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When the world ends, Chuuya Nakahara is twelve. Or sixteen. Or eighteen. Or twenty-two. At the end of every catastrophy, every new hurricane enemy thrown into his line of fire, Chuuya's come out bloody, and screaming, and victorious from the other side. Every abandonment and every moment he took the high road, it all helped save the world.
Of course, Chuuya's ommitting the part where the only world ended or saved is his own. It's why Suribachi City doesn't count, despite his rebirth being the source of the crater's devastation, the end of an infinite number of worlds contained within. Chuuya merely ends and saves his own world, his bruised knuckles and bruised pride in turn.
It's why nights like these are so rare.
Chuuya has a role to play tonight — he's a mafia executive, he always does —, but before his mission truly begins, the night sky is clear. He'd watched the sunset, too; watched the orange-yellow-blue bleed into the purples and dark blues and true dark of the night through the filter of his cigarette smoke.
Two blocks away, a wealthy foreign diplomat — why yes, the same wealthy foreign diplomat who arrived under a false passport two days ago, the same night Gin reported a unit of masked, unidentified observers staking out one of the Port Mafia' munitions storage facilities — awaits her guests of the night. In her rented mansion, all manner of Yokohama's elite, both above ground and under, await their host's greetings to begin the festivities of the night.
And in twenty minutes, Chuuya will don the masquerade mask carefully tucked in the outside pocket of his party ensemble and become one with the crowd. A faceless attendee; one with the same shadowed intentions as every other anonymous guest.
It's a good cover.
It was stupid of Olds to throw a masquerade ball, of all parties, while also planning on fucking over half the people underneath those masks.
It's fine. Chuuya will make it quick. The only reason he's out here, standing in the gravel near one of the parking garages that got put out of use after one disaster or another, still standing despite the odds. Him or the parking garage, Chuuya isn't sure. What a lovely legacy — one so similar to a parking garage that sometimes Chuuya can't tell the difference.
Smoke curls through the sky.
Chuuya's cigarette is near the filter, the cherry close to but not quite burning his fingers. They're cheap cigarettes, pawned off Gin once their brother woke up from his coma and they decided to kick the habit altogether. (That hasn't been going well, since this is the third pack of pawned, cheap smokes, but Chuuya tries to stay out of family business he can't understand.)
One breath in. One breath out.
It's another job.
One day, Chuuya will be in the ground like everyone he's ever been stupid enough to love, and there won't be more jobs. No lesser evil, no greater cause, nothing needing his attention or his guilt or his ruthlessness.
One breath in.
In the middle of Chuuya's inhale, the last of this cigarette's life, he's interrupted.
"I hope you have more cologne," he hears. It's interesting, because Chuuya can't recognize the lazy, but commanding, voice off the top of his head, but Sorrow doesn't immediately rush to the tips of his fingers. Not a threat, according to his instincts.
Chuuya hasn't trusted his instincts in ears.
One breath out.
"Why is that?" Chuuya drawls back, flicking ash off the barrel before dropping it to the gravel below. The cherry, that beautiful glowing red ember surviving despite the odds, is crushed to ash under the heel of Chuuya's dress shoes.
"Not everyone appreciates the scent of tobacco," the newcomer chides.
Chuuya doesn't bother to turn to them. A power play; he learned it from Kouyou when he was sixteen, finally mastered it after Dazai left and he was forced to be patient. Or maybe he learned it from Verlaine? Chuuya doesn't know where he ends and the people around him begin anymore, if he ever had.
From his periphery, he recognizes his company.
Doppo Kunikida matches his voice. It's a mundane comparison, for a man lacking in mundanity. Kunikida cleans up well, in a dark burgundy suit and matching tie. It isn't tailored — the Agency can't afford any salary that high — but it still fits Kunikida in all the ways that matter, though the pants bulge near his thighs and the suit jacket strains around his biceps. It isn't the worst problem to have.
Chuuya shrugs, stuffing his hands in his pockets childishly. "I've found it's easier not to care about pleasing everyone, detective."
Kunikida isn't donning a mask either. In fact, wherever he's stashed his masquerade mask isn't on his person. The Agency's likely not on the invite list either, like Chuuya, but found the same troubling pattern in the last seventeen times Sharon Olds has come to Yokohama.
They're both working, then.
When the Agency and the Port Mafia work together, it's under the compliant flag of truce, a mutual agreement not to become friends and make friendship bracelets, but rather to keep from injuring each other at any moment. Any mistake, any misstep, becomes immediate grounds for that truce running up in flames.
Despite the ever-looming threat of their different allegiances, Kunikida doesn't treat Chuuya like a ticking time bomb. The detective is in the presence of a fucking Port Mafia Executive, and the best he can muster is the relaxed set of his shoulders, the way he stares at the same nothingness in the distance as Chuuya, the freedom that lies across the bay in some other life.
Does Kunikida wish he was in another life, too? Does he contemplate the lesser evil, the role of necessity, the burden of being a pawn?
Does it matter if Chuuya's alone or not? He always ends up that way, one way or another, and it's best not to seek out companionship in a man who's also on a job.
Kunikida hums, low and deep in his throat. Kunikida's voice, like his balance and the way he holds his posture, is low and demanding, always searching for an answer. It's one of the first things Chuuya noticed about him, when they met again.
Does Kunikida remember the first time they met?
"You want one?" Chuuya asks, flashing the half-crumpled pack of smokes from his breast pocket. His lighter, one of the nice flip-backs he'd bought in France after getting it engraved, is nestled comfortably, but he retrieves it anyway.
It's hypnotic, sparking a flame and dousing it just as quick.
(Power, Chuuya thinks, is such a horrible thing; the more of it you have, the more of it you want, the more you lose perspective. He's one of the highest ranking members of an organization capable of taking on the government and heroes in turn, and all Chuuya can ever wonder is how it'd be if his chains were cut, if no one held the leash he's shoved in his own mouth. He has power. He isn't a child anymore. A flame and the atmosphere isn't the only thing he can control.)
Kunikida shakes his head, arms crossed across his chest. Underneath the suit jacket, his white shirt faces the same strain as the rest of his ensemble. Chuuya doesn't linger on it. "Like I said, it's impolite to smell like smoke at an important event. I'd rather not call my credibility into question off the bat."
"No one would care," Chuuya shrugs. It's true enough; what he's noticed, the older he's gotten and the more people he has under his thumb, is that people don't care. They don't care what he does so long as they don't notice it. They don't care if he smokes, or if he dies young, or if — Chuuya's not continuing that line of thought.
It's a bad night for an easy job. The anniversary of his joining of the Port Mafia is always a bit sore, the same soreness that aches on the anniversaries of the Flags' death, of Dazai leaving, of Gin's first kill, of all his reunions, it's always a bad fucking night one way or another.
Or maybe Chuuya just hasn't been medicating lately, fuck if he knows.
Either way, Kunikida takes Chuuya's words, rolls them around, and comes back with whatever meaning Chuuya had with all the context stripped bare, masquerade be damned. "I care," Kunikida says slowly, drawling out his syllables. "It's best to do right. Unless there isn't another option, in which case —"
"Choose the lesser evil," Chuuya fills in.
"— do the right thing anyway," Kunikida finishes, like Chuuya hadn't interrupted whatsoever.
Chuuya blinks at him.
The streetlights cast a ghastly blue light across them both, but Kunikida still seems warm nonetheless. Maybe it's the sandy blond in his hair, so neatly braided tonight, or the slight flush across his cheekbones from the slight chill in the air.
Philosophy is a subject Chuuya's studied. In his life, under a microscope, in a university classroom when he was undercover once. Philosophy is neither his friend nor his interest, so he blinks at Kunikida, letting a coy smile accentuate his face. "Am I not the right thing, detective?"
Kunikida, twenty-four now instead of the sixteen when they'd met, isn't fazed by Chuuya's blatant attempt at digging under his skin. "I doubt you'd think you are, yes."
"That isn't an answer."
"You don't want my answer."
And that's true enough. Chuuya's already this close to figuring out how the mafia will finally do him in, he doesn't need to wonder how the people in his peripheral will — or won't — feel his absence.
"Must we break our truce tonight?" Kunikida asks, never one to beat around the bush. He walks closer, boots — he's in boots for a party? — crunching through the gravel underfoot.
Objectively, it isn't a sexy setting. The parking garage blocks the looming skyscrapers of downtown, and the occasional small, half-demolished building dots the blocks from here to the bay, a district left forgotten by the city and the people who wish it well. Bizarre, but not unexpected, that this abandoned district is so very close to the mansions the next street over, money and wealth flaunted like a dancer's hips to the people who need impressed the least.
Depressing, how very little difference Chuuya's made in the world he swore he'd change, all those years back.
Chuuya mimics Kunikida from moments ago, humming lightly and letting the silence fill in what he can't say. Then, "I'd rather not, if that's fine with you. I'm doing my job; you do yours."
Kunikida clears his throat awkwardly. Like Chuuya's suggesting something so insane, so far out from what he believes that Chuuya has to be joking. Strange, how they've changed over the years. "Will our jobs intersect? If they do, I can't promise —"
"I don't need your promises." It's more snappish than Chuuya intends. Nothing ever happens like Chuuya intends. "Are you after the host?"
"No, we're only —"
"We won't run into trouble then." Is it wrong that part of Chuuya's relieved? Not because he won't have to break the tenuous truce that colors his interactions with half the people he knows in a way past acquaintanceship, but because it means he doesn't have to make the choice?
This is what you wanted, he reminds himself. Power. This is power.
It doesn't feel like power. It never did.
But people live or die by Chuuya's every word, every action, every command, so it's something close to power anyway.
Kunikida nods curtly, stepping closer to Chuuya. Maybe it's for the warmth that's always radiated off him, but either way, it's a little too close for strangers in the night in the sketchy backdrop of another abandoned Yokohama neighborhood.
The silence falls, heavy like a blanket and wanted like an unwanted baby, permanent and practically screaming.
Or — no. That's just the part in Chuuya's head. That doesn't shut up. That wants more than he can ever find out of other people.
"Trouble has a way of finding you either way," Chuuya laughs, playing off his own quips like someone who well and truly lost his marbles. If he had any to start with. Those might've been taken in some experiment or some shit, he doesn't know. "Y'know, the goodness, it clings to you, detective. Might be why."
"Ah, if it's the goodness radiating off me," Kunikida says, daring to crack a smile. "You might have some reevaluating to do yourself, given all I hear of your troubles."
"And what is it that you hear?"
Kunikida makes a so-so motion. "This and that. None, I'm sure, that you'd like me to know."
"Not all of my escapades are as bloody or depressed as I like to think," Chuuya agrees.
Kunikida isn't the same as Dazai. That much is fucking obvious, has been since the day Chuuya met them both, same and apart, but Kunikida doesn't try to deflect or bring himself down to Chuuya's level or generally try to remind Chuuya that power is the one thing he doesn't have. Instead, Kunikida laughs. "Oh, no, trust me, I've heard. I hear much more about you, Executive, than I think either of us would prefer."
"All PG, I hope?"
"Apart from your distaste of the gin-and-milk cocktail that wound up with a large, large donation to a local brothel and three separate felonies, yes. All PG."
More fondly than Chuuya intends (never does do anything he intends, huh), he responds, "that fuckin' bastard, that is not your business to know."
"It isn't," Kunikida agrees. He's still in Chuuya's space, close but not afraid, close but not obligated. "But you know more about me than I'd like, either."
"What, that you've finally caved and bought new sneakers?"
Kunikida's boots are nice, polished and nicely laced up for the ball they're both putting off for one more minute of peace. They're also a far cry from the loafers Chuuya knows he wore for a while, and the ratty, mud-and-blood-stained sneakers he wore for years before that. The same beat-up pair he was wearing while they met, when Kunikida's bruised ass wound up on the same pier.
Kunikida's laugh is loud and boisterous and deep, like Chuuya actually earned something for once in his life. "Yeah, stuff like that."
The future looms.
They should part ways. Make their separate ways to the ball. Go about their jobs. Go home. Wash the blood out of his mask and his clothes and make sure that his report is on the boss' desk by tomorrow morning. Make sure that damn cat of Gin's is fed, make sure his subordinates have their reports in, make sure the whole of Yokohama knows that Chuuya Nakahara is not to be fucked with.
Without the smoke curling into the eyelet of the constellations Chuuya can never identify — Shirase was always much better at that —, the night sky's dark is dull, lulled to complacency by the world moving on underneath it. Maybe, Chuuya thinks, the gods of wonder that might exist somewhere out there in space, understand that adults don't need them as much as children do, and only cast their streaked lightning grace to the children with stars in their eyes.
Chuuya was never a child with stars in his eyes. Shirase was, though.
He always gets so fucking nostalgic on anniversaries, it's fucking stupid. Chuuya's twenty-three, and it's time to get over his stupid childhood friendship from when he was twelve. It's… it's stupid.
"When I was a kid," Kunikida starts, startling Chuuya so badly he flinches. Kunikida doesn't apologize, eyes observant and keen and so very warm, so very unlike the ways Chuuya is used to being studied. "I thought the moon was supposed to be in the low stratosphere, and that it was being punished, all the way out there. I don't know why. But I thought that if I studied hard enough, I could figure out how to bring it home."
Depressing anniversary or not, it's hard not to laugh — slight, barely, like the way Albatross used to make Chuuya laugh (fuck, stop thinking, stop thinking) — at the mental image of a young, very blond Doppo Kunikida trying to lasso the moon to 'bring it home'. It's a sobering reminder that, despite what cards Chuuya holds close to his chest, he was staring at the same moon as the man next to him.
"Did you?" Chuuya asks, not bothering to stifle his smile. "Figure out how to bring it home, I mean."
"Do you see the moon in the low stratosphere?" Kunikida snorts, gesturing vaguely at the distant, brightly-lit waning moon. "No, obviously. I just set my sights a little higher."
"A little higher than kidnapping the moon?"
"Bringing her home," Kunikida says. He bumps shoulders with Chuuya, almost unconsciously — maybe something he does with his other co-workers, friendly as they are? Kunikida doesn't even seem to realize what he's done, considering he doesn't freeze up whatsoever. "I needed something. So I set my sights on the world."
"That's where your do-gooder attitude came from?" Chuuya asks. Unlike before, it doesn't come out as judgmental or scathing, lacking the general visceral irritation he has at moral arguments.
The way Dazai argues morals — he inherited it from Mori. The way Mori argues morals — he gave to Kouyou, twisted into Verlaine; even infected Chuuya and Akutagawa, to an extent. It's ingrained into the Port Mafia, of course, and that's fine, because whatever the boss thinks is what has to be right at the time, but there's a breath of fresh air in the same moral discussions with someone who doesn't ascribe to what Chuuya's pledged his loyalty to. Someone who doesn't try to tell Chuuya that he has to run away from all of this if he has any chance of having a redeemed soul, that he has to leave to make anything useful of himself at all. As though he'd be useless anywhere other than a grave, tempting as it is.
Kunikida shrugs again, noncommital. "You remember when we met, Executive?"
Chuuya nods. Their shoulders are still brushing. Chuuya's doing it intentionally now, seeking out the warmth, despite being underneath his own layers. It's close enough to human contact. Always close enough. "I think I was tipsy."
"Yeah, me too," Kunikida agrees, though they're both lying. "Well, I knew who you were. Not an Executive yet, maybe a year before that happened?"
"How is that relevant?"
"'Suppose it isn't. Look, I thought —" Kunikida struggles for words, looking up toward the sky like it has answers. Like usual, it only has that dull fucking meaninglessness that colors most of Chuuya's days, hiding that grand purpose. "I found it — you — fascinating. I was always told the Port Mafia was fully evil. Everyone in it was. And everyone who fought it, everyone on the police force and the military, that they were fighting the good fight. Laws were immutable truths of what was right."
"It's a common belief," Chuuya says, for lack of anything else. Kunikida needs more time to gather his words; a terrible time to pause, just long enough to make Chuuya remember all the times he woke up to a gun in his face, how many times he woke up in the drunk tank, how many needles were stuck under his skin, how many times he woke up kicked in the fucking side by some power-hungry officer in his dumbass slacks heckling a group of homeless kids.
They aren't fond memories. Chuuya struggles to remember anything positive. He thinks he remembers watching Yuan once, walking through some community event they weren't supposed to be at; despite the general grime of her clothes and the way Yuan's hair had matted that winter, the firefighters let her in the firetruck and gave her a sticker. One of the officers gave her a piggyback ride. Shirase and Chuuya couldn't find her for two weeks after some social worker came to their hideout looking for her. At the same time, he remembers the miserable, forlorn expression across Detective Murase's face, asking Chuuya to come into the light.
No. Back to present.
Chuuya hates anniversaries.
"There was blood on your collar," Kunikida continues eventually. He isn't looking at Chuuya; only the sky. Chuuya spends his time drinking in Kunikida's profile, the way his confidence is so very earned, the sharp cut of his jaw and the scars scattered across it. "You lit my cigarette. We floated. For the first time in my life, I felt like I could touch the moon. The impossible wasn't so impossible after all."
"You're giving me too much credit," Chuuya replies, but can't find it in himself to snicker.
Kunikida doesn't, either.
The vulnerability of the moment hits Chuuya suddenly — the way it always has — the way their shoulders are pressed together despite the nice, expensive clothes; the moonlight and the streets illuminating the solemn pair of never-to-be, the memories of cigarette smoke and using his ability for something he wanted and the look of exhilaration on young Kunikida's face when Chuuya first floated him. The way it felt like Chuuya had been the one to show him a new world, the way Chuuya's blood rushed to his face and he grinned so stupidly, so childishly, at the idea that his ability was wonderful.
So, so very childish. The preciousness — the fact that it's a meeting that hasn't been marred by time, even if they can't be friends, not really — is held so close to Chuuya's heart, he realizes, that this is close to his heart, that he's drinking in the details to give that memory a twin, that he's completely blocked out the parts of his night he's dreading to focus on this moment alone.
"You're proof of the middle ground," Kunikida says gently. It isn't so much a confession — a truth confessed to Chuuya, something grave he should be expecting to cherish — but, like everything else Chuuya inherits, a burden. He is the middle ground.
The Port Mafia is not evil. They are evil to some, yes, kind to others; the mafia is cutthroat like that. There are far worse things than the mafia, and that's the evil the mafia does not inherit.
Philosophy, philosophy, philosophy. Chuuya swears his life always comes back to it.
"The middle ground wins nothing," Chuuya shrugs, uncomfortable now that another burden has been placed squarely on his shoulders. The shoulder currently pressed against Kunikida, the same miniscule detail he keeps coming back to, the physical contact he's so unused to.
Chuuya's hands are covered in blood, and he knows Doppo Kunikida's are too. It's strange, then, how so much of the touch Chuuya receives feels like violence, is violent to its core, but this — this bloodstained matrimony — is not.
"Winning is out of the cards for us both," Kunikida answers. Unlike Chuuya, he doesn't take it as a burden; he takes it as a mission. Unlike Chuuya, Kunikida was able to come up with something to live for when the dust settled and his world was shattered. Unlike Chuuya, Kunikida was able to keep his soul. Fractured as it might be.
"I was hoping," Kunikida starts again, hesitant. He laces his scarred, callused hand through Chuuya's own. Through Chuuya's gloves, he can't feel any of the rough texture, the heat that should emanate — can only emulate what he can from memory, the ghost of a stupid teenage meeting and a thousand things he hasn't said. "We might be able to discuss it more later?"
"Careful, Detective," Chuuya says, "or it might sound like you're asking me on a date."
Chuuya hadn't asked how Kunikida knew to find him. If he knew that the mafia was going to be sending one too; if he was sent ahead to scout, or if he had the intel already. In fact, Chuuya has no clue why Kunikida in particular is standing next to him, why their truce holds, why he doesn't mind, why Kunikida hasn't called Chuuya out on the hundreds of transgressions that don't meet Kunikida's ideals.
Then again, Kunikida hasn't asked why Chuuya is entertaining him either. Their own little truce, sense of peace blanketed away from the rest of their miserable fucking lives that will end for something greater than them without a doubt. Chuuya's never lived for himself anyway; it'd be suicide to try.
"I'm always cautious, Executive," Kunikida counters.
Okay, that's definitely not… Kunikida squeezes Chuuya's hand, where they're laced together, ignoring the elephant bleeding out on the gravel — the woman Chuuya has to go kill, and the woman Kunikida has to look away from when Chuuya walks into the room.
Chuuya wonders if, later tonight, their broader truce will be broken. Somehow, Chuuya is more fine with that — with an all-out war between their organizations — than he is at the thought of breaking this truce, of shedding the miniscule peace, of losing any middle ground he actually has.
Chuuya sucks in a breath; blames his breathlessness on the cigarettes he's so prone to shortening his life with. "Well," he says, "I suppose I could find a time. If you're not always busy."
"There's always time for you, Chuuya."
Abruptly, Chuuya snags his hand back, a flush burning bright on his cheeks and sliding all the way to his ears. Thankfully, most of the damage is hidden by both his hair and his hat; a little embarrassment, only for himself. "You always know where to find me."
"I could say the same."
Chuuya doesn't know what Kunikida wants out of this. There's nothing Chuuya can offer that isn't the doom and gloom that festers and festers through everything he's ever interacted with; Chuuya is the sum of what tragedy can offer. Kunikida is a shining beacon of hope in a world that often loses it, misplaced and abandoned but surviving despite the odds.
In fact, there's very little Chuuya and Kunikida could possibly have in common.
But Chuuya supposes Kunikida will need more time to get to that conclusion, and that, stupidly, makes Chuuya grin. "See you later tonight, Detective?"
"Call me Doppo, you know you're always welcome to," Kunikida says, though Chuuya did not know that.
Chuuya grins even wider. "Oh, later tonight I think I'll be meeting the Detective. I'll go back to talking to you, Doppo, later."
Kunikida dips his head, his face now as flushed as Chuuya's. But just as composed, somehow, the streetlight reflecting that same warmth — somehow — from the glare against Kunikida's glasses. "You're such an ass, you know that?"
"Only to match you, Doppo."
Chuuya takes his leave, dipping his head in farewell at Kunikida before heading toward the party he's been avoiding. There's still blood to spill in the night, but the weight pulling his shoulders down isn't excruciating anymore. He has a detective to match, after all.