Itās been two weeks since the incident with Shibusawa. Dazai knows this, because heās all but counted the minutes. Itās really just another thing to do in the emptiness, since the city is too busy putting itself back together to have anything for the Agency to do. Thereās no business, and so everyone has been sitting around doing nothing, wrapping up what little paperwork they needed to finish and cleaning up the office, and then just...filling the silence with their usual antics. Not that Dazai can focus entirely on them, except when heās getting dragged into them himself or taking the opportunity to distract himself by giving Kunikida a hard time.Ā
He...heās trying very hard to do just that, in fact. He doubts anyone else but Ranpo might notice that heās working a little too hard at and being a little too loud with his shenanigans, but he is --- the other option is to start thinking again, and he doesnāt want to do that. So he tries instead to poke at Atsushi, harass Kunikida, involve himself with the rest of them at the Agency. Throw himself into what his normal now is, into the life he now lives. To an extent, itās easy, and to an extent, he needs it; spending all that time around Shibusawa and Dostoevsky dragged him too far back down into the path heād spent four years running away from. He needs to remind himself he lives in the light now, that life has things in it worth getting up and living for, that there is something in tomorrow that he can look forward to seeing. He is still empty, he is still struggling to find his reasons, but theyāre so much closer to his grasp here in this new home, and he needs that reminder after his brush too close to his mirror images, the twisted reflections that showed him what he could have become, showed him what he still could be.
And...he needs the distraction from his other thoughts. The ones about Chuuya.
Every time his thoughts turn towards the redhead, one jumps out at him, burning itself like a brand on his heart: Chuuya had come for him. He had let himself go, given himself to Corruption, not knowing if Dazai would wake in time, not knowing if he would get there in time. Chuuya risked death, or worse than that, simply...trusting him. After four years...no, six, after six of barely any contact than no contact at all, he still trusted him. Trusted him that much. His Prince Charming had risked it all for him, like he always did, threw himself into the jaws of danger (the jaws of a dragon, Atsushi had told him) for him. All for him. Oh, for Yokohama, too, he knows Chuuya cares about the city enough to fight for it, but...but heād gone there for him.Ā
He remembers clearly, vividly, the feeling of Chuuyaās cheeks beneath his fingers, the weight of Chuuya in his lap as they fell to the ground. Chuuyaās lips on his, the heat between them as --- dizzy with triumph and victory and both of them snatching their very lives back from beyond the edge of death --- the two of them celebrated the only way they knew how. He remembers it all too clearly. ItĀ had been...different, this time. It had been...oh, hell, if he has to admit it to himself, he can. Itās not like heās saying it aloud, after all. The memory of it, of the two of them together, alone in the fog and the quiet, of--- well. It finally answered a question heād only distantly realized he had. Something that had kindled in his chest the first time heād seen Chuuya use Corruption and realized it was for his sake, something that caught fire the foundations built the very first time he laid his eyes on the king of the sheep. Something that had burned low but present there for years, a fire he could not understand or process, a fire that was fed with every moment of understanding, every moment of camaraderie, every smile and every fond insult, every...everything about Chuuya. The fire in his eyes and the sharp edge of his smile, the way he snapped out insults and came alive and burned with every teasing word Dazai would say, burned like the fire in his hair, the way he became a force of nature, a natural disaster, when he let Corruption loose. Something had burned for Chuuya, long before Dazai had been able to understand what it was, that he was capable of it.
And with that moment in the fog, the knowledge of how far Chuuya went for him, the sensation of their bodies touching somehow softer than any time before, it...Dazai could finally put a name to it. And--- it felt like completing a puzzle, one left unsolved for seven years. He had a name for it, knew the shape of it. And it felt right. Like this rotten dream of a world adjusted itself just a little bit in his eyes, righted himself just a fraction more.Ā
But--- that wasnāt why he was avoiding the thought of it, the thought of Chuuya; oh no, if he let himself heād be sitting there with his chin in a hand sighing wistfully, picturing the other man in as many different ways as he could. No, he was avoiding the thoughts because he knew theyād only ever be thoughts. No matter that he knew now how he felt for Chuuya, that it explained so much about everything the past seven years, that it made him feel human, knowing he felt this way at all, let alone for the man who was his partner, his fellow monster, the one who understood him, the one who knew him...it didnāt matter. Because Chuuya didnāt feel the same way. Chuuya hated him. Maybe it was...maybe there was a chance, maybe there was hope --- he had come for him, after all --- but everything else that had ever happened since their reunion, hell, everything after Dazai had made executive...it spelled it out clearly. It had been the files, a stupid comment, or...god, he didnāt know. But after that Chuuya had started avoiding him and cut all contact, and, well...he was the furthest thing from stupid. He knew what it meant; what else could it mean? Chuuya hated him; anything he did for him, any warmth there was, was out of obligation.Ā
So it was pointless to daydream. No matter how wonderful, how bubbly and amazing it was to be able to roll these warm feelings around in his chest and know they were real and they belonged to him, that he could feel, it...just wouldnāt be worth anything in the end. So he put it out of his mind and went about his live, living the best way he knew how, slapdash and a mess, still his usual self, making jokes and rambling about suicide (because those urges have quieted but not vanished, not at all, never at all), giggling as Kunikida tried to throttle him and teasing the Agency children. This was his life, and his home, and he shouldnāt bother dreaming about something that heād already lost.
It had been two weeks since the Shibusawa incident, and it was approaching evening --- the Agency shut down at five, as most places did, and Dazai had spent the rest of the afternoon-to-evening at one of his usual haunts, one of the many bars he filled the void with (because Lupin was special), and now he was heading back to his apartment at the dorms. Heās not drunk, maybe just a little buzzed, but itās a nice buzz. Anyway, itās not hard to go back to the dorms, he knows the way, and he doesnāt even hop in a river on the way home. He gets into his apartment with a sigh, kicking his shoes off and dropping his coat by the door, wandering into the kitchen to dig out a carton of milk and taking a swig, before heading into the bedroom to change into his pajamas (a very old pair of blue plaid sweatpants and an even older, slightly baggy shirt with a cartoon sheep on it heād stolen from Chuuya a few months after heād joined the mafia). He hates that part of the night, having to stare at his bandages and remember what lies beneath them, especially when some of them are still fresh and covering the knife wound on his back thatās still finishing up healing, but he has to anyway.
In the silence, and the solitude, he can get lost again in his thoughts, and the world around him is unnoticed, neither sound nor sight, unless it decided to fall right on top of him.