Work Text:
Dazai appears in the doorway smelling of gunpowder and sporting a deep bruise across his cheekbone, but Chuuya doesn’t ask. Usually won’t. He’s got a good sense for when things are better left unknown, but Dazai rarely grants him reprieve like that.
Chuuya passively observes as Dazai saunters closer towards him with enough energy to warrant the action being labeled as dancing.
Like he said, Chuuya doesn’t ask, but he does say, “You look like a beaten dog.”
Dazai did something bad today. Something the ADA would find unacceptable at best, and something Atsushi would find unforgivable at worst.
It’s shame and desperation that has him crawling into the only arms that refuse to do anything other than open for him. Chuuya can’t be phased by the blood on his hands when his own are soaked in it up to the elbows.
Beaten dog, he says, and he’s right.
Dazai hasn’t slept in days, but he’s never felt more alive. These half formed explosions in his mind feel less like evidence of a coming undone, and more like the beginning of his rebirth.
The burning sensation of this thing he’ll label as life is spreading through every bone, every tendon, every vein, every cell— he’s so full of the fire he’s gurgling on it. Bubbles up through his throat and over his tongue.
So he laughs and laughs, just bends right with the weight of it.
“The fuck are you laughing like that for?” Dazai doesn’t look up from his place doubled over, but he doesn’t miss the undercurrents of apprehension in his voice.
Makes him laugh harder. Enough to see stars.
His hands are jittering with adrenaline he can’t shake even as he stands straight again.
Dazai’s smile is all teeth. Taps against the bruise marring his face.
“Guess what this is from?”
Chuuya’s got a deep furrow between his brows, but it’s clear he’s not following Dazai’s line of questioning. The fire between his ribs is turning molten. It hurts like hell.
“Do I need to call somebody?” Chuuya asks instead. Dazai takes a step closer like a shark beginning to circle and with all this blood in the water, it’s no wonder why.
“I got pistol-whipped. Right across my face,” Dazai pulls Chuuya’s hand away from his side and onto the tender skin; he wants him to press in hard enough for his skull to fold under it. Chuuya’s hand goes willingly, but it just barely grazes his cheek.
It’s infuriating.
“Who?” Chuuya’s hands are gentle but his voice is sharp with a premeditated plan to put someone’s blood under the sound of it.
And it’s the wrong fucking question.
“Doesn’t matter. Not important.”
The realization starts to dawn on him, and it’s like watching smoke start to waft off the wings of a crashing plane. The only way left is down.
“Why,” he tries instead.
And there goes the second engine.
“His buddy got talked into playing a game of russian roulette and lost. Apparently, the guy came to the deranged conclusion that I cheated,” Dazai watches idly as his eyes widen. “Even if I had, his dead friend is still dead. It’s better to learn that lesson early.”
Chuuya’s hand presses painfully into the bruise with the unconscious curling of his fingers.
“You could’ve fucking died.”
Another laugh is trying to bubble up again, but he fights it this time. Claws it back down.
There’s so much anguish on his face. Dazai drinks it down like a fish because it is in fire’s very nature to spread. Wildfire is just another name for people who are full of things they cannot understand.
“That seems a bit extreme. There was only a 50% chance anyway— the two of us have faced much steeper odds.”
His thumb presses deeper into the splotch of purple.
“One-in-six, you mean.” His voice is cold, and Dazai can sense Chuuya’s internal retreat with the tightening of his jaw. Dazai’s desperate for company, so he chains him there with a hand against his wrist.
“Two way roulette, hatrack. I had something to prove.”
Words are spilling out of him now. Dazai will forever be imprisoned by the sound of his own voice.
“What the fuck could you possibly have to prove to those people?!”
Chuuya’s hand migrates into the mess of his hair to tug his face closer, examining him with intense scrutiny. Whenever he got like this, Oda used to describe the look in his eye as wild; Dazai always caught the tailwinds of Chuuya huffing out dangerous from under his breath.
It’s all burning so bad. Hurts so bad. Dazai thinks his eyes are starting to sting with the beginning of a breakdown.
The fall— always catching against rocks in the fall.
“Not to them. I needed to prove it to me.”
The grip in his hair doesn’t relent, and Dazai doesn’t want it to. From here, counting freckles is a nice substitute for counting sheep.
“Prove what?” Chuuya asks, but he doesn’t want to know the answer. This is the reason Chuuya tiptoes around questioning Dazai— the only place it ever leads is the minefield.
“Prove that I can’t die. I know I can’t die— No, no. Don’t fucking look at me like that,” Chuuya’s mouth twists into a grimace and recoils out of Dazai’s space. Dazai’s vision is starting to blur with a sheen of tears that won’t shed, and he just— feels so fucking much. It’s like someone pulled back his skin and set him on hot coals; it’s like the world had scooped out his insides and tried to put every other person in the universe’s emotions into his frail body. It burns, so he laughs. It’s choked between the hiccups in his chest. “I know I can’t die. You don’t get it. Why don’t you ever understand?”
He’s trying to twist the everything into something he can understand. Anger, it’s always back to anger.
“You never understand,” Dazai whispers through clenched teeth, and Chuuya watches, struck. The frustration is making a child out of him. “Never understand.”
Eventually Chuuya breaks out of his stupor to pull Dazai into some semblance of a hug. It’s more crush than comfort, but Dazai tries to use the pressure as an electric shock to bring him back to death. Anything to dull the frayed edges of his mind.
“I thought you were getting better.”
He’s breaking promises to the living and the dead today, but it’s old news. Dazai’s laugh is acidic enough to leave his whole mouth sour.
“M‘never getting better.”
And it’s true.
“Don’t say that. It’s just one goddamn relapse.”
But, if you’re setbacks crash into you often enough to make a routine out of it— precise enough to start circling the days in red on the calendar like a bold warning— then it’s not just one setback. It’s who you are.
Everything will always be one step forward, one step back, and the only difference between this and a treadmill is the emergency stop button. The option to push that button was ripped from him the second Oda walked himself into an open grave. He’ll be on this machine forever.
Dazai’s voice cracks under the weight of his own words.
“M’never getting better.”
Chuuya is running out of bandaids to put on this bullet wound, so he takes the easy way out.
“I love you.”
Responds, “I’m sorry.”
And he is. It sounds miserable to love someone who is cursed to run circles around their life until it all falls apart. Until he tears them both apart.
I will make a mourner out of you.
Dazai thinks he’s halfway there.