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When he thought of himself before, Dazai didn’t think he could ever feel anything at all.
That thought was kinda hard to swallow at first, to be honest.
Sure, the environment he was in wasn’t really the best he could find to develop feelings other than fear and pain, but the thing that distinguished him from the other mafia members from the very beginning was his inability to actually feel things the way they did.
During those 4 years, all he heard were screams, a lot of screaming to be honest, but each scream was caused by something that Dazai couldn’t really understand on his own.
There were all kind of screams; there were screams of terror, of pain, even screams of joy sometimes.
Dazai often took a bit of time to just observe his colleagues.
There were all sorts of people around him, each one with their mind and idea of justice, each one with their aim and biggest fears.
He thought of himself too, a lot.
He wasn’t like them.
He wasn’t like them at all, he didn’t have any of those. And maybe that’s why despite that was exactly what was required to work in such an unhealthy place like the Port Mafia, he still didn’t feel exactly at ease.
But he couldn’t think of any other position even more perfect for him in the first place.
Was out there really a place darker than that?
His blood was mafia black, he didn’t care about anything, neither himself, he couldn’t feel pity, events didn’t touch him at all, and the things he did best were killing and manipulating.
The realization that he was a monster reached his mind slowly as acceptance of this fact as he saw the others mafia members acting human, and realizing he had to pretend the whole time to be like them, not having a clue of what having a human heart felt like.
It was kinda hard to accept at first, but it wasn’t like Dazai hadn’t even tried to feel.
After some time, that thought became something else, it became comforting, knowing that nothing can effect you in the slightest, that you won’t ever feel weak or small in the world.
He thought a lot of death as well, and to be honest, maybe it was the only thing that excited him a little bit, the unpredictability of death. One event that could actually change his ways of seeing and of feeling things the way he did.
Maybe he could even have answers on whether he had a soul or not after he died.
From what humans said about the afterlife, if Dazai ever really had a soul, he wouldn’t certainly end up in heaven, that was for sure, but sometimes he still wondered, either if hell could actually make him feel guilty about how he behaved on earth.
And somewhere inside of him he wished it could.
But he still doubted it.
Dazai saw all his convictions fall apart when he realized he was falling in love with Chuuya.
It was a slow process that took time to settle in his mind.
Chuuya Nakahara was the exact opposite of Dazai: When he first knew him, that’s one of the first things he acknowledged.
Chuuya felt things in a way that was impossible for Dazai to fully comprehend. His partners’ emotions were everything but subtle. Dazai could see them all even from a mile of a distance.
Chuuya expressed them through his facial expressions, his body language, his shouted words and even violent attitude.
Sure, the first impression of his partner wasn’t really all that fascinating, he was a small violent chibi with anger issues and a high pitched voice that stressed the shit out of him.
The thing that distinguished Chuuya from the other human beings Dazai had been close with as the time passed, was his actual ability to enjoy spending time with him.
It was funny at first, annoying the redhead all the time, seeing all that anger and energy spread from such a tiny body Dazai thought he could actually explode as he screamed.
He felt more in contact with human emotions than he ever was before meeting him, still unable to really feel them, but getting the idea of what it could be like, and differently from when he was with other people, he didn’t mind staying by Chuuya’s side.
Another difference he noticed as the time passed, was that even if his partner was in touch with his emotions, even more than anybody else, he never even slightly considered Chuuya as weak.
Chuuya wasn’t a genius like him, sometimes he didn’t really even think before acting, he did what he felt like doing most of the time and that mostly ended up being punching and fighting even if that brought them nowhere, and that’s when Dazai usually came up with a plan for them to actually accomplish something.
Despite his strategies weren’t all that, Chuuya wasn’t stupid either, and he couldn’t just be manipulated by Dazai like everyone else.
At first this upset Dazai a little bit, but it made everything more exciting and real as they worked together.
They were competitive and they both hated losing against the other.
Yet they made an amazing team and they both knew it really well.
Dazai realised he was falling for Chuuya when his partner’s emotions became his.
At first, Dazai thought it was just jealousy of those emotions so strong that he could only dream of having, but these convictions faded away quickly.
The exact moment Dazai realised he was falling was when he actually feared Chuuya’s death during Corruption.
His empty glare was terrifying, those blue eyes of his became something out of this world, it was like Chuuya’s humanity had came out of his body and left space for something darker and scarier that had nothing to do with Chuuya’s vitality at all.
The thought of him never going back to what he was made him feel things he never would have thought he would be able to feel, and even if he had wanted to before, he wished he could go back to feel nothing at all when he touched him and his partner crashed to the ground, exhausted, full of wounds and marks that made Dazai’s heart and body ache like he was the one who got hurt.
This episode was only one of the many to come where Dazai felt those kind of emotions, always around and towards Chuuya.
“Love” was never something that Dazai could expect to find, yet he found it in Chuuya’s eyes as he drowned in them, in Chuuya’s hands that were somehow bigger but that fit so well tangled with his, in Chuuya’s body that was full of scars yet that was so perfectly shaped and warm at night.
When Dazai realised he had a soul, he also realised that the port mafia wasn’t for him anymore.
No one with a soul should have been there or live the way they lived. Not him, nor Chuuya, nor anyone else.
Deep down, he knew that his path in the port mafia would have ended sooner or later because of his now discovered feelings.
And he knew that it would have meant leaving Chuuya behind, because even if his partner had the most beautiful soul he had ever encountered, he knew that he wouldn’t have left the port mafia for anything in the world.
Not even for him.
And Dazai was fine with it.
Leaving these thoughts behind, Dazai stayed as much as he was able to, taking in as much as he could of Chuuya’s eyes so that he could forever remember what love felt like, in case he ever happened to forget it in the future.