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Nakahara Chuuya does not dream.
It’s one of his few certainties.
Even when his own humanity is doubted. Even when he loses sight of who the man in the mirror truly is, the border of his copper hair blurred with the blood on his face, that’s one of the few things he can always hold on to.
He can’t dream, and as his life goes on, that absence doesn’t bother him too much.
As he watches even the unbreakable stone that is Dazai crumble- under the weight of memories being shoved down his throat by his own brain- he’s glad he’s unable to dream.
Sure, he does wake up panting some nights. Most nights, as of lately. Still, the memories always feel just right out of his reach. He’s fine with that.
Nakahara Chuuya does not dream, or at least, he doesn't remember it. It's something he has accepted without complaining. If it means not being haunted by the colored pictures of his past, dreams are not something he longs for.
Nakahara Chuuya does not dream. So, when one night he wakes up with vivid pictures painted red on his eyelids and screams etched in his ears, he doesn't know who he is anymore.
Dazai has to spread his arms to keep balance as he tiptoes through their empty living room. On a second, sober thought, their resolution to leave empty beer cans on the floor with the pledge of “cleaning tomorrow” was probably not one of their best strategies. Especially maintained for a week. It’s dark now, he has somewhere to be and he’s allegedly not getting there anytime soon, if he keeps stumbling on trash and ugly furniture once every few steps. He curses under his breath, his left feet accidentally hitting the leather, decorative couch that he hates so much. He’ll burn it, one day.
Still, it’s too late to go back to bed.
He’s already jumped off his mattress and gave himself quite the mental stimulus, by playing parkour in his own living room. Which means, he’s surely not falling asleep anytime soon. At this point- he almost steps on their cat, with a loud complaint coming from the feline who feels his own beauty sleep being disturbed- it would be a waste to not investigate the loud crash and incessant, raspy breathing coming from his flatmate’s room.
Which is not to be read as anything that might imply he’s worried.
Curiosity is a detective’s first requisite, if one wishes to call himself so. As a matter of fact, he’s been a detective for the past five- almost six years. It’s his rightful duty to be inquisitive.
He leaps over the last of the five coffee tables they have in their apartment- what a funny game it would be, guessing who’s the jackass that arranged the furniture- and stops when he reaches the ajar door of Chuuya’s bedroom. He softly, hurriedly knocks on the mahogany door but there’s no tangible answer other than the ongoing heavy breathing. He counts to ten, then he opens it. The door flows smoothly on the recently oiled hinges. Newly, he knows, because he’s the one who oiled them.
He’s greeted by Chuuya’s digital clock horrendously shattered on the ground, the glistening display’s glass crushed enough to tell him Chuuya used all his strength to hit it. Still, by the way it lays on the floor next to his nightstand, it doesn’t look like it was thrown voluntarily. It more likely just got in the way of an abrupt movement.
Then, barely visible in the faint light coming from outside the window, there's Chuuya. Sweaty fabric sticking to his back, he's sitting up with his whole upper body slouching forward. He looks like a puppet held up by a string tied around the highest vertebrae of his spine. Such high contrast with his usual, forcedly learned good posture. His white-knuckled hands are clutching at the cotton sheets. He doesn’t move, nothing indicates he has noticed another person intruding his room.
Osamu clicks his tongue. He gets no response. There's a slight slight tremor in Chuuya's shoulders that hasn't stopped for a single moment since he has walked through the door. Ah, how bitter is the taste that floods his tongue as he steps closer. His footsteps become dull when his feet get on the soft chenille mat resting next to Chuuya’s king size bed. He slowly sits at the edge of the mattress, at the man’s left, smoothing the folds of the cotton sheets with his right hand. He directs his upper body towards Chuuya.
Scattered aftermaths of a nightmare surrounding a man that does not dream. Each cluttered clue leads to a one-way street.
What a peculiar case.
"Chuuya?" he calls softly, breaking through the ear piercing silence. Once, twice, thrice. At the fourth call of his name, the man seems to hear him and he abruptly turns his head to look up at him.
He expects to be greeted by Chuuya’s anger. Brows furrowed or a pair of gray eyes threatening him, telling him to get away.
He does not expect Chuuya’s eyes to be so glassy. Is he really behind them? Jaw trembling with shaky breaths, Chuuya stares up at him with dread painted in thin, rough strokes on his face.
Dazai calls- whispers his name again, rattled.
“Chuuya?”
Nakahara Chuuya, Executive of the Port Mafia. Scratch that. For a handful of suspended seconds, the man in front of him is just…
“Chuuya!”
Chuuya snaps back into reality and squeezes his eyes shut. After a few seconds and a vigorous shake of his head, he sits up straight and opens them again. His eyelashes are darker than usual, wet.
“What was that?” asks Dazai, skimming over every little crease and scar on his face. Next to his lips, a little white line. Ah, that one is new.
“It’s… nothing. Go back to bed.” Chuuya says, voice rough and scratching the insides of his throat. It barely trips outside of his lips. The corners of his eyes gleam, reflecting the light coming from outside. The ghost of a creek runs down his cheeks. Dazai runs his eyes over his face. The uncomfortable sensation tying up behind his larynx, he doesn’t like. He keeps on smoothing the sheets with his right hand.
Staying on track, Chuuya doesn’t soften his hold on the bedsheets.
Silence falls on them like winter’s first snow. Quiet and numbing, it has Dazai running his hands on the cotton cloth for way more than needed. He doesn’t stop even when his hand feels sore and his sight has adapted to the faint light of the room. The idea of getting up and going back to bed is quickly tossed away by Chuuya’s erratic breathing.
“They were… I saw them.” Chuuya breaks the truce after a while, “I didn’t want to.” His hands leave their grasp on the sheets, but close back into fists right after.
“Has it never happened before?” Dazai tiptoes around the matter. He's careful.
“What do you think?! For fuck's sake, of course it hasn't! And if this happens again, I don’t…” Chuuya crashes into it headfirst. His voice harsh, trails off midway, metal pieces clattering to the ground as he hits the wall face first.
Osamu has been the unfortunate witness of how his eyebrows comically frown when faced with a bothersome enemy. He has watched him smirk as he fought as effortlessly as the act of breathing. He has observed his gray eyes narrow and open wide, his lips curl with disgust, his nose turning up when he hears him speaking his typical nonsense. Chuuya has always been expressive, nothing ever hidden from his face. Emotions curving and tilting his every feature, merging and meshing, painting and erasing. He has been with him through thick and thin, patching up wounds he has created with his own merciless schemes. He has memorized all the possible combinations of his emotions, of his facial muscles.
But he's human, he's learning how to acknowledge that. And if you're human, miscalculations are bound to happen.
The ensemble of features that’s displayed in front of him is new, a sight that he wasn't familiar with until a few seconds ago. It’s even worse than the disheartened expression he has seen earlier. And he despises it, more than he has ever loathed something about Chuuya.
He has observed him long enough to know his features by memory, but he has never seen him look so fragile, vulnerable- terrified.
It’s almost unsettling, how wide his foggy eyes are, a stone dam trying to hold back a swollen river. Shaky lips pressed into a paper thin line make him nauseous, and this time the frown of his eyebrows doesn’t make him laugh. He feels guiltily glad when Chuuya lowers his head, hiding his face from his sight. His curiosity wanes until there's nothing left of it.
“I don't’...” he says again, voice hoarse, red with newly spurted anger. He raises his right fist and slams it down once again. If it doesn’t hit his own leg it’s just thanks to Dazai’s quick reflexes. He chooses to not think too hard about the possible willingness of the aim.
"Hey," there's resistance in his fist. "Chuuya, stop," Dazai says. He's surprised by how demanding he sounds. He swallows dryly with distress. He lowers himself enough to be able to look at him, past the copper locks that stick to his face and fall in front of him like a curtain.
He feels like a fool. No, that's an understatement. He should've known that one day this would’ve happened. Now he's empty handed, drowning in a vulnerability he rarely ever had a glimpse of. How much is he allowed to give and to take? He's tiptoeing around borders. Making matters worse is nothing but the last thing on the list of his priorities. He hesitates, his left hand stills around Chuuya’s fist.
In response, unpredictable as Chuuya always is, he softens as he lets Osamu’s fingers make their way into his palm. He slowly eases his hand open, guiding him until their fingers are awkwardly interlocked. He lifts his head, but the fog in his eyes is still there, muddy gray. It doesn’t seem willing to fade away. Seems like simply touching him won't shelter him from it, not this time.
“It’s alright,” he manages to say, voice throaty. It's something, a green light. Chuuya somewhat gives him a signal, he makes it into instructions. It’s just enough to let Dazai's shoulders slouch as he strengthens the hold on his hands. The mashing of their skin burns. Yes, he really could use an instruction booklet right now.
They sit there quietly for a while. A dog barks outside, the sounds of the rising up city grounds them with metallic nails to a hazy idea of normalcy.
“Do you want me to get you a glass of water?” Dazai ventures. Chuuya nods, and he gets up. It startles him, the itching on his left palm as it leaves the hold.
Barefoot on the marble floor of their kitchen. He takes his time filling a clear glass -one that has a little slug printed on it- with cold tap water. He keeps his ears focused, searching for any sign of struggle while he roams around in the cooking area. There is none. When he goes back to Chuuya’s room, the man is sitting straight, his hair slicked back by his hand and seemingly focused on maintaining a steady breathing pattern. Dazai sits back on the mattress and hands him the water. Chuuya drinks and doesn’t seem to notice what glass he’s picked.
He leaves the empty glass somewhere at his right and it flips to the side on the messy sheets.
“It has never happened before,” he says after a while. He uneasily runs his shaky hand through his hair. He looks closer than he’s ever been, his gray eyes a window open down to his very core. The pale scars of corruption are barely noticeable in the cold, early sunrise lighting. Yet, their presence feels heavy on his eyes.
Dazai stays silent. He doesn’t like how his hands itch to reach out for him. To trace those whitish motifs… the thought swarms on his fingertips. Not now, iron taste on his tongue as he bites the insides of his mouth.
“I don’t know if those were my memories. I do not recall any of them. I think they were from before…”
He gambles. “Before the Arahabaki accident?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.” he says, appalled. The shallowness of his answer makes shame run cold in his veins. But no matter how hard he digs into his two-thousand-layered brain, no answer works right enough as he plays awkwardly with the clothing of his sweatshirt.
Chuuya gambles too. It's an already won match, as he slouches forward and rests his head against his shoulder. It’s a soft thud that sends shivers down Dazai's spine. He doesn’t move.
“Tomorrow?” He ventures. Chuuya softly nods. There’s a layer of cloth- a thick one, even- between his shoulder and his forehead. Yet, he swears he can sense his skin pressing against his. Dazai feels his partner’s breaths become even, his heart rate settling back to normal.
Chuuya is so terrifyingly human it scares him. In his highs and lows his heart seems to feel more than Dazai could even begin to understand. And somehow he’s still capable of keeping it under lock and key. How much of him is actually concealed behind the layers of thick skin he has grown during the years, Dazai doubts even Chuuya himself knows.
A ragged breath shakes Chuuya from head to toes. He relents. He reaches up his right hand and softly runs it up and down his back, rubbing slow circles to the rhythm of his breaths.
He tries not to think too much about Chuuya’s reaction to the contact. A subtle gasp at the contact, and he leans even further into him. Half of his body is now pressing against him.
Oh. Well.
Under the thin material of his white shirt he feels the pattern embossed on his back. It resembles lightning. He knows what it looks like. It’s discolored skin that runs like roots across his body, from his nape down to his elbows and knees. He still remembers seeing it for the first time still red and surrounded by bruises and bloody injuries. He wonders if its creation is one of the memories that tainted Chuuya’s dreams.
As he unconsciously begins to trace the scar’s pattern, Chuuya speaks again.
“It’s not fair,” he whispers, the sound coming out muffled against his hoodie. And oh how it irks Dazai, to admit that he’s right.
Haven’t the sleepless nights Dazai spent sitting on the floor next to his bed, giving him his hand- which always walked out of it relentlessly bruised- to hold onto, not to focus on the searing pain the singularity inside of him had caused, been enough?
All the relapses, all the arguments, all the effort that sticking back together as friends- no, partners had required… It wasn’t for nothing, and that’s for sure. Still, the hope that it was enough… that, has just shattered in front of them. Endless cars run in the streets outside.
He doesn't answer, he's not supposed to. But while he knows he's got no right to speak, for a few seconds he genuinely considers wrapping his other arm around him. Or at least, find his hand once again.
At some point, Chuuya’s breathing becomes slow and evens out. It's a set rhythm that lulls the both of them. The faint light coming from outside is brighter now, a thin ray of sun peeks inside and draws a line on the floor.
Dazai leans forwards. He holds Chuuya’s head carefully as he lies him down against the pillow. He’s sound asleep as his hair comes loose from his sweat beaded forehead and falls down on the pillow. The corners of his eyes are still damp, but Dazai doesn’t wipe them away. He fetches the blankets that have been thrown aside earlier and pulls them up.
He lets his fingers linger on his shoulders, before finally backing away.
Six a.m.strikes on the wall clock. The cat walks into the room, jumps on the bed and curls up at Chuuya’s side. Dazai grabs the empty glass and heads to the kitchen.
He takes Chuuya’s phone with him and turns it off. It startles him, the amount of strength he uses to put the empty glass in the sink.
How selfish can he be? After washing the glass until his hands become puckered by the water, he walks back to Chuuya's room and sits on the floor. His back is against the wooden bed frame. The same spot he's grown accustomed to over the past few years.
Now, the kind of hurt it's different. It's not something that a few hours and several painkillers can soothe for a while.
He lays his head back against the mattress out of habit and reaches out with his hand for Chuuya's own. Selfish, he finds it and holds it.
No longer human can keep quiet the rumbling in the back of Chuuya’s head, when it starts to seethe and gurgle. It can purge Corruption away, as it leaves behind only a few jagged, pale scars. What No longer human can’t do, is swat away dreams. Dazai wishes that was in his field of capabilities.
Chuuya weakly squeezes his hand. His detective's duty tells him he should investigate the quirky tingle that runs straight from his palm to his knees. He doesn't.
For the first time, No longer human is of no help. But, for the time being, as long as the sun is this bright pinhead peeking at the horizon- until the only sound lulling him back to sleep is the distant muttering of cars and trains filled with commuters, this will do.
Chuuya's hand burns a comfortable flame against his own.
Ah, the neck pain he'll get when he wakes up is going to be a hassle.