Work Text:
It’s a cool day in early October when Chuuya decides it’s better to speak than to die and says to Dazai, “Hey, idiot. There’s this… thing I wanna show you.”
They’ve been mostly sitting in silence for the past few hours while Ane-san and the Boss have been away at some secret meeting—each of them sprawled over an armchair in the Port Mafia Headquarters, both of which they’d dragged up to the window. It’s no surprise the bandage-wasting-device is being unproductive as usual, but Chuuya has been trying and struggling to write reports on his and Dazai’s most recent missions.
Dazai glances up from the book he’s reading, for once not his morbid suicide book, and raises an eyebrow. His voice is a touch sharp when he says, “What?”
Chuuya’s heart pounds so loud he’s worried Dazai can hear it. “There’s this thing,” he mutters, already wishing he could back out, “that I wanna show you.”
Dazai maintains his blank stare for all of about three seconds, and then he giggles.
Okay, so it’s even worse than Chuuya thought.
“Chibikko-kun,” Dazai starts, amused, “are you asking me on a date?”
Chuuya internally groans. “No, it’s not a date, you moron, it’s just—”
“Ah~ but Chuuya can’t take it back now,” Dazai interjects with a teasing smirk.
Frowning, Chuuya picks up his forgotten pen, deciding to revert his attention back to his stupid reports and ignore Dazai for the rest of all time. But Dazai is suddenly there, flung across Chuuya, pressing the heel of his hand against Chuuya’s crotch.
“Hey,” he says quietly, and Chuuya tries not to make any embarrassing noises. “I—Sorry. For laughing in Chuuya’s face.”
“It’s nothing you haven’t done before,” Chuuya mumbles. He really just wants to stop talking about it. He doesn’t like Dazai apologizing to him either; something about it ticks him off.
Chuuya shouldn’t have brought anything up to begin with. It does sound too much like a date—taking Dazai to see something he cares about, some place that actually means something to him. And he and Dazai most certainly do not have that kind of relationship. Not even close. They just… hook up, and go to the arcade together. And maybe it’s gotten less insufferable dealing with Dazai’s mood swings, Chuuya thinks, and they bicker much less than they used to—they might even get along sometimes—
“I mean, it’s obviously not a date,” Dazai says matter-of-factly. He moves his hand off Chuuya and lets his body fall lax, head lolling over the armrest so his bandaged throat is exposed, all of the blood rushing to his head while all of Chuuya’s blood rushes to—
“Obviously not,” Chuuya bites, voice clipped.
Dazai nods his head as much as he can given the distorted position he’s in. “Okay. When are we going to see this special thing Chuuya brought for show and tell?”
“It’s not special,” Chuuya snaps. “And your hedonistic bandaged ass is lying all over my work. Boss hates wrinkles and you goddamn know it.”
“Awh, poor chibi,” Dazai coos sarcastically, lifting his head. “Will the slug stop being all pissy if I give him a blowjob? ‘Cause this is getting a little weird, Chibikko-kun, I have to say~ So testy over an innocent joke. It’s not like it is a date, anyway.” He pauses. “Right?”
Chuuya clenches his hand into a fist and sighs. Resignedly he thinks, To hell with it. He’d be a moron to turn down a blowjob from Dazai. “Right.”
“Right,” Dazai repeats mockingly, and Chuuya doesn’t even need to look to know that Dazai rolls his eyes. Even so he says, “Okay. I’m gonna suck Chuuya’s dick now. Stop pouting and don’t move.”
—
Dazai insists that they go the next day they aren’t assigned a mission. Chuuya had figured—hoped—they would both pretend to forget about it, and maybe Dazai actually would have, even if Chuuya would have been haunted by it. But the brat is relentless, mercilessly so.
“It’s not supposed to be windy this time of year,” Dazai grumbles as they trek along the riverbank, wrapping his arms around himself.
From under his drawn-up hood, Chuuya glances sideways at Dazai. The wind whips his hair across his face, strands catching on his lashes and sticking to his lips like damp paper. Dazai doesn’t try to fix it, just lets it tear around while he stares straight ahead like he’s not being thrashed. Chuuya would say something, but Dazai’s stubbornness is almost amusing. And the sight of him hugging himself like a stray left out in the rain would actually be funny, if it didn’t look so honest.
Dazai mutters, “I deserve a more comfortable death than this.”
“You wanted this, not me,” Chuuya shrugs, continuing to lead them through the dense thicket of trees.
He’d worn a scarf himself, having taken a single look out the window when Dazai had barrelled energetically through his apartment, waking him up infernally, demanding they go out—if Dazai had just looked, too, he would have seen the gusts of wind that were trying to rip the trees from their roots.
“Hey!” Dazai protests indignantly. “Not fair, slug. You asked me on a date, and I very kindly sucked your dick afterwards. This is all you. Weirdo.”
“It’s not a fucking date,” Chuuya retorts, but it lacks heat. “Should’ve stolen that Dostoyevsky’s ushanka or something.”
Dazai pretends to gag. “Ugh, not that Russian demon again.”
They keep walking against the wind, Dazai’s hair tossing relentlessly in every direction. He hunches his shoulders as he curls further inward, arms wrapped tight around himself, gripping his own sleeves to shelter. It’s somehow one of the most pitiful things Chuuya has seen Dazai do, despite the unending plethora of pathetic behaviors the bandaged idiot engages in.
“This is the worst,” Dazai sulks.
Chuuya rolls his eyes so hard it feels like it drags his whole skull with it. “You’re the worst,” he mutters, but he yanks his scarf off and shoves it at Dazai anyway. “Now stop whining. Your voice is even more annoying when you complain.”
Clutching the scarf against himself where Chuuya had pushed it into his chest, Dazai tilts his head. After a drawn-out pause, he says, “I thought you said this wasn’t a date, slug.”
And it’s not.
Chuuya doesn’t respond. Shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and keeps walking. In his periphery, half-blocked by his hood, Chuuya watches as Dazai holds the scarf like he’s not sure what to do with it. At length, he wraps it carefully around himself, looping it again and again until he’s swallowed by it, his bandaged head barely peeking out from the puffball of wool like a tired little ghost.
Behind the layers of fuzz, Dazai keeps his mouth shut.
That morning, Chuuya had even told the brat to wear his own scarf. Dazai had had a vaguely curious, ultimately unreadable look on his face, but Chuuya had simply glanced away from the discerning, inscrutable gaze and tried to appear busy. Whatever reaction Dazai is having now is worse.
After some considerable time walking side-by-side in silence, hearing only the wind clawing through the trees and hissing past their ears, the roaring pulse of the river, Dazai asks, “How far is this thing anyway? Pretty soon here, I’m gonna get bored and throw myself in there.” He motions dully to the fierce surge of water. “This better be as special as you say it is, Chibikko-kun.”
“I never said it was special,” Chuuya gripes heatedly. “Drown yourself if you want, shitty Dazai, but take off my scarf first. Got it?”
Dazai sighs, big and deflating. “I’m already drowning in this thing just fine, I guess.”
Chuuya briefly thinks about granting Dazai his wish after all and shoving him clean off the side of the riverbank. “That complaining I hear? I’ll take it back.”
Slinking down lower into the soft layers of warmth, Dazai shrinks away from Chuuya’s outstretched hand and says meekly, “No. Don’t be like that, slug.”
Chuuya tilts his head up at the sky in disbelief, shoving his hand back in his pocket. “You’re a child. A spoiled brat. You know that, right?”
He can’t make out Dazai’s expression, or lack thereof, over the scarf avalanche. But after a few seconds, Dazai says, “So are we almost there or what? I am seriously getting tired of walking.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chuuya waves off dismissively, “I know your lazy ass is reaching its limit. We’re almost there.”
“How nice of Chuuya to consider my delicate, fragile constitution when planning our date.”
“Shut up.”
The path of the riverbank begins to narrow until it’s barely more than a muddy edge. The forest presses in on one side, the river slick and rapid on the other. Dazai wrinkles his nose, slowing as he gingerly assesses the mud splattering his shoes with each step and sighing in dismay.
Chuuya slows, too, casting an unimpressed look back at Dazai that he doesn’t see, too afflicted by his muddy shoes. Just as there’s nowhere to keep walking, the path eaten away by roots and moss, Chuuya cuts into the trees, boots crunching over the dry underbrush.
“We’re going in there?” Dazai asks.
“We sure as hell didn’t come out here to go swimming.”
Chuuya doesn’t wait for a reply—just ducks beneath a branch and disappears between the trees. Dazai stares after him for a beat, then sighs and follows.
The shift is immediate—the rush of water falls away, the wind dampens, replaced by the hush of leaves and earth underfoot. Light slants through the canopy, smattering the forest floor with dancing spots of light. Dazai trails behind Chuuya as he navigates the underbrush without effort, idly dodging a low-hanging branch that snaps back in his face when Chuuya pushes past it. They trudge through the forest for only a few scant minutes longer. When Dazai crawls out from under a massive tangle of branches after Chuuya, unhappily surveying the crushed leaves stuck to his slacks and bandages, he looks up only at the acute realization that the air feels strangely still—muffled, eerily calm.
Hooking his fingers in the front of Chuuya’s scarf, Dazai haltingly tugs it down as he gazes around, loosening the layers as though unsure. There’s something like vague surprise on his face as he takes in the mossy clearing, like he hadn’t actually expected to be fazed by Chuuya’s surprise. Outside, the trees rattle with wind, but inside the clearing, the air barely stirs. It’s quiet, like the wind has been stopped just at the edge, unsure if it’s allowed in.
Abruptly, a gust of wind spirals down from above, hitting the trees like a wave, but instead of rushing, it drifts, swirls, vanishes. It’s as though the clearing swallows it whole. An old well sits in the heart, half-swallowed by time. Its stone rim is round and smooth, the edges stained dark with centuries of rain and fallen leaves. Cracks run through the stones like veins, filled with creeping moss and tiny roots. Above it, the remnants of a shimenawa rope still clings to two wooden posts, the sacred twine frayed and sagging, its paper charms long since disintegrated or eaten by rain. A faint iron smell hangs near the mouth of the well—earthy, wet, and deep.
No one has drawn water here in years. Decades. Maybe more. But the space still feels… kept. Not maintained. Left alone.
Dazai says, “A well?”
Chuuya looks at him, not quite sure what to say now that they’re here. “Uh-huh. An abandoned well.”
“Why did you bring me here?” Dazai asks, and his tone isn’t sharp or mean or cutting—it’s almost confused, and it makes something twist in Chuuya’s chest.
And it’s a good question. Why did Chuuya bring Dazai here? What had been the compulsion? What had made him think it was a good idea to veer so far off-kilter their authorized script? He still isn’t sure he knows, even as they stand here in the middle of the clearing, staring at each other from across the well.
“I… come here… when I want to be alone. Need to be alone.”
Dazai’s blank expression doesn’t change. “So why did you bring me here?”
At a loss for some excuse that makes sense—Chuuya doesn’t even know what he’d be trying to excuse or justify, he doesn’t even know what he wanted to get out of this—he shrugs, turning away from Dazai and fitting his hands over the cool stone of the well’s mouth. It’s such a good question that he doesn’t know how to answer it, even to himself.
Looking down into the void, Chuuya says, “This well is… kinda like you. Bottomless. Cold.” He folds himself down to his elbows and tilts his head sideways, meeting Dazai’s gaze again. “Hollow.”
Dazai nods slowly, like he gets it, and Chuuya doesn’t know if he does, how he could. He can’t even figure it out himself. But Dazai’s mind works in a way Chuuya can’t understand, not for the life of him, and the brat is regrettably too smart to be wrong about something once he’s solved it. The thought strips Chuuya raw, exposes him, though he doesn’t even know what he’s just exposed.
For once, the air is too still.
Dazai drifts wordlessly up to the well, perching himself atop the rim across from Chuuya. One leg dangling, the other drawn up loosely, he leans against the splintered wooden post and tilts his head back just slightly. Eyes half-lidded, he watches the light filter through the leaves above, looking like he’s not really watching at all. His fingers brush the stone rim absently, fingers tapping once, a habit Chuuya has come to associate with that empty shift in Dazai’s presence, when he goes lifeless and distant. But as Chuuya looks at him now, Dazai is still here. Detached, yes. But not gone. That means that whatever he’s feeling, it’s not bad. Not enough to make him leave, anyway.
Eventually, Dazai says, “Not your worst, slug… But you know, this is still really gay.”
Short-circuiting, Chuuya lets out a strangled sort of “Wha—!?” followed by a series of expletives rained down like a torrent that make Dazai smile serenely. A halo damn near glows atop his stupid bandaged skull, so Chuuya chucks a handful of small rocks at his head while laying into him.
No matter what strangely familiar moments they may have, he can’t let himself forget that Dazai is still a catastrophe dressed like a person, a disaster in motion, a walking hellion—somewhere between charming and apocalyptic. Whatever thrill he brings, he poses a threat in equal measure.
When Chuuya stops going berserk and actually looks at Dazai, though, there’s the slightest tinge of color dusting his cheeks. It’s as much truth or sincerity as Chuuya will probably ever get from Dazai about anything, so he tucks it away for some other time.
He doesn’t know how long they stay there by the well, not a word spoken between them—only that the slanted ribbons of sunlight begin to catch on the dust and pollen hanging in the air like sinewy gold thread. The trees along the edges of the clearing, tall and still, stretch long shadows across the mossy ground, blurring where the light gives out. Every leaf caught by the sun seems to glow from within—sharp amber, soft gold, bleeding into rust. The edge of darkness, the kind of light that makes everything look like it’s been dipped in warm honey, slow and quiet and thick.
After awhile, Chuuya stands. There’s nothing left to say, and less to stay for. They leave without speaking. The forest swallows the clearing behind them, and Dazai trails one step behind, like always.
Chuuya keeps his eyes ahead.
Behind him is everything he can’t afford to want.