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“There’s something we need to talk about,” Dazai says, voice low. Chuuya doesn’t look up, doesn’t need to. He knows what he’ll see: deceptively soft features, too close for comfort.
“Does it have to be now?” Chuuya deadpans, reloading his gun and racking the slide for emphasis.
“Well –”
He’s interrupted by a spray of bullets. Chuuya grins at Dazai’s mildly affronted expression and leaps up from behind the now shattered wooden crate, firing two shots in quick succession. The first bullet hits one of the gangsters in the chest, but the second goes wide. It doesn’t matter, though, because none of them are ability users and they were doomed from the start. Within five minutes, the floor of the warehouse is covered by splatters of slick, shiny red.
Dazai, the fucking lout, hops down from a stack of crates and nudges one of men over with the tip of his oxfords. “Wo~ow. You really did a number on them, Chuuya.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes and bends down, wiping his blades clean. They slip back into the sheaths on the inside of his jacket with a satisfying clink. “Quit loitering. The police will be here any minute.”
“You’re right. There’s no way we can take on a whole squad of policemen! We’d be slaughtered.”
God, why does he even bother? He takes a deep, calming breath before trying, “We need to head back to base and report to Mori-san." He prays to any god willing to listen that Dazai will see reason.
His prayers go unanswered. Dazai turns on his heel instead, wandering around the maze of bloody corpses with his hands in his fucking pockets, and tosses a casual, “Why don’t you go ahead? It’ll be a while before I’m back,” over his shoulder.
It is, admittedly, an innocuous statement. It could mean anything, but the reality is that Chuuya has been Dazai’s partner, his equal, for too long for such a loaded statement to pass him by. His heart is pounding a steady two-beat in his ears, but even he can hear that his “what do you mean?” has come out far too quietly to be convincing. The blood on his arms feels cold and tacky.
Dazai turns, movements slow and smooth, and makes his way towards him. For a wild second, Chuuya thinks he’ll just walk right past, out of his life with no explanation whatsoever, until Dazai lays a hand on his shoulder and leans down.
“We can talk about this later. It doesn’t have to be now,” he whispers.
Chuuya opens his mouth to snarl, to shout some jumbled combination of stop fucking with me and do you even know what you’re doing, what this means, you fool – when Dazai leans down and kisses him.
His brain short-circuits. He’s standing, stock-still and frozen, and everything around him appears to be operating on a three-second delay. He feels as though he’s floating a good inch out of his body – impossible, his mind says, dazai’s touching you – and he’s grateful that he at least has enough presence of mind to clutch at Dazai’s shoulders when his partner mouths down the length of his neck.
Chuuya tilts his head to the side and pretends that his breath doesn’t hitch when Dazai’s hands trail down his chest, deft fingers unbuttoning his vest.
“Don’t think… you can distract me like this,” Chuuya stammers out, willing Dazai to stick to the script and normalize this whole situation. Dazai’s smirk against his skin, and the accompanying flare of annoyance that follows, brings him back down to earth. “I’m serious,” he stresses, catching Dazai’s wrist before he can move on to the buttons of his shirt.
Wrong thing to say. Dazai pauses, lips still on Chuuya’s neck, and he can feel Dazai’s smile fade before the other man extracts himself. When Dazai looks at him again, his face is an emotionless mask, cool and condescending as Chuuya forces his breathing under control.
“Chuuya,” Dazai starts, but Chuuya knows from his tone that every word he says will be bullshit, that he’s not going to get a straight answer. His hand curls into a fist and he socks Dazai in the jaw, clean and quick.
There’s a single beat of blissful silence before Dazai snarls and launches himself at him.
He knocks them both over, Dazai landing a solid hit to his shoulder before Chuuya counters with two elbows to the stomach. “Motherfu – ” His curse is cut short when Dazai slams his head back against a crate.
He kicks at him, furious, and almost manages to scramble to his feet when he stumbles on the cooling body of one of the men he’d killed. Dazai surges up and grabs him, flipping their positions so that Dazai is the one pressing him into soaked concrete.
Chuuya stares up at him, and for a vivid second, he sees the two of them in his mind’s eye, covered in blood and gore. Here, Dazai lets go of his arms and rips Chuuya’s clothes off with his bare hands.
He blinks himself back to reality. Dazai is still above him, backlit by the moon, and Chuuya feels some of his anger drain away. He’s exhausted.
“Dazai,” he says. Stops.
“Chuuya.”
A thousand thoughts run through his head. “What am I going to tell Mori-san?” he asks in the silence. “What am I going to tell Akutagawa?”
Dazai looks down at him, expression level. “Whatever you want.”
The doors to Mori Ougai’s office are a gorgeous oak, polished to a gleam, and open of their own accord when Chuuya knocks.
“Sir,” Chuuya says, spine automatically straightening. “The dozen or so gangsters that have been encroaching on our territory have been eliminated.”
“Good,” Mori says, calm as ever. “Anything else?”
Chuuya wills his voice to stay even. “Dazai disappeared in the middle of the mission. Who knows where that idiot’s gone off to.”
Mori looks at him, silent and impassive. Chuuya looks back. The strain of not blinking is making his eyes water.
“Sir?”
After an eternity, Mori picks up his pen and scribbles something into his ledger. He does not look up when he says, “You are dismissed.”
Chuuya bows, one hand pressing his hat to his chest, and backs out before his boss can change his mind.