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Chuuya got his key in the lock on the second try.
His hands were still unsteady in that stupid, residual way—like the anger had burned through all the clean fuel and left him shaking on whatever was underneath. He let himself in and shut the door without letting it click, palm flat against the wood, forcing the latch to settle like it belonged there.
The apartment smelled like home and tension.
Cold air clung to his coat. Under it was the familiar—laundry soap, cheap city rain, the faint bite of smoke from the street, and, threaded through everything, Dazai. Not cologne. Not anything deliberate. Just the stubborn fact of him, soaked into Chuuya’s sheets, his couch, the collar of the sweatshirt Dazai had stolen and never given back.
Chuuya toed his boots off by the entryway. His fingers twitched, almost looking for the gravity in his veins the way they did when he’d been out—when he’d found somewhere secluded enough to be ugly.
He’d done what he always did when his temper had nowhere to go. Picked a pocket of empty industrial waterfront, let the night swallow the sound, and tore the anger apart piece by piece until his ribs ached with it. Concrete cracked. Rebar shrieked. A rusted shipping crate ended up folded like paper.
It hadn’t fixed anything.
It never fixed anything.
Now, in the quiet of his own place, the absence of that violence made the apartment feel too delicate. Like if Chuuya breathed wrong he would knock something over and it would shatter.
He stared down the hall.
No lights. No movement. The living room was a dark mass of furniture and shadows. The kitchen counter caught a thin stripe of streetlight through the blinds. Somewhere, the refrigerator hummed. Chuuya took a step, then another, careful in a way that pissed him off. He hated creeping in his own place. Hated feeling like he was the one who needed permission. Hated that the fight had rewired him into this—quiet, cautious, already braced for the consequences.
But then he reached the bedroom doorway and the thought in his head… stalled. Because Dazai was in the bed.
Not sitting up against the headboard with a book he wasn’t reading. Not sprawled sideways with his long legs kicking off the mattress because he refused to sleep and refused to pretend he wasn’t refusing. Not perched on the edge like he’d been waiting, bright-eyed and performative and ready to make jokes about how Chuuya finally came back to his poor abandoned lover.
He was asleep.
Chuuya stood there with his hand on the doorframe, the weight of the hallway pressing into his shoulder. Dazai had turned himself into a knot in the center of the mattress, one arm tucked under his pillow, the other curled in close to his chest. His hair was mussed across his forehead, dark against the pale of his skin, and his face had that stupid softness it only got when he wasn’t actively wearing a mask—lashes resting against his cheeks, mouth slack and slightly parted like his body had forgotten it was supposed to keep up the act.
Chuuya’s throat tightened so hard it hurt. He didn’t move.
Dazai didn’t sleep. Not like normal people. Not like someone who got tired and just… let go. Dazai slept like an emergency measure, like his body pulled a switch to keep him from breaking in half. It happened after missions that went wrong in ways Dazai refused to name. After nights where Chuuya came home to blood in the sink that didn’t match any story Dazai was willing to tell. After moments where Dazai’s smile had been too sharp and his eyes had been too flat.
After things that dragged him under.
And tonight—
Chuuya swallowed.
Tonight had been bad. Not the usual bad that came with their lines of work, not the kind they both pretended was nothing because it was survivable and always had been, even when Dazai didn’t want it to be. The kind of bad that had made Chuuya’s hands go cold and his vision tunnel and his stomach twist up like a fist.
Dazai had tried again. There was always, always, that persistent part of him that kept reaching for the exit as if it was the only door he trusted. Chuuya had stopped him. Chuuya had gotten him down, gotten him breathing, gotten him angry, gotten him talking—snarling, really, words flung like knives because that was the only way Dazai knew how to handle being dragged back into his own life. It had spiraled from there, because of course it had.
They’d fought. Not about the attempt, not directly. They never nailed things quite so on the head. They fought about everything orbiting it—the lies, the dismissals, the way Dazai made himself untouchable and then acted offended when Chuuya bled from trying anyway.
Chuuya had been upset for a reason. Dazai had been wrong.
But Chuuya had also… gone too far.
He heard his own voice in his skull even now, rough with something that wasn’t just anger. Something meaner. Something scared. And the worst part—the part that kept replaying until he wanted to crack his own teeth— was how Dazai had watched him with that pale, unreadable stare, and Chuuya had told him before storming off: Swear to me I’m not coming back to a goddamn hanging body.
He’d meant it as insurance. A desperate tether. A pathetic attempt to make Dazai promise him anything that would hold. It had come out cruel.
Like a threat. Like a dare. Like Chuuya was more worried about what mess he’d find than what Dazai had been doing, whether Dazai was alive.
Dazai had blinked once, slow.
And then, quietly, obediently, because sometimes Dazai did that just to ruin him—
Okay, he’d said. If that’s what Chuuya wants.
Chuuya had stormed out before he could make it worse.
He’d expected—God, he had expected to come back to an empty bed. To Dazai gone, or worse. To the apartment scrubbed clean of him like he’d never been here, the way he could vanish when he wanted to punish someone.
Instead, Dazai was curled up in Chuuya’s blanket like… well, like a kid. Face half-buried in the fabric, breathing slow, clutching it close like it was the only thing in the world that didn’t demand anything from him.
Chuuya’s chest did something painful and stupid. He looked at the clock on the nightstand and didn’t process the numbers. He looked at the faint marks on Dazai’s wrist where bandages used to be and forced himself not to look harder. He looked at the line of Dazai’s throat and felt his pulse jump in the wrong direction.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Not to either of them.
Cautiously, Chuuya stepped into the room like he was approaching a wild animal. The bed creaked under his knee when he sat on the edge, and he froze instantly, listening. Dazai didn’t wake. He only shifted, a tiny sound in his throat, his fingers tightening on the blanket. Chuuya exhaled through his nose, slow.
“Jesus,” he muttered, barely audible. “You’re really out.”
It was rare enough he had to admire it for a second. The innocence of it. The complete lack of guise.
Chuuya reached, hesitated, and then touched Dazai’s hair. Just the crown of his head at first. A careful brush of knuckles, gentle enough that it barely counted. Dazai’s brow twitched, and Chuuya’s hand paused like he’d been caught. But Dazai only made another small sound, something soft and unguarded, and his body loosened a fraction like the touch had been permission.
Chuuya swallowed again, angry at himself for needing this so badly it made him dizzy. He stripped off his coat in silence, draped it over a chair, and slid into bed beside Dazai as carefully as if the mattress were rigged to explode. The sheets were cool; Dazai’s body was warm. Inch by inch, Chuuya shifted closer, until his chest brushed Dazai’s back. Then, when Dazai didn’t flinch away—when Dazai actually drifted toward him in sleep like a compass needle seeking north—Chuuya wrapped an arm around his waist.
The touch made Dazai stir immediately, the reflexive, instinctive movement of someone surfacing from deep water. His eyelashes fluttered, lips parting, and he made a breathy little “Mm” sound, voice thick with sleep. Chuuya’s hand tightened, careful.
“It’s me,” he murmured, mouth near Dazai’s ear. “Hey. Don’t wake up. Go back.”
Dazai made a sound that might’ve been a protest, but he didn’t have enough consciousness to commit to it. His shoulders rose in a slow inhale, then he turned his face slightly, cheek pressing into the pillow, and his body did the thing Chuuya hated because it always worked—
He melted. Inched backward until he was pressed fully into Chuuya’s chest, and Chuuya felt the give of him: the soft, vulnerable center Dazai kept locked away behind jokes and cruelty and suicide attempts like armor. Fingers sliding up to Dazai’s ribs, Chuuya traced the line of his breathing, grounding himself in the simple fact that Dazai was here. Warm. Alive.
Not gone.
Dazai’s own hand drifted across the sheets, found Chuuya’s wrist, and loosely curled around it. Possessive, even half-asleep. Like his body didn’t trust the world not to take Chuuya away too. It made Chuuya’s throat tighten again, because it hadn’t been fair to leave the way he did.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, before he could talk himself out of it.
Dazai wasn’t awake enough for words to mean anything, and maybe that was the only reason Chuuya could say it out loud without choking.
Chuuya pressed his face into Dazai’s hair.“I’m sorry I left like that,” he whispered. “And I’m sorry I said it like… like that. I didn’t mean it like a weapon.”
Dazai’s fingers flexed once on his wrist, a faint squeeze, and Chuuya’s whole body reacted like that meant something. Like it was forgiveness already. Shifting his arm higher, he drew Dazai closer until their bodies fit together the way they always did when they weren’t fighting—like they’d been built to lock into place, stubborn and inevitable. He began to pet Dazai’s hair slowly, fingertip to crown to temple, repeating the motion until his own heartbeat stopped sprinting.
Dazai sighed. A real sigh, unperformed. Almost a whine.
Chuuya’s chest ached. “There you are,” he murmured. “Yeah. That’s it. Just… shh.”
This time when Dazai’s eyes fluttered, they opened a crack. Unfocused and dark with sleep, they still carried the softness Chuuya rarely got to see. For a second, Dazai stared into nothing; then his gaze drifted, sluggish, and landed somewhere near Chuuya’s hand.
“Chuu…” Dazai mumbled.
Chuuya’s jaw clenched hard enough to hurt. “Yeah, ’samu,” he answered instantly, voice low. “’m here.”
Dazai blinked, slow, like he was trying to assemble time and memory and failing. Brows knit faintly, the smallest hint of worry tugged at his face, as though some part of him expected—expected punishment, expected abandonment, expected the fight to keep going even in the dark. Chuuya couldn’t stand it. He shifted forward, bringing his face closer until his breath brushed Dazai’s temple, and he kissed there first—barely a touch, just lips to skin, soft enough it could’ve been an accident.
Again and again Chuuya kissed him, a little firmer, along the edge of his cheekbone—and this time Dazai made a small sound in his throat, confused and half-pleased, like his body understood before his mind could. Chuuya’s hand slid to Dazai’s jaw then, thumb resting against the corner of his mouth; he could feel the warmth of Dazai’s breath, the slight tremble in it.
“Hey,” Chuuya murmured. “Look at me.”
Slow as syrup, Dazai’s eyes drifted up toward him. Chuuya held his gaze, even though it made something raw and panicky flare in him. Even though all he could see in that half-waking stare was how young Dazai could look when he wasn’t armored. How close he always was to leaving this world for good.
“Chuu is still mad,” Dazai mumbled, voice barely there.
Chuuya exhaled through his nose, a shaky little breath. “I was,” he said. “I was pissed, okay? For good reasons.”
Dazai’s lashes trembled. His eyes tried to sharpen, failed.
“But I’m here,” Chuuya added, softer. “And I’m not—I’m not doing this again tonight.”
Dazai’s mouth opened like he wanted to say something smart. Something cutting. Something to regain control. Chuuya might have even deserved it.
Instead, Dazai only swallowed. Chuuya felt it—how the fight had drained him. How the attempt had drained him. How the act of surviving in front of Chuuya had taken whatever strength he normally used to keep the mask up.
Slow, Chuuya’s thumb stroked the corner of Dazai’s mouth, gentle as he could manage to be. Dazai’s lips parted, and Chuuya leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t the kind of kiss they shared when they were battling wits or trying to win something from each other. It was the opposite of the fight—quiet and steady and choosing. A kiss that said I’m not leaving. I’m not punishing you. I’m not making you perform right now. Dazai froze for half a second, startled into stillness.
Then, he softened so completely Chuuya almost broke. His hand—still loosely holding Chuuya’s wrist—tightened like it was a lifeline, mouth moving against Chuuya’s with slow, sleepy uncertainty, like he didn’t know what the rules were anymore and didn’t trust himself to guess. Chuuya eased back only enough to breathe, their noses brushing, and Dazai’s eyes fluttered shut again.
“Does that mean…” Dazai murmured, words slurring. “Does that mean Chuuya is—”
Chuuya kissed him again, cutting the sentence off clean. When he pulled back this time, he pressed his forehead to Dazai’s, eyes closed. “It means I forgive you,” he said quietly. “For the parts that were actually a fight. For the parts where you were being an asshole on purpose.”
The sound Dazai made was tiny, breathless.
“And it means I’m sorry,” Chuuya added, voice rough. “For the way I talked to you. For leaving you then. For making you swear like that.”
Dazai’s eyes opened a crack again. They were wet-looking, but that might’ve just been sleep. Chuuya couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to stare long enough to make it into a problem.
“Chuuya meant it,” Dazai mumbled.
Chuuya swallowed. “I meant I didn’t want to come back to…” He stopped, jaw tightening, refusing to put the image in the room. “I meant I needed you alive.”
Dazai stared at him, unfocused but intent.
Chuuya’s thumb brushed his cheek. “I don’t know how to say it nicely,” Chuuya admitted. “I’m not good at nice. But I’m good at this.” He tightened his arm around Dazai’s waist, pulling him close until Dazai couldn’t pretend he was alone. “I’m good at staying,” he said, and it came out like a vow he hadn’t meant to make.
Dazai’s throat bobbed. He stared at Chuuya for a long beat, like he was trying to decide whether to believe him. Then the decision slipped out of him—not with words, not with some clever line, but with his body; he turned in Chuuya’s hold, nudged forward, slow and clumsy, and tucked his face into the curve of Chuuya’s throat, exhaling against his skin, warm and soft.
“Okay,” Dazai mumbled, so quiet Chuuya barely caught it.
Okay.
That was all. Like he trusted Chuuya that it was really that simple.
Chuuya closed his eyes hard, relief and guilt twisting together until he felt sick with it. He kissed Dazai’s hair. Then his temple. Then the corner of his eye, careful, as if Dazai might break apart under too much tenderness.
Hand sliding up under the back of Chuuya’s shirt, Dazai curled his fingers against the warm skin there, anchoring himself while Chuuya pet his hair, slow and repetitive, like he was trying to teach Dazai’s body that this was safe. That the fight was over. That Chuuya wasn’t going to keep bleeding him for it in the dark.
Little by little, Dazai’s breathing began to deepen once more, the edge of wakefulness dissolving back into something blurrier. But right before he slipped fully under, he turned his head slightly, mouth brushing Chuuya’s throat, and murmured something so faint it barely existed:
“Don’t go, Chuu.”
Chuuya’s whole chest went tight at the vulnerability of it, like his heart had been grabbed. Dazai calling him that stupid nickname never failed to make him want to yank a tree clean from its roots.
“I’m not,” he answered immediately, voice low and thick. “I’m not leaving.”
Dazai made a small, sweet sound—almost satisfied—and finally, finally, sleep took him again, heavy and deep. Chuuya lay there in the dark, holding him like it was the only thing he knew how to do right—and sometimes it felt like it was—listening to Dazai’s breathing, counting it, anchoring himself to it.
Outside, the city kept moving. Sirens in the distance. A car passing over slick asphalt. The faint glow of streetlight through the blinds striping the wall. Inside, Chuuya kept his arm tight around Dazai’s waist, his hand in Dazai’s hair, his mouth pressed once more to Dazai’s forehead—an unspoken, steady apology.
Forgiveness wasn’t a speech between them.
It was this.
It was staying. It was keeping the room quiet. It was kissing Dazai like he wasn’t a problem to solve, like he wasn’t a threat to endure, like he was simply his—warm and breathing and here. In Chuuya’s arms. In Chuuya’s bed.
Chuuya didn’t know what tomorrow would look like. He didn’t have that luxury, not with the nightmare thing he’d decided to make home.
He just knew that tonight, Dazai was asleep for the first time in days, curled up in his blanket like it mattered, and Chuuya was going to hold him until the sun came up—no matter how much it hurt.