Life is like a roller coaster, and death is the great equalizer— one a simile and another a metaphor, just like one is uncertain and the other is cold truth.

Just like the body before Chuuya now, and the rest in the freezers below.

Just like the way he couldn't hold down a clinical job, the way the rest of his year mates successfully have, and he only jumped at the chance to specialize in something when Dazai had made the offer.

Slimy-ass mackerel. Just because he'd successfully nailed both med school and law school, it doesn't give him the damn right to shove that enviable fact into Chuuya's face, application forms and all.

The fact that he'd filled out those same forms and turned them in the very next day made his ears burn, but he'd needed the money then, and something to do with his time and skill.

He'd always wanted to do surgery, anyway. This is close enough.

The law school thing, he'll consider later. After this last autopsy, maybe, over dinner and drinks with Dazai tonight. Then sex to destress. Yeah.

A beleaguered sigh; gotta carry on.

He picks up the scalpel.

"So, about Dazai-senpai..."

Chuuya's ears perk up at the sound of his neighbor's name. He'd always known law students are horrible gossips, but not to this extent.

"He's honestly so brilliant," Tanizaki gushes. "Not as much as Onii-sama, of course, but med and law? That's tough!"

"I can imagine," concurs Nakajima. "Dazai-san tutored me on the Med Juris module last month. He was so patient and gentle."

"I know, right?"

Chuuya immediately tunes out the rest of the chatter, going back to his case digests. Gentle has been the best word, by far. Others had called Dazai 'painfully shy', even.

It makes him want to scoff in disbelief. That proud bastard, shy?

Fortunately, none of them have ever so much as presumed familiarity with Dazai— not within earshot, at least. These children know nothing at all, the way they don't know his arsenal of childish insults, the daring words purred into his ear as he divests them both of their clothes, putting to use that well-trained tongue for a different purpose altogether.

Those many times Dazai had sucked him off to oblivion have stayed with Chuuya, even after he moved out. "Reasons," he said.

They don't yet know the sterile antechamber, the acrid fumes, the stench. How a body returns to nature, down to the very last cell, and how, with it, justice is lost forever, just like how a life is lost forever.

How Dazai ran away from it all— from him.

How much it hurt after.

All these, too, have stayed with Chuuya for far longer than he would have wanted, like a whole other set of nightmares apart from the ones numbed by alcohol after closing every case. ("Sanitize always.")

The children have moved on to a different topic. Good.

He hasn't.

He can't.

Chuuya easily forgives them the misconception they accorded Dazai— they are only children, after all, and they know nothing.

The mackerel himself's a whole different story, however. 'Painfully shy,' his ass.

Just a coward who broke his heart and ran away.

It was hardly gentle at all.

They meet again after five years, at an out-of-court settlement, of all things.

(That's a half-truth— they've crossed paths almost daily even after they broke up. They still live on the same floor, after all.

The additional burden of hurt was Chuuya's choice. Dazai was fine.)

Their paths have diverged since— one worked his way to the top, the other worked to find his place.

Once upon a time, one was Dazai and the other was Chuuya.

Now, he's not so sure anymore.

Dazai is soft spoken as he walks his client through the paperwork, Chuuya doing the same for his own. The look in his eyes had never been so uncertain before, as if his life had flashed before them and he just... broke.

The proceeding ends uneventfully, and they shake hands.

They had never been so cold, hard and dead .

"Awfully shy, wasn't he," someone— whoever, whispers an afterthought. "He'd have made it big if he were more assertive."

Chuuya snaps.

Dazai is neither an afterthought nor in past tense.

He doesn't remember what happened after that.

Chuuya wakes up in a familiar room, to a familiar face.

"Neurocirculatory asthenia," is the first thing Dazai properly says to him, monotone and clinical.

They've both hated that wastebasket diagnosis, only given after everything else has been ruled out. "Glad to see you, too, Doc."

"Just 'Attorney' will do... is what I'd like to say, but I've just renewed my medical license, so yeah, glad to see you, too, Nakahara-san."

So he says, but Chuuya doesn't miss the way Dazai's lips almost form the beginning of his given name, the way they love to whenever they sometimes meet to fuck. All to destress, nothing more.

The old bottle of luminol on the nightstand catches his eye. "You still keep that around?"

Dazai chuckles. ("Painfully shy.") "Just a little KonMari-ing. Got a little sentimental."

The smell of the fingerprint powder that had come with it also lingers in the air. Chuuya laughs.

He's always known he's got it bad, ever since the day they were assigned as lab partners in Chem 1. He'd never expected it to last for a good fifteen years, however.

And from the traces of a smile beginning to form on Dazai's lips, Chuuya suspects the same of him, as well.

Maybe those people are right— Dazai's being awfully shy about it, and it's hilariously cute, for some reason.

No matter; he is the more assertive between them both, after all.

He asks Dazai out on a date.

They have a wonderful time.

They text each other more often, now— upon waking up, between downtimes on the job, over dinner.

Chuuya often takes long to respond between them both— he recently shifted his practice to criminal law, which keeps him in his office for far longer than is physiologic.

Autopsies and live evidence become fine print on recycled paper, yet he still pictures everything in his mind as if he knows them firsthand. He's always had a better aptitude for visual-spatial things between them both.

It also makes the nightmares even more vivid and real.

The alcohol helps, but just a little.

"No more for you," Dazai gently wrestles the shot glass from Chuuya's weak grip. "Your last ALT was pretty high."

The liver ultrasound was also pretty alarming. "Don't care... Wanna be numb."

Dazai's hurt— good . They've switched roles now.

Chuuya had been patient then, saint-like in enduring Dazai's tantrums and meltdowns throughout med school and law school, and a little beyond that. There have been arguments, but nothing they didn't weather together.

Like all things, though, they had a breaking point— and an end.

Chuuya was the one who moved out; Dazai was the one who ran away. They still live in the same building, though, so really, they're just fooling themselves.

He knows all this, but still.

An intoxicated grin— he relishes his power to heal, but even more so, his power to hurt .

Dazai considers the shot glass for a while, before downing its contents himself. He nearly chokes on the smell, strong enough to disinfect an entire workstation, and then some. "That was horrible."

And he probably means it more than literally, so Chuuya only nods weakly in agreement.

"Remember all those times you tried to get me to stop? You'd show me our old liver path slides, and I wouldn't bat an eyelid."

It was the patho module they'd both scored the highest in back then— not that it successfully kicked the habit.

Seeing Dazai now, though, more alert and sober, eyes clearer and brighter than his life before had ever been, makes Chuuya want to scream in envy. But he's numb right now, and every small movement hurts.

He feels himself being cradled on a clothed lap. "You've changed, slug."

A scoff, this time. "No thanks to you, mackerel."

"I know."

Tonight's encounter is no different from the rest, few and far in between as they've lately been.

Chuuya is inebriated in a different way, inhaling hospital-grade antiseptic as he peppers kisses down Dazai's bandaged neck. He knows of the faint marks underneath, of haphazardly-opened scalpel blades from his bag that had him scream in fright and upend the entire house, in hopes that he was wrong.

Fortunately, he was— nothing a body's natural hemostasis couldn't fix, thankfully, but the cuts in both their hearts never healed, with ugly scars to show for it.

"Why are we doing this again?" It's Dazai who asks this time; never has an encounter between them passed without one of them saying it. They both realize the pointlessness of it all— of fooling themselves in this manner, but they are afraid of voicing it out, for fear of breaking the spell.

Their sex is clinical, formulaic in progression and satisfactory in outcome. It's a physical need for them both, a way to destress, and nothing more.

That had been easier to believe when they were still broken up, when boundaries were in place and strings were not attached.

Now, however, the question stops Chuuya short, tensed limbs on all-fours as he stops mid-thrust, and he wonders—

— since when did he start caring again?

"What's wrong?" Dazai's glossed-over irises are marred with mild disappointment, but he smiles anyway.

("— patient and gentle.")

The last time he let himself cry was when he moved out.

Fresh tears stain the bandages on Dazai's chest, and Chuuya hears himself babbling; nothing's registering anymore.

Regression, the opposite of progression.

Dazai rolls them over, gently breaking his fall— and the spell.

He adds a slow kiss to that, for extra measure.

It's the first time they've ended abruptly like this, like a test unfinished, a case not closed.

Like life itself, uncertain in everything except the fact that it goes on .

Like them, at the precipice between strangers and lovers, knowing not so much how they mean to each other except the fact that they do .

"Sorry," Chuuya says much later, chin hooked over Dazai's shoulder as they hold each other in mournful silence.

"For what?" Dazai asks, long fingers digging into pressure points on his back, slowly releasing the tension from their unfinished encounter. Chuuya attempts to mirror Dazai's actions to return the favor, but this only elicits a laugh.

"Sorry," he repeats again, blushing.

"I know." Dazai releases a hand and musses Chuuya's hair. "And you'll do better. You always have."

("I've always admired that about you.")

He chants another spell, like a routine prescription: "Sleep, for now. I'm here."

It takes effect almost immediately.

They find their way back to each other, even if they have to blindly grope around and hold onto things they fear to do it.

Dazai surprises him at his office with flowers and dinner. Chuuya is even more so— he had to pass through the old crime lab to get there. (Sterile, acrid—)

His hands are still sweaty and shaking as he puts the bags down in the back room, warm and homey and safe .

Chuuya holds onto them until they stop trembling.

Dinner is a subdued affair— not quiet, because quiet means peaceful, and Chuuya's day was anything but.

Dazai came to comfort.

"We lost."

"I heard."

"I let them get away."

"It happens."

A click and a pop, then a low fizz— make that two. (This talk had happened before, in a different office, many years ago.

There are no tears this time. They are both way past the age for that— no longer young, no longer hopeful.)

What a sorry pair they make.

One "shy" and the other "cynical"— both falsehoods, but what do they know?

The truth is all they have going for them— for how long, now, have they denied themselves that?

Dazai finishes his beer first. "There's a lot of bad energy in this office."

Chuuya likewise puts his can away. "Very unscientific," he scoffs.

"But you don't deny it."

No, he indeed doesn't.

He lets himself lean back as Dazai bends him over his own desk, swiftly closing the distance between them. The scent of musk and beer and the pollution from outside overtakes all of Chuuya's senses, and he eagerly kisses back, letting himself forget the pain and grief and loss and this job, even if only for a night.

Dazai, on the other hand, sheds his shyness with the rest of their clothes, and they finish what they've started many weeks ago.

The moment they both come is a moment of victory, and they let themselves bask in that, sticky bodies and sore muscles notwithstanding.

"You're cleaning this up," Chuuya says in between pants, wide grin as languid as a stray cat's.

"This is your office," Dazai shoots back. He doesn't say no, though.

It's a belated christening of sorts, each stain a new sign of life in a space that is witness to only death.

In the end, they don't bother to clean up so much anymore; it was a good memory, after all, and this time won't be the last.

Brutal, horrifying, sensational .

Chuuya finds out about the case on the news before the crime lab even calls him.

He's about to head out to the scene when he bumps into Dazai, all grim and worried and suited up. "I'm going with you."

A laugh to diffuse the tension: "What, they called you, too?"

Dazai doesn't answer.

The silence is very alarming.

They arrive much sooner than expected, to everyone's surprise— and to Chuuya's heartbreak, as Dazai kneels before the bloodied and broken young man there, introducing himself as his legal counsel.

He turns away at once. Inhale, exhale.

No betrayal has happened— it's part of the job.

Chuuya ties his hair back and puts on his gloves, murmuring a mantra that belongs to them alone: "Don't lose your way."

His eyes meet Dazai's one last time, and they both get to work.

The case lasted for all of a year, but to Chuuya, it felt much longer than that.

Despite being on opposite sides of the courtroom, they considered themselves partners of sorts, with the common goal of getting to the bottom of it all, for fairness and for justice.

For the memory of the woman who rests in this grave, silently awaiting the final decision tomorrow, along with the rest of the nation in bated breath.

For peace of mind.

"It's my first time here," Dazai murmurs, hands folded in prayer. A gentle wind blows across, as if in reply.

"What brought this on?" Chuuya asks. He's never been religious, but he does say a short prayer before every autopsy— more for himself than for the dead, really. Visiting them later had never occurred to him until Dazai suggested it.

He gets a shrug in reply. "Reasons."

Strong or flimsy, depending on what one makes of it.

Like life itself, uncertain and finite, ending without warning, to much grief.

Like death, too, bleak and sorrowful, but also peaceful— the last one inconceivable, until now.

Like them both, who know these two opposites well, both clinically and legally, and have straddled both extremes, holding out the best they can by holding onto each other once more.

They have muddled through things for so long, now— a cycle of understanding and not understanding for sixteen years, now, that has come full circle tonight, save for one final question:

"A second chance?"

One blinks at the question, and the other smirks. "No matter what happens tomorrow."

"Even after everything?"

"Despite everything."

They share a quiet laugh after that.

The city below is shining from where they are, but the stars are nearer than ever, and it's all they need.

One of them steals a kiss. "No objections to that."

The other kisses back. "Duly noted."