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Chuuya is pissed. Who the fuck does Shirase think he is kicking him out of his own gang? He’s going to absolutely kick the shit out of this idiot, but he can’t tank another suspension right now so ass-kicking has to wait until four. He storms up the B block stairs, slamming the first door he finds open. The second music room is more of a storage place than anything.
“Fucking Yuan! Fucking Shirase!” The snare drum rattles valiantly as it slams against the floor and Chuuya’s heart drops into his stomach. The whiteboard just moved. On its own. Ghosts? Secret electronic whatever? Could a ghost move stuff or is that a poltergeist? Does the difference even fucking matter? It moved. Independently.
“Hello?” He hates the timidity leaking from his voice. “Hey! Who the fucks there!” Better.
No reply. Maybe he should reconsider his position on the supernatural. Instead, he storms over and slams the whiteboard open. A small yellow whatever comes hurtling out, he’s embarrassed at whatever squeaky sound his throat betrays him with.
“Oh, is Chuu-chuu-chan afraid of tennis balls~?”
“Chuu-chuu-what? What the shit?” There's a whole person in here, notably not a ghost, a solid person, specifically the weirdest nut-case loner in this school.
“I thought you’d like it more. So loud and annoying~ like a Chuuyawah~”
He’s an eccentric fuckwit, no one knows anything else about him, except that he’s a grade-A smartass. Now, Chuuya is learning that this kid enjoys shoving himself into music room cupboards on his breaks.
“Chuuyawah? Do you wanna die!?” He yanks him up by the collar.
“Yes, quickly and painlessly please.” He’s a little stunned by his bluntness. “Not going to? Aww~ such a tease.” He pouts, whining in his naturally whiny voice. “Then go fetch.”
“Fucking what?”
“C’mon, you can do it!” This asshole starts patting his knees in encouragement. He throws him back into the cupboard, turning his back on the prick. “Ow~ Chuuya~ so mean.”
“Shut up! How do you know my name?” When he doesn’t get a response, he spins around to make sure he didn’t crack his stupid skull open on a shelf. The idiot is miming zipping his lips closed and throwing the key. “Are you fucking serious?”
The stare the hands him is eerie, downright uncanny. His eyes house so much.. nothing? Only a vague haunted expression, the deep burgundy irises suddenly overcast. Is he doing this for a joke? How do you even fake something so complex and precise?
He punches him.
“Don’t do that again.” This kid’s starting to seriously freak him out. “You look like a dead fish.”
He doesn’t whine again, or even rub his cheek. He’s weirdly indifferent, immune. Chuuya actually feels bad about hitting him now.
“Hey, I shouldn’t have done that.” He pulls him up by the arm, guiding him out of the storage compartment. “What’s your name.”
“Dazai.”
“Hah?”
“Osamu Dazai!”
This fuckwit has sat behind him for two years and he’s only just learning his face!? How can this guy just.. disappear completely?
“Why were you throwing a temper tantrum?”
“Say what?”
“You asked me a question, it’s my turn.” That annoying glimmer is back in his eyes. Well, actually it’s more like it's everywhere except his eyes. Somehow Chuuya thinks that's worse.
“My friends want to kick me out of our group.”
“Kill them.”
“What the fuck!?”
“I'm kidding~” he’s enjoying this far too much for someone who seemingly wanted to die a few minutes ago. “Dump them, join my emo band.”
“You have a band?”
“No, but we can make one.”
“What do you play?”
“The kazoo!” He gleams at him, all teeth. Chuuya doesn’t know what he expected.
“That's not very emo.” He huffs and turns back towards the room. “This is stupid, I’m leaving.”
“You didn’t fetch my ball!” He clicks his tongue, hurling the stupid thing back at him, only because it’s directly in his path. “Good dog!”
“Fuck you!” He slams the door on the way out.
That’s not the end of it. Dazai seems to have imprinted on him like a fucking baby bird and follows him around like a shadow.
“Chuuya~ buy me food!”
“Chuuya stay, good boy~”
“Chuu-chuu is late today!”
“Chibi-chan can’t reach! Sit down like a good dog~”
“Chibi-Chuuyawah.”
“Dazai! I’m going to skin you with a fucking butter knife! Piss off!”
“Aww~ I said no pain! Kill me quickly Chuuya~”
He also learns very quickly, Dazai is not joking about suicide. It started with a comment about a cutting board in home ec. Then it was a retelling of their volleyball pep talk,
“Never give up until you succeed!”
Then it was that bloody how-to suicide book, covered in notes and morbid drawings.
“Seriously, do you fucking sleep with that thing?”
“Do not kink shame me Chuuya.” He smacks him with the god-awful thing.
Then it was the first disappearance, Chuuya wrote it off as a cold or something, maybe his parents took him on holiday or whatever.
“What the fuck happened to your eye.”
“It got excited, popped right out!”
He’d shrugged it away with his usual nonchalance. Dazai’s covered in bandages, Chuuya still doesn’t know how far they really go, he’s only seen them on his forearms, and glimpses of his thighs from when he’d worn shorts. He has the horrible feeling that the injuries are self-inflicted, but he doesn’t feel close enough to ask about them yet. Truthfully, with his new fascination with Dazai, as annoying as he is, The Sheep have become somewhat petty that he hasn’t shown much interest in whatever fight they were starting with him. They’re still his friends, so it’s kind of annoying, but he’s never been for the indirect arguments. He’d rather Shirase just tell it to his face, then Chuuya would smack him and it would be over.
The absences slowly become more consistent, though his grades never drop, and Dazai appears to be becoming more eccentric every day. Most people would call the excessive energy a good sign, but Chuuya has still never seen it reach his eyes. The bandages climb higher, so does Chuuya’s bullshit tolerance.
“Chuuya~ don’t make me work so hard, you used to be so much funnier!”
“Hah!?” He grabs him by the scruff, sending him into the desk.
Sometime in September Dazai disappears for four days. This isn’t weird in itself, it’s the rumour that the school hasn’t heard anything from his parents. He doesn’t answer his phone, but when does he ever? So Chuuya goes to the office and asks for his address, they don’t give it to him. So he steals his file.
The next thing he learned about Dazai, he is rich rich. He would never have guessed. He hardly wears his uniform, only cycles through three hoodies. Sometimes Chuuya has to tell him if his bandages smell, they’ll be refreshed the next day. He’d always assumed whoever his parents were, they didn’t care about appearances that much. That is not what this house is telling him. He’s never even been in this pretentiously square-cut neighbourhood. He suddenly feels a little self-conscious about his unruly hair. He unclips the chain from his jeans. Why the fuck is he nervous about meeting Dazai’s parents? They’re just people, who are probably equally annoying.
He swallows and knocks.
“Oh? Who is this charity case.” He’s tall and his voice is equally as greasy as his hair. Some kind of ancient survival instinct tells him to fight him.
“Excuse you, bitch?” Okay, not a good start. “I’m looking for Daz- Osamu.”
“Really.. Come in.” This greasy motherfucker suddenly seems interested in him. He’s not really what he was expecting, he barely even looks like Dazai. Maybe the eyes, nothing of the colour or shape or really anything genetically relevant. They have the same indifference.
“Is he sick or something- oh shi- woah.” Their ceilings are fucking massive. His whole goddamn flat could fit in this room. “Who’d you have to kill for all this?”
“I’m a doctor.” His smile isn’t very doctorly.
“Huh, I guess that’s where the brains come from.” He follows him into a kitchen, pitch black and sleek. There is indeed a wall of framed degrees, varying in name. Maybe doctorates are hereditary or something. Though none of the names have ‘Dazai’ beside them. Perhaps it’s his mom's name.
“Osamu’s room is this way..” he stares down at him expectantly.
“Chuuya.” Suddenly he doesn’t think he wants his name in this man's mouth. “Nakahara is fine.”
“Right, Nakahara.” Somehow that’s worse, like somehow making him the exception to ‘Chuuya’ has left him accidentally closer than intended.
He trails him up a set of glassy stairs, he wonders how many of Dazai’s injuries are from tripping on them.
“Thanks.” He knocks on the door they stopped at. The doctor looks deeply amused. He doesn’t get a reply so he just turns the handle. “Dazai?”
He looks twice at the bed, then the floor.
“He’s not here.”
“A clever observation, Nakahara.” He hates the way his name drips on his voice, it makes him want to trash it entirely, rid himself of something tainted. “Stay as long as you like, you know where the door is.” He turns to the stairs again.
“Right.. Thank you.. again.”
“No need to be so formal Nakahara, I’m sure I’ll hear from you soon.” He fucking hates that guy. Chuuya shakes away the icky feeling clingy to him.
When he walks into Dazai’s room, he sneezes. It’s dusty on every surface, especially the sheets. Dazai doesn’t live here, he probably hasn’t for a long-ass time judging by these drawings, and the size of his shoes. Dazai is already small, well he’s more gangly, but it's hard to tell how old he’d have been in the polaroid on his bookshelf. Maybe ten? Either way now his hunt for Dazai has gone from big-ass house to butt-fuck nowhere. Brilliant.
Until he finds a shipyard key under a book. Probably nothing, but better than fuck-all. So he goes to the port.
It’s dark as shit and Chuuya can’t even imagine he’ll see anything there is to find here. There must be a thousand shipping containers, the hell is he going to do? Try the key in every paddock? The number on the tag is nearly entirely rubbed off.
He starts at nine-hundred. He doesn’t knock when he sees light peaking out from the cracks in the door.
He’s not here, but it’s undoubtedly where Dazai lives. Everything from an old mattress to a small stash of snacks. Two hoodies, fresh and old bandages, and that god-forsaken suicide book. He finds fresh footprints in the grass and thanks every god there might be for the rain he’d cussed out earlier. It’s hard to follow with only a phone light, but they undoubtedly lead to the harbour.
He runs, because fuck knows what the hell he’s doing now.
“Dazai!” He’s on the wharf, or he was just on the wharf. Chuuya tosses this jacket and dives. It’s cold, he can feel it in his bones. He can’t find any traces of another person in the ink waters. For a moment Chuuya thinks he might accidentally drown. Something wraps around his ankle, an eel? No, it can’t be. A bandage. He yanks at it, clawing around in the abyss until he finds hair. He grips the curls. He pulls and kicks, he’s not going to make the surface. He’s going to die struggling like this.
Wrapping Dazai’s bandages around his fist in a vice, he lets him go and kicks away. He breaches, the air won’t flow into his lungs. It’s like trying to breathe solid ice. Panic and shame, he gasps and pulls himself back down. This time he can yank off Dazai’s heavy coat, wrapping his arms around him. He didn’t realise how far they’ve drifted. The swim to the bank would barely be a few seconds alone, but with Dazai every kick is a struggle.
Chuuya’s never been a strong swimmer.
Red knees and grass burn taint both of them. His eyes are finally adjusting to the darkness. He doesn’t even know proper CPR, he’s just uselessly slamming his fists into the idiot's chest. By some miracle, or perhaps devine punishment depending who you ask, he coughs. Chuuya rolls him over, slapping him until he vomits.
“What the fuck are you doing.” It’s the real question. His own body is shivering uncontrollably, it’s safe to say his lips are probably as blue as this walking sack of bandages.
He has that same dead stare he did the day they met. Well, the day Chuuya met him. He doesn’t know how to fix this. Last time he’d just punched him.
“You live in a container?” He can’t confront what he witnessed just now.
“What a clever observation Chibi-chan..” it’s completely monotonous, quieter than he’d imagine Dazai could be.
“Don’t say shit like that.” He feels sick.
Chuuya stays in the hospital with him, mostly to make sure he doesn’t run away or make a break for the estuary. He’d only stopped fighting the paramedics on the condition the police never knew.
It takes some time, but he convinces Dazai to come live with him.
“Aww~ does Chuuya care about me?”
“I do actually, bitch.”
It’s not like he has parents to consult about it, though he can’t say what Ane-san with think of it, it’s not her call anyway.
“You live in a bar?”
“At least it has central heating.”
They climb the fire escape into the flat above The Golden Demon.
“You’re alone?”
“Kinda, my sister owns the place, I work the weekends and she lets me stay here. She comes by sometimes.”
“Cool.”
They ditch school the next day to move Dazai’s things, there’s not much to carry really. They throw a stink bomb through Mori Ougai’s office window and spend the afternoon in the park.
And they never talk about it again.
Dazai is actually pretty good as a roommate, aside from his incessant refusal to wash his own dishes, but he doesn’t make enough of them to warrant an argument.
Chuuya’s flat is only two rooms, a bedroom with an ensuite, and a studio-style kitchen and lounge. It’s the perfect size for a single person, he’s actually lucky to have this much space solo, cheap and in Yokohama. Dazai seems to be used to small spaces, they barely trip over each other.
He’s suddenly everywhere in Chuuya’s life. He’s the extra food on his lunch tray, the shirt on his couch, the instant coffee in his kitchen, the odd razor in this bathroom cupboard, he always throws them away.
“How does Chuuya sleep with all the noise!”
The Golden Demon switches from a bar to a nightclub at ten Wednesday to Sunday. He’ll admit the noise takes some getting used to, when he moved here last year he’d slept with headphones on for months, so Chuuya doesn’t bother him when he naps in the afternoons.
“Chuuya! Your friends here,” Kouyou knocks twice. “Bars open, let him in the window.”
“WoAH!? Chuuya’s sister is pretty! Why is Chibi-chan not pretty?”
“Fuck you.” Chuuya shoves him into the couch cushions. “Dazai, Kouyou. Ane-san, Dazai.”
“Was wondering when I’d finally meet you.” Kouyou simply waves and leaves.
Dazai shouts a marriage proposal after her and Chuuya’s suffocating him with a pillow when the knocks echo off the windows.
“Ohh, Chuuya’s little lambs are here~”
“Just keep your mouth shut for two minutes, or I’ll kill you.”
“Does Chuuya promise!?” He has that annoying starry look again. He shoves him by the face.
He runs over to the window, flicking the lock. Shirase climbs in without an invite.
“Chuuya listen, I know I said all that stuff about you being a poser and- what the hell is he doing here?”
“Oh, is lamby lost?”
Shirase fumes.
“Dazai, shut up.” Chuuya turns back to Shirase, “Why are you even here?”
“What, you replaced us that quickly!? Don’t want to hang out with your real friends 'cause you found a little boy toy!”
What the fuck? Is this guy insane or that stupid?
“Aww, little lamby sounds jealous~” Dazai leans over the back of the couch and fucking wraps himself around Chuuya. His chin rests in the crook of his shoulder and Chuuya can feel every breath he takes in his goddamn soul. “Chuuya can choose his friends however he wants.”
Shirase flicks his eyes between the deadlock Dazai’s arms have on him, to Chuuya’s face, then back to what he’s sure is a shit-eating grin.
“He’s right.” Chuuya leans against the couch. Not Dazai, the couch. He just happens to be there. “He’s annoying.” The bastard takes an elbow to the sternum. “But I can choose whoever I hang out with, and maybe I don’t want to hang out with someone who throws a little fit because I went to a party they weren’t invited to.”
“It’s not the party, it’s the code! They’re supposed to be our enemies!”
“It’s not that serious, dude.” He shoves Dazai down by the face when he starts grappling against his shirt. “Ow, did you just fucking bite me!?”
“Chuuya is so mean, sit down like a good dog.”
He’s dragged over the back of the couch before he can think. He doesn’t know how long he fights Dazai, but by the time he looks up Shirase is gone.
“Dazai! What the fuck, I said two minutes!”
“Chibi-chan wanted him gone, I wanted him gone. He’s gone.” He shrugs and flops onto the floor. He pulls at a cord until the controller finds his hands again. “Do you still want to be friends with all them, or did Chuu-Chuu just feel obligated?”
He’s not wrong, it pisses him off how perceptive he is.
That’s when the rumours start. Usually, people avoid Dazai at all costs, he does the same. Now people are flat-out asking him about his sexuality, Dazai doesn’t seem to care for the question at all.
“I detest all human beings, especially the small annoying ones that bark.”
They quickly get bolder at his lack of tact. They ask him about Chuuya.
“Temper tantrums are such a turn-off.”
“I’m surprised he can fit such a big superiority complex in such a small body!”
“That small annoying dog? Even a mouse could eat a Chuuyawah.”
Someone tried to call him Chuuyawah in class, for some reason, this faceless nobody calling him the name pissed him off so much more than that piece of shit blockhead. So he punched them without a second thought.
Nobody ever said anything to Chuuya’s face, it almost bothered him more knowing Dazai was taking the whole burden of Shirase’s shit talking. Soon after, people asked all kinds of questions to him.
What’s with the bandages? Why do you miss school? Why do you live with Chuuya?
Technically nobody actually knew of Chuuya’s living situation aside from The Sheep, but he’d like to think they’d at least keep that to themselves, he doesn’t really care either way. He likes living above his sister’s bar. But nobody knows anything about Dazai, or his greasy father who isn’t actually his father, his big house he hasn’t lived in since he was eleven, or the mysterious guy in his old polaroids. All Chuuya knows is the name Odasaku with no story to match. Everything public about Dazai is a rumour or a lie. Nobody knew they were living together, but neither denied it.
These new questions seem to bother him, though he only shows it to Chuuya. One day when Dazai insisted on staying in the flat, Chuuya cussed out the school’s counsellor and the dean, screaming about how they were standing by letting people ridicule a kid.
“He doesn’t seem to care.”
“Will it seem like that when he kills himself?”
There was a special assembly that afternoon.
When he got home Dazai was thankfully still breathing, though his bandages were unmistakably thicker on his wrists, by now they’d climbed all the way to his neck.
Chuuya had the brilliant idea to insult each other with harmonicas in their mouths. Dazai had laughed until he passed out, and they stayed together on the couch that night.
“Y’know you can just share my room, you don’t have to sleep on the couch forever.”
“Wah!? Chibi-chan’s asking me to sleep with him? No dinner?”
“Fuck you, I’m trying to be nice.”
“A challenge for such an angry mutt.”
He kicks Chuuya aside that night anyway.
Dazai sleeps like a goddamn rock. Once he finally falls asleep, he barely breathes. Chuuya always has to wonder if he’ll ever wake up. The way he falls completely limp for hours is uncanny.
Kouyou starts letting Dazai help clean in the mornings. She pays them with a few free bar meals, which usually last them several days, and pocket money. Chuuya sometimes wonders if he really earns his keep or if Kouyou just has to factor his expenses into her revenue. She always tells him to stop worrying about it.
“You’re a child, Chuuya. Be a child.”
“Sixteen isn’t a child.”
“Say that again when you’re twenty-five.”
He huffs but gives in anyway. He drags Dazai with him so they don’t spend their entire youth in a noisy flat playing video games.
They become inseparable. Chuuya tries to skateboard, he gives up pretty quick. They found a home at an old swing set, until they’d accidentally burned it. Ran from the cops twice or thrice. Gave Dazai’s container a makeover, scrubbing the Mori Corporate paint off, and sticking fairy lights on all the walls. It became their personal hangout, instead of the dank mortification it was before. Dazai tries to kill himself a few times, Chuuya’s always there to stop him. He’s starting to learn instincts exist for a reason. Then on Chuuya’s seventeenth birthday he revealed his prize possession. A Mori Corporate black card, unused and unknown.
“I’ve been saving this for something big, we probably have an hour before it gets cancelled.”
“Holy shit, how much does this asshole have.”
“Billions. Make sure Chibi-chan buys something big~”
“Dazai. You could buy a house with this. I can’t take it.”
“Nonsense! I only have to wait for Mori-san to keel over~”
“That could take decades!”
“Not if someone kills him first~”
“Christ.”
They spend nearly a week thinking about what they’re going to do with it.
“I’m getting a motorcycle.”
“Heh?” He pauses. “HuEH!? Chuuya can’t drive one of those death traps! His short arms will never reach!”
“I’m not even that short! I’m still growing asshole!”
“Oh no! Chibi-chan has peaked and doesn’t know it!”
They get the motorcycle.
“Chuu-Chuu-chan is colourblind, this does not match his stupid hair at all.”
“I’m not colourblind, pink is cool. Get on already!”
“Nah-uh! Chibi-chan is going to kill me!”
“You want me to kill you, at least this way it’s fun.”
“I like suicide, not suffering!”
He only gets on when Chuuya pretends to drive away. It feels positively like flying. The rush in his gut buzzes up his throat as he howls into the wind. It’s hard to believe Dazai could really be afraid of speed, it makes it easy to pass guilt by when he swerves the traffic to feel his grip tighter. Can you really blame him? Nobody holds Chuuya, most people don’t even like to come within his reach. Dazai is the only person who keeps him close for everything but obligation or fear. He got on this so-called death trap because he likes Chuuya. He likes Dazai, even when he’s a piece of shit societal outcast. He thinks that maybe he likes him beyond the bounds of a normal friendship. If anything, the fact that its Dazai of all people pisses him off more than any sexuality crisis could. Why the hell did he have to fall for the one person who spends the better part of his time trying to die? It’s like he wants to be hurt. Even if he doesn’t kill himself on a whim, there’s one thing he’s learned about Dazai it’s to trust his gut, and his gut tells him Dazai is nothing but pain. His heart says otherwise. Between the teasing and the fighting or his unwashed dishes and mismatched socks, Chuuya begins to wonder if it’s worth it. It might be. He wants it to be.
Everything about Dazai is already wrecked. There’s no possible way he can ruin him with his own baggage, whenever Chuuya starts feeling like he isn’t even real, and the edges of his body start to blur, Dazai’s there to call him back with annoying insults and incessant whining. Every way he slices it they can only heal together. He wants that even if it’s temporary, even if it’ll hurt when it’s over.
Chuuya shouldn’t be picking this apart right now, he should find the next exit. Dazai’s hiding his face in Chuuya’s neck, it’s undoubtedly adorable and probably means he’s sick of the highway.
He pulls up at the beach.
“That was fucking sick!”
“Euh! Chibi-chan is so loud~”
He can only smile. He whips his head around and drags Dazai off the bike with him.
“C’mon, there’s an arcade over here.”
“Okay~ but if Chuuya loses he has to be my lap dog for a week.” He has that stupid shit-eating grin plastered on his face again.
“No way, I’ll kick your ass!”
“Two weeks!” Chuuya only caves because of his stupid smile with his peace signs for two. What kind of sick sense of humour does divine intervention have to punish him like this?
They stop at an ATM with Mori’s card. It’s annoying how you can only take twenty thousand out at a time.
“Awh, looks like all my child support is gone.” He sticks his lip out and snaps the card. “One-hundred-twenty-thousand. We are gonna get so many plastic babies!”
“Of course you’d choose the weirdest shit.”
Chuuya lost.
“Are you not like.. afraid to piss him off?” Lord knows Chuuya is.
“It doesn’t matter if Mori-san is powerful, Mori-san is very stupid compared to me.”
“Hah?” Sixteen year old Dazai is smarter than corporate-man and doctor, (however those two professions work together Chuuya doesn’t want to know) Mori Ougai?
“AwuAH! Chibi-chan and I should blow up his car!”
“The fuck, why!?” He takes a moment to consider it. “Actually yeah, but if I get arrested I’ll kill you with my bare hands.” A pause. “Slowly and very painfully.”
“Not fair~ Chibi-chan does not obey like a good dog.”
“Fuck you.”
They don’t blow up Mori’s car, instead, they kick the front door in and hide tiny plastic babies in the entrance. Dazai scratched a middle finger into the door and left the snapped card behind.
“Chuuya~ let me drive back!”
“Hell no! You’d drive into traffic for fun!”
“You said I should die having fun!”
“Yeah on accident, you’re favourite hobby is suicide.” He flicks him on the forehead. And forces him to sit on the back.
When the school had forbidden him from driving an unregistered bike to school, Dazai confidently told them it was his and if they were going to stop them he’d have to call his dad. He gave them the Yokohama prison’s administration number.
“Ask for Odasaku, see how it works out for you.”
Chuuya barely stopped his jaw from dropping.
“You’re dad’s in jail?” He strums an untuned guitar, spending another lunch break in the old music room.
“Chibi-chan is such a stupid slug. Odasaku isn’t my dad or in prison.” He flicks a rubber band at him. “There’s no way they’ll call.”
“Then why didn’t you give a fake name.”
“Odasaku’s in my file, Mori-san isn’t.”
“Who is he?” Chuuya tugs the coil anxiously. Sure, he’s seen Dazai attempt suicide several times, they’ve spent every day for the past eight months together. He knows he hates tea and usually forgets to eat. His favourite colour is blue, though he refuses to admit what shade. He’d helped Chuuya steal a bottle of wine when he’d been curious. He’s snatched him back from rock bottom and made him smile the morning after. Still, Odasaku felt like some kind of invisible line he was never supposed to cross, there wasn’t a wall around the subject because Dazai never intended to let anyone in.
It was just buried.
“You could call him my predecessor.”
What the hell does that mean?
“I was Mori-san’s favourite possession, he stood up for me so Mori-san got rid of him.” He spins around on the stool. “I ran away after that.”
The string snaps in his fingers. He can’t even begin to imagine what that might mean. Any of it. Chuuya spent barely five minutes with the slimy prick, nobody’s ever made him feel so itchy inside like that.
“Now Chibi-chan knows, he doesn’t have to ask anymore.” His teeth flash in his smile. It’s haunting how genuine it might look to an outsider. It’s a flat remark, almost a plea.
Never bring it up again.
A bead of blood wells on his finger, guitar strings are sharp, huh?
He didn’t let Dazai lock the bathroom door that night.
Dazai owning a motorcycle made him somewhat of a personality in the student body, much to his own dismay.
“You. Nakahara.”
Nobody calls Chuuya his last name, or calls it so pissy. He only turns to stare down on (directly at) whoever dares to call his name like a slur.
“Who’re you?”
“Do you like Dazai-san?” Chuuya recognises him as an underclassman, notorious for wearing an edgy black coat instead of his blazer. Even Chuuya barely branches out aside from the rings and chains. He won’t lie, as much as his attitude pisses him off, he wears it well.
“He’s my friend. What’s it to you?” Why the shit is he asking him something like that!? Why is Chuuya getting fucking nervous about it!?
“So you do then.”
“That’s exactly not what I said.” Dumbass.
“If you didn’t, you would’ve just denied it. I’ll be going then.”
“Hang on, I do not like Dazai. I actually fucking hate him, so don’t go spreading rumours.” He considers going on a spiel about how he cares more about the leftover takeout on his coffee table than his pulse, but it seems a touch too dramatic, even for Chuuya.
This kid actually spins around and, I shit you not, sparkles. Fucking shines the universe through his eyes.
“Give him this.” He shoves a goddamn letter into his hand.
Holy shit. A love letter? For Dazai? Dazai. He can barely read the name on the front through the cursive writing. Whatever it is, this is hilarious. An actual human being with a brain took one look at the insufferable dickhead and decided, yeah, that one’s nice. I want the dumbass walking bag of bandages.
“Oi, shithead.” He slams the letter onto his desk. “Someone’s got a crush on you.”
“Wah!? Chuuya has a crush on me? How embarrassing~”
“I- you- fuck no!” Liar. “That edgy first year, weird bangs.” He curses himself, he should’ve burned the letter.
“Akutagawa, huh?” Why is he speaking his name like that? Like he’s actually fucking curious!? Why doesn’t he say Chuuya’s name with wonder, or whatever.
“You can read that shit?”
“Chibi-chan really is a stupid slug!”
“I’m dyslexic, bitch.”
The brief second of remorse he sees is enough to satisfy him, slightly proud he actually made some kind of emotion reach his eyes. That’s more than ten-fold the emotion his eyes will show reading edgelord poetry.
“So snappy, stop barking at me.”
“Shut up, ass. Open it.”
“Nuh-uh! This is a treasure! A personal love confession for me? I don’t see Chuuyawah written here.”
“Open it or I’ll bite you.”
“Kinky~” he opens it anyway.
The letter is the least romantic confession he’s ever read, he can literally hear the snarl in his head.
“Oh my god, he worships you, dude.” Chuuya actually can’t believe this is even real. He runs his fingers over the raised ink, it looks like it was written with some expensive fucking fountain pen or something.
“You should take notes.” He grins, and it does not make Chuuya jealous when he carefully folds the note into his pocket.
It does not make him jealous when Dazai considers the paper in his kitchen later.
“Oi, shitty Dazai!” He slams his physics homework over top of it. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Stupid chibi. It’s the same equations as last year.” He tips a smirk over what’s probably his sixth or seventh coffee. “Give.”
He calls him stupid and smacks him every time he gets it wrong, but he still patiently explains how to substitute properly, shows him why only some of the symbols are Greek letters this year. Chuuya decides he hates kinematics, and he’s very sick of angular motion, or whatever clusterfuck is scribbled on his page.
By the time he’s done, Chuuya feels like his brain is being held together by a single thread, floating in the spacey abyss he houses inside his head. He considers dropping the class, Dazai tells him he knows way more than he thinks he does. He can still barely focus on anything beyond the well-loved controller in his hand, Dazai completely wipes the floor with him.
“Get up.” He throws another pillow at him, earning a telltale groan that he is, in fact, awake. “It’s almost nine.”
“Not goin.”
“It’s been like three days.” He drags him by the ankle.
“Chibi-chan, no!” Dazai dully hits the floor, curls in on himself and attempts to go back to sleep.
“Hurry up, it’s Friday you can rot later.”
Dazai is everything except cooperative while Chuuya drags him all the way to the shower, he almost falls straight back the fuck to asleep again, even in a freezing soaking hoodie. The fabric slaps loudly on the tiles as he wrestles himself out of it, pissily staring up at Chuuya’s crossed arms.
“I hate you.”
“Good.”
“My bandages are wet.”
“Then you better change them.”
He stares Chuuya down, dead eyes reeking malice.
“You do it.” He flops against the hard floor, shirt sticking against his frame. “Or I’m not going.”
“Fine.” He throws the shampoo at him and turns the faucet to a reasonable temperature. “At least wash your hair, you reek.
By some miracle, Dazai actually complies, and Chuuya retreats to his room to hunt down something clean and comfy enough to convince Dazai out of the flat, he leaves the clothes inside the door.
After Dazai kicks it Chuuya lets it slowly creak under his fingers. He’s slouched against the bathroom cupboard, soaking clothes and bandages littered around him, sticking to practically every surface. He looks like he got halfway through rewrapping one of his thighs before just giving up.
Chuuya sighs and crouches, he peels the bandage away from him, starting over from the top. He barely has any open wounds on his legs, maybe a couple of almost-scars, but he doesn’t question why he wants them wrapped anyway. Chuuya had thought he’d have freaked out a little more with Dazai sitting unapologetically in front of him in only his underwear, but something about this seems deeper than the disgusting teen crush he’s been cursed with. He throws dark track pants at him, he doesn’t complain.
While Chuuya rewraps his arm, he gently folds softer gauze to protect the abused skin from the bandages, watching for anything that indicates he’s hurting him. Dazai doesn’t flinch, he only sits with his head resting on the cupboard, intently watching Chuuya’s face. He’s sure he’s treating the torn skin with more care than Dazai ever has, with more care than he’s ever shown his own injuries either.
“Why is Chuuya still here?”
He pauses, halfway up his other arm.
“Because..” he doesn’t have an answer, it just seems so obvious that he should be. “..I want to?” He meets Dazai’s gaze, it shows nothing, a horrible blank portrait.
He breaks the eye contact, finishing his work in silence. There’s a long scar, still pink and delicate, that traces from the side of his neck to his sternum, jagged, like it was drawn with something blunt. It’s hot out and he doesn’t really want to wrap his entire neck for it, so he sticks a bandaid over the visible part. It’s stark against his pale hue of malnourishment.
“Better?”
Dazai’s suicide philosophy isn’t about death at all, there’s no point in asking him why he does this, he doesn’t have an answer, not a rational one. Dazai just doesn’t see the point in the meaningless routine of life.
“I like Chuuya.” He mumbles it into the fabric of Chuuya’s own hoodie as he yanks it over his head.
“What?” This cannot be what his heart thinks it is. He’s barely had time to pull his own godawful feelings apart.
“Chuuya doesn’t think I’m a problem. He doesn’t try and fix me, but he makes me feel better.” Dazai curls his fingers into the dark blue collar. “I like Chuuya.”
Chuuya knows that whatever Dazai has going on in his brain, it isn’t something that he gained spontaneously, it just is, probably always has. Even if he doesn’t understand what it is, he just accepts the fact that Dazai’s desire to scratch off his skin with blunt metal and pencil sharpeners isn’t so different from Chuuya’s compulsion to bite his nails.
He wants to ask what the hell he means by like exactly. He doesn’t, Chuuya doesn’t even have the answers for all the questions that follow that conversation.
So he drags Dazai off the floor and makes him walk to school.
They’re extraordinarily late. He supposes it’s the fact that Dazai has reappeared, and looks noticeably shit, that they get off with a warning.
Dazai’s head had spent most of the day lying on the desk, then the picnic table, then another desk.
Somewhere along their walk home, Chuuya grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the promenade.
“Chibi-chan is so annoying~”
He ignores him.
“Chuuya, I really don’t want to do anything right now.”
“Then leave.” He challenges.
Dazai only gripped his palm and glared.
Chuuya marched them to an ice cream truck, and really neither of them are huge fans of sweet stuff, but it’s almost summer and they’re by the sea, what the fuck else are you supposed to do? Plus, Dazai could use the extra calories.
Chuuya glares at him when he gets the sherbet topping.
“There’s something seriously wrong with you.” Sometimes he thinks Dazai always chooses the worst options just to fuck with him. “Even by your standards.”
“No barking! Be a good dog.” The insolent prick wipes his ice cream against Chuuya’s face, malicious intention displayed in his grin.
“Actually fuck you.” He throws Dazai’s hand away, pulling his blazer up with his teeth the best he can, wiping it off with his shirt sleeve. He noticed the way his fingers seemed to chase him as he pulled back. “I hate you.”
“Chibi-chan is a big liar~”
“Hell no.” He practically snarls at him, hoping to all hell that he can pass the red in his face off as anger.
Neither of them says anything as Dazai grips his hand again, with no real reason or intent, he’s not dragging him down to the shore, or even back in the direction of the flat. He just wants to hold Chuuya’s hand.
Chuuya doesn’t finish his cone, he gets lost in heat on his hand, his neck, throbbing in his ears. It melts in his distracted grip.
They don’t talk about Chuuya’s obvious boy-crush, because if Chuuya knows it exists Dazai definitely does, or Dazai’s weirdly ambiguous confession. No matter how much he implies he wants to, Chuuya will absolutely fucking never willingly subject himself to confessing his abhorrent little feelings to this shithead no matter how much it eats his brain. So he waits until dead-eyed fish-face brings it up.
He’s building two photography boards when he does, making sure the themes are different enough that it won’t look like they’re cheating. He can only pray Dazai doesn’t get him an impossible 100 on his calculus assignment.
“I like Chuuya.” Nonchalance carries over the coffee table.
“I would hope so, you’ve been leaching off me for a year.” He doesn’t entirely clock what Dazai is saying.
“Stupid Chuuyawah.” He throws a pencil at him. Chuuya goes to throw it back at him, he pauses realising how much closer Dazai is. At some point, he’d slumped off the couch, loose papers forgotten. “I like Chuuya.” His face holds clear intent, it’s probably the most genuine thing he’s seen Dazai wear.
“You like me?”
“I just said that, slug.” His brows crease in annoyance, red still rises under his translucent skin. He doesn’t flinch back, holding his place on the floor, a mere foot away from his face.
He wants to believe it, but nearly every one of Dazai’s expressions is fabricated from people's expectations.
“I don’t believe you.” He tests him. “That’s cruel.”
He thinks Dazai looks.. surprised? Is this real?
“Why?” His bottom lip almost looks like it curls with hurt or maybe confusion. If Chuuya weren’t focusing so hard on it, he wouldn’t have noticed at all.
“Are you doing this because you’re bored?” Chuuya feels hurt and hope all at once, mixing in a horrible angsty adolescent slurry.
“No.” Dazai actually snaps at him, not in his usual feigned annoyance, in frustration. “I like Chuuya.” He repeats, hurriedly.
And Chuuya, forever too quick to believe, too selfless, who always gets hurt, trusts him.
“Can..” he almost rips his lip under his teeth, breaking away from Dazai’s deep brown authenticity, “Can I.. kiss- you.” He can barely force his volume above a whisper and he fucking hates it. Chuuya is not quiet. He’s crass and he’s loud. Fucking Dazai and his stupid doe eyes, what the fuck.
“Okay.”
Okay? Fucking okay? Seriously? Yeah sure, buddy, you can fucking kiss me.
Chuuya glares at him, pissed. Dazai actually looks nervous, he’s completely rigid, griping his own ankles where they cross like a lifeline. So Chuuya bravely reaches for his face.
He chickens out the first time, turning, pulling him into a weird awkward hug, he wants to throw himself out the window, let himself ricochet off the next building, maybe he’d be lucky enough to crack his skull open on the concrete gutter.
“Fuck you.” He snarls, and he’s not sure which one of them it’s meant for.
He pulls back, hesitating, before finally leaning in, he panics and he doesn’t exactly know when to close his eyes, he snaps them shut, wringing them to be as tense and his hands, his shoulders. After a simple peak, they fly apart.
Why the hell is this so hard? He’s kissed people before, well, he’s kissed like one girl during truth or dare, and really he didn’t care about that at all, and it’s not like it’s hard because this time it’s a boy, because lips are lips and gender is stupid anyway.
It’s because it’s Dazai, who never shows any emotion at all, who cares more that even he knows, who’s actually really nervous on his living room floor, who let him see the deepest layers of his skin.
Dazai who Chuuya hates, and for some godforsaken reason, likes.
Dazai doesn’t tease him, he looks like he’s ready to laugh though. Maybe this all was a cruel joke.
“Don’t look at me like that, I’ll kill you.”
He responds by grabbing his face, yanking him in way too fast. Chuuya’s pretty sure he just chipped a fucking tooth on him.
“Fuck-“
“Oh.”
“Not so easy is it, prick?”
He takes a second to fucking breathe, and he hates feeling so awkward and the air is terrible, he doesn’t know what the shit he’s trying to do, but he knows this is not what kissing is supposed to be.
“Just.. fucken wait.” He gently moves Dazai's hands a little lower, to his jaw and neck instead of squashing his cheeks into his eyes. “Okay.” Slowly, like very fucking slowly, or Chuuya is going to have an aneurism, he pulls on the stupid shithead's shoulders.
He watches Dazai’s deep brown flutter shut, under unfairly long eyelashes, he copies him. When they meet in the middle, it’s still a little awkward and tense, but at least they’ve figured how this whole head tilt thing. It’s soft and lasts only a second, then Chuuya feels like he needs to do something else, something more than just pressing his face into Dazai’s. So with false courage, he relaxes his jaw and presses a little harder. When Dazai mirrors him, he freaks the fuck out and pushes him away.
He breathes, embarrassingly loud, and he’s thrown himself so far back that Dazai’s stupid gentle hands rest in the air.
“Okay.” Chuuya chirps, fucking chirps. “Okay cool, cool.”
“Cool.” Dazai echoes.
“You could at least pretend to freak out!”
“I am freaking out.” And he is, because Dazai actually has colour in his face, and he thinks that maybe, possibly there’s a real emotion that’s made it to his eyes.
“Good!” He doesn’t know what to say or do or think because electricity has his heart in a vice.
“Are we going out now?”
“Yeah.” Chuuya grips the carpet. “I think so.”
“Okay. We’re going out.”
“Okay.”
So now they’re going out.
Not much changes at school, obviously, they share more lunch breaks in the quietness of the second music room. People have given up on the rumours, thank fuck, Chuuya absolutely would’ve ruined his entire reputation by stuttering over some stupid ass comment about Dazai’s fluffy hair that Chuuya has seen him wash with dish soap. The most overt thing Chuuya commits to is a point of grabbing his hand and flipping Akutagawa off in the hall. He only earns an eye-roll, it’s not satisfying at all.
“Oh~ is Chibi-chan jealous of his junior.”
“Fuck no, I hate both of you.” He pulls his hand away before Dazai can do something annoying like kiss the back of it.
Chuuya gets better at that. Kissing. He has to be because every time Dazai tries to kiss him it’s like the asshole is actually trying to eat his face and he’s completely certain that he’s doing it just to piss him off. He hates it every time, he blushes every time.
Still, whenever Chuuya starts, Dazai does nothing but go soft beneath it. Pliant with every tug and push Chuuya grants him. A deep sense of pride welled up and pulled the corner of his lip when Dazai had shoved Chuuya back one day, complaining, fucking chill, I can barely breathe, stupid chibi. It’s one of the only times he’s heard him swear. The memory is held in high commendation.
No matter how much Dazai’s face insists, his heartbeat always betrays him when Chuuya rubs against it, whether it’s with his fingers or with his teeth.
“How long have you known you like boys.” Chuuya lays against his chest. They’re graduating this week, and after a kinda shit afterparty, they retreated to their soft space they created at the port.
“Never.” Dazai runs his fingers over Chuuya’s hair, which he insists he hates. “I never liked anyone.”
“You like me.” And he believes it when it echoes off the container walls. “Why me?”
“You punched me.” He says it like that’s the whole story, like that’s all Chuuya needs to understand what’s going on inside that complicated incredible mind of his.
“I said sorry.” He grumbles, rubbing his face into his own shirt wrapped around the other boy.
“Yeah, you did.” Soft, quiet. “Nobody else did.”
“Oh.”
“I couldn’t figure that out, it was annoying.” His scowl carries on the words. “I didn’t know what I did to get an apology.”
Chuuya doesn’t quite know how to explain that you’re not supposed to beg for apologies. They’re supposed to beg for forgiveness.
“Then I realised, I didn’t do anything. You did.” Dazai hardly ever gets genuine like this, only when he feels really bad, worse than the usual bad, and doesn’t have a single modicum of energy left, or if he’s slightly tipsy after a shitty graduation party. “You’re just nice. But you’re also an asshole with no sense of self-preservation.”
“Oh.” Again, because Chuuya isn’t strong with words.
“And you’re a stupid slug.”
“Yeah,” he laughs, “I kinda am.”
If anything, it sounds like Dazai’s feelings aren’t hinging on anything romantic like Chuuya’s, and it makes complete sense. He doesn’t have a single rational reason for liking Dazai other than he just does. Somehow believing Dazai’s affection is entirely analytical makes him feel better, like he won’t just suddenly hate him one day without a reason. Chuuya is just important to Dazai, and if he wants to let Chuuya know that by giving him disgusting sloppy cheek kisses and kicking him out of his own bed, he’s okay with that. He’s so okay with it.
“Chuuya~ do you actually have a crush on me?”
“What the fuck.”
“You’ve never said it.”
“We’ve been dating for like six months.”
“So is that a yes?” His stupid face cracks into a grin.
And Dazai isn’t actually asking, he’s trying to coax colour into his cheeks, because he’s annoying, and an ass, and Chuuya has a stupid crush on him.
“No, shut up, I’ll kill you.”
“Awh, Chibi-chan~ really?! So sweet!” He glows beneath him, something small and dark twists inside Chuuya.
“No suicide after ten,” seems like a stupid rule, but convincing Dazai he can wait till morning to kill himself has left his bandages receding from his biceps. “Dance with me.”
“Gross~ no way.” Dazai pulls him off the floor, gently kicking the volume on the stereo, letting Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell echoes around the small space.
“You’ve gone soft.”
“Shut up, be a good dog.”
Chuuya recognises the song, he can’t place the name, he’s pretty sure it’s from an old American album.
It’s easy to move to, even when Dazai grabs his hand and yanks him in every direction that doesn’t make sense. They’re both horrible at dancing, they’re tripping over each other and Chuuya has hit the wall twice but it’s okay. It’s good. Dazai is laughing and Chuuya can feel the edges of his skin.
It’s unfair that it’s so hard to crawl your way out of darkness, you have to pull and tear at every root, the trail of your progress growing more daunting as it hangs below. Yet, no matter how much it hurts to cut your palms and rip your nails off in the fight, once you’re at the top, the darkness still clings to you. Reeking its subtle reminder, staring down at the edge you tore your way out of makes it almost seem desirable, in an irrational fearful way. It grew on you, crawled its way into your skin, burrowed into your veins, it became the only warmth. It was comforting. Now that only the stains and scars remain, it’s hard to find something new that will replace it. That might be the hardest part.
While they hold each other in the low-lit container, or in their shitty noisy flat, or under the desk in secret, so long as cling on to what they have they won’t slip into the bottomless pull of desirable death or the abyssal loneliness of neglect.