Archive of Our Own

"Chuu—” Dazai shouts and Chuuya drops like a lead weight, muscle memory kicking in. A childish ridiculous system that they haven’t used in years, not since they were a they. The first half of his name means go down now, the second half go up. The man in front of him drops to the floor half a second later, a trickle of blood running down his forehead. Such a small amount it always seems, when someone is shot like this. Chuuya grabs the gun from the dead man’s hand. He puts his feet on the corpse's chest and fixes it to the ground with gravity before he pushes off hard, slams into the wall down the corridor behind him.

He shoots twice as he bounces off the wall, recenters. He hits once. There’s too much blood in his eye to aim properly. He grimaces. He doesn’t like missing.

Dazai’s pressed with his back to the wall next to him and an odd murderous glint in his eyes.

"Hey." He says and cocks his gun, aims and fires where Chuuya missed. The air goes silent and still for a half heartbeat. “You’re bleeding.” He observes.

“Yeah.” Chuuya blinks blood out of his eye. He pops the magazine and checks the witness hole. Serviceable amount of bullets left. “Forehead cut.” He tells Dazai and tucks the gun in the shoulder holster he’d taken from someone as he made his way here.

“Those are a bitch.” Dazai says. “You’ll never stop bleeding.”

Chuuya grunts a vague response. Chuuya’s never stopped bleeding, not since Dazai left, but he doesn’t say that. He’s bled his whole body out again and again and again. He’s shed his skin. He’s cut his hair. Nothing in him will have known Dazai. It will stop hurting when nothing in him has touched Dazai, seen Dazai, known Dazai.

It will stop hurting then.

“Why are you here?” Chuuya asks. He wipes something warm and wet off his face with a grimace.

“Insurmountable grief.” Dazai says casually, like relating the weather.

“Right.” Chuuya tugs a knife from a dead guy’s hand. Dazai might have killed this man. Then again though, Chuuya might have. He likes the weight of the blade. It’s field grade, OKC-3S. “Military.” He tells Dazai, and spits some blood on the ground. “Obviously.” He adds, when he thinks about it.

“US Military.” Dazai says and Chuuya nods again, blinking hard. “Obviously.” Dazai adds. “Our Chuuya is so popular. Everyone wants Chuuya.”

“We gotta get above ground,” Chuuya says for no reason in particular, as though it’s not obvious to both of them. He watches Dazai watch as he spins the knife, gets its blade out, perpendicular to his arm. He wipes his eye with the back of his hand futilely. Blood drips into his mouth.

Dazai’s tongue darts out to lick his own lower lip. His eyes are trained on Chuuya’s mouth. Chuuya feels oddly dizzy.

“Tired of a firefight?” Dazai asks, and doesn’t look away from Chuuya’s mouth.

“Fighting half blind.” He tells Dazai, squinting. His eye burns from the blood. Dazai’s gaze snaps up. There’s the sound of incoming men. Chuuya vaguely wonders if they’re close to the exit. His body is aching like it thinks it can rest since he’s back on his heels. The drugs still in his system are throwing him off a little; he’s afraid to use his ability too much, crash the whole damn thing in on his head, unleash what he doesn’t mean to. Safer now, if Dazai is here. He doesn’t know why Dazai is here, but he’s stopped trying to assign meaning to the things Dazai does. “Cover me like you like me.” He says as he pushes himself to his feet.

He doesn’t exactly let himself think, as he moves. When violence takes over it’s easier. His hands are steady. He gets the first guy in the throat, risks gravity on the next man to crumple him to his knees, stabs a guy in the thigh and then up, under his chin. It cuts easy. The knife is sharp and people are soft, like stone fruit. He slices through flesh like butter and pretends the fine mist that settles on his skin is morning dew, glinted red in the sun. And then he tells himself it’s not and that’s a stupid thing to think and this is someone’s life and stabs the next assailant through the eye with such force he feels when his knife nicks the back of their skull.

The fight ends in a way Chuuya has always found odd. Fights start so differently than they end. They start with a honey drip slow trickle, even when they are sudden. There is this— the first person fires, the first punch is thrown. It opens a gateway, but not everything can come through all at once. There is a strange order to the chaos. Chuuya thinks ah and here it is and I will never escape this and then he is fighting. Then the doors of the fight are blown off and Chuuya keeps his back to a wall. Chuuya used to keep his back to Dazai’s but that was a lifetime ago.

Fights end immediately, the same way lives do, the same way some kinds of love do, the same way you go to your car and it blows up and you smash into the wall behind you and taste blood in your mouth and think of course, think you would never leave me standing, think if we had kissed goodbye my mouth still would have been filled with blood,

think you must kiss like you fight. dirty.

This one ends with the nick of a blade on bone. Chuuya turns at the ready and there is no one left to fight. There is a scattered pile of bodies, corpses littering the floor like autumn leaves. There is Dazai, back to the wall, gun trained on Chuuya.

“Bang.” He says.

Chuuya focuses on the gun so he won’t look at the bruise blooming on Dazai’s cheek or at his mouth, wet and open with exertion. He looks at the gun. Shoot me, he wants to say, just do it already. He’s been in Dazai’s sights for years.

“Stupid shitty Dazai.” He says, as a greeting.

Dazai’s smile is as sharp as Chuuya’s stolen knife.

“Slug shouldn’t be saying that,” he cautions, waving a finger. He pulls Chuuya’s hat, battered and folded, out of the inside of his coat and holds it out. Chuuya almost laughs as he takes it. He doesn’t bother asking how Dazai got it, where he found it.

“They drug you?” Dazai asks.

“Yes.” Chuuya says and considers the hazy length of his memories.

“They torture you?” Dazai asks.

Chuuya gestures at himself. “What do you think?” He asks flatly. He has clothes on but his wounds are easy to see. He had found some of his things as he made his way through the facility, a gun to the man whose badge he used to open doors, whose body he used to shield himself from fire. He’d borrowed what he didn’t find– socks, boots, a gun holster, a gun. He’s going to borrow this knife too. He wipes the blood off the blade and readjusts his grip.

“Chuuya.” Dazai says, in a way that makes Chuuya think Dazai has said his name once already.

“Dazai.” He responds. When he looks up, he accidentally focuses on Dazai’s mouth, the deep raw color of the bruise growing on his cheek. Chuuya blinks, rocks on his feet, looks away.

“I said did you kill them?” Dazai asks after a long pause. His voice is uncomfortably even.

Chuuya looks at Dazai and the violence in his eyes shakes him to his core. His stomach floods with want. His toes curl in his shoes.

Chuuya nods, a jerk of his head. His ribs ache. Dazai evaluates him.

“We need to go.” Dazai says.

I am afraid of the power you hold over me, Chuuya thinks and says—

“Yeah.”

Dazai steps on a body when they leave, eyes trained elsewhere. It makes a sound like ice cracking.

Dazai doesn’t look down.

The palms of Chuuya’s hands itch.

The safehouse is small, cramped, musty with disuse.

Chuuya was surprised the Port Mafia even had a safe house way out here in Kagoshima, but Dazai had led him to it like he was still in the Port Mafia, like it was part of his plan. The nice thing about underground government facilities is that they’re usually not totally out in the middle of nowhere, so there was somewhere to go, but that doesn’t mean it’s a nice somewhere. Chuuya hadn’t planned for a safehouse, but he’s not going to turn one down even if it’s shitty. Chuuya wonders if anyone is chasing them, how many, how good they are at following ghosts like him and Dazai. He would have given up his soul for a hotel room with a bathtub, room service.

He scrubs at his face, irritated by the drying blood and the fact that his cut is still oozing. He surveys the room, spinning on his heel as he takes it in. One twin size bed. A kitchen table and chairs that have seen better days. A stack of Russian books like a high school literature class. An inexplicable Hungarian-English dictionary. He plugs in the wired phone, dials a code he hasn’t used in ages, force of memory, get me out of here.

He hears the shower and kicks at the closed door of the small bathroom.

“Who said you go first, shitty Dazai?” He shouts and hears Dazai laugh, a live little thing. It skitters across the floor, bites at Chuuya’s ankles. He wants to crawl on top of the table to escape it.

He slams his foot on the floor dead center in the room and the board pops up. He drags the safe out easy, heavy for anyone else, opens it. Two guns, a small duffel bag, a wad of cash, a few extra magazines, a burner phone with no SIM. Serviceable. He tosses his pilfered gun and pilfered knife next to the pile. He wonders when the last time someone used this safehouse was. He turns back to the kitchen and opens the cabinets. Emergency rations. He grabs one, checks the expiration date, rips it open. He bites into it as he continues to look. A first aid kit that he tosses onto the table. An empty cabinet. He hears the shower turn off, opens the last cupboard. A bottle of whiskey, a few cotton rags, a flashlight.

He takes out the whiskey and takes a drink when Dazai steps into the dark hallway, bandages absent, skin blooming with bruises, scars, cuts. Chuuya screws the lid back on, leaves it on the table. He passes Dazai to get into the bathroom and does not look at him.

He steps in the shower in his clothes, turns the water so hot it feels like his skin is burning. He watches the blood and dirt wash away, takes off his shirt and runs it under the clean water, wrings it out. Hangs it up. He gets out of his pants, his boxers, repeats the process. He watches his blood go down the drain and inspects his body as he cleans himself. He wrings out his shirt and the boxers in the sink and puts them back on damp, mostly bloodless.

He inspects his face in the mirror. The bags under his eyes look like rotten fruit. His hands feel naked, neck too. He traces where his choker would be with a bare finger and it makes him shiver. He hangs their pants up to dry. He doesn’t look at himself again before he exits the bathroom. He’s jittery still, the adrenaline from the fight, the run, the sudden safety.

Dazai’s sitting at the kitchen table wearing only his boxers. The whiskey bottle is open. His bare skin is still damp. Dazai’s wrapping gauze from the first aid kit around one of his arms and humming softly. There won’t be enough gauze. Dazai’s as vulnerable as Chuuya is, throat bared for a bite. Chuuya feels a strange ache in his gut.

“Slug,” Dazai says amicably, when he realizes he’s being watched. The bruise on his cheek fractures with the light, deep dark red almost blue under his eye. Chuuya’s hands flex around air. Dazai kicks a kitchen chair toward him.

“Mackerel.” Chuuya walks into the kitchen that feels too brightly lit and sits down heavily. Dazai eyes his wet shirt. Neither of them move for a long suspended moment. A drop of water trickles down the back of Chuuya’s neck.

Dazai gestures to the first aid kit and the whiskey like they might at a fancy hotel when offering you a selection of teas. Chuuya shrugs, takes a sip of the whiskey. The fluorescents are making his head hurt. He pinches his eyes shut, opens them again.

“Let me.” Dazai says. Chuuya does not know what Dazai means until he does. He feels it in his body with the force of a kick to his solar plexus. Dazai’s fingers are soft where they graze Chuuya’s forehead, brush his hair aside. Chuuya’s stomach twists. Don’t be kind, he wants to say, it doesn’t suit you. It doesn’t suit us.

“Dazai.” Chuuya says instead. “Fuck off.”

“Why would I fuck off when I could bother Chuuya?” Dazai opens an antiseptic wipe as he speaks. “This is my life’s work.” He says pleasantly and dabs at the cut above Chuuya’s eyebrow. Chuuya hisses. Dazai’s hands slow but don’t stop. Chuuya watches Dazai’s lower lip tremble, like he has touched something shockingly cold. His tongue darts out to wet it and Chuuya watches that too.

Dazai’s hand stops moving. Chuuya flicks his eyes up from Dazai’s mouth and Dazai is watching him. Chuuya wonders how much want is written in his features. Dazai tilts his head in question. Chuuya closes his eyes so he does not have to look at Dazai. It is a terrible thing, how much he wants to look at Dazai. How much he wants Dazai. It lives in him, beating wildly inside his chest. It’s a feral thing, the way he feels about Dazai. It is a feral vicious thing. When he dies and decays and only his bones are left they will find scrapes on the inside of his ribcage from its claws.

Chuuya opens his eyes and Dazai is looking at him like he might look at something he is about to break.

“I forgot.” Dazai says abruptly and stands up. He had tossed his jacket on the counter when they entered and he rummages in the pockets before he turns around and holds up–

“Oh.” Chuuya whispers, throat tight.

“Chuuya has too many chokers,” Dazai sighs as he tosses the leather gloves, the black leather choker on the table. The buckle makes a heavy sound. “So I just picked one that I thought was nice.” Dazai sits in his chair again and looks at Chuuya. Chuuya does not look back. His head feels dangerous, like he has drank too much, like the alcohol has gotten to him already, a few sips of whiskey and he can’t open his mouth or his soul will slip out. “Chuuya,” Dazai sing-songs. When Chuuya looks at him Dazai slides off his chair and between Chuuya’s knees.

“What–” Chuuya manages, but the word comes out fractured and nothing else follows.

Dazai doesn’t take his eyes off Chuuya’s forehead as he attaches the butterfly bandage to the cut above Chuuya’s eyebrow. Chuuya’s hands squeeze the sides of his chair so tightly he’s surprised the wood doesn’t splinter under his fingers. It creaks ominously.

Dazai’s fingers linger on Chuuya’s forehead, brush against his skin. They stare at each other.

“Why are you doing this?” Chuuya asks.

“Take off your shirt.” Dazai whispers. “You’re hurt. I need to–” His words seem to fail him. He ghosts hands over Chuuya’s shoulders like the thought of touching them is too much.

“I’m not hurt.” Chuuya says. “Why are you here?”

He lifts his shirt off over his head and places it on the table next to him because he has never known how to stop, never known how to understand what is good for him, never known anything but this aching aching need to trust– this hunger that goes down to the marrow in his bones.

Chuuya is hurt. His ribcage is purpled and his teeth and jaw hurt from holding his mouth shut and trying not to scream and then from screaming, loud and open. He has cuts, some deep, that he washed in the shower. His eyes were cloudy with the drugs but now they are clear. His head does not feel sluggish, though it aches like a hangover. He is tired. He is bruised. He always is. He will heal. He always does.

Dazai examines him with considering liquid eyes that travel down Chuuya’s chest like a live thing. They pause. Chuuya has an old starburst star of scar tissue on his ribcage. Electricity burns will do that, leave something so pretty. Dazai’s hand traces over it with just the barest touch. Chuuya’s body aches like it just happened, like he’s still feeling the aftermath of the electric shock. It never really leaves your bones, things like that. Dazai’s touched him like this only once before and his body still feels it, phantom pain. It never leaves your bones, things like that.

“I’m not hurt.” Chuuya repeats and every single part of his body throbs at the lie. He reaches for his shirt and shivers. He’s not sure if it’s the air on his skin or Dazai’s eyes trained on the hollow of his throat or the thought of putting on his damp t-shirt again. He pulls the shirt over his head and it clings, like an ill-fitting life. He reaches for the whiskey, takes another drink even though he shouldn’t. “You’re the one who’s hur–”

Dazai touches the hollow of Chuuya’s throat and Chuuya's sentence snaps as he jolts, hard enough the chair screeches on the floor.

Dazai looks at him, hand hovering.

Something like a laugh spills out of Chuuya’s throat, strange and unbidden.

Dazai sits back on his heels. His hands fall to Chuuya’s bare thighs. It is the worst feeling in the whole world. It is the worst thing Chuuya has ever experienced. He never wants it to end.

They stare at each other like two trapped wild animals. Dazai moves first. It surprises Chuuya, who often moves first– in fights, in crises. He has had to learn how to move first to protect himself.

Dazai lifts up on his knees. He picks up the choker and opens it, leaning up so he can put it on Chuuya. His finger slides under the material and against the nape of Chuuya’s neck. Dazai pulls Chuuya’s hair out so none gets caught underneath the choker. His body is too close. His eyes are too intent. He fastens the buckle, snug, and Chuuya feels something in him relax. A semblance of himself returned. Dazai trails his fingers away from it, adjusting what doesn’t need to be adjusted.

Chuuya waits for the inevitable, my dog or you finally let me collar you or you’ve always looked best leashed. Something. Anything.

The silence slides, the moment teeters on something else.

Dazai opens his mouth, just slightly. Chuuya watches it. He wants to crawl inside it and live behind Dazai’s teeth. Curl up under his tongue. He hates him. He loves him. God does he love him. The wild animal in his chest chitters and scratches at Chuuya’s bones.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says, fingers tugging at the buckle on Chuuya’s neck, the material of the choker. His fingernail snags slightly on Chuuya’s skin. It’s strangely grounding. “Chuu-ya,” Dazai repeats. Chuuya’s name is split in his mouth like a piece of fruit, repeated like he’s trying to summon something inside of Chuuya. “Chuuya,” he says, like the third time's the charm and the rest of the sentence will spill out of him. Only it doesn’t and the silence returns. Oppressive. Dazai’s skin looks washed out, in the lights, and Chuuya wants to touch him. “Chuuya.” Dazai says softly.

Chuuya breaks. Grabs Dazai by the jaw.

“What.” He says. He presses his thumb into the bruise on Dazai’s cheek, distracted by it. “Does it hurt?” He asks, suddenly concerned without reason. Dazai shakes his head no, tilts into the touch. “Why were you even there?” Chuuya asks, soothes the pad of his thumb over Dazai’s cheek.

They were not supposed to be there together. They were not supposed to be fighting together. Now, in the aftermath, Chuuya can truly recognize the absurdity of it, of Dazai being there. Chuuya had been sent to negotiations, Port Mafia business that had nothing to do with the ADA. It had been a trap, people had died, and Chuuya had been caught, a needle to the neck as he realized what was happening. Chuuya doesn’t know if Mori knew it was a trap before he sent Chuuya. He doesn’t think it matters, really. It’s all the same in the end– whether Chuuya was sent into a trap unknowingly or if he was sent into a trap because Mori, like a child lighting something on fire, wanted to see what would happen.

Is this what he thought would happen— Dazai, between Chuuya’s thighs, on his knees on linoleum tile?

“You didn’t come back.” Dazai’s hands drop to Chuuya’s legs again, flex by Chuuya’s hips. Were his hands that high last time? Chuuya can’t remember. His heart is beating somewhere in his stomach, like it’s slipped from where it is supposed to be and is unprotected. He feels his pulse flutter high in his throat. Low in his belly.

He’s still holding Dazai by the jaw. Dazai’s hair is longer than Chuuya remembers, so long now it brushes against the side of his neck where his pulse beats. Chuuya watches, a small proof of Dazai’s humanity. He wants to put his tongue there. His teeth. He puts his other hand on Dazai’s throat, covering his pulse, so he doesn’t press his mouth to it. Dazai’s blood moves under his hand like something trapped.

“What?” Chuuya asks, still distracted. His thumb soothes over Dazai’s bruise again, like it's moving of its own accord. He wants to sink his fingers in it. He wants to know how to touch something gentle enough to heal it.

“I was there because you didn’t come back.” Dazai says, like it’s obvious. He blinks up at Chuuya and his eyes have something in them that Chuuya does not and has never known.

“And?” Chuuya says. And and and, he thinks.

“It had been weeks, Chuuya.” Dazai says.

“And?” He says. And and and, he thinks, you were gone years, Dazai.

“If my grief is violent enough, perhaps he will come back.” Dazai says, a quote Chuuya recognizes from somewhere, from something— “and then I thought, I can make my grief violent and then Chuuya will come back, so I—”

“Don’t.” Chuuya says.

Chuuya is not the one who left. Chuuya has never been the one who left.

“Chuuya—” Dazai says again. His face does not move but his eyes do, liquid and expressive even before before before, demon prodigy, just a child, sometimes something less than human, sometimes something more than. “You left–”

Chuuya is not the one who left.

“Don’t.” Chuuya wields the word like a knife. It slices through Dazai’s sentence, separates the flesh from the bones of it.

Dazai doesn’t.

Dazai’s hands slide to Chuuya’s waist under his shirt and then up. His thumb presses in on the center of Chuuya’s scar like he doesn’t need to see to know where it is. He presses his forehead to Chuuya’s sternum. Chuuya’s hands fall from Dazai’s face, his throat.

Dazai wasn’t wrong to leave, and this is the worst part of all. Chuuya cannot fault him. Chuuya can only ache.

“Dazai.” He says and the name has to be a full sentence because it is all Chuuya has.

Dazai tilts his head up. Dazai’s face from this angle— Chuuya is not used to it. Looking down at Dazai is a strange thing. He can see the veins in Dazai’s eyelids, the shadow of his lashes as he blinks. Chuuya is so close to him that he can see when Dazai’s pupils dilate. The liquid black of them. I could drown in your eyes, Chuuya thinks and means it. Means it like painful. Means it like Chuuya cannot breathe and he cannot find the surface and he will die here, lungs begging him for air.

Chuuya cups Dazai’s face in his hands like a thing possessed. He runs his thumbs over Dazai’s cheekbones. He presses them into the corners of Dazai’s mouth.

“Chuuya,” Dazai murmurs and Chuuya feels him say it. It is the worst thing he could have said. Chuuya’s name scratches at his soul. He hears the sound he makes like someone else has made it. Dazai’s fingers stroke his scar. Dazai’s other hand trips over his ribs, higher, searching out his heart. Dazai lifts up, just slightly, and then stops. He is still as anything.

Chuuya doesn’t move.

He doesn’t move.

If he moves, he will kiss Dazai. He teeters, wanting, on the edge, moments away from slipping and crashing into the rocks below. If he moves, he will kiss Dazai. If he kisses Dazai–

I don’t think that’s something I can survive, Chuuya manages to think, how could I survive that? Chuuya has made a living on survival. Why can’t he think how he would survive that, why doesn’t he know?

“Dazai,” he says softly. Dazai doesn’t answer. Chuuya takes a breath.

The safe house phone rings. It rings and–

Chuuya remembers how to survive.

He pushes himself to his feet and then over to the phone. He listens. They can wait to be extracted here or they can go. If they make it to Osaka, someone owes Mori a favor. Osaka is far. Staying here for an indeterminate amount of time seems unreasonable. He can still feel Dazai on his skin and he feels inexplicably exposed, like the voice on the other end will know. He feels feverish. He hangs up the phone.

“We should move tomorrow.” He says and doesn’t turn. “Head toward Osaka, stay low.”

There is no response.

He turns and Dazai is still where Chuuya left him– on his knees, sat back on his heels. His hands are upturned where Chuuya’s legs were. His eyes are closed, as if in prayer.

Grief is always violent, Chuuya wants to say, do you think I grieve like flower petals? Do you think my grief has ever been a soft kind thing?

“You can have the bed.” He says.

Dazai does not take the bed. He comes to sit by Chuuya, back to the wall, facing the door. Chuuya cleans the knife. He wishes he could sharpen it. He checks the guns. He drinks the whiskey when Dazai offers it. He makes a sound of discontent, realizing something, and drags Dazai with him to stand in the tub. He makes all the water in their clothes heavy heavy. It clinks to the bottom of the tub, rolls away and down the drain. Dazai laughs as they finish redressing.

They sit again. Chuuya twirls the knife until his eyelids are too heavy. He falls asleep. He wakes, his head in Dazai’s lap, Dazai humming a soft song. Chuuya blinks up at him, confused and misplaced in time. How old am I? He wants to ask, but both of Dazai’s eyes are uncovered and Chuuya knows. Dazai looks down at him. He stands and pulls Chuuya to his feet. He tumbles them into the bed before Chuuya can react, still dazed, body aching.

“Hmm,” Dazai breathes out. Chuuya’s scalp feels warm from it. He flexes his hands. Dazai is all around him and he smells like cheap soap and he is warm like blood.

“What?” Chuuya whispers, tries to shift.

Dazai pulls him closer, chest to chest, slots their legs together. Chuuya’s traitorous body goes easy. He fists his hands in Dazai’s shirt like he is going to hit him.

“I think you’ve gotten shorter.” Dazai says.

Chuuya flattens his hands on Dazai’s chest.

“You’re insufferable.” He tells him. “You’re the worst thing in my life, the worst person I know.”

“Yeah.” Dazai says simply. “Sleep now, darling boy.”

“Do not ever call me that again,” Chuuya grumbles and breathes in Dazai’s laugh and Dazai’s scent and the warm living wholeness of him. “You’re warm.” Chuuya says and means I have hugged your cold body one too many times, I smell river water and think of you drowning, there is a chill that still hasn’t left my hands.

“Chuuya is the warm one.” Dazai says. “I’m stealing.”

“Thief.” Chuuya mumbles and his lips drag on Dazai’s shirt. “I hate you.”

“I hate you too,” Dazai says, like it’s a promise they made a long time ago. Maybe it was. Is. Chuuya tucks himself closer. “Sleep.” Dazai says. Chuuya thinks to answer, but the world slides away from him and he sleeps.

The next morning they leave. Chuuya looks at the sky and thinks a storm is coming and he looks at Dazai and thinks Dazai’s eyes look like a vanitas painting. Chuuya considers his mortality. He repents.

Dazai hotwires a car and Chuuya switches the license plate and they drive aimlessly back where they came and farther away from their destination, scout the area a little. A silly trick. Dazai finds a diner and directs Chuuya to it. They drink coffee and drive and drive and drive.

It is a thing like hunger in Dazai’s eyes each time Chuuya looks at him.

“What.” Chuuya asks him flatly.

“What.” Dazai returns, pitch perfect. He smiles. It’s clear and cold, as though it has been soaked in river water.

They switch cars, switch license plates, stop and buy Dazai bandages, endless rolls of gauze. Chuuya picks up a hoodie and boxers and adds them and other things to the pile with Dazai’s purchases. They buy them with money that’s not either of theirs and drive away in a different car.

Let’s talk about other things, Chuuya says, when Dazai asks him questions that pry– have you ever been in love, have you ever been with anyone, do you think love is crueler than hate, what’s your favorite way to fuck–

do you think he thinks we’re together?

This under the watchful eye of the owner of the motel who hands Chuuya a key, flicks eyes between the two of them, disinterested and interested all at once.

“He thinks we’re fucking,” Chuuya tells Dazai, “he thinks I’m cheating on someone, that we’re having an affair.”

Dazai laughs as Chuuya parks their stolen car, rests his head back on his headrest like he’s not getting out.

“Come on.” Chuuya tells him, getting out of the car. He slams his door. He’s hungry. He’s tired. His whole body aches with want. His heart feels all broken up and patched together and it keeps beating wrong. He wants to be back in Yokohama. He wants to live on the road with Dazai forever.

“We could be, you know,” Dazai says, “Nakahara Chuuya-kun.”

“Could be what?” Chuuya asks, cracking his neck, more distracted than he usually lets himself be around Dazai. Unarmed.

“Having an affair,” Dazai says, and then he’s in Chuuya’s space, pressing him against the motel room door, the knob digging uncomfortably into Chuuya’s stomach. “We could be.” Dazai says again. His body is hot against Chuuya’s and solid.

“I don’t have someone to cheat on.” Chuuya tells him, and means I don’t have anyone. He doesn’t have anyone. He hasn’t had anyone in a long time. He rolls the words around in his mouth, swallows them. Chuuya has never been good with words. Violence, yes. Tenderness even, yes. But words elude him. There are too many and too few all at once. There’s never been anyone else, he wants to explain but the words don’t make it to his mouth. There never could be anyone else.

The air is humid. The door is sticky with it. Chuuya wishes the storm would break. He looks at Dazai over his shoulder. There’s that hunger again in Dazai’s eyes. Chuuya feels adrenaline coursing through his body like he just got out of a fight, like he’s covered in blood and is not sure if it’s his or not yet. The pain takes awhile to arrive sometimes, after the wound.

Dazai leans closer, close enough their mouths could touch. It wouldn’t take much. A twitch of a muscle, unconscious or not.

Dazai and him have been hovering on the edge of something for longer than Chuuya knows how to articulate. It’s nothing concrete, all strange fragmented little moments– Dazai’s hand on Chuuya’s waist, strangely proprietary; blood on his teeth and that thing, like hunger, in his eyes.

Chuuya hasn’t felt fear in a long time. He feels it now, in the closeness of Dazai, the heat of his mouth. His toes curl. His hands tighten hard enough around the motel room key that he feels it dig into his palm. Dazai looks at him like he wants him and Chuuya is so, so, unreasonably, earth shakingly, afraid.

Dazai’s hands are fists on the door by Chuuya’s head. He crowds Chuuya in a little more.

Chuuya sometimes tells Dazai he hates him and Dazai says I hate you too and his eyes are soft and Chuuya wants to say do you? Chuuya wants to say show me how much. Chuuya wants to say I don’t think this is what hatred is.

Chuuya elbows Dazai to get a little space and then shoves him off. Dazai stumbles back.

“Fuck off, mummy boy.” Chuuya manages, unlocking the door. Dazai laughs, too loud. Chuuya’s hand shakes slightly and he ignores it. The air in the room is blessedly cool. “I’m going to get us some food before the storm breaks.”

Dazai pushes past him into the room, falls onto the bed, and doesn’t say a word.

When Chuuya comes back he finds Dazai asleep, no bandages, most of his clothes kicked off. He must have showered– his hair looks damp. The comforter is down and falling off the bed and Dazai’s on top of sheets, only half on the pillow. Chuuya’s surprised he’s sleeping like that, in only boxers and a t-shirt, and not all his clothes. They sleep like they might have to run, might have to fight. Old habits. Necessary habits, especially at the moment when they might, without a thought, have to do either of those things.

The TV is on. The blue light from it flickering and casting Dazai in haunted relief. The scar on his neck, jagged looking and rough, is bared. It healed as well as it could. Chuuya remembers that one intimately. It had bled a lot. Chuuya wants to trace it with his tongue. He wants to see if it tastes like salt and iron.

Chuuya wonders what Dazai would do, if Chuuya just climbed on top of him. What if Chuuya didn’t say anything, just crawled over him and woke him up and put his teeth on that scar?

He drags his eyes up and Dazai is looking at him.

“What.” Dazai says.

what what what

Chuuya drops the bag of takeout and a pack of cigarettes on the table.

“Dinner.” He says.

Dazai picks at the food and it irritates Chuuya, somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach. He smokes a cigarette and Dazai still doesn’t really eat. He goes to take a shower and puts on clean boxers, a t-shirt. He leaves his jeans off, like Dazai did. When he comes back and tosses his pants on one of the chairs, Dazai is back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Even through his t-shirt Chuuya can see the imprint of his ribs, his stomach hollowed from the way he’s laying. He’s thin, thinner than Chuuya remembers him being the last time he saw him.

“Do they even feed you at the ADA?” Chuuya snaps and it sounds too harsh to his own ears. He grabs one of the takeout containers from the minifridge where Dazai had put them, extra chopsticks, and stalks over to Dazai, shoves both things into his hands. “You didn’t eat.” He tells Dazai, grits his teeth. “Eat, idiot.”

Dazai frowns at him.

“No.” He says, like a child. Chuuya takes the chopsticks and breaks them, hands them back. He takes the container and opens it, hands it back. Dazai pokes at the noodles.

Chuuya used to make Dazai eat. Chuuya used to peel apples for him with a steady hand and wait while Dazai choked them down. He used to show up in Dazai’s trailer and kick the lightbulb, drag Dazai out to buy a new one. He used to drag Dazai from rivers. He’s stitched up Dazai. He’s bandaged his wrists. He’s had Dazai’s blood under his fingernails, pressed the palms of his hands to the heat of Dazai’s life leaving him and chanted no no no no no in his head while he fought a fight he didn’t know how to fight. He used to feed Dazai. Any of his hungers, all of them. Dazai is so hungry and Chuuya knows what that is like and he always tried to feed Dazai in any way that he could. He still wants to feed him. He still has Dazai’s blood under his fingernails and stuck in his life line, his love line. The palms of his hands are wet with him.

Chuuya is hungry too.

“Take a bite, Dazai.” Chuuya says.

“What do I get if I do?” Dazai asks, taunts, somewhere in between. His eyes look hunted. He looks so hungry. Chuuya doesn’t say anything, just looks at him. “What do I get.” Dazai repeats.

“What do you want?” Chuuya asks.

Dazai looks away.

“Eat.” Chuuya says, lets the word brook no argument.

Dazai looks back then takes a bite. He doesn’t drop Chuuya’s eyes. He doesn’t answer. Outside the storm breaks. Chuuya listens to the rain start to fall, clatter against the window. It’s loud, even with the gentle buzz of the air conditioning.

“Take another bite.” Chuuya says, half-wondering if Dazai will listen.

Dazai does. Chuuya’s hands flex on his knees. The lightning flashes outside. Chuuya takes a breath, holds it, waits for the thunder.

“Another one.” He tells Dazai, expecting a fight now. Dazai just takes another bite and watches Chuuya. Chuuya tells him again and again and Dazai eats, until a third of the noodles are gone. “Good,” Chuuya tells him, “you did good.”

They both pretend they don’t notice the way Dazai shivers.

Chuuya takes the container back and tries not to think about the smooth of Dazai’s skin, the raised surfaces of his scars, the look in his eyes while he listened to Chuuya. When he walks back over Dazai slings fingers around his wrist, presses in on his pulse point, and looks up at him.

“What do I get?” He asks.

“What do you want?” Chuuya returns.

Dazai laughs and it’s bitter sounding.

Chuuya watches Dazai lick his lips, shiny with the oil from the food. Dazai’s mouth is wet and ripe like a plum. Chuuya wants to kiss him. He wants to lick into Dazai’s mouth and make Dazai make a sound Chuuya has never heard him make before. He wants Dazai’s focused attention on him, listening to him. He wants to feel Dazai’s teeth on his skin. He wants to know how Dazai bites. Chuuya looks at Dazai, looks at Dazai looking at him, and thinks that Dazai might let Chuuya kiss him. Dazai might let Chuuya do any of those things. Right now, for some reason, Chuuya thinks Dazai would let him.

Chuuya wants.

Don’t do this, Chuuya tells himself. He’s hungry with it, greedy with it– he wants Dazai’s skin against his tongue. Don’t, he counsels himself.

Dazai would let him. The thought rings in Chuuya’s head.

Chuuya unpeels Dazai’s fingers from his wrist, one by one.

They flip through the channels. Chuuya smokes another cigarette, more for something to do with his hands, his mouth. He watches Dazai look through the drawers in the nightstands. Condoms, a Bible, the Teachings of Buddha, a pen, a pad of paper, a forgotten thousand yen note. They brush their teeth stood side by side. Chuuya pulls on his hoodie. He takes if off. His skin feels itchy. The rain pours like it’s never going to stop. Dazai turns off the lights. The room flashes with lightning. It’s dark out. Chuuya doesn’t know what time it is. If they leave early tomorrow they’ll be back in Osaka by nightfall. Then they can fly to Yokohama, land before the night is gone. They’ll be home.

Chuuya sucks on his own tongue. His wrist burns where Dazai’s fingers had been.

Dazai would let him.

Chuuya curls on top of his sheets, rolls on his side, looks at Dazai in the dark. He finds Dazai looking back.

There are things that are capable of ruination, like flood and fire and earthquakes and Dazai’s hand on Chuuya’s heart, nails digging in.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says and Chuuya thinks to himself, this is going to hurt, he thinks, you are going to hurt, he thinks, how could this hurt anymore than it already does? “I thought you were dead.” Dazai says, very softly, like it means something else.

Chuuya says,

“Do you hate me, Dazai?”

and Dazai says, like it’s something he’s dragging out of him that has rarely seen the light but is an absolute truth,

“No.”

and something inside Chuuya breaks the same way glass does.

A splintering.

Do not do this thing, Chuuya tells himself, it will ruin you.

He gets up and walks to Dazai’s bed and crawls over Dazai’s body, plants his hands on either side of Dazai’s head, his knees around his hips.

Dazai doesn’t move, only a sharp intake of breath.

“Don’t you?” Chuuya asks. If Dazai does not hate him, Chuuya will bend. He will break. His stomach is sick with it.

“Do you hate me?” Dazai’s eyes are quizzical. Assessing. Chuuya can’t tell if Dazai knows the answer already and is trying to make Chuuya say it, or if he truly does not know. He must know. He must. Chuuya is good at a lot of things but deception– deceiving Dazai– Chuuya doesn’t think that has ever been one of them.

Yes, Chuuya wants to say, lie, believe. Yes, of course, I hate you. Of course I hate you. Let me show you how much I hate you. Chuuya digs his fingers into the sheets by Dazai’s head. He doesn’t know when the last time he hated Dazai was.

“Yes.” Chuuya breathes after a beat and wonders how much it sounds like a lie.

Dazai looks at Chuuya the same way he’s looked at Chuuya a thousand times before– like he wants to kiss him or hit him or tear into his flesh with his teeth. Chuuya feels like he can’t surface in a lake. His lungs hurt. He doesn’t know what he is going to say but he opens his mouth anyway.

“Do you kiss like you fight?” He asks Dazai. He wants to ask, will you make me bleed? but he knows the answer is yes. Yes, yes, yes. Chuuya would be making himself bleed though. Dazai, despite everything, would be an innocent bystander, a knife that didn’t mean to be used.

“Do you?” Dazai asks. Dazai’s hand lifts up, his fingers glance over Chuuya’s cheekbone. It’s strangely tender for someone who has held a knife to Chuuya’s throat, intending to cut. “I hope you do.” He murmurs, eyes tracing Chuuya’s features as he speaks. “Tell me no.” He says, like he’s trying to warn Chuuya.

“Just do it.” Chuuya says. He wants Dazai to kiss him. He wants Dazai to punch him. He can’t feel his fingers. His knees are knocking into Dazai’s hips. Dazai’s eyes are half lit up with lightning and he looks like a wraith, a ghost, something that is going to haunt Chuuya forever. Live in his bones.

If Dazai maybe started laughing at Chuuya, a trick that Chuuya has finally fallen for after all these years– you really thought I wanted you? that would make sense to Chuuya. His skin burns with the embarrassment of it. His stomach twists. It’s a thing that makes him feel sick to think of, so he thinks it again–

Dazai does not want you, you are making a fool of yourself, this is a thing you will never live down, you will always be hungry, you will always be alone, you will never be human, never touch someone else’s humanity, not ever again.

But Dazai doesn’t. Dazai lifts up and whispers,

“You fight and I feel like it’s holy.”

Chuuya doesn’t know what that means, doesn’t have time to ask because then Dazai kisses him. Chaste as anything. The kiss is nothing monumentous. It’s simple. Gentle. It’s human. Chuuya’s lips are chapped and so are Dazai’s. It feels devastating though. It feels like a piece of ice slipping between Chuuya’s lips and down down down.

Dazai’s hands are clenched tight in the neckline of Chuuya’s shirt, dragging him in, and Chuuya only realizes how tight they are when one of them releases and air slips into his lungs, sweet and cool.

Dazai does not kiss like he fights. He kisses like a gentle thing. It breaks Chuuya’s heart. He presses Dazai into the pillows and traces his jaw with a finger. Dazai shivers. Dazai tilts his face and Chuuya opens his mouth a little more. He feels the corner of his mouth tug and split slightly where he has gotten hit in the fight. He tastes a hint of copper. He goes to pull away but Dazai’s hand is on the back of his head, holding him close.

“Don’t stop.” He says, like this is something he wants, actually wants, not some weird adrenaline liminal space thing that they can pretend didn’t happen.

Chuuya is not something Dazai wants and Dazai has made that clear– has made that choice over and over and over– but he pulls Chuuya close to him like he wants Chuuya.

Just this once, Chuuya begs, let me pretend that I am wanted, that I am your first choice.

Chuuya kisses him again. He slips his tongue between Dazai’s lips, licks into his mouth, and Dazai makes a startled hungry sound. He tastes like mint and something clean. Chuuya tastes like blood. Sin and absolution, each time their mouths part and then touch again. He kisses Dazai with gentle reckless abandon, runs his tongue over the roof of Dazai’s mouth, across his teeth. He presses his canines into Dazai’s lower lip, leaves an indentation he soothes with his tongue.

Chuuya pulls back to breathe and Dazai chases his mouth, eyes fluttering open. His eyes are so dark. Chuuya lifts a hand and grazes the bruise on Dazai’s cheek, traces the outline of it. Dazai makes a sound like a wounded animal, small and contained and unlike any sound Chuuya has ever heard Dazai make.

“Chuuya,” Dazai breathes, “don’t stop.” His hand is tight again on Chuuya’s neckline. “Don’t–”

“I’ve got you.” Chuuya says mindlessly, letting Dazai hold more of his weight, his hand tracing back to slide behind Dazai’s head, the nape of his neck, the long hair there.

Dazai pulls Chuuya to him hard enough it hurts. The kiss is a mess. Their teeth knock, their noses bump. This is a kiss like a fight, messy, leaving them both bruised. Dazai digs his teeth into Chuuya’s lip, sucks on his tongue, makes a strange impatient sound into Chuuya’s mouth.

“Easy,” Chuuya whispers, threads his fingers into Dazai’s hair and tries not to cry, “easy, Dazai.” Dazai pants beneath him. “We have time.” Chuuya lies.

Outside the thunder rumbles, the world groans.

“We have time.” Dazai echoes, voice low.

He kisses Chuuya slowly then, tenderly, like he might kiss a lover. Chuuya feels all his guards fall down. He can’t understand the way Dazai is kissing him, touching him. It’s too hard to not pretend. It’s too hard. Dazai’s thumb presses in on Chuuya’s jaw, coaxes his mouth open wider, gently impatient. Chuuya pulls back a little, keeps the kisses close-mouthed. He lets his tongue touch the seam of Dazai’s mouth and then lifts off slightly when Dazai tries to deepen the kiss. He laughs when Dazai huffs out another impatient sound. He gives in. He gives in and in and in, Dazai’s kisses trickling down inside his body until he’s all full, like he’ll never be hungry again.

Dazai’s hands slide under Chuuya’s shirt and tug at it so Chuuya pulls it off and tosses it without thinking. He looks down at Dazai and Dazai looks up at Chuuya like Chuuya is something that is going to break him. He looks at Chuuya like Chuuya is something that he wants to keep.

Chuuya wriggles Dazai out of his shirt. It’s difficult. Dazai sits up but tries to keep his arms wrapped tight around Chuuya’s waist. He noses into Chuuya’s neck, bites at his collarbones, tugs at his earlobes with his teeth. He relents eventually and then presses their bodies together, skin to skin. Chuuya pushes Dazai down so he’s laying on his back again and holds him steady with a hand on Dazai’s sternum. His heart.

Dazai’s heart beats a steady rhythm. Slow and metered. Chuuya blinks, raises his eyes to meet Dazai’s. Chuuya’s pulse is not calm. He can feel it in his temples. Dazai looks at him and laughs, a little breathless, and his pulse careens, jackrabbits under Chuuya’s hand.

“I was cheating.” He whispers. “Wouldn’t want you to think I was affected.”

“The horror.” Chuuya says. “A human bodily reaction.”

“Unacceptable.” Dazai says. His voice cuts off into a strangled little sound as Chuuya scrapes his nail over one of Dazai’s scars and then his nipple. He bends down and kisses it, presses his tongue softly as it pebbles. “Oh,” Dazai says, “Chuuya, oh–” like the sound has been shocked out of him.

If this, what he has with Dazai, is love then Chuuya wants to tell any god that is listening to leave him alone. He has had enough of a love like this. It’s ruinous. Dazai says his name and Chuuya feels as though he has been skinned. He puts teeth to Dazai’s throat and bites.

“Oh god.” Dazai says and jerks up into him. Chuuya slides his leg between Dazai’s and kisses him, tugs at his hair, grinds his hips down. He expects Dazai to stop him at some point, some line they are crossing that he’s not sure of but that must exist somewhere.

Dazai doesn’t and Chuuya lies to himself.

He kisses Dazai methodically, tracking what makes him make these sounds Chuuya has never heard before, will never unhear. He traces down Dazai’s ribs, finds each scar he can, runs his fingertips over them. He kisses Dazai’s neck, his collarbones. He pulls Dazai up to sitting and traces each vertebrae of his spine while Chuuya rocks down in his lap, Dazai panting into his ear. Dazai’s hands grab at him, his thumb presses into the starburst center of Chuuya’s scar, his fingers scratch down the scars on Chuuya’s back like Dazai wants to leave his own, remake the ones that are there.

“Chuuya–” Dazai mumbles as Chuuya pushes him back onto the bed and kisses down his neck, his chest. He scrapes his teeth over one of Dazai’s nipples and Dazai makes a hissing sound, hands reflexively clenching in Chuuya’s hair. Chuuya traces the flat of his tongue over the spot he bit to soothe. He does this again and then again, reveling in the sounds that Dazai is making, the little kicks of his hips.

“What do you want?” Chuuya asks, bites at a different scar, a newer one. He sits on Dazai’s hips and grinds down, pulls Dazai’s hand to his face and kisses his fingertips. He slides two of Dazai’s fingers into his mouth and sucks on them. Dazai stares at him like he’s entranced. Chuuya makes a show of it, some little voice in his brain, make him want you, make him want this, show him how good this can be. He takes Dazai’s fingers deep, hopes Dazai’s nails scratch the back of his throat, hopes that his voice reflects it, his body, a mark that this happened.

“Chuuya–” Dazai says, like this is an answer.

“What do you want?” Chuuya says again, Dazai’s fingers falling from his mouth. Dazai trails them down Chuuya’s chest. Chuuya feels desperate. He wants his hands on Dazai’s body. He wants Dazai’s hands on his. He wants to be inside Dazai, in any way he can be. The warmth of his mouth is intoxicating. Chuuya thumbs at it. Dazai’s mouth falls open as Chuuya slides a finger in, traces over his teeth and then where they meet his gums. He slides two fingers in and Dazai licks at them, sucks, eyes fluttering closed then open. “You like that?” Chuuya breathes and Dazai nods, gaze heavy. He opens his mouth a little wider and Chuuya adds a third finger. Dazai takes them easy. His thumbs press into Chuuya’s hipbones. Chuuya strokes his thumb on Dazai’s bruise and pushes his fingers into Dazai’s mouth. He wants too much. He needs to know what Dazai wants.

He falls forward again and kisses at Dazai’s neck, sucks and bites the skin, until Dazai is gasping around his fingers, strangely pliant underneath him. He grinds his hips down again, tugging at Dazai’s jaw, his lower teeth, holding his mouth open as Chuuya lifts back up. He kisses Dazai before he takes his fingers out and Dazai groans into it, his tongue in Chuuya’s mouth, around his fingers. When Chuuya pulls back he watches the spit string from his fingers to Dazai’s mouth, his chin.

Chuuya feels like he has been fighting. He can’t catch his breath. Dazai pants, open-mouthed, pupils blown. Chuuya’s stomach twists with want. Dazai still hasn’t said a word, he just keeps making little hitched sounds and doesn’t answer Chuuya’s question and–

Chuuya slides his wet hand down between them and palms him. Dazai groans, long and desperate, into Chuuya’s mouth. Chuuya kisses him through it, eats the sound. Dazai’s boxers are tented and wet– so wet Chuuya feels dizzy with arousal.

“You’re so wet, Dazai,” he whispers as he squeezes Dazai, traces him through the cloth. Dazai stutters out a curse. Chuuya slides his hand under Dazai’s waistband, can feel the heat of his cock, heavy and hard with blood. Dazai’s hands fall from Chuuya’s hips. Chuuya glances up and Dazai’s eyes are pinched shut. His fingers are clenched in the sheets. Chuuya pauses, and then starts to remove his hand. Rejection begins to sing through his body. He has to hold his voice steady when he speaks. “Do you not want me to–” Chuuya starts.

“I’m gonna come–” Dazai chokes out.

Chuuya snorts then stills when he realizes Dazai isn’t joking. Dazai winces, licks his lips, doesn’t open his eyes.

“What?” Chuuya says. “Dazai, you’re–” Dazai pinches his eyes closed tighter. Chuuya watches his knuckles turn white where his fingers are twisted in the sheets. “You are?” Chuuya asks, feels a little wondrous. “Already? From this?”

Dazai’s body jerks like Chuuya’s still touching him.

“I—” Dazai’s voice does something like tremble. Chuuya lifts up and kisses him softly, shushes him. He cups Dazai’s cock gently. Dazai rocks up into his hand.

“I like that, Dazai,” Chuuya says and he means it. God does he mean it. Dazai undone from this little, this responsive to Chuuya’s touch. “You want to come like this, Dazai? Want me to make you come?”

Conflict is written on Dazai’s face in a way Chuuya has never seen it. He slides off of Dazai’s body and down so he can kiss the head of Dazai’s dick through his boxers. He tastes salty and bitter and Chuuya’s own cock kicks at it. Dazai moans, slaps a hand against his mouth.

Chuuya lifts and tugs it off his face harshly. Dazai’s eyes fly open.

“No.” Chuuya says. He will hear every sound he makes Dazai make. They’re his. Chuuya will covet and keep them for when he is alone, in the cold of his bedsheets, weak to pretending. “Those are mine.” He tells Dazai who nods, wide-eyed. His dick pulses under Chuuya’s hand.

Chuuya momentarily can’t speak or he’ll say something stupid like I love you or you like when I tell you what to do or god please let me make you come.

“You’re so wet.” He tells Dazai again instead, palming him, pressing down with the heel of his hand. He finds the head of Dazai’s cock through his boxers and rubs with his thumb. “God, you’re leaking, Dazai.”

“Oh god,” Dazai mumbles, pinching his eyes shut again, “oh god, oh god.”

“I want to see you come,” Chuuya tells him, squeezes. “Okay?” Dazai takes a second then nods, licking his lips, his hips kicking up as Chuuya rubs his cock. “You pent up?” Chuuya whispers, lifts up and bites the shell of Dazai’s ear as he plays with his waistband.

“No,” Dazai gasps. He doesn’t open his eyes. He’s still not touching Chuuya, hands clenched in the sheets.

“You always this easy?” Chuuya asks, crawling between Dazai’s legs. He finds the slit of his dick through the boxers. Chuuya feels the spurt of precome, hot against his thumb, as Dazai throbs in his hand. “Jesus, Dazai.”

Dazai makes a sound like a sob and his hips jerk up. He shakes his head no, bites his lower lip.

“Easy for me.” Chuuya whispers. Dazai makes a sound that could be agreement. Chuuya decides it is. Feels that settle into his blood. This is for him. Dazai, in this one second, only his. But Dazai still hasn’t opened his eyes again. He’s still not touching Chuuya. Chuuya needs. He wants. If it’s just this once then he can be selfish. He can be greedy.

“Dazai, look at me.” Chuuya says. He reaches for Dazai’s hand, puts it in his hair. Dazai makes a wounded sound, tightens his fingers, nails scratching Chuuya’s scalp “Look at me.” Chuuya uses the voice he uses to get Dazai to eat or clean wounds or let Chuuya bandage his wrists, clean blood from his clothes.

Chuuya squeezes the head of Dazai’s cock and Dazai meets Chuuya’s gaze with glassy eyes, lashes fluttering.

“Oh god—” Dazai says and his whole body tenses as he comes.

Chuuya finds the presence of mind to jerk him through it as best he can, Dazai hot and wet in his hand, leaking through his ruined boxers. His hand tugs hard at Chuuya’s hair, hard enough it hurts. Chuuya’s scalp stings. Chuuya holds Dazai’s hips down when they lift up and Dazai’s voice pitches higher, breaks on Chuuya’s name.

Chuuya feels outside his body.

“Jesus, Dazai,” he says, grinding down on the bed, “you’re easy as all shit.”

“Sorry–” Dazai gasps out, body still twitching from his orgasm. He blinks away tears.

Chuuya surges up and kisses him and Dazai is still hard in his hand and—

just this once, just this once, just this once

“Don’t be sorry,” he breathes into Dazai’s mouth, “I said I liked it. It’s hot.”

Dazai nods into the kiss. He slides shaky hands around Chuuya’s neck, pulls him into a longer kiss, licks into Chuuya’s mouth. Chuuya kisses him until Dazai’s hands have steadied.

“Let me look.” Chuuya breathes, hand on the waistband of Dazai’s boxers. Dazai pinches his eyes shut tight then opens them, nods. Chuuya tugs his boxers down and off, Dazai lifting up his hips to help. Dazai makes a soft sound as Chuuya settles between his thighs again. “You’re a mess.” Chuuya whispers, rubbing Dazai’s hip bones. He is, come and sweat all over the dark coarse hair at the base of his sticky cock. His dick is still mostly hard, leaking, come dripping down the side. Chuuya kisses the inside of Dazai’s thigh. He licks softly at the juncture of his hip, the dent there.

“Oh–” Dazai breathes.

“Tell me no.” Chuuya whispers, mouths at the base of Dazai’s dick gently. “I can stop. Tell me no–”

“Yes.” Dazai breathes on an exhale.

Chuuya licks Dazai’s dick slowly, from base to tip, and revels in the way Dazai’s head falls back on the pillow, his hand clenches on the bed, the other lifting up to thread into Chuuya’s hair.

“Too much?” Chuuya asks, licking Dazai into his mouth. He sucks lightly, releases.

“More–” Dazai says, “that feels so— god—”

Chuuya gives him more. He will always give him more. Chuuya cleans him up slowly, little kitten licks and gentle sucks, as Dazai mutters and twists on the bed under him. Chuuya’s so hard it hurts. His own boxers are a mess. He grinds down on the bed and takes Dazai down his throat. When he swallows around Dazai, he makes a sound that Chuuya thinks alone would be enough to send him to heaven when he dies. If he can make Dazai sound like that, that undone, that human, surely it means he was worth something.

He lifts his hands and traces the bottom of Dazai’s rib cage as he takes him down deeper. He tastes like sweat and come and Dazai and Chuuya is drunk off it. He can feel as Dazai gets fully hard again in his mouth, the way his dick twitches and pulses. He pulls off only when Dazai’s hands in his hair are too urgent, too strong, and Dazai gasps out his name. Chuuya presses soft kisses to Dazai’s legs, littered with scars and marks from Chuuya’s mouth.

“You’re pretty.” He mumbles, voice rough. He traces a scar with his tongue almost absentmindedly.

“I’m not.” Dazai’s voice is quiet.

“You are.” Chuuya bites softly, presses another kiss. He sucks the head of Dazai’s dick just to feel Dazai jerk under him, hear the sound he makes. “Can you come again, Dazai? Let me make you.”

“Chuuya–” Dazai gasps, reaching for him, “I need– I need—” Chuuya hums as he lifts up.

Dazai kisses him like he wants to taste himself in Chuuya’s mouth. That strange wild feral thing that takes over his eyes sometimes, like when he shoots something already dead. This feels like the opposite though, like proof of being alive. Dazai’s hand slides down Chuuya’s body like he is unsure. Chuuya puts his fingers on Dazai’s wrist and guides Dazai’s hand between his legs. Dazai palms him through his boxers and Chuuya groans into his mouth.

“Take them off,” Dazai says. Chuuya does, a little awkwardly, because he can’t stop kissing Dazai, coaxing Dazai’s mouth open to feel his little pants for breath on Chuuya’s lips.

When Chuuya’s free of his clothes, Dazai slides off the side of the bed to his knees, pulls Chuuya to the edge. Chuuya blinks down at Dazai between his thighs, feels a strange vertigo, deja-vu.

“You don’t have to.” Chuuya says, uncertain for reasons he can’t explain. Somehow, despite all of this, he wasn’t expecting that Dazai wanted to touch him too.

“Then tell me no.” Dazai says, after a moment, eyes quiet. He noses at Chuuya’s dick where it’s red and hard against Chuuya’s stomach. “Tell me no if you don’t want it.”

“Yes.” Chuuya whispers, threads his hands into Dazai’s hair. “I want it.” Those words aren’t big enough, can’t encompass all of what he feels, but they’re all he has.

Dazai licks the head of Chuuya’s dick, the precome leaking out his slit. He takes him down with hot wet suction, the flat of his tongue against the underside of Chuuya’s cock. He pulls up slow, takes Chuuya down deep again, mouth slick and hot like it’s burning Chuuya’s skin. Dazai settles, almost at the base with his hand working what he doesn’t have in his mouth. He stays there for a long moment. Chuuya thumbs at the corner of Dazai’s mouth where spit drips out, his lips stretched. Dazai pulls up, slides down again, sets up a rhythm. He bobs on Chuuya’s dick messily. It sounds filthy, the only noises in the room are the slick wet sounds and the soft buzz of the air conditioner, the rain outside. Dazai keeps humming softly when Chuuya groans, like each sound Chuuya makes is as pleasing to him as a touch. He pushes himself down on Chuuya’s cock and swallows. Chuuya’s hips jerk up, his hands tight in Dazai’s hair, pushing him farther down Chuuya’s dick. Dazai chokes, pulls off with a cough.

“Sorry–” Chuuya gasps, “fuck–”

“Do that again.” Dazai says, voice rough. “Please do that again.”

Chuuya feels wild. He squeezes the base of his cock. He feels like he’s going to come. He needs a second, doesn’t want this to end yet. He slides his finger into Dazai’s mouth instead, runs it over Dazai’s teeth, presses his finger pad on one of Dazai’s canines. Dazai takes it when Chuuya adds a second finger, then a third, with his mouth open, throat relaxed. Chuuya presses them back until Dazai gags. Dazai’s dick jerks against his stomach, his hands clench on Chuuya’s knees.

“You like that.” Chuuya affirms needlessly, strokes himself slowly, thumbing at the head of his dick.

Dazai nods, eyes not leaving Chuuya’s. Chuuya withdraws his fingers and feeds his cock into Dazai’s mouth again, pressing him down until Dazai’s nose is pressed against Chuuya’s stomach. He pulls Dazai off and watches Dazai gasp in air, eyes flooded with tears. Saliva strings from Chuuya’s cockhead to Dazai’s swollen lips. Before it snaps Dazai leans forward and rubs Chuuya’s cock on his mouth, his cheeks, leaning in to suck at Chuuya’s balls as Chuuya’s dick drips on his face.

“S’good,” Dazai slurs, voice rough.

“You’re good,” Chuuya tells him, feels wild. “You feel so fucking good.” Chuuya taps his cock on Dazai’s lower lip. Dazai licks at him sloppily, sucks the head of Chuuya’s cock into his mouth, and then looks up at him with beseeching eyes. Chuuya tightens his grip in Dazai’s hair. He pushes Dazai down again, tugs him up with his hair, pushes him down with his hand flat on the back of Dazai’s head. “So good,” he groans, voice cracking, “Jesus.” He bobs Dazai on his dick and Dazai just takes it, mouth lolling open, eyes blinking dreamily, tongue plush and hot. Chuuya pushes Dazai into his stomach and holds him there, hips jerking up. Dazai’s throat contracts around Chuuya’s dick and everything is hot and wet and– “Fuck,” Chuuya pulls him off with a gasp. Dazai blinks at him hazily, eyes wet. He coughs and sucks in air even as he licks at the tip of Chuuya’s dick like he wants it back in his mouth, his throat. “I’m gonna come, Dazai, you’re so good, it’s so good–” Dazai lets his mouth fall open again, tongue sticking out. He half-smiles, lets Chuuya tilt his head up. “Fuck,” Chuuya says softly.

Dazai opens his mouth a little wider. Chuuya spits in it and Dazai jerks. Chuuya almost says sorry, worries that wasn’t right, but Dazai lifts up on his knees and makes a pleading sound low in his throat. Chuuya spits again, then slides his fingers in and out, tugging at Dazai’s lips as he rubs his fingers over Dazai’s mouth, his cheeks, to spread his spit.

“You take me so well, Dazai, feels so good–” Dazai sinks himself back onto Chuuya’s cock with a hum. Chuuya’s on the edge, his words tripping over themselves. “Shit, I’m gonna come, I’m– oh fuck–”

Dazai’s hands find Chuuya’s hips. He holds Chuuya close as he comes, spills down Dazai’s throat. Dazai chokes and sputters but he only pulls back only enough he can breathe. Chuuya’s dick jerks in Dazai’s mouth and he pulls out, lets the last spurts land on Dazai’s wet red bruised lips and chin. Dazai sits there, mouth open, like he’s showing Chuuya. He is showing Chuuya.

“I like that,” Chuuya rasps, finger shaking as he swipes over Dazai’s lips, “swallow for me?”

Dazai closes his mouth, swallows with Chuuya’s hand on his throat. Chuuya kisses his own come off Dazai’s face and into Dazai’s mouth. He cleans him off with his thumb and Dazai sucks at it, sucks at Chuuya’s tongue when Chuuya kisses him.

“Jesus.” Chuuya says, still breathing hard, stroking his fingertips over Dazai’s cheekbones, trailing down to his neck, that fucking scar.

Dazai makes a sound like a whimper and fidgets on the floor. His cock is leaking, bobbing with his movements, swollen and red.

“You wanna come again?” Chuuya asks. Dazai nods frantically. “Come here, let me make you come again.”

Dazai crawls into his lap. He’s too tall for it to be entirely comfortable at this angle, so Chuuya falls back on the bed, gets a hand on Dazai’s dick while Dazai curls over and noses into Chuuya’s neck, kissing him sort of– more muffled wet pants against Chuuya’s skin than real kisses. Chuuya thumbs at the head of Dazai’s cock on an upstroke and Dazai groans. His knees slide wider on the bed. His fingers dig into Chuuya’s wrist as he drags Chuuya’s hand off his dick and up to his mouth. Chuuya can’t see, can only feel as Dazai rolls his tongue around Chuuya’s fingers that are already wet with Dazai’s precome. Dazai tugs Chuuya’s hand back down and then lower, lower, until Chuuya has a finger pressed against his taint, another massaging slowly around his rim.

“Inside,” Dazai’s voice is muffled and wrecked, “Chuuya, can you— I like it— I—”

Chuuya closes his eyes, tries to breathe. His dick jerks weakly. He circles Dazai’s rim and feels his muscles loosen, unclench as he massages. He thinks about fucking Dazai, feels the response in his body, heat pooling in his gut. They can’t fuck, they don’t have anything, but Chuuya thinks about it and slips the tip of his finger in Dazai’s hole.

Dazai whimpers.

“Fuck.” Chuuya mumbles. Dazai pushes back against Chuuya’s finger.

“Chuuya—”

Chuuya won’t hurt him. Spit is not a great lube and it’s dry even though Dazai’s wet. He goes slow, dips his finger in, then out, tugs at Dazai’s rim. Chuuya slides his hand from Dazai’s hip to his ass and spreads him as he fucks the tip of his finger in farther, earning him a keening sound from Dazai.

“More,” Dazai chokes out, “more.”

The angle is wrong and there’s no lube and Chuuya feels crazed with it. He pushes in a little deeper, circles with his finger to try and loosen Dazai more.

“We don’t have anything, I don’t want– I don’t want to hurt you, Dazai–” Chuuya wants and wants and wants. He tugs his finger out, pulls his hand to his face and lifts up so he can drip spit on two fingers, uses that to get one in deeper, past his second knuckle, and the sound Dazai makes is obscene.

“God—” Dazai chokes out as he falls to his elbows on either side of Chuuya’s head, “more Chuuya, please–”

“We don’t have anything, we don’t have lube,” Chuuya feels wild. “You’re so tight, god, I—”

Chuuya bites at his shoulder and brings his other hand around so that he can jerk Dazai off. He keeps his grip tight while he drags his finger out, tugging at Dazai’s rim.

“I don’t care.” Dazai’s mouth is wet against Chuuya’s ear. He bites at Chuuya’s choker, pants against his neck. “Chuuya.” He says.

“I do.” Chuuya breathes. “I want to do it right,” he tells Dazai and thinks of all the things he wants to do to Dazai, could do with Dazai. It’s just this once, he tries to remind himself, fails. “I could make you come without a hand on you because my fingers feel so good, you ever done that Dazai, come untouched?” Dazai jerks toward him, shakes his head no wildly. “No? Oh, I could make you feel so good.” Chuuya whispers. He draws his hand up Dazai’s spine, slides it back down and teases his rim. “I’ll make you come so hard, fuck you through it and make you come again, fuck,” he slips his finger in, “you’re so tight, I—”

“You want to?” Dazai mumbles wetly into his skin, teeth scraping, hips rocking. “Tell me you want to do that.” He gets out, words broken up.

Chuuya wants.

“I want to.” He hisses, pushes the tip of his second finger in, just barely, and works the head of Dazai’s cock, strokes him. “God, I want to— I will.” He promises wildly. Dazai exhales harshly and comes all over Chuuya’s stomach and his chest, hot spurts, body jerking as he tries to curl in on himself.

Chuuya strokes a soothing hand up and down Dazai’s body as he trembles through the aftershocks, ruts gently against Chuuya’s hand, his stomach, Chuuya’s nearly hard cock. Chuuya kisses the side of Dazai’s head. Dazai flops his full weight onto Chuuya in response.

“Oof.” Chuuya mutters, the air pushed out of his lungs.

“S’sticky.” Dazai slurs.

“You’re messy.” Chuuya informs him.

“Dirty boy.” Dazai says, like he’s delirious. Chuuya snorts. He holds Dazai in a way he has never held him before. The lightning flashes outside. Chuuya inhales, exhales, inhales again. He kisses Dazai’s temple. The fine hairs there tickle his lips.

“Come on, mackerel.” He says, trying to calm himself. He strokes Dazai’s ribcage until Dazai grumbles, slides off his body slightly. Chuuya manages to get them cleaned up, dressed again at least partially. Making Dazai put on clothes feels like a sin. He crawls into his own bed and lifts the covers, looking at Dazai pointedly. Dazai inspects his own wet bed perfunctorily and then huffs, grins, crawls into Chuuya’s bed with him.

Chuuya sleeps like the dead.

He wakes to Dazai, sitting at the little table, wrapping bandages around his forearm. His bruise looks dark in the morning light. He’s already wrapped up his neck, covered most of the hickies Chuuya left. He sees one though, peeking out, and feels it in his gut, his dick. He takes a breath. Dazai’s gaze flicks up.

Chuuya doesn’t know what to say exactly, when their eyes meet.

“It doesn’t have to change anything,” Dazai says, before Chuuya can try to formulate a sentence. He says this as though everything is not irreparably changed. He looks at Chuuya and his eyes are a blank that Chuuya associates with Dazai, holding out his hands, falling back into rushing water.

Doesn’t it, Chuuya wants to say. Hasn’t it?

“Why would it?” Chuuya says, stretching as he rises to his feet. He casts about for his clothes, pulls on his gloves like they can protect him from this.

Dazai adjusts his shirt collar and kicks his feet up. He seems nonchalant. Chuuya’s blood is still singing with Dazai’s touch.

Chuuya has had enough of a love like this.

“It could just be— until we get home.” He blurts out, speaks before he thinks. He knew this would happen. Once is not enough. Chuuya is hungry, greedy, human. His want is a tidal wave and he has been pulled down and under and is crashing against rocky shores.

Dazai’s eyes flick to him. Assess, calculate. A look Chuuya is accustomed to seeing in Dazai’s eyes, the careful construction of a plan. Chuuya doesn’t know if Dazai plans to say something else, is going to agree, disagree– because the motel room door crashes in and Chuuya moves at the same second Dazai does.

“Rude.” Dazai says and ducks a punch, knocks a man out. With a sort of resigned sigh he lets himself be grabbed by the throat, pressed into a wall. “Chuuya,” he chokes out, “would you be so kind–” The guy must tighten his grip because Dazai stops talking.

Chuuya knocks the other assailants out one-two, quiet quick, uses his gravity which is nice, the power flexing in his body and the air around him. He steps over their prone bodies. He pistol whips the last man, the one who’s holding Dazai up. When he staggers back and away from Dazai, Chuuya slams the heel of his hand into the guy’s nose. He hears something crunch.

The man drops. Chuuya resists the urge to kick him.

There is a pin drop of silence. None of the men on the ground move, least of all the one Chuuya hit.

“Ah fuck.” Chuuya mutters, flexes his hand. He kicks idly at a man and receives no response. “Well.” He says to Dazai. Dazai shrugs, aims a finger gun at the men and whispers bang. Chuuya rolls his eyes.

“Do you want our leftovers?” Dazai asks as Chuuya tosses shit into their duffel bag. Chuuya kicks his ankles as he passes. “You’re right, you’re right.” Dazai says mildly, rubs his throat. Chuuya uses the bathroom, washes his hands, waving them dry and pocketing his gloves. He grabs their shit and does a quick check he didn’t miss anything. Dazai’s poking through the pockets of the unconscious men when Chuuya returns to the main room. “I guess we should go.” He says and Chuuya watches him pocket some cash, another gun. “Come on, shorty.” Dazai says, dusting off his hands.

“Fuck off bandage boy.” Chuuya says and shoves his shoes into his feet. He swings the duffel over his shoulder. As they exit the room, he places his hand on the small of Dazai’s back, guides him to the car. It only occurs to him when they’re driving that he didn’t need to do that. It had been instinct. He had needed to feel the heat of Dazai’s body. He didn’t like how Dazai had just dropped his hands, let the man choke him. He knows it’s because Dazai had trusted the fight to Chuuya, but he still doesn’t like it.

They stop, dump the car, and Dazai gets coffee and onigiri for them which they eat at a bus stop. Chuuya puts his gloves back on and flexes his hands. They take the bus and then the train, switch a license plate or two when they get off, take an express train, steal another car.

Dazai keeps watching Chuuya with those analytical eyes. Chuuya ignores him. They drive. Chuuya smokes out the window. Dazai lights a cigarette and smokes half of it, crushes it into the ashtray they were both surprised to find this car had. Dazai kicks his feet up on the dash. Chuuya hisses at him that it’s unsafe. Dazai fiddles with the radio, offers Chuuya a milk candy. He stares at Chuuya while Chuuya tries to keep his eyes on the road. When they’ve been driving for maybe an hour or two, Chuuya breaks.

“What.” He hisses.

“It doesn’t have to change anything,” Dazai says, like the conversation earlier never got interrupted. “We’re not home yet, Chuuya. If you wanted.”

Chuuya is thrown, feels like he has waded into deep water accidentally. His breath comes unsteady. He glances at Dazai out of the corner of his eye. Dazai is looking out the front windshield, expression idle and bored. He flicks his gaze to Chuuya.

Don’t do this, Chuuya counsels himself.

“We’re not home.” He agrees and puts his hand on Dazai’s thigh like he’s testing something. Dazai’s legs fall open. Chuuya doesn’t move his hand up, just strokes his thumb on Dazai’s inseam.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says and slides Chuuya’s hand up to cup him. He’s hard. Chuuya can feel the hot blood throb of him through his jeans.

“You’re hard?” Chuuya asks, bemused and turned on and confused. He squeezes Dazai once. This is a bad idea. All of this, from the start– it’s been a bad idea. A chess game where Chuuya made a mistake with his opening move. There’s no way this ends well for him, but Chuuya’s so far gone, has been so far gone for so long, he can’t see where they started, can’t acknowledge that it was the wrong move yet. He can’t make himself stop. “You can’t wait?” Chuuya asks, makes his tone a touch condescending. Dazai groans, shakes his head, spreads his legs more as he slides down in his seat. Chuuya presses his thumb into Dazai’s inner thigh. “Wait until we get to the city.” Chuuya says, trying to modulate his breathing.

“No.” Dazai complains. “Now, come on.”

“Desperate.” Chuuya tells him, aiming for chiding but his voice shakes. Dazai nods, easily accepting in a way that throws Chuuya. He squeezes Dazai and strokes him through the thick material while Dazai hips twitch up. “I’m driving, Dazai.” He says, steadying his voice, pulling his hand back.

“Pull over.” Dazai gasps.

“Why, so you can come in your pants again?” Chuuya asks.

“Fuck.” Dazai fumbles with the button, his zipper. He lifts his hips to get his pants open, down a little. Chuuya glances at him briefly. Dazai is looking right at him. His eyes look like Chuuya is never going to escape him, is going to bleed himself dry on the sharp edges of Dazai over and over.

“You’re so easy,” Chuuya puts his eyes back on the road. He counts three breaths and then can’t help but chance another look at Dazai. Chuuya’s dick throbs in his pants at the sight of Dazai, his desperate expression, wet tented boxers. “Look at you, you’re already so wet—” Chuuya says and Dazai moans softly. “Fuck.” Chuuya says, squeezing the wheel so tight it creaks. “Fuck.”

Chuuya gets teeth on the leather of his middle finger to pull his glove off so he can feel properly how wet and hard Dazai is for him. Dazai grabs his wrist with a strangled sound.

“Don’t take off your gloves.” Dazai whispers.

“Jesus.” Chuuya tells him. Dazai drags Chuuya’s hand back to his dick. He squirms in his seat, holding Chuuya’s hand in place against him by the wrist as he ruts up into Chuuya’s palm. “Fucking hell,” Chuuya curses, tries to keep his eyes on the road, looks for a spot to turn off, “Dazai, what—”

“Liked when you hit that guy for me,” Dazai groans, “broke his nose, fuck,” He grinds against Chuuya’s palm. “You used— ah— this hand.”

“Christ.” Chuuya gets out. “Christ, fuck.”

“Want it in me.” Dazai moans.

“Fuck, you’re gonna kill me,” Chuuya’s hand shakes as he turns off on an exit, the wheel spinning a little wildly. “Fuck, I wanted to fuck him up more, didn’t want him to touch you, Dazai. Didn’t like that he did.” He feels delirious. “You look good getting choked, would you let me do that?” Dazai groans as he nods and pushes up against Chuuya’s hand hard, “Yeah,” Chuuya agrees, “you would let me, you like it. Looked so good choking on my cock too, Dazai, so good, like you were made for it–”

“Yeah,” Dazai pants softly, “liked it so much, stop the car, stop the car, let me show you how much—”

Chuuya pulls over on the side of the road and up a small emergency turn off. Dazai’s on him so quickly Chuuya barely has a chance to unbuckle. Once he does, he grabs Dazai and tugs the hair on the back of his head, soft and then hard, the long almost curls threaded through his fingers. Dazai’s head jerks back as he lets out a little ah.

“Chuuya,” Dazai pants. Chuuya looks at him. Dazai wriggles in his grip. Chuuya wants to fuck Dazai in the back seat. He wants to take him home and take him apart for hours, bit by bit, make him cry from how bad he wants it, wants Chuuya.

“You’re fucking easy,” Chuuya tells Dazai as he gets his hand in Dazai’s boxers. He strokes him hard and tight, precome easing the slide. He thumbs the head of Dazai’s cock.

“Yeah,” Dazai whines and Chuuya’s stomach clenches, “let me suck your dick.”

“This is ridiculous,” Chuuya mutters, turned on beyond belief. He pulls his hand out of Dazai’s boxers, wipes it on Dazai’s stomach. Dazai laughs breathlessly. “Dazai, we’re– the road is right there– you–”

“Let me,” Dazai breathes, tilting forward. He bites Chuuya’s neck, tongue soft and hot. “Please?” He says, pulling back.

Dazai is out the car the second Chuuya nods. He gets Chuuya’s door open and his pants undone as he kisses him. Chuuya swings a leg out of the car and Dazai falls to his knees, nuzzles at the base of Chuuya’s dick, drags his lips up the underside, wet and hot. Dazai wriggles Chuuya’s jeans down a little more as he sucks the head of Chuuya’s cock, looks up at Chuuya with dark eyes. Chuuya’s dick jerks. Dazai smiles. He kisses the head of Chuuya’s dick again, licks at the slit and moans like Chuuya tastes good even though he must taste like salt and bitter. Dazai rubs his lips on the head of Chuuya’s cock, letting it pull at the corners of his mouth. He pushes it into his cheek while he licks with his tongue. It slides out his mouth with a popping sound. He kisses just below the head.

“Dazai,” Chuuya gasps. Dazai hums and runs his lips up and down Chuuya’s dick, sticky sweet, wet and messy with spit. He’s acting like they’re somewhere private, like he has time to try to make Chuuya come undone. Dazai doesn’t seem to realize that Chuuya is already undone. Chuuya has been undone, is open and yielding in Dazai’s hands, has always been in so many ways. “You said you wanted to suck my dick, so suck it.” Chuuya manages to get out.

“Okay,” Dazai gasps, and slides down Chuuya’s dick until it’s deep in his throat, all hollowed cheeks and suction, hand tight at the base, twisting and stroking when he pulls up, following his mouth. He sinks down again, nearly to the base and hums, low in his throat. Chuuya pulls Dazai off roughly by the hair just so he can look at him, gasping, spit down his chin, lips red and shiny. He squeezes Dazai’s neck lightly and Dazai smiles all giddy. Chuuya pushes him back down on his cock. Dazai takes him easy, sloppily, groaning. He gags around him, spit bubbling out the corner of his mouth and doesn’t pull back, tilts forward a little more so his nose presses into Chuuya’s stomach. When he pulls up his eyes are shiny and wet, tears dripping down his face. He doesn’t pull off all the way, looks up at Chuuya while he sucks softly on the head of his cock, tonguing the slit, stroking him with a tight fist.

What are we doing, Chuuya’s rational brain says, trying to break through the arousal and the desire to fuck into Dazai’s throat again, what are we doing? Dazai is on his knees, dick half out, deepthroating Chuuya and anyone could pull up. They’re not in a private place. Hell, Chuuya can still hear the cars on the road.

“Come on,” Dazai’s voice is rough, “Chuuya–” He strokes Chuuya’s dick while he speaks, rubbing the head over his face.

Jesus, Chuuya thinks. Jesus.

He puts one hand on the back of Dazai’s head, the other on the door frame of this stolen fucking car, as he braces himself with one foot on the ground, one on the car. He jerks his hips up hard and forces himself down Dazai’s throat, watches Dazai’s eyes roll back, tears spilling down his cheeks. His hand falls from Chuuya’s thigh to between his own legs. He gags and swallows around Chuuya’s dick.

“You can take it.” Chuuya says when he pulls Dazai off, part question, part command. Dazai, gasping for air, nods and jerks his own dick. Chuuya fucks into his mouth, once, twice, Dazai swallowing around him, gagging slightly.

“Harder,” Dazai says, voice ragged when Chuuya pulls him off next. He opens his mouth, sticks out his tongue and relaxes it.

“Fuck.” Chuuya manages, pushes himself deep into the hot plush of Dazai’s waiting mouth. He does it again and again. He pushes Dazai down and slides his fingers to Dazai’s neck as he holds him there. He swears he can feel himself in Dazai’s throat, a slight bulge where his cock is. He presses in on Dazai’s Adam’s apple, then the sides of his throat. Dazai clutches at Chuuya’s hand on the back of his head like he’s holding it there, holding himself there, choking on Chuuya’s cock. “Oh god,” Chuuya manages, strokes Dazai’s throat, “Jesus, fuck, Dazai, I’m gonna come—”

Dazai makes a sound around Dazai’s cock and the vibrations of it are too much. Chuuya pulls back a little as he comes in Dazai’s mouth.

“Don’t swallow,” he gasps out as he comes, “fuck, fuck—”

Dazai’s eyes are closed and he sits there, mouth open, throat constricting under Chuuya’s hand while he tries not to swallow. Chuuya milks the last bit of his come out over Dazai’s lips. Dazai trembles, blinks his eyes open and looks at Chuuya dreamily.

“Good, good boy.” Chuuya says without thinking. He thinks Dazai might react to that, object, but Dazai’s eyes roll back a little in his head and he makes a soft sound of agreement. Chuuya can see his mouth move as he tries not to swallow, breathing through his nose. Chuuya holds him by the jaw, strokes his cheekbone and presses in on the bruise. Dazai makes a whining sound. Chuuya drips spit into Dazai’s open mouth. Dazai’s dick jerks against his stomach. “Good, here–” Chuuya holds a cupped hand against Dazai’s chin, under his mouth. Dazai looks at him like he’s dazed, then tilts quizzically so some of the mess in his mouth spills into Chuuya’s palm.

“Good,” Chuuya soothes him, “swallow for me okay baby, then kiss me.”

Dazai swallows and surges up to kiss him. His mouth is bitter and there’s still some of Chuuya’s come left in it. Chuuya licks Dazai’s teeth, the roof of his mouth, pulls him into the kiss with his clean hand tight on Dazai’s shirt. He reaches down to jerk Dazai off. The angle is a little awkward, but Chuuya doesn’t care. He strokes him hard, fast, uses what he made Dazai give him as lube. The sound is wet and obscene. Dazai fucks into his fist, whimpers against his lips.

“You want to come?” Chuuya whispers and releases his hold on Dazai’s dick. Dazai jerks against nothing, tries to push back into the circle of Chuuya’s fingers. Chuuya doesn’t let him.

“Oh god,” Dazai says, voice cracking as he reaches for himself, “please– I need–”

“No,” Chuuya stops his hand. Dazai just lets him, hand resting back on Chuya’s thigh at the softest touch of Chuuya’s fingertips. Chuuya kisses Dazai slowly, reaches down to cup his balls, push a finger back to his perineum. It slides easy with the spit and come. He touches Dazai’s rim, circles it. Dazai groans. “You’d let me do this right now, wouldn’t you? Fuck you open on the side of the road with my come. You’re that desperate for it aren’t you?”

Dazai moans softly, hips jerking as his cock leaks.

“Wouldn’t you?” Chuuya asks, pushes the tip of his finger gently into Dazai’s hole.

“Yeah, fuck, yes–” Dazai chokes out. “Please.”

“Fuck.” Chuuya says, sliding his fingers back to Dazai’s dick. “Fuck, that’s hot.” Chuuya rewards him with a loose circle of fingers to fuck up into.

“Thought about you— fuck, fucking me open with your gloves still on— Chuuya—” Dazai mumbles, the words seeming to spill from him.

Chuuya can’t think about that, about how hot that is, about what it means, when Dazai would have been thinking about that. He pulls his hand off to spit on it, and Dazai makes a sound at the loss that goes right to Chuuya’s dick. Chuuya gets his hand back on Dazai, rubs his palm over the head of Dazai’s cock on each upstroke, jerks him off hard and fast.

“This is someone’s fucking car,” Chuuya tells him in a heated whisper, “we’re in the open and you’re on your knees for me, Dazai. Begging for it. No patience, no shame, you’re easy, a fucking slut—” Dazai moans like Chuuya’s whispering sweet nothings. “Couldn’t even wait, so needy, couldn’t even wait and be good for me—” Chuuya hisses and Dazai jerks.

“Ah—” Dazai whimpers, blinking his eyes open like he’s confused, hips rutting up, fingers tight in the hem of Chuuya’s shirt, “Chuuya, sorry, wasn’t good—” He slurs.

Chuuya feels his world tilt on its axis. He slides his hand to the nape of Dazai’s neck and pulls him into a kiss as he strokes him.

“No, I’m sorry, you were good,” Chuuya whispers into Dazai’s mouth, bites at his lips, “so good for me. Come now, Dazai. Be good for me, baby.”

Dazai’s whole body shudders and the sound he makes as he comes is unholy. Chuuya works him through it and keeps going even though he shouldn’t, even though they need to go and go now. He likes the way Dazai twitches in overstimulation, leans into it.

“Fuck.” Chuuya mutters as Dazai finally whimpers and pushes at his hand. He lets go of him, kisses Dazai’s hairline, the sweat beading on his temple.

“Fuck.” Dazai agrees, head falling limply against Chuuya’s shoulder, breathing uneven. “Your glove is ruined.” Dazai sort of slurs after a moment and then raises his head, lifts Chuuya’s hand to his lips. He sucks a finger into his mouth to clean it, licks the flat of his tongue over the palm, his eyes dark and intent. He shivers, like the aftershocks of his orgasm are still happening, when he takes two of Chuuya’s fingers into his mouth.

“Gonna get hard again if you keep this up.” Chuuya tells him. “God, fuck, we’re outside, we need to—”

“You called me baby,” Dazai murmurs and Chuuya flushes, pulls his hand out of Dazai’s.

“Get in the fucking car, mackerel.”

“I’m your baby.” Dazai says absently, voice rough. He slaps Chuuya softly on the cheek with his sticky hand, “How embarrassing.” Chuuya can’t tell if Dazai means for Chuuya or himself.

“Fuck you.” Chuuya slams his head back against the headrest. Dazai walks back around the car, tucking himself back into his pants. “Jesus, clean up first,” Chuuya tells him and casts about for napkins or something. He settles on one of their t-shirts, tosses it at Dazai who wipes at himself vaguely.

“I don’t know that this is salvageable,” Dazai croaks out as he slides into his seat. He clears his throat and smiles at Chuuya, lips swollen and bruised and Chuuya knows what they look like around his cock now and will never be able to unknow it. “Aren’t you going to drive?” Dazai asks him, voice scratchy and raw. Anyone would know looking at him, hearing him, that he’d been sucking dick. They’d know it was Chuuya’s dick. Chuuya snags the t-shirt and tries to clean himself up. Dazai reaches out and adjusts Chuuya’s hair where he must have messed it up. Chuuya smacks at him. He turns the keys. Dazai flicks the radio back on and kicks his feet up. “Let’s go.” He says with a yawn.

Chuuya wonders how many times he can tug his heart back out of Dazai’s hands. Every time he does it leaves blood and bits of tender flesh under Dazai’s nails, pieces of Chuuya that Chuuya can’t get back. Chuuya has tried to seal his heart back up in his chest but it never works. His ribcage creaks ominously with it.

He tells himself he won’t do this again as he merges back onto the highway.

He already knows he’s lying.

They stop at a rest stop. Chuuya parks in the furthest corner of the lot. They go to change, not quite clean but better than they were. When they drop the bag back in the car, he pushes Dazai into the back seat, crawling on top of him. They make out in the car like teenagers, desperate. Dazai bites Chuuya’s lip hard enough it bleeds. They share gyoza and Chuuya kisses the grease off Dazai’s lips in secret, buys him an overly sweet coffee. He smokes and stares at the sky while Dazai looks at souvenirs. He pushes Dazai against the car door like he’s got a knife to him, palms him, gets Dazai panting and jerking against his hand and then leaves him there.

“Aren’t you getting in?” He asks, leaning over to push Dazai’s door open.

Dazai looks at him, betrayed, but slides into his seat. He fidgets but doesn’t try to touch himself, not after the first time when Chuuya slapped at his hand and gave him a look. He calls Chuuya a litany of names. Chuuya lights a cigarette and waves him off.

As they enter Osaka city limits, Chuuya glances over. Dazai is looking right at him. His eyes look like they do when he watches Chuuya fight.

It’s intoxicating.

Chuuya’s blood sings.

The Port Mafia’s contact in Osaka sends a lower level grunt to offer them the phone, the promise of safety. Chuuya smiles politely. The guy looks at him and Dazai with carefully practiced blankness in his eyes. Dazai wanders off as Chuuya grabs the burner phone being offered. Chuuya’s already snapped the one from the safe house, tossed it in a river somewhere along the way here, the SIM card snapped and trashed at the rest stop where he’d given way too much consideration to blowing Dazai in the dirty bathroom.

“What?” He snaps, when he notices the man staring at Dazai a bit too intently.

“Are you–?” He pauses, his question not a question. Clears his throat. Prying is not part of his job description. Chuuya watches him fight with himself. “Is he—?”

It figures that Dazai would still have a name for himself even here, even after so many years.

“A fucking pain in my ass?” Chuuya responds. “Yeah.”

The guy’s gaze snaps to him like he doesn’t understand. Chuuya can almost hear him saying no, that’s not what I meant.

He rolls his eyes and waits.

“They call— called him the Black Wraith, right?” The man asks, gaze drifting back to track Dazai’s movements.

Chuuya thinks of Dazai on his knees.

“Something like that,” he says, “do you know a good restaurant around here?”

“Tomorrow is fine.” He tells Mori over the phone. The line crackles. Chuuya inspects the palm of his glove.

Of course, Mori speaks smoothly. I’m glad you seem to be well, Chuuya-kun.

“Yeah, well. I’ve had worse.” Chuuya replies aimlessly, tapping his shoe on the stone of the ground. “And I’ve been kind of enjoying the drive.”

Of course, Mori repeats and there’s a pause. I gather Dazai-kun is still with you?

“You know he is.” Chuuya says with a sigh, leaning back on the side of the bridge. It digs gently into his back. “Like he’d leave me the fuck alone, crowing about how he saved my life.” He tracks Dazai with his eyes, the long length of him as he stares into the river.

Joined in of his own accord, Mori says, couldn’t have stopped him if I wanted to, you know. Just like old times.

Chuuya remains silent.

Tell him he’s welcome back of course, if he would like. His seat is always open.

Chuuya snorts.

“Tell someone who likes him to tell him that, boss.” The silence is deafening. Mori knows. Of course he knows. Chuuya’s toes curl in his shoes. “If you’re trying to use me to get him to come back,” he says after a moment, voice too quiet as he watches Dazai balance precariously on his stomach on the side of the bridge, his feet off the ground, his hand stretching out, “it won’t work, you know.”

Chuuya can choose Dazai first a thousand times over. Dazai never chooses him back. Chuuya understands that, like a law of nature, a simple scientific truth—

I see, Mori says. Good night, Chuuya-kun.

— Chuuya will always look to Dazai. Dazai will always be looking somewhere else.

Dazai kicks the door shut behind them and bullies Chuuya into the wall hard. His head bangs against it. He bites his tongue. Dazai’s bruise is plum purple and Chuuya wants to press into it with his teeth like it’s soft fruit.

“Can we fuck?” Dazai asks. Chuuya rolls his eyes. It’s a protection mechanism. He’s so stripped bare.

“I need a cigarette.” He tells Dazai. Dazai releases one hand and pulls a pack out of his pocket. He then pulls out Chuuya’s lighter, which Chuuya had definitely left at his apartment. He doesn’t even bother wondering why Dazai hadn’t mentioned he had it until now. “You break into my apartment?” He asks Dazai.

“Multiple times.” Dazai tells him, and pushes the cigarettes to Chuuya’s chest, pulls a bottle of lube out of his pocket too.

“You rob the convenience store?” Chuuya asks him, raising an eyebrow. Dazai pulls a pack of gum, condoms, and a tin of canned crab out of his other pocket. “So yes.” Chuuya says with a snort.

“Watched you palm a bottle of whiskey.” Dazai says. Chuuya did. He slides it out of his back pocket. Dazai strips the comforter off the bed with a flourish.

“You’re fucking annoying.” Chuuya tells him. He grabs Dazai by the jaw and kisses him. Dazai makes an almost startled sound.

“You like it,” he breathes into Chuuya’s mouth in between kisses. Chuuya doesn’t bother correcting or denying one way or the other. Everyone seems to know anyway, the horrible beating truth of it. Chuuya doesn’t just like it, Chuuya likes Dazai, through and through, all backwards and forward.

“Go take a shower.” Chuuya says, shoves him. Dazai laughs, soft and real. Chuuya thinks he has heard that so rarely. He wishes he could make Dazai make that sound again. He doesn’t know if he knows how to though. He feels like he doesn't know anything. He packs the cigarettes, opens them. Dazai reaches around him to pluck one out, put it back in upside down. Chuuya glances it up at him but Dazai is already walking away.

“Slug needs some luck.” Dazai tosses over his shoulder, as he enters the bathroom.

Chuuya does. He smokes a cigarette and stares out the window.

Dazai exits the bathroom in a cloud of steam and gestures grandly for Chuuya to enter. When Chuuya comes back from his shower, Dazai is sprawled across the bed, legs hanging off the side, feet tapping on the floor. He looks up at Chuuya and raises an eyebrow.

Chuuya walks over and stands in between Dazai’s spread legs. Dazai sits up. Chuuya tilts Dazai’s face toward him with a hand on his jaw, leans forward so their lips almost meet.

“Just until we’re home, right?” He whispers, trying to break his own heart, remind himself, create some sort of boundary so his heart doesn’t get away from him.

There is a long pause.

“Tell me you want this.” Dazai demands. His eyes harden in a strange way, like he will not just push Chuuya off of him if Chuuya says no, but like he will leave, walk out into the night, and never come back.

Chuuya doesn’t bother to try to lie. He doesn’t see the point.

“I want this.” Chuuya says. He wants so much. He wants everything. His palms feel warm, like Dazai’s blood is on them. “Do you?”

Dazai doesn’t answer, just lifts up and kisses Chuuya like it is an answer. Maybe it is. Chuuya kisses back. Dazai hadn’t put many clothes back on so Chuuya takes them off easily. He didn’t bother with his own shirt when he got out of the shower. It’s only when his fingers trace Dazai’s bare forearms and he brings one to his mouth to kiss that he fully realizes Dazai never put his bandages back on. Chuuya’s seen more of Dazai’s bare skin in the past forty-eight hours than he’s seen ever. He’s seen Dazai bandage-less before of course, back when they were partners and he was tending to wounds. Or when they were at the bathhouse. Or when he’d jumped into a river after Dazai and both of them, shivering and shouting at each other, had to strip so they could wrap themselves in blankets, not freeze to death.

“Chuuya?” Dazai says. Chuuya shakes his head, kisses Dazai’s wrist where the bones and veins show through the thin skin between scars. Chuuya presses his teeth around a newer scar. He drags his mouth back to Dazai’s and kisses him deeply, slowly. He lets himself go, get lost in it, the push and pull, the soft hot plush of it, the sharp of Dazai’s teeth against his lower lip. “Chuuya,” Dazai breathes into his mouth. Chuuya kisses up under his jaw, down his neck.

He pushes Dazai back on the bed. Dazai crawls up it a little so his legs aren’t hanging off anymore as Chuuya explores his skin like it’s the first time, kissing and licking down his chest. He stops, biting at Dazai’s nipples, twisting and pinching them. Dazai’s hands press into Chuuya’s shoulders, holding him tight. Chuuya runs fingers over Dazai’s ribs, his hipbones. He has scabbed over cuts on his arms, his thighs, that Chuuya kisses softly. He massages Dazai’s legs, digs his fingers into the muscle of them. He kisses the base of his dick. Dazai’s hard even though Chuuya hasn’t touched his cock. It drips on his stomach. Chuuya licks the precome away, lets the bitterness burst on his tongue. Dazai makes a soft impatient sound, one Chuuya is becoming accustomed too.

“Yeah, yeah, mackerel.” Chuuya murmurs. “Let me finger you.” He kisses Dazai’s stomach.

Dazai chokes out a strange laugh, pulls Chuuya’s face up to his. He kisses him, tongue slipping into Chuuya’s mouth. He kisses him like he forgets that he wanted Chuuya to fuck him, like this was his goal, just this, their mouths pressed together, endless kisses each tumbling into the next. He breaks the kiss eventually, pants into Chuuya’s mouth, little huffs of air.

“Get on with it, you short man, you.” Dazai says, pushing the lube into Chuuya’s hands.

“Oh ow, deeply offended.” Chuuya takes the lube and grabs a pillow as he slides down Dazai’s body, settles between his thighs.

“I’m offended by how short you are.” Dazai tosses back, lifting his hips for Chuuya. “You want me like this?” He asks.

“You don’t like it?” Chuuya asks, hand pausing on the back of Dazai’s thigh. “You can roll over. I wanted to be able to see your face.”

“Ew.” Dazai wrinkles his nose. He lets his legs fall open though, hitches his hips forward a little, pulls one leg back, hand sliding to replace Chuuya’s. “Disgusting.”

“Do you want to roll over, Dazai.” Chuuya sighs.

“No.” Dazai says and looks away. “Easier to kick Slug this way if he’s bad at this.”

“Oh I’m not bad at this.” Chuuya strokes a dry finger over Dazai’s hole as he warms lube on his other fingers. Dazai is responsive, sensitive in a way Chuuya is still overcome by. The touch makes Dazai groan, a low heady sound. “Okay?” Chuuya asks with a pause. He presses his thumb on Dazai’s perineum.

“Yeah, yeah, do it already, you talk too much— oh fuck—”

Chuuya snorts a little. He’d barely pushed the tip of his finger in, wet with lube, and Dazai had full body jolted.

Chuuya works him open slow, teasing but not entirely meaning to. He just likes how Dazai clenches around the tip of his finger, rocks his hips down, how one finger up to the second knuckle makes him gasp. He circles it slowly, as Dazai adjusts. By the time Chuuya has two fingers in him Dazai’s moaning softly, rocking down on his hand and chanting nonsense words. Chuuya fucks them in all the way and scissors them and Dazai gasps, hand slamming against the headboard with a bang.

"God," Chuuya says, watching Dazai fall apart, “you like this with everyone?” He kisses Dazai’s rim where his fingers are buried. Dazai groans. Chuuya pulls his fingers out a little and spits on them. Dazai jerks like he can feel it even though Chuuya thinks he probably just heard it. Everything is wet, sweat, lube, spit— precome that Chuuya’s swiped from Dazai’s stomach and pushed inside him.

"Dunno." Dazai mumbles on a gasp, grabs his wrist and grinds down on Chuuya’s fingers. “Never had anyone else to tell me— oh fuck, that feels—”

“What?” Chuuya asks, confused. “You said you liked this?”

“I do,” Dazai groans, “do it to myself, never— had another person to— god, Chuuya do we have to talk about this right now?”

Chuuya pulls his fingers out, fucks them back in. He presses his third finger in.

“No.” Chuuya says. There’s a whole list of things they don’t talk about. What’s one more. “Just tell me what feels good. Tell me if you want me to stop.” He circles his fingers, scissors them and watches Dazai’s rim stretch.

“It all feels good,” Dazai gasps, head lolling back on the pillows, “don’t stop.”

Chuuya looks up at Dazai and kisses his thigh and doesn’t ask why me.

“It all feels good, huh?” Chuuya asks, bending to softly kiss the base of Dazai’s dick again, sticky with the precome he’s dripping. “So I’m not bad at this then, hmm?” Chuuya half-teases, circling Dazai’s prostate in a way he knows must be maddening. Dazai’s muscles tremble.

“Shut up,” Dazai pants, shoves aimlessly at Chuuya’s shoulder with his heel. “Can you— fuck me—”

“You want me to fuck you?” Chuuya asks, half the question he wants to ask. Why do you want me to fuck you?

“Chuuya—” Dazai’s voice breaks, “talked a big talk last night—ah, fuck—”

“I don’t know we can do all that here.” Chuuya tells him. “The walls are thin and you’re not very good at being quiet.” He crooks his fingers, presses up toward Dazai’s stomach and Dazai makes a long strangled sound. “See? Be quiet.”

“Chuuya is too— thinks too highly of himself—” Dazai mumbles, his voice breaking.

“Mmhm.” Chuuya says spreads his fingers inside Dazai, who sobs. He kisses Dazai’s rim again, licks at it, sucks at his perineum harshly and Dazai’s hips kick up and then down.

“Ah,” he says, “ah— that’s—“

“You’re so tight,” Chuuya praises softly.

“Oh fuck,” Dazai says, rocks down on his hand, “oh fuck, oh fuck.” His heels dig into the bed and Chuuya just watches for a few seconds as Dazai fucks himself on Chuuya’s fingers. “Chuuya,” Dazai pleads, “more, move, fuck.”

“Someone’s gonna hear you.” Chuuya tells him mildly, strokes his prostate and Dazai babbles out a string of curses. “Be quiet, Dazai.” Chuuya doesn’t know if anyone can hear them, wouldn’t even care.

“Chuuya, Chuuya, can you— fuck me now—oh shit—” Dazai’s cock jerks against his stomach, leaking. He reaches for it and Chuuya grabs his wrist, pulls it down to the bed.

“Show me that you can be quiet, he tells Dazai, “and if you can be quiet, I’ll fuck you.”

“I can—” Dazai tries to say, cut off into a stuttered whine as Chuuya crooks his fingers in and up toward Dazai’s stomach.

Dazai can’t. He falls apart loudly and beautifully underneath Chuuya. Chuuya kisses his stomach and tastes the salt of his skin and his precome. He’s been fingering Dazai for long enough, his fingers are wrinkled with it and Dazai’s relaxed enough Chuuya could fuck him, press into the tight heat of him. He wants to fuck him. He also wants to do this, keep Dazai gasping and twisting underneath him, ruining the hotel sheets.

“You’re dripping,” Chuuya tells Dazai, tucking the tip of his pinky in his hole as he licks up Dazai’s cock which he hasn’t touched properly since this started.

“Fuck—” Dazai slams his hand against the headboard again, harder this time, pushing down on Chuuya’s fingers. An answering bang rings out. Chuuya pauses and whoever is on the other side of the wall bangs a few more times.

Dazai blinks like he’s confused, panting. He looks glassy-eyed down at Chuuya.

“What—” He slurs.

“I thought I was just messing with you,” Chuuya puts an arm over his hips to hold him still and presses on his prostate hard. Dazai sobs loudly, body trying to pull away, whines, his voice breaking on Chuuya’s name. “Guess everybody knows who’s fucking you, Dazai.” Chuuya says as he relents, drags his fingers out so he can push them back in.

Dazai grabs Chuuya’s wrist to hold him and presses down on Chuuya’s fingers.

“Yeah—” he gasps and, fuck, Chuuya’s whole body throbs.

“You like that?” He says, trying to control his breathing.

“Yeah,” Dazai groans, “yeah, yes, Chuuya—”

“Fuck, Dazai, fuck—” he feels undone.

“More, Chuuya, more, fuck, I want more—”

Chuuya sucks on Dazai’s thigh, scrapes with his teeth.

“Be quiet, okay?” He drags his fingers out, fucks them back in, circling them and stretching Dazai’s rim. “God.” He tells Dazai, “fuck, you feel so good, want my cock in you.”

“Yeah, please, feels good,” Dazai says, “Chuuya, please,—”

“Too loud.” Chuuya whispers. “Put your fingers in your mouth, baby, you’re disturbing people.”

Dazai listens, which almost breaks Chuuya’s self control. He’s aching. Dazai has two fingers in his mouth when Chuuya flicks his tongue in with the three fingers he already has in Dazai’s stretched hole. He bites softly at Dazai’s rim.

“Oh fuck, fuck—” Dazai’s voice borders on a shout.

“God, what does it take for you to be quiet?” Chuuya asks, pulling his fingers out as he surges up to put his hand over Dazai’s mouth. “Shut up, Dazai. Be good.”

The magic word, Chuuya realizes, because Dazai who was moving under him stills and blinks up at him, teary and desperate.

“Don’t you want to be good for me?” Chuuya asks softly. He strokes Dazai’s hole and feels it clench around nothing, the tip of his finger.

Dazai makes a soft sound under Chuuya’s palm.

“I wish I could edge you,” he tells Dazai, “would you like that? I could get you so close, keep you there, take you back, get you almost there again, just do that for ages before I make you come just from my fingers. It’s different, Dazai, feels different when you come like that and don’t touch your cock at all.” He ghosts his knuckles up Dazai’s cock, swollen and red. Dazai makes a half-sob sound that goes right to Chuuya’s dick. “Fuck.” Chuuya palms himself and Dazai flicks his eyes down, trying to see. They don’t really have time for that, Dazai spread and edged and begging, but Chuuya can’t stop himself from talking.

Dazai’s breath is hot and wet on Chuuya’s palm. Chuuya moves his hand so he can kiss Dazai. Dazai’s tongue presses into Chuuya’s mouth almost gently.

“Can I fuck you?” Chuuya breathes, feels like he’s pleading, “Dazai, god, let me—”

“S’what Chuuya wants?” Dazai asks through a pant, as Chuuya bends his head to Dazai’s chest to bite his nipple. “Ah– fuck— fuck, that’s— good,”

“Yeah, want to.” Chuuya whispers, presses the flat of his tongue to the nipple he just bit. “Let me get the condom, let me— you want that, right?”

Dazai doesn’t speak, just pushes at Chuuya, handing him a condom. He licks his lips. Chuuya travels back down to settle between Dazai’s thighs even though everything’s already wet and Dazai is open for him. He licks at Dazai’s hole softly, fucks his tongue in, and Dazai’s whole body jerks.

“Ah,” Dazai groans, muffled under his own hand, trying to be quiet like Chuuya told him.

“So good.” Chuuya tells him, fucks him with his tongue gently, reveling in the tight heat and the sounds Dazai makes. “So good for me. I don’t want you to have to be quiet, I want to fuck you when you can be as loud as you want, shit, there are so many things I want to do to you, with you—” He’s shaking as he sits up. He strokes himself with a lube covered hand then strokes Dazai too, listens to him keen as he arches off the bed. “Yeah, fuck,” he tells him, “be loud, fuck those people.”

“Please— in me—” Dazai groans.

“How do you want it?” Chuuya asks, stroking Dazai’s leg. Dazai groans and rolls himself over, pulls himself to his knees, burying his face in the pillows. Chuuya holds his dick at the base, feels like he’s about to come looking at Dazai spread open on all fours for him. Precome drips down the side of his cock, over his knuckles. “God.” Chuuya says, gets the condom on with shaky hands. He slides the head of his cock so it catches on Dazai’s rim, rubs it against his hole. “Look at you.” He murmurs. Dazai pants open mouthed and turns his head so he can see Chuuya. Chuuya gets to watch his face as he pushes into Dazai. It’s mind-numbingly good, the tight hot clench of Dazai around him.

“Oh god,” Dazai says, “oh god,”

Chuuya rubs the small of his back soothingly, pushes in a little more. He’s only halfway in. He feels like he might come.

“Relax,” Chuuya whispers, half to himself. “Shh, relax.” He pushes in a bit more. Dazai takes it, clenching around him then relaxing, stuttering breaths into the pillow. Chuuya drags his cock out and rubs it, aching and leaking into the condom, against Dazai’s hole. He watches him clench and Dazai sobs, spit leaking out the side of his mouth. Chuuya pushes back in, leaning forward to kiss any skin he can reach. He goes slowly, pushing in little by little, the heat around him incredible.

“You feel incredible,” he soothes Dazai, hand on his hip, “fucking hell, Dazai, you—” he pulls back a little, pushes forward, watching Dazai take him in, stretch around him.

Oh,” Dazai groans. Chuuya slides himself in deeper and then pushes in the last bit, brings their bodies flush.

“You feel so good.” Chuuya breathes, tries to give Dazai a chance to adjust.

“S’so much,” Dazai slurs, hands grabbing at the sheets. “Feels— full—”

Chuuya waits a moment. He wants to move. He can feel his hips twitching. Everything feels so slick and hot and—

“Can I— Dazai, can I move?” Chuuya tries to control the shake in his voice. He grinds softly against Dazai. Dazai doesn’t answer, has hooked his fingers in his mouth and is sucking on them. Chuuya can’t tell if it’s to distract himself because it hurts. He reaches around for Dazai’s cock to see if he’s softened, stroke him to distract from any discomfort. Dazai jolts, wet fingers falling out of his mouth to frantically grab at Chuuya’s wrist.

“No, no— ah, don’t touch me, I’ll come, I’ll— Chuuya—”

“God,” Chuuya manages and Dazai blinks open teary eyes to look at him, “that’s so fucking hot, you’re so easy, baby. My dick feel that good?”

“Yeah—” Dazai gasps, “yeah, it’s— different than when I do it to myself— it’s— god—”

Chuuya rocks his hips softly and Dazai keens underneath him. He tugs at Dazai’s rim gently, circles his hips. Dazai sounds broken as he whispers Chuuya’s name, pushes back against him.

“You’re so tight.” Chuuya feels on edge. He pulls out slightly and pushes back in with a snap of his hips. “God.”

Dazai pants and nods, mumbling, “You can move–”

Chuuya does, starts slow, rocking out and then back in. Then he pulls almost all the way out, fucks back in hard.

Dazai moans, open and unashamed.

“Yeah—” Dazai pants, “like that—”

Chuuya fucks him slow, drowning in it, how good it feels. He picks up the pace when Dazai whines please or harder. He knows he must have the angle right, hiking up Dazai’s hips, pressing down on the small of his back as he fucks him, because Dazai sobs.

“There– right– god, I’m so close, so close— Chuuya—”

Chuuya wants to see Dazai’s face.

“Need to see you,” Chuuya pants, trying to keep up the rhythm that has Dazai stuttering out breaths like he can’t get air in before Chuuya’s forcing it out of his lungs again. “Let me see your face.” He pulls out completely and Dazai chokes, sobs, rolls over at Chuuya’s encouragement. Chuuya hikes Dazai’s thighs on his, steadies his dick so he can push back in, one smooth roll of his hips that makes them groan in tandem.

Dazai’s hands trace over his own bared body, pinching his nipples, stroking his cock with a loose circle of fingers, pressing down on his lower stomach. He makes a punched out sound and mumbles something.

“Dazai?” Chuuya pants, “what did you say, baby— ”

Dazai pulls one of Chuuya’s hands off his hips, hooks a leg around his waist to hold him in deep.

“Stay like that,” he slurs, so Chuuya does, rolls his hips like he can get deeper, “can feel you in me, can you feel—” Dazai’s voice is wrecked. He puts Chuuya’s hand on his lower belly, presses it down.

“Fuck.” Chuuya can feel himself, low in Dazai’s stomach. He pulls out, pushes back in, Dazai’s hand linked with his, stroking his fingers. “Oh fuck—” Chuuya gets out. He strokes his thumb on Dazai’s stomach. “Fuck, baby—”

“I’m gonna come—” Dazai chokes out, “Chuuya— please—”

“Me too,” Chuuya tells him, “me too, baby.” He grinds deep and gets his other hand on Dazai’s dick, strokes once and thumbs at the head. Dazai comes all over his stomach, his chest, Chuuya’s hand, his body arching off the bed.

“Oh please—” Dazai groans and keeps coming, “oh god, Chuuya—”

Chuuya gets a tight grip on Dazai’s hips and fucks him while Dazai shakes, mumbles his name, clenches around him. Chuuya comes hard, unable to stop his mouth, all slurred words—

“Oh fuck, Dazai, fuck, you feel so good–” Chuuya’s dick keeps twitching weakly inside Dazai as his orgasm washes over him in waves. He feels sweat drip down his neck. “God.” He groans.

“Don’t pull out,” Dazai slurs, when Chuuya, shaking and overcome and broken-hearted, starts to move back. Chuuya nods, falling forward on his elbows so he can curl into Dazai’s neck, press soft kisses. He pretends, tries to steady his heart.

He pulls out after a minute, when their breathing has calmed. He fucks in again, half-hard, just to hear the stuttered sound Dazai makes. Chuuya ties and trashes the condom. He uses a warm washcloth to clean them both up, kissing Dazai’s body as he does. He strokes Dazai’s red rim, tugs at it a little. Dazai tilts his hips down on Chuuya’s finger with a sleepy grin. Chuuya rolls his eyes. Dazai tugs Chuuya to his chest and makes a satisfied sound, dropping off into sleep with his fingers still tangled in Chuuya’s hair.

Chuuya listens to his heartbeat and tries not to cry.

He wakes to Dazai showered and looking at him with those analytical eyes again.

“You fucked me like you like me.” He says.

“Fuck you.” Chuuya says. He’s been running on too little sleep for too long. His head is swimming. He feels sort of sick.

“Chuuya likes me,” Dazai sing-songs like Chuuya’s insides aren’t all messed up.

“Fuck you.” Chuuya repeats. “Fuck you.”

“Slug,” Dazai says, grabbing at his wrist when Chuuya pushes himself out of bed and away from Dazai, “the helicopter isn’t here yet.”

Chuuya closes his eyes. Every part of him feels like it’s being pricked by needles. He doesn’t say anything. He goes to the bathroom, pees, brushes his teeth, looks at himself in the mirror, all his cuts and scars. He steps into the shower and opens his mouth in a silent scream.

When he gets back in the room, Dazai holds out a cup of coffee and an energy bar like a peace offering. Chuuya takes them, kicks mindlessly at Dazai’s shins. He curls in a chair as he watches Dazai drink his lukewarm over sugared concoction that he calls coffee and almost wants to laugh. He downs the rest of his mug.

“Come here,” He says. Dazai looks at him with a raised eyebrow.

“Why?” He says, like he doesn’t know. His lip tilts up in a smirk.

Chuuya’s weak and tired and he has Dazai for maybe two more hours and then never again. He walks over to where Dazai’s sitting on the other shitty hotel room chair and straddles him.

“Tell me no.” He says as he leans in. Dazai lifts up into the kiss quickly, a little sound escaping him, his hands clutching at Chuuya’s hips.

“Wasn’t sure you wanted to again—” he mumbles, “thought maybe it wasn’t— ah—“ He tilts his head back to give Chuuya better access as Chuuya starts to suck a hickey into his neck. Chuuya wants Dazai to look in the mirror and remember. He wants to mark him somehow, the same way he feels he’s been marked. He wants Dazai to miss him, trace these as they heal, press in on them and remember the feel of Chuuya’s mouth.

They make out like it’s the last time because it is, Chuuya supposes. He feels desperate. Dazai undoes their pants with his usual impatience when he’s hard and realizes Chuuya is too. Chuuya wants to smirk, stroking over Dazai’s wet boxers, but he’s just as hard, just as impatient. Dazai palms him and Chuuya groans into his mouth.

“Fuck,” he lifts up off the chair, tilting up into the kiss as Dazai stands. “What do you want?” Dazai barely lets their mouths part, his hands tight on Chuuya’s face. Chuuya walks half on tip-toe toward the bed. “Want me to fuck you again? Want to fuck me? Tell me.”

“Can you— fuck me. Liked you inside– ah–” Dazai pants as he tugs off their clothes.

“You want me to?” Chuuya asks, as he pulls Dazai onto the bed with him, lets Dazai cage him in, grinding against his thigh.

“Do it,” Dazai challenges, the syllables running together.

“Okay,” Chuuya says, hooking a leg around Dazai’s hips to flip them.

He pins Dazai’s arms above his head by his hands. He lifts up and kisses down his wrists. He doesn’t mean to be as tender as he is as he works his way down Dazai’s body but he is, finds himself tracing Dazai’s scars with his tongue. Soothing each place he bites. Chuuya’s learned Dazai likes when he teases his cock more than when he focuses on it, so Chuuya does that. Little kitten licks, half there touches. He makes Dazai groan and gasp, his dick hard and already shiny with precome.

Dazai’s rim is a little red, puffy, but he doesn’t flinch as Chuuya traces it with a lubed finger. He tugs at it softly as he fucks a finger in and the only sound Dazai makes is one of pleasure. Chuuya pushes his first finger into the second knuckle and pauses, circling it inside Dazai, rubbing his perineum with his thumb, praising Dazai for taking him so well. Chuuya feels raw and skinned and obvious. He kisses Dazai’s hole, sucks at the base of his dick, tongues at his balls, fucks him open with his fingers.

“So pretty for me.” He tells Dazai who clutches at his hair, pushing Chuuya toward him and pulling him away all at once.

Chuuya opens Dazai up like he has all the time in the world and he’s never heard of the word hatred. Like the only parts of Dazai he’s ever touched have been with gentleness. Like the only heat he has ever felt from Dazai is this, like Chuuya’s never felt the hot pulse of Dazai’s blood against his palms. He fucks him with three fingers and tells him he’s good. Dazai groans, garbled sounds, Chuuya’s name, a thousand curses.

“Oh—” Dazai gasps. “That feels so good— I’ve never— I don’t—”

This isn’t hatred, Chuuya wants to say, you have to know this isn’t hatred.

Chuuya lifts up and Dazai tugs him down into a harsh kiss, licks into his mouth. He pushes Chuuya onto his back, holding a condom. He rips it open with his teeth, wiggling his eyebrows. Chuuya snorts, the sound cut off when Dazai gets a hand on his dick, strokes him a few times. Dazai rolls the condom onto Chuuya, kisses the head of his dick.

“Going to—” Dazai says and climbs on top of him, all lanky long limbs, “to ride you—”

Chuuya palms Dazai’s ass and spreads him, holding Dazai open with one hand and his cock steady with the other as Dazai lowers himself. His cockhead catches on Dazai’s rim before it slides into Dazai’s body, a sensation that makes Chuuya groan. The tight slick clench of Dazai on his cock is so good he has to bite back a moan, teeth digging into his lower lip.

“Fuck,” he mumbles, has to consciously keep his hips still so he doesn’t fuck up into Dazai hard.

“God,” Dazai mumbles, sinking down, “fuck, why does it feel like this— why is it so—”

“You’re taking me so well, you’re so good, God, you’re so good for me—” Chuuya whispers as Dazai takes more of him, circling his hips, mouth caught open in a moan. “Like that, shit—” Chuuya chokes out, slides his hands to hold Dazai’s hips steady.

“You don’t hate me—” Dazai gasps when he’s fully seated. “Fuck—” he mumbles, circling his hips. “Chuuya, do you—” He bends over as he rocks and Chuuya sticks fingers in his open mouth, cuts off the words.

“Stop talking now.” He tells Dazai and fucks his fingers back so Dazai gags around them. He pulls them nearly out quickly, holds onto Dazai’s mouth by his lower teeth and his jaw as he kicks his hips up. “Ride me, put those long legs to use, mackerel.”

“Yeah,” Dazai slurs around Chuuya’s fingertips, rocks his hips forward with a groan before he lifts up. Chuuya helps him bounce, free hand tight on Dazai’s hips. He thrusts his own hips up to meet Dazai as he works himself on Chuuya’s cock.

“Like that, you’re so good—” Chuuya says as Dazai grinds down, rolling his hips, his fingers light on Chuuya’s chest. He trails his hand from Dazai’s mouth to his throat, squeezes lightly. Dazai makes a strange sound, body going limp across Chuuya.

“Chuuya,” he slurs wetly against Chuuya’s skin, “Chuuya, Chuuya, tell me—”

Chuuya slides a hand between them to stroke Dazai as he thrusts up hard.

“I don’t hate you,” Chuuya whispers in Dazai’s ear, “Dazai, I want you.”

Dazai comes. It takes Chuuya by surprise and, if the startled sound that melts into a pleasured one that Dazai makes is anything to go by, it takes Dazai by surprise too. Dazai jerks above him, body twitching, seemingly blindsided by the force of his orgasm. Chuuya feels it, burning hot and wet, splashes across his stomach, his chest.

“Jesus, fuck. Fuck, you’re so easy for me,” Chuuya tells him, holding Dazai’s shaking body, stroking him through it with a tight fist, “Fuck.” Dazai moans and nods and lets Chuuya lift up and push him down on his back, head half hanging off the bed, his dick still jerking weakly. “Come everywhere,” Chuuya tells him, swipes a hand through the mess on his body and smears it on Dazai’s, “look at you, fuck. Should I pull out, is it— can I keep going?

Dazai nods, shaking still. He lifts a leg loosely around Chuuya’s hips so he can keep him there.

“Yeah?” Chuuya breathes, “yeah, you can take it, can’t you?”

Dazai nods frantically, as Chuuya pulls out a little, fucks back in.

“Want you to come—”

Chuuya fucks him steadily, still more focused on Dazai than himself. He strokes Dazai’s dick, something Dazai seems to find pleasurably painful. He’s still half hard and getting hard again. Chuuya kicks up his pace, his stomach tight with arousal. Dazai twists on the bed, hands tight on the sheets and then on Chuuya’s wrists where he’s holding onto Dazai’s hips as he fucks him, hard and rough.

Chuuya slides a hand from Dazai’s hip down to Dazai’s ass to spread him on his cock. He thrusts in deep and stills himself, pushes a finger in beside his dick just barely, stroking at Dazai’s rim.

“Oh,” Dazai half-sobs, “Chuuya—”

“Fuck, you take me so good, Dazai, fucking made for it, huh?” Chuuya pants. He strokes Dazai softly, as he fucks him, slides his hand up to his stomach, over his thighs.

“Chuuya,” Dazai slurs, “Chuuya—” He whines softly and his eyes are desperate, trying to lock onto Chuuya’s.

“I know, shh, I know,” Chuuya kisses him softly as he pulls nearly out, slides his cock back into the tight clench of Dazai’s body. He circles his hips and strokes Dazai’s wet and hard cock, “S’okay. Taking me so good, you’re so good— just for me, right?”

“Yeah, yes, just for Chuuya—” Dazai says, all broken up words.

“Slut just for me, so pretty for me—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah— oh right there— right— Chuuya—”

Chuuya tries to hit that spot again and again, keep making Dazai stutter out those soft pleasured broken sounds.

“What, baby, what?” Chuuya pants as he grabs Dazai’s dick and squeezes it, hard enough Dazai arches against him, hands grabbing at Chuuya’s. He doesn’t pull him off. His fingers wrap around Chuuya’s. Squeeze.

“I— ” he mumbles lifting his hips up to meet Chuuya’s thrusts, “ah, thought you were dead—”

“What—” Chuuya gets out. “What do you—”

“Can you come on me,” Dazai slurs, eyes wide and dreamy and far away. “Chuuya— can you—”

“Fuck, okay, I can—” Chuuya pulls out and Dazai makes a strangled sad noise. “Let me— gonna come for you—”

Chuuya soothes him with shaking fingers as he tugs off the condom, jerks himself off over Dazai’s chest. It doesn’t take long. His dick throbs and Dazai blinks up at him, gets a hand on the crease of Chuuya’s hip and opens his mouth like he wants Chuuya in it. Chuuya comes over Dazai’s stomach, chest. It splashes on his chin and Dazai licks at it, arching up toward Chuuya.

Chuuya pants and slumps a little, cock still dribbling come over his knuckles, as he tries to catch his breath. Dazai’s chest heaves like he’s the one who just came.

“You look so good— fuck— covered in my come, look at you, sweetheart,” he tells Dazai, lifting up so he can kiss his eyelids. Dazai’s hand fumbles for Chuuya’s softening cock and strokes it. Chuuya groans, half over stimulation, half pure pleasure, fire in his veins. Chuuya settles back on his heels, rubs Dazai’s inner thighs.

“It’s like I’m really yours,” Dazai mumbles nonsensically, trails fingers through the mess, dragging them up to his mouth to lick at them. Chuuya strokes his rim softly, fondles Dazai’s balls, watches as his dick jerks, cockhead red and weeping, and his hole clenches around nothing. “It’s like you really want me.”

“You are mine.” Chuuya tells him. “Fuck you, Dazai, you are mine. I do want you.”

“Oh god—” Dazai says like a sob. “Chuuya– Chuuya, I–” Chuuya licks the head of Dazai’s dick, sucks on it, and then takes him down, deep as he can. Dazai’s hand clenches in his hair as Chuuya swallows wetly around him. “Oh—” Dazai gasps as he comes again weakly, his voice breaking on a sob.

Chuuya doesn’t pull off until he’s swallowed everything Dazai has to give him. Then he does only so he can drag his mouth up Dazai’s body. Dazai’s eyes are wet with tears. Chuuya kisses Dazai’s trembling mouth. He strokes the scar on Dazai’s neck, the bruise on his cheek, kisses away the tears as he holds Dazai close.

“Hey,” he says, words failing him, “hey, you’re okay.”

“Chuuya,” Dazai says, hands grabbing at Chuuya’s jaw, his hair, pulling their faces together. “Chuuya–” his voice cracks again.

“It’s okay.” Chuuya says and doesn’t know what he means.

“You said–” Dazai mumbles, “you can’t–” all these half-finished sentences. Chuuya is not used to half-finished sentences from Dazai. Not from Dazai, who strings words together like drops of water, one after the other. Dazai takes a little breath. “You didn’t mean it.” He murmurs, like he’s telling Chuuya that, like it is a truth that Chuuya has forgotten.

“Didn’t mean what?” Chuuya doesn’t understand. Doesn’t want to. He thinks he knows though and his stomach twists.

“You didn’t.” Dazai says, like he’s soothing himself. “It’s okay. Chuuya— you didn’t mean that.” Dazai has a strange look in his eyes.

Don’t make me say this, Chuuya almost wants to beg.

“Dazai,” Chuuya says because Dazai knows, has to know. “I did–”

“You don’t want me, Chuuya.” Dazai says. He says it gently. There is a beat of silence. Chuuya’s heart stops then starts again, curled low in his chest. His ribs ache.

“Okay.” Chuuya whispers. He feels the rejection, coiled in his belly like a snake. He knew. He knew, he knew, but he’s always been good at pretending. It’s how he’s never been lonely, not once, not even sleeping at the graves of his friends and whispering into the dirt. Chuuya doesn’t need anyone, except that he does and every part of him aches with it and with the loss. “Right.” He looks down at Dazai.

“You wanted me right then,” Dazai says, breathing uneven, “because of the sex but it’s okay, you don’t have to pretend.”

“Right.” Chuuya says, a breaking thing. Dazai knows. He has to know. Their relationship is based on trust and Dazai is looking at Chuuya and asking him to lie, to trust him enough to know that he has to lie. Chuuya doesn’t want to lie anymore. He doesn’t know why he has to. He doesn’t know what harm there is in this one quiet truth. I want you. He feels like a glass window watching a rock hurtling toward it. “What do you want, Dazai?” Chuuya speaks quietly. It will hurt. He needs to hear it.

There is a long pause. It speaks of violence.

“I don’t want things.” Dazai says. His eyes look almost hollow. “I don’t want anything, Chuuya.”

“Okay.” Chuuya says and rolls off of him completely. They stare at the ceiling together. Chuuya’s skin is cold and clammy. “Okay.” He repeats.

On the table, the phone rings and rings and rings.

The helicopter ride is long and quiet. Dazai kicks his feet on Chuuya’s lap. When they land he pulls a face, pretends he’s going to jump off the side of the building. At the ground floor, Dazai does a little bow and then turns and goes.

He doesn’t look back.

Chuuya feels broken.

A week later, Dazai is in Chuuya’s apartment, laying on the couch when Chuuya gets home. His lockpicking set is open on the table.

“I need to change to a keypad.” Chuuya tells him, placing his things where they belong as he toes off his shoes. “An electronic lock system.” He hangs up his hat, grabs his cigarettes out of his coat pocket. He and Dazai fucked and it’s over and Chuuya doesn’t think about it. This is how he survives. He keeps himself so busy he only has time to be exhausted. He falls asleep on the Flag’s graves and knocks over the flowers he brought when his body slumps in sleep he hadn’t chosen. He rearranges the flowers when he wakes. He goes back to work. There is no time to have a broken heart.

“I would figure out a way to get in, shorty.” Dazai says peaceably.

Chuuya doesn’t dignify that with a response. He heads into the shower to wash the day off of him. When he returns he grabs a red that doesn’t need to breathe and uncorks it, brings it to the table with two glasses. He pour himself one, nudges the other to Dazai. He stretches so his neck cracks, sinks his body into an armchair so he doesn’t have to sit next to Dazai on the couch. The balcony door is open and he closes his eyes and lets the air wash over his body as he sips.

“Why are you here, Dazai?” He asks after a moment without opening his eyes. He curls his knees under his chin and only realizes as he’s doing it that he’s trying to protect his weak spots. Like Dazai is going to kick him in the stomach when he’s already down. He takes a long sip of his wine.

“Chuuya made a lot of promises he hasn’t kept,” Dazai says, after the silence has dragged on so long Chuuya has cracked his eyes open to see if Dazai is still there. Was ever there. “When we were traveling, so to speak.” He adds, like Chuuya might not understand.

Chuuya almost laughs but it tastes much too bitter in his mouth so he swallows it down.

“You came here so I would fuck you?” He asks.

Dazai smiles at him like he used to right before he punched him.

“I’m not going to fuck you, Dazai.” Chuuya says.

“Why not–” Dazai collapses in a pout, tilting toward Chuuya’s chair, “it’s fine–”

“It’s not.” Chuuya says. “I’m not going to.”

“I could fuck you.” Dazai offers easily. “Problem solved.”

“Get the fuck out of my house.” Chuuya says and presses his fingers to the scars on his ribs like a reminder.

“Why?” Dazai says, as though he doesn’t know. “You said it didn’t have to change anything.”

Chuuya feels the anger in the beds of his nails. His hands tingle. His toes dig into the chair. You said that, he wants to shout, you were the one who said that, you were the one who told me you didn’t want me.

“Yeah, well, if nothing’s changed we wouldn’t be fucking– you’d be drinking my wine and annoying me before you ignore me for another few years or what the fuck ever, mummy man.”

“Well damn, tell me how you really feel, Chuuya.” Dazai drawls like it’s a joke, like Chuuya’s a joke, like every fucking thing in life is a fucking joke. “It’s fine. I said things too, you know? It was just– endorphins so–”

Chuuya opens his mouth and his soul slips out.

“I wasn’t lying.” Chuuya tells him and Dazai pauses, like he’s been frozen for half a second, thrown off his game. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.” Chuuya says. Dazai laughs, a sick little bitter thing.

“You don’t want me.” He says. His voice is steady. He pours half a glass of wine and downs it.

“How the fuck do you know what I want?” Chuuya says. His voice is not.

“Because Chuuya hates me.” Dazai mumbles. He repeats it, like it’s an immutable law of nature. “Even if Chuuya doesn’t hate me, you can’t mean that because if you do then—” he stops.

“Then what.” Chuuya demands when Dazai doesn’t finish the sentence. He thinks of Dazai shaking underneath him when Chuuya called him good, called him baby, kissed his skin. “Then what?”

Dazai shrugs.

“Fuck you.” Chuuya snaps. “You’re always fucking– who cares then, what I want, what I say, if you’ve just already decided?”

Dazai doesn’t say anything, just tilts his head back and looks at Chuuya’s ceiling, twirling his empty wine glass in his hands. Chuuya watches the remnants trace against the side of the glass like blood. Chuuya breaks. He pushes himself up and crowds Dazai onto the couch, putting the wine glass aside precariously. He presses him back as he slides onto Dazai’s lap. He squeezes Dazai’s hips with his knees. Dazai jolts like the contact is painful. His hands go up to steady Chuuya on his lap like it’s automatic. His fingers bite into Chuuya’s hips.

He looks away.

Chuuya grabs him by the jaw.

“Look at me.” He says.

Dazai tries to look away again.

“Look at me.” Chuuya says, using the voice that Dazai seems to respond to without realizing what he is doing.

Dazai looks at him.

“Don’t put it on me, Dazai. Hate me if you need to, I don’t fucking care,” he does care, he cares like a bone deep bruise, “but don’t tell me how I feel.”

Chuuya is so upset that it takes him a moment to realize that Dazai is shaking slightly, a leaf in the wind about to fall. Shaking like he’s afraid. Chuuya doesn’t understand what there is to be afraid of, not here. Chuuya doesn’t feel like he can breathe. He presses their foreheads together.

“I want you.” Chuuya repeats.

“Chuuya,” Dazai says, like it’s a warning. “I am not a thing to be wanted.”

“You are not a thing.” Chuuya hisses at him. “You are a person and I want you.”

Dazai looks like he’s been gutted. Chuuya tilts toward him slowly, gives Dazai time to push him away, push him off. When their lips meet Dazai melts under him, like something has given way inside him. Chuuya kisses him softly, strokes fingers down his neck over the rough of his bandages. Dazai’s eyes are hurt things when Chuuya breaks the kiss. Trapped things, like an animal who has never heard of comfort, has no reason to believe in it. Has no reason to believe kindness could be something that it deserves.

Chuuya presses his fingers to where Dazai’s neck is scarred. He unwinds the bandage. Dazai hands flex on Chuuya’s hips. He slides them up and presses Chuuya’s starburst scar. He likes that one, Chuuya thinks, all pretty, all aware of violence and what it leaves behind.

He traces the mark the knife left on Dazai’s neck. He presses his hand flat against it, just like he did so many years ago. Dazai’s eyes flutter closed. His pulse pounds against Chuuya’s hand.

“Tell me.” Chuuya says.

“I can’t.” Dazai says and his voice does not shake. His law of nature laid bare. “I’m not allowed what I want,” Dazai doesn't open his eyes. “I’ve never been allowed that. I lose everything the second I ask for it. Chuuya, if I want it then it gets ruined so I can’t—” He blinks open his eyes and focuses on Chuuya like he is begging him to understand.

Want you, Chuuya finishes in his head. You think you can’t want me. He tries to think how to say you don’t have to just want me, Dazai. You have me, you’ve always had me.

“Well, I want you.” Chuuya tells him. “Fucking always have, stupid shitty Dazai.”

“How?” Dazai says. “How could you– why would you want me? I–” Dazai surges up and kisses him again, licks into his mouth with a desperation like a gunfight. He’s rough with it, teeth digging into Chuuya’s lower lip, tongue pressing in like Chuuya has answers hidden behind his molars. He kisses him like he can stop Chuuya from making him talk about this anymore. Chuuya almost wants it to work. Chuuya wants to be pressed down with the weight of Dazai’s body and feel safe and wanted, even if it’s only for a moment. He wants to surrender. He can’t though. He can’t throw himself on Dazai’s blade and then blame Dazai.

“Do you want me?” Chuuya whispers and Dazai stops moving, pants against his lips. “Tell me. I need you to tell me.” Chuuya says, tries to make the words gentle. “I can’t do this if I don’t— ” Dazai starts to pull back.

Chuuya stops him.

“Show me,” Chuuya tells him, “If you can’t tell me, then show me, Osamu.” The name drops from his tongue without him meaning it to. The laws of motion suspend for one liquid moment. Dazai closes his eyes tight, opens them again. He focuses in on Chuuya, sharp as a needle.

“This will kill me,” Dazai’s voice cracks as he presses the words into the space between them. “Chuuya, this will kill me.”

Chuuya kisses him. He lets his lips linger, presses his fingertips to Dazai’s cheeks. He pulls back and doesn’t get far, Dazai’s hands on his, holding Chuuya close to his face.

“If you stop,” Dazai breathes, “it will kill me.”

Chuuya huffs out a laugh and feels Dazai inhale it. Their lips touch as they talk. Not a kiss. Not not a kiss.

“It will kill me too.” Chuuya whispers; if they do this. If they don’t. “I don’t care.” He tucks Dazai’s hair behind his ear. Dazai’s hands clench and unclench on Chuuya. “You too chicken?” Chuuya asks and Dazai moves immediately, pushes Chuuya onto his back on the couch and cages him in.

“Hey.” He says. “Fight fair, shorty.”

“Never.” Chuuya whispers. “Not with you.”

Dazai looks down at him and mutters show you under his breath, like he’s considering it. Considering exactly how he can do this. Chuuya watches him draw something up that he keeps tucked deep down in the well of his heart. The dark water there. Dazai doesn’t seem to realize how close to the sun all his feelings really are.

“Lie to me.” Chuuya begs.

“I hate you.” Dazai breathes. He bends down and kisses Chuuya. When Chuuya kisses back, he does it again, and then again. He kisses Chuuya like he loves him, like he wants him.

“More,” Chuuya gasps.

“I don’t want you,” Dazai mumbles. He kisses under Chuuya’s jaw, a sensitive spot that always makes Chuuya’s breaths go stuttered. He pulls off his shirt, Chuuya unwinding his bandages and tossing them aside, tangled where they fall. He pushes at Chuuya’s shirt as Chuuya crawls into his lap again, grinding down against him.

“I—” Dazai breathes and then presses their foreheads together. “Tell me a lie, Chuuya.”

“I hate you.” Chuuya breathes, “I hate you, I hate you.”

“Oh god,” Dazai chokes out, presses Chuuya’s chest to his, fingers tangling in his hair. “Oh god.”

“Shh.” Chuuya whispers. “Don’t you hate me too?”

Dazai nods into the crook of his neck. “Uh-huh.” He whispers. “No.” He says, much quieter, shakes his head. Chuuya tightens his fingers in Dazai’s hair.

“Show me how much.” Chuuya tells him.

Dazai nods, traces his hands over a deep scar on Chuuya’s back, all the way down to his hip. He tugs Chuuya closer on his lap. Chuuya leans in to kiss him.

“You gonna fuck me, baby?” Chuuya breathes into his mouth. “If you want to I'd like that, Dazai. I like all sorts of things.”

Dazai groans, nods after a second. “This time—” he says, “but also Chuuya did promise things to me that I—” he cuts himself off.

“Want.” Chuuya finishes for him. “Things that you want.” He kisses Dazai’s cheek, then the corner of his mouth. “You can say it.” He offers, knows the words are stuck in Dazai’s mouth against the fence of his teeth.

Dazai shakes his head.

“Okay,” Chuuya soothes, “okay. Trust me, we’ll have time to do those things too. But tonight fuck me, baby. Come on, show me. Take care of me.”

Dazai follows Chuuya to the bed easily, pushes him down so gently it hurts. He pulls off the rest of Chuuya’s clothes like they’re fragile. He takes care, falling into the bed above Chuuya but making sure he doesn’t put too much weight on him. Dazai doesn’t weigh enough for his full weight to hurt Chuuya, but it’s sweet, tender. Chuuya reaches for the lube as they kiss as he explores Dazai’s body all over again. He had it for such a short time. He missed it unreasonably. He climbs on top of Dazai, warming some lube on his fingers. He groans into Dazai’s mouth, Dazai’s hands are tight on him, spreading him, as Chuuya works a finger inside himself.

“Chuuya,” Dazai whispers, voice cracking.

“You gonna show me?” Chuuya whispers. Dazai nods and fumbles with the lube, presses a tentative searching finger in beside Chuuya’s. Chuuya scissors his finger around Dazai’s a little inside himself and gasps at the feeling. Dazai groans and Chuuya feels the pulse of his dick, the spurt of precome on his thigh. He laughs. “Easy.” He whispers, withdrawing his finger, wiping the lube on Dazai’s hand. “Come on, show me.” He bends forward over Dazai, on his hands and knees, lets Dazai lift up to kiss him, his finger working him open gently. Dazai adds a second finger and spreads them inside Chuuya.

“Does it feel good– is it–”

“Doing so good,” Chuuya assures him, grinding back. “Your fingers feel so good—” Chuuya falls to his elbows at the way Dazai crooks his fingers, a sound ripped from low in his throat. “Oh fuck—”

“Oh–” Dazai breathes, “oh, was that– is that–”

“Fuck, right there.” He tells Dazai. “Do that again.” Dazai does. Pulls out only to add more lube, pushes his fingers back inside Chuuya, stretching him. When Dazai has three fingers in him, Chuuya can’t take it any more. He pulls him out by the wrist and tugs him on top. Dazai cages him into the bed and kisses him deep, lube-wet fingers stroking Chuuya’s cock like all that matters is Chuuya coming. It does a lot for Chuuya, Dazai’s intent beseeching eyes, the tight fist, the way he swipes over the head of Chuuya’s cock to spread precome and lube.

“Want–” Dazai pauses, fixes his gaze on Chuuya, “want to make you come, please.” Chuuya smiles, kisses Dazai softly as a reward, pulling him up so their faces touch, their bodies are flush.

“Want to come with you inside me, baby,” Chuuya breathes. Dazai makes a sound that’s half a groan, half a whine.

“I can’t– I’m gonna–” He shakes, kisses Chuuya’s neck. “I feel like I’m gonna come.” He mumbles.

Chuuya kisses the side of his head, patting on the bed for the condoms he had tossed there earlier. He reaches for Dazai’s cock with shaking hands, unable to focus with Dazai kissing him, biting down his throat. Dazai’s dick jolts as Chuuya touches it and he whines, hips jerking away.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” Chuuya tells him, stroking him loosely, “we wouldn’t even need lube if we weren’t using a condom.”

Dazai makes a sound of desperation, pulls his hips away from Chuuya’s searching hand. He rolls over onto his back. Chuuya sits up beside him, steadies his hands as he pinches the tip of the condom, rolls it onto Dazai.

“The world won’t end if you get what you want.” Chuuya tries to tell Dazai. He tries to organize his words as he hovers over Dazai’s hips. Dazai arches against him. “It won’t—”

“Won’t it?” Dazai murmurs, “it always– it always–”

Chuuya presses the head of Dazai’s cock against his rim. A high pitched wanting sound escapes Dazai and it makes Chuuya groan, the sensation of Dazai’s cock pressing in already enough that he feels his dick leak.

“Chuuya–” Dazai mumbles, “Chuuya–”

“I know.” Chuuya whispers softly. “I know.”

Chuuya pushes himself down on Dazai’s cock slowly, takes it inch by inch. Dazai pants underneath him, hips twitching, but doesn’t push up, just looks at Chuuya. It’s something like adoration on his face. Chuuya smiles down at him, hand on Dazai’s heart to steady himself. When Chuuya is sitting fully, Dazai bottomed out inside him, he rolls his hips as he adjusts. Dazai makes a keening sound. Chuuya falls forward and Dazai holds him, hips twitching up.

“S’good,” he slurs, “feels good– do you–”

“You can move,” Chuuya tells him with a groan.

“Can’t,” Dazai says, holding Chuuya tight to him. “Need— need a second.” Chuuya strokes his face softly and Dazai breathes, pressing kisses to Chuuya’s skin. He kicks his hips up after a moment, thrusts unsteadily like he’s trying to set a rhythm and can’t.

“It feels good, baby,” Chuuya moans and Dazai’s hips stutter. “God, you like it when I call you that, don’t you?” Chuuya thrusts his hips down to meet Dazai’s and Dazai slides in deeper, a different angle that makes them both moan.

“Yeah,” Dazai pants, “yeah, I– god–”

“Like it when I call you my slut, my baby, my easy Dazai,” Chuuya says, “mine, mine, mine.”

“Yours–” Dazai gasps. Chuuya pulls Dazai’s face to his and kisses him, half open-mouthed, all teeth and tongue and wet breaths. Dazai’s movements get more erratic, like he’s about to come.

“You gonna come?” Chuuya asks and Dazai nods, whimpers. Chuuya’s so turned on by that, by the fact Dazai is so easy when it comes to him, that he’s about to come already. It makes Chuuya’s gut feel heavy, balls tight. “Fuck.” He manages, reaching down to get a hand on himself.

Dazai sits up at Chuuya’s urging, pushing Chuuya onto his back. Chuuya wraps his legs around Dazai’s hips as he works himself between them. Chuuya feels Dazai inside him like a constant electric tingle up his spine, almost too pleasurable. He moans into Dazai’s mouth, rocks himself up as Dazai thrusts down. Dazai is holding tight to his thigh. Chuuya thinks it will bruise. Fresh fruit.

“Do that again, make that sound, I want–” Dazai mumbles, kissing at Chuuya’s ear, the hollow of his throat just under his choker,“I want–”

“Tell me what you want, Dazai.” Chuuya gets out, air punched out of his lungs when Dazai thrusts hard, grinds deep. “Ah, fuck– that felt–” He works the head of his cock.

“I want–” Dazai’s voice breaks. “You,” he breathes like it’s a sin, and then like a dam is broken, “you– Chuuya– I want you, please, Chuuya–”

“You have me,” Chuuya tells him, “Dazai, you’ve always had me–” He reaches a hand back and down, runs it over Dazai’s hole, presses just the tip of his finger softly inside. “You’ve always had me.” He repeats. “I’m yours.” Dazai gasps and Chuuya feels it when he comes, hot like a fever inside Chuuya as his body locks then shudders. Dazai’s shaking, his dick twitching deep in Chuuya, as he reaches in between them to wrap his hand around Chuuya’s hand. He moves Chuuya’s hand down, then up, slides his fingers with Chuuya’s.

“Please–” He whispers.

Chuuya feels his own orgasm crest over him. He comes all over both of their stomachs, dripping down their hands.

“Oh fuck,” he manages, his body shaking with the force of it, “shit–”

“You,” Dazai slurs again, “Chuuya, I want– I want you–”

Dazai whispers it to him over and over, endless words, like now that he’s said it he doesn’t know how to stop. Chuuya pulls Dazai’s mouth to his and kisses him gently, eats the words, keeps them safe, tucked behind his ribcage, for Dazai.

“I know.” Chuuya whispers. “I know.”

Dazai presses his face into Chuuya’s shoulder. He shakes. Chuuya strokes the scar on his neck and wraps a leg around his hips. Dazai whispers it again and again, you, I want you. Chuuya holds him, running a hand up and down his back and repeats the same words, over and over,

I know, Dazai, I know. You have me.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

“Oh shit,” Chuuya says to Dazai late the next morning after he’s coaxed two orgasms and a shower out of Dazai. Chuuya is cutting fruit and Dazai is watching his hands on the knife intently, lip caught between his teeth. Chuuya hands Dazai a slice of apple.

“Hmm?” Dazai says, looking up at him, hair still damp, face tranquil.

“The world didn’t even end.” Chuuya says, pointing at Yokohama out the window with a spoon. “Look at th–”

“Fuck you.” Dazai says cheerfully, “shut up, fuck you, I fucking hate you, tiny mafioso.” Dazai’s smile is small but genuine. The bruise across his cheek still hasn’t faded. Chuuya feels his palms itch. “I hate you.” Dazai says, like a promise.

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuuya says like nothing’s changed and nothing has– except for how he leans in as he says it so that he can meet Dazai in the middle for a kiss, “I hate you too.”

♡♡♡