Chapter Text
Chuuya, to be fair, didn’t react with the slightest smidgen of surprise when Dazai broke into the stupendously fortified bunker where he’d apparently been hiding out for at least the past seven weeks.
Instead, he glared up at Dazai from his armchair by the bookshelf (Chuuya always put an armchair by the bookshelf, predictable in this as the orbits of the planets) and snapped, in a manner more accusatory than anything, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Dazai didn’t bother to respond immediately, his attention mostly caught by the....whatever the fuck was going on in the bunker. It was a close-run race, with the heavy-duty soundproof carpeting and the multi-level locked foyer having made respectable efforts, but the winner was undoubtedly the... container that looked bizarrely like a miniature bedroom, with a bed that clearly had Chuuya’s favourite sheets on it, and which clearly locked from the inside, as evidenced by the barrage of bolts on the inside of its (currently wide-open) doors. A bedroom for a (small, the part of Dazai that never stopped snickering asserted) paranoid claustrophobe, and a deeply bizarre decorating decision, even by Chuuya’s standards.
“What the fuck,” Dazai submitted for consideration, right back at him, “is that?”
“Dazai,” Chuuya snarled, getting up from the armchair, and that was when Dazai looked at him, really looked at him, and his whole mind went quiet. “Why are you here? How did you get here?”
“You dropped off the radar for two weeks,” Dazai argued on autopilot, stepping closer. Chuuya was pale, even paler than he normally was, and that meant blood loss, which, in Chuuya’s history, had meant only one thing.
“Your radar,” Chuuya shot back. “People who needed to knew where I was.”
That...stung, somewhere distant that wasn’t caught up in the strange new shine to Chuuya’s eyes, catching at the light almost like a predator’s. “The last time you dropped off the map like that was-”
“I’m fine,” Chuuya hissed. “Now fuck off.”
And the back of his brain reached up and spat out an impossible result. No - just a wildly improbable one. “...are you fine? Same as always? Just the old usual deal?”
Chuuya glared at him, immediately defensive, and interestingly truthful about it. “Yeah, asshole, I’m fine. You know where the fucking door is, since you just busted in, so…” he gestured towards the one door in the place, past the cabinet full of curios he’d collected over the years. “Leave.”
Cabinet, sheets, armchair. Too many things, in combination. He let his gaze wander over the bookshelf, apparently distracted. “...you’re living here. You moved your favourite books out of your apartment, and you wouldn’t do that if it weren’t a near-permanent move, and you…hate living below-ground. But you weren’t lying about being fine.” He stepped closer, frowning at Chuuya, gaze lingering on his pallor, on the subtle difference in the shape of his jaw, even if the line of it was as elegant as ever. “Chuuya, why weren’t you lying about being fine?”
Chuuya glared at him, clearly not about to address the rest. “Because I. Am. Fine. What the fuck is your problem?”
“Yeah?” Dazai challenged, mostly to see what piquing him would produce, interested in the way Chuuya stiffened as he approached, as if he wanted to back away from Dazai. Chuuya, who never backed down from anything.
That, predictably, angered Chuuya into retorting. “Yeah, like I just said, like, thirty eight times, I’m fucking fine! I’m not fucking corrupted. Nothing’s wrong.”
“Oh, now that was a lie,” Dazai snapped, because it was, and how dare Chuuya condescend to assume that Dazai hadn’t learned all his tells, that Dazai didn’t know how Chuuya thought and spoke and breathed and every shift in the pattern of blood in his neck and his cheeks when he was deflecting-
And then his mind caught up with his information input, and threw up an absolutely ridiculous but entirely viable result, and Dazai, for the first time in his young but eventful life, boggled. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he snapped.
Chuuya huffed at him - huffed at him! - threw up his hands in an exasperated gesture, as if he and Dazai hadn’t read those files on Fukuchi’s exploits in Eastern Europe together, as if they hadn’t both laughed at what was clearly some sort of rogue Ability that the locals had mistaken for preternatural bullshit, and headed for the wine.
“Don’t throw your hands up at me, I’m throwing up my hands at you,” Dazai pointed out, affronted. “You can’t possibly be serious.”
Chuuya glared at him some more, pouring himself a generosity of wine. “I’ve got no fucking idea what you’re talking about, and clearly neither do you.” He drank all of the wine, in one shot, and then poured himself more. Impressive.
“I thought your lot didn’t drink...wine,” Dazai said, mostly on autopilot.
“I’ve always drunk wine, Dazai,” Chuuya said, with an impressive facsimile of patience that meant he was probably five minutes from punching Dazai into unconsciousness and throwing his carcass out on the street.
“...you’re going to make me say the V word first, aren’t you.”
“I don’t want chocolates, Dazai. Go. Home. ”
Annoyance? Annoyance worked. Chuuya couldn’t possibly- no. It was an Ability, clearly, something from the Order, maybe, a destabilisation. It felt like a British tactic. “How long have you been seventeen, Chuu~ya?” Dazai singsonged.
“What the fuck does that mean, asshole?” Chuuya seemed genuinely bewildered. Of course he hadn’t watched that movie.
It didn’t matter, though, because Chuuya always stopped to consider Dazai’s weirder statements, and that gave him enough of an opening to step right in, reach for Chuuya’s bare forearm to nullify...whatever this was. Whatever it was that had compromised Chuuya enough to take him right out of Yokohama and into this...this suburban bullshit bunker that was underground and security-minded and all of the things Chuuya would never ever choose unless he had to. The thought was tearing at the ground beneath his feet, opening up some unsteadiness, and if he could just touch him-
Chuuya growled, swatting his touch away with one gloved hand. “Don’t fucking paw me.”
“Shut up and let me nullify it, hat-rack,” Dazai snapped back, and reached for him again.
Chuuya shoved at him a little, stepping back as he did. “Nullify what? There’s nothing to fucking nullify.”
“Don’t be stupid. This is clearly some sort of...bullshit vampire Ability…” Dazai grabbed for his neck, this time, because it’d be easier, and because the alternative was ridiculous, and therefore to be eliminated, if at all possible, and damn it, Chuuya’d managed to dodge him again. “Is this Stoker’s Ability? Is that what this is?”
Chuuya stepped away, putting his glass down on the counter, which meant he was going to bolt; Dazai darted forward to try and grab his arm, but missed, Chuuya having predicted that strategy. Chuuya dodged the next grab, too, and leaped the armchair from a dead standstill with that fucking athleticism that always left Dazai angry and envious and itching to touch him and drag him down to earth. Fortunately, they were indoors, and Dazai had always had a better edge with that, because indoor chases (however stupid it felt to be darting around a table and over a couch after Chuuya’s back) were always more strategy than strength. “This is ridiculous,” he snarled, just as Chuuya wrapped himself in For the Tainted Sorrow and leaped off the dining table a half-inch ahead of Dazai’s fingers to reverse gravity and stick to the ceiling. Dazai climbed the table to grab him, but Chuuya had already backed away, and was crouched up against the ceiling well out of reach. “Really?” Dazai snarled. “I will hit you with a broom! ”
Chuuya flipped him the bird. “Gotta find the broom first, asshole.”
He had one fury-fueled momentary urge to do just that, just because Chuuya clearly felt he wouldn’t, but if he did, Chuuya would probably have nine choice comments to make before he found it, and fine. Fine. he stepped off the table and went to another of the cabinets, put the tip of his middle finger against a kyo-yaki bowl that he knew Chuuya particularly liked, looking him right in those strange new predator-shine eyes. “Five. Four.”
“Don’t you fucking dare, you fucking shitweasel,” Chuuya snarled.
There it was, that rage in his gaze, in the twitch of his hands, and it was bizarrely satisfying in that terrible mean immature way that it always was to bait Chuuya, to drag him down to the sea level of Dazai’s frustration. “Thre~e,” he trilled, giving him a dangerous grin.
Chuuya roared an imprecation in some language he’d picked up since the last time he’d had occasion to swear at Dazai and pushed off the ceiling, barreling into him with full force to send them both crashing down to the floor. Bright pain radiating from his spine for hitting the ground that hard, but he’d always known how to think past it, and he smashed the palm of his hand against the immediately available target of Chuuya’s face triumphantly.
And nothing changed. Just the accustomed sullen settling of For the Tainted Sorrow under his touch, and no other influence falling away from him. Nothing, except the colder feel of Chuuya’s skin against his, the shifted scent of him in Dazai’s gasp of breath, and oh.
Oh. It really was real.
Chuuya growled against his hand, a rougher edge to the sound than usual, and slapped Dazai, the stinging pain of it so familiar he both ached and ached , and had to bite back his body’s trained response to that. Instincts so deep that five years hadn’t even begun to dull their edge, not when- well.
“I’m trying to help,” Dazai pointed out, glad the breathlessness in his voice could be attributed in multiple plausible ways to Chuuya tackling him to the ground.
“Okay? Are you done groping me?” Chuuya pushed himself up, straddling him, and Dazai was so offended that he almost didn’t notice the way it shifted him against Dazai’s body, the catch and drag of weight and body heat. “Fuck .”
“Grop- I was going for your arm the first time, you wilting maiden.”
“Shut up,” Chuuya snapped, and smacked his shoulder this time. Got up off him, and ran his fingers through his hair, which was a gesture that inevitably and efficiently sniped Dazai’s knees with things that were probably inappropriate to this situation, so it was a good thing he hadn’t tried to get up, probably. “You got what you wanted. Now will you fuck off?”
“...it’s not an Ability, then,” Dazai repeated, both to get confirmation and to buy himself one more moment of being allowed to be on the floor beneath him, Chuuya towering over him as if he might kick Dazai in the head again, which would definitely be not what Dazai wanted. Not. Definitely.
Chuuya glared at him, clearly frustrated with having been backed into a corner on this. “No.”
Dazai pushed himself up to a sitting position, braced on one hand behind himself. “How long ago?”
“A couple of months.”
“And I had to find out by breaking into your safehouses?”
“Why the fuck would I tell you?”
Ah. Chuuya. He really was a fighter, at heart. Always knew where to strike, even if he didn’t know why. “I assume sunlight’s a problem, if you’re down here,” Dazai said instead. Anything to reach for to not let Chuuya know how much that had stung.
“And?” Chuuya snapped, heading for his wineglass. “Do you control the fucking sun?”
“How are you eating?”
“I don’t think I want to tell you that.”
That stinging thing was back in his chest, in his throat, making him gesture at the bunker just to make Chuuya stop looking at him. So he could look at Chuuya instead, take in the fine shifts in his appearance. Hair brighter, somehow, more vivid. The slimmer line of his waist. “How long are you going to live like this?”
“I’m...planning to build something else.”
“In or out of Yokohama?” Dazai asked, as if it were an afterthought.
Chuuya’s shoulders settled, certain. “I’m not leaving.”
Dazai got up, because it was ridiculous to be on the floor. “Right. You’re an Executive, it’s not as if you can just up and resign.”
“Even if I could,” Chuuya replied evenly.
“Right.” Bitterness on his tongue, too evident in his voice. “Everyone who needs to know is there.”
“You left,” Chuuya said sharply. “You don’t get to be mad I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m not mad,” Dazai shot back immediately.
“Then what the fuck is all this, you fucking liar?”
“I just wanted to delete your video game history,” Dazai said brightly, and threw him a distraction. “Also I’m sorry about the tablecloth in your backup backup safehouse.”
Chuuya narrowed his eyes at him, fury igniting fire-blue in their depths. “All of them?”
“I never said all of them,” Dazai pointed out.
“You did go to all of them, though.”
Ah. Ah, fuck, he’d forgotten that, he forgot it every time in between feeling it - the sandpaper-kiss of Chuuya’s knowledge of him, all the pain of not being on the same side of their fights any more. “You’re just projecting,” he protested.
“I fucking know you.”
Something gripped his throat for that, painful and immediate; the memory of Chuuya’s fingers resting there, perhaps. “Yeah, well. I thought you- needed your video game history deleted.”
“Every single safehouse. Even the two where I don’t have any consoles.”
“Why didn’t you have any consoles there?” Dazai countered as a redirect.
Chuuya frowned at him. “I never do. They’re backup and backup backup. You want a console, buy your own, asshat.”
Dazai sat down on the couch and glared at him. “Why, when you make ten times what I do?”
“I’m not making up for your shit financial decisions.”
The wine bottle was temptingly right there, a prime opportunity to thwart Chuuya’s enjoyment of the little things. “It’s inconsiderate,” Dazai said, and pushed the bottle out of Chuuya’s reach.
“Fucking right it is. I consider me, not you.”
“Becoming a vampire really worsened your temper,” Dazai said, and regretted it almost immediately. There were highly specific little lines they didn’t cross, and he’d edged a little too close to one of them.
Chuuya fell quiet, but he sat down on the other end of the couch, which was as good as forgiveness, taking refuge in his wineglass. Neither of them looking at each other. Dazai could feel him...paying attention, though. He’d always known when Chuuya was thinking about him, the weight of his thoughts on Dazai’s skin, his attention on Dazai’s self. He’d craved that too long not to notice every sliver of it he got. The glance and cut away of his gaze on Dazai for a half-second, and he might as well have stared him right in the eyes for what it was, and how much it meant.
“...you’re paying attention to me,” Dazai murmured.
“You broke into my house and pawed me and threatened my belongings. What the fuck else would I be paying attention to?”
“Pawed,” Dazai repeated, indignant. “Pawed? You were the one straddling me and running your hand through your hair.”
“I had to…” Chuuya paused, visibly regrouping, and of course he’d caught Dazai. Of course. Asshole. “Wait. What the fuck does straightening my hair have to do with any of this?”
“You know what it means when you do that,” Dazai sniped.
“I know that it means my hair’s not a mess anymore.”
“Sure. Right. But I touch your arm and I’m the one behaving like a horny suburbanite with a gateway used-panties habit.”
Chuuya gaped at him, as if he had any right to be offended. “What. The. Fuck. Dazai. You hyperbolic bitch.”
“I can tell when you’re just looking at me and when you’re actually paying attention,” Dazai pointed out in the face of his wilful obtuseness.
“So what?”
“You’re paying attention,” Dazai repeated, annoyed. “Why. ”
“I just had to fling myself at you from the fucking ceiling! I’m making sure you’re not broken or some shit.”
“Bullshit,” Dazai said, the pain of that falsehood a laceration. “You always know how hard you’re hitting me.”
The words hung between them, awkwardly heavy as any quarrel with five years’ compound interest attached. Eating up all the things Dazai might have said, all the protests Chuuya might have made. Chuuya had. He’d always known how hard to hit him, how deep to dig his nails in, how to push and pull and twist Dazai into shapes that were almost worth touching. Forcing alignment into the wreckage of his body, forcing quiet into the chaos of his mind. He’d always known, and to have him deny that hurt.
“It’s been a while,” Chuuya said, very quietly, eventually. “Things change.”
“Not that,” Dazai said, and was startled to find out how much he wanted Chuuya to know it.
“I meant you,” Chuuya pointed out, but the sound of him was softer, some edge gone. The same faint-surprised sound he’d had all those years ago, when he’d crawled back to consciousness after Corruption and Dazai had hooked Chuuya’s arm around his shoulder and not given him even a tiny bit of the flinch Chuuya had clearly been expecting.
“Not that, either,” Dazai replied, quiet, serious. “Chuuya. Not that either.”
Chuuya looked at him for a long moment, his gaze slipping down from Dazai’s eyes to his cheek to his jaw, and it occurred to Dazai for the first time that he could probably sense him more keenly now. “Okay.”
“Still doing it,” Dazai murmured, because he was.
“You’re...excited. I can sense that.”
Ah. Keener sense of smell, then. Which made sense, given that he was a predator. “Mm, well,” Dazai said, and slowed his pulse, calmed his body. It didn’t do much for the other parts of him, though, or their current state of insistence. Chuuya had taken refuge in his wineglass - drowning out his scent, probably, trying to lose Dazai in the tannins. He could hear the tiny catch of Chuuya’s breath, though, the shift of it that meant he’d locked into Dazai’s rhythm, the way they always did in the dance of battle or argument or- “...still doing it.”
“If you don’t like it, you can always leave.” Chuuya’s voice was even. Too even.
“I know,” Dazai murmured, and didn’t. Didn’t get up, didn’t move, didn’t look at Chuuya. Chuuya wasn’t looking at him, either, though. That frozen silence spreading out between them. He couldn’t move for it, couldn’t move in it. Something wounded in him. Eventually, he took a breath to say he was going, and instead, he said, “Months .”
“You know...don’t. Just fucking don’t.” There it was, the twin to his own hurt, or maybe the mirror to it. “You walked away, Dazai. You’re on the other team now, and this is dangerous for people to know. You have no fucking right.”
“We’re still in truce,” Dazai said sharply, instead of saying any of the other things that would have been even more true, and thus significantly more dangerous. “And you didn’t even know if this could be nullified. This could potentially have been fixed immediately.”
“And even if it could, what’s that fix? Hm?”
“It offers a potential temporary fix. You didn’t even consider it, did you?”
“No. I didn’t, because it would waste me. I’d be fucking useless if it worked.”
Right. Useless and safe. Nothing Chuuya would ever choose, even if it lost him the last tethering to the people he wanted so much to be like. “Wouldn’t turn into chibiyaki if you opened a window ten hours of the day.”
“Well I guess we know what matters to me, then.” Chuuya’s voice was flat with truth. Too much to resist. “I don’t want a life like that.”
And how was he supposed to argue? He’d made similar decisions himself, after all. Chosen to cling to what he could, to contain all of the things he couldn’t. “No, I suppose not.”
Chuuya looked over at him, such a fleeting thing anyone but Dazai would have missed it. “You can’t seriously have been worried,” he said, so offhandedly that it almost didn’t feel like having glass ground into his skin.
“Thanks for your certainty,” Dazai snapped, stung, and stole Chuuya’s wine in retaliation. Drank some, less to drink it than to make it something Chuuya couldn’t have. It tasted like shit.
“You know, you only play yourself when you do that.”
“It’s the wine’s fault for being shit.” The wine tasted a little like Chuuya when Chuuya’d been drinking wine. But that was nobody’s business but Dazai’s.
“The wine’s always the same, Dazai. You’re the fool who keeps drinking it at me.”
Dazai made an annoyed noise and drank more just to spite him. “Put consoles in all your safehouses and maybe I’ll stop.”
Chuuya blinked at him. “Like I said, dipshit, only you give a fuck about you drinking the wine.” He was quiet for a moment, and then asked - in that way that meant he was asking against his own better judgment - “So what do you want? You found me, you’ve seen me.”
“Maybe I want to delete your video game high scores,” Dazai shot back, because it was easier than admitting he didn’t know. Or worse, admitting that maybe he did.
“Dazai,” Chuuya said, a world of exhaustion tucked between two syllables. Compressed with so much practice, as if he’d spent years learning how to fold Dazai away into corners of his mind, tuck him out of sight, remove those layers of meanings from his words that only Dazai would have known to find there.
He’d thought it might have been easier, the way he’d left. He’d certainly made it easier for Chuuya professionally, because even Mori’s most paranoid followers couldn’t have faulted a thing Chuuya had done with Dazai’s departure or in his absence. He’d kept it to the odd phone call, the occasional tip-off when he stumbled on something that the Agency didn’t need, but that Chuuya might want. He’d been...he’d been careful.
Hadn’t he?
And yet, here it was. Another thing he’d ruined, another thing he’d crumbled into rot, and just slowly being uncovered between them. How badly he’d fucked up, if Chuuya had stopped expecting his arrival, his presence, his loyalty, even in that one thing where Dazai hadn’t ever failed. It hadn’t even occurred to him. “You seemed quite sure I wasn’t worried, after all.” The words curled sour out of him, anger directed at Chuuya as much as himself.
“Because I’m not your fucking concern. You left.”
“Corruption is different. It’s always been different.”
“I’m not corrupted. Information retrieved.” The words were sharp, but there was something...off about them. Surprise. It was surprise. Attention, too. He was still paying attention to him.
“Right,” Dazai said, quietly. Chuuya was going to ask him why he wanted to stay. Any moment now, Chuuya would ask him why he was staying, and Dazai would have no response but the truth, all other possibilities paper-thin lies that Chuuya would break through anyway, easy as breath.
Chuuya hesitated a moment, then put it away, almost tangibly, seized at something to say. “Did you at least bring snacks?”
“...do you even eat them?”
“I can still eat,” Chuuya replied, and there was that faint...thing in there again. That careful moving around the parts of himself that were unlike.
“I didn’t,” Dazai said, and let his sheepishness show. “Nobody but Ranpo brings candy on a mission.”
“The fuck am I a mission? Anyway, I don’t usually eat. I save it for when I want something particular.”
“And you really mostly do drink blood.” The delicate skin on his wrist, so much paler against the black of his ever-present gloves. The vein there more vivid, blue as his eyes. The little changes were so much more disorienting, somehow, and it made him want to learn them. To have Chuuya be fully known and fully...within his grasp, again.
“It’s...not ideal. I like wine even more now, though. My palate’s become finer.” Chuuya, always shifting things towards the better side of them. It wasn’t optimism, it hadn’t ever been, but...determination, perhaps. That iron will, bent towards gleaning every stray grain of good from even the worst harvests.
“Trust you to like wine more,” Dazai said, fondness in him, sudden and quick-wheeling as a zephyr.
“Everything’s more now,” Chuuya murmured, almost to himself. Dazai hummed a quiet sound of inquiry, and he continued, his voice slipping into that cadence that it did when the poet he never wanted Dazai to see in him was in play. “All of my senses. I can feel the insides of my gloves interacting with my fingerprints. I can taste so many more things in my wine, can hear the beat of your heart…” Chuuya took a breath, a breath that didn’t seem to be that accessible to Dazai just then, and it sounded like a tasting, seeking thing. “I can smell that you’re not clever enough to be afraid of me, even now.”
Oh, Chuuya.
“Chuuya,” he murmured, let all the years between them weight his voice and his words. “I’ve never had reason to be afraid of you.”
A shiver in Chuuya’s frame, perceptible only in the displacement of air between them, but Dazai had always known how to read those currents. “Not even when you could be lunch?”
Dazai looked up at him, met his gaze, steady, even. “But I won’t be, will I?”
There, flaring in Chuuya’s gaze, conviction to match Dazai’s, and it erased the last bit of uncanniness in the difference to his eyes, just Chuuya. “I won’t hurt you.”
There were other promises and potentials there, though, ones that sent a slow thrill of heat through him, like the burn of good sake. “I know,” he replied, because he did. He always had, no matter what else.
“Good,” Chuuya murmured, rougher edge to his voice, the brightness of his gaze, and just a hint of predatory intent in the flare of his nostrils when Dazai leaned a tiny bit closer, just as an experiment.
“Still paying attention,” Dazai breathed.
“I can’t help it. You’re here.” Chuuya’s gaze, lingering on Dazai’s throat, and the bandages might as well not have been there for the heat of his gaze. He’d unwound those bandages so slowly, once, when they were seventeen, bitten him and bitten him until he’d been shivering with sensation and need, head pulled back with Chuuya’s fingers in his hair, throat curved into a perfect arc of longing, bared to him and bared by him and his soul scraped as raw as his skin.
“So you’d be paying attention to any burglar?” Dazai asked, more on autopilot than anything. If his throat ached, it was with memory alone.
“Not the same way, but...I haven’t eaten. So a stranger who broke into my home would be drawing all of my attention.”
Oh, now that was a mistake, potentially. Dazai never had dealt well with not having all of Chuuya’s attention, however inadvisable. “So I don’t have all of your attention?”
“Not the part that would kill a stranger.”
There it was, that missed-stair terror of the beginning of the fall, and he’d gotten addicted to it so long ago, with Chuuya. The adrenaline of having all of his strategies tilted and curved and warped in the well of Chuuya’s gravitational field. “What part, then, Chuuya?” he murmured, catching Chuuya’s gaze, a dangerous little toehold in the bitten-back heat there.
“You,” Chuuya said, evenly, carefully, so very carefully that he might as well have said a dozen other things in the twist of his deliberation, “shouldn’t ask me that.”
He couldn’t help the little quirk to his lips for that, the rueful acknowledgment of the possible wisdom of that course of action. Set the wineglass down, never quite managing to look away from Chuuya. “When have I done what I should?”
“Dazai…”
“Chuuya.”
“This is a dangerous game. What do you want?”
Ah. That question. He’d never enjoyed being on the receiving end of that question, because what did it mean, to want? What was it to know what he wanted? He’d never known that, except when he’d known that. The bitterness of being asked that with the ease of someone who’d always had things they wanted, who’d had the certainty of knowledge to ask. Who could give, when asked, more of answer than the singularity of you, because Chuuya wasn’t enough of an answer.
Unless it was. Unless he could bring that incompletion into words, let Chuuya forge it into certainty. Something unfolding in him, one slow angle at a time, all sharp edges that caught the light.
“Dazai?” Chuuya said, a gentler sound to it that meant he’d probably said it once before. It made him look up at him again - when had he looked away? - and there, that question, softer for not being placed into the violence of syllables.
“Some things I’ve always wanted,” Dazai admitted, slow as stepping on ice, that one precarious thing he could grasp at, the stillness of Chuuya as he followed him down that line that wove through all of their collisions in time. “Others I didn’t know I might want.” It sounded like an evasion, but it wasn't. Not for Chuuya. Not for Chuuya, if Chuuya still knew how to read him.
Chuuya sipped his wine, deliberate, moving at a speed so slow no human would have made it look as sinuously graceful as he did. But Chuuya had had a lifetime’s habit of drawing the preternatural into the confines of human skin, after all. “Tell me, Dazai,” he said, a thing in his voice that stepped lightly between invitation and command.
“I want,” Dazai murmured, experimentally, but the words didn’t feel like they ended in a lie. Still felt like they were threading their way through black ice, the opacity of his own desires, beyond the intensity of them. The last air in his throat bent to the last word, to pushing oxygen enough to the cells of his hand to manage one abortive twitch towards him. “Chuuya.”
He watched the word reach, sink in, the slight widening and slighter narrowing of Chuuya’s gaze. That..ache in his eyes, in the line of that expressive mouth, that looked like it might feel like Dazai’s, something he’d felt, something he’d made. “Yeah, Dazai.” The tiny movement towards him that felt like so much more. He’d always been the one to reach out, hadn’t he? Always Chuuya moving closer, while Dazai remained in deniable stillness - but not this time. Not with this latest shift between them, not with what Dazai was asking and Chuuya was all but unable not to give. Chuuya, still trying to be careful, still giving him what he needed.
It ached, the way it always ached when Chuuya extended protection even to the undeserving thing that was Dazai’s body, the container that it was for the alleged rest of him. Gave him the ability to move, somehow, to stand up with the full consciousness of what he was about to do, to cross the infinite(simal) distance to the other side of the couch, holding Chuuya’s gaze as he sank to one knee, then both, on his knees before him, the rightness of that seizing him like a hand on the back of his neck, like gloved fingers against pressure points. “Chuuya,” he exhaled, an invitation, a plea, tilting on the edge.
Chuuya reached out, because he’d always known how hard to hit Dazai, the curl of his hand around the side of his neck so gentle it hurt. “Yes, Dazai,” he breathed, a gentle push against his jaw that Dazai obeyed eagerly, the touch of his gloves against bare skin, there, a collision of memory.
“ Yes ,” Dazai said, looking up at him, as he should, as he needed, the curl of his hair against his jaw, the way his choker moved when he swallowed down a question he probably didn’t need to ask. It didn’t matter. It had never mattered, not with Dazai, not in the high-wire act that was their every interaction. As Dazai knew to stop Chuuya, so did Chuuya know to hold Dazai.
“You don’t even know what you’re agreeing to.” There was a helpless edge to Chuuya’s voice, one that rang with the same ache unfurling itself on Dazai’s skin, in Dazai’s bones, the pins and needles of finally-again-touch. Magmatic tremors of barely restrained need, and Dazai caught in the feedback loop of it, but fear, beneath it, that one fear that Chuuya had always had, of being too much. As if that weren’t exactly what Dazai craved most from him.
There was information, in the back of his mind. Things he’d read in those stolen files, things he’d heard, but it didn’t matter. Chaff in the wind, and the winnowed-down truth at the heart of all things, that- “Chuuya won’t hurt me.”
Chuuya shook his head, just a fraction. “Chuuya won’t hurt Dazai.” The words had the weight of incantation, always had. “But there’s more.”
“I don’t care,” Dazai said, because he didn’t, but he tilted his head anyway - to listen because Chuuya seemed to need to say it, and to press his cheek just a tiny bit against the side of Chuuya’s hand. To reach up, slow enough that Chuuya could stop him if he wanted, to curl his hands gently around Chuuya’s hip, around his upper arm.
“It’ll give me power over you. I’ll be able to influence you for a while after.” Chuuya, holding so still, as if he expected Dazai to pull away.
Dazai considered that, part of him uncertain what about that hadn’t been encompassed in his previous statement, the rest of him sinking teeth into the idea of that. The promise of it, of being influenced, of being taken over body and mind. Something that could tear him open, and Chuuya’s hands holding him together in the aftermath, and why was this a downside again? “You won’t hurt me,” he repeated, holding Chuuya’s gaze, wanting him to know it as deeply as Dazai himself did.
“I won’t,” Chuuya repeated, another little shake of his head, and the slide of his thumb over Dazai’s pulse was delicate, almost, irresistible for it, making him tilt his head back in surrender. The possessive control in that gesture, and the promise of more. Power over him, concrete enough to make even Dazai’s mind go quiet, complete enough it’d make his body obey, perhaps even enough to make him be good. “You haven’t had enough time…”
He’d never been cruel like this before, to make Dazai jump through these arbitrary hoops when he was already down on his knees. But it was care, even if it didn’t feel like it in this moment, and so it was only need that roughened his voice, made him tremble. “Chuuya, don’t make me have to beg.”
Chuuya’s hand tightened on his neck, just a little, relief sweeping through Dazai for the almost-answer in it, weakening him. “Would you?”
He took a breath to say yes , but the air wouldn’t go into his lungs, let alone back out in words, caught in Chuuya’s gaze, in the demand there, a little nod all he could manage, caught. Caught, and bared, Chuuya’s nail catching at a bit of his bandage, tearing it delicately open, just a little. Too slow, a question in it, in the deliberate halfway pause of it. Dazai moved with it, tugging his bandages further open, baring himself, call and response in the sway of his body towards Chuuya’s, in the offering of himself. Cold air on his skin, just for a moment that still somehow uncurled too long, and he was already trembling by the time Chuuya leaned in, a rush of cool breath and the heat of his open mouth on Dazai’s skin, searing through him. The first time they’d touched, properly touched, in years, a collision of memory and sensation and yearning in the aching emptiness of his body, and taking a breath felt like inhaling a backdraft, the only soothing thing the sound of Chuuya’s name in his mouth.
It caught him almost by surprise, the shift of Chuuya’s mouth on him, Chuuya’s teeth, piercing him, so carefully and gently it lacerated his heart, the sharp pain and sideways pleasure of it, caught and lit up with it. Chuuya’s mouth offering pleasure and promises and delicious little threats, just as it always had, just as he always had, the layering and layering of meaning into sensation into knowledge into feeling. His hand in Chuuya’s hair, without his having quite decided to do that, pulling him closer, and Chuuya moaned for it, deep and rough, the sound resonating through Dazai’s body as he cradled Chuuya close, echo back and forth between them like a tide, like his blood in Chuuya’s mouth and Chuuya’s hands on him and-
And pleasure, spooling out from the bite, through his body, Chuuya’s arm around his waist in time to keep him from collapsing entirely with the sensation curling around every nerve like the battle song of their shared pulse. Chuuya held him safe through it, kept him at that almost-painful angle so he could feed from him, take life from him, life Dazai hadn’t quite known he had to give, an impossibly real proof of his existence that only Chuuya’s hands kept from tearing into him. He’d missed this, this intimacy, this entwinement, always the same even on this strange new vector of connection; he’d missed touching him, missed everything he had and everything he was just beginning to learn, yearning that was unraveling him.
Unraveling, unraveling, the weakness spreading in him right alongside pleasure as Chuuya drank and drank from him, cradled close like something precious, and it tore a sound of absolute loss from him when Chuuya pulled gently away, licking at the wound before it closed, an unbearable little intimacy in the soft-wet touch of his tongue, in the possessive care of taking every drop of blood Dazai’s body offered him, and oh, he wanted. He wanted to be drained, to be taken completely, to spill the life he hadn’t quite known he’d possessed on the altar of Chuuya’s desire. Here, I can give you this, let me quench your thirst, and was this what it felt like, for people who weren’t empty all the time, who had more to offer than a ruined self and a too-precise mind?
A soothing sound in his ear, so familiar it made him relax entirely separate from his own volition, and he realised that Chuuya hadn’t let him go. Was holding him close and tight, leaned back against the couch with Dazai cradled to his chest, those slender fingers combing through his hair. Chuuya’s scent in every breath, and even if part of it had shifted into whispers of ice and iron, the rest of him remained - the conscious hedonism of his cologne, the armour and will of leather, the ferocity of life in that edge of cigarette smoke. That indefinable something that lingered on his skin that sang of the raw power Chuuya contained and directed with such painful grace. All Chuuya. Human and more than human and other than human, and what did any of it matter? All of him had always been Dazai’s to sink his own teeth into. The thought bloomed in him, slow as anything else that was certain. The rising of a sun, somewhere.
“All right?” Chuuya murmured, still combing his hand through Dazai’s hair in that same sweetly possessive rhythm. “Dizzy? Weak?”
“It’s passing,” Dazai dismissed, because it was, disappointingly enough. Smiled a little, and admitted softly, “I feel...good. Surprisingly excellent.”
“I have a little food,” Chuuya murmured. “You’ll hate all of it, but you need to eat.” He must have sensed the face Dazai made, because he added, with emphasis and readiness to escalate, “Dazai. ”
Right, and there it was, the Look, even if he couldn’t see it, like a finger pressed to his forehead. Fine. “Fine,” he conceded, and sighed, the paradoxical normalcy of this aching a little. Reminding him, simultaneously, how different this was. “And you?”
“Of course I’m all right,” Chuuya responded, though the faint note of evasion in his voice said he knew exactly why Dazai was asking. “That was feeding me, remember?”
Dazai bit his neck, small and sharp, a pointed reminder that they both knew it was never that simple. Not with the two of them. Power never flowed one way between them, no matter how it looked at whatever moment, from whatever angle, and Chuuya had made himself vulnerable there, too, for however long it was that he’d allow Dazai to stay like this, however long Dazai had before he’d have to leave.
“I don’t know,” Chuuya said, quieter. The things they didn’t have to say loud in it. “I think I’m fine. Do you think I’m fine, Dazai?”
Dazai kissed his neck, just over the choker, that line that divided Chuuya from all of his armour. Just the hat, above it, and that hadn’t ever been a concealment. A chance he could take, there, a chance for both of them. “I think we both are.”
Chuuya’s fingers, pressed gently to his chin, tilting his head up with infinite tenderness to meet the demand of that ocean-blue gaze. “Sure?”
There were conversations to have, and conversations never to be had, before that could be true. This, this was an incantation, perhaps; some blade with which to draw a line against silence and void. Something with no inherent power or potential, except what they had to give it.
A simple task for Double Black, really.
“I’m sure,” Dazai replied, and let his absolute knowledge of their invincibility infuse every syllable.
Chuuya held his gaze, held those words, held him, one small nod before he leaned in, closed the last distance between them to claim Dazai’s mouth. The taste of his own blood there, and beneath it, Chuuya, a layering of truths that made him moan, a palpable reminder of what Chuuya had taken from him, what Dazai had been allowed to give him. Kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, until Chuuya’s taste and Chuuya’s touch surrounded him, until every fibre of him was threaded through with the memory and reality of him, sharp as Chuuya’s teeth, and he could almost almost almost forget every bit of the possibility that this was the rest of it, that Chuuya would tell him to leave this secure bunker and his secured life and rejoin the ranks of those who didn’t need to know.
“Dazai,” Chuuya sighed against his mouth, as if he could hear the acceleration of Dazai’s thoughts, and kissed quiet into him, too, curling his leg around him in a half-embrace, tugging his hair until Dazai couldn’t help but obey, breaking the kiss to nuzzle at his jaw, his neck, the subtly changed scent of him there. He bit Chuuya gently, right where he’d pierced Dazai, a little mirroring that made both of them moan a little, his own throat aching with memory and yearning. Chuuya’s nails digging into his skin just a tiny bit on his scalp, against his back, echo and response to the reckless thing whispering in Dazai’s veins.
“Bite me again,” Dazai breathed, fast, before either of them could think to stop him from saying it, breath a little too ragged even for the thought. The weakness in his limbs a too-distant promise of how it might feel to be overwhelmed, to be dragged into the undertow of Chuuya’s will, pressed against the riverbed and held there until all of the too-much air in his lungs left him at last.
Chuuya shivered hard against him, a tremor that left Dazai a little dizzy with the knowledge of inevitable victory. “I shouldn’t. You’ll be too weak.”
Dazai licked his neck soothingly, smiling to himself. “You always said I was the worst martial artist in the Port Mafia.”
“That doesn’t mean I should incapacitate you for shits and giggles,” Chuuya growled, and oh. Oh, that was supposed to make Dazai do something other than whimper, wasn’t it? But there it was, in the catch and drag of his voice over incapacitate , the knowledge tightening between them of how it would be, Dazai too weak to do anything and Chuuya more than able to do everything. He nuzzled at Chuuya’s throat again, a pleading little sound in his own, something Chuuya could both feel and hear. “You’d have to stay here for a while,” Chuuya conceded, and the words were meant to be a warning, functioned also as a signal of surrender, triumph licking at Dazai’s veins for it.
“Have me here, then,” he murmured in Chuuya’s ear, striking at that gap in his defenses, wanting, wanting too much to be less than purely mercenary in this, a little suck to his earlobe, right where Chuuya was most sensitive. “Pliant and ready and just for you.”
Chuuya whimpered, low and entirely helpless, and the rightness of it made Dazai’s nerves sing. Rightness, that Chuuya should be undone by that promise of worship; right, also that Dazai should be on his knees to give it, to promise even such an unworthy thing as his heart and his body in the tilt of his neck, in the offer of his throat. “For a little while.” There was a sharp edge to his voice, the negotiator’s wariness. Of course he’d choose to negotiate for Dazai’s safety, in this. Of course he wouldn’t understand that Chuuya’s ferocity in defending Dazai was exactly why Dazai didn’t ever have to bother protecting himself. That helpless melting thing inside Dazai that was affection and trust and surrender. “After tonight, you have to get strong again, and go back up. To show them. Promise me you’ll do that.”
“After tonight,” Dazai agreed, dragged his nails over the base of Chuuya’s skull, right where it always made Chuuya shiver and melt for him, nibbling at his earlobe, because Dazai never bothered playing less than dirty, especially when it came to this.
Chuuya shivered against him, held him tighter for it, but he didn’t quite give in. “Say the words, Dazai. Give me your promise.”
The words hooked in against his tongue, behind his gut, a demand to obey and comply, and that was probably the influence Chuuya was talking about. Force, unconcerned with consent or self or agency or premeditation or any of those things that Dazai always always always had to have in the threat-environment of not here, and the heat of it caught his breath, seized every inch of him in it and left him aching. Even if Chuuya was insisting on using it for distinctly unsexy purposes at the moment. “...I’ll get strong again, and go back up. I promise.”
“I will use the influence to make you keep that promise, if I have to. Don’t make me.”
Ugh. Chuuya being Chuuya, but it wasn’t unreasonable, really. They’d want to know where he was, and Dazai did have work to do, and Kunikida would give him hell for disappearing for as long as he wanted to anyway. “I can behave,” he said, almost without resentment, and nibbled his neck.
“Will,” Chuuya corrected resignedly, but the shiver said he was enjoying the nibbles, at least.
“I’ll behave and listen to you,” Dazai promised, both annoyed by and proud of Chuuya’s negotiation skills, as he always was. He was always careful not to let Chuuya know that he enjoyed it when Chuuya won their little battles.
“Mm, that’s better,” Chuuya hummed, and Dazai bit him vengefully for it, but that only seemed to encourage the purr in Chuuya’s throat. Maybe scritching his fingers through Chuuya’s scalp had given him a bit of a mixed message. “What should I do with you, I wonder?” Chuuya mused, relaxing back against the couch, and Dazai couldn’t help but grin for it.
“Would you like suggestions?”
Chuuya chuckled. “You know, I think I would.”
It was permission to go on the attack, not that Dazai had ever needed permission, as much as opportunity, and he let himself smile, stretched that fine layer of amusement over the ocean of need in him, tearing at the shore with the riptide of this chance. “I want you to drink me weak,” he murmured, nipping at Chuuya’s earlobe, moving with him to slip off his coat. “I want you to do what you want with me, whatever you want, and I’ll take it…”
“Whatever I want?” Chuuya murmured, a sharp edge beneath the simple question. Testing at the limits, just as gently as he was tugging Dazai’s tie open.
“You could,” Dazai replied, a helpless delighted shiver for the very idea that “I couldn’t help but let you.”
“You like that,” Chuuya breathed, and there it was, that thing Dazai wanted, the plenitude of teeth that lurked behind Chuuya’s words always. “That you’d be too helpless to fight me?”
All the things in himself that he held back and held back, as if Dazai hadn’t seen him at all of the moments he was most gloriously himself, as if that wasn’t part of what brought Dazai to his knees before him every time. “I wouldn’t fight you,” Dazai breathed. It wasn’t a direct answer, but it was more than that, because the rest of it was in a language Chuuya had always been able to read, the yes yes yes in Dazai’s veins, in his thoughts, in the ache of his body.
“Of course not,” Chuuya purred, hearing it, reading him, the relief of that still so vivid in Dazai’s hands. “I’ll have all of your strength in me, and all of the things you make me want to do to you.”
That tore a moan from him, the utter confidence in Chuuya’s words, in his voice, the promise of doing that, and he tugged at Chuuya’s choker with his teeth, a little pleading whine in his throat. “Chuuya, Chuuya, please…”
Chuuya hissed softly, not disagreement, but his hand curled tight in Dazai’s hair anyway, forcing him to endure the intensity of his gaze. “Whatever I want.” His voice pressed power into the next words, piercing him to the quick. “Tell me truthfully if that’s what you want.”
It was honestly incredibly offensive that Chuuya was using his kinks to manipulate him into emotional honesty, and it’d have outraged Dazai entirely, if he hadn’t been caught in reluctant helpless affection for Chuuya’s willingness to violate his own principles to keep Dazai safe. If the command hadn’t hooked into that same endless thing in him that ached for definition, for control, for oblivion, for Chuuya, dragging the words from him in agonised pleasure. “I want it.” He swallowed hard, resisting just to feel the influence forcing it out of him, exhilaration curving around the edge of his mind, a moan curving around the edge of his words. “I want you to make me exist for your pleasure, I want you to use my body however you want and I want you to make me take it -” and the rest was lost to a whimper, to the solar flare in Chuuya’s gaze that turned his mind to ecstatic static.
Chuuya nodded, once, voice low and rough with the counterpart to the things singing in the darkness of Dazai’s being. All of that overspilling need in him, something Dazai could devour, sink teeth and claws into, the monstrous match to Chuuya’s divine. “No more asking, then. Just me.”
“Please,” the word hoarse with the need it scraped from his throat, and Chuuya devoured any other prayer he might think to make in a kiss with ferocity enough to scorch even Dazai’s mind, demanding every inch of his surrender until he was a shivering shattered mess in his arms, barely aware of Chuuya working his vest open, his shirt, baring him and biting at him. There was a...a current to his demands, his thoughts, his influence, something Dazai was already learning to lean into and lean against, and he moved with Chuuya’s intent to free himself from stasis, kissing him and kissing him as they tore at each other’s clothes, hungry for skin, touching and touching and touching everywhere until even Dazai’s skin remembered Chuuya fully, until all the pins and needles disappeared into the molten truth of Chuuya’s hands on him.
Chuuya shrugged out of his own shirt, leaving him bare from the waist up and Dazai had forgotten that too, what it was like to have Chuuya not layered up and battened down for war, his hedonism expressed in silk-soft fabrics and the softer curve of his mouth. Time enough there, to realise how badly he’d missed that, the privilege of Chuuya’s skin for him to touch, before he dragged Dazai in for more biting kisses, his voice as rough as Dazai’s had been. “Tell me if you missed me, missed this.”
The question tore a little shocked sound from him, its place outside of the limits of the honesty they allowed each other, and it took the breath from his lungs, forced the truth from his mouth. “Yes.” He inhaled sharply - a gasp, really - fingers curling against the lean muscle of Chuuya’s sides, scratching hard, retaliation for how the words tore him open on their way out. “I missed this, I missed you, I missed you so fucking much, it hurts-” And that froze him again, the tense on it something he hadn’t quite let himself realise, and it bit into him with serrated edges, so perfectly made to catch and tear and hook and rend and-
Chuuya kissed him again, slow and deep, forcing him to breathe in the rhythm of it, when Chuuya permitted, pressing calm into him, even as his too-sharp nails tore Dazai’s shirt open to scratch at his skin, to make him arch. “I missed you, too,” he murmured against Dazai’s mouth, a secret just for Dazai to swallow down and keep safe deep inside, just as the little wounded sound the words tore from Dazai were for Chuuya. Chuuya, who’d missed him - the truth of it so clear like this, in the tender ferocity of kiss after kiss - who’d missed him despite all of the bad that Dazai had been at the end and in the middle and probably since the beginning, as impossible as the thought tasted.
He curled in against Chuuya’s neck, the skin there warmer now, and he’d done that, given him that warmth, and he couldn’t help but smile for it. “I blew up your car,” he protested against the soft-warm skin of Chuuya’s throat. It wasn’t quite a question, or perhaps it was several of them instead. A microcosm of the things he’d done, the things he knew he couldn’t allow himself to explain.
Chuuya made a low fierce sound for that, gripping his hair tighter. “Mm, and you’re definitely going to pay for that eventually.”
Fondness in the sound of his voice, right alongside the fury, spilling over his skin like honey, sticking sweet through the bite of Chuuya’s nails in his back, and he muffled a sound of sheer delight against the hollow of Chuuya’s throat. Chuuya’s fingers on his neck, like Chuuya’s will on his tongue, forcing him into having the courage to speak, relief and gratitude and something like terror in his throat as he arched up to whisper surrender in his ear. “Ask what you want.”
Chuuya curled his hand tight around the back of his neck, and there, that was his own predator instinct, the part that gloried in war. His fingers resting against the pressure point on Dazai’s neck in a threat, in a promise, his voice low, sharp with all the edges Chuuya had used to tear his way into the world and through it. “Tell me why you really came looking for me.”
The question stung, because Chuuya hadn’t believed him earlier, but who else did Dazai have to blame for that but himself? And even now he couldn’t look at him in answering, had to hide against the sanctuary of the line of Chuuya’s jaw, distract both of them by opening Chuuya’s pants. “You were gone. I thought it might be Corruption again.”
He could feel the vibration of Chuuya’s hum of approval against his own skin, inside him, resonating in the part of him that bent its neck in joyous helplessness to Chuuya’s control. “Why did that scare you?”
The question was so gentle it almost didn’t hurt. Almost didn’t remind him of too many things, and he bit at his jaw. “I don’t want you gone. I-” and he could resist saying the next thing, even if he didn’t want to resist it, but if he could, then he wouldn’t say it. This was for Chuuya to force him to say, if he wanted that; the parameters of the game they were playing, though it wasn’t a game at all.
Chuuya curled his hand tight around one of his wrists, just barely not bruising, an ineffable gentleness in it, in his knowledge of what Dazai needed right then. “Finish the sentence, Dazai,” he ordered.
It was faster, this time, as if the influence knew and the influence seized his mind, gripped his throat, carved the words out of him into air for the first time. “I don’t want to lose you,” he choked out, entirely unwillingly, drowning in the relief of being made to say it, and thus being allowed to say it, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He’d told him, he’d told Chuuya, and now he’d lose him, he’d lose him-
“I’m not going anywhere, Dazai.” Chuuya’s voice, as firm in his ears as his touch was gentle on his neck, his throat, cradling him close as he guided Dazai’s hand to his pants, inside, to stroke him. “You won’t lose me.”
An impossible promise, and he kissed Chuuya again rather than say that, rather than let himself feel the depth of his own terror, to distract Chuuya from being able to look at him, a pleading whimper that Chuuya indulged, as he always did, holding Dazai’s wrists to keep him still and grounded, even as Dazai stroked him. Soothed Dazai, almost despite himself, left him bent over and carved open on the altar of Chuuya’s demands, sacrificed to him. His heart torn from him to bleed all his insides outside, and the intimacy of it was a strange pleasure in itself.
Chuuya bit at his mouth, almost sharp enough to draw blood, his voice low, rough. “Shall I let you off the hook for a while, Dazai?”
It was a choice. It was too much of a choice, and he didn’t want that kind of air in his lungs, not when he could finally drown, caught in Chuuya’s current and given over to his will, so he bit him back, refused him an answer, stroked him faster. His own demands, there, and he knew they’d been heard, in the hunter’s curve of Chuuya’s mouth, in the thing in Chuuya’s voice that was nothing at all like gentleness when he crooned, “Oh, you don’t know, do you?” Bit at him again, swallowed down his sound of need with it. “Well, I do.”
It caught at him, in the gut, in the groin, in all the dark places in him that only Chuuya’s hands had ever reached, that only Chuuya knew how to predict and manipulate. “Chuuya,” Dazai whispered, almost a sob, entirely a plea, all he could manage.
“Shh, now,” Chuuya breathed, satisfaction so rich in his voice it made Dazai’s bones ache with triumph, abraded him with the promise of relief. He released Dazai’s wrist. “Take my pants off.”
He was shaking, he couldn’t seem to stop shaking, but his hands had always been clever even when the rest of him was falling apart, and it was the work of seconds to have Chuuya’s pants open and off, to melt against him again as he kissed Dazai and bit him to bleeding, the iron taste of it in his mouth as Chuuya gripped his hair. “Show me how much you want this,” Chuuya commanded, and he could hear the rest of it, too, could hear show me how much you want me, and he leaned into the touch and the influence with equal eagerness, taking him into his mouth. The sharp little pain in his mouth as he fell to sucking Chuuya’s cock, because Chuuya had bitten him open, Chuuya was fucking into his mouth, pushing it past the point of comfort and into the negotiable terror of too-much, and he wanted that, to push himself and have Chuuya push him still further, some kind of proof to maybe offer in it. Chuuya pulled one leg up onto the couch, pulled him closer with it, the scent and taste of him everywhere, slender gloved fingers pushing him down on his cock until he was dangerously close to choking - and he wanted that too, in some strange crazed arc of yearning that careened between worship and possession.
“Did you miss this, too?” Chuuya asked, and the sound the question tore from Dazai was yes yes yes, Chuuya filling him up too well to let him make more than muffled little whimpers, the influence pushing him to answer anyway, a messy collision of imperatives that left him shaking. Chuuya murmuring soft praises just for him to hear, Chuuya holding him still to use his mouth, rocking into him so deep it left his throat aching, and all of it was one perfect thing that was teeth in his heart and the all-encompassing comfort of Chuuya’s possession of him, tearing him open. “How’s that for you, hm?” Chuuya growled.
All the edges in him pressed to Dazai like promises of being cut open, like this. The just-sideways nonhumanity of him that was the only thing that Dazai had ever experienced as kinship in a world spilling over with the flickering goodness of the all-too-mortal. All the things Chuuya held back and held away from others, but Dazai, Dazai had always been there to see it, to hold it safe, to reunite and reintegrate all of the darkest parts of him. All of Chuuya, just for Dazai, and the enormity of it struck him like lightning, as it always did, toes to heart in an overwhelming electrocution that he couldn’t help but experience as pleasure. “Chuuya,” he managed, and it was an answer, even if only Dazai knew it.
Chuuya tugged his hair again, pain in Dazai’s scalp, sharper, just like his voice. “Tell me, Dazai.”
The influence kicked in with it again, tugging words from him, the ones that he could have found if he’d been less overwhelmed, relief for Chuuya taking that over from him. “Good,” he choked out, clinging to Chuuya’s hip, his leg, fingers maybe digging in too hard. “So fucking good, Chuuya, Chuuya, please, more…”
Chuuya’s smile was a razor pressed to all of Dazai’s arteries at once, pupils blown, his body a lithe lazy line of pleasure and command and abandon. The hedonistic glory of him, and Dazai in the perfect vantage point to drink it all in. “Good boy,” he purred, pushing Dazai back down onto him, muffling his helpless sound of pleasure with his cock. “Ah, fuck, I’m going to enjoy this…”
Dazai fell back into sucking him, letting himself be as filthy and eager in it as he wanted, as he needed, Chuuya in his mouth and against his body after so fucking long, and pushing him and using him, unraveling him with clever hands and needle-quick precision and more, more...but it didn’t last nearly long enough before Chuuya pulled him off his cock, dragged him up and back and back . Dazai shivered, held in a forced arch of anticipation for one timeless moment before Chuuya’s teeth were on him and in him again, piercing him right where he had before, thin new skin parting for the sweet violation of Chuuya’s demands, all he could do to cling to Chuuya’s shoulders and push into his teeth, moan his name in a prayer as weakness spread in his body like a benediction. Chuuya drank him down with an intensity that even Dazai’s too-numb body couldn’t help but feel, pleasure and sensation spiraling and spiraling in him until he couldn’t help but squirm.
He pulled away too soon, though, Dazai’s mind still too clear, body still too able to control itself, despite the intensity of the weakness and satisfaction in him, intensity that made arousal feel academic by comparison, still held in that arch that bared him for Chuuya’s pleasure. “How do you feel, Dazai? Is it what you wanted?”
Dazai managed to open his eyes for the question, and Chuuya, there, the fevered flush of his cheeks (that Dazai had given him, vitality taken from Dazai , and he could howl with the satisfaction of it), the vivid blue of his eyes and that strange new shine to them, and beautiful. Beautiful. “Fuck, yes,” he said, startled by how hoarse his voice was with the need roaring in him.
Chuuya smiled a little for that, that half-distracted one he gave when he was already committed to his next planned attack, though his thumb stroked so very gently against Dazai’s temple. “Can you wrap your arms around me?” It took a surprising amount of effort to do that, considering how little Dazai actually had to move to curl his arms around Chuuya’s neck, but he managed anyway. “Hold on as best you can.”
Dazai smiled a little more when Chuuya picked him up in a proper bridal hold, began to carry him towards the bed. “Carry me, my prince,” he murmured against Chuuya’s neck, nestling shamelessly.
Chuuya snorted softly, and Dazai could hear the little smile in it, even as he cradled Dazai so very carefully close until he could lay him out on the bed. “I’m not sure I’ve drained you enough…” he was probably talking mostly to himself, from the distracted little frown creasing his forehead as he tugged Dazai’s pants efficiently open and off.
“You haven’t,” Dazai agreed, because he could still feel his own strength, could still move and lift his hips and kick the pants off, still find whole cells in his body where Chuuya’s influence wasn’t reaching soothing immobility into him. “Take more, Chuuya…”
Chuuya looked up at him, a dark curl of satisfaction in the sound of his voice, undisguised hunger to match Dazai’s own. “You just be patient,” he murmured. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” He headed back out of the bedroom-container. probably for lube, and somehow, with that command, it was easy to be, to lie back and busy himself with picking the bandages on his throat open in a silent invitation, left in just chest and arm wrappings. Time enough, too, to be pleased that Chuuya obviously hadn’t had anyone else in here, hadn’t even planned to, given that Chuuya was nothing if not prepared when it came to these things.
Chuuya paused for a moment when he came back in, lube in one hand - ha - and a possessive sort of purr slipping from him that Dazai wasn’t quite sure even Chuuya was aware of, Dazai couldn’t help but squirm a little under his gaze, and he reached for him, murmuring Chuuya’s name, pleased when he came to him immediately, crawling up on top of him and giving him kisses, slow and demanding, until Dazai was caught in that current again, the brief resurfacing gone as if it had never been, Chuuya rocking against him, hard cock against Dazai’s thigh, biting kisses on his jaw and his mouth. “Can you get hard for me, I wonder? Or is that too much for you right now?”
Dazai made a vague sound of distress for that, the idea of something as concrete as arousal very distant right now, with Chuuya’s kisses and Chuuya’s insistence and Chuuya’s command devouring him so sweetly. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he argued, telling the truth entirely without having meant to.
“It matters to me, Dazai.” That crooning hypnotic note was back in Chuuya’s voice, making him shiver, caught in Chuuya’s palm, pinned down. “I want to know if it’ll make you too weak to lift your arms and spread your legs for me.”
The heat of that struck right through him, toes to heart to throat, a whimper of pure need falling from him, and he’d have thought he wasn’t aware enough of his own body to calibrate such a thing, but the influence tugged an answer from deeper than he’d known. “It would.”
Chuuya hissed for that, rocking against him slow and filthy and hard enough it moved Dazai’s body with his. “Mm, that’s perfect. All for me to decide, hm?”
“Yes.” It came out as a breathless little sound, almost a whimper, but words, still, what Chuuya wanted, the influence hooking into him even with that implied command. ‘All for you to...everything…”
Chuuya kissed him again, reward and demand all wound around each other, pressing gloved fingers to Dazai’s mouth. “Take it off for me?”
It wasn’t quite a command, but Dazai still knew, always knew how to do this, tugging Chuuya’s glove off his hand with his teeth, one finger at a time, still remembered the taste of fine leather against his tongue, the way Chuuya’s eyes narrowed with the heat in them. Chuuya trailed his fingers over Dazai’s mouth, teasing him with the promise of letting him suck on them, but pulling away before he could do more than lick at them, sliding slightly-damp fingers down his chin, his throat, the bandaged expanse of his chest. Never any differentiation, there, the same sure demand of his fingers over scars and skin and bandages, the same understanding of Dazai in every movement, in the promise in his gaze as he rose to his knees between his legs, slicked up his fingers as he pushed Dazai’s legs apart. The heat, there, searing into him, as strong as the will pushing him down and holding him still, and the knowledge unfurling in him, slow and sweet as the anticipation of being filled up by him. “You still want me this much.” His amazement entirely too clear in his voice, something that would have been embarrassing, if he hadn’t been caught up in the sheer wonder of that realisation.
“Never a moment less.” Something old and a little wounded in Chuuya’s gaze for that, the sting of all those years of wanting, and he’d...he’d tried to spare him that, he’d tried, he’d tried, but this really was inevitable, in the end. They’d tangled their orbits too closely and this was nothing like a circle at all, after all. Just a homing signal, body to body, soul to soul, Chuuya’s mouth against his knee, against the inside of his thigh, every point of connection lightning in his nerves. “Do you still want me that much?”
“Yes,” Dazai breathed, immediate, hungry, that sharp dark thing in him swallowing Chuuya’s response whole, anticipation sizzling through him for the heat of his mouth against Dazai’s thigh, the promises in it, in slick clever fingers pressing against his entrance. “Yes, fuck, yes, only ever more-”
Chuuya purred for that, a sound so soaked in pleasure it was hedonism even to hear it, and he struck in one fluid movement, penetrating him with two fingers as he sank his fangs into Dazai’s thigh, tearing a breathless cry from him. “Chuuya, Chuuya, please, Chuuya,” Dazai whispered, nearly mindless, a talisman against any other thought that might touch him, curling his hand in his hair, his grip weakening a little as Chuuya drank him and fingered him open with a rough-rumbling sound of pleasure that vibrated from Dazai’s thigh to his cock to his throat, a wave of delicious weakness following it. Chuuya’s gaze hot on him, Chuuya’s hair silk-soft in his hand, Chuuya’s fingers fucking into him rough enough to almost hurt, but never quite tripping over that line - he always did know just how hard to hit him, and Dazai would have reminded him of Dazai’s victory in that assertion, if he’d had the breath, if he’d had the words, everything fallen away, spinning in the rough devouring current of Chuuya’s insistence.
Time blurred into itself in the push and drag of Chuuya in him, fangs and fingers and weakening strength, spiraling pleasure, and he couldn’t do more than squirm weakly for it. Couldn’t even if he wanted to, and the thought threatened to undo him entirely, being in Chuuya’s hands like this, being for his pleasure, under his control, given to his will. Giving, and that was a revelation - to have something to give, the physicality of blood, the unambiguity of surrender, to offer them up to Chuuya and have them be accepted. He wanted that, half-crazed yearning to be drained dry and taken anyway, to lose his breath in this, and if it wouldn’t have hurt Chuuya he’d have begged on his knees for it, to be allowed to give him that finality of devotion. Instead, he dragged little scraps of his will and strength enough to tug at Chuuya’s hair when he pulled out of him, managed to reach up enough to touch his sides when Chuuya crawled up his body to kiss him and kiss him, smearing Dazai’s blood on his lips, into his mouth, the kiss rough enough it was all Dazai could do to kiss back. Chuuya, vivid and vital and wild above him, rocking against him so hard it moved Dazai’s body with his.
“Look at you, hm? Weak, now. At my mercy.” Chuuya’s voice slid just a little left of human, a growling rumble behind the sound of his words like teeth bared against Dazai’s skin, more than a match for all the roaring emptiness inside him. “I’m going to leave you aching."
The promise dragged a helpless hungry sound from him, his head falling back against the pillow when Chuuya straightened up, wanting...wanting to be pinned down fully, to have even that illusion of physical freedom taken from-
And Chuuya struck again, sliding off him in one smooth movement, straightening his legs and giving him a sharp little grin before flipping him over onto his stomach, the pillow pressing against his cheek, Chuuya pressing against his back, straddling him and lying on him, teeth worrying his ear, the weight of his body and the heat of it making him whimper in breathless need. “How does it feel, Dazai?” Chuuya bit his ear again, breathed heat and filthy words in it, another reminder of Dazai’s helplessness. “Do you like being my plaything?“
“So much,” he breathed, hands curling vaguely against the sheets, pleasure coiling sharp in his belly, yearning crystallised in his heart, dizzy and weak and trembling with it. “Make me your doll, Chuuya, please…“
He could feel the shudder take Chuuya’s frame for it, the sharp little pain of teeth on his ear, satisfaction poured there on Chuuya’s voice. “Oh, you are. Just for me to play with.” He shifted down against him, the heat of his body a delicious thing against Dazai’s thigh and the loss of it almost painful, only the sounds of him slicking himself up stopping Dazai from protesting. “How long’s it been, Dazai?“
“I’m all right,” Dazai protested immediately, desperate not to have to tell him that, desperate to feel him, to feel him, to be taken and used without those connotations of his not being Chuuya’s, not being a thing that Chuuya could have and keep and would have and keep. “I’m all right, I want…”
Chuuya hissed a little, rocked against him again. “I’ve got you for days, Dazai. You’re not going to not hurt.” The promise of being made to feel that, the press of his cock against Dazai’s body, slick and hot and demanding, making Dazai go limp against the mattress. “Now answer me. ”
The imperative seized him by the throat, by the gut, annihilating his resistance to spilling out this secret, the helpless furious arousal for that shaking him apart. “Since you,“ he choked out, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against whatever he might see right now, every nerve in him straining to catch Chuuya’s reactions even as he turned his head, hiding his face against terror and anticipation and the agonising tilt and shudder between those poles. One terrifying moment of uncertainty, but then Chuuya moved, driving into him in one slow rough thrust, an uncompromising claim, fangs sharp against the back of his neck, held like prey and taken like a prize and he couldn’t help but cry out for it, Chuuya’s name a prayer in his mouth.
Chuuya ground against him hard enough to make him gasp for breath that wouldn’t come, make him moan for relief that he wasn’t allowed, agonisingly pleasurable denial, Chuuya falling into a rough deep rhythm that moved Dazai’s body with every thrust. “No one else for you? Just me?”
The way Chuuya almost licked the words was fiercely satisfying, the relief of finally having that secret torn from Dazai was almost as intense, all he could do to moan for it. “Yes,” he half-sobbed, the words torn from him entirely unwillingly, infinitely pathetically grateful for it.
“Good, ” Chuuya snarled in his ear, and set to fucking him harder, leaning on one hand, tugged his head back with the other hand tight in his hair, pain shivering out on his scalp, vision exploding in sparks, soaking into him to entwine with and edge around pleasure. The unequivocal triumph in Chuuya’s voice curled around his heart like gripping fingers, pinning him in place even as his body threatened to give out.
The weakness in him was so deep he couldn’t even move with him, and the intensity of that wrecked him body and soul, Chuuya tearing moans and whines from him with sharp bites to his nape and his shoulder and the curve of his neck, too much, too much, not enough, too much, held safe as Chuuya tilted him over the edge with brutal deliberation. Sharp little points of pleasure and pain everywhere in him, Chuuya fucking him harder and harder, Chuuya burying his teeth in Dazai’s shoulder in a wordless demand Dazai understood in his bones, even Chuuya’s draining darkening his vision, the blurring of his thoughts, Chuuya, Chuuya. Chuuya, everywhere, Dazai’s body reaching vainly for arousal that it couldn’t withstand, couldn’t withhold, Chuuya driving into him hard as Dazai cried out, a sound that tangled around the shape of the meaning of Chuuya’s name on his tongue, and lost himself entirely with it, trembling to ecstatic darkness.