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Dazai was in the woods the first time he saw him. He’d heard rumors of someone attacking people outside the town and he’d gone to investigate. Who else would do it? No one was as safe as the immortal being haunting their town.
Finding the attacker was easy enough. Dazai was mid-fight with him when he heard the unfamiliar voice behind him.
“Dazai, get down!”
Dazai didn’t hesitate to do as he was told. Good thing he didn’t. A knife went sailing over his head and into the chest of the attackers, who fell to the ground.
It was a very familiar knife. Dazai pulled it from the dying man’s chest only to see that it looked identical to the knife in his hand. He held them side by side to see that the stranger’s looked a little more worn, a little older, a little dirtier.
“It must be early for you.”
It was the dead of night, hardly early by any definition, but Dazai had a feeling that’s not what the man meant.
He looked to where the man held out his hand, so trusting that Dazai would rearm him and not attack him. He handed over the knife.
Dazai didn’t learn his name, but he learned that the man seemed to know him. He was comfortable and familiar around him and kept talking as if they knew each other.
The man was a mercenary, who had taken a job to kill the same man Dazai had targeted. He said he took the job because he didn’t know Dazai was there, but he’d like to stay with him again.
Again. As if they had stayed together before.
“Sure,” Dazai agreed, wanting to know more about this man, wanting to know more about the person who was able to surprise him even after a century of living.
But he never got to take the man home. Instead, with a grimace and a quick goodbye saying it was time to go, the man disappeared.
Literally disappeared. There one second and gone the next.
What a strange man.
What an interesting meeting.
What a fun mystery.
How many decades had it been since Dazai had found something new and exciting?
Dazai didn’t see him again for months after that. By then, he’d been able to track down the person who hired him and learned his name.
Oda Sakunosuke.
When Dazai called him by his name—no, by a nickname, Odasaku—Oda didn’t seem surprised at all.
When Dazai talked as if they’d known each other forever, Oda responded in kind.
When Dazai mentioned that Oda told him he’d buy their dinner if Dazai let him stay with him, Oda didn’t remember. His only response was that he didn’t have any money.
And when Dazai handed him the money pouch he’d taken from Oda’s employer, Oda didn’t remember the job.
But he didn’t question it. He believed Dazai and took the money, then bought them food from a nearby stall.
As they were eating food and walking through the stalls of the town festival, Dazai told Oda that their last meeting was the first time Dazai had met him.
That got a reaction.
Oda seemed genuinely surprised that this was so ‘early ’ for Dazai. He kept saying that. Early. Referring to more than just the time of day. It was early in their relationship.
That was when Oda admitted what Dazai had come to expect. Oda had a time travel ability that he couldn't control. He was stuck jumping back and forth in time, living for a few minutes, hours, days in one time period before jumping to a completely different year, living life out of order.
The one time Dazai remembered meeting him is a memory Oda hadn't made yet.
It was fun, having a time traveling friend. Dazai didn’t always know when he’d meet Oda or what he’d remember, but he was a friend that he could keep for years and who would always have new and surprising news.
It wasn’t for a few years that Dazai understood just how dangerous Oda’s life was.
When he found Oda, for once Oda wasn’t in his usual tan coat. He was wearing black, and it didn’t fit him, not in Dazai’s mind.
Worse still, he was hurt.
Oda was bleeding from his chest, and it took Dazai days to bring him back to good health once he had taken Oda home. He was glad that this was one of the times that Oda got to stay with him for a while, not just a matter of minutes.
But when Oda woke up enough to speak, he was quiet.
Whatever hurt him was bad enough to scare Oda. It scared Dazai too. He came so painfully close to death.
It wasn’t until Dazai gave Oda his knife to take with him, the same knife he saw Oda use the first time they met, that Oda finally spoke.
“I wish I could be with you in the right order,” he said, hands clutching the knife hilt tight.
The words surprise Dazai. The two of them were sitting together in Dazai’s little bed, and he hadn’t expected Oda to speak, or for him to say that, but he agreed.
“Me too,” he said, even though part of him was glad that his time with Oda was spaced out. Humans come and go so quickly. Never staying as long as Dazai could. But Oda could be with Dazai far past when he’d normally lose anyone else.
But if this was what Oda wanted, then Dazai had enough time and resources to find it for him.
“I’ll find a way. I’ll help you get control of your ability.”
But when he looked at Oda, his promise wasn’t met with a smile, but with alarm.
Then, before they could say anything more, Oda was gone.
The next time they met, Oda didn’t remember being hurt. It hadn't happened for him yet.
Dazai’s worries and questions about if he was okay were met only with confusion and amusement.
Finally, Odasaku grabbed his face and kissed him.
“I’m okay.”
That was enough to silence Dazai.
He couldn’t think of anything to say back when his thoughts were spinning around the idea that this was apparently something they did in the future.
He couldn’t say that he minded.
Even after the kiss, Dazai wasn’t sure where they stood in the future.
Spending time with someone out of order was confusing like that. Sometimes it was early for Oda and he was a little more distant. Sometimes it was later and he let Dazai hang all over him. He could use any nicknames he wanted, could sneak a kiss here and there. It was nice.
But what really let Dazai know how close they’d grow to be was when Oda didn’t hesitate to climb into his bed.
There were times when Oda appeared in his bedroom and without even greeting Dazai, he’d say, “Thank god,” and lay down beside him.
It was when he was lying in Oda’s arms, Oda having fallen asleep as soon as his head hit Dazai’s pillow, that he realized just how close they’d get.
Dazai was Oda’s safe place.
Oda was Dazai’s one reliable companion.
They shared nicknames, kisses, a bed, and time itself.
It was an epiphany. An obvious one, if anything. Of course they become close. It felt fated.
It felt so obvious that Dazai stopped being hesitant at all. Why hold back when Odasaku would eventually and always be his?
Later Oda didn’t mind, but early Oda wasn’t expecting it.
When Dazai hugged him from behind, he froze in Dazai’s arms.
But then he relaxed.
And then they were hugging just as easily as any time he’d hugged a later version of Oda.
And Dazai had to wonder, did they grow closer and then become physical, or did they just start being physical with earlier versions of each other until it became expected? Did they change their own relationship by acting on expectations out of order?
Time travel was tricky like that.
What came first: the hug or the closeness?
Dazai didn’t really care.
Sometimes Oda could stay for months at a time. That was when Dazai really got to know him.
When he wasn’t constantly traveling and could settle down, that was when Dazai saw just how much Oda cared about people.
Dazai tended to keep others at arm’s length so that it hurt less when he needed to leave them so they didn’t notice how little he aged, but Oda embraced them. He knew he had to leave them, but he cared anyway.
And as Dazai watched him play with the town orphans he’d taken under his wing, he started to fall in love all over again.
A house by the ocean. That’s what Oda once confessed to Dazai that he wanted. He wanted to write in a room where he could see the ocean, and Dazai heard what he hadn’t said. He wanted a house that he never had to leave. A book he could write in order. He wanted consistency and safety that was absent from his life right now.
But Dazai knew that one day they’d lose those orphans.
After months, Oda left.
After years, Dazai had to leave too or he’d be inviting too many questions.
He still watched them though, even if he couldn't stay part of their lives.
It was after the funeral for one of the orphan’s children that his frustration hit its peak.
He couldn’t ever be close to them. He couldn’t ever be close to anyone.
Dazai stood on the edge of a bridge, looking down at the water and knowing with the confidence of someone with firsthand experience that the fall wouldn’t kill him. Damn it.
When he heard footsteps behind him, he didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to be near people, maybe never again.
Until he heard the voice behind him. Oda’s voice.
It was hard, but Dazai told him about the orphans, that they were gone now and so were most of their children.
And then Oda asked something that Dazai wasn't expecting.
“Do they have any grandchildren?”
They did. Each one had something that reminded him of the children he and Oda had played with so long ago, and he shared all of those details.
Then Oda, ever surprising Oda, told Dazai that he hoped he could meet their descendants one day.
And that was when Dazai remembered that he wouldn’t be alone forever. He had Oda.
Oda would see the changes of time with him. Oda would lose people too, but he always saw what they gained from knowing them.
And Dazai felt a little less alone.
There were stretches of years where Oda didn't appear. Dazai spent his time as he always had, adjusting to the changing time and looking for ways to help Odasaku stay in one place.
But when there was a stretch of decades without any sign of Oda, Dazai realized just how used to having him at his side he’d become.
Each year was harder than the last. It was all too easy to pull away from people again, to stop caring so much about humanity. He focused on one goal: finding a cure for Odasaku so that he could help the friend he was sure he’d see again. One day.
It had been nearly a century without Odasaku when Dazai finally got a lead.
The Port Mafia.
Dazai met Mori, who convinced him to work for him. Dazai took easily to the crime and killing. After so much time seeing people die, he hardly felt anything when he was the one causing the death. And without the one person he cared about around, there was little else for him to focus on.
But then Oda was there.
Dazai was excited to tell him the good news, that Mori was helping look into finding a way for him to control his ability. The only catch was that Dazai had to work for him while they looked.
He tried to convince Oda to join too, even got him to wear the mafia black, but Oda didn’t take to the work like Dazai did.
He didn’t want to kill anyone, not anymore, not when he went so long without hurting anyone.
And he made Dazai question it too. Oda didn’t think finding a way to help him was worth hurting others. He was content enough with how things had been, and he was sure that they’d find another way.
Dazai didn’t even realize that Mori had noticed his change in attitude until too late.
And he didn’t remember that Oda had been wearing mafia black when he’d shown up hurt all those years ago until they’d already been separated.
He showed up at the end of the fight just in time to see Odasaku disappear.
Dazai made sure that the next time Oda appeared things were better.
He’d left the Port Mafia and found the Armed Detective Agency. It turned out that the solution he was looking for was in the city the whole time. Fukuzawa’s ability would give Oda the power to control when and where he traveled to.
It was the same ability that allowed Dazai to slow his healing and let himself age.
Dazai even had an entrance exam ready to go at any moment.
Oda passed with flying colors, of course.
He was a full member of the detective agency when Dazai brought him to the house that he bought. A house with a view of the ocean. A house where they could live together with no interruptions, where Oda could write. A house where they could live every single day together, in order, while they both grew old.