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Before Dazai goes underground for two years, he comes back to the thing that he’ll miss the most on the surface.
But first he gets a haircut. Lord knows when the next time he’ll get to go to a barbershop will be. Or if he’ll kill himself before he even gets the chance to since he’s committing himself to an indefinite amount of time rotting away in hiding to fulfill a promise he made to a now-dead friend and the ridiculous irony of it might just finally make him end it all during one of those inexorably lonely, lonely days.
(That was a joke).
Yes, he gets a haircut. And a new outfit. Because he doesn’t remember the last time he wore something that he actually wanted to wear.
People have fashion senses. Humans wear clothes they like.
Unfortunately, according to the evidence, he seems to have the fashion sense of a sad little college student who uses The Dead Poet’s Society and buying stationary as their only emotional support to get them through their trainwreck of a life, but it’s admittedly better than the black and white suit.
It’s better than Mori’s coat.
Plus, the pants came free with the dress shirt. The bolo tie was just him experimenting.
He makes it to the threshold of Chuuya’s apartment before his partner gives him his first threat of the night.
“I’ll give you five seconds to get the fuck out of here before I alert headquarters.”
“We both know you won’t,” Dazai says calmly, slipping out of his new shoes. They’re the only things he takes off. If it were even just a month ago, he’d be shedding everything at a languid but habitual pace, leaving a trail of breadcrumb clothes, bandages, tools, his phone, ID, behind him, before reaching Chuuya, who would do the rest of the undressing for him, because even that got tiresome.
Dazai doesn’t do that this time. There’s only so much you can leave at the door that you’re about to walk out of.
Trembling and having nowhere else to go, he leans against the wall. His eyes never leave his.
Chuuya glares at him from across the room. It’s the middle of the night. He’s in pajamas, but he probably hasn’t slept. “I should report you,” he points out.
“I know.” Dazai replies. He was talking in that familiar, hollow way—as if his voice was just a flowing stream and the words were merely leaves, or untethered lily pads, floating on the water. Aimless, but still needing to pass through. “Chuuya?”
“What?” his partner barks, eyes flashing amidst the darkness. The spite in his voice is evident: slapping across the distance between them like a jagged metronome. To anyone but Dazai, it would’ve looked like anger. Betrayal. Disgust.
And maybe it was all those things. Did he even have a right to know anymore?
He inhales slowly, letting the air leave his lungs, like that one last molecule of oxygen that says goodbye right before exiting a gas chamber, and says, “Can I stay with you tonight?”
The request earns him a dry, bitter laugh, almost as vacant as the distance that separates them: It metastasized with each second, expanding infinitely as emptiness so often does, until nothing becomes more nothing, until there is too much of it to go around.
Dazai asks again, “Can I stay with you tonight?”
“Fuck no.” It sounds like the shattering of glass on cold stone: cracking, with no warmth to catch the fallen pieces. “Fuck you.” Chuuya laughs again. It sounds like bones breaking underneath tired flesh. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
“I’m not shitting you.” Dazai says matter of factly. He raises his chin, tries to look resolute. “Can I stay with you tonight?” He tells himself it’s the last time he’ll ask. If the answer’s still the same, he’ll put his shoes back on and walk out of here for God knows how long. He tells himself three times is enough.
Even though he wants to keep asking, what’s enough is what will happen.
“What, you want one last good fuck before you move on to somebody else?” Chuuya eventually says, fists clenched at his sides and cleaving the silence. His mouth wraps around his words sharply, teetering off composure like a trapeze rope about to snap. “Do you just want to make fun of me? Is that it? Do you—“
“No.” Dazai interrupts, unable to take it anymore. Everything hurts.
He steps towards Chuuya, who recoils out of reflex.
Or maybe it was duty. Hatred?
How was he supposed to know? He never thought he’d be here.
Dazai walks towards him. Chuuya finds himself choked in anticipation, breath hitching slightly as his back grazes the wall behind him. With the way his hands are shaking, Dazai knows that For The Tainted Sorrow is frantically snarling to do something. Hurt him back. Chew off a limb. Sink dull teeth into No Longer Human—not enough to swallow whole, but deep enough to cut skin. Draw blood.
Despite these warning signs, Dazai keeps walking towards Chuuya until his back actually touches the wall. Having nowhere to go, he lets himself be towered over by Dazai, who, in their three short years together, has always felt smaller. Especially now.
He leans forward silently. Someone watching might have thought he was bowing, but his forehead soon falls softly onto Chuuya’s hard shoulder, and before Chuuya can react, Dazai lets out a shaky breath and whispers, “Just tonight. Just tonight. Just tonight . . .”
“Dazai—”
“It’s all I ask.” Dazai insists, not lifting his head from Chuuya’s shoulder. Not wanting to breathe just yet. “Please.”
Exactly one second before all the anger melts from his body, Chuuya feels his shirt grow wet underneath Dazai’s shut eyes.
And that was that.
Of course. He didn’t have a choice.
When it comes to Dazai, Chuuya toppled gods, moved mountains—he’d march up to the gates of hell if Dazai needed him to.
But this time, Dazai’s gone somewhere Chuuya can’t follow.
He can’t. No one knows him like Chuuya does, and he can’t.
He just can’t.
He sighs in tired defeat, lifting Dazai’s head up gently until his face is level with his. Chuuya wipes away the tears, fingers damp against clammy skin. It occurs to both of them that nobody in the world must have ever done this for Dazai.
He whispers, “Don’t cry.”
Dazai opens his mouth and lets out the most splintered noise.
“Hey. It’s alright. Don’t cry.”
He starts sobbing.
Dazai almost never cries—to the point where he forgets what it’s like until he does it again. And when he does, he’s gone.
Even his sadness got lost sometimes.
Chuuya knows this.
He also knows that Dazai wouldn’t have come here—probably wasn’t even planning on coming here until the last minute—if he isn’t desperate. Reached his limit of keeping everything in.
He didn’t show up for anything reckless. Or to make do on any of the old debts the both of them had piled up on top of each other, like islands stacked haphazardly in precious hopes of finally touching the sky.
There was no need for bargaining or favors. Dazai wasn’t even asking for permission anymore.
Chuuya pulls him to his chest, feeling saltwater bleed through the fabric of his shirt almost instantly. He wraps his arms around the both of them as he slowly slides down to the floor, making their bodies crash together gently; his legs tucked around Dazai as if he could protect him from whatever it was that had made him run out for good this time.
Dazai keeps crying. He sniffles occasionally against Chuuya’s shirt and awkwardly apologizes every once in a while for the mess he’s making. Chuuya doesn’t care.
When did things get so wrong? Weren’t they just two kids a moment ago?
They’re pretty sure an eternity—and then some—passes.
Dazai eventually stops, and when he does, he threads skinny arms around Chuuya and plops his forehead against his torso.
“You just cried all over my shirt and now you want to cuddle?”
“Mhmm.” Dazai murmurs.
“Unbelievable.”
“You smell nice,” Dazai confesses. “Usually you smell gross because of work but,” He buries his face deeper, pressing his nose flat against Chuuya’s chest in a way that’s almost funny. “But right now you smell nice.”
“Yeah? What do I smell like?”
“You smell like Chuuya.” Dazai says simply, his voice muffled. A beat passes before he comes up for air, meeting the other’s gaze. He smiles softly. “My Chuuya.”
His heart convulses.
He doesn’t realize that he suddenly starts clawing at Dazai’s vest, numbly searching for the buttons and almost snapping them out of the holes, until Dazai, bewildered, places both hands on his, stopping them. He pulls back, eyes wide. “Hey. I . . . I didn’t come here for—”
“I know. Fuck.” Chuuya snaps. “Shit.”
“Chuuya?”
“Just take this off.”
“Why?”
His hands stumble over a button, and he curses under his breath, not answering Dazai.
“Chuuya—“
“It isn’t you.” Chuuya finally says, jerking his head up to meet the other’s eyes. “It isn’t . . . you.” His voice catches on the last word, but he looks away immediately after saying it, focusing and fumbling over Dazai’s dress shirt now. A part of him’s surprised when he first sees the colorful blue stripes, like IV lines, that pattern the shirt; another’s nonplussed, as if he was there when Dazai had picked out the shirt earlier that day and had only just temporarily forgotten about it until now.
For a moment, they both just sit there in the aftermath of Chuuya’s outburst.
Then, quietly, “It isn’t me?”
“Hell no.”
“I thought you said blue was my color.”
“When did I say that?”
“Osaka. A few months ago. You were drunk.”
“What about you?”
“I was there. You said blue was my color.”
“You said we’d be partners forever.”
A beat.
“. . . It could be you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“But not yet.”
“Not yet?”
“No.”
“No.” Dazai agrees. “Not yet.”
———
He’s gone come morning.
He took a shirt.
Chuuya thinks he’s imagining it at first, but no, one of his shirts is definitely gone.
He doesn’t know when he manages to get out of bed. Take a shower. Go to work. Learn to be alone. Get used to living.
It’s like that for what feels like forever.
He doesn’t see Dazai again.
It’s been years, so certainly it must all be over.
But, every once in a while, Chuuya loses another shirt—only to find it again, neatly folded, right where he left it. It’s also at that same time that he notices another one. Or two. Or three. Are missing.
After a bit, he stops wondering where they’ve gone. Or if they ended up somewhere he couldn’t possibly come looking for them anymore.
No, after a while, he stops wondering.
He just waits. For them to show up whenever.
For them to come back when they’re ready.