Chapter Text
"Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"
—Edgar Allen Poe, A Dream Within a Dream
“Wake up, Chuuya.”
Dazai’s voice is fresh and startling, like finding a clutch of blue bird eggs in long grass. Chuuya’s lost count of the number of times that voice has woken him from hazy slumber, on mornings fresh with the promise of dew. Dazai’s voice navigates the imperative with skill as he delivers a little poke to Chuuya’s shoulder.
“Chuuya; come on, wake up already…”
Before the first rays of dawn begin to slant through the windows, Dazai is up and about, hair tousled as ever. Chuuya can only see bleary slivers of him in the semi-darkness like he’s an Impressionist artwork: the sharp relief of his locks, the waxy pallor of his bare shoulders, and his eyes, his lashes that flutter softly as a moth lands.
“Chuuya, we’re gonna be late if you don’t get up.”
Chuuya groans incomprehensibly and rolls over, clamping his pillow over his ears because why can’t he just stay in bed until 7 like a normal person, and then Dazai pokes him in the side, depresses smooth skin with the neat edge of a fingernail. “Wake up, Chuu-yaaaa, you take three centuries to wash your hair and I’m hungry.”
Right; Mori-sensei wants them over for training by 8. Groaning like a door hinge badly in need of oiling, Chuuya fumbles around for the small clock beside his futon, glares groggily at the time, and then leaps into the bathroom with a few choice words.
When he re-emerges from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, steam billowing behind him like the dramatic entry of some Greek god, Dazai takes one look at him and loses it completely.
Chuuya is always the one to make breakfast (albeit much faster than usual today), because everything Dazai knows how to make involves canned crab, sake, and copious amounts of Ajinomoto. Chuuya thinks Ajinomoto should be made illegal, but then again, Chuuya’s greatest dream regarding breakfast is to eat cereal in a bowl of 1981 Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, when he earns enough to afford it. They’ve formed an unspoken agreement to disagree, but when it gets down to the bare bones, Chuuya has always been the one for action, and so he wins. Grand Cru in cereal it is, or in today’s case, a decidedly more mainstream toasted bacon sandwich, the recipe for which he’s just learnt from Kouyou-nee.
Dazai likes to watch him work, likes to steal bits of food off the chopping board and tug playfully at the strings of Chuuya’s apron until Chuuya swears that the next time he finds another piece of bacon missing he will tear up all of Dazai’s books.
“Okay, okay,” Dazai soothes with a hand on Chuuya’s head, and then he steals another slice while Chuuya’s back is turned.
Chuuya trashes Dazai a lot harder than usual during their sparring session.
Added to the lengthy list of things that Dazai Osamu hates about Mori Ougai is the fact that Mori had insisted on installing floodlights into the ceiling of the abandoned warehouse that serves as a training ground for Dazai and Chuuya, so every time Dazai gets swept off his feet by another of Chuuya’s breathtakingly executed attacks, he’s met with the searing glare of those floodlights burning bright black spots into his vision.
Today is… sadly, no different. He's still getting beaten up like the poor excuse for a fighter that he is, and somewhere in his mind he suspects that judging from the amount of suffering that's been bestowed on him today, Chuuya still isn't completely over what had happened at breakfast. Well, if anyone was living proof to the conjecture that the relationship between physical abuse and its antecedent pain was logarithmic, it was Dazai.
Trial number fifty-thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two. Result? Completely decimated.
Groaning in the hopes that the sound will persuade his worn-out body to pursue some course of action, he throws up an arm to shield his face, blinking in an attempt to clear the disorientating afterimages from his mind. As the patches of darkness fade away, Chuuya’s features sketch themselves into the blank space framed by his hair, irises gleaming in triumph. Dazai sighs with a touch of dramatic concession, and then winces in pain as his ribs protest the motion with ardent vigour.
“All right, all right, Chuuya, you win. And I suppose you'll want that favour of yours, as I promised. So, what do you fancy? One of those ridiculous hats? A new sharp toy? I might even agree to a date if you ask nicely, y’know…” Dazai lets his voice trail off, cheekily.
One second. Two seconds.
Dazai peeks out from between his raised forearms, having expected further punishment. “What, you’re not gonna pulverise me or something?”
“… Don’t say it like you want me to, you bandage accessory!”
Aah, Chuuya’s scowl is adorable. He could stare at that grumpy face all day. If Mori had been the normal sort of parent he might have asked for a sheepdog to toy with, but since that was impossible, Chuuya was the next best thing.
And not a bad substitute, either.
Chuuya’s voice drags him back from the delicious mire of his thoughts. “Hey, Dazai.”
He blinks, remembers what he’s supposed to be doing, and grins up at Chuuya. “Name your poison.” At this point, he's fairly sure he can handle anything that Chuuya flings his way.
Chuuya stares straight into his eyes, throws him off-kilter with his suddenly solemn gaze.
“Live.”
The single syllable ignites a fiery thrill in Dazai’s veins, the sensation of rushing down the slope of a log flume. For a moment he stares, mouth slightly agape and utterly speechless.
The very next second, an indignant crawling sensation at the back of his neck calls his irritation back, sets his teeth on edge. He snorts.
“Oh? What makes you think I'll do that for you? Aren’t you overestimating your own importance, Chuuya?”
Tch. He’d always known his partner numbered among one of those happy-go-lucky idiots whose survival was ensured only by virtue of raw, blockheaded power, and he despised it to the marrow of his bones, but asking him to live, as if it were as simple as making a trip down to the convenience store!
Did Chuuya know how many years of torment he was trampling upon with that one word? Did Chuuya know that that one syllable, with its piercing inflection, was an unforgiving summit that Dazai had endlessly tried, but could never hope, to reach?
How could Chuuya, with his trusting gaze and open heart, possibly hope to fathom even the tip of Dazai’s workings, the ocean of darkness churning behind the easy gait; the casually slouched frame?
To Dazai’s utter annoyance, Chuuya defies his derision with a confident grin.
“You will, Dazai. I know you will, because that's what partners do!”
“Chuuya.”
The name emerges from his mouth in an almost inaudible wheeze, and Dazai is pretty surprised at how different his voice is from usual—thin and scratchy from lack of sleep. The two of them have been busy ever since the truce began; underground organizations of all sorts are flooding Yokohama and its surrounding cities, looking for their share of the Guild’s (sadly nonexistent) treasure. Nothing that both organizations have said or done have served to do anything in the way of dispelling them, so now almost every agent of the Mafia and every member of the Agency is working round the clock—the Agency’s office has never seen fewer inhabitants.
Necessity has seen fit to trap them under her yoke as the revived Soukoku, and up till this fourth day of their newest mission, they’ve been hunted like animals: every shadow around the corner is another black-clad, burly organization operative; every segment of bent pipe protruding from a section of cracked wall the unrelenting barrel of a machine gun.
Well, up till now, the mission had been proceeding smoothly, with the entirety of the organization’s liquid assets sitting in a flash drive in Chuuya’s coat pocket, but what Dazai hadn’t quite expected was the irritatingly persistent wrath of its disenfranchised leader.
…And just how many armies does he keep under his employment?
They’d barely taken a step out of the data room when the soldiers had poured in, and they’d been fighting their way out ever since. Dazai curses the leader of the organization under his breath.
From the beginning, the man’s strategy had been focused on wearing Chuuya out, and even Dazai had to admit, if he were faced with that situation, he’d be doing the same. It was pretty obvious to anyone who had half a brain—if Chuuya fell, Dazai wouldn’t last five minutes against the sheer number of operatives, and if Dazai could feel the lack of food and water taking its toll on him, then Chuuya, with the added fatigue of being in constant combat, must be in even worse condition. Dazai lifts his gaze to check on him.
Less than a meter away, head pillowed by his folded cape, Chuuya lies in restless, shallow sleep. Occasionally his face contorts into an expression of immense sorrow that sends shivers through Dazai’s spine just from watching, and at some point during Dazai’s long watch he had called out, “Non! Non—mon Dieu, Dazai, je ne peux pas te perdre—!” and threw up his arms, as if to cling on something already hopelessly out of his reach. Dazai had contemplated waking him then, but had stopped himself right at the last moment. Chuuya needed the rest if they were going to get out of here alive, and sleep was sleep, even if plagued by nightmares of the caliber Chuuya had been suffering.
Chuuya’s poor excuse for rest is a mild relief for Dazai, but it doesn't go a long way in alleviating his very real concerns. Chuuya, workaholic that he was, had taken up a larger share in this whole truce business than he really should be involved in. Was it just his dogged sense of duty? Or was it something else? For once, Dazai can’t say with certainty that he knows.
The sudden urge to yawn overtakes him, and he lets the reflex run its course. Sitting awake the entire night was one of the things he occasionally did, but certainly not if he could help it, and certainly not in the middle of a gruelling mission where fatigue could prompt a fatal misstep later in the day.
Still, it wasn’t as if he had a say in the matter this time. As if to even things out, Fate had bestowed upon him an equal agony to Chuuya’s in the form of a bullet through his thigh—a little gift from a sniper that Chuuya had missed. It had been pulsing at the back of his consciousness up until he’d inadvertently drawn his attention to it by thinking about it, and now here it was in its full glory—the insistent, throbbing drumbeat of pain in his thigh that had kept him awake, all through the night until this moment. Dazai sighs in equal parts exhaustion and exasperation, and tries to shift his hurt leg a teeny bit, to relieve the pins and needles shivering with static through his muscles. It doesn’t really work, but at least it doesn’t hurt more than it has to.
By the feeble light of the moon, his watch tells him it’s near morning, and he’s experiencing a relief he shouldn’t really be feeling. It’s been a long night, but thankfully, burning through the hours with nothing but his own mind for company has given Dazai the elements of a plan. He’ll discuss it with Chuuya once he wakes Chuuya up—what he wants to propose is not easy task—but knowing Chuuya and his determined recklessness, Dazai’s pretty sure he’ll be up for it either way. Dazai moves gingerly, shifting his weight onto his uninjured leg as he stretches out to touch Chuuya on the shoulder.
“Wake up, Chuuya.”