Archive of Our Own

But never mind the target, Chuuya could have dealt with even this colossal disaster of a mission...if only Dazai hadn’t been bleeding out in his arms from a huge gash on his stomach.

“Hey, hey!” Chuuya pushes back locks of hair from Dazai’s sweat-slick forehea. “Stay awake, damnit!”

Dazai groans weakly and Chuuya curses under his breath. He wonders for a moment how somebody had managed to get the drop on Dazai of all people, but the thought leaves just as quickly as it had come. It does not matter, because Mori’s intel was wrong and now he and Dazai are paying the price for it.

He presses a hand to Dazai’s stomach, a desperate, unreasonable attempt to staunch the bleeding, before immediately realizing how pointless it was when his hand comes away completely drenched in blood. Chuuya’s own breathing is getting shallower by the minute as Dazai tries to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. 

He frustratedly runs a hand through his hair. “Shit, fuck this, I’m taking you back to the boss!”

But Chuuya has barely tried to haul him up when Dazai lets out a strangled cry, falling right back to the ground. His fingers are suddenly locked around Chuuya’s wrist, their grip tighter than a vice, and Chuuya looks at him in surprise. “What the hell, man!?”

Dazai’s head is bowed, breathing short and heavy, and Chuuya is surprised to feel the hand still gripping his wrist trembling slightly. Dazai mumbles something, hoarse but still too low for Chuuya to make out. He bristles, yanking his wrist back and crouching down.

“Damn it, we do not have time for this! We have to - “

One look at Dazai’s face silences each and every word that could have left Chuuya’s mouth, because he looks terrified. His eyes, wide yet unseeing, seem to almost stare right through him, and Chuuya might have even stumbled back a little if Dazai hadn’t already been gripping on to his sleeve with white knuckles, as if his life depended on it.

“H-hey...Dazai, it’s alright...What’s wrong?”

“Please…” Dazai whimpers, and Chuuya has to stop himself from recoiling because never in his life has he ever heard Dazai sound like that.

Desperately pushing down the panic and adrenaline rising up in his throat, he leans in closer, “what?”

“Please don’t take me back to him.”

It feels as if someone just jammed a knife through Chuuya's chest. He stares at Dazai, coughing and panting and getting paler by the second, and his face crumples a little. 

“Okay,” he murmurs softly, running a hand over Dazai’s forehead and smoothing out the locks of hair from his eyes, “okay, fine, I won’t.”

It’s only after Dazai passes out from the blood loss that he realizes that there is only one other place he can take him.

Oda has just emerged from the shower and is drying his hair when there is an unholy banging noise at his front door. He doesn’t need to use Flawless to deduce who it is, there is only one person who knocks with that intensity. In hindsight, Oda would think later, he should have used his ability after all, because at least then he wouldn’t have been subjected to the scare of finding Dazai bleeding to death on his doorstep and a very panicked Chuuya desperately trying to hold him together.

He lets them in without a question, rushing back to his bathroom to retrieve medical supplies. He has no professional skill in this matter, but he does have steady hands, and years of experience of stitching himself back together. That will have to do for now.

Chuuya doesn’t stop pacing back and forth the entire time Oda stitches Dazai up. It isn’t until Oda finally gets fed up and yells at him to calm down or he’d throw him out, that Chuuya finally stops, waiting until Oda is done to sit down beside him with a tired sigh, his head in his hands. 

In tense silence, they watch Dazai lying on the now bloodstained mattress, still passed out, his chest rising and falling steadily.

“I might have been able to get him here sooner if it hadn’t been for that cursed ability of his,” Chuuya mutters, though there is no real bite to the words. He’s just...so tired.

Oda has lit up a cigarette in the meantime, and exhales long and slow before replying, “it’s that same cursed ability that has kept you alive for this long.”

Chuuya opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. So he settles for letting out a small displeased noise, swiping the cigarette from Oda’s hand. He’s in the middle of taking a drag from it when Dazai stirs, eyes slowly fluttering open. 

He shoots up immediately, before letting out a pained cry.

“Hey, what are you doing, idiot? You’ll rip out your stitches!” Chuuya snaps, cigarette already forgotten.

But Dazai isn’t listening to him. His breaths are coming out in shallow bursts as he looks at his surroundings frantically, confused and uncomprehending. Unsurprisingly, it’s Oda who finally springs into action.

“Dazai, it’s fine,” he says, moving forward to touch him, but recoils back in surprise when Dazai flinches, his breathing getting harder. Oda frowns.

“Hey!” he says, louder this time, and moves forward to firmly take Dazai’s face in both of his hands, “Dazai, look at me!”

He’s still shaking, face wet with tears, but he does look at him, and stills for a moment when he sees watery blue eyes instead the violet ones that he had expected.

“It’s okay,” Oda murmurs softly, caressing his cheek with the pad of his thumb, “it’s alright, you’re safe here.”

You’re safe. Dazai blinks once, then twice, before his face crumples from sheer exhaustion, “Odasaku…”

“Yes, it’s me, you’re fine.” 

But Dazai doesn't relax, at least not until his frantically darting eyes finally come to rest on Chuuya.

Chuuya moves over to take one of Dazai’s hands into his own, and immediately the relief on Dazai’s face amplifies tenfold. Dazai sighs, deep and exhausted, and his head dips forward, forehead coming to rest on Oda’s collarbone. Oda runs a hand over his hair, petting his head gently.

Too exhausted and in pain to do anything else, Dazai falls back into a dreamless sleep soon after that, and though he doesn't know it, neither Chuuya nor Oda dare to move an inch for hours afterward.