Work Text:
Dazai boards the train. He raises his head a little to read the electronic display—8:17pm, estimated arrival at final destination: 10:37pm. Clutched in his left hand is a letter he spent a full week writing out and editing, a double-sided assembly of heartfelt words. Words that he has wanted to tell his childhood best friend since a belated realization after a few rounds of alcohol alone in his apartment that he used to share with the letter recipient. Words that he knows, if not written down and materialized in physical form, will be lost and forgotten amidst friendly bickering and insincere exchanges. Words that are pathetically cheesy, yet strongly emotional at the same time.
The train ride starts out loud, noisy and sweaty. Red, yellow, black winter jackets dusted with now-melting snow press against his suit, leaving trails of wetness behind. People chat with their coworkers, trying to talk over their neighbors and kicking up a vicious contest to see which conversation is the loudest. He plops earphones in, leaning idly by the door. His eyes close, lulled into a hazy nap by the wave of warmth wafting through the train car.
He thinks about Nakahara Chuuya.
He’s seven again, and they’re in the local library together, getting excited over exotic-looking animals in an encyclopedia their child hands deem heavy. He points at the Siberian husky on the “canines” page.
“That’s my favorite animal,” he says, voice quiet and rich with a certain dreaminess.
Chuuya laughs at his dazed look; soft, nervous laughter muffled behind a gloved hand. Dazai looks at his friend fondly, wanting to shove him and nestle closer at the same time.
Then he’s eleven, attending the same middle school as Chuuya. The shorter boy has started taken a liking to hats, he distinctly remembers. He remembers because when he blurted out a confession, his best friend was busy arranging his collection in the closet.
“I like guys,” he says, uncertainty woven into his low tone.
Chuuya keeps on fiddling with the headwear in his hand, and for a hideous moment Dazai thinks the other boy didn’t hear him, or even worse, chose to ignore him. But then the boy puts aside the hat and tackles his waist, enveloping him in a hug. Dazai looks down, and tentatively, places his arms around his friend.
“I still love you for who you are; nothing’s changed. Thank you for trusting me,” Chuuya mumbles against the fabric of Dazai’s uniform. His heart races.
He flashes back to when he’s thirteen. The secret has gotten out—not through Chuuya, Dazai knows his best friend would never gossip about things like this—and he gets ridiculed and harassed more than he can take. This particular time, the bully has scribbled “Dazai Osamu x Nakahara Chuuya” onto the classroom blackboard, complete with a stick figure drawing and hearts adorning the border of the writing.
Dazai stumbles when he sees the message on the board, and he’s scared. He’s too numb to cry, just a horrified expression etched onto every corner of his face. The last person he wants to see pops into the classroom just then, fancy shoes clacking to announce his arrive. The footsteps halt as the owner of them takes his sweet time to read the board. Then Nakahara Chuuya turns to scowl at the class, barking a string of threatening words while grabbing Dazai’s hand.
They run.
Chuuya’s the only one that sees him crying, and he looks away when the first teardrop falls. Dazai has never been so grateful in his life.
The train doors open at a particularly busy stop. Wind blasts onto his unprotected face and he sneezes, face scrunching up at the cold. People brush past him, trying to exit. Overwhelmed by the flood of passengers, he loses his balance. His arms shoot out to brace himself for the fall, and the letter in his left hand is snatched out of his loosening grip by an unfeeling gust of winter air. He can only watch as the paper is dropped into the gap between the train and the station platform. He doesn’t feel anything, just a void opening up in his chest.
He stands back up, at a loss. The train doors close and he walks over to an empty seat among numerous others to sit himself. His watch reads 10:17pm.
He’d told Chuuya that he’ll arrive at the station no later than 11pm, but the worsening snowfall threatens the promise he made over the phone. He knows his friend will be waiting at the station instead of in his heated new apartment, despite Dazai having told him not to do so. His hands clutch the edge of the metal seats when the announcement is made. Indefinite delay until better visibility.
He uses this time to think more about Chuuya. What he’ll say, what they’ll do, how to tell him the words now left behind under train exhaust and city litter. He thinks about his friend’s soft orange locks tucked behind ears by a fussy mother—he wonders whether Chuuya changed his hairstyle, or dyed it even. He remembers occasional complaints about how Chuuya would rather have black hair like himself, or how he preferred the fluffy feel of his shorter hair to messy, long strands. He remembers how he held the other boy’s wandering hand threading through his black waves, how he gently led it to his face instead, pressing his cheek against the open palm. Chuuya had stiffened a little, but soon relaxed and closed his eyes. He leaned in and touched their foreheads together. They were sixteen.
He thinks about the one time Chuuya stumbled back into their shared apartment late at night, unquestionably drunk. He helped him to his room, tucking him in, all the while listening to mumbling about a hook up with a guy he met at the bar. Dazai remembers hurrying to the bathroom and throwing up once he makes sure that his friend is hydrated and resting. He still feels the twist of dread, jealousy and concern writhing in his gut when he thinks back. They were eighteen and graduation was approaching.
Separation follows the walk across stage for the diploma certificate, as it does for so many others. Chuuya’s university is a solid two hours away from home by train, so he moves. Dazai keeps their apartment and attends a local college. Their texts go from frequent check-ins to rare greetings as both make new friends and get caught up with a new chapter of their lives. Neither of them notice the shift; both are preoccupied.
It isn’t until Dazai gets beaten up in a bar that he realizes why he’s never felt complete since seeing Chuuya off at the train station. He’s called all kinds of slurs, face knocked in by harassers, hair torn out by aggressors. He realizes, while taking a punch in the stomach, that he needs Nakahara Chuuya. And later when he’s sobbing in his apartment, clutching the cushion that his friend used to lean back against, desperate to catch a whiff of familiarity again, he realizes over a pack of beer that he not only needs Nakahara Chuuya, but that he wants Nakahara Chuuya, he loves Nakahara Chuuya.
So when the train starts again after a 2 hour lull, he’s dreading the arrival because he knows that Chuuya would’ve gone home by then. Deserted him to the cold. Left him behind, again. He lets the bumping from the train knock his head against the glass windows repetitively. The nausea hits him and he squeezes his eyes shut but the feeling doesn’t fade. That’s how he knows that the cause isn’t the shaky motion of the train.
He’s shaken awake by the train operator, announcing their arrival and ushering Dazai to the exit. He mutely complies, limp body half-pushed, half-stumbling out the doors. He decides to stop by the waiting room, just in case of a miracle. A glance at the empty room is all he needs before shifting to leave the station.
He bumps into someone in the process of turning, a short body cladded in a black, furry jacket. He steps back and looks more closely at the orange locks and sleepy blue eyes which seem to be peering at him just as curiously.
Orange locks and blue eyes.
Chuuya beats him to it, grabbing Dazai roughly by the collar.
“You’re fucking late.”
Tears are forming in his suddenly brightened up blue, blue eyes. Dazai grins, dazed.
Then Chuuya tip-toes and presses his lips against Dazai’s, hands pulling the other closer. Dazai’s not grinning anymore, too numb to process anything.
“So-sorry.” Chuuya pulls his hands back, nervously adjusting his hat and looking down. “I didn’t m-mean to.”
“Then what did you mean to do?” Dazai asks quietly, having recovered from his daze.
His friend looks up and opens his mouth to answer, but Dazai catches his lips midway of forming a word. He can feel Chuuya tense up then immediately loosen up, like years ago. He can feel the other kissing back urgently, kissing back to free the frustration, longing and desperation after all this time being apart. He can feel the passion, want and affection previously kept from him, the feelings that were lost amidst unclear signals and blurry boundaries between friends to something more. He can feel the chapped lips mercilessly bitten during the grueling, anxiety-ridden wait for the train, can taste the salty tears of relief, can smell the warm air heavy with their scents mixing between them.
But most of all, he can feel Nakahara Chuuya, and that's all that matters.