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It was the last day in Dazai’s calendar.
Not so much a suicide, he would say, but a euthanasia.
This cliffside was to be his grave.
Here, he would be buried in the shallow, rocky waters crested two miles beneath this mountain’s edge, while the world would remember him as martyr.
Dazai smiled despite himself. What a scenic location Ranpo had chosen to lead them both too. Not that Dostoevsky knew Ranpo had done the leading and luring, because Dostoevsky was a fool who couldn’t see the true mastermind behind the agency’s observations, but Dazai knew, He knew, too, that this stage had been specifically designed for his perfect death.
Dazai would die in a double-suicide, but the world would know it as Dazai sacrificing himself to take Dostoevsky down to save the world. What better way could there be to fulfill Odasaku’s dying wish than that?
As the wind howled around him as he shoved Dostoevsky and himself off the edge. He’d pierced the mark on Dostoevsky’s hand with a knife just moments ago, severing his connection to the divine deity. If Dostoevsky muttered a prayer, it was lost the wind that swallowed them as they hurtled down to their deaths.
It was a shame, really. He’d wanted, dreamed of, a death like this because he didn’t want to go out alone, and here he was worse than alone; traveling to hell with the devil at his side.
Then, and it was just a second, out of the corner of his eye– a blur of brown fabric, dark hair, green eyes, an outstretched arm within his reach just meters beneath him.
Ranpo was reaching out to him from the edge of a cliff, and Dazai–
grabbed onto him reflexively.
His hip slammed against the overhand, knees following a second later. The impact rippled numbingly through every point of contact with only adrenaline keeping the pain down to a sting. His cheek slammed against the rocky, vertical surface, and jagged edges tore his flesh.
His head spun and his grip spasmed, but Ranpo’s hold on him only slipped, never let go. When Dazai’s head had finally settled enough for him to process the blood running in rivulets along his cheek, he looked up, and blinked away the bleariness.
Ranpo, formerly sitting up, had been slammed down against the clifftop, left arm hanging over the cliff with the edge digging into his bicep and tearing the fabric there. His other hand was holding onto the edge, keeping him from toppling over.
Ranpo had saved him, it processed later. Dazai blinked slowly and tried to let that knowledge sink into his skin.
“Pull yourself up,” Ranpo said flatly.
“Eh?”
Dazai startled. His arm was sliding down in Ranpo’s hand, jerking down when the bandages Ranpo’s fingers found purchase in buckled and slipped.
“Pull. Yourself. Up.,” Ranpo repeated. His expression was pinched and Dazai’s head was entirely too murky with adrenaline to figure out what emotion lurked behind it. “Or die here, as the hero who took down Dostoevsky.”
“That’s cruel,” Dazai smiled, for a lack of better expressions to make.
“I didn’t come here to save you. Just giving you one last chance, in case you feel like saving yourself.”
The open air howled softly beneath him, curling about the open chasm he was hanging over. Waves crashed beneath him and the smell of salt stung Dazai’s nostrils. Between that and the adrenaline, he wasn’t thinking much. Asked, “You want me dead, Ranpo-san? That hurts you know, coming from you.”
In hindsight, he did deserve the near bone-dislocating push from Ranpo’s thumb against his elbow he got as punishment for that.
“Say something as stupid as that again,” Ranpo hissed, “and I’ll pull you up just to throw you off myself.”
When he slipped down again Dazai’s hand closed around Ranpo’s arm on instinct, which ended up meaning he yanked on Ranpo’s elbow. Ranpo winced at the tug that gave to his joint and Dazai grimaced when he heard it pop.
“Then why?” Dazai’s voice came out strained. His legs were beginning to feel numb; all the blood focused above him, in his arm, holding on for his life.
“You’re an adult, and you’ve been at this for a decade. If you still want to die after all that, I.” Ranpo’s mouth opened wordlessly. His expression pinched and he swallowed nothing. “I will respect that.” As if to cover his blunder of vulnerability, he quickly tacked on, “Look, I’m so nice. I even made the dying choice passive, and living the active one. That’s the kind of thing you want, isn’t it? For the decision to be made for you.”
Well, that was, but. Dazai bit his cheek, then regretted it when he slipped further down and the shock from that made his jaw clamp up and spill iron across his tongue.
“...My birthday’s a week from today,” he said eventually, weakly. “I don’t want to die before then.”
“Then don’t.”
Ranpo stared down, and made no move to help. The absurdity of it stole a laugh from Dazai.
“You’re a terribly demanding boyfriend,” Dazai teased, to no effect. “Not in the mood for jokes?”
Silence answered him still.
“Fine, fine. I’ll do this myself.”
It was more adrenaline than strength that enabled him to grab onto Ranpo’s arm with his free hand. The other arm was sapped of strength by the hanging, so he pulled himself up by bending the other one and latched onto a higher position around Ranpo’s arm with the weak one.
Ranpo really did just sit there, knuckles of his supporting hand whitening around the edge of the cliffside, and only occasionally shifting to avoid being thrown off himself.
The moment the cliff’s edge was in reach, Dazai held the position by grabbing Ranpo’s arm with his weak one and the edge with his stronger hand, curling his legs upwards and finding purchase in a small nook on the cliffside. There just enough of a space to get a good enough to push his shoulders above the edge, move his hand from Ranpo’s arm to his shoulder, scrape his knee above the edge, and pull himself the rest of the way up.
In his head, Dazai had imagined Ranpo sitting back on his legs and complaining about how long Dazai had taken, how the cliff had dug into his arm and it hurt and Dazai’d better make this up to him once they’re back, maybe buy him a few snacks.
But as Dazai slid his legs beneath him, and collapsed over the cliff top, Ranpo was wordless.
He scooted back to give Dazai space, shook off the hand that had held onto the edge then used it to nurse the welt that must’ve been forming where his arm slammed against the cliff. He hung his head, so that his hair obscured his eyes. His breath hitched.
Oh.
“Ranpo-san, I–”
“Shut. Up.” Another short, strangled inhale. “Shut up, shut up shut up shut up,” he repeated until his voice drained into mumbles and you couldn’t hear the difference between the syllables. His hands dove into his hair, strangled the strands, then moved over his eyes. Tremors rattled his frame, making him look impossibly delicate.
He’d never seen Ranpo cry, and now that he was, Dazai didn’t know what to do. Crying and Ranpo just didn’t belong in the same sentence. Ranpo was this–impossible, perfect thing, pillar of strength, unrattled even when a storm of bullets was driving him off the third floor window of a building. In the back of his dissociation-fogged mind, Dazai knew he should do something, but Ranpo looked like something that would shatter at the wrong touch, and Dazai was always wrong, so.
“I can hear,” Ranpo bit out beneath his breath, and Dazai could hear the strain of tears in his voice, “your fucking thoughts. You stupid, awful—.” A crack in his voice choked him, and Ranpo curled in his knees to hide himself.
“I’m the worst,” Dazai agreed quietly.
“My boyfriend almost died in front of me just now, so if the piece of shit I chose to love could just stop thinking so loudly, stop worrying, and occupy himself until I’m done embarrassing myself, that would be great.”
A wordless space hung delicately between them. Silent, except for Ranpo’s uneven, ragged breaths.
“...right. I can do that.”
Awkward as it was, Dazai pulled out his phone, and mindlessly thumbed to a platforming game that didn’t demand internet. But Ranpo’s hiccuping sounded so sharp it must’ve been painful. Dazai’s eyes burned, and he felt something like shame in him, too.
He got through a level eventually, trying and failing not to pay attention to the man across from him.
“I didn’t…”
Ranpo’s voice was so soft, the sound of the wind nearly drowned it out. Dazai heard it anyway, though, and focused so adamantly it became the only thing he heard at all.
“I wasn’t supposed to show anything in front of you, because that–that doesn’t help. I knew it would make you feel guilty, I–,”
I didn’t want to make it worse, Dazai guessed was what Ranpo meant to say.
Ranpo claimed his jaw shut and buried his face in his hands again. “I thought I could keep a straight face. You shouldn’t, I don’t want you to be—alive, miserable, just because you feel bad about me.”
Dazai ran his tongue idly over the wound he’d bitten into his cheek earlier.
There wasn’t a response he would think of that would rectify this situation, not when Ranpo didn’t want to be comforted at all.
“I’m not ready to go back yet,” Dazai eventually selected, readjusting the circles of bandages that had been dislodged by Ranpo’s grip on his arm. “Let’s stay here for a bit.”
Ranpo’s face was hidden by a lot of things–his hair, his hands, his knees, but Dazai did see a bit of his chin between his chest and his knees, and the slight twitch in it looked like a nod.
Dazai wouldn’t describe the silence that befell them as awkward, but it wasn’t comforting either. Dazai’s mind was still foggy and now guilt-tinged, still addled with worry. But he had a feeling that was something he was going to get used to, especially now that the battle was over, and there was so much damage to repair.
Even so, Dazai had made the decision to live, and, if it meant so much to Ranpo and the others, he wanted to think he could at least try to stick to it.
He laid his cheek against the stone and positioned his phone in front of him, idly selecting the next game to play. Ranpo had stopped crying, but he hadn’t stopped hiding within himself like a turtle receded into his shell.
As the temperature dropped, and Ranpo’s trembling was displaced by shivering, Dazai picked himself off the stone terrace and shuffled to the detective’s side.
He’d intended to wrap his arm over Ranpo’s shoulders, but at the slightest touch, Ranpo swiveled and threw himself into Dazai’s lap, swift enough to still hide his face until it was buried against Dazai’s chest. Dazai wrapped his arms around him, and tucked Ranpo’s head beneath his chin.
“How long before the director gets worried about us?” Dazai mused idly.
“Five hours ago.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“And how much longer until we go back?”
Ranpo curled into him, as though he meant to fit himself perfectly against Dazai. “Just… a few more minutes. I told Kunikida to come get me at sundown, in case I couldn’t bring myself to move after you, you know.”
“Ah. Then, I guess we’ll wait for him.”
“Mhm.”
As Ranpo relaxed against him, Dazai allowed his eyes to flutter shut. He pressed a kiss against his lover’s temple before he fully rested his cheek against the other’s hair.
He’d never expected to live this long, but he’d never expected to have a boyfriend either. He was turning twenty-three in just a week and a half from this day, and for once, this time, he wanted to try and see it as a good thing. That he made it to twenty-three, instead of failing to die.
“Can I expect a party for my birthday? Compensations for my efforts today?”
The bundle in his arms didn’t answer him, of course, but Dazai knew that since he’d just asked, Ranpo would, and began to look forward to it anyway.