April nights in Yokohama are windy. Chuuya keeps the windows closed to keep them from rattling and waking him up. Unfortunately, that does not guarantee that he won’t be woken up anyway by other, much more annoying things.
“Chibikko ~!” Dazai trills from the other end of the phone, and the noise feels so much like nails on chalkboard in Chuuya’s sleep-deprived head that he almost hangs up immediately. “What are you up to?”
“It’s one in the fucking morning, asshole,” he grumbles. “You better be dead or dying for it to have warranted this.”
“I wish,” Dazai mutters dryly, then giggles, “I just wanted to know what Chibi wanted for his birthday.”
There is something about his laugh, something odder than usual, that makes Chuuya frown. “What? Are you…drunk, Dazai?”
“Yes...no? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter,” he says quickly, then laughs again.
Chuuya lets out a sigh that morphs into a growl of frustration somewhere halfway through. “Listen here, moron. We’ve got a job tomorrow first thing in the morning, and I’m not going with you if you’re wasted.”
It’s not that Chuuya doesn’t trust him. He does (God only knows how that happened) and he knows that even a hungover Dazai is thrice as capable as anyone else sober. But he also knows that even the meagre, pathetic excuses of self-preservation instincts that have kept Dazai alive up until now get blasted to kingdom come when he’s nursing a hangover. And Chuuya doesn’t have the energy to keep them both alive right now.
“That’s not the point,” Dazai whines, “I wanted Chibi’s last gift from me to be special, but you’re being so mean, I think I changed my mind.”
His birthday isn’t for another three weeks. “What the fuck are you going on abo – “
Chuuya blinks slowly, already feeling an ache forming in his head. “What?”
“Let’s run away,” Dazai repeats simply. “You and me. We can drop everything and run away to some far off place, where nobody knows our names.”
Chuuya is silent for a while, and finds himself thinking that he really needs to know what this bastard is on, for future reference. There’s no way that is just alcohol talking. But Dazai suddenly sounds a lot more put-together, even if the clearer his voice gets, the blurrier his words seem to Chuuya.
“We can give this a chance, no? Give us a chance.”
He’s not joking. Chuuya knows Dazai’s brand of humour, shitty as it might be, and this isn’t it. Which makes it all the more confusing, because surely Dazai knows what he would say in return, right? The words ‘let’s run away’ aren’t nearly enough to disguise the ‘let’s turn traitor’ hiding just behind them.
“You and me, huh?” Chuuya murmurs after a while, then sighs. “Even if I ignore the ten thousand glaring fallacies in this brilliant idea of yours, why do you want to go? Where would we even go?”
The words sound weird as they come out of his mouth, and Chuuya frowns distastefully. They make it sound like he’s actually considering Dazai’s offer, and he isn't. He isn’t.
Besides, there is no place we can run to where they won’t find us. But you already know that.
For a few seconds, Chuuya hears only the sound of his breathing from the other end. Then Dazai snorts. “Eh, I knew Chibi wouldn’t understand. You’re too much of a coward.” he drawls and Chuuya can feel his head getting hotter.
“Then why the fuck did you call me?” He gripes. “Are you stuck somewhere and need me to pick you up? Is that it?”
“And make you miss out on your beauty sleep? I wouldn’t dare,” Dazai replies dryly. “Goodnight, Chibikko.”
He hangs up before Chuuya can speak, and Chuuya isn’t sure what the words that just died in his throat even were. He stares at his phone for a long while.
This wasn’t the weirdest conversation he had ever had with Dazai, but for some reason, it was the most unnerving one. Enough so that Chuuya only sleeps in uneasy fits for the rest of the night.
By the time he finally gives up and gets out of bed, the eastern sky has begun to lighten. He blindly stumbles into the kitchen for some coffee, tired eyes burning with every blink, and he curses Dazai under his breath with every step he takes. I bet the asshole did this on purpose.
It takes his bleary eyes a moment to focus on the piece of paper that’s stabbed onto his refrigerator door. With his own favorite knife, no less. He frowns, for what feels like the hundredth time since last night, and squints at the writing.
An early birthday present for Chibi. Hope you like fireworks.
Outside, a timer finally comes down to zero. With an ear-shattering noise, his sleek, imported car goes up in flames.
