Work Text:
I
pertinacious
per·ti·na·cious /ˌpər-tə-ˈnā-shəs/
1. (adj.) adhering resolutely to an opinion, purpose, or design
Nakahara Chuuya isn’t someone who sways easily. Whether that be in regards to a fight, a meeting or an opinion, he’s steadfast in what he wants: in what he believes in. Where many would call that stubborn, he considers himself to be resilient. Someone who formulates his own views on the world around him, someone who doesn’t give up.
As such, he’s hesitant to believe it when it’s announced that Dazai Osamu is dead.
It’s difficult to imagine that someone who is so irritatingly set on being a persistent thorn in Chuuya’s side is actually gone from the world. It’s even more difficult to believe that he has died silently, with no fanfare and nothing left behind to bother Chuuya. Suicidal as he may be, he always finds a way to make it Chuuya’s problem. The fact that it’s supposedly a quiet death doesn’t sit right with him.
It’s simply not possible. Chuuya can’t help but call bullshit.
Nevertheless, the point stands that Dazai has disappeared. That’s a fact Chuuya can comprehend, can see with his own two eyes. The bastard has vanished into thin air: and while Dazai going M.I.A isn’t abnormal in itself, Dazai not leaving any clues as to where he’s gone is.
Chuuya can only do one thing: search.
As usual, he doesn’t know what he’s searching for. Dazai isn’t entirely keen on sharing his master plans nor his childish schemes. More often than not, it’s up to Chuuya to do shit like break a perfectly functional microscope just to follow the guy’s breadcrumbs. Dazai has always been allergic to being straightforward and Chuuya has no doubt that this mess is no exception.
He combs through Yokohama meticulously, checking all of Dazai’s usual haunts. He repeatedly flips open his phone to check for any cryptic messages. He flips all of the photo frames in his office and his apartment to inspect them for notes. Nothing changes, nothing looks out of place—not even the dust patterns.
In the end, he comes up entirely empty-handed. No clues, no traces. No sign of Dazai.
For the first time in their three-year partnership—for the first time in his life—Chuuya can’t find Dazai.
The fact settles in his chest like a jagged rock. Uncomfortable, sharp and heavy, but undeniable. His mind knows, understands. He’s never been a fool and he can’t turn a blind eye to the facts in front of him, no matter how disturbing they are. Everything is laid out perfectly: even the weakest of minds could put together the conclusion that Dazai is dead.
And yet, he isn’t sure. He cannot force his soul to still, cannot force himself to believe something so unbelievable. Not when something nags at him, deep in his core, screaming the exact opposite of what his primary senses are picking up.
So, he’s conflicted. But he can’t deny the facts entirely. He searched and he did not find. Alive or dead, Dazai is gone, he’s sure of that much.
Despite being coated in uncertainty, grief still washes over him. It’s familiar, if not warm, and Chuuya can’t help but prefer its strange intimacy to the anxious uneasiness of not knowing where Dazai is: if he’s alive, if he’s okay, if he’s been taken. It’s easier, to convince himself he’s simply dead in a ditch. Easier to handle grief than failure.
Unlike his friends, Dazai has no grave. The Port Mafia holds a funeral, the Boss gives a solemn acknowledgement, offers a moment of silence. Chuuya could arrange for a grave to be made. He doesn’t. Whether it’s hope or fear that drives the decision, he doesn’t know. No one calls him out on it, so Dazai remains grave-less. There’s no body to bury, anyway, and Chuuya has a feeling Dazai wouldn’t want to be trapped in something as permanent as a grave.
Yet he feels awkward, having no grave to turn to, no true memorial site to offer up his respects. As little tolerance as he had for Dazai, he still honours the dead. He makes do, though. He finds other ways to remember his partner, fitting smaller acts of reminiscence into his schedule. After caring for the flowers at the Flags’ graves and lighting candles for his late friends, he wanders. He lets his feet take him wherever they feel like: along the boardwalk of the Port, to a nostalgic arcade, all the way back to the gravel of the crater that is Suribachi. He can’t quite explain away his own swelling hope, his scans of each area just in case there’s a sign, a clue. In case he spots a sliver of murky gauze or gets a whiff of something particularly fishy. He can’t explain it, so he ignores it, covers it up. He tells himself it’s a matter of kindness, of giving reverence.
Despite his efforts, not a single thing he does feels like enough, always just shy of worthy. And yet, without a proper location to send his respects to, it all feels oddly inadequate at the same time.
Fitting, he thinks, smoking through the last breaths of a cigarette on his balcony after another night of empty remembrance. Just as contradicting as the relationship itself.
A bottle of unopened wine stands on the round table, the two chairs that accompany it both housing ghosts. Chuuya puts his cigarette out on the railing before flicking the butt off the balcony, into the nothingness of the night. He picks the bottle up, running a finger across the label.
Pétrus, 1889 vintage. Expensive—something to be savoured.
Scowling, Chuuya forcefully uncorks it with just a gloved hand. He pours for two, filling two glasses to the brim. The aftertaste is bitter on his tongue as he lifts one to his lips: still, he drinks, emptying his glass in record time. The other glass mocks him across the table, yet Chuuya can’t bring himself to care about the waste of wine, about the cost of the drink left untouched.
He pins the blame on the ghost that’s so comfortable in the other chair. Its silence follows him all the way to his bed and into his non-existent dreams.
Just like that, Dazai’s death is solidified, wrapped up. The world moves on and so does the Port Mafia.
So does Chuuya, in a way.
He continues to work, to play his part in the well-oiled machine that is the mafia. He’s an important gear, a piece of the puzzle that can’t afford to bend or break. His productiveness and efficiency even increases overall, no doubt a consequence of the lack of a certain slacker. With no Dazai glued to his side, there’s no one to distract him from work, no one to stop him from burying himself with it. The newfound silence in his office is both a blessing and a curse.
Days start to become monotone, all blending into one. Chuuya has a desk calendar, of course, but he can’t remember the last time he actually looked at it. The work is all the same, a routine is firmly in place, and Chuuya no longer has specific dates to dread or look forward to. Time simply ticks by and Chuuya doesn’t bother keeping track of it. He lets hours slip through his fingers.
That’s why he doesn’t know what day it is when his office phone rings incessantly, demanding his attention. The hand that picks it up and raises it to his ear is borderline numb, the action more automatic that purposeful.
Nothing prepares him for the news he receives from the other end of the line.
He’s on his feet instantly, rushing down to the garage where his car stays—or the remnants of it, now. The entire place is filled with smoke but no amount of it can fully cover the sight in front of him.
His car, doused in flames. Exploded, his subordinates report, giving a detailed account of the detonation and the time it happened. Chuuya nods along sternly despite only catching every other word. It’s difficult to focus on the how when the why is so prominent in his mind. When on his tongue is a familiar curse, a name hasn’t spoken aloud in an indescribable amount of time.
Despite his best efforts, the urge to blame a seemingly dead man for this bold act is strong. Stronger than it should be, given facts. The deep, unfathomable need to yell at the bastard worms its way through his exterior, all his armour, straight into his heart. It makes his chest constrict with a sense of hope—and his soul takes advantage of this moment of weakness to wonder. To wonder a bit too much, allow too much thought to enter a part of his mind he’d sealed off. Surely, his conscious screams, surely there’s only one person who could manage this.
It’s tempting, to give in to those screams, to let himself wallow in melancholy hope again.
But even in his weakest moments, Chuuya himself is far from weak. He can’t be losing his shit over a dead man like some amateur, so he just lifts his hand and pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation, instead. He releases a deep sigh, lining it with frustration he doesn’t even have to fake.
“Clean this up,” he tells his nearest subordinate, a curt order. “Anythin’ you find bring into storage. Report back when it’s done.”
The young man gives a nod back and starts relaying the words to the others present. Chuuya tunes all of that out and marches out of the garage. No matter whose doing this mess was, Chuuya will find them and they will regret it.
And if he looks slightly closer than he usually would, looks for specific clues rather than broad ones—that’s his business only.
II
vexed
/ˈvekst/
1. (adj.) feeling or showing irritation, annoyance, or distress
2. (adj.) difficult and often frustrating to understand or deal with
Chuuya’s familiar with all of grief’s tricks. He’s mastered them, even, from how fleeting it can appear to how heavy it can actually be. Regardless of how much control he has over gravity, he can’t make grief’s insistent weight any lighter. He can fight it, push past it—but it stays heavy. He’s learned the proper way to hold it, over the years, but enough time carrying a weight makes it painful at times. Tiring.
Sometimes, it’s easier to let it crash down before picking it back up—it hurts at first, but then you have another round of bliss. Only it comes with frustration, with anger. Either at oneself for not being strong enough or at something that soaks up the blame for the weight, it’s unavoidable.
Chuuya’s no exception to anger’s claws, its inconvenient timing, its increasingly stupid triggers. He’s no exception to how it spreads through his body, pissing him off as soon as his jet lands back on Yokohama’s cursed land.
He tries to ignore it, he really does: tries his best not to snap at people who don’t deserve it, not to punch a wall in a public space. But it continues to brew in him, getting increasingly hotter with every detail he notices. And he certainly notices.
He notices the quiet, the lack of sudden problems, the smooth return home. He should be happy, really, that it all goes without a hitch—but with waves of grief threatening to wash over him, all he can think of is how wrong it all feels. To be coming back from a mission without a walking, whining problem. It frustrates him in a way that’s inexplicable, and it being inexplicable angers him even further. It’s grief’s trap and Chuuya falls for it.
He tries to busy himself with something, anything, just to stop noticing. He attempts something mundane, something that he thinks couldn’t possibly anger him further. He knows that sitting still or trying to sleep would be futile in this condition, so he goes out. He needs to stock up on groceries, anyway, after a full week abroad.
It goes well, at first. Nothing about shopping for food sets him off and his anger reduces itself to a simmer. Not quite cool, but calm. His basket steadily fills up with his groceries of choice and the subtle atmosphere of the market begins to relax him. That is until he reaches the seafood aisle and his body tenses, becoming so high strung it might as well be a live wire. There’s many things he can ignore, many things he can will himself to walk away from. Unfortunately for him, a shelf filled with cans of over-processed decapods isn’t one of them.
He stares at the canned crab for longer than he should, more than likely making himself look like an indecisive idiot. His attention is entirely arrested, the faint buzzing of the store being replaced by the echo of repulsive, pitchy whining. It’s a grating noise, a sound he resigned himself to never hearing again. Yet here it is, pounding in his ears and filling him with nothing but hot rage.
It makes him sick, really, the way Dazai’s presence can haunt something as simple as a can. The way the same can is capable of igniting anger so visceral simply because of association. The way Dazai manages to play him like this, force his frustration alight even in death.
It’s pure self-restraint that allows Chuuya to simply clench his fist instead of knocking the entire shelf over and watching the cans fall to the ground. Maybe it’s for the better, that Dazai doesn’t have a grave, because Chuuya might have crushed it by now.
He feels rooted to the ground, standing there, trying to figure out how to leave. How to force the chains that his own anger created to let him go. The solution comes to him, eventually, but along with it come a plethora of vile curses.
Selfish fucking prick, Chuuya thinks, his next movements abrupt but purposeful. He places one of the cans in his basket without even looking at it. He knows what it says, anyway. Absolute fucking asshole. Can’t even rot in hell properly, can you?
He moves on, after that, but the atmosphere of the shop isn’t so soothing, anymore. The fluorescent lights suddenly seem horribly bright and the surrounding public begins to get on his nerves. He’s never wanted to leave a shop so badly in his life.
The relief he gains once everything—including the can—is paid for is short lived. As he’s exiting the store, he swears he hears rustling on his left: so he turns, an action that’s pure instinct. His eyes just about catch the tail of something beige flowing in the wind, like the belt of a coat or a ribbon. It’s gone around the corner before he can do anything, leaving him staring.
He doesn’t know anyone that’s fond of that shade of beige, but something nags at him in the back of his mind, anyway. He dismisses it with a shake of his head, not wanting to open that particular can. Frankly, he’s had enough for one day. The idea of his mind playing these cruel tricks on him annoys him all the way home, nonetheless.
I need a drink, he thinks bitterly, letting his mind wander to which wine he should crack open.
By the end of the night, there’s shattered glass in his bin and a can of crab in his fridge. He never eats it, letting the thing mould until he gets fed up with the smell.
It returns, fresh as a daisy, a day later.
It riles him up every time he opens the fridge but he doesn’t throw it away, doesn’t even move it. He pretends that he’ll use it in a dish, eventually.
He doesn’t.
III
prevaricate
pre·var·i·cate /pri-ˈver-ə-ˌkāt/
1. (v.) to deviate from the truth
Chuuya eventually falls back into a routine. Into a more healthy one, this time, with less grey, meaningless days and more actual work-life balance. It takes some effort on his part and even more on his friends’—but he gets there. He’s fine. Thriving, even.
His grief for Dazai settles, the same way his one for everyone else has. It sits on the edges of his heart, his mind, his soul. It still hurts, at times, but it no longer makes him bleed. It no longer sucks the life out of him every time it dawns.
His life becomes mundane, if he had to use just one word to summarise it. For a mafia member, at least. He wakes up, goes to work, does everything that’s required of him and more, goes home. He quite literally eats, works, sleeps and repeats, in the most basic sense of the phrase. Occasionally, he’s invited to small non-work related events: tea with Ane-san, drinks with Hirotsu and Kajii, more tea with Akutagawa.
Really, he doesn’t even like tea that much. He goes, every time.
Overall, he makes peace with his grief. His life moves on and he’s content with it. Only content, because he could never be happy with how often Dazai’s haunting postmortem presence decides to rear its ugly head.
Like now, as he’s passing through the port’s black market. It’s a common place for him to be, given his occupation, and he’s familiar with its ins-and-outs. He swerves in its alleys and past its stalls with the grace of someone who knows his position, his worth, his strength. A suitcase trails behind him, made subtly lighter by his Ability, packed with brand new guns. Out of his own pocket and top of the line: only the best for his squad.
He’s just about passing a particular stall when his attention is piqued by sudden exclamations.
An enraged yell. “That sneaky fuckin’ rat! The audacity of ‘em!”
A displeased sniff. “Ya would think th’people ‘ere would have more honour, y’know? It’s pathetic, ‘s what this is.”
A growl. “When I fuckin’ catch ‘em, he won’t be seein’ tomorrow! That damn shaggy excuse for a beanpole!”
And Chuuya tries to ignore it, he really does. These kinds of curses are commonplace on the black market. Everyone here steals, complains, yells. But the description—despite not being much of a description at all—is too familiar to brush off.
He turns to face the stall and its owners, watching them startle at his ferocity.
“What’d the bastard look like?” he asks, not a beat wasted.
The burly man waves a dismissive hand in his face, grunting. “He’s already gone, kid,” he says, beginning to rearrange the goods that adorn his stall. Chuuya opts to ignore the descriptor, watching as calloused hands handle deadly weapons. Knives and guns clink together as they’re picked up and shifted around. He doesn’t see anything of particularly high value so he dismisses them, but before he can speak again, someone else does.
“Ran like the damn wind, nothin’ to show for it,” the other person at the stall confirms with a miffed frown. She paws at some of the weapons near the back of the table, shoving them into a wooden crate in her arms. Chuuya doesn’t get to examine them before they’re gone from sight, but he just about catches the precious gems ingrained within their craftsmanship. Now those are valuable, he’d know. Chuuya briefly wonders what they’d cost before shaking his head.
“Their mug ugly?” Chuuya says, gaze coming back up to the pair’s faces.
The man chuckles. A glint shines in his eyes, the same glint that exists in the eyes of everyone in this market. Greed. “What’re ya willin’ to offer to find out, lad? I ain’t a charity.” A knife spins in his hand, fingers twisting around the hilt with years of mastery behind them. It might have been intimidating, if Chuuya wasn’t…well, Chuuya.
He scoffs right in the man’s face, making his displeasure known. Still, he can’t quite bring himself to threaten him—bargaining on the black market is customary, and he can’t fault anyone for wanting to make a living here. He has no doubt that just invoking the name of the Port Mafia could do the trick, the words being enough to strike fear into anyone at the port. But he refrains, just for today. Instead, he takes out a few hundred yen from his pocket and slides it across the stall’s table.
The man swipes them near-instantly, leafing through the bills. There’s a brief moment where Chuuya watches a clear desire to haggle for more appear, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. It isn’t a particularly huge amount but it’s generous. They both know it’s more than enough, so the money is pocketed without fanfare.
“Ain’t sure about ugly,” the man tells him, the woman nodding along. “But unkept, definitely. Shaggy hair that’s had a ride through mud, or ‘s what it looked like. Coat that looked like sand. Too fuckin’ bright for ‘round here, stuck out like a sore thumb. Freakishly tall ‘n gangly.”
Chuuya’s eyes narrow, his chest constricting. “Bandages?”
The man frowns. “Bandages? Didn’t see none.”
Chuuya looks at the woman but she only shakes her head. His shoulders drop and he deflates, all sparks of hope his heart was fostering going out at once. No matter how similar the description is, there’s no way Dazai would be caught without his bandages. Even Chuuya, who spent most of his time with the bastard, only saw what was under them a handful of times. A Dazai without bandages isn’t Dazai at all.
“Right, yeah,” he says under his breath. He gives a curt nod to both of the sellers. “Thanks.”
He spins on his heel and is gone from the market quicker than ever before. He makes his best attempt to ignore the way his eyes sting, the way he once again fell for the trap that is his own hope.
No amount of bargaining with his heart can convince it to fall silent.
IV
lachrymose
lach·ry·mose /ˈla-krə-ˌmōs/
1. (adj.) tending to cause tears : mournful
Chuuya’s grief is a funny thing. It attaches itself to him in so many ways, a list that Chuuya doesn’t bother to keep track of. It keeps itself familiar, keeps their relationship intimate. But no matter how commonplace it lets itself be, it still manages to surprise him. Often.
Its usual sadness crashes into him in a way that’s unsolicited whenever Chuuya gives it any chance to. It affects him the hardest when he’s at home, his guard down and his muscles relaxed: it’s there that he uncovers items that stab through his heart, letting its sorrow infect his veins.
It’s no secret that Dazai practically lived at Chuuya’s house, essentially making it a second home next to his filthy shipping container. After his apparent death, Chuuya had cleaned the place out from everything that belonged to the guy—from clothes to his toothbrush to his spare bandages. He’d shoved them all in a box, taped it shut, and hid it away in the depths of his storage. He had considered burning it but ultimately couldn’t, the action feeling wrong in a way that stung. He’d opted for an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ tactic, instead.
And yet, even coming up on three years after the fact, Chuuya still manages to find Dazai’s belongings in his home. So, clearly, his efforts had been for naught.
It hurts more than it should to clean out his drawers and find a plain white shirt tucked away in the bottom one. A shirt that could belong to Chuuya, if he deludes himself enough—but in reality is too big to be his. The sleeves are too long to be anyone but Dazai’s. It’s far from folded properly. The collar is entirely bent. The fabric is crumpled, like all of Dazai’s shirts used to be before Chuuya yelled at him to iron them.
By all means, it’s a regular shirt.
Still, Chuuya’s eyes sting and his vision begins to blur the longer he holds it between his fingers. The soft fabric becomes rough under his touch, the clothing turning heavy in his hands. Continuing to hold it makes his skin burn. Despite that, any attempts to put it down are futile. Chuuya is left sitting on his knees on his wooden floor, tears dripping onto a shirt that doesn’t—and never will—belong to him.
There was a time where this kind of sorrowful grief would wrench sobs out of him. This is different: the pitchy sounds get stuck in his throat, only silent tears remaining. He doesn’t have the energy to properly cry, doesn’t have the effort to put his heart into a one-man performance. He just lets the tears fall, allows them to soak his cheeks.
The shirt gravitates towards his chest, his arms surrendering to the pull. Knowing he’s alone in his home, he doesn’t bother with embarrassment. He holds the clothing close, wishing it could suck the anguish straight out of his heart.
He knows it can’t. He allows it to be witness to his heartbeat, anyway.
V
ambivalent
am·biv·a·lent /am-ˈbi-və-lənt/
1. (adj.) having or showing simultaneous and contradictory feelings toward something or someone
Chuuya heals. It takes time, of course, but the grief that surrounds Dazai’s death eventually becomes something lighter. Eventually, the time comes when he realises he hasn’t let himself spiral over Dazai’s absence in a full year. It’s a cause for celebration, in his opinion, even if every sip of wine he drinks tastes slightly bittersweet.
His weeks have only been getting better, lined with not only a promotion but many successful missions. He no longer falters when he sees chestnut brown hair, no longer hesitates when he swears he catches a glimpse of bandaged limbs.
He still thinks of Dazai, occasionally, still lets his present haunt his life. But it’s not daunting, anymore, it’s not a weight on his chest that feels impossible to lift. It just…exists, in a way that Chuuya is truly okay with. There’s still bad days, as with everything, but they’re not the majority and haven’t been for a while.
Nowadays, most of his feelings towards Dazai are more fond than anything. He would never admit to anyone but himself that he misses the bastard, misses his company. Even if that company included stupid insults and petty threats. His home still feels a bit too quiet without rowdy banter filling it, but now Chuuya just smiles wistfully at the memories of it. He can imagine what Dazai would say, finding him smiling so sentimentally. It annoys him just as much as it warms his chest.
He’s come to accept that Dazai was one of a kind. That he’ll never meet anyone as simultaneously irritating and comforting. No one will ever be able to match what Dazai was to him—what they were to each other—and Chuuya has made peace with that.
It’s the same way he’s made peace with never playing on Dazai’s stupid handheld, despite keeping it charged. The console taunts him each time he plugs it in, with those shiny letters and cheerful sounds. Chuuya knows how to play the installed game, Dazai had shown him—but he doesn’t dare to click into it, doesn’t dare to disturb the relic of time that it has become. It feels wrong, especially since Dazai never gave him permission to play without him. And he never would.
So, Chuuya resigns himself to just charging the thing whenever it dies. Since it’s not used, he only has to do it every two weeks or so—it’s one of those reminders that doesn’t bother him. He lets his mind wander, on those nights, lets it reminisce about the actual good times he had with Dazai. The times when they laughed, wrestling on Chuuya’s couch and floor. The times when Dazai would hold controllers and remotes up high, just out of Chuuya’s reach, and not let him float up to grab them. The times when they’d argue over who could beat a game faster with massive grins on their teenage faces.
On some of those nights, he has wine and lets his thoughts wander further than the past—into possibilities, hypotheticals. It’s a dangerous game he plays, really, but he never truly regrets it. As he sips his wine and allows the alcohol to muddle his thoughts, he thinks of a reality where Dazai’s alive. Where he’s simply in hiding, somewhere, having managed to avoid Chuuya’s meticulous searching. Where he’s doing better, maybe, living a life that’s less miserable than what the mafia offered him. A world where he’s older than an eternal eighteen, maybe even twenty-two.
A world where he comes back into Chuuya’s life, as if he’d never left it.
All of those thoughts begin with ‘a world,’ though, and Chuuya’s never been one to daydream too much. Delusions are not a good thing to have in his line of work and while he might indulge some ‘what-if’ thoughts every now and again, that’s all he allows them to be. What-ifs.
What if?
He downs the rest of his wine in one go, tilting the glass up. He doesn’t let himself think more.
Sometimes, it’s okay to let thoughts wander. It’s also okay to let them go.
+ I
indelible
in·del·i·ble /in-ˈde-lə-bəl/
1. (adj.) that cannot be removed, washed away, or erased
Dazai re-enters his life not unlike the information about the bomb under his car: unexpected and relayed to him by someone else.
He touches down in Yokohama feeling refreshed, having slept on the flight back. All business in the west has been wrapped up and he can’t wait to tie up all loose ends here. Half a year away really had him getting slightly homesick: but now he’s back, and he can’t wait to sleep in his own damn bed.
It’s not even a minute after he sets foot in his office that he’s summoned. Or, rather, told a critical piece of information.
Traitor and former Executive Dazai Osamu is being held captive in the torture room.
The monotone voice that tells him this over the phone is cold and impersonal. The way Chuuya is instantly on his feet is a far cry from either of those. His heart does somersaults in his chest, threatening to burst through his ribcage at any given moment. He tries to calm himself down as his shoes click on the building’s tiles, making their way down to the basement. It’s a futile effort, but it cannot be said that he doesn’t try.
By the time he’s facing the entrance to the torture room, he’s sweating more than usual and his hands shake. It’s a strange mix of relief, adrenaline and anger—all three bounce back and forth, not letting his blood settle. Chuuya hesitates at the top of those stairs, his head spinning with thoughts he’d previously dismissed.
Dazai’s alive. Has he been alive this whole time? Obviously. Is he healthy? Does he look any different? He’s not a teenager anymore. He actually made it to twenty-two. Had Chuuya simply missed all the clues? Were there any clues? Had Chuuya been a fool to give up in the first place? Had he been a fool to hope that someone like Dazai would tell him anything? Dazai managed to keep himself hidden. It’s not that surprising. Was Chuuya wrong, when he thought that he knew Dazai well enough to find him? Clearly. Was it all a plan? Did Dazai plan the timing? Does he know what he did to Chuuya? Did their separation affect him, too?
He gasps, the sound of jingling handcuffs bringing him back to his senses. The noise echoes around the chamber and up the stairs: and reality hits Chuuya full force. Dazai is down there. Dazai-fucking-Osamu is chained up in the Port Mafia dungeons, right now. Alive, and knowing him, perfectly well. Probably anticipating Chuuya.
The thought repulses him. He walks down the steps anyway, projecting as much confidence is possible.
It’s easy to fall back into a familiar routine, after that. Banter flows between them smoothly, their dynamic as eternal as ever. It’s disgustingly easy, and it does a great job of pushing Chuuya’s spiralling thoughts down far enough to ignore.
That is until that very same night, when Chuuya’s lock jingles exactly like the chains and his door is pushed open. With that, in walks Dazai, stride casual and not an ounce of tension in his frame. He enters, locks the door behind him, leaves his shoes in the genkan. A familiar routine, Chuuya thinks, watching the entire thing with wide eyes. As if nothing happened.
But something had happened. Dazai had disappeared for four years, gone completely M.I.A. That much is evident by just looking at the man. He’s taller, is the first thing Chuuya catalogues and promptly chooses to ignore. His hair is wavier, almost leaning into curly. Both of his eyes are on show, not a single strip of gauze on his face. He dons a coat that’s beige—and while he’s never thought of Dazai in beige before, it suits him perfectly. Too perfectly, in fact. It makes him glow in a way that black never did—that the mafia never did.
He looks healthy.
But as happy as Chuuya is about that fact, he’s not so happy at being forced to senselessly mourn. Dazai’s audacity to stay away for four full years only to stroll back into his life without any repercussions is frankly astounding. He let Chuuya believe he was dead, let Chuuya run himself into the ground searching without so much as a hint. Dazai doesn’t even say hello—only makes himself comfortable in Chuuya’s home, like he has any right to.
(He does, because a dead man can’t lose such privileges, and he hasn’t been ‘alive’ long enough for Chuuya to rescind them.)
Dazai sits next to Chuuya on the couch. Only then does he speak.
“Ah, my console!” he says, reaching for the handheld on the coffee table. His bandaged hands hold it in such a familiar way. Chuuya’s chest squeezes. Dazai inspects the console, turning and twisting it until he appears satisfied. Then he turns it on, the musical tune hitting Chuuya’s ears. A snort leaves him as he stares at the screen.
“You haven’t beaten it yet?” Dazai asks, turning the screen around to show Chuuya the untouched game. Chuuya’s throat is suddenly dry. “Come on, I taught you better than that.”
That anticipatory gaze pins Chuuya down. He forces himself to answer. “I didn’t wanna play your shitty game.”
Dazai clicks his tongue. A fucking reprimand. “Wow, you’re still such a bad liar. Why would you keep it charged, if you didn’t want to play?”
And that ignites Chuuya’s anger in a way that’s so comfortingly familiar, yet painfully infuriating all the same. His fist clenches at his side but he keeps it in place. He doesn’t throw a punch, not yet, but he can’t stop himself from snapping back, “It just wasn’t any fun to play a game that belonged to a dead teenager.”
The following silence is heavy. It’s more of a hush, really, with how sudden and overwhelming it is. The room becomes terribly suffocating in a way it hasn’t been for literal years. Dazai’s face twitches, his gaze shuttering before settling on something blank and distant. It’s a familiar expression, one that Chuuya used to hate. He saw through it, eventually—it’s a thinking face. Dazai’s thinking face. It usually appears when Dazai’s confused.
Although, Chuuya’s not sure what’s there to be confused about. Irritated by the stretching silence from his ex-partner, Chuuya growls and reaches for a pillow. Putting as much emotion has he can into the action, he swings it back before smacking Dazai right in the face with it.
“Don’t just gape like a fuckin’ fish, bastard!” he yells, every thwap of the pillow eliciting a yelp from Dazai. Chuuya ignores all of them and just keeps swinging. “Say somethin’ or leave!”
Dazai makes some measly attempts to block the attacks. He manages to set the console aside and eventually grabs the pillow, throwing it away. Chuuya seethes but lets it happen, opting to glare at the ruffled man. Dazai licks his lips and meets Chuuya’s gaze before admitting, “I don’t…I don’t know what you want me to say.”
Chuuya scoffs. “If you said what I wanted you to say, you’d never stop grovellin’ on your damn knees.” His glare intensifies and Dazai shrinks back a little, melting into the couch. He doesn’t talk, though, and Chuuya is tempted to reach for another pillow. The genuine confusion on Dazai’s face is his only saviour from the full extent of Chuuya’s wrath. He leaves the pillows where they are, for now. “Well? Aren’t ya supposed to be some fuckin’ silver-tongued genius? Talk.”
“I thought you would’ve known,” Dazai offers, shifty eyes avoiding Chuuya’s own. “Come on, you’ve never been good at believing I’m dead.”
“Oh, I didn’t.” A bitter laugh passes through Chuuya’s lips. “But what was I supposed to think, when all my searches came up with nothin’? You bein’ dead is the only conclusion then, ain’t it?”
Dazai meets his gaze and there’s something there Chuuya doesn’t quite recognise. Something new. It’s both a painful reminder of the past four years of change and an exciting challenge. An expression of Dazai’s that’s real and new. His lips part in a way that tells Chuuya he’s baffled: but his eyes—bandage-less and shining—tell another story. There’s too much emotion there to be just bafflement. Not enough furrow in his brow to be plain confusion, either.
“You…” Dazai says, quiet and smooth. He sounds soft, touched. It makes Dazai seem gentle, a word Chuuya wouldn’t have used to describe the other man before this. “You looked?”
Chuuya swallows, turning away himself. He burns a hole into the ground with his stare as he grumbles, “Of course, I did. We were partners, damn it.”
“We were. Are,” Dazai says, voice leaking inexplicable warmth. “I’m sorry.”
“Don't apologise if you don’t know what you’re apologisin’ for.” Chuuya snorts. “I’m not mad you left, y’know, I just…I—”
“I know,” Dazai interrupts before Chuuya can explain. “I’m sorry you thought I was dead. I honestly didn’t think you’d believe it.” Chuuya looks at him, then, and Dazai scans his face. He visibly savours every inch of it, like Chuuya’s precious. He smiles, something teasing and yet so, so real. “You really care for me, don't you?”
Chuuya blinks up at him, trying to stop his eyes from stinging through pure willpower. The corners of his lips twitch, Dazai’s grin infecting him. “Yeah. You only figured that out now?”
“Well,” Dazai drawls and Chuuya bristles, recognising the bratty tone. “It was a bit hard to see the care under all the punching and kicking my gorgeous face was subjected to, wasn’t it?”
“Oh shove it, you absolute—!” Chuuya lunges at Dazai, grabbing the man by the lapels. Dazai snickers in his hold, not even bothering to dodge. Chuuya stares at him for a moment before slowly letting go, realising he’s proving Dazai’s point.
“Ah, why’d you stop?” Dazai teases.
Chuuya flips him off. “I'm kickin’ you out. Leave.”
Of course, Dazai doesn't move. Instead, he shifts, lifting his hands to grab Chuuya’s arm. He pulls Chuuya towards him with no warning, leaving their faces mere centimetres from each other.
“Hi,” Dazai says, the corners of his eyes crinkling.
“Hi,” Chuuya replies. Then he groans. “I fuckin’ hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
And Dazai says it with such a grin that it makes Chuuya’s head spin. It’s an expression that’s familiar, warm—an expression Chuuya didn’t realise he’d missed. All of a sudden, the annoyance brewing in his gut is inconsequential. All of a sudden, a wound he wasn’t aware of starts healing. All of a sudden, something in the world rights itself.
Yes, Chuuya thinks, this is how things should be.
“Yes,” Chuuya says, shoving his hand in Dazai’s face to wipe the treacherous expression off before he starts grinning himself. “I do.”
The wound heals slowly. Naturally, of course: Chuuya wasn’t expecting everything to magically become perfect with Dazai’s reappearance. While the world is no longer off-kilter, no longer wrong, their relationship is certainly not quite…there, yet.
Chuuya knows this is the case because he sees the change in Dazai. He sees how despite it definitely being the boy he knew as a teenager, Dazai is both visibly and conceptually different. Where Chuuya used to see a permanent weight on his shoulders, now rests a lighter burden. Not gone; but lighter. Where there used to be only fake smiles around anyone but Chuuya, now sit ones that make brown eyes crinkle. There’s a kind of contentment—if not peace—surrounding Dazai, now, one that Chuuya is learning to appreciate.
It doesn’t change that Dazai is Dazai, though, the brat in the man still very much alive. That much is obvious in their interactions, in the way they manage to bicker for hours on end as if they were never apart. It’s noticeable in the way Dazai still finds a way to get on Chuuya’s last nerve.
And fighting side-by-side again is no exception to that.
The first time Chuuya fights by Dazai’s side again, lets himself be part of a single unit again in four years is under Mori’s orders. With a truce in place between their respective sides, the duo that used to haunt the underground returns in full force. And along with it, Dazai’s tendency to push Chuuya’s buttons. He pokes and he prods: and yet, Chuuya can’t find it in him to force it to cease. It’s a type of nostalgia Chuuya begrudgingly finds comfort in.
Perhaps it’s this comfort that makes him so chatty.
“Dazai,” he starts conversationally, peering down the creepy hut’s wooden trapdoor. The kid has to be down there, somewhere. “Ever heard of Pétrus?”
He hears the creaking of a door, followed by Dazai’s footsteps. “It’s a brand of wine so expensive your eyes will pop out of their sockets just from looking at the price,” Dazai drones from behind him.
Chuuya hums in passive agreement. “The night you disappeared from the organisation, I opened a bottle of Pétrus 1889 to celebrate.” His gaze lowers, the overly-bitter taste coming back up his throat. “That’s how much I hate you, bastard.”
Dazai’s silent for a moment. When he speaks again, his voice is filled with exaggerated cheer. “Then good for you!” Another pause, in which Dazai hums in thought. “Now that you mention it…I also celebrated that day by rigging your car with a bomb.”
Saying Chuuya’s heart stops would be an understatement. It’s more accurate to say it implodes. His head swings around comically fast, gaping at a smug Dazai.
“So that was you?!” he demands, conflicting emotions swirling in his chest. On one hand, he’s glad he hadn’t gone insane that night when he thought it might’ve been Dazai who had performed the vandalism. On the other, that was his fucking car.
Dazai just grins at him and Chuuya can’t do anything but turn away in frustration, climbing down the ladder. Dazai doesn’t say anything as he follows him down.
The mission continues but the back of Chuuya’s mind stays with the car bomb. If back then he’d dismissed that because of grief, just what else had he dismissed? Were all of his gut feelings real, or were some of them genuine coping?
He tries not to think about how Dazai’s coat is indeed beige. He tries to focus on the mission. It’s easy enough, once there’s finally something to fight, even if Dazai gets thrown into a tree in the process. It’s easy, once there’s combat involved.
Combat wise, it’s equally exhilarating and irritating the way he and Dazai fall back into their old rhythm. Not a single cue missed, not a single move out of place. It excites him, in a way that it shouldn’t, to know that the powerhouse that they were four years ago still exists. As for everything else, Dazai has no concept of proper place and time—that much hasn’t changed, either. He spends the majority of the battle trying to anger Chuuya more than the actual enemy. He pokes and he prods: and yet, Chuuya can’t find it in him to force it to cease.
The trust that built the foundation of their relationship remains unshaken. Chuuya doesn’t spare himself any hesitation when the topic of Corruption is brought up, nor does his heart even locate any. He places his life in Dazai’s hands as easily as he always has and doesn’t even think twice. He isn’t surprised when Dazai follows through, bringing him back to reality. He doesn’t have any doubt, no, because they fit.
They fit back together like perfect puzzle pieces because they’re Double Black, they’re the enemies of the bad guys: and that’s just what they do.
The final stitch of the wound closes one night, at the cemetery.
Really, it’s an ironic place for it to happen: a twist of fate, or maybe a gift from it. Chuuya isn’t even sure how their current situation was reached. He had been heading for his weekly visit to his friends’ graves, basic gardening tools and candles already stashed away in a dark tote bag. It started raining half-way through his journey, but before he could make a run for it, he ran into Dazai. Perhaps it was pity or perhaps newfound empathy that made Dazai silent as he offered his own umbrella and fell into step with Chuuya. There wasn’t any point in forcing the man to leave—Dazai, above all, understood Chuuya well. As infuriating as he could be, he wasn’t heartless.
So, now, Chuuya is crouched in front of the Flags’ graves, garden scissors between his fingers as he snips away weeds surrounding the stones. Dazai stands idly behind him, holding the umbrella above both their heads. No one else is present at the cemetery, leaving the pair cloaked in silence. It’s a type of silence that only happens when they both actively choose to remain quiet. It’s neither comfortable nor awkward. Neither forced nor easy. Just silence.
Chuuya doesn’t mind it much. Dazai’s presence doesn’t make his trip any harder: if anything, Chuuya’s glad to have him there while he’s showing vulnerability. It’s easier to breathe, somehow, knowing that he’s not alone. That Dazai’s got his back, when it matters.
Snipping away the head of a weed next to Albatross’ grave, Chuuya finally breaks the silence, letting his walls down entirely. “I had to bring the bike down to the workshop, last week,” he tells his friend, “since all your tricks did nothin’. Tried every one ya taught me and everythin’. Maybe you weren’t as good as I thought?” He snorts, pulling another weed out, a particularly grating one, this time directly from the root. He gives the gravestone a gentle pat as if it were a shoulder. “Anyway, ya don’t need to worry. It’s all fixed now.”
Shuffling along, he starts digging a shallow hole next to Iceman’s grave. He transfers the flower he brought from its pot into it. “Spotted this the other day while shoppin’. It’s lavender, the one Lippmann said ya liked,” he explains as he plants it as diligently as possible. “Thought you’d appreciate it, here.”
He starts lighting a grave lantern in front of Lippmann’s stone, mindful of the rain falling around him. “I came across a disc of one of your movies, your third one,” he says, placing the lantern. “Honestly, it’s a miracle I managed to get my hands on it. The damn thing cost me near half a fortune.” He chuckles, wistfully reading the letters of his friend’s name. “I get why you refused to let me watch it, now.”
It’s rinse and repeat, after that. He gives his friends general life updates, information on how he’s doing. For Piano Man, he outlines his recent career successes. For Doc, he shares recent gossip and comedic mishaps. He cuts some weeds here, leaves a new pot there. It’s routine, by this point.
Eventually, he finishes. Eventually, silence swells again.
Silence should have never been a word associated with this particular group, yet it doesn’t subside. It simply settles, waiting. It’s not a word that Chuuya associates with Dazai, either. And yet, the man has been silent this entire time. In fact, he’s been almost eerily silent, his footsteps also quiet as he slowly moved along with Chuuya. Dazai’s unusual stillness is an odd thing: Chuuya appreciates it, nonetheless.
Minutes tick by like this, with Chuuya basking in the postmortem presence of his friends. Dazai is another presence, one that’s consistent behind him.
Until finally, the spell is broken.
“I never understood why you visited graves as often as you do,” Dazai says, then stops. Despite not looking at his face, Chuuya can imagine the contemplative face he’s making, the pause being very telling. It’s obvious Dazai is scouring his brain for the correct words. Chuuya lets him.
“It really does help a lot, though,” Dazai admits after a few moments, his voice only slightly louder than a hush. A sound that’s soft, unobtrusive. Gentle. “Conversing with them.”
Chuuya’s eyes widen and he cranes his neck, looking up at Dazai. Of course, he had known, from the reports, that Dazai’s friend was killed in the Mimic incident. He knew that the very same death had something with Dazai’s defection. Nothing could have prepared him for Dazai opening up about it, though, so he just gapes at the man. Dazai stares back at him with an expression both patient and vulnerable, a wistful smile on his lips. Chuuya wants to point it out, prod into Dazai’s life as Dazai used to do to him. But he refrains, only giving Dazai’s face a scan before looking away.
“Yeah,” he agrees gruffly, “it’s grounding, y’know? Therapeutic.”
Dazai chuckles. “Therapeutic, yes.” There’s some shuffling and Chuuya watches as raindrops fall from the umbrella as it shifts slightly. “Odasaku was never talkative, anyway. It was always me starting our chats.”
Chuuya can’t help but snort at that. “Yeah, you and your damn gibberish. With all that, I’m not shocked you talked his ear off.”
“Well, that’s rude,” Dazai says, the pout audible in his voice. “He loved all of my stories, actually. I had many fascinating things to talk about.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I’m serious, Chuuya, he enjoyed them.”
“Yeah, I believe you.” Chuuya rises from his crouch. An empathetic warmth settles over him as he turns to face Dazai. “I’m sure he still does.”
Dazai’s answering beam is blinding. There in that cemetery, with the rain pattering all around them, Chuuya’s sure of two things.
One: that Dazai certainly has a similar warmth spreading in his chest.
And two: that the collective warmth radiating from both of them is the true feeling of the final stich finally closing. The feeling of the string of fate that ties them finally mending.
The feeling of their souls finally—comfortably—being one again.
Chuuya wakes with so much force he almost knocks himself off the bed. He tries to gasp. He can’t breathe. His heart hammers hard enough to rattle his entire ribcage, thundering in his ears. He attempts to swallow. The massive lump in his throat fights him. His mouth is horribly dry. He clutches his sheets, gripping fistfuls of soft fabric as a new wave of cold sweat washes over him. Adrenaline rushes through his veins, making every hair stand on end.
Fuck, he thinks, trying to gather his thoughts. He manages to breathe, slowly, communicating to his body that it was a dream. A nightmare. There’s no real danger.
Gradually, his panic subsides.
That is until he turns his head, noticing the other side of the bed. The empty other side of the bed. With restarted fear, Chuuya reaches over, feeling the sheets. Cold.
Suddenly, the nightmare feels alarmingly real, Chuuya’s body freezing up on instinct. It’s silly, the way dread blooms anew within his chest despite all logic. Dazai isn’t dead, he tries to tell himself. That’s a fact. He’s alive, he literally lives here.
His body doesn’t co-operate. Instead of relaxing, it only tenses more, his hands twitching with anxiety. “He’s not dead,” he whispers out loud, a desperate attempt to ground. “He’s not. We literally went to sleep together, yesterday.”
Did you? a traitorous part of him hisses in return. Or did you imagine that, too?
Chuuya inhales sharply, gaze darting around the room. He searches for something, anything to prove that he hadn’t made up Dazai’s presence. Dazai’s life.
“Chuuya?”
He doesn’t have to look far.
His head snaps to the doorway, where Dazai is standing. The man exudes calmness, casually leaning on the wooden frame. He’s still in his sleepwear, his hair a bird’s nest. The only thing giving away his concern is the small frown etched into his face. Overall, he looks comfortable. He looks alive.
And damn Chuuya’s pride to hell: he reaches a hand towards Dazai, letting the gesture do the talking. It’s a tried-and-tested method: which works, given Dazai’s instantly moving, as attuned to him as ever, and is by the bedside within just a few steps. He sits down, Chuuya watching his every move like a hawk. Carefully, Dazai’s hands come forth, taking Chuuya’s own. The contact sends a shiver down Chuuya’s spine. The following strokes over his knuckles begin to slow his nervous system down, settling his goosebumps. Dazai takes slow breaths. Chuuya mimics him to the best of his ability. It’s embarrassingly easy, to follow Dazai’s lead without a second thought.
“Sorry,” Chuuya mumbles, once his breathing steadies. Warmth spreads from where Dazai’s touching him. “I…”
“Don’t,” Dazai cuts in, smiling. “What are you apologising for?”
Chuuya looks down at their intertwined fingers. He watches as Dazai’s thumb traces every knuckle, a tender rhythm of up-and-down. The sensation feels real. The movement looks true. Even in the silence, Chuuya can hear Dazai’s breathing. He takes a deep breath himself and tries again.
“I had a nightmare,” he admits, not looking up. “About you. Dead.”
Before he can spiral again, Dazai’s hands squeeze his. An understanding hum fills the following quiet. “Ah, I see.” Dazai stops his previous motions, turning his hands to hold Chuuya’s properly. “I’m here, now.”
“I know,” Chuuya says, his cheeks burning with sudden shame. “I know. It was stupid.”
Dazai clicks his tongue. “It’s not stupid. Your body is reacting to a nightmare. You’re strong, Chuuya, but you can’t control fear.”
Chuuya huffs. “You’re so cheesy.”
“How is that cheesy?” Dazai scoffs half-heartedly. “It’s the truth.”
“I know how fear works, Dazai,” Chuuya tells him, “it’s stupid ‘cause I’ve known you’re alive for months, now. I shouldn’t be havin’ these damn nightmares anymore.”
“I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“That’s how it should work.”
There’s a pregnant pause, then, in which Dazai doesn’t say anything. When the silence stretches for a suspiciously long time, Chuuya looks up. What he finds is Dazai’s thinking face, complete with a set jaw and stormy yet far-away eyes.
“Dazai…?” he ventures, unsure what has got the other so deep in thought.
A few more quiet moments pass before Dazai snaps out of it. He abruptly rises to his feet, pulling Chuuya up with him.
“Hey!” Chuuya yelps, regaining his balance. “Give me a warnin’ would ya?”
“Sorry,” Dazai says offhandedly, not sounding very apologetic at all. “Come on, let’s go have breakfast.”
Chuuya raises an eyebrow at the sudden topic change. He opts not to question it, for now, letting Dazai do his thing. He grumbles out an affirmative, instead. Dazai takes the cue for what it is and leads them both to the kitchen.
Breakfast is a quiet affair. Dazai doesn’t bring the nightmare up, his only words being quiet teases or work anecdotes from the past week. Chuuya replies to them all accordingly, giving his own anecdotes in kind. Chuuya makes the food with Dazai chiming in with his occasional help. It’s quite a normal morning for them, all things considered. The only thing slightly out of place is Chuuya’s minor clinging. He subtly lets his body brush against Dazai more than usual—a lingering touch here, some unnecessary hand-holding there. Dazai doesn’t comment on it and indulges each one.
It’s only once they’ve both eaten and they’re finishing their respective coffees at the table that Dazai returns to their original topic.
“It’s okay to grieve me, Chuuya,” he says, nursing his mug. “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t actually die. Your grief was real.”
Chuuya stares at him, his own mostly-drained coffee beginning to grow cold. “When did you turn into a therapist?”
Dazai snorts but doesn’t entertain the banter. “You believed I was dead. It’s only logical you’ll have nightmares about it. It’s alright.”
“Is it?” Chuuya counters, clenching his jaw. “What if they never stop?”
Dazai shrugs. “Then they never stop.”
“Dazai—”
“Chuuya.” Dazai puts his mug down with a little too much force, the resulting thud echoing around the kitchen. Despite that, the smile he gives Chuuya is nothing but gentle. “I’ll be here, either way.”
Something bitter swells in Chuuya’s chest, a sour retort about the suicidal man’s inability to stick around on the tip of his tongue. As he stares at Dazai in front of him, though, he can’t hold onto that hostility. Dazai looks wholeheartedly open, genuine. An openness that’s still new, still fragile. He doesn’t want to ruin that. Both for the sake of himself and their growing relationship. Tentatively, the fight drains out of him and his shoulders sag. He melts back into his chair. “Yeah, okay.”
Dazai’s eyes crinkle as his smile widens. “Okay,” he says, beginning to rise from his own chair. He walks around the table until he’s in front of Chuuya, then presses a soft kiss to his forehead. “Thank you.”
Chuuya looks up at him and frowns, attempting to ignore his growing flush. “For what?”
Dazai doesn’t answer. He just gives Chuuya a knowing look before holding out his hand expectantly. Blinking, Chuuya dutifully hands his empty coffee cup over and watches Dazai carry both the mugs to the sink.
It doesn’t hit him until Dazai turns on the tap that the man had thanked him for the words Chuuya didn’t say. Idiot, Chuuya thinks, staring at Dazai’s back as he washes the dishes. You don’t have to thank me for not being an asshole to you.
Huffing, Chuuya rises from his seat, stretching his arms skyward. He takes a deep breath before he starts walking, making his way towards his partner. He lets the sounds of the running tap and scrubbing dishes fill his ears as he wraps his arms around Dazai from behind, resting his face in between Dazai’s shoulder blades. They shift a little as Dazai’s arms move, Chuuya can just about make out Dazai’s heartbeat, and the warmth radiating from the man is unmistakable. Dazai’s undeniably here, undeniably alive.
Chuuya doesn’t say anything as he clings, simply basking in Dazai’s presence. Likely indulging him, Dazai stays quiet, too.
Eventually, once the tap turns off, Chuuya speaks into Dazai’s shirt, “I’m glad you’re alive, Osamu.”
He feels Dazai freeze at the use of his given name. Subsequently, he feels him relax. Dazai’s voice vibrates within his ribcage as he replies, “I am, too.”
In that moment, they’re breathing the same air, both of their hearts steadily beating. They’re both present. They’re both alive.
And, really, what more could Chuuya ask for?