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Dazai shut the office door, his wave and smile to the secretaries barely holding in place before he spun around, ready to go back to his desk and hoping for a break from the constant bickering plaguing his ears all day - given that both the mafia and agency employees had finally left for the day. There was truly no peace to be had with both organisations working in the same building while the Mafia headquarters was re-built. Was it worth listening in on the President’s conversation with Mori? Dazai wondered, quickly coming to the conclusion that it was not. There were definitely better ways to go out than having his current and former bosses decide that they’d had enough of his nuisance, it truly wouldn’t be a graceful suicide if it was induced by someone else. Leaning back in his chair and surveying the room, it really did seem like his last resort in spicing up the frankly dreary afternoon was to bother the last person left in the room with him; thankfully, it was a juicy target.
“Hey, Kunikida, do you reckon there are any suicide methods in my book i haven’t tried yet?” The other man made no effort to seem like he had even heard Dazai.
“Hey, Kunikida, do you think if I murdered someone Ranpo would ever solve it?” Still, no response from the other side of the room.
“Kunikida, should I blow up the Mafia’s new hideout when it’s built? It’s been a while since the office has been so busy” Dazai mused, letting his thoughts trail off for the absence of response. The Mafia members had been particularly mellow since having to share the office. While some clashing was sure to happen, Dazai was almost impressed at how much smoother things were going than he expected - it only took a look or raised eyebrow from him to reduce the Mafia members to silence if they did step out of line, and he was expecting at any point for discussion about his old post to start up, but the parties in the know had kept quiet, to his knowledge. Even the Agency members that knew - which at this point was more than originally intended - hadn’t discussed his past within his earshot. Though, Ranpo was unlikely to bring it up unless it served a purpose, and Atsushi was much too earnest to speak of him with anyone except Akatagawa.
“Do you think if i replaced Chuuya’s hat with a bucket, he would notice before it was too late?” Not expecting an answer, Dazai leaned back on his chair, flicking an absent ball of paper away from his mostly empty desk space. Much to his surprise, Kunikida frowned, as if in acknowledgement of his words. Interesting.
“Maybe I should pour vinegar in his wine, teach him not to drink on company hours” Dazai pressed on, encouraged, looking for any more signs of interest.
Kunikida pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, blinking for what seemed to be the first time since their colleagues had left the office. “What do you see in him, anyway?” he wrinkled his nose, his expression then turning to mild surprise, as if the words from his own mouth were unexpected.
Dazai’s surprised laugh reverberated from the empty desks. “I didn’t take you for the jealous type, Kunikida!”
The younger man sighed in exasperation, regretting ever falling for such obvious bait. He shook his head, looking back at his computer screen. Maybe he was working too much, the words and numbers on his newest spreadsheet were starting to blur together - marking grade school maths papers was definitely more forgiving than this.
Dazai’s voice rose from across the desks, “We’ve known each other for a long time”. Kunikida frowned, and Dazai flicked another ball of paper across his desk. “We used to be partners,” he continued “you know, before i joined the agency”. This wasn’t how he was going to tell Kunikida that the murderers they were sharing their desk space with were his former co-workers, but sometimes life throws an opportunity your way that it would be a shame to waste.
“I was wondering when you were going to tell me”
Now that was a surprise. “How long have you known?” Dazai asked, trying to calculate just how much he should tell his current partner, or how much he should apologise for.
“Since the President was poisoned” Kunikida sighed, “he wanted me to know the important information about the team. You know, in case he…” The trail of silence left their leader’s mortality unspoken for. Of course, if he was going to be the next president, he would need to know these kinds of things.
“There’s nothing going on between Chuuya and me” any more, Dazai offered, this really wasn’t the kind of conversation he was planning on having when he came back to his desk hoping for a few hours of fun tormenting his favourite coworker.
“What did you see in him, then?” Kunikida threw back. He sounded bitter, any emotion he was holding back before fully exposed in his tone now. Whether it was jealousy at the admission of something prior, or the sting of betrayal for not being told this sooner. The silence following the question hung like a fog in the air, and he pushed his glasses up and looked over in Dazai’s direction. It was unusual for his partner to leave a question unanswered, especially one that left the asker such an easy target for ridicule.
Dazai was leant back in this chair, gaze fixed on the ceiling and thumb gently fraying the bandages around his wrists. He opened his mouth once, then closed it again, following the motion with a sigh.
“We were kids,” the crack in his voice was unexpected, and he didn’t bother laughing it off. “We didn’t have anyone else, we’d been tools for committing the world’s atrocities for as long as we had known ourselves”, Dazai leant far enough for the back of his chair to rest on the window frame behind him, avoiding eye contact with his junior. “When I was left to join the agency, he threatened to kill me - if our roles were reversed, i wouldn’t have left it at a threat” he took a deep breath after that, as if to pull himself back in from the memory.
Kunikida understood, then, why he had seen Chuuya looking over at him with such bitterness. To lose a partner like that, and to see him thrive with your rivals can’t be easy, let alone to know that he’s better off now.
“Why didn’t you tell me” was his only real last question. Maybe it was betrayal, then. It felt like everyone knew about Dazai’s last job before he did, and to find out when on the brink of losing the President was, well, too much for him to really process at the time. Maybe there’s a lesson in that, to be written down when it could be put into words by a more mature man.
Dazai leant forward again, the front legs of his chair hitting the floor with a crack like gunfire, and flashed him what almost looked like an apologetic smile - “I didn’t want you to think less of me”. The gesture seemed so authentic, and so uncharacteristic that Kunikida furrowed his brow. Was this just another way to get under his skin, or was it genuine concern?
“Impossible,” he brushed it off, defaulting his tone to their usual back-and-forth “my opinion of you really can’t drop any lower”. He looked at Dazai again, though now the other’s face has no semblance of the softness it held a moment ago, though there was a flash of what could have been mistaken for relief, in his eyes. “Besides, I trust the president, if he hired you and knew what dump you crawled out of, he must have had his reasons”.
“You’re right,” Dazai laughed, the tones light, as if they had been discussing something as mundane as the weather. He stood up and stretched, knocking his chair back absently. “I’m hungry, and you owe me dinner for making me work this morning”, he walked around and pulled Kunikida’s chair back, ignoring the protest and furious pushing back from his coworker. When they left the building, Dazai didn’t move his hand from Kunikida’s back, where is rested above his belt. For once, Kunikida let it stay there.