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In hindsight, Dazai probably should have known that this was a bad idea.
After having just come back from a four-day mission overseas, he and Chuuya were practically dead. There was no shouting, no insults, no pushing each other back and forth like children.
In the Port Mafia, it was a widespread belief that Double Black was far more terrifying when they were docile and sleepy-eyed.
The only person who didn’t seem to feel that way was Mori, and Dazai only assumed this because his smile looked just as slimy as always. “Dazai, Chuuya,” he said by way of greeting. “Your mission was successful.”
That wasn’t quite a question, Dazai decided.
“It was,” he said when it was obvious Chuuya wasn’t going to reply. He looked like he was about to fall asleep right in front of the Boss, in fact. “Everything has been taken care of.”
“Wonderful,” Mori replied evenly. Even though Dazai, an avid insomniac, felt like he might nod off if given just a moment of silence, he could see Mori’s eyes gleaming. That was never a good sign.
“I have another mission for the both of you,” was what Mori said next, expression never faltering. He sat on the other side of his desk, hands folded and smile complacent, as Dazai’s entire world fell apart.
Another mission. Another mission. Another. Mission.
At the very same moment, Dazai and Chuuya whirled to look at each other, and Dazai could only assume that the horror on Chuuya’s face matched that of his own. Pure, unfiltered despair. Dazai was too tired to care about hiding it, and he guessed that Chuuya felt the same.
Chuuya turned to look back at Mori. “Another mission?” he repeated quietly, sounding weaker than Dazai had ever heard him. Not even Corruption could make him sound so hopeless.
Mori, like the demon from hell that he was, nodded politely. “Of course,” he said. Of course. Of course they would be worked to the bone, because they were Double-Black and there was no one better.
Dazai had never wanted to die more.
“There is a large gang operating underground called the Setting Sun,” Mori began mercilessly. “They have been interfering with our cargo transportation and taken a group of our lower-ranked members hostage. You two will infiltrate their base of operations, remove our men from the site, and reduce the rest to rubble.” He looked at them expectantly, either oblivious to their suffering or uncaring. Knowing Mori, it was most certainly the latter. “Any questions?”
A pause. Dazai couldn’t think of any questions because he could hardly think at all, but it seemed Chuuya was faring better.
“Procedure if we can’t save them?” he asked, voice scratchy and low. It was unfairly sexy, Dazai thought miserably, given their situation. If only they were well-rested and alone.
“Leave them,” was Mori’s nonchalant reply as he waved a hand. “If they need to be crushed by the debris, so be it. Do your best to remove them, though. Cannon fodder is always useful.”
Dazai snorted, and he immediately regretted it when Mori’s gaze fixed on him, smile placid. If only he were in better condition, he’d be able to control urges like that. Laughing at something Mori said was never a good idea.
“You’ll leave in three hours,” he said, apparently disregarding the situation. “Go to the east exit this time—Hirotsu will be waiting for you both.”
It was a clear dismissal. Dazai mustered his remaining strength and stood, making to leave when he realized that Chuuya was still in his chair.
He blinked.
Chuuya was asleep.
Well, Dazai thought as he slapped Chuuya across the face, effectively waking him up before dragging him to the elevator. This should be fun.
***
The mission was, decidedly, not fun.
Dazai crouched against a large boulder, out of breath and covered in ash, cursing Mori’s name to hell. Perhaps he should just stand up and die—at least he’d get some rest.
Chuuya would kill him again if he did that, though, so Dazai decided against it.
“Fuck, I can’t deal with a whole goddamn military right now,” his partner hissed, seated next to him in the dirt as gunfire sounded all around them. That was a particularly frightening thought: Nakahara Chuuya, unable to deal with something?
Of course, Dazai was hardly feeling up to par himself. It would be even more frightening if Chuuya could still muster his full strength after all they’d had to do the past few days, he supposed.
“Well, that’s certainly an issue,” Dazai murmured, pressing two fingers to his temple. A headache was beginning to pulse behind his eyes and the ceaseless gunfire wasn’t helping.
“Dammit, can’t you think of something? We still have those fucking hostages, too.” Chuuya’s eyes were bright amidst the sea of dirt and ash, but they were also foggy with weariness. Dazai imagined he looked much the same.
“We can leave the hostages,” he muttered. Countless plans were circling in and out of his head at dizzying speeds—he could barely keep up with them. This was supposed to be easy.
“We’re not leaving them,” Chuuya said sharply, eyes trained ahead. Dazai saw that coming; still, he thought perhaps Chuuya might be willing to prioritize himself, just this once.
He sighed, hanging his head. “Alright.” They only had another minute or so before they had to move, so he would have to do with an unfinished draft of a plan. “If I redirect their attention to the main entrance, can you cover for me while I disable the lock?” Normally, this would be a very silly question, but they were both about to fall asleep while being shot at, so the situation was dire.
Chuuya nodded. “As long as you’re fast.”
“Then we’ll send everyone through the east exit and take care of the rest.” Dazai peeped out around the boulder, grimacing at the sight of a hundred-man army advancing toward them, all still shooting like their lives depended on it. What a pain. “Okay, let’s finish this. Try not to die, darling,” he simpered, leaving Chuuya with a wink and a grin before rushing straight into the gunfire.
“Bastard! You can’t just—“
Dazai heard Chuuya curse behind him, but he didn’t pay enough attention to listen as bullets slowed all around them, stopping just before they made contact and dropping to the ground. There were a few close calls—one that grazed his ear, or nearly took off a finger—but he was still as lithe as ever, and he was able to maneuver through the field without trouble.
He’d have to thank Chuuya properly later.
“They’re getting away!”
Dazai ignored the sounds of dying men as he ran toward the southern entrance, barred by a large bolt mechanism. Luckily, Dazai could dismantle any number of locks with his eyes closed, so even with his sloppy hands, he was able to get it open in no time.
“Alright, slug, we’re in!” he called out behind him to where Chuuya was still murdering people left and right. He’d always thought that Chuuya looked especially beautiful when he was spattered with blood—did that make him some kind of sadist? Probably not.
“Then get moving before I shoot you myself!” Chuuya snapped, and Dazai couldn’t help but chuckle as he dashed through the tunnel, Chuuya coming up beside him in mere moments. He grinned, half-inclined to lean over and kiss him.
This was where it all went wrong.
Normally, Dazai would have noticed that something was wrong with the floor of the tunnel. He would have picked up on the subtle change in texture, the slight dip, the way the stone blocks didn’t quite line up.
But Dazai was running on adrenaline and the knowledge that he would get to have sex with Chuuya when they finally caught a break, so these minor details simply slipped his mind.
His foot landed carelessly on one of the blocks. It dropped a few inches, sending him stumbling to the side and right into Chuuya, just before the ground gave out from beneath them.
“Shit!”
Dazai could scarcely think as he and Chuuya fell in a tangle of limbs, twisting around like snakes. It got darker by the second as they descended deeper, deeper, deeper still. A tunnel?
“Now would be a good time to use those fairy wings of yours, Chuuya!” Dazai shouted, barely catching Chuuya’s reply with the air whipping around them so loudly.
“I can’t!” he snapped, and that was when Dazai remembered his oh-so-convenient ability–the one that would bring them a swift and certain death if he didn’t think of something fast.
Think, think, think, think—
Without any light to illuminate the tunnel, Dazai received no warning before he hit the ground hard, and—was that a crack he just heard? Hopefully not. He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as the situation caught up to him. He fell into a trap, and took Chuuya right along with him, and now they were stuck.
Dazai should have known that this was a bad idea.
“Fucking hell, what was that?” Chuuya hissed, and it was then that Dazai registered just how close they were. Their fronts were pressed up against each other and Dazai hardly had enough room for his shoulders, which meant that Chuuya was certainly having trouble as well, given his considerable musculature. A shaft. They must have been in some kind of shaft, surely meant to keep them contained until someone retrieved them.
It was small.
“Shit, I can’t fly us back out,” Chuuya muttered, and his breath fanned over Dazai’s collarbone. He shivered.
“You could shatter the walls,” he proposed, but Chuuya shook his head immediately, as expected.
“Can’t risk the hostages.”
Of course. Because Chuuya was kind like that. Despite the situation, Dazai could not help the warm feeling in his chest.
Chuuya started to shift around, reaching his arms up to brace them on either side of Dazai’s head. Had this been a different scenario, Dazai might have relished it—Chuuya’s arms were quite the sight to behold—but he was only wrought with anxiety now. Escape plans ran in and out of his head by the millisecond and he could not draft up a single one that would guarantee the safety of themselves and the hostages.
“Shit. Can’t even climb up enough to activate my ability,” Chuuya murmured. He was impossibly warm against Dazai, blue eyes bright. “Shit. Shit.”
For the first time since they’d landed themselves in this predicament, Dazai looked up. He’d expected to see a great many feet of darkness between them and the surface, but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so many as he found. He could not even see the tunnel where they’d fallen, nor could he hear any voices or feel any footsteps echoing through the stone. Nothing but vast, suffocating darkness and the blue of Chuuya’s eyes.
We're stuck, he thought to himself, breathing in deeply and breathing out shakily. We're stuck with no way out, no plan to escape, and not even room to move. Surely there was no contraption hidden somewhere that would lead them out?
Dazai nearly laughed. He had never been such an optimist.
“Hey. You okay?”
Chuuya’s voice snapped him from his tangle of thoughts, and Dazai looked down to find a furrowed brow and pursed lips. Worry. Chuuya was worried.
“Yes,” Dazai replied as evenly as possible. “Just thinking.”
“Well, think harder,” Chuuya grumbled, running his gloved hands over every inch of each wall. “There’s gotta be some way out of here, right?”
Right? The thought echoed in Dazai’s head. There was a way. There had to be a way, because if they were to die here, what would all those years building up his reputation have been for? If the Demon Prodigy were to simply be reduced to a nervous child, dead by panic, he would never forgive himself.
Dazai breathed in. Out. He would not panic. He was the Demon Prodigy.
“Oi, mackerel, you find anything? Some latch or something? I mean, if this is meant to keep people in one spot, there’s gotta be outside access,” Chuuya was saying, but even though Dazai could feel his voice on his skin, he sounded faraway. The walls were closing in around them, tall and towering and so, so dark—Dazai was helpless, completely and utterly trapped without so much as an inch of space to move, and still the walls became closer, closer—
“Osamu.”
There was suddenly a gloved hand on his arm, squeezing just hard enough to pull Dazai out of his head and into reality. He blinked rapidly as if to chase away the dread knotted in his stomach.
Chuuya’s expression was difficult to decipher in the dark. “Osamu,” he repeated, firmer and more frantic now. "Hey, what—"
Dazai could not formulate a reply as he sagged against the wall. Instead of saying something witty or teasing Chuuya for being concerned, the only sound that escaped his mouth was a choked gasp, like his throat was closing up (it felt that way).
He could feel Chuuya’s muscles tense. Immediately, the hands on his arms moved to hold him at his temple and his waist, fingertips teasing his hair. Chuuya’s grip was not painful by any means, but it did hold a rough sort of determination that drew Dazai’s focus away from the space that continued to close in on them both, smaller and smaller and smaller and—
“Hey.”
The mess in Dazai’s head stuttered to a sudden halt—only for a moment—as Chuuya gripped him tightly. There was still a hard edge of panic in his words, but Dazai could not think about that at the moment. He could hardly think about anything.
“Look at me,” Chuuya commanded, voice filled with the same authority he used to command the lower ranks of the mafia. It was embarrassing, frankly, how completely Chuuya had wrapped him around his finger. Dazai’s eyes snapped to his without question, without thought, despite the turmoil of his mind. Smaller, smaller…
Chuuya ran his thumb over Dazai’s cheekbone. “Breathe in.”
Dazai’s chest was already rising and falling unevenly, a match for his labored breathing, but he tried. He attempted one long, shaky breath in, blinking rapidly as if that would make the panic disappear. The walls were still so tall, though, and everything was just getting smaller.
“Now breathe out.”
Dazai let out a sigh immediately, flexing his fingers and trying—trying—to keep from collapsing. His skin was clammy, his limbs weak, and everything was so, so loud.
“In.”
Dazai attempted another long breath.
“Out.”
He let it go.
“In.”
Again.
“Out.”
Again.
The sick knot of dread was still heavy in his stomach, but Dazai did not feel on the verge of passing out in Chuuya’s arms, so something must be working. He was far too aware of all the ways the stone was pressing into him, constricting his movements and keeping him in place, but his labored breathing was beginning to slow and steady. He took comfort in the feeling of Chuuya’s warmth radiating from him despite all their layers.
Chuuya opened his mouth to speak. “You know—fuck!“
Without warning, the wall behind him wrenched open.
Dazai didn’t have a single second to react before he was being yanked out of the shaft right after Chuuya, all panic chased from his system by surprise. They stumbled forward, tripping over each other’s feet, and he couldn’t even take stock of where they now were as they fell to the ground in an undignified heap.
Dull pain bloomed in his knees and elbows, and Dazai groaned as his eyes fluttered open. The world was unfocused through his uncovered eye—courtesy of his current high blood pressure, no doubt—but he could identify the two human-shaped blobs as members of the organization they were supposed to be wiping out. So there was a secret exit after all, he thought with no small amount of irritation. If I hadn't been panicking, we would have found it.
“Oh, that’s…” one of the guards trailed off, and as Dazai blinked away the fogginess of his vision, he could very clearly see the fear on the guard’s face.
“Double Black,” the other finished for him, eyes blown wide.
It was at this moment that Chuuya groaned loudly, interrupting any further conversation as he stirred beneath Dazai—oh, Chuuya was beneath him—and pressed a hand to his head. “The fuck was that?” he grumbled, eyes still closed. “Hurt like a bitch.”
The lingering dredges of fervent fear still tickled Dazai’s insides, but he chuckled despite them. “I believe we have been freed,” he replied quietly.
Dazai was silent as he awaited the moment he would be shoved off, but it never came. Instead, he watched as, almost immediately, Chuuya’s expression morphed from confusion to panic, and then gloved hands snapped up to grip either side of Dazai’s head. “Osamu,” Chuuya whispered, sounding almost breathless, and then he was being pressed to Chuuya’s chest, chin nestled in the crook of his shoulder. “Fuck, I thought—I wasn’t—are you alright?”
Something flared up in Dazai’s chest at that. Chuuya sounded so worried, and it was almost painful. Being cared about. It was startling and frightening and an absolute miracle.
“Yes,” he murmured into Chuuya’s neck, brushing his fingertips through his hair. It was almost always soft, even after days like today. “Yes, thank you, Chuuya.”
Chuuya’s arms tightened around him, and silence settled over them again. It was a comfortable weight, worlds away from the ceaseless pressure from the stone shaft.
One of the guards attempted to interrupt the silence as he stepped toward them. “Well, I s’pose you critters are gonna be—“
Chuuya extended a hand and chocked them both full of bullets in an instant.
“Fuckin’ assholes,” he grumbled, to which Dazai could only chuckle.
“I believe murdering them makes you the asshole.”
“Nah. It was self defense.”
“If there had been a nation of them, maybe.”
Chuuya snorted at that, and Dazai propped himself up on his elbows to properly see him. Chuuya’s eyes followed his—such vibrant blue—and then, very slowly, he reached up to brush his fingertips over Dazai’s cheekbone. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked quietly, expression open. It hurt, that brand of affection. The careful, caring kind.
Dazai wanted to simply tell him the obvious. Something like that—a chink in the Demon Prodigy’s armor—would spread like wildfire through the underground, and that would be a nuisance.
Of course, that was just an excuse. Chuuya would never blab about something like that, not to a soul.
“It makes me feel weak,” Dazai admitted into the inch of space between them. He felt sick admitting that, but this was Chuuya, and he would always be helpless in the face of that bright blue stare.
“Osamu.” Chuuya’s brow knitted together as he reached up to brush gentle fingertips over Dazai’s cheekbones. “Fear doesn’t make you weak.”
But it did, his mind screeched. It did, it did, it did. If not for this childish fear of his, they would already be sound asleep in Chuuya’s apartment. Instead, they were sprawled out on what appeared to be concrete, bloodied and beaten and accompanied by two freshly dead guards.
Dazai took a deep breath, though, and tried to collect those thoughts. However he felt about weaknesses—leftover beliefs from Mori, he supposed—Chuuya was his beating, bleeding heart. Didn’t the poets always preach to faith in that?
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that,” he said.
“I like dealing with you,” Chuuya replied quietly, fingers moving to ghost along Dazai’s jaw.
“Is that so?”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
Dazai chuckled at that, and Chuuya’s own lips spread into a smile. They stayed that way, basking in the quiet and the presence of one another, for far longer than Dazai bothered to keep track of. He would have been content to stay there forever, tracing every line of Chuuya’s face with his eyes until they were both old and grey.
“You scare the shit out of me sometimes, y’know,” Chuuya whispered, breaking the silence.
Dazai couldn’t help but chuckle quietly at that; it sounded pitiful, deprecating. “A nasty habit.”
Chuuya met his gaze again, and Dazai found something akin to worry in his expression, mixed in with the fierce determination. “We’re partners,” he said, looping both hands around Dazai’s neck to twine them into his hair. “And it goes both ways. We protect each other.”
Dazai couldn’t help but smile, just a bit. He knew that, of course, and though it was certainly much easier said than done, hearing Chuuya say it made him feel a bit better. “Thank you, Chuuya.”
“Yeah, whatever, idiot,” Chuuya replied, rolling his eyes despite the smile on his own lips. “Just don’t be stupid about that stuff, okay?”
Dazai felt a bit sheepish. “Okay,” was his quiet response, and then they fell into silence again. He was still sprawled out on top of Chuuya, propping himself up on his elbows, but nothing felt terribly uncomfortable as they simply studied each other. Perhaps it was the exhaustion finally catching up to him, but Dazai’s limbs felt like lead and he had no desire to move an inch from this spot, undesirable though it may have been. No one else seemed to realize they were here, so they had all the time in the world.
“You’re beautiful.”
The words were soft, whispered into the inch of space between them, and they stole Dazai’s breath away in a way that tiny stone shaft couldn’t dream of. “What?” he breathed.
“You’re beautiful,” Chuuya repeated, fingertips now brushing his bottom lip. “I don’t tell you that enough.”
“Is Chuuya trying to butter me up for something?” Dazai attempted to sound nonchalant, but his reply only came out strangled.
Dazai could feel Chuuya’s laugh rumble through his body. “No,” he answered honestly, expression light. Dazai studied that, the way his eyes crinkled at the edges and his lips turned redder as he smiled. The way something lit up in him, the way it lit up something in Dazai, too (despite the disgusting sappiness of the thought).
“So then,” Dazai sighed, blinking down at Chuuya with a tired, crooked smile. “What happens now?”
Chuuya's eyes flitted over his face. “Now, we free a couple hostages and burn this place to the ground so we can go home and sleep for three days straight. And then,” he grinned, all devil-may-care and wicked promise. “I’m gonna fuck your brains out.”
Dazai laughed at that, unexpected but welcome all the same, and pulled himself to his feet, holding a hand out to Chuuya afterward.
Chuuya took it, of course, and yelped when Dazai gripped his undone collar and pulled them together, catching his lips in a searing kiss. It was far from refined and they both smelled like ash and gunpowder, but Dazai pulled away moments later with nothing but tingly warmth through his blood.
Then, without a word about it, he unwound his arms from around Chuuya’s waist and left him standing there with the bloodstained concrete, feeling lighter than he had in months. “I’ll hold you to that!” Dazai called over his shoulder, just in time to catch Chuuya’s array of curses as he ran to catch up.