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He doesn’t know when it started, but he knows it won’t stop.
Dazai doesn’t even recognize himself- the man in the mirror. There’s nothing there- his eyes are emptier than they’ve been in a long time. His ribs are sticking out, his hip bones are too prominent. There are too many jagged scars from messy stitches. There are circular scars from bullets.
He closes his eyes- if he turned to look at his back, he would see whipping scars from Mori.
Opens his eyes- deep, dark circles under his eyes, gaunt cheeks. He follows the mirror down the body- his body?- to the scrawny limbs, eyeing his thighs that barely have any muscle.
His eyes drift to his arms. More scars. To his neck- permanent bruising just under his jaw from one too many hanging attempts. Back to his eyes, which are dull as ever.
He wants to attempt again, but there’s no point. Chuuya will be back soon.
Either Chuuya is back sooner than he realized, or Dazai simply zoned out harder than he thought.
“Hey,” someone says behind him.
“Chuuya,” Dazai says, but it’s guttural and hoarse. “Welcome home.”
“Do you want pants?” Chuuya asks, nodding to Dazai’s naked lower half. “You don’t strike me as the nudist type, shameless as you are.”
“Bandages first.”
“Not if you don’t bathe,” Chuuya says, wrinkling his nose. “Come on.”
He holds out his hand, and Dazai takes it. Chuuya’s hands are always so warm. It breathes a little bit of life back into Dazai.
“Okay,” Dazai says, and he lets Chuuya shampoo his hair and sponge his torso. He lets Chuuya comb and dry his hair. He lets Chuuya kiss him because-
because he loves chuuya
Dazai’s eyes close. “Thank you.”
Chuuya kisses his temple and continues wrapping the fresh bandages around Dazai’s waist. “It’s not like you never do this for me.”
And- no, it’s not. There have been nights where Chuuya stumbles in the door, half-dead and full of liquor, on the verge of hysterics because someone died under his command. Maybe he gets a flashback to before Arahabaki, when he was just an experiment in a lab, and he panics. Maybe it’s just Arahabaki being too loud, too angry, too there .
It doesn’t matter- Dazai is there to soothe him.
Chuuya pulls one of Dazai’s T-shirts over Dazai’s bandages, helps him put his arms through the sleeves, helps him lie back on a pillow. Chuuya turns off the light and crawls into bed next to Dazai, the mattress dipping. Dazai lets Chuuya cradle him against his chest, and he lets himself breathe out. He’s okay here.
Chuuya would never let anyone hurt him,
not even himself.