Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is Thursday, and the Armed Detective Agency is accordingly lazy and disorganized. Paperwork is ignored, snacks are inhaled at breakneck speed, Kunikidas are targeted for many a prank, Atsushis and Kyoukas are fawned over. So is the rhythm.

Fukuzawa Yukichi wonders for the umpteenth time how, and why, nobody is commenting on the absolute stench of alcohol coming off of a certain vocalist-in-training. It lingers in his office for inordinately long after an admittedly unwelcome visit earlier, a cheery one-man circus barging in to say good morning at half past noon.

Dazai fucking stinks. This isn’t new as a concept.

Fukuzawa doesn’t really know what is new, beyond a profound gut feeling.

---

With the help of a certain observant somebody, he has an idea by the time five o’clock rolls around.

“Dazai?”

It is the end of the workday, quite early -- or perhaps perfectly on time, for any office that is not desperately overworked, if those even exist anymore -- and Fukuzawa has left the door to his office slightly ajar. He listens carefully, and the near-silent footsteps just outside the door come to a halt.

Most agency members have already left, and if Fukuzawa were to hazard a guess, he would say that Dazai is alone. Maybe Ranpo is asleep on the couch.

There are a few too many beats of inactivity for anybody’s comfort. Fukuzawa’s face sets into a slightly deeper frown than usual.

Then, the door opens without so much as an unpleasant creak to give the faintest sense of normalcy to this weird day. And, if Fukuzawa thought he saw a bedraggled and smelly Dazai at lunchtime, well.

“Good afternoon,” Fukuzawa greets, after taking a long, stalling drink from his teacup.

“Good afternoon, shachou.” Dazai’s sing-songy default cannot seem to push its way past the back of his tongue, so the words are said quite simply.

Fukuzawa motions for Dazai to come in so he does, two long strides that leave him exactly halfway between the door and Fukuzawa’s desk.

No longer backlit from the doorway, Dazai looks clearly fucking awful. Paler skin than usual, hollower eyes than Fukuzawa has seen them in a long, long time, when was the last time he had seen Dazai with five o’clock shadow ? Lord. He had forgotten the man grew facial hair at all.

“Are you well?”

It’s a stupid question that will not be answered. He may as well be asking the door. They both know that, and they both know that they both know that. The cycle goes on.

What Fukuzawa is not expecting is for Dazai to recoil a little, almost unnoticeably. His hands ball up a tiny bit tighter in his coat pockets, his lips press together minutely. Fukuzawa has put hard, hard work into reading the man in front of him over the years, and every improvement just makes him worry more. 

He wonders if he’s involved himself in something troublesome, calling Dazai in. He quietly scolds himself for the unprofessionalism of what he is about to do.

“I would hate to be too open about it-” Indeed, Fukuzawa thinks, “-but I’ve just been struggling with the anniversary effect of a traumatic event from my teenage years.” Dazai holds Fukuzawa’s gaze quite steadily, and his hands in his pockets still. “The actual date is tomorrow night, so I will likely be fine by next week.”

Fukuzawa nods slowly. “I see, tomorrow will be the most difficult. Is that why you’ve stopped drinking this morning?”

Dazai, already motionless, somehow manages to visibly freeze in place. 

Almost in mockery of the stillness in the office, the light outside shifts just so, signalling the approaching sunset. Glare from the high windows across the street scatter faint spots of light on Dazai’s coat. Fukuzawa has to squint just a little to keep his eyes focused.

“I don’t see how this is yours or Ranpo’s business, shachou.”

“It is not.” Fukuzawa fixes the man in front of him with a very, very hard stare. Dazai stares back just as hard, and Fukuzawa, as always, is equal parts thankful and concerned. 

“Is it a good idea for you to be on your own tonight, Dazai?”

Dazai is too late to hide the momentary eye-roll in response to that. He’s far too exhausted, and this room is far too cold? Hot? Something, for him to entertain these pre-answered questions.

“Don’t worry about me, shachou. I’m going home,” Dazai answers lightly, and spins on his heel to leave. His head unfortunately does not stop spinning once his body does. There is whisper of action behind the desk that is lost to his erratic heartbeat in his ears. Dazai only makes it a couple paces - admittedly graceful paces, for his state - before tripping, but there is a large hand around his upper arm, steadying him.

“Dazai.”

“What?” Dazai snaps, his head whipping around to meet Fukuzawa’s gaze. His arm stays limp in Fukuzawa’s hold. He thinks the other’s hands might be warm. 

Fukuzawa, on the other hand, thinks Dazai’s skin is definitely too warm, radiating through his many layers.

“You need a place to stay. You are coming with me.”

Dazai immediately recognizes that he cannot argue his way out of it when he cannot walk properly. With just enough resistance to make a point, he lets his arm be placed around Fukuzawa’s shoulders, lets the larger man support some of his weight. They are careful not to touch bare hands together. They fumble through the doorway. 

Ranpo is sitting cross-legged on the couch of the main office space, red lines of cushion seams on his cheek, hands folded quite neatly in his lap. The pair are regarded with a gaze, certainly, but the nature of it is completely up in the air.

Fukuzawa mutters something to Dazai that Ranpo cannot hear and does not care to. There is a hushed reply from Dazai as they are approaching the door to reception.

“You are still asleep, Ranpo,” Fukuzawa says sternly as Dazai is being maneuvered through the doorway. “Lock up in half an hour. We didn’t talk today.”

“Sounds good,” Ranpo replies, nodding, but shamelessly stares at Dazai until the door closes with a quiet click.

---

Fukuzawa’s apartment is not anything special. He refuses to mirror a certain somebody by living in the slightly more spacious top floor of the Agency’s makeshift dormitory building, leaving him instead with a comfortably sized and decorated two-room. A blank entryway leads into a small, well-loved living area and kitchen, all worn pale hardwood and soft corners and cat trinkets on windowsills. The stove is gas, the positively ancient refrigerator has a latch handle, the bookshelf in the corner looks like it is about to fall apart at any moment. After a rather awkward and painful trek up the stairs and through the front door, Dazai deigns to be carefully set down on a mess of cushions at the portable kotatsu on the far side of the living space. Fukuzawa leaves him there to dig around in his kitchen cabinets. Neither speak, and neither feel the urge nor the desire to.

Dazai weakly wiggles around to get comfortable, shuffling his legs under the kotatsu’s blankets. He instantly, and quite violently, recoils at the heat that envelops his lower body. A feeble whine escapes before he can stop it, a depressing imitation of his habitual brattiness. 

Fukuzawa spares him a short and hard glance, shutting off the kitchen tap. Each long, deliberate stride he takes across the room towards Dazai feels to the younger like the farthest thing from a death sentence. 

Dazai sighs in dismay, head leaned back against the wall, cloudy gaze turned to the ceiling. The twin bonks of the glasses being set down on the table hurt his ears. 

Hurt his ears a lot. Far too much. He does not move.

Fukuzawa steels himself for a few long moments.

“Dazai, I’m going to ask you some questions, and you need to be honest.”

Dazai screws up his face against the rush of blood in his ears, the chills scratching their painful, arduous way up his spine, the wording of that fucking question.

“Are you my doctor now?” Dazai muses.

“Nothing like it,” comes the curt reply.

And the conversation ends there, roaring silence re-emerging to suffocate Dazai with a practiced, ugly hand. It lasts barely ten seconds before his nails dig into his palms and he makes an involuntary pained noise that feels too foreign in his throat. The sun making its way into the quaint living room is far, far too bright. Dazai has never liked orange.

Both men are suddenly aware that they are not going to get a wink of sleep for quite some time.

“Okay. I’ll be honest.”

“How much a day, on average, for how long?”

Okay, that’s absolutely not fucking fair as an opener, and Dazai can’t help the way his fists and jaw clench. The oversaturated Yokohama sunset is forcing its way through his eyelids. His hands feel slippery. Far too slippery. He wants to check them, just to make sure they’re not-

“I am not judging you, even in my thoughts.”

A trembling exhale makes its way out of Dazai’s mouth. “More than half a bottle of forty a day for just over a month, shachou.”

“We’re not at work anymore. How long without?”

Opening his eyes for long enough to look at the Neko Atsume-themed clock he had noticed on the wall earlier is an insurmountable task. His head is splitting itself in two.

“The time?”

“Five twenty-five.”

“Eleven hours and forty minutes.”

Fukuzawa immediately stands up, and within seconds, there is a third and much heavier bonk on the table in front of Dazai. He cracks one eye open. A bottle of cheap white wine.

“Gross,” Dazai announces. His fingers twitch. His body screams at him to take it.

“As unfortunate as it may seem to you, I am not letting you die of a preventable seizure. It is this, it is an emergency room you will be identified in, or it is him. I selfishly hope you do not want the latter.”

That hangs in the air for too long. Dazai’s hands do not feel any less horrifyingly wet.

Dazai finishes his water, praying to whatever gods he knows -- beyond the most obvious, and currently most useless -- that it will stay down. Fukuzawa pours him a little of the wine, and he drinks. It is like somebody poured grape flavoured water into vinegar, but it still goes down easier than anything else that day.

Dazai barely notices him leave, and a few minutes later Fukuzawa returns with a small, rolled up futon, two bowls, and a washcloth. He tasks himself with the futon first, untying the cord.

Dazai notices that the soft ticking of the Neko Atsume clock has become far too slow. His eyes snap open and find the ground, using every trick he has learned over the past decade to settle his mounting dizziness.

What the fuck, is all Dazai can eloquently think as the lines between the floor planks begin to deepen and shallow at the same time. The light is getting brighter and his hands are jerking- God, how fucking long is he going to be untying that knot for?

As if Fukuzawa could hear his last thought, he turns to Dazai.

“How do you feel?”

“The fucking floorboards are moving.”

“Bowl right in front of you.” 

Fukuzawa averts his eyes very quickly.

Once Dazai is done with that, Fukuzawa moves to help him onto the futon.

“How do you feel, possibly more thoroughly this time?”

“Hot,” Dazai mumbles, and furrows his brows. “Cold. Headache. Can’t bring my heartbeat down very far. Hallucinating a little.”

Another small glass of the shitty wine is quickly handed to him, and he greedily downs it. Fukuzawa replaces himself at his spot by the kotatsu, sipping at his water. He picks out a book from a messy stack next to the shelf and picks it up.

Giving Dazai less attention was one of the first, but still one of the strangest ways Fukuzawa had learned to offer him comfort. The logic seemed odd, but who was he to regard logic as if it held all the answers?

“Would less clothing help?” Fukuzawa haltingly asks. There are still lines he is not sure he is in the position to try crossing.

Dazai pauses, expression blank as ever, and after many moments where Fukuzawa thinks he has definitely stepped over them, “No extras.”

Well. It’s not as if he can leave Dazai for long enough to get them. However.

“We are definitely going to need them,” Fukuzawa remarks, and Dazai cannot argue when he is wiping at the sweat on his face every fifteen seconds.

“Who can I call?” Fukuzawa asks.

Dazai’s face falls in a way he has never seen before, and it positively terrifies him.

“The executive, perhaps?” He offers.

Dazai’s face falls in an entirely different and less terrifying way.

“Which?”

“The redhead.”

A pause.

“Which?” Dazai says again, a clownish grin breaking on his face.

They both know.

“Dazai,” Fukuzawa says, and it's more a sigh than a word.

“I want nothing to do with him on a good day, and I especially want nothing to do with him when I feel like I’ve been hit by a train,” Dazai nothing short of huffs, turning over to face the wall.

“Of course,” Fukuzawa says, and resigns himself to the fate of his weekend.

Chapter Text

Fukuzawa, in the ever-few and dwindling instances he can, prefers to keep distance between his professional and personal lives. Rarely does he meet with his employees outside of work, and even more rarely does he invite them into his home. When he does, they are always short visits with the clear objectives of: 1. Some nice tea, and 2. A few minutes of quiet.

The latter is never achieved for various reasons; Ranpo and Yosano are not quiet people by any measure, and everybody Fukuzawa has hired since are certified nutcases (or chronic ramblers, as he fondly describes the weretiger), so conversation ensues. However, topics tend to funnel back into agency matters and stay there, much to everybody's dismay. Pleasantries are exchanged and everybody is on their way before the sun sets.

Fukuzawa looks at the whimpering man splayed out on his living room floor like a starfish, then at the clock. Nearly eleven. He exhales measuredly.

Dazai's shirt, vest, and pants are neatly folded in in a corner of the room away from the man himself, safe from his episodic thrashing. Earlier, when Fukuzawa had turned away to let Dazai undress and arrange himself under a thin blanket, he had felt the burn of the younger's gaze on his back the whole time. He shuts out all hints of curiosity about Dazai's evident fear of being seen. The bandages diligently wound around his forearms give him an idea, of course, but he scolds himself before he can start making those sorts of conclusions. Dazai's quirks, abundant and mysterious as they are, will be provided with explanations when it is appropriate, and there are many decisions that are not for Fukuzawa to make.

An especially loud whimper from Dazai breaks the careful equilibrium of the moonlit room. Fukuzawa slips his eyes shut against the empathy he feels strike him, ghostly throbbing in his skull and gooseflesh rippling accross his arms underneath his yukata.

A minute passes. Two. The clock, ticking louder and louder as the night continues, hits eleven.

"Do you need more of the wine?"

"No, no more hallucinations yet."

Fukuzawa hums a confirmation and wonders if the metric they have decided to use is a safe one. He has no idea. He knows who would.

"Still way too warm," Dazai mumbles.

Fukuzawa eyes the blanket covering Dazai up to the shoulders, beginning to show some spots of sweat soaking through. "You can't have any more acetaminophen for another hour."

Mumbled complaining, free of comforting brattiness, then more silence.

"If you want to have some lighter clothes delivered, we can-"

"Okay, fine. Call him."

Dazai's sudden--albeit huffy--compliance is a welcome change.

"Of course."

Dazai's voice is suddenly so quiet Fukuzawa can barely hear it. "Left inner pocket, no password. It's the only number in there."

Fukuzawa halts momentarily, then continues on his way to where Dazai's trench coat is hung up in the entryway closet. He doesn't currently have the capacity to think about Dazai's persistently foggy and unreachable past, nor matters of loyalty. He has a role to take on.

"Shachou...?" Dazai says. The question floats out of his throat a whisper.

Fukuzawa pauses for longer this time and looks back at Dazai's curled up form, jarred. He can't remember a single time over the past two years Dazai has addressed him in that tone, as if he is equally scared of being heard as he is of the alternative.

Dazai extracts a hand from his tight cocoon and futilely mixes his palm's burning-freezing stickiness with his face's before speaking.

"Don't tell him."

From the view of the hallway, the distorted rectangles of moonlight splayed over the room are all clear, sharp edges. The saturated, ethereal blue of it is something Fukuzawa wishes he could touch, hold in his hands.

"Of course. I had no plan to."

The floorboards under his feet are suddenly far too loud, disrespectful to the secret he was told.

The device is exactly where Dazai described. He locates the power button and presses on it a little harder than is completely necessary. The background is a strikingly abstract watercolour painting of three grey rabbits, and he opens the keypad.

---

Nakahara Chuuya pretends that he does not hear the unpleasant rumble of vibration against hardwood. He is walking purposefully down one of the long, wide hallways of his penthouse, very purposefully, with the purpose of getting a good night's fucking sleep, when the sound stops him in his tracks. It is faint enough that he immediately attributes it to his fatigue, and continues on his way.

Chuuya reaches his bedroom and there the blasted device is, lighting up the darkness, buzzing against the nightstand at the far side of his bed. He takes a few steps, flops down onto his mattress ungracefully, and waits for it to end.

It does. No voicemail is left. Typical.

It starts again. He loudly announces his distaste.

Uninterested in what is possessing him to do so, Chuuya reaches over to the table and calls upon Tainted, carefully tugging the charging cable out of the port and floating the phone to a comfortable distance above his face. He takes a moment to wrestle his dignity before accepting the call.

The split second of silence before it connects feels like a sentencing, or like a calm announcement on the 6:30 news that a typhoon is about to blow everything to absolute shit. Chuuya is already gnawing on his lips, irritation rising in his ribcage prematurely in anticipation of the stupid mackerel's stupid voice.

"Literally what the fuck do you want?" His voice is--only maybe intentionally, since he's still not sure if Dazai's brain cells will ever be able to fit together in a way that can produce the feeling known as "guilt"--laden with exhaustion.

"Nakahara-san, I hope I'm not disturbing you at this hour," a vaguely familiar voice sounds in the phone. Chuuya can't pin it on a face.

Well, this can only mean a few things, can't it. He snorts loudly.

"Dunno who you are. Whatever you've done to that bastard, I don't give a shit. Even if I did, I know with one hundred percent fucking certainty that you havent pulled one on him, he's pulling one on you. Good luck."

Before he can hang up, however--

"We've spoken before, Nakahara-san, in very different circimstances. It's Fukuzawa Yukichi."

--his forefinger freezes over the big red button that promises him a night of peace.

He recalls the same voice, albeit crackly and quite tinny, reverberating in a wide underground passage. He remembers the gleam of an overlarge and dutifully polished cleaver and a carefree little blond boy in full farmer cosplay pelting literal metric tonnes of hardware at him as if it was made of... what's a light but chuckable material? Chuuya doesn't know. The bitter, lasting taste of an undignified stalemate floods his mouth.

"Oi, what the hell? The boss battle of the agency himself? Holy shit, has Dazai finally kicked the bucket?"

Chuuya knows Dazai is not dead. How, he cannot explain, but he knows that his ex-partner's death would cause a profound and unignorable shift in his gut. Fate or what-fucking-have-you has regrettably tangled them far too tightly for the luxury of ignorance.

"Hardly. I was wondering if you could do me a favour."

"Hah? And what ultra-special midnight task can I do for you that your subordinates can't?"

Fukuzawa ignores that for the time being. "Do you know where Dazai lives?"

Chuuya presses his lips together, plunged against his will into an avenue of too-recent memories he definitively and absolutely does not fucking care to take an evening stroll down.

Dazai's shitty apartment, with the empty bottles and the unmade futon, paperbacks piled on every available surface. He's only ever been able to hold onto memories of being kicked out of the place, never finding his way to it. Beyond recent months, beyond the literal, that was a pattern with Dazai. Maybe it was for the best.

He knows where the dipshit lives. "No, why the hell would I?"

A moment of silence on the line makes Chuuya believe his lie has gone without a hitch, and he is more relieved than he thought possible.

"I believe you do." The careful patience in Fukuzawa's voice is infuriating, the easy announcement of his dishonesty even more so.

Chuuya's grin drops and he bristles, now irritated for a good reason, dammit. Do the terms of the agency's existence require all members to be annoying as hell? God.

"Then why'd the fuck you ask?"

"I prefer being courteous, but I do not mind the alternative. Nakahara-san, you are going to do a favour for me, a delivery, as Dazai does not prefer to have anybody else in his home."

That regrettably makes Chuuya suck in a surprised breath before he can stop it. The tone of those words makes him shrink in on himself a little, the cherry on top of his dignity flying out the window. There is a familiar something in Fukuzawa's voice, a spectacularly absolute self-assuredness that makes the command settle into Chuuya's skin a little deeper than it should, pushing past his resistances and twisting. Before he knows it, he is already catching the phone out of the air, slotting it between his cheek and shoulder as he stands, busying himself with the gloves shoved in his pocket.

"Alright, whatever, I bite. I'm damn exhausted though, you and your weird little band of cops owe me one."

"Of course," Fukuzawa quickly replies, "We will be sure to repay you to the best of our ability, Nakahara-san."

"Just Chuuya's fine," he autopilots, wiggling his fingers into worn leather as he trods back down the hallway. So much for rest. "Um. What the hell is going on with the mackerel, anyways?"

The following silence is easily interpreted as what a good question.

---

Once dire situations are revealed piece by incomplete piece as a form of uncomfortable coercion and delivery logistics are settled, Fukuzawa quickly hangs up. He replaces the phone into Dazai's coat and does not move an inch before sitting down on the floor.

Dazai's weak, strained voice makes its way from where he is still curled up facing the wall. "He's just like that."

He does not entertain Dazai by asking for clarification as to what "that" means. It could refer to... well, several of the executive's traits, and he is decidedly not interested in which one Dazai is fishing for an invitation to pick at.

---

Fukuzawa sits in the hallway for longer than he planned to, uselessly grinding his teeth about the soundness of his decisions long after they have been made. What the fresh hell is he doing, meeting up with an enemy executive in the dead of night, only blocks from his subordinates' homes? Truce be damned, Kunikida would surely bellow in horror and begin arranging a coup. Yosano would do much worse.

After some time, relatively concerning pained groans pull Fukuzawa back into the living room, where he finds Dazai on his back. The heels of his hands are digging into his temples, fingers wrapped around his forehead. It's pitiful to see, but Fukuzawa quickly denies that feeling the space it demands. He settles instead on something that feels somehow nostalgic when he lets it seep between his ribs, similar to fatherly concern and similar to protectiveness but... Not exactly either of those, really.

Fukuzawa remembers the hollow man he met only two years ago, and how he had--out of fear, out of hypervigilance, out of something--put a stopper in those same emotions before he could step foot into Dazai's evident jungle of neuroses.

And, well, what a jungle it is. Fukuzawa decides that he has a debt to repay, shutting out the hiss of dissent from the corners of his mind before it can leave cracks. He sits on the floor again, next to Dazai.

"Where is your head hurting?"

Dazai pries his hand off of his face, looking up at the older through glassy, unfocused eyes. Too-dark pools blink at Fukuzawa, who is becoming aware that this is one of many tells of the man dramatically overthinking. He wonders if his question should have been less blunt.

"Everywhere, but between my eyes the most."

Fukuzawa reassures himself, perhaps undeservedly, that this will not serve to strengthen the wall between them. "I know several pressure points for that type of pain. It's not long lasting." It still helps, he wants to add, but that sounds too close to I want to help you. Dazai takes a hot few seconds to process it anyways.

While he is, clouds shift away from a waning moon. A new patch of saturated light scatters and settles on Fukuzawa's shoulder, his chin and nose, his left eye. The offer hangs in the air similarly, illuminating calculated pieces of whatever the fuck they have between them, now.

The blue reminds Dazai of the light of his ability, which leads him to their first problem.

"The moon is out. It's too risky with No Longer Human."

"Atsushi-kun falls asleep in his linens closet at ten o'clock sharp, weeknights. He is safe for the time being."

This is news to Dazai. "The others?"

"The others don't erratically transform into overlarge, bloodthirsty predator animals."

Well. He can't argue with that.

"Okay," Dazai begins with uncharacteristic hesitancy. Fukuzawa wishes he could stop mentally ascribing that adjective to any of Dazai's vulnerability. "Yeah. I think I would like that."

"I will need the back of your neck."

Much to both of their surprise, Dazai rolls awkwardly onto his stomach with no further convincing. Fukuzawa looks down at the man's bandages and realizes that he has in no way at all prepared for this stage. He reaches out before pausing for several moments, fingers hovering.

"I'm not sure what I should be doing with these."

"Just push them out of the way, if you need to."

Easier said than done, Fukuzawa finds out, as they are wrapped exceptionally snugly. Figures, as he hasn't an inkling of an estimate for how long Dazai has been wearing them daily. He awkwardly holds them out of the way with one hand, and after taking a deep breath, touches his fingertips to Dazai's nape.

Words upon sentences upon whole paragraphs of prose surrounded by a soft, ethereal blue light flood like mist from the point of contact. Dazai visibly tenses. Fukuzawa can only stare, utterly transfixed, as the words hover and tremble and mutate around the point of contact into something resembling ghostly, intangible, criss-crossing rings of a planet. A curiously metallic hum swells while a soft, supernatural breeze rustles hair and ripples fabric.

Fukuzawa's mind settles into a relative silence he hasn't experienced for years, maybe decades. It scares him, being unable to feel the persistent tug of his subordinates' presence. He wonders if this is what it would feel like if they were all to die, together, peacefully.

After what feels like an eternity, the words retract and shatter, the blue light fades into a glow that is near unnoticeable, even in the dimness of the room. The heightened tension in Dazai's shoulders relents only a little.

Fukuzawa cannot help himself. "You're bioluminescent."

Dazai snorts a rather undignified laugh into the futon, free of mirth, free of mockery. It sets them both at ease.

"Not quite sure about the 'bio' part," he says, amusement in his voice evident even when it is strained in pain. "It's not that dramatic every time, unless I want it to be. It's just unfamiliar with All Men."

Fukuzawa is abruptly stuck with how much he does not know about one of the agency's most powerful assets.

Soberly remembering how he ended up here, he begins carefully searching for the right spot on Dazai's neck. His fingers land in the dip below the third vertebra and push down hard. Dazai visibly relaxes after a moment, tension seeping out of his frame.

They stay like that for a long time, Fukuzawa kneading the spot roughly with his fingertips, interspersed with many short breaks so he doesn't end up injuring himself before the other can find some relief. Only Dazai's laboured breaths fill the silence. Fukuzawa's hands are sore and tired when those breaths audibly lengthen, deepen, and Dazai drops into a restless not-quite-sleep, not-quite-wakefulness. There is a small, round bruise already forming where Fukuzawa had been prodding.

Instead of feeling apologetic, he tells himself that it is a necessity in life to make exchanges.

Chapter Text

Chuuya and Fukuzawa stare each other down quite shamelessly when they meet several blocks--but only a few exceptionally tricky and meandering shortcuts--away from the agency's apartment building. The night is chilly, and the orange of the streetlamps is hard on both men's tired eyes.

Fukuzawa firmly holds Dazai's phone in his pocket, the burner tucked into the other's sleepy grasp before he had slipped out, just in case. His other hand does not stray too far from his sword.

Chuuya hands over a cloth shopping bag, and Fukuzawa rifles though it for a minute to double-check the contents.

"Thank you, Nakahara-san."

His chin dips; acknowledgement. "My absolute displeasure. How's he doing?"

"He was sleeping when I left."

Chuuya quirks a brow and shoves his hands a little deeper into his pockets. "You ready to deal with the nightmares?"

Fukuzawa decidedly is not. Apparently he must show that, to a degree, as Chuuya begins to giggle after a few beats of silence. Honest-to-god giggling, shoulders drawn in, a gloved hand covering his mouth--clearly a challenge, or perhaps bait Fukuzawa is supposed to, but will not, take. It pierces the quiet street, merciless.

It takes a while for Chuuya to recover, or give up. Fukuzawa hopes the careful blankness of his stare doesn’t betray his bewilderment.

"I'm fuckin' stunned. You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into."

Now sure he is being challenged, Fukuzawa lets his repressed scowl break a little. The Port Mafia never ceases to amaze him with the characters they produce.

"I almost feel bad for you, old man. I would really, really like to be sleeping right now, but let me deal with him. It'll save your whole street from the idiot's nonsense."

"He's not strong enough to walk right now."

"I have my car," Chuuya quickly retorts.

"He's not strong enough to get down the stairs, Nakahara-san."

Chuuya immediately narrows his eyes. "Oi, what the fuck. You said he was sick, but not that damn sick. What's going on?"

Well, that's a rock and a hard place. Fukuzawa absolutely does not want to go against Dazai's wishes. However, he knows it would be nothing short of a disaster for a good part of the agency to find out about this ordeal the hard way. He may not know a whole lot about Dazai, but intrinsically to that, he knows the diligence the man pours into his secrets remaining kept.

Fukuzawa decides upon temporarily trustworthy as a descriptor for the executive before him. He makes a mental note to formally apologize to Dazai to the best of his ability.

"He cut himself off from alcohol nineteen hours ago."

"Holy fuck."

---

Holy fuck, indeed.

Chuuya has been quietly seated at the kotatsu for some time, still fuming at being lied to, fuming at Dazai's unrelentingly inconvenient existence, when the trembling starts, jerky and not unlike someone being gently electrocuted.

Aside from pointedly eyeing Fukuzawa, who decides to not take the hint, Chuuya remains largely unconcerned.

Dazai soon whines and throws himself onto his side, whacking the futon with his forearm. It's weak, his movements uncoordinated in a way that looks too foreign on his body.

The sudden action causes the burner phone to clatter across the floor and land at Chuuya's feet. Chuuya stares at it for a long time before piping up.

"Hey old man, congrats on strong arming him into this."

Fukuzawa patiently resists the pride he feels swell. Petty. He is feeling petty.

"He could barely walk on his own, it had really become a responsibility."

"Damn," Chuuya says lowly. "This really is bizarre, huh."

"Bizarre how?"

"Old man, I've seen him walk after gunshots to the leg. Bizarre as in the brain of Double Black, finally beaten by a lack of whiskey," Chuuya says, raising his hands to wiggle his fingers melodramatically. His voice remains quite flat.

Fukuzawa ungracefully gets tea on his chin.

Chuuya has the audacity to look genuinely shocked at that, of all things. "Are you fucking kidding me, he didn't even-"

"I had my suspicions," Fukuzawa says with hard finality.

Dazai's breaths soon begin to accelerate. He all but throws himself onto his back, blanket tangled around his limbs and across his ribs, bandaged chest rising and falling in a panicked, stuttering pace.

Out of respect, Fukuzawa carefully trains his eyes on the tabletop, away from Dazai’s exposed torso. He trusts Chuuya to do what he came here to do, but the delay is decidedly shortening the fuse of his nerves. After many more seconds than Fukuzawa believes is necessary--as is pride, he hazards--Chuuya does move, but it's only to flick a coin from his pocket at Dazai's forehead.

What the fuck.

Chuuya stares with almost too-blatant disinterest as Dazai scrunches up his face, and for a moment, everything is still once again. Then, with a rustle of blankets, Dazai rolls over and drops back into a doze. A few tense moments go by, and Chuuya’s eyes stay closely trained on his prone form.

Dazai slowly begins to hyperventilate again. Chuuya groans.

"Fucking hell. That works sometimes, I swear. Shocks his system out of it or whatever."

Fukuzawa does not mark it down for later.

Dazai whimpers and pitifully presses his arms over his face, as if he is sheltering himself from a blow. One hand roughly slides down to cover his right eye.

About what is behind Dazai's eyelids, Fukuzawa wishes he did not have several likely guesses. His eyes meet Chuuya's in both their peripheries. Two images of one man are suspended from the thread of their gaze.

"Nakahara-san, I am very close to managing him if you don't."

"Yeah, yeah," Chuuya rolls his eyes, scooting across the floor towards a now clearly panicking Dazai. Fukuzawa is expecting something equally as dumb as the coin, or maybe a slap, but not--

Chuuya, bored to death with this whole thing, gently tugs Dazai's hands away from his face and takes them in his own, pressing his fingernails into the other's palms. Dazai snaps awake with a start. When his eyes meet Chuuya's, wide and bottomless with panic, there is no recognition.

He violently scrambles back with nothing short of a snarl, banging his head into the wall in his attempted escape. His legs thrash. Chuuya fights to grab his jaw, muffling his distress. His other hand stays wrapped tight around Dazai's, nails only digging in harder.

Chuuya remembers being fifteen and seeing little pink crescents littering Dazai's palms in the mornings. He remembers being sixteen, moving in together as mandated by the rapidly mounting importance of their partnership. He remembers weeks of interrupted nights, sleeping as far away from Dazai's room as possible, before giving in and helping.

It really was the only way either of them knew how, and it stuck. Four years, Chuuya tells himself. Nearly half a decade. Everything fades with time.

And, sometimes, it only needs a few moments to catch up. Dazai freezes, stock-still for several moments, and blinks. His eyes catch the moonlight a little more when they open. Chuuya lets out a breath he didn't realize had been caged in his chest.

Fukuzawa watches this exchange with his hand drifting purposefully around his sword handle. Deliberate, semi-rhythmic movements of Chuuya's forefingers against Dazai's palms return his arm to his side.

Dazai's chest is slowing, the panic in his face dissolving. Violent tremors replace it. The pair's eyes are locked together, evidently having a conversation. Fukuzawa cannot read it, nor does he feel as if he should be trying.

The tapping stops. Dazai's eyes land on Fukuzawa, who is unfortunately caught staring. Chuuya turns to look as well, throwing him the same purposeful expression he had worn before this strange ritual began.

Fukuzawa is quickly learning that the executive is not one hard to know the intentions of, and stands. Apparently he is letting the mafia order him around in his own home, after all.

The rattle of a sliding door down the hallway makes the pair visibly relax. Then, Chuuya leans in close and backhands Dazai across the face.

"You're really fucking dumb, you know that?"

Dazai whines, affronted. The tremors still coursing through him make it a feeble, unsteady noise.

"For real, you stupid bastard, do you know how tired I am? Tomorrow was one of my days off and you had to go and give yourself withdrawal-"

"Hey, chibi-"

"Hey! Don't cut me off! Seriously, since when the fuck do you of all people not have anything to drink? What the hell? There's so many ways-"

Dazai weakly pushes against the other's chest, panic rising again. "Chuuya, seriously, I-"

"I fucking know you're not above stealing, shitbag, there’s a reason I’ve ended up here-"

Chuuya cuts himself off with a shriek as Dazai's hand flies to his mouth, and it's his turn to scramble away frantically to avoid the stomach acid.

---

Thankfully, it was little, and didn't get on the futon.

It did, however, get all over Dazai's bandages, which Chuuya is now replacing with no shortage of grumbling. There is a silent but very loud If you'd just listened to me hanging right in front of his eyes, so he closes them halfway while he works.

The rhythm of bandages slowly winding around Dazai's hips without his instruction brings him back to an era where he didn't pull this shit annually. God, his head fucking hurts. It hurts a lot. It unfortunately only hurts more with every modicum of energy he puts toward processing why on earth Chuuya is at his boss' house at ass o'clock in the morning.

He didn’t plan this. However, convincing Chuuya of truths has never been his strong suit, so he doesn’t try to correct the thoughts he can hear whirling under that mess of red hair. Pathetically, Dazai wishes to avoid explaining himself.

And, of course, as if Chuuya can read his mind and also really, really wants him to suffer, "So. Seriously, what the hell are you up to? I know for a fact you don't just... not have any booze left.”

Dazai, nearly delirious, still working at not gagging on the fresh taste of disgusting mouthwash Chuuya had force-fed him before getting it spat all over his vest, concedes.

"He really wanted me to be better, and I couldn't just not try. Not today." His voice is thankfully composed.

Chuuya pauses, and Dazai can hear the cogs of his brain turning, evaluating. For perhaps the first time while attempting to convince Chuuya of something, he feels a knot of apprehensive tension in his gut, desperately hoping he will be believed.

Alas, every prayer of his continues to go unanswered. A snort tumbles out of Chuuya's nose, and Dazai doesn't flinch.

“Good try. Better isn't all or nothing, one less drink than usual would have been better for everyone than this mess. You could have died before I made it happen myself.”

"Hm," Dazai considers, chewing on that as slowly as the chronic racing of his mind allows him to. He tries not to take it to heart.

Dazai could count how many times Chuuya had met his drinking buddies on his hands, but his ex-partner still manages to be infuriatingly correct about what Oda would have wanted for him. Isn't Chuuya supposed to be the stupid one, he asks himself, grappling. This is pissing him off. "Best outcome, so I wouldn’t have had to see your ugly face."

Drily, Chuuya barks a laugh. "You wouldn't be dead yet."

"When, then?" Dazai whines.

"Later, around when you start forgetting where you are and thinking you can hear your new car revving itself in the garage every five seconds. You know this, it says it in your little book."

Dazai adamantly ignores the way that timeline clicks into place. "So unfortunate, I'm heartbroken."

"It's not painless, idiot. Be glad he's letting you taper a little with that..." Chuuya wrinkles his nose, "...I'm not calling it wine."

"What a high-class alcoholic you are, Chuuya-kun," Dazai drones. The weakness of his voice rids the words of their intended effect. The jab thus goes completely ignored.

Chuuya arrives at Dazai's chest with the bandages, and his eyes are immediately drawn by a certain pair of scars on the expanse of heavily marred skin. His gaze lingers too long for either party to pretend to ignore it.

They belong perfectly on Dazai, Chuuya thinks, but would never admit; The mess of scars converges almost too naturally into the neat circles bordering his areolas. They are, however, far less visible than he recalls. Dazai’s eyes sharpen, and he averts his gaze.

"They're way less visible now," is what he decides upon. His careful enunciation betrays his curiosity.

"I'm putting stuff on them to reduce them."

Chuuya snorts, dragging his eyes over the surrounding mess of marks, all much more eye-catching and clearly uncared for. "Uh, do you mind if I take a closer-"

"Chibi, I can barely hear you over my headache anymore. Do whatever you want."

Breath catching in his throat, Chuuya stills, staring with shock-widened eyes at those words. He suddenly thinks he may have come here of his own volition.

---

Fukuzawa, needing to piss, as humans do, steps out into the hallway. He sees one half of what he now knows to be the most ruthless and devastating duo in the history of Japan's organized crime examining the other half's nipple, and walks right back into his bedroom.

---

When he tries again, Chuuya is laying on the floor next to the futon. Dazai has reassumed his position facing the wall, an overlarge button-up t-shirt concealing his frame. The blanket is neatly folded a few feet away. Fukuzawa's dishes are being lazily levitated into his dishwasher, glasses and plates and chopsticks enveloped by the same red glow that has repeatedly threatened the lives of his subordinates. While it is only slightly less fucking strange, Fukuzawa decides that this is a more comfortable sight than the previous. He imagines watching Chuuya smash all of his kitchenware in an underground passage--through a surveillance camera feed, of course, how else--and snorts to himself a little. After a few short minutes, he rejoins the pair in the living room.

Chuuya evidently has no tolerance for elephants in rooms. "You saw that, didn't you," he announces drily, still focusing on the dishes. It's not a question.

"Mm," Fukuzawa confirms.

Then there is silence, save the occasional clatter of a plate or glass as it lands neatly in a slot.

"Are you just not gonna question it?"

Fukuzawa has learned that answers to his questions about Dazai, especially when they involve his ex-partner, show up when they damn well please. "Is it required of me to?"

Chuuya is still not looking at Fukuzawa. "You're making this harder than it needs to be, old man." He pauses for a while, and Fukuzawa can almost see reluctance radiating off of him, not unlike the glow loading his dishwasher.

"I was taking a look at his scars. Did you see them?" Chuuya asks, his apprehension quite evident.

Fukuzawa furrows his brow. This is not going in the direction he predicted. "I saw many."

"Well, there's a couple around there that came from surgery, not a mission or an assassination attempt."

"Oh," Fukuzawa says dumbly, then he understands.

Chuuya eyes him, clearly kicking into gear for an argument.

"Nakahara-san, I'm forty-five years old, not from the nineteenth century. Should you be the one telling me this?"

Deflating, Chuuya mumbles a little. "Yeah, he gave me permission, said it was about time you knew."

That makes Fukuzawa pause, his eyes wide. An unabashedly protective warmth blooms through him and he lets it, however hesitantly. His smile, barely a twitch of the lips, does not escape Chuuya's notice. The moment is peaceful. The moonlight streaming through the windows has, at some point, shifted to illuminate Dazai's dozing form..

"I'm glad."

"Yeah, yeah," Chuuya says, facing away as he piles the last few cups onto the racks and slams the dishwasher shut. Fukuzawa is beginning to hear many different things within the executive's insistent standoffishness.

He absolutely must ask. "Was it Mori-sensei who..."

Chuuya interrupts him before he can finish that thought. "No. The fuck. He's a good enough surgeon to know to not operate on people he's that close to, especially not for something that life-changing."

The emphasis on "that close to" churns something in Fukuzawa's gut. He tries very hard to not begin reanalyzing several interactions he has had with Dazai that stick out in his mind.

"I see. I didn't know ethical practice was a concern of his these days."

"You'd be surprised," Chuuya says lightly.

Fukuzawa begs to differ; nothing Mori does could possibly surprise him anymore. However, just because he has let an executive into his home, it doesn't mean he's also letting an executive into the mess that is himself and his ex-colleague.

“Of course.”

Dazai, now hopefully in a state that fits within the definition of “sleep”, is beginning to resemble a different being to Fukuzawa from the man he had awkwardly laid down on his living room cushions. He looks fuller, more consistent, as if every piece of information revealed has made him less likely to disappear when Fukuzawa lets his attention slip. As much as he hates to admit it, he sees much of Mori in his subordinate, and from this day on, it will also be vice versa. For this, he hurts for Dazai.

“Anyways, I still don’t know what the fuck he’s really up to with this,” Chuuya grumbles, stifling a yawn. “Sorry, old man, dunno why you got in the firing line.”

“Up to?” Fukuzawa carefully asks, bristling a little.

“Yeah, obviously,” Chuuya snorts, rising to his feet. “Bastard never does anything without already being a hundred-and-fuck steps into a plan.”

Those words unceremoniously slam Fukuzawa upside the head, leaving him wide-eyed and reeling as Chuuya turns into the hallway, heading for the bathroom.

He thinks of an oddly-timed submersion attempt, a certain bloodthirsty and dangerously loyal mafia operative, an unlikely airborne encounter, and an even less likely team. The fall of a castle, a shot through the stomach. He stifles it when he chokes on air, desiring less than anything for Dazai to witness his mental puzzle pieces coming together, messy and incomplete as they are.

All-too-abruptly, Fukuzawa realizes that Dazai is a living mess of chains, a so ironically human attractive force, his existence dragging into delicate balance more than one person should ever be capable of. All he had to do was go and get himself sick and now a mafia executive is doing fucking Fukuzawa's dishes, for Christ's sake. The inklings he thought he had of Dazai’s past seem laughable in comparison.

Processing all this is a task he sets aside for much, much later. Fukuzawa Yukichi deeply resents Mori Ougai for many things, but now especially for raising--god, he wants to avoid thinking engineering, but now he knows Dazai's habits are far too deliberately, far too precisely put together for that--such an unbelievably important person. What a feat, Fukuzawa thinks drily, to inject yourself so carefully into somebody and still have them betray you. He wonders how the world didn't end when Dazai defected, and hopes the motivations for it weren’t another step in a long plan whose existence has yet to dawn on him.

Now, however, Dazai is just a semiconscious young man on Fukuzawa's floor, back to his earlier starfishing, drowsy eyes opening and flitting about upon Chuuya’s return only to slip shut again. He reaches out and weakly slaps the other when he reassumes his spot on the floor. Chuuya hits him back much harder, then flicks another painkiller into the air. Dazai ever so lazily catches it, a mere twitch of the hand, and swallows it dry. Fukuzawa is reminded of too many things as he watches their rhythmic, predictable back and forth, their practiced movements, their poorly-veiled fondness. He hopes things don’t end the same way for them.

The moon is making her downwards arc, and the three men are left in the near pitch black of the pre-dawn. The room remains still for quite some time.

Fukuzawa's sword sits silent and ignored on the floor, many feet away from his folded hands. There has not been a whisper of crimson light in the room since his kitchen became spotless.

"Nakahara-san, you look exhausted. You're not required to stay."

Chuuya hardens at that.

"I know," he says simultaneously with Dazai's quiet, strained, "He knows."

Fukuzawa dips his chin in understanding.

A clear, chilly, quite unforgiving morning is approaching. Fukuzawa knows the light will positively blind Dazai, gravely disorient him and nearly split his skull in two while he stumbles about to continue fulfilling his basic human needs.

Chuuya also knows this, and he knows there is no way Dazai can give him the slip to tough it out by himself. Not a second time.

Fukuzawa rises to retrieve more blankets.