Clandestine

A life from the movies

By the next day, almost all of Chuuya's friends knew about what had occurred that night. Tachihara, Fyodor, and Dazai found out when Chuuya stretched the next day, after a good rest; his shirt lifted to see dark bruises all over his back and most prominently, his hips.

Despite Dazai (for once) not asking about the details Chuuya still told him all about it, who listened but didn't enquire about anything, unlike all the other times. The only questions he asked were about everything but the sex, which Chuuya either couldn't remember or didn't care about.

He'd gotten drunk and smoked, nothing new or as spectacular as sex.

The only thing he said that stuck out to Chuuya was "You broke your promise," Dazai's voice was soft. Disappointed.

"What promise?"

"That we'd smoke weed together the first time."

Chuuya shrugged, not seeing the big deal but still deeming it important enough to apologise, "Yeah true. I'm sorry, but it wouldn't have been fun if I'd declined."

Dazai decided to end that conversation there.

The party life didn't stop for Chuuya after his first one, they were the places to be, and the world outside just seemed not to exist anymore, he felt free and wild and when he took a step back to look at his life, he found these moments of feeling everything a nothing were some of the best.

Even once school had started and both Dazai and Chuuya and all their friends had begun their courses, Chuuya found that he wasn't as excited or intrigued by it as he had once been, all of them were so enthusiastic, constantly conversing about what they did or what they were assigned, even Yosano, who was clearly going to struggle the most, said that she enjoyed everything, but Chuuya? He found he didn't really care, his mind was on another party, and more... time... with Shirase.

Who cared about literature, or grades? That shit was lame.

In the space of two weeks Chuuya had gone to 5 parties, and had sex multiple times at all of them, at this point his dates with Shirase were these godforsaken parties.

He'd turned down multiple invites from his friends to go, from Atsushi who wanted to go to Starbucks so he could get a latte, Akutagawa who wanted to study with him in the library, Yosano who wanted to go Shopping and even Dazai who just wanted to go the skatepark again.

"I can't, not tonight."

Dazai sighed and looked at him "Then what was the point of coming here, just to tell me you're going to another party, I don't want to know if you are."

"I'm not actually, I'm only going to Shirase's to smoke some weed."

"So what? Doesn't require you to walk here," Dazai bit back, folding his arms but then immediately relaxed as he gazed at Chuuya's surprised expression. "Look, go to all the parties you want, you don't need to come here and tell me every time, quite frankly I don't want to know, not with the context of what you do. I don't need, as your best friend, the image of you getting fucked, drunk and high."

Chuuya scratched the back of his neck "You're not mad, are you?"

"I'm mad that your whole life revolves around those parties but it's fine, doesn't matter much," Dazai sounded indifferent but Chuuya knew he was hurt, so he tried to make amends, terribly.

"Do you...maybe want to come to one? It'll be like old times."

Dazai almost scoffed at it "Don't kid yourself Chuuya. You'd leave me there to run off and have sex with Shirase, this is nothing like old times. We are nothing like old times," he muttered bitterly, looking away at nothing in particular.