Chapter Text
Chuuya knows that, as much as he is Dazai Osamu’s partner, the other half of soukoku, the man that understands him best, he never was and never will be Dazai Osamu’s first choice. He knows.
(There was a time he hoped, like a fool, but he learned better. He was shown better.)
But he doesn’t understand how little he matters to him until Mori - and Chuuya knows the Boss is manipulating him, he does, but that never stops it from working - tells him about the ADA’s president’s ability, All Men Are Equal, and-
You know, the good manipulators, the real good ones like Mori and Dostoyevsky, they don’t lie to you. They tell you the truth - and maybe twist it so that it has a direction, purpose, like the truth is a gun and you a bullet, and they just need to point you at where they want to and pull the trigger- and that is what makes them so effective. Dazai Osamu is a better one than them, for all he is a compulsive liar. But about the important things, he never lies. It would be counterproductive.
So.
Chuuya should have listened to him, when he named him a dog.
Because, in the end, that is all that he is to Dazai, a dog, a loyal companion that will unconditionally be there for you, but one that is beneath you in an irreversible way. And maybe you can love it, maybe you can cuddle it and spoil it but that does not change that it is an it.
(And Dazai’s has always hated dogs, anyway, so there was never real spoiling here. Just…grudging tolerance, under a heavy dislike.)
Chuuya has always known that he is more weapon than human, but it hurts when he considers seriously, when he gives voice to the little whispers in the back of his head, that Dazai never considered him human.
But he was a dog. Hell, he is even collared. Twice over.
One, more literally, by the choker on his neck that was his first and only gift Dazai gave him. He wore it in what he thought was defiance but, in hindsight, was just a declaration of unwavering loyalty. He was always good at following Dazai’s plan, like a dog follows his masters orders. There was no defiance to be found in obedience, even when one is as beligerant as Chuuya can be.
And twice, much more binding, damning, by his ability. Chuuya has a god trapped in his chest, calamity ready to be unleashed beneath his gloves and for all that he tries, for all that he fights, Chuuya’s body is not enough to contain divinity. To stop the corruption from slowly eating away at his body until there is nothing left but death. Nothing bus destruction. Dazai’s is the only one able to stop it, to control it, to muzzle the beast or something like that.
One reason why Chuuya has never tried to stop his loyalty towards his own partner, not really, was because he needs him. Because, despite their fights and standing in opposites sides he trusts Dazai with a side of himself he cannot trust himself with.
Chuuya always thought he understood why Dazai’s never asked him to leave with him, that night. He, in his best moments, doesn’t resents him for leaving. Getting the whole story of that night was a hard, foolish, ridiculous thing to do. Chuuya did it anyway, because he was never the smart one.
Dazai’s friend - his real friend, not his pet - died. Chuuya’s instincts are sharp enough to guess that Mori probably had a hand in it. He never understood why he chose to “walk into the light” instead of bloody revenge, what was the thing that made him change his mindset so abruptly. Probably the no-name grunt.
(That is a lie. Chuuya knows his name. It is Oda Sakunosuke. He even talked to him, once, when he noticed how much Dazai listened to him. Well, talk, threaten, same thing. He was-
He was the only person who didn’t laugh in Chuuya’s face when he showed concern - well if shouting something like ‘I don’t know what the fuck shitty Dazai sees in a no-name grunt like you but even though he is a waste of bandages don’t even think about adding a single bandaid more’ can be considered concern - about Dazai’s feelings. He even told him “he is lucky to have you” and Chuuya-
Chuuya was never a good thing, before. As sad as it is, it was a step up from being considered a nuclear bomb in the hands of a psycho. Still a thing but. Better.)
Dazai is happier, Chuuya knows, now that he is not in the mafia. Happier than he was, at least, even if it is not that much. Chuuya is not that big of an asshole to resent him for that, for all that he resents that he left him behind .
Then again, Chuuya never amounted to anything more than a dog to him. His favorite pet to torment, even. So he probably didn’t think twice about going without him, about how it would turn Chuuya into a shitty version of Hachiko, loyally waiting for an owner that will never come back. Knowing it but waiting regardless. As if his loyalty, his love, is enough to change something like that.
Dazai always told Chuuya that he was too loyal for his own good. Another thing he should have listened to. Another painful truth he denied.
“Have I given you reasons to think that I am no longer loyal to the Port Mafia?” It is what Chuuya ends up telling Mori, after a beat too long. He was never made for careful negotiations, for all that he has been a constant witness to them since he was fifteen, or their victim, more often than not. So he just will bludgeon over them, like a bull in a china shop.
“No, Chuuya-kun,” Mori tells him as if they were chatting over tea. They are, but that is just the appearance of civility and affability Mori prefers to portray when he is at his most ruthless. Chuuya never understood the importance of that kind of nuance. He knows how to play it, clumsily, so he forces his shoulders to relax. To lower themselves. Being a martial artist helps. Chuuya can lie with his body, it is his words he struggles with, his emotions. Mori smiles at him, “I know you will never betray us”
There is nothing openly calculating in his expression, he even looks understanding and compassionate, as much as he can without making it a blatant lie. Yet the glint of his smile tells Chuuya another thing, completes the sentence to its end.
I know you will never betray us, he tells him, eyes pitying, not on purpose.
Chuuya tries to not explode in rage. He manages it, because Mori is not Dazai.
“Then it doesn’t matter what that fukuwhatever ability is.” He continues, firm. “Because to be affected by it would mean that I change sides, right?”
“Correct” Mori smiles at him, naked steel, and it should feel like a threat but it doesn’t. Chuuya is already bleeding, either way, but the appearance of civility is maintained because Mori is facing him, so he cannot see the wound in his back.
He is just…making Chuuya aware of the presence of the knife. After four years. In a way that benefits him more. He is just making sure that Chuuya will never betray the Port Mafia, on purpose or not.
(Chuuya hates the nuance everyone has in this kind of negotiations. He is bleeding. Everyone can see it. Why pretend it is not there?)
“Then I guess we have nothing to worry about” Chuuya has end up whispering, voice rough but eyes dry and firm. He is clenching his composure with a white-knuckled grip and, as hard as he finds it, he knows he will convince himself of this facade of nonchalantly before he convinces Mori. “Are we done, boss?”
Mori puts his chin on his hands, in what it is true indifference but looks like indulgence, but he is a good leader.
“Take the week off, Chuuya-kun” Mori tells him. Not because he cares, but because he is a man who knows how to handle his tools. And you don’t break your tools, not unless you are going to throw them away when they are no longer of use to you.
And if Chuuya has ever been anything in this life, it is useful .
“I don’t need to,” that one is just bravado. And maybe cowardice, because Chuuya doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now. “But thanks, boss”
He bows, as respectful and polite as Ane-San has managed to instill in him, and quietly closes the door after him. He walks the corridors of HQ quietly, calmly, with his mind completely blank. He gets into his penthouse, but he doesn’t remember how, and is mindful enough to close the door and the curtain of every single window and turn off the lights. Then he changes into pajamas, the softest one he has, and gets into his bed. He immediately curls into a ball, clamps a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t make a sound, and hides his face as far as he can between his knees.
Then, and only then, when he is sure that he cannot be seen (not even the best surveillance can catch anything in complete darkness and no night vision can catch his expression in that position) or heard (they can try, but all his sounds will be muffled) he lets the facts truly sink in.
He lets himself feel the betrayal.
It hurts.
God, it hurts so much, like being stripped down and opened with a scalpel - but instead of putting something in, like his last time on a examination table, they have taken something out. Chuuya doesn’t let himself succumb to ugly, disgraceful sobbing but his knees are wet regardless.
It is not the god they take out, the one that haunts him like a continued death sentence, the one that reminds him that he is not really a human but a weapon, the one that has made everyone around him use him and use him and use him until they find better to discard him.
God, even Shirase stabbing him with a blade full of rat poison did not hurt like this. Not really. That was - as much as he had wanted to hope, had wanted to trust, well. The Sheep’s betrayal was something like a foretold prophecy. He was betrayed, yes, but his eyes were wide open, but he was never wounded in the back like this.
Dazai just made a mockery of his trust. Just saw his back, wide open to him - protecting him, the best way Chuuya knew how, which was just destruction, because that is the only thing Chuuya is good at - and put a knife on it. Like an afterthought. Like-
Their partnership is such a joke, when they were never-
It is one thing to know that Dazai never cared about him like Chuuya did. Looking back, Chuuya doesn’t think Dazai was capable of caring back then (but that is another lie, isn’t it? Dazai was plenty capable, when it wasn’t about Chuuya. Oda Sakunosuke is proof enough of that) but he still trusted him. It was…foolish perhaps, but it wasn’t like Chuuya had, realistically, any option about that.
The cornerstone of their partnership was that Dazai will stop Corruption before Chuuya goes too far. Before he dies. Before he loses himself. Before he destroys everything. The cornerstone of their partnership resides on that Dazai is the only one that can stop him. That, as much as they can hate each other, Chuuya needs Dazai.
But if what Mori said was true, if Fukutawa’s ability allows his people to have complete control of their abilities then that is a lie.
For how long has Dazai known that, and let him be in the mafia, knowing that one day he will have to use Corruption, alone, and die? For how long was Dazai going to keep the lie up, and use Chuuya like a trump card knowing that he will always come, because he needed him? For how long was Chuuya supposed to live, with a death sentence hanging over his head, hating himself like the aberration he is, when the person he trusts the most knows a person that will make it possible for Chuuya to not be out of control?
Would he have, at some point, find in himself enough pity to remember the rabid, abandoned dog he left behind for a better life to give him a chance in this world to not be just a weapon?
Chuuya presses his head harder between his knees and forces himself to stop trembling like a localized earthquake. Forces himself not to listen to that insidious, foreign voice that tells him to let it go, to become a real earthquake and see how they like how useful he is, when he destroy everything -
A whimper leaves him, like a dog whining after he is kicked.
God. He is so tired of being a weapon. He just wants to stop. He just-
He could stop. He could go right now to the ADA, saying something about business or the treaty or whatever random excuse he can find to catch five minutes alone with their president, knowing full well that both the annoying detective and Dazai will take a look and know, and then kneel before the president, begging him to take it under his wing so Chuuya can stop being a thing and start being a person, even if just for five minutes before the rest of the Mafia wises up his treason and sends Ane-san to kill him, knowing full well he is dog enough to let the people he loves to kill him without raising a hand.
He thinks that, for those five minutes of freedom, it would be worth it.
He thinks that, if those five minutes prolong to ten, to hours, to days, to months when he has to see Dazai’s smug, idiotic face everyday, it would not. It would not.
It would never be worth it. How could it, when he would be too busy being his dog to ever be a person? Because as much as Mori has manipulated this truth to make it a dagger and make him bleed out his loyalty for his ex-partner, Dazai can as much pick the truth from another angle and make it a blanket, another collar, and manipulate it back up until his loyalty not only comes back, but does so stronger.
And Mori? Mori would sigh, as if exasperated by a misbehaving child, and call it a loss in the game of chest they are constantly playing between the two of them, just bothering to throw words as daggers to Chuuya whenever Dazai is not there to occupy him. Not because he thinks they will amount to much, but because they will hurt Chuuya, maybe even enough to make him hesitate, to make him a less effective weapon. And because he is a vindictive asshole, too.
He could stop, go and beg, throw away any dignity he has managed to scrap together through the years, and it would all amount to absolute nothing, because he will end up exactly where he is right now, whenever Dazai shows him again how little he really cares - and he will, god, he will, because his act is not as flawless as he think and as much as he drons about not being human, he is and he has limits.
He is but Chuuya isn’t.
For all that he has spent a lifetime chasing humanity, trapped and caged and leashed by humanity, at his core, Chuuya is not human. He is a god. He is Arahabaki.
(Chuuya, if asked, and most time not even then, can admit to not remembering a thing before he was seven and the Sheep found him. This is not necessarily the full truth.
Chuuya does not remember a time before, a time as a human boy. But Arahabaki? Arahabaki remembers what it was to be a god. What it was to be free .)
Chuuya has never let himself dwell a lot about Arahabaki, not really, not when he hates how lonely it makes him, how hopeless. He wanted to know, back when he was fifteen, he wanted to understand how .
(He never needed to understand what )
He gots his answers, answers small enough to fit into a Manila folder. In exchange, he let new chains shackle him and walked on, unbothered. Back then, he did not care over much what direction he was walking to, he just didn’t want to walk alone .
And for a time, he wasn’t alone. He had Dazai. Dazai got him. He told himself that was enough.
Dazai left him. He had more people to walk with because Dazai still got him when he needed him.
But Dazai never got him, just used him with the key of his shackles dancing on his fingers and Chuuya is not walking alone but he is walking with snipers and that is not-
He is so tired. He wants to stop hurting.
He does not want to hurt anymore. He does not want to keep on being used. He does not want to see the smug face of the bastard he trusted, over and over and over again just to know that his trust was taken for granted. He does not want to keep on going to work, to keep on going on missions when he either intimidates or slaughters everyone in his path. He does not want to be a weapon.
He wants to be a person. A person with choices and freedom and limitations and-
Chuuya wants to stop. The funniest part is that he only thought he could stop when he died.
Does he want to die?
He first feels repulsed in committing suicide, like that bastard always talks about (and then doesn’t. He hurts and hurts and hurts and yet grabs on life like a stubborn mule and Chuuya never understood how he could want to die when he didn’t want to at all at the same time) Chuuya always wanted to live, to be, to become a human. However, where has that left him with? That want, what has he gotten out of it, other that chains?
But he hates the thought of dying if it means giving up. Life, Chuuya always figured since he was seven and alone on the streets, surrounded by hostiles, was a lot like a fight. And Chuuya does not lose.
(But what has he been doing all this time, if not losing?)
Yet Chuuya cannot win, in these circumstances. Not if people like Mori and Dazai have made the battlefield a game of chess.
Once, in the better times of their partnership (when Dazai was not yet an executive and when he had no friends to spent time with instead of wasting it with his dog) Chuuya got so bored in a mission that he started annoying Dazai for once. Chuuya spent hours talking about whatever came to mind. He remembers thinking that the annoyance he felt from Dazai (not that he ever outwardly showed it, the bastard) when he spoke about the time he spent with other people was jealousy. It made him feel wanted, back then.
It was not jealousy. That is what you feel for people. When it is about things it is about selfishness and possession. And Dazai was just a possessive brat and hated people touching his things.
(Chuuya was a god, not a thing. When has he, in his hopeless race for humanity, let himself forget that?)
Either way, he spoke about Ane-San, and how what she was teaching him this week. Chuuya was almost illiterate when he joined the mafia, and he had a lot to catch up with. That week they were talking about the art of war, which is a good book that Chuuya has admittedly re-read on his free time, but back then it was such a chore. A chore that lead to lessons about strategy, and, even though Ane-San never said it, when Chuuya was too slow to get it it eventually led to practical lessons, like a game of chess. Chuuya has just started learning how to play.
Dazai, the bastard, caught that weakness. He immediately challenged him to a game of chess. Chuuya lost, spectacularly, in less than a minute, and when Dazai couldn’t stop laughing Chuuya flipped the board to make that bastard choke on the pieces if he liked the game so much-
The point is.
He lost that game, but Dazai ended up under his feet regardless. It was Chuuya who stopped that night, Chuuya who decided enough was enough, Chuuya who decided not to kill or hurt Dazai that much. Even stripped of his ability, of the presence of the god inside of him, Chuuya was strong enough to defeat Dazai that night, and all the nights that followed.
If Chuuya were to play chess with Dazai, with Mori, with Ane-San or anyone else he will lose. But if he were to flip the board? Dazai is the person that makes him the most vulnerable and human he can be, and he is strong enough to defeat him. He is being used, constantly, but, he realizes, that is because he lets them use him. The moment he stops letting himself be used? Then the board is flipped, and they all can choke on the little pawn they thought he was.
Chuuya has three options right now:
One, he could stay were he is, a loyal Port Mafia executive, the trump card of Yokohama. He could stay and go on as he is, as Mori’s weapon. He has been doing it for a long time and Chuuya knows he could go on like that for a long time, until his usefulness expires and he is sacrificed to the altar of the Port Mafia. He likes to think he will be remembered but he knows better. He will be lost in the rest of them, one amongst many, as forgettable as the rest of them.
Sure, it is a choice that can hurt at times, but it is what he knows, and it is a safe bet.
Two: he could go crawling to the ADA and beg for a chance. To take control of the god inside of him. He could go back to Dazai to be his partner all over again, but this time in the side that saves people instead of hurting them. He could learn all over again how to be a protector, like when he was with the Sheep. It is riskier. They can always say no (But would Dazai let them, when Chuuya is such an useful, loyal, crawling dog? Will he try and keep him leashed by his side again? Or will he turn his back to Chuuya, for the last time, treat like the unwanted dog he is, constantly barking at the heels of his owner?) and then he will have to cause mass destruction in a fit of Dazai-induced rage and die. But they could say yes. Chuuya could become human at last.
All things considered, it is a fifty fifty chance. But Chuuya thinks some part of him would die in either case.
Three: he could flip the board and leave. He could be his own boss, his own master. He could make anyone choke on the pawns they sent after him, daring them to cage him all over again. He could leave and do whatever the fuck he wants.
It is an all or nothing. It means being alone, unmoored, purposeless. It means no longer being a weapon or used or a dog. He could even try again to be a person, if he finds what it means to be human, and if it doesn’t work, he could try and find out what it means to be a god. Not as Arahabaki, but as Chuuya. And if it doesn’t work out, well. Then he chooses again.
Chuuya sees the three options before him, and knows the first two are just excuses.
Really, he has already decided, it is a question of making it happen. Of saying goodbye.
The first person he goes is not the first he thinks about (that one…that one will go last, if Chuuya decides he deserves a goodbye. If his betrayed loyalty can convinced him to) but it is the one that has never hurt to love. Not until that moment.
She is also the only person that can genuinely make him stay. That Chuuya will give a chance to, because he knows there are other people who will try.
He goes to Ane-San.
“Chuuya-kun”, she welcomes him in, as she has always done, and Chuuya is already hating himself for his choice, for hurting her, but knows he won’t change his mind that easily. “Chuuya-kun, what is the matter?” Her tone immediately changes to one of urgency and oh-
Oh, Chuuya must look really pathetic right now, in his silk pajamas, with his eyes red and his cheek wet. He…he hadn’t bothered in anything before leaving his apartment, not even his hat or his gloves.
“Ane-san,” he tries and stops. He opens his mouth. He closes it. His eyes feel like they are going to leak at any moment. She cradles his face.
“Oh, Chuuya,” Ane-san hands is not soft against his cheeks. Her hands are hard, full of callous because of her sword, and it is his favorite part of her. The most honest one. “Who hurt you?” She asks her without any hint of softness, but with a fierceness that betrays the care that lays behind. Chuuya clears his throat.
“Ane-san, you know I love you, right?” He manages to whisper. “You are the only person that I have loved that has never hurt me.”
Ane-san hands fall from his face and Chuuya closes his eyes to not see her face. He knows how much Kouko leaving hurt her, and Chuuya has been by her side a lot longer. There is a sharp inhale of breath.
Chuuya thinks that she could stab him, right now, and all that he could manage to say to that is “thank you, and I am sorry”.
She should stab him. Or at least slap him. Anything, but stand there and take it.
“Why?”
Chuuya swallows.
“I am tired Ane-San."
Kouyou scoffs.
“Then take a nap. A vacation. A gap year,” there is barely a whisper and then Chuuya can feel a blade against his neck. He tilts his head back, so it has a better angle, but doesn’t dare to open his eyes. “Or are you going back to him?” The last part is spatted, like an insult, graceless and uncharacteristic of her.
Chuuya is startled enough to open his eyes. Ane-san looks at him impasively, but her eyes are as betrayed as his had been, and he hates the sight. He hates being the cause for it.
“No!” He exclaims, as sincere as he can, “you know I would never, ane-san”
“Wouldn’t you,” she says, soft as silk, poignant like a thrown knife that reaches the heart, “if he were to ask you?”
The words slid against his ribs like a blade and Chuuya closes his eyes, feeling small and defeated.
“Not anymore,” he manages to say, after a beat. He realizes he is crying.
He hears a sigh, and the blade leaves his neck.
“What am I going to do with you, you silly boy?” It is just a whisper, but Chuuya sags onto himself at the tenderness behind it.
“Whatever you want” he tells her, completely, utterly sincere. He even believes it. If she asks him to stay he will, for her. If she chooses to draw her blade again he will stay still, for her. For all that he has decided to be free, Chuuya is still a dog that needs permission from the ones he loves the most to leave.
“What happened?” Her tone leaves no room for refusal. Chuuya will have never, even if it hadn’t come to this.
“The boss-” Chuuya catches himself “Mori-San told me, about Fukutawa’s ability. About how it would affect mine”
If he weren’t looking at her, if he weren’t so jaded already, if he had any hope left that he was worth something, he would have never caught it. The flinch. It was tiny, a flip of the fingers.
Even if Chuuya was never the smartest person in the room, his instincts were always the sharpest.
“You knew,” he realized, something in him cracking, even though it was already broken. “You knew and you never told me”
“Tell you? Tell you and what?” Chuuya has never heard his sister in all but blood sound this bitter, this broken. “Did you think that I wanted to tell you and watch you-? Do you think I could allow the port mafia to lose their most powerful ability user like that?”
He has also never seen her this vulnerable.
“Ane-san” Chuuya says, his voice soft and wrapped in regrets, “ane-san, I am so sorry.”
He thinks that he wants nothing more than hug her, in this moment. He thinks of a world where she could allow it. Instead he watches her take his word like a hit, stoic despite of the pain of it, and gather herself in silence. She only speaks one word, like a shot.
“Why?”
“For hurting you” Chuuya says inmediatly “I never wanted to-” a soft chuckle cuts him off.
“No," she continues, relentless, “why do you want to leave, if you are not going to join them”
The bullet lands true.
“I am tired” Chuuya tries again, watching as something like rage or despair passes through his sister’s face like lighting “I am tired of being a weapon” He repeats like a broken record. He certainly feels broken.
“Chuuya-kun,” She stares at him like she has never seen him before. It is, well, it is not a nice feeling. “You know as well as I do than in this world is to use or to be used”
“Then I am tired of being used,” He snaps back, getting incensed, “I am tired of constantly being the pawn of everyone who just see me as this thing to use. I am tired of being a dog, Ane-San, and I am tired of being less than everyone else”
“Chuuya-kun, what-?”
“I have all this power in my fingertips, all this capacity of destruction,” he continues, gesticulating with said hands, “and I am tired with being pointed at enemy after enemy and being told to be a good boy and be done with it without a single ounce of thanks or care. I am tired and I want out. One way or another.”
Her sister remains silent after he finishes his outburst and he realizes he is breathing hard. His chest is heaving and his hair tangled and he has managed to make an even worse mess of himself that he already was and somehow, in the way, he has lost the capacity to care about any of it.
“Chuuya-kun”, his sister’s voice is quiet, firm, “when was the last time you slept?”
Chuuya stumbles, like he was punched. He knows the question comes from a place of caring, he knows and yet. Yet it feels worse than when he could feel Golden Demon’s sword against his yugular. He is unraveling and lost and unmoored and he should have never come here.
He should have left, arranging his affair discretely, in the middle of the night without a single goodbye.
“This is the first time I am awake, Ane-san” he tells her after a while, after looking at her eyes to search for something he does not know of but realizes it is not here nonetheless. “I am leaving” he repeats, more sure of himself but more sad because of it.
“There is nothing I can say to convince you out of it, is there?” Kouyou asks quietly. Chuuya laughs, a little, at the total conviction of it. At how wrong he thought she was. At how right he just realized she is.
“I though, coming here, I thought that I would stay if you asked me to”
“Then stay.”
“But I can’t,” Chuuya is crying again. Sobbing like a unruly toddler. “Ane-San I don’t want to die but I also want to live.”
“Are you searching for permission, Chuuya-kun?” She asks just as quietly, just as softly but Chuuya evades to the right all the same and activates his ability. Golden Demon passes where he stood like the blade of a guillotine and disappears in the same moment that Ane-San crumbles into the wood of the tatami.
“I am saying goodbye” Chuuya whispers, in the silence that follows her fall. He makes four thumps more against the tatami, for ane-san’s people, the people he once belonged with, “and I am saying thank you, for loving a thing like me, and I am saying that hurting you is the last think I wanted to do”
“But you have,” Kouyou gasps against the ground “you are.”
“I know” Chuuya says. He closes his eyes against the pain it causes him, “I am sorry”
“Do you seek forgiveness boy?” Kouyou snarls, “because you don’t have it. I will never forgive you this”
“I know,” Chuuya confirm, forcing himself to stop crying. He does not deserve to, when he is the one betraying, “it’s okay.”
He allows himself five seconds more in the presence of the one person who never hurt him, the person he chose to hurt instead. He breathes out.
“Goodbye, ane-san”
Then he is gone.
Dazai Osamu is shaken awake a Thursday night by a grip so tight it hurts. He lets himself be shaked like a doll, feigning sleep.
Then he is slapped. Hard. So hard his acting is thrown to the window and he gasps. He is slapped again with the same Herculean strength.
He knows that backhand.
“Chibi?” He asks, a little groggy and a lot confused. Not that he will let it show, “oi, shortrack, what do you want, in the middle of the night, huh? Don’t you know you have to be this tall to do adult things? Not that I would want to, with a chibi like you.”
Chuuya is not shouting at him, a think he is half-heartedly thankful for in his half-awake state, and that should have rang the first alarm bell on his brain.
“I am leaving”
Dazai is smart, okay, but your brain is not at its best when you just got awakened with what amounts to be two small concussions. He whines about it.
“Then go, what do you want me to do with it?”
The hands that held him drop him suddenly, and he lets himself fall onto his futon with as much dramatics as he can. Ah, he can sleep again.
“I shouldn’t have come here” Chuuya whispers, more to himself than to Dazai, who is suddenly wide awake, “this was stupid”
Because that, well yes, that is a normal response but that is not the normal tone. It is not dismissive annoyance, it is…resigned. Wrong.
“Well, when you have a brain as tiny as you are you are not going to make smart-”
“Shut up” Chuuya hasn’t insulted him once. He is not leaving for a mission. Dazai instantly is more alert, looking at his old partner with eyes sharp enough to cut.
“You are leaving the Mafia,” he says aloud more to have it confirmed than because he knows it’s wrong. He knows he is right, but for something as blindingly, stupidly loyal as the Chibi?
“Took you long enough,” Chuuya scoffs, watching him right back. His eyes are on him him like a hawk’s are on a bunny. Rude and wrong. Dazai is always the predator, for all that he acts like prey.
Metaphors aside, even for someone like Dazai it took Odasaku’s death to leave the Mafia, and Chuuya is a hundred times more loyal than he is.
“What have they done to you?” He asks, serious. Chuuya looks at him like he has grown a new head. Dazai barely can hardly care about that over the ringing of his ears, his eyes carefully cataloging the state the other is in.
It’s…it’s not great, even if he is not physically hurt. He is in pajamas, for once, one of those silk, rich man pajamas that are ridiculous and Dazai’s mouth itches to make fun of him for his shitty taste. He has no shoes, his hair is a complete mess and his eyes are red as if he has been crying. His hands are naked and he is hatless.
Someone is going to die before the night ends.
“Mori miscalculated,” Chuuya tells him.
Mori is going to die before the night ends.
“Miscalculated how?” Dazai’s brain is racing through the possibilities, one more bloody and horrible than the rest.
(The trick will be to reach him before Chuuya does, because those gloveless hands mean one thing in particular, and Dazai is in no mood to watch what will happen to Yokohama under the slaught Corruption)
“Does it matter?” Chuuya cuts through his theories like a sharpnel bomb, the worst part of them getting stuck on Dazai’s head. He sounds tired. Chuuya. Tired.
It makes no sense. Chuuya only ever sounds something close to tired after he has used Corruption.
“Yes.” He manages to say, somewhat normally. Chuuya scoffs, as if he has seen through his head and found it distasteful and inappropriate. Understandable, but rude nonetheless.
“Fight it out if you want but I am leaving Yokohama”
That makes even less sense that the tiredness. Chuuya fights for himself. Hell, he fights for everyone. He hasn’t met a single battle that he hasn’t gone and pick, like a brute.
“But what-?”
“I am not a dog, you know” Chuuya cuts him off, again. Not exactly uncharacteristic, but still landing wrong. “Or a pawn. Or a weapon. Or a thing. Or even a god. I am a person”
Dazai hasn’t felt slower in his life. This is what normal people feel, when he is the one talking? Annoying, Dazai wants to be back on the other side of the equation right now. It is where he belongs.
“I know,” he ends up saying to Chuuya, because he is looking right at him and his eyes are demanding a serious answer.
“Do you?” He asks him softly. There is something wrong here but Dazai doesn’t understand what. It is as if someone has changed the hidden language of their interactions overnight without telling him and now he is scrambling to catch up.
“Ye-”
“Because you have only treated me like a dog, you know. And you hate them”
Oh.
Well, this…Dazai can work with this.
“Chuuya, if you didn’t want to be my dog you just had to say it!” He tells him brightly, something in him relaxing. “you can be my ant, instead! But then, what if I step on you by accident? You are so tiny, I won’t see you there! What about my slug, then-”
“No.” Chuuya cuts him off and it’s nothing like the rest of times. There is no annoyance, no fury, no uncontainable emotion. Dazai tenses all over again. “I am nothing of yours anymore”
Dazai feels something land on his lap. He looks down. It is Chuuya’s choker, the one he gifted him on his sixteen birthday as a cruel joke, the one he never takes off, not even after Dazai left Port Mafia. His mind feels a blank page of paperwork to complete.
“…Chuuya, are you breaking up with me?”
“Yes”
What the fuck.
What the fuck.
No denial? No “we were never together you imbecile”? No “shut up, you waste of bandages”? No “as if anyone would date a fish like you stinky mackerel”? Just a yes, final and immovable? As if they were ever dating? As if Dazai has talked with him outside of a very urgent situation in the last four years? As if-
“Well, too bad, I refuse~”
As if Chuuya doesn’t need him, at the worst of it, to keep him alive? There is something very wrong with a world that doesn’t have a Chuuya on it. Dazai refuses to see it.
“Uh-huh. We can be together in your head, I guess”
This is what is wrong with their interactions. They are talking but Chuuya is not reacting the right way. He is reacting as if he were not talking with Dazai, as if Dazai was the same as any other person and that is so wrong that-
“And what if you use corruption and need me, then?” He asks, stunned enough to stop being so convoluted.
“Why would I use it, if no one is making me?” Chuuya asks right back and Dazai-
“That’s stupid. You are stupid. Of course you will use it at some point, it’s not in your nature to stand back-”
“What would you know about my nature, when all that I have done is been over backwards for you?”
What.
“Chuuya, what-”
“It is funny, you know. Even when you left, even when you break every single promise you make to me I still trust you. Do you know why?”
“Because you need me” Dazai’s voice is not small, but it is hard. He has known the ugly truth of their partnership for a long time. After all, why would Chuuya choose him if there was anyone else that he could have instead of-?
Chuuya shakes his head
“Because you taught me to”
Dazai is getting really fucking tired of being so confused. He has never been caught so wrong-footed in his life.
“I taught you to- Chuuya, what are you talking-?”
But Chuuya doesn’t look like he cares about Dazai’s confused and intolerable state of being. He is as relaxed as he can be, sitting in his open window, able and capable of jumping and disappearing faster than Dazai can hope to catch him. Something quiet and sure whispers in the back of his mind, in Odasaku’s voice, that if he lets him escape from that window he will never see Chuuya again.
This conversation has been outside of his control since minute one and Dazai hates it. He is done with it.
“This is the most you have ever said my name. And I have known you for eight years”
Danmit, he wants to go back to their banter. That, he understands. He makes the attempt.
“Well I never thought you’d miss my nicknames! Chibi, Chibiko, hat rack, ant, slug,-”
“Osamu” Dazai is silent instantly. Chuuya never calls him by his first name. No one ever calls him by his first name, especially not Chuuya. “I am tired of this game”
“…because you are a sore loser?”
“Because you cheat so that I never win”
“So it’s because you are a sore loser”
“Mori told me about your president’s ability.”
Dazai's world stops.
“Where did he get that information from?” His tone is urgent, out of control, aggressive even-
“…I don’t know why I expected anything different”
Dazai is almost too busy getting dressed to catch it.
“Chuuya, this is not a joke, do you understand?" He feels as if he is going to lose Odasaku, all over again. It is awful "This is a leak, which means a traitor and do you know what happened the last time there was a traitor and I didn’t catch him?”
He turns to Chuuya, ready to keep berating him, to make him explode so that maybe, maybe some key information the moron is not even aware he has slips by and Dazai can guess what is happening-
Chuuya is crying.
Silent, huge, shiny tears falling through his face and, and-
“What the fuck, chibi? Get yourself together this isn’t the moment for you to-”
He’s gone.
Sometimes, not most times but some, a few, like one or two, times Dazai regrets how fast his mouth can be, even compared to his brain. How cruel it can be, even when Dazai doesn’t want to be, not anymore.
Dazai shakes his head and goes to get his coat. He has a potential crisis to stop. Before it is too late.
It turns out, there wasn’t a leak.
It turns out, Mori has been aware of the president's ability the whole time, because they knew each other or something when they were younger. Uncomfortable to know, true, but it would have been better if anyone bothered to tell him before Chuuya went and cried.
It turns out, Mori’s plan all along was to take Chuuya away from him and Dazai played his part so well he practically deserves a fucking Oscar.
It turns out, Chuuya was telling the truth when he said he was leaving, because he has disappeared, as if vanished in thin air and Dazai can’t find him. Not even if he goes looking. Not even if he whistles in the wind and calls for his dog. Not even if he asks Sango or all his contacts or-
It turns out, Dazai is getting stabbed in a back alley because, apparently, to the surprise of no one ever, Kouyou hasn’t taken the news very well.
“And I had just gotten the coat from the dry cleaners, too” he sighs, a little forlorn. Blood is much more easier to get out when you are wearing black, and even though Dazai likes his new coat much better it’s so annoying to get it cleaned when people asks so many questions-
“Did you turn him away?” Kouyou asks him, as cold as she has ever sounded. Now, Dazai knows she won’t really kill him or anything so he doesn’t feel like the situation is that urgent as her tone implies. “When he went to you, begging for a chance, did you turn him away?”
Kouyou twists the blade and Dazai has to avoid grimacing. He reconsiders. She can make it hurt very much, however.
“Did you?” He asks back because for all that she looks - well not really, but yes really - devastated and betrayed she doesn’t look surprised. Or caught out of guard.
“You are heartless,” she tells him blandly, a condemnation. It shouldn’t hurt, really, because Kouyou is his enemy and it’s not as if she is saying something that is not true, regardless and yet.
It stings. A tiny little itty bit.
“Don’t tell me that when you would kill him now, if you were to see him again”
“You were always so stupid for all that you were smart” Kouyou snarls “Wether I can act out of duty or not that does not mean I do not feel, you fool. That is something Chuuya always understood”
In Dazai’s defense, he spent a lot of time trying not to feel a single thing. He has not wisen up how do you make feelings turn on again but he is making progress on that front.
“Why would that has something to do-”
Slow progress.
“He was ready to die by my blade before he left,” she tells him and all the thoughts in Dazai’s hyperactive brain turns into white noise “practically suicidal”
“What.”
Chuuya, offering his neck to die? Willing to give up without fighting? Welcoming the mere possibility of death? It doesn’t compute. It simply-
“And he would have, too, if I hadn’t-” Kouyou breathes out
But Chuuya is not the suicidal one in their partnership.
“You hurt him” Dazai’s mouth said, before his brain caught up with it. It even spats out the words with a vitriol Dazai didn’t know he was capable of. “You-”
“He betrayed me,” Kouyou whispers back, putting back her blade and stabbing him again, this time in the other shoulder. Dazai almost doesn’t notice, “and there isn’t anyone in this world that has hurt him more than you, Osamu-kun”
Well now. That. That hurts.
Probably because it’s true.
“Yeah,” he lets his head hit the pavement. He abstently wonders how long until Kunikida comes searching for him because he has paperwork. He wonders if he can be a dick enough to make Kouyou kill him for real. “I know.”
She’d probably just maim him, so better not.
“Just,” Kouyou sounds frustrated, and strangely human, “why didn’t you offer him a place at the ADA?”
Because Dazai is stupid where it counts and he never allowed himself the fantasy of Chuuya changing sides to come with him. And now Chuuya has changed sides but he has not come with him and he doesn’t know what to do with that.
“He didn’t want me to," he shrugs instead. Kouyou changes her expression from enraged to almost pitying.
“He practically confessed me that he would have left the Mafia at any point in the last four years if you only asked him to.”
Dazai opens his mouth, probably to make a witty comment or something, and when nothing, absolutely nothing at all comes out his mouth, he lets it open some more. Kouyou calmly takes away her blade, cleans it, sheathes it, and closes his mouth with a click of her tongue.
“You know,” Kouyou says, a goodbye, “at least, when he left me, he knew that I loved him, and that I wanted him by my side. He did not left because he thought he was unwanted.”
Dazai let’s himself sink on the pavement and puts his head between his knees. He stays like that until Kunikida finds him, two hours later. It takes a lot of shouting for him to realize that he has been stabbed but maybe that is on Dazai.
He was hoping to bleed out, to be honest. As slowly and as painfully as he could.
It’s no less than he deserves.
Chuuya spends the first three weeks just wandering. Exploring. Enjoying his ability in a way he hasn’t ever let himself before .
He walks on clouds, like a stupid kid, and plays with them with his ability. He can make it rain. He can make it hail. He can make it storm. He controls the weather and cackles about it like a madman.
Then he gets a cold, because clouds are not fluffy, they are just wet, and that part is not so fun. It is humiliating and he nurses his cold in a sulk. It doesn't last more than a day, because he actually takes care of himself, unlike literally everybody he knows except for Kouyou, and his health is partially powered by the god inside of him.
He does not play in the clouds again, however. He knows he can, and that is enough, for now. He does catch a couple of rides in planes, always sitting by the windows that have children (and are next to the wings, because if he is hatching a ride then he is getting comfortable, dammit) and waves cheerfully at their wide open, fascinated expressions.
He goes to the open sea, and sinks himself in with seven tanks of Oxygen and a huge flashlight. It is fascinating, the creatures he sees, the weird fish he hasn’t seen as anything but blobs before, and even if those huge squid remind him a little too much of lovecraft to enjoy playing with them instead of, you know, crushing them into extinction, it is not until he sees the giant crabs that he goes back to the surface.
They remind him of Dazai a little too much. He wanted to catch one and present it to him, just to see his dumbfounded face at the huge amount of crab, and then eat it whole right in front of his stupid face. Not because it would be gloriously petty. Even if it totally would, but because-
Because it reminds him how he is a loyal dog, always begging for attention from his owner.
So he stops wandering and goes to other places instead, places where he always wanted to go but never had the opportunity. In other words: he goes on a crazy wine vacation through Europe. 365 days for 365 wineries, one for each day.
And even if this freedom thing doesn’t work out, and he ends up right where he started? He is on day seven and it is already worth it.
Then, on winery number 23, on his freaking birthday, he finds Shirase, of all people.
He doesn’t splatter him like an egg on reflex by some miracle. He doesn’t run away when he spots him on principle. He also punches him in the face in a one hit KO when the asshole dared to light up when he saw him. This is on principle, too.
…He also waits for him to wake up in a motel room three towns over (okay, hear him out, there are too many Italian towns too close to each other. This is the normal distance for the standard procedure for this) because he is weak, and curious, and he has never understood, not really, what he did so wrong for the Sheep to betray him so. For them to not have an ounce of trust in him.
(And if he is pettily motivated because Dazai hated Shirase for some weird reason well. That would be bad. For his freedom plans. So he isn’t doing it for that reason)
“Sleep well, shithead?” He asks Shirase the moment he wakes up with a grunt, clutching his nose. His broken nose. Heh.
“Wha-oh shit” Shirase turns to him, eyes wide open, and just takes a moment to stare. Chuuya lets a wild grin, the one that made his face open like the maw of a predator, full of fangs with the promise of a painful death, take over his face.
“Oh shit it’s right,” he says, enjoying a bit too much the terror that seems to overcome Shirase’s face. “Now, I think we have a few things to talk about, yeah?”
Shirase whimpers. Chuuya kinds of want to make it worse, but he also doesn’t want him to piss his bed. He sits himself in the (shitty) sofa of the motel as if it were a throne.
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. Dead, probably.” Chuuya stares at him, unamused “we kinda separated after well,” he looks away.
“After you betrayed me like the rats you were?” He whispers like steel on the wind “after you stabbed me with a rusty fucking knife, full of rat poison?” He is close enough to draw blood, but Chuuya doesn’t need to touch anyone to obliterate them. He slowly increases the gravity Shirase’s is under “or after you chose to ally yourselves with the same people that were after us, like brainless idiots, to try and kill me in the sloppiest, most pathetic way I have been threatened in my fucking life!?”
So maybe that whisper ended up more like a shout, really, but, then again, Chuuya was never one for subtleties.
“Ye-yes” Shirase’s voice gets so high a preschooler girl will sound like a man next to it. “After…after all that”
“Let me guess why” Chuuya drawls out and wishes he had a coup of wine to made something enjoyable out of this situation “the ASRR betrayed you the moment I was gone and you realized how much I fucking sheltered all of you shitty asses and how much of a easy prey you were without me and, like the cowardly rats you were, you scattered through the darkest, smelliest, dirtiest alleys you could find”
“Um, more or less”
“So” Chuuya wonders, aloud “the real question is: who the fuck let you out that fucking alley and who do I have to punch to get you back in there?”
“I-a social worker found me? And send me to school?”
If Chuuya wasn’t tempted to kill him before, he would be now.
How is it, how is it, that everyone but him get out to try and be human, and be normal and a fucking second chance served in a silver platter but Chuuya, who wanted (wants?) to be those things more than anything, just gets to be a fucking weapon?
It might be a bit of an overreaction, but with a shout of rage Chuuya throws the bed - with Shirase still on it- through the wall….and the next wall…and the next wall….
It felt good. Not enough to make anything better, but good .
Mori….has miscalculated. Somehow.
In his defense, all plans carry a risk to them, it is how you manage that risk that makes you victorious.
In his defense, he did try and manage those risks, with a generous week of vacation.
In his defense, he did not expect to wake up with a note in his fucking bedside, which he never noticed despite not being able to sleep more than three hours if he is lucky, written by his most loyal executive, alongside the hat that symbolizes his loyalty and the gloves that he never takes off until he goes completely berserk like a natural disaster but worse, that read:
‘I am leaving. Try and catch me if you fucking dare.’
In his defense, which is his strongest point right now because his most offensive, most terrifying executive had just given him to what amounts to a strong worded resignation letter (fucking is underlined three times, and dare is written in capital letters) at least he does not have it as bad as Dazai Osamu, who has just entered his office like a wraith.
Not as a wraith as in a vengeance spirit, but as a wraith in that he looks like a spirit. Of a dead person.
It would be more intimidating if he didn’t look so pathetic. Mori has insomnia and he doesn’t have eyebags that big. He is also bleeding. From both shoulders.
(He better not bleed on his imported carpet. It is new and it fits his aesthetics in just the right way)
“Where is he?” He asks Mori, going straight to what he wanted and skipping all the foreplay. It’s sloppy work, he just revealed his hand and he probably has nothing to exchange for the information. Honestly, Mori taught him better at twelve.
“Akutagawa-kun is on a mission right now”
Not on a mission to capture the brand new traitor half of soukoukou, because then Mori would have really cripple himself irreparably in a miscalculation and he knows how to cut his losses (there was a reason why he let Dazai Osamu leave unscathed, and it was not as much as he could not find him and kill him as in that the cost of it would not be worth it) so. Akutagawa is on a mission, that enough is true.
He is in the most normal, most boring mission Mori could find that morning. Well, at least one that was in another country.
“…Did you turn stupid overnight or?”
Wow. He really is tired, huh. Mori expected Dazai to see right through him, but he also expected better of him than to tell him. It is just bad forms, in negotiations, to be this transparent. It takes the fun out of it.
“Or.” Mori smiles pleasantly as he gestures at the chair in front of his desk. Outside of the range of his very expensive, very new carpet, “sit please. Let’s talk about this like civilized adults”
Dazai smiles back, as hollow as a carved tree, and sits down. Right on his new carpet.
He has always been such a little shit.
Mori clicks his tongue in disapproval.
“Please, don’t bleed all over the carpet, it is brand new” Mori, the man who raised the little shit that calls himself Dazai Osamu, smiles even more blandly. “It is the last gift I have of Chuuya-kun," he lets out a wistful, artful sigh, “something to remember him by”
Dazai, very maturely, proceeds to have a fit right on the carpet and he doesn’t stop until every inch of it is blended on, ripped or completely unrecognizable.
“Oh dear” Mori takes the acceptable loss for the win he is about to get, “someone hasn’t taken very well that his ex,” a beat, in full knowledge that Dazai was too emotionally stunted to understand his feelings, much less act on them, “partner left them, has he?”
He looks as pityingly as he can to Dazai. Which is as much as possible and not as much as it is believable, because he can be the most irritating person in any room, at any time, and it is time that this brat remembers that. And in doing so, catches up on the fact that there is no point in annoying him, when he can out annoy him right back but worse.
(He does not have those pesky morals to try and mold himself to, after all)
Dazai does not explode in a fit of rage, but that is just because Mori did raise him and he taught him better.
“Oh, well, would you look at that, the carpet is all dirty” Dazai smiles so much his eyes close. He is baring his teeth like a wild beast. Now, that is just tacky. “Guess you’ll have to wait for the Chibi to come back to get a replacement. Oh wait,” his face changes suddenly, getting as expression as dark and empty as he had, back when he was his subordinate “you spooked him off”
Mori considers him, humming a little, completely unperturbed.
“Did I,” he wonders, as if he was a philosopher, “or did you, hm?”
Dazai points that empty face at him like the barrel of a gun and Mori waits him out.
“What did you say to him”
Well, now, Mori can leave that unanswered, can he?
“The truth”
Not that he is at a disadvantage here.
“And that is?”
That he could have been in full control of himself and his ability, if only Dazai had taken him with him when he left. That he is not condemned to succumb to corruption until his old partner find it in himself to come and save him. That said partner could have really saved him from himself during all his time but chose not to. That he was really abandoned, not just the Mafia, but him, personally, and possibly betrayed too.
(After all these years, Mori did not expect such an overreaction from his favorite executive. Maybe he should have, considering how prone he was to dramatics)
“Word for word?” Mori smiles even more. Dazai remains as empty as he always was, under his tutelage “he asked me how Atsushi-kun gained full control of his ability so fast, out of boredom or curiosity or exasperation because he has trained with Akutawa that morning, I did not care about, I said ‘their president, Fukutawa-kun, has the ability All Men Are Equal, under it, people have complete control of their abilities’ he nodded and turned to me and asked if he had given me reasons to his loyalty. I said no and gave him one week of vacation”
(…maybe, in hindsight, he should have caught it. That subdued, quiet intensity was not a standard reaction, it was a warning sign)
“It has been three” Dazai says emptily, into the space. When Mori got him he already knew how to count, but apparently he needed the reminder of how it worked.
(Oh well, you win some, you lose some)
“Indeed”
“He is not on vacation, is he?”
Mori just smiled at him and watched how the emptiness slowly started to bleed into despair before Dazai caught it and put it back into his most hated mask. He turned back, every inch the demon prodigy he said he left behind, and walked away.
His back was wide open, Mori muses, a little amused, and there was no one that would defend it now.
(Well, there was. But honestly, it is not as if Mori does not have all the right pieces to undermine the weaker pawns Osamu-kin has decided to surround himself with. Or is it not as if Dazai did not left that back wide open in purpose, as an invitation, practically)
He opens a bottle of whiskey -imported, expensive, delicious and something that Mori will never buy for himself, the real last gift Chuuya has given him - and smiles. It is genuine, even if it is just because he still can pull one over Dazai.
“I never liked that carpet anyway,” he muses out loud. He goes to take a sip of his drink, when the glass explodes. He activates his ability, instantly alert, when the shooter chooses to shoot the bottle of whiskey, instead. Mori finds himself laughing, charmed in spite of himself.
Honestly, what a brat he raised.
So.
It turns out that Shirase has ended up becoming a photographer, of all things, and that he did not smile at him because he recognized him (which, rude much? Chuuya threw him through five other walls for the disrespect. He only got a broken bone out of it, a thing he should thank Chuuya about, because he knows exactly the damage he deals and he could have ended up with all his bones broken) but because he was, apparently, the perfect model for their next photo shoot.
Chuuya wonders to himself if he should have agreed to it, a week later, when he is shirtless and bathed in oil, glistening in the sun like a mermaid or something. Maybe he should have cleared up that he was doing a campaign for Jean Paul Gaultier (how in hell Shirase has managed to land that, Chuuya does not know. He discovers he is practically the coffe guy on the photo shoot, either way, and laughs himself sick at him for it) for Gaultier’s new line of bathing suits, to be clear.
Chuuya did not plan becoming a model when he left the Mafia, but that is how his life turned out, and honestly, he kind of likes being recognized for something that is not his intimidating, godly strength. Even if it is just his pretty face.
“Oh my god!” A voice screeches to high heavens “where have you all hidden this twink?”
Chuuya twitches at being called twink, but corrects his posture nonetheless. He directs all his rage to the camera, with the intensity to smolder like the fucking sun. Burn, you bitches
“Um, Nakahara?” The photographer asks him timidly, in the middle of the absolute silence that has become the set. It is a big contrast with how high-pitched and cheerful he was five seconds ago. “That is not a smolder, it is…”
“It is not?” Chuuya stops immediately. Has he been smoldering wrong during all these years?
“It is more like a death threat?” The photographer offers awkwardly. Chuuya relaxes, he was doing it right. They are obviously in the wrong. He continues smoldering, The photographer squeaks “um,”
Chuuya starts having doubts again.
“Is it not the same thing?”
“Oh no darling, who told you that?”
Chuuya frowns, feeling a little betrayed. He bits his lip. Honestly, he expected this from shitty Dazai, not from-
“Ane-san” he is mumbling and ignoring how the camera starts to flash “but if it is wrong, why would she-?”
The director clears his throat, uncomfortable. Chuuya tilts his head towards him, the camera flashes even more. Honestly, he is not sure if that is how the modeling thing is supposed to work. Why were they taking more photos when he was not posing that when he was?
“How old were you, when she told you that?”
“I think…fifteen, why?” The group as a whole turns to him as if they understood Ane-San’s reasons. Chuuya doesn’t get it, but if this many people get it, maybe it is one of those normal people things he still struggles about.
“He grew up kind of sheltered,” Shirase offers, from the back, where he is holding all of the coffees. Chuuya turns to him, incredulous at the cheek of some people who Chuuya personally sheltered and not the other way around-
“Ex-fucking-cuse you?”
“I mean” the coffe mountain where that rat is hiding behind is shaking. Good. Chuuya smiles happily, satisfied with his work. The camera flashes again and he turns his beam towards it, because you smile in photos, right? “You didn’t know what a kiss what when you were living with u- with me, much less sex, so yeah?”
Chuuya splutters, slowly turning red. The camera flashes.
“No!” He turns to it in horror “Don’t photograph when I am like this! It’s so uncool!!”
“How can he be so cute and yet so terrifying?” Someone in the back - not Shirase, that one has learned better - says. Chuuya gasps at the audacity
“Who said that? Which one of you fuckers called me” he does a huge effort to remain composed “c-cute?”
There was silence, only interrupted by the flash of the camera. Chuuya is slowly getting the feeling that he is, maybe, perhaps, not as good at this modeling thing as he thought he was. Then, the guy in sunglasses that has been silent the whole time - the boss, clearly - gets up his director chair (Chuuya did not squeal when he was given one, shut up) and slowly claps. Once, twice.
“Darling” he tells him “you have the range” then he turns to the lawyer like people that were chatting in the back like the flies they were in most situations and clicks his tongue at them “sign a contract with him. He is the face of my new campaign”
Chuuya gapes at him because, one, he is his absolute, most favorite designer and two, he called him darling! Jean Paul Gaultier! Him!!
“You are Jean Paul Gaultier? I am the new face of Jean Paul Gaultier? This… this is the best day of my life!”
“This” Dazai declares with the most serious air he has ever seen him with outside of a life death situation “is the worst day of my life”
Atsushi, after a time, learned not to worry much about what his mentor, Dazai-san, was lamenting about because nine times out of ten (made that nine and a half. Or nine point nine nine nine…) he was just messing with him, or with the rest of the office, but he is starting to get worried.
“Has he…has he eaten any mushrooms today?” He asks Ranpo, who is usually the best source of information. Not because he is usually wrong, he is always right. Ranpo looks up from the sweet he is ingesting as if it were a race and glances at Dazai. He starts cackling inmediatly.
It’s just, there are times he doesn’t bother to answer. Still, can it be that bad, if Ranpo is laughing?
“Turn on the TV,” he tells Yosano, as excitedly as he ever gets when disaster is about to hit, “Canal six, it is about to start!” Atsushi has a faint sense of foreboding
“On Tv too?” Dazai mumbles against his desk, “unfair”
Yosano turns on the TV with an eager air. The news are on. It is one of those interviews program with people Atsushi never knows and he frowns a little.
“And now, let us introduce the rising star of the fashion industry, the person who has shaken modeling with grace”
“What grace” Dazai mumbles, still against the wood, but he has turned himself enough to watch. Atsushi’s sense of foreboding grows. “He is just a gnome”
“Beauty-” the woman continues
“An ugly gnome,” Dazai corrects her
“And a hotness enough to rival the sun-”
“They are just lying now”
“Nakahara Chuuya, the new face of haute couture in the world!”
Dazai lets out a terrible scream against his desk. Atsushi is too busy watching the most dangerous Port Mafia Executive, who disappeared less than a year ago, for apparently no reason, entering the screen like a super model, a thing he is now. Because that is a career change that you can do, apparently. That is a thing that just happens, now.
“Just of Versace and Dior, really Satsu, you don’t need to try and flatter me," Nakahara says and wow, Atsushi has never noticed, but isn’t his voice so low and yet so…soft, almost? And he never got a look at his face, because they never had that much contact and he used to wear a hat that hid most of it but really, aren’t those cheekbones unfair? It is just normal that he became-?
Atsushi ducks just before a bullet passes from where his head was a moment ago and he turns incredulous to the man who is supposed to be his mentor. Dazai stares back cheerfully. The gun on his hand is still smoking.
“Dior too? Congratulations!”
“Don’t worry~” Dazai tells him, cheerfully like a deranged serial murderer, “those were just~ rubber bullets~”
Atsushi knows enough guns to know they were not. He turns back to the TV either way. After a lot trial and error, he has learned to pick his battles against his mentor.
“Yeah!” Chuuya lights up with a beam of absolute delight. It is devastating. “We just signed the contract yesterday, I am so excited to start to work with Christian, too”
“I aM so eXciTed to wOrK wiTH cHriStIAn, tOo” Dazai mocks the TV. It is… a little sad, if Atsushi is being honest . Mainly because he has seen the man mope enough about his ex partner (even if he never called it moping, it was what it was) to know that he is just jea- the gun glints at the corner of his eye and Atsushi decides not to complete the thought. For his own safety.
“Ooh, first name basis already?” The presenter, Satsu, teases, laughing lightly “what will your last boss think of that?”
“Jean Paul?” Chuuya tilts his head. Atsushi can hear Dazai’s teeth gritting. “Why would he care?” He looks…Atsushi knows and has seen this man crushing people with zero effort and zero mercy, why is it that he looks so adorable and cu-
Atsushi dodges the second bullet of the day. This feels less like watching TV and more like being in an ambush.
“He is my favorite, after all!” Chuuya declares, before turning and winking at the camera. He even makes a heart with his hands, like all the other idols do for photos
Atsushi dodges three more bullets, in quick succession. He did not even have the time to think how-
“What is that for! I wasn’t even thinking about-!” He shouts to Dazai only to dodge again. Four bullets, now. “Those aren’t rubber at all, Dazai-san!!”
-HOW CUTE THAT WAS! Atsushi completes the thought in defiance the second Dazai’s takes to blink innocently at him.
“Shirase, did I do it right?" Nakahara is turning to the backstage with an ease that betrays a huge flexibility. It puts certain ass..ets on display. "What? Yeah of course I know I am alive, do I look like a corpse to you? God you are so stupid” Atsushi prepares himself for a game of dodge or die.
“What did he say?” Dazai’s whisper is very quiet. All the hairs on Atsushi's back are suddenly standing up. “What name did he call?”
Atsushi is starting to sweat but, because he is trying very very hard to be the best mentee to his mentor, he tries to answer.
“He…he said a lot of names?” He does, for your information, not squeal like a girl when Dazai turns to him and his eyes promise death. Atsushi quickly makes memory. “um, Satsu? Christian? Jean-paul?” Somehow, Dazai’s stare of death gets even worse. Atsushi is about to cry.
“He said Shirase” Yosano saves him before his imminent day “Shi-ra-se. Do you know him?”
Dazai opens his mouth to answer with a glower.
“Oh? And who is this Shirase? A boyfriend, maybe?” Satsu-san teased Nakahara onscreen, somehow loudly enough to be heard. Dazai’s head snaps to the TV so fast Atsushi hears his neck crack .
“As if Chuuya would date a loser like him!” Dazai screeches at the TV. From the corner of his eye, Atsushi can see how Naomi is filming everything from…her brother’s lap. Atsushi turns away. He closes his eyes. He does not see.
“Shirase? But he’s a loser?”
Well. R.I.P Shirase. Trust Atsushi, you are better off this way. Not everyone can dodge bullets like him.
“Wow, isn’t that a little harsh?” Satsu-san laughs nervously
“He knows what he did” Dazai informs her like he once informed his worst enemy that they have just lost everything to him.
“He knows what he did.” Nakahara says at the same time. That was soukoku for you. Atsushi wishes he was as coordinated with Akutagawa, alas, he was not.
“Well that doesn’t sound very nice”
“Does selling you out to a rival gang after a lifetime of protection, stabbing you and leaving you for dead sounds nice to you?”
Well. That was.
…Dazai shouldn’t be nodding at that. He shouldn’t be whispering ‘yeah, you tell them’ at all. This was, if Chuuya has anything close to the fan base of an idol, a death sentence to anyone named Shirase. The fan girls will eat him alive.
“Excuse me, he did WHAT?”
Exactly, like Satsu-San, who looks ready to breathe fire at Shirase. Poor guy.
Oh well, you can’t save everybody.
“But this ain’t about him” Nakahara says, turning towards Satsu and smirking at her. It looks…sinful. Satsu blushes. Understandable.
Atsushi prepares himself to dodge a bullet or three. They do not come.
“Did you teach him that?” Dazai is busy shouting at his phone. When did he even-? “We agreed we would never teach him that! Why would I- how is this my fault?? What!?” Dazai gasps. He sounds outraged, “how could you say that!?”
“Who is it and what did they say?” Yosano asks Ranpo. They are eating snacks. They are also not bothering to whisper.
“Kimono lady and she said she was proud of Mr. Fancy Ha-wait. He doesn’t wear a hat anymore”
“Are you doing anything after this?” Satsu-san asks behind the hands that hide her red face.
Dazai turns to the TV, with a death glare and an air of seriousness Atsushi has never seen on him, not even in the worst-
“Chibi, listen to me” He speaks to the TV. Atsushi takes everything back. “You are busy. You can’t. Say no”
“Huh? That isn’t in the questions that your show-”
“It is personal. Like, for drinks, if you want”
“ Don’t be a dumb slug and say no. Say it with me. No.”
“I mean, it is nothing definitive, but I was hoping I could visit someone special here”
Dazai lights up like a Christmas tree at that and he beams at the TV
“Good dog!”
(…Nakahara is not the one who looks like a dog whose owner just returned home, Dazai-San)
“No wonder he left you” Yosano tells Dazai, unafraid of staring death at the face “I would have left you, too”
“And you’d come back too!” Dazai winks back at her, absolutely delighted.
“O-oh.” Wow. Satsu-San really sounds crushed about it, too. Well, if Atsushi had to guess, then the effect of that smolder would be so much worse in person “a special person? Could you tell us” she turns pleading eyes to the camera, as if she was forced to ask “more” she grits out “about this person?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly part in the best terms,” Nakahara starts to tell her, looking nervous for the first time since he was on camera. Dazai nods, his eyes looking brighter and brighter the longer Nakahara speaks “and we have known each other for a long time,” he continues.
“How long?”
“Almost nine years” Dazai whispers reverently.
“Nine years” Nakahara says. He has a small smile on his face. It makes him look very sweet and very taken by the person he is speaking about. For the continuos existence of the ADA, Atsushi hopes Nakahara is talking about Dazai. “Honestly, I wouldn’t be the person I am without them”
Dazai is practically swooning on his seat. It is embarrassing to look at. Atsushi turns back at the TV.
“O-oh. Your partner must be really special then” Satsu-san says, looking heartbroken about it but genuine. “I am sure they will take you back”
“Yeah. Yeah.” Dazai is nodding, looking so pleased with himself Atsushi has the reflex to punch him. He has also picked up his phone again, probably because he is bragging. “you know why? Because I am the greatest, most gracious, most gorgeous partner and I will-”
“Haaaaah??” Nakahara, who had frozen at the word partner, is looking at Satsu-san as if she has said the most disgusting, unpalatable, unforgivable thing to him. “Who said anything about partner? I was talking about my Ane-san!”
With a click, the phone falls down in the ground. Dazai looks unaware of it, looking at the TV as if it betrayed him.
(Not that it did much to silence the smug, did you hear that? He said ane-san! that that came for the ground)
“Anyways, I don’t have a partner. I had one, once, five years ago, and it was the worst thing that happened to me!”
“W-worse than the stabbing, with the poison, and the abandoning?” The presenter looks wrong-footed.
“Well, yeah! At least Shirase only betrayed me once! And.” Chuuya gets quiet. He looks small, and sad. Atsushi kind of wants to give him a blanket and hot chocolate and tell him that everything will be alright. “I never love-” Chuuya clears his throat, looking back at Satsu-san with the smolder again, even if his eyes are a little wet. Somehow, it makes it even hotter. “he treated me like a dog, but do I look like a dog to you?”
“You look like a god-”
With a click, the TV is turned off.
“That,” Dazai’s voice is quiet, sad. Small “is enough of that.” He gets up and leaves the office.
Atsushi has never seen him looking so defeated.
“Talking about dogs, Karma is such a bitch , am I right?”
Atsushi quietly gets up, picks up the phone Dazai’s dropped before and hangs up the call.
“I mean,” Naomi shrugs, still filming, “she is right, but she shouldn’t say it"