soukoku w sentence prompt 22 please i need dazai to slip up and admit chuuya's cute
As part of my thanks for 200 followers. Ro, I have kept you waiting so long and I do apologize for that. Deeply. I won’t lie, I’m sweating. I love these babies, and I adore you and your writing. Shooketh.
22. “You’re lucky you’re cute…”
[~750 words, Soukoku, Mafia Days, Gently Pining Dazai…]
Dazai wondered sometimes if Chuuya’s ability gave him more weight, more heft, than his frame ought to bear. He watched Chuuya bare his teeth, facing down an entire warehouse of thugs that nearly doubled his height in every case, electricity and flames crackling invisibly through his compact limbs, and Dazai had the distinct feeling that he was the sidekick.
Watching Chuuya blaze with Corruption was a rush like nothing else Dazai had experienced, but it ate away at the pit of his stomach every time. He thought if he turned his insides out, they’d be bruised like Chuuya’s slender hands. If he could even see the bruising on his rotten organs, that was.
Scare them, were the orders. Dazai considered the unconscious thugs suitably terrified as he raced to get to Chuuya before he turned the entire warehouse into a blackhole.
He gathered Chuuya up off the floor when the destruction was over and silence blanketed the room like ash, which impressed Dazai a lot less than Chuuya’s perfectly average weight settling into his arms. The bend of his legs in the crook of Dazai’s elbow, the curve of his back curled with Dazai’s arm. His head to Dazai’s shoulder. His hat shoved hastily onto Dazai’s head for safe keeping.
Chuuya cracked an eye and attempted a snarl that was so exhausted it looked more like a smile. “Put me down.” Even his voice was bruised. It made Dazai’s bleeding insides feel like they’d been punched. He ignored it.
“I supposed you’ll walk to the car,” Dazai said, not pausing his stride. And Chuuya would, as well, even if it took him an hour. Dazai thought he could manage it in thirty minutes, though. Chuuya bent time as much as gravity. Dazai kept that to himself because he was certain that effect only worked on him. And they didn’t have an hour; they didn’t even have thirty minutes. They had ten, tops, Dazai figured.
Chuuya shifted and stiffened, and then frowned at Dazai, lips pulling into a faint sneer that felt good on Dazai’s battered insides. Menthol for aching lungs.
“You look ridiculous,” Chuuya huffed.
The band of Chuuya’s hat was damp with sweat where it pressed against Dazai’s forehead, at least a size too small.
“The hat is ridiculous,” Dazai shot back. He paused at the doorway to the warehouse, distracted, neck prickling. There was supposed to be a car parked an alley over. The street was damp and quiet, flickering streetlights reflecting in the filthy puddles. The light caught at Chuuya’s bare head. His hair was a tangled mess. “You’re lucky you’re cute,” Dazai said quietly over Chuuya’s indignant sputtering, heart ticking out the seconds, listening, listening, listening to make sure it was safe to make a dash for the car. If he stayed too long…
Chuuya fell silent, though, and his weight felt like more.
Dazai glanced down at him—bright eyes wide and cheeks blooming scarlet to match his wildfire hair—and he tried to swallow back what he’d said. But the words wouldn’t fit back down his throat. “Like a little animal,” he drawled past the word cute that had gotten lodged in his mouth. Chuuya’s eyes narrowed. Cute. Cute, cute. “A rodent, perhaps. A very small one.”
He smirked down at Chuuya, who snarled, looking nothing at all like a rodent. Dazai kept his body from relaxing as Chuuya’s blush faded because Chuuya would feel it, pressed as he was up against Dazai’s chest. Chuuya opened his mouth to growl.
“Shhh,” Dazai murmured, bracing himself to step out onto the street, and Chuuya was the one relaxing, sagging in Dazai’s grip, exhausted and somehow trusting Dazai more than his own bruised legs.
Last week, Oda had asked Dazai about his partner—tone too kind, eyes too gentle—and he’d smiled when Dazai said “little.”
“Chuuya is anything but little,” Oda said.
“Have you seen him?” Dazai had laughed, a little drunk and careless.
“I have,” replied Oda. He watched Dazai quietly.
Dazai was sober in an instant and thought Oda could have been terrifying if he had any other personality.
In his arms in the present, Chuuya shifted again, squirming in a way that made him hard to hold. “I’m not cute,” he muttered.
Dazai shook himself. He thought he’d been standing in the doorway for a minute or so, but it might have been an hour. Time. His arms ached, muscles burning pleasantly. He let out a breath. “The cutest,” he said, risking Chuuya’s sparking indignation as he splashed out onto the back street, sprinting for the alley like a rat.
Chuuya’s squawking protests lit up the night, reflecting in the puddles and turning up the street lamps, pouring in through Dazai’s torn up insides.
