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“The Agency dorms are being fumigated,” Dazai announced.
Atsushi tried a smile. He was standing stiffly in the doorway beside his mentor with a duffle bag in hand that contained all of his earthly possessions.
He stifled a yawn; it was only a few minutes past seven in the morning. He’d been on his way to check into a hotel a few streets down from the Agency when Dazai had swooped in out of nowhere and ushered him into a luxury car that very obviously did not belong to him.
“What the fuck,” said Chuuya.
“It might take up to two weeks,” Dazai explained cheerfully. “So, I offered—Atsushi can stay with us.”
“No the fuck he can’t.”
“Now, what’s that fancy guest bedroom for if we never have guests over to make good use of it?”
“You’re fucked in the head, mackerel.”
“Shouldn’t have gotten such a big apartment. So much space wasted on such a little guy.”
Chuuya scowled. “It’s my apartment.”
Dazai made a face, his lips downturned.
And it was around that time that Atsushi finally found his voice. “No, it’s all right,” he said. “I really don’t want to impose.”
Chuuya’s expression brightened. Gesturing at Atsushi, he leveled Dazai with a pointed look. Finally, a sensible idea, he seemed to say. The weretiger gets it.
“Yeah,” Atsushi went on. He turned to Dazai. “Really, I can find a hotel—”
Dazai clapped a hand over Atsushi’s mouth. His palm smelled like floral soap.
“Uh-uh-uh,” he said. He shook his head in a vigorous way that Atsushi felt more than he saw. “None of that. Come on, let’s go.”
He freed Atsushi’s mouth and set his hands firmly on his shoulders instead, steering him past Chuuya and toward the living room.
It was Atsushi’s first time seeing the place in the daylight. In its full glory, it was even nicer than he remembered. The massive plush couch, the mahogany furniture, the metallic glint of sleek appliances as far as the eye could see. And the view—the endless maze of the city sprawled like overgrown vines beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Dazai urged him to the left, down a corridor almost as long and narrow as the entranceway. Just as elegant, just as exorbitantly expensive. Sconces lined the walls, situated on either side of every polished wooden doorway. The warm tones were soothing, the carpet underneath Atsushi’s feet soft and inviting. He felt like he was walking through a dream.
He stared openly, taking in the details, the little things. Nearly a year had gone by since his last—and only—visit. Yet despite the time that had passed and the oodles of knowledge he’d acquired about his mentor along the way, about his life, his exploits, he still had trouble believing this was where Dazai lived.
“That’s our room—and that on the left right there is going to be your room,” Dazai was saying. Atsushi tore himself away from his trance, following Dazai’s outstretched finger as he covered the bases. “That door is the guest bathroom. And then that last room at the end of the hall is off-limits, so don’t go snooping or Chuuya is going to declaw you—and I won’t stop him.”
He paused to call over his shoulder. “If you strangle our houseguest in the night, chibikko, you’re sleeping on the couch for a week.”
The first day, it was relatively easy to stay out of everyone’s way.
Atsushi only had enough time to set his bags down at the foot of his bed—and, hell, it was grander than anything he’d ever slept on before—and finger comb his hair into place before rushing out to face the day. He wasn’t going to be late. He couldn’t be. He couldn’t disappoint. He had been assigned another solo case: to practice his decision-making, train his lacking people skills. His client had arranged to meet early that morning in a quaint eatery not too far from the Agency headquarters.
And while normally that would mean sprinting down a flight of stairs and across the street, he was now all the way across the city. He hadn’t planned for that. On his way out the door, he pulled up a local transit map on his phone. Only barely made his bus. Went over his notes on his way there. Details of the case, the witnesses, the suspects.
He came to an understanding, as he observed the traffic around him, cars and busses and bikes moving like molasses, why Dazai was so often late. Perhaps, if he had a car, he could circumvent the congestion, find a route consisting of back roads less travelled. But Dazai did not have a car. The Lexus he had picked Atsushi up in that morning was, as expected, Chuuya’s. Dazai had gotten yelled at for taking it. Atsushi had slipped out just as their pleasant conversation had turned to the topic of hiding explosives in the undercarriage.
Unlike Atsushi’s morning, the day at large was rather uneventful. His client didn’t seem to mind him being a stuttering wreck. They went over her testimony, Atsushi’s checklist, all of the formalities. She thanked him, he promised to be in touch. He went out and did his work. Interviewed bystanders. Watched two hours’ worth of surveillance footage. Crawled back to the Agency to file the necessary paperwork and sent the client an e-mail with a rundown of his preliminary findings.
By the time he got back to the apartment—and it was still mildly baffling that he was willingly about to spend two weeks in a Port Mafia executive’s home—it was almost ten. His eyes felt sticky, heavy with exhaustion.
Quietly, he let himself in with the spare keycard he’d been given. Shoes off, jacket off. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror as he trudged down the corridor. He was a mess.
To the right of the living area was the dining room, and from there, a cozy kitchen, a U-shaped nook with miles of counter space. The endlessly tall ceilings and open floor plan made everything seem that much bigger. There was so much space. More air to breathe. Atsushi felt his lungs expanding in his chest, trying to draw all of it in.
He found Dazai and his abysmal posture at the table, shoveling a bowl of instant noodles. As inconspicuously as he could, Atsushi looked around, peeked past him and into the kitchen.
“Don’t worry,” Dazai said. He didn’t even have to look up to notice Atsushi’s nervous twitches. “The angry little hat rack isn’t here.”
“I wasn’t—” Atsushi tried.
“Dinner? I won’t be cooking—but there’s a basket of these in the cupboard next to the fridge. At the top. The chef,” he motioned to himself, “recommends the shrimp stir fry.”
Atsushi accepted the offer. He wasn’t a picky eater—unlike a certain friend of his. Food was food. He boiled some water. Scoured around for a bowl. Tore the flavor packet open with his teeth.
They ate in silence. Dazai didn’t seem to be in the mood for small talk. He asked Atsushi about the job, nodded along as Atsushi recounted his experiences. And that was it.
Once they were both done, Dazai took their dishes and left them in the sink, splashing some water on the bowls in a careless attempt at rinsing. He asked Atsushi if there was anything he needed. Toothbrush? Slippers? Another pillow? And when Atsushi shook his head, Dazai simply wiggled his fingers at him in response, bade him goodnight, and disappeared down the hall into the master bedroom.
Atsushi switched the lights off in the living room and followed suit.
He crept slowly into his room—he didn’t know if Dazai had gone straight to bed, didn’t want the floors to creak and disturb him. He was going to be the perfect guest. Clean and quiet. He collected what he needed and slipped into his designated bathroom to wash the day away. The towels his hosts had laid out for him were massive, thick like blankets, the water pressure in the shower unlike anything Atsushi had ever felt in his life. It hurt him physically. He was in the wrong line of work, he thought.
Back in the bedroom, Atsushi flicked the light switch and crawled beneath the sheets. He was worn out. His feet hurt. Solo work was draining.
And yet, as he stared at the ceiling, he found that the warm embrace of sleep did not want to take him. Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. He got up and closed the blinds. Though the penthouse apartment was stories away from the bustle of the noisy streets, Atsushi found that the city lights were just as distracting. Glittering neons, hundreds of pinpricks of glowing windows like stars in the night sky.
In the pitch black, he tried again.
Thirty minutes went by, then forty.
Atsushi gave up and reached for his phone. Squinting, he lowered the brightness. Started poking around the Internet. Fell into a rabbit-hole of wildlife rehabilitation videos. Teared up watching a baby fox eat a strawberry.
It was at twelve minutes past two in the morning—according to the glowing numbers at the top of Atsushi’s screen—that the front door opened again. Chuuya. That was good news, Atsushi concluded. If their respective schedules were that incompatible, they would never even have to interact. He was quite all right with that. He would make it through the two weeks and return to the dorms unscathed. He couldn’t wait. Though, admittedly, he would miss the bed.
Atsushi’s alarm dragged him violently awake at a quarter to seven. He had fallen asleep on top of his phone, the home button digging uncomfortably into his cheekbone. As he wobbled to sit up, it detached from his face with a sticky sound. He wiped the screen on his pant leg and wished for nothing more than to curl back up under the weighted duvet.
Instead, he tumbled out onto the floor. He dressed himself, brushed his teeth, combed his hair. He crept quietly out into the dining area in his sock-feet, eager to grab a bite to eat before work. Dazai had told him the previous night that he could help himself to anything, pointed out where everything was. “I’ll know if you didn’t eat anything,” he’d threatened with a dazzling smile. “And then I’ll sic my dog on you.”
So—Atsushi helped himself to a bagel. A truly heavenly cream cheese spread. A side of fresh raspberries. He carried his plate to the table and set it delicately down on one of the place mats. He sat, took a bite, tried not to moan.
Then, the floor creaked.
And as fervently as he prayed for it to be Dazai, it was Chuuya who emerged into the living room.
Atsushi panicked. Heart pounding. Briefly, he considered shoving all of what was on his plate into his mouth and making a break for the door with a hasty, ‘kay, bye!
But he didn’t. He decided to be brave. Took a deep breath, clenched and unclenched his hands. Stuck a raspberry in his mouth. Chewed. He would be all right. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was a guest; he had been invited here.
Chuuya’s hair was a mess, layers poking up every which way. In place of the fitted blacks Atsushi was used to seeing him in, he was clad in loose sweatpants and an overlarge t-shirt that Atsushi suspected was one of Dazai’s. It reached his knees. Made him look even smaller than he was.
“Good morning,” Atsushi hazarded. Courage was a virtue. He would take initiative. Make friends or die trying.
Chuuya looked up at him. There were pillow creases indented on the right side of his face. It was terrifying, how human it made him look. More than that, Atsushi had never before seen him in such favorable lighting, or moving so sluggishly, no screaming, no gratuitous violence—he hadn’t noticed the freckles before. It was a complete stranger standing before him.
Chuuya sniffled, reaching up to rub at his eyes. He wasn’t wearing his gloves, Atsushi noted. Nobody ever saw Nakahara Chuuya without his gloves. And as he lowered his hand, just there, a glint of something shimmering in the early morning sunlight caught Atsushi’s eye: a sleek, silver band nestled on Chuuya’s ring finger.
Atsushi blinked, brain going into overdrive, working all too fast for the wee hours of the morning.
There was no way of knowing whether Chuuya had always worn it—or if it was a recent development. No way of knowing what it meant. Ranpo would know, but Ranpo was half a city away. Chances were it was nothing more than a fashion statement. Chuuya certainly seemed like the type. Surely, that was all it was. For one thing, Dazai didn’t wear anything of the sort. Which meant that they weren’t—
He was reading too much into it.
“Want coffee?”
Atsushi blinked. “Huh?”
“Do you want coffee?” Chuuya repeated slowly, clearly, like he was talking to somebody he considered an utter idiot.
Atsushi blinked again. The offer seemed genial enough. There was no malice in Chuuya’s voice, no underlying threat, nothing to suggest his real plan was to poison Atsushi and dump his body in the harbor before anybody even noticed he was missing. Perhaps—Dazai had given Chuuya a stern talking to under the cover of night. Something about being a benevolent host, a decent human being.
“No, it’s okay,” Atsushi managed. He plastered on a friendly smile. “I’ll grab some on my way to the office.”
Just in case. He didn’t want to impose—he was freeloading already. He had no intention of making demands, going out of his way to cause problems for the people under whose roof he was going to be living for the nearest foreseeable future. The harbor water was filthy.
Chuuya turned away from him without another word.
As Atsushi reburied his face in his plate, eyes fixed firmly on his bagel, Chuuya got to work in the kitchen. Water running, cupboards opening, closing, appliances beeping, ceramics clinking. Atsushi finished his meal in silence, feeling all the while like those daunting blue eyes were glaring a hole into his back, like even chewing too energetically would get him smacked upside the head. It was irrational, idiotic, he knew this, but there were habits he simply could not shake. Being a burden, hating himself for it, et cetera.
A steaming mug was placed suddenly in front of him.
He looked up, dumbfounded. Chuuya was holding a mug of his own, already turning away to head back the way he came; he jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen, waved his free hand in an unintelligible gesture.
“Milk is in the fridge,” he said. “Clean all this shit up after yourself when you’re done.”
━━━
In the beginning everything was just as Atsushi expected it to be.
Dazai ignoring coasters and setting his glasses down directly on polished surfaces. Not wiping away the sticky rings of condensation he left behind. Chuuya throwing one of said coasters at him. Dazai leaving clumps of shaving cream in the bathroom sink. Getting yelled at. Dazai joking about things that weren’t joking matters. Getting glared at. Dazai going out of his way to be an annoyance. Chuuya threatening him with violent bodily harm. Dazai firing back like the nuisance he was known to be. Arguments, bouts of repartee, senseless back and forths.
“Such double standards from my beloved,” Dazai gasped. “When I make a mistake, I get yelled at, but when a certain one of your subordinates makes a mistake—you pat him on the head. It’s going to be okay, little buddy.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“You treat him like a child.”
“I swear, I’ll hurt you.”
Dazai batted his eyelashes. “Is that a promise?”
“I’ll tie you to the toilet and remove your teeth with pliers.”
Dazai gasped. “Chuuya is so scary.”
As Atsushi watched them interact, he found he had trouble believing they were in a committed relationship, let alone alive after sharing the same hundred or so square meters for years.
Maybe—this was how they showed affection.
He stood awkwardly in the entranceway corridor waiting for Chuuya to finish his piece. What it was—Dazai had obliterated the last two doughnuts that morning and was now pouting down at the furious person he’d forgotten to share with.
Five minutes into Chuuya’s impassioned spiel, Dazai lost his patience. He held his hands up in a placating gesture, murmuring a lazy apology. And when that didn’t work, he leaned down and took Chuuya’s face in one hand, pressing a kiss to his opposite cheek.
Atsushi looked down at his feet. The apartment grew quiet.
Dazai broke the silence. “Look at him, poor Atsushi-kun must be sweating half to death in his big, puffy coat,” he said. “We’re running so very late.”
When Atsushi dared to glance back up, Chuuya was scowling at Dazai, angry at how easily he was able to derail his train of thought. After a moment, he raised his hand, curled into a fist, and swatted halfheartedly at Dazai’s chest in an effort to free himself.
“I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get you some more on my way home.”
“All right, piss off already,” Chuuya snapped. “Get out of my sight before I hit you.”
Wounded, Dazai whined, “You did hit me.”
“Go before I hit you again.”
“Chibi has anger issues,” Dazai later told Atsushi as they stepped out of the elevator and into the chilly foyer downstairs. “Don’t mind him.”
At first—much like Chuuya, Dazai was very much his usual self around Atsushi. Nonchalant and incorrigible. Causing problems on purpose. Jumping through hoops to fix them, like everything—like life—was a game to him, only as interesting as he made it.
The thing was, Atsushi could tell it was a facade.
He was no genius, but he knew that nobody, not a single person, could be like that every moment of every day. Relaxed, unbothered, with a skip in their step. And he knew, just as well, that it would quickly become exhausting, maintaining that persona for the entire duration of Atsushi’s stay. For Dazai and Chuuya to play parts. The masks would have to drop eventually.
And they did.
By mid-afternoon the second day, it started with the little things. Private moments spilling out into the open. Sitting close together in content silence. Less—minimally less—performative cussing on Chuuya’s end. Lingering touches, soft and honest. Coexisting in a shared space the way they usually did.
It was tentative. Atsushi understood, of course. Never before had they invited anyone from the outside in. This was new, uncomfortable, for him and for them. It would take getting used to.
In the end, the dam shattered completely. The little things built up until the walls keeping them contained could no longer hold them. By day three, the masks were entirely gone.
It was the change in Dazai’s behavior that was the most unsettling. He grew quieter, smiled more sparingly, stopped putting on a never-ending performance for the sake of Atsushi’s comfort. And it pained him, seeing his friend that way, realizing that this was his reality.
He was struggling. Hurting. The numbness seemed to eat away at him, little by little, until he could no longer manage to roll out of bed, or peel himself off the sofa. And there was no whining, not like at the office. No theatrics. No superficial complaints designed to paint a funny, palatable picture. There were only blank eyes, nails digging slits into his palms, a permeating exhaustion that went bone-deep.
Atsushi was obviously immediately concerned. He had no idea if there was a protocol for this sort of thing. If he should do something, if he should talk to Dazai. If he should tell Chuuya.
That first morning, after Atsushi had finished his coffee and scrubbed the dishes spotless, Chuuya had cornered him in the kitchen and held out a gloved hand. He’d watched warily as Chuuya took up his phone and entered his personal number, then handed it back without explanation. He wondered now, if it was for moments like these, when Dazai wasn’t doing too well. Or if it was for emergencies. Or if this was an emergency.
He wondered, too, how Chuuya managed to live like this. How he fit into Dazai’s grand scheme to end his own life, what his role was in the elaborate plans Dazai concocted. If he was as scared as Atsushi was, seeing Dazai that way. Fearing that, one day, he would come home to a sight he never wanted to see. He wondered how the anxiety didn’t eat him alive.
It was startling to realize that nobody at the Agency, none of Dazai’s closest friends, seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. And even if they did, they never saw the horror of it firsthand. Dazai hid it expertly: with jokes, a flippant attitude, ironic self-deprecation. It was all a barrier he built up to protect himself. He didn’t want to be pitied, to be seen as weak, or an inconvenience. Nor could he allow his vulnerabilities to be exploited, used against him.
It was only here, in the safety of his home, that he felt comfortable enough to drop the ruse.
His trust in Atsushi was a precious, fragile thing. Dazai had chosen to let him in, let him see. Invited him inside, knowing full well that he would eventually have to lay himself bare. And Atsushi swore to himself that he would cherish the responsibility bestowed upon him. He would do everything in his power to help, to whatever extent he was able.
But sometimes—there was nothing he could do.
A few days in, Atsushi returned to the apartment to find Dazai sitting on the living room carpet, still as a statue, with his knees pulled up to his chest—like he had slipped off the sofa and simply lacked the strength to drag himself any further.
He asked, quietly, if Dazai was okay, if he needed anything. And when Dazai glanced up at him, his eyes betrayed so much more than his body ever could. He looked to be on verge of tears—the kind that pricked his eyes but refused to spill. Empty but not. Like he wanted desperately to feel something, anything, but couldn’t.
In the end, Dazai only shook his head, turning back to the floor.
Atsushi wasn’t a quitter. Faced with an obstacle, he would push, pry, insist. But he didn’t want to be tactless; this was not the time and place. Instead, he nodded and slunk silently to his room. Dazai knew better what he himself needed. Most of the time, it was as simple as peace and quiet. That seemed to be enough: letting the hours tick steadily by until he snapped out of it.
Or was pulled out.
Atsushi was on his way to the guest bathroom when he heard the front door click open. He paused in the dimly lit corridor, listening to the sound of shoes being kicked off, outerwear being shed. Footsteps, a pause, then footsteps again.
Chuuya came into view, crossing slowly to where Dazai was sitting. Carefully, he sank to his knees before him.
“What is it?” he asked—and the palpable panic in his voice turned Atsushi’s insides to ice. “Did you do anything?”
Dazai shook his head.
“Did you take anything?”
Another shake.
Chuuya’s unsteady exhale, his instantaneous relief, was visible in the line of his shoulders. There was no immediate danger. Dazai was all right, in as stable condition as he would ever be.
It made Atsushi feel foolish. He should have pressed for details. He should have made sure.
“Okay,” Chuuya murmured. “Come on, come here.”
In gentle movements, he pulled Dazai into his arms. Dazai responded immediately, returning the embrace. He grasped at Chuuya’s back with trembling fingers, clung to him like he was the only thing keeping him from drowning, from slipping under.
Moments later, Chuuya spoke again. “Do you want to talk?”
Shake.
“Later?”
Nod.
“Okay,” Chuuya murmured. “You’re okay.”
Atsushi vanished into the bathroom.
Later that evening, having distracted himself for hours with videos of traditional street foods, Atsushi emerged from his room and crossed quietly to the kitchen to fix himself a cup of tea before bed. That, and his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He wanted to see how Dazai was feeling, if he was doing all right.
The overhead lights were bright, too harsh, in a way, for the somber scene before him:
The pair of them had relocated to the couch. Chuuya’s legs were outstretched. He was squinting at a long block of text on his phone; something work-related, Atsushi guessed. It wasn’t a security breach insofar as Dazai was concerned. He was folded into a little ball, his face tucked snugly into Chuuya’s shoulder, his hands nestled in the space between them. One of Chuuya’s ungloved hands was at the back of Dazai’s neck, threading back and forth through the short hair at his nape in comforting strokes.
On the coffee table stood a bottle of water and two empty soup bowls. That was good. Food was good. It was progress.
Despite the way Dazai was curled in on himself, most of that horrid tension was gone from his frame, like Chuuya’s touch alone had made it better. Not good, not fixed—just better. Like the burden didn’t weigh as much anymore, now that there was someone to help him bear it.
As he waited for the kettle to boil, picking nervously at his fingernails, Atsushi tried to imagine what that was like, having someone at your side whom you trusted so implicitly, with your wellbeing, with your life. Someone you could always turn to when everything became a bit too much. How it felt when they held you, when they made the pain bearable. How to—go about finding a person of his own.
On his way back to his bedroom with a steaming mug in hand, he found himself lingering a little ways from the couch. The itch resurfaced, the desire to ask if there was anything he could do. But he wasn’t sure if he should. He didn’t want to be useless, that was all. He hated the way it made him feel.
Before he could make his mind up, Chuuya sensed his presence and peered up at him over the top of Dazai’s head. The look he fixed Atsushi with was cutting, but surprisingly devoid of vitriol. It was something softer. Protective. And when Atsushi made no immediate move to leave, Chuuya made the decision for him, jerking his head in the direction of the bedrooms in the universal gesture for get the fuck out, kid.
Atsushi got the fuck out.
Yet again, sleep evaded him for a very long time.
It made his heart ache, thinking about Dazai going about his life wishing it would end. Plastering on a broad smile, an agreeable personality. Hurting and hiding and laughing along to the morbid jokes he himself initiated, offering help to those who needed it, like their wellbeing somehow mattered more than his own.
Atsushi couldn’t fathom why nobody else seemed to care. Or—he wondered whether he was taking all of it too personally, being too sensitive for his own damn good. Wondered whether it was simply in his nature: to reach out to anyone who was struggling.
When he finally did drift off, he dreamt of cold eyes and a sweep of billowing black silk.
He didn’t understand the connection.
━━━
Atsushi slipped on his way out of the elevator.
He was soaked through to the bone; his flimsy raincoat could only do so much to protect him from the raging thunderstorm.
While he and Kyouka-chan had been out on a reconnaissance job, he had received a text from one of the Agency’s sources regarding a long-term assignment he was working on with Dazai. The moment they got what they needed, Atsushi had packed up and sprinted back to the apartment; Dazai had made him promise, pinky swear on his life, that the moment the lab results came in, Atsushi would let him know. “No matter what I’m doing,” he’d said, eyes boring into Atsushi’s soul. “No matter what.” Atsushi hadn’t really wanted to press for details.
By the time he stumbled through the front door and shut it quietly behind himself, it was a little past eleven o’clock. He pulled his coat over his head and toed his shoes off, grimacing at the way his socks squelched against the tile. He then stuck his head into the supply closet to the right of the door and rummaged blindly around in the dark. Pulling out a handful of cleaning cloths, he arranged them at the foot of the coat rack. Just in case. Dripping. Bad. Would damage the floors. And then he would get murdered.
The apartment was dark and unnervingly silent, the living room and the kitchen both empty, utterly devoid of life. Every now and again lightning flashed, illuminating everything in a cold, blue glow.
Atsushi figured Dazai was home, either already in bed or getting ready to settle down. Chuuya’s schedule was less predictable: his curfew could be any time between early afternoon and the literal middle of the night.
As Atsushi tiptoed down the corridor, he saw that the door to the master bedroom was ajar, as it always was. Dazai was very particular about smells, he’d once explained. Stuffy and stinky was bad. They typically left the door wide open—but while Atsushi was staying, for the sake of his virgin eyes, they would close it just so to make sure he didn’t accidentally witness anything unseemly.
To which Chuuya had said, “Forget about it. I’m not fucking you with a little kid in the next room.”
Atsushi had blanched. Cleared his throat. “I’m actually—”
But Dazai had interrupted, capturing Chuuya’s hands in his own, and launched into a tirade about something or another, giving Atsushi ample opportunity to slip out of their sight unnoticed and go brush his teeth.
But nothing of the sort was happening—nothing unseemly.
Chuuya was home, after all. Perhaps the Mafia didn’t operate under poor weather conditions. Safety first, even when in the business of violent crime.
He was fast asleep, curled up on his side facing the door. Dazai was at his back, clutching him much like a child would hold their favorite teddy bear. His face was tucked snugly against Chuuya’s collar; he had one arm under Chuuya’s neck and across his shoulders, the other wound around his stomach in a hold reminiscent of a swaddle. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt that seemed to glow in the dark—and Atsushi realized, with a jolt, that he had never seen Dazai without his bandages before. It was unfathomable that such a version of Dazai should exist. And yet, there it was. Not only that, but it was a version that seemed more relaxed, more comfortable than Atsushi had ever seen him before.
Upon second glance—so did Chuuya. One of his hands was wrapped tightly around Dazai’s forearm. And though Atsushi couldn’t see it through the gloom of night, he could imagine the white-knuckled grip. Safe. Content. Nowhere he’d rather be.
He looked small. Not a revelation, Atsushi thought, not at all. But there was something more to it now that Chuuya wasn’t putting on a show. Faced with an audience, he was loud and bold and volatile—and it was difficult to reconcile that image with what Atsushi saw before him.
It was a highly deceptive picture. Chuuya was a highly deceptive individual. Fragile, at first glance, even delicate. But Atsushi knew from firsthand experience the extent of damage he could cause without so much as breaking a sweat. He was more formidable than any of them. The most dangerous man in the city—because nobody expected him to be.
And Dazai, in his own right, was just as powerful—if not more so. He was the one who held the key, the only one who could control the full extent of Chuuya’s ability. It was a blessing, all things considered, that they no longer worked for the same side. Whoever had both under their command held a weapon most remarkable. Whoever controlled them had the means to become downright unstoppable.
There was a poeticism to it. They balanced each other out.
Their abilities were one thing, but beyond that, everything about them was just as harmonious. The brains and the muscle, the schemer and the diplomat. The uncanny talent to anticipate the other’s decisions, the moves they would make, the emotions they would feel. Two halves of a puzzle. Dazai quieted Chuuya’s rage and Chuuya dispelled that aching numbness eating away at Dazai’s soul.
Without making a sound, Atsushi slipped back out into the hallway.
Somehow, this was infinitely worse than walking in on the two of them having sex, he thought. It was like a breach of decorum, witnessing something intimate as that, something he had no right to.
He decided he would text Dazai his findings instead. There was no way he was marching in there and shaking Dazai awake. One: neither of them got enough sleep. This was good. Atsushi was simply being mindful of their physical health. Two: he didn’t want to get disemboweled. He had no doubt Chuuya slept with an assortment of weapons under his pillow. And technically—texting Dazai was telling him right away. When Dazai actually ended up opening the message was his problem. Atsushi would have done his part, as agreed.
Back in his room, comforted by the yellow glow of his bedside lamp, Atsushi typed the message out, foregoing adding any attachments for the sake of digital security, and set his phone down. He and Dazai could talk about it in the morning. No harm done.
A half hour later, with the light switched off as his eyelids grew unbearably heavy, Atsushi found himself feeling sentimental once more. They were becoming increasingly common, these abrupt bouts of overwhelming emotion. It was, he figured, a byproduct of existing alongside an unexpectedly gooey, inseparable couple. It wasn’t jealousy, per se. Loneliness, perhaps? An ache, a longing for something more—for someone of his own whom he trusted with his life, whose unwavering devotion he had in return.
His match, as simple as that.
━━━
Atsushi found Chuuya slumped forward on the couch, elbows on his knees, staring blankly at the television screen. A commercial was playing, something about electronics on sale. Between his fingers was a wine bottle, nearly empty, swaying back and forth.
Chuuya didn’t look up; he didn’t seem to notice Atsushi come in. He was still dressed for work, his coat and hat thrown hastily over the back of the couch as though he had just come home, yet his eyes were glassy, his cheeks flushed like he’d been at it for a while. He hadn’t even bothered to remove his gloves.
Valuing his own wellbeing, Atsushi decided not to bother him. He slipped quietly into the dining area and set his things down on one of the kitchen chairs. As quietly as he could manage, he washed his hands, and as carefully as humanly possible, he microwaved the leftovers he’d set aside for himself the day before.
With his steaming noodles, he sat himself down at the table. Across the room, Chuuya was still in the same position, folded in on himself. The newscaster on the television screen was talking about the stock market.
One week living in close proximity to him, and Atsushi already knew it was not unusual for Chuuya to get this way, to be seen with a glass in his hand, a bottle to his lips. His gaze gradually growing sleepy, unfocused, until he could no longer hold himself upright and staggered unsteadily to the bedroom to sleep it off. A headache the next morning, two pops of Aspirin, and off he went to work.
It wasn’t healthy by any means, but it wasn’t any of Atsushi’s business, either. It was unadvisable, he thought, getting into a heated debate with an individual who not only could kill him without lifting a finger, but would do so gladly and without hesitation, drunk or stone-cold sober.
Atsushi had just enough time to swallow two mouthfuls of noodles in peace before the front door opened again.
He and Dazai had been on assignment together that day, questioning a shop owner in relation to a recent string of armed robberies on the outskirts of the city. On their way back, Dazai had instructed him to go on ahead without him. He wanted to visit the convenience store at the corner of their street; he would only be a minute.
“Honey, I’m home,” Dazai sang out.
He emerged from the entranceway corridor sans shoes and coat, with a smile on his face and a plastic bag swinging to and fro from his fingers.
When he caught sight of Chuuya, he stopped short. Almost too quickly for Atsushi to process, his expression fell, his pleasant demeanor replaced with something infinitely more serious, a crease of concern materializing between his brows.
Slowly, he set the bag down by the wall to prop up whatever was inside and approached the sofa in measured steps.
“Chuuya,” he drawled, feigning disappointment.
He crouched in front of Chuuya’s motionless form and pried the bottle from his limp fingers. Reaching blindly behind himself, he set it down on the coffee table with an echoing clink. Chuuya did nothing to stop him.
“Chuuya,” he repeated, quieter now.
From his vantage point, Atsushi couldn’t see Chuuya’s expression—but he could piece it together well enough. Eyes empty, blinking slowly, too slowly, not altogether there. On the verge of losing consciousness and sliding to the floor.
Chuuya swayed, listing to the left, but managed to catch himself before he toppled. He tilted his head to one side, then, as though he couldn’t discern if the Dazai in front of him was real.
His voice was faint when he finally spoke. “‘samu?”
“Yeah, it’s me. You feeling okay?”
“It’s loud. He’s—” Chuuya murmured. “Head hurts.”
“Yeah, I know,” Dazai said softly. “It’s time for bed, slug, don’t you think?”
Chuuya hummed. “‘m not sleepy.”
“Yeah, you are. Be a good dog. Come on, get your ass up.”
“‘m not a dog.”
“No?” Dazai laughed. “You’re wearing a collar and everything.”
“Fuck you.”
“Come on, chibi, up.”
With an arm around his waist, Dazai hauled him to his feet, ignoring Chuuya’s halfhearted protests, the weak slaps he aimed at Dazai’s midriff in a sloppy effort to free himself.
It was their standing—on opposite sides of the battlefield—that made it jarring, how much they cared about one another. Dazai’s teasing was never cruel. Chuuya’s aggression was never meant to maim. It was just as Dazai had once said: there was a balance to it. They never crossed the line of what the other was comfortable with.
It would be laughably simple to let their natural animosity fester and rot, morph into hatred. Instead, in spite of their positions, their dependence on each other remained unwavering, their faith in the other untouchable. And that was harder. That required effort—effort that they were more than willing to put in. To be considerate, to be kind; little, gentle things to bridge the unfortunate gap that Dazai’s departure had created between them.
One of those things, a remarkable display of trust, was their early-morning ritual—though Atsushi was only witness to it once, when they had taken it out into the open. Dazai sat on the sofa with his legs crossed and arms outstretched, talking animatedly. Chuuya’s head was bowed as he worked in silence, wrapping Dazai’s arms up in fresh bandages. Atsushi could tell he was listening, nodding along, biting back a fond smile. He was meticulous, impossibly careful, holding Dazai’s wrists between his fingers like they were porcelain.
Before that moment, Atsushi had never seen what lay beneath: lines of raised scars criss-crossing down the length of Dazai’s forearms. Some deep, some shallower. Some old, some newer. And he knew: he never wanted to see it again. It wasn’t meant for him, the privilege of seeing Dazai at his most vulnerable. That required a level of confidence, he thought, that he had yet to earn.
He shoved his nose into his coffee cup and didn’t look back up until Dazai bounced up off the sofa calling his name. He skipped over to Atsushi’s side and liberated the cup from between his clasped palms, draining it in one big gulp. “Up, up, up,” he instructed, pulling Atsushi upright and escorting him briskly into the hallway. Mask on, ready to face the day.
Sometimes, he and Dazai returned to the apartment in better condition, sometimes in worse. Mostly worse—when Dazai decided to act on his more reckless impulses with little regard for his own wellbeing, and Atsushi’s by extension.
Chuuya was home when they got back that evening, curled up like a shrimp at the kitchen table with his laptop open, a sheaf of documents and a purple highlighter at his side. He took one look at Dazai—bleeding from his head—and rolled his eyes so vehemently Atsushi feared that they would get stuck in the back of his head.
“Sit down,” Chuuya instructed, nodding at the seat across from him.
With that, he stood and went looking for supplies, muttering under his breath as he vanished out of sight.
Once Dazai was wrangled into place, he slid out of Atsushi’s grasp and craned his head to peer at the documents laid out on the tabletop. On instinct, Atsushi followed his gaze—the Mori Corporation logo was emblazoned at the top of each page. The Mafia’s front organization. Theatrically, Dazai gasped and screwed his eyes shut.
“Don’t look,” he told Atsushi. “Plausible deniability.”
Right on cue, the laptop slammed shut. Chuuya, having reappeared all too quickly, set the first aid kit he’d procured on top of it.
As he shuffled his mound of paperwork into a neat little pile and flipped it upside down, he asked Dazai, “How shit are you at your job for this to keep happening to you?”
“Ha. The job didn’t do this to me.”
“Who, then?” he demanded. “Fuck, you smell like cheap booze. The hell were you?”
Atsushi walked around the table. Gingerly, he sat, as far away as possible from Chuuya’s imminent wrath.
“Mm, Chuuya,” Dazai hummed. The cut above his left eyebrow had started bleeding again at some point during their troublesome trek home—blood was dribbling sluggishly down the side of his face. “A gentleman at the bar disagreed with me.”
Chuuya dabbed a generous amount of disinfectant onto a little, square strip of gauze.
“The bar?” he echoed.
And before Dazai could protest, plead with him to take mercy, Chuuya applied it to the cut. Dazai, unsurprisingly, squealed. Chuuya held him still as he cleaned the wound, then took up another wipe and swabbed at the trail of blood, both fresh and dried, rubbing carefully around Dazai’s eye and by his hairline. Focused, methodological, unbothered by Dazai’s valiant attempts at wriggling free.
Finally, Dazai seemed to arrive at the groundbreaking conclusion that he was playing a losing game; with a pout, he went still.
“Good boy,” Chuuya told him.
Dazai made a face at him. Then, he sighed, shoulders drooping, went limp like putty in Chuuya’s grasp. “See, chibikko, we were meeting an informant. At a bar. And if anybody asks, you didn’t hear that from me—because that’s against the rules.”
Though the reminder was for Atsushi's benefit, Chuuya hummed in lazy acknowledgement.
“Shady fellow,” Dazai went on. “Anyway—after he left, I decided to treat my dear Atsushi-kun to a drink. The scotch there was very good, mind you. Cheap booze, my ass. And then at some point, there was a guy who had some opinions, and I didn’t like them, and he didn’t like that I didn’t like them—”
When it became quite clear that Dazai wasn’t going to continue of his own accord, Chuuya poked at him. “And?”
Dazai continued to say nothing. Began humming to himself instead. The fight hadn’t sobered him up completely, by the looks of it. Well. It hadn’t been much of a fight. Dazai had simply stood there, laughing, as the towering boulder of a man had threatened him with violent death.
“He—the guy smashed a glass over his head,” Atsushi supplied helpfully.
Chuuya turned to scowl at him. Held his gaze for a second, then two, then turned back to Dazai, who was now peering up at him with an impish smirk.
“Just like Chicago, eh?”
“Idiot.”
He tilted Dazai’s head to the side with two fingers under his jaw, turning it toward the overhead light. He inspected the cut, prodding delicately at the swollen flesh with his free hand.
“Needs stitches,” he decided.
Dazai whimpered. He tried to shake his head, to get to his feet—but again, Chuuya’s hold on him was relentless.
“Shush,” he ordered. There was no bite to it; it was gentle, oddly comforting, the way he said it. “Don’t be a baby.”
As Chuuya laid out his tools, Dazai watched: half in horror, half wide-eyed admiration, like Chuuya’s mere existence was the most breathtaking thing in the world.
Chuuya grumbled while he worked, sterilizing the necessary instruments, slipping on a pair of black nitrile gloves. Something about dropping the Mafia, something about going into nursing. Patching Dazai’s stupid ass up all the damn fucking time.
“Are you going to pass out, too?
Atsushi glanced up. “Huh?”
Chuuya was looking at him. “Are you hurt?” he asked. “This could take a while.”
Atsushi prodded at his own swollen eye. He’d had no choice but to jump in to defend Dazai when it became painfully apparent that his mentor had had one too many to throw a straight punch.
He frowned as the full meaning behind the question sank in. Chuuya was offering him help. Insinuating that he would tend to Atsushi first before getting started on Dazai. Incomprehensible.
“Um, no,” he managed. “Just a bruise. I heal quickly.”
The next look Chuuya leveled him with was unquestionably a dismissal. Gladly, he took his leave, scrambling to his feet and out of the dining room.
“Go back. Go get an ice pack from the freezer,” Chuuya snapped. “Idiot.”
Atsushi promptly doubled back and did as he was told. As he left the room for the second time, he reined in the apology that threatened to roll off his tongue. He was always sorry for something, even when there was nothing to be sorry for. He heard a familiar voice in the back of his mind. Stop apologizing for being alive. It had a point.
He skittered across the living room, making a beeline for the guest bathroom. He intended on icing his face until the swelling went down, then taking an extremely long, extremely thorough shower.
Dazai’s voice continued to echo about the apartment. Whining and sniveling and small, panicked noises.
“Chuuya is so cruel.”
“And you’re a lost fucking cause.”
While it was usually Chuuya putting Dazai back together following whatever he did to himself or had done to him, Atsushi knew that was not always the case.
It was a couple of months now, he recalled as he stepped under the scalding hot spray, since the Agency’s last joint assignment with the Mafia, since he was witness to the true scope of Chuuya’s power. His corrupted form, Dazai had called it.
When the carnage was over, Chuuya had crumpled into Dazai’s arms like a puppet with its strings cut, and Atsushi thought, for a single terrifying moment, that he was dead. Lips blue, eyes sunken, burst capillaries stretching like spiderwebs beneath his skin. He was covered in blood, drenched in it; there was so much it was hard to believe there was any left inside his body. Dripping from his nose, his eyes, his ears. He coughed mouthfuls of it up, his chest seizing like there was something on the inside trying to burst free, Dazai’s bandages staining crimson as he cradled Chuuya close.
During the aftermath, Dazai had been unexpectedly calm: like it was familiar, like they had danced this dance before. Atsushi knew, of course, that they had.
But Dazai’s gaze betrayed the true depth of his worry. Controlled though his movements were—as he cleaned the worst of it from Chuuya’s face, as he turned him onto his back with practiced precision as soon as the convulsions ceased, once he was sure Chuuya wouldn’t suffocate on his own blood—his eyes had been wild. Anxious. A raging, helpless panic trapped beneath a stoic facade.
The damage was mostly internal, Dazai later explained—when Atsushi, concerned, had cornered him about it. Organs, tissue, the squishy parts. That was the cost of Chuuya’s ability. A power too absolute for a human body to handle, a vicious parasite eating away at his interior.
Atsushi couldn’t wrap his head around it:
Chuuya, making that sacrifice again and again. Reliving the worst kind of pain imaginable. Knowing full well what suffering awaited him upon his return, knowing the price he would pay if Dazai failed to get to him. Dazai, sending Chuuya out to wreak havoc, not knowing if he would make it out in one piece, praying he would manage to free him in time from the throes of blind chaos. It was unfathomable, the cost of their infamy. Beyond comprehension, what would happen if either of them slipped up.
But they would not let that happen. Stubborn as they were, they would cross every boundary, go to every possible length, to keep the other safe. It was easier said than done, considering the volume of violence in their respective lines of work. Easier said than done, given that they were usually on opposing sides of the conflict.
Late Sunday night, after Chuuya had turned in early for the night and Dazai had sprawled out in the living room with an ice cold whiskey, Atsushi cracked, the curiosity gnawing at him reaching its boiling point.
Tentatively, he sat beside Dazai, his hands twisting in his lap. And said nothing. He didn’t know where to begin, what the best way to ask was.
A minute or two into that tense silence, Dazai stretched one of his legs out, jabbing Atsushi’s side with his toe. “What’s up?”
“Huh?”
“You’re itching to tell me something,” Dazai said. “Out with it.”
There was no best way.
Atsushi took a breath. “How do you do it? You’re—” He paused. He glanced in the direction of the bedrooms, then back at his mentor. “You know.”
Dazai huffed. Offered him a little jerk of a shrug. His glass—which had been distressingly full just a quarter of an hour ago—only had a few sips left. And Dazai had a habit of drinking on an empty stomach. Which was why, when he spoke, Atsushi knew it was unfiltered, completely and utterly honest.
He listed the rules off on his fingers. They didn’t take their professional lives home. Only ever did work when the other wasn’t around to snoop. Plausible deniability, Atsushi’s memory echoed. They vented using the vaguest of terms. “Names, sure,” Dazai mused, “but no places, no details, nothing incriminating; it’s all very boring.” They didn’t intentionally sabotage each other’s assignments, nor did they go out of their way to damage the other’s reputation in the eyes of their colleagues, their respective superiors. It was all very fair. Very straightforward.
Dazai hummed. “There’s a lot of walking on eggshells,” he summarized. There was a little crease between his brows.
Atsushi nodded.
“I won’t lie, it would be easier if—” Dazai trailed off. He shook his head. “Leaving the way I did was a dick move. The slug’s very brave about it, but I’ve always been able to see through that. But I had to do it, you know, I needed out.”
“I mean—”
“I blew up his car, too. But, see, that I did for a very important reason. Therefore, he had no choice but to forgive me. Still, he was very mad at me for a very long time. I think he’s still mad at me. He has every right to be. But he knows that I—I forgot what I was talking about.”
Atsushi prompted, “Um. Leaving?”
“Right. You see, I made a promise. I’m keeping it. Besides, it’s good for me, the Agency. It makes me—”
“Happy?” Atsushi tried.
“Makes me want to lay down on train tracks a little bit less,” Dazai countered, his smile broad, his eyes glittering. Typical of him: squeezing in a morbid joke when the conversation turned too serious.
“Oh.”
“And I think he sees that, too,” Dazai went on. “Just—not a word to anyone about any of this. My Chuuya would shave my eyebrows off in my sleep if he knew I was being sappy around other people.”
With a weak smile, Atsushi nodded.
Dazai mirrored his expression and promptly knocked back what was left of his whiskey. “Whatever the case may be—and you have my word that this is the last melodramatic shit I’ll say before I go pass out—I just can’t imagine a reality where I don’t come home to him at the end of the day.”
The glass was set down on the coffee table with a jarring clank. Dazai stretched his arms out over his head, indulging in a comically loud yawn.
“And, well, my Chuuya’s been stupidly in love with me since we were—”
There was a muffled bang from down the hall.
Dazai’s hands dropped back into his lap. He pursed his lips. Uh-oh. The bedroom door was ajar, of course. And much like Dazai, Chuuya was not the type to mind his own business.
“Shut your mouth. Shitty Dazai, I’ll fucking kick you to death, piece of shit.”
━━━
It was the coldest night of his life. Atsushi was sure of it as he sped back to the apartment, fighting against the biting chill. No dinner with a friend was worth this. His fingers were freezing off.
When he rounded the corner, skidding on the slippery ground, he spotted a familiar figure huddled by the entrance to the high-rise.
Chuuya was standing by the doorway, kicking idly at a piece of loose concrete beneath his feet. He was dressed for the weather, bundled in a long coat, with a scarf looped around his neck—but underneath that, he seemed to be wearing more casual attire, the sort of thing Atsushi typically saw him in around the house. His hair, too, was less than presentable, up in a messy knot he wouldn’t be caught dead in in the daylight.
As he got closer, Atsushi noticed the cherry-red glow of the lit cigarette between Chuuya’s fingers; he hadn’t bothered with his gloves—the one time it would make sense to wear them.
Hearing the approaching footsteps, Chuuya raised his head. He took a drag so deep it made Atsushi’s lungs itch. Then, he exhaled, a cloud of dense smoke momentarily obscuring his face from view. With a strange little quirk of a smile, he stretched his hand out to offer Atsushi the cigarette, his eyebrow raised in what Atsushi interpreted to be mocking amusement.
For a moment, the unspoken question hung in the air between them. Gathering his wits, or whichever parts of his brain were not yet decimated by the cold, Atsushi declined. He shook his head awkwardly, wobbling like a bobblehead, before ducking into the stairwell and leaving Chuuya behind in the street.
From avid observation, Atsushi knew two things:
Chuuya only ever smoked when he was stressed. And given that stress was an occupational hazard in the world of organized crime, the sight before him was not an unusual one.
The second—he only ever lit up outdoors. Never inside the apartment. Atsushi assumed that little tidbit had everything to do with Dazai’s smell thing. And the fact that Chuuya wasn’t simply on his way back from work, that he had specifically left the apartment after winding down for the night—it was a sweet display of courtesy, of his deliberate care to avoid offending Dazai’s delicate sensibilities.
It was one of those little things.
Though they were constantly at odds, or so it seemed, always arguing, always disagreeing about something, the little things they did to be considerate of the other’s wants and needs never did get put on the back burner. Every day, they put in even the smallest of efforts, unprompted, to make each other’s lives, each other’s routines, as comfortable as possible.
There was, for instance, the kitchen rule, banning Dazai from doing anything more than boiling water in the electric kettle. As such, Chuuya was the designated cook in the household. And though it was no small feat, he never half-assed it. He put effort into everything he did: grocery lists, shopping for ingredients, keeping his kitchen clean and orderly like the sensible adult he was. He always made sure to stock up on Dazai’s favorite seafood, too, would travel across town whenever his schedule allowed it to pick up the brand of mirin that Dazai liked more than others, would always import the best wines from abroad to complement the dishes he prepared—although, that seemed to be more of a gift for himself than for Dazai.
Atsushi was sitting at the dining table, reading through the new issue of the Agency’s annual health and safety booklet. Chuuya was cooking. Dazai, meanwhile, was hard at work being an annoyance. His arms were looped around Chuuya’s waist, rendering him immobile, his chin perched on top of Chuuya’s head. He was cooing at him, pestering him with snide remarks, kissing his neck in an effort to be as distracting as humanly possible.
Bravely, Atsushi ignored the whole spectacle. He was used to it; it was, after all, already his second weekend at the apartment. On top of that, he was too intrigued by the different types of fire extinguishers in the Agency building to properly listen to Dazai’s ramblings. Back where he was from, they threw a bucket of water on the flames and hoped for the best, consequences be damned.
But he heard enough. Dazai was making suggestive comments about the text printed across the front of Chuuya’s apron. Atsushi, using his ever-improving skills of deduction, arrived at the conclusion that Dazai had gotten it for him as a joke some years ago. And then Chuuya actually wore it. And kept wearing it.
Finally—Chuuya snapped. “I’ll strangle you, asshole.”
“What a way to go that would be,” Dazai said dreamily.
“No, get off,” Chuuya insisted, struggling to wriggle out of the vice-like embrace. “Get the fuck off.”
It took some effort, but he eventually succeeded in shaking himself free. With the hand that wasn’t wielding his sauce-stained spoon, he shoved Dazai away.
“Go sit down. Sit,” Chuuya ordered. “Wait, try this—”
Before Dazai managed a single step, Chuuya’s arm shot back out to grab at his shirt and whirl him around. He stuck the spoon in Dazai’s mouth with no preamble and carefully observed his expression.
With an endearingly thoughtful frown, Dazai chewed and swallowed. Made a face. Whatever it meant—the face—seemed to be a good enough reaction for Chuuya.
“Okay, now go.”
Dazai slumped down in the chair across the table just as Atsushi was finishing the fire safety section of the booklet. Atsushi bent the corner of the page to mark his progress and looked at Dazai, then Chuuya. Realized how staggeringly useless he was being. Two weeks of freeloading and he hadn’t even bothered to offer to help with dinner.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is there anything I can—”
“No,” Chuuya said. “You stay right there. And make sure he stays right there, too, and doesn’t try to help.”
Dazai huffed and grumbled something unintelligible to himself. Predictably, though, his moment of dejection only lasted a handful of seconds. He reached into his pants pocket, then, and whipped out a small cardboard box. A card game, obviously liberated from somebody at the office—Atsushi had seen it on the windowsill by his desk earlier that week. Dazai flicked the instruction pamphlet at Atsushi and continued his performative pouting as he shuffled the cards.
“The ugly slug is so mean.”
“Shut up before I poison your fucking soup.”
Dazai pouted harder.
“He might enjoy that,” Atsushi pointed out.
Dazai grumbled again, something about domestic abuse. Shuffled more violently. Handed Atsushi a dozen laminated cards.
“You’re so far away now, Chuuya,” he whined. “I miss you.”
“Yeah, and I miss how quiet it was before you moved your sorry ass in here.”
Briefly, Atsushi considered—even though his time in the lovely couple’s company was already coming to a rapid end—if it wasn’t too late to head out and find a nice, peaceful hotel room.
Despite the somewhat aggressive exchange, it did not take long at all for a comfortable stillness to envelop the room.
The card game was completely illogical; it took all of Atsushi’s brainpower to make sense of the rules. Dazai, despite claiming he’d never played it before, wasn’t experiencing the same problem. His stack of cards was twice the size of Atsushi’s in no time.
By the stove, as Chuuya put the finishing touches on their dinner, he hummed a foreign song under his breath, sipped every now and again at the glass of wine he’d poured himself. He seemed to be far less angry now that Dazai wasn’t tangled like an octopus around him.
And while Dazai was still pretending to be upset, he most certainly was not—not really. Atsushi was slowly becoming an expert at reading in between the lines. Dazai’s lines, at least. The reality was that Dazai would let Chuuya get away with anything, the constant barbs and halfhearted attempts at physical violence included. Which was a daunting thought, in view of his status as law enforcement and Chuuya’s as a high-ranking criminal. That didn’t bode well, all things considered. But Dazai was well and truly, irrevocably, whipped.
And from what Atsushi had observed in the past, he was not the only one. Chuuya, undeniably, had a magnetic quality about him. The entire Mafia, for starters, was wrapped around his little finger: obeying his orders without question, just about catering to his every whim, present at his every beck and call. “They line up to light his cigarettes, weretiger,” Akutagawa had told him once. “It’s painful to watch.”
But what Dazai did for Chuuya—it went beyond the scope of what anyone else could do for him. They were things that nobody else would even think of, that seemed insignificant to anyone but Dazai, that were part of a side of Chuuya that only he knew existed.
For one—there was the physical contact.
Chuuya was not the sort of person to hand out hugs or friendly pats on the back for a job well done. Dazai was the exception to that unspoken rule.
Chuuya slipped into a restless state sometimes, gave off an almost frenetic desperation to reach out and latch onto whatever part of Dazai was closest.
Atsushi didn’t know the extent of Chuuya’s control over his ability—whether it was something he could turn off after hours or not. He supposed it was a lot more complicated than it looked. But he imagined the tactility was related to the maddening power thrumming in his veins. It made sense. Chuuya liked to be in control. Entering his corrupted state took that away from him, made him a stranger in his own body. Dazai’s gift, contrarily, gave him back his autonomy. It kept him whole.
But beyond just quieting his overactive ability, Dazai’s touch seemed to relieve pain of a far more physical kind. Chuuya’s skin was marred with raised, reddish marks: scars that wound around his forearms and up to the sides of neck, visible only when the light fell just right. Signs of where Corruption had torn his body apart. Atsushi had reason to suspect the external damage was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. His theory made sense of Chuuya’s permanent dark circles, his sleepless nights: the pain never went away. But when Dazai’s hand closed over his, the tight set of Chuuya’s jaw would often relax, the slope of his shoulders sagging.
Dazai never complained; in fact, he seemed to welcome the proximity. He gladly let Chuuya drape himself all over, petted Chuuya’s hair in a way that was almost possessive whenever he crashed onto his lap, twined their fingers together whenever they sat side by side in front of the television.
It was only natural to wonder if Dazai ever felt responsible for Chuuya’s wellbeing in that respect.
In the days following the mission that had required Chuuya to use his corrupted form, Atsushi remembered the consequences being dire.
Dazai had been frantic in a way nobody had ever seen him before. He took one day off to watch over Chuuya’s recovery, then another. For two days after that, once he came back to work, he was distracted, checking his phone every few minutes, texting relentlessly, placing regular calls to make sure everything was all right back home. Atsushi gleaned just enough from context to make his stomach churn: a raging, alarmingly high fever, lingering tremors, Chuuya stumbling to his knees in the bathroom, retching, blood staining his lips.
Dazai had let it go on for longer than he should have. He felt sick with himself—he made that painfully clear. And even if he didn’t, it was apparent in the way he picked violently at his nails, at his skin, like he wanted to tear a chunk of something out, to punish himself for stepping in too late.
Atsushi could tell—because he knew that he would react the very same way if he were trusted with somebody’s life and let them down, even by a fraction of a second.
Even so, knowing all that he did, Atsushi couldn’t help but marvel at how important, how easy physical contact was for the two of them. In all fairness, prior to his stay in their guest bedroom, he hadn’t had very many opportunities to observe their interactions—unless their respective organizations were forced into teamwork or butting heads, their spheres of work were entirely unconnected. And in the face of potential conflict, there wouldn’t even be a reason for them to stand close enough to touch. Especially so, considering Dazai’s ability effectively rendered Chuuya defenseless. Not the ideal scenario. Which also meant that in the comfort of their home, Chuuya didn’t care all that much about having access to his power. He trusted Dazai implicitly, felt wholly safe at his side.
Atsushi shook himself out of his reverie. He was thinking too damn much. Couples touched. End of story.
But, then, what did they do when—
Sensing eyes on him, Atsushi looked up from his pile of paperwork to find Dazai peering curiously at him from across his workspace. It was Monday. They were at the office. He had to stop daydreaming.
Dazai’s feet were up on his own desk, an open pack of crackers that he’d stolen from somebody else’s lunch box swinging from his fingers.
“What’s got your kitty tail in a twist?”
“Nothing,” Atsushi said. “Working.”
“You haven’t started.”
“I’m thinking.”
“About?” Dazai sing-songed.
About what happens when the organizations are at war. What then—how do you deal with it? How do you manage without tearing each other’s throats out?
“Stuff.”
He tried to recall Dazai’s behavior around the last time the Mafia had declared war on the Agency. Or vice versa. Someone was always declaring war. He remembered complaints about sleeping on the couch, getting scolded for leaving dirty clothes in places dirty clothes shouldn’t be, for forgetting to clean his hair out of the shower drain, that sort of thing. “Which is bold of him, you know,” Dazai had said. “You should see how much he sheds.”
Atsushi supposed that made sense. They didn’t bring work home—they had to get that anger out through other means.
“You’re thinking about me and my little sheepdog, aren’t you? You’re very curious about that sort of thing,” Dazai drawled, seeing right through him like it was nothing. “I wonder why that is.”
The way he said it made Atsushi feel like Dazai knew exactly why that was.
See, Atsushi almost had it. The realization was at the very forefront of his mind—it just refused to take shape. He would get it eventually. He knew he would.
“Just, you know,” Atsushi started. He cursed his innate curiosity and defective brain-to-mouth filter. “The last time we were getting our asses handed to us by the Mafia—how did you guys make it work?”
Dazai concealed his apparent amusement behind a great, deep sigh, like he was being asked to complete an arduous chore. He scrunched his face up, thinking hard.
“Hm. Well. For starters, talking—about feelings,” Dazai finally said. “Turns out that helps.”
Atsushi grimaced. Naturally, communication was the key to just about anything, including functioning relationships. Which was unfortunate, considering he was no good at talking. Or feelings. Or talking about feelings.
“Oh, and the sex, of course.”
Atsushi went red.
“That’s—”
Without another word, he lurched to his feet and scrambled to the office kitchen, suddenly desperate for a nice, cool glass of water.
“Good talk,” Dazai called after him.
Despite his abrupt escape earlier in the workday, Atsushi’s intrusive thoughts persisted. He pondered ceaselessly over what Dazai had taught him over the course of the past two weeks.
Perhaps, objectively speaking, Dazai Osamu was not the best person to be taking relationship advice from—but whatever he was doing, it seemed to be working. Luck was on their side. Together for years, Atsushi thought, despite being on opposing sides. It was possible.
He went over it in his head, Dazai’s voice drilling a hole into his skull. Do the laundry when it’s your turn to do the laundry. Take the trash out to the pick-up spot on time. If the person you’re kissing has allergies, don’t eat what they’re allergic to before kissing them. Don’t joke about their insecurities. (Atsushi remembered frowning at that.) If your lover works an office job, back rubs are the shit. If they work any other job, back rubs are still the shit. Make them good coffee. Tell them you love them. Buy them thoughtful gifts. Indulge their whims.
And oh, Dazai indulged Chuuya’s whims.
Despite the weather, the two of them decided to escape to the roof of the high-rise later that evening, intending to pick the lock with a confidence born of years of criminal activity.
Chuuya, just drunk enough to want to act on his every impulse, was determined to watch the sunset. With that declaration, he dragged Dazai to his feet and towards the door as Atsushi watched helplessly from the armchair at the far end of the living room.
In the entranceway, Dazai gingerly plucked the half-empty liquor bottle from Chuuya’s fingers and set it down out of reach—just in case Chuuya ended up overdoing it and wobbling off the edge of the building. He then made a solemn promise not to hurl himself to his death either.
Chuuya finished pulling his boots on and promptly frowned up at Dazai.
“I’d catch you anyway,” he insisted.
Dazai smiled at him. “How would you catch me?”
“With my—” Chuuya’s frown deepened. He shook his head; he was likely more inebriated than Atsushi initially figured. “No. You can’t jump.”
“You’re going to hurt your tiny, microscopic pea brain thinking that hard.”
No more than fifteen minutes later, Atsushi was on his way to the kitchen to get some tea and a pack of sour gummies when the front door swung open and the pair stumbled back inside. Understandable, he thought. It was starting to snow. He imagined the elevation they’d climbed to only exacerbated the subzero temperature.
Inexplicably fixated, he found himself lingering just out of sight, watching intently. He didn’t mean to. It just—happened.
Dazai had a tendency to get cold easily. In that moment, the splotches on his face made it readily apparent. His cheeks were flushed, his nose a bright red. He sniffled and mumbled some sort of complaint that Atsushi couldn’t quite make out, wrapped his arms snugly around Chuuya’s waist to pull him even closer than he already was.
The way Dazai was looking down at Chuuya was different from the smiles Atsushi was used to seeing on him. There was an undeniable warmth to it, a genuine gleam that reached all the way to his eyes. It was hard to believe this was the same infamous Dazai whose bloodcurdling reputation clung to him like smoke.
As Chuuya reached out to tuck a windblown strand of Dazai’s hair behind his ear, Dazai made another snappy comment. Chuuya’s resounding peal of laughter was just as surprising. Bright and unrestrained, completely out of place on someone with as much blood on their hands as Chuuya had on his, on someone who never seemed to show any authentic emotion besides bristling anger.
They were absurdly, unquestionably in love. So much so it was sickening. And Atsushi, for the very first time, was startled to realize just how jealous he was of that, after all.
Chuuya’s fingers curled into the plush of Dazai’s scarf and hauled him down to his level. Up on his toes, straining to reach, he kissed him, hands moving to cup Dazai’s face, to weave gently into his hair.
Heat flooded Atsushi’s cheeks. He should not be watching. He should—
He peeled out of the living room and ducked swiftly into the kitchen.
Five minutes later, the steam from his green tea was making his face sweat. Good, he thought. It masked how red he’d gotten.
Tucked into one of the stiff wooden chairs at the dining table, Atsushi dug his phone out of his hoodie pocket and plugged his headphones in. He decided to ignore his feelings—all they ever did was ramp up his confusion. Instead, he pulled up a streaming app and resumed the latest episode of the show Ranpo had inadvertently gotten him hooked on.
Dazai and Chuuya had relocated to the couch. Though he was perfectly sober, Dazai swayed as he attempted to sit up straight from the heap they had landed in. He waved his arms animatedly, shoved his phone in Chuuya’s face in a poorly coordinated attempt at showing him a photo he’d taken up on the roof.
Atsushi’s chest felt a little too tight for comfort.
He turned back to the screen: the characters in the show were arguing about cake batter. Atsushi tried to follow the subtitles, but found that he was entirely too distracted to focus. He was so jealous it hurt. He wanted that. He craved it—that closeness. A hand to hold, a kindred soul to cherish.
He thought back on Dazai’s advice again. Tell them you love them. A name popped into his head; he promptly dismissed it. It made him feel weird. Love was a strong word, anyway. He supposed he could start with like. Which—was still ridiculous. He didn’t like anyone that way. A face joined the name. The weird feeling got stronger, tugging furiously at his heart. It was harder, this time, to shrug it off.
━━━
In the end, the fumigation took two and a half weeks. It was a particularly bad case. In fact, the exterminators said, one of the worst they had ever—
Atsushi shivered. He didn’t want to think about it.
It was strange, sitting at his desk at the Agency with his belongings tucked underneath it, knowing he would be going back to his own room that evening. He would miss the soft bed. The heated floors. The breathtaking view.
Naturally, he’d been interrogated as soon as he’d stepped into the office earlier, his overenthusiastic band of colleagues finally snapping now that he was no longer at risk of being violently evicted for snitching. They wanted to know everything. What were they like? What was their secret—how did they function? Even those who pretended not to care listened in, turning their chairs ever so slightly to where Atsushi was being cornered.
But Atsushi said nothing.
On his way out of the apartment that morning, his duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he’d been stopped in the doorway by inhumanly strong fingers grasping his forearm—and threatened with gruesome death.
“One word out of your mouth,” Chuuya had told him, “and I’ll skin you alive.”
“Animal abuse,” Dazai, unhelpful as ever, had added.
But Atsushi never planned on gossiping about any of what he observed. Some things weren’t meant for public consumption. He respected the basic need for privacy, the trust Dazai had placed in him.
Two and a half hours late, Dazai spun into the office with a takeout coffee cup in hand. He took a look around, eyes narrowing. Everyone was buried in their work. But visibly annoyed. Horribly irritated. He put two and two together: Atsushi hadn’t told them anything.
“Atsushi-kun,” he crooned. “You really did take my little garden gnome’s threats to heart.”
It was flippant, but Atsushi knew better. Dazai was slowly becoming an open book. There was a shadow of relief in his expression, of silent gratitude for upholding the boundary between his personal and professional lives.
With a flourish of his coat, Dazai slid into place behind his desk. As he did, his phone slipped out of his pocket and clattered to the floor. The noise pulled Atsushi out of his thoughts. He turned to look, watched Dazai groan and lean down to pick it up—and watched a thin chain slip out from beneath his shirt.
On it, a silver band.
Atsushi’s eyes widened. He shot a glance at the others. Right, left. Nobody else seemed to notice. They weren’t paying attention to Dazai anymore. But Atsushi was. He saw, he remembered—a ring just like that hidden beneath sleek black gloves all the way across the city. He knew. He understood.
And this time—he was the only one who did.
Casually, Dazai tucked it back into place. He tossed his phone carelessly onto his desktop and sat back up. And promptly caught Atsushi watching. Connected the dots, knew what Atsushi had seen.
He winked.