Work Text:
“What the hell were you thinking?”
Chuuya fell to his knees in the dirt beside Dazai and grabbed him roughly by the collar. Dazai smiled weakly up at Chuuya with bloody teeth and half-lidded eyes.
“Are you crying, Chuuya?" he asked softly.
“Shut up!” Chuuya spat in response. “Fuck, God, for once in your life, can you just—?” He let Dazai go and scrubbed at his eyes with gloved hands, sobbing furiously. “I'm tired of pretending I don’t care, okay? Not now, not when you—!”
He couldn’t make himself look at the bloody mess of Dazai’s abdomen; looking at it would only confirm that this wasn’t one he would come back from. Chuuya dropped his head down into Dazai’s chest, his whole body shaking with sobs.
“I—love you, you—heartless fucking asshole,” he said. “I know we don’t say things like that, and I know you don’t feel the same way, but I love you, I—”
For a moment there was silence except for the muffled sound of Chuuya crying into Dazai’s shirt. Then Chuuya felt the weight of Dazai's hand on the back of his head.
“That’s not very nice, calling me heartless,” Dazai murmured. “And me on my deathbed, too.”
Chuuya’s sobs redoubled. Dazai sighed and pressed him closer to his chest.
“You know I don’t like pain,” Dazai said. “Loving someone is giving them the power to hurt you. I mean, look at you right now.”
“Shut up,” Chuuya wept.
“Let me finish,” Dazai said, and Chuuya’s heart twisted painfully in his chest when he heard the smirk in his voice. “I don’t like pain, Chuuya, that’s why I… after Oda died… I didn’t want to feel like that again. I didn’t want you to have that power, too. But I should’ve realized sooner.”
Chuuya sniffed. “Realized what?”
Dazai lowered his voice, tickling Chuuya’s ear with his breath. “That I kind of like it when you hurt me.”
Chuuya sputtered, now laughing and crying in equal measure.
“You piece of shit,” he quavered, grabbing Dazai by the collar again and kissing him harshly, licking the metallic taste of blood off his lips. Sucking and biting because he wanted it to hurt, because he wanted it to be undeniable. Because to have Dazai’s love was to have the power to hurt him, and Chuuya wanted to take as much of it as he could.
Dazai laughed into Chuuya’s mouth as he welcomed the kiss, moving his lips against Chuuya’s and clawing his fingers painfully into the other man’s curls. And then, too soon, the grip of those fingers weakened.
“No,” Chuuya whimpered. He pulled away and took Dazai’s face into his hands, but there was nothing to be done. His eyes were closed, so Chuuya could not meet them; his chest no longer rose and fell with his breath. His hand slid out of Chuuya’s hair and into the dirt. It was over.
“Wake up,” Chuuya choked, his chest heaving. “You bastard. You fucker. You—you goddamn—”
Anything else Chuuya could have said was lost to a new wave of sobs.