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Chuuya’s vision swam as he downed his fifth glass of cheap red wine. Muted, tipsy chatter from the other sleepless patrons of the run-down, sad bar drifted in and out of his ears, much like the sheep that used to circle his head when he was fourteen, lonely, and trying to sleep on the streets.
He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything besides a cup of coffee today. Executive work had been busier than usual lately, with many gangs popping up in Yokohama, both small-time and big. They were probably taking the Port Mafia’s silence as a sign of weakness. What they didn’t know was that, although the Mafia had been a bit more out and about in the scene lately, with all the drama happening between them and the Armed Detective Agency, the Mafia primarily operated under silence and secrecy.
But tonight Chuuya did not want to be silent or secret. He yearned to tell someone, anyone, everything that weighed down his heart, but if he did that he surely wouldn’t live to see tomorrow. Not because Mori would track him down and burn him at the stake, though that would certainly play a part. No, it would be because he would rather kill himself than allow himself that level of vulnerability with someone ever again.
So he drowned everything in alcohol and the smoke from cigarettes. Hangovers every other morning and a slight burning in his lungs every time he laughed at Tachihara’s dumb jokes were better than letting his mind dig into wounds that were better left unbandaged.
He would’ve preferred that someone at least keep him company, but both the stools on either side of him had been left unoccupied while the rest of the bar was packed. At least, last he checked it was. He hadn’t really moved his head from its position of lying sideways on the counter, and he didn’t even have the energy to do so. Even the bartender had disappeared from Chuuya’s view. Seems like that bastard’s aura had already leeched itself onto his skin, even a whole year after his defection.
“Bartender! A whiskey on the rocks, please,” a slightly deep, cheery voice called out from beside him, cutting through Chuuya’s foreboding thoughts like a razor. It seemed like he wasn’t alone on this dreary night after all, but something about the familiar way those words rolled so smoothly off the stranger’s tongue made his stomach twist in ways that alcohol couldn’t. And that scent emanating from the stranger — if Chuuya wasn’t drunk out of his mind right now, he knew he could’ve immediately placed where it was from.
This entire matter could be solved if I just lifted my head and looked at the goddamn guy, Chuuya’s thoughts rumbled angrily at no one in particular. After a moment of pointless deliberation, the redhead slowly lifted and turned his head in the direction the voice came from.
At first, he couldn’t make out much, partially because of the drunken fog his brain was in, and partially because he was half asleep. He squinted through the orange hair falling in front of his eyes; the other man was tall, remarkably so in comparison to Chuuya. He adorned a long, sand-coloured trench coat which looked like it hadn’t seen an ironing in days, and had slim, attractive fingers that were currently flipping through the pages of a book with a red cover, the title of which he couldn’t make out. And his dark brown hair…
The stranger looked up as if he could feel Chuuya staring. His eyes widened a fraction. His beautiful, caramel-coloured eyes. No, not his. Dazai’s eyes.
The warm bar light revealed the bandages wrapped around his neck, and suddenly the fog enveloping Chuuya’s mind thinned just enough for it to stab his heart.
No.
No, that was impossible.
Dazai was gone - not dead, unfortunately - but gone in every sense of the word. And so was their partnership and the empire of treachery and pain they had built, and so were all the soft feelings that had grown like moss on top of each body they killed together.
But even so… hope lurched in Chuuya’s heart.
“Dazai?”
A beat.
“Sorry?” the stranger asked politely, offering a smile that was much too soft to belong to anyone else.
Chuuya’s pulse roared in his ears. There was no denying it now, it had to be Dazai - the loose bandages, the ever-present twinkle in his eyes. Even the careless way he played with the ice in his whiskey glass, like he trusted the world not to fall apart around him.
“Dazai,” Chuuya repeated, more insistent this time, like he was willing it to be true.
“I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” Dazai said, looking almost apologetic.
No. No.
“I haven’t, and you know I haven’t,” Chuuya spat out, his every word coated with building rage.
“I don’t think so,” he spoke amiably, taking a sip from his whiskey glass.
This was fucking bullshit.
He was meeting Dazai after a whole year, and here he was pretending not to know him while sitting a foot away from him.
“You,” Chuuya muttered, pushing himself upright with visible effort, “are either the world’s shittiest actor or I’m finally alcohol-poisoned enough to hallucinate.”
“I think,” Dazai said carefully, like he was measuring his words, “you’ve had a little too much to drink.”
“Fuck you, man,” the redhead spat out, poison dripping from his words.
The man’s lips twitched.
And that did it for Chuuya.
Because no one other than wretched Dazai could look at Chuuya like that, with that much amusement behind his secretive eyes, like he already knew what kind of disaster sat beside him.
“You think this is some sort of joke?” Chuuya seethed.
Dazai took a sip from his whiskey instead of answering. And that was all he needed.
“Dazai,” the man repeated, feeling something inside him break.
“I really don’t know who that is.”
The words echoed viciously in his head.
And maybe Chuuya would’ve chosen blissful ignorance, let the alcohol fully take over, if Dazai looked uncomfortable or confused or even annoyed. But he didn’t.
He looked careful, like there was a fragile thread connecting the both of them and he was scared of snapping it.
Maybe I really am hallucinating. Yeah, that must be it. Nothing else could be the cause of the humiliating pressure building behind his eyes, or the man sitting next to him against all odds.
Chuuya let a long-held sigh whoosh out of his body, and it felt as if he aged ten years. “This… you’re not real, right? There isn’t any other explanation.”
Dazai stayed quiet as the room swayed gently around him, and somehow that silence hurt more than any wound Chuuya had ever experienced.
The redhead dug his nails in his calloused palms hard enough to bleed, his gloves sitting long forgotten on the counter.
“You left without a single goodbye,” Chuuya muttered. “Not even a note. Nothing.”
Silence.
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Mm. I get that a lot.”
“From me.”
“Probably.”
The world tilted uncomfortably and Chuuya pressed a hand to his stomach.
God, he was tired.
Tired in the place Dazai had carved out inside him with painstaking care, and then left without warning.
“I miss you,” Chuuya whispered, just loud enough for the hallucination to hear.
And for the first time since coming here, Dazai looked at him. Really looked at him.
At the dark circles under his eyes. The rumpled clothes. The odd scattering of cigarette burns on his hands. His slumped shoulders, like he’d forgotten how to carry his own weight.
“Come back. Just come back,” Chuuya muttered, his voice thick with the layers of his emotions.
They met eyes, blue against brown, the sky against the dirt. Something flashed in Dazai’s eyes, but it was too quick for Chuuya to identify.
It didn’t matter. None of this was real anyways.
Dazai finished the last dregs of his whiskey, setting his glass down with a small thump. After a moment’s silence, he got up from his stool.
“I’ll be going now,” he said slowly, almost as if he expected Chuuya to stop him.
But he was too tired for that. So all he did was nod and set his head back down on the counter.
“I miss you too.” The last words he heard right before the cold Yokohama air drowned out the rest. And then the door of the bar closed with a final, miserable creak.
The void headed home and the god ordered another glass.