Chapter Text
Dazai knows precisely what he’s done wrong, and it’s clear by the way he decided to take a long route home, walking slower than usual, with his eyes locked to the ground while he sniffles and holds back a stream of tears.
His heart is heavy, and his stomach aches. He feels hollow, just the shell of a person flooded by guilt.
He has to take a moment to stop walking and sit down so he can try and hold in a sob. He rests his head in his palm while he mopes, biting down on his tongue and the inside of his mouth, causing it to bleed. He scratches at his hands, chews on his fingernails and wraps his arms around his legs, hugging himself closely.
It's raining, there's a storm outside, the bitter wind grazing his skin with a sharp sting. He wants to go home, but his feet take him in the wrong direction. He ends up walking in loops around different blocks, exploring streets he's never thought of going to before, his face dripping with a sour combination of rainwater and tears.
“I can’t… I shouldn’t…” This was getting way too common. “...Do this anymore.”
He’s condemnable. He’s immensely, horribly, guilty, the shame of it making him want to rip himself apart brutally into tiny little pieces, limb by limb, peeling off his skin, and pulling out his hair.
He’s made a huge mistake, and he has nobody to blame but himself. His immediate instinct was to self-destruct. What else was there to do? He had not been happy for a long time- nothing would ever make him happy ever again- and he had no hope of making other people happy either. He was at a total loss, and he was a total weakling- a large part of him didn't even want things to get better. He was quite glad that he finally had a solid, undeniable reason to kill himself. He could now do it without guilt. There was no chance of talking himself out of it, now he was only waiting for the right time.
When he eventually reaches his flat, which he shares with his boyfriend Chuuya, he takes a deep breath before trying to coordinate the key into the keyhole and slowly unlocks the door with drunken shaking hands. He’s freezing cold, exhausted, and highly temperamental.
He hopes that the second the door opens the first millimetre, he will no longer be drunk and that he suddenly has thought of a reasonable excuse for Chuuya as to why he was coming home so late.
That didn’t happen, of course. He has absolutely no excuses for what he’s done and what he’s continued to do more and more often.
When he opens the door, he first sees Chuuya standing across from him, looking with a dull, exhausted expression as if he’s the most unsurprised yet disappointed person on earth. Which, really, is quite understandable. It’s a familiar expression that Dazai sees repeatedly, and it eats away at him. When he imagines an image of Chuuya in his head, that upset face is what Chuuya has. Dazai can't specifically remember what his boyfriend looks like any other way. It felt like that was the permanent accent on Chuuya's face. Chuuya rarely smiles anymore. He only ever looks hurt.
The brunet gulps, slowly stepping in and closing the door silently behind him, then he takes off his shoes, trying to look as sober as possible.
Dazai wobbles and almost trips over his own feet. He has to use the wall for support as he forcefully tugs off his shoes like a clumsy annoying child, not even bothering to untie the shoelaces. He avoids eye contact with Chuuya. He totally ignores the redhead. Neither of them talk. It takes way too long to take his shoes off.
It’s like something from an old silent film. He stands there for a moment to catch his breath after he carelessly tosses the shoes to the side.
Just as Dazai takes off his coat and hangs it on a hook, Chuuya speaks, causing him to jump in fright.
“Where have you been?”
Dazai speaks the first thing that comes to mind. “Out.”
“Out where?”
“Just out. Forget it.”
Chuuya sighs, rubbing his eyes tiredly. Dazai knows what’s about to happen.
“How many times are you going to do this to me, Osamu?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not, though, are you?” he sighs. “Because if you were, you’d stop doing it. You make me miserable.”
“I am sorry.”
Nobody speaks for a while until Chuuya frowns, glancing to the side. Dazai stands there, leaning with his back against the wall, looking away from his boyfriend too. Neither of them could stand to even look at each other anymore.
“I can’t imagine what goes through your mind, ever. You let everyone down. Are you cheating on me? Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“What? No. I’ve just been with a few friends from work. Why would you even ask that?”
Chuuya shrugs, “I… I don’t know when to trust you anymore.”
Again, that’s understandable. Dazai, in fact, was actually not cheating on his boyfriend, but he lies about so much else that, unfortunately, he understands very well why Chuuya would bring it up.
…
…
“Okay. Thanks.” Dazai mutters, about to move on with the conversation and go into the kitchen to hydrate his drying throat, “I fucking hate it here.”
“Is that all?” Chuuya stops Dazai by putting his hand on his chest, so he can’t walk away and avoid this situation any longer.
“Huh?”
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“I haven’t got anything else to say.”
“HA? So you’re not going to tell me about how you got arrested again today, or-”
“-How do you know about that?-”
“-how you’re able to afford to come home from Lupin, drunk, every single night? Where do you get all that money? What good does all of this do? Why do you do this? Why do you hurt me like this? Do you enjoy it?”
“Firstly, you’re being overdramatic, it’s not every single night-”
Chuuya scoffs. “-It may as well be.”
Dazai just glares at the redhead, clenching his jaw and standing up straight. Then some tears appear, and he has to hold back a whimper. He has no idea what to say or how to act. He wants to run out of the apartment and hide somewhere alone, but he knows that it gets worse every time, and it doesn’t help.
He doesn’t know why he does this. He doesn’t understand why he decided to go to Lupin today, even after yesterday when he promised he wouldn't.
He wasn’t thinking. And if he was honest, he would admit that he’d completely forgotten about what he had promised yesterday. He just wanted to be out of Chuuya’s way, and he also couldn’t deal with the guilt about the fact that he’d gotten arrested again after he promised it wouldn’t happen anymore. How could he face Chuuya sober when keeping a secret like that from him? He makes too many promises that he can't keep.
The more he thinks about it, the more he realises that he also doesn’t really understand why he got himself arrested in the first place.
It just happened. He doesn’t consider the repercussions of his behaviours until too late. Every. Single. Time. He’s constantly getting into trouble, and if he’s candid, he feels guilty most of the time, not because he’s done something terrible, but because people’s perceptions of him have worsened.
He felt a lot less sad about the impacts of his actions compared to the consequences.
He just didn’t want people to be mad at him.
He wants to weep. He wants the cycle to be over. He wants to stop hurting people, but the only way he’s ever been able to do that is to hurt himself in exchange. There was no other balance. Any time he tries to make Chuuya happy, it never works. He can never make his boyfriend happy; everything he does makes everything worse.
“Osamu?”
“What now?”
“You have a mark on your face. What is that? Have you been in a fight again? Is that why you got arrested? Fucking assault? Osamu-”
“-Oh, you’re acting like you’re my mother-”
“-So what’re you going to do? Spit on me and abandon me, just like you did to her?”
Dazai pauses, feeling like he’s been stabbed in the heart. He’s not sure if he has any tears left over.
He wants to die. He wants to die more than ever before. There’s no chance now of recovery. No matter what he does, it’s sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to shame.
His breath shakes, and his vision becomes cloudy. He keeps his voice low and quiet, nowhere near Chuuya, who was the exact opposite. Chuuya was always so loud. Dazai used to like it- he used to think it was fun. Now it quite scares him.
“Chuuya, you, of all people, know perfectly well that that’s absolutely not what happened between her and me. I can’t believe you’d even bring that up when you know how-... how hard that was for me. For both of us. You were there the whole time. Please don’t make things up just to hurt me. Especially not about things like that.”
The redhead stands there still, too, for a few moments. A tiny part of him looks regretful, but he quickly shakes it off, ignores that the whole thing ever happened, and changes the topic altogether, without even apologising.
“Who got you out this time?”
“What?”
“Who collected you from the police station? Who was it?”
“...” Dazai looks down to the ground, tears slowly leaving his eyes, dripping onto the floor and beginning to puddle. He holds his breath. Again, he’s messed up. All because he didn’t think. He was in a scary situation. What else was he supposed to do? He just thought of the person most likely to answer and help him out. He didn’t consider anything else. “Ango.”
Chuuya looks at him with disbelief. “Ango? After everything that he did to you… After everything that he did to me? You’re really fucking pathetic, Osamu. Ango? Of all people? You called Ango, but you didn’t bother to tell me at all?”
Dazai shrugs timidly. “He always helps me get out, and I was in bigger trouble than usual this time, so I didn’t think. He seemed like the safest bet. He always knows what to do, and he never gets mad at me.” Dazai rubs his teary eyes with the back of his hands. “Ango always listens to me when I tell him I'm struggling and that didn't know what I was doing. He talks to the police for me and explains the situation to them. He knows I can get impulsive, and he doesn't angry.”
“He always helps you out because he always wants something in return for it later on. You’re constantly in debt to him- and you’re twenty-two years old, you have an apartment, a job, me, and you’re constantly in and out of jail and police custody for stupid, petty things you had no reason to be doing. You leave me alone for days. Then you ask Ango for help, which is probably the least helpful and most self-centred person in the world. Ango does not care about you. You need to keep that in your head.”
“I’m sorry. I… I don’t really know why I do those things. I just do. I don’t think. I don’t consider the repercussions. It's all a blur, I get really stressed and overwhelmed that I just exist at that moment, and I just do things... Usually bad things. I don’t know why. I don't mean to hurt people. I don't want to. But sometimes I don't care. I'd stop if I could. I am sorry.”
“How do you expect to be part of a family one day, when you’re like this?”
Ah, again, that’s like a stab in the chest.
Dazai cries a little more because why, oh why, would Chuuya even say that? Dazai already considered them to be a family. Was Chuuya suggesting that he thought differently? How could he do that after all the years that they’d been together?
In Dazai’s mind, they were still a family no matter what either of them did. Hell, Chuuya hadn’t been perfect, but not once did Dazai ever consider Chuuya anything but family. To think that Chuuya thought differently really, really hurt.
“I don’t want to be the boyfriend of a criminal, Osamu. I want a normal life like everybody else. I don’t want to be associated with whatever the fuck you keep doing and the people you get involved with. The things you do affect other people, you know. Do you ever think about me? You don’t, do you? You forget I exist.”
Am I just being really, really sensitive right now? Why do I not understand? Why does it feel like he doesn’t know who I am at all? There's no way Chuuya is listening to what he is saying. This is a completely different Chuuya to the one he knew a few years- or even months- ago. Surely Chuuya should know that he was the most important thing in the world to Dazai- he was constantly on his mind. That was literally the whole reason why Dazai felt so guilty, and spiralled into so much turmoil. It was his fear of disappointing and hurting Chuuya. If he genuinely forgot that Chuuya existed, he would care even lesser about his actions, and he'd be happier. To say that Dazai forgot about Chuuya was the complete opposite of the truth.
Sure, when they were eighteen, things were different. At that point, they both still had their parents, and Dazai drank much less and was much more aspirational-
They were much more romantic and spent much more time together, making happier memories.
They had told each other that they were soulmates and that they were going to spend their life together.
They promised each other that no matter what they were going through, what doubts or struggles they had, or what they were worried about, they would always be there for each other. They devoted every piece of themselves to each other, so they became one- keeping each other the happiest people on earth despite all they went through.
What happened?
They didn’t talk to each other like that anymore. Dazai can’t remember the last time either of them had said “I love you” or the last time they genuinely spent a day or night together, purely focusing on each other and the joy that they shared, just like when they were younger.
Dazai can’t even remember what Chuuya’s favourite band was anymore, his favourite food, or who his friends were. He can only imagine the sound of Chuuya’s laugh, but he can’t know for sure how accurate it is as he hasn’t heard it in so long. This was barely a relationship, and it was all his fault.
Every day he found a new way to disappoint Chuuya. He was drinking more, staying out later, communicating less, and achieving less, and despite seeing how awfully it affected the love of his life, he had little motivation to change.
Motivation? Or self-discipline? Either way, getting better seemed impossible, no matter how much it affected his relationship.
Dazai just shrugs, lost for words. He had no excuses or explanations for anything anymore. He just wanted it all to be over. He was tired of feeling so insecure about everything, constantly, all the time, and having to simply cope with it. He could not survive.
He can not live. He can not do this any longer. There is absolutely no point. The one person he loves has forgotten who he was- Chuuya was in love with someone who doesn't exist, and he for sure wasn't going to fall back in love with the Dazai that now exists. There is absolutely no motivation to continue. There's nothing else to look forward to or to care about enough to make anything worthwhile.
“Do you know what really sucks, Osamu?”
Dazai shakes his head. He’s entirely lost for words.
“We were meant to go for food together today. You were supposed to be home by five, then we would go out at seven. You were the one who reserved the table and organised the whole thing. I was excited, and I bought a new outfit. I told everyone at work- I thought that finally, we were getting better- but we’re not. Nothings fucking changing. You’re not going to change. You’re only getting worse.” then he pauses and turns away. “Goodnight.”
Then he leaves to go to the bedroom, closing the door harshly behind him.
Dazai stands there alone for a moment, tears continuing to trail down his face, dripping down his chin and onto his feet and the wooden floor.
His chest feels empty, and his heart feels broken. He wants to evaporate and be forgotten. He wishes he never started any of this, and part of him wishes he could tell Chuuya to leave for his own sake, but the other part can’t envision a life without him.
He still wants Chuuya even though it’s hurting them both. How selfish is that?
After everything, he’s still in love with Chuuya. He’s not just in love with the memories they shared, but he is genuinely in love with the Chuuya he lives with right now, the same Chuuya that just stormed into the bedroom to get away from him. He loves him for all the same reasons as before, as well as many more reasons… he adores his Chuuya with all his heart… even though it feels like that’s causing more harm than good.
If he didn’t love Chuuya, he would have left by now.
He tugs at his hair after rubbing his eyes and takes a moment to sit on the floor against the wall, drunkenly sobbing in a way where Chuuya, if he had been there, would say he’s feeling sorry for himself.
All Dazai wants in the world is to be a fun, delightful person to be around. He doesn’t care about himself. He just wants other people to be happy. Even the people he hates the most. Especially his boyfriend.
He’d do anything to make them see him as a fun, happy person to be around. And perhaps, that’s what Chuuya had thought before they began to live together, and they’d both realised how difficult it was for Dazai to keep this clownish mask on every second of the day. He had nowhere to hide and no excuses to make on the days when he simply couldn’t function, and it was embarrassing. Over time, Dazai was getting tired of trying of constantly pleasing other people, he was weakening, and he was getting worse at it too-
So he’d resulted in a middle ground-
He couldn’t make people happy, but he told himself that as long as he doesn’t make people sad, that’s fine too. He was largely successful for a while, but apparently, constantly hiding away and staying an utterly neutral person was damaging to his relationship because Chuuya had fallen in love with someone much different to who Dazai presented himself as now.
He couldn’t succeed at anything.
The saddest part was that Chuuya thinks Dazai has changed in the last few months. Dazai, however, knows that he’s always been like this; it’s just getting harder to hide as he gets more and more exhausted.
I’m no fun anymore. Not even when he’s drunk. His behaviour was no longer “cool” and “brave” like when he was younger, it now got him into legal trouble, and people saw him as childish. His jokes, which made people cackle, now make them squint and mutter their disappointment.
No, Dazai! Chuuya no longer wants to break into the local swimming pool with you and swim in the cold water, fully dressed, past midnight. Chuuya doesn’t find it flattering when you go through the fuss to steal something that he’s always wanted but could never afford. That’s not what ordinary people do.
Everything had changed so suddenly, and he had no idea who he was anymore. Who was he, if not a clown, who served to please and entertain everyone else? When he could do neither, what was he supposed to do? It’s not like he had any organic traits. He manufactured himself. Now he was outdated and incredibly insecure. Insecure to an unbearable level. He was in agony, constantly critiquing himself, all while not knowing what to do about it. He knows nothing about being a mature partner in a mature relationship, acting like a regular adult. It was mentally exhausting, nobody had ever spoken to him about it, and he'd had no role models like that- he just wishes things were a little easier.
Eventually, he gets up from the floor, walks to the fridge still with a drunken spring in his step, and drinks some milk from the carton. He wipes the excess from his face before putting it back into the refrigerator, and he makes his way to the bedroom.
All the lights are off, and he keeps it that way, choosing to undress down to only his underwear in the dark, leaving his clothes on the floor. On the bed, he can see the outline of his boyfriend, who is lying on the edge of his side of the bed. Dazai slides under the blanket and does the same, and they lay there with their backs facing each other.
Dazai takes an educated guess and assumes Chuuya is still awake, and he hopes that Chuuya would turn around and wrap his arms around him as he cries or that Chuuya would say something to let him know that he still loves him, but nobody moves.
And, really, Dazai wonders, does he deserve that to happen?
Probably.
They both eventually fall asleep.