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Dazai is dead.
It had been an accident, a job gone wrong. Chuuya is having major trouble processing this information, but that doesn't make it any less true. His annoying partner is dead, gone, no longer exists in this world.
He thinks that maybe if he repeats it to himself long enough, the reality will start to sink in. He’s sitting on the bed in the hotel room they’ve been staying in and he doesn’t feel anything. He should, but he doesn’t and he doesn’t have the energy or mental capacity to worry about that right now. So he turns to one of his favorite coping mechanisms.
There’s a bottle of Dom Perignon in the mini fridge that the two of them were supposed to share after a successful mission. Chuuya uncorks it and takes a long chug straight from the bottle.
He drinks himself to sleep.
*
With a groan, Chuuya wakes up the next morning to his phone’s alarm.
Which is a problem, not only because he has to be conscious and deal with reality now, but because he doesn’t remember setting an alarm last night. He’s mulling this over in his mind when he hears the shower turn on, and now he’s fully awake. There shouldn’t be anyone else in this room not with Dazai….gone, so he would very much like to know who’s messing around in the bathroom.
He’s out of bed in an instant, hurtling towards the bathroom. There’s steam rising from the shower, and he rips the curtain back without hesitation.
Seconds later, he’s falling backwards with a yelp, hand shooting up to cover his eyes.
“Oh my Chuuya, how forward of you. If you wanted to get in with me, you should have just asked.”
Dazai has come back from the goddamn grave to haunt him or Chuuya has died and gone to hell, because those are the only plausible explanations for why his dead partner is currently having a shower in their hotel room. Chuuya sputters for a moment on the ground, lowering his hand just enough to peek over it to make sure he’s not hallucinating.
Sure enough, Dazai is still there in the shower, still very much naked.
“Why the fuck are you here?” He blurts out, covering his eyes again. He hears the shower shut off, followed by the sound of Dazai’s bare feet hitting the tiles.
“Where should I be?” His partner asks, and Chuuya doesn’t risk opening his eyes again until he hears the towel be pulled from its rack. Dazai is too much to deal with fully clothed; naked is beyond his capabilities.
Chuuya’s highly tempted to respond with ‘dead’ but that’s not something to be talked about lightly. He’s starting to think, with Dazai very much alive and dripping in front of him, that it’s possible he’s imagined the entirety of yesterday. The thought is highly appealing to him, so he goes with it, ignoring his gut feeling that there’s still something very wrong.
“You should be getting dressed!” He snaps at his partner, and within seconds, him and Dazai are bickering back and forth like they always do.
And it’s surreal, because the day repeats itself just like it had yesterday, and Chuuya’s pretty damn sure he’s not clairvoyant but he has no other explanation for what is going on.
Dazai dies again, and Chuuya drinks himself to sleep once more.
*
This has moved beyond strange and into downright upsetting.
Chuuya is now wholly convinced that he’s stuck in some sort of time-loop, laws of reality be damned. For the past four days Chuuya has watched his partner die in the same goddamn way at the same goddamn time and not been able to do a goddamn thing about it. He’s joked about killing Dazai before, yelled it in the heat of the moment (something he feels now was done in rather poor taste) but this...this is not what he wanted.
It’s not just Dazai’s death that’s the same either.
Every morning, his phone goes off at the same time, followed by the shower, that always has Dazai in it who always says the same thing when Chuuya bursts into the bathroom, and the mission always goes wrong and-
He’s about this close to losing his mind in all honesty.
So yeah, he’s stuck in some sort of loop and who the fuck knows why (he learned long ago not to question things in the world), and nothing he’s been doing has seemed to have any effect on the situation. He can say different things, he can push Dazai out of harm's way-some weird butterfly effect is going on, and it’s decreed that Dazai is not going to live past today.
On the evening of the fourth day, he’s back in the hotel room with the same bottle of wine that he’s drank for the past four evenings in a row. Chuuya stares into the bottle, sloshing the liquid inside back and forth, back and forth, thinking. There’s so much he wants to say to his partner, but who the fuck would believe him and what difference would it make anyway?
He goes to sleep desperately wracking his brain for anyway he can escape from this hell.
*
God must exist, and he must really fucking hate Chuuya.
It’s now day five of this weird time paradox and absolutely nothing has changed.
“Oh my Chuuya, how forward of you. If you wanted to get in with me, you should have just asked.”
Day five, and Dazai still greets him the same way, with the same stupid smile on his stupid face that won’t exist by tonight because the asshole will be dead and Chuuya will be alone again with booze and pain and this is all too much for him.
His emotions and exhaustion must show on his face because Dazai calls out to him softly, grin slipping off his face, barely making himself heard over the running water. “Chuuya…?” Dazai sounds worried about his partner, and that’s the final straw. He’s spent five days suffering and terrified and he doesn’t want to deal with this alone anymore. The redhead launches himself at the other, flinging his arm around Dazai’s neck and burying his face into the other’s neck.
He hasn’t cried since he was taken in by the mafia, but the tears flow freely now. Chuuya is sobbing earnestly, deep, heart wrenching sounds that make his body shudder and his breaths catch in his throat. He’s getting soaked from the shower and he’s pressed up against his very naked partner but he’s beyond caring about any of that.
“What’s wrong?” Dazai, for all his assholish ways, always knows when to be comforting. His voice is soft and gentle, and he doesn’t seem to care that his fully dressed partner has just flung himself into the shower with Dazai. His arms wrap around Chuuya, sheltering him from some of the spray from the showerhead, and rub soothing circles into his back.
And Chuuya is so, so tired of being alone, so afraid Dazai will be ripped from him again that he spills everything-the words come tumbling from his lips in a jumbled mess, and sobs keep making him start and stop awkwardly, but he tells his partner everything. Dazai listens to him through it all, silent.
“And I can’t watch you die again Dazai, I can’t, because it hurts so badly and I feel so damn helpless and-and-” He’s tripping over his words, and god he hasn’t been this bad at speaking Japanese since Kouyou and Dazai taught him all those years ago. “I can’t stop it.” He whimpers, and Dazai’s hands press down in an automatic gesture of comfort. “I’ve tried and tried and tried, but nothing I do matters because you die and I’m alone and…” His voice trails off, and he shoves his face further into Dazai’s neck.
“It’s okay.” Dazai’s voice is still gentle and even and Chuuya shakes his head fiercely.
“It’s not okay!” And it really, really isn’t. “Do you know how awful it is to watch the person you love die day after day?!”
Chuuya doesn’t realize he’s said that last bit out loud until he feels Dazai stiffen. “What was that?” His partner sounds just as confused as he feels because, holy shit, he does love Dazai doesn’t he? He’s in love with his stupid fucking partner who can’t seem to make it through one goddamn day and, no, he really can’t deal with this right now.
He moves to pull away from Dazai, mumbling half hearted excuses and lies in French, ready to escape to anywhere where he can try to make sense of the world only to be stopped by his partner.
Dazai is looking at him with eyes that Chuuya can’t read, and there’s water dripping down his hair and his eyelashes, and he’s so damn beautiful and-
And then he’s kissing Chuuya and there’s a desperation to it, and Chuuya’s heart is pounding and his hands are fisted in Dazai’s hair and there’s water running down his back and for the first time in days Chuuya feels something that seems suspiciously like hope in his chest.
*
“You love me.” Dazai’s voice is light and teasing, but there’s also a note of wonder hidden in it that Chuuya can pick out because he’s known the other for what seems like an eternity.
“You’re the one who kissed me.” Chuuya says in response.
“Cause you love me.” Dazai sounds so happy after the hell that Chuuya’s been through that he wants to punch his partner, but Dazai is warm against him and his heart's still beating and Chuuya is content just to be held right now.
“Shut up.” He mumbles back, burrowing closer to the other. “Still can’t believe that you find that more shocking than the fact that I’ve been reliving the same day over and over.” Dazai had looked over his shaking, sobbing partner once comparing it to the normally put together if not slightly angry partner he was used to, and that’s all it had taken for him to believe Chuuya’s story. If he’d know it would be that easy, he would have spilled his guts to Dazai three days ago.
Dazai chuckles, and the sound is warm and low and makes Chuuya shiver. “Can’t blame me for that one partner. Which do you think would sound more realistic if our situations were reversed?” Chuuya can feel his face turning red, but Dazai has a point (just like he always does, the dick) so he doesn’t bother with answering.
They had decided (well, Dazai had, Chuuya was still a bit of a mess) that the safest thing to do would be to skip the mission today and stay in their room, just to see if they could get out of this loop. And it does feel like something has changed. The tension that’s been coiling in Chuuya’s gut for days has finally started to loosen, like his confession was the key that he needed to get out. He’s not quite sure how he feels that it took him so long to recognize his feelings or that it took a damn declaration of love to fix this mess, but he’s getting less angry with every brush of Dazai’s hand against his hip, every kiss pressed to the top of his head.
Abandoning the mission temporarily and staying in had translated to ‘push the two beds in the room together and cuddle all day’ something Chuuya discovers he is perfectly fine with. It’s late at night now, close to the time Chuuya would normally be opening the bottle of wine and drowning his emotions in booze. The realization makes Chuuya tremble, something that Dazai feels pressed so close to him.
“You okay?” His partner’s question is quiet, concern evident in his voice.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep.” He admits, feeling weak and pathetic, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Chuuya feels Dazai shift in the dark next to him, feels his partners arms tighten around him.
“I’m still alive now, yeah?” The idiot doesn’t seem the least bit phased that he’s been dead five times over up to this moment. And his question is valid-he’s never survived until this point before.
“But what if you die in your sleep? What if the day resets anyway? What if….?” Dazai cuts off his questions with a kiss and a tight squeeze.
“I won’t leave you again Chuuya.” And his voice is somber and caring, and his words are a promise that Chuuya wants to believe in.
For the first time in five nights, he falls asleep in his partners arms, the bottle of Dom Perignon goes untouched.
*
The next morning, it isn’t Chuuya’s phone that wakes him up; it’s Dazai, pressing a kiss to his forehead.
He breathes in deeply, letting the tension melt from his body; everything is going to be okay.