Chapter Text
Chuuya Nakahara hates Dazai Osamu.
He hates his stupid bandages.
He hates his stupid brown coat.
He hates his stupid jokes.
He hates his stupid smile.
That’s the reason why his stomach hurts looking at the Instagram picture that Dazai had just posted. Dazai’s stupid smile was so ugly that it was making him sick. It wasn’t the fact that Dazai was smiling while forcing two of his new friends into the picture. Chuuya didn’t care who Dazai was posing for pictures with, it wasn’t his problem anymore. Dazai had made sure of that.
Chuuya hurled the phone across the room. It slammed into the wall opposite his bed, and landed softly on the carpeted floor. He stared at it for a moment, thinking about the bed that used to be right there. The bed that was always unused, because its occupant always made up an excuse to come and lie in his.
Chuuya rolled over in his bed staring at the ceiling.
This was dumb.
Why should he care what that dumbass posts on social media? Did he expect him to never make new friends after leaving? What was he even so angry about?
It didn’t matter, he told himself, because he hates Dazai Osamu.
He hated him ever since they were assigned to be roommates at PM University, ever since Dazai first sat next to him in Mr. Ougai’s criminology class, ever since Dazai first flashed that goddamn smile at him.
So it didn’t matter that he was flashing that smile for his other, better friends now.
It didn’t matter.
It didn’t.
Chuuya closed his eyes, trying to think of all the things Dazai did that annoyed him.
He never cleaned up after himself, for one, always begged Chuuya to give him homework answers for Mr. Ougai’s class, followed Chuuya around whenever he left the dorm, made him pay for everything, complained whenever Chuuya hung out with any of his other friends.
“God.” Chuuya said aloud to his ceiling, throwing an arm over his forehead. “I miss the bastard.”
What a horrible thought.
Dazai had barely any redeemable qualities, and he clearly didn’t miss Chuuya, as his Instagram posts loved to flaunt.
Groaning, Chuuya sat up in bed, and felt around the floor for cigarettes. Unable to find any, he spotted them next to his phone, on the other side of the small room. He stared at the two objects for a while, weighing his options.
He stepped out of bed and picked his phone up.
Climbing back into bed, Chuuya swallowed down the regret rising from his chest.
He hadn’t even looked yet, how could he already be regretting what he was about to do?
Was he really about to do this?
A voice in the back of his head was telling him how unhealthy and stupid this was.
The voice sounded oddly similar to Ane-san for some reason.
Chuuya clicked onto Find My Friends, ignoring the voice.
He closed his eyes as the app loaded up, and opened them with bated breathe.
“Son of a-“ Chuuya whispered to himself, staring at his too-bright phone screen. He let the phone slip from his hands, and dropped his head into his hands.
Chuuya was the person that, until recent events, Dazai shared his darkest secrets with.
Late at night, when the only sound to be heard was other drunk college kids stumbling back into their dorms, when Chuuya had his arms wrapped around Dazai’s concerningly-thin chest, Dazai would whisper things into the top of his red hair.
Maybe he thought Chuuya was asleep, maybe he knew he was awake, Chuuya had always been scared to ask. So he would just lay there and listen, as Dazai told him things he would never say to anybody else.
That’s what Chuuya had thought at least.
He didn’t know if Dazai told those things to other people, he’d always just assumed that those moments were special. Something only they had.
Now, he didn’t think Dazai even remembered.
He shared other things with Chuuya. His location, for example, which he seemed to have forgotten to turn off.
“I don’t want your location, asshole. Unlike somebody, I don’t need to know where my roommate is at all times.” Chuuya had groaned at him over coffee one day, when Dazai proposed the idea.
“But Chuuuyaaa, what if I go missing? Or get kidnapped? Or murdered?” Dazai had whined back, batting his eyelashes at Chuuya like some sort of Disney princess.
“I’d send them flowers.”
“How rude!” Dazai gasped dramatically, his eyes glinting with humor. “Well, I’ve already turned it on anyways. You know, in case you ever miss me.”
“In what scenario would that ever happen?”
“Well I don’t know, maybe if you’re ever bored during a class and wanna…”
He trailed off at that, wiggling his eyebrows in the same infuriating way he always did. At that, Chuuya glared at him and threatened to switch dorms for the millionth time, and it turned into a whole other argument.
He had made such a big deal of turning it on, just to forget all about it when he moved schools. Well, he forget a lot of things when he moved schools.
Stupid Dazai, Chuuya thought bitterly as he checked his phone again just in time to see his ex-roommate arrive at some bar called ‘The Black Dog’.
The was only one reason Dazai ever went to bars, and it wasn’t for the drinks.
Despite himself, Chuuya’s imagination started flipping through images of Dazai with a girl.
He had a right, of course, to hook up with anybody he wanted. He and Chuuya hadn’t so much as talked since he left.
And it wasn’t like they were ever anything anyways.
‘Partners-in-crime’ was what Dazai had always called it. He was so proud of himself for that pun, with them having met in criminology class and all.
Chuuya preferred ‘roommates-with-benefits’.
So no, Chuuya had no right to be upset if Dazai wanted to get wasted in some random bar and bring a girl home to his new, perfect dorm room that he shared with his new, perfect roommate that Chuuya had seen all over his social media.
But he couldn’t help the feeling that was hitting him right now: utter hurt.
It felt like he wasn’t even in control of his own body, how he opened Instagram again, and checked Dazai’s story to see a video with some blonde girl who was throwing her arms around him and giggling.
Chuuya just didn’t understand.
He didn’t understand how Dazai didn’t miss him, how he could go to a damn bar with this girl, a freshman by the looks of it, and just-
Oh.
In his hurt at the photo itself, Chuuya hadn’t even noticed the sound playing in the background.
The Starting Line.
Three weeks into them living together, Dazai dragged Chuuya to bar karaoke under the guise of “roommate bonding” or something. He then proceeded to sing three songs horribly off key while being booed by every other person in the bar, before pulling Chuuya onstage to sing a song with him.
The Starting Line was what he picked, despite Chuuya’s protests that it was too romantic, and he made it through about half the song alone before Chuuya finally sang too.
Blinking at his phone screen, Chuuya wondered if the girl had even heard the song before.
He replayed the story over and over again, watching Dazai and the girl laugh over and over again, before he finally closed out of the app.
Ever since Dazai transferred to the University of ADA, Chuuya felt something missing. It was a cliche way of putting it, but the only way he could word it.
He hadn’t cried over him, obviously, but there had been many nights like this one; staying up late, torturing himself by watching Dazai’s life through pictures and videos.
It felt like he was moving through the world with a lump in his chest, an ache for something.
His longing to see Dazai’s ugly face again stayed unspoken to everyone.
Chuuya complained to his older sister about it a couple of times, but he never expressed how hurt he was, although he knew she had her suspicions about his true feelings on the matter.
He was grateful for his sister, and he talked to her about a lot of things. But he didn’t open up to her the way he did with Dazai.
He was beginning to fear that he wouldn’t open up to anybody else the way he did for Dazai.
For the year and a half that he’d known Dazai, Chuuya considered him to be a brave man. Dazai had once remarked that Chuuya needed somebody to be brave for him, somebody that Chuuya could be weak with, and he played that role very well up until he transferred.
And Chuuya had believed it, because of course he had.
Last November, it had rained really hard.
Dazai had found him standing outside in the rain, staring up at the sky. Chuuya liked the rain, liked the way it fell onto his skin.
Dazai forced him back into the dorms, forced him out of his wet clothes and into the shower, telling him he was going to catch a cold.
Dazai held Chuuya’s shaking, rain-soaked body in the shower, stood with him under the hot water until Chuuya could look him in the eyes again.
Ever since he was little, Chuuya would get these moments when he felt like something was inexplicably wrong with him.
Dazai, despite all his flaws, was the first one to ever make Chuuya feel human during those moments.
Lying on his back, phone in his hand again, Chuuya typed out a message to Dazai in his Notes app—a habit he had picked up on nights like this one.
‘Do you hate me?’
No, Dazai didn’t care enough to hate him.
‘Was it hazing for some cruel fraternity at this shitty college? When you told me I was the only person you really trusted in this world? Were you making fun of me with some stupid joke?’
Chuuya still couldn’t shake the feeling that everything had been a joke, that Dazai couldn’t possibly have meant anything he said to Chuuya, because how else would he able to forget everything so easily like this?
‘I still mean what I said.’
It had been six weeks since Dazai Osamu transferred to ADA.
Six weeks since Chuuya’s dorm room had been clean from the smell of Dazai’s cheap cigarettes everywhere, but he still missed the smoke.
‘You know, I’m tempted to just move dorms and burn all my clothes, get rid of you in my life for once and all. Sometimes, I’m tempted to hire that weird religious kid that you hate to come and exorcize this place of whatever spell you placed that keeps making me miss you.’
Chuuya felt anger start to bubble up in his chest, overtaking his sadness.
‘And you know what, asshole? I hope it’s shitty in that fucking bar, The Black Dog or whatever. I hope you jumped up when they played The Starting Line, just to realize that girl has never heard it before, and you'll never find anybody else to sing that song with. ‘Cause, coward that you are, you left me.’
Suddenly, he was reminded of something his sister had said last time he called her to complain about how he kept buying those damn cheap cigarettes for Dazai whenever he was at the pharmacy, forgetting that he was gone.
“Old habits die screaming, Chuuya.” She had sighed, sympathy crawling into her voice. Chuuya had scowled at that, assuring himself that he didn’t need her pity.
“They sure do.” Chuuya smiled to himself in the darkness, staring up at his phone.
He closed his eyes for a moment, allowing himself to miss Dazai Osamu for just one more second, before opening them again.
It was easier than he thought it would be, as he deleted the message, then all of the messages.
It was easier than he thought it would be to unfollow and remove Dazai on all social media.
Taking one last glance at Dazai’s little blue dot, still at The Black Dog, he deleted Dazai’s number.
Old habits die screaming, was Chuuya's last thought as he finally drifted off to sleep, phone on his chest.