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"—don't you think, Chuuya?"
Someone's nudging his side. His dry, clean side. He shakes his head to clear it, 'cuz what. He was soaking just a moment ago; Dazai's little weretiger had tripped while his grubby weretiger hands were filled with a quartered cardboard tray of iced coffee and careened teeth-first into Chuuya's chest.
It's OK, baby. Don't worry about it. Nothing bad happened.
As he pats himself down he sees that he's in a clean, dry shirt. Even were it not for the Brobdingnagian size, he'd know it belonged to his ex-partner. Him and those damn blue pinstripes.
He should probably answer. He's got a 50/50 shot of saying the right thing, so might as well go for it.
"Yeah, I guess. Whatever."
The voice, Dazai himself, Chuuya identifies before he even gathers his bearings enough to really parse what's going on around him visually, gasps in delight. Clearly, whatever he was supposed to be responding to, he picked the wrong answer.
"Are you really finally admitting you're severely vertically challenged? To what do I owe this honor?"
Chuuya scoffs. As usual, the guy is being an asshole, it seems.
"Think what you want, you stupid noose-yearning giraffe."
There's a pregnant pause that lets Chuuya know that he has once again said the wrong thing.
"I just thought of something super duper important that I must tell Chuuya immediately," Dazai informs the room, of course the one to break it. "We'll be back in a jiffy!"
He yanks Chuuya toward him by the lapels and starts dragging him off. Chuuya does slap him upside the head, but he knows Dazai well enough to know that even if it isn't at this exact moment, he's going to get what he wants, so he figures he might as well acquiesce now and save the hours of protracted pain where Dazai makes it everyone's problem.
"If you're going to fuck in my supply closet, clean up after yourselves this time!" Yosano calls as they round a doorway.
The last thing Chuuya hears before said door shuts behind them is Atsushi's scandalized squawk, and then he's being led to a couch in what he now identifies as the president's office.
"Whaddaya want, asshole?" Chuuya asks with a raised eyebrow as soon as Dazai sits down next to him, lounging across the other couch arm like a motherfuckin' princess damsel who goddamn well knows he's the shit.
"I can't wish my dear partner a very happy birthday?"
Chuuya scoffs. "The agreement," he reminds, because he knows Dazai fuckin' remembers the mutual promise they made what's approaching a decade ago now — if nothing else because it's just as valuable to him as it is to Chuuya — that there are two particular cursed days of each calendar year, one belonging to each of them, that will never be acknowledged.
So Chuuya's question is understandably significantly more emphatic this time when he demands, "Just give it to me straight. Whaddaya want, asshole?"
"I ~want~," Dazai informs him, absolutely undeterred at having been called out, "to know what's going on. You've been acting very weird, you know! It's really starting to harsh the vibe. We here at the Armed Detective Agency pride ourselves on maintaining a standard of work culture that an uncultured Port Mafia swine like yourself would never understand. But like, you do have to try to at least pretend, which is why we are here right at this very moment sat on this couch with me asking you annoying questions."
Chuuya doesn't even bother to scoff, this time. He lets the silence linger until he knows Dazai's loudmouth ass is starting to get uncomfortable, because he just wants to know what the fucker wants and be done with it.
Sure enough, after a couple minutes, Dazai finally lets out a pompous, melodramatic sigh. "Fineee," he concedes. "I was wondering how you're dealing with this fun new transition from dastardly criminal to nefarious do-gooder. Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you're miserably crashing and burning. No offense."
"Since when did you give a shit?" Chuuya asks, praying the guy will give up and go away soon.
"You've gotten a lot worse at ragebaiting since we were kids," Dazai comments, putting his hands behind his head and kicking up his legs after pulling out of his shoes so his nasty fucking feet are sat directly in Chuuya's lap. "Try again."
"It's going just peachy, Dazai," Chuuya bites out. "Would be a lot better if you let me actually get back to doing my job instead of using my lap as a foot rest and wasting my time yammering about pansy-ass bullshit."
Another sigh, more dramatic this time, if that's possible.
"This is what I get for actually asking after your well-being, I guess," he laments, leaning back to physically freakin' languish across the couch. Like he got served for court by his ex instead of mildly shot down by Chuuya for the thousand millionth time, but that's Dazai for you.
"I hear there's a performance troupe hitting town next week," Chuuya intones dryly. "You should try auditioning, because this new career as a shrink is already going to dogshit and it hasn't even been five minutes."
"Like I said," Dazai shoots back, "ragebaiting is back to like. Level three. And that's being generous."
Chuuya shoves his feet off his lap, scoffing. "Just tell me whatever the hell you want, Dazai. I'm tired and not in the mood for your bullshit, OK?"
That of all things, for some reason, finally causes Dazai to sober up back into the land of taking conversations seriously like a normal fucking person.
"Yeah, you would be," he comments.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"You think I don't know you started remembering your dreams after you used Corruption for the first time? It's very, very obvious you've been having nightmares, Chuuya."
"Says who?" Chuuya bites out, prickling up. The fuck does this guy think he is?
"Says you waking up panting and gasping multiple times a night," Dazai says evenly. "The walls are pretty thin in the dorms, if you haven't figured that out. You've been very lucky so far. Everyone's just been assuming it's Atsushi-kun."
Stiffening, Chuuya hugs his arms around himself with a scowl. "You know, Dazai," he grinds through between his teeth. "If you needta use that big mouth of yours that badly, why don't you go give your gun a nice blowie instead. Deepthroat that shit with the safety off for me, will ya?"
"Chuuya," Dazai returns, nonplussed, unmoved, and so dead serious it's actively uncomfortable. "It's allowed to not be."
Saw, saw, sawing at that rope.
"Allowed to not be what?" Chuuya asks, voice still cusping spite.
"It's allowed to not be OK."
And then, it snaps.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Chuuya slams out. "You've been being weird for weeks now. You and your, and your 'What's wrong?' and your 'It's allowed to not be OK.' Will you cut it the fuck OUT? Stop being— stop being…"
"What?" Dazai asks, sounding genuinely curious.
"NICE to me," Chuuya spits. "Stop fucking being NICE. You're an asshole. You've always been an asshole, what the hell is this soft bullshit, what the hell is wrong with you? Will you fucking quit it? For five damn seconds, will ya cut it the fuck out! It's weird, it's fuckin' wrong, and I don't…"
He takes a breath.
"Just goddamn stop, dude. You're bein' creepy as hell."
Dazai stares at him as if he's a particularly rote and boring puzzle. Has been throughout his entire speech, and doesn't stop when he finishes.
"'I don't deserve it,'" he intones, not sounding like he has any particular feelings about it. "That's what you were going to say, right?"
"Wasn't," Chuuya bites out, shoving his hands into his pockets so he doesn't curl them into fists. He knows it's futile before the words even leave his mouth.
"Were," Dazai counters evenly, looking down at him from his nose.
Chuuya rolls his eyes, turning away to stare at the bushy potted plant wilting in the corner of the president's office. "Whatever, Dazai."
Dazai, ever the obnoxious asshole even in his #fakehealed era, sighs once a-fucking-gain. "Alrighty, then. If you're so intent on stewing in your own misery, I'll leave you to it."
Chuuya hears rustling as he redons his shoes, and then a series of clumsy clomping noises that is Dazai trying to learn to make his footsteps audible again. He feels his entire body loosen. Finally.
It doesn't last long, though, of course. He's pulled taut by the muscles like a string being yanked up by a particularly dogged aluminum crochet hook the moment he hears those footsteps pause just as the door is creaking open.
"For the record, though, Chuuya," Dazai says, "I think you're looking at things through a fallacious paradigm. This is not a fair world. You know that better than almost anyone. So why should it matter what you deserve? The real question you should be asking yourself is: What do you want?"
"Because," he adds, just before he pulls the door shut behind him, "I know you don't know this yet, but meaningless as it is, there is more than duty and resigned misery to be had in this world. And not to pull the 'partner of eight years' card, but I think you'd enjoy what else it has to offer."
"Three years," Chuuya corrects, but Dazai is already gone.
What does that guy know, Chuuya thinks. What does that guy know, so I have no reason to be crying. I'm not crying.
He barely makes it to the bathroom annexed off the side of the president's office before his eyes start watering like it's onion season and someone just crushed thirty open at once.
Fuck. Fuck.
Stop acting like a baby.
Oh, fuck off, Chuuya thinks, but isn't this wonderful, isn't this just peachy, there was only one voice. There was only one there's always only been one and now there're apparently two, because he's just that fucking batshit. He's really fucking gone Looney Tunes now.
Aw, do you want okaachan to kiss it better? Wah, wah, buckle up, buttercup.
Jesus Christ, it's been less than a minute and Chuuya's already tired of this new guy.
You're OK, honey. Ignore him, you're OK.
Chuuya can almost imagine her stroking his hair, and he hates it, because it actually makes him feel better. He'd castrate any fucker who tried to talk to him like this in real life.
He makes an exception for his delusions, he guesses.
Her words break some kind of dam, in him. He slides down the door he's leaning against to the ground and curls into a ball and lets himself cry for the first time since he was watching them shovel dirt over his friends' graves one by one, utilitarian like an industrial fucking assembly line.
He feels young. He feels scared. He presses his wrist to his mouth and it makes him feel momentarily better, but it also makes the tears fall harder.
Crying only seems to make it hurt more. What else is there but pain. What else has there ever been.
It would hurt less if you would stop squirming around, A2-5-8. Itou-kun, where the fuck is the paralytic.
"Help me," Chuuya whispers. "Please, help."
Don't you mean anesthetic, doctor?
I said what I meant. The anesthesiologist is busy today. He's being a baby, he's fine.
"Help me. Help me, please. Please help me. Please help me. Please, please, help me. I'm scared. I'm scared."
You're OK, baby. It'll all be fine. I'm here, you're OK. Shh, shh, just close your eyes. When you open them again everything will be fine.
Will you stop kicking, you little brat?
A blow to his face, an open-handed slap.
Chuuya barely throws his torso over the lip of the toilet in time to avoid spewing vomit over the floor. He watches, almost fascinated, as his upchuck burgeons outward in the bowl to taint the clear pond of toilet water.
Wiping at the leftover smeared across his cheeks like some especially gross flavor of baby food, he thinks, it's fine. He's fine.
Since everything's better now, and all that.