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He should’ve expected this, knowing Dazai for so long, but looking at the ceiling of dark trees and sparse stars shining through, he can’t help but snicker at his own naivety. By the corner of his eye he can see his coat, hat, and gloves, all folded nicely next to him, and he can’t help but wonder if he should be thankful for that bare minimum. He can still feel his own gun in a holster, digging into his back, and a knife by his thigh, so he wasn’t left entirely defenceless, but he’s still there, on the forest floor, clothes sticking to his skin thanks to slowly gathering morning dew and blood.
And gods, everything fucking hurts.
He can never fully forget what it is like to wake up after using Corruption, but that four years of a break still took him by unpleasant surprise now. There is iron on his tongue and in his lungs, probably, and despite having almost god-like recovery, he still can easily tell he’s got at least three broken ribs. The world keeps spinning around him when he tries to sit down, slowly, fighting for every shallow breath, and he digs his fingers into the trunk of the tree next to him to stabilise himself before he folds in half again and vomits blood. So his stomach took a hit as well, huh. He wipes his face with the back of his hand and sighs, reaching mindlessly for his phone.
Another crack on his screen, despite protective glass. Fuck it. Some messages, unanswered calls. A short “Good job, you have two days off.” from Mori, Ryuu asking him where he is, same with Hirotsu. He probably should answer them, send his coordinates, force himself to trust them and actually allow them to help him, but in the end, he gives up, dragging himself up. Enough shitty decisions and trusting others for today, he decides bitterly, and gathers his things before starting a long, tiring walk home.
It truly must be a stupid decision, since even ever-distrusting Arahabaki, screaming in his ears so loud it rings, quiets down, but Chuuya doesn’t have enough fucks in him to care anymore.
Dazai Osamu expected many things from Nakahara Chuuya, especially after knowing him for so many years. Unyielding trust was only one of them, woven in-between all the lies and mockery they allowed themselves to flow around any words they said to each other; he prided himself in his ability to read Port Mafia’s Executive with relative ease, and all that happened during the fight or their last meeting actually only reinforced his belief.
That’s why, when he finally realises that the Slug still hasn’t contacted anyone from the Mafia to come and get him, despite everything, he finally starts to worry. It’s a nauseating feeling; he used to think, many times, that he was above it, no matter who it was to centre around, but losing Oda (and, somehow, also Ango) changed many things. Or maybe it changed way earlier, when he kept finding his heart buried deep within those blue eyes, not even wanting to try to swim out, or when they laughed together on some hill in France, years ago, kissing each other stupid, or when they made those idiotic vows to annoy each other ‘till death do them part—
He keeps glancing at his phone. He's been tracking Chuuya's device the entire time, even after defecting, and there is anxiety gathering unpleasantly in his stomach. His fingers keep findling with a titanium band he wears as a necklace, discreetly hidden under his everyday clothing.
Maybe Dazai overestimated this time. Maybe for Chuuya... Maybe being left alone, again, pulled some unpleasant strings in his — was he, though? still? — little mafioso, especially after such a long time. And instead of following reason, he decided that if not Dazai, nobody will see him in that sorry state using Corruption reduced him to. And really, didn't it sound like something Chuuya would do?
With a gradually growing pit in his stomach he leaves the Agency, despite everyone else staying late to clean up the mess. He wouldn't be helping with the work if he stayed anyway, so he might as well prove to himself — and Chuuya — that he actually changed.
Hopefully, for the better.
Even if the security team of the building see him, they don’t say anything. Commenting on the state of the Mafia Executive was a quick way to get killed, and Chuuya would really prefer it if he didn’t have to change the staff anytime soon. His workload was insane enough, thank you very much. By the time he reaches his front door, he’s even more exhausted than he was before, and it’s a challenge in itself. He he isn’t even sure what fuels him, outside of pure spite, that he’s able to still move around and not leave bloody marks everywhere. By this point, he’s no longer coughing blood, though there is a bitter thought somewhere that he might just not have any more to spare.
His apartment is quiet, and it rings in his ears along with Arahabaki’s screams, full of his own anger he’s too tired to feel. Lights from the city, falling through big windows, are enough for him to move around. He strips from his coat and the rest, staying only in pants and a ruined shirt he needs to throw away later. He should probably burn it all somewhere outside the city like the last time and the one before, but that’s a thought for tomorrow, maybe. There is one bottle of cheap wine he keeps specifically in the fridge for the days like this and he stumbles for it, cold alcohol tingling in his throat not long after.
It’s probably stupid decision, but he committed so many of those today that it doesn’t even matter anymore. Thanks to years spent with Dazai he still doesn’t keep any painkillers in his apartment, especially since anything that would actually work would have to be in a dosage lethal to a normal person. That means all he has for this exhausting, dull pain, that seems to be coming from inside of his bones, is alcohol anyway.
And it’s stupid. So. Fucking. Stupid, and he feels like screaming, but all he can do is take a package of cigarettes from the pocket of his coat and drag himself outside to the balcony. Another fucking habit that he could’ve abandoned ages ago, just because some shitty Mackerel hated the smell of the smoke, and Chuuya feels dangerously hollow when he thinks about it. Maybe after their meeting in the dungeon and getting himself drunk almost to the point of alcohol poisoning he still had some hope. A small, misplaced hope that anything that once created them could still exist, despite pretty much everything else.
He should take it as his answer. He was abandoned, alone, again, in a fucking forest, after trusting motherfucking Dazai to take care of him — hell, just bringing him somewhere safe would have been fucking nice. Finally one burning bridge too many, going into flames along with cigarette in his mouth—
The door to his apartment opens quietly, but Chuuya hears it, even over the screams and pain and exhaustion, and he can almost see it, how his resolve melts away once again. Oh, he’s so fucking stupid, and so, so hopelessly in love.
Somehow, seeing Chuuya without his gloves still makes his head tingle in a weird way, and Dazai follows the movements of his fingers almost unconsciously as the man takes a drag from his cigarette. Small, silver band on his ring finger is dull, but it still catches the light from burning tobacco and Dazai's breath.
"You're still wearing it," he muses. Chuuya doesn't even have to look his way.
"Yeah."
"Despite everything that happened, really?"
"Yeah."
"You're a desperate sentimentalist for someone with so many knives in his back, aren't you, Chuuya?"
Another, slow drag of cigarette, a little too deep, as if burning in his lungs could drown the burning of the metal on his finger, even if neither left visible scars.
"Yeah."
It was always like this, with them. Two steps forward, one back. Two more back, then a random jump to the front. Following the footsteps on a road they couldn't see properly, one they desperately wanted to map for themselves, despite not knowing how to. Push and pull, reading unsaid words, apologising, trying again. Careful steps when they could, digging their heels deep when they couldn't. Unsaid promises, woven in-between their fingers and breaths, hopeful glances, desperate lips crashing together. More, more, always more, because they've been each other's weaknesses and strengths, and because if the whole world was their enemy, at least they could cover their weak spots, back to back.
But then, suddenly, Dazai started going up. Or maybe sideways, somewhere, in some new direction that Chuuya couldn't follow. And suddenly, he was stuck in a plain, three-dimensional world, all while Osamu found some special, fourth dimension, and went there. And then Dazai was everywhere and nowhere, all around him and far away at the same time, leaving memories of a touch on Chuuya’s skin, but never enough to feel. And Dazai was moving, too, seemingly floating on the edges of his sight, always leaving when Chuuya tried to look. Before he even realised there was a chain keeping him in place, and he had to stay where he was abandoned. The chain is made from his own fear, loneliness, desperation, maybe, useless hope that if he stayed here, he would be found again. But nothing ever stays perfectly still, and with every passing night — full of whispers of an insane god in his mind, mixing with doubts and anger of his own — he would sink deeper and deeper into the ground, desperately covering his eyes. To not see. To not know. To not hear.
Because he knew where to find him, where to look, always did, even when he pretended he didn't, and hearing him laugh, seeing him smile with that shine in his eyes, like he did with Oda, hurt more than anything else. It shouldn't, it should be a good thing, happy thing, and yet Chuuya couldn't help but punch walls and drown himself in alcohol and numbing drugs, laughing bitterly at his own hypocrisy, because he was bitter, and jealous, and he could feel precisely why he was abandoned again, why his place was in the dark of the night, with blood, anger, and violence. He couldn't give Dazai what he truly needed. He could be by his side as they spiralled together into misery and death, but when Dazai chose to try and find the light, and hope, and maybe something more than pure suffering and stolen moments of peace just for the two of them, that's when Chuuya couldn't follow. And that was the worst thing of it all - that he wasn't as stupid as he pretended to be, and he knew exactly why he was alone, and why it would stay that way, and he knew - that one hurt the most - that it was a good choice. To leave him and turn away was the best one anyone could make, especially Dazai.
And yet it hurt, hurt so much, and in the dead of the night, with too expensive alcohol and empty bottle of too weak meds, Chuuya sometimes kept wishing that they would just stay as they were back then, destroying each other once and for all.
It was his misery, cold and burning at the same time, and yet he kept finding comfort in it — because that was the last thing that kept giving it to him.
Leaving without a word only looked easy. Changing everything about himself, cleaning his tracks, trying to keep a promise to a ghost - it was exhausting, all of it, but the worst was probably the hypocrisy that kept eating him away, piece by piece. Because here he is, doing all of that for someone long gone, proving himself that he can, that there is some kind of fucked hope for him in this world, all while abandoning a promise to someone still very much alive.
Every night kept bringing back the same question. Would Chuuya come with him, if he asked? Uncertainty wasn’t something he was used to in their relationship; he would joke that was because little mafia was too stupid and predictable, but in reality, it was just his own, fucked up trust. It took him years to even admit that before himself, but when it hit him, it was almost as bad as the sight of Oda dying in his arms, because admitting this meant admitting to many more feelings, ones that were way deeper than their physical affections and falsely violent words, ones that Dazai Osamu kept swearing he wasn’t able to feel.
And yet here he was, still desperately following footsteps of his ex-partner, lying to himself that it was just boredom, and that he wasn’t hoping that their eyes would meet in the crowd, that he would find himself in his arms again, that he could show him all the new sides of the world he kept discovering.
For him, outside of Port Mafia, there was a new world, where he had to carve his own path. One where he didn’t have to fight every day for a right to stay alive when he wasn’t even sure he wanted to, one where sometimes, the terrifying dread of being known wasn’t so heavy on his soul.
But would Chuuya feel the same?
Chuuya was a fighter. Chuuya needed a clear purpose, a place to put his loyalty in, a routine to follow, even if it was bloody. He fought every day of his life, and the terrifying upside of belonging to the Mafia meant he could pick things for himself, limited only by orders of one person. Outside of it… there were mercenaries, and ADA, and the government, but Dazai knew better than anyone that all of those places would either be unstable, or Chuuya would rather die than be addressed by a number on his file instead of his name.
Mafia was the only place where Chuuya could be himself, almost, and four years ago, Osamu decided that any of his selfish feelings weren’t worth taking it from him.
But maybe — and it physically hurt him to admit it — maybe he miscalculated.
"You always knew where to find me, though, didn't you?"
"Same with you."
"So you can't exactly be mad at me for not doing it, right? After all, communication in a marriage—"
"It was you who left, shitty mackerel," Chuuya interrupts him, for a second losing a battle with his own impatience. "You can try to call me a dog for eternity for all I care, but I wasn’t pathetic enough to actually run after you like a kicked puppy. Leaving without a word when I was busy and planting a fucking bomb in my car sends a pretty clear goddamn message.” For a second he squeezes the cigarette's filter a little too hard, rendering it useless. With growing frustration, he reaches into the ashtray, putting the cigarette out in-between old stubs, just so he doesn’t have to wonder what kind of face Dazai is making in the prolonged silence. He sighs, slowly rising to his feet. "I didn't expect much when I married you, but, fuck, trying to pin this one on me is a new low, you know? Anyway, you confirmed that I'm sadly both still alive and still pathetic, sentimentalist shit, so you can get the fuck out, I'm still in enough pain to not want to deal with your fucking bullshit."
Not that I ever wanted to in the first place, he says in his own head, but that dances the line between a lie and the truth that is too thin for his liking.
He passes Dazai without a word, not even looking at his face, when a sudden wave of both headache and nausea hit him, making him stumble. And he braces himself for the fall, because Tainted never works as it should after using Corruption, and honestly, catching himself on a door to a balcony is a way better option than accidentally destroying half of his apartment, but of course, the universe — or Dazai, particularly — was never kind to him, so why would it start now? And so, his ex-partner-slash-husband-slash-who-fucking-knows catches him, and has the fucking audacity to look almost worried, and Chuuya feels himself scoffing wordlessly. His Dazai would never show his emotions so openly, nor he would worry for an enemy, and oh, he really needs another drink. A whole bottle, or three, because the realisation hits him again — he lost the person he loved the most to a dead man, and yet he still can't fully regret it, because seeing that amber glow in Dazai’s eyes is worth more than anything that Chuuya could ever buy, despite how often he screams into the universe that he doesn't care. But Chuuya is a liar and a hypocrite, and in the dead of the night it doesn't matter shit.
"Let me," Dazai says softly, and despite everything, Chuuya lets him.
It’s painful how easy it is to follow the old routine.
For Chuuya to lean on Dazai wordlessly on their way to the bathroom, for the comfortable silence to wash over them, despite bitter words before, for all the steps of post-Corruption clean up he repeats in his mind fall into place.
The place has changed. There are other tiles now, different cabinets, a concrete wall behind the bathtub, some plants, seemingly thriving under tender care of Nakahara. But it’s still so, so easy, and Chuuya murmurs where to find everything he might need, and he allows Dazai to help with the clothes, now just a bloody mess next to the bathmat. And it’s been four years since Dazai has seen his husband naked, and there are new scars all over his body — a testament to how from that day on, he had to fight alone — but he has new scars too, and somehow, there is not a word of protest when he strips and joins Chuuya in the bathtub, laying down behind him.
It takes only a second of hesitation before Chuuya sighs in resignation before laying on Dazais chest, his head falling somewhere around his shoulder, tension slowly bleeding out of his frame.
“I’m sorry,” the detective starts after a while, quietly, and he can feel how Chuuya tenses against him.
“Think carefully before you decide to continue that sentence, Dazai, I still have enough strength to strangle you,” he murmurs, not opening his eyes.
“You’d be right to do so.”
“I know. Don’t tempt me.”
“I’m not trying to. I’m… admitting. I fucked up, Chuuya.”
“I know.”
“You don’t wanna ask what I’m talking about?” There is a genuine surprise in Dazai’s voice when he asks, but somehow, Chuuya only lets out a tired laugh.
“You want me to start spelling it out, one by one? I can go on for pretty long once I start,” he admits, but his words carry no bite, as if he was already forgiving him, despite everything. There is a hand, reaching for a necklace he didn’t take off, and Chuuya turns his head slightly, so he can look at the ring matching his own.
“You shouldn’t forgive me so easily,” Dazai feels himself choke on this words, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t be looking at that gentlessness before him, because fuck, Chuuya is right, he doesn’t deserve it, he left…
“Stop thinking so loudly, ‘Samu,” little mafia murmurs, playing with the necklace mindlessly. “I’m not forgiving you, not yet anyway. You fucked up, you left me, then you left me again. I might trust you with my life, but that doesn’t exactly mean much all the time,” he admits, somehow bitter; being in mafia meant that every day he got out of bed ready to die, and corpses of those who were once close to him kept appearing under his eyelids when he closed his eyes. “But you’re here now, and I’m too tired to overthink this like you do. And this,” he pulls the necklace,” is here as well. Maybe it’s some fucked up tactic to make me lower my defences, but honestly, right now I don’t really give a fuck. If you want me to believe you, you’ll have to work for it anyway.”
And oh, Dazai thinks he can feel the tears in his eyes, despite being so sure for years that he didn’t have any more to spare for anyone. And his name still rings in his ears, so soft, so full of something he doesn’t want to name, but he feels it as well, making his heart swell dangerously. And he never really had to work for anything, all things he wanted just fell onto his lap, one by one, but this… This might be worth trying, and he wants it, wants to fight for it so much it hurts.
“I will.”