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A harsh wind is waving the jacket on his shoulders as Dazai picks the lock a couple of steps ahead.
His hair is like fiery whips, slapping his fever-hot cheeks. He barely has the strength to snuggle down the hat on his head and prevent the nervous night air from make it fly away.
They are breaking into an old Mafia hideout for which neither of them has had the key for a long time. Chuuya barely even remembered this place existed – at least, not until he’d lifted his gaze and spotted the seemingly abandoned building rising against the leaden sky near the city’s industrial district. They had used it only a couple of times: too poorly stocked and too isolated to be really useful during missions. And yet now, the night silence of the empty warehouses all around, broken only by the tired lapping of water against the docks, seemed to soothe the storm Chuuya still felt raging beneath his skin.
Leaning completely on Dazai – letting himself be get to safety – had been a feverish dream. Time had stretched, contracted, and bent, while the sticky remnants of the singularity dulled his thoughts, and the familiar scent belonging to someone he had forced himself to believe an enemy wrapped around him – far too close.
Chuuya remembers slimy tentacles piercing the night; an explosion, two, a hundred; the nauseous feeling of space itself twisting under his fingers. He remembers the almost total lack of hesitation with which he had taken off his gloves and the view of the frightful pallor of his hands against the darkness.
They hadn't even trembled.
Why? , he had just had time to think, while the whole universe began to condense inside his chest and his vision was devoured by ink, why am I not afraid?
All it took was a dark gaze, as sweet as a cup of tea – one whose taste he thought he had forgotten. It had only taken a pair of thin lips curving into a smile that had instantly dimmed the light of the stars. Just a voice. The disgustingly comforting certainty of having him by his side again; and it didn’t matter if a line, thin yet impenetrable, still trapped them within the distance of opposites, because that night every single one of the thousands of boundaries they had imposed on themselves over four years of silence seemed to have dissolved, like a trail of blood washed away by the rain.
Fuck .
A second before losing his grip on himself, Chuuya's breath had clearly broken.
I won’t forgive you. Not if you’re the last damn thing I think about before I die.
A violent dizzy spell causes him to lose balance. He only vaguely sees the pale flash of a hand, wrapped in white bandages, slip around his waist to hold him up.
He grits his teeth.
– You don’t have to – he mumbles, his head treacherously falling against his chest.
– I’ll write it down.
Dazai opens the door.
The salty smell of the port fills the wood of the furniture. The air is thick with dust, which is skittering in the moonbeam sneaked through the half-closed shutters.
That place is nothing more than a room with a bare bed, a table, two unsafe chairs and some old crates full of empty weapons or, if they're lucky, rotting rats.
Everything in there smells of desperation.
– Your extraction point sucks – Chuuya manages to hiss through his clenched teeth.
– The Guild is looking for us – the other replies calmly. He closes the door behind them with the tip of his shoe, so as not to let him fall down – While you were unconscious, I left Q with Kunikida and Atsushi and I agreed with Mori to meet tomorrow morning. I had to choose a place where no one would look at. If they find us while you are in this condition, It would’ve been much easier to let you die.
– Yeah, yeah… thanks, great.
Chuuya grunts and awkwardly pushes him away. Dazai doesn’t stop him, watching him collapse sitting down on the mattress, after a couple of wobbly steps. The bed base it’s been evidently broken for a long time. It creaks ominously, while Chuuya struggles to keep his back straight. His head still feels like the scene of a shootout.
He pulls his coat tighter around himself, shaken by shivers. The fever will probably last all night.
– Don’t be stupid, just lay down.
Chuuya barely has time to lift his eyes from a dead ant on the floor when, with a rustle, something warm covers them, and a soft weight falls onto his shoulders.
– Hey! You bastard, get this shitty jacket back! – he growls at Dazai, pushing it aside from his face like a hood.
The other smiles, offering his profile. Now he is standing in front of an electrical panel that looks like an archaeological find. The glass door is so opaque that it could be mistaken for a cardboard sheet. Dazai forces it open and it snaps to the side with a cloud of dust.
– Don't worry, I’m just lending it to you – the man makes a fluttering gesture of his hand at him before raising a pair of levers upwards. They emit the same sound as a broken branch under the sole, and as they flicker, the light bulb hanging from the ceiling shows signs of life.
A yellowish light spreads through the room. Dazai nods satisfied to himself.
– Too bad, nothing exploded – he emits an amused snort, before turning toward Chuuya with a fist on his hip – If you don't lie down right now I’ll feel authorized to force you to with a kick in the jaw, just so you know.
Chuuya blows away a bitter laugh.
– I’d dodge it.
– Sure.
– Try it, asshole, come on.
– Wow, what a nervous baby tonight – Dazai raises his eyebrows. He makes that strict parent expression that Chuuya had always wanted to smack right off his face: his pursued lips, on the edge of an exasperated grimace, and the tuft of hair that swings softly between his eyes as he shakes his head – Chuuya, you’ve lost blood, you don't have to impress me. It's been years since you tried like this. I know how you feel after using Corruption.
I know how-
A sudden rush of hatred crashes over him, before he even has time to pin down the reason why. He doesn’t have the strength to get up. He doesn’t have the strength to wrap his gloved hands around that neck the way he wants to. And even if he did, that bastard would slip right through his grip like spring water – he always does – as if he could read Chuuya’s intentions before Chuuya himself has even formed them, deciphering the tangled pattern of his every twitch and picking the lock of his thoughts.
– You don't know shit – he yells at him, his temples throbbing. Both jackets on his shoulders fall flaccidly on the mattress, while Chuuya feels his eyes tingle with anger. A twinge of pain runs through his head, making him hiss. His voice dies in his throat, reduced to a trembling breath – You don't know shit – and he still can't figure out who, between him and Dazai, those words are really addressed to.
He has irregular breathing. His skin burns, as if it were still patterned with marks. His vision blurs, as if time itself were still tightening on him like chains.
Why the fuck do I get angry?
Dazai squints, his mouth reduced to a thin white line.
Why? Why does he know it and I don't?
– I have about five hundred and twenty ways to prove you’re wrong, but we can talk about it – Dazai crosses his arms in a maze of white bandages – Rest, Chuuya, please. A breath of wind would take you away.
The other responds with a disgruntled moan, halfway between a "Fuck you" and an "You asshole, forget it".
– If you keep insulting me I'm afraid you'll faint anyway, it seems exhausting, y’know?
Chuuya barely notices himself sliding sideways, along a mattress reeking of mold, helpless, under the gaze of the most dangerous man he has ever known, his eyes as heavy as black holes. His head spins like a planet out of orbit.
– I hate you...
It's like forgetting the meaning of space and time again. For once, though, it doesn't hurt.
Once again, the last thing Chuuya can see before slipping away, is Dazai smiling.
– Goodnight, little slug.
Corrupting hurts.
Wonderful pain. Wrong agony. Each time, it is like having feverish hands plunged in his head, reducing his soul to a white ribbon. Those bandages wrap around his wrists. More and more. Until they tighten so much that it hurts. So much that it rips the breath from his lungs and the world from his eyes.
Corrupting is a drug – synthesis of the absolute.
It is reality disintegrating itself. It is the crazy and intoxicating certainty of holding the infinity between one’s fingers, being able to break it forever under the weight of a single thought.
A god.
This is what he is – what he feels he is – when power flows through his veins. He feels the universe tearing apart in his hands as he falls down further and further into himself, like a star captured by the furious whirlpool of a singularity and suddenly swallowed by it. There, the void and the whole dance embraced in a rotten waltz made of dead suns.
When the gloves leave his skin, leaving him to deal with the terrifying whiteness of his bare hands, Chuuya loses the light.
He could swear to feel it to flash and disappear every time, until the only thing he can feel is the boiling darkness in which a human mind drowns, pushed beyond the edge of what one can understand.
It hurts, falling.
It’s delight, that madness.
The event horizon. Y’know what it is, Dazai?
Chuuya, I'm not a man of science, come on.
Dazai had sighed. His single eye, bored, had lifted from the documents scattered in an indecipherable mess along the desk before him. That half-gaze of his was a blot of darkness. A well of sin. An abyss leading to hell.
Chuuya was the only one who saw it as a cup of tea left to steep for too long. With just a pinch of sugar.
Me neither , he had hurried to answer, annoyed. He had tucked his gloved thumbs in his pockets, I had to learn something ‘bout it though, y’know?
I guess it makes sense. Come on, spill it, what is it?
Well, it’s the final border of a black hole , he replied, seriously, Beyond that, gravity is so intense that nothing comes out of it. Not even the light. Beyond that it's oblivion, get it? The singularity. The forces of the universe stop making sense there and everything returns to the primal conditions of its creation.
Dazai had slowly crossed his fingers under his chin, his eye half-closed.
So what?
Chuuya had grimaced.
A singularity is a mathematical asymptote, Dazai, if you’re not too uninformed to know what it means. It means to run wildly toward something that will never be reached. It’s like chasing a goal and getting lost on the way to achieve it. Dreaming of flying and then finding yourself falling endlessly. It's exhausting, doncha think?, feeling gravity crushing you over and over again, knowing you can't go back. You know you’ve crossed a limit and then you’re trapped in regret of not having had the strength to stop in time.
Dazai had been silent for a moment.
I'm not good at physics , he had finally said, in a resigned sigh, I'm glad you found a way to spend time outside your missions, studying this stuff, but I doubt your Ability can go as far as manipulating the human psyche like that.
The other had smirked.
No, you idiot, not me , he had chuckled, I was just thinking ‘bout how ironic it was: we’ve learned to take others beyond the event horizon, in different ways, you and I.
Chuuya sleeps little and badly that night.
After Corruption, reality always takes a while to settle down in the right way.
Chuuya can’t really measure what “a while” means, because time has always held a far less defined meaning for him than it does for the other people.
He had learned to handle those anomalies late. He’d finally managed it as a boy, just before he began to fall headlong into a gaze warm and deep, like a cup of strong tea. That was back when his hands still stiffened inside the pockets of a hoodie he’d found on the street, and he stumbled on every step because the soles of his shoes were torn through.
Before he learned to control himself, he would vanish for days at a time, without meaning to, and endure the desperate cries of the other Sheep when he finally came back – how they would hurl themselves at him like little stray cats after a week in which he apparently disappeared into thin air. Actually, most of the time he had simply fallen asleep in the shadow of a particularly welcoming lane. The gravity, warped by his dreams, twisted the universe so far out of shape that, for him and him alone, the flow of time slowed to a crawl compared to the reality surrounding him.
It’s only been an hour, for him, with his head gracelessly leaning against a pile of crumpled rags – whole days had passed, for the rest of the world.
As a child, Chuuya invented incredible stories to fill the gap of those weeks he had never experienced.
Chuuya fought a dragon; Chuuya defeated an entire gang all by himself; Chuuya visited another country.
The Sheep believed him, amazed, their big eyes wide open with wonder as he told of his heroic deeds with the arrogant voice of those who have seen everything and know about the world. Of those who, at 14, know perfectly who they are and who they are supposed to be.
Now, as Chuuya wakes for the seventh time on a mattress that reeks of rot, his heart pounding wildly in his chest with the blind terror that he’s lost entire months of his life without even realizing it, he wishes he could seize back that sense of safety – lost by a fourteen-year-old boy, somewhere between blood-stained alleyways – and hold it tight. Just once last time.
Seven times now he’s woken only minutes apart, his mismatched eyes wide and glassy, twin sun and moon, his breath ragged and twisting in his chest; seven times in which Dazai has given him calm, placid smiles from across the room, his head tipped back against the wall and his eyes heavy-lidded like someone dragged awake by the sudden shift in Chuuya’s breathing.
He’s still here . For the seventh time, a wave of relief hits Chuuya and he hurries to swallow that feeling like a bitter pill.
Just like an evil matryoshka, that hides layers of fears that he had fooled himself into thinking he was strong enough to fight. One inside the other. Smaller and smaller, heavier and heavier.
I haven’t lost any more years.
I haven’t lost any other chances.
I haven't lost you.
– Bad dream? – Dazai now moans, and those words fully wake Chuuya up as he regularizes his breathing. The light bulb is off now, and a trail of pale night light, leaked through the broken shutters, divides Dazai's face right between his eyes. It looks like the ghost of a blindfold.
– An horrible one – Chuuya now replies with a slurred whisper – I was stuck with you in a room that smells like dead rats.
– What a nightmare.
– And stop watching me while I sleep, man, it's disturbing – Chuuya vaguely adjusts the two layers of raincoat over his body, before freezing to look at the collar of Dazai's jacket between his fingers. In the previous half-sleep, he hadn't even noticed it – You also have to stop tucking in me without asking, you weirdo! – he hisses then, weakly looking up towards him. He must look ridiculous, with his cheek pressed against the mattress and his ginger hair smeared around his head like an exploded paint tube.
Dazai's smile widens in response.
– Usually we say "thank you", Chuuya.
– Shut up, Dazai.
– You know, you’re doing this all by yourself.
The other frowns as he wiggles in the cosy shell of their coats, settling in. It sucks how pleasant it is. Dazai’s is still drenched in his scent – vanilla, blood, night rain – the same scent that had wrapped around Chuuya from every direction as they walked away from the battlefield against Lovecraft, his mind swaying unsteadily on the edge between wakefulness and shadow.
Chuuya clenches his jaw, his temples throbbing so much to make his ears ring, and pushes his palms against the mattress to get up. His body appears to weigh about a ton. He realizes, with hatred, that gravity is turning against him.
Dazai raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t comment.
A couple of times, Chuuya fails, collapsing face-first onto the bed and pressing a frustrated groan into the mattress. When he finally manages to lean his back against the wall, jackets half-slipped off his shoulders and his head feeling like it’s about to explode, an annoying part of him wonders why he didn’t just stay curled up in the warm scent of vanilla.
– You haven't slept even three hours – Dazai points out as their eyes meet in the half-light.
– I'm good.
– You're so pale that you glow in the dark, honey. And that’s not a compliment.
Chuuya rolls his eyes. He stretches his hand towards the hat, slipped next to him, and awkwardly jams it on his head.
– Geez, as you like. But if I smell this mattress just a minute more I’ll end up poisoned.
– Really? – Dazai straightens up suddenly – Move, I want to try.
Chuuya could smack him in the face with a brick.
– Fuck, forget it. Don’t you dare come closer – but Dazai is already getting up, an angelic smile spreading across his cheeks. Annoyed, Chuuya tries to shove him away with a weak kick, nowhere near the kind he usually uses to knock him flat. Dazai, of course, dodges without even thinking and lands gracefully beside him, making the bed groan under the strain.
Crossing his legs, Dazai stretches and laces his hands behind his head – Chuuya barely avoids the other from purposely knocking off his hat.
– Happy now? – Chuuya provokes him. He nestles deeper into their jackets, without looking at him.
– I'm moved, this thing is even more uncomfortable than the floor.
Vanilla scent is now everywhere, even among the smell of mud, blood and the sour one of their sweat.
Vanilla tea. With a pinch of sugar.
Chuuya’s tongue goes dry.
They remain silent for a while.
They’re close – too damn close – and this time, both of them are awake enough to feel the silence pressing in, heavy enough to swallow the tiny gap between them like a black hole.
They orbited around each other for so long that Chuuya felt Dazai as steady as dawn. They were two suns, rising for one another every morning – distant and entangled at the same time – caught in a play of instable gravity that they had both tried hard to escape, only to find themselves trapped in each other’s presence.
And when the balance finally broke, leaving Chuuya lost in the cosmic void of a lonely system, the Sun, overnight, stopped rising.
He had opened a bottle of wine, his head tilted towards the hundreds of stars scattered on a clear night sky, unable to find his own. With his fingers wrapped around a crystal glass, on the verge of shattering, he wondered if somewhere another star was doing the same.
Chuuya takes a shaky breath as he anxiously realize that the only scent he can smell is Dazai’s.
What leads two stars to meet on the same orbit after so long?
What leads them to come back together in an inexplicable gravity that neither of them has ever learned to control?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
Or maybe he’s just waiting for someone else to say it loud, because somewhere along the way he lost the ability to explain the whirlpool churning inside him: it only grown deeper since the day Dazai left. He doesn’t want to explain it. He doesn’t want to understand it, because the thought alone terrifies him.
Ironic, how that monstrous blot of horror, the one that used to eat away at him piece by piece, had suddenly gone silent the moment Dazai, in a voice soft as a breath, had asked him to trust him.
The only thing Chuuya knows for sure is that they’re colliding, and there’s no stopping it; they could both collapse, or become something else entirely.
– Chuuya.
The young man freezes when Dazai pronounces his name. He dares to cast a glance at him from below, but the other’s gaze is wandering, chasing the slow movement of the circling dust in the air.
– Hmm – he replies then, with a mutter.
– What is it that I don't know?
Chuuya blinks, frowning under his hat.
– The heck are you talking about?
– Earlier. You said I don't know anything. Explain yourself – Dazai lets his arms fall loosely back into his lap. The thumb and index finger of his right hand meet and part again, like a soft pinch, before he repeats the same motion with his thumb and middle finger, then his ring finger, pinky, and back to the ring finger. It’s a slow, rhythmic tic – hypnotic enough that Chuuya finds himself staring at it for a few silent seconds.
– Dunno – he exhales at the end – Forget it.
Dazai closes his eyes for a moment.
– Why do you always act like this?
– I told you to forget it – he growls at him now, then he falls silent. After a moment he adds: – Act like what?
– You try to hide things from me – chirps Dazai – As if I didn't know you even better than that jacket you stole from me – and he motions with his chin toward the coat wrapped around the partner’s shoulders.
– You piece of sh- It was you who gave it to me!
– You’re getting some color back in your face. That’s a good thing, you know?
With an irritated motion, Chuuya shrugs out of Dazai’s trench coat, crumples it up roughly, and tosses it straight into his face without a shred of ceremony.
– This beige disgusts me anyway – he says as the other chuckles – If you apparently know everything better than me, it's pointless to answer you, right? – Chuuya continues, exasperated, as Dazai moves his jacket away and shakes his head to fix the hair.
– Do you trust me enough to let me read your mind, without having the slightest certainty of what I’ve assumed?
Chuuya snorts. Without the other's jacket on, now he is almost cold.
– You do it anyway, so what’s the point?
– You just admitted that I can read your mind.
Chuuya grits his teeth.
– Fuck, Dazai, you-
– You're right, I don't know.
Chuuya freezes, giving him an inquiring look from under the brim of his hat. He can’t see his eyes, which are hidden behind a curtain of dark hair, but his mouth is like a white scar.
– I don't know how you feel, during Corruption. I don't think I ever asked you, it wasn't important – the young man continues, and those words leave him in a tight, awkward mix between a scoff and a laugh – I don't know what it means to live it in first person. To drive you to the edge after so long. I just thought it was the fastest way to get out of... whatever happened before.
– You used me.
– I gave you a choice.
– There are no choices, not with you.
Dazai falls silent. For a moment Chuuya fools himself into thinking he will apologize to him. But as the silence spreads, he understands bitterly that that piece of shit next to him can dress in any color – wear any jacket that helps him to silence the voices tormenting what’s left of his conscience – but, in four years, nothing has really changed.
– How is it? – Dazai asks at the end – What’s it like to Corrupt yourself?
Chuuya grimaces. Slowly, he’s starting to get his strength back. All it takes is a glance at a rusted nail jutting out from one of the warped floorboards for it to twitch and, with a flash of red, fly straight into his hand.
He can feel Dazai’s gaze on him as the nail hovers a few inches above his gloved fingers.
– Now you care about it? After I yelled at you?
Dazai shrugs.
– You’ve yelled at me many times: that’s not what makes me ask you something or not.
– You need this info to use me better in the future? – Chuuya provokes him.
– Maybe – the other admits – Or maybe I'm getting so bored waiting for dawn that I want to hear you talk about physics. Holy moly, am I going crazy? – he gives Chuuya a crooked smile, which he can’t interpret.
Chuuya lets the nail drop to the floor, and it lands with a solitary clang that, in the stillness of the room, sounds as loud as a gunshot.
– It’s not good, that’s all you need to know – he finally replies, in a low voice – When I fight, it's still me, I think… But there’s also something else. Fuck, it’s so hard to explain.
– Do you cross it? Your event horizon?
Chuuya looks at him. Dazai's dark eyes glow in the semi-darkness like a couple black pearls. He will never get used to seeing them both. It is just wrong, as if he were violating a forbidden border, entering a parallel dimension, or reading the forbidden page of a book he knows by heart.
– No – he replies, flatly.
I’ve crossed yours .
– Better this way. You said that there’s no going back when it happens, right?
Chuuya doesn’t answer. He presses a hand to his temple as he leans forward on the edge of the bed and drag himself up. His shoes hit the floor with a hollow thud. With an impatient kick, he sends the nail from earlier skittering away and scans the stacked crates with sharp, restless eyes.
– Did you find anything good to eat in this rathole?
Dazai lets out a low, quick chuckle and springs to his feet to follow him. He walks past him, presses a switch, and the light bulb flickers and coughed, forcing Chouya's swollen eyes to tighten to get used to the sudden glow.
– Are you hungry, little slug?
– It depends on how edible the garbage you left here four years ago is – he pauses, then gives him a killer look – Call me like that one more time and you’re done for, bastard.
He shows his teeth as Dazai's lips shape into a new smile – a delicate one, as sweet as sweet tea – that Chuuya wants to smash off with a solid hook.
– Here he is. Welcome back. Miraculously still in one piece.
They look at each other. Blue and gold into strong tea. They are angry and incompatible stars. They are twin black suns, recklessly rediscovering the embrace of a constellation, and for a single night, becoming one again.
For a breath only, Chuuya could swear that time has stopped.
– Shut up, Dazai.