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“…Geh, it’s you.”
It’s a statement echoed back to him due to their mutual hatred. He feels a pang of disappointment at how the slug doesn’t jump up and scream his displeasure upon their coincidental meeting, but he supposes that the night is still young and there’s plenty of opportunities to annoy the other into having a bald patch.
He starts by puffing his cheeks, placing his hands over them like he’s genuinely concerned. “Should shorties be left unsupervised at night? Aren’t you afraid that you’d get kid…napped, little kid?”
“I think it’s a failure on the law enforcement’s part to let some asshole like you continue to swim free and stink up places you go to,” is said with such a stinky expression. Chuuya even clicks his tongue, then tries to click his lighter open to ignite the end of his cigarette.
He snatches it up from the other’s hand, ignoring the other’s hissing like a cat whose tail has been yanked. “The night arcade doesn’t allow smoking,” he says and starts walking eastward.
“Ha? I never agreed to go there with you!”
He idly juggles the lighter and the cigarette stick that still has the other’s warmth on one end. “Then who shall pay for my tokens?”
“Pay for it yourself!” Despite the incessant complaints, Chuuya does walk beside him, face sour. “Don’t you have an actual job? Don’t tell me that the only salary they give you is so laughably pitiful?”
“But I bought fifty boxes of bandages.” A worthwhile investment, he’s sure. “And then there’s the usual magazines so I can have something to read whenever Kunikida-kun’s scolding becomes too motherly.”
Wearing his usual attire as a mafioso would have easily blended him in to the nighttime environment. But even with a day’s worth of fatigue layered over him, Chuuya’s eyes are still so bright. “Pfft, and he’s scolding you because you’re an asshole who skives off work? Or because you’re scum who flirts with hundreds of women?”
“Conversing with beauties while avoiding boring work… Isn’t that just fine?”
“Spoken like a true vagabond,” has a sneer attached to it, but any coldness is wiped away when they set foot into the night arcade and its dazzling colors. A lot of its clientele are several years younger than them, still green with youthfulness and the little crimes of staying out too late.
This is a new arcade, which means that the owner isn’t familiar with them. When Dazai swipes Chuuya’s wallet out of his pockets, he ignores the scoff disdaining his refusal to use his own money. The walk from the counter to the booth witnesses two dozen attempts to trip each other, earning them some strange looks. Like always, nobody actually dares to interrupt them.
“The loser has to pay for tonight’s dinner,” he offers the bet conditions, raising his eyebrows.
“Isn’t that a lose-lose situation for me?” Chuuya still sits down on his side, testing the controls. “Even if I win, I’ll have to contend with eating air because of your poor ass.”
“Isn’t the solution clear, then?”
With those words, they sink themselves into battle. He could easily imagine the vivid expressions that would play on the chibi’s face, as they’re evenly matched until the final second, in which Dazai’s character unleashes a burst that zaps out the remainder of Chuuya’s HP.
His lips curve up. “Fufufu, I’ll take the first win~”
“That’s just a fluke!” And without further preamble, they begin the next round.
A full hour later, and Dazai is smirking smugly. His fingers are sore, but that’s nothing in the face of seeing Chuuya fume beside him. “I want some nice crab,” he says as they line up to exchange their tokens for some prizes.
“Where the fuck can you get fresh crab at this hour?” Then, Chuuya elbows him, making a gesture for him to choose from the available prizes.
He picks one neck pillow, one pair of thin gloves and one matching pair of cellphone charms. Chuuya’s already grumbling about how he’s so lazy that he’d like a pillow so he can sleep anywhere, words that taper into silence when he snatches the gloves instead.
“Then I’ll leave it to the hatrack to pick somewhere nice and expensive,” and he sets the neck pillow over the chibi, then busies himself with putting the charm on the other’s phone. The charms are designed like fishes, so he smiles and teases, “To remind you that you’ve lost to me today.”
Even as he takes his phone back to his own pocket, his words are thorny, “I don’t need your stinking reminder!”
“Yes, yes, because you think about losing to me all the time.” He raises his both hands, as if he’s placating the other’s temper, when he’s all but stoking it to make flames to his liking.
A click of his tongue, and the click of his heels against the floors, as they both walk out of the arcade shop. “There are better ways of spending my time than wasting on thinking about things related to you.”
“Such as cleaning up the old mafia in Ikebukuro?” Idle, like it’s common knowledge that ‘civilians-in-name’ like him should know. “Or the fact that their bosses have somehow stashed away a big chunk of their arms when you’ve swept in to take over them?”
Chuuya gives him a look. “Someone who has flounced off from the mafia should have no business following our movements.”
“That’s true,” he allows, but leaves it at that.
After all, it’s not as if it’s the mafia that he’s actually following. It just so happens that annoying Chuuya is one of his favorite pasttimes, and annoying Chuuya works best when they’re face-to-face so he could appreciate the other’s anger better. Because he’s a workaholic addicted to wagging his tail at Mori-san and Kouyou-san, being able to annoy him face-to-face is entirely dependent on his workload. Because he’s a dog lacking discipline, not having the conscience to come his way whenever he feels boredom—Dazai has no other choice but to keep abreast on his movements.
One of the small merits of this tiny fairy is that he’s at least very good at reading him, even the unspoken bits. Back on the streets filled with salarymen dragging their leathers to various izakaya, with dolled-up ladies linked by the elbows so they could partake in karaoke—it’s as if they’re just a pair of colleagues who have decided to hang out together.
Chuuya brings him straight to a private room of a high-end izakaya, no doubt someplace that he’s visited previously, given his familiarity. The service is attentive, passing preparing water for them and then drawing away immediately, leaving them to browse through an electronic menu.
“I want all the expensive dishes,” he says, cheek resting against his palm. His other hand extends across the table to poke the gray bags under the other’s eyes.
Like an angry dog, Chuuya snarls at it, even bites the web of skin between his thumb and index finger; his sharp teeth scratch all the way to his ribs. “You’ll eat whatever I order,” is a half-grumble, half-command that comes at him after his hand has been thwapped away.
“If you’re too stingy, you’d never grow tall,” he teases, then tucks in close to the same side of the table, under the guise of supervising the other’s ordering. “I want some—”
“—edamame to munch on while waiting, crab chawanmushi, and a mocha mousse for dessert after,” cuts into his words, with barely a flick of the other’s expression. “Their steamed halibut and buttered scallops are great here.”
He rests his chin against the other’s shoulder, reaching for the menu using his right hand. Since the menu is on Chuuya’s right side, he has no choice but to wrap his arm around a petite frame in the process. He clicks a couple of things. “Add some skewers too.”
It can’t be helped that his well-developed brain is good at remembering things, no matter how inconsequential. Last time they’ve unfortunately crossed paths, he remembers Chuuya wanting to eat some skewers, but their meeting was interrupted before they could make it a reality.
Blue eyes slide at him. The tablet that they’re using to order food and drink is slid back to its place. This is followed by Chuuya sliding a small USB towards him. “People might think that there’s an incoming apocalypse if you work so diligently that you take overtime,” is the non-explanation that already explains so much.
“So this is some intel to help me with my current case?”
“It’s to remind you that you’re lacking compared to my resources, if you can’t even find out that much.” As he says this, Chuuya mimics his tone from earlier, when giving him that phone charm. It’s quite charming, this awkward way of showing care for him.
Perhaps there’s hope for this old dog to learn more tricks as to how to please him.
“How strange,” he extends his tone to the cloying type that he knows annoys the other so much. “Someone who isn’t working for the Agency is paying attention to this matter too?”
“Shut your mouth.” In order to ensure his compliance with this order, Chuuya even seals his mouth using his gloved hand. “Give me the intel already,” he adds, as if it’s expected that Dazai has information about the case that is taking up a lot of his time.
“People asking for favors know how to ask nicely,” he reminds.
With raised eyebrows, “But I’m not mere ‘people’, am I?”
Of course. Nakahara Chuuya cannot be contained by mere descriptors, for he’s an existence that vexes him so much, he’d need at least 27 notebooks to scratch at the surface of his venting.
“Uh-huh. Because you’re my dog.”
He’s punched for those words, as expected, and he doesn’t stop the fist from wandering away from his stomach to grope around his chest for the hiding spot of another USB stick. Tiny people have such tiny hands that he’d need an eternity to search him over.
“You best be grateful that I’m too tired and hungry to deal with your corpse, which is the only reason I’m not killing you right now,” and there’s even a convincing breathless quality to his voice, after the ‘search inspection’ takes involvement from even their mouths.
He spies the reddened swelling of the other’s lips, recalls their deliciousness against his mouth just now. “You’re still hungry for more?”
“For actual substantial food,” is almost absentminded, as his face is pushed away when he drifts close, but not before biting him. “Unlike you, I can’t survive just by being full of hot air.”
“You wound me so,” he complains, so devastated by such unpleasant words that he couldn’t help but stagger against Chuuya, plastering his entire weight to his side.
Without pity, “You’d survive, since it’s you.”
Theirs is a strange relationship that persists and survives all odds, “because it’s you”.
He tucks his smile against the other’s nape for safekeeping, and waits for the night to deepen, so they could fully enjoy their feast.
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end