Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i. first law 

Just over five minutes before the first bell, Chuuya’s speed-walking towards his locker so he can change to indoor shoes. Chuuya’s never been late in his entire life—because he’s not a goddamn inconsiderate, irresponsible asshole unlike certain bandage-covered bastards he can curse the name of—and he’s definitely not about to start now.

He’s usually the first one to wake up in their household. Today though it’s just him alone—Kouyou-anesan’s work is taking her to Kyoto for a month, and Chuuya’s fathers are still in that anthropological trip that’s taking them all over the continent. Chuuya’s used to being alone in their house—big enough for everyone to have comfortable living space and privacy, but also compact enough that it doesn’t feel too much like a gaping, hollow chasm when it’s devoid of people.

Well… mostly alone.

Chuuya grits his teeth as he reaches his locker and quickly switches shoes. Even more swiftly, he half-runs towards his first class for the day. He hasn’t had a chance to check if his homework and all of his things are in their rightful places inside his bag, harried as he is on his quest to avoid tardiness. If he finds out that a certain someone had swiped them out, he’s gonna—

Urgh.

—!!!

Too late.

He sees it, eyes registering the sight, but even if it appears to have played out in slow-motion, he’s still moving too fast, unable to halt his own momentum. He barely manages to flail his arms in a bid to regain balance, his feet catching on one outstretched leg blocking his way.

He squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for the unfortunate impact against the floor, which would lead to him getting concussed, then eventually becoming late for his class, then him earning a tardy strike, then his teachers and parents being concerned about the sudden rebellious act, which means that they could possibly ground him, which means he’ll have to endure a certain asshole’s side-comments about said grounding, which means he’d end up in jail because he’ll finally give in and strangle a certain bandaged bastard using his own bandages.

Any second now…

The impact doesn’t happen—at least, not the one that he would rather welcome.

“…Ah. Is the small fairy finally falling for me?”

Chuuya looks up at the person who caught him in his arms—the same fucking dipshit who tripped him to begin with. Glaring with the force of a thousand suns and then some, Chuuya hisses, “You fucking tripped me, asshole!”

Dazai shrugs, a self-satisfied smirk playing on his face. It’s such a signature look on his stupid mug that Chuuya can imagine it clearly even when he doesn’t even want to.

“Hmm, funny that you didn’t deny the ‘falling for me’ part…”

“Because I only fell in the first place because of your stupid, lanky beanpole leg!” Chuuya shoves Dazai away by pushing on the other’s chest, Dazai resisting by wrapping too-long arms around his waist. It is fucking annoying, because physical strength and Dazai in the same sentence is such a laughable concept. Yet, Chuuya’s finding it difficult to wrench himself away. “And let me the fuck go, you know I have class! You have class!”

Laughing, Dazai lets him go, but not before patting his back, then lightly scratching his chin like one would a cute dog. Which again? Is fucking laughable, because Dazai and dogs are worse than oil and water if said oil has been struck with a matchstick. “Better run along then, chibi! With your short legs, you’ll definitely be late~♬”

“Shut up! I’ll pay you back for this later!” Chuuya yells as soon as he manages to extricate himself from Dazai’s octopus-hold. As he passes by the bastard, he makes sure to slam against his arm with his bag. “There won’t be a second time!”

Dazai’s obnoxious laughter trails his exit.

-

Chuuya lets his forehead fall against his math notebook with a soft thump, as soon as the bell for lunch starts. There’s indistinct chatter around him. Some of his classmates comparing their lunches, while some are making plans of braving the cafeteria lines to buy food. All of them discuss where to eat their lunch, none of them wanting to stay inside their homeroom.

Tachihara knocks on his desk. “Chuuya-san, we’re buying lunch! Want us to get you anything?”

“Someone to stuff the math textbook inside my brain,” Chuuya replies with a long-suffering sigh. Today’s lesson is quite challenging and Chuuya’s mind is still reeling to make sense of it all. “Ah, but I did bring a bento. So I’m fine. Thanks for asking. You guys go and enjoy your lunch.”

“Tachibaka, let’s go already!” Higuchi calls out from the doorway, causing Tachihara to grumble as he walks away, and Chuuya lifts a hand to wave at her, still keeping his face flat against the notebook’s pages.

Then there’s some shuffling sounds, some spike in tittering inside his homeroom. Higuchi lets out a squeal. A few seconds, until there’s something warm being pressed against his nape.

“If you slump over like that, you’d end up shrinking even more, chibikko.”

“Glurgh,” Chuuya mumbles as he stretches back up and tries to swat at Dazai’s offering. The still-warm can of milk coffee is then rolled over his nape, then across his hair, messing it up. In retaliation, Chuuya pokes Dazai’s stomach sharply, right on the area he knows Dazai is ticklish, even if the other wouldn’t admit it. “I still haven’t forgiven you for this morning, damn it.”

“This morning?” Dazai asks with the air of innocence that should only be present on shrine priestesses. Chuuya rolls his eyes and pokes Dazai’s stomach again. “After all my gallantry in saving a tiny dog in distress… or is it that you can’t forgive me for making you fall for me?”

“Stop calling me a dog,” Chuuya says with another roll of his eyes. “And I keep telling you! That’s only because you tripped me!”

“Hmm, I would think that Chuuya could avoid that because he’s so very near the ground…” Dazai hums as he drags Tachihara’s now-vacant chair towards Chuuya’s desk so they can eat lunch together. “I guess I expected too much from a shorty?”

“Keep on yapping and I’ll make you choke on your food.”

“Oho, how lewd!”

“…you’re disgusting.” Chuuya rummages inside his bag until he has his bento. Well. It’s a bento, but he shoves it against Dazai’s nose. “Where’s my lunch?”

Dazai grins, making him look rather boyish instead of being the usual frigid asshole. “That excited to taste my cooking?”

“Let’s just get this over with,” Chuuya says as he clears his desk and braces himself for whatever ill concoction Dazai’s able to create. Today’s bet is about who can make a better lunch bento. Chuuya’s pretty sure he’ll hit this one out of the ballpark, mostly because Dazai’s genius rears its ugly head at the worst of times—like when cooking. Dazai has this shitty tendency to try to experiment different flavors, most of the time resulting in inedible clumps that can’t even be called food. Dazai also gets bored easily, so he usually flits about planning idiotic things to shave away at Chuuya’s sanity instead of making sure his food doesn’t end up as charcoal.

Dazai hands his bento to Chuuya and Chuuya fires off a short text to Kouyou-anesan telling her that he’ll probably end up in a hospital shortly due to food poisoning. Dazai, who has zero compunctions about reading off another person’s text messages, leans over and pouts.

“How mean! You haven’t even seen it!”

“I already know what to expect,” Chuuya says, shoving Dazai’s face away.

Kouyou-anesan replies, Dazai-kun cooking for you again? Your ‘hatred’ for each other manifests in such strange ways.

Chuuya sends out a quick affirmative, before unfolding the black-and-purple furoshiki wrapped around Dazai’s bento. Chuuya will give him this—he does know how to nail down the presentation to make it look sufficiently dark, foreboding and expensive. The wooden bento box looks even more expensive, black with gold accents. Knowing Dazai, it’s probably real gold.

“Did you buy a new box just for our bet?” Chuuya tries to think back to yesterday, when they’ve decided on this bet—they were walking together after-school and dropped by a department store before getting take-out, but Chuuya can’t remember Dazai buying this. “You really have no concept of financial responsibility, you dickwad.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Dazai points out, snapping his chopsticks near Chuuya’s nose. “You bought yet another tacky hat after all.”

“It’s not tacky!”

“It’s definitely not fashionable…”

“At least I’m not an idiot who thinks bandages are good fashion accessories!”

“Chuuya, have you seen your outfit when we went to the library last weekend?” Dazai asks while busying himself in taking pictures of Chuuya’s bento. “The library emptied so fast because of how you looked!”

“Stop lying!” For good measure, Chuuya kicks Dazai’s feet under his desk. “I was very fashionable!”

Bright orange shirt plus a green bomber jacket finished off with a red lace-up boots? It’s very cool! The only thing missing was some stylish, sleek hot pink motorcycle and he’d have looked very badass!

“Yeah, sure.” Dazai says wryly. “To blind people.”

“You bastard—!”

Dazai then peers at him, Chuuya instinctively slapping his face away. “Ne, are you stalling because you’re scared of how good my bento will be?”

“No fucking way!” Still, Chuuya opens the bento box with care. It wouldn’t be the first time that Dazai rigged something of his to explode, after all. He isn’t keen on a repetition of the Rotten Egg Incident or the Volcanic Slime Incident or—you know what, he’s not keen on any of those Dazai-related Incidents at all. “I’m just bracing myself for how foul-smelling it would be.”

“…Pfft, the Rotten Egg Incident, huh?” Dazai’s mirth is in full display as he recalls that day. “Ah, you looked so affronted then! Maybe I should do a similar prank again…”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Chuuya warns. “I swear, I’ll really dunk your ass in the incinerator!”

“Mm, but the question is, is the incinerator strong enough to handle how hot my ass is?”

Chuuya makes a face. “Disgusting, shameless asshole.”

“Eh, but you like me this way~~~♫”

“Delusional too,” Chuuya mutters as he finally opens the bento box.

It’s… actually quite good.

Reminds Chuuya of the pictures of meals on Mutekirou’s online menu and review blogs—restaurants that Chuuya can only dream of going to, because their family doesn’t shit gold for breakfast, unlike Dazai’s. Chuuya takes a cautious sniff and smells only deliciousness. How suspicious. Chuuya squints at the food. It looks fresh and authentic enough. He gives an experimental poke at one of the glistening red crab roe. Looks real enough, so he’s probably not hallucinating this.

A few moments pass like that, Chuuya prodding at the food this way and that, as though expecting it to bite back.

Dazai looks amused, warmth swimming in his eyes as he asks, “…Impressed?”

Chuuya huffs. “It’s passable.”

It’s an unneeded reminder that Dazai is an actual genius, really. Dazai is actually quite good at baking when he sets his mind to it and when Chuuya’s available to lock him up inside the kitchen so he doesn’t ‘accidentally’ forget about the oven—mostly because it’s something that requires precise calculations and timings, things that are right up Dazai’s alley of being a calculating bastard. It stands to say that Dazai can be good at cooking too, as long as he has the proper incentive.

How very annoying.

“…If you say so.” Dazai starts picking off crabmeat arranged like red tulips on the bento that Chuuya labored over earlier—to the point that he lost track of time that he almost became late. Actually, it’s not so much the time he spent over cooking that’s to blame, but more about the fact that Dazai sneaked into his house and turned off all his alarms since he napped a bit after cooking.

Chuuya takes a bite out of the crab roe lining the camellia design on top of the bed of rice. The petals are made of lightly-seared salmon, while the middle is a golden yellow of a perfectly-cooked rolled egg. The side-dishes form the stems and leaves: grilled asparagus, steamed celery sticks, seaweed sheets, cabbage strips seasoned with a drizzle of sesame oil. It’s actually a very tasty and healthy meal that Chuuya finds it hard to believe that Dazai actually spent time and effort to making such a thing.

“…Did you kidnap a chef from Mutekirou and force them to make this meal?”

“You of little faith…” Dazai snickers, then claps his hands together. “Ah. Maybe that’s because you’re too little? That won’t do, Chuuya, if you keep being so small-minded, you really won’t grow!”

“That has nothing to do with it!” Chuuya protests hotly, still disbelieving that Dazai-who-cooks-rotten-eggs is able to make this meal. “And I can still grow, damn it!”

“Whatever you say~♫”

“…so, did you get someone else to cook this?” Chuuya thinks back to the wording of their bet, I bet I can make a better lunch bento than you! Of course, knowing Dazai, he’d probably argue that if he’s the one who tied the furoshiki after the bento is completed, he still had a hand in making it, or something like that.

“Do you think I’d let anyone else make food for you?” Dazai cradles his cheek in his palm, elbow resting on Chuuya’s desk. His eyes are dark and assessing.

Chuuya rolls his eyes. “I think you’re a sore enough of a loser to make sure that you win, no matter what.”

Dazai laughs. “Ah, but this round is your victory, chibikko.”

“…Huh?”

Dazai’s laugh tapers into light chuckles, then to a dreamy smile that’s guaranteed to infuriate Chuuya. “My stomach is filled to bursting from your feelings~♥!”

Chuuya’s eyebrow twitches. “…Again: HAH?!”

“Chuuya made a bento with lots of my favorite crab and he even arranged it to declare his love for me!”

Chuuya blinks. “…Oi, did you finally crack or something? I don’t understand what gibberish you’re saying.”

“Is this an effect of Chuuya’s muscles eating his brain?” In slow motion, Dazai takes another strip of crabmeat and savors it, making obscene moaning noises as he does. Fucking damn it, this is why nobody else ever wants to eat with Chuuya during lunchtime! “Didn’t you know? Red tulips mean ‘declaration of eternal love’.”

“The only thing I’m declaring is your time of death after I’m done kicking your ass,” Chuuya replies firmly, finishing off his lunch so he can still study before the afternoon classes. Now that he knows that he’s broken their deadlock in the number of bets won, he can breathe a little easier. Also… “And since I won, I command you to get the hell out of my sight.”

“But that’s super easy to do,” Dazai teases. “I just have to stand up, after all~♪”

With force and aim that can garner envy from professional pitchers, Chuuya throws the wooden bento cover at his forehead.

-

It’s during the final half hour of his last class of the day that Chuuya feels it. A bubbling twinge in his stomach, just as he copies down the notes on the board, an analysis of the English passage about environmentalism. His eyesight blurs for a moment as the pain in his gut intensifies. He grits his teeth and looks at the clock.

Thirty more minutes.

That motherfucker!

He should have known that the fucker would put something nasty in the food, given how easily he had conceded his defeat. If he finds out that Dazai put some laxatives in his food, he’s going to really, truly kill the asshole.

Urgh! Stupid fucking Dazai!

That’s how the last period passes for him, one arm wrapped protectively over his rumbling stomach, his other hand still dutifully taking down notes. He can’t slack off, even with the stomach pain. After all, their main bet is not just who will end up at the top of their graduating class—on who will be chosen to give the graduation address. No, their main bet is as to who can get into Todai and who will be chosen to give the freshman acceptance speech.

While it’s true that even Kouyou-anesan does think that Dazai is the real deal when it comes to having a genius mind, Chuuya’s sure that hard work and having a more holistic portfolio will give him an edge. Plus, Chuuya’s never been the type to back down from that kind of challenge—one that Dazai issued with that infuriating smug-cat smirk that he so hates.

Once their Assistance Language Teacher, Poe-sensei, dismisses them for the day, Chuuya groans and slumps forward on his desk. His fingers are shaking and he’s not sure if he can haul his ass down to the ground floor and maybe die a quiet death by the shoe lockers.

Ah, shit, he still has to help with the classroom clean-up. The only good thing about this timing is that because he’s a third-year, he doesn’t have any more club activities. He’s not sure he can be in tip-top condition for soccer club training like this. Gurgh. Stupid bandage-wearing waste-of-breathing-space!

“…We’re going home, chibi.”

Blegh. Speak of the devil and he will appear. Shifting his face so that his left cheek is resting against his papers, Chuuya glares at the bamboo pole blearily. “You motherfucking asshole, I hate you.”

“Is that what you should be saying to someone who’ll give you a piggyback home?”

“Just let me crawl back,” Chuuya mutters, because Dazai is many things, but possessing arm-strength or back-strength or any sort of physical strength is just not part of his repertoire. Chances are, he’d piggyback Chuuya and he’d ‘accidentally’ drop him on the stairs. “I’d rather jump off from the rooftop than let your noodle arms carry me.”

Dazai smirks. “Ohoho. Is that an invitation for a double suicide I hear? Chuuya really does say the most romantic things…”

“I thought you wanted to commit double suicide with a beautiful woman?” Chuuya whimpers when Dazai starts packing up his things for him, snatching off the English workbook under his cheek, letting his face thump back down to a cold, solid wood.

Dazai ruffles his hair, messing it up, as he tells Higuchi, “This little fairy over here is feeling under the weather, I’m taking him home.” Higuchi must have answered in affirmative, because the next thing Chuuya knows is that he’s being dragged up by his armpits.

“I have food poisoning because of you,” Chuuya groans out because it has to be pointed out. “I hate you so much.”

“Fufufu, do you have proof that it’s me?”

“I didn’t eat anything else today, you fuck.”

“But you could have been infected by something else, you know?”

“Eurgh, I know it was you.” Chuuya feels his stomach rumble painfully again. “You bastard, I can’t believe you’d sabotage me like this for tomorrow’s PE Practicals.”

“Hmm, it’s not like anyone can even come close to your monstrous strength, chibizilla.”

Dazai then half-kneels on the floor, smirking expectantly at Chuuya. Both of their bags are beside him. Chuuya knows that it’s safer for him (physically, emotionally, mentally, psychologically) if he opts for a piggyback ride. But there’s a desire deep inside him to humiliate Dazai. If Dazai’s going to drop him anyway, he’d rather do it while breaking Dazai’s arms in the process. So he steps in gingerly into Dazai’s front, ignoring Dazai’s surprise and the gasps from his classmates assigned to clean up the room. His head spins and he quickly anchors his forehead against Dazai’s chest to keep himself from vomiting. His nose nudges against the second button on Dazai’s shirt. This way, if he gets nauseous, he gets to ruin Dazai’s uniform too. A win-win.

Dazai’s surprise lasts only a moment, because in no time, he’s lifting Chuuya up in his arms in a sweeping bridal carry, prompting Chuuya to half-strangle the asshole by linking his own hands behind the curve of that neck.

With overdramatic effect, Dazai calls out to the room, “I’m off to take this Sleeping Chibi away, goodbye everyone~!”

There are some wolf-whistles from his classmates.

Chuuya strangles Dazai with more force in response.

-

To Chuuya’s surprise, Dazai only ‘accidentally’ thumps Chuuya’s head against the staircase handlebars once during the three flights of stairs. Beneath Chuuya’s ear, Dazai’s heartbeat is pounding and his breathing is labored, because he’s a weakass noodle. Despite that, he doesn’t actually drop Chuuya—at least not until he’s setting him down gently near his shoe lockers.

Chuuya closes his eyes as he lets the coolness of the metal lockers wash over him. He hears Atsushi’s voice float somewhere above his form. “…Dazai-senpai, what did you do to Chuuya-senpai this time?”

“How mean, Atsushi-kun! My dear kouhai is so suspicious of me! Why would you assume I did something to the petite hatrack over here?”

“Because you always do something to him?” Atsushi sounds confused as to why Dazai is even denying his nefariousness. On his spot on the floor, Chuuya smiles, proud that his kouhai has learned from past mistakes (read: trusting Dazai’s faked guileless smiles).

“Can’t I just want to whisk away my very own chibi prince?” Dazai’s helping Chuuya change back to his shoes, but not before lightly tickling Chuuya’s socked feet. Chuuya kicks him on the face, if only a bit halfheartedly, because of the odd angle and the pain in his torso.

“So you did do something!” Atsushi sounds disapproving. “Chuuya-senpai, please get well soon.”

Dazai complains, a pout in his voice. “So very mean! My kouhai is so mean!”

“Jinko, what’s taking you so long?” Akutagawa’s very flat voice enters the fray. “Oh. Dazai-senpai. Chuuya-senpai. Are you alright?”

“The chibi’s fine because I’m taking care of him!”

Akutagawa coughs. “Ah. So you harm him so you can take care of him after.”

“Finally! Someone understands!” Dazai exclaims gleefully, clapping. “I knew you’re a good kouhai, Akutagawa-kun!”

“Stop teaching them shit,” Chuuya says with another kick to Dazai’s face. “Also, I fucking knew it, you poisoned me, you shitty mackerel!”

“Now, now, such hurtful accusations might mean I’ll end up dropping you on the way home…”

“Now you’re blackmailing me, urgh.” Chuuya opens his eyes and tries to stand up on his own, his neck and the back of his ears feeling feverish. “I’d rather crawl back home, thanks.”

“How very stubborn too,” Dazai says with something unreadable on his face, fondness maybe? It softens Dazai’s face, even as he’s rather blatantly proclaiming that he has his hands in deliberately poisoning a classmate. “I already called for a car.”

“Urghhhhh.”

A car means that Dazai’s family’s driver-butler-all-around-house-Executive, Hirotsu-san, will be present to stare at Chuuya judgingly, for always falling for Dazai’s traps. There being a car means that Hirotsu-san probably already went to his house to fetch a change of clothes for him so he can stay overnight at Dazai’s mansion.

…Shit. In his haste this morning, Chuuya hasn’t completed cleaning up the kitchen. There are still cookbooks strewn around, some of his notes as to how he can make a lot of different crab dishes. Shit, fuck, fucking fuck. It’s no secret that Dazai’s favorite food is crab, after all. Fuckity fuck.

As though sensing his distress, Dazai checks his phone and shoves it against Chuuya’s face. Even with his blurry eyesight, Chuuya can recognize the photo that Hirotsu-san took of the state of his kitchen. Urgh, Hirotsu-san is a traitor.

“I knew Chuuya loved me so~~~♪”

Chuuya swats the offending image away with a groan. “Shut the fuck up, urgh.”

From above them, there’s a faint, “They totally forgot about us, didn’t they?”, followed by a cough.

-

The ride back to Dazai’s place is fairly peaceful. Chuuya supposes that Hirotsu-san’s disapproving frown is already enough of a rebuke, not that it ever works on Dazai.

“Chuuya will be staying over tonight.” Dazai refuses any help in carrying Chuuya to the car and refuses any common sense in letting Chuuya sit on the actual seats instead of his lap, even if it’s not like there isn’t enough space in the backseat. Chuuya still feels woozy, so he’s not able to protest all that much, aside from knocking his fists against Dazai’s chest in a drumbeat percussion. Dazai continues imperiously, “I don’t want any interruptions.”

“Some papers regarding plans for the North America Headquarters have been sent for your perusal,” Hirotsu-san says mildly though he does sound resigned. Chuuya can understand, really. It’s a pain to work for a spoiled brat like Dazai. Especially since Dazai is being groomed to be a successor to his family’s multinational corporation. It makes Dazai even more of an ass, a lot of times.

“No interruptions,” Dazai repeats, shifting so that his arms are tighter around Chuuya’s form.

Chuuya doesn’t see it—because his eyes are closed to help alleviate the dizziness and because Dazai is nearly suffocating him against his chest anyway—but he can easily imagine Hirotsu-san’s long-suffering expression. “…Very well, Dazai-bocchan.”

There’s silence for the rest of the ride back and Chuuya ends up being lulled to sleep.

-

It’s already dark when he wakes up.

“Ah, you’re finally up! You took too long!” After rattling off those comments, Dazai quickly jumps off from the bed where he has apparently stashed Chuuya in. “Don’t move, I’ll get our dinner!”

Chuuya doesn’t think that he can move anyway, even if he wants to. He ends up settling back on the nest of pillows that are propping him up, relaxing when he realizes that he’s in Dazai’s bedroom. As always, it’s in a state of organized chaos, large floor-to-ceiling wooden bookshelves flanking a huge television set, the shelves themselves crammed with books featuring a variety of topics, some of them in their original languages. In front of the television set is a low coffee table that has several gaming systems on top, which is then surrounded by an assortment of Jenga-like towers of game disks.

To the right are floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a glass door that leads to a balcony overlooking a swimming pool. Curtains are drawn, letting Chuuya see that there are already stars twinkling out in the sky. To the left is another shelf filled with knickknacks and a desk that has a laptop on it. Beyond that are three doors, one leading to the hallway, one to Dazai’s enormous closet filled with lots of bandages and black coats and another one to an adjoining bathroom.

Dazai appears from one of the doors after a few moments, dinner with him, as promised.

Dinner is congee topped with generous helpings of chicken, spring onions and crispy browned garlic. Chuuya wrinkles his nose at it, especially since Dazai’s smile as he brings it inside along with a foldable tray doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. There’s an appetizing scent of ginger wafting from the porcelain bowl, making Chuuya’s stomach rumble in anticipation. Stupid body of his, not able to remember that Dazai’s poisonous bento from earlier also had a mouthwatering smell.

“Please tell me that Hirotsu-san at least supervised you in making this,” Chuuya begs as Dazai sits in front of him, cross-legged on the bouncy mattress. While there’s no force on earth that can stop Dazai when he’s really determined, having Hirotsu-san around to stop him from adding more questionable concoctions into the congee would at least pacify him a bit.

Dazai smirks as an answer, drawing out Chuuya’s agony. Though, to be fair, he’s feeling slightly better now that he’s had the chance to rest while reclining against a den of pillows arranged against Dazai’s oversized bed’s headboard.

Chuuya thinks of strangling Dazai to wrangle an answer out of him, there’s a polite knock on the door that’s left ajar, before Hirotsu-san swings it fully open. “Dazai-bocchan, Chuuya-sama, do you require anything else for the evening?”

“Please take me out of here,” Chuuya halfheartedly pleads as Dazai starts scooping up some of the congee and blowing at it with exaggerated cooing baby noises. “I don’t want to actually die of food poisoning!”

Hirotsu-san’s eyes crinkle in laughter. Or maybe he’s squeezing them shut so that he can’t see Dazai’s antics in full swing. “Dazai-bocchan was pretty worried about you getting seriously sick, so there’s no need to worry, Chuuya-sama.”

“Dazai? Worried?!” Chuuya shoots his rival a dirty look. “That is worrying!”

Wordless, Dazai simply keeps a serene expression practically dripping with honeyed innocence.

Hirotsu-san shakes his head at them. “To confirm – you don’t need anything from the staff?”

“I’ll call for assistance later in burying Chuuya’s tiny body in the backyard,” Dazai says with a bright smile, causing Hirotsu-san to chuckle lightly before bowing and shutting the door behind him as he leaves.

As soon as Hirotsu-san is out of earshot, Dazai turns back to Chuuya and starts cooing for ‘Chuu-Chuu to open up for the chuu-chuu train’. Chuuya responds by biting Dazai’s hand. Dazai retaliates by shoving the spoon inside Chuuya’s mouth, knocking against his teeth painfully. Then, Chuuya reaches down to pinch the skin around Dazai’s ankles. Dazai whines like a baby.

All in all, it’s a pretty normal dinner for them. And, despite Dazai’s all-around annoying-ness at trying to baby Chuuya, their dinner is actually… quite okay.

Strangely enough, Dazai actually does something relatively nice and offers to clean up after dinner. Of course, it only means that he brings the tray out the door for the house’s cleaning staff to handle—but he moans and groans about it, as though expecting to be praised for something so mundane. Not for the first time in their long years of knowing each other, Chuuya wonders if Dazai has been dropped on his head as a baby. He says as much, which Dazai ignores, but not before making a quip about Chuuya’s height remaining baby-like.

…Still.

Dazai practically skips back to the bedside, hands on his back, a sunny smile on his face. “Now, time for your medicine!”

“…you sound so excited about that.”

Dazai and excitement are such a deadly combination, because there can only be two reasons for it. One, because it’s something so out of his scope of prediction and therefore interesting to him. Two, because he’s an evil asshole with evil plans to spread evil. Unfortunately for Chuuya’s sanity, it always ends up with him having a headache and bemoaning the fact that he’s been acquainted with Dazai to begin with.

“Now, now, this kind of paranoia will just make you even shorter, you know?”

“It’s self-preservation,” Chuuya says with a roll of his eyes that he immediately regrets, because it makes him dizzy. “Also, it has nothing to do with my height!”

“Really? Because here I am, tall as a tree!” Dazai shoves a foul-smelling bottle of medicine under Chuuya’s nose. “You should be like me, open to new experiences!”

“Pffft. Is that why you tried to eat some wild mushrooms the other week?”

“I was hoping to see if I’d hallucinate something nice,” Dazai continues with the same sunny smile. “But all I got was Chuuya’s worried face when I woke up. It really sucks!”

“I wasn’t worried,” Chuuya snaps, keeping the worry out of his tone and his face and his body language. He achieves this by grabbing a pillow and slamming it against Dazai’s face. “I was… adequately concerned, because we still have an ongoing bet and I won’t let you snake out of it!”

“Ah, a classic tsundere response…”

Chuuya slams the pillow again, in vain hopes that he’ll be able to knock Dazai out to stop the stream of shit running out of his mouth. It doesn’t quite work, but Chuuya does drink the medicine and he shoves it back against Dazai’s nose. The look on Dazai’s face as he gets a scent of his own medicine is rather funny too.

As a good rival, Chuuya makes sure to point it out. “You look like an idiot.”

Dazai mutters something like, “only to you”, but Chuuya’s busy trying to settle back down on bed so he can rest and therefore doesn’t really pay attention to it.

-

Hours later, Chuuya wakes up from fitful sleep. His stomach still feels a bit… unhappy, but it’s much better now that he’s had a few hours’ worth of rest and some medicine and warm meal on him. The restlessness in his sleep is more because of the creeping sense of dread that he hasn’t really grasped today’s English lesson because of the inconvenient stomachache and if he doesn’t review now, he’d end up having a backlog and if he’s behind the lessons, then he won’t be prepared for the exams and if he’s not fully prepared, then Dazai will easily steamroll his scores, and then he’d end up with a smugly smirking Dazai who’d be taunting him for the next eighty-four years about losing focus and maybe ordering him around to only answer in barks or something equally humiliating.

…So, yes. In conclusion, he absolutely has to wake up now and review his English worksheets.

He stretches up and unearths himself from the bundle of blankets and comforters wrapped around him like some warm bandage. And speaking of bandage…

“Stupid octopus,” Chuuya mutters as he stealthily crawls away from Dazai’s clingy embrace. He’d usually kick Dazai off him—especially on situations like this, when he’s all but politely kidnapped into Dazai’s bedroom—but he’s planning to use the time to study. Dazai is extra insufferable whenever he’s disturbed in his sleep and Chuuya doesn’t want to have to deal with that.

…So, yes. Stealthy and smooth. It takes him more than five minutes to finally extract himself from Dazai’s hold. It takes him another two to take a video of Dazai doing some weird wading thing, long limbs flapping about as he tries to seek the missing warmth, those arms bundling the blankets and comforters into something resembling a body pillow, hugging it instead.

Chuuya saves the video under some innocuous name—Leg Exercise Guide 101.mp4, because Dazai is allergic to anything remotely approaching effort, sweat and physical exertion. He then waddles along towards the bathroom, taking care to walk slowly in case he ends up stubbing his toe against one of Dazai’s knickknacks just messily lying around. Last Saturday, when Chuuya had stayed over and had to take a piss at some deadass time in the middle of the night, he ended up nearly face-faulting into a bunch of marbles melded together.

There’s also this one time when he ended up getting scratched up by some circuitry and motherboards lying around, as part of Dazai’s half-hearted effort to build a robot Chuuya who’d follow all of his instructions. The robot didn’t even reach Chuuya’s calf—Dazai called it ‘realism’, while Chuuya called Dazai a motherfucking asshole and threw the robot towards his slimy face.

…So, yes. He has to very careful.

He goes and takes a piss now, able to reach the bathroom without any unfortunate accidents. He washes his face, satisfied to see that he now has more color on his cheeks, at least. He notices that his hair is braided, some bandages weaved along the strands, making it look as though he has white highlights on his hair. It actually looks quite nice, because he does take care of his hair (unlike a certain mackerel he could name, who think that running water through his floofy hair counts for proper grooming) and also most likely because Dazai’s fingers are just really good at making themselves useful. But then again, it’s also likely that these bandages are already used, so they’re probably contaminated by Dazai’s germs and sweat. Blegh.

…But they look nice enough and they do a decent job of keeping his hair away from his face, so…

Chuuya washes his face again and wipes off, before leaving the bathroom.

When he gets back to the room, Dazai is awake, seated on the bed with his hands juggling two phones.

“Drop my phone and you’re dead,” Chuuya promises, picking up his bag from the foot of the bed so he can get his English worksheets. He then climbs to the bed, crossing his legs so he can set up a study camp on his side of the mattress. The light on the left bedside table is already switched on.

“Hmm, Chuuya is feeling energetic enough to threaten me…”

It’s probably because of the late hour, that it’s easier than usual to realize that Dazai is actually… concerned, about him. Of course, Hirotsu-san had hinted at it earlier, but Chuuya had dismissed it as such a laughable thing, given that 99% of all the pains and aches in his life are due to Dazai himself, with the other 1% reserved for the things that he hasn’t managed to pin on Dazai yet.

…Still.

“Threaten? It’s a promise, jackass.”

“How mean, how mean!” Dazai doesn’t sound sleepy per se, but he does sound a bit mellow. Urgh. Stupid dumbass. If he’s going to act like this, then maybe not poison him to begin with?! What a dumbass, really. “Chuuya is so mean, even though I actually did my best to cook some old-man food! And he doesn’t even compliment me!”

“Congrats on being a decent human being for once, thanks for kidnapping me, etcetera, blah blah blah.”

“Super mean, this is why you’re short!”

“Ha?! It has nothing to do with it!”

“Really? But then again, how do you explain that I’m this tall compared to you, little mushroom?”

“…a mushroom?” Chuuya’s lips twitch as he remembers Dazai’s mushroom escapades.

“A small, cute, button mushroom,” Dazai decides, after taking a moment to peer at Chuuya’s face. Chuuya smacks Dazai’s head with his bag after he’s able to get all of his study materials out on the bed. Chuuya spends three seconds lamenting the fact that Dazai’s bed is large enough that even with his worksheets fanned out in front of him, there’s still plenty of space.

Plenty of space that Dazai doesn’t utilize, because the clingy octopus instead situates himself against Chuuya’s back, plastering their backs together.

“Why don’t you just go to sleep,” Chuuya asks flatly, even if he knows it’s a lost cause. “You don’t have to stay up with me, even though this is your shitty mackerel ass’s fault.”

Dazai knocks his head back harshly, forcing Chuuya to bend forward. “Who says I’m staying up for a chibi’s sake? I’m just excited to play a game!”

Chuuya feels Dazai’s heartbeat resonating from his back. He knocks Dazai’s head back and stretches so that he’s the one forcing Dazai to bend the other way. Dazai doesn’t have any game on his waitlist right now. But, if he wants to insist on keeping Chuuya company… well. It would likely result in the two of them being too sleepy, and therefore too snippy, the next day, but…

Chuuya rocks back against the other’s head, half-hoping he’d knock some sense to him.

Dazai whines about Chuuya’s head being harder than a bag of bricks.

Really.

Such a stupid mackerel.

-

The day of PE Practicals sees the two of them sporting eyebags big enough to make them look like panda rejects. Dazai insists on having Chuuya foregoing concealer, so when the two of them appear together in front of the gymnasium where the classes are lined up, they’re lugging along suitcase-heavy eyebags with them. Chuuya feels exhausted, which is why he stays beside Dazai, leaning most of his body weight against the beanpole.

Atsushi’s the first one to approach them, exclaiming, “Chuuya-senpai, what did Dazai-senpai do to you?!”

Chuuya kicks Dazai’s shin. Dazai hits back by jabbing a sharp-boned elbow against his ribs. Chuuya returns fire by punching Dazai’s stomach. Dazai tugs at the long edge of his ponytail, leaving an arm around his shoulder so he can tug on it every couple of seconds.

“…Uh, Chuuya-senpai?”

“This fucking bastard,” Chuuya says while grinding his heel against Dazai’s toes, “kept me up all night!”

“It was a lot of fun,” Dazai contributes with a very snake-like leer, his fingers tickling the back of Chuuya’s ear in retaliation, his body curving along Chuuya’s side as Chuuya tries to side-step him to get away from his tickles. “Chuuya was… pretty wild.”

“It wasn’t fun for me,” Chuuya complains with a roll of his eyes. He punches somewhere near Dazai’s kidney when Dazai reaches a particularly ticklish spot. “You knew that I was still recovering!”

“You slept like a baby in my bed though…” Dazai muses, twirling away in a manner too-energetic for someone who got only an hour of shut-eye. “Drooled like one too… Maybe I should call you my baby instead of chibikko?”

“What kind of babies have you been exposed to,” Chuuya asks really flatly, chasing after Dazai’s sorry ass so he can punch him, then use him as a resting post.

“Fufufu, don’t worry, you’re my only baby, Chuu-Chuu!”

Chuuya grits his teeth. “Stop calling me Chuu-Chuu!”

Atsushi says, “They forgot about me,” but Chuuya is too busy hitting Dazai to hear.

-

Chuuya’s time for the 100-meter dash is still the best in the entire school, even if he has a handicap. Dazai drapes himself all over his shoulders after, light sweat making their clothes stick together.

“Get the hell away from me,” Chuuya says while stabbing his elbows against Dazai’s ribs. “Urgh, you’re so sweaty, stinky mackerel!”

Dazai huffs and clings tighter. “You’re so sticky too, just like a tiny slug~”

“GO. AWAY.”

“Nope!”

“Go away or I’m burning all of your bandage supply!”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I so would!”

“Would not!”

“Would too!”

From a few meters away, Tachihara asks Higuchi, “—is Chuuya-san running the 200-meter dash while carrying Dazai-san on his back?”

-

They’re neck and neck in the pole vaulting and long jump—with Dazai ahead by a hair. Chuuya insists it’s because Dazai’s long limbs count as cheats. Also, his shoes have chewed-up bubblegum on their soles—no guesses as to who’s responsible for it. Dazai denies it as always, so Chuuya slaps his arm using his dirty shoe.

Despite Dazai’s constant heckling and booing, Chuuya’s weight lifting record remains untouchable, as is the results for the rest of the Practicals.

“Hmph. I’m still better than you even if you sabotaged me,” Chuuya says smugly, turning up his nose when Dazai frowns and glares at their scores.

“Yes, sure, you muscle-for-brains,” Dazai says, hands curling around Chuuya’s upper arm and squeezing at his biceps. “You really are the most physically-gifted, huh?”

Chuuya squints at him. “…That sounds too much like a compliment. Did you put frogs inside my locker or something?”

“Chuuya!” Dazai removes one of his hands from Chuuya’s arm, opting to place it over his heart in some exaggeration of affront. “How dare you accuse me of something like that?”

“Very daringly.”

“I mean… how could you think that I’d use frogs?” Dazai wrinkles his nose at the thought, like he’s offended beyond belief. “Of course I’d use slugs instead! Slugs for a slug!”

“You—!!!”

-

Chuuya ends up stuffing half of those slugs inside Dazai’s shirt. It backfires on him, because Dazai is the shameless sort who just shrugs and starts stripping in the middle of the hallway, so he can get rid of the slugs sticking to his uniform. Dazai isn’t completely naked, given that he thinks that bandages make for a good undershirt, but still…

“You’re such a shameless ass,” Chuuya says as they walk back to the infirmary, so Dazai can get wrapped in new bandages because the ones he’s wearing are now very slimy. They pass by some students who simply stare at them in wide-eyed awe. The teachers they pass by simply sigh and shake their heads, presumably counting their lucky stars that their top two students who also happen to be their top two troublemakers are off to university in a few months.

“Chuuya’s the one who planned for me to give him a striptease though?”

“Ha?! Why the hell would I plan something so disgusting?!” Chuuya shoves at Dazai’s arm, instantly regretting it because now his palms are covered in a thin layer of slimy goo too. Urgh. “You’re the one who put slugs in my locker!”

Granted, Dazai apparently was decent enough to plastic-wrap Chuuya’s books and papers inside.

Still…

Wait, no! If Dazai was decent enough, he wouldn’t be putting slugs in his locker in the first place! Urgh!

“Hmm, so is Chuuya saying that he doesn’t need to plan for me to get naked?”

“Uh, yes? Why the hell would I need to plan for that?!”

“So Chuuya is saying that he’s prepared to see me naked, huh…”

“That’s not what I said!” Chuuya whacks Dazai’s arm again. “Plus, it’s not like I haven’t seen your naked ass already!”

Dazai flutters his eyelashes, simpering, “Ah-ah-ah, what do I do, I feel so violated already…”

“Seriously, what the fuck.”

-

Things go on like that, more or less.

Just like every other year of Chuuya’s life.

Chuuya’s grades are higher in English, history, music, art and physical education. They’re tied together for Japanese, economics, civics, geography and moral studies. Dazai’s math scores have always been perfect, along with his science scores. That’s been mostly the case throughout their lives too.

Unlike most of their classmates, they don’t attend cram schools, because Dazai has access to all of the review materials used there anyway and Chuuya doesn’t want his parents to spend extra money for cram schools when he can study the same materials with Dazai anyway. Plus, given their competitive nature, the two of them studying after-class and during the weekends together mean that they’re able to cover a wide range of topics in a short amount of time.

They’ve spent a long time together, to the point that they already have a routine:

• Chuuya finding out that his alarm (or bed, or door, or shampoo, or uniform—) has been tampered by Dazai, then him speed-dialing the mackerel asshole to scream at him from the shower.

• Chuuya half-rolling, half-sliding down the stairs to discover that Dazai has broken into his house and is shamelessly eating stuff from the cupboards or the fridge. Sometimes, when Chuuya’s parents or sister are around, they’d sit Dazai down so he can eat a nutritious, healthy meal. If they’re not around, then Chuuya prepares two sets of bento—nothing too fancy, unless he manages to wake up earlier than usual—while he shoves Dazai towards the small backyard so he can water the plants there and be useful instead of simply flopping about uselessly.

• The two of them then leaving Chuuya’s house while racing each other all the way to the Lawson one block away from school, where Dazai will buy some new flavor of gum or candy so he can have something to occupy his mouth instead of talking about shitty things. Dazai sticks by Chuuya’s side until he’s deposited to his seat in homeroom, presumably because Dazai wants to guard his bento from any possible theft, even if he’s the only one who’s enough of a jackass to steal someone else’s food.

• They have lunch together in Chuuya’s homeroom. Sometimes, when the day is particularly nice, they eat outside or on the rooftop. Chuuya’s particularly fond of eating under one of the sakura trees near the baseball field, not only because of the nice ambiance, but also because there’s that one time when one wild practice pitch nearly brained Dazai. Remembering Dazai’s affronted look is one of the highlights in Chuuya’s highschool life—he’s never seen someone look so much like a disgruntled, sprayed-on-by-a-hose cat. Of course, it’s not as funny when Chuuya remembers that the guy apparently did it on purpose, because he’s one of the people that hasn’t been brainwashed into worshipping the ground Dazai slinks on. Then again, Chuuya had a lot of fun talking to him and reminding him that defeating Dazai—which includes injuring him—falls solely on his shoulders…

• (Dazai used to skip classes a lot, during their freshman year in middle school, claiming that the topics are too easy for someone like him. Chuuya beat him up to beat some sense to him, but it only led to Dazai going back to his old habits of self-harm, so he’d have an excuse to be detained in the infirmary. Those were the months when Chuuya defeated Dazai’s grades on all subjects, the same months when Chuuya had refused to speak more than absolutely necessary with Dazai. Until one day, Dazai had shown up inside Chuuya’s room in the middle of the night, declaring that it sucked balls to be ranked lower than a slug. That day marked the beginning of their bet about getting into Todai. The day after that, Oda-sensei spoke with Chuuya and thanked him. Up until this day, Chuuya’s still not sure what that ‘thank you’ was for. He didn’t do anything—it was Dazai who ultimately decided to stop being a dumbass, after all.)

• That doesn’t mean that Dazai doesn’t slack off every-so-often. At least, this time, he usually just makes a nuisance of himself while appropriating the sofa inside the Student Council Office when he’s hit by the desire to be a lazy dipshit.

• After-school sees the two of them either being driven back to Dazai’s mansion (never during the increasingly rare times that Dazai’s parents are there) or walking towards the supermarket two blocks away from Chuuya’s home, where they proceed to get snacks for their study session and ingredients for dinner. Chuuya’s able to perfect his skills in protecting the grocery cart from all of the junk that Dazai try to slip past him and his carefully-calculated shopping list.

• They check each other’s work, Chuuya pointing out ways to make Dazai’s answers for their Japanese Language homework flow better, Dazai scribbling some made-up pneumonic for Newton’s Laws of Classical Motion and Law of Gravitation. Chuuya whacks Dazai’s forehead with his multicolored chart for the Warring States Era and Dazai haughtily lectures Chuuya about dark matter and the formation of stars.

• They take turns in relaxing in the bath, though Dazai more often than not doesn’t show any self-restraint or shame or anything that could be chalked up to basic human decency and decorum, which means that he sneaks inside the bathroom whenever Chuuya’s already inside. It usually ends with one of them getting a bruise from Chuuya pelting shampoo bottles towards Dazai and Dazai managing to get his way anyway, slipping into the bathtub with his long legs and lanky arms, forcing Chuuya to either concede getting a bath after Dazai has baked himself to a prune or to share the tub with the stupid fucker. Very often (read: all the time), Chuuya gives in because he was there first and he ends up making sure to dig his toes and his elbows against Dazai’s skin as they soak together. Chuuya tells himself that this is the logical course of action, because this way, he gets to keep an eye on Dazai in case the shithead thinks about replacing his conditioner with fabric softener or mayonnaise yet again.

• Whoever gets bruised (it’s always Dazai, because he has weakass skin) ends up demanding being pampered and lotioned after the bath. Chuuya never listens and always makes sure to harshly poke a finger against the bruise, especially since it’s nearly always on the other’s neck, high enough that it’d be awkward to try to cover it up with bandages. It’s fun, forcing Dazai to display the fruits of his battle losses against Chuuya. But then Chuuya’s ears end up bleeding from Dazai whining and groaning about abused by his self-proclaimed ‘chibi-wife’ so he usually ends up acquiescing and pouring lotion over the bruise anyway.

• Dazai sleeps over enough that he already has a good number of clothes inside Chuuya’s closet and he already has a house-slipper with his name on it. Despite the regularity of his sleepovers, he refuses to buy a pillow and blanket of his own and continues to insist on sharing Chuuya’s—which then devolves to him insisting on using Chuuya as both his blanket and pillow. Chuuya usually shuts him up and puts an end to this kind of shit by punching him, at this point.

• Weekends are usually spent on parks, coffee shops, libraries. They make bets as to who can finish a particular homework or worksheet faster. Dazai’s prize is often about getting to pick what movie to watch after they have dinner—he’s insufferable enough to pick those insomnia-curing documentaries or those artistic-philosophical films where everyone speaks in extended metaphors instead of just saying what the fuck they mean. If Dazai’s feeling meaner than usual, he’d want to watch a mystery/crime-thriller. Chuuya actually likes those movies, but Dazai’s a fucking spoilsport who’d whisper his guess about the entire plot to him within the first three minutes. And because Dazai is Dazai, this ‘guess’ always ends up 100% accurate, spoiling Chuuya’s enjoyment.

• Chuuya’s prize, on the other hand, is mostly focused on what kind of food they’d get for dinner, because if left to Dazai’s devices, he’d have them go to a food festival halfway across Japan, where there’d be vendors selling raw octopus or sea cucumbers or fried spiders and then he’d goad Chuuya into trying them out. If Chuuya’s retaliating against Dazai’s previous assholery though, he’d use his prize to pick a movie instead and he’d pick the loudest, brightest action film with the flimsiest plot, because it’s hilarious to watch Dazai’s expressions as though he can’t quite believe that such idiotic plots can exist.

Their lives go on, like so. Together.

-

Dazai’s birthday this year is on a weekday, which means that he’s very annoying at school, because there’s still a wave of not-yet-disillusioned girls who titter out birthday greetings and well-wishes. There’s a couple of cutely-wrapped chocolates, as is the norm.

(There used to be a time when love confessions accompanied said gifts, but that’s a long time ago. That was before Dazai had made that announcement, over the school’s PA system, that he’s not accepting any love confessions anymore. To Chuuya, he had admitted that he actually found it interesting how people got the courage to confess their feelings. Chuuya remembered replying that just because Dazai has hang-ups about honesty, it doesn’t mean that everyone is the same.)

…Anyway.

Because there’s a lot of smart people in their school, someone (read: beleaguered Student Council President Sakaguchi) has already put up an actual box with a label, ‘Dazai-kun’s birthday presents’ near the shoe locker area.

“Good for you, it’s not as hot today,” Chuuya remarks when they pass by the half-filled box by lunchtime. It’s been a rather sweltering past couple of days, summer already making itself known. Today, however, there’s a drizzle which helps maintain a cooler, albeit a tad humid, atmosphere. The chocolates won’t melt so easily then.

“Hmm, such sweet treats for someone as sweet as me!”

“I think I spotted a 95% dark chocolate there,” Chuuya teases. “Probably from Atsushi.”

“Akutagawa-kun is such a bad influence on him,” Dazai complains, but his facial expression is gleeful, like he’s very interested in this development.

“It’s your fault as a shitty senpai.” Chuuya adjusts his hold on his bag when Dazai tries to poke him on his stomach for that comment. “If you’ve been a good role model, this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Better than being a senpai like Chuuya, since your kouhai can’t even see you most of the time…”

“Shut it, asshole.”

“Maybe you should try the girls’ uniform? At least you can get away with wearing heels that way…”

“Oi, it’s not as if there are no heeled shoes for men!”

“Pfffft, why does Chuuya know about that?”

Chuuya’s face reddens even more from Dazai’s laughter. “I-I-I just know it!”

“Did you try to buy one?”

“N-No!”

“Ah, so you wanted to, but got too embarrassed to go through with it, huh?” Dazai makes a considering noise. “Mm, you see, unless the heels are two meters high, it really won’t work!”

“Two meters?!”

“Like stilts!” Dazai claps his hands in glee as he skips ahead of Chuuya, walking backwards so they can maintain eye contact. “And then I’d saw them off and watch the chibikko flail about and fall!”

“Quit it with trying to trip me, fucker.”

“Afraid you’re going to fall for me for real?”

“You make for a very uncomfortable landing pad,” Chuuya grumbles as he tries to steer Dazai away from bumping against Kyouka—one of their kouhai who’s helping carry a bunch of folders to the faculty room—by holding on to the other’s arms. “You’re all sharp bones, you skinny piece of shit.”

“At least I have long bones, unlike a certain unfortunate someone I could name~♬”

“Stop shitting on my height, damn it!”

“It’s just fair!” Dazai proclaims self-importantly, pouting at him. “It’s the only thing I can insult about Chuuya, aside from his tacky sense of casual wear!”

“Don’t insult it either!”

Dazai’s bottom lip juts out as he continues, “It’s almost like Chuuya wants me to rip off his clothes…”

“What kind of public humiliation are you cooking up now?!”

“…Is that it?” Dazai doesn’t seem to be listening, lost in his own mumblings. He nearly bumps against Poe-sensei and his stack of papers, forcing Chuuya to just continue holding on to him. “Is Chuuya deliberately wearing blinding colors during our study dates so I’d be forced to rip them off him?”

What the hell is this idiot saying now? Chuuya shakes his head. “…Did you eat those mushrooms again?”

“I ate one of the chocolates,” Dazai says. “The one from Nana-chan. It’s tastes very expensive.”

“What, there’s actual gold in them?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!”

“So that’s to blame for you being stupider than usual right now?”

“I’m not stupid, it’s completely Chuuya’s fault he can’t keep up with me!”

Chuuya rolls his eyes and shoves Dazai forward, ignoring Dazai’s whining when he bumps against his classroom’s door. “There, now I’ve escorted you to your class. Your birthday gift is done.”

“So stingy! You didn’t even hold my hand all the way here!”

“You’re gross.”

“Well, you’re Chuuya, so that’s worse!”

“Fuck you to hell and back, shitty birthday mackerel asshole.” Chuuya makes to leave for the next-door classroom, leaving Dazai behind who’s now whining to whoever who would listen to him about Chuuya’s list of injustices to him during his birthday.

-

Hours later, they go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients for a spicy seafood hotpot with a lot of crab and mushrooms and whatever-else Dazai wanted. Chuuya restrains himself from karate-chopping Dazai’s hand whenever he adds a pinch of ajinomoto into the bubbling soup stock.

Chuuya even allows Dazai to help him make dessert. Not the usual cake, not chocolate flavored—because Dazai likes new things, interesting things.

Chuuya dusts the strawberry-flavored sugar on top of the plate, declaring, “We’ll call it ‘anti-gravity rose jelly plate’.”

“Eh, that’s such a chuuni name,” Dazai pouts like the brat that he is, even as he continues videoing the plating process.

It’s simple enough—mixing some sparkling juice with gelatin, suspending edible rose petals in it as it cools, to give off an impression of it being a captured moment in time, roses swirling about in air. Dazai has a massive sweet tooth, but since most of his gifts are chocolates, Chuuya opts to go the sweet-fruit route instead. He slices up some blueberries, oranges, strawberries and raspberries. He already made orange marmalade and the strawberry-infused sugar the night before, so it’s easy to add them.

Chuuya added food coloring to the orange marmalade so that it matches the color of Dazai’s eyes—not that he spends a lot of time thinking about its exact color profile. It’s just convenient, because the sweetened-milky-coffee type of brown provides a grounding contrast against the bright colors of the rest of the dessert’s components. Especially since Chuuya writes out the message on the plate, happy birthday shitty dazai using the marmalade.

Dazai oohs and aahs over the final product. And then: “Chuuya’s handwriting is so small, just like—”

Dazai’s video recording is abruptly stopped after being overrun by the sound of laughter being violently cut off.

-

Tanabata this year falls on a Saturday, which means that they sleep in until noon and start their day in their yukata, walking around the neighborhood and challenging each other to the most random things along the way.

Dazai easily wins their fastest-at-eating-cotton-candy competition, along with the messiest-candied-apple-eating bet. Dazai volunteers them to help out at the local shrine in handing out flyers for tonight’s festival; Chuuya wins the fastest-at-distributing-the-flyers because they bump into a group of mothers who all coo at Chuuya’s outfit.

“They’re probably just worried that you don’t know how to wear it right,” Dazai teases and Chuuya kicks him in the shin for that comment. “Or that you’re a lost kid playing dress-up.”

Chuuya’s wearing a sunset-red yukata with black, vertical lines running on it, totally not because he heard that vertical lines make one look taller. Separated by a silver-gray obi, the bottom half has additional designs of blooming red camellias near the hem. He pairs it up with slippers the same shade as the yukata, which is a decision he’s mildly regretting. His only red slipper is very flat and it highlights his height difference with the bamboo pole he’s with even more. Even if he’s wearing Arthur’s present from his travels—a black fedora with a red, silk ribbon—he’s still very much lacking in the height department, urgh.

“I’m not the one who’s still wearing bandages underneath my clothes,” Chuuya retorts with a roll of his eyes. It’s a waste of such a fine yukata—twilight-blue with vertical lines of silver-gray, an obi in a shade of molten gold. There are tiny stitches of hydrangeas near the hem, an understated sort of beauty. And because Dazai’s a massive asshole, he wears a geta with a raised heel, as though to lord over his height even more. Urgh.

“If Chuuya wants to see all~ of~ my~ naked~ skin, he just has to ask!”

A derisive snort. “I just ate and you want me to throw up?”

“Uwaa, so mean! Just because I don’t have those stupid washboard abs, doesn’t mean that I don’t have a banging hot body, you know!” Dazai prattles loudly enough that people give them a wide berth as they continue ambling along the street. “My pecs are quite well-developed and my nipples are very—”

“—oh my god, shut the fuck up!” Chuuya shoves a hand against Dazai’s mouth in precaution. “Stop traumatizing the entire neighborhood, you ass!”

“Do you mean,” Dazai asks, words warbled against Chuuya’s palm, “that you don’t want me to share facts about my body to anyone but you?”

“Yes!” An immediate response. Chuuya thinks about it for a moment, and then, “NO! I don’t want to know them either! Keep it to yourself!”

Dazai smirks. “But you agree that my pecs being well-developed is a fact?”

Aggrieved beyond belief by his companion’s shamelessness, Chuuya can only let out a voiceless scream.

-

Despite all the close-calls to Chuuya’s blood pressure and heart rate, they manage to make it to the Tanabata Festival without killing each other.

…Well. There were a couple of incidents that could probably count as murder attempts if the lawyer is particularly persistent and creative. But the important thing is that they both manage to make it to evening in one piece.

Of course, a lot of this can be credited to the fact that Chuuya keeps a vise-like grip around Dazai’s forearm, so he can stop the idiot from bolting off and causing havoc and breaking unsuspecting women’s hearts with his patented weapon combo of handsome face, charming grin and shitty personality. It has the unfortunate side-effect of making them look like some weird three-legged person hybrid, garnering them some giggles, wide-eyed stares and plenty of space around them.

In any case, they find themselves a secluded corner in the festival, a few meters from the last of the food stalls, several benches available for the festival goers. They share yakisoba, yakitori and takoyaki in five different flavors. Dazai’s bag of goldfish is there, beside their food.

…There used to be twenty bags of goldfishes, because Dazai’s apparently some sort of god when it comes to scooping up small, cute, orange-colored prey. The rest of the bags have been distributed amongst the people they bumped into along the way.

Kouyou-anesan’s the first one they bumped into and there had been a long stare-off before she accepted the goldfish from Dazai. Chuuya can’t blame her, really, accepting anything from Dazai needs a lot of consideration, because one never knows when it’s an actual bomb or something. Arthur and Paul, they find near the cotton candy stall. The stare-off there isn’t as long or as tense as the one with his sister, but Dazai does actually bow down to his fathers, solemnly offering the goldfishes, which? Honestly? Funny. But also creepy as all fuck.

Tachihara’s there with Higuchi and both of them deny being there on a date, which Chuuya doesn’t really buy because they’re standing really close to each other and there’s not a lot of reasons to go to a festival about star-crossed lovers aside from being on a date. They get one goldfish bag each. Same goes for Akutagawa and Atsushi, who don’t deny that they’re on a date—though that’s probably because Dazai had said that he’ll buy them food if they agree to say that they’re on a date. Chuuya later finds out that Dazai used his money to buy said food and he punishes Dazai’s leg with an extra-painful kick.

Oda-sensei gets six bags of goldfish, because some of them are apparently for his adopted kids. Sakaguchi accepts his plastic bag, but looks stressed at the thought of taking care of a living thing. Tsujimura blushes and thanks him for the gift, but the blush disappears when he reveals that it’s actually Dazai who caught it. Chuuya can relate—even the cutest gift can appear suspicious if Dazai has a hand on it.

They bump to more classmates along the way and Chuuya hands the rest of the bags to them, telling them that they’re doing good by accepting the goldfishes, because otherwise, they’d just die lonely deaths in Dazai’s hands. Kenji asks why Chuuya wouldn’t be taking care of them, if that’s the case. Chuuya pats his kouhai on the head and gives him money to buy two beef bowls, because nonsensical questions are a sign of hunger.

…which brings them to now, with the two of them writing down their wishes on the colorful tanzoku so they can hang them after. Dazai actually takes a few minutes to decide on his wish, this year. From the other side of the bench, Chuuya stares at Dazai’s pensive face and wonders if he’d be cursing himself to an eternity of torture if he actually writes down the first thought that entered his mind.

Be rivals with the shitty mackerel forever.

Should it be, ‘Be friends with the shitty mackerel forever’ instead?

But they’re not really the usual type of friends… ever since Chuuya’s known Dazai, they’ve always competed against each other in some way, so to call them anything aside from ‘rivals’ feels… wrong. But calling them rivals also feels wrong, especially recently? Is he overthinking this? Urgh. This is surprisingly complicated. Maybe he should just write, Get into Todai and kick Dazai’s ass in the entrance exams and be done with it? But that doesn’t sound like wish material… Chuuya’s going to achieve that through hard work, after all. Writing down be happy forever also feels strange, like it’s some nebulous thing that he can’t quite grasp.

Leaning sideways so they can bump shoulders, Chuuya decides to ask, “What are you writing?”

Dazai blinks, then smiles. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

“I don’t have anything written down yet.”

“Chuuya’s small brain is that slow, huh…”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chuuya hisses and slams his shoulders against Dazai’s. He leans away and scribbles down on the paper slip balanced on his knee, ‘be with the shitty mackerel always so i can always kick his ass, anytime anywhere’ and nearly runs out of space even with tiny, cramped print. He then slams his tanzaku against Dazai’s nose, grabbing Dazai’s paper slip in one swift motion.

Chuuya feels his cheeks burn when he reads Dazai’s words.

Have Chuuya cook for me every day for the rest of our lives.

“Y-Y-You…” Chuuya blinks rapidly. He stares at the piece of paper. The words don’t change. He doesn’t look up to see Dazai’s expression. He blinks again, feeling the back of his neck heat up. “You… want me… to be your personal chef-slash-slave?!”

Dazai reaches down to pinch his nose, forcing him to raise his face and meet Dazai’s stare. Dazai’s boyish grin greets him, a faint sheen of pink on those cheeks. Dazai looks happy. It’s such a… weird look on him. It makes him look even more handsome than ever, almost enough to short-circuit Chuuya’s brain and make him forget about all the pranks and insults and harassment they pile up on each other. Dazai continues staring down at him, the warmth in his gaze transferring to Chuuya and making his entire body grow warm, like he’s on the verge of a summer fever.

Dazai slowly moves his fingers from Chuuya’s nose and slides it against Chuuya’s cheek, tracing the droplet of sweat that beads down from his forehead. The slight wetness being spread on his skin doesn’t alleviate the heat on his face. It actually, almost-impossibly, makes the heat-flush worse.

Chuuya’s lips part, even if he’s not sure what he’s about to say.

‘It’d be nice, if you’re this happy forever?’

…‘Let my nose the fuck go, I can’t breathe?’

Choosing his words becomes a moot point when Dazai’s smile then morphs to a smirk, as he reiterates, “Forever.”

Dazai ends up laughing when Chuuya regains control of his voice, protests about being cursed by a damn devil. They continue this way, Dazai wheezing from having the air knocked out of him when Chuuya doesn’t stop kicking and punching him, even as Dazai is reaching up to hang their wishes on the bamboo designated for this festival, away from Chuuya’s flailing fists.

Forever.

It’s such an intangible concept, but surrounded by evidence of Dazai’s mirth, Chuuya finds that he doesn’t mind so much.

-

With summer vacation nipping right on their heels, most of their school hours are devoted for the preparations for the school festival. For third years like Chuuya, it’s the final festival before they leave. However much they’d like to devote more time in preparation to make it the best though, workload for third-years only pile up, along with talks with their homeroom teacher as they discuss their futures.

Chuuya’s Aspirations Sheet has always been filled in with Tokyo University – Faculty of Law. During lunch, Chuuya fills in the sample essay question, how did you decide on your undergraduate course? He composes his thoughts in-between dodging Dazai’s chopstick-pokes and chasing Dazai’s chopsticks away from his own bento (it doesn’t make any fucking sense aside from Dazai being a grade-A nuisance, because they have the exact same lunch).

He ends up with a, I want to help ensure that it’s easier for people like my fathers, to provide help and home to those who need it. He adds a few more lines explaining his family situation—having to be adopted by his fathers outside the country because the adoption laws in Japan for same-sex couples remain a difficult hurdle. Adds a line about wanting to make a difference. Finishes it off with a, so I can protect those that are important.

He debates over the last line, finds it a bit too cheesy even if completely honest.

“Eh, that’s so serious!” Dazai comments unnecessarily while snooping on his answers. “That’s boring, boo, Chuuya!”

“Stop booing me,” Chuuya uses his chopsticks to stab Dazai’s encroaching hands. “If you’re so good at this, what did you write?”

“I’m the best,” Dazai insists, unveiling his answer sheet with a flourish. “Ta-da~!”

I will change the laws so I can marry Chuu-Chuu and have many, even-tinier babies with him!

“Please change planets instead,” Chuuya says wryly, ripping the offensive paper into shreds, to the background of Dazai’s renewed booing.

-

The third-year classes have agreed to make a joint effort for the festival—they’re commandeering the entire floor and making it look like one long café, with each room having a different ‘theme’. Class plays or dramas are the norm, but given that their batch has Dazai, nobody wants to risk the additional headache that goes along with his presence.

To clarify:

• A great number of the students here all come from the same junior high that’s a few blocks away—the same junior high where Dazai and Chuuya are from.

• It means that nearly everyone is aware of That Snow White Incident from five years back. Short version: a lot of trauma and migraines. Long version: Dazai did a long, elaborate con that involves fake transfer students, a hell lot of disguises, a steaming pile of blackmail—just so he’ll end up as the Snow White for Chuuya’s class play—even if Dazai isn’t even in that class! All because Chuuya’s been chosen as the Prince! Because apparently Dazai lives for sabotaging Chuuya’s greatest moments.

• Years later, people are still half-scared and half-amazed at how Dazai’s been able to pull off seemingly being in two places at once—as Dazai Osamu in his normal class and as Tsushima Shuujiko, the new female transfer student to Chuuya’s class who so happens to be the perfect pick for the Snow White role.

• To Chuuya, it just means that everyone who knows him and Dazai also know to avoid such situations in the future. No more class plays and dramas for him, because nobody is ready for a round two. Also, everyone is scared of the property damage that Chuuya can cause—last time, he let it slide with a punch to Dazai’s face. He won’t be as forgiving for the second time.

…So. A café it is.

“Chuuya!” Dazai makes a beeline for him, arms already outstretched in a bid to suffocate him. Chuuya ducks and kicks the back of Dazai’s knee instead. Dazai is unfazed, smoothly evading and renewing his attempt to crush Chuuya inside his octopus-like limbs. “Let’s make a bet as to who can rock a girl’s outfit better!”

Chuuya wrinkles his nose as he dodges Dazai’s arms, sidestepping so he can finish cutting up the strings needed for the decorations in relative peace. “If you just wanted to see me in a girl’s clothing…”

“Ehhh, Chu-u-ya thinks so highly of himself!” Dazai has that flighty spring on his step, which means that he’s here hiding from his classmates and responsibilities. “But, ah… That’s probably the only thing that is remotely ‘high’ about him…”

“One more word and I cut up your tongue,” Chuuya promises, waving the scissors in his hands as a warning.

Dazai chuckles. “Will you give me a forked tongue?”

“A warning sign to others that you’re a snake?” Chuuya lets out a considering hum. “Not a bad idea.”

Dazai opens his mouth to reply, but Akutagawa’s cough resounds from the hallway and Dazai bolts, proving Chuuya’s theory that he’s hiding from festival-preparation responsibilities. When Akutagawa asks him if he’d be so kind to rat Dazai’s location out, Chuuya very helpfully points his hardworking kouhai to the right direction, delighting upon hearing Dazai’s whining about ‘being too lazy to do anything and being too heartbroken from Chuuya’s betrayal’ fill the hallway not even three minutes later.

-

The weekend after the festival—the official beginning of their summer vacation—Dazai the Traitor tells Kouyou-anesan about his idea of competing over who can rock a girl’s outfit better between them. Kouyou-anesan is very enthusiastic in dressing them both up. Dazai gets Hirotsu-san to join in on the Judge’s Panel, composed of Chuuya’s fathers, Kouyou-anesan banned from being a judge because of her obvious bias.

Chuuya’s not sure if he should feel happy or betrayed that he wins with all three judges voting for him. He actually gets five votes, because Kouyou-anesan is nothing if not resourceful when it comes to getting her way. The last vote is from Dazai who succumbs to a nosebleed the moment he sees Chuuya in a women’s kimono without even a make-up or jewelry—just with his hair combed differently.

Hirotsu-san then lugs up a suitcase filled with Dazai’s shit to Chuuya’s bedroom, as is tradition. He then brings down the already-prepared suitcase filled with Chuuya’s shit so that it’s ready for Chuuya when he stays over at Dazai’s house.

It’s really comforting, the easy way their lives just fit so well even if they are so different and come from very different worlds.

-

Summer vacation is mostly spent inside air-conditioned libraries and coffee shops, stacks of books and worksheets between them. In order to not sustain the embarrassment of being kicked out of establishments, they manage to control the volume of their bickering (they’ve long given up on outright stopping said bickering).

They make it a system, even if it’s established wordlessly:

• Research, reading passages, taking down notes—those are reserved for the library. They usually sit side-by-side when they’re reviewing languages, especially English, earplugs split between them as the steady thrum of English-language tapes play from Dazai’s phone.

• Answering and discussing worksheets—those are reserved for coffee shops, or if the weather isn’t so hot and humid, in parks. They tend to be rather loud when discussing things, after all.

• They crash to whoever’s house is closest. Most of the time, they end up on Chuuya’s bedroom, if only because the temptation to go night-swimming in Dazai’s pool is too high—a spectacularly tempting idea, but a bad one, because it will only increase their chances of getting a summer-cold, instead of increasing their chances of getting into Todai.

• Sundays are reserved for relaxation. Dazai drags him to the nearest beach during the first weekend, getting the two of them nauseous with the amount of shaved ice they demolish between the two of them, after one ill-advised bet as to who can resist having brainfreeze from copious amounts of the dessert. Chuuya gets roped to retelling ‘The Little Mermaid’ first in Japanese, then in English to practice his grasp of the knowledge. Chuuya sings some of the songs that Dazai requests from him, as they walk around the beach picking up shells and hunting hermit crabs (read: Dazai only). Chuuya draws the line at that stupid ‘double suicide song’.

• Sundays left for Chuuya to plan are usually spent indoors. He usually bullies Dazai to baking for him, because he’s very good at it. There’s a lot of peaches during summer, so Dazai makes a lot of peach tarts and Hakuto peach jelly for him. Chocolate gateau with balls of raspberries and peaches slathered with chocolate ganache makes a lot of appearances too. In return, Chuuya makes sure that their meals for the rest of the week aren’t so indulgent that they’d be overloaded with sugar.

Summer passes like that for them—surrounded by books, hands sticky with sweat and shaved ice, laughter tinkling along with glass wind chimes.

Just like always. Together.

-

The night before classes resume, Chuuya wiggles his toes against the sand, feeling it cool from the swell of the waves lapping at the shore. It doesn’t hurt as much as before, but his left foot still feels sore. There aren’t a lot of clouds overhead, which means that the moonlight is free to stream a silver haze over the seawaters.

“Feeling better?”

Chuuya turns to his companion, pants rolled up above his knees so that they don’t get wet. They’re both barefoot, because this is an impromptu decision.

…Well. It’s probably within Dazai’s plans, but he’s an idiot who thinks it’s cool to walk around with waterlogged shoes, so.

“It’s fine,” Chuuya replies with a shrug. He knows Dazai doesn’t buy it, but he doesn’t have any other answer.

He lost his temper as they were perusing the stalls in the flea market they were visiting. One of their upperclassmen, visiting home from university during his summer vacation, had a lot of choice words about Dazai. While Chuuya himself has a great selection of choice words about Dazai, it’s grating to hear it from someone else, especially if that someone isn’t even someone who has spent a great deal of time getting annoyed by Dazai, when that someone doesn’t even know the reasons behind Dazai’s shitty antics and even shittier personality. Chuuya miscalculated in his kick though and he landed at an odd angle, earned a foot sprain in the process.

And Dazai’s idea of lifting Chuuya’s mood after that is to get them to a beach ASAP. It’s actually working, but it’s not like Chuuya will ever admit it. He can already taste the other’s smugness at reading Chuuya right, after all.

From out of nowhere, Dazai hands him some sparklers. It’s such a quintessential summer thing to do, including the fact that Dazai being prepared for such circumstances—that Chuuya can only laugh, the pain on his foot forgotten.

The final summer of Chuuya’s high school life.

He peers up at Dazai, face awash from the silver moonlight and the tiny sparks of color from their sparklers. Somehow, Chuuya has a feeling that everything is right.

-

The rest of the school year passes by in a blur of books, exams and worksheets. Their winter vacation is short-lived, mostly spent huddled together in the heated kotatsu that Dazai buys and installs in Chuuya’s already-cramped bedroom.

Almond coffee and matcha latte free-flow into their mugs, as they crunch numbers into their calculators, the swish of pencil on mock exam sheets as steady as the downpour of snow outside. Chestnut-filled monaka, dozens of daifuku, dove butter cookies, black sesame cookies and castella cakes are brought into Chuuya’s household as offerings from Dazai as some sort of payment for them practically housing him. Most of those desserts end up in Dazai’s stomach too, which is just so typical Dazai that Chuuya can’t even find it in himself to be mad about it.

Dazai sneaks out of his family’s Christmas Eve Party as he claims that having too many businessmen and investors under one room makes him feel slimy. It’s the first time in a very long time that Dazai’s parents are back in the country, but Dazai is apparently not interested in catching up with them.

“I’d rather be with a slimy slug,” Dazai proclaims as they climb up Chuuya’s bedroom, hanging over Chuuya’s shoulders and wrinkling his suit in the process.

(Kouyou-anesan had whistled in approval at his outfit—or maybe because Dazai had also sneaked out two bottles of premium sake from his family’s party. Arthur and Paul weren’t too surprised at this sudden visit, but maybe that’s because this has been happening every year anyway. Really—with the way Dazai stays over so much, he should be paying rent, damn it.)

Chuuya wakes up to Christmas Day with Dazai complaining about getting literally kicked off the bed. He makes sure to step on Dazai’s feet as he makes his way out of the bedroom, for good measure. Exchanging presents while they have breakfast as a family (plus one stinky mackerel as a hangers-on) is yet another tradition. Chuuya half-strangles Dazai with the handmade knitted scarf that has cost him two sleepless nights. Dazai lets out an aggrieved sigh as he slaps his gift against Chuuya’s cheek, a gift card of undiscernible amount to the most expensive shoe store in Yokohama, because the only thing he can tolerate from Chuuya’s fashion sense is his taste in shoes. Chuuya resolves to buy something really bold and colorful, just to screw with Dazai.

Dazai continues free-loading at Chuuya’s home, simply letting Hirotsu-san act as a clothing delivery and laundry pick-up service. As payment for cramping Chuuya’s bedroom, on the last day of the year, Chuuya delegates the futon-airing and bathroom-scrubbing to Dazai. Dazai feigns fainting spells and Chuuya resolutely doesn’t catch him when he fake-swoons to the floor.

They go to a public onsen after lunch, the two of them competing as to who can brave the hot temperatures longer. Chuuya sighs and takes himself out of the competition, because Dazai is a stubborn, weakass fucker who would prefer fainting for real from heatstroke rather than allow Chuuya to win. It’s not because he’s worried about Dazai having a heatstroke. Chuuya just knows that it’d be additional headache for him if Dazai ends up fainting, because he’s not about to carry a deadweight shitty mackerel back to his home.

They come back home after shopping for ingredients for the osechi ryori, the traditional New Year foods. Dazai buys them a four-tiered lacquered box plus a twelve-piece gold-gilded porcelain set. Arthur gamely accepts what Kouyou-anesan calls as a bribery. Paul calls it a dowry instead. Chuuya threatens to kick them all out of the kitchen if they wouldn’t properly behave and help him prepare the food.

Chuuya wins the bet as to who can finely chop daikon and carrots faster. Dazai wins in chopping up complex flower designs for the food presentation with delicate chrysanthemum turnips, sunflower omelets and daisy-patterned Japanese fish cakes.

Two hours before midnight, they all share toshikoshi udon topped with shrimp tempura, Dazai stealing Chuuya’s share of the shrimp ‘because a shrimp doesn’t need to eat a shrimp’. Chuuya jabs his neck with his chopsticks in retaliation.

Dazai is still whining about the abuse to his person by the time they’re lining up for the first shrine visit for the year, though he does have the decency to keep his mutterings low and for Chuuya’s ears only as the bells resound to welcome the new year.

That’s how they pass the winter holidays.

Together, as always.

-

The morning of January 19 is cold but thankfully void of a snowstorm. Chuuya goes out of the house and finds Dazai already waiting for him, wearing the crimson knit scarf around his neck. Despite the fact that he’s also wearing a thick overcoat and wool gloves, he still looks cold. Chuuya feels cold, just looking at him.

“You could have waited inside your car,” Chuuya says with a roll of his eyes, tugging his own coat tighter around him.

Dazai looks unimpressed as he opens the car door for Chuuya. “Good morning to you too, chibikko.”

As soon as Chuuya shuts the door behind him, the car moves, already driving towards the designated exam hall for this year’s Center Test. It’s the first step to getting to Todai, because their result here would determine whether they’re eligible to take Todai’s second-level selection exams. Chuuya’s… not nervous. Well, he is. But not too much. He’s studied hard for this and he believes in his hard work. Plus, Dazai is there with him, in the same exam hall. Even if they’re not seatmates, there’s no way he can miss the other’s presence. It’s comforting, because nearly all of his studying has been done with Dazai nearby.

…So he isn’t nervous. Not that much.

“Ne, Chuuya.”

“What.”

“Don’t lend anyone a pencil or an eraser, okay?”

Chuuya frowns. “What kind of selfish shit are you spouting now?”

“But that’s how shoujo mangas start! Love at first sight due to someone lending an unprepared idiot an eraser!”

Chuuya’s about to protest about how that’s not true at all, but thinking about it… Huh. He’s seen quite a couple of manga where the main couple’s first interaction is bumping to each other and then helping them stand up or helping them pick up fallen things or lending an eraser…

…Wait.

“How do you know about those?” Chuuya watches Dazai’s face. “You said you hated shoujo manga!”

“I only read them for research,” Dazai claims haughtily, but it’s ruined by the slight blush on his cheeks at being caught. “Unlike Chuuya who cries like a baby when he reads the contrived confession scenes!”

“You—! I don’t cry at them!”

“Oh, sorry, was that not what you were doing last Wednesday when you read this month’s Monthly Girls’ Magazine?”

“I wasn’t crying! I was just moved!”

“That’s the same thing!”

“It’s not!”

“It is.”

“Not!”

“Is.”

Hirotsu-san cuts in, “Dazai-bocchan, Chuuya-sama. We’ve arrived.”

Chuuya narrows his eyes at Dazai. “We’ll continue this after our exam!”

“Heh. I’ll make sure to finish first.”

“Today’s subjects are those where I have better scores than you, dickwad. I’ll win.” Chuuya’s pretty confident in his geography, history and languages, after all.

As always, they shake on it, Chuuya squeezing Dazai’s hand hard enough to cause a pained grimace to simmer under his rival’s face.

The second day of the Center Test—for the science and mathematics portion—unfolds in the same manner.

They submit their application for Tokyo University the following week, both of them confident in their scores from the Center Test. They spend the rest of the time building up to the release of the Center Test’s result by studying even harder.

Dazai buys them celebratory heart-shaped chocolates to share as they see their successful results posted on February 13.

“Urgh. Heart-shaped, really?”

“It’s the only design available,” Dazai says, popping another piece to his mouth. “Or did Chuuya’s small brain forget that tomorrow is Valentines?”

“Shut up and eat your chocolates,” Chuuya replies, smiling.

Chuuya keeps on smiling, even two full weeks later, after he finishes the grueling three days’ worth of tests for Tokyo University’s second-level selection exams.

“It’s finally over!”

Dazai is beside him, the two of them being assigned to the same examination hall. From all around them, there are students who are either expressing relief or stress from the exams’ difficulty. But at least, now—Chuuya can relax for a bit. There are two and a half weeks until the final results of the tests. Chuuya can’t wait to see the results so he can win their bet.

…Their bet.

Chuuya pauses.

Dazai looks—weird.

Weirder than usual. His expression looks closed-off, like he’s dealing with his parents, like he’s dealing with adults or strangers he doesn’t care for. Actually, Dazai’s been acting pretty weird recently, but with the entrance exams looming in the horizon, Chuuya’s been satisfied to just wait for Dazai to open up.

In hindsight, he should have known that it’s a mistake.

So, now—

Now, Chuuya can only stare at Dazai as his rival stares back at him with dead-fish eyes. Around them, there’s hundreds of students, all busy with their own lives.

Dazai smiles ruefully at him.

For a brief moment, Chuuya thinks he can already hear Dazai’s words inside his mind. For a brief moment, Chuuya wishes that he doesn’t know Dazai so well, so well that he can predict what he’s about to say.

And despite that foreboding feeling, it still feels like a dagger to him when he hears Dazai say:

“Chuuya. I’m sorry. My parents are sending me abroad for university.”

end of part one. first law of motion: inertia
an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force

Chapter Text

ii. second law

“Chuuya. I’m sorry. My parents are sending me abroad for university.”

I’m sorry—

My parents are sending me abroad for university—

Abroad for university—

Chuuya, I’m sorry—

“—Chuuya.”

Chuuya blinks at the sudden harshness of the tone calling for his name. Kouyou-anesan’s frowning face greets him. It’s different from Dazai’s face—

Oh.

He’s already back home.

It’s already been a day.

He’s sick, for the first time in years. Well, if he doesn’t count Dazai’s mildly successful attempt at poisoning him. Dazai—

—Fuck.

He’s sick.

He’s actually sick, taking a day off from school. He’s apparently worried his classmates. Kouyou-anesan takes a half-day from work because she’s apparently being harassed into annoyance by Dazai who keeps on calling her to get updates on Chuuya’s condition. Because Chuuya shut off his phone, not wanting to talk to Dazai.

Dazai—

Chuuya, I’m sorry—

—Dazai, who’s lied to him. Who’s apparently already aware of his parents’ plans to send him abroad as early as Christmas Eve. Who’s apparently content to, what, let Chuuya think that they’d go to university together, just like always.

Dazai.

Who’s decent enough to not mess up Chuuya’s concentration in taking his exams, who kept quiet even though it’s obvious that he’s unhappy with the prospect of getting pulled away from the place that he’s already comfortable in. Who’s decent enough to wait until the worst of exams are over so that Chuuya doesn’t end up worrying about it when he should be worrying about getting into Todai. Who’s decent enough to let him know, ahead of time, instead of simply disappearing into thin air.

That Dazai.

That same infuriating bastard of a rival who’s always challenged Chuuya to be even better than ever. That same shameless asshole who keeps on tripping him and whining to him and tricking him into cooking for him.

That Dazai.

“Ah, young love.” Kouyou-anesan sighs, pinching his thigh. “I can’t believe that it’s finally time for my little brother to spread his wings.”

Chuuya shakes his head, unable to make a sense of things right now. He’s bundled up in blankets, a gel patch plastered on his forehead. He’s squeezing a pillow in his arms, as he leans against his sister as they watch movies together on her laptop. He should be in a position where he’s feeling comforted, but instead, he just feels like shit.

Case in point: Kouyou-anesan smiles at him and pats his knee. Chuuya usually finds it a warm gesture, but right now, there’s nothing but icicles on his skin.

It doesn’t help that the movie they just watched is making his mind spin in circles. A movie about star-crossed lovers. A movie about people getting separated. A movie that—

When he told his fathers this morning about Dazai’s news, Paul had let out a huge sigh of relief. In his words, “Thank goodness! Because there’s only a few months until you both turn 18 and I still haven’t decided on a good color scheme for your wedding!”

Chuuya still doesn’t understand.

But maybe—

“Dazai’s going abroad.” Maybe if he says it often enough, it will start to make sense. “He’s leaving Japan.”

“He’s leaving you,” Kouyou-anesan clarifies, making him flinch.

“It’s… good for him. I should congratulate him, right?” Chuuya feels his hands shake, so he curls them into fists, hoping that they’ll be anchored down this way. It doesn’t work. “I mean, he really is a genius, isn’t he? Universities even better than Todai… he’d be surrounded by other geniuses like him. And he’d be far away, so… That’s good, right?”

Kouyou-anesan’s voice is patient, as she pats his shaking fists. “And he’ll find other friends, other rivals too.”

So once they graduate and go their separate ways, Dazai might find someone else as his new rival? And Chuuya just has to accept it?

He doesn’t notice it, not until it’s too late, but he’s clutching at his chest. How strange. Is his fever getting worse? Is his fever spreading? His chest feels painful, like it’s being squeezed, like his heart’s being strangled. His vision swims. He should be celebrating, right?

This way, he’s sure to win their bet! This way, he doesn’t have to wake up worrying whether his alarm clock has been tampered or his conditioner has been mixed with mayonnaise or his body wash replaced with vinaigrette! This way, he doesn’t have to wake up earlier than usual so he can cook food for two! This way, he doesn’t have to spend hours researching new recipes because a certain someone complains if he cooks the same foods too often! This way, he doesn’t have to deal with heart attacks from pranks and high blood pressure from all the height-insults! This way, he doesn’t have to look after Dazai and ensure that the stupid mackerel shit isn’t making trouble for others, ensure that he keeps on smiling like an idiot!

He hates Dazai back, right?

He should be ecstatic about this news!

He feels like he’s about to throw up.

He should be happy that Dazai will make trouble for someone else, at a place far, far away from Chuuya.

Kouyou-anesan is staring at him, but Chuuya can’t meet her gaze. His stare lands on the kotatsu that Dazai bought a few weeks back.

Chuuya opens his mouth and—

“—what if he gets sunburnt?”

Chuuya feels his heart thud against his palm. He should be saying something else. He should be asking something else. Kouyou-anesan is wise, after all. He should be asking her what he should do in order to celebrate properly.

Instead, his mind is filled with rather strange concerns.

“Just the other day, when we were on the beach, he… he forgot to put sunblock on his nose, like an idiot! Even though it’s winter, he should still put sunblock, damn it! He’s the type of stupid genius who won’t notice such things until his skin is peeling off! He’s the type of guy who’s prepared for impromptu beach trips with sparklers and change of clothes, but forget about his own sunblock! He, he—he needs someone to remind him! And slap some sense to him! Because he doesn’t notice it when his cheeks start to redden, and, and—”

Chuuya’s vision swims again. He knows that he’s seated in his bed, and his Kouyou-anesan is beside him, but—

—but his mind’s eye sees something different. Like his life is flashing in front of his eyes, like he’s dying from free-fall.

“—plus, they need to know when to wake that mackerel bastard from his naps! I mean, he’s just slacking off most times and being a nuisance to the Student Council, so it’s okay to kick him awake, but…” Chuuya feels his throat clogging up, in an even worse way compared to when he got poisoned by a certain asshole recently. “…But sometimes, he’s just really tired from nightmares the night before, so… And sometimes he can’t sleep because his mind works triple-time, thinking about a lot of shit, so… So… he needs to sleep, and…”

“But that shouldn’t be a problem, right?” Kouyou-anesan sounds so reasonable and Chuuya feels like he’s really about to throw up. His stomach rumbles and he tastes bile at the back of his throat. “Since my dear Chuuya hates him.”

“I—”

He hates Dazai, right?

They’re rivals, right?

They’re—

They’ve known each other since elementary school.

Dazai, the haughty, spoiled brat who turned up his nose at anyone and everyone who invited him to join them for lunch or for play or for club activities. Dazai, who enjoyed creating a wall between him and others. Dazai, who Chuuya punched in the face on their first meeting, because Chuuya didn’t like the other’s arrogant attitude, especially when he had insulted Chuuya’s friends. Dazai, who stayed glued to Chuuya since that day.

Dazai, who pulled at Chuuya’s hair hard enough to uproot some strands and called him a baldie with a receding hairline. Dazai, who bit his face and called him fat-apple-cheeks. Dazai, who caught the biggest, rarest, most colorful bugs and stuffed them down Chuuya’s shirt. Dazai, who whined and cried like a brat when Chuuya got even and poured soda over his clothes. Dazai, who only laughed so much when he’s teasing him, who looked so happy when they’re fighting and bickering that Chuuya can’t find it in himself to stop their antics.

Dazai, who hated eating the meals cooked by his family’s live-in chefs, because he preferred the taste of Chuuya’s cooking. Dazai, who could never resist challenging him, even in things that he couldn’t win even if he outrageously cheated. Dazai, who disregarded the world that made no sense to him, the world that didn’t interest him one bit—that same Dazai who whittled away time by thinking of ways to irritate the shit out of Chuuya.

Dazai, who wanted to be the Snow White to Chuuya’s Prince so badly that he had to nearly destroy their entire school and their entire school’s minds. Dazai, who got off his ass and baked cute, Instagram-worthy desserts to cheer Chuuya up whenever he’s not doing well in school—nevermind the fact that it’s Dazai who ends up gobbling most of them up anyway. Dazai, who always gave the nicest, most relaxing massages whenever Chuuya’s stressed—nevermind the fact that the cause of said stress is very often Dazai anyway.

Dazai, with his handsome face and his coffee-colored eyes and his uncombed hair and his long legs and his dexterous fingers and his damn smile.

Dazai, who disliked things that are unchanging, who lost interest quickly, who could predict anything and everything and therefore finds the world boring—that same Dazai who wished that he can ‘have Chuuya cook for me every day for the rest of our lives’ during Tanabata.

Dazai, who promised forever in the same tone of voice he uses to say Chuuya’s name. Dazai, who says Chuuya’s name like he’s an interesting, one-of-a-kind existence.

That Dazai.

“I—”

—I’m in love with Dazai.

He doesn’t manage to say the words out loud, but Kouyou-anesan pats his head again, as though she hears them anyway, as though in condolence.

Of all the people in this world, he had to fall for him, really?!

…I’m in love with the shitty mackerel.

What the flying fuck, really?

…I’m so screwed.

end of part two. second law of motion: acceleration
if a body is accelerating, then there is a proportional force applied on it

Chapter Text

iii. third law

Ignorance is bliss.

Before, Chuuya used to think that it’s a saying that’s made by idiots for idiots.

Now though… He almost wishes he can give himself amnesia. Better yet, he almost wishes for a time machine, so that he can go back to his past and make sure that he has a stomachache on the day Dazai Osamu transfers in to his elementary school, or maybe that he has skinned his knee or something and had to be in the infirmary during that moment when Dazai sneers about Chuuya’s friends.

That way, he wouldn’t end up punching Dazai. That way, Dazai wouldn’t lose a couple of screws in his head and think that the best thing to do in your new school is to stick like a leech to the person who makes your nose bleed from a punch. That way, they wouldn’t be rivals.

If they never even meet to begin with…

He shudders and scrunches his nose as he thinks about that hypothetical scenario.

He wouldn’t have a partner when it comes to making observation diaries, to catching those beetles during the field trips. He wouldn’t have someone who’d gossip with him and make him laugh with dry, sarcastic comments about the people around them, passed directly to his ear or in some crude drawings or in the tap-code that they’ve established. He wouldn’t have someone waking him up at odd hours in the night by sending him random memes, outlandish recipes, pirated videos of new series they would watch together. He wouldn’t have someone constantly snooping around his room, wouldn’t have someone who’d insist on having lunch together with him, wouldn’t have someone who’d steal his umbrella so they could run like idiots in the rain.

Another shudder.

It’s a very lonely existence.

Chuuya kicks that scenario to dust inside his mind.

In reality, Chuuya jogs towards a familiar place. Granted, he’s never actually gone there alone. He’s never gone there by commute too, since Dazai always calls for a car whenever they go there. But Chuuya’s not with Dazai now, because he comes running after his talk with his sister.

He…

He doesn’t plan on confessing. Falling in love with Dazai is traumatizing enough when he’s the only one who knows it. He’s not about to admit it to Dazai. He’s not worried about Dazai gossiping to others about it, because Dazai’s a shameless blabbermouth, but he does know some restraint when it comes to these matters. What Chuuya is worried about is Dazai gossiping and prattling about it to his usual gossiping partner—himself. Dazai would enjoy a full-bellied laughter aimed at him for being big enough of an idiot to fall in love with his rival.

He’s going to Dazai’s place to apologize. And help the other pack. Dazai’s leaving before graduation—there’s just under two weeks before he leaves. Knowing Dazai, he’d leave packing to the last minute and he’d make trouble for Hirotsu-san while video-calling Chuuya and harassing him into helping him with packing anyway. Chuuya’s just nipping the issue at the bud.

Eleven days.

He just has eleven days before Dazai leaves.

Just eleven more days of the other’s antics—and then… and then.

And then Chuuya will be free to nurse his heartbreak alone. He’d have an entire four years of meeting new people and letting his feelings die a quiet, unrequited death. If he does get into Todai and his desired course, he’d probably end up dying too, from coursework, never mind meeting new people. Maybe after four years inside the country’s greatest education institution, he’d end up being smarter and getting over his stupidity.

Chuuya resolutely doesn’t think about it likely being a lifelong affliction.

He feels his cheeks burn once he’s in front of the huge gates leading to Dazai’s mansion. It’s still fairly cold, even though March is about to burst in with spring in hand. He knocks on the gatehouse. Tanaka-san, today’s guard-on-duty, does a double-take upon seeing him.

“Chuuya-sama! Welcome! Ah—so that’s why Dazai-bocchan… oh no, you should have called for a car!”

Chuuya can’t get a word edgewise as Tanaka-san argues with himself in panic, then calls Hirotsu-san. Chuuya wants to tell him that he definitely doesn’t have the right to call for a car and he very definitely doesn’t need an escort to the mansion, as it’s just a couple more meters from the gatehouse, but Tanaka-san isn’t hearing it. Hirotsu-san isn’t hearing it either when he comes to fetch him.

“Chuuya-sama. You should have called for a car. No need to worry about its availability. If it’s not available, we have a helicopter available for you.” Hirotsu-san scolds him in that mild manner of his, leading him up a curving driveway. Chuuya makes a face, wondering why rich people are like this. Also, don’t they trust him to know how to walk up a driveway without getting lost or something? “Dazai-bocchan… well, he’d surely have his spirits lifted up, now that you’re here.”

Geh. Typical Dazai. Throwing a tantrum and acting like a brat, just because Chuuya didn’t fall all over himself in applause for him getting to a big-shot university abroad. He’s probably also whining like a baby because Chuuya hang up on him. Typical dumbass.

But since Chuuya is an even bigger dumbass for falling in love with a mackerel bastard, he’s smiling as he imagines Dazai’s face.

Ah, he’s really hopeless, isn’t he?

Imagination matches reality, Chuuya soon finds out.

Not like Chuuya has a lot of time observing Dazai’s facial expression, because Dazai performs a truly magnificent flying tackle from his bed, half-collapsing, half-crowding Chuuya against the door, as soon as he enters the other’s bedroom. The back of Chuuya’s head bangs harshly against the wood, prompting an “Oww,” to escape from his lips. Dazai doesn’t seem to notice, intent on clinging to him like an oversized koala wielding cuteness and clinginess as its main weapons.

It’s a good thing that he hasn’t eaten before going here, because he’d probably end up throwing everything up with how tight Dazai’s arms are gripping him by the waist. Dazai’s face is shoved against his neck and Chuuya can see messy hair-strands on top of the idiot’s head, like Dazai hasn’t even bothered with a perfunctory hair-combing. From beyond Dazai’s head, Chuuya can see an even-messier-than-usual bedroom, the Jenga-like towers of game disks toppled like unruly building blocks, the mass of pillows on Dazai’s bed scattered all throughout the carpet like they’ve been swished around by a hurricane.

“You’re such a baby,” Chuuya whispers, closing his eyes as he allows himself the luxury of rubbing Dazai’s scalp, in the pretense of fixing his hair. “Throwing tantrums like this…”

Dazai mumbles something as a reply, but all Chuuya could feel is an electric, suffocating warmth.

He’s never allowed himself to cling back to Dazai whenever he’s like this, but—

It should be fine, right? He just has a little bit more than a week.

The angle is awkward because of their height difference, but Chuuya leans his cheek on top of Dazai’s head. His fingers continue alternating between messing up and fixing Dazai’s hair.

Just eleven more days.

-

Ignorance really is bliss.

Before, Dazai’s antics are just that—antics. Dazai’s actions are just that—actions.

But now, with the newfound realization of his feelings, Chuuya is hyperaware of each little thing Dazai does. The way he plays with his food has evolved from annoying to cute. The way he has his pinky slightly raised when he raises the glass to drink water has evolved from mundane to adorable. The way he wipes his mouth with the napkin systematically, always from left to right, has evolved from something senseless to something endearing.

It’s gotten to a point that Dazai starts calling him ‘apple cheeks’ again. Chuuya can’t even refute it—he can glimpse his reflection on the polished silverware and see his cheeks suffused with red.

He really needs to get the hell over Dazai soon or else he’ll permanently become a tomato! He’d be forced to dye his hair a different color or else his face will match a little too well with his hair! Damn it! And he likes his hair color too!

(This, by the way, totally has zero relationship with the fact that Dazai had once mentioned several years back that he thinks Chuuya’s hair color is really cool, okay? It’s pure coincidence that their tastes in coolness and color schemes aligned, for once.)

“Let’s go swimming,” Dazai says, as soon as their plates are cleared. There’s a certain tenseness around his shoulders. Chuuya feels his traitorous heart skip a beat—can’t believe that he actually has the shitty taste to find Dazai sporting a messy, unkempt bedhead to be cute, urgh.

Couldn’t he have fallen in love with someone who actually used hair conditioner and combed his hair regularly instead of allowing it to be a fluffy, floofy bird’s nest? Couldn’t he have fallen in love with a normal, lowly mortal who actually needs hair conditioner to have soft hair, instead of being born with naturally-silky strands that remained soft round-the-clock?? Couldn’t he have fallen in love with someone without a shitty personality who’d sabotage his own hair conditioner???

Dazai raises an eyebrow at his silence.

Fuck.

He even looks nice like that!

Blergh.

Chuuya tries to calm himself down. He’s managed to live through the past decade without combusting like a thin sheet of paper thrown into an incinerator. It’s just that he’s realized his feelings. Nothing else has changed. Nothing else has to change. He can act normal… normal…

He takes a deep breath, then.

“OKAY. LET’S GO SWIMMING!” He cringes at his own voice, falters. “NOT BECAUSE, I. NOT BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE YOU NAKED. TOPLESS. NO. URGH. LET’S JUST GO!”

He stomps his way towards the pool in Dazai’s garden.

“…Chibikko is so excited to swim at night in the middle of winter…”

“SHUT UP! IT’S MARCH TOMORROW, ALREADY! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO INVITED ME! ALSO. JUST. SHUT UP!”

-

Chuuya’s more or less calmed down after he jumped straight to the pool, with all of his clothes on, sans his shoes, because he managed to retain that much common sense. Of course, the ‘calming down’ portion is probably because of his higher brain functions actually shutting down due to the creeping hypothermia, because the water is damn cold.

From above him, Dazai’s amused. “You couldn’t have waited for me to warm the water up?”

“S-S-Shut up and come in already!”

Dazai raises an eyebrow at him again. Chuuya dunks his face under the water so he can control his blush. It’s just a stupid eyebrow! How can it be adorable?! Of course, Dazai’s entire face transforms with that look, but… it’s not like Dazai is the most handsome person he knows!

It’s not like…

Chuuya’s brain quickly runs through his remembered images of all of his acquaintances. It’s not as fast, given that he’s also trying hard not to suddenly inhale while underwater while also trying not to die from the freezing cold.

…Shit… okay, maybe he knows of some celebrities who have nicer faces?

Chuuya concentrates on thinking of all the actors and models and everyone else he knows of.

…Fuck.

Couldn’t he have fallen in love with someone less good-looking? Is he bound to be cursed with blushing 24/7 because of his feelings for Dazai?!

Dazai, who is currently tugging him up, exposing his wet face to the cool February air. Contrary to biology and common sense, he still ends up blushing anyway, because Dazai is too close! Too close! Dazai’s apparently a freaking copycat who also jumped into the pool while wearing all of his clothes, but instead of looking like a drenched cat, the water just makes his clothes cling to his skin like he’s part of some underwater photoshoot. Or something! Chuuya freezes, mostly because his limbs are starting to feel numb but also because Dazai’s hands are on his shoulders, the two of them floating with scant centimeters between them. Like this, their height difference isn’t so much. Chuuya ends up looking up at Dazai though—which is also bad news, because his hair is dripping wet, plastered against his forehead, the longer strands against his cheeks.

He looks—

Chuuya closes his eyes, unwilling to assault his senses even more.

Around them, the water grows warmer, the heating on the pool doing its work. Chuuya remains frozen though, the two of them suspended in the water for a long amount of time. Dazai keeps quiet, for once, simply breathing in and out, in and out, in and out—a calming lullaby that’s been the melody in Chuuya’s ears for the past couple of years.

The thought that he’d lose it in just under two weeks is…

“…Congratulations.”

There.

He’s said it.

Dazai’s tone is full of wonder. “Why?”

“W-Why?” Chuuya opens his eyes, but keeps them downcast, so that he doesn’t have to look at Dazai’s face. He stares at the water shimmering under the pool lights, under the moonlight, instead. “Because you got to a nice school. Nicer than Todai. You’d certainly have a great future. You’d inherit your family’s company. You’d be some hotshot CEO. You’d be…”

You’d probably have a lot of marriage offers, daughters from equally renowned companies. You’d be surrounded by other geniuses, you’d have a lot of even-smarter, even-richer, even-more-powerful rivals.

It’s not that Chuuya doesn’t think he’s smart or powerful. But he’d be far away from Dazai. And Dazai might meet someone who’d be for him the way Dazai was for Chuuya, since all those years ago—a powerful force that will knock his life and his world out of the ballpark, having it spin wildly out of control into a whole new orbit.

“You won’t stop me?”

Chuuya feels his heartbeat thud against his ribs. He chances a look at Dazai, sees the frustration and irritation wreaking havoc on his handsome face. It’s such a strange expression on him, because he’s always been a rather frigid asshole, especially when it comes to things he hates. It’s really such a strange expression on him, and Chuuya can’t help but wonder what other expressions are hidden there, that he hasn’t had a chance to witness, that he wouldn’t have a chance to witness.

Almost on auto-pilot, he raises both of his hands, presses them against Dazai’s shoulders, mirroring how Dazai is holding onto him. He then raises them even more, until he’s touching Dazai’s face with cold fingers. Dazai doesn’t even flinch, even though Chuuya knows that his fingers must be like ice cubes, at this point. Slowly, gently, he rubs at the tension on Dazai’s jaw, on his temple, under his eyes.

Despite everything, happiness is still the best look on Dazai, after all.

“Why would I stop you?” Chuuya grins wryly. “Unlike a certain someone I could name, I’m not that much of a douche to stop you from getting a good education and a good future.”

Dazai blinks at him, his hold against his shoulders tightening. “…I don’t want you to forget about me.”

Chuuya snorts. “Me? Forget? Excuse you, I’m not a senile old man!”

Dazai chuckles as well, leaning down and resting his forehead against Chuuya’s. “You are old.”

“Just by a few months!” Chuuya feels his fingers grow warmer from where they rest against Dazai’s cheeks. “See, I can still remember your first words to me!”

“You can?”

“Uh-huh.” Chuuya’s memory is impeccable, especially when it comes to memorizing the shitty things Dazai does to him. It’s a self-preservation habit, you see, because the more he remembers them, the more he’s prepared for the next shitty antic to come his way. Still, even without closing his eyes, he can vividly see that moment play out, as though it happened simply hours ago. “You said, ‘What is a sheepdog doing here, did he get lost from a pet shop?’, all while smirking like an asshole. Thinking you’re the cleverest piece of shit.”

Dazai pulls back a bit, making it easier for Chuuya to see something dawn on the other’s face. Something powerful, something that makes Dazai’s face transform to something that could be suitably considered as a view that could rival masterpieces that costs more than ten billion.

With eyes that seem to twinkle brighter than the moon and the stars above combined, Dazai beams at him. Dazai’s face is a radiant pink and Chuuya can only stare when Dazai claims, “Ah, I remember what you said that time too! You said: woof, woof, woof—!”

Chuuya dunks Dazai under the water for that impertinent comment.

Huffing, Chuuya floats away from the spot where he shoved Dazai down, and waits. And waits. And waits…

There are very little bubbles escaping from the spot. Because the pool water is very clear, Chuuya can easily see that Dazai is still near the pool’s floor. Dazai has his eyes closed, looking very serene as he stays plunged down.

“Such a good-for-nothing asshole…” Chuuya mutters, as he goes under as well, so he could pull the mackerel bastard up, fully knowing that it’s a trap. As expected, Dazai tries to be as much of a nuisance deadweight as he can, flopping about like an actual fish that refuses to be caught. Chuuya wishes he has a dynamite he can throw Dazai’s way. He can make do with a net and he can just hang Dazai on one of the big-ass trees growing in their property. As it is, Chuuya only has himself so he lugs Dazai with him, dragging the other to the warmed tiled steps on the shallow end of the pool.

Dazai pretends to be some swooning, fainting princess. Chuuya leaves him there by the steps and does some laps around the pool.

After a few minutes, Dazai apparently tires of the pretense, crying, “I can’t believe my savior won’t even do CPR!”

“Why the hell would I do CPR on some stinking fish?” Chuuya immediately ducks his head under the water so he can preempt the blush from blooming on his face again, because CPR means breathing air into Dazai, means their lips would touch, means k-kissing—! He’s blushing again, damn it! He slaps his face three times as punishment. He’s about to do more, but he figured that he can just punch Dazai instead.

“Ah… but what if the only way to save my life is through CPR? Would Chuuya actually leave me to die?” Dazai coughs up water pitifully. Even though Chuuya knows it’s just an act, he wades closer anyway. Just in case. He keeps most of his body and face hidden under the cool water though, so he approaches like an alligator prowling for prey.

“I will,” Chuuya lies as soon as he reaches Dazai. He quickly does a brief, clinical inspection of the other, not letting his hands or his gaze linger for too long. For his part, Dazai swoons and coos and generally makes himself a nuisance that Chuuya would like to throw cannonball-style to the deepest parts of Yokohama Bay.

“How mean… My prince is so mean…”

Chuuya ignores Dazai’s complaints as he finishes his inspection. He sometimes finds it hard to control his strength, but apparently, Dazai’s just being a big baby and it’s not like Chuuya shoved at him too hard.

“If I was mean, I would have kicked you to death a long time ago.”

“Mm, that’s true.”

Like this, they’re almost of the same height, with Dazai seated on the steps and Chuuya floating in the water. Chuuya finds his hands gravitating towards Dazai’s face again, in the same way that Dazai’s fingers curl around his shoulders once more.

“…Let’s skip class tomorrow,” Dazai murmurs into the minute space between them, the idle splashes of water against the poolside the only background noise in the moment that settles around them. There’s only the moon and the stars and the nighttime sky who can witness Chuuya’s cheeks flaring at the thought of just… spending the rest of the time together with Dazai, locking him up and locking him close, so that nothing else can intrude in their final moments together. It’s such a selfish and irresponsible thought that Chuuya wouldn’t think he’s capable of—at least, before he’s realized the depths of his feelings.

Chuuya finds himself whispering back, “What will we do?”

It’s probably a trick, once again. Chuuya will get tricked into doing all the work in segregating Dazai’s things into marked boxes with actual inventories, because the thought of Dazai thousands of kilometers away, is still very painful. That, or Chuuya will get tricked into joining Dazai in some insane adventure, like going on roundtrip train rides that will take them from end-to-end of the country.

Chuuya’s already saying a quick apology to his parents and Kouyou-anesan for this irresponsibility that he’ll definitely say ‘yes’ to.

Dazai smiles beatifically. “Let’s go stargazing!”

…?

Huh…?

That… is actually not-so-insane?

Chuuya blinks in surprise. “Stargazing…?”

“Yes!” Dazai nods, like it’s the best reason for truancy ever. But then, his smile turns into a sly smirk and Chuuya feels his heartbeat go into overdrive, because that look never bodes well for his blood pressure or his sanity. “…Ah. But I’m already gazing at a star right now, aren’t I?”

—!

—!!!

—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chuuya feels his mind quitting on him, like maybe he’s an actual robot and getting into the pool just splashed water into his circuitry and what is his name? Who is he even?? What is going on???

Dazai’s smirking at him, like he’s very, very proud of that line and Chuuya can only blink and gape at him, like he’s one of those small (but very cute!) orange goldfishes that Dazai is able to collect and catch by the dozen.

Dazai considers him a star…?

An actual star…?

Is he saying that he’s as radiant as a star…? Or that he looks like an actor…? Is it even a compliment…? Knowing Dazai, it’s probably an insult…? Or perhaps a backhanded compliment at best…?

Dazai’s smirk twitches. He looks disappointed for a very brief moment—something that Chuuya’s able to catch only because he’s staring at him intently, but that’s washed away by something fonder. With the same imperiousness he uses when he wants to get his way, Dazai declares, “You’re an orange dwarf.”

“…an orange… dwarf…”

“Yes,” Dazai nods, laughter in his eyes. “You’re very small, with orange hair and are probably surrounded by aliens.”

Chuuya’s eyebrows twitch. “You’re the biggest alien!”

“Fufufu, Chuuya thinks that I’m orbiting around him?”

Chuuya shrugs his shoulders, pointing out the hands holding onto him. As though to say that he doesn’t care, Dazai simply tugs him even closer by his upper body.

“So I’m not a star in Chuuya’s eyes,” Dazai pouts in mock-offense.

Chuuya shivers.

I think you’re a supernova.

To me, you’re—

You are—

“…A black hole.”

Dazai blinks. “Eh?”

“You’re a black hole,” Chuuya says, meeting Dazai’s eyes that look darker than the nighttime sky.

“…Pffft.” Dazai’s body shakes as he ineffectively tries to control his laughter. “Because I suck?”

“Amongst other things,” Chuuya confirms with a shake of his head. “Always hungry, always distorting things, always leeching off me.”

In his mind, Chuuya continues:

Mysterious. One of the rarest occurrences in the universe. Capable of elevating matter around it, making them shine even more. Able to distort space-time, making each moment feel like it could last forever. At the center of this galaxy, the center of his world.

Unforgettable.

Inescapable.

You truly are—

“Hmm. So if you’re a star and I’m a black hole, is Chuuya saying that others can only see me because of him?” Dazai’s smirk is very cheeky. “Ah, I guess it’s true… because Chuuya is so small, so people can definitely see me if he’s in front of me…”

Chuuya laughs too, despite himself. “You’re a massive idiot.”

“It’s fine if I’m a black hole,” Dazai admits. He moves his hands so that they’re looped around Chuuya’s neck, making it appear like he’s hanging off him, even as they’re buoyed by the water. “That just means that once I catch Chuuya, he can’t ever escape.”

You’ve already caught me.

But of course, Chuuya doesn’t say it. It’s just under two weeks, but that amount of pitiful humiliation is still too much. Dazai can only react two ways, after all—it’s either he’ll reject Chuuya decently or he’ll treat it as a joke. Both are things that Chuuya would rather avoid.

It’s fine this way, right?

His feelings would just be like a star—burning brightly until he’s consumed by it, until it goes away once all of his feelings are burnt out.

Until then—

Until then, he’d be fine like this.

Until then, he’d be fine holding onto Dazai like this.

Dazai, whose cheeks are still warm.

Warm, as though—

“Chuuya, I…” Dazai’s eyes are wide as he leans even closer. “I…”

And because Chuuya is staring at him intently, he’s able to see it, even before it happens. Chuuya ducks, as Dazai trembles and starts sneezing uncontrollably.

“You’re really an idiot,” Chuuya says—or starts to say, that is, because he also ends up sneezing from the cold.

With an impish grin, Dazai starts to aim his sneezes towards Chuuya, the two of them bursting into a strange sort of chase as they alternate between shivering from the ill-advised nighttime swimming and sneezing some more.

-

They both end up with clogged nose and sore throats, the following day.

-

The next days pass like a blur, a strange fever-pitch dream.

At school, it’s like everyone has learned about Dazai’s circumstance and Chuuya’s impending heartbreak and everyone promptly distances themselves from the two of them. During lunchtime, Chuuya’s homeroom empties immediately so that it’s only the two of them who end up having lunch inside. Even at home, his fathers and his sister all seem to disappear whenever Dazai’s around.

It’s weird, because Chuuya already misses Dazai, even before he actually leaves. It’s nonsensical and illogical and Chuuya half-hopes that Dazai would just leave already, just so this painful waiting game finally ends.

…Of course, Chuuya’s other half is refusing to even look at the calendar.

But Chuuya can only put it off for so long.

At the crack of dawn on Sunday, Chuuya’s cellphone blares a familiar ringtone. It’s automatic, his motion to sweep his arm towards his nightstand so he can grab the phone and yell at the person on the other line.

It’s routine, really.

And it’s that thought that really jolts him to wakefulness, as he realizes today’s date.

March 10.

Dazai’s flight is later today.

While classes start months later for American university, Dazai is flying there early because he has to deal with a couple of things for his parents and their company.

So… later. Dazai will be gone later today.

“…Chuu-Chuu?” Dazai’s voice comes from his phone. “Did you like my voice so much that you swooned back to sleep?”

Chuuya grips his phone tighter. “Where are you?”

“Mou. If Chuuya was listening to me, he’d know that I’m already downstairs!”

“Then why call me?!”

“…fufufu, is that your express permission for me to just let myself in your room?”

“Like you haven’t been doing that for years,” Chuuya mutters as he crawls out of his tangle of blankets. Last night’s the first night that he slept in his own bed ever since he realized his feelings—and it’s been the worst sleep he’s had in years. Maybe he can steal the mattress from Dazai’s bed?

Urgh.

Who is he even kidding?

His body’s just been used to having an octopus attached to it. He just has to… get un-used to it. Get over it.

There’s a thud and then a too-perky-for-this-early-hour voice directly against his ear: “As ordered, one Dazai Osamu, present~♫”

Chuuya looks up and his lips twitch. “Rejected. What’s your company’s return policy?”

“Why is Chuuya so mean so early in the morning?” Dazai asks with a pout on his face and a thick bundle of clothes on his person. The gifted knitted scarf is wrapped around his neck. He looks ready for his flight, even though it’s not until in the afternoon.

“Because it is so early,” Chuuya says with a roll of his eyes. He allows Dazai to pull him out of bed. He kicks Dazai in the shin when the other snickers at the sheep-pattern on his pajamas. He keeps his kick light enough, because everyone else in the house is still asleep.

“So cranky in the morning,” Dazai comments while ruffling his hair. Chuuya swats the offending hand away, but Dazai just ducks out of the way, until Chuuya’s chasing him to the dining table downstairs, where there’s a vacuum flask filled with coffee already waiting for him.

“…Oh.” Chuuya takes a sip—ah, it’s the brew from Dazai’s house. “Thanks.”

Dazai shifts his weight from one leg to the other. Chuuya raises an eyebrow in question. Dazai fidgets again. Chuuya hasn’t seen him be this… restless, in a long time.

Chuuya takes another sip of the coffee, before he asks very seriously. “…did you kill someone and need my help to bury it?”

“…Pfft, no.” Dazai shakes his head and gestures for Chuuya to walk towards him. Chuuya does, letting Dazai pull him forward and out of the house. It’s a very cool March, and Chuuya starts to protest that he’s just wearing his slippers and pajamas and he’s not about to get another cold so soon—

Oh.

Parked right in front of Chuuya’s house is the hot pink motorcycle of his dreams.

“W-What—”

Dazai tugs Chuuya forward, so he can touch the motorcycle. “Your graduation gift.”

“How—”

“It’s the only one that’s not that tacky,” Dazai says softly.

A few minutes pass like that, with Chuuya dumbfounded, staying rooted in his spot on the welcome mat, staring blankly at the extravagant gift.

“…Did you suddenly develop good taste?” Dazai’s words are teasing, but his voice is actually a tad insecure. “Did you finally realize that a pink motorcycle is actually tacky?”

“Da—” He feels his mouth go dry. “Da—Daisuki.”

A beat.

“…Really?! Chuuya, I—”

Chuuya suddenly rushes away from Dazai and towards the gift. “I mean—I really like it! The motorcycle!”

Another beat.

“…Ah. I see.” Dazai coughs, then follows Chuuya. “Chuuya’s bad taste is incurable, it seems.”

Chuuya touches one of the side-mirrors, sees his own blushing face reflected on it. He steels himself. “I can’t accept this.”

“I thought you said you like it a lot?”

“I do. I really do.” Chuuya turns around so he can face Dazai instead. He keeps his gaze resolute. “But this is too much. I can’t accept such a thing.”

After all, Dazai has already forwarded the reservation information to his parents yesterday night—a reservation for four at Mutekirou for later this afternoon. Supposedly Dazai’s ‘Congratulations for getting to Tokyo University’ gift. Very presumptuous gift, because the results aren’t even out yet, as they’re due to be posted later this afternoon.

“If it’s the cost you’re worried about…” Dazai shrugs and makes a vague hand gesture as though to wave it away. “I’ll just make sure to get a huuuuuuge favor from you in return!”

“Sounds like blackmail.”

“Fufufu, I’ll take an unspecified, huge favor from you, that I can collect anytime, anywhere~♪”

Chuuya shakes his head. In just a few hours, these antics will cease. He keeps that thought out of his mind for now. Bone-dry, “Now you sound like a bargaining devil.”

“If Chuuya thinks this is too expensive…” Dazai comes closer—close enough that their respective body heats intermingle. His right hand lands on Chuuya’s elbow; his other hand curls around Chuuya’s neck. Bracketing him inside his hold. “I’ll just take something priceless, in exchange.”

—!

—!!!

—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chuuya tries to keep his breathing even. Tries to keep his heartbeat calm. Tries to keep his eyes open and focused. Tries.

Instinct rules over him though, making him squeeze his eyes shut as Dazai’s face comes closer and closer.

Dazai’s hold on him trembles for a brief moment.

He’s going to—

Chuuya thinks he’s going to die on the spot. Right in front of his house, while wearing soft, fluffy slippers and sheep-print pajamas. Cause of death: forgetting how to breathe properly when faced with the love of his life. Fuck. Breathing should be an involuntary action, but his stupid body is sucked into Dazai’s orbit as well, apparently. Double fuck.

Dazai’s breath puffs over his lips and Chuuya can’t even gasp or stiffen or do anything, frozen as he is.

And then—

It shifts.

…?

Chuuya feels both of Dazai’s arms wrap around him, one on his waist and another near his shoulders.

…Huh?

Dazai’s breath is now near his ear. And then, Dazai whispers, directly against his earlobe, “I’ll take your uniform’s second button.”

But that’s—!!!

The token in shoujo manga set in highschool. The second button is prized because it’s supposedly the button that’s nearest to someone’s heart for the three years of highschool.

For Dazai to want it—

He—

“Something priceless,” Dazai repeats from earlier. “Because nobody would buy it from Chuuya!”

Chuuya twitches. He should have known—!

Angered, Chuuya opens his eyes and tries to wrench himself away from Dazai’s hug. But Dazai is apparently expecting it, simply swaying along with him. Chuuya pulls back so he can glare at him, but Dazai’s expecting that too.

“That’s it.” Dazai smiles, satisfied. “You should look at me, Chuuya.”

And then Dazai leans down and presses a kiss against his forehead.

Chuuya doesn’t exactly faint, but it’s a close call. Good thing that Dazai kept his arms around him, or else he might have crashed against the motorbike. Dazai stays there, lips chapped from the cold managing to remain soft against his skin.

Ah.

I’m really in love with you, aren’t I?

Chuuya’s not sure how much time has passed, with just the two of them there, in an empty street, with only the sunrise and the early birds for company. Eventually, Dazai pulls away—expression unreadable as he stares at Chuuya. Chuuya’s not sure what kind of expression is on his face. Longing? Heartbreak? Embarrassment? Whatever it is, it must satisfy Dazai, because he smiles again.

“There!” Dazai crows like he’s won the grandest lottery. “Now I’ve stolen your first forehead kiss!”

Chuuya twitches. “There’s no such thing!”

“Eh? What is Chuuya saying? He’s not even an expert when it comes to kissing, how can he say these things?”

“T-That doesn’t matter!” Chuuya lets the usual spirit of their banter move him, because the rest of his body and his mind are still offline from that kiss. “Plus, how do you even know that it’s my first forehead k-kiss?!”

“Pffft, you can’t even say it without stuttering, Chuu-Chuu~♫”

“My dads might have kissed me there already!”

“Trust me, they only managed to kiss the top of your hair.” Dazai pats the top of his head, like one would a dog. “Because you’re too short.”

“You—!”

Chuuya kicks Dazai. Dazai laughs and doesn’t dodge.

It’s the last time.

-

Dazai calls for a cab to take him to the airport from Chuuya’s house. He’s going to the airport a couple of hours early because today is apparently Oda-sensei’s flight back from visiting his long-distance boyfriend in France and Dazai figures that the airport’s a good place as any to catch up.

Dazai refuses Chuuya’s not-quite-offer to send him off, citing that the reservation at Mutekirou is right around the time of Dazai’s flight. It’s most likely on purpose. Nothing Dazai does is without meaning, after all. Even if a lot of times, the meaning is simply because it would make Chuuya stressed.

Chuuya’s not sure how he’s managed to say goodbye to the mackerel bastard. He must have somehow managed it with his dignity mostly intact, because Kouyou-anesan isn’t looking at him with pity. Paul only tells him that he should start picking a good color scheme as soon as they ‘decide’ on things. Arthur tries to comfort him by telling him that it’s just going to be a short time.

Chuuya locks himself up in his room, citing the need for sleep before they go to the restaurant reservation.

He checks his phone every two minutes. He checks the group chat he has with his friends. He checks his email.

He has a nagging feeling that he’s missed something really important.

Chuuya collapses back-first on his bed, one hand on his forehead, right on the spot where Dazai had kissed him earlier.

A kiss.

Chuuya’s resolute in not confessing to Dazai because he thought it was hopeless, because there were only two possible reactions from Dazai’s end.

But—

Maybe that’s not entirely true?

Chuuya tries to think things over.

Some facts:

• Five years ago, on Valentines Day, Dazai had made a grand announcement over the school’s PA system that he’s not accepting love confessions anymore.
• On the same day, as they were walking back to Chuuya’s home, Dazai mentioned, complete with raised eyebrows and pointed elbow-jabbing, that he finds it interesting, how people got the courage to confess their feelings. Chuuya replied something about Dazai being a coward and having hang-ups about honesty.
• A few months after that, Dazai ends up starting that elaborate plan to end up as Snow White to Chuuya’s Prince. Chuuya’s always chalked up the reason to Dazai’s typical insanity and even-more-typical desire to sabotage Chuuya whichever way possible, but… Dazai had mentioned, very loudly and very insistently, back then, that he couldn’t allow anyone else to get kissed by Chuuya.

Another salient point: Dazai has admitted that he reads shoujo manga ‘for research’.

Could it be…?

• Stealing his umbrella so they end up running in the rain then being forced to share Dazai’s umbrella afterwards…
• That stargazing invitation…
• His octopus-like ways of clinging…
• Him liking to bite Chuuya’s cheeks… wait, that’s just typical Dazai insanity… got to cross that out…
• His Tanabata wish…
• That request for the second button…
• Practically everything else that’s happened ever since they’ve met…

Could it be—?

—That despite Dazai’s claims to be a charismatic flirt, he’s actually been just flirting really, really, really badly all these years?!

Is Dazai actually in love with him as well?!

Holy fucking shit.

Chuuya jumps from his bed and nearly tears open his bedroom door from its hinges as he yells to the hallway, “All this time?! Has Dazai been in love with me all along?!”

Kouyou-anesan goes out of her bedroom—the one beside Chuuya’s. Stone-faced while maintaining eye-contact with Chuuya, she raises her hands and slowly claps. Once, twice.

“Congratulations for finally realizing it, brother dear.”

“Fuck,” Chuuya says empathically, then bolts back to his room before she can scold him for his language. For a brief moment, he fancies himself jumping onto his new motorcycle (he fucking gave him a motorcycle—something that he’s only sighed upon as a fantasy) and weaving in and out of the traffic so he can reach the airport. But then, reality ensues as he remembers that 1) he doesn’t actually have a license yet; 2) he doesn’t know how to drive, racing game experiences at arcades notwithstanding.

So he grabs his phone and calls Hirotsu-san.

Fuck.

He should have realized it sooner! Dazai gave him the number to his family’s butler, for shit’s sake! How are they both this stupid?! They’re competing to be in Todai and they’re like this?! Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“—Chuuya-sama?”

“Hirotsu-san!” Chuuya reaches for his wallet and quickly changes to the first outfit he manages to snag from his closet. Because most of them are uniforms, he ends up grabbing his school uniform. It doesn’t matter. He changes to it, as he says, “Please help me get to the airport quickly! I need to punch Dazai!”

Hirotsu-san chuckles indulgently, which? Makes Chuuya lowkey worried for Dazai’s sake, because butlers shouldn’t sound that supportive of their employers getting punched. But then again, it’s that bratty Dazai, so… it’s not like Chuuya can’t understand where Hirotsu-san is coming from… Wait, he’s getting distracted!

“I’ll pick you up at your house in five minutes, Chuuya-sama.”

While waiting for Hirotsu-san, he apologizes to his parents for leaving them to eat at Mutekirou alone. Then making them promise to bring him lots of leftovers. All the while, ignores their sighs and comments about having such a dense son.

Groveling done, he checks his contact list for Oda-sensei’s number. He doesn’t have it.

But he’s not about to give up easily!

He dials Sakaguchi instead.

Sakaguchi picks up on the first ring. For a second, Chuuya considers himself lucky that Sakaguchi isn’t knee-deep in studying or something to hear his phone ring. “Chuuya-kun?”

“Glasses, what’s Oda-sensei’s number?”

“…Why are you asking me? What do you need the number for? Is this part of your prank with Dazai-kun?”

“I know you have the hots for…” Chuuya says impatiently, but keeps it deliberately vague, because he’s not actually 100% sure who Sakaguchi looks at with longing in his gaze. The glint of Sakaguchi’s glasses can rival lasers in their intensity, hiding the man’s eyes and eyebags most of the time. He’s mostly positive that it’s on Oda-sensei, if only because Sakaguchi looks smart enough to avoid falling for Dazai. “No, no need to deny it, it’s not like I told anyone! I just need his number quickly!”

“…How is it that you’re able to know my very hidden feelings but not know about Dazai-kun’s…” Sakaguchi sighs heavily, sounding very sleep-deprived. It’s his usual tone of voice. Chuuya makes a mental note to set him up with someone nice. Like sleep. Sleep sounds nice.

“I’m asking because I need him to stall Dazai!”

“…Oh. Congratulations,” Sakaguchi sounds a little bit more alive. A couple of tapping sounds. “I texted Oda-san and told him to stall Dazai so you can make a grand confession.”

Chuuya’s eyebrow twitches at Sakaguchi’s audacity to use him as a bridge to talk to Oda-sensei. He erases his mental note to set Sakaguchi up with someone. “Fine. We’re even, then!”

He hangs up after, because Hirotsu-san’s arrived.

He has a grand confession to plan.

-

Or rather, he plans to plan a grand confession.

It’s quite difficult to do so when there’s the constant noise of blades spinning in the air though, buzzing like wild hornets near his ear.

“Why am I in a helicopter,” Chuuya asks in dismay for the fifth time in ten minutes, half-shocked that things have escalated to this and half-depressed that he’s too focused on thinking about Dazai that he can’t really appreciate the view from above the skies. Hirotsu-san’s been ignoring his mumbled questions, busy as he is with driving the helicopter. Which? Really cool, but also really rude, because Chuuya’s questions are important, damn it!

“The car wasn’t available,” was Hirotsu-san’s only line to him, said before earmuffs were shoved against his ears.

Really though.

It’s not like Chuuya has room to complain. Flying to the airport via a helicopter means that he gets there as soon as possible, after all!

…Even if it has the unfortunate side-effect of not getting enough time to mull about what he can say as a worthy confession. He has to make it count! After all, this is going to be the first and only time he’d confess!

…Oh.

Chuuya pinches his thighs, as punishment for willingly cursing himself so easily.

If Hirotsu-san finds it weird that he’s muttering to himself about being cursed, he doesn’t comment on it.

-

By the time Chuuya makes it to the Departures wing of the airport, half-running, he spots Dazai stepping away from the check-in counter, having completed his check-in process. He doesn’t have any carry-on bags with him, not even a briefcase for his laptop. Typical Dazai, really. Being so lazy that he only bothered to bring his phone, passport and wallet with him. He’ll probably just go and buy a new laptop once he lands. Lazy rich bastard.

Chuuya’s not here to just stare at him longingly from afar though. Even if there’s a lot of people around them—Chuuya needs to call out to him so he’d stop walking with his stupid, spindly-long legs and let Chuuya catch up to him.

Dazai’s sixth sense in spotting Chuuya seems to be having some delays today. So Chuuya opens his mouth, ready to yell loud enough to be heard over the flight announcement system.

“Da—!”

And it’s at that moment that Dazai half-turns and spots Chuuya. A brief thought sparks inside Chuuya—he really has a sixth sense in spotting me—and catches fire inside him. Even from a distance, it’s obvious that Dazai’s eyes widen like a surprised idiot. And seeing that rare dumbfounded look on Dazai’s face stutters the breath in Chuuya’s lungs, upends his entire life in a thrilling rollercoaster, makes him feel like he’s floating in an eternal free-fall.

Chuuya wants that look for himself, forever.

So even though Dazai’s already seen him and is starting to make his way towards him, Chuuya still continues his yell, his heart swooping in from a great height.

“—Daisuki!”

Dazai’s eyes bug out even more, almost as though they’d topple out of his face.

They approach each other faster. The gravitational force between them spins and snaps into place, Chuuya pushing forward and Dazai pulling himself closer, two opposites finding their way and latching onto each other. Chuuya’s fists shake as he breaks into a run, momentum carrying him forward until he’s within striking distance. Dazai’s awestruck look doesn’t falter, even when Chuuya pulls his right fist back so he can punch Dazai right on his stupid face.

Logically, Chuuya knows that there must be some security guards running towards them, because of the commotion. But all he can see right now is Dazai.

Truly a black hole, this guy.

Sucking all of Chuuya’s attention in, not allowing anything else to pass.

Even with the reddish imprint blooming like the incoming spring on Dazai’s cheeks, his shoulder shakes in laughter. Happiness dawns on his features, rebirth and light sparkling like twinkling stars inside his eyes. Dazai’s hands settle around Chuuya’s shoulders, drawing him inside a comfortable embrace.

“Fufufu. What is a sheepdog doing here?” Dazai wets his lips as he recites the next line, as though recreating their first meeting all over again. “Did he get lost from a pet shop?”

In response to those annoying-ass words, Chuuya raises his fist again, as Dazai sways to dodge it.

“Chuuya! You already punched me!”

“I’ll punch you again!”

“You chased me here so you could punch me?”

Chuuya releases an emphatic “Yes.”

Dazai purses his lips. “Chuuya is so tsun… even though he already yelled out something really embarrassing…”

“W-Well, you already heard it.”

Everybody else in the check-in area has heard it, fuck. He hopes against hope that nobody had the presence of mind to video the whole thing, because he’d surely end up as a viral internet laughingstock. More importantly, once Dazai gets hold of that recording, he’d never let Chuuya live it down!

“Chuuya.”

Chuuya twitches. When Dazai says his name like this at the weirdest times, it never fails to heat him up like he’s being consumed by a massive conflagration.

“What.”

“Please say it again.”

“Urgh, go and clean your ears!” Chuuya frowns when Dazai’s fingers start playing at the hair strands at the back of his neck. “You heard it already!”

“I want to hear it again.”

“D-Die!”

“That’s not what you said~♪”

“So you did hear it!”

Ignoring Chuuya’s very valid accusations, Dazai simply continues with a silky, teasing, “Mm, Chuu-Chuu, please say it again~~♫”

Chuuya’s always disliked giving in to Dazai’s whims, mostly because there’s something really vexing about surrendering more to someone who already possesses so much of him. Also, because Dazai is a smug motherfucker 99% of the time, that Chuuya imagines his head filling up like a lopsided balloon from all the smug airs.

Today is different though.

Today, he’s here to make sure that there’s no lingering misunderstandings between them. Today, he’s here to make sure that Dazai understands that as much as he’s kicking himself for being stupid enough to have shit taste in men—(even if it’s technically not true, because it’s not like Chuuya has ever looked at anyone else, much less other men…)—that Chuuya’s playing for keeps.

“Da—Dazai.” Looking up and holding his gaze, Chuuya gathers not just his courage, but also the self-control to not give in and punch the teasing smugness off that face, as well as the self-control to not just go ahead and climb Dazai like a tree. “I love you. A lot.”

There’s silence.

Well, not the true type of silence one can expect from a vacuum, but the crowd surrounding them has been reduced to white noise already anyway. Because Chuuya’s straining his neck to meet Dazai’s eyes, he sees it: the way Dazai outright freezes, as though he’s a computer whose circuits have been overloaded to the point of a system crash. It’s like he’s not expecting Chuuya to actually give in to his unreasonable request, like he’s not expecting to be handed happiness on a silver platter even if he’s shamelessly begged for it just moments before, that he’s now at a loss as to how to react.

Typical Dazai, really.

His fondness for the shitty mackerel must have reflected on his face, because the next thing he knows, determination flickers into Dazai’s visage. Dazai leans down with purpose, his fingers clutching at Chuuya with tension guiding them, curling against his hair and the curve of his neck, pulling Chuuya into his chest like the swell of the tides, Chuuya helpless to resist to the gravity of the shining presence in his sky.

Chuuya means to keep his eyes open the entire time, but the sweetness that he tastes at the back of his throat even with just the first press of their lips together is enough to make his eyelids flutter shut, as though to shut all of his other senses except for the sense of touch. He focuses on the bumps and ridges that he feels against his lips, the uneven Cupid’s bow on those lips, the sweaty palm curved against his nape, the heated press of a handprint against his tailbone, the soft bump of the bundled scarf looped around Dazai’s neck.

…But then again, it’s useless to try to focus on just one aspect, when it comes to Dazai.

Dazai opens his mouth and Chuuya chases—the taste of the soda bubbles from his lunch earlier fizzling in his bloodstream, the smell of Dazai’s shampoo caressing comforting touches down to the tips of his toes, the sigh of finally vibrating against the synchronized frenetic drumbeat of their hearts, the sight of their future spinning bright ahead of them coursing through their nerves faster than the speed of light, time looping in all directions as they grab onto each other before, years later, in this moment right now.

…Really. Trust Dazai to erode his self-control so much that he’s fine with the fact that his first kiss is in a crowded airport.

Chuuya feels his entire body flushing, the flames inside him stoked mercilessly by the soft sighs and puffs of air that come from Dazai’s mouth. The heat doesn’t quite subside, even when Dazai pulls away with the softest look on his face, not even ruined by the obscene pop from their lips separating or from the string of wetness that links their mouths temporarily. Dazai looks so shiny and soft, the kind of gentleness that one wouldn’t expect from a person who insists on being an obnoxious pain-in-the-ass. It makes Chuuya feel like he’s floating, to have been able to cause that expression to flush Dazai’s usual coldness away.

“I’ve stolen your first kiss,” Dazai whispers with obvious delight, eyes shining like there’s a star locked inside them. Or maybe, just like Dazai had playfully said before… that Chuuya’s a star in his eyes, the one person causing this kind of brilliance to shine.

“You didn’t,” Chuuya whispers back, leaning his entire weight against Dazai as he stands on his tiptoes, presses a soft, brief kiss against those shiny lips. It turns into a couple of kisses that flutter like butterfly wings, flying from one place to another, captured in their orbit.

Dazai doesn’t whine or protest about there being someone else who’s received Chuuya’s first kiss. Because he is a genius, especially when he actually puts his mind to it, he does know and understand that Chuuya means it in a ‘it’s not considered stealing if it’s freely given’ kind of way. Chuuya’s just thankful he doesn’t have to utter even more embarrassing words aloud.

They remain like that, embracing in the middle of a crowd, until it’s time to part.

There’s a PA Announcement telling the passengers on Dazai’s flight to complete the check-in processes as the boarding will start soon.

Chuuya grins, pushing down anything unnecessary such as longing or sorrow. Looking up at Dazai, he issues a challenge: “Even with oceans between us, I bet that I can make you be so crazy over me!”

Dazai blinks. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing.

“And if I win, you…” Chuuya soldiers on, emboldened by Dazai’s surprise. “You have to give me your heart!”

With those words, Chuuya rips the second button out of his uniform and presses it against Dazai’s nose. In the next breath, he surges up again, and presses a hard smacking kiss against those lips. It’s quite difficult to pull away, but Chuuya manages it, along with pushing Dazai away from him so that he doesn’t end up missing his flight.

They don’t say goodbye.

They will see each other soon, after all.

end of part three. third law of motion: action and reaction
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Chapter Text

iv. gravity

Soon, apparently means getting a video call invitation from Dazai not even five minutes after they part. Chuuya answers it with trembling fingers, though whether it’s out of acute blood loss and dizziness from blushing so much from his embarrassing public display of affection or due to lingering annoyance at the other’s antics, it’s hard to say. It’s most likely a little bit of both, given how their relationship is.

Despite his reservations about seeing Dazai’s flushed face be transmitted in pixels to him, Chuuya is absorbed in bickering with him, scolding Dazai for being too noisy and annoying the other passengers waiting in the boarding area with him. Of course, he now knows that Dazai is doing this to cheer him up, in a way, so the scalding words are wrapped with a lovestruck, giddy grin, giving it an atmosphere of a very sweet sort of teasing.

Too absorbed, really, that he doesn’t notice that he’s about to bump to someone until it actually happens. Chuuya prioritizes hanging up on Dazai first before looking up and apologizing at the person he bumped to.

“Sorry—wait, what are you doing here?” Chuuya rapidly blinks at the person in front of him. And then, at the entourage flanking him. “What the hell are you all doing here?!”

‘All’, in this case, pertains to his friends from school. Akutagawa’s the person he bumped to, who coughs a bit as he helps right him. Beside him, there’s Atsushi and Gin. Behind him, there’s Higuchi and Tachihara. Behind them, there’s the odd congregation of Kenji, Kyouka, Lucy and Tsujimura. Tsujimura’s phone is aimed at him—apparently, Sakaguchi is on the line, not wanting to miss this piece of gossip.

Hirotsu-san is smiling as he comes back from… talking with security guards?

Fucking hell.

Seeing them is akin to getting thrown bucketfuls of cold water, then getting thrown into Yokohama Bay in the dead of winter. The jetsetter crowd around them, the PA announcements blaring every-so-often, the bright airport lights—they all come back to Chuuya’s focus, after they’ve been swept under the rug of his consciousness upon seeing Dazai.

Holy fucking shit.

He really has it bad for that shitty mackerel.

Has he always been this single-mindedly focused on him, all these years? That he didn’t even recognize the presence of his friends watching the show from the sidelines the entire time? That he didn’t even realize that Hirotsu-san smoothing it over the airport security personnel is the reason why he’s been able to punch and kiss Dazai undisturbed?

Goddamnit to all fucks.

And now… he has to deal with his gossipmonger friends. Fuck his life, really.

“We’re here to see Dazai-san off,” Higuchi chirps with a bright grin that normally looks endearing in his eyes. The fact that her cellphone is aimed at Chuuya is very worrying though. Seeing his gaze land on the device, she continues blithely, “Don’t worry, Chuuya-san! I was able to record it from beginning to end!”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” Chuuya mutters, feeling his cheeks heat up. He considers the pros and cons of threateningly pleading to Higuchi so that she’ll delete the video, but he already knows that she’s prone to using Facebook Live. He runs through a quick prayer to all the deities he knows and then some, that Dazai doesn’t check social media for the next eighty-five years. He focuses on his initial inquiry, “So? Why the hell are you guys here?”

A cough. “I had a feeling that you’d… do this.”

He raises his eyebrow at Akutagawa. “…This?”

“A heart-pounding confession,” Atsushi chimes in with a double thumbs-up. “There’s that bet about who will confess first, and—oops?”

Because Atsushi is a good kouhai despite betting on his senpai’s lovelife, Chuuya lets him go with only a glare and a harsh forehead flick. “Why the hell are you betting on us?!”

“Chuuya-san, this has been going on for years!”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better!”

“Chuuya-san, I bet on you,” Tachihara is quick to cut in to provide his assurance. “Though I didn’t think that you’d do it so publicly… you really are amazing…”

“I really thought that they were already married,” is what Lucy says, to which Kyouka agrees with a solemn nod.

Gin pats Kyouka’s shoulder comfortingly. “Don’t worry, they’re the only idiots who don’t know it.”

His friends continue to rib him about this new development in his life. They’re all driven back in a limousine, courtesy of Hirotsu-san. Apparently, someone else will be coming to pilot the helicopter back. Dazai calls again while they’re in the limo ride and the round of teasing flares up again, especially since Dazai gamely answers (read: lies) the nosy questions from his friends about the things he likes about Chuuya.

Things such as:

Q: What’s Chuuya-san’s charm point?
A: Of course, it’s his silly height! …Also, why are you asking about that? Do you have designs on my chibikko?

Q: When did you start liking Chuuya-san?
A: Since he punched me! …Also, why are you asking about that? I’m the one who knew Chuuya first, so I hope that means that you know where you stand in the pecking order!

It’s all in good fun, even if Chuuya’s cheeks never quite recover from the onslaught of blood to his face.

Dazai says his goodbyes and congratulates him just before his plane takes off.

A few minutes after that, Chuuya gets buried under the hugs of his friends when the Tokyo University website has posted the results.

-

Graduation breezes by like a spring gale, Sakaguchi on the podium as he makes the farewell address for their batch. Hopes, aspirations, dreams over the future fill the auditorium and the graduates’ hearts.

Chuuya thinks about the next two weeks, which will be spent in a flurry of paperwork and campus tours. He’s not exactly dissatisfied, but there’s an odd sort of gloominess that hangs over his shoulders. He’s worked hard for the past couple of years to get to this point, but he’s always thought that he’d reach it with company. Matching it with reality is still kind of… bittersweet.

After the ceremony, he calls Dazai, as promised, taking Dazai with him as he does one last stroll around the school, before he leaves it for good. Over Skype, Dazai can’t hide the pleased expression on his face as he saves the pictures that Chuuya’s parents send him—all featuring Chuuya looking like a delinquent with his uniform gaping slightly near on the chest area because of the missing second button.

Akutagawa and Atsushi both bow down to him and promise that they’ll follow him to Tokyo University. Chuuya’s locker is filled with letters from various people—most of it from his friends, a lot from his soccer club, from the kouhai that he’s tutored, from the people who’ve asked him to pass messages to Dazai before, from the Student Council thanking him for his hard work of helping drag Dazai out of their room many times, from Poe-sensei who tells him to not hesitate to have coffee with him near Todai because he’s doing his PhD there.

After the ceremony, he gets a couple of non-confessions—girls who ask to speak with him under the backdrop of cherry blossoms in their full bloom, girls who tell him that they’ve always admired him in a very platonic way (this is stressed at least three times) but they don’t expect anything from him, aside from maybe making sure that they don’t get killed by a jealous Dazai.

Chuuya promises that they won’t see any sort of green-eyed retribution from the shitty mackerel, flushing as the realization that everyone really knows about his… thing, with Dazai. There’s an odd sort of wistfulness, as he thinks about it. He doesn’t quite think that they’ve wasted many years tiptoeing around each other’s feelings—because the years that he’s spent since meeting Dazai have all been nice, in their own way. But there’s this lingering sense of… longing, of wondering, whether things would be different if they’ve admitted their feelings much earlier.

…Wait.

Chuuya freezes near the school gates.

Dazai hasn’t actually confessed, has he?!

…Well, okay, so Chuuya’s very certain that Dazai likes him back, he hasn’t actually heard Dazai say such words?! Gurgh. Typical Dazai! That shitty mackerel got him to say such embarrassing things, but he hasn’t returned the favor?! He’s been had! He’s been tricked!

[Chuuya, why is your nose twitching like a bunny’s right now?]

He twitches as he swears to make it so that Dazai will end up verbally confessing to him too, when they meet again.

He completes his ‘final tour’ of the school grounds, exchanging contact information with some acquaintances, getting some encouraging words from his teachers, obtaining signatures and messages for his yearbook, signing soccer balls and yearbooks of his classmates, posing for pictures with his friends.

While Tokyo isn’t that far from Yokohama, once the next school year starts, he’d be hard-pressed to spending a lot of time hanging out with his friends, so he’s trying to get a fill of them, before he leaves.

And just like that, Chuuya’s high school life is over.

[Chuuya, you sound like a drunk old man, reminiscing like that.]

Chuuya rolls his eyes at Dazai’s tinny voice coming out from the video call.

“Shut up, you jerk.”

I wish you’re here, is what they both don’t need to say.

-

Matriculation at Tokyo University is pretty straightforward. Chuuya’s admission papers are completed on-time. He gets a studio apartment some twenty-minute bike ride away from the campus. He’s on scholarship based on his exam scores, but he doesn’t want to completely drown himself in school by staying at the in-campus dorms. He has a feeling that he’d end up camping in the school premises if given the chance, so he’d like to avoid that kind of temptation.

The fact that he’s looking forward to Dazai going back to the country for the winter holidays (and therefore, staying with him, with Chuuya…welcoming him ‘home’…) has zero bearings on this, okay?!

Over Skype, he gives Dazai the grand tour of his new, mostly-bare accommodations, most of his things still in boxes.

He came to Tokyo a full week before the start of classes to complete the enrollment, as well as familiarize himself with the area, but he felt a bit disconnected? He wasn’t quite sure what the strange feeling was for.

…Well, he actually knows.

Despite everything, he still hasn’t completely adapted to the thought that he’d be spending the next couple of years with just phone-calls. And not even a lot of phone calls, because they’re on completely opposite timezones.

Chuuya pinches himself to get rid of the gloominess.

Nevertheless, he ends up going back to Yokohama for the next couple of days, deciding against spending more time in his new place. He reasons that he’ll be spending a lot of time inside said apartment in the future. He’ll come back during the first day of school.

-

On the first day of school, Chuuya gives the freshman acceptance speech at Todai.

-

Chuuya actually doesn’t have any classes on the first day, so after the acceptance speech and the short introduction meeting with the Law faculty, he’s free for the day. He sends a selfie to Dazai and makes sure that his entire outfit (reminiscent of the one that Dazai used to claim was able to scare off people from the library) is caught on camera. He also sends Dazai a reminder that he’s the one who won the bet, Dazai should be prepared for what Chuuya will make him do.

He passes by a supermarket that offers a student discount before going back to his apartment for the unpacking duties. Kouyou-anesan helped him out with the budgeting two days ago, so he shouldn’t starve or need to crawl to school even if he regularly buys groceries. After all, it’s actually cheaper and healthier in the long run to prepare his own food compared to gorging himself on prepackaged food…

And the thought of budgeting brings a smile to his lips. Not because he’s wild about accounting, but because it reminds him of the fact that the reason that he ended up consulting his sister is because when he initially talked about it with Dazai, Dazai’s genius solution is to apparently text Hirotsu-san and for Hirotsu-san to ask Chuuya if he’d prefer to receive a bank transfer or an actual briefcase filled with cash. Dazai pouted for hours about not being able to provide for his self-proclaimed ‘chibi-wife’.

...Ah, he’s grinning like an idiot in the supermarket aisle. Dazai’s told him that he’d be busy for the next couple of days settling in to his new role in his family’s company. Chuuya’s solution to the two days of no-Skype-calls is apparently to daydream about Dazai. Urgh.

With a shake of his head, he hurries up his shopping so he can get started on the unpacking.

There’s practically a carpet of sakura petals on the pavement, already a week past their full bloom. It’s still very beautiful though, so Chuuya opts to walk back to his apartment with the bags of his groceries in his hands. Unlike certain people he could name, carrying this much over this distance is mere child’s play for him…

He’s in a lighter mood when he finally reaches his apartment building. He’s on the ground floor because it’s the only vacancy, but he’s at least on the furthest unit from the main entrance—and the nearest to the small backyard garden, a rarity in this area.

His light mood lasts until he opens his apartment door.

It’s a studio apartment that’s only a couple of square meters big, with its own (small) bathroom. When Chuuya left, only one out of seven boxes has been opened, while none of his three suitcases has even been touched. Now—the studio apartment looks like an entirely different beast.

There are a couple of wall-cabinets installed to maximize the space. The built-in wooden clothes cabinet has been replaced with something taller—nearly touching the ceiling. It looks like there’s been a massive overhaul—wait, did he get to the correct room?

Chuuya quietly steps back out, but he checks the room number and the key in his hands and no, he isn’t lost. His apartment simultaneously looks crowded and not. Chuuya slowly parks his bag near the doorway, along with the grocery bags, ensuring that he doesn’t make any noise.

Most of the tenants in the apartment building are still out, so the silence makes it easier to hear the rustle from the bathroom. Chuuya knows that the logical thing is to call security, or maybe sidle close to the kitchen counter and grab a knife. But maybe the solution to the gloomy mood hanging around him is to let loose a bit?

It’s not like he can’t incapacitate whoever it is. He’s always been very diligent in exercising and making sure that his body is in top condition, after all. Maybe he just needs to punch and kick someone, because it’s one of the things that he hasn’t been able to do since Dazai has left…

So strike to incapacitate, he does, the moment the bathroom door swings open and reveals the very-opinionated-about-Chuuya’s-interior-decoration intruder. Chuuya leaps toward the stranger, intent on making him regret choosing Chuuya’s apartment to mess around, his right knee rising to land a knee to the gut, while his left arm swings so he can box the other’s ear to make him lose balance.

And then, it’s almost as though in slow-motion—

Chuuya sees a bandaged arm palm rise to wrap around his left fist, just as he sees another bandaged arm shift so that it’s guarding the stomach protectively. The momentum is too fast and strong for him to fully stop—and to be honest, upon discerning the intruder’s identity, Chuuya’s more than happy to beat him black and blue.

So, Chuuya lets it.

Lets the punch and kick connect to their targets.

The intruder is knocked back against the bathroom door, slamming it shut with enough force to make it seem like it’s going to be torn off from the hinges.

A chuckle.

“Ah… such a wild welcome,” Dazai says while continuing to chuckle, sounding breathless. “I thought my guarding arm would be torn off.”

Seeing Dazai in front of him, looking very shady indeed while wearing an all-black outfit that’s more fitting for a burglar, is enough to make Chuuya’s heartbeat go to overdrive. Giddiness and adrenaline stream through his veins, making him yell out, “I will tear your fucking face off, you shitty mackerel asshole!”

“Ahaha, I guess Chuuya really did miss me so much?”

“Don’t you ‘ahaha’ me!”

Despite Chuuya’s harsh tone, there’s a grin on his face as he collapses forward so he can embrace Dazai and break his ribs in the process, wrapping his arms around that stupid torso and burying his face against that stupid chest. Dazai returns the favor, stupid, lanky arms equally eager to squeeze the breath out of him.

“It’s been a long four weeks,” Dazai murmurs against his ear, his hands splayed out over Chuuya’s clothes, as though in effort to maximize the area that he’s able to touch.

It sounds ridiculous, given that it’s just been a month, but seeing that they haven’t really been apart for more than eight hours ever since they’ve met… Chuuya feels like the world has tilted back to its proper alignment.

But that kind of fantasy… Chuuya forcibly brings reality and logic back. “Why are you back so soon?”

Dazai stiffens for a moment.

…Oh no, he didn’t.

“You…” Chuuya looks up and sees the vaguely guilty expression on Dazai’s face. “You—!”

Seeing Chuuya’s temper flare up, Dazai hurriedly tries to pacify him, rubbing hands all over his back. “I… never actually said that I’ll agree with my parents?”

“You—!!”

“I went there to let them know that I’ll be accepting my spot in Todai instead?”

“You—!!!”

Chuuya can feel his entire body shaking—from anger and incredulity, that Dazai dared to pull this on him. From that starburst of giddy elation, that Dazai did this for him. He can’t even form other words, simply trembling as he curls his hands into fists around Dazai’s collar.

Tellingly though, he doesn’t spring away from the other’s beseeching embrace.

Suddenly, he remembers his parents repeated reassurances about how their separation would just be a short time. His breath leaves him in a gasp, as his eyes widen in shocked realization. Dazai, seeing this, is quick on the uptake, bundling Chuuya even closer.

“…You told my parents.”

“And Kouyou-anesan,” Dazai adds looking a bit sheepish. Just a bit, because the lazy-cat satisfaction burns brighter on his expression. “I wanted to make sure that they won’t think that I’m… deliberately hurting you.”

Chuuya grits his teeth. “And you didn’t think to let me know?!”

“I wasn’t sure if it would work,” Dazai whines, leaning down to rub their foreheads together to smooth out his frown. “It would have been super embarrassing if I told you and it didn’t work!”

Chuuya scoffs. “You? Not sure about your plans?”

“I wanted to be very sure,” Dazai insists, looking very sincere indeed.

And he really should be more annoyed, given that apparently, all this time, Dazai’s been planning on bullying his way to Todai (and Chuuya) from the beginning, no matter what his parents decreed. All those weeks spent with his heart in an emotional rollercoaster…

But he knows Dazai.

He doesn’t do anything that’s not planned, that doesn’t have a reason, even if the reason is something as petty as teasing Chuuya. Everything is calculated and therefore, Dazai must have known that there was a chance that his parents would have done something more excessive to prevent him from pursuing his plan to go to Todai.

“A surprise of this caliber…” Dazai’s eyes are crinkled at the edges as he continues, “As your new roommate, I’m here to tell you that I’m already crazy about you since years ago, so it’s technically not your win!”

“You’re really a piece of work, you devilish shitty mackerel,” Chuuya says with a slight shake of his head and proceeds to punch Dazai on the face using his mouth, this time.

And so the two of them celebrate the first day of their reunion nurturing the bond between them, something that can only be likened to gravity—irrefutable, mutual, inescapable.

It’s the first day of the rest of their lives and they spend it the same way that they always do things: together.

end of part four. law of gravitation: attraction between two bodies
gravity is a universal, mutual force which causes any two bodies to be attracted to each other, growing stronger the closer they get

Chapter Text

v. epilogue

Chuuya feels his cheeks burn as he watches Dazai watch him. It’s irrational, really, because during the mock trials that they’ve been doing in class, Chuuya’s not easily rattled or flustered or distracted—but all it takes is for Dazai to raise an eyebrow or for Dazai to just slightly narrow his eyes at him, and he’ll already feel his blood boiling underneath his skin. While a lot of it can probably be considered a Pavlovian response at this point, it’s still very—

He shivers, and he raises his hands so he can undo the top button of his shirt, loosen things up a bit because his entire body already feels hot, even though snow is free-falling outside their apartment window.

“Don’t move,” Dazai orders, keeping his voice even despite the fact that Chuuya can practically see the firestorm whirling inside those eyes as they hungrily stare at him.

It’s very irrational, the way that he still feels the smoldering heat between them, despite the fact that they’ve been in a relationship for three years now and that they’ve definitely had sex for hundreds of times. It still feels exciting, the swooping plunge from a steep rollercoaster, whenever their eyes meet or their hands touch or even when he’s just suddenly plagued with a random thought about Dazai’s bedhead hair curling up or when he looks up from his books and sees a post-it with a crude drawing of a dog wearing a fedora hat taped on a mug of freshly-brewed coffee.

“Stop ordering me around,” Chuuya protests, even though his hands slacken and fall back down on his lap. He’s the one who’s fully clothed and he’s the one imperiously surrounded by dozens of pillows with his back straight against their bed’s headboard. On the other hand, Dazai’s shamelessly proud of his nakedness and of the fact that he’s already half-hard from just devouring Chuuya using his eyes. Dazai’s the one who lost their bet about their exam results, but he’s definitely twisted the prize—“to pamper the winner”—to suit his purposes. It’s yet another reminder to Chuuya that being a lawyer really suits Dazai—he’d win all of his cases by annoying everyone else around him with the way he’s able to abuse rules and create loopholes.

Dazai has argued that he can’t properly pamper Chuuya because Chuuya’s personality makes it so that he’s always worrying over a number of things (like Dazai doing something shitty and headache inducing… to the point that Chuuya gets a headache just by thinking about such possibilities…). Dazai has made further arguments about how the best way to pamper Chuuya would be to make sure that Chuuya’s worries are fucked out of his mind so thoroughly without him lifting a finger.

…So, Chuuya’s here, waiting for Dazai to just go ahead and do something about it, aside from just pressing hot iron stamps courtesy of his eyes against his skin. The truly great thing about the fact that today’s the first day of their winter vacation is that Chuuya doesn’t have to endure the pitying looks from their classmates about the sorry state of his neck that looks more akin to the aftermath of wild animal attacks. Truly pitying—it’s a small saving grace that they don’t know the state of Chuuya’s chest, back and thighs, which manage to look even worse, as Dazai, unsurprisingly, has a fixation on marking Chuuya up.

“I’ll take care of everything,” Dazai promises with a very lewd leer and Chuuya makes a face. “Just trust me.”

“There’s nothing trustworthy about a pervert,” Chuuya fires back, though he doesn’t manage to suppress the full-body shiver he has when Dazai curls over him like a deadly panther, all fluid efficiency of a predator. Dexterous hands unbutton Chuuya’s shirt deftly, the fabric separating like sliced butter to expose Chuuya’s torso to the cooler air—something that only makes it more evident how hot he’s feeling. Dazai angles it so that his left hand’s blunt fingernails scrape a dull-red line from Chuuya’s collarbones down to his abs, to the scattering of hair forming a reddish arrow of-sorts pointing to his hips. Chuuya hisses and he feels his abdomen twist and coil from the contact.

“Mm, is that so?”

Dazai doesn’t seem bothered by the ‘pervert’ accusation, mostly because he has fully embraced such things a long time ago. Not that Chuuya has the high ground on this—urgh, not just because he’s shorter, damn it!—because it’s usually Chuuya who gives in and shoves Dazai in dark alleyways to kiss him senseless after watching a late-night cinema showing or a date that ends near midnight. To be fair, a lot of those times are because Dazai goads him to losing control, by teasing Chuuya with a footjob underneath a restaurant table, by foregoing bandages so he can display the hickeys on his neck, by letting out obscene moans when they share a particularly sumptuous dessert.

…Sometimes, it’s because Dazai will pause as they walk back home, hand-in-hand, and just smile, as though caught off-guard by the fact that Chuuya has deigned him worthy of his affections.

Chuuya comes back to his current reality when an outwardly placid Dazai very slowly drags the shirt off Chuuya’s skin, tracing each patch of revealed skin like he’s making a mental blueprint of every pore, ridge or bump. At this point, Chuuya’s not going to be surprised if he suddenly wakes up to a life-sized realistic marionette carbon-copy of himself, with how intently Dazai seems to be in knowing each inch of his skin.

Chuuya tries his best to keep still, remaining seated on the bed, his legs outstretched and Dazai seated on top of his thighs.

Dazai alternates rubbing Chuuya’s skin with the pads of his fingers and the scrape of his nails, starting from Chuuya’s right-hand fingers, to the spread of his palms, the jut of his wrists, the expanse of his forearms, the dip of his elbow, the slight swell of his biceps, the line of his triceps, the valley on his armpits, the ball of his shoulders, the stretch of his collarbones, the column of his neck, then down on the same trajectory for his left-hand side. Gooosebumps raise along the way, tiny prickles of skin sensitive to the gentle, almost reverent handling. Dazai raises his left hand and stares at his fingertips, as though memorizing even his fingerprints.

That kind of steady dedication, Dazai’s complete focus zooming in on him… Chuuya’s toes curl, his entire body breaking out into a light layer of sweat from the steady heat that burns inside him.

Dazai continues his exploration, pushing Chuuya slightly back so he can recline against the pillow fortress against the headboard. Both of his hands start from the rabbiting pulse on his neck, before very slowly dragging down against his chest, taking time to slowly tease his nipples into pebbled hardness, the skin surrounding them a faint pink from all the rubbing. Light, ticklish touches trace Chuuya’s ribs, fingers tracing curved lines from the sides to the center of torso, doing it all over again for each rib. Those touches grow harder and more insistent when they’re dragging fingernails against each defined dip of abdominal muscle, Chuuya’s breath hitching as Dazai’s fingers go lower and lower.

And because Dazai is a shitty mackerel, he simply teases the waistline of his pants, scratching a looping line around his hips. Dazai’s fingertips gather the light sheen of sweat and distributes it with each sweep, leaving behind tingling sensations that’s a little too sensual to be considered ticklish. Thumbs dip in to tease at his bellybutton, before those hands return to playing with his nipples, pinching, stretching, flicking all over them.

Chuuya’s pants start to become tighter and Dazai lets out a very satisfied smirk as he grinds forward against it, delight on his face as he attains friction against Chuuya’s clothes.

And then the pressure is gone, Dazai squatting over him while still looking rather dignified, undoing the buttons and the zipper on Chuuya’s pants quickly so he can pull it off his legs. Dazai avoids brushing directly against his boxers-covered groin, content on running spider-like spindles of touches over his inner thighs, his quads, the back of his knee, his calf, his shin, his heel, his soles, his tiptoes. Dazai doesn’t leave any part of his skin untouched, as he settles himself at the foot of the bed, right where Chuuya’s feet are.

Dazai’s eyes have a worrying glint on them.

Chuuya doesn’t get a chance to control his breathing, before Dazai lifts his right foot and presses it against his face. Dazai’s warm breath is ticklish against his soles.

“I’ll make sure that Chuuya is really clean,” Dazai says impishly, fluttering his eyelashes as he starts giving out kitten-licks to Chuuya’s feet, that pink tongue nimbly going in-between his toes, his toes going inside that mouth that always says an alarming number of shitty things that are always guaranteed to increase Chuuya’s heartrate. Dazai doesn’t do it in half-measures, making sure that he lavishes the same amount of attention to each toe individually, practically lapping all over his feet and encasing it in stickiness that only exacerbates the temperature difference between his body and the room they’re in.

Chuuya tries to keep his expression as close to neutral as possible, even if it’s really hard not to jerk in surprise or pleasure when Dazai plays with his nerve endings by drumming his fingers all over his feet, hitting pressure points that simultaneously make him excited and relaxed.

…Goddamn it, he saw Dazai reading up on acupuncture the other day. He should have known that the other’s idle curiosity would be used for his downfall!

“You’re… actually slobbering all over me,” Chuuya manages to gasp out, because Dazai’s fear-slash-hatred of dogs is one of the most adorable things about him. To think that someone with enough brains to rule the world if he so wished can be defeated by a tiny Chihuahua… an actual Chihuahua even, not just Dazai mangling Chuuya’s name to sound like a dog’s breed. And because it always bears pointing out: “Like a dog.”

Dazai rolls his eyes and speaks against his calf, creating rippling sensations from the vibrations of his words. He continues the reverent treatment of kissing and licking his way up his leg, lavishing an inordinate amount of attention on his quads. Dazai even places his face between his thighs, bracketing his hands around Chuuya’s legs and closing them in, like there’s nothing more wonderful than getting his head crushed like a walnut by Chuuya’s thighs.

It’s pretty weird—in the same way that a lot of things about Dazai are weird. They always have the side-effect of making Chuuya flush in pleasure as he accommodates it. Dazai rubs his nose against his skin as he starts nipping small, ant-like bites all over his inner thighs, Chuuya now openly panting as he runs his fingers all over Dazai’s scalp.

Because Dazai is pretty childish a lot of times, Chuuya makes sure to be generous in his praises of the (rare) good deeds Dazai does. He’s been hoping that this system of nagging at Dazai when he’s being annoying and praising him when he’s being good will work, but, well, it’s been like that for the entirety of their relationship and Chuuya’s pretty much given up on trying to stop Dazai’s whirlwind antics.

“That’s good,” Chuuya offers the encouragement as Dazai completes yet another rosette-like hickey bloom on his skin. “You’re doing really well…”

Chuuya feels Dazai’s face heat up between his legs, as Dazai’s eyes laugh at him, as though to tell him that he knows that Chuuya is playing to his wanton delight in receiving praise from him—someone who’s never been properly caught in his thrall, at least not in the way that he’s snagged everyone else’s almost-mindless adoration. Dazai knows and he doesn’t care, apparently, because he lets out shameless moans whenever Chuuya rubs at his scalp while murmuring praises for his skill at making Chuuya lose his mind.

It feels like hours, the way Dazai ends up covering his entire front—sans his boxers-covered groin, that is—with kiss-marks. Dazai, who’s never been the best when it comes to stamina or endurance, doesn’t look like he’s lost energy. Unbelievably, he looks even more energized, by the time that he sits back and admires his handiwork. Chuuya’s skin is a mingle of sweat and saliva, a combination that is pretty gross in theory. In reality, it is also pretty gross, but there’s an added sense of being so thoroughly marked that adds an obscene amount of enjoyment in being covered in body fluids.

It’s very, very irrational and Chuuya loves it.

Dazai’s tugging at him, positioning him on his stomach, so that his back is freed-up for Dazai’s exploration. Dazai oh-so-helpfully props up his hips with a pillow, raising his ass and giving him something to rut against. The backs of his legs have already been thoroughly kissed, so Dazai moves up and settles over the back of his thighs, curving his body forward so that he’s rubbing his chest over Chuuya’s back and ass.

Slithering like an undulating snake, Dazai wiggles and wriggles on top of him, sweeping palms over his shoulderblades, gently exploring the planes of his back. And then Dazai moves higher, putting pressure against the knots on his upper back, fingers pressing at various points to loosen up his muscles.

“Unnn,” Chuuya ends up moaning as Dazai presses down on a particularly hard knot. It truly is one of Dazai’s more useful talents, even if it’s usually given in a less arousing situation. Dazai’s very good at giving out relaxing massages, after all—though it’s probably in tandem with the fact that he’s also very good at causing headaches that need relaxing massages as solutions.

In this case though, Dazai apparently has oil that smells a bit like incense. It almost gives out a feeling of—

With a voice silky with desire, Dazai hops on to his train of thought and asks, “Like this, isn’t it just like I’m worshipping you in a temple?”

Chuuya moans again, Dazai digging his thumbs at a spot just behind his heart, where there’s a knot that disappears from the force of Dazai’s insistent rubbing.

“You… have a pretty strange idea of temple worship,” Chuuya eventually manages to gasp out, as Dazai leans down and leaves him a bite per segment of his spine, tracing each tiny arc with pinpricks of red. This is done all while Dazai’s oiled hands are busy sweeping out like fanned wings, rubbing the tension out of his muscles, leaving Chuuya with a boneless, pliant body.

It’s a heady mix of arousal and relaxation, both sides harmonizing with each other. Chuuya knows that his cock is hard, but it doesn’t feel like he has to rush reaching his climax, so his body is satisfied with infrequent thrusts against the pillow under him.

…Ah, damn it. Now, even his cock apparently has a Pavlovian response to Dazai too, knowing that it will get taken care of, somehow, as long as Dazai is there. Chuuya takes a moment to curse the fact that his body is too quick to believe Dazai.

The moment quickly passes when Dazai slowly pulls down his boxers, biting hungrily at the just-revealed swell of his buttocks. Chuuya jolts when Dazai gives him a particularly harsh bite.

“O-Oi! Stop leaving your teeth’s imprints on my ass!”

Dazai’s laughter is obvious from the way his body shakes, but he tries for an exaggeratedly seductive, “But you make me so hungry, Chuu-Chuu~♪”

“Eat shit and die, you fucker.”

“I’d rather eat something else,” Dazai says with a wriggle of his eyebrows that Chuuya feels against his asscheeks, and that’s really all the warning Chuuya gets, because Dazai’s tongue starts licking around his hole. Dazai keeps his hands roaming around his lower back, into the dips of his tailbone, pinching at the sensitive skin where his ass meets his thighs—keeps them away from his hole, which is completely serviced by Dazai’s mouth. Dazai keeps Chuuya guessing with his rhythm, alternating between poking inside with the tip of his tongue, laving his opening using the width of his tongue, letting the edge of his teeth gently catch on the rim as though he’s about to be devoured as a full-course meal.

And because they’ve always been in-sync, Dazai murmurs his words against his now-twitching hole, “Chuuya’s more like an osechi ryori, though…”

Chuuya ends up chortling against the bedsheets. It has the bonus effect of hiding his face, because being compared to the multi-tiered New Year’s meal shouldn’t make him so happy, okay?! “Does this mean that you’ll actually have the self-control to only fuck me on New Year’s?”

“Ahaha, nope~♫” Dazai singsongs, then finally lets his fingers probe into his ass, using two index fingers to pry him open in slow motions, crooking them against the ball of nerves inside him. Chuuya shudders at the sudden spike of sensation, then Dazai starts rubbing at his inner walls, as though to calm him down.

Very typical of Dazai, to embark on this brand of cruelty—tapping against his prostate to electrify him with pleasure then retreating to build him up, before doing it all over again. Chuuya’s pretty sure that his cock’s now purpling from all this teasing. He’s also pretty sure that Dazai would let him cum, if he asks for it—but he’s also quite curious as to how far Dazai will take this. After all, Dazai’s never been able to defeat him on anything related to stamina and endurance.

Time passes by in some sort of vortex around them. Has it just been a couple of minutes? Half-an-hour? An entire day? The curtains are drawn presumably for insulation purposes, but it also has the added bonus of maintaining the illusion of them being in some untouchable world. Like Chuuya’s been swallowed by the black hole that is Dazai—placing them in a construct where time, space, light—everything else ceases to exist. Everything else, aside from the two of them.

The single-minded determination by which Dazai relentlessly abuses his prostate and soothes his walls. The hyper-focus of Dazai branding his skin with the force of his biting kisses. The kind of reverence that Dazai treats him with, like he’s being placed at a pedestal that Dazai can only supplicate himself on.

And it’s not even just today.

Ever since Dazai had kissed him that fateful day in the airport, it almost feels like Dazai has been trying to make amends—no, not that. It’s more like the dam has overflown and Dazai’s idea of a solution is to just destroy the dam and let everything leak out, flooding the entirety of their relationship. Dazai is still very Dazai in his teasing and his antics and his general desire to coax the nerve to burst on his temple, but it’s also done in a very gentle way, like he thinks Chuuya is incredibly precious so he’ll use the full arsenal of his tricks just to keep him close.

It makes Chuuya feel—

“Chuuya,” Dazai suddenly whispers his name in a voice that sounds broken with desire, and that’s more than enough to make Chuuya’s back curve like a bow, the muscles underneath his skin stretched taut, before unfurling into a more relaxed state, his toes curling against the messy bedsheets, his cock twitching and jerking as it spills release against his stomach and the pillowcase. Chuuya’s not sure what kind of words have slipped past his mouth as his vision whites-out, but it’s probably some mangled version of Dazai’s name.

Dazai continues fingering him through the aftershocks of his orgasm, drawing out a series of whines from his throat and trickles of drool from the edge of his mouth as he pants, open-mouthed, his cheeks sliding against sticky sheets as he’s rocked in a steady rhythm against the fingers on his ass. Said fingers continue to maintain the rocking motions, as Dazai shifts so that he’s rubbing his own erection against the spot where Chuuya’s reddened rim meets his fingers, before sliding it down to slide against his perineum, then forward so that he’s burning his hardness against Chuuya’s spent cock. There’s no frenetic frenzy to his actions, as though he has all the time in the world, as though he’d be more than happy to just keep on fucking the space between Chuuya’s oiled thighs, teasing Chuuya back into arousal.

Dazai and patience… He’s only ever patient when he’s working towards a goal. Most of Dazai’s daily whims happen in hummingbird-quick pace, but on the things he truly wants…

Chuuya shudders at that thought and Dazai senses this, easing down on the pace even more. Torturously slow, Dazai seems to take a full minute with each thrust, spreading his pearly precum from his ass down to his thighs and cock. Added to the sweat and saliva from earlier, to the oil that Dazai’s been very generous in distributing all over his body… everything is very slick, to the point of messiness, but there’s something really, really appealing with the fact that they’re just wallowing in their own actions, uncaring of everything else.

Chuuya’s mind is just a steady iteration of Dazai’s name, of thoughts about Dazai, of Dazai’s scent and touch—just Dazai, Dazai, Dazai.

It’s exactly what Dazai’s been aiming for, but Dazai’s always been an overachiever, hasn’t he?

Dazai takes his fingers out very slowly, the squelching sounds pronounced even over Chuuya’s panting. Chuuya feels sparks racing all over his body, as he trembles from the aching loss inside him. Chuuya feels Dazai reposition him again, flipping him over gently while kissing all over his neck and jaw. Between the two of them, Dazai’s the one who’s more prone to bellyflopping and generally acting like a deadweight nuisance, but between the very slow tease and very thorough treatment of his ass, Chuuya can’t even lift a finger, with how boneless his body feels.

“See?” Dazai looks very satisfied, even if his eyes are practically overflowing with greed as he stares at the redness on Chuuya’s cheeks from being rocked all over the sheets. Trust Dazai to have a particular preference for his ‘blissfully fucked out’ look, really. “Just let me take care of you~♪”

Chuuya can’t even roll his eyes or scoff at Dazai. Though he does let out a rather pitiful whine when Dazai quickly jumps off the bed and goes to the bathroom. There’s a smell of mint when Dazai comes back in record time—it’s one of the pros in having such a cramped studio apartment, really. Dazai likes to literally kiss his ass and it’s always very helpful if he’s within the vicinity of a mouthwash before they proceed to other activities.

Chuuya’s tongue tingles when Dazai licks into his mouth upon returning, Dazai’s hands busy in propping Chuuya up in a reclining position as he kisses away the last two remaining brain cells in Chuuya’s mind.

Dazai then proceeds to drive Chuuya mad, tracing back the path that his fingers and hands traversed earlier when exploring Chuuya’s body, but this time—using his mouth. Dazai layers brackets of teeth imprints over Chuuya’s biceps, sucks an all-natural choker in vivid purplish-red around his neck, designs a V-shaped neckline made entirely of hickeys. Dazai doesn’t heed Chuuya’s body bucking wildly when he makes a show of licking into his armpits, or when he sucks Chuuya’s nipples to half-painful overstimulation.

Chuuya’s vision hasn’t quite recovered from his previous orgasm yet, still hazy around the edges as stars keep on exploding right on his eyes from the onslaught of sensation. The only thing he can see is Dazai’s face—with sweaty hair that’s sticking up in all directions from Chuuya’s hands anchoring themselves there and digging against his scalp. Dazai’s focus zeroed in on mapping Chuuya’s body using his own body.

Dazai’s love for him, never been said in a straightforward ‘I love you’, but ever-present in each breath that he takes.

…It’s almost a game between them, at this point.

Chuuya likes seeing Dazai’s look of rapturous wonder each morning when he ensures that the first words out of his mouth are always ‘I love you, Osamu’ even on days that he wakes up because Dazai is doodling on his face or on days after nights spent arguing about how Dazai’s trying to trick Chuuya to marrying him by slipping in marriage registers in his assignments. He always ensures that he says ‘I love you, Osamu’ before they sleep too—but that’s usually followed by a ‘shut the fuck up, stop clinging to me, we need to wake up early tomorrow, if you don’t behave, I’ll let Kouyou-anesan castrate you!’, so it very rarely is the last set of words he says every night.

Dazai, on the other hand, admits his love freely using other means. He doesn’t have an ounce of shame in his very tall body, which means that they’re practically a local attraction on campus, seeing as they’re always prone to PDA. Dazai is also very open in threatening people to stay the hell away from Chuuya, citing actual laws and regulations that he somehow is able to bend to his logic.

It’s obvious in his random doodles and messages left in sticky-notes all over their apartment—most of them drawings of Chuuya’s face superimposed on dogs and fairies and sheep. It’s on the cascade of desserts and coffee that appear whenever Chuuya’s stressed about a new mock trial. It’s on the fact that Dazai complains about his fashion sense all the time, but is very diligent in helping Chuuya clean his shoes and bring his more delicate clothes to the dry-cleaner. It’s on the massages that Dazai bestows upon him, on the braids that pull his hair away from his face when he’s too busy studying, on the way that whatever he’s craving for nearly-magically appears in their apartment as soon as possible.

Dazai’s always found it hard to just straightforwardly admit what he wants to say. And it works for them, because Chuuya can understand him anyway.

…So Chuuya’s vision clears, once he sees Dazai bite a red circle around his left ring finger.

Chuuya’s heart thumps even faster, compared to running a marathon, compared to receiving a black-out orgasm. Dazai’s eyes are staring straight at him, as he bites another red imprint purposefully on the same area. The pain from the bite is drowned by the surge of emotions bursting from Chuuya’s gut.

He can’t even punch Dazai for not knowing how to propose properly, like a decent human being.

All he can do is keep his eyes wide open as he stutters out loops of ‘yes, okay, you shitty fuck, of course I’ll say yes’. It’s all he can do to stop from half-sobbing when Dazai finally sinks into him, ever-so-slowly. Dazai holds on to his left hand, their bodies rocking along in gentle waves, Dazai rotating his hips in half-arcs as though he’s stirring Chuuya from the inside. The slow burn of the intrusion into his body makes him feel very full, Dazai’s cock heavy and hot inside him as it keeps on pressing against his prostate. Dazai pulls out, but doesn’t do it completely, leaving the head of his cock stretching Chuuya’s hole, before slowly driving it back in. The unhurried process makes it so that Chuuya can almost feel each millimeter of his inner walls fluttering as they squeeze around that hardness.

Dazai leans forward and licks Chuuya’s lips, keeps on licking it as Chuuya loses himself to the sensation of getting fucked so thoroughly.

After kissing him for a very long time, Dazai says with a sigh, “red velvet lips”, following it up with a, “hair softer than a squash pie splashed with orange liqueur…”

Chuuya blinks and before he can protest about not being interested in getting literally gobbled up, Dazai starts waxing poetic about the desserts that he considers comparable to Chuuya.

“Peach-vanilla mille-feuille skin…”

“Sakura-mochi blush…”

“Asscheeks plumper than a Hakuto jelly…”

Dazai continues in that vein, murmuring his compliments into the heated air between them, all while continuing to wreak havoc on Chuuya’s five senses. His sight is filled with the intensity of Dazai’s eyes; his hearing is drowned by the rabbiting of his pulse. His nose is bombarded by the scent of their lovemaking; his tongue is heavy with the taste of desire. His skin feels like they’re being peeled off of him, Dazai destroying him piece by piece so he can get to his heart, then rebuilding him anew, everything back in place because of how well they know each other.

Each slide forward makes Chuuya hyper-aware of the shape of Dazai’s cock, each drag backward lets Chuuya feel the ridges of that throbbing underside vein. Every hit against his prostate is deliberate—maybe it is possible, for Chuuya to burn from inside-out, a wanton consumption that will result in the explosion of a star.

And Dazai will be there to swallow it all, ensure that nobody else but him gets to witness the supernova.

“Go on,” Dazai coaxes, the blush high on his cheeks betraying his efforts at holding on. “There’s no need to be stingy, I plan to not let you out of bed until you’ve cummed at least four times.”

“You bastard,” Chuuya says with a breathless laugh. With how busy they’ve been with exams and projects, they haven’t been able to really spend a long time in bed together. Trust Dazai to pounce on the very first opportunity he finds, really. “Whatever did I do to deserve such a shameless jerk like you?”

Dazai’s grin is impish as he responds, “Mm, I wonder what I did to deserve a Chuuyahua like you too…”

…Despite that mischievous, impertinent set of words… well. They’ve known each other for a long while, after all. So Chuuya musters all of his strength and raises the upper half of his body so he can bop Dazai on the forehead. Only, the angle is a bit off, so they end up bumping noses instead.

“You acted like an insolent brat who insulted my friends,” Chuuya reminds Dazai of their first meeting, whispering the words directly against Dazai’s mouth. “You were so annoying, I knew I had to punch you at least a million times.”

Dazai chuckles and presses down on Chuuya, collapsing flat on top of him while still being inside him. They exchange a couple more kisses, seesawing short, open-mouthed ones that end with lingering pecks against the sides of their lips.

“A million sounds like a whole lot… why is Chuuya so mean to me?”

“I’ll let it go with one punch a day,” Chuuya negotiates generously, his heartbeat stuttering even more when realization dawns on Dazai’s face. The giddiness there is reflected by the way his cock inside him grows—harder, heavier, hotter. Still, he soldiers on, because he’s not about to be outdone by Dazai’s method of simply biting a ring into his finger. “So, you better make sure that you’re around for me to punch you.”

Dazai’s still staring at him in wide-eyed adoration, that Chuuya turns his cheek to the side, averting his gaze, as he adds, “…S-Stupid, shitty mackerel.”

“I’d gladly bear it, even if it’s ten punches per day,” Dazai murmurs solemnly, with enough sincerity in it to make it seem like he’s making a vow. He even says it with his hand splayed out over Chuuya’s heart, like he’d be more than happy to grab the still-beating organ with his own hands if it means they can keep this moment forever.

Chuuya snorts, “Better remember that when I start punching you, then.”

“I’ll never forget,” Dazai promises, then renews his slow and steady fucking. It’s a little bit faster compared to earlier, but given that he’s still very excited from the most recent developments, Chuuya can’t really blame him. Dazai keeps their chests pressed together, driving his entire weight against Chuuya, only moving his lower half as he thrusts in deep.

After that, it doesn’t take long for Chuuya to cum a second time, even though there’s no deliberate pressure against his cock. Coming purely from getting filled and from getting sandwiched—Dazai is very smug about it. Chuuya feels even more boneless as he simply lies down, limp and satiated, lets Dazai do whatever he wants.

…Well, Chuuya gets a slight revenge by clamping down on Dazai’s cock after one thrust that feels deeper than before. He follows it up by saying his time-tested killer line, not even said with a particularly seductive tone, “I love you, Osamu.”

Dazai doesn’t even get a chance to throw him a dirty look for that unfair move, as his hips suddenly spasm as his dick starts spurting his release inside of Chuuya. Since it technically doesn’t involve lifting a finger, Chuuya lazily pumps his hips and squeezes his inner muscles around Dazai, milking him thoroughly.

Dazai, who’s prone to being a chatterbox when it comes to Chuuya, repeatedly calls out Chuuya’s name as he continues thrusting into Chuuya as he rides out his orgasm.

Chuuya lets Dazai flop into him, fully spent.

…At least, that’s what Chuuya thought.

After a few minutes, Dazai lifts his sweaty face up from Chuuya’s equally-sticky chest and grins roguishly at Chuuya.

Chuuya feels his heart thump hard inside his ribs at that look.

Oh no.

The grin turns brazen, as Dazai starts to harden again inside him.

“Ah, that was just the appetizer,” Dazai says cheekily, as he makes circling motions with his hips as though to evenly distribute his seed inside Chuuya. The squelching sounds are even more pronounced this time, because aside from the copious amount of oil that Dazai has used for lubrication, Chuuya’s insides now also have Dazai’s release. Chuuya feels liquid leaking out from his ass with each move from Dazai. With a tone that makes it sound as though he’s saying something very reasonable, he says, raising an eyebrow at Chuuya, “The osechi ryori has a lot of other courses too, hmm?”

And it’s at that point, that Chuuya starts to genuinely fear that he’s going to die from getting too spoiled with too much sex.

…Well.

He does end up dying little deaths multiple times, as he’s fucked out of his mind, many, many times afterward. He does end up being unable to leave the bed, though that’s mostly because his limbs have been turned to useless jellies, something that not even his physical prowess can resolve.

Dazai does end up massaging him again to soothe his sore body—which leads to more rounds of sex.

…The cycle of their lives, the constant push and pull between them—Chuuya revels in it.

…Well.

Not so much the fact that he has to field constant calls from Atsushi two days later, their kouhai complaining about the promise to have a double date being forgotten once again. Not so much the fact that his family just shake their head at his sorry state once they visit Yokohama for Christmas, his parents grilling Dazai about color schemes for weddings.

“I bet that I will be the judge who’d make it legal for same-sex couples to marry here,” Dazai tells him as they huddle together against the cold winter night, waiting for the shrine to start ringing the bells to welcome the new year.

“You’re on,” Chuuya accepts the bet and holds Dazai’s hand tighter.

And that’s how they spend the rest of their lives.

Together.

Chapter Text

some references!

+ instead of Einstein’s theory of relativity, i used Newton’s Laws of Classical Motion & gravitation, because Newton’s the one who’s credited with “discovering” gravity due to a dead apple falling on him

+ red tulips: “declaration of love”, “eternal love”
+ Yokohama’s MUTEKIROU menu! the dessert they make for Dazai’s birthday is based on the official soukoku dessert in the Dead Apple collab café ;) ingredients taken from the website! the other desserts/food mentioned are from here: [1] [2]

+ yukata designs from Mayoi… which I’ve just noticed… they’re actually matching…
+ Tanabata Customs: (a) writing wishes on paper and hanging them on a bamboo; (b) it’s a festival that celebrates the once-a-year-meeting between star-crossed lovers separated by the Milky Way

+ JP High School Curriculum, Schedule & National Center Test Schedule/Subject Coverage & Tokyo University’s Academic Calendar & Application/Exam Schedule
+ “Orange Dwarf Stars” are types of stars that are more stable/have more longevity than the Sun and are therefore the stars that are considered the most favorable for sustaining life ;) (so yes, it is a backhanded compliment, because Dazai is calling Chuuya a smol bean, but a smol bean who can give life LOL) + “Black hole” – Chuuya’s purple prose aside, the stuff he thinks about relating black holes to Dazai are actually true ;) so yes, it’s also a backhanded compliment LOL

+ “daisuki” = “i like you/it a lot” … the “da” in “daisuki” & “dazai” uses the same character (大)
+ 1,000,000 days = 2,739+ years