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Dazai wants to throw himself against the wall. He wants to jump out of this too tall building, land hard enough that it won’t only be his body that breaks but his soul too. He wants to let whatever he is at his root spill out, viscous and bile, until there’s nothing left at all.
“I’d jump with you,” Chuuya says, “I’d hold you the whole way down.”
“Wouldn’t work.” Dazai reminds him idly, watching the shadow and light play on Chuuya’s ceiling. “I nullify your power, slug. We’d both die.” His words feel funny, like when he’s drunk too much, but he hasn’t drank too much. He’s barely drank anything at all tonight, just whiskey.
“Who says that’s not what I want?” Chuuya asks.
“You don’t want to die, Chuuya.” Dazai chastises. Even the thought of Chuuya wanting to die feels bad. It makes Dazai feel a strange sort of sick, like he’s drank too much hot tea too fast. Chuuya wanting to die doesn’t make sense to Dazai. He can’t connect it with the world. Dazai wants to die though. That thought doesn’t land unsettled in his mind. It is a background hum, a soft breeze rustling and whispering, tugging at his hair with gentle but impatient fingers,
come here, come here, come here.
“Guess you can’t jump then.” Chuuya says, like he’s solved a problem that has puzzled Dazai for years.
Dazai laughs, but his brain and his body are connected all wrong. What comes out is strangled and sounds far away. His hands feel funny.
“M’hands feel funny.” He tells Chuuya.
Chuuya’s face appears in front of his, wavering slightly like a mirage. Maybe Chuuya is a mirage. A hallucination. Dazai wouldn’t be surprised. Chuuya had seemed too calm when he came home and found Dazai there. He had barely reacted to Dazai’s presence, like he had expected Dazai to be there even though he couldn’t have expected it at all. Maybe Dazai is imagining this. Maybe he never left his dorm, is actually still alone in the dark and not at Chuuya’s apartment, with Chuuya. That would make sense. He almost smiles. What a silly thing to fantasize about— being welcomed by Chuuya, wanted by Chuuya. Chuuya’s soft hands against his cheek. Dazai tilts into Chuuya’s palm. He runs his fingers over the couch underneath him to try to feel through it to the tatami mats of his dorm floor.
The couch is soft leather and it stays that way, creamy under his fingers.
Chuuya’s face is very close.
“Hey.” Chuuya says. His thumb is rough on Dazai’s lower eyelid, tugging it down. “Shit.” He says, his voice all funny. His other hand presses against where Dazai’s heart should be. “What did you do?” He asks.
“Nothing.” Dazai tells him. He tries to cup Chuuya’s face and misjudges the distance, slaps him. He does it again for good measure and this time Chuuya leans into it, presses against Dazai’s palm.
Chuuya’s skin is very warm. It always is. Dazai has only felt Chuuya be cold once, when they were young, in a graveyard, in front of five equally identical fresh graves. Chuuya’s body had been heavy and sodden with grief and sleet. He had been unable to muster up the energy to even fight with Dazai. His skin was pale and his eyes were stark. It was the first time Dazai had noticed Chuuya’s faint freckles. He had reached out to touch without thinking and Chuuya’s cheek, Chuuya’s skin, Chuuya, had been cold against Dazai’s fingertips. Cold like a dead thing. Dazai never wants to feel Chuuya cold like that again. Even thinking of it makes him feel clammy and ill, makes him feel like he’s a child all over again, sitting in his abandoned shipping container, lightbulb flickering.
“Dazai.” Chuuya says, cups Dazai’s face. Dazai wants to curl into Chuuya’s warmth and sleep there. “What did you take?” Chuuya asks and there’s a weird tone in his voice that Dazai can’t place until Chuuya says his name again. “Dazai.”
Ah. Dazai thinks. Panic.
“Nothing.” Dazai slurs. He tugs at one of the earrings Chuuya is wearing. It’s pretty.
“Dazai.” Chuuya repeats and his voice is solid as bedrock. Dazai leans into it, letting it hold him. Chuuya brushes his thumbs against Dazai’s cheekbones, palms hot and strong on his cheeks.
“Something.” Dazai acknowledges.
Chuuya’s fingernails cut Dazai’s throat when he makes him throw up, hand tight and possessive on the back of his head. Dazai spits after, tinged red with blood, mouth bitter with bile and melted pills.
“You hurt me.” He tells Chuuya, frowning at him as best he can, trying to get his eyes to focus.
“Good.” Chuuya says viciously even though he doesn’t mean it. He can’t. His body betrays him, tender and scared. He holds Dazai firmly but his arms are trembling. Dazai holds on and Chuuya holds on to him and Dazai is not sure, really, who is holding who. They slump against the cold of Chuuya’s bathroom wall. Chuuya squeezes Dazai tightly, too painful to be a hug, too painful to not be one. His hands clench once on Dazai’s upper arms, fingers digging in. When Chuuya lets go Dazai is unmoored, uncentered, slumps further against the wall in surprise. Chuuya straightens, pushing himself to his knees, then to standing.
Dazai closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to watch Chuuya walk away. His throat hurts. He wants it to hurt more, the mark of Chuuya on him. He listens to Chuuya move and waits to feel the rough of his dorm’s tatami mats against his cheek. Time passes or perhaps it doesn’t. The wall remains cool tile.
Chuuya is there again in a rush of sage and pear. His fingers are gentle as he neatly unwinds the bandages around Dazai’s wrists, inspects the damage he finds. His fingertips are warm and quick. The antiseptic is cold. It burns. Dazai wants to complain but finds that he can’t when he looks at Chuuya, bent over his work of Dazai’s wrists. There’s a faint trace of scar tissue coming out of Chuuya’s collar, a mark from corruption that never quite heals. Dazai thinks there are a lot of things about corruption that never quite heal. There are a lot of things that never quite heal.
Chuuya lifts his head. His eyes are red, the kind that comes with crying, and glassy, the kind that comes with pain.
Dazai closes his eyes again.
“It hurts.” He says softly.
“Yes.” Chuuya says, like an acknowledgment or maybe a confession. “It hurts.”
Neither of them move. Dazai tries to count his breaths but loses track, counts one, one, one, one, one. He blinks his eyes open as Chuuya starts to work on his wrists again. His fingers are methodical. The bandages are soft.
Dazai looks over Chuuya’s shoulder at the open bathroom cabinet, the endless rolls of neatly organized gauze. It’s been years since Dazai has been in Chuuya’s apartment.
Yes, Dazai supposes, it would hurt, wouldn’t it?
Dazai passes out more than he sleeps. He wakes before Chuuya. He wakes before he should be awake. He closes his eyes but they don’t listen, drift open again. Dawn is burning across the apartment, staking its claim with soundless light.
Dazai watches Chuuya sleep. His face is relaxed, at rest, but his eyes are dark bruises in his face. The hollows underneath them are deep colored like ripe plums. He looks younger than he is, than he has to be. Maybe asleep he looks his age. He has faint scars clawing across his skin, tracing out from under the sleeves of the too big shirt he sleeps in, up over his collarbones. He has freckles, barely there, dotted across the bridge of his nose. Dazai can see the veins in his eyelids. He watches Chuuya exhale, his lower lip tremble.
Dazai absurdly remembers being sixteen and Chuuya wondering if he was human, even though he told Dazai he wasn’t wondering, wasn’t afraid, already knew. Dazai had almost believed Chuuya when he pretended not to be worried. Of course Dazai had almost believed— he hadn’t been able to see how Chuuya couldn’t know he was human. Chuuya was the most obviously human human that Dazai has ever met. Chuuya is the most obviously human human that Dazai has ever met.
“I’m hurting you.” Dazai observes quietly.
Chuuya’s forehead creases— he looks like he’s dreaming. He says he doesn’t dream but Dazai knows he means he doesn’t remember them. Doesn’t want to remember them. Dazai has woken often enough with a sickening swoop of nausea, cold sweat, to know what it’s like to have dreams you don’t want to keep. Chuuya’s fingers flinch against his pillow, trying to hold something that’s not there, clenching against a hit that isn’t coming. He makes a low sound. Chuuya’s hair is sweaty, when Dazai pushes it back from his forehead.
“I’m hurting you.” Dazai repeats, cupping Chuuya’s cheek, letting himself touch for just a moment. He shouldn’t touch. He should leave. He watches Chuuya breathe, the way his lips shake almost imperceptibly. Dazai should leave. He should leave.
He doesn’t want to leave.
Chuuya’s hand is resting on his pillow, palm open now, facing up. Dazai removes his hand from Chuuya’s cheek. He presses one finger into the center of Chuuya’s palm. Chuuya sighs softly. His hand is warm.
Dazai lays down.
He closes his eyes.
He doesn’t remember falling back asleep.
When Dazai next opens his eyes the light is watery in the bedroom. Chuuya is lying next to him, awake but with sleep still tangled in his limbs like a jealous lover.
“Why are you here?” Chuuya asks, voice rough. His fingers twitch toward Dazai like he wants to reach out. He curls his hand into a loose fist like he has thought better of it.
Dazai thinks about making a joke— that Chuuya hates him, that Chuuya wishes Dazai had run out in the night, that Chuuya must be used to leaving and letting someone else wake up hoping that he’s still there, seeing as how he expects that from others. Dazai can’t find the joke. All the words run together inside his head, tripping over each other. It’s never an absence of words for him. It’s always too many, too much, all at once.
“Why would you do that and then come here?” Chuuya asks. His voice is ragged. Dazai feels ragged. He can’t look at Chuuya. He averts his eyes, picks at a thread in the sheets.
Chuuya waits and waits, and then the bed dips as he stands. Dazai is still trying to find the answer and Chuuya is leaving. Chuuya is leaving and Dazai can’t speak and he needs to or Chuuya might turn at the bedroom door, tap against the frame, tell Dazai he can let himself out.
“I think I missed you.” Dazai says, as Chuuya starts to turn back to him to speak, his shadow pulling across the ceiling. Dazai only realizes just how true it is as he says it. He watches Chuuya’s shadow pause. “Funny way of showing it, wasn’t it?” Dazai acknowledges before Chuuya can say anything at all.
“You blew up my car when you left.” Chuuya says. “That’s not really a thing you do to someone you’re going to miss.”
“Well.” Dazai darts his eyes down and they skim over Chuuya’s form before he flicks them back to the ceiling. “Loyal dogs always follow their owners.” He says. He feels as though he can't look at Chuuya straight on, needs to see him in relief, can only manage the edges of him. Dazai doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s always able to make himself look at things, do things, no matter how much he doesn’t want to or feels like he can’t. “Couldn’t have that.” His throat feels tight.
He looks at Chuuya.
“You think you missed me, huh?” Chuuya says when their eyes meet. “Don’t know for sure?”
Dazai knows for sure. Of course he knows.
He closes his eyes.
The floorboards creak when Chuuya leaves the room.
Chuuya makes them tea.
Dazai’s stomach has mostly settled but it is an uneasy truce that he has with his body. He threw up twice more during the night. Each time he woke up and saw Chuuya’s face, that was a good thing. It was an appalling thing— jerking awake, sweaty and disoriented— but it was good to see Chuuya’s face. Dazai finds that he wants to see Chuuya’s face. He does not want to see his own face. When he was in the bathroom he averted his eyes. Didn’t look in the mirror. Crawled back into Chuuya’s bed like a thief, clammy and shaking, mouth tasting like Chuuya’s toothpaste, his mouthwash, the sweet fresh mint of him.
Dazai doesn’t know how to say this, not any of it, so he doesn’t.
He drinks the tea Chuuya has made for him. He lets Chuuya feed him.
He passes out again and wakes up sweaty, his hair clinging to his forehead, the back of his neck. He stares at Chuuya’s ceiling, body tangled in the smooth of Chuuya’s sheets. He cannot make himself get up. He needs to get up, he thinks, but the thought is distant. He doesn’t want to think. He doesn’t want to look at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to look at himself at all. He closes his eyes against the day.
“Come on.” Chuuya says from the doorway.
Dazai turns to him, head so much heavier than he remembers it being.
Chuuya tugs Dazai to the bathroom, hand light but compelling around Dazai’s wrist. He turns the bathroom lights on low, squeezes Dazai’s wrist once before he releases him.
While Chuuya adjusts the shower temperature Dazai waits, slumped against the same wall as last night. He wants to make snarky comments to get a Chuuya he understands and is used to, one he knows how to provoke, one who will let himself be provoked. This is a Chuuya he sees so rarely. This Chuuya destabilizes him. Chuuya is, Dazai knows, surprisingly gentle and tender, loyal, considerate— but with Dazai he’s foul-mouthed and violent, impulsive, belligerent. He’s always known a gentle touch will make Dazai crumble.
Chuuya tugs off his own shirt, turns to Dazai with his thumbs hooked in the waistband of his pants.
“Get your clothes off, asshole.” Chuuya says with no bite and barely any bark. Dazai is astonished at how gentle Chuuya sounds. It breaks him. He takes two steps forward as Chuuya turns back to the shower and puts his forehead on Chuuya’s bare shoulder. He wants to say something but, even when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He closes it with a click. He counts the scars on Chuuya’s back.
He is afraid to count his own scars.
Chuuya takes Dazai’s clothes off for him, like Dazai is a child. Dazai accepts it, acquiescent, pliant. To fight back would be too much. To do it himself would be too much. He just lets Chuuya. He just lets him and waits for something, anything, that he will know how to react to. That he will be able to react to. His body feels muted. The water hits him and doesn’t hit him at all. He presses his nose into Chuuya’s wet hair.
Chuuya turns him from the mirror when they exit the shower, like he knows Dazai does not want to see himself. Dazai watches a drop of water trail down the muscles of Chuuya’s back. He wants to press his mouth to the dip of Chuuya’s spine. Not for any reason beyond the touch, to press his tongue flat against the warmth of him, taste his skin.
The lights in Chuuya’s room are dimmed and Dazai wants them bright fluorescent so he has to look at himself. He wants them off so he cannot see what he is about to do. He wants to place himself in the here and now and the only ways he can think to are reckless, dangerous.
“Chuuya.” He says.
Chuuya turns to him, jeans slung low on his hips, t-shirt half pulled up one of his arms.
Dazai pushes Chuuya into the wall of his bedroom hard, grabbing at his wrists. He wants Chuuya to fight him. Gut him with quick hands and sharp nails. He wants Chuuya to fuck him. Fill him up, however briefly. Dazai feels like he is a thing that deserves shattering, a glass bay window pleading with a rock. He leans down to catch Chuuya’s mouth in a kiss. He’s never kissed Chuuya before. He hopes it will be a bite. If it hurts, then it will make sense.
Chuuya’s fingertips are shower-warm against Dazai’s lips when they stop him. The touch is soft. It aches.
They hang suspended for a moment.
“What do you feel when you look at me?” Chuuya asks. His fingers tremble against Dazai’s mouth.
Something, Dazai pleads with himself, something. Love. Desire. Nostalgia. It doesn’t matter— something.
“I—” Dazai whispers, his voice breaking, “I feel nothing all the time— but I want to feel it. I’ve felt it before with you. Let me feel it again.” His voice teeters on begging. Chuuya’s eyes flick across his features. “Kiss me, fuck me, fight me, I don’t care, Chuuya, just—”
“Kiss me when you feel it,” Chuuya tells him, pushes him away. It’s a soft touch, but Dazai stumbles like it was a shove. “Even if it’s hatred, kiss me when you look at me and can feel it.”
Everything is so hollow. Dazai can’t remember what it feels like to feel anything at all. He wants. He thinks he wants. He wants to want.
“I want to want.” Dazai manages. “I want to want you.”
Chuuya smiles at him softly, tugs Dazai’s hair.
“Stupid mackerel.” He says, and his voice is fond.
“What do you feel when you look at me?” Dazai begs. He touches one of Chuuya’s freckles with a fingertip. “Did you miss me?”
Chuuya looks at him.
“I suppose you don’t have to tell me.” Dazai says.
“I suppose I don’t.” Chuuya agrees.
Dazai lays on the couch while Chuuya works. He looks at Chuuya’s books, the spines upside down from where he is lying. It takes more energy than he cares to admit. He can’t read, he knows this, he tried. The words twisted, seemed meaningless, and the TV made him feel sick, all the sounds, and he is tired and how body aches right down to his blood and everything seems so useless in that terrible apathetic way where—
He forces himself to stand. It is nearly impossible. Chuuya’s pen, scratching on paper, stops then starts again.
Dazai looks at Chuuya’s books.
“Why don’t you get a dog?” He says, and the words are like he’s thrown a wine glass at the wall. He’s surprised at how the silence shatters.
Chuuya looks up at him. His T-shirt is too big. There are papers spread across his table, his laptop whirring gently.
“I can’t.” He says and looks back to his work.
Dazai counts the books on the shelf about how to take care of a dog, how to be a good pet parent, how to train a rescue dog, how to help a dog who’s been hurt before. The spine of that one is broken and creased. A book that has been read. People get broken like that too. Dazai was always told the breaking was out of love, just like a book, but he knows that’s not true. He tugs it out, smacks it lightly against his hand a few times, watches the pages flutter.
“Could help me work with Chuuya.” He says, holding up the book. “My poor previously abused rescue dog.” He offers the sentence like an olive branch.
“Mm.” Chuuya says and scrolls on his laptop, checks something against a paper in front of him, frowns.
Dazai looks out the window. It’s late enough Dazai has missed work. It’s late enough that Chuuya should be at work— but he’s not. He’s here, with Dazai. It’s late and Chuuya shouldn’t be here and Dazai shouldn’t either and Chuuya has books and books and more books, all on how to take care of a dog, and there is not one dog here, not one, not anywhere at all. His apartment is as silent as a tomb, a church.
Dazai’s nerves sting.
“Get a dog.” Dazai says, too shortly.
“I can’t.” Chuuya responds.
“Why.” Dazai demands. “Get one.”
“Dazai.” Chuuya says, like it’s a warning. His tone is sharp.
“Why not.” Dazai snaps. “Get one.” He feels almost angry. Maybe Chuuya will get up and hit him. Maybe Chuuya will throw his knife. He might be in house clothes, but Dazai knows he has one. It’s not like Chuuya to not have a weapon on him, even if he doesn’t need one. Chuuya is a weapon. Dazai wants to be a weapon. He wants Chuuya to wield him. He wants to taste blood. “Why not, slug.” He taunts. “Would you be bad at it?”
Chuuya doesn’t respond.
“Bad at taking care of things.” Dazai smacks the book against the others. He knocks one to the ground deliberately. Then another. Chuuya doesn’t blink or look at him, just mouths words to himself, dragging his pen across the paper in front of him. Dazai can’t keep it up. “You have a terrible work schedule.” He acquiesces, shoulders slumping. He picks up the books, feeling off center. “Who would walk it?” He adds mostly to himself as he reshelves them. “And it would get bored all alone, I suppose.”
“No.” Chuuya says. He’s pressing his pen to his paper very hard. Dazai watches it tear. “My death and dismemberment policy wouldn’t exactly assist the dog when I left one day and never came back.”
Dazai doesn’t breathe. He feels a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach. He wants to tear at his skin to let out this hollowness that is holding him up.
“People would know it was here.” He tells Chuuya.
“Who.” Chuuya states, not questions.
“Neighbors.” Dazai tries.
“This is a penthouse, Dazai. It’s sound-proofed. No one else lives on this floor. Who is there to know.” Chuuya doesn’t even look at Dazai as he speaks.
“Your friends.” Dazai tries, feeling more solid in this answer.
“I don’t have friends.” Chuuya responds.
“You do.” Dazai argues.
“I did.” Chuuya closes his laptop and looks at Dazai. His eyes are so tired.
Dazai wants to scream. He wants to throw a tantrum. He wants to punch Chuuya until he bleeds. He wants Chuuya to punch him until his outsides look like his insides— rotten fruit. The scream claws at his throat and builds as pressure behind his eyes. They stare at each other and the distance between them yawns with all those empty years.
Dazai is no stranger to standing on the edge of buildings but he’s never jumped from a height like this.
“I’m hungry.” Dazai says, voice breaking. He clears his throat. “I want pasta.” He adds, as Chuuya watches him. “With white wine sauce.” He makes his voice demanding, trying to get his mask to slip back into place even though Chuuya can see through it. See through him. See him, perhaps. “And fresh tomatoes. Garlic. Clams.”
There is a pause.
“Do you.” Chuuya says evenly, head tilted.
“I do.” Dazai says.
Chuuya rolls his eyes but he’s already pulled his phone out, most likely to order what he doesn’t have.
Obedient to a fault, Dazai thinks, as Chuuya takes out white wine, sets water to boiling, begins to thinly slice a peperoncino. Chuuya is obedient to a fault and loyal to a fault too, like a dog— or a person who has never learned how to care for anyone but others.
The knife gives Dazai vertigo. He watches it press into the flesh of the pepper. It looks like it cuts easy. He wonders how sharp it is. Chuuya wouldn’t penny pinch, not on knives.
Chuuya turns and Dazai catches a glimpse of another scar, just barely visible on the back of his bicep. Chuuya has many scars but none on his hands. Dazai watches them flex. Chuuya’s hands are soft. Dazai’s touched them, been touched by them. He knows how soft they are. He knows how they hold things like they’re holy even when they’re not. They hold Dazai like that and Dazai is not holy. They are hands that know how to be gentle. How to be kind. Dazai wishes he had hands like that. He wishes he could treat Chuuya kindly. He feels that his hands don’t know how to do anything but take advantage.
Dazai wants to crawl inside Chuuya’s stomach, live in the wet pulsing heat of his organs, and learn how to feel, want, care. He wants to be worthy of the tenderness that is being gifted to him. He wants to bash his head against the smooth marble of the counter. He wants to bash his head against the smooth marble of the counter. He wants to bash his head against the smooth—
“Dazai.” Chuuya says sharply.
Dazai makes himself turn away and, hands shaking, puts on a record.
“I should go.” Dazai says, staring out the window at nothing. Chuuya, sat next to him on the floor, nods slowly. Dazai watches him draw nonsense shapes with his fork in the dredges of his pasta sauce.
Dazai doesn’t stand up.
They ate without speaking much. Chuuya had brought over a plate for Dazai, one for himself. The food was so good it hurt. It was exactly what Dazai had asked for. He got full quickly but was able to eat it all. Chuuya hadn’t given Dazai that much anyway, always perceptive.
“Are you going to kill yourself when you get home?” Chuuya asks and then seems stunned that he has asked that.
Dazai can’t answer for a moment.
“No.” He says.
Chuuya smiles strangely.
“Not sure what I would have done if you said yes,” he admits in a peculiar voice, “we both know you make me helpless.”
“Slug wants me to stay,” Dazai says, so he doesn’t say something else, “can’t stand to be alone, would try to use gravity, his ability, to—”
“That’s not what I mean.” Chuuya says. He looks at Dazai but his face is backlit in a strange way and Dazai can’t see his eyes.
Dazai shifts.
“What do you mean?” He asks.
“You make me feel helpless.” Chuuya says, like honesty is something they give to each other easily, can wield in their lives like a comfortable expectation and not a weapon.
“I don’t.” Dazai says quietly.
“You do.” Chuuya looks away. He presses his forehead to the glass.
Dazai watches the window fog up as Chuuya breathes.
“You should get a dog.” Dazai says. Chuuya turns just slightly, doesn’t lift his head. His uncomprehending eyes meet Dazai’s. “I would know he was here.” Dazai says, the closest thing to a promise he has. Useless and meaningless and still— he says it.
“She.” Chuuya says, after a moment.
“She.” Dazai agrees. “I would know she was here.”
“You don’t like dogs, Dazai.” Chuuya speaks calmly. His eyes have slid and he’s not looking at Dazai but past him, like he’s talking to a ghost and is not sure where exactly to fasten his gaze.
“I don’t,” Dazai admits, slumping against the window. “I hate them.”
Dazai’s afraid of them. What do you do with something that loyal? What do you do with something that loves unconditionally, would love you enough that you could train it to go against its nature, be mean if it is kind, attack when it wants to be held? What do you do, with something like that? It startles Dazai. It frightens him.
Chuuya pulls away from the window. He tugs his sleeve over his hand, wipes away the mark of himself.
“I could get used to one specific dog.” Dazai says, quieter than he means to. “I got used to you, after all.” This last part is an admission.
Chuuya doesn’t say anything. Dazai stares at the skyline so hard his vision blurs.
He’s afraid of dogs.
“Dazai.” Chuuya says. Dazai looks over. Chuuya is already looking at him. “Don’t go.”
What do you do, with something like that?
What do you do, with someone like that?
It frightens Dazai.
He nods.
He doesn’t go.
“I don’t like pain.” Dazai tries to explain, in the quiet enclave of Chuuya’s room. Chuuya and he are not touching. The lack of touch is electrifying. Chuuya is so close Dazai swears he can feel the brush of his skin like butterfly wings, insect legs.
“I know.” Chuuya says, looking right at Dazai. “You like clarity.”
Dazai looks away.
“Pain is clarifying.” Chuuya says with calm certainty. “You don’t like pain, but you do like clarity.”
It is clarifying. It is an awful and sweet moment, sharp, where there aren’t too many thoughts and there’s not a horrible absence of thoughts either. Not a deep well Dazai can’t claw himself out of, not the same well filled up so he can’t breathe. There is just the one thing. The pain. It helps. It doesn’t help.
Dazai sleeps in Chuuya’s bed and wakes in a fit. Chuuya breathes easy next to him, like Dazai’s presence could somehow be soothing.
Chuuya runs so warm Dazai can feel the heat of him even with the space between them. He shifts slightly closer, holds up his hand like he’s warming it near a fire. He looks at Chuuya and traces a constellation on his skin without touching him.
Dazai shouldn’t touch. He knows this.
Chuuya has a scar on his stomach. Smooth and deep. No hesitation in the wound. Say what you want, but Dazai put that one there. He knows he put it there. He wonders how many of Chuuya’s scars, visible or not, are from him.
No, Dazai should not touch, he’s done enough already— but he is selfish and so he looks, lets his eyes pore over Chuuya, dragon to gold. He looks at Chuuya and feels, strange and muted, like he wants to touch, to press with his fingertips, smooth Chuuya’s forehead, drag his hand down, press his thumbnail into the swell of Chuuya’s lower lip.
Clarifying, he thinks with half a laugh. It is clarifying. Things are clear. And it does, of course, hurt.
Dazai doesn’t like pain.
The sun is just beginning to egg yolk its drippy way across the floor. Dazai slips out of Chuuya’s apartment before the morning light can see him properly, catch him at it.
asshole, Chuuya texts when he wakes, realizes Dazai is gone.
Dazai has an unbidden image of Chuuya in his too big apartment with its too high ceilings, walking from room to room like he is lost, trying to find Dazai. Standing by the doorway, looking at the space where Dazai’s shoes were. Checking in the bathroom, on the balcony, under the couch— like a game a child would play. Dazai wishes he was there for Chuuya to find. He wishes he was there and he could crawl back into Chuuya’s bed and Chuuya’s chest and Chuuya’s heart and say you found me.
awww, Dazai texts back, poor sweet slug, are you so lonely, do you miss me?
yes, Chuuya responds, I missed you.
Dazai has to count to thirty before the nausea fades and he can open his eyes again.
don’t do that, he responds and turns off his phone and puts it in the oven and sits, in the middle of his dorm on his tatami mats, and stares right out the window. The sun burns away the clouds to glare at him. It is hot and it is too bright and he sits there and tries to not exist at all. When it gets dark, he hears Kyouka and Atsushi come home. There is a half second of quiet as they enter their apartment, the sounds of footsteps and rustling fabric, and then one of them says something, voice going up at the end, and they both laugh brightly. It is jarring, bells clanging in a strong wind.
Dazai feels as though he is crawling through mud. He feels as though he is dying.
He turns on his phone. Chuuya has sent him one message.
you can’t stop me
Chuuya’s bed is big and he lets Dazai into it without a word.
It breaks Dazai’s heart.
It’s a silly thing to say but it’s not fair.
Dazai understands that life is not fair and it’s a useless and childish complaint, but still.
It’s not fair.
It’s not fair that he can’t pinpoint the exact moment when this started. It’s not fair that he doesn’t have an explanation for why he wants to die with a habitualness that mirrors the way other people make grocery lists or run errands. He doesn’t understand why he is sometimes unable to do the simplest things without grief consuming him or why grief sometimes feels less like an emotion and more like sinking sinking sinking, muted and greyscale. He doesn’t understand why sometimes killing himself or eating a rice ball seem to hold the same weight, would take the same amount of energy. He doesn’t understand how everyone else just carries on all the time like living is a thing they didn’t have to be taught how to do.
He doesn’t understand. It’s not fair.
His great fear, what he believes to be true, what he sometimes is so sure is true, is that there’s no reason for why he is how he is. There is no trauma he can resolve. No incident in his past he can shed light on and understand. He simply is this way and that means he will be this way. Possibly always.
He looks at the river.
He wants to die.
He goes to work.
“Good morning,” he trills, as he walks through the door, “sadly still amongst the living.” He nods in thanks and appreciation of the general murmurs of so sorry, perhaps next time. “I simply wish I was dead instead of here.” He says cheerily to Kunikida, when he hands Dazai a stack of late reports.
Kunikida rolls his eyes but he scans Dazai once, quick and assessing, because he is a good man with a good heart and he might not know—
Chuuya had asked, right before Dazai left his apartment, if anyone at the agency knew, truly knew, that is.
Oh no, Dazai had said, couldn’t have that, now could I?
— but he knows. Imagines. Conjectures. They all must, in some way. They check in on Dazai when anyone else would not bother to check in on a colleague; they drag him out of rivers when they could let him sink; they check his pockets for rocks.
Dazai tilts his head and must pass muster because Kunikida turns away.
Dazai settles in at his desk, picture perfect, mask pressed to his skin.
“Atsushi-kun,” he says, collapsing over, “is there simply any chance I could interest you in exploring the fascinating and challenging world of expense reports?”
Atsushi gives him the serious look of exasperation that Dazai has come to expect. Dazai sighs at the rejection, slumping over his desk to mumble about how very very difficult his life is.
Ranpo looks at him.
“Bad canned crab,” Dazai shares conspiratorially when Ranpo doesn’t look away, “was vomiting for ages. Can’t blame the crabs though, of course.”
Ranpo nods. His eyes are methodical as they track over Dazai.
“You smell like sage,” he tells Dazai. Dazai does. “It’s a comforting scent, isn’t it?” Ranpo adds, placing a candy between his teeth as he looks away.
It is.
Outside, it starts to rain.
Chuuya’s apartment is so high up that, if Dazai looks out the windows, he can peer past the clouds and see all the way up in the sky to God. Dazai looks up at God who does not look back or seem to have any interest in looking back, distracted and elsewhere, an errant and absent parent.
Dazai watches the lightning and it watches him.
The room behind him is dark and the balcony door is open just enough the wind and rain rush in. Dazai’s feet are wet with it, the blanket around him too. His face as well. If he closes his eyes, he can almost pretend he is crying.
He closes his eyes.
He thinks of it, this thing at the bottom of the hole inside him, as a radio static scratch, claws on rock, an unyielding voice on a phone line, distorted but still his—
I have the thing you love.
The rain against his face stops, snapping him back unpleasantly into his body.
Chuuya sinks to sit beside him, back to the glass, back to God. He looks at Dazai in a way Dazai does not understand. It is as though Dazai is worthy of care.
“Hello.” Dazai says, momentarily disoriented. He hadn’t heard Chuuya come home. He hadn’t asked if he could come over. He hadn’t thought of himself as someone worthy of care. “Shorty.” He adds.
“Hello, Mackerel.” Chuuya returns and then blinks. His eyes resolve themselves, unreadable. His face is tired, pale and drawn. His shirt is unbuttoned around his throat. Dazai watches his eyelashes fan as he blinks slowly, with difficulty, like his eyes want to stay closed.
“Nice suit,” Dazai manages after a moment. His voice is unrecognizable to him. He wishes he hadn’t spoken.
“Funeral.” Chuuya says shortly. Water is seeping into his socks. Dazai watches it spread like a stain. “I’ve been to more funerals than I have weddings.” Chuuya adds. His index finger is working at a hangnail on his thumb, his gloves clenched in his other fist.
It’s the way he says it that makes Dazai’s stomach lurch. If there was castigation there, anger, accusation, if don’t make me go to yours too was hanging in the air, then Dazai could understand. Then he would know what to say.
Chuuya’s tone is bland, the way you might say you don’t need a receipt or excuse yourself past someone to step off a train. It’s said as statement of fact, something long ago accepted by Chuuya— there will always be more funerals than weddings. There will always be more funerals. Endlessly, there will be funerals. Dazai’s funeral will come one day and, at some point, Chuuya’s as well. And Chuuya will attend his own funeral too, when it comes, pale and amorphous, standing in the back corner of the room, clutching a wine glass full of ash, watching himself rot.
“My condolences.” Dazai whispers and tries to stop his thoughts.
Chuuya doesn’t answer, but he closes his eyes. Dazai puts his hand next to Chuuya’s. Their pinkies almost touch. Dazai flexes his hand. He stares at the water, puddled on the ground around Chuuya’s fingers. He lets his eyes travel up to the pale exposed skin of Chuuya’s wrist, the jut of his bones, then to his finger, digging into his thumb.
Dazai watches the blood well up.
Dazai once thought that he and Chuuya were the worst team in the world. He thought they were the best team in the world. He wanted to get under Chuuya’s skin. He loved it under Chuuya’s skin, right in the glorious wet heat of him. He loves it there still.
“Do you hate me, Chuuya?” He asks.
“No.” Chuuya says.
The bed is large. They lay in the center, facing each other, bodies curved like parentheses. The space between them holds something important. Dazai wants to know what it is. The parenthetical is important. He wants to read the silence, the empty space.
“You being gone,” Chuuya says, parenthetically, “doesn’t mean you weren’t still here.” He touches his fingertip to Dazai’s wrist. “No.” He says again. “I don’t hate you.”
Dazai shuffles forward. He blots out the space between them.
Chuuya’s body is strong, against his. Flushed with life. The hair on the back of Dazai’s neck raises. His skin prickles.
“I have never hated you.” He says. His voice is muffled. Chuuya’s shampoo smells like sweet sage. Chuuya’s fingers clench in Dazai’s shirt, graze against his skin.
Chuuya doesn’t say anything.
Dazai doesn’t know if this means Chuuya already knew this or if it means he never did.
Chuuya sometimes turns away from Dazai, in sleep. Dazai likes it, the softness of the hair and skin at the nape of his neck, the way his shoulder blades jut into Dazai’s chest. He likes when Chuuya turns toward Dazai again, like he is seeking Dazai out, like Dazai is something worth being sought.
Dazai likes to think he is someone worth turning toward. That the turning away, the leaving, is worth it, for the coming back.
Dazai watches Chuuya’s mouth move around the end of a sentence as he lifts a stone from the go board. Chuuya is good at adversarial games like these, strategic games. People make the mistake of assuming that, because Chuuya’s physical strength is so overwhelming, his mind will be two steps behind even as his body is two steps ahead. Dazai loves watching people underestimate Chuuya. He loves watching Chuuya crush them calmly, cleverly, capriciously.
He looks at Chuuya and feels.
“When I look at you,” he says, suddenly overcome, “I want to get under your skin.”
Chuuya’s hand freezes above the board. He doesn’t look up. Dazai knows he’s listening, his fingers are trembling.
“It’s not because I hate you.” Dazai explains. “It’s not because I like you mad. It’s because, for one second, I get all the weight of you, your gaze, on me. It’s because for one second your focus narrows down and I know it’s narrowed down to me. I would do anything to keep it there. I wish it was a physical thing I could grab, hold, keep. You looking at me, you focused on me, it’s—” His words stop as quickly as they started. He flexes his empty hands. “I look at you,” he says softly, “and I feel.”
Chuuya looks at him.
Dazai kisses Chuuya. He does not ask for permission and he thinks, a moment too late, that perhaps he should have— but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because he kisses Chuuya and Chuuya kisses back.
It makes Dazai want to die.
“I want to die,” he tells Chuuya, as Chuuya crawls into his lap. His voice breaks. “I want to die.” He says like a sob.
“Shh,” Chuuya breathes against Dazai’s lips, pressing him back against the cold of the window, “I know. I know.” His fingers tremble on Dazai’s cheeks. “Do you want me to stop?” He asks.
Dazai can’t speak. He finds the word no stuck in the back of his throat. He finds the word yes.
Yes, stop, this is not something I could deserve. No, please don’t take this away from me, not this, no matter how undeserved.
He shakes his head no.
“Kiss me.” He begs.
Chuuya does. It’s so simple. It’s so painful. Chuuya kisses him gently, something on the edge of lazily. It is the most unhurried thing Dazai has ever felt. It’s devastating. Dazai’s mouth then body buzz with it. The intensity of his need, his want, astound him. Chuuya’s tongue touching his lower lip is a revelation. Dazai opens to him so easily he surprises himself with it. Chuuya’s mouth should taste like fresh fruit, Dazai thinks as he licks into it tentatively, like soft and sun-warmed peaches.
Chuuya shifts against Dazai. He is so warm. Dazai wants to throw himself on the heat of Chuuya and burn alive. Even if he does burn, even if it is a painful death, wouldn’t it be worth it for the one full pure second where he can feel? He pulls Chuuya tighter to him with a convulsive movement and Chuuya exhales sharply into Dazai’s mouth, teeth digging into Dazai’s lip.
“Chuuya,” Dazai manages as Chuuya moves against him, their hips pressing together in a sudden heartbreaking second. He can feel Chuuya growing hard against him. “I can’t—”
How to explain that Dazai wants and his body will not respond to the want the way Dazai wants it to, the way it is supposed to.
Chuuya stills.
“I want,” Dazai complains bitterly, broken, betrayed by himself, “it’s fine, keep going, I can still— we can still—”
“It’s okay,” Chuuya breathes. The window against Dazai’s back is ice cold. Chuuya, in his lap, is warm. So gloriously warm. “Do you want me to stop kissing you?” Chuuya asks with a gentle curiosity that makes Dazai feel dizzy. Dazai shakes his head, his hands fall from Chuuya’s waist. He knocks his head against the glass behind him once, twice. “Just kiss me.” Chuuya whispers. “Just stay here. That’s all I want. I don’t want anything else at all.”
Chuuya waits, then leans in slowly at Dazai’s nod. He kisses Dazai, hands tangled in Dazai’s collar, his hair, dancing across his bones.
Dazai digs his fingers into the wood of Chuuya’s floor. His nails scrape against it. Chuuya kisses the line of his jaw and Dazai gasps, feels the curve of Chuuya’s smile, the hard of his teeth. Chuuya brings their mouths back together.
Dazai lifts one hand tentatively. He slides it up Chuuya’s thigh and Chuuya trembles, wiggles closer. Dazai pets at the small of Chuuya’s back and then lets his hand slide under Chuuya’s loose t-shirt. He presses one fingertip, then two, and then his palm against Chuuya’s lower back, above the waistline of his jeans.
His skin is so hot. Dazai’s fingers flex against him. He rubs his thumb on a jut of bone, Chuuya’s spine.
Chuuya shivers in his lap.
“You’re cold.” He breathes, cupping Dazai’s jaw, Dazai’s mouth against the ball of Chuuya’s thumb. Dazai presses a kiss to the sweet salt heat of him. “You’re so cold, Dazai.” Chuuya whispers.
Dazai almost laughs.
“What do you feel when you look at me?” Dazai asks. The question has been scratching at his throat.
Chuuya looks at Dazai, a loose movement. The air around them is smoky. Dazai feels lazy with it. He feels honest with it.
“Cruel.” Chuuya offers after a second. “I would want to make you stay alive, even when your soul is aching. Even if you had passed some sort of ethical limit, like, the suffering you felt was too intense and there was no promise that it would get better— I’d want you to stay alive. I’d want to demand it of you— so I feel cruel.” He nods once, like it’s settled, the cruelty of Chuuya, who is the least cruel person Dazai knows.
“That sounds like love.” Dazai tells him. He wishes he could be as human as Chuuya.
“I thought love was supposed to be a sweet thing.” Chuuya laughs a little but he looks sad. “Sweet nothings and all that.”
Dazai has loved before. He thinks he was loved too. A friendship chosen, when he could have been left. Choosing to be at someone’s side— that’s love, isn’t it? Be on the side that saves people— that’s love, isn’t it?
Love got grave dirt under Dazai’s fingernails. It got blood in his mouth.
Chuuya had loved before, been loved. Dazai knows this. He inspects Chuuya’s fingernails.
“What are you doing?” Chuuya asks, sucks his lower lip in between his teeth. Dazai watches them dig into the plush of it. Dazai wants to do that, wants to replace Chuuya’s teeth with his own. He wants to crawl inside Chuuya’s mouth.
“Checking.” Dazai tells him. He slides his hands to Chuuya’s hair, the soft of it, messes it up. Twines a strand around his finger.
“Checking.” Chuuya agrees softly, his lashes fluttering. He looks like he feels good, Dazai wants to make him feel better. His body almost remembers, distant but there. He presses his teeth to Chuuya’s neck.
“Love is sharp. It will bleed you dry.” Dazai explains. He feels parched. He would kill Chuuya to keep him. He would bleed him dry. He wants Chuuya to understand this. Love is not a kind thing. It is a verb and the only verbs Dazai knows are painful.
Chuuya fiddles with the lighter in his hand. His knuckles are juts against his skin, veins pressing up. His hands are slim. Lethal. Dangerous. Dazai wants them on his throat. Chuuya drops the lighter, puts his hands on Dazai.
“It’s selfishness, what I feel for you,” Chuuya says, “so I suppose it is love.” He presses their foreheads together. “Can I kiss you?”
Chuuya still asks this sometimes, like he becomes suddenly unsure if Dazai will say yes. Like there is a chance that this would be it, the breaking, Chuuya kissing Dazai without asking in the casual way of relationships, one that speaks to how many times their mouths have met in the past, how they will continue to meet easily in the future.
Dazai kisses him.
Chuuya is patient with Dazai’s body, more patient than Dazai is with it. Dazai pinches his own thighs angrily, twisting the scarred skin. Chuuya soothes the marks away with his fingertips. He presses kisses down the length of Dazai’s limbs, mouths at Dazai’s soft, then barely half hard cock, fingers him until Dazai’s shivering pleasured trembles turn into overstimulated squirming, milky liquid leaking out of his cock.
Chuuya doesn’t seem to mind anything, not anything at all, not even when Dazai can only rub his cheek against Chuuya’s inner thigh, kiss at the soft skin there, while Chuuya’s hand works above his face. Chuuya is hot, all parts of him, and Dazai licks at the heat. He will keep this part of Chuuya too, consume it. Chuuya slides a finger over Dazai’s cheek, collecting his spend, and presses it into Dazai’s mouth, then kisses him gently.
He is always so gentle.
It makes Dazai want to scream, kick, this lack of violence. Even when Chuuya is rough with Dazai he is gentle. Chuuya does not, will not, push Dazai past what he can offer, past the ambiguous lines of his boundaries. Dazai almost wants him to. Wants Chuuya to be frustrated with him, bored with him, tell Dazai to do things he cannot so that he can scream and shake and say vicious things, watch Chuuya’s eyes close off. He wants Chuuya’s eyes to close off because then it will make sense. Then he will have found the boundary, the line that must exist, however well-hidden, where, once crossed, Chuuya’s love falls from Dazai like scales and Dazai is alone again, deserving of his isolation, just him and his reflection, ripe for shattering.
Dazai can never make himself say anything particularly cruel. Chuuya’s eyes never close off. Chuuya accepts him easily, bites his bruises just the right amount, kissing away any sting, licking at Dazai’s wounds.
Chuuya kisses his eyelids and Dazai sobs without tears, only the familiar burn.
He can’t cry— except that he finds he can, so late one night it is early, staring at the rolls of bandages and Chuuya’s bottles of Dazai’s medications. It startles him, the concept of there being a place for Dazai in Chuuya’s life, the evidence that there is one, that Chuuya has created one. It scares Dazai enough that tears spring to his eyes and he feels a sharp stab of pain. He nearly leaves, makes it to the entryway, gasping and clammy, to see his shoes lined neatly up next to Chuuya’s. Dazai didn’t leave his shoes like that. He feels furious. He shatters outward.
He hits Chuuya hard, jolting him awake.
“Fight me.” Dazai tells him, near shouting. “Fuck me. Hate me.” He lands on that and it feels right. His cheeks are tacky with dried tears. “Be reasonable, Chuuya.” He spits. “Hate me.”
“No.” Chuuya says sleepily, rolling them over with a quick move, pinning Dazai onto the bed by the bandaged wrists. Chuuya bandaged Dazai earlier that evening without judgement, without anger. Dazai had been angry, to be shown tenderness like he was worthy of it and not— a total fuckup, Chuuya. God, you’re such a pushover, what’s the matter with you, do you think you can fix me?— before his words slipped into silence. He pressed his face to Chuuya’s shoulder, hard enough that it hurt, hard enough that his quiet thank you was muffled into Chuuya’s skin.
Chuuya has a bruise on his cheek not from Dazai. Dazai iced it for him though. Showed care the way he has been shown, Chuuya watching him with liquid eyes. Dazai lifts up and puts his mouth to the mark now. Then his tongue. His teeth.
“Hate you for what?” Chuuya asks.
Dazai scoffs.
“Hate me.” He begs. “Then you won’t miss me when I’m gone.”
“I always miss you when you’re gone.” Chuuya says, matter of fact. “Just because you’re gone, that doesn’t mean you’re not here.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” Dazai says, even though it does. “Gone is gone. Dead is dead.”
They both know that’s not true.
Dazai’s been blindsided before, a note from Oda, tucked in an old jacket pocket, straight edge folds. Lupin tonight? in carefully scrawled script. Dazai, at Lupin, tucked furtively into a corner, feet pulled up on the stool next to his, waiting for Oda to come through the door, tracking graveyard dirt.
Two days ago Chuuya still as anything in his closet, staring at the ground, that’s Lippmann’s but I don’t— why did I—, a cufflink he had dropped like it had burned him. A small thing that had lived tucked back and forgotten in a velvet box, waiting to try to drag Chuuya’s unsuspecting heart out of his chest, pulling it between his ribs, leaving it misshapen and bleeding, fitting back into him funny.
“Dazai.” Chuuya says.
“I’m not gone.” Dazai says, drags Chuuya into a kiss. “Don’t miss me yet.”
Chuuya fucks Dazai then, like Dazai asked, slow and steady, massaging Dazai’s soft cock as Dazai groans and spills outward over his own edges, body trembling, gasping for air. Chuuya’s gaze pins him, does not waver. Dazai is momentarily unrelentingly warm. Hot. He feels Chuuya like a fever inside him, moving quickly, selfish with it. Dazai thrives on it. He wants Chuuya to take. He wants Chuuya free of him. He wants to die. He digs his nails into Chuuya’s back to keep him close.
“Chuuya,” he near sobs, voice ragged, “Chuuya—” His body is bee stung, honey venom sharp and sweet, buzzing.
“I know,” Chuuya soothes, kissing clumsily at Dazai’s jaw, shuddering as he comes, mouth open and wet, the words tangled in a groan, “I know.”
Dazai falls asleep warm.
In the morning Dazai checks under Chuuya’s fingernails for grave dirt. He checks in Chuuya’s mouth for blood. He touches Chuuya’s cheek, still hot with sleep.
Chuuya kisses the inside of Dazai’s wrist. Chuuya still doesn’t have a pet dog.
Dazai wonders how many times a day Chuuya imagines his own funeral. Imagines something left. Remembers being the thing that had been left— shivering, howling at the sky, grinding his teeth and gnawing at his own tail. Dazai wonders how often Chuuya imagines that happening again.
He checks under his own nails for grave dirt.
The storm has broken but the wind outside is loud, shrieking at the windows, begging to be let in, like an animal desperate for warmth, safety. Dazai places his back to the window. He listens to the claws scratch at the glass.
let me in, let me in, let me in
He wonders how much longer he can resist the urge to turn around, look it right in the eye. He thinks his own eyes would be what looks back. He doesn’t want to face that. Chuuya still doesn’t make him look in mirrors, covers them up when they fuck if Dazai asks him to, lets Dazai see himself through Chuuya’s eyes.
The wind quiets.
Dazai listens to it approach, feels it, this thing that was born with him, laid in the bassinet next to him, has spent all his years closer to him than a shadow. It curls around him, breath damp and cold on the side of his neck.
Dazai looks at Chuuya.
Chuuya’s hands are efficient as he makes them breakfast, his brow furrowed in concentration. His movements are economical and his hands are steady, the same way they are when he slits a throat.
Dazai sits, covered in grave dirt, and watches them work.
♡♡♡