A/N: "Canon does not exist from here on out" the author said in an excited gremlin voice because they had planned out the entire book a year ago when it still seemed like Chuuya was a vampire, and they were not going anywhere near that.
Also because I wrote this so long ago, there was so much editing involved.
Dazai POV
Anxious energy poured through my skin as I sat at my desk, Riptide still hidden away neatly in its pen form between my fingers as I fiddled with it like I once had during meetings when I was younger, waiting impatiently for the work day to be over. Normally I would just pull myself to my feet and leave with cheerful lies on my lips of meeting a beautiful woman for a double suicide, but Kunikida was somehow managing to stare daggers into my soul as I watched the clock above the door, my legs dragged uo to my chest like I was still a small child.
Today sometimes made me feel like one.
Ranpo, seeming to have noticed that the queer mood that I had been in all week was actively worsening by the moment, lifted his head and opened his piercing eyes as his gaze settled on me. Studying me like I was some sort of experiment that wasn't acting quite the right way.
Dropping one of my legs to the ground, I leaned down and reached into the bottom drawer of my desk for the emergency bag of chips that I kept there for days like this. The bag was the other man's favorite kind, and gave an almost satisfying sight as I tossed it into the air at the other detective across the room, waiting to see what the older man would do.
If Ranpo opened the bag, then he would be agreeing to leave the situation be, trusting that it wasn't so bad that he would need to intervene. If the older man threw it back, then he wouldn't and I would likely be dragged to his apartment for the night as it meant that the other didn't trust me on my own at the moment.
The other detective hesitated for a long moment before turning away from my side of the office and looking out the window at the port city, popping a chip into his mouth.
Safe.
My phone rang dully through the room, dread pooling in my gut at the familiar ringtone that I had set.
Today wasn't the day for this.
"Dazai, I swear-" the blond detective started in, only to be cut off by the whine of Ranpo's voice, a sound that I cherished in that moment.
"Leave him be Kunikida," the eldest detective said boredly, not even bothering to glance at the scene that was unfolding, he didn't need to.
It could almost be seen as thinking when the older man tapped the steadily emptying chip bad with his index finger twice, if it wasn't so deliberate a movement. I rolled my eyes like a teenager and pulled out another of the chip bags that I had stashed away, passing it to the other man on my way out of the office to take the call. Ranpo only smiled deeper and nodded slightly, amused by the information that he held.
Sucking in a breadth as if it held all of the oxygen in the world, I glanced wearily at the contact name before answering.
Slug.
My heart plummeted in my chest, if this had been any other night...
If it had been the beginning of any other night, then Chuuya wouldn't be calling.
"Dazai!" The other started, his voice filled with too much cheer as it spoke my name. "You should come over here," the other suggested and I knew then from the way that the other's voice slurred that the Hatrack was drunk.
He always has been a lightweight.
"I don't even know where 'here' is, Chibi," I reminded the older man and was met with a drunken giggle and what sounded like a glass settling on a table, placed there by careless hands.
"Dazai," the other started again on the other side of the line, the false name slightly slurred in a soft way that the other man had never spoken it before, as if he was about to speak of something that he didn't want others to hear. "I love you."
The breadth in my lungs was stolen as words that I never thought I would hear from the other were spoken, whispered into my ear as if the other was right here to do so.
Closing my eyes, I will away the pain rising in my chest, the familiar hands that always came as anything that I had ever wanted was stolen before I could even hope to grasp it, tearing it from me like children fighting over a toy. Because while drunken words might be sober thoughts, I wasn't foolish enough to believe that the older man would ever think such a thing of me - even less so in the way that I wanted the other to.
A day at the beach brushed across my mind, muscles kissed harshly by a war that would never be written of in any history books. Words spoken carelessly that reminded me that the way that the pair of us had been living at the time wasn't the reality that we knew, that in Yokohama Chuuya wouldn't ever voluntarily allow himself to hold me in such a way as we did in those days. It made me feel unclean to know that, shame and disappointment coiled in my gut at the memory alone.
I've loved him almost since the day that we met, and Chuuya has made it clear that his feelings were not the same.
Not then at least, but certainly not now after so many years of pushing the other away.
I'd still let him kill me though, if that was what he wished. I'd rather it be his hands that I fall to than anyone else's.
"Yeah, Chibi, I'll be right there," there was a smile in my voice, but it didn't take the World's Greatest Detective to know that there wasn't one curved across my lips.
Chuuya mumbled some sort of goodbye into the phone, seemingly unaware of the words of his that I had so willfully ignored as the other side of the line went dead. Unaware of the way that my heart ached at even the idea that it might not just be some drunken mutterings.
Sighing, I thought through my limited options before dialing a new number, one that I knew as well as my own and all of the others from before.
"D-Dazai?" The new voice questioned, unsurity mating their voice as if they thought that this was some sort of dream, the words spoken with the roughness of sleep. I knew that depending on the mission that the younger had taken this week, they just might have been.
"Hello Akutagawa," I spoke formally, the words kept low so that not even those with the advanced hearing of tigers might perceive them. "It's about Chuuya."
The other side of the phone went quiet before a rustling sound could be heard for a long few moments. If I were to garner a guess, it would be that the younger was moving to somewhere more private where Gin wouldn't be disturbed by the conversation that would surely worry the assassin if she were to hear only half of it.
"What's wrong?" The boy questioned quickly, his voice laced with worry just beneath the monotone that it usually held when anger or desperation didn't control it. I knew that the younger cared for the mafia executive as most in the Port Mafia tended to after being exposed to the older man for so long - it was hard not to - and I knew that the Hatrack would have sought him out while I was away, kept an eye on the children that I had brought in. It was the reason that I had called him.
A soundless sigh escaped my lips, draining my body of what little energy I possessed. "The slug called me drunk," I explained, not bothering with the false cheer that I would put on for others, not when the boy already knew how false it was at the end of the day after countless attempts of trying to teach the younger man how to do something similar himself in the early days after Akutagawa's joining. "I wanted to see if he was in his office, or at a bar."
There was a sigh that would have mirrored my own had a sound been made. It seemed that the boy was no stranger to Chibi's occasional bad night either. "He left around three," the other ability user answered. "The boss let him pick up extra missions yesterday to leave early today."
Thought so.
Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was close to five now. "Thank you, Akutagawa," I said, unsurprised to find the words much more genuine then they had once been, the influence of the Agency eating away at me like some sort of well meaning poison. "I'm going to go look for him now. Could you inform Kouyou of what has occurred?" It was phrased as a question, but I knew that the other would take it as an order regardless.
Glancing at the clock one more time, I knew that if I started now I might be able to find the older man just after six.
"You're welcome, D-Dazai," the younger man stuttered, his voice quiet and unsure, and just as changed by time as my own.
Kunikida was waiting for me at his desk when I rushed back in, going straight for my own. "What took you so long?" The younger man questioned, barking like a particularly annoying dog, but I only had enough care for one at the moment. "You haven't even done half your paperwork for the day!"
No one else turned an eye at the familiar scene.
"Not now Kunikida," I tonelessly as I walked up to my chair and grabbed the coat there, sliding it on as all childishness - pretend or not - was temporarily forgotten.
The change was enough to surprise the blond detective into a still silence, as Atsushi glanced worriedly between the pair of us, an unwitting spectator that hadn't seen this match just yet.
"I'll do extra work tomorrow," I lied, already feeling some unnecessary form of chaos on the horizon, seeking the rest of us out, lingering in the air since the Dead Apple incident.
With that, I left in a rush, my coat rising lightly from the speed at which I moved. I'd never say it out loud to another, but it felt strange to wear it at that moment, to be chasing after the slug in anything but mafia black.
—-
Almost an hour or so later, I was still searching for the older mafioso, having started at the bars closest to the Port Mafia towers and making my way farther out. It was a good bet that the Hatrack wouldn't want to wait too long to get drunk if he'd gone as far as to leave early to do so, but I had already searched almost every bar in the area, showering the streets with the mental map that I held I'm my mind. There was one bar left within walking distance of the towers, one that I had been avoiding until now due to my own discomforts with it, but it was all that there was left to see.
The Lupin Bar sign came into view as I hurried down the street, dim with age but still casting a warm glow into the quickly darkening night.
With the last steadying breadth of a man facing down the doors of death, I slipped into the bar, almost running at the familiar sound of jazz in my ears and the way that the stairs still creaked beneath my steps in all of the same places. The same bartender from all those years ago was still cleaning glasses behind the wooden bar, beneath the warm light. It never got easier coming back here, the ghost of someone long gone lingering in the air in the way that only spirits could hope to.
It never got easier to know that I've been remembering him for longer than I knew him.
If I closed my eyes for long enough I could almost pretend that I was only early to meeting Odasaku and Ango for drinks, and forget that I never would again.
The bartender looks up at the sound of dress shoes making their way down the stairs with purposeful noise, knowing good and well that I could have done so silently. The older man raises a questioning brow. "Bleach cocktail, Dazai?" He asks, a memory of a time long past flitting between the pair of us.
"I thought you were all out," I remind the other, feeling my lips tug into something that might have once been a smile, sorrowful and serene, but was too broken now to ever be so again. "Not tonight," I tell the other, my eyes finally landing on the figure at the bar, hair Thayer burned like flames in the sun splayed out against the countertop as the older man's head was pillows in his arms, chest slowly rising and falling like a being from a fairytale as a half empty bottle of wine sat next to the elder's head. "I have other matters to tend to at the moment."
There's an ache in my chest and a curse on my lips as I approach the sleeping ability user, wondering if he had come here on purpose so that I might find him and he could say more foolish things that he never would beneath the light of day. Things that hurt me to hear.
Not wasting any more time, I took the older man into my arms, the other's arms fitting loosely around my neck as the slug was drunk enough to barely even stir from the movement. Nodding to the kindly bartender, I made my way to the stairs and into the Yokohama night.
The sky was burning a bright pink as I carried the older ability user in my arms, taking the back alleys through the streets to avoid the prying eyes of those going home from work, vultures in fancy suits that didn't know anything but would slow others down anyways. My arms shook weakly after a time, but I knew that I could carry the other back to the Agency apartments, I'd carried him longer distances with each of us in a much worse condition than we are now.
A sigh escaped my lips as I was relieved to see that all of the other Agency members were either out to eat or already tucked neatly into their own apartments by now, though I still moved quietly through the building, half expecting to see a thoroughly pissed off Kunikida materializing out of nowhere before me.
The apartment was its usual mess when I walked inside of it, carefully maneuvering the Chibi in my arms so as to not wake the other as I opened and closed the door. Bottles were strewn carelessly across the ground, books in nearly every language that I knew but English piled up near the bed.
I layed the Hatrack down on the floor near the Japanese style bed, cursing under my breath as the other began to stir, coming out of his drunken daze a bit as I pulled back the comforter. Carefully, I grabbed the older man and placed him in the bed, pulling the sheet over his small frame before moving away from the older man, or trying to at least.
Chuuya had grabbed at my wrist in his drunken state, his grip harsh against the fresh cuts there and making me wince even more from the strength that the other used, too out of it to be gentle. In the back of my mind I knew that it was a grip strong enough to bruise even as I tried to pull my wrist back, but the other was strong even without the use of his ability.
The older man pulled me down on top of him with a sloppy movement. I tried to move away, not wanting to sleep next to the other when I knew that the morning wouldn't be pleasant because of it. But then the other moved, lips hot against my neck in a way that should have made my brain go numb, but instead drowned me in panic as I struggled my way out of the other's grip, uncaring of the pain or marks that it might cause.
The kiss was harsh, bruising even, as the other slammed his lips against my own and all my mind could think was not like this.
None of it was supposed to be like this.
He tasted like wine as a hand slipped across my ribs, and it made me want to die.
I bit the other's lip hard enough for the sharp taste of blood to spill in my mouth, staining each of our lips a deep red as the older man finally loosened his grip enough that I could pull away while he was still in shock.
Not like this.
I can't do this again.
Scrambling off of the other quickly, I pulled myself to my feet and collapsed against the far wall, switchblade in hand as my heartbeat thrummed in my ears and bile rose in my throat. The world seemed to be shaking, or maybe that was just me. My chest tightened like a snake was coiled around my lungs, pulling tighter at them with each gasp of breath. The feeling of hands running along my body, delicate fingers that I wanted to break. Destroy before they could take anymore.
I stayed crouched against the wall with my blade poised in my hand until morning when August eighteen had turned into the nineteenth.
Happy birthday to me.
—-
The sun had barely even risen, bright and persistent in the sky, when Chuuya began to stir, groaning from what I could only assume must be one nasty hangover. He looked beautiful as he sat up in my bed, not even having the decency to have bed hair. I watched as the other man whipped his head around, taking in the room as confusion was written over his fine features, and I couldn't help the spike of fear that welled up inside of me when those eyes of his that I loved finally landed upon mine. My arms still felt marked, throbbing from the other's previous grip. My lips and neck felt heated and bruised.
"Ah, Chibi, you're finally awake," I called out with a false cheer as my voice was just loud enough to irritate the other's hangover. It was petty, but I didn't care.
The smile on my face was as false as the one that I wore at work on days when not even the eccentrics of the Agency could bring out the smallest of genuine ones. I wore it like armor. I held onto it like a curse.
Chuuya didn't need to know what he had done, I could bear that burden on my own.
The other groaned once more in response, curing my name just loud enough that I could understand it before he finally seemed to have gathered his thoughts. "Where am I?"
"Armed Detective Agency dorms," I answered the other, not looking at him as I pulled out my phone and sent a message to the elder Akutagawa sibling before sliding it back into my coat pocket.
"Why?" The other moaned as he seemed to consider going back to sleep just then.
"You called me drunk." The answer was simple, efficient in nature and all that I was going to be giving the older man as I stood and walked over to the other, kicking the other ability user lightly in the shoulder as his eyes dropped closed. "C'mon, get up. Good dogs don't make their masters late to work."
"As if you're ever on time to work," the other growled, not seeming to notice that he had just inadvertently called himself a dog.
I pushed the other few more times before Chuuya finally moved, attempting to stand. I shrunk back from the other on instinct, getting out of arm's length from the other gifted, but Chibi didn't seem to notice. He also didn't make it far in his efforts before he crashed back to the bed with a curse, holding his head as I only sighed at the sight, and grabbed the bottle of aspirin from on top of my dresser, throwing it at the older man.
"I'm going to go brush my teeth," I lied as I slipped into the bathroom, pulling out the phone in my pocket once more to call the number that I'd had Akutagawa retrieve for me a few minutes before.
"Ah, Dazai," the voice on the other end of the line said calmly before I even spoke, likely knowing that no one else would be calling the Port Mafia executive at such an early time in the morning, unknown number or not. "How is Chuuya?"
"Acting more like a slug than usual, but awake enough to be handed over, Kouyou," I answered plainly, emotion lacking in my voice as I spoke quietly enough that the older man in the apartment wouldn't overhear.
There was a delicate sigh on the other side of the phone, something reminiscent of the way that the red headed woman had acted when the Hatrack and I were in meetings together, and the older executive had to moderate the pair of us like children even though she was only four or so years older. "The park near that Agency of yours in ten minutes?" The elder asked tiredly after a moment.
I thought for a moment and listened to the soft sounds of the slug attempting to open the pill bottle in the other room. "Make it fourty," I countered. "I want to give the Hatrack time to become more coherent."
"Alright," the elder agreed easily, hanging up the phone only a moment or so later.
Putting the phone away, my gaze fell to the red staining my arms, dried after having been reopened the night before with the other's unrestrained grip as I had tried to pull away. I forced my eyes to the mirror, to the reflection there that I usually avoided when given the chance to do so. There was a small bruise on my neck from where the other man had sloppily tried to kiss it.
A wave of nausea rose up inside of me at the sight of everything - from the blood on my arms to the bruise and my neck and likely my wrist too if I were to look - and I knew then, as I could feel phantom hands on my body and breadths on my neck, that this was bound to taint things between us until a greater monster unwittingly came along.
The bandages were replaced with easy fluid motions as I avoided looking at what laid beneath them, knowing but never wanting to see.
When I left the bathroom, the other man was still holding his head, but the bottle was at least open now so I knew that he at least had the opportunity to take some, whether he did or not was none of my concern. The older man's head rose at the sound of the door opening and the other ability user's eyes narrowed as they fell on me and finally saw without the haze of sleep.
"You have a hickey," the Hatrack stated simply, his eyes glued to the spot, and a hateful part of me wanted to tell the other that it was his doing, just so that he might feel as disturbed and discontented from everything as I did. I shoved that part of me as far away as I could manage it.
Instead I simply with my usual false smile thick on my lips. "I met a beautiful woman yesterday," I lied easily, knowing good and well that the other man didn't buy it for a moment. The slug could read me too well after all of the years spent in tandem with one another. "It was a shame that she wasn't up for a double suicide though."
Walking back over to my spot on the wall, I watched as the other ability user fixed his hair, twisting it into a coil before letting it fall once more and sliding on that damned hat of his. I wanted nothing more than to burn the key to the other's Corruption like I had my coat four years ago.
"Think you can stand?" I asked teasingly after the greenish tent had begun to leave the other's face. I watched as the other pushed himself slowly to his feet, swaying on them once upright. The only answer that I received was a very particular finger pointed into the air. "You could at least buy me dinner first," I called out just loud enough for the other to hear but no one in another dorm to. The words tasted like sawdust in my mouth, but were expected nonetheless.
The other man only growled and walked into the bathroom, closing and locking the door tight.
"Guess another date then."
I let the older man puke his guts up or sulk for a good half hour before moving once more to bang on the bathroom door till it opened. "Come on, Slug~" I called out with a false cheer much too great for so early in the morning. "Kouyou is waiting for us, and you know how she is about punctuality."
There was a grumbling as the older man stumbled to the door once more, curses followed by the spiteful title of Mackerel spilling from his soft lips as the other ability user drew closer and flung the door open.
"We're on the second floor," I inform the older man as we walk to the door, slipping on shoes and coats, fixing bandages until Chuuya gives an approving nod that everything was in place, some tendencies never quite dying.
The slug laughs at the information, his voice ringing like a bell in the otherwise silent hallway. "They let the suicidal maniac live above the ground floor?" The other asks, between breaths. I don't tell them how only Ranpo knows that the jokes that I make and the attempts that I fail are very real in nature, the rest of the Agency believing them to be some sort of eccentric joke that they can just brush aside, choosing to only stick my tounge out at the other ability user like a child instead.
For a moment everything felt right.
—-
We make it to the park with only three minutes to spare, bucking the entire way there as the pair of us nearly avoid a scolding from the older executive. I may not be in the Port Mafia anymore, but I wouldn't put it past the woman to bite our ears off anyways out of habit alone.
The executive is question was sitting primly at one of the picnic tables in her traditional Japanese clothing, her hair already pinned up for the day and simple make - up applied to draw out her pleasant features enough to make most men not know that the beauty before them was dangerous until a blade was at their throats. She looked as out of place as a moonflower that blooms during the day. Looking at her I sometimes wondered if the light could ever suit her once more, if she would ever want it to. From how she tried so hard to convince Kyouka to come back, I almost think not.
"How early does she wake up?" I ask the older man as we draw closer, seeing not a hint of tiredness in her pale features.
"I've been asking myself the same question for seven years," the Hatrack answers with an almost understanding sigh.
"Chuuya," Kouyou greets in a voice so warm that I think it would burn if she were to ever level it at me. Her arms were opened in invitation as she briefly pulled the gravity manipulator to her before drawing back and patting the older man on the shoulder. "Why don't you go to the car and finish sobering up?" She phrases it as a question, but the three of us know that it isn't one at all.
The older ability users spared me the smallest of glances before moving to do just that.
Once Chuuya was well out of earshot and inside of the car that the older executive had taken here, Kouyou turned her full attention to me, her gaze much colder than it had been only a moment before. "Dazai," the older woman said in a way of greeting.
"Kouyou," I said in turn, the name stiff on my tongue as a false smile laid thickly there. "You look lovely as ever."
The assassin's pleasant features pulled into something more unsavory as her eyes flicked over my face. "Don't smile around me if it is not genuine, Dazai" the woman commanded in a way that still said she could do nothing if I refused to comply, her voice was stern but fair though.
With a sigh, my face dropped into something devoid of any emotion at all. I looked empty and I knew it, seeming the dark gaze stare back at me in the mirror every day and night when no one else was around to see the green eyes that came with it.
"Fine," I conceded shortly, knowing that it never did do any good to try and pretend with the older executive, not when her eyes were so often as empty as my own. Not when she had been there when I was fifteen and flicked at every touch, and she had been the one to teach me to fight with a katana while laughing as I stubbornly tried to repress my Greek instincts.
"So, what did the lad say when he called you?"
Cutting straight to the point I see.
Sitting down next to the older woman, I ignored the hint of jealousy that rose up within me at the fact that the older man got someone that called him such a thing as she always had as a mentor, when I got needles in my neck and a monster masquerading as a man that took away the first person in Yokohama to care for me as Kouyou did Chuuya.
My gaze was fixed on a small pond filled with koi fish that gleamed in the quickly rising sun as I spoke. "He said he loved me," I admitted. If I were to lie to myself it would be to say that there was no point in attempting to hide what had occurred over something so trivial, but in all honesty I just wanted someone else to know. To make it real in a way that the lies that spilled from lips never could be. If someone else knew as well, then maybe it would be. "He doesn't remember though," I continued, "and likely never will."
"Do you love him?" The question is soft, but not sudden at all, and I know that the other already knows the answer as surely as I do, and has known it since I went to her all those years ago all but begging her to take the younger redhead in so he wouldn't go to the boss.
"Since we were fifteen."
"Then why did you leave him?" Her voice is just as soft when she asks this, but I can hear the underlying anger there, the ice that means she would never look at me again the same way that she did during those long hours sparring together.
And there it is.
The question I had been waiting for since the start.
"How much do you know about the night that I defected?" I ask, still not looking at the older executive, but knowing that I had her full attention with that question alone.
"Only that you apparently blew up the lad's car," the older ability answers easily, sounding almost bored, though I knew she wasn't.
"It was an ugly car," I answered honestly, ignoring the unimpressed look that I was sure to have received from the other. "The mafia grunt, Oda Sakunosuke, he was my friend," I admit, ignoring the surprise that I can feel coming from the other. The Demon Prodigy never would have claimed another as such, and yet here I was doing just that.
"I loved him in the way that Chuuya loves you," I explain, a tightness forming in my chest at saying so after all these years. "I loved him and the boss engineered his death because of that." I finally look at the other, seeing a grief that wasn't my own in her dark eyes, as she remembered something that I didn't know. Someone. "It was test," I tell her bitterly, all but snarling the word. "The only one that I have ever been happy to fail."
The worst thing about voicing it for the first time was that Kouyou didn't even look surprised.
"He asked me to become a good person." Said it might make my world a little more beautiful, and maybe I was tired of living in a world of black. "I didn't ask Chuuya to come because I knew that he would say yes," I explained. "He managed to find a family in the Port Mafia and would have given that up had I asked. I'm never going to ask."
I'm not doing that to him again.
There was a delicate hand on my wrist, a light touch that said more than words ever could.
Thank you for bringing him to me. Thank you for letting me keep him.
I tapped the hand once before moving to stand and leave, only stopping once the older executive spoke once more.
"How much longer do you think you'll love him for?" She asks.
"Till I finally die," I reply without any hesitation to my voice, the answer was simply enough to know. He was the other half of my soul after all.
I could hear Kouyou hum in approval at the response before she herself moved to leave as well, the other just didn't know how close that day might be.
A/N: The author of BSD said that if Dazai had asked Chuuya to leave with him, Chuuya would have done so.