@ficresc

WARNING

Chuuya’s only seen one name carved on Dazai’s skin – Fyodor Dostoevsky – and even as Dazai covers it up with thick bandages and broadcasted clumsiness, he knows that it’s impossible that it’s the one Dazai loves, because Dazai is many things, but a person capable of love isn’t any of them.

It continues like this: Suspicious disappearances of his umbrellas during downpours; Ordered coffee suddenly being overrun by sugar; Leather gloves drowning in too-sweet fabric softener; Ties and ribbons looking like they’ve been chewed on by a hungry mongrel

“Shinigami love apples," the professor said, and it never occurs to Harry to  wonder why his smile suddenly became wry and a little nostalgic because he never saw it.”

“Did you really think you can hide it, Chuuya?” For his part, Chuuya’s heart stops. Dazai’s smirk is unkind as he bears down on him, thighs on both sides of his hips as he’s pinned in place. “Did you think I’m stupid?”

“L never expected to reach thirty-five. He’s been a detective now for well over half his life and he’s never found what he’s been looking for.”

"The title ‘L’ should go to someone who can bear its weight, his name should go to someone he is confident can suffer being L by himself, just as he has.”

The morning after his first promotion he wakes with the dawn, his head empty of everything except a faint desire to scream. He watches the sun rise inside, his eyes dry and blank.

“Light Yagami is beautiful. That is what Harry thinks the first time he sees him sitting at the teacher’s table, hair falling into his eyes, a study of casual elegance, young and ancient and ageless in the same moment. He might be seventeen, he might be twenty-five, he might be forty for all Harry knows. He is beautiful the way a spell is beautiful, the silent wings and flash of avada kedavra green.”

Despite claiming that he wishes to commit double suicides, he still has so many things to hold on to. Ten fingers, four limbs—

"You know what I mean," Shizuo says exasperatedly. "We've never had an actual conversation about us. Relationships are about compromise and… you don't compromise. It feels like I'm always the one compromising. I moved in. I changed my schedule. I do what you want. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like we're dating. Sometimes it just feels like… I'm just in your life." 

“Does Chuuya think he’s my soulmate or something?” Dazai asks cruelly, using the term that’s been generally accepted by the general population to explain the unmistakable affection one feels for the owner of the name on their bodies. “Does Chuuya think he can make me belong to him?”

The ache inside him grows, gnawing at his guts, writhing experimentally. Just to remind him it is still there, just to make sure he never grows accustomed and immune to its presence.

“Falling in love means accepting everything about someone.”

"I've never met a brilliant marksman who assumed they could just as easily play the piano, or a gifted musician who assumed their talent would automatically translate to academics. Yet every academic genius I've ever met assumes they have a divine right never to struggle. That if picking up a new skill takes longer than half an hour, either the skill is worthless, or they are."

The next day, Chuuya requests for year-long assignment to the Continent, specifically noting that he wants a solo mission. The day after that, Dazai orders and shakily spills whiskey over the bandages on his chest, gamely fielding questions from the bar’s late-afternoon customers – a bespectacled man and a scruffy-looking man – about the name Nakahara Chuuya just above his heart.

He knows there has to be something more to existence, that there must be something else to strive for, but he gave up long ago, perhaps even before he reached high school -