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There was Chuuya.
Basking in a good smoke after a long day of work. Contemplating the cityscape from the PM rooftop as the sun started to set in the distance, dyeing the sky above with a plethora of astounding redi-ish colors.
Unsurprisingly, he did not enjoy the peace and quiet for too long for, as soon as he lit his cigarette, he sensed someone behind him.
Not caring enough to budge an inch, he listened as a certain someone's footsteps came walking to his direction.
He could feel the raw intensity of that piercing stare on the back of his neck, studying him scrupulously as you would a lab rat. Being watched like that nearly gave him goosebumps, despite his familiarity after years of having the darkness of those void-like eyes carved into his skull, exactly like a bad memory.
None other than his old partner in crime, Dazai - who had followed the redhead all the way there solely to sneak out of work -, waved at him in a chirpy way.
"Hey there, Chuuuyaaaa~~" He greeted in an over the top, irritatingly cheerful way. As per usual.
Chuuya ignored him. He took a drag of his cigarette, hoping for the 'bandaged idiot' - as he would put it - to leave him be. Though, he was well aware that such a thing was not going to happen anytime soon.
The brunette stood beside Chuuya and turned around to face the opposite direction as him, then leaning with his back against the railing, both arms resting on it.
He inspected Chuuya's gaze briefly, as if that were enough to fully understand what was going on inside his head.
The redhead didn't even bother to give him a quick glance, eyes fixated in the tranquility of watching the clouds that adorned the rosy-painted sky, his pumpkin-colored locks being rhythmically pushed back and forth slightly by the soft breeze.
Judging by that boring, unamused expression on his face - which was fairly odd since Dazai expected to get some kind of reaction out of him, anything -, he appeared to be deep in thought.
The redhead's eyes had this somber, almost nostalgic taint in them. Traces of something that, most probably, nobody but Dazai would have noticed. He could always read Chuuya like an open book, with no exceptions.
"It's rude to ignore people after they greet you, hat rack." The brunette pointed out nonchalantly, pushing his tone higher to make it sound more dramatic. To top it all off, he let go a - fake - exasperated sigh.
"Mhm" was all he got in exchange from the shorter male as he took another drag from his cigarette, unaffected by the brunette's usual theatrics.
Dazai took another attentive glance at him before directing his gaze towards the sky - giving up the display of his 'annoying drama queen' persona in the process -, allowing his face to adopt a neutral expression.
The brunette would never admit it but, seeing all those unique shades of orange-ish, warm colors blending perfectly with the lighter blues that previously covered the sky whenever the sun starts to come down, had always reminded him of Chuuya.
Blame it on his vibrant, burnt orange hair that, depending on how the light hit it, almost appeared dark blonde or some sort of copper brown.
Blame it on the reflection of the sunset itself on his soul-absorbing sapphire eyes, resembling the way the blue sky changes colors throughout the day.
Blame it on whatever you want because the reason didn't concern the brunette in the slightest. Not enough to ponder about it at least.
With time, Dazai had learned to appreciate having the certainty that there's at least one thing granted to remind him of his old partner on a daily basis, a constant in his life. After all, even when everything else fails, the sun will still set every single time.
The two men shared a somewhat comfortable silence for a good five minutes, watching the sky above them as if there were no heavy thoughts occupying empty space in their heads.
Eventually, Chuuya - who had lit his second cigarette by then, earning a quick vigilant look from Dazai, who he was sure made a mental note about that - was the one to break the silence between them.
"Remember how, back in the day, we used to go to the movies…" He spoke up in a calm - yet serious - tone of voice, like there was some cumbersome, deep-rooted longing weighing him down from the inside that he didn't know how to get rid of.
"And watch the most unappealing, shitty-looking kids movie out there just to-" He continued saying, his distracted mind failing to keep his tone from turning somber at the start, which he managed to cover up by putting more emphasis when he described the type of movie - in a comical, perhaps even mocking manner -, making a few vague hand gestures to back him up. Clearly, he was trying to make it sound a lot less meaningful than how he thought of it in his head.
Before Chuuya was done talking, however, Dazai cut him off to finish his sentence: "Just to laugh at it so hard that we'd get kicked out of the theater before it ends."
Usually, he would have interrupted Chuuya to annoy him, taking advantage of their 7 year-long perfect mutual understanding to 'read his mind', but that was not the case this time.
Stealing his words from his mouth was Dazai's way of demonstrating that he understood what he talked about, how much it meant to him and assure him that those memories were just as dear to him as they were to Chuuya.
The taller of the two knew without a doubt that, at that specific moment, interrupting his old partner would water down the tension of whatever was messing with his head at the time, perhaps he would even find it somewhat reassuring.
And, as always, the demon prodigy's predictions were proved correct.
Chuuya felt a lot of the added pressure he had put on his shoulders dissipate, allowing himself to open up freely - or at least with more freedom than before, feelings aren't his forte - about their shared memories together.
When it came to Dazai, Chuuya knew he could safely take down his walls - surely not all of them, but some - without worrying too much about showing signs of vulnerability.
If anything, the worst thing that could happen was giving his former partner more material to mock him about later, careful not to cross the line with whatever he chose to pick up from it. Still, there had been a handful of times where he miscalculated how much a comment would upset Chuuya and earned a totally deserved smack from the shorter of the duo.
Chuuya gave him a quick glance and smiled to himself, content. "Heh.” He scoffed, taking another drag of his cigarette.
"How could I possibly forget? Those were the only times when being around Chibi wasn't torture!" Dazai jocked dramatically, aiming to lighten up the conversation with his usual bubbly and carefree child-like demeanor.
"Mhm mhm, sure thing dude.” He said while shaking his head, skeptical. He knew Dazai was just messing around so he followed along and paid no attention to it. If there was anything Chuuya had learned from working side by side with him was that his partner slandered more than he talked about suicide, and that’s saying a lot.
“Crazy to think about the amount of money we would have wasted if we hadn’t snuck into the cinema every single time." The redhead remarked, somewhat proud of having watched so many movies for free, even if they were absolute trash in every aspect a movie could be.
"I'm pretty sure money wouldn't have been an issue for us at the time," Dazai pointed out, interrupting himself mid-sentence with a short pause, as if hesitating whether to finish talking or not.
"Not like I would have cared to spend all of it on that anyway." He admitted at last in a sweet-tempered, easygoing way.
Chuuya gave him a somewhat puzzled look. "Ah..? The hell you mean by that?" He asked with slight annoyance.
Dazai simply gazed at him with an honest, soft smile on him.
"Chibi can be so short-minded sometimes..." He teased with a tired groan, as if being asked to explain the most obvious thing to ever exist.
The next words he said, he spoke them seriously and delicately, a sense of content and gratitude becoming apparent in his tone: "Laughing so hard that my face would hurt for the rest of the day…” He paused briefly, letting his words float heavily into the air.
The brunette’s smile grew slightly wider at the remembrance of the two of them hanging out as teens, having fun together. Those moments were incredibly dear to him because Chuuya, with his presence alone, had the power to lighten up all the darkness in his life.
And, suddenly, all the carnage wasn’t that bad. Being in the mafia wasn’t that bad. Living in the dark wasn’t that bad. Because Chuuya would be there, too, and he made everything bearable.
“That alone almost made me want to reconsider committing suicide a handful of times, for the sole reason that we could do it again some other day." He concluded, a wave of relief washing over him as he finally let out what he had been keeping to himself for so many long years.
Even the brunette found it hard to believe that he had said what he said out loud, and for nobody but Chuuya to hear. His younger self would have shot him on the spot for exposing a truth that he worked so hard to bury.
Chuuya froze. He blinked a couple of times, utterly dumbfounded, unable to react for the few longest seconds of his life.
Hearing those words come out of the brunette’s mouth left him speechless. He didn’t expect Dazai would ever actually admit that to his face.
He had always had this irking thought stuck in the back of his mind that told him he, Nakahara Chuuya, was the actual reason why Dazai ‘suicide enthusiast’ Osamu suddenly decided to ‘give life a try’ shortly after meeting him for the first time.
The redhead never let himself believe it, however, because it was ‘full of bullshit’ - as he would, quite literally, describe it -. In his eyes, that being the truth was far from impossible. So he immediately discarded it, constantly having to push it back out of his mind.
Fast-forward a few years and he found himself hearing exactly that coming out of Dazai himself and he just had to believe it now, hence the shock. Perchance there really wasn’t anything they didn’t know about each other after all. Whether they denied it to themselves or not didn’t matter.
Shortly after, Chuuya closed his eyes and smiled softly, his expression relaxing as he digested, memorized and embraced the meaning behind Dazai’s deliberate confession.
"Yeah... I liked hanging out with you, too." He confessed in a calm - yet quiet, almost even embarrassed - voice, looking away from Dazai to instead contemplate the sunset view of the city below.
Dazai directed his gaze towards Chuuya, his eyes as dreamy as ever, like he was physically melting at the sight of the most beautiful flowers out there.
He turned his body around to face the same direction as the redhead, crossing his arms over the railing beside Chuuya's.
The brunette’s eyes betrayed him, however, for he continued to look at the petite mafioso - as he would call him - from the corner of his eye with that tender, loving gaze he only made when he was sure that the redhead wasn’t looking. The faint blush in his face blending in with the warm color palette of the sky up above.
Dazai elbowed Chuuya gently, his frivolous smile turning into his usual jockster smirk. "Don't think I've forgotten about those times the movie made you cry like a scared baby~" He teased, playfully winking at him.
Chuuya didn't take a second to react, glaring at him with an irritated scowl in his face and the ever-burning urge to make this man shut the fuck up.
"HAH??? BULLSHIT. I DIDN'T CRY LIKE THAT." He defended, trying to hide the sudden wave of sheepishness behind a - seemingly confident - half-truth.
"Oh? Does Chuuya not remember?~ You started crying so loudly that the theater staff had to come to tell you to shut up!!" Dazai politely explained as if it were a shocking fact, making faces as well as sticking to his mocking tone, seeking to provoke Chuuya even further.
"That's NOT how it happened and you know it. Besides, the only reason people complained was because YOU kept BOTHERING ME ABOUT IT, ASSHOLE!!!!" The shorter of the duo refuted through gritted teeth, clenching his free hand into a tight fist, his voice rising considerably by the end.
"And how could I not! Chuuya was basically asking for it, hiding under his ugly hat, poorly suppressing his quiet little sobs with red, puffy eyes!! So annoying, blegh." He made a mocking face, as if to suggest that the thought of that made him want to throw up, although Dazai wasn't even trying to hide the way his smile never seemed to fade.
Deep inside, Dazai cherished the memories from all those times where he caught a glimpse of Chuuya’s softer side as much as he valued the ones in which they just laughed their asses off at the most random shit imaginable.
Seeing his partner's reactions to some of these so-called ‘heavily sentimental’ scenes in movies made it, as Dazai saw it, incredibly easy to truly understand just how inherently human Chuuya was.
Not like he needed any evidence to prove it anyway. To Dazai, the truth of Chuuya's humanity had always been as clear as day.
“THE MOVIE WAS ABOUT A FILTHY RICH DOG GETTING LOST IN A BIG CITY, OK? HE STRUGGLED-- Tch. At least I have some compassion, mister 'the only thing i feel is hollow'.” He shot back at the taller man, trying to save his ass to his best ability after being both exposed and cornered with such ease.
He turned his head sideways, facing opposite to Dazai as he tried to calm his nerves before he ended up throwing him off the rooftop with a single punch to the stomach.
"Bastard." He cursed him out under his breath, pissed.
All the while, Dazai was taking great joy in annoying Chuuya to the point of flusteredness. He had always known exactly how to get to him and his reactions never failed to amuse him.
"Awww is Chibi jealous that I didn't bawl my eyes out just like him??" He snickered, unable to hold back - not that he wanted to, either way- the soft laughter that escaped his mouth.
"FUCK OFF!" Chuuya shut him off, hiding all his embarrassment behind the mindless rudeness of his tone.
That just made Dazai laugh harder. Sincere, heartfelt laughter coming from the man that rarely let loose of his true colors in front of anyone but himself.
Actual, real emotion turned into sound.
An audible proof that there were some remains of unmasked emotion left in the bottom of his heart. Remains of a person, somebody capable of feeling human who had been locked away for years, finally coming to the surface even if for an instant.
Chuuya's anger slipped away from him, similarly to the way in which the heat of a hot summer day accumulated on the surface of the road vanishes into thin air the second it starts to rain.
Hearing Dazai laugh, actually laugh, had always been rather hypnotic for him.
He had told himself countless times that it's just 'a laugh'. One like any other, nothing special about it. Yet, he couldn’t help but perceive it as, for lack of a better word, an angelic phenomenon.
Chuuya was certain his heart skipped a beat at least once before his pulse started to speed up like crazy. In a sense, he hated feeling so tense, so out of breath, so powerless when it came to these little moments with Dazai. Just the two of them, chatting casually. With nothing to worry about other than what topic to bring up next.
Chuuya turned around and eyed Dazai, who was wiping away a single tear that had formed in the corner of his eye while his laughter slowly died down, a lighthearted smile curving his lips that showed no intention of fading anytime soon.
From the redhead's perspective it was hard to believe that this man had been wishing to die for as long as he had known him because, in moments like this, he looked as happy to be alive as one could be.
To those bright, intense ocean blue eyes, the beauty of the Yokohama sky that hovered above them like a blanket full of warmth couldn't be compared to the mesmerizing, magnificent sight of the man standing in front of him.
He would be lying if he said he didn't find him charming on the normal, but the extremely rare occasions he allowed himself to be his true self were undeniably captivating. He could muster all the strength in the world and it wouldn't be enough to get his eyes off of Dazai.
The redhead didn't bother to fight back the breezy smile that effortlessly formed on his lips, shaking his head faintly as he punched the brunette's arm softly, matching his jolly attitude.
"You're an asshole." He said, evidently not in a derogatory way.
"Am I now? You wound me, slug" Dazai replied, playing it off theatrically as he leaned to his side, resting his weight on Chuuya's shoulder.
The redhead only rolled his eyes in response, his smile not fading from his face. "Sure I do, mackerel." He added.
Dazai shifted in place, going back to leaning on the railing like he previously was, except he threw one of his arms around Chuuya's neck. He gave him a tender nudge to bring him closer to him, to which the redhead complied, resting his head on Dazai.
If it weren't for the brunette's quick reflexes, Chuuya's hat would have fallen off to who knows where in Yokohama, pushed around by the wind. Dazai caught it mid-air in a breeze, securing it on his own head as he held onto his former partner like he was the most huggable stuffed toy ever manufactured.
"Come to think of it, yesterday I overheard Atsushi and Kenji talk about this new Dreamworks movie-" Dazai started to say after a good minute of comfortable silence, interrupted by Chuuya's quick response, not needing to hear the rest to know what he was going to propose.
"Sure." he blurted out without giving it a second thought, as if he were already expecting him to ask him that question.
Dazai only hummed in response, closing his eyes as he rested his head on top of Chuuya's, being pleasantly engulfed by the smell of lavender coming from his incredibly soft, fiery ginger hair.
He gave himself a couple of seconds to wallow in the familiarity of the scent he had grown so fond of before opening his mouth to speak again.
"Tonight?" the brunette mumbled out lazily, absorbed by the comfort the shorter male brought to him.
"Sure, I'm free for the day anyway." Chuuya agreed, his voice as soft and tender as a cloud.
To an outsider it would probably look like they’re lulling each other to sleep with their company alone but, to them, intimate moments like these were the only chance of feeling truly safe they had ever experienced.
They trusted each other enough to let their guard down with the other and, as easy as that, they found themselves feeling at home only when they're alone. It was this comfortable, cozy experience that neither wanted to let go of that kept their bond intact after 4 long years out of contact.
Now that things in Yokohama were somewhat calmer and they had reunited, it was the perfect time to hang out together until they got fed up with each other, just like old times.