Work Text:
“What would you do if you suddenly got rich?”
The smoke of Chuuya’s cigarette makes its intricate way towards Dazai’s face, grazing his cheekbone, the side of his jaw – zero touch, zero contact, the most he can hope for after what they did in bed just twenty minutes ago, and even then, Chuuya had precisely asked not to kiss him on the mouth, it might mean something, and Dazai just shrugged it off with a scoff: his dick was so hard in his pants that it hurt, and he could not care less for any other thing in the world but getting his hands all over Chuuya, everywhere he allowed him to reach. It’s their first sex, and first sex means many discoveries; like this one – Chuuya likes talking business minutes after he was railed into the bed by a boy whose face is pretty enough to consider him worthy of a one-night stand. Or so Dazai was told. It kind of bought him. He was sold the second Chuuya looked at him from the other side of the club, and their gazes crossed like rusty swords. Now there is an array of cat-like scratches and upset hickeys all over Dazai’s neck, an unmade, ruined bed somewhere behind their backs, a used condom in the bathroom’s trash bin, and a tired smile on Chuuya’s bitten-through, perfectly kissable lips.
Oil on canvas. They are sitting at the fire escape, the metal of the stairs freezing Dazai’s balls even through his hastily put-on slacks, unbuttoned, unzipped, and Chuuya is smoking a cigarette. The cigarette is ashing out between his long, thin, calloused fingers; worker’s hands; capitalism is the cancer rotting our bodies from the inside, Dazai had read on an activist’s poster earlier today, inching his way through the packed city centre in the back of the car, eat the rich, tax the rich, burn the rich. He only smirked into his palm. Sure. Chuuya is feeding a house of four: his mother and three siblings; he is the only one capable of work. The breadwinner. Dazai likes the little tattoo on the back of his neck; a wilting rose; metaphorical, he said, and Chuuya smirked, shut up, luring him into a drunken kiss, I need to wake up for work in six hours, and you’re still not balls-deep inside me, so why are we killing time? Work. Damn, it’s been a while since Dazai heard the word not on TV.
“Suddenly?” He smirks, struggling to light his own cigarette, the lighter not cooperating with his trembling hands, the flame shying away from the wind. “Can anyone get suddenly rich?”
Chuuya shrugs, passing him his own lighter without sparing him a look. “People randomly discover gold mines in their backyards. Find out about some crazy rich granny who kicked the bucket and had enough sanity left to write them into her will before her death. Businesses blow up out of the blue. Demand creates supply and then more demand. It just be like that,” he grimaces as he stares at his cigarette, like he’s suddenly realised how bitter it tastes. “So I wonder. I ask this question to everyone.”
Yokohama at night is silent, blinking back at them with ginger streetlights. Not as ginger as Chuuya’s hair in this shy moonlight. A fast car passes by somewhere in the distance. The air smells like industrial fumes and wild peppermint. Dazai wants to fuck Chuuya again.
“Enough with the money talk,” he says, giving up on his cigarette, and shifts closer to him on the steps. “You need to wake up in… how many?”
Chuuya’s grimace deepens. “Four hours.”
He just nods. “So I thought.”
But when they get in bed fifteen minutes later, having showered and brushed their teeth, Dazai’s hand inches its way towards Chuuya’s bare thigh under the blanket, his unsure knuckles against his skin, tender like the ripest peach – how can someone who works so much and so hard have skin this soft? – and Chuuya stops him with a quiet hiss – only to guide his hand all the way up his leg, where he’s already getting hard again. It’s easy to get addicted to. Dazai reaches for the bottle of lube they left on the bedside table earlier.
Chuuya’s breathing is discordant, loud, laboured, like he’s balancing the weight of the world on his shoulders; he squirms and presses his doll-like face into the pillow, trying not to moan out loud as Dazai fingers him under the blanket, in complete secrecy – as if there might be someone else in the room, lurking in the dark corner, watching them ruin each other. The night is deep, quiet, tender. Chuuya’s shaking thighs close around Dazai’s wrist; he’s trembling all over. “Enough… you’ve already…” And when Dazai tries to pull his fingers out, he whines, “No… I… fuck… put them back.”
Closer to the crack of dawn, Dazai fucks him again. It’s much slower and softer this time, almost like they’re full-time lovers, no torn-off clothes, tripped-over doorsteps, or curses spat into each other’s mouths. Chuuya melts into the pillow, his legs laced around Dazai’s waist. More easily said than done, because being inside Chuuya also means visiting this turbulent kingdom of uncertainty, this abandoned altar of all the people he could have been but never became, this graveyard turned into an art gallery, and it’s their first and last night together, which means that Dazai will leave in the morning and never see Chuuya again.
He doesn’t leave in the morning. In fact, he leaves much earlier, the second Chuuya falls asleep, the last ounces of strength fucked out of him. Dazai collects his clothes as quietly as he can and sets Chuuya’s alarm for him before leaving. It’s the most he can do.
And when he stands outside the hotel building (embarassingly cheap as to his preference, but it’s not like they had much choice), the one he booked for one night only, to have sex with someone he’d never plan anything serious with, waiting for his family’s driver to pick him up and drive him back to the manor, he finally lights a cigarette, watching the rising sun paint the sky hazy orange. The ripest peaches are also bruised. Dazai has sucked one bruise into Chuuya’s skin, right next to his knee, a mark to remember him by.
In the backseat of the car, dozing off to the sounds of the city slowly waking up, Dazai can’t erase the image from his mind. After his third or fourth orgasm of the night, entirely spent, trembling from weakness, Chuuya suddenly turned around in bed, facing the wall, and groaned like he was in deep, agonizing pain. When Dazai asked him, his fingertips brushing gently against the back of his shoulder, what he was lamenting about, Chuuya shrank into himself and spat out, like it was something unforgivably insulting to even voice out, bills.
Chuuya needs to pay bills.
He’s a waiter during the day, bartender at night; he works with his hands, his mouth, his charm, which everyone says he has plenty of – at least, his employers, and they’re the only ones whose opinions matter to him. He works overtime if needed, he covers up for his coworkers with their colds, weddings, funerals, and children’s school recitals, but as soon as someone thinks they can take advantage of his kindness, he’s out. He’s no one’s doormat. He’s been there before. He’d changed dozens of day jobs before ending up with his current one. At Honey Meadow, he learns one of the most important rules of laying the table, which also becomes the motto he lives by: start from the outside and move inward. The cutlery you need to pick up first is usually positioned farthest from the plate. You take the spoon and feed yourself; your lover; your children; your family. You win the bread before enjoying it.
There is no other way.
“You’re saying they booked the entire place?” Chuuya calls out through the open door of the powder room, where he’s tying up his apron and fixing his hair. “What kind of rich is that?”
“It happened before,” Tachihara offers lazily, fresh off his smoke break, lingering outside, shoulder against the wall, hands in his pockets. The restaurant is still quiet this early in the morning, the rest of the waiters are about to seep in, and the big birthday banquet they’ll be battling with today is scheduled to start at four in the afternoon. A weird time for a meal – too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Oligarchs tend to have their own quirks, outside the scope of Chuuya’s understanding. “Before you came in. We had this big oil company owner barge in every other weekend with a new mistress, book all the tables, and sit at the one that caught his sweetheart’s eye. The rest were just… decorations. We made a shit ton of money off his fat pockets. Pity he doesn’t show up here anymore.”
“Why, what happened to him?” Chuuya’s only half-ear, half-mind in the conversation, trying to rub some drugstore concealer into the rich violet bruise on his neck with the pads of his fingers.
Tachihara is quiet for some time before speaking again. “Died, probably,” he offers, at last. “I read on the news that he’d been shot.”
Chuuya turns off the lights and steps out of the cramped room, smelling of these fancy vanilla candles that their owner, Yosano, likes putting all over the place. “Sucks to be him, I guess.”
They’re allowed one smoke break before the first breakfast tables start to arrive – to have enough time for the nasty smell of cigarettes to vanish from their clothes. They sit on the steps outside, to the right of the entrance door, looking at and breathing in the smell of a freshly mowed lawn. Honey Meadow is an interesting solution, both interior and exterior-wise. It is a luxury restaurant indeed, likely the most expensive in town, too, and when they talk regulars, they mean rich heirs, tech CEOs and their wives, and virtually everyone whose net worth is enough to buy half a country or even an entire island. In some way, the world of the guests is separated from the world of the waiters more than just physically: Tachihara, for instance, is a prideless high school dropout dreaming of moving to Europe and living on a villa somewhere in Italy with three dogs and no permanent partner; Gin (who’s being late stuck in traffic, again) is a former school teacher who got fed up with Japan’s education system and decided to study art to their pleasure; Higuchi is the only one of them who has more or less of what one may call a stable life, engaged to a doctor’s son, planning a wedding next summer, and growing a whole fruit garden in the backyard of her countryside home; all this while mourning an ex-girlfriend she’ll never get back together with.
They are the lost generation. Kids with no past and no future, constrained to the present moment alone. Every morning, Chuuya fires up his bike, a cigarette between his teeth, and prays that the day ahead will be gentler to him than the last, but it never happens. Honey Meadow is only pretty on the outside; a shiny wrapper keeping rotten candy. None of those people, enjoying their fancy dinners and fancy wine that costs just a little less than Chuuya’s yearly income, has the slightest clue about the inner seams of this place. They don’t see the cooks working their asses off in the kitchen, fire, refire, throw away, dammit, cutting their fingers with sharp knives and burning them off sizzling pans; they don’t see the bussers and waiters rushing around in the back like a swarm of bees, spitting curses under their breaths only to beam with the fakest smiles known to man the second they’re back in the spotlight, carrying their silver trays. There are people who serve the bread and people who eat the bread. Chuuya feels nothing towards another nameless dude showing off his fat wallet, ordering the priciest positions from the menu, and talking business on the phone, paying no attention to the waiter who approaches to clean up his dirty plates. These guys have a big ego, and they always hold it close to their faces.
The same Chuuya does with his grudges.
He’s been staring at the list of chats on his phone for five minutes now, completely ignoring Tachihara’s yapping about the tennis game he watched yesterday on YouTube and how tired he is of ads that only go away if you pay. “Hey, are you even listening?”
Chuuya wrinkles his nose as he locks his phone, putting it in his back pocket. He doesn’t know what he expects; it’s not like they parted ways on a particularly pleasant note. Hell, he didn’t even ask for Dazai’s full name, whether it was his real, legal name, and not the one he came up with to use with strangers; he thinks he heard him say it as they were booking the hotel room deep into the night (why not take Chuuya to his place instead?), but he was so tipsy and hanging low in his desire to finally drag Dazai into bed that he didn’t care to commit it to memory.
Now, all they have is dust. Hickeys on Chuuya’s neck and collarbones that will fade away in four or five afternoons. His sore lower back, legs, and ass after those three times in a row that Dazai had him last night, and each one somehow even better than the last. The fading emerald light on the walls of the hotel room early in the morning, haze in Chuuya’s sleepy eyes, a veil, some Art Deco here and there, sharp and triangular things; his shameful check-out at the receptionist’s desk down below, his talentless theatre of one actor, unable to stand on his own two without shaking and swaying a little, are you okay, sir, and he would nod with a constricted smile, I’m fine, thinking to himself, I’ve never slept in a hotel before. His road back home to change into fresh clothes, the ghostly imprint of his breath on the dirty bus window, the morning chill, the dew on the grass far away. Dawns after sleeping with someone he’ll never see again have always been his personal flavor of therapy, coming back into his own skin after spending so much time outside of it, not belonging to himself entirely. But the night with Dazai did something to him. He can’t find where his body begins anymore.
“And the worst part is that he didn’t even wait until morning.” He doesn’t notice how the bitter thought materialises, how his mouth forms the words, how they are suddenly right there, dropped to his feet, for the whole world to see and try to transcribe.
Tachihara stares at him for a second, flabbergasted. “What are you on..?”
Chuuya runs a hand down his face. “Forget it,” taking the last hit of his cigarette and snapping it away with his fingers, watching it ash out on the roadside. Then, he thinks better of it, spits a whispered curse, and reaches to pick it up and carry it to the nearest trash bin.
Honey Meadow is clean. It should be clean. So should be its staff. Their shirts always ironed, their shoes always shined, their faces always shaven, their hair always neatly combed (whenever it's long and rather boisterous, like Chuuya’s), their smiles always glinting with welcome. Welcome, sir. Welcome, ma’am. Let me escort you to your table. Chuuya knows what money smells like. He took a whiff of it off Dazai’s wrist last night, as he was biting into his pulse point, trying not to scream out loud and wake up the entire building. There was a slightly reddened rectangular mark going across his skin; a country border; a warning; it smelled like leather; there used to be a watch; they didn’t count minutes together.
Chuuya steps back into the dining room, ready to welcome the first guests of the day. He puts his smile on like perfume. He sets down the cutlery on each table. Outward to inward. The utensil farthest from the plate is the one you start with.
He’s about to make some money.
Dazai hates birthdays.
In their family, there is always some kind of big gathering. They don’t really need an occasion. When it’s no one’s birthday but they feel like celebrating, they invent one for someone just so they can throw a party. For quite some time now, Dazai has been banned from most birthdays on his father’s side of the family, due to that one unfortunate occasion when he had one drink too many and said that he couldn’t wait for his dad’s cousin (one of his many-many aunts) to finally kick the bucket, just so they never had those horrendous dinners at her place again.
Now, he is getting ready for another horrendous dinner – this time, for his grandpa’s birthday, and it’s always birthdays, birthdays, birthdays with this huge family, so much for being yet another year closer to death, they would celebrate anything as long as there is money to spend. He’s not even there yet, and he already despises every second of it. If it were on him, he’d crawl out of his skin and let his body alone wander away to that humiliation and nonsense; he’d keep his mind to himself and walk in another direction – to do whatever he wanted, where he wanted, and how he wanted. Alas, this is the only luxury he can’t yet have.
As he’s clasping the cufflinks on the sleeves of his well-ironed white shirt, he notices a small, almost unnoticeable bracelet of teeth marks, slowly purpling into a rich bruise, on his right wrist. He sighs as he pulls the sleeve back up, covering the evidence from view. There’s enough of this evidence scattering his shoulders (he asked Chuuya not to mark his neck, and he listened after a solid minute of being a brat about it), crawling back and forth in scratch marks all over his back… but wait.
Chuuya.
He can’t recall the last time he remembered the name in the morning.
It’s true that the rich tend to have a shitty memory. The only thing they never forget is where they put their money, who and what they invest it in. This is also the only thing they’re never mistaken about – or so Dazai thought, before his granddad decided to bet his entire lifetime fortune on his only grandson’s bright and stable future. You’re a deserving heir. Dazai sucks his tongue. Tough luck. His only concern right now is how to sneak out of that forsaken dinner, bored out of his skin, unnoticed by anyone, and hook up with some pretty waitress in a bathroom stall. Money has never worried him, not in the slightest; one scarcely considers the possibility of losing something they were just born with. There’s a silver spoon in Dazai’s mouth; it’s been there since the dawn of time, since as early as he can remember, and, god knows, his teeth are clenched tight around it.
Earlier that morning, while he was having breakfast in the dining room, their housemaid had set a platter of glossy, homemade butter next to Dazai’s basket of freshly baked bread. Her hand lingered over his food for merely a second, but he still slowed down in his chewing, fixated on her fingers – dry-skinned, calloused, the fingers of someone who worked hard to make a living. It was the same kind of hand Chuuya had placed on his forearm last night while he was staring into his eyes, holding back tears, Dazai’s name trembling like a leaf on the tip of his tongue, and Dazai was silently begging him not to say it. It would have meant something. It would have meant something more, and it was another luxury he couldn’t afford.
Dazai loves hotels. They deprive you of everything but your legal name and your face, the way you decide to present yourself. The palace of your mind is irrelevant. Your past is erased. They strip you of you, leaving you a floating boat with no destination. He thought it would be easier to fuck Chuuya in a hotel instead of taking him to one of those posh apartments his family owns all over the city, standing there lonely and bodiless, gathering dust on their oakwood shelves, marble staircases, and gold doorknobs. He thought it would be easier to lay Chuuya down in a bed that wasn’t his. Some people wrap themselves around you like poison ivy or barbed wire, deeming you a prisoner or a treasure chest; Dazai had never planned to get lost and forgotten like that.
In the back of the car, on his way to the restaurant, he keeps looking at the strip of reddened teeth marks on his wrist, rubbing and pinching his skin with his fingertips to make them hurt just the way they did yesterday. He takes his watch (his father’s watch) out of his pocket and clasps it over the scene of the crime. No one should see. No one would mind, on the other hand. He’s a grown boy. He can sleep around with whoever he wants as long as he doesn’t make it to the front page. This is about the only condition – and, since his face is not exactly public yet, it’s not at all that hard to follow.
After landing a modest kiss on his grandpa’s cheek – manners and all – Dazai takes his rightful spot at the middle of a long dining table, already lit up with these sickly sweet candles all over, the kind that gives him a headache, and he realises it’s going to be a long evening before he even gets to his entrée. All the blinds in the dining room are down, making it feel like dusk outside, an illusory chill of the twilight. Each empty table is dotted with a lit candle. Dazai takes a second to make out the cutlery laid out in front of him; he doesn’t need long, he has it all memorised. The first fork is the farthest from the plate.
His mother is barely talkative; she likes this family no more than Dazai does. Still, when one of her sisters hooks a finger at her, coaxing her closer to whisper some gossip into her ear, she loses all of her provisional defences and covers her mouth with her hand, giggling soundlessly as she takes in every word, her eyes travelling sneakily across everyone present. She loves rumors; it’s not that hard to lure her in.
His father, on the other hand, doesn’t need anyone’s encouragement to initiate a conversation of his own, soon turning his entire side of the table into a debate site. Selling these shares would equal cutting off one’s own leg, and then – names, and more names, anyone he’s ever made an enemy of, his every grudge he keeps recalling whenever they gather at any table, each table they’ve ever gathered at, and so the circle.
Dazai sits there, his elbow propped next to his plate, his head in his hand, his mind stuck between a rock and a hard place; between gossip he has no interest in and business talk he’s still too young and unserious for. He’d rather be drinking whiskey on the rocks and reading a book in the shade by the pool. Honey Meadow. What an innocent, foolish, sweet name for a place like this, where the tables are made of the finest wood, where the hand towels are silk, where everyone has a name card atop their designated plate. There should be live music, too, but Dazai can’t hear any yet, drowning in the cacophony of voices he listens to way too often to still enjoy them, or even miss them much once he’s left in silence.
“Darling, have a bite,” his mother says as she leans closer to him, her porcelain hand placed on his forearm. “I thought you were hungry.”
He is. And the food looks impeccable, it really does; the finest cheese, honey like melted gold, roasted meat, fish, oysters, caviar, and even his favorite crab. And yet, he feels like a knot has been tightened around his stomach, empty and growling in discord under the layers of his fine clothes. He keeps drinking water in small sips, never getting enough of it, and in other circumstances, his hand would have already reached for the bottle of wine, but right now, even his eyes detest the sight of it. Something is wrong. He can’t explain what just yet, but something is.
“If you’ll excuse me,” he clears his throat quietly as he stands up, leaving the hand towel he’s been fidgeting with under the table for the past ten minutes on his chair, and turns around in search of the bathrooms.
No one seems to notice his parting, or if they do, no one seems to mind. The talk resumes just the same, the clacking of glasses and passing of plates, dearest, hand me some more of those shrimps, will you, they are mouthwatering. Dazai is the only one who feels like this ship is about to sink, pulled down into the bottomless abyss with all the gravity that it takes.
He feels ill. In the bathroom, he splashes some water onto his face, rinses his mouth, and washes his hands like the relics of this place might contaminate his bloodstream through his pores. He fixes his hair and looks at his watch. Even if he plans to sneak out unnoticed, he should endure this for at least a full hour, so that his sudden unexplained absence is less of a sting.
Good thing he took his cigarettes with him. Mother will be insulted if he comes back reeking, but he sneaks outside anyway, the filter already between his teeth. It’s only then that he remembers that his lighter is still dead. “Fuck,” he spits under his breath, swaying nervously next to the door, shaking the useless piece of metal in his hand like it might do a miracle. “Shit.”
“Tough luck?” Someone asks behind him, the door opening and closing gently, and before Dazai can fully turn around, a small flame sparks in front of his eyes, lighting his cigarette for him.
So that’s where those hands come from, then.
For a moment, he is so stunned he forgets he’s supposed to be smoking.
Chuuya is cold with him, dismissive, playing strangers as he keeps aloof, walking down the steps and stopping around the corner, his back against the wall. Dazai takes the cigarette out of his mouth and follows him, stopping close enough that his whisper can be heard, “You work here?”
With a careless flick of his hand, Chuuya scoffs. “What would you do if you suddenly got rich,” he mocks his own voice from last night – but this time, full of spite and that quiet, hissing vitriol. He puts his face in his hands, then, his fingers sprawled like trembling stars, holding his smouldering cigarette. “Gosh, I was so fucking blind.”
“So what if I come from money?” Dazai frowns. He genuinely can’t understand. “Does it somehow hinder our compatibility?”
“Hinder our compatibility, my ass,” Chuuya scoffs, again, throwing his head back with a wide grin of sheer disbelief. “I should have guessed from the way you talked,” he clicks his tongue. “You are way too speechy.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Dazai shakes his head, forgetting about his cigarette, again, letting it ash out onto the bare ground they’re standing on. “I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable.”
He can hardly register what he’s saying. Chuuya’s face is way too close, and he doesn’t try to shy away from this proximity, which is something that makes Dazai’s heart leap. He can’t believe it’s the same person he spent the last night with; thin, well-mannered, clean of his yesterday’s makeup, with his hair slicked back and tightened into a high ponytail; Dazai prefers it tousled and curled, lying in chaos over his shoulders; he prefers his mouth wet from endless kisses and forming another soundless scream to this thin line of dry, pursed lips, I do not recognise you. God, and even still – Dazai would trade his family’s honor to pin him against the same wall and kiss him into it, kiss him until he can’t speak, smoke, curse, or walk in a straight line; the flowerbed of his body under the hotel blanket, dotted with hickeys and bruises like the darkest roses. Dazai loses his head even remembering this.
“So I am lucky, then,” Chuuya suggests with a quiet, nervous giggle, his eyes sliding up and down Dazai’s figure, his well-ironed, expensive clothes. “I let royalty fuck me.”
“I’m not-”
“How many yachts has your daddy bought for you already?” Chuuya won’t let him speak, smoking his cigarette in fast, short drags, like he can’t wait to be done with it. “Houses? Cars? Has he paid for your education?”
Dazai narrows his gaze at him. “Your grudge against the rich won’t add numbers to your bank account.”
“No,” Chuuya agrees way too easily. “I just enjoy insulting you.” Met with his glare, cold and hostile, Dazai feels like a butterfly under a magnifying glass; a certain angle against the sun – and he’s done with; forever. “How is your dinner so far?” This might be nothing more than purely professional interest on his behalf; otherwise, Dazai is reading too much into it.
“I couldn’t bring myself to swallow a piece,” he admits, hands by his sides, desperate for something to hold. He keeps fiddling with his own fingers and cracking his knuckles, his mind outside his body, his memory nested inside Chuuya’s mouth. Dazai tilts up his chin to seem prouder, braver, a pinch less forlorn, and adds, “I had a premonition.”
Chuuya only smirks, looking down, a premonition, huh, and Dazai knows he’s still in a dangerous place, tightrope walking between two worlds, and if someone, anyone from his family saw him right now, exchanging gazes and cigarette smoke with someone who serves their food, he would not know how to answer their many questions. “I should go,” he offers, as much as he doesn’t want to, as much as his body strives to linger there, in this uncertainty between them, even though it seems like for Chuuya, everything is certain and decided on.
“Yeah, fuck off,” he just points at the door, done with his cigarette and lighting another, hands rummaging hastily in his pockets, like Dazai is not even there. Like he’s irrelevant. It’s a fresh feeling for him; he’s scarcely felt anything like that before.
Still, he lingers there instead of leaving right away, studying as much of Chuuya as he can see in this fading daylight. As long as he waits, Chuuya doesn’t look back at him, staring at the ground under his feet instead. A distance of several worlds between them. A hickey Dazai left on Chuuya’s neck, its dimmed outline seeping through a thin layer of concealer. He puts his hand there, feeling for his pulse. Someone must finally teach him that certain things can’t be removed.
Back at the table, Dazai indulges in the food. He eats a full meal, washing it down with two glasses of wine, and even participates in the conversation whenever his father, uncle, or grandpa asks him a question; something about how he’s doing at the university and whether he’s already decided to marry. Dazai’s polite responses are numbered; he uses them all to the brink. Half the table is tipsy, the other – outwardly drunk; his mother is dozing off on his aunt’s shoulder, having had one glass of wine too many. He has solid chances of running away, Dazai thinks, and disappearing without a trace at least until morning.
Waiters – and there are four of them serving their table – start circling like little birds, flapping their wings, taking away the dirty plates, pouring more wine into every empty glass, replacing the used hand towels with clean ones. Dazai watches them all. He feels it when Chuuya stops right behind his back, his hand reaching for the plate, and if Dazai had the right, the opportunity, he could stop him right now by locking his wrist inside the cage of his fingers. The worst part is that Chuuya still smells like last night. The worst part is that Dazai still remembers how nice it felt inside him.
“Thank you,” he whispers, looking down and to the side, trying to steal at least a glance at Chuuya’s apron.
Chuuya says nothing, but when he passes by, moving on to the next dirty plate, his free hand brushes against the back of Dazai’s chair ever so slightly, so close to his shoulders he feels it deep in his bones. He takes a breath to soothe himself, fidgeting with the hem of the tablecloth, not knowing where to put his useless hands.
The party’s not over. They order another round of drinks, a big set of desserts, and a birthday cake. Dazai’s remaining patience is only enough to condone his – damned they be – manners, and it forces him to wait until his grandpa blows the candles, to clap along with the others, to raise his glass and then down it in one gulp like water. He slams the empty glass against the table, then wipes his mouth with the back of his palm, and steps away from his chair – this time, without excusing himself.
A waitress girl, blonde and with big doe eyes, nearly bumps into him around the corner with a yelp. “I apologise, sir,” she mutters under her breath, fidgeting with the front pocket of her apron, not knowing where to look, avoiding Dazai’s eyes. “May I help you, perhaps?”
“No,” he shakes his head hastily, but on second thoughts, “Yes,” taking the deepest breath he’s capable of, breathing out. “Have you seen Chuuya?”
Even if she tries to hide it, her shock seeps through every little feature of her young face. “I think he’s about to leave. His… his hours are over.”
What would Dazai do if he suddenly got rich? A better question is, what would he do if he suddenly got poor? If he had nothing else but this, and he were losing it, shamefully, not trying to get it back, giving up even before the start of the race? Would he give up? Run away in embarrassment? Curse out the system?
He lets the wind punch him when he finds Chuuya in the back of the restaurant, next to his bike, about to put his helmet on. He looks much better than Dazai does, in his leather jacket and ripped jeans, his hair finally loose on his shoulders, no trace of concealer left on his neck, the hickeys bared out for the entire world to see. They could never be mirrors of each other. Dazai’s jacket is half off his shoulders, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned, revealing his bandages, his heart inside out, an artillery round. “Let’s try again,” he demands, before Chuuya can even see him.
He looks up, startled, his grip tightening on the helmet, his hair in his eyes. He blows it away. “Here comes daddy’s money,” he sighs, leaning with his hip against the bike, watching Dazai as if he owes him something, silently wondering how he’s going to pay it back. “Didn’t I tell you to fuck off?”
But Dazai is already dashing towards him, stopping within a mere step of his body, trembling from the cold, and taking him in up close. He is so beautiful. Kingdoms have fallen for faces like his. Chuuya wrinkles his nose in disgust as he looks up at him. “Have you swallowed your tongue?”
Dazai’s kingdom is next.
“I said,” he breathes in, plucking up all his courage, all his patience. “Let’s try again. It won’t be a hotel this time.”
“I need to wake up in-”
“You don’t,” Dazai shakes his head. He keeps fiddling with the hem of his jacket absentmindedly, not knowing if he’s allowed to touch Chuuya just yet, and he wants to; god knows, he wants it more than anything else. “I mean,” he speaks again, his futile attempt at fixing what he broke; he knows how stupid he must look, smitten for the first time in his life. “I mean… I’ll figure something out.”
Chuuya shakes his head slowly as he looks at him, his smirk melting into something softer, touched by a brief brush of mercy, almost a smile, but not quite. “Will you pay my bills?” He clarifies.
Dazai is so close to just saying fuck it and kissing him right there; he could whine, bare all of his weakest spots in front of him. The final remains of his patience are dying out on his fingertips. He is a loser enough to nod, “Yes,” not shying away from Chuuya’s glare, scrutinising and trying to crack him apart, oblivious to the fact that he’s already done this before: now and then, before and after, the only thing that haunts Dazai is his money, but even that he can get rid of if need be.
When Chuuya says nothing, he braves putting his hand on the back of his neck, making him shiver. “Stop me if you don’t want this,” he says and waits seconds before diving in. He thinks that Chuuya’s raised hand is going to push him away, but it hooks against the sleeve of his jacket instead, sliding under it and over the shiny cufflink on his wrist; over his own mark; over their last night; over their shared past. He opens his mouth on an exhale. God, he tastes even sweeter. Dazai pushes him back, advancing, pinning him against his bike, and startles when both of Chuuya’s hands fly up to the nape of his neck. Dazai bites his bottom lip, sucks on his tongue, tastes the roof of his mouth. He feels every part of Chuuya’s body relax, one after another, in his embrace, resigning to something for which his aversion has always been the strongest.
“Take me,” he whispers hastily, staring at Dazai’s mouth, when they break the kiss. “Home.”
Dazai doesn’t know which one yet, but he will.
He’ll take him home.
Dazai might have stripped off his honor. His pride. It’s alright; it happens to him when he starts falling in love but is still too stubborn to admit it. On the top floor of the hotel, where they get all close and personal with each other for the first time, his hesitating hands float in the air next to Chuuya’s forearms, fingertips starved to trace the outlines of freckles covering his skin; they are everywhere, even on the back of his elbows – his joints, where something ends and another thing begins, – on his neck, over the apple of his throat, and Dazai is sure that if he looks inside his mouth, he will find some there, too.
He’s never fucked redheads before. Sure, he might be a man of preference, but never a man of principle – while most of his lovers have been dark-haired like himself, he didn’t have enough time to develop a type. When it comes to Chuuya, his physical features remain complementary – or, at least, his body is far from the first thing that Dazai notices when they lock gazes across the club. A passing, blurred stain of auburn in the dimmed lights, but there’s more – his piercing glare, tipping the overflowing goblet of Dazai’s patience, a spark of you will be mine tonight – and here they are, falling off a cliff, and the cliff is nothing more but Dazai’s hand, leading Chuuya outside, through the crowd, to the car.
“May I at least know your name?” He asks, so tipsy he seems smitten, while there’s nothing to be smitten about just yet; Dazai has barely said a word.
He tells him nothing more than his last name. Then, already in the room, they exchange a couple of words while taking off their shoes, washing their hands, getting undressed. “Do you think these are antiques?” Chuuya asks, gaze critical and assessing, pointing at the dark wooden furniture, mostly gathering dust, purposeless. These things are so cheap that Dazai doesn’t even view them as worthy of consideration.
“I don’t think so,” he says with a flash of a gentle smile, looking at Chuuya over his shoulder as he works on taking off his watch and putting it in the back pocket of his pants.
Then, as they stand there next to the bed, Chuuya notices something, “Your hands,” he says, swallowing, and catches Dazai’s wrist with his fingers, bringing his palm closer to his face and examining it like a rock he found in the street, hoping it might be a jewel.
“What about them?”
Chuuya hesitates to answer and shakes his head instead, dropping the subject and returning Dazai’s hand to where it belongs – at least for the night – the side of his stomach, that unpatched hollow pit under his ribs, his waist. “Nothing.”
Dazai has never been good at reading people’s nothings. This time, he discards it, as he doesn’t expect to stay with Chuuya for a second longer than this night alone, if this night ever comes to an end. The thoughts and feelings of whoever Dazai sleeps with are none of his concern.
The only thing he regrets is that he doesn’t get to kiss Chuuya on the mouth. It does nothing to his perception of the night, of course, to the feeling of Chuuya’s body in his embrace, so pliant and reckless, not a single page of the one-night stands etiquette read on his part; through most of it, he acts like Dazai is someone he’s already committed to, someone to whose sight he will wake up in the morning and watch him brew coffee in their shared kitchen, their home, and not this lifeless hotel room with its horrendous design choices. Biting down on Dazai’s shoulder while he’s inside him, whispering the tenderest things into his ear, his hair, the side of his neck; Dazai can swear he almost hears an I love you, making all of his systems malfunction.
Later, as they share a cigarette outside, Chuuya acts like a different person. “What do you do for a living?” He asks, voice dry and estranged, as he stares into the distance with his exhausted but concentrated eyes.
No one has ever asked him this before; not after sex, at least. Dazai doesn’t have a template answer prepared, so he just coughs. “You know-”
“I don’t.”
“Here and there… a bit of this, a bit of that,” work. He’s been getting pocket money enough to buy a small house somewhere on the beachfront monthly for as long as he’s been conscious enough to remember. He doesn’t even know how ordinary people pay bills these days. Then, he recalls something he saw in a film the other day, “I’m a truck driver.”
Chuuya side-eyes him like he’s suddenly grown a second head. “Excuse me? A truck driver?”
Dazai regrets saying it immediately, but backing down wouldn’t be like him at all. “It’s just one of the many jobs I do,” he explains, tastefully layering one lie over another. “I’m never really… in the same place.”
Back in bed, kissing Chuuya’s thighs all over while lubing up his fingers, he stops for a second, staring down at his own palm, and the puzzle of what was between the lines in Chuuya’s words from earlier finally starts coming together in his head.
Your hands.
No one who works has hands like these.
Dusting this entire place off would take half a century.
Clearly, no one has lived here for a long time, nor has anyone used this apartment for purposes other than settling down. Still, it is grand, and the layers of dust on the chests, shelves, counters, and railings fail to make it look any worse; or cheaper. Even the bedsheets still carry a faint scent of fabric softener, which means that someone did come here to clean up not so long ago. Dazai has lied to him; again. If it were indeed his home, it wouldn’t look so… abandoned.
Chuuya sets himself on the bed after some roaming, alone, waiting for Dazai to pour some wine for them in the kitchen. He puts his hands atop the comforter, his fingers clawing at the silky fabric, and looks out of the huge window covering the entire wall. His head is heavy with the thoughts of the passing day, of what awaits him tomorrow; the same shift, the same restaurant, the same rich clients believing that they somehow deserve a higher level of respect compared to an average person just because of the bigger numbers in their bank accounts. Chuuya puts his head down with a sigh; his shoulders are tense, and his back hurts. The last thing he wants is to wake up sore tomorrow.
“Hey.”
But he’s already there, which means he’s once again committed to something he can’t reverse.
Dazai sits down next to him, his body sinking gently into the mattress, and they are both shipwrecks, stranded for different reasons but stranded still. He hands Chuuya his glass, and he hesitates for a second before taking the first sip; the wine coats his throat, arid like a scorching desert up until this point. “I have thought of what you asked me.”
“When?” Chuuya doesn’t look at him, staring down at his glass instead.
“About what I would do if I got rich,” he explains, which nearly draws a short, hysterical laughter out of Chuuya’s chest. “No, let me dwell on it-”
“It’s a sore subject,” Chuuya cuts in still. “I prefer it when you talk less.”
Dazai turns to him immediately, staring at him with wide eyes. “Fascinating,” he breathes out, his left hand deadlocked over his glass, half-full. “It’s semantics, after all,” he shakes his head slowly. “You asked me what I would do if I got rich, which is still a valid question, because I was, in fact, born rich-”
Chuuya places his own glass on the floor and reaches to take Dazai’s; he lets him, not without a glint of surprise, relaxing his fingers. Once their hands are free, Chuuya doesn’t waste a moment – he straddles Dazai’s lap, resting both of his palms on his neck, feeling his skin, velvety and lukewarm, and leans forward for a kiss, violating his own policy. Dazai is surprised still, but he kisses him back, greedily and with a kind of possession he didn’t know he needed, switching their positions immediately and throwing Chuuya on the bed, locking him in place. Dazai breaks the kiss only for a second to whisper, “I wouldn’t be wasting my money so foolishly.” He waits for it to sink in, eyes sliding all over Chuuya’s face, and nods to himself. “Now, let me take your clothes off.”
And Dazai is attractive. Chuuya wouldn't have chosen him if he weren’t. There is something in this glinting haze surrounding him – not just his money – that makes the pull ever so strong. Chuuya doesn’t want this night to end; or any of the other nights they will share after this one. He likes having sex with Dazai in this huge apartment, so classy and cozy and yet belonging to no one, likes riding him in this heartless bed, likes every kiss they share before, during, and after. He is sure that Dazai likes all of this too; hence the messy clothes, hence his hair in the wind, hence the desperation in his eyes when he said, let’s try again, and Chuuya glanced down, trying to hide his treacherous smile.
Some time before their first meeting, before his eyes ever found Dazai’s in that stuffed club, Chuuya had an epiphany. It follows him still, an entity breathing into the nape of his neck, his own devil on the shoulder, reminding him of the only choice he has left.
A long time he spent at the bar, alone, staring down at his phone.
I’m scared, Gin
what if he won’t like me?
He tapped his fingers against the counter, sipping slowly on the only cocktail from the entire menu he could afford, the cheapest one and tasting like gasoline and melted tar mixed with a sugary, strawberry-flavored sweetener. The reply came the moment his heartbeat started to accelerate from all the accumulated anxiety.
relax
with that hair I gave you? impossible
so
relax and take the dick
This time, it takes Dazai longer to fall asleep; he keeps moving back and forth in bed, clearly unused to it, his hand caressing Chuuya’s bare shoulder lazily while his eyes are closed. When he finally dozes off, Chuuya carefully sneaks out from under his touch, puts his underwear on, and looks at the pile of Dazai’s clothes and serpentine bandages on the floor for a second before picking them up and mounting them on the nearest armchair. He feels like taking a shower, and so much he does, spending a solid twenty minutes just trying all the different toiletries lined out on the bathroom shelf. The marble sink; gold faucets; a soft beige mat that feels like walking on clouds; several intensity modes of the ceiling light, and his own bathroom’s blinking lightbulb hasn’t been replaced for several months now.
He wraps a towel around his hips and returns to the bedroom. Dazai is still deep asleep, his gorgeous face calm and undisturbed. Chuuya wishes he could get used to sleeping like that; like a baby, without an alarm, not worrying about the labors of the following day.
He walks back to the bed but doesn’t lie down right away, stopping next to the pile on the armchair instead. He works his hands through it for some time, considering the carved brand on the other side of Dazai’s platinum watch, the labels on all of his clothes, the subtle trace of perfume on the neck of his shirt; he puts the fabric to his face and takes a deep breath – all this while staring, unblinking, at Dazai’s sleeping face on the pillow.
If Chuuya is lucky – and he is – he won’t have to wake up for work in the morning.