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Mori has let his executives get away with questionable things before—it comes with the territory of managing a group of incredibly powerful but unhinged individuals.
Bringing a member of an enemy organization to a private meeting with the Boss, however, is pushing it, even for people who regularly destroy pieces of furniture in fits of rage.
He eyes one such executive, standing at attention before him with utmost seriousness, and the man attached to his executive by the hand, and raises an eyebrow.
“Chuuya-kun, is there something you’ve neglected to tell me?”
The rigidness of Chuuya’s stance makes it very clear that he’s fighting to keep a straight face. “Boss, I can explain—”
“We’ve decided to go steady!” Dazai cheerfully interjects from beside him.
All restraint forgotten, Chuuya immediately tries to kick Dazai through the nearest wall. Unfortunately, since they’re currently joined at the hands, the most he succeeds in doing is sending both of them toppling over.
Mori sighs. It’s like watching a playback of their teen years.
“I see. So you’ve somehow gotten your hands superglued to each other,” he summarizes after a long-winded explanation from Chuuya that kept occasionally devolving into ranting. All he’d gleaned from the near incoherent recount was that an arm-wrestling match had been involved, the dignity of Chuuya’s shoes had been on the line, and it was all Dazai’s fault. Which, in most cases, is sufficient explanation.
Chuuya straightens up with what little composure he still has. “Despite my carelessness, I won’t let this setback affect my performance, Boss.”
“I would hope not.” Mori leans forward against his desk, observing his two former wards—both brilliant (and infuriating) in vastly different ways. “It might be a tall order, but I still expect you to complete the task I summoned you here for.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What would the little man even know about tall orders?” Dazai mutters under his breath.
Mori dives to the side as a body crashes into his desk—followed, of course, by another body. It’s a good thing crime pays so well, or the organization would have gone under from all the property damage by now. And that’s not even counting the number of times Kajii has blown up an entire wing in a lemon bomb experiment gone wrong.
There’s a lot of finger pointing after that, accusations of who started it flying through the air, until Mori flings a scalpel in their direction and calmly asks the two of them to get out of his office.
***
If Chuuya has to hear one more well-meaning but mistaken subordinate congratulate him on his new relationship status, he’s going to bring the entire Port Mafia headquarters down, consequences be damned. Even without Corruption.
“Sir, I heard you’re going out with Da—”
A fist buried deep into the wall next to random mook number 234’s face cuts off that line of questioning quickly enough.
“I am not in a relationship with this fucker,” Chuuya growls, jabbing a thumb at the source of all strife in his life since he was fifteen.
His subordinate’s gaze zeroes in on the hand connected to Dazai’s, and Chuuya makes another hole in the wall to match the first one. The traumatized grunt scurries off, muttering something about unconventional mating rituals.
Dazai, who’s been observing the past few exchanges with an ever-widening smirk, clutches at his heart in feigned dejection. “It pains me that you would deny what we have.”
“Not another fucking word.”
They need to get out of here before they encounter someone they actually know, and things get even more complicated than they already are. Of course, knowing shitty Dazai, complicating things is exactly what he’s trying to do. Chuuya comforts himself with the knowledge that once he completes his mission, he’ll be free to strangle the life out of that stupid bandaged neck to his heart’s content.
“Dazai-san!”
At the sound of Akutagawa’s raspy voice calling out to them from across the hall, Chuuya’s stomach drops down to his feet. He’ll be damned if Akutagawa of all people gets the wrong idea about his social life. And knowing the little zealot, he’ll probably believe every single lie his precious mentor feeds him. Just the thought of having to correct the misunderstanding is enough to make Chuuya’s head hurt.
“Run!” He hisses, taking off in one direction.
A force jerks him painfully in the opposite direction, and his legs fly up as he crashes into a bony shoulder. Untangling himself from bandaged limbs, he grabs Dazai by the lapels and shakes him roughly. “What the fuck are you doing?!”
The fucker smiles at him innocently. “You told me to run.”
Chuuya would have flattened his face right there, but the growing proximity of Akutagawa’s voice reminds him that he’s running short on time. He unceremoniously throws Dazai over his shoulder, ignoring the yelp of surprise, and tears down the hall as quickly as he can.
***
The best part of this entire debacle, Dazai decides, has to be watching Chuuya adapt to increasingly annoying setbacks as his plans are derailed at every turn. There’s this little vein on his forehead that’s been twitching nonstop, but Dazai can’t call himself a professional nuisance until he gets at least one infuriated screech out of Chuuya.
“Spot check? I didn’t hear about this,” the frontman—stocky with a receding hairline and a bad spray tan—for one of their shell companies says as he scowls at the two of them.
There have been whisperings of unsavory dealings, shipping records and invoices that don’t quite match up, and Mori has appointed Chuuya to look into it. What this really means, of course, is that bones need to be broken. Many bones.
“That would be the point of a spot check,” Chuuya responds coolly, his expression a stark contrast to the violent grip he has on Dazai’s hand. “Boss’ orders. Now hurry up and lead the way.”
“Alright, alright. But did you have to bring your boytoy along?”
The unspeakable horror that flashes through Chuuya’s eyes does nothing to deter Dazai from pasting on a big smile and leaning over with a flutter of his eyelashes. “You know what they say, we’re inseparable!”
Chuuya looks like he might actually pass out, but he just barely holds on to consciousness by sheer will alone. There’s an entire debate playing out in the twitch of his eyebrows—between pretending to date Dazai and coming clean about the superglue issue, which is more humiliating?
“He was very insistent on coming with me,” he eventually settles on.
Dazai’s grin is pure evil. “Of course, love!”
The frontman gives them a suspicious look but doesn’t make any further comments. The moment he turns around to lead them into the facilities, Chuuya grinds his foot into Dazai’s hard enough to crush his toes.
Predictably, the whole thing turns out to be a setup, though they had already suspected as much even before the shootout started. Embezzling funds from a parent company is bad enough when that company isn’t the literal mafia, but sloppily covering your tracks and then trying to kill off the envoy that came to investigate? The height of idiocy. Dazai would have done a far better job of removing the evidence and killing the messenger.
A bullet whizzes past him and he ducks back behind the safety of his cover. The metal crate currently keeping him from being pumped full of lead reeks of fish. Actually, the entire storage area does, and he can’t decide what’s worse—the stench or the biting cold.
The spot next to him, on the other hand, is radiating heat from the force of Chuuya’s growing impatience. How frustrating it must be for the little musclehead, to not be able to blitz through all opposition with his ability like he usually does.
“Every day, your temper gets shorter,” Dazai comments.
Chuuya levels him with a glare, still nursing a bump on his head from when Dazai ran the other way and tripped him. “If you make one more joke about my height, I’m gonna use you as a meatshield.”
“Well then, I hope the bullets go through me and hit you~”
“You realize that would kill you, right?” Chuuya grumbles before shaking his head, already anticipating the answer he’ll get. His attention is elsewhere as he shifts back and forth on his heels with a restless energy.
Dazai catches his gaze, a silent agreement passing between them. Chuuya repositions his hat with a tch, while Dazai grabs an absolute specimen of a frozen salmon off the ground. On an unspoken count of three, they run out into the open.
For once, Dazai lets himself get dragged along as they weave through the barrage of bullets. As funny as it would be to fall and get the hatrack shot, Dazai would rather not have to lug around a deadweight.
It’s easy enough to fall into familiar rhythms—predicting how Chuuya will act and matching his movements so that their joined hands act as more of an anchor point than a hindrance. The piss poor aim and sloppy gun handling of their attackers certainly isn’t doing them any favors either.
Rushing up towards a clearly inexperienced grunt, Chuuya disarms the man with a well-aimed kick. A crowbar comes swinging at him at the same time, swiping through only air as he drops to a crouch and jerks his non-free arm forward. Propelled forth, Dazai cheerfully slaps one grunt in the face with his fishy bludgeon and then kicks the falling body into the other one. Another shower of bullets has them retreating behind some storage containers for cover, but not before Dazai nabs the discarded gun.
They make quick work of the rest of the grunts, once they stop arguing about whether it’s more of a Shame and Toad situation or a Rain Beyond the Latticework one long enough to focus on their objective. Dazai only engages in non-lethal friendly fire twice, and Chuuya retaliates by using him as a blunt force weapon.
All in all, it’s just another day for them, and they exit the warehouse a little worse for wear and quite a bit smellier. A phone call to the cleanup crew is made, a hat is snatched away, and two hands are still superglued to each other.
“You know, I should just snap your arm off and be done with it,” Chuuya mutters darkly after another failed attempt to take back his hat.
Dazai twirls the ratty old thing around on a finger, high out of the reach of yipping little chihuahuas. “That hardly seems fair. You should be the one to get your arm broken, since Yosano-sensei’s ability actually works on you. We’ll even offer the healing at a discounted rate. Limited-time deal.”
Chuuya stifles a shudder. “I don’t need that crazy doctor lady anywhere near my arms.”
They’re walking along the perimeter of the wharf, thinking about their next move, when a voice calls out from the distance.
“Dazai-san!”
Dazai perks up, looking over his shoulder to give a wave to an approaching Atsushi. “And there’s our ticket out of this mess.”
He pushes the hat back onto Chuuya’s head like an afterthought, but Chuuya can’t even stay mad because this is the first bit of good news he’s heard all day. That is, until another voice—rougher and edged with traces of a cough—carries over from the opposite direction.
“Chuuya-san!”
They stop in their tracks, waiting for the inevitable moment when their respective subordinates make eye contact. There’s a few seconds of eerie silence, two rivals locked in a stunned staredown, and then all hell breaks loose.
Akutagawa barrels straight past them and tackles Atsushi down with a warcry of Weretiger! Reflexively, Atsushi knees Akutagawa in the stomach, flipping them both around so that their positions are reversed. He gets a few punches in before a tendril of Rashoumon curls around his leg and slams him repeatedly against a tree.
Dazai and Chuuya watch the tussle travel down the row of trees and take out several lamp posts, their idiot subordinates having long since forgotten their reason for coming here.
“Is that how we look?” Dazai wonders.
A grimace. “God, I hope not.”
“Maybe they’d get along better if we superglued their hands together.”
Chuuya’s glare is a mix of disapproving and disgusted. “Fuck no.”
“You’re right, that would be a bit much.”
Hearts in unison for once, they roll back their sleeves and proceed to tear their subordinates off of each other. Two head bonks and one skin-safe solvent later, they’re finally free from their hand-holding hell, and they go their separate ways after exchanging a few choice words.
***
“Dazai-san, quick question.”
“What is it, Atsushi-kun?”
They pause at the crosswalk to wait for the light, and Atsushi shoots his mentor a curious look. He’s almost certain he’s forgetting something, but his memory has been made fuzzy by the amount of hits he took to the head.
“I delivered the solvent like you asked, but I don’t understand why you didn’t just use the one you were carrying?” he points out.
With a hum, Dazai reaches into his coat pocket, fingers closing around the tube of solvent that’s been there this entire time.
“Secret~” is all he says, skipping ahead with a mysterious smile.
***
When Dazai gets back to the agency dorms, there’s a package on his doorstep. Wrapped in plain brown paper, it’s missing a return address, but the To Mackerel messily scribbled on the front makes it clear who the sender is.
Without a second thought, he picks the package up and lobs it into the lot, where it hits a tree and immediately explodes in a violent burst of red. Chuuya must be losing his touch, because ketchup as blood is unimaginative even for a slug. His head must be caving in from the weight of that silly little hat.
Dazai strolls over to survey the damage and maybe come up with a way to foist the cleanup onto Kunikida. That’s when he sees the bloody message left on the tree trunk in drooping ketchup strokes—
happy birthday, bitch
He sheds a single tear. “Chibikko remembered.”