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Chuuya couldn’t remember most of the ride back to the Port Mafia’s main building, the only thing he knew was that his hands were covered in blood, Dazai’s blood to be specific, and said boy hadn’t shown any signs of waking up soon.
Not even five seconds after the cab parked, Chuuya got out of it while carrying Dazai, yelling from the entrance for someone to please, help him, he’s dying. A group of bodyguards approached him, stating Mori’s orders to take Dazai to the infirmary immediately, so Chuuya followed them, not letting anyone touch his boyfriend unless necessary.
The infirmary was located on the base floor, it was huge, with tall walls and at least twenty individual rooms. Chuuya was guided to one of them, having to put Dazai in one of the gurneys so they could take him inside and start the examination. Mori was waiting for them, standing at one side of the room and wearing a medical gown, Chuuya had never seen him wear one.
“I will personally take care of Dazai-kun” Mori put in latex gloves, then he walked until he was standing in front of Chuuya, smiling at him “we’ll call you once he’s out of danger.”
Chuuya nodded, not finding anything else to do, he’d helped Dazai as much as he could, so leaving all the medical aspect to Mori was everything left. Giving back what looked more like a grimace, he left the room, only turning to look back at the time the door closed behind him.
Two hours had passed since then, Chuuya couldn’t be more impatient, bouncing his leg up and down, biting the nails of his left hand while Kouyou looked at him over her teacup, giving him a penetrating glare.
“I don’t see why you’re so worried about him” she left her cup over the little porcelain plate, putting her now free hand over his at the time she ran her nails along his wrist, “he’s a nuisance, but that’s the exact reason why nothing will happen.”
“Bad grass never dies, you say?” he asked, still with his nails on his mouth.
Kouyou sighed, not answering but leaning forward to smack the back of his hand, muttering something like uneducated brat under her breath. Chuuya pulled off the hand she was holding as well to put both on the pockets of his jacket. She clicked her tongue in disapproval.
Chuuya’s cup of tea was still full, it had been since Kouyou put it in front of him moments after he came to her office, moving slightly with the movement of the table when he reaccommodated himself. He could see his reflect on it, dancing on the surface of the fuming drink, and he felt disgusted by it.
Along his younger years, he always had to take care of the youngers at The Sheep, he was their leader, the king, as much as he hated the title. He was no king nor good leader either, just a slightly older kid like the rest of them, but he still had to carry with the responsibility to not let them starve and make night rounds to keep them safe. He’d learned first aid techniques and even played the role of a therapist when needed, but nothing had prepared him for what he saw that day.
To see Dazai bleeding to death.
And he wasn’t dead, but he was so close. Chuuya was no expert, but it couldn’t be fine to loss so much blood. He could still feel some of the hardened spots on his pants where Dazai’s blood had stained them, already dry but working as a reminder to him of every second that had passed since then.
“You should’ve changed your clothes” Kouyou seemed to have noticed the same, taking another sip of her tea, “it smells like blood since you came in, you thought I wouldn’t notice because they are black?”
“No, I didn’t” he admitted with a low voice, reaching for his cup of tea and tasting its content for the first time. Gyokuro. “I just couldn’t. Sorry.”
That made him gain another glare from Kouyou, but less threatening than the last one. She hummed as if looking something to say, slightly pressing her lips together. Chuuya kept the eye contact, expecting something, anything that’d comfort him. The uneasiness was starting to be too much, and he needed someone to ground him more than ever.
“I think, sometimes, we tend to expect too much from people we shouldn’t” Chuuya didn’t understand where she was going or what it had to do with him, but the seriousness on her voice and the impassive expression on her made him stay silent, “and I’m not saying that’s not right, but the toll of being disappointed when things don’t go the way we expect them to… It’s saddening, don’t you think?”
“Yes…?”
Chuuya felt at lost on what to answer, he didn’t expect the world to be gifted to him by Dazai. They were partners and boyfriends, yes, but they always cared for their independence and having a life outside of the other, as well as knowing their relationship might be dangerous at some point. A target to anyone wanting to hurt the other. So, they kept it at bay as much as they could, it was a limit both of them agreed since the beginning of their partnership and evolved along with the current situation.
“I know about your relationship with Dazai, probably more than any other executive” that was true, they didn’t express their feelings openly to everyone and Kouyou was Chuuya’s mentor, so he trusted her enough to give a more detailed description of what happened between them, never too specific, but always enough, “I never approved it, not one bit. But I think I never gave you an explanation on why.”
“Because he’s a whiny brat most of the time?”
“Besides that.” Kouyou rolled her eyes, looking annoyed at the mention only, “You don’t expect much from Dazai, do you?”
“Not at all” he confessed, pressing his arms together, wanting to shrink on his seat between the leather and tea leaves, “I mean, of course there are some expectations like loyalty and trust, but our lives are always on the line, and we knew it when we signed up for it. So, in terms of this being long term, never.”
“But you do have those expectations on yourself, on keeping him alive even at the cost of your own life.”
That snapped something inside Chuuya’s brain. He did, in fact, wanted to do anything for Dazai to be safe and well. That’s why he always did the physical part on their plans and cared on keeping him away from fights where he could end up being injured. Chuuya kept an eye on him at all times, even outside work, because his habits were a menace to his own life.
But they got separated once, and it was enough for Dazai to almost die on his arms.
“I do, yeah.”
His teacup clicked against the porcelain when a guard opened the door claiming to be looking for him. They had news about Dazai.
The door to Dazai’s room was still closed by the time Chuuya arrived, the guard guiding him as he didn’t have mentally reviewed the way there at least twenty times while being with Kouyou.
To his fortune, not even ten minutes passed until Mori came out, looking somehow exhausted and with the previously white gloves now almost completely covered in crimson. Chuuya gulped at the sight, feeling the uneasiness from before transforming in anxiety.
Taking off his gloves along with the gown, Mori disposed them on the trash can labeled with Trace Chemo. Then, he turned to look at Chuuya, his expression didn’t say much, but something on it made Chuuya feel discouraged.
“You might want to seat to hear this.”
All the color from Chuuya’s face drained, why would he need to seat if not for bad news? Or maybe the prognostic was so good he might faint of joy? Was that possible? Either way, Mori looked at him waiting for a response of any kind, having the patience to not make any comment when his trembling hands almost made the chair fall at the time he pulled it.
Everything around him felt surreal, like he was living on a dream, and he’d wake up at any moment. Mori’s voice came muffled, and he had to put all his remaining energies to focus his attention on him.
“Dazai-kun lost too much blood” he began, to which Chuuya nodded, that wasn’t new, he saw the blood and got covered with it earlier, “when patients suffer from blood loss, we usually make a transfusion and try to fix any internal damage. But there are other instances where they’ve lost so much blood before getting to the clinic, that their heart is unable to pump enough for the whole body.”
That didn’t sound like it was nothing, Mori was using all these simple words so Chuuya could understand but his brain simply wouldn’t wrap around them. They seemed distant, like being told to someone else. But he was the only one on that chair, looking at the door in front of him, just waiting for the bomb to be dropped.
“And what does that mean to Dazai?” his voice didn’t feel his, it was like talking but not really doing it, as if someone had taken over his body to make him act in a certain way, an impassible and calm way, “Is he dead?”
The question came out before he was able to process it, he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to hear the answer. It was automatic, like the last drop of sanity on him trying to find something to grasp on, evaluating if it was the time to cry or to stop feeling so tense, so out of him, and like a doll being pulled by the force of wanting to be with Dazai only.
Mori dropped his gaze, interlocking his fingers before returning his attention to Chuuya.
“No” he stated, and Chuuya breathed.
He was alive.
He would wake up.
He was—
“Not yet.”
Chuuya’s breath hitched up again, his eyes opening in confusion and looking for any trace in Mori’s semblance that told him he was lying. Because it must be a lie, Dazai must have convinced him to make a prank on Chuuya and make him believe he was going to die, that he was currently dying.
But he found nothing, and the realization hit him.
“When?”
“His organs didn’t receive enough blood for a certain amount of time, and due to his low defenses and bad—”
“I’m asking when, boss” Chuuya interrupt him, hands clenched in tight fists, his nails digging on his palm’s skin.
“I don’t think he’s going to make it through the night.”
No.
No.
Nonononono.
It felt like a bucket of cold water had been thrown over Chuuya, a nerve chilling and breathtaking sensation of solitude and despair. It couldn’t be happening; he must’ve heard wrong. Maybe he did, maybe he was just anticipating so much his head had created the illusion of Mori saying Dazai wasn’t going to be alive by tomorrow.
But the moment he turned to look at the entrance of the infirmary and his gaze met Kouyou’s, who had apparently been hearing the whole thing, he knew it wasn’t a creation of his mind.
It was true.
Dazai was dying.
A sob broke the silence, Chuuya’s frame shaking uncontrollably and his head falling in between his hands in an attempt to appease the bawling that threatened to alert the whole mafia of what was happening. If breathing was hard before, now it felt like an impossible task. Oxygen wasn’t getting to his lungs and the agitated weeping was only making him feel more and more desperate. Chuuya hugged himself, trying to soothe his own emotions. He couldn’t be acting like that in a moment so crucial, but the thought of never seeing Dazai again was breaking him from the inside, making the anxiety grow and grow until it was bigger than him.
A pair of soft arms embraced him, placing his head against someone’s chest. The pink blossom perfume involved him, helping him to find a distractor from his crying and the panic attack that was threatening to make him pass out. His breathing started to even out, but the sobs persisted, Kouyou didn’t mind it, hugging his tighter while Chuuya grasped on her kimono, letting his emotions flow.
Later that night, Chuuya found himself seated next to Dazai on his room. The other was unconscious, and Chuuya would’ve think he was already gone if it wasn’t for the constant beeping of the machine next to him, which confirmed his heart was still beating.
Even if it wasn’t for long.
Chuuya felt numb watching at Dazai’s face, uselessly waiting for him to wake up, to open his eyes and smile at him acting as if nothing happened and he’d successfully fooled Chuuya once more. So, he stayed like that for a while, contemplating how pale Dazai looked, the veins more notorious than before, and the cold coming from the hand he’d been holding since the moment he got there.
“I always swore to myself that I’d do everything to keep you safe” he whispered, as if telling a secret no one else was meant to hear, thinking maybe Dazai could hear him, “that I’d follow you everywhere just to make sure you were okay.”
Chuuya leaned against Dazai’s hand, pressing his forehead to the back of it, tears starting to form on his eyes.
It was funny, he thought, how he seemed to never run out of tears to cry, he’d been like that the entire evening since Mori told him about Dazai’s state. Not even Kouyou was capable of getting him to eat or drink something, he was most surely going to dehydrate sooner than later.
And honestly, he didn’t care.
“But now you’re dying, going somewhere where I can’t” Chuuya laughed, dryly and lacking emotion, a sarcastic sound that rasped his throat and only sent shivers down his spine, “don’t go where I can’t follow, ‘Samu.”
Being in that position, the last of Chuuya’s tears fell, leaving a wet trace on his cheeks until he felt asleep.
The next time Chuuya woke up, there was a flatline crossing the monitor where his last way of knowing if Dazai was alive relied on.