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"I didn't fall in love, I rose in it." -Toni Morrison, Jazz
Dazai finds an angel dressed in a Sailor Venus outfit on a high-rise rooftop in Yokohama.
“You’re beautiful,” he says to the boy lying face-up in a thick bed of snow. The freezing night air has leeched color from his skin except for the strawberry-red splotching the underside of his exposed limbs and the purple-blue staining his fingertips.
One shoe is a garishly orange high heel, and the other is missing. His curled toes are whiter than the snow. He’s shivering, little barely-there tremors that seem to bother him as much as his freezing extremities.
A translucent plume of breath curls in the air on a sigh, but his angel doesn’t look at him. His hair is as pale as moonlight except where it's darkened by the wet snow.
“Would you do me the honor of committing suicide with me?”
His angel blinks. Snow calcifies his eyelashes, and starlight shines in the crystals and refracts into infinity. His toes twitch, and the bottom of his foot is as red as if he walked in blood.
Spectacular heterochromia saturates Dazai’s world, and all he can think is, burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
His angel with firework eyes shrugs thin shoulders, all bone white and blue like a bruised moon, and wearily sighs,
“Yeah, sure. Why not?”
Well, Dazai’s never had that response before.
His angel’s stomach immediately growls. Dazai tilts his head, already a little charmed. "Perhaps we should eat first?"
His angel makes a face up at the sky. “I mean, that seems sort of pointless now? Why put it off? It’s not like we’ll be hungry for long.”
“Committing suicide on an empty stomach is highly unsatisfying,” Dazai assures. “Instead of relaxing into the sweet, cool arms of death, all you think about is spicy curry.”
“Spicy curry?” His angel lifts his head. His hair goes from pale to dark like feathers dipped in tar. “Really? Is that a favorite dish, or—”
“I hate the spice.” Dazai shrugs. “I think of it every time. I suppose it could be different for you.”
“Ochazuke,” his angel says immediately, head flopping back in the snow. “That’s probably what I would think of.” His head lifts again. He squints firework eyes at Dazai. “Wait. ‘Every time’? Just how many times have you tried?”
Dazai frowns and looks down at his fingers. His boots pulse when he wiggles his toes, and he hums contemplatively when he runs out of digits.
His angel flops back down. The remaining orange shoe pops off his heel and hangs askew on the curve of his foot. His ankles are so thin, with dark valleys sloping between delicate bones. Dazai could wrap his hand around them, dip his thumb in that valley, and leave behind a fingerprint bruise.
“It doesn’t seem like you’re very good at it,” his angel says.
“I would say that I have excellent and varied experience, actually.” He pauses as he considers his fingers and toes. “Success rate could use improvement.”
“I just don’t want it to hurt,” his angel says, his limbs red from the cold, his fingers and toes turning purple, frost in his lashes, and blue slowly tinting his lips like a poisonous kiss.
The first thing Dazai learns about his angel is that he is beautiful.
The second thing is that his angel is contradictory, or at least has a different definition of pain than Dazai.
“I don’t want it to, either,” Dazai agrees. “Or to be a burden to anyone.”
“Don’t worry,” his angel waves off with long, elegant fingers. His fingernails are nearly chewed raw, and chipped orange nail polish still clings to his thumb and middle finger. “There’s no one I can be a burden to. I suppose that’s a bright side to not having friends I haven’t considered before.” There’s no bitterness, no anger in his tone. Bemusement, maybe. An old, worn, nostalgic sadness.
It begins to snow again. The strobe of the red police lights below—the ones that had drawn Dazai to this building in the first place—seem to suspend the flakes in the air mid-fall. Curious, Dazai takes three quiet steps to the edge and leans over. Below, the police car is still parked in the alley. The broken shards of window glass are hard to make out against the bouncing lights and brightness of the snow. However, the grill of bent metal bars that once provided extra security to the window is still easily visible from the roof. He watches the tops of hats—police, a journalist, bystanders from the street, and the club the window belonged to—move in a ponderous pattern around the twisted metal. Given the lack of active pursuit, the police are still struggling to find a lead.
Dazai taps his fingers against his coat pocket and smiles.
“Alright!” He calls and turns with a quick clap-clap-clap to get them on task. “Let’s get to it!”
“Well,” his angel huffs. “Tell me how we’re doing this.”
“The bridge,” Dazai says immediately, because he’s been thinking about it ever since he saw this bruise of a boy laid out so prettily in the snow. He’d be just as pretty falling through the sky. Pretty in the water, a pale flame flickering in eternal dark. Maybe he’d let Dazai hold him when they fall. That’s the point of a double suicide, isn’t it? “Impact should kill us before we drown. Or we’ll lose consciousness from the freezing—”
“New rule,” his angel interrupts. “Don’t tell me how we’re doing it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re losing your nerve,” Dazai pouts. “You’re perfect.”
His angel snorts, quite ugly and imperfect.
“I’ll disappoint you.”
Dazai puts his hands in his coat. “Well, disappointment is an old companion, and I’m not particularly afraid of it. Besides, I think you’ll be interesting right up until the end.”
“Thanks,” his angel says. And then, after some debate, “I think.”
Another growl.
“So. Are we really doing this last meal thing?” His angel asks.
“What would you like?”
“Are you buying?”
Dazai pats his pockets. Kunikida had reclaimed his wallet already, and Dazai’s own was… well. It was somewhere. “I don’t suppose you…?”
His angel lifts his head, looks down at his tight body suit with the crooked orange bow and fraying skirt hem, and looks back up, exasperated.
"Right,” Dazai says gamely. “We’ll figure it out. What do you want?”
“Steak,” his angel responds immediately. “Like, the biggest steak. At the nicest restaurant in town. Or at least the nicest one within a couple of blocks.”
Dazai closes his eyes, already tasting the wine he’ll order with his. “Yeah,” he hums. “That’s good, angel. Steak it is.”
“Nakajima Atsushi.”
“Hmm, that can’t be right. Are you sure it’s not Angel?”
Atsushi rolls his eyes. “I’m sure. But that reminds me. I’ve never done this before.”
He kicks off his orange high heel first before moving his arms and legs in tandem—out and then in, out and then in. Bright, frozen strawberry bursts gush over his skin as he scrapes over the snow with a hilarious expression of concentration. His tongue is poked out and everything. It’s too adorable.
Atsushi stops and looks up sheepishly at Dazai.
“Will you help me? I want it to be perfect.”
Dazai blinks, then exhales charmed laughter through his nose. He crouches down, mindful not to scuff the hem of the heavenly robes Atsushi had so painstakingly outlined with his heels. Dazai holds out his hand.
“My name is Dazai Osamu.” Frozen fingers grasp his hand as Atsushi hauls himself up. In the same motion, Dazai wraps his other arm around a slim waist and lifts. For the briefest moments, frostbitten blueberry toes dance over the snow, keeping Atsushi’s creation pristine and untouched.
Atsushi is heavier than he seems—densely packed and warm beneath his clothes despite the icy chill to his extremities. He fits nicely against Dazai’s body as they both behold the imprint of a celestial shape in the white snow.
“It really does look like an angel!” Atsushi says with awe.
“You’ve really never made one before?” Dazai asks.
“Have you?” Atsushi returns, a wet clump of hair stuck to his arched eyebrow.
Dazai gives a reflective pause. “I suppose I haven’t.”
“I only regret the things I did not try to do,” Atsushi murmurs. “I’m glad I did this. It’s a little magical.”
“Yes,” Dazai agrees, pushing the wet hair off Atsushi’s forehead and straightening his tiara. “I think so, too.”
“We’re still definitely getting steak, right?”
“Atsushi-kun, do you take me for a liar?”
“I’m not sure what to take you for, Dazai-san.”
“I haven’t quite figured you out, either,” Dazai admits. “Which is a bit unusual for me. Well, then! We’re off to our last steak before our beautiful double suicide.”
“In this?” Atsushi asks, looking down at himself. He reaches up and braces himself on Dazai’s shoulder as he works his foot into his orange heel. Then he blinks around the rooftop, clearly puzzled by the absence of his other shoe.
“Ah, here you go.” Dazai reaches into his coat pocket. His prize catches on to the fabric, but eventually, he frees it and brandishes it proudly for Atsushi.
“My other shoe! Where did you even find it?” He hops as he tries to put it on, wobbling until Dazai catches him under his elbow. He winces as his numb, cold toes catch on the edges before he works them in.
“On the fire escape.” The police lights had caught his attention, and the inhumanly bent metal bars had been worth some idle contemplation. But the large orange pump hanging by its high heel on the fire escape? Worth investigating.
“You look lovely, Atsushi! The prettiest sailor scout in all of Yokohama.”
Atsushi gives him a deadpan look, which is definitely not undermined by the light dusting of pink at the tips of his ears. Cute.
“I meant that it’s cold.”
“It is! But you know what they say.” Dazai trails off because he’s actually not quite sure what they say.
Atsushi waits gamely for a few seconds before tilting his head. “And what do they say, Dazai-san?”
“Well, it’s something about beauty and sacrifice.”
Even with the botched delivery, the pink of Atsushi’s ears darkens and spreads down the back of his neck. Dazai grins, pleased.
“Dazai-san, that’s not what I’m trying to say.” He pointedly looks at Dazai’s shoulders, up to his face, and back again. Dazai blinks. Atsushi repeats the motion, this time raising his eyebrows for emphasis. Dazai follows his gaze.
“Oh?” He pulls at the edges of his coat. “Oh! You want me to offer you my coat?”
“Yes,” Atsushi is too polite to hiss, but it’s a near-miss. “It’s cold in this outfit.”
“But this is my coat!” Dazai emphasizes this by clutching the lapels as if he were clutching pearls, tone implying that Atsushi had just threatened to rob him of his last stitch of clothing.
“Well,” Atsushi sighs, arms wrapping around his middle and bundling up all his hunger and patches of frostbitten skin. “I can say with certainty that I don’t take you for a gentleman, Dazai-san.”
“Nonsense!” Dazai waves him off. “I’m the perfect gentleman! Just wait. I’ll get you a coat and your steak!”
***
These words, naturally, lead them to a little bit of thievery.
Perhaps even a mugging.
“In the loosest sense of the word,” Dazai insists to Atsushi for the third time as they dodge around a thinning throng of people in their hurry. Is his angel even listening? “I mean, if you think about it, what even is mugging—?”
“The act of physical attack upon an isolated pedestrian on a public street at night,” Atsushi immediately supplies in a high-pitched, thready voice as if he’s reading a definition off the page by rote. “And the taking of money and effects from his person—”
Dazai stops and blinks. “Are you a law student by day, Atsushi-kun? Sailor Venus by night? You know, you really are a surprising puzzle—oh!”
He’s rudely interrupted by Atsushi grabbing his hand and hauling him around the corner onto a less-populated street, where he practically dives into the narrow alcove of a closed shop.
“So forward, Atsushi-kun—” he breaks off in a wheeze when Atsushi shoves his back against the wall. Long fingers press against his lips as Atsushi makes frantic and hilariously loud shushing sounds.
“Do you ever stop talking?” Atsushi whisper-shouts. “Hang on.” He pokes his wide-eyed gaze around Dazai’s arm and out of the alcove. “I don’t think we were followed. Somehow.”
They weren’t followed, of course. But Dazai whispers, “I think I see someone!”
Atsushi squeaks like a tiny cat toy and ducks back into the alcove. He presses against Dazai’s body as if it could afford him camouflage or protection.
Dazai hums happily out to the empty, snow-covered street.
“I can’t believe you mugged that man for his coat!” Atsushi groans.
“I didn’t!” He shakes out said coat—luxurious faux fur, lined too richly for Atsushi’s second-hand sailor scout uniform with the threadbare hemming done by his own hand. “There was no violence. He wasn’t even an isolated pedestrian. He gave it to me.”
Atsushi’s face goes through quite a compelling journey. Frustration, exasperation, anxiety, and then—
His face breaks into laughter as dawn breaks over the sea, completely transforming him. Delicate, papery crinkles appear at the corners of his eyes. He scrunches his nose, and a healthy pink forms high on his cheeks. Then he hides his face into Dazai’s chest, shoulders shaking loosely and utterly powerless against his waterfall of giggles.
(The laughter infiltrates between Dazai’s ribs and unfurls like wings until there’s no room to exhale.)
“I can’t believe that worked!” Atsushi gasps. “Who would even believe such a story? You never even showed him your ID. Besides, what detective needs a fur coat on the fly for a covert operation?” He pauses thoughtfully before deciding, “a clearly very bad and ill-prepared one.”
“It happens all the time in the movies,” Dazai says. “All it takes is a hint of that nostalgic movie glamor, a tantalizing implication that the man will be recognized by the detective agency that has ended up in the papers so much lately…”
“Does it really?” Atsushi asks.
“Does it really what?”
Atsushi runs his fingers over the fur. “Does it really happen in the movies? Things like this?”
“Are you not a movie person, Atsushi-kun? Wait, have you ever been to a movie theater?”
Atsushi’s eyes dance. “I did once! When I first earned a little money. It was so stupid of me to spend it there when I was barely scraping by!" He laughs at himself as he rubs the back of his neck. “It was a foreign film, actually. I didn’t know what I was doing. But there were songs and dancing under the stars!” Dazai’s impression of Atsushi had been all starved, sharpened edges—a young man made of moonbeams half-frozen by the winter. But he’d been wrong. Atsushi is now softly boyish, his head tilted back, grinning up at Dazai without reserve. “It was like the books in the library come to life, it was—”
And then that self-consciousness returns all at once in a flutter of eyelashes and the dip of his head. His fingers withdraw from the coat, and his heat dissipates from Dazai’s body. And what was once a burst of flame in the sky is now smoke curling in on itself.
“Oh, that probably sounded pretty naive, huh? I’ve only been once and couldn’t even pick a film I could understand. Still,” he picks at stubby nails and chipped orange nail polish. “It was its own magic.”
I’ll take you to another movie, Dazai almost, almost says. He parts his lips, takes a breath, and then—
Ah, he realizes with a swell of melancholy. But I won’t be able to.
So he says, “Come on now, it’s cold.” And then he unfolds the thick coat with a stately flourish. He hadn’t picked his target haphazardly—the coat’s wearer was about Atsushi’s size. Atsushi hesitates, stretching his fingers but not quite allowing himself to touch the synthetic fur again
“Allow me.” He slides one sleeve over Atsushi’s arm, steps close to bring the coat around the back, and holds it for Atsushi’s other arm.
Atsushi sighs as he stretches contentedly into every warm corner of the coat. “I am wearing a stolen coat,” he says. “With a stranger I’m going to commit suicide with.” Despite this, his rigid shoulders relax, as does the tightness around his mouth.
It’s amazing what a little warmth can do.
“I show you the best times, don’t I?” Dazai asks as he pulls the collar closer around Atsushi’s neck.
“That depends on the steak we get.”
Dazai grins. “That was your end of the deal, Atsushi-kun. What did you get for us?”
Atsushi’s eyes dart unseeingly, and he bites his lip before reaching under the thick, brand-new coat. “I think I got enough—”
Dazai changes their positions, flipping them so that Atsushi is pressed against the wall. Atsushi gasps, his firework eyes lighting up at him in confusion.
“Security camera,” Dazai explains, indicating the position with a quick backward nod. He waits for Atsushi to notice the store’s front door camera and how Dazai’s height difference now shelters his hands and potentially damning evidence from view.
“Thanks,” Atsushi breathes. “I’m not used to—anyway. Here.”
“Just where could you have possibly hidden that?” Dazai asks with genuine awe. That awe doubles when Atsushi opens the wallet to present a fat wad of yen. “Atsushi-kun! Are you a thief, a lawyer, or Sailor Venus on Fantasy Night at a down-on-its-luck nightclub?”
“I’m not a lawyer,” Atsushi grumbles. “I just read a lot.”
“Law dictionaries?” Dazai asks dubiously because it sounds incredibly dull. “In your leisure time?”
“My library was small where I grew up. You can only re-read the fiction selection so many times,” Atsushi huffs defensively. “Do you think this is enough? I’m so hungry.”
They both look over the wallet, foreheads almost touching.
“Seems right. But, ah. I don’t know of a place around here, and it’s getting late—”
“This way,” Atsushi says, disappearing the wallet into the mysterious hideaway place in his skimpy outfit and grabbing Dazai’s wrist again. “There’s this place—it smells so good. Don’t you smell it?”
They plunge back into busy streets and city lights, starving and enchanted.
***
“So tell me, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai starts when they’re hunched over their salads. Well, Dazai idly sorts the various pieces of his. Atsushi has already inhaled his portion and returned his attention to his soup bowl, which he clutches close to his face like he wants to crawl into it and soak up its warmth.
“Mm?” Atsushi murmurs, side-eyeing Dazai’s half-eaten soup bowl even when he’s not done with his own. Too cute.
“Where exactly did Sailor Venus learn to pickpocket so well—mmff?” Dazai breaks off, confused, with his mouth unexpectedly full of bread.
Atsushi’s fingers move from Dazai’s lips as quickly as they had appeared, leaving behind buttery fingerprints. His firework eyes flicker beneath scowling eyebrows. “Do you just say anything that comes to your head? Do you want someone to hear you and call the police?”
Whatever severe effect Atsushi is going for is entirely ruined as he stuffs the rest of the roll into his mouth, cheeks bulging like an indignant squirrel.
That was the last roll. That was Dazai’s last roll.
Another thing he learns about his angel is that he’s timid and docile right up until there’s food or money on the line. Then he’s a greedy little thing.
“You worry too much about other people,” Dazai says.
“You don’t seem to worry enough,” Atsushi counters.
Dazai shrugs. “What’s the point?”
There goes those cheeks again. Little pockets of pique.
“The point is—” Atsushi breaks off, gaze turning thoughtfully inward. “Huh. I guess—I guess after we’re done here, there really isn’t a point.”
“Just a bridge and hard, freezing wa—” he breaks off, going cross-eyed when a chopstick is brandished threateningly at his face.
“No details,” Atsushi commands. Then he primly sets down his chopstick and returns to sipping his soup. “I guess it is sort of… freeing to know what’s coming. Like, I don’t care that I’m in this stupid outfit at the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever been to, eating all of the rolls.”
“Eating all of my rolls,” Dazai pouts.
“I got us the money.”
“Yes, let’s return to that!" Dazai leans forward, chin in hand. "Sailor Venus is a masked thief. That lift was flawless, Atsushi-kun. Tell me your secrets.”
Atsushi rolls his eyes at this. Dazai sticks out his bottom lip, already missing half an hour ago when Atsushi was so easily impressed by him.
“Not much to tell, really. I haven’t, you know,” Atsushi drops to sotto voce, still painfully obvious about how furtive he’s being. A brilliant thief with all of the makings of a terrible actor. “Stolen all that much. I was just so hungry when I first got here, and I had to learn.” He shrugs and taps his fingers on the rim of his now-empty bowl. “I think I’m weirdly good at it. When I’m not throwing up from nerves.”
Yes, he’s good. Dazai barely even glimpsed it, distracted as he was by conning the fine gentleman from his luxurious coat. Atsushi stood out like a rose among thistles in that ridiculous outfit, yet his steps were silent when he wanted them to be. Dazai thought back to the rooftop at the high rise, glancing over his shoulder to ensure Atsushi was still following him because he was cottoned silence in the snow.
And he’s fast. Unbelievably sharp reflexes that, improbably enough, are relatively raw and untrained. Dazai moves the puzzle pieces around the board in his head and taps the ones that say abuse and had to be fast and quiet to stay alive in contemplation.
Then he swipes the whole thing to the side. Hears the imaginary echo of the pieces falling and skitter-sliding across the floor. After all, he just told Atsushi that it didn’t matter, didn’t he? There’s no need for secrets or mysteries with the freedom of the bridge and the water at the end of Dazai's night.
“I think it’s a career you missed out on,” Dazai teases.
Atsushi looks vaguely green. “Ugh, no, thank you. I felt bad enough when I had to do it for a few weeks.”
“Oh? Was there a moral dilemma?”
Atsushi shrugs. “I guess? Stealing can hurt someone else, and I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be the reason anyone is afraid.” He pauses. “But mostly, I don’t want anyone to yell at me.”
Dazai blinks, then laughs.
Atsushi huffs. “What about you, Mr. Detective?” He grumbles, then frowns. “Wait. Are you really a detective? I thought it was part of the con for the coat, but now...” Atsushi trails off, squinting suspiciously.
Dazai tilts his head. “What do you think it is? Am I a detective or a con artist?”
“Well,” Atsushi starts and then hums in thought. “Do the two have to be exclusive?”
“One would presume so, given that both seem to be in ethical opposition.”
“Well, you certainly conned that poor man out of his coat on a cold, windy winter’s night—”
“I’m hearing a lot of judgment when you’re directly benefiting from that ‘poor man’s’ coat,” Dazai deadpans.
“—but I don’t know,” Atsushi continues. “You seem very…”
“Devilishly handsome?” Dazai prompts. “Extraordinarily clever?”
“Shifty.”
“Shifty?!” Dazai gasps.
“Like a fox,” Atsushi nods firmly. “Though I suppose your coat makes you look almost like a detective.”
“Almost?” Dazai pouts. “I make an excellent detective, you know!”
Atsushi hums skeptically. “I don’t know. You must not be that good, since all but your arm was cropped out of the newspaper photo a few days ago.”
“Kunikida pushed me as they were taking the picture,” Dazai whines. “He wanted all the glory for himself.” Of course, Dazai had goaded Kunikida into pushing him. He didn’t mind being in the news, but it didn’t hurt to avoid it. After all, his methods worked better when he could move freely with the shadows of Yokohama. Plus, he’d avoided attention from most of the mafia for four years now, and intended to do so until it was time to utilize them for his own plans.
“How did you know it was me?” Dazai asks.
Atsushi’s eyes fall to the bandages around Dazai’s wrists, but he doesn’t say anything. Dazai doesn’t say anything about them, either.
“Maybe Atsushi-kun would make a good detective, too.”
Atsushi snorts a little, eyes downturned in a way that Dazai has already learned means his angel is thinking self-deprecating things. “That’s doubtful.”
“You underestimate yourself.”
“And you overestimate me.”
“Do you always read the paper?" Dazai asks. "Or are you a fan of the Armed Detective Agency?”
“More like I’m not a fan of The Guild, and I keep up with stories about them.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” Atsushi frowns. “They’re—I don’t know. They showed up a couple of months ago and didn’t leave. People are—they make people nervous. Patrons at the club, my co-workers, and others at the tenement. I hear talk about it at the library, too. That the Guild is full of ability users, and that they’ll buy out anything and anyone to get what they’re looking for. Or hurt you if they can’t do that.” Atsushi scowls. “This is—I don’t have family or many friends here. But it’s not right that they can just come to this city and hurt people like that. Make them afraid.”
“What do you think they’re looking for?” Dazai asks.
“What?”
“You said that they’re looking for something.”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “It’s just a rumor. They keep buying up property and driving up the rent so high that people are forced to move or be evicted. Maybe they just want territory for some reason. Wouldn’t you know more about them than me?”
“Yes and no,” Dazai answers vaguely with an idle wave. “Was that them at your club tonight? The Guild?”
“What? No, they’ve never been there, as far as I know. Why?”
“The police were there when I was walking by. The broken window? The twisted security bars? It seemed like maybe an ability user was involved.”
Atsushi drops eye contact, shrugs, and says, “I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything. I was already on the roof.” He folds and unfolds the corner of his napkin.
All the makings of a terrible actor, Dazai thinks once again.
“Why were you on the roof?” Dazai asks.
“I was on my break.”
“Without a coat? And food?”
Atsushi huffs. “Why were you on the roof, Dazai-san?”
Dazai grins at him. “I was looking for an angel.”
“Ugh,” Atsushi groans. He steals the rest of Dazai’s soup, the tips of his ears bright red.
“You keep stealing my last meal, Atsushi-kun.”
“Sorry. There’s still steak coming,” he assuages but does not move to relinquish the soup. Firework eyes spark hopefully. “And maybe dessert?”
Dazai, helplessly charmed, rests his chin in his hand with a smile. “Of course we’ll have dessert.”
They do not have enough money for dessert.
They do not realize this until after they’ve had dessert.
They both lean over the table, dishes stacked to either side, their heads bent once again over Atsushi’s pilfered wallet.
“Count again,” Atsushi demands between his teeth.
“Counting is not going to change the face of the bills,” Dazai counters. “Atsushi-kun, I don’t mean to criticize you in your profession, but you really should have stolen more—”
“Shut up! It’s not a profession! I told you I don’t like it!”
“Well, I guess you were too good to be true.”
“See? I told you I’d disappoint you.”
Dazai glances up through his curls and is swept away by the tiniest constellation of freckles across Atsushi’s nose. “I think you’ll have to try much harder for that.”
“What do we do?” Atsushi bites his lip. Then he absently reaches to the side, forks the last bite of cake, and pops it in his mouth.
“Atsushi-kun.”
“What?” he mutters defensively. He licks frosting from his lips. Dazai feels like he's watching it in slow motion. “I’m a nervous eater!”
“I say we make a run for it.”
“What? Dine and dash?” Atsushi gasps like it’s synonymous with armed robbery and perhaps even a large-scale murder spree.
“I don’t mind saying this—”
“It seems like you don’t mind saying anything that comes to your head, Dazai-san.”
“Aw,” he simpers. “You care to notice all the little details about me.”
“The waiter is on the way,” Atsushi says, his eyes widening so much they seem to take up half his face. Dazai tilts his head, looking just past Atsushi’s shoulder to where their waiter is three tables down, handing checks to the patrons. He glances around, looking for a mirror or reflection where Atsushi could have spotted his approach, but doesn’t spot any.
“It’s now or never,” Dazai responds gravely.
Atsushi swallows. “What about one of the super fancy cards he has?” He points to a rainbow of credit cards. Dazai shrugs.
“We’ll be in the same position if it ends up being canceled.”
Atsushi hisses before standing up abruptly. “Fine. Let’s go. Now.”
Dazai rises a great deal more slowly, making Atsushi stand in place as he adjusts his coat for him. “You have to act natural, like you’ve already paid.”
“A serial dine and dasher, huh?” Atsushi grumbles, scowling. He’s blushing, though. The tips of his ears are a cherry red Dazai that aches to taste. He settles for running a fingerpad over the delicate skin of the shell. Atsushi’s reaction is beautiful—all eyes on Dazai.
“Come on, Atsushi-kun. I believe our destiny awaits.” He maneuvers Atsushi’s hand so that he holds on to the crook of Dazai's elbow. They proceed to walk toward the exit with their heads bent together as if in intimate conversation.
“Oh,” Atsushi murmurs, leaning further into Dazai as they walk. “It’s so strange. I’m entirely unable to forget what we’re going to do tonight. It’s everywhere, the knowing. In my head, in my lungs, in my feet. And yet, I keep forgetting that it’s not some distant thing. It’s tonight.”
“Tonight, tonight,” Dazai sings a half-remembered song. I saw you and the world went away.
“Great,” Atsushi sighs, gripping Dazai’s arm tighter. “They’re going to chase us.”
Dazai glances over their shoulders. Their waiter is just a few tables behind them, flanked by a second waiter and heading toward Dazai and Atsushi with quick strides. Someone larger and much more menacing emerges from the back, dark eyes immediately honing in on them. Who knew such a place had in-house security?
“Keep your head down,” Dazai encourages.
“Do we run?” Atsushi asks.
“Not yet—”
One of the waiters exclaims for them to stop. Plates crash to the floor.
“OK, yeah,” Dazai agrees, idly wondering if the president would make him serve jail time for this. He would undoubtedly give Dazai a disappointed frown, which was worse. “Run!”
They burst into wind and snow, Dazai tugging Atsushi along until he gets the picture, and then it’s Atsushi tugging Dazai along, fast even in heels.
They collapse against the wall of an alley almost half a block over, curled into each other like vines. They giggle helplessly, wheezing on the biting cold in their lungs.
“I don’t think we had to run that far,” Dazai admits. “I would be surprised if the restaurant staff were so dedicated.”
“I couldn’t stop, even if I wanted to,” Atsushi says, still breathless. “Felt like I could run forever.”
“Yes,” Dazai muses, looking down at their still-joined hands. It had felt freeing to run through his city at night as various parts of it closed down. Was that because his end was coming later? Or because he’d been fueled by the pulse of another?
“It looks like you’ve run right out of your shoes, Cinderella-chan,” Dazai murmurs, looking down at Atsushi’s bare feet.
Atsushi winces. “Yeah. I’d say they hurt, but I honestly can’t feel them anymore.”
“Want to get another pair of shoes?”
“All the shops are closed,” Atsushi immediately responds, though it sounds like he already knows that a closed shop won’t stop Dazai. “And, again. It just seems pointless. We agreed on a last meal. Shouldn’t we be getting this… over with?”
“We have time,” Dazai says. Because there is always time for death. “And I’d argue that it being pointless is all the more reason to do it.”
Atsushi looks up at him and smiles softly. “Somehow, I thought you might say that. I’m learning a little about you, Dazai-san.”
“There’s not much to know,” he says with a smile. It's a lie and the truth all at once. He’s a killer, a liar, someone who had to be told to help others. He’s a sucking void, agonized by his own emptiness. He’s a snake, holding on too tight to the ones that are his. He’s a failure, unable to hold on to a single thing he wants.
“There’s everything,” Atsushi insists. “All that you are. It’s infinite.”
Firework eyes crawl like spiders into Dazai’s chest, and he’s helpless to deny Atsushi anything, even his naivety.
“Let’s get you some shoes.”
Atsushi takes a fortifying breath. Dazai idly swings their joined hands between them, waiting.
“If we’re going to continue to be criminals tonight,” he starts. “Do you think we can replace a whole outfit?”
“Do you mean to deny me my fantasy of a double suicide with Sailor Venus?”
Atsushi rolls his eyes, but the quirk at the corner of his mouth is fond. “I keep thinking of—of tomorrow. Or next week. What will they think when my body washes to shore in this? Would they even bother to find my name and what happened to me? I see it all the time out here. Bodies turned up and then hidden away, along with their hopes and dreams and names.
“I think it’s pointless to worry about this now. After all, it’s not like I’ll be around to care,” Atsushi continues, looking up into Dazai’s eyes. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe now’s the best time to worry about pointless things.”
“I’m always right,” Dazai assures. “About everything.”
“And so modest, too,” Atsushi sighs.
Dazai grins, tightens his hold on Atsushi’s hand, and pokes his head out of the alleyway, taking in their position. “I know just the place.”
***
“Sorry, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai says as Atsushi sits astride his shoulders.
“You don’t sound sorry at all,” Atsushi hisses. He’s nervously trying to break into the clothing shop’s back window by working Dazai's knife between the panes to unlatch it.
“I thought the window was closer to the ground!” Dazai defends himself. "And that it would be big enough for both of us."
As it stands, it's barely tall enough for Atsushi’s head. The width is such that Dazai doubts he'll get his shoulders through without some impressive flexibility. And since he doesn't possess a pipe cleaner for a spine, it's up to Atsushi to climb through the window and let Dazai in through the front door.
If he can fit, that is. Dazai's more willing to risk Atsushi's shoulders than his own. Plus, if it fails, then Dazai will get treated to a once-in-a-lifetime fantasy of seeing Sailor Venus stuck in a wall.
“Are you sure there’s no alarm for this window?”
“I’m not all-knowing,” Dazai says. “There could always be an alarm. I just don’t think that there is!”
“What makes you think so?”
“Well," Dazai shrugs. Well, he tries to. "It’d be really inconvenient for us if there were.”
Atsushi lets out a noise somewhere between a scream and a whimper.
“...did you drop the knife again?” Dazai asks.
“No!” Atsushi huffs. “I said I was sorry!”
“You nearly impaled my foot,” Dazai whines. “You’re very nervous for a hardened thief.”
“I told you! It was just a few wallets! Months ago!”
Something clicks in the window, and snow falls down the brick wall like a waterfall. Atsushi’s plush, warm thighs press tighter around Dazai’s neck and face as he leans forward to wrench it open.
“I could die like this,” Dazai sighs dreamily.
“Did you say something?” Atsushi calls back from where he’s stuck his head in the window.
“Nothing,” Dazai grumbles. “Only, Atsushi-kun, are you sure you need another outfit?”
“What are you talking about? We’re already here. Lift me higher. Wait, I can’t get my shoulder—”
“You’ll have to leave the coat,” Dazai says.
“But,” Atsushi whines. “It's warm!” Still, he pushes away from the window. “Don’t drop me.”
“Yes, sir,” Dazai hums, bracing the best he can as Atsushi places a hand on Dazai’s head for balance before maneuvering the coat off. It plops heavily into the snow at Dazai’s heels.
“OK, here we go,” Atsushi mumbles. Dazai braces his palms as high as he can on the back of Atsushi’s thighs, stabilizing and giving leverage as Atsushi ducks into the window and wriggles inside. Dazai pushes up until half of Atsushi’s body is through. He has one glorious glimpse of plump ass cheeks perfectly framed by an orange skirt.
“Mm, nice view,” he hums happily before letting out a sigh of disappointment when Atsushi abruptly slides the rest of the way inside with a squeal and a thunk.
“Are you OK, Atsushi-kun?” Dazai calls, amused.
“Somehow,” comes the grumble. “I’ll meet you at the door.”
“Do you remember what I told you about disarming the alarms?”
“Yes, I think so.”
A few minutes later, Atsushi opens the front door with a deadpan expression. “There’s no security system.”
“Oh?” Dazai grins. “No? In a city like Yokohama? They sure are tempting fate, aren’t they?”
Atsushi squints. “You knew.”
“How would I know? Atsushi-kun gives me too much credit.”
“I’m not sure how, but I’m sure you made me go through that stupid window for no reason.”
“There were reasons!” His neck and shoulders are still tender from Atsushi’s thighs. Seriously worth it. “The view alone—” he breaks off into a choking sound when Atsushi grabs him by his tie and yanks him inside. “Oh! Be gentle with me, Atsushi-kun—”
“You play with people, Dazai-san,” Atsushi sighs, shutting the door and locking it behind them.
“Is it too much?” Dazai asks, tilting his head and not saying, am I too much?
“It’s something,” Atsushi answers, looking over his shoulder. The light outside shines in his eyes, reflecting eerily as the shadows from inside mask the bottom half of his face. Then he tilts his head, and the illusion is gone. It’s just Atsushi, the pretty bruise of a boy in a ridiculous Sailor Venus outfit who has walked side by side with Dazai in these last hours under the freeing respite of assured death.
“Do you want me to promise to stop playing with you?” Dazai asks.
Atsushi snorts, pushing off the door and stepping to Dazai, reaching up to fix the tie and collar he’d so rudely wrecked with his manhandling. “I’ve known you for what? Three hours? And I already know that you will never stop. Besides, we only have another hour or so, don’t we? That’s not a long time to promise anything.”
“From another perspective, it’s a lifetime’s promise. An eternity.”
“I suppose so,” Atsushi shrugs. “I don’t mind it much, as long as it's you.”
“Do you have so much trust in me?”
“Obviously, given what we agreed to,” Atsushi says. His long fingers slide down from Dazai’s collar and rest against his chest. “Mostly, I don’t mind it because…” he trails off, fixes Dazai’s collar again, and then steps away. “Help me find an outfit!”
“Atsushi-kun is such a tease.”
“Hardly,” Atsushi says, disappearing in the clothes. “Holy shit. Do you see the price tags on this stuff? Oh man,” his disembodied voice whispers in awe. “So soft. How is this so soft?”
Dazai rounds the display of dress pants to find Atsushi half-crawling into a rack of shirts without a hint of shame or self-consciousness. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and he can’t help but laugh.
“I’m going to wear every single warm and soft thing,” Atsushi swears.
“The world is yours,” Dazai says with a flourish. “Or at least this department store is.”
“The changing rooms are way too dark,” Atsushi grumbles.
“Change here,” Dazai says. “I won’t look until you tell me to. Besides, you need an audience for the makeover scene.”
“Makeover scene?” Atsushi repeats, shuffling away from Dazai to a corner between the wall and some clothes racks. His back is to Dazai, but the moon and Yokohama’s lights beam into the store and lash across Atsushi’s skin. “Is that another movie thing?”
Dazai’s a liar, so he doesn’t look away. Instead, he takes the image of the moon-white back as it’s revealed to him. He burns it into his memory—the canyon that the shadow under Atsushi’s shoulder blade makes, the puckered, ropey skin near the waist. His fingers itch to touch them, to memorize them, to hurt whoever inflicted them on Atsushi.
(He yearns to touch those scars with tongue and lips. Gently, reverently, because they curl like holy filigree on Atsushi’s body.)
“It is,” Dazai says, absently wishing he had met Atsushi a little earlier in the day so they could have gone to the cinema.
He thinks, I wish I had done everything on earth with you.
“You agreed to suicide so quickly,” Dazai murmurs. “Are you mad that I haven’t tried to talk you out of it?”
Clothing whispers over Atsushi’s skin, but he barely gets it on before shrugging it off and discarding it on the floor. The moon of his back waxes and wanes with each movement, with each breath.
“No? It's my choice, isn't it?" Atsushi responds. "Are you mad that I haven’t tried to talk you out of it?”
“Not at all,” Dazai says. “The opposite, really.”
“I’m scared,” Atsushi admits. “All my life, I’ve thought of myself as a coward. I cling to life so desperately, but I never know what to do with it. It’s so painful, you know? Full of hunger. And pain.”
“It is,” Dazai agrees in a whisper. “Endlessly painful.”
“I hold on to life, but I don’t want it to hurt me, so I just do what I need to get by and nothing else. I work two jobs to scrape rent money together, but never enough to go anywhere or do anything. Or, hell, not even enough to buy things to decorate the place I rent. I put up with people who hurt me and put up with myself hurting others so I can get ahead. It's so lonely, Dazai-san.” He slides on a shirt that clings to his shoulders. “And I'm so tired.”
A thousand words war on Dazai's tongue, but the victor, for once, is silence.
“Anyway," Atsushi continues. A pale thigh flashes from the shadows as he pulls on dark trousers. "I’m a coward, and I'm afraid to die. Normally, I wouldn't even think of doing this. But I’m so tired, and you asked, and I wasn’t even afraid. I think it’s because I realized I wouldn’t be alone. I think being alone is what I was afraid of to begin with.” He pauses but doesn’t dare to meet Dazai's eyes over his shoulder. Maybe it's easier for him to talk to the darkness. To let the shadows swallow his words.
“Do you promise to be with me tonight?” Atsushi whispers to the dark.
It’s Dazai who answers. “I promise to be with you for all the time we have left."
“So, for eternity?” Atsushi asks.
“For eternity," Dazai promises.
***
Cosmo World is long closed when they walk past it on the way to Yokohama Bay Bridge. The Ferris wheel, an iconic hallmark of the Yokohama skyline, is still lit up, so they walk buffeted by a kaleidoscopic frenzy of purples, blues, and greens.
“It’s beautiful, even empty like this,” Atsushi breathes, mesmerized by the light show’s reflection on the water, the nearly abandoned bay walk, and the quiet buildings.
“Have you ever rode on the Ferris wheel before?” Dazai asks.
“Are you going to steal it for me, too?”
“I could,” Dazai says thoughtfully, mind already unraveling the puzzle of how to pull off stealing a Ferris wheel and getting away with it.
Atsushi grins over at him. “Don’t worry, I’ve done the ride. Twice! I think I cried the first time I went up in that thing. It was at night, like this. And I could see everything. Everything on the ground was so big and overwhelming, but up there, I could spread my hand and touch my pinky and thumb to each side of the skyline. It was as if I could hold the city in the palm of my hand." He reaches up toward the Ferris wheel, tilting his head and spreading his fingers as if to pluck it from their view.
“And I'd always thought I couldn't see the stars in Yokohama, but they seemed so close that night," Atsushi continues, lowering his arm. "The view was sad and so beautiful at the same time. Why do you think that is? It feels the same tonight, as well. Do you think it’s because the view will be here even when I am not?”
“I think it being here when I’m not is what makes it beautiful,” Dazai counters.
The wind blows sharply, and Atsushi hugs himself, shivering
“Ah,” he sighs. “I left my coat in that alleyway. After Dazai-san so generously stole it for me, too.”
“Borrowed,” Dazai immediately counters. “He fully consented to it and everything.”
The wind whips the plume of Atsushi’s breath away. Dazai shrugs out of his coat and places it over Atsushi’s shoulders. He waits patiently for Atsushi to catch on and fit his arms into the warmed sleeves.
“I thought you weren’t sharing this coat for anything,” Atsushi says as Dazai turns him around to straighten the collar. The material bunches on Atsushi’s thin shoulders and hangs long to his ankles.
“I’m sometimes a liar,” he answers. “Or maybe I just changed my mind. Besides, I've thought of a way to make this view less sad for you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Atsushi says.
“No, no, you’re supposed to say, how, Dazai-san?”
“How, Dazai-san?” Atsushi dutifully recites.
“We become part of the view!” He answers grandly and then sweeps Atsushi into a dance.
Unfortunately, Dazai's plan goes the opposite of grandly. Atsushi is taken too much by surprise by Dazai’s sudden pull, squawking like a seagull as he trips over their feet and knocks them both to the ground.
“What was that supposed to be?” Atsushi hisses, sprawled indignantly over Dazai’s lap with his ass in the air and the heel of his hand between Dazai’s ribs as he scrambles to try and stand up.
“Atsushi-kun—Atsushi-kun, maybe just slow down—no, not your knee—”
“Stop pulling on me—oh my God, Dazai-san, I’m so sorry! Are you—”
“Stop!” Dazai calls, grasping both of Atsushi’s flailing hands between his. He sits up with Atsushi still mostly in his lap, wide firework eyes staring at him with the reddest blush of the evening spreading across his cheeks and ears.
Atsushi giggles first, high-pitched and half-hysterical. Then he's a crystal flute with champagne fizzing over the rim, helpless as the bubbles of his laughter spill between them and into their joined hands. Dazai’s forehead rests against Atsushi’s, the wings in his chest crowding out his lungs and heart and threatening to crack open his sternum.
(A stranger to his own joy, Dazai forgot the unique pain of being so ecstatically full.)
“What were you even doing?” Atsushi asks with tears latticed between his eyelashes.
“I was trying to dance.”
Atsushi snorts. It’s gross with the tears and runny nose from the cold and laughter. Grosser still is the unbearable fondness within Dazai that stretches and curls like sunbeams.
“I was going to sweep you off your feet,” Dazai insists.
Atsushi breaks down into giggles again. His body is so warm against Dazai’s, even as the damp, cold concrete seeps icily into his clothes.
“What a disastrous first dance,” Atsushi sighs. “I nearly killed my partner. Or he nearly killed me. Do you usually haul people around like that during dancing?”
“First dances are nearly always disastrous,” Dazai pronounces authoritatively. “The second ones are better. Everyone knows.”
“Do they?” Atsushi wonders dubiously, carefully getting his feet under him and pulling Dazai up. He carefully inspects Dazai’s coat, dusts it off, and checks the buttons and hems for damage.
“Of course. Here we go," Dazai says. "Hold your arms out like this.”
Atsushi blinks up at him. “Now? You’re determined to do this?”
“Yes, Atsushi-kun. I’m being very charming right now. You can at least do me the courtesy of noticing.”
“Oh,” Atsushi breathes as he holds up his arms in an impression of Dazai. “I’ve noticed.”
“Well, it’s hard to tell. You’re not swooning enough, and it’s very rude.”
“I’m sorry, Dazai-san.” Atsushi's solemn apology is ruined by his unabashed grin. “I will try to swoon harder for you.”
“Very good. Do your best. Now,” he says, placing one of Atsushi’s hands on his shoulder before wrapping his fingers around the other. Then he settles his hand on Atsushi’s waist—a little lower than what propriety calls for, but it’s not like Atsushi will know that. “Dancing is like a battle of wits. A multi-dimensional moving chess board of give and take.”
“That seems very complicated. Are you sure I’ll be able to do it?” Atsushi’s eyes are wide and overwhelmed, but he can’t seem to press the humor from the corners of his mouth.
“Of course you will!" Dazai declares. "Because I’m here. Now, I step like this, and you step like that, see? Like a mirror.” He steps to the side, Atsushi stuttering a split second behind. “Again! To the other side.” He sidesteps, and Atsushi mirrors it with near-perfect timing. “And I go forward and you back. See? You know, I’d think there’d be more opportunities to dance in your current profession.”
Atsushi looks up from studiously watching their feet, concerned about stepping all over Dazai’s toes. He blinks, visibly trying to rewind and catch up to the conversation. And then he laughs, his head tilting back and eyes squinching closed. The moonlight loves his skin; it kisses his throat in exaltation.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s the same kind of dancing,” he laughs. “There’s no battle of wits, for one thing. Just a lot of ass-shaking. And arm flailing.” He demonstrates this by letting go and leaning back. Dazai holds Atsushi steady by the waist as he awkwardly raises the roof to a beat they can’t hear.
Dazai grins. “I bet you’re the best ass shaker.”
Atsushi rolls his eyes, carefully placing his hands back on Dazai and returning his gaze to their moving feet. “Way too much faith in me.”
“Perhaps. I do maintain that you’re probably a better thief.”
Atsushi clicks his tongue. “Enough of that. What are you, recruiting?”
Dazai laughs long and loud, startling Atsushi.
“Is it that funny?” Atsushi asks.
“Unbelievably so. Are you ready for the next lesson?”
“I don’t know, isn’t this enough—oh!” Atsushi gasps when Dazai sweeps him in an easy, lazy spin. More in tune with the feeling of the dance, Atsushi doesn’t stumble. His natural balance and grace take over as he allows himself to be swept along. His hair flies over his forehead as he lifts his chin and stares in childish wonder at the lights and colors swirling around them.
“Oh,” Atsushi repeats when they ease into a gentle side-stepping sway. Then he tugs on Dazai’s hand in determination. “Again!” He demands.
“As you wish,” Dazai says, taking Atsushi along for a series of spins. Dazai hums idly, but they mostly dance to the scrape and thud of their footsteps, the gentle lap of the sea, and the howling song of the wind in their ears. They float on Atsushi’s laughter in an endless field of light.
Dazai ends with Atsushi in a dipped position, his head tilted back, eyes closed, and the long column of his throat bared. The moon loves his skin, Dazai thinks again. He aches to press his lips against it, to trace the vulnerable arch of Atsushi's throat with his tongue. But he remembers himself at the last minute and turns away, nose brushing against warm, moon-blessed skin instead.
He slowly pulls Atsushi up and they’re both left panting, plumes of translucent breath colliding between them.
“I feel a little lightheaded,” Atsushi murmurs.
Dazai smirks. “That’d be the swooning.”
“It may be,” Atsushi whispers. He places a hand on his own forehead. He doesn’t turn away from Dazai, doesn’t blink. His hand slowly falls to his throat where Dazai had almost kissed him. “I didn’t think I’d ever dance like that. I didn’t even know to dream of it.”
“There you go again,” Dazai whispers, and he’s not sure if he’s talking to Atsushi or to the ache cracking in his chest.
“Dancing didn’t seem like a battle of wits, though,” Atsushi says. “We just moved in the world together for a while.”
Dazai scowls. “No, dancing is strategic. A game of chess. Give and take. A battle to guess your opponent’s moves—”
Atsushi presses a finger between Dazai’s scrunched eyebrows. “Alright, Dazai-san. If you say so.”
“Are you patronizing me?”
“I’m sure people do it to you all the time. You just don’t notice.”
Dazai scoffs at that. “I notice everything.”
Atsushi pats his cheek. “I’m sure you do.”
“No, really!” He finds himself insisting. “It’s my thing. It’s what I’m known for! It pisses off so many people.”
Atsushi tugs impatiently on his waist. “I want to do the spin and dip thing again. How did we do that?”
“Ah, I knew I’d sweep you off your feet.”
“Yes, yes,” Atsushi says, trying to lead Dazai in what he remembers of the dance but only managing to press their bodies closer together. His cheeks are so red that Dazai fancies he feels the heat radiating off of them. “Mostly, I’m just trying to get you to stop talking.”
“Too bad for you!” Dazai crows, hauling Atsushi into another spin. “I never stop talking.”
***
“Who knew it was so much work to die?” Atsushi wheezes with a hand over his chest as he sits back-to-back with Dazai on top of one of the towers of Yokohama Bay Bridge. Dazai wheezes with him. The cold, thin air lances his ribs each time he tries to inhale.
Daizai raises his hand as if he were in a classroom. “Me, I did. It’s so much work, Atsushi-kun, you wouldn’t believe. Or maybe you do now.”
“Is that why your success rate needs improvement?”
“It is, among other things,” Dazai nods. “I don’t like pain, you know. Death without pain is hard to achieve, apparently.”
He tips his head and meets the back of Atsushi’s. They breathe together, alone in the winter night. The sky roars in their ears. The wind stings their faces and jerks at their clothes. Dazai suspects that there’s a chance they might even become too frozen to move if they wait much longer.
“So,” Atsushi shouts over the wind. “Are we going to do this?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Dazai returns.
Atsushi’s silent. Dazai lifts his foot, letting it be buoyed by the wind. He closes his eyes and imagines the fall, the impact.
Then, he imagines Atsushi falling. Atsushi hitting the water. Dazai has to open his eyes and push the image away.
Atsushi reaches out, icy fingers scrambling at Dazai’s wrist before he obligingly turns his palm and holds Atsushi's hand.
“I’m afraid,” Atsushi admits. “I’m terrified for the first time this entire night. Because here, in this moment with you, I don’t want to die. I want to dance and go to the movies and eat more delicious food. From here, it doesn't seem as hard to do as I always thought. I almost feel silly for taking so long to do them and other things I’ve never known I was allowed to dream of.”
His fingers tighten around Dazai’s.
“But then I think of tomorrow,” his voice cracks, and Dazai’s chest cracks with it. “That I’ll wake up, and everything will be impossible. I’ll still be at the same shitty jobs. I won’t be able to afford the movies. No one will ever dance with me again. I’ll be alive but too afraid to live, and I can’t go back to that. That’s the most painful way to die that I can imagine.”
There are a million words on Dazai’s tongue, crowding against his teeth. A million more in his head, loud and rushing like a cyclone. He doesn’t manage any of them before Atsushi stands, preternaturally graceful despite the dizzying height and the strong winds.
“What about you?” Atsushi holds out his hand. Dazai takes it. His fingertips curl around Atsushi’s wrist, and he wonders why the feel of another person's pulse beneath his skin suddenly feels so infinite.
Atsushi pulls him to his feet. Vertigo and adrenaline make his head float two paces and two seconds off from the rest of his body like he’s on the wrong side of tipsy. But Atsushi is warm and steady.
“I’m tired of this thing called living.” The wind steals the whispered words from Dazai’s lips, but Atsushi hears him anyway.
They stand in the world together, on top of the world together, with the wind whipping their hair and clothes. Dazai is frozen almost to the bone, and the coat he gave Atsushi whips about them like a sail threatening to take them both flying.
“I want another dance with you,” Dazai says, unbearably honest. He settles both hands on Atsushi’s waist.
The moon shines in Atsushi’s eyes when he says, “Yes.”
Dazai’s stomach swoops as they sway in an easy box step. Back and forth, side to side, back and forth, side to—
They step into the sky and fall.
“I’m sorry, Dazai-san. I think I’m too much of a coward, after all.”
Dazai opens his eyes. He hadn’t meant to close them. He'd intended to meet Death with his eyes open.
He wanted Atsushi to be the last thing he saw. He wanted to make sure—
He opens his eyes to find moonlight in his arms. Atsushi glows pale blue with gold, unblinking eyes. His very presence is heavier, crushing Dazai’s lungs.
(Or maybe that’s the gravitational force and air resistance crumpling his body.)
Atsushi snarls so deeply it reverberates in Dazai’s bones.
Dazai’s dazed by the light. For once, he doesn’t think. He’s falling, he’s finally free, watching as the visage of a beast melts seamlessly into his angel’s pretty face. He only wants to reach out and touch the wild moonbeam in his arms, to prick his thumb on the deadly fangs.
So, he does.
The blue light snaps out as soon as he touches Atsushi's face, leaving behind two fragile humans falling toward the churning sea.
“What?” Atsushi cries, confused. Then he looks from Dazai’s hand on his cheek to Dazai’s eyes, to the water below them and back.
“Right, I guess I should have told you about my ability before now—I’m sorry!” Dazai shouts over the wind.
“Let go!” Atsushi shouts back. He slaps Dazai’s hand away from his face with his own hand, which helps nothing. He seems to realize this and frantically tries to push Dazai’s hand from his.
Only to miss and push Dazai away by his face. Dazai bites his tongue when the heel of Atsushi’s hand hits his chin, metal flooding his gums. He thinks he hears Atsushi frantically apologize, but he ignores it. He flails, trying to disconnect the skin contact.
His eyes find Atsushi’s in the struggle. They’re wide, shining with tears that the wind dries before they can fall.
And so, so afraid.
“Atsushi-kun! Just let go!” Dazai shouts. “Push away! It’s OK!”
The air whips away his voice and threatens to rip his body apart like a rag doll. Atsushi either doesn't hear him or is too scared to understand, and Dazai makes his decision with bright, cold clarity.
Struggling against the wind resistance, Dazai places his palms on Atsushi’s chest and shoves.
There’s a moment where they cleave apart and the sky rushes in between them. And Dazai thinks good and Atsushi is going to make it and this is how it should be. He thinks I'm selfish because I want another dance, and one after that and I can never hold on to the things I care about—
Atsushi crashes back into him. Strong hands clutch above Dazai’s elbows, fingers digging into the material of his shirt and branding bands of bruises into his arms.
“No!” They shout it simultaneously for wildly different reasons.
Atsushi’s face contorts in determination as he throws his weight. They spin wildly, stars and sea bleeding like an out-of-control Ferris wheel. Dazai feels Atsushi’s knees close around his thighs before he throws his weight in the other direction until they stop spinning.
Until Atsushi is below him, positioned deliberately so he'll hit the water first.
“No!” Dazai screams again, but the air fills his lungs until there’s nothing left of him but the falling. He can’t even see Atsushi’s face. It’s obscured by the shadow of his own body and Atsushi’s moon-struck hair.
Dazai curls his fingers into fists and tries to tuck them away so they’ll never, ever touch Atsushi again. He viciously wishes that his hands would just fall the fuck off—
He never remembers hitting the water.
it’s cold—
darkness, pain, pain, help, where’s—
it’s heavy, it’s so heavy—
cold, cold, pressure splitting him inside out, please
it hurts, it hurts—
light and hands and snow angels and running and dancing and—
He wakes to pressure on his lips—
—and water burning a path out of his nose and mouth.
He turns on his side, coughing and gagging on briney water, eyes and nose on fire as his body shivers uncontrollably.
“Please, Dazai-san, it’s OK!” Atsushi calls desperately as his hands tug on Dazai’s arms.
The world spins and his stomach gurgles. Every nerve is exposed and raw; live with cold-burning-help electricity. Every inch of him feels bruised, every bone broken. He blinks, shore and sky and firework eyes swirling like he’s drunk on too much whiskey. Dazedly, he looks down to where Atsushi’s fingers are scrambling at him. His arms are tightly crossed, hands locked under his arms. His muscles are seized and rigid in this position, restricting his already struggling lungs.
“It’s OK!” Atsushi coughs and gasps on delirious repeat. “It’s OK now! You can let go! Let yourself breathe, Dazai, please—” he stops scratching at Dazai’s arms and instead places his hands on either side of Dazai’s stinging, bruised face. “See? It’s OK now. You can touch me, it’s OK. Just breathe—”
Dazai blinks slowly. Moonlight wreaths Atsushi in silver.
“Like an angel,” he murmurs.
He relaxes, hands falling numbly to the ground. Atsushi laughs, and it’s wet with snot and sea and tears. He bends down and kisses Dazai’s forehead. His lips, tinged blue, still feel warm against Dazai’s shivery skin.
“You,” Dazai inhales, coughs, and exhales shakily. “Missed.”
Atsushi blinks uncomprehendingly at him until he gets it all at once. “You’re ridiculous.” He leans down again and places his lips gently on Dazai’s. It’s the slightest pressure, the barest warmth. It’s—
“Familiar.” Dazai pouts. “Did you steal a kiss already when I was unconscious?” He coughs and grimaces when his stomach burbles. “How forward—”
Atsushi covers his mouth with his hand. “You really never stop talking,” he whispers with a watery smile.
Dazai shakes his head and shrugs.
Atsushi kisses Dazai again, but it’s gone as quickly as it came, like a brush of an angel’s wing. Dazai is very put out about it. He’d like to tell Atsushi just how much he is, but he sighs in ecstasy when Atsushi pushes his wet hair off his forehead and combs his fingers over his scalp.
Dazai’s sigh turns into a cough, and Atsushi quickly crawls behind him and props his head up on his thighs.
“I’m sorry,” Atsushi says. His fingers are still in Dazai’s hair, and Dazai tries to keep himself still, lest he make Atsushi too aware of himself and he stops. “I was selfish after all.”
“It’s not wrong to want to live,” Dazai whispers around his raw throat.
Atsushi coughs. It’s wet, heavy, and sounds painful. Dazai eyes Atsushi, who looks tired but unbroken from the fatal fall and the treacherous swim to shore. Some distant part of his mind picks up the scattered puzzle pieces of Atsushi and tries to reassemble them with the new information.
Mostly, Dazai just tries to breathe freezing air into his tender lungs.
“I think I’m a coward because I wanted to live,” Atsushi says, voice hoarse and shredded. “But I’m selfish because I didn’t want you to die, either.”
Dazai stares at the stars and breathes because what does he say to that? He feels the phantom grip of Atsushi’s hands on his upper arms, his knees locked around Dazai's hips. The snarl of determination as Atsushi wrestled with Dazai and the elements to ensure he impacted first.
What can Dazai say in response to something as simple and incomprehensibly big as I want you here with me?
So he just says, “Atsushi-kun.”
Atsushi leans over him, his lips bruised with the cold. The stars weave through his wet hair like a loving crown.
Dazai grins, a little punch-drunk.
“There’s my angel.”
***
“You left,” Dazai accuses as he steps onto the rooftop where they first met three days later. He still aches when he moves. “It was a weird role reversal for me.”
Atsushi looks over his shoulder. His eyes are tired, but his smile breaks over his features like a sunrise.
(Surely, Dazai’s chest will eventually run out of space to crack. Or will he keep cracking down the middle every time Atsushi smiles at him from now until eternity?)
He turns and hurries to Dazai like he’s going to—jump into his arms? Kiss him? But then he stops himself only a step away, eyes wide and shoulders nearly up to his ears.
“I, uhm. I’m glad to see you—that you’re doing well. I. Wanted to return your coat to you.” He looks down at the coat that’s been dry-cleaned with money Atsushi probably can’t spare. It's folded as gently and neatly as possible in his arms.
“You didn’t want to keep it?" Dazai asks. "As a memento?”
Atsushi shakes his head. “I think this is really important to you, isn’t it? Besides, it suits you best.”
The wind picks up, cold and clean. Atsushi unfolds the coat, careful not to let it touch the ground. He holds it up. Dazai stares for a beat and steps forward, placing an arm through the sleeve. He turns his back to Atsushi, lets him guide his other arm into the remaining sleeve, and lift the coat over his shoulders. He turns back around, closer than before, not giving Atsushi any quarter.
Atsushi’s shoulders are still tense around his ears, but he doesn’t seem interested in shying away. He smoothes out the lines of Dazai's collar and tugs the wrinkles out of the sleeves. He withdraws his hands, but Dazai loosely entangles their fingers before he can completely retreat.
“You gallantly rescued me and brought me to Yosano. And then you left,” Dazai repeats. “And don’t say that Yosano intimidated you. You two got on a little too well.”
He’s not pouting about that.
“I have a job.”
“That you quit the same morning you left.”
Atsushi’s lips press together. “It’s not nice to stalk, Dazai-san.”
“Too bad. It’s what I do. I notice things. I get into other people’s business. I talk too much.”
“I know,” Atsushi says with a fond tilt of his head.
“You have the weirdest reactions, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai says. “It’s fascinating.”
“If you say so.”
“So you left for a job you quit,” Dazai recaps. “And you didn’t come back?”
Atsushi stays quiet.
“If it’s work you’re worried about, there was a job offer. I very clearly said, ‘You should join the Armed Detective Agency’.”
“And I said that you probably don’t have the authority to decide that,” Atsushi quips back.
“Ah, see? You were there. I was beginning to wonder if the concussion scrambled the sequence of events for me. So you remember the part where the president told you to report to his office that afternoon for the paperwork?”
Atsushi’s expression goes flat and considerably less amused. “Yes.”
“You left,” Dazai repeats for the third time, and even more petulantly, “while I was asleep.”
Atsushi’s gaze softens a little. “I am sorry about that part.”
“Why did you leave?”
Atsushi shrugs, dipping his eyes to study their entangled fingers. “I’d just tried to kill myself? But I survived, and then I kissed someone. And then I got a job offer for which I’m woefully underqualified? It was a lot to process.”
Was it really? Huh. “Weird.”
Atsushi rolls his eyes but isn’t offended. “I activated the ability that I denied most of my life and was able to somewhat control it,” he adds. “That's pretty big, too.”
Dazai opens his mouth to bring up the job offer again.
“Did you know who I was? What I was?” Atsushi interrupts. “Is that why you spoke with me? Why asked me to... to commit suicide with you? To see what I can do?”
Dazai closes his mouth and exhales through his nose. “No,” he says. And then, before Atsushi can fully relax his shoulders, “Yes. I don’t know.” At Atsushi’s patient, watchful face, he sighs. “I was just poking around when I saw the police lights and the broken window. I saw the orange heel on the stairs and followed them up to the roof, where I found an angel in a ridiculous Sailor Venus outfit.”
A blush blooms across Atsushi’s cheeks, and Dazai brushes his thumb across the skin, marveling at how Atsushi lets him touch.
“I’m rarely this honest, you know,” Dazai murmurs. “I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it in great detail.”
“It’s like wearing socks on the wrong feet,” Dazai immediately explains.
The skin at the corner of Atsushi’s eyes crinkles when he smiles. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as socks on the wrong feet.”
“You’d think that. It's what they tell you—”
“Who’s they?” Atsushi murmurs.
“—but it still feels off in your shoes. No, wait!” Dazai holds up a hand because now he’s got it. “It’s more like déjà vu.”
Atsushi hums thoughtfully. “Familiar but maddeningly incongruent?”
“Yes! Atsushi-kun gets me.”
“I think I would probably have to work much harder to do that,” Atsushi says, reaching up to push Dazai’s hair out of his eyes like he did three nights ago. “I wouldn’t mind it, though.”
The space between them is electric. For some reason, Dazai’s heart pounds in his chest, and his stomach swoops like he’s about to step off of that tower again.
“I promised someone I would live and do good,” Dazai whispers. Saying it out loud isn't as eviscerating as he thought it would be, and he hates that. He thought it would be impossible to codify the memory of Odasaku’s lifeblood soaking Dazai’s clothes into simple words. He never imagined shaping into language the touch of Odasaku’s hand against his face and how his fading smile hooked into Dazai and pulled him inside out. How it fissured wounds into him that he resents and cherishes.
“But I get so tired,” he continues. “And I thought—I thought a hundred things. I thought that if I died helping someone else, then I wouldn’t break the promise. That the promise had no expiration date, and surely I'd done enough, and it was OK to let go. I thought that you were beautiful and sad and that maybe we could dance together and fall together, whatever that meant.” He tightens his hold on Atsushi’s hand.
“During the night, I did put together that you were probably the gifted we’d been tasked with searching for a few months ago. The twisted metal bars at the club was you, wasn’t it?” Dazai asks, mentally touching the puzzle pieces he’d put together three days ago. “Did someone make you angry? No, that’s not you. You did that for someone else. And then you fled the scene up the fire escape so unnaturally fast that the police didn’t even consider the rooftop as a viable option for the search.”
Gold briefly swallows all other color in Atsushi’s eyes as he scowls. “There was a rude customer.”
Dazai chuckles, and it’s real, if a little stilted. “I’m sure that’s an incredible understatement. Anyway, I guessed that you were the case that got away. I thought your ability might save you where I couldn’t. I thought about those things, but I also thought nothing at all.
“Meeting you was familiar and incongruent,” he concludes. “I got swept up in the night.”
Atsushi frowns. “Meeting me was wearing socks on the wrong feet and déjà vu?”
Dazai furrows his brow thoughtfully. “Hm, well. I admit that doesn’t sound as romantic as it feels.”
“Are you?” Atsushi asks with unwarranted skepticism. “Trying to be romantic?”
“Well, yes, Atsushi-kun. I’ve done all the proper courting, you know? I got you a coat when you were cold—two of them!”
“One of them was stolen—”
“I took you to dinner at a fancy restaurant.”
“That we’re probably banned from—”
“I got you clothes! Even though your Sailor Venus outfit was really very nice for me. I sacrificed for you.”
“I appreciate your great chivalry, Dazai-san,” Atsushi deadpans.
“I provided you with an option for a better-paying job! With benefits!”
“I haven’t known you long, but I can guess how you think. You definitely have reasons you want me to join other than my benefit.”
“Of course I do!” Dazai exclaims, waving an arm without thinking and dragging Atsushi along with him. “There are things coming to this city, not just the Guild, and you have a powerful ability! And you’re kind and good. Of course, I’d use the things I don’t have myself to fight our enemies.”
Atsushi looks at him, his expression wide with surprise and something between pity and tenderness that Dazai can't look at for long. It occurs to him that he's maybe just revealed too many of his cards too early in this particular game of give-and-take.
(Was he playing such a game with Atsushi now? Life is give-and-take, a back-and-forth, a chess game embodied in a dance. If he is, Dazai’s not sure at the moment what, exactly, he's taking.
He’s not sure what he’s giving. But the crack in his chest suggests that he’s giving more than he ever intended.)
Whatever. He committed to this gross honesty thing already. Might as well see it through.
“Was that night some sort of recruitment technique?” Atsushi asks again. “Was it a way to manipulate me to work for the Agency—or for you, at least, if I refused to work for them?”
“No,” Dazai says fiercely. “I saw police lights, an orange high heel on the stairs, and an angel on the roof. You were someone I wanted to spend my last day with. You became someone I wished I had done everything on earth with.”
“So if I say no to the Agency—”
“I’ll be incredibly obnoxious about it,” Dazai admits. “But I’d still want to spend time with you doing everything you haven’t done before: movies, dancing. What else do you want to do? We can make a list. Tokyo? A concert? Horse racing? Poetry readings? Baseball?”
“Baseball?” Atsushi repeats with a startled laugh. “As in watching it? Or do you mean playing?”
“One sounds atrociously boring, and the other sounds like too much work.”
“But you’d do it?" Atsushi asks. "If I wanted to try it?”
“Yes,” Dazai sighs. “Stop laughing. This is a two-way street. You’d have to wear the Sailor Venus outfit as a compromise, of course.”
“Of course,” Atsushi smiles. “Or we can just go to an aquarium.”
Dazai perks up. “Oh! Is that our next date?”
Atsushi inhales sharply, eyes widening. “Is it?”
“I don’t know! You’re the one who asked me out.”
“Did I?” Atsushi mumbles dazedly.
“Pick me up after ten tomorrow?”
Atsushi’s eyebrows draw together. “Don’t you have work?”
“Not if it’s ten in the evening.”
“Won’t they be closed…? No, Dazai-san. We’re not breaking into the aquarium.”
“Break into the aquarium after hours for a picnic dinner, you say? Atsushi-kun! I didn't know you were such a romantic.”
“I can't cook,” Atsushi sighs, resigned. “How about you?”
Dazai beams. “Not a thing! I’ll worry about those details.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Atsushi grumbles. “I don’t even know where you live.”
“Hm,” Dazai hums, framing Atsushi’s face with his hands. “Nothing for it. I guess you’ll have to stay over tonight.” Then he leans forward and kisses Atsushi, laughing when Atsushi squeaks adorably and sighing when Atsushi opens up to him, bright and sweet and warm.
“I filled out the Agency's paperwork yesterday,” Atsushi whispers when they part.
“What, really? But…”
“Someone named Kunikida-san said that he 'is not obligated to share information about new hires with people who don’t show up to work’.”
“That, I—I had a concussion!”
Atsushi laughs, stands on his toes, and kisses Dazai’s forehead. “Your co-workers seem nice. I really liked Yosano-sensei.”
“That lack of self-preservation? One of the things I find charming about you.”
“I’m sure she’s lovely,” Atsushi insists.
Dazai hums. He presses a finger pad into the soft dip between Atsushi's knuckles, wondering at the strength and fragility he holds in his hand.
“When do you start?” He asks.
“Day after tomorrow.”
“Well, nothing for it,” Dazai sighs. “I guess we’ll need to do as many things as possible from our list today and tomorrow before everyone else starts hogging you.”
“You wanted me to work there.”
“Before I remembered how selfish I am.”
“I’m selfish, too, then,” Atsushi says. “What’s first?” He tugs Dazai’s hand, and they head toward the stairwell together.
“How do you feel about laser tag?”
“Like I’ve only ever vaguely heard of it.”
“Great. That means I’ll annihilate you. Let’s do it.”
Atsushi snorts indelicately. He stops abruptly, tugging on Dazai’s hand to make him turn to face him. He hesitates before firework eyes determinedly meet his own.
“You said earlier that you weren’t good or kind and needed others to be those things. I just want you to know that I do think you’re kind. Maybe not in the ways that someone else is or you think you should be, but you were kind to me in all the ways I needed that night. And it was the most beautiful night I’ve ever had.”
His face flushes red, and whatever courage he has to meet Dazai’s eyes leaves him. He ducks his head, shoulders hitching around his ears.
“I just think you should hear that,” Atsushi stubbornly tells their feet.
Dazai is rarely at a loss for words, but this is just one of the many firsts he's experienced around Atsushi. He feels cracked down the middle like his chest might split and fly apart. He doesn’t know what to do with that except lean down and kiss Atsushi again.
He falls that day. It feels like he’s been falling since he stepped foot on the rooftop three days ago. Except with his chest split open and flying apart, falling feels a lot like rising.
end.