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Chuuya is sitting with his legs dangling from the dock.
Ships stand gloomily and sadly in the dark, as if people at train stations and airports are saying goodbye to their loved ones for a temporary eternity. The waves quietly hit the shore, caressing the ear with their death. Nakahara lights a cigarette and, hiding behind his palms, lights it up in a relaxed manner. Fortunately, the wind is very light.
The moon is staring at Yokohama and at the gloomy red-haired loner. He adjusts his hat and exhales smoke into the sky — this is how he gets to know the Moon.
He hears footsteps from behind. Quiet, almost weightless, they are clearly sneaking up on him. To kill? No. For some other reason, and he knows exactly who.
"I hear you, Dazai," he mutters, the salty air running his fingers through his fiery hair. The fire was dying out in the barely visible sea fog.
Not a word in reply. Osamu seemed not to have heard Nakahara — he dispensed with rudeness and completely ridiculous jokes. Is he drunk?
He just sat down next to him and lit a cigarette. He looked... unusual. But, surprisingly, sober.
Dazai and Chuuya have known each other for a very long time. Irritated by each other's existence, they realized with disgust that they were still one of the closest people to each other. And, although they saw each other in completely different states, a wild dog's stable image was ingrained in everyone's head — instead of the sugary photos that couples take for memory. Much better are the memories of righteous anger and sarcasm, or the conversations about death that shook the air because of the ridiculous smiling boy.
Osamu wasn't smiling now.
He looked strangely serious, as if something had happened, but at the same time it was easy to guess from his completely calm and even relaxed face that nothing tragic had happened. It's like he's tired of pretending. It was as if the sea had impatiently stripped off his false disguise, killed the laughter with which he was trying to fill the ringing void. And now the real Dazai appeared before Chuuya.
A dreary guy who could have been forty by the eyes, wrapped in bandages that covered the devil knows how fresh wounds, with sometimes trembling hands, that preferred to drown his grief in alcohol and in women. And now, in peace, he smokes. He methodically exhales smoke and seems to taste life itself along with tobacco.
Here it is. Quiet, calm and slow. It does not condemn or approve, it only looks with the cyclopean eye of the moon, it only speaks with the noise of suicidal waves.
"Did you know I'd be here?" Chuya suddenly asks, finishing his cigarette. He puts out his cigarette on the dock and throws it into the sea, drowns the flame in the icy water. Dazai somehow listlessly shrugs his shoulders.
"Yes. I won't say that your behavior is difficult to predict," a chuckle does not escape from pale lips. He doesn't have the energy or the desire to joke right now. Is there really anything that can be said to them sincerely, not with the aim of offending? Chuuya didn't believe it very much, but he didn't have the strength to swear either.
For some reason, he wanted to preserve this fleeting and phantom world that they had built next to the water. Although Osamu looked like he was going to drown himself at any moment, this time he was much more determined.
"I don't want to listen to your super-intelligent explanations right now," Chuuya mumbles, lingering his gaze on Dazai's profile. Sentimentalism scratched in his eyes, a confession frozen on his lips, he would give only nicotine and the sea.
"Great. Me too," Osamu replies shortly, finishing his cigarette. He sends his cigarette to the same place as Nakahara — into a dark blue pool.
"I missed you, you know," Dazai says surprisingly sincerely, and the usual nasty smile slides over his face again, but this time Chuuya sees: it's completely different. It's sincere. It is caused only by longing and love.
Nakahara squirts.
They were both not used to this kind of display of feelings. To speak honestly and frankly is too simple, too obvious and naive, as if you are exposing wounds that have not yet healed to the enemy so that he opens them with one light swipe of a knife. But Chuya remains merciful, no matter how much anger he spits at the sight of Dazai.
"You can always bother me more often. There's not much that can stop you," Nakahara mutters, but at the same time he looks at Osamu with amazing tenderness — the blue air ruffles his brown hair.
Their eyes meet, and a faint smile slips across Dazai's face. He wasn't in the mood at all today — just a spreading weakness that he wanted to give to Chuuya to be torn to pieces. Let him scold, let him bite, let him laugh hatefully, if only he would smooth it with some rudeness, if only he would kiss with a short-lived promise, which, to the surprise of both, has been held for so many years.
Osamu doesn't say a word.
Fingers in plasters reach for his cheek, tuck slightly damp red hair behind his ear, and Nakahara looks away somewhere to the side, in some kind of mute request or remorse, turns to the waves. They respond with the same lulled noise. Perhaps only Osamu, with his tremulous, not hungry gaze, can give him an answer.
He is extremely careful and gentle. Unnatural.
He presses his cool pale lips to his cheek, closing his eyes — Chuya can feel his eyelashes tremble. And in an awkward gesture, Nakahara hugs Osamu in return, carefully pulls him to himself, pinching pride and habitual rudeness.
Volcanoes and fires are stability in their relationship, but if they are sometimes replaced by quiet waves, then why not take advantage? Chuuya was hiding from an amazing feeling of calm and security, from that bittersweet feeling, like millions of little bells ringing in his ear in his hometown. A short rest that they share.
Nakahara, intoxicated with feelings, does not even notice how his lips collect Osamu's cuts on his neck, casually pulling off bandages. They'll get wet on the dock. However, like both of them, they were drugged by salt water, but this did not stop them. Sometimes tenderness and trembling love, neat and a little timid, intoxicate much more than burning passion, from which it is impossible to keep wet palms in coat pockets.
Dazai doesn't make any sounds. He only whispers sometimes, frivolously and purely, that he loves him. Probably, if Nakahara had given him such an opportunity: he looked into Osamu's eyes thoughtfully and piercingly, took his scratched palms in his own, Dazai would have mumbled to him a whole poem that he composed on the go.
Clothes will stay wet on the dock. They both look at it sometimes askance, with a kind of slight contempt and relief, after that they immediately return to each other's bodies. Nakahara is slightly freezing — the sea air blows over his pale back, he shivers, squints with displeasure, as if at any moment he will bite Dazai out of anger and squeeze him in his arms from the desire for warmth.
But instead, he only gasps when Osamu leisurely touches him. Painfully slow, but Chuuya doesn't want to rush him at all. He only mumbles a little more indignantly when he becomes completely impatient, and the moonlight stroking Dazai's shoulders began to seem like a real rival for his attention and love.
Osamu just grinned, kissed him softly, and examined the blue-white frozen body with lilac eyes. Wet fingers glide over the skin.
Nakahara's hot touch makes him want to scream. Either he is dissatisfied with the fact that they decided to bring him pleasure so unexpectedly, or he is happy that he finally feels Osamu's fingers where they need to be.
Heavy hot breathing is the only thing that can give them at least a little warmth on a cool summer night, while the cold comes from the sea and breathes down their necks a little menacingly, as if tragedy awaits them tomorrow. But today it doesn't matter. How can they think of such a thing?
How can they even think about anything when they look into each other's eyes so lovingly, when they reopen in for some reason completely outright nakedness, when both have legs cramping from trembling touches to each other, when they put their heads on their shoulders to maintain at least some self-control, when they leave lazy but thirsty bites on the skin, approaching the peak.
And then they lie.
Then they lie hugging each other — sticky and marine, the taste is salted caramel. When they look at each other in the moonlight, when they carefully remove their hair from their cheeks and kiss on the forehead. When the port and massive ships witness a rare and new love. When they awkwardly want to return to the old, familiar, native, and grumble hoarsely:
"Slug,"
"Mackerel,"
And the sound of the waves approved of the stupid nicknames.