Chapter Text
Osamu Dazai had had countless meetings with death, and yet none of them had ever amounted to anything. Every time he had searched for it, death had evaded his grasp.
It was no wonder now that the lead singer of the rock band, Armed Agency, was desperate to find solace if not in death, then in a glass of whisky. He swirled around in the almost empty glass, what had remained of the clear amber liquid, thinking about how many more glasses until he'd forget the day he had had.
It hadn't been a particularly bad one, but it hadn't been a particularly good one either. It was all blurred lines past this point, another monotonous day of practice, interviews, and then gigs at local clubs. They were famous and honestly didn't need the gigs, but Dazai remembered something about Atsushi saying this would bring them closer to their fans. Something about establishing deeper and more intimate connections with their audiences and whatnot.
Anyhow, he hadn't questioned the kid when he had told him they'd play tonight at yet another bar in Yokohama. Or was it a pub? Well, as long as he could drink a few glasses after the show was over, he wouldn't complain. And to drink, he did.
Dazai finally put down his glass, tapping with one finger on the side of it to show the waitress he wanted a refill. She nodded along and took it swiftly to pour another shot of liquor. Until now, she hadn't asked who he was, what he was doing here, or how he was going to pay the tab, but Dazai supposed he should be grateful for her discretion. Not many treated the rock star like that nowadays.
"Good evening, Miss. One glass of the best wine you have. Preferably a red one, chilled and with no ice."
"Fancy as ever, huh? I could have sworn I saw a slug entering the bar earlier. "
"Shut the fuck up, Osamu. What are ya' doing here anyway? Shouldn't you be playing on some worldwide stadium, right now?"
Dazai looked up at the newcomer, a beautiful red-haired man, who had taken a seat at the bar next to him. He looked almost the same, as when he was still playing guitar with Dazai in a stuffy garage near Mori's studio.
Somehow the years hadn't had any effect on Nakahara Chuuya. Only his hair, a bright shade of auburn, had grown longer, and now it was tied back into a small ponytail at the base of his neck. It looked soft, and in that moment Dazai wanted nothing more than to run his fingers through it, to admire in the light of the pub the way it shined and coiled around his bandaged hands.
"Good evening to you too, Chuuya. I suppose I ought to, but Atsushi said we should take a break before our next tour." He hadn't said that, but Dazai knew the kid was worried. For him. Well, he should have been, but it wasn’t like he would ever get better.
"A break?! This looks like no break to me, damn, they'd be workin' you worse than Mori-san."
"We both know that isn't the truth." It wasn’t. Fukuzawa would never profit of off him, like Mori had done, and Chuuya was aware of that too. In fact, Dazai could bet he had seen the slug relaxing visibly when he had heard about the break from touring.
Before, back when he was eighteen and still part of The Mafia, Mori's rock group, Dazai was only a shadow of himself. He was suicidal, not that he was perfectly fine now, but then it had been so hard to even get out of bed in the mornings. He remembered picking himself back off the bathroom floor before a concert, dealing alone with all the sadness, the guilt, the hurt.
And then, the last string tying him to his group, Odasaku, their sound assistant, died, and Dazai Osamu couldn't bear it no more. He left and for two whole years he lived in a small village somewhere in the countryside, where no one knew who he was or who he had been. It was a peaceful life, though one that hadn't lasted forever. And now he was there, back to square zero, back where everything had begun.
"Chuuya."
"Whatta do ya' want from me, idiotic bastard?" The ginger responded while fumbling with his packet of cigarettes. So, he hadn't quit either.
"Give me one too." He looked at Dazai with a frown, those were probably some expensive shit brand but handed him a cigarette anyway. "Andd...how is life in The Mafia going?"
"Thought you wouldn't care." He lights the cigarette with care and takes a greedy drag, that looks almost obscene to Dazai.
"It's alright, I guess. Akutagawa-kun is being Akutagawa, Higuchi is fawning over him as usual, Gin is doing good, and Tachihara and the old man, Hirtosu-san are composing some new song."
So, they were continuing to live on without him. He supposed it was good in a way, Dazai knew him leaving the group had had a massive effect on their younger members, especially Akutagawa-kun. Back when he was eighteen though, it hadn't even crossed his mind that Akutagawa might have felt betrayed by his departure.
And it wasn’t only he who had felt betrayed. Nakahara Chuuya was a proud man. So proud that he hadn't dared to show any kind of regret in front of their other members, or in front of Mori, but he knew better. Chuuya had missed him. And Dazai had missed him too.
He didn't know what he had missed more. The softness of the other's hair or the forbidden touches in their private changing room. Perhaps it was both, or it was the feeling of being safe, of being understood, a feeling he had gotten only from Chuuya. Not that he would dare admit it.
"Don't think that something has changed just because you left, shitty Dazai. We weren’t going to throw out years of hard work out the window, and disband."
"I hadn't expected you to, Chu." It's all too easy to slip back into their routine, to forget about everything and go back to a state of in-between, not friends but not quite yet lovers. Love was another thing which had long since started evading Osamu Dazai. He was no man, made for love, or that was what he had always thought.
"Don't call me that, stupid waste of bandages." He scowled, but the ginger's voice was rather soft, and when he punched Dazai in the shoulder it held no ounce of real power. It was merely a reminder of their teenage days.
A phone interrupted Dazai's line of thought, and he saw his ex-partner picking up. Mori. He asked the ginger when he was going back to the studio, and from what he had heard from their short conversation they were practising for a big event in Yokohama next month. A long time ago Dazai would have also been there, Odasaku in toe, ready to hit the stage next to his menace of a partner. But that was just the past. Now he was getting ready for a world tour with the Armed Agency, his new and much younger band members.
"Chuuya-
"If you're serious about getting me back and all that shit... then come to our next show."
Chuuya throws back the remaining wine, tipping the glass forward in a motion so elegant, so fluid that it makes Dazai trace the curve of his pale neck as he swallows. Come to his next show. Come and see him performing again but this time from the stands, not next to Chuuya on stage.
"I will." He says it without realising, softly letting the words come out his mouth, even though all he wants to do at that moment is to kiss the red-haired man senseless. Dazai craves a different kind of poison tonight.
"Then it's settled, bastard." He lights up another cigarette, putting on a leather jacket, different than the one he used to wear four years ago. For a fact, Dazai knows that this one used to be his.
"You aren't getting a third chance, Osamu. This time make it count."
And then Dazai is left alone again, swirling around his glass of whisky, and staring long after at the door, almost expecting the redhead to come back any minute from now. But he doesn't. Soon enough, Atsushi comes to take him home, probably sent by Fukuzawa to make sure Dazai wouldn't try to drink himself to death yet another time.
Osamu Dazai had long since started to be evaded by both love and death. Only that this once, he might have encountered one of those invisible strings of fate and was holding tightly onto it. Holding onto the possibility of Chuuya.