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Dazai Osamu is not typically a jealous man.
He doesn’t mean to say such a phrase with a moral sentiment. He doesn’t care much for morals, doesn’t care to be perceived as such, and doesn’t care to seek morals within others.
If there’s any explanation for his lack of jealousy or sense of possessiveness, it would simply be that he’s never regarded anything as his, and so has never felt any right to be jealous, or further yet, even any inclination for regret, upon ‘losing’ anything. Because he doesn’t consider to have ‘lost’ anything at all, but rather just that it was there and then it was not. In the end, he’d rather not obtain anything at all, because any possessions he tries to attain will surely be lost.
After all, everything passes. One way or another.
Such a standing even serves to explain the state of his bedroom—if you can even call it that. Stripped completely bare down to the bone, it consists of nothing more than a mattress with a bedsheet and a small drawer where he stashes canned crab. Those are the only objects of permanence in his laughable home of an intermodal container.
And so, the first time that Dazai feels true, unbridled jealousy, the feeling doesn’t come alone.
It also comes with shock, humiliation, confusion and fear.
He would like to say that one emotion is stronger than another, but no; all four emotions (or five, including the jealousy) emanate with equal impact, stunning him into standing still, as if the soles of his feet had melted, merged with the ground, and then solidified, leaving him stuck in the corner of the room whilst he can do nothing but look.
One of his hands clutch a Nintendo Switch (mind you, he’s almost eighteen, but video games will always be a sufficient distraction for him) and his other, a sparkling lemonade with a straw.
They both suddenly feel like they weigh a tonne.
Because on the other end of the room, next to the front door, stands Nakahara Chuuya.
Kissing a girl.
The first thought in Dazai’s mind had been: what the fuck? And then, a dawning realisation. Now it makes sense why, on every mission lately, Chuuya had been arriving later than usual (though still disgustingly early), and leaving earlier than usual (though still dreadfully making sure the job had been thoroughly carried out).
With slightly wide eyes, Dazai watches the scene for maybe a few moments longer than appropriate.
First, they kiss innocently. A small peck. The girl says something, a mumble too low to be heard from where Dazai stands, and then she leans in and kisses him again. Chuuya pulls away, responds to what she had said. And kisses her too. This time, soulfully. Pushing her against the wall gently and everything. Cupping her face.
The five emotions roaring within Dazai with the pressure of seabed waters now spread out in chronological order.
First, the shock. Not only at the situation but at the immediate jealousy that arises from deep within his chest, burning his skin, clouding his mind. Then, humiliation from his own reaction, because why the hell is his body reacting this way? It’s humiliating enough, and not knowing the origin of it is even worse. That’s where the confusion of it comes in.
And then, fear. Not just of his own mind and body in the present circumstance, but also at the circumstance itself, which gets worse with every second that Dazai has to stand there like a gobsmacked idiot, witnessing their passions increase.
The girl’s hair is brown.
That’s the only thing Dazai registers about her.
“I’m going to be sick,” he mumbles to himself.
He truly does feel like he will be.
Undoubtedly a horrid, unpleasant situation. He hates being sick. Physical pain is the worst burden on man.
And that too because of a redheaded brat he was born to hate.
“Eurgh! How disgusting!” Dazai exclaims suddenly. He relishes in how the two spring apart immediately, Chuuya whipping around with a look of bile, and the girl with one of wide-eyed fear. “If you’re going to eat the poor girl’s face off, Chuuya, at least get a room.”
Chuuya’s face suffuses with the colour red—mostly from anger, of course, but Dazai hopes also with embarrassment. “We have a room, you invasive bastard! This is my fucking room! Why the hell are you here?!”
With effort, Dazai lifts the Nintendo Switch. “We had plans,” he lies.
Chuuya sees right through him. “No, we didn’t.”
“We did too! You said we’d have a rematch!”
“That doesn’t mean we had plans. Ugh!”
The second Chuuya turns away from Dazai to look at the girl, Dazai makes eye contact with her. She looks shocked, slightly afraid, and almost as if she doesn’t want to be there.
Dazai glares at her.
It seems to be threatening and deadpan enough to make her clench her jaw with apprehension.
“I’m sorry about this shithead, Imiko,” Chuuya says, and when he grabs her hand to pull her off the wall, Dazai can’t take his eyes off of their joined palms. “He pulls this nonsense sometimes. Wait a sec while I kick him out.”
Dazai’s smile when Chuuya turns towards him is full of venom. Even more so when he glances at the girl, with her brown eyes covered by thick lashes, and her pretty triangular face shape.
“Get out of here,” Chuuya says when he approaches him. His hands are in his pockets, red hair messy. Complexion full of ire.
Dazai pretends to be submerged in deep thought. “Hmmmmm~,” he begins, dragging the word out long enough to annoy Chuuya further, “No, I don’t think I will!”
“Dazai, I’m not in the fucking mood.”
“That almost implies that other times, you’re in the mood for my presence.”
“No, it implies that those times, you’re fuckin’ annoying but I can almost resist beating the shit out of you—but right now, I can’t.”
“Why not?” Dazai taunts, his own smile dropping. There must be something on his face, something humiliatingly evident, because Chuuya’s face contorts with confusion at the countenance that he sees. “You prefer to get busy with your little whore over there?”
That earns him an immediate punch right to the jaw. A powerful, bruising one.
Dazai doesn’t dodge it. He knows he deserves it.
Chuuya stands over him despite their height difference, with his fists clenches and his eyes narrowed and full of promise to batter him half to death if he needs to. “Get. Out.”
“Ah, I do wonder!” Dazai begins, jumping to his feet again. Sometimes he has a horrible habit of needing to piss someone (usually Chuuya) off even more when the situation is delicate. “What would Mori-san think if he knew his prized possession is having a third-rate make out session when he always promised to be on his best behaviour?”
“Mori-san would say that he already fucking knows about it,” Chuuya retorts furiously, grabbing Dazai by his shirt collar and dragging him right out the door. The brunet lets it all happen.
“The only one that didn’t know was you,” Chuuya snaps. A look passes across his face, swift like a hare, before it’s gone and replaced again with anger. “Now get the fuck away from here and don’t come back, you got that?”
The door is slammed in Dazai’s face.
He stands there and listens briefly as Chuuya apologises to Imiko. She mumbles something illegible again, and Dazai hears shuffling as they settle down on a sofa together.
At least they’re not kissing anymore.
Dazai, slightly embarrassed but mostly just enveloped in a red-hot rage, leaves.
From then on, almost as if Dazai had unleashed a hellish curse by witnessing their private moment, he sees Imiko everywhere.
Usually with Chuuya.
The first time, Dazai is sat like a frog at a small mock lounge room in headquarters. There are twelve coffee tables in the room, each surrounded by three chairs, and he sits at one alone, feet on the chair and squatting whilst he sharpens his blade against another blade.
There are other Port Mafia members in the room, of course, but they all—almost comically—sit as far away from him as possible, such that there’s almost a perceivable gradient of humans that increases in density the further you get from him. Some of them talk in a low murmur.
He’s incredibly cold, so he’s wearing two sweaters and a blazer jacket. Chuuya would sometimes make him warm miso soup when he felt cold or sick. But Dazai hasn’t broken into his apartment since that incident two weeks ago, and he’s certain that if he did, Chuuya wouldn’t make him any soup. He’d kick him out. For these two weeks, he hasn’t interacted with Dazai at all, apart from when interaction is necessary for business.
Dazai hasn’t talked to him either. He feels an ineffable rage when he even thinks about it.
Just when Dazai has finished sharpening his first blade, he hears the pitter-patter of a familiar pair of footsteps. He glances up, his jaw clenching, as Chuuya enters the room.
Their eyes meet instantly.
Chuuya holds eye contact for a few moments too long. He almost looks unable to look away, and Dazai, for one, refuses to look away. The redhead’s eyes are a dusty light brown and squinted with acute irritation. A wrinkle sits between his furrowed brows. His reddish hair, which he’s been growing out, rests a little against his cheek.
He looks as he always does. He looks lovely.
And then, Imiko appears from behind him. Her pin-straight brown hair tucked behind her ears. She’s smiling, her eyes scanning the room curiously, her hand grazing Chuuya’s.
Dazai’s heart drops.
“Such a large room...” she mutters.
Then her eyes land on the brunet, who’s squatting weirdly on a chair, watching her with a blank, albeit deathly, stare. Her face winces. She glances at Chuuya, who’s staring right at him.
“Chuuya,” she says, to which the redhead finally looks at her. “What room is next?”
He stares at her blankly, as if in his own world, and then shakes his head. “Oh, yeah. Uh, next is where the Port Mafia stores...”
His voice fades out as he steps away from the room with the girl.
Chuuya doesn’t look back, but Imiko does. Dazai stares her right in the eyes until, shivering, she looks away.
The second time Dazai sees her is the very next day.
He’s walking in the street, slow and unbothered, towards Lupin. When he turns a corner, he finds Imiko sat on a bench with another girl. They’re talking and giggling. Dazai doesn’t register anything about the friend, but he does notice the objective beauty and perfection of Imiko’s face. Not just the facial features, but the way her personality lives on the surface of it, mellow and generous. Imiko then laughs at something her friend says, and the sound of it chills Dazai’s body.
Not because it’s an evil laugh. An evil laugh couldn’t chill Dazai. But because it’s anything but evil—sweet, soft and kind, with an almost melodic lilt to it.
Dazai fucking hates it. He hates realising why Chuuya has feelings for her.
He was hoping, if they are in a relationship, that it was shallow.
But of course, relationships are anything but shallow to Chuuya. He wouldn’t be with her if he didn’t like her. If there wasn’t something about her to like.
Dazai leaves her be instead of glaring at her.
“Giving the girl a tour of headquarters like it’s a holiday destination,” is what Dazai says venomously the next time he sees Chuuya.
The redhead is sat on a chair in the coffee table room. He was so concentrated on his phone screen that Dazai almost isn’t sure whether he’d even noticed him come in.
Now, he looks up. His lips part, an insult almost slipping past, but then he closes his mouth and returns his attention to his phone.
“What are you trying to do?” Dazai asks, circling the table in slow steps instead of taking a seat to unsettle the boy. “Be completely open with her so she trusts you?” Then, in a mocking high-pitched voice: “‘Oh, and Imiko-chan, this is the torture chamber! Yes, we bring people here—sometimes innocents—and cut their limbs off if they don’t give us the answers we need! Yes, and this is where we hold prisoners! We starve them and make them grovel for help! Do you love me now, Imiko-chan? Do you trust me now? Do—’”
A strong hand suddenly grabs the lapel of Dazai’s blazer and drags him down.
Before he knows it, he’s almost touching nose-to-nose with the redhead.
Dazai’s eyes immediately fall to his lips.
He’s kissed Imiko with those.
“Shut up,” Chuuya snarls with pure fury. So pure that, despite their constant clashes for the past three years, Dazai can count only one hand the amount of times he has been so purely angry with him. “You say one more word and I’ll smash your fucking head in, Dazai. I mean it.”
Is it wrong that Dazai loves it? His anger, the way his own name rolls off Chuuya’s tongue when he’s so frustrated.
The only reason that Dazai doesn’t piss him off to such an extent on a daily basis is that, eventually, Chuuya would have enough of it and never talk to him again.
“If you knew anything,” Chuuya continues, “then you’d know that Mori-san is looking to recruit Imiko, if he thinks she can be trusted.”
Dazai’s eyes widen with surprise.
The redhead lets go of him, and whilst the brunet straightens up, he carries on talking. “We met when she was trying to join the Port Mafia. I tried to dissuade her, but she’s hell-bent on it, so what can I do? I was giving her a fuckin’ tour ‘cause she’s joining the organisation.”
No... that can’t be.
Dazai wants to break the coffee table into smithereens.
That means Imiko will always be around now. She’s already been showing up more frequently than before, and now she’ll be a constant, a shadow in every room, clinging to Chuuya at every chance.
“I...” Dazai begins, seemingly at a loss for words. The redhead stares at him with slight fascination. It’s not a common sight, after all. “You can’t let her.”
Chuuya squints his eyes. “And why not?” he asks.
“Because... we’re Double Black.”
“Hah? We still will be. She’s not joinin’ to work as us, she’s going in the tech department.”
“But—ugh, dammit,” Dazai mumbles, turning away from Chuuya.
Then he turns back around, and this time, he leans down of his own will, getting close to the redhead’s face.
Chuuya doesn’t move his head back. He simply stares.
“Listen here, pipsqueak,” Dazai says. “Whether she joins the Port Mafia or not, I’ll be damned before I let you be hers.”
Curiously, Chuuya raises an eyebrow.
It’s horrifying. Dazai would rather he be angry than curious, would rather have his own face punched than this.
“Why?” Chuuya asks.
The redhead’s lips twitch, and Dazai feels another bout of humiliation, because why the hell is he almost smirking? Does he find the brunet’s behaviour amusing? It’s not meant to be amusing!
“Because I want to see you suffer,” Dazai lies.
Then, not wanting to face Chuuya’s odd expressions of amusement anymore, he leaves the room hurriedly and frustratedly.
Then, the third time that Dazai sees Imiko.
A day before his and Chuuya’s mission. They were both meant to be waiting—alone—for their final debrief in Mori’s office. Currently, the boss is preoccupied with a phone call, so they are sat on a couch outside. A waiting area, if you may.
Well, they were sat outside.
But then Imiko comes.
Chuuya’s lips smile.
And Dazai, gagging, gets off the couch and starts pacing the room.
“Chuuya!” the girl greets excitedly. She kisses him, and Chuuya, after split-second hesitation, kisses back, seemingly for a few moments too short for her liking.
Ugh. Dazai was hoping he’d get used to it, but he fucking can’t. The rage only bubbles further, boiling his blood, scorching his brain.
“You didn’t text me back last night,” she says.
“Yeah, I realised this morning. I’m sorry,” Chuuya responds, holding her elbow for a moment before letting it drop. “I was busy yesterday. Me an’ Dazai have a mission soon—it could get hectic.”
Imiko finally catches sight of Dazai in the corner of her eyes, who, much like the first time, is stood glued to a spot further down the room, peering dangerously at her.
“Dazai-kun,” she greets, bowing respectfully.
That’s the first time either of them has spoken to the other.
“Imiko-chan,” Dazai responds, his tone completely flat. “Are you here to see Mori-san too? Or just your numbskull of a boyfriend?”
Your. Boyfriend. The words make Dazai’s tongue feel sour.
Chuuya scoffs. “As if you can speak, fuckin’ bandages-for-brains.”
“At least I’ve grown more than half a centimetre in three years.”
Imiko, nervously glancing between the two of them, quickly responds to the question asked of her. “Um, I’m here to see Mori-san too, Dazai-kun. After the two of you.”
“At least I’m not a social misfit,” Chuuya continues, grumbling.
Suddenly, the double doors of Mori’s office slam open, and Double Black is called upon. They enter the room.
Dazai hopes, maliciously and stupidly, that Chuuya not even glancing back at her means something.
That night, Dazai’s impatience gets the better of him.
He finds himself unable to sleep, tossing and turning on his mattress in the container. It’s nowhere near summer, and yet, sweat pools on his upper lip even though his skin is cold to the touch. His stomach growls, but he doesn’t want to eat.
All he can think about right now...
Before he can rationally stop himself, Dazai is out of his container and heading for a certain someone’s apartment block.
The redhead’s bedroom light is off, but the window is open, weirdly enough.
Chuuya never leaves it open. It’d be too easy for Dazai to get in that way.
Oh, well. Maybe he’s gotten a bit sloppy because Dazai hasn’t come over in weeks.
Grinning to himself, Dazai climbs the building easily, perches himself onto the redhead’s windowsill, and lands feet first in his bedroom.
Empty.
For a second, he flips the light on and scans the room. Pathetic behaviour, truly, making sure Chuuya hasn’t started keeping photo frames of Imiko yet. And luckily he hasn’t. Just a small one of The Flags, perched on his bedside table.
Dazai turns the light off again and heads for the living room.
This time, he does find Chuuya. In knee-length shorts and an oversized t-shirt with some random diabolical metal band on it that he listens to. He’s sat on the sofa, sipping an ice-cold energy drink whilst he types at an average pace on a laptop perched on his cross-legged lap.
He obviously knows that Dazai is here, but he doesn’t bother to look at him, initially.
First, Dazai circles the room uselessly. Touching things. Looking around. Scanning, mainly, for any signs of Imiko’s coming and going to his apartment. But there are none.
Once he’s satisfied, he goes and sits next to Chuuya.
Almost touching.
Of course, on his laptop screen, he’s got tomorrow’s mission report pulled up.
“For the love of God, take your fuckin’ shoes off,” Chuuya snaps.
Grinning cheekily, Dazai lifts his feet and—
Puts them on the sofa, too.
“You goddamn asshole! Take them off!”
“Nuh-uh.”
“You prick, don’t make me throw you out the window you came from!”
“Ah, please don’t! The fall won’t be enough to end me of my misery, that’s for sure...”
“Just take them off! I cleaned everything today, you fucking waste of space.”
Having had enough, Chuuya leans over, grabs Dazai by the ankles and forcefully removes the shoes himself.
When he’s done, he pulls away and glares at Dazai.
Weirdly enough, the redhead looks randomly extremely handsome. Dressed in silly clothes, his hair a mess, and a half-hearted glare on his face. The domesticity of it, perhaps.
Dazai pulls out the Nintendo Switch he had carried here from his jacket pocket. “I believe you owe me a rematch, Slug,” he says.
Chuuya huffs. “Can’t. I’m working.”
“But, Chuuya~!” Dazai whines, pushing their shoulders together. “We’ve already been debriefed, like, a hundred times! Stop being stuck up.”
“I’m not stuck up, I—”
“That’s exactly what you are.”
“Stop being annoying. Why are you always so damn annoying at night?”
“Chuuya~~~.”
“Like an annoying cat.”
“Meow. Please.”
Chuuya shakes his head. Then, a laugh breaks out of him. “Fine,” he says, smiling. “A quick one. Weirdo.”
Dazai feels oddly triumphant, knowing that he’s never caught Imiko making him laugh. A smile can be fabricated, but the redhead isn’t good at forcing a laugh.
Their ‘quick one’ ends up lasting forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of endless competition: Dazai’s whining when he loses, Chuuya’s smirks when he wins, and Dazai’s evil laughter when he wins, and Chuuya’s unbridled frustration when he loses.
It’s all very familiar, a soothe to both their chests. They hadn’t had one of their normal moments since Imiko entered the picture.
They had just finished a game and were starting a new one, when Chuuya hears, unfortunately, the growling of his stomach.
“...You hungry?” he asks, nonchalant as always.
“No,” Dazai lies.
“Shut up. I have leftovers.”
“I don’t want to eat.”
“You eat or you leave.”
Dazai huffs. It’s the sound of accepting defeat, so Chuuya gets to his feet, and, as always, Dazai totters behind him, whining uselessly whilst the redhead heats up leftover chicken curry and rice in the microwave.
Dazai watches him whilst he does everything. He looks beautiful. His red hair, his toned arms, his posture, his face. Everything. Everything. And Imiko’s probably touched it all. Tainted him, this apartment.
For the first time, Dazai feels more of an ache than an anger.
“Do you really like her?” Dazai asks spontaneously.
Chuuya stops moving for a moment. The microwave pings, so he takes that excuse to not respond, and grabs the bowl from it.
Dazai follows him again when the redhead goes to the coffee table and puts his food down on it. “Eat,” Chuuya orders.
“Answer my question.”
“I don’t need to answer anything you ask,” Chuuya snaps. “Eat, or get the fuck out.”
Dazai glares at him, but nonetheless, he eats. Slowly. Painfully. And annoyingly. Making sure he ticks the redhead off as much as he can, poking him where he knows he’s ticklish and dribbling some curry here and there on his laptop that has Chuuya’s hands wrapped around his neck for a moment, ready to choke the life out of him.
They settle down a few moments later, and again—infuriatingly—Chuuya is on his laptop.
Dazai, full and satiated, sits next to him once more, this time fully touching and staring at his screen shamelessly.
Chuuya doesn’t seem to care.
“I do like her,” he says.
Dazai holds his breath, hoping he’ll continue. Hoping for a “But...”
However, it doesn’t come.
“Why?” the brunet inquires.
“She’s everything good,” Chuuya says. “I trust her, mainly. She genuinely cares about me. Not a lotta people do. And she likes me.”
“So, you like her because she likes you?”
“No.”
A revelation suddenly comes to Dazai’s head. “Ah, I see,” he says. “She liked you and asked you out, and you, being a dimwitted midget, agreed even though you weren’t sure how you felt.”
“That’s not what fucking happened.”
His answer is so strained that Dazai knows, immediately, that that’s exactly what happened.
“You’re lying to me~,” the brunet taunts, staring at him.
In the heat of the moment, he had miscalculated. They both had. Because when Chuuya turns to look at him, they’re suddenly too close for comfort. Their noses touch, their breaths mingle, and in an instant they’re both as still as fucking statues.
Dazai’s heart races with the power of a hundred stampedes. The cold he had been feeling dissipates, and his skin fires up, and suddenly he’s too hot.
Maybe it’s showing on his cheeks. He can’t be sure. It’s definitely showing up on Chuuya’s, his face a soft pink, his light brown eyes slightly wide.
Dazai leans down half an inch.
He’s never wanted to kiss someone so fucking bad.
He’s never wanted to kiss anyone in the first place.
And Chuuya’s lips... they’ve been touched too many times by someone else for Dazai’s liking. He wants to claim them as his own.
But, of course, Chuuya rears his head back.
“You—” the redhead begins, though he is promptly interrupted.
Not by Dazai.
But by the front door of his apartment opening.
And Imiko.
Stood there with a fading smile, and widening eyes.
It does look a little suspicious, after all, the way both red-faced boys jerk apart the second she steps in.
They stand in the aftermath of carnage.
Dazai has always felt at a perpendicular tangent with Chuuya. In certain ways, they’re indomitable opposites, but at a point, they may have similarities too.
This, however, is also a situation of opposites. In the hollow silence after they finish a mission. The moon is full tonight. It shines its light down on the two dozen bodies littered across the floor, and the brunet can easily make out Chuuya’s silhouette as he goes around uselessly swiping the dead body’s eyes shut.
Dazai has never understood such an action. It seems very pointless to him.
“Well,” the brunet begins, wiping gunpowder off the tip of his pistol. “Another successful day. My luck has been great today—” (he says this despite Double Black having never failed a mission), “and so I think I’ll head on home and hang myself before it strikes midnight!”
“Do whatever,” Chuuya responds impassively. He’s been in a bit of a mood today, ignoring Dazai more than usual and lacking even the aggression to name-call him. Dazai assumed that it might be because of Imiko’s reaction from last night.
“Chuu~ya~,” Dazai whines, skipping over to the redhead’s side when, with his hands in his pockets, he turns to leave. “That’s your cue to say you’ll save me from a tragic suicide and take me to your apartment!”
“No, thanks.”
“You’re so mean.”
“You can go kill yourself in peace,” the redhead says, yawning whilst he stretches his arms out over his head. “I’m going to my apartment alone.”
Dazai pouts, ready to challenge him when Chuuya speaks up again.
“Plus, I invited Imiko over.”
Dazai stops walking.
Chuuya does too, a few steps ahead of him, before turning around to face him with a curiously lifted brow. The brunet swears he can see a brief hint of amusement on his face again. He hates it immensely.
Still, the situation is too dire to walk away from this time.
“Huh...” Dazai begins, forcing the tumultuous anger and dread in him to not show, “I thought that she would have been angry.”
“She was.”
“Angry, as in, she would break up with you.”
“She was going to,” the redhead continues. “But I convinced her that it wasn’t what she thought. Because it wasn’t. It was just an awkward moment and bad fuckin’ timing.”
Dazai’s hands ball up into fists at his sides.
What the hell.
Awkward moment? Bad timing?!
Chuuya’s face was pink too! He didn’t look away, didn’t even pull his head back until Dazai started moving forward, and that too because of his own guilty conscience!
From the outside right now, Dazai looks as he always does, with an unshifting countenance and a relaxed posture. But inside, he feels a storm of pure negativity.
After a moment of waiting, the redhead turns and begins walking off again.
Dazai watches his figure grow smaller in the distance.
He can’t fucking do this. He can’t let Imiko come to his apartment... they’ll kiss, and spend the night together, and then it might be too damn late and—
Before the brunet allows himself to think too deeply about his (probably dooming) actions, he rushes forward, catches up with Chuuya again, who (unsurprised) turns to face him with a venomous glare. It quickly shifts into awe and confusion when Dazai grabs him by the bicep to press him against the wall of the dilapidated building closest to them.
“Don’t let her come over,” Dazai says, slightly breathless.
Their eyes meet; Chuuya immediately narrows his. “Why?” he demands, this time with a twinge of desperation.
“Because she can’t.”
The redhead scoffs. “She can and she is, you fucking—”
“You can’t let her.”
“Why?!”
“Because... because she...”
“Goddamnit!” Chuuya snaps, seemingly on the last thread of his sanity. “Goddamn you, you bandaged bastard! Always running your mouth until I want you to run it. Just say it! Say it if you mean it, or let me go and piss off!”
Is that what he wants?
Is that what he’s wanted? He has been, weirdly, asking why again and again. Dazai would either lie or deflect.
But that’s not an option anymore, is it?
“You’re not hers,” Dazai says, gulping. “You’re mine, you brat. Do you know how annoying it is to see you smile at her...? More than the kiss, I hate it when you smile at her.”
The next thing Dazai sees is Chuuya’s face twist into one of wonder and annoyance at once, when, before the brunet even knows what’s happening, Chuuya is in his face, and a pair of desperate lips are on his.
Despite his shock, the brunet kisses him back immediately. He uses one hand to cup his face, and the other lifts to grab Chuuya by the nape of his neck whilst he keeps him pressed against the wall. An irrational feeling that Chuuya will run the first chance he gets fills him with dread, so he tries to keep his body trapped in case he decides that Imiko is better than Dazai.
Because of course she is. She’s probably infinitely better than Dazai. And yet...
Chuuya kisses him like there’s no tomorrow, like he’s making up for everything that happened and all the time that’s passed them by. Dazai kisses back like a man possessed—or rather, a man that wants to possess. Laying claim, as far as he can, on the redhead’s every kiss, trying—as impossible as it is—to make it so that he’s the only one Chuuya’s ever kissed.
“Stop,” the redhead gasps suddenly, his head falling back against the wall. Dazai stops. “I can’t fuckin’ breathe.” A small laugh leaves his lips amidst the pants.
Dazai scans his face intently. His otherworldly, dilated dusty brown eyes. Flushed cheeks. Satisfied smirk. Red, wet, swollen lips.
“You look so pretty right now,” Chuuya whispers, one of his fingers outlining Dazai’s lips.
If only you knew what you looked like right now, the brunet thinks. A thought that, too, goes unsaid.
“You kissed me,” Dazai states.
Chuuya leans forward. “I did,” he says, smiling. “And I’m gonna do it again.”
“But that means that you’re not with Imiko, are you?”
The redhead laughs, shaking his head. “No. Fuckin’ hell, sometimes you’re dense, you know that?”
“…You made it all up to make me jealous and get me to admit to how I feel, huh, Slug?” Dazai whispers menacingly.
“Yeah,” Chuuya admits easily, like he doesn’t regret it for a second. “She was upset at what she saw but wanted to stay together, an’ I refused. That’s all.”
“That’s all...”
“Yep.”
“You cheeky little midget.”
Dazai kisses him again, harder this time, so hard that they can barely move their lips.
“Hmmm...” Chuuya says, pulling away, his eyes glimmering with salaciousness. “Whaddya say we go back to mine and practice some ‘third-rate’ make out sessions?”
“I say I’ve never wanted to kill you so bad, you despicable Hatrack.”
“Same to you, you brainless shithead.”
Their harsh words lack any heat whatsoever.
And they can’t stop smiling. It’s truly, abhorrently disgusting.
Dazai reckons he should kiss the stupid thing right off his face.