Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence - but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.”

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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Mackerel
today's the day, chibikko!

Quarter to eight, earlier than Kunikida himself, Dazai Osamu is already at the office. Inside is a blur of activity; all the lights on, streamers on the floor, a french press left to steep on the counter.

It’s not that it’s unheard of—which it is, by large—but it’s how Kunikida finds him when he arrives: humming loudly and off-tune, arranging delicate chantilly cupcakes on a platter set as a centrepiece over tulle cloth. Beside it, there are different colored boxes, filled with pastel-colored macarons and eclairs and other things too dainty for Dazai’s taste. It’s looks amazing. It looks exquisite. Even Kunikida is momentarily too stunned to ask if the man washed his hands during preparations.

“It’s Tuesday!” Dazai says cheerily by way of greeting. There’s a spring in his step when he bounds to the back to fetch more teacups.

They both know it’s not just any Tuesday, not if Dazai himself decides it's a good day to break his streak of coming to work serially late to start on decorations, like putting up a banner that says WELCOME, DETECTIVE in a surprisingly pleasant serif, for one.

(In a kinder life, perhaps, Kunikida thinks Dazai would’ve done well as a party planner. It might’ve given his perversely detail-oriented brain something to do.)

Settling down on his seat, Kunikida watches Dazai dutifully wipe a stain off the counter with a rag and doesn’t know whether to cry or short-circuit from shock.

If Dazai is going to be this decent at work from now on, Kunikida thinks, why on earth couldn’t have Nakahara joined us sooner?

But they all know the answer to that.

 — | — 

Like all new member announcements go, with Fukuzawa floating into the office and marking a small X on their shared calendar, a buoyant force takes up the room for weeks. Suddenly, the potted plants are a shade greener. Dazai sings abouts hats, throws pensive glances out windows, and attends to paperwork with only mild levels of procrastination. Even Ranpo walks the three-feet distance to the garbage bin to dispose his candy wrappers, lest give the newcomer a chance to question the Agency’s virtue.

“What virtue,” Kyouka deadpans.

“The bar is very low,” Yosano agrees.

“I think,” Tanizaki says, “instead of pretending to be something we’re not, we should just show our true colors from the get-go, you know?”

“Agreed!” Ranpo’s finger punctures the air. “We don’t want him to think we’re boring.”

“You trapped him in a book and left him there, if I may remind you, Ranpo-san,” Kunikida says, his journal snapping shut. “I’m sure Nakahara needs no reminders that we are not some run-of-the-mill detective agency. All I ask is that we be on our best behavior, and be decent—“

At that, Dazai breaks into a laugh, just as Yosano snorts tea up her nose. Kunikida stares at them with dead eyes; he doesn’t even have the energy to blame them.

The Port Mafia and the ADA, being decent. Ridiculous. This whole situation is off-the-books backwards, completely and utterly—

“Wack!” Kenji says, prematurely setting of one of the party poppers Dazai had hidden under everyone’s tables, as to give Nakahara Chuuya “the welcome of his life.”

“A heart attack,” Kunikida near-yells, dusting the glitter from his scalp. “You’re gonna give him a heart attack.”

“Talking about yourself?” Dazai trills, then ducks from an ill-timed roundhouse kick aimed at his head.

 — | —  

Five days before onboarding day, Yosano points at the extra desk by the door and demands, “I want the runt to sit here. You know I can’t work with all that sun in my eyes in the afternoon, and his head is the perfect size to blot it out,” in that detached drawl of hers like she isn’t completely taken with the idea of him here, like the rest of them are. Like Dazai, who whines and says it’s impossible, he needs to keep his dog close, so tell her, Fukuzawa-shachou!

Four days before onboarding day, it rains buckets. Atsushi swears he sees Nakahara’s ex-protege watching them from the street below, only to vanish in a crowd of umbrellas.

Three days, and Dazai goes eerily quiet. The hat songs stop.

Two days, and Dazai starts arguing with Yosano over their seating arrangement with renewed fervor.

One day left, now: Kunikida paces the floor, mutters ground rules and drafts several files worth of back up plans in case Nakahara decides to blow up the whole building as some sort of insider job—that one makes Dazai laugh, sharp and fond, and Kunikida hasn’t seen him like this in a while—his whole body seized with light—so he drops his case long after.

 — | —  

Today’s the day. A humble Tuesday, if you will. Bleak and quiet, the sun washed-out.

The members arrange their gifts on Nakahara Chuuya’s desk (by the door; you win this time, sensei, Dazai sulks). Atsushi gets him teacher chocolate, Yosano a bottle of the best merlot in town, and Ranpo a box of Q-tips and a single purple crayon, which is definitely an inside joke from their time together in The Book, from the way Ranpo cackles madly to himself as he walks back to his desk.

Dazai clicks his tongue at the display. “Clearly, no one knows what the hat rack likes the way I do. But I suppose it cannot be helped!”

With a flourish, Dazai produces a black hinged velvet box on the table. Everyone cranes their heads to see as he lifts the cover.

“That’s not what I think it is, right?” Atsushi blanches. “Anyone? Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”

“A ring?” Naomi announces hopefully, just as Kyouka blinks, says in a hollow echo-tone of a voice, “Kinky.”

“Enough of this,” Kunikida grits out, pounding the table. “We don’t need to hear about your… private affairs.”

“Head in the gutter today, I see, Kunikida-kun!” Dazai says. “How nasty, the day has barely started and you are already fantasizing—“

“Someone shut him up before I do—permanently—I swear, how is it only Tuesday—“

“Indeed it is a Tuesday!” Dazai gasps, clasping his hands together. “Today’s Tuesday, it’s Tuesday~!”

“We know!”

“Chibbiko’s coming any minute now,” Dazai sighs, draping himself against the window like a lovelorn prince. “I’m so nervous I could die. Chuuya’s the type of person to overcompensate, you know? He’s probably worrying about how to make a lasting first impression. What kind of stunt will he be pulling today, I wonder? Will he crash his car through the door? Or will he skip the commute and arrive straight on the roof?”

Kunikida chokes on his tea.

“Mm, you’re right,” Dazai says thoughtfully. “He probably skipped the commute. We don’t have parking after all.”

The clock on the wall reads: 8:30 A.M. In ten minutes, Nakahara Chuuya’s first day at the Armed Detective Agency will officially begin.

Ten, Dazai predicts, not thirty, because Chuuya will rather break a bone than be tardy. Even back in the Port Mafia, when they didn’t operate on a strict time-table, the man was known for being severely punctual, only losing his streak for the most special of cases—like a punctured lung, or his only ride going up in flames thanks to an ex-partner that didn’t know how to say goodbye.

And so: Dazai sits—

And Dazai waits.

Honestly speaking, he’s no good at it; between the two of them, it’s Chuuya who’s racked up more experience. After all, Dazai leaves people the way Chuuya builds moorings in them. The art of being steadfast is something that is completely lost on him.

Between the both of them, Dazai thinks: if anyone had deserved a second chance at the ADA, it wasn’t Dazai.

No—he knows.

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Mackerel
it’s not easy being geographically-challenged, so here’s a map
in case you got lost! feel free to call me if your brain
can’t understand such simple instructions~

“Listen up, you waste of space,” Chuuya tells Dazai the first time he brings it up casually—the job offer, that is, and honestly, how many people can say the boss of the ADA personally requested them at the Agency? Nearly nil, nada, zero—people come to Fukuzawa and not the other way around—and honestly Chuuya should be grovelling at Dazai’s feet in gratitude by now. Except, in typical Chuuya fashion, there is nothing but bared teeth and snarling fury, every weakness walled tight behind a scowl that Dazai himself can’t needle through. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—the Agency going through a tough turnover, is that it? What is this? Are you scamming me?”

Dazai makes a horribly affronted sound. “How rude! The Agency is incapable of such barbaric—“

“O-ho, with you in the mix? I wouldn’t be surprised if this was one of your weird social experiments. Listen, bandage-freak, I don’t ever wanna hear this bullshit again. I don’t want your membership or your—your protection, or whatever the hell this is,” Chuuya spits, and the wine sloshes in its glass next to his clenched fist. “You think you know what I am, but you never did, never will, and that’s that.”

“But even you don’t know what you are, Chuuya!” Dazai responds cheerily, knowing the way the hurt breaks open on Chuuya’s face without having to look.

Two feet away or two hundred, Dazai sits on a bar stool with his ex-partner and thinks, it’s happening again, thinks: why do we keep doing this to each other?

“It doesn’t matter,” Chuuya says. It sounds like an echo. It sounds like Dazai himself. Call and response. The way he squares his jaw as he stares Dazai down is a flawless veneer. “It’s my business,” he murmurs.

Not so flawless; whether Chuuya likes it or not, they’ll never be complete strangers. Dazai can see the minute tightening of his mouth and the tremor in his hand as he tosses the drink back, these small inevitabilities.

Besides, if Chuuya would only stop trying to numb his nerves, he’d see that Dazai is trying, the way he could not years ago.

“Well,” Dazai says, “lucky for you, we aren’t retracting the offer any time soon—“

“Didn’t I just say—“

“Just think about it, Chuuya. This is no one’s choice but yours.” Dazai snatches the next bottle before Chuuya can pour it into his now-empty glass. “Yours. Just yours.”

Chuuya makes a sound through his nose. He doesn’t make a move for the bottle. Small victories. “Whenever you say that…” he chuckles darkly and doesn’t continue.

“Thank you,” Dazai tells him, and it surprises them both.

“The fuck for,” Chuuya says, eyes wide

“Your company, of course,” Dazai recovers easily, smiling. “Here I was, expecting to use Plan B to woo you into having an afternoon drink with me.”

“Do I want to know what this Plan B entails?”

“Nope!”

“…good enough.”

Chuuya shrinks into his seat.

“They’re good people,” Dazai says suddenly. Means, if I trust them with my life, can’t you too? Means, can we stop running now?

Chuuya's fingers flex around his wine glass. Dazai knows the scars beneath that glove, has bandaged it in all its iterations—splintered bone through a wall to let out steam, or charred flesh gifted from a war-god stirring from sleep—Dazai has learned to bury Chuuya’s history so he can live to tell the tale. The fact that after all this and more, Chuuya still distrusts Dazai’s genuine concern for him is a hurt he supposes is well-deserved.

“Fuck,” Chuuya says, and it’s all the warning Dazai gets before Chuuya lets out an anguished half-yell, half-whine, the sound of pure existential dread, dragging his fingers savagely through his hair. And then, he quiets, deflating like a balloon on his stool.

“I always wondered,” Chuuya mutters, defeat and something else, “how someone like you managed to pass the entrance exam.”

A laugh bubbles out of Dazai’s throat. “You know, Kunikida-kun said the very same thing!”

 — | —  

Ah, comes the realization, I left him.

It’s a rude thought, like tripping on a random root on the sidewalk that leaves you with scraped up knees and palms. One moment Dazai is strolling through Yokohoma’s winding markets, and in the next the thought perches on him like a small bird: I left him, and I didn’t even give him a chance to follow.

It an objective truth, no frills. Facts on a white page. It shouldn’t burn the way it does.

Somewhere on this street, Atsushi is buying both of them candied apples. Dazai doesn’t care for apples, but the kid wants to buy him a treat from his first ever pay-check, and isn’t that something.

Would you change anything? The thought turns coy, the shape of Chuuya’s ghost, and immediately, Dazai knows the answer.

Atsushi calls his name, waving a caramel-covered treat in one hand. It tastes sweet, like apples should. His tongue is coated in syrup.

No, Dazai thinks. I’d do it again.

Not for the first time, Dazai wishes to be anyone but himself.

 — | —   

The Port Mafia doesn’t fall when Mori does, not because its foundations are strong, but because Interim Boss Nakahara Chuuya doesn’t let it.

Quite literally, as is the case: the warped-red anti-gravity of Chuuya’s ability wrapped around the entire belly of the ceiling—and all twenty-seven floors above—is all that keeps it from crashing into the lobby and entombing them here. Chuuya breathes, then crushes his fist; the concrete carcass crumples like a pancake, straight to the bottom, compacted into a grotesque disk before it’s tossed out the street.

Outside, the sky is rust, bloodshot from the last bomb.

No one cheers when it’s over. Chuuya wobbles but doesn’t fall. He’s so tired he can almost forget the bodies strewn like cigarette filters on the floor.

They don’t have room for sentimentality here, never have, but even so—

Even so, Chuuya knows their names. That one, with the eyepatch, who he taught to shoot. There, the blonde with the pipe through his chest, owns the sake store on the path back to Chuuya’s apartment, which will still be there tonight when he stumbles back home. Chuuya knows the sister. Hell, he knows the goddamn cat—a tabby named Matcha—that treats scratches like overeager kisses.

He has the mark on his ankle to prove it. Several others too, inevitable contact from each subordinate he’s met and trained and worked with, most invisible. Chuuya’s skin sings from ghost-static.

Yet again, Chuuya, and the god inside him, lives to see another day. Perhaps there is a manual somewhere detailing countermeasures in the wake of your boss’ death—a very public one at that—What To Do So You Don’t Lose Your Shit, or at least, not for long. Chuuya doesn’t know where it is, so he has to be creative.

He knows what Mori would’ve done, which would be to fall back, reassess their weaknesses, then retaliate from another vantage; he knows what Dazai would’ve done, which would be to pull out his favorite strong-arm tactics, see who dies first.

But Chuuya is not Dazai. Nor is he Mori. This, he realizes very quickly, is the problem.

The air tastes like flint, and he can’t hear out of his left ear. His hat has gone askew. Reaching up to tilt it back in place, he realizes his hands are shaking. It’s not often that he feels gratitude for being alive, for being human, but as this moment careens towards the end lets his lungs expand and fill with euphoria.

Thank you, he thinks, looking down at his hands, the leather slick with grime. Goodbye.

  — | —  

(And now—drumroll please: the next leash—!)

  — | —  

He doesn’t hear his associate arrive until he comes into view.

“Were my instructions unclear?” Chuuya barks. “I’ve cascaded the order to all units; fall back. It’s over. We count our losses. Then we go home.”

“Sir,” the man begins—Yozora—his voice falters. “If we pull back now, the damage will be irreparable. The Port Mafia should not stand to be humiliated like—“

“Got a wife?” Chuuya says. “Don’t you, Yozora?”

Startled, Yozora seeks his face. Then slowly, he nods; nobody speaks about ties outside the mafia unless torture is involved. “I—yes I do, sir.”

Chuuya stretches out the crick in his neck. “Then you better take my advice, while you can. Tomorrow, the Port Mafia will still be here. At least, what’s left of it. Your wife, though? Can be lost as collateral damage any time if any of our enemies decide to join forces right now and attack us while we’re scattered. So for the last time: Go. Home. Let’s hope the news is slow.”

Chuuya can hear the gears click into place. Yozora bows deeply, then takes off.

“And you—?” Chuuya asks, not bothering to turn around. He spits out a gob of blood. It’s almost obscene against the once-pristine tiled floor of Mori Corporation’s lobby. “Might wanna go home if I were you. Family—?”

“A son, sir. I have a son. He’s in college. About your age.”

Chuuya has to smile. He is well aware of his status, his lost childhood.

“Well, then, why the fuck are you still wasting my time?” He turns, then pauses. “You’re not one of mine. Ane-san’s—?”

The man bows, presenting him a box covered with polka-dot wrapping paper. The corner is singed. “Sir, these were the only things left from their room,” he says.

He takes his leave when Chuuya receives the present. It’s a curious weight; inside is Elise’s personal collection of very special lovely pretty things, including marbles of different colors and sizes. Once, Elise assigned all of them a marble—blue for Rintarou, black for Dazai, purple for Akutagawa.

Clear, for Chuuya.

“Thanks,” he says, to no one. Inside him a bomb-blasted, colorless sky. Is this grief? Can you grieve for yourself?

Out of everything he carried today, this box weighs the heaviest.

 — | —  

Of course, Chuuya gets himself absolutely shit-faced.

If anything, at least, it’s the one thing he can’t fuck up today. And of course, Akutagawa sits a seat away in solemn silence like his own shadow, listening to another of one of Chuuya’s restless spiels.

“I asked her, right? Why the fuck do I get the boring one? I wanted the yellow one, or—hell, even the gray one, but clear? And you know what she tells me? You wanna know what she tells me? She says that’s just how my soul looked like. My fucking soul.” His glass refills, only for its contents to disappear in his throat by the next second, Chuuya’s very own magic trick. He grabs the next bottle, squinting at the label, and almost goes cross-eyed with the effort. “Anyway. Shit’s fucked up. That’s some—some grim reaper shit.”

“Right,” Akutagawa says.

“S’boring,” Chuuya complains. “I’m not boring, am I?”

“No,” Akutagawa agrees.

“Thank you.” Chuuya fixes him a wide-eyed stare. His mouth trembles. “The fuck are you so nice for?”

“I’m…” Akutagawa shifts uncomfortably; there’s a spot behind his ear with dried blood he forgot to wash out. “I’m not…”

“You are!” His fist comes down on the table. Akutagawa’s spine goes ramrod straight. “You know what I’m gonna do for you? You wanna know what the hell I’m gonna do for you?”

“Chuuya-san—“ he says feebly, just as Chuuya puts two fingers in his mouth and wolf-whistles, “What’s a guy gotta do to get some fucking shots ‘round here, huh?”

But Akutugawa has enough on his plate, so Chuuya doesn’t tell him anything else. He doesn’t tell him about Elise, how she’d held his hand like the kids of Sheep used to, and said, Rintarou says you are the best handyman the Port Mafia could ever ask for, and how it felt like a salve, that saving thought, releasing him from the burden of looking back and questioning his place—which also meant he’d stopped dreaming of the sea, that he started setting his eyes on the sky instead. Chuuya doesn’t tell him about Mori, about Dazai at fifteen, the boss’ hand on his shoulder that looked too much like Chuuya’s very own leash in the right light that he had to look away.

(Utility, Mori said, tipping Chuuya’s hat up, is our highest honor. Don’t you agree, Dazai-kun?

And Dazai—

Dazai had looked at him and said—)

Grinning, Chuuya pushes Elise’s box towards Akutagawa. “Which one am I,” he slurs, lifting the lid.

Akutagawa blinks at the box, then at him.

“Well? Go on, pick a damn marble!”

Reluctantly, Akutagawa’s hand hovers over the box. Inside is bright and gaudy, like a child’s mind. Then, he grabs one and turns it up on his palm. “Red,” he decides faintly, but it’s resolute.

“For real?” Chuuya sets his glass down. He ponders this for a moment, before his face sours quickly. “I get it. Like, Corruption, right?”

Akutagawa shakes his head. “No, sir. Like—“ he flounders in silence, fingers cupped around the marble. “Red, like Camelias. I know it means… devotion.”

“Oh,” he says, eventually. “That’s—“

Chuuya doesn’t finish. Akutagawa hides his face by coughing down his sleeve.

Outside, the sky churns, shifting like a bad bruise.

(Will you be the man we need? Mori’s shadow asked. You’ll protect us won’t you? Shirase said, the skin of his fingers searing a brand around his wrist, and Chuuya was so lucky, Chuuya was so loved, he’d been drifting like a cloud all his life, what else was there to say now but yes, always, yes—)

“Chuuya-san,” Akutagawa says, before the color drains completely from his face and he hastily appends: “Boss. Boss, we need to—“

“Don’t.” Chuuya’s face breaks open. “Not—not yet. Give a man a goddamn minute.”

The light outside falls as stripes through the window, crisscrossing over Chuuya’s arms, wrists. He brings the glass to his lips and his face twists when he finds the bottom. The fight leaves him in seconds. He sighs. “There’s no one out there to fight tonight. Just—just finish your drink, Akutagawa.”

For a terrifying moment, Chuuya fears the worst—not Akutagawa leaving, but him backing down, just like he’s told. Even worse: Akutagawa putting a hand on Chuuya’s back in comfort, because Chuuya’s not sure if he’ll be able to push it away.

Mercifully, Akutagawa takes his drink and says nothing. His silence is question enough.

“Heavy,” Chuuya says after a while.

“Yeah,” Akutagawa says quietly. He stares at the red in his drink. “I figure.”

— | — 

—Dazai had looked through his mismatched fabric of a soul and sneered, “That’s it?”

 — | —  

Maybe Sheep can see it—the Suribachi-sized hole in his chest and memory—so they gravitate to him like ants to a teaspoon of sugar. Chuuya’s youth is sour but still sweet as the inside of a honeycomb, all to easy for a hook to sink in, slow and easy. After all, Chuuya has no one, so he indebts himself to everyone. But at fifteen, dirt-poor and hungry in more ways than physical, Nakahara Chuuya is ravenous for things even the Sheep can’t give.

So, when Chuuya’ gaze drifts off to the sea, Shirase notices.

He’s on him immediately. Shirase has anxious eyes, passed down from his dead brother like secondhand clothes. He’s always waiting for Chuuya to turn. When you scrape up to the bottom of it, they’re all just a bunch of malnourished kids, fighting a war their parents won’t partake in; they have no use for traitors here, or threats.

And Chuuya is a walking landmine. Sheep kids learn to tread carefully.

“Remember your promise,” Shirase says, hounding him in their makeshift kitchen and pressing him against the counter, just enough that it’s more heat than threat; Chuuya’s touch-starved body reacts with the equivalent of bare hands on a live wire. “You’re the only one we have, Chuuya. It’s your responsibility. Promise me.”

“I promise,” Chuuya says, eyes wide. “Yeah, fuck, I promise.”

“Good,” Shirase sighs. His breath washes over him, smelling faintly of the whiskey he stole this morning. The metal roof creaks as rain begins to patter overhead. Shirase’s forehead drops to his shoulder, his voice a taut bow. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Chuuya.”

Chuuya doesn’t correct him when he says “I” instead of “we.” Beyond the collective, having something all to himself is nice. Chuuya likes being desired. Likes that Shirase stares at him when he thinks he isn’t looking, that he wants to touch him instead of shoving a gun into his throat. So Chuuya stays there, bracketed between his arms. His rabbit-heart begs him to move. But he stays, even as Shirase’s hands grow bold and his face shifts to burrow itself in Chuuya’s neck, his most vulnerable spot.

“Need you,” Shirase says into his skin.

And because it’s Sheep—the only family he knows—Chuuya lets himself be folded.

And then: “I think I love you,” Shirase whispers into his neck. It’s Chuuya’s very first love confession. Chuuya doesn't know why, but suddenly air pushes out his mouth and he’s laughing, he realizes—he laughs and laughs and laughs so hard Shirase peels his hand out of Chuuya’s pants and looks on in confusion, then anger, then revulsion—Chuuya’s still doubled over when Yuan peeks her head into the room, trailed by the youngest members of Sheep.

That’s the moment Shirase decides, enough, and nicks him in the jaw, cutting Chuuya short.

Slowly, Chuuya’s head lifts to find the expression on Shirase’s face. It’s a good look on him, he decides. It’s the same one people give him, moments before gravity grinds their spine to powder.

“Love? Who, me?” Chuuya says, as red coats his body like a brewing storm coats the sky. “You sure about that?”

In seconds, they’re gone. And he is alone.

Chuuya shuts his eyes and listens for the rain.

 — | — 

A week later, he meets another boy his age, one-eyed and obnoxious, with a coat three sizes too big. It keeps slipping off his skinny shoulders, but that doesn’t stop the adults from following his every beck and call.

Chuuya predicts the offer when it comes. Joining the Port Mafia is just like death, but with a fancy membership card. But at least this one says it as it is.

Clearly, Chuuya is no winner here; Dazai doesn’t call it salvation.

Still: “Bring it on,” Chuuya declares. Tries not to think about how the boy who said he loved him stabbed him with a knife laced with rat poison. C’est la vie, as they say. Life is shitty, too bad. This is hardly a setback.

Live, Dazai’s sickle-smile seems to say. A command—not for the god inside him—but for Chuuya himself, feral and dying—slowly, painfully.

While the mafioso crowd around him, faces pale as they brace for Arahabaki’s wrath, Dazai’s one eye looks at him, and only him.

Chuuya grins, then walks with open eyes into another leash.

 — | —  

Farewell, Suribachi. Hello, Yokohama.

 — | —  

There’s a card in his suite—a suite!—with handwritten instructions for his next meeting. Tea with Kouyou, a red-eyed flower of a woman who calls him squirt.

Welcome home, Yokohama seems to say, rising in greeting beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of Mori Corporation’s executive lobby. It’s not home. Not yet, at least. Wearing leather feels excessive; eating more than one meal a day is a dream he’s braced to wake up from. Any time now, someone’s gonna pop up from a corner with a rusted kitchen knife and go for his guts, re-open Shirase’s small parting gift and make a mess out of his pressed shirt.

But: no one does.

Instead, he catches himself in mirrors, finding his hat skewed every time. He’ll make it work someday. Right now everything is a half-size too big, too misplaced, too alien and cold and grey.

Still, it’s a pretty swanky view. Beautiful, even, in the right light. If Chuuya tries, squints his eyes, he can carry all of Yokohama in his hands—a thousand lights from a thousand lives, cupped in his small palms.

See?

Like so.

A perfect fit.

— | —  

Chuuya doesn’t bother with knocking—he strides right into Dazai’s room where his partner sits on the bed, a swollen ankle braced on a footstool while he holds an ice pack over it—and he puts the box on the carpeted floor right in front of him with little fanfare. Announces, “It’s everything.”

Dazai doesn’t ask what “everything” means. Doesn’t ask about the graze wound on his cheek, or the wild, shaken look in his eye. Doesn’t have to. Just moments ago, this ordinary box was sitting inside one of Mori’s heavily guarded vaults, locked with a combination code Chuuya just earned the right to over the course of 15 months.

Just over three hours ago, Mori finally hands him the code.

Chuuya sits on the floor, grimacing; already, dust goes airborne because Dazai is incapable of anything remotely resembling hygiene. “God, at least pretend you like your own room. It’s like something died in here,” he mutters, but reaches over to brush Dazai’s fingers—trading a pack of Tylenol with a cigarette that Dazai pulls out of his shirt pocket with ease.

For a doctor, Mori doesn’t approve when Dazai takes painkillers; says it incapacitates him, makes him slow. He also says Chuuya shouldn’t smoke--so he takes up drinking at sixteen instead.

If anything, at least Mori is true to his word. Chuuya has learned to fit steel in his bones and slaughtered thousands in his name, and as promised he receives proof of his life—at least, remnants of it, written by people who address him in numeric. The book is everything and nothing he expects, detailing the painstaking research, the numerous experiments, and the thousands of dollars expended by blind faith for a false god, because that’s what Chuuya is, like he always knew.

He doesn’t pity about those who died at his hand. You reap what you sow, and Chuuya is determined to be more than what he finds on his file.

Along with the book are Rimbaud and Verlaine’s possessions, bits and pieces from a life swiftly cut short before a chance for goodbye. Chuuya pulls out a metal cigarette case, a floral tie, a few old browning letters, and an old VHS copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

He tries reading the title out loud, but his tongue is too blunt and heavy. Peering behind him, Dazai opens his mouth and reads it perfectly on the first try.

“Fucking show off, I’ll kill you,” Chuuya says, with very little venom.

“I’ll teach you,” Dazai says, watching Chuuya feel the cover with something akin to sentimentality. “English is hardly a challenge; even a dog like you should find it easy.”

“Okay,” Chuuya says, already faraway. He’s in no mood for a fight. He can feel Dazai’s one eye watching him as he kneels to feed the tape into the player.

The room floods with soft light. Outside, lightning flashes, bomb-bright, outlining the jagged edge of Yokohama’s skyline.

Dazai pops in a Tylenol. Chuuya takes in a slow drag. They stay like that for a while—watching Holly Golightly peer into windows and fall in love with her oversized cigarette holder—and for one hour, Chuuya feels this must be what kids his age do, staying at home to watch movies during a storm. Listening to Dazai breathe and gasp and even chuckle next to him, Chuuya’s chest settles into something quiet.

It’s been weeks since Double Black was called for a mission; Mori says the Port Mafia’s influence is growing like spores, with no need for the heavy-handed tactics that had paved the way for its current glory. Come to think of it, these days Chuuya only sees Dazai in snapshots—a dark head turning the corner, a ringing voice echoing off the ceiling from a meeting room with its door ajar. With Dazai’s being groomed for higher leadership, and Chuuya being pulled from one corner of the country to another, the last time he’s seen Dazai is two weeks ago—Dazai had tracked him down and pulled him into a storage room, whining darkly into his mouth, Chuuya is such a slippery target—and they’d devoured each other like teenagers do, as if on borrowed time.

Chuuya doesn’t realize the phone call isn’t coming from the movie until he hears Dazai mumble, “Noted, Boss. On my way,” and begins to shuffle to his feet, wincing.

“Already?” Chuuya says, eyes falling to Dazai’s injury. “What could Mori-san possibly need now? You can’t go back yet.”

“Is Chuuya offering to carry me?” Dazai’s eyes brighten, his coat halfway on his shoulders. “I prefer bridal carry.”

“Fuck that. But you’re in no shape to go on a mission, I’ll—”

“Surely there is a reason Mori-san called me and not you,” Dazai says, and Chuuya’s mouth snaps shut, fingers curling as hurt sours the inside of his mouth, ruining everything. Dazai is always ruining everything, and Chuuya always lets him. Unconsciously, he’s pulling his knees into his chest until he feels Dazai’s hand touch his shoulder—rare and hesitant, before tugging his chin back so he can blacken his own lungs with Chuuya’s cigarette. Then, perching it back on Chuuya’s lips, he straightens, says, “Don’t follow me, Chuuya. Enjoy your reward. You worked hard.”

Chuuya stares at his box. He doesn’t watch him go.

Cursing, he reaches up and pauses the movie.

“When you come back,” Chuuya says resolutely, when Dazai turns to him, too fast—his eyes a little lost, a little feral like Chuuya himself, in unison as they should, “let’s finish the movie.”

“When I come back,” Dazai repeats. Alive, he doesn’t say.

Chuuya glares at him warningly. The light from the TV makes his hair burn torch-bright. “That’s what I said, bastard.”

Dazai smiles, soft and lopsided. Wordlessly, he nods and leaves the room.

When he comes back fifty-nine hours later, Chuuya is gone for a mission of his own, along with his box of secondhand possessions, the sound of New York and Holly Golightly.

It takes one year before they find the time again. They’re twenty-five minutes in before Chuuya is whisked away for duty.

Three months later, they sit down, put the tape in and watch ten minutes until both of them are called for separate missions; Mori needs Dazai’s help getting a rat to talk, and Chuuya—

Chuuya is being sent overseas.

“Aw, and it was getting to the exciting part,” Dazai moans.

“Move, I need to pack.“ Chuuya brushes past him to surf through his suits. “It’s my first international client, so I really gotta kick this one out of the park, you know?”

“Congratulations,” Dazai says, after a long pause. His voice is a hollowed-out thing.

Chuuya swallows; if he turns around right now, he knows: he’ll be swallowed whole. So he doesn’t.

“After this trip, let’s finish the thing,” Chuuya says. “So don’t die til I come back, alright?”

“I make no such promises,” Dazai singsongs.

A month later, Oda Sakunosuke falls.

So does Dazai.

✉️ 3 new messages - now

Mackerel
ranpo-san is finishing all the sweets i bought for you!!!!!!
they were very expensive!!! do you know how much the agency
pays me? DUST, chuuya!

✉️ 4 new messages - now

Mackerel
if you come a minute later, i’ll demand all expenses
to be cut from your first paycheck!
how utterly unprofessional! 👎👎👎

The wall clock reads 9:45 A.M. The next time Dazai blinks, it’s 11 A.M.

Chuuya is still nowhere to be found.

Soon, lunch arrives with the coffee gone stale, along with the party spirit that has whittled down to the sound of Dazai vigorously texting profanities to Chuuya’s unresponsive cell phone. Excited as the agency members were, the day goes on, and there is work to be done, people to save; they leave Dazai’s elaborately bedecked table untouched.

Tanizaki says, “Anyone want takeout?” and Atsushi shoots him a look that means, shut the fuck up, but polite.

The thing is, Dazai isn’t pacing. Of course he isn’t. He huffs through his nose, sending the last text with more force than necessary, then drops to his seat, arms crossed.

“Being late to your first day at work—how incredibly embarrassing! How unbecoming! How... severely unprofessional! If this is a sign of Chuuya’s work ethic for the coming days… I need to have a word with him, as soon as possible! It’s rude!”

Wordlessly, Kunikida and Ranpo share a glance. Kyouka says something that Atsushi immediately cuts off, slapping a hand over her mouth and stuttering, “Die—die—diarrhea—is what you were saying, wasn’t it, Kyouka-chan? Of course—”

Dazai’s hands fly to his mouth. “An acceptable hypothesis! I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. How nasty.”

He snickers, then flips open his phone to egin frantically composing another message.

Atsushi swallows, eyes panning the room for any willing tribute. He sighs.

Of course no one has the heart to tell him otherwise. How can they? When Dazai’s looked more alive in the past month than in years?

— | —  

“Absolutely useless,” Chuuya grumbles, after they end yet another war on Yokohama soil.

His choker is singed, his hat irreparably ruined, and he has split ends now, from all the acrid, radioactive heat—but still, here the city stands—their city, even if these days it’s Shin Soukoku who comes to steal the show.

Again, like clockwork, Chuuya arrives when Yokohama treads the edge of a knife. Dazai smiles when he hears the voice announce his coming—a pinprick in the sky like a trick of the light, or the Agency’s saving grace—and again, Chuuya doesn’t have to, never has—but he makes a detour by the ADA to lend them a hand

“Agency motherfuckers always need a goddamn baby sitter,” Chuuya sighs, after redirecting a shower of broken glass back to its owner with a flick of his wrist. Forty feet away, the shockwave ability user stills, then crumples to the asphalt.

“How much is your hourly rate?” Dazai manages. He’s a wreck himself—lost a shoe at one point, right after breaking a clavicle or two. He’s leaning against an upturned car, both as a crutch and a shield from the gunmen. He tells himself it’s the pain that’s stretching out the grin on his face; like seeing Chuuya isn’t always a highlight.

“Bitches can’t afford me,” is what Chuuya replies. Then he launches a motorcycle at the last sniper before they can catch Dazai in the crosshairs. Turning around, he winks. “Think of this as charity work.”

“Chuuya, you bleeding heart! You didn’t have to do all this,” Dazai says, trying not to let the smile grow. There’s a welling cut on Chuuya’s cheek from the sole shard he missed, and before Dazai can help himself he's reaching a thumb to swipe it, resting his palm on his jaw to say, “Too much hard work will give you white hairs, you know.”

Chuuya’s face freezes. Too late, Dazai withdraws his hand. Before Dazai can catch anything, Chuuya’s turning around, eyes going faraway. Mutters, “Guarding what’s mine, is all.”

Dazai tracks Chuuya’s gaze and sees, in the distance, Yokohama’s skyline. There’s a sheet of smoke rising with the clouds, the sky pink and chemical-ripe.

“It’s mine too,” Dazai says, so thank you, he doesn’t add. If he talks anymore he’ll slip for sure, his hands flying away from him to do something terrible or tender.

(Someday he’ll be able to say it, pry the words from his own mouth to see it sing in Chuuya’s eyes.

Thank you. I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re here. I—)

He hears a laugh and sees Chuuya run his hands through his singed mane. The sight hits Dazai’s gut like something barbed, and he stays and stares at the line in Chuuya’s throat where a choker used to be.

Come to think of it, the first time they met, it was under a sky like this one.

“The future is already here,” Dazai murmurs quietly.

“What?”

Dazai shakes his head, smiling vaguely. His stomach bubbles with something bright and foolish.

“Weirdo,” Chuuya says, looking him up and down before deciding, “christ, you need a doctor.”

Dazai laughs and laughs, until he starts coughing blood and Chuuya has to drag him bodily to Yosano’s feet, only leaving when she gives him the magic words: unfortunately, he’ll live. Dazai doesn’t know what to do with this information; the fact that after all these wretched, ridiculous, years, Chuuya is still selflessly loyal to him, is—

it’s something, right there.

— | — 

The days after, Dazai self-diagnoses himself with delirium, with how he wants to crash into Chuuya’s apartment and rub his cheek against his towels and bring him wine and hopefully annoy him to submission. “Are you okay?” Atsushi asks him one day, with honest concern, and Dazai shakes his head, I don’t know, I don’t know, honest himself. What a pain this is. But what wonder.

Dazai doesn’t know when the line between Chuuya the Port Mafia Executive, Chuuya the Ex-Partner, and Chuuya the Honorary Agency member starts to blur, because the transition is near-seamless. There are days where Dazai finds Ranpo and Yosano hounding Chuuya at the bar—to talk like regular civilians, about politics and good alcohol, of all things. Even Atsushi blushes to the ears when recalling the time Chuuya saved him from certain death. “His grip was very firm,” Atsushi says, and Dazai has to walk himself out.

For so long he’d sequestered Chuuya into a partition of his life he never thought to speak of again; it’s so like him to spill over, tainting every part of Dazai’s life, filling it to the brim, greedily and completely. Dazai wouldn’t have it any other way.

The weeks after each battle ends are a kindness. These days, Dazai sits up on the roof at nights and isn’t surprised to hear the soft sound of shoes landing next to him. The silences are easier to fill. Easier enough that they don’t fill it. If Dazai shuts his eyes he can pretend they are seventeen again, with Chuuya gracelessly shoving junk food into his mouth the way Kouyou hates, while Dazai slumps around, shirking Mori’s calls and the demonic prodigy’s facade, talking about porn he pretends to like to watch Chuuya sputter and his ears turn pink.

When Chuuya catches Dazai’s wrist when he slides a little too close to the edge—an accident this time, honest—his face pinched with worry, Dazai realizes, ah, it’s me. I’m the one who changed, after all

And then Mori gets sick.

First through Elise—a nasty curse that leeches her of vitalis—then ultimately, eats at Mori himself. The irony is not lost to Dazai. By the time another war comes, and the Port Mafia Boss, by a mixture of his own folly and pride—and love, perhaps, if the man was capable of it—does not back down, it’s made clear where Chuuya’s loyalties lie, in the end.

 — | — 

“Kunikida-kuuuuun, as a man of virtue, tell me something. Loyalty, especially in animals, is a survival mechanism. To belong to a pack is to survive, is it not? But how do you explain attachments formed outside the pack? And I wonder—how long until it snaps? How much internal or external pressure is required before—“

“If you want me help you psychoanalyze your ex-partner, I won’t.”

Dazai pouts. Thinks: Chuuya would’ve been the most human of them all, if it wasn’t for that angry little god inside him—just like how Dazai could’ve been the most inhuman, if it wasn’t for that small hurt child, found at the right place, the right time.

“Hey.” Kunikida flicks his forehead. “Stop thinking."

(Stop thinking, Chuuya says, pressing close.)

Dazai blinks to see Kunikida’s face crumpled in a frown. In this moment, he feels floored by the weight of his own gratitude. To have Kunikida’s worry, the Agency’s protection, and, incomprehensibly, Chuuya’s loyalty, is too much light he will ever deserve.

It’s been two weeks since the last city-wide war. The Port Mafia’s quiet is disconcerting. Understandably so, but compared to the numbers from the death of their former boss, Dazai’s intel speaks of a glacial pace—not quite the movement of a recovering organization.

“Dazai—whatever you're plotting, leave the agency out of it. I refuse to deal with anymore of that wretched paperwork,” Kunikida says as Dazai leaves to go. “Oi, Dazai!”

“Don’t you worry, Kunikida-kun!” Dazai smiles. “This time, this is strictly personal!”

 — | — 

“Sorry I lost your hat,” Chuuya says.

Rimbaud’s grave is pockmarked and sea-stung. It’s exactly like he left it four years ago—the first of many departures. Today, Chuuya will find out if he still has one last goodbye left inside him.

Chuuya scratches his scalp. “More like, it’s super wrecked right now. I tried to get it restored, but they couldn’t get the name right.”

Forty feet below them, the ocean crashes into foam. Chuuya toes at a pebble by his feet—smooth and white—thinks about tossing it back to the depths where it was born, then thinks twice. Stops stalling. “The boss is gone,” he reports. “I was voted next in line.”

He breathes. Here it is, the wretched heart of it, vulnerable and raw: “I don’t want to be Boss,” Chuuya says, the confession wrenched from his own gut like a serrated knife, catching at the skin, jostling inside him that a breath so heavy comes flooring out of him. He has to bite his tongue to keep him from snatching the words back. “Didn’t expect that one, huh?” he laughs hollowly.

But Chuuya will always be mafia, just like he’ll always be one of Sheep’s lost children caught on a wild goose chase for something close to a life.

And Maybe Dazai is right. Maybe, once, Chuuya had looked at the life Mori had offered and decided: this, and only this. Followed the path for miles and miles without questions, until he stopped and saw only desert and the carcass of his own heart. Thought, where was I going again?

He's stalling now. He’s standing still.

“Was it worth it? Leaving the organization?”

Chuuya doesn’t ask Rimbaud why.

“Come on, gimme a hint. About to do something really fucking stupid here.”

Chuuya waits a beat. Rimbaud doesn’t answer. Of course he doesn’t.

Chuuya sighs. Turning to the grave next to Rimbaud’s, he rests his hand over Verlaine’s headstone with unexpected tenderness. “Guess, I’ll never know, huh?" He chuckes. “You’re both dead.”

Suddenly, he thinks of the Akutagawa siblings. Two little kids, growing like tumbleweed in the slums of Yokohama. The violence that birthed them, like Chuuya himself. Thinks about how long they’ll live as exit wounds, as what was left behind.

The ocean curls and curls—

“But I’m not,” Chuuya sighs. Then he smiles, eyes closing, feeling the breeze like a salve on his skin. “Yeah, I know, I know. Though, I might as well be.” Withdrawing his hand, he bows his head. “For all its worth, I think I understand why you left. And… I’m not angry anymore.” Chuuya turns away, starts walking up the path. “See ya.”

He will never return to Suribachi again.

— | — 

It’s a visceral, gooseflesh-up-your-back kind of reaction that Chuuya experiences when he pads into his Yokohama suite, his coat halfway off, and finds Dazai Osamu reading a lifestyle magazine in his kitchen.

“How was Suribachi!” Dazai greets cheerily, looking up from page on 13 Health Myths, Busted! “Ah, Chuuya smells like the sea. How fishy. Would you like a moment to freshen up? I can wait!”

Chuuya is about to get mental whiplash; Dazai’s right arm is in a sling from their most recent battle, exactly like he looked like when they met six years ago.

All he needs is an eyepatch right now before Chuuya goes into a full-on seizure.

“You know—the executive team of Cathay Pacific are going to be very upset once they finally realize you’ve been freeloading on their airplane for the past few years—”

“What do you want, Dazai?” Chuuya barks. He pulls the rest of his coat off, then starts roughly tugging at his belt right there, propriety be damned. When Chuuya kicks his slacks off, Dazai barely blinks.

“Just checking in on the agency’s favorite honorary member,” Dazai answers, “or can we still say that? Would you rather I address you properly, Boss—“

Wisely, Dazai tips his chair back to avoid the trajectory of Chuuya’s fist.

“Don’t,” Chuuya rasps—in this second, he is fifteen all over again, Dazai’s voice curling around his leash, yes, Mori-san, I caught the King of the Sheep—until Chuuya catches the look on Dazai’s face and his temper peters out, almost instantly.

Fetching a robe to cover himself, Chuuya stomps over to his wine rack. A drink, now.

Dazai, as expected, is undeterred. “I take it the executive votation favored you?” he says. “After all, I can’t imagine another candidate being more suited for the job.”

“Wrong,” Chuuya scoffs. “I can name a few.”

“Hmm. Still, you’re the only one the geezer wanted to take over.”

“Ha! Wrong again. Or did you forget already?” Chuuya doesn't turn around to confirm this. He chuckles, “Want is strong word. If Boss had his way, he’d be alive way longer, rule the Port Mafia til he was ninety years old and dusty. That’s what he would’ve wanted.” His eyes narrow at Dazai’s smile, distrustful. “Tch. Keeping a close eye on the Port Mafia, are you? After everything, the Agency still looking to take advantage while they’re ahead?”

“We’re nothing if not concerned, Chuuya! After all, our spectacular camaraderie from last month should prove the benefits of a continued partnership. Shachou wanted to talk to you, but you’ve been busy, as I can imagine. ” Chuuya snorts in answer. “You haven’t been answering any of his letters.”

“You mean those?” Chuuya jerks his thumb at a stack of unopened envelopes on the table. They’re sitting under a bottle of gin used as a paperweight. He shrugs. “Nah.”

“Most people would be thrilled to receive a personal invitation from the President of the Agency himself, you know.”

“Obviously, I’m not most people. If I were, the both of us wouldn’t be here, would we?” Chuuya snaps, eyes scanning the shelf for the strongest label he can find. Nothing here will do the trick, he knows, so he curses and reaches blindly for the first bottle he finds and pops it open with little finesse. “Don’t mistake me for one of those poor souls; I want no part in your little Fukuzawa fanclub. Tell your president to sit his ass down. The Port Mafia has suffered a hit like this before; we’ll bounce back by the end of the week to play with you sad agency folks, alright?”

“I’m not here because of the President,” Dazai says easily.

“The fuck you’re not,” Chuuya says. His glass half-filled, he drains it in one go, then poises the bottle for another. He doesn’t want to turn around yet; he doesn’t want to see what he finds.

There’s a pause before Dazai says, the words stiff, “I wish you’d believe me when I actually put in the effort of not deceiving you.”

“Just second nature to you now, though, isn’t it.”

Bizarrely, his grip jerks; Chuuya startles to see wine sloshing past the rim. “Fuck,” he curses—rag, or glass?—then steps back; glass then, okay, more alcohol in his system, now please—and barely feels Dazai come up behind him, reaching out smoothly to pluck the bottle from his fingers.

Blinking, Chuuya watches his glass glint darkly with liquid.

“There you go.”

“I got it, hands off,” Chuuya says, turning to glare.

Dazai’s smile doesn’t connect. “Of course.”

The heat of Dazai’s stare lingers as Chuuya drains his second drink. It twines up his throat and seeps into his skin.

Sighing, Dazai puts the bottle back on the shelf. “I’ve never been in your position, Chuuya, but… this is a rather sensitive a time, don’t you agree? For the newly-minted boss to be setting off faraway islands…” he trails off. “People talk. Forgive me if I think it strange. I mean, you left right after the funeral—“

“You were there?” Chuuya whirls around. Suddenly, the glass in his fist feels like a slug’s weightless, paper-thin shell. Chuuya thinks of the sky that day, improperly sunny. Akutagawa’s shadow, glued to Chuuya’s own as he grieved for both the mafia and himself. Thinks of another shadow by the trees—too quick for his eyes.

“I was Port Mafia, once,” is all Dazai says. “Some things you can’t escape from. Or did you forget, Chuuya?”

It is all too hot and cold in the room. Wordlessly, Chuuya abandons his drink and walks out the kitchen.

“Chuuya?” Dazai calls softly.

“Get out of here,” Chuuya says without looking. He glances at his hands—he hasn’t activated Corruption, he’s sure of it—but still, his heart is a trapped rabbit in his chest. His fingers move against his neck to rip away the choker that isn’t there. He catches his own eyes as he passes his bedroom mirror—wild and trapped—and scrambles for another breath.

“Chuuya?” he hears Dazai say again, unsure.

“I said—“ Chuuya whips around. Halts. Seeing Dazai’s face without its veneer like this feels downing a bottle of blood thinner. The back of Chuuya’s knees hit something solid, and he falls seated on what he realizes is his bed. “Didn’t I say—“

He looks up; Dazai’s eyes are wide. Chuuya wants to smack the look out of him, if only the room will stop tilting dangerously.

Chuuya swallows. Pressing his face into both palms, he pulls in another shaky breath.

“Tell me what you need,” Chuuya hears, much closer now.

“Die," he says into his hands.

A hand pulls at both his wrists. Numbly, Chuuya cranes his exposed face up to see Dazai press Chuuya’s own fingers against his neck, finding the steady pulse half-covered in bandages.

“Count,” Dazai commands softly. “Four pulses, you breathe in. Four, out.”

“I said—“

“Count, Chuuya.”

Chuuya counts.

Dazai doesn’t look away as Chuuya gathers himself. It takes him all of three minutes before the room expands and blood returns to his head and Chuuya realizes his hands have been trembling in Dazai’s grip. Slowly, he pulls his hand back and tilts his face to the side, cheeks hot with shame—bracing, any moment now, for the scorpion’s tail in Dazai’s words, but it never comes.

Instead, Dazai collapses unceremoniously, butt to the floor, his legs sprawling every which way. Says dryly, “I take it you don’t like this career move.”

“You take it—“ Chuuya laughs bitterly, can’t help it. He runs a hand over his face, grateful for the feeling in them.

“Will you talk to me, Chuuya?” Dazai says, an almost-whine. “You know, if anyone’s an expert at this specific scenario, it’s me, and you know it. Besides, you shouldn’t keep things from your partner.”

Chuuya’s about to brush it off with another laugh when he sees how Dazai is observing him. His mouth goes dry. “You’re right,” Chuuya admits, heart clenching—holding the power over Dazai is a rare, heavy feeling, one he doesn’t take lightly—but Dazai would, his heart thinks, he’d lord it over you and cut you open with it, and you’d let him, won’t you? Chuuya rips the thought away, grins. “I hate it, but we’ve always known each other too fucking well. You’re the only one who ever—“

Chuuya chuckles and doesn’t continue.

Dazai waits for him to speak.

“You’re right,” Chuuya repeats, dragging in a full breath. “You’re always goddamn right—you already know, don’t you? If I take this now, I’ll be bound to the Port Mafia forever because that’s the kind of person I am. You told me—one day, my attachments would be the death of me. Well, bingo!” Chuuya brings his fist down on the bed, eyes and smile near-crazed. “Can’t help it. Gut me and cut me open—that’s just how I’m wired. Can’t help it if that’s the only way I know how to live. I was nothing before the Port Mafia.” His voice is a dead thing. “I’ll be nothing after.”

“You forget, you were nothing without Arahabaki too,” Dazai drawls. He rests his cast on his knee, leg propped up. “You were nothing before you were crowned King among the Sheep. Nothing before we came together. Before you were one-half of Double Black. After the Port Mafia, you’ll be nothing again. A zero. A nobody.” Dazai tips his head, eyes full of knowing. “That’s exactly what you want, isn’t it? Chuuya?”

Chuuya’s smile blooms gradually. He’s sure now, without a doubt, that Dazai will be able to read his heart even if it was scribbled in code, sealed in a box leagues under the sea.

Just like Chuuya can read his.

Dazai continues, raptly watching him. “To have everything ripped away from you. To be nothing. No one. Not a dime to your name.” Dazai is smiling at him now. “My, you’ll be good as a dead man, Chuuya.”

Chuuya grins, feeling wide and reckless and expansive. “Is that selfish?”

“Incredibly so,” Dazai chirps, surging forward on his knees to bracket Chuuya against the bed with one arm. Chuuya doesn’t flinch. Dazai doesn’t offer him any condolences. Instead, he smiles and swipes Chuuya’s chin. “Not bad, little mafia. I’m impressed.”

Chuuya grips Dazai’s fingers and doesn’t release them. Such fragile, beautiful fingers; he could break them, just like that. But Dazai’s face is bereft of fear. “Don’t get the wrong idea here,” Chuuya spits, “It’s easy for you to just drop off the face of the map, go live in a shack somewhere and never surface again, but—but—“

I’m not you, Chuuya doesn’t say.

“I don’t—I don’t have the time to think about this shit—what I want—I don’t have time for, for reflection or whatever it takes to change my mind—the Port Mafia will own me for as long as I live, and I need—I need an out or else I’ll never—I’ll never—“

“You’ll never see what choices you have,” Dazai says lowly. “I understand.”

Chuuya breathes. Looks at Dazai’s face just inches from his, his eyes brown and warm and his face mask-less, just for him—and something in him unspools.

“‘Course you do.” Chuuya smiles, soft and lopsided. “You see right through me, don’t you.”

“On the contrary, I never quite know what to do with you, Chuuya.” Dazai’s smile turns wry. “Let’s just say I’ve been hoping for an outcome like this for… quite a long time.”

“And what outcome were you waiting for, exactly?”

“Let’s just say,” Dazai says, tracing his clavicle, “it’s a whole world out there,” and Chuuya laughs, sharp and full, shoving Dazai’s startled face to the side so suddenly the man scrambles for balance.

“Your friend, that low-ranked officer,” Chuuya says suddenly. “He was good for you, huh?”

On the floor, rubbing at his abused nose, Dazai blinks. “Yes,” he says eventually, feeling wretched. He remembers ditching Chuuya for them; he’d kept Oda—and Ango—all to himself. He was afraid of losing the only good thing he had; back then, there was only so much light to go around.

“He—yes.”

Chuuya nods wordlessly. With a groan, he pulls his legs up and flops horizontally across the bed, eyeing the ceiling. “I’d be pretty shit leading the Port Mafia anyway. I’m no leader.”

“You should believe in yourself more,” Dazai singsongs. Sits up to prod him on the shoulder. “Give yourself more credit!

Chuuya frowns. “Tell me the truth. What do you really think?”

“You’re not,” Dazai replies easily. His hand tiptoes along Chuuya’s wrist. “You’re too hot-headed to be one. You lack the finesse and the heart to cut people off, a necessary evil—“ his fingers stop at Chuuya’s heart, as if to cut it open. “You believe too much in people, and you remember everyone’s names. The truth is, maybe you’d have been suited as a leader for a different organization, but not for the Port Mafia. You’ll never replace Mori." Smirking, Dazai’s hand brushes Chuuya’s bangs back. “The best you’ll ever be in that hell-hole is a soldier. A dog.” He taps Chuuya's nose. “My dog.”

“Your dog? I’m not yours.” His lip curls. “I’m not anyone’s.”

“That is true, unfortunately,” Dazai acquiesces, smiling as pushes to his feet, and Chuuya blinks up at him as Dazai offers his hand. “Are you free for the afternoon?”

— | — 

Chuuya sets the teacup down, too hard, announcing, “The tea is spectacular as always, Ane-san.”

Across the table, Kouyou sighs. “I’m afraid subtlety is a quality I’ve yet to properly instill in you. We will work on that soon.” Kouyou’s posture is impeccable, her face schooled into an air of unaffected grace. Still, Chuuya sees the minute hardening in her eyes when she smiles and says, “Now—tell me why you’re really here.”

Chuuya stares at her, considering. Then, his fingers twist over his lap and his face falls into a grimace. “Ane-san,” he says, “what do I do?”

Kouyou’s manicured hand holds his cheek and suddenly it is his first day as Kouyou Ozaki’s protege, the tip of her katana poised at his adam’s apple as if to say, behave, boy—his heart shuddering, the damning proof of his humanity.

“You already know what I’m about to tell you. No one leaves the Port Mafia,” she says, and with it Chuuya’s heart congeals with a darkness like Corruption.

“But…” she continues, pouring more tea, and steam rises softly, “if, say, the Boss were to take an extended leave of absence for an indeterminate period of time, I suppose it could not be helped…”

Chuuya’s mouth parts.

“It isn’t unheard of. Mori-san used to do it, so we could survive. He even went so far as to masquerade as a member of an enemy organization—for research purposes, of course. The Boss has no such limitations.”

Chuuya’s eyes drops to his lap, unseeing. He laughs. The sound of it is all wrong. “What are you saying—”

“I am saying that acts of treason such as those by Dazai Osamu and myself, once, will be punished, as these acts did not serve the mafia and were not legally officiated. But, as you now wield the necessary authority—you are free to decide.”

“You never tried again,” Chuuya rambles. His chest feels so tight it can burst.

“I am not you, boy,” Kouyou says. “And you are not me.”

“I’m not Dazai, either,” Chuuya spits, and Kouyou laughs.

“No,” she decides, putting her teacup down. “I suppose not. You’re not betraying me by doing right by yourself. And you’re not as perfect a solider as you think you are. You’ve always had a rebellious streak. Gave me enough headaches to last a lifetime.”

Chuuya’s knuckles are going white from how hard he’s clenching his fist; he’s going to throw up.

“Besides,” Kouyou continues, radiant, looking at him like he’s something wonderful, “I think you’ve already made up your mind.”

“Is that so,” Chuuya says, far away.

“Underestimating your old sis? I know you like my own. We’ve already lost you, haven’t we, Chuuya?” Kouyou smiles gently. “We’ve lost you long ago.”

It’s a terrible moment; Chuuya exists in this painful stasis, watching her watch him. Just seconds before ripping the bandage open—

“Forgive me,” he says finally, the sound wrenched from him. Manners be damned; his chair scrapes back when he falls to his palms, as if struck through the gut by an invincible sword, limbs shaking as Chuuya gives up everything he knows; the question rises like a shout, echoing around them: How can he leave? How can he leave her and this place that he called home? How can he be so selfish—

Strong hands pull him up by the armpits, pushing him to his knees. Kouyou’s fingers are warm, tugging a tear-stained face to the light; Kouyou is the warmest thing he knows.

“Ane-san—“

“Come back when you’ve found what you’re looking for,” she tells him. “The Port Mafia is smaller than we have been in years, but closer, in grief. We will rebuild—“ she pauses, and something edges into her voice—“I will rebuild. Perhaps it is time I take things into my own hands. That is, if you would allow me the pleasure, Boss.”

“You… would?”

“I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to change things around here. I have a personal grudge to settle. Besides, I’ve had years worth of practice holding down insufferable brats who think they know what it is to be mafia.”

That startles Chuuya to laughter. The sound rings through the room, out the parted window—

Outside, half of Mori Corporation lies in cinders. But the sunlight is the same.

Kouyou tucks a stray hair behind Chuuya’s ear. “Living is so strange,” Kouyou says, wistful; Chuuya can almost see the imprint of her—the young Kouyou who sought for the light. “Sometimes, even I forget our place in the dark. Now go, squirt, before I change my mind and run my blade through your throat.”

Desperately, softly—worn with all the gratefulness his clumsy heart can convey—Chuuya staggers to his feet and kisses her cheek, then the other. And then, for the first time in years, Chuuya turns around, walks down the hall with his head tucked, and then stars running for his goddamn life.

He runs like hell.

— | — 

“Kunikida-kuuuuun,” Dazai says.

“What do you want,” Kunikida says blearily. “Am I on speakerphone?”

“Just wanted to tell you about my day!” Dazai looks up at the sky, swinging his groceries. “Do you know? Today, a god leaves his shrine.”

— | — 

Sex with Dazai is so much simpler without all the pent up teenage tension in the way. All it takes is a quick message—coded, of course—a heated look, or a small touch, barely there. Chuuya traces his thumb above Dazai’s hip while the rest of the ADA are distracted by a case and then Dazai is dismissing himself, dragging Chuuya by the wrist to his apartment.

Of course, Dazai is still annoying, says things like “mood” when they kiss too hard one of them bonks their head on the headboard. There is a lot dodging CCTV cameras involved, and Ango is pulled (i.e. propositioned) into keeping Chuuya’s status on the low, but all in all, this is mainly how Chuuya spends his first summer as this strange liminal entity—drinking pina coladas, having copious amounts of sex—particularly with Dazai Osamu who lingers like an everlasting, sweaty shape on his bed.

“It’s like having a pet,” Chuuya complains, after Dazai drapes his arms over Chuuya’s chest, begging for kisses.

“Ah, does Chuuya fuck his p—“

“Finish that sentence, and I’ll gut you,” Chuuya says, but moves closer so he can suck on Dazai’s tongue in earnest.

They’re adults now, but it’s almost ridiculous—bordering on embarrassing—how much they still fuck like teenagers. It’s an un-relearning, this awkward process of reintroducing each other back to their systems.

Very quickly, Dazai learns how good Chuuya can be at other things outside the mafia.

“You like that, huh?” Chuuya’s eyes brighten. With his hat gone, Dazai is free to tangle his fingers in his locks as they fall over his face.

“Please, Chibikko,” he says, grip tightening in them, “if you need an ego boost that bad—“

“I’m gonna be so good to you, you’ll be thinking about me for weeks,” Chuuya promises evenly, pressing himself behind Dazai’s knees as his legs make way. “Even in those boring Agency meetings of yours, you’ll be thinking of me, my hands on your thighs, my voice, my cock—“

Dazai’s throat dips, but his face betrays nothing.

“—fucking you…” Chuuya drags the waistband of Dazai’s boxers down, then tongues a hot line from the dip in his hip to his belly-button. Again, Dazai shivers to his toes. “Kunikida will be asking you a goddamn question  and you won’t be able to answer—why? Because you’ve been reading the same sentence on your report over and over, thinking about me. A mess; that’s what you’ll be, when I’m done with you.”

“That so." Dazai cranes his neck. He keeps his face unbothered despite the tent in his boxers. “My Chuuya is so bold. I look forward to it then.”

Chuuya grins, then leans up on his elbows to peck him chastely on the lips. “I’m going to wreck you, Dazai Osamu.”

He makes due on that promise.

Chuuya rarely doesn't, after all; even back then, when all they knew to wield was violence—Chuuya had been good to him. Chuuya had held him like Dazai himself was good. Like he was more than an echo.

— | —  

After Dazai comes—which he does, because Chuuya always makes sure he comes first—he flips them over and starts licking earnestly into Chuuya’s mouth.

“That was generous of you,” Dazai says as they pull apart, like he doesn’t look absolutely fucked out, just the way Chuuya likes.

Chuuya laughs. “Glad you enjoyed it.”

“I mean, I’d like to return the favor.” Dazai moves to kiss his jaw, swirling a tongue in Chuuya’s ear for a solid minute because Chuuya’s a freak who likes stuff like that. “What do you want, Chuu-ya.”

“Getting me off would be nice,” Chuuya says, bucking when Dazai’s thumb traces the inside of his thigh and nothing else. “Come on, hurry up. This ain’t a business transaction.”

“It isn’t,” Dazai agrees. “It’s sex between two adults who mean something to one another, isn’t it?”

Chuuya stills beneath him. He doesn’t have to speak, because his face does it all for him.

Dazai sighs. “It’s not like you to show so much restraint. My Chuuya’s a hedonist through and through. Come on,” Dazai kisses him now, slow and true, until Chuuya writhes beneath him. To his ear, he whispers, “tell me how to make you feel good?”

Dazai noses under Chuuya’s jaw, leaving wet, open-mouthed kisses up the side of his neck. The red of his hair blooms against the pillow.

“If—” Chuuya says, sudden and very quietly, as Dazai sucks a bruise in his chest, “If I let you fuck me, will it be good?”

Dazai stills. Looks up and stares. “You never—“

“I know, and now I do, yadda yadda.” The rest of Chuuya is red too, the tips of his ears, his shoulders. “Do I gotta spell it out for you?”

Dazai frowns down at him. “Why now?”

“You asked—“ Chuuya’s voice is suddenly rising, his body sealing shut like an envelope. “You’re the one who—“

“I did, I apologize,” Dazai says immediately, brushing Chuuya’s cheek with his knuckles until Chuuya relents, looking away with unease. Dazai says, “I’m simply… surprised is all. You never let me…”

He lets the unsaid hang for a moment, until Dazai’s eyes dull with the implications of it. Chuuya sighs, hooks an ankle around his hip and says, “Well? I asked you a question?”

“I… don’t know,” Dazai decides, reading his face over and over. I’m not good at tenderness. Dazai cups his cheek. “But will you let me try, Chuuya?”

“Okay,” Chuuya says, after a while. He exhales. Crosses his arms and parts his thighs forcefully. “I want it.”

There’s a laugh. Chuuya is redder than he’s ever been, like something left too long in the sun, and it makes Dazai want to laugh even more. Dazai wants to kiss him silly. Dazai wants to run.

“I want it,” Chuuya repeats, so Dazai stays where he is.

Turns out that Chuuya is too tense; Dazai has to soften him out, coax out the pressure by kissing up his thighs, licking heat back into his fingers.

When Dazai enters, Chuuya’s whole body clams up.

“Don’t hold your breath,” Dazai commands.

“Is that how it feels, when I do this to you?” Chuuya asks, fingers clenched on a pillow above him. “Hurts like a bitch.”

“It’s not. It shouldn’t. Plus, I prepare myself.”

“Fuck, wait.” Chuuya says, hand grabbing Dazai’s hip; sweat trickles down his stomach. “Wait.”

“That’s okay, don’t force it,” Dazai says. He’s out immediately, kneeling between his thighs. “Chuuya doesn’t have to—“

“Sorry,” Chuuya says, and he hasn’t let go of Dazai’s hip; his cock curves against his own stomach, heavy and untouched. Chuuya breathes, laughing with fake cheer as pain lances through him. “Sorry, I—fuck, I—can we try that again—“

They do; it feels like more like loss, watching Chuuya’s face twist from pleasure to hurt all in one push. This time, Chuuya relents, nearly biting through his lip.

“Fuck, sorry I—“

“Don’t,” Dazai says, surprising himself by the reverent way his hands push Chuuya’s hair out his face. “Don’t be silly.”

“I really wanted—fuck, I really wanted to—” Chuuya’s hip twitches, and his eyes are blown. When he speaks again, it’s more plea than heat: “Maybe—maybe your fingers, then—“

Dazai doesn’t need to be told. Dazai feels Chuuya inside and something abrupt and bizarre happens; Dazai finds it—another path, here. Right here. Chuuya gasps—a new sound.

“Beautiful,” Dazai whispers, can’t help it. A coil of heat licks inside him, and Dazai parts Chuuya’s thigh even further to suck a bruise cruelly into a vein running through it; it’s impossible to stop, now that Dazai’s found that beautiful ache inside him. He wants to coax it out, all of it.

Dazai can feel Chuuya grow against his fingers, his breaths growing fuller, his spine arcs, his fingers twitch off the sheets—

“Come on, Chuuya,” Dazai says, feeling Chuuya’s galloping pulse on his tongue, on skin, everywhere; Chuuya is coming alive, and it’s all for him. “Did you know, in French, orgasm means ‘a little death’?” .

“I know, asshole,” Chuuya gasps. “I’m half French—“

(He doesn’t know; at least not by himself. The nightmare goes like this: Mori pats the book’s spine, saying, everything there is to know about you is in this book—as the book turns into himself, a cold marionette with blue eyes, and then Chuuya is watching himself fall down the end of a hallway, a hundred doors shutting in his face—)

Dazai’s hand on his throat brings him back. Chuuya’s eyes fly wide. “Eyes on me, chibi,” Dazai says, as his hand curls that spot again and again. “Say, Chuuya—shall we die together?”

Later, when Chuuya looks back on this, he’ll remember how delirious he was, how strange; even mid-air, driving a motorcycle up a building, Chuuya hasn’t felt his body like this—truly felt it, down to the ends of his nerves—not so much a bomb now, but a geyser—bubbling below, deep from the earth then bursting like a new birth—something novel and all-encompassing and true. This desire that was his, and all his, alone.

Inside him, a secret door unlocks—

Chuuya steps into it—

— | —  

Dazai finds him in the morning, perched on his balcony like a strange bird. Smoke curls into the air. In the light, Chuuya’s eyes are green, so green they’re blue—the sky and sea converging.

Leaning against the railing, Dazai takes the offered cigarette and breathes a lungful of heat. He exhales, unraveling into it, and says, “What’s your plan now?”

Chuuya takes his cigarette back without looking. Puts it to his lips. “I… I don’t know,” he confesses. But his eyes are unclouded.

“Oh?” Dazai smiles. “What is this? The great Nakahara Chuuya of the Port Mafia without a plan?”

Dazai ducks quickly on instinct; there’s no need for it, because Chuuya puts no strength behind it.

“Just Chuuya now,” Chuuya says, the sun in his face. “Let’s start with that, aight?”

— | —  

“The future is already here, you know,” Oda tells him once, “just… in bits and pieces we don’t understand. It’s our job to be patient and put the pieces together.”

Dazai is, for all intents and purposes, a man who avoids pain for the practicality of it. Pain is inconvenient. Personally, it serves him no purpose. It doesn’t get him to work any faster.

Doesn’t help that his heart’s a clumsy, flat-footed thing. Difficult to carry, difficult to hold. Dazai’s heart is stubborn old mule that keeps running away from him.

In the mornings Chuuya kisses him quiet and stays for breakfast. Disappears in the day, only to reappear deep into the night, like clockwork, the art of moorings. Chuuya kisses him in the mornings and Dazai thinks about being young. Thinks about the cold, lumpy thing he keeps in his chest. If Dazai tries, maybe he can hold it still.

Maybe he, too, can learn to grow roots in people.

“Please,” is how it starts, head bowed, as Fukuzawa’s eyes grow wide at Dazai’s stance. “You did it once, for Kyouka-chan. This time, one more time—there’s someone who deserves it—“

— | —  

“Did you use my fucking card, you asshole? Dazai, I’m talking to you!” comes the bellow, and this is how Saturday morning’s quiet shatters, with Nakahara Chuuya stomping across the grass like a firecracker, rousing several unsuspecting villagers from sleep.

Dazai dodges the slipper that embeds itself in the tree behind him and simpers, “I had no choice, Chuuya! You realize how poor we are! We don’t even have enough to repair the coffee machine, or even afford Ranpo-san’s dental care!” He dodges the other pair, which slices a bough cleanly off the trunk. “He has a lot of cavities!

“And that’s my problem?” Chuuya yells, completely ignoring one Kunikida imploring them to please refrain from disrupting the peace, and Chuuya doesn’t care if the half the village is stirring awake, he’s going to suffocate Dazai, right here in the sunlight.

“Think of it as charity! Put the mafia's money to good use—”

“What the fuck does the agency even need an inflatable pool for—“ and promptly stops; behind Dazai’s irritating head, is the bright blue inflatable pool worth 1000USD, taken right off his black card—along with twenty small water guns, and an outdoor La-Z-boy with the wicker seat. Two kids—who Chuuya comes to know as Eun and David, waterball into the pool, shrieking as they go.

“What else for, Chuuya!” Dazai says, sounding exasperated. “For swimming, of course!”

“Yeah, yeah, Chuuya!” Eun says, waving at him from the pool. “Schools’ out!”

“…Right,” Chuuya says.

It’s too late; the fight leaves him completely, and he lets Dazai prance off to fetch him a drink in nothing but his stupid orange trunks and bandages.

The Agency, with their measly petty cash stash, has dedicated a portion of their savings to sponsor the activities of a local orphanage nearby. Not that Chuuya is involved, but he goes once Dazai says, “there's a kid who looks exactly like you, but he’s waaaay brighter!” so of course he goes.

Eun is a wild-haired ten year-old that the Agency absolutely adores. Chuuya doesn’t see the resemblance until he finds him dangling off rooftops like Spiderman, or hears about him trying to cross Yokohama Bay inside a Zorb.

Chuuya says, “Just wait til he’s a teenager,” and everyone laughs; no one takes him seriously. Their loss.

It’s a strange picture, the Agency acting docile with kids. Yosano is sunbathing with a magazine, while Ranpo holds his breath underwater with the kids. Kunikida is berating Dazai after he spurts water in one of kid’s eye, laughing tearfully, and Chuuya breathes, feeling something expand his chest.

But it’s a scene not meant for him, so he turns to leave, until he hears Eun call, “Heeeeey, you not getting in? Boo!”

“Yeah, yeah, Chuu-ya,” Dazai teases, arm dangling off the pool’s edge. “Boooooo. Isn’t he boring, Eun-kun?”

“Totally boring!”

Chuuya stops in his tracks.

In seconds, the pool is airborne, and all the kids shriek in surprise.

“Who’s boring now, huh?” Chuuya goads, launching Eun in the air.

— | — 

“You should be nicer to me,” Eun tells him, his round cheeks and the tips of his huge ears pinking from the sun, “it’s my birthday after all.”

“Surprise—the world doesn’t owe you shit, kid. Even on your birthday,” Chuuya replies, but slathers on another dollop of sunblock on Eun’s freckled shoulders anyway, then between his bony shoulders where he can’t reach.

He spins Eun around to reapply more on his face; with his hands bare, Eun’s eyes are instantly drawn to the starburst of scars on Chuuya’s knuckles with barely-held wonder. “Dazai-senpai says the Port Mafia is bad,” he says.

Chuuya snorts. “Yep.”

“But you’re not Port Mafia?”

Chuuya rubs more sunscreen on both Eun’s cheeks. “It’s complicated, kid.”

“You’re not Agency?”

“Fuck no.”

Eun hums again, eyes too blue and knowing for Chuuya’s liking. Chuuya plays with the thought of reducing the gravity on Eun’s floaters to watch him rise like a hot balloon.

Eun tilts his head. “Dazai-senpai says you’d do great in the Agency.”

Chuuya’s hands still. “He said that?” he says, his eyes going past Eun’s head to see Dazai pushing Atsushi into the pool with a cruel laugh.

Eun crosses his arms. “But you’re not Port Mafia, and you’re not Agency, so what exactly do you do?”

Chuuya narrows his eyes back at him. “You’re a nosy one, aren’t you? I knew the ADA’s annoying detective behavior was contagious. It’s a nuisance.”

“Well, I am becoming a detective when I grow up,” Eun smirks, like there’s no other way about it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eun grins back. “I wanna be exactly like Ranpo-senpai! What about you? If you’re not Agency, and you’re not Port Mafia, what do you want to be?”

Chuuya pinches his nose, says “kid, you ask too much,” but for a fearful moment is confronted with nothing, a blank-slate sky, and maybe Elise was right, maybe he is nothing but an empty errand boy—but then, he hears a peal of laughter, and a million images come at once—the sea, the sky, the wind in his hair, the heat of Dazai’s hands, branding his thighs—

There’s a splash as Chuuya punts Eun back in the pool. Followed by a, “Chuuya-senpai is mean!”

“Damn kids,” Chuuya says, and doesn’t see Dazai’s eyes follow him quizzically as he leaves.

— | — 

Summer lasts forever until it doesn’t.

— | — 

“Where are you?” Kunikida shrieks through the phone—Chuuya hasn’t heard Kunikida sound like this before, all twisted glass and urgency—so he belts back, “Not close enough,” at the same time Yosano yells, “Almost there.”

Chuuya shoots her a hard look, but Yosano stays tight-lipped and pale as Chuuya sends the car rollicking straight through the underbelly of the highway to dodge traffic.

Chuuya plans many things to spend his morning, but it is not waking up at 4 ass o’clock to an address and a coded message from Dazai.

✉️ 1 new message - now

Mackerel
the snow that falls on me
falls like petals.

(Meet me in this address immediately. Follow everything they tell you.)

They, being one grumpy medic in the form of Akiko Yosano, who hauls in a black canvas bag with about a twenty vials and quickly debriefs him as Chuuya cuts through Yokohama:

“These ability-users are part of a human-trafficking duo. The first one turns—yeah I know these fuckers, don't ask—the first one turns body parts into collectible figurines; he’s a connoisseur of sorts, and his taste is children,” Yosano says, barely blinking as Chuuya blasts them over a twenty-foot leap to another building’s rooftop. “The second one’s the wildcard; he can manipulate toxicity levels—one touch and even your own breath can send you into toxic shock. But it’s still poison, and all poison has a cure, so all we have to worry about is not getting in range.”

“Fun,” Chuuya says; he hasn’t even had his morning coffee yet, and he’s not getting paid for any of this, but he makes no complaints. It’s a universal truth that Dazai will drag him into any and all of the Agency’s little problems. That, and Chuuya will let him and not lose sleep over it.

Instead of agonizing over the implications, Chuuya asks her, “We sure your witch brew will do the trick?”

Yosano smiles grimly. “We’ll have to find out then, don’t we?”

They arrive at a orphanage with not a hair out of place—Chuuya using another car parked by the driveway as a cushion—and crouch behind the trunk, watching the front porch. Across the street, there are signs of an altercation: broken mirrors, an electric pole felled on the ground, a garden hose left sputtering in intervals. Wordlessly, Yosano pricks herself in the arm with the liquid from one of the vials and turns to him, whispering, “Stay here. I put a dose that’ll last me 10 minutes—I only made enough for those inside, so we can’t risk you getting contaminated too, and we need you to protect that bag. Watch the exits. Ten minutes.”

Chuuya squawks. “And if you’re not out by ten?”

“Then we’re dead, and you can wreck the place,” she grins, and then crosses the street.

Chuuya curses. Lame. Like this, he’s basically an glorified chauffeur. How did he get here? Chuuya counts to 60, then does it again. Kicks the side of the car so hard in a rage it tilts.

Fuck ten minutes. Five minutes is already way too goddamn long. You can kill a whole organization in five minutes—less. Chuuya knows this firsthand.

Hauling the canvas bag over his shoulder, light as a feather now, he leaps over the car and darts in from another vantage point.

— | —  

Chuuya cleaves a path in from the roof and arrives at the living room, just in time to see one of men with a face mask seconds before crushing his heel into Dazai’s throat. Behind him, Eun is curled into a ball, lips dark and fingers shaking at Dazai’s shirt.

Chuuya doesn’t think—in the next second he's flying across the room, his knee crushing all four of the man’s ribs against the opposite wall. Chuuya watches his eyes go wide then dull, the last breath shuddering wetly out of him. He’s so angry everything is red, red, red—then black, creeping into the edges of his vision—

“Always in the nick of time, my prince,” he hears Dazai croak, and Chuuya shakes the spell off; leaving the man to slump to the floor, Chuuya rushes over and drops to his knees.

“Dazai—what the hell—“

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dazai says, pulling Eun’s face gently into his lap; but his face is ashen too, and he’s breathing far too quickly. “He’s okay—“

“You sure?” Chuuya hands twitch helplessly. “You—“

“Nakahara! Help me administer antidote, now,” Yosano interrupts, tossing her cleaver to the side. “Now. And you take one too.”

“I know what to do. Ten minutes,” Chuuya grumbles, reaching for the vials in the bag—one, two, six, for Kunikida slumped in the corner, then Atsushi and Tanizaki, and the three other orphans crying in his arms.

He tells himself his hand doesn’t shake when he brings the vial to Eun’s lips, then Dazai’s—he lingers for a few seconds, just to watch the color return on their skin, feel his own heart constrict—but then, as he turns around to cure everyone else, a hand closes around his wrist, and then Dazai’s dark eyes are looking at him, as he rasps, “I'm glad you came,” in a small, proud voice, their fingertips linking over Eun's head.

“You better be,” Chuuya says, swiping a thumb across Dazai’s cheek, the same smile pulled out of him. Dazai and Chuuya, pulled from the same dirt, alive. Miraculous. Chuuya's heart lurches. Call and response. "You better fucking be."

— | —  

Someone—Atsushi, maybe—lays out a torn curtain on the grass outside and they start a barbeque right there, like they weren’t just brutally attacked by a terrorist a few hours prior. The Agency’s as stubborn as they come, and Chuuya doesn’t want to admit he’s impressed by this, so he staggers outside and lays his body out on the pseudo-mat, away from the chatter of kids to watch the sun set. Minutes later, Dazai lies down next to him, saying nothing.

Chuuya turns his face to watch him. It’s near-dark, the shadows from the leaves above crawling slowly over their faces. Chuuya reimagines the deathly pallor on his skin, how close to the memory of Dazai at fifteen that image was. But Dazai is here—just Dazai, not the demon prodigy or the youngest executive of the Port Mafia. Like he’s just Chuuya.

How strange; for all his hopes, Chuuya has not imagined their lines to intersect quite like this.

Of course, Dazai chooses that moment to speak:

“It’s a fortunate thing that you’re unemployed Chuuya! Otherwise… we’ll, I’m not sure we could’ve done this without you."

Chuuya laughs; he’s been doing more of that lately. “Of course you’d ruin the moment. You know, I was just thinking about how weird this is. All of it. I never thought you’d make it, to be honest, but… here you are, you know? You’re different.” Chuuya pauses. “It’s not a bad thing.”

There’s silence. “You’re different too, Chuuya,” Dazai says eventually, and it’s full of—something. The stuff of dreams, things Chuuya shouldn’t want and will not pry into, so he pins his gaze on the sky. Dazai continues, “Aren’t we lucky? It’s the only constant, after all. That even the most unmoving, stubborn people can and will change—“ a pause, and suddenly Chuuya’s hand is grabbed from its place on his stomach.

He hears Dazai sit up, abrupt. “Your hand—“

Chuuya snatches his hand back. “Didn’t I tell you to stop ruining the moment?”

For the past thirty minutes, Chuuya’s eyesight has gone completely foggy. Black was seeping into his ankles, and now Chuuya suspects it has grown up his wrists too, like tar. Fucking terrorists; how inconvenient.

“Chuuya—“

“It’s nothing,” Chuuya says. “Can’t you keep quiet? I finally have you to myself.”

Dazai’s silhouette stills. “You didn’t take the antidote,” Chuuya hears, a betrayed sound. Chuuya doesn’t speak, so Dazai continues, voice growing dark, “He touched you, but there wasn’t enough of Yosano’s antidote, was there? You gave it to Eun. Why did you—“

“Why else?” Chuuya snaps, reaching blindly for any part of Dazai he can reach—his fingers scrape a sleeve, so Chuuya pulls until a weight falls back on the mat next to him. “Shut up,” he says, as a surprised breath brushes his ear.

“Sensei will—“ Dazai says. “Yosano-sensei will—“

“We never got to finish that breakfast movie,” Chuuya says quietly.

“Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” Dazai corrects after a long and aching pause, and in the next moment Dazai’s warm hand is in his, gripping tight enough Chuuya can feel it tremble. “Still lagging behind pop culture are we, Chuuya?”

“Fuck,” Chuuya shivers. Just now, his eyes are completely shrouded in black. “How lame.”

“Chuuya,” Dazai insists, “we need to—“

“Stupid, there’s no time,” Chuuya laughs, laying his forearm over his eyes. “Don’t you get it? We’re always running out of fucking time. We wasted enough, doncha think?  For all it’s worth,” Chuuya says, pulling Dazai’s hand to his chest—and the small, dying part of him rattles angrily against his teeth, begging to speak, are you scared, like I am? Did you ever regret me? Even a little?—but it’s too late; Chuuya’s already chosen Dazai, like he always knew he would.

Chuuya tugs the hand that’s become clammy in his until he can hear Dazai’s damp breath above his mouth, says, “You’ve done good, Dazai. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise. Got it? Don’t ever let anybody tell you nothing. Take care of the kids—the world doesn’t need more of you and me, god. And thank you, for seeing me.” Chuuya takes one last shuddering breath, grins, big and true. “Lucky bastard—you really got me, you know? You got me til the end.”

Dazai’s makes a small, heartbreaking sound. He can’t feel his fingers from the way Dazai is gripping it.

All in all, it’s not such a bad way to die.

Chuuya closes his eyes and waits—

A pair of lips press against his knuckles. Chuuya’s eyes fly wide. Slowly, the darkness around his corneas recedes, and now he can see Dazai looking down at him reverently, his smile soft and sweet as bruised fruit.

All around them, the sky parts into light—

“Dazai, what the fuck—“ Chuuya says, sitting up. The soot on his fingers is gone. “What the fuck is happening.”

Approaching them now is Kyouka and Atsushi, smiling. Behind them, Tanizaki peeps his head out and throws him a sheepish peace sign. Yosano, Kunikida, Ranpo. All of them looking at him, soft and bewildered.

“Sorry about that,” Yosano says. Everybody else is looking away now. “That terrorist’s ability is activated by contact with blood, not touch—you’re safe. You were always safe. Dazai wouldn’t risk it.”

“I’m really sorry, Nakahara-san,” Tanizai blurts, bowing now.

Chuuya’s mouth opens, then closes.

“I have to hand it to you, you really helped us back there—though they had 60% of it covered before you arrived,” Yosano says. A sly smile plays at her mouth. “My, I didn’t know our Dazai could act that well.”

“Act?” Chuuya is having an out of body experience.

Beside him, Dazai drapes his arms over Chuuya’s chest and adopts a high-pitched tone, “I did no such thing, my love! If you must know, everything you saw is exactly what I would’ve done, had you really been on the verge of dying—“

“—really, really sorry, please don’t kill me,” Tanizaki keeps saying.

Armed Detective Agency Entrance Exam

Name: Nakahara Chuuya

Position: Full-time Employment

Status: Pass

Fukuzawa appears out of the shadows like a ghost.

Chuuya, who has always associated him with danger and defeat, crouches low, instincts telling him to fight, protect. Dazai’s touch at his shoulder abates the feeling it, but not completely.

“I can control it?” Chuuya seethes—aghast, above all—and Fukuzawa nods.

The rest of the Agency pile behind Dazai, watching the strange sight of a sane Chuuya with Arahabaki’s war signs crawling over him.

His left eye is human-blue; the other a glittering red.

(Chuuya will only discover this later: alone in the bathroom, his hands shaking on the sink.)

Chuuya keeps his gaze fixed on Fukuzawa, waiting for the punchline. Nothing comes.

“Dazai,” Chuuya says. Dazai watches him curl his fingers, uncurl-

“Congratulations!” Dazai chirps, clapping his hands. Behind them, on the front porch, all the orphans watch curiously, a safe twenty feet away. “You passed the entrance exam. Courtesy of our president, the prize is,” unbidden, his voice drops an octave, “complete control over your ability.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

Dazai looks him in the eye. Tries to be kind, for once. “I wouldn’t lie about this,” he says.

“Yes, you would.”

Dazai would. But he is not lying now. Maybe this part of Dazai will always haunt Chuuya, no matter how many times Dazai tries to reinvent himself.

“Arahabaki is yours,” Dazai tells him. “As it should have been.”

Something flickers in Chuuya’s eyes; it doesn’t matter what Dazai sees in them, because in the next moment Chuuya is looking at him—and then he’s running, running, out of sight.

“Dazai-san—“ Atsushi crouches, skin rippling with the White Tiger beneath.

“Don’t.” Dazai’s voice is clipped. “Don’t follow him, but keep an eye on him. Don’t get too close.”

“Where is he going?"

“Wherever he wants,” Dazai says, his throat thick, pocketing his hands to walk back inside the orphanage. “A dog cut from its leash always runs off, after all. It’s their nature.”

— | —  

It only takes four days.

Four long, eternal, summer days—before Chuuya is sauntering back in the Agency’s favorite coffeeshop like he never left, which is exactly what Dazai would’ve done and he’s almost impressed if he wasn’t on the receiving end of Chuuya’s absence.

“Earlier than I expected, Chuuya—“

“Why?” Chuuya demands, pulling him up by the lapels. The other regulars spare them a glance but their eyes don’t linger; Dazai gets his life threatened every day, after all. “Tell me that much. Did you feel sorry for me? Are you—“

“I’ve never pitied you,” Dazai confesses. He’s also (valiantly) trying not to choke.

“Then—“ Chuuya drops him back on the seat. He looks lost, eyes dark and sleepless. “Then why?”

Dazai catches his fall on his forearms and glares. “I wanted to give you a choice, you idiot. No one was ever keen on that. I’ve watched you give yourself up longer than I should have, and I grew tired of it. I don’t care for it, Chuuya. I didn’t do anything then, but now—now I can—“

“So, a charity case,” Chuuya’s face twists. “That’s what—“

“There was so little of me left,” Dazai says, and Chuuya halts, “that night. I was going to get you. We were partners—I wanted to—but oh, how stupid of me. How could I? There was so little of me left, I would’ve brought you along to die. So I saved myself first.”

Chuuya looks shell-shocked. Something chips away from his gaze and falls.

Dazai continues. “Listen to me, Chuuya: you can do whatever you want—I don’t care, as long as it’s your choice. I don’t care,” Dazai repeats, and Chuuya drops to the seat like a puppet with its strings cut. “The exam isn’t just a requirement—it’s a litmus test. So if you want to save lives instead of taking them, you can.”

“Me—you think I—?” Chuuya sputters. He looks up at the ceiling and lets loose a hollow laugh. “I’ve killed—I’ve killed so many people. It’s all I know. The Port Mafia ruined me for anything else.”

“The Port Mafia ruined me for anything else,” Dazai mimics. “It’s a sunk cost fallacy, you know? You think you’re a murderer? Well, you’re looking at one. The goody-two shoes Agency you so adore was founded by a murderer. What’s one more?”

Chuuya stares at him, at a loss. Then he’s burying a feral grin behind his hands that pull back at his face in the way that will give him wrinkles. “I think I’m gonna lose it,” he says. “I can feel Mori turning in his grave. Remember—remember when you were his biggest disappointment?”

“Mm, will you be dethroning me then, Chuuya?” Dazai says. Chuuya looks out the windows, as if pulled by some inevitable force, mismatched eyes bright and luminous with possibility; by now Dazai learns enough a thing or two to follow when instinct calls, and so he reaches a hand out and brushes Chuuya’s wrist, as if to catch him before he floats away.

Very quietly, Dazai says, “I’m sure Ane-san can handle things in the interim while the Boss is… occupied.”

Chuuya looks at their joined hands. Then, he pulls away, only for his hand to grasp Dazai’s front shirt and pull him across the table. “Okay, shitty mackerel. I’ll take your offer. But I’m not doing this for you,” Chuuya says against his mouth, “if you can believe it. I’m doing this for me,” and then he’s smiling, then brushing past him as he leaves Dazai at his booth, stunned into silence, the Ex Port Mafia Boss, beautiful and leaving, leaving.

“Well?” Chuuya barks from outside, when Dazai hasn’t moved an inch. “When’s the goddamn orientation?”

— | — 

There's a distinct joy in introducing the ADA’s brownstone building to Chuuya as a civilian (Dazai has to send Ango a thank you card for this later). Flocked by flower vendors and kids playing hopscotch in the daylight, there’s an undeniable rustic charm to it that even Chuuya, for all his garish tastes, isn’t immune to.

“This is why you have so little clients,” Chuuya says, craning his head high, “it’s so… plain.

“A sterling observation!” Dazai says. The ADA is definitely nothing like Mori Corporation’s granite walls and sleek black-stone. “It’ll take a while, but eventually, you get used to—“

Chuuya shakes his head. “No, no. Plain is—plain is good,” he says, gruff.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Dazai says.

Thinks, Oda—

I think I can save this one too—

✉️ 5 new messages - 3 hours ago

Mackerel
are you lost, stupid????? can chibi not read maps after all????

✉️ 10 new messages - 2 hours ago

Mackerel
chuyaaaaaaa

✉️ 13 new messages - now

Mackerel
where are you

📞 Mackerel is calling you….

decline | answer

📞3 new missed calls - 10 minutes ago

It’s 6 P.M. Chuuya hasn’t answered any of his calls. Dazai knows Chuuya isn’t going to make this easy, and Dazai can deal with spitfire and maiming and other forms of violence, but this—Dazai doesn’t know how to deal with this.

Dazai has never considered Chuuya walking out; he’s not very good at the visual.

At the end of the day, Ranpo sighs, sliding off his glasses. “You’re both fools. Go home, Dazai.”

Atsushi helps Dazai pack away the silverware, the treats and cold cuts, then the party poppers. As Dazai reaches up to grab the banner, Atsushi says, smiling in the way Dazai recognizes how people look when they’re trying to be kind: “Wait, Dazai-san. Just in case. Let’s…”

Dazai nods wordlessly. They leave the banner up for four more days.

Just in case.

— | — 

The next day. Chuuya doesn’t come. Or the next, and the next, and the next. Dazai is running out of excuses.

The banner comes down on the seventh day.

But work doesn’t stop for the agency. The next mission brings Dazai and Atsushi in an abandoned railway in Osaka, looking for clues.

“Nope!” Ranpo says, through the phone. “He’s still not here.”

“Perhaps chibi is now living it up as a pole dancer somewhere?” Dazai wonders out loud, shining his flashlight ahead. Gasps, “Or what if he got kidnapped?!”

“He’s not here because he doesn’t want to be,” Ranpo says, and Atsushi winces.

Well, he thinks, watching Dazai pick his way through the rubble in silence, that’s one way to shut him up.

— | —  

“The runt’s alive, don’t worry,” Yosano says, to his left. “Shachou confirmed it.”

Dazai makes a noncommittal sound.

“Stop that,” Kunikida says, to his right.

"Stop what?"

"That." Kunikida gestures vaguely. 

“I’m not doing anything, Kunikida-kun!”

"You’re being too quiet!”

Dazai laughs. The sound of it's all wrong. His two drinking buddies stare at him disconcertingly.

“You two are doing a very poor job at comforting me.”

“Comforting you?” Kunikida scoffs. “And why would we want to do that?”

“I’m not worried that he’s alive,” Dazai continues anyway, turning the glass in his hands. “Chibi can’t die. He’s not allowed. It’s in the rules.”

“Weirdos, the both of you,” Yosano mutters.

 — | —  

With little fanfare, a week turns into a month. Then it turns into two. Dazai thinks it’s unfortunate that there aren’t any rewards after this waiting game, because he’s getting pretty good at it.

He's doing spectacularly, if you ask him. In the last week before summer turns to fall, Dazai edges into the last vestiges of grief and doesn’t even do anything remotely dramatic. Like renting a blimp with Chuuya’s face on it and setting it on fire. (Admittedly, a very good idea.)

Then, one Sunday morning, perched on his apartment wall like an overgrown cockroach—is Nakahara Chuuya himself.

“Finally,” Chuuya says.

Dazai does the obvious: he fires ten rounds into his face.

Obviously, all of them fall short.

“Aw,” Dazai says, the gun smoking in his outstretched hand; ten bullets hover harmlessly over the outline of Chuuya’s body. “I missed.”

Chuuya sputters, “Holy sh—you could have killed me, asshole!” which is not true. Dazai can’t kill Chuuya even if he tried to, which he has; the man is indestructible and stalwart as a city, even more-so now, with complete control of his ability.

The bullets clatter harmlessly on the carpet floor. Chuuya is wearing cuffed jeans and a leather jacket over a plain white tee, his hair twisted into a loose knot, and it's a casualness Dazai isn’t used to. He forces himself to push through the beginnings of arousal before Chuuya notices.

“Forty-two days, Chuuya!” Dazai gripes, watching Chuuya land on the floor with barely a sound. “Could you have picked any other day for your existential crisis? I was rooting for you! Embarrassed me in front of my coworkers—”

“Please, you do that yourself,” Chuuya says, crossing his arms.

“Rude,” Dazai pouts. “Don’t ever do that to me again. I thought you’d never come back!”

“What can I say? You learn to walk it off,” Chuuya says, in a knowing way that has Dazai tensing on the spot. He notices Chuuya has a backpack on him, slung loosely over one shoulder.

“And what’s in the bag? Some poor man’s head?”

“Yours, I hope, once I’m through with you.”

We’re going nowhere again, Dazai thinks.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says, and hates the way his voice sounds. “Where are you going?”

The words still in Chuuya’s mouth. Instead of giving them form, he brushes past Dazai and walks into the living room, where he drops his backpack in front of the TV and rummages through it. When Dazai follows, sitting on sofa, he sees Chuuya feeding a copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s into Dazai’s VHS player.

“Was hoping you still kept this ancient thing. Well?” Chuuya prompts, leaving Dazai to stare at the TV, a Paramount Picture blinking to life. “Got anything for me to drink, host?”

“I’ve got Asahi on the fridge—“ Chuuya makes a face before poking his face into the cabinet, so Dazai rolls his eyes and says, “Coffee then, you princess. There, on your left. I have a press on the counter.”

Chuuya makes them both black coffees, and they sit on the sofa and nobody ever suggests fast-forwarding to the part they stopped, like they always did. Today, time is theirs to spend however they like; no Mori, no missions to usher them into separate rooms, no timers that will go off to say, time's up, no more.

Beside him, Chuuya crosses his ankle over his knee and plays an invisible piano over his leg—a new habit he adopted, and for a moment Dazai heart seizes in his chest; they’ve lived too long as parallel lines, and all these new things he has to learn about his partner feels like a curse, definite proof of all the years they’d lost and will never take back. You walk it off, Chuuya says, but Dazai’s a slow learner, hideously slow. He hopes Chuuya’s still waiting.

He’s impatient, too; when he can’t take it anymore, he turns to Chuuya, voice reaching through the distance between them and asks, again, “Chuuya. Where are you going?”

Chuuya doesn’t take his eyes off the screen. “Nowhere,” he says, after an elongated pause. “Somewhere. Wherever.”

Holly Golightly prances around on screen, making a fool of herself.

“New York doesn’t sound too pretty these days. Maybe I’ll go to France,” Chuuya grins brightly, but Dazai can see the way his shoulders brace themselves. He’s waiting, Dazai realizes: for the sharp tug on his leash, telling him to stay.

“How? You know you’re wanted when you step out of Yokohama. By illegally catching rides on planes again?” Dazai clucks his tongue. “Chuuya, you’re breaking my heart.”

Chuuya snorts, then rises on his feet to get some water. Dazai watches him and aches all by himself, aches until Chuuya returns with a chipped mug and a pitcher. It's the scene where Holly throws the tabby out the taxi, and Paul tells her, Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself, only later for them to reunite in the rain. Dazai isn’t surprised to see tears on Chuuya’s face. To be easily moved has always been a weakness for a Port Mafia Executive; just one more thing Chuuya has failed to beat out of himself.

Dazai wants to touch him. How can a wound be so beautiful?

“Well,” Chuuya says, hastily wiping his eyes, “some movie, huh?”

“That was a beautiful film. Worth the wait,” Dazai says, watching Chuuya rise up to return his glass. “Moon river, wider than a mile—“

Chuuya laughs. “Stop, you’ll ruin it for me.”

Dazai stands and sings, one hand on his chest, the other outstretched towards him, “—dream maker, you heartbreaker—“

“Stop,” Chuuya says, mouth shunting into a line, when Dazai’s smile stays, real and true as he closes the distance, singing, “—wherever you’re going—“

Chuuya covers Dazai’s mouth, and real emotion floods his face this time. Dazai is poleaxed. “I said stop. Fucking—movie’s over. We did it, we finished the goddamn movie like we promised. So—"

Dazai doesn’t know what takes over him when he kisses the palm sealed over his mouth. Chuuya startles, pulling away, but Dazai grabs his wrist gently and places a kiss there, too, his eyes falling shut—he keeps kissing, against the small bone, up the palm, into the tips of his fingers. Chuuya shudders.

“I visited the Port Mafia,” Chuuya says, and Dazai’s grip goes slack. Chuuya takes his hand back and curls into himself. “That’s where I’ve been. Hirotsu's okay. Akutagawa, too—Gin's finally recovered from her injury. She's a tough one, you know? Always been. But most of my men—not everyone’s coming back. Not this time.” Chuuya doesn’t falter. He continues, gritting his teeth in complete fury and love, “I think about it when go to sleep. Do you know that? When I brush my fucking teeth. I can’t fucking sleep. Did that happen to—“

“Always,” Dazai says, knee-jerk. “Always. I told you. Some things you can’t—”

“God," Chuuya rasps. “God, I—as long as I’m in Yokohama, I’ll always be tied the Port Mafia. I know it. I’ll keep crawling back, I’ll always—“ he claws at his throat, as if to say, I’ll always try to give my life up.

“Chuuya,” Dazai tries.

“I’m leaving Yokohama,” Chuuya says with finality, and it punches a hole through Dazai—but when Chuuya looks up at him, he doesn’t look lost. “Call me a coward motherfucker. I don’t give a damn. I need an out, Dazai, and it’s not jumping into the next thing I find. This is what I need; I’m giving it to myself. Just… just know that if I came that day—I wouldn’t have left. I’d be yours. I swear to god,” Chuuya says, like it’s important Dazai knows this, that he has this truth delivered to his hands and keeps it safe above all else. “You’d have me to the end,” he says, and Dazai lets out a breath; he wants to believe it so badly.

Chuuya walks the few steps towards Dazai’s open balcony; his eyes flicker through the roofs, where somewhere, the ADA sits, too early for work. Dazai doesn’t want to think about it yet, Chuuya as an almost, so he doesn’t—following Chuuya to the view until their shoulders brush companionably.

“I think,” Chuuya starts, “I think I would’ve had fun. Saving lives. All that shit. Tell Eun I’m sorry, but not really. And give Fukuzawa-san my thanks, for trusting the enemy.”

“Aw, you’re not the enemy, Chuuya,” Dazai says gently. “Just an ugly overgrown mutt!”

Chuuya shoves him. “Stop bluffing. The kid—Atsushi—he says I’ve saved your sorry asses so many times now, I might as well be an honorary member.”

“Well, the offer still stands,” Dazai says, already knowing the answer. “We’ll keep it open for you in case you change your mind.”

Chuuya stretches a hand out, catching sunlight in his palm. A bird flies over the roof.

“I take it staying isn’t an option.”

“If it’s for you, I wouldn’t mind,” Chuuya says, soft and vulnerable. A self-depreciating smile plays at his lips. “That’s the problem.”

Dazai nods, feeling his throat constrict as he looks at Chuuya and stares at the hideous insides of his own heart. Dazai hasn’t felt this human in years.

“Well then,” Dazai says. “I won’t ask.”

“Good,” Chuuya says, coughing. “Good, that’s—“ he pauses, then, “I spoke to Ango, I’ll be MIA for a couple of months. More. I’ll—“

“It’s the healthcare package, isn’t it?” Dazai blurts. “Or the lack of a travel allowance, perhaps? Maybe we can—“

“Shut the fuck up for once, Dazai.” Chuuya interrupts. “I’m trying to do this properly. Fuck—I’m really bad at this whole goodbye thing, can’t you see? And I’m not changing my mind, so stop asking me.” He turns, then thumbs into Dazai’s cheek, the part with the soft wrinkle he loves. Says, “I don’t wanna keep breaking your heart, after all.”

Dazai shudders, picked apart under that stare. Well, might as well; he takes out the velvet case inside his coat pocket and whines, “Then, what do I do with this now?”

The collar glints in the light, the leather warm and dark. “I had it specially personalised too! My initials are engraved at the back, see? It's special. So you’ll always know who you’ll belong to.”

It’s an obnoxious homecoming gift; Dazai half-expects Chuuya to grab the thing in exasperation and chuck it out the window.

Except: he doesn't. Chuuya pries it gently from Dazai’s fingers, then fastens the accessory around his neck, clicking the lock into place.

Chuuya brushes his hair back so Dazai can see better.

“Well,” he says, “how’s it look?”

The words die and are born in an infinite loop on his tongue. Dazai moves without thinking, reaching out to brush the pads of his fingers over it—

“Hands off,” Chuuya says, smirking as he swats Dazai’s hand away. Pink looks good in his cheeks. “This is mine now."

Dazai swallows, keeping a smile. “Glad it pleases you.”

Chuuya grins. Then he points at a spot behind Dazai. “You still keep that old thing?”

Dazai turns. “What?”

It’s too late when he realizes the trap; when Dazai turns back, he’s alone in the balcony. Chuuya is nowhere to be seen.

Dazai’s breath hitches.

Just like that, Chuuya is gone.

He rushes towards the open balcony, eyes scanning the street below, the skyline. A sparrow flutters into the sky.

Nothing.

“Bad dog!” Dazai shouts into the air, his grip white-knuckling on the railing. “I didn’t even throw the bone yet!”

His voice seeps into the morning sky. Dazai heart sinks and soars with the finality of it. He puts his hands to his mouth and yells out hoarsely, the last lie—

“I put a tracker in that collar!”

In the distance, over a beloved city,

             a boy scatters his laugh for the last time—

✉️ 1 new message - now

slug

[photo attachment]

god i’ll miss this dump.
it better be in one piece while im gone, hear me???

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slug
don’t look for me

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slug
who knows.
maybe i’ll come looking for you