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The pungent scent of chlorine hits Chuuya's nose before he slips his shoes off at the foyer. Ugly and medicinal. He has never been to a public swimming pool but he imagines it would smell somewhat like this, albeit slightly easier on the nose.
His phone had lit up with an unknown number - Chuuya looks down at his watch to check- 27 minutes ago; a somber Kunikida asking him to report at Dazai's residence, and before he could ask him who the fuck he thought he was asking him to report anywhere, the name trickled through his conscience and he was out the office. Coat in hand and instructions to carry on any current investigations relayed to Higuchi, he didn’t even stop to think about whether he’d be meeting the corpse of his ex-partner or at least, something very close to it.
‘’Nakahara-san’’, Kunikida meets him properly at the door, despite the vitriol marked in his posture- shoulders back, spine ramrod straight and a furrow in his eyebrows that Chuuya can only imagine he addresses Dazai with all the time. ‘’I cleaned up the best I could.’’
Cleaned, Kunikida says. There’s blood.
"Is he alive?’’ Chuuya's voice comes out gruff, but even.
"If I were ten minutes later, he wouldn’t be.’’ Kunikida slides his glasses up his nose.
"Okay’’ Chuuya clears his throat, filing away the involuntary relief flooding his senses. "Thanks for calling. Now get the fuck out.’’ He leaves his coat at the hanger, looking away.
"Nakahara-san’’ Kunikida bristles. There is no doubt in Chuuya's mind he is about to get lashed with a preaching on the ideal of staying out of the Agency’s business, so he raises his hand.
"No. Out.’’
He’s met with a frustrated sigh, but Kunikida relents. "I’ll be back’’
Chuuya leaves him no response and goes into the apartment to find the source of all this trouble.
The place is dark, windows shuttered and curtains drawn. It's 10 steps to the bedroom, and Dazai's laying there, lips patchy and blue, eyes sunken in. Chuuya doesn’t move until he clocks a breathing pattern- it’s there, but it’s shaky. It’s good enough for him.
"What was it this time?’’ Chuuya comes in, masking the concern with annoyance.
"An X-Acto knife’’
And oh, Dazai's voice almost grates on his ears- scratchy and hoarse in the way Chuuya has never heard it, even after multiple trips to the hospital together back in the Mafia.
"When's the last time you drank some water?”
If Dazai tries to laugh at the question, it doesn’t translate. All Chuuya hears is a painful wheeze.
"Sake’s 80% water.’’
Chuuya nods. He can see the empty bottles littered around the nightstand. That doesn’t explain the voice. He thinks for a second and it nearly rips his heart out.
"It wasn't just a knife, was it?"
Chuuya wonders where Dazai hung the rope. There aren’t any beams in the apartment strong enough to support the weight of a 22 year old man hanging off a rope.
Dazai doesn’t try to laugh this time, much to Chuuya's relief. Instead, he meets his gaze with a soft smile, ugly and plastered onto his drug-addled face. "It’s fun to make a guessing game out of it’’
"No’’ Chuuya nearly buckles, but he remains upright, shifting his center of gravity. "It’s not fun for anyone but you’’
"No, perhaps not. It’s the only fun i get to have now though’’
For a slight second, he registers the lack of snarling and whining thrown his way. A marked change from the Dazai he knew after a serious failed attempt. This is Dazai at 22, washed out, dull gray, as if he’s resigned himself to the fact that he is yet to exist with whatever shit he carries around for a while longer, until he finds the energy or until things get bad enough to try again. No screaming, no biting, no god awful tantrums where Chuuya needs to pin him down and fight the sense back into him. Dazai's newly seventeen saw them screaming at each other after the second time Chuuya interrupted an attempt, volleys of unfairness, on Chuuya's part and selfishness, on Dazai's part, thrown at each other when they knew they were both losing the battle, each of their respective fights lost the moment Chuuya walked into Dazai's mildewed shipping container in the middle of June.
This is the fifth time, at least the fifth that Chuuya is around for, but this time, he isn’t the one who stopped it. Perhaps, he’s not the recipient of any of Dazai's disproportionate anger this time because Kunikida already bore the brunt of it earlier.
Perhaps.
"Where did you hang it?’’
"Kitchen. Underestimated the strength of that beam. So then-’’ Dazai trails off, throat in too much apparent pain to continue. Chuuya knew where he was going with that though. So then, he resorted to the knife. He must’ve been desperate today. A double whammy, no wonder he’s like this now.
"Did Kunikida call you?’’
Chuuya nods, "Almost considered not coming’’ he smiles.
"You shouldn’t have,’’ Dazai doesn’t smile back.
‘’You’d have tried again’’
‘’And of what concern is that to you, slug?” There’s bitterness in the name. A rare emotion coming from him and Chuuya takes a second to reply.
‘’Of every concern. Nothing personal, the balance in Yokohama would perish.’’ It's all personal, but Chuuya keeps quiet about it.
‘’Cheesy’’
‘’Sure’’ Chuuya rolls his eyes. ‘’Did Kunikida put new bandages on you?’’
Dazai shoots him a look brimming with all the condescension he can muster in his sorry state, as if to say ‘You know me better’. His arms are hidden and stiff underneath the ratty blanket draped over him. Chuuya almost doesn’t want to see it.
‘’Okay. Where are the fresh rolls?’’
‘’You’re not doing that’’
‘’Shut it. Where are they?’’
Dazai stays quiet, lips zipped in brattish silence.
‘’I’ll rifle through your medicine cabinet’’
That stirs Dazai. ‘’Wait.’’
It was a gamble bringing the medicine cabinet up. For all Chuuya knew, this lackluster Dazai would shrug and tell him to go ahead. It's a bitter sort of familiarity, seeing that this part of Dazai hasn’t changed. The shame circling pills and medicines- a vestige from Mori’s care from before Chuuya had even been a part of this fucked up circle. He often wonders what Mori did to instill a reflex this deep almost eight years later. though, he figures it’s not just the medicine still, there’s probably far more shame-induced reflexes rammed in there from Mori than Chuuya will ever know, than he will ever want to know.
‘’Nightstand, second drawer’’ Dazai closes his eyes, head lolled over the pillow in begrudging defeat.
Chuuya moves towards it, nose wrinkling at the soured, alcoholic smell remnant in the room. He's closer to Dazai now, and he notes the sick, yellowed pallor of his skin. His eyes are crusted and red in that vague, ambiguous way where he couldn’t tell if it was from heavy sleep or tears. He’s never seen Dazai cry, can’t even imagine it despite that empty, aching look he always wore around slinking through the hallways of the Mafia headquarters. His complexion reminds him of back then, and it shudders horrible, grueling nostalgia out of him for a time he tells himself he does not miss.
The bandages are soft in his hands, springing in his palms when he presses into them with his fingers- a clear change from the rough, prickly bandages Chuuya was more accustomed to feeling on Dazai. It's a good thing. He turns to Dazai before he contemplates on the kindness of the soft gauze any further. ‘’Sit up’’
"I can’t.’’ Dazai sounds positively shattered, and Chuuya feels positively shattered- it’s like they’re seventeen all over again, whispers of "I can’t, Chuuya.’’ in the dark of Chuuya’s Mafia-financed apartment when he asked him why he can’t just fucking hold on and live for him. An unfair request, both then and now, but it’s all he had to offer in exchange- himself. And he'd do it again and again.
"I'm going to prop you up,’’ Chuuya whispers, forewarning to mitigate any ugly reactions skin-to-skin contact may tear out of Dazai.
He slides his hand around his back, and he’s funnily surprised at the warmth of it. He’s not sure what he was expecting- it seems odd that he’d have a perfectly human temperature, not corpse-cold to touch.
He slides two pillows under him, and moves the blanket away. If Dazai is cold, he does not say anything. He just continues staring ahead, face trained to stay blank, almost like a child faking bravado at an injection appointment. Affection swells inside Chuuya at this sorry, compelled vulnerability, but he tamps it down, schooling himself to stay neutral when he glances at the sleeves of Dazai's shirt. They bend like cardboard under his fingers, crusted with blood, dirty and metallic. He stops rolling them up at the insides of Dazai's elbows when his arms twitch, the minute spasm not going unnoticed under Chuuya's eyes. That's probably all there is then, nothing on his upper arms that Dazai would need Chuuya to see. In a way, he’s relieved it’s just half his arms that bore all of Dazai's anger today.
Just half. To find relief in that makes Chuuya feel monstrous.
He digs around the same drawer he retrieved the bandages from for wipes, half-expecting to not even find any actual first aid supplies, other than the bandages, considering Dazai's flagrant disregard for his own hygiene and safety when it comes to his injuries, but his hands knock against a pile of wipes and he fishes them out, tearing one open with his teeth and unfolding the wipe with the hand that wasn’t holding Dazai's arm. ‘’This will sting,’’ he says unhelpfully, both of them knowing this is a ritual Dazai has undertaken himself hundreds, thousands of times. He’s well-versed in the sting, but he says it anyway, playing into a script he wasn’t even aware he followed every time he patched Dazai up.
Chuuya builds it up so much in his head that seeing the actual wounds come into view underneath the dried blood doesn't come as much of a shock. It's not the worst he’s seen from Dazai, but it is still worse than usual. He forces himself to look, an unfamiliar queasiness settling in his stomach that only comes through after Dazai's attempts. Chuuya is no stranger to violence, blood-crusted clothes, almost a second skin sometimes; enough injuries to know how to stitch skin blindfolded. He's seen Akutagawa's shoulder blown out after a botched mission last week. Comrades dead, cracked open, over the last eight years. Violence hand in hand with the power thrusted upon him since the start of his remembered life. But still, Dazai seems to have a propensity for making Chuuya sick with a little bit of torn skin.
He tears another wipe open after setting the first one aside, moves onto his left arm, and ponders on the number of times he’s witnessed Dazai try- actually try, attempts exempt from the impulses that Dazai gives into, knowing it’d fail, simply to maintain the facade that it’s never really serious.
There were a couple times in the Mafia that struck pure fear into Chuuya- days spent visiting the hospital in between missions, grateful for their status as executives when he saw Dazai in a private key-card entry room each time. He thinks of the lumpy couch to the side of the hospital bed that Chuuya often camped on, during nights he felt strongly about keeping an eye on his partner- his self-proclaimed sworn enemy. Call it intuition, or self-preservation seeing how he’d lose access to an integral part of his ability without Dazai around. It was a bitter fact he was left to grapple with alone on that hospital couch, the fact that that frail slimeball held enough power over Chuuya where he’d want to keep him alive. And he did- he’d later realize it had nothing to do with self-preservation, just a begrudging concern that he assumed Dazai would never really understand.
Those were one of the few times he’d let himself worry for his then-partner’s actual wellbeing, choosing to shove it all aside for routine annoyance when Dazai was upright and walking, flaunting his terrible intelligence that got him into those hospital beds of his own accord so often. At least, in Chuuya's opinion.
‘’Okay,’’ Chuuya nods. ‘’Bandages now. I assume you have no feeling in your shoulders to do it yourself, so if you’re going to protest, I’d prefer you shut up.’’
‘’You’d prefer? How unusually polite of you’’ Dazai looks at him head-on. It feels like a challenge.
‘’I think you’ve had enough nastiness for a day, Osamu,’’ using his name was a strategic choice, one that made his heart squeeze to take but that curling embarrassment is worth the expression on Dazai's face. It’s sick, how that unguarded look never fails to give Chuuya a sad sense of accomplishment, how it only ever comes after bringing Dazai back from the ledge.
Rolling the bandages on is easy, Chuuya gives himself some leeway and lets his eyes unfocus while he does it. He wonders if this was the first serious attempt Dazai's done since the last one Chuuya was around for. He wishes so, painfully, but he knows it’s not. There’s a new scar lengthwise from his wrist that was not there four years ago. He nearly wants to ask what saved him back then, but he doesn’t, clasping the last loop securely in silence.
‘’Next time, I’ll jump’’
‘’There’s not gonna be a next time, fucker’’
‘’Why? Is Chuuya planning to kill me himself today?’’
‘’I will if you don’t shut up’’
Dazai smiles, mischief bleeding into the corners of it. ‘’Don’t threaten me with a good time’’
Chuuya does not regale him with a comment.
‘’When’s the last time you’ve eaten?’’
‘’I can’t get food down’’ Dazai points to his throat, arm shaking with the effort of keeping it up without Chuuya holding it for him.
‘’Soup,’’ Chuuya says, matter-of-factly, dodging Dazai's incessant need to punish himself through denying himself anything that could be good for him. Fucking annoying.
The fridge is stocked, surprisingly- vegetables in the crisper that Chuuya knows Dazai would not buy for himself. probably Kunikida, he concludes. He takes them out and sets about whipping together the fastest soup he’s ever done, the rhythm of the knife against the cutting board grounding him to the small kitchenette.
Dazai's apartment. Agency territory. They may be on a truce, and Chuuya has never given a shit about crossing lines where the Agency was involved, but nothing about this sits right with him. Presumably the fact that it’s Dazai and he still feels like he’s being strung along for something he never wanted to be a part of, despite him being nearly incapacitated in bed.
‘’Dazai,’’ Chuuya nearly hands him the bowl and realizes with pre-emptive horror that he’d have to feed him, ‘’why did Kunikida call me?’’
‘’Who knows?’’ Dazai shrugs with whatever strength he has. ‘’He’s always made strange decisions. I sure didn't want you here.’’ The crinkles around his eye are slightly too intense for it to be an unblemished truth.
Chuuya sits on the bed, and Dazai shuffles slightly to the side. He is grateful for the space. He picks up a spoonful of the soup and looks at Dazai, refusing to ask him to open up like he’s a fucking child. Dazai presumably feels the same, and he takes the bowl with shaky arms, picking up the spoon himself, albeit trembling, all the way to his mouth. Chuuya supposes this is Dazai's silent gratitude- the fact that he is eating it at all. He remembers Dazai's unshakeable resolve to not eat any of the food he was given at the hospital, preferring to subsist on jello. He feels warm with each spoonful Dazai chokes through.
‘’I’ll ask him directly, Dazai’’
‘’You won’t.’’ There's a bit of soup at the corner of Dazai's mouth, and it’s all Chuuya can do to not rub it off with his own thumb. An affection Chuuya could not give him after years of his absence. Once, where he’d easily lean in for a kiss, now he finds he cannot make himself move an inch closer. He wonders how Dazai would react if he tried. Instead, he hands Dazai a kitchen towel and gestures to his mouth.
Dazai looks at him funnily for a second, and wipes at his mouth. Chuuya unclenches his fist after how hard he was trying not to move his arm.
‘’He said he’ll be back’’
‘’Chuuya will be long gone by then’’
‘’Do you want me gone?’’
It’s a question he’d have never asked, vulnerability seeping into it the way he never allowed it to around Dazai. But here, with a Dazai that’s been defanged and hazy in his words, he finds himself giving in to it. If he were slightly less aware of what he’s doing, he might have even kissed that stupid look off Dazai's face.
‘’Kunikida shouldn’t have been checking in on me today,’’ Dazai ignores the question, much to Chuuya's chagrin, but he doesn’t interrupt, choosing to let Dazai talk. ‘’He has a schedule. After four days if I haven't turned up at the Agency at all. After eight if I show up but don’t stick around much. It’s just been two days so far.’’
Dazai's voice cracks when he says, ‘’I should’ve been successful today’’
And Chuuya doesn’t say it but he feels the first unfurlings of gratitude towards that weirdly uptight man, blooming further when Dazai sluggishly adds, “He does grocery runs sometimes. Every third or fourth week. It's only been around two weeks. Sixteen days.”
“It should've worked today,” frustration white-hot in Dazai's broken voice.
Chuuya sighs, chewing on the words before he says them but he looks at the anguish thinly-veiled in his face and figures he may as well. The worst he could get was a dismissal.
“I'm glad it didn’t work.”
It was quiet for a second, Dazai shaking his head.
“Thought you wanted me dead,” Dazai laughs lightly
“From my hands. not your own”
“Romantic”
“Only the best moves for you”
“Just do it now then” he looks up at Chuuya, and if he didn’t know Dazai any better he’d have thought he was pleading.
“No,” Chuuya rises up from the bed and takes the forgotten half-eaten bowl of soup off Dazai's lap, “No fun if you can’t fight back. Come on, time for a wash.”
“You just changed my bandages.”
“Then I caught a whiff of you, smartass. Get the fuck up, you stink.”
“Nobody's asking you to sniff me. I know you’re a dog and all, but-” Dazai is interrupted with a slight oof, as Chuuya nearly half-carries him to the bathroom.
“Don’t complete that sentence.” Chuuya's voice is so close to his ears that it almost tickles. Pleasant in a way Dazai actively steers his thoughts away from.
Chuuya stops at the entrance of the bathroom door, Dazai leaning limp and helpless against him, and pauses. The chlorine scent is the strongest here, flooding Chuuya's nose. Dazai crinkles his nose in twin unpleasantness. Before he can ask, Dazai says, “He found me here.”
A beat of silence passes over them as Chuuya takes that in. A miserable, frenzied Dazai making his way to the bathroom after the failed hanging, making the tub his presumed last resting place with the knife in his hand. There's a tub of bleach on the sink, soaked sponges in the bin and the faint suggestions of what Chuuya can only assume to be the stubborn blood Kunikida could not remove.
He wonders if this is where Kunikida had to hold Dazai down, arms restrained as he wrenched the blade out of his grip. Chuuya knew Dazai was never stronger than when he didn’t want something being taken out of his hands. He wonders if Kunikida yelled at Dazai too. Knee-jerk reactions Chuuya always gave into after seeing a friend bleeding out in front of you for the millionth time. Chuuya shuts his eyes briefly, remembering the broken ‘’do you know what this fucking does to me?’’ he had croaked out over the hospital bed once, Dazai out cold after a forced sedation to stop him from flailing and kicking when the nurses tried to insert an IV into his arm.
Selfishness, on both their parts back then. Dazai for not realizing it gets really fucking hard for everyone around him. Chuuya for not realizing it gets really fucking hard for Dazai in return.
A lose-lose. It feels fitting for who they are.
“He did a good job, you should thank him.”
Chuuya's sternness surprises him too. an equivalent exchange, he supposes, immense heartache for orders. Dazai does not need to know how his heart breaks thinking of how he was in that tub bleeding out a mere hour or two ago.
He doesn’t turn to see Dazai looking at him, doesn’t want to see what kind of expression he’s making despite being able to imagine it pretty well.
“I will”
“No need to unwrap them,” Chuuya says, balancing Dazai on the ledge of the tub and bringing the showerhead down. “Take off your clothes”
“Chuuya!,” Dazai gasps in mock scandal, “without buying me dinner first?”
“Dickhead,” Chuuya laughs, and Dazai slips out of his crusted shirt, arms barely lifting with the effort, and pants. Chuuya doesn’t even want to know how long he’s been wearing them. He picks them up with two fingers and throws them in the bin, deciding they’re unsalvageable.
The bandages on Dazai's legs look old, Chuuya frowns. He looks at Dazai in silent permission to take those off and he looks reluctant, as reluctant as one could look when they’re half out of their mind while the other half is steeped in misery. Shoulders slouched, neck low, face crumpled. He takes the silence as a no and settles for soaking a towel and wiping his skin with warm water.
He sees his upper arms now, mottled and dappled without Dazai's carapace of bandages or a shirt hiding them. He goes slowly with the towel, careful around dented skin. He doesn’t think it’d hurt, scars looking like they’ve had years worth of repair upon them, but for some reason he doesn’t press his brain too hard on, he feels like with the wrong pressure, the man under him would wither away into the bathtub drain.
“Dogs wash themselves, not their masters,” Dazai says. It's a weak attempt at his usual jab, soaked in humiliation, voice missing of all his characteristic conviction that it makes Chuuya not want to even humor Dazai's sorry try at retrieving his dignity between them.
“Don’t talk. rest that ugly voice of yours”
“Dogs don’t give their masters orders either”
Chuuya flicks a little bit of water into Dazai's eyes in lieu of a response.
His hair is grimy under Chuuya's fingers. He massages the shampoo- of course it’s a shitty convenience store 2-in-1 bottle- into Dazai's hair, silently grateful that the ledge of the tub is low enough for Chuuya to reach his head comfortably when he sits. Dazai shivers from time to time, and lets out a particularly vigorous one when Chuuya firmly massages the tangles out of a stubbornly matted part of his hair.
“Does it hurt?” Chuuya pauses his hands.
“No, it’s-” Dazai cuts himself off, looking down suddenly. Chuuya can’t see his expression.
“What?”
“It feels good”
“Okay,” Chuuya restarts lathering the shampoo, “That’s good.”
He wonders if anyone had done this for Dazai over the last four years, because god knows he would never lavish himself like this. It's too much like wanting to stay alive. The shame-ridden admission that a scalp massage actually feels nice convinces Chuuya that perhaps, he never was the recipient of any such care. Not really.
But he voices the question anyway, midway of washing the suds out of his hair. He makes sure the water spray provides a curtain Dazai can hide behind should he not want to answer. The strands are softer now when Chuuya runs his hand through them. He knows he could get them softer in due time.
“No one. Mori-san, when I was younger.” Dazai sounds half-asleep. Chuuya's sure he could get him to answer anything right now. maybe he’d even be honest. Still, the idea of Mori providing something akin to human care that didn’t involve a scalpel seemed hard to believe. It didn’t align with the hard-edged man Chuuya knew. There’s a sinking feeling in his gut.
“Boss?”
Dazai's nose wrinkles in distaste at the word. Chuuya files that away in his head.
“Mori-san. it hurt when he did it”
“Washed your hair?”
“Among other things” he lets out a pathetic attempt at a chuckle.
Chuuya doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t even breathe. He's lucky his gravity is nullified with his hands soaped up in Dazai's hair because it’s all he can do to not accelerate at terminal velocity to the Port Mafia headquarters and liquify the man’s face under the gravity of his palm. Tear his limbs apart at the atoms. Increase the mass of his flesh until his bones crumble under his own weight.
He doesn’t even realize the force with which he’s pulling at Dazai's hair until he feels a hand on his wrist and a soft ‘ouch’.
‘’Sorry,’’ Chuuya steps back, ‘’got distracted.’’
Dazai doesn’t let go of his wrist, ‘’I have a feeling Chuuya would do some pretty stupid things if I let go right now.’’
Anger flares at his ribs, ‘let go, Dazai’’
‘’No’’
He knows, logically, he could pull away. With the state in which Dazai is right now, he doesn’t stand a chance at keeping him here. But he looks at Dazai, silent and unyielding, perhaps the most he’d get as a signal that he wants him here, and he nods.
‘’Okay,’’ Dazai lets go when Chuuya speaks, ‘’Okay, I’m not going anywhere.’’
‘’Good dog’’
Chuuya smiles at that for once, heart breaking with the weight of it.
He switches the water off and towels Dazai dry. He sits still throughout all of it. Perhaps out of embarrassment or plain weariness, Chuuya doesn’t pry, he just lets him sit there and presses the towel into him softly, like it’s an aphorism for the love he cannot express.
“It doesn’t hurt when Chuuya does it”
The sentence is quiet, barely audible over the rustle of towel over skin. but Chuuya hears it, sharper than the knife he still has in his holster, and he lets it settle into his skin.
‘’It shouldn’t hurt’’
‘’It always does,’’ Dazai's eyes open just slightly more as if he’s been brought back into awareness, reminding himself he’s at home and not under Mori, and adds, quieter still, ‘’It always did.’’
‘’Not with me’’
‘’No, not with you’’
‘’I didn't know,’’ Chuuya matches the whispered tone. There’s a bubble around them and he finds his incessant urge to break things is reeled back for this one.
‘’Of course you didn’t. That was the point’’
‘’No, I didn't know . Dazai, I always know. Hints of it. Something’’
‘’Mori would’ve had you killed if you found out’’
‘’There’s nothing he could throw at me that’d leave a scratch’’
‘’No,’’ Dazai laughs, a weak full-body shudder, ‘’No, he absolutely could’’
‘’Are you scared of him?’’
Dazai looks up at him then, a weird, faraway look that leaves Chuuya's insides turning. ‘’I've never been scared. I knew what I was doing’’
‘’Did you know what he was doing?’’
Dazai smiles, ‘’I want clothes on now. It’s cold’’
Chuuya doesn’t say anything to that. He just moves to the cupboard in silence and takes out the softest t-shirt and pants he can find.
‘’I'm not dressing you,’’ he says, throwing the bundle to Dazai.
‘’God forbid, after showering me like a child’’
‘’Learn how to say thank you before that smart mouth gets itself a kick’’
‘’I'd rather get a kiss,’’ Dazai's voice is smaller than he has heard it today. Whiplash- how Dazai can go from spitting ripostes to this. Whatever this is. Asking for a kiss like Chuuya didn’t leave him bloody and bruised the first time they met after four years a couple weeks ago. it was reciprocated though; Dazai's punches were slight but they were punches regardless. He wishes he could, press into him to make up for all the time they've lost, a show of true gratitude to him for holding on despite all his attempts to stop. He sees the way Dazai's eyes are downcast. A genuine admission. But he can't, not now. Not with the way things remain moth-eaten between them still, not with the way the image of Mori doing all of what he wants to do to Dazai for god knows how long hanging heavy over him. He doesn't have the courage to ask yet.
‘’Dazai,’’ Chuuya looks at him. A silent chiding, steering away from affection. He pouts at the tone, and Chuuya would laugh at the childishness of it if he didn't have a more pressing question at hand. ‘’How many medicines did you take?’’
His face hardens up at the mention. Chuuya vaguely wonders what came first- Mori’s hands on him or the aversion to any talk of medicine, or if they were simultaneous. It’s not like Dazai has completely sworn off pills- not now, not then. With the barrage of pain that hits him everyday, it’d be impossible to. Once, when they were both sixteen, holed up in a safe house in Kawasaki after a rough mission, he caught a glimpse of the pouch of painkillers Dazai carried around, red and frayed, bursting at the seams with white, round pills- oxycontin, as Chuuya later learnt after a hushed question to Kouyou. He had wondered where he got them from, knowing Mori as the kind of doctor who kept the Mafia’s stash of narcotics under tight lock, not even granting easy access to his right-hand man, but he sees part of the picture now. Now - seven years too late.
“Doesn’t matter much”
“Tell me”
“Tramadol”
“Does it hurt that much?”
“Maybe. Can’t feel it”
“Did Kunikida give it to you or did you take it?”
“Doesn’t matter much”
Chuuya wishes they were back in the shower, Dazai pliant and honest under the hot water spray. Talking to him didn’t feel like pulling teeth when his hands were combing the knots out of his hair.
“It matters because I need to know if you’re gonna develop a fucking dependency or if the Agency regulates this shit”
“It’s just Tramadol”
“It’s a fucking narcotic”
“Chuuya, I've been hopped up on Oxys forever. lf the dependency were to happen, it’d have happened already.’’ He sneers on the ‘forever’. A mean word out of Dazai's mouth.
Chuuya decides to pick his battles, makes a mental note to storm through the Agency once Dazai inevitably falls asleep and catch Yosano by the collar, to catch them all by the collar.
‘’Okay, Dazai,’’ he sighs. He sits on the other side of the bed, barely on the corner, and watches Dazai struggle to slip his legs through the holes of his pants, trembling. He almost wants to rush over and help, but he consciously reminds himself that’s not his place now. He ignores how even showing up here went beyond his prescribed place, let alone cooking for and showering the man, but he’s always been great at justifying his shitty decisions. Kunikida called him, a move he’d have to grill him about during his later visit to the Agency. He listened to him. The Agency and the Mafia are on a truce. Chuuya's building rapport. He goes through the defenses cushioning his already shaky morals like a grocery list.
The vanguard of the Mafia’s offense squads building rapport with an enemy organization. It’s almost laughable.
‘’You need to get some rest now,’’ Chuuya says, once Dazai is done struggling through the heap of cloth thrown on his lap. He’s slightly panting, stubbornly keeping his mouth closed and breathing through his nose like he doesn’t want Chuuya to know doing something that menial takes all that energy out of him. Dazai lies down slowly and Chuuya, unwittingly, drapes the blanket back over him. He only realizes when he steps away and Dazai's giving him a funny look again.
‘’You don’t need to hold back either, slug’’
Chuuya frowns, but doesn’t say anything.
Dazai's words are fuzzy around the edges, syllables slipping into each other while his usual cadence always remains measured for whichever situation he finds himself in. It's disconcerting, but Chuuya can find enough relief in the fact that he can speak semi-coherently at all. He decides not to put any stock into what he’s saying now, sensing the future grief he’d go through once Dazai wakes up intelligible again and cruel . Reluctance adding weight to every step closer to leaving, not wanting to give up the way Dazai looks at him now- soft and sorry, an apology for all of it.
‘’Sleep now’’ is all he says, picking up the hat he left on the nightstand.
Dazai mumbles something into the pillow, words mangled into babble through the effort it takes to move a single muscle through the pain. Chuuya leans in closer to hear, enough to feel Dazai's shaky breath on his cheek.
‘’I don’t want you gone’’
There’s the answer. There it is, but Chuuya stands up, despite his whole body aching to slide next to him, legs tangled the way he knows Dazai likes, the way they would after he was discharged from the hospital each time and the ache- the fear- of leaving Dazai alone got too strong for the both of them.
Instead Chuuya says, ‘’I’ll be back,’’ and allows himself to brush over Dazai's sleeping face, smoothed out and slack. Peaceful. If he leaves a soft kiss on his damp forehead, that's just for him to know.
The door is quiet when Chuuya closes it behind him.