Am I your priority now?

Prologue

Spring. The season for hope, for joy, for new beginning. With the fading of winter, comes the winds of spring, ready to sweep its little people into their newest chapter in their book of life.
But chuuya had never asked for a new beginning. He didn't need one, he was perfectly at peace with how things were going, even if dazai was growing more distant, and Mori was as much of an asshole as usual, it was normal. And then it wasn't.

Rather peculiar, that the explosion that sent his car up in flames, no doubt it was dazai's doing because that was the car only Dazai knew about as well as the one that drove them out of the dark days of the mafia into evenings under bright starry skies, wouldn't just be confined to the car, but to his life as well. Mori had lost his head after that, incapable of accepting that his beloved protege would up and leave over a man Mori could clearly not see the significance of. And naturally, chuuya would be the target of his temper. After all, both Mori and chuuya knew, no matter how badly chuuya was treated, the mafia was his only home, and like an abused dog with only one place to call home, it would still guard it with its life.

It started small, with just a few hurting comments sprinkled here and there, just a little of "Dazai Kun would have done this better", and "This is done all wrong chuuya Kun, i expected much better from you." to really make him question his own ability, but if chuuya thought this treatment sucked, the others to come would have torn down his definition of 'bad' and turned it into 'good'.

Because verbal insults were to come next, which would be followed by increasingly dangerous missions, before it escalated into outright suicidal missions. Chuuya, to both of their displeasures, like a shoot bursting out from beneath cement, albeit a bit weak and crooked from its ordeal, survived all of it.

Unfortunately for chuuya, the worst had yet to come, even if it had already been 4 months since dazai's unceremonious departure. Even now chuuya didn't understand why Mori hadn't moved on from it, sure Dazai was someone not easily replaced, but all his work was already being done by chuuya in the first place, and chuuya was already handling most of the missions that were left undone in the wake of dazai's escape. So really, chuuya didn't think there would be a reason for Mori to continue his...tantrum.

Well there was one. "Because you will never measure up to Dazai Kun."

That sentence was the answer to chuuya's pleas for an explanation for his torture, after Mori had locked him up in the port mafia's interrogation rooms and started to draw scarlet lines all over chuuya's body, like an artist to his canvas, if each stroke of the artist's brush was meant to inflict pain of unimaginable levels.

"I would ask you where Dazai Kun is, but i doubt you would know, since its quite apparent you're not even worth enough for Dazai Kun to leave a parting message."

Chuuya didn't know how Mori knew that, but the words stung either way. He had long known he was never a priority for dazai, that he would never measure up to dazai's friends at bar lupin, that even though kisses and small sweet nothings were exchanged, that was all it was, a sweet nothing. He was probably only stress relief to dazai, like how he was currently stress relief to Mori.

Be grateful for the little things. Chuuya was grateful that even in his tirade that somehow extended to physical hurt, Mori was sane enough to not maim him or mutilate his body too much, because chuuya still needed to do his work in the mornings after all. Soon enough that became his new everyday, his new 'normal'. Gruelling missions from dawn, finishing paperwork as the sun beat down from its place in the sky, redoing paperwork again after mori's rejection as the sun started its descent from its throne in the blue kingdom, and straight to the interrogation room by dusk, where the only sleep he would catch would be from passing out after screaming himself hoarse.