Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I was overcome by an impulse to stop time right there and limit the world to what I saw before me.” - The Ruined Map, Kobo Abe

Day 1

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. The cheerful little ditty plays uninterrupted beside the man it is intended to wake, the phone’s vibrations muted by the tatami floor. 

Even without waking, he begins to hum along. 

Forty-five minutes later, Dazai yawns and stretches himself out full-length across the bed, linking his hands together over his head and arching until his shoulders give a satisfying pop. Grabbing his phone, he swipes away the notifications from his irate partner without bothering to look at them, rolls to get off of the mattress, and immediately knocks into the empty bottle of sake and half-empty canned crab that are the remnants of his dinner. He scoops up the mess and tosses it in the trash as he pads across his dorm, feeling quite virtuous about cleaning up for once. The only thing left in the mini-fridge is the now-congealed curry from two days ago, which means a trip to the cafe is in order.

If he goes to the one downstairs from the Agency, Kunikida will sense him immediately--Dazai swears that it’s like an Ability all of its own how Kunikida always knows exactly where to show up to drag him to his desk and begin haranguing him about work. Early on in his employment at the Agency he had a rather paranoid thought that the detective had placed a tracker on him, but after turning everything he owned inside out and sweeping the dorm for cameras, he finally conceded that it was some sort of intuition that made the otherwise predictable man able to hunt him down no matter where he wandered. 

Right now, that interaction sounds exhausting.

Despite the late start, Dazai didn’t sleep particularly well. It was the kind of night where the dark of the room stared back at him, where the weight of his limbs kept him anchored to the bed even as his mind ran laps through past and present mistakes, concerns, fears, losses. It was a rough night in a lifetime of similarly rough nights, in a month of hazy fugue, and the three hours of sleep he finally snatched after dawn broke don’t entirely make up for that. 

Certainly not well enough to start his performance so soon after waking.  

Luckily, there still exist places in Yokohama that don’t expect the mask of the affable detective out of him and also happen to serve caffeine and food that he doesn’t have to force himself to consume. 

The problem is that when he ambles to the rundown little cafe he very clearly called dibs on in his youth, there is a small problem. A very small problem, in fact. Approximately 158 centimeters worth of a problem, once you discount the blatant lies to the contrary, the deliberately clunky shoes, and the tacky hat that is all that Dazai can see from this angle. 

Like his current partner, his previous partner seems to sense his presence immediately, too. 

When Dazai walked past the windows, Chuuya was sitting in the back corner with his head down, fingers braced to his temple as he stared down at his phone indifferently. As soon as Dazai opens the door, though, Chuuya lifts his head from his hand and meets Dazai’s eyes across the room with a faint frown. 

Completely unacceptable.

“Don’t…” Chuuya begins as Dazai approaches, putting a hand up as if to stop him from saying something, which unfortunately for Chuuya was exactly the wrong move because it left his coffee unprotected. And considering they both gained their taste for coffee at the same time and from the same place, it’s exactly how Dazai likes it anyway.

“You are breaking the terms of our agreement,” Dazai answers Chuuya’s long-suffering groan of frustration, after a pointed sip of what is now his coffee as he settles into the chair across from Chuuya.

Chuuya looks good, though a little rumpled. His faded maroon t-shirt looks sinfully soft even with the neck stretched and frayed, like something Chuuya would throw on for a stressful day. It looks intentional and even a little stylish when paired with jeans, his leather jacket, and beneath the line of his choker. He’s dressed for riding. If Dazai were to go searching for it, he knows he would find Chuuya’s prized motorcycle parked nearby.

Resigned to the interruption, Chuuya silences his phone and flips it face down, leaving it to buzz with messages he clearly is ignoring the way Dazai’s ignoring his own work. It makes Dazai’s smirk grow, the edge of the cup pressed against his lips as his words shape the steam drifting up from the coffee.

“I get this place Monday through Thursday. It is very obviously a weekday, so…”

“... ‘so ’ your dumb ass is supposed to be sitting at a desk somewhere pretending to give a crap about stopping crime. And I didn’t agree to shit, this has always been my place.” Chuuya smacks Dazai’s hand away before he can grab for the toast on his plate, curling his arm protectively around his breakfast. “So why the hell are you sitting here looking like shit at my spot, stealing my coffee.” 

“Dogs shouldn’t growl at their masters over their kibble. That kind of food aggression is…” Dazai’s knee bangs the bottom of the table as he jerks his leg to the side to avoid the kick he knew was coming. If he’d had even a little more sleep he might have also accounted for the secluded low table Chuuya has always chosen here, as if he was trying to make Dazai seem like the abnormally sized one of the pair of them. Cupping a hand over his knee protectively, Dazai tuts in annoyance. “Do you choose this table because it’s the only one you can reach? Do I need to get you a booster seat?”

“Do I need to tie you to the chair so that you don’t break the table and get us both kicked out?” In answer to Dazai’s silent lecherous smirk at what was inadvertently an offer of bondage and table breaking, Chuuya just rolls his eyes.

“Just like old times?” Dazai lets the double meaning sit there between them for a moment too long before continuing. “It took them months to let us back in here after you threw their plates at me, slug.” 

“It was deserved and you know it, asshole.” Chuuya fastidiously adjusts the egg on his toast back to the center after the impact to the table made it slide off, and then points the corner of it at Dazai like he’s raising a glass at him. “So what’s wrong with you?” 

Dazai now knows that he hasn’t gotten enough sleep, because he is infuriatingly distracted by watching his ex smugly crunch down on toast and then catch a bit of yolk at the corner of his mouth with his tongue. What can he say? Breaking up as teens via car bombing didn’t suddenly make Chuuya unattractive as an adult, and never let it be said that Dazai Osamu cannot recognize beauty even if it’s being inconveniently exhibited by an obnoxious little hat rack. 

Luckily, his lapse in attention is covered by a commotion at the front of the cafe. 

“...No. I’m sick of this! This is the last time, we’re done.” 

The outcry turns heads through the entire cafe, as a middle-aged woman rips a wedding ring off of her finger, throwing it down and storming out. 

There’s a momentary pause, and people look away to save face for the man who eventually picks himself up from the table and follows in her wake. 

Dazai turns back and meets Chuuya’s eyes again, where it seems like his partner is still waiting for an answer. At least he’s no longer being unconsciously pornographic about his breakfast habits. 

“Say that again? I couldn’t hear you from all the way down there.”

“I was saying that you look even more like shit than usual, you’re already two hours late to work, and you’re running on, what, two hours of sleep? Three at most.” Dazai has never quite figured out how he feels about the fact that Chuuya can read him so intuitively, without even a third of the work that Dazai’s put into studying every microexpression and motion from Chuuya. Then again, Dazai approaches Chuuya the way he does this cafe he’s visited since they were fifteen--without fully putting on the persona. So Chuuya does him the same favor, putting aside the responsible executive act and letting himself be the ruthlessly blunt hothead he’s been at his core ever since they met. It’s Soukoku’s own bizarre form of trust, weaponized and yet intimate. “How are you supposed to solve crime like this, oh great and brilliant Dazai? Will some dangerous tax evader go free? How will Yokohama survive without you there snooping around to prove yet again that politicians are the same corrupt hypocritical bastards they’ve always been?” 

“Maybe I’m cutting off crime at the source. Where better to start than with at the top?” Chuuya snorts, taking another bite of his toast while watching Dazai make an idiot of himself. Dazai doesn’t want to talk about what’s wrong with him, so Chuuya doesn’t push that boundary and lets him act a fool instead. Once again proving how well he reads Dazai. “Those messages you’re getting, for all I know you’re coordinating a crime right now. Honestly, this should be a company-paid meal.”

“First of all, you’ve got the boss’s number. You want to harass someone at the top, call him instead of bothering me. Second, you haven’t paid for shit, even if you were on ‘work business.’ And the texts aren’t work-related. Some of us actually have lives.” 

Dazai can feel his eyes narrowing as his gaze flits to the still-buzzing phone, messages arriving intermittently as if someone is still trying to get him to respond. It’s slightly gratifying that Chuuya’s putting off whoever they are to have breakfast with Dazai (however out of line he was to be at Dazai’s cafe) but… “Chuuya must be very popular. That is a lot of messages.”

“Yeah. It is.” Chuuya pops the last of his breakfast into his mouth and grabs his phone before Dazai finishes considering whether or not to steal it to sate his curiosity. To find out why Chuuya’s tone is off about that. “I’m out.”

“Off to go do crime?” Dazai teases, just to hear Chuuya chuff his reluctant amusement.

“I’m off today. I usually only ‘crime’ when I’m paid for it.” Chuuya kicks Dazai lightly in the ankle as he walks past, a rebuke without much heat behind it. “Buy your own breakfast, then get to work you lazy bastard.” 

Dazai turns in his chair to watch analytically as Chuuya walks away, his partner’s gait slightly rushed like he’s leaving before Dazai can say something, his shoulders are raised like he’s defending himself against whatever it is he does expect Dazai to say, his hands are shoved into his pockets immediately as he withdraws into himself, one clearly clutching the still buzzing phone. Nothing is explicitly wrong, or Dazai would have caught it, but something has made Chuuya uncomfortable enough that he’s prickly. Prying into what it is right now would make his partner lash out sarcastically as a way to clam up.

Dazai knows him. He knows how Chuuya works.  

But it’s not something dire. So he’s got time to dig into it later. The fact that he has discovered a low-stakes mystery involving Chuuya’s life gives him something to… if not look forward to, at least to look in anticipation towards. Which is more than he had this morning when dragging himself out of bed. 

For now, though, he should get to work. He pays for a breakfast to go and then starts his trek towards the Armed Detective Agency. The street outside of the cafe is now unusually crowded, performers setting up for the street festival of Noge Daidogei that will be kicking off in the afternoon and will turn his little haven into a zoo along with all of the other restaurants in the area. Dazai sidesteps a woman practicing her juggling right outside the door, catching a spinning club before it can thump him across the head. He offers a hollow charming smile and a meaningless and forgettable platitude as he hands it back to her, and then ambles down the street. 

Further down the alley there’s the slightly off-key and discordant sound of multiple instruments being tuned at once under a canopy. Across the road a wizened old woman, her face a map of creases like rivers and tributaries, shuffles a set of tarot cards between rheumatic hands as she stares at him. Two gymnasts painted gold practice tumbling passes side by side past him down the pavement to the admiration of a shrill-voiced child. 

It’s just as well he came to the cafe today, because by tomorrow the street will be far too noisy for Dazai to want to deal with. Already the clamoring sounds and chaotic movements are beginning to get to him, the excessive liveliness and giddiness of the growing crowds enough to remind him that their zeal, their enthusiasm, isn’t really in him. Now even as he gets away from the festival, the sunlight is too bright and the bustling streets of Yokohama too busy. 

The staircase up to the Armed Detective Agency is a dim and quiet little oasis, a brief pause between one sort of chaos and the next. But even that must end. 

Atsushi finds him first, or rather Atsushi falls right out of the door as Dazai opens it. Papers spill from the thick case files he’d been carrying, photographs and printed pages fluttering to the tile as the boy stares in despair at the mess. He clearly had been leaning in to open the door with an occupied hand, and been unbalanced. Atsushi drops to his knees immediately, trying to gather all the papers as they rustle and crumple in his grip, and in his catastrophizing he doesn’t seem to see his mentor until Dazai bends to sweep some pages into one of the folders, uncaring of which one, and then bumps the cardstock folder under his protege’s chin.

“I understand you’re excited at my arrival, but really Atsushi, you don’t need to fall all over yourself to greet me!”

“Dazai!” Atsushi’s smile, like his eyes, is a sunrise. Even in the aftermath of the worst things the Agency has gone through, he’s always seemed to find the sort of hopefulness that has been missing from Dazai’s life since he was years younger than his apprentice. For as frequently as anxiety and grief and the memories of his past seem to hit him, Atsushi always returns from it stronger. Would that they all had that gift. “We were getting worried about you. You’re usually not… this late.”

Ah. See, far too kind a soul.

“DAZAI!” Compared to Atsushi, Kunikida’s greeting is less cheerful and more apoplectic, which is frankly far more reasonable and endemic to being partnered with Dazai. Much like Chuuya, any concern from Kunikida translates itself right into irritation after it’s belayed. If Atsushi’s hope is refreshing for its novelty, Kunikida’s frustration with him is at least comforting in its familiarity.

Dazai makes sure to fill his hands with papers as Kunikida stomps over while Dazai is glancing over the top sheet. By the time his partner is at the door he looks like he’s been earnestly attempting to help Atsushi with his plight. The misdirection is absolutely not going to fool the detective, but Dazai doesn’t need to fool him, exactly.

“Ku-ni-ki-da…” Dazai drags out the name until the corner of Kunikida’s eye begins to twitch, an eternally useful gauge of how successfully Dazai is driving the other man crazy. His partner looms over the two of them on the floor, and Dazai assumes his most innocent expression. “Just the man I wanted to see! The stake-out didn’t reveal anything…”

“You’re late. …And you said nothing about a stake-out…?”

And there. That small kernel of uncertainty. That’s all Dazai needs to build off of. One moment of skimming over the first page of the topmost case of the scattered pile… therefore near the bottom of the tipped over stack… was enough for him to pull an idea entirely out of thin air. Now all he needs to do is layer on more words: Kunikida is undeniably an excellent detective, but he’s not without weakness. And Kunikida’s incredibly useful exploitable weakness is that his need for rigid order makes him the perfect target for bafflement. And if there is anything Dazai is good at, it is at being baffling. 

“I thought I could take Atsushi with me to the cemetery to investigate there. The wrong body in a casket, Kunikida, of course I was right on the case! Would that it were me instead.” Combined with prodding just right at Kunikida’s frustrations to redirect his ire in the direction Dazai wants and to throw him off course.

“This is not the time for your antics! And Atsushi is scheduled to work with Kyouka today…”

“I’ll go with them.” Kyouka flows past Kunikida in the doorway with the kind of effortless grace that speaks of significant past effort, her footsteps silent and not even a whisper of the silk kimono to give her away. “This will be different from the protection requests.” 

Perfect. Kyouka had been placed on bodyguard duty for the most part as a small and unassuming ghost trailing politicians and CEOs and informants who are under threat, ready to disable any attacker. She’s good at it, and it puts her particular skills to use, but the fact that she’d jump on the opportunity to work a case instead is little surprise. Especially if she can do it alongside Atsushi. 

Dazai, meanwhile, scoops up the files from Atsushi and combines them with his own, then shoves them into Kunikida’s arms.

“So off we go! I can’t believe you’re slacking off like this standing around in the hall, Kunikida!” Dazai scampers back down the stairs without giving his partner time to regroup or to recognize the stunt he just pulled, leaving Kunikida still indignant and blustering. He can vaguely hear Atsushi trying to smooth things over before the door closes behind him, leaving him back on the street.

A group of teens is shoving each other on the sidewalk as they approach, cars putter by, nearby tourists chatter in English, and Yokohama bustles with life. The sun beats down on him relentlessly, and the humidity smothers his skin beneath the bandages, and the sounds are head splitting. 

It’s still too bright and too busy and too noisy, but the cemetery is the perfect escape from that, so he takes the opportunity to walk through the grounds towards their destination rather than skirting around it. While others might find cemeteries an unsettling reminder of their inevitable deaths, Dazai has always taken comfort from them. The dead have found a peace that he never has, and if he’s quiet and still it’s almost like he can hear the secret to that. 

The irony that the center of this investigation is a cemetery he has spent significant time at isn’t lost on him, but it’s also not surprising. Many of the gravestones they pass are newer, the marble and granite not yet worn by time or tempest. Here the newly dead come to rest.

Dazai can feel Atsushi’s eyes on him, even as the boy converses quietly with Kyouka while they read the file together. Atsushi is perceptive in his way, and he’s been the one sent to retrieve Dazai from this cemetery enough times to know it holds meaning for him. 

As they cross the park, Dazai can see in ahead of them a tree he’s grown quite familiar with from staring up into its branches and watching the change of seasons in the color of its leaves. Beyond it, the path marches on towards a church that Dazai has listened to the bells of as they solemnly tolled the hour, its steeple in his periphery different from the shrines and temples dotted throughout Yokohama. 

Even from here, the yellow police tape is visible across the wide wooden doors, fluttering faintly in the breeze.

“Do you know the caretaker here, Dazai-san?”

Dazai laughs at the careful question from Atsushi, turning to walk backwards and watch them, hands in his pockets and voice deliberately light and cheerful. “No, I usually don’t see anyone but the groundskeepers who chase me out when they need to mow. The church has never held much appeal for me–all of the interesting people are out here!”

He waves a hand expansively, looking out over the headstones, until his gaze catches on the most familiar of them all.

There’s a spot of white on the ground before Oda’s grave.

Dazai’s steps don’t falter because he’s had years of hiding everything from surprise to injury, but his playful words do fall quiet. It’s possible that Atsushi’s speaking to him, but he’s already tuned the boy out, and he’s changing direction. 

There’s a single chrysanthemum placed at the base of Oda’s grave.

The number of people left living who could have placed it there are few–Oda’s children died before he did, and of his friends… Dazai and Ango most often pay their respects to Oda where he lived, rather than where he died–they’ve worked out something of a peace treaty when it comes to sitting at the counter of Bar Lupin, though they usually avoid one another there. 

For Dazai, Oda’s grave is a place for contemplation, for remorse and recollection and remembrance. He’s never encountered anyone there who wasn’t looking for him , so the flower is an oddity. By the curiosity on Atsushi’s face as he falls in beside his mentor, he wasn’t the one to leave the flower: it was a possibility once Dazai told him of Oda’s role in his life. 

“Oda Sakunosuke.” It’s Kyouka’s voice that breaks the silence, and Dazai raises an eyebrow as he turns towards the girl. Solemn gray eyes rise from the gravestone to meet his own stare, and she tips her chin slightly at the name and initial. “He was in the Port Mafia.”

Interesting. Oda died years before Kyouka was pulled into the Mafia, so the fact that she knows his name is curious. 

“Did you know him?” Atsushi sounds a little excited to learn more about the man who pulled Dazai out of the dark, though the boy is abashed as soon as he asks. He knew better than to ask Dazai more about his friend, but his curiosity is getting the better of him.

“No. But I heard of him.”

As the lowest ranking member of the Port Mafia, he wasn’t necessarily well regarded among the organization. No one in particular had a problem with him, but no one paid him any mind either. That left a very short list of potential gossips she could have heard the name from. Akutagawa has little positive memory of him, too proud to admit that Oda saved him and too bitter after Dazai’s departure to remember him well. That leaves…

“You should continue on to the church. You’ll get information there that you will need for when you visit the crematorium afterwards. They burned one body and replaced it with someone who had no family to claim him. The culprit responsible didn’t account for someone noticing enough of a difference to uncover their face.” Dazai rests a hand on the cool stone of the grave beside him, fingertips pressed to the familiar texture of cut stone. Kyouka watches him with the serious, composed face of someone accepting orders, as if she’s being given a new assassination target. Atsushi’s eyes keep dropping back to the stone and then raising back up to Dazai, as if looking for signs of distress. 

“Find the driver and you’ll be able to trace back to the person responsible. Either they are covering up a murder, or it was a negligent mistake. Apply pressure to find out which… but don’t hurt them in any visible way.”

The last is for Kyouka, who is still a little too quick to pulling a knife on suspects. She nods gravely, but he can see she’s already come up with all of the ways she can compel a confession that wouldn’t leave a mark at all.

Akutagawa, Kouyou and Verlaine really did a number on the girl.

Dazai doesn’t feel bad for sending the teens on their way—it was a straightforward case that he’d all but solved almost as soon as he read the page, perfect for Kyouka to get her feet wet and for Atsushi to practice his investigation skills. Besides, he has an investigation of his own to complete, and an inkling of the answer. 

It is a suspicion that he confirms by going further into the cemetery, toward stones placed just a scant few years earlier. 

A barely familiar family name and an initial. A small bouquet of chrysanthemums. A single white feather tipped in black tucked into the twine. A short way past that, another bouquet placed carefully at a gravestone along with a pack of cigarettes. Dazai knows that the next three graves that will receive similar tribute are at a different cemetery, nearer to the mountains.

Pulling out his phone, Dazai taps to open the GPS tracker that Chuuya has known about for eight years now and allowed regardless because of the threat of Corruption being triggered and uncontrolled without Dazai’s presence. During their time apart Dazai used to masochistically watch the dot of Chuuya entering a bar and leaving to residential areas, but Chuuya left the tracker active even when his hook-ups were… dissuaded… from a second date. 

Now the dot of Chuuya is cutting a straight line toward the mountains with a speed that clearly shows Dazai was right about the motorcycle. 

Meandering back toward Oda’s grave, he picks up the single flower to preserve it as he takes his usual seat, back to the cold stone. The text image he fires off of the flower between his fingertips stays unread even after Chuuya’s parked at the second cemetery—he’s refusing to read all texts today, not just whoever was bothering him this morning. 

But that’s fine. Dazai will find Chuuya in the morning, once he’s done with his pilgrimage to the graves of each of the Flags. 

—

Day 1-001

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. Though the phone’s vibrations muted on the tatami floor, Dazai’s hand fumbles off of the futon to grab the phone and knocks into an empty bottle of sake and a half-empty can of crab. 

Strange. He is fairly sure cleaned those up yesterday. Then again, he did meander to Bar Lupin after sitting at the grave for a while and it isn’t the first time he’s drunk himself into a haze, come home, and drank some more while forcing himself to choke down food.

Still. He had a plan this morning and no time for distractions. Thumbing open the GPS app on his phone, Dazai keeps an eye on it as he slips out of his apartment. He monitors Chuuya’s location until he stops momentarily at a parking garage near the same cafe as the previous day. The dot begins again slowly as Chuuya starts the trek to the cafe—his slug is a creature of habit, so that’s no surprise. 

The surprise comes when he steps out of his shortcut alleyway directly in front of his partner. Blue eyes flick up to meet Dazai’s as soon as he appears, Chuuya coming to a complete stop before they can run into each other. 

Head to toe, he’s in the same outfit as the night before—maroon shirt, leather jacket, jeans.

The swell of jealousy is as irrational as it always has been. It makes his voice sharp, more bitter than he had planned for this interaction. “The walk of shame, Chuuya? Really? You couldn’t have taken fifteen minutes to change outfits and shower…?”

And then the world stops. Dazai’s mind begins calculating absolutely everything around them at a speed that makes it all seem to run in slow motion, all at a single look from Chuuya. 

Because Chuuya. Blinks.

To anyone else, that blink would be meaningless. Blinking is an involuntary movement, without conscious thought or consideration. It’s not purposeful, or overt. 

But to Dazai, who has obsessively made a study out of Chuuya, it is absolutely a statement.

“Hah…?”

Chuuya is genuinely confused. 

“…The fuck are you talking about, shitty mackerel?”

A way up the road, a van is unloading an orchestra’s worth of instruments. A couple quarrels their way down the street toward the cafe. Two women are touching up gold paint on their skin. An old woman is being helped out of a teahouse, a young man carrying a table and her hand clenched around a tarot deck. Chuuya’s phone buzzes in his pocket, disregarded.

But none of that registered until Chuuya met his eyes. 

It’s the same morning.

Chapter Text

“Yet there seemed to be some truth in the law of probability, according to which the chance of success is directly proportionate to the number of repetitions.” - Kobo Abe

Day 1-001 Continued

“Did you take something?” 

The worst part of it all is that Chuuya doesn’t sound judgmental of Dazai’s suspected drug trip. Even years after the dissolution of their partnership, Dazai can tell when he’s worried and hiding it in gruff tones. Sitting across from Dazai at the low cafe table, Chuuya scrutinizes him as if he’s assessing him for an injury. Eyes search his face, scan for new marks on his skin, look to the crook of his elbow like he can see through the coat to spot track marks. 

“You are on your way to pick up at least five bouquets of white chrysanthemums.” Head in his hands, Dazai stares down into the steaming cup of coffee set before him on the table, his own this time because he arrived with Chuuya and his partner is trying to get food in him like it will stave off the effects of whatever drug he thinks Dazai is on. “You have an albatross feather in your pocket and probably a pack of cigarettes. Kick me. Hard enough to hurt.”

That part, at least, Chuuya doesn’t hesitate on. The table rattles. The pain flares through his ankle. That helps rule out the idea that he’s asleep, but not entirely—pain is just another signal to the brain, after all.

“All of that could just be proof that you’re still a creepy fucking stalker.” Chuuya continues conversationally, as if he didn’t just kick Dazai with a speed that betrays just how willing he is to kick his partner’s ass and claim he’s just being helpful. “Still not convinced that means you’re reliving a day. Could just be deja vu, drugs, a concussion, or some combination of all three.”

Dazai drags his hands down his face, fingertips stretching the skin as he stares unseeingly down at the food that’s placed in front of him by a waitress. He doesn’t even look up to flirt so he can gauge Chuuya’s reactions. He’s been entirely thrown off his game. 

“I don’t need you to believe, I need you to sit there and let me bounce ideas off of you. You make me think.” Chuuya’s eyebrow raises, and he sits back in his chair with his arms crossed, waiting as if he expects Dazai to pop up and declare everything a joke. Tucked into his pocket, Chuuya’s phone buzzes away. “…A middle-aged couple at the front of the cafe are about to go through a loud breakup.”

As if on cue, the woman’s voice rings out. 

“…I’m sick of this! This is the last time, we’re done.”

Even as the woman storms out, Chuuya doesn’t look away from Dazai. Raising his head, Dazai meets Chuuya’s eyes across the table and he can see that his partner is listening and half convinced. But Dazai can tell that it isn’t because of the outburst: it’s because Chuuya can read him in turn. Dazai is perceptive enough that he could have seen the breakup coming in a glance as they walked in, but now that they’re eye to eye Chuuya is perceptive enough to know that Dazai believes what he is saying. So he’ll work off of that.

“Run me through what you did yesterday.”

“Today.” Dazai corrects, but he sits back up fully and drags in a deep breath. It has always helped to have Chuuya to bounce ideas off of—his partner has never judged him for not having an answer immediately, has hidden all of Dazai’s eccentricities and insecurities from prying eyes, and has always offered a different perspective. “Woke up late. Came here. Stole your coffee. Their breakup. The festival setting up outside. Office, ran into Atsushi and Kunikida, took him and Kyouka to a case through the cemetery. Saw your bouquets, stalked you on GPS…”

“I really should turn that off,” Chuuya mutters, but he isn’t surprised that he’s still being stalked, nor is he trying to stop Dazai’s litany. 

“…Went to Bar Lupin. Got drunk. Woke up to my alarm again.”

Chuuya nods slightly, plucking his hat off and dropping it onto the table so he can lean back in his chair and fold his hands behind his head. He stares up at the ceiling in thought. “But this conversation obviously didn’t happen. So you’re not actually reliving it because you can change present events, right?”

A fair point, and it sets Dazai’s mind switching directions the way Chuuya always seems to. Even when Chuuya is wrong—which obviously he is all the time, as Dazai likes to remind him—he still shifts Dazai’s train of thought just enough that one of them can land on some epiphany. “So either it’s an ability and No Longer Human is keeping it from directly touching me, or I am the target but it’s not an ability. It could be something like a drug slipped into my drink, and I’m just picturing talking this out with you because you’re always in my subconscious.”

“Well, I can tell you I’m not just your subconscious, but you’re not gonna believe me. When you figure that out for yourself, though, you’re going to be embarrassed as hell about what you just admitted.” Chuuya sounds wryly amused, tipping his chin back down to look at Dazai as he stares vacantly off trying to put together clues. But of course Chuuya is writ large in his mind, so even if he were trapped in a hallucination he could recreate his partner down to every response, inflection, and gesture in perfect detail in his thoughts. There’s no sense denying that.

 “Could be a fluke. If it’s an ability or a drug, it might just be a one-day reset button. You going to need backup?”

No. Because if he brings Chuuya with him, his mind would just fold his partner into everything and make it that much more believable even if it is a delusion. 

Whatever is going on, he doesn’t have all the pieces yet to put them together. He needs a control variable. So Dazai blinks himself back to full awareness, and shakes his head. “No. I need to figure some things out. Go do your self-pity parade first.”

The mood changes instantly. The flare of fury from Chuuya is almost palpable, a rage that seems to crackle in the air around him, blue eyes bright and hot as sulfur fire. Every word is clipped, carefully controlled and all the angrier for it. “Go. Fuck. Yourself. You absolute asshole.”

Well that was a successful experiment, and makes it all the more likely that this is really happening instead of a scenario he’s playing out in his mind. It’s been at least six years since he pushed Chuuya entirely past the brink, and he doesn’t have the frame of reference for what that looks like in an adult Chuuya. A teenaged Chuuya would have thrown a punch, and so that is what he would have pictured subconsciously. 

Adult Chuuya crams his hat back onto his head and stands stiffly, leaving behind his coffee. 

He’s out the door before Dazai could even consider explaining his rationale for the comment. It wouldn’t do much good anyway—they both would know it wasn’t an apology. 

Dazai packages up both of their untouched breakfasts and the two cups of coffee, and makes his way out of the cafe. He waits at the door until the juggler drops and retrieves her pin, rather than let it hit him while he has his hands full. Stepping out of the cafe is like walking into a wall of sound as the orchestra tunes their instruments. The old woman across the street stares at him as she shuffles her cards. The gymnasts tumble by. The high, shrill laugh of the child. 

The only thing that changed was his interaction with Chuuya. It’s like the entire rest of the world are marionettes, pulled through the same performance all over again, unable to see their own strings. 

Dazai feels that way sometimes. Often. But seeing it play out throughout the whole city is a dissonance so deep that it makes him want to grab someone, to shake them, to scream in their faces, to hurt them just to change their fixed trajectory. It scoops out something in him to see this from them. 

He can’t stand to see the same from his little found family at the Agency. He couldn’t handle it if his presence were so meaningless that they flowed around it, untouched by the disruption of him. So the only solution is to change his own choices for the day, another experiment. 

He reaches out and grabs Atsushi by the shoulders as he opens the door, steadying the boy so he can’t topple forward.

“Dazai!” The same sunrise smile is there, this time over an intact stack of folders. 

“DAZAI!” The same bellow from Kunikida. 

No, none of that will do. Dazai sweeps into the office completely this time, scanning over his coworkers already within. Kunikida is already out of his chair to confront Dazai at the doorway as he had before, Kyouka is silently organizing documents where she must have been when she overheard them, and Yosano is perched on the corner of Ranpo’s desk as the detective crows over the phone to her about the idiocy of criminals and the case he’s on with Kenji. 

He needs to change this.

The first thing he does is drop his and Chuuya’s untouched breakfasts onto Kyouka and Atsushi’s desks, then swing by Ranpo’s desk to hand off his untouched coffee with a dramatic bow at Yosano, each movement part of a calculated dance that happens to keep Kunikida from grabbing him by the collar while he cheerfully offers his greetings to everyone.

While he started yesterday’s “this morning” wanting nothing to do with the performance of his life, for this today that performance is what he has to cling to. 

When Atsushi arrives back with empty arms, having delivered the files to Haruno to enter and assign, he thanks Dazai profusely before setting in on the food with the voracious appetite and haste of someone who’s starved before, like he still has to eat quickly to keep his food from being taken away. By contrast, Kyouka nods her thanks to him and then eats slowly, like she’s savoring the simple meal.

“I would have bought you coffee too, Kunikida, but I know you have your coffee on your daily schedule!” Dazai lies, eyes wide and guileless, taking credit as if he bought any of it himself as he sits down at his desk to finish Chuuya’s drink. Kunikida is still fuming at him, but Dazai knows there’s still just enough of the gruffly caring teacher there that seeing Dazai feed the kids gets him credit for a little of the time he was late. 

“You’re still throwing off our timetable. We have potential clients in…”

Naomi opens the door to usher in the group of teenagers Dazai noted approaching the building on yesterday’s today, while he was escaping towards the cemetery. They’re apparently early, which also throws off Kunikida’s schedule, but he’s professional enough that he tries to hide it. 

The teens slouch in, tousle-haired and wary-eyed, hands shoved in their pockets but shoulders squared for a fight. Dazai knows immediately that this is going to be his case for today, different enough from yesterday to soothe his anxiety but reminiscent enough of days alongside a certain juvenile street punk of his own that he’ll be engaged in it despite himself. 

The case itself is something that wouldn’t take high priority. The agency earns its operational costs by consulting for police departments and government offices, by collecting bounties on dangerous gifteds, or investigating corporate fraud and security threats. The smaller one-off cases like this are rare. For a bunch of delinquents to come to them directly, it would mean…

“…And the police don’t give a shit about Suribachi, and they don’t believe us.” The leader of the little band finishes his explanation, clearly frustrated and disdainful. “Because as far as they’re concerned we’re probably the ones doing the stealing. What’s the point of us knocking over the one place that actually gives a crap about us, though, you know?”

“I believe you!” Dazai interjects from where he’s been lounging pretending not to listen, tipping his seat to look upside-down over the chair back at the little group of them sitting with Kunikida and Naomi as she takes notes for the file and he listens with a frown. “I’ll take this one.”

The four teens look him over as if they’re judging a mark, seeing only the foolish act he puts on and skeptical of whether he’d even cut it wandering around Suribachi City. There’s a certain sort of humor to that. Kunikida at least knows enough of Dazai’s background to surmise exactly why he feels like wading right into the lawless streets of Yokohama’s slum. And he doesn’t even know the history there, how a kick to the chest by an underfed Suribachi delinquent like these ones became one of the most important moments of his life.  

He gets the case, naturally. Unfortunately, it’s a fairly straightforward one and barely piques his interest once he’s immersed in it. The Buddhist temple in Suribachi lacks the classic architecture of other temples scattered across Yokohama in their carefully landscaped parks. The pagoda is formed from corrugated metal propped over bent wood, but it’s clear that the frail monk within had tried his best in these slums crowded into the steep inclines of the crater. He offered shelter during the worst storms, simple foods, medicine when he could get it, and genuinely seems to care for the little punks who scrabble and fight for their turf around him. 

So when he was attacked and the temple burned by a hired ability user, they took it rather personally. 

It’s like looking back into his past to see these posturing little punks banding together for self-protection, their turf wars as much about watching out for their youngest and most vulnerable members as claiming more territory. 

These sheep are just missing a king who could actually look out for them.  

Dazai could turn over the drug dealer that paid to take away their support system because he was trying to make the kids beholden to him for jobs as runners and dealers… or he could leave this to Suribachi City’s violent facsimile of a justice system. He splits the difference, looking at the boys dead-on when he calls to outline what exactly happened and to inform the police that the problem has “taken care of itself.”

They didn’t want to be down in the slums anyway.

As Dazai makes his way back up the steep incline of the crater he taps away at his phone to track the pipsqueak who formed it, just to find Chuuya’s either turned off his phone entirely or finally disabled the GPS tracker. Neither of those bode well for Dazai. He’s still morbidly curious about whether Chuuya’s day was entirely thrown off, so he takes the switched-corpse case next just to confirm the chrysanthemums are still placed at the graves of the Flags. 

They are. Of course. Chuuya is an intractable creature. He had his plan and he’ll follow through just out of spite and hardheadedness. 

One of the white funeral flowers still rests on Oda’s grave too, but now alongside it is the decapitated head of an orange lily that drops its petals into Dazai’s hand when he picks it up. Only Chuuya would find a way to passive-aggressively flip Dazai off without a word, while showing just how well they can still predict each other. 

The stomp of Chuuya’s motorcycle boots on the stairs down into Bar Lupin after hours that night is unsurprising, too, even if Dazai had no way to see him coming. Chuuya is still radiating his fury as he takes the seat beside Dazai at the bar, dropping his phone down and then his hat on top of it before picking up the glass of wine Dazai had waiting for him. The phone buzzes once as if rub in the fact that he specifically cut Dazai off, rather than the rest of the world.

There are no greetings spared between them. No niceties. Chuuya picks up right where they left off, the entire day nothing more than a brief interruption to a fight that Dazai picked but Chuuya is more than willing to end as forcefully as he has to.

“I’m not your damn guinea pig. Next time you pull that shit, I’m putting you through the fucking wall.” 

The fact that Chuuya means that quite literally should be concerning, but it never has been. They were raised in the belly of the same beast side by side, and Dazai would have to be a true hypocrite to be put off by violence. So he takes a sip of his whisky, a bitter twist to the corner of his lips. “How long did it take you to catch on?”

“That you can’t give me shit for visiting cemeteries when there’s a permanent indentation of your bony ass behind your friend’s grave? Before I got out of the building. I still wasn’t going to sit there and let you treat me like crap just so you could see how I’d react.” Chuuya throws back the first glass of wine like he’s dying of thirst, burgundy liquor downed like a shot rather than savored like Chuuya once preferred. The heavier drinking came later for the both of them—he’s received enough slurred voicemails over the years that he could practically track Chuuya’s progress on that, and Dazai knows that getting blackout drunk to sleep some nights is hardly healthy of himself either. So he watches without even an affectation of surprise as Chuuya refills his glass from the bottle of wine Dazai plucked off the shelf, and then tops off his own whisky. Chuuya had a reason for showing up that had nothing to do with getting a drink, though. 

 “You figure out what the hell’s going on with you?”

“Careful there, hat rack. People might start to think you care about me.” Needling Chuuya is second nature, but Dazai’s feeling a little reckless about it tonight. Maybe it’s the surreal day and the question of if he’s going to have to live this all over again. Maybe it’s the buzzing of Chuuya’s phone, reminding him of the years he spent text-bombing Chuuya for every morsel of attention he could get. It’s driving him a little crazy wanting to know who’s taken his place in that. The idea of not being the center of Chuuya’s attention rankles. “No, I haven’t figured it out yet. Are you planning to answer your boyfriend?”

Chuuya barks a laugh, and now it’s Dazai who’s fuming. He knew better than to ask, but his possessiveness runs even deeper than Chuuya’s resentment for him. So he knows the accusation that’s going to be leveled at him. He even knows that Chuuya will match him word for word and tone for tone, all while wearing a vicious grin. “Careful there, mackerel. People might start to think you’re jealous.” 

Dazai is jealous, and Chuuya does care. The best taunts are rooted in truth, after all. 

“You don’t get to have an opinion anymore about who I let fuck me. Can we get back to the part where…” Chuuya is trying to push him back onto the topic of Dazai’s repeated day, but it doesn’t matter. His mouth is shaping words that Dazai only half hears now because he’s staring at Chuuya’s lips. He knows when Chuuya is sniping at him. And he knows when Chuuya is teasing him. Bringing up sex was undeniably teasing, and Chuuya’s trying to distract him from analyzing a slip of the tongue that only could have happened if Chuuya was thinking about sex because Dazai was thinking about Chuuya’s hypothetical boyfriend. 

Dazai very abruptly finds that he couldn't care less about whatever fluke had him repeating this day. 

“I’ll deal with it tomorrow if it happens again, but why is my slug thinking about me fucking him?” Chuuya’s mouth snaps shut, eyes narrowing in annoyance as a grin spreads across Dazai’s face. Oh, this is good. This is excellent. “What was it, our third time that happened here?”

The benefit of Bar Lupin being Port Mafia affiliated was that the highest ranking members have always been able to let themselves in past the bar’s closing, just as they did today, to grab a drink and wait out pursuits or to blow off steam. Dazai still does it, tucking money in the till for the liquor he takes and enjoying the solitude to sit in the memories. Most of Oda and Ango, yes—but one other memory, as well.

High on teenage hormones and the adrenaline of a successful mission, Dazai had thoroughly taken advantage of his access to the bar not long after Soukoku’s periodic makeout sessions had turned into more. Even if Bar Lupin had been open at the time, it’s fairly certain that everyone would have turned a blind eye to the most infamously powerful duo in Yokohama dragging each other to the bathroom, but with it closed he’d had no excuse not to…

“I can see where your mind is going, and not a fucking chance.” Chuuya throws back his second glass of wine before pushing himself up from his stool. “In case you forgot: you’re a coward, a traitor, and I hate you.”

Dazai turns on his stool to rest his elbow on the bar so he can take Chuuya in. If Chuuya licking yolk off of his lips was distracting yesterday… or however he’s keeping time… then Chuuya now is captivating. There’s a pretty pink flush on his cheeks from the wind, and the wine, and from arousal however much he’d like to deny it. Dazai can’t help but see how far he can take this. “You know what they say about the line between love and hate…?”  

He’s watching closely enough that he can see the moment his words rub Chuuya the wrong way. Blue eyes narrow in anger at him, and Chuuya’s hat is back on his head, his phone in a white-knuckled grip. As Chuuya stands, he leans in to growl his last words directly in Dazai’s ear.

“A line between love and hate? No. It’s a one-way fucking street. And don’t forget who drove us there.”

Dazai should stop him from stomping out. He knows that right now if he grabbed Chuuya by the wrist and reeled him in, they’d end up kissing, biting into it like they were trying to hurt each other, probably fucking right here in Lupin without any lube or preparation or tenderness. Their idea of affection has always been a little hurtful.

But it’s the first time Chuuya’s actually admitted aloud that he loved Dazai, however often Dazai confessed to him in varying tones from awe to mockery. 

And Chuuya means it in the past tense. 

“Chuuya…”

Day 1-002

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. 

It is immediately met by an empty can of crab being thrown at it. 

Even if Dazai weren’t excruciatingly aware that the previous day cut off in the middle of a very important thought, he would recognize the moment his hand hit the empty tin can that he was once again reliving the same day.

He stares miserably up at the ceiling above him as his cheerful little suicide ditty plays out on his still buzzing phone, now several feet away across the floor with a tin can half perched on it as if to add a metallic echo to the phone’s gentle vibration.

Chuuya said that he had loved Dazai, and he meant it, and he meant it when he put that past love behind them.

When he finally rolls out of bed, he kicks the empty can and empty sake bottle out of the way without stopping to pick them up, barely even blinking when he notices the crack in his phone screen. A fatalistic part of him wants to laugh over the fact that if this keeps up, it will be just like new the next time he wakes up. 

He doesn’t see the point in going anywhere now that he has the next bottle of sake.

Kunikida’s annoyed calls are each swiped away to voicemail as Dazai watches a dot on a map, prone on the bed with only the light of the phone above him illuminating the room. 

A red dot moves through the world unhindered by Dazai.

Cafe. Florist. Cemetery. 

He zooms in, watching as Chuuya moves by foot through the familiar park, noting where he lingers. The cracked screen catches the pad of his finger, a smear of blood that he mops away with the edge of his sheet. 

The next stops taste of blood, Dazai’s finger in his mouth as he waits for the bleeding to stop. The liquor on his tongue stings in the fresh cut, but it’s a minor inconvenience.

Albatross. Iceman. Oda. Parking lot. Highway. 

Kunikida pounds on the door, yelling at him that he’ll break it down if he has to. He won’t, though—he’s too aware of the expense of replacing it, and the lights are off so it’s just as likely Dazai is out throwing himself off of a rooftop. 

Even that sounds exhausting. 

Mountains. Hino Park Cemetery. Piano Man. Doc. Lippmann. Highway. Yokohama. 

Atsushi’s texts have begun. Just a few. Nothing too intrusive because his protege is afraid to be annoying. Kunikida’s texts continue, threatening. 

The Port Mafia’s headquarters. 

Because Chuuya goes in even on his day off. Naturally. He’s just infuriatingly responsible that way.

Naka Ward. A restaurant Kouyou favors.

Yosano texts. Just once. The preview of the text makes it clear that if he doesn’t give some indication that he’s alive she will come and ensure he won’t be, because he’s worrying Atsushi. 

That text he flips open, allows to show read, and closes to return to the GPS tracker. 

Her next text thanks him and calls him an asshole. 

True. 

Dive bar. Apartment. 

That at least is reassuring. Chuuya doesn’t bring hook-ups to his apartment. Whoever is texting him incessantly, at least on this repeated day they get shot down. 

Or they’re not a hook-up. Or they’re truly serious, and Dazai was out of luck either way because his dog is nothing if not loyal.

Or…

Day 1-003

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. He recaptures the device and swipes the undamaged screen to stop the noise. 

Hauling himself out of bed this time is a Herculean effort. He kicks away the single bottle of sake and the tin can.

It still seems like an excellent time for some heavy day-drinking. But then he’d just end up passing out, waking back up, and doing it again on the same day. Even for Dazai that sounds depressing.

Dazai won’t go to the cafe. Not today. Seeing Chuuya again so soon would not go well. He needs time to reel it back in before they’re face to face again, or he’ll end up giving away far more than he means to. 

He won’t go to the cemetery, where doubtless someone from the agency would see him, given their nearby case, or he’d run into Chuuya if he were in his usual spot and lingered too long.

So he takes a new route today, cataloging events around him clinically to see if there’s an area of effect—a minor car accident just up the road is holding up traffic as the drivers have a coldly polite stand-off. A calico cat knocks the lid off of a trash can as it streaks by through the alley he steps into. An exhausted young mother, clearly several months pregnant again, apologizes when a child perhaps three years old careens into his knee from around a corner running from a younger sibling. 

Dazai doesn’t even bother to flirt with her, to turn on the charm, to react. Something in his eyes must scream alarm bells in her mind, playing on a mother’s instincts, and she bustles her children away. 

He wonders how the scenario would have gone without him there—how much his presence changes things. If they simply fell back into the same motions as soon as they were around the corner from him. 

Something tells him that they did. Taking a new route, trying to see new sights, is not the comfort it should be. No. He needs answers. He needs information. And he knows just who to get it from.

Ango just looks resigned to being taken hostage again. It’s bitterly humorous that he had the same expression and sigh when a teenaged Dazai went flitting off to find dynamite for a trap because a wild idea had taken hold of him. Dazai graciously waits with Ango’s own backup weapon pointed at his temple as the traitor angles the rearview mirror of his car to see his captor in the back seat.

“Hello, Dazai.” The glare of reflected light from the mirror makes an opaque mask of round glasses. “You do realize that you have the capability of just picking up the phone and calling when you want to speak to me.”

“I could!” Dazai agrees with false cheer, acknowledging and then immediately dismissing the now-routine complaint. “But I know you’d miss our visits. What do you know about any ability users with time-manipulating gifts?”

The fact that Dazai just skipped any banter or mockery probably tells Ango a great deal more than he’d like, but frankly it’s still better than if it had been Chuuya scrutinizing him. Ango’s observational skills are as sharp as one would expect from a turncoat triple agent spy, but Chuuya knows him better and would jump from observations to conclusions instinctively.

“We don’t have anything on an active time controller. I can look into it, if you tell me what the effects are.”

It would take at least a day for Ango to get those answers, and Dazai won’t have that kind of time before it resets and he would have to start all over. 

Still, it tells him that this isn’t something the government is tracking. 

The gun spins down, dropped from his grip and hanging by the trigger guard as he offers it back to Ango. 

“…That’s it?” Ango could be a champion poker player with complete control of his bland expressions, but for this he raises an eyebrow. “You take me hostage and leave with nothing?”

It’s strange. Dazai has empirical evidence that nothing he does right now will matter when he wakes up again in the morning, but he doesn’t feel the urge to put a bullet in Ango’s skull for his betrayal. Melancholy has crept up on him and stayed. But in a way, being adrift means also being free.

He could say or do anything right now. Anything.

“I won’t kill you, and not just because Odasaku would never have wanted that from us. Because there was a time I would have said you were a friend. One of few.”

He can see the alarm in Ango’s eyes as he steps back out of the car, but doesn’t stay to hear the platitudes about how really he was a friend, how the friendship between the three of them was the one thing that he didn’t fake, that he’s worried about what the sudden honesty from someone nearly as duplicitous as him means. 

He lets his feet carry him where they will, ignoring the buzzing of texts on his phone, realizing the irony of that when he remembers Chuuya’s own incessantly buzzing phone. 

The river is beautiful today. He could…

Day 1-004

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. 

He may come to hate his favorite song at this rate. He’s going to have to change the ringtone and alarm sounds if he can ever make this stop.

He cannot be expected to work today. Just because it insists on remaining a single workday doesn’t mean he gets no time off at all. And days investigating don’t count—so far as he’s concerned, this is a case.

Even cyber-stalking Chuuya counted as investigating. He needs a baseline, after all.

When Dazai finishes the sake in his dorm, he waits out Kunikida’s pounding on the door, then walks down to the convenience store. 

He grabs three more bottles of liquor and a sandwich, then walks out without paying in front of the store clerk’s aghast expression. 

It won’t matter tomorrow anyway. And evading the police is laughably easy when you’ve been doing it as long as he has. You just have to wait it out where they won’t look for you.

“The problem,” Dazai conversationally tells the black-tailed gull perched beside him on a rooftop, head cocked as if it’s listening, “…is going to be the boredom. I hate being bored. And what’s more boring than living the same day, every day?”

The gull steals the sandwich out of his lap the second he puts it down for another swig, and Dazai watches his purloined lunch be winged away. 

“Rude.”

But still, the bird soaring away is beautiful as it throws itself into the air, uncaring of the drop below. He could…

Day 1-005

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone.

Dazai turns it off, rolls over, buries his head under his pillow, and calls it a loss.

Day 1-006

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. Dazai glares blearily up at the ceiling as his cheerful suicide ditty continues uninterrupted. 

If he’d known he was going to have to live this day over and over again, he would have turned off the alarm. He’d set it late enough that he’d never be on time to the Agency anyway. 

Time to get back to work and try something new. 

Car accident. Calico cat. Harried mother, though the child runs into a salaryman who’d been a few paces up the sidewalk from Dazai’s alley. The Agency. Atsushi dropping the files. Kunikida yelling. Yosano on the phone with Ranpo. 

This time it’s her he beelines toward. Or, rather, her phone call. 

The doctor gives him a truly impressive unimpressed look when he takes her call off speaker, puts the phone to his ear, and addresses Ranpo directly. 

“You are about to declare that the job you’re on was originally an insurance scheme that ended in murder. So either I’m smarter than you and came to that conclusion first, or I’ve lived this day already.”

“Time control is new!” It’s not a surprise that Ranpo believes him instantly. They both know that his raw intelligence and investigative abilities outpace even Dazai’s, and anyway he would have instinctively known the truth of it. “We don’t have anything in the files about that. Though, we wouldn’t. For us it would just be deja vu.”

Well, there goes Dazai’s hopes for an easy answer. If Ranpo says there’s nothing in the files, though, there obviously isn’t. If there had been, it would have been interesting enough for him to look into. 

Kunikida is staring at him suspiciously, and Yosano is watching him like a hawk, both brazenly eavesdropping on his side of the discussion. 

“Three options! Someone who has moved in on Yokohama recently. Or someone who hasn’t used their abilities before this—either someone young and inexperienced or someone afraid of their ability. Or it’s not an ability. …Which you already considered, since you’ve had a few days to catch up to me.”

Which is partially true, but Dazai has been a bit distracted each time, by encountering a tiny pest and by obsessing over that tiny pest. It doesn’t usually take him quite so long to catch up to Ranpo’s thinking. 

“Recently arrived, because it would have affected me sooner otherwise. If we’re in a time loop…”

“Oh, it’s obviously centered in Yokohama but it would require us ‘catching up,’ otherwise we would be out of sync with the rest of the world,” Ranpo agrees before Dazai can finish his thought. “If someone had the ability to affect the entire world, you would have noticed it already.” Dazai can hear the crinkle of cellophane, and then Ranpo’s voice continues around the slurp of what is definitely candy. “I’d start with retracing your steps. You were likely near the epicenter when it began.”

Ugh. That means he’s going to have to start near Chuuya again, which means he’ll inevitably encounter him again. But the street fair seems like a likely place to begin. 

The Suribachi delinquents have arrived, and Dazai watches them take a seat with Naomi and Kunikida, watches as they tell their story again. Watches as Kunikida suggests they go to the authorities because the agency is booked, and really the authorities have no issues helping in Suribachi. He watches as Atsushi and Kyouka leave for the bodyguard duty they were originally assigned. 

“I’ll probably call you back. Not that you’ll remember.”

Ranpo’s laughing when Dazai absently hands the phone back to Yosano. The delinquents are headed back out the door, disappointed and pissed by Kunikida’s response to their request. He’s about to follow them out when his partner steps in front of him.

It usually amuses him the rare times that Kunikida tries to use the centimeters of height he has over Dazai to loom authoritatively. Dazai’s far more experienced at it, and it’s nowhere near as impressive as standing a head taller than a partner.  But Kunikida does make an obstacle of himself very adeptly, hands on his hips. 

“You were late. And this isn’t the first time you’ve come in with a ridiculous story to try and excuse…”

Dazai reaches over to grab a post-it note and a pen from his desk, scrawls the solutions to the day’s cases he’s already completed, and pats the post-it note onto his partner’s vest as he sidesteps him in the doorway. 

“I’m on a case. Ask Ranpo. I’ll be in tomorrow.”

Or today. Again. 

The truly sad thing is that Dazai does like Kunikida—quite a bit, in fact. But he gets in the way sometimes, his morals and his strict regimens and his questions. Always questions. And on those days, Dazai misses his other partner like a phantom limb, misses never having to retrace the random leaps of his thoughts to explain it to someone else, never having to justify his actions because they’re instinctively understood. 

So he doesn’t wait for his new partner to catch up, taking the steps down from the office two at a time to get away. 

In the alley, the small knot of delinquents are gathered trying to figure out their next step. It’s a matter of seconds to pass on a name to the teens and then go about his day. He’s not exactly sure why he does it--it won’t matter the next time this day cycles around, after all--but he does throw the little gangsters the tip nonetheless.

He’s aware of his own soft spots. He’s not in denial. But knowing for himself and admitting it are two different things.

The street fair has started when he arrives, the crowd of performers and vendors and attendees too thick to really do much investigating. He’ll have to try again in the morning to really get a feel for who was there when the ability was triggered. 

Dazai suspiciously watches the children milling around for a while, remembering Ranpo’s comment that it might be someone inexperienced. Children are something he’s never much paid attention to even when he was one, and here they are a shrill screaming crowd that bolts and mingles across each other. Maybe one of them decided that this festival was the best day of their lives and determined to relive it again and again.

He hopes not. The painted faces of the performers, the mingling music, the flashes of color as acrobats and dancers put on their shows… There has to be something more to life than this, even for a child.

All it does is compound his headache and deepen the sense of unreality to this farce of a day. He slips back out of the crowded alleyway again only an hour after going in, resigned to needing to start earlier next time.

He’s grimly certain he’ll get the chance. 

Day 1-007

At nine o’clock on a random morning in April, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. Dazai sits straight up, a man rising from the grave, and glances at the canned crab and empty bottle of sake beside his bed. 

Well, that confirms it. 

Time to bite the bullet. To take the plunge. To grab the bull by the horns. And other vaguely suicidal idioms for having to commit to something he’s been putting off—namely, sitting himself back down in front of Chuuya like he didn’t just have his heart stomped on by his partner, who’d have no memory of it whatsoever. 

It’s a rare and tragic day where he doesn’t look forward to spending time harassing Chuuya.

But if this is personal and aimed at him specifically, then it’s just as likely aimed at Soukoku. They did, after all, piss off quite a few people during their partnership. And the fact that it happened on a day where they reunited again seems significant to him, even if it’s not to the unknown ability user who’s found an effective purgatory to strand Dazai in.

Without spending forty-five minutes loitering in bed as he had that first iteration of this day, he beats Chuuya to the cafe. It undermines the idea of going through everything step by step as he had before the loop began, but frankly he doesn’t care. Something tells him that he’ll be getting a redo button on this investigation. 

Besides, it lets Dazai watch Chuuya’s genuine reaction before and after seeing him unexpectedly. He needs to watch that, to see for himself the truth of Chuuya’s emotions. 

Because wallowing in self-pity aside, he knows that Chuuya will absolutely believe something as he’s saying it in the heat of the moment—for instance, and just as a random example, that he hates Dazai beyond any love they may-or-may-not have for each other. But when Chuuya’s clear-headed he’s more honest with himself, which is a completely different matter. 

So he watches on the GPS as Chuuya drives up and parks his motorcycle in the nearby garage. Watches as the red dot of his partner slowly traverses his direction. Flips his phone over and watches as Chuuya crosses into view of the cafe’s windows. 

Chuuya is slumped more than he’d ever allow in front of his subordinates, or his comrades at the Port Mafia, or Dazai except on the rare occasions he let Dazai see him exhausted outside of the physical exhaustion of Corruption. His phone is in his hand, head down to look at the screen, finger flicking upward— dismissing messages.

Interesting.

He’s still looking down at his screen as he enters the cafe, approaching the counter to order. 

“Chuuuuuyah!” 

“Son of a…” it’s a call and response, a children’s game ingrained in the both of them, and Chuuya wheels in place to take in Dazai where he’s already claimed Chuuya’s seat at Chuuya’s table, with two breakfasts and two coffees in front of him. 

See? He’s on his best behavior. And Dazai’s best behavior is impeccable. He has it on good authority that he can be quite charming—his own, obviously, but what better authority is there? 

Chuuya’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and he approaches Dazai the way one might a stray dog—if one were inclined to approach horrible mutts, which Chuuya always has been. He’s waiting to see if he’s about to be bitten, or about to end up with a creature demanding all of his attention and affection.

To be fair, Dazai’s been both before.

“Why are you here.”

Rude. Honestly he has no idea why he became attached to such a short, hotheaded little jerk. But he is. And Chuuya isn’t looking at him with hate, he’s looking at him observingly. Warily. But not with any rancor.

“To see you. Obviously. And I’ll remind you that this is my cafe on weekdays. Which this unquestionably, unendingly is.” 

Chuuya takes his seemingly nonsense, thrown-away comment and plucks it out of his ramble immediately, like separating the wheat from the chaff, sifting out Dazai’s bullshit to get at what’s actually important. 

“Are you whining about work, which you’re obviously skipping, or is something going on?” Chuuya drags his chair to the side of the table instinctively, refusing to sit with his back to the windows. That hurts a little, Dazai won’t lie. They always watched each other’s backs, but his instincts don’t trust Dazai to do that any longer though Dazai’s own instincts did. On the other hand, it puts Chuuya closer to Dazai, which is a net-gain. “You look like shit.”

“I’ve lived today repeatedly for about a week. And since I got little to no sleep the night this started, I'm in a loop with that too.” Might as well cut to it, then, and answer every variation of this conversation in one go. “No, I’m not on any hallucinogens. Yes, we’ve had some version of this conversation before. No, I haven’t figured out what’s going on. Yes, I am able to change general outcomes—you asked that the first time. No, I don’t know if this is aimed at me or if I’m just outside of the effect because of my ability. Yes, I know your plans for the day but may need backup.” And after a pause to consider what else Chuuya might ask, Dazai adds another response. “No, I haven’t drugged your breakfast.”

“Good, because I’m fucking starving and I’m going to need coffee for this shit.”

And without any objection, Chuuya’s just… there. Dazai knows that his partner had plans for the day. He even knows what those plans are, and while he doesn’t understand why Chuuya’s on a cemetery parade, he knows it must hold some kind of meaning for him. But Dazai asked for help, and Chuuya’s willing to drop out of those plans. 

Just like that.

Chuuya’s phone buzzes as he sets it on the table face down, and the curiosity finally gets the better of Dazai after days of wondering. As his partner begins to take his seat, Dazai bumps the bottom of the low table with his knee, upsetting Chuuya’s coffee cup so he has to catch it in both hands to keep it from spilling, and Dazai uses that opportunity to steal his partner’s phone. 

Happy Birthday, Nakahara-san!

I hope you have a restful day off, and a pleasant birthday. We will see you on Monday.

I heard it’s your birthday! Why didn’t you tell us that before? I’m years behind on gifts!

I’ll see you this evening for dinner. If you try to back out of it again this year, I will find you. Do not make me have to find you, Chuuya dear.

I’m so sorry, Nakahara-san. I didn’t realize you hadn’t told people when your birthday was when I gave you the gift. I saw it in a database and thought everyone knew.

I have something for you, if you’re willing to visit me. I know better than anyone that birthdays are complicated for us--I will not be offended if you would prefer not to see me.

Happy Birthday!!!

Why don’t we all get drinks tonight? Our treat. As long as it’s not that expensive stuff. 

Oh. Dazai’s an idiot. He’s lived this day for a week, and never bothered to look at what day he was re-living. The messages go on, new ones arriving even as Dazai holds the phone, each one proof of how central a figure Chuuya has become in the lives of his people… and how long he’s kept this secret from the majority of the Mafia, just another day for all the people who care about him for years except for Mori (ugh), Kouyou (unsurprisingly), and Verlaine (infuriatingly).

And for Chuuya, a day for making the rounds to the graves of the friends who gave him back that birthday. Even if he never entirely felt that it was his own. 

Chuuya snatches the phone out of Dazai’s hand, but the damage is done. Dazai’s misplaced jealousy has abated, but his curiosity is now running rampant, his mind racing.

“It’s your birthday.”

Chuuya snorts bitterly and shoves the phone into the inside pocket of his leather jacket instead, reaching for the toast on his plate. “So I hear. Just tell me what the hell is going on. Is there something actually significant about today? Why this day?”

The only significant thing about the day is that it is, apparently, Chuuya’s birthday. Chuuya genuinely doesn’t consider that significant. In the long run, when it comes to today’s fluke reruns, it may not be. No one really knew about his birthday, after all, unless there’s a leak at the Port Mafia. And Chuuya’s people adore him, so that would be a strange and otherwise inconsequential leak for them to spring. 

…But isn’t that coincidence worth investigating?

“...No. I’m sick of this! This is the last time, we’re done.” The world continues on, the break up, the festival setting up outside, the fortune teller, the children shrieking, the gymnasts, the musicians. And Chuuya sits with an expectant eyebrow raised, taking Dazai at his word and begrudgingly ready to help. 

Dazai stares across the table at wary blue eyes, and decides abruptly that he’s going to hit the reset button for this day in a new way. If he’s going to relive this day over and over again, maybe he can make it worthwhile before fixing it. So he’s going to try a different route and see if he gets a different response. If today is an eternal redo-button, there is one part of the day that he'd like to redo and do better. The old, urgent need to be the absolute center of Chuuya’s attention has reared its ugly head, greedy and just the smallest bit pathetic, and Dazai caves to it immediately just as he has since they were fifteen and he developed the most excruciatingly embarrassing crush within hours of them meeting. 

If Chuuya doesn’t in fact hate him, as Dazai now can tell he doesn’t, then he’s just angry at him and was spitting out what he thought would hurt worst. He knew just what to do to twist the knife in both of them, and that means the last thing Chuuya felt for him as teens (aside from resentment) was (resentful) love. 

Dazai can work with that.

Now he just has to convince Chuuya to go about his day with Dazai in tow, under the guise of looking for clues in case this mystery is about him. 

It’s in the name of investigating the case. 

Obviously. 

Chapter Text

“Feeling that any expression I carried behind my bandage and my sunglasses would not get out had made me perverse.” - Kobo Abe

Day 1-007 Continued

Crashing Chuuya’s day is already proving to be one of the best ideas he’s had in a while, and certainly since this terrible unending day began. 

It took wheedling to get Chuuya to agree to let Dazai tag along on his day, rather than him following Dazai into whatever fray he’s imagined they’ll find at the end of this investigation. And now he’s here with his hands in his pockets, standing in an overpriced little flower shop while Chuuya patiently lets the elderly florist pat his cheek and call him a good boy, and thank him for being such a loyal customer. 

Dazai half wants to see if she pinches Chuuya’s cheeks and tells him that he’s too skinny, and underfed, and that’s why he hasn’t grown any. He’s certainly being told all about one of the woman’s granddaughters, who’s a very fine young woman who she’d love to introduce Chuuya to.

Chuuya scowls at him over the woman’s head (no wonder the shortie likes shopping here) until Dazai mimes zipping his lips to stop his snickering, and wanders off past the bouquets towards the more expensive displays while the woman continues to unsuccessfully list off a number of girls who’d be a suitable wife for the rich and handsome and thoughtful and unmarried (and decidedly gay) young man who frequents her store.

Dazai’s never been much of one for ikebana, but the old women is clearly skilled at it. Flowers and reeds twist delicately into minimalist art pieces, beautiful in their simplicity. She’s likely taught those daughters and granddaughters the centuries-old art of it all, and doubtless Chuuya’s bought gifts from here before. This seems like the kind of place he’d go to for Kouyou or the secretaries at the tower. 

Dazai is more of a grocery-store flowers buyer when he has someone to suck up to, and it seems like it would have been just as easy to get the cemetery flowers from them, but to each their own. 

He pauses in front of a display while Chuuya finishes his transaction, eyes caught by a familiar bloom. Thick, hardy stems twist down in an arch from one side of a bowl to the other, glossy green leaves positioned just-so, all to frame two brilliant flowers so deep a pink that they’re nearly crimson: one draping down from the stem, and one cut short enough to seem as if it’s floating on the water facing it from below, both nearly as wide as his palm, suspended only centimeters apart.  Camellia Japonica, the small hand-written sign reads. But above it, in neat calligraphy, is the romantic nickname for the flower and so the inspiration for the entire piece:

“April’s Kiss.”

When Chuuya wraps his transaction and whistles between his teeth to get Dazai’s attention, he impulsively plucks the flower from the water and hides it behind his back. Chuuya’s already putting his hat back on and tucking away the funeral flowers when Dazai approaches the woman at the counter with a charming smile and his finger pressed to his lips.

While Chuuya trots across the street to the garage he stashed his motorcycle in, Dazai brings the camellia forward and offers his most boyish smile and the excuse that he knows will get him the response he’s looking for. 

“Did he mention that it’s his birthday?” 

It’s not manipulation if it’s true. And anyway, he doesn’t actually have the money to pay for it after buying Chuuya’s breakfast, so he’s not going to turn down a free flower. 

He has to jog to catch up with Chuuya, the camellia tucked into his coat for safekeeping, and he accepts the irritated and suspicious look Chuuya shoots him in stride and with his best innocent expression (that Chuuya sees right through, as always). Chuuya’s snapping the glossy red cowl off the rear of his bike to reveal the pillion seat it hides, and Dazai is left wondering how often he even has a passenger on his motorcycle anymore. Not often, if the way he struggles to shove the cowl into one of the saddlebags is any indication.

“If you gave her my number for her granddaughters, I will murder you in a way where no one will ever find the body. She’s been trying to trick me into a blind date for years.” 

“Does that sound like something I’d do?” Dazai asks in faux innocence, just to be caught by Chuuya’s assessing stare as his partner pauses in circling the motorcycle to consider him.  

“You’re right. You wouldn’t…” See, he knew Chuuya still understood him! “…Because you’re a jealous prick.” 

Ah. Maybe a little too well. Chuuya’s got a smug little smirk at winning that round when he turns back to what he’s doing, carefully stowing the flowers in the opposite bag and tucking his hat away with them regretfully, knowing that he can’t wear it with Dazai on the bike with him nullifying Tainted. 

“I could have given her my number,” Dazai tries, aware that he’s grasping at straws trying to draw out his partner’s own jealousy, but Chuuya doesn’t even blink. Instead, Chuuya pauses with his hair gathered back in his hands, speaking around the hair tie caught between his lips.  

“Nah. You may be an ‘equal opportunity manwhore’…” hey, that’s Dazai’s quip and how dare Chuuya quote it back at him now, years after they came out to each other. That was a vulnerable and sincere moment, flippantly revealing a part of himself in answer to Chuuya hesitantly admitting he was gay! Unrepentant, Chuuya finishes his ponytail with a snap of rubber. “…but it’s my pants you’re trying to get back into right now with the bullshit ‘I’ll just follow you today’ ploy. Get on, jackass.”

“Rude.” Dazai repeats, huffing when Chuuya just scoffs at the familiar accusation. He watches as his partner clambers onto the motorcycle (he has to use a foot peg to get a leg over, how adorable), and ponders what he feels about Chuuya seeing right through him but playing along anyway. Chuuya’s dismissed his claims that this is all part of his investigation into his timeloop situation, and is still letting Dazai take over his day—his birthday, no less. “Who said it was a ploy. It could be relevant. I won’t know until I investigate to see if it’s about you.”

“Right.” Chuuya deadpans, as he shoots an unimpressed look over his shoulder, the motorcycle coming to life between powerful thighs with a low roar. “Do you still know how to ride, or should I let you walk?”

“You were always the one doing the riding…” Dazai mutters pettily under his breath, but throws a leg over the bike (no foot peg required because he’s a normal height) and settles in against Chuuya. The seat is as uncomfortable as it always had been, but having an excuse to live up to the ‘back warmer’ title is exhilarating in a way the racing motorcycle leaping into motion could only dream of. Dazai plasters himself to his ex, the wind whipping away any conversation they could have had, and Dazai finds that he still loves this. Loves the way he can fold himself around Chuuya completely given their size difference, how the bike’s rapid acceleration gives him an excuse to slide his arms around Chuuya’s slim waist and test if his battered old t-shirt is as soft as it looks (yes) and if Chuuya still runs so hot that holding him is like curling around a heating pad (yes).

It’s almost whiplash to go from Chuuya snarling contempt at him to this, technically in the same day. He’s aware that their relationship right now is a minefield that he deliberately stomped through last time, but while he knows how to prime Chuuya to explode, he’s not quite sure yet what he’s doing that’s making Chuuya humor him and let him in close again this time.

He’s missing a variable in this equation of them. 

It’s not a long trip to the cemetery, but it’s very different when riding with Chuuya, zipping in and out of traffic instead of on foot from the agency. Chuuya rides like he was born to, and Dazai finds himself remembering to lean into each turn, to tuck his head down as best he can behind Chuuya’s to keep behind the windscreen. The bike is built low for speed, practically laying Chuuya out along the body of it, and Chuuya leans deep into each too-fast turn as if to keep Dazai holding on tighter. All Dazai can think of is them in this position in far less innocuous circumstances, his front plastered to Chuuya’s back, Chuuya’s ass pressed back into him, hearts racing, bodies hot where they touch…

The second the engine cuts off, Chuuya calls him out on it. 

“You’re a horny fucking bastard, and I can tell where your mind is going. Not going to happen.”

Ah. He said that last time too, just before the conversation fell apart. Dazai steps off the motorcycle with his hands raised in surrender, eyes wide. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, short stack. I’ve never had an impure thought in my life. How could you besmirch…”

“Yeah, yeah.” Chuuya rolls his eyes, waves away Dazai’s nonsense, and fishes his hat and the flowers out of the saddlebag. Flipping his hat back onto his head, he pauses for a second holding the paper bag before plucking out one chrysanthemum and shoving it into Dazai’s hands. “Just… go say hello to your friend or whatever. I’ve got some things to do.”

Dazai stares at the flower between his fingertips for a moment too long, twirling it back and forth on the stem. Chuuya placed it on the grave before. It was, dare he say it, a rather sweet gesture from his partner, an acknowledgement of what Oda meant to Dazai rather than any sign of a deeper connection between Chuuya himself and Oda. 

And he’s still making that happen, just giving it to Dazai to let it be more meaningful. 

When Dazai looks up, Chuuya’s a ways away already, dropping into his familiar gremlin crouch before a gravestone and fishing a feather out of his pocket, trying deliberately not to look in Dazai’s direction like the show of empathy to Dazai is somehow more embarrassing than his own grieving nostalgia.

There is not an ‘indentation of Dazai’s bony ass’ at Oda’s grave, but there’s a notch where his feet rest, a spot more comfortable and familiar than his own futon, and Dazai twirls the flower between his fingers again as he settles in. The multitude of petals, perfectly arranged in concentric circles, blur with each rotation.

I think I’m still in love with him. I don’t think I ever stopped, Dazai confesses to Oda in his own mind, as if they’re picking up a conversation that requires no context, silent as it ever is. You wouldn’t be surprised to hear that, would you. How many years did you listen to me whine about him, knowing how I felt and wanting to shake sense into me so I’d get it too?

Dazai doesn’t try not to watch Chuuya in the distance so much as he tries not to be obvious about watching Chuuya. It’s too much to hope that he’s making the same confession to Albatross. But Dazai wishes he were. 

Chuuya has his head bowed so his face is hidden by his hat and the fall of his ponytail, but his shoulders shake not in tears but in what Dazai can recognize as his self-deprecating humor. It makes sense that it’s Albatross he’s laughing with, though. Albatross could make Chuuya laugh, in a way Dazai never did. 

I talked to Ango. Told him what I told you. He won’t remember it, which is just as well. Do you think there’s a chance I could get Chuuya to love me again? How many days do you think it would take for me to figure out the right way to get him to?

Dazai’s thoughts, ever mercurial, flit between topics the way his stream of consciousness always seems to, racing words and jumbled topics. He doesn’t realize he closed his eyes until he hears the crunch of footsteps approaching him. 

He’s expecting Chuuya, right up until he’s kicked in the ankle by a pointed shoe. 

“Kunikida is going to murder you when he finds you.”

Ah. Dazai never did find out who was assigned to the switched-bodies case, when it wasn’t him stealing it or dragging the kids along. He should have guessed, though. Who else would they send to interrogate a medical examiner. 

Yosano’s hands are planted on her hips, eyebrow raised at him expectantly, skirt fluttering gently in the breeze and a faint smirk quirking the corner of her lips belying any idea of her being annoyed or surprised by finding him here. 

“It’s the mortician.” Dazai offers cheerfully, closing his eyes again and resting his head back against the stone. “He cremated the wrong body, panicked, threw a homeless man into the coffin, and hoped no one would notice.”

“Damn. I was hoping I’d get to question the funeral parlor assistant. She’s pretty, her picture’s in the file.” Yosano’s voice changes direction as she moves to lean against the tree near his feet. “I guess I’m free to go to lunch, then. I’d offer to cover you, too, but I’m guessing you’re busy avoiding the office and hanging out with your criminal ex.”

Ah. Ranpo’s been intuiting things about Dazai and gossiping with Yosano again. It’s one of his best and worst qualities—best when it means embarrassing revelations about their other coworkers, and worst when it’s embarrassing revelations about Dazai. 

“That…” Dazai lies blatantly “…is my rival. The bane of my existence. The tiny but irritating pebble in my shoe.”

“Uh-huh. And Ranpo just spends his nights at Poe’s so that they can argue about mysteries and perfect being ‘rivals’ too.”

Dazai raspberries at her, cheeks puffed out childishly, and opens his eyes again. Chuuya has approached warily, keeping his distance, but Dazai can tell he’s ready to run off without him if he has even the slightest reason to do so.

“Hey, asshole. I’m heading out.” Chuuya is keeping a distance between them, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans and eyes on Yosano, even if his words are for his partner. “You didn’t tell me you hadn’t taken the day off.”

“Dazai’s never taken a day off. Requesting one means paperwork. He just doesn’t show up.” Yosano is scrutinizing Chuuya right back, probably noting how different he looks dressed down, the fact that he spends his time in cemeteries in a way no one would quite expect from a professional murderer. She’s running everything she knows about Chuuya through a new filter, the filter of Dazai’s care for him. “Surprised to see you here.”

Abruptly, Dazai is happy they’re probably going to have to redo this day again, considering he’s slacking off on figuring out his mystery. The idea of being perceived has him deeply uncomfortable.

So he does what he’s done for nearly eight years: deflect and quip.

“It’s his birthday. He chose hanging out at a cemetery instead of cake or sex. I’m disappointed in this too.” 

It’s the wrong thing to say. He knows it as soon as he says it, even as he hears Chuuya breathe in sharply at the words and watches his stare freeze over, his anger blisteringly cold instead of blazing this time. 

Crap. He did it again. 

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to help him play hooky from work just so he can entertain himself…” Chuuya says, eyes swinging back to Yosano as he abruptly dismisses Dazai. It’s as if Dazai doesn’t exist to him any more, a blatant disregard that guts him even more than Chuuya snarling in anger at him. “…so the bastard is all yours. Maybe he’ll accidentally make himself useful there.”

Chuuya’s always been able to make good time with his purposeful stride, even despite the relative length of his legs, and he’s stomped away before Dazai can even contemplate words that could fix this. The motorcycle roars to life in the distance, and then it’s gone.

Dazai thumps his head back down against the gravestone as he once did against his friend’s shoulder, bemoaning the same boy he always has. Shit. Odasaku, I…

“Well. You’re still the biggest idiot of a genius I know,” Yosano intones dryly after a moment, offering a hand down to Dazai to drag him to his feet. “And considering the company I keep and our line of work, that’s actually a decently long list.”

“Thank you. I am going to go walk into traffic, now,” Dazai responds, already turning to make good on that promise. But Yosano has always been stronger than she looks, and when she takes him by the collar of his shirt and coat and pulls, he finds himself dragged along like a scruffed kitten. 

“Not on my watch, you’re not. Come on. I’m still getting lunch, and now you’re going to tell me how long you’ve been fumbling a sure thing, because that was embarrassing to watch.”

Dazai spends the rest of the day regrettably alive, useless at his desk, eyes on a dot of red traversing the world. Chuuya ends up skipping the Port Mafia and the restaurant to end up at the dive bar far earlier in the afternoon, not moving from it. 

A crimson flower begins to slowly wilt on Dazai’s desk, and head in his hand he lets it.

He’s walked back to the dorm between Atsushi and Kyouka at the end of the day, and that has Yosano’s suicide watch warnings written all over it. So he finds himself back on his futon again, still fully dressed, watching a red dot meander to another dive bar, clearly thrown out of the first one. 

The drunken voicemail comes just before the day’s reset button will kick in, and Dazai listens to it as time counts down. 

“One lousy fucking day of not being a damn joke to you. That’s all… that’s all I wanted, asshole…”

It is, indeed, a lousy day. 

Day 1-008

At nine o’clock on Chuuya’s birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. 

Dazai fumbles past tin can and sake bottle to grab it and pulls the phone onto the futon as he silences it. 

He sends out two texts. One to the ADA’s group chat, saying he wouldn’t be coming in.

And one directly to Chuuya. 

Happy birthday, Chuuya. I’m sorry. 

Just another text message among a hundred or more, and he has no illusions as to the fact that it will be about as well received as Verlaine’s probably was. 

Or that his honesty will mean anything at all when he wakes up next. 

He has a bottle of sleeping pills he stole from Yosano’s office. He could…

…

He’s briefly roused by the door slamming in, broken off its hinges, and he registers faint surprise at the change in routine. Kunikida never followed through, before. 

His mouth floods with the bitter taste of charcoal, nose held closed to force him to swallow, all the while a string of curses echoes through his head. 

“…fucking told you months ago to take his depression seriously…!”

Oh. Wrong partner. No wonder. 

“Yes well forgive us for not registering a cryptic anonymous email.” 

“You’re detectives, isn’t that your damn job?” 

He’s unceremoniously hoisted up from his comfortable bed and thrown over a familiar uncomfortable muscular shoulder, though he doesn’t remember his hands being so close to dragging on the ground last time this happened. 

It makes him giggle, drugged, brain fogged with sleepiness. 

He drifts in and out of unconsciousness the rest of the day, each time wondering when he’s going to wake up to the next same-day. 

“Not today, you selfish asshole.”

It would be selfish, wouldn’t it.

“You want to fucking apologize, do it to my face.”

Ah. Actual advice.

Useful.

Day 1-009

At nine o’clock on Chuuya’s birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. Dazai rolls over and stares at his ceiling, frowning faintly to himself. 

Well, that was different.

And makes it pretty clear that as much as he might want to, he can’t do that again. Chuuya already clearly hates his birthday, and Dazai’s not that much of an asshole that he’s willing to give him more of a reason to if the world failed to reset. 

Somehow, that part had never occurred to him.

It should be heartening to know that Chuuya would care. That Chuuya would drop anything, work alongside his enemies, and tip his hand so thoroughly to people who could exploit his weaknesses. That Dazai is still his weakness. 

It isn’t heartening. 

Dazai finally turns the alarm off and sits up on his bed, bypassing the sake and the crab to go throw himself into the shower. 

He doesn’t need it—he’s been resetting on that, as well—but it always helps him to think. 

Why is it that both Ango and Chuuya expected him to kill himself the second he was honest with them—because he recognizes the alarm in Ango’s eyes now as the same fear that drove Chuuya. 

They were right of course, but what made them expect to be?

Is his honesty that rare and that alarming?

He turns off the water and rifles a hand through his damp hair, shaking off the excess water because he forgot a towel. By the time his bandages are re-wrapped, Chuuya is already done with the florist and on the way to the cemetery. 

He spares a thought for the camellia, but gives it up for lost today. He won’t be able to go get it and still find Chuuya before he takes off for the mountains. 

On his walk to the cemetery, he sends a message to the group chat again, this time saying he’s on the switched-bodies case and will wrap that up before coming in. They don’t need to know that he already has, and it will at least keep Yosano from showing up and Kunikida from blowing up his phone all day. 

He doesn’t need to give Chuuya the excuse to kick him to the curb to get work done. There’s no sense living this day over and over again if he doesn’t learn from past iterations. 

Chuuya’s pushing himself upright from crouching before Iceman’s grave, a haze of cigarette smoke surrounding him as he pinches off the ember at the end and steps on it, keeping it from catching in the grass. The rest of the pack rests beside the flowers at the gravestone, two friends sharing a conversation and a cigarette because Chuuya only ever smokes socially.

He’s wary when he hears footsteps approaching. Warier still when he sees that it’s Dazai.

He’s been wary around Dazai every time they’ve lived this day.

“I need your help.”

And that easily, Dazai again finds he’ll get exactly that.

…

It’s the fortune teller that they approach first. Something about her is unsettling, so she’s as good a starting point as any. She’s shuffling the cards in rheumatic hands when she spots them walking towards her through the growing crowd of the festival. Her age is impossible to guess--her face is a map of creases and wrinkles, each speaking of years of experience, her shoulders stooped in as if she’s carried the world for eons, her eyes fathomless. 

They remind Dazai of the ancient eyes of the Americans’ pet squid-man. Otherworldly and inhuman.

“You’re an odd one.” She addresses Dazai with a voice that’s thin as parchment paper, her head cocked to the side, cards still dancing between her hands. She turns her eyes onto Chuuya then, seeing through him as much as anything. “You’re not quite right, either. But not like him.”

Chuuya bristles, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes narrowing at her as he decides how to take that comment. Despite being unfailingly honest most of the time, Chuuya doesn’t like being perceived beyond that any more than Dazai likes people seeing behind his masks. Certainly not about anything to do with inherent oddities of his existence.

Dazai turns the chair in front of the woman that she’s left for her customers, and straddles it. He folds his arms along the back of the chair and rests his chin on his wrists. “Interesting parlor trick. How many people have you told that today.”

Her dry laugh is like the rattle of wind through reeds, and she begins laying out her cards in front of them without being asked. “Today? None. Ever? Rarely. You’re too empty and he’s too full. Strange pairing.”

It’s Chuuya she turns her eyes on even with Dazai before her, and that raises another suspicion in him. 

A card clicks down onto the table, flicked there by talented hands. The Knight of Swords. Another card hits the table beside it just as quickly, and Dazai narrows his eyes at it. The Hanged Man, reversed so that he seems chained to the earth rather than suspended from his rope. 

“I’m not who you’re searching for.” She offers, and here her eyes slide back to Dazai even as four cards hit the table in rapid succession, and she nods her head in Chuuya’s direction. “He’s your clue, not me.” 

“Come on, Dazai. I’ve seen enough.” Chuuya mutters under his breath, eyeing the old woman, braced and guarded. He suspects a passive ability has been turned on him, but Dazai knows it. And they both know that whatever her ability, it’s not time control.

That doesn’t mean that Dazai likes it. No one has the right to pry into Chuuya’s feelings and emotions except him.

He grabs the old woman’s wrist, keeping her hand suspended without letting her lay the final card, and the brilliant blue flare of No Longer Human fills the air between them. There are gasps from the audience as people turn towards the light, even applause as if it’s just another show from the entertainers gathered for the festival. She’ll likely just end up with more customers for all of her intrusiveness.

She stares Dazai down unblinking through the light, and when he releases his grip flips her final card between two fingers, showing it to him without looking at it herself.

“Two of Cups. Partners and lovers. But was it going to be upright or reversed.” She tilts her head at him, a smile creasing her face further, baring yellowed teeth. “I suppose you’ll have to decide that one yourselves. Enjoy the day, boys. You’ll have plenty of time to do so, I think.”

….

Even with Dazai and Chuuya actually earnestly working the case this time, they strike out beyond the old woman and her unsettling words. Night has fallen over the festival, lanterns and twirled torches of the circus performers and glow sticks of dancers making a riot of color that hurts his head. Dazai knows he’s going to end up repeating the day again, but he’s not going to be bringing Chuuya back over to the fortune teller. It shook him, and unlike Dazai he seems to have looked at the cards the entire time she laid them out. 

Chuuya’s going to be wondering about it for the rest of the day. If he had a tomorrow to get to with the memory intact, Dazai knows he’d eventually cave and look up the meanings of each of the cards she laid out for him. 

It’s bad enough her parting words promised more of this endless day.

But Chuuya’s the clue. Whatever that means. So Dazai knows that they’ll be spending it together from now on.

“Come on, hatrack.” Dazai punches Chuuya in the shoulder lightly, tipping his head towards the mouth of the alley and their escape from the festival and its lights and noises and screaming children. “I need a drink.”

Chuuya blows out a breath, looking over the festival with a frown. It’s not in his nature to give up a hunt before it’s over or to admit defeat. He’d pin everyone in a half mile radius down with Tainted if he had to, just to interrogate them all. He is, after all, the man who decided to punch his way through a mystery until a thousand people were all unconscious at once just to get out of Poe’s book.

Dazai’s partner is stubborn in a way that no one else could ever aspire to be. It’s endearing and infuriating in turn.

So Dazai wraps a hand around his wrist and begins pulling him away.

“It’s a wash for today. Don’t worry, I’ll have another chance tomorrow. But I need a drink, and it’s your birthday so I’m buying.”

This at least seems to get through to Chuuya, and he rolls his eyes as he lets himself be pulled away—and he is letting himself, because ability or no Chuuya is both an immovable object and an unstoppable force. “Picking my pocket doesn’t count. You don’t make crap for salary at that agency.”

True, but only in comparison to what he used to make and what Chuuya’s still raking in monthly. So he’ll have to find a compromise between paying and not.

Chuuya is still uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative as he lets himself be dragged to Lupin, where Dazai knows for a fact that they won’t be interrupted by the birthday well-wishers that Chuuya inevitably went to meet at that dive bar all of the other todays but the last two. 

A quiet Chuuya is often a dangerous one and always an unpredictable one.

The phone goes onto the bar, still buzzing away with birthday wishes. The hat goes over it. Chuuya swings himself up onto his seat, and it’s all so reminiscent of that first repeated night, hearing Chuuya shove everything they felt for each other into the past tense. 

Maybe he should have chosen a different bar. Or one of their apartments. Or…

Chuuya has his first glass of wine in his hand, staring into it without drinking, when he finally speaks again. There’s an edge to his voice, a demand for the truth and an unwillingness to let Dazai beat around the bush. “How many times have you done this now?”

Dazai purses his lips, embarrassed to admit the truth, and then takes a fortifying sip of his own whiskey. Chuuya wouldn’t ask idly, he’s got something on his mind and Dazai’s pretty sure he isn’t going to like it.

“Ten, I think. It didn’t go so well, most of them.”

“But you didn’t ask the fortune teller in any of them until this round.” Chuuya raises his eyes, pinning Dazai with a searching look. “She was the most suspicious person there. Which means you’ve fucked around every other time you’ve done this. You knew where to find me, though, so you’ve obviously met up with me at least a couple times.”

He’s not looking for an answer. Not really. Chuuya’s already come to his conclusions. Dazai answers anyway, though, because he’s trying this whole ‘honesty’ thing out. 

“We met over breakfast the first day. So we’ve done that a couple times…” honesty, he thinks to himself and finishes. “And I stalked your GPS.”

“Yeah, of course you did. You know I only left that on because I wanted you to be able to find me if you needed to shut me down after Corruption.” Ouch. That hurts worse than thinking Chuuya forgot to turn it off, or that he was just graciously allowing Dazai’s continued stalking. But of course he was just being brutally practical, and trusting Dazai more than he trusted himself. For years, even after Dazai defected. But Chuuya isn’t done. The intensity to his words and stare is building, not abating, all in that dangerous quiet. “How much of that time was spent fucking with me, instead of actually trying to get out of this?”

Dazai doesn’t wince, but only because he knows Chuuya would read into it, but he does shrug helplessly. Honesty. “Less time than I spent trying to off myself because I can’t handle the boredom. You’re never boring.”

And he’s done it again, he can tell. He’s stomped on another of those verbal and emotional landmines left between them, this time entirely accidentally. He isn’t even sure how, until Chuuya spits out his response bitterly. “Yeah. I figured. Well, I’m glad I could amuse you.”

He drains his glass, and Dazai can see it all over again. Chuuya leaving him here at the bar, Chuuya not letting him get a word in edgewise, Chuuya effectively closing the door between them again. And Dazai can’t handle that again.

So he does what he wanted to the first time, catches Chuuya by the wrist before he can pull away entirely and reels him in. But Chuuya lets him, lets him curl a hand over the back of his neck, lets him pull until they’re breathing the same air, until he can press his forehead against Chuuya’s, begging him to understand. 

“I love you, Chuuya. You know that. You have to know that, I’ve said it for years.”

He doesn’t give Chuuya time to argue against that--it’s a fundamental cornerstone of their relationship in his opinion, and he tries to pour the truth of that into a kiss. Chuuya’s supposed to understand him, so why is this where that line is. Why does kissing Chuuya feel like goodbye again, even as Chuuya lets himself be drawn into Dazai’s lap, straddling his thighs on the stool, pinning him against the bar as he surges forward against Dazai.

He tastes like wine and regret and anger, and Dazai tries to draw all of that away like he can drink it directly from Chuuya’s lips. Chuuya’s fingertips claw into his shoulders as he seems to cling to that fury, an endless well of it. Too much, the fortune teller had said, and she didn’t even know the half of it. 

Some of the best sex they’ve ever had, Chuuya was furious at Dazai through, clawing and biting, riding his cock at a punishing pace until he burned himself out on it. It’s always been like their fights, all of their frustration boiling over until it’s simmered away. So when Chuuya reaches for Dazai’s belt, adeptly unbuckling it without ever breaking the kiss, it’s not unexpected or unwelcome. 

God, never unwelcome. Their problem was never the sex. 

Dazai lifts his hips when Chuuya slides off of the stool to have room to drag down the waist of his pants and boxers at once, as Dazai’s already unbuttoning Chuuya’s jeans, sliding his hands down the back of them to shove them down, scrambling to strip Chuuya out of all of his layers just to get his hands on warm skin. He then pulls Chuuya back in again with hands molded to the curve of an ass shaped by years of kicking and fighting and stalking the world with footsteps that crack the ground with all of the gravity of a black hole in such a tiny little frame.

He should feel guilty fucking in the middle of Lupin on the stool he used to sit on between his friends, but it won’t matter in the morning when everything resets again. Right now all that matters is how Chuuya shimmies his jeans down the rest of the way, pausing only to grab his wallet and throw it on the counter. Dazai knows to reach for it as Chuuya is kicking the jeans off entirely, to grab a lubricated condom that Chuuya’s made a habit of tucking into one of the credit card slots since they were teenagers. By the time Chuuya straddles his lap, pushing Dazai back to get the angle right, he’s already rolled the condom down over himself.

Just in time, too. 

Chuuya hisses in discomfort at the first press of Dazai’s cock into his unprepared hole, but it’s never stopped Chuuya before and never will. He’s always liked pain and seen it as a challenge rather than a deterrent, and there’s enough lube on the condom that it’s only the stretch that’s the problem. One he seems quite adamant on getting rid of immediately, considering the steady way he drops down until Dazai’s hilted entirely in heat and pressure and Chuuya. 

“Slow down,” Dazai warns breathlessly, trying to be the reasonable one no matter how much he aches to drag Chuuya back down from where he’s risen again, feet pressed to the crossbar of the stool to give himself leverage. Chuuya punishes him for the command, fingers digging into Dazai’s shoulder again, body dropping back down with the sharp clap of skin on skin. 

“Don’t tell me what to do, asshole,” Chuuya releases his own bitten lip to snarl out, and his mouth looks bruised and swollen and so damned tempting that Dazai surges up from where he’s been pinned to the bar, clutching Chuuya’s back to hold him close, kissing him again helplessly. Sharp teeth catch Dazai’s lower lip, but this time it’s a groan of pleasure as much as pain that Dazai steals within the kiss. 

He also steals control while he’s at it.

Hooking his arms under Chuuya’s legs, Dazai hoists his partner up as he stands, and then Chuuya’s back hits the top of the bar. Sweat slicked skin drags over polished wood as Dazai yanks him back down enough to line himself up again, leaving Chuuya’s shoulders braced against the bar and his balance in Dazai’s complete control as he fucks back in with a speed and force to win an uninhibited cry from Chuuya. Chuuya’s hands scramble back and up, fingers curling over the other side of the bar to brace himself, body arching as he attempts to ride down into each thrust. 

He’s beautiful this way, laid out like a feast, all sinewy muscles and golden skin traced with the silver of old scars hard-won in the endless fight that is a life in the Port Mafia, hair like copper fanned across the bar top, sweat beading on his skin already making him seem to shine.

Dazai loves him so much. And he missed this. Missed Chuuya, more than he could ever explain even with his newfound attempts at honesty.

Neither of them is going to last long, not this first time in far too long for both of them, but that never stopped them before either. Chuuya’s stamina has always been obscene, and for all of his whining about work Dazai’s endurance has always been one of his strongest suits outside of his intelligence. They’ve been known to go several rounds in a night, and Dazai hopes--prays, really--that this can be one of those nights.

He’s determined to make Chuuya come first, a far more conscientious lover than others would likely suspect of him, but there’s a reason all of his conquests try to track him down afterwards--and Chuuya’s body is the one he knows best out of any but his own. He knows just when and how to squeeze Chuuya’s cock in his fist, the right rhythm and pressure to make his lips part on a soundless cry, how to trace his free hand up the taut muscles of Chuuya’s stomach to his chest, cupping over a defined pec and catching Chuuya’s nipple between his knuckles.

“Fuck. Dazai!”

That’s what he likes to hear, what he needed to hear--his name spilling from Chuuya’s lips, knowing that Chuuya is his now, again, hopefully for the rest of his cursed life. 

Chuuya arches through his orgasm, body tightening down on Dazai’s cock within him until he spills into the condom too, his breath shuddering out of him as he dips his head down to watch Chuuya’s cock twitch in his hand, as he milks out every last pulse of cum he can from his partner, his lover, to prolong the pleasure for him.

He gets a few minutes at most, both of them catching their breath, to think that maybe somehow this fixed them. 

And then Chuuya presses his shoulders back as Dazai slips out, and stands on unsteady legs again without looking at him. 

No. Dazai knows that expression, the crease between Chuuya’s brows, the downturn of his lips. 

“Chuuya?”

Chuuya mops himself clean with one of the bar towels, then reaches for his jeans as Dazai scrambles to tie off the condom and pull his pants back up so he can then reach out, try to catch Chuuya before he escapes again. 

Chuuya falls still the moment Dazai’s hand falls on his shoulder. And then he draws in a steadying breath.

“You don’t love me, Dazai.” No, he can’t say that. He can’t believe that, but Dazai can tell that he does with every fiber of his being, can tell that it’s tearing something within Chuuya just to put his feelings into words. “You’re bored with life and I entertain you. All I do is give you something to look forward to for as long as you’re forced to keep living.” He laughs, a bitter little chuckle without any humor in it, and finishes buttoning his jeans with his eyes lowered, as he shrugs back into his shirt and grabs his jacket from the floor. “And the thing is, you’re probably standing there right now asking yourself what the difference is.” Blue eyes flick back up to Dazai’s, steely despite the wet shine of them. “And it’s not even today, or however many times you’ve done ‘today.’ How many times over the years have you decided to pull this string, or push that button, and see what the most interesting responses you can get from me are?”

“Chuuya.” Dazai grasps his wrist again, refusing to let him go, refusing to accept this. But he doesn’t get the chance to finish finding the words.

“That’s not love, Dazai. That’s infatuation. Or maybe just fascination. And I think… I think you should let me go. Because I can't keep hoping for more.” 

Time ticks down, the endless reset button of the day catching up to him as it did the last time in this bar while having his heart broken by this man. The last time he broke Chuuya’s heart in turn. 

But this time, though… this time it’s coupled with a flare of blue light.

No Longer Human triggers as the time ability washes over him. Over them.

Because this time, Dazai is canceling the ability’s effects on Chuuya through his desperate grip.

This time, like Dazai, Chuuya will remember.

Day 1-010

At nine o’clock on Chuuya’s birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. Dazai wakes with a gasp and scrambles out of bed, knocking aside the empty can and the empty bottle, barely remembering to grab his phone and shove his shoes on before he bolts out of the dorm. For the very first time, he’s glad he collapsed fully dressed into his bed on the night before this all started, because he feels as if he needs every second he can get to race out there, to make this right.

Chuuya. He has to find Chuuya. He can’t leave them on that note.

He forgets for a moment that he’d stalled each day before, that Chuuya hadn’t gone to the cafe precisely at nine. He still finds himself scanning the street as if Chuuya will suddenly appear. 

As if he hadn’t just said goodbye only minutes before in both of their perspectives.

The GPS tracker is turned off, when he thinks to open the app. Further proof that Chuuya's been freed from the memory alteration of the time loop as Dazai has been all along.

And on this day, Chuuya never arrives at the cafe.

Chapter Text

“Suicide is an escape from life. What is life? An escape from death. This means that each of us must die twice. There is the death waiting for us ahead, and the death that comes pursuing from behind.... Once you are free at least from the death that comes pursuing you, you can relax and enjoy life as you go along.” - Kobo Abe

Day 1-015

At nine in the morning on Chuuya’s truly awful endless birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. A cheerful little suicide ditty plays out, phone buzzing against the tatami mat of his dorm. 

A bottle of sake sits beside the futon from where Dazai had drunk himself to sleep in the early hours of the morning the day before, which seems like a lifetime ago. An empty can of crab sits beside it, from where he’d crammed down food thinking to himself, as he always does, that starvation is a terrible way to die and that he’d spent years being gruffly nagged into eating. 

Dazai stares up at the dimly lit ceiling of the dorm where the midmorning light has snuck its way in despite his wishes to the contrary, as it always does, and resigns himself to living again. 

It has now been five days since he last saw Chuuya. Or however he’s counting time. Five resets? Five rewinds? Five days of endless purgatory, watching the public play out the exact same farce of a performance every single day? 

Overall, it has now been over two weeks of the exact same miserable day and it got more miserable without Chuuya in it. Is his frustration that Chuuya was the only person whose behavior changed drastically every time that Dazai sought him out?

Does that make Chuuya right? 

No. That much, at least, Dazai knows.

His limbs feel like dead weight, arm too heavy when he finally lifts it, letting his hand fall on the phone and pin it to the floor beneath before dragging it over to himself and finally turning off the alarm. As has become his habit, the first thing he checks in the GPS app, just to confirm that--once again--Chuuya has turned it off already.

The fact that he wakes up earlier than Dazai is an endless frustration now. When they were dating (were they dating? They crashed into each other, both knew that they were exclusive, and they spent all of their time side by side, but he’s not sure they’d ever defined it as such. But in Dazai’s young mind, they were dating. Chuuya was his boyfriend. His first.) it didn’t bother Dazai that he woke up first. 

On the nights Chuuya managed to talk Dazai into leaving his shipping container behind and staying at his apartment (it didn’t actually take much convincing, most days--nights he spent at the shipping container were self-punishment, were his reminder that life is a miserable affair that he’d be better off without) he woke up first, made coffee, and waited Dazai out or dragged him out of bed, depending on whether it was a workday or not.

And irony of all ironies, it is still a workday. And Dazai’s thoughts are tripping all over each other again.

Closing the GPS app, Dazai opens the texts between them now. They’re wiped clean again every morning, but he knows that like himself Chuuya will remember them despite that. Fingers tap against the screen, swiping away the notifications from Kunikida so he can continue.

Do you remember when we were together and you’d make me coffee in the morning? It was terrible coffee. I never told you though because you were still the only person who ever made me coffee without it being some way to ingratiate yourself with ‘Executive Dazai.’ 

And I liked waking up to the smell of it. Coffee still makes me think of you. 

You’re still a moron who should answer my texts, though.

He sends the words off into the void, half aching nostalgia and half annoyance because his half pint partner is being stupid.

Dazai’s supposed to be the one of them that wallows in his crappy mood and overthinks things. Chuuya is encroaching on his schtick. Annoying.

Still, Dazai makes himself roll out of bed and shoves his feet into his shoes, still in his work clothes from the day before this all began, and finally makes it out of the dorm. 

This part has become routine, too. 

He checks the cafe for Chuuya, on the off chance that he’ll be there--looking in from the sidewalk instead of going in. Nothing. As usual.

Then he makes his way down the street to the florist, to see if Chuuya picked up the flowers. He hasn’t. As usual.

So Dazai pays for them instead, and the camellia as well. The old woman looks at him knowingly when he asks for it, and in her eyes he can tell every day when she figures out that he’s hopelessly, stupidly in love with the handsome young man who placed the order. 

She doesn’t try to sell off one of her granddaughters to him.

He swings by the cemetery on the way to work, and sets the paper bag of flowers down at Oda’s grave, knowing that Chuuya will notice them there if comes by. He perches the camellia on the top of them, a spill of scarlet atop white petals.

Some days the bag of flowers are gone when he comes by, distributed among the dead. The first time it happened, the camellia sat nestled into the shadows against the cool stone of Oda’s gravestone. Since then, when Chuuya made it to the cemetery, it’s the only thing he can’t account for afterwards.

He wonders if Chuuya spends hours staring at it, the way Dazai did the first day he bought it as it sat on his desk.

Speaking of his desk, Dazai makes his way to the agency then, right on time (in that way of being late). He catches Atsushi before he can tumble through the door, lets Kunikida shake him, and then from there decides what kind of day this will be.

Today he grabs the stack of post-it notes and a pen, and scrawls down the answer to every single one of their active cases, slapping the notes one by one onto case files of every case he’s made himself do in the past five days. 

The mortician switched the bodies because he burned the wrong one.

The politician is funneling money from his own campaign funds to pay off blackmail because they have proof that he’s cheating on his wife with five other women.

A lowly accountant has set up a shell company and falsified records for it to allow him to make payments to it, bilking the corporation for millions.

And finally, the dealer wanted the kids to be stranded so he could make them drug runners. That one he slaps onto Kunikida’s chest as the Suribachi delinquents come to the door. 

Then he tosses the post-it notes back onto his desk and meanders out, too drained to want to watch them react. 

Today is not one of the good days. But Dazai stays out of the river on the way back to his apartment, stays out of the middle of the road as he crosses streets when the crossing lights come on. Stays firmly on the rooftop as he stares up at the sky. 

No. It’s not one of the good days.

Day 1-016

At nine in the morning on Chuuya’s truly awful lousy terrible unending birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. The cheerful little suicide ditty plays out, phone buzzing against the tatami mat of his dorm. 

It has now been six days since he last saw Chuuya.

I figure it’s probably the weekend right now. You can have the cafe. That was the deal, right?

“Infatuation.” Someone told you that when I left, didn’t they? Was it Kouyou? Verlaine? Tell me it was Mori, I wanted him dead already anyway and I’m taking a day off work so I could technically make that happen. Even if it won’t matter next time we wake up. 

Dazai swipes away from their texts, knowing he won’t get an answer, and into the group chat of the ADA. He’s tested the excuses that work and which ones don’t, now. Today he has food poisoning. They’ve all seen how he eats, and they buy it. Kunikida’s complaints will taper out after a bit, with something Dazai did to blame it on. 

He’s tired, perpetually living a day where he had only three hours of rest.

Today is not one of the good days. 

So he stays home and tries to will himself to sleep.

Day 1-017

At nine in the morning on Chuuya’s absolutely dreadful depressing unending birthday, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. The cheerful little suicide ditty plays out, phone buzzing against the tatami mat of his dorm. 

It has now been a week since he saw Chuuya.

There’s a text notification on his phone. Well, one outside of all of the irritated ones Kunikida sends him before he ever wakes up. Dazai sits upright immediately, tapping into the most important message string on his phone. 

Get off your lazy ass and figure this out already, “detective.” I can understand the mediocre salary now. You suck at this. Are you even trying?

If you make me live one more birthday, I’m going to murder you.

The time stamp is from an hour ago. Chuuya woke up in his bed dreading the day--moreso than usual--the way Dazai has for the past two and a half weeks.

But it’s contact. The first real contact he’s had in a week. Dazai’s heart soars. It’s absurd how much of his mood is dependent on a surly idiot who’s hat seems to have eaten his brain sometime in the past four years. 

Promise?

I’m kidding. Mostly. Unless you really do want to kill me. That would at least be a change of pace.

He sends the message off into the void and stares at his screen. This time, he’s still looking at it when it switches to ‘read.’ This time, three dots appear, then disappear, then appear again.

Chuuya’s self-editing. See, this is why he prefers face to face conversation. Chuuya is far more forthright when he doesn’t have the time to rearrange his thoughts into what he thinks is appropriate. 

Just figure this out.

Ugh. Dazai flops back onto the bed, staring up at the ceiling, sulking to himself. 

He has been slacking off, that much is true. Anything can become a routine with enough repetitions, and Dazai’s been living this day over and over again long enough that it feels like it will never end. Now he barely even has a goal, because Dazai’s goal had been figuring out how to make Chuuya understand how he feels and admit he feels the same.

That ship may have sailed.

Now that’s a depressing thought in a sea of them.

Fine. Chuuya asked for help, however brusquely he asked for it. That’s an unspoken pact between them: if one of them asks for help, the other will be there. Dazai’s strength is his ability to puzzle things out, so he’ll put his mind to work now to help Chuuya. The clues are there somewhere--but the clues are with Chuuya, the old woman had said. So it would help if Chuuya weren’t avoiding him. 

What did the tarot cards say, Chuuya? I didn’t look at them, but I know you and I know you searched them up while you were milling around avoiding me because you’re a coward who won’t just let me talk this out with you. 

Dazai reads the text after he sends it, then blames his sleeplessness for sounding punchy. He understands why Chuuya self-edits, now, though he still doesn’t like it. So he immediately slings out another text.

Sorry. I’ll stay on topic. Even though I’m right.

See? He’s still trying this honesty thing. Chuuya starts typing immediately, then edits. Dazai would bet money that he doesn’t have that Chuuya just deleted everything he wanted to say about being called a coward. He knows he’s right when he gets a simple answer and nothing else.

She wasn’t reading the situation she was reading me, and I think it’s a bunch of bs warnings about figuring out what the hell to do about you. So I don’t think it’s relevant, but whatever. I’m done with today.

The two of swords. The moon. Eight of cups but upside down. Judgment.

Why don’t you spend more time on actually solving this and less on trying to figure me out.

Naturally, Dazai ignores him on that one. If Chuuya wanted him to focus, he could come help Dazai sort through this. But since he won’t, and since he dangled that bit of information that her reading was about them, then Dazai feels absolutely justified this time in prying into what it all means. 

So he sends his excuse for missing work off into the group chat, drags himself out of bed, starts the water for his instant coffee, and settles down to delve into the esoteric and superstitious world of tarot. He’s not trying to determine what the old woman was predicting with the cards, rather how Chuuya interpreted them when he did the same research. It’s easier to let himself look for the key words and phrases that Chuuya would have gravitated to and sought meaning in.

Two of Swords, crossed so that each one points in a different direction because he’s at a crossroads and not sure which way to go. Well, that one seems obvious, and yes like she’s reading Chuuya with her ability. Who could just decide already instead of leaving Dazai wondering which way he’ll go in the end. 

No, he’ll reel that back in. He’s trying to get clues out of this. But Chuuya is supposedly his clue, so he’ll keep going.

The Moon. Assuming it’s a romantic reading--which Dazai is, because Chuuya is interpreting this as about them--is miscommunications, arguments, old insecurities. Or alternately deception which maybe, possibly, and completely without any historical basis, Chuuya may interpret to be about Dazai.

Dazai pushes himself back to his feet as the water begins to heat, and steps out into the hall. All of his coworkers are actually working, so he has no fear as he picks the lock on Kunikida’s dorm, grabs a loaf of bread, locks the door behind him, and returns to his own dorm to make toast as he’s still flicking through web pages that try too hard to work in celestial motifs. 

Eight of Cups. Dazai’s veins seem to freeze as the first keywords show up on the page he’s scrolling (“walking away, letting go, abandonment”), so he clicks in quickly and scrolls down. Upside-down, Chuuya said. That means that it has dual interpretations, something else it could be. Fear of being alone. Fear of losing something important.

The coffee tastes bitter on his tongue, too much of the powder for the amount of water the way that he always makes it. It’s nowhere near as good as what he gets from the cafe, but in some way it tastes like home. 

He can picture Chuuya reading these meanings, frowning at his phone as one card after the other shows a measure of uncertainty. Chuuya’s never been one for indecision, and that’s in the cards too--the Knight of Swords, the card she put down for his partner, is all about being unstoppable and assertive, focused and ambitious. That is the Chuuya he knows and the man Chuuya has built himself up to be. 

Are you done trying to read me, yet?

The text preview is already calling Dazai out, anticipating his actions the way Chuuya always does. Dazai crunches down on his toast, unrepentant, and switches back to the text messages with the toast still between his teeth. 

Not quite. Are you done trying to make all these decisions for the both of us? Because I’m pretty sure I should get a say too, Chuuya.

Every new card is infuriating to him, every question and crossroad and fear they reveal. If Chuuya would have just let him talk, he could have done something about this. And if he’d just had one more day to figure out the right words, the right thing to say to make this better between them, then…

Then…

Chuuya is the clue.

Chuuya was always the clue.

He flips back to the texts, interrupting Chuuya as he’s still self-editing.

I figured it out. I’ll have to handle it in the morning.  

Dazai sets his phone down, rakes a hand through his hair, and leaves his coffee and toast on the counter. The screen winks out on the description of the last tarot card, as Dazai turns on the water for a shower, resting his head against the tile.

Judgment. A period of self-reflection. A renewal of love. 

Day 1-018

At nine in the morning on the last of Chuuya’s birthdays for the year, an alarm peals out on Dazai’s phone. He stares up at the ceiling, drags in a deep breath, and rolls out of bed.

For the first time since this started, Dazai takes the time to pick up the empty bottle of sake and the tin can, throwing them both away. He spares a moment to send his excuse to the ADA group chat, and to check for messages from Chuuya.

There aren’t any. Of course there aren’t any. 

Dazai takes the time to shower and to change out of the work clothes he’s been wearing for weeks now. He stares into his wardrobe for a long moment, deciding, and chooses a blue sweater that’s every bit as soft as the t-shirt Chuuya wore. A passing comment from Chuuya when they were sixteen about liking Dazai in the color has half his wardrobe blue, and the other half tan, little black to be seen anymore. 

Dazai’s out of the dorm in plenty of time to complete his routine before he was meant to arrive at the cafe.

He collects the flowers for Chuuya, as he regularly does now. He picks out the single camellia, tucking it away for safekeeping. 

And then he picks up a single red rose. 

He arrives just in time. A chair scrapes across the floor and a voice rings out stridently as a middle aged woman throws down on the table a golden ring.

“…I’m sick of this! This is the last time, we’re done.”

He steps to the side to let the woman out of the door, her coat brushing against him as she goes. His attention is instead on the man at the table, his eyes puffy as he stares down at the ring, his breath shaking. 

Dazai gives him just a moment before slipping into the chair the woman abandoned, meeting the man’s eyes steadily when he looks up in surprise. 

“I know. This is new. And not a lot has been new around you, has it? You’ve tried to change this for a while now and nothing is working.”

Chuuya asked for his help. And Dazai’s let his partner down often enough that he won’t do it again. 

So he finally put in the work.

Dazai is, despite it all, a detective now. And as a detective, he did his research last night. After landing on his answer, he broke into the cafe after it closed and hacked into their cloud storage where the daily security footage is kept for forty-eight hours. That part might have relied a little bit on his criminal past,  but it isn’t the first time he’s smudged the line of the law for the greater good, and it won’t be the last.

While the footage was silent, he was able to get a face from it.

So he called in a favor.

All he needed was a phone call to gain temporary access to the Eyes of God. The thirteen hour time difference between Yokohama and New York made it easy, his late night only mid-morning for Fitzgerald. 

That gave him a name.

From there, he went to the Agency and let himself in after hours. Just because he rarely does his job there doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to do it.

The Agency, as a sanctioned organization with close ties to the government and a license even to investigate them, has access to the official records of everyone the government has paperwork on. Birth certificates, death certificates, school records, driver’s licenses. 

Marriage certificates.

So now he sits across from Kobo Abe, a nondescript salaryman, married to a woman he’s known since primary school, a man with an unremarkable life. The type of man no one ever looks twice at, who even Dazai overlooked despite seeing his marriage implode more than once. The type of man who would have been terrified to use the kind of power he has at his disposal, who would lock it away until he couldn’t control it anymore. Until his fear of what would happen next kept him trapped and trying to change the outcomes.

A man Dazai empathizes with more than he ever expected to, after being put through hell by him for so long.

“You can’t keep her this way. You know that. No matter how many times you live through today, you can’t change the outcome with only one day’s work.”

Chuuya was the clue. Not because this was happening because of him, but because Dazai can relate. And once he understood the Ability user’s motive, he was able to piece together all of the rest of it.

Red-rimmed eyes behind coke bottle glasses well with tears again, and for the first time it’s his voice Dazai hears. The desperation in it, the pain. “I can’t lose her. And I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, it’s obviously not living this day over and over again because you’re not making any progress on it at all. Now there’s three of us on rewind, and I’m ready for tomorrow already so you need to get it together.” Dazai draws back in, centering himself and putting away his waspish tones. He’s a detective. He’s empathizing. He will not punch this indecisive, timid man in the jaw for being afraid of losing someone. His job, as a detective, is to solve the case--which he did --and to try and save people.

So he pulls the rose from the inside pocket of his coat, and holds it across the table.

“If you want a chance, then go after her .” 

The man stares at the rose in his hand, then meets his eyes again, glances behind him towards the door, and then continues miserably. “I’ve tried. She gets away, and I never find her before the day resets.”

And here, Dazai may be blurring the line between criminal and detective. Just a little. Because he suspected that might be the case. And he planned for it.

The woman brushed past him in the door, crowded to the side and in close quarters with Dazai.

And Dazai, remembering days of watching a dot move along a map on a screen, may have known exactly what to do with that.

He holds up the receiver for the GPS he slipped into her coat pocket in the other hand, rose and tracking device, and raises an eyebrow. “No more excuses. And no more time loop. I know where you live, where you work, and how to find you. If you do this to us again, I will hunt you down.”

Again, maybe his criminality helps.

Then again, maybe it’s just the concentrated fury in the eyes of the black-clad little crime boss standing behind Dazai that gets Kobo Abe scrambling from his seat, rose and tracker in hand. 

Dazai’s head thumps down onto the table as he leaves, arms folding around his head, and he listens as the chair opposite him is pulled back in. 

“So a flower and a tracking device, huh? That’s the answer to everything these days?”

“You…” Dazai protests, voice muffled. “...were not meant to hear that. And I’m guessing you heard all of it.”

“Yep.” Chuuya pops the ‘p’ mockingly as he answers blithely in English just to rub in the sarcasm, stretching his leg out to kick Dazai in the ankle under the table. It’s good to know that even without that memory, Chuuya’s still absolutely willing to kick his ass and call it helpful. “Who’s the coward now, asshole?”

Dazai raises his head from the table, glaring back at Chuuya. “Still you. And the moron too.” Heaving in a breath, Dazai sits up again, raking his hair back and glaring at his partner. “‘Infatuation,’ really? For eight years? You’re interesting, but you’re not that ‘fascinating.’”

Chuuya hums noncommittally, but at least he’s here and he’s listening. His expression is complicated. Then again, so are they. 

Still, it’s a start. 

But they’re sitting at a table in a busy cafe without ordering anything, and frankly Dazai’s lost the taste for the food here and has no interest in being here when the festival kicks off outside. So he pushes himself to standing, takes Chuuya by the arm and drags him upright, grabs the paper bag of chrysanthemums from under the table and shoves it into Chuuya’s arms, tucks the stem of the camellia into the fold in the trim of Chuuya’s hat the way a girl might tuck it behind her ear, and then perp-walks his partner out the door like he’s dragging him off to jail, just so that he can’t run away again.

“My motorcycle is the other way,” Chuuya drawls as Dazai keeps pushing him down the sidewalk outside, letting himself be manhandled for the moment. Around them, the festival is setting up. The orchestra tuning up down the street, the old woman and her cards watching them with her eerie stare, the children shrieking, the juggling pin that Dazai has to catch out of the air so it doesn’t peg Chuuya across the temple. He has to let go of Chuuya to do that, and finds himself shrugged the rest of the way off. 

But Chuuya still falls into step beside him. Still lets him lead the way.

“My dorm is this way. And we’re working this out today, because I have lived this stupid day nineteen times and I’m not leaving it without you.”

“That makes absolutely no sense, but whatever.” Chuuya gets what he means, though, which is what he’s supposed to do, understand Dazai’s rambling and follow his train of thought. 

Still, he should have accounted for the expensive taste that Chuuya acquired sometime between sheep and mafia executive, because as soon as the door of his dorm is open Chuuya’s wrinkling his nose critically, looking around the barren room as he toes his shoes off. “It smells like seafood and alcoholism in here.”

“Yeah, I had both for dinner last night.” Dazai quips, throwing the light on for the first time in a long while and then peeling off the black suit jacket Chuuya put on this version of this morning as armor. He hangs it on the never-used hooks beside his door and Chuuya’s hat follows, plucked off of his head and hung carefully to not disturb the camellia decorating it. 

And then he shoves Chuuya flat onto his futon and pins him down.

This is an important conversation. Dazai intends to do it right. None of the awkward sitting across from each other baring their feelings while feet away bullshit. They’re Soukoku. That was never them.

“I can’t believe you think that you get to tell me what my feelings are,” Dazai grumbles into the crook of Chuuya’s neck, breath skating across the body-warmed leather of Chuuya’s collar until he bites down into the curve of the neck beneath it. 

It wins him a hiss of pleasured pain and a hand fisted in his hair, pulling tightly. “Oh, yeah, because you’re a fucking expert on emotional intelligence.”

Chuuya may think he won a point in his favor, but his reward for it is having his hands pulled away and pinned to the futon with his fingers laced through Dazai’s, his breath pushed out of him by the full weight of Dazai’s larger body laid out across his. “I told you I was in love with you the day we met and you still spent a year going ‘I wonder if I can tell my partner I’m gay, what if he hates me for it,’ so which one of us is the emotionally stunted one here?”

Dazai finds their positions reversed so fast that his head spins with it, Chuuya snaking a leg up around Dazai’s back, pushing off with their linked hands, and slamming Dazai down onto the futon beneath him. He rises from there, legs straddling Dazai’s waist to keep him pinned, a finger jabbed hard into Dazai’s sternum. “That is not about emotional intelligence.”

“Oh, you’re right.” Dazai grins, all teeth and threat and exhilaration. He shouldn’t be this happy with an impromptu wrestling match, but he is. He can’t help it. Here they’re equals, biting and scratching and grappling with each other, but only winning their points with words. “That’s deductive reasoning, and obviously that’s not your…”

The jibe is cut off in a wheeze, as Chuuya deliberately lands his entire weight onto Dazai’s stomach to keep him from bucking his hips to throw Chuuya off the way he planned.

“You can’t beat me in hand-to-hand.” Chuuya drawls menacingly in reminder. Dazai may have him beat on ‘deductive reasoning,’ but he’s not going to win in a wrestling match. Even one that’s more foreplay than fighting.

Dazai glares up at Chuuya, temporarily disarmed but not defeated, arms sprawled upwards across the bed and hair in his eyes. Maybe he can’t win a physical fight in the long term. But words were always his best weapon anyway. “Yeah, and you can’t beat me in ‘emotional intelligence.’ How long were we together and you never once admitted that you loved me too. And don’t try to deny it.”

Chuuya sucks in a breath, eyes widening, and the verbal sucker punch is immediately followed by Dazai cheating as he always will. Offbalancing Chuuya mentally and verbally, so he can follow up how he needs to: ridiculously long legs hooking up, catching Chuuya around the middle, and riding him down until they’re half off of the futon, Chuuya’s wrists pinned to the tatami mat and his legs twisted in Dazai’s.

“Gotcha.” Dazai purrs, and then surges in to steal a kiss, to take Chuuya’s mind off of any ideas of continuing the physical portion of this bout. Well, not the wrestling, at least. Untangling their legs leaves him between Chuuya’s, able to press in and prove that a little juvenile wrestling left them both hard, as turned on by a fight as two adrenaline junkies ever were.  

Chuuya gives as good as he gets, as always, wrenching his hands free to wrap his arms around Dazai’s back and link his wrists together, to pull him in and keep him there as he fights for control of the kiss that Dazai has no intention of giving up to him. Dazai pulls free of his lips, nuzzling into the hair at Chuuya’s temple before leaning in to murmur in his ear. 

“Let me make it good for you this time.”

Maybe he’s talking about the sex, making up for the brutal and somewhat painful fuck they had at Lupin. Maybe about the day, Chuuya’s birthday, ruined so thoroughly over and over again. Maybe about their relationship, the redo button he’s spent weeks hoping to find, something that will win Chuuya back for him and keep him. 

Maybe all of them. 

Chuuya shivers at the rasp of Dazai’s voice in his ear, at words that sound like sin and promise, and that’s all the permission that Dazai needs. He can read Chuuya, still. They’ll always have that, at least.

This time when he hoists Chuuya up into his lap, it’s not a violent wrench but coaxing, Dazai’s head tipped back as Chuuya leans down, another kiss sealed between them. Chuuya’s laid back out across the bed, blanketed by Dazai’s weight, but he braces himself up with his elbows planted to the futon this time to keep Chuuya from being crushed. His lips find Chuuya’s neck again, sucking kisses behind his ear, above his collar, teeth nipping Chuuya’s earlobe before he speaks again before rising up and cupping Chuuya’s cheek.

“I…” Dazai begins, with all of the gravitas of a vow, all the weight of a promise, and Chuuya’s breath hitches as he waits.

“…have lube.”

It’s a long pause, Chuuya’s mind catching up to exactly what Dazai just did, Dazai trying and failing to keep the earnest, somber expression. 

When Chuuya breaks down, breath huffing out of him in a laugh, Dazai absolutely cackles his amusement at himself. 

“You’re such a dumbass.” Chuuya wheezes, shoving Dazai off of him by the shoulders. Dazai ducks and rolls, letting himself be moved so that he can dig the aforementioned lube out from underneath the futon, still snickering to himself. 

“Yeah, well, what’d you think I was going to say there, slug, that I haven’t already said. For years, might I remind you.”

“Yeah, yeah. Pretty sure you are going to ‘remind me.’ You’re never letting that go, are you?”

“Nope.” Dazai pops the ‘p’ himself, a mockery of Chuuya in the cafe, and then he catches Chuuya by the ankle and drags him further down the futon so he can climb back up his body, stopping to catch the button of Chuuya’s pants in his teeth and tongue and open his fly. 

When Dazai looks back up at Chuuya through a fan of thick lashes purposefully, Chuuya’s eyes have gone dark, pupils blown, lids heavy. 

“Get your clothes off or I’m going to fucking shred them.” Chuuya warns, but he’s putting word to action already, sitting up slightly to drag the sweater off over Dazai’s head and fling it across the room, Chuuya’s own shirt joining it moments later. 

Dazai answers by dragging down the zipper of Chuuya’s pants with his teeth. He plants his freed hand on Chuuya’s stomach to push him down, dropping the bottle of lube onto the futon so that he has a hand free to drag Chuuya’s slacks and underwear down and off. 

Chuuya’s heel catches him between the shoulders when his entire body jolts as Dazai swallows down his cock as if he’s never even heard of the concept of a gag reflex. 

“Oh, holy fuck…” Chuuya gasps out, both hands fisting into the sheets beneath him. The fact that he can feel Dazai try to laugh around his cock, a huff of air through his nose, shouldn’t be nearly as arousing as Chuuya seems to find it. 

Dazai draws himself back off of Chuuya’s cock slowly, trying for an innocent expression even as he flicks his tongue over the precum that beads as soon as he releases Chuuya from his mouth. “What was that again…?”

Chuuya tips his head back up, glaring down at Dazai. “Don’t be so fucking smug, shitty mac… son of a …”

Dazai smirks, lapping up the length of Chuuya’s cock again as he presses two lubed fingers deeper into Chuuya’s hole, batting his eyelashes innocently as if he didn’t just deliberately play Chuuya so he would miss the pop of the cap and the motion of his hand. “Sorry, still didn’t catch that.”

Chuuya doesn’t try to speak again this time, legs both coming up to wrap around Dazai’s shoulders, hand wrenching him down by the hair to thrust back down Dazai’s throat. Chuuya throws his other arm across his face, teeth sinking into his own wrist to try and play down the embarrassing sounds Dazai’s trying to wring from him.

So Dazai has no shame at all in making that difficult on him. Fingers thrust unerringly against Chuuya’s prostate, Dazai’s tongue flicking frenulum with each thrust, giving the head of his cock the most attention the way he remembers Chuuya likes. By the time he adds a third finger, Chuuya’s insensate with pleasure. 

Just how Dazai likes him. 

He uses the thorough distraction he is serving up to free himself from his own pants, kicking them off of the end of the bed, sure that Chuuya is far too gone to notice it before Dazai pulls away mouth and fingers all at once, deliberately abrupt to leave Chuuya arching away from the bed as if to chase his touch, a whine Chuuya would never admit to ripping out of him. 

He’s pinning Chuuya to the bed again within seconds, freeing himself from the powerful thighs that try to pull him in and pushing them back, instead, folding Chuuya’s knees toward his shoulders as he buries himself in the heat of Chuuya’s hole in one sharp thrust. 

Chuuya cums with a cry the moment Dazai’s cock bullies into him, head thrown back, eyes wide and unseeing. 

Dazai doesn’t give him time to recover. Overstimulation, like pain, is a fine line that Chuuya flirts with and dances over with pleasure, so Dazai throws himself into it, chasing his own release now that he’s won Chuuya’s, determined to drag another orgasm out of him while he’s at it. 

“Say you’re mine.”

If he’s really seeking an answer, he won’t get it yet. Hands hooked beneath his partner’s knees, Dazai keeps Chuuya just where he wants him, forced to just take every thrust. For all his strength, his agility, his stubbornness, this is where Chuuya lets himself surrender. 

And Dazai soaks in every moment of it, heady with the power Chuuya hands over to him so naturally.

“I’m going to cum inside,” Dazai half warns and half promises, condoms a distant afterthought unnecessary with actual lube. Chuuya’s toes curl by Dazai’s ears as he leans in, using all of his weight to pin Chuuya folded nearly in half beneath him as he reaches between them to catch Chuuya’s cock in his hand again. 

“Yes,” Chuuya gasps, and it’s all the permission that Dazai needs. 

It’s a few short thrusts, barely even drawing out, that throw Chuuya back over the edge again, so overstimulated with it that tears bead his lashes, that he can’t even draw in a full breath to moan. Dazai crashes over that edge moments later, pressing as deep into his lover’s body as he can, as if determined to make Chuuya carry some part of Dazai within him even if he runs again. 

Though neither of them is likely to be running any time soon. 

Dazai collapses beside Chuuya on the futon once he pulls out, trying and failing to catch his breath, an arm curling around Chuuya’s waist to pull him in, to bind them together even as sweat-soaked and overheated as they are. After a moment Chuuya turns toward him, face burying against Dazai’s chest, body curling around him in turn. 

It’s only then that Dazai relaxes, lets the fear that Chuuya’s going to run again drain away. 

They’re silent long enough that Dazai thinks Chuuya may have fallen asleep, even as early in the afternoon as it is. Dazai wouldn’t blame him if he did—the sex and the emotional rollercoaster and the mess of the past endless day would be enough to knock anyone out. He’s pressed his lips to the crown of Chuuya’s head, fingers lacing together between them, when Chuuya proves that assumption wrong. 

“I am, you know. And I do.” Chuuya’s voice is a gravelly approximation of his usual rough tones, low as an admission of guilt. 

It takes Dazai’s thoughts an embarrassingly long time to catch up. To figure out what he means

Say you’re mine. 

You never once admitted that you loved me too.

“That,” Dazai rasps, throat raw from the enthusiasm of the blowjob, “…is the worst confession I’ve ever heard.”

Chuuya snorts a laugh, and it gives Dazai the steam to keep going. 

“…And I get confessed to all the time. Women I barely know fall all over themselves to confess to me and you, who I have been in love with since we were fifteen, might I remind you…”

“Yeah, still with the reminders,” Chuuya yawns, but Dazai is still going. 

“…half-ass your confession as if I haven’t been waiting for it for nearly eight years…”

“ You don’t get to count while you were gone, asshole.”

“…for nearly five years…”

“ That’s better.” 

“…and you expect me to just…”

Dazai finds himself with a blanket of boyfriend pushing him back down into the futon, shutting him up with a kiss. Which is fine. For now. When they come back up for air, though, Dazai presses a fingertip to Chuuya’s forehead with a halfhearted glare. 

“This isn’t done. I’m going to give you hell about this forever.”

“Mmhm.” Chuuya rumbles, completely without concern as he makes a pillow out of Dazai’s chest again, melting into the way Dazai instinctively begins petting a hand up and down his spine. 

The room is silent again for a long while, the contented silence that’s comfortable and rare even between the two of them. 

“…I’m not staying the night in your fishy alcoholic dorm on my birthday.”

Chuuya snickers as he’s pushed off of the futon.

Day 2

At nine o’clock in the morning on the last day of April, Dazai’s phone peals out an alarm.

A hand, not Dazai’s own, immediately snatches it to silence it before tossing it into the soft, overly expensive sheets of a too-big western style bed. 

“No.” Chuuya demands, capturing Dazai once again in a painfully tight one-armed grip. “Neither of us is going to fucking work today.”

The idea of Chuuya being the one to skip work for once makes Dazai laugh, tucking his chin over his partner’s head, dragging the rumpled sheets back over them. 

“Whatever you say, slug.”

“When I look at small things, I think I shall go on living.” - Kobo Abe