Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Even at this time of night, Yokohama never really manages quiet: Chuuya ditches the driver and makes the last of the way home on foot, basking in it.  A car zips past; a phone rings; across the street, someone laughs.  Wind whipping his face red, Chuuya’s mood stays high until he takes the steps up to his apartment, two at a time, and finds the door cracked open.

Any Port Mafia executive worth his salt finds an assassin or two waiting in their home sooner or later; new to the post as he is, Chuuya certainly has.

But they didn’t leave the door open.

Chuuya takes in a deep breath, determined not to get into some stupid squabble that will cost him the precious few hours of sleep he has until dawn breaks.  His hands ball into fists in his pockets.  His foot pushes the door.

Dazai doesn’t actually live here, but it’s a near thing.  For all his griping, Dazai rarely if ever makes it to his place on the other side of town; either Chuuya finds him passed out in his office at headquarters, or he finds him here — folded up on the too-small couch, coat tossed to the side, eyes squeezed shut.  He left his shoes on again, the bastard.

There’s something unsettling about seeing him like this.  Chuuya’s under no illusions about the innocence of youth, but with his piercing eyes closed and annoying mouth shut, Dazai looks almost uncomfortably young — boney and stretched out, recent growth spurt dragging him further than his body wants to go.  Even now, he’s in the same clothes: tie loosened, belt undone, bandages wrapped tight over one side of his face.  Chuuya isn’t convinced he even owns another outfit.

Another deep breath.  Chuuya takes his own shoes off like a reasonable, civilized human being, willing himself not to shake Dazai awake and throw him out.  Jacket hung over his arm, he makes his way to his bedroom, mind helpfully counting down the hours before he’s expected back in the field.

Apparently, Dazai has other plans.  “Aren’t you going to ask how I got in?” his voice calls quietly, ricocheting off Chuuya’s retreating back.

It’s a stupid question considering Dazai wears his lockpick like a badge of honor, and Chuuya has never asked before despite the many nights he’s found him here.

Chuuya huffs a sigh through his nose, turning around and crossing his arms over his chest.  “If you’re awake then get out.”

The living room is dark; the top half of Dazai’s face is hardly visible at all from where it peeks over the couch.  “I bet that’s what you tell all the girls.”

There isn’t time for this.  There’s no reason to rise to the bait.  No matter what Chuuya says or doesn't say, Dazai will be gone by morning, and they’ll never mention this conversation or any like it again.

He leans against the doorframe anyway.  “You sure seem comfy for a home intruder.”

“Oh, not at all.  Your couch is just terrible.”

There’s something there under the jab, ragged and frustrated and strained.  Chuuya scratches his nose, not pretending to be anything but put out, and stalks back toward the kitchen to open a bottle of wine.

“I’m not getting a new one, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he says, setting two glasses on the counter with maybe more force than necessary.  “It was expensive.”

“I’m sure,” Dazai says from the couch, eye glued to Chuuya’s hands as he twists the screw into the cork.  “Expensive and gaudy and terrible, just like all your purchases.”

“Sorry I don’t want to live in a derelict storage container like a piece of cargo.”

“Who does?”

The back and forth pauses with the glug of wine being poured.  Chuuya tucks the bottle into his arm and carries both glasses to the couch, setting them all down on the coffee table before sitting on the ground.

“Your tastes are as weak as ever,” Dazai mumbles, snatching the whole bottle instead.  “We’re not all as tiny as you, Chuuya.  How am I supposed to get wasted on this?”

Childishly vengeful, Chuuya slides both glasses towards himself, swirling them near his nose as if to inhale double the scent.  It’s good — fruity and warm, like coming home.  “Maybe pick somewhere else to get wasted then, asshole.”

Dazai mutters something under his breath but doesn’t argue, hauling his body more vertical and taking a swig straight from the bottle.  It brings his shoes closer to Chuuya’s face; Chuuya shifts over to avoid them, wordlessly focused on not spilling his drinks.

The thing is that Dazai and Chuuya aren’t friends.  They’ve never gotten along swimmingly, even from the start.  Every conversation ends in argument, fighting and pulling each other’s collars, bringing Dazai in so close Chuuya can feel his breath on his mouth.

There’s something else, though.  Maybe it’s a natural consequence of saving each other’s lives; maybe there’s a natural, predetermined magnetism between them.  Maybe Chuuya is just as incapable about not caring about someone he’s spent time with as Dazai always says he is.  Maybe it’s just that Dazai doesn’t have any friends he can really call on, and Chuuya doesn’t either — not anymore, not alive.

In the field, in the organization, in the dark of Chuuya’s apartment — it’s only them.  It’s only ever them.

“I’m bored,” Dazai says suddenly, pressing the cold bottle against Chuuya’s neck.  “Play with me.”

Chuuya jumps, and only his ability saves his nice white carpets from no-doubt disastrous stains.  The red glow of altered gravity shines off the glasses as Chuuya eases the wine back in on autopilot, already whipping around to snarl at Dazai.  “Fuck off; play with yourself.  I’m going to have this drink, and then I’m going the fuck to bed.”

That wide-eyed faux-ingenue joy that only ever means trouble sparks through Dazai’s eye.  “Play with myself, right here?  I never knew Chuuya was such a pervert, but if you want to see so badly—”

He can’t even be mad; he walked right into that one.  Chuuya groans and downs the last of one glass, setting it on the table with a definitive click.

Then he tilts back until his head rests on the cushion, lolling sideways to look at the intruder on his couch.  “What’s your play here, Dazai?”

Dazai’s pupil is so big in the dark; it skates down Chuuya’s ruffled hair and rumpled clothes, down his exposed throat, across the line of his choker.  His expression is eerily flat, but his lips are parted, the tops of his cheeks flushed with what could be alcohol, or could be something else.

He meets Chuuya’s eye, and the tension bleeds out of him unnaturally fast.  “So suspicious of your one and only partner!”

“You inspire that feeling in people.”

This time, Dazai laughs.  Dark suit in a disarray, clutching a wine bottle like a baby, it’s hard to believe he’s the fabled demon of Port Mafia mythos.

But the gleam in his eye is nothing but dangerous when he tilts his head to the side and grins.  “I’m not getting at anything.  I’m bored, and not half as drunk as I’d like.  You’re here.  That’s it.”

“Of course I’m here,” Chuuya mutters, righting himself to take another sip of wine.  “This is my apartment.”

Dazai’s knee knocks the back of Chuuya’s head playfully.  “Chuuya,” he says, sing-song and irritating.  “I’m bored.”

There’s only ever one choice when Dazai gets in this kind of mood.  Chuuya imagines leaving right this second, storming to bed, and locking the door — but as he’s so quick to remind him, Dazai is very proficient at picking locks, and having the other boy’s shoes on his sheets is so much worse than his couch.

Another downed glass, another click on the table.  “If I said yes — what are we playing?”

He can’t see from here, but Chuuya hears Dazai smile.  “Lady’s choice.  Shiritori, or truth or dare?”

Groaning, Chuuya leans back again.  Maybe he drank a little too fast; his pleasant buzz is quickly tilting into something more than tipsy.  “Neither.  Don’t want to think, don’t want to move.”

Someone else might have missed the way that, instead of looking irritated or inconvenienced, and instead of taking a minute to come up with another game, Dazai’s smile widens, next suggestion already on the tip of his tongue.  “Truth or truth?  Winner gets the bed.”

Chuuya already knows he’s been had, and he shouldn’t have to fight not to sleep on his own couch, and it’s suspicious for someone as cagey as Dazai to suggest this anyway — but a challenge is a challenge, and maybe Chuuya’s a little bored, too.  “Fine, but I go first.”

Dazai watches him around Chuuya’s expensive wine, raised halfway to his smiling mouth.  “Whatever you say, chibi.”

The bottle bends and pushes the soft flesh of Dazai’s bottom lip.  Chuuya wishes, suddenly, that he had another drink.

“I have a name, you know.”

Amusement flickers across Dazai’s face like a light.  “I’m aware.”

“Can’t you just call me Chuuya?”

“Everyone calls you Chuuya,” Dazai retorts cheekily, handing him the bottle like he’s read his mind.

Sure, no one really calls him by last name, but Chuuya’s tipsy brain is struggling to make sense of why that matters here.  His lips touch the bottle, right where Dazai’s own had been moments before, and he tilts backwards to pour the drink into his mouth.

None comes, though, and when Dazai starts laughing, it becomes obvious that none will.  Chuuya flicks upright so fast he makes himself dizzy, twisting his upper body onto the couch to point the bottle at Dazai’s chest threateningly.

Dazai doesn’t look threatened, though.  He pushes the bottle away with the back of one hand and smiles, “My turn.”

With a huff, Chuuya returns to his previous position: back to the couch, head on the cushion, looking up at Dazai.  The neck of the bottle stays loosely in his grasp.  “Hurry up.  I’m tired.”

From the moment Dazai called out to him, it was clear he had a plan.  From the moment he started suggesting this game, it was clear the plan wasn’t just to annoy Chuuya.  Chuuya is no great fan of playing into his hand, but it’s not like he can outthink or outrun it, either.  In the end, Dazai is his partner, and by the time Chuuya catches up to his train of thought, he’s already in Dazai’s palm.

There’s a safety in it.  Chuuya doesn’t need to think; leading never suited him, anyway.  His pride recoils from the leash he’s being dragged on, but Dazai’s never pushed him into irreparable harm before, and Chuuya has no reason to believe he ever will.

This, though, is something else.  Dazai leans into the side of the couch, chin on his hand, watching Chuuya; his single dark eye seems to swallow everything it sees, greedy and magnetic.  The look on his face, too, is odd: the strained, overwrought, bright-eyed one he makes when they enter the last stage of a hard fight, and even he isn’t completely sure what will happen.  The one he makes when Chuuya enters Corruption, just before everything else fades away.

By comparison, his voice is incredibly light.  “Have you had sex?”

If Chuuya had something to drink right now, he’s pretty sure he’d have spit it all over the floor.  “What?”

That brightness grows.  Dazai leans closer, leering down at him like a schoolyard bully.  “Aw, so you haven’t?  No need to be embarrassed; you’re young, after all—”

The mocking tone of voice expunges the shock from Chuuya’s body, replacing it with irritation.  “I have,” he interrupts.  Dazai’s ridicule cuts off abruptly.  “I mean, it depends on what you mean by sex, I guess, but — yeah.  I have.”

Spending your younger years in a compound of teens your age will do that.  The mafia isn’t any more supervised, but there are rules, etiquette, expectations; the Sheep weren’t like that at all.

It’s been a while, though.  Chuuya has been so focused on reaching the executive seat that he’s hardly thought about anything else in ages, and anyone he could have asked died in one fell swoop a couple years ago.

Except for one, that is.

Chuuya looks up.  Dazai’s lips are pressed firm together, jaw set, but his apparent sudden bad mood doesn’t stop him from eyeing Chuuya’s ruffled hair and rumpled clothes, his exposed throat, the dark line of his choker.  His skin is brushed pink, even though Chuuya knows most of a bottle of wine isn’t enough to get Dazai any more than a slight buzz.

This is an awful idea.  Dazai is a ‘give an inch, take a mile’ kind of person, and Chuuya is much less capable of holding his ground against him than he’d ever admit.

Still.  “Wanna do it?”

Dazai’s gaze flashes from Chuuya’s neck to his eyes.  “What?”

Some other day, Chuuya will ruminate on the satisfaction of catching Dazai off-guard.  Tonight, he just shrugs and sets the bottle down.  “Sex.  Do you want to?”

It’s no secret that Dazai is attractive.  Chuuya isn’t in the habit of complimenting him, but he’s noticed it before: Dazai’s features are sharp and severe, all pale skin and strong lines, hidden though they may be beneath bandages and an awful haircut.  Dazai isn’t in the habit of complimenting Chuuya either, but it would take a fool not to notice how often Dazai’s heated stare follows him around the room.

That stare isn’t hiding at all tonight: it burns holes into Chuuya’s skin, darting across his face, searching and tense.  Tilting his head to the side, Chuuya lets him look.  There were things he was supposed to do tonight — a shower to have, sleep to catch up on — but he isn’t thinking about any of that, now.

Sometimes, being with Dazai feels like being held underwater.  Chuuya can’t find his bearings.  He can’t catch his breath.

Finally, that intensity breaks.  Dazai inhales, leaning forward with a curious grin.  “Chuuya is more open about this than I expected.”

“Lucky you,” Chuuya says, rolling his eyes.  “Can I blow you or not?”

Tonight definitely marks the record for number of times Chuuya has seen Dazai stumped, no matter how quickly he recovers.  “If you insist,” he sighs, leaning back further into the arm of the couch, fully clothed and knees apart.

He’s as lazy as ever.  Chuuya has half the mind to fight over it, drag his legs closer so Chuuya doesn’t have to move so much — but then he’d be kneeling on the floor for him, which isn’t really ideal, either.  Alcohol thrums Chuuya’s limbs loose and his inhibitions low, and he hauls himself up onto the couch, settling twisted on his front between Dazai’s thighs without complaint.

Chuuya is already tugging Dazai’s belt loose before he realizes the other boy hasn’t moved.  When he looks up, Dazai’s single uncovered eye is hardly visible under his bangs.  The way he’s looking at him isn’t the way Chuuya is used to guys looking before he sucks them off.  This isn’t the nervous jitter of a first-timer, or the easygoing look of a friend.  It’s not that the enthusiasm isn’t there, but there’s something uncomfortable about the way Dazai makes eye contact with Chuuya: heavy, like a weight dragging him down.

He has half the mind to back off, call it a night, and never return to the topic again — until Dazai curls his fingers in Chuuya’s hair and grins.  “What’s the matter?  Lose your nerve?”

“I was going to ask the same thing,” Chuuya snarls, trying to shake Dazai’s hand loose.

Instead, Dazai’s hold twists tighter while his free hand pulls his tie undone.  “I didn’t realize you needed so much feedback.”

“I don’t,” Chuuya says, like a liar.  “Fuck off.”

It’s hard to get his clothes off like this.  Dazai takes care of the buttons of his shirt himself, while Chuuya gets stalled trying to pry his trousers down.  He pulls hard enough to hear something rip before Dazai finally deigns to lift his hips.

Chuuya has seen Dazai undressed before.  He’s sewn his wounds together in the field, stripped ruined shirts from his back, caught glimpses of bare skin when they’ve switched disguises mid-mission.  Dazai’s attractiveness or lack thereof had never mattered in that context, and Chuuya is a guy, too; he’s seen plenty of half-naked men.

Now, Dazai’s shirt falls open in what can’t be anything but an invitation to look.  Bandages are wrapped to his abdomen like a second skin, rising and falling with each breath — farther down than usual, like he’d planned for this, too.  Peeks of flesh escape in the gaps between, small and secret, as jarring as a wound.  Chuuya wants to scrape his teeth across them until they bleed.  He wants to bundle Dazai back up until he can’t see his ribs strain against his skin.

He doesn’t do either of those things, though.  Instead, he lays his hands flat on Dazai’s abdomen, mapping him out: sternum, navel, the sharp jut of his hip bones.  Then he gets his fingers underneath the waistband of his underwear, and tugs.

Dazai is only half-hard, and already bigger than Chuuya’s pride had hoped.  When Chuuya gets his hand around him, Dazai leans back into the cushions with a hiss.

“Not one for a gentle touch,” he asks roughly, “are you?”

Obviously not; Dazai knows Chuuya better than just about anyone, and Chuuya would bet money he’s thought exactly about how Chuuya would touch him before.

Chuuya rolls his eyes, tugs his dry hand up and down Dazai’s stiffening shaft, and tucks an annoying lock of hair behind his ear.  “Do you want me to do this or not,” he asks, flat and rhetorical — and before Dazai can add something else to piss him off, he ducks his head down and takes the head into his mouth.

Even for casual, drunken fumbling, it’s sudden.  Dazai’s fingers fist in his hair and the noise he makes, halfway between moan and complaint, sends eager heat shooting up Chuuya’s spine.  He wants to force more of Dazai’s cock into his mouth, feel him get harder and harder in his throat until he chokes — but it’s been a while, and Dazai would never let him live it down if he so much as coughed.  Instead, Chuuya firms his lips and sucks, hand holding Dazai steady.

Dazai curses under his breath.  The buzz between Chuuya’s ears only grows stronger when he realizes he’s just found the simplest, most reliable way to make the biggest pain in his ass shut the fuck up.

The couch is easy on his knees, but the leverage from this particular angle leaves something to be desired.  Chuuya adjusts as best he can without getting his mouth off Dazai’s cock, tongue lolling lazily over the head as he arches his back and puts more weight on his elbows.  When he glances up through his lashes, he finds Dazai — hand over his mouth, eye impossibly dark, watching him.

That buzz shakes its way into a shiver that Chuuya only barely manages to force down.  Pulling off and licking the center of his palm, he gives the best nonplussed look he can in these circumstances.  “What.”

“Nothing, just—”  Chuuya’s hand, now minimally lubed, returns to Dazai’s cock to stroke him off idly at the base.  Dazai uncharacteristically stumbles on his words.  “You just seem used to this.”

He’d asked something similar before.  It’s weird for Dazai to repeat a question, even if it wasn’t quite a question either time.

That doesn’t mean Chuuya needs to answer him, though.  He levels Dazai an unimpressed look, lowering himself back down to tilt his head to the side and mouth aimlessly at Dazai’s cock.

“If you have something you want to say,” he says; the vibration travels from his lips to Dazai, “just fucking say it.”

Looming above him, focused and flushed, Dazai looks at him like a puzzle he can’t put together.  It’s exhilarating.  Chuuya can’t remember the last time he’s felt anything but transparent in Dazai’s eyes.

But Chuuya wins, because Dazai doesn’t say it.  Instead, he leans back into the couch, curls his other hand into Chuuya’s hair, and tugs.

Chuuya takes him back into his mouth obediently enough, pushing as deep as he comfortably can and stroking off the rest.  Dazai is big; already, there’s an ache beginning to burn in his jaw that will no doubt haunt him tomorrow.  Still, there’s no denying that Chuuya is liking this: he likes the attention, likes the quiet breaths and twisting fingers, likes the way Dazai’s gaze darts between his face and his ass, pushed high in the air.

Dazai twitches in his mouth, groaning, pulling Chuuya closer.  Chuuya doesn’t fight it, either; the head of Dazai’s cock edges past his tongue, past his mouth, pressing in and in and in until he’s holding back the urge to gag.  He isn’t stroking him off anymore; instead, both hands are pressed to Dazai’s thighs, both to support his weight and prevent completely losing control of the situation.

Though Dazai doesn’t seem all too eager to take the reins at the moment; he’s lazily greedy, taking shallow breaths, lips parted and posture loose.  “Chuuya,” he whines, hips bucking up slightly when Chuuya doesn’t immediately move, still getting used to the depth of Dazai’s cock in his throat.

By now, Chuuya is achingly hard, the front of his pants wet, all the muscles in his abdomen tense.  He’s aching for some relief, but he doesn’t put it past Dazai to suddenly fuck his throat if he takes his hands off him.  There’s nothing to grind on in this position but he rocks idly anyway, even the shifting of his clothes managing to take a bit of the edge off in his hyper-sensitive state.

Slowly, he pulls back and takes a sharp breath in through his nose.  Then, before Dazai can finish voicing the complaint on his lips, Chuuya takes him back in, all at once.

The noise Dazai makes, head thrown back, fingers tightening painfully in Chuuya’s hair, is the most gratifying thing Chuuya has ever heard.

There’s no way to communicate the sentiment in his current state but Dazai must get it anyway, because when Chuuya relaxes his throat, readjusting himself to be more malleable, Dazai holds him still and begins gently thrusting into his throat.

It must be hard to get leverage from the angle he’s in, reclined back into the couch, but even each rucking movement seems to undo Dazai.  His breaths are unsteady, thighs twitching; under Chuuya’s hands, his hips seem to tremble.  When Chuuya looks up at him, Dazai’s too distracted to meet his gaze: eyes closed, brow furrowed, biting his lower lip.

He must be close.  Chuuya groans, feeling the effect the vibration has on Dazai when the other boy gasps and pulls him even closer.

His scalp tingles from being pulled; his jaw aches; he can already tell his voice is going to be completely wrecked tomorrow.  None of that matters now, though; Chuuya has already committed to this, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t give Dazai the best blowjob of his life.  Any gratification he may or may not get from the feeling of Dazai’s cock in his mouth is secondary.

All at once, Dazai’s hips stutter.  “Chuuya,” he says, whiney and desperate, reaching and reaching for him, “Chuuya, Chuuya—”

Chuuya would tell him to shut up or hurry up if his mouth wasn't occupied.  As is, he moans around him, pushing Dazai back into the couch and bobbing up and down, faster and faster, chasing Dazai’s high like it’s his own.

When Dazai does finally come, curling in on himself, murmuring shaky words under his breath, Chuuya fully intends to swallow.  Dazai seems to have other plans, though; wrenching Chuuya back by the hair, his come largely avoids Chuuya’s open, gasping mouth to cover his face.  By instinct, Chuuya wrenches his eyes shut just fast enough to feel it spurt across his cheek, lashes, the bridge of his nose.

There’s a moment of relative peace before Chuuya springs up to his knees, rubbing his arm over his eyes.  To his relief, the expensive fabric sops up the worst of it, though he can feel the remains of come already beginning to dry.  “Are you serious,” he says, voice at least as raspy as he feared.  “My face?”

Dazai is just as out of breath as Chuuya, and about ten times more smug.  “Oh, my bad.  Did Chuuya want to swallow?”

“It’s fucking everywhere.  You could have at least aimed.”

“I hear it’s good for the skin.”

Snorting, Chuuya gives up on using his shirt as a rag and gets up to rinse his face.  But before he can even fully stand, Dazai is stopping him with a hand around his wrist.

“Not so fast,” Dazai says.  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Chuuya could very easily shake his hand off.  Instead, he raises an eyebrow at him.  “You want a kiss goodnight?”

Dazai wrinkles his nose and drags him onto the couch until Chuuya’s back is pressed to Dazai’s chest.  Chuuya lets him, too exhausted and turned on to put up his usual struggle.

“Your turn, chibikko.”

The entire curve of his spine against Dazai, Chuuya lets himself notice how small he feels in his arms; the thought makes him want to pull away, beat Dazai up, and kick him out of his apartment.  Instead, he just shivers and focuses instead on Dazai’s hands, tracing up from his wrists to his shoulders, then down his abdomen.

There, they spread, fingers nearly touching as they circle Chuuya’s waist.  Chuuya can hear the same thought echoing in Dazai’s head, too: small.

Mortification and fury and something not half as negative race through Chuuya like an electric shock.  He stiffens when Dazai sets his chin on Chuuya’s shoulder, mouth dangerously close to his ear.

Dazai’s laugh is low and insincere.  “Nervous?”

Forcing his body to relax, Chuuya blows his breath silently from his nose.  “Don’t be stupid.”

“My mistake,” Dazai teases, dragging his hands up to Chuuya’s neck to start unbuttoning his shirt, “Chuuya is as fearless as always.”

The room is chilly.  Chuuya forewent an undershirt today, and unlike Dazai, he isn’t absolutely covered in bandages; goosebumps rise on every stretch of skin as Dazai works his way down.  Bit by bit, Dazai exposes his collarbones, chest, stomach.

Uncomfortable with his own inactivity, Chuuya starts unbuckling his belt.  Dazai tuts somewhere behind him, but doesn’t stop him.

Skinship isn’t unheard of for them, but it isn’t usually like this.  Chuuya is used to Dazai touching him for set, defined reasons: to bug him, to yank him out of the way, to pull him free from Corruption.  But when Dazai trails his fingers across his ribs, brushes his palms over his chest, catching a nipple between parted fingers — every second of skin on skin seems to burn.

“Hurry up,” he bites, and Dazai’s laugh rattles him like a hit to the head.

“Patience,” Dazai says even as his hand trails lower, running palm-down all along the flat of Chuuya’s navel, sneaking under the waistband of his underwear.

It doesn’t take long, with how wound up he is.  Chuuya comes so hard he sees white, and the next thing he knows, he’s waking to his ringtone, a crick in his neck from a night on his god-awful couch.  Not only is he already late, but the come dried on his chest and parts of his face mean showering is nonnegotiable.

As if to add insult to injury, when he darts into his room soaking wet for a change of clothes with nothing to protect his dignity but a towel around his neck, he finds Dazai in his bed.  The shoes are off, thank god, but his street clothes are still very much on, and Chuuya wastes precious time debating whether he should strangle Dazai with these sheets or just burn them.

A whistle snaps him from his thoughts.  Dazai, now wide-awake, is leaned on an elbow, raking up and down Chuuya’s very nude form.  “Good morning to you too.”

Chuuya bares his teeth and pretends he can’t feel a flush zip up his body.  “You better be gone when I get back,” he hisses, pointing at him threateningly, before grabbing the first articles of clothing he sees and racing back into the hall.

Kouyou regards him thoughtfully over her tea when he barrels into her office with muttered apologies for his late arrival.  “That’s an interesting outfit.  Is the jacket new?”

It isn’t new; it’s an expensive impulse-buy Chuuya has never worn before, because it’s baby blue and makes him feel like an elementary-schooler.

“Yeah,” he grunts, ignoring how abused his throat sounds.

One long, elegant sip of tea.  “Rough night?”

Leaning back in his chair, Chuuya crosses his legs, ankle over his knee.  “That obvious?” he sighs, rubbing his dry eyes.  It’s unprofessional, but Kouyou doesn’t chide him for it; they pass a few moments in peaceful silence, watching the sun rise through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

It wasn’t meant to last, though.  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I called for you,” Kouyou says, cleaving the silence in two.

Her voice is all business, chilled and low.  Chuuya glances at her stern side profile and sets his untouched tea down.  “A mission, I assume.”

“Ogai-dono is asking for you.  Dazai as well.”

Chuuya succeeds in swallowing his groan, but his face still twists sour.  Dazai better not still be in his bed.  He’s probably either drooling on his pillow or rooting through his drawers again.  Chuuya will have to do another sweep for mics and cameras.  “Ah.  Are you briefing me then?”

“No,” Kouyou says carefully, “Ogai-dono will be taking care of that.  I had the morning free, so I only thought I’d warn you in advance over tea.”

Port Mafia executives don’t have mornings free.  “What’s this about, ane-san?”

When she sets her cup down, it’s completely silent.  “This is your first mission with Dazai since you became an executive, yes?”

It’s their first mission together in a long time.  The last one, months back, had been such a mess that when Mori assigned Chuuya double the work and triple the trips out of the city afterwards, he’d been certain his chance at the next executive seat was gone.

Shows what he knows.  Chuuya frowns at the memory.  “That’s right.”

“That means you’re equals now, Chuuya,” Kouyou says.  Her voice is quiet but sharp, like the sound of a sword pulled from a scabbard.  “Dazai can’t officially give you orders anymore, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t clever enough to get away with it.  He was reared to manipulate and control.  Don’t let him catch you in his net simply because you were unprepared.”

There’s an uncomfortable tension to this conversation, like pulling a single thread taut.  Kouyou shouldn’t be saying this at all: for one, she isn’t Chuuya’s superior anymore; they’re on equal standing, too.  For another, Dazai is a fellow executive, and Mori’s understudy in all but name at that; unless Mori says otherwise, his loyalty should not be the least bit in question.  Dazai’s machinations have never done anything but benefit the Port Mafia, and Chuuya’s feelings about his place in them shouldn’t matter at all.

This is personal.  Kouyou is looking out for him — not only as a fellow executive, but as a mentor, as a friend.

The truth is that, regardless of rank, regardless of what he might tell Dazai — Chuuya knows that he hasn’t stepped out of Dazai’s net from the moment they met.  Dazai is transparent as fucking glass but Chuuya only seems to realize it a second too late, and at that point, it’s already his own fault for slipping.  He’ll follow Dazai’s orders not only out of trust or habit, but because by the time he receives them, all other options are already blocked.  They’re rivals, confidantes, partners — and no matter where Chuuya goes, the road home always leads to the same place in the end.

The truth is that if Dazai really wanted to drag Chuuya under, he wouldn’t even need to ask.  No amount of caution or warning is going to change that.

“Thanks, ane-san,” Chuuya says.  “I’ll remember that.”

His luck must be truly abysmal today, because when he makes his way to Mori’s office, he runs into none other than Dazai.

Dazai makes a face when he sees Chuuya, speed-walking toward him with worrying purpose.  “What’re you doing here?  I thought you’d be destroying public property or whatever it is you do all day.”

Ah, Chuuya really has rotten luck.  He’d even left for the briefing early, in the hopes of avoiding a long, close-quarters elevator ride with Dazai.

“You didn’t know?” Chuuya asks, dryly gloating.  “Boss called for us both.  Seems we’ve got a job to do.”

A stiffness passes over Dazai like a shiver, gone as quickly as it came.  “No,” he whines, clutching his hair dramatically even as he falls in step beside him.  “A job with Chuuya?”

“I’m not happy about it either, asshole, but orders are orders.”

The guards don’t stop either of them; they don’t even dare to make eye contact as the two executives walk into the elevator in sync.

“You’re obedient as always,” Dazai shoots as the doors shut.  “It’s too bad not all of us can have your desperation to please.  I’m sure that would make Boss very happy.”

Last night flashes unbidden through Chuuya’s mind: Dazai’s hands in his hair, his voice rough — I didn’t realize you needed so much feedback.

Scratching the back of his neck, Chuuya fights down the heat he can feel beginning to stain his face.  “We’d be a hell of a lot more efficient than if every member was like you, that’s for sure.”

Dazai shrugs like he’s above it all, which is somehow even more aggravating than the jabs themselves.  The rueful, self-deprecating twist to his mouth makes Chuuya’s blood boil.  “Then it’s lucky that I’m one of a kind.”

Mori’s office is the same as always, windows open and air still.  Chuuya has stood on the other side of the room enough times, watching couriers and lower ranks scuttle in, to know that the long stretch of empty lights the nerves of most people.  To Chuuya, it’s just a room.  He keeps his eyes solidly forward, ignoring Dazai with all he has to keep his professionalism intact, as he strides forward to greet the boss.

The meeting is not strange in it of itself.  Mori fills them in on a mysterious pattern: civilians and mafia alike are dropping dead in particular parts of the city, with strange symptoms.  Information has come in about a small-scale organization who may or may not have gifted members.  The results are inconclusive so far, but the threat is serious, and Dazai and Chuuya are meant to use the full strength of their famous rivalry to nip it in the bud.

As it’s both highly concerning and presumably small-scale, most of their normal duties will be postponed or relegated elsewhere, and missions that fully require one or both of them will be pushed off if possible.  Strangely, Mori doesn’t give them a deadline, or generally rush them at all.  Instead, with the tone of a corporate boss gifting a surprise vacation, he just tells them to give it their all.

The pay-off is that it’s to be very discreet; they won’t be able to use their usual manpower.  Assigning menial tasks to subordinates is fine, but explaining said tasks is not.  “Use your own discretion,” Mori finishes.

“Is there a reason you need us specifically?” Dazai asks, just deferent enough to not risk outright insubordination.  “Is every low-level grunt in the organization swamped with work at the moment?”

“Did you want me to ask your low-level grunt friend instead?” Mori asks, indulgently dangerous.

Dazai smiles, knife-sharp and narrow, and opens his mouth.  The air crackles, and Chuuya is snapping to interrupt his partner on instinct.  “Consider it done, Boss.”

All at once, Chuuya can feel the full weight of Dazai’s attention on him.  He’s been odd ever since they left the elevator, even more so than usual: cold and expressionless, unwilling to joke or bicker or rise to jabs.  Even being in front of the boss of the Port Mafia isn’t usually enough to cow his urge to bully, but he’s all business now.  This is the longest Chuuya has gone without feeling his animosity since they met.

By comparison, Mori’s attention turns to Chuuya slowly, like trying to peel a sticker from glass without tearing it.  “Thank you, Chuuya-kun,” he says pleasantly, raising a dismissive hand.  “Keep me updated.”

In the time it takes Chuuya to bow his head, Dazai has already turned on a heel and begun speed-walking back from where they came.  As if pulled on a leash, Chuuya hurries to catch up.

“What’s wrong with you?” he hisses under his breath, sticking his shoe in the elevator door just before it can close.  “Are you trying to make the Boss cut you out?”

Dazai tears his gaze from the button he’s mashing to look at Chuuya.  Derision and disdain are painted all over him in bright, angry letters; he seems at once wildly volatile and so, so tired, seconds from collapsing like a house of cards.  “He wouldn’t dare,” he says evenly once the doors shut behind them.

There’s nothing good in his tone: no pride, no arrogance, no affection.  Instead, his frustration is so palpable Chuuya could dig his teeth into it.

Between the fluorescents and the rollercoaster ride that is Dazai, Chuuya is quickly getting a headache.  “What does that even mean.”

“You wouldn’t get it.  Your little pea brain is too tiny and simple to retain the information.”

“Try me, bastard.”

For a second, there’s no movement between the two of them at all, eyes locked and bodies frozen.  The elevator is small; even standing in the far corner, Dazai’s less than an arms breadth away.  He’s a barely-contained mess, like usual: hair unbrushed, covered in bandages, dressed in the same wrinkled suit as yesterday.  At least he doesn’t smell like sex, though the thought of Dazai climbing back into his dirty clothes after showering is barely better than not bathing at all.

Ugh, Chuuya is really going to need to destroy those sheets.  He needs to get a better lock on his door one of these days, too.

Still, the sex itself wasn’t exactly bad.  Chuuya’s jaw aches about as much as he’d expected, but the rest of his body feels loose, muscles relaxed and temper slow to come.  He’s been making a point of not thinking of Dazai at his back, rough palms sliding over his nipples, voice in his ear, hand in his pants — if only because it would make getting through his work day a near impossible thing.  He most certainly shouldn’t be thinking of that now, with the person in question within touching distance.

His mind wanders anyway.  Dazai touched him last night with the gentle, reassuring tenderness he usually reserves for pulling Chuuya from Corruption, in the secret stretch of time when Chuuya is too exhausted to pull away or fight back.  He seemed so self-assured, stretched out languid behind Chuuya, having his back in a very literal sense, taking his pleasure into his hands.  And Chuuya, overworked and underfucked, had melted right into it.

It was a terrible idea.  It can definitely never happen again.

Heavy and half-lidded, Dazai’s single visible eye stares right through him.  “Do you trust me?” he asks, already with the knowing, humorless self-deprecation that drives Chuuya mad.

“Are you kidding?” Chuuya says, equally humorless.  “No way.”

Dazai studies him a moment longer, then nods, like he’s coming to some great decision.  “Then why would I even bother to tell you?”

Chuuya growls.  Dazai sticks his tongue out.  The elevator doors open, and Chuuya stalks out without a second thought.

The guards still haven't looked up, sufficiently good at their jobs to recognize two of the highest-ranked members of the Port Mafia, and Chuuya doesn’t encounter anyone in the hallway.

Even so, there are eyes on his back: eyes tracing his hips, his waist, the line of his neck, holding him there like a collar.

Still, Chuuya doesn’t look up.  In between his scheduled duties for the rest of the day, he makes a plan to investigate his new case and picks out a new cyber security system for his apartment.  Dazai doesn’t show himself, and when Chuuya goes home for the night, his apartment is blissfully empty.

Chapter Text

Meeting a mysterious and unfortunate end is not uncommon in a city like Yokohama — doubly so for members of the Port Mafia.  But the recent mysterious deaths following the same mysterious patterns have all appeared in territory directly under Chuuya’s management, and only about half of them have been mafia at all.  That changes things.

It’s suspicious.  Executives don’t reveal their jurisdictions readily; the information would be hard for a mid-level grunt to come by, much less an outsider.  And though Mori hadn’t said so directly, the fact that the orders went straight from him to Dazai and Chuuya, not to be allocated but to be immediately taken care of, speaks of trouble.  Information doesn’t appear out of thin air, and Chuuya isn’t sure who he can trust.

In a way, it suits Chuuya just fine.  He’s never been one for allocation, standing at the head of the table weighing strengths and weaknesses to most efficiently reach the best possible outcome.  Chuuya trains the best of the best to become even better; when things get messy, he takes groups of men and machinery to shoot everything that moves.  When things get downright disastrous, they send in Chuuya with Dazai, and Dazai has always been the tactician between the two of them.

There are no emergencies that demand his attention, and one of his direct subordinates is in charge of keeping things running smoothly while Chuuya is otherwise occupied.  Chuuya clears his schedule and paces around his office, spinning the information around again and again in his head until some new lead presents itself.

His valiant attempts to wear a track into the floor are only halted by a knock at the door.  “Chuuya-san?” someone calls.  “Are you in there?”

He’s thinking himself in circles.  Sighing, he calls out, “Come in.”

At first, only half of a dark-haired head pops out from behind the opening door, like its owner isn’t quite sure he’s actually allowed.  Once they make eye contact, though, he hurries inside, balancing a tray on one hand.  “Chuuya-san!  Are you thirsty?”

Takahashi Shinkichi came under Chuuya’s care about a year ago, his gift ‘Triumph of the Sparrow’ deemed both impressive and combat-oriented enough to justify his tutelage.  Despite being older than Chuuya, he’s never been anything but grateful and obedient, with a bright personality and enthusiasm for self-improvement.  Chuuya has sent and taken him on more missions than he can count.

“Takahashi,” Chuuya greets, shoulders relaxing.  “Thanks.”

Takahashi’s already perky demeanor perks up even more as he eagerly sets out the coffee on Chuuya’s desk.  “Of course, sir!  I’m happy to give you anything you need!”

If Chuuya was going to pick a subordinate to bring with him investigating, Takahashi would be a good choice.  Even if his obvious attraction for Chuuya has the potential to be a liability in the field, he’s skilled enough to make up for it; his spacial-manipulation ability is best used in conjunction with a strong martial artist, and would come in handy in case of encountering aggressors in large groups.  Though Takahashi has a partner already, the other Gifteds in Chuuya’s arsenal don’t fit as Chuuya’s pair nearly as well.

Of course, loathe though Chuuya is to admit it, the most ideal situation would be to investigate with Dazai directly; he’s sure his partner is already ten steps ahead of him in searching for leads.  But ever since that uncharacteristically tense exchange in the elevator, Dazai hasn’t come to bother Chuuya even once.

It’s annoying.  Chuuya thought he’d be happy to have his apartment to himself so many nights in a row, but opening his door to an empty room only ever seems to make him more uneasy.

Takahashi is still lingering, eyes darting between Chuuya and his coffee expectantly.  Sighing, Chuuya leans back to sit on his desk and picks up the cup.

A second before his lips make contact with the rim, the prickling weight of someone’s gaze makes him pause.  Looking up, he finds one dark brown eye staring holes into him.

“Slacking off on the job, are you?” Dazai asks, leaned inelegantly on the doorframe like a pile of wet laundry.  “Ah man, I really wish I’d been assigned to this top secret, straight-from-the-boss special mission with anyone but you.”

It’s been days since they’ve seen each other.  They pick up right where they left off.

“Shut up, shitty Dazai,” Chuuya says, dropping his cup down with a clatter as he throws himself up to his feet.  “I bet I’ve already done more to solve this case than you have.”

“Betting again?  You never learn, do you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dazai shrugs, puffing out some hybrid between a sigh and a scoff.  “Chuuya is so simple.”

“Listen, you—”

“I’ll let you win,” Dazai interrupts, abruptly bored, “if you have even one lead that I don’t already.”

His matter-of-fact haughtiness has a whole host of insults springing into Chuuya’s mouth, but before any of them can escape, Dazai’s gaze sweeps cooly over him to somewhere past his shoulder.  “But first,” he says, pantomiming hush with a finger to his lips, “we should go somewhere a little more private, right?”

When Chuuya turns to look, he finds Takahashi shock-still, staring at Dazai with a strained expression on his face.  The tray he’d carried in, now empty, is clutched tight to his chest.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says, stealing Chuuya’s attention effortlessly, “come.”

The most private place they could talk about the case would be Chuuya’s own office; he could simply shoo Takahashi out and pull up an empty chair, like they’ve done so many times before.  But Dazai is already out the door, and Chuuya isn’t in the habit of falling behind.

His ability glows red around him as he launches himself out into the hall, foot sweeping out to crush Dazai’s knees.  “Who are you bossing around, bastard?”

Dazai jumps out of the way effortlessly without even turning around to look.  “Am I not allowed to call my dog to heel?”

“Who’s your dog?” Chuuya growls, aiming for his ankles this time.  Dazai nimbly avoids this, too.  “I’m an executive now.  We’re on equal footing.”

“How could I ever be on equal footing with someone who’s ten centimeters tall?”

“You—”

Even as they’re stepping into a coffee shop on the other side of town, Chuuya doesn’t stop to think about the abandoned cup left to cool on his desk.

The place Dazai leads him to is small: just a couple of high tables and a small bar, one tired-looking employee quietly making their drinks with shiny chrome machines Chuuya couldn’t name with a gun to his head.  He supposes it suits Dazai so much as anything does.

In fact, Dazai doesn’t look out of place here at all.  His hair is still sticking in ridiculous directions from the ride over, arms around Chuuya’s waist, shouting barbs at him about choosing the motorcycle over the car — but with his dark, neutral suit and handsome, neutral face, he could be one of any of the young professionals that crowd the streets in this area.  Chuuya would know; this part of the city is under Chuuya’s care.

The face in question is mostly hidden once their drinks come out, though.  “What is that?” Chuuya asks, recoiling in horror at the frozen, blended, over-the-top monstrosity that towers between them.

Dazai’s face reemerges when he swipes his straw through the mountain of whipped cream, sticking it into his mouth gleefully.  “I don’t really know.  You paid, so I ordered the most expensive thing on the menu.”

Given the fact that Chuuya’s salary more than pays for his lavish lifestyle, a single coffee isn’t going to make a dent.  His wallet feels much lighter, anyway.  “Don’t do whatever you want with my money.  You haven’t even explained why we’re here.”

“Can’t I just enjoy the atmosphere?”

Chuuya has never known Dazai to ‘just enjoy’ anything.  He leans back in his seat, the metal backing digging into his jacket, and raises an eyebrow.

Straw in his mouth and elbows on the table, Dazai stares back at him innocently.  The first sip of drink hits his tongue, and he pulls away with thinly-veiled disgust, pushing the glass to the center of the table.  “Too sweet,” he complains, entirely too loud.  “This sucks.”

Though Chuuya doesn’t look, he can feel the barista’s eyes on them.  Count on Dazai to make a scene; doesn’t he love cold, sickly-sweet drinks like this anyway?  Sighing, Chuuya rolls his wrist in a smooth motion, making the ice in his americano clink against the glass.

Forcing Dazai to talk when he doesn’t want to never works; he’s so stubborn that Chuuya isn’t convinced even Kouyou’s best interrogators could persuade him.  But he brought Chuuya here for a reason, and there’s no way that reason is to drink coffee with him.  And obviously, this shop isn’t any more private than Chuuya’s office back at headquarters.  There has to be something here, only that Dazai doesn’t want to tell him what it is yet.

While arguing is one of their favorite shared pastimes, it would only make them more conspicuous now.  They’ve flipped a table or two in similar situations.  Chuuya may as well just humor his partner and ride it out — until it passes into a new level of dickish idiocy, at least.

“You said you had leads,” Chuuya says, “so talk.”

When he raises his drink to his mouth, the cold glass sticks to his lip.  Dazai watches it with devout focus.

“Are you giving up already?” Dazai asks, doe-eyed.  “I haven't set a condition for when you lose yet!”

It takes Chuuya a second to recall their conversation from the office: you win if you have even one lead that I don’t already.  He stiffens in his seat, setting his glass down without even taking a sip.  “Stop talking like you already won.  You’re just trying to trick me into doing all the work.”

Dazai grins condescendingly.  “If you could manage it, I wouldn’t complain.”

Gritting his teeth, Chuuya reminds himself that this mission is very important and very secret, and that discretion is more important right now than launching Dazai’s smug face through the window.  Mentally, he runs through the reports he sorted through in the last few weeks, brow furrowing as he sets them in order as best he can on the fly.

“The mysterious deaths have all occurred over the last two months,” Chuuya says, pitching forward so that his low voice doesn’t reach the employee wiping the counter across the room.  “Victims don’t seem to share any notable traits, really; they’ve been mafia, civilians, locals, tourists, rich, poor, whatever.  The youngest we know of was twelve, and the oldest was over 80.  Other than the general regions they show up in and the state of the bodies, they don’t have anything in common at all.”

Boredom is written all over Dazai’s slumped form, but his expression is sharp as he stares out the window.  “Mhm, I read the reports, too.  What else?”

“I did some snooping on my own.  Nothing was taken off any of the bodies — money, jewelry, passports, nothing.  So robbery isn’t a motive.  No violent injuries, either; it’s not some sadistic freak running around slashing people.  Except for a certain mark, there’s no clues on the bodies at all.”

One dark eye flicks to Chuuya’s face.  “Go on.”

Something about it makes Chuuya’s heart thump a little louder.  Thinking he may be sensing nearby killing intent, Chuuya instinctively repositions on his seat to be able to more easily leap into action.

“I paid the morgue a visit,” Chuuya continues lowly.  “Every victim had a mark over their heart: irregularly-shaped, with sort of… dark, squiggly lines leading out.”

“Like veins,” Dazai agrees, tapping his finger on his elbow.  “Even under a little pressure, the coroner said he’d never seen anything like it.”

There’s no point in being disappointed that Dazai was one step ahead of him; Chuuya will have to get him next time, that’s all.  “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you thought to go there, too.  The morgue is probably like wonderland for you.”

“I wait patiently for a white rabbit everyday,” Dazai sighs.  “What else?”

Chuuya’s foot taps impatiently.  “You got me, alright?” he grits after a few seconds of stalling.  “That’s all I got.”

Dazai gasps.  “That means I win, right?”  One bandaged hand sneaks out from under his coat, long fingers wrapping around Chuuya’s drink.  “Then I’ll take this as my prize!”

For Dazai, it’s a pretty tame request.  “Seriously?” Chuuya asks, brow arching.  “You hated your drink that much?”

“Seriously,” Dazai confirms with an unreadable smile.  “You’re wrong, though.  There’s something you forgot to say.”

Is this some sort of bizarre humiliation tactic?  Chuuya scowls, somehow unable to take his eyes off of Dazai’s hand as he raises his pilfered drink.  “I think I would know.  That’s it.  I didn’t find anything else.”

“No,” Dazai corrects, lips hovering over the rim.  Chuuya could be wrong, but it almost looks like the same place he’d held it to his own mouth.  “There’s something else, Chuuya.  Something obvious that you know we both already know.  Something you skipped over in your initial summation.”

Something obvious, that he didn’t feel the need to spell out.  Chuuya frowns, replaying his previous words.  The bodies, the victimology, the —

“Location,” he says slowly.  “All the bodies have been found in territory under my jurisdiction.”

When Dazai smiles and takes a slow sip of his drink, his one visible eye curls into a mischievous, glittering crescent.  “Chuuya,” he says, and Chuuya can hear a rushing in his ears, like waves crashing on the shore, “do you know where we are right now?”

The quiet, insulated atmosphere shatters all at once, like a bullet through a window.  Dazai and Chuuya leap backwards in the same instant that a sharp downward kick cracks their table in two.

Before his chair has time to hit the ground, Chuuya uses it as a launchpad, throwing himself at their attacker.  He hits them like a wrecking ball, leg cracking up to catch their chin with the toe of his shoe.

No wonder Dazai dragged him here.  This shop, and the employee with it, must be connected to the incidents they’re investigating in some way.

It’s over as soon as it started.  Chuuya presses down between the shoulder blades of their attacker — the barista, writhing like a worm under his knee — and turns to bark at Dazai.  “Some warning would have been nice.”

Leaned back on the wall with his hands in his pockets, Dazai smiles innocently at him.  “Looks like you have it handled, no?”

“Let go of me,” the barista hisses, thrashing and furious.  “Let me go—”

Chuuya grinds his knee in to the center of his back, ignoring the resulting cry of pain as he continues to stare at Dazai.  “No thanks to you.  You’re handling the interrogation.  I can’t be bothered with this.”

“I’m sure the Boss will be thrilled to hear that one of his top agents ‘can’t be bothered’ with the very important mission he personally handed out.”

“You can’t bluff me out, Dazai,” Chuuya says shortly, holding his palm out for the handcuffs he knows Dazai keeps on him.  “You’re not the type to go tattling to daddy.”

The good humor leaves Dazai’s face in an instant, replaced with something curiously blank.  When it returns, it’s in jerky, uncoordinated stages, like pulling stubborn window shutters open.  “If that’s what Chuuya wants,” he sighs, distantly indulgent, “I don’t mind asking a few questions.”

The handcuffs shoot through the air so quickly that they would have whipped a lesser man’s teeth out.  Chuuya doesn’t even look up.  “How’s he involved?” he asks, catching the cuffs and putting them on their barista-turned-attacker in one smooth motion.  “You sure sniffed him out quick.”

“My bloodhound was slacking off, so I had no choice.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re really persistent?”

Dazai smiles sunnily.  “Not once.”

The man underneath him is still struggling in spite of the cuffs, though his shouting has lessened significantly.  Chuuya sits on his back, checking his pockets.  “I’ll call one of my people to pick him up.  We can’t bring him on the bike.”

“It’s too cozy of a ride as is,” Dazai agrees, flipping his phone open, “though I wouldn’t mind a buffer between us.  You could afford to go a little lighter on the cologne, you know; I’m pretty sure all of Yokohama can smell you coming.”

Once the man beneath him is knocked out, Chuuya raises his head to argue more.  But Dazai is already across the room, looking out the front window with his phone to his face.  Chuuya’s stolen iced americano is in his other hand, in the middle of being poured into a to-go cup.

Not five minutes later, Dazai’s new charge pulls up to the curb in a nondescript black car.  He’s comically small behind the wheel and completely silent, face round and young under his short, choppy bangs; even though he’s staring two executives in the eye, he doesn’t even nod his head.  His attention locks blankly on Dazai, and Chuuya can feel Dazai’s irritation surging in a wave.

“That was quick,” Chuuya says conversationally when the silence stretches too long, extending an olive branch to the poor teen who has to put up with Dazai’s shit all the time.

“I was in the area,” the boy says, and then, a second later, “sir.”

Well, Dazai has taught him his disrespect for authority, if nothing else.  Giving up on any semblance of small talk, Chuuya goes back to the outdoor table where they left their former barista.

Slumped over the table, long black hair falling in his face, he could be mistaken for passed out drunk if you didn’t look too close.  Certainly, none of the passing bodies do despite the early hour, throngs of suits clumping and passing one another like schools of fish.  They part easily as Chuuya loops the man’s arm over his shoulder, adjusting his gravity so that he hardly drags at all as Chuuya pretends to help him to the car.

Chuuya expects Dazai to get in the car too, taking the easy ride back to headquarters with his subordinate so he can get the interrogation over with, but he doesn’t.  Instead, when Chuuya tosses their hostage into the back seat, Dazai only closes the door behind him and stares the driver down.

“Akutagawa,” Dazai says casually, “don’t fuck it up this time.”

The boy — Akutagawa — stiffens behind the wheel like he’s been shot.  “Yes,” he pushes out before peeling away from the curb.

When Dazai turns, Chuuya is already staring at him, elbows leaned forward on his motorcycle.  He raises an eyebrow, conveying the question he can’t be bothered to ask.

Dazai obviously sees and understands it, the way he sees and understands everything Chuuya throws at him — which means that when he ignores it to climb on the seat behind Chuuya, it’s intentional.  Chuuya hears the answer there loud and clear.

“I thought you hated the bike,” he says as he kicks the side stand up.

Even through his layers, Dazai’s arms are strong and wiry around his middle.  “I do,” he gripes.  “We’re way too close, and I’m drowning in your stink.  Maybe I should have brought that crash test dummy along, after all.”

With a snort, Chuuya throws them in a wide curve to turn around, accelerating like a bat out of hell.  But before he can even make it to the next light, Dazai is leaning in to shout in his ear.  “There’s somewhere else I want to go.”

His words almost caught by the wind.  Chuuya doesn’t slow down.  “Where to?”

They’re on a deadline, so when Dazai directs him — arms around his waist, chin resting on his shoulder — to a jetty looking out into the bay, Chuuya is already squaring up for either a briefing or a fight.

But Dazai only folds himself onto a rock and looks out into the water, chin in hand.  There’s nothing ahead of them but the sea and a distant lot of shipping containers, not unlike the one where Dazai lives.  Salt-battered warehouses loom like mountain cliffs.  The wind pushes Dazai’s hair and coat in great, erratic bursts, but underneath, he’s eerily still — like a stone statue, slowly eroding.

Chuuya stands behind him with his hands in his pockets, glancing left and right, though he’s already certain despite his initial assumptions that there’s no danger waiting for them here.  “I told you what I know,” he says, voice raised to be heard over the sound of the water.  “It’s your turn.”

The moment the words leave him, Chuuya is reminded of the last time he heard them: Dazai’s chest to his back, pulling him in tight, his hands sneaking under the waistband of his trousers.  The top of Chuuya’s cheeks blush pink, and he can only blame the wind so much.

Like he’s reading his mind, Dazai peeks at him over his shoulder.  “Don’t say that,” he gasps, hand covering his mouth demurely.  “You’ll get me excited.”

When Chuuya groans, Dazai’s mouth twitches up into the approximation of a smile.  When Chuuya climbs toward him to sit a couple rocks away, that smile drops back into blank boredom.

The sky is gray today: all cottony and indistinct, packed so full of clouds that they seem to fall straight out of it.  It makes the line where the bay surges up to meet it just as blurry; the dark water lapping below them fades near-unrecognizably light the further it stretches from shore.

With his dark suit and dark hair and sallow skin, Dazai blends straight in; all these things, water and fog and blurry lines, fit intrinsically into Dazai like pieces of his own body.  He belongs to the landscape in a way that Chuuya knows he never could.

Dazai is always saying that he’s barely even human, but Chuuya has never seen it that way.

Flipping his phone open, Chuuya reaches sneakily for the to-go cup of coffee placed just behind Dazai.  No calls, no emails — it seems nothing has gone terribly wrong in the hour or so since they left headquarters.  His mouth brushes the lip of the cup, so close to caffeine he can already taste it.

“Don’t drink that,” Dazai says conversationally without looking up.  “It’s poisoned.”

Of course there was a catch; there’s so way Dazai Osamu would let anyone swipe his hard-earned prize so easily.  Resisting the urge to throw the cup at Dazai’s head, Chuuya sloshes it around with a thoughtful flick of his wrist.  “The saltwater could get into the cup before the labs can get their hands on it.”

There’s no concern on Dazai’s face, though.  “It’s fine.  They won’t find anything, anyway.”

The Port Mafia’s poison labs are world-class.  If they can’t find anything, then —  “An ability?”

“Bingo,” Dazai says with feigned cheer, dead fish eyes still locked on the sea.  “Who’s a good boy, using his brain for once?”

“The dog gag was already tired the first time.  The more you use it, the more you sound like an old pervert.  Cut it out.”

“Chuuya wounds me!” Dazai sighs, hands clutched over his heart.  “I’m as pure as the driven snow, I’ll have you know.”

Chuuya snorts, placing the cup back behind Dazai.  Poisoned through an ability — that must be why Dazai had no trouble drinking both of them, then, with his nullification.  The barista was the only other person in there, so either the poisoned ingredients were pre-prepared, or he’s the Gifted in question.  And an ability like that could definitely cause the unnatural mark found on the bodies waiting in the morgue.

He has no idea how Dazai tracked him down, but it’s lucky that Chuuya didn’t actually get a taste of his coveted americano, what with his susceptibility to poison.  Maybe the Gifted was planning to wait for both of them to drink before attacking, but cut his losses when Dazai got his smarmy hands on Chuuya’s.

As cunning a concept as running a coffee shop to spread poison is, it doesn’t really answer any of the main questions.  There’s no obvious motive, for one.  If this was their only method of distribution, Chuuya would have tracked them down on day one.  And, most pressingly, they’re supposed to be looking for a group.

“So are you ever going to tell me what you know?”

“Nope,” Dazai says with a pop of his lips.

Chuuya rolls his eyes even though Dazai isn’t looking.  “Some partner you are.”

Hands folded over his knees, eyes focused somewhere far away, Dazai’s low, dismissive voice is almost almost swallowed by the wind.  “You're not a big picture person, Chuuya.”

Though he would never admit it under pain of death, working with Dazai isn’t actually that bad.  He’s frustrating and cagey and Chuuya hates basically everything about him, but there’s a reason they make such an effective team.  And especially after climbing the ranks, becoming in charge of more and more people, calling larger and more important shots — there is something almost relaxing about the way Dazai plans for everything, and all Chuuya has to do is what he already does best.

That and the sense of accomplishment leftover from the coffee shop soothe something in him.  He waits for his temper to surge, but it’s quiet today, rolling in and out just as distantly as the waves.

“As long as your big picture doesn’t get me killed,” he says eventually.

Dazai doesn’t offer the same pause before speaking. “Don’t be stupid, chibi,” he says, almost wistful as he looks out to sea.  “We both know I’ll be going first.”

There’s that delicate longing that Dazai only ever seems to get for death.  Chuuya feels like, lately, he’s been going longer and longer without hearing it.

Chuuya isn’t an idiot; he knows their lifespans are tied.  The moment Dazai dies, it’s only a matter of time until the day Mori asks him to use Corruption and Chuuya says yes, no killswitch in sight.  But he also knows there’s no point in talking about that with Dazai.  The stubborn bastard is always going to do what he’s going to do, and Chuuya’s wellbeing has nothing to do with it.

In that way, it doesn’t even really matter whether Chuuya dies in one of Dazai’s schemes.  Their lots are tied enough together as is.

“If you ever get bored of this,” Dazai says, turning to Chuuya for the first time since he sat beside him, a bright smile on his face, “we can always take the easy way out.  These rocks look pretty nice for jumping.”

Those rocks look sharp enough to maim and distant enough to break a few limbs on, but they’re a far cry from the painless suicide Dazai is always going on about.  Chuuya isn’t convinced a fall from this height could hurt either of them at all, much less kill them; intention notwithstanding, instinct always takes over in a fall.  There’s some warehouses nearby with exposed upper floors they could throw themselves into the sea from, but it looks like the tide would just carry them back here to the rocks, and neither drowning nor getting slammed into pointy things seem like Dazai’s ideal end.

“Did something finally break in that thick skull of yours?” Chuuya deadpans, because if he’s realized this, then suicide-aficionado Dazai definitely has.

The wind twists Dazai’s laugh round and round.  “You’re right,” he agrees, folding his legs up so his knee bumps his chin.  “Who’d want a double suicide with a slug like you?”

The water pulses below, dark and constant.  Even when Chuuya gets on his bike and speeds away, Dazai is still sitting there above it, unmoving.

In the days that follow, Dazai keeps his frizzy head blissfully out of sight.  Chuuya can still sense him skulking around headquarters, and he continues to receive a steady stream of spam through both text and email, full of nonsensical emojis and links that definitely lead to either porn or malware.  Naturally, Dazai is the sender, and naturally, Chuuya ignores them — just like always.

Even though Chuuya leaves his office locked, a number of useful updates end up on his desk: police reports, witness statements, loose ends.  Nothing on the interrogation of the Gifted from the coffee shop, because that would be too easy.  And without even a lick of Dazai’s analysis, Chuuya is forced to track down leads himself.

For Dazai’s sake, Chuuya hopes his partner is occupied with a very important lead right now.  Chuuya has been rushing through investigating, and pushing off more on his subordinates than he usually prefers to.  Shiga Naoya, the most administratively-minded of his squad, has been a good sport about keeping everything running smoothly, seeming to take it as special training with an admirable amount of pride, but it still feels wrong how little time Chuuya spends with his people these days.  If he finds out that Dazai’s just been drinking and daydreaming and napping in his office this whole time, Chuuya is going to kick his bony ass so hard they won’t find his body on this side of the Pacific.

Maybe his repeated curses at Dazai are bringing down the mood a little, because his subordinates send him home early from the bar tonight.  Standing beside him under the awning, Shiga pats him on the shoulder with a “Chin up, Chuuya-san!” while Takahashi goes out in the rain to help him hail a cab.  Wine still sweet in his mouth, he gives Shiga a hug and Takahashi a very long, enthusiastic handshake before getting in.

It’s a nice night.  Chuuya rolls the window down and lets the cool air sober him up, pretending not to notice the way the non-mafia cabbie keeps glancing at him anxiously in the rear-view mirror.  Back at his apartment, he takes the steps two at a time — and finds his door cracked open.

Though Chuuya just drank himself silly, he already feels too sober for this.  Taking a deep breath, he pushes the door open and steps inside.

Maybe Dazai was dissatisfied with Chuuya’s reaction to his fake-sleeping last time, because he’s very much awake now: upright, eyes already on him, one of Chuuya’s most expensive vintages to his lips.  When he smiles, Chuuya can see its dark, rich color on his teeth.  “Welcome home, honey.”

Rage trembles through Chuuya’s body in a shiver.  “Why do you always leave your goddamn shoes on.”

Dazai blinks at him slow, like a cat.  “Oh?” he asks innocently, leaning forward.  One shoe scuffs his pristine white carpet back and forth in a feigned absentminded motion.  “Does it bother you?”

“I hope you trip on your laces and die,” Chuuya replies, quickly stripping himself of his coat, gloves, and shoes.

The heavy weight of Dazai’s attention follows him like a searchlight as he stalks into the kitchen.  “If you keep whispering me such sweet nothings,” he calls after him, “I might get the wrong idea.”

The combination of sweat and booze and the general grime of the day that manages to sneak under Chuuya’s gloves leaves his palms sticky.  He turns the water on hot when he washes them but it comes out cold anyway: cold enough to sting, and cold enough that when he splashes some on his face, another modicum of sobriety fights into his system.

The moment they met, Dazai lodged himself firmly as a thorn in Chuuya’s side.  They’re coworkers, partners, something else: not friends, but sometimes more than that, and never less.  All the missions that matter hit both their ears at the same time, and whenever Chuuya reaches for him, Dazai is always there in the periphery, like their hands are lacing together through the impenetrable wall of Rimbaud’s ability all over again.

They don’t see each other every day.  They’re both busy people with their own distinct duties who don’t like each other much besides.  Chuuya goes out to eat and drink and party and chat with every coworker who asks, but Dazai never asks; he only either appears, dragging Chuuya somewhere on a one-sided whim, or is forced into his corner for work.  And despite the many hours they’ve spent killing time in between stake-outs or watching shitty movies in the infirmary while they lick their wounds, Chuuya would never consider them close.

Still — most days, Dazai swings by his office to harass him, or happens to come across him in the field ‘by chance’.  Not a day goes by without Dazai texting or calling or emailing him — sometimes from fake numbers, sometimes pranking him, sometimes asking some bizarre line of questions that will inevitably lead to trouble.  And in the last couple years or so, Chuuya comes home more and more often to this: the door unlocked, as if as a polite warning for the intruder on his couch, fully-dressed and almost always already asleep.

He thought they reached an understanding on this.  If Chuuya doesn’t throw him out, Dazai will leave by the time Chuuya wakes up, and they never need to talk about it again.  It’s weird, but every part of their life is weird.  Chuuya has never bothered to question it.

Dazai hasn’t invited himself over to Chuuya’s place once since they slept together.  He doesn’t come across him in the field.  He hasn’t called.

Something has changed, but Dazai has made it clear he has no interest in telling Chuuya what it is.  Chuuya doesn’t care, but even if he did, there’s never any changing Dazai’s mind once he’s made it.  There’s nothing for him to do, even if he wanted to.

Shaking his hands dry, Chuuya turns on a heel and is unsurprised to find Dazai standing directly behind him, so close that Chuuya’s forehead brushes his chin.  “What do you want?” he asks shortly, leaning back against the counter.

Dazai is weirdly cleaned up, for Dazai: his hair is damp and clothes unusually neat, like he’d showered and put on a freshly-laundered suit just to make a ruckus in Chuuya’s apartment.  There’s nothing odd about the mischievous smile on his face, but there’s something odd about the way it sits there, like blinds pulled unevenly over a window.  “I couldn’t have just wanted to see you?”

“Like hell,” Chuuya snorts, righting himself so he can slip away and leave this weird mood behind.

Dazai laughs.  “You’re right,” he says, the words molten and dangerous in his mouth.  Slowly, he pitches forward until his hand rests on the counter behind Chuuya, halfway boxing him in.

He leans so close Chuuya has half the mind to knee him, so close his words tickle Chuuya’s ear.  “Let me fuck you.”

Only a spider’s thread of self-restraint keeps Chuuya from kicking him into the opposing wall.  His temperature skyrockets, heart pounding in what must be acute rage.  His mouth opens, but no words come out; even his thoughts skid to a stop, mind scrambled, like papers thrown in the air, spinning round and round, unable to be read.  He isn’t even fully aware of how tense he is until he feels that same stillness reflected through Dazai, hot breath still tucked into his neck.

Chuuya isn’t really a wonderer.  He isn’t half the idiot Dazai makes him out to be, but he’s never seen much of a point to any of it: scheming, reading into a person’s psyche, trying to figure out what makes them act this way or that.  Everything that happens just happens, and other people’s thoughts are none of his business.  The world is made up of actions, not intentions.

Maybe that’s why the ambiguous honor of being the only person able to read Dazai doesn’t mean much to Chuuya.  Obviously, something has been bothering Dazai lately.  Obviously, he’s been acting strange — Chuuya knew it the moment he saw his face tonight, the moment he watched his back against the sea, the moment he saw how blatantly combative Dazai was with Mori, with none of the usual playful back-and-forth.  He knew it when he poured those glasses of wine, that first strange night.

But the world is made of actions, and Dazai is painfully stubborn, anyway.  Scowling, Chuuya jabs a foot toward Dazai’s ankle just to watch him dodge, the feared demon prodigy of the Port Mafia doing a little jig in Chuuya’s kitchen as he kicks toward him again and again.

“Why would you be the one fucking me?” Chuuya demands, irate and exasperated.

Though Dazai had taken his kicks without any reaction at all, this finally makes him surface from Chuuya’s neck.  There’s a sparkle to his eye: mischief and surprise, like a humored child.  “Are you saying that you want to fuck me?”

Chuuya’s temperature climbs once more, rapidly.  “No!”

There’s no offense on Dazai’s face when he shrugs.  “Then that settles it.”

He’s insufferable.  “Like hell it does,” Chuuya groans.  “You love deciding things by yourself, huh?”

Dazai hums.  “Want to bet for it?”

“More bets?”

“Whoever wins picks positions.”

At this point, Chuuya is considering ditching Dazai and jumping in the shower just to get his body temperature stable again — though the bastard would probably just follow him in, with the mood he’s in now.  “No,” he says, turning around to wash his suddenly-sweaty hands again.  “Whenever it’s a game you suggest, I always lose.”

There’s a laugh in Dazai’s voice when he leans forward, once again entirely too close to Chuuya’s ear.  “You lose the games you suggest too, chibi.”

Arousal curls in Chuuya’s gut, warm as a light and sharp as a shiver.  “Go fuck yourself.”

“Why would I,” Dazai lilts, fingers curling on Chuuya’s hip, chomping at the bit to pull him close, “when Chuuya’s right here?”

He’s so annoying — insufferably so, so much so that no one aside from Chuuya, bound by their partnership as he is, really bothers to deal with him.  But Chuuya had known that when he’d slept with him the first time, and it hadn’t stopped him then; there’s no reason, then, that it should stop him now.  They’re obviously attracted to each other, if only on a purely physical level, and Chuuya has been so busy and frustrated over the investigation lately — and here Dazai is, tripping over himself for him, waiting up in Chuuya’s apartment with his stupid handsome face and stupid fresh suit like he already knew Chuuya would say yes.

They’re always on the same wavelength.  Dazai always takes things too far — but then, so does Chuuya.

“Fine,” Chuuya grits, and then, the moment he feels Dazai light up behind him, “let’s fight for it.”

The fingers kneading his hip still.  “Hm?”

“One round, no weapons,” Chuuya says, turning the water off.  The echo of Dazai’s words already taste like victory in his mouth.  “Whoever wins picks positions.”

With that, he kicks backwards, aiming for Dazai’s knee.  Dazai jumps narrowly away, but before his feet are even fully on the floor again, Chuuya whirls around to kick him again, pushing him back into the opposite wall.  Chuuya’s crystal wine glasses wobble in their rack, precariously close to the impact point of Dazai’s fat head.

“No fair,” Dazai whines, breathy and drawn out as he flips upright.  “The strong shouldn’t resort to sneak attacks on their poor, weak, innocent partners!”

“Innocent my ass,” Chuuya says, sweeping a leg low for Dazai to hop over.  “You knew it was coming eventually.  It’s not my fault your reaction time is trash.”

A shift in Dazai’s weight is the only warning before he’s closing the distance between them.  Chuuya curves sideways, anticipating a punch, but Dazai fakes him out to catch him with his knee instead.  The dull throb of a hit is less a distraction than the short distance Chuuya loses as the force pushes him backwards.

“Is Chuuya worried about my reflexes?” Dazai asks, breathy and grinning.  “I promise I can keep up just fine.”

The back of Chuuya’s neck burns, irritation coiling hot in his stomach.  He launches himself across the room without a second thought.

Chapter Text

Chuuya’s rush of kicks are too fast to avoid, but not hard enough to seriously injure; Dazai puts his arms up to block, not wincing as he stares him down.  “You really want to fuck me that bad?” Dazai asks jovially.

He’s only teasing, but Chuuya can’t help but rise to it anyway.  Growling out some approximation of his partner’s name, Chuuya stops kicking long enough to get a fistful of Dazai’s collar, shoving him down to the floor.

His knife is at Dazai’s neck before he can blink.  “It’s my win,” he says, giddy with victory as he kneels over Dazai’s waist.  “You should know better than to challenge me, you useless waste of combat training.”

Being out of breath doesn’t keep the knowing sigh from Dazai’s mouth.  “I thought this might happen,” he says even as he raises his hands in obvious surrender.

Chuuya frowns, sheathing his knife.  “Are you finally admitting you wanted to lose?”

The fight, while brief and relatively tame, seems to have tired Dazai out: his pulse is fast, and his face is pink.  Still, there’s an unmistakable smugness to his face and gloating in his voice that sets Chuuya’s teeth on edge.

“Is that hat of yours really eating all your braincells?  We both know that I don’t make bets I won’t win.”

“Does any part of this look like winning to you?”

Suddenly, Dazai grabs him by the hips, yanking him down until his weight sits on the hard buckle of Dazai’s belt.  “Some part of it, maybe,” he admits with a devilish smile, hold so tight Chuuya can feel his nails through his trousers, “though I wasn’t talking about the fight.”

A Dazai-related-trouble premonition tingles at the back of Chuuya’s skull.  Dazai doesn’t have his pouty whiney ‘I lost’ face on, but he doesn’t have the shit-eating ‘all according to plan’ expression on, either.  He is neither defeated nor especially smug, which means even if this wasn’t his ideal, first-choice scenario —

“Just because you think you can talk your way into my pants doesn’t mean you can talk your way into being on top,” Chuuya warns, scowling at Dazai as he resettles his weight.  Dazai’s belt buckle is hard enough to be uncomfortable so close to his crotch, so he sits low enough for it to not be an issue — only to run into something else, well on its way to being just as hard.

Underneath him, Dazai freezes, snarky retort caught halfway out his mouth, uncharacteristic flush becoming more pronounced.  Chuuya laughs, reaching behind himself to paw roughly at Dazai’s erection.

“Are you serious?” he mocks, tilting his head to the side and watching the way Dazai’s red iris tracks the movement.  “Are you that pent up, or are you as much of a crazy bastard who gets off on being kicked around as I thought?”

“So you think about what gets me off?” Dazai asks, wrinkling his nose.  “Gross.  It’s like you’re obsessed with me or something.”

A vein throbs on Chuuya’s temple.  “Like you’re one to talk.”

The smile creeps back onto Dazai’s face, vengeful and mean.  “If you’re that curious, I’ll have mercy and tell you why you’re going to let me fuck you,” he says airily.  “We’ll be waiting here all night otherwise while the hamster working your brain runs himself in circles trying to figure it out, and it isn’t very comfortable on your kitchen floor.”  A pause.  “I hate your tiles, by the way.  Your taste is as tacky as ever.”

“Coming from someone who, again, lives in a shipping container.”

“I’m trying out the minimalism lifestyle.  I hear it’s very trendy these days.”

Chuuya snorts, but grinds his palm down on Dazai’s crotch anyway.  His abdominal muscles jump when Dazai’s hips automatically roll up to meet him.

In spite of the flush spilling down to the undone top buttons of his shirt, Dazai maintains his cocky, unaffected expression.  Leaned back, neck lax and shoulders dropped, he’s less submissive and more condescending, with a distinct predatory glint to his eye.

One hand slides slowly up Chuuya’s thigh from the floor, palm and fingers splayed over his lower stomach.  “The first reason,” Dazai says, low and smooth, thumb hooking under Chuuya’s belt, “is that you want me inside you just as badly as I do.”

As he speaks, Chuuya pictures it — feels it almost, the projected pressure like an ache, satisfying and full.  If he’s being honest, when he’s pictured Dazai in any sexual capacity at all it’s always been like this anyway; despite his proud attestations otherwise, he’s never been in the dark about what he wants here.

Still, Chuuya scoffs and rolls his eyes, like it isn’t the least bit true.  “And the second reason?”

At this, Dazai smiles: his bright, needle-thin, trump card smile.

“That was my first time, the other night,” he says breezily.  “You need to take responsibility.”

For a long second, Chuuya just stares at him, uncomprehending.  The words are building in his throat before his mouth even opens; by the time it does, they all but burst out.  “Are you telling me that after that whole stink you threw about how I was young and inexperienced—”

“That’s not what I said.  Should we take you to the vet?  You clearly need your ears checked—”

“—the whole time you yourself had never even gotten your dick wet—”

“Let’s hope they take walk-ins because I don’t think this can wait for an appointment—”

“—and now,” Chuuya says, finally taking a breath, “you want me to take responsibility for — what?  A shitty blowjob?”

“You’ve soiled my feminine virtue,” Dazai replies, prompt and prim but for the grin stretching slow across his face.  “My marriage prospects are ruined.  No husband will ever take me.”

Though Chuuya manages to wrestle down his laugh, the corner of his mouth still twitches in its telltale way.  Dazai’s eye flicks to it, so Chuuya knows he sees it, and Dazai knows that Chuuya knows.  His resulting huff may as well be a victory bell for Dazai: equal parts exasperated and amused, and no longer interested in fighting just for the sake of it.

“You’d better do a good fucking job,” Chuuya says, and when Dazai grins, it doesn’t even feel like losing.

Dazai’s hand is a familiar force on the back of Chuuya’s neck, guiding him steadily down.  Every muscle in Chuuya’s abdomen tenses as he fights to keep balance, letting Dazai take the lead, like always.

They didn’t kiss that first night, or any time before — but when Dazai’s lips part and his hold tightens on the back of Chuuya’s neck, Chuuya is almost certain he’s going to kiss him.  Then, at the last second, he wrenches Chuuya to the side instead.  An outraged exclamation is halfway out of Chuuya’s mouth when Dazai’s teeth clamp down on what’s exposed of his shoulder.

It hurts — not excessively so, but in an unfamiliar way that lights Chuuya up inside.  Dazai isn’t tearing chunks from him but it doesn’t feel right to call it a love bite, either; right off the bat, the sharp edges of his canines break skin, and the suck that comes after makes the whole area ache.  There’s something ironic to it: Chuuya, who is used to coming home completely free of injuries after taking on even a hundred men alone, is having his shoulder split open by his crazy bastard of a partner.

“Watch it,” he starts to say, but before the words are completely out of his mouth, Dazai dislodges his teeth and yanks Chuuya further down until his forehead brushes the cold tile floor.  He bites him again, on the side of his neck this time: too far from the artery to be dangerous, but too violent to be tender.  Chuuya hisses, ignoring the increasingly uncomfortable strain of his erection against the front of his pants.

It isn’t until the bites turn less vicious — less teeth and more lip, Dazai’s tongue lathing over the marks he leaves, lapping up blood like a vampire — that Chuuya pulls away.  “I don’t know what’s normal on whatever alien planet you crashed in from, but here on earth, getting bathed in blood and spit isn’t a normal part of fucking.”

Dazai sucks a hickey into his neck as if to spite him.  “Chuuya does seem to be the expert on these things,” he says brightly, like an asshole.  “My poor virginal self just can’t keep up.”

Chuuya rolls his eyes.  It’s not like he’s done this before, either.  “I thought I defiled you.  Are you saying you got away with your virginity intact after all?”

“Mm, fifty percent.  That’s why you have to finish the job.”

Another pass of tongue and teeth.  Chuuya wrenches free before Dazai can do something stupid like suck his name into Chuuya’s skin.

“Let’s finish it, then,” he says impatiently, flipping up to his feet before Dazai can protest and drag him back down.  “Lube’s in the bedroom.  Try to fuck me dry and you can kiss your sad little dick goodbye.”

There’s something dark and stormy clouding Dazai’s one visible eye, but he gets up amiably enough to follow Chuuya down the hall.  “You didn’t think it was little when it was in your throat the other—”

When Chuuya kicks, Dazai dodges.  When Chuuya swipes the half-full bottle of lube from his nightstand, Dazai is waiting at his back to push him down.

No sooner has his back hit the mattress than Dazai is climbing on top to paw at his vest.

“Take your own clothes off, asshole,” Chuuya gripes, though he doesn’t stop unbuttoning his own shirt, and when Dazai yanks insistently enough, he lets his partner pull both articles off his body at once.  It leaves his torso bare, nipples pebbling the second they hit the cool night air.  Dazai must have managed to get his belt undone at some point, too; when Chuuya reaches down, he finds his fly unobstructed.

Dazai doesn’t retract entirely, though he does sit up on his knees.  Long and looming, Dazai watches Chuuya work his zipper open with a focus that directly contrasts his casually unaffected tone of voice.  “You should have told me how badly you longed to see me naked, all my most delicate and tender parts exposed.”

“Yeah, like a crab with its shell peeled off.”

“So, delicious and tantalizing?  The best meal you’ll ever have?”

Chuuya reaches forward to tug Dazai’s tie loose.  “I’ve already seen you naked,” he snorts, dropping the black strip on the bed and quickly going to work on the shirt.  “There’s nothing delicate about you.”

Even as more and more of Dazai’s bandages come in full, unobstructed view, he doesn’t assist, pull away, or do much of anything but look at Chuuya.  There’s that full-moon blankness in his one visible eye, and Chuuya could take the time to decipher it — but any idiot could tell the emotion it’s reflecting isn’t negative, so instead he just finishes with Dazai’s shirt and pulls himself further up the bed.

“Hand me the lube,” he says before Dazai can crawl after him, wiggling his pants and underwear off and throwing them at his partner.

Said partner catches them before they smack him in the face, but only barely.  “You don’t want a little help?” he asks slowly even as he returns the favor, aiming the bottle directly at Chuuya’s face.  “Are you sure your short fingers and little hands can do the job?”

Chuuya, of course, catches it effortlessly.  “They’ve never struggled with it before,” he replies, dry and short.  In truth, he’s only tried fingering himself a few times before, with none of the ear-splitting orgasms promised to him by articles online, but that’s neither here nor there.  “Plus, I’m not letting your nasty paws anywhere near my ass.  When’s the last time you clipped your nails, huh?”

Dazai’s mouth twists in a petulant pout as he blatantly hides his hands behind his back.  “Who says I want my hands anywhere near your ass?”

“Fine, then,” Chuuya says, rolling his eyes.  Then he settles back comfortably into the pillows, cracks the lube open, and spreads his legs.

He isn’t easily embarrassed, but the situation could be embarrassing — if not for the obvious, pained desire spilled all over Dazai, his thoughts overflowing until they’re both swimming in them.  Dazai swallows; his jaw clenches; a vein in his neck jumps.  Chuuya pours lube onto his fingers and Dazai’s hands curl into fists; he reaches down between his legs and Dazai’s thigh muscles jump under his trousers.

“Well?” Chuuya asks with a mean laugh, petting over his hole.  “Are you just going to sit there drooling or are you going to finish undressing, useless bastard?”

“I can be very useful,” Dazai says smoothly, like he isn’t twisting Chuuya’s sheets into knotted spirals.  “For example, have you heard that even without hands, a sufficiently-talented tongue can be enough to—”

Chuuya slides one finger into himself.  Dazai’s words stop in their tracks.

The silence is more satisfying than the finger itself.  With just one, it isn’t even really a proper stretch: just a slight discomfort, without any real pain or pleasure to hold onto.  The angle is awkward, too; lying on his back, his arms don’t reach well, and he can’t go as deep as he’d like.  The only gratifying thing is the look on Dazai’s face: at once eagle-eyed and far away, watching Chuuya’s finger push into himself with a singular focus.

It makes Chuuya want to antagonize him.  He adds another finger, spreading his legs further apart and smirking at Dazai with a lazy loll of his head.

“Take your clothes off, stupid,” he breathes.  “Those bandages take forever, and as you can see, I’m a little busy.”

“Chuuya is multitalented,” Dazai says with a visible swallow.  “Surely he can handle a couple simple tasks at once.”

“I’ve never met such a lazy bastard in my life.  I’m amazed you manage to breathe by yourself.”

“It’s refreshing to hear you finally admit how badly you want to see me naked.  If I stall longer, will you start begging?”

Thrusting in and out is easy, but the feeling of being stretched out intensifies when he scissors his fingers.  He pulls them out partway to add more lube, jarringly cold on his hot skin.

If Dazai’s eye got any wider, Chuuya thinks it might just pop out of his head.  He laughs meanly.  “Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be the one begging.”

Dazai keeps his mouth remarkably shut after that, removing his clothes and then bandages with a diligent obedience that makes Chuuya suspicious.  Still, the reprieve from the peanut gallery is appreciated; it becomes immediately easier to focus on the task at hand.  Scooting partway down the bed, Chuuya lolls his head back and readjusts his arm.  This would probably be a lot easier on his front, but even if Chuuya doesn’t particularly want to keep looking at the bastard’s face, turning his back on Dazai in this situation is just asking for trouble.

In the meantime, the view is — okay.  Usually, the way Dazai gets undressed is all business, so Chuuya is surprised by the slow slide of his white button-up down his boney shoulder.  It’s a little silly; he’s too rumpled and boyish to fully pull off this coquettish blushing-beauty routine, eyes peeking out slyly from lowered lashes, bottom lip pulled in between his teeth.  Chuuya’s face burns anyway.

The bare skin under Dazai’s bandages and the scars it carries are not strangers to Chuuya, and his eyes slide right over to trace the shapes underneath.  Dazai has shot up like a beanstalk in their years of knowing each other, leaving him all gangly and stretched out; his muscle is lithe and light, hips narrow and collarbones more prominent than his pecs.  If Chuuya didn’t know any better, he’d never guess at the violence Dazai’s everyday life is steeped in.

There’s nothing pretty about Dazai, but there is something kind of elegant in him: all punched-out hollows and long jagged lines, a shock of dark hair swinging into his eyes.  Studying him, Chuuya slides a third finger inside himself, lips parted and eyes half-lidded as he takes him in.

Dazai’s pants and underwear come off last, even after the bandages over the right side of his face.  He seems almost shy, gaze averted and flush high.  Chuuya could buy the act from anyone else; as is, he only waits for Dazai to give up this demure ploy and launch into the whining demands Chuuya’s come to expect from him.

But he doesn’t.  Instead, Dazai kneels on the bed in front of Chuuya, eyes dark and hands twisting into the sheets, completely still but for an ominous jerk that shivers through him now and then.  Instead of the resplendent prince, lounging waiting to be served, Dazai looks like a leashed dog, enthusiastic and one wrong command away from biting.

Arousal doesn’t jolt through Chuuya so much as it burns, building and compounding, sinking deep into his bone marrow.  He forces his fingers apart inside him and revels in the stretch, eyeing Dazai’s cock appraisingly.  It’ll be a tight fit — but Chuuya’s no coward, and he’s tired of waiting.

Decisively, Chuuya pulls his fingers out.  “Tell me you brought a condom.”

He half-expects Dazai to pounce on him with the implicit go-ahead, but he doesn’t: his eyes dart wildly between Chuuya’s face, fingers, hole, and his lack of attention drags his voice breathy.  “Chuuya doesn’t have one at the ready?”

If this were earlier, Chuuya would have tossed Dazai out naked to trek to the nearest convenience store.  But he hasn’t spent the last however-long preparing himself just to wait around.

“You better pull out,” he says, hooking one ankle behind Dazai’s back and dragging him up the bed.

Finally, Dazai’s characteristic whine wheedles loose from his throat.  “I’ll bruise, you brute,” he complains even as he settles obediently between Chuuya’s spread legs.  “What’s the point of pulling out?  It’s not like I can knock you up.”

“I don’t want your come dripping out of me, you ass.  Do you ever think of anyone but yourself?”

“I promise,” Dazai says, hand cupping Chuuya’s ass, thumb spreading his hole open, “from now on, I’ll be fully dedicated to the craft.”

Even when Chuuya squirts cold lube directly on Dazai’s cock, he doesn’t soften.  The head of it prods blunt and wet into Chuuya’s entrance, entertainingly red and so wide that Chuuya momentarily regrets not adding another finger to his earlier efforts.

Until Dazai grins, breathless around his own inflated ego.  “What’s wrong?” he asks in that horrible, wheedling, baby-talk voice he does when he’s playing around.  “Is it too big?”

“Oh, you would love that, wouldn’t you—”

“Oh no, it’s not going to fit—”

Chuuya bares his teeth and knocks his knee into Dazai’s ribs.  “I thought you were going to fuck me.  Lose your nerve, Dazai?”

The challenge is hardly a flicker in Dazai’s expression; in the dark of Chuuya’s unlit bedroom, Dazai looks less bereaved and more — fond, or something close to fond, all warm crescent eyes and a distinct ease to his body, like he’s more comfortable on Chuuya’s bed than his own.

Given the sorry state of Dazai’s bed the last time Chuuya saw it, lacking bedding with some ambiguous stain on the exposed corner, it isn’t all that surprising.  Affection successfully written off, Chuuya moves his thoughts toward the task at hand: getting Dazai inside him.

“What are you waiting for?” he asks, digging his heel into the same spot on Dazai’s back and vengefully hoping it bruises.  “I’m going soft waiting for you.”

In lieu of calling his bluff audibly, Dazai wraps a loose hand around Chuuya’s hard cock, curved up and leaking on his tummy.  “Yeah, yeah,” he laughs, throaty and low.  “Working on it.”

The next push is harder; the very tip of him just barely catches, and the pressure against Chuuya’s rim makes his nerves light up, knees aching to press together.  Instead, he holds his next inhale in this chest, spine curving as the back of his skull sinks into the pillow.  His eyes stay faithfully closed, so he doesn’t glimpse the look on Dazai’s face when he finally gets the head in.

Already, the pressure is — a lot.  And Dazai doesn’t let up, either; his breath escapes him in one long exhale, blown hot on Chuuya’s forehead, and then he’s pressing in more, more, more, every red-hot centimeter amplifying the feeling.  By the time Dazai’s halfway in, Chuuya thinks he’s never felt fuller in his life; by the time he’s bottoming out, he’s sure of it, pleasure zinging citrusy and metallic until he can feel it ringing in his clenched teeth.  It should ache, but it doesn’t; at least, it doesn’t in any way Chuuya’s experienced before.  Twisting his fingers in the pillowcase beside his mussed hair, Chuuya forces himself to relax, focusing on Dazai’s punched-out gasps and the way his fingers dig into Chuuya’s thighs, nails leaving grounding crescent-shaped imprints in their wake.

Dazai’s eyes are still closed when Chuuya finally deigns to open his.  Brows drawn down, skin flushed and lips parted, he looks every bit a virgin trying not to blow it too early.  Chuuya smirks; alleged genius or not, he’d be shocked if Dazai lasts five minutes at this rate.

With that in mind, the considerate thing to do would be to stay put and let him catch his breath.  Instead, Chuuya locks his ankles behind Dazai’s back so he can’t escape and starts slowly, purposefully rolling his hips.

A hiss escapes Dazai’s teeth; it sounds suspiciously like Chuuya’s name.  Chuuya laughs, pulling Dazai even closer until his hips are fully flush with Chuuya’s ass when he’s pitched downward.

There isn’t enough movement to get much friction like this, but the insistent pressing is still doing something for him; the stretch and pressure are constantly consuming, and when he positions it just right, Dazai’s cock just barely brushes Chuuya’s prostate.  Even the indirect touch is more than Chuuya has managed on his own, and he dedicates himself to chasing that spot, hunting down the biggest and brightest reaction before Dazai inevitably prematurely ejaculates.

“Chuuya loves to bully me,” Dazai observes, almost believably bored but for the breathless, desperate edge to his voice.  “Do you think I won’t retaliate?”

A single hard thrust shocks Chuuya’s response straight out of his brain, a low moan taking its place on his tongue.  Fuck, the friction really is distracting, to put it mildly; additionally, the weight of Dazai’s cock presses it further down on the way in, making the drag along his sweet spot that much more direct and devastating.

One of Dazai’s arms shoots up the bed, supporting his weight on a hand on the mattress beside Chuuya’s neck.  Chuuya notes with no small amount of satisfaction that it’s shaking.

“Right,” he bites, and pretends he doesn’t sound just as wrecked as Dazai does, “like you aren’t holding back coming by the skin of your teeth?”

Dazai laughs tightly, hand fisting in the sheets.  “Are you underestimating me, chibikko?”

His tone of voice is unfortunately a familiar one to Chuuya; it’s the one that means they’ve made a gamble, and Chuuya overlooked a vital piece of information.  Quickly, Chuuya scrapes his gaze up Dazai’s shaking body — all the way up to his intense, unnervingly ecstatic face.

He isn’t shaking from exertion, from the look of it.  He’s just — so excited that it’s leaking out of him, like a dog wagging its tail even after being told to sit.

Chuuya’s stomach flips and his palms sweat with how disgusting he finds that.  “Well?” he creaks, holding his ground.  “Are you just going to stare at me like a serial killer, or are you going to get on with it already?”

“Chuuya,” Dazai tuts, grinning and breathless, “technically, we’re both serial—”

“Do you live to be obstinate?” Chuuya grits, rolling up and then tossing himself down onto Dazai’s dick with enough force to make them both gasp.

That, thankfully, is enough to spur Dazai into action.  His trembling, grasping hand slides from Chuuya’s hip to lock at his waist, tilting him up into just the right position to receive a downright punishing thrust.

Now that the dam is broken, Dazai doesn’t stop moving.  His hips rocket enthusiastically, with enough force that the sound of skin on skin reverberates through the room.  His pace is uneven but undoubtably good; Chuuya twists his head to the side, the pillow just catching on his open mouth, aching to bite down on something.  The fullness of having something inside him is that much more with movement, lighting him up in ways he’s never felt before, hot and bright and achingly sweet.  It’s better than he ever thought it would be.

Above him, Dazai is a mess: panting and starry-eyed, flush spread all the way down to his chest.  One hand has locked solidly on Chuuya’s wrist, thumb pressed almost painfully hard over his pulse point; the other can’t seem to decide where to go, wandering over every bit of skin it can reach.  Chuuya hisses a breath through his teeth when Dazai tweaks a nipple, curious and just south of painful; he catches an inhale in his throat when Dazai’s hand grips his cock instead, pumping lightly a few times before retreating to feel up his thigh again.

It should be gross, seeing Dazai shaking and shivering above him like a feral raccoon.  It should be infuriating, too, that even in spite of that, he’s a natural at this, too.  Chuuya can’t deny that this is much better than anything he’s ever experienced before; years-old blowjobs and his own exploration can’t even begin to compete.  Dazai’s sleazy, silky-smooth prodigy veneer is missing here but the despicable ease with which he takes to everything remains, leaving this unfamiliar version of Dazai in its place, raw and live-wired and whimpering even as he fucks Chuuya into the mattress.

He’s big: long enough that every inward motion forces any intelligent thought out of Chuuya’s brain, and thick enough that every moment he’s inside makes Chuuya feel like he’s actively splitting open.  It doesn’t hurt but it aches, and Chuuya arches his back as if to lean into it, chasing that raw, mind-numbing fullness that’s at least as exhilarating and satisfying as any good fight.

Very quickly, Chuuya can feel his orgasm starting to build in a tight swirl behind his navel.  Instinctively, he reaches for Dazai, as if to wordlessly let him know; somehow, his hand ends up on Dazai’s sternum, sliding up his chest, neck, jaw, until the base of his palm butts up against Dazai’s lips.

Dazai bites him, because of course he does.  Head tilted, tongue lathing over the stinging flesh, his heated eyes don’t wander from Chuuya’s face even once.

He looks like he’s losing his mind.  It’s a good look on him.

Reluctant affection shoots through Chuuya like a bullet to the head.  Before it can spread to his expression, he twists his mouth into a scowl, locks his legs around Dazai’s hips to keep him inside, and flips them over in one solid movement.  Dazai’s back hits the mattress, a questioning complaint already forming in his mouth when Chuuya shoves his thumb in between his lips to shut him up.

“You’re terrible at this,” Chuuya lies before sitting back on his knees to ride him.  Dazai’s doubtful complaint warbles into a whine in his mouth.

The pros and cons of this position quickly make themselves known.  For one, Dazai’s already overwhelming length manages to press even farther inside him than before, shocking Chuuya’s spine ramrod-straight as he fights to keep his reactions securely behind his teeth.  It’s so good it almost hurts, spiny and sour-sweet; he keeps his straight face as long as it takes to slide halfway up before dropping back down.  After that, he can feel his eyes open wide, mouth dropping open — can feel it, but can’t bring himself to care.  Abs aching and thighs tense, Chuuya puts one hand on Dazai’s chest, both to steady himself and keep the overeager idiot from moving, as he works on fucking himself on Dazai’s cock.  His other lingers at Dazai’s jaw, thumb still shoved between his tongue and hard palette.

For his part, Dazai doesn’t seem all too put out by any of the proceedings.  He happily sucks at Chuuya’s thumb, teeth gnawing aimlessly below the knuckle in between swathes of his tongue.  When Chuuya tightens experimentally around him, Dazai moans, hands reaching up to grab appreciative handfuls of Chuuya’s ass.  He doesn’t even use the leverage to move Chuuya, despite the persistence of his enthusiastic, feral-raccoon shaking and shivering.  All in all, he seems fully content to let Chuuya do all the work, the lazy bastard.

Chuuya can’t claim to have any less eagerness or any more finesse than Dazai during his turn on top, but he’s determined to give his partner a ride he won’t forget.  Chuuya’s pleasure coils through him, distracting and suffocating, sweat brushing his skin and muscles clenched tight; he’s a trembling bastion of self-control, pulling himself up and dropping himself down, only narrowly holding back from fisting his cock and coming all over Dazai’s dumb blissed out face.

Sucking in a breath and holding on tight, Chuuya drags himself up and down Dazai’s length — again, again, again, gaining momentum each time, slamming his hips progressively harder until the sound of their skin meeting once again fills the dark room.  When Chuuya leans forward, his balls hit Dazai’s smooth navel on every downward motion, overwhelming enough to hurt, but when he tilts back, it doesn’t brush his sweet spot quite right; screwing his eyes shut, Chuuya chases the tail of every bit of sensation he can wring from his partner’s body, riding him right into the edge of overstimulation.

That feeling only sinks its teeth in further when Dazai starts bucking up into him in earnest, lazy complacency apparently run out.  “Chuuya,” he whines in a desperate, reedy way that Chuuya is already learning to recognize, even around the finger in his mouth, “Chuuya, I’m… Chuuya—”

“Not,” Chuuya starts, fumbling into a gasp when Dazai manages to nail his prostate head-on, “Not inside, you fucking—”

The precision with which Dazai hits that same spot again might make Chuuya wonder if he isn’t as fucked stupid as he’s making himself out to be, if his brain were able to retain the thought under these circumstances.  As is, all he’s able to do is yank Dazai’s chin down with his thumb, still hooked in his mouth like a dumb fish.  Dazai tips easily and his drool does too, but his desperate, irregular pace doesn’t slow or lighten in the slightest.

A whine creaks from high in Dazai’s face, and — are those tears spilling out of his eyes?  A jolt of heat bounces through Chuuya’s body, clouding his head, spreading pleasant and numb at the base of his skull — disgust, no doubt, or maybe satisfaction over seeing his lofty rival in such a compromised state.  He wishes he could take a photo, to stare at and gloat over later.

“Chuuya,” Dazai cries, tears spilling over, eyes big and dark and pathetic, “please.”

It must be a very exhilarating victory indeed, because suddenly, Chuuya feels himself there: orgasm hanging off the tip of his tongue, only one touch to his cock away from hurting over the edge.

“Fine,” he hisses — not because he wants Dazai’s disgusting come inside him, but because he won’t quite make it to the finish line if Dazai pulls out right now.

Dazai keens, shaking and shivering, hips rocketing up with enough force he nearly bucks Chuuya off.  Any control Chuuya had over their rhythm disappears; holding himself aloft, he leaves enough space between their bodies for Dazai to thrust as he mindlessly chases his peak.  And Chuuya is right there with him, panting and undone; he’s distracted enough that when Dazai wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him down, he goes easy.

From this angle, bent dramatically with his cheek to Dazai’s sweaty neck, Dazai doesn’t reach quite as deep or angle quite as well inside him — but the slick, heady friction on his cock more than makes up for it.  It isn’t exactly a hand or mouth but in his state it’s more than enough; arching dramatically up and away from Dazai’s restrictive arm, he makes it one desperate thrust, then two, before he’s there.

His come spurts between their bodies, blissfully missing Chuuya’s skin to paint Dazai’s instead.  A bit even manages to land on Dazai’s chin, but instead of pulling away with disgust, Dazai just moans like a wanton pervert around Chuuya’s thumb that he still hasn’t released and drags Chuuya back down.

Chuuya doesn’t want to lay in his own come, but in his toothless post-orgasmic state, he’s more focused on making Dazai finally finish than anything else.  He squeezes rhythmically around him, fucking his thumb in and out of Dazai’s wet mouth, fighting back the urge to escape the near-painful oversensitivity already setting in as Dazai continues scraping along his prostate.

Needy, Chuuya thinks, almost affectionate, and doesn’t pull back even when Dazai bites down hard enough to break someone else’s finger bone.

All at once, his erratic thrusts break and slow; he presses in as hard and deep as he can, holding Chuuya so high on his hips that he’s hardly supporting any of his own weight.  Dazai comes inside him with a broken-off moan, Chuuya’s name just as chewed up and mangled in his mouth as his thumb.

Then, all at once, they both fall lax, dropping down to the bed.  Chuuya knocks his forehead into the sharp collarbone below, and Dazai’s softening cock shifts inside him, increasingly uncomfortable now that he’s less distracted.  The night air cools the sweat on both of their skin, unpleasant and sticky, and Chuuya’s come is swiftly and surely trying to glue them front to front.  It’s terrible; Chuuya should have known better than to expect a nice afterglow with his dull-eyed mackerel of a partner.

Thankfully, Dazai is useless and exhausted enough that his persistent clinging is easy to twist out of.  Dazai whines his complaints even as he flops heavily onto his side, already half-asleep.  Chuuya scowls at him before wobbling to the bathroom; at the moment, figuring out if there’s come in his hair is more important than kicking Dazai out.

Standing under the shower, Chuuya eases as much of Dazai’s come out of him as he can.  He feels sore, but not unpleasantly so, humming with a loose-limbed satisfaction like that from a mission well-done.  His hips ache, and Dazai’s teeth are imprinted bruised and bloody on his neck and shoulders.  The hot water paints his skin red.

Dazai proves to be an atrocious obstacle, refusing to move even though Chuuya’s almost certain that last hit to his solar plexus woke him, but Chuuya shows mercy; instead of carrying him out to dump on the stoop, thereby risking getting dirty once more, he just leaves that half of the bed unstripped.  The elastic from the freed fitted sheet wraps around Dazai in a filthy, sticky cocoon, while Chuuya falls asleep freshly scrubbed on fresh linens.

Not that it matters, ultimately: by the time Chuuya wakes, the sex-ruined sheet is draped over the both of them like a blanket, and Dazai’s sweaty legs are tangled in his.  Without opening his eyes, Chuuya kicks Dazai’s shin, but Dazai doesn’t even cry out.

A bad feeling sinks through him.  Reluctantly, Chuuya opens his eyes.

As he suspected, Dazai is already awake: lying on his side, hands folded demurely under his cheek, and eerily blank-eyed.  Watching him.  His expression doesn’t change even when Chuuya scowls at him, grumpy and shaking off sleep.  “What?”

Dazai’s eyes skirt slow down Chuuya’s body, down to the marks on his neck, down to where the sheet is yanked over his bare waist, down to the hidden lines of their intertwined legs.  He blinks, and his eyes are back up to meet Chuuya’s again.  Their warm hue is completely obscured in the dark; it must be night or the very early morning, judging by the lack of light peeking under the curtains.  Instead, Dazai’s irises are so black they blend with his pupils, a bottomless void that could swallow Chuuya whole if he let it.

He isn’t used to seeing both of Dazai’s eyes for so long at a time.  It leaves something in him feeling — different.  Not shaken, but wary, like walking a familiar road at an unfamiliar time of day.

“You were really huffing and hawing,” Dazai says, flat and bored like he’s delivering a report, or explaining a stupid problem to a stupid person.  “Chuuya is such a hard worker he even finds ways to annoy me in his sleep.  Hurry and get rid of your nightmares already; I got sick of them years ago.”

This is too much talking too quickly.  Chuuya’s frown deepens as he rubs the heel of his hand into his eye.  “I don’t dream, idiot.  You know that.”

Dazai flops onto his back with a heavy sigh.  “Whatever.”

He’s in one of those moods again, then.  Chuuya rolls his eyes and ignores the sulking rat nestled in his bedding to stretch his sore body.  His back is killing him and his thighs burn like he climbed a fifty-story building yesterday instead of just his gangly scarecrow of a partner.  When he stretches his arms over his head, the bite wounds from last night throb sharp and hot.

Maybe he makes some kind of groan, because when he opens his eyes, Dazai is watching him again.

They don’t touch at all above the covers; Dazai doesn’t even reach for him.  His eyes don’t follow the same restrictions, though, and Chuuya can feel their laser-focus searing into a scar on his skin: a rough, jagged line below his ribs, the most prominent reminder leftover from his fight with Verlaine that never quite healed right.

Chuuya hasn’t thought about that fight in ages; he doesn’t think about much of anything from back then.  If there’s one thing he’s learned in his short life, it’s that there’s no point in wallowing in the past, wading waist-deep in preserved corpses and rotted memories.

Dazai isn’t like that at all.  “I read the reports,” he says, abrupt and unwarranted.  “You wrote that you saw hallucinations who tried to convince you to kill yourself, back in that lab.  Who were they?”

He’s still lying flat on his back, head turned; his broad, pointy shoulder juts rudely into Chuuya’s space, a hairsbreadth from his limp fingers.  Chuuya frowns at that space, then at Dazai’s expectant face.  “Am I supposed to just go along with the idea that you only read those reports recently?” he replies flatly.  “It’s been ages since then.  And anyway, I know you stole them off my desk before even Boss got them.”

Unexpectedly, instead of saying something stupid and predictable, like telling Chuuya exactly how many minutes it’s been since the Verlaine incident or insisting he should always believe everything Dazai tells him because they’re partners, Dazai only grows sulkier.  “Why shouldn’t I get to read them first?” he asks glumly.  “You shouldn’t even answer directly to Mori-san.  You’re my dog.”

“Haven’t I told you a million times?” Chuuya asks, eye twitching.  “I am not your fucking dog—”

“I found you first.  I brought you home—”

“I already know you cheated on that stupid bet, I’ve known for years, and you know that I know—”

“If I knew you were going to end up wagging your tail for Mori-san instead I would have just let the rat poison kill you on that beach—”

“You sucked at games when we first started playing, so there’s no way you could have won against me in a fair fight—”

“Can you please stop interrupting me?” Dazai asks primly, but his mouth is twisted tight, like he bit into a lemon.  “I just wanted to know who you saw.”

It takes a moment for Chuuya to even remember what they were talking about.  The Verlaine incident, the lab, when Chuuya was being tortured — right, he hallucinated.  Dazai was one such hallucination, as he no doubt knows, hovering and whispering in his ear everything Chuuya never wanted to hear: that Dazai was right, and Chuuya should know that by now.  That it was a mistake for either of them to be allowed to exist; why shouldn’t they die just as disgracefully as they lived?  Deep down inside, you and I are the same.

Chuuya narrows his eyes at him.  “Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, dumbass.  Do you just like to hear yourself talk?”

Dazai smiles humorlessly; there’s uncomfortable gravity in his attention, pulling Chuuya down.  “What did I say?”

“Why?  Going to try it again?”

“No,” Dazai says immediately, and then, a second later, “Not right now, anyway.”

The silence he lapses into is annoyingly contemplative for someone who swears up and down that he finds the idea of a double suicide with Chuuya revolting.  Chuuya rolls his eyes even though Dazai isn’t looking at him before turning over onto his other side, determined to get back to sleep and unwilling to risk waking up to Dazai’s ugly mug again.

Dazai, characteristically, can’t let anything rest.  A scant couple minutes pass before his voice rings out again.  “Did you consider it?”

Chuuya sighs loudly, already resigned.  He could refuse to answer, but he’ll just miss out on more sleep for his trouble; there’s no way Dazai is going to let this lie.

“What?” he asks incredulously without turning around.  “Killing myself?”

No clarifying remark follows.  Chuuya frowns.  He hates wasting time thinking about things like this.

That lab sucked ass, but Chuuya could endure it.  He could endure anything, just like he always has and always will.  That wasn’t the issue.

Those hallucinations didn’t make him feel like he couldn’t take it.  They made him wonder if he even wanted to.

And Dazai was the first of those hallucinations.

“If there really was no place for either of us in the world,” Dazai asks, lofty and distant like he’s some academic posing a hypothetical, like Chuuya’s answer doesn’t matter at all, “would you do it?”

Together, he means, though he doesn’t say it: if there’s no place for them together.  If they ended it together.

There’s a reason the vision of Dazai in the lab that day was so effective.  Chuuya really does know his partner too well, if even his old ghoulish projection of him could predict this sentiment so accurately.

Chuuya’s throat is inexplicably tight, but it doesn’t leak into his voice.  “Your pillow talk sucks.”

When he peeks over his shoulder, Dazai is looking at him like he’s stupid.  Chuuya likes that.  It’s how he’s used to Dazai looking at him.

“Am I not the best you’ve ever had, then,” Dazai asks flatly.  The prior serious mood is eaten up quickly by how achingly transparent he’s being.

“The worst,” Chuuya snorts in agreement, body relaxing into the familiar cushion of Dazai’s annoyance.  “The best too, but only by default.  Don’t go getting a big head about it.”

Dazai’s silence rings loudly, and Chuuya feels that familiar satisfaction again; sex really is the easiest way to shut Dazai up.

The night is long and cool, pleasant even when a boney, sweaty body scoots up too behind him, their legs tangling together once more.  Above the covers, Dazai still doesn’t touch him — though, just before he sinks into unconsciousness, Chuuya swears he feels fingers skim over a certain flat white scar, a grim reminder of betrayal from Shirase’s poisoned knife in his back.

Chapter Text

Not even Chuuya’s quick healing can take care of Dazai’s dog bites by the time he has to leave the next morning.  Scowling, Chuuya sticks a couple adhesive bandages over his neck and shoulder, cursing Dazai when even a fully-buttoned shirt and the hair he’s been growing out can’t quite cover them.

He isn’t supposed to be seeing anyone this morning who would dare mention it, though Takahashi does give him an owl-eyed look when he stops by to rattle off a report, the poor kid.  Something about some group of kids squatting in one of the empty warehouses the Port Mafia uses for its deals; Takahashi insists he and Shiga, paired as they are, scared them off.  In between, he stares blatantly at Chuuya’s neck, as forlorn and dejected as a kicked puppy.

When he scuttles off, Chuuya finally notices a folder on his desk he didn’t put there.  There’s a sticky note on the front, adorned in permanent marker by a shitty scribble of a crustacean with an oversized hat.  For shrimps’ eyes only!, it says proudly.

It must be the interrogation report he’s been waiting on.  Chuuya’s hips ache when he shifts in his chair.

It’s impossible to know if it’s intentional — but it feels like a reward.  Cold, sterile, transactional.

A frown crosses Chuuya’s face as he opens the folder and remains steadfast while he reads its contents.  The frown follows him even as he fetches his coat and makes his way down to the lower levels of the building.

Dazai was long gone by the time Chuuya’s alarm went off this morning, probably roused by the first reaches of sunrise through the window if he slept at all.  He left as unceremoniously as he came, cheerfully wrecking Chuuya’s apartment on his way out; he used Chuuya’s toothbrush, stole a pair of his nicest socks, and left the bathroom sink on so that the floor was completely flooded by the time Chuuya woke up.

Chuuya finds him now, though, lying face-down in a cell, big black coat spread in a puddle around him.  The door is closed, but when Chuuya tries it, it opens easily without a key.

Though Dazai is doing a very convincing impression, even holding his breath out of commitment to the bit, Chuuya knows he’s very much alive.  He puts his foot up on Dazai’s back without hesitation, pressing his heel remorselessly between his shoulder blades.

“Get up,” he demands.  “What’s with this sorry excuse for a report, huh?”

Dazai’s head lifts a minuscule amount, most of his face hidden by his mussed hair and outstretched arms.  What Chuuya can see of his face is annoyingly put out, like Chuuya is personally inconveniencing him by intruding on his sad little prison cell.

“That’s not right, Chuuya,” he chides, “not right at all!  You’re supposed to cry out my name, rescue me, and swear to crush whatever foul schemer put me here!”

What is this, a test of loyalty?  Chuuya’s eyebrow twitches.  “The only schemer I see here is you.”

“Obviously, the final boss wouldn’t be right where you get your first quest.  I can’t believe you were bragging about your video game prowess just last night.  Don’t you have any shame?”

“Are you sure you of all people should be lecturing me about shame?”

Dazai sighs, so great and heaving that his expanding rib cage takes Chuuya’s foot on the ride with it.  “Here I am, languishing in the dungeons, waiting for you to take me for dead, and you can’t just say your lines?  I even practiced stopping my heartbeat for sixty seconds to catch you unawares!”

His coat spreads around him like a pool of tar.  Similarly, when Chuuya removes his foot, the fabric seems to cling to him, viscous and oozing, unwilling to let go.  “What kind of idiot do you take me for?” he tuts.  “There’s no way I wouldn’t know if you were dead.”

Face down once more, Dazai doesn’t reply.  Chuuya slaps the folder on top of his head before leaning against the opposite wall.  The only paper inside sweeps out on impact, landing right-side-up on the floor.  It’s empty, except for a couple lines in Dazai’s recognizable scrawl: Couldn’t get anything out of him!  Whoopsie!

“Ah,” Dazai says, finally pushing himself into sitting, “I see you got my report.”

He’s so languid and self-satisfied; he doesn’t look at all like someone who’s only tangible lead dried up.  Chuuya eyes him suspiciously, unable to escape the feeling that he’s stepped in one of Dazai’s messes once again.

“This,” Chuuya says, stomping his foot down on the paper this time, “is not a report.  I don’t know what the fuck this is.”

Dazai rolls his shoulders, coat half-falling off of him.  Underneath, he has the same suit as last night, only in a much worse state: wrinkled, white shirt stained brown and red with dirt and rust.  “You’re so demanding,” he complains.  “It’s not as cute when you’re not moaning my name, you know?”

Having sex isn’t a big deal, but some part of Chuuya had expected it would be an off-limits topic outside the closed sanctuary of his apartment.  After all, after the last time, Dazai had been — well.  He guesses it doesn’t matter.

Chuuya’s pulse jumps — in rage, no doubt.  “That’s rich, coming from you.  Who was the one going Chuuya, Chuuya, like a cuckoo clock in my fucking ear—”

Naturally, since the conversation isn’t going his way, Dazai interrupts him.  “You’re so overtly, obnoxiously noisy in battle,” he butts in.  “I’d always wondered if you scream like that in bed.”

Ignoring how damning that statement is, Chuuya just rolls his eyes.  “Well?  Are you disappointed?”

For the first time since he’s walked in, Dazai finally raises his gaze to look directly at him, oil-slick grin on his face.  “Disappointed is the wrong word.  I noticed it last time, too; you’re easier to be around after you’ve been fucked.”

Out of the two of them, Chuuya is more likely to break into obscenity.  If Dazai set out to get a rise out of Chuuya, he unfortunately manages it; steam practically bursts out of Chuuya’s ears, shoulders rigid and mouth twisted tight.

Dazai laughs, leaning his elbow on his knee.  All his bandages are back in place; his lone visible eye is turned up in a crescent, dark brown and twinkling.

Something uncomfortable sticks in Chuuya’s throat.  No matter how he tries to swallow it, it just won’t go down.

“You still haven’t explained this,” he says, brittle and unconvincing, twisting his shoe on Dazai’s useless report until he hears it rip.

“What is there to explain?” Dazai asks flippantly, waving a hand to and fro.  “Couldn’t get anything.  He wouldn’t talk.”

Chuuya raises a disbelieving eyebrow.  “Were you the one asking the questions?”

Dazai smiles with venom on his teeth.  “Of course.  After all, my Chuuya asked so nicely.”

Chuuya’s resulting scoff does nothing to wipe that self-satisfied grin off Dazai’s face.  If anything, he only grows smugger, raking his gaze greedily down to where Chuuya’s untimely flush disappears under the collar of his shirt.

Their unfortunate barista had the spirit, but he didn’t seem like the kind of man to give Dazai of all people any trouble.  He didn’t put up anything close to a fight; even most new recruits could have taken him down easily.  When Chuuya had stuffed him into the backseat of Dazai’s boy’s car, he had expected news within hours.

Still, unrepentant prick or not, Dazai doesn’t lie about this kind of thing.  Now that he’s looking for it, Chuuya can tell: Dazai has that look on his face.  Chuuya already has the information; Dazai is just waiting for him to figure it out.

“If it was just good old-fashioned human resolve,” Chuuya starts slowly, “you would have broken him down.  But if he had some kind of information-concealing ability, you would have negated it.  So if you didn’t get anything out of him in spite of that…”

“Mhm,” Dazai hums, finally deigning to get off the floor.  “He didn’t have any information to give.”

But that’s —  “Impossible,” Chuuya says.  “He knew enough to attack us on sight, and he was in that shop alone; our men didn’t find anything or anyone else there.  No secret routes, no bunkers, no other entrances or exits.  Unless the poison was pre-prepared, but even then—”

“Nope, the poison was his ability after all,” Dazai says, brushing both hands down the backs of his thighs briskly, as if that alone could shake him clean.  “Try again, chibi.”

“So you did get something out of him.”

“Oh c’mon, that doesn’t even count.  Even you knew he was the Ability user.”

His gut said as much, yeah; knowing is something else.  Knowing is what Dazai is for.

Dazai watches Chuuya with an ardent hunger, waiting for him to get on the same page as him, already tasting Chuuya’s knowing in his mouth.  Chuuya stares at him, then at the wall behind him: foot tapping, hands on his hips, thinking.

The answer settles like dust.  “He didn’t have any information to give, you said,” Chuuya starts, realization dawning.  “Not just that he didn’t tell you anything; he didn’t have anything.”

Dazai’s grin stretches wide across his face.  “I think we established he didn’t tell me anything.”

“Shut up, I’m onto something and you know it.”  Chuuya leans against the cell door, metal rattling into metal, and doesn’t so much as complain when Dazai joins him, their shoulders nearly touching.

“Initial intelligence said it’s a group of ability users,” Chuuya continues.  “A lot of the action so far rode on this ability, and clearly they trusted the guy—”

“How do you know?” Dazai interjects, forehead hitting the wall lightly when he tilts his head.

Because he was in the shop alone.  Because so much of their modus operandi so far depended on his ability.  Skipping steps and jumping to conclusions might be confusing to anyone else, but this isn’t anyone else.  There’s no point specifying, since it’s Dazai.

“I just know,” Chuuya says gruffly, “don’t interrupt me.  Anyway.  Clearly, they trusted him — but that information is gone now.  If you can’t torture it out of him, it must be gone.  Locked away.”

If Dazai got even half as much of a kick out of solving puzzles as he does watching Chuuya solve them, his boredom would surely shoot down to normal human levels.  “Are you going to get to the point soon?” he needles in spite of that, eye wide and body pitched forward like he’s got front-row seats to a riveting show.

“One of them manipulates information somehow,” Chuuya delivers right on cue, stubbornly irritated but stubbornly unwilling to stop.  “Memories, speech, consciousness — something.  No matter how much you tap him, there’s just nothing to bleed.”

Dazai stretches his arms in front of him, languid and catlike.  “Is that your final answer?”

The punch Chuuya throws hits Dazai’s ribs, right on target, but with less power than it started with.  “Just shut up and show me.  You’re so eager to show off that you’re practically vibrating.”

Though Dazai objects, he follows Chuuya out of the cell easily enough.  When they reach a crossroads, he puts a hand on Chuuya’s back, silently leading him to their prey.

And it’s true; their poor, unfortunate barista doesn’t know a single thing except for the fact that he doesn’t know.  “They’ll come for me,” he — Ibuse Masuji; he’d given them that much, at least — swears, blood matted in his hair, eyes alight.  “I don’t know who or how or when, but they’ll come.”

He isn’t looking at Chuuya, eyes fixed at the person looming over his shoulder.  Chuuya doesn’t need to turn to feel the way Dazai smiles; it’s a smile he’s seen many, many times before, in many rusty cells just like this one.

“I hope you’re right,” Dazai says simply.  And Chuuya almost feels bad for the suckers, because he really means it.

Afterwards, Dazai complains about being hungry and follows Chuuya to his car.  It’s his favorite: the one he’d bought right after his promotion, shiny-slick and deep red.  When he can’t find his keys, he turns accusingly to Dazai; Dazai grins, toothy, and swirls the chiming keychain around his finger.

It’s Chuuya’s turn to choose, so he meanders down the shoreline, toward a cheap carry out-only place he and Dazai discovered years ago.  They wait in companionable silence in the closet of the shop; Chuuya texts Shiga back, confirming a meeting for tomorrow afternoon and telling him where to find the password for the laptop in his office.  Dazai chews a toothpick he took from a jar on the counter, tapping at a gacha game and blatantly reading Chuuya’s messages.

The worst of the chill has burnt off by the time they leave the shop, though the wind remains.  The knot of the tied plastic take-out bag digs into Chuuya’s palm when Dazai complains about his stolen socks being too hot while they walk.

The beautiful sheen of the fabric around Dazai’s ankles gleans under the midday sun as if to mock him.  “Those are silk,” Chuuya protests incredulously.

“Are these silk too?” Dazai asks, hooking a thumb under his waistband and peeking in.  “They do feel nice and soft against my—”

“You are not,” Chuuya hisses, face burning, “wearing my underwear.”

Dazai sighs, waving a hand aimlessly in the air.  “Unfortunately, I am.  It was dire straits, Chuuya, my own were ruined — though these are such a tight squeeze that it’s seeming less and less worth it by the minute.”

He’s the most infuriating person Chuuya knows: the worst person to work with, the poorest excuse for a partner, and the only one thick-skinned enough to order an inedible amount of sushi on someone else’s dime.  He has no sense of boundaries or personal space, and if they weren’t tied together so securely by their obligations, Chuuya would never go out of his way to see him again.

The sky is a bright and vibrant blue today.  With his coat draped over his shoulder and the salt-scented breeze ruffling his hair loose and wavy, Dazai isn't half as bad of an eyesore as usual.

Even the wind off the water can’t quite manage to brush away the flush on Chuuya’s face, no doubt spurred on by sun and irritation.  “We’re meeting the boss today, so I can’t beat you up,” he says matter-of-factly.  “Let’s go to the usual place.”

Part of him expects Dazai to refuse; he’d been so distant and strange after the first time they slept together, after all.  Even with how sticky and annoying he’s been today, part of Chuuya is still waiting for him to leave.

But of course, there’s no way it’d be that easy to get Dazai out of his hair.  “Lead the way,” Dazai says as he hops up to balance on the sidewalk ledge, black clothes a stark cutout against the pale sea.

The nearby arcade still has its doors open wide, as if unaware that spring is only just rolling in; Chuuya stuffs his cold hands in his jacket pockets as they cross the threshold.  Their sushi is spread in a disarray around their machines of choice, crumpled napkins and used chopsticks splayed over cracking plastic seats, sticky from spilled sodas long-passed.  Other than the outdated nineties pop coasting over the speakers, their only company is the old woman watching a soap opera at the counter, sorting coins into piles.

Even across the room, Chuuya’s eyes are naturally drawn to the actress on the screen: sitting upright with the bedspread clutched to her otherwise-bare chest, tears springing into the corners of her eyes.  “Didn’t this mean anything to you?” she demands of the male lead, who’s turned away, adjusting his tie in the mirror.  “What are we?”

An electronic sound of distress draws Chuuya’s attention back to his own screen, much closer to his face.  Dazai’s avatar — a cute girl with pink pigtails and spikes on her knee-highs — has just gotten Chuuya’s own on the ground.  ‘Game over’ flashes across the screen while Chuuya’s fighter of choice scowls accusingly at him behind massive shades.

Dazai pops his head over top the machines, leaning his weight on his elbows.  “Chuuya shouldn’t have invited me out if he was just going to turn his attention elsewhere,” he says, eye narrowed and mouth twisted in a pout.  “It’s not even fun to beat you this way.”

“Who says you’ve beaten me?” asks Chuuya, beaten — but his heart’s not in it.  His thoughts keep straying somewhere else, too far away for him to even see them.

A hum drifts low from Dazai’s throat — acknowledging, not agreeing.  “C’mon, you lost.  Time to pay the piper.”

The small ball of wasabi left on Chuuya’s empty sushi tray tries to intimidate him, but he’s no coward; screwing his eyes shut, he pops the whole thing in his mouth and swallows as quickly as possible.  It burns the whole way down, and he manages to take a half breath in before a cough consumes him.

By the time he surfaces, Dazai is laughing himself to tears, and the elderly arcade owner is watching them judgmentally from her corner.  Chuuya smiles at her apologetically, wiping his eyes and nose with the cleanest napkin within grabbing distance.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up,” Chuuya grumbles roughly.

“I like that voice,” Dazai grins, shameless.  “It reminds me of the other day, after you sucked my—”

The volume on the soap opera across the room shoots up dramatically.  Chuuya’s ears burn; he chugs an entire bottle of water, crushing the plastic in his hand when he’s done.

“Shut up,” he says before starting another game.

Right away, Chuuya leaps in on the offensive.  “How many Gifteds are there in that little group of theirs?” he asks, jamming out a combo.

Dazai tsks, but no matter how he squirms, he’s stuck in the corner; his health sinks, girly avatar flashing intangible as she recovers.

“Five or six,” Dazai says, distracted.  His character finally escapes, jumping into the air and catching Chuuya’s with a spike to the head.  Dazai rejoices.  “Yes, yes!  Take that!”

Five or six — more than any Yokohama organization outside the Mafia, but too small to register in Chuuya’s head as a real threat.  That number wasn’t in the initial report Chuuya received from intelligence, and he knows without asking that no one besides the two of them knows it either.

He blocks in time for another kick, just barely.  “And non-Gifteds?”

“None that matter.”

Vague, but to the point.  Dazai never lies at times like this.

“There’ve been no new deaths since we took Ibuse in,” Chuuya grunts, tongue between his teeth, blocking Dazai’s onslaught of kicks.  “At least, none that fit the pattern.”

“I hope you’re not patting yourself on the back already,” Dazai replies, mashing buttons so hard Chuuya can hear it from here.  “We haven’t actually gained anything.  I doubt Mori-san’s going to be pleased about this information-obstruction wall we’ve hit.”

Chuuya’s avatar crouches at just the right time to throw off Dazai’s momentum, landing a solid upward punch.  “Maybe if you’d tell me what you know, I’d have some good news for him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dazai says, words spinning round in his mouth like marbles.  Frustration bleeds angry and red out of him until they’re both submerged.  “The next scene’s already written for us anyway.”

There are a lot of things Chuuya can put up with: Dazai withholding information, Dazai stealing his last piece of sushi, Dazai sneezing into his hand and then wiping it on the dash of his car.  He accepts Dazai’s whining and the raw, ragged wounds he left on his shoulder and neck.  When he saw Dazai in daylight and realized there was blood on his clothes along with the dirt and rust, he didn’t even question it.

The soliloquies are pushing it, though.  “Okay, Hamlet,” Chuuya grouses, kicking the machine just to hear it thump.  “Done with life again, are you?  And here I was starting to believe you were giving up on giving up.”

“I’m not responsible for the beliefs of single-celled organisms one way or another.”

A spiky knee-high takes his character down.  Chuuya grits his teeth; something about this is starting to piss him off.  “Nothing about this mission is interesting to you?” he asks, jamming his thumbs down so fast the machine is liable to break.  “What, torturing guys doesn’t get your blood pumping anymore?  You need something else to feel alive?”

Dazai’s voice is too flat to be a joke and too genuine to be real.  “Chuuya makes me feel alive.”

Inexplicably, Chuuya’s suddenly-sweaty fingers slip on the controls.  His defense falters with it, and Dazai beats him down once again.

Wasabi is still burning in Chuuya’s throat when he drives them back.  Dazai yawns on his way to his office, shirking work once again to take a nap before their dinner meeting with Mori.  All he does is eat and sleep, like a lazy cat.  Chuuya ignores him, stepping off the elevator early.

Chuuya works with and knows a lot of people, but his small team of ability users is different; they’re his people.  His devotion has earned him devotion in turn, and while they may number at less than a dozen, their efficiency speaks for itself.

Out of everyone in the Port Mafia, Chuuya knows best that he doesn’t have a good track record for keeping his people, and keeping them alive.  Still, he thinks, meandering through the normie office floors of the building, every opportunity is a new one.  When he turns the corner into the lounge his squad likes to occupy and finds three familiar faces looking up at him, he can feel his commitment compounding in on itself.  They’re painfully out of place against the washed-white walls and sterile over-padded seats: too bright, alive, different, wrong, to belong.  That commitment keeps folding inwards, heavier and heavier, dense and tight.

“Chuuya-san!” Uno Chiyo greets brightly, yellow-gold eyes curling with her smile.  She smooths her hands down the frilly front of her dress, but it pops back up heedless of her instruction, layers and layers of petticoats rustling.  “Are you taking a break, too?”

Chiyo’s ability ‘Ohan’ allows her to walk backwards in time, tracing a particular individual’s path and seeing the world as they saw it.  Once, she’d been used mostly for information — until her latent bloodlust revealed she could cause wounds in the past retroactively, leaving her targets confused and weak with blood loss, poisoned by a blade they never touched.

She’s one of the only members of Chuuya’s squad who’s younger than him.  He can’t help but dote on her.

Despite her words, it doesn’t really look like any of them are taking a break.  Chiyo has a knife halfway-sharpened in her lap, another three already finished and set down beside her.  Takahashi is hastily hiding his paperwork behind his back, but his reading glasses are still on; beside him on the loveseat, Shiga doesn’t bother doing the same.  The bags under his eyes and stack of documents in front of him betray that he’s been taking on even more than Chuuya has strictly asked him to.

Pride tugs at him like a leash.  “Something like that,” he agrees, ruffling Chiyo’s hair.  “What about all of you?  Any updates for me?”

“Chuuya-san, that isn’t a break,” Takahashi protests with a furrow between his brow, at the same time that Shiga deadpans, “The meeting is supposed to be tomorrow, sir.”

“You got me,” Chuuya laughs, caught and unabashed.  “I know it’s late, but have you all had lunch?  I’ll order something.”

Chuuya has, of course, already eaten, but the kids don’t need to know that.  At ease, he watches Shiga and Chiyo argue over restaurants for several minutes before he feels the weight of eyes on him.

The most obvious culprit is Takahashi, though he doubtlessly doesn’t see it that way: sneaking peeks in between listening to his teammates, shining gray eyes mostly hidden behind the bangs falling in his face.  Something about his hair color and the cut of his fringe kind of reminds Chuuya of Dazai, though it’s not really right: his hair is too black, and cut too short by the ears, like a respectable member of society.  These reading glasses are cute on him, bronze and rounded, or maybe Chuuya just isn’t used to seeing them; Takahashi always seems determined to present himself at his most manicured to Chuuya whenever possible.

The less obvious way Chuuya is being watched is through a certain camera.  He can’t see it, but he can feel it; somewhere in this room, Dazai has one of his ridiculous spy-cams recording his every move.  So much for a nap.

This theory is confirmed when something in the corner makes a loud, cliché shutter noise.  Conversation about restaurants dies as three heads turn for Chuuya’s orders.

Chuuya waves them off with a roll of his eyes, already getting his phone from his pocket.  “Have you all decided?  I’ll be late for my dinner appointment at this rate.”

Despite protests from his squad, Chuuya doesn’t stay longer than it takes to read his card number to the woman on the phone.  As soon as he can manage it, Chuuya is riding the elevator back up to the blatantly-mafia floors, where he belongs.

There’s no way Dazai is going to be of any use organizing information, so Chuuya takes up the unenviable task of writing a progress report.  By the time he’s finished, it’s already time to go.

Dazai isn’t waiting for Chuuya outside his office or car, so he goes alone: away from the water, up through winding paths into the hills.  The chosen restaurant is Western in style and completely empty; when a silent hostess leads Chuuya to a private room in the back, he opens the door to find Mori already inside.

“Chuuya-kun,” Mori greets, brows jerking up as he watches the space behind Chuuya.  “Dazai-kun isn’t with you?”

“Hi Boss,” Chuuya says, quickly sitting at one of the two empty seats.  “No, he didn’t tag along.  But I just saw him hours ago; he’ll be here.”

Mori smiles indulgently and offers him the wine menu.  Chuuya accepts, and feels that indulgence stretching thinner and thinner as the minutes stretch farther and farther.  They’ve long-since ordered, meals arriving any second now, and Dazai still isn’t here.

It’s such a Dazai thing to do, letting Chuuya know that there’s no reason he shouldn’t be here and then leaving him to his own devices.  At the same time, it’s so different than their last meeting with Mori, where Dazai had gone imperceptibly stiffer every time Mori looked at Chuuya.  Someone else might not have noticed; Dazai’s body language might not have physically changed at all, his expression consistent and limbs lax.  But Chuuya noticed.

Judging Dazai and his reactions is easy.  Figuring out why — why he was so off with the boss, and why he’s been so off in general, and what that off-ness has to do with Chuuya — isn’t so simple.  Chuuya is always repeating it to himself, over and over: the world is made of actions.  He isn’t going to waste his time thinking about all the things Dazai doesn’t want him to know.  If it’s relevant, he’ll face it; if not, it doesn’t matter in the first place.

His fingers drum on the table; his stomach grumbles.  Mori’s smile hasn’t moved a centimeter since they passed the half-hour mark.  In front of them, two glasses of expensive wine go untouched.

The funny thing is that Mori doesn’t seem really, genuinely angry; it’s nothing like how he was after Dazai and Chuuya’s last mission together, when they’d gotten the wrong target and lost the shipment they were meant to intercept.  Then, with a politician’s son dead and an overwhelming amount of money lost, Mori had been ice-cold and crystal-clear: this would never happen again.  Even when he’d split them up, sending one at a time into the hall like misbehaving schoolchildren, that fury hadn’t lessened; when Chuuya left, he was so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t even looked at Dazai, still waiting for his turn.

He doesn’t know what Mori said to Dazai that day; they’ve never talked about it.  In the time that followed immediately after, between their increased workloads and Chuuya’s many trips out of the city, they barely saw each other at all.

Mori and Dazai aren’t related, but they resemble each other in the ways that count.  Whereas Chuuya is all tapping feet and impatience, Mori is still; he isn’t angry per se, but there’s a certain frustrated stiffness on him, cracking and bleeding out, that Chuuya has only ever seen on one other person.

As if awaiting this thought to announce him, Dazai’s familiar footsteps sound near-silent outside.  Mori must recognize them too, because when the door bursts open, neither he nor Chuuya draw weapon or ability.

“Am I late?” Dazai asks cheerily.  The restaurant hostess trails meekly behind him, throwing frightened, uncertain glances Mori’s way.  “Traffic is just crazy tonight, isn’t it?”

There’s no traffic this far out of the city, and all of them know it.  Even if there was, there’s no way something so mundane as backed up cars would impede Dazai, of all people.  Chuuya rubs his temple in anticipation of a headache.

Mori just sighs.  “Come sit.  We’ve been waiting.”

The meek hostess pipes up.  “I’ll have someone bring you another menu right away, sirs—”

But Mori just waves a hand, smile as friendly as can be.  “Thank you,” he says, eyes darting sharp to Dazai as he flops gracelessly down, “but there’s no need.”

To punctuate it, a waiter comes in with Mori and Chuuya’s food before Dazai’s done wrestling the coat from his shoulders.  It all smells delicious: fatty and meaty and rich, that distinct alcohol-depth wafting from the purply sauce dressing Chuuya’s plate.  Dazai eyes Chuuya’s food greedily, and for once, Chuuya doesn’t feel deep satisfaction from the way that expression shifts pained when he puts the bite in his mouth.  Something about this night must be throwing him off.

He chokes the thought down with a swig of wine — then another, and another, until half the glass is gone.  Just as soon as he’s set it down, Dazai is stealing it from between his fingers.

“Didn’t you drive here?” Dazai asks haughtily, holding Chuuya’s stolen drink in his grubby paws for the millionth time.  “Trying to die and leave all the work to me, are you?  How lazy.”

“Like you’ve done any work,” Chuuya snorts, leaning back in his chair instead of crawling on the table to wrestle his glass back.  “Care to tell Boss just how that interrogation of yours went?”

“What about you?  Care to explain exactly how you found the person I interrogated in the first place?  I’d just love to hear it.”

“You—!”

“Chuuya-kun has already updated me on your findings,” Mori interrupts smoothly, looking up from his meal to zero in on Dazai.  “You’re fortunate to keep such a capable partner, Dazai-kun.”

Mori looks amused; Dazai doesn’t.  Chuuya feels it again: that tenseness without tensing, the imperceptible change in the air that means something is wrong.  Before, Chuuya knew implicitly that Mori was someone Dazai trusted — not safe, not benevolent, but consistent; an evil you know — but now there’s only a black hole where that trust once sat.

Something is wrong.  When a waiter slips another glass of wine beside him, Chuuya drains it in an instant.

Dazai’s smile might as well creak under all its strain.  “I do intend to keep him, Mori-san.”

Mori’s sigh is quiet but passes over the table like a storm, forcing the air heavy and the food cold.  “I recognize you’re going through your teen rebellion phase,” he says, “but one day, I believe you’ll look back on this and realize I was right.”

It’s well-known in the upper echelons of the Port Mafia that Dazai and Chuuya have their own language.  Mori and Dazai must have their own too, because alcohol or not, Chuuya is never this far out of the Dazai-related loop.

Making that sour-lemon face, Dazai swallows the last of Chuuya’s drink, slams the glass down, and stands in a rush.  “We’ll finish up this errand of yours soon, Boss,” Dazai says hurriedly, faux-cheer stretched thin as he stacks his coat and then Chuuya’s on his arm.  “Not to worry!  Soukoku is on the case, and we’re as efficient and capable as ever.  You won’t be disappointed.”

With that, he yanks Chuuya’s chair back and wrenches him to his feet by the elbow.  Lost in thought and mostly-drunk, Chuuya lets him with little more than a growl.

They’re already in the doorway when Mori responds.  “I hope so,” he says, voice warm and scented with blood.  “Even my favoritism has a limit, Dazai-kun.”

Chuuya starts to look back, but Dazai pulls him around the corner before he can.  Wide-eyed waitstaff part to let them through as Dazai races to the exit like a drowning man to the surface.

When they get to Chuuya’s car, Dazai fishes the key out of his own trouser pockets like they belong there.  Chuuya raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything yet; bickering is one thing, but Dazai is a powder keg just waiting for an excuse to explode, and it’s a long drive home.

Even when Dazai gets into the driver’s seat, Chuuya just rolls his eyes and slides into the passenger’s side.

“You suck at driving,” he points out, rolling down his window as Dazai peels out of the parking lot on the wrong side of the road.

But Dazai isn’t listening.  His thoughts bounce around in his head so loud that Chuuya has to crank the radio just to escape their echo.

Twilight is breaking as they drive, purple-gray and sherbet-orange creeping out from behind the mountains to stain the whole sky.  As they speed down the winding roads toward the coast, clouds obstruct more and more of that color, until Chuuya has to remember what it looked like to see it there at all.

All the while, Dazai is silent.  He doesn’t break vigil even when Chuuya finally finds a working rock station, every twist and turn of the road punctuated with the same heavy riffs Dazai always claims will break his delicate eardrums.

At first, Chuuya finds peace in it, fingers tapping to the rhythm, fresh air blowing onto his hot face, annoying partner silenced.  Eventually, the silence in itself starts to piss him off.

People are all fundamentally the same; Dazai is no exception, no matter how he might feel about it.  It isn’t that he’s unreadable, or incomprehensible — if anything, Chuuya has never known anyone in his life who makes more sense.  From the moment they met, Chuuya has been able to anticipate and work around Dazai like a part of his own body, and even if he isn’t filled in on all the information Dazai has, he always knows exactly what to do.

That much hasn’t changed, even with Dazai’s strange moods recently.  He knows what to do.  He understands Dazai, anticipates him, knows him as well as he knows himself.  And Dazai has never been one to lay out all his cards, anyway; he loves gloating too much, and Chuuya is only ever a half-step behind.

He knows they’ll complete this mission.  He knows that, if Dazai wanted Chuuya’s help with whatever melodramatic demon he’s wrestling in his own head, Chuuya would already be able to taste the order between his teeth.

Still, it rubs something raw in him, the general offness of Dazai — during this mission, before it, leaking even into the familiar home-comfort of speeding Chuuya’s nicest car down the wrong side of the road as the sun sets.

“Hey,” he says, lowering the radio volume and rolling his window back up, “what’s your deal tonight, huh?”

Dazai’s tone is cheery but his expression is completely flat; it makes him look like a puppet, discordant and impersonal.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

There’s a lot Chuuya could point out.  Nap or not, Dazai had no reason to be late; Chuuya knows he doesn’t sleep deeply anyway.  Even if it were an accident, there would be no reason to act that way with Mori; while Dazai has never exactly been the most deferential, he’s at least always showed Mori the proper respect when there are other people around.  And then there was his strange conversation with Mori at dinner, both closed off to Chuuya and very obviously involving him.

Instead of saying any of that, Chuuya snorts.  “Bullshit.”

In the rearview mirror, Chuuya watches Dazai’s eyes flick to him, then away.  “I thought Chuuya didn’t trust me.  Why should I tell you anything?”

That gives Chuuya pause.  It’s true that he had told Dazai he didn’t trust him after their last meeting with Mori, cramped in an elevator the morning after an awkward handjob, but he thought — well.  They’re always on the same page with everything, and Chuuya can always depend on Dazai to be just as mean-spirited and competitive and willing to take things too far as he is.  They’ve held each other’s lives in their hands so many times.  If that’s not trust, what is?

Even if he knows Dazai is only pouting, dredging up insincere words just to have an excuse to be hurt, it still catches Chuuya off guard.  “Stop changing the subject,” he says, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing some Dazai-shaped piece of the puzzle for maybe the first time.

The next turn comes sudden; Dazai doesn’t slow at all.  His boney hands twist the wheel so fast that the entire side of Chuuya’s body presses uncomfortably against the passenger-side door.  They bleed into the other lane in their haste, and a truck passing the opposite way blares its horn while Dazai swerves once more to avoid it.

All of this is unfortunately normal for Dazai driving.  The lack of reflection or remorse is also normal, as Dazai not only continues over the limit but in fact speeds up.  Chuuya glances at his partner out of the corner of his eye, watching him chew something over and over and over.  He glances away, leaning his chin on his palm to study the twilight sky.

Finally, Dazai remembers how to speak.  “You’re the raw meat,” he bites, short and frustrated and achingly childish.

Speaking doesn’t mean he’s magically started making sense, though.  “What,” Chuuya says flatly.

This time, Dazai doesn’t play along so easily.  Mouth twisting sideways into a pout, Dazai stares resolutely ahead of him and doesn’t elaborate.

So he’s giving Chuuya the silent treatment; that’s fine.  Rolling his eyes again, Chuuya once again faces the window.  All the sky’s color has been thoroughly bled out; dusk is upon them once more.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says suddenly.  He’s still driving, but his gaze is fixed so firmly on Chuuya that he can feel it digging around in his brain.  “Don’t you think it’s weird, that Mori-san assigned this mission to us specifically?”

Chuuya flicks his eyes at him.  “No?  It’s a sensitive mission.  Why shouldn’t he assign it directly to us?”

Dazai huffs a sigh.  “Chuuya is so simple.  You’re like a stray kitten who would die if it couldn’t eat out of my hand every day.”

He’s relaxing, less a ticking time bomb and more of a live wire.  It’s a state Chuuya’s very comfortable with; he knows just how to handle him without getting shocked.

“Who’s the helpless stray, bastard?” he complains, unfortunate fondness springing from his uncomfortable relief.  “Do you not make me bring you dinner multiple times a week?”

Even as Dazai swerves and veers and stops and starts, erratic enough to bring a weaker man to his knees, neither he nor Chuuya so much as change their tones of voice.  Dazai is back to fully whining, petulantly not watching the road, well-aware that Chuuya’s ability would bail him out of any potential crash anyway.  After all, this is his favorite car.

“That doesn’t count,” Dazai objects, bottom lip jutting out like he’s a third his age.  “It’s your duty to live and die by your master.”

That old rag.  “I can’t say I have a master,” Chuuya says dryly.  “If the position’s ever filled, I’ll be sure to call and let you know.”

If looks could kill, Dazai’s flinty stare would level the whole city.  Chuuya ignores him, watching Yokohama light up ahead as night continues to rise.

Normally, Chuuya would use this time to check in on his subordinates — but his phone must still be in his coat pocket, shoved in the trunk alongside Dazai’s.  The lack of action sets his teeth on edge; it’s weirdly freeing in a way, too.  He’s not driving, not working, not fighting, not thinking.  His wine-heavy eyes trace the silver line of the distant sea in a slow, even drag.

Dazai is quiet too; the only sign of his usual mischief is his changing the radio station.  He’s not half as sneaky as he thinks but Chuuya lets it go; if anything, the soft, low-energy music only chills him out more.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing he knows, Dazai is gathering him up on his back.  “I said hold on,” he complains in a mutter, looping Chuuya’s arms around his neck.  “Chuuya never listens to me.”

Try as Chuuya might to mumble a rebuttal, his words are unintelligible.  He does hold on if only so his forearms dig into Dazai’s throat, taking the opportunity to strangle his partner even passively.

Dazai’s laugh isn’t audible, but it rumbles through his ribs and into Chuuya’s cheek, smashed flat to his shoulder blade.  “You’re heavy,” he says, replying to the jab Chuuya didn’t finish forming.  “That’s why.”

It’s true that he’s heavy, and it’s true that despite his larger body, Dazai isn’t nearly as strong as Chuuya.  It’s also true, though, that Dazai isn’t as weak as he pretends, and his arms don’t shake at all as he carries Chuuya in a piggyback ride into the elevator and up to his apartment.

Chuuya doesn’t often sleep well — but here, face pressed to Dazai’s shirt, inhaling the familiar scent mixed with blood and wine and sea air, he can’t keep himself afloat.  He doesn’t even last long enough to find out how Dazai gets around his new lock; he’s already unconscious, drifting in a deep and dreamless sleep.

Chapter Text

Chuuya wakes to the smell of burning.

Autopilot flicks on before his brain.  Even with the early hour hazing over his thoughts, Chuuya doesn’t stumble in the slightest; he’s a well-oiled machine, zipping toward the source of the smoke with single-minded purpose.

Maybe that’s why it isn’t until he comes face to face with Dazai, holding a smoking cast iron in his hand while Chuuya’s expensive toaster oven is actively on fire behind him, that Chuuya realizes he’s buck naked.

Dazai whistles, delighted.  Chuuya gets déjà vu.

“What are you doing to my kitchen?” he cries, outraged.  The rage burns so hot it paints his skin red as Chuuya races to the counter with absolutely no shame or self-consciousness whatsoever.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed, Chuuya,” Dazai teases, hand held mischievously over his mouth.  “If a man can’t even be naked in his own apartment, then where?  Nice eye boogers, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Chuuya spits, scrubbing at his eyes.  “Why am I naked?  Why are you in my apartment?  Get out.  Fix this situation, and get out.”

“Isn’t Chuuya always the one complaining about outside clothes on his bed?  To think this is how you thank your only partner for doing you this generous favor!”

At this point, Chuuya realizes that Dazai is shirtless.  His button-down is swung conspicuously over a chair, tucked neatly into the kitchen island, directly in his line of sight.  He’s so obvious.

Chuuya tugs the shirt on anyway.  It’s too long; its hem skims the tops of his thighs, leaving him almost decent.  Dazai hums a jaunty tune and pretends not to watch him, flipping what might have once been an egg in the charred remains of Chuuya’s favorite pan.

Putting the fire out is easier than taking the batteries out of his alarms while Dazai blatantly stares at his ass.  Doing all of that is still easier than keeping a straight face when Dazai sunnily passes him a plate of smoking charcoal and calls it breakfast.  There are casualties in the battle that follows, and Chuuya rifles through delivery menus while Dazai sweeps up the broken dishes with suspicious obedience.

Though Chuuya hadn’t noticed at first, it’s earlier than he thought.  Opening the blinds tells him that dawn hasn’t yet hit, though the sky isn’t pitch black, either: stuck in this strange, in-between stage of night and morning, like it isn’t sure what it wants to be.  It seems like stealing a place in Chuuya’s bed hasn’t made Dazai miraculously better at sleeping, then.

Chuuya is peacefully digesting breakfast and stewing over his report from last night when Dazai climbs onto the arm of the couch beside him.

“You sit in a stupid way,” Chuuya says before Dazai has the chance to speak.  “Why do you always perch on the corners of things, with your boney-ass knees jutting up in the air?  You look like some kind of bald, malformed parrot.”

“What’s that, boy?” Dazai asks, wide-eyed and innocent.  “Someone fell in the well?”

When Chuuya makes to jab his elbow into Dazai’s thigh, Dazai catches him by the wrist.  “You might want to hear me out,” he teases, leaning down so his low voice drags right in Chuuya’s ear.  “You’re at a dead end, right?”

His gaze flicks down to the report in Chuuya’s lap.  Chuuya scowls, then tosses it aside.

“Don’t be so smug,” he says, even as victory seeps from every one of Dazai’s pores.  “Just tell me.”

The plan is deceptively simple.  There’s some big-name asshole — some politician or corrupt government higher-up — that throws these frequent, elaborate parties.  They’re high security, black tie, and no invitation required; if you know the right things to say or the right names to throw around, you’re in.  On the surface, they’re a well-meaning, generous way for young people to make connections; children of socialites might go, or aspiring artists searching for new or better patrons.

Underneath that, it’s a recruitment drive for young, unfettered Gifteds.  “Rumor has it that all you have to do is show the old man that you have some ability, and he’ll put you up,” Dazai says around a yawn.  “At least, for a while.”

And they happen to be looking for a group of unfettered Gifteds.  “They’ll be there?” Chuuya asks skeptically, studying the floor plan Dazai’s dumped in his lap.

Dazai nods.  “They’ll be there.  An opportunity for money, connections, and the possibility of recruiting new, powerful allies?  There’s no way they could pass up the opportunity after hearing this rumor at just the right time.”  He pauses, theatrically dramatic.  “Serendipity is a funny thing, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Sly bastard,” Chuuya says appreciatively.  “What did you do?”

“Are you asking because you really want to know?”

It doesn’t matter how he knows, but Dazai usually takes opportunities like this to show off.  Chuuya brushes it off with a snort.  “Whatever.  So we go to the party.”

“Mhm,” Dazai agrees, toothy grin sliding slick across his face.  “But we can’t be mafia.  They wouldn’t let us in if they knew, and our targets would scatter.  For the plan to work, we’re going to need a disguise.”

The party is on some luxury ship; every passenger gets on and off at the same time.  With their lack of resources and people for this mission, there really is no other option but to blend in with the crowd.  In a worst-case scenario, Chuuya could probably use his ability to launch himself to the port — but Dazai, with his goddamned annoying nullification, couldn’t come along for the ride.  So that’s off the table.  A disguise makes sense.

That isn’t the problem; it’s the familiar, wheedling tone of Dazai’s voice that’s the problem.  “For the last fucking time,” Chuuya growls, “I am not dressing up like a French maid—”

Dazai is fully leaning over him now, curved and taut like a bow, his choice of seating boosting his preexisting height advantage into infuriating levels.  “How rude, jumping to conclusions like that!  It’s not even a maid dress this time!”

Unfortunately, Chuuya can already see where this is going.  “What is this?  Bone Bleached by the Rain?”

“What are you, stupid?  Keep up, chibi!  Silver Moon!  Obviously it’s Silver Moon!”

Ugh, Chuuya hates Silver Moon.  Just the thought of it makes his face hot — but he sees what Dazai sees.  It will work.

“Fine,” Chuuya bites, getting up from the couch so quickly that the side of his cheek brushes Dazai’s big, stupid head.  “I’m going to start preparing.  Leave me alone, and don’t try to burn down my apartment again.”

Behind him, he hears the sound of Dazai falling face-first onto his couch.  “We’ll see,” he calls toward Chuuya’s back, mischievous and unaffected — but under that, Chuuya hears something strain.

Silver Moon is a simple plan, really — a basic variant of a schtick they’ve pulled a million times before.  There’s only two major differences: one, that they’ll pose as a couple.  Two, that Chuuya will be wearing the guise of a hot girl.

For obvious reasons, Chuuya has never volunteered this particular plan before.  Clinging to Dazai’s arm all night in heels is never going to be number one on his agenda.

For similarly obvious reasons, Dazai is always looking for an excuse.

Chuuya doesn’t bother taking off Dazai’s shirt before sitting down in the tub.  The detachable shower head makes getting his legs wet easy without completely drenching the shirt, and if Dazai wants it back so bad, it would be funny to see him complain about it anyway.  He always gets all puffed up and hissy when damp, like a cat.

Truth be told, though he’s loathe to admit it, Chuuya’s legs don’t have much to shave.  His hair is light, anyway.  But any disguise requires the utmost attention to detail in order to work, and Chuuya is a dedicated actor.  His pride has never gotten in the way of doing a good job before.

There’s something relaxing in the ritual, anyway: wet, wash, lather, the glide of the blade and the rinse and repeat.  It’s far from the worst thing Chuuya has done to his body in the name of professionalism, even if the growing-out period is bound to be prickly and itchy and uncomfortable.

He manages to shave both armpits and a calf before the lock clicks.

“You don’t have any snacks,” Dazai boldly complains as he forces his way into the room.  Contrary to his bratty, unaffected words, his eyes immediately find and scour Chuuya’s form, lingering over his bare legs and Dazai’s shirt rolled up his arms.  “How can you leave me to fend for myself in these conditions?”

Chuuya turns the water on both to rinse his calf and drown out Dazai’s words, but only achieves one of those goals.  “Are you seriously hungry again?” he asks, exasperated.  “You’re a bottomless pit.  We had breakfast two hours ago.”

“You were like a bottomless pit when you—”

“Shut up,” Chuuya snaps, neck red.  “If you can’t tell, I’m a little busy, so if you could just get out of my hair—”

“What if I help you get out of your hair instead?” Dazai interrupts, crossing the room briskly to stick one foot in the tub.  “Buy me lunch in exchange for my generous service, okay?  I want melon soda!  And something salty!”

Settling between Chuuya’s legs, Dazai holds his hand out expectantly for the razor.  On his knees, shirtless and face bare of bandages, he’s deceptively tame — but there’s a glint in his eye, familiar and hungry.

Arousal kicks and sputters like an engine roaring to life.  Chuuya presses the razor into Dazai’s hand.  “Just how many meals are you trying to get out of me?  Useless freeloader.”

“As many as I can until we both die,” Dazai says sweetly, twirling the razor in the air and catching it artfully.  “Spread your legs more.  I can’t reach like this.”

Chuuya does, lounging back into the tub until his nape hits the ridge.  The warm water on his lower body has long-since settled into the rest of the room’s chill, and Dazai’s pathetic excuse for body heat does nothing to combat that; he drags a soap-slick hand up and down Chuuya’s other calf with no mind for the comfort of either of them.

As if hearing him, Dazai whines, “It’s so cold and wet in here, and a little fairy stole my shirt.  I’m being mistreated.”

Rolling his eyes, Chuuya says, “Yes, yes, and you’re being very brave about it.  Aren’t you the one who climbed in yourself?”

Dazai’s thumb digs into the tight swell of muscle behind and under his knee, vicious and sweet.  Chuuya hisses and closes his eyes, relaxing until the curve of his spine meets the tub.  It’s too little stimulation and too cold here for his dick to perk up, but the familiar slow coil of interest winds anyway, low and hot in his gut.

With brutal precision, Dazai’s thumb slides higher up the center of the muscle, obliterating any tension in its path.  Once, twice — then he shifts into more of a hold than a press, shifting Chuuya’s leg subtly open.

The cool metal razor rests lightly below Chuuya’s knee.  For a moment, Chuuya is certain that when it comes down, it will take his skin right with it, shaving-implement turned weapon in Dazai’s capable hands; his skin feels hot, inhale caught in his throat.  Then it slides down, gliding smooth and harmless, and he lets that breath go.

It’s hard to find something the two of them haven’t done at this point; this is one of them.  There’s a bizarre intimacy in this: crammed in the bathtub together, only one shirt and one pair of pants between the two of them, Dazai’s fingers gripping Chuuya’s legs and Chuuya’s razor in Dazai’s hands.  Dazai is long and looming, shrunken and withdrawn, twitching with an energy that has nowhere to go.  Limp beneath him, damp hair curling around his ears, Chuuya just watches.

Dazai could split him open if he wanted to.  Chuuya has so much trust inside him that it wouldn’t spill even if the blade finally turned on him; he would keep waiting, watching, knowing something else lies on the next inbound wave.  This trust isn’t built on nothing; it goes both ways.  Whenever Dazai hurts him, it’s always part of a plan, and even when Chuuya can’t quite see the plan in its entirety, he can always see him: Dazai, shining like a beacon in the dark, his own personal lighthouse guiding him home.

It goes both ways.  Dazai always has a plan; he only hits Chuuya where it hurts when he needs to, and if it needs to, then it doesn’t hurt anyway.  Chuuya isn’t a fool who can’t understand the need for some playacted betrayal in the workplace.

But this isn’t work, not yet.  When Dazai presses the razor to skin, shaving the entirety of his other calf quickly and efficiently, it isn’t to cut him at all.

His touch is so gentle it aches.

“You’re so tiny,” Dazai teases, wrapping a hand fully around Chuuya’s ankle and pulling his leg straight.  “Are you still growing now, too?”

He hasn’t said that in years, but Dazai never lets him forget.  A real rebuttal builds in his throat, but when Dazai’s cold palm skates up Chuuya’s thigh, slipping under the hem of his shirt to brush his hip, it falls away.

“Shut it,” he says instead.  Dazai laughs, squirting soap into his palm to lather him up.

There isn’t actually all that much hair past the knee, but it’s fine to let Dazai have his fun for a little while.  It’s like exercising a pet dog, Chuuya thinks: if you throw the tennis ball a few times now, they won’t destroy your expensive shoes later.  If he lets Dazai do what he wants now, his drive for mischief will be lower later, when it really counts.

If Chuuya’s face is a little red, and if Dazai runs his hands up and down Chuuya’s thighs more than is strictly necessary — no one needs to know.

“I could cut you right now,” Dazai says thoughtfully, like the tactless idiot he is.

Duh, Chuuya thinks.  “Just try it,” he says instead.  “I’ll kick your lights out.”

Dazai looks at him mournfully, but his eyes are twinkling.  “I shouldn’t,” he sighs.  “Chuuya needs all the help he can get to look pretty enough to be my date.  Your legs are one of your best features, and covering them up with big ugly bandages is no fun at all.”

The roundabout compliment goes ignored.  “Bold coming from the desiccated waste of bandages himself.”

“My bandages are a fashion accessory,” Dazai sings, “but I’ll have you know they’re coming off tonight.”

It’s an obvious choice as far as disguises go; Dazai is enough of a recluse that the only description most people have for him is ‘tall guy with one eye, covered in bandages’, and two of those things have very easy fixes.  He isn’t like Chuuya, with his unusual coloring, social tendencies, and… noticeable height.  Dazai doesn’t need to put a dress on to become someone else.

It’s surprising, too.  Chuuya raises an eyebrow.  “Dazai Osamu, showing bare skin in public?  You’ll be practically naked.”

“Just for you, baby,” Dazai grins, thumb digging into Chuuya’s thigh as he drags the razor gently down.  “Special peep show, one night only.”

Dazai hates pain — vocally, emphatically, repeating it every chance he gets — but Chuuya doesn’t think about it.  Life is fighting and fighting is pain; even if most enemies aren’t good enough to touch him, he’s had enough pulled muscles and ceilings collapsed on him to last a lifetime.  Pain isn’t a negative because it isn’t anything; it’s neutral, normal, a natural result of his own lack of ability or foresight.  It comes and goes.

In Dazai’s hands, it becomes — something else.  Dazai’s thumb bears down with more force and it aches something fierce, needling a knot Chuuya hadn’t known existed with merciless accuracy.  It’s productive and distracting, growing more and more intense until the soap-slick pad of his thumb slips on Chuuya’s wet skin.  Even then, the razor doesn’t falter, and the juxtaposition of it all — pain under Dazai’s hands and the lack thereof under the blade — makes Chuuya dizzy.

“You’re so cold,” Dazai mumbles, pitching forward to rest his cheek on Chuuya’s knee.  When he rubs catlike against him, one side of his hair dampens and sticks in strange angles.

Maybe Dazai is onto something for once, because his face does feel comparatively hot.  Or maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with Chuuya at all; maybe it’s more about how Dazai’s ears go red and his pupils round out big and black.  Maybe it’s the way that when Chuuya licks his suddenly-dry lips, Dazai instinctively follows the motion.

A shiver races through him, leaving a numb, tingly feeling at the base of his skull.  His nipples press erect against the soft fabric of Dazai’s stolen shirt.

“Yeah, well,” Chuuya says around his clumsy tongue while Dazai’s hand continues to glide up, up, up, “now you know how I feel.  You’re always cold.”  Like a corpse, he thinks, and doesn’t say.

But there’s nothing deathlike about Dazai now; a light sparks in his eyes as he skates his palm over Chuuya’s bare hip, pushing the lower hem of the shirt up his stomach.  The action exposes altogether too much of him to the open air, and his spine curls, bone pressing harder into the tub, as if to instinctively shrink back from the chill.

“Careful,” Dazai warns, though there’s nothing sharp on his tongue as he presses the razor to the top of Chuuya’s other thigh.  “I could still take a chunk out of you, you know.  With how tiny you are, even something like this could cut halfway through you.”

It’s an exaggeration, and even Dazai couldn’t manage much more than a surface wound before Chuuya kicked him off.  Still, there’s something about the words, the image, that lingers: Dazai’s long fingers covered in blood, pulling a fresh wound open until they slip inside.  Dazai cutting through his flesh to make the only place that could hold him, because their favorite form of knowing has always been streaked in violence.  The way the red would linger under Dazai’s nails long enough to turn dark, and how Chuuya would remember it every time he saw them; he’d remember it with every limping step.

“Still haven’t given up on seeing inside me someday?” Chuuya asks roughly, remembering Dazai’s words from years ago.

Dazai grins with teeth.  “Oh, chibi,” he says, “I already have.”

The final passes of the razor are almost uneventful comparatively.  Dazai stares at Chuuya and Chuuya stares back, unwilling to back down even when his legs are completely smooth.  Over-the-top always, Dazai doesn’t take his eyes off him even to reach behind, finding the shower head with alarming proficiency.  Chuuya has the sneaking suspicion he’s bathed here even more than he thought.

The water is still warm from his previous efforts, but Chuuya shivers anyway when it first touches his skin.  Dazai is not half as diligent in this as he was in shaving, and Chuuya ends up drenched all the way to his stomach, water pooling in his navel and saturating the fabric lying wrinkled there.

Or maybe that was a form of diligence too, because as soon as all the soap is gone, Dazai descends on him once more.  “Chuuya,” he says sweetly, brushing his lips to Chuuya’s knee before biting the same spot, “I did a good job, didn’t I?”

Chuuya snorts.  “Do you need that much feedback?”

Dazai pouts at his own words thrown back at him.  “My Chuuya is so mean to me.  Here I am, doing this nice thing for no personal gain or gratification—”

“Who’s your Chuuya?” Chuuya growls, though it’s too rumbly-soft at the corners.  “And please, no personal gratification?  What’s this, then?”

His foot comes down on the front of Dazai’s trousers, tented and obvious.  Dazai whines like the dog he is.

“How cruel,” Dazai cries, though color rushes down to his chest, and his eyes spark and curve as he grinds subtly up into the arch of Chuuya’s foot.  “Can’t you tell?  I live to serve.”

Derision pulls Chuuya’s lip up, and Dazai’s cock throbs.  “You’re insatiable,” Chuuya says, looking down at him through his lashes.

Already, Dazai is both pulling Chuuya’s shirt open and shoving it up to his ribcage, like he’s too impatient to even decide on one method of entry.  “It’s your fault,” he says confidently.  “When you took my virginity, you opened me to a whole new world I never knew existed—”

“Will you shut up with that?” Chuuya hisses, stepping down harder just to watch Dazai’s eyes flutter shut.  “I’m already taking responsibility, aren’t I?”

Dazai’s eyes shoot open to stare at him with a sort of glass-marble blankness.  The seriousness of his gaze has so much gravity it aches to drag them both under; his flush is pleased and prominent and tomato-red.  He really is so obvious.

Even when Dazai finally gets his shirt suitably away, even when his rough hands trace all the way up to Chuuya’s cock — he’s still so cold.  Only his mouth is warm: on Chuuya’s nipple, biting its way down his torso, wrapping tight around his cock.  The contrast nearly undoes Chuuya, gasping for breath in the bathtub, Dazai’s name on his lips.

With all the lead-up, it doesn’t take long.  Dazai is already yanking Chuuya’s hand toward his own crotch before Chuuya even gets his eyes open.

“No,” Chuuya says lazily, thoughtfully, delighting in the way Dazai freezes under his command.

The waterworks come on immediately.  “Chuuya,” he whines, not serious just as Chuuya isn’t serious, their lack of seriousness ricocheting between them like a bouncy ball, “I did a good job, didn’t I?  To think this is how you thank your only partner for—”

Chuuya gets a fistful of Dazai’s hair and tugs him close.  Instinctively, Dazai follows, mouth falling slack.  He looks good like this: wide-eyed, stupid, and obedient if only for now, when it suits him.

He smells like sex.  Chuuya wonders, if he kissed him right now, if he would taste like it, too.

With Dazai suitably disarmed, Chuuya lets go.  “Come just like this,” he says, leaning back into the tub to study Dazai’s face.  His foot comes down with more force to carry the point home, and Dazai meets it enthusiastically, rocking into him with a hiss.

Even with his eager flush and panting breaths giving him away, Dazai loves to complain.  “But Chuuya—”

“C’mon, Dazai,” Chuuya says dismissively, looking down at his partner like he’s a fly not worth swatting.  “I know you can.”

The breath Dazai sucks in is enlightening.  He needs little encouragement after that, already rocking into Chuuya’s foot all desperate and raw, hunching and shivering and whining — when he comes, he’s just as feral and stupid-looking as Chuuya remembers.

A second wave of arousal coils in Chuuya like a spring, but he’s out of the tub the moment Dazai’s orgasm-slack hands release him.

“I’m getting some more sleep before my meeting,” Chuuya says, stripping without turning around and wrapping the only towel in the room around his shoulders.  “Don’t bug me.”

Dazai objects, but Chuuya ignores him.  He’s flopping down face-first in bed in a heartbeat.

Miraculously, he does manage a few minutes of shut-eye before the tell-tale dip of another body on the mattress wakes him.  It’s Dazai, obviously — couldn’t, wouldn’t be anyone else — but he doesn’t say anything to announce himself right away; he lies there in silence, curled up on the edge of Chuuya’s bed, for so long that Chuuya nearly drifts right back to sleep.

Of course, it couldn’t last.  “Chuuya,” Dazai whispers.

Huffing a sigh through his nose, Chuuya blearily opens one eye.  “Is there something about ‘don’t bug me’ that you don’t understand?”

The last time they slept together, Chuuya had woken in the middle of the night to Dazai gazing at him just like this: strangely blank and strangely vulnerable, at once distant and constantly pressing, trying to catch something in his hands and pin it down live.

There’s something bigger at play here, beyond how they may or may not feel about each other.  It’s none of Chuuya’s business — except that it explicitly is, because everything that’s Dazai’s business becomes his business one way or another, whether he wants it or not.

But now isn’t the time for any of that; Dazai knows that, too.  “My knees hurt,” he complains, whisper-quiet.

Chuuya closes his eyes again.  “Mhm.”

“And I’m cold.”

Wordless, Chuuya flops on his back and opens his arms.  Dazai doesn’t even pretend to hesitate before climbing on top of him.

Like this, Dazai is less held and more holding down.  He’s like a weighted blanket but worse: damp and squirming and vaguely sticky.  Chuuya frowns into the crown of Dazai’s head, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to hold him still.

“Your hickeys are already gone,” Dazai says, abrupt and accusatory.

Chuuya doesn’t open his eyes, but his brows furrow.  “That so.”

Satisfaction stains Dazai’s next words sickly-sweet.  “But the bite marks are still there.”

Truth be told, Chuuya had all but forgotten about those, deep and sore though they are.  Pain is so secondary that it isn’t until now that he notices how Dazai’s giant skull presses against the still-healing wounds.

The reemerging throb makes him fuzzy and hot.  “Huh,” he says.

Dazai shifts, and Chuuya can once more feel his gaze on his face.  “You really are more agreeable like this.”

Tightening his arm, Chuuya forces Dazai back down until they’re flush.  “If you’re staying, then shut up,” Chuuya mumbles, muted to reduce the risk of getting Dazai’s hair in his mouth.  “You woke me up at five today.  I’m getting at least a few hours before I go.”

“So demanding,” Dazai sighs — but he tucks his face obediently into Chuuya’s neck as he settles in on top of him, complacent and wide-awake.

They do make it into headquarters somehow, not that Dazai is any help at all; Chuuya’s alarm gets mysteriously turned off, and useless hours pass dealing with nonsense Dazai has no doubt intentionally set in their path.  Even once they arrive, Dazai goes so far as to loiter in the back of the meeting room while Shiga tiredly makes his reports.

It’s business as usual, for the most part.  Shiga and Takahashi got into a scuffle in the warehouse district, Chiyo put down some vagrants cooking up unauthorized drugs, and another partner pair tackled the shipment discrepancies Chuuya’s been monitoring for the last few weeks.

The whole time, Takahashi can’t stop staring at Chuuya, and Chiyo can’t stop sneaking suspicious glances at Dazai.  The other faces in the room are orderly and well-maintained, and Shiga barely looks up from his screen.  Chuuya’s laptop, borrowed from his office with permission, is handed back to him at the end of the meeting with additional documentation saved in its files.

“Good work,” Chuuya says, and adjourns the meeting.  And when he walks out, laptop in hand, it’s with Dazai on his heels.

“Don’t go to your office,” Dazai says, slouching alongside him like a shadow.  “It’s already this late.  I want lunch.”

“What does that have to do with me,” Chuuya asks flatly.  “You’re a grown-ass man, aren’t you?  Go eat.”

“I’m hungry!”

“You’re always hungry.”

The pout comes out, full force.  “You promised.”

He didn’t, technically — not that technicalities have ever spared him Dazai’s goading.  Instead, Chuuya flicks his eyes up at Dazai, lingering at his mouth, before dropping away.  “Didn’t I already feed you?”

It’s hard to keep a straight face.  Chuuya feels the corners of his mouth twitch up once, twice, before finally cracking.

His smile blooms out like blood in water.  A half-step behind him, Dazai is not nearly so amused, though his flush and lack of debate tell a story of their own.

It’s kind of cute, in the way a little girl pouting after getting her pigtails pulled is cute.  Maybe that’s why, when Dazai rushes ahead toward his own office, Chuuya follows him without a fight.

If there is one truth in the world, it’s that Dazai is a conniving bastard, so Chuuya isn’t even surprised to see a dress and heels laid out on the couch of Dazai’s office.  A black wig and ostentatiously-rhinestoned sunglasses sit on his desk, arranged so that in passing, one might mistake it for a face.

The dress is deep navy, so dark it’s nearly black, all slinky-elastic and absolutely coated in glitter.  Chuuya raises an eye skeptically; it’s a color that might look good on Dazai, but not himself.

“What,” Dazai asks, sitting loosely on the corner of his desk with a shit-eating grin on his face, “you don’t like it?”

There’s no good place to sit, really.  The couch is bound to be a cesspool of glitter, and heaven knows Dazai doesn’t keep much else in here.  Unlike Chuuya’s office, there’s no chairs or settings for guests, no space for chatting subordinates.  There’s a chair for Dazai, a desk for Dazai, and a couch for Dazai — for working or sleeping or whatever else suits his flippant whims.

Sighing, Chuuya hooks an ankle around Dazai’s desk chair, rolling it nearer so that he can still see his partner’s face when he sits down.  “No, I don’t fucking like it,” he says.  “When did you buy all this, anyway?  I know you haven’t been back here today.”

Like usual, Dazai ignores his question.  “It’s the color, isn’t it?” he asks, spinning around to wield his big sparkling baby-doll eyes at him.  “You know, Chuuya, I think you could do to branch out more.  Maybe the blue would bring out your eyes.”

“I need to branch out more?” Chuuya asks, eyebrow shooting back up.  “You’ve worn the same suit every day since we were fifteen.”

Dazai’s eye sparkles conspiratorially as he leans his chin in his hand.  “Shows what you know.  I wore them before then, too.”

The boundary set between them twitches violently before settling back into place.  Dazai doesn’t talk about before.  Chuuya has never asked.

Discomfort tingles up Chuuya’s spine like a shiver.  “Maybe you should branch out,” he says, distracting both Dazai and himself as he motions to the dress.  “We’ve got a great candidate right here.”

But there’s no chagrin on Dazai’s face: no backtracking, no surprise.  “Oh, Chuuya,” he practically purrs, “if you wanted me to wear it, you should have just said so.”

Before Chuuya has the chance to process his own mistake, Dazai tugs his tie loose.  His coat comes next, revealing the shirt underneath; still damp from Chuuya’s wearing it in the bathtub earlier, it clings to his skin, color peeking through like swipes of paint from the tip of a dry brush.

Hair messy, sleeves rucked up, shirt buttoned unevenly — he looks a mess.  Chuuya finds himself watching every twist of Dazai’s clever fingers anyway as they guide buttons through and out, confident and easy.

“Is Chuuya struck dumb by my beauty?” Dazai needles, though the flush spreading down his neck is undeniably pleased.  “You look like an idiot with your mouth hanging open like that.”

His mouth is not hanging open; still, Chuuya swiftly closes his jaw, teeth clacking together.  Grumbling under his breath, he swivels his chair slightly to the side and pulls out his phone.

He has Chiyo on speed dial.  She picks up on the second ring.  “Chuuya-san?”

“Hey,” he greets, knee jittering.  He’s tense, halfway sure Dazai will abandon the ruse immediately to pounce on him, but against his expectations, Dazai goes through the motions: stripping, even demurely folding up his clothes, and then holding the dress allegedly meant for Chuuya up to his own body.

Dazai’s gaze flicks to Chuuya.  He smiles.

“Chuuya-san?  Hello?”

Chuuya swallows, looks away, clears his throat.  “Yeah, I’m here.  Listen — keep this under wraps, but I need a disguise for a mission later.  Can you come with supplies in an hour or so and help with makeup?”

The bratty, vaguely annoyed tone vanishes from Chiyo’s voice in an instant, replaced with bright enthusiasm.  “That depends,” she sings.  “Do I get to make you look pretty?”

Not bothering to hide his snooping, Dazai snorts.  Chuuya watches the way it pulses his bare ribs out and in as he steps into the slinky little dress.  It’s stretchy enough to fit but drapes all wrong, and the garment is almost obscenely short; still, there’s just — something about it.

The black of Dazai’s usual dailywear washes him out into something ghostly and impersonal.  Here, instead, swathes of dark blue draw the pink from his skin: his knuckles, his cheeks, his boney knees.  The blue paints him more — saturated.  Alive.

One thin strap rolls artlessly off his shoulder; the ruched overlayer hides the harshest lines of his body.  Dazai doesn’t have the corresponding practice or grace to really pull it off — but Chuuya doesn’t hate the way it looks on him.  Not entirely.  Not more than his usual.

“That’s the idea,” Chuuya says, mouth dry.

Chiyo is still negotiating a good time when Dazai climbs onto his lap.  Wrapping both arms over Chuuya’s shoulders, he slowly drags his fingernails through the hair at Chuuya’s nape.  Short — he must have cut them recently.

Chuuya holds his gaze, heated and obstinate.  Dazai grins like the cat with the canary, skating one hand across Chuuya’s neck to tilt his chin up.

“Your office in an hour, then,” Chiyo’s voice says.  Chuuya can hardly hear her over the sound of his own heart — or maybe it’s Dazai’s heart he’s hearing.  Maybe it’s the both of them, beating in tandem as Dazai presses them chest to chest and leans his face slowly down.

He stops just before their lips can so much as brush.  Instead, his mouth catches Chuuya’s cheek, his jaw, meandering down to tongue at his larynx like a beast.

Maybe it’s because of that pressure on his voice box that Chuuya’s words come out so strangled.  “Come to Dazai’s office instead,” he croaks, and, before Chiyo can reply, snaps his phone closed.  It hits the carpeted floor with a muffled thump, consequences tossed aside to pick up later.

Before Dazai can start preening over his victory, Chuuya grabs him by the back of the neck  “Again?” he asks, low and rough and condescending.  “Our go — what, eight hours ago — wasn’t enough for you?”

Dazai licks his lips, eye curled and twinkling.  “You’re the one who said it, Chuuya,” he replies, unabashed.  “I’m always hungry.”

He’s so annoying, so awful — truly the worst possible choice of partner.  Chuuya fights down the smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

Dazai’s boxers are longer than the dress itself; Chuuya slips his fingers under both to caress the bare skin of Dazai’s upper thigh.  On top of him, long and lean and caging him like a bird, Dazai could almost be intimidating — but Chuuya already knows he could flip Dazai into the ground right now if he wanted to.  His body stays lax, watching Dazai under his lashes, anticipating his next move.

It’s impossible to see the expression on Dazai’s face when he tucks into Chuuya’s neck.  Teeth replace tongue, gnawing dully on the wounds that haven’t yet healed until the white-hot zing of pain has Chuuya’s toes curling in his shoes.  The hum that crests from Dazai’s mouth is low and satisfied, so close to Chuuya’s ear as to send a shiver up his skin.

“Hurry up,” Chuuya grits.  “We don’t have time to be fucking around.”

When Dazai surfaces with blood in his smile, amusement at the accidental innuendo is dancing in his one visible eye.  “Hurry up and do what?” he asks, hands sliding slow down Chuuya’s body: stroking over his choker, fiddling with his shirt, lingering at his belt buckle.  “What is Chuuya waiting for, exactly?”

He’s so smug.  Chuuya levels a look at him that would probably be more intimidating if his hands weren’t on his ass.  “What, are you giving up the reins for once?”

The next time Chuuya checks, his belt is undone, and Dazai is sinking to his knees to tug Chuuya’s trousers and underwear down to his ankles.  “Well,” he simpers, “I didn’t say that.”

Chuuya isn’t exactly going to complain about another blowjob, and it’s gratifying to see Dazai like this: down on his knees in a too-short dress, hair mussed and face flushed.  It’s when Dazai reaches behind himself to pull a bottle of lube out of his desk drawer that Chuuya grows some misgivings.

“Do you always keep that there?” he asks tiredly, arching up at the corners when Dazai wraps a hand around his half-hard cock.

“Is Chuuya curious about my sexual exploits?” Dazai asks, blinking up at him.  His tongue is just barely poking out, so close to Chuuya’s cock that he can feel the heat radiating from his mouth.

Digging his fingers into the armrests, Chuuya resists the urge to chase Dazai’s mouth.  “And here I thought I was the only one.”

Dazai’s expression doesn’t change outwardly, but some microscopic change leaves Chuuya feeling smug.  Days ago, Chuuya would have believed Dazai had seduced dozens of people in this office; now, he can practically see his partner in his mind’s eye, storing a brand new bottle of lube in his desk drawer for one target only.  Blood rushes under Chuuya’s skin, as if even his veins are competing with the way Dazai’s flush seems to deepen.

All the while, Dazai is watching him.  He parts his lips to say something before uncharacteristically backing down.  Instead, reaching around to grab at Chuuya’s thighs and ass, he pulls him up into standing.

It’s awkward, with his pants around his ankles and Dazai’s desk just a little too far to comfortably hold onto.  Chuuya is unsteady on his feet in a way he isn’t used to — but Dazai steadies him, strangely tender as he nuzzles his face forward into Chuuya’s cock.

Before Chuuya can make a comment about it, Dazai reaches between Chuuya’s legs to prod lightly at his hole.  His fingers are cold with lube, though Chuuya never even heard the bottle open; his breath catches in his throat, body tightening instinctively, not even trying to allow Dazai entrance.

“We can’t,” he breathes, though that familiar too-empty fire is already stirring in him, aching to be fed.  “Chiyo is coming here in an hour.”

Dazai must feel that enthusiasm; he absorbs it, reflects it, pays it back tenfold.  “Then there’s no time to waste,” he says, cheerful and not half as unaffected as he’d pretend; his eagerness pours from him like an overflowing glass.  “I’d better start preparing you right away.”

Before Chuuya can offer up a half-hearted rebuttal, the pads of Dazai’s fingers stroke at his hole again, begging entrance.  On his knees, gazing up at him, Dazai’s lips are parted and his face is flushed; he has that blackhole-intensity in the center of his one visible eye, dark and wanting, taking in every look on Chuuya’s face and every twitch of his body with devastating longing.  His nails are freshly cut.

This isn’t about sentimentality, Chuuya tells himself — it’s the tennis ball again.  If Chuuya humors him now, he’s less likely to be jumped later tonight, when it really counts.

Dazai mouths aimlessly at Chuuya’s hip, teasingly close to his cock; his expression is cracked wide, wide open.  Chuuya shuffles his unsteady feet, grabs a steadying handful of Dazai’s hair, and takes a deep breath.

“Tell me you locked the door,” he says, exhaling slow.

Instead of answering, Dazai grins and takes Chuuya into his mouth.  And for the second time today, Chuuya closes his eyes and lets go, Dazai’s name on his tongue like a prayer.

Chapter Text

There isn’t enough time to go slow but Dazai, ever the contrarian, does it anyway, rubbing insistently at Chuuya’s entrance until his finger is slipping in with hardly any pressure at all.  Chuuya has always thought of fingering as a means to an end but it’s different experiencing the reality of someone else’s fingers: somehow heavier and lighter all at once, making him tense and gasp and shudder by doing hardly anything at all.

Chuuya has always had a masterful control over his own body.  Something about sex is — different.  Standing on shaky feet, Chuuya bends dramatically at the waist just to have something to hold onto, hot palms pressed to the impersonal wood of Dazai’s desk.  He pushes further into Dazai’s face in the process, and Dazai hums happily, nuzzling against his upper thigh, biting at the line between his hip and crotch.

His lone finger pushes farther in and curls.  He laughs, genuinely gleeful, and grasps Chuuya’s half-hard cock before Chuuya can kick him in retribution.

A gasp snakes from Chuuya’s mouth before he can help it; his hips jerk forward instinctively, tugging at the steadfast hook of Dazai’s finger so hard his eyes unfocus.

Dazai tuts, stroking Chuuya with a laziness that doesn’t match the crazed look in his eye.  He presses the flat of his tongue to Chuuya’s slit, lapping once, twice, before taking him into his mouth.  The warm, wet heat is almost too much — the softness of his cheek, the slow curve of his tongue.

Gasping, Chuuya sinks one hand into Dazai’s hair, holding at the root and pulling hard.  “Thought you were just preparing me,” he gasps.

Dazai hums before pulling back, like the brat he is.  “I am,” he says, “but first, you need to relax .”

Before Chuuya can reply that he’s perfectly relaxed, Dazai makes to retract his finger.  Instinctively, Chuuya tightens, and Dazai smiles indulgently before putting his mouth on him again.

Sighing, Chuuya decides he’ll give Dazai this one.  Knees bent, head ducked, one hand on the desk holds him up; the other remains tangled in Dazai’s fringe, pulling for the sake of pulling.

It isn’t long before Dazai manages to push his finger in and out without trouble, and not long after that before a second one follows.  When he curls them, he does it hard, brushing against something that has stars bursting behind Chuuya’s eyes.

“H-hold it,” Chuuya grits, knees weak.

“That’s right,” Dazai says, still breathless from Chuuya’s cock in his mouth, “We’re in a rush, aren’t we?”

He avoids the spot after that.  Chuuya is one quip away from strangling him.

It’s impossible to keep track of time like this.  By the time Dazai is shoving a third finger inside him, Chuuya is having trouble remembering they even have a deadline.  Lube drips down his thighs, doubtlessly staining the fabric rumpled below; the glazed wood of Dazai’s desk clouds with heat from Chuuya’s clawing hand.

And Dazai keeps him from the edge the whole time, keeping from his prostate and periodically pulling his mouth off him to lean his cheek on Chuuya’s hip and grin.  He’s all smug and desperate, content and hungry, pulling at the seams to take him apart.

Sucking an impatient breath through his teeth, Chuuya wrenches Dazai’s head back by the hair.  “Get on with it,” he croaks.  “We don’t have all day.”

Dazai is apparently in an amazing mood, because he doesn’t even complain — just rises into standing and pulls Chuuya in close.  Hand on the back of Chuuya’s neck, he yanks him sideways to gnaw on the skin his shirt collar doesn’t cover: not hard enough to wound like he had before, but hard enough to pop blood vessels, scraping teeth painting wide swathes of dark pink in their wake.  Mere centimeters away, hidden under bandages and fabric, the not-yet-healed injuries on his shoulder throb, as if anticipating their reopening on Dazai’s bared canines.

That throb shakes its way up Chuuya’s body, from his curling toes to his eyes squeezed shut.  The itchy fabric of Dazai’s dress scrapes unevenly on Chuuya’s exposed skin, and impatience bears down on him — sucking him in, eating him whole.

“Hurry up,” he says, nimbly side-stepping Dazai to hop up on the desk.  One gloved hand grips his bare ass, fingertips digging into plush skin to hold his hole teasingly open.

The fluorescents light Dazai up harshly, the edges of his dark hair glowing with a halo, his face all but hidden in the contrasting shadow.  “Of course,” he says a second late.  “You wouldn’t want your pretty little subordinate seeing you like this, would you?  Getting fucked in an unlocked office with your pants around your ankles?”

“So you didn’t lock it—”

Cold lube poured directly on Chuuya’s skin has his words jolting to a stop in his mouth.  He had never seen Dazai reach for the bottle again; the bastard would have made an amazing magician in another life.

He looks so self-assured; the short, rumpled dress does nothing to discount that, not even when Dazai yanks it unevenly up to get a hand on his own cock.  It’s red and leaking, caught between the navy dress and Dazai’s dark underwear: a visual representation of Chuuya’s impatience reflected back at him, using his partner as a mirror.  Intimidatingly large, too — especially when Dazai lets it rest briefly on Chuuya’s bare stomach, pre-cum smudged on the button-down he hadn’t bothered to remove.

Then Dazai shifts, and the blunt head of his cock prods lightly at Chuuya’s entrance.  “It would get back to the rest of your team, I imagine,” he continues babbling, eye dark and stormy.  “She doesn’t seem the type to keep a secret — ah, and imagine the look on that poor little Takahashi’s face when he finds out you let your partner hike his dress up to fuck you into the desk—”

Arousal shoots through Chuuya like a burning bullet.  Not from Chiyo seeing him like this, and not even really from Takahashi finding out, but — the jealousy, the possessiveness, the way Dazai talks about them like a growling, territorial dog —

He hooks an ankle around Dazai’s hips with the casual imperiousness of someone who already knows they’ll get exactly what they want.  “Don’t be stupid,” he says — face, neck, chest burning.  “Just fuck me already.”

The edge of Dazai’s mouth pulls up — half-grin, half-snarl.  He’ll never be the kind of pet you can teach not to bite.

The kiss he presses to Chuuya’s cheek is gentle, a brush of lips mere centimeters from Chuuya’s own.

Then he grabs hold of Chuuya’s hips in a white-knuckled hold, and slams inside him in one heavy motion.

The thrust punches Chuuya’s breath out.  He’s too stretched open for there to be any pain but the overwhelming force of it almost hurts anyway; it’s all too much, too fast, until Chuuya can feel Dazai in his veins, until he can feel the prodding length of him with every shuddered breath.  His body strains to accept Dazai’s cock, thick and heavy, and Chuuya doesn’t even realize he’d shut his eyes until he’s struggling to open them again.

Experimentally, he tightens; the shockwave of pleasure shoots up his spine, fizzling like fireworks behind his ears.  He must have arched his back automatically, but every time he tries to relax, Dazai’s cock rubs his prostate in a way that’s too pleasurable to feel good.  So he stays arched, shoulder blades pressing hard into the desk, the silky fabric of his shirt making him shift just often enough to keep him unsteady.

When Dazai pulls out halfway just to shove himself right back in, that same fabric has Chuuya’s whole body moving with the motion.  Dazai’s body weight comes down and the desk creaks; Chuuya is pushed up until the collar of his shirt digs uncomfortably into his neck, stars bursting behind his eyes.  He’s so hot and full and, in spite of that, still aware of the unlocked door, of the uneven weight of his pants dangling from one ankle, of the too-tight way Dazai grips his thighs.  Dazai pulls out in a drag and the friction makes Chuuya’s teeth grit; he thrusts in and the stretch is almost enough to hurt.

A gripe is already on the tip of Chuuya’s tongue when he finally gets his eyes open — but Dazai isn’t looking at him.  Not at his face, at least; instead, his lone eye darts around Chuuya’s body with so much force it paints him unfocused, attention darting here and there like a pinball.  His iris is scarlet and swirling with desire, with frustration, with pure feral want, just as desperate and disorganized as the last time he’d been inside him but in different shades.  He fucks him like they’re running out of time, and Chuuya doubts it only has to do with Chiyo.

Then Dazai pulls out again, scraping all of Chuuya’s thoughts out with it.  Gasping, Chuuya throws his head back until the back of it slams into the desk, neck bared in a pale arch.  His choker digs into his jugular, pressing in just enough that for an instant, Chuuya instinctively holds his breath.  Dazai sheathes himself back inside him in the same moment that Chuuya exhales, and Chuuya’s resulting moan echoes shockingly loud around every corner of the room.

Chuuya, who has a few other things on his mind, thinks little of it until Dazai freezes hilted inside him.  A pathetic, weak, warbling groan coaxes free of his mouth, and Chuuya swears he feels his cock twitch and harden inside him.

Before Chuuya can poke fun at him for it, Dazai’s pace resumes, harder and harder and faster and faster until the noise of skin on skin is all Chuuya can hear over his pounding heart.

His eyes must have slipped shut again, head turned so that his cheek is pressed to the desk and his breath leaves light condensation on the wood.  He doesn’t open them again until Dazai’s hand brushes almost curiously over his Adam’s apple, just above his choker.

Dazai’s eye is warm but his smile is mean.  “I’ve always liked the way these look on you,” he says, low and slow like a pot set to simmer.  One finger snakes under the front of the leather, nail digging loosely into skin.  “Stark and softened.  You always did like accessories, didn’t you?”

Though he puts on the airs of an unaffected man, Chuuya knows better: sees the gloss of sweat on his brow, the erratic thrum of his pulse.  He’s overthinking again.

Tightening his legs around Dazai’s hips, Chuuya throws his weight into their movements, encouraging Dazai to follow suit.  Their fucking becomes a competition just like everything becomes a competition, until each punishing thrust shoves Chuuya down so thoroughly it might hurt someone else.  As is, Chuuya wouldn’t be surprised to find the desk’s edge bruised in a line on his ass.

“I can tell you’re scheming,” Chuuya says, short and breathless.  “If you carve your name into my chokers, inside or out—”

“What?” Dazai asks, wide-eyed and eager, breath coming fast through parted lips.  “You’ll cut me up?”

If possible, his next thrust is even harder.  Chuuya might laugh if he had the breath.

“Nothing you’d like so much,” he manages, bracing his hands on the table for better control.  His abdomen tenses and flexes as he focuses on taking it, taking everything Dazai can give him and then some, rocking out and into every stroke.  “I’ll—”

Before he can finish the thought, Dazai wraps his hand around the front of Chuuya’s neck in earnest.  Chuuya’s words skid to a stop in his mouth.

It’s almost impersonal to have Dazai’s hand through the leather rather than on his skin — but Dazai’s right.  Where once the ridge of the choker dug stiffly into his neck, it now wraps around like a second skin, softened and warmed into just another part of him.  Dazai’s boney hand is stretched wide, thumb and pointer finger at the sides of his neck; the meat of his palm presses down light and even.  It doesn’t restrict Chuuya’s breathing in any physical way, but Chuuya immediately feels lightheaded anyway, drawing his knees in close and tightening around Dazai on instinct.

The hold tightens — incrementally, bit by bit, the pads of Dazai’s fingers just barely pinching in.  Somehow, though his thrusts don’t lessen, his arm doesn’t shake at all.

A lightness shocks up and down Chuuya’s spine, pooling like mercury in his lower back and the base of his spine.  Dazai rocks and Chuuya can feel him startlingly deep, lighting him up in sparks that burst white behind his closed eyelids.  His legs jerk but it’s almost out of his control — exhilaratingly so, shaking and tightening like someone else is bidding them to do so.  The firm hold of Dazai’s hand bears steadily down, more and more until lightheadedness makes Chuuya’s blood sing, until Chuuya is sure that Dazai’s fingerprints will stamp straight through the leather to tattoo their imprint on his neck.

All the while, Dazai hasn’t stopped fucking him.  He gazes down with a glint in his eye and his lip pulled hard between teeth; Chuuya arches his back and claws Dazai’s shoulder and stares at his mouth, just waiting for blood.

The first breath of air once Dazai lets up is sweet as sugar.  The oxygen is euphoric and Chuuya tightens automatically, abandoning his prior handholds to tangle his fingers in Dazai’s nape.  Even though his airflow hadn’t been fully restricted, the relief felt in the absence of the pressure feels so much like letting go that it’s almost like coming.

Chuuya must have gotten lost in it — the fullness, the friction, the creak in his throat — because he blinks, and suddenly Dazai is pitched down into him, nuzzling his face in Chuuya’s neck.  “You’re close,” he murmurs, pleased and matter-of-fact, stroking a thumb over Chuuya’s cheek with disturbing tenderness.

He’s right, of course.  Chuuya bites him anyway.  “Unlike a certain idiot,” he says, voice scraped rough, “I know how to hurry.”

Dazai doesn’t whine at the crescent embossed on his skin; that’s the first warning.  Instead, deceptively light, he says, “Takahashi has never seen you like this, has he?”

The next thrust is more of a grind, pushing in and in and in as if to carve a new place for himself in Chuuya’s guts.  Chuuya pants, legs tightening around Dazai hard enough to bruise.

It’s hard to think, harder to reply; Chuuya only manages after several seconds more of debilitating grinding.  “Are you,” he starts, stops, starts.  “Are you really waiting for me to answer that, or—”

A sharp yank out.  Chuuya’s voice is pulled forcefully from his chest, and he reaches for Dazai in an instinctive attempt to pull him closer.

Dazai slams him down by the throat.  “You don’t need to,” he says, heady and breathless, nearly bragging.  “He hasn’t; no one has.  No one but me.”

Chuuya’s blood boils and rushes and hums, and suddenly all of it — the hand on his throat, the fullness inside him, the half-crazed look on Dazai’s face — has him there .  The spiral of tension in his stomach tightens and tightens and Dazai just keeps moving like he doesn’t notice or care; clenching his jaw until his teeth ache, Chuuya gets one hand around his cock, pumps once, twice — and comes, gasping, rocking himself down onto Dazai with shaking, jerky movements.

By the time Chuuya has come down enough to open his eyes, Dazai is barely moving; all of his energy seems to be funneled into watching Chuuya’s face, his grinding only an automatic afterthought.  His hand lingers on Chuuya’s neck, barely there.

Affection shoots through Chuuya like a drug, burning its way through his bloodstream.  “You’re always so slow,” he says, creaky and used.  One hand comes up to cup Dazai’s cheek, flushed and warm; Dazai leans into it instantly, folding like wet cardboard.  “Finish up.  We have work to do.”

It doesn’t come out nearly as harsh as he’d meant, but Dazai doesn’t call him out on it.  In an instant, his hand darts from Chuuya’s throat to his wrist.  His teeth scrape lightly over the meat of Chuuya’s palm as if to mirror Chuuya’s earlier bite before a barely-there brush of lips takes its place.

“Chuuya could do something to help,” he says, all bright and bratty, persona shifted entirely from the domineering, intensely jealous figure from before.

But wherever Dazai is, Chuuya is only at most a half-step behind.  “Spoiled,” he snorts even as his legs wrap fully around Dazai’s hips once more, holding him in place while Chuuya rolls his body down his cock.  The oversensitivity is more pleasant than painful this time, prickling warm and slow up and down his spine as he encourages Dazai to use his body, leading him into every increasing movement until he’s fucking him in a bunny-like frenzy.

Privately, in his tired state, Chuuya can admit that his partner is pretty like this: dark bangs in his face, face pinched and expressive, slinky dress all but sliding off of him.  Without thinking, Chuuya lays a hand across Dazai’s chest, two fingers on either side of a nipple; Dazai’s hips stutter, and Chuuya closes the distance between his fingers to pinch it between.

Dazai’s doe eyes bear down at him, cute and teary.  “Chuuya,” he says, and then again, higher this time, when Chuuya tweaks a nipple.  “Chuuya,” squeaky and pained, thrusting in and in and in, “ Chuuya —”

He pulls his bottom lip sweetly between his teeth when he comes.  By the time he’s finished, holding Chuuya’s hips with bruising force, his lip is bullied plump and pink.  He collapses over Chuuya, mouth on his cheek, breath in his ear.

Chuuya feels warm all over.  Maybe it’s because Dazai came in him again, the bastard.

Still, there’s no afterglow for people like them — and for all he knows, Chiyo could be coming in any second now.  Summoning what’s left of his strength, Chuuya delivers a swift blow to Dazai’s flank.  Dazai crumples to the floor, moaning and dramatic, while Chuuya rolls his eyes and forces himself upright.  His hips and lower back pang in a familiar, irritating way, but he pays that no mind either as he hastily checks the time.

They have fifteen minutes until the hour.  Chiyo is almost never on time, but she’d sounded suspicious and enthusiastic enough on the phone that Chuuya wouldn’t put it past her to get here early.  There’s no time to waste.

The moment Chuuya’s foot hits the ground, though, Dazai’s hand clamps around his ankle like a vice.

“Where are you going?” Dazai pouts, moody and stormy and liquid, still sprawled on the floor in feline despondence.  Chuuya might kick him, if he thought Dazai was in the mood to dodge.

As is, Chuuya just rolls his eyes and wrenches his ankle loose.  “Stop clinging,” he says thoughtlessly.  “It’s creeping me out.”

Dazai doesn’t bite back, but his eyes stay fixed firmly on Chuuya’s back.  His stubbornness emanates so thick from his body that Chuuya can feel it stinging in his nose, even once the door to the connected bathroom is closed.

When he emerges minutes later, though, hair still wet from the fastest shower of his life, Dazai is sitting primly at his desk, ignoring Chuuya to stare intently at his computer monitor.  A low-definition game of chess is pulled up, but even though Dazai doubtless already knows a hundred different ways to win, the computer’s white team is still waiting on Dazai to make his next move.

Chuuya is quickly forming a grudge against whatever it is bothering Dazai these days.  Not because it’s bothering Dazai; if anything, that can only be a bonus in Chuuya’s books.  But he’s insufferable in his loud silences, and Chuuya is not looking forward to cleaning up the mess that waits at the end of this match.

For now, though, there are more important foes to face — for instance, the dress waiting expectantly on the sofa, exactly where the last had laid.  It’s a warm, pearly ivory this time: smooth and strappy, shiny silk draped all the way from its low neckline to the slit up the thigh.  Juxtaposed to the dark room, surrounded by jewelry, it’s almost uncomfortably bridal.

Unfortunately, they’re too short on time for Chuuya to argue; it’s his own fault for leaving this up to Dazai, anyway.  Still stewing in his own juices at the computer, Dazai wouldn’t be any fun to yell at now, so Chuuya settles for loudly grumbling as he steps into the dress, heels, and underthings provided.  Thankfully, Dazai used his brain just this once; while the underwear is lacy, it isn’t half as strappy or unsubstantial as the dress, hugging his hips smooth and secure.

No matter how heavy Dazai’s eyes are, he’s always facing away when Chuuya checks.  Snorting, Chuuya takes the opportunity to look him over unimpeded, if only to be sure he won’t assail Chiyo’s poor eyes.

Dazai wears a black suit every day of the week; he’s worn one virtually every day Chuuya has known him.  This one, too, is not all too different — except for the vest, and the off-white handkerchief peeking out of the jacket pocket, and the fact that, when he takes a second look, the color isn’t black at all, but a deep, dark blue.  If there were glitter dripping from every stitch, it might match the dress he’d had on mere minutes before, and it suits his skin just as well; even though Dazai is just as pallid and miserable as usual, there’s a rosiness to him that wasn’t there before.

Between that and the missing bandages, Dazai does look believably like someone else.  If Chuuya didn’t know any better, he might wonder the identity of this approachable young man, sitting politely in the Port Mafia demon prodigy’s office.

Still playing his ignoring game, Dazai adamantly does not look at Chuuya — though his body posture tightens near imperceptibly.  Chuuya holds in a mean laugh as he flops gracelessly onto the sofa to watch the door.

Chiyo is still visibly skeptical when she arrives at Dazai’s office, dragging an improbable number of bags and containers behind her.  As she fawns over Chuuya’s outfit, tugging the fabric here and there, adjusting the ties in the back, she can’t stop shooting suspicious glares Dazai’s way.

It isn’t until Dazai vacates the desk, exiting to the bathroom without a fight, that she relaxes.  Sitting on the surface they’d only just finished having sex on, Chiyo puts this and that product on Chuuya’s face, eyes, neck, lips, and Chuuya looks steadfastly past her out the window, pretending not to notice when she pokes and prods the marks on his shoulders and neck.

The black wig and ostentatiously-rhinestoned sunglasses are still on Dazai’s desk, right beside them.  They seem to stare through Chuuya during the whole process, watching him as he jokes and makes smalltalk with Chiyo; Chuuya wouldn’t be surprised if Dazai had managed to get a tiny camera in one or both of them somehow, just to watch him like a creep even here.

Dazai doesn’t come back from the bathroom until Chiyo leaves.  His hair is damp and freshly-styled, swept out of his face.  And it’s brief, but for a split second, he freezes in the doorway when he catches sight of Chuuya sitting pretty on his desk.

Chuuya isn’t so modest that he doesn’t know why.  Chiyo did her job well, after all.  But basking in Dazai’s attention has never been Chuuya’s style, so he only glances up from his phone for a second to scoff.  “You’ve got to stop putting the same clothes on after you shower.  It’s disgusting.”

The smile that pulls across Dazai’s face is dazed and weak, but his mouth is as smart as ever.  “I didn’t know slugs had a sense of hygiene.  Did you grow a brain while I was gone?”

“Are you admitting to taking forever in there?”

“Aw, Chuuya missed me!”

Groaning, Chuuya hops off the desk, sweeping his coat behind him.  “Let’s go, loser.  We’re going to be late.”

For the sake of anonymity, they can’t take one of the usual cars.  The two of them argue over who should drive — Dazai makes more sense for their particular cover, but Chuuya doesn’t drive like a fucking moron — the whole walk to a public square, where they quickly hail a cab.

The cabbie is friendly, but Chuuya doesn’t speak to him; his control over his voice isn't as precise as his control over his body, and it’s not worth the effort before the mission has even started.  Crossing his legs, he stares out the window and pretends not to feel the older man’s gaze drag slow up his body.

Dazai’s hand settles heavy on his knee, sliding dangerously high up the slit on his thigh.  Though Chuuya isn’t looking at him, he can hear the dangerous smile on his face.  “Sorry, we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

Tactless, showy, to-the-point.  Chuuya doesn’t feel the man’s eyes on him the rest of the trip.

They really are running late, and it’s a rush of activity getting to and on the boat.  It’s smaller than Chuuya pictured — or maybe it only looks smaller.  No matter how many people funnel in, there always feels to be a strange absence of bodies.

Maybe that’s why it feels intentional when Dazai pulls him toward the nearest throng of people — the bar — right away.  Holding onto his arm, Chuuya follows with little protest other than a swift kick to the back of the ankle, which Dazai nimbly and predictably dodges.

Dazai only orders one drink, hogging it selfishly while Chuuya scans the nearby crowd.  It really is all young people: some teenagers crowd anxiously around, uncertain if they’ll be served; others who have already taken the plunge flush and sway with drink, taking full advantage of the open bar.  Guests of other ages linger, too, talking in groups and clinking their glasses together, or ditching their companions to sneak away.

It’s early for a party.  The sun is still making up its mind about setting, pulling out reluctant rosy handfuls from under the clouds.  The water shimmers with light, twinkling and nauseating, and the still-visible harbor bustles with life.

And all of them are trapped here for the foreseeable future — long into the night, when the ship meanders back.  It’s a clever way to keep miscreants out; it’s a strange commitment, too.  After all, its bigwig sponsor is trapped right along with them.

Hand tight on Chuuya’s waist, Dazai pulls him close.  “We can’t have you getting wasted on a glass yet,” he teases, voice low.  “We’re meeting our contact at the bar upstairs.”

He’s up to something fishy again.  Chuuya eyes him skeptically, but doesn’t bother to fight back when he’s dragged away once again.

It’s a boring affair overall.  Dazai plays nice while Chuuya plays the part of his arrogant, high-maintenance girlfriend, rolling his eyes and barely speaking to anyone.  He grinds his heels into Dazai’s nice shoes, pulls on his sleeves, smacks his hands when he gets too touchy — and the people around them just eat it up, eyes lingering every time they step into a room.  Chuuya tells himself it’s because some animal hindbrain part of them recognizes soukoku as a threat — but deep down he knows the truth.  They’re both primped and polished, and it must be something to watch a handsome man get yanked around the way he’s been yanking Dazai around all night.

And still, Chuuya has not seen hide nor hair of any suspicious lurkers.  If the ability users they’re looking for are here after all, they must have the sense to be discreet; Chuuya has been keeping his eye out for any groups or especially tense individuals, but all he’s found is a lot of keyed-up kids.

Maybe it would have been better to come in a worse disguise, so the fight could just come to him.  All this waiting around is just making his feet hurt.

Dazai pulls him into another room, already turning to chat with another young man leaned against the doorway.  He’s been wearing that sweet, guileless smile from the moment he whipped out their fake ID’s to board: deceptive and dangerous, candies rolling loose in a lead-painted bowl, reeking of trouble and burnt sugar.  Chuuya slips away to escape the smell, making a bee-line for one of the snack-touting waiters waltzing across the floor.

It’s a real challenge to not use his ability.  Chuuya doesn’t remember any grand awakening to his gift; it’s older than even his oldest memories.  Dazai’s ability is his trump card and Kouyou’s is an extension of her arm; Mori’s is a companion; Lippmann’s was a sixth sense.  But Chuuya’s ability has only ever been what it is, as much a part of him as his blood or memories, and forcing himself not to reach for it feels like trying to walk without touching the floor.

It would be so easy to get one of those cocktail shrimps if he could use it; just a crook of his finger and —

Another body collides with his, their chin knocking his shoulder.  Even in heels, it takes only a second for Chuuya to catch himself; in that time, the other person — a young girl, by the looks of it — is already mumbling her apologies and skirting by.

Something about her is familiar.  Chuuya finds himself turned to watch her narrow back disappear, trying to place that silvery-brown hair somewhere in his memory, or otherwise find some suspicious thread of behavior to follow to explain the feeling tugging his gut.  But then she disappears from the room, and the feeling disappears with her.

By now, the party is starting in earnest.  Unfamiliar bodies sway and shift, pressed hip to hip and knee to knee, the scent of sweat and booze and perfume mixing into a heady fog.  Maybe that’s why Chuuya lets himself stand there a moment too long, staring after the back of a stranger.  Maybe that’s why he doesn’t pull away when a hand settles loose over his shoulder.

“Chuuya-san?” someone whispers over the crowd — unsure, sweet, boyish.  “It is you, isn't it?”

His cover is blown — but Chuuya knows that voice.  Looking up through his painted lashes, brows drawn and exhale pushed harsh through his nose, he tugs the figure closer, lowered voice barely coasting the tight space between their bodies.  “Takahashi?”

Takahashi Shinkichi, Chuuya’s trusted subordinate, blinks down at him owlishly.  He’s dressed up for the event, suit neat but for a mussed tie, like he’d knotted it wrong, or fiddled too much.  Either that’s makeup on his face or, more likely, he’s blushing: staring down at Chuuya’s disguise, obviously fighting to keep his eyes to himself, holding his breath.  Chuuya might be flattered, if the situation weren’t so bizarre.

“Hi, Chuuya-san,” Takahashi squeaks, obediently bent down in a strange angle, his breath tickling Chuuya’s cheek.  “Could you please let me go now?”

Chuuya studies him a moment longer before releasing his grip, pushing Takahashi back by the shoulder.  “Come,” he grits, and stalks to the door without waiting for Takahashi to bumble after him.

It’s already dark outside, though not fully; Yokohama, left behind on the shore though it is, never dims, trapping the lot of them in its glow even here.  Every room in the ship’s open cavity bleeds a warm yellow-orange, spilling out to the dark water beyond.  Even the deck, largely deserted though it may be, is studded periodically with light: white and indistinct, too bright to look at directly.

Not that Chuuya is bothered by it.  He’s lived and breathed cities as long as he can remember, and all the messes that come with them: the good and bad, the visibility and light pollution, the laughter leaking out from the party into the open sea.

Leaning his elbows on the railing, back to the water, he sighs.  The ship isn’t large enough to hide its rocking when you’re looking for it, but Chuuya isn’t bothered by that either; tilting his head to the side, wig tickling his bare shoulders, he leans subtly into the wave.

Then he flicks his eyes up, catching Takahashi in his starstruck gaping.  Embarrassment flicks lazily under Chuuya’s skin, but he pushes it aside impatiently; the mission comes first, as always.

“What are you doing here?” he asks lowly.

Takahashi flinches, fumbling his hold on the railing beside Chuuya.  “I,” he starts, stops, hesitates.  His voice is barely louder than a whisper.  “Chiyo-san told me you would be here.”

Of course.  Chuuya had expected news of this particular excursion to make it around his team eventually; these things always do.  Granted, this seems early.  Chuuya can’t even remember what particular details he’d given to Chiyo during the time she’d been working on him tonight; had she or Takahashi simply pieced together the bits of information he'd mentioned offhand to uncover his destination?

With another sigh, Chuuya turns to face the sea.  “That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?”

There’s surprise splattered all over Takahashi’s face, rising up to mingle with his flush.  Chuuya has never really scolded him before — but then, Takahashi has never really put a mission in danger before.  His cover is good, but not good enough to get away with an undisguised if largely unknown mafioso following on his heels for long.

“I’m sorry, Chuuya-san,” Takahashi rushes, eyes wide.  “It just seemed so risky, and you only brought Dazai-san with you, and I just thought with my gift, I could help if something went—”

If it wouldn’t ruin all of Chiyo’s good work, Chuuya would drag a hand down his face.  She’s going to need to get a talking-to for this, too.  “Did I ask you to come,” he asks, tiredly rhetorical, and before Takahashi can finish opening his mouth, “And don’t talk shit about Dazai where he can hear you.  He’s a vengeful little prick if I’ve ever met one.”

“Chuuya-san—”

“Don’t say my name either, Takahashi,” Chuuya scolds in a rough whisper, eyes fixed on the shore.  “You’ll blow my cover.”

Takahashi falls silent after that.  It’s a shame to hurt the kid’s feelings, but there’s nothing to do about it; Chuuya’s priority list for the night is already booked.

It’s true that Takahashi’s gift would be useful here.  The biggest hole in the plan is their escape in a worst-case scenario; Dazai’s nullification means that Chuuya can’t just haul ass out of here without abandoning him.  ‘ Triumph of the Sparrow ’ lets Takahashi manipulate the space around him, twisting the very fabric of the world like clay in his hand.  Most likely, he could get the three of them safely to shore; the whole ship might come with them, but Chuuya can handle some hundred armed guards in his sleep.

Of course, they don’t need the help.  Dazai knows that Chuuya can’t manipulate gravity while holding him, so if he did have to leave him, Chuuya has no doubt Dazai would be perfectly fine; most likely, he’d get some vital information in the time it took to escape.  And Dazai doesn’t like Takahashi enough to let him do something so useful in one of his plans, anyway.

That’s not the problem.  The problem is that this is Chuuya’s mission — only his, apart from Dazai — and yet Takahashi is standing here, being battered by the sea just the same as him.

There’s a long pause.  “So,” Takahashi says eventually.  The look on his face is strange: twisted up and stiff, like he bit down on something unpleasant.  His usually-clear gray eyes are stormy.  “You and Dazai-san.”

The attempt at a normal tone of voice is appreciated, stilted though it may be.  The cigarette offered as a peace offering is even more appreciated, and Chuuya indulgently lets Takahashi light it for him, one hand curled lazily to protect it from the wind.

Still, this isn’t a conversation Chuuya is interested in having.

Tilting his head back toward the water, Chuuya lets his first inhale out with a sigh.  Takahashi takes his cigarettes light: the smoke goes down smooth and breathes out even smoother, that telltale tobacco licorice crawling low between his teeth.  Chuuya isn’t a smoker by habit but the extra kick of clarity is appreciated to get through this particularly exhausting chapter in this already exhausting day.

“Go lie low somewhere, Takahashi,” Chuuya says, watching the embers crumble the end of his cigarette black.  “You shouldn’t have come in the first place.  If anyone asks, you don’t know me.”

This, clearly, is not the response Takahashi expected.  He bounces alert, objection half out of his mouth.  “Chuuya-san—!”

“You, me, and Chiyo are going to sit down and have a chat about this later,” he interrupts coldly.  “Voice your complaints then.”

Takahashi is a good boy.  He closes his mouth, tucks his tail between his legs, and leaves Chuuya to smoke in peace.  With any luck, he really will fuck off to some other corner of the ship for the rest of the night, and Chuuya can get on with his job without issue.

Once, years before Chuuya left the Sheep, one of the younger members had taken in a stray kitten.  They’d been squatting in an old house that winter, locks broken and wind whistling through every wall — and Chuuya, newly-knighted as leader wearing shoes three sizes too big, hadn’t had the heart to tell the watery-eyed little girl to abandon it.  Perched midair beside a cracked window, he’d kept watch while the two young, fragile things slept curled up into each other, remembering for the millionth time that some things are too weak to so much as exist without protection.

The next week, the kitten stopped sneezing, and its broken tail finally set bent.  The week after that, some of the older boys brought dogs home.

“To guard,” they’d said, eager smiles decorated with knocked-out teeth.  The Sheep were always defenseless without him but it was worse in those early days, and Chuuya had spent days and nights going stir crazy, guarding the only people he knew — people that were good as dead the moment he turned his back.

But they were low on supplies: food, medicine, everything.  And the last time Shirase had gone looking, he’d returned with nothing to show for it but a broken arm.

“Fine,” he’d said.  He came back with all the things they needed, blood on his knuckles and a shovel under his arm.  The little girl cried, and Chuuya let her help dig the grave for that tiny, pathetic kitten even as the resistance of the frozen ground made her hands blister and split.

The bloodstains remained in that mattress even when they finally left it behind.  Sometimes, he can still smell that room when he closes his eyes: the way decomposition and betrayal seemed to linger, even without a corpse to tether to.

Leaned against the railing, cold creeping up his arms like choking vines, Chuuya pulls the cigarette from his mouth and blows.  He’s spent his whole life as an attack dog; it’s not like he has any space to judge.

Everyone does the job they’re given.  There’s no space for sentimentality.

A door creaks, and familiar footsteps trace a path behind him.  “There you are, sweetie,” Dazai says, low and pleased as he drapes his jacket over Chuuya’s shoulders.  “Are you done chasing the strays out?”

“Watch it,” Chuuya cautions under his breath, pulling the jacket closer to himself.  Dazai runs cold, so no doubt he’ll regret this foolish attempt to humiliate him; Chuuya won’t give it back until he’s groveling.

For now, though, Dazai’s good mood persists.  Bending his green bean body, he leans his elbows on the railing, one forearm pressed all the way against Chuuya’s, their pinkies just brushing in the air.  A smooth hum spills from his lips, quietly distracting, as they look out at the water.

The ship travels in a wide arc around the bay, never getting too far out into sea.  There’s no fog tonight, and it’s a fairly smooth ride; it’s easy to see the shoreline from here.  The thick of the city is at the center of attention, a glittering jewel under a million tiny spotlights, but the less lit corners creep into sight when they’re close enough.  From here, Chuuya can see the warehouses his team has been reporting squatters in lately, and the rocks beside them that Dazai had so casually suggested they throw themselves off of not a week ago.

Then another outcropping comes into view: smaller rocks, lining a smooth, sandy shore.  Surrounded by looming warehouses, it’s a relative spot of peace in the turbulence.  Chuuya traces it with his eyes, wryly thinking that if he were someone else, he might find it symbolic; as is, all he’s thinking is that if Dazai does shove him off those rocks, he at least knows where to swim.

The ship turns, and light shifts, and that little stretch of shore leaves his sight.  Chuuya listens a moment to make sure they don’t have any potential eavesdroppers nearby before turning to Dazai.  “Are they here or not?”

“Whoever do you mean, darling?” Dazai asks, wide-eyed and innocent.  It is an answer, whether it was supposed to be or not; Dazai would never be so pleased and relaxed if this wasn’t netting him something.

Maybe if Chuuya leans farther out over the ledge, their sneaky malefactors will come out of the woodwork and try to push him over.  That would be the most simple solution.

But then, if that was going to work, they wouldn’t be in these goddamned disguises.  Chuuya sighs again.  “I’ll die of old age before this case gets solved, the way tonight is going.”

“Patience,” Dazai says, pinkie dragging slow and spider-like between Chuuya’s fingers and down the back of his hand.  “As if I’d let you die from something so boring as old age.”

Chuuya rolls his eyes.  “Right, I forgot about your elaborate flour trap, or mud trap, or water trap—”

“There’s always the rocks,” Dazai interrupts cheerfully.  “Your loyal partner is ready and willing to jump at any time.”

The rocks that definitely won’t, can’t, and wouldn’t kill them.  Chuuya squints at Dazai, aware that this is a code, and unsure what’s so important about it that he has to hammer it in multiple times like this.

“I don’t see why we would be jumping together,” he says eventually.  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”  Ignoring the fact that he’s here with him now, on this boat.  “And maybe you forgot, but the point of all those plans is to kill me , moron.  If you get us both stuck in some death trap, don’t expect me to be saving you, too.”

“Chuuya is so cruel, leaving me behind to die a lonely, watery death with just my broken heart for company!”

“There’s never anything good about dying,” Chuuya says shortly, drawing his hand away from Dazai’s to grip the railing.  “The whole point of living is to live.  Is it just some final fuck you, to drag me down with you?”

Dazai’s face is out of Chuuya’s periphery, but he watches his hand twitch, just barely.  “You think so highly of yourself,” Dazai replies after a moment.  “It’s not about you at all.”

Chuuya doesn’t even bother to reply to that.  Dazai picks up the conversation again for him.

“It’s enough to live alone, isn’t it?” Dazai asks the sea, a brittle, miserable smile on his face.  “Why should I die alone, too?”

One again, Chuuya is struck with that shock-struck uncomfortable feeling, bristling at Dazai’s uncharacteristic honesty, the vulnerability that has always been off the table for both of them.  This isn’t like him; it’s not what Chuuya expects.  Whatever is hanging over Dazai’s head and turning him into useless putty lately has really incurred Chuuya’s wrath, because this display is so sickening he’s going to puke all over this stupid disguise.

Their targets better get here soon.  Chuuya’s been stagnant for too long; he’s itching for a fight.

“If you’ve been living all alone,” Chuuya says roughly, “then who’s been in my hair all these years, huh?”

Dazai doesn’t say anything, but Chuuya recognizes the viselike grip of his undivided attention locking into place.  Undoubtably, if Chuuya were to look at him now, he could read him — but he doesn’t care, and he doesn’t want to know, and Dazai is disgusting like this anyway, so he doesn’t look.

“You should stop giving that subordinate any of your time,” Dazai says eventually, apropos of nothing.  “He can’t keep up with you.”

This conversation, while annoying, is familiar.  Chuuya lets out a breath slowly between his teeth.  “You’re an idiot.”

Dazai’s hand settles over Chuuya’s, grip tight and skin ice-cold.  “I’m your idiot, darling.”

A signal — the cover is back on.  Behind them, a door opens.

Chuuya glances over his shoulder just as a young woman steps outside.  She’s beautiful in a severe way, features sharp and eyes cold.  A smile curls her dark-painted lips.

“Tanaka-san?” she asks — the fake name on Dazai’s fake ID.  “I thought we were meeting in the upstairs bar.”

Dazai smiles, toothy and sharp.  Chuuya watches him with a languid boredom that isn’t too hard to put on.  “Kato-san, is it?  We were just about to head up now.  My girl was feeling a little sick.”

“Poor thing,” she tuts, looking Chuuya over with that same customer service smile.  Chuuya meets her eye, raising a challenging brow, cigarette held to his lips.

To her credit, the woman is unfazed.  Her smile doesn’t budge at all as she turns back to Dazai and neatly inclines her head.  “Apologies for the inconvenience, but Kato-san was unavailable, so I’m here in their place.  Endo Shusaku, at your service.”

“I see.  Well!  These things do happen.”  A frown twists Dazai’s face, but his voice stays agreeable.  “I imagine this won’t slow anything down?  I’d like to see the location as quickly as possible, if you don’t mind.”

Endo’s eyes flash.  “Of course not, sir,” she says politely.  “I have a speedboat on call, if you’re willing to leave the party early.”

The smile is back, sharper and sleazier than ever.  “Endo-san,” Dazai says, arm tightening over Chuuya, “nothing would make me happier.”

Dazai’s fingers dig tight into Chuuya’s waist.  Chuuya takes one last drag of his cigarette before flicking it into the sea.

It’s going to be a long night.