Everything or Nothing
CatacylsmicEvents
Chapter 21: What's behind door number three?
Notes:
you can find me on twitter at @cataclysmiceve1 !
Dazai has two options before him. The first: taking it like a man, and calmly listening as the one good thing in his life tells him that he doesn't actually want to be with them and that Dazai has taken Chuuya's reciprocation of his feelings for granted this entire time—
Or, Dazai can take a leaf out of his father's book and do what he does best.
"You know what?" He grabs Chuuya's arm a little tighter, tugging him towards the nearest entrance to the underground. "I know what we can do."
He can use money to avoid his problems.
And, to Chuuya's credit, he actually is trying to tell him. "But Dazai, I—"
"You've heard of Harrod's, right?"
His friend is suddenly determined not to hear it. Every single time Chuuya tries to broach the subject on the ride over, Dazai smoothly changes the subject, finds some reason that he has to stop and look something up on his phone—or he outright talks over him, and Chuuya's determination to finally just say it is waning with every single pointed instance of Dazai shutting him down. And Chuuya doesn't even understand why he's doing it, but it's making him crazy, because it's already hard enough for him to try to do this when the brunette isn't actively sabotaging his attempts just finally clearing his chest.
And then, when they finally reach their destination, Dazai spends the afternoon distracting Chuuya by having him try on the most expensive items in the store—and not telling Chuuya how much they actually cost until he's already wearing them, and, just by sheer example, at one point when Chuuya is looking at a dress shirt in the mirror, examining the glimmering sheen to the fabric, he asks, "How do the make it look like that?"
To which Dazai comments, sipping a glass of complimentary champagne, "Diamonds."
Not knowing that he almost legitimately gives Chuuya a heart attack right then and there. “What?!" He stiffens, like if he moves, the shirt is going to somehow shred off of his body, and he'll be sent to debtor's prison or something until he can work off the debt. "How much does this thing cost?"
"Around thirty thousand?"
"...Yen?"
"Pounds."
"Oh my GOD—"
"It looks good on you—"
"There are people who live on less than two dollars a DAY, why does anyone need a THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLAR SHIRT?"
"I didn't say I condone it—" Dazai shrugs, relieved that Chuuya finally seems distracted from whatever he was trying to say earlier, and he thinks he's averted disaster.
But he hasn't.
Because the night doesn't actually go downhill at that point, that comes later.
And not in a way that either one of them one have expected.
Chuuya finally gets to the point where he decides that he's just going to yank out his bracelet and shove it in Dazai's face, like a burning scarlet letter, to declare that he's a horrible, lying, short, physically frail person who has been deceiving Dazai about his health for months—
But when he reaches into his pants, he feels like the stupidest human being on the planet, because—he wore leggings today.
With no pockets.
He doesn't have the bracelet, it's back at the hotel.
Fuck.
And then, comes the first domino in a long chain of events—because when Chuuya is about to mention that he forgot something in the room and he wants to go back, Dazai mentions, "It's getting pretty late—" Chuuya nods, assuming they're on the same page, "—want to get a drink before we head back?"
