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When Oda enters Lupin that evening, Dazai is already there - slumped on the bar, face hidden in his arms. There’s a still full glass of whiskey in front of him, as if he’d fallen asleep before even taking a single sip.
Years of knowing the boy have him expecting Dazai to immediately jump up and welcome him, a bundle of energy as he always is - he does not, though. He stays just as he is - if not for the minute trembling of his body, Oda would think he’s passed out.
He takes a seat next to Dazai, cautiously watching him out of the corner of his eye the entire time - Dazai still doesn’t move. From the new vantage point, he sees that his fingers are digging into the sleeves of his shirt. The nail polish that was there just two days ago is all but entirely scratched off, which Oda finds particularly strange. Dazai came bouncing in that day showing it off, proclaiming that Nakahara-kun painted his nails, which meant he held his hand, and Dazai spent an obscene amount of time focusing on that minute piece of information. Ango looked constipated and uncomfortable (as usual when Dazai got started on the topic of his partner), but Oda let the boy talk. Dazai barely ever gets the chance to act his age, and letting him talk about his crush is the least Oda can do to give him some semblance of normalcy in his life.
All that being said, Dazai had been very protective of his fingernails - Oda’s never seem him quite so cautious. He didn’t want to chip them, cause ‘what would Chuuya think?’. Oda found that logic odd, but, again, he’s a seventeen year old boy in love for the first time. If he wanted to make a big deal out of it, Oda would let him. It just makes the scratched off polish the more strange.
He waves at the bartender to get him a glass as well, and the man does so silently; Oda drinks it calmly, silently, waiting. He keeps watching Dazai, but the boy stays stock still the whole time, only occasionally wiggling on the stool, likely uncomfortable from sitting there for God knows how long.
Dazai only properly acknowledges him after Oda’s finished with his drink - he sets the glass down, and when he glances at Dazai again, his face is a bit more visible - the lower half of it still concealed by his arm, but now his eyes (well, eye) peek out, with Dazai staring off into nothing with a frown.
“There was this mission in Europe, up for grabs for anyone,” Dazai begins speaking - Oda finds his voice eerily normal, like quiet before a hurricane. “The Boss had no one who wanted it cuz it’d take long. Months, probably.”
Oda nods, and Dazai starts nudging his own whiskey - still untouched, the ice long melted - with his finger.
“I told him,” Dazai mumbles. “Yesterday.”
“You told the Boss no one wanted the mission?” Oda asks.
Dazai glances up at him briefly, and although the kid is always rather nice to him, this is the closest thing to an insult he'd ever been at the receiving end of from him, with the obvious deadpanned expression in the visible eye.
Though the gaze disappears just as quickly, Dazai pointedly avoiding looking at him, hiding his face again.
“I told Chuuya,” he says, even quieter. “That I love him.”
Ah. This doesn’t paint a pretty picture so far.
“What did he say?”
Silently, Oda prays that this is just Dazai’s inexperience - he’s not good with feelings, having been burned by them so many times in his life. Maybe Nakahara-kun reacted well, and Dazai’s just overthinking it, or he's confused.
Dazai then straightens up, and the prayers die out in his head when he sees the borderline insane grin on his face.
“That’s the thing! He didn’t say a-ny-thing!” Dazai laughs, empty and echoing through the bar. “He left. He just left me there! And I didn’t run off after him cause-”
-cause he was embarrassed, probably.
“Well, I didn’t,” Dazai keeps going, still with that burst of manic energy. “And I go to the Boss this morning, to report about data we retrieved the other day, and he wasn’t there, and you know what the Boss says? That he took that fucking overseas assignment, earlier in the morning, and what a shame cause I just missed him and he’s already on the plane to France! He didn’t even tell me, I had to hear it from Mori. I know he hates me but this was a low blow,” he hisses bitterly, his voice breaking into a sob towards the end.
Oda sees him try to compose himself, closing his eyes, turning on the stool to face the room instead of the bar, squeezing his eyes shut tight enough his whole face scrunches up.
He’s just about to speak up to try and offer some comfort when Dazai grabs his whiskey glass and throws it at the wall. It smashes against the wood, glass flying and liquor spilling violently, through the bar and then whatever left in a splash on the wallpaper. Oda would be impressed by Dazai’s strength (especially with those stick arms) if he didn’t see him reaching for Oda’s glass as well.
Oda barely manages to grab his wrist - the glass tumbles down to the bartop, but at least it doesn’t break.
“How about we go outside?” Oda suggests; he can feel, now, that Dazai’s trembling a lot harder than it looks. “I don’t think breaking things will make you feel better.”
“You’d be surprised,” Dazai laughs. “I blew up his car and that felt fucking fantastic.”
Oda blinks a few times.
“You did what?”
“I set fire to his car and I watched until it blew up.”
Well. Oda can’t say he’s surprised. Dazai doesn’t do emotions very well, after all. He’s kind of glad Nakahara-kun fled the country - Oda is a little worried he’d already be dead if he stuck around.
“I think,” Oda begins, slowly, getting off the stool, still gripping Dazai’s twitching hand, “that I’m going to take you home, and you’re going to do your best to not break anything else.”
“I’m perfectly fine staying here,” Dazai grumbles.
“You’re paying for that glass and we’re leaving, Dazai.”
Dazai isn’t happy, obviously, but he pulls out a stack of cash and throws it on the bar. It’s probably worth much more than just that one glass, but hopefully that’s enough for the bartender to forget the whole incident. Oda happens to like this bar.
Oda orders them a cab, which they wait for in silence - the entire ride is passed similarly as well, Dazai stubbornly staring out the window the entire way. It’s unnerving - Oda’s never seen the boy this quiet before. He’s quite literally the most chatty little thing Oda’s ever met, even if half of what he says is mindless chatter and the other half lies.
He pays the driver, and then pulls Dazai with him to his apartment - it’s small, and a little cramped, but it’s home. Dazai’s been there several times already - Oda can’t in good conscience leave him in that godforsaken container he sleeps in when temperatures are below zero; there’s a spare futon that pretty much belongs to the boy, as well as a mug he’d claimed as his favorite.
He deposits Dazai on the small couch, and flees to the kitchen when he contemplates as to what to do.
Dazai’s hurting, that much is obvious - he may hate that fact, might pretend that isn’t the case, but he does have feelings, and they have been hurt, quite significantly. The outburst at the bar is proof enough, and Oda’s sure that’s not the last of it. Feelings are volatile, especially those of a teenager. And unfortunately, there’s not much Oda can do - this is the type of thing Dazai will have to simply go through; bear it, survive it, hopefully move on. Oda wishes he could take the burden away - Dazai’d been hurt too much in his short life already - but he can’t. All he can do is try and provide the little comfort he can.
And so twenty minutes later he’s back in the lounge, two steaming bowls of curry in his hands - he presses one into Dazai’s hands. Dazai blinks down at it slowly, as if he doesn’t know what to do with it. Oda just presses a spoon into his hand.
“It’ll make you feel better,” he just says. Only marginally, but it’s a start.
His mother had taught him that - a warm, homemade meal is a good start for when the world feels like it’s falling apart. And although it won’t stop the world from falling, it’ll keep it together for just that much longer. Dazai probably needs that.
He knows the boy is likely at war with himself - feeling too much, yet at the same time reasoning that he shouldn’t be so hurt, so touched by such an insignificant thing as teenage heartbreak. In the grand scheme of mafia life, having your heart broken means little; but for a teenage boy, it means everything. Too often, Dazai gets caught up in the mafia so much that he forgets it doesn’t cancel out the fact that he's still a child.
Dazai eats his food slowly, but he finishes the entire bowl - once he deems his stray fed, Oda takes the bowls back to the kitchen to be washed later; when he returns, Dazai’s still sitting on the couch, stiff and uncomfortable looking, picking at the edges of the bandages on one of his wrists.
“You should change,” Oda tells him. He’s dressed like he always is - the black suit and the awful heavy coat that swallows his frail frame. The only times Oda’s seen him wearing something else was right here, behind close doors, where no one can witness that the Demon Prodigy is nothing more than a sad boy caught up in the wrong life. “There’s clothes in the bathroom.”
“‘m fine,” Dazai mumbles. The picking continues as Dazai stares off into empty space.
“You’ll feel more comfortable.”
“I’ll still feel like shit,” he quips back, this time harsher, surprising Oda. It seems to surprise Dazai as well - he blinks a few times and turns his head away, shrinking into himself.
Oda bites back a smile; it amazes him how people (how Dazai) view him as some sort of otherworldly, inhuman thing, when the proof of who he is is right in front of his eyes. Teenage petulance at its finest.
“You will,” he agrees - there’s no point in denying the truth, after all. “At least you won’t have to lounge in clothes that aren’t meant for it. Your pajamas are softer.”
Dazai seems to be searching for a counterargument, but doesn’t find anything. After a moment, he stiffly stands up and heads to the bathroom.
With the few minutes he has, Oda washes the dishes, and then boots up his old TV - it’s an old thing that Dazai always makes fun of, but it’s reliable, and he has no need for anything else. He has a small collection of movies, most of which they’ve watched already; half of it he immediately rejects on account of them being romcoms. Usually Dazai likes to comment on their silliness, or sigh to himself and daydream (not that he’d ever admit it), but today it’d be pouring salt on an open wound.
Instead, he loads up a DVD of some horror movie Dazai got him, figuring it’s as good as anything he’ll find.
Dazai comes back wrapped in a blanket he found God knows where. Below that, Oda can see he’s wearing the fuzzy pajamas Oda got him - they’re blue and the pants have a white star pattern. He also took off the bandages he usually wears around his head. Like this, he looks smaller, younger. It’s easier to pretend that the Mafia doesn’t exist, if just for tonight.
And although he shouldn’t, Oda passes him the bottle of whiskey he happened to have in one of his cupboards. He ignores Dazai’s drinking on account of the whole Mafia thing - if someone is ordered to kill, Oda doesn’t see why they shouldn’t drink, even if a little too young for it - but he’s never the one to actively encourage it.
One - Dazai surprisingly drinks very little, all things considered, so Oda figures just this once is okay. Two - getting drunk after you got rejected is also relatively normal. Three - he has an ulterior motive in that he hopes Dazai will loosen up enough to talk. Or cry, or scream, or talk smack about his partner, whatever. Oda just hopes he lets it out and doesn’t internalize it like any other bad thing he’d gone through.
Dazai looks at the bottle for a long moment, as if he’s unsure what to do with it. He then opens it with a sigh, and then takes a swig from it, scrunching up his face at the burn as he swallows. Oda notes, if Dazai were more himself right now, he’d have felt embarrassed about that, but as he is now, he doesn’t seem to care at all, barely waiting until he’s taking another swig.
“Try to drink slowly,” Oda says. “You’ll make yourself sick otherwise.”
Dazai shrugs his shoulders, but he does pace himself a little better. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention to the movie at all, but it’s there as background noise more than anything.
At a certain point, Dazai starts to mumble to himself. When Oda glances at him, he can't help but wince. It feels like barely any time has passed, and the bottle is already empty. Damn.
“-so stupid,” Dazai murmurs - more into Oda’s shoulder than anything, apparently now unbothered - probably unable - to stay upright on his own.
“What is?”
“He,” Dazai hisses, as if it’s some wretched word. “He’s so, so, so dumb. Hate him.”
“You don’t,” Oda tells him softly. Dazai would roll his eyes if he noticed, but he’s too caught up in his verbal crusade.
“He’s so,” Dazai begins, and then wavers as if he can’t find a sufficient insult. “He’s short,” he finally grumbles. “Short and stupid and has stupid pretty hair and stupid pretty eyes and I hate him.”
“You’ll feel less strongly about it after some time.”
“No I won’t,” he now retorts. “It’s been like this forever, I met him and it was like woah, and now it’s still like that but so much worse and now I think bout him and I want to kill him but this time for like real cause it feels fuckin’ awful and he’s the one who did it!”
“He should’ve handled it better,” Oda agrees. Well, it’s not exactly agreeing - he’d like to make sure Dazai knows Nakahara-kun shouldn’t be blamed for how he feels (or doesn’t feel), but such a concept would likely fly over his head right now.
There’s a beat of silence, and then a sniffle from his side.
“I don’t want ‘im to handle it better, I want- I want him to like me,” Dazai chokes out, voice small and strained and wet, right after which his breath hitches on a sob. “I thought he did! I rea-really thought that! We went out everywhere together ‘nd, and we hold hands s’metimes and danced that one time and I thought he liked me even a bit but I guess I was fucking stupid cause who’d ever like a thing like me.”
Dazai curls in on himself, which is when Oda risks putting a hand around his back; when he’s met with no protest, he starts to slowly rub his back as Dazai begins to shake. It takes but one frantic inhale before he completely folds in on himself, his face squished into Oda’s lap as he heaves out a sob.
Loud weeping fills the small room. Shaky, barely-there inhale turn wet, downright painful exhale, on repeat til seconds turn into a minute, that turns into two, three, then five.
They both wait it out. It’s only when Dazai’s able to breathe calmly again, the fabric of Oda’s pants uncomfortably moist with the boy’s tears, when he speaks up.
“Plenty of people are capable of liking you," he says simply. "And whatever he may feel about you,” he goes on - noting that Dazai tenses under his touch, but he proceeds anyway, “it doesn’t reflect on you or who you are. Him not liking you doesn’t make you a bad person, just how you being a good person wouldn’t necessarily make him like you.”
Albeit clumsily, Dazai shrugs off his hand and shuffles away to the other end of the couch, immediately hugging his bent knees. His face is blotchy with the tears, eyes red rimmed clearly against the waxy pale of his skin.
“Maybe,” he drawls, once again with that petulant tone that Oda can’t quite take seriously on account being so very teenage-ish, “he doesn’t like me cause I’m not a person at all . Don’t you hear what people call me nowadays? They say I’m a demon, and they’re right.”
Normally, Dazai deals with such things by deflecting, or taking it in stride - he likes to pretend he’s proud of people being scared of him, or that he doesn’t care they’re mocking him behind his back. It’s a mask he wears well, and one he wears a lot.
But aided by heartache and alcohol, the usual bravado is nowhere to be seen. Instead, he sounds small, sad, bothered by the weight placed on his shoulders by so many people, by the words thrown at him any time he’s out of view.
“We’ve all done bad things,” Oda continues, voice calm regardless of the outburst. “You may think yours are the worst, but they’re far from it. Mistakes make you human.”
“Mistakes is all I am,” he quips back immediately. “No one’s ever wanted me since the day I was born and I don’t see a reason why Chuuya should be the first, when bad things follow me like I have a bad luck charm glued to my forehead.”
Ah. Oda may be older than him, but he’s by no means a therapist (which is something Dazai desperately needs, but they’ll tackle that another time), and it’s not exactly the right time and place to dismantle the not-so-subtle quip about his parents even if he did know how to go about that.
At least Dazai’s talking - that’s better than internalising. Or setting another car on fire.
“You’re still young,” he decides to say. “Chuuya-kun might be the first you’re interested in, but there will be other boys later in your life. Ones that will want you, and you won’t even remember him.”
“I don’t want another boy!” he sniffles rather dramatically. “I’m never gonna want another one which sucks cause he doesn’t want me, and I’ll be stuck loving that slug forever!”
If there’s one thing Oda’s definitely not looking forward to with his kids, it’s them reaching teenagehood, if Dazai’s any indication of how that might go.
Dazai groans with another sniffle, and leans back so he’s laid down on the couch, still curled up like a small cat trying to keep itself warm. He reaches for a couch pillow and throws it on the ground - also like a cat in need of causing chaos.
It falls to the ground softly, barely making a noise. They both stare at it for a beat.
“Does that make you feel better?”
“No,” Dazai mewls. He shuffles for a bit - wiggling in place so his head is touching Oda’s thigh, subconsciously seeking a comforting touch. Oda rests a hand on his head and starts to pet him softly.
“Fucking up his car also didn’t feel good,” Dazai then mumbles. “I mean- it did at first, but then it didn’t and I just stood there looking at it burn and felt stupid cause he’s not even gonna see it for months.”
“Property destruction isn’t really the best way to express your feelings.”
“‘twas that or a bullet to my head.”
Oda didn’t not expect that; Dazai wears suicidal like a designer brand, and he’s known the boy for too long not to see the honesty behind the jokes made out of his mental state. He’d usually berate him for saying something like that but he decides to spare that for another day as well.
“I’m glad you chose that, then,” he states. “But try not to break any of his other possessions, how about that? I don’t think he’ll be very happy when he’s back.”
“Who cares,” Dazai pouts with another sniffle, nuzzling both into the couch and further into Oda’s leg. “He’s always pissed at me anyway. But then even when he’s mad he’s-,” he pauses, flailing one of his hands in an indistinguishable shape, “he’s still so nice to me, and he treats me like I’m a real person, and he always says ‘m weird but still does things with me that I’ve never done even when it’s somethin’ stupid like going to the mall or- or the cinema, and it’s not fair that he made me like him and then didn’t like me back.”
Oda remains still, this time not responding - Dazai will likely not remember anything tomorrow anyway, so hopefully Oda will be forgiven for being ill prepared to handle a teenage broken heart. At some point, when Dazai stops speaking coherently and begins to mumble again, he briefly gets up to get him a glass of water, but other than that, they stay right as they are, Dazai curled on the couch in a miserable ball, and Oda offering some silent comfort.
The boy fall asleep at some point, tuckered out by the crying - Oda carries him to the spare futon, tucking him in under the warmest blankets he has, knowing Dazai runs cold. He keeps painkillers and a bottle of water on hand, as well as a trashcan close by.
Turns out, Dazai’s never had a hangover before - which is miserably explained to Oda the next morning, when he’s woken up to the lovely sounds of heaving teenage boy a mere meter away.
“I feel worse than I did yesterday,” he tells Oda, sobbing into the messy trashcan. “How’s that even possible?”
“You drank a whole bottle of whiskey.”
“You didn’t tell me not to!”
It’s a little mean, but it does make Oda laugh. Dazai’s whining at him laughing is even funnier.
Regardless, Oda cooks him some food that’s easy to stomach, letting the boy whine and complain the entire day. He seems to be in a better mood, but that just might be Dazai’s uncanny ability to pretend to be something he’s not; Oda sees him glance at his phone, or scroll through it until he lands on something, thumb twitching for a bit before he locks it again and throws it back on the futon. Every now and again, it seems he’ll want to mention Nakahara-kun, and the boy’s name gets stuck in his throat, his previous thought forgotten as he frantically changes the topic.
He doesn’t cry anymore - Oda didn’t expect him to; he needs it, God knows, but Dazai’s never been good at meeting his own needs. All Oda can do is keep a closer eye on him for the next few months, and be a comforting presence whenever Dazai feels like the world is collapsing again.
And, perhaps, he might have a word with Nakahara-kun when he’s back from overseas.