Chapter Text
1.
Dazai wasn't expecting a grief parade or anything, but honestly he'd anticipated a little more of a reaction out of Mori when he'd announced he was dying.
"I see," is all Mori had said instead, appraising him once with a raised eyebrow before returning to reading over what from Dazai can see from here appears to be the itemized expenses spreadsheet Hirotsu had submitted for the quarter.
He tells Mori so.
"You know, you're not the most warm guy in the world, but I was expecting a little more than an 'I see' to hearing one of your most valuable subordinates is being forcibly expunged from the mortal coil by some crazy illness and leaving a whole mess behind for you."
Mori looks up again, raising his other eyebrow.
"Dazai-kun," he says, sounding like he feels like he is being deeply indulgent to a frankly offensive degree, "with no offense intended, you announce your impending death to me on a practically weekly basis. Of course, I'll be setting a tail on you to intercept whatever grand suicide plan you've concocted this time, but this isn't exactly groundbreaking news."
Dazai throws his head back and groans, dropping down to splay himself across the floor. He has a feeling this is going to be a long conversation.
"You're really stupid for a guy who's supposed to be running an entire criminal organization, you know," he complains. "This obviously has nothing to do with suicide."
This time, when Mori looks up, he's squinting a little, genuinely appraising. There we go.
"I see I've finally caught your attention," Dazai snarks snidely.
Reaching up to rub his temple for a brief moment, Mori lets out a quiet sigh that Dazai knows he was supposed to hear. "You have," he admits. "But also, as you yourself said, I have an entire criminal organization to run, so please make it quick."
Dazai smiles at him winningly. "I'm so glad you asked!" he says. "Because this is actually in a direct area of your former expertise. You see…" He pauses for dramatic effect, just because he knows it will piss the guy off. "I seem to have contracted a fatal illness."
Every ounce of the genuine attentiveness in Mori's expression instantly vanishes. He does not even deign to reply, simply turning back to the work he was doing before Dazai had walked into the room.
"Paging Mori Ougai-san, aren't you going to say something? Literally anything?"
He doesn't even look up this time when he addresses Dazai. "I enjoy indulging your little games occassionally, but I frankly don't have the time or patience for this today. Please find someone else to amuse yourself with. I think Ace-san is in the office today. I'm very happy to direct you to his location so you may waste his time instead."
Dazai groans again, staring at the ceiling in despair.
"You're not getting it," he complains. "This isn't a joke. I think I'm actually dying. I've been having weird symptoms for weeks now."
His expression remains guarded and cautious, but Mori does indeed glance down toward Dazai again upon hearing this.
"You truly believe you may be having a health concern?" he asks genuinely, not quite catching the aborted beginnings of his lips worrying together before it becomes visible.
"Yes," Dazai insists emphatically. "That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole time."
The eyebrow raises again.
"Forgive me for not taking a man as deeply serious and unwont to drama as yourself at face value," Mori apologizes solemnly. "I won't make such a mistake again."
Dazai pulls a face, scowling as he studies the ceiling grain. "Point taken," he concedes.
The corner of Mori's lip twitches up. It looks really weird from Dazai's angle on the floor. A lot looks quite different from a vantage point like this, actually. This one just happens to be funny.
"Acknowledged and appreciated. Fortunately for you, despite your tendency for melodramatics, I happen to be listening now. What," Mori says, slipping into a doctorly voice that Dazai doesn't even know if he's aware he uses, "seems to be the problem, my utmostly stoic subordinate?"
"I've…"
To be honest, there was a part of him that wasn't expecting to get to this point. He hadn't actually prepared for this.
"Well, heart palpitations…" Dazai begins after some thought. "Sweating with no clear cause, uncomfortable body heat to the point I feel febrile…" As momentum starts to build, his list grows more rapidfire and confident. "Unsourced anxiety, restlessness, tremors that concentrate in my hands, nausea, degrading cognitive function, loss of appetite, lightheadedness, tinnitus, dizzy spells, flushing, impaired proprioception, generalized paresthesia, random tachypneic episodes, strange thoracically concentrated sensations, erratic behavior, decreased impulse control. I think that's it."
Mori looks down at him, curtain of hair shading his face just so. "That's it," he echoes. His face isn't unreadable in the strictest sense. It's more accurate to say that Dazai can't read it. Contemplative? Assessing? Baffled? Not quite any of those.
"Let me ask you a question, Dazai-kun," Mori says after several moments. "And please save the snark and commentary on my medical judgment for afterward, if you would."
After realizing that Mori actually expects a response, Dazai gives him a short nod, not plussed in the least at having been called out.
"Do you notice there are certain times these symptoms are worse? At a certain time of day, for example, or while engaging in specific activities; physical exertion would be an example."
Dazai has no reason not to honor his word, and to be honest even if he did this doesn't seem so questionable, so he genuinely contemplates Mori's query.
There are, upon reflection, times the symptoms are worse. Much worse, actually.
"They get worse when I'm on jobs," he theorizes cautiously, eyeing Mori's face and finding neither salvation nor damnation there. "And when I'm alone."
"Mhm," Mori acknowledges. "I see." He studies Dazai for several moments, before seeming to find whatever he was looking for. "I've assigned you a lot of jobs with Chuuya-kun recently, haven't I?"
Dazai squints at him. "Well that's a bit tangential, don't you think?"
"Your word, Dazai-kun," Mori reminds.
"Yeah, yeah."
However, though he rolls his eyes, Dazai indeed does not further pursue his judgment. "You have," he agrees. "It's seeming like Soukoku is shaping up to be your favorite little pet project."
Mori pleasantly ignores the jab. "I do remember though that last week I sent you down to the east docks to negotiate with a government agent sent to do a random cargo inspection on one of our ships by yourself. Did you notice the same symptoms then?"
Dazai lets out a huff. "I told you that—" he starts to say, before interrupting himself when he really does get a chance to think back. "You know what… actually you're right. I didn't feel ill during that mission at all."
Mori nods to himself, always his own best gushing literary critic. "Noted," he informs Dazai.
Dazai blinks unimpressedly.
"Well, what's your diagnosis, doctor?"
Mori tilts his head, smiling a little in that beguiling, eerie way of his. "My diagnosis," he says, "is that while I understand why these symptoms may have been confusing for you, I'm rather sure you're just fine."
"You don't believe me," Dazai says flatly, feeling every single ounce of emotion drain from his body in the span of an instant as he tenses, appraises Mori with a carefulness that is quickly approaching dead.
There's nothing to glean from Mori's mild expression, and even if there were, he'd surely be masterfully hiding it. This fact isn't as disconcerting as it might have been even two minutes ago.
"On the contrary," Mori assures him pleasantly, "I'm positive you're experiencing every one of those symptoms you just listed to me."
"Then why—?" Dazai starts to ask, but Mori doesn't let him finish.
"The thing is, Dazai-kun, I'm equally positive that those symptoms are not quite the death knells you think they are. The chronic… 'condition', we shall say, that you seem to have found yourself experiencing is nothing to be concerned about."
Something does finally show on Mori's face. But it's not nearly the answer Dazai might have thought, considering that smarmy, smarmy diabolical man has the nerve to be biting back a smile right now.
"How could you possibly know that without conducting a single test," Dazai intones, voice as empty as his heart. The better way for it to be, probably.
He's known Mori long enough that he should've seen this coming, but maybe that's exactly the problem. Complacency in the nest of a pit viper is a sort of suicidality even Dazai wouldn't be interested in, and yet somehow this is exactly where he's found himself.
He'd almost prefer Mori to have poisoned his drink to this.
“I’ll tell you what,” Mori says, looking far too amused. “If you can find a doctor out there who agrees you are, as I believe you put it, ‘being forcibly expunged from the mortal coil by some crazy illness,’ I will take time out of my day to go down to the hospital and pose as your father to give them permission to conduct whatever tests they deem necessary myself.”
He smiles placidly at Dazai. There's a knowingness to it that Dazai doesn't like, one that makes him feel like the butt of an inside joke.
“As it is, I believe you owe me…” Mori makes a show of going through a bunch of files on his desk that have absolutely no relevance to anything Dazai could ever hope to do for him. “Four mission reports as of today.”
2.
Chuuya's trying a new look again, apparently. The crisp white button-down, gray waistcoat, and black slacks are all fine—although Dazai doesn't understand what possessed Chuuya to get those last ones tailored so fittedly. They're a frankly infuriating distraction and he finds his eyes wandering up-up-up the lengths of Chuuya's legs far too often.
So a little shameless and slutty, yes. Fine still nonetheless.
But a bolero? Really? That bolo tie that looks a little too much like a body harness for comfort? What? And it's a little hard not to notice he's now taken to styling his bangs and hair in a way uncomfortably reminscent of one Verlaine Paul's. Like, good for them they're getting along and all that, Dazai guesses, but ew, don't make that everyone else's problem.
"You'd better not be planning on wearing this monstrosity of an outfit to my funeral," Dazai tells him, because he's always been one to capitalize on a good opportunity, and an opportunity to criticize the worst thing since sliced bread and make Chuuya feel offput and uncomfortable by Dazai's impending death is simply too good to pass up on.
Chuuya lets out an impressively piecemeal half-scoff, half-groan. "I'm really not in the mood for one'a your suicide schemes today, Dazai," he complains. "Can ya can it 'till we get back to headquarters at least? I haven't gotten a single hour of peace all day."
"You've been with me all day," Dazai points out, smiling serenely, oh so innocent, as if he's not in the least caught Chuuya's intended implication there. Chuuya hasn't figured it out yet, but that's okay. There's time.
"Didn't stutter," Chuuya bites out, stalking away to continue disoutfitting the squad he'd just taken down of their semi-automatics.
A little uncouth to rob the dead, perhaps, but the Port Mafia is in the business of crime in a country where civilian gun ownership is illegal and weapons entry into the country highly regulated, so they do need to be a little shameless from time to time.
"Would it kill you to help out, by the way? There are like fifteen'a these guys to get through, man."
Dazai, who for his part is sprawled out across the floor of this warehouse filled with fresh corpses with his hands behind his head as if they're in the midst of a relaxing day trip to the beach, makes a raw, scandalized noise.
"You'd really sink so low as to force an injured man to help with heavy manual labor?" he asks, deeply judgmental in a way he knows will deliciously grind Chuuya's gears.
The words aren't even quite finished coming out of Dazai's mouth when Chuuya emits a noise of his own, distinctly less theatric and distinctly more threatening.
"Last I checked you got clipped in the head with a bullet, not the leg." Still, after a few deeply flattering muttered expletives, his shoulders flatten and he gets back to disarming their dead buddies without any more complaints.
It's not two minutes into it that Chuuya opens his mouth again. Admittedly a little longer than Dazai expected, but then, there's always Chuuya's hatred of Dazai to weigh against his startlingly hypocritical selective conscience. Overestimating the conscience is simply part of the game occasionally.
"Hey, uh, you're not actually planning on…" He trails off, but the implication is quite clear nonetheless, so much so that Dazai considers pretending it isn't just to piss him off.
However, that might take some of the jeuje out of the later fun to be had in this conversation, so for the moment he chooses benevolence.
"Oh, Chuuya," Dazai says pityingly. "You truly are so sweet that it's a little adorable. But fortunately for you, I no longer need to set my sights on banal human fancies like suicide to achieve my means anymore, so you can stop worrying that pretty little head of yours."
Three words spouted out that'll alone have Chuuya on a hair-trigger, and that deeply unpeeled, raw expression he quickly tries to mask with a scowl doesn't disappoint. Poor dear Chuuya, who very well knows once you skin a fruit trying to cover it back up'll only do good until the next wind comes in and yet never stops trying.
Sometimes Dazai almost feels bad for taking advantage of his partner's deeply, far too easily volatile emotional breadth.
Almost.
"The fuck," Chuuya eventually grinds out, with impressive restraint, "is that supposed to mean?"
Dazai smiles, all teeth.
"It means," he says, mimicking Chuuya's inflection with frankly snide accuracy, "that my body has transcended the need for my active hand to be required in order to take my own life."
He watches Chuuya bluescreen for a few moments before taking pity on him.
"I'm sick, Chuuya," Dazai informs him, brimming full of condescension and perhaps more pique than he was planning. "I'm dying."
The words don't even come out hollow. They sure do ring that way in his chest.
Chuuya, of course, neither knows to nor probably would if he did pay Dazai's conflict any heed. His recovery is impressively fast, actually, but the particulars of his childhood mean that "freeze" and "fawn" have never been options of danger reaction mechanism for him, so it's not really so surprising as one would assume.
"You jokin'?" he asks. Swallows enough times before he says it that it's not even a question he's trying to gullet down a catch in his throat that says he doesn't really need to.
There was some level of him that knew he'd receive this sort of reaction to at least a degree before the celebration began. Almost anticipated it, met it as eagerly as the burst spout of unadulterated rage he'd knew would come with it.
Yet now that it's here, it hits like a bought of nausea. An insidious, slowly encroaching illness so vivid it reads in colors.
What he tells himself is that this is a solace. If you are a being who is truly so broken that care cuts like the flick of a switchblade, concern hits like the late stages of venom death, what business do you have feeling hollow about the concept of your own death. What business do you have when, reasons notwithstanding, you're merely doing the job no one else has the guts to do and putting yourself down like a dog.
This illness is the universe finally putting on its big boy pants in the vet's office and pulling out the euthanasia needle. This illness is the opportunity he's been lusting after since he was old enough to understand that your death could be hand-manufacted by the hands that belong to you.
Truly an ungrateful wretch until the end. And all this ungrateful wretch can bring himself to say, with all that in mind, when his eyes flick back up to meet Chuuya's and the storm behind them that must rival the intrepid beast from his brother's prophecy, is this:
"No. I'm not."
The way Chuuya presses his eyes shut? The way he falls into stiffness, upon registering his words? It burns. Because Dazai has always loved Chuuya's pain. But he has never loved his own.
3.
There are probably more poetic places for a fight to start than a particularly cluttered and cramped Village Vanguard that they've probably only been saved from being sued for property damage by the franchisees owing to it having the misfortune of having encountered them during its final closeout sale.
On second thought. That's probably a little too poetic for Dazai's tastes.
Pro-tip: If you and your partner who abjectly despise each other have a half hour to kill before rendezvousing with your squad prior to the start of a job, do not make the mistake of spending that half hour attempting to engage in recreational enrichment with said partner.
But look. Look. The opportunity with the choker was just too good to pass up.
The choker in question? A thin black band, simple and with a modest but functional silver buckle. A thin black band with a modest but functional silver buckle that Dazai catches Chuuya's eyes lingering upon for a few seconds.
"What's this?" he asks mockingly. "Is Chuuya's microchip not enough now? He wants a collar too? Have you started running with certain communities under my nose or has the day truly finally come that you've decided to embrace your canine proclivities?"
"Can it, shitstain," Chuuya snarks back, barely stopping to shoot him a glower in favor of taking advantage of the fact that there's nothing to lose by admiring the choker openly. "This is genuine leather, alright? ¥1100 for somethin' like this's fuckin' insane."
"You know you're not poor anymore, right?" Dazai comments derisively.
It's a little to be asinine, but also very deeply because he's seen Chuuya actually, yes, forget about this fact before. An innumerable amount of times by this point, and one can only tolerate him emptying the napkin dispenser whenever they hit a Sukiya and washing Ziploc bags to reuse like they're dishes so many times before it frankly gets a little pathetic to watch. Like watching a dog staring at you through the back door when it's out in the pouring rain.
For a guy with a reaction time precise enough to stop bullets down to the nanosecond they make contact with the surface of his skin, Chuuya can be an awfully slow conversationalist at times — it turns out that one flies right over his head in favor of fixating upon Dazai's now stale jab from two turns ago in the repartee.
"The fuck did you mean 'microchip', by the way?" he asks, pursing his lips like the mere question puts a bad taste in his mouth almost as much as the implications he's clearly currently mulling over. "If you actually sewed a damn tracker in my arm or some shit while I was sleeping, I'm so serious Dazai, this will be your last day on Earth, so you'd better kiss that sweet ground you're walkin' on goodbye."
Despite his joke about the BDSM community earlier, Dazai is not masochistic enough that he wants a fist to the face if he tries for a surprise grab of one of Chuuya's limbs. Instead, he quite politely holds both of his hands out, nodding toward Chuuya's right arm. Chuuya is very likely regretting every single life choice that led him up to this moment right now, and yet, just as Dazai expects, his stupefication by the possibility he's dreamed up and morbid curiosity make him docile enough to comply.
Cupping Chuuya's wrist between his palms sends tingles up Dazai's arms, his heart kicking up to somewhere over the hundred zone and his skin flaming up as quick and hot as a to-go meal. These symptoms are quite familiar by this point, but there's never been such a direct and sudden trigger to their happenstance. With idle curiosity, Dazai wonders if it's actually possible his body is so repulsed by Chuuya as a being that he's having a sort of allergic reaction in the form of an illness flare-up.
To be honest, it's not an implausible possibility, so he sets that aside to contemplate for later. More gently than Dazai really intends to, he presses his thumbs to either side of Chuuya's pulse point and uses them to peel up the fine and strong fabric of his glove until the dark scar on his wrist he's soon going to come to deeply regret telling Dazai about becomes visible.
Transferring Chuuya's wrist into a single hand, Dazai holds it up triumphantly for him to see. "Your microchip!" he enthuses.
The reaction not coming after five seconds is not particularly surprising. Ten, a little more so but not implausible. At fifteen, Dazai's starting to wonder if the guy died standing up, and at twenty, he finally looks up to meet Chuuya's eyes. He's staring not at his own wrist like Dazai expects, but at the free hand it had just been released from, tracing over Dazai's thumb on static repeat broken-record style.
"What are you doing?" Dazai queries, tracing his face with his eyes for any hint of an answer.
The really infuriating part is that there is one, so clearly written into every fine line of Chuuya's face. It's just not any sort of expression Dazai thinks he's seen even a single time in his seventeen years of life. He has absolutely no frame of reference to decipher it.
Catching Dazai staring is what finally snaps the guy back to reality, unfortunately for Dazai, because now he has to go find a mole people or similar species of burrowing creatures to live among for the rest of his life. Je-sus, the things you could cook on his face, right now.
What is more fortunate for Dazai is that rather than gloating or exploding into a fit of rage, Chuuya's eyebrows merely furrow into a deep trough.
"You're…" he starts slowly, perhaps even only saying it aloud in the first place to process the concept himself. "Calling my pencil lead scar a microchip…?"
Dazai either has the opportunity to do something really decent or really shitty right now.
He's feeling magnanimous, today.
"A small piece of metal that confirms one's origins and is a marker of their species," Dazai says blithely, "is one whether that species is dog or human. I thought it was pretty clever of me, actually, but if you want to be like that, alright."
"Go fuck yourself," Chuuya retorts, quite immediately. His voice, however takes on the beginnings of a suspicious wet edge upon reaching the last word. In the spirit of the aforementioned magnanimity, Dazai refrains from mentioning it.
"Love you too!" Dazai says cheerfully.
Chuuya scoffs, all traces of any emotion from moments ago pouring from his face with the smoothness and rapidity of a rushing brook as he starts prickling up like some kind of emotionally stunted porcupine. It never stops being deeply, deeply funny how bent out of shape you can get the guy just by insituating you have even the most remote positive feelings toward him.
"Die," he hisses, storming away in a huff. Notably, with the choker still clutched in a fist.
"Already on it," Dazai calls back blithely.
Somehow it's that, of all things, that finally does it and lights the fuse on the Chuuya TNT Dazai's been trying to poke at for the last ten minutes.
"Will you shut up about dying for five fuckin' seconds," he snaps. "We all get it, you wanna drink antifreeze like a goddamn piña colada n' don't care shit about how you're gonna bother people with cleanup and a funeral after. I think we got it after the, hm… FIVE HUNDREDTH time?"
Chuuya pauses to get some air, breathing heavy; glowering at him with unadulterated, blistering malevolence. In this moment, Dazai would genuinely believe it if you told him that if a semi crashed into the building moments from now and took Dazai with it, Chuuya would feel actual pleasure.
"Christ, your wish is finally fucking comin' true, and even now you can't be a normal person about it, yammering on and on 'bout it like it's something any person with a single shredda sanity'd celebrate. You're so frickin' batshit, man; like, it's not even funny anymore. I'm goddamn done. Don't talk to me, Dazai, and I'm not even kiddin'. Leave me the fuck alone."
Chuuya's heavy breaths. The faint white noise of pedestrians and traffic, city life. Dazai's own beating heart. Suddenly all the noise becomes oppressive. The very moment, oppressive.
He thinks he may have forgotten how to breathe for a few moments. But that is never something he will ever let Chuuya have, so instead Dazai pastes on a smile so farcical it probably looks like poorly painted clown makeup and breaks into a slow clap.
"Fantastic explosion, Chuuya. I'd rate it a whole seven out of ten. You're so close to full marks, really! You're just missing the part where you spew out actual substance instead blustering rageful gibberish."
The glint of Chuuya's bared teeth is the only warning Dazai gets before he's bodily kicked into the wall by the ribcage. His world is nothing but bloodless scintillations, the ivory teeth of screaming nerves and a short-circuiting brain.
It takes a scary amount of time for him to reach the actually quite chilling realization that if Chuuya had aimed even ten centimeters lower, that blow could have been fatal. Dazai's stomach was untensed — he was not in the least prepared to take a hit like that.
As soon as that thought sinks low enough into his mind swamp of pain to really register, Dazai is reacting without thinking, shooting up with no regard for the way it makes his ribs shriek and rounding into a kick of his own aimed for Chuuya's dick.
It's dirty fighting, dirty even for the two of them, but Dazai's not really thinking about that right now. What he is thinking about is the burgeoning airlessness in his chest that feels like a neverending implosive blow. That burgeoning airlessness, and how it crests into an unbearable peak of sympathetic-nervous crashout like a sine wave hitting one on a Cartesian plane every time it hits again that Dazai's stomach had been untensed.
"Jesus fuck," Chuuya curses, dodging and then rolling into a backward flip that ends with him perched atop the nearest clothing rack. "The hell is wrong with you?"
The look in his eyes tells Dazai that question isn't academic.
"If you want me dead so bad," Dazai says, knowing he sounds wild, knowing he sounds like he's having some kind of episode. Not particularly caring. "Do it yourself, you coward."
He says this because he knows whether Chuuya actually wants him dead or not is immaterial. All that will hit for the guy in this state is the challenge.
Chuuya never turns down a challenge.
Dazai is right. Of course he is.
He just didn't expect "right" to entail a destroyed building and Dazai and Chuuya careening off the Tsurumigawa Bridge into the rushing rapids of its eponymous river.
"Let go of me, shitstain," Chuuya grits out, shoving at Dazai, quite futiley without the leverage of the ground or his ability to aid him.
Dazai can't help himself. He cackles.
"So you can leave me to get soaked all by myself? As if!"
Chuuya lets out a noise that probably hasn't been invented yet. It's truly a fascinating creation, one of his most unique. Very ferocious. Much beastly. Such deranged, even, if you're listening to the music carefully.
Yeah, so basically an angry kitten jacked on anabolic steroids.
"No," the aforementioned angry kitten spits with a growl, "'cuz from this height it's gonna be like hitting fuckin' cement."
"Actually," Dazai pipes up helpfully, "Even with our combined body masses, this distance isn't necessarily great enough to achieve an acceleration that will be fatal upon collision. If you reduce the surface area of your body that's actually making conta—"
"Full offense: Really don't wanna hear it right now," Chuuya snaps.
Dazai rolls his eyes, shoving Chuuya's head downward and laughing again as he tips forward like a duck bobbing for bread bits in the water.
Well? That's what he gets for seething so much he isn't even really listening.
"The guy with the ability that's ninety percent physics," Dazai mocks, each word dripping in derision, "telling me to shut up when I'm trying to tell him in his language that you need to dive, dumbass."
Then, of course, he lets go. But Chuuya does not suddenly rocket up with the help of his ability. In fact, the guy keeps falling.
Dazai grins a very personal secretive sort of grin that hits rather closer to the seventh deadly sin pride itself than actually, in fact, personal and secretive, wiping his sluggishly bleeding thumb into the inseam of his jacket. Chuuya's own jacket is a little stained right now, see — with Dazai's blood, blood that is in turn touching Chuuya's bare skin.
Handily, it'll continue to steadily nullify his ability until every last drop of blood in contact with raw epidermis de Nakahara dries. Dazai's not sure entirely the science of it, and thinks that's likely a good thing considering most of the time when people do have a grasp of the science of their abilities, they have stories not dissimilar to Chuuya's.
Whatever the logic, it sure is convenient for his purposes. Both he and Chuuya hit the water at the exact same time, Chuuya knifing into the river with a frankly annoying amount of grace.
That's right, isn't it? Albatross had taught him swimming. Dazai doesn't have much nice to say about that guy, but he can say with full certainty that Chuuya most definitely got a well-rounded education in the subject.
Dazai's dive is less graceful, a little more painful for the clumsiness, but, well? Now would be a rather inconvenient time to die when it'd make Chuuya so happy. Sacrifices must be made.
4.
It's not that Dazai is antagonizing Chuuya on purpose.
"~Chuu-uu-uuya~, you still haven't told me how you're gonna honor my sendoff."
OK, so Dazai is totally antagonizing Chuuya on purpose.
"Eat shit, you suicidal giraffe," Chuuya says. "No way I'm wasting a single penny of my paycheck on your completely preventable death."
Dazai smiles at him, cold and vapid. "How admirable you've managed to acquire yourself a medical degree in the—" He makes a show of looking down to check his nonexistent watch. "—two days since we've last seen each other."
Chuuya scoffs at him, glowering at him with such blatant and unrepentant abhorrence that it sets something giddy alight within Dazai. "Don't need a damn degree to know you shouldn't fuckin' decide a disease is gonna kill you when you haven't even heard shit about what's wrong with you outtuva doc's mouth."
"For your information, I did consult a doctor," Dazai says, tilting his head at him as his smile freezes into something frigid. "Mori-san's advice was, as expected, terrible, so you must excuse me for not having a lot of faith in the profession."
"Oh bullshit," Chuuya snaps. "Don't go blaming your sick twisted logic on other people. You're the insane one here! You're insane and instead of buckling down and sucking it up like the rest of us you make it the whole goddamn world's problem. Go and cry me a river Dazai; you're getting shitall pity outta me."
It takes Dazai cycling through Chuuya's words three times in his head before he really processes them and all their implications. And he has to admit, he's curious. Might that be a little bit of defensiveness he spies there?
"'Buckling down and sucking it up like the rest of us'. Quite interesting phrasing, Chuuya. It almost sounds like you doubt your own sanity just as much as you do mine."
It's actually kind of funny, the way he watches Chuuya physically contract like a porcupine, spikes ready to impale him with prejudice.
"I'm nothing like you," Chuuya spits out, like even keeping the words in his mouth burns like acid.
Dazai smiles. Oh, this he can work with.
"That's cute," he says conversationally. "You think there's any kind of honor in being stoic about hanging by a thread. But I have a secret to share with you, my dainty dear diminutive dog. You're not as subtle as you think you are. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you're fucked up, Chuuya. You're just as fucked up as me."
Chuuya's fists clench by his sides, and Dazai can't see, but he would bet anything the guy is grinding his teeth to the quick right now.
"Go fuckin' brain yourself on a plastic cutting knife, Dazai. Or is Mori-san letting you keep metal ones again, now?"
"Does your past follow you, Chuuya?" Dazai asks, completely ignoring him. Still smiling so, so serenely. "Does it haunt you? Your every waking breath? Does it scare you? Does it make it so you can't even be a normal person anymore, so that you can't have normal thoughts or feelings or reactions or relationships?"
Dazai lets the expression fall from his face, after that. The killing blow is never so satisfactory as the anticipation, the leadup. His face is as blank as a crisp, new sheet of printer paper when he asks, "Does it make you wish you were dead?"
Dazai anticipates several possible outcomes in the aftermath of him being so blatantly antagonistic and underhanded. Chuuya decking him, for one, but also Chuuya telling him that not everyone is an insane suicidal maniac like him.
After all, Dazai's last line hadn't been intended to make Chuuya feel exposed; rather, to hook his thought process back into hatred of Dazai rather than send him irretrievably down the path of self-reflection. Making him feel exposed was only ever to peel away at his defenses. It's just simply not engaging as a concept to Dazai, the idea of getting Chuuya to feel insecure about his mental state. It's actively boring, actually, considering he already knows and sees that Chuuya feels that way all on his own.
Earning his vitriol, on the other hand? Well, that sounds positively sexy.
Chuuya, however, seems hellbent on defying Dazai's predictions today. Dazai looks up, expecting to see him boiling over his edges with unencumbered rage. But what he is met with instead is… Chuuya staring, dumbstruck and in a shock of nerve-burn in the same way he'd be if Dazai had just slapped him.
Dazai watches him for quite some time after that, waiting, watching, to see what he will do. If he will fall in line or if he has, for whatever ever so strange a reason, decided to defy expectations.
What Chuuya says eventually is, "The movies."
Dazai squints at him. "Pardon?" he asks.
"You wanted me to honor your sendoff so bad," Chuuya says, bitter but not quite in or even near to the way Dazai expected. "They're showing the remake of that movie you like you've been bitching is gonna be a 'complete mockery of the original' at Tsurumi Shore. We're seeing it, so you'll finally shut the fuck up about this death celebration bullshit."
Dazai blinks. Then he blinks again.
"Pardon?" he parrots.
Chuuya stares at him as if he is a particularly hopeless case of incurable stupid.
"Tsurumi Shore Mall. The movie theater there. That I am telling you I'm carting your ass to so we can '~celebrate your impending death~'. Are ya seriously questioning me giving you exactly what you've been asking for for weeks now?"
That boots Dazai's brain back to normal. Completely independent of his own feelings of it, his face breaks into a beam. It's instinct, as after all, refusing to hand another, especially Chuuya, a win is baked into his bones.
"Why, of course not," Dazai titters, clapping his hands together. "I knew Chuuya would agree if I wore him down long enough."
Actually, he hadn't known that at all. This was an entirely unforeseen outcome. Five minutes ago, he wouldn't have believed there was a single world even were there a vast collection of universes in which Chuuya actually said yes to his ridiculous bullshit demand.
But Chuuya doesn't need to know that.
The man of the hour chuffs, scoffing and looking away as he scuffs his foot. "Knew your ass would get all smug the moment I agreed. Rub it in too much and I'm cancelling before you can even get the words 'terminal illness' outta your mouth, got that?"
Dazai laughs at that, a corpulent, belly-deep thing. "Well, I'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth! Don't worry, Chuuya-kun, I'll make sure you regret it before we even make it halfway through."
Chuuya's face flushes, deep pink. "Oh, I'm sure you will," he mutters. "And don't call me that."
Dazai brings a hand to his mouth with utmost drama and pomp and circumstance. "Oh-EM-gee," he says, fluttering his hands as if he's flustered. "Did I make you uncomfortable? I'm so sorry, Chuuya-kun. Don't worry Chuuya-kun, I'll be sure to respect your boundaries in the future! Chuuya-kun, do you forgive me?"
Chuuya is no longer pink. He is red. He is very red.
"Fuck OFF," he snaps, burying his head in his hands.
So three days later, Dazai finds himself standing at the fringes of the midday mall crowd in front of the Tsurumi Shore Mall Theater, dressed in the most horrific ensemble imaginable that he only half-believes Chuuya when he tells him it's fashionable among their age group.
The only reason he is wearing it at all is because Chuuya had made the unfortunately excellent point that they'd do well not to stand out in this part of town by wearing business attire, although Dazai will say that he doesn't think that anything "business" Chuuya wears would fly in your run-of-the-mill hedge fund. Other than that brief period of stunning common sense he'd had at the age of sixteen when he'd temporarily swapped the insane duds for smart slacks and a simple, casual black blazer over a button-up, of course, but that is a period of his life Chuuya is no longer willing to talk about and even Dazai isn't cruel enough to push.
Still, he would not call his current feelings as he stands here in a graphic tee and well-worn jeans "comfortable".
"I don't understand," he grumbles to Chuuya, who's looking nearly as Gangster™ as he had when Dazai'd met him two-and-a-half years ago in a ridiculous whole-ass real leather jacket, "why anyone would walk around in clothing with words on it. I did not consent to be a walking advertisement for—" He looks down. "— 'Akira (1988)'. Although I can see why you would think this was cool."
He gestures unimpressedly to the big red futuristic bike emblazoned on the center of the shirt.
"Christ, Dazai," Chuuya says, rubbing his head as if it's started aching. "Give it a rest."
"I think you're just bitter I'm making you acknowledge you have terrible fashion taste."
"Or maybe you just hail from another planet and find our customs strange and offputting 'cuz it doesn't compute in your fucked mind that 'different' doesn't always mean 'bad'."
Dazai starts to say something that even someone as heartless as him would come to regret the moment he'd see the look on Chuuya's face when he registered it, so he decides it probably better to bite the bullet and simply conspicuously zips up his jacket so that the monstrosity on his chest is concealed. He knows he's made the right choice when Chuuya preens triumphantly at Dazai's acceptance of today's attire, looking awfully happy for someone who was strongarmed into throwing a suicide celebration. Chuuya is akin to those odd birds who like to collect shiny things and bequeath them to those they deem worthy, sometimes, truly.
'Cuz yeah, "Lab rats shouldn't throw stones in the glass house of inhumanity," was probably a little too low to go over some tacky clothing.
Dazai sighs, dragging him over to a kiosk to buy their tickets. "Chuuya," he says longsufferingly when he goes to select their movie, "this says the movie starts at 3:00."
Chuuya raises an eyebrow at him. It's clearly meant to be demeaning, but it's actually kind of annoyingly attractive so Dazai would appreciate if he could stop now. Attraction and Chuuya should never go in the same sentence. The very thought is hurl-worthy; in fact, he can feel it exacerbating the symptoms of his illness as they speak.
"Whattabout it?"
"It's 1:30," Dazai deadpans.
The eyebrow does not deraise.
"Whattabout it?"
"Dude," Dazai says, his own eyebrow twitching. "The first ten minutes of the movie is always just previews and it's a school day for all the children who have legal birth certificates and parents who love them. We could've waltzed in here at 2:58 and hit the theater room before the movie even started."
Chuuya's eyes narrow, infinitesimally so, but they do. Still, all he says is, "Whattabout it?"
"'Whattabout it' is you made me wake up two hours early for nothing," Dazai complains sourly. "I was out receiving a shipment at the docks at three a.m. last night."
Judging by the little waver-stutter to his chin, Chuuya is repressing the urge to genuinely drop his jaw. "So was I!" he exclaims. "Save your excuses for someone who cares."
Dazai raises his nose into the air snootily. "For your information," he drones. "I have a very delicate countenace and require a certain amount of beauty rest to function at the level the Port Mafia requires me to to do my job."
Chuuya does let out a positively obnoxious scoff at that, but there's a hint of a chuff behind it that tells Dazai he's glanced him on the funny bone.
"You don't got the looks to be a pretty boy, Dazai. Start taking care of your hair and skin and maybe then you can get away with this nail painting garbage."
How perfectly ambivalent. Dazai does not allow his expression to falter. What he has the power to do right now is make Chuuya squirm by focusing on the unintentional implications of the second part of that statement.
"Are you saying that if I started taking care of my hair and skin you'd think I was attractive?" he coos, batting his eyelashes.
Chuuya splutters, face flush crescendoing into a shade of outright puce. "Stop fishing for compliments!"
"That's not a nuh-oh," Dazai sings.
The spluttering increases in intensity until his dear hateful partner could be doing his best impression of a car engine trying to start on a dying battery. "Dumb bastard, you've already got women banging down your door the way you are now, whaddeyou think? Not making your ego any bigger than it is already, so fuck right off."
Well, alright, perhaps he is sleeping after all, because reality could truly never be this strange. He's sorry? The brain is not braining. The computer is not computing.
"Wait, wait," Dazai says after a few moments too long, putting up a finger as he attempts to parse that. "Hold up. You know I was just joking, right? You actually think I'm attractive?"
"Kill yourself. I'll kill you," Chuuya snarls, looking like he's on the verge of spontaneously combusting. He reaches forward and snatches their successfully procured tickets out of Dazai's hand before storming away to present them to the employee behind the desk.
It's an unbelievably corny next move that Dazai will deny until the day he dies, but he surreptitiously pulls his fingers to the side of his leg and gives himself a firm, hard pinch.
Upon the realization that he is in fact, not dreaming, he realizes that the only possible course of action from this point is to kill himself.
What is he even supposed to do with the knowledge that Chuuya thinks he's hot? Enough so too that he'd reacted all guilty like he'd just been caught cheating by his girlfriend with her best friend when Dazai had pressed him about it.
Can you, he wonders, eyeing the popcorn machine behind the snack counter, if you stick your head in it, use a popcorn machine to nuke your brain with poison the same way you can a gas oven.
"Da-ZAI," Chuuya calls from the counter, sharply gesturing at him and then toward the employee, who after giving them both a nervous smile shoots Dazai a thumbs up while flashing both their tickets.
Dazai gets the message, of course, but he briefly considers pretending he hasn't to give Chuuya a little grief. Then he comes to his senses and realizes that if he keeps pushing Chuuya he might start saying even more crazy stuff than just that he thinks Dazai is good looking, shuts his mouth, and follows Chuuya inside like the good dog he always insists he is.
Chuuya, he immediately notices when they're back within a close vincinity of each other, walking side by side, is different. He won't look at Dazai, and when Dazai brings up the very important point that they need to acquire food as is the sacred movie theater ritual, he only responds with some vague monosyllabic muttering before ducking his head, stuffing his hands in his pockets, and stepping outward to create a few extra centimeters of distance between their side profiles in a way Dazai hopes Chuuya doesn't think he's stupid enough not to notice.
Dazai realizes he is not, in fact, imagining it when they reach the ticket booth counter and Chuuya becomes the picture of politiness as he informs the cashier they would like a large popcorn, a cola, and a melon cream soda.
Screw that guy. Who does he think he is being snooty and standoffish and then remembering Dazai's drink order.
"Anything else?" the cashier asks politely, and Dazai shoves Chuuya out of the way before he can say no before beaming at her.
"Actually, lovely miss, there is something. I will take seven boxes of pocky please. All strawberry."
Just as Dazai expects, that gets a real response out of Chuuya. "Are you drunk?" he demands, scrubbing a hand through his hair as he blinks at Dazai incredulously. He turns back toward the cashier. "He'll take two," he informs her.
Dazai shoves him out of the way again. "No, actually, I'll speak for myself, and I want seven. I will take seven boxes, all of which I intend to eat as we are enjoying our movie, and if that disturbs my dear friend here so much I am happy to put the charge on my own card."
"Now you listen here, punk—" Chuuya starts to say, fists starting to curl, and perhaps it is time to do some damage control. He curls a few fingers around Chuuya's wrist to flood him with energy from No Longer Human. It's functionally useless in this case, technically, but Dazai has noticed over the years that the shock people react with upon being hit with his ability isn't solely a reaction to no longer being able to use their own. He's asked several people about its collateral sensation but he finds Mori-san's explanation the most concise and descriptive: An electric jolt of sorts, a flood of liquid ice shot into the veins.
A nervous system reboot, essentially, which is how Dazai is utilizing it here.
Keeping his fingers wrapped lightly but firmly around Chuuya's wrist, Dazai uses his other hand to fish out his wallet and pull out his card. He has multiple cards that are considered a flex among people from less wealthy backgrounds, but those are probably not the most intelligent choice at the moment considering Chuuya was so insistent this be quiet and on the downlow. He opts for a nondescript one that had actually been his first ever credit card back before he'd been in the mafia long enough to have a stable income.
"I think my friend is feeling a little under the weather," he says with a demure smile. "I'll just pay for everything so he can go and sit down and regather his bearings."
He punctuates that with a firm pinch to the inside of Chuuya's wrist. Chuuya positively glowers at him and seems to be on the cusp of putting up a fuss, but Dazai gestures sharply down to his unusual outfit to hopefully remind him that pulling out the flashy ability probably isn't the best idea right now and he backs down, merely making a rude gesture under his sleeve before billowing off to find the right theater.
The cashier blinks blankly for a few moments before seeming to have her own reboot as she gives him her best customer service smile. "Tap, slide, or insert," she says politely, nodding down to the payment processor machine. Dazai does so, biting back an amused huff when she gives him one long once-over and then pulls out a bag for the food items without asking him.
"Thank you, milady," he says, absentmindedly bowing and not even really thinking to go through his usual routine of flashing her a flirtatious smile and miming tipping a nonexistent hat before wandering away.
He's not particularly enthused to go find Chuuya after his little passive aggressive display earlier, but considering there's still a little less than an hour to go before the movie starts, there's not much else to do.
It's not really even a "search", in the end. He finds Chuuya leaned against the wall outside the third theater in the hall, zoned out. Well, zoned out by their standards, because sure enough when Dazai goes to be a jerk and snap his fingers in front of his face, Chuuya catches his wrist before it even makes it a foot away from his body.
"They're still playing the movie before ours," Chuuya informs him before he can ask, tossing his wrist down with subzero care.
Dazai hums in acknowledgment, stepping over Chuuya and to the side to lean adjacent to him against the same wall.
"You know," he says, not even sure why he's about to be not a total tool about this, "if there's something making you miserable at my death celebration, you should probably tell me about it so I can fix it before it harshes the vibe."
He does not have to see Chuuya to sense the way the air stills where he should be taking in a breath. It's not that he was expecting much, but it's surprisingly subdued for someone who has feelings as big and burning hot as Chuuya's tend to be.
"You're being weird," Chuuya points out, and the urge to get vicious when he points that out is strong, but that would be letting Chuuya know those words got to him. He's not about to hand him that kind of leverage when Dazai currently has exactly zero leverage in understanding what's going on in his fun-sized brain right now.
So instead, he shrugs, not even denying it. "So are you," he points out. "It's why I'm asking."
Chuuya seems to chew on that. Dazai doesn't miss the way he goes tense at Dazai's—albeit tame and not very threatening—accusation, but it's probably better for both of them if he pretends he doesn't notice.
In the end, he doesn't acknowledge Dazai's question at all.
"You owe me at least one of those boxes of pocky," he informs Dazai snidely.
Dazai raises an eyebrow, considering pressing but realizing that conversation was about to hit territory that would have them going postal on each other in a matter of minutes and sagely refraining.
"Oh, really?" he asks instead. "And whyever is that? If I recall, I'm the one who just paid for our entire haul."
He doubts it, but he hopes Chuuya is grateful for the mercy he's just bequeathed him. At the very least, he's not shy of taking advantage of it.
"It's your gift to the host who's throwing this damn suicide party for deranged death lusters in the first place."
Chuuya's a little too loud with that one, because a passing mother herding her two bumbling, frolicking children pauses long enough to give them one of the dirtiest looks Dazai's ever been subjected to.
"Tut, tut, Chuuya," Dazai says with a smirk, not about to concede even a single stick. "Corrupting the youths with thoughts of fatal self-injury. That poor mother is about to have to have a positively delightful conversation with her offspring thanks to you."
"I think they'll live," Chuuya says gruffly, but his voice is significantly lower and Dazai catches him sending a cautious glance toward another family twenty meters away. "But you know what? If you want to make yourself sick by being a pig, be my guest."
"'You know what?'" Dazai echoes. "I'm feeling magnanimous today. I'll bet you the last box that I get through the first six without any of it coming back up."
Chuuya scoffs. "You're disgusting," he proclaims. "… But deal."
Fifty-five minutes later, with the deadline for the movie's start ticking ever closer, Dazai finds himself eating his words as he upchucks every piece of food he'd just eaten and then some over a dirty toilet in the men's bathroom.
Can he concede another way that doesn't involve consumption, actually? 'Cuz he doesn't want to put anything in his stomach ever again right now.
Chuuya, for his part, is being patently unsympathetic as he browses his phone outside the stall with his free hand pinched over his nose.
"You're not even gonna say 'I told you so'?" Dazai burbles miserably.
A positively heartless chuff. "Don't think I haftasay shit when your digestive system is making my argument for me."
"Die," Dazai informs him viciously before vomiting up a mouthful of stomach acid the color of putrid.
"I thought that was you," Chuuya ripostes heartlessly.
Dazai doesn't have any material way to respond to that other than blindly flipping Chuuya off while his face is still in the toilet bowl.
"We're definitely going to miss our movie, by the way," Dazai informs him when he's once again regained a semblance of control over his esophagus.
Chuuya snorts. "Yeah, I kinda figured." Dazai hears him shut off his phone and slip it back into his pocket. "You wanna cut our losses when you're done with… that and see if we can make the staff mad enough that they ban us from this place?"
"Are you drunk?" Dazai retorts. "Because I can't believe you were getting on my case earlier for buying too much candy when you want to get us permabanned from a business establishment."
He glances up in time to see Chuuya shrug, his expression unreadable. "I mean, thought you'd wanna go out with a bang considering in a few months it's not gonna matter to you whether you can come here or not anymore. But alright, if you're gonna be a prude about it." He tosses another half shrug Dazai's way.
"You're being awfully cavalier about this," Dazai points out. "It's almost like you're not gonna miss me."
A shifting-sliding noise becomes audible, what Dazai presumes is Chuuya sliding down the bathroom wall by his back. He'd have a heart attack if he understood that bathroom walls are only barely less bacterial than any other given part of a bathroom, but his reaction probably wouldn't be all that funny when he's all cold and sulking like this.
"Well first of all, yeah, no I'm not," he states bluntly. Dazai's stomach is well steady enough that he could turn around to catch a read of the expression on his face, but honestly part of him… doesn't want to know. He doesn't want to know how Chuuya truly, in his heart of hearts, views their fraught and difficult partnership.
Because if he does not know for sure, how they feel about each other can remain Schrödinger's relationship. They either love or hate each other. Unalienable fact. In this state of superposition though, where neither knows for sure how the other feels? So long as they never define it through perception by opening that awful box of feelings, Dazai and Chuuya can remain in a simultaneous state of both love and hate in perpetuity.
He thinks that is how he wants to die. With them remaining in that simultaneous state defined and determined by undefinition in perpetuity. Even if Chuuya loves him, actually, there would… honestly be a loss in the reduction of their relationship to surety. He can't explain it at all, but that is how he feels. An intangible, inexplicable, senseless feeling that nonetheless persists.
Maybe that's fucked up. No, that's definitely fucked up.
"But Dazai," Chuuya says, and Dazai will bow to no number of gods when the world they rule and he subsists in is so deeply, deeply flawed, but he asks for unknowing into the empty air like a crazy man. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
Dazai does not bow to gods but the reason his doing so is in question in the first place is that he is, in fact, is just a man, so when he hears that, his head snaps up. His eyes hone in on Chuuya like he's aiming a laser sight on a gun.
"'Cuz to me it seems like you don't want me to miss you at all. Don't get me wrong, you're always a cruel motherfucker, and petty, 'n evil, 'n vicious, but you've been treating me so bad lately it's like you want me to hate you. I swear to fucking God, like you're gunning for me to dance on your goddamn grave."
Chuuya grumbles, scoffing and pulling out his phone again, as clear a dismissal as they come.
"Don't get you," he tells Dazai.
Huffs.
Rolls his eyes.
Channels all his best overseasoned melodrama with a side of overcooked pomp and circumstance as he peck-slams in his password like that phone is hurting him.
Tap, tap, stab. And maybe he's imagining those keys are Dazai.
"Don't get you at all."