Work Text:
It was Dazai’s sixteenth birthday when Chuuya gave him a camcorder as a gift so he could record and take pictures of everything he liked, a way to help the young Dazai not fall into the same deep depression he usually did — for him discover the beauty of life — though Chuuya would never admit that.
Dazai was suspicious at first, but he kept it as something precious — it was given by someone important.
A few months later, the dark-haired boy finally used his gift, taking photos of the sunset, the landscapes of Yokohama, stray cats… and everything that made him happy.
After taking the pictures, Dazai transferred them to a USB drive so the camera wouldn’t fill up and so no one could find them if someone happened to take the device.
⸻
Six years later
While cleaning his house and throwing away old things, Chuuya found an unnamed USB drive. The redhead paused for a moment, trying to remember what it could be, even though his heart was already beginning to race. When he plugged it into his computer, he was bombarded by dozens of old photos and videos, as if the past were coming back to life. Until, briefly, a memory hit him like a bullet.
“He kept it…” was his first thought.
Chuuya had never known that Dazai had kept the photos and videos he’d recorded. But then he noticed: most of the photos and videos on the drive were of him.
Pictures of him sleeping, messy, in a more casual, domestic style. Videos of him singing and dancing, talking nonsense with a wide smile on his face.
“It’s for you to take pictures of the things you like, shitty-dazai.”
A painful realization. But the redhead refused to believe it, or even think about it. He simply unplugged the drive and shut down the computer in silence.
⸻
At the end of the meeting between the Agency and the Port Mafia, Chuuya took the opportunity to slip the USB drive to Dazai. The dark-haired man obviously noticed, but made no scene, out of curiosity and doubt about whether it was really what he thought it was.
He was right…
In his apartment, the detective turned on his computer and plugged in the drive.
All the photos, all the videos — he remembered each one. He remembered the beautiful sunset he’d photographed from the roof of the Port Mafia building, he remembered the stray cats, and most of all, he remembered everything about the small redhead.
He watched every photo in silence. A moment so intimate that, as if something were stopping him, Dazai didn’t make a single comment about any of Chuuya’s videos, not even the ones where the mafia member was singing with a big smile that made his cheeks blush.
Silence. No sound was made except for the noises coming from his computer.
He couldn’t. Not with the realization of how intimate they were back then. Of what they were.
Of what they could have been…