The Road Not Taken

by TopHat69

Summary:

On the night Dazai leaves the Port Mafia, Oda's blood still staining the edge of the bandages around his wrists, he makes an offer that will change everything:

"Come with me, Chuuya."

Chapter 1: Two Roads Diverged

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

- Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

 

“Come with me, Chuuya.”

Dazai still reeks of smoke and ash, the dark coat he wore like a shield nowhere to be seen. It makes him seem smaller, the way that the lack of bandages on his face makes him seem younger. 

He is gaunt and pale, his eyes reddened in a way that betrays that he has been crying tears that few people would ever believe possible from the handpicked heir to the Port Mafia.

And Oda Sakunosuke’s heartsblood still stains the edges of the white bandages around Dazai’s wrists.

It was that blood which had Chuuya bolt upright as soon as Dazai woke him from a dead sleep, hands snatching Dazai’s and pulling him in so that Chuuya could look at his wrists and assess the damage. It took a few moments for him to realize that the blood wasn’t Dazai’s own, and a few moments past that to notice that it had settled into each of the lines of his palms, rivers and tributaries of rust red.

He scrubbed at his hands with his coat before he burned it, but it wasn’t enough. 

Now they stand in Chuuya’s bathroom, the last of Oda’s blood swirling down the drain and Dazai’s eyes locked on Chuuya in the mirror as he pauses with a fresh roll of bandages in hand.

It’s a life-changing decision. It would mean upending everything he’s built for himself, abandoning an organization he has put heart and soul into for the past few years. 

But isn’t that how he came to the Port Mafia? Is it really so strange that he’d leave side by side with the boy who pulled him into that life to begin with?

“Yeah.”

It makes sense to stick together, anyway. Traitors or no, who in their right mind would volunteer to track down Soukoku if they left together?

 

—

 

Sometimes, all it takes to change the world is a single word. 

 

—

 

For the fifth night in a row, Chuuya is expected to pretend he doesn’t notice Dazai carefully sliding into his bed at two in the morning, skin chilled from sitting out on the tiny balcony of their hotel room. He’s shaking, and it’s not just from the cold. 

It’s never just from the cold anymore. 

It took a few weeks, but Chuuya’s now pulled out of Dazai everything that happened. How Oda died, the deaths of his children, Mori’s hand pulling the strings to arrange it all for the benefit of the Mafia. Dazai’s been replaying it in his mind in a loop, looking for everything he could have done that would have kept Oda’s blood off of his hands. 

He’s making himself sick with it, even with Chuuya there to kick his ass and keep him moving.

That’s during the day, though. At night…

Dazai knows he’s a light sleeper. He knows that Chuuya’s dreamless nights mean he has nothing to keep him under when his sleep is disturbed. There are no elaborate fantasies, no absurd scenarios, not even the repeats of his biggest losses—none of the dreams that movies and books tell him is normal.

Just black, and then his half-frozen partner, and then black, and then waking up at four when Dazai slips away again, then black until he wakes at last to the smell of coffee and the sight of Dazai’s bed artfully mussed as if he spent any time in it. 

Four nights in a row.

This night, the fifth night of Dazai curled in on himself on the opposite edge of the bed, Chuuya abandons the pretense that Dazai has been forcing him into. 

It’s stupid. It’s unnecessary. And it’s making him lose sleep. 

Dazai tenses when Chuuya rolls over, frozen in place as if just being still and quiet enough would keep Chuuya from noticing the dip in the mattress, the chill beneath the blankets. He’s literally holding his breath when Chuuya flings an arm around him and drags him to the center of the bed, face burying into the dip between Dazai’s shoulder blades, legs tangling together beneath the covers. 

Dazai’s stiff in his arms for another long moment as if he’s worried Chuuya is going to snap out of whatever half-awake haze Dazai’s convinced himself of and kick him out of the bed, or like he’s going to be mocked for needing this.

“Stop fucking overthinking it and go to sleep.” Chuuya mutters into the dark, tightening his arm around his partner. 

And Dazai does.

This time Chuuya wakes up at seven and Dazai’s bed is still made. The other side of Chuuya's bed is still warm.

The next hotel room they transfer to in their paranoid flitting around Tokyo only has one bed.

They don’t talk about it. 

 

—

 

It’s just a bit ridiculous how excited Dazai is to rifle through clothes at a second-hand store. He flits from rack to rack, earning amused and indulgent looks from the elderly women gently pressing clothes and putting them out for sale.

But he’s engaged by something, excited even, and Chuuya can’t begrudge him that after a rough few weeks of rough nights and too-long blank stares. If this is what Dazai wants to do, Chuuya will support him in it—even if it’s at the expense of a few more short jokes thrown his way. 

The sweatpants he loaned Dazai flutter just above his ankles. The sweater that had been comfortably oversized on Chuuya pulls across Dazai’s shoulders. Together with the dress shoes Dazai had to keep from his previous attire, it does make for a strange ensemble. The grannies have been tutting to each other and taking turns gently redirecting him towards clothes that suit him and will fit his stupid long legs. 

They’re under the impression Dazai’s going through a growth spurt (he is, it’s infuriating) and that he’s planning for his first job interview. If he is, he sure as hell hasn’t told Chuuya about it. They’ve both got cash, it’s not like they need to worry about a job for… hell, for a couple years at least as long as Chuuya stays the one handling their finances. But unlike Chuuya, Dazai didn’t really get the chance to pack before they defected from the Mafia.

So Dazai shops while Chuuya leans against the wall, able to watch through the display-crowded glass windows without being immediately spotted himself. It’s becoming a habit of his, delinquency a second skin that Chuuya slid back into easily the way he slipped back into skinny jeans and cropped jackets. 

(Again, making himself the butt of short jokes, because his old clothes probably just fit him better now than they did when he was an underfed fifteen-year-old).

Shimokita is bustling even in these off-hours while school is in session and the salary workers are trapped within their sad gray cubicles. College students browse the thrift shops in packs, tourists aimlessly wander and natter, and retired grandmothers apparently gather to display their wares at vintage shops.

It’s lively and colorful and teeming with life and music.

But however close they may be, Tokyo is not Yokohama. Chuuya looks out the windows, and sees a street crammed with buildings crowded with signs and murals. The wall he’s meant to be leaning against should be red brick and he should smell the ocean instead of just car exhaust and the food sizzling down the street. 

Chuuya never expected that he could get homesick for a place he’d mostly lived in the underbelly of, but that’s life. He knows Dazai noticed the faint stirring of melancholy, the way Chuuya noticed how fake Dazai’s cheer was when he threw Chuuya’s jacket at him and said they were going on a field trip.

What Chuuya doesn’t notice is the trap he has fallen into, until it closes in on him heralded by the shuffling of feet and a sun-spotted hand armed with measuring tape. He knows Dazai is behind his downfall even before he’s summarily herded toward a dressing room, not that it would be hard to guess based on his partner absolutely cackling at his expense.

“Such a handsome boy,” his grandmotherly captor tuts, flapping her hands at him to keep him walking now that she’s draped clothes over his arms. Metal hangers rattle together like manacles with Chuuya’s every step. “Yes, we’re going to fix this…”

“Yeah, Chuuya. Let them fix this…” Dazai offers with a teasing grin, waving a hand to encompass literally everything about Chuuya. If Chuuya weren’t fully conscious that they’re trying not to gather more attention, he’d be across the store kicking Dazai’s ass already. As it is, Dazai sticks a tongue out at him mockingly because he knows he’s safe to do so with his geriatric enforcers on his side and with propriety as Chuuya’s handcuffs. 

“This isn’t over,” Chuuya warns ominously, before the dressing room door is closed behind him with a firm click, like the bars of a cell that cuts him off from the world. 

“Bastard.” Chuuya grumbles under his breath. But softly, because he doesn’t want to bring the wrath of the shopkeepers down upon himself. Chuuya can deal with thugs and lowlifes and criminals. He has no suitable defense against well-intentioned grandmothers.

Apparently while he’d been staring off the shopkeepers had gotten the measure of him—literally, this time. When he offloads the pile of fabric on his arms into the chair in the dressing room, he sees at least three pairs of slacks with careful cuffing to shorten them, and he’d be vaguely insulted if it weren’t necessary to keep him from walking on the hems. 

…No, he’s still vaguely insulted. 

He can tell what Dazai’s doing immediately though, looking over the clothes foisted off on him. Tan and brown and red and blue spill before him, the darkest color to be found a charcoal vest that he knows Dazai only let them add to the pile to tie his temporarily stashed hat into the look. 

Double Black they may be, the Mafia steeped into their veins, but they’re deliberately putting that behind them now. And for whatever reason, Dazai’s decided they’re dressing like professors or doctors instead. 

Fine. The joke’s on him. Chuuya can pull off any look. 

With a deep breath, Chuuya peels off his jeans and tosses his jacket, then gets to work reimagining himself as someone who hasn’t been a mass murderer since he was seven years old.

When he steps out of the dressing room, finishing tying off the braid over his shoulder, it’s to the realization that Dazai made a coordinated set out of them. Chuuya takes one look at Dazai in his blue stripes and his blue bolo tie, then clicks his tongue disdainfully and strides back into the dressing room to tug the blue tie from around his neck in favor of the burgundy one he’d initially rejected after thoughts of a red scarf that either one of them could have once fought to lay claim to. 

He’ll just replace the satin of his hat band to match when he goes to hem the slacks. It’ll be fine.

Dazai’s already paying a smiling old granny for both of them, a bag with his old clothes dangling by his fingertips until Chuuya snatches it away to shove his own old outfit into. He’s not letting Dazai get rid of his sweater. He likes that sweater. And even if Dazai stretched it out more, it’ll just be more comfortably baggy. 

“So where the hell are we going where we need to dress like the world’s most mundane history professors?”

They’ve rented a car again, a boring and nondescript sedan that makes Chuuya long for the motorcycle he had to stash away. Everything they own is stacked into the trunk between every hotel room. The bag of their old clothes is tossed in on top of a duffle bag of their liquidated fortune and next to the bags of toiletries and weapons.

Chuuya drives. He always drives, following Dazai’s seemingly random directions that keep them off the radar of any mercenary stupid enough to try and cash in the bounty on Soukoku. 

This trip will be different, though. Chuuya can just tell. 

“Get on the Bayshore Route.” Chuuya’s knuckles whiten on the steering wheel, eyes fixed firmly on the road, but Dazai can read him anyway. 

“We have a stop to make in Yokohama, and we need to be there around seven.”

Chuuya presses his lips together, refusing to give Dazai the satisfaction of seeing him unsettled. This change of plans could force Chuuya face to face with people he genuinely hopes he never has to kill for their protection. It’s why they went to Tokyo, to disappear into the most populous city in the world, protected by constant crowds and never staying in the same place long enough to be tracked.

(But close enough that were there some major threat to the city they both care for, they could still make it back).

Chuuya left the Port Mafia with Dazai. But that doesn’t mean he wants to square off against the other people that he cares about within the organization.

“Do you trust me, Chuuya?”

Fuck. Dazai has him backed into a corner with that one. Obviously he does trust Dazai, or they wouldn’t be here. Chuuya snorts bitterly at the notion that Dazai can just ask that loaded of a question and know that it’s rhetorical at this point. That he can just keep the conversation going without even pausing to consider if Chuuya might answer no.

“I have a plan. We’ll be in and out before anyone spots us, and then we’ll hopefully have some options for where to go from here.”

It’s Dazai using the word hope in any context that gets him.

In all the years they’ve known each other, hope has never been something that Dazai believed in enough to chase it.

So yeah. Of course he’s in.

 

—

 

If Chuuya weren’t already aware that his partner was a madman, being led to a table occupied by the chief of the Special Abilities Department would be evidence enough to cement that fact. 

But Dazai is strolling confidently up to his table, so Chuuya prowls in his stead. No one in the world could accuse Chuuya of being timid. Certainly not over facing down some stuffy old ministry hack that he could crush with a single thought. 

So when Dazai summarily plops himself into a seat facing Taneda, Chuuya hooks the chair beside him around, straddling the seat so he can keep an eye on the door, an eye on their mark, and can clear the table easily if they’re waltzing into a fight.

“Well. I had heard rumors that you’d both disappeared and gone underground for a while.”

Dazai’s grin is blinding, boyish, innocent in a way that no one at this table actually could be. “Well, we’re both on the job market now. I was hoping you knew of some good openings that would take us!”

So this is what Dazai planned. Chuuya is familiar enough with Dazai’s thought process that he’s not far behind, but that doesn’t mean he won’t step on Dazai’s foot beneath the table as a silent and unnoticed objection to trying to ally them with the government.

“I could offer you a job with us…”

“Fuck no.”

Dazai kicks him in the side of his ankle. 

They don’t even rattle the table with their silent bickering, let alone pause the discussion. 

“I believe what my partner is trying to say is that we probably wouldn’t do well in any workplace with so many rules.”

Chuuya can see Taneda considering it, cup of sake to his lips and keen eyes taking them both in. He can practically see him salivating over the idea of bringing the most powerful duo in Japan’s underworld to heel on the side of the law. 

And how barring that if he doesn’t find an optimal alternative, the two of them could upend the entire landscape of Yokohama on the whims of a fickle genius and in the hands of a singularity given flesh. 

“So what exactly are you looking for?”

And isn’t that a damn good question.

“Somewhere that we could save the innocent and protect orphans.”

Shit.

Chuuya’s gone still beside him, stuck on that thought. He knows why Dazai mentioned orphans—not just because of Oda’s kids, but because of him. 

Protecting orphans. Isn’t that what Chuuya’s been trying to do since he joined the sheep at eight years old? 

Even in the Mafia, everyone had long since figured out that kids were Chuuya’s soft spot. He’s been a protective brother by trade for so long that it’s just a part of him now—he took Gin Akutagawa under his wing the moment she set foot into the Port Mafia, stepped up for the younger mafiosos even if it meant squaring down against other executives, and defused conflicts with teen gangs the moment they arose. 

Dazai knows Chuuya so well that he knew, without discussing it, what mission could have Chuuya agreeing to loosely work alongside a government that he hates. 

But he’ll never forget why he hates it. 

“If you can stay underground for two more years, even with your sordid history I could offer you a clean slate.” Taneda’s attention turns to Chuuya now, and Chuuya knows what he’s going to say even before he does. “I don’t believe I could offer your partner the same. It’s not just our branch of the ministry that wants him.”

Of course. Everyone wants their lab rat back, and no matter what pretty pictures Dazai might paint of the future, that will always remain true.

It’s fine. He can stay a fugitive, it’s not like that’s new for him. Dazai had hope, though, and getting his partner out of this life would be…

Slender fingers clench around Chuuya’s wrist before he can fully push himself to standing, and Dazai continues as if that gesture wasn’t done in the eyes of everyone in this room, let alone Taneda himself. 

“We’re a packaged deal, I’m afraid.” Dazai offers, his unshakable grin just a little sharper now. “Both of us or neither. I’m sure you can find a suitable job, can’t you?”

And this becomes the moment they’re both left with something to look forward to. A countdown for how long they’ll have to stay away from the city they love. A path to move side by side toward the light. 

Detectives. 

Chuuya thinks he could get behind that.

Chapter 2: A passion wholly of the mind

Summary:

Two missing years.

Notes:

Non-specific reference to an averted suicide attempt by Dazai. No major side-effects to Dazai and the focus is on what it means about his mental health.

“I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.”

- Louise Bogan, “The Alchemist”

 

Chuuya didn’t ever have the luxury of being body-shy growing up on the streets, sharing stolen space and hand-me-down clothes with a bunch of street rats who were in each other’s pockets nearly every minute of every day. 

Sure he wore gloves and kept his hands in his pockets in fights, but he’s never been averse to touch. He got used to platonic bed sharing curled together for warmth, one-armed hugs, fist-bumps, walking arm in arm, wrestling…

So it took him a few months into their partnership to notice that none of that held true for Dazai. He’d hide every inch of himself in fabric if he didn’t need at least one eye to see. He’d avoid touch entirely if it weren’t a legitimate necessity given his Ability. 

That’s when Chuuya recognized that he’s always been the exception to Dazai’s rule. From that first time they linked hands, palm to palm in the middle of chaos, Dazai’s draped himself obnoxiously over Chuuya to whine about having to work. He’s swooned dramatically into Chuuya’s side when playing up the theatricality of any story of Chuuya showing up to the rescue when Dazai damn sure could have handled something himself. He’s pressed close on Chuuya’s motorcycle as they crashed into a scene. 

Basically, Chuuya’s the only person that Dazai consistently touches voluntarily. But he had almost always couched it in a joke or a barb or a matter of convenience.

Still, Chuuya doesn’t really think about the fact that they’re sharing a bed as anything odd until it’s skin that Chuuya tucks his face against when Dazai slips into their shared bed for the umpteenth time, until it’s bandages that scratch at the arm flung around his partner beneath the sheets instead of a long sleeved henley. 

Until Dazai let out a rush of air at so much skinship between them, Chuuya’s bare chest pressed to his back.

And that’s… fine. Chuuya doesn’t mind it, even if Dazai’s skin is a little clammy and cold from his continual attempts to freeze himself on balconies and rooftops. He’ll warm up soon enough.

But it does leave him to question some things—maybe it wasn’t entirely Dazai doing the avoiding. After years of people skittish about Dazai robbing them of their power with a tap of the finger, maybe he’s a little touch-starved. And maybe he realized that Chuuya decidedly doesn’t mind being touched by him.

So this becomes routine as well, Dazai in just pajama bottoms and bandages wandering their shared hotel rooms, curling into his arms, shoulder to shoulder on the bed to watch television, leaned against Chuuya’s side when they’re reading.

It’s mostly just more of the same. God knows their lives are fucked up enough right now without adding any more uncertainty. 

Chuuya won’t read into it. 

They don’t talk about it.

 

—

 

It’s the night before Dazai’s nineteenth birthday when he slips into their hotel room silently, holding the handle down as he goes to try and keep the latch from being too loud.

It doesn’t matter. Chuuya wasn’t really sleeping anyway. 

He can smell cheap perfume and cheaper alcohol on Dazai as he pads to the bathroom, the pipes singing when he starts a shower. 

In the alley below, women chatter together as they pass by, cigarette smoke curling up toward their window. Chuuya doesn’t have to hear their words to understand their pleased and teasing tones. 

Dazai’s hair is still damp and scented like Chuuya’s shampoo when he crawls into the bed. He tries again for the first time in months to stay to one side of the mattress. 

Chuuya doesn’t let him, dragging him back to the center of the bed. Dazai melts back into his customary position in Chuuya’s arms with clear relief, as if grateful that Chuuya’s not withholding touch out of resentment.

Dazai’s straight. Chuuya’s not. It’s whatever. It’s not like Chuuya didn’t know that already. They’ve known each other for years, and it’s never mattered before. They’re partners in basically everything else, and yeah maybe they’re a tangled codependent mess but it works for them. 

So Dazai slips out at night sometimes. Chuuya doesn’t care. 

They don’t talk about it. 

 

—

 

“Are you trying to fucking die?!”

Chuuya slams the door of their hotel room open, hand clamped over the still-bleeding gash on his bicep, a dusting of shattered glass still glittering in his hair. All of which he’ll have to take care of later because his asshole partner decided to be careless and there’s no way Chuuya’s deflection of that is going to go entirely unnoticed. 

People tend to pay attention when a universal constant like gravity is shredded in public to save an ungrateful bastard.

Chuuya starts throwing their things into a bag before Dazai even clears the doorway. Which is just as well, because if he looks at Dazai right now this entire situation is just going to escalate. 

“Do you actually want me to answer that?”

No, it’s going to escalate anyway, because that tone is going to send him over the edge. Chuuya has no idea how Dazai manages to combine cheerful nonchalance and empty apathy over not caring if he lives or dies. Dazai’s cavalier treatment of his own wellbeing has long been an issue for Chuuya as the person most invested in keeping his partner alive. 

It’s been a while since they had a real knock-down, drag-out argument. They’re probably overdue for it at this point. 

But the stakes have changed. 

With a snarl of frustration, Chuuya storms over to Dazai where he’s meandering back out of the bathroom. Chuuya’s clutching a black t-shirt in his fist, hand at his side as if to keep himself from swinging, and he crowds Dazai against the wall—even if it means he has to tilt his head back to glare at his partner now. Each word is a growl, a vicious declaration. 

“You do not. Get to drag me out of the Mafia with you. And then fucking die on me. Do you understand me?”

It’s been a long time since Dazai’s gotten under his skin this badly, and as always when he gets a reaction out of Chuuya he has to poke at it, to push him as far as he can. He leans down towards Chuuya, looming in answer to Chuuya’s crowding, eyes hooded and voice crooning. 

“Is that what I did? Did I drag you out, Chuuya?” Dazai certainly drags out his name, wringing extra syllables from it with a mocking drawl. “Does that make you angry?”

Chuuya scowls, but he’s paused to consider his next words. For all that Dazai likes to pretend he’s a loose cannon, Chuuya does actually think things through. Dazai has tried to off himself before. He’ll probably try again at some point, because he’s a depressed and defeatist bastard who rationalizes the hell out of those qualities. Chuuya’s not exactly the picture of mental health either, but putting Dazai with a therapist would just mean trying to talk them off a ledge later with how Dazai can turn things around on someone trying to reason with him. 

Just like he’s trying to turn this back on Chuuya.

They’re halfway into their two year disappearance, and the finish line seems further away than ever. Dazai’s mental health is nosediving. Chuuya can actually understand that part, even if how Dazai handles it pisses him off.

But the longer Chuuya takes to answer, the more Dazai’s mask slips. Right now they are the only damn thing the other has, and Dazai’s too smart not to know that himself. 

Dazai doesn’t want to live. 

But he doesn’t really want to be alone, either. 

“We’re in this together, bastard. And we need to leave.” Chuuya knows that the frustrated growl that rasps his vocal cords isn’t exactly comforting, but he’s got every reason to be pissed. “So get your shit together.”

Even Chuuya doesn’t quite know if he’s just referring to packing, or taking a verbal swing at Dazai’s fucked-up mental health. 

Either way, Dazai’s stunt is going to have them moving days before planned so now he has to get their shit together fast. Chuuya can nearly feel when they’re being hunted and the prickling at the back of his neck seems to warn that someone’s gotten close. And he just advertised where to find them. 

For once, Dazai just lets it go. Chuuya can tell he’s chewing on how to take Chuuya’s words and how to respond, but they don’t have time for this. 

So Chuuya puts aside the argument for later too and shoves everything into duffle bags, throwing two at Dazai to carry because his arm fucking hurts so he’s not going to be a pack mule on his own. They’re going down the back way instead of through the lobby, because he knows someone is close. 

There are too many people who could be sent after them that Chuuya doesn’t want to have to kill.

Tokyo is always a mess of crowds, so slipping into the constant flow of people with a bag on his back and one hooked onto his shoulder should be enough to slip anyone following them. It doesn’t feel like enough, though. 

Dazai takes point, still silent, and they weave through people to the train.

It’s as the doors slide shut behind them that he spots it. A glimpse of a hat over the heads of the crowd only visible because of the height of the man wearing it. 

A curl of blonde hair, and skin alabaster pale as if it hasn’t seen sunlight in years.

Dazai’s gone still beside him, far too observant to have missed it either. 

They can’t stay in Tokyo. 

It’s better if they leave Japan entirely.

On the next available plane out of the country, Dazai drapes his new tan coat over them both like a blanket and uses that cover to deftly bandage the gash in Chuuya’s arm. Chuuya could do it himself, but he recognizes an act of contrition. 

They don’t talk about it.

 

—

 

America is large enough a place that they can stay in the same country awhile and save their money by relying on domestic flights, public transportation, and road trips. They’re not broke, but Chuuya’s got to keep a tight grasp on the purse strings to keep it that way now. Hotels, cars, airfare, take-out food—all of it is expensive and they’ve been at it for just shy of two years now. 

Sure, Chuuya and Dazai could throw together a heist pretty easily, but that could draw attention to them when they know who’s after them now. Chuuya doesn’t want to see the outcome of that chase either way. 

To his credit, Dazai hasn’t seriously attempted to kill himself since Tokyo. Oh, he still makes it a point to stare wistfully at rivers, to quip about highrise balconies, to make endless bad jokes… but even if it puts Chuuya’s teeth on edge, Dazai isn’t really trying.

Chuuya thinks that Dazai may be doing that just for his sake rather than out of any real desire to live. Otherwise, he just feels guilty over the new scar that hasn’t faded yet to silver on Chuuya’s bicep. Chuuya has decided to take it as a win whatever the motive. And to be fair, Chuuya isn’t letting Dazai out of his sight often anymore.

They both know that it’s not Chuuya in the most danger if their tail catches up with them.

They’re also staying in more often, crammed together into tiny one-bed hotel rooms of varying quality. The more time they spend out in crowds and in cities, the more likely that they will be spotted by an informant. They’re already conspicuous enough now that they’re outside of Tokyo—two Japanese men traveling together through places that tourists rarely visit, one with bandages that he refuses to lose and the other with red hair that he refuses to cut or dye.

They’re somewhere in the American Midwest right now in a place Chuuya wouldn’t be able to pinpoint on a map even now that they’re in it. So it’s a night in again, in a crappy chain hotel who’s rooms are essentially just a bathroom, a closet, and a narrow path around the bed. It makes for cramped quarters.

They both just finished the novels they were reading on their e-books and aren’t ready to search for others. There’s nothing they care to watch on TV. But that doesn’t mean they’re entirely without something to waste time on.

“If you throw another shell at me I swear…”

Chuuya keeps his inarticulate growl of rage quiet this time so that the neighboring room won’t bang on the wall at them again. But he does drive an elbow into Dazai’s side on the foot of the bed as his view is splattered with black ink, obscuring half of the track. 

“Not a shell,” Dazai snickers. 

“I will fucking end you!”

“Not in this race, you won’t!” 

“Son of a…” 

Chuuya shoves Dazai, and he hits the pillow behind him absolutely cackling as Princess Peach blows kisses from the back of a hovering motorcycle. 

“Can’t help that you suck at video games, partner.”

“I do not, fuck you!”

A fist bangs against the wall. Both Chuuya and Dazai instantly raise their middle fingers at their unseen neighbor as if they choreographed it.

It sets them off snickering again. 

When Chuuya falls backwards into the pillows they’re shoulder to shoulder again. The fact that they’re both done with the video games doesn’t need to be discussed, they reached that point at the same time. The fact that both of them are night owls by trade, habit, and nature is just a known factor after being partners since they were fifteen. 

Neither of them is going to sleep yet.

For a long moment, Dazai gazes at Chuuya across the pillows as if he’s a fascinating puzzle. By the time Dazai pops up onto one elbow, Chuuya knows that his partner is going to be up to some of his bullshit. “Truth or Dare.”

Chuuya rolls his eyes and drops a too-soft pillow over his own face, letting it muffle his voice. “We can’t do any real dares right now, asshole. What are we gonna do, embarrass each other between here and the ice machine down the hall?”

“Ah-ah-ah, sounds like the slug is choosing truth, then.” Chuuya sighs and crams the pillow back beneath his neck, arching one eyebrow knowingly. Of course Dazai wouldn’t let go and choose something else. He knew what he wanted to ask even before he proposed the game. 

“Why don’t you get this done and just ask whatever you’re curious about instead. I’ve got nothing to hide, you’re just a fucking weirdo who has to make games out of shit.”

“It’s Truth or Dare, Chuuya,” Dazai insists, and Chuuya rolls his eyes even knowing it’s going to be taken as surrender. “Who was your first kiss?”

Chuuya narrows his eyes, scrutinizing Dazai warily. This is a new line of questioning right off the bat, and Chuuya doesn’t know if he can trust it. Especially since he knows Dazai’s probably already figured out that answer. “Shirase. Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.” 

Dazai’s position looming over Chuuya is getting to him, so Chuuya braces his head on his hand to put them on equal level, shaking his head slightly because of course Dazai chose Dare. He expects there’s not much Chuuya can do to him, and he’s right of course. But if they’re picking into each other's lives, Chuuya has no issues returning the favor. “Lay off the suicide talk for at least a week.”

Dazai wrinkles his nose, but nods slightly. “Fine.” He will, of course--neither of them is the kind to go back on a dare--but the dare bothers him. Less because the jokes are a necessity, and more because he doesn’t like being commanded. So he throws out his next challenge without further discussion, redirecting the game. “Truth or Dare?”

“Truth.”

Dazai’s watching him with an intensity that belies his cavalier attitude, that points out that whatever the hell he’s up to it’s not entirely a game. “Why haven’t I ever seen you dating?” 

Yeah, Chuuya’s catching the pattern already. It would take a complete idiot to miss it. Dazai wants to have a conversation but sucks at starting them, so he’s doing this instead. Still, Chuuya answers because he doesn’t have anything to hide. “Because the first guy I was involved with literally stabbed me in the gut, and the last guy who expressed any interest in me died before we could figure out if we wanted to make something of it. And I don’t do casual hook-ups.” Raking his hair back with his free hand, Chuuya returns the stare, trying to figure out where this is going. There’s a reason Dazai insisted on a game that allows him both questions and actions. “And Dare, before you ask.”

“Kiss me.” 

Honestly, Chuuya should have seen that coming. Dazai’s nearing twenty and has been fooling around with women off and on throughout their travels. But he spends all of the rest of his time with his openly gay partner, even sharing a bed together in their own fucked up version of what Dazai doesn’t know to call a queer platonic relationship. It’s natural that Dazai would be curious. Hell, it’s probably weirder that he hasn’t asked before this. God knows he hasn’t exactly been sparing in his own form of affection since the day they met.

They’re only a couple of months away from returning back to Yokohama, close enough to their return that Dazai can still chicken out if he gets cold feet about it. It’s strategic timing, which is of course Dazai’s speciality. It speaks of forethought to this instead of some kind of spontaneity.

It’s an experiment. And Chuuya’s had enough of that in his life. 

But he doesn’t want to completely shoot down Dazai, either. Not if there’s even a chance he means this. If Chuuya has a chance to make a relationship actually work, it’s with his partner in crime and in basically everything else. They’ve both proven that literally everyone else is going to fall by the wayside of their partnership if anyone even remotely pushes. They’re in this together. If there’s even a chance... 

Chuuya wants to know.

And a dare is a dare.

Dazai falls completely still when Chuuya cups a hand to his cheek, lightly enough that if Dazai backs out abruptly he won’t be trapped in place by it. He’s so still that Chuuya doubts he’s even breathing, eyes dark and unreadable.

Chuuya searches Dazai’s face for any hesitation, any sign that he’s going to suddenly laugh and play this off as a joke. When he doesn’t find any, he leans in. 

Dazai’s lips are slightly chapped, the first brush of tender skin against skin as light as the breath Dazai finally lets out. It’s hesitant on Chuuya’s part not out of fear, but as a question.

Just this is enough to satisfy the terms of the dare. The question is if Dazai wanted more than just a chaste peck on the lips. The answer to that comes pretty quickly.

Unlike the hand guiding Dazai close, the grip that finds the back of Chuuya’s neck is anything but gentle. Chuuya finds himself pushed onto his back, Dazai braced above him with his free hand against the headboard. His partner is straddling his hips in a way that is quickly going to become embarrassing if Dazai doesn’t stop. 

Because Dazai seems to have wholeheartedly thrown himself into introducing Chuuya to the kind of kiss that keeps women leaving their numbers on Chuuya’s burner phone because Dazai hasn’t memorized any other number. The kind of kiss that could make Chuuya forget that this is probably just a passing whim, a dare taken too far. The kind of kiss that reminds him that Dazai is the one with far more experience between the two of them, even if never with another man.

Dazai kisses like he can meld them together, mouth cloyingly sweet from the candy they’ve been throwing at each other all night, tongue coaxing rather than dominating. It’s slow, and deep, nearly indulgent, and Chuuya finds himself sinking into the feeling. He buries both hands in thick dark hair as if Dazai’s still going to pull away before they can explore how the same instincts that have them anticipating each other’s every step can turn into hips rolled at the same time, a tilt of the head, a swipe of the tongue. 

Chuuya wants this, in a way he hasn’t let himself hope for because Dazai couldn’t be interested in him like that. At least, he didn’t think…

At that moment, a phone rings within the room.

Everything freezes. Both of them tense immediately. The kiss breaking puts them nearly cheek to cheek as their eyes turn towards the duffle bag in the hall closet. 

Because no one outside of this room should have the number to Dazai’s new cell phone. 

“Shit.” Whichever one of them said it, or if they said it together, it doesn’t matter. They’re both thinking it.

Dazai rolls off of Chuuya, grabbing the pistol they stole from a pickup truck a few towns back and tucking it into the small of his back as he goes for the rest of their gear. The Switch console is tucked between clothes to keep it safe, and the bandages are tossed in on top of it.

Chuuya wants to take a deep breath, wants to brace himself after the bucket of cold water thrown over them.

He is pissed.

That part probably rings through the line as he drags a thumb across the screen of Dazai’s burner phone to answer.

“Paul.”

And mostly he wants to punch his ‘brother’ right in the fucking nose for interrupting something that Chuuya hasn’t let himself consider a possibility until this night.

“You sound out of breath, little brother. Am I interrupting something?” Dazai meets his eyes as he approaches, their other bags slung across his back, straps thrown over broad shoulders. He holds his hand out for the phone without making a sound, and when Chuuya passes it over he puts it on speaker so he can open a tracking app. 

“I wasn’t expecting a call. You’re a long way from the basement.”

It’s a game of cat and mouse, now, but Soukoku sure as hell aren’t mice. They’ve been staying out of reach of Verlaine not out of fear but as a compromise. Chuuya doesn’t want to have to square down against a brother who has no chance to win a fight against him now. 

Nowadays Paul Verlaine is an ambush predator. For him to reveal himself instead, he wants something. 

“Yes, I know Mori was very upset to misplace three executives at once. But you are my connection to the Port Mafia, and once you stop running I’m certain the two of us will still have a place there.”

No one in the conversation misses that Verlaine is only discussing himself and Chuuya returning. It would not be the first time that Verlaine killed someone that Chuuya cared about in order to break ties that he felt impeded Chuuya’s true purpose. 

But it would be the last time.

As if sensing Chuuya’s temper about to boil over, Dazai takes over the conversation, fingers still tapping on the phone screen as he leaves it on speaker. “Rude of you to pretend I’m not right here when it’s my phone you’re calling. You could at least threaten me directly.”

“I find I have very little I’d like to say to the thoughtless fool who decided to abscond with my brother in the middle of the night.”

Dazai holds up the phone screen to Chuuya, a dot on a map. 

Verlaine is half an hour away at best and closing in, currently between them and the nearest airport. Far too close in a sprawling expanse of midwestern nothing, in a country with so many states they could have been in. He’s using the call to narrow in on them too. At Chuuya’s nod of recognition, Dazai switches apps and resumes tapping at the screen. 

“I left with him. It was my choice. So is this.” Chuuya reaches over to hang up the call and finish the factory reset that Dazai’s prompted, then tosses the phone onto the rumpled queen bed for Verlaine to find. 

“We could wait for him,” Dazai offers, already anticipating Chuuya’s answer and opening the door for the both of them. They could wait and easily end this fruitless game of tag tonight, then wait out the rest of their exile. 

But Chuuya doesn’t do anything halfway. He committed to something, beyond just this partnership or… whatever… they might become.

“We’re supposed to be trying to become the good guys.” Chuuya finishes pulling his hair back into a ponytail and slips out of the door opened for him. “‘Good guys’ don’t kill their brothers. I’d rather not give him the chance to prove just how far from that goal I am and fuck up our timeline while he’s at it.”

Dazai hums, non-committal, but isn’t that just the story of them? Dazai is willing to switch sides on a whim, to manipulate a system, to bend rules or break them if necessary. If Chuuya’s going to do something, he’ll face it head-on while his partner slips between cracks.

Chuuya glances up at the black mechanical eye of the security camera pointed down the featureless hallway, one that Dazai was planning to wipe before they left. But now… now he wants Verlaine to see this footage. To hear that the only thing keeping him alive is Chuuya’s attempts to establish a new sense of morality in himself. 

And to see that he’s not fucking leaving Dazai.

Dazai who doesn’t put up the least bit of resistance on being pushed into the wall beside their hotel room door, the bags digging uncomfortably against his back as he ends up with Chuuya’s body weight pinning him in place.

It’s slightly annoying that Chuuya has to rise onto his toes in this position to hook a hand around Dazai’s neck, but he does it anyway to pull Dazai down into a fierce kiss that’s half a declaration and half a threat to a man still miles away. Dazai’s hands immediately find the curve of Chuuya’s waist to brace him on his toes and pull him in closer, long fingers nearly circling around Chuuya’s middle in a way that shouldn’t be nearly as thrilling as it is. 

That’s a discovery they’re going to have to revisit later.

Just like the rest of this.

“We’re talking about this later.” Chuuya warns quietly against Dazai’s lips, and he can feel more than see the faint smirk it wins him.

“Sure thing, partner.” 

By the time he drops down flat on his feet and leads the way out of the hotel, he knows they’ve put on a pretty telling show for Verlaine.

Good.

He should know better than to threaten anyone else that Chuuya cares for. Especially Dazai. 

 

—

 

They don’t stay in America. There’s no point, now. Their planned return was in only a couple of months anyway. 

Their route back is nearly thirty-two hours of connecting flights and layovers. Chuuya falls asleep with his head on Dazai’s shoulder on the final leg of the journey as the ocean yawns dark and endless behind the window beside him. The cheek resting against the top of his head and the fingers that idly braid and unbraid his hair are enough of a promise that Dazai’s taking this watch. He can rest while his partner’s there to keep an eye out.

They don’t talk about it. Not yet.

But stepping out of the Tokyo airport onto Japanese soil is one step closer to home. Chuuya feels their return like a part of himself has been missing, and just found its way back to him.  

 

—

 

They do talk about it.

But they still haven’t figured jack shit out. And Chuuya doesn’t exactly slam on the breaks, but he’s not okay with going full speed ahead, either. 

This means too much to him. If Dazai’s not on the same page…

Chuuya’s not okay with giving up what they are for what they could be.

 

—

 

The moment Taneda steps aside, leaving Soukoku face to face with their future coworkers, the assessment begins.

Their President is a fighter. The hand he shakes Chuuya’s with has thick calluses on ring finger and pinky finger. Katana use, and a lot of it over the years. Something about them has triggered Fukuzawa’s instincts and he doesn’t fully trust them. Slightly bent knees beneath that yukata, as if he’s unconsciously prepared to move into defense. He may be projecting a Buddha-like serenity, but there’s a promise of violence not far beneath.

He’s standing between them and the younger man fully perched on a desk, a bottle of ramune at his knee and candy in his mouth. Even with his eyes mostly closed, Chuuya can tell he’s scrutinizing the both of them. Chuuya knows the moment that Dazai determines him to be the linchpin of the organization and most interesting target. So he’s the brains of the operation. That means Chuuya will leave him to his partner to fuck with. 

That leaves two more. 

Glasses is the easiest to figure out. Chuuya is pretty sure that what you see is what you get, there--an overbearing workaholic nerd, who takes himself too damn seriously. Dazai’s going to have a field day with this one. That leaves the doctor, who is a shade of their former Boss. She belongs with a scalpel in hand, and she’s certainly dissecting them already.

They’ve cased the room and the people they’ll be working with already, and they’ve only been inside long enough to get the niceties out of the way. They’ve planned this, though, and dressed in their best ‘history professor’ chic to blend in with the group. 

It’s the second tenant of a covert operation after assessing the room: the appropriate attire to prepare for a job by looking as if you belong there. Kouyou taught him that as she took in a Sheep and helped him refashion himself as a mafioso. Now he’s doing it all over again with a new purpose. 

So when the man they now know as Kunikida pushes his glasses up his nose and declares that they’ve got work already, both of them are braced for it.

What does come as a surprise is the lazy detective dropping his feet to the ground, waving a hand lackadaisically as he redirects the plan. “I think we’ll be better of splitting up into two teams, don’t you Kunikida?” Vibrant green eyes focus on Chuuya as if looking through him.

“Kunikida, you take Dazai. Nakahara, you’re coming with the us.”

Chuuya knows they’re being separated deliberately. For some reason, they feel like they need to test each half of Soukoku individually. With a glance shared between them, they acquiesce. 

They are going to make this work. 

It’s time to try being the bad guys’ enemy.

Notes:

Queer Platonic to not-entirely-platonic to ???

The Agency are going to have a field day with figuring these two out.

Chapter 3: A face to meet the faces that you meet

Notes:

If you're familiar with the "Osamu Dazai's Entrance Exam" light novel, this is running in tandem with it while Dazai's half is off-screen. If you're only familiar with the anime, that's okay! The Azure Messenger storyline in season one was actually Dazai's entrance, not one of Atsushi's adventures with him.

This will also reference Storm Bringer in passing, by referring to a character that briefly appeared in it. You shouldn't need that context to fully understand it.

Meanwhile, references aside as you read this chapter just know that I'm setting up partnerships here, not ships (the ship tag will stay the same throughout the fic).

I hope you enjoy!

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.”

- T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

In some ways Chuuya being dragged away from his partner immediately upon entering their new life feels like losing a tooth—a little uncomfortable, but mostly a gap that you can’t help but poke at for the dull pain and the oddity of a hole where there wasn’t before.

In other ways, it’s easier for him to begin this reinvention of his life without Dazai immediately at his side.

He and Dazai have been a single unit continuously since he was fifteen. Considering his memories only began once he was seven, that’s a large portion of his formative years with Dazai a constant presence at his side. An annoying, persistent, suicidal but distracting presence for most of that, yet there nonetheless. If this new life is going to work—and Chuuya, stubborn as he is, is determined to make this work—then he needs to integrate himself into the organization. He’s done it before. Dazai dragged him into the Port Mafia, but he established his own relationships there. 

But Dazai needs this life, and Chuuya wants it. Innocents and orphans. It’s what Chuuya has always wanted to protect, from the time he was a Sheep who would kill for his ragtag band of orphans and runaways, to the moment he made a deal to swap sides to protect the very people who stabbed him in the back, and then when he was convinced that the Port Mafia acted in the dark in part to preserve order for those in the light. 

So now he has to convince this group of detectives that he could fit in this life. Which means he needs to chameleon his way into being a good law abiding (law enforcing, damn that’s weird) citizen, and it’s probably easier to do it without being distracted by instinctively reading what his literal partner in crime is thinking every step of the way. 

But they are still partners. So they’ll regroup after and share intel, meeting back up in the single dorm room they intend to share without advertising the fact to the rest of the agency. Chuuya looks forward to it, to a place that they can stamp their mark onto, toothbrushes on counters, clothes in a wardrobe instead of duffle bags waiting for them to run again, groceries instead of take-out.

For the promise of that, Chuuya’s willing to put up with a lot of things.

So this is going to run like a two-pronged infiltration mission. Which is fine, and familiar, and he’s run plenty of those with Dazai.

It would be easier without one of his new coworkers immediately prying into what they mean to each other.

“It’s complicated,” is Chuuya’s quelling final answer to the doctor who’s strolling casually at his side, both of them keeping an eye on Ranpo, who seems at any given moment only a step away from walking into a signpost or street lamp as he ambles along with a newspaper in front of his face.

“I bet it is.” There’s a faint curl to the corner of Yosano’s lips, a dry twist of humor to her words that Chuuya can’t quite read yet. It’s fair—she’s trying to get a read on him, too, and he’s not exactly forthcoming. 

If Dazai’s poker face is an idiotic smile and a sing-song voice to hide his scheming, Chuuya’s version is sarcasm and flat stares that hide his constant assessment for threats. 

So it’s no surprise that Chuuya’s split attention still snaps immediately to what that’s best for: he darts forward, grabs a self-declared genius by his collar, and bodily yanks him back from walking into the street. 

He bumps the crosswalk signal button with the side of his other fist immediately afterwards. 

Well, that’s certainly familiar. At least he’s reasonably certain this one’s not trying to die.

Ranpo barely even seems to notice or care that he’s been manhandled into traffic safety. Now that Chuuya’s close, he can see that the detective is reading obituaries the way others might read classified ads. Even as Chuuya stands there waiting for any sort of acknowledgment of what just happened, Ranpo declares another death “boring.”

Yosano is laughing when he turns back to her, the folio in her arms covering an amused grin that lights her eyes with mischief. 

And like that, he’s snapped out of the mindset of trying to infiltrate. She’s likeable and has already shown herself to be quick witted and sarcastic and by the read he got off of her she’s clearly not afraid of violence. Frankly that’s the exact kind of person he gets along well with. He’s just been too wound up to notice because anyone trying to ‘get to know him’ seems like a threat right now. The wry humor he greets her laughter with is probably the most genuinely him he’s been all morning.

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Force of habit.” 

“It’s a good habit to keep around here. He does that a lot.” There’s genuine affection in her voice, coupled though it is with an amused resignation to her coworker’s eccentricities. She thumps the back of Ranpo’s loafers with the side of her shoe and he starts walking immediately at the cue, the two of them following along behind until he clears the crosswalk to the other side. They’re on the way to some tech wiz’s place about some government case Ranpo is about to travel for, and it’s all pretty nebulous to Chuuya so the conversation is all he really has to go on right now. “So, how many siblings? You don’t come by that instinct on your own.”

That… is a tricky question. Immediately Chuuya’s at a loss for how to answer that. There’s Paul, obviously, but that’s complicated as hell and it’s the younger Sheep that he thought of more like siblings and tried to keep out of trouble. But… “Dazai walks into traffic, but it’s usually on purpose for that asshole.”

He hesitated just a shade too long on that answer, and his attempt to side-step it wasn’t smooth enough. After two years with only Dazai for company, he’s out of practice with carrying an actual conversation. Which is a pain in the ass because he was the sociable one. Dazai’s got a weird sort of charm to him, but Chuuya could actually connect. Now he’s fumbling.

“Just tell her you were a government asset instead of trying to figure out a lie about your childhood. She’ll understand that.”

His steps falter. 

Yosano’s slanted smile slides away. 

Chuuya slowly turns his head to take in the detective strolling in front of them, eyes narrowing as he immediately reassesses Ranpo as a threat. He shouldn’t know that. It’s not just a file you can pull for research, and Chuuya knows that better than anyone. Ranpo hasn’t had time at all between the two of them joining the agency and them breaking into teams. So either he knew that already and everything is a setup, or…

The hand that comes to rest against his arm is meant to be reassuring. 

“He just does that. His ability…”

“Ultra Deduction!” Ranpo thrusts a hand into the air, pointer finger raised and newspaper crumpling in his fist. 

“…Lets him put together any clues in seconds.” Yosano continues, as if Ranpo’s pronouncement is just a normal part of everyday conversation. Hooking her arm through Chuuya’s, she guides him toward a ramshackle three story apartment as Ranpo takes the stairs ahead of them two at a time. “There’s no keeping secrets around him.”

Chuuya doesn’t miss that arm-in-arm as they now are, Yosano has deliberately tried to limit the possibility of him lashing out, as much a mild threat of physical restraint as it is camaraderie. 

He needs to get used to being around detectives who are all trained observers, because his reaction to Ranpo gave away too much. Now she’s wary of him. 

As they round the final landing they end up face to face with the Ranpo, his green eyes sharp and knowing as if an answer to Chuuya’s sudden concern and unspoken question. 

Ranpo knows. And there’s no way he should know. Dazai checked Taneda’s work before they ever poked their heads back out into the world—their criminal records are clean, even their government records are either wiped or locked down. They both aced the written and the practical exams. If anything, the only suspicion should be that they’re too clean, and Dazai had already considered that and half joked about what minor affronts Taneda could have added to make them more believable.

But Ranpo Edogawa doesn’t look suspicious. He looks like he knows everything. 

Taneda did warn that Chuuya would be harder to make disappear.

“Let’s go!” Ranpo crows as if nothing just transpired between them, eyes hooded and creased by a smile that reminds Chuuya too much of Dazai’s for him to buy into it. Meanwhile, Ranpo turns to amble down the breezeway towards an apartment that he throws the door open for immediately, cape flaring around him dramatically. 

“Katai! Refusing to come to work doesn’t mean you’re out of the Agency!”

Whoever they’re dropping in on doesn’t even lock the door. Chuuya grimaces at the utter naivety of that, even as he’s trying to sort through his own clues and problems. Cornering Ranpo to figure out what he knows just shot up the list of priorities. 

It keeps him preoccupied enough that he’s only half paying attention to the details they’re getting from some guy buried in a futon in a dim room that reeks of filth. Chuuya would almost be tempted to drag out a few trash bags worth of old take out boxes, were he not currently running through scenarios of his own. 

By nature, Chuuya prefers to be fully invested in a mission briefing—in reality, he’s had years of subtly playing catch up because the bandaged bastard he calls his partner delights in pulling him off-task. So when they step back out onto the landing he gets ahead of it. 

“ That guy’s a detective? Really?” 

Yosano smirks again, shrugging one shoulder as if asking ‘what can you do.’ “He’s good at what he does, but even when he was coming to the office he was a bit of a shut-in. He recently was locked into the office over a weekend and didn’t notice, so he’s working from home now so at least he has delivery options.”

Well, at least Chuuya doesn’t have to worry as much about Dazai’s eccentricities being a dealbreaker for them at this job. 

(The idea that he would stay if Dazai washed out doesn’t even occur to him).

Yosano’s still guarded, but Ranpo’s got not a care in the world as he looks back at them both, a lackadaisical hand waving his part-time partner away. “Yosano, you should go back to the Agency. You’ve wanted to stay at the infirmary more and they’re going to need you. Nakahara will be able to get me to the airport and around Kyushu.”

“Chuuya.” The correction is immediate, and then the words and their meaning settle in. Ranpo’s sending Yosano away. Which, considering they have no reason to trust him yet and every reason to suspect him, is a deliberate statement. Yosano has pinned Ranpo with the long and considering look of a woman who sees herself as the detective’s big sister, whatever their relative ages. But Ranpo sounds certain, and the Agency seems to revolve around the fact that Ranpo’s reasoning is always sound. 

It’s a show of trust and a leap of faith, and the importance of it isn’t lost on Chuuya. So Ranpo will come back alive and unharmed, no matter what his answers are when Chuuya presses them out of him. He’s not going to ruin their chance at living in the light by turning the entire Agency against them in their first week.

When Yosano turns she fixes Chuuya with a warning stare as she presses the case file and Katai’s research into his chest until he takes the papers. In return, Chuuya lightly tips his hat with his other hand in an answering promise. 

So he guesses he’s going to Kyushu.

 

_

 

Twenty minutes to gather a single change of clothes from the dorm that Chuuya and Dazai may get to call their own if all goes according to plan. Five minutes of waiting for Ranpo to return with his own. Half an hour train ride to Haneda. Forty-five minutes of waiting at the airport, during which Chuuya is tasked with getting Ranpo food. Fifteen minutes of everyone boarding. Three and a half hours in the air, where Chuuya stares out the window and stews in it. Fifteen minutes of disembarking. Twenty minutes on a train. 

At no point are they entirely silent, but at no point are they alone. Ranpo flipped idly through the information Katai gave him and the case file without even seeming to consider the words on the page, and then tossed the files back into Chuuya’s lap and began ‘people watching’ by telling Chuuya the flaws of each person they passed. He bragged smugly about his own intelligence, his past cases, and how Ultra Deduction was the most useful Ability in Japan (if not the entire world). 

All the while, Chuuya watched him and waited. 

It’s night by the time they reach the hotel that the central government is comping for Ranpo, hours after they left Katai’s apartment. It was long enough for Chuuya to gather his thoughts, to stop obsessing over everything Ranpo might know, and to plan. To text Dazai, and to warn him that their cover might have been blown before they ever entered the office. And to notice that he wasn’t getting a text back, then track the dot of Dazai back and forth across the city to determine that he was still on his case.

He’s just fucking done with this day by the time he finally enters the hotel room behind Ranpo, throws his bag onto the nearest bed, and folds his arms as he blocks the door. 

Supremely unconcerned, Ranpo flops backward onto his own bed fully dressed, hands tucked behind his head, and lets out a satisfied sigh at finally getting somewhere comfortable. It’s a long moment of silence--easy on Ranpo’s part and tense on Chuuya’s--before he sighs again and drawls lazily.

“I don’t have any part in it, don’t be ridiculous. Me, working on shady government experiments?” Ranpo raspberries, nose scrunched in judgment as if the very thought is beneath him--even as they’re on a case he’s specifically been requested for by the government.  

“I need to know what you know, and how you know it.”

Ranpo tips his cap back and off, and then raises a hand to count down points one after the other.

“You were a military experiment. You broke out. You blew the place up. You became a petty criminal. Then you became a professional criminal.” All the fingers on one hand down, Ranpo then toes off his shoes, letting them fall to the floor one after the other with two dull thunks, and wriggles his toes in his white socks as if freeing them. “No one else at the Agency knows. Well, except Yosano now! Couldn’t have you attacking her when you wake up in the infirmary.”

It’s close enough to Chuuya’s history that it’s unsettling to hear Ranpo lay it all out so blithely and succinctly, as if it doesn’t matter whatsoever. As if it’s all irrelevant. The fact that he knows about Chuuya’s “professional” career means if nothing else he can intuit Dazai’s connection to him. Maybe even who they are, and their reputation.

“You didn’t tell me how you know that. Or what you plan to do with that information. You didn’t get all of that from us walking through the door. The doc said your ability is pulling together clues, not that you’re psychic.“

Without sitting up, Ranpo turns his head on the mattress to look at Chuuya, piercing green eyes fixed on him in that knowing way again. Like he’s considering how much to give away.

It’s disconcerting how Chuuya can’t read him. 

“I’ve worked as a detective for a little over ten years. The president took me in at fourteen and built the agency around me because obviously not sharing my ability with the world would be a crime in itself.” Chuuya could choke on the ego on this one, except god knows he has experience dealing with ego. It’s also why he can tell when it’s half bravado, a mask so deeply ingrained that Ranpo himself almost believes it. He’s also a talker. Luckily, Chuuya’s learned to listen past that. “I’ve worked with almost every homicide detective in Yokohama over the years...”

It clicks. 

“…and you get to know their flaws, their habits, their history, their regrets. Their obsessions.”

A riot of wooly hair. A bullet on a chain. 

“I knew one, a few years back. He was popular at his station. A moron, but not as much as some of them. He wasn’t a good man, but he had a personal obsession. Some delinquent he felt partially responsible for.”

A sickening crack. A birchwood cross. 

“He had an ulterior motive, but kept saying he wanted to get a kid out of a life of crime...”

A promise to pull him into the light.

Chuuya doesn’t want to hear the rest of this. Raising a hand, he cuts Ranpo off before he can go further, before he can continue laying out every card. “I get it.”

It was enough data for Ranpo to put together everything else. Maybe Ranpo had crossed Chuuya some time as he sat in the interrogation room. Maybe Murase showed Ranpo a picture or told him to keep a lookout for a red-haired teenaged criminal. Or maybe Ranpo was called to the station to investigate Murase’s assassination and reviewed the video before the Port Mafia wiped it. Maybe in the years they worked together, Ranpo had puzzled out Murase’s former job, or even his relation to the man responsible for Chuuya’s fucked up past.

Chuuya finds he doesn’t need to know more.

“So you know. Why string me along and drag me to Kyushu?” 

And the bastard has the nerve to laugh.  

“Because I needed you to handle the transportation, obviously! And Yosano puts headphones in when we fly, now.” He’s sulking. A grown-ass man, and he’s got his lower lip pouting out like a child. 

Chuuya’s not even going to pretend he understands this guy’s angle. 

“Yeah. Okay. Whatever you say.” Shoving his phone and his wallet back into his pocket, Chuuya makes his way to the door of the hotel room. He needs away for a bit. He needs to fill Dazai in. He desperately needs a smoke, and he’d just kicked the habit in preparation for trying this whole do-gooder thing. So, a convenience store is in order. “Don’t get killed or wander off, I’m not taking the blame for that.”

Ranpo shoots him a thumbs up, clearly with no intention of leaving the room at all.

Stepping out into a darkened street and then slipping into a back alley immediately is almost comfortingly familiar, an environment that makes more sense to him than the crowded office that waits for him back in Yokohama. Late night convenience stores are the same everywhere, liminal spaces full of lost souls and insomniacs.

Chuuya’s not sure which one he is, right now. Everything right now has a weird sense of unreality to it. After having everything dragged so casually to the fore again, he’s feeling a little detached. Like he missed a step: an unsettling lurch, unsteady, unbalanced.

It still smells like rain, until it doesn’t. Tobacco and menthol, the rush of nicotine, and Chuuya steps back into the darkness again. He doesn't melt back into the shadows as well as he once did, the browns and tans and burgundy he's clothed himself in now aren't made for the dark. The symbolism isn't lost on him.

Tires race through puddles on the street beside him, the convenience store lights rippling on the water and then fracturing with each splash into glittering gems of light that come crashing back to earth. 

Chuuya pulls up the GPS on his phone to confirm that Dazai’s own overly-long day has ended with him at their new home and presumably safe, then waits passively as a phone rings, and rings. The line picks up and he’s greeted with a familiar voice that makes him feel almost real again. 

“Isn’t it past time for slugs to be asleep?” 

Dazai’s voice is quiet, almost intimate coming from the phone, like they’re curled in bed together and shutting out the rest of the world. Chuuya feels himself relaxing at once, smoke released alongside a held breath.

“Fuck off.” There’s no bite to it, their repartee so familiar that it’s almost call and response. “You weren’t answering texts.”

“Busy day,” Dazai murmurs, and Chuuya can read the frustration in it, the exhaustion. “My first case went sideways. You’ll probably see it in the papers tomorrow, and I’ll catch you up when you get back. First, tell me what’s wrong.”

It’s not as disconcerting that Dazai can tell just from his voice that Chuuya’s in a free fall. They’re partners, they’ve never needed more than this to understand each other. 

“This detective fucker knows everything. Read me like a book, all of it. He knew the…”

“Is everything okay? I heard talking.”

A woman’s voice, soft and sweet, and it’s like a bucket of cold water thrown over Chuuya. Like being splashed by the puddles just outside his alleyway, cold and dirty and wrong. 

There’s a woman in their dorm room. The place they were going to settle into together.

When Chuuya told Yosano earlier that he and Dazai were complicated, it wasn’t a lie. They’re inextricably tied together and both of them know it. Their feelings for each other are far more than friends, or partners, and in some ways deeper than lovers. They have been, and still are, and always will be two halves of the same whole. 

They’re already in a relationship, but not yet a relationship. It’s still surprising that Dazai’s sexually or romantically interested in Chuuya, even if it does end up being mere curiosity or just being each other’s only person they can rely on. But the unspoken understanding was that they were going to let it develop into more. 

If Dazai realized being with Chuuya that way wasn’t something he wanted, it would sting. Hell, Chuuya isn’t one to lie to himself, he knows that by now it would hurt like a son of a bitch. But it would be something he accepted, just as in their years on the run he had never been jealous or resentful of Dazai seeking out women. 

But Dazai had never brought any of those women back with him. And certainly not to a place they were going to live together.

“Everything is fine, Miss Sasaki…”

Dazai is on the other end of the line offering reassuring nothings to this unknown and unseen woman in a studiedly sincere voice and Chuuya doesn’t want to hear this. He doesn’t want to be in the middle of this. 

“I’m going to go. Need to make sure the detective doesn’t get himself killed.”

There’s a beat of silence on the other end mid-sentence to the woman in their dorm, in their bed. Then the sound quality changes—closer to the phone, as if Dazai is whispering directly into his ear. “Is Chuuya jealous…?”

Suddenly the answer is no. Because that tone, all curiosity and delight and teasing, is enough to abruptly thrust Chuuya into a much more familiar emotion.

“Go fuck yourself, Dazai.”

Fury. 

He doesn’t bother giving Dazai time to try and twist the knife.

Chuuya finishes a second cigarette on the way back to the hotel room, smoke curling and trailing around him like a wrathful dragon. When the phone buzzes with a text, he doesn’t even give Dazai the satisfaction of opening it even if he would just leave his partner on read afterwards. 

Chuuya is not willing to be anyone’s plaything, any more than he’s willing to be a failed experiment. He’s got his pride, and even more than that he has some fucking self-respect. 

His bad mood doesn’t need to be everyone else’s, though, because unlike some people he’s an actual adult. So he slips into the hotel room again silently, leaving his shoes beside the door and making his way to the bathroom to clean up and change so that he doesn’t make the entire hotel room smell like an ashtray. 

He has to walk by Ranpo’s bed to get there, where the detective is laid out in actual pajamas within a messy pile of every one of his pillows and all but one of Chuuya’s. Chuuya’s almost to the bathroom when one hand shoots up from the pile of pillows and blankets, finger pointed toward the ceiling.

“You. Are an idiot.”

Being an adult only gets you so far. Raising his middle finger in return is viciously satisfying.

“Go back to sleep, asshole.”

He closes the bathroom door on Ranpo’s snickering. 

He doesn’t understand why that exchange was weirdly reassuring. Like he might be able to make something more honest out of his interactions with Ranpo, now that he doesn’t have anything to hide or a mask he needs to wear.

Chapter 4: Your one wild and precious life

Notes:

Like the previous chapter, this one runs alongside the Dazai's Entrance Exam light novel. There are portions that were compressed for the anime arc that we will instead be building off of here. Portions of this (notes and quotes) are direct from the light novel.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”

- Mary Oliver, “The Summer Day”

The annoying thing about smug egotistical genius partners is that they usually have something to actually be smug about. 

It takes Ranpo all of fifteen minutes on the scene, pleasantries (such as they are) included. The detective dramatically puts his glasses on, takes one look at the bodies, snidely outlines to the otherwise clueless police who the killer was and how he did it, and then looks to Chuuya and tells him that he’s absolutely famished and that he should find them someplace to eat.

Which is how Chuuya ends up on a sunny morning walking side by side with Ranpo Edogawa through Fukuoka towards some restaurant that a quick search showed him was highly regarded for brunch.

If there’s one thing that Chuuya agrees with Ranpo on, it’s that if they’re eating on the government’s dime they’re not doing it in some cheap dive restaurant. It’s been a while since Chuuya’s been out to eat instead of holed up somewhere with take-out. Besides, he figures the government owes him more than a few overpriced meals. 

The rain of the night before has long since blown over, leaving the grass greener and the birds trilling as they dig into the softened ground for their own meals. Kyushu is pretty enough, though the view from the shore is to the wrong direction for two men from Yokohama. While not provincial, the city is certainly quieter than most spots in Yokohama. Mostly quieter. Well, it would be quieter were Chuuya there in anyone else’s company.

“...back later, because they’ll need me to spoon-feed them evidence that they should be able to gather themselves. We’ll wait until he’s in custody though because…” and here Ranpo sounds like he’s reciting someone else’s words, eyes rolling in annoyance “...I shouldn’t always be on the scene for arrests because pointing at murderers just makes them want to kill me more.”

Oh, that’s an image. Chuuya pictures Ranpo walking up to him while he was in the Port Mafia, or to any mafioso, then pointing them in the face and declaring to the world that they’re a criminal.

“Yeah, who’d have thought.”

He’s smart, but apparently an idiot if he needs to be reminded how that’s absolutely going to get him killed. No wonder they don’t let this guy go anywhere without a chaperone. 

Still, Chuuya holds the door for him as Ranpo ambles into a cafe and immediately plops himself down in a seat with his back to the door, as if he’s used to people keeping an eye on the entrances for him. If he’s been doing this since he was fourteen, Chuuya can only imagine that started with Fukuzawa himself and just continued from there. It’s just as well because Chuuya can’t eat with his back to a door at all, so in that way their trained habits are compatible.

Ranpo immediately flips to the dessert menu, which while relatable (Chuuya’s sweet tooth has always been something Dazai hypocritically teased him for) isn’t remotely healthy. Chuuya orders them both something actually healthy before letting Ranpo rattle off every sweet breakfast item on the menu. Still, Chuuya adds a few sweets of his own for takeout. 

Okay, so he does wish he could watch some government accountant looking at this receipt and flinching as they reimburse it.

Orders placed, Chuuya leans back into the bench seat and watches Ranpo watch him, a staredown once again.

“So, is this going to be a problem?”

Chuuya figures he doesn’t need to specify what he means. Chuuya would eat his hat if he was wrong about Ranpo knowing he’s still fixated on a detective agency knowing his history. And he likes his hat.

“Until you make it a problem for them, it’s your business not theirs,” Ranpo shrugs. As if he’s not blatantly admitting that he’ll be withholding evidence about a criminal in their midsts. Two, once you count Dazai. Chuuya’s not sure what to think of the Agency, if their long rap sheets aren’t a dealbreaker. “Taneda wants you on our side. They say you have the most powerful ability in Japan…”

Damn but Chuuya wants to know what Ranpo’s overheard through the years.

“...And I have the most useful one! We’ll end up partners.”

“Partners, huh?” Ranpo said it so matter-of-factly, like he isn’t upending years worth of Chuuya’s working arrangement with Dazai. There must be something to his expression as the waitress places their drinks down, because Ranpo pauses with his mouth against the lip of a soda that absolutely is not a breakfast drink, and waves his other hand dismissively.

“Nope, wasn’t going to happen! You two would care more about backing each other than you would about saving people. Neither of you will pass that way.”

That’s a cryptic-ass closing to that statement, but it will have to do for now because Ranpo’s phone starts buzzing in his pocket. The Armed Detective Agency’s reputation is taking a nosedive as video spreads online showing Kunikida failing to save hostages that died right in front of them. Only the barest slip of Dazai’s tan coat is on camera at all, but Chuuya immediately knows that this is the cause of Dazai’s exhaustion the night before.

Meanwhile, the agency has just received a new letter threatening to detonate a bomb that will kill thousands and generate new video evidence of the Agency failing to save civilians. Ranpo frowns at the text and then leaves it to Chuuya to change their flight plans.

They’ve done all they technically need to in Kyushu to not further damage the Agency’s reputation. Now is not the time not to worry about the dead, it’s more important to protect the living.

 

--

 

Dazai wears exhaustion differently than other people. For most it’s a sluggish feeling, slowing and dimming, dragging them down. Dazai’s depressed self is almost always ‘down’ anyway, so when he’s really feeling it he often swings too far in the opposite direction.

So it’s not remotely a surprise for Chuuya that Dazai is making a clownish production out of goading the uptight blonde he’s been partnered with. 

Kunikida stomps through the glass-paned door into the Agency offices, and he’s tall enough that for a moment it’s only Dazai’s voice that precedes him, a sing-song mockery.

“… told you that your ideals for a woman were going to get you shot down.”

“I will never want your romantic help, Dazai!”

Dazai tuts mockingly but by the time he clears the doorway he’s spotted Chuuya, hip leaned against the side of Ranpo’s desk as the detective speaks to the Agency president to update him cheerfully on the case in Kyushu so that he can coordinate with the government on any follow-up. 

“Chuu-yah!” 

Chuuya’s used to it by now, but the childish sulking greeting makes Kunikida’s jaw bunch, muscle visibly twitching. Chuuya raises an eyebrow, trying to fight the amusement at how easy the blonde is to read, even as he ends up with Dazai draped over him dramatically whining.

Chuuya doesn’t flinch at the beanpole’s entire weight being dropped on his shoulder as he languishes in the supposed injustices imposed on him. 

“Kunikida here tried to strangle me because he thought I was sleeping with a witness! Tell him, tell him, you know that I would never take advantage of a beautiful woman that way!”

Dazai is so very not subtle. How did Chuuya ever think this would work like an infiltration? 

Ranpo cackles knowingly, tipping his cap back as he looks pointedly at the two of them. Chuuya is half tempted to flip him back off again for nonverbally calling him an idiot this time. One jackass genius at a time, though.

“Don’t pretend you weren’t trying to rile him up by making him think you might be, bastard.” 

Hidden under the edge of Dazai’s coat, he jabs a finger between his partner’s ribs for pulling the same bullshit on him. Dazai hip-checks him lightly, and that’s a conflict sorted for now. Considering Kunikida is loudly confirming that it was the point of Dazai’s stunt, the only person who’d notice the exchange is Ranpo. Who already knows. And is coming over to plop down heavily in his desk chair beside them. 

“Alright, give me the letter! You guys are clearly lost without me! Chuuya and I didn’t get to sight-see in Kyushu because you can’t handle anything without my Ultra Deduction, so we had to leave before our onsen tamago was even served!”

It’s two hours to sunset, but everyone in the Agency is watching Ranpo make a dramatic production out of putting on his glasses instead of canvassing the city searching for a bomb whose detonation could kill hundreds and completely shutter their organization at the same time. They trust him that much.

Standing together as they are, only Chuuya notices when Dazai uses their proximity to capture a tuft of Ranpo’s hair between his fingertips with the feather-light touch of a skilled pickpocket.

Chuuya has seen Dazai disable any enemy’s ability with the lightest of taps. He has felt even his own power drain away at a caress. If anyone knows the effects of No Longer Human, it’s him.

So he understands immediately the significance of Ranpo’s “Ultra Deduction” landing on a fishing gear shop without ever triggering Dazai’s ability. 

When they’re divided back up into pairs, Chuuya and Dazai share a look of understanding, microexpressions that form a whole conversation. They have both realized exactly why the Agency president would insist on Ranpo being partnered with Chuuya.

Because Chuuya has enough raw power on his own to make up for Ranpo’s complete lack of an ability. 

When Dazai and Kunikida are flung back out into the field to deal with the bomb while Chuuya is left behind with Ranpo, he stares consideringly at the for-once oblivious detective that he’s apparently being trusted to keep alive. 

Then he takes his place at the nearest desk to wait for the letter that Ranpo anticipates will arrive as soon as the bomb is disarmed.

 

--

 

Dear Sirs and Madams,

I must request your efforts a third time.

I have taken the liberty of having an interference signal transmitted to the engine and yoke of a passenger aircraft currently in flight known as JA815S.

I ask that you neutralize this signal and ensure the safety of its passengers. 

My apologies, but I thank you for your understanding.

Yours,

The Azure Messenger

 

-- 

 

It’s disconcerting being this out of touch with Dazai while he’s in life or death situations back to back. It’s not how they work. Dazai’s plans usually rely on pulling Chuuya in when situations become dire. And Chuuya usually counts on Dazai being there to stop him, when the call for his ability edges too close to his limits.

But Dazai is still across town after installing a jamming signal on the bomb when the next message comes through for them all. A Japan Airlines airbus with over three hundred souls on board is going to crash into Yokohama unless they do something. And while Chuuya has no doubt that Dazai’s craftiness will get him to the source of the interference signal, the odds of the plane crashing are still far too high. 

Chuuya’s fate is sealed by a phone call patched through from the prefectural police, shared to both teams on the case. Chuuya, Ranpo and Yosano crowd around her phone as a video glitches and then connects.

“I’m… I’m a p-passenger on this p-plane. This is M-mommy’s phone, but Mommy doesn’t feel very good… so it’s m-me instead. The airplane is f-falling, and a ton of people are s-screaming, and crying, and…”

Tears well in the eyes of a small girl clutching her mother’s phone in her hand, an oxygen mask obscuring half of her face as her mother lolls unconscious beside her, held in place only by the seatbelt cinching her in. They can barely hear the girl over the screaming, and the video is shaking and lurching.

Innocents and kids.

“The captain t-told us to stay in our seats…. but no one’s l-listening, and some people are f-fighting…”

Dazai’s proving once again that, despite being an utter trainwreck in all other ways, he’s shockingly good with kids. He gets her name. He keeps her calm. Kunikida’s car tires screech on pavement as they rip through the city toward the signal transmitter in the mountains. Yosano and Ranpo are making contingency plans. But Chuuya’s already on his feet. He got the lay of the land during the brief time he had to case the office--he knows where the equipment is. 

“Hey, kid. Hang on, okay? You don’t need to be afraid…”

Ranpo’s face is grim as he catches the communicator that Chuuya tosses to him, and the expression looks foreboding and wrong on him. Yosano catches the car keys that Chuuya throws at her, already closing Ranpo’s laptop. Chuuya imagines that even over the screams and the chaos of the shared call he can hear Dazai suck in a breath of understanding on the other end. He knows what Chuuya is about to do. Of course he knows.

“...I’ll be right up there. Have you ever heard of Superman?”

This isn’t stepping onto a small charter flight just after takeoff as he has before. The passenger plane is falling from at least 30,000 feet. It’s not down in the middle of Yokohama’s city streets. The air is going to be thin enough that he’ll be risking hypoxia. It’s not a stationary object. The jet is over 600,000 pounds and rapidly coming down nose-first. He reasons that he doesn’t need to heft all of it, though. If he can just level it out, it should be able to coast until Dazai and Kunikida can deal with the transmitter. If all else fails, Chuuya may be able to get them angled and controlled enough to handle an emergency water landing. That will save the passengers. 

It won’t do shit for Chuuya, though, if thin oxygen and sustained pressure fuck him up. That’s assuming he isn’t about to just commit suicide by Ability either way. He needs to work fast .

Chuuya reaches past Ranpo to hit mute on their end of the call to keep the rest of their conversation from reaching the kid as he tucks a communicator in one ear, a GPS tracker into his pocket, and settles his hat onto his still-empty desk.

“I need you to get me in the path of the plane, and then I need to know exactly when to push off. Because at the speed they’re falling if we fuck this up I’m not going to have time to course correct. I’m going to need you to be really, really fucking precise here.”

Chuuya doesn’t let himself think as he wrenches up one of the windows at the Agency and drops, feet planting into the bricks as he ricochets himself into motion. Even if Yosano is miraculously an Albatross-level driver, there’s no way they could get a car where he needs to be as fast as he’s going to need to be there. He just needs to continually shift his own gravity to keep him accelerating from building to building through the city as Ranpo tracks his GPS and the plane’s trajectory. 

He’s been out of the city long enough that he’s once more struck by how beautiful Yokohama is glowing in incandescent light and painted in moon shadows as it streaks by.

“Chuuya…” Dazai must have stolen a communicator from Kunikida, but as things go that’s not even a crime. They’re partners now, after all. “...What are you doing?”

“What we came here to do. We’re the bad guy’s enemy, right?” Chuuya’s legs bunch as he lands in a crouch against the side of a building, dragging in a breath deep and slow, holding for a count of four before exhaling. Easy. Like he’s about to freedive. He’s going to need to be as ready as he can when he heads for the plane.

He can’t fall back on using Corruption for this. Not without risking killing them all himself. He needs control.

Ranpo’s voice directs him again. “Further north and west. One minute.”

Chuuya pushes off again.

“We’re only eight minutes out from the signal.” Dazai’s trying to reason with him, and if Dazai masks depression with comedy he also masks fear with anger. Chuuya doesn’t even fault him for it. He’s always been able to see past that, and frankly they both know Chuuya’s going to do this no matter what Dazai says. Eight minutes is a long damn time compared to a literal plane crash where anything could happen. Meanwhile, Dazai and Kunikida don’t know what kind of situation they’re going to be rushing into. The idea that the transmitter is completely unprotected and waiting for them is so absurd that none of them believe it.

And there’s at least one kid onboard who thinks Chuuya’s Superman.

Another impact. The ugly brown loafers that Dazai talked him into for this reboot of their lives crack the safety glass windows of the skyscraper beneath them. Another breath. “Then fucking get there. Sooner you deal with that, the sooner I get back down.” They both know the chances of Chuuya’s descent being controlled are very slim. Chuuya knows his limits just as well as Dazai does.

“North. Thirty seconds.”

“Clear the line, Dazai, before you throw off my countdown.”

He can hear Dazai spit a curse, but the benefit of never having to talk about things to understand each other is that Chuuya doesn’t need to say goodbye.

He can see the plane, now, a distant ghost against the night sky without lights or engines.

“...two… one”

Thrust, weight, drag and lift. Chuuya knows the four principles of flight: he fucks with them all the time. Push off with full strength. Make himself weightless to keep himself going. Arms tucked to his sides and hands in his pockets for aerodynamics. Angling himself for approach. 

Chuuya doesn’t let himself smash into the plane and risk throwing it off further: he lands in a crouch and only adjusts his gravity once he’s dug his fingers into the fiberglass and Kevlar skin of the plane over the cockpit, careful not to dig in too deep. 

Weight. Lift. 

He just needs to manipulate the nose to level out the plane and angle it towards the bay.

The pressure hits him first, and it’s staggering. Fingers digging deeper into the plane beneath him, he pushes the graying at the corners of his vision aside and pulls with his ability.

Weight. Lift. 

If anyone is speaking to him over the communicators, it can’t reach him now. Not at this height and this velocity. 

His lungs are burning.

Lift.

Yokohama Bay is rapidly nearing. If he wants a chance of not being lost to the ocean, he needs to do this now.

Lift .

He can feel it when they level out, when the wings catch the air current and the plane begins to glide.

When his body begins to fail, his grip weakening.

He thinks he vaguely sees the wide eyes of pilots and passengers as he slides sideways off of the top of the plane.

But somehow, he’s still holding some level of control that even he feels like he might never have been able to manage in this state before. He’s not falling as fast, as hard, as he should be.

Chuuya’s still mercifully blacking out before the impact, unable to hear the screech of tires as a car comes to a barely controlled stop in the grass strip of Portside Park, Ranpo’s voice giving a different set of directions to his driver. Chuuya doesn’t see the lights of the plane wink back on, the blocking signal disabled and the pilots immediately throttling to ascend. He doesn’t hear Yosano, heels off, fall into a dead sprint to be able to reach him as soon as he smashes into the earth like a tiny meteorite.

But for a fleeting moment just before he should die, he thinks he sees butterflies.

Chapter 5: Remembering we were never meant to survive

“When we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
Remembering
we were never meant to survive.”

- Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival”

“This one is going to give me all sorts of trouble, isn’t he?”

Chuuya’s not sure why he’s alive. Honestly he’s still not entirely sure that he is. Even the best case scenario would have left him broken from the fall.

“Probably!”

He’s laid out somewhere only nominally padded and awkwardly angled. The back seat of a stationary car. Someone is looming over him. All he knows is pain.

The car creaks as the tires clear the pavement, the world around him caught in the comforting glow of his ability. 

“Definitely the most dramatic entrance exam...”

Chuuya doesn’t have the time or energy to avoid the flash of a blade. He feels too frozen to yell, but the pain ebbs as his vision splinters once again into a cloud of butterflies. 

The car lurches and creaks as it falls the few inches back to the ground. The conversation above him continues uninterrupted.

“…just as well! No simulated test was really going to feel life-threatening for him…”

A knife.

Butterflies.

“…and he needed the President’s help more than any of us.”

---

 

“…looking for a stubborn self-sacrificing shrimp, you found him.”

Chuuya’s long since been trained to relax on hearing Dazai’s voice as he drifts in and out of consciousness after one of their stupider stunts. His partner is frequently cuttingly snide at those times—it took Chuuya a couple of years to understand that as the natural combination of fear making him angry and being upset making him a dramatic jackass.

Chuuya jolts as he’s dropped the last couple of inches onto a hospital bed, and if he were more awake he’d be cussing Dazai out about it because he knows that was on purpose. That part is just him being petty.

“Well…” Chuuya swears he can hear Kunikida pushing his glasses up. He hasn’t known the guy long, but he just seems like the type who’d do that before every awkward statement. “…You did well today. Both of you.”

“Aww, Kunikida! I knew you liked me!”

Ugh. Too loud.

“I wouldn’t go that far. You’re an absolute menace, unfit for society, lazy…”

“It’s okay, you can just admit I’m growing on you.” 

Chuuya’s fading again. He can tell now that it’s the too-familiar feeling of extreme exhaustion dragging him so far down, as it always has after overextending himself. Not down enough yet, though. Chuuya grumbles out a nonverbal complaint, prompting a third voice to join the conversation. 

“You’re both crowding my office and you’re loud. Out. Kunikida, the President asked for you.”

Footsteps, a door, and then a beat of silence. 

“ …Thank you. ”

“Thank me by not landing yourself in here. If he’s a pain in the ass to handle, treating you would be a nightmare. Now, out.”

---

 

Chuuya wakes up ensconced in stiff linen sheets over a thinly padded bed, and immediately realizes a number of things. He’s breathing and unharmed, at some point he was changed into the softest t-shirt and most worn-in sweatpants from his bag back at their new dorm, he’s in a room that smells strongly of antiseptics, and there’s a heavy weight pinning him down with an uncomfortable bar of pressure that cuts across his chest. Pulling in a breath only makes the crush of it seem tighter and makes his next breath out a heavy sigh. 

He doesn’t have to guess what’s happening.

“Go ahead, get it over with.”

When he opens his eyes, Dazai is glaring directly at him from inches away, arms folded across Chuuya’s chest in a near-painful line as he braces his chin on his wrists, his entire lanky body keeping Chuuya in place on the medical table. Because Dazai is intentionally, eternally obnoxious when he’s upset.

The Armed Detective Agency beyond the doors is quiet and there’s a dimness to the light that speaks of early morning. Earlier than Dazai would ever willingly be awake, so he must have gone back to the dorm for Chuuya’s clothes and then either overnighted in the room so he could clock exactly when Chuuya was waking up, or made it a point to get back before he could. 

Now Dazai is trying to literally trap Chuuya into an argument.

“What the hell was that. You fell off a plane. That you only threw yourself onto because you’re an impatient showboating pain in the ass.” 

That did indeed happen. What’s Dazai expect him to do, deny that? But he will correct it. He’s not going to let Dazai make it sound like he was on a joyride over the city. “I leveled out a falling plane full of kids and families before it could crash into the city and kill more kids and families.”

“I had a handle on the signal, Chuuya. If you’d waited even a couple more minutes…” Oh, Dazai’s furious. He hasn’t heard Dazai sound this cold and clipped in years. 

“Wind shear. Metal fatigue. Turbulence. Hell, just them getting thrown around inside enough to take people out…”

“I had it. But instead of working with a plan, you decided to…”

“I never doubted you’d take care of the damn signal, Dazai! But there were a hundred ways that could have gone south and I wasn’t going to risk people dying because…”

“Stop.” Dazai surges forward, grasping Chuuya’s chin to hold him still and force him to listen, eyes blazing with the kind of unfettered emotion that he rarely lets people see. “You almost died.” 

And abruptly, Chuuya understands what’s happening. 

This isn’t actually anger. It’s grief. And the last time Chuuya saw Dazai this unapologetically distraught was the night his best friend died in his arms. The night they both upended their lives for this chance to start over in the light. 

Chuuya is entirely willing to go toe to toe with Dazai when he’s lashing out. They have a history of setting each others’ tempers off and they’re both usually too hard-headed to admit when they’re wrong. But this isn’t that. And Chuuya understands grief, too.

He’s had a couple of years now to come to terms with the life they’re going to be entering here, and he wants to try and be part of the light. He’s never had that chance before. He was created in the dark, grew up trying to carve out a safe little piece of the dark for the Sheep, and then plunged from there into the Port Mafia. If this is his one chance to try and be a ‘normal human,’ he’s taking it seriously. It’s not just a bit he’s committed to, no matter how awkward it’s felt for him to try and make himself more than he actually is.

So even if he hadn’t survived, in Chuuya’s perspective it would have been for the greater good. People were going to die when he could have done something about it. If there is any reason for fate to have dealt him the power he has trapped inside him, any good outcome for the years of experiments that formed him, then Chuuya would like to imagine that it's for moments like that.

But from Dazai’s perspective, Chuuya ignored working out a plan with his partner and threw himself into a suicide mission while Dazai was miles away and miles below him and couldn’t do anything about it. 

Chuuya’s not obtuse enough to miss what about that would trigger Dazai, because he knows what memory that evokes. Obviously it would hurt Dazai, because he sees Chuuya as the only thing he has left. Now that he’s recognized what’s going on in Dazai’s head, it does change things. 

Their faces are so close together that Chuuya can feel the gust of breath against his skin as Dazai closes his eyes again and shoves his emotions back into their box. He’s fast at that—always able to switch it off on a dime, or at least appear to. Instead of letting him close off completely, Chuuya palms the back of Dazai’s neck, bringing him down to rest forehead to forehead against each other. In return, Dazai’s grip on his chin relaxes, hand sliding down to mirror Chuuya’s own, fingers buried in the spill of his hair on the pillow.

This is a grief that Dazai doesn’t need to carry, because Chuuya’s alive, right here, and doesn’t exactly plan to do that again. So when he speaks again it’s quieter, eyes closed, voice slightly apologetic… Slightly. “I’ve done worse. And I’m alive, right?”

Dazai snaps his response, but that’s expected too. “Only because Yosano’s ability is literally named ‘Thou Shalt Not Die.’”

When Chuuya snorts, Dazai raises his head enough to glare down at him, daring him to explain what he thinks is funny about the situation. Chuuya raises an eyebrow in the face of that glare, keeping his partner in a loose hold. It’s the delivery that’s key—a wryness that has always been his counterbalance to Dazai’s more volatile moods. 

“You have to admit that’s a bit on the nose. Just imagine if you called your ability ‘I’m A Human Power Vacuum’ or something. ‘Ability Obstruction,’ ‘Skill Sap.’ Just doesn’t have the same ring.”

The problem with knowing each other so well is that Chuuya can tell that Dazai is reluctantly amused by him, even if he is still furious. Chuuya’s job now is to pull them back on track to bickering instead of fighting. Usually that’s Dazai’s role, but what’s the point of being called ‘rivals’ for half their time together if he can’t do everything that Dazai can, but better.

“You’re not distracting me from the fact that I’m pissed at you.” 

Chuuya settles more easily into the pillow beneath his head without disturbing Dazai’s deliberately uncomfortable prone position on top of him. For not the first time, Dazai reminds him of a housecat—pinning someone down and staring at them judgmentally in a dare to try to pay anything else attention. Next he’ll randomly bite Chuuya in punishment, or reach over and push the cup off the table beside them just to be a shit.

Hand still cupping Dazai’s neck, Chuuya strokes his thumb over Dazai’s nape absently, dark hair ruffled then smoothed. Chuuya can’t fault Dazai for being hurt. Chuuya knows he would be intolerable if their roles were reversed and it were Dazai who nearly died. But he still doesn’t regret what he did, only how it impacted his partner and made others scramble to pull him out of the aftermath of his choice. Right now, though, Chuuya is mostly just glad to be alive and here like this with Dazai. 

“I know you’re pissed. I don’t plan to go jumping on any jumbo jets again.”

He really wants to kiss Dazai right now. But he’s been carefully leaving it to Dazai to decide when and if that’s okay. He doesn’t want to push Dazai away by forcing anything, or to push him any further than he wants to go. So they’re at something of a standstill. Which is fine. If Dazai doesn’t want to move from where they are, that’s fine. 

Besides, it’s not the time. Dazai’s frayed and upset, and Chuuya isn’t selfish enough to take advantage of that. Meanwhile; the building is waking up, traffic noises outside, the sound of voices echoing up the stairs, the distant ding of the elevator below. 

Chuuya doesn’t want Dazai having to field questions about what they are to each other, and if anyone walks in on this there will be teasing or questions. Chuuya slides his hand away from Dazai’s neck and taps him on the shoulder as a signal. Dazai pauses with an annoyed look followed by a delayed sigh as he rolls off of Chuuya with one last elbow to the ribs. 

“We’re talking about this tonight.”

“Figured.” Chuuya rakes a hand through his hair, sitting up and recalibrating after having Dazai that close and that that vulnerable, no matter how he was trying to hide it. It left Chuuya a little flustered. After years of denying it even to himself, Chuuya has come to terms with the fact that he finds the bastard more attractive than he lets on.

That’s how Yosano finds them seconds later, as if she loitered outside the door until they were done. She looks back and forth between them once—Dazai shrugging his tan coat back into place on one side and Chuuya still in bed on the other, the air still tense between them. Then she raises an eyebrow. 

“I can leave if you need me to. Whatever this is, it seems ‘complicated.’”

They’ve joined a group of nosy bastards. Guess that comes with the territory of being a detective. 

“It’s not complicated at all. My dog is just a moron.”

Great, and now they’re back to the “dog” stuff. Chuuya shoots a middle finger at Dazai’s back without really thinking on Dazai’s words beyond the familiar insult. But the gesture falls flat when Dazai sweeps out of the room without looking back or reacting. 

Chuuya can’t say he’s looking forward to continuing that argument when they get home. But the idea of a home to return to with Dazai in it… that is something he looks forward to. 

Yosano drags her chair over towards the edge of his bed, the rattle and squeak of the wheels jarring and off putting, making Chuuya tense until they stop. Then she sits down, crosses her legs, smooths her skirt down, and fixes on Chuuya the most piercing stare he’s ever faced, and that’s impressive considering his entire history and the company he keeps. 

“You should be dead right now.”

“I hear I have you to thank for being alive.” Chuuya offers a disarming lopsided smile, tipping his head down in a bare sketch of a bow. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“I’ll cash in on that later, but I wasn’t done. I nearly didn’t reach you in time as it was, but you shouldn’t have been alive to hit the ground.” Before she can reach for the clipboard on her desk, Chuuya waves her off. She doesn’t need notes or a chart to explain it to him. 

“Pressure sucks but it’s not quite as much an issue for me as for most people. Oxygen is.” One day at sixteen years old, Dazai subjected him to a litany of things that could be used to kill him. Drowning, suffocating, drugging, electricity… it was a slightly disturbing, incredibly graphic, somewhat threatening and covertly concerned monologue that went on for too extended a period of time. “The fall, too, obviously. But usually that’s not a problem for me.” 

But that does get Chuuya thinking. Yosano isn’t wrong. That fall should have killed him before Yosano could reach him, even accounting for Chuuya’s general strength and the enhancements he’s long suspected that the experiments left him with to contain a singularity.

And if anyone understands smashing someone so deep into the ground that it leaves a crater, it’s Chuuya. That was kind of his modus operandi, after all. And given their velocity, he should have been over the bay before he came down. Did he slow his descent somehow? He was unconscious, or damn near close enough, so that kind of fine control shouldn’t have been possible.

Yosano is watching him put together the pieces, waiting for him to land on the question she clearly led him to. When he meets her eyes again, she nods slightly and then calls out. 

“He’s ready for you.”

Chuuya knows he can only hear the wooden thump of traditional zori against the floor because the man wearing them wants them to be heard. He clocked the Agency president as a fighter the moment they shook hands, but face to face like this he knows him as a killer. Death recognizes death. He knows now that Fukuzawa can see it too. In him. In Dazai.

But even as the president stops in front of him, hands tucked into the green sleeves of his yukata, Chuuya knows he’s not going to pull a weapon out.

It’s strange. Chuuya’s instincts should be going haywire right now, preparing him to fight. But there’s a feeling there. Some kind of connection between him and the older man that wasn’t there before. 

Maybe it’s just that it’s hard to assume he’s being threatened when Ranpo ambles in behind the Agency president. Out of the corner of his eye he watches as his apparent partner immediately hops up to sit on the desk, stretching out to rest his feet on the arm of Yosano’s chair. “Congrats. You passed the test. Now you’re stuck with us!”

Chuuya snorts, pretty sure the translation should be that he’s stuck with Ranpo, but there’s something more important there. “What the hell test are you talking about?”

He already passed the written and field tests before they ever opened the doors to them, even with Taneda’s backing. But Chuuya’s always been able to read between the lines if given just a few seconds to focus. The plane. There was some test of loyalty, or self-sacrifice, or ‘heroism’ though Chuuya’s not convinced he believes in the concept. There was an unwritten, undisclosed string attached to their acceptance. 

And it has something to do with the Agency president whose stare he hasn’t looked away from. Whose presence he can almost feel now that he’s focused on it, buried in the back of his mind. 

“Nakahara Chuuya.” Fukuzawa’s voice is deep, his expression frozen into a stern stoicism. “Welcome to the Armed Detective Agency.”

If there is anyone in the world who can pinpoint when another ability is interacting with his own, it’s the man who feels No Longer Human like a hum beneath his skin every night, every day, every time Dazai brushes against him or drapes over him or pulls him in close. Every time that Dazai pulled him back from the brink. Now that he focuses on it, Chuuya can feel the impact of another ability intermingling with his own, bracing instead of quelling. 

As the Agency members begin to explain how that works, all he can think about is Dazai.

And how that could easily send his partner into a spiral.

---

 

Nearly two hours later he finds Dazai where he expects to; sprawled on the futon of the dorm assigned to Chuuya, stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, arms braced behind his head and eyes fixed vacantly on the switched-off light above him. 

It’s still morning. While Chuuya was excused from the office for obvious reasons—not the least of which because he was basically loafing around there in sweats and a t-shirt—Kunikida was already bitching to anyone who would listen about how Dazai ditched him on a job. Dazai could have been anywhere, anywhere at all, but to Chuuya the answer was obvious.

“How long until they figure out we only need one dorm, do you think?”

Chuuya toes his shoes off and hangs his hat next to Dazai’s coat… because the first thing he bought for their dorm was, in fact, a hat rack. Sure, it’s a cheap prefabricated bit of wood he screwed to the wall in under five minutes, but it was deliberately purchased and placed just to intermingle their belongings. The quiet spark of joy that brings is something he’s afraid to nurture. Now that the entire ploy with Dazai bringing women back to their room has passed, Chuuya feels like he can look at it without feeling conflicted. 

This is going to be their home.

And he was prepared to christen it in true Soukoku fashion—by butting heads with his partner and bickering until a truce was declared and they could face the world as a united front, or at least order dinner in and then curl up together. 

So the silence from their bed is disconcerting as Chuuya’s bait is ignored. It’s another sign that things aren’t alright.

Dazai backslid from anger to melancholy sometime between waking Chuuya and returning to the dorm. He’s deep in his own head, too, considering he doesn’t have a sarcastic comeback to Chuuya entering the room. 

Unfortunately, Chuuya has never been as good at managing Dazai crashing as he is at redirecting Dazai’s anger. Oh, he recognizes Dazai’s moods even when he conceals them behind shitty masks. But he’s never been as good at dragging Dazai back up out of his lows. The most he’s gotten is the promise that Dazai won’t die and leave him by himself.

The chilling thought occurs to him that, now that they’re settled and have been folded into the Armed Detective Agency, Dazai most likely considers that deal fulfilled. Chuuya knows that’s a rabbit hole he’s going to have to chase Dazai down into eventually.

“Yosano ripped me a new one. I apparently owe her for the rest of my life, but she’s just going to use me as an errand boy when she’s shopping. Kunikida and Ranpo are acting like I’ve been condemned to a fate worse than death. Whatever the fuck that’s about. They’re all weird as hell.”

Chuuya drops down onto the futon beside Dazai, mirroring his position as he folds his arms behind his head and crosses his ankles. Their infuriatingly growing height difference and the narrow bed means that their folded arms are overlapping uncomfortably and Chuuya’s cold toes are pressed directly against Dazai’s shin—and he deliberately makes sure to find a gap in the bandages for the full effect. 

Turning his head, he watches the faint furrow of annoyance mar Dazai’s smooth brow and considers it a win when Dazai blinks his way back into awareness and rejoins the land of the living. Dazai’s head swivels until they’re locking eyes again, and Chuuya smirks in greeting. 

“The silent treatment was creeping me out.”

Chuuya’s not supposed to be the one filling in silences—that’s unquestionably Dazai’s domain. They’ve both gotten more comfortable with it after two years of living together, downloaded books and hotel televisions and endless nights in leaving them with plenty of time just coexisting. But Chuuya walked in ready to conclude their fight, and Dazai had just… checked out.

And now he’s doing that thing he does sometimes, where he seems to be rifling through every thought Chuuya’s ever had. And judging them.

“You’re an idiot.”

Whether it’s the deadpan way that Dazai says it or just the repetition, Dazai’s response succeeds in ruffling Chuuya’s feathers immediately. Eyes narrowing, he rolls onto his side to meet the flat stare on him head-on, propping his head on his hand. “I’m getting pretty damn tired of hearing that this week.”

“There’s a simple solution to that, then.” Dazai grumbles in response, shifting onto his side to mirror Chuuya’s position in turn, and he jabs Chuuya in the sternum to make his point. “Stop being an idiot.”

“The fuck are you complaining about this ti-…”

Hand flattening against Chuuya’s chest, Dazai shoves him until he’s on his back again, flinging a leg over Chuuya’s hip until they’re right back into the position they were in early in the morning—Dazai pinning him down, staring intently at him.

“When did you stop thinking of yourself as human? We got past that.”

It’s preposterous. It’s so far off base that Chuuya’s lips twist as he readies himself to defensively snap back, but Dazai presses a palm over his mouth before he can speak and stares down at Chuuya. 

“You’re about to say ‘I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about,’ but about ten seconds after that you’re going to start questioning if you have started thinking of yourself as less than human again, then you’re going to refuse to admit to being unsure, then I’m going to point out that at some point you inevitably thought about yourself as finally being useful beyond what you were made for, and then you’re going to remember thinking that way but deny it. So we’re going to skip all of that.”

Chuuya should have known as soon as he walked in that Dazai was already playing through entire conversations in his head, trying to work his way ahead in whatever was going to happen. It’s an infuriating habit that Chuuya hasn’t really had to bear the brunt of since their time in the Port Mafia. Even then, he was very rarely the target of it—Dazai enjoyed bickering with him and wasn’t trying to fast-forward past it. 

But he expected Dazai to have figured out Fukuzawa’s whole schtick and to be overthinking how their field dynamic was being upended. He didn’t expect Dazai to be laying in their dark room having second-hand existential thoughts on his behalf.  

So Dazai keeps Chuuya’s mouth covered for a moment longer, watching and waiting as Chuuya goes through each of the predicted steps until he gets where Dazai expected, then past it. He hasn’t really consciously contemplated his own humanity recently, but it’s hard not to feel a step behind everyone else in this. He doesn’t know definitively that he’s human, and maybe it’s part of what has been eating away at him as he works to be perceived as something worth walking alongside normal people in the light. No. Not just ‘normal’ people. He’s spent the past two years contemplating how to be objectively good.

It’s not just his crimes—he already clocked the Agency president as a killer, though perhaps not for profit. And despite their near-identical rap sheets, he has no problems picturing Dazai adapting to a life in the light, using his intellect and cunning against their former boss and any other supposed geniuses to look Yokohama’s way. Using his charm to win over his coworkers, witnesses, anyone he actually wants. But for Chuuya himself…

It’s not what he was made for. Whether that’s nature or nurture, it’s true. He’s a product of experiments designed to make weapons, to make killers and apex predators—not people. And he was their most successful specimen. 

“That. Right there. Stop that.” 

Dazai’s frowning down at him, and the hand over his mouth slides down to his chest, pressing over the steady drumbeat of Chuuya’s heart. 

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Chuuya lies in monotone, following the script just as a nod to the fact that he knows Dazai’s seen through him. He shrugs a moment later, letting his frustration with the topic bleed through. “It’s just… it’s nothing I’m trying to do. It’s whatever. I’m handling it.”

“Oh, yeah. You’re handling it so well, I can tell. You killing yourself trying to ‘be human’ is clearly ‘nothing.’” Despite his acerbic tone, Dazai’s fingertips tap against Chuuya’s chest in the rhythm of his heartbeat, consciously drawing his attention to it. Just a hair too fast; a sign of alarm or of anxiety. “And it’s completely a coincidence that since you learned more about the experiments, you haven’t even entertained the thought of being in a relationship…”

“I have… ” Dazai’s blossoming grin is vicious even more than it is smug, fingertips drumming faster as Chuuya’s heart races. Dazai cornered him into practically confessing, or close enough that he knows Dazai can read between the lines. “Bastard. Putting me through all of that crap to get me to tell you something you already know…?” 

“No, we’re absolutely revisiting the rest of ‘that crap’ later, I just had to confirm a theory. I’ve been trying to figure out your bullshit since we were at least seventeen.” Dazai angles himself, leaning in to cup a hand to Chuuya’s cheek, to tilt his chin up so that Dazai can steal a kiss, slow and lingering. Thank god he stopped monitoring Chuuya’s pulse to do it, because he’s already got enough to hold over Chuuya’s head without adding further embarrassment. Dazai barely breaks the kiss to finish his thought, and each few words is punctuated by a brush of his lips against Chuuya’s for emphasis. “Took a while to see through that thick skull of yours. Acting like you were waiting for me to make up my mind.”

Emotional whiplash is something that Dazai trained Chuuya out of long before just by being his mercurial self, swinging from the heights of ridiculousness to the depths of nihilism and back in a matter of moments. So while this is a different matter altogether, Chuuya isn’t thrown by a sudden change of mood and in fact enthusiastically welcomes it. If the options are a prolonged discussion of his humanity or making out with Dazai, the choice is fairly obvious. 

And Chuuya is not one to let Dazai hold something over him both figuratively and literally for long. As soon as Dazai’s back hits the futon, Chuuya’s the one pressing in for a kiss. Elbows braced on the mattress he surges in to catch Dazai’s lower lip between his teeth, but it’s him that ends up hissing in pleasured surprise. Dazai’s caught him, knees bracketing his hips and ankles locked across the backs of his thighs, pressing Chuuya down against him.

While neither of them is hard yet after that particular discussion, Dazai seems determined to fix that and has a knack for getting what he wants. They’re going from 0 to 60 fast enough that it’s a headrush, and Dazai’s immediately determined to blow past the furthest they’ve explored together. 

It should be embarrassing, how Dazai hauling Chuuya into place between his legs leaves him having to adjust just to kiss him, how Dazai has to brace his elbows and chase him down for it--sometime between fifteen and twenty, Dazai more than tripled their original height difference, a fact that the bastard is now silently mocking and Chuuya can tell. 

“Shut up,” Chuuya grumbles. 

“Didn’t say anything,” Dazai snickers, tightening his legs to rock them together, and with only one thin layer of Dazai’s boxers to conceal his growing erection Chuuya can tell how far behind he is already.

After how long Chuuya spent convincing himself that Dazai was the one hesitant about taking the more physical side of their connection further, it’s almost dizzying to feel how much Dazai wants him, even if Dazai breaking the kiss to peel Chuuya’s shirt up over his head wasn’t clue enough. 

Apparently they’re doing this. Chuuya’s overthinking it and he knows that he’s overthinking it, but it’s Dazai. And that doesn’t just promise a level of permanence, it comes with risk. He could ruin this. Ruin them.  

“Why is the slug so slow! If you don’t get your pants off right now, I’m going to…”

Chuuya doesn’t get to hear whatever threat Dazai’s going to cook up. He slips a hand down between them, cupping his palm over Dazai’s barely concealed cock as if measuring the heat of him, the heft. It’s like he’s found the pause button for Dazai’s constantly running mouth, which is something of a gift itself.

“‘Going to’ what? I didn’t catch that.” Just because he’s anxious doesn’t mean he’s planning to stop, and certainly not that he’s going to give Dazai the upper hand. Pressing a kiss to the side of Dazai’s neck means ending up with a face full of fabric which won’t do at all. Chuuya catches bandage between his teeth and tugs it loose, needing to get to skin. 

“And you say you’re not my dog…” Dazai teases breathlessly, but if he’s taunting Chuuya for using his teeth he’ll just get more of it. Chuuya nips lightly at his neck, then sets to work leaving a mark, hand working its way beneath the band of Dazai’s boxers to reach skin there, too, fingers circling Dazai’s cock. Despite his teasing, Dazai’s nails dig into Chuuya’s shoulders to keep him there, head tilting to give Chuuya more access to his clearly sensitive neck, a hitch in his breath giving away that he in no way objects to Chuuya marking him. 

Whatever turns their relationship takes Dazai is his, right now and hopefully for always. So any thought of nosy detective coworkers noticing a love bite is promptly dismissed. 

What isn’t dismissed is specifically how this is going to happen. Dazai’s shoving the waistband of Chuuya’s sweat pants down as far as he can in their position to better cop a feel until Chuuya pulls back slightly, pulling his hand back out of Dazai’s boxers and dropping down to sit on Dazai’s thighs so they can work this out. 

“Top or bottom? I’d be good with either. I know you’re used to being with women so it might be easier for you to t--”

“Grab the lube out of our wardrobe and get your clothes off.” There’s a burr of arousal in Dazai’s voice that Chuuya is immediately enamored with, even if he’s looking at Chuuya like he’s being obtuse. “We have a little over five hours until Kunikida’s schedule puts him back at the dorms. I don’t care how we do this but we’re going to do this, and it’s not like this is going to be a one-time thing.”

Then Dazai smacks his ass to get him moving, earning him a pinch on the hip in retaliation as Chuuya stands again. 

He said ‘our’ wardrobe. Dazai unpacked their clothes. Chuuya never thought of himself as the domestic type, but apparently he is because like the hat rack before it, seeing their clothes put away because they’re living together is another small wonder. It’s a ridiculous thing to focus on as he’s shucking his sweatpants and digging among their mingled socks for the brand new bottle of lube that Dazai stashed there. 

“You’re being weird about socks now. If that’s some kind of fetish of yours…”

“Oh shut up, asshole.” Good to know that Dazai’s still an insufferable brat in bed, too. Chuuya abruptly realizes that he’s so obviously into that brattiness, and isn’t that just a little infuriating. By the time Chuuya turns back around, though, any complaint he has slips his mind. 

Dazai’s kicking his boxers and shirt away, bare save for his bandages, laying fully nude in their bed. He’s got both of their phones in hand, making sure they’re off and then tossing them out of reach as if to ensure no one is going to interrupt them this time and get Chuuya overthinking their way out of it again.

Chuuya’s damn near ravenous when he falls on Dazai again, dropping the lube onto the futon beside them because he absolutely has to reclaim Dazai’s lips that moment. Despite his clear eagerness to move on to the next step, Dazai doesn’t rush him. His arms come up around Chuuya to hold him close, hands splaying warm across his back and cupping his neck, skin warm and bandages soft against Chuuya’s chest, legs bracketing Chuuya once again. There’s a wry little smirk shaping his lips against Chuuya’s when he speaks again. 

“If this is the reaction throwing some unfolded clothes into a drawer gets me, I expect a blow job when I take the trash out.”

“Did you take the trash out?” Chuuya raises an eyebrow mockingly, and only Soukoku could make their nonsense seem like a proposition. Especially since Chuuya isn’t waiting for an answer.

He has to untangle Dazai’s stupidly long legs from around himself again, and it only makes their height difference very, very obvious. Dazai laughs into the next kiss, earning himself a sharp nip on his lower lip. But with Chuuya already tucked between Dazai’s legs, his next course of action just seems clear. 

“Stay there.” Chuuya orders, pressing a kiss to Dazai’s neck over his mark, down to mouth over his clavicle, his abs, finding flesh between bandages and trailing down. Dazai disobeys him almost immediately, propping himself up on his elbows to watch Chuuya as he presses one last kiss over the faint line of hair that bisects Dazai’s stomach below his navel. Chuuya makes eye contact as he wraps a hand around Dazai’s cock and delicately catches the head between his lips as if placing another kiss.

“Fuck.” Dazai’s not the one that cusses between them, not usually. It’s almost as good to unravel him that way as it is to pull a damn near pornographic guttural moan out of his partner as he smoothly takes more of Dazai into his mouth, practicing to see how far he can go. Truthfully, Chuuya isn’t experienced--but it doesn’t seem to matter right now. Dazai’s hands tangle in Chuuya’s hair, clever fingers never pushing him to take more than he can but making sure that he knows that his work is being appreciated as Chuuya’s lips make their way down to his curled fist. 

Having Dazai’s hands out of the way makes it easy for Chuuya to pop the cap on the lube in his off hand, soaking his fingers in more of it than he intended. It’s fine, though. Considering he’s never been on this end of sex, Dazai may need that much. He’s certainly tight as Chuuya presses his middle finger slowly into him, spreading the lube as he does and laving his tongue down Dazai’s cock as he distracts him from any discomfort. 

Chuuya can take more, so Dazai can take more. It becomes a challenge and a game—one finger pressing into Dazai, one finger on the other hand lifted away from the protective ring around the base of Dazai’s cock, making Chuuya take Dazai further into his mouth, into his throat. Every slow thrust of his fingers into Dazai is paired with Chuuya matching the pace of his lips over Dazai’s cock. 

It works until Chuuya’s three fingers in and crooks them just right to press into Dazai’s prostate, and Dazai yanks on his hair unconsciously as his hips buck into the sensation. Then he just keeps pulling steadily if less painfully—lifting Chuuya off by his hair. 

“Get up here already.”

Oh, Dazai’s voice is already rasping just from his attempts to hold it back. That combined with Chuuya outdoing Dazai in his self-made little game has him feeling as if he’s already won at sex even if he’s the only person to know.

Well. He would be, if Dazai couldn’t read his mind. Chuuya must be grinning because Dazai rolls his eyes, then rolls them over so Chuuya’s on his back, hair splayed over the pillows and hands coming to rest on Dazai’s hips. 

“Looking very smug for a shrimp who’s too short to top any other way.”

He’ll have to disabuse Dazai of that notion eventually—but for now, Chuuya is absolutely not going to do anything to interrupt Dazai planting one hand against Chuuya’s chest to brace himself as he carefully sinks down onto Chuuya’s cock for the first time. Teeth driven into his lower lip and fingertips pressed deep into Dazai’s hips, Chuuya is even holding his breath in an effort to hold back and give Dazai all the time he needs to become used to the stretch, to accustom himself to the sensation.

He’s beautiful. Long and lean, head tipped back in a way that shows the graceful line of his now bared neck with purpling bruise that Chuuya left on it, shoulders rolled back to show their breadth. Even the white lines of his bandages are just an adornment that show off how flushed he’s become. 

Chuuya’s dizzy with the feeling… or with the lack of oxygen. It’s only when Dazai’s fully settled, eyes closed, that Chuuya lets out his breath in an explosive exhale. It makes Dazai huff a laugh and that feels… 

God it’s so much, because it’s Dazai. 

Dazai tips his chin down, heavy-lidded eyes watching Chuuya, lips kiss-bitten and pink. “You going to make me do all the work, Chuuya? I thought you were the athletic one…?” 

If that isn’t a challenge, Chuuya doesn’t know what is. Chuuya clutches Dazai’s hips to keep him in place as he sits up against the pillows, the movement jostling Dazai in a way that he clearly enjoys. Not quite as much as he enjoys when Chuuya bends his knees and pushes Dazai back to recline against his legs in a way that changes the angle and puts direct pressure against Dazai’s prostate.

“Remember that you asked for this, Osamu,” Chuuya warns, even knowing that he was goaded into taking control. He’s not sure if the uninhibited moan is because of the use of Dazai’s first name or the sharp snap of Chuuya’s hips coupled with the way he’s gripped Dazai’s waist to move him. He’s pretty sure both probably contributed. The same way that he figures the blowjob and the extended fingering is probably why Dazai’s already so worked up that it’s clear he isn’t going to last long.

And that just means Chuuya has to work harder to catch up. But he’s never been afraid of hard work. Pushing Dazai’s thighs apart lets Chuuya see where they’re joined together and takes more of Dazai’s control away from him. Even in the unlikely event that Dazai wanted to take over, he couldn’t. Each upward thrust hits so hard that Dazai bounces back on him, and his fingernails claw the backs of Chuuya’s thighs as he reaches back to try and brace himself. 

It’s going to sting tomorrow every time Chuuya sits down… but considering the circumstances that seems like a fair trade. 

Dazai comes first—given the foreplay and the effortless manhandling, of course he comes first. Chuuya doesn’t even pretend to mind, enamored with watching every moment of it. He pauses, keeping Dazai pressed down against him just to feel how he tightens around the cock inside him, how his intelligent eyes seem sightless for just that moment, how his mocking mouth goes silent. For all of his yammering the rest of the time, Dazai’s quiet when he comes and somehow all the more vulnerable for it. 

Chuuya can’t fathom ruining that by tipping Dazai into overstimulation. He’s gentle as he slips out of Dazai to fist his cock, and a few moments is all it takes for him to add to the mess glazing Dazai’s skin. 

Dazai’s discontented grumble at that is endearing. So is the way his partner finally slumps down to rest against him, head pillowed on Chuuya’s chest and body curled around him. It’s a peaceful moment—both of them catching their breath, both of them basking in the glow of finally being together in a way they’d put off far too long. Chuuya curls his arm around Dazai, hand stroking up and down his back—bare skin to loose bandages and up again. Dazai’s resting with an ear over his heart, fingers tapping again with Chuuya’s pulse. They’re a mess and will have to deal with that soon, but they’re not in a hurry to. 

It’s a long and slow comedown, and yet Chuuya knows before Dazai ever opens his mouth when to brace for his partner’s next words. Somehow he still doesn’t expect them to knock the breath back out of him.

“I thought that I was about to listen to you die.” With Dazai’s face tucked down against Chuuya’s chest, he can’t see his partner’s expression—but he doesn’t need to, and in some ways he thinks it makes it easier for Dazai. “And I was afraid because it was you, not because of what that would mean for me.”

Chuuya had a thought like that, hadn’t he? That Dazai would be upset because Chuuya’s death would leave him alone. Even if Chuuya was right about outcomes, it’s a small but significant difference in perspective that he skated right past. It still would be easy then to chalk this encounter up to reaffirmation of life after a near miss. But it’s hard to do that when Dazai’s staring him in the eyes, propped back up to make sure Chuuya’s listening. 

“…Do you really think they could make me feel this way over a few man-made lines of code?”

Chuuya lets that sit with him for a moment, even though the thought makes him cringe, makes him confront a concern that he’d much rather ignore. After a moment he tugs Dazai back against his chest, pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. 

“I hear you.”

Chapter 6: from your lips the breath of my name

Notes:

Rather than sit on a chapter for eternity, I've decided to break off the front half of what I've written and offer it to you as a gift for the holidays. This is a quiet moment before the plot really takes back off, but considering current events I was inclined to write something soft as I continue to fold Chuuya fully into the ADA by establishing his relationships with them.

This fic has art, now, too! Nawy made an incredible comic of Chapter 3. Go check it out!

“A soul trembling to sit by a hearth so bright,

To exist again, it’s enough if I borrow from 

Your lips the breath of my name you murmur all night.”

- Stéphane Mallarmé, “Pour votre chère morte, son ami”

It’s funny how little anything actually has to change. 

Chuuya waking up curled together with Dazai is hardly new, though both of them being naked as they’re tangled together beneath the sheets is something he would happily accept as a new routine.

Trying to pry Dazai out of bed to make him stop hiding from his work is something he started when they were fifteen, though that didn’t used to involve Dazai pulling him back into bed with an enthusiastic and highly distracting blow job. 

Dazai never does make it back to finish out the workday.

But bullshitting to cover for Dazai isn’t new either. Leaning against the closed door to his dorm as Dazai doubtless eavesdrops from the other side, Chuuya sighs as the same old habits climb right back out of their grave. 

“Last I saw him was when he left the clinic. You probably know where he might be better than I would.” 

It’s strange to look up into Kunikida’s unforgiving, frustrated face and consider this man as Dazai’s new partner. It’s a title that has come to mean so much more than it did when Chuuya was branded with at fifteen. Now he has no idea what they're going to call each other now that partner’s off the table.

But Kunikida is going to be called on to keep Dazai from just dancing right into the line of fire, and to wrangle him when the spark of madness that lives within brilliance takes him careening in new directions. Chuuya has a vested interest in him being competent at the job.

“You’ve known him for a while.” It is a complete statement not a question, Kunikida’s authoritative voice steady and sure. Even as he looks for answers, Kunikida has a certainty in what he’s already gleaned from them, a confidence in himself and his own abilities. “Is he always like this?”

Kunikida has no idea what he’s getting into. Considering he’s gullible enough to buy every word Chuuya throws out there as he’s covering Dazai’s whereabouts, they’re going to be an interesting mess to watch.

“Nah. This is him on his best behavior.” Chuuya can practically sense Dazai’s fake indignation behind him as if they were looking right at each other. Dazai’s hidden presence doesn’t dissuade Chuuya from dissecting him, though—never let it be said Nakahara Chuuya would say something behind a person’s back that he wouldn’t say right in front of them. Anyway, he’s not wrong. Kunikida would probably have a heart attack if he met Dazai when he was at his worst. Dazai at his most suicidal, chaotic, nihilistic worst was frequently a challenge even for Chuuya.

Shoulder propped against the door, arms folded across his chest, Chuuya fixes his gaze on Kunikida and ponders what he would have liked to know when he was assigned the job of being Dazai’s better half in the field.

“Look, Dazai’s a jackass. He’s going to give you shit just to entertain himself when he gets bored, and he’s smart enough that he gets bored often . He’s going to dump any tedious tasks off on you, and he’s going to drive you fucking crazy. But he’s going to catch everything that you might miss even if he doesn’t stop to explain it.”

Kunikida’s hand moves toward the journal that Chuuya knows he keeps on him, and that opens up the possibility of this becoming a whole question and answer session with Dazai listening in. It’s bad enough that Kunikida’s already prying further. 

“But you trust him. And he called you his previous partner.” Chuuya contains his grimace at the past tense, unsure if Dazai used it or Kunikida inferred it. “Can you explain…”

“Why he does the shit that he does?” Chuuya shrugs one shoulder, huffing a laugh. “Because he’s an asshole.” Oh, Dazai’s got to be holding his breath right now not to respond audibly and to maintain the illusion that he’s nowhere to be found. Still, Chuuya won’t leave it at that. Kunikida’s role is going to be important, so he needs to understand exactly what he’s just been handed. “Underneath the dumbass act he’s every bit as intelligent as Ranpo, and geniuses are fucking weird. All of them.”

The pen is moving already, even as Kunikida frowns faintly at Chuuya’s prolific application of profanity when he’s off the clock. When Chuuya watches as Kunikida adds a question mark behind the word ‘genius’ as if there’s any doubt of it, he finds that he’s ready to wrap this impromptu interview up. Even though he knows that doubt in Dazai’s intelligence is only there because his partner sowed it, that single question mark bothers him. If people are going to ask his take on Dazai, as he’s apparently the world’s foremost expert on the man, then they should take him at face value when he answers.

“I give Dazai shit right back because that’s our thing. We’ve been getting on each other’s nerves since we were kids. How you decide to deal with him is up to you.” Puffing out a breath, Chuuya rolls his shoulders back to push himself off of the door, hands shoved into the pockets of the sweatpants he tugged back on when he heard Kunikida banging on the door next to them. “Look, he’ll turn up when he wants to, and if not I’ll find him and drag him to work in the morning.”

“I would appreciate that.” The pen clicks to punctuate the end of Kunikida’s questioning, and he straightens up in a way that inadvertently makes him loom over Chuuya. The detective probably scheduled downing a gallon of milk at every meal since he was old enough to write, he is offensively tall. Before Chuuya has time to really dwell on that, though, Kunikida drops a kernel of information that Chuuya can’t help but pounce on. “I will allow it to slide this time, and look for him at the office in the morning. Dazai was extremely distraught when he heard you approaching the plane, and I’m sure that contributed to his current disappearance.” 

Oho.

A better man would let it go at that, now that he’s gotten Dazai off the hook. A better man would feel bad enough about causing so much worry that he would respect the privacy of grief. A better man wouldn’t want to know in detail how Dazai reacted to his presumed death.

Chuuya isn’t that good a man. 

“Oh was he? Tell m-…”

Chuuya doesn’t get the opportunity to pry every embarrassing detail out of Kunikida. The door behind him opens abruptly, a hand presses firmly over his mouth, and Chuuya finds himself hauled stumbling backwards into the dorm as if he’s been snared. As if a trapdoor opened under him. 

“Hi Kunikida, bye Kunikida, see you at work tomorrow!”

The door slams shut behind them, and Chuuya’s muffled snickering becomes raucous cackling when he looks over his shoulder and sees the disheveled mess that Kunikida was greeted by. 

Dazai’s hair is an absolute wreck from roughly toweling it after his shower, he’s painted in lovebites, and he’s wearing only fresh bandages and Chuuya’s boxers. The fact that they can hear Kunikida’s flabbergasted stammering in the hall only makes it worse. Chuuya clutches the arm Dazai wound around his stomach as he doubles over with laughter. 

“I think…” Chuuya has to break to try to stifle another laugh, as Dazai tries to haul him back towards the bed. “...I think the cat’s out of the bag about us only needing one dorm.”

“And you blew your cover about you being willing to lie for me. They’re never going to buy your excuses for me now.” Dazai points out as Chuuya digs in his heels rather than let himself be tumbled back down to their rumpled sheets. Momentum thwarted, Dazai instead sulks and then drapes himself dramatically over Chuuya,  “What kind of accomplice are you.”

“Technically, it was you who blew your own cover. …And the excuses were a one-time thing, Osamu.” With Dazai pressed against his back, Chuuya can feel the sharp, silent breath he takes on his first name being used. Oh, yeah. He’s got Dazai figured out now. Like the moment he realized his partner was touch-starved, he now recognizes that no one uses Dazai’s given name. Now he just has to use the trick sparingly so that he knows it will have an impact when he does. Also, because using it in public might end up with indecent side-effects considering how Dazai’s fingers knot into his shirt, body pressing closer. No time for that. “Come on. I need my own shower. Then I’m supposed to meet up with Yosano.”

Dazai refuses to let go, not that it slows Chuuya down as he stubbornly trods to the tiny bathroom of their dorm with an equally stubborn brat trying to anchor him.

“I don’t know why you need to go buy clothes. I like the sweatpants. Just wear these. All the time.”

“You’re so fucking weird,” Chuuya huffs, using his foot to slide the bathroom door open and turning as best he can in Dazai’s arms to appease him with a chaste kiss as he steps backwards into the cramped space. “I’ll be back in a couple hours, you can survive that long. The doc says I need clothes that don’t make me look like a casualty in a slasher movie. And ratty sweats aren’t exactly going to bring in clients.”

“You have no idea what you look like in gray sweatpants, do you?” Dazai tuts, tilting down to let Chuuya kiss him, a mischievous little shit again as he leers against Chuuya’s lips. “I knew Kunikida was either terminally heterosexual or deep, deep in the closet because he wasn’t checking you out just now.”

Considering Chuuya thought Dazai was entirely straight not even eight hours ago, it’s particularly amusing to hear that coming from him. Still, he makes fake-listening noises as he turns on the shower, an act that doesn’t even really need him to completely pull away.

Chuuya expected that he’d miss the frankly obscene salary of running the jewel trade for the Yokohama underground, but he never thought he’d miss life in endless hotel rooms. The bathrooms there were definitely a perk, though. Still, they’ve both had worse. And he wasn’t expecting to get rich off of being a detective. “There isn’t room for both of us in here, mackerel, and you’ve already had your turn. Stop stalling.”

He only catches the flash of deviousness in Dazai’s eyes as he’s turning back toward his partner still standing in the door. It doesn’t give Chuuya enough time to brace himself before he’s shoved into the shower while still dressed. 

“What the fu—” Chuuya pushes aside the tangle of his abruptly drenched hair to glare ineffectively at a completely unapologetic jackass.

“Well, you were in such a hurry that I figured you wanted to stop stalling.” Dazai’s smirk should be a crime in itself, as he pointedly looks down at the sweatpants now soaked in water. “I like them even better now.”

“And you call me an idiot.” The wet cloth makes a satisfying splat as the pants are pelted at Dazai, just barely catching him as he tries to duck around the doorway. Chuuya can’t say he wasn’t expecting some petty revenge for trying to reveal Dazai’s secrets. Still, it’s a warm feeling--knowing that no matter what they are now, they really aren’t going to change that much. 

 

---

 

“Are we going to just pretend we don’t see your boyfriend stalking us?” Yosano adjusts the strap on the heel she’s trying on, tilting her ankle to see it from either side and humming to herself consideringly. “I like the red, but do I really have anything to wear with it?”

They’re in their third store of this trip, and Chuuya’s still wondering why their coworkers act as if being dragged shopping with Yosano is a sentence worse than death. Sure, he’s expected to carry all of her purchases, but it’s not like that’s any trouble for a man who can subtly balance anything she buys with his ability, even if he couldn’t just heft it on his own. Plus, she has taste. And Chuuya appreciates that.

Dazai, meanwhile, is somewhere in home goods doing an incredibly terrible job of hiding by standing with his back turned as he looks at kitchen appliances as if he cares at all about them.

“Ignore him, attention is like a drug for him. He wants us to see him, or he’d be doing a better job at hiding.” Chuuya scrunches his nose as he looks between four ties draped over his arm, turning to hold them up for Yosano’s scrutiny. “What do you think? Ranpo’s doing a blue tie and Kunikida’s got the red ribbon tie going. Last time I wore anything green, it took Dazai weeks to let the leprechaun jokes go.” 

Yosano glances over while strapping on the same shoe in silver, standing to look at both side by side. “So ditch the tie and wear the shirt open-collar. Less is more for you, I think. Put on too much and you’ll end up looking too busy because you’re…” Yosano purses her lips, eyes alight with humor “...petite.”

Chuuya chuffs in wry amusement, hanging the ties back up and popping the top button on the white shirt Yosano had already decided on for him. “You can just say ‘short.’ I’m not actually in complete denial, I just don’t want Dazai thinking he can get away with his stupid jokes. And get the red, we can find you something to wear with them.”

Yosano grins as she leaves the silver shoes on the shelf, picks up the box for the red, then links arms with Chuuya. “You just deliberately extended my browsing for clothes. So either you’re actually enjoying this or you’re really committed to avoiding Dazai. Whom, I’ve noticed, you didn’t object to me calling your boyfriend this time.” 

Chuuya is in fact enjoying himself--he had a few years as the unofficial little brother and shopping companion of a fashionable young woman, and he misses that connection more than he feels like he should be allowed to considering it was him that turned traitor. Yosano reminds him of Kouyou with her barely hidden edge of violence and her bearing and confidence. The doctor’s humor is sharper, her mannerisms less regal, but he can see Yosano and himself becoming fast friends. He hopes that they do. For two years Dazai has been Chuuya’s only companion, and that’s not natural for him. Chuuya’s a social creature and he wants that back. Dazai’s jealousy over other people now claiming his attention is something he’ll deal with over time. 

So he lets his thoughts skirt past the question of what Dazai’s official title has become in his life for the second time today, and leads Yosano towards a red silk dress that caught his eye on the way in. “I’m having fun. And you did sort of save my life yesterday, so I’m at your disposal this evening. Plus I owe you dinner. Don’t worry, Dazai will give up the act and ambush us there.”

“‘Sort of’ saved your life? For that you’re paying for detailing the car, too, just to get your blood off the seats.”

“Yeah, yeah. Have them take it out of my paycheck.”

Yosano lets go of the teasing over his relationship, and he appreciates her for that as they finish their clothes shopping--Chuuya carrying her purchases on one arm and offering Yosano the other. It really isn’t all that difficult. Chuuya just makes everything on his left arm a bit lighter so the handles on the bags don’t dig in uncomfortably. Easy. 

It’s still easy, if a bit less comfortable, when Dazai gives up trying to be subtle and attaches himself like a barnacle to Chuuya’s side, knowingly canceling out Tainted. “I’m bored. This is boring. How does someone spend three hours in one store? And without even once inviting me into the changing room? I’m offended and I’m bored.”

“Hi, Dazai.” Yosano looks around Chuuya and raises her eyebrow at his partner, clearly amused by Chuuya calling the ambush ahead of time. “You like what I did with him? I think it really emphasizes his assets, don’t you?”

“And by that you mean tucking his shirt in so we can all appreciate his ass?”

And now Chuuya’s being discussed like a hunk of meat. Rolling his eyes, he pries away from both of them to open the restaurant door. “I’m right here.”

“Yes, you are.” Dazai agrees gleefully as he tries to follow Yosano through the open door, only for Chuuya to step in front of him and let the door start to close right in Dazai’s face. The fact that it’s a nice restaurant is the only reason they don’t get into a covert shoving match. Undaunted by the challenge, Chuuya still manages to whack Dazai in the side with all of the bags when he goes to put them down under the table. 

It’s even more satisfying getting to watch Dazai slide into the booth seat beside him--the faint wince that Chuuya only notices because he’s looking for it. Dazai’s absolutely still feeling the effects of their morning in. It’s hard not to feel smug about that, even when Dazai stomps on his foot beneath the table for not hiding his satisfaction well enough.

“Well, I didn’t want to know any of what I just learned from that whole interaction.” Yosano picks up her menu with a primness that anyone could tell was faked. “Glad you two worked it out. No sex in my clinic, that’s not what the beds are for. And if you ever get caught in a storage closet, the secretaries will absolutely group chat to assign you a grade of execution depending on how you’re caught.” 

Chuuya can feel his face heating up, even as Dazai writes off all of her warnings with a “Booo! No fun.”

So maybe some things do change. That may not be a bad thing, either. 

 

---

 

“You know that shit’s going to hit the fan soon, right?”

It’s been a quiet moment until now, the two of them tangled together in the dark on fresh sheets and beneath a thick comforter. For once Dazai is laying facing Chuuya instead of curled back to front on the futon, so that Dazai can watch him. If Chuuya were less used to Dazai’s constant scrutiny he might find it strange how he can see Dazai’s overactive mind trying to memorize everything, each detail and facet that their changed relationship has brought. Chuuya suspects that it would be easy to push that need for skinship back over the edge, to tumble them back into sex.

But Chuuya likes this, too.

Dazai’s fitting their palms together between them, fingers pressed to fingers as if to test the difference in size between their hands, or to cement in his mind what Chuuya’s gloves always hide—the nick of scars, the faint bump of a fracture never properly set. When they were fifteen and Dazai did this the first time, Chuuya noticed that Dazai’s clever fingers were more delicate than his own, his partner’s hand just a bit smaller. Chuuya tilts his fingertips down over Dazai’s as if to prove that they still are, which only ends up with their fingers laced together.

He knows memory will color that gesture for Dazai, too. He wonders, knowing now how touch-starved Dazai had been, how long his partner clung to the memory of that sensation. If it set off a chain reaction that eventually ended up with them, here.

Dazai squeezes down to prompt Chuuya into answering his question, and Chuuya sighs and does--even though he considers it obvious.

“Shit always hits the fan. And we deal with it when it does.”  

Chapter 7: A desperate love and a pretty crime

Notes:

Immediately after my declaration that I was going to post this darn chapter, AO3 went down for the entire day. I take no responsibility.

Please take this chapter. Take it from me. I have sat on it for months. The only reason I even feel better about posting it now is the amazing beta reading of the phenomenal Fin who told me that I was okay to end it where I did and gave some amazing feedback to make it flow better.

Please enjoy, and I apologize for the debilitating anxiety and random headlong dive into another fandom. Soukoku family, I will never fully abandon you. (Just kick me in the shin or something if I seem to).

“And from my window I see new specters rolling through 
the thick eternal smoke-- 
our woodland shade, our summer night!-- 
new Eumenides in front of my cottage 
which is my country and all my heart 
since everything here resembles it,-- 
Death without tears, 
our diligent daughter and servant, 
a desperate Love, and a pretty 
Crime howling in the mud in the street.”

- Arthur Rimbaud, “Illuminations XV: Ville”

It’s first thing in the morning when Chuuya slips out of his shared room at the dorms, and Kunikida asks him to spar.

Not in so many words. The phrasing is all business—"field-readiness drills," "rotational conditioning," something about maintaining Fukuzawa's form. But the way he says it—tight-lipped, sleeves already rolled to the elbow—lands more like an invitation than a directive. Buttoned up, wrinkle-free Kunikida is offering to get rumpled up, and Chuuya would be lying if he claimed he didn’t want to get the measure of Dazai’s new partner even if it means revealing himself enough to be weighed and judged in the same manner.

Chuuya shrugs, curious enough to accept. He’s not looking to prove anything. But he wouldn’t mind being seen. They’re not new anymore, he’s been accepted into the fold following his successful entrance exam, but if he’s going to be trusting his life and Dazai’s life to these people for the foreseeable future, he wants to know who’s got their back. 

So they meet over the mats in a room that smells faintly of wood polish and effort. Fukuzawa’s there, stately, sword still sheathed at his hip. Kunikida nods once in greeting and is already loosening his tie.

Kunikida bows stiffly before stepping onto the mat. Chuuya just steps forward, hands tucked into the pockets, informal rather than outright rude. He never learned this shit in a dojo. If Fukuzawa minds the lack of decorum, he doesn’t say anything about it as he stands aside with his hands tucked up his sleeves.

The difference in their styles is immediate. Kunikida stays grounded, body low, always mindful of leverage. Chuuya moves like air, flowing, legs sharp and fast. In a real fight, he never needs to worry about power behind his movements. And even against Dazai, who nullifies his ability, he still has brute strength and inhuman speed to back his attacks. 

The first exchanges are pure testing. Chuuya doesn’t bother to reach for gravity, and Kunikida takes the room to test Chuuya’s style. Then Kunikida grabs for control—balance, direction, execution—and Chuuya lets him. Until he doesn’t.

Kunikida gets a grip on him once, nearly pins him, and Chuuya slips out of his grasp with a grin. 

He misses a good fight. It’s been a couple of years. It’s not like he can get the lazy bastard still sleeping in his bed to throw down with him. But there’s something honest about hand-to-hand with someone who knows what they’re doing. Even if they’re not exactly an ideal match-up.

Kunikida’s training is based on the principles of using an attacker’s momentum against them and throwing off their center of gravity.

But Chuuya is inherently a being of both gravity and momentum. Honed by those forces, rooted in them. And then there’s the difference in their approach.

Kunikida fights like a man with a manual. Every motion is deliberate, practiced, and perfectly measured. His technique is sharp, but he telegraphs his actions like he’s taking a moment for confirmation that it’s the “right” move.

Chuuya doesn’t hesitate. At no point in his life could he afford to. He fights like someone who learned through necessity, not curriculum. Not art. His form’s undeniably messier, but it lands. He’s harder to predict, because he doesn't think about where the hit goes until it connects. He just sees an opening and moves.

Kunikida hits the mat for the second time in as many minutes.

Fukuzawa, off to the side with arms folded, watches without stepping in. He's not there to correct them. Not yet. He’s observing, and Chuuya knows that he’s learning a great deal more about Chuuya from watching him fight than he did from any fabricated primer Taneda might have handed him.

“Brute technique, but adaptive.”

Well, if that isn’t just the truth. Chuuya can’t even take Fukuzawa’s interjection as an insult—he’s not wrong. 

They go again. And again.

Kunikida’s good—really good. Chuuya can tell. He’s got reach and discipline and stamina. But he’s stiff when the fight goes off-script, too married to his form to react on instinct. But he’s also fair. There’s a bit of frustration to him when Chuuya slips his attempts at a pin, but no anger. He’s there to learn, not to prove anything. Chuuya can respect that.

When Kunikida gets under his guard and starts a lock, Chuuya drops his center of gravity and kicks his legs out backward, taking them both to the mat—but flipping the hold on the way down. It’s not elegant, but it works.

By the time they break, both are breathing hard. Kunikida straightens his glasses without comment. There’s sweat staining the collar of his undershirt. A line between his brows that wasn’t there before.

“You have a good eye,” Kunikida says finally, but not as an accusation.

“I’ve got practice,” Chuuya replies, toweling off. “You’ve got good form. But you learned to fight from an instructor who worked with you.” Chuuya tips his head respectfully at Fukuzawa. “I learned because it was either that or die.”

Kunikida takes that in stride, and nods once. He accepts it for what it is: not gloating, just fact. 

“You learned it through practical application. That requires discipline, too.” 

Maybe.

But Kunikida sounds like the work done outside the lines still counts to him. 

Chuuya wasn’t expecting that. Kunikida treats rulebooks like scripture, to the point of scribbling them into his journal at every opportunity. But he’s solid. So maybe when Dazai gets himself into something messy–and he always does–Kunikida can bend without breaking when it truly matters.

Off to the side, Fukuzawa watches them without comment, arms still folded. He’s not just observing skill, and he didn’t pair them up for harmony. He’s measuring the way their styles clash, and how that friction might sharpen them both one sparring match at a time. Chuuya knows a little bit about what that’s like already. After all, it’s why Mori paired him and Dazai together–but then, Chuuya was in Kunikida’s place. 

Fukuzawa steps forward. “You two pair well. Keep at it.”

From Fukuzawa, it’s not a compliment, exactly. But it’s not not one, either. But the truth is, they pair like shit—two completely different styles, two completely different methods, but Chuuya can see that’s the point. 

The Agency president wants Chuuya to learn discipline, and Kunikida to adapt when things go off the rails.

Chuuya can work with that. 

They walk upstairs together, and while Dazai doesn't say anything about it, he can see his partner’s eyes narrow, taking them both in. If he gets the wrong idea about them showing up together at the start of the meeting sweaty and rumpled, that’s on him and Chuuya will give him shit about his own jealousy. 

Unfortunately, though, he just expects that they’ll never get another opportunity to spar without a lecherous audience, unless Fukuzawa himself makes Dazai leave.

 

---

 

Being on the other side of a crime scene is actually interesting, an intellectual exercise that Chuuya didn’t expect to get so invested in. Sure most detectives probably don’t wander around judging criminals for their sloppy work from the perspective of a former crime lord, but at least he’s not the only one in this joint who does. 

It’s a shakedown for protection money gone wrong. The cash register is tipped over and the victim is lying near a fallen baseball bat that he probably grabbed for when they applied pressure on him for not having the full amount.

It takes one glance across a table over an array of grainy crime scene photographs for he and Dazai to come to agreement that they’d have cleaned this mess up instead of leaving it for detectives to pour over. 

Some people just have no professional standards. 

“Boring!” Ranpo declares from beside Chuuya, feet kicked up on the table and hat covering his face, not even bothering to look at the file. 

“Someone is dead.” Kunikida’s respect for Ranpo is the only reason he’s not blowing up at him the way he would anyone else. “Even if we can tell why he died, we’ve been brought in by the police to bring his killer to justice.”

“And we could do that by sending them an email,” Yosano points out with a yawn. Dazai’s now bored enough with the Monday meeting that he’s loudly pretending to sleep facedown on the table, which leaves Kunikida further incensed by not finding any support from the rest of the team.  

Taking on a case that the cops can put together the pieces on their own is a waste of resources.

They've got a reputation because of Ranpo’s ten years of solving any crime he takes an interest in, but their caseload otherwise is still somewhat limited by sparse staffing. They’re a tiny organization, especially compared to the forces that Chuuya and Dazai once led. As much as an idealist like Kunikida may hate to admit it, their work needs to be prioritized by where they’ll do the most good rather than helping the authorities with every violent crime they encounter. 

Of the nine people in the office, only Chuuya, Ranpo, Dazai, Kunikida, and Yosano are active in the field and only Ranpo, Chuuya, and Dazai are openly available around the clock. Ranpo only stirs from his desk when something is out of the ordinary about a case, so evenings for Dazai and Chuuya are filled by taking in the trivial cases, bodyguard duties, and stakeouts.

Outside of work hours, most of them have obligations outside of the Agency; Yosano runs a private clinic to keep her medical license current, Kunikida works as an algebra teacher at a cram school to keep his teaching certificate while completing online courses to finish his degree, and the President sticks to creating connections for them and maintaining their ties to the government and military. 

Even a few months into this new life, Chuuya tries not to rankle at being indirectly a government asset. But they’re not beholden to the government. And that means they have the discretion on what to assist with. All that to say, Ranpo declaring something boring and making them focus their efforts on other cases isn’t new. He’s callous and probably disrespectful of the dead, but he’s not wrong. 

Plus, Chuuya secretly finds his partner’s attitude entertaining, especially when it means that he usually gets put on the most interesting mysteries. A fact that he now gets to lord over Dazai when he comes home whining about a case that wastes his genius, or about playing bodyguard to someone tedious. 

Before Kunikida can reach for the next potential case, Ranpo points at the door into their office as Haruno slips into the room, a notepad clutched to her chest. 

“I want that one!”

A more violent crime. A fresh crime scene, so urgent that she came to them before even creating a folder. There’s nothing mysterious about how Ranpo knew which case was more interesting, but it’s still remarkable that he knew to call dibs even before the door was fully opened.

Chuuya slides the rest of the folders across the table to Dazai, smirking slightly as Dazai sulks at him. “Well, that’s us out then.”

It’ll take Dazai all of an hour to start blowing up Chuuya’s phone with texts or trying to dodge Kunikida to give himself the rest of the day off, so pouting doesn’t get him an ounce of sympathy.  

Pushing away from where he was half-perched on the table, Chuuya grabs his jacket and shrugs it on as Ranpo unfolds himself from his chair and doffs his cap dramatically. Holding the door for Ranpo and taking the notes from Haruno, Chuuya winks at Dazai as he ambles out in Ranpo’s wake. 

 

---

 

Arterial blood paints a macabre scene, splashed across concrete walls and dripping from rafters. It soaks through the green felt of a poker table, a spreading stain on the last otherwise undamaged bit of the room. Perched on the stairs down into the basement, Chuuya watches the police mill around the scene in rustling plastic capes to keep their uniforms clean. Ranpo stands among them with an umbrella that Chuuya kept on him because of the weather forecast, not because he anticipated following his partner into a literal bloodbath. 

The place smells like an abattoir, and the tarps covering the remains spread across the room make it pretty clear that the victims are in literal pieces. The police obviously recognized one of the victims, and though there’s no particular grief involved, there is a level of professional frustration. Dismemberment in the basement of a snitch, a poker game interrupted, and all of the players killed because of the turncoat in their midst. The story it’s telling is almost as straightforward as the shakedown they rejected this morning, but there’s more to this case.

Sharp green eyes find Chuuya’s across the room, and framed as they are by Ranpo’s glasses that can only mean that Chuuya himself just became a clue. Great. He was kind of hoping it wasn’t what it looked like, because a few years back it didn’t look this way. Wishful thinking. 

Rocking himself up to his feet, Chuuya shoves his hands into his pockets and strolls through the crime scene and toward his partner.

The slow drip of blood never touches Chuuya, repelled away the moment it encounters the faint glow of Tainted. The cops are gathered around Ranpo who’s making a big production out of having an ability, so Chuuya figures that seeing a real ability shouldn’t be too alarming. Using Tainted this way is a vanity considering Chuuya’s past, but he doesn’t like scrubbing blood out of his clothes and it never lifts the same from light colors. 

As soon as they’re side-by-side Chuuya takes ahold of the umbrella over his partner before Ranpo does something like gesture too emphatically without paying attention. The cops are looking at him, Ranpo’s looking at him, and he doesn’t want to be here. But Chuuya’s never shied away from duty before, however unpleasant he finds it.

“Like he probably just told you, this is a Mafia hit. You left your informant too exposed.” 

“It doesn’t match the M.O. of a mafia hit…”

Here, Ranpo heaves the irritated sigh of someone who just explained this. “Because this was done by an Ability. Obviously. The Port Mafia aren’t all just goons with guns and knives.” The ‘idiots’ goes unstated there, but is thick in Ranpo’s voice. So he either already insulted them, or he’s learning manners. Probably the first one. Definitely the first one. “The blood hasn’t coagulated. The dismemberments happened all at once, and within the last thirty minutes.” 

And here Ranpo turns a look on him again, too knowing and too expectant. Well, Chuuya did promise that his previous life wouldn’t supersede his new one—it’s why Ranpo has never revealed his past. 

Still, he hates this. 

Chuuya’s never been a snitch. He’d rather take the fall for something he didn’t do than turn on someone else. But this is the reality he signed up for, and now he has to make a choice between his old life and his new one. Chuuya adjusts his hat down, taking a moment to steel himself, and decides.

“Skinny kid. Pale. Late teens. Dark eyes, black hair with white tips. White frilled collar, black calf-length coat. If you see him, do not approach him or he’ll make this seem tame. This probably took him all of thirty seconds, and that’s including telling your rat why he was going to die.” Chuuya may have to look up at the officers around them, but he takes the time to meet their eyes one after the other to really emphasize this fact. “He’s out of your league. Shooting at him won’t do crap. If you see him, you need to call us and then get out of the way.”

There’s indignation at that, as if their badge and their conviction in the rule of law will protect them against an Ability user with an offensive power. It won’t. Chuuya could take them all down with a single thought and leave just as much of a mess, or contain the blood and leave the entire place spotless. Looking at them from that perspective is a little sobering. Past the scarlet haze of his Ability, blood drips down in his field of vision, bending around him and landing with viscous little plaps into a puddle on the floor that used to be a human being. 

That could just as easily be these men.

Chuuya’s never cared much about the law. If there’s anything that Chuuya learned as a professional criminal, it’s that law means little at all to people who live on the outskirts of that society. Basically, it’s a smokescreen. The illusion is broken the second you’re on the other side of it. Not a single person in the Port Mafia or any other criminal organization sees the police as having any power over them.

Once you take away the mythologizing of the law and the uniform and the badge, they have no real power. They’re just human. And there are plenty who ascribe little meaning to a human life, whether they have a badge or not.

Chuuya doesn’t give a shit about law, but he cared about minimizing casualties even as a mafioso. But Dazai had slipped into that darkness. And even before he and Dazai abandoned the kid to leave the Port Mafia, Akutagawa wouldn’t have hesitated to cut these police officers down. 

Chuuya doesn’t want to hunt Akutagawa and he sure as hell knows ‘arresting’ won’t happen, because if these cops decide to ignore their warnings they’ll be the next blood bath he has to wade through. If Akutagawa is going around having Rashoumon splatter-painting with viscera, then he or Dazai need to be the ones on-scene to figure out how to handle that.

Chuuya’s not turning on Akutagawa. He’s setting the stage for himself and Dazai to figure out how to deal with him when the time comes. 

He’s quiet as Ranpo takes the conversation back over, as the crime scene team finishes their photos and carts the remains away. He stands scanning the room as he takes in the gouges in the concrete wall. There was rage in this. Akutagawa has always been merciless, but this wasn’t a clean hit. He’s gotten sloppy. 

Ranpo’s already figured out why, but he’s not already emphasizing what that means in his smug self-aggrandizing way, so he knows that Chuuya’s landing on the right answer independently.

Akutagawa’s mental state was not improved by the abandonment of his Executives. The Hellhound of the Port Mafia has gone rabid—but he was unleashed here anyway. 

“This is about you and Dazai.” Ranpo’s at his elbow and they’re on their way back out of the building, Chuuya so deep in his own thoughts that it seems as if no time has passed at all. Ranpo’s practically pushing him out of the scene of the crime, and Chuuya absently takes the bloodied umbrella from him and hands it off to a crime scene officer before his partner can walk out onto the street with it still dripping blood. 

Given his immature persona the rest of the time, when Ranpo becomes serious the dissonance is striking. 

“They wanted this to be noticed.” 

They leave the iron tang of blood behind for a world that smells like ozone. Police cars have cordoned off the area in front of the building, but civilians are watching from a little ways down and across the street. The wind is starting to pick up and the air seems to sizzle with the kind of energy that makes your hair stand up; the threat of a rising storm. 

Mori wanted the cops to call in specialists. Which means that Mori knows that they’re the specialists now. But this—the bloody crime scene, the sensationalism of the crime, the heavy police presence and thus increased government scrutiny—this was bait intended to specifically draw out the best of their ragtag little team. Something this sensational, Mori would have known the Agency would demonstrate to their allies that they were taking it seriously.

So either they were going for Dazai, or they know about Chuuya’s partnership with Ranpo. And either way, Mori wouldn’t send Akutagawa after either of them as his opening salvo. He was brought in for just the slaughter. 

This is a bait and switch.

Chuuya’s phone is buzzing in his pocket, playing the stupid ringtone that Dazai programmed in for himself. He doesn’t have time for that. He barely has time to dig his feet into the earth and brace for impact, voice low.

“Fall back. Now.”

To Ranpo’s credit, he doesn’t try to argue. He put it together for himself and he’s already moving back toward the building. He spreads his arms and raises his voice, chivvying the cops on the stairs back inside and out of the way. They’re all sitting ducks. But even the police are not in quite as much danger as a detective who calls himself Chuuya’s partner and anchors him to the light. 

Chuuya’s eye catches on the gaping yaw of a blind alleyway across the street, perfectly situated to watch the comings and goings from the crime scene. Perfect for stalking prey. 

Too perfect. Too obvious.

The sidewalk beneath Chuuya cracks as he anchors himself to the earth, a radiating cobweb of fissures and crevices that send up chips of concrete and sparks as metal grates across it at an impossible speed. The police car comes flying at Chuuya from the opposite direction at a velocity that would be unnatural even if it were driven into him, rather than careening in his direction under another power entirely. 

Chuuya doesn’t move, doesn’t dodge. Feet planted and hands in his pockets, he closes his eyes as the car sheers in half around him, split by the density of his ability and the unmoving wedge of his body. He can’t allow the two halves of the car to split and smash through the building full of cops beside him and into the scattering of screaming pedestrians to the other side, so he flings them to the sides and lets them crash to the earth, the walled area around the building now in ruins. 

Even before the pale figure strolls out to face him from the other side of the destroyed car and pulverized wall, he knows when they’ve locked eyes. He can feel it.

“Hello, Chuuya.”

His attacker steps over the rubble as regally as if he’s descending from marble stairs, tipping his head amiably.

“Hello, Paul.”