The Great War

by the_most_happy

Summary:

Dazai "Ouji" Osamu is the most popular idol of his generation.

People adore him, critics worship him.
He has the whole world dancing in the palm of his hand.
When he steps into an underground bar in Yokohama, on a summer night like any other, he is looking for a muse, a fake boyfriend and a reason for living.

Nakahara Chuuya just wanted a glass of wine and a one-night stand.

(Or: the “I slept with a stranger and he turned out to be my little sister’s favorite singer” AU where two idiots catch very real feelings through a fake dating contract. Art in notes.)

Russian translation here by Sterialye

Notes:

Some of the beautiful art for this fic here, here, here, here and here

Chapter 1: Golden Boy

Summary:

“You gotta imagine a few shitty things to stay sane, sometimes.”

Notes:

A huge thank you to @mosaichiko for the wonderful arts and @Alkaline (Ao3 here) for the support and the beta-reading ❤️ It’s been absolutely wonderful working together.

Art here ❤️

And thanks to SKK Big Bang for organizing the event!

“And would you say the events of 2018 could have been avoidable, Chuuya-san?”

The man called Chuuya hesitated at the host’s question, crossing his legs.
She’d been warned he might refuse to answer – which would have made her breakfast show live tremendously complicated, to be fair, so she hoped he’d play along.

He seemed on edge, from the way his blue eyes kept dropping to his lap and his hands kept finding the silver band at his ring finger.

“Hard to say.”

“Have you ever noticed a sign?”

His eyes narrowed. “A sign for what?”

“A call for help.”

Chuuya took a deep inhale.
His nostrils flared, and he adjusted against the seat — buying time, letting the white light of the TV studio wash over him.

“I— look, I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe we fucked him up. Maybe we failed him. What I know is that, at the time, no one quite understood the depth of Dazai’s suffering.” He opened his lips and closed them again, then started fidgeting with the thin platinum ring, stretching his ring finger imperceptibly. It shone under the light.

“Not even I.”

 

Yokohama, July 2018

 

That summer was hetched in Chuuya's memory.

He remembered the smell of sweat, the feeling of linen glued to the skin, the leather of his choker biting his skin and his Doc Martens scraping his heels.

July was always unbearable.

When he used to live in his parent’s house, the crickets somehow found their way to the spot of the garden right under his window, keeping him awake and filling the night with noise.

Winter killed those concerts, and Chuuya would find himself missing those sounds come October.
Both his sisters were summer creatures, born in June and relishing the heat of the monsoon season, but he hated everything about it. He hated the chirping, the silly festivals and its crowds swarming the streets; the sweat, the humidity.

Then, Kouyou sold the house and they relocated to Yokohama.

It didn’t make sense for three orphan siblings to keep an old house, right? Chuuya’s scriptwriting agency was in the city anyway.
Kouyou’s designer studio too, and Aya would find the best education.

It was for the best.

At least, in Yokohama, Chuuya always slept through the night. There were no crickets in the city, no grass and no mud and no snakes to be captured in the ditches alongside rice fields.
No proper summer.
In Yokohama, there was nothing but the suffocating feeling of breathing through fire and concrete and dust.

There, Chuuya found a new way to despise the summer.

That was how — on a quest for decent air conditioning and good wine — he’d ended up at the Old World, of all places. An old bar with an even older billiard pool, where the counter was always sticky and the air always smelled like cigar, but the wine selection never betrayed him.
That’s where Chuuya saw him for the first time.

He was easy to spot in the semi-empty bar, hunched over a stool.

Maybe, after all, summer hated Chuuya as much as he hated her.

What other reason but hatred could have caused a cruel season to tempt him with that vision? That haunted beauty and beautiful, empty half-a-smile, so often drowned in alcohol.

The danger of an empty smile was that Chuuya found himself drawn to it and eager to fill it with his kisses.

How beautiful he was.

It was too late for regulars and too early for the occasional last-minute drunkard hopping clubs, crawling from place to place on the prowl for a cheap drink.
The man didn’t look like the former category and was way too sober to belong to the latter.

He looked like he’d stumbled into the bar by accident, searching for himself at the bottom of a glass.

Despite his own wine and his own thoughts, Chuuya found it hard to look away.
No matter how hard he tried, his gaze always strayed back to the stranger.
He seemed perhaps in his late twenties, but the worn-out Evangelion t-shirt made him look younger. White gauze covered his arms and neck, peeking from under the black fabric. 

He had willowy arms and a lean neck, long pianist fingers poking a glass cube inside a glass of whisky. Under the undeniable beauty of the stranger, something nicked at Chuuya.
It was like looking at a scratched glass, or listening to a broken vinyl — a beautiful piece of music only occasionally ruined.

Ignoring Chuuya’s gaze eating him alive, the stranger threw back his head while he gulped down the spirit.

He drank whisky as if it was a shot, and soft brown curls fell on his forehead with the movement.
His Adam’s apple bobbed down, and Chuuya found that he couldn’t peel his gaze away.

Skin, bandages, the faint trail of a single drop that escaped the man’s lips and rolled down his chin.

The ice clicked as the man sat the glass down on the counter and flagged the barista down for a refill. Another.
And, God, did Chuuya want to know what kind of demons the stranger was drowning in alcohol—

“Do you want to get out of here?”

Dragged out of his own head, Chuuya blinked.

His grip on the glass faltered as he quickly averted his gaze — too late to avoid a pair of deep, brown eyes.

Shit, he thought. Those eyes. Fucking illegal.

If he’d thought the stranger was handsome before, those eyes — doe-like and framed with dark, thick eyelashes, yet sharp — changed everything. So distant and so inviting, deeper than any secret and thicker than liquid gold. 

Damn, those eyes.

“Huh?” Chuuya echoed.

The stranger smirked. He had nice lips and a crooked smile, with one dimple on the side. Chuuya had a feeling he’d seen that smile somewhere, a subtle sense of familiarity nicking at him for a moment before it disappeared.

“Are you drunk?”

“Take a wild fucking guess,” Chuuya said, nursing his wine. “I didn’t expect you to talk to me.”

“You were staring at me.”

Chuuya grimaced. “I have no idea what you mean.”

"Sure.”

“What was that?”

“I said sure. I’m making fun of you.” Chuuya grimaced, but the stranger’s smile widened. His dimple softened, and for some reason that was enough to soothe Chuuya’s annoyance. “I said: do you want to get out of here? As long as you can stand. I’m not into carrying drunk people around.” 

The happy skip in the man’s voice felt like velvet on Chuuya’s skin, and he couldn’t decide if he loathed how intrusive it was, or if he had abhorred every other voice before that. 

“I got that,” he snarled. “But what the fuck?”

The stranger tilted his head as if Chuuya’s reaction surprised him, doe-eyes blinking. “You’ve been stare-fucking me for the last ten minutes. I am just saying, I’m in.”

Chuuya fidgeted with the glass, cheeks on fire.
He did stare-fuck him, didn’t he? Great. Just great.
He couldn’t even deny it properly.

In the last few minutes he had fantasized about running his mouth down the stranger’s collarbone and sharp jaw, sinking his fingers in his brown hair.
He had wondered how his breath would sound once broken by whimpering and gasps. He had envied the rim of the stranger’s glass, kissed with every sip.

He did want to fuck him. Based entirely on looks, that was.
But he also never thought the man would notice or reciprocate.

Thinking over it, Chuuya cocked his head.
That wasn’t the kind of predicament he used to find himself stuck into. Normally, he would end up working late on a script, shoulder-by-shoulder with Michizou and hunched over a moodboard, not hooking up with strangers in a bar.  

“If you’re not up for it—“

“I hate having sex in summer,” Chuuya interrupted him. “It gets too sticky.”

As the stranger flagged down the barista to refill his glass, he nodded in Chuuya’s direction – almost pensively, not a trace of mirth in his eyes.
The redhead covered his wine glass when the stranger asked for a refill for him too, refusing the offer with a tilt of his head. 

“Yeah,” the man said, voice almost laconic as he rolled his whisky. He had something aloof about him, something remote; as if he was high and at the same time was painfully, perfectly lucid. “If I’m being honest, sex during summer is the worst.”

“Then why are you even asking?”

“Well, I would have ignored anyone else, but you seem worth the exception.”

“You too, I suppose.” 

He hated to admit it, and yet loved how the man’s eyes came alive.
He smiled that cryptic smile that tangled Chuuya’s guts. 

Going somewhere where the heat couldn’t find them, outrunning a season that turned the simplest touch into torture — it seemed tempting enough.
And he did want to fuck the stranger anyway.

“Do you have a name?” 

“Chuuya.”

“Chuuya,” the man repeated. 

It sounded lewd on the man’s lips.

He dragged the sounds as if he was already moaning it — as if rolling the vowels on the tip of his tongue was nothing but foreplay, just like licking fingers and sucking hickeys on skin that tasted like salt and summer.

Chuuya crossed his legs in a helpless attempt to keep at bay the warmth pooling in his stomach.

“You’ve got some guts, huh? Asking strangers to follow you so shamelessly,” he commented, lifting his glass. He took a long sip, wine wetting his dry throat. Too bad it did jack shit for his nerves.

“It’s not shameless at all if Chuuya was the one staring at me.” The man shot him a grin, voice like velvet and lips shiny under the bar’s bright neons. His eyes shone. “My name is Dazai, by the way.”

Chuuya nodded.

He didn’t care. Still, it felt nice to have a name to cling to — to cry to.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise. Well, Chuuya, like I said, I know a place nearby,” Dazai said. “A love hotel. If you are interested.”

If I’m worth the exception, too.

“A love hotel?”

Dazai nodded. “Hm’m.”

“Is it close?”

“Just around the corner.”

Chuuya pretended to mull over the offer as the waiter got Dazai his whisky. He waited as the man downed the drink all in one go — and, he had to admit, it was impressive.

Fuck summer, he thought. Fuck the heat and fuck the sweat. I’d fuck this man in hell if he asked.

“Sure. I’m in.”

Immediately, Dazai slapped the counter.
Then, he sat the glass on the surface with a loud thud, enthusiastically, smacking his lips as if chasing after the taste of whisky left on his skin. The sound of clicking glass filled Chuuya’s head, reaching him as if from underwater.

“Fantastic,” he said. “Let’s go.”

He had a rough voice, seared by the whisky, and a wild gleam in his eyes. 

 

Kissing Dazai made his head spin.

There were no sounds but their moans, the rustle of fabric and the buzzing of the a/C. 

Quite clearly, Dazai disliked the bed, considering they fucked everywhere but there. Although Chuuya had found it a bit odd, he didn’t mind the creativity of finding the perfect spot around the room. 

Sofa? Check.
Wall? Check.
Rug, with its scent of laundry detergent, and the desk, and the sofa again? Check, check, check.

Dutifully, they had christened every square inch of the room — hands all over each other’s bodies and mouths claiming voracious kisses and then slow ones, biting and lapping. Chuuya’s head spun, his overstimulated senses screaming for more. His skin became tender under Dazai’s caresses.

First Dazai had heaved him up against the wall, and he had taken him there until Chuuya cried out his name with tears pooling at the corners of his eyes.

As it turned out, Dazai liked him to be loud and yet he barely made any sound himself. Chuuya was sure he could read a beautiful, unknown language in the patterns of the man’s veins, thin rivers of blue slithering under the skin and disappearing under pale gauze.

He saw his name written all over the man’s inner thigh, in every vein and the bandages covering the skin. He wished he could stretch the night on forever.

He searched for a way to drink Dazai’s smile, to burn his moans and sighs on the forefront of his mind.

By sunrise, they were both naked and spent. Dazai’s t-shirt and tan pants were tossed over the couch, while Chuuya’s black jeans and red t-shirt lay forgotten on the bathroom floor, spoils of a war that left both of them defeated.
He’d forgotten about the socks, probably kicked somewhere around the entrance.

Shallow puddles peppered the bathroom tiled floor, remnants from the time Dazai had made Chuuya face the shower’s wall and ordered him to hold back for as long as he could, sliding long fingers in him.

Dazai had played him like an instrument.

He knew what to do, how to move, hitting that sweet spot between tender and rough. That somehow surprised Chuuya, because he didn’t think it’d be this good. 

One-night stands were seldom good and never interesting, but this one? It took the crown.

“Can you stay until tomorrow morning?” Dazai asked, studying his nails.

“Nah. I have to wake up early tomorrow.”

“Something interesting to do?”

Chuuya only shook his head in response, waving the comment away. “Not really. I gotta take my little sister somewhere.”

“Doing something nice?”

“Fuck if I know,” he said – and it sounded like an excuse, but it was the truth. ‘I need you to take Aya,’ Kouyou had said. 

In the process of stepping into a meeting, Chuuya had forgotten to ask where or why.

As Dazai hummed noncommittally, Chuuya took the moment to study his face.
He drank in how Dazai leaned forward with the grace of a big cat and stretched a hand to grab a green, half-finished pack of filterless cigarettes.

Then, his fingers closed around a lighter he had abandoned on the built-in window sill.

He studied the man’s side profile as he cupped a hand against the flame, shielding it, and let the cigarette kiss the flame.

Looking in silence as Dazai tossed back his head, releasing a first exhale of grey smoke before leaning his hipbone against the window frame, Chuuya found himself doubting what had just happened.

Was it even real?

Dazai smiled to himself around the cigarette, taking a slow drag. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

“And you talk too much,” Chuuya volleyed back. “Do you always snoop around in your flings’ business?

Dazai took a last, long inhale before offering the cigarette to him. “Only if I like said fling,” he said, with a happy skip in his voice. “Do you smoke?”

“Not anymore,” Chuuya replied. He still took the cigarette, driving it to his parted lips. He inhaled, tasting nicotine on his tongue, chasing the ghost of Dazai’s lips on the stub.

Dazai looked at him, his gaze unreadable. “Why did you quit?”

“My mum. She died of cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” Chuuya said. He shrugged, taking another drag. “She was a bitch. It just kinda showed me I don’t want to end up like her.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Chuuya scoffed, voice like gravel. Fuck no, he thought. “Not after a good fuck, no. Don’t wanna bring down the mood.”

Understanding, Dazai hummed. Usually, in that kind of reaction, Chuuya had learned to recognize the sign that someone was as fucked as he was. 

‘Of course, let’s change the subject’ was rare. People who know when to shut up and take a hint or take their leave even more so.
That was one of the reasons Chuuya never talked about his mother easily — and certainly not in such terms. People didn’t understand.

And yet, the man’s presence seemed to have loosened his tongue.

After all, Dazai had apparently fucked him into being talkative.

The truth was that their parents used to be a ghost in Chuuya’s life. Kouyou’s, too, although she had some time with their father before he decided to off himself the day the firm he worked for went bankrupt. Fucking workaholic. 

He’d never been around for Aya, and thank God their mother didn’t care much about her.

In silence, Chuuya handed the cigarette back to the other, their hands brushing as Dazai accepted it.

“My mother’s in New York,” Dazai offered. His voice came out as distant as if he were talking about a stranger. “She moved there when I was ten and I’ve never seen her since.”

“Not even a phone call?”

Laconically, Dazai’s lips stretched around the stub. “I don’t even remember her voice.”

“I’m sorry. That’s shitty.”

“Sometimes I wish she were dead. At least, that’d be better than knowing she doesn’t want to see me.”

Unsure about what to say, Chuuya swallowed.

He knew the feeling – he had imagined his mother dead for years before it actually happened, and he longed for it and prayed for it. He wanted it when he found her almost drowned in the bathtub, drunk and passed out. 

Chuuya didn’t know much about the world then, and he sure as hell didn’t know much now, but he guessed that a fifteen-year-old boy shouldn’t consider turning away and pretend his mother isn’t drowning.

That day, Chuuya cleaned her naked chest from vomit and spit, and hated her and saved her life anyway. For days, he remembered feeling bad about that act of kindness.

He imagined killing her himself.
It would have been a mercy killing, sparing Aya from what he and Kouyou had gone through.

But he was only fifteen.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “I know what you mean.”

Dazai threw him a distant glance. “Don’t you think I’m creepy? That I’m horrible?”

“Good people sometimes need bad thoughts to live on,” Chuuya said, shrugging. “And being abandoned sucks.”

“Yeah. It does.”

“I’m not a hypocrite. You gotta imagine a few shitty things to stay sane, sometimes. Violent things. Creepy things. That’s how we are.” He watched Dazai take a long drag. “That’s why thrillers are so popular, isn’t it.”

For a long, long moment, Dazai stared at him. It wasn’t a bad look, although it unsettled him. Chuuya had the feeling of looking into a mirror – a kindred pain, another good person who lived with their demons and bad sides. When an adult fucks you up, you learn to live with the voices.

And those voices — his and Dazai’s sang the same song of loneliness.

In silence, Dazai turned off the cigarette by rubbing its tip on the whitewashed window frame and walked to Chuuya.

His fingers smelled like nicotine and sweet lube when he framed the redhead’s face. His lips were careful and slow and butterfly-light, as if he was kissing a dream – as if he was kissing a ghost.

For two people who had just discussed death and violence moments before, Chuuya thought that the kiss felt incredibly sweet.
Comforting, even. 

Chuuya’s mouth parted under his tongue, and he angled his face to kiss Dazai deeper. In silence, dutifully, his hands found the tousled mass of the other’s hair – he combed his hands through it, pulling lightly, coaxing a sigh out of the other man as he broke the carefulness of the kiss by biting his bottom lip and tugging at his hair. 

He found Dazai, and Dazai had found him.

This time, the man guided him to the bed – the mattress and blankets felt soft against his back when Chuuya plummeted on them. Dazai adjusted above him on all fours.

Chuuya tried to struggle and put up a poor excuse of fight, saying yes but making Dazai work for it just to savor the feeling of a strong hand grabbing his chin and keeping him in place, forcing him to open his mouth.
He smiled into the kiss, fighting back only for delicious jolts of adrenaline to run down his body when the other pinned him down. 

You gotta imagine a few shitty things to stay alive.

But, suffocating his moans in the crook of a semi-stranger’s bandaged neck, Chuuya’s mind just went blank.
It was just peaceful numbness. No images. No fears.

Nothing but need, nothing but Dazai, nothing but the touch of a stranger he would never meet again. 

—

Nakahara Aya loved idols.

Chuuya didn’t exactly understand why, but he accepted that at least one sibling in the family had to have shit taste in music.
It was logic. Besides, she was thirteen.
She would grow more sophisticated (like rock, that was proper music) and her taste would develop toward more deserving artists, or so Chuuya hoped.

Still, Aya loved this dumb pop idol called Ouji. Ouji, like 'prince'.

Ridiculous, right? Right.

“It’s a pun with his real name, duh,” Aya explains, dangling her legs from the barrier where she was sitting. “ Osamu. People started calling him Ouji because of that.”

“Why Ouji? It doesn’t make sense.”

“O-samu, both Os? And he’s, like, totally royalty.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes.
That was another kanji entirely, and only made sense for a foreign market. The obvious marketing move made him want to retch.  

“So you people want to cut off his head?”

“That was the king.” Aya scoffed. “Forget it. It was a cute nickname.”

Chuuya shrugged away the comment — because no, it was lame for an adult to be called like that, but who was he to judge? This Ouji guy clearly swam in money and had more fans than any sane person would dare to count, so he was still at the winning end of the conversation.

“Nice, I guess.”

“You know, they started calling him that when he was still the ADA main vocalist? Before he became a soloist.”

“Nice.”

“And now Odasaku, his ex-choreographer, became his manager.”

“Nice,” he said, monotone, although Aya didn’t need his nudge to go forth.

“…And sometimes Akiko, ADA’s current keyboardist and singer, duets with him. We are all shipping them.”

“Nice.”

“There are fanfictions.”

“Nice.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“Nice,” Chuuya said, on autopilot. He stopped, then, meeting Aya’s furrowed brow and serious eyes. He lifted his hands. “Sorry. Sorry, of course, I’m listening.”

“And what did I say?”

“That Ouji-whatever has a pretentious nickname and y’all fans are weird.”

“ O’nii-chan!”

Stifling a yawn, Chuuya flashed her a grin. God, he went straight to grab Aya from Kouyou’s house after driving his bike out of the love hotel’s parking lot.
Just the time for three coffees, a shower and a change of clothes and he was out again, damning Kouyou for getting their little sister parterre tickets to Ouji’s worldwide tour.

However, Aya had declared she would watch her idol from the very first row or not at all.

Hence why Chuuya had been waiting in front of the entrance of the Yokohama stadium since six in the morning.

“You’re tired,” Aya said, lifting an eyebrow. “Where did you go last night?”

“That’s none of your business, squirt.”

To have my back blown off by a man I’ll never see again, his treacherous brain provided. Damn. He really would have paid to meet Dazai again, though; that had been a solid night, and an unexpectedly good fuck.

“Did you get drunk?” she insisted. For some reason, she found it hilarious when he got drunk. “And, I mean, you get very shitfaced drunk.”

“Aya!”

She shrugged the exclamation away. “Auntie Lucy said it.”

“Ha?!”

“But you look happy. Do you have a secret boyfriend?”

Ignoring how Aya had just called him a ridiculous drunk, Chuuya’s mind flew to Dazai.

Ah, boyfriend.
Funny, how a stranger in the night was nothing like a boyfriend and, at the same time, the closest thing to that definition Chuuya had encountered in a while.
Still, he found himself smiling as his mind wandered back to the previous night. 

“You worry about your crush,” he volleyed, playfully, glancing at the empty stage. There was no way in hell he was going to gush about a boy with his sister. “Is this princeling of yours going to only sing crappy love songs? Because I might kill myself first if he does.”

Aya’s eyebrows shot up in indignation.

“Ouji-Sama is an artist, unlike the noise you listen to. You’ll never fall asleep. And he’s smoking hot, too.”

“Hey! Who taught you to talk like that about boys?”

As she looked at him, Aya grinned. Cheeky by nature and cunning like her older sister, at thirteen Aya was very much aware of her power as the youngest and favorite member of their family.
Sometimes, Chuuya worried about how much of his younger self he saw in the little girl, too.

“You did,” she said.

See?

“I didn’t—“

In that moment, the stage lights turned on.
The interruption caused Chuuya to blink, adjusting to the change in lighting. 

“Ah!” Aya cried, interrupting him as the stage’s light flickered — pink, then baby blue, then an intense purple. Immense butterflies appeared on the LED screens, and a low vibrato crawled out of the speakers.

Chuuya sighed, bracing himself for two hours of torture, and helped Aya off the fence as people started pushing for a better view. 
The moment the lights flashed, a group of teen girls behind them started giggling and screaming, waving their glowing sticks in the air.

“I hope he notices me,” one of them cooed.

Chuuya rolled his eyes to the sky.
Yeah, he thought, and I hope I get to go home soon.

It was going to be a long night.

—

Dazai had fought tooth and nail to avoid Yokohama, as he would have rather — quote and unquote — “played tag in a highway than set foot in that cursed city that hated him”. 

He had been against a date at the Yokohama Stadium, more than content with a bigger date in Tokyo before settling down for a few months. In a hotel, that was. A comfy, central, welcoming hotel in Tokyo. A place far away from his own house in Yokohama, the one that he owned, and that had been empty for months.

His father’s always-empty, too big of a house.

All in all, Dazai just didn’t want to be home.
He had no use for the hypocrisy, and found no vindication nor satisfaction in being cherished in a city that had always alienated him.

“Five minutes before showtime.”

But—

“Makeup check? Where is Steinbeck?”

But all he could think of was Chuuya. Chuuya’s hands on him. Chuuya’s mouth on his.  

“…Dazai?”

Chuuya smiling at him and saying, ‘see you around’ as he meant it. As if they were fated to meet again.

That absurd person had told him ‘see you around,’ as if it was ok to just leave — no pictures, no autograph, not even one last kiss snatched in the darkness.
No demand.
And God knew Dazai was not used to people who wanted nothing from him, who didn’t expect something from his carcass of an existence. 

Chuuya did not know — he did not care — who Dazai was. He didn’t even care if Dazai was a terrible person.
For a hundred times in the past evening, Dazai had fallen in love with the idea of this stranger knowing nothing but his name and the weight of Dazai’s hands on him. He’d fallen in love with the soothing sense of peace, of anonymity, that beautiful stranger had granted him.

Maybe, after all, he had fallen in love with Chuuya right then and there. Bam, thunderstruck.

Meet, fall in love, never meet again. End of story.

“Dazai? How are you feeling?” Kunikida called, waving an open hand in front of his face and snapping aggressively. 

The thunder of the fingers snapping together was what finally dragged Dazai back to reality, to the here and now and the sea of people waiting for him, derailing his train of thought almost violently.
The memory of Chuuya arching under him, moaning under his thrusts, got replaced by the echoes of the crowd chanting his name outside.

Much closer, the backstage workers and his team were barking orders.

Suddenly, he remembered that he was the Dazai Osamu, the sensation, the idol, the romantic dream of thousands of girls and boys out on God’s green earth.
A prince. 

Clearing his voice, Dazai steadied himself on his feet. He never wanted a date in Yokohama, but it was too late to back down now.

“Of course,” he said. “How do I look?”

Kunikida glanced at Atsushi standing next to him. Too dissociated to notice when Atsushi had appeared, Dazai just accepted the information with all the grace he could muster.
He didn’t worry about his voice because he knew he’d sound just right. He always did.

“You look awesome,” Atsushi assured.

“Make-up could use a freshen-up,” Kunikida growled, a single wrinkle appearing on his brow. “Where the hell is Steinbeck?”

Someone screamed ‘on cig break’, and Dazai could see a vessel swell on Kunikida’s neck.
Being his publicist surely wasn’t the easiest job on earth, especially when most of the people they worked with seemed incapable to rise to the occasion — or went on cig break two minutes before show time. Figures.

Not that Dazai could talk, since he had no intention of taking his job seriously nor to rise to the occasion. 

“I could use a cig break,” he said, lips curling up. Kunikida’s posture went rigid, and another vessel throbbed in his temple. He should get those checked, Dazai considered. 

“You go now, I’ll murder you.”

“Aw, that’s a sweet offer, Kunikida-kun~”

“I will make sure it’s as painful as it gets.”

“On second thought, I’ll pass. Thank you though. And I assure you that the makeup is fine,” Dazai replied, placing both hands on Kunikida’s shoulders. He could sense the man deflate under his gaze and touch. “Really. I’ve got this.”

“Hm.”

“I promise. ”

“Just try to not space out again,” the man said.

Driven by sheer adrenaline, Dazai nodded. With his hair tucked behind his right ear, which was supposed to add a touch of sophistication like an actual prince but only managed to make him look flirty, and wearing an all-white outfit, he was as ready as he could be.
Yet, somehow, he could not shake off the memory of Chuuya — ah, how he wished he’d asked for his surname. Instead, he had to guess its pronunciation from the business card he’d stolen.
He wanted to know how Chuuya would say it.
Two minutes to go, and he only wished he could revert back time to the night before.

“Osamu,” a voice called him, bringing him back to the here and now.

Dazai’s smile turned mellow, his eyes softening. He met a pair of blue eyes, and a hand squeezed his own, and suddenly he was okay.

“Odasaku.”

“It’s just for tonight,” Odasaku said. He squeezed his hand again. “You’ll be fine.”

It sounded terribly like an apology, even though Odasaku had not been the one to insist on a tour date in Yokohama. Knowing the baggage that came with the town, the man had fought tooth and nail to spare Dazai the mental strain of performing in a town he hated.
They had both lost when Mori put his foot down and forced the Yokohama date on them, but what Dazai truly cared about was knowing that his best friend — his manager, his guardian angel — had his back.
He squeezed back, summoning a smile to his lips.

“I’ll be fine,” he promised, echoing the other’s reassurance. “I’m just a little light-headed.”

“Should we go eat something out tonight? As a treat.”

Ah, always curry, Dazai thought. There was something, in the predictability of his best friend, that always calmed and soothed Dazai’s restless spirit. Where his mind was murky, with monsters lurking in the shadows, Odasaku managed to find pleasure in the good little things in life.

‘One minute to go,’ a voice shouted.

Dazai smiled. “Of course. I would love that.”

“I’ll book a table somewhere,” Atsushi chimed in.

“Book for the whole team,” Odasaku instructed. “I’ll email you the number to call. We’re taking you to the best curry restaurant in the world.”

“That’s Odasaku’s favorite place,” Dazai said.

Then he took a deep breath, pushed the memory of deep blue eyes back to the depth of his mind and prepared himself for the blinding, white-hot lights of the stage.
He prepared himself for the music, the crowd. He closed his eyes.

Five seconds to go.

In that second of uncertainty, Dazai prayed Yokohama wouldn’t eat him alive, and braced himself. It felt like sinking in a soundless ocean and he just hoped he wouldn’t drown.
Music weighed him down recently. He had been searching for something new, but the words – the notes – just refused to come out.
He couldn’t sing.
He couldn’t write. 

He dragged himself onto the stage and through the entire performance barely looking at the crowd, blinded by the burning lights and with his head already focused on the can of beer that would wait for him backstage.

His stomach churned, and his head felt light; he could feel the sugar from the chocolate bar he’d ingested half-willingly burning in his blood as he sang to a song somebody else had picked for him.

He didn’t look at the audience because he could not face them.

While he sang about love, about missing someone – a girl he had forgotten all about, too stoned to remember more than the auburn shade of her eyes and the black of her hair and that would forever live in a song – Dazai lingered to the memory of the night before.

Chuuya’s memory.

A stranger in his bed, a passerby in his life. A mirage.
And the more he sang, the more he stretched his arms as if to grasp smoke, the more he realized that the past was out of his reach.

He could not feel the man, because he’d had him for a fleeting moment in time. He wanted more, but he was scared. And suddenly, the cheerful melody of a loved ballad was cloaked with a tinge of regret, tainted with a speck of sorrow.

The song talked about a girl he’d met in the corridors of his school; she found him, loved him. She never left him, in the ballad, because his agent at the time had advised him that a popular hit had to be hopeful and appeal to the general public. Truth was, Dazai couldn’t give a shit about the general public.

Surrounded by people screaming the words of a song that didn’t mean a thing to him anymore, he sang about the girl and thought about a boy he met at a bar. It was physical. It was good, but it didn’t last.
He lost him with the first lights of the day.

And God, did he wish he had found the courage to make him stay longer. 

The song died out with a guitar rift, a touch of rock that Mori had found ‘refreshingly unexpected’. To Dazai, it only seemed out of place.

He hated rock bands in high school.

He was the lead singer in a rock band, smoking his days away with his head on a groupie’s lap, and couldn’t find a single reason to appreciate that world. Akiko was the keyboardist, then. She carried herself like one of the boys – and certainly punched stronger than them – but she kissed like a girl. They were having sex just to try and stitch together the edges of their young lives that were tearing at the seams.

But now, on a stage at the tail end of a pop concert, Dazai found himself missing those rock days when he could just sing about drugs and one-night-stands and alcohol, and that would be just about it. He’d be able to sell it. The crowd would roar his name and kiss his feet.

Now, he missed something – a spark, a feeling.

He bowed, letting the cheering and clapping wash over him.
A sea of people waved their glowing sticks – blue, pink, green – in an enthusiastic salute.

“Thank you,” he started, stopping to welcome a renewed wave of screams. Despite himself, he smiled. “Thank you, that was very kind.”

I love you! Someone screamed.

Dazai grinned. 

“So, the next one is going to be the last song for tonight,” he said, willing himself to slow down and take deep breaths despite his racing heart. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. “And I want to thank you all for coming here today, truly. Yokohama was never an easy city for me. I grew up here.” The words fought their way outside his mouth, but he pushed them and pushed them. “So, the next song has an awkward story. You know Odasaku, my manager, right? A saint, really. We were drinking together one night, and he said: Osamu, you truly need to give a new spin to your old gig. Well, it happened in a weird basement bar— ah.”

Dazais’ eyes widened, then, and his surprise was captured in 4K on the huge screens flashing above the round stage.
His lips parted, and the words broke and slipped past his lips. 

In the crowd, he saw Chuuya. 

When he stuttered, stopping mid-sentence, he didn’t know if it was because of the way he’d felt the presence of the redhead like a fist grabbing his stomach and, then, his heart, or because of the smile painted on the face of the little girl sitting on Chuuya’s shoulders. She could have been his daughter.

Maybe she was, if Chuuya were a very young father.

He didn’t mention a kid, though.

Still, whatever it was, that spark of wonder, that sense of forever, burned in him. 

As he fully clocked Chuuya’s presence and blinked just to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, Dazai could feel the connection click. 

Just him and that person in an ocean of people. 
Like a highway that, among a hundred other roads without a name, led to the sea. Like dust shimmering under the sun – silent, but visible. For a heartbreaking, breath-stopping moment, it felt like fate.

Then, Dazai smiled.
For the first time in what felt like forever, he knew exactly what he wanted to sing.

“—On second thought, you know what? Let’s shake things up a bit. Who needs a line-up, anyway?”

—

“That was merely the first time Dazai-kun would bend the rules for himself and that husband of his. If you want my professional opinion, it ruined sales. Publicity is nice, but ultimately no little girl wants to daydream about a taken idol. 

No, I never allowed my talents to date.”

Mori Ōgai, former Ouji producer.
Read more here

—

“Dazai, you absolute chaotic asshole. You can't just change the line-up?!” Kunikida screeched in his earpiece before Dazai could even see him.

“Good closure,” Oda interjected, on the same frequency. “But don’t do that again, please. The sound department is having a heart attack.”

Dazai barely heard any of that. 
As he bulleted himself down the metal stairs that lead to the backstage under the main stage, with dried sweat on his forehead and the crowd cheering echoing in his ears, he ignored everything.

He ignored Kunikida.

He ignored Odasaku.

“Give me a phone,” he ordered, with a blank expression and voice dry, stretching his hand in the generic direction of the workers backstage. 

The three technicians glanced at each other, pale and confused. 

“Dazai-sama, I’m not sure I can…”

“Mine is low on battery?”

“It’s really an old phone. Do we—?”

Dazai’s hand stretched further, huffing at the jittery knees of the men in front of him. 

Damn it. 

“I don’t care who, give me a goddamn phone.”

“Dazai-san?” Atsushi called, rushing by his side as the three men shivered. 

His skin was scorching under the synthetic fabric of his white costume, but his breath had become short and ragged for all the wrong reasons.
It was Chuuya’s fault.

Chuuya’s presence alone had made his heart race and chest ache. 

Chuuya was the only crowd he needed. 

Chuuya could help him. 

He side-glanced at Atsushi, grabbing the phone a sound technician was handing him with shaky hands. “There’s someone I need backstage.”

It wasn’t an explanation, but it was the only thing Dazai was going to offer.
The good thing about being a star was that most people didn’t dare tell him what to do — or not to do. Most surely, they wouldn’t dream of policing who he could or could not invite backstage.

After all, Yokohama suddenly seemed interesting enough.

—

“[…] Ouji’s pop sensation ‘Schoolgirl’ presents a tongue-in-cheek ballad about everyday life, while old favorite ‘Pandora’s Box’ continues to tear the house down. The Yokohama-born idol surprised the audience with lower tracks covered acapella, in a tribute to the audience who welcomed him in his hometown, but Billboard’s beloved ‘Pandora’s Box’ reconfirmed itself as a chart-topper.

There’s been a lot written about Dazai “Ouji” Osamu. The ascension of the singer started with A.D.A, and he continues to rack up accolades and successes – not least, a recent Vogue cover. Ever since he stayed with Mori Corp while A.D.A moved to Fukuzawa’s RukuCho, the soloist has been equally celebrated as a savior of modern idol culture and dismissed as a traitor of the former ten-piece group act.

Recently, voices speculated if the value of the 25-year-old singer decreased as he got older. 

However, after a lukewarm performance, the last song of the show saw the artist coming alive. If it is true that the performance of the Yokohama-born star lacked during the last dates of his tour, with the tail end of his performance Dazai seems to have found again the passion for performing he allegedly lost before his latest comeback.

Well, Japan: this is the comeback. 

Dazai Osamu is a party, and it only just started.”

Kodate Izumi, Rolling Stone, July 2018, issue 1317.
Read full article here

—

 

Queuing at the gates to get out of the stadium, pressed between agitated girls and singing groups screaming about the concert, felt like torture. The whole concert felt like torture. 

All he could focus on was Dazai — and not in a ‘ he’s on a stage and broadcast by several HD screens’ way. Oh, no. It was a he’s-so-tall, I-kissed-that-mouth kind of obsession that carried Chuuya through the concert as if he was trying to fight his way through a dream.

Every time he opened his mouth to breathe, he feared that Dazai’s name would come out. 
Because of that, much to Aya’s disappointment, Chuuya had not commented a single thing ever since the end of the concert. 

He occasionally offered a ‘hm-m’ or a nod to Aya’s commentary, but looked straight ahead, shouldered his way in the crowd whenever possible and focused on not losing his sister amidst the sea of people.
The whole situation stunned him into a flabbergasted sense of being half-sentient. He’d lived through the concert – nothing special, to be honest, and definitely overpriced for a guy who obviously hated what he was doing – with a sense of impossibility, waiting for something to pinch him awake.  

And still— 

Again, Dazai was Ouji.

He’d fucked his sister’s idol. 

The tiny, hopeful voice that had whispered to him that maybe his and Dazai’s paths would cross again had gotten crushed under a giant, apocalyptic ‘lol, fuck you and your greedy dick’.
Realistically, the chances of Dazai being a celebrity were non-existent – and yet. 
Chuuya was holding onto Aya’s hand as if his life depended on it (and it did, since Kouyou would have murdered him for losing their little sister) when his phone vibrated in his jeans pocket. 
Three missed calls from Kouyou popped up on the screen, followed by one from an unknown number.
An insistent number that was calling again.
Damning his sister’s lack of faith in getting Aya back home safe, Chuuya held onto the girl’s hand firmly and secured the phone between his shoulder and ear.

“Kouyou?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “We’re heading back now—”

“Take the G1 exit~”

Chuuya’s shoulders went rigid. 

“Dazai?”

“Hi, Chuuya. Take the G1 exit and turn right, will you?”

Puzzled, Chuuya glanced down at Aya, who tilted her head.
He squeezed her hand as Dazai chirped out his name again — tenderly, insistently. His voice was slightly rough, ruined by the concert.

Many questions flashed in Chuuya’s mind, then. All of them came too late, though, because he felt a little delayed when facing the man. 

How did you get my number?
Why should I?
Why are you telling me to do that? 

But something told him most of those questions would be useless, and Dazai would refuse to answer the others.

“Oi, don’t joke,” he murmured, gauging every word as they fought their way up his throat. “That’s the exit to the backstage.”

“Nice to see Chuuya can read.”

“I don’t have a pass.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you don’t need a pass,” Dazai said, and hung up.

That was his cue to ignore whatever Dazai wanted — because Dazai was insane — and follow the crowd to proceed to the train. Instead, he sighed and looked down at Aya. Her dark eyes studied him, bottom lip jutted out in a mute question.

“What?” She prompted.

“We’re taking a detour,” he said, guiding the girl to the big G1 sign at the other side of the stadium.

A few people side-eyed them, agitating to check if another exit had opened, whispering when the human barrier of security guards – all steadily lined up to protect the backstage – opened to let Chuuya and Aya in.
Although he could hear Aya firing questions, Chuuya refused to answer them. He didn’t even know what to answer, in all honesty. He fucked Dazai? Guilty.
But that didn’t mean he expected the man to notice him from a stage, in an ocean of people. It wasn’t even a figure of speech; the stadium was just that crowded.

As it turned out, Dazai had excellent eyesight — or a talent for torturing him. 

—

“Chuuya!” Dazai chirped, opening his arms the moment he saw him. Chuuya’s blood ran cold.

“Chuuya?” the white-haired boy next to Dazai asked, his green eyes jumping from him to the idol as his lips shaped in a little ‘o’. 

“O’nii-chan?” Aya echoed.

“What do you want?” Chuuya asked, instead, glaring at Dazai.

He looked different, and yet exactly like the night before. 
For a fleeting moment, Chuuya realized he preferred him disheveled and smoking in bed, nothing but bandages to cover his body and with hickeys blooming on his skin. He could see one at the base of his neck.
A fading stain of purple and yellow where Chuuya had bitten him to swallow the moans.

“Aw. When you said you were occupied, last night, you could have told me it was to see me,” Dazai said, with a happy skip in his voice. It was vaguely rough, throaty, the vocal cords strained by the evening of singing. 

It sent a warm shiver down Chuuya’s spine.

“What? It wasn’t that! It’s a coincidence. My sister… Aya.” He lightly lifted his hand, his fingers still firmly intertwined with the girl’s as if he could use her as an excuse. He saw Dazai deflate the moment he said ‘sister’, and wondered if he’d thought Chuuya was a father; maybe one of those closeted guys with a family, sleeping with strangers to satiate a hidden part of themselves. “I’m only here for her, and I told you I had to get my sister somewhere. I had no idea where, and sorry if I didn’t hand your shitty highness my life schedule.”

Chuuya himself didn’t even know where he was going, to begin with. 

Dazai hummed. “You did say that.”

“Besides, we were clearly otherwise preoccupied,” Chuuya added. His light scowl must have been ridiculous, because it caused Dazai to snort - a tiny sound that Chuuya found cute despite himself.

“Very true.”

“And you stole my number.”

“I won’t apologize for aiding fate,” Dazai said, with a small huff as if Chuuya was being finicky. 

“Righto. You should apologize for stealing my personal data, you imbecile.”

“Ah, but that’s how I contacted you~”

Right. 

He rolled his eyes at the comment, trying to hide how it made him flinch. Dazai didn’t need to contact him, yet he did anyway.
Part of him feared to know the reason why Dazai had called him. Chuuya doubted it was just to reminisce on the past night.
Was it because of the sex?
They had a good night. And yet, he had a feeling he would pay the price for that one-night stand a hundred times over.

“Why did you call me here, Dazai?” he asked, cautiously. “You’re an idol.”

In silence, Dazai squinted and refused to answer. 

Then, he pointed a finger at him. He stopped in a pose that trickled unnecessary drama — like a Shakespearean character standing under the stage lights, the hero of a tragedy. He looked as if he was still acting.
For a second, caught in the tense silence, Chuuya wondered if Dazai ever truly dropped his acting number. If all the man had to offer was one mask after the other, covering nothing – concealing a no one, a blank personality. 

“Chuuya…”

“Hm?” He lifted an eyebrow. “What’s with the solemn bullshit?”

“… Date me.” 

—

God, he thought. 

Chuuya was beautiful when he wanted to punch him. 

—

It was a nightmare. A terrible, delirious nightmare.
Whatever Dazai was blabbing, and Chuuya hardly managed to follow the words while he was too focused on the general absurdity of the situation, it made absolutely no sense.
Date me. He blinked, his eyes jumping from Dazai to his finger that was still pointed at him, and then back to Dazai’s assistant. The poor guy looked vaguely grey in the face. 

Chuuya took a deep breath. 

“What?”

“No, actually. Let me ask you something else.” Dazai squinted, brown eyes almost black in the semi-darkness of the backstage. “Did you like the concert?”

Opening his mouth, Chuuya balanced his answer. 
He could feel the eyes on him — Aya, Dazai’s white-haired friend, the technicians. Expectations carried weight, and everybody expected a single answer out of him. And yet, Chuuya had no reason to lie.

“It sucked,” he said. “You don’t like that shit either, do you?”

He would have lied if he had said he didn’t expect the shit-eating grin that painted itself on Dazai’s face.

“ Bingo,” he said. “It sucked.”

“It didn’t—!” Dazai’s assistant stammered, wide-eyed and with practically a am I going to be fired -shaped wrinkle on his forehead. 

Dazai waved him off.

“Now, Atsushi-kun, it’s true. We all know it. Mori-san and Mori Corp know it. The reviews point to it. But what I miss is a muse. A feeling, so to speak, that is deeper than fucking a girl and forgetting her in the morning. I’m not a rock star. That just doesn’t work for my music.” He looked at Chuuya, a solemn flame burning in his eyes and making him look older— taller, more alive. “Be my muse, Chuuya.” He inhaled. “Make me feel again.”

Oh.

Wow.

Chuuya crossed his arms to his chest, feeling weirdly lightheaded. “Is this a joke?”

“Not at all.”

“You want me to date you because you can’t find a poor soul that would date you for real?” 

With a smirk that had no business being this confident — after all, Dazai was admitting he could not, for the love of him, find a hook-up. It wasn’t exactly a flattering look for the so-called prince of idols and sovereign of a wide fanbase — the man nodded. 

“That’s not quite correct. I could date, but my agency has a strict policy around it. They allowed me to fake date, instead. So they told me to pick someone I liked, someone who wouldn’t require the commitment of an actual relationship but that would be good for the cameras, and find that inspiration I’ve been lacking.” 

As if he was just talking about the weather, Dazai raked a hand through his hair, charmingly calm and put-together despite having spent the last two hours jumping up and down a stage. The night before Chuuya had asked himself where did such a lanky beanpole get his stamina in bed— and, well. 

His doubts had been answered. 

Also, right there, he reached the conclusion that Dazai Osamu was insane. Beautiful, yes, but insane. He was admitting to being a manipulative asshole with the most solemn expression on his face, no regards whatsoever for the other people involved. 

“Why?” He still enquired, mostly to indulge his own curiosity on how much self-awareness could a person lack. 

“I find myself in a bit of a pickle, you see. I’m not inspired.” 

Chuuya’s lips twisted in a scowl. “My condolences.”

“I can’t write.”

“How terrible.”

Go fuck yourself.

“In order to defeat my creative slump, as you can imagine, I need to experience… all those things people experience in a relationship. My agency can pay for your trouble and your time, of course. In fact, they intend to do so.” The comment twisted Chuuya’s stomach. It wasn’t a good twist. And no. Who could imagine such a drastic resolution for such a boring problem? “Date me, Chuuya.”

“No,” he said immediately.

“Please.”

Chuuya halted, considering the proposal for a moment.
Dazai was not only emotionally unavailable, but obviously tied to a contract that controlled him and every part of his life: his schedule, his art, his personality. He probably didn’t have dreams and aspirations left.

If he was being honest, Chuuya didn’t want – he didn’t need – such a complication in his life. He didn’t need to fake date.
He didn’t want Dazai’s handsome face and puppy eyes. 

“I said no,” he repeated, ever so slowly, scanning the sounds. For a moment he wondered who he was trying to convince— Dazai, of course. He was convinced already. “I don’t need your money or your company or your attention, Dazai. I don’t need to date you and hell knows I don’t want to.”

Immediately, Dazai’s shoulders slumped.

“Chuuya’s boring.”

“I have morals.”

The man had the audacity to scowl. “…Boo-ooring.”

Right. 

Chuuya was not going to comment on that.

“We had fun,” he said instead, shaking his head. “It was a good night. But I don’t want a relationship with anybody right now, and even less I’m interested in helping you write with your dick.” 

Dazai quirked an eyebrow, glancing at Aya. “Are you supposed to say such things in front of a lady, or are we breaking some house rules?”

For a moment, Chuuya’s eyes widened as he searched for meaning in those words. House rules? He hadn’t said anything that Dazai didn’t already know, nothing they hadn’t done that night that he—

Oh, shit.

He forgot about Aya.

“Sorry,” he muttered, glancing down. Aya shook her head, her lips puckered, but didn’t reply.

As if to point out how terrible of a brother he was, Dazai kneeled in front of the little girl.
Chuuya didn’t need to do that anymore, but he also wasn’t a tall, lanky so-called prince.

“Now, did you like the concert, Aya?”

The second he talked to her, taking her hand, Aya’s cheek turned red. “I—" she started, and closed her mouth and opened it again. Several times.

Dazai tittered, featherlight. “How cute. I promise you don’t have to be scared.” 

“I’m not scared,” she hummed. “I’m— surprised. I guess.”

“Well, Aya, that makes two of us.”

She glanced up, first at the singer and then at her brother. “You know my brother?”

Know was way too generous for two people who fucked once, Chuuya thought. 

“I do,” Dazai said, soft. Unfairly soft. “I like him.”

Chuuya forced himself to swallow.
He almost regretted his answer in front of the spectacle of Dazai acting quite so nicely and politely with Aya, but he had no reason to reconsider.
Did Dazai just say he liked him? He didn’t even know him. They’d fucked once. 

His only — very, very vague — possibility of acceptance vanished the moment Dazai mentioned the money.

With his pulse drumming in his throat, Chuuya cut the conversation short and escaped the backstage as soon as Aya allowed him to drag her away from Dazai’s magnetic personality.

It took him less than five minutes and a quick Google search to realize that Dazai Osamu had a ban on relationships in place – which Dazai had mentioned, and suddenly it made so much sense that the sneaky bastard was hooking up with random strangers in bars – and a long list of brilliant reviews for his performances, charm and ability to capture the public.

The thought relieved Chuuya. 

If Dazai was truly so good a catch, he would find someone else to bother with his shitty schemes and stupidly pretty dimples. 

—

“You look disappointed.”

Aya shrugged, kicking her legs against the driver’s seat. Dazai had insisted on calling them an Uber home and refused to listen when Chuuya had tried to turn down the offer.

“I’m not disappointed.”

“Aren’t you going to pout at me for refusing Dazai?”

“No,” Aya said. She sounded thin and didn’t look at him — her eyes fixed on the glass and staring at the road outside. “It’s just weird to hear you call Ouji by name.”

“It’s not my fault that’s how he introduced himself,” Chuuya said.

He knew he sounded defensive, and hated it.
He hated all about how he felt on the verge of lashing out against his sister, the lack of sleep and the events of the last hours mounting in the back of his head together with a throbbing migraine.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault.”

“Then why are you pouting?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “It was strange, that’s all.”

“Well, at least you got a meet & greet out of it.”

It was supposed to be a joke, but Aya’s frown deepened. He couldn’t quite tell if she was disappointed or worried, her expression one far more mature than her thirteen years.
With her red hair and sporty clothes and worried frown, for a moment Chuuya saw Kouyou in the little girl. “I guess so.”

“I’m sorry you had to meet that bast— your idol like that.”

“It’s ok,” she said, under her breath. “As long as you’re ok.”

Was he ok?
That was a good question.

Undoubtedly Chuuya was going to be ok — maybe not right now, but he was going to.
As he held onto Aya’s hand in the backseat of the car, he rested his head against the seat and exhaled a deep, shuddering breath, allowing exhaustion to overcome him.

He needed to sleep.

He needed a beer.

God, he hated his stupid life.

And, most of all, he hated Dazai Osamu.

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading this first chapter. I hope you liked it, let me know your thoughts! ❤️

Find Max’s beautiful arts here

I’m on Twitter as @blind_blossom
or on CC.
Updates weekly 😌

Chapter 2: Pandora's Box

Summary:

"You have to stop with this stuff. It's gonna kill you."

"Good," he said, "I hope it’s fast."

Notes:

Hello! In this chapter, please watch out for the following TWs:
> Drug and alcohol abuse
> Mental health issues
> Manipulation
> Self-destructive behavior

Beautiful art by @mosaichiko here.

“Why did you agree?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Well, Nakahara-san, you obviously agreed to date Ouji in the end. Considering your… well, status.” The presenter gestured at the TV studio, which had plunged into a religious silence. She smiled at him, then, giving him her most professional beam. “I’m sure our audience would love to know how you said yes.”

The man sighed, drumming his fingers on the armrest of the pristine white seat. He rolled his eyes, glancing briefly at the camera before focusing back on the interviewer.

Nakahara Chuuya had something about him, with his braided red hair and black leather jacket and silver wedding band and slightly tilted fedora, that intimidated people.
Maybe it was the Emmy nomination, maybe it was the ice-blue gaze; maybe it was his husband.

“That’s easy,” he said. “Have you tried to say no to Dazai?”

 

Yokohama, 2018

All men are born sinners. 

That is what Dazai always thought, at least. His father and mother made it easy for him to buy the concept in a heartbeat — sinners and liars, all of them.
Dazai used to be comfortable around them, believing that sin was something shared and inevitable.
The original sin would be erased with death, and death alone. It was not a characteristic or a human decision, but an inescapable axiom. 

Sin was inevitably, inherently human. 

And that was, ultimately, the reason why sin — as something shared by many — was of little importance.

‘All men are born sinners’ meant: sin is cheap. 

Enter Nakahara Chuuya.

Handsome, loyal to a fault, and with seemingly unshakable morals. Dazai had offered him a paycheck in exchange for his time and affection, and Chuuya had said no. He said no as if the idea of lying, of trading feelings for money, disgusted him. In some odd jest of destiny, Chuuya was a virtuous man with a sinful body and addictive kisses.

When Dazai called him again the morning after the concert, the redhead answered after the second ring. 

He sounded fresh in a way that Dazai was unfamiliar with, as if he’d been up for hours. Rolling the bottle of pills in his hands, the brunet found himself at a loss for words. Maybe the pills had numbed his brain.
Maybe he should have asked Mori-san for different ones.

For a brief moment, he considered the possibility of counting them, instead of swallowing a few and hoping to fall asleep rested for once in his life. That just didn’t work for him, though. It never did.

“…Hello?” 

The nudge was enough for Dazai to smile and regain control. 

“Hi, Chuuya.”

On the other end of the line, the man groaned. 

“I’m starting to hate that sentence,” Chuuya said. “Delete my number. I’m hanging up.”

“I swear I just wanted to say sorry.”

“Cool. Bye.”

“Please, wait,” Dazai said, voice bordering on desperation.

Saying ‘please’ always tricked good individuals into giving bad people like him space to talk. It worked with Oda. It did with Kunikida. 

Chuuya wasn’t any different.

After a second, he sighed. “What?” 

Bingo.

“I’m serious when I say I wanted to apologize for yesterday. Properly, I mean. Ideally over a drink. It was…” He spared a second to measure his words. “Indelicate of me, to drop on you my dating situation like that.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“I just thought Chuuya would understand.”

It wasn’t that Dazai had planned to talk Chuuya into rethinking his stance, but that seemed to be the right approach. 

Right, he thought, as he listened to Chuuya’s quiet breathing on the other side of the line. Good people also help the ones in need, don’t they?

“Look,” Chuuya started. Then, another pause. God, I could listen to his breathing all my life. “It’s not that I don’t understand or I’m not sympathetic to your work struggle.” A third pause, Chuuya’s resolve crumbling loudly in the silence. Dazai relaxed his back against the couch. “And, frankly speaking, both my friends and my older sister keep setting me up for dates. It’s annoying. So I was thinking, let’s just meet for lunch somewhere public. We can talk this through and, in case, see if we can reach an agreement.”

Let’s talk this through.  

“Sure,” Dazai said. “Now works. Tell me where.” 

It probably was too early to claim a victory, no matter how inconsequential, but Dazai smiled anyway.

—

Dazai looked handsome, wrapped in a black turtleneck and grey tailored slacks that made him look even taller than he was, and Chuuya was absolutely not flustered about it. He caught Dazai’s eye as the man was still making his way to their table, zigzaging between the other tables in the modest brasserie Chuuya had picked for the meeting, and waved to signal his presence. For some reason, that made Dazai smile. 
As if there was anything to smile about. As if he didn’t know how handsome he was, and the things it did to Chuuya.
Forcibly, the redhead swallowed and mentally told his dick to get a grip and stop acting up. 

Dazai was a professional idol. His job was to look good.

He took the seat at the restaurant’s table with nonchalance, as if he wasn’t half an hour late. 

“You’re late.”

“You’re beautiful,” Dazai answered, smiling brightly. 

However, it was the kind of sharp, sweet smile that didn’t reach his eyes and didn’t feel natural. It was the paparazzi smile, the one he gave to the cameras. The fake-it-until-fuck-knows-what-happens smile.

After having seen what Dazai’s genuine smile looked like, Chuuya had no intention of letting himself be fooled by a shitty mackerel with a shitty fake smile.

“Sit down, before I eat the damn table,” Chuuya said, ignoring the comment. It was best for his blood pressure if he didn’t give Dazai an answer and just ignored him. “I ordered already, so get yourself something.”

Dazai hummed. “Such a bossy Chibi,” he complained, although he obeyed. Then, when the waitress came to take his order, he glanced at the menu for less than a second and asked for a matcha pot. No food at all, just hot tea. Chuuya allowed himself a second to digest the situation. Matcha. Hot. In fucking summer.

There was no way that was normal. 

“Touring upsets my stomach,” Dazai offered.

Chuuya‘s eyebrows jumped up. “Maybe you should cut on the bar hopping.”

Something told him Dazai didn’t appreciate the intrusion because his lips twisted down — imperceptible, but still visible if one paid attention. His hand found a knife, twisting it, fidgeting with it as if impatient for something. 

Dazai merely looked like a healthy person, Chuuya realized.
A shell of a man with his shit together, with a career that didn’t weigh on him. A man born to withstand the crushing burden of international fame, with success tailored to him like a pricey dress. A prince.

He looked like a healthy person, and that was a masquerade.

Because, like many other things in life, the little tells were the ones that gave him away. The tiny signs of a scarred mind.

“Do you get an upset stomach or are you anxious?” Chuuya tried, only to prove a point.

Dazai now was different from the man he met at the bar, and most certainly different from the idol that reigned over a stage. Both of them were shields. Both of them did not exist.

This Dazai was raw anxiety and restless uneasiness. He never met Chuuya’s eyes, and fidgeted with everything within reach. His right leg was bouncing too, although it might have been a nonchalant sign of annoyance. 
However, the way Dazai flinched told him that the emotion shaking him wasn’t irritation.

“You said we had to talk, Chuuya,” he said, fidgeting with the spoon next. He couldn’t keep quiet. “Let’s talk. Before I die of boredom— I have no interest in being killed by a boring Chibi.”

Chuuya shrugged. “We already started.”

“Are you here to psychoanalyze me?”

“Perhaps. Would that surprise you? I gotta know who I’m dating.” 

Dazai’s eyes narrowed, his fringe brushing the furrowed surface of his brow. “Well, I guess that’s what normal people would want, yes.”

“Besides, you are not as mysterious as you think you are, Bandages.”

With a click of his tongue, Dazai huffed. 

“I never tried to be mysterious.”

“You did, with the whole ‘date me’ thing. You think people can’t read your motives, but they can. They do.”

With another scoff, Dazai rolled his eyes. Now he was annoyed. Chuuya could read it in the gleam of his irises, in the thin spider web of expression lines at the corners of his eyes. 

He completely ignored the waitress bringing them the food — a steak in red wine sauce and a glass of Pinot noir because he couldn’t face Dazai sober — and the tea, gaze never straying from Chuuya. 

“Then you are welcome to question me, chibi, if that amuses you.” A pause, and Dazai’s hands cupped his silly matcha cup as if looking for warmth. “Unless you think you had enough reading for today.”

Chuuya’s brow furrowed. “Well, you can’t sleep so you fuck strangers in bars. You hate your music, as it’s obvious to anybody above eighteen. And you pretend you’re not, with your ‘just tell me where’ bullshit, but you are nervous about being out. But why do you need my help, Dazai? You are good-looking.” That, at least, kindled a spark behind Dazai’s eyes. “And you are a global music star. So help me out, here… where is the catch?” 

Dazai hummed. 

“I don’t like a lot of people,” he said, measuring his words. His fidgeting slowed down, too, although Chuuya could not say if that was a good thing. His eyebrows arched. “Most of them, in fact. And I select the ones who surround me with a certain carefulness.”

“We met in a bar.”

“I said it was a careful process, not that you needed to understand it. I watched you. I talked to you. Sometimes all it takes is a gut feeling. And when I realized you didn’t give me bad vibes, I asked you to follow me to the hotel.” Dazai stopped, then, making it clear that he would have backed off at any time if Chuuya had given him bad vibes.

Which meant: Dazai would be quick to run away if need be. That entire conversation meant Dazai was probably good at finding escape routes. 

Chuuya hummed, a lighthearted grin spreading on his lips as he cut his steak. “So you vibed-checked me?”

“Call it what you will.”

“Fine, alright. Thank you for answering,” he said, with a nod. Gosh. He got vibe-checked in a bar by a weirdo; even worse, he was okay with that. “So, bearing that in mind… I thought over your proposal again.”

“I thought you said you wanted nothing to do with it.”

“After you ambushed me at the concert? Yep.”

“You know my deal, Chibi.” Dazai gestured between them, almost dismissive. Anxious. “What’s your counteroffer?”

“First of all, if I agree, I don’t want to be paid for whatever is going on here.” He paused, taking a bite of his lunch. It was nice, yet the whole predicament left a foul aftertaste of fuckarsery to the food. “Dates, expenses? On you. No presents or shit, just— if you want us to go out anywhere, you pay. I have no money to spare for your charade. But I’m not an escort, and I won't date you for money.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“And it bears repeating, no presents.”

Dazai scowled. His eyes gleamed, and he seemed genuinely upset about it. “Why?”

“I’d rather not feel in debt for something that is not even real.”

Also, Chuuya added to himself taking another bite, presents felt like a payment. An indirect one, but a payment nonetheless.
Even worse, he might have gotten attached to objects, and returning them eventually would feel like shit. 

He didn’t need to borrow fake presents for a fake relationship from a fake boyfriend.

Again, Dazai hummed. “Alright. And I want you to suggest dates, too— things you like. Things that you want to do.”

“I can do that. You also need to be discreet. I don’t want my friends pestering me more because they think I’m being cheated on.”

“Of course.”

“For how long are you staying in Yokohama again?” Unless they were talking about long-distance relationships, too. Honestly, that would have been a bother. 

Dazai seemed to mull over the answer while drinking.
One second, then two.
Then he squinted. 

“It’s bitter,” he complained, screwing up his face. He stuck out his tongue, too.

What a man child, Chuuya thought — but it was a fond consideration, laced with tenderness. However, he dismissed it as an annoying byproduct of the night they spent together. It would pass; like a flu or a bad dream. “Anyway, I don’t know. At some point I’ll leave for a tour or something, but I’m supposed to write the new album now. I would say I’ll be allowed to leave this hell of a city in… six months, give or take? When I do, our contract is broken.”

“And I can back out if I’m uncomfortable?”

“Of course. But you’ll have to keep up the farce for the paparazzi until my team comes up with a breakup story to pitch.”

“And I get to say if I’m busy, plus you’ll show up for any mandatory family dinner. No drama. They need to love you.”

“Your sister already does.”

Chuuya scowled. Unfortunately, he was right. “Yeah, and that’s a big part of why I’m accepting your shitty offer.” A pause. “And Aya gets everything. Merch, concert tickets, pictures— you name it.”

“I’ll talk to my PR team, but I don’t see why not.”

“Cool.”

“Cool,” Dazai echoed. “So I’ll be your back-up and you’ll help me write.” With a subtle smile, then, the man offered Chuuya his hand from across the table. “Deal?”

Damn.
He had no way to refuse, hadn’t he? He also didn’t have to bargain about physical contact because they had covered all the bases already. They knew each other’s bodies, by now. 

So he grabbed Dazai’s hand, shaking it firmly. “Deal.”

—

 

“The question we are asking today is not ‘why is the idol-sensation Dazai Osamu, better known as Ouji, still popular?’

The question is: how is Dazai Osamu still alive?”

Rolling Stone, June 2019 issue, SEVEN & I Publishing

  

— 

 

Nakahara Chuuya definitely wasn’t sulking. 

He was in no way whatsoever blindsided, confused and licking his wounds after accepting the proposal of one Dazai Osamu, idiot extraordinaire and his now-boyfriend.

They had decided to keep the relationship private, at least in the beginning, and as low-key as possible, but that had done nothing to mellow down Dazai’s enthusiasm about the fake-dating arrangement. If possible, it had only upped his expectations.
That was why, apparently, Dazai felt confident enough to abuse his phone-number privilege by calling Chuuya during working hours.

Video-calling, to be exact.

Chuuya had a feeling it would be the first call of many.

“Oi, bastard, remind me why I have to see your ugly face even when I’m at work,” Chuuya greeted him. He flopped on the sofa in the Coffee Cave (that was how Tachihara, his boss, friend and favorite drinking buddy, had renamed the office's kitchen) with a soft sound, holding the phone in front of his face with one hand while he held a much-needed coffee with the other.

“Why, Chuu~ya! Because you miss me, of course!” 

“Who misses you, asshole? I saw you yesterday.”

And the day before.

Although he didn’t deny it, Chuuya still shook his head.
He ignored Dazai’s smile as if his nonplussed act could nullify the little jump that his heart made at the sight of familiar dark hair and gold-brown eyes on the screen. Dazai’s torso was covered in bandages and an absurd fitted shirt with Ouji’s stage name embroidered on the right side, right above the heart in ridiculous golden lettering.
Stage clothes, no doubt. He refused to think Dazai was obnoxious enough to wear clothes with his name on a regular basis. Yet, Chuuya couldn’t help but think that, for somebody so skinny, Dazai had stupidly broad shoulders.
He wasn't too muscular or too lean, despite his lanky limbs and weird hatred for healthy meals: he was just right.
And he dressed terribly and covered himself in weird bandages, but Chuuya supposed the universe needed a balance.

“Cute outfit,” Chuuya teased, with the tiniest hint of venom. He lifted his coffee mug in a mockery of a martial salute.

Dazai pouted, blowing his cheeks. “I think it’s nice.”

“It’s ridiculous, and you know that. Who picked it?”

“Styling dep. And you’re one to talk, with that stupid choker that looks like a dog collar and the ugly hat on your silly little head.”

With a snarl, Chuuya lifted the hand that was holding the mug to his head. Not the best idea, since it splashed a drop of coffee on his shirt. And that was why he hated Dazai Osamu. Well. One of the many reasons, coercion and manipulation being only two key pain points of a fucking long list.

“Ha? Shut up, you fuckface. It helps me write!”

“A hat?”

“It’s a creative thing!”

“Ah right, what is it you do again? You write scripts for Commercial TV, right?” Slowly, Chuuya's head bobbed down. He had briefly mentioned his job for an advertising agency during their first night, and the fact that Dazai remembered it absolutely didn’t cause him to squirm in his seat. It meant nothing. It meant— “Besides, you don't look too good yourself, Chibi. Did you shrink?”

Right. Maybe it meant nothing, because Dazai was full of shit.

“I’m good enough to kick your skinny ass until you bleed.”

“Kinky~”

As he forced back a smile, Chuuya shook his head and tried to erase the memory of how kissing Dazai felt. 

He’d only had the man once for a handful of hours, and yet he’d gotten used to the feeling — to the smell of Dazai’s skin and the sweetness of his voice — frustratingly easily. And, yes, he’d gotten used to the kinky part too.
He remembered how he put on a show of fake resistance for Dazai to pin him down and love him roughly, biting his lips and blocking his wrists.

“Ugh, you are such a pain in the ass,” Chuuya grumbled, concealing his smirk in a sip of coffee. “What are you up to?”

“Working,” Dazai said the word as if it disgusted him, “I have an interview with NHK in five minutes, give or take.”

“Then why are you here?” 

“I missed my boyfriend,” Dazai volleyed back, lips curled up in a smirk. The rust-free confession dropped so casually made Chuuya flinch. Of course, he was dead set on denying any of it in case Dazai had pointed out the sudden flush of pink that had dusted his cheeks.

“Too bad. I don’t miss you.”

“Ah, I spot a lie right there, Chibi. But don’t worry, I know that a Chibikko like you can’t resist my charming personality and dashing looks~”

“I’m hanging up,” Chuuya announced. He stretched his hand in an exaggerated, dramatic motion to close the call, stopping only when Dazai yelped. Dazai Osamu yelped. As if that wasn’t crazy enough, then he whined Chuuya’s name like the grown-ass baby he was – Chuu-u-ya, stretching the vowels, clinging to the sound as if it was enough to manipulate Chuuya into listening to his bullshit.

It shouldn’t have worked – and yet.

With a smirk playing on his lips, Chuuya allowed himself to lean backward again, with his back comfortably resting against the sofa and a lazy satisfaction gleaming in his blue eyes.

“Don’t you use that tone with me ever again,” Chuuya said, quietly. “If you want to be a needy asshole, find yourself a groupie or something.”

“Isn’t my boyfriend going to be jealous?”

“You kidding?” Chuuya snorted, though something in his mind screamed that he was going to punch in the face anyone who had the gall to get too close to his boyfriend. Ah, well. Fake boyfriend. “I’d be grateful. Find yourself some poor girl to drag into this charade and leave me the fuck alone already. Bet your production team will be thrilled.”

“Chuuya is not funny.”

“Ah, here you’re wrong. I’m very funny.” When he beamed and winked, Chuuya thought nothing of it. It was just part of the joke. They were goofing around, and nothing more. But Dazai stopped, eyes widening.

“Ah,” he said as if placed in front of a revelation. Chuuya scowled.

“Ah?”

“Your eyes. They’re…blue.”

Chuuya’s stomach tangled for all the wrong reasons. He felt naked and seen, even from across a glass screen. His jack slacked a little as his heart hiccuped.
Oh my God, he thought, swallowing dry, this is bad. 
How could Dazai not know what kind of mess he had awakened in Chuuya’s body with that stupid comment and the way he was staring? Eyes overflowing with boyish amazement, like a child in front of a museum’s wall. Like a boy experiencing Christmas for the first time. 

And— God.
Dazai had no business making him feel handsome.
Chuuya knew he was a solid seven, on some days and when he made an effort. But Dazai? He just made him feel different. Not hot, although Chuuya knew he could be that too. Not enthralling.

For a second, under Dazai’s awed stare, he felt beautiful.

“Shut up,” he growled, turning his face and staring at his coffee mug. Glad that Dazai couldn’t notice the embarrassing racing of his heart, he took another sip of coffee, hoping that the rim of his black fedora would conceal his disoriented eyes. 

He hated it.
How dared the bastard throw such curve balls like he had any right to mess up his head? If only Dazai had only been a random guy in a normal bar, things would have been different.
Instead, Chuuya had to sit back and witness his younger sister drool all over Dazai’s idol act. He had to witness people fawn over his man, and Dazai had already warned him that his fandom might have been occasionally salty about their relationship.
It sounded exhausting. Thank God he didn’t date Dazai in real life. In fact, he didn’t give a single flying fuck about the man.

Dazai’s lips parted, but a voice called his name from the background.

‘Dazai-sama,' the voice said, 'five minutes to airtime. Please, follow me.'

“You gotta go?”

“Seems like it. But ugh, I hate it,” Dazai whined, fingers raking through his hair as if he was an overgrown schoolgirl complaining to his boyfriend. No doubt, that reckless gesture must have made a hairstylist cry. “At least Odasaku will get us all to drink after.”

Chuuya twisted his nose. “Who’s Odasaku?”

From the mirth shining in Dazai’s eyes, he could already tell that the man was going to tease him for a question that anybody would have asked. “My, Chuuya, you break my heart. You should have read my wiki page by now.”

“I’ve read the one that says you’re a smartass.”

Dazai nodded, almost pensively. “That one's accurate too.”

“So, Mr. I-have-a-wiki-page, enlighten me: who’s Odasaku?”

“Odasaku is my manager. And my best friend —a very patient best friend.” Dazai smiled, saying that – a beam that reached his eyes, young and carefree. Side-glancing outside the call, he gestured for someone to give him one more minute. “We always go to drink in this nice place, Odasaku and I, a bar in Ginza. We should go there sometime, too, so I can introduce you two and you can drink something decent for a change. I can ask if they allow shrimps inside.”

“Hah? Bold of you to assume I want to be seen with a shitty idol.” 

“But Chuuya~!”

“Look…You really should go, Dazai,” he said. “You’re making everyone wait for you, and that's really shitty to all the people who are just trying to do their job. Do everyone a solid and wrap up this interview.”

“Sure, I could. But I have a better idea.”

Chuuya’s brow furrowed. “Huh?” 

The man smirked, wickedness and mirth turning his eyes the most alluring shade of golden brown. “I’ll hide in a dressing room and we can sext,” he said, with a grin. “So I can avoid that boring interview and Chuuya can relax a bit. Maybe he’ll even grow taller.”

Despite everything that had happened, Chuuya’s first thought was: not a chance in hell.

Taking the last drop of his now lukewarm coffee, and even that gesture seemed impossibly slow and delayed after the possibility that Dazai had thrown in the conversation as if gravity had decided to riot and make his limbs heavier, Chuuya tried to ignore the things Dazai did to him. The buttons the man could push without even trying.
Every smile and nonchalant word from the man punched the air out of his stomach.

Why did even Dazai’s body language have to be that annoying and handsome? It was not fair. 

“Actually, that’s a good point.” He cocked his head to the side, thinking of a sensible way to voice out his concern. “Anything overly sexual is off the table. We take sex off our arrangement, or I’m out.”

That opened a crack in Dazai’s cheerful mask.

“Eh~?” Dazai moved an inch closer to the screen and waited for the man to budge, to explode in laughter and say he was joking, which would have been fair after their first night, but Chuuya refused to. “Chuuya doesn’t like me anymore?” 

“It’s not that,” he said. God, it definitely wasn’t that. “But I would rather not get too intimate as things are now.” He gnawed at his bottom lip, glancing at the screen to study the other’s reaction – and finding nothing in the man’s face. Dazai was waiting, silent, blinking with big, confused eyes. “If that’s ok for you. I know it might seem dumb because you saw pretty much everything there was to see. I remember. I know that. But it happened under different circumstances, y’know? I can play boyfriend, is what I mean. What I can’t play is a living and breathing sexual toy to someone I have a fake-dating relationship with. It feels— fake.” He took a deep breath. “This is fake. And fake sex is not my speed.”

“I don’t understand. It’s just sex.”

“It’s never just sex,” Chuuya said. 

Dazai had guts, throwing his weight around and acting as if they were just fuckbuddies after talking Chuuya into a fake relationship. They weren’t fuckbuddies. They were complicated, and complicated relationships needed to be treated carefully or someone would end up heartbroken or hurt or both. Bringing things into the bedroom always complicated everything.
Chuuya was happy to tiptoe around the flirting, and a certain level of intimacy would have been no issue, but sex? 

Yeah, no thank you.

Sex was free. 

Sex wasn’t a part of an agreement.
And Chuuya might have been liberal and ever careless about it at times, sleeping with strangers whenever he liked them enough, but he would not let money play a part in whoever he decided to fuck. 

Dazai wetted his lips, gauging the situation.

“Does the idea of having a more intimate relationship make Chuuya uncomfortable?”

“A bit,” Chuuya admitted, eyes narrowing. “I still think we had fun, yeah? It was good. But, to be perfectly honest, it would weird me out to sleep with you again after we shook hands agreeing to fake-date. Like I said, it makes sex feel fake too.” Knowing we are using each other kinda spoils everything, right? “Kisses are okay. Hugging too. But sex is not something you necessarily need to explore in a relationship, and for me, that would be… a little too weird. The lines would be too blurred. So I’m sorry if I’m not making any sense, or if it comes off as a sudden change of boundaries. It’s not personal.”

“That’s understandable,” Dazai said, but he had closed himself behind a mask of polite understanding. 

It was impossible to tell if he was surprised or pissed off by the change. 

Somehow, Chuuya would bet on the latter.

“I’m not keeping you away with a ten feet pole, Dazai,” he clarified, his heart drumming in his chest. “As I said, kisses are okay. Sex is just not something I want to trade.”

“I heard you,” the other said, with a small nod.

“You’re disappointed.”

Quickly, Dazai shook his head. “I’m surprised,” he corrected. “But of course that’s alright. We can keep things clean if that makes you feel more comfortable.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s all good.”

“Thanks for being understanding,” he murmured again. Then, partially to change the subject of the conversation, he moved an inch closer to the screen as if he could better assess his boyfriend’s physical state. “Did you drink enough, by the way? You’re pale. And you look about to pass out.”

Dazai froze, and the little time they had spent together had been enough to teach Chuuya that one didn’t take the man by surprise often. It turned his eyes a shade darker, and his lips puckered in a reverse v. 

The weak smile the redhead got as an answer came a little too late, and looked a little too weak: it was a facade, and not even a convincing one.

“Perhaps.”

“Don’t ‘perhaps’ me, Dazai.”

“Leave me alone, chibi~ I’ll drink if I’m thirsty.” The answer sounded low and uncomfortable, just as Chuuya expected.

“Remember to take breaks. And tell your shitty management team that if they don't take care of you, I will feed them to the fish in the bay,” Chuuya said, lifting an eyebrow. “They better take good care of you while I’m not around.”

“Is Chuuya worried?”

“Of course. I’m your boyfriend. If you drop dead it’ll be a headache.”

“Aw, Chuuya is such a mother hen,” Dazai sing-songed, with a happy skip in his voice.

With his face crumpling up, Chuuya refused to answer. He was just being decent.
Dazai was welcome to call him bossy and overprotective for it, he did not care. 

Distracted by his own thoughts, Chuuya almost missed Dazai announcing with unnecessary emphasis that he was going to hang up and undergo one last makeup check before his interview. He didn’t mention sexting again.

For some reason that Chuuya could not and had no desire to pinpoint, the idea of being alone at work after dealing with the Bandaged disaster sent a shiver down his spine. Dazai made everything else seem insipid.
And, because of the same mysterious force that tethered him to the man, Chuuya did not want to hang up. 

“Wait, Dazai?” 

The man tilted his head to the side, surprise crossing his face for a second as brunet strands fell over his eyes. Chuuya stalled and licked his lips, his brain buzzing to find the right words.

He tried to ignore the headache roaring on the back of his head.
‘Don’t go,’ would have been the more straightforward request, but honesty was freaking Chuuya out.

“I’m really looking forward to kicking your ass for bothering me at work, you know,” he said, after a moment.

Dazai smirked. A foolish part of Chuuya wondered if his very much real fake idol boyfriend hadn’t somehow managed to hear the truth that remained stuck in his throat. 

“I look forward to seeing Chuuya too,” Dazai purred. “Let’s say, tonight? Your place?”

“Wait, what–”

“Text me the address, please and thank you! Bye~”

The second later the call beeped, and the screen turned black.

—

The woman approached Dazai right after a small gig Kunikida had organized at a private venue — thirty seats, give or take, a little private arrangement for selected guests. 

He was swallowing two pills dry when the blonde American girl approached him after the concert, swaying her hips. He had seen her at other gigs, snorting lines in bathrooms at parties with music producers and other idols. In Tokyo, drugs were cheap if you knew where to find them. Same for alcohol.

Luckily, Dazai had access to both — in fact, being high was the only thing keeping him on his feet after the concert, when the woman walked up to him. He geared up for some fun. 

She was wearing a voluptuous red lipstick that screamed on the prowl and rocked a tiny red dress, all shimmers, all inviting curves.  She looked beautiful, that kind of beauty that is not ashamed of being admired or noticed. The down-to-earth beauty that was, at the same time, approachable and above all men. Or women, whatever. Dazai didn't plan on asking, anyway. The point was, she wasn’t one of those girls who paid their own entrance to the club and she didn’t seem to care about whoever she was with.

“Nice concert,” she said, sweetly, resting a hand on his arm. Her Japanese was accented. “I’m a fan.”

Dazai smiled. “Thanks.”

“Want to come over?” 

“Where?”

“My house.”

“To do what?” He asked, feigning innocence. She smiled as if he was being mysterious on purpose — he was, as her offer was pretty self-explanatory — and flicked blond hair off her shoulders. It shone like gold. He imagined how soft it could have been under his fingers.

“You know what,” she said. Bold. Dazai had always liked bold girls, especially when he was drugged out and high on adrenaline. 

Small venues always made him feel closer to his public, allowing him to fantasize about making love to the handsome faces in the audience — making him feel something.  But he smiled right back, cocksure, dripping that idol-like  confidence that belonged to Ouji but not to Osamu.
When Osamu remained at the corners of society, Ouji was always the first on the dancefloor.

“Sorry, I have a boyfriend,” he said. It was the best feeling in the world, the one to say no. I have someone. 

He felt powerful. 

He felt loved.

Inspiration kicked him in the guts right then and there, screaming to him that he should have written about the powerful feeling of saying no to someone available: he could finally write of temptation, of loyalty, of wanting someone who wasn’t present. 

He could have gone with the girl if he wanted to: Chuuya wasn’t his boyfriend, and they weren’t even having sex. He couldn’t cheat on someone he wasn’t really with. The truth was, he didn’t want to go with the woman. He wanted to go home to another boy, to something that would really matter shit to him.
That, Dazai thought, that was a high worth writing about.

That gig kicked off the news that Dazai Osamu had finally found himself a partner. 

—

Dazai looked sexy with a gun.

It was tragic, really, to recognize that gunmetal and an ice-cold stare and a stereotypical bad-boy attitude could fit someone and attract girls for a pop video, but Mori Corp seemed to like the aesthetic.
Scrolling through Ouji’s entire Vimeo playlist had been a decision that Chuuya had yet to understand if he regretted or not. 

Some songs featured Dazai in white, elegant attires. Others had him in high black turtlenecks, white striped shirts and pastel colors.

And then there was the whole mafia arc, starting with the Blue Bamboo album in 2016. 

Apparently, mafia arc was the fandom-bestowed name of a collection of loosely connected songs from 2016 to 2018 — that according to Aya, at least, who had squealed and screamed and let Chuuya know all her recommendations.
It didn't surprise him that the infamous mafia arc was at the top of the list. 

It was as if someone had handed Dazai a black coat and a gun and told him ‘do your thing, you know, that thing.’ And damn, did Dazai deliver. 

He looked at the camera from above the barrel of a gun, eyes sharp and irises as crimson as withering roses, and you couldn’t quite decide if he was going to kill you or do much, much worse. 

And—

A notification appeared on the top of Chuuya’s screen, white against the black background of the video. Immediately, his thumb went to the video and his eyes flickered to the message. 

From: Mackerel 

>Chibi~ 
>I miss you! And I’m bored! I’m calling you in a bit! You better greet your favorite boyfriend properly 
>Maybe a maid dress? ⊂(￣▽￣)⊃

Chuuya tossed his phone on the sofa without replying, turning his gaze to the skyline outside the window. 

Dazai Osamu was not his boyfriend. He was a clown.

It also seemed obvious to him that the charming man at the bar had been a ploy to lure him into a weird scheme. Equally, the charming idol turning girls into puddles of screams and giggles was nothing but a well-concocted scam.
Chuuya had been bamboozled. 

Because the real Dazai was a man-child who refused to cook for himself and mocked Chuuya’s clothes and never remembered to collect his laundry in time — RIP his assistant. He talked too much and never said anything for real.
Despite his undeniable good looks, the artificiality of his smile opened into a bottomless isolation. Something in his constructed beauty, somehow existing in between nonchalant carelessness and zealous dishonesty, rendered Dazai unpleasant to look at.
Well, no, not unpleasant; unsettling.

His jokes had a coarse, cruel undertone.
And then, other times, his jaw relaxed and his shoulders dropped and he looked like no one had ever taken a chance on him in his entire life. Most of the time, Dazai looked older than his years; more mature. With nobody around, he seemed younger. He turned into a lonely creature; a stray dog, beaten and kicked, with drool trickling from famished fangs and daybreak shining at the bottom of his glass eyes.
A loner waiting for the end of the world, whose weak pulse scanned a requiem mass for disappointed expectations.

And yet, as Chuuya discovered, ignoring his calls would become an incomprehensibly laborious task in his otherwise mundane life.

 

—

Ouji to be named MOST streamed artist of 2018 two weeks after game-changing date in YOKOHAMA, Billboard reports.

Dazai Osamu (aka Ouji ) can add another milestone post-tour to his recent successes.

“To be completely honest, and I'm sure my sales team might want my head for that, I never cared about charts and placements,” the Yokohama-born pop star reported in a recent Pen! Interview. “All I wanted was to write my songs and sing them. That’s all. Ultimately, we all want to be heard.”

Regarding the rumors about a new relationship, the singer…

READ MORE

By Nathan H. For DailyPop.Com
8:13, July 2018, updated 5:06, August 2018

60 shares
35 comments

—

 

Dazai’s mind was a rainbow. 

When all hope was lost and his soul bottomed out, drugs made flowers bloom from fear and creativity flowed free again. Drugs helped. 
Alcohol kept Dazai chill enough to act normal, it grounded him when the pills made him float away — the forceful feeling of no control taking over. By that time he was mostly too stoned to panic about not controlling everything. His mind was a machine, Mori had told him. Sometimes he had to slow it down. 

And slow himself down he did, closed in the guest bathroom of Poe and Ranpo’s house. While the members of A.D.A were giving a party for their newest release, instead of celebrating the success of his friends and former colleagues, Dazai had let himself slip on the bathroom floor. 

Akiko found him first.
She always knew where to find him when he lost himself. She’d kicked off her shoes, walking around Poe’s mansion barefoot, and looked like an angel in her black dress and short glossy bob and lack of makeup. She never needed makeup, and that was something Dazai loved about her. She didn’t need to be a girl to blend in with the boys — she was just Akiko. 

And the moment she showed up, Dazai knew he was in for a scolding.

"Osamu…”

"Leave me alone," Dazai growled, with his back against the sink. He took a deep breath, air prickling his lungs, and his heartbeat exploded in his temples.

Instead of obeying, Akiko moved closer.
She kneeled next to him, and the rustle of her clothes made him cringe but the worry tainting her face squeezed his heart. What a weird duality, he thought. Her presence annoyed and relieved him. He chuckled to himself. Funny. Why wouldn’t people like her give up on him already?

“How are you feeling?”

“Yellow,” he said. “And blue.”

"What does it mean?"

“It means I’m blue, and yellow, and all the other sad colors. And there’s a dragon next to you. You might want to say hello.”

“Dazai, that makes zero sense.”

I'm under no obligation to make sense to you, he thought. A knee-jerk response that Akiko didn't deserve and that he, despite the dizziness, managed to stifle down before it rolled out of his lips.

“I want to write.” Write about blue eyes and a door that won’t open and a city of glass and a slug and a mackerel falling in love. “I’ll write. I will. As soon as the room stops spinning.”

“Do you need to throw up?”

“No. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You’re—“ Akiko’s voice trailed off, and she sighed and suddenly he was reminded of all the times she’d stopped him from offing himself — either by accident or by design. “Fuck, Osamu, this is getting serious. You don’t need this stuff to write songs.”

Oh, but he did. 

He always aimed too high — he wanted to be Springsteen and The Beatles and all the western things his mother listened to wherever she was.
Maybe his voice would reach New York. Maybe she would regret leaving him. Maybe she’d come back.

So he ran. Fuck, he’d become the fastest goddamn horse in Mori’s stable. The fastest in Japan.

But, at some point during the race, he realized he couldn’t keep up. So, yes: he did need that stuff.

“Do you have a cigarette?” He asked, instead, head bobbing to the side. 

“Absolutely not. You’re gonna walk downstairs with me, now, and get some water.” A pause. "Is Mori still giving you this shit?"

"No," he said. It was only a half-truth. Some pills had been given to him by a sound tech — they always had the good stuff, stuff that would keep him awake for days. That shit was useful. It worked. "No. Mori-san wants me clean."

"Sure, how silly of me. And I bet he also reads you bedtime stories and cuddles you when you cry.”

“Ew.”

“Exactly. So don’t expect me to buy the Mori ‘is a good person’ shit.”

Yeah, Dazai thought, that's bullshit. 

Mori-san wanted him awake and productive enough to make money, but clean wasn’t necessarily in the cards. But, as long as he wasn't passing out on stage or throwing up in TV studios, Mori was alright with him being a drug addict and an alcoholic — because that's what he was, and there was no pretty way around it.

He had no interest in sugarcoating what he was.

What is the catch with you? Chuuya had asked. 
And, God… where was he even supposed to start? The truth was ugly, too ugly to let Chuuya see it:  Ouji was a prince. Ouji was a star, he was sociable and surrounded by lovers and all that. Dazai was the train crash that fame had made of him. He was a Dorian Gray of whisky and pills and demons visiting him in the dusk.
Fame had devoured him whole and spat him out.

But, thank God, he supposed, the outside remained still beautiful enough to pretend everything was going as planned. The portrait was still intact. All was well in the kingdom. Meanwhile, on the inside, he rotted on.

People like him never got cleaned up.
People like him could only sell songs while they destroyed themselves piece by piece, day by day.

'You gotta imagine a few shitty things to stay sane,' Chuuya had said. 

How odd, he thought; even on the verge of breaking, his mind still ran to Chuuya.

"It's just a bad trip," he countered, slurring his words. "And it was a small dose, and I’m alright. But please don’t mention Mori-san ever again, now I see him and— ugh. I’m ok.” I will be. When I write. “Come on, we should go before Poe starts getting anxious.”

As he said that, Dazai tried to stand up. He propped himself up, pressing a hand on the smooth bathroom tiles, but stumbled back down when his knees gave up under his weight. His fingers shook. The world spun faster.
And, thanks to Akiko’s prying, all he saw now was Mori.

But… Wasn’t it beautiful, how she hadn’t given up on him yet? Beautiful and stupid. What a waste of energy.
Akiko was a fool still looking after a carcass of a body, a shadow of a man. 
Why would she waste her mercy on a beast? 
As he pondered over that and failed to find an answer, the girl guided him down on the floor, her grip soft as she led his head to lay against her chest.

“It’s ok,” she said. “We can stay here a few minutes if you can’t stand. You need to rest.”

“I’ve been busy,” he said, voice dozing off.

“I know. You’re a hard worker, Osamu, but this is past your limit.”

‘Dazai-kun, you are a prodigy.
With the right training, you’ll become huge. But to do that, you need to forget your—'

“—I lost touch with my limits long ago,” he said. 

They both knew it, though. They just had dissonant opinions on the simple truth of that statement. 

Through his blurry vision, the world spinning faster with every expansion of his chest, Akiko looked like an angel. A beauty painted on the colorful glass of a church's rose window. 

The bathroom was too bright, his mind too yellow and blue and neon green and Dazai’s head was too loud and he needed some beer to wake himself up. He wasn't going to pass out in a bathroom. 

“Give up the bastards at Mori Corp and sign with Fukuzawa,” she asked, the ghost of a plea in her voice. “Odasaku would follow you, you know that. Kunikida and Atsushi too.” 

“I can’t.”

“But why?”

“I can’t,” he said again.

He felt helpless without Mori Corp backing him up, overlooking his shortcomings and stitching him back up when he was tearing at the seams. Mori taught him he was worth a damn when he was a child. Mori worked on him. Mori was the only reason he wasn’t dead yet.

Who told him that he couldn’t thrive anywhere else? Was it Mori? Was it a journalist? He forgot. It didn’t even matter. 

That was why, when the A.D.A had moved to another record label with Fukuzawa, he’d stayed behind. 

He half-expected Akiko to insist, but she didn’t. She held him closer and sank her nose in his hair and sighed. The girl smelled like flowers, like sunlight — a comforting scent that filled his lungs, relieving some of his pain. 

"At least promise me you’ll slow down. And you have to stop with this stuff. It's gonna kill you."

Dazai closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. 

"Good," he said, "I hope it’s fast."

 

—

 

“You should go home, Dazai. It’s almost nine.”

“Leave me be, Chibi~” Dazai whined, hugging a pillow and pressing it to his chest, ignoring how Chuuya was glaring at him — hands on his hips and a bun somehow restraining the mess of his shampoo-day-was-yesterday-but-I-forgot hair. Now, the man looked completely unfazed about the online allegations that he’d vomited on himself at the A.D.A party the week before, but Chuuya wasn’t even surprised. “I don’t want to go home.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“I swear I don’t snore. Unlike a slobbering dog, here, who drooled all over me when we were watching Squid Game~”

“Oi, I don’t drool!” He snapped, waving his fist. “And I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Yes, sure. Chuuya wasn’t sleeping like a log.”

“Damn right I wasn’t. I was just resting my eyes.”

“Come on, Chuuya,” Dazai drawled, purring against the pillow like a big, lazy house cat. “Let me sleep here. We can make it a sleepover.”

"You should be invited to sleepovers, not decide to throw one in somebody else's house."

"But, Chibi! I'm your boyfriend." Ah, and he was starting to regret it. "What's yours is mine."

Immediately, Chuuya's eyebrows arched up. "And what about what's yours, Mr. Communism?"

"Still to be decided," he volleyed back, with a broad grin and a ferocious gleam in his eyes.

Albeit cutthroat, Dazai's jokes kindled a spark in him as if he came alive with an unsettling sense of humor that established even more grades of separation between himself and society.

He found pleasure in being considered weird, and his jokes never landed: they punched. 

Lacking a better answer and deciding that go fuck yourself was a tiny bit too aggressive even for him, Chuuya snorted. In the early days of their relationship, he had started to realize that most things turned into a party, for Dazai — a sleepover, a drinking game. A funeral. 

Obnoxious as he was, he never took anything seriously — Chuuya’s privacy included. Thinking about it, Chuuya’s privacy was probably his favorite thing to disrupt, shattering the man’s peace like a cupboard of dusty porcelain. 
Chuuya poked him lightly in between the shoulder blades, with no true bite in his actions. 
Dazai still winced with unnecessary pathos.

“Damn it. You’re so lazy.”

Dazai yawned, as if his attitude can make his dramatics more bearable. “I’m sleepy.”

“Then go home. You can still make it before ten.”

“No,” Dazai answered, his voice muffled into the pillow, yet solid. A no that truly meant no. When he side-eyed Chuuya, there was something pointed in his gaze— something cold. “Do you have booze? A beer or two? Saké?”

He did. He had plenty of booze and several bottles of wine. That didn’t mean he was going to give them to Dazai in place of chamomile tea.

“I have herbal tea,” he volleyed back. What caused Chuuya to refuse to give Dazai any alcohol, really, was the demand hidden under the musicality of the man’s timbre. He didn’t want a beer; he needed one.
And the difference, albeit subtle, freaked Chuuya out.

Almost on cue, Dazai scrunched his nose. “I didn’t know herbal tea was classified as booze.”

“It’s not.”

“Then I’m not interested,” Dazai puckered, “whisky?”

“I’m not giving you alcohol to fall asleep, Dazai, that’s not healthy. If you’re as tired as you say and you wanna sleep now and shut the fuck up, that’s fine. I’ll even sing you a shitty lullaby. Otherwise, do me a favor and go home.” 

“Oh? Would Chuuya sing for me?”

“At your own risk, that is.”

“I think I’ll take my chances,” Dazai teased, a grin curling up his lips as he turned to glance at Chuuya. Of course, he would tease. 

“And I'm a terrible singer.”

“Thank god you’re not competition, then, or I should have killed you,” Dazai cooed, light-hearted. “But that’s fine.” A yawn. “Thankfully for Chibi, I have nothing to record him. So, by all means, sing your heart out. I'll listen.”

 

As it turned out, as the clock ticked on and nine in the evening crawled into midnight, Dazai didn’t go home.
After all, Chuuya supposed, he could lend his couch to the stray cat he had taken in as his — customary quote unquote — boyfriend. Fake boyfriend.

In more ways than one, putting up with Dazai almost felt like adopting a stray puppy. A lanky, needy puppy that batted his eyelashes and kicked his little feet whenever he didn’t immediately get what he wanted: a bandaged, occasionally cute puppy. 

A puppy that, when Chuuya emerged from the bathroom with a spare towel and a new toothbrush, was already sound asleep on his couch, all curled up and snoring softly. How peaceful he looked. How tired. He was hugging the couch’s bright green pillow to his chest, his lanky legs bent in an attempt to keep himself warm. 
Damn, Chuuya thought.
Dazai Osamu was a brat.
A stubborn, complicated, lovable brat. 

Dazai was loud, obnoxious and spoiled — and he was pretty when he slept with his tousled hair tickling his eyelashes and lips parted just so. The moment Chuuya fetched a blanket and tucked him under it, Dazai snuggled into the warmth with a subtle hmpf-like sound. He hummed, burying his nose into the fluffy fabric. 

Finding himself smiling, Chuuya gave up on the (obviously useless, since the idiot was octopus-hugging the blanket) attempt to wake the other man up and force him to slip into proper nightwear.

When he scoffed, it was tainted with a fondness he could not quite place. 

 

—

The morning after, when Chuuya strolled into the kitchen stifling a yawn, Dazai was sitting at the table with a mug of tea in his hands. The brunet welcomed him with a weak grin and a ‘yo,’ that Chuuya couldn’t return. 

He still sported messy hair and was wrapped in his work clothes from the day before, but his eyes were circled with purple. He looked like hadn’t slept a single minute in the entire night. 

For a moment, Chuuya felt terrible about letting him sleep on the couch.
Maybe it was uncomfortable. Maybe he was being a prude and should have allowed Dazai in his bed. Just to sleep, that was.

“Rough night?” He asked, instead.

Dazai waved the question away. “Kind of. I've slept enough to make the morning exhilarating, I suppose.”

"What the hell does that even mean?"

"I forgot my pills," he clarified, voice colorless. Looking at the man - the detached line of his lips, the subtle tension of his fingers around the mug - Chuuya realized that it might have been the most honest Dazai had ever been with him. "Can’t really go more than a couple of hours of sleep without them.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I would have woken you up—“

“It’s ok,” Dazai interrupted him. His lips twitched as he seemed to force himself to smile; a somber, distant ghost of a smirk. “Believe it or not, this was still one of the most comfortable nights I had in a while.”

“You know, you can say it if the couch broke your back or something.”

“It didn’t.” 

“So I didn’t make you sleep terribly? Because you can say it. Really.”

Letting out a soft chuckle, Dazai shook his head. It took all of Chuuya's self-control not to tug the wild strands away from the man’s face. “I swear. And it’s ok, Chuuya’s embarrassing poetry collection kept me company.”

“You’re impossible,” Chuuya managed to grind out, swallowing dry. Maybe it was a lie, but it was always hard to tell with Dazai. He took a good look at the man again, trying to assess exactly how much he needed his meds. He still blamed the couch, at least in part. He blamed himself for a second and then shrugged it off, because it was easier than dissecting the worry slowly seeping into him. “So, I need to be out in an hour, but I’m gonna make breakfast. Is coffee alright?”

“Aw, Chuuya’s such a good wifey~”

“Oi, asshole, stick to boyfriend. I’m not your wife.”

“Ano ne, wifey, take the day off! We can have lunch somewhere nice.”

“I can’t take days off like that, idiot!” He barked, padding to the coffee machine. Still, part of him was already thinking about phoning Tachihara and asking for a day off. Just to indulge Dazai’s idiocy, and to make it up to him for the uncomfortable night.

Despite the banter, Chuuya didn’t miss the split second of vulnerability passing across Dazai’s face that morning. A glitch in the man’s mask that didn’t go unnoticed and that, yet, happened too quickly to be fully understood.
In hindsight, he would remember it like a dream, a mirage.
A feeling. 

That morning, for the first time, with Dazai sipping coffee barefoot in his kitchen, Chuuya feared for a semi-stranger’s life. It was a thought in passing, yet it had an ominous ring. 

‘This man is gonna kill himself.’

Notes:

Thank you so much for the support on the first chapter! I hope you enjoyed this one too, let me know ❤️
As always, a huge thank you to @mosaichiko for the wonderful arts and @Alkaline (Ao3 here) for the support and the beta-reading ❤️
Also, all the hurt/comfort bits between Dazai and Akiko are specifically a present for Chloe, because she made me see the light.

Let me know what you think and I'm ALWAYS very happy to chat, so come say hi on Twitter or on CC.

Chapter 3: Poison Ivy

Summary:

Where Dazai allows himself to learn about his love for being spoon-fed cake, quaint love songs and chibi redheads. Not necessarily in this order.

Notes:

TWs for:
Drug abuse
Depression
Mention of anxiety-related eating disorders

As always, a huge thank you to Skk Big Bang, @mosaichiko for the wonderful arts and @Alkaline (Ao3 here) for the support and the beta-reading ❤️

“Were you aware of Dazai-san's medical issues, at the time?”

Chuuya’s mouth twitched.
“Are you asking me if I knew my husband was struggling with addiction? No. I obviously didn’t know. But it’s the music industry, y’know. That’s how it is.”

The hostess’ red lips puckered, her teeth sinking into her inner cheek as she mentally cursed and thought about how she could save the interview. Music equals drugs wasn’t a message that would please the sponsors. “Nakahara-san, I apologize, but we would rather not normalize that kind of behavior on national television—”

“I’m just saying it as it was,” Chuuya interrupted her, lifting a hand. “And the truth is this: everyone was doing something, back then.”

“Weren’t you worried?” 

“No. Not then, at least. I didn’t know about Mori Ōgai. Later, of course, that changed, but— I mean, I saw this guy gobbling up more pills than food and I thought, ‘what the fuck?’ Everybody would be scared, and I was. I was terrified. It scared the living shit out of me to see him like that, but Dazai said that you either snort something or you’re dead meat. And when you’re Dazai Osamu, people are gonna tell you that you’ve flown too high to fall gracefully, so you better stay up while you can. The fall is gonna hurt like a bitch. It’s gonna destroy you. So you do everything you can to stay up.” His blue eyes narrowed. “But Dazai has always been better than that. He just didn’t know it yet.”

Yokohama, 2018

“I can’t give you anything.” 

Mori looked at him from behind his desk, hands interlaced in front of his face.
Dazai could feel it, when Mori was looking down on him — he could sense the distaste in his eyes creeping up his body, and he could discern bored pity in the light tension of his jaw.
His emotions showed at the corners of his eyes.

“I think you can. I am still your top-selling artist.”

"That can always change."

"Of course," he drawled, venomous. 

“You’re getting older, Dazai-kun. Your fame, your stamina, your grip— nothing is what it used to be.” 

It was true.

“I can still hold a stage,” he countered, hands balled into fists. He needed pills to stay awake and work, and then some to cool himself down when the beer and saké weren’t enough anymore.

“Akutagawa-kun is coming in strong.”

Ah. Akutagawa-kun wishes he had what it takes, Dazai thought, with a ferocity born from despair.

He didn’t hate Akutagawa Ryuunosuke per se, but he did hate competition and the looming threat of the new pushing the old out of the picture.
Akutagawa was a rookie, but he was fresh — and something told Dazai he didn’t need to beg Mori for drugs to keep going.

That was inconvenient.

“We both know who sells more albums, here, between me and Akutagawa,” Dazai hummed. He slid his hands into the pockets of his black trench coat, mulling over how safe it was to mention that Mori always preferred the young and the new. Still, he decided that a gratuitous dig wasn't worth angering Mori. “We both know who’s the one Mori-san can’t afford to lose, and who’s going to be forgotten in a handful of months.” Then, he dropped his head in a bow. Soft strands of hair fell over his forehead, tickling his eyelashes. “Please, Mori-san.”

Odasaku would have hated him if he knew he was still taking drugs from Mori.
After years and years of fights, Dazai had only gotten better at hiding his little tricks from Odasaku; his hard-earned survival wasn’t worth Odasaku’s worry. Kunikida would have lynched him and stuck a microphone up his ass if he knew, and for good reason.
Akiko had begged him to stop.
But, despite all that, despite the perspective of his only friends hating him for it, still Dazai found himself begging. 

Mori had given him his first imported stimulants when he was underage, and Dazai had welcomed that little help — a real-life hack, just like a video game — like a blessing. They hyped him up. Then, joints and antidepressants and saké calmed him down.
They made him sleepy. 
They soothed the excessive hunger that crept up his body and folded his stomach in between rehearsals and occasionally made him sleep, and he needed to sleep just enough to show up refreshed at recording sessions and dance classes.
Equally, he had to tire himself out to sleep. It was a cycle — live, suffer, train, rinse and repeat. He had crescendoed himself in a loop, a rollercoaster. Pills were the centrifugal force that kept him centered and pulled together.

The mechanism was hatched so deeply in him, Dazai had forgotten when it started.
He’d forgotten when being unwell became part of his routine, when pain and fatigue had started to weigh him down every morning.

Mori hummed sotto voce, studying the display with a quirked eyebrow and a sort of fatherly calm. “It’s not every day I hear you say please, Osamu.”

He rarely, if ever, used Dazai’s name.
It sent shivers down his tailbone, not that different from the icy quivers that had been shaking his body and pulling at his muscles ever since that morning. He'd tried to wash away the cramps with tea and water, trying to distract his aching body, but nothing could water down the coldness taking over him.
It surged and surged.

“I need a refill.”

“And so what?”

“You have to help me,” he said. 

“I wonder if I have to, after all. And you didn’t come here to beg,” Mori said. 

It wasn’t a question. 
Dazai never had the chance to ask or answer questions, with Mori, only to exceed expectations and perform tasks that were expected of him.
The man was a shark, but he had this sixth sense for deals and hits. Mori was the real deal, in production.
And, for some reason, he had done good by Dazai. 

But he had never been a person to cross or question, and Dazai’s addiction was beginning to disappoint him.

“That’s unfair, Mori-san. I will beg if I have to,” he said, voice stiff. He had not lifted his head yet, hoping that his contrite act might win him a bottle of two. He couldn’t function without it, dry as a desert and just as goddamn dead.

“Would you really?”

“Yes.”

“And what else would you do, I wonder.”

Dazai gnawed at his bottom lip, and he bowed deeper and closed his eyes real tight. Anything, he thought. Everything. 
He stayed silent and hoped it would end soon.
What was the price for what Mori was asking of him? It was only dignity, after all. He could do without it. Worst things had happened than a man stripped of his dignity.

It was real desperation.
He didn’t want to come down crashing.
Because Dazai filled his mouth with dying wishes but, when all was said and done, he didn’t want to die just yet.

Mori tutted. “Tell me something else, first. How’s Akiko?” 

“She’s alright,” Dazai said, when truly he wanted to say that's none of your business. 

"Would she be open to signing back with us, you reckon?"

"Doubt," he said, through gritted teeth. He refused to elaborate.

“I see. We'll see how long that lasts.” Mori stretched an arm, voice quiet as he hummed to himself, and opened a drawer in his desk. “Now, I need you to take this situation seriously, Dazai-kun. I’m not pleased with you. We have six months to record this album before the Chinese leg of the next tour begins, and your reviews are less than immaculate. I’m losing money, and so are you. But you will have to buckle up for a lot of work, and we can’t have our star go to rehab or pass out from exhaustion… can we?” A pause and, whilst still spewing his monologue, Mori sat a little bottle on the desk. Dazai’s body reacted to the pills rattling in the brown plastic like a starved dog forced to sit in front of a steak. His mouth watered. His face smiled. And none of those movements had been of his own volition. “You see, Dazai-kun, I take no pleasure in handing you the means of your self-destruction. But if this solves our mutual problem, then so be it.” His cold eyes landed on Dazai, scanning his face. “Try not to be a headache for your team until then.”

Dazai’s entire body grew tense. 

He had a feeling of being trapped inside a rollercoaster— high, and then low. Hopeful, and crushed. 

This is the last bottle I can give you, Mori was going to say, in a pale attempt to discourage him. Which was bullshit, because there was always another bottle, and another, and another.
All Dazai had to do was keep making them money, and Mori would keep providing him with what he needed.

It was never the last stack of pills, Mori just made him beg a little harder for it. 

“Thank you, Mori-san.”

“This is the last one,” he said. On cue. “Next time you feel like getting high, call that boyfriend of yours and fuck it out of your system.”

—

“I don’t get why people make a lot of noise about inconsequential things, you know? Like death. 

Why does it have to be loud? Not everybody wants to go out with a splash. 

Cut me some slack, here — suicide is a good hobby because it doesn’t take much effort. Some of us want to tiptoe to the ultimate exit with an honest heart and an easy conscience. [He laughs, ndr]
When I die, I hope people will do me the courtesy of remembering me for who I was.

I don’t want to turn into a martyr. The idea makes me sick.”

Dazai Osamu, Skream! Interview
Last visited: 25 August 2018

—

Chuuya didn’t remember how he found himself in an underground bar at Dazai’s arm.

He was drunk already by that point, having bottomed an entire Pinot Noir bottle all by himself during dinner. Dazai had paid for that, as per their agreement. It made the wine taste even better.

After dinner, they crawled into a bar. It had begun to drizzle — a gentle summer rain tapping over the streets — when Chuuya pointed at the red neon of the piano bar and said, “oi, here looks cool. Let’s go in here.”
Dazai followed him without a protest, refusing to voice out an opinion.
He never cared where they went, Dazai, as long as it offered booze and privacy. For somebody so loud, Dazai never really expressed a real opinion on anything. 

“Is that true?" Chuuya asked. He and Dazai were sitting at the counter, thighs brushing every time they moved even a little. "Are you always drunk when you write your songs?”

“Huh? Where did you hear that?”

Chuuya shrugged the question away, scowling down at his glass of wine. “Reddit or shit,” he said. “Yeah. I think it was Reddit.”

“Well, you're welcome to tell them that no, I’m not always drunk,” Dazai dismissed him. “In fact, I'm rarely really drunk at all. I don’t need that to write, although it helps. Life is unbearable and boring otherwise. People, too. They are boring, with their everyday revolutions and disgusting will to live and do better. Truth is, optimism is bearable only if intoxicated. If I'm not, if I'm lucid, I see it for what it really is; delusion. Sadness and delusion.”

He was only slurring his words a little, which Chuuya found majorly unfair since the asshole was running on caffeine, sleeping pills and alcohol and still seemed decently capable of carrying himself like a proper human being.
Chuuya, though? The wine had loosened his tongue, and he kept swinging closer to Dazai and bumping against the man’s side without meaning to.
Damn it, he thought, the idiot is gonna think I’m flirting with him.
He wasn’t flirting with the guy, no sir. He was drunk.
Drunk and unbalanced and, for some reason, gravity was pushing him against Dazai’s shoulder.

It looked comfy.

Chuuya scowled, willing himself to ignore the sudden temptation of falling asleep on Dazai’s shoulder.

“What about the pills?”

“Huh?”

“People aren't jackshit to you, gotcha. And you know what? That's fair enough. But you said you can’t sleep without pills, so do you really need to get high?”

For a moment, Dazai looked at the baristas as if he could escape the conversation. “That’s different,” he said, dragging the pause between his words. He was crafting them, Chuuya realized, tailoring his vocabulary for his sake and sensibility. He was waving a lie right in front of his eyes, and Chuuya had no way of calling it out. “That’s another thing entirely, Chibi, and that’s medical. Alcohol occasionally helps the creative flow. That’s all.” 

Puckering, Chuuya refused to ask how alcohol would help Dazai, or anyone, feel more creative.

That’s all.

How uncomplicated did addiction sound, when Dazai talked about it.
Every time the subject came up he put on this wall, this impenetrable barrier, and thorns bloomed from his barbed silences and Chuuya suddenly found himself shut out.
Dazai’s lack of transparency — the fact that he didn’t owe Chuuya shit, and certainly not transparency — reminded him every time that they weren’t dating. They weren’t in love.
They weren’t even friends.

A superstar was looking for an easy escapade, for a romance that came with an NDA, and Chuuya had agreed to it. And that was truly all.

He was mulling over that answer when the piano man started playing Minna Yume no Kana.
Fuck’s sake, Chuuya thought, shoot me now. His fingers skimmed over his wine glass, petting the drink while willing himself not to get blackout drunk to escape the music selection.
He was the Scorpions kind of guy, an I-left-my-heart-with-Sid-Vicious kind of person who cared little about old love ballads. But surprisingly Dazai hummed along with the song and Chuuya found himself thinking that the melody was, in its own way, beautiful. 
Or maybe Dazai was beautiful, and he was just too much of a coward to admit it out loud.

It was an old song, yet Dazai knew it by heart. There was something, in the familiarity of Japan’s most acclaimed popstar humming ‘60s blues ballads under his breath, that stole a smile out of Chuuya.

“I didn’t peg you for a traditionalist,” he said, lips curling as his eyes met Dazai. When he adjusted on his seat and their knees touched, it was entirely unintentional and yet utterly intimate. 

Dazai grinned back, his eyes shining with mirth.

“Odasaku made me listen to Showa-era music,” he explained, circling the whisky in his glass. “He said ‘this is good, you should listen to it,’ and I did.”

The ice in his drink clicked with the lazy movements of Dazai’s wrist — he had lean, elegant wrists. Wrists made to be tied and held in bed, their graceful shape concealed by bandages. Chuuya couldn’t peel his gaze off them as he licked his lips.

“So you do everything this Odasaku guy tells you?”

“He’s my friend,” Dazai said as if that explained that he’d follow the man to the world’s ends. “So, anyway, he used to put on old songs for me. Odasaku has a collection of records, and he used to listen to the same old records all the time. He likes old-school music. So he had hundreds of old records and I found that stupid, and yet I loved them all.” He smiled a soft smile, the kind that formed little dimples at the corners of his mouth. “I was sixteen.”

“This is not the shit a sixteen-year-old listens to.”

“No,” Dazai agreed. “It’s not. But I loved it.”

Chuuya could almost see it with cruel vividity: a lanky, bandaged boy with shaggy dark hair, sitting cross-legged in a small tatami room, surrounded by old Showa-era records. He could see him rock back and forth with the music – windows open, eyes closed. In silence, the redhead wondered what appealed to a younger Dazai.
He asked himself if Dazai was attracted by the gentleness of the melody or by the promise that, one day, he would bag a hit single, too. One day, his music would be right there with Minna Yume no Kana and people would say, ‘I know this song. It’s a classic. I love it’.

Before he could realize the uniqueness of the situation, the sheer beauty of Dazai singing because he wanted to as opposed to Ouji turning music into a commercial act, Dazai was hmming with the piano.
He sang faintly, bobbing his head with the song.
A few customers had started yelling song suggestions and some others were singing, too, but Dazai’s timbre had a clarity that every other voice lacked – one could tell that he was singing properly, with an ease that most people never achieve. He was a natural.
It was easy to single out, Dazai’s voice.

Chuuya found himself grinning, resting his cheek on his fist while he listened. 

He didn’t remember when Dazai tugged him to his feet to slow-dance. He blamed it on the wine, on the adrenaline.
Dazai became bold whenever he was in a situation where nobody would recognize him, and Chuuya would go with the flow just to see him smile like a child— all that innocence, all that wonder kindling a youthful light between his eyes. 

That childish surprise was a sight worth billions.

So, no, Chuuya didn’t care to remember how they ended up laughing and stammering about, with his hand on Dazai’s hip and the other’s warm breath fanning over his face.
All he knew was that they were rocking in place, dancing in an old-fashioned, half-empty piano bar like they were the only pair left on the face of the earth, holding each other, smiling lovestruck beams that people dating for convenience shouldn’t have known. 

Dazai was whispering into his ear shell the foreign words of a love song Chuuya didn’t know.
All he could understand was something mushy and depressing about a lost lover, but he cared little about semantics when Dazai was murmuring them into his hair, nose sunk in russet strands that smelled like nicotine and damp summer air.

When Dazai pulled away just enough to look at him in the face, every atom in Chuuya's body wanted to protest and keep dancing. He scrambled for words that escaped him, difficult words like let's stay like this, and one more song and this feels way too real, but, in the end, he settled for a shivering breath and said nothing at all. He looked at Dazai’s face — his pointed nose, his eyes, his lips — and wished he could summon enough courage to kiss him. Not for the cameras, but for himself. 

With parted lips and distant eyes, Dazai looked at him too.
He seemed raptured, focused on something invisible, and Chuuya swallowed hard under the intensity of his gaze.

“So…We’re dancing, huh,” he whispered, looking a little lower than Dazai’s eyes. 

“How foolish,” Dazai said. 

“Yeah. That’s pretty silly.”

“But it was fun,” he whispered. “Thank you for being silly with me, Chuuya.”

Gentle knuckles brushed against Chuuya’s cheek for a moment longer than they should have, sending a shiver down his spine. He held onto Dazai for what felt like a lifetime, breath faltering, praying for a moment more as if there could be a life before and after that song. A single song had toppled his world.

And what could Chuuya say, really? How could he ask ‘stay’ and then brace for a refusal?
How could he explain?

Then, Dazai let him go and he walked up to the piano man.

“Excuse me,” he asked. “Do you know Goodbye?”

“No,” the man said, scratching his head. He had raven, glossy hair that didn’t seem real, but who was Chuuya to judge? His fucking relationship wasn’t real and everything reminded him of that, and the mess he’d gotten himself into. “It’s that pop song, right? I’m sorry, son, I wouldn’t know where to start with it.”

“That makes two of us,” Chuuya muttered, side-eyeing Dazai.

He had never listened to Ouji’s albums, much to Aya’s scorn and disapproval, and it didn’t surprise him that an old-school piano bar didn’t keep track of the newest trends. It wasn’t that kind of place.

“I can look it up,” the pianist added, more to be polite than anything.

“It’s all good.” Dazai eyed the piano, striding closer to the instrument with graceful politeness and slightly bent shoulders. “Actually, may I?”

Chuuya quirked an eyebrow. 

“Are you gonna play for real?” he asked, hands on his hips.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know the song. Goodbye or whatever it’s called.”

Dazai flashed him a sheepish smile. “It’s ok, I know you don’t. But I’ve been playing around with something new and I wanted Chuuya to hear it, so, since we happen to have a piano handy...” Voice drifting off, Dazai looked at the piano man and plunged a hand into his pockets. A moment later, he was handing him two crisp ¥10,000 banknotes. “Get yourself a drink.”

The pianist gawked at him for a second, but grabbed the money and scooted away from the piano with a curt bow, muttering an ‘of course’ under his breath.
He didn’t seem happy about the tiny revolution happening in his bar, but he was too well-behaved to tell Dazai to fuck off and stop ruining his job. Chuuya wondered if he would have been in trouble for letting a customer play.
He also knew Dazai didn’t care about putting other people on the spot as long as he had his way.

So Chuuya let him. 

After all, he told himself, helping Dazai get back into songwriting with the right foot was his job. It was the only reason why he was involved at all. He was a tool just as the piano or somebody's vocal cords, with the difference that he could quit; but he was, above all, a mean to an end. 
He looked at Dazai as he sat at the piano – a pill popper, a bastard, a spoiled brat – and suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

The first note stole an inhale out of him, high and trembling.
With the second note, his stomach dropped and he exhaled. He was breathing around the music.

Dazai looked calm, with eyes closed and hands grazing the piano keys, taking deep breaths as if to merge his soul with the instrument. 

He played well, his long fingers waltzing over the white keys and then jumping to the black ones, wrists bending ever so gracefully. Before the first chorus, even the two baristas behind the counters had stopped to listen. 
A few people had their phones out.

And, in the perfect immobility created by Dazai, Chuuya couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t take his eyes off him.

The melody was lush and slow. Dazai’s body curled around the music with every note, his voice vibrating in the air as he tilted his head and leaned forward, shoulders high and eyes closed.
The song, dragged and boned-out mellow as if he was singing to a lover still tangled in his sheets, sent shivers down Chuuya's spine. Dazai’s voice in recordings was nothing special, Chuuya thought, polished to the point of having no soul, but now it sounded alluring.
It made him want to discover how Dazai sounded when no one was listening; how he might have whispered the words of a song in the early hours of the night, voice throaty and husky, or how he sang under the shower after a morning of lazy lovemaking.
This one was nice, but it could still be better. Sexier. Truer.

It was the grittiness, the mistakes, that made a good song.
No one hears a packaged, mass-market-perfect song and thinks, ‘this is what raw love sounds like’.
Even for a draft, the melody was too polished. It was an exercise.

But the words? God, Chuuya thought. He could fall in love with the words.
He wanted to interrupt Dazai, grab the front of his shirt and crush their lips in a kiss — rake his hands through brunet hair and bite him and rub his fingers down his skin.
Those words were the real deal. 

They hit just right.

“And I will lose myself / Drowning in that perfect blue.”

—

“[…] To this day, I don’t know what ‘Perfect Blue’ was about. 

If he was thinking about me, or about killing himself.”

[Transcript of Nakahara Chuuya for NHK News Good Morning Japan, 2019]

—

“Should we go see a movie today?”

Chuuya glanced up from his phone, lazily tuning in with the question. A movie. He and Dazai. His first thought was to marvel, not for the first time, at the fact that he was dating an idol.
He was dating a pop superstar, Japan's sweetheart.

His second thought, however, was how inconvenient that was.

“Can you even go to see a movie, Bandages? I thought paparazzi would swarm you if you show up in public places,” he said, returning to his scrolling. Flicking through Instagram still felt more useful than conversing with Dazai.

“I can wear glasses, and a baseball hat?”

“Ha? What are you, shitty Sailor Moon?” Chuuya growled, scrunching his nose. “People will recognize you, you imbecile.”

Instantly, Dazai’s eyebrows shot up. “How?”

“The bandages?”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed. And the fact that you are a tall, loud, 100% recognizable annoying beanpole.”

After pondering over it for a moment, Dazai scowled.

“I hate it when Chuuya is right,” he mumbled, then, curling tighter into his corner of the couch. He hugged his knees, resting his chin on his folded legs. He looked so bony in his oversized shirt, the brown of the lightweight linen complimenting his eyes.
Not for the first time, Chuuya wondered if Dazai had ever eaten properly in his life. Yet, he could not peel his gaze away from the man, reminding himself that this — whatever this meant — was nothing.
That domesticity and pale, simmering affection meant nothing. The thing about fake dating was that it was — drum roll for dramatic effect — not real. Their relationship? Fake. Their dates? You guessed it, fake.

So Chuuya shrugged off the feeling and begged his brain to get a grip.

“Get used to it, because I’m always right.”

“Ugh. Debatable.”

“Who was the idiot who wanted to waltz into a cinema with sunglasses, here?”

“Who’s short, here?”

“And you’re petty.” It shouldn’t have sounded so affectionate. He was in no way fond of Dazai. Chuuya clicked his tongue, tossing his phone aside. “Anyway, I couldn’t go anywhere today even if I wanted to. I’m busy.”

“Busy?” Dazai echoed, blinking as if the concept of people having anything to do outside of work puzzled him.

“Yeah. Aya has a recital at school. She dances Wazowski or some shit.” 

“Tchaikovsky,” Dazai said. “Mike Wazowski is the green monster from Pixar.”

Carelessly, Chuuya waved the comment away. “Same difference,” he said. Then he stopped, eyebrows arching. “You’ve met Aya, by the way. My little sister.”

“I did.”

“Yeah, her. So I guess you’ll have to go to the movie theatre on your own, or with one of your girlfriends—”

“I’m coming with you.” 

Chuuya’s jaw dropped.
No fucking way, his brain immediately screamed. No.
There was no realistic way he could sneak Dazai inside a school full of teenagers who, no doubt, would go feral upon seeing him. They’d recognize the idiot in a second.  
But Dazai blinked with expectation glittering in his eyes, and for some reason — some ridiculous, unfair reason — Chuuya found it impossible to actually forbid him from anything. Dazai propped himself up, sitting straight.

“I’ll go change,” he declared.

“You are not going anywhere.”

“Can you stop me?” Dazai volleyed back, with a delighted skip in his voice. 

Irritation bubbled in Chuuya, reminding him of how stubborn and spoiled Dazai could be. A rotten prince in the worst sense of the word, on and off stage.

So, declaring defeat, he groaned. A man had to pick his battles.

Besides, having Dazai at her recital would have made Aya beyond ecstatic. Selfishly, all Chuuya wanted was to see his little sister smile, and maybe cry a little after she’d been surprised by her favorite singer. He wanted to see her happy. No matter the cost, and no matter if it meant to be with Dazai.
The man seemed hard-wired to grieve deeply, experience fame and let himself die young. Every day, he seemed to be living on borrowed time.
But seeing him would make Aya happy, wouldn’t it?

“Fine.” Chuuya sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “Cover up those bandages, and I might have a wig left from last Halloween.”

With a malicious glint in his eye, Dazai smirked.

“Amateur,” he drawled. “I have Steinbeck and the rest of the hair & makeup on speed dial.”

Oh. Chuuya’s lips parted. Oh, he thought again, dumbstruck. For a moment, he felt like an idiot.
Of course, someone like Dazai would have the entire Hair and Makeup Department on call for secret outings, he thought.
What a privileged asshole.

“We’ve got two hours,” he said. “You’re late, I leave you behind.”

 

“O’nii-chan! You look so cool!”

Chuuya scowled, rocking on his heels to avoid a couple of heads that had turned after Aya’s screech.
So, yes, Higuchi, Steinbeck, and the rest of Dazai's team had decided that Chuuya needed to be styled too. His brand-new Doc Martens bit his feet and heels, while the fitted black t-shirt felt stiff around his body, hugging his shoulders with just the right fit. He didn’t dislike it entirely but it was weird.
He felt weird.

“Isn’t he cute!” Dazai agreed in a chirping voice, sneaking his arm around Chuuya’s elbow. The interruption caused Aya to stop in her tracks, frozen in place as she computed Dazai’s presence. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

“O—” she started, then stuttered.

Her blue eyes grew wide, and Chuuya could see her brain glitching and hiccuping as her lips parted again. This time, she let out a wheeze.

Promptly, Dazai squatted to her level. “Call me Dazai,” he said, raising his index finger to his lips and winking as if to let Aya in on an exciting secret. “We don’t want everybody to know I’m here, do we?”

Slowly, she bobbed her head.

“O— of course.”

“You were great though, Aya-chan.”

At that, predictably, Aya’s cheeks caught fire.
It looked comically bright if compared to her russet hair and pink tulle skirt. Whoever decided to put a redhead girl in a pink skirt probably had a grudge against Aya and wanted to be beaten up, Chuuya pondered.
However, that mattered little when he could sense her body heat, the way her breath faltered into a loud, hissed “oh”.

Far from being embarrassed by the reaction, Dazai smiled — that tender smile Chuuya could never quite decipher. He wondered if it was genuine, or if Dazai was a professional at faking polite warmth.

“I—thank you, Dazai-sama,” she mumbled, knees visibly buckling.

“Dazai is fine, really.” He smiled. “Now, that was a pretty impressive White Swan, young lady. Chuuya didn’t tell me you were Odette. That’s a big accomplishment, especially at your age. I hope you’ll tell me everything about it.”

To himself, Chuuya thought that he didn’t have a clue about Odette, and swans, and people jumping around on a stage. At least, Dazai seemed to know what he was talking about.

But Aya looked on the verge of tears and, for a moment, Chuuya thought that maybe he could keep dating Dazai if that meant adding a positive figure to Aya’s life. If keeping Dazai around would allow Aya to keep talking like this, excitedly explaining how she had mastered her pirouette, Chuuya supposed he could do it.

And, perhaps, he wanted to keep seeing Dazai’s smile. No matter if it was fake. No matter if they were fake.

Suddenly, the smell of new leather made him dizzy. He looked at Dazai and only saw a young man with a black turtleneck and long sleeves, not an inch of skin on display. He really couldn’t believe Dazai was not suffocating, despite the airy fabric of the clothes. He saw dark eyes and darker hair — longer than they would usually be and kept in a ridiculously short ponytail, arranged with dye and extensions courtesy of Higuchi’s masterful work.
As Dazai chatted with Aya, commenting on this pirouette or that temps levé, Chuuya wondered if the man suspected how handsome he looked, and that he could find love anywhere he wanted.

Inspiration, though? That was harder to find. Inspiration was a cruel bitch and Chuuya felt for Dazai, who lived at her mercy.

“Should we make a pit stop at the cafeteria and get something to eat?” Dazai asked, glancing up at him. The question made Chuuya flinch.

“Huh? Why are you asking me?” 

Dazai looked at him arching one eyebrow. “Because you’re the responsible adult.”

Ah, right.

“Well, yeah, I guess…?”

“I could have some cake,” Aya murmured, fidgeting with the fluttery edge of her tulle skirt. The admission caused Dazai to beam.

“Cake it is, then. My treat.”

“Oi, no way. I’m paying.”

“Chuuya said I would pay for outings, yet never allows me to treat him,” Dazai protested, his bottom lip jutting out as he poted.

Heat crept up Chuuya’s neck. He did say that Dazai would pay for both of them whenever they were out, as it seemed the most professional way to go about their arrangement, but he had not really been able to let Dazai pay for him except for a few sporadic dinners. In fact, he was the one feeding Dazai daily. At home, sure, but still.

That made him wonder about the many other things he was willing to backpedal on, too.

“Because I’m independent!” 

Dazai looked at him with beady, innocent eyes. “I thought you said you were poor.”

“Ah!?”

“Oh, please, you two keep flirting like it’s not shameless,” Aya murmured to herself, taking Dazai’s side and never straying too far away from it. Chuuya pretended not to notice that.

When they stepped into the cafeteria, Chuuya realized they weren’t the only family who had decided to stop for something sweet to eat. Aya ran to the changing rooms, reappearing with a tracksuit and her gym bag, with still glitter dusted all over her hair, and Chuuya was still trying to convince Dazai not to pay. They bickered all the way to the cashier, and while ordering.
Predictably, they never reached a conclusion about who was supposed to pay for the cake.
They ended up buying two of everything out of sheer competition. Chuuya thought it was ridiculous, but the extra cake made Aya squeal with joy and he supposed they could always ask for a takeaway bag to take the food home.

“Ne, Chuuya, we can take the cake home and eat it for breakfast, right?” Dazai reflected, tilting his chin toward the food.

It seemed like a sensible comment. Something a couple would do. But Chuuya felt Aya gawking at him, a spoonful of strawberry cake frozen halfway between the plate and her mouth.
Some whipped cream fell to the plate with a wet splotch and, only a second too late, Chuuya realized that—

Oh.

Oh.

Breakfast meant sleeping first, implying other things. 
Things he refused to do with Dazai, and that may or may not have haunted him in his dirtiest dreams. Daydreams and memories that followed him under the shower, at work, and whenever he remembered about Dazai tossing and turning like an overgrown worm on his couch.
Hell knew what a teenage girl could imagine about a grown-up’s — and specifically an idol — private life. Shit.

“Dazai is sleeping on the couch,” he declared, choked up. Too fast.
Too damn fast.

“Chibi’s bed is too short, anyway. We tried, but—”

“We didn’t try anything!” Chuuya cried, pointing an accusatory finger in Dazai’s direction. “Don’t imply shit! Aya’s already thinking God-knows-what.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Aya said, brow furrowing.

Dazai stopped, his smile morphing into a line that wasn’t quite a pout, but not a smile either. The bleak expression turned his eyes a shade darker, beads of burnt gold scanning the girl’s face before turning to Chuuya. “Joke's aside, Chuuya's right,” he started, wetting his lips. “It's not that kind of relationship, and your brother is being kind and letting me sleep on the couch. Thing is, I kinda hate my house.”

Chuuya’s stomach dropped. Sure, he knew Dazai detested Yokohama— he never asked why, though, and Dazai didn’t seem like the person who would ever justify that hatred out loud to strangers. 

“Oh, I'm sorry,” Aya said. “That’s sad.”

With a soft hmpf, Dazai poked at his slice of cake. “It is. But I’d really rather not be in a big, empty house on my own.”

His voice rang with an odd melancholy, somber under the apparent quietness of the words. It was a voice with no edge, with no intonation at all.
Chuuya considered that, perhaps, the deepest and most honest side of Dazai was just that: an empty, hollow shell of a man that needed pills to sleep and alcohol to get through concerts and stay afloat.
He had always expected Ouji to hide his true personality, a private side no one on-stage could witness, but what if his personality was just… void? Void and loneliness? What if Dazai was too busy fighting to stay alive to be anything more than that?

“Is it very big?” Aya asked.

“Too big. And it’s cold all the time.”

“Well, I bet electricity is kinda not a problem for you,” Chuuya hummed, swinging the fork. 

“It was my father’s house. He died there,” Dazai said, returning the comment with a blank face and an even more bleak timbre. His words, though, cut deep. “I’m not gonna die in that house, too.”

Well. Wow. Well, wasn't he a perfectly idiotic asshole?
With an apologetic pout, feeling both terrible and stupid, Chuuya reached for Dazai's hand. A tiny, barely visible brush of fingers. "You know you can stay at mine for as much as you need, right?"

"Yeah," Dazai whispered. "Thank you."

“Hm… Can’t you sell the house if you truly hate it?” Aya asked, cautiously. “And buy something you like?”

“The house is part of my contract, I’m afraid. I don’t decide where I live, Aya-chan; my agency does.”

“Even if you don’t like it?”

“It’s alright,” he said. “I can always run to your brother. Chuuya’s apartment is small and noisy.”

“Ha?!” 

Aya exploded in a hearty laughter.

“Ugh. Where’s Kouyou?” Chuuya growled, downing a sip of coffee and taking some cake to sweeten the taste of betrayal. Even his sister teamed up with Dazai to torment him. Unbelievable. “I’m outnumbered here. Even my own kin betrays me.”

Aya nodded gingerly, a big bite of cake disappearing in her mouth before she added: “I'm sorry, Dazai-san is my favorite brother-in-law now.”

Dazai’s lips curled up in a smile. “Obviously, I will work hard to become Aya-chan’s favorite.” He winked at her, complicit. “Because of that, you can pick the flowers for the wedding.”

“Oi, we’re not marrying?!”

“We're not marrying yet!" Dazai chimed in, chipper. 

"I have to say, what's fake dating without a fake marriage..."

“Aya, shut the fuck up. And you don’t give her ideas, Bandages, or you're gonna be banned from the couch for real!” Chuuya screeched, loud enough for a few mothers to turn in the nearby tables. His cheeks turned red, but Dazai and Aya chuckled almost in synch, curling closer to each other. The genuine happiness that painted Dazai's face whenever he interacted with Aya - whenever he allowed himself a taste of normality - squeezed Chuuya’s heart.

Still, something bothered him. Namely, the lack of food Dazai had been ingesting compared to the alcohol he drank.

The moment Aya excused herself to say hi to another girl in her class, her voice suddenly high-pitched and giggling as she flew in the arms of her friend, Dazai popped a pill. 

Now, Chuuya didn’t consider himself an expert, but the asshole magicking new pills from fuck-knows-where wasn’t the tale-tell sign of a healthy person.

“What’s that?”

“Painkillers,” Dazai answered — too soon, too much like a lie for Chuuya to buy it. 

“Are you feeling unwell? You didn’t touch your cake.”

“It’s ok. I’m just not hungry.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes, ignoring how Dazai had pouted in front of his reaction. “It’s dessert. You should have a separate stomach for it, y’know.” 

“That’s highly untrue and unscientific— what are you doing?” Then Dazai stopped, voice strained. He looked at the cake, then at Chuuya, then at the fork that Chuuya was handing him.
His amber eyes widened and he looked like a feral animal caught in the middle of a highway, utter surprise painted on his face.

“I’m feeding you,” Chuuya explained. “So open your mouth before I stick this thing in your eye.”

“I said I’m not hungry.”

“Then maybe don’t drool while you look at the plate. What’s the deal, Dazai? With the cake and everything weird with you.”

“There’s nothing weird, and there’s nothing to discuss.”

“Then tell me why you are stopping yourself from eating. Because it’s pretty fucking obvious if ya ask me, and if you expect me to commend your self-control you’re wrong. You wanna take a bite, and it’s not like you need a diet, so why on earth should you fight it?”

“I can’t.”

“Why?” Chuuya asked.

He didn’t receive an answer.
Something told him that he could wait forever, and Dazai would still refuse to reply and explain. The man hesitated, his eyes lingering on the cake as if it was poisoned, and pushed himself against the chair’s back.

“Food,” he murmured as if that single word could explain everything. His work, too, and how it had likely shaped a toxic relationship with food. “I don’t do food. Especially not in public.”

"It's ok if you want to take this home. Should we have a takeaway bag prepared? I can ask that, you don't even have to stand up."

"And it's really best if I just don't. I don't need it during a tour, and I don't need the judgment right now."

“That’s bullshit, and you're allowed to eat. You're human, aren't you?”

“Really, Chuuya. Let it go.”

“You’re hungry. You’ve been talking non-stop to avoid eating, and the last time I saw you put something in your stomach was yesterday morning.” Dazai flinched, and Chuuya’s eyes narrowed as he realized Dazai had not expected him to notice. Well, guess what. “A mouthful of cake won’t kill you.”

Dazai swallowed. 

Chuuya saw him glance at the cake again, and his eyes begged to differ — a mouthful might kill him for real.
He wanted it, yet he couldn’t bring himself to eat. 
Ever so slowly, Chuuya turned the fork and ate the bite he had prepared. He tasted the whipped cream, the soft sponge and the strawberry jam.

“How cruel~” he heard Dazai say, mirth laced in his voice. “So Chibi baits me and then eats my f—“

He couldn’t finish the sentence because Chuuya kissed him, the taste of strawberries delicate on his lips.
No matter how saccharine the cake tasted, kissing Dazai always reminded him of summer and whisky — it was intoxicating, filled with spice and never too sweet. 

“Why?” Dazai murmured when Chuuya pulled away. 

Chuuya grinned. “An incentive to eat if you ever crave some cake.”

“Now, that is an incentive I can get behind.” Dazai leaned closer again, his hooded gaze resting on Chuuya’s lips for enough to make him quiver. “Can Chuuya do that again?”

“Will you eat?”

“From your mouth? Yeah. I think I’ll make the effort.”

Despite the suggestion, Chuuya laughed quietly.
Disgusting, he thought, and surprised himself by not meaning it in the slightest. In fact, he was the disgusting one. “You’re way too lazy,” he said and kissed him again. Dazai covered his cheek, parting his lips a moment before Chuuya’s mouth brushed against them.

He could think of a few interesting uses for that cake, actually.
He could feed it to Dazai, the man licking his fingers clean in between kisses.
He could—

“Huh, sorry?”

Aya’s voice made him flinch.

Immediately, Chuuya jolted away from Dazai, pushing as far as he could from the man. He had to stop forgetting about his sister when Dazai was around. He needed to get a grip. He needed to slow himself down. Kissing Dazai as if his life depended on it definitely wasn’t going to sell the fake dating narrative — because he was indeed fake dating Dazai, but his need to kiss him was very much real.

“Sorry, Aya-chan,” Dazai said, unfazed. 

“It’s ok. Really. I haven’t seen anything.”

“I was just telling Dazai that he should eat something.”

“Hm-m.” Aya nodded, taking her seat. She flashed him a merciless grin. “Sure. Eat your face?”

“Aya!”

Fuck, Chuuya thought, vaguely desperate. He hated teenagers.
He especially hated his teenage sister when she was right and he was wrong. She was smart, and he was a clown. 

He just wanted to kiss Dazai again, despite his better judgment and all the alarms in his head. It had been just a peck, the chemistry broken by Aya’s arrival, yet Chuuya’s gaze kept wandering to the other’s lips.
He had a hunch that cake would forever remind him of Dazai’s kisses. 

—

“When Chuuya kissed me in public places and whatnot, back then, it was never an actual kiss.
It had tongue and all, but it was a contractual kiss - he was doing it for me, and I was doing it for my music. I wanted it to be real, but it never was. He did too.
And neither of us had the guts to say, ‘hey, let’s try for real. Let’s kiss because we want to’.
[Laughs, ndr]
We were cowards.”

[Dazai Osamu, Record of the year, GRAMMYs LIVE Red Carpet]

—

“I remember when Dazai was smoking on the terrace of the Three. You know, the club in Tokyo.
Dazai's head makeup artist, Steinbeck, got us in. Dazai called me and said they were going to have a few drinks and asked if I wanted to come with, and I said, 'that's dope, I'm in'.

Even if he still behaved around me, I knew something was wrong. I could tell that was his world, the world he'd grown up into. His normal was touring and snorting shit and working and going for drinks and never really sleeping enough. 
And that was part of his charm, y'know?

It was hard to tell what Dazai was thinking, in those days, but I would still try to guess.
Dazai is the kind of guy that you have to decode and crack open like a riddle. There is something about being around him that is addictive— that enthralling feeling, like being part of a secret, can make a poor bastard feel special. Anyway.
We had just kissed in front of the cameras and I’d had a few beers and I was stupid and high on pride, I guess. 

So I asked him: Is it real? Any of it. 

I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I knew it wasn’t.
But Dazai stared at me — that haunted, beautiful look he does — and breathed out the smoke and I think he laughed.
I think he was stoned, too. 

Chuuya, he said, You are the only real thing I can see for miles and miles.

And, God—

Like I said, the shit he says makes a bastard feel pretty fucking special.”

Nakahara Chuuya, Skream! interview, 2020

Last visited: 3 Jan 2021

—

Dazai had great expectations for Perfect Blue.

After listening to the very first draft of the song, Kunikida hugged him and hollered that they had a massive hit. Another one. Possibly, the greatest one of all. Odasaku smiled, too, encouraging him to keep working on it before they submitted a draft to Mori himself.

That was the same week when he called Chuuya and asked him to show up for the last date of his tour — a closing concert in Tokyo. Aya would have special VIP seats, and Chuuya would stay backstage like a true, supportive boyfriend.

Dazai was positive Chuuya would decline the invite. 

Chuuya was rock’n’roll and indie, he was percussive guitar and raw acoustic songs that sounded like nails on a chalkboard. He was beer cans and filterless cigarettes and long bass solos.
He hated Ouji’s music, from his polished pop voice to his complex dance routines and backup dancers. He never made a mystery of it. 

‘Are those just backup dancers? You look like you’re gonna fuck them,’ Chuuya had asked once, with Dazai’s head on his lap while they were both lounging on the couch. Dazai was studying a replay of one of his past choreographies and, in the video, his hand was firm on a dancer’s throat. Another dancer was draped around his body, hands wrapped around Dazai’s thighs.
Dazai had hummed, then.
‘I did sleep with them,’ he said. ‘Most of them, at least.’

On the road, he had a habit to get wild – he got lonely, a visceral loneliness that destroyed his mood and ruined his focus, and he was sometimes too high to notice. Kunikida almost had an aneurysm when he found out Dazai was sleeping with the backup dancers.
Chuuya just groaned, said ‘called it’ and didn’t comment further.

If anything that made Chuuya hate his music even more, but he showed up at the concert nonetheless.

Dazai supposed it was because Chuuya was also a ridiculous person who went out of his way to please others. He barked a lot but, if Dazai was going to rack up enough courage to ask Chuuya to show up at his concert, then Chuuya would not let him down.
The redhead showed up alright, and settled backstage in a ponytail and a choker and a fedora hat, with a puffy black shirt that hung from his shoulders.
He stood out, unapologetically out of place, as he awkwardly high-fived Dazai and wished him good luck. 

It was an odd display of affection, and maybe it might have passed for cute, but most of all it was discreet.
Once again, Dazai thought that Chuuya truly had his feet well planted on the ground.
Maybe that was what kept him so short.

 

Dazai had worked his way halfway through the concert when Pandora's Box started.

It was an uptempo ballad about a girl finding herself with nothing to lose since she’d failed school and her boyfriend was cheating on her, so she retreated into a world where nothing was real and nothing hurt her anymore. It was comfortingly true, to Dazai — not a song about love, but about hiding and creatively giving up. About finding an exit.
When he lost his compass, he always found himself in those lyrics.

By the first few notes, the entire stadium was hollering and jumping and waving colorful glowing sticks in the air. The microphone vibrated with the people stomping in the parterre, the whole venue resonating with the choruses echoing from the stands, and Dazai’s heart throbbed. 
Those people were singing with him.
They were singing for him.
And in that whirlwind of voices and lights, in that chaos of human beings distantly screaming his name, all he could think of was Chuuya. 

His eyes were flickering over the crowd, yet his mind was stuck on the boy waiting for him backstage.

In some ways and then others — intimate, invisible others — Chuuya had saved his art. 
He had salvaged his career and likely his next album, which was everything that Dazai gave a damn about.

I did it, he thought. I finally did it. We did it.

And maybe it was only the beginning, maybe his music wasn’t quite saved yet, but he’d started to realize that Chuuya was the kind of man people wrote songs about.
He wasn’t just anyone. 
He was art, he was fire and he was raging chaos in the tranquillity of Dazai’s heart. 

He was a war.

End of the fucking story.

By the time of the final drum roll, Dazai was beaming — mouth against the microphone and heart racing in synch with the cheering crowd. And he felt them close, and he felt alive after a long time of fighting for oxygen.
And, in those first few, eager seconds of clarity, he knew exactly what he wanted to do next.

“Sorry,” he said, out of breath, with a big smile on his face. “I’ll be right back.”

Immediately, surprise slithered through the audience.
Despite the aggressive lights, Dazai even noticed a few people in the first rows exchanging perplexed glances as the consciousness that Ouji was about to leave the stage propagated across the stadium like a wave.

What, now? Is it done?

Why is this idiot stopping? He could read on the crumpled-up faces of the sound crew.

“You idiot, go back,” Kunikida hissed in his earpiece. “Do you want Mori to kill me?!”

Dazai didn’t listen.
He dashed to the right and took the iron stairs that led backstage two steps at a time, almost tripping over himself. Despite Kunikida screaming to bring his ass back on the stage, he rushed into the room instead.

He ignored the journalists, the VIP guests and the press, and walked straight to Chuuya.
This, he thought, almost running across the room. This is what I was looking for.

Not minding the crowd buzzing around them or Atsushi running to him with a water bottle, Dazai framed Chuuya’s cheeks, heart almost not beating at all, and kissed him with everything he had.
With everything he was. 
Every inch of his face was smiling when he clashed their lips together.

It was an eager kiss, at first, that mellowed down into a gentle one as Chuuya relaxed against his chest. 

“Dazai, wh—"

You, he thought. You have bewitched me. 

“Thank you,” Dazai interrupted him. 

Chuuya’s eyes widened, pearls of blue into a sea of white. They reflected the lights, and they shone like stars.

“What? I did nothing.”

“You did enough. More than enough. And now I need you to listen closely, ok? I’m about to show you something you’ll never forget.” 

Before Chuuya could explode in insults and shove him back on stage, Dazai kissed him again.
He savored the softness of Chuuya’s parted lips, and how his hands felt big on the man’s freckled cheeks.

Don’t ask me why I did it, he begged to himself, hoping Chuuya could somehow hear him, I have no answer.

All he knew was that he’d never kissed somebody like that before. 

Notes:

I hope you liked the chapter 🥰 I'm ALWAYS very happy to chat, so come say hi on Twitter or ask me anything on CC.

Chapter 4: Dear, Dead

Summary:

You wanna sing, right? Then, for as long as we can—

 

“As long as we are in this dating thing, fake or not, don’t sing for anybody else,” Chuuya said, forcing himself to speak before he could chicken out. “Men, women, your fans… I don’t care. Sing thinking of me. Sing for me.”

Notes:

Major, major thanks to Sarah (@NOBODYs_art on Twitter) and Marí (@borntoshine on ao3 and @anataonametai on TWT) for giving me a wonderful, last-minute beta read of this chapter. You guys saved my life! Go give them some love.

As always, a huge thank you to Skk Big Bang, @mosaichiko for the wonderful arts!

“Can you tell us something about when you started to fall in love with Ouji, Nakahara-san?”

Chuuya grimaced, fidgeting with the silver band around his ring finger. “Ah, about that… I’m not sure. Questions like that come up often during interviews, I guess, and it’s always a bit embarrassing. Because I never fell in love with Ouji, I’m afraid. Hell, I might be the one person left on this planet to not love Ouji.” His expression softened as he said that, and a subtle smile graced his face. “But—”

“But…?” The TV host prompted, leaning forward in her chair. 

Chuuya grinned.

My heart lives in shades of blue, Dazai sang in Perfect Blue. 

Although it was a line people now sang to their loved ones, a song lip-synched in TV shows and TikToks, no one ever quite fully understood it. At that moment, under the cold neons of the TV studio, the entire world could see why Ouji wrote those lines.
They all saw the man Dazai married.

“—But I can tell you everything about how I fell in love with Osamu.”

[Yokohama - 2018]

July ended, and August rolled in without Chuuya noticing. 

The weeks passed quickly, punctuated by Dazai’s calls, dates and dinners as Chuuya juggled his time between work, fake dating and family time with Kouyou and Aya. 

Before he realized it, his routine started including Dazai too. 

Chuuya would get home and find a message signed Mackerel saying Dazai would pop by after the last recording session of the day to watch a movie and have a glass of wine (yes, just that.) 
Oftentimes, Dazai would buy takeaway from Chuuya’s favorite restaurant after the end of a meet & greet. They would drink, banter, and talk about Dazai’s manager or Chuuya’s day at work.

Although the man always asked polite questions about Chuuya’s family, he also refused to answer anything too personal about himself. 

They rarely kissed without a reason, seldom touched if not in front of a camera, and never went beyond that.

Chuuya thought he had no love left to waste on a hopeless story. It was best to keep his distance. Dazai was eccentric, but he was fine. He didn’t need Chuuya.

He should have known better. 

His house of cards of baseless securities, his tranquillity and sense of control over a situation that sometimes felt so much bigger than him, held up until the first week of August. It was colder than usual. A bright full moon illuminated the sky, yellow and round like an eye opened wide in the perfect fabric of the night sky.

Dazai — apparently busy with rehearsals and interviews — wasn’t supposed to call until the day after.
By now, Chuuya had also learned that Dazai never called without a reason. 

Either he was bored, needed advice on something, fancied annoying the shit out of Chuuya, or just wanted to avoid a work engagement. It didn’t take him long to learn Dazai’s quirks and patterns. Therefore, when he saw Dazai’s name appear on the screen — a ‘Mackerel’ with two fishes emoji — Chuuya groaned inwardly. 

It had been a draining day at the office, and he had to deal with a difficult client for a new advertisement campaign, and hearing from Dazai’s spoiled ass would not make his night any better. 

Rolling his eyes to the ceiling, Chuuya told himself he was only answering because he was (kinda) contractually bound to do so.

He really needed to stop using that excuse.

“Oi, Macker—“

“Chuuya?”

Chuuya halted, wetting his lips. Dazai’s empty voice ricocheted in his marrow, bouncing against the walls of his skull like an echo in a church.
His own name didn’t sound right.

That wasn’t how the Dazai he knew — so carefree, so annoying; so unmistakably, unapologetically cheerful — said his name.

Despite the distance and the impossibility to see each other through the call, the desolation of the man’s tone caused Chuuya’s hair to stand up at the base of his neck. 

Trapped in that moment, with Chuuya’s name on his lips and the sound of something like wind howling in the background, Dazai sounded like a dead man walking. 

“Yes,” Chuuya said. “I’m here.”

I’m here, he meant. I’m close.

“You answered.”

Chuuya’s voice softened. “You called, you silly fish: if you call, I’ll always try to answer.” He didn’t mean to sound quite so reassuring. He didn’t mean to close the space between their souls even though he could not do the same with their bodies. Yet, unapologetic comfort seemed to be the only possible answer when Dazai made the effort to reach out. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”

“Hm-m.”

“Dazai,” he insisted, “are you okay?”

No answer. 

The stretched, eerie lack of reply cut Chuuya’s breath short as he adjusted his phone against his ear. That sudden silence was truly an answer in itself.

He could hear Dazai breathe, his deep inhales and the faint echo of his heartbeat. Nothing of what he heard — or, even better, didn’t hear — made Chuuya remotely guess Dazai might be, in fact, okay.

“Oi? For real, are you alright?” He insisted. As he waited, the pause of tense silence opening between them started to freak him out. He had to fill the void. That silence screamed. It was suffocating. “Really, Dazai. If it’s a joke, it’s not fucking funny. Ar—”

“Please, come get me.”

Ah, shit.

Before he could realize it, Chuuya raised his hand. He touched his fingertips to his chest — to his heart. To the little organ that, with his voice alone, Dazai had squeezed in an ice-cold grip.

For the first time, he could tell that the man was upset, other than empty. He was far away and almost out of reach — going and going and going away.

He was disappearing.

And maybe it wasn’t Chuuya’s business, where Dazai decided to stray as he chased the darker abysses of his troubled mind.

Dazai wasn’t a stray puppy.
Dazai needed help, professional help, and could count on the help of an entire team; he was a grown-ass adult who didn’t need to lean on a stranger, and Chuuya probably shouldn’t have indulged the shenanigans of a man he barely knew— but.

But.

Something in Dazai’s voice sounded ruined, the same gritty sound Chuuya heard at the bar the night they met. That voice painted images of ruins of a war no one could see. A beautiful vinyl record scratched on the surface.
His voice sounded like fingers racking through the grovel — not too unpleasant, but just enough to be unsettling. And it was so frail, that voice, so distant. 

Chuuya’s heart hiccuped as he realized he could easily picture Dazai’s eyes in his mind.
Empty, beautiful eyes. 

“Where are you?” 

“Yamashita park,” Dazai said. “West entrance.”

Chuuya let out a low hmm, the cogs of his mind working frantically as he considered the fastest route to reach the park.

In his mind, he prayed Dazai could wait for him despite the temptation of the waterfront opening in front of his greedy eyes.

“Gotcha,” he murmured, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. “Fine, fine, that’s helpful. Are you sitting down? If not, find a bench and wait for me there. Actually, pin me your location. Are you h—”

“I’m not hurt,” Dazai murmured. Not yet, he seemed to say. “But I wish you could see it. It’s so peaceful here, Chibi. It almost makes the world look like a place worth missing.”

Chuuya flinched.

Fuck. Dazai, don’t say that, he thought. Don’t leave like this. 

But he also knew how worthless his words sounded when he could hear the ghost of a death wish in Dazai’s confession. 

“Tell me what you see,” Chuuya murmured. “Tell me what’s beautiful about your surroundings.”

“The ocean.” An ice-cold shiver ran through him as Dazai's voice barely reached him. “It’s so quiet.”

“I bet it is. It’s a beautiful night.”

“A good night to join the waves, I guess.” A pause, swinging between the pensiveness of a question and the power of a tell-all decision. “Do you think it’d be easy, now? Do you think it’d be painless?”

“Dazai, don’t. You said it yourself, it’s a beautiful night: isn’t that a good reason to stick around?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look…”

“…I’m not sure I will ever be this serene again.”

Massaging his temples, Chuuya tried to think — searching for the words that could help Dazai, and that could buy some time. “Dazai, I mean it: don’t move. I want to see you. You called me, so the least you can do now is let me find you. Wait for me.” That, at least, coaxed out of Dazai something that seemed like an obnoxious hum of agreement. Like a ‘yes, I wanted to see you’, and also like an ‘although I don’t quite understand why’. Chuuya took it like a small victory, though, like a sign Dazai wasn’t ready to die — he was ready to cry for help and be saved, though. “I’m coming to you. It’ll take me half an hour to get there, give or take. I’ll be quick. Can you wait for me, Osamu?” 

A moment of silence. 

Chuuya took it all in — Dazai’s serene breathing pattern, the waves, the cars in the background. The tranquility Dazai was talking about assaulted Chuuya with every moment he couldn’t guess what Dazai was thinking. Then, a small ‘yes’. 

“Yeah,” the man said. Somehow, Chuuya took it as a sign that Dazai had defeated that deadly tranquility, for now. He was fine. They were good. “I think I can.”

“I promise I will be very, very quick. Is there anyone else you can call in the meantime, while I grab a taxi? I’ll call back as soon as I can.”

Dazai swallowed. “No.”

“Your manager?”

A pause. “No,” he said again.

“Your friend, Odasaku?”

“No,” Dazai murmured, voice broken. “Especially not Odasaku.”

“Alright. Then I’ll stay on the phone with you for as long as I can. I’m going to take a taxi, and I’ll be there before you know it, but I need to call to reserve one. No matter what happens, I need you to stay where you are. Don’t move from there,” Chuuya said, dreading the idea of being stuck in the dreadful rush hour traffic now. His hands shook as he looked for his shoes. He hated the idea of leaving Dazai alone for too long. “I promise I’ll find you.”

“I know. Chuuya has a talent for finding me — like a hound, I suppose, or taxes.”

Chuuya let out a low tch, running a hand through his hair. “Yeah, sure. Wait for me right where you are.”

“Hm.”

“Seriously. Stay there.”

“Chibi talks like the dog can order his master around,” the other whined — but it sounded hollow, the lukewarm irony stripped to the bone. Underneath, Chuuya could hear self-deprecation.

“I’ll talk to you as you want, as long as you don’t do stupid things.”

“Alright.”

“If you move, if you’ll do anything, I’m going to find you and punch the light out of your stupid mug,” Chuuya swore. “Wait for me. I’m coming.”

But they both knew Dazai had nowhere else to go, and that he’d called Chuuya as a last resort, a cry for help no one else was willing to hear — a swan song that god knew how many times had been downplayed or ignored. 

No, Dazai was going to wait for him. Chuuya was sure of it. Chuuya believed in him. 

He believed Dazai would wait, live, and show Chuuya that tranquil sea that was luring him in and, together, they would look at it and count all the reasons why Dazai’s story was one worth living.

 

When Chuuya reached the west entrance of Yamashita Park, running all the way from the spot where the taxi pulled up, he found Dazai waiting for him on a bench just like he’d promised. 

He was staring at his hands with hollow eyes, moonlight caressing his sharp side profile.

He was listening to the ocean.

—

The cab ride that drove them both back to Chuuya’s house was silent. 

Dazai stared straight ahead, eyes on the road and chest barely heaving as if he was trying to blend with the car’s interior. 

'I’m good at finding escape routes' Dazai had said.
Now, as Chuuya guided him into his apartment and looked helplessly as Dazai slipped out of his shoes and curled on the furthest corner of his couch, he realized how feeble the man’s existence truly was. 

Dazai’s silence seemed perpetual and unbreakable. He appeared hard-wired to break, shatter, and turn to dust until the wind would sweep every speck of his existence away.
Then, the only thing that would remain of Dazai Osamu, of Ouji, was the music.

“What happened?” Chuuya murmured, emboldening himself to ask.

The comment forced Dazai out of his own mind like a punch. He flinched and shook his head. “Nothing happened.”

“Liar.”

“It’s just a bad day,” Dazai said, dismissing the question without sparing him a single glance. He curled tighter on himself. “Sometimes I get restless when things are hard at work, or when I’m overstimulated by too many interviews and too much writing. I get stressed. And when it happens, I say things I don’t mean.”

Chuuya’s brow crinkled.

‘I say things I don’t mean’ seemed like something Dazai had been instructed to say to patch up the PR damages he might have caused with mindless actions.

‘The sea is tranquil’ on the other hand was the most honest thing Dazai had ever told him — a sentence loaded with yearning, dripping misery. 

That sentence wasn’t a shield. 

Oh, no. Dazai meant it.
He meant every single word he’d said on the phone, but Chuuya moved closer and didn’t comment since it was obvious someone had instructed Dazai on what to say.

“Alight. What can I do?”

“There’s nothing much. I guess you—” Then, tilting his head as if he had to think about things that could make him feel better, Dazai added: “Actually, I’m cold.”

Among other things, Chuuya had learned that outright requests didn’t suit Dazai. He never just asked for things or spoke his needs out loud.

He never exposed himself or his needs. 

Chuuya liked to think that such an uncharacteristically honest demand — I’m cold, warm me up — was the only reason that made him move without a single protest.

It was the proof that Dazai trusted him — just a little, maybe, but enough.

So he plummeted on the couch next to Dazai, arms enveloping the other’s lanky limbs with steady hands.  

As he breathed into Dazai’s hair, the man’s body was hard and real under his hands. It was cold. The wind had swept through it, and it had dampened his skin. The ocean breeze, the cold, the salt all lingered. They covered his skin like a thin, translucent patina.

The invisible memories that night had imprinted on Dazai’s bandages painted a picture of a man who had stood at the mercy of the marine breeze for hours. For that long he had been waiting for a sign, staring at the ocean, longing for the tide.

Dazai’s hair smelled like grass, like salt.

His skin was soft and slightly sticky when Chuuya kissed his cheeks, his eyelids, his chin — a face splashed with salty water and eroded by the wind. 

Dazai didn’t move. He almost didn’t even breathe. And so Chuuya kissed him more, and held him closer, and wished he could show him to a better, kinder world. A world that would deserve him and not feed on his suffering whilst calling it art.

He tasted sky and salt and a tinge of sweat and maybe, just maybe, the ghost of tears Dazai had shed in the quietness of his solitude.

With every kiss, Dazai’s stiffness thawed a little.
With every caress, the man leaned into Chuuya’s embrace, holding him close. 

After a moment of hesitation, Dazai nuzzled into the embrace, looking for contact himself. His lips were chapped by the dry ocean air when he pressed them to Chuuya’s hair, then his ear shell, then his hair.
It was like being kissed by the ocean breeze.

How weird, Chuuya thought, skimming his lips over Dazai’s dark fringe. 

He’d saved Dazai’s life in a way, and was sheltering him in his own house, and yet he didn’t feel safe as he held the man — Dazai kept slipping away, always keeping a foot out of life’s door. 
He existed as if he was ready to leave.

“Chibi,” Dazai murmured, speaking against Chuuya’s skin. “Do you think I could stay here? I mean, move in for a little while.”

“Of course.”

“But I need you to keep it a secret from my team. Don’t tell them, even if they ask.” He nosed the side of Chuuya’s head, gently. Despite the tenderness of Dazai’s voice, though, Chuuya turned rigid. “Please.”

“Why?”

“They’d want to check I’m working, and make me go back.”

“…Right. That doesn’t seem smart.”

“I don’t want to go back to work, now. I can’t.”

Sighing, Chuuya rested his forehead on Dazai’s shoulder.
He had a surprisingly calming scent, for someone so troubled. 

Chuuya brushed his lips against the fabric of the man’s t-shirt, feeling the other’s warm breath ghosting over the side of his ear. 

“You know you can stay here,” he murmured. Damn it, he thought, I wish I could say yes. To refuse Dazai anything was a pointless exercise in self-control. “And I wish you could hide in here for all the time you need, too. It’s not that I don’t want to help, but it just doesn’t seem the best thing to do if your people are looking for you. And you need help, Dazai. Maybe you need a therapist, not to fall off the face of the earth and hide in somebody’s house until you force your emotions under the rug.”

Letting out a noise from the back of his throat, Dazai hugged him closer. “We’ll be discreet.”

Yeah, that was not the point. “You said it yourself — your team will worry about you.”

“I can’t face them,” Dazai answered. He mumbled it sheepishly, and it broke Chuuya’s heart but still didn’t convince his brain.

“You’d still make them worry for nothing. And, even then, have you thought about the backlash if a journalist or shit finds you before your team does? If they ask questions you can’t or don’t want to answer?” A pause, and Chuuya wondered if it was worth upsetting Dazai. Then he decided that yes, it was. “What if they assume the worst?”

Truth was, Chuuya didn’t have the faintest idea of the perils and risks of Dazai’s world— he didn’t know what could hurt a superstar or their career.
He had a faint idea about the general issues of being a celebrity, things he’d seen in movies and read about in books, but lacked the experience Dazai’s team had.

Because of that, he felt inexperienced. Small. He could not protect Dazai even if he wanted to.
He was useless. 

All he knew was that letting Dazai hide and deprive him of the people who cared for him when he needed help didn’t seem like a great idea. 

“Please,” Dazai said, again. The word sounded foreign on his lips.

“Dazai, you can’t. It’s not smart, and it might hurt your future.”

Immediately, Dazai curled up on the couch— his knees pressed to his chest, his face hidden by the hair falling over his forehead. He breathed heavily, crumpled up in a tight ball. “I don’t care,” he murmured. “It would be better if it destroyed my life. I wouldn’t mind.”

For a moment, stunned by how quickly Dazai had moved away from him, Chuuya thought he might have misheard. 

It could not be, because Dazai loved his work and his fans.

“I don’t care if it all ends,” Dazai forced out, voice still muffled by his lips pressed against his knees. He quivered. “I might as well not have a career at all.”

A shiver ran down Chuuya’s spine.

He closed their distance again, gently. He held Dazai close to his chest — and he was so cold, lightly trembling, shivering like a grass stalk at the wind’s mercy. “You don’t mean it,” he murmured. “You love your career.” 

“I don’t love it. I hate it,” he murmured. “I hate him.”

“Who?”

“Me. This byproduct of humanity I am.”

“Osamu—” Chuuya hesitated. Then stop, he wanted to say; Say ‘fuck you, Ouji’ and dip. And how simple it would have been. “You told me you like being Ouji.”

“I did. I do. I hate me, and I’m not Ouji; people love Ouji. And I don't know anymore if I care that they don’t love me for me— but it doesn’t matter, I just want to rest. I want to go home. I want to go home, but I’m not sure where that is.” He said it quietly and with a tinge of guilt, his voice low and almost boyish. It sounded like the reluctant request of someone who had not asked for a single thing in his life, of someone who had never admitted defeat.

Dazai never lost once in his adult life. What life coaches don’t say, though, is that winning streaks suck every strength out of people.

“The ocean was so quiet, Chuuya. It could make me rest. I could find a home, it’s not like someone would miss me anyway. Or I can disappear, right? Everything would be much easier if I just disappeared, and the world could forget about me. But they wouldn’t. This world forgets nothing.” He gave Chuuya a moment to fight that statement, but Chuuya only nodded. No, the world would never forget about Ouji easily. “So death… sometimes death seems so comforting. Death seems easy. If that makes me a coward, then I’m sorry. I’m a coward.”

I’m not sure I will ever be so resolute again.

Scrambling for words that could mean something without hurting them both, Chuuya held onto Dazai and kissed his temple, then his hair.
Dazai wasn’t a coward.
Dazai was bone-tired.
But he couldn’t find meaningful words that could soothe the wounds in the man, so he said nothing and hugged him as close as he could. He hugged him so that Dazai could feel it, so that he could breathe Chuuya’s closeness.

He allowed Dazai to sink his nose in the crook of his neck, nuzzling there in a mute request for comfort.

Save me, he said.

When he left the bar with a charming stranger, Chuuya never thought he’d find a scarred animal, hungry for love and starved for kindness. He never thought Dazai would ask him to save him.

The ocean is so tranquil.

Dazai had everything but tranquility.

Before Chuuya could talk or offer to move things to a more comfortable, warmer space where Dazai could get some actual sleep, the obnoxious ring of the doorbell made them both flinch. 

Puckering, Chuuya flashed a glance to the front door.
It was night, for Christ’s sake. Whoever knocked at his door after 10 pm deserved no answer and a raised middle finger.

“So… I’m gonna ignore that,” he declared. 

“Go,” Dazai whispered instead, opening his arms to allow the redhead to open the door. “It might someone important.”

“Yeah, screw them. You are important.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dazai smiled. “I’ll try to take a nap.”

“Stay here, I’ll tell whoever it is to fuck off and come back,” Chuuya promised. He bent to kiss Dazai again — on the mouth, this time. He felt Dazai lean into the kiss, languid and half-awake, their mouths moving as one until the doorbell rang again.

As he left Dazai’s side, Chuuya swore he could murder whoever was dropping by unannounced at ass-o’clock, clearly having fun ringing his doorbell.
He stalked to open the door, mentally cursing against whoever had interrupted, and prepared himself to shoo away the intruder and return to Dazai.

If only. 

The moment he swung the front door open, he had to lift his eyes and tilt his chin up.

The first thought that crossed his mind was: Fuck.
And then, immediately after: Why is everyone in Dazai’s team so goddamn tall? Is that like, a requirement?

“Yes?” he encouraged, closing the door an inch as his body shielded the inside of the house. 

The open defensiveness of the gesture caused the blonde man to balk. “Nakahara-san?”

“Depends on who’s asking,” Chuuya said, with a scowl.
What Dazai’s team didn’t know was that he had a damn p.h.D in being unfriendly and rude, and no shame in using it.

“I’m deeply sorry to bother you at this hour of the night,” the man answered, bowing his head. His square glasses slipped down his nose a little, and Chuuya could only focus on that detail as the man handed him a pristine business card. “My name is Kunikida Doppo, and my colleague here is Oda Sakunosuke.” He paused, glancing past Chuuya’s shoulder, eyes wandering to the inside of the house. “We are with Dazai, and we manage his team. His GPS signals he is in your house, would that be correct?”

So he’s stalked, too? God.

Drily, Chuuya nodded. “Yeah. That’s right.”

“Did anybody see Dazai get in here? There are a few suspicious cars already parked outside.”

“Huh? I don’t think so—“

“And how was he?” Kunikida pressed on. 

The question made Chuuya wince. It would be easier if I just disappeared. The words echoed in his head. “He’s not doing too well,” he murmured, as it was the only genuine response he could think of. “He’s not hurt, and he’s taking a nap, but he’s not… I guess he’s not doing well.”

“Alright. Then thank you for everything you’ve done until now, but we’ll take Dazai home.” 

He said it as if it was a simple fix, something to solve.
Taking him home was just Kunikida’s decision.

It wasn’t Dazai’s own decision. What he wanted didn’t matter. 

Dazai had no decision power over his own life, over where he lived or who he saw — unless it was a meaningless fake boyfriend he could dispose of, of course.

Kunikida’s voice wasn’t unkind, yet it caused Chuuya to grit his teeth and clench his fist.
Kunikida didn’t ask about Dazai’s well-being straight off the bat. He did care, of course, but it seemed secondary. Backhanded, almost. 

“Oi, I just said he’s not doing well. He can stay.”

“I’m afraid that’d be most unwise. We’ll be taking him off your hands, now, and let Mori Production handle Dazai’s future engagements.”

“I hope that means he’ll get to fucking rest?”

“I’m afraid we are not allowed to discuss Dazai’s schedule with outsiders, Nakahara-san.”

“What?” He growled, eyes narrowing. “I’m Dazai’s boyfriend. Outsider my goddamn a—”

Instinctively, Kunikida tched. He didn’t have to say anything. 
Boyfriend? He seemed to say. You’re Dazai’s toy and cover-up story.

It flashed in Kunikida’s green eyes for a moment, but Chuuya could see it anyway. Such dry dismissal blocked him mid-sentence, causing him to shut up. 

Fuck, he thought. He was an outsider. 

Then, before he could say anything at all, the man next to Kunikida bowed his head, too. “I take it Dazai is inside?” He asked.

Even without Kunikida’s introduction, Chuuya recognized his dark hair, an uncommon shade between maroon and red, and blue eyes from Dazai’s phone screen. 

Odasaku; Dazai’s best friend. 

Just at a first glance, Chuuya could understand why Dazai found comfort in the man’s presence. Looking at his eyes was like looking at the tranquil ocean called Dazai. 

He nodded, and even that gesture hurt. “Yeah. As I said, he was just about to take a nap.”

“We won’t bother him if he’s sleeping. May we come in for a moment? Only at the entrance, to avoid—” Oda’s voice trailed off, but Chuuya heard it anyway: to avoid pictures and paparazzi.
To avoid the press speculating about Dazai’s well-being once the journalists realized the Ouji needed to be picked up from someone’s house like a child. 

Obediently, Chuuya stepped back. 

He pressed his body against the wall to allow the two men to step inside, mumbling that they didn’t need to take off their shoes. They were gonna leave soon, anyway.

“It’s a pretty home,” Oda said. 

“And Dazai’s gonna stay here if he so pleases,” he answered, ignoring the pleasantries. He didn’t have time for fake compliments on his house — he was on a mission. 

Kunikida’s lips twitched. “Says who?”

I do, Chuuya thought, although he realized that meant nothing to the people in front of him.
They didn’t know him, and Kunikida was, ultimately, right: he was no one and wasn’t Dazai’s real boyfriend, and he was nobody’s knight in shining armor.

“Well, Dazai himself,” Chuuya said.

“Dazai can’t decide for himself in this kind of situation.”

“Look, dude. I get it. I understand you are overworked and that drinking six coffees a day turned ya into an asshole, but—”

“You don’t understand anything,” Kunikida interrupted him. His voice sounded calm, but he leveled Chuuya with a thunderous glare. Somehow, he made the words seem polite even when their meaning was everything but. “Nakahara-san, allow me to be clear: Dazai’s career is part of his life and happiness. He started performing incredibly young. If he will ever suggest that is his wish to stop, I will take him out of this circus as fast as I can and never look back. But so far he’s only been happiest singing, and I will protect that happiness.” His eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and Chuuya found himself glued to the floor. Oh, he thought, he cares. Four-eyes truly cares about Dazai. “I understand Dazai has issues, and those issues are scary. But do you think the backlash would make it easier for him? Do you think he will thank you tomorrow if you help him destroy his career today? Do you think this is the first time?” His gaze sharpened as a righteous, fierce rage started to seep through it. “We care about him. We have dealt with this before, and we protected him. So, Nakahara-san, forgive me if I won’t allow a stranger to lecture us on how to protect our best friend.”

Speechless, Chuuya bristled.

He closed his hands into fists as reality sank in, and he realized that Kunikida was right and he was wrong. His eyes burned as he lowered his head, embarrassed for being scolded like a child and, at the same time, angry for allowing himself to be put into this position.

He was a hired third party, after all.

Everything Kunikida was saying, he’d known all along. And the bastard wasn’t even saying it in a way that could have authorized Chuuya to break his nose with a punch.
Oh, no; he was being polite about it. He was being reasonable. Shit.

“Damn it,” he murmured, under his breath. “I get it, y’know. I’m just worried.”

Kunikida’s eyebrows twitched up. He opened his mouth, but Oda acted faster than him.
He moved closer, blue eyes gentle and lips twisting up.

“Nakahara-san, we know you are only doing what you think is best. I am glad you are. But I promise we are only acting with Dazai’s well-being in mind.”

Chuuya swallowed, taking a scant breath. “Dazai said he wanted to stay.”

Carefully, Oda nodded. His blue eyes seemed so pure, an endless sea bathed in sunlight. “From what I understand, Dazai trusts you. But we are asking you to trust us too.”

“Either Dazai likes it or not, we have to keep him safe,” Kunikida added. 

Oda threw him a glance, nodding. “Exactly.”

“I understand that,” Chuuya said.

He envied it, even. The chance to take care of Dazai for real. If he only could—

“And that is why, Nakahara-san, although we appreciate the concern, we are asking you to let us see Dazai. We know how to take care of him.”

Torn, Chuuya wetted his lips. There was no legit way to argue with Oda’s fond voice, not with how calm and genuinely concerned he seemed. Even Kunikida, with his cold rage and polite outburst, was obviously only distressed about his friend. Not a co-worker, or a boss he worked for.
Only then, Chuuya realized Kunikida had called Dazai a friend.

And how could Chuuya keep them out of Dazai’s life, forbidding them to see him? It wasn’t fair. He knew that.
But Dazai had also asked him to ward him off.
Dazai had trusted him.

“I—”

“Ah, you two will make me cry. There’s no need to talk Chuuya into it,” a voice interrupted him, coming from behind. Chuuya turned so violently his neck hurt, clocking Dazai’s presence.

The man was wearing his leather jacket draped over his broad shoulders, ready to leave.
His smile was somber, his hair scruffy.

“Ah, Dazai! How are you?” Kunikida asked, leaning forward. The moment he dropped the pretense of being above the situation, his walls crumbling down, it was easy to notice how on edge he’d been.

His voice shook as he stepped forward, and Chuuya regretted calling him an overworked asshole. 

Only a little, though.

“Hanging in there. Sorry for putting you in a tight spot, I understand I’ve messed up.” Then, Dazai smiled. “Thanks, Odasaku. Chuuya has been taking good care of me.”

Oda nodded. “I know,” he said, and Chuuya’s heart dropped to his ankles. Oda talked about him as if he believed in him. Not many people talked about strangers that way.

“Dazai—”

“I’m ok, Chibi. I’m fine.” He smiled at him, sadly, eyes glossy and lined with screaming red. “Thank you for today.”

“If you’re fine, then get out of my sight and rest as much as you can.”

“Yeah. Thanks for picking me up.”

He was smiling, and Chuuya mustered a sheepish smile right back. “Of course. But text me, alright?”

“I’ll call you later.”

Then he bent, and his lips brushed Chuuya’s. It was a delicate, quick peck.
That kiss had no reason — Dazai didn’t have to convince his team that he had a boyfriend, after all — but to reassure him.
And Chuuya, allowing Dazai’s lips to slow his running heartbeat down, welcomed that contact like the first rain after a long, long summer. 

“Don’t make me worry too much,” he said, low. It was only for Dazai to hear, anyway. The other smiled weakly against his mouth, resting his forehead against Chuuya’s hair. 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. You have nothing to do it for.”

“But I made Chuuya worry.”

“It’s ok.” He cupped Dazai’s cheeks, pulling him in for one last peck. He felt the light stubble under his fingers as if Dazai had forgotten to shave for too many days. “I’m only happy you have a good team that will look after you, Bandages.”

“I—” Dazai stopped, and swallowed as if he was suddenly reminded of the presence of the other two, awkwardly glancing at each other to avoid prying on them. “I’ll talk to you later, Chibi. Goodnight.”

—

“You like Nakahara,” Odasaku commented, glancing at him from the rearview mirror. 

He was driving with Kunikida in the passenger seat, while Dazai was confined in the backseat like an unruly child who had upset his parents. In silence, he glanced outside the car’s window, his lips pressed together in a thin, dry line. He blinked behind his dark sunglasses, grateful for how they kept the merciless light at bay. 

In hindsight, he regretted all the things he’d said to Chuuya. 

He couldn’t give up when he was so close, he couldn’t slip back into the limbo of those who had been almost-praise-worthy, those who almost made it. All he had was his career. Whenever he looked back to the disaster of his life, all that was left of him was music. 

He sighed and refused to give any importance to the darker voices inside his head, confining them in a corner of his mind while imagining having a drink in his hand. 

“I suppose I do,” he murmured. He pressed his forehead against the cool windowpane. “Drive me to Mori-san.”

“No,” Oda said, a sharp edge in his voice that told Dazai he knew exactly why he needed Mori. “I’m driving you home, and I’m staying with you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“Right. You need two,” Kunikida interjected. “I’m staying over, too.”

Fantastic, Dazai thought. It’s gonna be boarding school all over again.

It reminded him of the days when he was in training with A.D.A — he had fun, those days. They worked together. They lived together. 

Akiko would sneak into his room and they would smoke weed and have sex and keep their hands all over each other as if they could consume their bodies, imprinting every curve in their minds. 
He would smoke with Tanizaki, and play Go and cards with Ranpo.  It was fun until he regularly ended up with one of his episodes. He never wanted anybody around, then. Not even Akiko. 
But Chuuya— 

“That’s unnecessary.”

“It is. And I want to check your pockets, too,” Oda added. “Are you high?”

“No,” he said. Fuck, he wished he were. 

“Good. Rehearsal tomorrow is canceled — you’re taking some time off to sleep and get some rest.”

“I don’t need time off.”

“Clearly, you do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he murmured, scowling against the windowpane. 

He said he didn’t need to rest but the truth was that he didn’t want to. The idea alone clutched his stomach and pressed on his chest, the pressure so real that he expected to hear bones cracking under the weight of the anxiety. 
He could not stop.
He would have no reason for living if Mori Corp dropped him for being a fluke. A fraud. A disappointment.  He didn’t want to be abandoned again. 

Kunikida clicked his tongue. “You lost your right to fight us when you crashed at a stranger’s house and had us looking for you for hours.”

Ah. So he was worried. 

Dazai hummed, grateful to discover that the unspoken rule of the car was to never address openly the reason for his breakdown. 

“Sorry,” he said, although he struggled to mean it. He knew that guilt would kick in, though, sooner or later. Then, it wouldn’t be nice.

Gripping the wheel, Oda sighed. “Dazai…”

“I’m sorry about Chuuya, too. I won’t involve him anymore.” 

“Thank you,” Oda said — his voice sweet and understanding.

Next to him, Kunikida kept his eyes firmly on the road. Although he didn’t comment, Dazai thought he could sense disapproval coming from the man. 

But Odasaku was right; he liked Chuuya.

God help him, he truly did. 

—

Despite his promise, Dazai didn’t text. 

He didn’t call, either. 

Instead, he appeared on a morning show dressed in Vivienne Westwood — beautiful and confident, delivering his answers in an hour-long interview with charming ease. 

He laughed when somebody said he might have been the only man on earth to pull off a tweed tan-and-navy-blue jacket, brushing the compliment off as if he didn’t deserve it. He confessed that his manager and publicist had forced him to take a small break from his usual obligations.

Yet, watching the live show on TV with Aya, Chuuya couldn’t help but think that Dazai looked more tired than usual.

—

At last, Dazai called him again on a Wednesday. 

A workday, with no respect or mindfulness for the fact that the morning after Chuuya would have to get up, drag his ass to work and produce like every other human being on earth. But, no. Dazai was a prince. He wasn’t respectful or mindful. 

He was infuriating, and complicated, and he called when he needed knowing fully well that he had his hands already wrapped around Chuuya’s heart.

Lean, beautiful hands that played with Chuuya’s emotions like fresh snow, melting the redhead’s reluctance within the endearing warmth of his palms.  So, when he called, part of Chuuya wanted to tell him to go fuck himself and find someone else who would help him in his fuckarsery.

However, there was another part of him that had grown protective of this newborn feeling — of this little ‘he needs me’ spark that sprouted in his chest whenever Dazai called.

Dutifully, Chuuya put his store-bought katsu curry in the freezer, hopped on his bike and drove to Dazai’s house. 

It’s a job, he told himself. A warped sense of duty was the only reason he allowed himself to put his life on standby for a man he barely knew at all and — possibly, tragically — liked a little bit too much.
It wasn’t an actual contract, the one with Dazai, but it felt emotionally binding nonetheless. He was being naïve, Chuuya supposed, and too easily manipulated. He ended up caring too much, and Dazai knew it.

He kept his hand on the throttle, hitting the gas as if the speed and the wind and the road could convince him to face Dazai and his many troubles, and let his thoughts blend with the howling of the wind in his ears, in his helmet. 

Dazai, he thought. 

Dazai, Dazai.

 

“What’s wrong now?” 

Dazai smiled. 

He looked like a daydream, sprawled on the leather black couch, feet kicked on a footstool, wearing his work clothes still. 

He must have just returned from a recording session. At least, Chuuya supposed those were work clothes— a shirt and tan pants did not exactly count as loungewear. 

His smile was poison, a sweet venom that Chuuya tasted in the kiss Dazai denied him. 

“Hello, Chuuya,” he said, stretching up. How unfair it was, that his voice sounded so enticing despite Chuuya being mad at him. “How are you?”

He ignored the question, tilting his chin to point at Dazai’s attire. “Back from work?”

“Ah, no. I didn’t go to work, today.”

Oh. Chuuya looked at him again, evaluating the situation. 

Either Dazai had not bothered to change his clothes since the day before, or he didn’t mind being uncomfortable in work clothes. Probably a mix of both, considering the crinkles in the fabric. 

In more ways than one, Dazai struggled with allowing himself the luxury of being comfortable. 

Bandages that scratched the skin, carelessly matched clothes, unkempt hair, barely any food or sleep; everything in Dazai exuded careless suffering. Paper cuts self-inflicted with boyish indifference, acts of self-hate hidden under a thousand masks of apparent normality.
The charming Dazai, the smart Dazai, the spirited Dazai, the loving Dazai — and then, under all those personalities, lurked the you’ll never see the real me Dazai. 

He could be many things, but fucking transparent was never one of them.

Never allowing himself to be content as if a taste of happiness could break him. He could only survive half-awake, half-alive, and deaf to his body’s needs. Everything that hurt him made Dazai feel worthy of breathing, kindling that pale flame of humanity that he could not see otherwise.

Dazai found peace in pain, happiness in immobility, and a definition of his humanity in the things he deprived himself of.  

And Chuuya could not stand it.

“You wanted to see me.”

“I did. I’m bored,” Dazai said, stretching on the couch with a charming grin. “So I thought you could come over~ Entertain me.”

“I’m not a dog, shithead. Ya know who I am, don’t you?”

“Hmm. Maybe. Enlighten me, please.”

“I’m someone you promised to call the second you got home after you felt sick, and yet somehow I have not heard from you in days.” 

Dazai’s eyes sharpened at the remark, and at least his grin dropped. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Bullshit,” Chuuya answered. 

They both knew Dazai didn’t mean it. The big star didn’t have the time to feel sorry for him, nor the mental capacity. He could barely feel sorry for himself — and Kunikida was right: Dazai had issues. 

That was the reason Chuuya refused to waste time judging Dazai for his lack of empathy. If he was being honest, Dazai downright sucked at empathy. And the tragedy was, he was his own first and favorite victim. Everybody else was just collateral in Dazai’s crusade against himself. 

“Right. I’m… I don’t know why I didn’t call you. I meant to.”

“Don’t worry about it. How are you?” Chuuya asked. “For real.”

Dazai shrugged the question away.

“Alive,” he said. He said ‘alive’ as if it was an inconvenience — a circumstance he wanted to fix. “You’re right, I was supposed to update you. But I could not deal with what happened, and I was embarrassed about dragging you into the middle of an unpleasant situation.”

“I told you it wasn’t a problem.”

Dazai flashed him a smirk. “People lie, Chuuya,” he said, voice gentle — a joyless, sharp sweetness. 

“Huh?”

“People lie. Yes, you did say you didn’t mind, but people lie all the time about the likes of me not being an inconvenience or a burden.”

Chuuya puckered. 

“You are not a burden to me, Dazai,” he said. He talked slowly, every word settling between them. “If you don’t trust me, that’s your issue. But if you give half a shit about my sanity, don’t leave me worrying when I don’t even know if you’re still alive.”

“I wouldn’t do it for real, Chuuya. I don’t really want to die,” Dazai said. Too fast. Another meaningless string of words concocted by his press office, when Dazai meant the exact opposite. It took Chuuya’s entire self-control not to laugh at his face. 

“Then you’re a fucking good actor,” he said. “I was convinced you would. For real.”

“Is that why you came?”

“Among other reasons,” he compromised. The idea of Dazai being alone and without someone helping him tortured Chuuya. No one should have been that lonely, drowning with his demons.

But how could he convince Dazai – a man who had only known lies, abandonment, and work his entire life – that not everybody was out to fuck him up? How could Chuuya explain he meant it when he said that helping Dazai wasn’t a burden, and it wasn’t something he was keeping tabs on?

He couldn’t change such a deeply-rooted insecurity in a day. Hell, he probably couldn’t change it at all.

Dazai’s lips twitched and curled in a rapid, fleeting smile. “Was Chuuya worried about me?”

Chuuya clicked his tongue. “Are you dumb? Of course, I was worried. You call me to get you from a park and start saying you want to disappear, what else should I be?” 

“Ah,” he murmured, tugging a strand of hair behind his ear. “Yes. I supposed I did all that.”

Don’t, Chuuya thought, heart heavy and tongue glued to the roof of his mouth. Don’t say it like taking care of your stupid ass was a passing inconvenience.

“Do you remember anything that happened?”

Dazai tilted his head to the side. “Some things.”

“You scared me,” he said, not unkindly. He just wanted Dazai to understand that, somewhere, someone cared about him.

“I didn’t think you’d care.”

“Dazai, we are going out. It might surprise you, but I got sad about people I met on the bus and I get stupidly depressed about the stories I make up for them in my head. So yes, I do care about you.”

“You’d be part of a very exclusive fan club.”

“Maybe, if you didn’t keep everyone at an arm’s length, it’d be easier.”

“I’m busy.”

Fuck’s sake. “ You wanna know what I think, no lies or shit? I think you’re not struggling with music, not even a bit.” Staring at the man, Chuuya folded his arms in front of his chest. “You are not even struggling with relationships. You are simply burning yourself out, and you’re gonna crash straight into a wall someday. And, yes, that worries the hell out of me.” 

Looking away, Dazai shook his head. His body said he was fine, but his eyes— they were dark. And Chuuya wondered for how long the man had gaslighted himself into thinking he was fine, after all. 

“I can keep up.”

“Can you keep up, though? Between interviews and rehearsals and shit, you are still working yourself to the bone. Seems like a lot to me.”

“I’m alright. My schedule is being reduced, so I can focus on what matters and the next album.”

“Did you at least take a day off?” Chuuya asked, fully knowing the answer already.

“It was a moment. I don’t need time off.”

“Dazai, please—“

When Dazai’s gaze lingered on his face, studying him, Chuuya fought the urge to step back. His honey irises seemed detached, his lips had no expression at all. He was a beautiful mask of lukewarm annoyance. A ghost. 
And yet Chuuya knew that was the closest to Dazai’s genuine self— an emptiness that burned cold, kindled by a fire of self-loathing that devoured everything and everyone. “Don’t forget your place, Chuuya. Who are you?”

“Someone who is fucking worried for you.”

“I never asked you to get attached,” Dazai’s lips twisted, and Chuuya just knew he was charging his next words to hurt. “I did not hire you for that.”

I didn’t hire you to get attached.

Speechless, Chuuya’s blood boiled. It hurt. His teeth sank into his bottom lip, and he tasted blood on the tip of his tongue.

Hire.

The word echoed in his skull, merciless. Yes, he was worried for Dazai. Yes, he’d grown attached despite his better judgment.
Then, before their discussion could stem into an argument, something touched Chuuya’s ankle. Something fluffy. Before he could stop himself, Chuuya jumped away and screeched. He screeched.
Cheeks on fire, he slapped both hands on his mouth as he looked down, terrified, heart beating in his chest to find—

‘Meow’.

“Meow?” Chuuya echoed, muffled as he talked against his palms. What. In the hell.

His eyes met with a cat — a tiny thing, peachy pink. Its clipped ear twitched as it blinked, big green eyes searching Chuuya’s face almost questioningly. Then, meowing, it rubbed its little head against Chuuya’s leg again, tail swirling around his leg. 

“Oh, Momo!” Dazai chirped, jumping on his feet. His lips curled into a smile, and Dazai’s mood improved as if someone had turned on a switch.

Chuuya gaped in front of the change of attitude, swallowing back a cuss. 

He could not believe he had just risked a heart attack because the idiot got a fur friend and didn’t think of telling him. He stared at the animal for a long moment, jaw practically hitting the floor as Momo rubbed his little head against his ankle. 

Then, he glared at Dazai.

“Momo?”

Jutting out his bottom lip, Dazai pouted. “Is Chuuya just going to repeat everything I say?”

“Are you for real?! When did you get a cat?”

“It’s not my cat,” Dazai replied. He became owlishly innocent whenever something surprised him, big eyes flickering with long eyelashes and looking around as if they opened on the world for the first time. 

He looked young. It didn’t happen often, but it always made Chuuya regret not having a photographic memory. It was a beautiful sight.

For now, however, he raised his eyebrows and focused on the fact that Dazai had a cat in his home. A cat he never mentioned before. 

A cat that, apparently, wasn’t even his. 

“…It’s not?” 

Dazai shrugged. “No.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. Then he pushed closer, picking up Momo with careful gestures. He seemed unsure of his movements as if he expected the animal to wriggle away or scratch him to be freed. Instead, as his lean fingers sank into the fur, the cat meowed back and pawed him on the nose playfully. “Little guy here showed up at my doorstep before the tour, and I have the personnel feed him when I’m not in. I’m just taking care of him, but he’s not mine.” He glanced at Chuuya as if the same thing could apply to their situation. “He’s shabby, but friendly. I was wondering if maybe he’s been abandoned, or ran away?”

“Have you asked your neighbors?”

“Not yet. Kajii next door is always traveling for some new movie he’s working on, and—“

Lifting one hand to stop Dazai, Chuuya pinched his nose. “Please,” he interrupted, voice slightly shivering. “Please tell me you don’t mean Kajii the scriptwriter. The one that won an Academy Award for Lemon Tree. That Kajii.”

Dazai’s lips stretched up, ever so innocent, but he only had the time to glance at Chuuya for a moment before Momo nosed him. A little boop, but more than enough to win Dazai’s attention back. “I can introduce you if you want,” he said, simply, without moving his attention away from the cat. 

He said it as if it was that easy to create connections with people who had more Academy Awards than food in their pantry.

Chuuya didn’t even know how to respond.

“Dazai. I’m a scriptwriter. You can’t just promise this shit to me and never follow through, I will cry.”

Idly, Dazai tilted his head to the side. He made it seem simple. “I’ll set up a dinner for you to meet when Kajii is back, so you can pitch him something or whatever people do these days.”

“What?! For real?”

“I said I will, didn’t I?” Dazai echoed, eyes narrowing. 

The sudden sharpness of his tone made Chuuya raise an eyebrow as he saw the perfect opportunity for a jab. He guessed Dazai didn’t like the taste of his own medicine. 

“And you also said it yourself: people lie.”

“Yes, Chuuya, they do. But you promised not to lie to me, and I have no intention of lying to you ever.”

We’ll see, Chuuya wanted to say. We’ll see. But Momo meowed and, immediately, Dazai turned to the cat with a soft aw sound. His face opened in a beam as he leaned forward, touching the tip of his nose to the cat’s head. 

He meowed softly back, and Momo purred — loud as a lawnmower under the attention, whiskers vibrating happily. Despite the surprise and the annoyance still left behind by the discussion, Chuuya’s lips twitched upward in front of the scene.

“Momo likes you,” he said.

“I feed him,” Dazai replied, casting him a side glance. “And I shelter him. Of course, the little gremlin likes me.”

“Fuck’s sake, Mackerel, you’re impossible. The cat likes you because you can be fucking sweet, when you want to and when you don’t shut people out.” He hesitated, suddenly terribly aware of Dazai’s stare lingering on him. “And that is making me forget my place, too, if ya want to know; because you are incredibly easy to get attached to. Somehow, and for some reason I can't understand either.” The jab caused Dazai to flinch, but Chuuya offered him a smile that, he hoped, could soothe the burn. He never meant it to hurt, not for real. “So, I’ll ask you again: how are you? For real. And if you dismiss me with ‘alive’ again, I’ll punch you.”

As if the question had caused him to deflate Dazai’s head dropped, his shoulders arching as if he was giving up at last under an invisible burden. “I’m sorry. I was being an ass.”

“You were, but that’s ok. I’m sorry I pressured you.”

As if scrambling for words, Dazai took a moment to inhale. He let Momo jump out of his grip, too. “I’m not well,” he murmured, at last, voice leveled. He was still looking at the cat, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt.

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“But I am doing better.”

Chuuya believed him. He had no reason to, but he did.

“That’s great.”

“I think— Odasaku likes you, y’know. He says I can trust Chibi.” He snorted a laugh, throwing his head back. “And I will try, I promise.” 

“Just know you can talk, if you need. I’m here for you.”

“I know you are.” Momo mewed. “Do you want to get food and watch a movie?”

Despite himself, Chuuya grinned. “Only if I get to pick the movie.”

—

“I’ve always liked cats more than I like people. And let me tell you, Momo is a very well-behaved cat too.
Maybe because we are both strays, we get along well and know when to make a fuss and when it’s not worth it. Or maybe it’s because Chuuya adopted us. You better not make a fuss around Chuuya. Maybe because he’s so short, but that little guy can hold a grudge for days.
I don’t like it.
It’s no fun when Chibi ignores me.”

Dazai Osamu, Pen-online.com
Last visited: October 2021

—

Momo soon became the bane of Chuuya’s existence, as well as the highlight of his days.

He started taking the cat to work with him, even. On other days, he would curl up on the couch and write with Momo balled on his lap. How easily some things could enter his routine after just a handful of days, he thought. After a while, he could read the exact twitch of Momo’s pointed ears and the vibration of his whiskers. He would let the cat hang out on the ledge of the tub during his baths and feed him at night before leaving Dazai’s house. 

Dazai was always preoccupied, during those frantic summer days between the end of his tour and the beginning of the new album. He was in full writing mode, hunched over a piece of paper or a guitar. He would sing and hum and vocalize to himself, stopping with a screwed-up face to scribble down something. 

At the time, Dazai used to write for everybody: guitars, keyboards, even the tambourine, and the violin. He was a control freak like that. Odasaku helped smooth out the relationship with the other members of the team anytime Dazai came off as harsh or dismissing. 

So Chuuya took care of the cat and made Dazai tea and checked that he wasn’t too high. 

He even let Momo sit inside his lucky hat, the cat meowing happily while Chuuya helped himself a can of beer from Dazai’s kitchen as if they both belonged in that house. It didn’t take long for Momo to become the excuse Chuuya used to hang out around Dazai more often. The redhead visited any time he could, also on account that Dazai’s management seemed to prefer him staying at the idol’s guarded, out-of-the-public-eye mansion rather than the other way around. Chuuya didn’t mind it. As long as he could see Dazai, he found he didn’t dislike playing by the rules.

“ You write about being stoned a lot,” Chuuya said, one afternoon.

He was in Dazai’s bed, reading through the other’s rough draft of a new song.

The piece had been called ‘Blue’ until that point. The title seemed too simple to Chuuya, but he thought they could discuss the details only after they had a polished song. 

He could feel the other man stiffen next to him, eyeing Momo as if he could escape the conversation. The cat was sleeping on one of the lowest shelves in the wardrobe and, for the longest time, Dazai stared at him rather than focusing on Chuuya. That told him he’d asked the right question. 

“Do I?”

“This ‘Perfect Blue’ you talk about during the bridge, it sounds like you’re drugged out. And then there’s ‘I can only find peace/at the bottom of a river/at the bottom of a glass’ and… it’s a lot.”

“People like to hear songs about being drunk. It makes them feel like partying.”

“Yeah, if they are fun. This one reads somber. It sounds as if you are allowing yourself to feel only when you’re too drunk to overthink.”

“People like alcoholic metaphors.”

“Yeah— they want to drink, not to drown.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You’re a good writer, Dazai, but this is a sad song.”

“It’s a love song,” Dazai countered stubbornly. 

That was it, really. It explained a lot.
Love was intertwined with sadness and regret, for Dazai, and his solution was to bury the feelings under alcohol and drugs until he couldn’t feel anything at all. 

Love equaled pain.

“This can’t be love,” Chuuya said.

Dazai shrugged it off, almost numbed by the discussion. “It’s what love always felt like to me.”

Is this what I feel like? Chuuya wanted to ask. He didn’t dare speak, glaring at the paper in his hand. Being dismissed as if he was overstepping — and for the second time, too — left a sour taste in his mouth. 

It seemed sad that Dazai deemed him as somebody that knew him enough to suck his dick but not enough to ask personal questions. It was sad and unfair. 

“Dazai, you should stop. Get cleaned up.”

“Hah.”

“Don’t hah me, bastard,” Chuuya growled, propping himself up on his elbows to face the other man. “Do you truly want to die?”

Although he looked at him with a blank stare, Dazai didn’t reply. 

Yes, his eyes said — stone-cold, emotionless. Yes, as long as I can make it quick. 

All of a sudden, all the jokes Dazai had made about dying came back to Chuuya with the strength of a punch in the guts. Under the lighthearted tone, Dazai wasn’t joking at all. 

He opened his mouth, but Dazai was faster.

“Ne, Chuuya,” he said, scooting closer to the redhead, retreating behind a mask of empty patience. “You’re boring.”

Boring. Dazai wielded that word as a shield. When he didn’t like something, he would label it as boring, dismiss it and move on.

Then, he pushed Chuuya onto the mattress, climbing on top of him the moment the redhead landed on his back and let go of the scribbled notes. It was a decoy, one that Chuuya had no strength to call out. Not when Dazai weighed on him.
It felt nice as if the brunet belonged on top of him, and Chuuya realized he’d been waiting for this until that first night in the love hotel. His entire body came alive with that touch, with anticipation. He let out a brief hiss, and the other looked at him as if he’d just won the jackpot. 

See? This is what love should look like, Chuuya thought, although he didn’t say it.
He said nothing at all because, end of the day, he didn’t have a right to meddle in someone else’s business and in Dazai’s idea of love.

Dazai slipped one hand under the redhead’s shirt, slowly, smirking when he heard Chuuya’s heartbeat under his fingers. He palmed his abs, and his stomach, lingering on his navel and traveling up to his pecs.
When Dazai leaned in just so, slowly curling over him to meet his lips, his warm breath fanned over Chuuya’s mouth. It carried the promise of a kiss.

“Daz—“

Before he could lift his hands and adjust under Dazai’s warm, familiar body, Momo jumped elegantly on the bed. He broke the spell hopping right between them, with his fluffy ears straight and tall. He settled on Chuuya’s chest, his long tail lazily sweeping across the man’s face as he let out a loud cry — that dragged-out, high-pitched meow of when he was jealous. 

A cat. 

A cat was fucking jealous of him.

Chuuya scoffed, sputtering when Momo’s tail swept over his face, tickling his nose and making him cough. The sudden feeling of fur in his mouth almost made him sneeze. For a moment, Dazai glanced at him. Then, still on top of him, still with a hand under the man’s shirt, he laughed — a hearty, uncontrolled laugh. After a second of surprise, Chuuya joined him. 

They laughed as they had never done before, not together at least— they laughed like they were friends before fake boyfriends. The out-of-breath, tears-in-my-eyes kind of laughter. And again, Chuuya thought: this is another shade of love Dazai can’t recognize. 

Can’t he see it? 

How can I make him see it? 

Was it even his job — a stranger hired to act like a boyfriend, a passerby — to make Dazai see that love could be kind and warm? Love songs could be much more than sad songs concealed behind a pretty bow and a good marketing plan. 

“Maybe I should take Momo to the living room,” Dazai said, pulling back. In his voice lingered a chuckle, a soft sound that warmed his eyes.

“Yeah, get his fat ass off my face.”

“And I’ll close the door.”

With a heavy heart, Chuuya tittered. A part of him didn’t want to downplay their issues and allow Dazai to weasel his way out of the conversation, but what else could he do? 

“Yeah,” he said, “and hurry back here. We’ve got a whole damn song to go through.”

—

Dazai had proposed to drop by Yokohama Sparkling Twilight on a lazy Sunday morning.
‘There’s a whole seafood-themed area, chibi! Loads of crab dishes!’ he’d screamed into the phone, sounding like a child on Christmas. He asked if they were okay to stay until the fireworks. 

When Chuuya answered he was on babysitting duty because Kouyou was out of town, however, the invite was easily extended to Aya. 

So here they were, both back in Yamashita park, sitting on a bench as they watched the crowd pass by.

People were roaming everywhere in the jam-packed streets, chatting and moving from stall to stall. The delicious smell of food — fried shrimps, takoyaki, candies and caramelized apples — soaked the air, causing Chuuya’s mouth to water and kindling in him the hope that perhaps, at least for a day, Dazai would eat without complaining. Meanwhile, merry flocks of visitors swarmed the park, wearing western clothes or delicate cotton yukata, filling the space with delighted cries and giggles. 
Aya had rushed to a goldfish scooping stall, leaving them free to rest on the bench after a whole morning of walking through the food stalls and parades. Chuuya needed to collect his strength for the evening event. He wanted to stay, and enjoy the being.
‘It would be a pity to miss the boats and the fireworks’, Dazai had said.
For once, Chuuya didn’t have to force himself to agree.  

“You know, I look forward to seeing the fireworks,” Dazai said, breaking the silence. “It’s odd. I’ve lived in Yokohama for a long time, and I never came here for the festival.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“I could see the fireworks from my room if I wanted to. But I never cared.”

Chuuya hummed. “Any particular reason?”

“I guess it felt stupid— I couldn’t be out there with the crowd, so what was the point? It was a reminder that I’m not like other people, and I may never be.”

Chuuya tilted his head in understanding. He remembered Dazai’s admission about his mother — she was somewhere in the States, and had lived a separate life ignoring him. All his life, Dazai had been failed by the adults around him.

At least, Chuuya supposed, his dead parents had lost their chance to disappoint him. With a sigh, he intertwined his hands on his lap. He glanced at the goldfish stall where Aya was trying to capture her prize, waving her little white paper scooper.
He wondered if Kouyou would have murdered him for giving Aya a pet.

“I understand,” he said, throwing back his head and glancing at the sky. Blue, tranquil. He tried to remember that somewhere, under that same sky, someone was having worse problems than what he was going through. He had to count his blessings. “I don’t know shit about being a superstar, of course, but the feeling of not being a normal kid, that I understand. You know, that’s why I try to let Aya do fun stuff whenever I can. Kouyou, too. My older sister, I mean.” A smile crossed his face, unguarded and fast. Kouyou had been sister and mother and friend to him; together, they tried to be that for Aya, too. “We both try to give Aya a normal life since our parents aren’t here. And it’s fine, really, because we both love her. She’s a good kid, too. But— I don’t know. I guess it’s pretty sad that no adults were ever around to do the same for us.”

Dazai hummed. “Aya is lucky.”

“Yeah, I hope she knows how much we love her. Kouyou and I had shitty childhoods, I believe I told you that, but if we can do right by her…”

Chuuya took a deep breath and, slowly, Dazai’s hand covered his. It was steady and warm, and it stopped Chuuya’s voice as well as his racing heart. Then, gentle fingers squeezed his knuckles. 

“You are doing everything you can,” Dazai murmured, dark strands covering his handsome side profile as he spoke. “You are doing right by her, Chuuya.”

“Thanks.”

I wonder if I can do right by you, too. 

“Do you want a drink?” Dazai asked. 

Chuuya blinked, blindsided by the question at first and, then, wondering if Dazai was asking for real. Sure, he could agree that they likely needed a drink to lift their spirits and spare their minds from drowning in old memories of ruined childhoods, but they couldn’t abandon Aya. 

They couldn’t just leave.

The closest vending machine was probably at least five minute’s walk away, and they could not leave Aya on her own with the risk of her being approached by strangers — or worse. 

The perspective made Chuuya shiver. 

“Are you dumb? We can’t leave.”

Big, honey-colored eyes gawked at him. They looked innocent, those eyes, illuminated by the gentle summer light. 

“I never said we should leave,” Dazai countered, as if Chuuya was being nonsensical for even considering it. “We can’t leave Aya-chan, that much is quite obvious. A stranger might approach her while we’re not watching.” He paused, inclining his head. “Or worse.”

Chuuya scowled, irritation simmering in his stomach. God.
He was going to punch the guy — and he was sure that Dazai had purposefully cherry-picked the words Chuuya had used in his mind, because he was a cunning little bastard who could read people too well for his own good.
It was so annoying.

“Well, exactly.”

“And I like I said, I only proposed we should get a drink. Chuuya misunderstood me.”

“Then how—“

“This,” Dazai chirped, cutting him off. He rummaged in the pocket of his sand-colored trench coat with his free hand for a moment, taking out a little transparent vase.

A saké jar.

Chuuya frowned, clocking the blue tag on the front of a brand-new premium jar of One Cup Saké. His brow hurt from how much his eyebrows corrugated over his eyes.

“Do you truly go around with a One Cup Sake in your pocket?! It’s disgusting.”

“It’s alcohol,” Dazai replied as if the answer was obvious. 

He said it as if it was normal, and if that simple statement could justify the presence of a cheap, off-the-shelf jar of saké in his pocket.
And Chuuya was all for drinking, he’d gotten drunk off cheap store-bought bottles with his friends, drinking them sitting on sidewalks at night, but this?  This was disgusting.

“You have alcohol in a jar. In your pocket.”

“It’s called convenience.”

“It’s called alcoholism.”

Dazai pouted. “It’s not alcoholism if I go into a bar, so why is it now? Chuuya’s double standards are showing.”

Unsure, Chuuya gnawed at the inside of his cheek. How could it be a double standard? There was an ocean of difference between seeking a drink in a bar and carrying alcohol around as if Dazai needed it more than food — more than people. As if he needed the reassuring weight of alcohol and loose pills in his pockets.

He guessed there was a difference between want and need.

“You are an idol, idiot. You have money and enough connections to get in any club, and whenever you want,” Chuuya said, flicking Dazai’s arm. The other flinched. “You could just go into a bar and order a drink. You could be Deliveroo-ing yourself an overpriced drink and even that would be much better than this.”

The idea of going through the hurdle of walking into a bar seemed to disgust Dazai, though. He twisted his lips and showed Chuuya his open palms as if to push away the idea.

“But going to a bar implies ordering, and talking to people,” he whined.

Chuuya rolled his eyes.
What a man-child, he thought. How could he chug down cheap alcohol to avoid talking to people? He was a star. 

Sadly, no one had the power to complicate the simple things in life like Dazai man-child Osamu. 

“Then maybe ask yourself if it’s worth it,” Chuuya said, standing up and tugging at Dazai’s hand to encourage him to do the same. “Come on. Aya must be finished by now. I’ll buy you a proper drink.”

 

As it turned out, they never got that drink. 

On the contrary, Chuuya ended up in a situation he would have never imagined possible.

He supposed that was another superpower of Dazai — dragging him into situations he never thought possible. More impossible than having a date with an idol, of course.
That was a whole other level of absurd already, and Chuuya found himself pinching his forearm a few times.
Part of him couldn’t believe his life. Looking at Aya and Dazai sharing a crepe, holding hands to avoid losing each other in the crowd, with Dazai nodding while Aya talked about school and ballet class and the art club— damn, it felt like a family outing. A real one.
And Chuuya feared he could get used to the feeling.

The idea terrified him.
Dazai was not going to be a permanent member of their family. Dazai would be gone in six months. 

He was a fake dating adventure that had felt too real, too soon.

They were walking down the different stalls when Aya gasped, her index fingers shooting up as she pointed at a lavish booth, a little defiled from the rest of the stalls. Even without the board, it was easy to guess the nature of the Fortune Teller booth.
A tourist trap, likely.
Purple curtains covered a simple white table and two chairs, and Aya’s eyes gleamed with anticipation as Chuuya’s blood froze.

“Let’s go in here!”

Dazai was the first one to stop, falling into step with Aya. He did not mind walking around with a pre-teen holding his hand, as if he were truly an acquired big brother, and Chuuya was still deciding what to think about it.

Still, he frowned, glancing at Aya and, then, at the booth. A waste of money. Fantastic.

“You’re not serious.” 

“I’m totally serious. I want to know if I’ll pass math,” Aya whined, holding her brother’s gaze while she tugged at Dazai’s hand. “Please? Please, please pleeee-aaa-se?”

“Yeah, you’re definitely not gonna pass that since you never study.”

The girl gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth. “That’s mean!”

Chuuya’s eyebrows arched. He was already being merciful by not mentioning that Aya spent her time listening to Ouji’s songs and chatting in his Fanclub. “You know it too. Ya can pay me for telling you that you’re not gonna pass math, young miss.”

“But I still want to make sure, and you’re not a fortune teller.”

“I can be one if the answer is obvious enough.”

“Aya-can, is this about a boy?” Dazai chimed in. Despite his gentle tone, Aya’s cheeks caught fire.

“No! I swear. It’s about math.”

Sure.

“Ah. Or it can be about a girl, of course,” Chuuya added, pensively taking his own chin between his fingers.

Dazai grinned. “Something tells me it’s about a boy,” he said. 

“You two! You’re allying against a poor young damsel in distress? That is sooo mean!”

Smoothly, Chuuya stepped closer to Dazai. He smirked as he wrapped his arm around the man’s sinewy waist, pulling him closer. “Me? Allying with Dazai to taunt you? Jamais.” 

“Hm, I like it when you speak French,” Dazai drawled, his lips twitching up. His eyes lit up with a raw, hungry enthusiasm that did things to Chuuya’s stomach. Somehow, he ignored the flush of sudden want that blossomed in his chest and grinned back.

“Ah, is that so? What do you want me to say?”

“Chuuya,” Dazai said, leaning forward. His lips lingered an inch away from the other’s mouth, lightly parted. So inviting. His voice dipped. “I can’t say such things in front of children.”

With a chuckle, Chuuya bent forward. Not quite a kiss, but almost. “Hold that thought, then.”

“Oh, you can bet I will.”

As he drifted closer to Dazai with a smirk playing on his lips, Chuuya teasingly hooked one finger into the other’s pants pocket — keeping him as close as possible, letting his breath fan over the man’s skin. He looked into Dazai’s eyes, pools of liquid honey, glittering with a genuine smile under the sunlight.

Aya pouted, folding her arms to her chest. A  strand of hair had gotten caught in her lips as she looked away, her face pink to the tip of her ears.

“Stop it,” she growled, “You two are embarrassing.” 

Chuuya snickered against Dazai’s mouth.

“So, Osa—“

“Ok!” Aya cried, interrupting him before he could say the name. No one in Ouji’s fan club called him Osamu — no one dared. “Ok. You win. Maybe it’s about a boy,” she whispered. “Now please stop that. You are so embarrassing, I’m going to vomit.”

“Stop what?” Chuuya sing-sang, still speaking with his lips against Dazai’s mouth. In response, the other touched the tip of his nose to Chuuya’s own in an Eskimo kiss, sending a jolt down his body. 

The redhead smiled and, for a moment, he was blissfully, stupidly happy.

“K- kissing!” 

“Oh? Can’t I kiss my boyfriend?” Dazai hmmed, in a husky voice that shook the redhead to the core. “Heard that, Chuuya?”

He pretended the word boyfriend didn’t just turn his stomach into mush. “Hm-m. That’s unfortunate.”

“Pity.” Gently, Dazai drove a strand of hair behind Chuuya’s ear. “And here I wanted to whisper sweet nothings in my beloved boyfriend’s ear since Aya-chan was going to keep secrets from us. And we could hold hands and—”

“Stooop! I’ll tell you everything!”

Chuuya grinned, leaning against Dazai. Minor victories, he thought. 

He pretended to not notice how Dazai’s hands lingered around his hips even after Aya told them everything about the boy she liked.

As Chuuya imagined, Aya wanted to check with a fortune teller to be assured that she would indeed have a successful relationship with her crush (not under Chuuya’s watch, anyway).
Young love always wins, the fortune teller said. She winked too, complicit, and Chuuya rolled his eyes. Aya blushed furiously, but smiled. 

What Chuuya didn’t imagine, however, was that he would be the one who had his future read. 

Not that he wanted to, of course. He didn’t need to know his future. He didn’t care. But he also couldn’t protest when Aya dragged him on the chair and slapped some cash — Kouyou’s courtesy and weekly allowance — on the fortune teller’s table. 

“Please, ma’am, read my brother’s future,” Aya ordered, with a bossy scowl as she slipped some money on the woman’s table. She took it after Kouyou, of course — orders and bribery and natural charm were a terrible DNA combination. “He’s very unlucky.”

“Oi—“

“He needs guidance so he can stop making messes.”

Let it be known that Chuuya only capitulated after glaring at Aya and staring daggers at Dazai — he had turned on his heels and clasped his mouth on his hand to cover a giggle, the traitor. He tried to fight it. He did.
The truth was, he could hardly say no to Aya. He wasn’t that strong.

And he was sitting at the Fortune Teller’s table already, anyway, so it was too late to run for the hills.

Out of a three-card reading for past and present, the fortune teller has picked the reverse pope and the tower. Meaning, bad news and even more bad news. His past and present were absolute car crashes.

The woman told him he was a creative person — no shit, Chuuya thought. — and a nurturer.
He could be described as an impulsive, giving character. 

Again, something the woman could probably guess from the fact that he’d allowed his little sister to drag him into a tarot reading. The tower — his present — seemed to stand for the worst possible shitstorm ever, and indicated he should brace for something bad looming over his life.
So I’ve got shitty luck. What’s new, Chuuya thought.

Finally, the woman uncovered the third card; the future.

It revealed the intricate, handsome drawing of a young man sitting sideways on a throne of gold. Long-limbed, smiling at the distance, the man in the card expressed a handsome nonchalance that made Chuuya pout.
In the backdrop, several swords cut the golden background.

“Oh. There is a prince in your life, my boy,” the woman hummed, fingers brushing over the smooth surface of the card. “The prince of swords. A cunning, capricious presence that can bring rationality, but also challenges and change. It’s an unexpected help, and perhaps sexual awakening.” She didn’t even try to dissimulate her delight as she glanced sideways, looking at Dazai with no regard for how Chuuya’s blood ran cold.
Sexual awakening. Fuck.
Try perpetual blueballing, that'd be more fitting 
Horrified, his blue eyes traveled all the way up until he met Dazai’s grin.

“Shut up,” Chuuya mouthed, his cheeks on fire. “Don’t say a word.”

The remark only fueled Dazai’s childish joy. And it was stupid, really, because Dazai was projecting. “A prince,” he echoed, taking his chin pensively in between two fingers. “It reminds me of someone.”

“Yeah, I wonder why.”

“It’s a nice card. You should be happier, Chibi.”

You’re just happy because you’re a self-centered idiot, Chuuya thought — and hated how fond it sounded. His treacherous brain spat that thought out as if he liked the idea of Dazai giving himself airs like an actual royal in public, casting himself as the savior and protagonist of Chuuya’s tarot reading. Asshole. 

“I’m gonna punch you if you start gloating, asshole,” he growled.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Aya squealed. “Oh! The prince could be Ouji!” 

“Hm?” The woman said, tilting her head in Aya’s direction. Her earrings dangled against the soft, reddened sides of her cheeks.

“Nothing. Please, ignore her,” Chuuya growled. “She drank too much Diet Coke for today.”

“Hey!” 

“Do tell us more about this card, please,” Dazai interjected, landing a solid hand on Chuuya’s shoulder. The proximity made him quiver. “What is this stunning and kind prince going to do? Is he going to win Chibi’s heart?”

“I don’t know about no shitty prince, but I’m ready for a regicide,” Chuuya hissed under his breath.

“Now Chuuya, that’s violent~”

“I’ll show you violence if you don’t shut up.”

“Are they going to marry, ma’am? My o’nii-san and the prince?” Aya asked, big eyes sparkling. She leaned closer to the reading table, eyes shining as if she was living a fairytale in her head.

The woman’s lips puckered, and she squinted as she focused on the cards.
Chuuya pondered that, considering how much he was paying her for a bunch of bullshit, the woman should have at least predicted an amazing future. 

She dragged a long, red nail across the prince of shitty scams card, eyes narrowed and pupils focused as if she was following a voice only she could hear — Chuuya suspected it was the whispers of the money he was going to waste on this dumb reading. 

“I will not lie, it’s an interesting reading, my dear,” the woman started. “Your future will be punctuated by unexpected events. The tower feigns change, a challenge and, sometimes, a painful loss. But the minor arcana represented by the prince of swords is a positive omen — it might be seen as rationality conquering the darkness. It brings balance because -  you see? -  the prince holds two swords: creation and destruction. It might mean you will overcome great difficulties together.”

Dazai hummed under his breath, nodding gingerly. “Right. Right. I guess that Chuuya being vertically challenged may be a hurdle.”

In response, Chuuya kicked him in the shin, subtly, and reminded himself that he did not believe in tarots, magic and destiny. 

He had no prince in his future.
Balance? Yes, please and thank you.
Rationality? God, he needed that.
What he didn’t need was a stupid prince haunting him even in tarot readings.

And he most definitely was not going to hurt himself by thinking that his so-called fated shitty prince would stay. Ouji had other priorities. He had a life; a real one.

They wouldn’t have time to overcome difficulties together. 

But, stealing occasional glances at Dazai’s unguarded smile, Chuuya found himself thinking that it would have been nice to have more time and, maybe, cultivate a real relationship. It would have been nice to visit the festival the next summer, and the one after that. 

As the afternoon went on, he forgot about the Fortune Teller — at least until he found himself with his nose up to the sky, staring at the fireworks exploding in front of his eyes. 

“It’s beautiful,” he heard Dazai murmur. 

And, after all, Chuuya couldn’t decide if Dazai was talking about the lights, their intertwined fingers, or their odd relationship.

—

When Dazai returned from the photo shoot for Men’s Non-no ’s December issue, which offered him a cover with A.D.A’s frontman Edogawa Ranpo and Yosano Akiko, he didn’t ask the driver to take him home. 

He drove to Chuuya’s place, let himself in, stammered to the couch, and plummeted on Chuuya’s lap with a content sigh. 

He looked so happy as he said:

“ Honey, I’m home.”

It seemed so natural.

The first thing Chuuya noticed was that Dazai smelled like expensive cologne, a subtle hint of roses and cinnamon lingering on his bandages, and silver rings bejeweled his lean fingers. He had picked nicer earrings, and his hair looked fluffier than normal — well-brushed, soft.
And all that would have been nice, almost romantic, if only Dazai had the keys to Chuuya’s apartment to let himself in.
It took Chuuya a second to remember that detail.

“What the— Oi, you’re in my home?!” He barked, looking down at the man resting on his lap and sporting the most carefree, satisfied smile, like a toddler cuddling their favorite blanket. “How did you even get in, you criminal?”

“Oh~ I picked the lock.”

“What?!”

“It’s easy, and I always have earrings or hairpins on me,” Dazai explained, voice a little shy of a tired whisper. He adjusted his head on Chuuya’s lap. 

He was so tall that his legs dangled past the couch’s armrest.

“You can lock pick?” Chuuya screeched, considering pushing the idiot off his knees and to the ground. What the hell, he thought. “And why are you even here, you imbecile? Kunikida is gonna scold me again!”

Dazai let out a thin noise from the back of his throat, not much different from a puppy wailing for attention. “Why does Chuuya care so much about that scary manager and his stupid schedule? Obviously, I wanted to see my boyfriend…”

“Then you could have called ahead!”

“Come on, chibi, let me sleep on your lap. I’m so tired.”

“No way!” Chuuya barked, fisting a handful of Dazai’s hair. “And why are you tired? Are you not sleeping enough again?!”

“Well… Between the meetings for the new album, the photoshoots, and the interviews I didn’t have time to sleep.”

God. Someone really needed to tie Dazai to a bed. 

Possibly not Chuuya, though, or the 'get Dazai on a bed' would have snowballed into something completely different and they wouldn’t have much time to rest.

“Then go home and sleep.”

“Chuuya is such a cruel man~” Dazai whined, boyishly. 

“Dazai!” 

“Chuuya should stop yelling,” he mumbled, dramatically, sporting tears Chuuya was not entirely sure were fake. Maybe he was just that tired. “It’s not my fault, so don’t get mad at me. The photo shoot went on forever, and Higuchi wanted to keep refreshing the makeup, and we had a hundred costume changes~ I hated every single moment of it. And then there was the meet and greet, and can you imagine how many screaming girls I had to smile at? My mouth feels stiff.” Dazai sighed, deflating with a pout. His expression thawed into a lightless line. “Ugh. Today sucked.”

“Today was still your job,” Chuuya murmured, although not unkindly. He ran a hand through Dazai’s hair. 

“I don’t like my job,” Dazai whined. “I like to sleep on Chuuya’s lap. You’re soft.”

“And you’re being a whiny baby.”

Rolling to the side, sneaking a hand under Chuuya’s thighs — claiming the warm spot between his slacks and the couch — Dazai sighed. “You know, Chibi, I wish I could avoid the crowded events. I wish I could just sing.”

Oh, Chuuya thought, letting silence linger between them. Of course, that’s what he wants to do. 

Singing was Dazai’s entire life. 

Every time he opened his mouth, Dazai leaned into the lyrics and the notes, pouring his overflowing loneliness inside them. He didn’t sing for the big crowds, for the fame and the fans. 

He sang because he couldn’t cry or laugh or express himself like anybody else, and had molded his coping mechanism into art. It was a brave, selfless choice. Because, as the world sang with him, Dazai cried through a glass barrier, convinced no one else could hear him — that no one would ever truly find him.  

He sang to be found, yet retreated out of reach the moment someone noticed his loneliness. 
He was the personification of a cat in an alley, Dazai, friend to everyone and truly belonging to none. Living anywhere, and nowhere.

Suddenly, the idea of such a lonely man being surrounded by fans all day pulled the rug from under Chuuya’s feet. His stomach dropped to his ankles and he bristled, carnal flowers of jealousy blooming in his stomach. 
He wasn’t the only one who could soothe Dazai’s pain and loneliness. 

Dazai was a coveted man. 

Dazai was the idol everybody wanted. 

Dazai had the world dancing in the palm of his hand.

Chuuya’s bottom lip trembled as he let a sense of possessiveness sink in him — cold and then hot and then everywhere. Suddenly the veins in his body filled with sand scraping the tender walls of his insides.  
He could never compete with whatever Dazai had, and there was no point in doing it. He didn’t belong to his world. 

Dazai could toy with a normal person with a normal life and write songs about him, sure. The princeling idol could sneak into Chuuya's house and family and introduce him to his cat and all that. 
But, in a few years, Dazai would reminisce with his new supermodel date (a girl, a boy, whatever) about that old crush he used to have for a no-name scriptwriter in Yokohama. He would remember that boy with blue eyes he’d only dated to sell albums. 

He would remember the circumstances, but not the name.
He’d forget him. Dazai would forget them, and all the marvelous, crazy things they were and could have been.

And that would have been alright, Chuuya told himself. He and Dazai were on borrowed time, two colliding universes never meant to last. 

But until then, he was ready to make it count. It didn’t feel like a trade anymore.

“Oi, Dazai?” 

Dazai lifted his gaze, big eyes looking at Chuuya as if trying to assess what, exactly, had changed his attitude. And Chuuya wished he could offer an answer to that mute question, but he couldn’t. That jealousy, that sense of possession? It was unwarranted. It was dumb. 

Yet, it was the truest emotion Chuuya had allowed himself to feel in a long while. 

“Hm?” 

You wanna sing, right? Then, for as long as we can—

“As long as we are in this dating thing, fake or not, don’t sing for anybody else,” Chuuya said, forcing himself to speak before he could chicken out. He remembered when Dazai rushed off the stage to kiss him and understood it, at last: that urgency, that need. “Men, women, your fans… I don’t care. Sing thinking of me. Sing only for me.”

After a moment of surprise, Dazai’s lips curled up. Yes, he seemed to say, yes. For now, and forever on. 

“Aw. Is Chuuya becoming a little jealous, at last?”

“Damn yes I am.” He leaned forth, fisting the front of Dazai’s shirt. The aggressiveness of his fist clashed with the indulgent smile gracing Dazai’s mouth. “Sing for me, Dazai. I mean it.”

“Of course,” Dazai hummed, happily. “I can’t believe it. You’re such a possessive pet.”

“You have no idea.”

“And I look forward to exploring it,” Dazai said, voice earnest and a half-lidded grin that caused Chuuya to skip a heartbeat. 

He didn’t want to lose this feeling, or the man in front of him. 

“I was going in for a bath,” he said. “Wanna join?” 

Dazai glanced up, then at the clock on the living room wall.  Chuuya could see interest in the other’s eyes peak before he remembered that nothing was going to happen because of the transactional nature of their relationship. 

“I don’t know,” Dazai hummed, glancing at the clock again as if he was gauging if it was worth staying. “With the interview for NHK tomorrow, I think I might have to go. It’s odd enough that Kunikida-kun hasn’t buried me in messages and tweaks on the call sheet yet, and now Odasaku actually calls my landline to check I’m home. So I should go. I think. It'd be the adult thing to do.” Then, he thought it over for another moment, and Chuuya’s grip over his shirt mellowed down. Dazai smiled — fleeting as a blossom in spring and just as tender. “But who cares. I’ll stay and keep Chuuya company in the tub.”

Chuuya blinked, eyebrow arching. “Why the sudden change of mind?”

“Chuuya’s puppy eyes.”

“Oi, if this is a dog metaphor—” 

“It’s not,” Dazai interrupted him, leaning forward. He sounded distant, distracted, as his eyes kept falling on Chuuya’s lips. Not kissing him was an exercise in self-control. “I like Chuuya’s eyes. I like many things about Chuuya, in fact.”

“You don’t have to stay if you can’t.”

“I don’t care about what I can do,” Dazai countered, a whisper away from Chuuya’s lips. “I want to stay. Are you ok with us being in the same tub, though?”

“More than ok.”

“We can always take a bath and not do anything.”

Chuuya hesitated. “Or we could see where things go.”

“Look, Chibi, if you are doing it for me…”

“I’m not. I know what I said about no sex, and I somehow still stand by it in general, but—"

But I don’t care.

“But?” Dazai prompted. His voice sounded quiet, open. 

“But this is not a trade; this is getting more real than I thought. And at this point, I guess you are not a stranger anymore. Or a job. You are—“ You are someone I’m falling in love with. “You are Dazai, and we’re something in between friends and partners, at this point. And I’m alright with everything that might happen because I want to. I want you.”

Dazai came alive under the confession. He smiled with his eyes, with his whole body, and said: “You have me.”

How earnest it sounded. How true. 

That corny, rom-com answer gave Chuuya all the reassurance he needed — the enthusiastic consent, so beautiful as it shone in the depth of Dazai’s irises, and the reassurance that sex was a choice, not a clause. It was true. 

Whatever fake clusterfuck they were… the tension pulling them together was true and honest and ever-burning. 

Whenever Dazai was around, Chuuya found himself unable to breathe, to speak, to think, mind and heart filled with dumb, blissful happiness. That was real. That mattered.

He fisted the front of Dazai’s shirt, laughing as he pulled the man in for a kiss, hands wandering everywhere with the same boldness of the very first night. 

Sing only for me.

Maybe, Chuuya considered, he wasn’t just a stranger Dazai had hired after a one-night stand. He wasn’t just a fake. 

Despite what Kunikida had said, he was falling in love with Dazai. 

And maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to let go.

—

“What would have happened if that summer had gone differently? If he hadn’t left? I’m not sure. Nobody will ever know.”

[Nakahara Chuuya, GRAMMYs LIVE Red Carpet, 2022]

Notes:

Thank you so much for reading and I really, really hope you liked the chapter 😭❤️

Let me know your thoughts in the comments ❤️

Chapter 5: Daybreak

Summary:

A sound like grovel, like sand embraced by the ocean. A sound soft and rough and warm.
This is a sad song, he thought, fighting for air— fighting for ground. But it’s Dazai’s idea of a love song.

Notes:

TW: PLEASE read here and be careful with the hospital scene. It’s 100% skippable so if graphic descriptions disturb you, feel free to move forward.
- Minor Character Death
- Gore
- Graphic Description of Violence. If car accidents trigger you or if graphic descriptions may disturb you, skip the part at the hospital.
- Minor description of a panic attack (it's not very obvious, but it's there. Again totally feel free to skip the scene at the hospital.)
- Implied Suicide Attempt

Major thanks to Marì for beta reading this chapter (as always, go read her beautiful fics!) and for suffering with me. It was tough.
The song at the end is Maneskin’s The Loneliest ❤️

“The thing is, Dazai was singing to save his life. He’s— it’s hard to explain.” Chuuya frowned, looking down at the white floor of the TV studio, his left foot tapping on the tiles as if to set the pace for his own thoughts.

The TV host gawked.
Such an honest expression seemed almost misplaced in her doll-like gaze, framed with perfectly curled eyelashes.

“You didn’t see it,” Chuuya continued. “Ouji was smiling on that stage, dancing and whatnot. But, behind that circus, Dazai was drowning. He was dying.” 

“That’s why he took the 2018 break,” the woman offered.

Her red lips twitched up as if she’d just cracked a code, and Chuuya smiled with her. She hadn’t cracked shit. 
But that was the catch, really: no one understood a thing about Dazai unless Dazai opened up first. 

“I think he took that break for a lot of reasons.” 

Odasaku, first of all.
Mori.
Then the fact that Dazai was using, and that would have killed him eventually. But Chuuya also liked to think that the break and following comeback had been an inevitable cornerstone in Dazai’s life. 

“And speaking of 2018 and changes…” She smiled a little, coy smile, letting the sentence trail off. “How sad.” 

“How sad indeed,” he echoed.

“Did you expect to break up?”

“Frankly, we weren’t even truly together. I didn’t expect anything.”

“How did you two say goodbye?”

“We didn’t, actually.”

Her bright eyes widened, surprise flashing across her face.

Chuuya going off-script and mentioning something he’d never said before wasn’t planned, but he’d also sworn to himself he would be honest during this particular interview. Dazai was happy for him to say the truth as it was. Dazai had his back.
So he touched the ring to feel his husband close and glanced at the camera, knowing Dazai was watching. 

“Ah, I apologize,” the woman said, squirming in her seat. “I thought… I mean, I understood you still had an arrangement with Ouji, at the time.”

“We did, but it was a spoken agreement and Dazai just fucked off exactly like he promised he would: finding the closest emergency exit and bolting.” That asshole, he added, although it had no bite. “But you see… there’s something wistful about him, ethereal. He’s like sand through your fingers, that man. Gone before you know it.”

[Yokohama, 2018]

Falling in love with Dazai was slow until it wasn’t anymore. 

During the first week of September, a weird sense of oppression started cramming Chuuya’s chest whenever Dazai wasn’t around.
He started leaning more freely on the man, dialing his number without thinking; he looked for him even during work hours.
Every time Tachihara asked him what was wrong, Chuuya would answer with a simple ‘I can’t focus’. Elusive. Cowardly so.

Even now, with Dazai resting with his head on his lap, Chuuya struggled to find words for this newfound sense of being perpetually distracted and yet wide awake.
But, again, being infatuated had turned him into a moron.

“Chuuya~ I don’t want to go.”

Raising a quizzical eyebrow, Chuuya placed a hand on Dazai’s head.
He scratched him behind the ear like a lazy cat, and snorted when the brunet nuzzled into the touch. The warm pressure of Dazai’s cheek against his thigh sent shivers up his body. “Do I look like I’m your manager? You have to go unless Kunikida says you can stay.”

“But I am soooo very tired~”

“Maybe if you could only eat something real for a change and get some food in your stomach, you’d have enough energy to face a concert.” He scowled, seeing Dazai part his lips and loading a reply. "No, canned crab all the time doesn't count. It's not healthy."

Dazai whined. He even sounded like their cat. “Chuuya is mean. I was only going to say that small promotional concerts make me sick.”

“Why?”

“They make me claustrophobic. People are too close.”

“Are you allergic to people, now? Well, aren’t you a prince,” Chuuya echoed, with a laugh trapped in his voice — flickering like a butterfly, blooming in the intimacy.

With a pout, Dazai propped himself up to face the redhead. His bottom lip jutted out and, for a moment, he truly looked like a spoiled prince. “Come with me,” he said, with a pleading nuance in his voice. “Ah, I know! Let’s call Kunikida-kun and find you a VIP seat or something. Maybe I could sneak you backstage since I need moral support.”

For what felt like a lifetime, Chuuya stared at the man. 

He could easily see how the tight bandages kept Dazai’s tired limbs together like the strings of a puppet, and had long noticed the dark circles under the man’s eyes. 
His chiseled cheekbones seemed ever more prominent on his thin face, framed by soft brown locks.

In that scene, Chuuya saw all the signs of a man who hated himself.
Every single day of his life, Dazai worked himself to the bone. 

But despite that and no matter how ardently he wanted to be there for the man, Chuuya couldn’t always pause his life for him. 

“I’m not coming to your concert, dumbass. I’ve got work to do for some clients in an hour, and I can’t just bail on Tachihara as if it's acceptable to just avoid work. He’d throw me out.” He flicked Dazai’s forehead before the other could pout and talk him into bailing work. “Let’s do something— Sing me what you want right here, now.”

“Eh?”

“To warm yourself up. Sing me something you like.”

Dazai hesitated, gnawing at his bottom lip. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“What about those Showa Era songs Oda likes? You love them.” As soon as he said it, he realized from Dazai’s frown that the man wasn’t in the mood for any of that. Pity. Chuuya had recently discovered that he enjoyed those old ballads — much like Dazai, they had grown on him. Instead, tucking a strand away from Dazai’s face, he smiled. “Then sing me the thing you were humming earlier.”

“Oh, you mean Perfect Blue?”

“Yeah, that one,” Chuuya said, bobbing his head down in a nod. 

Dazai seemed to ponder over the proposal for a second, side-glancing at Chuuya. Then, the most subtle flush covered his face. “Ok. So. You know it’s not finished.”

“I know.”

“I’m trying something different, so don’t judge.”

Displeased, Chuuya tutted. “Christ’s sake, Dazai— I’m not asking for something perfect. I’m asking for something you actually enjoy singing.”

He didn’t expect the harsh words to convince Dazai, but they did.
When the man tilted his head and nodded, however briefly, Chuuya wasn’t sure what to expect. Perfect Blue remained a mystery even for him.
He knew that the brunet had vomited out all the words and arrangements for the song in a night, although he refused to explain how. 

Leave it to Dazai Osamu to turn a sad love song into a chart-topper overnight.

Unlike his crystal clear stage voice, this was a smooth growl. It was an enveloping sound that didn’t coddle the ear but aroused it. It sounded like nails dragged down bare skin, scratching languidly. 
It was suffering and digging it.

Dazai’s true voice was gritty but not unpleasant. 
It scraped against the cords of Chuuya’s soul instead of plucking them gently, pulling them till the point of breaking. Then, on peaks, Dazai always took a shaky breath and released. He sang with his belly. 
He sang with his heart. 

And, most of all, he sang looking Chuuya straight in the eye, almost looking for a piece of himself in their locked gazes — in their brushing hands. 

Chuuya only realized Dazai was finished when silence pinched him. For the longest time, he stared at the other man with a mind filled with words and no strength to articulate them.
It was beautiful. It was moving.

And for the first time, he realized that Perfect Blue was, at least in part, his. 

It was how Dazai saw him. It was how Dazai remembered making love to him.

“What do you think?” Dazai asked, waiting for a response. 

“Fuck,” Chuuya breathed out, staring at the man and scrambling for words that wouldn't come to him. 

I think you finally changed my mind. 

I think I love your voice.

I think—

“Fuck,” he repeated. “I think I love you.”

 

Dazai’s existence had always been cheap. Cheap drugs and cheap alcohol and cheap thrills.
But that confession? God.
That didn’t come cheap at all. 

He didn’t talk. He leaned forward and framed Chuuya’s face in his hands, stomach dipping when the other didn’t move away. The redhead seemed stunned into silence by his own words, blue eyes staring blankly with a mixture of horror and surprise, every inch of him silently hollering: oh gosh, what did I do? 
Words seemed cheap too, so Dazai kissed him instead. 

He kissed Chuuya, and it was tender.
He kissed him quietly when he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. The heel of his hand brushed Chuuya’s jawbone, thumb lodged in the sensitive space between his chin and neck. 

He found himself grinning when, snapping out of his surprise with a violent shake, Chuuya sank a hand in his hair and tugged and pulled him closer. 

“Look, I’m sorry—“

“Don’t be,” Dazai breathed out. “Say it again.”

Chuuya beamed against his mouth.

‘Oh, I will,’ his eyes said. There was a fierce gleam to the blue irises that spoke of future. ‘Again, and again, and again until my throat runs dry and my voice will be raspy and people will think I’m a fool. I’ll scream it, I’ll whisper it, I’ll vow it. The lowest of beggars, praying the highest of heavens. 

I love you, I love you.  I love you.’

Instead, because it was never going to be that easy, Chuuya snorted and asked: “What if I changed my mind?” 

“You didn’t,” Dazai pleaded, sounding dozed off, too busy looking at the redhead’s lips — so pink and glossy with the kiss, corners rugged up in a mindless smile  — to truly pay any mind to the weight of his words. What he really meant was: ‘please, please, tell me you will never change your mind.’ 

“I think—“ Chuuya paused, playing with the silence. He relished being a tease, he did. Yet there was an endearing gleam in his blue eyes, now. “I think I’ve fallen in love with a Mackerel.” 

Still smirking, Dazai leaned forward. 
He kissed Chuuya again, open-mouthed, tugging the other against his body — tasting the same need and anticipation of that first meeting. 

“Hello,” he said, smiling like a madman. “I’m a mackerel.” 

Chuuya giggled and Dazai’s entire body curled around that sound, claiming it for himself. “That you certainly are.” 

Dazai hummed.
Things that he thought cringe weren’t that terrible or corny anymore, as long as they involved him and Chuuya. 

“Does Chuuya mean it for real, though?” He murmured, still trying to wrap his mind around the confession. He’d never told Chuuya Perfect blue was for him, he’d never even allowed himself to compute that information — telling himself that it was inspired by a boy he was fake dating, not for a boy he had fallen for — yet it was undeniable at that point. “I can’t believe it.”

“Me neither,” Chuuya said with a smile. His eyes shone, blue and black and so, so bright.
Dazai looked at him, getting lost in the constellations of his freckles, counting his blessings as he counted the subtle marks on his boyfriend’s skin.

A shiver ran down his spine. “But I don’t deserve you.”

“You deserve anything that makes you happy,” Chuuya said. “You deserve the world, Osamu.”

For once, just that once, Dazai allowed himself to believe those words.
He allowed himself to be nothing but mindlessly, fully happy.

He held Chuuya close, hands on the other’s hips, nose hidden in russet hair.
Dazai let out a sharp sigh, his tongue caught between his teeth, when Chuuya kissed his neck, right under the jawline.
He slid a hand under Chuuya’s shirt and found not hard bones and gauze, but soft skin and warmth and subtle abs.
What he hated about himself — skin — became something he loved to touch on the other. 

Their mouths found each other again, Chuuya’s hands lost in his hair and Dazai’s teeth sinking into the redhead’s bottom lip.

“Oi, hold on. You’ve got a concert to go to.”

“H’mm.”

“I still have an hour at the very least, but you’re late.”

“Screw the concert,” he said, with an edge in his voice. “This is more important.”

He loves me, and I love him. 

The moment he turned off his phone, Dazai shut all his fears and silenced all his other engagements — he shut the world out.
He didn’t answer any of the messages and calls asking for his whereabouts. At the same time, though he never outright replied to Chuuya’s confession.

He told himself he had a lifetime to muster enough courage to let out those new, daunting words. 

In the beginning, he had asked Chuuya for something powerful. Something human.
In return, the man had gifted him the butterflies and the stars and the fireworks and love, the one that burns.
The real deal. 

In lieu of an answer, he guided Chuuya to his feet and laughed, and pushed his real boyfriend to the bedroom with no intention of freeing him anytime soon.
When words failed him, Dazai was sure his hands and tongue could speak for him.

—

“I asked my team to reschedule the concert.

I remember Odasaku replied to my message with a simple okay.
Kunikida-kun was going to pop a vessel, because ultimately he was the one dealing with the venues and all that, but Odasaku went with the flow.
He was happy for me.

‘I’m gonna change my life and skip this gig,’ I said. ‘I’m in love. Wish me good luck.’

‘Fine. I’ll take the team to dinner, then.’

That’s the last conversation I had with Odasaku.”

Dazai Osamu, interview with Pen, 2021
Visited: 155 times

—

When Dazai left Chuuya’s apartment, he expected the car to drive him straight to the recording studio inside Mori Corp HQ, where Mori would scold him for disappearing again.
It never did.
Dazai never reached the familiar black door of Mori Corp, nor the marble lobby and the labyrinth of corridors that would take him to the recording rooms.

I love you. 

Suddenly it didn’t mean much at all once Dazai realized where he was headed — not to the familiar black skyscraper, but to Yokohama General Hospital.

He found himself not in Mori’s office, but in a bleak corridor. A nurse invited him to wait there, the white neons wounding his eyes and the smell of antiseptic and plastic making his nostrils flare.
Mori was the first to greet him, pale as a ghost. His black coat floated around the man’s frame as he quickly reached for Dazai.
The stubble covering his chin and loose raven hair signaled that the head of Mori Corp, one of the most influential voices in the entertainment industry, a man who always dressed the part, had rushed to the hospital without any heads-up or time to change.
Dazai’s stomach dropped to his calves as he tried to breathe.

A little girl trailed behind Mori, and Dazai recognized his daughter — a pretty blonde girl, not older than ten.
Elise, she was called. Dazai remembered her.
With blonde hair and a notoriously sweet tooth and a platoon of pretty dresses, Elise-chan was the apple of Mori’s eye, a “treasure” he had with the German soprano Olga Kann.

Elise’s frilly red dress fluttered around her legs, and her blonde hair fell on her back like a waterfall of gold as she yawned.

“Dazai-kun,” Mori said, slowing down as he waited for Dazai to close their distance first. “I thought we had lost you too.”

Dazai walked up to him, trying to glance behind the man’s frame in an attempt to gauge the situation. The tension in his shoulders skyrocketed when Mori grabbed his arms, squeezing. 

“What happened?” 

“There was an accident.”

“What?! When?” He asked, his voice rising beyond his control as he squirmed in the man’s grip. “What happ—“

“It’s about Oda-kun.”

Past that very first piece of information, Dazai’s brain flatlined.
It rejected the sounds, retreating behind a wall of obstinate deftness. Although he heard scattered bits of the rest of the sentence — car crash, tree, blood — he refused to compute them.

It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t true.

“How is he?” He willed himself to ask, feeling the world spinning fast and faster. He dreaded the moment it would come to an abrupt halt, and reality would hit him in the face. “I want to talk to him.”

“Dazai-kun, you are not listening—“

“How is he?” He asked again, his voice harsh and howling at the same time.

It sounded like a whisper full of hope, even if a part of him knew that hope was misplaced.

Because Mori was looking at him too pitifully, dark eyes narrowing under the neons as people walked past them. Someone coughed in the distance. Somebody laughed.
Elise-chan hooked a hand around her father’s trousers, clinging to him in search of comfort. 

Reminded of her presence, Dazai looked at her with spirited, wide eyes.
Why was a child in the hospital? It couldn’t be that bad if she was here, right? Right?

“He’s just past that white door behind me,” Mori said. Dazai’s stomach dipped. Good news, bad news. He knew Mori’s patterns enough to brace for the next bit, to hate him for not hitting him with the bad news first; despising Mori for that granular, useless second of hope. “You don’t have to walk in there if you don’t want to. I’m sorry for your loss, Dazai-kun.”

No.

No, he thought.

He stared at Elise obsessively, not seeing her — seeing white, breathing hard as if he’d tried to outrun that exact moment all his life.
A scathing pain in his chest stabbed him, forcing him to double over.

“He’s not—"

“The doctors tried everything they could.”

“Oh, please.” He raised his gaze to Mori. “I don’t care about what they tried to do. I want to speak with Odasaku.”

“I understand your shock, Dazai-kun.”

“It can't," he murmured. "I... how?" 

His voice trembled, barely surging above a whisper. He didn’t want to ask.
He didn’t want to know. And, yet, he was surprised he could talk at all.
But when Mori shrugged, almost contemptuously, liquid anger roiled in him.
He wanted to punch the man and kill him to have Odasaku back.

It couldn’t be right. 

Odasaku wasn’t—

“We missed the signs, I suppose," Mori answered. He sounded oddly dismissive, something off in his tone that caused Dazai's blood to sing. I'll kill you, he thought, I will do it now. Yet even murder seemed meaningless unless it could bring Odasaku back. "Of course, you were his best friend. But you are clearly otherwise preoccupied with your new pet, and we should all have noticed something. It’s not your fault.”

Dazai halted.
It had not felt like his fault until Mori pointed out that he might have been wrong, and that he should have felt some guilt for being too busy to notice Odasaku’s struggles. As if the tragedy was on Dazai, and on the time he lost with his music and Momo and Chuuya.

It’s not your fault.

It sounded like a backhanded reassurance: feel bad, and then I’ll imply you have nothing to feel bad for.

“I’m being told that it was a tragic accident. Oda-kun fell asleep at the wheel," Mori said before Dazai could muster the courage to ask for details. "He died on impact."

Dazai’s lips parted.

No, was the first thought that crossed his mind. A meteor, a gut reaction. No, it’s not possible. 

But, if he was honest— yes, it was possible. Odasaku fostered a few orphans and volunteered at the local orphanage, and worked twelve hours a day, and never, not once in his life, he’d complained. 
He always smiled and cheered everyone up with aloof spontaneity.
He was Dazai’s cornerstone, his lighthouse.

Was that the price to pay? 

On impact. 

How merciless that word sounded — a thunderous crash, an accident, and a heart just stopped and a string just snapped.
Hurting all over and yet not knowing where the shock finished and anguish started, Dazai stared as Mori handed him a picture.

He didn’t take it, didn’t dare touch the paper.
He didn’t trust his hands to hold even the lightest weight, but what he saw would remain forever printed on the back of his eyelids. 

The picture portrayed exactly what Mori had said; a tree, the smashed front of a car, white paint and black plastic debris. Then, the blood.
No corpse, no nothing, and his treacherous brain whispered that perhaps Odasaku might have been alive still.

No corpse, no death.

Maybe it was a mistake.

“I understand the idea of our PR team is to keep it a secret for as long as we can,” Mori said, voice flat. He retreated the picture, and Dazai felt silently thankful for it. He wanted to burn the memory of it away from his brain. “For now, though… He’s behind this door if you want to pay your respects.”

Dazai opened his mouth, a wheezing sound rolling out of his lips. He tried to speak, but his own voice escaped him.
“I—“ He swallowed. “I would like to see him.”

Was it a good idea, though? Mori’s tone said otherwise.
Was it truly what he wanted?

“As I said, you don’t have to go inside, Dazai-kun. You don’t have to see him unless you are ready, and it’s fine if you are not.” A moment of pause, as if he expected Dazai to back down— a suggestion buried in the emptiness of his eyes. Then, the man raised a hand, stretching long fingers in Dazai’s direction. “I’ll need your phone, please. With the news so fresh, we don’t want you to accidentally say too much.”

You’re alone.

Dazai flinched.
“I know,” he said, holding onto his phone. Mori made Odasaku sound like a secret. He nodded again, anguish seeping into him as he yielded. “Yeah. Fine,” he murmured. “The team already has my passwords.”

“And you’ll cut ties with anyone who might turn any kind of information to the press. Anyone who isn’t in the close circle will have to be nuked from your contacts, for now.”

“Sure,” he said. He didn’t care. Not now. He couldn’t even focus on the words.

How unreal it all seemed, Dazai pondered, as he felt his control slip away.

With striking clarity, he sensed every second as a part of him floated away, away from his body, away from what hurt.
You can see him.
Odasaku was a body, though, wasn’t he? A corpse. A mass of limbs. Odasaku was a lifeless ‘it’, now, he was no more — he left Dazai even though he’d sworn he was never going to leave. 
The image of what he supposed the accident looked like hit Dazai stronger than any reality, aided by the picture of the smashed car and the bent tree and the blackish blood splotched over the concrete. 

These things should happen at night, he thought. They should be hidden.
People only die at night. People die when I can’t see how red their blood is.

But Odasaku died on a sunny day.

But the fierce summer sun showed no mercy for Odasaku’s blood, no modesty for his death. It shone over it, over the car crash site and the tree and the blood. The lucid white of the car paint crumpled up like a children’s toy.
It was only a projection of his treacherous fantasy, yet it seemed so realistic. He could almost smell oil and burnt plastic.

And in all that, his mind offered him Odasaku. It was a ghastly, horrifying figure — a monster covered in blood, pieces of skull, and smashed bones. He was a ghost.
Black and red. 

Odasaku is dead.

Overwhelmed, Dazai gaped. The news crashed upon him, diving into his skin and pulverizing his backbone.
He's dead.

I didn't say goodbye.

The world turned hot-white, then black. He fell on his knees and gagged, tasting sour bile and salty tears climbing up his throat. 

“Dazai-san!” he heard. Someone called him again. He couldn’t tell who. It came from somewhere vaguely in the corridor, but it didn’t sound like his name. It wasn’t Mori reaching for him. It wasn’t Mori’s child either. 

It wasn’t a voice he knew.

Odasaku, he thought.
Merciless, his breath stuck in his throat as his heart ran wildly. The lack of control trapped his body in an ice-cold immobility as his mind flickered back to the blood.
The tree, the car, the sun. Spin and rinse and repeat. The tree, the sun, the car. The blood. 
He heard in his ears the gushing of buckets of water emptied on the road to wash away the blood and the limbs that flew out of the vehicle upon impact. 

Odasaku was alone when he died.

You’ll have to cut ties with everybody.

He’s behind this door. 

Your fault.

Dead.

On all four, Dazai puked. Right on the floor. He puked bile in his palms, his empty stomach revolting as his own saliva burned his throat. The warm liquid torrented between his fingers. It dripped on the tiled hospital floor as Dazai crumbled.
He coughed another mouthful of vomit and cried, tears mixing with his fluids, and was grateful that people couldn’t distinguish one from the other.

—

“The death of Oda Sakunosuke changed the music industry. I’m telling you, man. We were never the same after.”

r/J-pop • 1 yr. ago

posted by kroassants

—

“Hi, Odasaku,” Dazai murmured as he pushed into the room.
A faraway, half-smile played on his face. His nose was flushed with the alcohol he’d already chugged down before the function, although it had done nothing to embolden him for the funeral he was about to face.

The room was small and empty enough to create an echoey effect. A dark wooden altar occupied the eastern wall, with incense and Odasaku’s photo and an empty plate Dazai supposed was going to be filled with curry. Little Sakura, one of the orphans Oda was fostering, left her fuchsia crayon, too.
Her lucky crayon.
The image caused Dazai to swallow hard, bile scraping his dry windpipe as he breathed around the lump in his throat. 

Fuck, he wasn’t prepared for this. 

“Hi, Dazai,” he answered to himself, in a voice he imagined Odasaku could have used. He couldn’t bear the silence.

And yet, despite it all, it was in silence that Odasaku smiled back at him from his funeral portrait — a nice face with russet hair, a jovial smile, and a light stubble on his chin, forever crystallized in the handsome appearance of a man too young to die.

His eyes stared at Dazai with brotherly affection, as if tenderly mocking his black suit and tie.
How did Dazai need those eyes. Eyes that remained blue and moveless and kind in the picture, and that now felt unfailingly unreachable.

“Oh please, Odasaku, don’t laugh at me~ it’s mean,” he said, tugging at the lapels of his jacket. Then, he adjusted his tie. “I never learned how to do a proper knot, and couldn’t ask anybody for help— you’re not around and I can’t even text Chuuya, now, with all this media secrecy. So don’t judge me, because it’s your fault my tie is a mess.” He smirked at the picture, opening his arms. “So… How do I look, Odasaku? I dressed up for your party, you know. Do you hate it?” 

He rarely wore all black, Dazai, on and off-stage. It didn’t suit him.
It made his dark hair look brownish and muddy, it watered down the natural brightness of his eyes — dark grey looked great on him, but black? Black was a no. 
Odasaku knew it and bribed the styling department to avoid black attires.

No, Odasaku would have never let him wear something as boring as western-funeral-black.

But, then again, Dazai had never looked at his best friend smiling in a frame thinking ‘this is it, this is all I’m gonna get’ before, either.

And the reason he was thinking about his outfit now was just to exorcise the knowledge that—

He was alone. 

Truly fucking alone.

As he looked at the frame on the altar, occupying the place of honor, Dazai’s bottom lip trembled.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I couldn’t take on more, or be more by your side. I'm sorry I- I get so distracted, and I can't be there for my friends. I’m sorry I don’t know what to say at your funeral.” His hand disappeared into his pocket, finding a bottle of pills. Humming to himself, he rolled the plastic around his fingers and let the pills rattle in the plastic. The sound made his shoulders relax. “Kunikida asked me to say a few words. I said no." He swallowed a mouthful of air, trying to bargain for time, and it burned his lungs and made him want to vomit again. Apparently, though, his body was tired of throwing up with an empty stomach.
"How can I talk, when I failed you? When all I do is hurting people. And I...I can’t begin to talk about how much fun we had together, you know, drinking and traveling and starting that silly music club in high school. I can’t tell them you threatened a teacher to let us borrow the music room, they’d think I’m making it up.” He chuckled. “Do you remember it, Odasaku? It was a nice spring, back then. Do you remember what kind of dreams we had?”

When he met Odasaku, they had dreams bigger than them.
Over time, they made those dreams flourish together. 

The little box rolled on his palm, the plastic lukewarm against his bandaged skin. 

“What about those dreams now, Odasaku?” He murmured. “What about all the things we were supposed to conquer together? You know I can’t do it alone.” He sniffled, refusing to allow tears to push past the barrier of his self-control. “Please, don’t leave me alone.”

I can only do it if I’m with you.

Despite the words, Dazai smiled at the frame again — a watered-down, dizzy smile to stifle the sob that had crept up his throat.

Oda’s funeral was a small, private business.
Dazai had drunk a bottle of foul saké before showing up at the ceremony, only to gather enough courage to show up and get himself through the preparations. He opened the bottle of pills with shaking hands.
He was not sure about what he was going to do — what he wanted, what he strived for. 

He emptied the pills on his palm, red pills covering the skin. He looked at them and inhaled. He was ready — almost.
Almost.

“Dazai!” 

Dazai halted, blinking at the threshold and the figure that had blocked it. 

Kunikida’s eyes seethed as he marched to him, glaring at the little bottle in his hand as if he could burn it with the strength of his gaze. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Quietly, he turned to face Kunikida. The pills in his hand suddenly weighed like rocks.

“Oh, hello, Kunikida-kun~”

Kunikida’s expression hardened. “What are you doing?”

“I’m saying hi to Odasaku.”

“What are those?”

“Pills,” he answered, chipper. 

“Dazai, don’t be ridiculous.”

He blinked, feigning innocence. Let me go, he thought. Let me go to him, so I can tell him I'm sorry. 

“Why?”

“You know why. And I know what you’re doing.”

“You know, huh? Kunikida-kun, tell me,” he said, voice cold, turning to face the other man. His eyebrows twitched downward, a scowl barely detectable under his detached expression. “What’s the point in living in a world without beauty?”

Kunikida’s fist collided with his cheekbone before Dazai could finish his speech and register what was about to happen. He didn’t fight it.
He fought exactly none of it, letting Kunikida grasp his wrist and yank him about, shaking him with furious strength.

The pills rained on the floor, a pitter-patter that reminded him of a drizzle. Of a waterfall.
Apathetic, Dazai considered that he’d never seen the man quite so upset — quite so angry. 

Thinking of it, he’d never seen Kunikida angry at all. It made it even more difficult to even consider ducking the hits, taking in each and every blow with mild surprise and building-up respect for Kunikida’s anger. 

Yes, he thought, hate me. Hate me for my weakness.
Hate me for my lack of fortitude. 

Hate me because I’m here and Odasaku is not, and we both know who deserved to die between the two of us.

The second punch hit his lower lip, sending white sparks behind Dazai’s lids. Burning pain exploded in his face, radiating from his mouth to the corners of his jawline. Stumbling back, Dazai tasted iron on his tongue. He lifted the back of his hand to his mouth, glaring at Kunikida.
The man was heavily panting, his green eyes glowering at him loaded with exasperation. Not hate, but love.
Pure, unabashed anger.

Dazai’s eyes widened.

For the first time, a sense of uneasiness crawled under his skin — surprise, guilt. 

“There is value in living, you absolute asshole,” Kunikida roared. “Odasaku wanted you to live. Do you have no respect for that?!”

“…”

“Do you have no respect for him?”

He didn’t have to scream. The words bounced against the room’s walls, thundering like an explosion.
Then, with his head down and his fists red-knuckled and clenched, Kunikida walked to him. The subtle crack of the pills he stomped on, stepping on them with no regard to how vital those little things had become to Dazai’s sanity, made Dazai cringe.

Standing still with his stomach threatening to riot again, Dazai prepared to be hit.

He deserved it. 

Instead, Kunikida’s hand landed on his shoulder. Solid, grounding.
Dazai almost wished that the man would have hit him again, this time hard enough to knock him out, because his stomach lurched and his eyes pricked. At last, he felt tears pushing their way out. 

Mechanically, Dazai’s entire body folded over. He hunched as if his bone cage had deflated, the blood spilled from the fight satisfying his inner demons enough to leave him alone.

Some quietness, at last.

I’m sorry, he thought, hands shaking. For some idiot reason, he was sure Kunikida would read his mind and find that apology.

He’d been fighting against windmills for so long. 

He was so tired. And yet the journey had seemed worth the pain, the tiredness, the sacrifice, as long as Odasaku stood by his side.

But now—

Not looking at him, Kunikida guided Dazai against his shoulder.
He sensed Kunikida’s expensive cologne, the one he never changed, and the smoke of a cigarette. Under that all, Dazai discerned the subtle hint of wine, too.

The knowledge that he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t face the funeral sober caused his heart to stutter, and the first sob to roll out of his mouth. 

“You will take some time off, and then I'll take you somewhere far away from here. I promise,” Kunikida murmured. The words, so harsh and raw, fell heavy between them. “Live, you idiot, and find happiness.” Oh, Dazai thought, hearing how the other’s voice was ripping at the seams. Kunikida was breaking as much as he was; he’d just never given up. “It's not your fault, Osamu. It's not your fault, no matter how people will try to make you believe that. Just... I already lost one person I cared about. I can’t lose you too.”

—

“I never confessed this to anyone but, before Odasaku’s funeral, I had no intention of leaving Yokohama.
I had no reason to. Chuuya had just said he loved me, and I intended to collect my strengths and get lost in his arms. Kunikida was going to cancel my appointments. Akiko was with me. 

I had plenty of people who could help me. 

As I would discover only recently, Mori-san didn’t like that.

An interestingly observing magazine recently wrote 'A declining singer can still sell albums when he's dead, the case of Mori Ougai and Dazai Osamu'. I do not think Mori was pushing me to that extreme if you ask me. I never even imagined it. 
But what I can tell you is that I was all over the place, of course. I was vulnerable. 

Mori-san called me into his office and put a plane ticket in my hand.
He said I should leave before causing a scandal and before my erratic conduct would hurt Mori Corp and more people. He sat me down. He said I needed to finish the album abroad, and find my center before my actions would kill someone else too.

I will never forget that word. Too. Part of me still wonders how many people think I killed Odasaku.

And then he said I wasn’t allowed to date Chuuya anymore, fake or otherwise. Not for a while, at least. He’d take care of all the paperwork about Chuuya’s situation — NDAs, documents, everything. The strong implication was that I would hurt him, too because, apparently, that's what I do.
He'd help me out, and manage expectations on multiple fronts and talk to all the sponsors we were rapidly losing.
All I had to do was to discretely say my goodbyes without the option of explaining what was going on, because Mori had decided I had to leave Japan. 

Au revoir, my life.
Welcome, exile. 

That was the beginning of my 12th chapter, if you will. My Suma. Some said I left like Genji — a prince leaving the capital in all haste, like in the classic novel — and I remember I liked that comparison.
But, at that moment, heavy with a pang of guilt I can’t even explain, I genuinely believed leaving was the best thing I could do for myself and everybody around me. Mori looked at me and all but said: you don’t want to kill Akiko and Atsushi and Kunikida as well, right? You don’t want to kill Chuuya, right?

I think it was the worst decision I could ever take, and in hindsight, it wasn’t mine. Everything happened too fast. I was drunk when Mori talked to me, and stoned when I stepped on the plane. But when you are told what to do by the same voice since your teen years, you don’t realize when something is moving suspiciously fast. 

You only see a man — a father-like figure, someone you owe something to — doing what’s best for you. 

Now I see he was only doing what was best for him.”

Dazai Osamu
Transcription from MTV Music Awards, 2023 - Time Stamp: 01:10:34

—

Whatever had happened with Dazai — and Chuuya had no idea what threw him off — obviously ended up killing an infatuation born out of lies and that was never meant to evolve past a practical agreement.
He tried to tell himself it was nobody’s fault.

After that confession, he did not hear anything from Dazai for a week. 

Are you ok? He texted, after less than twenty-four hours. Should I come over?

Dazai didn’t reply immediately — he sent a smiling emoji saying it was all good, and things were happening but he couldn’t talk about them.
NDAs, and that kind of stuff. 
Reading past that, Chuuya imagined it might have been weird for Dazai — who wasn’t supposed to date at all — to get involved romantically with his fake boyfriend. It might have been expected, sure, but complicated from a company policy perspective.

From: Chuuya
Is it because of us? Am I putting you in a weird spot with your team?

No, Dazai texted back, don’t worry about it.

From: Chuuya
Are u ok?

From: Dazai
Yeah. I’ll text you when I can. 

After that initial conversation, Chuuya didn’t fret too much. Not in the beginning, at last. He carried on, thinking that Dazai would call him whenever he had time. 

He harbored an unexplained and blind sense of trust toward the man, knowing that Dazai would call him no matter what. It might end up taking a day or two, but he would hear from Dazai eventually. 
They weren’t over. 

Chuuya knew they weren’t over. 

But the hours passed, and the days rolled in and out, and his phone remained silent.

"I think I love you."

It was while he was having lunch alone and staring at his phone that, for the first time, Chuuya thought that maybe they were over. Dazai had said it: he was good at finding escape routes, and maybe a confession had made Dazai feel cornered.
Maybe he’d gone overboard and ruined everything.

Frustrated, Chuuya punched the table. His knuckles dug into the wood, pain blinding him as a bunch of splinters nestled in his flesh. He had to go and run his mouth and ruin everything, hadn’t he?
Maybe they just weren't meant to be.
It was just the wrong place, the wrong time. Wrong people, perhaps.

So, when Dazai finally called him to exchange a long-overdue goodbye, Chuuya expected nothing different. 

“Delete my number,” Dazai said, in place of a hello. He didn’t explain why it took him a week to finally get back in touch, yet he had a smirk in his voice that made Chuuya shiver — curling his lips up, making his eye burn. 

“Ha? Why would I?” 

Damn, he hated how soft and sad his own voice sounded. He hated, even more, the tender, amused hmpf that the question stole from Dazai; it sounded like someone was pulling teeth out of him with a rusty tool, though.

“Chibi doesn’t want to deal with a scoundrel like me.”

“Damn right I don’t.” 

Of course, I do.

“I’m leaving. It’s really best for everybody if I leave. This time, I’m taking Momo with me.”

Chuuya swallowed, and his spit felt like sand down his windpipe. He knew this time would come, Dazai had been forthright with him from day one. “I see. When are you leaving?”

“I’m at the airport now,” Dazai replied and, from the way he said it, Chuuya realized Dazai was calling him from an airport that wasn’t even in Japan. The knowledge wretched his heart. A voice so thin. “Thank you, Chuuya, for everything.”

Thank you, but I’ll be going now.

‘And with a little luck, I won’t ever be back.’

—

“Since he couldn’t say a word about his true situation for contractual reasons, Dazai thought it would have been best if Nakahara hated him. 

The thing was, once he found love, Dazai struggled to walk back to a life without it.
And, Dazai being Dazai, he made sure it was everybody’s problem.

But let me tell you: to Odasaku, I swore I would free Dazai from Mori Ougai.”

Kunikida Doppo,
Dazai Osamu's Personal Manager

—

Following the death of Oda Sakunosuke, regarded by many as Ouji’s only and last lifeline, no one heard a thing about Dazai Osamu from September 2018 to February 2019. 

Then, timidly, tentatively, he resurfaced again. It started with interviews and short quotes.
He started racking up forgettable TV appearances in morning shows.

His social channels were slowly re-activated and flooded with promotional teasers. 

A new single, Fairytale, topped the charts in record time. The release also announced the upcoming album — Daybreak.

A new beginning.

Fairytale stayed on top for six weeks straight.
Soon enough, the whole world knew Dazai Osamu was back, and he was alive. 

That snowballed into features and earned media covers and pieces, as well as a cover for Vogue US – Dazai’s fourth overall.
Critics agreed that he looked good, sporting his usual charming smile and a sharp electric blue eyeliner.
The simplicity of his black turtleneck, with shoulders barely visible in the cover, enhanced Dazai’s sharp traits and shaggy hair, soft and messy as if someone had just run a hand through it.
All the way across the ocean, in Yokohama, every time Chuuya came across a new picture he wanted to holler.
He looked away, but it was always too late.

In April 2019, a few weeks before Chuuya’s birthday, gossip columns reported that Ouji had accepted a three-album record deal with Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby Records and moved from Los Angeles to New York.

That meant that ‘Yokohama’s brightest star’, as he had been dubbed outside of Japan, had finally done it. The big splash.
Chuuya supposed he ought to be glad that Dazai made a name for himself, coughing blood and eating nothing but hot matcha on a scorching summer day. 
He also hoped that, perhaps, somewhere along the road, the man might even find himself.

Deep down, though, he knew that was wishful thinking. 

Dazai was running away from his demons.
From Yokohama.
From Odasaku’s tragic death, kept mostly private and shrouded in mystery, and all the other things he might grow to treasure and lose.

He was running from the ghost of them.

“I can’t believe that ass is making you sign an NDA,” Tachihara said, gobbling up a mouthful of noodles.

Chuuya shrugged.
Although his best friend’s indignation flattered him, part of Chuuya couldn’t but think that Michizou’s anger was misplaced. 

He didn’t care, and was silently grateful that his so-called relationship with Dazai had always been more or less private. It was fine. An NDA was fine. It was professional, unlike sleeping with the man who is paying you to fake-date him.
At least, Kunikida Doppo had attached to the email the most formal, useless apology humankind could come up with.

“It was honestly just a matter of time,” he said, quietly, stirring the ramen in his bowl. He preferred soggy noodles and warm broth, and playing with the chopsticks at least gave him something to focus on as he watched Michizou devour the food. “That’s alright. Just another closed chapter, I guess.”

“It’s your birthday week, and that asshole sends you an NDA. Nice shitty gift.”

Chuuya grimaced. “He couldn’t know,” he said. 

Not that he’d ever mentioned his birthday to Dazai – they never had the chance to talk about the future or about birthdays.

“That’s still a shitty move.”

“I guess,” he said, voice leveled. “But I should give half a shit to have an opinion about it. Alas, I don’t.”

“Don’t you wish you could hit him?”

God, yes. Every day. “Nah. Who cares.”

Throwing him a curious glance, Michizou slurped on his noodles. “What did it say?”

“What?”

“The shitty NDA.”

“It’s a non-disclosure agreement, I can’t exactly gossip about it,” Chuuya answered, with a chortle. Michizou flinched, cheeks turning purple. “No, but that’s alright. It was the usual stuff, just asking not to talk about Dazai, or Oda, and shit. Like I would ever remember that idiot Dazai on my own accord.” He downed the entire glass of water wishing it was wine. “I’m not a fucking masochist.”

It had taken Chuuya a few weeks to adjust to the fact that Dazai wouldn’t call or bother him anymore. That the last meaningful thing he said to the idiot would be a love confession that was never reciprocated.

It seemed clear then that Dazai wanted to witness powerful emotions, but he never wanted to be part of it.
By then, Chuuya had no choice but to try and push everything in the back of his mind. So he threw himself head-first into work. 

Work was safe.
Work couldn’t break his heart.

Because he lowered his defenses and then all went to hell, as it always happens, leaving him disappointed but not surprised. 

There was something wrong about Chuuya having time to actually chill. Something was off about not having a lanky, ever-present beanpole bothering him after a gig, or picking the lock of his room. There was something empty about Dazai’s absence – as if he’d left a piece of his own loneliness behind, a fragment of an ice-cold heart. But what no one had told Chuuya before was that ice could burn.
And now there was something inherently excruciating in living on without Dazai laughing, smiling and trying to get in his pants most unceremoniously. Because Dazai was a dim light shining in a suffocating darkness. He was an energetic asshole with no sense of personal space. 

He was a presence Chuuya missed every day.

Chuuya might have been fine with being thrown away, even, and he would have gotten over the rejection eventually, but Dazai was Every.fucking.Where.
Every mag cover, every radio station, every poster. He was on goddamn (co-designed) tissues.

“But yeah, Dazai’s press office sent it, so it’s not like it was him or anything,” he growled, under his breath. “That’s what pisses me off. He didn’t fucking bother.”

"I also heard that there’s another album coming up,” Michizou said, looking down at his noodle bowl. “It’s trending on TikTok. That mafia shit is so stupid, I cringe watching the videos. It was on NHK this morning and— ew. I had goosebumps, man. And not the good kind.”

Chuuya scoffed. “Clearly, it works for his demographic.”

“And his demographic is teenagers. As I said, dumb.”

“Right. Teenagers are dumb.”

“He’s not even that good-looking.”

“Right,” Chuuya repeated, a little lower this time.

Gosh, he hated how fake that sounded.
Even more, he hated himself for allowing his cheeks to warm up at the familiar sight of Dazai in a black coat and fake gun.
All it took was for the idiot to smirk at the camera and lick his lips and wink like an absolute moron, and Chuuya felt the urge to smash his head against a wall. Because Dazai had bruised his feelings and tilted his world. 

But Nakahara Chuuya wasn’t brooding. Oh, now.

He didn’t miss the bandages scattered in the house, or how Dazai stayed up late to write songs or scurried into the kitchen to make himself tea and fix Chuuya a glass of wine. 

He didn’t miss his absurd outfits and annoying comebacks, his bed hair and the way he ran his fingers through it in the morning. 
Chuuya didn’t have enough free time to mourn their relationship.
Their fake relationship that felt a little too real, a fuse burning fast and leaving him cold way sooner than he expected. 

He had no right to mourn the loss of domesticity, the comfort of their bodies pressed together, the fights nor the way his ideas seemed to click with Dazai’s own.

“Oi, Chuuya.”

“Hm?”

“Are you sure he doesn’t know it’s your birthday?”

“Positive,” he said, drowning the aching of his chest in a spoonful of ramen. “If he knew, I bet he’d complain about not being invited to a party or shit.”

Because Dazai had a talent for complaining: he had complained his way into Chuuya’s heart, loud and messy. 

Yet, ever since he'd left, it was always awfully quiet.

—

“I knew Chuuya’s birthday was in April.
Call me obsessive, but I memorized all the info about him that I could find on the day of our first date.
But I didn’t know about the NDA.”

Dazai Osamu for Rolling Stone, issue 2383.
Read the full article here

—

In the Summer of 2019, No Longer Human landed on Netflix.

The two-hour documentary featured a crew that followed Dazai around, reporting on the highs and lows of a life lived dancing with demons, seldom sober and grasping at anything to stay afloat.
It was a healing journey, according to the category tag next to the title, and a retelling of the worst moment of a man’s life. The story of a passerby loitering at the extreme corners of society. 

It recounted the worst and best moments of Ouji’s career and Dazai’s troubled life — past and present.

His rise to stardom, his past work with A.D.A, how he signed with Mori Corp when he was a teen and how he found himself caught in a spiderweb of NDAs and secrets after Oda’s passing.
It lightly touched upon some of the sordid company secrets Dazai and Doppo were still legally bound to keep.

When he heard about the documentary, Chuuya refused to watch it.
Ignoring Dazai’s shitty grin caught in 4K whenever he opened his laptop browsing for something to watch soon became some sort of muscle memory. Parkouring past Dazai’s face everywhere he went, everywhere he looked, became second nature and a well-engrained habit.

Besides, Chuuya didn’t need a documentary to know Dazai.

But, when Aya called him with a voice shaken by sobs, he had no choice but to listen.

As it turned out, the problem wasn’t the documentary in itself, or how it depicted Dazai. It wasn’t even the subtly voyeuristic way the production used to expose Ouji’s life to the ravenous public eye, painting a raw portrait of a man tortured by pain beyond words. 
It wasn’t the drugs or the alcohol and the excess and the depression — he’d seen that firsthand, he’d looked at Dazai’s demons in the eye.  

Oh, no.

The consequences of the documentary, the people involved— that hurt, and left claw marks in the most tender spot of Chuuya’s soul.
He finished the documentary with a single thought hammering in his mind: he wanted to kill Mori Ōgai.

He wanted to smash the face of the man who gave Dazai most of his bad habits, the monster who had pushed him into toxic patterns one after the other ‘for his own good’.
The man who gave Dazai drugs when he was a teen. The man who gave him alcohol when he was way too young to drink.
The man who had shamed, gaslighted and manipulated Dazai ever since he was a child.
The asshole who, one way or another, had stolen Dazai from him.

‘ I had to protect Akiko,’ Dazai said about Mori. He refused to elaborate.

The moment the TV screen turned black and the end credits rolled in, Chuuya got up from the sofa without sparing a single glance at Aya. She was crying. He was furious. He got on his feet and marched to the shoe rack at the entrance, trying to breathe around the wad of cotton in his throat. 

When Aya asked in a murmur what he was doing, Chuuya didn’t reply. He was going to kill the bastard. Skin him alive.
Jumping on her feet, too, Aya reached him as he was moving to grab the car keys. Her fingers sank into his arm, steady despite the dry tear patterns streaking her cheeks.

“Let me go," Chuuya hissed, glancing at her for the first time ever since Dazai’s face had appeared on the screen.

“Don’t be a moron,” Aya said, holding onto his elbow. “Where the hell are you going?!”

“I will kill that bastard.”

Her lips parted in an o. “Wh— You can’t just march into Mori Corp!”

“Can’t I, hah?!" He roared, barely controlling his strength to not inadvertently hurt his sister. He couldn’t shake her off, even if he wanted to — but he fully intended to march into Mori Corp with Aya still anchored to his arm, if need be. "Watch me.”

“What about security? Are you stupid?!”

“Fuck them,” he spat. “Fuck all of them.” He glared at the door of his apartment as if he could kick it down just by glaring at it. He fantasized that Mori could be just behind that door, waiting to pay for all the shit he’d done. “I’ll beat up the shitty guards too. I’ll break every shitty bone in their shitty bodies until I get to Mori Ōgai. And then—”

“And then what!?” She interrupted him, and for a second she sounded just like Kouyou. “What do you plan to do when you get there, huh? Be a hero? Get filmed beating up a billionaire and be sent to jail?” Aya’s fists grasped his forearm more firmly. “Do you think Dazai will show up, then?”

The unusual sound of Dazai’s name on Aya’s lips caused Chuuya to halt. Fuck. 
She was right.
What the hell could he do now? Blinking at his sister, Chuuya let out a sharp exhale and allowed his muscles to relax. It grounded him, Dazai’s name, it gave him comfort right before pushing him off the edge.
He caught a deep, aching breath, and his shoulders fell as he allowed himself to fall back on the sofa. 

Everything he’d known about Dazai, everything he’d been concerned about, was nothing but the tip of the iceberg.

He really wanted to kill Mori Ougai. 

“…Dazai never even mentioned him. I didn’t know.” He stared at his open palm, imagining hurting Mori — hurting him good, making him bleed, socking him in the face. Blood and teeth being spat out and bruises. “Fuck. I had no idea that all along— it was all a cry for help and I ignored it like a fucking idiot.” His voice frayed.

Dazai has spent a lifetime not feeling like a human being.
That jerk had taught him that he was a tool and that he was expendable. And Chuuya— he said he loved Dazai, but the truth was that someone really in love and less egoistic would have picked up the signs of Dazai’s suffering. 

Slowly, as he rubbed his forehead and allowed guilt to numb his muscles, he heard Aya pad next to him.

“Chuuya…”

“Dazai never talked about that. Not about Mori, or how deeply he was depending on those pills. He didn’t tell me shit about that, he made it sound like a joke and I never even fucking questioned it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”

And then again, the true question was— what could he do? 

After No Longer Human, Chuuya tortured himself for days.

What would have done if... When... 

What, what, what.

—

“I saw your Instagram story. You look like shit.” 

“Aw, Akiko, you’re always my most darling supporter and guardian angel,” Dazai chirped back, plummeting on his unmade bed. 

He’d left Akiko’s past with Mori Corp out of the documentary, but hearing from her and her continued support had helped him through the entire production.
To be frank, she helped him through everything.

In New York, Dazai had rented a hotel room at the Warwick.
A penthouse on the 6th with a beautiful view of the urban skyline, as he looked for an apartment to his taste.
They wouldn’t normally accept pets but, thanks to a bribe from Fitzgerald, the hotel’s management had turned a blind eye to Momo. That act of kindness was the first time Dazai had truly appreciated his new producer and the way he treated the talents under his wing.

Pushing his luck, the brunet had asked for a room on the top floor. In two days, Fitzgerald got him a penthouse and everything Dazai could ask for.

After a lifetime of struggling to breathe properly, suffocated by responsibility, he’d discovered that he needed the sky close. It helped him to feel less claustrophobic. 
It reminded him of the thousand shades of blue in Chuuya’s eyes. A deep sapphire. A perfect blue.

“Really,” Akiko said, capturing Dazai’s attention again. He adjusted the phone against his ear. “Are you seeing the city? Enjoying your life? Eating good food?”

“I’m starting to,” he admitted. “It’s… it’s getting easier. Guilt is still there, just not as much anymore.”

“Good,” she said, measuring her words. She almost seemed tentative, as if wondering if it was her place to comment on his progress. As if she was afraid of triggering him. “Good, that’s a promising start. How is New York?” 

Dazai hummed, glancing outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Same old. I’m still adjusting, but Kunikida almost choked on a Conticini brioche this morning and I caught that on camera, so there’s that.”

“What were you two doing at Conticini?”

“Ranpo-san craved croissants. When Fitzgerald told him to go alone, Ranpo-san threw a bag of chips and said he wanted friendly croissants and not lonely croissants,” Dazai said. Then, he scrunched his nose. “It was quite the view. And he’s visiting Poe, so we’re just collateral, but these things are fun.”

Akiko’s giggle flickered between them. “Tell the gremlin to show up at the next recording session on time. Ranpo might be a genius, but there’s only so much the rest of the band can do without him.”

With a chuckle, Dazai adjusted the phone against his right ear. “Can’t make promises.”

“I’d still appreciate an effort,” she said. “Have you found a way to contact your mother yet?”  

Blindsided by the question, Dazai flinched. 

A ‘ah’ escaped his mouth.

With Kunikida’s support and a constant reminder that he couldn’t control other people’s emotions, Dazai had set himself on a quest in search of his mother. He owed himself a chance.
One day, he vowed to Kunikida, she’d take her to meet Odasaku.

“Gosh, that was more brutal than I intended,” Akiko murmured, breaking the silence first with a tentative skip in her voice. Dazai could imagine her torturing a pen, or twirling a strand of black hair around her index finger, damning herself for speaking too much without thinking. “I am— ah, fuck, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just dropped the question like that. I thought that you were still looking for her, and…”

“I’m making progress,” Dazai interrupted her. For some foolish reason, he didn't want her to take his silence as a defeat, as a giving up of some sort.
He was done doing that.

“Oh. That’s good.”

“Kunikida-kun and Atsushi are helping me out in between meetings and recordings.” 

“That’s very nice of them,” she said, voice low. “I’m really happy for you, Dazai.”

Throwing back his head, Dazai rested against the pillows.
His expression curled into a smile, thinking of how sheepish Akiko could be around the people she cared about.
Normally assertive and headstrong, the woman had a soft core that not many were allowed to see; he counted himself among those lucky few.

Her comment trailed off as Dazai’s gaze shifted away, Akiko’s words still echoing in his head even though all he could hear was her steady breath in his ear. He was happy, too.
Happier than he’d ever been in his entire life, feeling more alive than ever.
And his life might have been sailing smoothly, if one ignored that he was still irreparably, terribly missing someone.

“I dreamt about Chuuya again,” he said. “And wrote another song. I presented it this morning.”

“What did they say?”

Dazai grimaced. 

This cheesy stuff of yours is going to make us millionaires, my boy, had been Fitzgerald’s only comment, in a delighted tone that signaled that the producer was ready to spend billions on marketing and promotion.
Fitzgerald "Call me Fitz, old sport," Francis loved his songs. It still felt a little surreal, even in hindsight.
He’d given a full green light, while Dazai didn’t know how to take the backhanded compliment. 

His music wasn’t cheesy. His recurrent dreams, the ones where he reunited with Chuuya, on the other hand? Those were a little corny, maybe. 

“They loved it.”

“Big surprise,” Akiko retorted, but it lacked bite. He could imagine the girl as she glanced at the ceiling, exasperated. 

“It’s a strange thing though, isn’t it? Such a tiny Chibi manages to haunt my dreams and bully me into work even from Yokohama.”

“Maybe you should talk to him.”

Oh, please, not again.

With a scoff, Dazai reminded himself that Kunikida would not be happy with him for throwing another phone off the balcony after trying and failings to muster enough courage to text Chuuya. 
Throwing cell phones in the toilet or from the balcony was a much easier way to deal with his problems.

Besides, there was the minor inconvenience of having signed papers that technically kept him from contacting Chuuya.
It was a Mori Corp-kind of issue, a work in progress and, according to Fitzgerald, a whole legal headache.

“I’d rather swallow bleach,” Dazai said, eventually, scanning every syllable. The comment caused Akiko to scoff, and from the rustle that followed Dazai could imagine her shaking her head, her butterfly pin catching the light as the girl moved.

“Oh, come on. What’s the worst that can happen?” 

Dazai pouted. “That he replies?” 

“Wrong," Akiko answered, annoyance seeping in her voice. "Replies are good. The worst thing is that he tells you to go fuck yourself, you brood a little and then woo him right back.” 

“Ugh. You say it like it’s easy.”

“You made him fall in love with you once, so you already know he has fucked-up taste. That was, like, 99% of the risk. Now he’s got to take you back because pretty disaster wagons like you are hard to come by.”

“Akiko! Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” he asked, dramatically slapping a hand over his heart in mock disappointment.
At the gasping sound, Akiko exploded in a hearty laugh.
The chaos attracted Momo, and the cat elegantly jumped on the bed and curled at Dazai’s side. Welcoming the animal with a gentle smile, Dazai wondered if Momo too felt alone or ignored, just the two of them all the time.
If he missed Chuuya's hat and silly attentions as strongly as Dazai did.

His vibrating, loud purr increased the moment Dazai’s free hand scratched the fur in between his ears.

Maybe Akiko was right and he was a drama queen. He'd just grown into that exaggerated, dramatic behavior that earned Ouji the love of tabloids and fans alike.
The approachable star, the Prince Charming who acted funny and kind.
The ladykiller of the idol scene. Unteachable, yet just out of reach. 

But that act didn’t fool Chuuya. It never did.

“I am on your side, dumbass. That’s exactly why I’m asking you to stop writing songs for the guy, raise a middle finger to Mori and talk to Chuuya.”

“I will,” he promised, lips quirking up in a smirk. He glanced at Momo, who rewarded him with a meow. It sounded like encouragement. “When Kunikida will figure out how to reach out safely, and I’ve become the man Chuuya can date for real, I’ll find a stage and sing those songs to him. You’ll see.” He smiled at Momo, petting his little head. We’re getting there, he thought. “Until then, I’ll keep writing.”

—

"Ouji's Daybreak is a tragedy in 13 acts that came out when it felt like everyone was waiting for Dazai "Ouji" Osamu to crash and burn.

But what the Yokohama-born prince of contemporary pop has given us isn't a requiem to cry on.
What he's given us is a depiction of modern love: reckless, honest and bone-shattering.”

Iseki J. Smith for Rolling Stone.com, issue 1545.
Read the full article here

—

Chuuya hadn’t seen or heard from Dazai for well over a year when Daybreak hit shelves worldwide.
An ode to love and loneliness, the magazines dubbed the chart-smashing album. 

“A depiction of modern love: reckless, honest and bone-shattering.”

The album was composed of fifteen tracks, all ballads with a more or less slow tune, all with a characteristic artistic choice that took some distance from Dazai’s previous work with Mori Corp.
Chuuya wasn’t eager to listen to any of it, stopped by the possibility of finding Dazai in the songs — of finding someone else, too, someone Dazai had found at the opposite ends of the world.
Someone who could have made him stay. 

But, wherever he turned, Daybreak seemed to haunt him. 

When Chuuya finally caved and listened to the album, he was sitting at his desk, still working way past office hours. 

He pushed away the early draft script for a perfume commercial that had landed on his desk and opened a Spotify window, hoping to find something that would compensate the artistic dryness of the commercial script he was working on.

He hated everything about this particular project, but it paid rent.

However, in a moment of inexplicable masochism, when the office was too lonely and the evening seemed too dark and he missed Momo sitting in his hat — well, he decided that, if he had to suffer, he might as well do so listening to the man who broke his heart. 

Rip off the band-aid, listen to the shitty album and go on with his life. 

When the first notes of the first song of Daybreak hit him, Chuuya’s breath got stuck in his throat. 
He remembered the same melody coming out of Dazai’s lips, smooth and heavy like velvet.
He remembered Dazai humming it under the shower, and in Chuuya’s living room and in Chuuya’s bed.
A sound like grovel, like sand embraced by the ocean — soft and rough and warm. 

It was an album about them.

In case of death, that's what I want.

Chuuya remembered it all, and it killed him.
Slowly, it demolished his walls one brick at a time.

Every word pulled out his defenses like teeth, and he bled and bled and bled on the altar of Dazai’s insecurities. 

This is a sad song, he thought, fighting for air — fighting for ground. But it’s Dazai’s idea of a love song.

In every single song all the old references to pills and dying were gone, replaced by delicate metaphors, and Chuuya supposed the old habits had been swiped away by the rumored rehab that had kept Ouji away from the stage. 

There's just one thing I hope you know, I loved you so.

A hole opened in Chuuya’s chest under that gritty rumble of a voice, like a thunderstorm in the distance.
The leading single sounded as if Dazai was singing with his stomach. 

Chuuya had read somewhere that human beings experience love with the stomach first. The heart comes second — it’s rational, while the stomach is pure instinct.
The heart might be late, but that tangled knot in your stomach, those butterflies, that visceral burning? The body knows. 
And Dazai was singing with his belly, voice spilling from his lips ruined and gravelly as if every word had fought its way out.

For what felt like a lifetime, Chuuya listened and stared at the screen without seeing it at all.

The words sank into his soul, blades ripping him open with every note.

'Fuck,’ echoed inside his skull. A memory overused but never forgotten. ‘I think I love you.’

Not that those words meant anything when Dazai wasn’t coming back, but—

Chuuya lowered his head and took it between his hands, fingers sinking in his hair until his nails dug into his scalp, and closed his eyes.
He wanted to laugh. He wanted to cry.
In the end, eyes prickling and cheeks hurting, he had a feeling he was doing both.

He loves me, he thought, dumbstruck. After years, the thought seemed foreign and ironic in equal measure. Fuck.

He loves me. 

(‘I'm sorry but I gotta go,
If you'll ever miss me give this song another go’)

 

Chapter 6: Perfect Blue

Summary:

All was well in the sad prince's kingdom.

Notes:

As always, major shoutout to Marì and Sarah for the beta-reading ❤️

“So, in the end, I don’t think the events of 2018 could have been avoided,” Chuuya said. 

“I see…” The TV host gnawed at her bottom lip, holding onto the notes on her lap. Chuuya almost felt bad for having thrown her interview off-script and taking over the entire chat — almost. “I guess my last question to wrap up the interview would be about the future. I hear rumors about a second wedding?”

Despite the exhaustion, Chuuya found himself smiling. “Yeah.”

“And Ouji is leaving the stage?”

“He’s is going to perform under his real name. I see nothing wrong with that.”

“Are you alright with such a dramatic change of career?”

“I am supportive of anything my partner wants to do,” Chuuya answered. Not a heartbeat of hesitation, even though Ouji undoubtedly paid some of Dazai’s bills. “Here’s how it went: Osamu told me, ‘I want to stop hiding behind Ouji.’ And I looked at him, this brave soldier or a man who fought all his life, and I can promise you I kissed him as hard as I could.

The deal is… if Dazai wants to change his career and tell Ouji to fuck off, and Fitzgerald is fine with that, I will support him.” With a click of his tongue, he ran a hand through his hair only to exorcise the blush creeping up his cheeks. “That’s why I asked that Mackerel to marry me again. A public wedding, this time, with the audience knowing us and our story for what it really was. There are no secrets anymore. It’s just us.

And that’s the bottom line.”

 

—

New Year’s Eve 2019
Brooklyn, New York City

Many things happened during that year, many of them life-changing.

When he looked back at the dumpster fire he was at the beginning of the year, Dazai struggled to recognize himself. He wasn’t the same person at all.

At the beginning of the decade he had Odasaku by his side. He had never been in love, truly in love, searching for it outside his golden cage. Mori controlled every second of his life. Now? Now he was a bard without a crowd, an imposter prince, and his art felt as remote as his hometown.
He didn’t hate Yokohama anymore.

He missed it, even.

Things had happened during that long, long year – a year that felt like a day and like a century in the same breath, passing in a flash at times and dragging itself through never-ending months at others.
Kunikida had settled into his job at The Great Gatsby comfortably, as did Atsushi.
He’d even been promoted into a PR executive role, while Kunikida single-handedly managed Dazai’s career. They both worked well with Fitzgerald’s team.

Ranpo occasionally abandoned his engagements with the A.D.A and took the first flight to New York to visit his “absolutely secret American boyfriend”.
He always crashed in Dazai’s spare room.
Momo was regularly delighted about the extra attention he got whenever Ranpo was around.

Yosano flew over for New Year’s Eve too, declaring that “she missed her favorite bandaged disaster wagon”.

Smooth talker, Dazai said, and laughed, and told her to hurry up.

He missed their chats and their adventures. He missed their time together; he missed her. 

Akiko was the closest thing Dazai had ever experienced to love before that person, and that would always make him miss the girl.

And Dazai— well.  

He wrote more songs.
He found a nice apartment overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge and painted the walls a light blue that reminded him of Yokohama. The city where the wind blows. The city where his heart got stained with blue. 
Of course, he kept Momo close. 
And — in a leap of faith he would never regret — at the beginning of winter he fired a message to his mother. He did so straight out of the umpteenth rehab, as he clawed his way to another high that would hopefully last more than a handful of months.

He was a work in progress. 

He was a fighter.

And so he collected his courage and fought. Atsushi eventually found her: Tsushima Tane, 57, married to an American man. Two kids. Dazai wrote to her while the rain tapped against his window, on a starless night, stumbling over his words and swallowing his pride to find out if he really was meant to be alone.

Here goes nothing, he thought.

Kunikida read over all the drafted texts Dazai scrapped.

Akiko reassured him through the process, and Atsushi held his hand while he read the message he received a few days after from an American number.
Just like she asked after a brief conversation over text, Dazai showed up at her workplace in Queens with a throbbing heart and anxiety devouring him from within. He braced himself for the most bitter of rejections, but the first thing she said was ‘you’re exactly how I imagined’.
She was smiling.

Dazai expected nothing from that small act of bravery, but gained a family instead.

So much time had passed since that terrifying day. 

On New Year's Eve, New York was covered in white and Dazai’s life was full and his apartment was buzzing with guests. 

“Is Tane-san joining us?”

“Ah, no, Dazai-san said his mother has work to finish. She also has her own family, now…” Atsushi’s voice faded away while he rummaged in the cupboard, grabbing seven ceramic plates for dinner. Himself, Dazai, Yosano, Kunikida, Ranpo and Poe. And Odasaku. On special occasions, he always had a plate and a chair saved at their dinner table. Dazai insisted. “But she’ll stop by at some point.”

“Fair enough.” Akiko rested her hands on her hips, tightly wrapped in a black dress, scanning her surroundings. She looked around the apartment, realizing they were missing a detail – or, rather, two. “Where’s Ranpo?”

“He went to the park with Poe-kun. To play with the snow.”  

“Ah, that’s what we call public sex, now?” She asked, a lighthearted chuckle ringing in her voice.

She had three glasses of wine already, and her remarks sounded playfully sharp. 

“Yosano-san, please, don’t tease them,” Atsushi said.

“I’m not teasing!”

“You totally are.” Kunikida sighed, placing three bottles of white wine on the table. “By the way, talking about people that should be here, where’s Dazai?” 

Dazai, a few rooms away, had every intention to leave his guests waiting a few more minutes. Familiar noises filled the house, reminding him of everything he ever wanted: a house full of people, full of love. A warm life.

But, as the year ended and a new decade began, he needed that time to mourn his past mistakes. He wanted to honor his old self and welcome the new one. 

Dazai Osamu, healed.

'New year, new me' — Fitzgerald had been repeating that saying ad nauseam, insisting it was their very own recipe for success in the upcoming year. Despite everything, it was a mindset Dazai aimed to steal.
He would grow up.
He would become an adult, and he would go back to someone he’d left behind. But for now, hiding away in the studio and surrounded only by silence and the dim lights bathing the room from the tall industrial windows, Dazai looked at the snow-covered streets.

The muffled echoes of his friends’ chattering reached him as if through a glass, coming to him in waves of giggles and rattling of dishes and clinking of glasses. 

All was all perfect.
All but two people.

“Happy New Year, Odasaku,” he murmured, lifting his whisky glass to the heavy grey sky. “I hope you’re rooting for us, wherever you are.”

He stared at the snow falling outside, covering the city in a soft blanket of shimmering white. Everything turned blindingly pure.
For a moment, lips against the rim of the glass, Dazai lost himself in the white flakes turbinating out of the windowpane, wondering what were people doing in Yokohama.

I miss you, he thought.

“To a kinder year, and better days ahead,” he said.

A one-way ticket to Tokyo rested inside his phone.

Three months, and he’d be back. he wondered what the spring had in store for him: if Japan had missed Ouji, and if he was going to return in time for a picnic in the Imperial Gardens to enjoy the cherry blossoms in full bloom.
He wondered if Chuuya would wait for him — not forever, but just a little longer. Enough for Dazai to fix the final loose ends of the mess that was his life. It had taken time to fix it all and fix himself, but he’d done it.

He was close to becoming a man Chuuya could love.

Winter in New York was cold and crisp, a unfriendly weather biting right into the bones of a city swept by a merciless wind, but it would not last forever. Another season would follow. Another summer in Yokohama, perhaps.

Humming to himself, Dazai downed the whisky in one sip.

He couldn’t wait to see the fireworks.

Yokohama, 2020

'To my muse,
I miss you.'

Chuuya stared at the tickets in his hand.

Two tickets for VIP seats.

For. Ouji’s. Fucking. Comeback.

Fuck this clownery, he thought, fists shaking. Muse my ass.

Who wanted to be a fish’s muse anyway?
Even worse, he wasn’t Dazai’s anything. He was nothing. His whole body refused to accept the words, his stomach dipping to his calves as anger and irritation propagated through his veins.
The audacity of that idiot painted his sight red. 
How dare he, he thought, glaring daggers at the two pieces of paper. 

How could he? It had been years.

Alas, Dazai didn’t send him only tickets for a stupid concert (how self-referential could the asshole be, still, after all those years?) and that silly handwritten note. Oh, no. That would have been far too easy, and very few things ever remained straightforward whenever Dazai Osamu was involved.

‘I got Aya-chan the closest VIP tribune I could find. Consider it my apology to her in advance, for ruining the concert.’  

Crumpling up the note in his fist, Chuuya gritted his teeth.

Although he was dying to ask what exactly Dazai had in mind to ruin the concert, that likely meant unblocking the asshole, exhuming his chat from block-hell and asking directly.

That, Chuuya was not gonna do. No, sir.

He had a life away from Dazai.

Years of radio silence had hardened him into not caring about Dazai Osamu or Ouji, or whatever name he went by. He did not give a single flying fuck about the man’s silly little interviews, his covers and his prince-like frilly stage costumes.
He couldn’t care less about the expanded version of Daybreak – an obvious attempt to make the album sound as if it was recorded in somebody’s childhood bedroom, just Ouji’s gritty voice and an acoustic guitar. He did not care.

He didn’t care about Dazai or his bed and who slept in it.

“Oh, you’re back?” a voice reached out from behind him, accompanied by the light sound of steps. Although he flinched, taken aback by the interruption, Chuuya didn’t raise his head to face Aya. He handed her the envelope.

He hated the Tokyo postal stamp, hard proof that Dazai was in his same city. In his same country.

“You’ve got mail,” he said.

“I wasn’t expecting anything…”

He let out a guttural hah. “Surprise, I guess.”

“O’nii-chan? Everything alright?”

“Dazai sends these,” he said, without any particular inflection in his voice.

His heart cracked, though, hearing himself mention Dazai – the name rested on his lips, so familiar yet foreign. He heard Aya suck in a deep breath, and added: “Courtesy of his press office, I assume.”

Saying that he stretched his hand and urged Aya to grab the tickets, barely finding the courage to look at his sister.

She never outgrew her passion for Ouji’s songs, and he could see she missed Dazai too.

Chuuya never judged her for that, knowing she couldn’t fall out of love with an artist just as he couldn’t just fall out of love with the person. 

In the end, believing in a higher form of creative freedom (separating the artist from the person and all that) had royally backfired on him. However, Chuuya was also silently grateful that she was respectful enough to only hum Ouji’s tracks when she thought he couldn’t hear.
He wondered if Aya suspected what that album was about, and to what kind of lost love Daybreak referred to.

“These are…” Her voice trailed off as she studied the tickets in her hands.

“Two tickets for Ouji’s Daybreak tour. He’s moving the closing night to Yokohama.”

“Shit,” Aya murmured.

“ Aya, language.” He scoffed, though, crossing his arms. There was a limit to the times he could reprimand Aya for having a foul mouth when she was fifteen and had learned how to cuss from him. “Apparently, they are VIP seats and whatnot. Go with Kouyou or a friend, I don’t care. They’re yours.”

“But you should go!”

“Like hell I should.”

“Dazai sent these to you.”

Chuuya scowled. “Do I look like I give a single flying fuck?” 

“But aren’t you curious?!”

Oh, he was.

But he wasn’t Dazai’s dog to summon with a single command, he wasn’t going to sell his pride just to find out what Dazai was scheming. “I’d rather stay home and look at the washing machine go,” he answered. “It sure as fuck would be a better investment of my time.”

“But—“

“I’m not going,” he said, harder. He didn’t even want to think about it. “You like that dimwit’s music. Enjoy the concert.”

She frowned, her eyes lingering on the two tickets in her small hands. She clung to them. “But the tickets are for you.”

“I don’t see a motherfucking name on the seat, Aya. Go or not, I’m giving them to you.”

“At least think about it.”

“Don’t raise your voice.”

“Then don’t snap at me,” she barked back, the moment Chuuya’s voice rose into an aggressive, exasperated growl. It made him recoil, reminding him he had no right to talk to his sister like that because of Dazai. “And your name is right here, moron. It’s written all over this gift — it might not be spelled out, but come on. Your name is right here.”

“I’m no one,” Chuuya interrupted her. “I don’t see my name written anywhere in there.”

“Oh, please, you’re just being petty. You’re obviously Dazai’s muse.”

“I’m not a fucking inspiration, Aya. I’m a person.”

His protest sounded low, this time, a little shy of a whisper — his voice going through the same rollercoaster as his heart, unsure if he should settle on tiredness or anguish or anger or all of them at the same time. 
He wasn’t Dazai’s muse. That name made him feel so expendable, so interchangeable. 

Ridiculously enough, it made him wonder if Dazai wanted to see Chuuya — person Chuuya, just Chuuya — at all.

Aya’s brow furrowed as she swallowed.
The name might have seemed like a technicality to her, but it wasn’t to him. “He’s asking to see you.”

“And I don’t wanna see him.” 

Liar, he thought.

You want to see him so obviously that it’s making you look like a clown in front of your little sister.

But at the same time— why? 

Why did he have to make an effort?

He was a line in a contract Dazai never even bothered to write down, he was a handshake. He was a fake relationship that didn’t even survive a summer, and yet produced an album and a lead single that skyrocketed Dazai to the Billboard top 10.

Good for Dazai, truly. 

All was well in the sad prince's kingdom.

And Chuuya, silly, naïve Chuuya, never admitted to his sister or anyone else that he’d fallen in love with Dazai, somewhere along the lines of their weird story.

He wasn’t sure about when that happened, exactly.

Perhaps, he’d loved Dazai all along.

He wanted him from that very first night in the bar, strangers in the night stumbling upon each other with tongues loosened by the booze and hands itching for holding something. Someone.  

“You’re still on time.”

“I don’t want to be on time,” he said. She scoffed and parted her lips again, but Chuuya leveled her with a glance. “It’s my business, Aya. Take the tickets and stay out of it.”

He’s the one who’s two years too late. 

It wasn’t supposed to sound so harsh.

Still, the words rolled out of his lips before he could stop himself.

Snarling and snapping at his younger sister would do him no good, yet it – albeit momentarily – soothed the frustration simmering in him.

Damn it, that dimwit Dazai. 

He just couldn’t leave it alone, right?

“Alright,” Aya murmured, taking a step back. She pressed the tickets to her chest, almost protectively. “If you change your mind, it’s ok. We can go together.”

—

Chuuya didn’t show up.

As he frantically looked for familiar ginger hair in the crowd, the realization that Chuuya didn’t accept his tickets only struck Dazai between the second and third song. It hit him like a slap when he spotted Aya in the crowd, a hook strong enough to make his head spin as he stumbled over a note. She was with a friend, and she looked exactly as the last time Dazai saw her.

In hindsight, of course, Chuuya had no reason to accept his invitation or to wait for him. He didn’t even ask.

He had fired his shots and tested his luck, and let it not be said that he didn’t try, but it was a fair defeat. 
After all, their relationship was still tender when Dazai severed it.

By definition, muses never stuck around for long.
They marked humans with their claws, and beautiful things bled out of the wounds left by their cruel, light touches. The longing was a gift. Nothing beautiful stemmed from perfect happiness.  With no use for a muse that would coddle him, Dazai appreciated Chuuya’s absence as much as his presence. 
Both fueled his songs. 

So, mid-concert, a grand piano appeared in the middle of the stage for Perfect Blue.

In its final edit, the song had become a piano ballad about a never-truly-happened relationship with a person he never had the chance to meet. The main voice sang in hypotheticals, talking to somebody that wasn’t in the room. It was a discourse on missed chances. A study on lost love.

The melody was stripped of all instruments and played only with Dazai’s range — rough, then polished, then his voice shattered into the low notes like waves crashing against the cliffs. It was the kind of build-up you can feel in your lungs.  
It was ecstatic heights and bone-breaking lows.
It was exactly how falling in love with Chuuya felt, from start to finish.

Amidst the general surprise and whispering, Dazai sat at the instrument and looked at the crowd. He drank in their presence and leaned on their support. 

Dazai took a deep, sharp breath.

“So… Perfect Blue," he began, leaning into the mic. The crowd cheered. "Most of you don’t know this song has a story." 

The static noise deafened him for a moment, adjusting to his voice, and he waited for the noise to die out before continuing. 

His index bounced over the piano keys, nervously, never actually pressing the note but feeling the smooth surface under his fingertips.

“Two years ago, I met a boy,” he began. He smiled to himself at the memory, as he looked down at his hands, almost expecting to find a drink in front of him. “He was— well, is, the most obnoxious, oblivious, obstinate person I’ve ever met.” A chuckle crackled through the crowd, like a flame taking courage before turning into a fire. “I don’t know what he saw in me. I don't. But every day, for a summer, that boy put up with me. Every day I pushed and demanded, and he pushed back. And all the while I just thought: man, this is what playing with fire feels like. Until the day he said something very important to me.” A pause, and he glanced at the dome above his head and took a deep breath. “That day was also the day of Odasaku’s death.”

Licking his lips, Dazai found himself dwelling on that sentence. For a moment, the morale in the stadium plummeted.

Odasaku was loved.

He was missed. 

But the loss of his best friend, his center of gravity, would never be an excuse for his shortcomings and vices, and Dazai never hid that from his fan base. 

Yet he couldn’t help but think that, like all cataclysms, that loss had brought forward great change at an equally high price.

“I never replied,” Dazai went on, powering through the confession before his courage would forsake him. 

“Those days went by in a haze. I don’t remember much. But I know I left with the first flight headed to the other end of the world.” I got cleaned up and became the kind of man who could grow old with Chuuya, he thought, although he would never admit that in front of strangers. The kind of man who’d never leave him. “I never told that boy that I loved him too. But—”

The entire crowd breathed out at the same time.

A giant, reverberating, collective lung that let out a soft ‘oh’. 

The fictional oh, embodied for him in a stadium full of people. Fingers brushing the piano keys, Dazai could feel their surprise in his bones.

A fair reaction, since he used to be surprised too. He used to think love was out of his reach, and that he'd never be happy. Not anymore. Because Chuuya was here and was real, and he was everything Dazai wanted.

“—But I wrote this entire album about him, so I guess now he knows.”

—

“The audacity. Can you believe this absolute clown? 

He told the world before he told me — and I only learned it because Michizou sent me a bloody TikTok some fuck-knows-year-old girl had uploaded live. 

Fuck, I thought.

What if I go there and kick his ass.”

Nakahara Chuuya, interview with Pen, 2022
Visited: 156 times 

—

“He said: ‘You’re lucky I still love you, but I really wanna punch you.’ 

In hindsight maybe I deserved that punch, but I remember thinking that it was okay as long as Chuuya still wanted to touch me. 

Of course, he never punched me for real.

The thing is, I become a little bit pathetic around Chuuya.”

Dazai Osamu, interview with Pen, 2022

Visited: 157 times 

 —

The Old World was the same as Chuuya remembered it. 

The poignant smell of bourbon and nicotine filled the room. 
Summer brought forward the sticky feeling of linen glued to the skin, air swollen with the promise of thunderstorms and rain. July was always unbearable.
July carried the ghost of Dazai. 
The memory of the man’s existence somehow found its way back to Chuuya every summer, overlapping with everything that had existed before— the crickets chirping and the summer festivals, and the memories Chuuya had of summers pre-2018. 

He had found himself hating the heat if he couldn’t complain about it with Dazai. He hated the lack of physical contact, lounging in a bed and writing songs and exchanging banters. He still hated sex during summer, when it was so hot even breathing was a challenge, and never found anyone worth the exception.

Not after Dazai.

Before Chuuya knew it, his life had been chopped in two. He existed pre and post- Dazai. 

He’d never been the same.

That bar had never been the same. 

He still felt like he was breathing through fire and dust, as he descended the set of stairs that brought him to the underground bar. How masochistic of him, really. And yet, he kept returning.

In an even worse masochistic streak, Chuuya couldn’t help himself from wandering to the bar on the evening of Dazai’s last date in Yokohama. He didn't expect to find him, imagining the man would likely be in his hotel room. Maybe he was partying the night away with a groupie or twenty. Or perhaps he was sleeping.

Whatever Dazai was, after the viral confession ( Ouji reveals mysterious heartbreak, really?!), Chuuya just had to see him. He hoped that absurd confession meant something. He hoped Dazai would answer.
He hoped he would be there. Chuuya was really good at hoping.

But summer was the cruelest season of all. 
She had tempted him once with a stranger in a bar, allowing a night to derail his life and steal his heart, and now—

“Ah,” Chuuya said, stopping as he spotted the only other figure in the bar.

Dazai was as attention-grabbing as ever.

He sat alone,lanky limbs and bandages peeking out from under his clothes, perched on a stool. He was all arms and legs, still. He looked tired and lonely, so ancestrally lonely, and he looked like he’d rushed all the way to the Old World right after the concert. 

A glass of whisky rested in front of him.

Chuuya’s heart stuttered, body suddenly as heavy as a block of concrete sinking in the sea. Two years. Two damn years, and still looking at Dazai was pulling away the rug from under his feet.

Dazai’s presence was eating him alive, keeping him dangling on the edge of sanity. He looked at the man rolling the whisky in his glass, taking another sip, and evaluated his possibilities: he could run away, or stay. Yell, or say nothing.

Decisions, decisions.  

He looked at Dazai. 

Speak up, or leave and be forever gone. He won't even notice, right?

Then, Chuuya took a deep breath. He collected himself and stepped forward.

“Oi,” he said. 

The moment he registered the voice, Dazai scrambled to his feet. He turned to face him, mouth hanging open, cheeks pale. He almost kicked off the bar stool as he stumbled forward. His eyes rested on Chuuya, full of surprise and unspoken questions. He stared at him as one would stare at a ghost, with the reverence and horror of an apparition. With his heart skipping a beat, faltering for a moment before it started thumping against his bones, all Chuuya could think was: he looks good. 

In a new Evangelion t-shirt, as black as the old one Chuuya remembered so perfectly from their first meeting, Dazai stared at him and didn’t dare move.

It seemed unfair for someone to look that gorgeous even in a ratty oversized t-shirt that showed too much collarbone and shoulder to be nothing but obscene despite the thin layer of bandages covering the skin. Chuuya could smell the hairspray gripping his hair into the style the makeup department had planned for him throughout the concert. His skin tickled with expectation, longing to touch the man to make sure he wasn’t a ghost.

“Chuuya.” 

“Hello, Osamu.”

Dazai’s eyes widened at the name. His hand twitched. "You came." You're real.

"Long time no see." Every word burned his lips, and the involuntary smile that had curled them. "You look well, shitty princeling."

Dazai stepped forward, knees slightly shaky. For a moment, they seemed ready to give out under his weight.

“Chuuya, look, I know I have no right—” he started. His voice quivered, and Chuuya couldn't help but think that it was a peculiar way to start an apology.

No, Dazai had no right.  

And yet it wasn’t a matter of right. It wasn’t a matter of wrongs, either.

It was never a matter of permissions, because Chuuya had discovered that he would go with whatever dumb idea Dazai had. He’d learn the steps as they went, and he’d let Dazai lead him through new feelings and familiar dreams.

“You have every right,” Chuuya said, instead. 

The air turned static, hard to breathe.  

After a second of mutual silence, Chuuya’s eyes wandered to the empty bar behind them. He pouted at the sight of the bartender, who was busying himself with a kitchen towel and dusting off bottles, but he then decided that a possible witness who could sell Dazai's whereabouts to the internet wasn’t his business. That was Dazai’s problem.

“Does your team know you’re here?”

Dazai shrugged. “When do they ever?” 

Right. 
Irresponsible as always. Some things truly never changed.  

“Kunikida is gonna beat your ass.”

Dazai smirked. “He mellowed down in the past years, y’know? But yes, I presume he could be… mildly worried.”

"Shoot the poor bastard a text," Chuuya said, huffing, although he didn't really care if Dazai did it or not. He just pitied Dazai's team, that was all. “So I take it that no journalist or shit has followed you, yes?”

“Why, Chuuya, that’s a rather sterile question to ask on our first meeting after years.”

Annoyance simmered in him; it started from the corners, from a tingling sensation taking over his fingertips.
Dazai had no right to remind him of how long he’d fucked off without an explanation. He didn’t want to remember that, despite it, he was still forgiving him for leaving.

“Just answer the damn question.”

“No,” Dazai said, shaking his head. “No one followed me. Not that I know of.”

“Are you sure? Because I don’t want my damn face plastered on every gossip mag tomorrow morning.”

The smile Dazai gave him was indulgent. Protective. “Have I ever disappointed you?”

“Yes, you have,” he answered. The dart of hurt that passed through Dazai’s face lasted a second, but Chuuya noticed it anyway. “Not that we can do anything about it now. I hope you’ve got me a drink in advance, shithead.”

He pushed further into the bar and flopped on the stool next to Dazai’s empty seat, strengthless and a little light-headed. The other followed him, taking his place in front of his half-emptied whisky. 

“I asked for the wine menu,” Dazai said.

“You did, huh?”

“I imagined you’d want your usual red.”

I never told that boy I loved him.  

“You imagine a lot of things, you ass,” he heard himself murmur, talking mostly to himself. “Damn it, are ya really doing this?” He carded his hands in his hair. “Just say it’s all a marketing move and move on. Just tell me.”

“Tell you what, Chuuya, exactly? I sent you a note and you didn’t answer.”

Chuuya swallowed. “I heard what you said during the concert. Tell that shit to me.”

There was no trace of emotion in his voice, matching the deadpan expression on his face. It wasn’t an easy feat to keep himself still while his heart was fluttering in his chest and all he wanted was to run for the hills, but he tried anyway.

Dazai sucked in a deep breath.

He seemed healthier and happier than Chuuya remembered — his slender neck peeking out from the white bandages almost begging to be bitten; long, lean fingers meant to be sucked on and played with.
The old suffering — the paleness and the purple-circled eyes sunken in his skull — had slipped off Dazai’s shoulders like a heavy coat. He looked more solid, now. Rooted to a ground that wasn’t sucking him in anymore.

The ocean was tranquil, and so was Dazai. 

For what felt like an eternity to Chuuya, the man silently stared at his drink and didn’t answer. In the deafening silence, he raised his hand to flag down the bartender, asked for a glass of red wine, and declared that he’d add it to Dazai’s tab.
No one protested, and part of him regretted not going for the most expensive bottle on the menu.

“You saw the concert,” Dazai said, eventually.

“I did. Parts of it, anyway.”

“I hoped you’d be there.”

“Why, exactly? What the hell did you expect me to do? It’s been years, Dazai. It’s been years. And, in case you didn’t notice, years are a lot longer than the time we actually dated.” 

And they weren’t even really dating, in those months— as if time mattered at all, when Chuuya’s heart had set on Dazai and refused to let him go ever since. Hyperfixation only needs a second to kick in. A life-changing, goddamn second.

Because those months had been more life-packed and memorable than the rest of Chuuya’s entire life. They had been thick with experiences and words and kisses, and Chuuya had found himself drunk on a feeling he’d never experienced before.

Dazai sighed, poking the ice cube in his drink. The fact that he was still a whisky-on-the-rocks type of guy gave Chuuya a weird sense of comfort.

“Two years. I’ve been counting.” 

You’re not the only one. 

“Yet you couldn’t spare a word of goodbye,” Chuuya said, screwing up his nose. “Why didn’t you tell me any of that to my face? Anything of what you were going through.”

“You were a stranger back then,” Dazai whispered. “A stranger I wanted and that felt a little too familiar, and one I was starting to love, but a stranger nonetheless.”

It hurt, even if Chuuya pretended it didn’t.

“And what am I now?”

Dazai seemed to think over the answer for a moment, biting his bottom lip. “An obsession,” he admitted, eventually. He smiled. “And you’re my hope.”

Strengthless, Chuuya’s shoulders fell.

Hope, huh? That was rich.

What a stupid joke. 

“Look…” He sighed. “You are under no obligation to trust me. But don’t say stuff like you are in love with me or like you regret leaving or whatever that was. Don’t— just don’t lie.” He inhaled. Fuck, he thought. Fuck. When he spoke, his voice broke at the seams. “I’m not that strong, Dazai. You fucked me up good. So don’t lie to me now, because I can’t handle it after two years of seeing you everywhere and not having you around at all.”

“I’m not lying.” 

“So you say,” he hummed, lowering his gaze to the counter. “Which would mean shit if I could actually trust you.”

Dazai flinched. “I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“At least we agree on that.”

“I hoped we would…” Sucking in a deep breath, Dazai shook his head. “I understand why you’re mad. I could have called you when I was in New York, or when I landed in Japan before the concert. I never did.”

“Yes, you could have,” Chuuya agreed. “Whatever the hell you're doing, stop it. I’m not your hope and fuck knows I'm not your muse, Dazai.”

“You are, you know you are.”

“And is that all that I am?” He volleyed back, seething.

Muse, hope— they were all tools, the expression of how he could be useful to a prince's goals. 

Why couldn’t he be just Chuuya?

Was that not enough, for Dazai?

“No,” Dazai murmured. “You know that’s not all you are.”

Chuuya clicked his tongue, waving the comment away. He could fight it, but it’d be useless. Besides, having seen No Longer Human, he could tell the decision of leaving wasn’t entirely Dazai’s own.
Even if never explicitly stated, he could at least guess Mori Corp had a lot to do with it.
Then why wasn’t Dazai admitting that it had not been his fault, not entirely? Why was he still so hell-bent on working alone, and carrying all the guilt on his own?

Sometimes, Chuuya wondered if God hadn’t given Dazai such long legs to help him outrun his demons and all the lies following him around. 

But at the same time, Chuuya wondered how much of Dazai was in that decision.
After all, he didn’t call for years. He could have, and he didn’t.
So what if you love me?   he thought, teeth sinking in his bottom lip as he nodded at the bartender, mouthing a ‘thank you’ in exchange for a glass full of red wine. 

“You could have called,” he said, because that single mistake bore repeating.

“Yes. I was— scared. I guess. And ashamed.”

“Yeah. Relationships are fucking damn scary, especially when you don’t talk.” Then, defeated, Chuuya cupped his drink with both hands. “I’m not mad. I’m not, but you can’t be serious.”

“I am,” he said. “I loved you then. I do now. And while I was away, I tried to become someone who could be by your side.” 

Chuuya frowned. I just wanted you by my side, though, he thought. That would have been enough. “It was just four months.”

“But those four months left a mark on you, didn’t they?” Dazai smiled. “They certainly did it to me.” 

“...”

“I look back fondly at our summer together, you know. We had a good time.”

The knot in Chuuya’s throat tightened. “Yes, I guess we did.”

“But it was also the summer I lost my best friend, Chuuya,” he murmured, quietly — as if speaking through a mirror, through a wall. The emptiness of his voice made Chuuya flinch. “The rug had been pulled from under my feet. I don’t mean it as an excuse, but my hand was an easy one to force.”

Damn it.

Of course, Dazai would take responsibility for his feelings and act contrite once he’d already made a mess and caused a scene. Wishing he could have just talked to him, instead of stepping on a stage and screaming their story to the whole world, Chuuya pretended that the familiarity didn’t hurt. He lifted the glass to his mouth and wondered how did whisky taste from Dazai’s mouth.
He hated himself for wanting to find out.

Almost contrasting the liquor, his wine was sweet.
Rounded and rich-flavored, with notes of berries and field flowers, because Dazai wasn’t the only one untouched by the years. Chuuya had not changed much, either.

“Momo’s alright, by the way,” Dazai carried on, talking as his mouth brushed the rim of his glass of whisky. “He returned to Japan with me, too, of course. He misses you— he misses your hat, I guess.”

Chuuya chuckled under his breath.
His mind refused to dwell on the detail dropped almost effortlessly in the conversation: Dazai was back. If he was back to stay, though, was another question entirely. 

“I see,” he said. “And how are you?” 

The question was waved away, minimized as if Dazai’s well-being was just a drop in a much bigger, more complicated world. As if words as simple as fine or bad could not explain the rollercoaster of Dazai’s mind. 

“I’m alright. I even have an appetite, most days — which is still progress, I suppose. I sold my old house. My new apartment in Brooklyn is nice, for a change.”

“Hm-m. New York, was it?”

“It’s a place like any other, but the city has been good to me.”

“Yeah, Aya says you’ve done well for yourself.”

Dazai blinked, surprise painting a slight blush on his cheeks. “Oh? After what happened, I thought she’d hate my guts.”

“You expect too much from a teenager,” Chuuya said, a giggle in his voice. “Oh, she tried. But I didn’t want to ruin it for her, and I think she has Daybreak in a loop and your new Vogue cover in a little pop shrine.”

“I bet Chuuya hates it.” 

Chuuya scoffed. “I tried to set it on fire,” he said, not unkindly. “But you made my life easy, too. When I got her some stupid merch for her birthday, she almost cried.” Koyou also called him a masochist, but that was beyond the point. “I’m just glad you’re ok.”

“I think I am, now. Fitzgerald has been a good partner to work with, and Atsushi and Kunikida-kun helped tremendously.” A pause. “I’ve also met my mother, you know?”

Oh.  

Turning to face the man, Chuuya had to remind himself to close his mouth and collect his slacked jaw. Relief washed over him, together with an inexplicable sense of contentment. 

“That’s great,” he said, voice full of wonder. He meant it; genuinely. “How is she?”

“She’s different from what I expected. Nice. I also have a half-sister and a half-brother.”

“That’s great. Really.”

“She didn’t turn me away, Chuuya.”

He sounded on the verge of crying, and how desperately Chuuya wanted to hug him. “No sane parent would ever turn you away, Osamu,” he whispered, leaning closer and looking for Dazai’s eyes. “How is having a family doin’ for you, then?”

“Well, I’m still getting used to the concept of having a family, I suppose.”

“I guess it’s a process? Don’t take family advice from me, but I’m glad your mother came around.” He found himself smiling. “I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you. I— It’s been a long two years, Chuuya. I wish I could turn back time and show you everything you've missed.”

Me too, Chuuya thought. “It’s late,” he said.

His relationship with his parents was beyond saving, as there’s not much left to mend when your family is six feet under, but maybe Dazai had caught and rescued his life just before the inevitable fall.
He had his sisters, but Dazai had nobody. Unlike him, Dazai had always been terribly alone. 

Putting as little commitment as he could in that soundless comment, what Chuuya did not say was that he understood Dazai’s reasons. Part of it, at least. 

It had been two long years, yes.
Two years where Chuuya had roamed through old audio messages just to hear Dazai softly singing in the microphone, humming melodies they needed to test, or just singing along with the radio. 
He’d saved the half-slurred, drunk messages that Dazai would send him when the sleeping pills didn’t kick in, or after a gig or an afterparty. 

Somewhere along the lines, during their fake relationship, Dazai had started whining that he couldn't sleep right without his chibi boyfriend. 
Chuuya would call him 'a shitty baby' and complain, but he would make sure that Dazai would always wake up to a good morning text or a meme, or a selfie. 
Years later, after listening to Daybreak for the first time, Chuuya sometimes curled in bed with his headphones and listened to Dazai’s songs. 

“I’ve seen your Netflix thingy," Chuuya said, fighting to keep his voice neutral as he wetted his lips. “No Longer Human, was it?”

Dazai’s posture stiffened. “Oh… Did you?”

“Aya forced me, she said I would want to watch it, and she was right. That shit— was that true?”

Dazai glanced at him; eyes cold, lips thin as if the memory had left a sour taste in his mouth. “Every single word.”

Chuuya swallowed around a lump in his throat, scrambling for words. “Fuck,” he said — and it felt the best thing he could come up with. 

“I know.”

“Look, I’m happy you told Mori to fuck off. I wanted to beat him up to a pulp when I saw the shit he put you through.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. He’s not worth Chuuya’s time.”

“You are, though,” Chuuya said. The confession caused Dazai to turn, wide-eyed and with parted lips. Chuuya’s Adam’s apple bobbed down, uneasy, and he realized he’d let out a breath he’d been holding in for years — voice fraying and cracked like a glass on the point of exploding. “You say you love me, but honestly, I wish you could have just trusted me to begin with.”

Dazai winced. He didn’t move nor answer, staring in dull silence at the half-empty glass. 

Somebody in a magazine had once called Ouji a beautiful sterile soul, and Chuuya found himself thinking that he had never read something quite so wrong. 

He played beautifully, but he didn’t love life.
Behind the scenes, Mori made sure of it.
After all, Chuuya supposed, that was the reason behind their whole relationship. Because, despite their first meeting and the way Dazai had outright asked him for a one-night stand, he turned out to be so much more than the adventure of a night or a man without a heart. 

If anything, Dazai had too much heart.
His feelings were off, a city in ruins trapped in a constant blackout. Every occasional flicker of energy hurt, and his heart ached for the simple act of being alive. 
Dazai was an overflowing bucket of lost hopes and imprisoned art, although he claimed to be empty all the time.

Suddenly, a rush of unguarded affection ran through Chuuya.

“Fuck. I can’t believe it. You love me, huh, you jackass? You say you do. You said you loved me back in front of a shitton of people,” he repeated, almost talking to himself.

Dazai threw him a side-glance. “Yes,” he murmured. “Yes, I do.”

“Then prove it.”

It was then that Chuuya’s body moved on its own accord, refusing to wait for an answer.

He leaned forward and closed the distance between them, placing one hand on Dazai’s neck and cradling his nape to drive him close. Stone-sober, he regretted not being able to blame his actions on the wine. 

He hoped Dazai would shove him away and call him an idiot. He didn’t. If anything he moved closer, amber eyes sparkling with genuine, vibrant surprise.

The proximity warmed up his chest with a strange glow, a cramped feeling that exploded when his lips touched Dazai’s mouth — hesitant and ready to pull away at the slightest sign of uncertainty on Dazai’s part.
But Dazai’s lips parted, tongue flicking out to find Chuuya’s bottom lip, and his entire body relaxed. 

A sense of familiarity blanketed him — a need never forgotten. His stomach fluttered.

There had been others after Dazai. 

Good men, truer relationships than Dazai had ever been, and yet— no one could give him that. No one could touch him like he was precious porcelain, and halt his breath and make him smile into a kiss the way Dazai did.

Dazai’s thumb skimmed over his chin, lightly touching his bottom lip to encourage Chuuya to part his lips. 
He was a great kisser, as Chuuya’s body never allowed him to forget. He was infuriating and stubborn and so easy to hurt — and he was back.

Part of Chuuya wanted to scream.

With a single touch of lips, he’d betrayed every single I don’t care he’d ever uttered. He’d betrayed the heartbroken person Dazai left after an unanswered confession, the person who lost sleep wondering if maybe he should have done things differently— if maybe he had scared Dazai away with too much pressure. 

And yet, there wasn’t a single cell in his body that didn’t still long to drown in Dazai’s touches.

When he pulled away — short of breath, one hand still cupping Dazai’s cheek, lips wet and eyes laughing — Chuuya felt a blush creep up his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya murmured, burying every word in the non-existent space between them. His voice rang hoarsely and his hands were rough as they covered Dazai’s neck. “I’m sorry for just jumping you, I—“

“Hey,” Dazai shushed him, a smile shining in his eyes. “It’s ok.”

“I’m so fucking sorry for missing the signs, too. For not being there for you when you needed me.” He gnawed at his bottom lip, brow furrowed as Dazai’s lips curled up — glossy and red and so inviting.

How odd, he thought.

Chuuya’s heart was bursting, and Dazai was smiling; that beam should have pissed the redhead off, and yet, somehow, it also felt marvelously right.

Gently, Dazai drove a strand of red hair behind his ear. “You were there when I needed you.”

“I watched that documentary a stupid amount of times, y’know. I did, and I felt like a moron because I had no idea, and I couldn’t even call you because I had no idea how to reach you. But I would have apologized, if I could.”

He could have gone through any of Dazai’s social media, too, but he was too much of a coward for that, but he had signed an NDA that asked him explicitly to not contact Dazai in any way, or endanger the secrecy of their relationship. Besides, he was scared.
He couldn’t have survived a second rejection. 

But Dazai’s grip was gentle, now, and slightly quivering.

“You couldn’t know.”

“I never even noticed you were that unwell.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“No, it wasn’t. But it wasn’t your fault either.” He held him closer, feeling tired all of a sudden. “God. Sometimes I want to punch you.”

I love you too. I always did.  

I never stopped. 

Although he rested his forehead against Chuuya’s, ebony dark and russet red blending as one, Dazai’s expression darkened. “I understand if Chuuya doesn’t want to see me anymore. But would you mind if we stay like this for a bit? I’ll be gone forever after that. I promise.”

In response, Chuuya hugged him closer.
He smelled his hair and took a second to enjoy the reality of Dazai’s breath ghosting over his cheek. It subtly tasted like whisky.
He focused on the air moved by Dazai’s eyelashes when he blinked, the body heat, the movements of his chest. 

He’s back, everything screamed. I’m back. 

“Screw you,” he said, although it lacked any aggressiveness. “Come home with me.” 

With Dazai’s pulse point under his hands, he sensed the man’s heart skipping a beat before it started running. Faster and faster, flustered by the invitation— a door ajar, looking on the past.

The man pushed his nose against Chuuya’s cheek, like a lazy house cat rubbing himself against somebody’s leg for snuggles. He used to do that all the time. Chuuya used to laugh and call him ‘Momo,’ too, just like the cat he had started to consider theirs.
But he couldn’t laugh now, drowning in the absurdity of the situation and in a sense of impending future.

“Why?”

Despite himself, Chuuya snorted. “Because I’m a sentimental idiot.”

Because I love you, even though I shouldn’t. I never understood how to stop loving you. 

“Chuuya—”

“And because I still have the clothes you forgot at my house.”

The chuckle Dazai let out ran down his spine, an invisible caress that caused goosebumps to bloom on his skin. “Shut up. You don’t.” 

“They’re in a box somewhere,” Chuuya insisted, smiling too. For some reason, he couldn’t stop beaming even if he felt like crying.

He had also kept the old notes, the texts, and a stock of fresh bandages 'just in case' — although he didn’t dare admit the latter out loud.

He’d considered moving out and finding a new condo just to escape the memory of the man writing music in a pair of boxer briefs in his bed, but it didn’t seem fair to abandon a house he liked because of somebody who stuck around for only a summer.
Perhaps, part of him had always known Dazai would come back to Yokohama.

“Chuuya, I know it sounds cheap now, but…“ Dazai licked his lips, eyes bright as he stared through dark eyelashes. “I am in love with you.”

Despite himself, Chuuya grinned. “Oh, are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you are—“

“I am,” Dazai insisted, somehow bratty. It stole a snort out of Chuuya, unguarded, and he feared that affection would overflow from his voice and thaw the lump in his throat into tears. 

“—then, if you are, I have a request.”

“Anything.”

“Would you sing for me again?”

—

Yokohama, 2025

“Do you love me?” 

Even after all the years together, kissing Dazai after a long day at work was still the highlight of Chuuya’s existence. The man still sported the same charm as the first night they met.

Kissing him still felt like the first crazy, mindless leap of faith of talking to a stranger. 
Jokingly, Chuuya still said he would hit on Dazai as strangers in a bar.
And even with their second wedding approaching, being with the man felt like jumping in the void — eyes shut, knees trembling, heart in his throat. Kissing him was warm, too. As warm as a summer day. 

“No,” Chuuya said, allowing Dazai to wrap his arms around his body, but he was grinning. “I married you by mistake.”

Dazai laughed — a sweet sound. “Ah, that sounds about right. Don’t you always say you’ve been scammed, my love?”

“But I was,” Chuuya answered. He pouted, bottom lip jutting out. “I’ve been promised free alcohol and a huge party if I married a certain silly fish, and we both know I’m partial to a nice wine open bar.”

“Hm-m. Understandable, the open bar sounds nice.”

“Sadly, I was talked into eloping with said fish during a tour,” he grinned. “Not a single drop of wine. Disgraceful, really.”

“I knew the lack of wine was why Chuuya proposed a second time.” 

Still smiling, murmuring a fond ‘idiot’ under his breath, Chuuya hooked Dazai’s collar to drag him down. No, he thought, as his heart halted in the split second before their lips met, no. It started beating again only with the touch of Dazai’s mouth, running.

He had proposed a second time because Dazai deserved the biggest, most shameless party known to humankind.

The biggest cake — whipped cream and strawberries.

The biggest crowd. 

He proposed a second time because, every time they kissed, Chuuya’s world turned into silence. Quiet, soothing silence. Around Dazai, his world turned blue. A happy, tender blue. A perfect life.

And, even after several years together, Dazai seemed eager to devour him, capturing his lips every time they passed by each other in the brand-new house they shared, taking Chuuya’s chin in between his fingers so Chuuya could angle his head to welcome his husband’s kisses. 
Dazai teased him all the time about how his husband had to stand on his tippy-toes to meet his mouth and, despite his grumbling, Chuuya didn’t truly mind.
As long as he could kiss Dazai, he didn’t hear the jabs at his height. 

In retrospect, yes: Chuuya deeply regretted meeting Dazai on that unbearably hot summer night, hunting for something strong to drink and for someone to hold on to till morning.

He had never been the same man after that night.

He became a servant of this handsome prince with the sad eyes and a generous mouth and voice like warm sand.

Ever since that day, regrets had piled up.

Chuuya regretted wasting time.
He regretted not understanding Dazai, not always, at least, blind to his pain and deaf to his cry for help. And, most importantly, not always as Dazai deserved. He regretted the backflip his heart made when the man smiled against his lips.
And then Dazai grinned and murmured “my love,” against Chuuya’s mouth, and Chuuya regretted his lack of words to explain the things that the sound did to his stomach. 

He worked with words, yet could never quite describe Dazai’s existence in his life; it was a light, and a storm, and a discovery.

It was a static change – ever present, always different.

It was happiness. 

How could a person still awake such a storm of butterflies in his lungs, after all these years?
In hindsight, he regretted falling for Dazai because he never stopped falling ever since. 

“Why do you ask if I love you? It’s not like you to be so insecure,” Chuuya whispered, nose against Dazai’s. “You know I do, so— did you eat something spoiled again? Was it the spoiled milk? Last time, you were sure you were going to die.”

“Well, to be fair, people die from drinking spoiled milk.”

“Not if it’s been spoiled for a day.” He scoffed. “Damn it— you’re worse than Momo, you little princeling. The only spoiled thing I see here is you.”

“I’m just worried about you if I were to die. Kunikida would go mama bear on Aya, and we all know Chuuya would be a promiscuous widower.”

That sounded like him, he had to admit. Still, Chuuya rolled his eyes. “I’m not the one in this relationship who has an exhibitionism kink, and you’d be proud of me being a promiscuous widower,” he said, not unkindly. Dazai would encourage him to move on, and Chuuya would do the same— if I’m ever gone, he’d say to Dazai, have fun for me too. Gobble up every inch of life you can. “Really, Dazai, what’s going on? You're being weird.”

“I saw your interview,” Dazai murmured. He leaned forward, then, kissing the space between his eyebrows in a way that forced Chuuya’s lips to stretch in a shit-eating smirk.

“Oh, did you?”

Despite the teasing, they both knew Dazai never missed an interview, and Chuuya tried his best to keep up with all of Dazai’s arrangements and appointments too, despite his job with Michizou’s agency. He never missed a concert.
They were partners.  

They supported each other. 

“So Chuuya hates Ouji?”

“That’s hardly news for you.”

“And you fell in love with me from the very beginning?”

With a tender indulgence, he nosed his husband’s neck.

Dazai was fishing for compliments, then, since he already knew the answer to that question. They both did. 

“You know I did. You were my knight of spade, after all. What was that? A sexual awakening?”  

Dazai grinned, his eyes shining as Chuuya mirrored himself in the pitch-black pupils.
Only recently, after their reunion, he had the chance to discover a Dazai without dilated pupils and red-rimmed eyes. Chuuya loved his husband’s eyes, now, a testament to Dazai’s quiet soul.
It was a subtle detail, but it told a story of hard-earned redemption.

“I guess we can vouch for the sexual awakening, yes,” he purred. “But that’s where you are wrong, Chibi: I didn’t know you were interested in me at all. I thought I was a one-night stand like any other.”

“Like any other? I don’t talk about my dead parents to any stranger I fuck once, Osamu.”

“It’s just—“ He held Chuuya closer. “You seemed out of my league.”

“You are a literal idol, asshole, and the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. You have fan clubs.”

Shrugging off Chuuya’s surprised comments, Dazai let out a throaty hum. “I was just a ghost in the night,” he said. “I wouldn’t have put quite so much effort into wooing you, otherwise.” 

Throwing back his head, Chuuya barked a harsh, surprised chuckle.
How dared Dazai lie so shamelessly to his face, saying he never realized Chuuya had tripped over his heart the second their eyes met? 

“Smartass.”

“It’s true. I worked very hard to make sure Chibi would become my husband.” He sighed, happy, leaning against Chuuya’s side. “Aya and Kouyou Ane-san wanted to see us, by the way. We should swing by their place tonight, surprise them.”

“Is the fact that we are getting married again not surprise enough?”

“That’s another reason to butter them up. Fitzgerald sold the exclusive to L’Officiel, so maybe you want to give your sisters the heads up on that before they learn about the details of the wedding from a press release.” 

“We really should, yeah. Also, Aya must be missing you.”

“And I miss my little sister, too,” Dazai said. He sounded true, too, and Chuuya’s heart lit up.

More than anything, more than fame and connections and wonderful sex and an adorable husband, Dazai gave him something Chuuya always longed for: a family. 

A cat, Aya, Kouyou, Dazai’s mother. Their friends. It was all positively perfect. 

Quietly Dazai planted a kiss over the redhead's jugular, lips brushing over Chuuya’s pulse point.

Whenever he did that, Chuuya could feel the man’s mouth inside his heartbeat.

I love you, that heartbeat said. I will never leave. We are free, and we are real. 

“Before we go, can you come with me for a moment? I think I finally know what I want for our first dance at the reception,” Dazai said. “And I want Chuuya to be the first one to hear it.”

“Oh? Was that why you stayed up all night again?”

Slowly, Dazai nodded.

Old habits stuck with him, and he still worked at night sometimes. Now, at least, Chuuya could pad to the grand piano in the music room and hug his husband from behind — holding him in the dim light, gently whispering to him. Sometimes he lured him back to bed, curling one against the other. Other times Dazai kept him up, making love to him against the piano, bodies intertwined in the silence of Tokyo’s bright night.
Those nights were intimate.
They were slow.

“Guilty as charged,” Dazai said. He smiled. “But I think I know what I want, now.”

“Do you?” Chuuya hummed, almost distant. He leaned his chin against Dazai’s chest, allowing the man to kiss the crown of his head. 

“Yes,” Dazai echoed. “Ouji’s last song, and my very first one.”

—

“So, going back to your first question… did we fail Dazai at any point in this story? Maybe. Maybe we fucked him up. Maybe we could have been kinder to him. If we did hurt him, even only a little, please know it wasn’t intentional. 

What I know is that my husband is the strongest, craziest, most eccentric and most infuriating man I know. 
He’s a work of art, one worth the billions. 

And I don’t plan on leaving him anytime soon.”

[Nakahara-Dazai Chuuya, 
Interview extract from Gilgamesh Night, Yokohama, 10th February 2025]

Notes:

Thank you SO much for reading, for the support, for the love this fic has received in the short time it's been ongoing.
A huge thank you to @mosaichiko for the wonderful arts.
: you can find them here ❤️
And thanks again to SKK Big Bang for organizing the event!

Let me know your thoughts, and I hope you liked this fic as much as I liked writing it.

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