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It was embarrassing, to say the least.
Locked inside Kouyou’s bedroom – and with no intention of coming out of there – Chuuya kept looking at his own image, gowned in bright red silk which matched the color of his cheeks.
He was thankful that it covered all of his body, at least. Chuuya may have a pretty face, but his muscles were starting to show on his teen body, thanks to his hard and constant training. The dress’ job was to conceal them.
The long curly extensions, which Kouyou put on his hair, were meant to cover his jawline instead, a bit too sharp to be a girl’s one.
Kouyou also put makeup on him. Luckily Chuuya was already blessed with clear skin, so she only had to use mascara with some eyeshadow and a pretty red lipstick.
Everything felt incredibly uncomfortable to him: the gown didn't allow him to move freely, he felt stiff and the heels – as much as he was happy to look taller for once – made him constantly feel as if he was about to fall. Not to mention the fact that the lipstick kept getting on his teeth and he couldn't rub his eyes whenever he felt like it, or else he would’ve messed up his makeup.
A sudden knock at the door made him jump, then Dazai’s voice reached his ears.
“Are you done?” he asked. “You’ve been in there for ages, you slug!”
“You’re not the one who got the humiliating job, so shut the fuck up and wait!” Chuuya shouted.
Dazai gasped loudly, feigning shock. “Ladies shouldn’t use such words, Chuuya!”
“I don’t give a fuck!”
“Seriously, will you open the door?” Dazai urged. “I’m about to die of boredom waiting for you here.”
“Then die.”
“Not before I get to see you dressed up as a beautiful lady,” Dazai scoffed.
“Fuck off, I’m never gonna leave this room!”
They were going nowhere, if Dazai didn’t stop teasing him. Mori wasn’t going to be pleased about them being late at the party they had to attend disguised as a young couple.
“Really, Chuuya, we’re going to be late.”
No answer came from the other side of the door.
Actually Dazai could’ve easily opened the door with the help of a hairpin, but he could sense Chuuya’s uneasiness through all his shouting and swearing and, as much as Dazai had fun teasing him, he didn’t want to make him mad or uncomfortable, so he wasn’t going to force Chuuya out of there.
“Are you still here?” Dazai asked, as he knocked on the wooden door again.
“Yes,” came the muffled answer.
“Take your time, but please, come out.”
“If you dare to make fun of me, I’m going to rip this shit off,” Chuuya hissed.
Then, he took a deep breath, gave a last glance at himself in the mirror and he made his way to the door, slowly, as he wasn’t used to walk with high heels.
When he walked out, he was immediately met with a loud, impressed whistle from Dazai, to whom he retorted with an angry “fuck off!”
“No, really, you look stunning!” Dazai exclaimed with no hint of malice in his voice. He really meant what he said, but obviously Chuuya was too riled up to notice.
Chuuya furrowed his brows, expecting the other boy to tell him he was just kidding and to taunt him next, but nothing else came from Dazai’s mouth.
“Are you serious?” Chuuya asked warily.
Dazai nodded. “You look way more pretty as a girl!”
Of course, Dazai couldn’t stay serious and not tease Chuuya for more than a minute.
“That’s not a compliment!”
“Yes, it is! You might be the girl with whom I’m gonna commit a double suicide,” Dazai jested.
The redhead let out a frustrated growl. “No way in hell I’m gonna pretend to be your girlfriend all night!” Chuuya yelled, cheeks blushing furiously.
“Are we having a lovers’ quarrel yet?”
“Fuck off!”
“Okay, okay, if I’ll stop teasing you, will this beautiful lady give me a second chance?”
“There will be no second chance!”
“Oh, is this how a lady speaks? Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Chuuya stared at Dazai dumbfounded for a few seconds, not getting what Dazai meant right away. This time he didn’t even swear.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?~” Dazai repeated, in a singsong voice this time, mimicking a girl.
That’s when Chuuya got what his annoying partner was hinting. His voice, of course, didn’t match his looks right now and it could blow up his cover, that meant Dazai wanted Chuuya to talk like a girl would.
“Hell no, I bet you’ll tease me about it for the rest of my life.”
“That’s still not how a girl talks.”
So Dazai wasn’t going to give him an easy time. As if being dressed like that wasn’t humiliating enough for Chuuya, his asshole of a partner now wanted to make him even more miserable and sadly, Chuuya knew full well that when Dazai wanted something, he didn’t give up until he got it.
He had no choice. He took a deep breath and gathered all the patience he needed not to strangle his partner right on the spot.
“T-There will be no second chance!” Chuuya squeaked in an exaggeratedly girlish voice, as he bent his knees slightly and extended his arm out, pointing at Dazai.
Silence fell upon the room before a scoff slipped past Dazai’s lips and then, said scoff turned into a full belly laughter. A pretty and genuine laughter Chuuya didn’t get to hear often and he felt a warm feeling filling his chest knowing that he was the one who caused it. Not that he would ever admit it.
“Will you quit it?!” he shouted instead, since Dazai wasn’t stopping. Really, Chuuya had never seen him laughing so hard before.
“That was so stupid, yet so funny!” Dazai managed in between laughters.
“Yeah, yeah, very funny,” Chuuya said dismissively. “But now cut it out!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll stop,” Dazai consented, actually calming down and catching his breath.
Not even a minute passed before he started to laugh again. “We should do this more often!”
“Totally not, if you’re gonna be like this all the time!”
“It’s your fault you’re so stupidly amusing!”
Or stupidly pretty, that’s what Dazai was actually thinking, but he would never let him know.
“Fuck off!” Chuuya hissed, as he walked past Dazai to step out of the room. “Let’s just go before I knock you out,” he added before actually leaving, followed by Dazai.
A few months later…
“Dazai!” Chuuya shouted through the door, after he had been banging on it for a while with no response from the other side.
“Dazai!” he yelled again. “We were supposed to meet an hour ago!”
When he was met with silence again, a hint of concern started to creep at the back of his mind.
He decided to open the door regardless and thankfully, Dazai didn’t hang himself, he was just sleeping as usual.
Chuuya felt a vein on his forehead pop. Not only his shitty partner had worried him, he was also making them late to the meeting with their boss.
“Oi, Dazai!” Chuuya called loudly, as he tugged the covers off Dazai’s body. “Mori will be furious for this and you keep lazing around!” he scolded, trying to pull Dazai out of the bed.
“Leave me alone, Chuuya,” Dazai murmured, his voice muffled by the pillow he kept pressed on his head.
“We have a meeting in ten minutes, idiot! You have to get up!”
“Then just go and leave me to die here.”
At those words, Chuuya stilled. He should’ve noticed something was off with him the moment he didn’t move an inch when he took his covers away. It wasn’t the first time Dazai was in these conditions, Chuuya knew he struggled with depression or something very similar to it and by now, he had seen it so many times it wasn’t hard for him to recognize an episode.
Nevertheless, he still had no idea what to do or say.
“The fuck are you talking about?!” Chuuya hissed, but panic was clearly taking the best of him. “You’re not gonna die!”
But what if that wasn’t just Dazai talking no sense about death and he had actually ingested something lethal that was slowly going to kill him for real?
He gathered all his strength to keep his cool and try to approach him in a different way.
“Is there anything I can do?” he tried.
“Leave,” Dazai commanded weakly.
Like hell he was going to leave. Dazai would’ve probably slashed his wrists.
“If you get up, I’ll treat you to the best breakfast you’ve ever had, how does that sounds?” Chuuya proposed with a gentleness he didn’t know he was capable of. “And we can talk,” he added.
When Dazai refused his help once again, Chuuya’s patience started to wear out. He was growing more and more frustrated, not towards his partner, but towards himself for not being able to do anything to help.
Nothing useful was coming to his mind, everything he could think of, he was afraid it would’ve made Dazai feel even worse.
The only idea he got sounded so stupid to him and he wasn’t sure laughing was what Dazai needed right now, but he couldn’t come up with anything else.
He might as well give it a try.
“Dazai,” he called. “Look at me.”
Thankfully the brunette did as he was told and lifted his head from beneath the pillow to look at his partner.
This was going to be embarrassing, so it’d better work.
“There will be no second chance!” Chuuya squealed, stuttering a little, like a little rich girl, acting exactly as he did that day when he had that obnoxious dress on.
He still remembered how much Dazai laughed at him, he occasionally reminded him about that just to tease him, and Chuuya was pretty sure he had never seen him laugh like that ever again.
Not before now.
At first a weak laugh left Dazai’s lips, then it turned louder and brighter with every passing second, as a large smile stretched his lips.
Chuuya felt the burden on his chest suddenly lift and it was replaced by the same warm feeling he felt that day instead, as he watched Dazai laugh. Only a few minutes ago, he barely even talked and now he was laughing his head off.
To be able to lift Dazai’s mood so fast, made him feel so proud, no matter how embarrassed he was and no matter how much he was going to be teased, he much preferred the teasy, annoying Dazai, to the depressed one.
“How are you so dumb, Chuuya?” Dazai teased, still laughing.
“Is that how you thank me for helping you?!” Chuuya frowned, but he couldn’t bring himself to be actually mad at the other boy right now.
“Thank you, Chuuya,” Dazai began seriously, leaving the redhead honestly astonished. Dazai never openly thanked – or apologized – anyone and now he sounded so honest. “For being such a pretty little rich girl,” he added right after.
Chuuya sighed deeply, deciding not blow up just this once. “You’re welcome, mackerel,” he refrained from using any kind of insult for now. “And now get up, I’m gonna make you breakfast as I said. I’m a man of my word,” he concluded with a wink, and a slight smile that betrayed how happy he was to see Dazai being himself again.
He was going to use that little rich girl thing a lot in the future, if it made Dazai laugh so hard.