Archive of Our Own ^beta

The way Chuuya slams the door is violent enough that it jars Dazai's heartbeat out of sync.

He gets it back under control quickly, of course. Not a soul would have noticed anything amiss. But it throws him off for just a second too long, and by the time he's taken another breath in, Chuuya is already yelling.

“You just couldn't let things be, could you?!”

“I don't understand what you’re—”

“Don't give me your bullshit! We were having a nice dinner —”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yes, you godawful fucker, yes, it could have been a nice dinner, but you had to go and— whatever it was you did. Messing with the couple behind us? Sabotaging their food? I don't know, and I honestly don't care, but you made a fucking mess like usual. I mean, last week there was the thing with the waiter, and then before that there was the broken window, and then the mariachi band the time before that — I don't know why I even try to get out on dinner dates with you and I don't understand why you have to be like this.”

“I have always been like this.” Dazai's answering stare is impassive, cold and black. Dredging the bottom of Yokohama Bay at midnight. “You have known this from the start. I don't understand why you're acting so surprised.”

“I — “ Chuuya breaks off, runs a hand through his hair. Frustration renders him speechless. “I'm not surprised, Dazai. I'm just —”

“Sick of my shit?”

“Don't interrupt me. I swear to God. I'll kill you for real.”

Dazai doesn't doubt him. His eyes are icy, the pale of a winter sky; vapour trails in the distance, sun low and almost out of sight. Chuuya does not kill indiscriminately but he is capable of doing so without hesitation, without a second's regret. His rage lacks its usual heat, here, Dazai thinks, the usual spark that makes his partner adore him so.

Here, in the nighttime quiet of his own apartment, there is no thrill of the fight. No cocky grin on his face, no leisurely flexing of his lithe body as he readies for the first punch.

The fight has gone out of him. Chuuya is tired.

“Am I wrong?” Dazai pushes him. Prickling, persistent, pressure; needles in the skin. Right over the edge.

“Of course I'm fucking sick of you,” Chuuya spits. “Anyone would be.”

Tired of Dazai. As anyone might have expected.

“You're the one who asked me to go out to such a fancy place.”

“Are we not allowed to at least try to have nice things?”

“Nice things like a steak dinner? Like thirty thousand yen bottles of wine? What are those things even for?” He tries his best to sound… bored. Apathetic, uninterested, rather than desperate to find meaning in it that might not even be there. His skin feels like the fine glaze on porcelain. Thin cracks creep across the surface, fracturing slow — his soul seeps out, bitter tea oozing black, sharp tannins that stain.

“For us, damn you.” Chuuya's fist strikes the wall. The plaster fissures and crumbles around the impact –– more damage for him to regret later. “After everything, we were gonna fuckin' try, weren't we?”

“Why? Why bother?”

“Because — ” He has to clench and unclench his fists, a deep inhale of breath filling his lungs. Dazai hears the fine leather of his gloves creak and almost snap. “We are — we were supposed to be — ”

He will never say in love. Dazai will never fault him for that. In love is not for people like them.

“If you ever seriously thought that we could be anything other than what we are,” Dazai tells him, “Then you are more of a fool than I took you to be.”

He says it simply. Without embellishments, without the tone of someone gloating about being in the right.

Dazai, too, is tired.

“Well, what are we?” Chuuya demands of him.

“A disaster,” Dazai says.

Chuuya does not flinch. The indictment is damning, but he knows it to be true. The two of them know each other too well to pretend that it isn't.

Twin stars on a collision course. Trees with roots intertwined, holding on too tight in the upheaval of an landslide. The roar of an earthquake and the inevitable tidal wave that follows.

Natural disasters, violence at their very core, inseparable from each other.

“Fine,” Chuuya says. He drops his fists as though they are two-ton weights; relief and pain in the letting go. “If that's how you wanna see it.”

“It doesn't seem to be getting through that little head of yours, does it? Did you have your hat on too tight today?” The teasing does nothing. Chuuya's eyes are as stone. It makes Dazai sick. Sick sick sick sick–– “I'll say it again. Am I wrong? Am I ever wrong?”

Chuuya studies him. Slowly, curiously, the pinched and cold look of anger still creasing his petite features. It's uncharacteristic, it's out of place. Chuuya ought to have his stance wide, teeth bared, the glow behind his eyes that of a wild animal. Dazai hates being under his gaze like this. He feels something writhe in him, scratching at his insides like a dying insect.

“No,” Chuuya says. “You aren't. I guess you always have to get your way, don't you?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're not the big damn genius you want everyone to believe you are, you know that? You just… destroy everything that doesn't fit your narrative, and hope no one else notices.”

“That isn't true,” Dazai says, “But if that's how you want to see it…”

“You are a ruiner, Dazai Osamu,” Chuuya says to him. “You ruin things. Everything you touch, even.”

“I am all too aware,” Dazai says. “This is what I mean when I say we are a disaster. We cannot be anything but bad for each other. You are too angry and I am too deranged. You and I are made for destruction. Perfect on the battlefield, of course, but too volatile off of it––”

“Stop spouting such pretentious shit.” Chuuya cuts him off halfway. “I'm trying, here. You're the one who can't hold onto a good thing.”

“You think this was a good thing?”

“It was!” Chuuya's voice snaps, somehow, as he bites back; the split between an angry growl and a despairing scream, something of the desperation of adolescence in it, like a teenager's voice breaking. It's nostalgic in a way that feels like a kick in the teeth. “It was good, it used to be, until you started playing sabotage. You break your toys when you're bored of 'em, is that it?”

“That's not what this is—”

“You can't fucking lie to me, you know that?” Chuuya exhales through bared teeth, half a snarl. “I know you too well, more's the pity. Whatever you're doing, it's bullshit. Leave me out of it.”

Dazai pauses. Breathes in. He makes his best decisions when he's emotionally detached, he tells himself. It is better. It is cleaner.

“Very well. Consider yourself left out of it.” He moves to pick up his coat and his keys. He'd only just set them down as they'd come in.

Chuuya stares at him. “That's it?”

Fight me, Dazai wills him, Scream at me, kick me, hurt me, show me that you're still willing to stand up for something.

For me.

Chuuya does nothing. Chuuya has had enough.

Dazai's hand closes around his keys. The metal digs into his skin, cold and sharp. “That's it. If you want this done then so do I. No sense in dragging it out.”

“What I want done is your bullshit. The way you've been lately – pissing me off more than you usually do – I'm sick of it all. But not—” he gestures vaguely. His knuckles still end up clenched tight again at the end of it all. “Not us. If you weren't––”

“Unfortunately,” Dazai says, voice monotone, “I am.”

He shuffles the key that opens the front door – Chuuya's front door – off of the keyring. The little snik noise it makes as it falls away feels so very much like a knife against a throat, cold metal and the death of something. Finality under his fingertips.

“Are you serious?” Chuuya sounds less incredulous and more exasperated. “You're just walking away – again?”

“This is different from back then,” Dazai says, “And you know it.”

“How did this—” Something catches in Chuuya's throat, like he can't speak past the rising wall of his own anger. “We were just having dinner.”

“And I ruined it.” Dazai is already turning away. “Let's leave things here, before I ruin the rest of your life, shall we?”

Chuuya has nothing to say to that.

“I imagine we can still work together, should the situation require it,” Dazai says to the kitchen floor. “Our combination of abilities works well, and it would be a strategic mistake to throw that aside. But our personal involvement…”

“Good to know you've considered the bigger picture,” Chuuya spits, sarcastic, spiteful. “You always have the right answer, don't you?”

Dazai has nothing to say to that.

He places the key down on the countertop. Chuuya's kitchen is fancy marble, cold and stone and unmoving.

Dazai steps away. Chuuya watches him go.

He hadn’t had that privilege, Dazai thinks, four years ago, to look at a retreating back and know the truth of it in his heart; that something was ending.

Would he have tried to fight it, then, if he’d known? Would he have asked Dazai to stay?

Somehow Dazai doesn't think so.

Not even ten minutes after he'd entered through it, the front door clicks closed behind him.

Those precious few minutes ago, he'd been coming home, and now —

He hears the security chain slide shut. Chuuya's already locked him out.

Well, that makes sense. A clean break is good. And there's nothing particular about Dazai that deserves to be fought for, anyway.

A clean break. Quick, painless, like tearing off a band-aid. It's for the better. For both of them.

That's what Dazai tries to convince himself, anyway. It becomes a mantra, every time he drags his sorry half-corpse of a body from his futon in the morning, along the streets that are just now beginning to warm in the sun, and into work, plaster on a silly smile for nine hours, and home again; a drugged-up hamster on a wheel, round and round and round and round again until he fucking dies.

This was the right thing to do.

Staring at the ceiling, in bed at 8pm because there's nothing better to do anyway, listening to the ancient air conditioner buzz and occasionally rattle alarmingly. If it broke, would he bother to get up to fix it? Or sit and stew in the rising heat, let himself cook to death? It doesn't sound like a bad way to go. Minimal effort, at least.

This was the right thing to do.

Feeling sort of hungry but not really, and anyway the convenience store is too far and nothing sounds appetising at all. Chuuya was always the one to cook, when they'd lived together, to drag them out of the house on dinner dates; sushi and roast beef and imported foreign food in dimly-lit modern restaurants with soft jazz playlists on the air, accompanied by the tinkling percussion of wine glasses.

Not Dazai's style, but then – it wasn't really the food, or the vibe, that kept him there.

This was the right thing to do.

It would never have worked out, between him and Chuuya. Not in the long term. Chuuya is too volatile and Dazai too cold. Like chemicals that ought not to be mixed. They were always going to implode together in close proximity.

Dazai knows one thing to be true beyond all else.

The moment I start to want something, it is lost to me.

Better to minimise the damage. Make him realise that we're better off apart sooner rather than later.

He had been frozen, he only realises now, during the whole argument in Chuuya's kitchen. For the sake of making decisions with a clear head, for the sake of not letting the walls of pretence, so carefully shored up, slip down around Chuuya and reveal that Dazai had planned the whole thing all along – he had shut himself down, like any malfunctioning machine.

Now, though, the ice that he'd so purposefully packed in around his own heart is starting to melt, with time, turning the whole thing into a bloody slushy mess.

It feels like shit. The tightness in his chest is constant, half an inch away from hollow regret and half an inch closer to an actual heart attack.

He passes two weeks in this sort of fugue state, not that he especially feels the time going by. Work is quiet, quiet in a way that means boring, no long-lasting difficult cases or deadlines by which to mark the days, no danger to run from, which at first had felt refreshing and safe but now feels dull to the point of numbness. The onset of summer heat is beginning to feel more fatiguing than anything, too hot to go out, the sunshine not a bright symbol of a new dawn but a heavy weight on the shoulders from the moment you step outside.

Being with Chuuya, trying to work on something positive, had felt like something to aim for. The next step on his nebulous and vague journey of being a better person. Whatever that means.

Chuuya had been the one person in this world to understand, or come close to understanding, the tangle of sparking fraying wires inside Dazai's head – at least the one living person to understand. And now he's gone. Because Dazai pushed him away on purpose.

It was the right thing to do. Dazai’s plans are never wrong.

slug [do not answer] 16:45

stop ignoring my calls

slug [do not answer] 16:45

are you gonna come get your shit at some point or am I throwing it out

16:50

what shit

slug [do not answer] 16:51

all your clothes that were in the dresser

16:52

I don't have that many clothes

slug [do not answer] 16:52

a couple of suits, some sweaters, your blue jeans?

slug [do not answer] 16:53

there were like five of your shirts in the closet

16:54

you can keep the shirts

16:54

;) to remember me by 

slug [do not answer] 16:55

I'm not going to validate that with a response.

come and get your crap by friday or it's going in the trash.

slug [do not answer] 16:56

you left your stupid suicide book here too.

16:57

?wait did I leave my work notebooks

slug [do not answer] 16:57

idk, probably

slug [do not answer] 16:58

I'm not responsible for your shit anymore.

come and pick it up if you need it, or don't. i don't care.

17:02

fine. i'll come by later. after work.

slug [do not answer] 17:05

I'll leave the door unlocked.

since you don't have a key anymore.

17:06

so very gracious of you.

The elevator ride up to the apartment – Chuuya's apartment, Dazai has to remind himself, it is only Chuuya’s now, although it has been theirs for the better part of a year – feels as wobbly and unpleasant as any cheap fairground rollercoaster ride. The shift in gravity makes the weight that's sitting low in Dazai's belly drop and roll in a nauseating sort of way, seasick on dry land.

Last time you'll ever come here, an exceedingly unhelpful part of his brain reminds him, last time you'll see this hallway. He tries not to focus on it. He knows very well that in his relatively short life he’s already left a trail of places behind that he can never return to again, and nostalgia is a bitter opiate he refuses to let hook him.

True to his word, Chuuya had left the front door unlocked, and it swings open with just a gentle push from Dazai's fingertips.

Chuuya is somewhere inside. Chuuya is a mafia executive and would not leave his home unlocked and unguarded – but he clearly wants to avoid interacting with Dazai at all costs. Doesn't want to have to talk to him, cannot stand to even see his face.

Dazai knows he deserves it. But still, it stings.

He steps into the apartment. He takes his shoes off in the entryway, thoughtless with ingrained habit, and it’s only as he's stooping to pick them up that he realises there's no point at all putting them away in the shoe-box. He is not staying here.

Swallowing the strange feeling that rises in his throat, a feeling he cannot quite name, he puts his shoes back down. Instead, he opens the shoe-box, and takes out his other pairs, the ones he'd left here.

A pair of summer sandals, the kind with straps that are good for walking. They'd taken a couple of trips together, during their delirious little honeymoon period when Dazai had first moved in, to seaside resorts and cool mountain rivers, splashing each other in the water, eating shaved ice with sweet fruit syrup, sharing soft kisses in the hot night as the cicadas sang. They'd had grand plans for this summer, too. Grand plans that won't come to pass.

The black patent dress shoes, that Chuuya had bought for him, for their more extravagant dates. Barely worn. They'd had an argument about that, too, the fateful night of the restaurant outing, while they were still getting ready. Dazai had picked up his usual brown loafers to wear, preferring comfort over the newness and stiffness of the lace-up brogues. Chuuya had insisted Dazai's everyday work shoes weren't appropriate, were too scuffed, didn't match his black suit, why doesn't Dazai ever want to make an effort? Dazai had bitten back, still a little peeved that Chuuya had bought the damn things for him without even asking first, without Dazai even expressing a want for such a thing.

I didn't even get to try them on, you just put them in the closet and insisted I wear them, Dazai had complained. They don't even fit, they pinch like hell––

You need to wear them in, I told you––

I don't want to, why would I willingly give myself blisters?

They look good on you, you just need to be patient––

I'm not going through all that just for a pair of shoes, why can't you get off my case?

Chuuya had slammed the dresser drawer shut, then, rattling the mirror and assorted photo frames sitting on top, as though an earthquake had rippled through the room. Fine. Do what you want. See if I buy anything nice for you ever again.

The seeds of the way it ended had been sown long ago, Dazai realises now – he himself is no good at accepting gifts, knowing full well he doesn’t deserve a single one, and Chuuya has long been tired of his evasive bullshit.

The sandals, Dazai takes, putting them away in the canvas bag he'd brought with him, one of the fold-out ones people use for moving house. He'd borrowed it from the office, honestly; he’s never even had enough personal effects to warrant having to buy one.

The dress shoes, he leaves where they are. Chuuya bought them, he thinks, Chuuya can do whatever the hell he likes with them. Not like Dazai's going to be going to any expensive restaurants on his own, now.

Finally, Dazai's house slippers. After a moment of thought, he opts to leave those where they are, too, stepping up into the apartment proper in just his socks. He has a pair of slippers at the dorm, and anyway he can't wear these rubber-soled ones on tatami flooring. It would be pointless to bring them with him, and he somehow doesn't want to wear them now, either. These slippers were purchased to make someone else's house feel like a home. They belonged to someone who lives here. Someone who isn't Dazai, anymore.

In front of him is the open-plan kitchen, the marble-topped island where he had left his keys, sixteen days prior.

Not that he's been counting the days.

He scans the room quickly, but he's pretty certain there's nothing of his in here. Chuuya was always the one to cook, on the occasions when they didn't eat out or order in, and it should have been Dazai's job to wash up in return, but he was often guilty of leaving the dishes to sit until Chuuya's patience snapped and he wound up washing them instead.

Ignoring the kitchen, Dazai makes a turn into the living room. Like the kitchen, it is spacious, of sickeningly modern design, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the sparkling Yokohama skyline, clouds dipped in sunset-purple skimming the tops of buildings.

Dazai doesn't get why Chuuya lives this high up. It reminds him too much of the view from Mori's office, the overt display of power and control, king of all he surveys. In fact, you can see the Port Mafia towers from here. They're visible from most tall buildings in Yokohama, in fairness, dominating the horizon for miles around, but why would you want to have to look at your workplace when you're resting at home?

He turns away from the window. Better that he's out of this place, he thinks to himself. He never really liked it anyway.

On the bookshelf, as Chuuya had said, sits The Perfect Guide to Suicide, along with several other books that are definitely Dazai's and not Chuuya's.

They're all mixed in amongst each other, no organisational system in their little shared library, but Dazai knows which are his. Chuuya prefers escapism when he reads, books with glossy covers picked from some bestsellers list, ranging from fantasy to romance to kitchen-sink drama (but he would never touch stories about gangland warfare, or some gritty action that would easily make a blockbuster movie, or anything remotely similar – the man values his work-life balance). Dazai, on the other hand, sticks mostly to nonfiction, fascinating things about medicine or statistics or psychology, facts that he can quote aloud to Chuuya while reading to either pique his interest or piss him off, depending on the fact and depending on the day.

He puts two of the books in the bag, ones he brought with him when he moved in. He’d had precious few of his own belongings, back then, and it’s only looking at this shelf in front of him, now, that he realises how much he’d allowed his life to expand into the space Chuuya allowed him, how much he’d indulged in stuff he didn’t need.

He hesitates with the other books, the ones that had been birthday presents from Chuuya, or ones that he had purchased for himself with Chuuya in mind, like the one about gravitational physics.

He pictures himself in his dorm room, reading alone. Saying hey, did you know…? to no one at all.

Dazai can always go and annoy Kunikida with random facts, maybe. He might even want to write some of them down.

But it’s not the same.

He leaves the book on physics where it is. Knows he’ll think of Chuuya every time he picks it up; the equations on the page mapping the mesmerising shape of him in the sky, his body a natural pattern that fits into the world as it should. A lightning bolt, a gale-force wind, a storm that unfolds as beautifully as the petals of a flower.

It’s fine. This is fine. This is what Dazai wanted, after all. A clean break. And nobody has to know how he feels about it on the inside, in the end. He can keep pretending it’s fine.

Where is Chuuya, Dazai wonders. He has to be somewhere in the apartment, but Dazai hasn’t even heard so much as a noise that indicates where.

As he’d suspected, his work notebooks were stacked on top of the side table – honestly, the fact that he hadn’t really missed them for two weeks is extremely telling, but he is supposed to take case notes to write up later, even if he is haphazard about how he does it, and he’s quite sure if he left them here he’d have cause to regret it later down the line.

Maybe he needs to start making note of things he regrets, as well – the list is getting pretty long.

Packing up the books, Dazai heads back through the kitchen, down the hall and towards the main bedroom. The door is ajar – Chuuya’s probably here, just by process of elimination, but Dazai doesn’t feel the need to announce himself. This used to be his house, too.

Without fanfare, Dazai slips inside of the space that was once his sanctuary. Chuuya is lying silently on the bed – fully clothed on top of the sheets, fist clenched in the softness of the pillow, making it clear he’s not actually asleep. He’s sticking to ‘his side’, Dazai realises, even after more than two weeks – the habit of months takes longer than that to wear down. It will wear away, though, the way even the strongest of cliffs cannot hold strong against the time and tide of an insistent river’s flow.

Chuuya doesn’t want to see or talk to Dazai. He made that obvious by refusing to even answer the front door.

So Dazai does not acknowledge him. Instead, he heads straight to the dresser, where Chuuya had said some of his clothes still sit, and pulls open the drawers. He does not try to be quiet about it – it’s only seven p.m., and Chuuya isn’t even sleeping, after all.

It's far too late for care, consideration, gentleness. Not that they ever had those things to start with.

Ignoring the feeling that prickles at the back of his neck, a wall of stony silence behind him that seems to press against his back, with the immense weight and coldness of solid iron, Dazai rifles through the dresser.

They'd started out keeping their shit separate. Dazai had been allocated the bottom drawers – Chuuya had said those were easier to clear out to make room, but Dazai is sure that he secretly liked seeing his partner have to stoop and bend awkwardly to get things out of a morning. Or maybe that's just the sort of thing Dazai would do and he's projecting. Not like he's going to ask Chuuya about the truth now.

Over time, anyway, the edges of yours and mine had started to blur; Chuuya borrowing Dazai's shirts, insisting oversized was comfier, giving Dazai his scarves and big knit sweaters in return when he got the idea in his head that Dazai doesn't wrap up warm enough in the cold, unpatterned socks and generic one-size-fits-all stretchy t-shirts that had maybe belonged to one of them at some point but after several laundry cycles no-one could tell anymore. Yours and mine smudged and smeared in shared shopping trips and holidays away and things lost in the dryer and became something called ours.

Dazai takes the jeans that are too long in the leg to be Chuuya's. Two of the suit jackets that hang in the closet – the navy one that Chuuya said goes with almost anything, can be dressed up or down, whatever that means, and the classic black one with the matching pants and waistcoat, the one he wears for ADA parties when it's required of him. He takes a couple of random t-shirts that he's honestly not sure whose they are but he’s pretty sure Chuuya won't miss. The collared shirts – well. He knows Chuuya likes to steal that olive-green one. He has to roll the sleeves up, but he knows Dazai likes that, the way it shows off his arms, muscle and tendon and freckled skin. He'd wear it open, unbuttoned over a sleeveless vest, enjoying the ego boost, the way Dazai's eyes would rake over him, collarbones-waist-hips, the drape of the shirt's fabric, caressing without touching.

Or at least, he did. Dazai doesn't know if Chuuya wants him to leave the shirt, or not. And he's certainly not going to ask.

Hey, want me to forget a part of myself in your life on purpose? Want to be reminded of what we used to have, how it used to be good? Want to be reminded of everything that failed every time you open the closet? Want to be able to act like you miss me?

He takes the stupid shirt. The hanger clatters on the rail. He's not going to fucking wear it ever again, but maybe he'll donate it or something. That's a nice thing to do, right?

See? Dazai's so good at this doing good shit. Maybe he can make this situation a net positive after all.

He packs the shirts and the suits and the jeans and the precious few books into his fold-out bag. He ignores the bathroom, knowing that whatever of his is in there can easily be re-bought at any old drugstore.

It all fits, pretty much, into the one bag. That’s kind of depressing. The little parts of his life that had been so important, at the time, brick by painstaking brick in the building of an existence together, now looking like so much randomly assembled trash for the scrap heap.

It stings. It stings, and although Dazai would rather pretend that it doesn’t, that he is numb under the anaesthesia of years of purposeful indifference, the reality is that he feels that pain just as sharply and as fearfully as he would feel a knife between the ribs. The loss of something is awful, no matter how clean and dry the logic of cutting it away might seem on the surface.

He’s known that much since Mimic.

Chuuya is clearly hurting, too. The uncharacteristic silence tells him the truth of it, the lethargy speaks as loud as words.

After years of partnership and almost a year of doing their best at romance, Dazai is sure that any normal human would feel a base and instinctual urge to provide comfort in this situation. Dazai is not the comforting type, though, and he would be a hypocrite if he offered such a thing here. He is responsible for that pain. How could he even begin to ease it? How could he even dare to try?

It’s becoming a familiar feeling. It’s not quite like guilt, or remorse – these have never been things with which Dazai concerns himself – but it is a sort of regret. It’s like knocking a priceless antique vase to the floor – whether accidentally, through carelessness or despite taking all possible care, or even on purpose. You’re left looking at the shards of something broken, something that had once been beautiful, knowing that something so rare and lovely existed and now it doesn’t and it’s your fault.

Dazai keeps on doing this to people. He keeps doing it and he can’t seem to stop, even amidst the efforts of trying to be better, someone whose impact on the world is a positive one.

Ruiner, Chuuya had called him, you ruin everything.

Holding the remnants of their life together in a plastic bag in his hands, Dazai looks at Chuuya on the bed. Watches the steady rise and fall of his ribcage, the tension of his shoulder muscles, the hard set of his body as he faces determinedly away.

Despite it all, Dazai can’t help but want to be close to him. To want to reach out.

It’s so odd to feel that he doesn’t know how. As though he is suddenly a stranger in his own body. He and Chuuya have always been close, and it’s always been the easiest thing in the world.

They are right here together in the same room, and yet here Chuuya’s absence feels the heaviest.

Dazai puts down the bag that holds his life in it. “You asleep?” he asks softly.

No response. Not that he’d expected one anyway.

Carefully, very carefully, as though he were stupidly somehow afraid of destroying something already broken, he climbs onto the bed, and lies down next to Chuuya.

Dazai does not dare touch him. Hardly dares to move or breathe in case his thoughtless, disastrous hands might chance to shatter something else, something he did not intend to.

I want to hold him, he thinks in spite of his best efforts, I want to hold him so bad.

But it is over. It is over. And Dazai is trying to do better. He will not let the ruin that he caused go any further than what he leaves behind in this bed.

The city falls dark around them. They lie, still, in the harrowing silence as the streetlights flicker on below, a false glow that spills through the open blinds like an oil slick.

When Chuuya’s breathing has softened into sleep, the sense of his body gentler and finally at ease, Dazai leaves him.

On his way out, he pauses at the bedroom door, his hand on the doorframe. Stopping on the threshold, the edge of something unseen.

He feels the overwhelming urge to look back over his shoulder. To look back at Chuuya and see the sleeping form of his lover. To look back at Chuuya and, perhaps, see his open eyes, twilight-blue and electric in the night, full of love and tempting Dazai back to bed. And then Dazai, as much as he had tried, could say that he had done all he could, to simply give up and turn around, to slip under the covers and lie beside Chuuya, where he belongs.

But Dazai is smarter than that. There are a thousand myths and parables that warn of the dangers of looking back. He refuses to be the Orpheus who dooms his beloved by turning around, by caring too much not to beg the world for one last glance, by loving too much to walk on alone.

Theirs is not a tale that could have ever had a happy ending, anyway.

Dazai walks out of the room he had shared with Chuuya, and he does not look back.

Dazai likes to think he’s pretty good at hiding. He keeps his walls up, continues to go to work like nothing ever happened at all. Nobody knows, nobody has to know. If he numbs himself enough he can convince himself it’s fine to just carry on like this forever.

He must be off his game, though, because Kunikida catches him one lunchtime ducking surreptitiously out of the smoking shelter on the street behind the agency building. Maybe he’s not as good at hiding physically as he is at hiding emotionally. It’s understandable. He’s sort of tall. It makes him too noticeable.

Kunikida is glaring at him, blocking his path back to the main road.

“What were you doing in the smoking area?”

“Thought it'd be a nice place to eat lunch,” Dazai replies dryly. “Really, what do you think I was doing?”

Kunikida does not react to that, other than a slow, judgmental sort of blinking, half-shrouded by the afternoon sunlight off his glasses. He should invest in anti-reflection coating, Dazai is about to say, or transition lenses, but his partner is already flipping through his ubiquitous notebook, tapping his foot thoughtfully.

“On Tuesday,” Kunikida says, “You arrived to work on time.”

“Okay,” Dazai says, bewildered. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?”

“I'm not sure that's how you use that idiom,” Kunikida retorts, “But I won't allow you to distract me with your nonsense. Let's see… ah, yes. On Wednesday, I detected the smell of stale sake on your breath after lunch. And today, you are being sarcastic in ways that aren't witty in the slightest.”

“Do you have a point, or—”

“Something's wrong with you.”

“Well spotted,” Dazai says. “Your powers of observation are impeccable, truly I could not ask for a more worthy partner—”

“Stop that,” Kunikida barks, and god, his eyes look like Chuuya's did when he glares like that, the same coldness; not the usual spirited anger but a resigned sort of resentment, bitter, sharp, deep-rooted. “It's not funny when you're insincere. I mean something is more wrong with you than usual, obviously.”

It's fine, Dazai tells himself. He drives the poor man loopy on purpose. This is to be expected.

He shrugs. “Bad day?”

“Bullshit,” Kunikida says. “It's deeper than that. You can't lie your way out of this one, you slippery bastard.”

“What do you want me to say, then?”

“Tell me what's wrong,” his partner urges him.

Dazai stays silent, hesitant, for a moment too long. So of course Kunikida pushes.

“You were trying to do good things for yourself, I thought, after you got out of prison. I thought you were trying to make things work, moving in with that mafia boyfriend of yours. What happened to the positive efforts? Why are you suddenly picking up all your bad habits again, all your vices you'd left behind?”

Push, push, push. Nag, nag, nag. What else did Dazai think would happen? He knows he is enough of a pain on his good days.

“Forget all that,” Dazai says, flapping a dismissive hand. He hopes his voice hits the right note of bright-and-breezy, not pitched too wrong to make it obvious he's faking it. He doesn't care, that's all. “It doesn't even matter now.”

“Dazai,” Kunikida says, slowly. Like a kindergarten teacher on his last thread of patience, like Dazai's about to be put in time out. “It matters to me.”

“Why should it?”

“Because I am your partner, and your behaviour is worrying me. Is that a good enough reason for you?”

“Fine, jeez. It's not that big of a deal.” It is, but he doesn't need to put any more weight on Kunikida's shoulders than he already has. “I'm saying you can forget the positivity shit. It didn't work out. But, y'know, we tried, right? A for effort.”

“So you broke up,” Kunikida observes. “And now you're breaking down.”

Dazai shrugs again. Kunikida's mouth twitches slightly – the starting shiver of a very small smirk.

Dazai says, “It's funny to you, huh?”

That would about make sense, that everyone he's pushed away would revel in his pain. He did this to himself.

“It's… no, not funny. Not quite that. You don't deserve to hurt like this, even when I'm at my angriest with you. But…” The smile breaks out in full, now, and Dazai finds he can't even be mad about it, because Kunikida's clear eyes are softening, greyish-green as dew-drenched moss in the early morning. Safe and welcoming, the forest floor for a bed. “It's a very… normal problem, isn't it? A very human problem, to be sad after a breakup. It's almost reassuring to know you feel it too.”

“Turns out I have a heart,” Dazai deadpans. “One that beats, even. The world falls to its knees in shock.”

“I knew that,” Kunikida says. “Did you?”

It's not often that Dazai is completely blindsided. “Huh?”

“I was very much aware that you had and continue to have feelings,” Kunikida continues, like he's not just sideswiped Dazai's brain with the force of a speeding twenty-ton truck. “But I don't think that you allow yourself that grace, sometimes. If ever.”

“I…”

“Close your mouth. You'll swallow bugs, this time of year. Look, I'm not good with this shit either, but if you want to just… let yourself feel stuff, let me call Yosano over tonight. You guys can eat ice cream and complain about how men suck, like in the movies, if you want. Or whatever. Just don't bottle it up, for god's sake, or drink away your last remaining braincells. The Agency needs those.”

“I don't need ice cream,” Dazai says, maybe a little too harshly, “This isn't a teen drama.”

“Well, whatever makes you happy, then. Apart from being a menace to others.”

Dazai pulls a face. “Is there anything else?”

“I'm sure you can think of something. I don't have any more leeway in my schedule for your shenanigans this week, and I do think it would be healthy to find you a better hobby.” Kunikida puts a hand on Dazai's arm. “In any case, I'm sorry you got broken up with. That sucks.”

Still reeling a little bit from this whole conversation, the unexpected intimacy of it, Dazai blurts out, “I broke up with him.”

“Oh,” Kunikida says. He blinks, bemused. “Why?”

Dazai's smile is paper-thin, a shoji screen door. He's sure his real feelings are visible like shadows on the other side. “We… were not good for each other, in the end.”

“I see.” Kunikida thinks about that for a second. “Well, I'm sorry either way. It still sucks.” He fixes Dazai with a much more familiar glare, folding his arms, his notebook with all the incriminating evidence of Dazai's vulnerabilities safely put away, for now. “Did you eat yet, by the way?”

“I––”

“Cigarettes and gum isn't lunch, before you say anything of that ilk.”

Dazai sulks. “I didn't eat yet.”

Out comes the notebook, again. Looks like Dazai had spoken too soon. Muttering, Kunikida adjusts a few finer points of his schedule; wild motions of the pen, arrows from here to there and there to here, down to the minute.

“We don't have enough time for a sit-down lunch,” he says half to himself, and then looks back up from his scribbling, back to Dazai. “We have eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds, accounting for the time I allotted to interrogate you about your personal problems. Can I tempt you to a convenience store sandwich?”

“You're buying?”

“Not a chance. But I will force you to eat it.”

Dazai sighs, heavily, as though the idea of a sandwich is the most wearisome thing he's faced all week. “This is workplace bullying. Power harassment, even.”

Kunikida sighs, too, in answer, but it's a small sigh; soft, fond, and familiar.

“You can complain to HR when we get back to the office, if you like,” he says.

“Do we even have an HR?” Dazai gripes. “I don't recall having any onboarding process. They just threw you at me.” Kunikida smacks him in the back of the head. “Ow. And I'm grateful, or whatever. Fine.”

“Good,” Kunikida says. “Now scoot. The green light at the crosswalk to the Seven-Eleven only lasts for twenty seconds.”

Dazai's usual brand of complaints and Kunikida's usual brand of neuroticism. They've safely veered away from the tender edges of hearts and the precipice of everything a little too real – for now.

Yosano knocks on his door that evening. He knows it’s her from the sound of it, heard her heels clicking down the concrete outside.

“Open up, already,” she calls through the letterbox when Dazai doesn’t answer. “I got delivery sushi. Imitation crab rolls, the kind you like.”

He hears the determination in her voice. Knows she is just as obstinate as him, as any of his colleagues. It is both a virtue and a fault, Dazai feels, in all of them, the ability to keep pushing when the odds are stacked against you.

Dazai stalks to the front door, dragging his socked feet heavily across tatami, as though his legs were chained down.

He slides open the bolt, pulls open the door with perhaps more dramatic force than is warranted, and glares at Yosano.

He doesn’t ask her what do you want or why are you wasting your time with me or anything so prosaic. He waits for her to explain herself.

“Heard you’re going through a breakup,” she says.

Dazai grimaces. “Kunikida is a terrible gossip. You ought not to listen.”

“He tells the truth, mostly,” Yosano points out, “Unlike some people I could mention.”

“Do you have a point?”

She raises the plastic carrier bag she’s holding in one hand. “Sushi. Good. makes you feel better.”

“I don’t need sushi, thank you.”

“I already bought it. Might as well have some.”

“I appreciate the gesture, but I’m all right. Maybe you can offer some to Atsushi, he’ll eat almost anything.”

Yosano huffs a sigh, places her hands on her hips. “Good god you are stubborn. So used to getting your own way, huh?”

“It’s a side effect of usually being right. Can’t be helped.”

She grins evilly. “My ability doesn’t work on you,” she says, her smile near splitting her face, “Which means that if I punch your teeth out of your head, I can’t fix it for you. What a shame.”

Dazai says, “You are threatening me with physical violence over takeout sushi. Would you consider that normal behaviour?”

“Would you consider anything that goes on in the Armed Detective Agency ‘normal behaviour’?” Yosano counters quickly. “Look, I don’t know what your deal is. You’re perfectly happy to laze around and be selfish when the stakes are low. But when you actually feel shitty you seem hell-bent on torturing yourself instead of doing things that make you feel good. If you need to be threatened into enjoyable activities, well, I’m more than happy to do the threatening.”

“It’s just a breakup,” Dazai says. “It’s not like the world is ending.”

“Exactly,” Yosano replies. “We’ve been there, done that. But this is different. It’s personal, and it’s painful, and just like the end of the world, in fact, you don’t have to face it on your own.”

“And you think sushi from the shop on the corner is going to fix everything?”

“Obviously not. But it makes it just a little better. Just that little bit more bearable.”

“Fine,” Dazai says. “I'll eat the sushi, if it gets you all off my case. Let me get my shoes.”

“It's takeout,” Yosano says, brandishing the bag again. “The point is you can eat it in the comfort of your home.”

“Your home,” Dazai insists. “Mine's kind of…messy, right now. You don't wanna come in. Really.”

Something flashes in Yosano's eyes. The same kind of quick and sharp glint she gets when she's spotted an enemy's weak point.

“Good thing we don't need to worry about sushi getting cold,” she says. “Let's put it in the fridge for a bit and I'll help you clean.”

“You don't need to do that. Let's just eat at yours.” Dazai's bomb defusal skills are rusty, but he really doesn't want another blazing fight. He's kind of sick of those, of being the sticking point, the touchpaper that sparks a fire every time.

“No, I think it would be good for you to clean. Cathartic.”

“And I'll get around to it on my own. I don’t need you to—”

She grabs him by the lapel of his shirt and yanks him down to her height. In her heels, there’s not a huge difference between them, but Dazai certainly feels it with how violently she pulls him closer. “Listen. I realise you think of me as just your coworker, but I am your friend, okay? You stare down death with someone enough times, you get past coworker status. That’s just how it is. I know you’ve always been the type to distance yourself, and I get it, alright? You get close to people, the more it’s likely to hurt when they leave. Either they die or the space they took up in your life gets vacated some other way. It happens, and it hurts, but holding everyone at arm’s length just in case is not a solution. You just end up lonely and sick in the head. You get what I’m saying?”

“Jeez,” Dazai says, stepping back as she lets go of his shirt, “Okay.”

“Do you get it? Or––”

“I get it. Fine. You are my friend, I need to open up more, feelings are real and valid, et cetera.” He smooths out his shirt-front, more exaggerated than he needs to. “Could you have been any more aggressive in getting your point across? I swear, everyone in the agency is so violent.”

Yosano shrugs. “You dated that gravity manipulator guy. I figured violence is your love language.”

Dazai cannot stop himself from visibly wincing.

“Right,” Yosano says, a little late. “Breakup. My bad. You wanna let me help clean your room to make it up to you?”

Dazai says, “Why are you so desperate to clean my room?”

“I am your friend,” Yosano says again, insistently. “Friends help each other out.”

“And friends don't judge friends for how messy their dorm gets, right?” Dazai says with a shaky, sheepish sort of half-smile.

“No judgement,” Yosano says, but she has one eyebrow raised in a way that says No promises. “Provided you don't have, like… a dead body in there or something.”

Dazai sighs. “So this is what you think of me. I see, I see.”

She hands him the plastic bag. “Stick this in the fridge. I'll run to the convenience store and get trash bags. You have that time to hide or throw out anything you really don't want me to lay eyes on. Okay?”

Dazai says, “Do I have a choice?”

Yosano, grinning again, says, “No. Get looked after, idiot.”

There is nothing, really, that Dazai has to hide inside his apartment – his secretiveness lies not in the physical but in the things he keeps inside his own heart.

After a moment of thought, unsure what to do or where to start while he waits for Yosano to fetch the trash bags, he pulls down all the little bits of paper sellotaped to his closet door, one after the other after the other, and throws them in the trash can next to the table. They're all just receipts. Not even Chuuya knows he kept them, silly little mementos from their dinner dates and cashed in tokens at the arcade and even convenience store runs in the middle of the night after missions.

They're just pieces of cheap, fading paper anyway, a crumbling memorial to something already long dead, and Dazai doesn't want Yosano to ask him why do you have so many old receipts on your wall, why do you think about him still, why do you care?

Receipts on the wall are conspicuous, but receipts in the trash are nothing at all.

He doesn’t allow himself time to think about how much it hurts to throw it all out. There is no time, anyway, before the doorbell rings again, insistently, incessantly – Yosano asking to be let back in.

It shouldn’t matter. It’s just stuff, and it’s all in the past now anyway. Gone for good. No one ever has to know about the softer parts of Dazai’s heart.

Yosano stands in the entryway to Dazai’s dorm apartment and stares.

Piles of convenience store food trays and crumpled cans of various alcoholic drinks do not have eyes to stare back at her, but Dazai is sure that they would if they could. The tension feels like an old Western shootout in the making.

“It's bad,” Dazai says. “I know it's bad.”

“It's not that bad.”

“It looks like those hoarder shows you see on TV.”

“It does not.” Yosano tears open the pack of plastic bags, hands him one from the roll. “You’re so dramatic. It’s mostly cans and glass bottles. We can separate those for recycling.”

Dazai says, “Call me out for my alcohol problem, why don’t you.”

“Stop yapping,” Yosano says, “And start tidying. I don’t care how much you drink. The only way we get to eat good sushi at the end of all of this is by sorting it, so get to it.”

Dazai salutes. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll take glass, you do cans?”

“Sure. We can do burnable trash afterwards, for all the food packaging and whatever else is underneath this stuff.”

“I actually don’t know what’s underneath,” Dazai says. “Maybe we’ll find buried treasure.”

Yosano huffs a sardonic sort of laugh. “If the treasure is mould, then yeah, maybe.”

Dazai says, “Maybe we should’ve got gloves.”

“Too late. Get on with it before I bury you.”

They’re mostly quiet as they work through the assorted heaps of stuff littering the small room. There’s the occasional comment from each of them every now and again, an is this recyclable or not? here and a do you wanna keep this or chuck it? there.

It’s comfortable, in a strange way. Far from the tender borders of emotion, no mention of the reasons why they’re actually there.

More or less.

“I see you started smoking again,” Yosano remarks, picking up the clearly used (and almost full) ashtray on the table. “Y'know, you don’t have to be a doctor nowadays to recognise that shit's bad for you.”

“I accepted help,” Dazai says, “Not a lecture.”

“The lecture is the help, you fool,” she says. She doesn’t call him a fool with the same anger as Chuuya, or the same acerbic disdain as Kunikida. There is a warmth in it that Dazai doesn’t quite recognise. “I get it, the nicotine rush feels better than whatever’s going through your head, but I know that you know that lung cancer isn’t a painless suicide method.”

“With any luck,” Dazai says, “I'll find a better way before the cancer catches up.”

Yosano throws an empty can of Strong Zero at him. It bounces off his shoulder and clatters against the floor. He knows her aim is impeccable – she could have hit him in the head if she wanted. It's a warning shot. “You don't mean that.”

Dazai shrugs. “Maybe.”

She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, it's hard to know when you do.”

“You don't take me seriously, is that it?”

“Not really.” She shrugs. “It's kinda like… the boy who cried suicide, or whatever. It's impossible to know when you're being genuine and when you're just making trouble for the hell of it.”

“So it's easier to just ignore me?”

“Yeah, it is.” She straightens up, shaking her trash bag so that all the cans fall to the bottom. They rattle against each other, hollow. “Which is why it's all the more important that you ask for help when you need it, stupid.”

“I don't need help,” Dazai says.

Yosano snorts. “I believe that even less than your melodramatic suicide bullshit.”

Dazai thinks about that in silence for a while, shoving empty cup after cup of instant ramen into the open mouth of his plastic bag.

It's impossible to know when you're being genuine. That's not necessarily a bad thing, he thinks. It makes it easier for him to do his job, at times; easier to slip under the radar, easier to weasel his way into a whole host of situations. But harder, in the long run, for anyone to really trust him. For anyone to stick around.

Dazai’s not entirely emotionally calcified. He knows that there are benefits to honesty and openness. But he’s always thought of it more like a tool, adapted to specific situations, than something that might be good for him.

He doesn’t think a lot, really, about things that could be good for him. Those types of ideas only get him hurt in the end.

When at last all the trash is sorted, bagged, and taken out, the futon rolled away and hung up on the balcony to air out, the two of them sit down on the tatami.

There’s a moment of quiet. Dazai puts his head in his hands.

“Oh, hey,” Yosano says, managing to not sound nearly as awkward as Dazai is sure she feels, “There it is, there's the feelings. C'mere.”

She sits up on her knees, leans over his crumpled form, and puts her arms around him.

Dazai hates that all he can think of is that her embrace feels nothing like Chuuya's.

“I'm fine,” Dazai says, like the two-faced liar he is. “I'm not upset or anything. Just tired from cleaning up.” His voice sounds strangled because of the weird angle at which Yosano is holding him, he's sure.

“It's worse than I thought,” she mutters, half to herself. To Dazai, she says, “Look, Kunikida did tell you it's fine to accept that you're a human being, right? That it's fine to just feel things?”

“I know that,” Dazai mumbles back. “I’m not ashamed of having feelings.”

That much is true. In his teenage years, perhaps, he might have held back; out of some misguided attempt at upholding a reputation, at keeping a wall between him and the unforgiving world. A cold-blooded mafia executive does not have the need to love, after all, or care overmuch for the lives of others.

Now, though, it's a different situation. He'll never be a gentle person, or kind, and the violent impulses never quite go away, but he has no need for the unfeeling persona any more. It does not serve him or his goals. Still, his true self, his true emotions, remain at a distance.

It's not that he’s ashamed, or has some foolish idea that feeling things might get in the way of his analytical capabilities. He is a grown adult with decent compartmentalisation skills, and is more than capable of being logical in the face of potentially emotional situations. It's more like…

Feelings are so much. He's allowed himself to truly feel maybe only a few times in his life, from memory, and each time it has threatened to overwhelm him.

He doesn't like that sensation. The idea of not being in control – of feeling so much that he simply drowns in it – is frightening. And very little is frightening to a man like Dazai.

It had been that way when he first met Chuuya. The idea that there could be someone so like and so unlike him at the same time, the idea that someone could want to live that desperately, had flooded his brain like a tidal wave, so fast and so powerful that he could no longer hold himself upright. It had been confusing and messy, disorienting to the point of being incapacitated by it; his teenage brain, impressionable and not yet fully formed, forever marked by the experience.

It had been that way for a while, too, after Odasaku. Like there never would be anything inside him ever again except the pain of the grief and the leftover love that had nowhere to go. His head and heart had felt full with it, overflowing, choking him, blinding him. It had taken him two weeks to claw his way out of the dark and find a way forward.

He never wants to feel that way again. If he hadn't allowed himself to love so much, maybe he wouldn't have done in the first place.

Instead, now, he lives in fear of it, perched on a precipice of wanting too much, backpedalling every time he gets too close to the edge.

“Not saying you are ashamed of it,” Yosano tells him. “I'm saying you need to be honest with yourself about what you're feeling. You don't have to tell me about it – actually, I kind of don't want to hear about your relationship drama. It's weird to think of you having relationship drama like a normal person.”

Dazai snorts. “Kunikida said that too.”

Yosano pats his head. “Yeah, he's probably not the person to go to with your issues either. But even if you don't tell anyone what's up, for god's sake feel it. Put it into words instead of running away from it and pretending it's not happening. I promise it feels better than shutting out and shutting down.”

Put it into words…? Dazai can do that. Words are his thing.

“Splitting up was the right decision,” Dazai says, after a long moment of thought. “But it still kinda sucks ass. Coming back to a crappy dorm alone when I'm used to hanging out with him in the penthouse. Drinking convenience store one-cup sake by myself ‘cause I got no-one to share a bottle with. You know? It's boring. It's lonely. It's shit.”

“Thanks for being honest,” Yosano says. “Good job.”

“Might do it more often if you didn't make it such a torture,” Dazai grumbles.

Yosano laughs, not unkindly. “I'm sorry it's shit. Really, I am.” She lets go of him, sitting back on her heels, and while Dazai had resented the hug at first he now feels the loss of contact more than he expected. “Let's eat something delicious, okay? It might suck ass a little less if we have crab rolls. And just for now, I’ll be a person you can share a bottle with. If you want.”

Dazai's eyes light up, perhaps for the first time in weeks. “You brought sake?”

“Not the fancy shit you're used to with your ex,” she teases him. “I don't have that kinda mafia money. And it's a small bottle. I know what you're like about being self-destructive, so I’m not letting you drink that much on a work night. But yeah, I brought sake.”

Chuuya, Dazai knows, had reached into the space in between his ribs and grasped the shape of his soul from the very first day that they had met.

This, though – this is a different sort of being known. Of being understood. The kind that takes effort and time and prising your own heart open with a pocket-knife.

This, Dazai decides, is also good. Especially if he gets sake out of it.

He lets Yosano fetch the takeout bag from the fridge. They sit on the tatami cross-legged like schoolkids, eating straight out of the plastic trays without bothering with plates, getting steadily tipsy with the TV on in the background. There's some stupid variety show on that neither of them are too good to keep from mocking in increasingly ridiculous voices, shrieking with childish laughter through the commercial breaks.

At five minutes past midnight, Kunikida comes knocking on the door to remind them that quiet hours are from 11:30 until 6am, and they signed the contract for the dorm lease agreeing to such, and while he does agree that the personal circumstances Dazai is going through are outside of the norm, it's really much later past the cutoff than he can give grace for, and––

Yosano somehow manages to convince him to sit down and try a sweet shrimp temaki.

“There's a lot left over,” she had said, patting the empty space next to her. “Would be a shame if it went to waste.”

And Kunikida had blustered for a while, made excuses, tried to throw the rulebook at the situation, but eventually had given in.

It's all too easy. There's so much sushi left over, there’s no way they could have finished it with only two people. They'd used Dazai's own chopsticks for themselves – one of the few personal items he does have in the kitchen – so there's still spare disposable ones in the bag. Dazai wonders, later, if Yosano had planned it that way or if it was a coincidence. He knows a scheme when he sees one.

Either way, Kunikida is convinced to sit, and he stays, quietly making a dent in what's left of the sushi, organising the piled-up boxes as he goes.

They're all the same, at the core. They'll put up their walls, to hide their damage, get pissed off when someone tries to get inside, but in the end it's the companionship they crave. The trust, and the honesty, and the feeling of being safe in your own skin.

Dazai could stand to remember this from time to time, he knows. He's well aware he sequesters himself more than the other agency members do, and up until now it's felt more like a silly idiosyncrasy than a bad habit, but this whole thing with Chuuya has dragged more of him out into the open than he would have liked, and he's not sure he can pretend not to have emotions anymore.

The variety show switches to some game involving bento boxes. The guest contestants have to… stack them? As quickly and as quietly as possible? Dazai's not 100% sure, he's only been half listening, but it sounds about right for weird late weeknight TV. They're even using a decibel meter to determine win or lose.

Kunikida, now inexplicably holding his own cup of sake, starts detailing his own ideal strategy to win. Yosano tells him in no uncertain terms that he is wrong. Kunikida gets up to prove his theory, using the takeout sushi trays as his reference, and he is so deadly serious that Dazai cannot help wheezing with uncontrollable laughter. They don't have a decibel meter, but Yosano offers critique, too, smacking poor Kunikida in the arm with her glove when she perceives him to have failed. Dazai cannot breathe. He has to lean back against the wall, not look at either of them or acknowledge their silliness until he can catch his breath.

Somewhere inside, something very quietly says oh, yeah. Joy is a good thing, isn't it? Overwhelming, but good.

All three of them, of course, are hungover the next day.

Kunikida glares at Dazai as he waltzes in late, one hand pressed to his temple, forcing his glasses askew.

Dazai's own head feels so fucking heavy, but still, he makes an effort to skip over to the desk as sweetly and as nonchalant as he can. Delighted, he notices that Kunikida, despite his hangover, has not neglected to prepare his lunch box for the day. It sits, as it always does, to one side of his in tray, maximising efficiency in case he needs to take lunch at his desk. Perfect.

Dazai has never once prepared a lunch to take to work in his life. Still, in an effort to commit to the bit, he'd picked up a box of the same size at the hundred-yen shop on his way in – it's partially why he's so late. Only partially, though.

On his way to his own seat, Dazai slides his newly-bought box down on top of Kunikida's. It barely makes the tiniest of sounds as the plastic clicks together – almost silent.

“Forty-five degree angle on the descent,” Dazai says, “That's the secret,” and Kunikida bursts out laughing so suddenly that he chokes on it and has to double over in a coughing fit.

“Are you okay?!” Atsushi is filled with deep, clueless concern as he hovers over Kunikida nervously. “Dazai, what did you––”

“Word of advice, Atsushi,” Dazai says, twirling into his seat, “It's good to let yourself feel nice things.”

“Okay?” Atsushi says, bemused. “Mr. Kunikida, I'm going to get you a glass of water, alright?”

Dazai beams.

Dazai sits alone at the table. The lights of the port sparkle all the way across the horizon, the floor-to-ceiling windows leaving out none of the spectacular view. Dazai is sat at a forgotten table in the corner, halfway behind the bar, in a spot where he can easily ignore the rest of the clientele and be ignored in turn. The brightly glowing clock on the Minato-mirai ferris wheel ticks steadily up, minute by minute, and all Dazai can do is push his food around his plate, take sip after sip of wine, slowly eroding himself.

The steak is delicious. It ought to be, he supposes, since it cost him a week's budget just for this alone. It's highest-grade wagyu, brought in from Gifu prefecture, lightly seasoned, medium rare. It doesn't even need sauce, the marbled meat full of flavour, and it melts ever so softly on his tongue.

Eating it here by himself makes it taste like so much vaguely garlicky cardboard.

The wine isn't much better, either. He's not the biggest fan of red wine to start with, preferring the cleaner and sweeter taste of sake, but wine goes well with red meat, usually.

Chuuya ought to be across from him, pouring from the bottle – he never lets Dazai pour, always complaining about how Dazai does it, liable to spill. You need to twist it, he'd say, as you lift it, like this, and Dazai would watch the clever curl of his wrist, the tendons raising in his forearm where his perfectly white sleeve is rolled back, the curve of his spine as he leans over the table.

Chuuya, oh, Chuuya.

Tonight, there are little splotches of wine already on the pristine tablecloth, a ring of red under the bottle where it ran down the neck and seeped into the fabric. It's not that Dazai is really so clumsy at pouring. Mostly he pretends to be bad at it because he likes watching Chuuya do it – much like a lot of things. But now, it's more like… it didn't seem worth even trying to do it right. Chuuya isn't here to bitch at him anyway, so what's the point? May as well let the wine spill, let it stain, leave the damage where it is.

No use in trying to be better. Not for someone like Dazai.

He is perhaps feeling rather more morose than he had expected from this endeavour. The general outlook had been positive after the sushi and sake, and the bento box stacking affair, and he had therefore been expecting more of an upward trend.

Yosano had been right. He can do nice things for himself whenever he likes. He can buy himself nice food and it doesn't have to be a date night. So why does this particular nice thing feel so shitty and half-baked?

It's true that the last time he was here, in this restaurant on the very top floor of this fancy hotel, he had been with Chuuya. The night things ended.

But that's half the point. He doesn't need a partner, he especially doesn't need an annoying loud hat-rack spoiling the vibe. This restaurant is equally as convenient to get to from the agency offices as it had been from Chuuya's place, and it’s good to get used to coming here without him.

At least, that had been the intention.

Unfortunately, all Dazai can do is think back to that night. It's aggravating at best and downright tragic at its worst, when he feels he doesn't have control over where his own brain takes him. It is his greatest weapon, and when it disobeys him it feels like a much greater betrayal than the simple misfire of a gun.

He and Chuuya had made up in the car on the way here, that night, following the argument about the shoes and a good half-hour of stony silence – which is to say they made up in a way typical for them, not involving any sort of apology but rather Chuuya driving recklessly and at speed, tyres screeching, until Dazai had placed a hand on his knee and Chuuya had stopped, lawfully and carefully, at a red light, with a deep sigh that had seemed to come from somewhere deep inside his bones.

“You piss me the hell off,” Chuuya had muttered, as the light turned green and the car started back up.

“I know,” Dazai had simply replied.

He wonders, now, if he had said something else, then – if he had done something more, if he had tried to make it up to Chuuya in some way instead of relying on his partner's seemingly endless capacity for forgiveness – would things have ended as they did?

But Chuuya had opened the car door for him like a gentleman, kissed him in the parking lot as he'd stepped out, held his hand all the way to their reserved table by the window. He'd thought —

Well. If he's truly honest with himself about what he'd thought, that night and almost every night leading up to it—

I don't deserve this.

I can't get used to this.

The moment I start to want something, it is lost to me.

If I admit that I want this — with him, with me, forever — it's only a matter of time before he realises I am a ticking time bomb and cuts me loose.

I need to beat him to it. I need to be the one in control.

And where had that got him, in the end? He doesn't feel in control now. He's lost the thread of everything he intended to do somewhere in the tangle of mixed-up feelings inside his own head.

So maybe, just a little, he misses Chuuya. So what? It's not as though admitting that will do any good at all. Dazai ended things, already, and has likely long since exhausted the limits of Chuuya's forgiveness.

So he misses Chuuya, and there is nothing he can do about it except sit here and try to eat expensive steak he doesn’t feel he deserves, hoping that if he offers up enough nice things to the mercurial altar of his emotions he might one day feel something close to better.

It's a long shot. But his friends – apparently they are his friends – managed to convince him to try it anyway.

What an existence.

As he picks up another mouthful of dauphinoise potatoes, trying to at least pretend to enjoy them before they go cold, there is a clicking of heeled boots on the polished floor behind him. It's not the waitstaff, Dazai knows – they are silent and graceful in a well-practiced sort of way, and this step holds too much purpose, too much anger in the force of the footfalls.

“You.”

Dazai knows that voice. He’d know it even as an echo, even in the depths of his abyssal dreams. The sound of it is tattooed on his soul.

He scoots his chair back slightly from the table, leaning back to look behind him.

Chuuya does not look happy to see him. That’s not exactly a surprise, but there’s not even a hint of sadistic glee behind his eyes, not the slightest bit of revelling in Dazai’s obvious misery and discomfort. He stands with his arms folded, only the most dull and workaday of plain irritation cast in his face. There is, it seems, no more desire to tease or torture or taunt just for fun.

How strange and how vile that Dazai even misses that.

“Can I help you?” He drags it out, exaggerated as always.

Chuuya is unmoved. “Stop fucking stalking me.”

“I'm not stalking you. I'm eating dinner. Rather egotistical to think you have anything to do with it at all, isn't it?”

“This is my favourite restaurant,” Chuuya points out, dry and unsmiling. “We used to come here on dates all the time. You don't even like steak that much, so why would you come here after we broke up if not to get at me in some way?”

“It's nothing to do with you,” Dazai sniffs. Putting on an indignant and huffy air makes it far easier to lie. “And it's also none of your business. I am minding my own in a public place and you definitely weren't here when I walked in. I did check, precisely for the reasons you just mentioned. A better question is what are you doing here, when I was here first?”

“I'm here to work,” Chuuya drawls. “Have you heard of the concept?”

Dazai blinks at him. “Work?”

“Stupid,” Chuuya sighs. “This place is on the mafia payroll. That never clicked? Why d’you think we always came here?”

“Thought you just liked the wine list,” Dazai mutters. It's not often he's outsmarted.

Chuuya grins, wide and smug and feral. Oh, god, Dazai loves that smile. The kind that comes out when there's blood in the air. “I mean, they have that shit because we pay them, y'know?”

Dazai snort-laughs in spite of himself. Going back-and-forth with Chuuya, the witty repartee that occasionally changes lanes into outright insults, comes far too easily to them both. Like breathing back out after breathing in, it is simply natural to respond, to echo, to push back. “Look the other way when there's shady deals going on at the table, allow secret meetings in the back room, import the picky executives' favourite rare wine from Switzerland. I guess if you're already being paid off it's all pretty much the same.”

“Exactly,” Chuuya says, and just for a second, Dazai can pretend that things are the same as they ever were.

Silence stretches between them, a rubber band old and tired and perished, ready to crumble under the pressure. Because things are not the same as they ever were, and likely never will be again.

Dazai looks at Chuuya. Cannot help but look at him. They have been parted not even three weeks – it’s nothing, really, in the sense of the overarching connection of the last eight years, nothing compared to the four where they’d had nothing at all, but still, Dazai feels that insignificant blip like a hole in the heart.

He somehow fears that he might have already forgotten some small detail of Chuuya, without being around him every day, and he takes this unexpected opportunity to study the way his hair falls in his eyes, the way his stance shifts so easily, light on his feet and strong in his body. The tiny little ways he lives and breathes and moves even when Dazai isn’t around to see it.

Chuuya says, “Quit starin’. What the hell’s your problem?”

Because things might not be the same as they ever were, but Chuuya will always be able to see right through him, right into Dazai’s soul. It’s probably one of the most aggravating things about him.

“Nothing,” Dazai lies. “Just wondering why, if you’re here for ‘work’, you’re wasting time harassing me.”

“I think I deserve the truth.”

Dazai stares at him expectantly, eyes melodramatically widened. “About…?”

Treating Chuuya like he’s stupid is kind of a betrayal of their whole partnership. Dazai has never once seriously doubted Chuuya’s intelligence, their ability to stand on an equal playing field. Unfortunately, needless cruelty is a well-worn shield that Dazai wields very, very well.

“About you,” Chuuya spits. He says the word you like it’s a dirty word, a stand-in for the even worse expletive of Dazai. “About… whatever the fuck you think it is you’re doing. If you’re going to come into my space when I’m supposed to be free of you, when you’re the one that decided to end things, that’s fishy to me.” He rocks forward on the balls of his feet. Poised for a fight, in the subtlest of ways. “So. Spill.”

“I have nothing more I have to say to you,” Dazai informs him.

Chuuya moves before Dazai can blink again, dashing forward so lightly and so silently without even needing to use his ability, coming to land just behind the chair. His knife against Dazai’s throat feels as familiar and as thrilling as a kiss.

“Tell me the truth, you slippery fuckin' bastard.”

“You wouldn't kill me here,” Dazai taunts him, even as his heart threatens to vibrate right out of his chest, “Not in your favourite restaurant. You'd get blood on the floors. It's a health code violation, they'd have to close.”

Gloved hands tug sharply at Dazai's hair. Pain shivers along his scalp, goosebumps in its wake.

“Watch me,” Chuuya growls. “I'll do it.”

“You wouldn't dare––”

“Why'd you leave.”

“Leave the mafia? I thought I made my reasons quite clear––”

“Bein' stupid on purpose doesn't suit you,” Chuuya drawls. He presses his blade closer, through the bandages to softer skin underneath, and Dazai feels hot blood wet his neck. It might be the adrenaline rush, but it doesn't hurt at all. “Me. Why did you up and leave me.”

“I told you. We are not good for each other.”

“And I'm tellin' you that's bullshit. You cared, you manipulative fucker, you cared enough to miss me even if you pretend like you don't, so why did you blow up the relationship on purpose?”

“I don't miss you,” Dazai argues, because it’s one thing to admit it to himself but quite another thing to admit it in front of Chuuya.

“Bullshit,” Chuuya says again. He leans over, keeping his knife’s edge still against Dazai's neck, even as Dazai watches him, curious; leans over far enough to press a small kiss to his ex-lover's waiting forehead. And Dazai must have shivered, gasped, must have made some small imperceptible sign of his longing that even he hadn't noticed, because Chuuya's smirk reappears. “There. See?”

Dazai's favourite smile. The brightness of a summer sky in those eyes. The very same that had caught his soul on fire, eight years ago, had driven him towards life, kicking and fucking screaming the whole way.

Dazai is so very tired of fighting it, the act of living.

He flops forward, lets his head rest against Chuuya's sternum.

“Fine,” he says, half-muffled by Chuuya's shirt. “You damn stubborn mutt. Don't know how to let anything go, do you?”

“I don't know what you mean,” Chuuya says, “Explain,” and oh, Dazai could smack him. Now who's being stupid on purpose?

“...I got used to having you around,” Dazai admits, so softly, his words almost lost in the tiniest space between them, enough to claim plausible deniability in case anyone actually ever accused him of getting emotional. “Felt... weird, without you there. No yapping little dog in my ear. Weirder than after leaving the mafia, since we actually lived together this time. You know?”

“So,” Chuuya says, and Dazai feels he might be belabouring the point just a bit, “You mean to say, you missed me?”

Dazai is quiet. Chuuya's knife is insistent against his neck.

“Say it,” he demands.

Dazai almost retches. “Missed your stupid ass,” he mumbles, “I guess.” 

“Aw, baby.” It's both a taunt and an endearment, which is very fitting. Patronising enough to be cruel, too, but that's fine, Dazai probably deserves it that way. “You still didn't answer my original question, though. Why’d you do it?”

Chuuya has not let his knife drop from Dazai's neck. He is too close, blue eyes as piercing as his blade, and Dazai finds it too sharp, too uncomfortable to look at him directly, instead zeroing in on the fine threads of Chuuya's waistcoat, directly at his eye level.

“I thought my reasons were clear,” Dazai says dryly, “But if I have to re-explain myself to a stupid slug who still doesn't get the obvious, then fine. We were not good for each other. We were both sick of the fights, the constant antagonism, and we couldn't even escape each other when we were living together. It wasn't healthy, it wasn't even fun. It needed to come to an end, for everyone's sake.”

Chuuya considers that. He taps one gloved finger on the handle of his knife; once, twice, thrice, in deep thought. Eventually, he steps back, letting the pressure off from Dazai's neck, sluggishly oozing blood into his bandages.

Dazai looks at the steak on his plate, what's left of it. He'd ordered it medium rare, the fine china streaked with red. He suddenly doesn't want to eat the rest.

Chuuya sits down heavily in the chair opposite him, making the metal feet clatter. He crosses one leg over the other, leans on the table, nonchalant. He does not close his flick knife, holding it lightly between his fingers like an old-fashioned cigarette.

“You're evading the truth,” Chuuya says. “I know you well enough to know when you're lying – and you are lying, there's no question.”

“If you say so,” Dazai says.

“Listen,” Chuuya says with a sigh, “When you know you're right there's not a force on earth that can get you to shut your goddamn gloating fish mouth. You just fuckin' love showing the world that you think you're the cleverest specialest guy alive, with your oh-so-wonderful plan. I had to threaten this out of you, and you're still just repeating the same bullshit. Which means the truth is yet another layer down, and you're hiding it. The question is, why. Why work so hard to lie about something that's s'posed to be already over and done?”

He taps his knife with his fingers again. Purses his lips in a way Dazai struggles not to find endearing, even now.

Chuuya looks at the remains of the meal on the table. Looks at the half-poured out bottle of wine – all ¥23,000 worth. Looks back at Dazai.

The smile spreads slow and certain over his face like the tide pulling in to shore. Dazai loves this smile, too, although he's only been on the receiving end of it more in recent years – it is the smile of the fox that's cornered the shaking rabbit; his partner, the cocksure hunter.

Chuuya picks up Dazai's half-finished glass of wine from the table. Elegantly, of course, the stem held delicately as a paintbrush between gloved fingers. He does not ask Dazai for permission before taking a sip.

“Nice wine,” Chuuya observes, after tasting it. “Good year. Didn't think such extravagance was to your tastes.”

“Maybe there's a lot you don't know about me,” Dazai dares to goad him, although there's a small and fearful part of him that doesn't really know where Chuuya is going with this.

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Chuuya sighs. He leans back in the chair. He makes bad manners look so refined. “I don't know if you're trying to prove something to yourself with this whole thing, or to me, but it's time you quit it.” He gestures to Dazai's plate. “You know, you barely ate your food. If it's delicious, then eat it. Why hold back?”

“Chuuya doesn't have the brains to speak in riddles,” Dazai says.

“You and I both know that's not true,” Chuuya replies; soft and dangerous, the whisper of a snake's scales sliding under the sand.

“So say what you mean, already.”

“Oh, is it frustrating, to be played with like a toy? Does it annoy you, to be talked around in circles?”

Dazai doesn't reply.

Chuuya smirks, takes another swig of Dazai's wine. “You know what I mean,” he says. “If you want something, then take it.” Dazai doesn't begrudge him the wine – it's not really to his tastes, anyway. “Your whole life you've deprived yourself of shit, haven't you? Living in a shipping container when you could have had a decent Mafia-run apartment – yeah, I knew about that, you thought you were so fuckin' secretive an' all – convincing yourself that friends you love are nothing more than occasional drinking companions? Nothing more than coworkers? Burning every bridge, sabotaging your whole relationship on purpose, and for what? Because you think you don't deserve it? Because you're scared it'll fall apart? Because you think that everyone else's sins are worth redeeming except yours?” He scoots his chair closer to Dazai's, abruptly, staring intensely at his former partner. “It's stupid. You're only hurting yourself. If you want the fancy steak, then eat it. If you want to be less lonely, go out with your friends more. If you want me,” he says, “Then take me. I'm right here.”

“We,” Dazai says, working harder than ever to keep his thoughts on track with Chuuya this close to him, “Are a disaster. Bad for each other.”

“So you keep saying,” Chuuya retorts. “Broken fuckin' record, you are. You wanna elaborate at all, or just keep repeatin' shit that doesn't mean anything 'cause it makes you feel better?”

“By all accounts, I am an awful person.”

“And I'm, what, some sort of saint?”

Dazai snorts. “Obviously not.”

“Then…?”

“I will only hurt you,” Dazai says simply, “Or worse, destroy you entirely. And that would be a shame.”

“I seriously don't think you're as awful as you believe yourself to be,” Chuuya says in answer. His voice is still soft, but it's lost its dangerous edge. He swirls the wine in its glass. “And I'm not so feeble that I'd let you steamroller me into a lifetime of misery. Do you really think that'd happen?”

Dazai has to look away. He knows he is the one in the right, damn it all, not stupid Chuuya, but there is no victory in it, no success of solving any sort of puzzle. It is an empty sort of truth. “I saw it in your eyes, at the end. You used to be a flame, a rampaging fire, and I… dulled it. Dampened it. Made you so exhausted you couldn't even fight anymore.” He means this wholeheartedly, so much so it makes him feel lightheaded. Maybe it’s the blood he’s rapidly losing. Maybe it’s about as honest as he can get. Chuuya had always burned brightest, had ignited in Dazai a blaze of incomprehensible feelings since the day they met, had raged and fought and loved with the force of a towering inferno.

It's not Dazai's first time breaking a person from the inside out – far from it. But he might be getting sick of how it makes him feel to look at the fallout.

“Look at my track record,” he points out. “My ex-friends. My ex-apprentice.” He gestures vaguely at Chuuya in a way that tries a bit too hard to be derisive. “My ex-lover.” He has to smile, in the end, a wry sort of smile that doesn't quite plaster over the cracks. “You yourself called me ruiner. You were not wrong.”

Chuuya grimaces. “Look, we've both said things we regret—”

“But not things that were untrue.”

“Maybe. You are a dickhead, I'm not debating that. Who cares, though? What's done is done. What I'm more concerned with is what we can do from here on in.”

Dazai says, as plainly as possible, “We broke up.”

“Okay,” Chuuya says, like it's not emotionally devastating. “But by your own admission, you miss me. And god fuckin' help me, I miss you. Unfortunately.”

Dazai blinks at him. “You miss me?”

Chuuya snorts at his expression. “Yeah. See how easy it is to say when you're not an emotionally constipated dumbass?”

Dazai just says, “Why?”

“You mean why do I miss you?” Chuuya leans forward, unfolding his arms to rest instead on one knee. “Dunno. Lotsa reasons. S'nice when you hold me, and stuff. I get to hear your heartbeat and know that we're both alive. That's pretty good to have.”

Dazai says, “So date another tall guy. Shouldn't be hard, I think you probably come up to chest height on most men.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chuuya snarls, “I'm tryna be real, here, if you're capable of not bein' shitty for five seconds,” and Dazai is smirking until the blade of Chuuya's knife is once again pointed in his direction.

“And if you are capable of not being violent for five seconds,” Dazai replies smoothly, “Then say your piece. I want to finish my food and leave.”

“Liar,” Chuuya says. “If you wanted out, you'd have found a way to weasel out by now, or just run. Slippery fish.” He stares Dazai down, eyes wide, incensed. Dazai half expects him to bare his teeth. He knows his dog well enough, after all, to know when he’s in the final stages of the hunt. “You want this. At least, some part of you does. Or you'd be already gone.”

“Why don’t you leave the plotting and logic to me?” Dazai says. It’s such a non-answer, as easily duplicitous as any politician, avoiding the point. “Stick to punching and kicking things, that’s more your speed.”

“Fine,” Chuuya says. “If you wanna keep on lying. I’ll be honest for both of us until you feel like you wanna join.”

“Do whatever you like,” Dazai mutters. He picks up his fork, takes another mouthful of steak. It’s gone cold, but the flavour’s still good. He’s mostly doing it so he can pretend to ignore Chuuya.

Chuuya who is still glaring at Dazai with a really quite aggravating sort of sincerity.

“Mostly I feel it here—” Chuuya taps himself twice in the center of his chest, knuckles right on the breastbone, “—like, it goes deep, knowing you get me. Knowing I don't have to say shit and you just know what's up. No Longer Human feels calm on my skin, too. Quiet, cold. When you're there I know things are as they should be. Feels safe at night in a way I didn't know existed before. Y'know what that's like, for someone who grew up on the streets?”

Dazai opens his mouth, and then closes it.

Chuuya huffs, derisive but not angry. “'Course you don't.”

The implications of that, the idea that he isn’t capable of understanding, somehow rankle. Dazai sits up straighter in his chair, irritated. “I resent that.”

“Why? Guy like you, the boss’ personal protégé, handed an executive position on a silver platter? Wormed your way into the Agency by a personal recommendation from the government? Get real. You never had to work hard for shit. Never felt unsafe or insecure a day in your life.”

“That’s not true,” Dazai argues, not stopping to wonder how it is that Chuuya out of all people is the only one to get under his skin so consistently. “I never once felt at home in my own body. You don’t know what it’s like, you have no idea. My brain feels like a rabid creature clawing at the inside of my skull, all the time, searching for pattern and meaning in places they don’t exist. The first time I even knew quiet was when I got kicked through a wall, and then I looked up and my only thought was that your eyes were the same colour as the sky, and—”

He stops abruptly there, but he’s already said too much. He realises, too late, that he’s already been caught.

Heart hammering, he waits for the jaws of the trap to close around him.

Chuuya says nothing, only raises one eyebrow. The beginnings of a smug little smile are pulling again at his lips, the little dimple underneath his cheekbone starting to crease. The small details of him that Dazai had been so afraid would come out in the wash of memory.

“That wasn’t fair,” Dazai croaks feebly. “You baited me. Chuuya’s mean.”

“All’s fair in love and war,” Chuuya says with a smirk. “Not like you ever play fair either.”

Love, Dazai thinks. Love love love.

“So… what you said,” Dazai says slowly, hoping it sounds like a genuine question for the sake of objective fact and not a desperate plea, “About feeling safe with me. That was a lie, right? Just to get me cornered.”

“No,” Chuuya answers plainly, “That was true. I don’t have the need to make up bullshit about how I feel. But I embellished the rest. I knew you wouldn’t like me insinuating that you didn’t understand something, or that you don’t think about things. You’re annoying like that.”

“You know me far too well.” Dazai almost whispers it. It comes out less like the bitter accusation he’d intended it to be and more like a confession.

You know me down to the bones of my soul. How did you get this close? How dare you?

“Yeah,” Chuuya rolls his eyes. “That’s why we work well together in the first place, dumbass. Or were you so busy feeling bad for yourself and messing things up on purpose that you forgot that?”

He stands up, kicks the chair back with a clatter – he’s already pushed himself close enough that when he gets to his feet he fills Dazai’s vision; the dip of his waist, the neat pleating of his slacks, the way his hair falls over his shoulder. All Dazai can see is Chuuya, and really, if that’s not the crux of the whole damn problem—

“So,” Chuuya says, “Your head gets nice an’ quiet when you’re with me, huh? Sounds like we’re not as awful for each other as you wanna make believe we are.”

“Don’t make more of it than there is,” Dazai mutters. He doesn’t look up to meet Chuuya’s eyes. “You were just the first person I’d met my own age, that’s all.”

Chuuya abruptly grabs him by the hair, pulls Dazai’s head up, forcing him to look. Dazai had expected disappointment in his gaze, cold and unforgiving, but instead he is met with anger, passion-fuelled and fiery. It’s so very Chuuya, so achingly familiar and loved in the place where it sits in the archives of Dazai’s memory, that it almost dulls the pain in his scalp from being so suddenly and violently wrenched upwards.

“You’re still not bein’ honest, even now, are ya?” Chuuya growls at him. “What do I have to fuckin’ do to get you to talk?”

“What benefit is there in talking at this point?” Dazai snaps, matching Chuuya’s ire tit for tat. “It’s done. It’s over. What does talking get us?”

“This,” Chuuya says, and in a move that Dazai could not have predicted even if he’d taken weeks to analyse and strategise and scheme, puts his arms around Dazai and pulls him close into a gentle embrace. “You goddamn river-water-for-brains idiot, the benefit is us.”

Dazai is still seated, and with Chuuya holding him like this, cradling his head like he’s something delicate and precious, his face comes to rest somewhere around Chuuya’s collarbone. He smells the leather of Chuuya’s ever-present choker, worn with age but kept with care, the black-tea-and-tobacco scent of his cologne, the tang of gunsmoke that clings to his hair along with the fragrance of botanical shampoo.

Home, says the stupid, stupid little part of him that he has tried so hard to silence. Smells like home.

“You mean more daily fights over pointless things?” he says against the grain of the feeling. “Feeling on edge 24/7 waiting for the next big argument because we piss each other off as easy as breathing? Doesn’t sound like much of a benefit to me.”

Dazai feels Chuuya’s deep inhale surround him, from the tickle of breath in his hair to the rise of Chuuya’s ribcage against his cheek.

“Heaven fuckin’ help me, Dazai. Yeah, you piss me off. I piss you off. Our personalities are a total mismatch. But half the time I know you’re doing it on purpose, because it’s easier for you if you push people away with fake stupid bullshit than with your real self, right?”

Dazai’s breath falters halfway to his lungs. He’s close enough that he knows Chuuya felt it.

Nowhere to hide.

“Yeah,” Chuuya says softly. He tucks a lock of Dazai’s hair behind one ear. “Took me a bit to figure it out, after you left, but I got it in the end. We are a disaster together, my ass. You were just scared of anything real, weren’t you?”

Dazai blinks. Breathes out, unsteadily.

Searching for a lifeline, he rests one hand at Chuuya’s waist. It feels like the safety of shore after drowning.

“I was very much aware that you had and continue to have feelings,” Kunikida had said to him. “But I don't think that you allow yourself that grace, sometimes. If ever.”

And then the very same day, Yosano had said, “Even if you don't tell anyone what's up, for god's sake feel it. Put it into words instead of running away from it and pretending it's not happening.”

He screws up his face, as though he’s a child, pretending he cannot be seen. He is being forced into feeling. It is… so much.

“‘Real’ is bullshit,” he says, even knowing that to Chuuya, this close, it sounds too shaky to be believable.

“Alright,” Chuuya says. He speaks slowly and clearly, which Dazai knows must take effort for him, with his flint-spark temper and his tendency to slur his words together like the street kid he was and is. “If you really don’t want me here, then I will leave, and you will never see me again outside of a battlefield. But I need you to be honest about what it is that you want.”

Dazai twists in Chuuya’s hold, to look up at him. “Why are you doing this? It’s not like you. I thought you came here to punch my lights out because you figured out I sabotaged our relationship on purpose.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fuckin’ real with you,” Chuuya growls with his usual venom, “I wanted to beat the shit out of you. Or rather, wanted to beat sense into you. It’s just like your selfish ass to decide on your own what’s best for me. But, y’know.” He leans back just slightly, keeping one hand in Dazai’s hair as he studies him. Dazai never wants him to let go. “Way I see it, if I’m tryna get you to be honest, then I need to try to be patient. Make it so we both make a decent effort. For the better, an’ all.”

“How noble of you,” Dazai says. Sarcastically, like the asshole he cannot help but be.

“Besides,” Chuuya says, ignoring him, knowing he’s still deflecting, “Back then, when we had that big fight, you wanted me to push harder, didn’t you? You secretly wanted me to fight back, to work more at keeping you here, and I didn’t. As always, I played right into your stupid little plan, huh? Well, not anymore. Not gonna be your dumb little pawn in your self-sabotage scheme. I am your partner, you ass. In every sense of the word. That means we do it together.”

“So here you are,” Dazai says. “Fighting back.”

Chuuya shrugs. “S’what I do best.”

Dazai considers that.

The two of them work as a duo, he knows very well, precisely because they each have their unique and opposing strengths, and they play to them perfectly in tune.

Well then, let Dazai also do what he does best.

Lightning-fast, he takes an analysis of the situation. It is extremely possible, given the current variables, that Dazai could play this to get exactly what he wants. The negative arguments to the contrary – everything positive he desires will eventually crash and burn around him, he doesn’t deserve good things, he ruins the lives of everyone he touches – are rapidly being disproved by the set of circumstances he finds himself in.

It is possible for him to want, and to have, joyful experiences. His colleagues at the agency had pushed him into understanding that much. He has friends, he is learning, who trust him and value him. People who have seen behind the veil and still believe him worthy of living. Worthy of good.

The most logical outcome, Dazai is forced to admit, is that he should try to get what he wants. To reach for it with both hands, acknowledging his own desires and his own shortcomings, and take from life what good there is to be had.

Which is to say, Chuuya.

Well, that’s the easy part done – the thinking. Now comes the doing.

“I miss waking up with you in the mornings,” Dazai says. He forces himself to look Chuuya in the eye, to reward honesty with truth, commitment with devotion. They always were a sort of warped mirror image of each other, after all. “You always kiss me first thing. As soon as you’d silenced the alarm, you’d roll over to kiss me, without fail. It… it made me remember that there’s always something worth waking up for, even if it’s small.”

Chuuya eyes him carefully. “Was that a jab at my height? Because I swear to fuck…”

“No,” Dazai says vehemently, and then laughs, realising what he’d said. “Not an intentional one, no. Okay, I’ll give you another – you’ve never once doubted me. When I come up with a plan that sounds insane on paper, or I need you to take a risk when the stakes are high – you just do it. You trust me in everything. When I left the mafia, you didn’t need to ask me why I’d done it. You never challenged my reasons, you just accepted that’s what needed to happen. I know that’s kind of just who you are as a person, with this immense capability for understanding others, but, well.” He shrugs, sheepish, suddenly feeling like he’s said too much again. “I’m glad you’re like that. You’ll bitch about it ‘til kingdom come, sure, but when it comes down to it you’re always in my corner. Even now,” he adds, softer suddenly, “You came back for me. You didn’t stand for my bullshit when you knew I’d gone too far, but you… you still saw something worth saving. Something worth trying to understand.”

He wraps his arms fully around Chuuya’s waist, resting against him. In response, Chuuya noses gently at the crown of his head.

“I thought about what you said,” Chuuya murmurs. Dazai feels his lips moving against his hair. “About us being a disaster. I think you had a point.”

Dazai wants to say I thought me being honest was supposed to help. I thought this was a getting-back-together type of conversation. Was I wrong?

He’s not quite used to second-guessing himself, though. Instead, he says, “Oh?”

“Y’know, we happen to live in a country prone to natural disasters. Earthquakes, and such. What happens when there’s an earthquake?”

Dazai, incapable of not being glib, says, “Remember your emergency kit?”

Chuuya flicks him in the head. “Dumbass, I mean after. You take stock of the damage, right? And then you fix it. You pick back up again, and shore things up so they don’t crumble quite so bad next time.”

“What a clichéd metaphor. Please never become a writer.”

“You started it. What was all that bullshit you said about made for destruction? 2009 called, they want their emo poetry back.”

“We’re arguing again,” Dazai points out.

“Yeah,” Chuuya says. They’re nose to nose. It feels, almost, like the completion of a circuit, the electricity rushing back to life. “Disaster. See?”

Dazai kisses him.

There have been many kisses between the two of them, since they were teenagers, and Dazai almost always lets Chuuya be the one to initiate. He knows Chuuya likes that, knows he likes the feeling of power and autonomy when Dazai lets it be Chuuya’s choice.

Not this time. This time, Dazai needs to be the assertive one. Needs to let Chuuya know that he is in this, completely, body and soul.

Chuuya’s hand curls around Dazai’s jaw, fingers carding through his hair. There is a warm sensation that’s growing in Dazai’s chest, something sweet and melting that he has to fight so hard not to let turn sour. Not to run from it, not to try to ignore it. This is what feeling is. This is what being a person is.

They pull apart to a sudden and incongruous sound of cheering from behind them. Dazai swivels in his seat, curious, but does not quite let go of Chuuya, one hand still curled possessively around his waist. Chuuya, too, follows the sound, looking over Dazai’s shoulder. Had they been spotted, in their secluded little corner? How did anyone know they were finally repairing their damaged bond?

The attention of the room, thankfully, is not on them. At one of the centre tables, perfectly placed and lit softly by real candles, is a young man in an expensive but slightly ill-fitting suit, down on one knee on the shiny floor, and a young woman in a sparkly dress crying into her champagne. Despite the tears, they are both grinning ear to ear, and the patrons at the surrounding tables are applauding.

It doesn’t take Ranpo-level deduction skills to determine what just happened.

This is an upscale restaurant, after all, the kind most people would save up to afford, or save for a special occasion. Dazai ought to feel some sort of lucky that Chuuya brought him here on a regular basis, probably, but he’d never really thought about it like that.

“We'll never be like them,” Chuuya says.

Dazai takes his eyes off the happy couple, and looks back at the man he adores. It’s not hard – Chuuya pulls him in like a magnet.

“That’s a good thing,” Dazai says, “Isn’t it?”

Chuuya certainly doesn’t sound bitter about it. Chuuya, in fact, is smiling at Dazai, a soft little half-smile, as wistful and as tender as Dazai has ever seen him, his eyes the same as a sky above a cornfield in summer; peaceful, limitless blue.

“Yeah,” Chuuya says. “We’ll never be like that. Blissfully oblivious in love and sweet and dreamy and stupid and normal – and that's fine. I don't want to be so vapid and corny, anyway.” He strokes Dazai’s hair, gloved fingers twirling one of the little curls that frame Dazai’s cheek. “But we can be our own sort of good. Our own sort of extraordinary. And if we break each other apart in the end, then so fucking what? At least we were something real.”

“That sounds like you’re asking me to be more honest.”

“I am. Would it kill ya?”

“Maybe it would,” Dazai says, mock-seriously, “I’ve never tried.”

Chuuya rolls his eyes. “Well, you can start now. And just try to enjoy the ride instead of overthinking everything.”

Dazai flutters his eyelashes sweetly at Chuuya. “You gonna take me back, then?”

“Fucker,” Chuuya says, “I should make you beg for it.”

In spite of his words, he kisses the tip of Dazai’s ear, affectionate in a way that makes Dazai flush pink, nuzzling against Chuuya’s neck to hide it.

Nobody has to know he’s secretly soft on the inside, right?

“You’re not gonna do that,” Dazai says. His lips brush against the leather of Chuuya’s choker. It’s so intimate, so easy. “Look at those lovebirds over there. If I got on my knees to ask for forgiveness in a place like this people would think I was proposing.”

Chuuya snorts. “Let’s try getting back together first before we think about that.”

“It’s not a bad idea, though,” Dazai muses, toying idly with the buckle at the back of Chuuya’s waistcoat.

“You seriously wanna get married?” Chuuya says.

Dazai tries to lean into the way that makes his heart flip, and ignore the fear of being overwhelmed by it. “Nah, we don’t have to do it for real. Maybe we’d get free champagne out of it if we made everyone believe I proposed.”

“Finish your food, dumbass,” Chuuya says, “And then let’s go home. No schemes today. Yeah?”

“My food’s gone cold,” Dazai whines. “Chuuya interrupted me and babbled on for ages.”

“I’ll finish it, then,” Chuuya insists, plopping down in the other chair and snatching up Dazai’s fork from the table; because of course he does, because how could someone with Chuuya’s past ever stand to waste food?

He’s grown into it over time, the steak and wine, penthouse apartment and shiny cars lifestyle. Built it for himself, tooth and nail and trauma, to settle into a life that’s satisfying.

Dazai, maybe, thinks he might be able to learn to do the same.

For now, he pulls his chair up next to his partner, so close their knees are touching, and pours out a second glass of wine, so that Chuuya can have something to drink with his food.

The wine dribbles down the neck of the bottle and on to the tablecloth. It leaves red stains on the white fabric, on the cuff of Dazai’s shirt.

It’s messy. It’s always going to be messy. But the taste of it, Dazai is discovering, is worth the price.

“You didn’t fucking twist it,” Chuuya complains through a mouthful of steak.

“No,” Dazai says, beaming, “No, I did not.”