Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Ane-san,” Chuuya wheezes from the floor, “is a cruel, cruel woman.” 

Kouyou’s perfectly painted face appears then, looking down at him with a smile full of benevolence - which is a lie, he knows, because this is the same smile she uses on the people she’s about to kill. He does his best not to make it obvious he’s looking for the telltale golden aura of her Demon, but she doesn’t quite get the chance to threaten him with gilded words.

“Cruuuuel is right!” comes the most grating, obnoxious, stupid, shitty voice ever . Dazai isn’t faring much better than Chuuya, slumped against the wall and breathing heavily, which is at least a tiny bit of consolation in the middle of this hellscape. “Ane-san is cruel for pairing me with the clumsy little shortie!”

"Hah?! Clumsy?! ” Chuuya roars, suddenly shooting up with renewed enthusiasm - he hops gracelessly on one foot to rip his shoe off, exposing his black and blue toes, and hurls the shoe at Dazai’s head. The fiend cackles at him even as he dodges it, his usual shit-eating smirk firmly in place. “Who’s got the injured feet here, huh?! That’s right, not you , ass-”

He bites down so hard on the expletive that he’s sure the other two hear his teeth click, survival instincts reminding him that Kouyou has not magically vanished, and that wise men do not stoop to cussing in front of her.  Settling for a glare that would melt anyone but the stupidly invincible suicide freak into a pile of goeey viscera will have to do for now. 

“Stupid Chuu- ya, ” said suicide freak drawls, still smirking, “that was on purpose! You make such pretty faces when you’re in pain.”

Chuuya can feel himself grinding his teeth so badly he’s going to need dental work. “I’m gonna show you pain, you waste of bandages,” he growls as he stomps over to retrieve his shoe, kicking Dazai in the thigh for good measure on the way.

So when Kouyou sighs in tired resignation and continues their lesson with a, “one day you’re both going to need to actually impress people, and the tango is a perfect dance for that,” Chuuya forces himself to grin and bear Dazai’s smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. He takes Dazai’s hand, grips it tightly enough to feel the satisfying way Dazai’s knuckles grind against each other, and dances - dances, and dances, and continues to dance, until he isn’t sure whether its exertion or the surprise of the impromptu spin that Chuuya effortlessly lifts him into that finally shuts the bastard up.

Whatever it is he and Dazai were, are, will ever be - there aren’t words that describe it. Chuuya’s long since given up on putting words to feelings because he figures: what does it matter? He could spend years attempting to put pen to paper, and he would never find one sentence, one paragraph, one book that would ever adequately describe Dazai. There would never be a library big enough to hold all the failed volumes Chuuya could try to write about Dazai, about the two of them, about the absence of him. It’s one of the few fights he’s not too proud to admit he could never win.

No matter how much time passes after the sticky, humid, sweat-filled summer where they were forced to learn to dance together, Chuuya will always fall instinctively into Dazai’s presence like a tango. It’s a wordless dance between them, an eternal game of cat-and-mouse, that the rest of the world can only watch while the two of them execute the steps. Descriptions aren’t necessary on this stage for two. 

Not even when it becomes a stage for three, seven years and one heartbreak later. 

Soukoku’s real strength is the silent back-and forth, lead-and-follow, of two boys who know each other like their hearts beat to the same tempo. They exchange plenty of heated words, throw them around like poison-tipped darts, mutter them in quieter moments they pretend aren’t happening, but when it comes down to it there simply isn’t a need for them. Dazai strategizes, Chuuya shows up according to the smug bastard’s plans he never bothers sharing with the class, and they once again emerge victorious. People marvel - and shake in their boots - over their synchronization, the way they can communicate without even being near each other.

So Chuuya never needs to hear the unspoken words to know the truth: one day, Dazai will be gone. 

( “You’re going to be the arbiter of your own destruction,” Kouyou tells him a year after those fated dance lessons, “and it will be because you allowed Dazai-kun to cause it.” 

He remembers giving her a well-rehearsed grin, remembers telling her “please, ane-san, the idiot would forget how to tie his shoes without me around,” and he remembers biting back the words I already know that. )

Chuuya is young, and he’s both the immortal God trapped in this fragile vessel and the boy who can only remember the last ten years of his life all at once - he is intimately familiar with the abyss, and seeing it reflected back at him from Dazai’s vacant eyes - well, he can almost call it feeling like home. It’s easy enough to put off thoughts of a future without Dazai in it. 

Then Chuuya is eighteen, and the world he’s worked so hard to build for three years comes crashing down around him. 

The dance stops abruptly, jarred and discordant. There’s no longer an easy rhythm to follow, no promise that Dazai will be there to catch him when he spins out too fast, and Chuuya is left behind to try to learn to move by himself again. 

His ears ring for days in the aftermath of his car exploding. 

He knows what the bomb means.

Goodbye, Chuuya.

There was never anything more between them, not with Dazai constantly teetering on the edge of this world and the next, too fascinated with his own death to notice that Chuuya sometimes dreamed about burning the entire fucking Mafia to the ground if it meant Dazai would choose to live. There had been - moments. Moments where they looked at each other in a way that dared the other to finally breach that thinly-maintained boundary, but that was all they were. Dazai was busy dreaming of dying. Chuuya was busy dreaming of living. 

So it shouldn’t hurt so badly when Dazai leaves. It shouldn’t take months for him to stop catching on the jagged pieces of himself, like shards of broken glass, whenever he hears Dazai’s name. It shouldn’t take so many nights of Kouyou coming over to pry a bottle of wine out of his hand and forcing him to go to bed.

(It shouldn’t take him nearly activating Corruption in the hopes it would make Dazai come back.)

But it does. The hurt never quite goes away, no matter how he tries to hide it behind righteous fury and a vow to kill Dazai if he ever sees him again. He just learns to continue the dance alone, and tells himself that was that. 

Two years after Dazai vanishes, Chuuya meets Kunikida Doppo. It could have been the start to a perfectly romantic story to tell snot-nosed grandchildren, were they different people. He can almost see the movie playing out in his mind: two strangers frantically ducking into the same crowded coffee shop to avoid the sudden late afternoon storm, awkwardly sitting at a table together because there’s no other space - the way Kunikida blushes to his ears when Chuuya “accidentally” brushes their hands together to reach for a napkin. 

It could be harmless. It could even be nice, in another life where romantic comedies are real and Chuuya isn’t one of the most wanted criminals in the world. But it’s been a lonely two years of pretending his other half hadn’t burnt their partnership to the ground with a shitty ass bomb, a lonely two years of casual fucks that mean nothing, and he indulges for a little while. Kunikida doesn’t look at him like an easy lay, or like a boring puzzle solved long ago - Chuuya is willing to give himself a couple of hours to admire a shy boy who’s serious but earnestly kind. A couple of hours to pretend he isn’t anything but a jaded Port Mafia Executive with more blood on his hands than gloves could ever hide.

Of course, the universe continues to get its rocks off at Chuuya’s expense.

Of course, the shy boy has to reveal he is a member of the Armed Detective Agency, of all the rainbows-and-gumdrops places he could work for in comparison to the mafioso across from him. 

Of. Fucking. Course. 

Chuuya closes his eyes, groans inwardly, and concocts an exit plan that minimizes damages. Now that he knows who Kunikida is, he can’t leave without at least turning this into a token fight. There are Mafia eyes everywhere, and he can’t be accused of clandestine meetings and betrayals so close to the two year anniversary of losing the closest thing he’s ever had to a friend. He's been pretending not to notice the extra eyes on him lately.

“It’s a shame you’re so handsome,” he sighs, even as he determines the best way to escape the shop. “That ADA holier-than-thou righteousness really turns me off.” 

He has the distinct feeling Kunikida is pulling his punches during the scuffle that ensues. That was fine: Chuuya is too. And when word reaches him later that both of them sent checks to the shop to pay for the damages, he allows himself a smile.

Kunikida doesn’t enter his life again until after Dazai does. 

Four years of anger and hurt later, and Dazai is - different, and yet infuriatingly the same. Chuuya isn’t going to tell the smug bastard he looks better without the dark shadows of the Mafia clinging to him, not when he wants to knock his teeth down his throat, but he suspects Dazai can hear the unspoken words anyway.

You look happier. I’m glad.

It should piss him off, that even after four years he’s being pulled back into a familiar step sequence with Dazai, but he can’t find it in himself to care. 

Dazai Osamu is alive and in Yokohama. It’s a problem for the Port Mafia.

Dazai Osamu is alive and in Yokohama. It’s a relief for the man who loves him. 

Nakahara Chuuya breathes deeply for the first time in four years.

It’s less a surprise and more a formality when he finds Dazai lazing across his couch.

“You never changed the lock,” Dazai says in a deceptively mild tone, eyes tracking Chuuya like prey as he comes in the door. “Is it possible Chuuya missed me?” For once, it’s hard to tell if he’s being spiteful or curious.

Could you miss me, after everything I did?

After the shit day he’s had, Chuuya doesn’t rise to the futile challenge of reading Dazai. He doesn’t feel particularly inclined to rise to the bait being dangled in front of his face, either, unable to find the necessary anger just this once. Instead, he aims a half-hearted punch at his former partner’s head as he walks by him, only huffs in amusement when Dazai manages to block his hand without having to look, and continues into the kitchen.

Digging for the leftovers he’s glad he’d already hidden at the very back of the fridge in anticipation of Dazai showing up uninvited and rummaging through his kitchen, Chuuya finally graces him with a response: “They haven’t yet invented a lock that could keep you out, you shithead, or I would have put five of it on that door.”

Of course I missed you.

Welcome back.

It’s a familiar and foreign feeling all at once, sitting on his island shoving cold takeout into his mouth, when Dazai finally sidles into the kitchen and leans against the counter across from him. There’s a purpose to him being here besides being obnoxious, but Chuuya doesn’t ask - he stares resolutely into eyes that somehow seemed to have lightened several shades over the years, and waits. 

Dazai says nothing, and if Chuuya didn’t know him better, he’d say the other man looks - lost. The silence stretches between them like a bowstring that’s begging to be released, and the tension is disconcerting and uncomfortable. He waits long enough that he finally raises an eyebrow and talks with a mouth so full of food that he can almost sense Kouyou fainting from here. “Look, shitty Dazai, just because I aged well doesn’t mean I wanna sit here while you admire me. The fuck do you want?”

“There’s a war coming.”

“Eh? What, those Americans? You broke into my apartment to tell me about some rich assholes who are gonna throw the usual temper tantrum before they get crushed under -” 

"Chuuya."

And it’s something about how Dazai says his name, almost reverently, almost like he’s pleading, that finally gets Chuuya to set aside the greasy takeout container and really, truly look at the man across from him.

And it comes as natural as breathing, the way he sinks back into the familiar weight of Dazai’s gaze. And it doesn’t take words to understand what’s different about this new and improved version of the former Mafia Executive. 

This has very little to do with The Guild, and he feels his dinner settle in his stomach like a leaden weight. He’s seen Dazai angry, victorious, tired, amused, disappointed, pleased, irritated. He’s seen him laugh over dead bodies and stupid jokes alike. When Dazai left him four years ago, Chuuya was reasonably certain he’d seen every emotion the other man was capable of.

Tonight, for the first time, he notices that Dazai looks worried. Worried, more specifically, about him. 

Please, Chuuya, stay safe.

He knows better than to ask what it is Dazai is seeing on that distant horizon, what this war is going to be and why it has him upset. Instead, he’s tired enough and Dazai is tense enough, he pulls out an old trick in his How To Handle Dazai Osamu: A Guide For The Hopelessly Devoted manual. A trick so rare that they’d both pretended it never happened each and every time, and like they hadn’t wanted more of it.

“Alright,” he says slowly, agreeing to Dazai’s silent plea. “Alright,” he repeats, carefully holding out a hand in an invitation that he waits for the other man to take him up on.

I understand.

Dazai hears what he doesn’t say, and he recognizes the wordless invitation for what it is, and it’s only a matter of seconds before he’s crossed the distance between them to lean against Chuuya. And Chuuya, who is stupidly willing to be led once more into a dance that will only end with him shattered and alone, wraps his arms around him in a way that felt forbidden four years ago. 

I’m not going anywhere, Dazai.

Three things happen the next time he meets Kunikida Doppo.

It was supposed to be a simple enough mission, a walk in the park as Chuuya still works to regain his full strength after using Corruption against the Octopus of Nightmares. The Guild is defeated, but in their wake the lowest insects of the Yokohama underworld brazenly scuttle about, trying to claim territory that was never theirs to claim. Chuuya might have lost a lot of his worth to Mori the night Dazai left the organization, but even now there’s not a more quick and effective method than sending Chuuya in to brutally crush a group to remind everyone else that the Port Mafia still owns these streets. 

Simple. Easy. Home by dinner for once, and maybe he’ll finally have a chance to do something normal. 

This first thing that happens is this:

He’s going through a mental list of the movies he’s been meaning to watch as he kicks in the door to the group’s hideout. This will be so fast, it won’t require any real att - 

“What the hell are you doing here?!” He bellows when he realizes he’s already been beaten to the punch. There are fifteen lowlifes tied up and groaning pathetically at Chuuya’s feet, and standing so tall above them that he has to grudgingly lift his head to meet his eyes is the ADA’s pet nerd. He decidedly ignores how handsome Kunikida looks with a little bit of blood dripping from a split lip. “This isn’t your Agency’s business, piss off!” 

Kunikida scoffs at him like a misbehaving schoolboy. “They were sending threats to the residents of this neighborhood. Their leader has an ability. We were called in.” His tone is gratingly rational and logical, and he can hear the i f you actually used your brain, you could have figured that out for yourself in it. Dazai would approve.

“Ehh? Don’t you assholes have more important business to attend to, like helping little old ladies cross the street and rescuing cats from trees?” The nearest loser to him groans at how loud Chuuya’s voice is, so he does him the favor of kicking him in the head to knock him out for a nap. “Look, Kunikida-kun, I can be reasonable here. Leave them to me, the Mafia’s got a message to send.” 

“No. The police can have them.” I’m not going to leave them with you to die.

“Yeah? You think the police are gonna get here in time?” You sure you wanna try to save them from me?

It should feel inconvenient that the Mafia and Agency are still in the muddy waters of a recent alliance, and that Mori has prohibited true violence. He should feel collared, frustrated he can’t just call on his control of gravity to make this a quick and dirty fight.

But he grins in spite of himself as he watches Kunikida adopt a fighter’s stance. He’s learned that the other man is the Agency’s best martial artist outside Fukuzawa himself, and it’s been awhile since he was really challenged in an old-fashioned fight. Chuuya falls into the stance as easily as he once fell into a dance with a different kind of opponent, and he’s willing to overlook the soreness in his limbs for a chance to pretty that too-perfect face up with some more blood. 

They’ll both walk out of this alive. All that’s on the line is pride and the insignificant lives of the insects at their feet. It excites him in a way little else has lately, and he can see behind the glare of Kunikida’s glasses that maybe - just maybe - he’s feeling the same way.

May the best man win.

Kunikida proves to be an excellent match for his skills, and Chuuya grins wider at the simple delight of it. It’s ludicrous, stepping in and out of his opponent’s space while dancing around the living obstacles at their feet, and it’s so entirely beneath him to behave like he’s a fifteen year old again, but he can admit - he’s having fun. The tall, blond, stick-in-the-mud doubtless isn’t seeing a spar over others’ lives as fun, but hey. He at least looks like he’s interested in the challenge. 

The second thing that happens is this:

“Kunikida-kkuuun, I’m here! I got distracted by a beautiful woman on the street who I thought might want to die with me-”

And Chuuya is distracted enough by the sudden intrusion of that voice into his happy place that he falters, and then Kunikida’s kick lands squarely in his chest, sends him barrelling over a table until he crash-lands on the convenient padding of one of his would-be victims.

"YOU!" they both yell at once, as Chuuya jerks away from the stranger under him and Kunikida is swiveling to face the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!”

“Why are you always late ?!” 

“Go away, you shitty bastard!”

“Get to work, you lazy waste of space!”

The look of genuine surprise on Dazai’s face is priceless enough that it’s worth the fact Chuuya’s definitely not leaving this room as the victor now. It’s even worth spitting out the greasy, lanky hair of the man he’d landed on to watch his former partner rapidly assess the scene in front of him. 

And he can’t help it.

Chuuya laughs, wild and free in a way he hasn’t in so long, and he doesn’t even care that two of his so-called enemies are witnessing it. He keeps laughing even as he pushes himself to his feet, even though his body hurts worse than it did earlier, even though he’s wheezing through it, and he revels in the way both Kunikida and Dazai look at him with very interested expressions. It’s almost tempting to stay just for a chance to admire them both at once, but he’s still got a date with Netflix and a good bottle of red. 

“Well, kids,” he coughs out around his abused airways, brushing dirt off himself, “it’s been real, but I’ve got better things to do than listen to your old married couple squabbling.”

He doesn’t miss the way they both tense at that, like they’re about to fervently deny the accusation - or, he thinks as he looks at Kunikida - like he’s never realized that’s what has been going on between them. For such a bright man, Kunikida apparently hasn’t noticed the chemistry he has with Dazai and just what that might mean. He’s brought back to memories of a coffee shop on a random street on a random day two years ago, and the boy who blushed at a brush of hands. 

This isn’t the first time he’s noticed that Dazai and Kunikida are now caught up in their own kind of dance. He’s seen their partnership in action, and he can privately admit it’s a good match. It reminds him in some ways of the old days where Dazai danced with Chuuya, but it’s a gentler pace. More of a waltz than a frenzied, complicated tango, to reflect how Dazai’s sharp edges have dulled into something smoother. Kunikida doesn’t seem to realize yet he’s been caught by the hand and led gracefully around the dance floor.

A lesser man would be jealous, but Chuuya was sixteen years old when he fell in love for the first and only time. Sixteen years old and it should have been giddy, innocent, exciting - but love was synonymous with heartbreak for him the day he realized it. 

Dazai was never his, and he’s always known it. This version of Dazai seems capable of more feeling, more caring, than the lost boy Chuuya once knew, but Chuuya has even less right to this happier version of the shade whose unfathomable eyes he’d once called home.

No, Chuuya isn’t jealous. He’s perfectly content with the stinging ache of if you love something, let it go . 

The third and final thing that happens is this:

Dazai catches his shoulder as he walks past him to leave. Chuuya immediately opens his mouth to cuss him out, but something in Dazai’s expression makes him slowly close it. Dazai smiles that dangerously confident, handsome smile he always used on Chuuya when he’d caught him out in something, and then he pointedly looks over at Kunikida in a way that makes Chuuya feel compelled to look too.

He looks at the impressive figure Kunikida cuts in this dingy room, at how he’s somehow silhouetted beautifully against the washed out fluorescent lighting, at how he towers over Chuuya in a way that he isn’t ashamed to say makes him want to climb the oblivious bastard like a tree and never leave. The room fades away until there’s nothing but the searing heat of Dazai’s hand on his shoulder, and Kunikida’s proud stature, and suddenly Chuuya realizes what Dazai is trying to tell him.

Look at my new partner, Chuuya. Isn’t he beautiful?

Do you think you can keep up?

Chuuya swallows thickly when he realizes he hasn’t been discarded like an old plaything, but instead has been invited into a very new, electrifying type of dance for three. He works hard to smother the heat in his face, and then composes himself because he refuses to let shitty fuckin’ Dazai have the last laugh. 

He steps away from Dazai’s familiar heat, then shamelessly runs his eyes over Kunikida. His back is turned to Chuuya and Dazai, muttering to himself about schedules and useless partners who victimize women as he double checks the captured criminals’ restraints , so he doesn’t notice the way Chuuya’s gaze deliberately lands on his ass and stays there for a moment too long as he admires the shape of it.

Then, he turns his eyes back to Dazai and returns the cocky idiot’s smirk in kind. He doesn’t miss the way Dazai’s eyes have widened, and he pats his cheek as he finally slips by him to call headquarters and tell them the mission was a wash.

Don’t you think you should be asking if you can keep up with me, Dazai ?

It’s almost frighteningly easy to find Kunikida’s number. He’s been itching for a rematch since that day in the hideout - which he tells himself has nothing to do with newly developing interest - and he finally feels fully up to snuff for it. He doesn’t bother to include his name in the single text he sends.

9:37 AM
TO: K

Rematch? 11 PM tomorrow.  

An address to an abandoned warehouse far enough on the outskirts of the city that even the Port Mafia has no claim to it. 

Chuuya doesn’t get a response, but he feels that’s as good as a yes.

Sure enough, it’s 10:58 PM when Kunikida enters the building. He’s looking around warily, knowing better than to fully trust a Mafia Executive, and Chuuya’s smile is almost fond as he waves from where he’s been waiting up on one of the rafters. “So kind of you to honor my invitation, Kunikida-kun.”

Kunikida looks like he doesn’t quite understand himself why he showed up tonight, and he watches Chuuya closely as he hops off the beam and floats easily down to the ground. There’s a telltale wetting of his lips that draws Chuuya’s attention, a nervous tic that he suspects has less to do with a fear of danger and more a fear of giving into something he’s been trying to deny himself. It should be alarming how much it makes him want to discover what Kunikida tastes like.

Chuuya could reassure him that he has no intention of trying to corrupt his idealistic soul. He could tell Kunikida that he thinks his bright-eyed, bushy-tailed savior complex is both nauseating and familiar, because he understands giving everything to protect the people you care about. Chuuya could talk at length about how he isn’t someone to crush another person’s light and happiness like a cigarette butt, even if he thinks those things will never belong to him. That was much more fitting of someone like Akutagawa, and not everyone in the Mafia is as feral as the boy he’s been trying to rehabilitate after long years of Dazai’s handiwork. 

He doesn’t, though. Kunikida is here, against what he seems to think is his better judgment, and he’ll let the other man figure out on his own whether or not he thinks it was a mistake to show up. 

There’s a silent agreement between them as they make eye contact, assess each other, analyze strengths and weaknesses and decide on who will attack first. No abilities.

They’ll both walk out of this alive. 

Sparring with Kunikida is nothing like dancing, he discovers the longer the match goes on. Without any stakes, they both take time to enjoy the fight - they savor it, languid and slow, like good wine and nowhere to be in the morning. It’s a push-pull, a give and take, and there is no leader here to guide well-practiced choreography. The unknown quality of it hums under his skin like the first growth of spring, like new possibilities and new hopes that he knows he’s unwise to indulge in.

Chuuya seems destined to always indulge in Kunikida. He doesn’t find himself minding.

“Who taught you?” Kunikida says as they step apart, circle each other like very curious sharks in the water, and his tone is approving. Like he’s decided Chuuya is worthy of his time, of his energy, and isn’t that an interesting kind of warmth blooming in his chest at the sound of it. “I’ve never met someone who could keep up with what Shachou taught me.”

"Taught me?” Chuuya mirrors, a cocksure smile on his face. “Don’t be silly.”

The smile widens into a grin as he braces himself on his back foot, prepares to launch. “I taught myself.” 

It’s simple enough to use Kunikida’s surprise against him, just the same as had been done to him last time. Only this time, no one goes flying across the room - and this time, if Dazai is there, he’s going to throw the asshole into the sea and tell him to choke and drown. 

This time, Chuuya has Kunikida pinned on his stomach under him, one arm held up and back to discourage resistance. He’s got his head turned to glare up at Chuuya for not getting off of him immediately, and it takes him a moment to realize why.

“Something the matter, Kunikida-kun?” he says with the same deceptively mild tone Dazai used on him. His smile could have been innocent, but the way his eyes travel down to where he’s straddled over Kunikida’s ass gives him away. He didn’t mean to land in this position, but - well, he’s not above enjoying the furious blush that’s traveling from his opponent’s face to his ears, and undoubtedly under the collar of his shirt. He’s seen enough men under him enough times to recognize that Kunikida is enjoying this, but there’s inexperienced embarrassment overriding the pleasure.

Bless his heart. Dazai clearly hasn’t made any overt moves on him yet, and it's obvious enough he isn't sure how to handle this situation. It feels unfair to push him farther past his comfort zone tonight.

So Chuuya chuckles and relents, standing up gracefully and offering Kunikida a hand up with a simple, “you need to ice your shoulder when you get home.” There’s a brief flicker of surprise on the other man’s face, and Chuuya shrugs with a genuine smile. He can see Kunikida’s question before he asks it, lets him ask it anyway: "You're going to just to let me go?"

“We aren’t all as scary as the bedtime stories I’m sure you ADA members share at sleepovers.”

He collects his coat from where he’s folded it neatly on a rusted chair nearby, shrugs it back on, and winks at Kunikida as he heads for the exit. He doesn't miss the sharp inhale that earns him, and Chuuya isn't above adding a little more sway to his hips so that Kunikida will remembering this night for weeks.

“You're a smart one, Kunikida-kun, so here's a nice challenge for you: Is it possible that you and the big bad Mafia Executive are fighting for the same thing?” Chuuya calls over his shoulder, turning his head just enough to grin at him and not stopping to take in his expression. "You've got my number if you're looking for a rematch!"

The next two times, Chuuya loses, and he doesn’t mind - he just admires those green eyes up close.

When he sees Dazai again, he’s floating like the world’s tackiest rendition of Snow White inside the remains of Shibusawa’s dragon. It’s so ridiculously contrived, setting him up like some hapless Prince Charming in the idiot’s latest scheme to save the city by trusting Chuuya to understand his cues, that even if he wasn’t consumed by Corruption he would have socked him in the mouth. 

Now it’s thirty-six hours later, and Chuuya is recovering in his apartment. The pain is worse than usual this time, probably because he ripped a skyscraper out of the ground and forced a giant dragon to deepthroat it, and it’s unfortunate because he’s been left to lick his wounds alone. He privately craves the way Kouyou used to take care of him whenever he was dragged back from a battlefield post-Corruption, but the aftermath of Shibusawa’s destruction means all hands on deck. Except Chuuya, who Mori took some version of pity on by telling him to go sleep it off until he was well enough to give his report. Akutagawa was good enough to keep his mouth shut as he helped him hobble into the safety of his apartment, and then he was alone. 

Just Chuuya, the God lurking under his skin, and the ticking of the clock.

He hadn’t made it off the sofa at all yesterday, slept through most of it still fully clothed with his face buried in the cushions. He’d pretended he didn’t desperately need company in moments like this, after Arahabaki was done taking control of their shared body and Chuuya is left to remember how the human pieces of him slot together. And when he couldn’t pretend, he slept more.

Today makes yesterday feel like a pleasant vacation. He’s nauseous with pain and hunger both, his ears are ringing like a gun was fired by his head, and every inch of his skin feels too tight, like invisible wounds are knitting themselves back together. He can’t do anything but pathetically brace himself against the walls to stumble and fall into the bathroom.

Between the tinnitus and the miserable sounds of him retching acid into the toilet, he doesn’t think he should be blamed for not hearing the front door open and the footsteps in the hallway. 

Dazai’s hand lands in his hair, and he startles so badly he manages to slam his head against the toilet seat, and then Dazai is laughing softly at his expense while kneeling next to him. Chuuya groans pitifully and reflexively tries to punch him for scaring the last scraps of life out of him, but he discovers it’s too much of an effort to make a fist so he gives up on that and tells himself he’ll cash a rain check later. “Can’t you go laugh at something else,” he rasps out, “like a kicked puppy?”

“But Chuuya! I’m looking at a kicked puppy right now.” Dazai’s voice is strangely - soft, and quiet, and then he’s tipping Chuuya’s chin up with uncharacteristically gentle fingers to study his face. Chuuya, for his part, squints against the light and wheezes from the pain of coughing up two days’ worth of bile. He’s sure it looks incredibly sexy and not at all mortifyingly hideous. 

Whatever Dazai sees, it causes him to sigh and shake his head - definitely not sexy, then - and Chuuya finds himself being encouraged to his feet. It requires him to lean an embarrassing amount of his weight against Dazai, but they manage to work in-step enough to get him to the bedroom. Dazai carefully deposits him on the bed, rummages through Chuuya’s drawers to find clean clothes - catches on a breath when he notices the well-worn t-shirt he’s pulled out. 

“This was mine,” he says in that same unusually soft voice. He brings the stolen shirt and clean sweats to Chuuya, who suddenly hopes he’s still looking miserably ill enough that it’s covering the flush in his cheeks. Most of Dazai’s belongings he’d left behind were destroyed, but Chuuya managed to sneak this one memento out. He runs a sore thumb over the faded lettering, remembering the mission six years ago that required them to blend in with the kids scurrying around the boardwalk. Dazai bought the first t-shirt he could at a tacky, overpriced souvenir ship and complained the whole time about how stupid it was.

Of course, Dazai could never blend in with normal kids, even in civilian clothing, but it was the sight of him softened by the golden warmth of fading afternoon light in this ugly ass shirt that sealed Chuuya’s fate. Dazai had been wearing this atrocious crime against fashion the day he realized he was in love with him.

“Yeah, well,” Chuuya finally says as he forces his fingers to start undoing the unbuttons of the vest he hasn’t bothered to take off in two days, “I was gonna cut it into washrags, but I forgot to.” 

I couldn’t give you up completely.

Dazai’s indiscernible stare is familiar, and he ignores it as he continues the frustratingly slow process of getting his damn clothes off. He’s more likely to get answers out of these buttons than the other man, and eventually Dazai leaves him to it for the moment. 

By the time Dazai graces him with his presence again, Chuuya’s face is mostly buried in his pillow. He watches his home invader with one eye, sees him hesitate before offering Chuuya a glass of water and the painkillers he must have gone hunting for. His body feels as heavy as the skyscraper he’d wielded two days ago as he forces himself up long enough to take the pills and chug the water, and then he’s down for the count with no plans to sit up for another six months. 

“Thanks.” For coming to check on me.

Dazai must take this as some sort of permission, because he moves to sit on the bed next to Chuuya. There’s a careful, deliberate half-inch between them. It’s a courtesy - an offering of comfort, but without rendering Chuuya defenseless by touch. 

He’s always been defenseless when it comes to Dazai regardless. He hears himself laughing with a voice so hoarse it ought to belong to his downstairs neighbor who’s been smoking a pack a day since mankind first invented the wheel, and he spares them both the pointless words - Chuuya just picks up Dazai’s hand and drops it into his hair, and Dazai quickly gets the hint. He can’t hold back the relieved sigh as his former partner starts rubbing soothing circles into his scalp. 

When Chuuya wakes up it’s dark outside, but Dazai is still next to him. One hand is still in his hair, the other holding the phone whose screen is the only source of light in the room. It highlights Dazai’s tranquil expression in a way that feels like it could be poetic if he were in the mood to write. He closes his eyes again and listens to Dazai’s thumb tapping at his phone, listens to him quietly humming the first few bars of his stupid double suicide song, and he would have been content to leave it like this for awhile.

Dazai, of course, goes and ruins his peace and quiet. 

“Ah, is the prince finally awake? I was getting worried that I’d have to find someone who loves him enough to kiss him!” 

“Fuck off, loser.” He shifts his head closer to Dazai’s thigh. “It’s not like I asked you to come over.”

Dazai doesn’t seem inclined to continue the argument, but Chuuya knows the type of heavy silence hanging between them well - it’s the same silence that permeated the room the night he asked Chuuya to watch out for himself. Chuuya is too comfortable to pry the words out of him, and so it takes an impressively long time for Dazai to break open the dam on his own.

“Kunikida-kun was worried about you. I only came so he’d stop fretting himself into gray hair. More than he already does, anyway.”

Ahhh, this familiar game. A lie cleverly covering a truth. I was worried about you, too. Chuuya can’t help a fond chuckle. 

“Was he?” he replies, humoring Dazai’s antics and ignoring the way news that Kunikida has been thinking about him makes him feel pleasantly warm all over. “How very thoughtful of him.” And you .

“I told him I’d tried to kill Chuuya at least a thousand times in the past and it never worked, so he shouldn’t worry, but then he just yelled at me.” There’s more to that story, he can tell, but Chuuya lets it slide.

He knows Dazai's roundabout way of speaking better than anyone, and so he knows what he really wants is to discuss the Kunikida-shaped elephant in the room. It’s not fantastic timing, but nothing in their lives ever has been. So he yawns, stretches until his joints pop, then decides to go right for Dazai’s jugular.

“You need to tell him, you know.”

“Tell him what?” Dazai asks with feigned ignorance.

“That you care about him, dumbass.” Chuuya pauses, then adds with wicked mischief in his voice, “or, I mean, you could tell him you wanna bounce on his dick like a pogo stick. However you think is best, Casanova.” 

The pillow smothering him for a solid minute is not at all a surprise, and he finds himself laughing the whole time. Dazai, he thinks, is trying to hide a laugh behind vivid threats and insults to Chuuya’s person. This time, when they quiet down, it doesn’t feel nearly so tense.

This time, Dazai isn’t hiding what he means when he asks, “but what if he isn’t into men?”

Chuuya’s reaction is more of an inelegant guffaw than it is a laugh. “Trust me,” he says with all the mock solemnity he can muster, patting Dazai’s knee, “he is very into men.” He doesn’t elaborate on the night in a warehouse where Kunikida blushed so prettily under him. “Men including your shitty self, though don’t ask me why. He cares about you in the same way you care about him. It doesn’t take your little detective whizkid to see that.” 

Another long stretch of silence that neither of them feels the need to fill. Chuuya is half-asleep again by the time Dazai quietly says:

“And what if he cares about you too?” What if I care about you too?

This is the kind of dangerous territory that Chuuya forced himself not to tread six years ago, and he isn’t sure it’s safe to tread it now. Not after Dazai left him so easily once. Not when he’s being asked to consider trusting two men with a heart he’s been shielding for so long. Two men whose livelihoods are fundamentally opposed to his own.

“You tryin’ to have your cake and eat it too, greedy bastard?” is the response he settles on while he pushes himself up onto his elbows to look at Dazai better in the bluish glow. “Just for once, stop overthinking and planning. You can’t strategize how he feels about you, or the baggage I’d come with.” 

Buried in there is the point he trusts Dazai to find: He’s the safer choice. Choose him, and I’ll be happy for you from a distance.

The silence hangs between them again until Chuuya’s stomach growls loudly enough to wake up the whole damn city. 

“Come on,” he sighs, sliding out of bed to hobble with somewhat-improved grace into the kitchen. “Now I really want some fucking cake.” 

Falling in love with Dazai had been beautifully painful - a summer afternoon with tacky t-shirts and sun-warmed skin, and the sense it would hurt less to drown in the bottomless ocean under their feet than to keep drowning in winter-chilled brown eyes.

Falling in love with Kunikida goes a little like this:

He wakes up at seven in the morning to loud banging on his front door, and a too-cheery stranger’s voice calling out “delivery!”. Dazai is gone, but he’s too half-awake to care, instead stumbling to the door to answer and stop the goddamn knocking.

“I didn’t order any damn food,” he snaps preemptively as he nearly yanks the door off its hinges. To his credit, the delivery boy only smiles at him in spite of the fact Chuuya must look like he went on a week-long bender. 

“He said you’d say that!” he says with the same fake enthusiasm, practically forcing the paper bag and steaming cup of coffee into his hands. Before Chuuya can even ask who the hell he’s talking about, the kid is walking down the hall and calling behind him: “Guy who ordered it said to keep his name anonymous!”

What kinda cheesy ass James Bond movie shit is this ? 

While he’s debating if there’s a bomb buried under the unfairly deliciously looking and undoubtedly poisoned pastries, Chuuya hears his phone ding at him. He grunts, gingerly sets the death trap down, and blanches when he reads the message.

7:06 AM
FROM: K

My useless coworker said these were your favorite. Enjoy the coffee.

Chuuya should be going to work today. He’s only now feeling like he was run over by a truck instead of a freight train, but he doesn’t like to keep Mori waiting. He’d already planned it out: he would kick open the door to the Executives’ conference room, loudly complain he’d been given abandonment issues these past two days to mask his continued pain with bravado, and survive the rest of the day on coffee and willpower. 

Instead, he bites his lip on a smile and slides down the wall with all the giddiness of a schoolgirl invited on her first date. 

He feels something vibrant and bright blossom inside himself, effortlessly weaving itself into the same space in his heart that Dazai occupies, until the two become indistinguishable from one another. 

Work can wait one more day.

Hours later, Chuuya is cocooned in blankets on his sofa, finishing off the last of the pastries with a James Bond movie playing in the background. 

He’s paying more attention to the search results staring back at him from his tablet, and the one word that finally answers all of his questions.

Polyamory.

Gone are thoughts of tangos, and waltzes, and the unscripted fluidity of a good fight. 

There’s nothing to compare this feeling to.  He feels completely unmoored without the familiar mental references he's used to frame his life, so well-worn and rehearsed they're almost clinical.  He wonders if Kunikida and Dazai are feeling this way, if both of them are as paralyzed by the same fear of a potentially gruesome crash-landing after floating too far away from the known and familiar.

Chuuya exhales until his lungs burn for want of oxygen and picks up his phone.

He's the only one of them that's never had to fear the fall in his life.

4:32 PM
TO: K

You wanna help me get one up on that shitty coworker of yours, handsome?

The next night, at 8:11 PM, Dazai saunters into Chuuya’s apartment like he owns it after being invited to watch movies with him. 

“Chuuuyyaa!” he calls out in his favorite fake singsong. “I-”

Whatever he was going to say is cut off when Kunikida emerges from the kitchen. Chuuya doesn’t need to see the moment to feel Dazai’s shock. “You’re eleven minutes late,” Kunikida deadpans at Dazai, though Chuuya can hear the suppressed smile in his voice. He’s cute when he’s pretending to be serious instead of the pleasant kind of nervous. 

“Come on, you know him,” Chuuya adds as he joins them in the living room. If sensing Dazai’s surprise was fantastic, nothing beats seeing it up close, and he grins at him while getting up on his tiptoes to hook his chin on Kunikida’s shoulder from behind. He feels the way the other man shudders at this barest hint of contact, and Chuuya hums in pleased interest as he wraps his arms around Kunikida’s waist. He’s going to be fun to turn into a begging mess under him, one of these days. 

Dazai was once the beginning and the end of Chuuya’s belief in love. Now, looking into softer eyes that feel like safe shores instead of a slow drowning, his own grin turns into something more gentle than he’d ever thought possible as he imagines a new beginning with both these men.

“He’s always late to everything that matters.”