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[revocations]

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Post-business trip

[geodesics]

[ OOC: continuation of texting upon Chuuya's return. ]

Though the trip wasn't that long, it was nearly sleepless and laborious if often dull work. Oh the work went smoothly, so smoothly there wasn't a single fight or anything else to take the edge off. So he stops by a wine shop on the way home, buys a decently good bottle of wine, and makes his way home for a relaxing night with thicker walls where he won't hear anyone making noise late into the night. Just what he needs.

When he opens his door, his mind instantly recognizes something is off but not what as he shuts the door, not before something large, black, with multiple tubes comes toward him. "HYAAAAAAH!" Chuuya kicks the ambush and imparts gravity in multiple directions enough to tear concrete apart. "You challenge me!" He cackles.

The black thing comes apart far easier, far too easy. As white stuffing litters his apartment, Chuuya sees Dazai farther into his apartment and scowls. "You!" Chuuya roars. He sets the wine down roughly on a counter as he stomps his way across the room toward the true guilty party.

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"You killed it!" Dazai is very aware of what he's doing, and it had taken some planning to get this set up. Gotta keep Chuuya on his toes after all, and given the boring week of work he probably had.

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

"Ha ha ha," Chuuya forces out humorlessly. He gets to the couch and doesn't entirely stop. He steps right up onto it, which forces him to lean down to wrap his hand around Dazai's throat and squeeze. Yes, he killed it. He killed a black stuffed animal of some sort in too many pieces for Chuuya to identify.

"You had all week, and this is the best you could do?"

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"I thought about having it stuffed with glitter but there wasn't time" When he's able to speak

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

Chuuya stares down at Dazai, imagining the horror of his apartment absolutely coated with glitter. "You would be cleaning every surface with your tongue, if you'd done that," he declares. "Eating the glitter. All of it."

Never mind how unreasonable an idea it might seem. He likes the image.

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"I don't think I would." Mildly.

"Most of it would be on you, anyway."

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

His nose flares in anger. That tone, that fucking quiet tone so at odds with everything Dazai says and does.

"Then I guess you'd be licking me."

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"Is that what you want, Chuuya?" His voice is soft, amused, his eyes never leaving Chuuya's face.

"Because all you have to do is ask."

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

His hand still rests against Dazai's chest where it no longer chokes him. He drops one knee to rest on the couch, pressed close against Dazai's groin. There's only so much space. His face comes much closer to Dazai's, and it's tempting to shut him up, press his mouth against Dazai's, and not say a single word.

One quip and Dazai's response... and he can't get the image out of his head. They're both mafia, but Dazai makes it so hard to trust him. "I bought a decent bottle of wine," he downplays the quality, "you can lick it off me."

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"Let's see how it tastes before we do that." He does lift a hand this time, fingers coming up tug a piece of stuffing out of Chuuya's hair.

"I'd rather find out if I like the taste first."

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

Chuuya rolls his eyes. "Are you concerned it'll be too good for your tastes?" he asks. He breathes heavily at the stuffing in his hair but steps back and down from the couch.

He fetches two wine glasses, opens the wine he bought, and pours them each a glass. This routine is normal enough. Something he can try to relax into. "Try to enjoy it," he says as he passes Dazai the wine.

Re: Post-business trip

[revocations]

"More that it might overpower what I actually want to taste on my tongue." Dazai counters, taking the wine before he lets it sit a moment and then sips.

"How did your business go?"

Re: Post-business trip

[geodesics]

Chuuya rolls his eyes. It's called taking a sip of water, if it's that big a deal. Besides, good wine deserves to be appreciated. If Dazai cannot enjoy the bold flavors of tannins, he can drink something else.

"Business went well," Chuuya says, "Can't say either party's in love with each other, but a good deal's a good deal. We can work together with that."

He's never sent for his way with words, unlike Dazai.

reaching out as i look above / up to the clouds i will never touch / with my tainted hands

[notawriter]

[Darkness. Silence. Stillness.

Who knows how long it's been since Oda has experienced any form of sensation?

A heart beating. A slow breath that goes through his nose or mouth, trachea, lungs. Then another breath and another in gradual succession until it becomes more or less normal. His muscles seem heavy, stiff and unmovable after years of rest. He feels the need to test them, and his movement is torpid but not impossible.

How long has he been lying like a sleeping dog? How could he let himself fall into this condition? Was vengeance not enough to fuel him in chasing Gide through the afterlife?

…

He sits up with a jolt, eyes snapping open, before he glances around and finds himself returned to a world he never thought he'd see again. A surge of fury shot through him but dissipated almost as quickly as it first came.

…

It had taken quite a bit of time for Oda to accept that he'd been wrangled back into this world against his will. As much as he doesn't like it, his revenge has been placed on hold for the time being. So even as that flame burns within him, slowly but steadily eating its way through his being, he forces himself to make do ignoring it.

It's with that tenacity that he has the patience to put in all the work necessary to find his friend. The one that, to his knowledge, is his only friend.]

Dazai…

[revocations]

He visited the cemetery fairly regularly, even if it was just sitting and talking to the gravestone. It wasn't as if he thought Odasaku could actually hear him but it was a nice thought. His footsteps slowed as he approached though, the name bringing him to a dead stop, gaze focusing on the figure standing there.

The open grave, the dirt on his clothes and the sound of his name from the one person he'd never expected to see again. Dazai's hands are still at his sides, expression fairly neutral as he studies Odasaku or whatever this is wearing his face.

"...So was it Heaven or Hell that tossed you back here?" It's almost conversational. "Because you look way too alert to be a zombie or a ghoul, although I've never met either so I could be wrong."

[notawriter]

Honestly, Oda hadn't meant to make such a mess of his gravesite. How distasteful this must look—but it is his own grave. So that should account for something, right?

Still, his expression is nearly as neutral as Dazai's as he looks the man over. He seems taller than Oda last remembered; his attire doesn't exactly pin him as Port Mafia. And his eyes, those piercing eyes. They still have that darkness, though perhaps it's more tempered than before.

He brushes a bit more dirt from his trousers just so he has something to do. Because he'll likely get more dirt on himself later when he cleans up this mess as if he didn't exhume his own remains.

"You know, could be neither." Just a suggestion. He would've continued if it weren't for the fiery vengeance erupting in his chest—Heaven or Hell, he should be exacting a very thorough revenge. It's enough for him to squeeze his eyes shut and take a long breath to maintain his composure. "I don't think I went to either of those places."

[revocations]

"So where did you go?" Not that he's fully believing this even if he wants to. And he wants to believe it. He's wondered how Oda'd react to the choices he's made.

"If you remember anything at all." Dazai continues, taking steps toward him, closing the distance slowly, his pace deliberately casual. "I don't know if they'd let you keep those memories and come back."

[notawriter]

So where did you go? If left at that, it wouldn't really have mattered to Oda where he'd gone. It wasn't where he thought he should be: hunting that man down for eternity, trapped in an endless gunfight. Slowly, slowly, he exhales as he inwardly tamps on the fury that's always there.

"I remember darkness. And stillness."

Finally he opens his eyes, notes the distance between them, and continues to observe each step by measured step that Dazai takes in unmistakably calculated ease. Cautious. Guarded. It's familiar all the same; he and Dazai both are trying to read each other. But while Dazai's actions weigh with intention and care, Oda remains as straightforward as he's always been. Attentive he may be, but he never himself had seen the need to be wary of Dazai.

"And mostly silence. Except—" He looks down to his side, to the gaping hole that was once his grave. "I think I did hear your voice from time to time."

[revocations]

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Whether Odasaku heard him or not didn't really make much of a difference at this point. It was a pleasant thought, or might have been for anyone else, but it didn't change the fact that Oda had walked away from him and gone to die.

Even if he'd gotten there in time for the final moments, it didn't make it any less painful knowing the one person he'd actually tried to stop hadn't even tried to listen.

"Did hearing me make you feel anything?"

[notawriter]

There's a trap lying between Dazai's queries and the sight of that dirtless void beside Oda. It's a pitfall ready to swallow Oda up.

"Both of us knew I wouldn't... find what I was looking for."

His blind rage was indeed blind, his actions and decisions irrational, his very spirit broken. Ever since he'd awakened, it had persisted, albeit in something of an incomplete form. However, this diminished form is exactly what it takes to ensnare Oda and reveal to him what he hadn't seen in all his bull-headed quest for vengeance.

"I'm sorry... Sorry for hearing you and not listening. To you. Not even when it was too late."

His mouth is like picked cotton, he swallows what felt like a stone in his throat, and it doesn't make anything easier. But he doesn't expect anything about this situation to be easy by any stretch of the imagination.

"When I finally heard you, I felt..." Inwardly he grapples with how to put it. "—proud of you. Seems like you joined the side that saves people."

[revocations]

"Did you really think I'd ignore the final thing you asked of me?" He stops directly in front of Oda, meeting his gaze evenly. "When someone dies in your arms, you do try to do what they ask, after all." And even more so given it had been Odasaku.

"What are you going to do now?"

[notawriter]

Their eyes meet, and Oda's gaze falters as his guilt for abandoning Dazai mounts.

"No. No. You never would have ignored what I asked."

Oda had imparted to him a cold, harsh truth about their reality before leaving Dazai with a desperate single wish that Oda hoped would save his one and only friend, to keep him from leaving this world so devoid of meaning. Whether or not Dazai followed through on the request was his own choice; that wasn't up to Oda to decide.

To write a novel is to write a person.

And Dazai fulfilled that wish. His life was rewritten and so became the very novel that Oda posthumously wrote. For all intents and purposes, that shouldn't have been possible after Oda had discarded his dream and granted Gide and his men the deaths they so desired.

"It's because of you that the dream I had lost came true."

Oda is sorry for having been so cruel by giving so many what they longed for while denying his friend the very same thing he'd wanted and even welcomed.

Could Dazai accept something like that? In any case, Oda's said as much as he thinks could be said about that for the time being. If it comes up again in the future, they can deal with it then.

The first to falter, Oda is also the first to break eye contact as he seats himself on the dirt and leans back on his own headstone. His gaze falls on Dazai's shoes as he lets out a small but tired and frustrated sigh.

"I don't... I don't know what to do now." He had forfeit his own life and abandoned this world and what little he had left in it. "What do I have left?"

[revocations]

The silence lingers after those last words, Dazai watching him silently before he exhales a breath.

"You still have me." Not that he'd be enough to keep Oda here or anchor him, but it's true nonetheless.

[notawriter]

... To think that is Dazai's answer even after Oda had abandoned him, urging him to continue on in this life and be on the side that saves people. Then again, Dazai was the only one Oda could still consider as his friend until the very end. Here he is, nothing to his name, and the man who'd destroyed his dream has escaped Oda's pursuit.

Which means that Dazai is truly all he has left.

Does that mean Dazai forgives him? Oda knows how to hold a grudge when push comes to shove, and Dazai isn't exactly known for his good graces either.

Still, Oda turns his gaze upward to face the man towering before him. Is Dazai his angel of mercy or judgment? Oda's expression is subtle but still that of a broken man seeking redemption.

"Would you have me, then?"

[revocations]

There's only one answer to that question, his expression shifting, softening in a way that it wouldn't for anyone else. Dazai still doesn't say it immediately though, some small part of himself pushing that line because it had been the worst moment of his life, sitting there holding the body of the only person he'd have given everything up for without question.

He has other anchors, but those he could break if it came down to it. But this man?

"In whatever way you're willing to allow, yes." Because that's how it's always been since they formed this. Oda had tried to restrain him in the Mafia, teach him a different way, but he'd been filling the role he'd been given. Just as he was now, although there were different rules until he had to put them aside for the sake of protecting the city.