Chapter Text
Shards of colored light dance across the open room, reaching over polished floors and the toes of recently shined shoes. The sun's movement has the colors flinching away from each heel and practiced step, a hopscotch of survival that none of the party attendants pay much attention to throughout the evening’s hours.
The Port Mafia boss haunts the halls with movements that would be more fitting of the spirit he’s so often likened to.
Black Wraith of the Port Mafia
Demon Prodigy
Dazai Osamu
As he enters the celebrations— a party he’s thrown in this grand building, the ballroom warmed by the bodies mingling within— he smiles as if he could ever truly trick anyone into believing he’s happy. Members of opposing organizations approach him with thin-lipped grins, thanking him for the invitation and promising to uphold the truce they are here to commemorate. Half of the attendees are twice his size, thrice his age, but he meets them each with a dauntless tone, a single burnt-honey eye simmering beneath the wavy halo of dark hair.
“It is an honor to be a guest of such a sagacious character,” an older man with whiskers around his upper lip says, the scent of wine already thick on his words. “Let us toast to your generous nature.”
“No need,” Dazai says, waving away the offer. “The honor is all mine.”
The lie sits more sweetly on a sober tongue.
Music plays in time with the dancing masks around the room, golden and silver faces decorated with jewels. Useless extravagance, Dazai thinks. He’d call this a waste of his wealth if he cared for material things.
All the same, Dazai seems at home in the luxury, a princely black suit clinging to his form in a way that emphasizes each delicate line of his body. He’s left behind the scarf and opted for rich red accents in the jacket linings. People stare as he circles the room— but perhaps that’s because he’s the only person unmasked at his own masquerade.
Ah, but he’s crowned himself instead, and he thinks it’s only fair that everyone knows the demonic crown— a series of red skulls wrapped around his head, wings stretching from the sides as though they wish to be horns— belongs to the man who called them here.
As the night goes on, Dazai allows others to approach him, offering a gentle smile to each masked beast that appears. He never speaks first and never intrudes upon conversations, but the softest exhale summons dozens to his side, eager to see the man they know as a devil.
“A bold choice for a party,” a woman says, two-thirds of her face hidden beneath an ornate violet mask that extends into a beak that threatens to take out Dazai’s one free eye each time she turns her head. “Is there excitement in guessing which of your masked guests are the ones that like you?”
“You misunderstand what this is,” Dazai says, hardly glancing over the thick dark hair piled atop the woman’s head or the color of the jewels around her neck. “I don’t indulge in guessing games. They’re far too boring— wouldn’t you say, Kazuko-kun?”
Kazuku’s flush begins at her collarbones and works into her face, hidden behind the mask. Dazai smiles an empty smile, and that’s more than enough to dismiss the heiress of the Port Mafia’s latest benefactor.
She was wrong on several accounts, Dazai thinks. These people may pick out masks and makeup and laugh as they point out each other’s ridiculous faces, but none really want to hide. They’ll adorn themselves with tell-tale markings of their true identity— specific brooches, clues in their words, smiles that say they think it’s all a joke. Dazai could scan the room and state each masked face’s real name, but he doesn’t have the energy to listen to them all pretend to be surprised.
More than that, though, he finds it ridiculous that she thinks anyone in this room likes him. They’re attending his party and will offer to drop to their knees if he crooks his finger a certain way, but none of that is because they like him. Even now, the space between him and the rest of the room speaks the truth: no one here likes him half as much as they fear him.
“Oh, that’s him, isn’t it?” They whisper to each other like he can’t hear each astonished voice. “He’s so much younger than I expected.”
“He has the entire city beneath his thumb.”
“He’ll have the country at his feet before the end of the year.”
“He killed Mori Ougai when he was eighteen.”
“He killed the boss before that when he was fifteen.”
“They say he’s a genius, that no one and nothing escapes his plans.”
“That’s not true.” A new voice alongside the rest, trembling as though he knows what he says is dangerous. Dazai stands in the shadows behind a group that’s never once spoken to him but has done nothing but murmur his name all evening. He doesn’t make himself known or react and is curious to hear what they say.
“Oh?” A woman asks, the feathers on her mask bouncing dramatically with the word. “Are you suggesting he’s not as terrible as they say?”
“I’m suggesting,” the man says, “that he can still make mistakes.”
Ah, yes. This story.
The man’s shadow shifts, his hippo-shaped mask making him appear half-monstrous as he flutters his hands in the air, decorating his story with meaningless flourishes.
“See, everyone says he’s an inhuman genius, but this is the truth— the Demon Prodigy miscalculated long before he became King of the Mafia, and it nearly cost him everything.”
It’s a tale the fearful like to share, extending the details with each retelling to comfort themselves with the thought of his failings.
“It happened when he was just a boy— if you can believe something so monstrous was ever such a thing. He served as Mori Ougai’s most favored executive and, at his side, had a partner twice as terrible as him— a partner with the power of a devil in his soul.” The man grows more confident in tone as the crowd around him grows. “He was captured by scientists who wanted to control his power, held captive, and tortured for days. You say that Dazai Osamu is revered and respected for his mind, but hear this— he arrived to save his own partner days too late.”
A gasp. A chuckle. The story goes on.
“The next time the other boy enacted his awful powers, the scientists’ tampering broke through. It destroyed him from the inside out,” the man says, licking his lips. “They say that, ever since that boy’s death, Dazai Osamu has locked away his heart and become the coldest leader the Port Mafia may ever see.”
A visible shudder goes through the group, a reaction more fitting a ghost story than a tragic tale of loss and remorse. The man in the center revels in the questions he’s asked, smiling patiently as he answers each.
“Can you be certain it’s true?” A woman asks. The man parts his lips to speak—
“I can confirm that nearly every word he speaks has a grain of truth.” A loftier voice than the rest slips into their midst, Dazai circling the group like a predator until he takes a place beside the storyteller. His tone keeps them trapped, keeps them still, and he smiles like he doesn’t notice the paleness of the man’s face.
“I meant no disrespect; I simply wished—”
“Why apologize? It’s a dramatic tale befitting an evening such as this, and it’s not inaccurate. Not only did I lock my heart away, as you said, but I had to chain my very soul to the darkness.” The shadows of Dazai’s crown stretch across the crowd around him, piercing throats and tongues as he tips his head to the side. “Ah, there is one detail you misreported, however.”
“I—” The man licks his lips and looks to the others for help but continues when he finds no such support. “Well, do tell.”
Dazai speaks in a voice like iron bars.
“My partner never had the power of a devil,” he says. “He had the power of a god.”
<><><> <><><> <><><>
Moonlight burns through stained glass windows like a silver river, sneaking past welded bolts and steel locks. It’d be pretty— if Dazai had the time to appreciate it.
Instead, he’s running in time with the sound of doors slamming shut and the whispers of his name as his guests hunt him down. A frenzy of desperation as he had turned his back— a knife glinting in the dark as the lights cut out all at once, his skin saved only by the chilling sensation of someone aiming a blade for his flesh. He’d grabbed the wrist and disarmed the attacker, but he already knew this assassin wasn’t working alone.
He’d known from the beginning that this night would end with an attempt on his life. He’d had Hirotsu invite just the right crowd to draw out the people who liked him least, and he’d put the proper precautions in place. His only mistake was assuming they weren’t cliche enough to choose such a ridiculous time. If they had any level of strategy, they would have waited at least three more hours and made sure Dazai was deep enough in his cups to lose his wits or ability to fight back. Sure, that plan wouldn’t have worked, either, but at least Dazai would be satisfied knowing he was up against a more competent group.
Well, that’s neither here nor there. He may have made his plans for later in the evening, but there’s no reason he can’t move the timeline up.
He slams against a wall and feels for the light switches for the corridors. Unsurprisingly, he’s only met with the dull sound of a flick and the darkness. Another foolish detail from the opposing side— using the dark as though Dazai doesn’t know the layout of the home he invited them to.
He pushes away and follows the path of colored moonlight across the floors, painting himself in violets and blues and greens. There’s a distinct lack of red in the rainbow, something the guests had pointed out and pondered. They really know nothing of Dazai’s mind.
Which means they know nothing about the room at the bottom of this lavish mansion.
He takes the stairs down to the basement with little precaution, defiant voices shouting to one another as they realize where he’s going. The bloodlust is a contagion within them, and it’s almost amusing to think of how these poor, violent creatures must live such simple lives. Money and murder and power— is there really nothing more to life than that?
There must be. He has to believe there must be.
At the bottom of the stairway, he unlocks a large set of doors with a key he keeps on a chain around his neck, tucked beneath bandages so tightly it’s left an indent on his skin. His hands don’t shake even as he opens the gate to greater darkness, deeper than the sea, and steps into a room of cold, unforgiving stone.
There are no lights in a place like this, and it’s like the shadows themselves consume the little brightness leaking in from the outer hallway. Everything is silent, a black hole eating through each of Dazai’s senses until he is nothing more than an exposed nerve, numb to everything but the terrifying touch of anguish in this forbidden air.
A deep breath in. A deep breath out. The sound echoes, but he’s not quite certain if that’s still his own breathing he hears.
“He’s down here! He’s trapped himself— quick!”
Voices thunder down the stairways in the same way that footsteps do. Men with knives and flashlights and guns block the exit, standing in a horde of unmasked faces, a terrible excitement etched into each expression blinking into the dark.
“Not so scary when you’re hiding away like this,” the man up front says— the one who’d spoken about Dazai’s partner, who’d taken such joy in sharing such an awful take. “You think the shadows might protect you? Are you here to hide?”
The external world shrinks and folds in upon itself until it’s only Dazai’s Cheshire cat grin in the dark.
“I’m here to pray.”
There’s the crash of a gunshot, the held-breath silence of knowing it was aimed at Dazai’s head. His lips twitch, but that’s all the movement he gives.
The bullet never reaches him.
For a moment, all is silent. All is still. All is darkness, but then—
Like the sun's rising, a crimson glow takes shape. A low growl fills the air; the walls seem to shake from its angered force.
Dazai’s smile grows.
A glowing red fist held a hair’s width in front of Dazai’s face, so close he could smell the blood on it. The light chases the skin along the tattered white shirt on someone’s arm— to a shoulder and a neck, a body and a face.
A monster called Arahabaki. A man named Chuuya Nakahara.
Still growling, he opens his fist. The bullet falls, crushed, to the ground.
It was folly, Dazai thinks, for these men to believe stories made only for comfort. It was folly, he knows, for them to believe he’d ever let Chuuya die.
Not that anyone else would recognize this as Chuuya. The cream poet shirt Dazai gave him before the event is torn, barely held together enough for anyone to realize it’s a pair to Dazai’s. The black cloak has been cast aside, lost somewhere in the room. Red hair’s still tied to the side just the way he likes it, but the bangs are damp with sweat, the ends tangled. How is it that a demon plays prince with these fools— still crowned, still smiling— while a god snarls like an animal in the shadows?
Chuuya’s eyes burn white, brighter than the Corruption marks stained upon his skin. Dazai follows the trail with his gaze across his neck and cheeks. He can’t go further than that, though, for Chuuya wears the one thing he never breaks in his blind rage.
A mask.
A red mask in the shape of a skull. Covering the upper half of his face and hiding the worst of his Corruption marks from the world.
A god, indeed. But, to these men, he’s something else.
“The Red Death of the Mafia,” the man in the front breathes. “I thought it was a rumor. Surely, the Demon King of the mafia wouldn’t truly have something so terrible beneath his floorboards.”
Dazai’s smile sours. Is this what they see? A monster? A weapon? A pet?
Something whose only thought is to—
“Protect me,” Dazai snaps, and Chuuya’s nothing more than a streak of blood-stained light.
The first man’s arms are the first to go, torn from his body with all the ease of snapping a pencil. Guns fire, but their bullets fire back at them, aiming for throats and skulls with perfect precision. Chuuya’s attack is as quick as it is brutal, an indulgence in a power these men could only ever dream of— could only ever imagine in their worst nightmares.
The room quakes with the force of Chuuya’s massacre, gravity fighting against the solid structures Dazai put in place years ago. It’s been a while since Chuuya’s had the chance to behave so freely, and the wicked laughter in the air more than shows it.
Screaming men burst with the slightest touch of Chuuya’s hand. Loose items like books or dishes fly across the room, caught up in the whirl of Chuuya’s storm— items Dazai laughs at when he watches them go through people like the deadliest of weapons. Chuuya won’t like seeing what’s become of his things when he wakes up.
For now, though, Chuuya’s nothing more than a slash of blood in the air, already on the last man— seconds after the fight began. He has his hands around his throat, grinning wildly as he crushes his neck in his grasp, bones crumbling into dust. Dazai watches before shaking his head and approaching.
Chuuya’s touch can kill a man. Dazai’s can bring him back to life.
The barest brush of Dazai’s fingers against the back of Chuuya’s neck has Chuuya going still, gasping as he falls back. Dazai catches him with practiced ease, cradling the man in his arms, and removes that terrible mask just in time to watch the last remnants of Corruption fade.
To watch blue eyes blink back at him, bleary and dazed.
“Told you not to let me wear the nice clothes, asshole,” Chuuya says, lowered to the ground and lying in Dazai’s lap. Dim lights flicker above them, a timer set for a precise amount of minutes after Dazai opens this door. It runs on its own generator and has softer lights than any other in the house, safer for Chuuya’s eyes so soon after nullification. All the same, Chuuya groans and squints.
Dazai can’t help but chuckle. “I’ll buy you new ones.”
“Hmph.” Chuuya looks up at Dazai, frowning as he brings his hand to Dazai’s cheek. A thin cut— some debris from Corruption grazing his face, no more than a papercut.
Dazai turns his head away from Chuuya’s guilt-ridden fingers. “I let one of the assassins get too close.”
“Liar,” Chuuya says, but the pain in his eyes settles at the explanation. He blinks again, turning his head towards the mess of bodies near the door. “It’s weird, y’know. Hearing them when I’m like that.”
Dazai does his best not to swear at Chuuya’s words, keeping his expression neutral as he continues looking down at him. “They’re not much better when one’s in their right mind, either.”
Chuuya continues as though he hadn’t heard him, a pinch between his brows. There’s the softest waver in his voice. “Is that what they’re calling me now? The Mafia’s Red Death?”
“They are,” Dazai answers in a gentle whisper, pressing a kiss to Chuuya’s temple. “But only because I’m too jealous to let anyone know the true story.”
“I’m sure,” Chuuya says, returning his eyes to him. “And what is the true story, then?”
He’s so pretty when frustrated, Dazai thinks as he lifts Chuuya into his arms. He stands, holding Chuuya close so he can whisper against his hair, telling him their story as he walks across the gore and broken bodies.
“It’s the story of a demon who was foolish in his planning, a demon who thought he loved a god and forgot to think of the boy beneath the divinity,” Dazai tells a story that’s only for them, a story he’d kill to keep within these two bodies and nothing more. “The demon was meant to save the boy from torture, that’s true, but he had too much faith in the god’s ability to keep that boy safe. The damage had been done, the pain made— and, the next time the boy called upon the god’s power, the god feared that hurt being pressed upon them again. In a curse of Corruption, Arahabaki held onto the boy’s form and refused to let go. Just the same, that boy fought back. With every breath, he kept the god from claiming him fully.”
Chuuya shudders in his hold as Dazai ascends the stairs. Still, Dazai speaks on.
“It should have killed him, but the demon did have one gift to offer— an injection of his blood.” Dazai pauses here, flashes of a time strapped to Mori’s table playing through his mind. Experimentation and indulging Mori’s long-requested curiosity of No Longer Human— all of it means nothing compared to what Chuuya had gone through. “It didn’t cure the boy, of course. Nothing in the demon’s life could be so simple. But it kept the god from ever truly breaking him, the thinnest barrier between destruction and death.”
A death of crimson red and bloodied hands. A death that would always sound better as a scary story.
But there’s more to the tale that people never know to share, an ending to the story Dazai does not need to say Chuuya as the other boy falls asleep against his chest, lulled to rest by the retelling of his own horrors.
He thinks of it, though, the memories flickering through his mind now that he’s opened the door to it.
He thinks of the blessing and the curse that came from this. The way Chuuya can’t help but be in Corruption. The way he’s only ever free when Dazai’s touching him.
And Dazai would have done it. He would have stayed at Chuuya’s side, bound and captured in whatever ways Chuuya might have him. His right hand and closest confidante, as Dazai planned his rise to boss. Soukoku unparted just as fate intended from the beginning. He’d keep Chuuya next to him, against him, always in reach, always in sight.
But Chuuya had told him no.
The only request Chuuya had ever made was the one Dazai wished he wouldn’t have to give.
“I’m a monster,” Chuuya had said— and it’s a memory like yesterday, a voice that rings through Dazai’s mind every time he has to leave him in that damned cellar. He can still feel how Chuuya’s fingers had scorched the skin beneath his shirt as he pulled Dazai down, can still hear the broken rasp of his words. “I’m a monster, Dazai, and it’s your job to treat me like one.”
Dazai could never refuse when Chuuya sounds so desperate.
And, so, he made a room. He constructed a space with the best experts and researchers to aid, building an enclosure that could withstand Corruption’s rage. He gave his blood and marrow to every stone, encasing Chuuya in his body as thoroughly as if he’d pinned him within his ribcage.
When the mafia heard of Dazai’s plans, they demanded that Arahabaki be kept outside of city limits and claimed they wouldn’t follow him as a leader if they couldn’t trust him with this. Well, Dazai’s lived in isolation before—building his own home in the middle of nowhere outside of Yokohama was child’s play.
And what a fantastic home it is. Lavish and grand, just as Chuuya deserves.
“They were right about one thing, though,” Dazai says as he comes to the large bedroom he and Chuuya share, a bed that could fit five or six men but is made only for two who will hold each other through the night as though they are one. He keeps a hand in Chuuya’s hair, brushing gently as the other reaches for the washcloths he’d laid aside earlier, ready to cleanse Chuuya of the pestilence still clinging to his skin. “Entertaining, isn't it? That such fools can get anything right.”
He lowers his lips to Chuuya’s brow.
They say the Demon Prodigy of the Mafia buried his heart beneath the floorboards, that he chains away his soul each time he goes back to work for a city that cares nothing for him.
They don’t know that the door is never locked from the inside. The chains are never tied. When Dazai comes home, his hands never leave Chuuya’s skin. Hours, days, weeks— they are half each other’s souls. It’s only fitting that their bodies, too, press together so closely so easily.
And, so, Dazai holds Chuuya just as he always has, and everything is alright so long as he has this.
As long as there is a beacon of light amidst the darkness and decay.