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He considered it, he really did — he considered leaving Chuuya alone after he had passed out from using Corruption like last time. Of course, he’d make sure he was safe and to retrieve his hat and such. Because although he despised his (technically former) partner’s devotion to the monster that was Ogai Mori, he could certainly respect it as the person who had dragged him into it in the first place, and so he understood the attachment to the tacky-ass hat. He could have left him propped up against the wall of the storehouse they were in, he could have even cleaned the dry blood off his wounds before abandoning the unconscious man — because that would have made sense.
If he did that, he would no doubt get a (loud and angry) lecture about negligence by Chuuya the next time they interacted. Perhaps Chuuya would have gone out of his way to do so, and Dazai would have gotten a laugh out of it. It would have been normal for them, right in line with their usual behavior of arguing and inconveniencing one another.
That is not what Dazai did, though. No, he lugged an unconscious Chuuya Nakahara back to his apartment.
Something in his chest told him that his partner had been left behind enough times in his life already.
So, yes, Chuuya was thrown over a sofa covered in a towel, dried blood matted in his hair and on his skin, dirt and grime caking his clothing. Anyone else might have groaned and lamented about having to take care of someone in such a dreadful state at such an unholy hour — but Dazai’s complaints had nothing to do with how late it was, since he was nearly always up at such a time.
“Look at how you’ve gone and made a mess of yourself this time,” he grumbled under his breath as he combed through the other’s hair with his fingers, searching for any major injuries. He scanned the rest of his body in a similar manner, finding no serious trauma. Despite this, his worry did not ebb. He was well aware that Corruption’s damage was always more internal and he wouldn’t be able to properly evaluate the other man until he regained consciousness, and that was if he even let him do so.
Dazai hadn’t taken care of Chuuya like this in over four years. Corruption had been used against Lovecraft, and he deserted him, and then it had been used again during the incident with Shibusawa, but Akutagawa had been the one to lug the ginger away as he hung off his shoulders. The last time Dazai used antiseptic to dab away blood like this or pressed gauze onto particularly awful gashes, the pair were at most eighteen years old. Mori had them utilize Corruption often enough that each time ran together in his mind, blurred by time and repression alike… probably for the better.
There’s something in him that still got worked up over Ogai Mori; flint and steel buried deep inside that sparked with each reminder of his old boss and mentor. A dying Odasaku came to mind in these instances and a flaming rage burned in his gut. Dazai, known for his calm and cool nature, for his aloof attitude, for his detachment from society and reality, still got angry over Mori. That feeling incinerated his insides when the man offered him his spot back in the mafia after so many years, pretending like he didn’t know the reason why Dazai defected, and his usually empty void was lit with hellfire.
It wasn’t just Odasaku, either. He felt similar when he recalled Mori’s abuse of Corruption, how he saw Chuuya as nothing but a tool of destruction, and often tried to insist on the power’s use in inappropriate situations. He didn’t care about the death and destruction, he didn’t care about the state it often left the mafioso in — Corruption was a nuclear bomb and Mori could press the button whenever he pleased, drunk on power he knew that Chuuya, disgustingly loyal as ever, wouldn’t refuse him.
It wasn’t like Dazai was the pinnacle of perfection when it came to this either, and he recognized this. When he was in the mafia, death meant nothing to him, and the suffering of others was little more than a game. He carried out the most egregious acts in the name of trying to feel something. It was selfish. Being unnecessarily cruel was in his nature, and while he wasn’t quite the same any more, he sometimes had trouble recognizing if he held back now because he truly cared, or just because he knew it was “right.”
Mori didn’t have that luxury as the head of the Port Mafia, though. Disposing of mafia members was always well devised and thought-out, he didn't kill just for the fun of it. Yet, despite the fact that he was an excellent strategist and would never let Corruption's use get to a point where Chuuya would die, he had no issue pushing this limit. On more than one occasion, Dazai had to argue against its use, and while he always told himself it was because it would be inconvenient if his partner was severely injured, he now recognized there was a part of him that was genuinely concerned for the other.
That concern came forth that evening, and so Dazai situated the unconscious man on his couch, cleaned his wounds, stripped him of as many garments as was appropriate, and patched him up the best he could. Chuuya would likely wake soon, grumble about having been kidnapped or the like, and make a hasty exit, asserting that he could take care of himself just fine. Dazai was okay with that, though. He wasn’t looking for anything in return from his partner, the whole thing was more for his own peace of mind than anything else.
“I always wondered if he’d make you use it after I left,” Dazai mused in a whisper, followed by a dry chuckle. He was attempting to brush out the ginger’s hair with a damp brush, carefully working through it from the bottom up, cleaning out what blood and grime he could. “I was always nervous he’d get trigger-happy and use you— one and done.” He halted in his ministrations, fingers playing with locks so fiery they burned to touch. “I’m glad he didn’t, I get to continue to make your life a living nightmare this way,” he said with a slight cheerfulness to his tone, snorting softly to himself after a moment of silence. Then, to make sure Chuuya was faring well, he gently placed fingers to the pulse point on his neck. The other's heart rate was fairly normal, nothing to worry about, but a smirk came to Dazai’s lips when he felt it increasing. “Caught ya,” he sang, abandoning his position standing behind the couch, “time to wake up, sleeping beauty!”
Chuuya groaned, cracking open his eyes with much effort, squinting at the brightness of the room though the lights were dimmed. He flexed his fingers and winced slightly at the action, too, before his gaze found Dazai’s.
“Why the fuck ‘m I here?” he grumbled, brows drawn together as he took in the room around him. “This your place?”
“Welcome to my humble abode!” he proclaimed brightly, and Chuuya scrunched his nose at this.
“Too loud,” he complained, and Dazai hummed at this — he purposefully had not spoken particularly loud to gauge his partner’s state. The fact that a normal speaking volume was considered “too loud” and that he was still looking through squinted eyes likely meant Chuuya was in a worse state than he looked to be on the outside.
This assumption was only confirmed when a violent cough suddenly wracked the other’s petite frame, and he raised an arm to cover his mouth. Crimson stained the white fabric of his shirt and Dazai frowned.
“How bad is it?” he inquired seriously, approaching Chuuya slowly as his hacking receded, eyes trained on his bloodstained sleeve.
“‘M fine,” the other asserted quite weakly and Dazai let out a tch. Somehow, even in this delirious state, his partner had the audacity to try to lie to his face. “Akutagawa does it all the time.”
“Akutagawa has a terminal disease,” Dazai remarked with a raised brow. “You may have a dog’s brain, but you’re not stupid. So, how bad is it?” He spoke without mirth, even with the added insult. Chuuya sighed, recognizing his own defeat.
“‘S worse than Lovecraft,” he admitted lowly, “didja let me go too far again, bastard?”
“No,” Dazai replied truthfully, standing before his partner with hands on his hips, “Corruption’s after-effects have gotten exponentially worse over time, I can only assume that’s why you’re in such an awful state.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, simultaneously glad and frustrated that Chuuya was now under his care for at least the next twelve hours. The fact that the other man had hardly moved since waking up was telling too, because though he was obviously resistant to being taken care of by Dazai, he didn’t appear to have the strength to leave (or perhaps knew that he wouldn’t get too far). “Are you planning on staying here, Chuuya?” he asked, and the other’s frown deepened.
“Yeah,” he admitted after a tense moment, “mafia won’t help me any better than you would.” Dazai’s jaw clenched. When they were in the mafia together, he was always the one who took care of Chuuya, and when he left, there was no reason to have someone else take his place — at least until the agency and the mafia began to work together on occasion. Even so, it appeared that Chuuya was in charge of taking care of himself. The thought made Dazai huff frustratedly.
“You must’ve missed me,” Dazai teased as he leaned down to pick the other up bridal-style. Chuuya only hummed in response to his taunt, a surprise to the agency member— he didn’t know if the other’s weakened state was to blame, or if it was a hum of agreement. “We’re giving you a bath, Chuuya,” he explained, and again, Chuuya simply hummed in the exact same intonation.
He sat Chuuya down on the lidded toilet, ran the water, and poured in the children’s bubble bath soap he had bought once on a whim.
“I can do it myself,” the mafioso argued before Dazai got the chance to ask about undressing and getting in the tub.
“I’ll help you wash up,” he said before rising and leaving the small room. He didn’t want to admit to himself the depth of his concern, but the fact that he stood right outside the door spelled it out in large, bold font: he cared.
It was a fact he would have denied as a teenager, repressing the emotions he so desperately craved to feel. Unbearably numb, he couldn’t fathom the fact that he held Chuuya in high regard. It was something beyond simple respect, he recognized now, a companionship exclusive to Double Black.
“C’mon in,” the voice sounded from beyond the door, the strongest he had heard it all evening. Or morning? It was probably far past midnight at this point. Dazai didn’t care to know, he was more concerned with the small, pale skeleton of a man that sat in his bathtub and whose face was fixed into a seemingly eternal glare, and while he was still concerned about the other man, he couldn’t help but think he looked like an angry little chihuahua getting a bath it desperately did not want.
Chuuya didn’t yap like an annoying dog, though he certainly growled like one, seeming to have gained some of his energy back.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear what you said earlier,” he grumbled while Dazai massaged shampoo into his scalp.
“What ever could you mean?” the latter questioned innocently, pulling off his best puppy-dog eyes even though the other couldn’t see him from his current position.
“‘Bout how you’re glad Mori-san didn’t have me use Corruption when you fucked off,” he explained with a grunt.
“I am glad,” he said seriously, and this seemed to take Chuuya by surprise, because he turned to look at Dazai. It was probably the sincerity with which he spoke, a juxtaposition to his sarcasm just moments before. Under the scrutiny of cerulean blue, the man simply shrugged as if to say “it’s the truth!”
“Why do you care? Back then, it seemed like you just wanted me dead,” Chuuya challenged with a suspicious glare, still turning toward Dazai. This prevented him from continuing to wash his hair, and so he was forced to stare back and focus on the exchange at hand. Effectively, Dazai was trapped in Chuuya’s gaze and his only way out would be to frustrate the mafioso to the point that he tried to attack him or simply gave up on the conversation.
“And what does it ‘seem’ like now?” He knew this game was not new to Chuuya: answering a question with a question. Sometimes he’d get worked up over not getting a direct answer, but other times, like this one, he saw it as his chance to get Dazai to at least agree to something he wouldn’t express overtly.
“It seems like you do care,” Chuuya conceded, “but you still haven’t explained why.” A beat and Chuuya turned back around to allow Dazai to keep scrubbing the blood from his scalp. “What changed?”
“Nothing changed all that much, and yet everything did.” He received a tired groan from the smaller man, and he decided to indulge him with an explanation. “What I mean is that I feel the same about you now as I did then, but back then I didn’t realize it in the same way I do now.” It was the truth. At least, it was the most logical reasoning he could come up with.
“Agency’s made you go soft,” Chuuya commented, and Dazai hummed noncommittally in response, because his partner was both right and wrong. “But I guess that’s made you more human somehow.” Dazai froze— because yes, that was exactly it. He knew that was it, and yet hearing it come from Chuuya (and in a tone that didn’t necessarily denote this as a negative thing) was weird as hell. “What?” the ginger questioned the other at having gone still.
“Time to rinse,” Dazai said simply, standing from his seat on the lidded toilet and retrieving the handheld shower head and turning on the water, as if it would drown out the unspoken words that lived in the silence between them. Admission meant vulnerability, so he opted to not reply at all to what the other had said, instead running fingers through soapy hair, coaxing out knots and grime until the water ran clear.
The bath ended wordlessly, Dazai leaving the room once again to give Chuuya privacy to change, providing him with clothes he knew would hang loose on the petit mafioso, but the sweatpants had a drawstring and the crewneck was comfortable, so it was the best he could do for the moment.
“Why do your clothes smell like fuckin’ antiseptic, mackerel?” The voice came from the other side of the door, more proof that Chuuya was gaining some of his energy back, though Dazai suspected he was playing up his crass nature to make himself seem more recovered than he actually was. He did the same at fifteen and eighteen, and apparently he still was as stubborn as ever at twenty-two.
His existence in Dazai’s apartment was proof enough of his weakness, and he had even admitted it earlier, but of course his partner wasn’t going to continue displaying his frailty. He was too headstrong for his own good.
Dazai realized he was a hypocrite in this— well, he was a hypocrite in most things, really.
“I’ve got to keep things clean,” he replied to the comment about antiseptic.
“First, that’s bullshit considering the state of this bathroom,” the door opened, “and second, it makes everything smell like a hospital. How d’you stand it? Get some lavender air freshener or something.” Chuuya was putting his full weight on the doorframe, practically swimming in the clothes provided to him by Dazai. The latter almost chuckled, a fond smile threatening to come to his lips, but he suppressed both reactions in favor of alleviating the door frame of the ginger and guiding his arm to be slung over his shoulder instead.
“Hungry?” he inquired as he led the other toward the kitchen.
“Why the hell are you doing this, Dazai? Just let me go home,” Chuuya muttered, his sharp gaze meeting Dazai’s, but Dazai knew him, and he saw right past the iron wall Chuuya had built, behind it a city of rubble.
“You’re the one who said you were planning on staying here,” he asserted, opting to set the mafioso down on the sofa again rather than the kitchen. He had a feeling that Chuuya would have thrown a tantrum like a small child if he tried to feed him, anyway.
“I changed my mind, I feel better.” His eyes were full of fire and challenge, but any actual strength was just about as real as anything Light Snow could produce.
“You should really know better than to lie to me, chibi,” Dazai said, monotone, and the other let out an aggravated sigh that turned into another fit of coughs. This time, no blood came up, but the wheezing that followed spoke for itself, and Chuuya stopped arguing. “Just like the good ol’ days, me taking care of you.” The shorter let out an unamused snort at that, rolling his eyes as he glanced at the sleeve to check for blood, visibly relaxing slightly when there was none.
“Told myself I wouldn’t trust you again,” he muttered into the silent room, quiet words filling up the space. Sunrise began to peek through the window and fatigue weighed down Dazai’s body.
“When was that?” he inquired curiously, tilting his head to the side as he regarded a worn-out Chuuya. Even though he looked considerably less pale than an hour or two earlier, he certainly was not in optimal shape, and Dazai suspected he would drift off into a much-needed sleep fairly soon.
“When you came back,” Chuuya informed, “I mean, when I found out you were with the agency.” He rubbed his eyes, then closed them for a moment. His exhaustion was loosening his tongue.
“Were you angry?” It was a quiet question, a hesitant thing. Dazai pressed his lips together and looked at the other man in a sideways glance.
“A little,” a thoughtful pause, he opened his eyes again, “but it was more that I was confused than surprised. I didn’t understand your reasoning— no one ever fucking does— but I remember thinking ‘of course Dazai would go and join the enemy organization’. Didn’t think for the longest time you did it to become a good man or whatever.” Chuuya was leaning back on the couch now, comfortable clothes draped over his small frame, a pensive look smoothing out his typically intense expression. “Then I saw how you were with the were-tiger, saw what you found there, and it made a bit more sense. You always had it in you to care about others, but the mafia wasn’t where you were gonna figure out how to do that.”
And Dazai had no clue how to respond to that, because Chuuya knew him— and few people really understood Dazai so intimately. He was also right about him having found something meaningful within the agency, a fact that Dazai was well aware of but chose not to think about too often lest he soften even further than he already had.
“You’re falling asleep,” he said instead of any of the thoughts ricocheting in his skull, and he moved to retrieve a blanket.
“I’m not,” the other man protested, though he didn’t move as the blanket was laid over him, snuggling into the fabric slightly. Dazai’s jaw clenched at the sight, pushing down the thought that the action was cute. Chuuya then grabbed his wrist, using whatever strength was left to pull the other down so he was seated on the sofa beside him. “Trapped ya.” Dazai could have easily twisted his hand out of the mafioso’s grip, the small man’s strength sapped by having used Corruption earlier, but he let himself be “trapped”.
“Oh no, whatever will I do!” he deadpanned, freeing himself from the other’s constraint around his wrist to show just how not-trapped he really was.
“Next time you won’t be so lucky,” he squeaked in a half-assed high voice, pulling up the blanket a little more so it reached his shoulders, resting his head on the cushion, facing Dazai.
“Wouldn’t this qualify as ‘next time’ already?”
“You’d call this situation ‘lucky’?” Chuuya yawned. “Being forced to take care of me, I don’t think that’s lucky,” he muttered, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment before he slowly opened them again. It was obvious he was fighting off slumber, even as the sun’s orange glow filled the small living room, bathing Chuuya in a warm glow that made Dazai think that somehow he felt lucky despite the circumstances.
“Said I wouldn’t trust you,” Chuuya mumbled, already half-asleep, repeating his sentiment from earlier. “Said I wouldn’t… but think I do anyway.” His breathing was slowing, he was drifting off.
“I’m—” He hesitated, but he could say this, right? Chuuya was basically asleep anyway and probably wouldn’t remember. “I’m glad you do.”
Chuuya’s weight fell against his side, and the smaller man hummed. Dazai tensed at the contact, also unaware if the hum was in response to what he had said or if it was simply contentment with the physical contact. Either way, his breaths became deeper and slower, with a slight snore on the inhale, and Dazai assumed he was asleep.
He relaxed into the touch, shifting his arm so that it was slung protectively over the other’s shoulder, hugging his body slightly closer to him, letting it rest on his shoulder and chest rather than the arm.
“I trust you, too,” he whispered into fiery hair, bathing in the sunrise’s soft, warm glow.
