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When they first met, Dazai was drawn to him. He was fascinated by this all power full teenager who was a rough 5’2 with a saviour complex to rival Odasaku’s. He was fascinated by how Chuuya’s copper hair glinted in the sunlight and his blue eyes were frozen oceans. How he was ice and flame all at once. He was fascinated by how Chuuya didn’t mince his words and how despite being betrayed by the only people he’d ever known he still managed to scrounge up enough compassion to not have them killed for sport with him as the leader of the hunt. He was fascinated by how he was a better man than Dazai would ever be.
And then suddenly, everything is Chuuya, Chuuya, Chuuya. Chuuya is a new mafia employ, he’s being trained by Kouyou, he’s Dazai’s new partner.
That fascination devolves into something akin to obsession because under Kouyou’s guidance, Chuuya becomes not just a fearsome fighter who can snap bones like paper straws but also because he becomes just so fucking pretty. Pretty like a rose or a glass doll that would go for thousands of dollars at a high-end auction, beautifully crafted and preserved. His hair is an inch or two longer and the choker he wears drives Dazai a very specific type of insane. The hat adorning his red hair would look stupid on anyone else and the fact that it looks almost normal on Chuuya leaves Dazai flabbergasted. No one should be allowed to look good in a glorified fedora (it’s called a pork pie, Dazai, you stupid mutt), for fuck’s sake. No one. That’s practically a law of nature.
And yet there’s Chuuya Nakahara, proving Dazai wrong again, and again and again.
He’s entranced. And you cannot blame Dazai for it, okay? Not for how he’s enchanted by the redhead or how Dazai thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever placed his eyes on. You just can’t. Chuuya is gorgeous with porcelain skin people could only dream of, a slim figure worthy of a porno and a good fashion sense, even if Dazai will deny saying that till the day he finally dies. Not only this, but Chuuya is whip smart, always down for a good time and so painfully vibrant that the rest of the world pales, murky and incomprehensible, in the face of his sheer colour. Dazai thinks he could drown in the scarlets and azures.
***
They’re sixteen and the mission is boring. Stakeouts are Dazai’s least favourite assignments because-
- Staring out of a window of a dingy hotel or sitting on an uncomfortable rooftop isn’t fun when you’re on duty.
- He can’t stare at Chuuya since his senses are heightened and Dazai will have to explain himself.
- He doesn’t get the chance to watch Chuuya kick ass until they’re at the end of the mission.
He pretends to care about what’s going on outside the tiny room that they were unceremoniously dumped off in only after his sixth attempt at surreptitiously eyeballing Chuuya doesn’t work. The conditions are dire and Dazai is so bored. The dull concrete of the next building can hold his attention for a decidedly un-riveting two minutes before he’s back to the well of colour that is Chuuya.
Chuuya, who has a cherry-coloured lip balm between his index and his thumb and halfway from his mouth, a dark glossy red left in its wake.
“What are you looking at, asshole?” he snaps, brows already drawn and posture suddenly defensive, as though Dazai’s going to make fun of him. It’s not too farfetched an assumption, Dazai muses distantly as he stares, dumbstruck, at Chuuya and his wine coloured lips. Oh. Fuck, this is bad. No one told Dazai that he’d also have to deal with coloured lip balm! Coloured lip balm that he can smell in the air and coloured lip balm he’d very much like to taste. Fuck.
“Getting all pretty isn’t going to stop the enemy from kicking chibi’s ass,” he taunts, hoping it sounds less strangled to Chuuya. He has a reputation, damn it, and it’s not going to be destroyed by a lip balm that Chuuya probably spent a couple hundred yen on. That tiny blue tube is not going to best demon prodigy Dazai Osamu. Even if the tube makes Chuuya’s pouty lips seem impossibly more kissable. Which he didn’t even think was possible.
Chuuya uses Tainted to try and smack him with the lip balm before he floats it back and stores it safely in one the many pockets of his leather jacket. Dazai mentally resolves to steal it as soon as possible because life as a mafia executive doesn’t allow you to be distracted for even a split second, and he’s so distracted right now he’s sure that he wouldn’t even know if someone stuck a knife deep into his stomach.
-
When Chuuya is totally exhausted post-Corruption and being carried by a huffy Dazai, he strains out five words that lead to Dazai nearly dropping him on the wet grass under his shoes.
“Do you think I’m pretty, Dazai?” Chuuya asks, his words slurred. He attempts to bat his lashes but ends up just fainting instead, becoming totally dead weight in Dazai’s arms. Dazai’s face goes up in flames and as worried as he is about Chuuya, he’s almost a little glad that his partner is now in an unconscious state because living this down would be damn near impossible. Fuck Chuuya and fuck his beauty and fuck his affinity for asking questions he already knew the answers to.
***
They’re seventeen and Chuuya has been seeing someone. As much as he’d like to avoid the fact, Dazai knows it because he’s all knowing. And also because the idea of not knowing everything about Chuuya sends a shiver down his spine and makes his impassive façade feel liable to splitting at the seams.
Dazai has seen a lot of pain, he’s gotten a lot of bad news. His job is to kill people, innocence or guilt be damned. He’d even go as far as to say he enjoyed it when he was fifteen and a sick fuck and to this day he remains a sick fuck in ways that aren’t related to his job. His life kind of sucks.
But the worst thing that ever happened to him was Chuuya getting a boyfriend. And the fact that the boyfriend was fucking Tachihara.
Since he’s Dazai, he was able to figure out that Chuuya was seeing someone fairly easily. Chuuya has his heart on his sleeve and doesn’t hide the hickeys on his neck very well. The only question was about who it was that was lucky enough to be someone Chuuya would spread his legs for, seeing that he didn’t mention anyone in particular and there were no blushes or secretive smiles when Dazai took extra care to name drop some of the people he suspected Chuuya to be involved with. In fact, aside from the hickeys he didn’t even act like someone who had a significant other. He didn’t go on his phone too often and never called anyone even when they were away for days. There were regular calls from an unknown number to his device, sure, but they went ignored as Chuuya busied himself with a million rounds of Donkey Kong with Dazai and their missions.
Finally, after two months of his curiosity (and jealousy) simmering enough to boil over, he asked Chuuya point blank who it was. Chuuya gave him a look and just said, “Thought you knew already. It’s the hunting dog spy. Tachihara. You know, band aid and strawberry hair? Don’t tell anyone, though. It’s kinda hush-hush with the, uh-” Chuuya rubs his neck, discomfort over his features, “-you know,” he finishes lamely. Then he goes back to his report, chewing on the back of his pen again as though he hadn’t just extracted the little will to live Dazai had.
As though it was so easy to just date Tachihara.
Like, Tachihara? He knows that Chuuya’s taste is tacky but Tachi-fucking-Hara stretches it a little too much, no? Why the fuck does he have a band aid on his nose? Seventeen is no age to get rhinoplasty done, and he’s in the mafia where it probably won’t even be able to heal properly. Also, Chuuya hates the bandages on Dazai. Why is he okay with Tachihara’s bandage? Also, Tachihara is just a lowly spy. He’s nothing important. Meanwhile Dazai is going to be taking over the mafia when Mori dies or gets bored or gets murdered by Dazai himself. He’s going to be boss of the organisation that Chuuya has pledged his whole life to. Tachihara is nothing in front of that. Nothing at all. Also, he’s stupid. And dumb and horrible. So, what does Chuuya see in him? Does he find his spiky red hair cute or something? Dazai’s hair is a solid ten times better. It’s not that ugly shade of red and it’s definitely much softer and probably doesn’t constantly reek of blood. It would be so much easier for Chuuya to thread his hands through Dazai’s hair since it gives him more material to work with because it’s longer and more luscious than Tachihara’s mess of needles. Tachihara also dresses as though he goes dumpster diving instead of shopping and settles on the most aesthetically displeasing clothes his runs yield. Dazai’s constantly decked in a whole suit, and he looks good, he knows that. Then why Tachihara?
Anyway. Tachihara sucks. Dazai is better than him in every aspect and Chuuya still went and chose him? What was wrong with him?
-
Something was wrong.
Dazai shakes his head in an attempt to ground himself. He had broken in to annoy Chuuya into a couple rounds of Mario Kart but now he’s standing on the landing, trying to pin point where exactly Chuuya’s sobbing was coming from. For the first time in his life, he feels annoyed at how spacious Chuuya’s penthouse is because it made it near impossible to tell where he was despite the high volume of his cries.
Dazai hurries through the floor, standing for a second extra in front of every door, senses on high alert. Unbidden, his hands begin to shake. Chuuya crying is a sound he’s heard fairly often. Chuuya isn’t as emotionally repressed as half the people in the mafia and how much he cried when he watched Titanic was even a little funny but this sound he’s not heard in years. This is Chuuya crying like he wants his viscera to weep with him, or like he wants the earth to open up and swallow him whole. The last time Dazai was confronted with this atrocity was when they were fifteen and their third mission resulted in more than half of the men ending up as casualties and Chuuya himself strapped to a Port Mafia hospital bed. As soon as he had regained consciousness, he had started sobbing as hard as his bruised lungs would allow him. It was as horrifying then as it is now.
Dazai finally finds Chuuya in the kitchen, sitting on the floor, leaning against the island with a plate of cookies beside him.
“Chuuya?” He calls out softly, trying to not scare him.
At the sound of his voice, Chuuya looks up from behind a curtain of orange and sends the cookies, iron oven plate and all, whizzing at Dazai’s head. He has to duck to not get his ear cuffed by the plate or stray crumbs into his eyes.
“Get the fuck out,” Chuuya seethes, half-heartedly attempting to throw a butter knife in Dazai’s direction. Dazai, of course, dodges it very easily and situates himself beside Chuuya, grabbing on to his left arm as the right weakly punches Dazai in the stomach.
Dazai doubles over groaning mostly just for show. “What is the matter with you?” he screeches, scandalised and all fake.
“The matter- “Chuuya gestures to the mess around him and his tear-stained face “-is none of your fucking business,” His is voice thick and tear stained. Dazai takes it for the tentative agreement to being interrogated that it is.
“A dog getting hurt is always his master’s business, chibi,” Dazai says, trying to compress some snootiness into his voice. His heart beats loudly in his throat. Chuuya huffs out a watery bastard at him and then immediately starts crying again.
“Okay no. Hey, hey, hey,” Dazai repeats, panicked at the abrupt reappearance of the redhead’s tears. This time Chuuya doesn’t even bother to put on an aggressive front, just crumbles into himself and with his hands on his drawn-up knees and his palms on his eyes. He doesn’t cry as loudly this time but it’s a close thing. The way he gasps every so often as though fighting with the very air in his lungs leaves Dazai feeling the kind of hollow he’s not felt in a long time.
It’s clear that Chuuya isn’t going to respond to anything right now. So, Dazai just holds him close and considers it a success when Chuuya allows himself to be held.
-
Later on, when Chuuya’s wild crying has faded into a prettily red face and a sore throat and they’ve finally stop screaming along to shitty 2010 pop hits that had been playing on Chuuya’s giant speakers, he volunteers the information Dazai would kill to know but rather die than ask.
“Tachihara told a couple people about us,” Chuuya says under his breath, gruff, that odd discomfort about him again. “I told him not to, that fucking idiot. I told him not to again and again and again and he still went off and did the one thing I asked from him. Like, it’s not that fucking hard. And we weren’t even properly dating. All we did was mess around in his room but he told them we’re in a relationship,” Chuuya scoffed, throwing back the last of his whiskey and soda. “As if I’d touch his idea of a date with a ten feet pole,” he grouses, reaching for the remote as one hand reaches back to rub at his neck. He’s clearly not in the mood to discuss it any further if the awkward air in the room is anything to go by. Dazai has a faint inkling that that isn't all that's there to it but he lets it go.
“Sounds like an asshole,” Dazai hums, glancing at Chuuya from behind his lashes as he looks up from his phone. Some of the tension Chuuya was holding in his frame drops noticeably and he exhales a breath too relieved to be normal. Dazai reaches across and flicks his forehead, ignoring Chuuya’s hissed threats of genocide.
“Alright then. Mario kart?”
***
They’re eighteen and having a drink after a very, very long night. Dazai stares unashamedly at Chuuya, whose red hair shines anew in the dim light of the bar. He seems to be in a passionate, if one sided conversation with the Akutagwa siblings, his hands gesturing wilding, presumably recounting the night’s bloody events. Chuuya hadn’t lost any men tonight despite how they’d left their opposition and Dazai could almost feel the relief rolling off him in waves.
Chuuya appears to finally gives the pair a break from his tipsy recollection and makes his way towards the other side of the bar, Dazai’s watchful gaze still on him. He seemed to be ready to lose himself to the sweet wine he preferred, idly drumming his fingers to the beat of the strange, almost synth-y jazz that reverberated through the whole establishment. He looked fucking ethereal, and the beaded choker and long earrings and heels that made his legs look a hundred kilometres long didn’t help with how Dazai’s eyes were glued to him. Nakahara Chuuya and his beauty were almost unfair, he thought, watching Chuuya nurse his wine with a small smile. So. Fucking. Pretty.
His little staring session is interrupted as some random grunt sidles up to him, evidently taking empty seat next to him as an invitation.
They sit together in a silence that would be described as awkward if Dazai could deign to care. He’s still staring at Chuuya, who is now blustering through a declination for a dance.
He hears the man beside him scoff. Dazai swivels to face him on his barstool because Chuuya has now collapsed with his head in his arms and likely won’t resurface for at least a bit out of embarrassment.
“Can I help you?” he asks dryly, trying to keep a modicum of cordiality in his voice.
“Nah, not really. Just looking at executive Nakahara over there,” the man replies, inclining his glass towards the executive’s stooped form and giving him a distasteful once over. Dazai bristles internally at the open show of disrespect but he knows talking shit about him with a random subordinate that clearly harboured some dislike for Chuuya wouldn’t be appreciated by him, so of course Dazai has to do it.
“He’s annoying, isn’t he?” Dazai feigns, his lips twitching. “Parading around like a little fairy as though people want his drunk thoughts on everything under the sun.”
The man snorts into his glass. “Fairy’s definitely the right word for him,” he mutters, not privy to how Dazai’s expression drops in confusion. “Say, executive,” he starts, almost conspiratorially, leaning closer to Dazai, beer on his breath. “Do you know why he grew out his hair?”
Huh. That was something that Dazai hadn’t ever really thought about. He had noticed of course, because it’s hard to miss anything new about Chuuya even if you aren’t staring at him nonstop, but he hadn’t cared about why. Chuuya looks good and he looks happy with it, which is all that matters to Dazai.
He shakes his head, reaching towards his glass. The man beside him leans in even further and lowers his voice to the point that Dazai has to strain his ears to hear. It’s not very pleasant a situation to find himself in, but his curiosity has always overruled his comfort. “It’s the same reason he’s wearing those earrings and that shiny dog collar,” Low Level Mafia Grunt whispers, “it’s because he’s a fag.”
He says it almost gleefully, like it’s the most devilishly wicked and witty and humorous thing anyone’s ever said since the very dawn of mankind. He says it in a way that makes Dazai almost glaze over with white hot anger.
-
The man goes home with a broken nose, Black Label on his clothes and ringing ears from a very conveniently aimed bullet. Dazai goes home with Chuuya who’s grumbling about the nice glass of wine he had had to leave behind to patch up ‘bitchy bandaged bastards’.
Chuuya sighs as he pulls out their trusty medical kit. “Stop getting into drunk fights, idiot. It’s bad for morale.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” Dazai grumbles from where he’s collapsed on Chuuya’s bed.
“Then why? What the actual fuck could have warranted that? That was quite the overreaction, you know,” says Chuuya, rolling his eyes. “You calling me the dramatic half of Double Black is a dirty lie when you act like that yourself, you hypocrite”
Dazai huff, scandalised. “It wasn’t an overreaction!”
“Of course it was! You nearly shot the guy!”
“Trust me, he deserved it. Regardless, if I actually wanted him dead then he’d be at Hell’s gate right now,” Dazai whinges, making grabby hands at Chuuya.
Chuuya chuckles as he brings the collected supplies over to Dazai. “I know that, but still. You know it’s not okay to scare the grunts like that. They get pissy and insubordinate and before you know it, there’s a warehouse mutiny or ten.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dazai dismisses, uninterested. He obnoxiously flaps his hands as if he was fanning his words away. Chuuya furrows his brows.
“Come on, Dazai, don’t give me that shit.”
“Just drop it. It’s not worth our time.”
“No, I’m serious, Mackerel. You can’t just do that, provoked or not.”
Dazai makes a noncommittal noise. “He said something,” he finally admits, picking at the bandages on his neck as Chuuya takes his arm to clean the cuts the guy managed to leave behind.
“So you dumped your drink on him? Then proceeded to fight in a very crowded place? Then proceeded to threaten him with a gun?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Dazai answers, blasé. His disregard seems to itch under Chuuya’s skin.
“What the fuck, Dazai? What could he possibly have said to incite that reaction?”
“It was nothing, Chuuya, seriously. Forget about it,” Dazai insists, sitting up straight and looking Chuuya in the eye. Chuuya returns the look with the same intensity, making it known he won’t be backing down.
“No, it was clearly something so tell me what, idiot. You know you can’t hide it from me,” Chuuya coaxes, pressing an antiseptic coated cotton pad onto Dazai’s skin. He hisses at the pain and Chuuya makes a sympathetic noise at the back of his throat.
“I don’t want to,” Dazai says, sullen and stubborn.
He’s given up on his staring match but still gives Chuuya a glare, which the other also partakes in enthusiastically. Chuuya rolls his eyes again. “Come on, asshole. You’re usually so ready to talk about your bar exploits but the one time I want to hear it you wanna keep that stupid mouth of yours shut.”
“Low blow, Chuuya.”
“Shut up. Tell me what happened.”
“I don’t want to.” Dazai repeats, bare hints of irritation climbing up on him.
“Oh my god, Dazai, why do you have to make everything so difficult?” Chuuya asks, roughly switching out his left arm for his right like he’s punctuating his sentence. He traces his fingers up and down the already scarred skin, not very gentle on the new cuts.
“I’m not making it difficult, I just don’t wanna talk about it!” Dazai tells him, now equally as annoyed.
“Why the fuck don’t you wanna talk about it?” Chuuya grouses, louder than before.
“Because it was about you, okay? Happy now?” Dazai snarks, matching Chuuya’s volume. There was nothing that got him riled up the way Chuuya did. Even as he appreciates how beautiful Chuuya looks with flyaway hair and a flush high on his cheeks, his annoyance overrules his love for the view.
Chuuya’s face contorts slightly and he gives Dazai a mirthless smirk. “Wow, I’m impressed. Aren’t you the height of chivalry? Going around and attacking random bar goers in my name?”
“Drop it. I’m serious.”
“Why should I? After all, I’m the guy you did it all for. I think I deserve to know,” he says as he pushes the antiseptic cotton deeper into Dazai’s wound. The combination of the pain and condescending tone finally gets to Dazai, and he loses it.
“You never know when to back off, do you?” he snarls, shaking his arm out of Chuuya’s hands and rounding on him. “He called you a fag,” he snaps. He strides across the room, his arms crossed. “Sorry I didn’t wanna hear this asshole call my partner an actual slur.” A scoff. “Had we not been in public, he wouldn’t even be able to crawl home,” he adds darkly, eyes not meeting Chuuys’s.
As soon as the words leave his lips, Chuuya seems to explode.
He stalks to Dazai’s side of the room, jabbing a finger into his chest. “You fucking idiot,” Chuuya hisses, eyes searing. “What makes you think you had any right to do that? I don’t need you to protect me or whatever the fuck you think you did. Acting like you give a single shit about something like this doesn’t suit you and your stupid lying self,” he sneers.
“So what if he said that? I’ve been hearing it all my life. Where were you then? Too busy kissing up random girls ‘cause you couldn’t be bothered? You only care about this, about my queerness and how I feel when you have a chance to be violent. You’ve never ever given a fuck before and you expected me to believe that out of nowhere some ounce of compassion bled through and you suddenly hated homophobia? I’m not stupid, Dazai, no matter what you like to believe. You saw an inning for a fight and you took it.” Chuuya says, chest heaving and words as bitter as cheap whiskey.
“How the fuck are you not stupid?” Dazai asks, taunt with anger. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you, Chuuya? Do you really believe what you’re saying? Do you think so fucking lowly of me that you just assumed I knew about what people said to you? You know me, I’ve never been interested in office gossip. How the fuck was I supposed to know if you didn’t even tell me? Do you think people were lining up to tell me about how they’re shit talking my partner? And how did you just let it happen? You’re usually so defensive about everything, from your ugly hat to your stupid vest,” he says scornfully, giving Chuuya a derisive look up and down.
Chuuya looks chastised but there’s still heat burning in his icy eyes. He opens his mouth and closes it once, seemingly steeling himself. “It’s because I thought they were right, you fucktard!” Chuuya finally yells, caution to the wind and the number of decibels to the sky. “I thought that they were right,” he repeats, his voice breaking this time. He recovers. “And by the time I realised they weren’t, it was common enough for me to tell myself I’d just ignore it because there wasn’t any use picking a fight. I didn’t even know what to say ‘cause I felt ashamed I was that way in the first place. Happy now?” he mocks, throwing Dazai’s words back in his face.
“No, I’m not fucking happy, what the fuck?” now Dazai’s also yelling, an edge of desperation to his voice. “Of course not. I didn’t know Chuuya, I swear and I’m not-” he takes a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself “-I didn’t do that as for a performance or as an excuse to fuck that guy up, I just- I just- I couldn’t take hearing it and the fact that you have to deal with that on the regular kills me,” he finishes, sour like blood.
Dazai crumples against the wall, his head in his hands as a sudden wave of exhaustion washes over him. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
After a moment he feels Chuuya slide down and sit next to him. There’s a beat of silence which seems awfully loud given the circumstance surrounding it.
“‘S alright mackerel,” Chuuya says gruffly. “I’m sorry too. Kinda rude of me to lash out at an ally like that. God knows we need some of those.” he tries to chuckle but it falls flat.
Dazai raises his head a fraction. “I’m not an ally, idiot,” he mumbles as he drops his head back against the wall. “I’m bisexual. That might have had something to do with how pissed I got.” Dazai traces random patterns on the floor before loosening his tie and pulling it off. This was his first time saying it out loud, he muses, but he doesn’t mind. The first person to know should be his bisexual awakening. It’s only fair.
They lapse into what Dazai thinks is a glum silence until Chuuya splutters out a profoundly gobsmacked “What?”
Dazai tilts his head at him, confused. “Yeah? I’m bisexual?”
“No no no what, what the fuck-”
“Yes? How did you not know already?”
“I don’t know! You only ever talk about girls!” Chuuya is getting very close to screeching.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause I don’t really date guys. But haven’t you noticed me taking one home? I do that pretty often, like, straight from the bar. I’ve dated a couple girls but it’s never been serious.”
“So you just fuck guys? That’s it?”
“Uh, no,” Dazai says. He clears his throat and starts, voice almost bashful. It’s the closest to embarrassed he’s ever been. “No, that’s not what I meant. I think I’m a little too romantically invested in this one guy to do anything but have a one-night stand with another.” he admits, sighing. “Honestly it kind of sucks,” he says, looking anywhere but at Chuuya. “Whenever I actually looked for someone I wanted to have stay I always ended up at the same place.”
Dazai goes for the plunge.
“I always ended up making eyes at someone with blue eyes and red hair because they’re all I’ve wanted for, what, years at this point. It’s almost pathetic,” he chuckles, his heart beating out of his chest.
The second he’s done saying it, he regrets it. Chuuya regrets it too, if the way he stiffens is any indication. Dazai feels like he’s sinking through the floor. He’s ruined it. He’s ruined all their memories and their new missions and he’s ruined their simple existence with each other and that easy camaraderie they’ve had for years. All because he can’t help falling for Chuuya and his copper hair and periwinkle eyes and sweet everything.
“I’m pretty sure Oda will return your feelings if you tell him, Dazai,” Chuuya says in a voice that’s too neutral to be real. He’s staring at his hands in his lap, a dazed look in his eyes. The answer renders Dazai speechless, which is quite the feat.
“What does Odasaku have to do with this?” he asks, bemused.
“Uh, he’s your red-hair-blue-eyes guy? You talk about him like he hung the stars?” Chuuya sounds equally bewildered now.
“What is wrong with you, Chuuya,” Dazai groans, stretching out his name. “You really are stupid, you know,” he lets out a long-suffering sigh just to hide how his hands are shaking. Chuuya starts with his threats about genocide again.
“It’s you, you fucking idiot,” Dazai says with a dramatic flourish in Chuuya’s general direction. “And now that I know you don’t feel the same cause of how you’re being deliberately obtuse, I can go and drown myself in some whiskey. Bye!”
Dazai scrambles up from the floor, almost tripping over himself as he winds down his sleeves over the bandages hastily and is about two seconds away from booking it all the way back to his apartment before he realises something -probably his discarded tie- is wound around his ankles. He falls flat on his face and whines pathetically, the three drinks, embarrassment and terror catching up to him swiftly. This was the worst, this was the worst. He’s now not only freshly out of a best friend but also out of even a shred of dignity. Not to mention the wicked bruise that’s going to manifest itself on his forehead tomorrow.
He hears Chuuya laugh, the faint tinkering sound making his smush his face into the carpet. He’s so fucked. Who even does that? He just fought with some random guy at a random bar in The Name of Love, then fought said Love, then came out to him, then confessed his affections. Then tried to escape and then fell flat on his face. Demon prodigy my ass.
Dazai feels a hand fist in his blazer and pull him back up next to Chuuya. He rushes to hide his face in his hands for the second time in the night, but his ears are a dead giveaway. Dazai fucking Osamu is a wreck.
“You calling me stupid doesn’t sit right with me when you’re like, the dictionary definition of an idiot,” Chuuya chuckles, not facing Dazai. He doesn’t sound mad or creeped out so Dazai musters all his courage to peek at him through thin fingers.
“I think the years of repetitive head trauma have caught up to me because I-,” he cuts off, swallows, and follows through. “I like you too, Dazai. I have for a while now. Since that day after the whole Tachihara debacle, when we screamed to Roar by Katy Perry.” Chuuya is as red as his hair and Dazai knows he’s the same shade. “I mean- it’s still a shitty song though!” Chuuya hastens to exclaim, not willing to let the fragile silence persist. All his usual grace seems to have deserted him and he looks as awkward as a new-born deer. Some random wrapper that his hand is touching starts to float, but Chuuya doesn’t notice.
But Dazai does, so he winds his hand around Chuuya’s wrist. Chuuya whips his head towards him, breath hitching. He stares at Dazai with those gorgeous ocean eyes and Dazai can’t help himself.
“You should get that pretty head checked then, Chuuya,” Dazai says and kisses him.
Its soft and saccharine and chaste and so unlike anything Dazai’s ever experienced that he’s momentarily damned to no sensation. Then Dazai cups Chuuya’s jaw, almost hesitant. Chuuya leans into to the touch with a low sound and suddenly Dazai’s flushed with feeling. He’s running on air and he’s swimming in sand. There’s something so indescribably right about the moment. Chuuya is a soothing cold against his feverish skin and his lips are softer than what Dazai had thought up in any of his various daydreams.
This kiss doesn’t go further than just a sweet press and Dazai hates it and is grateful in equal measure, considering that he’s almost certain he’d keel over if it went on too long. But then again, it’s Chuuya, and when it comes to him Dazai doesn’t do anything but want, want, want. He’s so happy that he could probably live forever coasting off memory of this joy. “Is this really happening?” he mutters when he leans back, dazed beyond his own persona. Chuuya gives him a small smile, the kind that’s strictly reserved for when Dazai hasn’t been a little shit in the past 48 hours.
“Guess so, mackerel,” Chuuya says, nose bumping against Dazai’s. Dazai’s certain he could get so high he overdoses on Chuuya’s voice. It’s lighter than Dazai’s ever heard it and he could simply pass away. “Cool, okay then,” he says, dumb and numb. His comprehension may be lagging a little. Chuuya just pulls him closer and lets Dazai rest his chin on his head and huffs a small laugh.
Dazai is so gone.