Work Text:
It’s pitch-dark when Dazai stumbles through the entryway.
The doorknob is slippery with his own sweat and sticky with blood. He struggles to fit the key in the keyhole, because his vision is swimming in hot oil, and he throws himself against it in despair after missing the mark for the third time. It doesn’t open, though he knew it wouldn’t, so he’s forced to try harder.
The door gives with a creak. He sobs in relief and doesn’t bother trying to catch himself when he pitches forward. He hits the floor with a dull thud. The stabbing sensation in his abdomen brings with it a feeling akin to being pummeled with nausea, a disgusting cocktail of sickness and pain; but the scream in his throat fizzles instead into a pathetic whine.
He lays there, breathing hard and trying, trying desperately to struggle upright — but his fingertips are cold and his limbs feel like lead. His head’s a merry-go-round, and everything around him tilts and whirls like a sick carnival. He can’t see. It’s so hot.
There was a gunman, robbing a woman in the back alley of a convenience store. Chuuya wanted Dazai in bed; Dazai’s been sick with the flu for three days. Dazai didn’t believe it at first, because Dazai hasn’t been sick since he was fifteen. Chuuya played doctor the first day; but of course, Chuuya has to go to work. Dazai’s not allowed to, said Kunikida. So Dazai’s been at home. Tonight, tossing and turning next to Chuuya in their sweat-soaked bed, Dazai decided he was hungry.
Part of Dazai was also itching for a fight, and lord knows he found one.
He groans into the floor. He has no idea how late it is. His mouth tastes like pennies and vomit. He might’ve thrown up in alley on the way home — the memory is fuzzy and pilled at the edges, like an old wool sweater, though it could only have been a few minutes ago. His brain churns sluggishly inside his skull, made of day-old-oatmeal. It’s unbearable.
If this is the way he’s going out, it’s a terrible one. There’s nothing interesting about being shot to death. Not that there’s much he can do about it now, but if he had the choice, he’d like to end his life at least with a clear head.
He wonders vaguely if the assailant was an Ability user — he’s been shot before, and it was inconvenient, sure, but this is agony. Some Ability users can manipulate guns, make explosive bullets and such else. Then, at least, there’d be an interesting story.
No, that wouldn’t make sense. His body would nullify the Ability upon contact. Silly.
Even in his whirling delirium, he scolds himself for letting the guy get away. It’s unprofessional for a private agent like himself, and real pathetic for an ex-mafioso. Mori taught him better.
In the recesses of his mind, he realizes someone’s turned on the light. He feels, instead of hears, their footsteps. There’s something warm on his back, like a hand, and shouting. His ears are… waterlogged, but he doesn’t remember getting wet. The world buzzes with static — he feels like an old TV, and his channels are out of commission.
The disembodied hand tries to flip him over. He gasps and sputters with the way it tugs at the hole in his stomach, but turned over he sees… Chuuya, who looks angry and scared and hurt, somehow. He yells something at Dazai, and another something into his phone. Dazai offers a weak cough and what he hopes is a smile: I’m home, Chibi. I’m sure you were worried when I left. It’s alright now.
When Chuuya presses something over the hole in his stomach, hard, his brain whites-out completely.
Yosano hates her job, sometimes. It’s almost always Dazai’s fault.
She’s awakened from a pleasant dream — one about the last time she got to slice Kunikida’s stomach open on the operating table — by her phone ringing; a breach of her sacred silence. She lets it go to voicemail the first time, tries to bury her head in her pillow the second, and irritatedly picks up on the third.
Ten minutes later, she sprints, breathless, into the Agency’s infirmary. There’s blood on the floor when she gets there; Chuuya and Dazai have already let themselves in.
A gunshot wound, Chuuya explains, and allows Yosano to take over pressing the towel into Dazai’s stomach so that he can pace angrily and kick her cabinets. He doesn’t know how in fuck’s name Dazai snuck out of bed and got himself shot without waking him up; but he’s royally pissed that he’ll have to mop the apartment floor again this week. Dazai has nothing to say to that, because Dazai is unconscious.
(Chuuya’s obviously not just upset because Dazai snuck out of their apartment, or because he’ll have to clean up the mess. He’s clearly more than irate, too — the way he clenches and unclenches his fists, the crackle in his voice, and the fact that he will not make eye contact with Yosano tells her otherwise. She doesn’t know Nakahara Chuuya very well and, admittedly, does not like him. But the one merit he does have is he cares about Dazai; loves him, she assumes, which puts her and Chuuya in the same club. For her intents and purposes, that is enough).
She looks at Dazai again, unconsciously curled in on himself on one of the empty cots and flushed to high heaven. He shivers oh-so-slightly and his face is contorted in pain. She’s not used to seeing him so… vulnerable.
Yosano does not like treating Dazai, because Dazai, with his Ability nullification, takes the fun out of her job. It also means there are real stakes — there’s no pulling out the chainsaw when things go south with him.
So she starts with what she always does: kicks Chuuya out to the lobby and ignores his shouts of complaints when he does; Strips Dazai from the waist up and straps him, bleeding, to her beloved operating table; and pulls on a fresh pair of latex gloves. She’ll have time to be upset with him later, because really, what the hell was he thinking?
That time is not now. For now, she will do what she always does: save a life. He can try all he pleases, but Dazai won’t get away from her this time.
He sleeps for a day and a half. He learns this because it’s the first thing he asks about when he wakes up.
Yosano is furious. He picks up on that much, even though his head’s positively cooked and everything he sees, hears, and thinks is distorted like a funhouse mirror. He woke her up at three in the morning; made her extract a bullet from his liver (he could’ve sworn it was his stomach) and if she did a bad job than sue her, because she’d been asleep twenty minutes before. Blessedly, she knows his limits; and when he begins to nod off from the drugs and the pain, promises to ream him at a later date once he’s more… there.
Chuuya, however, does not show mercy on him. Neither does Kunikida when he arrives the morning after Dazai wakes, and between the two of them, the Agency quickly becomes ground zero for an emotional explosion of massive proportions (He thinks he hears a filing cabinet thrown across the room, accompanied by much swearing and a scream that sounds distinctly like Atsushi; but it could have been a product of his fever-muddled imagination). Fukuzawa-ex-machina manages to de-escalate the situation, once again saving Yokohama (and Dazai himself) from total destruction.
For all it’s worth, Dazai’s sorry he went out and got himself hurt. He tells Chuuya this the second day after he wakes up, when it doesn’t hurt as much to think or speak or move or breathe. Chuuya spins around in Yosano’s office chair. They have the room totally to themselves; Dazai almost wishes they didn’t. If someone else was there, Chuuya wouldn’t bother sharing how he really felt. Dazai doesn’t know if he can stomach it.
“It’s great that you’re sorry and all,” Chuuya huffs at the ceiling as he rotates, “but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a hole in your stomach. You’re damn lucky to have Yosano — and that’s the first and last time I’ll say anything nice about one of your agency people.” He stops the chair with his foot and slowly angles his head back down to look at Dazai. “You were fucking stupid. You were really, really fucking stupid, Osamu.”
Dazai hums, as he idly picks at the IV in his hand, which feeds him a steady stream of painkillers and fluids — the other one, supplying him blood, was taken out yesterday. “First, it was my liver. Yosano told me. But I’m happy to know the Slug worries about me. Makes me feel special.”
Chuuya snorts. “Oh, save it, you asshat. I know you’re only saying that because you don’t want to have a serious conversation about this.”
He feigns ignorance. “What is it we have to talk about?” He doesn’t not know. Chuuya’s right — he just doesn’t want to say it.
“See? It’s that. You’re clowning. You always do that, and it’s… it’s pathetic,” he spits, but it’s not malicious — it’s just sad and broken. “I wish you took yourself more seriously than that. I mean, what were you thinking, leaving the apartment in the middle of the night, let alone when you were so sick? Did you go looking for a fight?”
“Not really,” he says plainly. “The fight found me.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes. “‘Course. So you got mugged or something? You sure would’ve been an easy target, though I doubt you even thought to bring your wallet.”
“No, not me — but a lady at the convenience store did. I just happened to be there.” He pauses, and then sneezes so hard it makes his head spin. Damn flu. He sniffles and continues, “Better me than her, I suppose.”
For once in his life, Chuuya has nothing to say — he just grumbles and mashes his face into his hands, like he’s been bested by the antics of a toddler. For awhile they just sit there, this terrible silence permeating the room. Dazai continues to peel at the sticker keeping the needle in his hand.
Chuuya often pretends to be angry. Dazai often pretends to be unbothered. The pretending is so thick right now, he could cut it with a butterknife.
Chuuya isn’t mad, Dazai knows. Well, maybe he’s a little mad. He’s mostly… scared, or the feeling after one doesn’t have a reason to be scared anymore but isn’t quite relieved, because that would mean everything was okay. That’s probably what it is.
And Dazai… Dazai feels guilty. He doesn’t think in his right mind he would’ve gone and gotten himself shot by a mugger — although that much is the mugger’s fault, really — but it doesn’t change the fact that Chuuya had found him collapsed in the entryway of the apartment, previously unaware that he hadn’t been in bed in the first place. Chuuya’s been through a lot, sure. But that’s more than just a lot.
It‘s easier to pretend, most of the time. They will continue dancing their elaborate dance, and one day, this incident will disappear into the long ledger of their history. Dazai will be glad when it does; and one day he will do something like this all over again.
Chuuya says, “Yosano told me you can go home this evening. Given your little stunt, she also says you’re not coming to work for the rest of the week. When we get back to the apartment, I’m making you dinner and sending you straight to bed. And you’re staying there this time — or I swear to God, I’ll punt you into the fucking sun. You got that?”
Dazai smiles. After everything, it doesn’t seem like a terrible fate anymore.
“Sounds good to me, Chibi.”