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"I’m not a doctor, Dazai." Oda’s tone is as reticent as ever, the low hum of it reverberating off the walls of his terribly small, terribly cramped bathroom. "You really would be better off at a hospital.”
Dazai shrugs and immediately regrets it when hot, razor-sharp pain flares to life beneath the threadbare hand towel he has pressed beneath his clavicle. “This is hardly the first time you’ve treated a stab wound, Odasaku,” he points out, the sing-song quality of his voice lost to the gritting of his teeth.
Oda doesn’t deny it, only eyes him critically as he pulls a few more towels from the shelf above the toilet and sets them onto the lip of the bathtub beside Dazai.
“Besides,” Dazai sighs, “it’s not even that bad… Two centimeters up and I could have had a nice, swift death. My enemy was so inept that he didn’t even have the decency to stab me properly.”
Oda chews on that for a moment, as if he's not quite sure how to respond. “Is that so,” he finally says, candid even as his mouth flattens—a tell that Dazai has come to recognize as displeasure.
Dazai frowns thoughtfully. Maybe that was a rude thing to say to someone who is currently digging through his bathroom for his medical kit to help him avoid said death.
Not that Oda has ever given Dazai a hard time over being… well, Dazai. Even as their relationship had progressed from flirting to falling into bed together—blooming as only night flowers do: slowly, in the tender refuge of darkness—Oda had always taken Dazai’s unslakable thirst for death as just another part of him, no different than his curling brown hair, or the slender curvature of his wrists.
Still… Dazai slumps against the chipping tile of Oda’s shower. He should say something to make Oda feel better. Something reassuring. Something human.
"I'm glad he didn't hit it, though,” he adds feebly. “Odasaku's hair is looking radiant tonight. Like a spider lily in full bloom. It would have been an unfortunate sight to miss."
The thin press of Oda’s lips lift upward into a suggestion of a smile as he unearths a first aid kit from beneath the sink, and Dazai thinks his heart might lift too, right out of his throat and into the ceiling.
Oda nods his head toward Dazai’s shoulder. “Has the bleeding slowed?”
Gingerly, Dazai peeks beneath the towel and finds blood soaked through his bandages, blooming red and sinister across the crisp white of his dress shirt. "A little, I think. It's difficult to tell from this angle."
Oda hums and abandons the first aid kit at the sink to take a look for himself. "Yes, it looks like it has," he agrees after a long moment. "I think it's safe to clean it. Do you need help removing your shirt?"
Am I okay to remove your bandages? The unsaid question threads itself beneath Oda's words, apparent in the way his brows pinch beneath his bangs as he watches Dazai's face with scrutinizing eyes.
"Yes." Dazai swallows. "Help would be… very nice."
Oda makes quick work of the buttons of Dazai’s dress shirt, coaxing it carefully from his shoulders before moving on to the bandages. There is a tenderness to Oda's touch—like clemency; like forgiveness—as he unravels the seams that hold Dazai together, loop over loop over loop, until the last of them flutters to the floor in loose ribbons, gathered about their ankles like dead skin. Like a past life.
He rests his hands on the sharp, jutting bones of Dazai's hips as if to steady him.
"I'm going to find something to use as an antiseptic," he murmurs. He presses a kiss to Dazai’s temple. "I'll be quick, I promise."
True to his word, Oda returns before Dazai has the time to properly process his absence past cold and empty and silence. He's holding a bottle of whiskey clutched tightly in his fist, uncapping it as he lowers himself onto the bathtub edge. He reaches for one of the towels he’d laid out beside Dazai.
"Oh my," Dazai crows. “If I'd known this was what it took to get you to buy me a drink I'd have let someone stab me sooner.”
“I’ll be sure to save you some,” Oda chuckles, exasperation and fondness warring over his face as he leans over the bathtub to tip the mouth of the bottle of whiskey into the towel in his hand. He’s maddeningly patient because of course he is, pouring a little at a time until it's soaked through. He squeezes the excess into the bathtub, and the scent of whiskey wafts, heady and sharp, into Dazai’s nostrils.
“Here—if you’d still like some." Oda passes what's left of the bottle to Dazai. "That wound needs stitches and I’m… a little out of practice,” he admits sheepishly.
"I’m sure you're better at it than Chuuya," Dazai replies, accepting the bottle with an impish grin. He takes a long, dramatic swig from the bottle—and sputters as it hits the back of his throat like a chemical burn.
"God but even Chuuya has a better taste in booze than this," he rasps. He takes a second, smaller sip from the bottle and makes a face. "Odasaku, I have been drinking with you for years. This is a betrayal."
Oda frowns. "Not everyone has a mafia executive’s salary. The cheap stuff works just as well in a pinch,” he replies—insists, even. Dazai thinks it might be the closest to indignation he’s ever seen on Oda’s face, simmering beneath the surface of his eyes like water on the verge of boiling. As if to prove his point, Oda begins to clean Dazai's wound, and Dazai hisses at the antiseptic burn left in the towel's wake.
“Oh I’m certain it will kill bacteria.” Dazai pauses, considering the bottle pensively, and indulges himself with another long, agonizing sip. "I also think it might melt my insides completely.”
“You don’t have to keep drinking it, you know,” Oda points out with an arched brow.
Dazai hums agreeably and takes another sip. It’s easier this time, the liquor already beginning to settle into his muscles like a warm blanket. When did I become such a lightweight? he thinks, then remembers he'd been stabbed.
“Next time someone stabs me I’m bringing my own antiseptic,” he declares. "Top shelf. Gonna go out in style."
“There are certainly worse ways to go,” Oda agrees placidly, and turns his attention back to the wound. "You could also bring me actual antiseptic if you're planning on making a habit of showing up on my doorstep with stab wounds."
Oda's work is as methodical as ever, the press of his towel gentle against his wound, like Dazai is something fragile. Something worth saving. Dazai thinks maybe he should remind him that he's not worth it—he's not even a real person, just a demon in a pretty mask—but instead he only watches Oda wipe away blood until Dazai’s skin gleams beneath the dim fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, all raised scars and pale flesh.
Oda sets the towel down and eases the bottle of whiskey gently from Dazai’s hands. He takes a quick nip himself before soaking his hands with what’s left of the bottle and depositing it somewhere behind him.
“Almost done,” he promises, and reaches for the first aid kit that he’d left sitting on the sink. He opens it with a plastic click. Inside, tucked between rolls of bandages, is a suturing kit, its edges faded with age and use. He unzips it and spreads it out carefully between them before plucking a needle driver and forceps from the kit. His hands are steady as he threads the needle and orients himself over the wound.
He glances up at Dazai and searches his face. “Still with me?” he asks.
Dazai’s head feels heavy as he tips it forward to meet the still water of Oda’s eyes. “Always.”
Oda’s face erupts into a smile—a real smile, rare and beautiful and bright as sunlight, and Dazai can’t look away, can only grip the smooth side of the bathtub tightly as he lets the image burn itself into his memory.
Oda is quick, efficient, stitching the wound shut with practiced hands despite his claim that it's been a while, and in the combined haze of alcohol and blood loss, Dazai barely feels it, only floats in the warm waters of delirium. Before long, Oda is finished, propping Dazai up gently to re-wrap his shoulder in bandages from his first aid kit.
“I don’t have enough to replace all of them… I’m sorry,” Oda says apologetically as he ties off the last bandage snugly beneath Dazai’s rib cage. He runs one hand along Dazai’s bare arm and holds the other against the exposed flat of his belly as if he thinks Dazai might fall forward if he doesn’t. “I can go pick some up if you’d like.”
Dazai shakes his head and his world—his mask—tilts with it. “I’m okay. Just stay with me.”
They walk together to the bedroom, where Oda helps him change out of his ruined dress pants and into an old pair of sweats and a t-shirt. The borrowed clothes are baggy against his body, the drawstring pulled tightly around Dazai’s narrow hips, but they’re warm and smell like Oda, and as Oda eases Dazai into his futon, he thinks he might never want to wear anything else again. Thinks nonsensically that if he could make bandages out of Oda’s clothes, he might be safe forever.
Oda slides in beside him and wraps an arm gingerly around Dazai’s shoulders, adjusting them both until Dazai is enfolded comfortably against him. “Is this okay?” he murmurs into Dazai’s hair.
“Very,” Dazai replies languidly. “I could die here.”
“Not tonight, ideally,” Oda counters smoothly. “For now—rest. I've got you," he adds as he paws for the book, heavily earmarked, beside his pillow.
Dazai lifts his head and peeks at the cover of Oda’s book. “Read to me?”
Oda chuckles. His breath ghosts against Dazai’s ear. “Sure,” he relents easily. He flips to one of the many dog-eared pages and begins to read.
Dazai presses his ear over Oda’s chest and listens to him speak through the thrum of his heart. Oda's voice is like the rumble of thunder in the distance, a promise of summer rain, clean and warm and safe as bathwater, and Dazai just wants to sink into it, wants to let the water roll over his head and rinse the filth from his body.
He curls himself into the humming, living heat of Oda’s body and lets his eyes slip shut. Lets his thoughts float along the cadence of Oda’s voice until he drifts to sleep.