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Before anything else, Chuuya would like to clarify that he isn’t drunk. Who would get drunk over two sips of wine? Excellent, expensive vintage wine, but two sips nonetheless. He’s not such a lightweight that he can’t withstand such a thing! He’s Port Mafia’s strongest martial artist, he’s not so weak that he can’t defeat two sips of alcohol!
“I think hats are really cool,” he confesses to the person beside him. He definitely doesn’t slur his words or anything like it. He hugs the bottle of wine close to his face, enjoying the coolness from the glass. “They’re just so—” here, he makes a gesture with one gloved hand, demonstrating the depth of his feelings towards fashion accessories, “—cool.”
Chuuya isn’t drunk. His eyes are as sharp as always. He could see that there’s a man seated beside him in the bar counter. A man with tousled dark hair that looks very fluffy. This man also wears a lot of layers, just like him, but in lighter colors. Sharp nose, defined cheekbones, nice lips. Handsome.
And judging from his fond chuckles: very charming.
Chuuya hasn’t felt this warm and starstruck since the last time he spotted a cute dog in an alleyway during a rainstorm.
That dog was so obedient and cute, and it wagged its tail at him, and even ran around him and licked him. After being fed steak, that dog even showed him his belly, and slept in the same bed as him. Come daylight and the dog scurried away, but that one night experience was already more than enough.
…Anyway, the person in front of him is very charming and cute.
More importantly, this person doesn’t immediately stick his tongue out and make disparaging noises towards his expressed affection for hats. In fact this person even smiles at him and says, “I think it’d be cooler if you take it off you.”
Flirting! This is absolutely flirting!
Ha, take that, shitty Dazai!
Even if he sits down and does nothing, and even if he talks about hats, a hot and charming man would still sit beside him and flirt with him!
Ha! He definitely has appeal, unlike what that fish claims!
Chuuya feels himself grinning widely. “You’re flirting with me. Right?”
He definitely isn’t drunk. It just takes him some time to slide his phone out of his pockets. He needs to record this moment and show it off to that fish—uh, why record when he can just call Dazai directly and tell him about this! Where’s his phone, damn it?!
“You’re looking for this?” Hot and Charming Man has one hand covering his mouth, a move reminiscent of Ane-san whenever she’s demurely laughing at him complaining about Dazai’s general fishiness infecting Yokohama’s air. Hot and Charming Man raises his other hand and dangles something in front of Chuuya’s nose. “Want me to help you dial a number?”
Oh! His phone!
Wow, not only is this man handsome and charming, but he’s also helpful! A mind-reader too, somehow knowing that he wants to use his phone to call someone. Not only that, he’s also able to conjure his phone like some magic trick. Amazing.
Ha! An amazing person is flirting with him! Unlike Dazai, who only gets slapped by women whenever he opens his stupid mouth and starts inviting people into double suicides!
But, he has to be sure of one thing first. “You’re flirting with me, right?”
Even the way Amazing Man’s eyebrows furrow look handsome. Really amazing. “Why are you so insistent on this? Do you want men to flirt with you so badly, Chuuya?”
Not-so-amazing is his propensity to not answer a question directly. It reminds him of Dazai, a guy who really can’t be honest and straightforward at all. That guy is so in denial about so many things—see how he insists that he’s cool and charming, when he’s nothing but fish? If he’s a little more honest and a little more self-aware, he’d be cutting down on his annoyingness, but to the detriment of this world, he remains a pest.
Then again, it’s good that he remains permanently like that.
Chuuya might have a heart attack if he ever has to exist in a world where Dazai isn’t being a constant nuisance. It’d be too horrifying to think about. Such a world is bound to give him freaky hives all over his skin, from the mere allergy to such a poisonous being.
…Anyway, even if Chuuya is surrounded by men who aren’t very straight…forward, he can forge his path onward!
“But you are flirting with me, right,” he persists to clarify.
If one punch cannot defeat the enemy, then the solution is just to punch them harder. That’s going to be the key to defeating Dazai too, surely. It’s just that the hundreds of kicks and scoldings that Chuuya had sent his way over the years haven’t successfully exterminated him, but surely someday, it will work! He’s not going to give up, damn it!
Hot and Charming Man lets out a sigh. It makes his face look a lot softer. Kind of like D—no way, no way, no way, that fish is a fish while this man is very charming. And he doesn’t immediately retch upon listening to him talk about hats for ten minutes straight. This means that this man is at least 10 times cooler than a mackerel!
“Once I start flirting with you, you would certainly know it,” is slow and syrupy, choreographed along by fingers that dance over his forearm. Hot and Charming Man takes his gloved palm and places his phone there, but not before drawing random patterns over his lifeline. “Your heart would race and your cheeks would flush, and you would feel hot and bothered.”
Hot and Charming Man even leans forward a bit, their breaths mingling together.
“Oh,” he says, nodding a little in understanding. Their noses brush against each other. “So it’s the same thing as whenever I’m angry at that shitty mackerel.”
The man in front of him freezes.
Chuuya takes his phone and takes a bit of maneuvering to unlock it. His PIN code hasn’t changed in a long time. It’s the bastard’s birthday, for many reasons. One, nobody would expect him to use such a thing, therefore foiling any attempts at guessing it. Two, his own birthday is a contentious information, so it’s best to use someone else’s. Three, the person most likely to attempt stealing his phone is that bastard anyway, so it’d be nice to have him freeze with disgust at being reminded of his day of birth and the reminder that his days are numbered. Fourth—urgh, his ring finger is suddenly caught by the Hot and Charming Man so he can’t use it to count right now, urgh.
“You feel hot and bothered when you’re angry at—”
The thought of someone else calling Dazai a ‘shitty mackerel’ makes him feel… unpleasant. So he hurriedly cuts off with a, “—because he’s bothersome!”
So bothersome, that he deserves to have his time disturbed by Chuuya’s call for once.
Chuuya dials a familiar number, right near the top of his contact list for easy finding and scolding. The number rings, rings, rings—and then clicks. Tsk, typical of that bastard, trying to make him wait!
“Shitty Dazai!” That’s his booming greeting, so loud that it echoes in his ears. “Guess what just happened!”
There’s a harsh intake of breath from somewhere. Oh, the thought of disturbing Dazai makes him smile even more. Ha, his happiness must be crossing over Yokohama’s airwaves and infiltrating that gloomy mackerel, rendering him speechless!
Without waiting for the other’s reply, he snickers and continues with a, “Someone so hot and charming chose to sit beside me and flirt with me all night long!”
There’s prolonged silence from Dazai’s end, but that’s just fine with him. It’s better if Dazai is quiet, because that would mean that he wouldn’t be saying annoying things such as insults to his height, his bike, his love for wine, his love for hats, his love for work and his coworkers… A quiet Dazai means that he could just sit there like a statue, one that he could reluctantly price as ten billion yen.
If Chuuya squints hard enough and closes his eyes, nose and ears, he could classify Dazai as… urgh, handsome.
…Fuck, just that thought makes his stomach roll.
Or maybe that’s the two sips of wine?
But anyway, he’s not drunk.
He just has… eyes. And in the privacy of his mind, he could admit that Dazai has passable eyes, passable nose, passable earlobes, passable lip shape, passable chin, and maybe even a cute forehead. But all those observations hinge on the fact that he’s not unhinged enough to actually consider that aloud, and especially not if Dazai has a working voicebox. Dazai’s lips flapping about means that he’d be spewing nonsense, which directly tanks his handsomeness.
Ah, but who cares about a mackerel?
There’s a hot and charming guy right in front of him!
…Hey, why don’t he video-call Dazai and show him this charming man? Maybe he’d collapse out of jealousy that someone can look so charming instead of being so fishy? Maybe he’d even be enlightened as to how it’s possible to not reek so much of fishiness? Maybe he’d even be so jealous that Chuuya’s able to attract people, that he’d beg him to teach him his charismatic ways?
Because Chuuya is definitely not drunk, he barrels into the Hot and Charming Man and wraps an arm around his shoulders. He focuses his camera on the two of them, as he declares a challenge to the silent Dazai on the other end—a suspiciously dark screen, but somehow very familiar, and very similar to the bar he’s currently in.
“This handsome man is so nice and good at flirting! Ha! I’m so charming that I was able to score such a man! Ha! Take that, shitty Dazai!”
Perhaps even a charming man has his limits. Perhaps this handsome man is shy upon being praised.
This handsome and charming man collapses against him, and conveniently flops on top of him while pushing him to the floor.
There’s something like a thunderous sound of emergency evacuation around them. There’s something like a voice echoing past the call, similar to a phenomenon where the callers are too near each other. There’s something like a dog licking his neck.
“I’ll show you just how good at flirting I am,” the man declares against his ear, and starts licking a stripe over his jawline.
…Urgh.
Suddenly being pushed to the floor is all fine and good, but his head is so dizzy…
So dizzy, to the point that he thinks he even sees Dazai on top of him.
But that can’t be, right?
Dazai being handsome and charming is impossible.
Satisfied with this conclusion, Chuuya closes his eyes to prevent the world from spinning further, ignoring the shrieks on top of him from someone who sounds suspiciously like Dazai scolding him for being a drunk chibi.
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The next day, after being stuck inside the mafia headquarters—disinfected and inspected for possible alien possession, all by Verlaine’s request—Chuuya walks back home to his apartment and sees a pitiful brown-haired dog directly camping out on his doorstep.
Chuuya closes his eyes and pinches his nose.
…Damn it, this fishy dog actually looks kind of cute.
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