Chapter Text
The note is, against all odds, warning him that the transformation won’t be a one-off, it'll occur again when the light fades; the note is very straightforward about it in a way curses rarely are. It could be a trick… maybe, maybe not… the hell does he know!
He paces the length of the penthouse, between the open kitchen and the living room windows, again and again.
Why has he been given such a level of detail? That creature must be laughing its arse off, if it has one. Does he need to know about the curse, because that’s what it is, for it to work? No, that’s wishful thinking, it’d work regardless.
No, it’s worse than that, how very surprising. It’s a declaration: ‘here’s how it works. I’m letting you know because there’s nothing you can do about it’.
It’s fundamentally sadistic, quite probably crafted with that specific clarity just to instil helplessness. If that’s the case, then good fucking job.
He stops at the window; in the reflection his lips are reduced to a thin line merged with the view of the sun being swallowed by the horizon. Chuuya has twenty minutes, give or take, to solve this. Duh, he won’t be solving shit without a voice or opposable thumbs, he’d be powerless.
Gently, he abandons the hat on the sofa cushions before circling it. His hands find the back of the sofa and grip it; the surface barely gives under his fingers, and the resistance itself is somewhat soothing.
“Think, ya useless piece of shit,” he mutters to himself as he taps his left foot against the polished linoleum. Should he just get on his bike and ride east? He cannot outpace the night, that’d work only as long as there are roads.
His chest is tight, his breathing is speeding up, pulse hammering and shattering his thoughts: not even facing enemies alone, ever elicited this shitty state. Should he call for backup? Kouyou? No, if he wanted for her to know he would have said it, in person, earlier. If Ane-san is not an option, the same applies to the rest of the organisation.
Every inhale whistles through his nose; no intake is enough to placate his heartbeat.
What if he…
Chuuya’s thoughts are tripping over each other as he frantically chases a non-existent solution. The people he’d trust with this are few in number, and one is the woman he just lied to, and the rest are dead.
Who might be able to fix this without making it worse?
Someone who conceives plans with the same ease as taking a breath, someone who could deal with the impossible without asking too many questions, someone…
Dazai?
Since when has a suicide-obsessed maniac, who would humiliate him if he knew, become the best option? How could the worst bastard in Yokohama help?! Chuuya would be giving him ammunition for a lifetime: a link between himself and the cat, a cat who purred and kneaded. Chuuya would never, ever live it down.
Why is he even considering this? Nothing good would ever come from it, so why the fuck?! Yet the temptation is there, unjustified and frustrating, propelled by feeble memories: a towel drying his fur, the pressure of a hand between his ears, canned crab on a plate, a heartbeat under his whole body, a gemstone swaying. Every sensation is painted with the same hues: warmth and safety.
Chuuya’s hands race upwards, resting on his forearms and gripping: his nails are human, still, but they dig reddening crescents into his freckled skin. The pain is sobering, at least; it doesn’t solve shit, but it makes the world sharper.
Clearly, cats are stupid: nothing sensible would associate Dazai with feeling safe.
It doesn’t matter if he carries you in one hand or dries you off. The food meant nothing, and neither did being taken care of for a single night.
Yet, there’s a single bullshit thought that refuses to die: Dazai didn’t have to do any of that. Last night there were no witnesses or rewards; such premises imply a very uncomfortable truth: if not observed, and maybe only then, the bastard is capable of kindness.
This is new.
It doesn’t mean shit, though; Dazai is still the man he knows, and a fragment of human decency doesn’t mean contacting the bastard is a real option.
Sure, there has been a four-year gap between the man Chuuya knew and the one he met last night. Nothing really changed, forget it; Dazai of all people would never change.
Chuuya sinks onto the floor, nodding to himself, almost trying to convince himself that this is the most sensible thing to do, that he’s not hiding. Regardless, he ends up sheltered behind the couch, with his forehead pressed against it.
Nobody can help him, end of story. He should just go to bed and sleep it off. He could carry on with his life even if he spends his nights being a cat, after all.
He could live with it! Chuuya grits his teeth, his mouth open wide in a bastardized version of a smile; what’s with all the fucking despair!? Why are there tears prickling the corners of his eyes? He survived worse, and when there’s no solution in sight one has to let this type of emotion fizzle out: sorrow is useless when there’s no action to be taken.
Yeah, that is true… but that place was safe, that person was safe, he can help, he will help.
On impulse, he fishes his phone out of his pocket. He’s not doing anything at all, of course, but the shadows around him are growing longer, more distorted with every passing minute. He should be acting, he should be thinking… his thumb hovers aimlessly for a brief moment before opening a specific contact.
The chat itself is frozen in time, stuck on a text Chuuya himself sent four years ago. It’s ‘fuck you’, simple enough not to require additional explanations. This text bubble and a myriad of others, right above it, stare up at him: explicitly they convey very little, and the truth resides in the empty spaces, everything unsaid. Dazai always understood.
Did he though?
Even that last text, it was about the car, fucking obviously it was about the car. It had been sent under the delusion that it was a charade, just another taunt of many, so there would have been more time to throw more insults at the bastard, in the hope that he’d discern the pattern nestled between the swearwords.
Looking at them now, those two words withstanding the passage of time, there’s very little anyone could extrapolate except rejection.
Nah, Dazai is smarter than that! And even if, it’s not like it would have affected him to begin with!
Most certainly not enough to rant about lost things to a cat… four years later. Oh, so… being wrong about one thing, or a couple, doesn’t imply Chuuya should rely on the bastard! He gently places the phone on the linoleum, glaring at it from above; it felt a bit too heavy, a splinter of sensation that flashed within his hands before fading.
Of course the conversation stalled: Chuuya blocked him the moment the events became clear enough to label Dazai as a traitor.
It was the right thing to do, a condition for his own survival within the organisation he’s loyal to.
A couple of months ago Chuuya had unblocked him, right before facing an unkillable thing from the bottom of the ocean; yeah, he’s tactical like that. The thing could have gone sideways in the blink of an eye, the Mafia had just lost so many men, and with no way to contact him directly, it would have been idiotic. He’d been right, and he’s also been lying; yes, those things can coexist.
He stretches out his arms without thinking … and all the joints are wrong: locked and seized, unresponsive and unable to fluidly perform the motion. It’s happening, no matter how hard he’s been trying to ignore it.
Before his eyes his fingers shorten and stiffen whilst the nails curl and sharpen. A breath later, a crunching sound fills the space; it’s coming from inside his own body: vertebrae being compressed and rearranged. He gags at the pressure, yet it’s not really as painful as he expected it to be.
Shit; time’s up.
The phone, where’s the fucking phone? Oh, there.
The world dilates; there’s not time to appreciate how bizarre that is, because he is shrinking. At least his index finger still works, if he jabs at the screen. Okay, shit. His eyelashes flutter as he takes a deep breath to gather all the focus he can muster.
The chat is still open, ‘Blue Mackerel’ occupies the top of the screen. There’s no time to weigh pros and cons: there’s nobody else to contact, and even if there were, Chuuya has no time to select a different contact.
Behind him, breaking free from his black trousers by slithering above the waistband, a fluffy orange tail unfurls and curls.
Fuck it.
Pressing down with everything he has, each letter still takes three or four attempts because the paw-pad slides on the glass and the autocorrect is a bitch.
He hits four keys at once, ending up with a jumble of letters. Before trying again he deletes them all; then, one key, finally, but the wrong one. Shit, shit… no, frustration is a waste of time.
Suddenly, the phone expands to tablet size under his touch… which is surprisingly useful, actually: type, he can still type.
The keyboard shines bright and sharp, whilst the world grows duller: every drop of red bleeds away, leaving blue and yellow in its wake.
‘my plae’
‘hrurry’
‘plwas e’
Sent. All of it. The first two texts don’t say enough: all of his hope rests on the last one. It’s awfully written, but it’s a plea, coming from Chuuya… that should be enough to alert someone who, unfortunately, knows him well.
He never makes contact with the cool floor as he curls into a little ball right atop his own clothes. Pain would be easier to understand than this: nothing aches, but exhaustion is enough for him to succumb. Snout pressed against his front paws, his last coherent thought is nothing but regret: he should have opened the canned crab when he had the chance to do so.
The phone vibrates against the low table set in front of the couch; it’s a single buzz that brushes the edges of his perception. Dazai doesn’t move; one notification means nothing and implies no urgency: he’s lying on the couch, knees folded over the arm with his bare feet dangling.
There’s a book lying next to his hip, but it’s not even open: there was an attempt at reading, but it didn’t go past the step of selecting the book. At least when the time is ripe, when his mind becomes cooperative, he won’t have to stand up to pick something to read.
This has been going on for an hour or so, which he has spent existing in the dim light, one arm draped over his chest.
The phone lights up again. A second vibration, a brief pause, a third one. Okay, definitely more significant, but oh-so-annoying. His hand reaches for the phone, and the screen glows bright enough to force him to squint.
Three messages, one sender: ‘Slug’.
His lips part but nothing comes out; the line between his brows deepens. What? Why? It’s been months since they even saw each other, which is definitely not enough for him to recover from the inevitable and nauseating abhorrence of it.
Many possibilities juggle through his mind in the span of a breath: it may be a prank, or the texts might simply be meant for someone else. The content might be gibberish, just an accidental text or something, even if that would mean Chuuya had this chat open to begin with.
Before making assumptions and painting vivid scenarios he should take in the texts themselves, shouldn’t he?
The left corner of his mouth twitches upwards, just a nudge, before dropping. It’s neither a smirk nor its failure, but a reflex: the mere muscle memory of responding with mockery. It dies before it forms. Okay, that’s a lot of information squeezed in only four words. There’s a location, an undercurrent of panic… and the last one is… indecipherable.
Option one: he’s drunk. It’s a simple explanation, really, Chuuya has a wine collection, and even if his alcohol consumption has always been moderate he’s also a lightweight. But then, why the urgency?
So, he needs a better scenario: something time-sensitive happened, and Chuuya is incapacitated. Not bad, second try might be a good one, but still he’s not taking into account the most glaring uncertainty: why him? Why not Kouyou? She’s certainly far higher in any ranking of ‘people Chuuya trusts’. No, wait, even some random off the street would be higher-ranking than Dazai himself, so that’s a glaring inconsistency he should take into account before doing anything else.
Indeed, it takes just a bit of patience! Dazai is well-versed in the ways Chuuya operates, he just needs to give himself a minute to think about it. Instead he stands, and the motion is sudden enough that his vision swims for half a second. His coat is off the hook, his keys are in his hand, whilst he types with the other.
Knowing exactly what he’s doing is beyond him, at this instant, but it can be blamed on the simple fact that in almost three years of occasionally working side by side he’s never, ever, heard Chuuya say ‘please’.
For now he can, at least, test the waters: any follow-up reply could untangle the unexplained. The best way to obtain an answer, especially from someone as volatile as the slug, is also one of Dazai’s few pleasures in this world: annoying him.
‘My, my, a new low! Take a deep breath, hatrack. Now try again and use your big-boy words this time.’
He’s walking fast, and he doesn’t really need to look at the screen to type or send. If he gets an additional answer, good, that’s information. Even if he doesn’t… that’d be useful too, extremely so; this is a perfect bait, and if Chuuya doesn’t take it… then he simply cannot answer. If the latter happens to prevail, then Dazai’s current long stride is not as pathetic as it seems.
The corridor stretches ahead, lit by those annoying fluorescent tubes that have been giving him headaches for years. He makes it a dozen steps before a door opens on his left.
It’s just a gap: a soft creak followed by a sliver of warm light.
“Ah.”
Ranpo doesn’t step out, it’d be too much work. He just stands there, barefoot, heels on the hems of his pyjama bottoms and a chocolate bar in hand.
“Dazai, whatever it is you’re doing… do it faster, and think less,” he drones before taking a bite. Of course, he chews slowly before swallowing: Ranpo has all the time in the world, after all! “Thinkin’ is not your best skill, that’s a fact.”
“Ranpo-san, I-”
“And the konbini on the corner closes in twenty minutes. There’s tuna on sale this week.” The door swings shut, effectively ending the conversation.
What does tuna have to do with this? Does Ranpo want some? He usually asks Kunikida this type of thing…
Queries dance behind Dazai’s eyes, a frantic multitude with no answer in sight. If there's any advice, within that tangle of apparently disjointed sentences, then it’s a simple one: he should be rushing.
The compound door swings shut behind him, and he rushes down the stairs as the cold scratches his exposed skin. It’s tolerable: the timid cold of an autumn that has yet to properly sprout. Yesterday’s rain still lingers in the air, and the smell of wet asphalt fills his nostrils.
Dazai walks, but in the span of a minute he catches himself jogging and he’s forcing his legs to slow down. Running draws attention, and that’s the last thing he needs given that he’s about to board public transport with a modified card that expired for two years.
The ticket gates glow under harsh and cold lights; the battered plastic card slides through the reader and, for a moment, the light flashes red… and then a stuttering green followed by a cheerful beep. The gate parts before him, no alarms, it still works. Dazai slips through without breaking stride.
Platform three. The next train arrives in four minutes, and he spends three of those standing completely still whilst his mind whizzes.
Where is he going? Whilst he has no address, ‘my place’ could only refer to the overpriced penthouse Chuuya purchased five years ago. If he had moved, it’s probable he’d have sent an address, no? What if it’s just someone who acquired a mafioso’s phone and is now playing tricks with that line of communication?
The carriage is half-empty when he steps inside. From a seat near the window he has a perfect view: businessmen with dead eyes, a student asleep on his bag, a woman scrolling her phone, a couple seated near the exit. Normal people doing normal things at twenty-five minutes past eight on an ordinary evening. Human beings just do what they do: revelling in their imperfect lives, complaining about them, but still, they keep on living. If their existence were intolerable, then they wouldn’t be on the train, but rather… it doesn’t matter right now.
The messages are messy, and each word is still bright in his mind. There is no feeling in his gut, no tingle suggesting that something bad is about to happen. That’s objectively worse, uncertainty is always worse.
He blinks and forces his eyes to follow each branch on the route map for a bit; he zeroes in on the correct one without much thought. So, Minatomirai has twelve stops, and that one incredibly tacky building is close to the eighth one.
Gingerly, the train thrums beneath him. If Chuuya hasn’t moved and this is not a prank, then the address he remembers is still correct. He probably still remembers the keycode, and if he doesn’t there’s a hairpin in his pocket.
Third. Fourth. The woman gets off. Fifth.
Stations pass in a soothing rhythm: announcement, doors, pause, doors. Hrurry. The city blurs past, smears of neon on a backdrop of murk.
Sixth. Nobody moves.
A pachinko parlour, a closed pharmacy… he avoids his own reflection in the glass. His reflection has always had an uncanny quality to it, a certain dullness in his eyes that he hopes nobody else can see. Dazai knows it’s there, but ignoring it makes him a bit less aware.
Seventh.
If he’s late he’s wasting time; wasting time could have consequences. Ranpo said that he should be doing it faster, so this is time-sensitive, isn’t it?
Eight stops, his stop.
He’s on his feet before the doors open.
At least he knows where he’s going; his stride eats up the pavement, leaving the station behind. Wet leaves stick to the soles of his shoes as he rounds the corner, and there it is: the high-rise looms ahead, a monument to both obscene wealth and tacky taste.
A security guard’s chair sits empty, the monitors left unwatched… how delightful. The lift doors open to a box of mirrors on a marble floor, and he steps in even if it demands a keycard he doesn’t have. If it hasn’t been changed, then there must be… a hidden service keypad, tucked in a corner. He’d learnt the master-code for this building years ago; he types it in out of pure muscle memory. He keeps his eyes on the marble floors in order to avoid his own reflection, and, just because, he scrapes a leaf from his shoe right onto the sheen: a smear of mud and orange.
Perhaps Chuuya will simply open the door, furious and alive; the thought perishes before it forms.
2919. He types the code mindlessly, and the door yields without a fight. It hasn't changed, why hasn’t he changed it? Maybe Chuuya simply couldn’t be bothered, because traitors don’t come back. A bit of a security risk, but a minimal one.
No, it doesn’t cross his mind that the opposite is equally plausible: not changing the code equates to leaving the door open; it could speak of disdain, or, equally, it could be a whisper of hope.
Inside, the penthouse is a showroom of spite, overflowing with leather and glass, well-polished luxury designed for a single pair of eyes. As usual, it’s way too clean: nobody so high up in the mafia hierarchy worries much about chores, but everyone has their own preferences for how many times a week a space has to be polished and sanitised. The frequency is an excessive one, at least to Dazai’s eyes, but nobody should ever pay a thought to the cleaning standards of a man whose bathroom ceiling is adorned with mould.
Dazai’s entry has been silent, and the light is off: the immense space is bathed in the neon bleed from the city below… but there’s nothing here.
He slips through the dark entryway, fingers trailing the wall. One hand reaches for the light switch, and the penthouse reveals itself, glimmering in a diffused golden light filtered by Murano glass.
In the kitchen, a couple of tins sit on the counter, with nothing else worth noticing. Where’s their owner?
No blood, no signs of forced entry, no struggle, and no signs of the Port Mafia executive who texted him gibberish.
A hideous hat… the hideous hat! It’s resting on the couch cushions, positioned with care, almost as if someone set it down before… what? Disappearing, apparently.
Yes, definitely disappearing against his will; a suicidal man doesn’t plead, usually. Not everyone properly commits to it, and regret can always sprout right at the last instant, not that Dazai himself ever experienced such foolish hope, but if that were to be the case with the mafioso… oh,what an ironic twist of fate would it be!
Sarcastic catastrophising is never of help, but it doesn’t hurt too much either, in virtue of making the absurd a smidge less daunting.
Mindlessly he circles the couch, giving his back to the living room and about to head towards the bedroom; then he sees it. A speck of copper behind the sofa, curled tight on a pile of familiar clothes.
It’s a cat. An orange cat, asleep behind Chuuya’s couch.
It’s just an orange cat, come on. Weird but not extraordinary, perhaps the dog just got a pet.
Yet he crouches; the cat’s face is buried in its own tail, ears relaxed. It’s just so tiny. The pieces don’t connect, they refuse to… or maybe Dazai isn’t ready to join them just yet.
Its fur is clean and familiar; he simply stares, because touching feels like a crime and his brain isn’t cooperating much.
That’s it.
The cat from last night.
Not the same cat, here’s not enough proof to decree it with a single glance alone, but emotions don’t really wait for facts.
“Of all the things to steal,” he murmurs. “Of all the ways you could’ve got your revenge… my cat?!”
My cat. The voice is infuriating and familiar, and it’s enough to dissolve Chuuya’s sleep. His eyes snap open to an oversized world, and Dazai is right there: the detective is crouched, frozen mid-reach. Revenge? Stealing?! Chuuya’s body reacts to the words: he lurches backwards and his spine hits the sofa’s wooden frame with a thunk.
I didn’t steal your fucking cat, you idiot, I AM your cat! This unvoiced thought flattens his ears and puffs his tail up to twice its size. Chuuya carefully avoids processing that he just implied that he is owned. No, he’s not touching that, not in this feline form, not ever, thank you very much.
Instead, he focuses on the outrage elicited by that idiotic accusation. A yowl escapes him, undignified and irate, but it’s short-lived: Dazai’s eyes are helplessly open and devoid of amusement.
“Easy…?”
Meant to be soothing, but ultimately the tone is thin and uncertain.
But he came.
As idiotic as Dazai might be, he showed up. Chuuya assumed that the bastard may have laughed it off, ignoring the texts, and that the gibberish he sent wouldn’t be enough. Instead, he’s here.
“Have we met before?” The query leaves Dazai’s mouth with no sharpness, in a fragile and trembling cadence; it’s scarily close to a hopeful tone.
It’s a smart question, that much Chuuya can admit, but how can he answer? His fur flattens as the panic ebbs away.
An answer comes, even if it’s not Chuuya’s choice: his body acts, before he can stop, doing the only thing it’s learnt to do when Dazai is close, the world is too big, and he himself is too small.
He purrs.
Logically it means nothing: cats purr when they’re content, and maybe that’s all Dazai’s listening to; a sociable cat who, after being startled, is now pleased to see a human around. He shouldn’t read into it.
There is no way it implies agreement.
As the purr fades Chuuya realises that the detective hasn’t understood shit. Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s not so hard! The note. If he drags that creepy-arse note over to the bastard, maybe his supposed genius might actually be worth a damn.
Chuuya stands on unsteady legs, shakes himself and he pads past Dazai’s crouched form, close enough to brush his fluffy tail against his knee before heading for the kitchen. The distance is warped, every piece of furniture towers over him… well, no shit, currently Chuuya is sized like a shoe!
Behind him, nothing, just the fridge humming.
Chuuya pauses at the boundary between the living room and the kitchen, he turns his head and stares. Dazai blinks back, still rooted in place.
Oh, you dense motherfucker.
Fuck it; he meows. It comes out sharp and insistent.
“What?”
He meows again, louder, and takes a few steps in the kitchen’s direction before looking back.
“Okay,” Dazai says, rising hesitantly and taking a long step in the correct direction. “I’m coming, alright.” There’s warmth in his voice, and a very specific one at that, the kind that implies a certain weakness.
With a satisfied chirp Chuuya resumes his walk, with tiny deliberate strides; he still has some dignity left even if his tail swishes at each step, betraying agitation he’d rather not externalise.
The black kitchen tiles are cold under his paws as he paces in a tight circle between Dazai and the counter, urging the man close because there is no way in hell he’s jumping on the counter. He won’t make it.
It’s far too tall…
Chuuya leaps.
The jump feels right in his head, but his claws scrape uselessly against the stone, finding nothing to hold on to… and he slides down, landing on the floor with an undignified heap. So, this didn’t happen. He springs to his feet just to sit down, trying to look imperious and composed with his tail neatly wrapped around his paws. Not a fucking word or I’ll bite you, arsehole.
Dazai says nothing, but he makes a sound: a strangled laugh cut short by incredulity as he approaches the counter; his eyes drift for a moment, to the cans, then the cat right underneath him… and then, finally, the note.
“What is this?” he wonders aloud as he reaches for it; his fingers close around it and a chill runs through them. This is definitely not paper, no, nope. At that, he opts for pinching a corner between two fingers, holding it up to the light to squint at the unsettling red letters.
‘Heed the hours, mark them well…’
Dazai’s lips silently shape each line. So, someone killed something and wrote a curse on its hide, alright. It activates at night, clearly… and ‘small things’?
An orange cat found in the rain, that vanished from a locked room at dawn, qualifies for that.
Man again, beneath the sun.
The cat was gone in the morning.
His hand lowers and the note escapes his fingers and drifts down onto the worktop. Beneath it the cat is still there, sitting at his feet and staring up with such an expectant expression: big pleading eyes, the look cats always use to ask for food.
Chuuya didn’t steal anything.
And Chuuya is right there.
A laugh punches out of him, ugly and sudden, whilst his left hand grips the edge of the kitchen island. “Oh, slug!” It comes out like a shaky wheeze that wraps the laugh up.
“You got yourself cursed, of all things! And what kind of curse transforms a dog into a cat?” The words are in rapid succession, born from the lingering hilarity; Dazai receives a well-deserved hiss in response.
“So, this was the plan? Hope I'll figure it out?” It’s a light and teasing question, but the smile slips off his face a second later. Tuna on sale. Ranpo’s words. That stings: he hasn’t really worked it out on his own, he was herded like sheep until he could see the answer.
Whatever, it doesn’t really matter.
“You purred. On me,” he contests, yes, against reality itself more than to his fluffy interlocutor. The worst part of all of this has nothing to do with the curse: the cat wasn’t a stray that trusted him out of desperation; it was, and is, someone who knows him well and trusted him despite it all. Mockery, rivalry, betrayal, subjective disdain, and everything Dazai didn’t do himself, but had just allowed to happen… none of that has been enough to smother whatever faith is making the mafioso act like this.
The detective drops to the floor, crossing his legs. The cat’s… no, Chuuya’s fur bristles and then settles before he takes a hesitant step, his paws silent on the floor; his whiskers brush against the fabric of Dazai’s trousers. Then he scrambles back a few inches, ears flatten once again and his tail swings erratically behind him.
“I’ll fix this,” he murmurs, as his fingers stroke the soft fur between Chuuya’s ears. “Be mindful though: I’m never letting you forget this. Ever.”
Dickhead. What a shitty life sentence this is; but this is also the Dazai he knows. The promise of eternal mockery is a fragment of normalcy, soothing in its own way. Meanwhile, Dazai’s nails are scratching under his chin. It’s an irresistible burst of bliss and Chuuya leans into it: an implicit signature on a deal with the devil he knows.
On the other hand, next to the note, the two tins still linger.
They’re right there.
Chuuya tries to ignore the thought and avoid looking at them. He fails.
The problem is that he remembers the taste, the desperate appreciation he savoured last night, and that’s also why he bought them in the first place, when he was barefoot and striding across Yokohama in borrowed clothes. It’s not urgent, they have bigger problems, don’t they?
But the cans are there and he really wants some, but he cannot access them! He sits closer to the base of the cabinet, staring up; he lets out a meow, carefully nonchalant.
Dazai glances down with an arched brow. “Hm?”
Another meow, small, reluctant even; he paws at the cabinet once. Sharp yet tiny claws click against the wood; hell, even the sound itself comes out as petulant at best.
The cans, motherfucker. THE CANS!
Dazai’s face shifts, his eyes narrow and then widen; when he speaks there’s a laugh hiding in his voice: “Seriously?”
Regardless, the detective reaches for one of the cans. The tab pulls, the lid peels back; the scent floods the kitchen in a salty, rich caress and Chuuya’s whole body vibrates.
The contents are split in two, between two identical shallow dishes. Of course Dazai’s helping himself to a portion, what would stop him? Propriety? The fact that they have… other fish to fry? Ah! If the circumstances differed, Chuuya would comment, but at the moment he lacks the ability to speak and he’s aware of how hypocritical that would be.
“Alright, let’s go,” he announces, holding both plates and walking towards the living room, expecting to be followed. “Don’t say I never did anything for you!”
A breath, that’s all, Chuuya stays put… is he really going to follow? Like a loyal little dog? It’s a type of humiliation, clearly, mockery devised in the blink of an eye… but, the crab is going to the living room, not only the bastard. Yes, he’s loyal to the meal, not to the man, fuck it! Chuuya lurches; the plate is there, on the floor, politely waiting for him near the couch.
A couple of muddy penny loafers have been discarded nearby, and the bastard is already sitting on the couch and looking unfairly at ease as he takes small bites off his own plate with a pair of chopsticks.
The crab is cold and just perfect, and Chuuya leaps at it: every bite sends a shiver of satisfaction down his spine. The purring is both unavoidable and shameless, mingling with the sound of each swallow in a hushed rhythm.
Four years apart, and this is their first shared meal… a can of crab. Half for the cat, half for the detective, with no condiments and no conversation.
There is also no pretence in sight, no deflection, both the meal and the goal are shared, for once. So, even if it is a pathetic one, it’s not such a bad reunion.
Time slips by, punctuated in bites, until both dishes are bare. The silence is broken by the click of a lighter: Dazai cups the flame even if they’re inside, out of habit; as such the cigarette dangling from his lips ignites with a spark.
When the acrid smell of smoke cuts through the lingering scent of crab, the cat's tiny pink nose wrinkles. He hadn’t noticed the detective reaching for the crumpled pack now resting on the sofa cushion. Inside?! The bastard is smoking inside!
Oblivious to this, Dazai leans back and exhales a thin stream of grey that drifts towards the ceiling. It’s not like Chuuya doesn’t understand the appeal, he smokes too, it’s a bad habit, but it’s also the scent of the mafia.
Ash flicks into the dish. Do it in your own hand if you must! Not in my fucking dish. Each flick of the detective’s wrist sends flakes tumbling into the ceramic, and Chuuya glares from below, simmering.
“A spoken truth,” Dazai mutters, his eyes on the ceiling; he exhales a thicker plume before he speaks again. “Or a love that’s true.”
“So, spoken. That requires intent, and it can’t be unimportant, because you must have had plenty of chances to give true answers,” he’s not speaking for the sake of getting a reply, because as they stand at the moment, Dazai will get none, but it’s a way like any other to think. “The truth must be something you don’t want to say, given the obvious clause that it must be you and not someone –”
Another flick. More ash tainting the plate. I’m going to kill him.
What should have been a death threat leaves him as a low growl that interrupts Dazai’s sentence.
“What?”
The bastard shoots a look at the dish, and then a quick one to the cat; the right corner of his mouth twitches. “Oh, sorry,” he starts, but his smirk widens. "Couldn't find anything different… and you have a dishwasher, so no, I’m not sorry.”
The audacity of this fucker. Chuuya’s ears flatten as he gathers his hind legs: the jump is a leap of spite, and he lands on the cushion next to Dazai. His fur is bristling and his tail is whipping back and forth. He swats at the air with a clawed paw, which supposedly is a threat of scratching Dazai’s eyes out. It’s very intimidating, if you ask him.
Instead, Dazai chuckles and his shoulders start shaking with silent laughter as he catches the paw mid-air with his free hand. His thumb tenderly brushes the soft pink pads, and Chuuya’s tantrum dissolves into tingles at the base of his own tail. Fuck you, not fair, playing… dirty…
“So, we were saying,” the detective resumes; his hand lands on the cushion. “The other one is a love that’s true, ‘a love’... that seems to imply that any love would do, even if curses are known for fetishizing the romantic kind. But what does count?” Dazai presses the cigarette into the empty dish. The cat watches the smoke curl upwards, but he doesn’t react: the fight is over and the couch is soft.
“Love is just… a lot of behaviours, consistent with a sentiment, made predictable by…” Not the best definition of the term that one can find, but it’s insight into how Dazai’s brain operates: when he gets lost, when the destination is clear but the path isn’t, what else is left to do if not ponder the key terms? Maybe, right there, a clue resides.
Chuuya doesn’t mean to leap, but he does so anyway and he ends up closing the distance and settling on the man’s lap; he tucks his head against the edge of the black waistcoat, looking up as if a mere look would be enough to communicate something even words would be insufficient for: an inane sense of trust, a spark of hope, a tiny self-assured plea… the man is undeniably a piece of shit, but if he focuses on this, then he’ll be able to make everything work, doesn’t matter how strong or how brilliant the enemy is.The problem with working with Dazai, as he and a certain four-eyed detective know, is having to battle with the man’s motivation to do shit; on the other hand, arguing over the odds of success is pointless. The equation, if one were to pry into a certain handwritten notebook, is something comparable to the following: “Convince the waste of bandages to stop lazying around = everything works out.”
For a moment nothing comes, just Dazai’s breath stuttering, then a big palm lands on the cat’s back, delivering delicate strokes.
“Yeah, we’ll figure it out.”
Chuuya’s paw stretches out and seeks the point on Dazai’s waist where the shirt, the waistcoat, the trousers, and the coat offer the perfect thickness for his claws; he presses down, claws catching through multiple weaves. The texture is satisfying, and he gives just a couple of pushes and pulls which suffice as the only type of answer he can convey, and it's an affirmative one for sure.
Outside the window, the city shifts and where the harbour meets the sea, the blurry lights of a ferry slowly slide across.
A love that’s true; Dazai circles back to it. Love is consistent with a sentiment, but here it’s a prerequisite: in order to be true, it has to be already present, which also implies that simply “feeling” the sentiment isn’t enough. So, the second option doesn’t differ much from the first; it still demands a revelation of sorts… it’s circular.
It’s a single and cruel option masquerading as two.
Mindlessly, his fingers move in an unconscious pattern, racing down the cat’s spine, reaching the base of his tail and then back up, again and again. Somehow the act is bolstering his reasoning, and Chuuya hasn’t mauled him yet, so he clearly doesn’t mind.
“Who’s the judge, though? ‘Truth’ and ‘true’, sure, but against what? Some universal standard? Where’s the cut off?” A humourless snort escapes him, and he shoots a glance at his interlocutor. “Love is just people acting like idiots and then justifying it after the fact. And what if you’re not reciprocated?” His voice is thinner now, worn out by how long the detective has been wandering the perimeter of each and every concept.
Perhaps that’s the reason behind the transformation: for how callous the terms are, turning a rageful mafioso into an objectively adorable cat doesn’t ensure reciprocation, yet it definitely aids it a bit.
With such a premise, the other party has to be a cat-person. Which makes one wonder if there’s a specific target besides the mafioso, which, in turn, brings forth the matter of how such a piece of information has been acquired.
This is yet another dead end of many, no, he has to conceive a different solution, but what?
Beneath his hand, Chuuya is oh-so-soft as he leans into the contact.
Curse. Fucking. Important. Keep up. Chuuya should be focusing. The bastard is talking, he’s mulling things over, this is…
The curse, they have to break the curse, he cannot spend the rest of his life turning into this.
The fucking curse…
But his eyelids are made heavy by the voice above him: it has a well-known rhythm, and the words degrade into mere sounds, morphing into a lullaby. His paws twitch once before going slack against the fabric, and then he’s gone.
Just a boneless, tiny ball of fur.
The weight on Dazai’s lap deepens, though his senses fail to report it.
“And what if I asked you questions? And you answered? A meow for yes, silence for no? Could we pry the truth out of you? Would it count as spoken?”
Shush! The cat is dead to the world: snout tucked from sight, front limbs outstretched whilst the rest of his body curls tight.
“Maybe it’d count, but you’re asleep, aren’t you.”
No answer, obviously: Chuuya’s out, a useless loaf of copper fur. His tiny exhales are relaxed and slow, small puffs against Dazai’s black waistcoat. The sight affects in a way that doesn’t even generate a thought, it lingers right below where a thought would surface: a soft pang, somewhere amidst his ribcage, the uncomfortable caprice of tenderness.
With a uselessly performative sigh for a man with no awake witnesses, Dazai shrugs off his coat, one sleeve at a time just to avoid jostling the tiny passenger. The gabardine slithers down his arms and pools on the sofa. He stands fluidly, with one hand sliding under the small body on his lap with ease, given that the weight is insignificant. Chuuya’s body moulds itself to his hand; his head lolls and his muzzle parts just enough for the tip of a pink tongue to peek through. Briefly, his back legs dangle before instinct bends them inwards: he’s a loose ring of fur.
Eh, it’s more like an orange botamochi, with whiskers. A very dangerous one, for sure, but a mochi nonetheless.
The bedroom door is ajar, and Dazai nudges it wider with his hip to step inside. He bends at the edge of the bed with a relatively simple plan: deposit the cargo here, tuck him in and go back to thinking. For one very optimistic second the plan is working.
A snag.
One paw is still hooked into the fabric of his waistcoat, with tiny needle-like claws caught between the threads. Dazai tugs experimentally, and, of course, the grip tightens in a sleepy reflex of toes, and the points bury themselves even deeper.
He tries again; careful and spidery fingers try to dislodge each toe, one by one, but every adjustment draws small sounds of protest from the sleeping ball of fur. As if separation is unacceptable.
“Oi,” he tries, his voice barely a whisper, but it’s a fruitless attempt. He tugs for the last time, slightly more forcefully, and all he gets in return is a loud mewl one could easily interpret as a ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’
There’s plenty of options available: he could wake Chuuya up with a flick, or maybe he could unbutton the waistcoat… Instead, he quickly surrenders to the feline’s will; don’t judge him, he’s been running in circles around the lexicon of the curse, without any feedback, for who knows how long.
He lies down.
The mattress is firm against his side, and Chuuya adjusts comfortably against his stomach. Mr. Cat has clearly made its choice, so one might as well just adapt: the bolo tie is the first thing to go, since it digs uncomfortably into his clavicle in this position; he unfastens it with a flick and sets it on the nearby pillow. He pops open two buttons at the collar, freeing his throat.
Answers don’t find themselves, but the note can wait. There’s little Dazai can do on his own, without being able to communicate with the mafioso who wears the curse in the first place. Yes, knowing when to take a break is a virtue, or so someone would say. Definitely not Kunikida.
The dark does something insidious to people: it provides plausible deniability. It’s not a real thing, you’re still responsible for whatever you say in the depths of the night, but this delusion is an ordinary malfunction of the human species. For how detached this bandaged man might feel from the concept of humanity as a whole, he’s not immune.
Here, with the city glow banished by the thick curtains, everything is muted; the only thing brushing at the edge of his senses is a faint rumble: Chuuya’s purring again. His hand finds its way back to the velvety fur, right between those bat-like ears.
The ears are a bit too big, aren’t they? And so is the head. Even in this form, Chuuya’s proportions are a bit odd; he’s akin to a juvenile, at that awkward stage when the rest of the body has yet to catch up with an oversized head.
Regardless, it’s just a cat.
And a sleeping one at that.
This notion, albeit incorrect, is enough to open the gates.
“You were,” Dazai starts, without knowing where his sentence is going but his voice is pitched low. “You were nice to have around, as a cat.”
Chuuya doesn’t stir; he cannot be a witness to this atrocious sincerity, there is no consciousness present between those ears. Perfect.
“I didn’t even know I could want to take care of something, and then a mangy orange idiot found me.” By technicality the opposite would be true, but it’s a matter of what it felt like to Dazai himself. “I checked the cabinets, in the morning, like an idiot, like you were hiding behind a jug of laundry detergent, for whatever reason.”
A shaky exhale dares to interrupt his monologue; his throat feels dry, a notion trying to escape him, an easy thing for other people to say, but not for him. He would do it theatrically, if there were witnesses.
But Chuuya is out.
“I was upset, okay?! About a cat, of all things. You were on my chest when I fell asleep, and then when I woke up you were gone, and I…” He’s accusing a cat of abandonment; except it’s not a cat, it’s the smaller half of Double Black, who must have been horrified and disoriented by whatever was happening to his own body. He couldn’t waste time playing house pet for him, Dazai knows it. The logic is sound, yet the loss felt real, and it still does to some degree.
It’s stupid and selfish, but perhaps Dazai is both of those things.
“I know it sounds insane,” he corrects himself under his breath. His jaw tightens a fraction, but the bed is warm, the cat is still purring in his sleep, so the temporary strain dissipates in an exhale. Against the back of his neck, the pillowcase is cool, which further slackens his muscles.
“Then… oh, I’ve been texted by a cat.. this is why–” The fingers of his free hand, resting on the cotton above his chest, twitch.
His words are rushing towards a destination he’s not ready for, but he doesn’t find it in himself to stop talking.
“It’s normal for a soaking wet cat to show some gratitude to the cretin who dried him off. It's polite feline behaviour. Instead it was you…”
A motion brushes against his stomach, and Dazai’s sentence fades. Chuuya is unconsciously shifting, a repositioning made by tiny stretches: his head nudges upwards and upwards, past the edge of the waistcoat, burrowing through the open collar.
Oh no.
A tiny nose presses into Dazai’s bare skin, it’s cool and slightly damp, settled against the notch of his clavicle.
“You trust like a fool, you did it when we were teens. Then again, last night… and you did it when you texted me. You should want nothing to do with me. What the hell is wrong with you, Chuuya?” His voice is barely audible, a surprisingly timid whisper for such cruelty.
“Despite everything we’ve done to each other, and everything we might still do… it’s not bad, isn’t it?”
His hands cage the back of the cat’s skull, cradling it with a thumb on either side; maybe he can protect someone he never thought needed it, for once, if only for this fleeting moment.
“I’m just glad it…” A yawn interrupts him, his jaw cracking. It’s been a day for him too, even if nothing consequential really happened.
“...glad it was…”another attempt, but this time the words blend into a sigh. His blinks grow longer, stretching until one of them lingers long enough to lock.
“...you.”
His lips remain involuntarily parted, so this last sentence is left perfectly complete in its paucity.
It seems Dazai will sleep well for the second night in a row.