Chapter Text
Dazai wakes up, his vision still spotty.
“Chuuya?” he whispers, forcing himself into a sitting position.
He feels slightly better than he did earlier before he drank the water, but his jaw is still swelling. His whole face feels kind of tender, and he winces as he puts two fingers against it. Chuuya is still on the ground where Dazai left him. So Dazai crawls over as quickly as he can.
“Come on, Chuuya. You gotta get up. I don’t have the strength to get out of here on my own. We are not dying in some random man’s basement,” Dazai says past the odd feeling in his mouth.
His chest clenches when Chuuya doesn’t move.
“Chuuya, stop being an idiot, and wake up.”
Dazai slaps Chuuya, knocking his head to the side. Though it does make Chuuya’s eyes crack open.
“Hnghm.”
Dazai grabs Chuuya’s chin, forcing his face towards Dazai’s.
“You have to get up.”
Chuuya’s fever glazed eyes wander past Dazai, trying to focus on something, anything. Dazai lets go of Chuuya, and his face falls to the side. His hair falls across his eyes, which are only about half open.
“Ok, this is fine. I have a little more strength now. I can get up the stairs. Chuuya, listen to me, do you have anything I can pick the lock with? I think if I drink some more water than maybe I can steady my hands enough to pick the lock. Chuuya!”
Chuuya’s hand drifts up to his face, even though Dazai has no idea if the motion means he’s listening, or if it’s just reflexive. He almost pokes himself in the eye, barely missing it, and his hand rests on the ground by his eye. Dazai squints at him.
“You’re no help.”
He grabs one of the water bottles, and starts drinking it slowly so he doesn’t make himself throw up. Chuuya exhales harshly, not quite a cough, but something close.
“You are not allowed to die,” Dazai mutters, glaring half-heartedly at Chuuya.
Despite the fact that his anger is coming from a place of worry, he’s still lashing out. He’s half aware of it, but somehow this feels better than the inevitable loss that’s to follow if something doesn’t change soon. He sniffles before focusing back on the water. Finally he pushes himself up, glancing back at Chuuya one last time. Dazai heads back up the stairs, fiddling with the door. It doesn’t take long for him to decide that he can’t get it open. So he ends up settling down next to Chuuya. He checks Chuuya’s pulse and breathing before letting his hand rest flat on Chuuya’s chest.
“Don’t want you to stop breathing right now. That would be a bummer,” Dazai whispers, eyes roaming Chuuya’s face as though he’ll find something there. “You’re really going to hate me for this, but I have to check your wound again soon.”
Chuuya doesn’t respond, and Dazai sighs.
“Nothing, really? You’re going to have to respond to me at some point.”
He pointedly ignores how shallow Chuuya’s breathing is, and how unlikely it is for him to respond to anything Dazai says. Chuuya’s breathing stutters, and Dazai’s eyes are drawn back to him immediately. He smacks Chuuya’s face lightly.
“Hey, that’s not funny.”
He grabs Chuuya’s face, tipping it forward, and pulling open one of his eyelids. Dazai lets Chuuya’s head drop, something in Chuuya’s hair catching his eye. It’s on the side that Chuuya was laying on earlier, hiding it from view.
“Son of a bitch, you had bobby pins in your hair? What the hell, man? You could have told me,” Dazai mutters, deftly pulling the two crossed bobby pins out of Chuuya’s hair.
Chuuya’s frizzy hair immediately falls onto his face. Dazai forces himself to his feet, taking a second to get his bearings.
“Don’t stop breathing while I’m gone,” he says before heading up the stairs.
With one of the pins, he makes quick work of the door. The door creaks quietly as Dazai opens it. The hallway beyond is not as worn-out as the basement. The house itself looked big earlier from the outside, so Dazai knows he might have a hard time finding the man that locked them in there.
What was his name again? I don’t know, but I guess it doesn’t really matter in the long run. I’m going to kill him, or knock him out depending on how generous I’m feeling. Then I’ll have to find my phone so I can call Mori. Maybe this guy will have a phone, or have kept ours.
Dazai creeps through the hallway towards the big room at the end. He can hear someone talking as he gets close. The voice is raspy and sounds angry, but Dazai can’t tell what he’s actually saying. He seems to be speaking broken Japanese, and as he creeps closer, Dazai can tell that he’s talking to himself. He’s talking about him and Chuuya. The man looks at the wall with narrowed eyes as Dazai watches him. He slips into the room, and behind the man. He turns around in just enough time to catch Dazai’s fist with his face. He drops like a sack of rocks, and Dazai pulls his hand back.
“Ow, that hurt,” he mutters, rubbing his knuckles.
He starts looking around for any kind of phone as soon as he gets over his bruising knuckles. He finds Chuuya’s phone first since Chuuya’s backpack is on the couch with his ID and driver’s license on the table. It looks like he was checking over them. Dazai punches in Chuuya’s password, his brain short circuiting when he realizes that the lock screen said the date was four days later than when they got there. He clicks on Chuuya’s contact list, and calls Mori.
“Chuuya, what the hell? You just disappeared. I gave you a job, and you better have a damn good reason for not coming back with what I asked for.”
“Wow, do you talk to Chuuya like that all the time?” Dazai asks, raising one eyebrow.
“Dazai? What are you two doing? Where is Chuuya?”
“I think Chuuya’s dying in the basement, but what can I say? I have no idea what we’ve been doing other than slowly dying over the last four days. Why didn’t you tell us that the last dude was completely insane? Why did no one come to get us? Chuuya has some kind of infection, because that bastard stabbed him as soon as we showed up. The knife was poisoned, or drugged, or something. He passed out, and then I got drugged.”
“Wait, you’re still at Clint’s?”
“Yeah, if that’s his name. Where did you think we went?”
“I’ll send someone to pick you up right now. We called him, and asked him if you ever made it to his house, and he said no.”
“Well, from the looks of it, Chuuya’s car is still outside, and he’s been looking over our IDs. I swear if he kept us in his basement for a stupid reason, I’m going to torture him to death slowly.”
“He’s not dead?”
“No, not yet. I hurt my hand punching him, so I didn’t feel like killing him anymore. You should hurry though, because Chuuya’s breathing was not too good when I left him. That’s where I’m heading after I find something to tie this guy up with. I’m going to keep an eye on him until you get here, make sure he doesn’t die. Anything you want to tell me, or anything I can do for Chuuya before I get off the phone?”
“It would be better if you could stay on the phone until you do the examination.”
“I don’t think there’ll be a signal down there, and I can’t move him. I know that much. I can tell you what I saw earlier, and we’ll see if the connection will hold. He was running a fever, and his pulse was racing. His leg was black and blue, and he had some kind of red blisters. His hip and leg were red farther away from the actual wound.”
“Ok, it sounds like you need to clean it out really well. Use something like compression bandages to help blood flow, or stop bleeding. He’s probably not bleeding right now, but cleaning it will make it bleed again. See if you can find a first aid kit before you head down there. The nearest person that I have is half an hour out. So you just gotta make sure he’s alive by then. We’ll figure everything else out. All you have to do is wait with him after that.”
“Ok, I can do that,” Dazai says, his voice tight.
He looks around, and ends up finding zip ties and the first aid kit in the kitchen.
“Why does he have zip ties in his kitchen?” Dazai mutters, jogging back to the living room.
Dazai’s head pounds at the quick movements, but he decides to just ignore it since a headache is the least of his worries right now.
“Alright, we’re heading down to the basement now,” Dazai says, approaching the stairs.
His heart starts to pound a little harder, and anxiety threatens to choke him. He slowly descends the steps anyway. Chuuya is still on the floor at the bottom. His face is redder than it was when Dazai left, but Dazai can hear him wheezing from half-way down the stairs.
“Mori, you still there?”
There’s no noise from the other end, so Dazai hangs up before hurrying down the last few steps.
“Hey, Chuuya, I’m back. I’m-”
Dazai stumbles into the wall, his vision spinning for a few seconds before settling back down.
“Woah, I forgot that I’m still dehydrated and all that jazz.”
He drops down next to Chuuya. He puts two fingers against Chuuya’s throat, holding his own breath as he counts Chuuya’s heartbeat. Once he makes a mental note of the number, he exposes the wound again.
“I thought we were going to die in someone’s basement. You’re not allowed to die, ok? Mori is sending someone, and they should be here in fifteen minutes. You’re gonna be fine, alright?”
Dazai starts cleaning out the wound again, eliciting a moan from Chuuya.
“That’s good. At least you’re still responding, huh?”
He reaches out, and taps Chuuya’s face with one hand, keeping Chuuya’s leg in place with the other. Chuuya’s eyes flutter, but he doesn’t actually open them.
“That’s fine. You can wake up when you’re ready, Princess.”
He wraps Chuuya’s leg up when he’s done, and then he carefully clips Chuuya’s hair back again.
“There, now your stupid hair isn’t going to get in Mori’s way.”
Dazai sits frozen until he hears the door open upstairs. Normally he’d be on high alert, but he knows that he can’t do anything if it isn’t Mori’s people. At this point, he’d be defenseless from everything. So he just sits there, his hand wrapped tightly around Chuuya’s wrist. However, he immediately recognizes the man that runs down the stairs.
“Hirotsu?”
“Dazai. The medical team is right behind me. Are you hurt?”
“Somewhat, but it’s not that bad. I’m mostly just dehydrated.”
Hirotsu nods, and walks over. Dazai pulls himself back, trying to stay out of Hirotsu’s way. It only gets more chaotic as the medical team arrives. Chuuya is taken away immediately, whisked away to a hospital. Dazai is slower to get up. He’s grilled about his injuries, and what happened since they got there. He doesn’t worry too much about it though, and just answers the questions to the best of his ability. He’s taken to the nearest mafia hospital too, and he finds himself falling asleep before they even get there. He wakes up feeling a lot better. It’s only a few minutes after he first wakes up when Mori walks in. He doesn’t look happy, but does he really ever?
“Dazai, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. What happened?”
“You and Chuuya were transported to a hospital while Hirotsu transported Clint to a nearby holding facility. Apparently Clint was convinced that you were far too young to be high enough members to be at his house. He thought you were impersonating the people that were actually supposed to be there.”
“How’s Chuuya?”
“He’s alive. He developed necrosis through the wound on his leg. He had to have surgery, and lost a good bit of his leg though they were able to save the limb itself. He’s still pretty sick as of right now, so he’s in the ICU. They think he’ll make a full recovery.”
“Of course he will, he’s too stubborn for anything else. It’s annoying.”
“Yeah, sure it is. You can see him once you’re cleared to leave your room. We don’t want you fainting anywhere.”
Dazai narrows his eyes, folding his arms.
“Don’t pout. You were severely dehydrated.”
Dazai nods, but doesn’t unfold his arms.
“Alright, just take it easy for now.”
Mori walks out, and Dazai immediately stands up. He carefully detaches the IV, and covers the spot. He waits for just a few minutes before sneaking out of his room. He sneaks to the ICU, and finds Chuuya’s room easily. He has a breathing tube down his throat, and his leg is heavily bandaged. He’s breathing though, and his heart rate seems at least somewhat normal. He’s still running a fever, but his face is a pretty normal color.
“Well you look better,” Dazai mutters, walking over. He checks Chuuya over with a critical eye, looking for anything that Mori might have lied about. “Yeah, you’ll be fine. Till then, I’ll be here,” he says, sitting down.