hand, clinking softly onto the granite. He doesn't look at Dazai.
"I'm gonna drink until I forget I ever met you."
iv.
“It’s been a long time.”
Chuuya laughs humorlessly. “Not long enough."
The dim light is yellow against the dungeon floors, harsh on the shadows of Chuuya’s face. Sharp angles and every muscle tensed — Dazai isn’t used to it. Maybe it’s bad lighting. Maybe it’s a picture of every moment he has missed in the last four years. Then again, maybe it is simply a rational reaction to facing an enemy.
“You should’ve stayed away,” Chuuya says. His words echo, and even the scrape of his boot rings among the stone walls. Loud, angry, forceful. “Back at whatever shithole you got yourself into.”
Dazai shrugs. “I was never very good at staying.”
He hits a nerve. Chuuya stiffens for just a moment—
“Fuck you.”
—and Dazai just narrowly avoids Chuuya’s fist. It crashes into the wall where Dazai was, forming a small crater in its wake, the stone cracking beneath the blow. That might have been enough to kill. But Chuuya could never truly bring himself to hurt Dazai.
At least that’s what Dazai tells himself. It’s what Dazai knows, and he considers it a constant in the grand scheme of his plans, until Chuuya throws him into the walls and his head bangs against stone. His ribs crack. He feels like he’s been crushed inside those little fists.
He steadies himself, pretending to be at ease even though his head is throbbing and the yellow light makes him want to throw up.
“You’re as much of a brute as I remember,” Dazai taunts, as if just speaking doesn’t hurt.
He reads Chuuya’s next move and evades. The world sways beneath his feet with every motion. Each breath feels like a stab to his chest.
Chuuya swings at him again and again. Dazai dodges each one. His head is getting lighter. When he sees the glint of a knife, he wonders if there is a possibility he will finally die.
There is a part of him that allows him to rest: Chuuya would never truly hurt him.
He blacks out for only a moment, but it is enough for Chuuya to pin him against the wall. Dazai can’t breathe and it suddenly feels like his chest is splintering open. Chuuya has one hand on his neck, another holding a blade to Dazai’s chest.
Is this it?
Dazai coughs. He tastes blood. “A kabedon? How embarrassing for you.”
“Why aren’t you fighting back?” Chuuya demands.
Dazai scoffs. “I lost the chains and predicted your attacks with one hundred percent accuracy. I think I’m doing pretty well.”
“We’re enemies now." Chuuya leans further in, and Dazai gets a vague sense of déjà vu. "No holding back.”
Dazai gestures drily at the knife pointed at his broken ribs. It hurts like hell. “I can see that."
“I’ll kill you if you don’t do something,” Chuuya says, desperately, as if he doesn’t have the clear upper hand. As if he is the one at knifepoint. “You’re going to lose. You hate losing!”
“I know.”
At that, Chuuya seems to give up. On what, Dazai isn’t quite sure. But his shoulders slump, the light makes him look more ragged than ever, and oh, Dazai has never liked blue looking so sad.
“Any last words?” Chuuya asks.
The blade lifting, pressing at his Adam’s apple, looks too real. Dazai has only been wrong once. Of course Nakahara Chuuya would try for a second time.
“Don’t you love me?” Dazai asks, staring down the tip of a knife.
Chuuya flinches. He grabs Dazai’s hair and wrenches it backwards so his neck is completely exposed. Dazai hisses in pain.
“I don’t even know you anymore,” Chuuya spits out.
Four years ago, they knew each other better than anybody else in the world. Perhaps it is dangerous to rely on outdated information. Chuuya is not his partner, not anymore. He hasn’t been for a long time.
v.
"Dazai."
The ground is hard, rough as the gravel scratches his skin. Cicadas hum a midnight sonata as the smell of blood taints what would have otherwise been a lovely evening.
"Dazai, what the fuck?"
The voice is louder this time, and clearer too. A familiar figure comes into focus, and Dazai feels a second stab to his chest.
"Chuuya," he breathes softly.
"What the fuck happened? You're bleeding your heart out, damn it." Chuuya practically rips Dazai's shirt off and comes face-to-face with raw bleeding flesh.
"It's not that bad."
"Bullshit," Chuuya replies. He tears a piece of cloth from his jacket and applies pressure to Dazai's chest while his other hand brushes over to see if there are any more major wounds. Dazai pretends not to notice the trembling.
"It's all part of the plan," Dazai explains. "Yosano-sensei will patch me up soon."
Chuuya's hands still. He leans back so his face is fully in Dazai's view, a sunrise bathed in silver.
"And you…your new friends are okay with this?" Chuuya's eyes flash angrily, but his hands return to Dazai. "Never mind, fuck the Detective Agency, I'm bringing you home."
"How forward of you," Dazai says, wasting breath as he laughs. His chest screams in pain. "But it isn't necessary."
"You're slurring," Chuuya tells him. Is he? Usually Dazai can keep his composure until he passes out, agony or otherwise. "They can't see you like this."
Dazai scoffs. "They've seen worse."
It's been a long time, they've seen worse.
They've seen worse, and more than you.
They are my people now, they've seen worse, and you are just someone I knew when I was a child.
Chuuya says nothing and shifts him into his arms. Dazai blacks out, his subconscious betraying him as soon as he is in Chuuya's touch, and when he comes to, he is in an unfamiliar apartment.
"You moved."
"You didn't know?" Chuuya asks, instead of You're awake? He is sitting right beside Dazai, elbows on the bed, an empty cup beside him.
"I don't keep tabs on old friends," Dazai lies.
"What about enemies?" Chuuya shoots back, as if he didn't just save Dazai's life.
"All this pretending doesn't suit you," Dazai says.
Chuuya frowns. "What pretending? It's the truth." And he's right.
Dazai regards him as he leans in, dabbing ointment at the minor cuts on his face, brushing his finger over Dazai's chest to see if the bandages are still as fresh as the wound.
"When you left…did you even think of me once?" Chuuya asks.
Everyday.
"I should ask you the same thing," Dazai says instead.
Chuuya rolls his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious?”
"What did you think of?"
"How much I hated you for leaving. I wanted to kill you, you know. And then I couldn't stop reliving every moment, wondering where I went wrong. I blamed myself."
Dazai knows this. And he still left. "I'm sorry."
It seems wrong to lie on a night like this, but Dazai is still caught off-guard at the honesty as Chuuya continues, "And then I hated that you left like that. Like there were so many things I didn't get to say."
The cuts sting a little bit each time Chuuya's hands return to his face. His breath smells like caffeine, the bed smells like blood and antiseptic, and the world is hushed as it waits for their words.
"Chuuya," Dazai says quietly. I love you. "Do you love me?"
A heavy silence: One. Two. Three. Four.
Chuuya sighs, all coffee and old regret, and pulls away. "Rest, Dazai. You'll be better in the morning.”
+ i.
Dazai is falling, falling, falling.
The wind whips into his face, everything is a blur, and he is reminded of a time when he was seventeen and felt like he was flying.
Really, the only difference between the two is whether gravity is on his side.
The building explodes. He steps outside a window this time too, but he is not the one who fans the flames. There is no mirth when he leaves.
In his head, he counts the people in the building, compares it with how many he warned, multiplies by how quickly word spreads, subtracts by the stubbornness and stupidity of humanity.
Could he have done better?
There's no more time to think when he hits the ground, or a bullet, or a blade, or whatever the hell is causing every part of him to flare in pain. It hurts like hellfire for a moment, giving Dazai a taste of his future before his body shuts down.
Chuuya appears beside him in what feels like an instant, but is still too late to make a difference. He is glowing red, his body falling apart, Arahabaki bursting at its seams. Dazai forces his aching body towards him. His entire being screams, nerves overridden as his mind floods with adrenaline in an attempt to make this bearable.
Even as he just begins to move, he knows he won't be able to reach Chuuya in time to nullify his Ability. There’s no point trying, but he can’t just watch his partner die right before his eyes. He refuses for that to be the last thing he sees.
His partner slows, drifting beside him and crouching down. Dazai has never seen Corruption so gentle, but he doesn't question it. It almost hurts how close Chuuya is, like the air between them is buzzing in anticipation to see Arahabaki destroy Dazai once and for all.
But Dazai knows: Chuuya would never hurt him.
So he lifts one finger and touches Chuuya's hand, watches his partner come from the brink of ruin, closes his eyes so he doesn't have to deal with the look on his face when he sees Dazai.
Dazai drifts in and out of consciousness. He hears the worst parts: Chuuya cursing, Chuuya screaming for help, Chuuya tearing the slightest threat apart, Chuuya breaking all over again.
"Chuuya," Dazai forces out.
Chuuya tenses and leans forward immediately. "Good, you're ali– awake, oh my god, we're gonna get you safe, I called your doctor friend, don't talk –"
There isn't any time. "Chuuya, do you…"
"Please don't make me say it," Chuuya cuts him off, almost begging. How is Dazai so cruel even in death? "Not now."
"I have to know," Dazai begs too. This is it. He doesn't want to leave like this again.
"You already do. You always have. Isn't it obvious?"
"I love you," Chuuya says, but by then, Dazai is gone.
Chuuya feels the body go limp in his arms. And then all hell breaks loose.
"No! No, asshole, come back," Chuuya sobs. "You can't just die on me, you didn't get to hear it, please, I love you, I love you, I love you…"
The Mafia comes, and then the Detective Agency, and someone tries to pull Chuuya away.
"I love you," Chuuya screams while he injures whoever dares to pry Dazai from his arms.
"I love you," Chuuya cries after Yokohama is saved, as the city accounts for the damage.
"I love you," Chuuya whispers when the Agency's doctor approaches him like he's a wounded animal, gentle gaze and arm outstretched — and for fuck's sake, he's a Mafia executive, he doesn't have to be treated like porcelain—
"It'll be okay," Yosano murmurs, reaching for Dazai's body.
Chuuya wants to fling himself over Dazai, push everyone away and scream don’t touch him like a broken child, but he has never allowed himself to be so selfish. That was always Dazai’s role.
He is not the only one who loves Dazai anymore. He isn’t the uncontested, most important person in Dazai’s life. And that should make him happy, that his partner has grown into the hearts of so many people, but as he watches them carrying Dazai away, envy creeps in like weeds, choking his throat.
“We’ll save him.” A blonde child — his name is Kenji, Chuuya remembers faintly — approaches him. “He’ll be okay.”
I should have saved him, Chuuya wants to say. I was right there. I’m always there. Over and over, I am the one who sees him at his worst. Even when he hates me. Even when it hurts.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Kenji tells him.
“How would you know?” Chuuya snaps. It’s not the kid’s fault either, he has good intentions, there is no reason for Chuuya to act like such an asshole, but god, he doesn’t know what to do.
“He trusted me,” Chuuya says angrily. “He jumped off that burning building knowing I was there. It’s not an accident, it never is with Dazai, he just fucked up thinking I could save him…”
His voice cracks.
Kenji looks at him with a watery smile. “He loves you. A lot.”
Chuuya scoops him up in his arms. This kid might be one of the strongest Ability Users in Yokohama, but he’s still a kid. Chuuya isn’t the only one who is hurting.
Chuuya squeezes Kenji tightly and lifts his head towards the heavens. God, Fate, whoever the hell is listening — I’ll tell him, okay? Just let him wake up. Please, please just…
“He’s not stable,” Chuuya realizes. Dazai is still dying.
“Not yet,” Mori says. “Don’t give us that look. It was hard enough to bring him back from the dead with the inhibition on Yosano-kun's ability. We did the best we could.”
Back from the dead. So he wasn’t imagining it then. For a few moments, Dazai Osamu was truly gone.
It took the Tripartite alliance and the best doctors in Yokohama to get him back, and still Chuuya would do so much more for him to wake up.
So he waits. At Dazai’s bedside, counting every second, until the sight of Dazai Osamu in death is ingrained in his mind.
He relives their moments together. Each is more painful than the last because he could have said it. But he didn’t, and now he doesn’t know how he can survive the rest of his life with it haunting his memory.
He could have said it as soon as it bubbled in his chest, when he pretended it was post-mission high even though he already knew that adrenaline didn’t come with the bittersweet ache where Dazai held him.
He could have said it when Dazai left. Would it have made it easier?
He could have said it even after all those years, when he thought Dazai Osamu was a thing of the past. When he saw him again and realized his feelings remained constant because it still hurt to hurt him.
He could have said it that night when everything was too quiet and too honest and he could taste the words in the salt of Dazai’s wounds. It was terrifying, because Chuuya was just getting used to soukoku that was fractured; he didn’t know what to do if they ever tried to cross the rift.
He could have said it that first time, just to get Dazai to shut up, just to let the broken boy realize that loving Dazai Osamu isn’t such an outlandish idea.
“Please come back,” Chuuya whispers.
Maybe Dazai has everything he ever wanted in death. But Chuuya is going to be selfish, just this once, like the bastard has taught him to be.
Chuuya is the first thing he sees, slouched against the white infirmary lights, eyes red and swollen. Tired.
Dazai takes in the scene, spinning with vertigo from déjà vu and lingering pain. “Don’t tell me you moved again.”
“Dazai!” Chuuya’s voice cracks. He jumps up, gaze running over Dazai’s bedridden body like he must have done a hundred times.
Dazai catches his wrist. “Don’t call anyone yet.” He takes a deep breath. Stiff, like his bones haven’t moved in years. Dull pain lingers in injuries that are still healing. “Let’s just stay here for awhile.”
“If you die on me, I will kill you,” Chuuya warns as he sinks back into his seat.
Dazai grins. “I’m counting on it.”
They lapse into silence, listening to the steady beep of the heart monitor. Neither of them speak when Chuuya touches Dazai’s fingers lightly, or when he takes Dazai’s hand into his. Dazai doesn’t even try to slow his pulse when Chuuya’s thumb brushes against his wrist like a kiss.
“Before all this happened,” Chuuya says, breaking the silence, “you asked me if—”
“Don’t,” Dazai cuts him off. “You already made it clear.”
“Let me talk, asshole,” Chuuya counters. “I don’t want to regret this. I’ve lost you too many times.”
Dazai shakes his head. “You lost me because I left.”
“So stay this time.” And again, Chuuya says it like it’s so easy. Does he ever learn?
“You know I can’t promise that." Dazai isn’t selfish enough to lie, not now, not when Chuuya has weathered himself away just to watch Dazai sleep.
His chest aches. It is painful to see Chuuya like this, driven to grief by Dazai over and over. All Dazai ever does is twist the most beautiful thing in the world into something beaten, broken; how long will it be until Chuuya is tired of mending?
“I love you.”
Dazai flinches at the sudden admission. “Chuuya—” He pulls his hand away.
“You are loved,” Chuuya says. It sounds like a promise, so painfully earnest that Dazai almost believes it. He wishes nothing more than for it to be true. “By me, by your friends. Your family."
Dazai Osamu is many things: demon prodigy, genius, detective. But loved?
"You're wrong," he says quietly.
Chuuya frowns. "Are you saying you don't trust me?"
"I don't trust this." Dazai gestures between them. A hospital bed, a brush with death, belated post-mission high. "You'll regret it."
"It's been seven years," Chuuya replies.
"So don't you already?"
"Did it hurt like hell?" Chuuya snorts a little. "Yeah. You're an asshole—"
Dazai rolls his eyes. "Tell me something I don't know."
"—But I'm still here.”
Here, where it hurts. Where they carve their hearts out, knife to the throat; where they don’t know which way they are going until they hit the ground.
Here, where Dazai feels like his life is worth something for once. Where Chuuya tends to Dazai's wounds even though he will bleed open again. Where he sometimes dares to think that maybe, one day, he’ll get better.
“I love you, Dazai,” Chuuya repeats. “That shouldn’t be so hard to believe.”
Dazai squeezes his eyes shut. He feels tears fall, salt stinging the cuts on his face, and he pretends Chuuya isn’t here. Dark and alone, empty, gone — he can pretend this is death. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
Chuuya touches his tear-streaked cheek, his aching shoulder. Pulls him in. In the darkness, Dazai can only feel: Warm arms. Stuttering heartbeat.
Dazai opens his eyes, tears blurring the world like he is falling, like he is flying; like he is right here, crying in the arms of the man he loves.
And he feels safe.
“I love you too.”