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The metal fence rattled as Chuuya touched down on the other side, leaning against it to catch his breath. He tightened his grip on Dazai’s shirt, trying his best not to touch him directly.
“Shitty mackerel,” He breathed out, voice rough.
No response.
Chuuya shook him, but in his own weakness, the attempt was feeble. He leaned forward, trying to catch his partner’s eyes.
“Dazai?” He attempted again, firmer. He tapped his forehead against the other boy’s, using as much force as could muster.
Dazai stirred, the movement making him groan. He lifted his head slightly, dark eyes meeting one blue.
Both so, so, dim.
“...Chuuya?” He murmured, voice subdued, barely there.
Chuuya cracked a smile.
“Yeah,” He rubbed his forehead against Dazai’s, sighing in relief. “We’re here.”
At this, Dazai raised his head weakly, taking in where they were for the first time that evening.
In front of him loomed the giant entrance to a desolate amusement park, the name no longer legible with most of the characters missing. A rust-covered yellow smiley hung lopsided.
It looked like it was decaying.
How fitting.
The soft red hue of Upon the Tainted Sorrow lit the settling dusk, Chuuya carrying most of Dazai’s weight as they began limping forward. They passed the threshold of the park, and the inside was much like the entrance—old, like it was on the verge of breaking down. Rust covered everything like freshly fallen snow.
“Slug c–couldn’t have found a better place?” Dazai grumbled, eyebrows taut, wincing as he tried to hold some of his own weight. Chuuya rolled his eye.
“Shut up. No complaining when you’re not doing any of the work.” He responded, shifting his grip to have a better hold.
“Slave-driver.” Dazai pouted, nearly leaning his head on Chuuya’s shoulder, before catching himself.
A humourless smile twisted his bloodied lips.
Stopping in the middle of the park, Chuuya surveyed the extent of damage. It wasn’t a big one, by any means; a few rides, a go kart track, a big ferris wheel in the middle that clearly used to be the main centre of attraction, and a run-down departmental store a little ways ahead.
While none of the rides seemed functional, he was sure he could make at least some work. He had to.
Shifting uncomfortably, Chuuya pressed his other arm harder around his stomach. Not that it was doing much.
“So? What do you want to ride first?”
A cough rattled Dazai as he looked around the dilapidated park. Chuuya almost flattened his hand on Dazai’s back to soothe, before remembering that he couldn’t. He needed to keep them upright.
Chuuya bit his tongue.
“Go karts,” Dazai decided after a minute, nodding towards the small track to their right.
Chuuya started limping towards their set destination, trying to focus on his breathing to distract himself from the pain. It had begun to dull a little, by now.
The track looked like it was made for children, with the karts themselves relatively small in size. The three or four that littered the track looked like they were once coloured brightly, now only a shadow of their previous selves. The whole park felt like an echo of itself, the blues and reds dulled down with time and dust.
Chuuya grinned.
“It’s gonna be fun watching your lanky ass try to fit in that,” He said, knowing full well that it was going to be him that put the other in there. Dazai could barely stand as it was.
Dazai frowned, weakly raising a finger to poke Chuuya’s side.
“Chuuya is mean,” He complained, but the smile playing on his lips said otherwise. “And not tall enough to ride a roller coaster.”
“Fuck off.”
When they reached the track, Chuuya moved one of the karts with Tainted Sorrow, setting it upright in front of them.
As carefully as he could with one arm, Chuuya tried to manoeuvre Dazai into the kart, making sure to avoid any contact that could hurt. But he saw, he saw the cry the other tried to stifle, wincing at the pained scrunch of his brows.
“Sorry,” He whispered, loosening his grip on Dazai as he settled into the kart, legs awkwardly spilling out from the sides like the blood that soaked his white shirt.
Dazai smiled softly at him in a way that felt like an apology of his own, before patting the side of the kart.
“Now push like a good dog,” He ordered, lips split in an obnoxious grin. On the drained pallor of his skin drenched in sweat, to Chuuya, it broke out like the sun from behind clouds.
He’d thought he would never see it again.
“Asshole.” Chuuya grunted, half-heartedly punching Dazai’s shoulder, if only to keep up with their routine. He didn't know how many chances he was left with.
Putting his hand on the back of the kart, both it and Chuuya glow red as he began to push, lightly at first. That doesn’t last long, though, and soon Chuuya was running as he pushed the kart all over the track, pain almost forgotten on hearing the sounds of Dazai’s delighted laughter, his own mixing with it. Their voices blend together—frail, and filled with life they’d yet to live.
Dazai tilted his head backwards and up to look at Chuuya, the boy he loved, eyes near crescents as they meet his. Happiness leaked out of him, blurring his vision, and he saw it fall freely from his partner’s eye as he laughed.
His cheeks ached with the smile that refused to leave his face.
Over the length of the scar that mangled half of Chuuya’s face, his eyes crinkled, and Dazai wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch.
But his arms were numb, and he could barely feel them anymore.
Abruptly, Chuuya stumbled, crying out softly as his knees hit the ground. When he didn't regain his footing, Dazai willed his body to move, grimacing with effort and pain as he tumbled out of the kart, arms useless at his sides.
Chuuya reached out, cushioning Dazai's head just as his face was about to hit the track. He gave him a tight-lipped smile, before turning his head to spit out a mouthful of blood. Where Chuuya’s hand met Dazai’s cheek, he felt the warmth of blood. The realisation that Chuuya just used the arm keeping his guts together to hold Dazai’s face dawned on him like the tomorrow he was never going to see.
“Stupid slug,” He whispered, pressing his cheek further into the redhead’s hand. It twitched, as if wanting to caress.
Chuuya tilted his head up at him, mouth bloodied and wide open in a stupid grin.
“We’re just st–starting out, you w-waste of bandages,” He managed to voice out, pinching his cheeks weakly. He inched closer towards Dazai, retrieving his arm from under him to once again place it on his bleeding stomach. Using the other arm to bunch up Dazai’s shirt fabric, Chuuya’s red glowed fainter as he stood, picking the other up.
“Where to?” He asked, as if he wanted to give as much of the world as he could to Dazai in the time they had left, in this abandoned amusement park.
Dazai breathed out—in acceptance, and in anger.
Acceptance, because Dazai had known long ago that his death would not come kindly, that it would be brutal and sudden and bloody. The luxuries of a quiet death were not one he would be privy to, for that was the life he had lived.
“Ferris wheel.”
Anger at the cruel irony of this world, of this bloodstained life. Of how for years the only thing he’d yearned for, the death he’d wanted so badly, had eluded him, only to come knocking now. Now when there was something—someone—he wanted more.
Off to the ferris wheel they went, one broken step at a time.
Dazai spotted a claw machine on their way to the ride, and like everything else in the park, it was out of order, the glass broken in a way that made it easy to grab whatever was inside.
“Chuuya,” Dazai called out, and at the other’s responding hum, tilted his head towards the machine. “Win me something?” He asked, playful, and Chuuya’s lips twitched with a smile. A trickle of blood made its way down Dazai’s own chapped ones.
Stopping in front of the machine, Dazai considered his options. There wasn’t much left there except for a few dirty and cobweb covered plushies—so warped from their original shape and colour—and a few animal headbands. Noticing the only matching ones were the two cat-ears, Dazai chuckled. Chuuya glanced at him, raising a brow.
“That plush looks like Chuuya,” Dazai spoke, tilting his head at a disfigured yellow puppy.
“You’re so fucking annoying.” Chuuya clicked his tongue, but even in his exasperation, grinned despite himself.
With blood staining his teeth, Dazai gave him a matching one of his own.
“I want the cat ones,” He said after a beat, using his head to push Chuuya’s in its direction. Chuuya rolled his eye, but it was filled with so much fondness that Dazai almost wanted to look away.
“Seriously? The demon prodigy wants cat ears?” He deadpanned, and at Dazai’s answering nod, only huffed out once before using Tainted to bring the two out.
Setting Dazai down momentarily against the claw machine, Chuuya fixed the band on both of their heads, running a gentle hand through Dazai’s hair as he did. Relaxing, Dazai closed his eyes, only to open them again when he felt Chuuya’s hand shake.
The boy he loved was laughing, and it was the most beautiful thing Dazai had ever seen.
“We look,” Chuuya started in between his laughter, trying to breathe through his nose because laughing hurt. “So stupid right now.”
And Dazai started laughing too, some distant part of his brain wondering what their opponents would think of them now, the feared and infamous Soukoku, dressed in cat ears, of all things.
Chuuya sat beside him as his laughter died down, and grabbed Dazai’s hand to squeeze gently. Dazai couldn't feel it, even as he tried his hardest to squeeze back. He couldn't. He burrowed his head in Chuuya’s shoulder instead.
And as they laid there for what felt like hours that were probably only a few minutes, Chuuya didn’t seem to mind.
“Anything else?” He asked, glancing down at him from the corner of his eye as he rested his head against the claw machine with a thunk.
Just you.
“Hatrack never beat me at Dance Dance Revolution after all,” Dazai said instead, voice cheeky.
Seeing Chuuya’s dim blue eye twinkle just a little with a smile, a poor facsimile of what it used to be, he exhaled, grinning.
“Not my fault you got stupidly long legs,” Chuuya defended, and found himself repeating the phrase he used to say so much when he was younger, memories flowing through him like water in a creek. “I’m still growing, y’know.”
Dazai laughed, a bloody cough jolting him soon after.
Eyebrows creasing, Chuuya took one look at Dazai before glancing up at the ferris wheel standing motionless in front of them, strings of damaged and broken lights hanging from it like a torn up birthday banner overstaying its welcome in an abandoned home, long forgotten.
They didn’t have much time left.
Intertwining their fingers to give one more squeeze, Chuuya dropped Dazai's hand, gathering his shirt and holding him upright in what was now a familiar process. Biting his lip to suppress a groan, he activated his ability, slowly standing up in the process.
Dazai looked at him dazedly, and despite it all, he looked so endearing with the cat ears that it had Chuuya biting back a smile.
“Come on, shitty Dazai, we need to get up there,” He reminded him, and Dazai blinked slowly, as if he’d forgotten about the ferris wheel entirely. He nodded his head.
The dark blue of the evening was disrupted by Tainted’s red as they moved, a soft breeze bringing momentary relief to them both. A few flyers got tugged along with the wind, breaking the quiet of the park.
Propping Dazai on the ground next to the ticket booth, Chuuya considered the wheel. It looked run down and shabby with disuse and rust, and had definitely seen better days, but he could make it work. It didn’t look like it was going to collapse anytime soon, and that was good enough.
Still, with a light trepidation in his wobbling steps, Chuuya wrapped his hand around the outermost metal rim of the wheel, and with whatever strength that remained in him, gave it as forceful a push as he could muster.
The ferris wheel creaked loudly as it began to spin, the sound grating, like bones cracking after a long lack of movement. In the inky darkness of the amusement park, it glowed red like a beacon.
Flakes of rust fell down from above, orange-brown snow in the middle of spring just for the two of them. The dangling lights clinked against the moving structure, a lone yellow bulb lighting up dimly near the top.
Or maybe that was Chuuya’s imagination. His one eye couldn’t see that well anymore. Everything had begun to blur, turning hazy.
With the ferris wheel spinning, Chuuya turned back towards Dazai. The latter was struggling to keep his eyes open, black pupils shrivelling up.
“Come on, we’re almost there,” Chuuya whispered against his partner’s ear, grasping him by his shirt to retain use of his ability.
For the last time, Nakahara Chuuya defied gravity as he glimmered red.
Holding the love of his life just out of touch, he touched down in the topmost seat of the ferris wheel, the box swaying as they stepped in.
Chuuya settled them both on the same side, hand quivering as lets go of Dazai’s shirt. With a tremor, he folded his knees towards his chest, leaning against Dazai’s. Clasping his hand in the other’s, he finally closed his eye.
With the last of his strength, Dazai took control of his numbed fingers, giving his partner’s hand one final squeeze.
“Chuuya,” He breathed out, like a prayer answered, taking in the sight of the boy laying on his chest, the boy he was lucky enough to be next to.
Dazai had always known his death would be pitiless, a cruel end to a cruel life.
But what he never would’ve even dared to dream of, and what had now come true, was that he wouldn’t be alone in it.
“Dazai,” Chuuya whispered, his name a promise on his lips.
Breathing in the scent of blood and dust and Chuuya, always Chuuya, Dazai rested his eyes, settling his weary head on top of the boy he loved, and who loved him in turn.