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Sluggishly opening his eyes, Chuuya’s met with a bright, blue sky as the summer heat blares down on his skin, lukewarm water surrounding him. His head turns to the side to give his bleary eyes a break from the glaring sun, now looking at a funky plant next to him. It takes his brain a few seconds to process that what he’s staring at is rice.
In his peripheral, he notices more of the same vegetation. It must mean that he’s in a rice field, except he’s not exactly sure why he’s here. With the aches spreading around his skin, in his joints, and deep within his bones, he must have been on some sort of mission, but that’s the only thing he can deduce.
He attempts to think back to his latest memory only to find his mind blanking on anything that might be of use. The last thing he can remember is Dazai’s face, expression unreadable as he stares at Chuuya, those brown eyes swirling.
He isn’t able to discern anything else, just the vague smell of the earth which doesn’t surprise him considering he’s stranded in a field.
Shifting to the side, he feels the slight resistance of water holding him back. He tries to wipe the liquid off his face, fingers gently brushing against his cheek, only to smear more mud against himself.
There’s a chance that he got too drunk, decided to run off, and ended up falling asleep in some random rice terrace. Ignoring the fact that this doesn’t feel like a normal hangover and that he usually isn’t one to do whatever this is, it’s certainly a possibility. Besides, he can figure out all the extra details when he’s back at home, away from this rice field, and looking more presentable than whatever the pathetic state he’s in right now is.
Getting one elbow underneath his back, he uses the other to fully sit up, back hunching over while his head sickeningly spins. His arms shook when he pushed himself upwards, he realizes, a strange feeling swirling inside of his stomach at the revelation.
He exhales deeply, trying to ignore the uneasiness due to the situation, before fishing around in his pockets to try and find his phone. His eyes widen in shock when he can’t find a phone in either of his cloth compartments. He forces himself to calm down under the reassurance that he left his phone at the bar, that he’s completely fine without it anyways.
Light shivers start to wrack his body as air breezes past his wet clothes, arm tingling from the sleep cutting off blood circulation. Squeezing his eyes shut, he brings the ball of his palm against them, pushing down harshly. He’s completely stranded here in this shitty rice field for reasons he can’t figure out.
“Fuck…” He groans, only giving himself a few more seconds to sit in distress.
Getting himself up, vision dancing with black spots, he looks around to examine his surroundings. Most of the landscape is just water and rice on a hill, but the main thing that stands out to him is a dirt road cutting through the middle.
It’s something he’ll be able to follow. Whether it will take him back home or to a different city, he’s not entirely sure, but it’s the only lead he has. Carefully, he maneuvers himself out of the water, making sure he doesn’t step on any of the rice, and onto a raised portion of land usually used as a pathway which takes him straight to the road.
By the time he’s standing on the sidelines of the dirt trail, he can only stare as cars pass by. He feels nauseous, brain whirling around and making him want to throw up. To make matters worse, a light drizzle begins to course its way over the land, getting heavier as time passes.
He staggers his way to the left, quickly steadying his steps so as to not look like a drunkard who needs a ride.
Walking down the road feels like a blur of putting one foot in front of the other, resulting in an uncertainty of exactly how much time he spent wandering in a straight line. Everything around him is constant: the rain beating down which he can’t stop from drenching him because of his apparent ability loss, the cars passing by in random intervals, the scenery of grass and dirt as he stares downwards. This only serves in distorting his internal clock.
The road quickly becomes muddy and causes his feet to stick to the bottom ever so slightly. His vision swims when he finally looks up, everything a little blurry from the rain. Unknowingly, he steps to the side, foot sliding down the edge of the road and into a ditch.
The sudden change causes a flare of panic to blossom in his chest as he falls into a channel. He lands on his front, groaning loudly at the presence of newfound pain that wraps around his stomach. It’s fairly similar to the dull yet sharp ache that comes with getting a bruise.
He lays there, feeling the way water trickles down his face into the wet grass below. He doesn’t miss how it turns a red color, hues shifting into a brown as the green grass cancels it out. Bringing a hand up to the back of his head, he winces as he lightly presses into his skull, pulling away a second later.
He can see blood, diluted by the rain, on his fingertips, the watery substance dripping fastly down his fingers. He needs to get up and find some help, but he can’t bring himself to get his legs moving.
A car suddenly breaks the constant, slowing down and coming to a halt a few feet in front of him. Footsteps hurriedly make their way over to his limp body, crushing the grass underneath them with a crunch .
Ignoring the nausea that accompanies the movements, Chuuya forces himself upright, preparing to explain the situation to somebody he doesn’t even know when an unexpected fishy smell assaults his nostrils.
Looking up, he sees his lover, Dazai, running towards him. It was possibly the best person to find him in this situation, not that he would ever tell the other that.
“What the hell are you doing here, you shitty bastard?” He decides to question.
Dazai looks ecstatic to see him, lips curling up into one of the happiest smiles he’s seen on the brunet, “I’ve come to take Slug home!”
The ginger crinkles his lips in distaste after seeing the car that the mackerel chose to drive. It’s a gross one always filled with trash, clothes or food and the one that the asshole knows he hates, “I’m not sitting in that damn car,” He says despite his body’s protests to rest.
“It’s clean! I swear.”
“You said that the last time I stepped foot in that fucking thing.”
The younger grabs his arms so he can try to take him home, “It’s not that bad,” He drags out the last word.
“No!” The shorter attempts to pull away from the other, “I don’t want to get in your nasty ass car!”
The brunet doesn’t let up and, instead, responds with information the shorter should have been told beforehand, “Chuuya, you've been gone for a week.”
He stops struggling in the taller’s grasp, shocked by the information he was just given. Has he truly been gone for that fucking long? He could’ve sworn the last memory he’s able to recall was from the night before he found himself in a rice field, but it wouldn’t make any sense for his lover to lie to him.
They stare in each other's eyes for a few moments, ending with Chuuya reluctantly agreeing to ride in the mackerel’s shitty vehicle.
Dazai’s hands hover as the shorter walks closer to the automobile, to which he just slaps them away, loudly proclaiming, “I don’t need you stupid help!”
Except when the mafioso starts swaying a bit too much, the bastard is the one who gently guides him into the passenger side despite the ginger saying he could do it, leaning the seat back so that the shorter could lay down.
It’s the kind of action that has Chuuya wanting to smother the brunet in kisses and tell him that he’s honored his late friend’s wish by becoming a better man than he used to be. Instead of actually voicing his thoughts, he just stares as his lover walks to the other side of the car to get behind the wheel.
During the drive, which was much longer than the ginger thought it would be and he still isn’t recognizing the roads, he attempts to start a conversation, “Where are we going?”
“A hotel,” Comes Dazai’s curt response, intently staring at the road. It’s unlike him to actually use his driving skills, or incessantly talk about his day. Chuuya finds this whole situation strange.
He tries to sit up to get a better view, the dull throbbing in his stomach now burning with the effort, and he immediately lays back down. Against his better judgement, he finds himself peeling up his soaked-in shirt from the bottom. He sucks in a breath at what he finds.
His skin is mottled with an array of purpling bruises, long and thick across the entirety of his abs.
“Dazai?” He asks the question that’s been plaguing his thoughts ever since he’s woken up, “What the hell happened to me?”
The bandaged man doesn’t answer, he just purses his lips ever so slightly. It should make Chuuya upset, should make him yell, but right now he’s too tired to care. They sit in silence for the rest of the ride.
When they finally reach their stop, Chuuya’s awoken to the sound of the car door opening. The rumble of the engine must have lulled him to sleep, his eyelids now too tired to not be half-lidded.
“C’mon, Slug…are you going to sleep all night or get into a nice comfy hotel?” Dazai offers with a smile placed on his lip.
The ginger glares at him for a moment, which the asshole just chuckles at, before he moves to unbuckle his seatbelt. The mackerel’s hands rest against his back, pulling him into a sitting position.
The second Chuuya slides out of the car, shoes hitting the pavement, he’s remembering a different time. With the feeling of road underneath his feet, a blindfold covering his eyes, his legs taking a few stumbling steps forward until he falls on his knees. The way a fist curls into his hair, dragging his head up and—
He’s brought back to the present time with steady hands seizing his shoulders. He gasps ever so slightly. He thinks he hears someone talking, but he isn’t sure.
“Huh?”
“I said, Chibi’s so small, he’ll get trampled if we walk in there,” Chuuya vaguely notices how Dazai is keeping his tone quiet with his mouth close to the ginger’s ear.
“What? I will not,” He hisses.
“I propose a solution!” The brunet’s voice deepens with his next few words which means he’s trying to get the shorter to comply, “I’ll just need to carry you instead.”
And before Chuuya can say anything at all, there's an arm against the underside of his knees and his upper back, lifting him up into a bridal carry. He latches onto the other’s neck in fear of being dropped.
“What do you think you're doing?” He yells at his lover.
Dazai leans down to whisper into the ginger’s ear, “Carrying you like I said I would, Slug.”
They get through check-in without any hassle, even if the shorter scowled and glared the whole time. Eventually they start their walk down the hallway to enter an elevator.
Movement from the hold starts to twist Chuuya’s stomach into tight coils, threatening to make him puke if he continues to stare at the hall in front of him. Instead, he turns his head into the mackerel’s shoulder, pushing his face into the bandages wound around the others neck.
In the blink of an eye, his feet are being set down on bathroom tile meaning that he must have fallen asleep again. He silently hopes that Dazai didn’t notice, it would give the man a chance to tease him about it later.
Dazai strangely smiles at the ginger before turning to face a tub, “Chuuya should take his clothes off for me while I run him a bath.”
Despite wanting to say something about the oddly suggestive wording, the shorter keeps his mouth shut to focus on his new task.
He begins by unbuttoning the crumpled vest around his torso before sliding it off of his shoulders with ease, discarding the fabric somewhere on the bathroom floor. Watching as Dazai continues to fill the bath, he pulls the bolo tie off of his neck and sets it onto the counter. He finishes undressing by removing his undershirt, belt, pants, and underwear.
Chuuya awkwardly stands by the sink, refusing to look at his beaten body, while the brunet fills up the bathtub, occasionally checking the temperature of the water to make sure it’s warm enough. He stares into the flowing water. At the liquid filling up Dazai’s palm, seeping into the white bandages on his wrist. Hazy memories flood his brain at the sight of the substance, almost enough to paint a picture, but not a single idea is able to be formed in his mind.
Uneasiness washes over him as he continues to be fixated by the water even if he doesn’t have a reason as to feel like this. His stomach turns at the thought of stepping inside of the bath, having water surround him and cover almost every inch of his skin.
Suddenly, the faucet is turned off, snapping the ginger out of his thoughts. He quickly focuses on his lover's face, an unreadable emotion passing through his eyes before a light smile is placed onto his lips. Something about it seems off .
Dazai then stands up and gently tugs on the shorter’s hand, allowing him to use the younger for support. He gratefully takes it, but refuses to show his thankfulness to the other since the brunet would just find some dumb way to say he’s “going soft”.
Another hand presses into the ginger’s back when he steps into the bathtub, offering more stability as he’s slowly enveloped in water. The palms eventually stop making contact with his skin and, instead, rest on the side of the tub, leaving him in his own mind surrounded by liquid.
He looks down at the water covering his legs, encompassing most of his arms, and clinging to half of his torso. It makes his stomach turn with unease for a reason he can’t even remember.
His head was shoved underwater. The only distinct feeling of touch was the hand pushing him farther into the clear liquid. There was a burning sensation in his nose and mouth, lungs filling up with water.
His shaking legs begin to kick in the bathtub. He can’t breathe, there isn’t enough oxygen to inhale. It feels like he’s back in that wretched tube, water surrounding him as cables are connected to the insides of his wrist and he can’t—
Arms abruptly grab him and pull him close while the ginger instinctively tries to push away. He needs to get away, but he can’t breath and it feels like the walls are closing in.
“Chuuya,” A familiar voice calls out, stopping the limbs from thrashing around in the water. He realizes that it’s Dazai trying to hug him when rough bandages scratch against his skin, “It’s okay now, you’re not there anymore.”
The shorter doesn’t even know where there is, all that he can recall is short glimpses from his head being shoved in water. As he’s pulled into a hug, he decides to ask what the brunet is taking about, “What the fuck are you saying, asshole?”
Dazai’s arms continue to hold him a tight embrace, squishing the ginger’s face into his chest. The familiar, low voice begins to speak again, pulling the shorter out of his worries, “I’ll tell you everything that happened in the morning, okay? All Slug needs to do now is rest.”
Despite wanting to press for more, Chuuya hums into the other’s collarbone and closes his eyes, dozing off with the trust that Dazai will take care of him after he’s fallen asleep.