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leonawriter · 5 years

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Held In Trust

Read it on AO3

Fandom: Bungo Stray Dogs

Characters: Dazai, Atsushi, Chuuya, Mori (mentioned)

Pairings: Dazai/Chuuya, pre-relationship, or something.

Summary: Dazai has issues regarding even just the very concept of the Port Mafia's boss, given what the job entails. And then, the idea of Chuuya in that role is put into his head...

...

"Ah, but I thought you knew that I've had plans for such a long time, to have Chuuya-kun succeed me as boss, Dazai-kun?"

Dazai's smile had frozen in its place, the world going off kilter and in a way that reminded him, later, far too much of those times in the past when everything had gone so blank and grey that death had seemed a reprieve that he could only desperately reach out for.

From the way that Mori had smiled, he wasn't sure that it had gone unnoticed.

He wasn't sure what to think about that-

No, that wasn't true.

He didn't like it, at all. And yet, there wasn't anything he could do.

...

"Dazai-san?"

...hm?

"If... if something happened, between the Agency and the mafia, do you... do you think we'd end up fighting again?"

Dazai's first reaction had been to wonder where that had come from - but then again, this was Atsushi. Who had a habit of making friends in unlikely places, and getting attached in unusual ways. He hadn't been immune. Even Akutagawa had been dragged into Atsushi's influence.

But then, his next reaction had been to laugh, and if there was something more than a little bitter about it, then perhaps he simply feeling sentimental about things that weren't worth keeping.

"Ah... sorry, sorry! But... really, Atsushi-kun. They're the mafia. It's just like how Mori said, that time... you remember, don't you?" He linked his arms behind his head as they walked, staring up at the sky. It was easier than the idea of Atsushi with a disappointed look on his face. Not that he wanted to dash the boy's hopes, but it paid to be a slight bit more realistic at times. "The mafia works on pride and face. It's better not to assume any sort of truce or alliance can't be broken."

They carry on in silence for a while, with Dazai wondering if the more gentle tone and quiet voice that he had put the words to had helped soften the blow.

"I... maybe that is the truth, and maybe we can never fully trust the mafia, but... I'd still like to believe in the people we've come to know."

Which was certainly one way of looking at things, even if Dazai couldn't fully get behind it.

But as long as Atsushi knew and understood the dangers of expecting everyone to return the same faith that he had, as long as that trust wasn't simply blindly given... who knew. Perhaps Atsushi had the right of it.

...

In the next two weeks, he's dragged out of the river enough times that Kunikida confiscates his belongings - anything non-essential, capable of being lost downriver, that isn't waterproof, and that can't have a tracker put in it. They've started making waterproof phones, and he's heard Kunikida muttering about the idea of getting one for him, once, while Dazai had still been drying his hair, coat dripping onto the Agency's floor.

Atsushi dives in after him again, and he almost feels the black of oblivion before he momentarily feels the the sensation of a hand on his arm, dragging him back up toward the light.

For the first time in quite a while, he feels more than the usual hint of annoyance, a little frustration, at having been interrupted.

Then he sees the expression on Atsushi's face, the concern, and he wishes that anyone else could have dragged him out of the river.

It's a little harder to play it off as merely floating, when he had come to with a gasp, coughing up water.

...

It happens by chance, that he and Chuuya wind up working on the same job, and they fall into step a little too easily, a little too well, and he bites back a little more than usual, not to keep pace with him like that.

Chuuya looks at him like there's something wrong, and maybe there is, because the world isn't properly righted yet.

He's been having dreams recently, of his time in the mafia.

Sometimes, he'll dream that he had slashed mori's throat like the man had been afraid he would, and he had taken over.

Mostly, however, he dreams of Odasaku.

The mission isn't a particularly difficult one, and it's hardly one that requires either of them to work particularly hard to resolve it, either, but Dazai still fumbles a move, leaving Chuuya to pick up the pieces of the manoeuvre while Dazai nurses a bruised rib or two, which will take a while to heal.

Chuuya shouts at him and cusses him out, for that, for making him do all the work, and he smiles and laughs it off, saying that he must be having an off day, even as Chuuya says that the Dazai I know doesn't have 'off days.'

Maybe that was true.

Maybe he wasn't the Dazai that Chuuya knew.

Maybe, he thinks, lightheaded, something is wrong.

...

He dreams of Odasaku dying in his arms and the dream turns into the mafia headquarters, that room at the top of the tallest building in all of Yokohama, a wall of windows looking out over the city that the mafia owned.

Dazai dreams of the black envelope paid for in blood, and turns it over, and it's something else - another thing, some priceless, unimportant thing - and he looks up, and instead of Mori sat in the chair-

The figure is too small, the hat obscuring features that don't change even in dreams.

"A leader's got to be able to commit all kinds of atrocities in the name of the company, Dazai-"

...

He wakes with a gasp as if he'd just been dragged out of another river, and his chest hurts as if someone had tried to give him CPR, which wouldn't be a first, but was never a pleasant experience. The only thing reminding him that this wasn't the case is the fact that there's no water in his mouth, and he doesn't feel wet.

In fact, aside from his chest hurting, he actually feels comfortable, resting on something soft and... familiar. Familiar enough to make him open his eyes properly and look around, confirming his suspicion.

"Oh, so you're awake now, huh?" He blinks, wondering why Chuuya had taken him back to his home, when even though it wasn't as though Dazai didn't know where it was, hadn't broken in on a few occasions, it was still a rare show of... of something, that he wasn't entirely certain how to interpret. "Fat load of use you were at the end there, you could've warned me you'd gotten yourself hit to the head." Which was funny, really, because he couldn't remember that, and yet if Chuuya said it had happened, then it probably had. "I had to drag your ass back here, the least you could do is be thankful, shitty Dazai."

"Ah," he says, as if it makes sense. Which it still doesn't.

Chuuya disappears off to the kitchen, and when he comes back, it's with a glass of water and painkillers. The correct dose, no more and no less. It's not like he hasn't had Chuuya look after him as he suffered from bruised ribs before. They know what to do.

He drinks the water and swallows the tablets without a word.

"...oi, Dazai."

It's better not to assume any sort of truce or alliance can't be broken, he'd said to Atsushi, and he still remembers seeing Ango one last time in Lupin, telling him to go, before he changed his mind.

The reality of losing people was no stranger to him. To position, to broken loyalty, to death.

Why, then...?

Chuuya sighs, clearly frustrated with something - him - and sits himself down on the side of the sofa that Dazai had cleared when he'd sat up, feet drawn toward him.

It hurts, he thinks, because he's only just taken the painkillers, and they haven't had a chance to work yet. It hurts, he thinks, and he isn't sure that he's just thinking about his bruised ribs.

"I thought my job as your secretary fielding your calls after something like this had ended when you quit, but no, I had to be the one to tell that Agency of yours you weren't dead."

He winces, a little, and finds suddenly that the ceiling is very fascinating.

"Tch... the silent treatment, is it?"

Chuuya doesn't get up to move, though, just sitting there, and Dazai can feel the barely held in frustration pouring off of him.

"...Atsushi-kun asked me recently, what would happen to the tentative alliance we've got, if something were to threaten it."

"....Hah? Like that's gonna happen. Boss' orders say no fighting with the Agency, that's what happens."

And you should know that, was left unsaid. Didn't need to be said.

"And if anything happened to Mori?"

"That a threat or a warning?"

He closes his eyes, and hears Chuuya shift awkwardly more than sees it. Which rubs at him wrong, because Chuuya is confident and as the best fighter in the Port Mafia, he doesn't do awkward. Or he shouldn't, at least.

"A question," he says, no matter how much he might want it to be either of the offered options.

There's a pause, as if the future hangs in the balance on a string between them.

Eventually, Chuuya sighs.

"You know I can't make promises neither of us can keep, shitty Dazai," he says, "and open your eyes. The last thing I want is you falling asleep on me again after you hit your head." He doesn't, a small smile playing about on his mouth, as if he's tasted something bittersweet. Chuuya punches his arm. "Next time it'll be your chest I hit, dumbass."

"And... if Chuuya were in charge?"

He sidesteps the matter of keeping his eyes open by only - just - glancing out of the corner of his eye for Chuuya's reaction to that.

A reaction which is a long, drawn out breath.

"This isn't about Atsushi, is it," Chuuya says at last, slowly.

"...no," he admits. Quietly enough that if Chuuya weren't so close, he likely wouldn't hear. "It's not."

...

Chuuya doesn't give him an answer, straight away. Instead, he stands and leaves the room, and a few moments later Dazai hears water boiling for coffee, and moments after that another glass of water is set in front of him.

"Well?" he asks, once Chuuya's back on the sofa.

He'd prefer to be having this conversation anywhere but here, and not with a couple of bruised ribs, but if it weren't for needing it in the first place, he probably wouldn't have the issue of his injuries to deal with now.

"Me? I'm not the one with the issues here, Dazai. If I end up as boss after Mori's gone - which won't be happening for a while yet, by the way - that's on me. You lost your say on the leadership when you left."

There's resentment, like there always is. Usually, that wouldn't bother him.

Today is an exception, in more ways than one.

"I left because of a disagreement over leadership methods, actually," he hears himself say. It's the first time he's been so open with Chuuya as to say anything about the circumstances of his departure, and the way Chuuya looks at him, sharply, speaks volumes.

"Ha...? And there I thought it was something to do with that Mimic incident."

"In a sense," he says, because in a way, it was. It was both, and neither, and everything else besides. "You never met the kids Odasaku picked up... did you?"

He's fairly sure Chuuya hadn't, at least.

A shake of a hatted head confirms what he'd thought.

"No. But then, he was your friend, wasn't he?"

Dazai tugs against the pinstriped sleeve of his shirt.

"I saw them in passing, a few times. But I can't say I met any of them properly."

"Huh," Chuuya says, and then, "I don't see how this has anything to do with... oh."

"Boss knew Odasaku was the only one who could fight the leader of Mimic," he says, the words ringing dead in his ears, and if it were any other time, any other place, he wouldn't say this - even to Chuuya, because it was easier if Chuuya just thought that he had decided one day to quit and turn up one day on the other side, for the pure hell and thrill of it. "Boss also knew he wouldn't."

The rest didn't need to be said.

If Mori had needed someone to do something for the sake of the organisation, then he would have ensured that they were encouraged to do so, no matter the personal cost.

Chuuya doesn't respond for the longest time, and when he does, there's a weight to his words that mere gravity can't compare to.

"I'm... not Mori," he says. "I... Dazai, I don't think I could be boss like him, even if I tried." He doesn't miss the way Chuuya takes his hat off, the same one he must have received from Mori after being inducted into the mafia all those years ago. Chuuya looks at it as though it holds the answers to all the world's questions. "I said before, didn't I? I can't make promises we both know neither of us can keep. But the way I figure, the mafia looks out for our own."

He looks up, as if searching for something in Dazai's face, blue eyes as open as they always had been, because Chuuya has a habit of wearing his heart on his sleeve, Dazai remembers now.

"He was my friend, Chuuya."

It's important. He can't say that four years ago he might have not cared so much about the fact that the children had died, because people died every day, and the mafia had been the cause of so many that he himself had lost count. He would now, because Odasaku would want him to, and because he'd look at the children and think of Atsushi, and Kyouka, and Kenji. People change, after all.

Chuuya punches his arm again.

"For a genius, you can be a complete dumbass, Dazai."

"Eh? Chuuya?"

"You think I don't know what it's like to lose friends, huh? Honestly, I'm insulted." From anyone else, he'd take offence, see it as anything other than the still-awkward attempt at a connection that it was. "Get over here."

His chest still hurt, and not having adrenaline to push the pain out of his mind made it that much more obvious when he shifted and it flared up, but it wasn't quite as bad as it had been before. Maybe the painkillers had started to work.

Even so, no matter whether it made sense or not, he felt more relief relaxing against Chuuya than he had in sitting up against the soft cushions of the sofa.

"I still won't go back to the mafia," he finds himself saying. "Kunikida-kun would kill me," he adds, as an afterthought.

"Yeah, yeah... I get just about enough of you the way things are now. Try coming back and I think I'd kick you out so hard there'd be a Dazai-shaped hole in the walls."

The worries aren't completely gone. But... maybe Atsushi was right, even more than he'd thought.

I'd still like to believe in the people we've come to know, the boy had said.

Maybe Dazai wouldn't ever be able to put his trust in Mori, or the mafia, ever again.

But in Chuuya... well, it wasn't as if that would be something he'd have to learn from scratch, would it?

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bsd stuff #soukoku #Leona fic

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goddamnitdazai · 7 years

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Like Smoke

[ Chapter 2 ] [ Mafia!Dazai x Reader ] ******* {Previous Chapters} ******* [ Words: 1,449 ][ Mature ] [ Canon Divergent - Canon typical violence ] [ Language - Adult situation ] Between midnight and two am when the rain sprinkles lightly and mixes with the heat of growing summer a thick fog billows through the city. Tapping feather-light over the windows and doors of sleeping inhabitants the rain brings an eerie chill slithering between alleyways. The streets are barren and ink black. Pale amber flickers down from towering streetlamps and glimmer across the wide diner window. The booth feels stiff against your back; the edges of your sleeves feel soggy against your thumb and forefinger. Apparently the dead of night was the perfect time for a decadent hot pot, and a decent way to warm up after being drenched in ice water for nearly eight hours. His eccentric behavior didn’t seem all that strange given his position. Despite the fancy clothes donning each member and boatloads of cash funneling in from all areas of the darkest parts of the city the mentality of hustling didn’t change. Charisma, control, dominance, and manipulation were key to running a crime ring be it small or large, and the kings of the land always kept their cards tight to their chest. Dazai was another prince waiting to be crowned king, and in spite of the airy cheeriness in his voice when he offered a sorry-we-tortured-you meal you weren’t fooled into thinking his kindness didn’t come with a price tag.

“Not that I care much about the car, but you should be more careful when you work,” His lips split into a smile as he talks, cheek cradled in the palm of his hand. “I haven’t seen you before, are you new?” “Sorry boss I’ll be more careful next time,” you retort sharply, “but if I make the same mistake again I’ll get to see your oh so warm and loving subordinate. We had such a lovely time this evening.” Dazai’s eyes spark with amusement. Sarcasm is not something he often deals with (other than from Chuuya) and a rift in the stale ‘senpai’ worship Akutagawa constantly choked him with was something of a cherished gift. Dazai laughs—almost as soft as a school boy—but his eyes remain a swirling ocean of shadows. They flit up and down your face searching for a hint of anything worth triggering his inner alarm but all he sees through the steam is a shiver every now and again. His jacket looks good draped over your shoulders, he thinks to himself, but he’d have to take it back before the sun began to rise. “Did you enjoy the show then, boss?” Dazai’s lips stretch further. Sharp brows rise with the movement of your hands carefully bringing a tender slice of pork belly to your lips. It’s hard to catch up with the way Dazai’s mind works, but a sliver of uncertainty flickers in his eyes before he closes them. A softened hum slips through his lips as his fingers thread themselves with each other and nestle beneath his chin. The pork slides down like a thick ball of sand catching in your throat. His silence is unnerving. Your hand finds the cup of sake—buffering your nerves was better than letting your guard slip. “What makes you think I was watching? My subordinates aren’t attached to me. I don’t care to keep tabs on them until they do something worth my time.” Dazai sighs, eyes popping open and falling on the empty glass in your hand. “Taste good? This is the best sake they serve here.” “Weren’t you having him guard your car? Or were you just using him as a hood ornament because he pissed you off? I know you were there at some point before I got kicked down to that rancid dungeon.” Dazai’s head cocks to the side revealing an empty row of booths lining the rest of the diner. At some point between the hot pot and sake the small room had become vacant. Music drifts through old speakers hanging behind an old half-polished espresso machine. Idling outside the front door a man with a white apron slung over his round belly puffs out thick smoke into the night air. Every beat of your heart feels heavy. Dazai remains still—colder than before, and damn could that man could hold a gaze longer than you could hope to live. Inhale, exhale—don’t look down. “Boss?” A choked utterance of his title barely cracks his demeanor. The wooden chopsticks between your fingers roll back and forth as you wrack your brain for an answer. Underestimation didn’t seem to happen very often under Dazai’s thick veil of intelligence. Something hidden sparked bright against his dark eyes; no, underestimation of an enemy was too rare of an occurrence to be wasted on you. Rather than display his cards he was waiting to see how many of them you could read with the minuscule amount of detail he’d dropped throughout the day. “I’m just guessing that’s why he was there in the parking lot. Or he just loves you too much to let you out of his sight.” Rolling the dice with tone was like prodding a sleeping bear at this point, but flirting with death was a vice you couldn’t kick. Dazai’s hands move slowly down to the table and begin to tap lightly on the edge. His eyes close once more; your lungs forget how to hold on to a breath. He eases one hand over the untouched pair of chopsticks and languidly dips them to the bowl to pluck a piece of pork belly from the stew. The smile you’d first seen down in that grimy dungeon pops back on his face. His eyes fall to the piece of pork like a child finding a hidden prize before he plops the meat into his mouth. “I didn’t want to force it out of you. You seem so stubborn and I didn’t want to deal with that,” he says between bites, “Akutagawa-kun managed to get enough out to confirm my suspicions. Now can we skip the formalities and jump to the part where you just say yes? I’ve had a loonnggg day.” The bitter tang of bile reaches your teeth. Gnarled up like a dead tree root your stomach attempts to lurch. Dazai blinks and pushes a glass of water towards your hand. His smile is captivating, iniquitous—perfect. Take me home, boss. “Do you want to see it?” Offering compliancy is not a state of submission, it is a state of transparent loyalty. Connections between humans locked away in the shadows of society are the only means of survival. He needed you, and vice versa. Perhaps need was too strong of a word, or maybe it wasn’t strong enough. “What drives you, ____?” Your name on his lips feels like cyanide. A response to a question with another is considered evasive, but he is merely working you in circles. Keeping you dizzy, blind, and guessing which step to take next. He plays with people—he was raised to be a puppeteer, and unfortunately your strings were neon lights waiting to be yanked whichever way he pleased. Did he know? He knew your name, he had to know everything. “Money, what else?” You say, “But do you want to see it?” “Not now, _____. I’d rather keep drinking.” Dazai winks and slides the refilled sake cup your direction. A shot of lightening rolls down your spine. Benevolence returns to him; that smile with brightened cheeks the color of a rose due to the sake running through his veins. Dazai, your boss, the man who looked on as you nearly froze to death solely to watch your ability knock death’s grip away. Dazai, who baited you with an expensive car and an unruly subordinate who lusted for nothing other than blood just to bring you in under his command or someone’s because who the hell knew what he wanted. And you fucking fell for it. His brilliance was nothing to snub. Annoying, however, he could have just fucking asked. “A toast?” You suggest while plopping your chin on your palm. His cologne wavers across the booth, had he always smelled so good? White bandages poke out from his sleeve as he reaches for the carafe and pours you both a decent sized shot. Black cups clink as the sun peaks over the horizon and lights up the world in honey-suckle gold. A spell of exhaustion tugs you at your body. The mixture of alcohol and draining adrenaline renders you with the mobility of a half-dead corpse. Dazai’s hand cups your chin from across the table to keep your head steady. “Ah, not yet ____ ~.” Dazai chimes, “We’ve got one more stop before I take you home.”

#bungou stray dogs #dazai #dazai osamu #mafia!dazai #bsd #ls #my writing #my writing dazai #dazai x reader #bsd reader insert #dazai reader insert #osamu dazai #bungou sd #bsd fanfic #dazai fanfic

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