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"You," Chuuya says, inhaling in a manner not unlike a rapidly heating kettle, "are the most infuriating guy I've ever met in my entire life." Dazai literally made the plan himself, how hard could it be to actually follow it? Successful mission or not, now Chuuya's shoes are soaked in a lot more blood than necessary, and he's seventy-percent sure that Dazai's new sprained wrist was completely avoidable.
Dazai grins at him, swinging his legs from where the executive is perched on top of the balcony railing, and chirps, "not a guy!"
Chuuya blinks. He takes a second, letting his eyes drop down over Dazai's body, only to be met with the exact same outfit and appearance as ever: the suit typical of mafiosos and that obnoxiously large coat still draped over his — their? — form. He can even hardly tell what expression Dazai is making, most of their skin still just as covered up by those bandages as ever, and where their face isn't obscured by gauze, it's covered up by choppy brown hair.
All in all, they don't appear to have changed much from the day that Chuuya had met them, and he's mostly sure that they were a guy back then. At least, he hopes so, because it's been a while and if he's been accidentally misgendering them this entire time he might actually have to take a page out of their book and kill himself from the embarassment.
As if reading his mind — which he supposes Dazai might as well be capable of — the executive says, still just as brightly, "it's not like you could've known." And then, because they're allergic to genuine comfort, they add, "not with your tiny little pea-sized brain! But that's not your fault, either. It's your height."
"Oh fuck off," Chuuya snaps instinctively, and then the fine line of his scowl wobbles as he hesitates. "So, is it… new?" That was so poorly phrased. He can already feel the tips of his ears heating up, a brilliant red sure to be reflected on his face, and from the snicker Dazai lets out, they're fully aware of it.
"Like, not really," they say, smirking, "but I haven't really gone around saying anything. You can never be too sure in the mafia, you know? Don't want to make things worse."
Chuuya frowns. "Wait, seriously? I'm sure if you said something, then Ane-san—"
Dazai bursts out laughing, almost falling off the railing. "Nah, I was just joking!" Chuuya flushes even more, gritting his teeth. "Ha, who's gonna say anything to me?" Of course. They're right, they're so obviously right, and Chuuya hates himself for going along with it at all. When he'd first joined the mafia, and had to awkwardly talk to Ane-san about testosterone and binders, she hadn't batted an eye, setting up the hormone shipment in a couple of days. She would've never allowed the mafia to run so uncontrolled that something as paltry as gender would affect anything. Anyone impulsive or immature enough to make a scene would've gotten kicked to the curb immdiately.
And just like they said, there's practically no one in the mafia who isn't scared of Dazai.
"Aw," the executive in question coos, and Chuuya imagines smacking them straight off of that stupid railing, the image of their body splattering against the concrete below the only thing keeping him from going on a rampage. "You were worried for me."
"Nobody's worried for you, you asshole," Chuuya growls, and digs around in his pocket for his phone. "Can we fucking go back already? We're done here."
Dazai snorts, clearly spotting the unsubtle deflection for exactly what it is, but hops off of the railing anyway. Chuuya doesn't bother fighting it when they step closer, hooking their chin over his shoulder and shamelessly reading off of his phone screen as he types out a quick order to one of his subordinates to send a car to pick them up.
"So," Chuuya hesitates, but the embarassment of asking isn't the important thing here, "when you say you're not a guy…"
There's another laugh from the chin still on his shoulder, rumbling through the fabric of his suit jacket, and he considers slapping them as he turns around, but Dazai acquiesces and steps back, readjusting their collar. "I'm not a guy," they repeat. "I'm not anything."
"Then?"
"I'll be dead," Dazai beams. "You know, if I get my way!"
Chuuya groans, rolling his eyes. Leave it to that bastard to somehow make everything about suicide. Still, it's all the answer he needs, and from the absurdly smug smile Dazai now wears, they know he gets it.
"Wait," Chuuya says, shoes clicking to a stop. "You said you didn't go around saying anything. Am I seriously the first person you came out to?"
Dazai pauses and blinks, and then they say slowly, as if trying to explain a concept to a child that's not particularly bright, "well, it's not like your opinion matters, does it? So I started with you."
This time, it's Chuuya's grin that splits his face far too widely, and he can't stop himself from repeating their tone of voice in the most annoying way he can. "Aw, you're so sweet," he says, and unsuccessfully stifles his laughter as he turns to leave.
"Wow, Chuuya really is delusional," he hears them mumble behind him, but his grin only grows larger. He can hear them following him, anyway, picking their way between the bodies left behind on the floor with faint mutters about the horrors of laundry. They wear the same thing every day, anyway, he sure hopes they wash their clothes.
There's a faint hint of warmth in his chest that he ignores. Displaced pride is always annoying to deal with, but still — at least he knows now. (He's the first one to know. That means something.)
Kouyou groans, turning around to get back to her list as Dazai continues to just stand there, watching her blankly. For a genius executive, he never seems to know quite what to do when he visits her houses.
No, that's not quite right — she's sure he knows exactly how he could act, both appropriately and inappropriately. Instead, for some reason, he always just stares, eyes trained unnervingly on her until their meeting is over. He doesn't do it anywhere else, but she's long trained herself to ignore it as just another one of his many quirks.
"This is an important festival, Dazai," she says, and crosses something off of her list before looking up to meet his eyes. "You will be there, and you will dress properly."
He breaks eye contact to look away with an exaggerated huff, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. Or at least the one eye she can see that isn't wrapped in a bandage. "Ane-san, nobody wants me there. And nobody wants me to dress up."
"The Port Mafia has made great leaps in our influence," Kouyou replies, returning to her list. "You of all people should be aware of how our presence has changed from only a couple of years ago. As such, we are expected to have at least some members at the festival in a couple of days, and as an executive, you are included in that."
"Seems like poor planning to collect so many higher-ups in one place," Dazai says, raising a brow. "Just one bomb, and everything goes boom."
"Do not set a bomb at the festival," she refutes immediately, long used to the directions that Dazai's mind likes to go in. It's best to try to cut those thoughts as quickly as possible before they have time to truly take root and bloom, because his impulses always end up worse than their original concept. If Dazai will listen to her at all is another question, but she knows that over the years, they have curated a grudging respect for each others' work, frustrating as she finds him. "Dazai, it's one night."
"Yeah, and you're asking me to be all fancy for it!"
He wears a suit on a daily basis, she wants to say, loose-fitting and improper as he likes it, but there's something almost true in the annoyance of his voice that it stills her tongue. She looks back at him, frowning.
She'd missed it at first, but there really is something genuine in the way he's glaring, looking away from her and off to the side. Sometimes, it's far too easy to forget that he's only a teenager, and though she knows that he's purposefully allowing her to see his tells, it doesn't erase the fact that they're there.
"Dazai," she says slowly. "What, exactly, is your problem with this?"
He groans, throwing his head back and letting his arms drop limply to his sides in mock exhaustion, and she knows already that he wouldn't bother acting so pissed off if he wouldn't tell her the truth. "I'm not wearing some fucking — formal outfit."
"You spend too much time around Chuuya," she notes almost instinctively, and then she registers what he'd said and her brows raise. "It's a traditional festival. You don't need to wear a different suit." She, herself, wears kimono on a daily basis, and she's been quite eager to wear one of her more expensive pieces for the festival.
Dazai matches her frown. "So you'll let me go with this one, then?"
"No. At least change your outfit in some way. Dazai, what is the problem?"
He groans again, picking at his nails absentmindedly, and says, "it's going to be traditional. I'm going to have to act all — masculine, or whatever."
Kouyou blinks, settling back in her chair. Anger looks strange on Dazai like this, in all honesty, as if the executive had translated one of Chuuya's own expressions and missed a word somewhere.
"You're welcome to wear a kimono," she offers, and at the frown that gets her, "or a yukata."
"That'll be weird, though," Dazai says, but the edge of true frustration has lightened, and she can tell the complaint is only there for the purpose of spiting her.
"You're the Black Wraith," she returns. "Nobody will care."
Dazai shrugs carelessly. "Yeah, I know."
Kouyou sighs, shaking her head. Teenagers are ridiculous sometimes, she thinks, and pities Mori all the more for having to deal with Dazai at a much more frequent degree than she. "You know how to set up hormone shipment, I'm sure," she says, waving a hand to usher Dazai out of the room. She'd only really wanted to make sure the executive would show up to the festival at all. "Now leave. We both have work to do."
"I don't need hormones," Dazai scoffs, but starts to leave anyway. "I'm not a girl, either."
Well, that answers her question, at least, Kouyou thinks privately, and know fully well they'd said it for that exact reason. "Good for you," she says. "Close the door on your way out."
"Yeah, yeah, Ane-san," they say, and disappear behind the click of its latch.
"Hirotsu," Dazai says, throwing himself across the back of the car seat and ignoring his faint plea for the boy to use an actual seatbelt, "would you still love me if I was a worm?"
Hirotsu sighs, but there's something undeniably fond tinged in his voice, and rolls down the window to exhale the smoke. "Dazai."
"I'm not hearing a yes," the executive whines, a faint rustling sound that means he's most certainly wiggling around in the backseat and breaking about six safety laws, "c'mon, c'mon, Hirotsu!"
"Well, you would no longer be my boss, so I would no longer be required to," Hirotsu says amiably, and lets his mouth quirk up at the incredulous shriek of laughter coming from behind him. He's glad, honestly, that Dazai likes him enough to ask him these sorts of questions.
Exhausting as it may be to follow him around, it's clear that the boy is brilliant — too brilliant for his own good. He's never minded their conversations, and if he can provide at least some way for the boy to act a little more his age, he'll do so gladly. After all, he's loyal to the Port Mafia, and Dazai is perhaps one of their most successful executives in the organization's entire history.
And perhaps he wants to be a little kind to a murderous teenager.
"Hirotsu, why does no one believe me when I say that you're actually super mean," Dazai's voice floats over faintly, and when he looks back through the rearview mirror, he sees that the boy has somehow ended up upside down.
"Please sit properly," he replies instead.
Dazai makes a disgruntled noise, but shifts back upright anyway. There's a few seconds of peaceful silence, the only noise the car's motor as they drive, before he breaks it abruptly and asks, "Hirotsu, would you still love me if I wasn't a guy?"
Hirotsu chokes on an inhale of smoke and coughs, exhaling as much of it as he can out of the open window, and looks back to find Dazai's eyes trained on him unerringly, all traces of a smile wiped from his face. There is no doubt in his mind that should he answer wrongly, the executive would pull out a gun and shoot him right then and there, car or no.
Fortunately for them both, Hirotsu would have never had any intention of that. "I respect you greatly," he says, and watches Dazai's nose wrinkle. "That has never had anything to do with your gender."
Dazai sighs, something almost disappointed in the tone of their voice, and leans their head against the window. "Of course you'd say something like that."
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No, of course not," Dazai huffs. "The opposite."
"Ah, I see," Hirotsu says, even though he very much does not and the look Dazai gives him tells him that they're fully aware of that. "In that case, may I ask how I should refer to you?"
"I don't care," Dazai says, shrugging, as if they hadn't been ready to crash the car with them both in it mere seconds ago. "I'm not a guy or a girl. That's all."
"Alright," Hirotsu says, nodding. "Thank you for telling me."
Dazai sighs again. "Hirotsu, you're, like, so nice," they say almost wistfully, lying down horizontally across the car seats and absentmindedly tracing a finger over the leather. "Ugh. I wanna shoot somebody but obviously not you."
Long used to their antics, Hirotsu looks over at his phone, and says, "there might be a jewel shipment arriving a couple of piers over, if you'd like to crash something."
He's sure that they were already long aware of it, but with the way that Dazai perks up excitedly, it would have been impossible to tell. "Wait, really, really? C'mon, turn the car around," they say, leaning over to squint at the small letters on his screen and cheering when Hirotsu flicks on one of his turn signals to make the change. "You're the best, Hirotsu, thank you!"
"You're welcome," Hirotsu says, and smiles faintly.
Verlaine has had a very, very long time to master his reflexes. Dazai seems hell-bent on testing every single one of them, which is proven when he decides to pop up at his elbow out of nowhere as he watches Gin train with another subordinate.
"They're getting strong," he says with a pleased hum, and Verlaine carefully steps to the side to make room for him instead of jumping.
It is rare for Dazai to make his way down to Verlaine's basement. For one, it has not been his for very long in the first place, his title as executive younger than the boy's own, and for a time there he'd even started to consider that his younger brother had been trying to stop Dazai from ever showing up.
Of course, he knows that there is nothing Chuuya can actually do to stop Dazai, nor anyone else, he guesses, but his younger brother is still upset with him, so it hadn't been too strange a thought. He'd expected, at the very least, for the other executive to show up to gloat over his successful victory.
Verlaine has far too much self-dignity to lie to himself and pretend that the way things had unfolded hadn't benefited the boy greatly. Childish as Dazai likes to act, he's near-inhumanely intelligent. For that, Verlaine respects him, and he does believe that the other respects him, as well.
It is not a very close relationship, but a beneficial one, at least. Dazai's appearances, sparse as they are, have been interesting each time.
The last time, he'd shown up with a small child hidden behind his legs, a scrappy, dark-haired thing. For all of the child's quiet, Verlaine hadn't made the mistake of assuming it to be meekness, and he's rather proud to find his initial belief correct.
Even in the span of a couple of months, Gin has grown immensely. They may turn out to be one of his greatest projects, in fact.
He relays this to Dazai calmly, who remains silent, but the glint in his eye says more than words ever could. Verlaine has no idea what plans the other executive may have in store and he holds no interest in finding out, either. He's perfectly content to remain in his basement, training whoever passes his tests and managing his subordinates as he waits for the storm he can feel building. Dazai is free to do whatever he wishes.
"I expected as much," he says finally, as the two of them watch Gin take down an opponent over twice their size. "Gin and their brother both have immense potential. It would be a shame to waste it."
"I agree," Verlaine nods, and thinks of Chuuya. From the sidelong glance that Dazai gives him, he's sure that the other has guessed the direction of his thoughts perfectly, but it is not as if Verlaine has ever tried to cover them up. The two of them had once shared a very enlightening conversation on that very subject, a long time ago.
Dazai tilts his head at Gin readjusting their mask through the camera's view. "They appear very attached to that mask," he says, voice unreadable. "I suppose that was to be expected, too."
"It's yet to become a weakness," Verlaine shrugs. "I'll train it out of them if necessary, but they seem better-suited to assassin work, so it's not needed yet."
"Of course," Dazai says absentmindedly, gaze still trained on them, and then he hums, "they remind me of myself, sometimes."
Verlaine turns to look at him slightly. "A child killer," he says dryly.
"Sure," he says, snorting, his bloody ledger nothing more than a mere afterthought. "I meant in attitude."
Gin is quiet where Dazai is loud, polite where he uses mischief as a weapon, but Verlaine does see where Dazai is coming from. There is steel in his eyes, a sharpness dangerous enough to cut, mimicked in Gin's own, even if they don't know how to use it quite as well yet.
"And," Dazai says flippantly, lips curling into a smile, "the whole trans thing, too."
There's a pause. Verlaine blinks slowly, scanning Dazai up and down as if searching for any difference from the last time he'd seen them, and then says, "huh."
The other executive bursts out laughing, body nearly bent in half from the force of it, and rises, wiping at their eye in clear amusement. "Sorry," they gasp, "it's just that Chuuya did the exact same thing."
Verlaine can't stop the instinctive smugness from uncurling in his chest from those words despite Dazai's knowing look cutting straight to the heart of it. Of course he reacted like his younger brother — the two of them are inextricably linked, after all.
Gin is nonbinary. The one time he'd asked, merely for clarification, they had told him that they had no connection to anything at all. With that in mind, he asks, "so you have no gender?"
Dazai blinks at him, for once the one to be surprised, and says, "well. Yeah, I guess."
"I see," Verlaine says with a nod, tucking that next to all of the other few pieces of information on Dazai that he's gathered over the years.
"You're taking this, like, strangely calmly," they observe.
Verlaine sends them an unimpressed look, watching them double down and grin right back at him. "Dazai, I see you perhaps once or twice a year. I cannot think of any way in which this would matter to me."
Dazai starts laughing again. "Aw, don't say that," they say, pouting, "you're going to make me feel unwanted."
"In my basement, certainly," he says. "If you were just here to check up on Gin, then you're free to leave."
"Aw," Dazai repeats, but the two of them are long used to their conversations ending in this way. They're still grinning sharply, after all. "I'll leave you to your work, then. Thanks for all you do and whatever else I'm supposed to say!"
Verlaine scoffs, shaking his head, but he's still smiling even as Dazai offers one last sarcastic wave and slips out of the door just as silently as they snuck in.
On the screen, a resounding crack echoes as Gin breaks another subordinate's arm, and Verlaine returns his attention to his student where it should be.
Mori respects all of his executives greatly. There is a reason they had been appointed, after all. Kouyou has long been one of the mafia's strongest members, and Verlaine is quickly proving himself to be one, as well. The Colonel is a great supporter, a powerful soldier on the field and a skilled director off of it. Chuuya, young as he may be, holds great power and great potential, with a sharp mind to boot. And there is no proper way to condense Dazai's accomplishments as executive into a mere couple of words — the boy is perhaps Mori's greatest card.
That is to say, he truly appreciates having each of them work both with him and for him.
However, sometimes, he truly does feel the weight of exactly how young his latest executives are.
The Colonel remains always far too immersed in his job, low enough on the executive ladder to allow him to disappear in his work instead of attending meetings. Mori has no wish to force Verlaine to attend, not when his talents lie more strongly outside of management decisions.
The problem is that it leaves only himself and Kouyou to manage the two teenagers, who are currently grappling across the highest floor of the Port Mafia's headquarters. Dazai has made sure to keep at least one hand on Chuuya's skin throughout their entire scuffle, successfully reducing them both down to pure strength without abilities, and though that would hypothetically be an automatic win for the redhead, Dazai has managed to stay slippery enough and prevent the other from gaining a proper grip on him.
Not unlike how death continues to avoid him despite his best efforts, Mori thinks with no small amount of amusement and exasperation. He's fully aware of his own contributions to Dazai's continued survival, but sometimes he is genuinely astounded by the boy's ability to bounce back from wounds that would be considered fatal on anyone else.
"Dazai," Mori says loudly at the exact time that Kouyou calls out, "Lad."
Both heads peek up. At some point, Chuuya had managed to hit Dazai in the face enough so that the gauze wrapped around his eyes is coming loose, and Mori winces in preparation for the complaints that are sure to come once he notices.
"Sorry, boss, Ane-san," Chuuya says immediately, scrambling up from the ground and pushing Dazai further down in a move that may not be entirely unintentional. The boy bows slightly and then beelines directly for his seat with a sheepish tilt to his shoulders.
In contrast, Dazai seems entirely unapologetic, sprawling on the tile floor as if it were a luxury couch. It's only after Mori calls his name again that he sighs and pushes himself up, ambling over to his chair leisurely.
Mori pretends not to see Chuuya's eye twitching in hopes of getting the meeting over with sooner. "Well," he says, "now that the boys are done fighting—"
He's interrupted by a sharp inhale followed by a spluttered cough. When he looks up, Chuuya is surreptitiously avoiding eye contact, face and ears nearly as red as his hair. He glances over to Kouyou for an explanation, but there's a faint furrow to her brow, the look she gets when something unexpected happens and she does her best to act as if she'd predicted it with the mask of the elegant mafioso.
There's a pause, and then Dazai says, voice entirely too knowing, "Chuuya is so sweet."
"Shut up," Chuuya says, clearly flustered, and Mori's confusion only deepens. "I thought — I thought you would've said something by now!"
Dazai shrugs, careless. "Didn't really matter. And then I just forgot."
"You forgot," Chuuya says, voice strangled. Dazai nods cheerfully.
Kouyou clears her throat, interrupting the two of them and the brewing argument they all know is going to happen. "Dazai, it was not an unreasonable assumption for Chuuya to make. After all, he is our boss."
He shrugs again. "I mean, I never said it wasn't."
She glares at him pointedly, and jerks her head in Mori's direction sharply, who is only getting more lost as the conversation continues.
Dazai groans, acting as if the very motion takes an immense amount of strength, and turns to him. "You're outing me," he whines in Kouyou's direction, though he doesn't look away from Mori.
There's a faint sigh of exasperation and her voice says, "I very much am not."
Oh, Mori thinks. Suddenly, a lot of things about this make sense. He opens his mouth to say something, but Dazai beats him to it with another exaggerated groan.
"I'm not a boy."
Mori looks at them for a moment, and then nods. "I know."
It may be one of the few times that he's actually caught Dazai off guard, and he would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy it a little bit. He has known since the beginning that they would surpass — they have already begun to do so — but he's not entirely hopeless.
Dazai isn't the first teenager he's ever met. Certainly, they're not the first trans one. He was an underground doctor for a decade, after all, and there are plenty of places to go for someone on the outskirts of society if they're willing to step somewhere a little darker.
They're a genius. They're also young, and before they figured it out for themselves and smoothed out their tells, Mori had already been able to figure it out.
"You did?" Chuuya says, snapping Mori out of his reverie and drawing his attention to the clear shock on his face. There's a hint of it in Kouyou's eyes, too, though she does a much better job at hiding it.
"Of course," Mori says, nodding again. "I simply decided that I wouldn't say anything until Dazai did so first."
"You asshole," Dazai says, but they actually sound impressed for once. He grins at it. There is very little that impresses someone like them, these days.
"Though, of course, I don't truly know the specifics," he says, an obvious question weaved into the words.
"I'm nothing at all," Dazai tells him. "A bunch of dead bodies shoved together."
From anyone else, it would sound like something negative, a self-destruction. From Dazai's mouth, it is the perfect explanation.
"Well, then," Mori says. "It's lovely to meet you."