Twelve years was a long time to spend not being friends with someone.

That’s what Chuuya always thought when people asked—though no one asked anymore. Not after the punches. Not after the names. Not after the years of walking home together, curled up on the same beanbag in the garage, stealing each other’s hoodies like it meant nothing. Like they didn’t notice how every stolen item felt like a piece of the other person they weren’t ready to admit they wanted to keep.

They’d known each other since they were six. Now seventeen, on the brink of graduating high school, and still clinging to a bond no one—not even themselves—could name.

They weren’t friends. They weren’t enemies. They weren’t lovers, though people had dared to call them that once. Chuuya made sure that stopped. With his fists. Dazai helped, using his words like knives. After that, no one really knew what to call them. So they stopped trying.

It didn’t help that Dazai lived in a house where silence came from more than just emptiness. His father was there in body, sure, but barely present in any way that counted. Chuuya knew Dazai’s smiles were sharper when he was hurting, knew the way his jokes curled at the edges when he hadn’t slept. He could recognize the exact pitch of Dazai’s laugh when it was covering something darker.

But Chuuya wasn’t any better.

He smiled with his teeth. Held himself together with pride, rage, and the kind of stubbornness that scraped his throat raw. His stepmother said Dazai was the reason he was acting out. That Dazai was a bad influence. Chuuya almost laughed at that. As if he hadn’t already been unraveling before Dazai ever taught him how to pickpocket candy bars or hotwire a scooter. He was chaos with a temper and a bleeding heart he’d rather burn than admit existed. Dazai just made it easier to let the chaos breathe.

They stole for fun. Not because they needed to, but because it felt like control. Something they could take, when so many other things were out of reach.

Their garage—Chuuya’s garage—had become something like sacred ground. Messy, patched together, lived-in. Beanbags, old blankets, a printer that never worked, a cracked TV, and Polaroids stuck to the wall—mostly of Chuuya, because Dazai had this quiet obsession with capturing him in every mood, every angle. Dazai slept there more than he did at home. Sometimes they’d crash on the floor together, a tangle of limbs and quiet breaths. Other times they’d just sit, watching reruns and pretending their thoughts weren’t loud.

They never talked about the bad days. Not directly. Not about the nights Dazai disappeared. Not about the mornings Chuuya showed up to school still buzzing with leftover fury or hollow silence. But they knew. They always knew.

They chased off each other’s crushes like it was a joke. Girls came and went, confused and half-annoyed, because Dazai always showed up, leaning too close, arms draped too easily over Chuuya’s shoulder. And Chuuya would glare down anyone who so much as looked at Dazai the wrong way. It wasn’t possessive. Or maybe it was. They just told themselves the other was being annoying and moved on—usually with a string of insults or a passive-aggressive hoodie theft.

They didn’t cuddle. They ended up cuddling. In the garage, on the grass behind the school, under the tree where the light hit just right. Heads in laps, fingers brushing, warmth that lingered a little too long.

People stopped asking if they were together. Not because they were convinced they weren’t—but because it was too obvious that Chuuya and Dazai had something neither of them would admit. And because no one could figure out how two people could orbit each other so tightly and still insist there was nothing there.

They weren’t just “not straight.” They were them. Screwed up. Co-dependent. Terrible at emotions. And pretending they weren’t already halfway in love with each other.

Maybe someday they'd admit it.

But for now, they’d just keep pretending the other was an asshole.

And maybe that was easier than facing the truth.