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His hands find Dazai first. The rest of him follows.
His nose knows him too well. Blind to everything his partner is, it’s a damn shame burying his face in his shirt and inhaling practically nothing in return. But, repenting, familiarity is what he needs. The sort that walks alongside him and kicks at his heels when seriousness becomes too much of a second skin and curls up beside him to sit in his partner’s place. Familiarity is their common ground, where their needs extend into each other’s until Chuuya is not the one needing. It was not for him— never for him since he is the one that learned to get on without it. Teasing prods and honesty jokingly laughed away. Watching Chuuya with every second he cares to spare as if he wouldn’t notice— as if he will be lost in the next blink. He got by without it, knowing it was nice not to have an annoyance constantly over his shoulder. It was nice not having a constant with everything else pushing him further— his job being his life; an organization that never sleeps.
He doesn’t need, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting. Give and be given (receive when he chose to believe he didn’t want anything Dazai had to give him). This cycle they are entangled in might as well be the sanest kind Chuuya has ever given himself to. Dazai reciprocates with any manner he sees fit, often equal with Chuuya— always equal with Chuuya, however absurd it is. Chuuya never had to ask, whatever answer Dazai would give it would be just as odd. Still, Chuuya doesn’t ask. He walked through their door with no intentions other than unwinding from the day, if that included ignoring the large fish on the sofa, then Dazai would have to deal with it.
Nothing was out of place when he entered, but his instincts took over— the ones reserved for these moments— and he toed off his shoes and hung up his coat. His hands reached for Dazai before he even saw him. It is harder to acknowledge how they both collapsed into each other. Chuuya easily can hide away and pretend this normalcy isn’t so. Dazai wraps his arms around him stiffly as if he is, has been, somewhere else. The automatic response pulls Chuuya from pretending. Chuuya searches Dazai’s face and when he finds no expression that could serve either of them there, he sighs.
“That kind of day? Yeah.” He pulls them down on the cushions. Dazai hardly moves, save for pressing his face against Chuuya’s neck, the hand in his hair does more to encourage him than any disapproval Chuuya could express. He shuts his eyes.
“Yeah… you know how some people just don’t know how to shut up? Mm. You have experience in that area so, that isn’t right. When. Someone doesn’t know when to shut up?” Chuuya scrubs a hand over his face. Truthfully, he does not want to speak. They can’t both be silent, drifting away from themselves. So, for both of them he continues. “My subordinates are capable. More than capable of deciding for themselves. So they know when to ask for help.”
A disagreement pressed into a single grumble. Chuuya mindlessly taps out a rhythm along Dazai’s back. A tempo too slow to be anticipated and too fast to have any real sense of rhythm. Dazai tires of the poking and lifts his head a bit. Chuuya can hear words forming, for once looking forward to the bullshit about to leave his mouth for the first time in several assumed hours.
“Hardly. Dogs who bare their teeth aren’t approachable.”
Chuuya pinches him. He drops his head.
“I am approachable! Too approachable. There’s only so much I can help with when you’re sharing your entire life story when it’s unwanted.”
“Did it get you to help?”
Chuuya rolls his eyes.
“Of course it did. Too easily tamed— OW!”
“I didn’t get to help the guy because I had meetings back to back right after that. It was my only downtime.”
And it had been hell with a headache on top of it all. It started right when he got into his office, as if being out of his partner’s vicinity was a personal offense. By the time there was a moment to do anything about it, the ache had gone away. The buildup deflated into something less than relief and the momentary peace he had evaporated on the way home. All of this is several breaths too long to explain. Dazai will read it in another sigh.
“Yeah. Shit day.” Not nearly as awful as a general busy day could be. For once this one wasn’t filled with necessary violence, subordinates that need covering, and eight plus page reports. And there wasn’t a single image to haunt his eyes when they’re shut. The first time in a while. As the scales go, a lesser shit day. He hums, the next appropriate thing to do is to ask of Dazai’s day. Find out where today sits on the scale. Where the imbalance is. He doesn’t. Not in any normal way and not in any verbal way cueing a response.
Yet, Dazai looks up. He unhooks his grip on Chuuya to gesture, hands splayed against Chuuya’s back. Unceremoniously, he responds.
“Shit day.” He mimics the intonation perfectly it’s startlingly inaccurate. Chuuya laughs anyway.
‘I didn’t laugh when you said it! I thought I was sick earlier—“
“So you went in.”
“I almost did.” Dazai sits up, entirely pulling away from Chuuya. He draws his long legs up, sitting in a corner of the sofa. Warily, he glances at Chuuya, then his surroundings. Eventually, he unfolds his arms and legs, as if remembering where he is; who he’s with. He picks at his shirt button. translucent white against opaque white, a dulled yellow under the few lights on in the flat. “I got dressed but…”
He pulls at a loose thread. It’s thin and nearly invisible from where Chuuya sits. It’s right in front of Dazai as if it is in his face. Twisting from the button holes, waiting to be plucked and pulled. The buttons on his striped shirt aren’t nearly as transparent and don’t fit snug into the holes, just enough to pass as secured against threads of polyester and cotton tightly woven together. The scratchy combination currently sits on his bathroom floor wedged between the tub and the wall where it was tossed in a haze of thoughts as itchy as the fabric. Later, when the shirt is found Chuuya will consider crushing and discarding it.
“Some things just weren’t meant to be.” Dazai chuckles without the glee he would have felt missing work. “Kunikida called— Yes, I did answer. The third time. Don’t give me that look!”
Putting the image together isn’t hard. The flippant dismissal of the detective’s worry and the ensuing silence when the call ended. He goes missing every third day, another absence won’t alarm them unless the actual detective finds a cause for it and says something. Chuuya voiced his own concerns with the system, but dropped the subject, leaving it in Dazai’s hands where it began in. A reason for everything, he doesn’t want to worry his coworkers. His friends. Chuuya only has the insight because they live together. A fact that always manages to spark a myriad of feelings he never wants to sort through or look in the face.
He starts to lean back over, ready to fall back on Chuuya’s lap. He doesn’t get near before Chuuya pushes at him to sit, following the movement and pulling himself as well.
“Up, mackerel.” Chuuya sits, groaning as Dazai does, though the latter’s is out of petulance. He stayed longer than he’d like in his work clothes. Lounging in them isn’t a habit he wants to form. “We should change.”
Dazai holds his arms, sleeves caught in his careful grip. His fingers are too mindful of the soft fabric Chuuya picked out for him. Any and all pleading goes into his eyes. With his defenses built against every one of Dazai’’s tactics, Chuuya steels himself against the expression. They should change. Sitting around longer than is comfortable in clothes that carry their outside lives into their personal space…
They should change. But Dazai pouts just enough for the irritation to melt.
“Your bandages at least. I guess it’s fine since you didn’t go anywhere.”
Dazai doesn’t have to ask him to help. He never had to when they were double black. Chuuya would bleed into every corner of his life and give it the slightest bit of color.
Once, the question forced its way past a mouth that didn’t want to move. Less than a year after his defection, Chuuya didn’t hear from him for an entire month. In one of several safe houses hardly anyone knew about, he found Dazai in the bathtub. Head submerged and limbs sluggish, past any human instinct to fight or freeze. For all of the talking everyone knows he does, Chuuya has his own record of keeping Dazai alive. This wasn’t any different. His skin wasn’t pruned and the bandages puddled around his body, providing no help in hauling him out, nor getting him conscious. His eyes were glassy. Water fell from his lashes and nestled in the corners of his eyes. He found himself when Chuuya dried him off. Things passed across his face. None of them stayed for long. But he asked.
Chuuya never found out why he’d done it. Dazai only told him he hadn’t tried to kill himself.
Winding the gauze around Dazai’s arm, Chuuya is relieved he wasn’t greeted with a similar sight today or anything worse.
They quickly agree that going to bed isn’t a decision they have to think over. Immediately Dazai hogs the blankets. It’s exhausting to fight over it, so Chuuya almost lets him. He flops right down on the lot of them, earning half-hearted shoves and grumbles. The lack of energy seeps into Dazai as well. He tolerates the situation. Then un-tolerates it. The blankets are too much of a barrier between them. Rolling them aside would take Chuuya with them and wrangling the blankets to the other side of the bed would disrupt the comfort they’re settling into. Chuuya shares the same sentiments, but solves the dilemma Dazai made for himself. He blinks and pulls himself under the blankets. Warmth engulfs him, too much but Dazai clings to him before he can rethink his choice. Pulled into pleased arms and listening to Dazai hum delightedly, Chuuya doesn’t mind.
“Chuuya should take care of me more often.”
You act like I don’t. Chuuya shakes his head. He rescues Dazai from more dragons than he should have to.
“You should handle your own shit for once.” The blankets. Thinking too hard over something simple so Chuuya has no choice but to act. Never anything he shouldn’t be handling by himself.
“One day we’ll marry and then you’ll be legally obligated to handle my problems.”
“Who said I want to marry you?” The same conversation. Responses and all.
“Who said you’d have a choice?” Dazai always gives him one.
“You already make your problems mine.” And I always handle them. Always someone else’s to handle. He has a hard time forgetting Dazai does the same for him when the man insists on reminding him. Dazai squeezes his arm. A reassurance and silent promise to continue doing so.
If he had his way there wouldn’t be so many things to handle. Dazai’s head wouldn’t be so full and days wouldn’t be grating on his nerves. Dragging him in one irritating direction then releasing him into something quiet but no less heavy on his shoulders. Some days he’ll remember and their roles will reverse. Not an itchy shirt or blood on his hands but images of faces he’ll never see again. A touch and the cold will strip the images apart and the deadly warmth resting under his skin. Familiarity will curl up beside him, sitting with him in a present he doesn’t have to go through alone.
”Maybe one day…” Chuuya pulls Dazai closer.
Holding each other, they shut their eyes against moments passed.