Chapter Text
The first time Chuuya kisses Dazai, it isn’t planned.
The first time Chuuya kisses Dazai, he’s angry and he’s desperate and he’s half-convinced he’s got the timing all wrong.
The first time Chuuya kisses Dazai, it’s with the taste of fear still on his tongue and the sunrise bleeding across the sky. It’s moments after he’s dragged Dazai back from the edge of a bridge— fingers twisted in that stupid black coat, breath sharp with rage and something even more dangerous than that.
It’s terrifying in the way that everything to do with Dazai is terrifying.
The night before had been just another mission. Two teenagers playing the part of monsters, never pausing long enough to question why or what it meant. Blood on Chuuya’s cheek. A gun in Dazai’s hand. Something cracked in both their smiles.
But, then, the world had stopped just long enough to remind them they’re still nothing more than kids.
Because Dazai had miscalculated.
Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was fatigue brought on by his reckless disregard for his own existence, but he had slipped. Sent in a squad too early. Didn’t consider the extent of the trap waiting for them.
Nearly a dozen men dead because a teenage boy was expected to know how things like life and death work. People with families and friends stolen away because someone somewhere forgot that being broken doesn’t make Dazai any less young.
(And maybe Chuuya had forgotten, too, when he saw the bodies. Maybe, at that moment, he couldn’t see Dazai as a boy, at all. He doesn’t believe in gods or angels, but he does believe in the Demon Prodigy.
And maybe that belief deepened when he saw the hollowness in Dazai’s eyes. When he grabbed Dazai by the collar, tugging on that jacket as if he could strip it from him; but it clung to Dazai like a child clings to a blanket, and he didn’t know whether Dazai was holding onto the jacket or the jacket was holding onto him.
“You’re supposed to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen, Dazai!”
“But it did,” Dazai had answered, his voice as empty as his body. “What do you want me to do about it now?”)
He had thrown Dazai to the ground instead of striking him, fingers curled into fists that never landed. He had stared— at that sharp and too thin face, the unruly mess of dark hair, the slouched form draped in fabric as lifeless as his expression. And then, with a scoff that tasted bitter, he had turned away as if the sight of Dazai was something he could shake off.
Chuuya didn’t think of him again until the shrill ring of his phone broke him from a restless sleep; dawn hung as a distant threat rather than a promise, the sky heavy with stars and silence.
“Dazai never came to give his report,” Mori’s voice murmured through the receiver, tinged not with concern but something colder. Disappointment, perhaps. Exasperation. “And he’s not at home.”
Home— the word fluttered through Chuuya’s mind, fragile and misplaced, before settling. He thought of Dazai’s shipping container, of the flimsy mattress pressed against rusted steel, of blankets worn too thin to hold warmth. The flickering light. The dust-heavy air. The loneliness woven into every corner.
As if a place like that could ever be called a home.
“Do you think—”
“He answered my call. I spoke to him just five minutes ago,” Mori had interrupted, but there was something in his voice that made the answer worse than Chuuya’s question, something that had Chuuya gritting his teeth and wondering why Mori waited those five minutes before calling. In five minutes, Dazai could have— “I would find him soon, Chuuya-kun.”
The line had gone dead before Chuuya could press further, leaving behind a silence that curled thick and heavy in his stomach, a sharpness lodging itself beneath his ribs. He thought of the look in Dazai’s eyes before he had turned away. He wondered if indifference and pain could look so similar.
(He wondered if it was something worse than either. Something nameless. Something he had seen in Dazai too many times to question, too many times to realize just how terrified he should be of it)
Even now, after tearing through the city with his heart hammering in his throat, the unease does not loosen its grip. It clings to his skin, tightens around his lungs, and it only grows heavier when he finally finds Dazai—
Just a few blocks from where he left him; just a breath away from the edge of a bridge.
Chuuya doesn’t know how to talk someone down. He doesn’t know the careful, measured words that might coax a person away from the edge, doesn’t have the softness required to turn fear into reason. What he knows is action: ripping blades from Dazai’s hands without care for the scars left on both of them, severing ropes with frantic fingers, slamming his fists against Dazai’s chest as if force alone could tether him to this world.
And maybe Dazai doesn’t want to jump. Maybe he’s just standing there, flirting with the abyss the way he always does, daring himself to slip, waiting to see if the universe will make the choice for him.
Maybe he doesn’t want to jump.
But Chuuya doesn’t want to wait to find out.
A flash of red. Gravity drags Chuuya forward before thought can catch up, his fingers closing around Dazai’s wrist in a bruising grip that nullifies Tainted Sorrow, yanking him back with a snarl caught somewhere in his throat. Dazai stumbles into him, unresisting. He doesn’t look surprised, but he doesn’t look entirely present, either. His skin is pale, his hands unsteady, his breath a ragged thing that tastes of exhaustion, of regret. Chuuya knows from one look he never went home. He holds on but it’s not out of care or some naïve hope that he can save him. He doesn’t believe in things like that.
(Somewhere, something cold settles in his chest, and it’s as simple as the realization that he holds on because he would miss Dazai if he was gone)
Dazai smiles then, like he’s amused by the whole thing, but Chuuya knows better. He knows Dazai’s smiles, knows their shape, and this is one of his worst kinds. The kind that never quite reaches his eyes. The kind that is never as pretty as the ones he wears when he forgets someone’s watching.
For the second time in twenty-four hours the urge to strike Dazai slams into Chuuya, if only to force something real onto that face, to carve an expression that means something even if it’s only pain. He wants—
He needs to know there’s something real in Dazai, at all.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Chuuya roars, his voice cracking like a whip through the cold night air. He shakes Dazai like a bag of brittle bones, like if he rattles him hard enough something will snap into place; like his touch, however violent, could bring something to life. He settles for screaming, for threatening, for gripping Dazai like he could tear answers out of him. “You think I want to be out here, dragging your sorry ass back from another self-pity spiral? You think I want to wake up to Mori calling, telling me my suicidal partner’s missing?”
Dazai’s teeth click together from the force of Chuuya’s shaking, but he doesn’t fight back. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t push. He lets himself be thrown around like a lifeless doll.
“I didn’t ask you to come after me, dog,” he says, voice like a rusted blade. “It’s not my fault you’re so eager to play fetch on Mori’s say-so.”
Chuuya’s grip tightens, and he doesn’t know if it’s from fury or fear. “Mori called because he was worried about you, fucker.”
Dazai laughs. A jagged, broken sound— ugly, distorted, nothing like a laugh, at all. He throws his head back, bares his teeth, and when he meets Chuuya’s eyes again, there’s nothing in that gaze.
“You’re so stupid, Chuuya,” he breathes, and the simplicity of the insult cuts deeper than any of his usual barbs. “So, so stupid.”
“Then explain it to me,” Chuuya snarls, shoving him back. Dazai stumbles, and Chuuya’s gaze stays locked on him, watching every movement, every unsteady step, making sure he doesn’t stray too close to the edge. “Because the only stupid person I see here is the asshole making people chase him down just to stop him from dying. ”
“And that’s what’s so stupid!” The words explode out of Dazai like shrapnel, raw and furious, something desperate crying out beneath his emptiness; something thrashes just below the surface, a heartbeat flickering somewhere unseen. “Gods, none of you make any sense. Pretending you care, pretending there’s anything worth keeping alive when we all know there isn’t!”
His hand jerks to his chest, fingers clawing at his coat as if to rip something free. As if there’s something lodged inside of him, something suffocating and rotting and wrong.
“My job is to make sure things don’t go wrong, isn’t it? To make sure we don’t fail, to make sure Mori’s little partnership experiment doesn’t fall apart. That’s the only reason I’m still here, the only thing keeping me useful. So if I can’t even do that— if I can’t be what I’m supposed to be— then why the fuck should I be here at all?” His voice cracks on its own venom, shaking with a feeling far uglier than anger. “You know what you do when a dog outlives its usefulness, Chuuya? You put it down.”
It’s Chuuya’s words. It’s Mori’s words. And, maybe, it’s Dazai own thoughts, too; it’s a mindset fed to him by a boss who sees a machine to perfect, nourished by a partner who chooses to believe in the rumors of a heartless husk because it’s easier than acknowledging that Dazai can do something as absurd as feel.
“Things like me don’t care,” Dazai spits. “They don’t think about the people they hurt. It’s like I was born in this endless dark, stumbling through it blind, crashing into people and pushing them away without thinking of how they’ll fall. And how the fuck is that fair? Why do I have to survive when everyone I touch just keeps getting hurt?”
“Dazai—”
“I know you hate me, Chuuya, but even this— this is too cruel.” His breath shudders, voice fraying at the edges. “Keeping me here is too cruel. Do you really hate me so much that you’d force me to stay? Force me to rot away, to rust, to ruin everything I touch—”
“Do you really think any of that holds weight?” Chuuya’s voice trembles now, burning in his throat. His heart pounds against his ribs, an untamed drumbeat, frantic in its search for the right words, but they’re not words he’s ever learned to say. “Are you so caught up in your own self-deprecation that you can’t see how false it all is?”
Because Dazai is the Demon Prodigy, but he’s also the boy who wastes hours with Chuuya at the arcade, slipping claw-machine prizes into Chuuya's apartment when he isn’t home. He’s the Black Wraith, but he’s also the person who lingers at Chuuya’s bedside when he’s sick, the one who saves a seat beside him at meetings, the one who calls in the dead of night with a voice too soft for someone so feared. He’s the same person who wipes the blood from Chuuya’s cheek with a touch so careful it almost feels reverent.
He’s Dazai. He’s Chuuya’s partner.
What could ever be simpler than that?
“Don’t lie to me.” Dazai’s voice is quiet, but it cuts through the space between them like a blade. “I know what the Mafia thinks. I know you’re all scared of me.”
Scared of a whisper, a story. A child.
There’s a fretful little thing in Chuuya’s chest as he steps closer to Dazai, stumbling towards him like Dazai’s the bridge and Chuuya’s the madman looking to fall.
“You idiot,” Chuuya exhales, the words barely more a breath, a sigh, a prayer. “You don’t see it? I need you more than I will ever fear you.”
“You don’t know what you—”
Dazai never gets to finish. Not when Chuuya’s fists tighten in the fabric of his jacket. Not when Chuuya’s lips crash against Dazai’s, sudden and burning and fierce.
The moment steals all thoughts from Chuuya, wipes his mind clean with the warmth of Dazai’s breath against his own. His pulse thrums wild beneath his skin, his body trembling like a string pulled too taut, and yet— gods— he only presses closer, like he can carve this moment into permanence.
He’s kissing Dazai.
And Dazai kisses him back.
The realization crashes into him not with hesitation, not with fear, but with a certainty so deep it roots itself in his bones. He’s waited for this for longer than he can name; he’s ached without knowing why and, all at once, it finally makes sense. He was meant, he’s sure, to feel Dazai’s heartbeat against his fingers, to taste the warmth of his breath, to prove beyond all doubt that Dazai is here, Dazai is real, Dazai is alive.
And, perhaps, Dazai has been waiting too.
Fingers tangle in Chuuya’s hair, pulling with a promise of shared desperation. A soft wounded sound slips from Dazai’s lips, and part of Chuuya wants to open his eyes, to see him like this. Unguarded, undone, stripped of every layer of deception. But another part of him knows that this is delicate, sacred, too easily shattered.
So he clings. Clings to the heat between them, to the way Dazai gasps against him, to the way they fit like two jagged pieces of the same broken thing finally finding their place.
How long have they been unwhole?
He pulls back and he’d say it’s to breathe but it’s not air his lungs need anymore. He sucks in a breath, close enough could be stealing Dazai’s. As if the very act of living is something they must share.
And then—
Then, the horizon shifts. The first light of dawn spills over them, soft and golden, casting gentle pink hues across Dazai’s skin.
Gods, Chuuya thinks. The light makes him look so beautiful.
Chuuya doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything quite like this— anything that makes Dazai look alive the way he does now. But the sunlight catches in his eye like molten gold, gleaming and shifting with every flicker of movement, and his lips tremble with something that echoes in Chuuya’s own breaths.
It makes him want to kiss him; it makes him selfish, thoughtless, wishing to claim a piece of that light for himself.
“You look nice like this, you know,” he murmurs instead, the words slipping free like a truth too heavy to keep inside. “In the sunlight.”
Dazai’s eye widens, his breath hitching as if Chuuya’s words have stolen the air from his lungs. He looks beautifully, devastatingly stunned. Like no one’s ever told him this before, like he’s never even considered it.
And really, what’s Chuuya to do but kiss him again?
Again and again and again— until the warmth of the sun and the warmth of Dazai blur together, until it feels like they’ve never done or been anything else.