Chapter Text
Best friends is too simple a term to squash the entire dynamic of Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya within.
Sure, they’ve known each other since they were children, and they’re each other’s #1 on their best friend lists on Snapchat, and Chuuya’s been seen one too many times in his hoodies. People have also noticed how Dazai’s main muse for his volunteer hobby of polaroid photographer is the redhead himself.
But…
It’s not exactly a best friend thing to pick on each other almost every time they’re near one another.
Or to pull relentless and borderline heartless pranks every single week.
Or to punch each other (though the punching is usually from Chuuya’s side, because he’s much more short-tempered than his ‘best friend’).
And—dare say—if you ever make the mistake of calling them best friends to their faces, you might even witness a rare moment in which they team up, and beat your ass into dust with their own hands. And they’ll pummel you and pummel you, as if the label is an insult to their entire existence.
So, yeah—people don’t exactly call them that anymore.
At first, they changed it from best friends to enemies, but that didn’t exactly work either, because they found Chuuya tending to Dazai’s sprained wrist that one time he fell off a tree that he was too stubborn to not climb. He even went so far as to call the ambulance in the midst of his worry, but the school nurse came to the scene quickly, and whisked Dazai away.
And Chuuya just so happened to stay by his side the entire time.
So then it went from enemies to, well… lovers.
Only because a first-year said she ‘shipped them’ online, which just created a whole new branch of rumours, and then someone even had the fucking nerve to photoshop Dazai stroking Chuuya’s hair.
The picture’s long gone now.
Because a certain redhead kind of beat the person responsible unconscious.
And he got suspended, but it was worth it. And they deserved it. Because, honestly—who’s crazy enough to ship two real life men who very clearly hate each other? And then even go so far as to photoshop their disgusting delusions into an uncomfortable picture that honestly just looked so fake? (Chuuya also happened to get pissed at Dazai when he started criticising the lighting in the picture and the unrelated looks on their faces rather than the very obvious gay position they were in—he didn’t exactly have his priorities straight.)
So, the lovers term was extinguished far quicker than the previous two. It’s all but extinct now, because after what happened to the person responsible for the picture, no one had the guts to mention that term even behind the two men’s backs.
From lovers, it kind of went to rivals. Which is the most accurate one out of all of the ones so far, but people didn’t really like the sound of it, so it didn’t get too popular.
Nowadays, it doesn’t tend to hover around friends, rivals, or even the specific hate-each-other-but-are-sometimes-seen-caring-for-each-other-and-doing-best-friend-things.
Basically, people don’t really but a label on them anymore.
It got exhausting.
So, they’re kind of just…
Dazai and Chuuya.
Chuuya and Dazai.
Whatever way you want. It doesn’t really matter.
“Hurry the fuck up!” Chuuya yells loudly, picking up another rock from the floor and hurling it into Dazai’s window, creating another one of many scratches on the glass. In fact, over the years, his window’s become so scratched by the rocks that it’s hard to find a spot in it where you can look out and see the world clearly.
One time, Chuuya hurled a rock that was a little too big a little too hard, and it cracked a small hole in the window that Dazai’s father duct taped all the while glaring at a sheepish redhead stood in the corner of the room.
And to be honest, Chuuya is so loud and angry that Dazai’s entire family (which is just him, his father, and his little sister) use him as their alarms. They used to have real alarms; Mori had one on his phone, Elise had an alarm clock on her bedside table, and Dazai just trusted himself to wake up on time, which he never did. But then with the way that Chuuya would start screaming at Dazai just five minutes after their alarms went off, they realised they might as well use his loud ass voice to wake up rather than go through the strenuous task of listening to such unpleasant ringing first thing when they wake up.
Not that Chuuya’s screaming is pleasant either, but it’s better. Somewhat.
And, just like an alarm clock, he doesn’t stop until you tell him to.
“Dazai!” Chuuya yells, picking up another deliciously perfect rock from the ground. “Get up! If I get late because of your stupid ass, then—”
“Shut up!” one of the neighbours yells, leaning out of her window, glaring at the redhead that ruins her sleep every single day for the sole purpose of waking her neighbour up.
Chuuya pauses, and then twists on his feet to face the woman, even glaring at her. “Why don’t you?” he shoots back loudly. Then, he lifts the rock to her sight. “You want some too, Margaret?”
The woman, whose name definitely isn’t Margaret, gapes at the redhead. “Don’t you threaten me, boy-o!” she yells. Chuuya notices the bags under her eyes, and he has enough shame to feel bad for it, but there’s not exactly a way to solve the situation other than this. “I’ll call the police on you!”
Chuuya scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Wouldn’t be my first time,” he snaps before turning back to Dazai’s window and hurling the rock at it. “Dazai!”
“I swear to—” non-Margaret yells, cutting herself off and then turning to stare at Dazai’s father’s window instead. “Mori! Mori! Get this redhead off your porch for once, will you? I need my sleep!”
After a few moments, the window for Mori’s room slides open, and a very groggy forty-one-year-old leans out, watching Chuuya for a few seconds and then turning to look at non-Margaret poking her head out of her bedroom.
“What do you want, Margaret?” Mori asks, his voice rough and deep and very sleep-induced.
Non-Margaret gapes. “My name isn’t Margaret, Mori! You know that. Get the boy off your porch!”
Mori glances at Chuuya, who raises his eyebrows at him, and then the older man scoffs. “Trust me, I’ve tried,” he says, leaning back and shutting his window.
Whilst he draws the curtains, non-Margaret gapes further at Mori’s very obvious evasiveness and then glares at the redhead. “I’ll get you one day!” she snaps, closing her window with a slam.
Chuuya sighs exasperatedly and turns back to Dazai’s window. He pauses, for a moment, when he finds the brunette stood by his window, staring at him. His annoying brown blob of hair is as messy as ever, and his hoodie hugs his body. The sleeves have been rolled up to his elbows, so you can see his bandages, and when Chuuya looks back up at his face, he’s smirking.
Whilst Dazai opens his window, the redhead eyes his hoodie.
A teal colour, huh?
Chuuya doesn’t have a teal colour version of Dazai’s hoodies. He needs to get it. He needs to.
And even though it surprisingly goes well with Dazai’s dark eyes and hair combination, Chuuya doesn’t really care, because c’mon, it’ll look way better on him.
“Wow, Chuuya,” Dazai starts, lips still pulled into a smirk as he puts his forearms on the window ledge and leans out. “You really haven’t grown since I last saw you, huh?”
Chuuya clenches his jaw, his chest burning with pure rage. “Maybe because you just saw me yesterday, you fucking mackerel!” he snaps, throwing the rock and purposely missing, watching as it slams against the brick wall next to Dazai’s window and then hurtles down into a bush. “And I’m a young, growing boy!”
Dazai raises his eyebrow sceptically. “Really?” he asks. “Because, y’know, I’ve grown almost twenty centimetres in the past three years and you haven’t even grown two.”
“It’s not my fault if you get growth spurts like a fucking freak!” Chuuya yells. And, honestly, they’ve had this conversation—or argument, more precisely—about a billion times already in their lifetime. But Dazai still always initiates it, because Chuuya gets insulted so much by it, as if it’s the first time, and something about seeing him get enraged by the same thing every single day is just hilarious to the brunette. “And hurry the fuck up, will you? It’s almost half past; we’ve got ten minutes.”
Dazai stares at him for a few more seconds. You’d think he’d get exhausted waking up every day to a short redhead screaming his brains out, and then having to walk to his window like a half-dead zombie, and watch the same face, with the same height and words and insults.
But, no—
Something about is refreshing. And it gets Dazai up better than any other way. Alarms are easy to ignore, and Mori eventually gives up on trying to wake him up, but Chuuya won’t allow for himself to be ignored and will definitely not give up on getting Dazai to wake up.
Which Dazai finds annoying, sometimes.
Mostly amusing though.
“Be patient, will you?” Dazai says. “I’ll be down in a sec, slug.”
Chuuya picks up another rock, throwing it at the window whilst the brunette shuts it closed. “The real slug is you,” he retorts. Then, he just leans against the gate, and tips his head back, watching the sky, waiting for Dazai to get down.
The teal hoodie. It has to be new. Chuuya has every single old hoodie of Dazai’s, and whenever he buys another one, Chuuya makes it his life goal to get it—and when he’s determined, he genuinely gets shit done. Even if it’s against the Dazai Osamu.
And now the teal hoodie is his new goal.
It will be his new memento.
And it’s very obvious that Dazai is just enticing him. Because it’s almost summer, which means it’s rather hot, so there’s no need for a hoodie, and definitely no need to sleep in one. He knew exactly what he was doing when he walked to the window with the hoodie on.
Chuuya will get it.
No matter what.
It takes twelve minutes for Dazai to emerge from the house. Which isn’t ideal at all, because they only had ten minutes to begin with, and now they’d be late even if they teleported to school. And with the twenty-minute walk to school, it’s pretty obvious they’re going to miss homeroom.
“If you’re that pissed about getting late,” Dazai says, his bag over his shoulder and camera around his neck, walking at a slower place as usual since the redhead’s short legs aren’t exactly ideal for fast walking, “then I can get my dad to drop us off. You don’t have to start punching me.”
“I wasn’t punching you,” Chuuya states. And he wasn’t. Just, y’know… light pats with a closed fist. “And you know that I saw that stupid hoodie of yours, right? I want it.”
Dazai snorts. “You have to win to get it. Like always.”
“Okay. When?”
The brunette glances at him, and then smirks. “I’m free whenever,” he says. He always says that. Even when he isn’t free. He could be having a binge-watching late-night therapy session or a heart surgery and he’ll still say he’s free. And he’ll actually show up, too, albeit late. Pushing and shoving at his schedule to make time is the closest Dazai gets to affection.
Chuuya sighs. “I’m free, too,” he says. “For like half a week. We just gonna do the usual challenge?”
Dazai thinks about it, and then nods. “Mhm. There’s a new shop open out near the bridge. We can do it there.”
“Isn’t that a bit too far?”
The brunette looks down at him, and then grins, a bright grin, a cheeky one that has Chuuya staring at him for too long. “That just makes it fun,” he says.
The redhead rolls his eyes. “Whatever, you fucking psycho. I’ll meet ya there at seven.”
Dazai blinks blankly. “Is this the part where I go ‘it’s a date’?” he asks.
And, well, yeah…
He ends up getting chased by Chuuya all the way to school, which is a bit of a win, because they get there in half the usual time, which means Chuuya actually gets to attend homeroom.
Or at least half of it.
Chuuya would never call Dazai a friend. Ever.
But there are some people he doesn’t mind calling friends.
Like the certain light-haired boy standing in line with him, with his lips pulled up into a friendly smile, and his eyes as kind as ever. “Chuuya-san, you look really nice today!” Atsushi exclaims, repeating the line he says every day.
Which is fine, because, let’s face it, Chuuya’s drop-dead gorgeous. And he knows it. Even when he’s just dressed in the school’s depressing blue-and-white uniform, he likes to think that he looks good in it.
“Oh—thanks, Atsushi,” Chuuya says, smiling lopsidedly at him. “You look nice, too.”
Notice how Chuuya knows how to be kind? To a certain extent, at least. He isn’t completely a short-tempered, fiery redhead that swears in every other sentence. That personality is usually only brung out by an annoying asshole. Everyone else generally gets to see a generous handful of Chuuya’s good side.
Atsushi beams and turns to the dinner lady, who plops scoops of chips in his tray, and a grilled fish, too. He takes one of the plastic forks and knives and then leaves the line. Chuuya mirrors his actions, but gently coaxes the dinner lady to put an extra scoop of chips in his plate. By gently, he obviously means with a nice, friendly glare paired with a sweet snarl and a soft threat.
Chuuya sighs and grabs two plastic forks and a plastic knife, settling it onto his tray.
And even though it’s not necessarily allowed to leave the diners with a tray, Chuuya has, over the years, normalised himself leaving with the tray, so no one questions it or stops him anymore. They’re fine with it, because Chuuya’s proved continuously that he’ll bring the tray back—at the very least, he’ll send someone to drop off his tray. So the trays always come back, and the dinner ladies are spared his wrath that they’d undoubtedly have to handle if he were stopped from leaving.
“The summer holidays are coming soon,” Atsushi says as the two walk down to the field, trays in hand, the sun beaming on their backs. “Are you excited?”
Chuuya scoffs. The summer holidays are always the same—stay inside with the parents, wasting away time on his phone and computer, and then meeting up with Dazai at least once every couple of days to wreak havoc once again. No wonder Chuuya’s step-mother has never liked him. She likes him as a person, sure, and even laughs at his jokes, but she doesn’t want Dazai to be a ‘bad influence’ on Chuuya. Which is laughable, because they’re both bad influences on each other. Chuuya’s not any better.
“Nah, it’s just gonna be the same old,” the redhead replies. “What about you? Got any plans?”
Atsushi smiles and shakes his head. “Not exactly. I might go around the city with my family, though. We’ve been here for three months already and we’ve barely seen anything.”
“Sounds decent,” Chuuya says. “I’ve lived here all my life. If you want suggestions of where to visit, I can tell ya some.”
Atsushi grins brightly. “I’d love that!”
The field is packed. As expected. Whenever it gets this warm, the entire school jumps to whatever spot they can find, and the grassy area becomes overcrowded with stinking teens. Chuuya and his friends always have the same spot, though—the one under the large oak tree. No one ever really dares to sit there. To have to deal with Nakahara Chuuya, Dazai Osamu, and the rest of their pack isn’t exactly a situation to fantasise about. They just scurry off somewhere else and settle down.
The two of them make their way to the oak tree, having to step around and even over several people when there’s hardly any place to walk. Most of them just move out of the way; either because they have manners, or because they fear Nakahara Chuuya.
Chuuya doesn’t care whichever one it is.
At the tree, they’re all sat in an uneven circle. Dazai, leaning against the tree as always, taking the most comfortable spot as if it’s his to take. Akutagawa is sat there too, and Yosano next to him, and Kunikida next to her. The only missing idiot got himself suspended... again.
Chuuya notices, most primarily, the two girls clinging to each of Dazai’s arms. He doesn’t remember either girl’s name. They’re pretty, though—pretty enough that Dazai might even get interested.
“Chuuya-san,” Atsushi says from where he’s already sat down next to Kunikida. “There’s space here.”
Chuuya watches the gap between Atsushi and Kunikida. “Nah,” he says, looking back at the girls. “I’m sitting there.”
Atsushi doesn’t understand where ‘there’ is, exactly, because there doesn’t seem to be place anywhere else.
Chuuya steps into the circle and walks towards Dazai. The brunette grins at something one of the girls says, and then notices the redhead stood in front of him, looking down with a stoic expression.
“Oh, the midget’s here!” Dazai exclaims.
The girls turn to look at Chuuya, but Chuuya ignores them both. Instead, he squints down at the brunette. “Spread your legs,” he snaps irritably.
Dazai raises his eyebrows, a snicker escaping his mouth. “Is this you coming out to me?” he asks.
Chuuya pauses.
When he realises how ‘spread your legs’ sounds, he can’t help but blush the tiniest bit, his eyes averting to the grass around his feet before he looks back up into Dazai’s eyes, which seem to sparkle under the dancing sunlight coming through the leaves of the tree.
“I swear, I’ll punch ya,” Chuuya promises.
Dazai opens his mouth, no doubt to say something even more embarrassing, so the redhead quickly springs to action and kicks his legs apart, sitting down in between them as casually as ever.
It’s not like this is the first time Chuuya’s sat between the asshole’s long legs. He’s done it quite a few times before, and everyone apart from Atsushi, the transfer student, has seen them do this before. So it’s not odd, exactly—but Chuuya still feels the tiniest bit annoyed at himself for saying ‘spread your legs’ out of everything he could have said, and listening back to it in his brain just makes him go redder with every passing second.
And, finally, the girls let go of Dazai, a little confused. “You guys are a bit close,” the one to the left says.
Chuuya turns to glare at her just as he leans back into Dazai. “Shut up,” he says, not able to disguise the disgust he feels. “Scurry off while you can.”
And sure, Chuuya threatens females (sometimes, at least, only when he’s pissed) but he’d never act on them. So they’re usually empty threats, because he doesn’t often indulge in the idea of raising a hand to a female. It’s perhaps the only thing him and the brunette can relate on.
Dazai sighs and slumps a little as he watches the pretty girls walk off, undoubtedly going to target a different guy that might show them interest. “You know, slug,” Dazai starts, “You don’t have to ruin every single chance I get with a girl.”
Chuuya turns to glare at him, eyes fierce and blue, which makes Dazai smile the tiniest bit, despite himself. “You get what you give. Each time I went out with Yuan, you literally fucked up every single date. So don’t expect me to sit back and let you have a peaceful love life, you got that?” After a moment, Chuuya raises the tray in his hands and shoves it towards the brunette. “And eat. I know you didn’t eat breakfast. You’re getting so scrawny, and if you go down another size in hoodies, they might start actually fitting me, and I don’t want that.”
Dazai can’t stop smiling. His eyes sparkle a little, and he leans down closer to the the redhead, so close that Chuuya can see the little faded scar under his left eye that he got when he slipped on a slide and fell face-first into the rocks at the bottom. He bled excessively, and since they were only seven, Chuuya panicked, and thought he was going to die.
Obviously, with the way he’s staring at him right now, his lips pulling up, and his eyes shining, he’s not dead at all.
Right now, Chuuya really wishes he was.
“What makes you think I didn’t eat breakfast?” he asks curiously.
The redhead rolls his eyes and turns back around so that he doesn’t have to spend another second staring into those annoying eyes of his. “Your breath smelt of toothpaste this morning,” he states simply, taking a chip and putting it into his mouth. “You always brush before breakfast. So, you didn’t eat.”
Atsushi can’t help but stare at the two of them, whilst the others have learnt to just mind their own business. Because he’s never seen a friend sitting between another friend’s legs. Isn’t that what couples do? But he’s gotten to know them enough in the past three months to understand that he’ll be killed if he says that out loud.
But…
Atsushi squints his eyes, observing Dazai’s face.
…He never smiles like that towards anyone else.
Does Dazai ever smile?
It’s usually just smirks and cheeky grins.
Not smiles.
“You’ve gotten disgustingly observant,” Dazai says. He leans even further forwards, until his face is right above Chuuya’s, and then takes a handful of chips. “I’ll eat some for you, though, Hatrack.”
The redhead scoffs and shoves the tray closer to Dazai. “Yeah, you better. And have half the fish, too. I won’t be able to finish it by myself.”
“And if I don’t?” Dazai asks curiously, his eyes trained on the little bit of side profile he can see of Chuuya as he swallows down some chips.
“Then I’ll shove your sorry excuse of a face into the mud.”
Dazai raises a curious eyebrow. “This ‘sorry excuse of a face’ gets more girls than you ever will,” he teases, feeling proud when the boy emits his pissed back-of-the-throat sound.
“That’s because you ruin every goddamn chance I have with a girl,” Chuuya snaps back.
The brunette watches him for a moment, and then shrugs with one shoulder. “So do you,” he states simply.
And he’s not wrong—Chuuya does it as well. But only as revenge. He didn’t start it, and probably wouldn’t have ever started it. It was all Dazai’s fault. It first happened when they were eleven, and a girl called Chuuya’s hair pretty. Chuuya got the tiniest bit of a crush on her after that, because he loves compliments, and getting it from a girl just seemed a bit endearing and charming. He even gathered the guts to go talk to her eventually, about two weeks after the compliment, but when he got close to her and she saw him approaching, she ran away.
Needless to say, Chuuya was really confused. It took Dazai a week, but he eventually fessed up, telling the redhead that he’d lied to her so that she stops liking Chuuya. He told her that Chuuya picks his nose, and doesn’t shower until weeks pass, and that his hair is a wig. All were lies, of course, because Chuuya priorities hygiene more than your average person. And his hair is very much authentic.
So then Chuuya obviously got pissed. And punched him. And didn’t talk to him for an entire day, which he was proud of himself for, because that’s a hard achievement.
Dazai never apologised, but Chuuya thought he’d have the shame to feel some remorse.
At the very least, he expected Dazai to not do that ever again.
But he did.
Chuuya was sixteen the next time it happened. They’d just started their second-year in high school, and Yuan asked the redhead out—so he said yes, obviously, because Yuan’s a pretty, kind girl with nice pink hair and a sweet smile. And another plus: she’s shorter than Chuuya. And she’s funny. Sometimes.
Maybe it was Chuuya’s fault a little bit for provoking Dazai so much. He couldn’t stop rubbing it in his face, and when the brunette finally snapped, he glared at the redhead and ran off down the street. Chuuya had laughed at that. It was such a nice sight, to see Dazai’s face fall, to see him run away.
But Dazai got back at him. Maybe as revenge for Chuuya’s provoking, or because he just wants Chuuya to suffer for the rest of his life. It doesn’t matter. He still did it. He still coaxed Chuuya to come into the garage with him, and then locked the redhead in, without his phone and with no key.
So, yeah.
Chuuya never got to attend that date.
Dazai sat outside the garage the entire time, leaning against the shutter, listening as Chuuya cussed him out. He let him out two hours later. The redhead was pissed—like pissed pissed, but he didn’t hit Dazai. No, he just scolded him.
It hurt a bit more than a punch. But Dazai doesn’t regret it. He’d do it again, if he had to.
It took a bit of convincing to make Yuan believe that it wasn’t Chuuya’s fault that he stood her up. When she did eventually become convinced and accepted the redhead’s apologies, they officially dated.
For four days.
Yuan broke up with Chuuya after those four days, because, and I quote:
“You’re too close with Dazai.”
Chuuya was the tiniest bit upset about it for three days. He got over it when Dazai lent him a hoodie to borrow which Chuuya, of course, didn’t return.
So, in short—
Unless they cut each other off from their lives, they’ll probably just remain lonely, single fucks until they die.
But Chuuya has never considered that. Even when Yuan said that, he didn’t think, “Oh, maybe I should put some distance between myself and Dazai.” No—he let her break up with him, and then went to Dazai’s to cuss him out.
Both of them know that cutting each other off, in simple terms, is impossible.
They don’t know why.
It just feels like something that can never happen.
“You started it,” Chuuya says, using one of the forks to pick at the chips before forcefully stuffing the other fork into Dazai’s stupidly perfect hands, because seeing people eat with their bare hands without washing them makes him squirm.
The brunette shrugs and puts a chip into his mouth. “Seeing you happy makes me sad,” he states simply.
Chuuya gapes, slightly offended. He twists around a little, both for the sake of facing the brunette better so that he can glare at him, and also so they can eat without having Dazai’s long arm reaching across and brushing against his every single time.
“And seeing you alive makes me sad,” Chuuya snaps.
Dazai rolls his eyes. “Then let me kill myself in peace,” he mumbles. The only reason he mumbles it is so that nobody else hears—and sure, the brunette is pretty open about his suicidal tendencies, but that’s mostly as comic relief rather than anything serious.
But having Chuuya bandaging up his slit wrists those few months ago, well—
That’s pretty serious.
“No,” Chuuya says, but his heart pangs, and he has to look away from the brunette’s face. “You’re not allowed to pass on without me. It’s not fair.”
Dazai pauses, and then grins cheekily, eyes squinted the tiniest bit. “Is this you inviting me to a double suicide?”
Chuuya scoffs. “As if,” he snaps. “Shut up and eat already. You’re gonna piss me off.”
“As if that isn’t your default mode already.”
“Wanna get stabbed by a plastic fork?”
“As long as it kills me.”
“It won’t.”
“Then no thanks.”
“Then shut the fuck up.”
“Aw~, is the little midget angry~?” Dazai asks, leaning forward to pinch the redhead’s cheek.
Chuuya slaps his hand away harshly. “I’m always pissed off around you, you long ass freak. God, what I wouldn’t give to just have you shut up for two seconds.”
“It’s your fault. I wouldn’t even be talking to you if you let those girls stay here,” Dazai says, smiling a little, his head leaned down close enough for Chuuya to see that scar again.
“Yeah, well,” Chuuya says with a roll of his eyes. “Don’t expect me to let you have a love life if you won’t let me, you piece of shit.”
Dazai stares at him for a second; and Chuuya can’t help but stare back, their eyes locked for a beat too long before the brunette finally looks away, pupils averting to the tray that still his half the food on it. “I don’t want a love life,” he states simply.
Chuuya raises his eyebrows. “Everyone wants a love life.”
“Nah,” Dazai says. He breaks off a piece of the fish and eats it, because Chuuya really wasn’t lying when he said he won’t be able to finish it by himself. “Never met anyone that piqued my interests.”
The redhead scoffs. “A tacky bastard like you shouldn’t be the one to have high standards.”
“They’re not high,” Dazai says.
Chuuya expects him to carry on, but he doesn’t.
After a moment, Chuuya realises that him and Dazai aren’t the only people in the world. It takes him a long while to notice this, as always, but once he does realise, he turns back towards his friends and engages in a small conversation with Atsushi when he asks him what the best place to visit is.
Dazai smiles.
He lifts his polaroid camera and takes a quick shot of Chuuya’s side profile whilst he talks about that one place by the port that lends view of the best sunsets.
Whenever Chuuya talks about something he’s passionate about, his face lights up indiscreetly, eyes sparkling, his hair redder than usual.
Dazai always takes a picture of him when he’s like that.
And then, once the photograph is printed, the brunette shields it from the sun with his hand and thigh and waits for the photograph to appear.
Chuuya notices the picture.
He only rolls his eyes at Dazai. Doesn’t punch him, or scold him, mainly because he’s used to having his pictures taken out of the blue. The same way he’s used to Dazai’s insults to do with his height, so he usually lets his annoying nicknames slide.
But the pictures Dazai takes of him...
Well, they infuriatingly end up being the prettiest pictures Chuuya’s ever seen.
And they both know, that when they go to Chuuya’s garage together again, that very picture is probably going to end up in the Polaroid Photo Box in the corner.
Or, if it’s pretty enough, it might even get the privilege of being hung up somewhere on one of the tightly cramped walls.