★彡[ᴇᴠᴇʀʏᴏɴᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇꜱ ᴄʜᴜᴜʏᴀ]彡★

And Just After We Were Starting To Get Along

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask a serious question?"

"That'd be a first for you but go ahead."

Dazai hesitated, gathering himself.

"Is this flirtatious?"

Chuuya, for a horrible moment, was convinced of the existence of mind readers and nearly sprung upright,  "The hell are you-?"

"Sorry, sorry. Too random. See, Fitzgerald was saying something about how I- well how I might come off as..." Dazai hesitated, clearly unsure how to articulate his words. Being serious wasn't his strong suit. He sighed, "Is this bothersome? Am I bothering you?"

"Dazai," Chuuya said matter-of-factly, "You're always bothering me."

"...right." 

He began to withdraw his hand.

Chuuya grabbed it. "Hey -- still might try to demolish the entire population of Yokohama over here, remember?" 

Dazai paused. His fingers twined back with Chuuya's, wrists pressing together and a cheerful lilt creeping back into his voice "Of course, of course. What type of detective would I be if I let that happen?"

Chuuya muttered something under his breath about his ex-partner being a waste of oxygen and looked back up at the sky.

No. He was not going to spend any more time thinking about what their relationship was  Right now, the mackerel was beside him, in one piece and as snarky as ever.

This was enough.

"How about you?" Chuuya asked, "what went down with Fitzgerald?"

"Congratulations on your new job."

"Dazai."

"Kidding, kidding! I left things ambiguous and hooked our lovely subordinates up with some explosives. They should have escaped by now."

Chuuya turned to him. As expected, the detective looked smug. How was it that he was able to come up with such extravagant schemes on the spot like that and execute them with such perfect and calculated ease all the time? Was he even human?

His attention slid to the side, "Something wrong?"

"No," Chuuya said.

Dazai smiled wanly, "Then why are you looking at me like that."

"You really are something else, aren't you?"

Dazai's eyes rounded slightly, then he cleared his throat and quickly looked back up. A firework burst overhead, dusting his ears an adorable scarlet. Strange, considering that the sparks Chuuya caught sight of were green and not red.

Bzzt!

Frowning, Chuuya dug through his pockets and withdrew his phone. He sighed, "Mori says he heard what happened wants to know if I want you added to the mafia's hitlist."

"Lets take a selfie and send it to him."

"That's a horrible idea."

"Come on~ what's the worst that can happen?"

Some pretty bad stuff, actually. But there was something about the needling of his tone that Chuuya couldn't help but give in to.

 "Okay, alright. This one time."

He leaned over, their shoulders brushing. Dazai smiled broadly like the idiot he was and Chuuya took the photo. 

Before he could even look at it however, Dazai grabbed the phone, "I'm sending this to myself first."