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2019-03-05
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tie our hearts together

Summary:

A powerful Ability compels Yokohama’s citizens to stick close to the person or object they want to protect the most.

Dazai lets out a whine, “Why is nobody trying to get into my personal space?!”

“I’m sorry Dazai-san, I guess everyone here thinks you can handle things on your own?”

[in Russian!] [in Vietnamese!]

Notes:

something written really quickly, as i deal with the realization that i have 986 (now 985) files in my BSD wip folder ahahaha...haha....ha....

dedicated to the lovely million kudos Tay, i hope you had a safe trip home! and that your cat is doing well!!!! thanks for always being so sweet ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

“I have very good intentions! It’s for the sake of world peace and harmony! Like this, everyone is able to see what they hold most dear and they can be in close contact with them!”

The rogue Ability User proclaims such things proudly, seemingly unaware that the creepy mask, the voice-changer and the gloomy background of his video are all seriously undermining the Good Guy image he’s trying to portray.

Despite his PR issues, there’s no doubt that his power is the real deal. His Ability has a city-wide range, managing to compel Yokohama’s citizens to stick close to the person or object they want to protect the most. There are even some shimmering translucent chains to go with it.

Right now, it means that the Agency’s main office is crowded with people.

“We all want to protect this place,” Atsushi says happily, playing with the chain that’s set against his neck, looping outward to the ceilings and around the office. “This Agency is our family, after all.”

Very heartwarming sentiment—which is tainted by the fact that Ranpo is hugging a metal safe filled with snacks, his chains wrapped around said safe. Poe is glued to Ranpo’s back, the chain on his neck attached to the great detective. There’s also Yosano a few desks away, double-checking her stash of finely-curated wine under her desk (which has apparently been modified to be a portable cellar, something that Kunikida is still in shock about). And then, there’s the Tanizaki siblings, chains looped around each other. They could have stayed in their apartment until this all dies down, but Naomi apparently would like to know her coworkers’ attachments for… gossip purposes.

Kenji brings a huge TV set to the middle of the room, the broadcast still looping the proclamation from the Ability User who thinks he’s doing Yokohama a favor for unleashing his Ability upon them.

The broadcast is in a loop, because the Ability has revealed certain… illicit work relationships in the news studio. Instead of doing an infinite commercial break, the news studio decides to just replay the broadcast. A lot of business establishments in Yokohama are similarly affected. The chains’ distance restriction makes it hard to deal with; there are a couple of households where at least five people are stuck together in a Gordian knot.

The government has issued a special announcement, advising citizens to stay inside enclosed spaces to facilitate the Ability’s restrictions, as they haven’t ruled out the possibility of nasty consequences, should they resist against the pull of the chains.

It makes for fairly empty streets where one would usually see the hustle and bustle of a port city.

Atsushi looks outside the window. Despite the eerie emptiness outside, it looks beautiful. There’s faint pillars of white outside. It looks like there’s glimmering snowfall, but instead of snowflakes, there are diamond-like particles that gleam in the summer sunlight. It seems as though it’s the manifestation of the Ability, as the snow-like chains are spread all over Yokohama.

“This is unpleasant,” comes the voice from Atsushi’s right.

…Right.

There’s a coughing man beside him.

Akutagawa—‘I’m only here because I’m the only one who can kill you and because you’re a foolish jinko, I need to keep an eye on you and make sure you don’t get killed by someone else’—Ryuunosuke. And of course, because there’s Akutagawa, it means that there’s a Higuchi—‘I can’t leave senpai alone, what kind of kouhai would I be if I left him in the crutches of the Agency?!’—Ichiyou attached to him. Akutagawa’s sister is also inside the Agency, but she’s on the far corner of the room, blending quite well with the potted plant. If not for Dazai occasionally chatting with her and the glimmering chain floating in the air connecting her neck to her brother’s wrist, she’d be invisible.

“You are here because of your desire to protect Atsushi,” Kyouka points out without mercy to Akutagawa’s blood pressure or pride or budding tsundere tendencies. “If you wish to leave, know that I’m enough to protect Atsushi.”

“Just because we’re h-h-here!” Lucy’s cheeks are as red as her hair. “It doesn’t m-mean anything! It’s not like I actually l-l-like you!”

Lucy’s chain connects her neck to Atsushi’s leg, overlapping with Kyouka’s. Atsushi knows that he should feel grateful that he has a number of people who want to protect him, but somehow, with even Kenji’s chain looped to him (“Mm, but Atsushi-kun looks like he’s going to get need all the help he can get to survive being a city boy!”), Atsushi just feels like he needs to step up his game in being self-sufficient.

On the other side of the room, Kunikida is busy internally sobbing that the President is apparently stranded in a cat café. He keeps on trying to justify it, muttering things about ‘Shachou trusts us’ and ‘we’re not ranked lower than cats in his heart are we’ and ‘not that I have anything against cats’ and ‘there have been reports of the Port Mafia’s Boss being spotted near that area too ’. Kunikida’s neck is chained similarly to Atsushi, looping around the Agency office and looped twice around his desk. His notebook and his office stationery are apparently very, very important to him.

…Simply put, the entirety of Yokohama, including the government agents and Agency members who are being counted on to solve this rogue Ability User case, is unable to move around much.

Except for one person.

Dazai slumps gracelessly over his desk, because his favorite couch is being occupied by the Akutagawa-Atsushi-Kyouka-Lucy-Kenji chain.

“You look like you’re enjoying the cozy couch,” Dazai points out with a mournful sigh. And then, he lets out a whine, “Why is nobody trying to get into my personal space?!”

It’s the question he’s been muttering about for the past couple of minutes. There’s no chain on his neck—because No Longer Human has cancelled it—but there are also no chains connecting to him. He’s been touching everyone’s chains and they’ve determined that No Longer Human cannot cancel the chains from other people. They have to find the rogue Ability User so Dazai can cancel his Ability directly from the source, but given that the only mobile member of the Agency is sulking…

“I’m sorry Dazai-san,” Atsushi tries to placate his mentor, “I guess everyone here thinks you can handle things on your own?”

Akutagawa’s still trying to saw off the chain connecting him to Atsushi using Rashomon. As though he’d be more than happy to transfer the other end of his chain to Dazai.

Dazai whines and huffs and puffs from his spot, unwilling to move. Kunikida keeps on trying to punt him with pens to get him to get to work, but given his attachment to his desk, the angle is very off. “This is so unfair! I’m such a catch though?! Why would nobody want to protect my handsome face and banging body?! This Ability must be really, really stupid!”

Suddenly, the television broadcast ends the loop of the rogue Ability User. There’s a long chain of employees crowded on the news anchor’s desk, but the lead newscaster seems to be taking it in a stride.

“We bring you breaking news! Aerial footage of Yokohama shows that there’s a tiny floating dot over the city where the chains are converging! Could this be the location of the Ability User?!”

The broadcast then pans to the aerial footage.

Dazai lifts his head from the desk to look at the television set that’s been plonked in the middle of the office so that everyone can still get updated even if they’re attached to various offices surfaces.

“…Oh.”

Atsushi looks quizzically at his mentor. Even with his tiger’s enhanced senses, all he can see is a tiny black dot surrounded by mist-like clouds.

Dazai immediately jumps to his feet, fleeing from the Agency’s office without another word.

-

Thirty minutes later, Dazai is on board a helicopter that he’s strong-armed Ango into providing for him.

(The fact that he tracked Ango nearly face-planted to a familiar tombstone… well, it didn’t make him feel any more forgiving. But he mercifully didn’t kick Ango even though he found him in such a wonderful position, which was very generous of him, really.)

But yes, a helicopter. He’s flying over the spot that’s been shown on the news footage.

Compared to the ground, where the chains look like snowfall, the surroundings here look almost a blinding white, as the countless chains are emanating from a tiny, tiny source.

“You really are such a dog,” Dazai says with a shake of his head, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard over the roar of the helicopter blades. He tilts the helicopter to an ill-advised angle; if not for the seatbelt, he’d be falling off from his seat. “But your taste in collars could use some work. Didn’t anyone tell you that glittering white doesn’t match mafia black?”

Nakahara Chuuya, the tiny dot in the aerial footage, is floating over Yokohama, countless glimmering chains splitting from the collar on his neck. The chains are spread out over the city, enclosing it in a dome-like fashion—as though to protect the entirety of the city inside the beautiful snow-like cage.

Nakahara Chuuya also looks very pissed off. “Why the hell are you hanging out here, you shitty mackerel?! Go and find the bastard who’s causing this already!”

“Hmm, I thought about it, but I wanted to commemorate this first?” Dazai grins as he takes pictures of Chuuya being suspended over Yokohama. “This is the one and only time Chuuya can be so tall, after all!”

“Are you fucking kidding me, I can always use my Ability to fly—” Chuuya cuts himself off as Dazai laughs in victory. “Oi! You bastard! Stop calling me short! I will kick your ass!”

“How can you?” With one hand on the controls and another hand on his phone, Dazai adds a filter to Chuuya’s pictures. Dog-ears look quite fetching on the chibikko, after all. “You’re too busy pretending to be a goody-goody two shoes wanting to protect the entire city!”

“Pretending to be a good guy is your expertise,” Chuuya retorts snidely.

Dazai barrels on, “Not even Atsushi-kun had such a wide range of things he wants to protect! Are you trying to oust him in being the angelic main character? Being the hero will not make you taller, you know?”

“Ha?! Main character?! Hero?!” Chuuya sputters in rage. His face looks red, almost like his hair. It’s probably sunburn at work, given that he’s been floating for a few hours already. “I’m a Port Mafia Executive! I have no interest in those things!”

“Yes, yes, yell it louder for the news choppers above us~” Dazai keeps his phone focused on Chuuya. The helicopter tilts again, but Dazai isn’t worried. If the helicopter falls, the blades would hit Chuuya first, after all.

…not that Chuuya would allow such a thing to happen.

“Why is Chuuya protecting the whole Yokohama though?” Dazai asks after a few moments of Chuuya’s rage simmering below him. “Is there a hat convention or wine tasting or something?”

That is really disgusting and also par for the course with Chuuya.

Dazai peers at the places below them. From up high, Yokohama looks small, like it can fit in the palm of his hands. On one side, the port area where the Port Mafia’s headquarters are. On another, the area where the Agency and the dorms are. On the other, the remains of the tower where Shibusawa and Dostoevsky tried to erase all of Yokohama’s Ability Users. On one corner, Cone Street and the blown-up research facility that once housed the Arahabaki Experiments.

There’s the bar where he first shared a drink with Chuuya, if only to trick the man into getting so drunk that he’d lower his guard and allow Dazai to ride with him on his tacky pink bike and cause it to crash. There’s the book shop where Dazai bought five sets of flowery stationeries and calligraphy pens so he could write fake love letters to harass Chuuya with. There’s his usual pharmacy, where he buys boxes of bandages using Chuuya’s card that he swiped beforehand, with its easy-to-guess PIN and easy-to-read owner. There’s the family restaurant that he’s permanently banned from, from offering so many double suicide invitations to their waitresses; the restaurant has such a delightful variety of desserts though, and the manager only lets him in whenever he’s with Chuuya, because the manager has this (very incorrect) theory that Chuuya’s presence tempers his desire to flirt with women.

There’s the grave of the man who’s opened his eyes to a new path in life. There’s the four-walls-and-a-roof that housed him until he’s old enough to limp away from it and never look back. There’s the Agency, the Port Mafia, his past and present.

There’s Yokohama in front of his eyes.

There’s Chuuya, who apparently holds everything underneath them dear enough to his heart that he’s chained himself to this city, this city that made him thrive, that made him strong. This city that destroyed any semblance of a normal type of happiness, normal type of humanity, normal type of being normal, for him. This city where he’s been betrayed, the city where he’s been brought to the brink of death so many times.

The proof is right here.

That Chuuya, a chibi sheepdog, too tiny like a fluttering fairy, has a heart big enough to love the entire city, with all its brilliance, with all its flaws.

That despite everything, Chuuya loves—

“…Do you finally get it?” Chuuya’s voice is quiet, but Dazai’s able to hear it over the spinning blades slicing into the wind. Dazai feels his mouth go dry as Chuuya’s eyes seem to sparkle brighter than the chains converging around him. Dazai’s not sure how he managed it, given how frozen he feels, but he’s somehow able to nod. “…Good. Now go and find the culprit so I can go back down already, damn it!”

Dazai nods again, wide-eyed. He throws a bottle of sunscreen towards Chuuya’s forehead, but even with all his strength, it’s not enough to hide the wary gentleness in his gesture.

-

By sunset, everything is back to normal. The rogue Ability User found from their hiding place under the sewers, captured by government agents led by Ango who still has some grass and soil on his suit. Everyone is now free to move again, though the realization about the things that are really important to them… well. It’s not something that’s easy to ignore.

Dazai picks the lock of a penthouse suite that he hasn’t been welcome to, in quite some time.

…Well.

He’s never actually been welcomed here, but it hasn’t stopped him from sneaking in anyway.

As expected, there’s today’s clothes on the laundry hamper. And today’s hero soaking in a bathtub wide enough for four tall people. By the edge of the bath, there’s a tub of aloe, a squeezed-out tube of soothing cream and six different types of moisturizers.

Only Chuuya’s nose and closed eyes are visible, the rest of his body soaked in a bubbly bath that smells of roses.

He’s had hours to think, but Dazai is still not sure what the right words are, in this situation.

So he falls back to their usual.

“You’ve gone all out,” Dazai says as soon as he closes the bathroom door shut. “Just how bad is your sunburn, really? Or did you overreact again? Tsk, you’re such a vain fairy.”

Chuuya doesn’t even bother opening his eyes to glare at the intruder. “Aren’t you the one overreacting?”

“Me?”

Chuuya shifts so that his entire face is above the water. His cheeks and chin are very red, as is his jawline and the edges of his neck. “Why are you here, shitty Dazai?”

“Can’t I check up on my dog?”

“No.” Chuuya lazily opens one eye. “Urgh. Why are you making a face like that?”

“What kind of face? A handsome one?”

“The one that looks like a kicked puppy,” Chuuya corrects him. The eye closes again, as though it’s painful to keep on looking at Dazai’s pout. “You look disgusting, it makes me want to kick actual puppies, you dick.”

“Tsk, tsk, Chuuya, there’s no need to be mean to your fellow dogs!”

“Pfft, coming from you, Mister-I’d-eat-dog-food-to-spite-dogs?”

“I wouldn’t kick a dog,” Dazai says with a sniff. He’s approaching the bathtub slowly, stopping only until he’s close enough that he can sit down and be on eye-level with Chuuya.

“Of course. You’re scared they’ll bite, aren’t you?”

“I’m not scared of such silly beasts!”

“…Really, it’s a wonder that they still believe you.” Chuuya sounds melancholic, but he looks so beautiful anyway, surrounded by red, water droplets making his skin gleam under the dimmed lights of his opulent bathroom. “Your asshole aura is plenty obvious, after all.”

Dazai bites back the ‘I knew you agreed to being a dog’ that’s on the tip of his tongue. It is a wonder, even to someone of Dazai’s caliber, that Chuuya is capable of loving something that has caused him pain. It doesn’t make sense, especially since Chuuya is someone who has enough power to excise the pain away with one flick of a finger, with one crush of a fist, with one whisper of a blade.

Instead of avoiding such things, such people, such traitorous partners—he accepts them. Understands them. Believes in them.

“…I hate you, Chuuya.” One day, he’ll be able to actually say what he means. “Even if the Ability worked on me, I’d never chain myself to you.”

“Sure,” Chuuya agrees. “I don’t want to be protected by a shitty mackerel anyway. I’d end up doing all the work, given how much your martial arts suck.”

“If it worked on me though…” Dazai murmurs as he reaches out to touch the sunburnt skin on Chuuya’s face. Chuuya doesn’t even flinch. “…I’d probably have floated along with you.”

“Mm.”

“So it’s good,” Dazai says, hushed so that the only thing he can hear is the pounding of his heartbeat. “Because I’d definitely hate getting sunburn.”

Chuuya snorts. “And you call me ‘vain’, huh?”

“Uh-huh. I’m not the one who’s super worried about my dashing looks getting ruined, after all!”

“Is that so? Then get the fuck out of here and leave me to my bath.”

Instead of leaving, Dazai climbs in, clothes and all.

After all, he’s getting better at understanding the things that Chuuya wants to keep close.

-
end

Notes:

extras:

+ chuuya wants to protect the entirety of yokohama, because it’s the city that means so much to him and to dazai
+ kouyou is there on the agency rooftop, because she doesn’t want to pressure kyouka with her presence
+ best raccoon karl is tied to poe’s head
+ hirotsu-san is the only person left in the PM headquarters
+ mori claims that he’s bound to elise, so he can walk wherever he wants, even if it means being near a certain cat café

+ ango gets a bottle of whiskey delivered to his workplace the next day and his subordinates hold a celebration because he’s finally slacking off!!! ango mayhaps cried a little bit from being touched from dazai's ‘forgiveness gesture’, but he also cried a lot because it’s not whiskey, it’s actually a weird concoction with chili sauce;;; rip ango

+ atsushi proposes that akutagawa train him one-on-one in hand-to-hand combat so that he’ll be strong enough that akutagawa doesn’t need to worry about him getting killed by someone else; he can’t believe that it actually worked! so he’s always limping to work, because akutagawa doesn’t know how to hold back. AT ALL.

thanks for reading until the end! ♥