Archive of Our Own

Nakahara Chuuya is no stranger to the unexpected.

Except when the unexpected takes the form of a man lying on his belly on Chuuya’s futon, reading with his feet in the air (and his shoes still on, the nerve).

Dazai Osamu is whistling gaily through his teeth as he turns the page, and Chuuya notes with horror that Dazai’s been through his precious liquor supply, and half-empty bottles of sake are lying around the futon in what has to be the most provocative piece of exhibition art he’s ever witnessed.

If Chuuya had had the presence of mind to perform a closer inspection, he might just have noticed that some of the bottles had been opened, briefly sampled, and simply left out in the open because they didn’t suit Dazai’s taste.

Instead, his brain injects that piquant cocktail of emotions that surface only when he's dealing with Dazai into his veins, and Chuuya wastes no time delivering a vicious leg drop, aimed at Dazai’s spine.

Dazai merely rolls aside, cool as an ice cube, and Chuuya has to settle for an awkward landing with the balls of his palms, which he turns into a graceful backward handspring, flipping over Dazai and sticking the landing almost perfectly, though he’s still in his socks.

“Oh, Chuuya,” says Dazai without looking up, rolling back onto the futon. “Welcome h—”

Chuuya cuts him off by jumping onto him, trapping Dazai beneath his weight, and whaling on him like a kindergartener who's just had their toy stolen. Dazai doesn't try to escape Chuuya’s abuse, which is a pleasant surprise (because they both know that Dazai knows Chuuya better than the bandages that are his second skin) and instead, lets Chuuya have his fill, raising only his arms in a halfhearted block to prevent Chuuya from socking him directly in the face.

Chuuya, on his part, doesn't try very hard to murder Dazai—just draws back his arm after each sloppy punch for another, until both his knuckles and Dazai’s forearms are reddened like the first ripe peaches of the season.

They're both panting now, breaths sinking deep into the otherwise still night air of Chuuya’s apartment. Dazai’s painfully thin chest heaves up and down in a steady rhythm beneath Chuuya, and Chuuya is straddling Dazai’s waist, the flaring heat at the apex of his legs all too obvious to Dazai, even through the three layers of fabric (and one layer of bandages) separating them. Chuuya stares into Dazai’s dark eyes, mesmerized by the stark contrast to the pale skin surrounding them, more of the flood of fury within him draining away with each passing second.

It's Dazai who finally speaks, bringing up an arm to shield his face so that Chuuya is forced to focus on the shape of his bowed, pink lips as they make the sounds that Chuuya’s brain assembles into meaning.

“Sure… looks like… your maturity’s, hah, still proportionate to your height, huh, Chuuya?”

Chuuya’s elbow catches Dazai’s forearm like Dazai planned for, but it still hurts—Chuuya’s insane strength seems only to grow outside the laws of common sense every time Dazai runs into him again.

Why, just this afternoon, he had actually been faster than Dazai had expected, taking Dazai completely by surprise. Dazai’s only glad that Chuuya, grumpy cat that he is, didn't aim for his ribs—they would've shattered (for the umpteenth time) with a punch as hard as Chuuya’s could be, even without that meddlesome Ability of his.

“Out,” snarls Chuuya, with all the ferocity of a stray dog with an invader in its territory. Dazai resists the urge to quip about how this position they’re in is the only chance Chuuya will ever get to look down at him, because knowing Chuuya, that would only end badly.

While Dazai wants to play up his Heroic-Escape-From-The-Port-Mafia story as much as he can, he doesn't really want to get too beat up, or Yosano-sensei will offer to “make you better, you poor man,” and that is one outcome Dazai would like to avoid. Besides, he's only here because Chuuya’s the easiest to play, and he can't waste that advantage. Mori, for example, would probably shoot him on sight.

Instead, Dazai whines, “Chuuuuuu-ya, you can't do this to me,” stretching out the first syllable of his old partner’s name like warm caramel.

“Why not?” Chuuya snaps, terse, exhaustion seeping into his voice and the lines on his forehead. “You're in my house, you asshole. You're not allowed in here anymore, so get out, and screw off back to where you came from.”

Dazai ignores the tiny twinge in his heart at “anymore”, and instead drops his eyelids, lips curving like a blade. He knows Chuuya knows he's in pure blackmail mode. He can't wait to see how Chuuya will react to this.

“Why, Chuuya,” he purrs, voice a sleek growl perfected over years. “If I go now, there'll be no time to cook up a cover that looks like the Agency rescued me. In fact, they're probably all snoring in their beds by now, bless their little souls. There's no way anyone would come rescue me at this hour, terribly unprepared, and on such short notice. Wouldn't you agree?”

Chuuya’s sapphire eyes widen, his eyebrows shooting up, and Dazai thinks, hook, line and sinker.

But Chuuya manages to surprise him yet again. His eyes darken, pupils going dangerously blank, almost as if he's being Corrupted, and Dazai is forced to clamp down on the instinctual panic in his heart. He curses the knee-jerk reaction he's developed through so many years spent observing Chuuya’s every move, his most insignificant quirk, in order to smooth his hands over the storm when and where he's most needed.

“No.”

Dazai wonders if his ears are malfunctioning, too. Gullible, trusting Chuuya, being on guard?

“You're not staying a second more,” Chuuya growls brusquely, getting off Dazai and dragging him towards the door. He seems to be gaining momentum with every passing second like a hurricane, swirling tightly into the apex of his growing ire. “Fuck the cover-up, I don't care how Mori slaughters me! I’d rather that any day than having a bloody traitor under my roof,” he spits, his words boring straight through Dazai’s bandages.

Dazai cranes his neck to observe Chuuya’s body language, pinpoints all the signals.

This is bad.

Chuuya’s being hostile in earnest now, his movements lacking all the punch-pulling he used to do back in the old days, and judging by the tone of his voice, he's actually pretty worked up about it, Dazai figures. By his calculations, one wrong move, and there's a 76.28% chance Dazai might end up dead. 78%. Actually, maybe almost 80%. Dazai frowns. That's far too dangerous, especially for the gullible idiot that Chuuya is.

Chuuya’s grip on the join between the sleeves and the body of Dazai’s shirt is so tight, Dazai thinks his shirt might rip. Even with Dazai trying his best to be a human deadweight, Chuuya is still moving him, seemingly without much effort, and if Dazai doesn't do something to pierce Chuuya’s fossilizing resolve, he's going to end up dead—or worse, out on the streets for an entire night.

Not that everything he's suffered up until now has got the better of him, but a good, solid beating from Nakahara Chuuya in a dark, dank prison cell is worth Dazai falling back to lick his wounds, and he doesn't want to spend the rest of tonight bar-diving - and missing the water, too.

Dazai makes up his mind just as they're halfway to the door. “Okay,” he declares, with a sigh, not too over the top, or Chuuya would get suspicious. “Okay, I get it. You don't want me here, I'll leave. I'll leave, and maybe they'll find me dead in some back alley, frost on my fingertips, a smile glazing my handsomely dead features—”

“Cut the crap, you insufferable bastard.” His tone is softening now, though, from diamond hard to maybe granite soft. Dazai reckons he's got a foothold in, but just by tenterhooks. However, if Chuuya is anything like he remembers, he'll be able to work himself out of almost any precarious situation with him. After all, he'd been brought up by Mori, the old fox, and if there was anything Dazai had ever learned from that, it was how to play people like poker cards.

Dazai clears his throat; slots his business voice into his vocal chords; makes sure that Chuuya can hear the definite shift in tone. “—As I was saying, at least just let me walk out of here. Preserve some of my dignity, y'know? And it'll make it easier for you, what with not having to drag me out anymore and all...”

Chuuya's eyes narrow.

Dazai crosses as many pairs of mental fingers as he can, and waits.

It takes Chuuya an uncomfortably long time to relent. “Fine,” Chuuya concedes haltingly, the word unfurling itself from his lips like a butterfly from a chrysalis, and though his brow is still deeply furrowed, he lets go of Dazai as if in a daze, fingers uncurling slowly from the fabric like the blooming petals of a flower.

66.43% certain death. Better than before, but still not quite there yet.

Dazai scrambles to his feet under Chuuya’s searing gaze, brushing out the deep creases in his shirt that Chuuya's fingers have pressed in. He lifts his coat gingerly from where he's discarded it on the floor, and folds it meticulously in half, draping it carefully over his arm as he walks calmly towards the door. Chuuya follows, wary in case Dazai should go back on his word, and leap straight onto Chuuya’s futon again.

Dazai doesn't. Instead, he waits till he's at the door before he slows, turns around to face Chuuya, and murmurs softly, smile wide as a whore’s legs: “So, Chuuya... How many times are you going to fap to you sitting on top of me tonight?”

A miniscule dilation in Chuuya’s inky pupils is the only warning Dazai gets before Chuuya’s leg is off the ground, his hip twisting to keep his aim true. This, of course, seals Dazai’s victory. He squeezes his eyes shut, reaches into his coat pocket, and shoves his lifeline out in front of him.

There's a contracting moment of silence, like all the sound in the vicinity has been pulled into a black hole.

Dazai dares to open his eyes.

Chuuya’s leg is at face level, his black trousers filling Dazai’s field of vision. His boot has stopped just short of the curved sheen of a bottle of 1952 Armand Rosseau, the tip of the shoe just tapping against the cream label. The long, sleek line of his raised leg is perfectly steady, his form exquisite, and Dazai permits himself to follow that line for a while, down, down to where it joins the pivot leg in a graceful black arch, and then he stops himself and lazily rips his gaze away.

Dazai allows himself a quick whistle. Chuuya hasn't lost his edge, then, and while it warms Dazai’s heart, he's not here for the sake of coddling.

“Bastard,” Chuuya hisses like a very incredulous snake. “How the hell did you—”

“Aw, Chuuya’s old hidey-holes only contained boring wines, so I thought Chuuya might be keeping his real treasure in a different spot, and how right I was,” Dazai sing-songs, raising his voice on purpose.

He's practically on the verge of shouting down the corridor, now, as he cups one hand around his mouth and clutches the neck of the Rosseau in the other, bending forward in exaggeration. The corridor’s empty prism magnifies his voice, bouncing it back and forth like tennis players. “Though I can't imagine that Chuuya would ever think of putting his precious Rosseau in a place as embarrassing as his—”

“Shut up!” yelps Chuuya in abject horror, lunging forward to shove one hand over Dazai's mouth to prevent him from speaking, the other making a grab for the Rosseau. Dazai skillfully switches the Rosseau from left hand to right to avoid its tragic demise against the wall, which also conveniently keeps it out of Chuuya’s reach, and blocks the hand going for his mouth with his now free left hand.

The resulting position is one where Chuuya’s right hand is pinning Dazai’s left wrist into the wall, his fingers sunk into the plaster, but Dazai’s lifted knee is precariously close to crushing Chuuya’s balls, which means that Chuuya can't get to the Rosseau, held at arm’s length away on the other side of Dazai’s body, because his height puts him at a clear disadvantage. Dazai’s almost proud of himself for coming up with this one.

Chuuya flails like this for a while before he realizes just what the intention of Dazai’s set-up is, and then gives up, his face beginning to go ruddy with embarrassment. He extracts his fingers from the wall with a little difficulty, snowflakes of plaster going everywhere, and gingerly maneuvers his crotch away from Dazai’s bent knee.

“Give it… back,” he mutters under his breath, chin scrunched like a little kid, and Dazai takes a moment to wonder how a 22–year old can still be so adorable.

“Put me up for the night, then,” he smirks, dangling the bottle above his head, where he knows Chuuya can't get to it. Chuuya eyes the bottle dejectedly…

… Then leaps up and snatches it from Dazai’s fingers—or would have, if Dazai hadn't been expecting it, and whisked the bottle out of his reach.

He used his Ability to get up there faster, huh. What a sly little midget.

The sounds of Chuuya grinding his teeth are almost audible, now, and Chuuya knows he looks like an idiot, but it's a fucking 1952 Armand Rosseau, people would kill to have it, and Dazai’s just tossing it around like it's a bowling pin!

“I…” Chuuya sputters, rather ineffectually. “You b—…  You little—…  Oh, just get the fuck in, Dazai, and give me that. ”

Chuuya would pay quite a bit to see that satisfied smirk wiped off Dazai’s face, but he won't do anything right now, not when a bottle of Rosseau is at stake. Dazai carelessly flings the bottle at him, which he catches in his arms, cradling like a newborn.

Dazai waltzes back into Chuuya’s apartment like it’s his fucking home, and then Chuuya realizes, with a small, sad mental oh that until about four years ago, it kind of was.

“I'd make a good villain, wouldn't I!” Dazai is rambling on in the present, throwing his arms about flamboyantly. “Keeping hostages and all that—”

“It's a bottle of vintage, not a person, for goodness’ sake,” Chuuya sighs, closing the door and removing his hat as he follows Dazai into the apartment. “And that wine is worth a million times more than your life, so don't you dare fuck around with it, or I swear to God I'll rip your pathetic excuses for balls out and shove them down your throat. ”

Threat successfully completed, Chuuya gently places the Rosseau back into its hiding place, daring Dazai with a threatening glare to make any sort of smart-ass comment about it. Thankfully, Dazai doesn't.

Chuuya glances at the clock.

Crap, it's getting late.

All that fooling around with Dazai has wasted a good chunk of his time, and if he doesn't take a shower soon he's going to have to stay up till the wee hours of the morning just to dry his hair.

Chuuya looses another exasperated sigh. He pulls off his socks, tugs off his gloves with his teeth, shrugs off his coat and hangs it over his chair, and then begins to undo the buttons of his vest with one hand, the other tugging at the straps across his chest. Much to Chuuya’s surprise, Dazai has stopped reading, and instead watches him lazily from where he's perched atop Chuuya’s futon again (asshole).

Just being observed by those unreadable dark orbs sends a tingle laddering down Chuuya’s spine. Dazai makes even a simple undressing from work as intense as a strip show, and Chuuya can't stand the prickling of Dazai’s gaze against the back of his neck anymore, so he struggles out of his vest as quickly as possible, and dashes into the bathroom. “Don't. Move. From there.” he snaps at Dazai, stabbing a finger in his direction, and slams the door, hard, locking it behind him.

Dazai blinks, once, in the long silence that ensues, and then seems to remember something.

He deliberates a little on whether it'll be worth his time, then gives it the green light.

“Chuuya!” he calls half-heartedly from the futon, where he's already opened yet another bottle of sake, and is reading again. “Chuuuuu-ya, your choker—”

The bathroom door bangs open, and a stark naked Nakahara Chuuya flings the piece of leather at him as hard as he can. The buckle strikes his skin and it stings freshly, but it's worth every moment of Chuuya in his birthday suit, his face flushed scarlet like a teenage girl’s, hurling abuse at him in French before the door slams closed.

Dazai can’t help it—he laughs aloud to himself: a real laugh, the first he's had in ages.

The shower water is warm, almost debilitatingly so, and Chuuya runs his hands over his shoulders and down his chest as he basks in the water. He gathers his wet hair in a messy ponytail and flicks it over his right shoulder so he can deal with it later.

A mass of irritation throbs in his chest, pulsing against his ribcage with every heartbeat, and he scowls. What on earth was that traitor doing here? Didn't it make him uncomfortable in the slightest to come back here, to parody all their sickeningly familiar motions like a puppet show, all the while knowing that they were on different sides of the curtain now, dark and light? Hadn't it hurt him at all when he’d turned his back on the Mafia; on Chuuya, who’d been waiting for him to come home for a good four years now?

Chuuya had gotten hold of the Petrus just two days prior—a rare find he'd wanted to surprise Dazai with. On that night he'd placed the bottle on the low table, set out two wineglasses, and, as a nice finishing touch, opened his balcony door to the scent of the stars, and the unmistakeable smell of burning metal and rubber.

Rushing out so fast his hat had flown off, he'd practically thrown himself over the edge as he stared down, disbelief numbing his heart as he watched flames tear silently at the chassis, lick at the blackened glass sky.

One question had burned in his heart as strongly as the flames burned in the ruined shell of his car, and he’d clutched the railings tightly, propping himself up with sheer force of will.

Why?

The creamy lotion is smooth against his skin, makes it slippery, spreads the heat from armpits to triceps to forearms to fingertips, from the insides of his thighs down to his calves and then his toes. He's bent over into a deep stretch now, the water running up his back and trickling from loose locks of his hair to curtain his face, and then he straightens back up, taking another breath. The steam is full and moist at the base of his throat, gives him the urge to cough.

But the question had never been answered, having no one to answer it, and after a while it dulled, like the ache inside of him that all the vintage he’d consumed that night hadn't been able to wash away. Days and then months had passed, and work had become his god, and the question had all but worn away.

Until, of course, today. The day that he'd stepped out of an airplane, fourteen hours of travel inked into his clothes, the blood of an entire minor organization glistening on his palms, and gotten a call from Headquarters.

Dazai’s back.

Chuuya had hated the way his heart had skipped at those two words, on which rested the pressure of four years suddenly made weightless in a second.

But of course—who was he kidding? He'd been half-dreading, half-expecting it, but the sight of Dazai chained to the wall a prisoner, the shackles dark bands around his thin wrists, had spilled a dark, dangerous satisfaction into his blood; a confirmation and a conclusion.

“So, Chuuya... How many times are you going to fap to you sitting on top of me tonight?”  

Chuuya shudders, then shakes his wet hair violently, shakes Dazai’s voice out of his head.

It's only when he's rinsing the shampoo out of his hair that he happens to look down again, and notices, much to his chagrin, that somehow, he's at half mast. He curses silently, curses the hot water and Dazai’s penetrating gaze.

The shower is already turned up as loud as it will go and the lotion is temptingly close at hand, so it makes sense that the first finger is easy; goes in almost too quick, so quick that he can't stop the gasp that seems to echo an infinite number of times against the tiles in the bathroom. He pushes his finger in and out, crooks it a little as he pants softly and shallowly; scrapes his nail against the walls, murmurs Dazai’s name. The pleasurable feeling draws another little shudder and a subdued moan from him, and he's so impatient, his need racing a thousand miles ahead of his brain, that he shoves in the next two fingers together.

He’s rewarded by the familiar terse burn, the almost confused, distraught clenching as his muscles work to accommodate the new intrusion. He allows himself another quiet groan as he scissors his fingers, arches his back, the bliss diffusing into his limbs.

Chuuya’s starting to get clumsy with the lotion; when he attacks the pump most of it splatters directly across his chest and stomach instead of making it onto his hand. He draws his shoulders upwards, shuddering with a new wave of pleasure as he looks at it, his skin covered in sticky white that's starting to mix with the water and ooze down into the deep curve of his hips, slipping provocatively down his inner thighs. Chuuya bites his lip, recalls Dazai’s hungry gaze as he’d watched Chuuya pulling off his vest.

Now Chuuya bends over, elbow against the wall’s cold tiles so that he can open himself up better. Those three fingers all inside of him at the same time feel so good, his body spasming deliciously around the knuckles, and he sucks in a long breath that hitches like a lady’s dress at quite a few points along the way, his ribs quivering bluntly against his skin. He presses his fingers in deeper to find that familiar, burning spot deep inside of him, coaxing his fingertips against his prostate until he's on the brink of climax, eyes wide and panting hard. Then, relaxing a little, he pulls out slightly, flexing his fingers to stretch himself open wider, his thighs taut with tension and rivulets of lotion trickling down his fingers and his spread thighs. In his mind’s eye they are Dazai’s fingers; in his mind’s eye Dazai has never gone, has never broken all those whispered promises he made by candlelight and the sweet smell of wine.

He pulls out after a while, chest heaving and face flushed, and is astonished by the hot tears that slip soundlessly from the corner of his eyes. Angrily he scrubs at his face with the back of his hand, washes his slippery fingers, cleans himself out with a methodical acrimony.

Deciding to finish up by jerking himself off instead, he wraps his fingers around his straining arousal delicately. His hand is almost hotter than he can bear, slick and tight all at once around his sensitive skin. The contact makes him hiss through gritted teeth, though he’d been expecting it, and it’s a while before the initial oversensitivity wears off, and he can start to move, sliding his hand up and down the shaft slowly and scraping lightly with his thumbnail on the upstroke. The gradual build of pressure in his groin makes him bite his lip, his need so solid he can taste it staining his tongue, grabbing his throat in a chokehold. In his imagination, Dazai goads him on in a low, needy voice that barely conceals his excitement, makes Chuuya feel needed; makes Chuuya feel nostalgically, astringently loved.

Chuuya’s breathing fractures suddenly, voice lamenting his every exhale, and time seems to have turned to lava, sealing him into its torturous, crawling current. For a few moments he feels as if he's staring into the sun, being crushed by its gravity until he ruptures, inside and out, and then everything expands, and space shoots away from him, filling with stars that build into galaxies at the edge of his vision. Supernovae explode within a kaleidoscope, and before he knows it, he’s coming with a low, tremorous keen, white, wet warmth coating his palm, his thighs, the barrels of his fingers. The tangy metal of blood is sharp enough to slice open his tongue, acrid and sweet like the lingering notes of a fine brandy.

On the next deep breath he sucks in so much steam that he really does choke this time, and coughs loudly, shooting out a hand blindly to grope for the water faucet. The last of the water splashes against the floor, leaving only the clouds of steam that rise forlornly towards the air vent, and there’s a sudden lonely silence, save for the dripping of water from Chuuya’s hair and the showerhead. Chuuya shivers, half from the cold and half from the remnants of pleasure still shimmering in his groin, and reaches for a towel.

“...—uuya.” Dazai’s voice comes from outside the bathroom.

Chuuya freezes, mid action. Crap. In all the excitement, he’d actually forgotten that Dazai was staying the night. When Dazai was miles away at his own apartment, jerking off in the bathroom was one matter, but when the cause (and object) of this salacious need was separated only by one (debatably) locked door, it was quite another.

“Chuuya,” Dazai calls again, slightly louder. Chuuya swallows the lump in his throat, pulls his voice down to what would be accepted as normal Chuuya range, and answers.

“What, you imbécile!”

Still a tad higher than he'd hoped for, but acceptable nonetheless. He begins to towel himself off, listening for Dazai’s reply.

“Are you done? ‘Cause I'm kind of sweaty from our little, ah, session, this afternoon, see, and Chuuya’s futon just isn't doing it as a towel…”

Chuuya has never put on a yukata so quickly before. He bursts out of the bathroom, and yells, “Get off, you dirty mongrel,” steam rearing behind him like a manifestation of his wrath.

Dazai flashes him a stupid grin, gets up like he has all the time in the world, and strolls leisurely into the bathroom. Chuuya unwraps the towel from his head, gives Dazai one last glare, and then devotes himself to rubbing his hair dry with an intense ferocity.

He's almost through with blow-drying his hair, working his comb through a tangle, when the bathroom door opens, and Dazai comes out, towel wrapped around his waist. The bandages over his chest and shoulder have come a little loose, and the strips around his wrists are a scruffy, dirty white, still shining dully with moisture.

“Ah, Chuuya,” Dazai exclaims happily as their eyes meet. “Why don't you help me with some fresh ones?”

Chuuya doesn't know why he kept that stupid first-aid kit, modified to include a shitload of bandages, but if anything, it's coming in handy now.

He works his fingers into the familiar reef knot securing the bandage wrapped around Dazai’s chest, and as it comes loose, so too from his mind do a few memories of them sitting like this, close as binary stars in a galaxy, in a room much darker than this one.

Chuuya will turn sixteen this year, and he is dressing Dazai’s wounds, holding back tears as he presses gauze pads larger than his hands over bullet wounds.

“I'm sorry, Dazai… I didn't get them fast enough…”

The wounds are Dazai’s, but Chuuya feels them as surely as they had been torn through his own flesh. He's the older one, never mind that it's only by less than two months. He’s supposed to be the one protecting Dazai, sweeping away tears from his cheeks, not the other way around.

Dazai has lost so much blood that his skin is luminescent by the light of the candle, and his fingers are sprite’s kisses on Chuuya’s burning cheeks, but he does it anyway, catching a pearly, shining tear on his fingernail, and holding it close to the candle to admire the quivering bead from all angles.

“Ahh, Chuuya’s crying for me.”

Chuuya doesn't even have the heart to kick him, because he knows it's true—there wouldn't be any point in denying it now. Dazai brings his finger back towards himself, opens a small, birdlike mouth, licks with a kitten’s pink tongue.

“This is what Chuuya’s sorrow tastes like,”  he murmurs to himself, as if committing the sensation on his palette to memory. “Chuuya’s tainted sorrow.”

It takes half the industrialized world’s supply of bandages, and less gauze could have made them a wedding dress, but Chuuya fixes him eventually.

Chuuya has always been able to fix him, somehow, begging gravity to keep his shards together, and all this time it has worked, has seen them through grueling missions enough for several lifetimes. Chuuya had been so sure that just as he would die if not for Dazai’s ability to halt Corruption in its tracks, so too would Dazai get himself in over his head and perish without Chuuya there to pull him out of it.

These four years, every additional second has driven the message into his heart that he's more wrong about that than he can possibly hope to fathom.

“You missed a spot,” Dazai chides gently, and presses his fingers to Chuuya’s like a kiss, shifting the path of the bandages on his skin. Chuuya comes to with a start, embarrassed against reason by Dazai’s cool fingertips on his uncomfortably hot hand.

“I was about to do that anyway, you goddamn perfectionist,” snorts Chuuya, but without bite. If Dazai notices anything, he doesn't voice it.

Chuuya’s fingers deftly secure the bandages around Dazai’s left forearm, and ties the knot just a tad too tight. Dazai winces, and the expression makes something carnal shift deep inside Chuuya, akin to the few moments before Corruption flows over his body, when he's still himself, but deeper, darker and leagues more terrible than himself at the same time.

“Is this what they call “tough love”, Chuuya?” Dazai teases, eyes light and brown like a swooping kite’s feathers, and Chuuya’s heart drops into freefall, gravity dragging against his fingertips.

“Shut up and sit still, idiot,” he mutters, averting his gaze.

“Chuuya,” says Dazai, in all seriousness, reaching over and tilting his chin up with a finger. “How are you going to bandage me properly if you won’t even look at me?”

Chuuya’s heart stops.

And then it races back into motion, twice as fast as before, and Chuuya does smack him this time, hoping the brief contact will siphon off this ridiculous feeling. “It's obvious, asshole—if I look at your face for too long, I'll get eye cancer!” he snarls, returning to work with the renewed objective of cutting off all blood flow to Dazai’s right hand.

Dazai merely chuckles. Chuuya’s just as easy to work up as ever, and if only for a little while, time has rewritten itself, and maybe he can forget about Odasaku’s last words, his faint dying breaths that wafted Dazai away like a paper boat from the Mafia and out like a struggling newborn into a wide-open sea, into society and the Agency.

Sometimes he thinks the Director must have been nuts to take him in, but even at their first meeting, Dazai had been thoroughly impressed by the solid, pinewood gaze and the calm that radiated from every inch of the man like gentle ripples in a pond, so very different from the twisted, jagged spires of Mori’s presence. With Mori he'd had to be on edge all the time, and the sudden contrast of the Director is unsettling, off-putting as it is welcoming.

The cafe is chatter and the clinking of cups, soft laughter and the smell of coffee. Dazai thinks that surely this man must see everything that disqualifies his pathetic attempts at humanity, everything he's tried to hide; can pierce past, present and future with a single gaze straight as the shaft of an arrow. He keeps his smile on, though it's a pathetic disguise as he grows increasingly uncomfortable under the Director’s dissecting stare.

“So you’re the one that Taneda-sensei recommended?” Fukuzawa asks, lifting his eyebrows just a little.

“Yes,” Dazai affirms quickly, mentally fidgeting and just wanting this to be over as soon as possible.

It doesn't escape Fukuzawa, who pins him with a look against the backrest of the booth, and then smiles after what seems like an interminable length of time, gravity in the slow, sonorous lift of his lips.

He reaches out a hand callused equal parts by combat and calligraphy, and Dazai takes it tentatively.

“Welcome to the Armed Detective Agency, Dazai-kun.”

If anything, Dazai thinks, Chuuya should be proud that he'd been the only thing—the very thing that had made Dazai hesitate, had drawn him away from gripping the haft of his decision. Chuuya’s irresistible gravity had been the only force binding him to the Mafia after Odasaku had left him, with a burnt-out match, a sliver of silver cigarette smoke, and the smell of death, in that wide, airless room.

If he left, he would live the remainder of his life drifting in space, entirely free but for Odasaku’s calls to pull him towards the purpose, the light, the taste of being reborn. If he stayed, he would be sucked down, towards the inevitable drowning in Chuuya’s massive presence, the force that had welded their bodies and souls together endless nights.

The decision had been as easy as walking away.

There was nothing else keeping him, and the car bomb would have settled all remaining scraps of goodwill—or so he'd thought.

Dazai had calculated for everything but Chuuya’s footsteps coming down into the dungeon, familiar because no one else in the Mafia wore heels quite as high.

This isn't part of the plan—

He'd heard Chuuya was coming back on that day, but he'd just figured Chuuya would want to have absolutely nothing to do with him—it'd seemed that way after the separation, and he in turn had tried to keep his distance as well. Dazai hadn't been able to conceal the distaste on his face (and relief, though he would never admit it) as he had taken in the familiar features for the first time in four years, slightly more fatigued than he'd remembered them, but the same nonetheless.

The truth that he'd never been willing to admit before came back to smack him in the face, and Chuuya’s cocky grin seemed to confirm it as well.

That bomb was fucking half-assed. You think you could get rid of me that easily?

“There,” Chuuya snaps, tying the last knot, and Dazai watches the way his fingers fly through the sequence of motions appreciatively.

“Aww, thanks, Chuuya.” Dazai smiles sweetly as he bends his arm to make sure the bandages hold. Chuuya makes a face as Dazai pulls on the yukata he’s borrowed, and unties the towel, tossing it aside casually. Chuuya’s scowl deepens at that.

The fabric cuts painfully into Dazai’s shoulders, and the hem is way too short, coming up all the way to mid-calf.

“Geez, you should really learn to grow taller,” he quips, wincing as he rotates his shoulders.

“That's not something you can learn, stupid Dazai.” Chuuya gives him a look dirtier than the Mafia’s entire supply of money.

Dazai chuckles, lying back with his hands behind his head, and turning his head so that he can see Chuuya, still kneeling beside his futon with an expression on his face that half-reminds Dazai of a daughter at her father’s sickbed.

“You know, Chuuya,” Dazai muses, staring directly into Chuuya’s eyes for maximum effect, “I wonder where I'd be without you.” It's obviously still a sore spot, and though Dazai tells himself he's just dipping his toes in the water, the obvious, raw hurt on Chuuya’s face—the way he flinches, irises trembling—is a beautiful sight, and the other, darker reasons he’d wanted to leave for snake in tendrils under his skin, writhing in shades of ink below the surface.

“Wh… whatever,” Chuuya scoffs as he recovers, twisting his head aside like a petulant teenage girl, though it's not enough to disguise the obvious tremor in his voice. “You seem to manage just fine without me anyway.”

Dazai hums, because he knows that's the reaction that makes him the least culpable.

Chuuya gets up and goes to his cupboard, deliberately avoiding Dazai’s gaze, and drags out another futon, backing up until he's against the wall furthest away from where Dazai has set himself up.

Dazai frowns. He's never seen the quilt before, but the telltale red, yellow and orange autumn leaves, with gold thread painstakingly stitched onto every leaf border, means it must be a gift from Kouyou-nee.

Sometimes Dazai wishes they'd traded places, Chuuya and him.

“...And I was planning on saving this for the New Year, too,” Chuuya is grumbling to himself, under his breath.

Dazai frowns. “You could just use my old one if you don't want to sleep on yours, y'know. There’s no need to use your new one.”

Chuuya meets his inquisitive gaze with a deadpan stare, eyes hard as blue steel. “I burnt it the night you left.”

Ah.

“Anyway,” Chuuya says, “You will stay on that futon, and keep your… your mess—there. If you step off this futon, you die. If you so much as lean over it, you die. If you even think about getting off it—”

“—I die,” Dazai finishes for him, rolling his eyes.

Chuuya nods, fluidity returning to his motions slowly, like he’s thawing out. He seems much more relieved now that the tension has dissipated. “See, it's so simple, even Bandages-for-Brains understands.”

Dazai’s lips curl at the lame insult, but Chuuya’s already flopped down, turned his back on Dazai, and pulled the quilt over himself. Dazai thinks the leaves match his hair perfectly, and takes a moment to admire Kouyou’s impeccable taste (which somehow never made it to her protégé.)

Chuuya must be hella pissed at Dazai, because doesn't even bother with turning out the lights, since the switch is on the wall above Dazai’s head, which means he’ll actually have to come over if he wants them off. However, Dazai also happens to know that Chuuya’s the kind of person who couldn't sleep if a firefly was fluttering in front of him (but once he's really gotten into it, not even an earthquake would wake him.) Dazai, on the other hand, is the kind of person who doesn't even know what sleep is, most of the time, and so it doesn't matter to him either way.

Dazai decides to play the nice guy, eventually, and reaches up to flick off the lights with the tips of his fingers. There's silence for a bit, and then Chuuya grunts appreciatively.

Dazai’s smile is involuntary.

Chuuya wakes up in the middle of the night to find that he’s warm, more so than he usually is. At first he’s full of praise for Kouyou-nee’s watertight quiltwork, but that’s soon brutally disproven when a portion of the quilt at his back shifts, rubbing against his ass in the process, and murmurs sleepily, somewhere above his head, “Oh… up so soon…?”

Wordlessly, Chuuya tilts his head forward as far as it will go, and then slams the back of his skull into Dazai’s chin.

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” wails Dazai, bringing his left hand up from where it’s been resting on Chuuya’s hip to nurse his injury, and rolling away before Chuuya can attack him again. Chuuya doesn’t spare him the slightest bit of remorse. “I told you to stay on your own goddamn futon, blockhead!”

Dazai sits up, a blurry shape in the darkness to Chuuya’s eyes, still rubbing the sore spot. “I couldn’t help it,” he protests, through gritted teeth.

“And what, exactly, couldn't you help?” If there's anything at all that Chuuya has picked up from Kouyou-nee, it's that tone of voice that slices even sharper than Chuuya’s knife.

Dazai hesitates.

He sucks in a breath that ices over his gut, opens his mouth, closes it, and changes his answer before he even knows what he’s doing.

“Well, I read somewhere that sleeping in the same bed as a shorter person increases their chances of growing taller!” he chuckles, though he despises himself for every word, and pulls his elbows up to block the pillow that Chuuya hurls at him.

Pillows are usually soft, but this one has the added force from Chuuya’s Ability that Dazai wasn‘t quite expecting, and it sends him flying backwards and crashing onto Chuuya’s old futon, knocking over quite a few opened sake bottles. Dazai can almost hear Chuuya’s consternation from across the room.

Dazai flaps his hand around against the wall, the lights come on, and he blinks blearily at the damage he’s wrought. A good quarter of Chuuya’s room is now an absolute mess. Spilled alcohol is spreading faster than floodwater across the tatami mats, and the corpses of at least fifteen bottles of expensive sake are bleeding out all over the floor like the aftermath of a shootout. Dazai follows the path of the encroaching tide with his eyes, all the way up to the person who’s sitting across from him with a look of utter disbelief stamped like a brand onto his face. There’s about two seconds where Dazai stares at Chuuya, who’s staring right back at him, and then everything goes to shit.

“Ohmygodfuckquickhurryupandgetthosebloodybottlesoffthefloor,” Chuuya is gasping as he scrambles over on hands and knees, righting every bottle that’s within his (considerably limited) reach, and somehow Dazai finds himself grabbing tissues out of nowhere, soaking up the alcohol that’s now turning the hem of his yukata wet.

The ragtag, two-man emergency squad fight with full force inside the disaster zone until finally, Chuuya gets the last bottle upright on his low table, and Dazai wipes sweat from his forehead and kneels up to survey the situation. There’s tissue everywhere, and dark stains all over the tatami mats, and if Dazai didn’t know better, he would say that the place looked like it belonged to someone with a morbid interest in masturbation.

He glances over at Chuuya, who has his back to Dazai. He’s still kneeling in front of the low table, hand wrapped so tightly around a sake bottle Dazai thinks it might implode from the sheer force. Dazai holds his breath, and waits.

Chuuya takes a few deep, deep breaths, his petite frame expanding and contracting with each, and by now Dazai almost expects Chuuya’s burnt orange hair to burst into flame.

“Dazai,” Chuuya says calmly, and though his voice is quiet it travels, and Dazai shivers, despite himself.

“Yes, Chuuya?”

“You'll be scrubbing my tatami mats for me for the next month, do you fucking hear?”

There silence for a moment while Dazai processes this, and then he laughs, the space around his eyes crinkling. Chuuya whips his head round, scowls in that endearingly familiar way.

“… So don't you dare leave me just yet, you waste of bandages.”

Dazai ends up huddled beside Chuuya on his new futon anyway, skin against warm skin under the soft cave of Chuuya’s new quilt. Chuuya has given up on ever using his old futon and quilt again, not after Dazai’s soiled it beyond repair with the spilt sake (and, according to Chuuya, his filthy presence.) They’ve used it as what can only be the world’s largest tissue, soaking up as much spilt sake with it as they can.

Dazai’s changed into a fresh set of clothes, before which Chuuya had threatened him at knifepoint to swear upon the Complete Manual To Suicide that he would wash the sake-stained yukata. Dazai had gone along with it to keep Chuuya happy—he’ll find a way to wriggle out of that one tomorrow.

Chuuya’s moved the futon right onto the rift between the clean tatami mats and his balcony, and dragged the low table onto the stone balcony floor in front of them. The survivors of the Great Sake Massacre stand forlornly on the glass surface, filled to varying degrees with the sake that the two have managed to keep from flowing out.

Dazai has mixed several types of sake into his bowl, all the better to finish the assorted liquor as quickly as possible, because he’s not a connoisseur like Chuuya, who is savouring every half-bottle of sake painfully slowly, so slowly it makes Dazai’s skin crawl with irritation just looking at him. Dazai watches Chuuya set down his bowl for what must be the seventh refill, and the moonlight shines onto it, creating a mesa of translucent shadow on the glass surface.

Even under the stark white desert of the moon’s glow Chuuya’s face is flushed gently with twin blooms the colour of carnations, and, eyelids drooping,  he leans his head on Dazai’s shoulder, soft orange curls spilling over the fabric of Dazai’s yukata. He mumbles something incomprehensible, lifts his bowl to his mouth with difficulty, and drinks, some of the clear liquid dribbling from the corners of his lips and making wet blotches on Dazai’s shoulder. Dazai blinks, slowly, and then puts out a finger to Chuuya’s chin, catching a pearly, shining tear of sake on his fingernail, and holding it up to the moonlight to admire the quivering bead from all angles.

“Dazai,” Chuuya murmurs, curls his fingers into Dazai’s sleeve like a child. Dazai puts his finger to Chuuya’s slightly parted, full lips, and in response, Chuuya leans forward, closes his hot, wet mouth around Dazai’s finger, rasps against Dazai’s skin with his tongue. Dazai tastes faintly of salt and alcohol, and Chuuya nips on the pad of Dazai’s fingertip with sharp teeth, nearly slitting his tongue open on the edge of Dazai’s fingernail. Dazai watches him with those kite’s eyes for a moment, expression unreadable, and then his right hand is on Chuuya’s back, rubbing in slow, warm circles. Chuuya’s eyelids flutter shut while his back curves into Dazai’s reassuring touch. His eyelashes are so long, Dazai notices, as he presses his lips to Chuuya’s brow, traces a line down his cheek to taste at fresh tears.

It’s just as he remembers from so long ago. This is what Chuuya’s sorrow tastes like—Nakahara Chuuya’s tainted sorrow.

 “How are… the people at the… the—aah, the Agency?” Chuuya slurs, as Dazai cants his hips upwards, sliding thick and slow into Chuuya’s body. Chuuya’s nails carve red wings that flare out from his spine into his shoulders, the raised lines reminiscent of cat scratches. Even with Chuuya slightly elevated by his position on Dazai’s lap, they’re more or less still face to face, and now Chuuya throws his head back with a loud groan as Dazai sinks in all the way in one brutal motion, hands pulling Chuuya’s waist down to keep him from bucking wildly. Chuuya hurls profanities at the restraint, his curses mixing Japanese and French with sweat and spit, his cries hoarse. Dazai goes for his throat, wants to wreck the perfect white skin with his teeth while Chuuya moves, body a coiled, tight contraption, and Dazai can feel every miniscule shift, every contraction in the walls of Chuuya’s tight, hot passage.

Now Chuuya’s reduced to just clutching at Dazai as if he’ll fall into an abyss if he doesn’t, his heat sears into Dazai’s skin wherever they touch, and Dazai swears Chuuya is trying to crawl into him, the way he’s squirming and writhing with increasing intensity on top of Dazai. Dazai hisses as bolts of overwhelming sensation overpower any intelligent thought. He feels like he's struggling in his body, entangled in his own flesh.

“Wait,” he manages to gasp, tugging at Chuuya’s curls to try to get him to slow down, but Chuuya seems to be in a world of his own, reduced only to a few persistent instincts, crying out shamelessly as his throat cords and strains and the wet sounds of his thrusts spatter against the walls of the room. Dazai’s only thought is that if Chuuya keeps going like that he’ll definitely lose control.

“Goddamnit, Chuuya, calm down—”

In a last-ditch effort, he clamps his palms onto Chuuya’s cheeks, and mashes his lips, hard, to Chuuya’s. It seems to get Chuuya’s attention, so that instead of riding Dazai like a fairground attraction, Chuuya’s now devoted to eating Dazai alive instead, but, as with all other things Chuuya, a small improvement is the key.

Eventually Chuuya has finished chewing on Dazai enough, and starts to run out of breath, and he's no longer moving in a manner as frenzied, so Dazai lets go, shaking Chuuya’s shoulders to make him focus on Dazai, even through the thick haze of alcohol that his brain must be souped in right now.

“Chuuya,” he pants, trapping Chuuya with cool, long fingers that burn cold against Chuuya’s feverish skin, forcing Chuuya to meet that piercing gaze. “Chuuya, slow down. You'll wreck us both if you keep going like this.”

Chuuya utters a long, drawn-out groan as he collapses against Dazai, arms draped over Dazai’s shoulders. Dazai releases a breath he hadn't even known he was holding.

“You horny hatrack,” he laughs, shakily, rubs his fingers into Chuuya’s sweaty hair. Chuuya just makes cat noises as he curls into Dazai’s warmth, buries his face into the hollow of Dazai’s bandaged collarbone. “Just leave it to me, you're in no state to do anything properly,” Dazai says, reassuring, but Chuuya pushes off him suddenly, shakes his head wordlessly but resolutely. He grips Dazai’s shoulders hard, and Dazai winces as Chuuya’s nails claw into his flesh again.

Thighs trembling with effort, Chuuya lifts himself off Dazai slowly, a slurry of lube and bodily fluids running out from where they're joined. He's lowering himself onto Dazai when his muscles fail him, and he half-falls back down, impaling himself onto Dazai again with a surprised bleat. His eyes are blown so wide Dazai can see every shade of blue in his irises, and for one whimsical second, he’s put in mind of butterfly wings. The next moment Dazai is gritting his teeth and steeling himself against the sudden flood of sensation in his groin as Chuuya’s body swallows him again, hungrily, greedily, and he feels himself being drawn in, disgorged, engulfed again.

Chuuya moves against him, around him, and Dazai watches his muscles flow like a river under his skin, watches the white mermaid’s curve of his waist, the shining wetness at his hips, leaking out between his supple thighs. It's a while before Dazai remembers Chuuya’s question, opens his mouth to answer with a voice dry and hoarse from the tension.

“The people… at the Agency? Hah, fine, I guess. Doing well, though they're, every bit as, eccentric as, the people in the, nnh, Mafia,” Dazai rasps. Technically he could have answered “Did you know that chickens lay eggs?” and Chuuya would be happy with that, he's so wasted. Chuuya nods, then bites his lip coyly, a deep flush racing up his chest and throat as Dazai nudges further into him, opening him up deeper inside.

“Hnnn,” Chuuya whines, back arching so the softness of his lower belly brushes the area around Dazai’s navel, “Do they… mmh, do they know you're a suicid… suicidal waste of resources, too?” Dazai thinks Chuuya’s so uncharacteristically coherent in his conversation today, he might actually still have a bit of booze-free brain inside that thick skull of his. Usually Drunk Chuuya runs his mouth like it's an Olympic event.

“Hardly,” Dazai replies, as smoothly as his current predicament allows him to, and shoos the mental image of Kunikida’s disapproving frown out of his head. He leans forward to kiss Chuuya, fingers of one hand tangling in his hair, cupping the back of his head to pull him closer. Chuuya moans through the kiss, the vibrations buzzing in Dazai’s jaw, and Dazai bites playfully on that plump lower lip as he pulls away. “They all love, me, and they're, absolutely, adorable—Atsushi, in fact, is just as, gullible as, hah, you—”

Chuuya grunts, annoyed, and clamps his teeth down hard on the join between Dazai’s neck and shoulder for his trouble, like an angry cat. Dazai winces, chuckles bitterly. “If you dirty those bandages I'll, have to, put on new ones, Chuuya,” he chides, rather ineffectually.

“You're gonna have, to change them, after this anyway,” wheezes Chuuya. He switches angles as he slides down onto Dazai again, and this time whatever Dazai’s making him feel must be pretty darn good, because he tosses his head back with a series of soft, gasped moans, clenching violently around Dazai for a few moments.

“You, nnh, found it?” Dazai asks, by way of confirmation. Chuuya nods numbly.

Dazai leans in to nip the shell of his ear. “Then, I'll take over from here,” he whispers, low and intoxicating in Chuuya’s ear, and Chuuya can't help the shiver that dances outward along the tops of his shoulders from the base of his neck, and that sweeps down into his gut in a pulse of white electricity.

Dazai smells sterile like medical gauze, smells tainted like rubbing alcohol and drinking alcohol, and it makes a warmth shimmer in Chuuya’s gut like heatwaves above tarmac, this smell he knows every note to like an old lullaby. Dazai’s hands tingle minty against him as they close over the spot where Chuuya’s broken rib had pierced his lung before Dazai had gotten to him, lying in a pool of his own blood; they trace his skin where his femur had been broken in three places under the immense pressure of using Corruption.  

And then Dazai leans forward suddenly, tipping them over while he's still inside Chuuya, and eliciting a startled moan from the unexpected friction. Now Chuuya’s back is flush against the tatami mats, the grain of the material pressing into his yukata, and Dazai’s arms are twin columns on either side of him, bandages spiraling up to disappear under those wide sleeves. Chuuya feels like a rabbit trapped by a wolf, and the gleam in Dazai’s eyes is certainly carnivorous as he rocks, hard, into Chuuya’s prostate, a cruel smile twisting his lips as Chuuya whimpers and moans and clamps his knees around Dazai’s thighs, hands pushing feebly at Dazai’s bandaged chest.

“Dazai, Dazai—ahh, Dazai! Non, attends, please, not there, that's, haaah, too hard, too good—no, no—wait, je t'en supplie, if you do that, I—ah, hah, aaah, get the fuck out of me, salaud, you—fucking, ohh—”

Then Chuuya has his arms around Dazai’s neck; he's arching against Dazai like a fish leaping out of water, a strangled sob tearing from his throat, and Dazai feels Chuuya spasming around him so hard that Dazai sees flares of white in his vision. A wet warmth spatters against his chest and stomach in sporadic bursts as Chuuya is gripped tight by his release, quivering so hard Dazai thinks Chuuya might fall apart from the sheer force of the orgasm.

They listen to Chuuya’s little quivering moans in the ensuing stillness, the random hitches spiking his voice like barbs catching in silk. Chuuya’s body is smooth and hot and slippery like a newborn’s, creamy skin heaving and shining like fish scales, and Dazai can feel Chuuya twitching around him with the remnants of pleasure, his arms still looped loosely around Dazai’s bandaged neck.

“Fucker,” Chuuya gasps, once he's got his breath back. His eyes flash silver-blue as the light catches them, and the moon makes a lake out of him, casts ripples over his skin as his chest bends in and out of shadow with every breath.

“Fucked,” Dazai shoots back automatically, and Chuuya groans, throws an arm over his face in exasperation. Dazai grins. “Maybe I'll let you top me when you hit 170.”

“You never do… shut up, do you… you fucking social misfit? Someday…someday I'll kill—”

Dazai bends down to plant another neat kiss against Chuuya’s collarbone, but Chuuya shoves him off, annoyed.

“If you’re done… here, get, the fuck out.” He wriggles his hips impatiently underneath Dazai, drawing a sharp groan from Dazai at the sudden stimulation. “Chuuya,” Dazai sighs melodramatically, clenching his eyes shut and trying not to lose it right then and there, “You may be happy, but my problem’s not quite solved yet.”

“Oh, is… Is that so?” Even while dead drunk, Chuuya still manages a decent impression of being mockingly aloof.

“Well, yeeees,” Dazai concedes, slowly, hoping that if he says anything slowly enough Chuuya will buy it, “So, if you'll juuuust let me—”

“N—no way in fucking h—hell,” Chuuya growls, face starting to go red again. His eyes are pinched shut above ruddy cheeks, and his vehemence just doesn't quite come across this way, Dazai thinks. “I'm not—it's not—” with an unconvincing shake of the head—“Y—yeah, it's never going to… happen again. I—aah, nnnh, Dazai, you motherfucking- Dazai, Dazai—fuck, Dazai—! Aah, hah, nnh, m-ahh, more, please, merde, w—wait, no—too fa—ah—ast, arrête, oh, oh, oh—go, faster, more—plus vite! Non, wait, yes, y—es, there; fuck me there, hah, fuck no, don't you dare—don't you fucking dare come insi—”

It's Chuuya, it's always been Chuuya, and he's never wanted to love anyone more. Dazai falls away from himself like he's stepped out of a plane at ten thousand feet, quickly, suddenly and all at once, as if a rug has been pulled away from under his feet, and then only half a minute later, Chuuya seizes up underneath him again with violent, mewling shudders, his breaths quick and scalding.

“F—fuck,” gasps Chuuya, probing a hand between his thighs after Dazai’s pulled out and rolled aside. He’s rambling low and practically incoherent as he stares at his hand, which has come away sticky and webbed with threads of shining fluid. It makes another wave of heat surge, crowding close and uncomfortably arousing, inside Dazai again. “Stupid Dazai… you're low, fucking low on stamina- how do you fuck, women, with that fucking useless, dick, of yours? Agh, you got me dirty; you'd better fucking wash me out, Dazai, fuck; Dazai, are you even listening…?”

“Here, I’m here,” murmurs Dazai, staring at Chuuya with a wild, yearning intensity in his glazed-over eyes, but Chuuya barely takes notice, he's so feverish. He reaches for Dazai, arm trembling, eyes burning and unfocused.

“Dazai, Dazai, I swear to God, I fucking love y- ”

Chuuya collapses on the spot, fingers twitching mildly, and Dazai can't help but notice the most stupid of things; the way his eyes are slightly crinkled at the corners; the strands of flame that course through his hair like a fresh mountain stream; the curve of his gleaming, ivory nails; the luscious swell of his hips and waist in the position he's fallen in, and the glimmer between his thighs where fluid has slipped out and rolled down the luminous skin like condensation on glass, teasingly slow.

It hits Dazai like a freight train, and not for the first time, that his old partner—his old lover—is beautiful.

“Chuuya,” he whispers, lips close to the shell of Chuuya’s ear. “Chuuya… Chuuya.”

He likes the sound of it, the way it grabs hold of his tongue and shapes the nuances of his voice like a glass-blower, likes the hold that Chuuya’s name - that Chuuya - has over him. The word seems to carry a different meaning every time he says it, hot and cold and loathing and loving, and so he does, chants it into Chuuya’s skin between frenzied kisses until he's out of breath and he feels as though he might burst, his feet too heavy and his head too light.

“Chuuya… ”

When Chuuya comes to, he's floating in a deep, nebulous warmth, and he doesn't want to open his eyes, for fear that this might all be a dream. He's terribly sore all over, but especially at the base of his spine and between his legs, and he's reminded, with an unpleasant prickle in the back of his neck, of the events that had transpired the day before.

It was… embarrassing, to say the least. The very thought of it makes blood throb angrily in his brain. To have Dazai see four years worth of vulnerability that Chuuya’s been so desperately been trying to convince himself didn’t exist.

And then Dazai’s fingers move inside him, and Chuuya just about inhales his own weight in water, spluttering as he splashes and struggles for air in the large bathtub.

“What's wrong?” asks Dazai from behind him as Chuuya twists round from his newly discovered position on Dazai’s lap. Dazai’s got the most innocent motherfucking look on his fucking face, and Chuuya swears that one day he will get a knife and stab out the bastard’s eyes.  

“What the fuck do you think you're doing!” he yells, his voice echoing around the bathroom, the tips of his ears a florid crimson.

“Why, exactly what you requested last night,” Dazai replies cheekily, with another twist of his fingers that makes Chuuya’s voice wobble even as he’s babbling curses at the top of his lungs. “Shhh, you'll wake the neighbors.”

“Like I motherfucking care!” shrieks Chuuya. “You bandaged mummy of a pervert—”

“Don't tell me you don't like this, Chuuya,” Dazai grins, free hand stroking teasingly between Chuuya’s thighs, and Chuuya’s train of thought takes an abrupt dive off a cliff, horn blaring as it vanishes into the abyss. “Ooh, look, you got hard again—”

“ … Fuck!”

Chuuya eternally curses the day he met Dazai.

“Chuuya-kun,” reproaches Mori, brows drawing together as Chuuya tries his best not to make it look like he's limping too much. “It's not like you to be late. I hope you didn't run into any trouble on your way here, surely…?”

Chuuya practically snaps in two at the waist as he throws himself into a deep bow to hide his furious blush. His head spins and he nearly falls over, but manages to keep himself on his feet somehow. “My deepest apologies. I plead no excuse.”

Mori chuckles. “How’s the situation in the West, then?”

Chuuya straightens up, adjusts the collar of his coat. “Settled without a problem, sir. I’ll submit the report without delay.”

“Good, good.” Mori waves him off absent-mindedly, bounces Elise on his lap. The girl fixes Chuuya with a wide-eyed stare, and he shivers slightly.

“If you require no more of me—”

“No, I don't. You're dismissed. Oh - right; I have something else for you. While you were away we’ve had a little, ah, visit, from your new friends in the West, it might seem. The information’s ready for you in the Intel department; you can pick it up at your convenience. And you might be interested in this - I've had Akutagawa-kun rambling on—something about capturing Dazai-kun! Well, I never! It seems he managed to escape, though—they found the wall smashed in this morning; must be one of those Agency brats. Akutagawa-kun’s been mad as a dog! Do try to calm him down for me if you see him, will you? I can never figure out how Dazai-kun made him…” Mori wrings his white hands like linen, looking pained, and Chuuya nods.

“I will in my greatest capacity, sir.” Chuuya breathes a sigh of relief. Then he bows again, turns on his heel, and walks out.

His footsteps are soft on the carpeted corridor. He’d left his apartment in a hurry just a while ago, leaving Dazai alone, and he hopes with all his might that when he gets back tonight the place won’t have burned down, what with all Dazai’s capable of doing with it.

The morning sunshine will be pulling last night’s chill out of the wooden floorboards, out of the damp tatami mats, the faint acrid tang of alcohol vapid in the air. Tonight, Chuuya realizes, he will sleep in a futon that's suddenly too large for him alone.

Chuuya pulls his hat down over his face, and keeps walking. It's then when he notices it—a small white square of paper, taped to the brim of his hat. He stops, blinks, then slowly removes his hat, as though it might be a bomb, and tugs the paper free, unfolding it slowly.

Dazai’s scrawl is instantly recognisable, sprinting down the page in haphazard, slanted columns, punctuated by deformed kaomoji that look as though the US dropped the atomic bomb on them instead.

Chuuuuu-ya! ♡＾▽＾♡ Thanks for letting me stay over; that was super nice of you~（*´▽｀*）

Didn’t you blackmail me into doing that…?

If you're thinking that you've gotten rid of me, don't worry! σ(≧ε≦ｏ) We will meet again, I'm sure of it. (≧∀≦) Anyway, my predictions always come true, but you knew that already ヽ(´∇｀)ﾉ

xoxo, Dazai

Chuuya scowls, and is about to crush the paper to bits with his Ability when he notices the small straggling line of text at the bottom left corner.

P.S. You look adorable asleep so I took some photos; don’t mind me~ ☆～（ゝ。∂）

The sun casts its beams like a net over Yokohama. The breeze flies in from the sea like a child on a garden swing, and any passer-by would have testified that it was the perfect day indeed. Perhaps had any sailors by the Port paused from their busy bustle, and stopped to listen, they might have heard a bloodcurdling scream, followed by the most minor of tremors under their feet. But then again, they might have passed it off as just another occurrence of the unexpected.

And the people of Yokohama were certainly no strangers to the unexpected.

-fin-