Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dazai knows far better than to play his hand without all the information, so when Chuuya first comes to bed not in his boxers, but in loose black sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, gloves still on, he does not confront him with his immediate suspicion as to the cause.

Still, it would arouse suspicion in Chuuya not to comment at all. There is only one solution; there is only one solution to most things in Dazai's life, and that is when in doubt, go for farcical.

"Wearing gloves to bed, handsome? Someone's in the mood for a little S&M."

He scooches closer to Chuuya and skims a delicate finger down, down, down the flesh of his arm in a way that usually leaves Chuuya with goosebumps. Then, he grasps his hand, pulls it towards his mouth, and presses a gentle kiss in the center of the back. Chuuya stares at him like he's grown three heads.

Perfect. Time for the cincher. "If you want me to call you master though, you're going to have to start paying for the pleasure of my company."

Chuuya snatches his hand away and smacks Dazai's arm, a scowl planted dead center on his face.

"Stop being an ass and say what you actually want to say."

If Dazai were the type to do so, his eyes would have widened. Ah.

He forgets sometimes, how well this human who calls himself Chuuya can predict his intentions. It's not something he's ever had to worry about with the vast majority of people. Very few, actually. Ranpo. Mori. Fyodor. Ango on a good day. Odasaku, a lifetime ago.

Five out of the thousands of people he has met in his twenty-three years of life, and none quite like Chuuya.

Dazai considers. How he wants to say this, what he wants out of the rest of this conversation.

"You don't usually wear this many clothes when we're going to sleep," he eventually points out.

"Yeah," Chuuya shoots back. "What about it?"

So he's going to make him say it. How sanguinary his partner is.

"Why are you wearing this many clothes when we're going to sleep?"

Chuuya appraises him with hooded eyes. "I'm cold."

Dazai raises an eyebrow. "It's the middle of summer."

The way Chuuya doubles down is a tangible sensation. "You blast the air conditioning 24/7 year round."

So he wants to play that game. Alright.

"Why, I had no idea that bothered you so much, Chuuya. If it means so much to you, I'll go and turn off the air conditioning right now! Then you can take off all of those stifling layers. Of course, I'll be sweltering tonight, but anything for my babygirl." He leans over and plants a mocking little kiss on Chuuya's forehead to seal the deal. When Dazai pulls away, Chuuya's fingers snap up to his temple as if it had burned.

He really should know by now that playing games with Dazai is a mistake.

When Dazai turns around and moves to get up, he feels a hand snatch his shoulder. "Wait!" Chuuya interrupts.

Dazai keeps his head facing the wall so Chuuya can't see the beginnings of a smile curling up his lips. "Yes, Chuuya?"

"You—you don't have to do that. I, er... I don't want you to be hot. Sit back down."

Dazai does turn around now. "How selfless," he simpers, patting Chuuya condescendingly on the arm, "but it's really no big deal." This time to get up, he rolls over Chuuya and steps onto the floor from his side of the bed.

Inevitably, Chuuya intercepts him again, this time by yanking him back by the neck of his t-shirt. "No," he says, this time more firmly. "I insist."

Eyeing Chuuya amusedly, Dazai decides he will play along with this little game for now. "Alright," he agrees, languidly stretching on top of Chuuya. "If my partner wants to cater to my every whim, who am I to deny him the privilege?"

He will let Chuuya win this one battle. Because here's the thing: Dazai never loses the war.

Chuuya does not stop wearing his layers. In fact, they continue to accumulate every night until there are so many that you could slap a toque on his head and call him the Pillsbury Doughboy. Dazai does not make the mistake of commenting on them again, knowing he has to step back and reevaluate before he can rebroach this issue. If he just adjusts his lens a little bit, looks at it from a different angle, he knows that he can figure this out.

The angles, however, are not angling. The whole situation remains stubbornly annular. It's—it makes Dazai want to take Chuuya and shake him.

Things only continue to crescendo, until one night, there is a particular happening, one so gruesome that it reveals depth to Chuuya's little issue that Dazai thinks could rival the Mariana Trench. Dazai comes to colloquially refer to it as the No Good, Horrible, Very Bad Shower Incident. Or really just the Shower Incident, but Dazai rather enjoys the pomp and circumstance of the former.

Succinctly: Dazai walks into the bathroom while Chuuya is showering to relieve himself. The part that cannot be described with such brevity is the reaction that follows from Chuuya.

Chuuya is humming an Arashi song and lathering up his hair with scented soap like the teenage girl he is, so he doesn't notice Dazai at first. Dazai watches him for a moment, the delicate slope of his hips that contrasts greatly with the sharp geometry of his wiry, muscled limbs, his sunfire hair, choppy and long, gone dark and brown with wet.

He watches the more intimate parts too. Chuuya's pecs, his pink, hardened nipples. His pretty, pretty dick, so unseemlily large that Dazai had torn the first time they'd fucked. Honestly, its size is so ridiculous that Dazai feels amusement rather than envy whenever Chuuya unclothes.

It's helpful, to have a partner whose silly dick and androgynous physique doesn't leave Dazai feeling... weird and squirmy about what is left of the body he was born with. After years of targeted body-shaping exercise and longterm courses of synthetic hormones and owing too to his bony frame that never seems to quite go away even though the part of his life where he does not have consistent access to food is long over, it is nearly unrecognizable as a particularly feminine body—but Dazai still notices things, sometimes.

It's only when Dazai has walked in and pulled the toilet seat up that Chuuya snaps to attention. And then he dives down to the ground, curling up to hide as much of his body as possible.

"I'm in here, dumbass!" he roars, a crackling, raw edge to his voice that Dazai has heard only very few times in their eight years of knowing each other. Interesting.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Dazai retorts calmly, pulling his packer out of his boxers just as much to see what Chuuya will do as out of a genuine desire to relieve the pressure in his bladder. "Seriously, it's nothing I haven't seen before, you stupid slug. It's a little late to get penis shy."

"I don't care," Chuuya snaps, sounding out of breath. "Get the hell out of here, Dazai. Go piss in the sink or something—we both know you're not above that."

Dazai glances over at him to retort, but that seems to be a mistake, because Chuuya only grows more agitated. "Stop looking!" he insists. "Dammit, Dazai, I'm serious. Get. The fuck. Out."

Morbid curiosity almost causes Dazai to continue pushing, but he knows that if he gets Chuuya too riled up over this now, his likelihood of opening up about it later on when he's not in a vulnerable moment will decrease exponentially. "Alright, alright," he acquiesces, tucking himself back away and buttoning his pants back up. "Whatever the petit mafioso wants."

"Chuuya?" Dazai asks with a raised eyebrow. "Why am I the only one who's getting undressed?"

They're in the bed, all hot and bothered and flushed and sweaty after a heated makeout session that's heading à la sex city. While Dazai has just slid out of his pants and shirt, however, Chuuya has merely unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out, appearing to have no intention to disrobe any further.

Dazai would almost believe Chuuya's next words if it weren't for the deer-in-the-headlights expression he was wearing. "I thought it would be hot to try it this way," he insists. And then he kills it. "You know... power dynamics and stuff."

"'Power dynamics and stuff?'" Dazai quotes incredulously, 'hot' starting to feel a lot more like 'not' as his sex drive rapidly cools. "Chuuya, I don't know if you've realized this, but I'm not stupid. You've refused to get undressed in front of me for weeks now." Beating around the bush has gotten Dazai absolutely nowhere. It's time to be upfront.

Chuuya scowls. "So what if I have?" he bites out testily.

"'So' I don't find it particularly sexy to be ravished by a man when I can't even see his no-no dots."

"And I don't find it sexy when you call nipples 'no-no dots,'" Chuuya retorts, crossing his arms. "So I guess neither of us are getting what we want tonight."

"Chuuya," Dazai says, scrubbing a tired hand across his temple, "are you going to tell me what's really going on, or am I going to have to start guessing? Because I don't think you're going to like my take on what it is."

"Try me," Chuuya challenges, though Dazai can see a dusky apprehension in his eyes.

"Alright," Dazai says with a cold smile. "You don't like your scars. You've never liked them, but lately you really haven't liked them. There are the ones that remind you of things you don't want to remember... and then there are the ones that you can't remember. Those ones are worse. You look at the vivisection scar on your chest and you wonder if they gave you anesthesia when they did it... or if you were awake, screaming and screaming as they rifled around your insides without giving a damn about the pain you were in."

Dazai reaches forward to caress Chuuya's cheek with absolutely no love, uncaring that his eyes are wide and he's so stiff he's nearly shaking.

"You can't stand it. You can't stand not knowing, and more importantly, you can't stand there being living reminders that you were ever weak enough to be at someone's mercy like that. So you've decided that you're just not going to look at them anymore. Nobody is going to look at them anymore. Not even me. After all, what right do I have to complain when I've never even taken off my bandages in front of you before?"

Dazai tilts his head. "Does that sound about right?" he asks frigidly.

There is nothing equivocal about it. Chuuya is shaking now, full on. He slaps Dazai's hand off of his face, pulling back. Panting like he's just run a marathon, looking down at his trembling hands like they're covered in the blood of his own mother.

"Even if that were true," Chuuya rasps out after several moments, "what the hell good would pointing it out do? You just always have to have the last word, don't you Dazai? Even all these years later, it's still a power trip for you. You still enjoy seeing me miserable."

Going carefully still, Dazai watches Chuuya with hooded eyes. "That's not true," he protests.

Chuuya raises a dubious eyebrow.

"Alright," Dazai acquiesces, "that's true. Sometimes. Not right now. Right now I'm..."

Scoffing, Chuuya squints at him. "What? Worried about me? Is that what you were going to say? Because give me a break. Any other day getting you to admit something like that would be like pulling teeth."

Dazai's teeth press together. Creak. He looks at the floor. The wall. The bedspread. Anywhere that's not Chuuya. It seems he's going to have to show his hand. "Consider me a concerned party," he tells Chuuya. "You know, in the legal sense."

Though he gives Dazai a doubtful look, Chuuya's hackles fall marginally. "OK," he agrees. "You're a concerned party in the legal sense. What does your complaint entail?" He pauses. "You know, in the legal sense."

Dazai chuckles despite himself. "The concerned party's complaint entails that it has a... particular understanding of the bad habit of hiding scars, and thinks it would be... prudent for the other party to nip this habit in the bud before it gets out of hand. It's not..." He hesitates. Takes a breath. Sighs. "Look, Chuuya. Living the way I do? It's not fun. I don't... I don't want this for you."

At some point during that, Chuuya had taken Dazai's hand. He's holding it to his chest. Huh, funny. Dazai hadn't even noticed.

"That's... honest," Chuuya points out. "For anyone, but especially for you. If you're worried enough to say something like that, then alright. I'll take you seriously."

"I'm not worried," Dazai corrects immediately. "I'm a concerned party."

Chuuya lets out a half huff, half laugh. "Right," he says. "Sorry. Concerned party." He massages a thumb under Dazai's knuckle. "You're a solutions guy. How do you propose I stop wanting to hide my scars?"

A beat. Then two. Then three.

"Let me show you," Dazai says.

Dazai doesn't exactly expect a warm reception to the intimate insinuation he's making, but Chuuya's dubiously raised eyebrow is a little galling.

"You won't even take off your bandages for sex and you're going to show me how to like my scars while you're bedroom talking me?"

A sour taste seeps into Dazai's mouth. Of course. Something must show on his face, because Chuuya's softens, in a lips-pressed-together, "Oh," sort of way.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I don't—ugh, I don't want to make you feel bad for stuff that probably has something to do with... uhh..."

Dazai feels his stomach twist so hard he feels it in his groin. He doesn’t let it show, deliberately curls his face up into a grin instead. Though his tone is light, an edge remains hidden in the nadir. "You might want to shut your mouth while you're ahead, Chuuya. Bringing that up when I'm offering to ravish you isn't exactly the best way to turn me on."

Chuuya pulls a face. "That's not a problem, because you're not going to be ravishing me."

"Why not?" Dazai asks with a raised eyebrow.

"Because even though I shouldn't have said it like that, you're still a hypocrite!" Chuuya snaps.

Dazai's heart kicks up a beat. "Your problem is that you think it's not fair that I force you to put your body on display when I won't show you mine in return?" he asks. There's a solution to that. An immediate solution.

He does not like the solution.

"Yes," Chuuya insists mulishly.

Say it, Dazai. Say it.

"What if I did show you mine?" he blurts out. "What if I let you see mine first? You can... you can tie me up so I don't back out at the last minute."

Chuuya's eyebrows crunch together. "You don't seem very enthusiastic about it," he points out. "'So you don't back out at the last minute?' I'm not going to coerce you into showing me your body. That's sexual assault, Dazai. I'm not a rapist." He cocks his head. "And besides," he points out. "You can undo any knot in less time than it takes me to tie my shoe."

"Tape my hands shut," Dazai insists. "I want you to do this. I want it."

Another look. "No you don't."

Dazai deflates. "Alright," he agrees, "I don't. But I do want to try my solution with you, and if doing it to me first would make you feel, er... more 'comfortable,' then I'll do it."

Giving him an appraising look, Chuuya lets go of Dazai's hand and readjusts so they're at a better angle to look each other in the eyes. "You're really serious about this."

"I am," Dazai confirms.

Chuuya breathes in. Breathes out. Looks Dazai dead on. "Alright," he agrees. "Let's do it."

"Alright," Dazai says. "Let's start." Still, he does not move. When Chuuya reaches forward to grasp one of his wrists, the touch of his fingers jolts through him like a bolt of electricity. Dazai is too well trained to stiffen, but he can feel his blood begin to grow colder.

Instead of taping his hand into a fist right away, Chuuya tangles their fingers together and gently brings Dazai's hand toward his mouth. He presses his lips to his knuckles gently.

"It's not too late to back out," Chuuya murmurs into his hand. He pulls it down slightly to say in a more normal voice, "This plan is... well, we're both going to be showing a lot more skin than we'd like to. I'm not entirely comfortable with it... it's clear you aren't either. Believe me, I take great pleasure in making fun of you when you're being a pussy, but I'm not going to give you shit for taking the out on something like this.”

Dazai doesn’t even consider for a moment before he answers. “You’re being a pussy, Chuuya. Just start already.”

Chuuya stares at him for a while, even beginning to open his mouth as if to protest. But eventually, inevitably, he must think the better of it, for he begins: folds Dazai’s thumb to touch his palm with one hand and grabs the roll of duct tape with the other, pulling out a sizable strip disturbingly gracefully for it being a one-handed endeavor and ripping it off with his teeth. His first hand presses Dazai's four fingers gently over his thumb as his other hovers over Dazai's closed fist, hesitating achingly.

"How are you more nervous about tying me up than I am?" Dazai comments caustically, knowing that were he not in control of his heartbeat, it would be rabbiting right now. "Christ, Chuuya, I can't believe you accused me of going soft now that I'm with the agency when you apparently can't even truss someone up without having a whole dark hero moment about it."

The look that Chuuya gives him is so wholly unimpressed that it sends Dazai's spine stiff. "I'm hesitating because I can tell that you're nervous, moron," he says, deadpan. "You have a look in your eyes like I'm about to cut off your fingers instead of tape them down." He lets out a quiet scoff. "Not that you'd be scared if someone cut off your fingers, you fucking maniac."

Dazai stares at Chuuya, trying to conjure up words and failing. His thoughts are moving... fast, too fast for him to really think, to know what to say. He's stuck in some true north state of stupefaction. That's almost more disquieting than what's about to take place.

"I'm not going to continue until you tell me that you want to do this," Chuuya tells him. "I want to hear the words. I want you to say, 'I want you to do this to me, Chuuya.'"

Clearing his throat quietly to attempt to gather his thoughts, Dazai looks down. Lets out a breath of air. He knows what he has to say to see this through, to get to the end so that Chuuya will allow Dazai to give him another perspective on his scars, but the words dry up in his throat. He almost wants to opt for candor. If there's anyone he can be honest about the weakness he's experiencing right now with, it's Chuuya. Dazai has seen Chuuya at his most vulnerable in the aftermath of Arahabaki—Chuuya knows that he owes Dazai silence on his indiscretions in return.

"That would be a lie." He's admitted it. He closes his eyes. Breathes in, then out. Then looks up to gauge the direction Chuuya's facial expression has gone in.

He doesn't know what he expects. Schadenfreude? Disgust? But when he looks up and sees something level, something discerning, something warm instead, he feels muscles he didn't even know were tense melt like butter in the microwave.

"Are you really that determined to go forward with your little scheme that you're forcing yourself into sex that scares you to do it?"

"It doesn't scare me," Dazai insists, feeling stripped raw when Chuuya responds to that with a dubious quirk of his brow.

"Alright," Chuuya allows charitably, "sex that makes you... unhappy. What about this exactly is making you 'unhappy?'"

Dazai puts some thought into this. Continued honesty won't hurt. "Nobody," he admits, "has seen my body bare in a long time. Every person who has had the, shall we say 'privilege,' of seeing it since it's become scarred enough that I chose to cover it has been someone who made significant contributions to said scarification."

He pauses. Glances at Chuuya to take note of how he's reacting—his lips are pressed tightly together but his eyes do not seem to be directly projecting malice at Dazai. Fair enough. Nothing that changes his mind about continuing, certainly.

"You've seen bits and pieces when I've gotten injured in the field." That wasn't meant to sound so much like an accusation. He's sacrificing carefully cultivated control every second this conversation continues. "But never the whole thing." He presses his own lips together. "It's not pretty. I look more like a rotting piece of fruit than a human, especially because the scarring is itchy a lot of the time and it's hard not to indulge the urge to scratch it, often until it bleeds. You're already very aware of my rotten soul, Chuuya, but..."

Alright, that's enough sharing for today.

Unfortunately, it seems that he gave Chuuya enough to go off of. "You're not exactly eager to let me see your... well, I don't agree it's rotten but let's go with that for the sake of the metaphor—body."

It sounds so plebeian, laid out like that. Dazai pulls a face. It seems to stir something in Chuuya. He outright sets the strip of duct tape down, releasing his grip on Dazai's hand. Letting it flop down onto the bed beside them, Dazai stretches and wriggles his fingers, relishing their continued ability for motion. His thoughts start to rush by less like river rapids and more like the burbling strokes of brook waves.

"Dazai," Chuuya says.

His words are painfully kind, striking Dazai as so immediately uncharacteristic that he feels alarm bells beginning to tinkle somewhere in the recesses of his mind. Dutifully, he ignores them. The truth is something he knows well: kindness is very characteristic for Chuuya. It's just historically not been characteristic when he's talking to Dazai.

This new thing where they try it—try kindness toward each other—has been disconcerting for them both in equal parts. Dazai cannot miss the way Chuuya shifts around like there's a porcupine in his gut when he shows him too much consideration. He cannot blame him for that. Dazai is the same person who had left him to N's torture all for the sake of a plan, after all.

Admittedly, as is evidenced in the current moment, Dazai's reactions to such things are little better.

But Chuuya is talking. Chuuya is talking, so Dazai will listen.

"You're probably going to get mad if I start reassuring you that you don't have to feel ashamed, because of course the superior homo sapien super ultra plus species that you're a part of is above things like that, but I am going to say this. I've already seen the ugliest part of you. Your soul is way more ugly than your body ever could be, even if it were made of actual rotting fruit. What the everloving fuck could I see that would shock or disgust me more than you've already shocked and disgusted me with just how deplorably low you can sink as a human being? There is nothing that could make me judge you more than I've already judged you, be horrified by you more than I've already been horrified by you."

Chuuya pauses. Grabs Dazai's hand again. Squeezes it so hard that his bones ache.

"You absolute moron, I've felt all those things about you and beaten you bloody more times than I can count in return and I'm still sitting here about to have sex with you. If that doesn't show you that nothing about you could ever turn me off to you, then I don't know why everyone's been calling you a genius all these years."

For several moments, Dazai sits and stares: his mouth parted dumbly, his head tilted quizzically, his eyebrows scrunched together.

Then, he bursts out laughing. The laughs are so corpulent and belly-deep that they make his lungs ache, but the pain only drives him to laugh harder. "You're such an—" he chokes out, clutching onto his knee for support so he does not literally fall into a pile of childish giggles. "Such an asshole. I love you so much."

Chuuya flushes, and Dazai knows did he not have the sensibilities of a grown man, he would be pressing his pointer fingers together all bashfully. "I love you too," he mutters gruffly, quickly, like he's hoping Dazai will miss it. Quickly, he recovers into something more in line with their usual comfortable antagonist-to-violent-defender banter. "Now stop laughing at me, you fucking jerk!"

"No!" Dazai taunts, as if the amusement is a deliberate, directable sensation. He's nearly bent himself in half at this point trying to rein in his mirth, to little success. A disgruntled Chuuya watches for multiple minutes as Dazai struggles to regain some semblance of control over his body.

But that time does come, and when it does, Dazai summarily shoves both of his hands forward, already pressed into fists with his thumbs tucked inside. "Do it," he orders. "Before I change my mind." He'd been telling a bit of a half-truth earlier: his preoccupation was not solely with his displeasure in Chuuya witnessing his whole body. The other concerns, though, seem just as less daunting after Chuuya's ridiculous little speech as the actual issue Chuuya had been trying to address. Might as well take advantage of that before his mind snaps back into its default state.

Chuuya, to his credit, does not waste time shilly-shallying. Picking up the piece of tape he'd ripped off earlier, he quickly and deftly wraps Dazai's fist shut, layering and layering until Dazai, who does not have gravity at his fingertips, would be largely incapable of bursting it open in a feat of strength. He repeats this with the other fist, pressing the final edge of the tape onto the rest of the mass with too much sensitivity for Dazai's tastes, even.

Staring at his encumbered hands, Dazai feels the fluttery, vexatious sensation of his lungs trembling begin to return. To ameliorate this issue, he simply decides to close his eyes, obediently leaning back as Chuuya guides him down into a lying position on the bed and concentrating on keeping his breaths even as Chuuya closes the two pairs of handcuffs around each wrist with a snick!. He keeps this up as Chuuya pulls his left arm out toward the left bed post and ties the unused cuff to it, and then, with a little bit more difficulty, as he does the same to the right.

"Open your eyes," Chuuya commands. It's not particularly vicious, but it leaves no room for argument. As he finishes letting out his next breath, Dazai blinks his eyes open. Just as he is deliberately not testing the feeling of the cuffs or the hold of the tape, he does not allow his eyes to wander to either side of him. Instead, he fixes his gaze on Chuuya, who is sat between Dazai's spread legs.

Chuuya rubs a thumb over Dazai's ankle, the skimming touch sending needles of electricity prickling through the skin underneath. "You're not going to be able to keep your legs out and exposed like this," he points out. He's not wrong.

Dazai has a feeling that he knows where this is going, and though it sends his gut sinking into the mattress, he humors Chuuya. It's not as if Chuuya is forcing him into this. Dazai knows, somewhere deep in his heart that he can't access right now, that this is going to be just as good for him as what he is going to do for Chuuya later will be for Chuuya. "How, dear Chuuya, do you propose we solve that issue?"

Giving him an almost hesitant smile, Chuuya reaches over the side of the bed to pull something up. When Dazai sees it, his first thought is that he's really slipping if he hadn't noticed something that obnoxious sitting by the bed earlier.

The object is a pole, several feet long with soft latching cuffs attached to either end by a few chain links apiece. Dazai swallows heavily, making sure to let nothing that's currently raging in his head become visible on his face. They're weaknesses he refuses to indulge.

Blasted Chuuya, of course, immediately gives him a knowing look. Dazai is as transparent to this man as clear spring water. "We'll figure it out if you don't want to use this," Chuuya says, not unkindly. "I can put it away."

Does Chuuya really think him that weak? A flash of stubbornness rockets through Dazai, and he gives Chuuya an obstinate look. "Put it on," he demands. When Chuuya shoots him a doubtful glance, Dazai says tauntingly, "Breaking news! Port Mafia executive Nakahara Chuuya has gone softer than a pile of kittens for his side piece. Nakahara, who doesn't even try to hide that he was pathetic enough to let a man change him, knows his days in the Port Mafia are numbered if he keeps this up, but is too enamored to do anything about this concerning turn of events!"

"Stop trying to manipulate me," Chuuya snaps, but without any more ceremony and in thirty seconds flat, Dazai's ankles are permanently spread and locked. He thinks it's a bit overkill when Chuuya ties the bar to one of the rungs at the foot of the bed, but then, when has Chuuya ever been one to spare the flashy dramatics?

Out of morbid curiosity more than anything else, Dazai goes against his better judgement and tests the restraints. When he attempts to pull his legs together, his ankles move toward each other about an inch before being fettered by the metal bar between them. It's an incongruous sensation, and very suddenly the soft shifting of air Chuuya is causing with his movements around Dazai's genital area reaches the forefront of Dazai's attention.

Chuuya could do anything he wanted to Dazai right now and Dazai wouldn't be able to do a thing about it, Dazai suddenly realizes. He's just willingly sacrificed even his ability to kick at him. This is... a feeling Dazai has experienced very few times in his life. Never, actually. There aren't many people who ever had the forethought to fix Dazai into restraints that he couldn't escape when enacting their will, and the only thing Dazai had ever been able to feel during those situations was dread.

This is different. The lack of agency is still there, certainly, but this time rather than traveling to his heart or breath it flashes straight through Dazai's groin. Experimentally, he flexes his fingers, which have already grown sweaty in the confines of the duct tape, and confirms that they cannot move an inch—furthers this thought by tugging at the handcuffs and reinforcing for himself their lack of give.

This time, Dazai's groin makes a sharp jerk as if it's being spun helically like a marshmallow twist. The sensation is unmistakably pleasurable at this point.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, Dazai wants to continue testing this hypothesis, but he knows that if he keeps being so overt about it, Chuuya will catch on. It's best not to hand him unnecessary information right now. Dazai would feel— uncomfortable —if the person who had him at his mercy knew that being at his mercy turned him on. He trusts Chuuya a lot, but not quite yet in the way that begets a belief that he will be careful with something as delicate and easily taken advantage of as Dazai's sexual fantasies.

Just as Dazai has not fully shaken his cruelty streak when it comes to Chuuya, Chuuya has not fully escaped his desire to make Dazai feel small and hurt not only in retribution for how Dazai has treated him in the past, but out of the sheer belief that Dazai deserves it. Well—Dazai does deserve it, but that's rather notwithstanding in a relationship where they're both trying to learn unconditional compassion for each other.

Even to this day, Dazai would not put it past Chuuya to twist his tentative interest in the restraints trapping him into something that satiates his desire to subject Dazai to sadism. That's kind of the caveat when you're dating someone who was your bitter rival for years.

"You good?" Dazai jolts to attention, immediately becoming captured in the intense liminal space created within Chuuya's hazel eyes.

"Keep going," Dazai demands in lieu of answering.

Chuuya raises an eyebrow, but whatever his reservations may be, doesn't kick up a fuss. "Alright," he agrees. When his hand disappears into his pocket for a moment, Dazai gives him a quizzical look, but his silent question is answered when Chuuya pulls out a penknife, flipping the blade out of its resting place.

"What's that for?" Dazai asks, a little cooly, and honestly, a little amusedly. "Is Chuuya feeling kinky today? You know I was joking the other week when I suggested S&M, right? Are you actually into that stuff?"

Shooting him a wholly unimpressed look, Chuuya wipes the blade on his pants. "It's to cut you out of your clothes and bandages. If you hadn't noticed, we kind of haven't taken those off yet."

Dazai's breath catches, but he quickly disguises it as a chuckle. "So you are into S&M, you smug-mugged slug. You know, that's kind of something you should really tell people before they promise their lives to you—we totally could have fit an argument about that in between where we almost broke up because you wanted kids and I didn't and where we almost broke up because you wanted to combine our assets and I didn't."

"You know, gagging you is starting to sound really tempting," Chuuya comments idly, leaning forward and gently poking the tip of the blade into Dazai's cheek and letting the blade dip to the side until the flat end covers Dazai's mouth.

Dazai really hopes he's imagining the wet patch he feels growing on the sensitive part of his boxers that rests on top of his cunt, because he definitely knows he's not imagining the way it positively throbs at those words.

"Do it," Dazai dares, meeting his gaze challengingly. "You won't."

Giving a caustic little laugh, Chuuya lets the blade dip downward until the tip is resting on Dazai's cricoid cartilage. "You really think I'm going to give you what you want that easily? Nice try."

The pressure on the blade increases. Dazai doesn't know what's going on at first, but when he feels air tickle the top of his throat where air is not wont to tickle, he goes carefully still. "Chuuya?" he requests. Honestly, it's more of a plea, but if he calls it that, he'll never be able to look in the mirror again.

Immediately withdrawing the blade, Chuuya rests a firm, reassuring hand on Dazai's chest, right above where his heart beats. "What's up, 'Zai?" The speed with which he does so, Dazai thinks, is a testament to the development of their relationship. 

"Don't—" Dazai begins haltingly. Stops. Swallows. Closes his eyes and breathes. "Don't say anything when you start seeing stuff. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anybody's opinions on my body ever again. And I really, really don't want to hear your opinion. Don't even try to be nice and tell me it doesn't look that bad or whatever it is people say when they see people like me and feel secondhand guilt. Just... be quiet."

Chuuya nods solemnly, letting his hand make an imitation of a pulse on Dazai's chest. "Your wish is my command," he says. His words are dim. Muted. That’s reassuring, though.

Dazai can't help but notice when his palm suddenly stills in the center of his chest, in an awkward position that suggests it was not a natural pause.

"Can I ask about your scars?" Chuuya asks, but quickly amends that to, "Where they come from, I mean. I've heard talking about things is supposed to help you... 'process' them, or whatever the psychobabble du jour is. And I mean. I think part of the reason I'm having a hard time with my scars is because because I don't know where half of them are from, except for the ones I got with the Sheep or with the mafia or with... yknow, that whole thing that happened before the Guivre incident. I mean, I do: they're from when I was a kid at the lab. But they'll never have names or explanations or really anything to measure that they did something to me." He coughs awkwardly. "Err... what I'm trying to say is—"

It's time to do the merciful thing and take pity on Chuuya, so Dazai swiftly swoops in and puts him out of his misery. "You can ask about them," he agrees with a laugh. "I mean... you're probably not going to have much luck picking a lot of them out. The scar tissue is all mashed together and there's not really a ton of clean skin to use to separate stuff. But you can give it your best shot."

Chuuya, who has been trying so, so hard to play nonchalant about this that it's kind of cute, finally breaks. "Is there really... that much scarring?" he asks.

A quiet chuckle. Dazai's chin is tucked into his throat so he feels the rumble. He continues to study the undershirt he'd stripped down to when they'd first sat down rather than look at Chuuya. "Mon cher petit mafia," Dazai says, knowing very well that he sounds like he's about to give condolences for a shark attack, "Under my bandages, I look like that Western horror movie freak with the blades for fingers that appeared on Kato-chan Ken-chan Gokigen that one time."

It's kind of funny, to watch Chuuya physically struggle to try not to pull a face. "You mean Freddy Krueger?" he asks, looking like he's just tasted something bitter. Dazai nods. "I can't tell if you're self-deprecating or being honest right now," Chuuya admits truthfully.

Dazai huffs, suddenly tired of all the scar-stalling foreplay. "Just strip me down and find out," he tells Chuuya mulishly, almost moving to cross his arms before he remembers that tugging them downward isn't going to get him anywhere. "All this game-playing stopped being sexy ten minutes ago."

Honestly, Dazai half expects a snide comment about how it's funny that a career game player can't take it when he gets a taste of his own medicine, but Chuuya unceremoniously obliges, drawing his knife to Dazai's neck again as he pulls the uppermost wrappings up and slides the blade underneath. Dazai keeps his eyes trained on the ceiling as the soft boinging noise of parting elastic fabric makes appearances in several short bursts.

And then all at once, Chuuya is pulling the bandages apart like he's prying open a ribcage, the pulsing of Dazai's carotid arteries even imitating a sad little heart. Dazai imagines, momentarily, the knife sliding a few layers deeper, parting the soft tissues of his neck until muscle and cartilage and blood, so much blood lay open and red before the judgmental sky. He feels the uncomfortable whistle of air and exposure on skin that has not seen sunlight in years. The air is cold. Stark. His neck aches, and then ants begin their march to their hill underneath his skin and the itching starts.

Dazai knows exactly what Chuuya is seeing right now. It's what he covers the mirror in the bathroom so he doesn't have to see. Carefully, achingly, he lets his eyes fall to his face.

Though he studies it carefully, he ascertains… absolutely nothing.

Chuuya is at heart a savvy, clever creature; people just tend to forget it. He knows how disadvantageous it would be for Dazai to read anything on his face right now, no matter what it was.

"I want to know what you're thinking right now," Dazai informs him. He's not going to let him get away that easily.

"Do you now?" Chuuya asks, in that infuriating, cocky little voice of his. His gaze is absolutely and utterly unimpressed. "Well, I'm feeling kind today, so I guess I can help you with that." He presses himself on top of Dazai's chest and leans forward so that his breath is misting on the pulse points of Dazai's neck. "Right now I'm thinking…" he begins, and then trails off. "This." And then he dives down and scrapes his teeth from Dazai's thyroid cartilage down to the dip in his neck just before his ribcage starts.

Dazai cannot help it. He lets out a full-body shudder. The light pressure of Chuuya's teeth had provided merciful, blissful reprieve from the itching, and though it had only intensified the dull ache that is always humming under his mauled skin, oh, it had been so, so worth it.

"Do that again," Dazai commands breathlessly.

This time, Chuuya sucks a hickey right in the center of the biggest uninterrupted expanse of tissue belonging to a single scar on his neck. When he's done, he lets his tongue poke out of the side of his mouth and begins tracing the lines of what little pattern can be found among the amalgamation of skin.

Instead of simply satiating the need to scratch, this time the tonguing makes his whole body grow tingly and warm. His duct-taped hands are no longer the only part of his body that's sweating, and the wet patch on his boxers from the tangy fluid dripping out of his cunt has grown so omnipresent that Dazai can no longer deny its existence.

He can only say one thing to that. "Keep—ah, keep going. Don't you dare stop, hatrack."

And Chuuya, ever the pleaser when it comes to the people that he loves, obliges. Still mouthing at his neck, in the process of sucking another hickey into the hollow of his neck, he grabs the knife where he's tossed it to the side on the bed and draws a line right down the center of Dazai's undershirt, cutting deep enough to slice the bandages underneath apart with it. This, too, he pries apart, this time accidentally clawing at the skin of Dazai's stomach a little in his fervor.

Dazai has to close his eyes once his layers have been peeled away, the zeal with which he embraced arousal being doused with ice water. He has no desire to see his bare stomach.

"Open your eyes," Chuuya orders. It is demure. It is level. If Dazai would ever concede such a thing, he would say that it was omnipotent. "If you expect me to let you mess around with my scars later, you can't half-ass your turn now." Dazai obstinately ignores him, lets his lids continue to protect his eyes from sight. The knife point dips into the hollow of Dazai's neck where Chuuya had just left a hickey. It presses in insistently, and Dazai feels the exact stinging moment where the blade breaks skin. "I wasn't asking, Osamu."

Every drop of blood in his body ossifies into bone denser and more unwieldy than his actual skeleton. Preternaturally, without his say so, his eyes snap open. Osamu's eyes snap open, his breathing heavy and his fists clenching tightly in the unpleasant swimming pool of suppurating sweat that has overtaken the inside of the tape.

Ironically, his stomach becomes the last of his concerns as soon as his vision clears. For Chuuya's hand is ghosting over the end seam of the material currently enveloping his chest.

"No," Dazai says simply.

Maybe it's their years of teamwork in the field that causes Chuuya to obey Dazai immediately and without question. Maybe it's part of his newfangled resolve to include Dazai in his definition of "human being" and treat him thusly. Maybe it's simply that Chuuya understands that this is a sensitive issue for anyone.

"Alright," Chuuya agrees easily. "The binder still stays on during sex."

Dazai will never know why Chuuya snaps into obeisance rather than presses the issue—he's certainly not going to ask. Chuuya would have the right to. The whole point of this exercise was that Dazai expose his whole body to prove to Chuuya that he could put his money where his mouth was, after all.

Still, he finds himself once again in Chuuya's debt.

Chuuya sits himself up in between Dazai's thighs. As air brushes by the area where his pants conceal his genitals, Dazai feels his cunt ache with the desire to be touched. Cruel Chuuya, however, cruel, cruel Chuuya is more interested in the masses of scarring across his stomach, aching ardently now that they've been exposed to the snappish cold and movement of the room air. When his finger lands on a patch of bubbly scar tissue: sculpted divots and lethargic valleys of kinked veins like some kind of abstract sculpture, he reaches forward with his other hand to cup the area in the space between his forefingers and thumbs. The touch is not comfortable—that spot is both hyper and undersensitive and the sensation of foreign skin at a foreign temperature creates an indescribable physical disquiet.

"Where did this one come from?" Chuuya asks. His voice does not sound subdued, but rather purely curious. Good. Dazai wouldn't want it the other way.

"A dog."

Chuuya quirks a brow. "I'm going to need a little more than that."

Dazai gives him a cheeky half-grin. "A Doberman."

Sighing, Chuuya scrubs a hand across his brow. "You know that's not what I meant," he complains.

This is how Dazai is accustomed to exchanging information: sharing the minimum amount possible that answers the question. Information is valuable, and innocuous information doesn't always stay innocuous. Sharing information extraneously can cost unnecessary loss of possessions, money, valuable time, good reputation, and even lives. Can anger people in positions of power who can—well, Dazai has put that behind him and intends to never ponder it again.

He probably owes Chuuya more than the minimum, considering their history. Considering his position in Dazai's life.

"When I was ten," Dazai admits, "I lived with a man who trained underground fighting dogs for several months. He agreed to let me sleep in his barn if I cleaned the dog pens for him."

Chuuya's warm hands stop cupping the scar and instead rest on top of it, radiating heat and soothing Dazai's short-circuiting skin. He stares at Dazai attentively, eyes open and ready.

Alright. Alright.

"The way this came to an end was not exactly... ideal. His prized Pit Bull escaped one night and he blamed me for it. He needed it to be me because this was his third dog loss in two years and the breeder who supplied him with Pit Bulls told him he wouldn't sell a dog to him again unless he could prove that losing this one wasn't his fault. I denied it when he confronted me, so he told me he'd make sure I wasn't so keen on lying to him the next time he asked and locked me in the cellar with one of his Dobermans until I confessed.

"I won't drag out the story. The Doberman was starting to starve after a few days and wanted lunch. We fought. It tore me up in a few places. I killed it by stabbing a wooden pike into its brain through the eye socket. Mother necessity gave me a lesson in the school of lock picking. The end."

"That's heavy," Chuuya says quietly, reaching toward the space by Dazai's side, as if he's forgotten he's currently restrained and wants to take his hand.

Dazai rolls his eyes. "Did you really expect a story about a scar that looks like that to be light?"

Making a noise that's verging on a snort of his own, Chuuya grabs Dazai by either hip to readjust himself so his legs are sprawled outward. "Actually I expected you to make up some kind of story about how you ate a piranha whole and that's where it chomped its way out of your stomach."

"Sounds like something I'd say," Dazai agrees with a laugh.

Chuuya eyes him unimpressedly. "That is something you said. It's what you told me when I asked about that big keloid on your back when you were shot there and I had to rip off your shirt to get a better look at the wound."

Dazai laughs. "Do I know me or what?"

Rolling his eyes, Chuuya turns his attention back to Dazai's stomach, letting his hands rove over its breadth. He stops at a messy, jagged scar, in the crook between Dazai's right hipbone and groin.

"What about this one?"

That one's easy. "Appendix," Dazai fires out immediately.

Chuuya quirks an eyebrow. "Why is it so big and jagged?" he asks. "Don't they do those laparoscopically now?"

"Hospitals do it laparoscopically," Dazai corrects. "This was done on a desk with an X-ACTO knife. It's jagged because I was awake and I was a lot more wimpy about pain back then so I had trouble lying still."

"Dazai," Chuuya says, all the more gently for how ungentle it is. "I really thought I couldn't be surprised by any of the shit that comes out of your mouth anymore, but genuinely, what the fuck?"

Dazai flashes a grin. "I freaked out Chuuya!" he cheers. "Do I get a prize?"

Pulling a face, Chuuya rubs a hand idly over the scar, with such a feather-light touch that it tickles. "No. You get more questions. How long ago was this? Why didn't you go to a hospital? Why the hell would you let someone who's not a doctor fucking cut you open?"

Dazai goes still. Well, this suddenly got a lot less fun. He's decidedly not interested in having a conversation of this gravity when he's trussed up like a bought and paid for sex toy—or ever. But he's already dug himself this far into the hole. "Nine years ago. Because it was a... ah, shall we say 'punishment.' And I never said they weren't a doctor," he says rapid-fire, deliberately keeping his voice light.

For a few moments, Dazai can no longer hear Chuuya's breath. This is finally interrupted by a wince. "Christ. He acts so silly that you forget sometimes that he left his morals at the door farther back than even most of us."

Giving Chuuya a cold smile, Dazai concentrates on keeping steady time with his heartbeat. Bah-BOOM. Bah-BOOM. Bah-BOOM. "Presumption and treason are both pretty lofty sins in the mafia, you know."

The look Chuuya gives him is something Dazai can't quite decipher, a point of irritation for him because he likes to tell himself that he knows Chuuya better than Chuuya knows himself. "'You're still so melodramatic," he complains eventually, though it sounds half-hearted. "I made a comment. I'm not planning a fucking coup."

"My loyal little mafia dog," Dazai coos, making a kissy face. Chuuya gently knocks him on the arm, looking contemplative in that melancholy way people do when they're about to say something gut-wrenchingly soft instead of peeved. That can't be good. And he had been taking it so well.

"I care, you know," Chuuya tells him. "That that happened to you."

Ugh.  He makes a face. It's not as annoyed as he would say it was if he were on the record. "Of course you do," he says simply. "You're Chuuya." Chuuya, who cried for his dying clone and forgave his psycho brother for murdering five of his dear friends and never made Dazai have a loaded conversation about how he'd left him behind without a word when he'd ditched the mafia even though even Dazai could admit that he deserved to get lambasted and possibly have a few bones broken.

He kind of wants to lay a hand on his shoulder right now. He thinks that would be a good idea. His current little bondage predicament is starting to become a bit inconvenient beyond the obvious.

"You don't have to tell me that you care," Dazai assures him. "I know. I'm not expecting you to betray the mafia now or anything. You really don't have to justify yourself to me." He smiles. "Don't worry. I wouldn't betray the ADA for you either."

It's not as simple as he's just said. He thinks—he thinks that if he were ever put in a situation where he had to choose between the agency and Chuuya, he simply wouldn't survive. Every move Dazai makes to protect Yokohama and influence mafia activity is made with the avoidance of this outcome in mind.

But he's not going to tell Chuuya that. It's better that way.

(There's some other stuff Dazai could tell him that Chuuya probably would betray the mafia over. But Dazai would never do that to him. Chuuya has lost so many homes in his life, and one of them had already been Dazai's fault. He would be an ilk of repugnant that not even he has achieved in his lifetime to take another one away from him.)

"Pick another scar!" Dazai commands. He's done with this conversation.

Chuuya's expression is moving back into recognizable territory. He knows that self-satisfied look anywhere, which is why he's not as surprised as Chuuya would probably want him to be when Chuuya's fingers slip under the hem of his boxers.

"I have a better idea," Chuuya informs him, moving so that his bottom is hovering over Dazai's legs rather than blocking his path and beginning to shimmy his boxers downward.

"Your attention span has gotten even shorter than you," Dazai comments, though he's certainly not complaining about this turn of events.

Chuuya whacks him in the leg for that. "Get some new material," he complains. "And unfortunately for you, scar share circle isn't over. I just figured I should give you a little fun as a reward for actually being honest for the first time in your life."

"For your information, it's the second time," Dazai jokes, the imminent expectation of pleasure softening the edge that's been on his mood since this night began.

Though Dazai's packer is revealed once his boxers are about halfway down his thighs, Chuuya pays little attention to it, instead thumbing at the wet spot in the fabric crotch area.

"I got you that turned on with a few hickeys?" he asks amusedly. "I thought you'd still be dry."

Dazai sticks his nose up. "That was absolutely not because of you," he insists. "That's my... pre-period fluid!" He nods sagely.

Chuuya stares at him unimpressedly. "There's no such thing as pre-period fluid."

Wriggling like a worm for dramatic effect, Dazai lets out a charming scoff. "Cis men are all the same," he says, putting on his very most serious voice. "Too squeamish about a little bodily fluid to ever learn a thing about periods. I really thought you were better than that, Chuuya." He shakes his head in disappointment.

Chuuya look even more unimpressed now, if that's possible. Well—that's not what was supposed to happen. "Dazai," he deadpans, "My mentor owns a brothel —she taught me about uteri. There's no such thing as pre-period fluid."

Cocking his head, Dazai gives Chuuya a blank look. "What the hell is a uteri?" he asks.

Chuuya scrubs a hand across his brow tiredly. He sighs longsufferingly—so, so longsufferingly. "Uteri is the plural of uterus," he explains, squinting at Dazai. "I can't believe you accused me of knowing nothing about your reproductive system when you don't even know that."

Dazai makes a face. "Why would you ever need to know the plural of uterus?" he complains. "People only have one."

"I just needed to know, didn't I?" Chuuya points out.

Dazai starts to stick out his tongue at him, but that quickly gets aborted when Chuuya drags his thumb firmly down his clit, turning it so at the end his nail gently scrapes the edge.

Something must show on his face, because Chuuya grins smugly at him. "You like that, baby?" He presses his thumb down again, making gentle, circular strokes that have Dazai, who usually has impeccable control over his facial expressions, fighting to keep a straight face. If Chuuya's going to be like that, then Dazai's not giving him the satisfaction of knowing he's making him feel good—no libidinous sighs, no lascivious wanting eyes, not even a fucking blink.

"You're going to break eventually," Chuuya points out conversationally. "Isn't it better to do it because you want to instead of because you couldn't control yourself anymore?" He punctuates his words with rough, almost pulsation-like dancing around Dazai's clit with his two forefingers before rolling back and ghosting it with only feather-light touches.

He's right. That vertically challenged bag of rocks is right —experimentally, Dazai lets himself whimper at the loss of contact. Then allows a series of slowly crescendoing moans to begin sidling from thoughts into words when Chuuya throws himself back into his task with reckless abandon and at a breakneck pace.

"Mmmph," Dazai vocalizes softly. Then, as the pleasure starts building great walls and towering cities: "Mnnnn. Ch... Chuuya, you're... mmmmnnnnn..."   His breaths beat out quick and heavy and hot as he begins to shift around to find an outlet for all this sensation. It's rather futile in his four-way restraints, so he mostly looks like a dilapidated seesaw.

"Yeah. Just like that," Chuuya encourages, tacking on a "moron," as an afterthought.

Dazai huffs, digging his teeth into his bottom lip to ground himself. As the ministrations continue and his struggle for relief through movement becomes more acute, that becomes easier—mostly because the handcuffs begin to scrape and pinch at the soft skin of his wrists. Between that and the duct tape, he's been firmly tethered in the moment by the aches of inoptimal body conditions. Dazai does not enjoy pain or discomfort, even sexually, so this is not particularly pleasurable for him, but there is something to be said about the power pain holds over him as a domesticative tool.

With how many issues there are in this little body ritual he's currently pulling Dazai through like a teenager recklessly driving the yacht he'd gotten from his filthy rich parents, it's becoming clear to Dazai that this isn't something Chuuya has done with other sexual partners. He wonders idly how he even got his hands on this immobilizing bar with the soft cuffs that are currently wrapped around his ankles.

And then Chuuya hits a sweet angle, and the way it pulsates through his groin. The way it pulsates through his groin. He's still not quite close to climaxing, but he begins to taste it, the first swallow of the sweet summer air in a dancing field to his city-dwelling, smog-accustomed loving.

"HGHHH, " he moans.

But before these almost ritualistic sensations can continue, Chuuya abruptly pulls his hand away.

"No," Dazai orders breathlessly. "No, why did you stop? Put it back."

Chuuya grins at him, fully channeling his "cat that ate the canary" energy. "I will. After you tell me about another scar."

Letting out a groan, Dazai slams his head back against the pillow. "Urghhh," he complains helplessly—truly literally, considering he is physically incapable of taking over where Chuuya had left off. Desperately, he attempts to rut against the bed as best he can with his legs stymied like they are, but even if they weren't, that would be useless considering he's flipped on the wrong side for that.

Alright. Dazai begins to slow his heartbeat and focuses on taking even breaths. Denying his body its desires, both wants and needs, is something he's a bit of an expert in. He can deal with a little sexual teasing. He watches Chuuya gaze at him with something a little hungry, a little skydance in his eyes as he comes back to himself. After a few seconds, the novelty wears off and it becomes simply meditative to see a man who's professed undying hatred for him stare at him so.

He decides about a minute into this, once he is once again à la Dazai homeostasis, that it is time to say his piece. "You're not devious enough to do this to manipulate me into backing off of my turn to do this to you," Dazai begins, "so that means... either you're just punishing me or you've developed a sudden affinity for sexual sadism. If it's the latter, I want it known that I will bite you if you try to do anything other than cut off my clothes with that knife."

Chuuya's eyes widen. "God no," he says. "I wouldn't do that even if you asked me to. I'd have trouble sleeping at night for the rest of my life if I knew that I contributed to..." He gestures vaguely at Dazai's body. "I'll stick with bruising you up. Maybe a broken nose if you do something really awful."

Honest. Dazai studies Chuuya carefully. His principles make him so strange sometimes. Not that Dazai is condemning him as ethically inferior for being willing to cause him physical pain—they make quite the pair, actually, with Dazai's painmaking talents lying on the emotional playing ground—but hurt is hurt is hurt. Really, there's no ethical difference at all between giving Dazai a good whooping and knifing him up or burning him. And yet, simply because he could see the map that hurt has left behind on Dazai, Chuuya has grown squeamish about committing similar violences.

What an odd creature he is.

"You haven't answered my question," Dazai points out.

Chuuya gives him a long look. Dazai doesn't miss the smile beginning to curl up the sides of his lips. "There's a part of me," he says to Dazai softly, bedroom eyes hooding smokey and dangerous, "that is always going to relish making you suffer. We have too much history for that to ever go away. I'm just feeding it, Dazai."

Very honest. A little too honest. They're treading toward territory inhabited by things like relationship discussions and feelings words. That's... not opportune.

Time to dial up farce city. Jutting out his bottom lip melodramatically, Dazai pouts. "So Chuuya likes having me chained up and at his mercy? How cruel!"

Chuuya laughs, sonorous and mellifluous, like the deep-bodied tones of a bell. "You get to have me helpless every time I use Arahabaki. This is a nice change of pace if you ask me." He picks up his knife where it's lying to the side and slashes through the bandages on Dazai's right thigh and calf in one long, low fell swoop. As they fall to the side, Dazai averts his gaze from Chuuya's face. He derives no enjoyment from having him see this.

Sensation in his legs is more limited than it is in other parts of his body, but Dazai still feels it when Chuuya gently grasps his calf with two hands and picks it up to examine it more closely. He knows what the metal bar between his legs is for now. If he were able to move his leg in any meaningful way, he would not be able to hold still under scrutiny like this. Frankly, he might have kicked Chuuya just to get him to stop looking.

"This is burn scarring," Chuuya says lowly, eventually, after what feels like aching eons. "Were you in a fire?"

"In a sense," Dazai says shortly, studying the ceiling quite determinedly. It's a little humiliating, to be this moved by the mere exposure of his body, nothing more than a vessel that houses his mind and will, but he can't bring himself to crack a joke right now. He can barely bring himself to breathe.

"What happened?" Chuuya, cruel, cruel Chuuya asks.

Dazai swallows. His mouth is so dry that he almost begins coughing when his throat muscles contract, his gums sticky like fly paper. "A different kind of punishment, from someone from much earlier in my life," he admits quietly. "I was six and I was living in an… unconventional situation, with unconventional people. I started crying because someone put out a cigarette on my arm. They grew angry at me for being unable to control myself and told me they would give me something real to cry about. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and I was reprimanded by being forced to crouch in it until I stopped crying about the cigarette. My lower back and arms look pretty similar."

Chuuya gently, almost reverently sets Dazai's leg down. His hands are shaking, Dazai notices. "How did it end?" he asks subduedly. "You may be able to handle that kind of pain with a straight face now, but there's no way you could've back then."

"I did stop crying," Dazai reveals. "I started screaming instead." He pauses. Chances a glance at Chuuya's face. Chuuya is—

Oh, Dazai doesn't like that. He doesn't like that at all.

"Eventually they realized they weren't going to get me to shut up and someone yanked me out.”

A cacophony of silence, deafening.

“You were a baby,” Chuuya says eventually, quietly. He’s turning away so Dazai can’t see his face anymore.

“I was old enough,” Dazai counters, narrowing his eyes.

“Osamu,” Chuuya snaps heatedly, voice… wet. “You were a baby.”

Dazai feels his lungs begin to settle uncomfortably under his ribs, like a foreign body his chest wants to spit out. Eyes narrowing further, he tries to kick at Chuuya only to feel his legs flap up and down in useless synchronicity a few inches like a flipper. He’s suddenly intensely aware of the restraints fettering his movement, and not in the spine-tingly way he was earlier.

“So were you,” he tells Chuuya coldly. “Stories like ours are a dime a dozen. If you stopped to feel pity for every single ickle kiddykins who’s ever been hit, you’d drown so much in misery that you’d make your life into a tragedy of your own. Wallowing in ‘righteous’ anger and secondhand hurt does nothing to actually help the suffering. All it does is make you suffer too. You’ve already lived five lifetimes worth of suffering, you masochist. Don’t be a fucking idiot.”

Chuuya’s gaze snaps back toward Dazai, but Dazai barely catches a glimpse of it before he’s feeling the buzzing sting left behind by an open-handed slap.

“Only you would put such a cold spin on human empathy. Caring that my fucking partner was fucking tortured when he wasn’t even old enough to know how to add double digits isn't 'wallowing,' Dazai! It's giving a damn!"

A traitorous liquid has welled up in the corners of Chuuya's eyes, begun to run down his face in iridescent rivers. Dazai hopes it burns.

"Look," he says, blowing hair out of his face uncomfortably. He searches for something civil to say. "I guess I can... appreciate that sentiment. But Chuuya, this happened a long time ago. You're wasting your tears on a Dazai who's been dead for years."

Rather than having the soothing effect Dazai had intended, this only seems to incense Chuuya even more. His face contorts into something quite ugly. Dazai is fully expecting another slap, so when Chuuya instead curls into Dazai's side and wraps his arms around him, his eyes go wide. Chuuya peers up at him from where he's laid his head on his shoulder with rude, lachrymose eyes.

"He's not dead," Chuuya insists, squeezing Dazai with gentleness that simultaneously makes his skin crawl and his chest ache. "He's right here in front of me. And we don't have to talk about this anymore, but he also doesn't have to pretend that this stuff doesn't still affect him."

Dazai stares at Chuuya's stupid, teary face, and the arms around him, already uncomfortable, start feeling like a vice. His hands and wrists hurt and he doesn't like the breeze between his legs that he can't stop by closing them and all of a sudden he can't—he can't take another second of this.

"Untie me," Dazai demands. "Right now. Untie me."

Chuuya's hand tenses on top of Dazai's chest. When he doesn't respond right away, Dazai's heart begins to jackrabbit, because how had he not foreseen that trusting Chuuya with this would be a mistake, but then Chuuya is unwinding himself from Dazai and reaching up toward the bedpost to free one of Dazai's arms.

"Legs first," Dazai demands, knowing exactly how ragged his voice sounds yet absolutely beyond caring.

"Alright," Chuuya agrees, and then he switches directions to comply.

As soon as Dazai's first leg is freed, he draws it toward himself, and when the other one is freed he brings it up too and snaps them together. He starts to get better control of his breath once his arms are free too, rubbing the the ache out of his wrists with them clutched to his chest, pushing himself into a sitting position with his back against the headboard.

"Better?" Chuuya asks, sitting at the foot of the bed with his hands in the air in the universal gesture of surrender, legs pressed under him in seiza.

Dazai wordlessly nods, rubbing his wrists over and over again until he feels pain begin to aggregate under the already-irritated skin of his wrists.

"I'm sorry," Chuuya says after several moments. "It was clear you didn't want me to say anything else about that. I shouldn't have pushed."

"I've never been sorry for anything I've said to you, A-258," Dazai snaps quickly, testily, desperately. "Save your apologies for someone who'll return them."

Silence.

"I'm going to let that go because I know you're just lashing out because—you know what, let's just leave it at you're lashing out. I'm not fifteen anymore, 'Zai. You're going to have to say a lot worse than that to piss me off into going away."

Scowling, Dazai curls more tightly into himself, pressing his hands over his ears. He'd ordinarily be humiliated at how much of a child he's acting like, but right now, that same feeling he'd had all those years ago as he knelt in front of that fire gushes up his throat and into his stomach and through his chest and he can't breathe and he just wants everyone to go away, he just wants to be left alone.

He feels the bed dip and then spring upward at the loss of a pressure. Faint footsteps that break through his hand barrier. The opening of a door. This makes breathing a little easier. Not a lot, but a little. He lives in a liminal space between life and living, curling tighter and tighter with each ragged gasp of air.

So preoccupied is he that he misses the sound of returning footsteps, and thus jolts when someone presses a damp cloth into one of his hands and says, "Smell this." He doesn't have the presence of mind to determine who is commanding him, but he's sure that not listening will not get him anywhere, so he complies.

He's immediately assaulted by the scent of citrus and soy. It's shockingly potent, jolting him awake like his head has just been dunked in gelid water. He tries to pull the cloth away from his nose, but a broad, calloused hand presses it closer to his face. Oh. Alright.

Dazai does not like this. He does not like it at all, but he's sure something worse will happen if he fights, so almost against his will, his body goes limp. Could he even move, if he wanted to? He doesn't think so.

As he lays still, the pungent scent, so close to his nose it's registering as fetid, drags his mind out into the open and forces it onto its knees. Slowly, Dazai remembers: he's in Chuuya's bedroom. They made a deal about showing their scars and Dazai was holding up his end. Chuuya had started talking about things Dazai didn't want to hear. Chuuya is pressing the cloth to his face. Dazai can feel the shifts in air that come with someone leaning over you if he pays attention.

It's Chuuya, so nothing bad is going to happen if Dazai shoves his hand away again. Dazai does thusly, twisting out of Chuuya's grip and slamming himself up into a sitting position.

"Stop that," he snaps.

He peers toward Chuuya for the first time since he'd returned. He looks pale, and there's something weak in his eyes that Dazai doesn't like, but surely, reliably, he's raising an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

"You back with me?"

Dazai's cheeks burn. He suddenly can't look at Chuuya for a second longer.

"You could have picked something better than ponzu sauce," he complains mulishly as he picks at a thread on the comforter.

"Well, seeing as I was going for 'something that Dazai would hate,' I don't think I could have picked anything better, actually."

Scowling, Dazai flings a pillow at Chuuya, looking back up to glare at him. "Stupid Chuuya," he complains.

Chuuya blinks unamusedly at him, easily catching the edge of the pillow between two fingers. Show off. "Cool your jets, buckaroo," he says, "before I cool them for you."

It takes a moment for that to register, but when it does, Dazai feels a smile curling up the edge of his lips. "I'm a buckaroo," he says, and when Chuuya squints at him quizzically, Dazai drops the punchline, "who just fucked a Chuu."

Groaning, Chuuya lobs the pillow back at him. "That's so bad," he laments.

Dazai's grin grows. "Chuuya never changes. Always making so much ado."

"Stop," Chuuya complains, giving Dazai such a longsuffering, ever-pained look that Dazai feels it in his bones.

"Bite-sized man of Lilliput," Dazai continues, "you really shouldn't misconstrue. / The truth: I always follow through. / I listen not to peer review / so you can take your point of view / and feed it to a caribou."

Chuuya raises an eyebrow at him. "I can take you," he declares. Clears his throat dramatically. "When you rhyme me black-and-blue / you really tend to overdo / it to the point you devalue / whatever mess you're talking through."

Dazai's mouth falls open. He claps his hands delightedly. "Chuuya didn't tell me he was a poet," he enthuses.

Frowning, Chuuya flicks a hand toward him in a pantomime of a tiger clawing apart prey. "Chuuya's not a poet," he insists. "Chuuya just wants you to shut up before his ears start bleeding."

Dazai thinks on that for several moments. He begins to develop an idea. A wonderful, terrible, tantalizing idea. He never did get to finish earlier, after all.

"I know a way for Chuuya to make me shut up," he says deviously. Unsubtly, he parts his legs and gestures toward his crotch.

Squinting dubiously at him, Chuuya settles himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and gently lays a hand on Dazai's thigh. "Are you sure?" he asks. "Dazai, you just had a total freakout five minutes ago."

"It wasn't a freakout," Dazai grumbles. "It was a completely rational reaction to your stupid attempt to overdramatize stuff about my scars."

"You're right," Chuuya acquiesces quietly. "I won't do that again."

"I said it wasn't a freakout." Dazai's undertone becomes testy.

"Alright," Chuuya concedes again, scrunching his eyebrows quizzically. "I understand where you're coming from."

"It wasn't."

"Dazai," Chuuya says emphatically. "I wasn't disagreeing with you."

"Oh," Dazai says eloquently.

Chuuya rolls his eyes. "Yeah, 'oh,'" he says. "Look, I promise that scar-sharing session is over, so if you're really sure about this, then let's get crackin'."

"I'm sure," Dazai insists confidently.

When Chuuya drags himself further onto the bed and settles prone between Dazai's legs, Dazai almost shivers. Chuuya leans forward and lightly blows on his clit, still a bit sensitive from their earlier tomfoolery. The first tinglings of pleasure begin to needle through Dazai's groin, but Dazai does not budge an inch, merely meeting Chuuya's gaze levelly.

"Stop teasing," he intones. "You're being annoying."

Chuuya blows again, harder this time, mouth nearly touching the lips of his labia. "I'll stop teasing," he shoots back impassively, "when you start making some noise." Nose and mouth dipping forward, he licks a hard stripe from Dazai's entrance all the way upward. Dazai allowingly lets a breathy whimper escape.

Peering up to grin at him smugly, Chuuya lets his tongue poke out as he leans down again, this time to take his clit between his mouth and give a sharp suck. 

"AhhhaaAHT," Dazai breathes out, clenching his fists into the bedsheets. Chuuya begins to suckle on it while lathing the tip of his tongue along its body. Dazai sucks in a harsh breath. "HuuGHMMM."

"Good boy," Chuuya murmurs into his cunt after some time of this, playing, taunting with his tongue. "Already getting wet for me again."

Dazai raises an eyebrow. "'Good boy?'" he says unimpressedly. "I'll show you 'good boy.'" He summarily proceeds to grab Chuuya by the hair and mash his face as hard as he can against the lips of his labia. Chuuya lets out a surprised whine. Because his lips are smashed outward, his teeth press forward, gnashing against the slippery geometry of Dazai's folds. He sighs in contentment when Chuuya takes this in stride and begins energetically lapping at him again.

Being the sneaky bastard he is, Chuuya waits until the entirety of Dazai's world is engulfed by the heat in his lower stomach before making his next move. Dazai jolts and then stiffens when he feels two fingers push through his opening and slowly start scissoring: hold, release, hold. Groaning softly at the stretch, his breath catches when one of Chuuya's finger joints jabs into a sensitive spot. His hold on Chuuya's head instinctively loosens.

"Stupid—" Dazai pants out. "Stupid— ah —stupid sluGHMMMM."

Chuuya pulls his head back up and gives Dazai a smarmy look. "You know better than to mess with me during sex," he points out blithely, as if he's not currently pumping his fingers in and out of Dazai to the tune of sickly libidinous squelching. "You're never going to win that one, dumbfuck."

"Wha—" Dazai tries to say, whole body seizing when Chuuya dives back down to lick up his wetness. "Whatever—you—hah whuhah—say— AUGHHH."

The pleasure in his abdomen has begun cresting, writhing and bucking around inside of him like a goddamn rodeo bull as it tears everything in its wake. All he can think is yes, yes, YES as Chuuya's ministrations continue. Mouth parting when Chuuya runs the tips of his teeth over his clit, he full out moans.

"Chuu..." he garbles senselessly. "Chuu... ChuuoH GOD, oh god, oh my fucking God Chuuy—"

Dazai's climax bursts through him with all the viciousness of a riptide, engulfing him in a horrific, wonderful, paralyzing wave of pleasure. Pulsating, pulsating, setting his genitals on fire as he arches and his mouth opens in a silent scream. It last for minutes, or maybe seconds, or maybe hours—he can't tell. He pants desperately through the come-down, but it slows and slows and then finally tapers off, a soft, fuzzy haze beginning to envelop him.

Blinking until his vision clears, the first thing he really sees after is Chuuya, having leant back at some point during Dazai's orgasm, a self-satisfied smile on his face. "How was that?" he asks cheekily.

Dazai waits until he won't sound quite so out of breath to speak. "Not bad," he asserts casually, succumbing to a stupid, silly moment and leaning in to meet Chuuya's lips in a soft kiss. Chuuya makes a surprised noise as their mouths connect. However, after a few moments, he returns the kiss in earnest, grabbing either side of Dazai's head around his ears and gently tilting his chin back as he presses into the connection of their bodies. After several seconds of dizzyingly soft kissing, Chuuya pulls back.

"That's not the kind of kiss you give when it was just 'not bad,'" Chuuya points out, raising an eyebrow.

"Chuuya, the day I compliment your abilities in the bedroom is the day the Special Division for Unusual Powers stops being corrupt."

Chuuya rolls his eyes. "Ass," he complains.

Dazai waits until he seems settled and relaxed to bring up this next point, meeting his eyes solemnly as he speaks. "You're totally off the hook for your turn for scar-sharing session, by the way. I enjoyed getting the scars more than I enjoyed that. Don't get me wrong, making you miserable is my sole life's goal and most solemn purpose, but even I'm not enough of a monster to make you do this."

Studying him contemplatively, Chuuya's gaze falls to Dazai's arms, still wrapped in neat layers of bandages all the way up to the shoulder, and then roves over the rest of his—distinctly more exposed—body. "It did something for you though," Chuuya points out. "You're sitting here in front of me almost completely unbandaged right now and you're not even blinking."

Dazai glances down at his own body. "Huh. I guess I am." He picks at the edges of his arm bandage that wraps around the heel of his palm, trying to judge how uncomfortable he feels now that he's aware of his nakedness.

Something must show on his face, because Chuuya reaches forward to squeeze his hand, not gently but not meanly either. "I ruined it, huh?" He lets out a soft chuckle. "Here. I think there are some more bandages in the nightstand drawer." He reaches over Dazai and fishes around until he pulls out two large rolls of gauze and another of double-sided medical tape, then summarily tosses them at him. Dazai blinks as they hit him in the face.

"Jeez," Chuuya says, "sex really messes with your brain, doesn't it, Strike Three?"

Dazai simply responds to that by flipping Chuuya off. He snatches the double-sided tape off the bed and immediately begins to measure out a strip to the size of his thigh. While he's working, Chuuya seems to think that it's a prudent time to continue their conversation.

"So nothing changed for you then?" he asks. "You're still not comfortable with showing bare skin?"

Though he's tempted to immediately fob Chuuya off by saying something snarky, Dazai does end up actually considering his question. "I'd... maybe do it again for sex if there was no talking involved. You touching and putting your mouth on my scars felt weird... but in a sexy, I-want-to-kiss-this-annoying-sonuvabitch-stupid kind of way."

Dazai, further into his preparations to wrap himself up like a Victorian maiden's virginity, begins to wind bandages around his taped-up thigh and shin. He honestly has no interest in gauging Chuuya's expression right now, so he keeps his entire attention focused on his task.

"Do you," Chuuya starts, clearing his throat as he hedges embarrassingly obviously, "feel any different about them? Your scars. Do you feel less ashamed of them?"

Dazai laughs despite himself. "Chuuya," he says, more gently than he'd usually. "I hide my scars for very different reasons than you do. You've known me long enough to know that I don't really feel the way most people do. Your wah-wah-boohoo-type emotions about this stuff aren't like mine, so you can't judge how effective... shall we say 'exposure therapy' will be for you based on how effective it was for me."

Pulling a face, Chuuya raises a dubious eyebrow. "You really have no self-awareness, do you?" he ponders with equal the amount of irresolute gentleness Dazai had shown him. "Dazai, the emotional rollercoaster you went through in the last hour alone involved so much feeling it would probably bring most guys to their knees. You feel stuff just as much as anyone. That checking-out-numb shit you've told me you get a lot isn't you. That's just something you started doing to survive your bullshit excuse of a life with your sanity intact."

Dazai's face scrunches. His immediate instinct is to derisively dismiss every word that's just been said—what does Chuuya know, after all? But then, there are few people who know him as well as Chuuya does, and no people to whom he's shown as much of himself as he has Chuuya. Strictly logically speaking, he would have an idea of what he was talking about.

"I beat Akutagawa black-and-blue for years and don't feel guilty about it to this day," Dazai points out blithely. No point in mollycoddling himself by dancing around the crux of the issue.

Chuuya's eyebrows crunch together. "OK, yeah, empathy isn't your strong suit," he concedes, "but that's not the same as not being able to feel." He pauses, clearing his throat. "Look," he says, "I'm not a shrink. But maybe think about what I've said."

"Psychobabble really isn't a good look on you," Dazai says unimpressedly as he pins the bandages around his left ankle shut and picks up the medical tape again to move on to his right leg.

Throwing his hands up in the air, Chuuya lets out a longsuffering sigh. "Why do I even try," he cavils. "I should know by now that I'm dating a complete manchild, but I guess I never learn."

Dazai scoffs. "You say that like you're some prize," he complains. "You have the temper of a seasick bird gizzard on your best days." Scrubbing a hand across his forehead, he decides that if nothing else but for the hazardous emotional terrain he's wadded through, Chuuya deserves a real answer to his question from earlier. "Look..." he starts, and Chuuya's eyes carefully fall onto his face, scowl abating as he takes in Dazai's expression. "I'm not going to recommend you go through with scar-sharing session, but if it's something you want to try, I am... willing to help."

Chuuya chews on his lip, locked in place. Dazai lets him for a few moments before deciding he's had enough. Abandoning his work with his bandages, he grabs the back of Chuuya's neck and unceremoniously shoves him downward so that they're lying facing each other.

"Wha—?" Chuuya blurts dumbly.

Dazai ignores him. Bursting forward all starfish-limbed, he wraps himself around Chuuya and tugs him in tightly, closely, slotting his head in the space over his shoulder so that their ears brush.

"Are you... hugging me?" Chuuya asks incredulously.

"I'm strangling you," Dazai corrects. "This is a new, highly coveted technique in a top-secret martial art known only to the ADA. Tremble in fear as I slowly squeeze the life out of you, koala style!"

"Love you too, dumbass," Chuuya says with a disbelieving shake of the head as he wraps his arms around Dazai in turn.