Everything or Nothing

I want it to be you

It's the night before Chuuya's flight back home—and Dazai will be going back to his father's house in the morning as well, so...

It's a weird day.

Dazai is actually stunned that he made it through his first semester—and that he received high marks on all of his exams—(Chuuya did ask for that as payment, after all.) Which means, this might be the first Christmas in years where his father isn't going to be at his throat. And Atsushi is going to be home, along with Oda...He might actually enjoy the holidays this year.

He's stopped in the middle of packing when Chuuya steps inside, shrugging out of his coat and unwinding his scarf. But there's something weird about the look on his face, something that Dazai can't quite place.

He seems nervous, but...resigned.

"...Before I make a snarky joke about the hat, did something happen?"

Instead of deigning that with a response, Chuuya pulls the beanie off, tossing it aside. He's been hyping himself up to this all day, really for the past two days, and he isn't backing out of his plan now.

So, he just has to get through the hard part. "I..." Chuuya takes a deep breath, "I need to ask you something."

"...if it's about that idol concert in Shibuya you and Yuan were ranting about trying to sneak into, I don't actually know anyone who can get you counterfeit tickets, okay—?"

"I'm being serious." Chuuya mutters, fighting the urge to look away, or to cross his arms over his chest.

"...Okay," Dazai's expression quickly turns serious, the way he really is only willing to do for Chuuya—and that in itself is a pretty recent change of heart. "What?"

Just say it. Chuuya's brain is encouraging him while he takes slow breaths, making every effort to stay as calm as possible. "You don't date—ever, that's what you told Yuan, right?"

Suddenly Dazai is both excited, intrigued, and terrified by where the conversation is going, and he can't decide which emotion is dominant over the others. "I don't."

"So..." Chuuya taps his foot against the floor, gritting his teeth as he forces himself to get over it and just spit it out. "You wouldn't want to date me, right?"

Dazai feels like he's being ambushed. He knows that isn't the intention, but his jaw is hanging loose, and for the first time in his life, he has no idea what to say.

"...Did someone say I wanted to date you?" It's such a high school kind of answer, but Dazai kind of feels like a high schooler right now, reduced to clammy palms and stuttering heartbeats.

"No." Chuuya mutters, glancing away. "I mean, I know you don't, I'm just double checking to make sure before I—"

Dazai is flustered and thrown off by the whole thing, and he barely sounds coherent when he asks, "Why would you need to double check something like that?"

"...Because," Chuuya takes another deep breath, and Dazai doesn't really know what he was expecting. He couldn't have been expecting anything, because nothing about this was foreseeable, but—

"I've not had the best luck figuring out the whole dating thing this semester, and..." Chuuya almost chickens out, but...he doesn't. "I want you to be my first."

Dazai's brain isn't working.

No. There's no way.

And even if that did actually just happen, he would be an awful fucking person for going along with it, because he knows that he actually likes Chuuya, and—