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1.
Nakahara Chuuya is drunk.
Intel collected over the span of three months does note that the Port Mafia Executive has a glaring weakness regarding alcoholic drinks, so it’s not that surprising. What’s surprising is that the target allows himself to get wasted, alone, at a bar outside of the Port Mafia’s direct control. It reeks of arrogant carelessness – something that he and his group will undoubtedly take advantage of.
He purposely bumps into the man reeking of fancy perfume and reddened cheeks, the heavy overcoat slipping off from the back of a barstool. He watches if his target notices, but he doesn’t even change his position, slumped over the counter rather messily. The bartender must be more lenient than most or Nakahara Chuuya has a really deep wallet, because they just allow the man to snore and mumble rather noisily, an empty glass of red wine near his forehead.
With a sleight-of-hand that probably isn’t necessary, given the bar’s dim lighting and the target’s obliviousness, he picks up the fallen coat, takes out the target’s wallet and two phones, and pockets his loot stealthily. It’s over embarrassingly quickly. He’s dealt with much better secured targets in his hometown in Nara – given the number of zeroes in the paycheck for this job, he expected a much more difficult assignment. Not that he’s complaining – it seems that people in bigger cities do like to throw their money around and who is he to stop them from fattening up his own wallet?
He makes his way out of the bar, tucks himself inside the mouth of a vacant alleyway a street over. Under the guidance of a flickering streetlight, he goes through the wallet’s contents. Bright-red leather, Givenchy engraved in gold. There’s a driver’s license, as well as a security card ID placing him as a Vice-President for Mori Corporation. There are four credit cards, including one black AMEX. There are ten creaseless 10,000-yen bills. There’s a receipt tucked in there, for a purchase made earlier today for a Virtual Reality game console and a couple of games; behind the receipt is a messy scrawl of ‘thank you’, in English, along with 21:20. He takes note of a possible meeting time, wondering what a Port Mafia Executive is supposed to do with such a mundane (if rather expensive) entertainment.
He looks at the only picture on the wallet, the only other sign that the mafioso he stole this from is someone other than a walking pile of money. It’s of two people – one of them is Nakahara Chuuya. It looks recent, because Nakahara Chuuya’s face and hair looks about the same as those from the recent intel. The target’s laughing, something that they’ve never managed to capture during their surveillance. The target’s presumably laughing at the person beside him on the picture, with splotches of paint on his face and neck. There are bandages peeking out from the second person’s shirt collar. They look like they’ve just finished battling it out in a laser tag competition, but the backdrop is a wall with an unfinished paintjob, so the possibility that the two are in the middle of painting the wall is also very valid.
With no other information to be gained from the wallet, he moves on the satellite phone. There’s an engraved ‘Mori Corporation’ logo on the back case. He tries pressing a button and is met with a prompt for a fingerprint identification. He pockets the phone back – he’ll let his colleagues do the cracking part.
He moves on to the second smartphone. He swipes at the screen and is greeted by the standard lock screen. The lock screen has Nakahara Chuuya’s sleeping face on it, catching the photographer’s arm covered in bandages at the edge of the photo. There’s a notification for two unread messages. He clicks on them, but the phone won’t allow him to read the full messages until he enters the lock code. All he can see is that both messages are from someone registered as ‘Mackerel’. He taps on it again, and he sees ‘sorry I was late’, just before the message notification disappears in favor of an incoming call.
Startled, he accidentally hits the ‘accept’ button.
He keeps his breathing shallow and silent. The caller also seems to be very quiet, until—
“Hi~ the password is ‘ilovedazai’.”
—?!!
He turns around as soon as he hears a footstep approaching, but it seems to be too late, because he feels something sharp stab his throat.
The last thing he sees is the man accompanying Nakahara Chuuya on his wallet photo, blotches of blood over the displeased frown on his face.
2.
Hirotsu’s day ends late and starts early. It’s a rigorous schedule but he’s thankful for it – he’s able to practice self-restraint and discipline because it leaves no time for idle thoughts. Long waking hours mean that he’s awake for a lot of things happening around him. It means that as he’s steeping his morning tea, he’s the first one to see a report about a member of a fledgling organization, Shadows, stabbed in the throat and left to bleed to death in a back alley.
He hums as he confirms in Yokohama’s street map that said back alley is just one street away from Chuuya-kun’s favorite non-Port Mafia bar. Chuuya-kun is too high-profile to be wasted on dealing with the likes of Shadows – they’re just an upstart gang that focuses their recruitment on small-time gangsters from provinces away from Yokohama and Kanagawa.
…Well. Given Chuuya-kun’s propensity for getting distracted by the possibility of drowning his sorrows whenever he hits a snag in his relationship, it’s entirely possible that he’s just in that area due to chance.
Still, it’d be remiss of him if he doesn’t even try to make a courtesy call to check on Chuuya-kun.
Hirotsu pours his tea, then dials Chuuya-kun’s registered Port Mafia number from his office. He’s well aware that Chuuya-kun has a different personal number, but this call is official Port Mafia business.
Two rings, and then: “Good morning, Hirotsu-san~~~♫”
…Ah.
Hirotsu smiles. “I trust Chuuya-kun is safe?”
“As safe as the hatrack can be with someone like me~♪” comes the reply, terribly familiar if not for the odd way that the speaker seems to be hushing himself.
Hirotsu’s smile grows wider. It’s always great news to hear that Chuuya-kun is quite safe.
“Then. I won’t disturb you two,” he says in the end, because he may be quite involved in overseeing all of their lives, but he’s not that interested in detecting other things in a phone call, like the fact that Dazai-kun is probably watching Chuuya-kun sleep off his drunkenness at the moment.
The phone call ends and Hirotsu drinks his tea.
3.
It’s Dazai-san’s day-off.
Atsushi fiddles with his fingerless gloves as he watches Kunikida-san alternate between pacing around Dazai-san’s desk and trying to make sense of all the papers in it.
“That idiot… I told him to keep a standard filing method…”
Earlier, Atsushi had volunteered to call Dazai-san, because they’re supposed to meet with a Port Mafia liaison for some information exchange about a looming threat in Yokohama. It’s been months since the fiasco with the government and with Dostoevsky and while Port Mafia isn’t exactly what one could call an ally… it’s been a rather peaceful cooperative ceasefire.
(For the record, Dazai-san didn’t pick up; they only got a sing-song recording asking them to not leave a voicemail because Dazai-san will never bother checking anyway.)
As with all things related to the Port Mafia, Dazai-san’s the one who brokered the meeting, therefore making him the one with the contact information regarding their liaison.
Atsushi had apologized profusely for not getting that information from Dazai-san yesterday before his mentor had left with an overenthusiastic twirl and a skip in his step, but Kunikida-san had told him that it was his own fault for trusting Dazai-san to be responsible with his work.
So here they are, trying to find the Port Mafia liaison’s contact information underneath the piles of bandages, scribbled-on paperwork, snack wrappers and whole lot of garbage.
Atsushi tries calling Dazai-san again, he gets the voicemail again. It can’t be helped – Dazai-san seemed really excited about getting the next few days off, something about getting to live in a mansion? Atsushi usually finds it easy to keep up with hearing even the barest mumbles, but not with the way Dazai-san was rapid-firing his excited words yesterday…
Keeping an eye on the pacing Kunikida-san, Atsushi tries calling Akutagawa instead.
Two rings, then: “What, jinko.”
—!!!
Oh!
That’s quick!
“Oh! Hi!”
“…”
“Um, I was just wondering…” Atsushi wonders if it’s too forward to say Akutagawa’s name over the phone. Everyone in the Agency looks busy in their own tasks, but the somehow, the thought of them knowing that he has Akutagawa’s number makes his stomach feel funny, like he’s eaten a mountain of chocolate. “…are you the contact for today’s meeting with the Port Mafia?”
A pause, then Akutagawa coughs.
“That should be Chuuya-san.” Akutagawa coughs again. “Isn’t Dazai-san handling it?”
Atsushi frowns. “But Dazai-san is on vacation!”
Two coughs. Akutagawa’s voice is hoarse. “Dazai-san is handling it. Don’t be a nosy fool.”
“But—!”
“Suit yourself, jinko,” Akutagawa says, before coughing out until there’s only a dial tone in Atsushi’s ears.
Still frowning, Atsushi approaches Kunikida-san. “Um, Kunikida-san… our contact for today is Chuuya-san.”
“Chuuya… the gravity user Nakahara Chuuya?”
“Yes!” Atsushi nods eagerly, glad that Kunikida-san’s too busy with complaining about Dazai-san’s work ethics (or the lack thereof) to even interrogate him about his methods for getting that information. “We can contact him directly!”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
Atsushi sweats, falters. He could have asked Akutagawa for the contact information, but… “We can try the phone book?”
It’s nothing short of a minor miracle that they find Chuuya-san’s information in the public phone book. Kunikida-san is skeptical that the number will lead to the Port Mafia Executive, because if you’re mafia, why place your contact information in the public phone book?! Atsushi takes up the task of dialing the number. There’s more than one ‘Nakahara’ in Yokohama, but only one ‘Nakahara Chuuya’, and Atsushi’s more than thankful for that, because it means that there’s only one possibility of failure.
The line rings and rings, Kunikida-san pacing in the background while muttering about the area code being in one of the more expensive residential wards.
It rings for ten times, before the phone is picked up.
“Hi~ This is Chuuya’s favorite person in the entire world~ If you’d like to reach the hatrack… it should be fairly easy given that he’s so short!”
Atsushi blinks. The voice is terribly familiar.
There’s a muffled sound of ‘Dazai, you idiot, stop fucking around, get back here!’ and Atsushi blinks rapidly.
“…Uh…”
“Ah, is it Atsushi-kun?”
“I’m… pretty sure I dialed Chuuya-san’s number?”
On the other end, Dazai-san squeals a ‘It’s our first phone call to our landline!’, which is countered with a ‘Our landline?!!!’.
Back to Atsushi, Dazai-san says: “Ah, is this about the information exchange? Don’t worry about it, Atsushi-kun, I’ve got it covered! Tell Kuni~kida~kun that if he keeps on pacing like that, it would ruin the floor! I’ll send the details to Akutagawa-kun and you can meet him instead, Atsushi-kun! You’re welcome!”
Atsushi blinks at the phone receiver as he gets a dial tone after that rapid-fire set of instructions.
On one hand, he can wonder and worry about the fact that Dazai-san’s idea of a vacation is staying in the home (mansion?) of a Port Mafia Executive. On another hand, Dazai-san did tell him that he can meet with Akutagawa… It’s not rocket science to decide which one deserves to be his top priority.
4.
At 10PM earlier, Shadows struck again.
It’s his third straight night of not being able to get back home, energy drinks piling up around his desk. Ango would prefer not to work with the Port Mafia as much as possible, despite the tripartite alliance, but given that the Shadows struck against one of the Port Mafia’s controlled harbors…
Ango pulls up the file on A5158 and retrieves his contact information, transfers it to his phone. He listens to the phone ring – it’s late enough that the Port Mafia activity should be in full swing. Ango doesn’t think that the Port Mafia had assigned one of their Executives to handling Shadows, since the upstart organization didn’t seem to be a threat. But any sort of breakthrough is welcome and it’s possible that after this incident, the Port Mafia will assign A5158 to wipe out Shadows from the map as retribution for striking in their territory.
It rings and rings until he gets the message that the person he’s calling isn’t available.
Ango dials it again – if it doesn’t connect after the second try, he’ll pursue other avenues of information.
He hears a click, then: “Why are you calling Chuuya?”
Ango blinks. “Why are you the one answering his phone?”
“Chuuya is busy cooking a lovely dinner,” Dazai answers rather petulantly. “And you’re not about to ruin our date night.”
Ango files that information away in his mind. “I just want to confirm if—”
Ango’s phone pings, an email notification.
“—there, I’ve sent you the information you need, I’m blocking your number!”
Dial tone.
Ango, bemused, can only click on the email and its attachments with spreadsheets of information that precisely maps out the past and future activities of Shadows.
…Well.
Ango sighs and pushes the interesting tidbit about Dazai’s relationship with A5158 at the back of his mind. He has a lot of work to do if he wants to get some sleep tomorrow.
5.
This is it, Tachihara. You can do it, Tachihara. This is your chance, Tachihara.
He repeats those words inside his head as he punches in the numbers for Chuuya-san’s contact information. Chuuya-san’s on vacation because he’s moving to a new place – he’s apparently renovating an old mansion? – and this is Tachihara’s chance to offer help and maybe, possibly, score some alone time with his idol.
His fellow Black Lizard squad leaders are there in their shared office, offering judging looks and no support whatsoever. Hirotsu-san cryptically told him earlier that he’s just setting himself up for disappointment, while typical Gin didn’t say anything. Kajii’s there too, for some reason; the noisy deranged scientist tried to drag Akutagawa-san into office earlier, but lemon bombs are no use against Rashomon. Higuchi has a phone in her hand, apparently ready to video-record Tachihara’s phone call.
He tries to ignore them as he keys in the last of Chuuya-san’s phone number. It’s not like he doesn’t think Chuuya-san can’t just lift all of his boxes and belongings using his gravity. It’s not like he thinks Chuuya-san doesn’t have money to pay for a discreet moving service to handle most of the workload. He’s just… well, okay, he’s just practically foaming at the mouth at the idea of helping Chuuya-san, of seeing Chuuya-san in an environment other than the office, of possibly seeing him with a ponytail and beads of sweat on his brow, of possibly being thanked for his help with a smile and homemade lunch and maybe a kiss…
“Gross, Tachihara,” is what he hears from the majority of the people in the room and Gin throws a knife wrapped in a handkerchief at his direction. He catches the knife and uses the handkerchief to dab at his nosebleed.
This is it, Tachihara. You can do it, Tachihara. This is your chance, Tachihara.
Tachihara finally presses the ‘call’ button.
And waits as the phone rings.
And rings.
And rings.
…Huh.
Chuuya-san’s fairly responsible in answering his phone – the only exception being is when he’s busy drinking, which shouldn’t be an issue, because it’s eleven in the morning and even Chuuya-san doesn’t like alcohol that much, does he? Plus, Chuuya-san never sleeps in. It’s one of the main pillars of truth in the Port Mafia – Chuuya-san is never late because he never sleeps in.
So Tachihara tries again.
The phone rings.
And rings.
And clicks.
Oh!
Tachihara chokes on his breath and doesn’t manage to stutter out a greeting immediately.
…it’s probably for the best, given what happens next.
Even though Tachihara’s phone is on speaker (supposedly so the people loitering around in his office will mockingly help him in case Chuuya-san says something that robs him of his train of thought), the sounds coming in from the other end feels uncomfortably clear.
There’s a soft moan – and Tachihara sort of hates himself because he knows it belongs to Chuuya-san immediately. It’s followed by rustling sounds, of smooth cloth sliding against skin, then faint suction sounds of wetness against skin. They’re kissing. Chuuya-san’s in bed, surrounded by blankets, and he’s being kissed to wakefulness. Tachihara sort of hates himself because he’s able to piece that together quickly.
“What time is it?” Chuuya-san asks from the other end of the phone call. Tachihara feels a part of him die at how soft and fond Chuuya-san sounds.
There’s an answer to his question, but it’s muffled. It’s presumably pressed against Chuuya-san’s skin and Chuuya-san is presumably okay with that, because the kissing sounds resume.
Until they stop, two minutes later, a wet smack punctuating their separation.
There’s an honest-to-goodness needy whine coming from Chuuya-san and Tachihara dies on the spot.
“Come back here, Osamu,” Chuuya-san pleads and Tachihara slams the ‘end call’ button so hard his phone cracks. Well, it actually doesn’t, because he’s not like Chuuya-san who’s incredibly gifted when it comes to strength, but Tachihara wishes that his phone screen cracked instead of his heart.
He doesn’t cry, definitely not in front of his shitty friends. But he slumps forward on his desk, not at all consoled by Higuchi patting him on the back, because she’s definitely going to blackmail him because of this.
“…did Chuuya-san entertain my flirting because I was wearing a bandage on my nose?”
Because they’re not that shitty as friends, nobody tells him that Chuuya-san probably doesn’t even know that he’s flirting to begin with.
+1.
“Come back here, Osamu,” Chuuya pitches his voice in the perfect needy whine and watches Dazai crumble like a sack of potatoes in front of him, ears tinged pink. “Wow, I didn’t think you’d be that weak to it.”
“Ah, but Chuuya is a liar,” Dazai accuses him with a smile on his face, burying said face against Chuuya’s bare thigh. “You definitely know that I’m weak to you.”
Chuuya hums in response as he plays with Dazai’s hair, not denying the fact that he knows his power over the shitty bastard. “Then maybe you should think twice about trying to traumatize my coworkers.”
“…Ah. Chuuya knew?”
Chuuya shrugs, because he’s mostly aware about Dazai’s stupid plans – he just finds it too troublesome to deal with them, most of the time.
“Well, I know you’ve been itching to tattoo your name on my forehead…”
They’ve been in a relationship for a couple of months now – well, some would argue for years already – and he knows that Dazai’s is a possessive bastard. Something of this level – answering his phone calls and letting whoever’s calling know that Chuuya’s spoken for – is to be expected.
“Mm, it’d vastly improve your beautiful face.”
“Shut the fuck up and kiss me,” Chuuya demands, because shitty ideas deserve to be shot down immediately.
Dazai smiles and crawls upwards, answering Chuuya’s call.
-
end