Chapter Text
It was a quiet and still evening as Nakahara Chuuya made his way through the streets of Yokohama. In the distance he could hear the normal chatter of nightlife that accompanied every evening, but because he had forsaken the city route to walk by the port, the noise faded into a pleasant background hum. The colored lights of the downtown skyscrapers shone bright white, gold, and blue against the backdrop of the fading dusk. They reflected in the rippling surface of the port, flickering gently, like fragments of stardust trapped beneath the dark expanse of water. Chuuya stuffed his hands deeper into the pockets of his pants. The long coat draped over his shoulders lifted with the wind and settled again.
Chuuya’s footsteps scuffed lightly against the pavement, hooded eyes trained on the path ahead but not really seeing - his mind was occupied with a sort of melancholy haze, the sort that extended itself into every fiber of your being and colored your perception. He was used to this feeling, it had become his constant companion recently. He couldn’t pinpoint the cause, but that never really mattered to him. It was gone with a drink or two, and he was all too willing to pop open a bottle and wash it all away.
As he neared his apartment, Chuuya closed his hand around his keys in his right pocket, running his index finger over the serrated edge. He wondered briefly if the feeling that rested in the pit of his stomach was loneliness - but quickly banished that thought. He had no reason to be lonely now, and had never in the past. Even as illusions of golden eyes and soft whispers of his name filled his memory, Chuuya would never admit to missing him - his life was countless times better without his constant presence. But this reassurance sounded hollow even to his own ears, and he let out a sound of quiet frustration as his apartment door came into view.
He slid the key into the slot and turned it, hearing the quiet creak and soft whooshing of his door swinging open, and stepped into the dark room. “I’m home,” he called into the empty space, not expecting a reply - there hadn’t been one for a very long time now.
“Welcome back,” came the amused answer, startling Chuuya and making him almost drop his keys. Chuuya cursed and fumbled for the light switch, and when he finally hit it the room illuminated with light to reveal messy brown hair, golden eyes twinkling with mirth, and a lopsided smile.
“Made a habit of calling out ‘I’m home’ to an empty room, have you,” Dazai snickered, lifting his arms above his head in a catlike stretch before folding his hands under his chin. “Oh Chuuya, how embarrassing.”
Chuuya flushed and flung his keys at the intruder that was perched cross legged on his couch (Of course he reached out and caught them easily, damn him). “What the hell are you doing in my house?!” He demanded, choosing to ignore Dazai’s previous jab.
“How cold,” he pouted, blinking innocently, which only served to inflame Chuuya’s rage further. He was about to march over and grab Dazai by the collar, forcibly dragging him out the door and dumping him in the street, when Dazai continued: “Did you forget?”
“Forget what,” he asked with extreme exasperation.
“You really forgot, didn’t you,” Dazai said gleefully. “You’re the most embarrassing type of person, you really are, Chuuya.”
“Forget what!” he snapped, running out of patience - he swore to God, he was going to punch that look off his face - and then with a loud pop, he suddenly had a face full of confetti.
“Happy birthday, Chuuya,” Dazai announced, a striped party popper in his hand and the same cheeky smile on his face.
“Oh,” was all he could manage as realization dawned - It really was his birthday. It was strange how something like that had lost its significance as each day slipped past in a monotone, to the point that he hadn’t even paused to think that there was something special about the day.
“Thanks, I guess,” he mumbled quietly, more to the ground than to Dazai, rubbing the back of his neck. On some level, deep down, it was kind of touching that he had remembered. Maybe Chuuya would hold off on the physical violence for tonight, in honor of that.
But still, it didn’t mean he wanted to spend time with his big hulking menace of an ex-partner. “Now that that’s done,” Chuuya sighed heavily, brushing a strand of hair behind his ear. “Get out.”
“What?”
“I said, get out.”
“But Chuuya-”
“Leave! You can’t just come into my house and-”
“Well I could leave,” Dazai pondered, cupping his face in his hands and tilting his head to the side like he was actually contemplating doing so (In all likelihood, he was not). “But I’ve got a better idea.”
Chuuya wondered if he really had to ask. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
As it turned out, he didn’t need to - Dazai pushed on without waiting for a response.
“Ta-daah~” he sang, producing a strange object from behind his back with an elaborate flourish of the arm.
Chuuya stared.
It was nothing impressive, just spiked gold construction paper taped together haphazardly at the ends, but the memories it brought back were overwhelming.
“This old thing, huh,” he mused, reaching out to pluck the crown from Dazai’s outstretched fingers.
“An age-old tradition brought back to life,” Dazai agreed dramatically, one corner of his mouth lifting higher than the other.
Since young, the birthday crown had been a bi-yearly armistice for the two of them. Growing up in the mafia, neither boy was very interested in any type of big birthday celebration, and perhaps felt that it was beyond their conscience to be rude to each other on their birthdays (though even the crown never really prevented that). So one of them, the years had blurred out who it had been, had decided on a birthday crown that granted the power to command the other to do anything they wanted, and it had stuck. Chuuya wondered when they had stopped.
He didn’t really have the heart to play these games with Dazai, though. Pretending that everything was normal, as if he had never left, gave him a strange tight feeling in his chest. But he had the feeling that, like with so many things concerning Dazai, he had no choice in the matter.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kick you out right now,” Chuuya plopped down on the couch next to Dazai with a defeated sigh.
“You love me,” Dazai suggested with an impish grin.
“Do you want to show yourself out or should I-”
“Okay, okay. Jeez, Chuuya, lighten up a little~ Since it’s so important to you, I’ll give you two reasons.”
Dazai lifted a plastic bag filled with containers of takeout and a bottle of sake off the ground.
Well, in Chuuya’s defense, those were two very compelling reasons.
He must have had too much sake that night. (Never mind that it had only been one cup.)
That must have been the reason he’d let Dazai push him back gently so that he was lying on his back on the bed, with Dazai hovering above him, trailing soft kisses down his neck and across his collarbone.
It wasn’t the unnaturally soft look in Dazai’s eyes, the way he’d whispered Your Majesty before biting down gently on his earlobe, and it most definitely was not the way the heavy sadness that plagued him before disappeared completely once he’d told him Welcome home.
Dazai shifted upwards to press a kiss to Chuuya’s forehead, and then his right temple, the tip of his nose and his left cheek, and as Chuuya braced himself for their lips to meet, Dazai skipped over the entire region and traced his lips along Chuuya’s jaw.
“...Hey, damn Dazai,” Chuuya growled. He could feel Dazai’s smile growing against his face, and when he spoke his breath felt warm against his skin.
“What’s wrong?” Dazai teased, kissing his neck again. “Is it not to your liking, my liege?”
“Kiss me, dumbass,” Chuuya ordered breathlessly.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Dazai purred, the grin only growing. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing?”
Chuuya reached down and grabbed a fistful of Dazai’s hair, pulling him up so they were eye-level.
“You know what I mean. King’s orders.” Chuuya commanded. Dazai leaned in, angling his head so they would fit better together, and smirked, breathing out,
“As you wish, my King.”
Dazai kissed him once, gentle and chaste, before Chuuya took ahold of both sides of Dazai’s face and pulled him down again, deepening the kiss. Chuuya lost track of time as they kissed, all soft touches and wordless promises and wanting - it felt as if it had only been seconds when Dazai pulled back again, hovering just out of reach with that infuriating smile playing on his lips. Chuuya's breath caught, and he tilted his neck up, straining to kiss him again, but Dazai placed a single finger on Chuuya’s lips and pulled out his phone, the lock screen display showing that the time was 11:59 P.M.
“You’ve got time for one more command, I think,” Dazai murmured, looking unusually gentle illuminated in the silvery moonlight. Chuuya felt a number of emotions in that moment - indignance, he’d only had a few hours left to begin with, wistfulness, soon the day would be over and Dazai would be gone again, but above all a deep, aching love for the man who had always been everything he wanted, but could never have.
“Stay with me,” he finally whispered, a broken plea, a blossoming of hope that had been crushed over and over again but still reached out each time towards him.
A beat of silence stretched on for far too long between them as something unreadable swirled around in Dazai’s eyes.
Dazai took his hand, lacing their fingers together, and pressed a kiss to his knuckles, before lying down next to him and taking Chuuya in his arms, nuzzling into his hair. “Of course, Your Majesty,” he joked quietly, but there was a hint of something like longing in his voice.
Chuuya felt like crying for some reason, but held back his tears - he’d learned to, over the years - and rested his head in the crook of Dazai’s neck. Knowing he would be gone in the morning made it hard to want to close his eyes, but his eyelids drooped unbidden and he was asleep in seconds, knowing that memories of phantom kisses and touches would haunt his dreams for a long time.
A few hours later, Dazai awoke from his sleep, and raised his head, supporting it with his elbow, to look at Chuuya’s sleeping face. He looked so peaceful in his sleep, no creases or worry lines, breathing in and out lightly. Like this, he was almost painfully beautiful, and Dazai would have given anything for the circumstances to be different, for them to be together like this every night. He felt his chest constrict, and leaned in, brushing hair off his face, to kiss him softly on the forehead, temple, nose, and cheek - sweeping shadows of the kisses from the night before. Finally, he pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth in lieu of an I love you, extricating himself from Chuuya's grip though it was the last thing he wanted to do.
He grabbed his coat where it was discarded on a nearby chair and slipped it on. The cloth was so cold in comparison to Chuuya’s embrace, but he knew that he had to go.
Dazai opened the door quietly and watched with his solemn gaze the way the pink and light orange colors of sunrise transformed the sky.
“Happy birthday, Chuuya,” he whispered, not daring to look back at the sleeping man for fear that it would make it impossible for him to leave, and then stepped outside and disappeared into the dawn.