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“Fuck, your mouth’s wet”
Chuuya gags, Dazai retreats the fingers from his mouth as he splutters out, “Jesus Christ, don’t fucking phrase it like that, jackass.”
Dazai laughs, light and chirpy, “My bad.”
Dazai sticks two fingers back into Chuuya’s mouth again, “He really stuck them on there, huh? What did he even use, fuckin’ super glue?” He rolls his fingers around, pinching at the fang stuck onto Chuuya's canine. Not too rough. He doesn't want it to hurt. Or at least, not hurt that much- he yanks on it for fair measure.
“I have no goddamn idea,” he burbles through Dazai’s fingers, “Gotta use a plier for this shit.”
“Do you want to lose your teeth?”
“No,” Chuuya consciously has to resist biting down on Dazai’s fingers. Hard. The vampire act is up now, “Just get them the fuck off.”
“I'm trying!” Dazai’s shaking in laughter, keeping his injured shoulder still throughout it all. Chuuya clocks it and winces.
“Finally got to shoot you. One of my lifelong dreams realized.”
The words are halfway to unintelligible, comprehension only born through Dazai’s immense catalogue of Chuuya’s cadence. “Yeah? You could’ve aimed slightly to the left and hit my axillary vein.”
“I fucking considered it,” Chuuya clicks his tongue as Dazai takes his fingers out again, “but I’m not that bad of a shot.”
Dazai just grins and wipes his saliva-slick fingers on Chuuya’s jacket.
“Fucking hell, that’s gross,” Chuuya grimaces. The fangs give him just the most subtle lisp. He hates it.
“Yeah, I think you’re just stuck with them on until we get to Yokohama. Ask Mori what the hell he used. Maybe he can glue your mouth shut with it too.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Chuuya tries to jiggle at the tooth once more. It really is stuck on there, holding onto his real teeth with the same sheer tenacity with which Dazai is looking at him right now. He feels warm- he figures the jacket might be a bit much.
“It’s a 13 hour flight back home,” Chuuya’s mournful about it, already imagining thirteen hours of vampire jokes.
Dazai peers up at him. Chuuya’s on a cement block and Dazai is kneeling on the ground— a good vantage point to extricate the fangs but a terrible one to have a conversation. “Maybe the glue will melt off by then.”
Chuuya grunts, pushing at the fangs with his tongue with just enough force for it to chafe his tongue and do nothing else.
“Right,” Chuuya gets up and dusts his jacket off, “at least the contacts are gone. Couldn’t see shit.”
Dazai looks at him pointedly. then down to his shoulder. Chuuya. Shoulder. Chuuya. Shoulder.
“Yeah, I fucking get it.” Chuuya looks around the control room they dragged themselves to and spots the first aid kit lying underneath rubble. He clicks his fingers and motions at Dazai to sit down properly. He does, silently.
“Clean exit wound, at least. No need to go around fishing for a bullet with no anesthetic.”
“Shucks, I was really looking forward to that.”
“Should’ve shot that damn attitude out of you.”
“You’d need to do way more than shoot me for that.”
“Should’ve left you in here to rot.”
Dazai just closes his eyes and smiles. There’s sweat beading his hairline. The effort of keeping the cheer up was getting a bit much.
Chuuya takes a scissor and cuts through the sleeve around his shoulder. “I’m not stitching the wound, not sure if these needles are sterilized.”
A pack of them lies loose in the kit. Shoddy.
“Okay”
“Antiseptic and gauze for now. Okay?” He tears the gauze packet open.
“Okay,” Dazai hums, “It’s a 13 hour flight.”
“I have fangs on.”
“I’m risking gangrene.”
Chuuya clicks his tongue and takes out three cotton balls to soak in antiseptic.
“Gonna sting”
“Don’t I fucking know it,” Dazai sighs. He’s nauseous from the poison. Lightheaded from the blood loss. His right ankle is shattered, and the makeshift splint can only do so much. Chuuya's fingers against his skin are searing. He doesn’t have the capacity to trudge through the comfort he finds in that specific pain.
If he's shaking, it doesn’t deter Chuuya. He presses the cotton into the borders of the wound and holds him by his other shoulder to keep him still. This was the only serious shot, the other two nicked his skin. Dazai has done worse than that on himself- he wasn't worried.
No, not worried.
But there’s a churning swirl of something- sick and festering- brewing in the pits of his stomach. Dazai’s skin is just a step away from yellow and his veins are visible underneath the thin skin of his face. He's holding in the panting, but Chuuya can tell- the pain is unbearable.
And he did that to him.
“Stay awake, ‘zai,” Chuuya mumbles close to Dazai’s ear. He pats him on the cheek with his free hand to drive the point home.
“I don’t have a concussion.”
“No, but-” Chuuya wipes the last of the crusted blood around his shoulder- “I can’t patch up a limp, fucking body. Stay awake”
“So demanding,” Dazai’s head lolls forward, almost resting on Chuuya's shoulder. He's tired. Has it really only been half an hour?
Chuuya holds his head up while he picks up the roll of gauze from where he kept it in the kit. His forehead’s sticky with sweat. The pulse at Dazai’s temples throbs so hard Chuuya can feel it through his thumb. “Fuck,” the whisper is strained. He gives into the growing pit inside him and says, “you’re gonna be okay.”
“I know. I expected this much.”
That’s the truth of it. Chuuya pulled the trigger, but Dazai put the gun in his hand.
He wraps around his shoulder as gently as he can bring himself to. Dazai’s swaying and trembling and Chuuya’s grasping for straws.
“What you said. In the elevator”
“Hm?”
“Where did that come from?”
“Out of my heart, Chuuya. I mean everything with utmost sincerity-”
“Cut the shit,” Chuuya is slightly rougher with the next wrap of gauze around him, “The fuck was that?”
“Okay,” Dazai hums. “You wanna talk?”
“Yeah”
“Right now? When my shoulder’s all torn up and you have that funny little lisp going?”
“Asshole, I came here. For you. You’re gonna talk when I ask you to.”
Dazai smiles a little at that. “God, maybe you should’ve turned into an actual vampire, would’ve been way easier.”
“Get back to the point. Or I’m leaving your ass here to get septic.”
“Nah,” Dazai breathes in, “You’ll carry me back if I pass out.”
“I still have two rounds left in the gun, Dazai.”
“One for you, one for me”
“Don’t rope me into your double suicide shit. I can’t believe you’re still on that.”
“I'm not. Just wanted to see the reaction.”
“Right,” Chuuya clasps the gauze together and looks for spare uniforms around them, “What a child. Answer my question.”
“I had already caught onto you by then. Figured it was the quickest way to aggravate you.”
“Motherfucker, I’d have shot you either way.”
“I don’t doubt it for a second.”
Chuuya fishes out spare clothes from the storage. It’s dusty and a size too big but it will do. He throws them to Dazai, aiming for the face but he catches them mid-air with his good arm.
“I'm glad you came. I wasn’t sure if you would.”
The words are muffled through the cloth Dazai’s pulling over his head, but it reaches Chuuya’s ears in stunning clarity. He fucking hates the warmth that rushes over his skin with that; it’s the poison, Chuuya tells himself, Dazai would never verbalize shit like that if he weren’t under the influence.
“Yeah,” Chuuya’s quiet. “You’re welcome”
Dazai slips the shirt over him with much struggle, arms shaking at the end of it. His shoulder feels like it’s been torn off but Chuuya’s looking at him- sharp- so it’s okay.
“It was a risky move.”
“All my cards were risky.”
“You were prepared to die in there, weren’t you?”
“Maybe. Not in the sense you’re thinking.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Chuuya scowls and walks back over to Dazai. He doesn’t kneel on the floor like Dazai had been minutes ago but plops right on it unceremoniously, intentionally avoiding sitting in seiza. Kouyou drilled it into him years ago— his knees feel wrong facing sideways.
“My primary goal was eliminating Fyodor, of course. I wouldn’t have died without assuring his destruction,” he looks up. Chuuya assumes he’s counting the seconds until they both make their entrance outside, “but I didn’t discount the possibility of me dying in the end either. Especially for those few minutes where I wasn’t sure what you were.”
“Kouyou’s girls did well with the makeup” Chuuya grins, remembering the shaky hands of Kouyou’s newer courtesans in training holding his face in place.
“Sure they did,” Dazai huffs. It aches. “But you’re right in a way. Don’t let it get to your head.”
“So. Our fates, huh?”
“God, just shut up.”
“Hah. Not a chance in hell,” Chuuya rises to his full height which, much to his chagrin, just barely reaches over Dazai’s head while he’s sat. Dazai straightens his spine, just so they’re at eye level. The little child.
“What was it about our fates?” He taunts.
“Where’d you keep the gun, Chuuya?” He lilts, leans in just slightly closer.
“Nowhere you’d be able to find it” Chuuya maintains the proximity. It’s fucking warm.
Dazai slinks his good arm around Chuuya’s side, “Not on you, I suppose?”
Chuuya holds Dazai’s wrist tight where it wraps around his waist. He off-handedly wonders if Dazai has been getting fresh rolls of bandages since he’s been here. “You’re free to check.”
The fangs look ridiculous up close. Chuuya’s eyes are bloodshot from the large contacts. All that to save him- he has never looked more beautiful.
Dazai says it.
“What’s flattery gonna get you?” Chuuya grins. The fangs brush against Dazai’s lower lip.
“A kiss, perhaps” He’s cocky about it. Chuuya wants to sink his teeth in. Everywhere.
“Is that all you want?”
“For now”
“Okay,” Chuuya breathes. He doesn’t want to give Dazai the satisfaction but he missed him- misses him as he’s right in front of him, “Okay, I’ll let you have one.”
It’s chaste, barely anything but Dazai melts into it and Chuuya melts right back. He chases Chuuya’s mouth for more and the enthusiasm makes him huff out a laugh, “We have time for this later.”
“One more”
“I just said one,” he doesn’t move his face away, but he’s smiling into Dazai’s mouth where he brushes against him.
He whines, a high pitched whirr that starts from the pit of his sternum and punches out all the way out his throat- a cute sound, but it reminds Chuuya all too viscerally of the noise Dazai made just a little while ago when he loaded the first bullet into his shoulder. The split-second of real pain before he burst into expletives. Just a split-second.
Chuuya steps away.
“Fuck”
“What is it?”
“I hurt you.” He realizes this like a knife to the gut, the taste of Dazai, poison-filled and all, steadily reminding him of what a gunshot feels like. That slow, nauseating drip of pain filtering through the adrenaline until it knocks you onto your knees, that’s what he did to Dazai.
“I made you.”
“That’s not the fucking point, Jesus Christ. You hate pain and I-”
“Chuuya,” Dazai forces his voice to be steady, “I’m alive.”
He reaches out for his face again, cups it with the feebleness of a doe, but the conviction is there. “I'm alive, you hear me? That would not have been the case had you not shot me.”
Chuuya closes his eyes, leans into the open perch of Dazai’s clammy hand and sucks in a shivering breath. He hears the convoluted logic, but he doesn’t argue. “You’re alive”
“I'm alive. So are you” Dazai tamps down the burning urge to make an ill-timed joke, something about a double suicide, something about getting out of here. something about how beautiful Chuuya looks under the greasy white prison light.
“We’re alive”
“Kiss me again, will you?”
“Tell me what you were gonna say before I had to fucking shoot you.”
“Or what?”
“Or I shoot you again.”
“Do whatever you want. Just kiss me once more”
Chuuya concedes, realizing he doesn’t really have any bullets left.
“Second time you’ve come to my rescue. What a prince”
“Don’t tack that cheesy ass label on me, more like I’m the damn marionette here.”
“You had agency here,” Dazai hums, “you always do. You had it even when that dragon swooped down on Yokohama.”
“The dragon you unleashed.”
“I wouldn’t quite say that” his smile is soft against Chuuya’s face. The chill is seeping into Dazai, and Chuuya’s skin is warm. He just can’t help it. “You could have just as easily let the poison take over. Both then and now. But you still got me,” Dazai leans further against Chuuya, head pressed into the junction of his shoulder, “both then and now.”
“What else would I do?” He sighs, like it’s the worst fate he could have been assigned to, but they both know this is just what they are, what they always will be. Stars in orbit, spinning and spinning. Maybe that’s what Dazai was about to say; destined to spin around and come crashing into each other one day. That is, if they haven’t already.
With the way he’s feeling now, he can’t quite tell.
“But it’s like I said. I’m glad you’re here.”
“You’re gonna hate yourself tomorrow morning for saying any of this.”
“That’s tomorrow’s problem. I’m quite comfortable right now.”
Chuuya is inclined to agree, almost, if it weren’t for the burning awareness that this pliancy Dazai is exhibiting comes from nothing short of searing pain, low cognizance.
The sallowness of his skin against Chuuya’s own skin, stained gray with makeup washed out under water. The jolty, shivering movement of his throat against Chuuya’s shoulder. The deep, heavy breaths Dazai is taking to stay awake. Chuuya can almost hear him counting down the seconds in his head- he wishes he’d stop. All these small things he takes in before this bubble vanishes, before they step out and deal with what’s waiting for them outside.
“Can you stand?”
“Yeah. Yeah, maybe”
“I can-” Chuuya clears his throat, shakes away his embarrassment, “-help you walk to the exit. You’re on your own after that.”
Dazai shifts, just enough to meet Chuuya’s eyes from the side, “I can stand.”
“Okay”
“3 minutes until we go outside.”
“You ready?”
“Always. Are you?”
“Yeah. Would be a shame to fly all the way here and not see that fucking bastard blow himself to bits.”
Dazai laughs, sits up straight and tries to get the cricks out of his neck.
“You’re gonna tell me what you were about to say earlier once we’re out of here.”
“Maybe if you ask nicely.”
“Shithead. This is the best you’re getting.”
“Then you get nothing.”
Chuuya flicks his forehead, shifts his hand to the back of his neck and pulls him in for a kiss. A last one, he supposes. There’s something off about all of this. “Nice enough?”
“Getting there”
Chuuya sighs and pulls away.
Dazai stands up gingerly, adjusts himself and flashes his bare wrist at Chuuya like there’s a watch on it. “It’s time”
“Let’s go?”
“Let’s go”