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The smell of whiskey and strawberries.
And the pain of a lonely man.
Three weeks old sheets that still feel warm off your body, but cold as your gaze.
—---------------☆
He could get drunk off the tears alone. The glass of alcohol is practically Luke warm water compared to the never ending pour running down his face. He could down every single bottle on that damned shelf and none of it would've been enough.
Three weeks. Twentythree days to be exact, because of course he counted. Of course he logged it in that damned notebook like a case, like a wound left unattended and now is oozing puss and blood. Twenty three days since he had done the single most foolish thing of his carefully structured life. Since the day Dazai Osamu had laughed in his face.
‘It wasn't funny’ he thought, tipping the glass again. ‘It was never a joke’.
—---------------☆
It had started, as most disasters do, with the best of intentions.
Kunikida had planned it. That was the worst part — he had planned it. He was not a man who acted without preparation, without deliberate thought, without accounting for every foreseeable future. He had written it out in his notebook three weeks prior to that morning.
A single page, precise and unadorned:
Things I know to be true:
1. I am not an easy man to love.
2. I have spent years making myself into something that functions with goals in mind. Something reliable. I have never allowed anything to grow inside my chest that I could not also manage.
3. Dazai Osamu is the single exception to everything I have ever built.
He had stared at that last line for a long time before he turned the page.
He was not naive about what it meant. He was not under any illusion that it would be simple or clean or fit neatly into any ideal he had ever written down. Dazai was chaos wearing a trench coat and a grin. Dazai was reckless and infuriating and occasionally he laughed at Kunikida's expense in a way that should have been unbearable but instead —against all reason felt like he was being seen.
And that was the problem. That has always been the problem.
Because somewhere between the missions and the arguments and the thousand small moments of standing shoulder to shoulder, Dazai had become the person Kunikida looked for first in every room. The person whose absence registered in his body before his mind caught up. The person he watched out of the corner of his eye with an intensity and longing he knew he should never have.
He had carried it quietly for a long time. He told himself it was practical, the same way all his silences were practical.
He told himself: “not yet. He needs time. He is still learning how to stay in one place, how to want things, how to want to be here.”
He told himself he was being patient rather than afraid.
But twenty three days ago, he had decided that patient was just another word for coward, and Kunikida Doppo was not and had never been, a coward.
Or so he'd believed.
He had waited until the break room was empty. Morning light thin through the window, the kettle still warm, the sounds of the Agency filtering in from outside like the world was agreeing to give him exactly five minutes. He had his notebook. He did not open it. He had told himself he would not need it. He had everything memorized, and besides, he wanted to come off as authentic rather than the monotonous tone you may develop when reading a script.
When Dazai walked in– mid-sentence with someone in the hall, already reaching for his favorite mug(Kunikidas mug), Kunikida had taken one measured breath and said his name. Dazai turned and smiled, giving him that easy, unhurried attention.
"Kunikida? You're blocking the cabinet.”
"I know." He didn't move. "I need to tell you something." His hands were already clammy, hed already cleared his throat time and time again.
Something shifted in Dazai's expression as he tilted his head. Mild curiosity. Or maybe he was trying to figure out if this particular conversation would be another long lecture. Either way, he listened, and looking back on it, Kunikida wished he hadn't.
"You look very serious."
"I am serious."
"You're always serious. Occupational hazard."
He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms. He looked at Kunikida the way he rarely looked at anyone, completely open, and straight on. "Go ahead then.”
Kunikida had rehearsed this. He had the words arranged in the correct order, precise and unambiguous, honesty he could stand behind because it cost him something and yet he was willing to pay it, because he deemed it worth it.
"I love you," he said. Plainly. No fluff, no twist arounds, stuttering nor tears . "I think I have for a long time, and I'm not asking you for anything — I'm not putting this on you as an obligation. I just—"
He stopped, and darting his eyes around the room, and when nothing seemed out of place he started again. "I've been waiting to say it until it felt like the right moment, and I've realized that I've been using that as an excuse, so. There it is. You deserve to know."
A beat of silence.
And kunikida took that silence to wipe his sweaty hands on his pants…and shift his weight…and glance at the clock behind dazai…and just when kunikida thought hed actually just die…
Dazai blinked. Once. And then his face cracked open into the widest, most delighted grin Kunikida had ever seen on him, and he laughed — bright and helpless, the kind of laugh that shook his whole frame, the kind that usually meant something had gone spectacularly, entertainingly wrong in the best possible way.
"Oh, that's good," Dazai managed, pressing a hand to his mouth trying to contain his laughter and failing completely. "That is genuinely good, Kunikida! I have to hand it to you. The delivery — the delivery was perfect. Very earnest, very—" He waved a hand. "Very you.” He wiped a tear in his hysterics. “Did Yosano put you up to this? Or Ranpo? Was it both of them? I can never tell when they're working together, they're terrifyingly coordinated—"
Kunikida said nothing.
"April Fools is still a week away, technically, but the commitment to the bit — and doing so this early– you really threw yourself into it! It's impressive. You almost had me for a second, and I want you to know that almost is—"
"Dazai."
"—more than most people manage, so you should feel very—"
"Dazai."
He stopped. Then looked at him.
"I'm not joking," Kunikida said. His voice was even. He was very focused on keeping it even. "I wasn't joking. I meant what I said."
The laughter faded by degrees, like a light being slowly dimmed. Dazai stared at him, and Kunikida watched him reach for it. the charm, the deflection, the comfortable armor of performance, and watching him find it, then his grin came back was slightly different. Still warm. Still easy and passive. Tilted just a fraction past genuine.
"Oh, come on. You can admit it. I promise I won't even tell anyone how long it took you to—”
"I've been in love with you for years." The words fell out without ceremony. "I have watched you walk into danger like you're daring the world to finish something, and every single time I have stood there and willed you not to. I have sat at my desk and listened to you breathe on the other side of the office and felt like that alone was enough to keep me going. I have—"
His jaw tightened. So hard he could practically feel the crack forming somewhere behind his sternum, a hairline fracture spreading outward. "I have tried to write it down in every way that makes sense and none of them come close. It is not a joke. It has never been a joke.”
It will never be a joke to Kunikida.
Dazai's smile had gone very still.
"Today is April first," he said. Lightly. Gently. He had confused the date. Typical of dazai, but all the more painful for Kunikida.
"I know what day it is."
"Kunikida-kun—"
"I know," he said again, and his voice did something he would not forgive it for, a small involuntary roughness, "I know what day it is, and I know how this looks, and I'm telling you it doesn't matter. I'm not —” a even rougher sigh “ I didn't plan this for today, it just…It just happened. I had planned to wait for the right moment and instead it's this and I know that…. I know, alright? I know this isn't — that this is—"
He stopped.
Because Dazai was looking at him now with an expression that was not quite a smile anymore and not quite anything Kunikida could name, and it was the first time he had ever seen Dazai look at him like that. like he was something dangerous. Something that needed to be managed carefully before it could do any real damage. Dazai looked at him like he sometimes looked at a very bad unavoidable incident.
And Kunikida understood, in the same moment, two things simultaneously: that Dazai knew. That Dazai had always known. And that Dazai was going to smile through it anyway, because that was the only way he knew how to soften the blow.
"I think," Dazai said carefully, slowly, "that someone has been spending too much time with Ranpo and Yosano and their particular brand of holiday enthusiasm." The grin returned, practiced and entirely horrifyingly fake. "Seriously, Kunikida, very convincing. The frustrated follow-up was a nice touch."
Then he winked. He fucking winked at Kunikida—- and maybe that was his own practical joke. To make Kunikida feel like a fool.
Kunikida looked at him for one more second.
Then he picked up his notebook from the counter, tucked it under his arm, and walked out of the break room.
He made it to the hallway.
He made it twelve steps down the hallway before he heard the door swing open behind him and Dazai's voice, still bright and still laughing.
"You're actually upset! Kunikida! you cannot be upset, this is—" The sound of quick footsteps, unhurried, Dazai caught up without even trying because he had always been able to catch up to him without trying. "You're really committing to this, aren't you? Does staying in character all day earn points? Is there a prize? I feel like there should be a prize for this level of dedication—”
Kunikida did not stop walking.
He kept his spine straight and his pace even. he breathed through his mouth, steady and controlled, because that was what you do. That's what you do when the person you love is walking behind you giggling about the fact that you had just handed them your heart and they tossed it back and forth with friends and poked fun at it.
"You know, most people just do the classic fake spider, swap the coffee for decaf, maybe a well-timed boo around a corner but you Doppo Kunikida go straight for the emotional jugular, very on-brand if i do say so myself, very—"
‘Stop talking’, he thought. ‘Please. For once in your life, just stop. Leave me be to suffer in silence’
But he didn't say that.
He felt it instead. the thing that had been a fracture became something else entirely, something that moved through him like a wave and kept going, like a building whose foundation had just been taken out by a tsunami, and everyone had already evacuated, now all that was left was watch as you alone were taken under. He had not known a heart could break from the inside out. He had not known it could feel so thorough. He had spent so long being careful with this, with all of it, and he had picked the wrong day, the wrong words, the wrong life, maybe even the wrong person. It was like being held — no, like being gripped.
Like something had reached inside his chest and closed a fist around whatever was still beating there and was squeezing. Slowly. Not to kill, just to remind him what he had been foolish enough to put this heart at risk. The pressure of it was enough to wind him. It radiated outward through his ribs and down his arms and it did not let up. It just kept building with every footstep, every lilting syllable of Dazai's delighted voice behind him.
‘The devil’, he thought, full of disdain and misplaced anger. ‘ He is the devil and he doesn't even know it.
He's had his hand around Kunikida's heart for years and he's never once squeezed this hard.
He turned the corner.
He took the stairs.
He did not look back.
Three floors down and out the side door into the cold morning air, he finally stopped walking. He pressed one hand flat against the outside wall of the building and he stayed there for a long moment, just breathing.
Just allowing himself that much.
The notebook was tucked under his other arm and he squeezed it, the familiar weight and edge of it, something concrete and measurable in a moment that was neither.
Then he straightened. He adjusted his glasses. He rolled his shoulders back.
He went back to work.
He did not see Dazai again until the following afternoon, when Dazai arrived at his desk with a cup of coffee and a new joke ready and looked at Kunikida with something careful behind his eyes, and after a pause Kunikida took the coffee and said thank you in a voice that was as empty as he felt, and that was that.
That was the day the silence started.
That was the day Dazai stopped hovering over his desk, stopped leaning over his shoulder to read his reports, stopped saying his name with that particular inflection, the one that meant nothing and meant everything, the one that Kunikida had long since stopped pretending didn't do something to him.
He stopped sitting on the floor beside him, and allowed Kunikida the pleasure of reminding him that his own desk was literally right in front of them. And the day all their banter stopped, and every causal touch came with more distance, and every laugh was met with an empty smile.
That was the day Dazai understood what he felt needed to be done. And ran.
So that's how it is.
Kunikida had written, that night, in the one notebook he did not carry to work. (Thank dazai for that as well)
He knew you were serious. He left anyway. File it. Move on.
He had not moved on.
He had moved to a bar on a Sunday night and sat alone with something that tasted like bad decisions, and he had not moved on at all.
—---------------☆
He felt him before he heard him.
That particular shift in the air, like something in Kunikida's body still, stupidly, oriented itself toward him, the way a compass orients north whether it wants to or not.
Kunikida stared at his glass.
"You're hard to find," said the voice. "I went to three places first."
"Then you should have stopped at two."
Dazai slid onto the stool beside him anyway. He didn't order anything. He didn't do anything for a long moment except exist in Kunikida's peripheral vision, which was the most irritating thing he had ever done, and he had once faked his own death during a briefing.
"Kunikida—”
"Don't." His voice came out quieter than he intended. Flatter. "Don't do whatever this is." He didn't need dazai to play “clean up”, he didnt need his pity. Kunikida would get over it soon and he didnt need dazai to parade around him pretending…to care.
"I'm not doing anything. I'm sitting."
"You tracked me down at a bar on a Sunday night. That's something."
Another silence. Kunikida drained the rest of his glass. The bartender moved to refill it and he covered it with his hand.
Not tonight.
He was probably drunk enough, and he needed to be present for whatever this was about to become.
"Come outside with me.”
"No."
"Kunikida—”
"No." He finally turned to look at him and immediately regretted it, because Dazai looked…wrong.
Not performative. Not carefully arranged into some fake expression he wanted you to believe was real. He looked tired in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep, and his eyes darted around the bar before settling back on kunikida. His expression was warm, doe like— the thing that made Kunikida's chest feel too small for everything it was still holding. "I'm not going anywhere with you. Say what you came to say or leave."
If it was a normal day, dazai would've probably made a comment about Kunikida sounding rather “childlish” for that, and probably would say that even their youngest members would never throw a fuss like Kunikida is now.
But this is not a normal day. So when Dazai said quietly: "Not in here."
something about the way he said it, no deflection, no charm, made Kunikida stand up.
—---------------☆
The rain had started while they were inside.
Of course it had.
Kunikida turned his collar up and said nothing as the cold hit him, as the street slicked black under the streetlights, as the city continued on around them.
They walked half a block before Kunikida stopped. "Why are you here, Dazai?"
"I told you. I was looking for—"
"Why are you here?" He wasn't asking about the bar anymore. "You were the one who left. You haven't said a word to me in days. You've been at the Agency —and don't lie I know you have — and you have not looked at me once, you've actively been avoiding me ." His jaw tightened. He could feel it. "So what is this? What do you want?”
Dazai turned away slightly, looking at nothing in particular down the road. The rain caught in his hair. He looked beautiful. So so so beautiful.
"I wanted to make sure you were alright."
The laugh that came out of Kunikida was not kind. It wasn't meant to be.
"You want to make sure I'm alright. Right of course you are. Because three entire weeks I wasnt alright was too inconvenient for you."
He cut dazai off before he could try and talk.
"I confessed my feelings." The words landed hard between them, heavy with everything they'd been carrying. "I told you the truth, Dazai. And you laughed. And then you followed me into the hallway and kept laughing." The memory moved through him like cold water. "I walked away from you and you giggled about it all the way down the hall and that — that is what I have been living with for twenty-three days." His voice cracked on the last word and he hated it, hated himself for it, pressed his teeth back together. "What was I supposed to think? What exactly was I supposed to do with that?"
"Kunikida—" Dazai's eyes flickered upwards, not rolling them in annoyance but rather exaggeration.
"I'm not finished." He was shaking. Not from the cold. "You want to know what the worst part is? It's not that you said no. I can accept no. I'm a grown man, I can survive rejection, I've survived worse— the worst part is that you didn't even say it. You just hid. Like I was a problem you could wait out. Like if you avoided me long enough I'd — what? Stop meaning it?"
Dazai still wasn't looking at him. He was looking past him. Far away from him.
"Did it ever occur to you," Kunikida's voice dropped dangerously low, "that I have been standing next to you for years? Watching you. Worrying about you, every single day, more than I have ever worried about anything in my life, and I waited because I thought you needed time, and I thought I owed it to you not to push, and then I finally said it—and fine it was the wrong day, the wrong moment, and April first of all the—" A sharp exhale. He looked up at the rain. "I thought you knew me well enough to know I wouldn't joke about that."
Dazai was very still. "I did," he said quietly. "I knew."
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.
It shouldn't have shocked him. Kunikida himself suspected just that. In fact, he could've gambled on it and came out on top. But it didnt change the fact that he was hearing it. That it wasn't all in his head.
Kunikida turned. "Then why…”
"Because I panicked!" It came out rough. Unfamiliar. For dazai hardly shouted out of anger or rather any emotion. He hadnt ever sounded so…raw. "Because you meant it and I knew you meant it and I….I didn't know what to do with that, Kunikida, for goodness sake i didnt think you'd acutally come right out and say it!. " He laughed, and it sounded like it hurt. "I know what to do when things are a performance. I know how to solve cases, or pick apart someone's mind–I know how to be useful or invisible or unbearable. I don't know how to be chosen without ruining it! I dont know how to hold onto the good!”
The rain filled the silence.
Kunikida stared at him. "You rejected me because you were scared.” he was in disbelief. If not astonishment.
"I rejected you because you deserve someone who isn't a disaster waiting to happen." His voice was harder now, like he'd decided on something. "Because you have an ideal, and I know what's in that notebook, and I am not in it. I am categorically not in it. I am everything you've built your entire life to not be — reckless and unreliable and I have done things, Kunikida, things that—"
"I know what you've done."
Dazai shook his head, "things that—"
"Dazai." He said his name like a command. "I know. I know and i dont care. Do you understand that? I know who you are. I know what you carry. Do you truly, honestly think that you being from the port mafia would matter that much to me? I know all of that" His voice was unsteady but he didn't look away. "And I chose to love you anyway. That was my decision to make. Not yours."
Dazai shook his head. He didnt look relieved or even remotely happy.
"You shouldn't," he said. It came out small. Stripped of everything else. “Its not just the mafia, Kunikida. My life is stained for everything tainted and sorrowful. If I love you. I'll use you”
Kunikida looked at him for a long moment. The rain. The streetlight. The careful destruction of a man who didn't know how to believe he was worth staying for. That he meant everything too kunikida and more. How Kunikida could tell him right now, that if he were to die loving Dazai and Dazai loving him. It'd be worth it all.
He exhaled. He looked at the wet pavement and he laughed — a small, dry sound, barely anything.
But none of that meant a thing to a dying rose.
"I confessed on April first." He shook his head slowly. "I went over it a hundred times in that notebook — the right moment, the right words, and I picked the one day you'd never believe me. I'm such a fool" He was quiet. "I guess that's the biggest joke of them all."
Dazai said nothing.
But he didn't leave, either.
And Kunikida, who had always been a coward about the things that mattered most, stood in the rain next to the one person he had never been able to leave behind. He let the rain fall over their words and wash away. He let every hopeful memory of their future that he held onto dance across his mind. Let the rain suffocate his tears.
He didn't hope for a second chance. Simply because, this alone was enough.
—---------------☆
Some equations have no clean solution. Some fools keep trying anyway.