Chapter Text
Solitude creeps up on Chuuya’s routine like quiet, eerie music. Over three months since he parted ways with his latest sweetheart, and he’s finally ready to jump back into the dating scene – a glorious, long-awaited comeback, except he doesn’t feel any glory, or even like someone might be waiting for him on the other side. Kouyou says that he just needs time, that it’s normal, that no one meets their next big love after a couple of predictable and monotonous Grindr dates, but Chuuya thinks that he’s just looking in the wrong place. Maybe the mere idea of looking is wrong, and his love affairs are one of those aspects of his life where he should not force things. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t care. He misses meeting new people, having fun, falling in love headfirst, seeing no red lights; the drudgery of endless first dates is tiring enough: listening about the same things from different people, who are not so different in the end, because Chuuya always ends up matching with someone who has a master’s degree in assholery.
“Are these real?” Another self-satisfied case asks him about his hair, his veiny hand reaching uncerecomiously across the table they pre-booked three days ago to brush against one of the red locks. “I mean, you didn’t get extensions or anything?”
The case is twenty-five years old, a young CEO of some tech startup, because his family apparently comes from a lot of money, and the first solid twenty minutes of their date, he spends venting about how AI is going to revolutionise the world in ways unseen before, making Chuuya roll his eyes whenever he turns away, pretending to look for their waitress. For him as an artist, hearing such things is beyond insulting, and it’s just one of the many reasons he knows from the start that this situationship is not going to last, even though they’ve spent a solid week ranting to each other over texts like little honeymoon birds the second they matched on the dating app.
And now, his hair.
This is what makes the bubble of patience in Chuuya’s stomach finally burst.
“Are you kidding me?” He asks, no sign of mockery in his voice, as he wipes the corner of his mouth with a napkin made of soft fabric, silky to the touch.
The case frowns as he takes a sip of his red wine. “What are you talking about?”
“You brought me here, spent half the time talking about your useless business, and now you have the audacity to ask me whether my hair is real?” Chuuya articulates each word clearly, his voice a calm melody, but inside, he is fuming, the fire from his stomach spreading across his entire body and making him shiver to the fingertips. “It was the first thing you asked about me in the whole evening.”
He stands up from his chair gracefully and leaves the restaurant to the sound of his continuous rant of excuses. Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Chuuya blocks the number and immediately switches to the Uber app to request a cab home. There are only so many first dates he can go through without losing his mind, he decides. If anything, he’s already starting to.
Chuuya lives a double life – not the Hannah Montana style, although he’d also wish to get famous and recognised for his hard work and talent one day; he lives in two cities at once, constantly moving between Tokyo, where he does his studies in fine arts, and Yokohama, where his family, his childhood, and his heart belong. Those are two entirely different worlds to him, though both boisterous and filled with people of extremely different kinds. In Tokyo, he shares a dorm room with four other guys, which is why he never really gets any privacy and – partly – why his most recent relationship broke off without having properly started. In Yokohama, life is entirely different, and this is the only place where he allows himself to let loose and live a little, especially during long breaks between studies, when all the exams have already been taken and all final projects submitted and revised.
In Yokohama, he also has an apartment to live in, a cosy one-bedroom spot with a large kitchen, renovated to the smallest detail; the loan his parents took for it still comes to him sometimes in his anxiety-induced dreams, reminding him that nothing in life is for granted, even though the topic of his somehow repaying such a pricey gift hasn’t been brought up once in Chuuya’s memory. Whenever he’s in Tokyo, he rents the place out on Airbnb for extra income, though for the first year, the thought of having perfect strangers living there gave him the ick every time it appeared in his head. He used to go against himself and his control freak tendencies to battle the urge to check up on his tenant every couple of hours, texting them on the Airbnb app and immediately erasing the message like a creepy stalker. In the long run, it could be all right, because the property was insured, and there was no reason for it to remain empty during the long months Chuuya spent at the university. After many changes of heart, he managed to suppress his own barely reasonable fears; his therapist helped, as well as his family.
Speaking of family, this time, Chuuya deliberately chooses to stay with his parents for the holidays – for two reasons, one of them being rather selfish. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t really mind living with them as long as he gets enough quiet time alone in his room, he also needs some extra money this term to purchase the latest generation tablet for his digital art on the side. The extra money, in his perfectly built scheme, should come from renting out his apartment to a certain someone called Dazai Osamu – a guy with no profile picture, which already gives Chuuya a subtle hint of anxiety, but otherwise extremely polite and laid-back in a conversation, willing to pay the whole cost of the booking upfront, and not in installments, like most of them choose. Chuuya is on cloud nine with joy when he sees his bank account get hit with a hefty sum – enough to purchase the coveted tablet and even have some change on the side for a shopping spree. He sends out all the instructions to Dazai immediately: how to get into the apartment, how to call security if anything happens (which, of course, he hopes he’ll never need to apply in practice), and how to connect to WiFi. He also politely warns against rummaging in his closet and bookcase – even though he’d taken all of his most precious belongings to Tokyo with him, he wouldn’t feel exactly pleased if someone he didn’t know randomly decided to dig through his underwear or read the corny pencil-written annotations he loves to leave in his philosophy textbooks.
So far, Dazai seems to suppress all of his fears. He is polite, uninvasive, and asks only those questions that Chuuya expects to hear. No sudden surprises, no boundaries crossed, – a peaceful, non-argumentative, dreamlike tenant.
Chuuya really hopes it will go on like so.
He’s on a ride home after another successfully failed date, staring blankly out of the window and watching Yokohama get washed off by torrential rain. Chuuya feels utterly tired. At this point, he doubts he can even have anything with anyone. So far, all of these dating app cases have been mental cases as well – tech bros, gym bros, weirdos obsessed with sex, straight guys wanting to experiment and top another dude, because topping is obviously not gay, – and Chuuya doesn’t know where to run from all this embarrassment. At some point, he even considers agreeing to a one-night stand or two just to feel something, just to fill this unbearable void inside himself, at least for a couple of hours, but here’s where another problem lies.
Having had sex so many times and with so many different people, Chuuya can hardly say that it brings him anything worth doing it for. He doesn’t want to point at anyone and accuse his partners of being the problem, as it is likely that he’s simply wired differently. It’s extremely difficult for him to enjoy close physical contact with someone who doesn’t even know how to touch him right. He used to be all service and obedience, putting all of his most sensitive spots to light, to the other’s hands, begging – silently and verbally – to do it the way he liked, but never to any avail. For whatever reason, every guy he’s ever shared a bed with – even when they were in a serious relationship – seemed to care about his own needs alone, and Chuuya’s needs were successfully shoved all the way down the priority list. Long story short, casual sex for him is nothing but an unnecessarily strenuous exercise he wants to avoid. He’ll get his cardio done at the gym in any regard.
The next morning, having briefly chatted with his mom over breakfast and coffee in the kitchen, he plans to finally go out and stop by the tech store to pick up the tablet he ordered over two weeks ago. His tenant should be in Yokohama already, and, if Chuuya remembers his arrival dates correctly, it must be three days since Dazai checked in, and he won’t leave until the end of the month. He contemplates sending him a short text and asking whether everything is going well so far, but thinks better of it, deciding to be as nonchalant and uninvasive as possible.
It’s when Chuuya is on his way home in the passenger’s seat of a cab, his newly bought tablet resting in a shopping bag next to him, that he gets a sudden phone call from someone whose voice he expected to hear the least. His next-door neighbour, Yosano.
“Hey, Chuuya, do you have a minute?” She asks the moment he picks up, her cheerful tone bordering on irritated, which alerts Chuuya immediately. The cab is about to take the final turn leading to his residential block, and he readjusts himself in the seat, ready to unfasten his seatbelt.
“Of course,” she hasn’t called him in a while, he thinks, if ever, and it’s reason enough for him to start worrying out of his skin. “What’s the matter?”
“Listen,” she clears her throat, her voice growing quieter and more serious. “I don’t want to sound rude or anything, but… You should really try fucking at least a little bit quieter.”
Chuuya’s next breath gets caged in his throat. Fucking? Quieter? “What are you talking about?”
Yosano sighs. “I’m really happy for your… eventful personal life, but I also want to get some proper sleep after my twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, and these pitchy girl moans behind the wall of my bedroom are insufferable. Last night, I swear to god, she was screaming like someone was decapitating her alive, I even considered calling the police for a second…”
Chuuya stops listening at some point, staring emptily at the seat in front of him and trying to think of what to say. Indeed, it would be logical for him to explain the whole truth, but right now, he’s not even sure he knows the whole truth himself. Surely, the same guy who replied to his texts all so cheerfully, always remembering manners and respecting personal boundaries, can’t be the one to break the most sacred rule of apartment renting, which is under no circumstances should you invite anyone over and let them stay for the night.
He is so abashed by what he’s heard that he doesn’t even notice that the cab has already pulled up to his front yard, and that the driver is now staring at him intently through the mirror, with a mix of irritation and confusion. Chuuya grabs his tablet from the seat and rushes out of the car, bowing in apology multiple times, while Yosano keeps complaining about the three surgeries she performed in a row and then had to sleep in ear plugs, because Chuuya seemed to be ramming some poor girl into the mattress like an animal in heat.
“Okay, okay, okay, hold on, please,” Chuuya blabbers desperately, spinning in circles in front of his porch, confusion and rage both fighting for the trophy at overwhelming him faster. “Yosano, I don’t even sleep with girls.”
He gets hit with an immediate silence, louder than any words could be.
“Oh?” Yosano squeaks, at last, suddenly embarrassed. “Oh.”
This is how another uncalled-for battle in Chuuya’s life begins.
Instead of marinating in the cozy silence of his room and properly exploring all the features of his brand-new graphic tablet, he’s supposed to call another cab to a whole different part of the city, dropping a quick warning in their chat with Dazai half an hour in advance. The pretext is that he urgently needs to grab something from the apartment, and he might be a horrible landlord for storming in like that at the latest notice, but he doesn’t really have a better choice in the given circumstances.
The whole car ride, half of it spent in insufferable traffic jams pertaining to a Tuesday afternoon, car horns and irritated pedestrians running across the road right in front of them at the last seconds of the green light, Chuuya’s heart keeps pounding in his chest. He can’t even discern what he feels anymore. Surely, he should not jump straight into rage and start an argument – maybe, everything is not the way he thinks, maybe, Yosano hallucinated the loud sex sounds coming from his apartment after being overwrought at work, and maybe, Chuuya will even be able to preserve both his dignity and his stable formal relationship with his current tenant and every other tenant that will come after him.
Hence, he starts preparing a speech in his head. He will ask a subtle, non-provoking question, maintaining his composure and the cheerfulness in his voice, and hoping for Dazai to be as decent and honest with him as possible. He won’t jump at him with insults, demand that he get his ass out immediately, or start violently throwing his things outside the apartment. He will be civil about it. He will be a better person.
The familiar streets of his sunlit neighbourhood burn his eyes as he gets out of the car next to the entrance gate, taking a good look around. This place bears a drastic difference from the whereabouts of his old family home – much cleaner, more posh, and screaming status from behind every corner; whitewashed apartment buildings, panoramic windows, well-tended gardens and front yards, and women with Rolexes and Cartier bracelets on their wrists, walking their dogs along the street. Sometimes, Chuuya genuinely doesn’t believe he lives in a place like this, among CEOs, engineers, doctors, product designers… In Tokyo, he’s reminded once again, his life is drastically polar.
Taking a deep breath and plucking up all his courage, he unlocks the gate and marches straight to the entrance door. He bows to the security guard on the first floor and proceeds directly to the elevator, counting seconds the entire ten-storey rise. When he finally steps out, he finds himself in a quiet, deserted, sunlit corridor, the walls lined with identical apartment doors like at a luxury hotel, the only distinct feature of each being the number pinned to the wooden surface.
Stopping in front of his door, the closest one to the window, where all the sunlight is coming from, he freezes for a second, gathering his breath and his thoughts. He doesn’t really know what he expects to see there. He has never seen this Dazai guy’s face, nor does he particularly strive to. He was just okay not knowing what he was about, waiting patiently for him to spend his welcome in peace and bid his farewell right after. Now, he has one more problem to worry about. And, although Chuuya obviously has his own key to his own apartment, he still chooses to ring the bell, because it’s just the right thing to do when it comes to anyone’s privacy.
The door opens in under ten seconds, and Chuuya realises that his problem is hella fine looking.
He almost chokes in the moment, staring at the guy in front of him like someone just punched him right in the chest and trying to remember at least one line from the long speech he carefully compiled in his head during the cab ride. Now that Dazai is standing in the doorway, leaning against it with one shoulder and throwing his arm over his head, scratching the nape of his neck lazily, Chuuya’s lexicon scatters around like leaves in October; all the weather in the world seems to be concentrated in his solar plexus.
Fucking wow.
“Oh, hi,” Dazai drops lightly upon seeing him, not really sparing him the same level of scrutiny. He should not, in any regard, – Chuuya doesn’t even look particularly pretty today, at least, not the way he usually does for his pitiful dates, and his most defining feature must be his hair, washed, sprayed, and combed into a loose ponytail behind his back; he should also give some credit to the freckles on his cheeks and nose, which make him look younger than he is whenever he doesn’t bother to cover them with a generous layer of concealer, feeling insecure about his face religiously at least twice a month. “Anything the matter?”
Chuuya continues studying him with the precision of a scientist in a lab, not even ashamed of his unceremonious scrutiny. Dazai is freakishly tall, so tall compared to Chuuya that it’s almost a turn-off, and a sky-blue patternless sweater he’s wearing resonates weirdly with the creamy-peach walls of Chuuya’s apartment, creating a kind of perfect symphony you can only hear if you’re scrupulous with details. Chuuya is, unfortunately, scrupulous with details. Dazai is also wearing a pair of long, flowy pajama pants, and his hair is tousled in a strangely calculated manner, almost as if he did it on purpose. All in all, he looks like someone who has just woken up, even though it’s already long past afternoon.
And yes, there can be no doubt now – the reason for Yosano’s complaints is definitely not made up.
“May I come in?” After so much time, it’s still so weird to ask this about his own apartment.
Right now, he is a guest and must act accordingly.
“Sure,” Dazai nods, all the way too easily, as he steps away from the door to let him in, and Chuuya notices – not without a momentary confusion – that he is also barefoot; at least, the floors must be clean, then. “You mentioned that you need something from here,” and his mind – sharp; indeed, Chuuya did mention that his was not a purposeless arrival, and now he has to stand there, in the middle of the hallway, shutting his eyes and searching his head for something believable to say.
Nothing comes. Dazai makes a circle around him, stopping right in front of him once again, and when Chuuya opens his eyes, they are returned to this strangely confrontational position, which would feel a tiny bit less confrontational if Dazai were at least half a head shorter. But, as it goes, Chuuya is forced to look up to find his face, a fortress to seize, an altar of shame to burn. He swallows the dryness in his throat, coughs it away.
“Actually, yes,” his lips stretch into a soft smile, and he finds a pretext to pass by Dazai, headed to the only bedroom in the apartment. Next to the closed door, he stops, turning around – almost habitually by now. “Do you mind?”
Dazai just shakes his head. “Not at all,” and retreats into the kitchen, from where Chuuya can faintly hear the sound of the stove, boiling water or brewing coffee, which he wouldn’t know unless he checks, but he doesn’t intend to stay a second longer than he needs to complete his secret mission.
With all his body language, Dazai is trying to show that he has no care in the world that Chuuya barged in with a belated warning. Perhaps, he truly doesn’t. When Chuuya finally tries the doorknob and steps into the bedroom, Dazai’s presence somewhere behind him keeps nagging him with its intensity. He’s utterly unused to having someone else here, hearing someone’s steps in the kitchen, their calm breathing, their body moving around like that of an enemy. Chuuya purses his lips, forcing his thoughts away from Dazai and taking a good look at the room instead.
At first glance, it seems neat. No broken beds, no aftermath of whatever Dazai was doing here last night, no weird stains on the bedsheets, and no unfamiliar smells – except for his own, of course, which Chuuya immediately sinks into – against himself – drawing in a deep breath; it must be his body wash, or his shampoo, or his aftershave, or his perfume, it doesn’t really matter. The scent is soft, unimposing, a strange mix of floral and piney, like a walk across a forest alley in the heart of spring. The window is open, letting more sunlight and fresh air in, and Chuuya doesn’t feel – like he expected to – suffocated by someone else’s trace in his beloved apartment.
Still, his eyes linger on the bed. He’s let couples stay in before, and he is more than sure they had sex in it more than once, but for whatever reason, he has never felt the discomfort of sleeping in the same spot afterwards. He just always took the bedsheets to the dry cleaner’s for proper sanitation, or, if the circumstances required, purchased an entirely new set. Some thorough tidying around made by Fumiko, his precious cleaner, and airing all the rooms for a couple of hours, – and the apartment was as good as new, letting Chuuya proceed with his routine as planned.
With Dazai, however, this is different from the get-go. He is hot, and Chuuya almost immediately starts hating the thought that he is his perfect type, and the mere idea of him bringing someone in and fucking them in the same bed Chuuya sees his sweet dreams in nearly makes him fume from how scandalous he feels. There is also a pinch of jealousy in it, which Chuuya has not yet discerned.
If anything, he just hopes that Dazai is a bad person. That he has multiple trophies in assholery. He hopes that Dazai is worse than all of the men who have ever taken Chuuya out on a date for the past two weeks.
Sensing that he’s starting to outstay his welcome, Chuuya turns to the bookcase and grabs the first book that catches his eye – a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie that he forgot to return to the school library once and that is now resting on one of the shelves like his own personal token of shame, its spine cracked and crooked from how many times he’s reread it.
His immediate reflex is to proceed to the exit and leave, but it would mean not solving the core issue, which is why Chuuya forces himself to regain his composure, take a deep breath, and follow Dazai into the kitchen instead. He is there, hunched over the stove and heating up some milk for the coffee. It’s almost ridiculous at this point – how unnecessarily big he looks compared to everything around him, how he nearly bangs his head against the cupboard the second he looks up and turns around, spotting Chuuya at the entrance.
“Coffee?” He suggests, pointing at the two cups he’s taken out and placed on the counter in advance.
Chuuya doesn’t feel like drinking coffee at two in the afternoon, but he needs a reason to start a conversation, which is why he nods, sitting down at the island counter and locking his fingers on it. He watches Dazai pour coffee into the cups. “Milk, sugar?” He clarifies, not turning around.
“Neither.”
“So you like your coffee detective style,” Dazai hums, placing the cups on the counter and taking his seat across from Chuuya. “Noted.”
“What the fuck is detective style?” Chuuya frowns at him, moving his own cup closer and watching the steam rise from it in half-transparent trickles.
“You know, like,” Dazai says through his first, very careful sip. “In a small town where something is not right, a detective will order a cup of joe with some delicious pie on the side before embarking on their investigation.” Noticing Chuuya’s unimpressed expression, he lets his face fall. “No? Okay.”
“You’re also raw-dogging it,” Chuuya notices, pointing at his cup. “No cream, no milk. Why were you boiling it in the first place? To waste?”
“I wanted to express my affiliation with you,” Dazai explains, his tone entirely serious, but when he takes another sip – fuller this time – he makes a disgusted face and shakes his head, jumping off the chair. “No, you’re right. Fuck it.”
Chuuya hides a soundless giggle in his own cup. Wait till you find out what cigarettes I smoke.
Back at the counter, having fixed himself a proper cappuccino, Dazai returns his attention to him. “I imagined you to be a bit different.”
Oh, here it goes. “How so?”
Dazai frowns, scrutinising his face for a long second and tilting his head slightly to the side. “Older.”
“That’s, um,” Chuuya is genuinely taken aback, losing all his words at once. He’s used to bullshit like you’re even prettier in life, overused by blue-balled assholes going out of their way to drag him into bed, so Dazai’s confession that he expected Chuuya to look older than in his Airbnb profile picture (taken not so long ago, by the way) can’t but tickle his ego a little. He points at his face. “That’s because I’m not wearing any makeup today.”
“No, I think it’s something else,” Dazai is still frowning, visibly puzzled, his coffee forgotten in his hand. “I can’t quite pinpoint it…”
“I didn’t expect you to be this tall,” Chuuya sighs on his part, hiding his eyes. “Even with no shoes on,” that’s nearly insulting, he doesn’t add.
“Oh, about that,” Dazai stirs, leaning against the back of his chair. “I really like your flooring decision. Extremely easy to clean.”
“You’ve barely lived here for three days, and you’ve already done some cleaning?”
“Why, of course,” Dazai nods like it’s not even a question. “I’m extremely respectful towards someone else’s property, and the least I can do is keep it tidy at all times,” it looks like he’s blabbering nonsense just to show off at this point, but Chuuya can’t stop watching his face, the way his lips move as he speaks, the way his eyes tend to linger at random objects behind Chuuya’s back, not resting on his face for longer than a second, almost as if he’s scared to look at him. His body language does not reveal a hint of anxiety, though – he’s entirely relaxed, kicked back in his chair, and drinking his coffee like he’s just having habitual small talk with a close friend. The excess of manners is often used to conceal the lack thereof, Chuuya thinks, which is why he finds it hard to believe a word of what Dazai is saying. Dazai glances back at him all of a sudden, making his thoughts trail off all at once. “I don’t know if you checked, but I actually have an excellent tenant rating.”
It’s like he’s offering Chuuya a perfect opportunity to berate him on a silver platter.
“Is that why you’re bringing random people over for the night to fuck?”
And, well, Chuuya doesn’t miss it.
Dazai clears his throat quietly, tensing up for a moment before relaxing all the way back again. For a second, Chuuya almost believes he’s going to ignore the provocation entirely, but it’s not what he does. “So, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” Chuuya retorts immediately, putting his half-empty cup back on the counter. “A neighbour complained to me. I have the full right to kick you out immediately for violating the booking rules, but, lucky you,” he flashes him a fake grin. “I prefer to start with a warning.”
Dazai sighs, abandoning his own coffee just the same, and thinks about something intensely for a long moment. Then, looking back at Chuuya’s face, “I might’ve gotten carried away a bit,” he admits. And then, kicking all the air out of Chuuya’s chest, “I fell in love.”
“Good for you,” Chuuya says the second he regains his ability to speak. “But from now on, try to fall in love in a city where you have your own property.”
“Tokyo is way too busy for leading a stable personal life,” Dazai fires back immediately.
Everything inside Chuuya starts to boil from the level of audacity, but, at the same time, his stupid mind still catches, stumbling, upon the mention of Tokyo being the city Dazai lives in. It’s almost like they’re leading the same routines, always moving in a clear parallel without ever crossing paths. Until now. Just what in the world is he doing in Yokohama? If they had the prospect of becoming friends, Chuuya would most certainly ask him that, but he has no intention of having anything in common with the man in front of him.
“It seems like you’re not hearing me,” he shakes his head.
“No, I can hear you perfectly,” Dazai objects. “And I apologise,” he seems to be sincere, at least. “It won’t happen again.”
“I surely hope it won’t,” Chuuya sighs, standing up and picking up the book he – seemingly – came for from the counter. “I’ll go now. Enjoy your stay.”
Dazai follows him all the way to the door, waiting patiently for him to put his shoes on. Chuuya feels a strange urge to turn around and give him one last look – something he certainly wouldn’t do with a guy he doesn’t know at all – and he does, trying to think of a line to say, anything that could make Dazai remember not to break the rules ever again, but the moment their eyes meet, and Dazai looks at him with his – already habitual – nonchalance and soft smile lingering in the corners of his eyes, Chuuya loses all his cool.
Maybe it is a good life lesson.
Maybe he does need to casually sleep with someone, too.
Chuuya can’t think of anything better to say than, “No more loud fucking at night, please.”
Dazai straightens his shoulders, bringing his hand to his temple like a soldier following a basic command. “As you say, boss.” Then, back to his usual self, a smug smile all over him: “Have a good day.”
Come to think of it, Chuuya probably should have been just a tiny bit harsher with him.
All the best responses always appear to him only after the moment is already lost.