Work Text:
Curled wisps of red settle on the sheets. The sun streams in through the window, and the room might be small but it’s warm, full of posters and half-empty coffee mugs and hastily scribbled post-it notes. Freckled shoulders peek out of a black t-shirt, and he curls like a cat, stretching in and out across the empty bed space.
…No, not empty. He curls like a cat, stretching in and out across the bed, legs intertwining with knobby knees. Bony elbows dig into his back, and it’s painful, but it makes him smile. Somehow, red turned into brown, and short turned into tall, and Chuuya turned into Dazai. They lie together, appreciating the beauty of this lazy morning, just the two of them in a small, quaint life. There are no noises outside, no honking of the traffic, no gunshots or sword strikes. Just Chuuya, Dazai, and happiness.
Exactly the way things were supposed to be.
Chuuya claws his way to standing, and pads across to the small counter, fixing a pot of coffee and grabbing a mug. He pours the coffee in, careful and quiet, drinking it with his back to the counter. He glances over at the unmade bed, at the sheets all tangled up, and his mouth twists. He’ll have to do the laundry later, once he has some free time.
Wait, no—he grabs two mugs, pours two cups, and he drinks it back in bed, passing the second cup to Dazai, lying in bed with him. The sheets aren’t tangled, they lie folded neatly at the bottom of the bed, and Dazai smiles at him, shining with the brightness of the stars and the gods. He’ll do the laundry once Dazai manages to sort through his pile of clothing on the floor, not any earlier. For now, he just sits tiredly, nursing a cup of coffee with Dazai in his perfectly pedestrian life.
Just the two of them.
(Eurydice had been dead long before Orpheus had even laid eyes on her.)
His lyre sits on the bedside, and with a small grunt, he reaches for it. Cold fingers wrap around his wrist when he turns back around, and Dazai sits up with a small smile, thumbing through pages of sheet music. “Play this one,” he says softly, eyes wide and glossy like a cat’s. “Please.”
Dazai would never say please.
Chuuya acquiesces, dipping his head to his collarbones, letting the first few notes reverberate through his chest. Dazai’s fingers twist into his, and the room is silent save for the soft plucking of the lyre and the intermingled sounds of their breathing. The song is soft and beautiful, a haunting chord-filled piece in a minor key, but Chuuya transposes it effortlessly to a major one, just the way Dazai likes it. His body is warm, pressed against Chuuya’s, and he drinks it in, the normalcy of it all, the domestic way their life plays out.
The piece comes to a gentle end, curving into silence, and the lyre buries itself in white sheets. His hands raise up to cup Dazai’s cheekbones, smoothing stray eyelashes from alabaster skin. The sun rises steadily. He tries, so desperately, to hold on—to this miracle, this beautiful world, which he wants so badly, but can never have.
“Please stay,” he whispers, voice a shudder. “Please don’t go. You don’t need to go. We can just stay here. I’ll play the lyre again. I’ll move the constellations for you. Just stay here.”
“I’ll see you when you fall asleep again, Chuuya,” Dazai says softly. His mouth is a smile against red hair.
In the Underworld, Hades and Persephone mourn. The Furies sing a song of sadness. Chuuya never plays the lyre again.
He opens his eyes.
He's late for work.
✧
Chuuya Nakahara is sure of three things:
- He is being haunted by the Book.
- In almost every other universe, Dazai Osamu is dead.
- In almost every other universe, he dies by Chuuya’s hand.
There is always a lyre. It plays a melody of death in the distance, bending low in mourning for the fallen soul. Chuuya is always able to play the lyre. It responds to his call, and there is never a sound more breathtaking than his song of grief. Ghostly hands dust over liquid fire, trailing down his back like a prophecy still untold, and he finds himself standing before Dazai, an impossibly kind smile on his face.
- Dazai always, without fail, tells him to let him go.
- Chuuya always, without fail, refuses.
The lyre strums for Hades and his queen. The clocks rewind, and the snake slithers back underground. Chuuya makes a promise; his gaze turns forwards, and he looks to the future, not the past. Dazai stands up like a paper doll whose strings have been cut. Chuuya looks back in tenderness, and he disappears like a candle blown out by the wind.
- Dazai returns to life with a brittle grasp on the very air that surrounds him.
- Chuuya kills him a second time, through nothing but pure love.
✧
The knife slides effortlessly between ribs. A blade that whispers of vengeance and murder. A few feet away, Fyodor stands upright, dressed in snowy white unflecked by blood. The battlefield smells of rot and apocalypse. Somehow, none of it seems to touch him. The knife trembles in Chuuya’s grip. The handle feels clumsy in his palm; he’s not used to holding a weapon like this. No, his fight forms inside the notes of the lyre, now abandoned on the bloodstained ground, strings ghosting over Akutagawa’s dead body. But he’s desperate, in need of winning the war, and he had picked up the blade without much fanfare.
“Kill Fyodor,” Akutagawa had said before he’d fallen to his knees. “Accomplish what I couldn’t.”
God, he had tried. He had tried so, so hard. Yokohama lies in rubble around them, members of the Port Mafia and Armed Detective Agency alike crystallizing the earth. The Port Mafia, his enemies, now turned comrades, and he twists away from the sight of their gruesome ends. The detectives, his coworkers, his friends, his family. Yosano had died much too early, and without her, they’d fallen one by one.
Now, his knife sticks through the chest of the only ally he’d had left. Dazai coughs weakly, spitting blood onto Chuuya’s pristine shirt, a small smile gracing his lips.
His hands shake. He doesn’t know how he could be smiling right now.
“Let me go, Chuuya,” he says softly. “I’ll see you when you fall asleep again.”
“No,” he says, choking out the word like it poisons his very essence, and he claws the knife out. It falls to the floor with a clatter. “No, we can still save you, we can stop the blood flow, you don’t have to—”
(No matter how much Orpheus tried, his love was not enough to bring Eurydice back.)
He stands before a river of ink. The gates of the Underworld slide open with a creak. He moves fluidly, kneeling before the King of the Underworld, and he plucks the first notes of a song, composed of pleading and guilt. Hades’ crimson eyes soften slightly, and Persephone clutches to his arm by his side. Bring him back, Chuuya sings through the lyre. Let me love him once more.
Hades nods, brisk and small. Barely even there. As if he had never even left, Dazai stands before him, and Chuuya turns his gaze away, towards the river and its darkness. He will not look back. He cannot look back. Dazai follows humbly, moving in silence for the first time since Chuuya first met him. One day passes, two days, three. Chuuya braves the rough terrain with a desperate promise. The lyre hangs at his side, slamming into his thighs, but he does not dare move it. There are eyes on them, thousands of people moved by the beauty of his song; Sisyphus, Tantalus, even the Furies stand still. He pays them no mind. He moves forwards. He will reach the surface, and he will hold Dazai’s face in his hands again, and all will be well.
Dazai stumbles. Chuuya turns around.
He does not know who reaches first. He does not know if either of them made it, but Dazai is gone. Chuuya killed him again, and he's the only person left in Yokohama.
He opens his eyes.
He's late for work.
✧
He plays a thousand times. Every night, he closes his eyes, and he wakes in Hades’ palace. His fingers begin to bleed.
Every morning, he opens his eyes, and it is like none of it ever happened. He is still a Port Mafia Executive, former half of Double Black. Dazai is still an Armed Detective Agency member, former half of Double Black. He’s still alive.
Chuuya calms his breathing. He goes about his day. Sometimes, he sees Dazai. He forces his hands not to shake and stops himself from hugging him with relief. He works harder than ever before. He goes drinking with Tachihara after work. Sometimes, he drunk calls Dazai. The bastard never picks up.
Then he goes home and does it all again.
✧
“Hey, Chuuya, do you ever get tired of it?”
“Of what?”
“Why, of saving me, of course.”
He takes a deep breath. The water is clear before them. In this world, Dazai is already a ghost. He’s already passed on, but Chuuya hasn’t made it to the Underworld yet, so he floats in limbo, a strange figure of translucent limbs bobbing beside him. Because of this, he’s perceptive, Chuuya supposes? He knows the truth of the dreams, the hauntings that take place every night, the truth behind his deaths. Maybe he even remembers getting killed by Chuuya. In this world, he had been poisoned, gruesome and painful. He’d drunk from the wrong cup, and Chuuya had held him as his body convulsed in his arms.
He doesn’t like to think about it.
“I don’t think so,” he replies. “To me, it’s always worth it.”
“Why? You know you won’t ever bring me back. You’ll play your songs, sure, but every time, you’ll look back. I'm never going to come back to life. Isn’t it draining? Don’t you think it’s time to let me go?”
(Orpheus played as much as he could, but his love was his curse.)
“But if I never let you go, then it’s as if you’ve never left at all.” He speaks the only truth he can bear to think about. “I’ll wake up in the morning, and you’ll still be breathing. So I have to try as hard as I can for these worlds, these universes where you’re truly gone. I owe it to the Chuuyas who will, one day, mourn you.”
“That’s an interesting way to think about it,” Dazai says. “But what if you could stop these dreams if you just let me go? What would you do then?”
And Chuuya thinks about that. He thinks about the long months, sleepless nights, waking up in a cold sweat. He thinks about the hundreds of Dazais that have died by his own hands. He thinks about the songs he’s played, the grief he’s felt, the mourning he’s done. And he realizes: for Dazai, for himself, for the other versions of himself that aren’t so lucky…
He would do it all again.
“I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that,” he whispers. “I’m going to go save you now, Dazai.”
The ghost smiles sadly beside him. He slips away to the Underworld, where he doesn’t shy away from Hades’ cold gaze. He picks up his lyre with stable, unshaking hands.
He begins to play.
✧
This time, Chuuya doesn’t close his eyes.
Dazai stands before him at midnight, brown hair blowing in the wind. The ocean glitters beside them with the might of a thousand gods. But Chuuya only cares about the opinion of one.
He raises his arm as though a man possessed. Dazai stands there in his beige coat, lightness in his eyes, a sense of forgiveness in his body. Chuuya watches draped in shadows, a veiled hand clutching his shoulders, holding on to pointless anger and hatred. He carries a spear, dipped in gold, handed to him by Zeus himself. It crackles with the energy of the divine.
“I’ve always hated you,” he spits. “I hope you fucking die.”
“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Chuuya,” Dazai says with a bright chuckle. “I love you.”
His hands shake. He throws the spear. It veers off-course, guided by guilt and nerves.
It strikes Dazai in the heart. He stumbles backwards. Chuuya rushes forwards, the weight of infinite apologies on his lips. I love you, I love you, I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry. Please don’t go.
He stands before Hades once more. His judgement is passed. He plays the lyre, a forgotten skill he hadn’t remembered he had. He plays it like it’s second nature. He plays it like the strings are made of Dazai’s bones and the sound-chest of his heart. He moves the Queen of the Underworld to tears. He makes a promise.
He breaks his promise.
Chuuya is a man not easily felled. He is not a man, not a king, but a god—he can stand before the might of the Olympians and emerge unscathed. He has not lost a fight in a very, very, long time. And yet, he is defeated by love. It is his curse, his malediction, his tormentor.
And Dazai is the one who pays the price.
✧
“This is just a personal theory, but—love is the most twisted curse of them all.”
— Gojo Satoru, Jujutsu Kaisen (Gege Akutami)
✧
His hands touch solid arms, his fingers slide across warm cheekbones, but he’s hollow-eyed once more as life slips through his palms like sand. He sits by the ocean alone, no soft touches strumming his back. This time, he doesn’t wake up. This time, his eyes don’t fly open, to an empty bedroom, in a world in which Dazai Osamu is alive.
This time, it’s all too real.
(Eurydice was lost to time, and Orpheus to his grief.)
Chuuya stands on the edge of the pier. For the first time in nearly a year, he slept the entire night without a single disruption. That bandaged, good-for-nothing bastard is finally out of his life. Forever. He takes a deep breath. He should feel happy. He should feel victorious.
Instead, he’s going to visit Hades again. This time, for a different kind of visit.
He closes his eyes, and he jumps.