Chapter Text
Chuuya dreamt. He didn’t know it, but Dazai did. Dazai was there in the middle of the night when Chuuya was making weak sounds that he never would let past his lips if he were aware enough to stop them. Whines and whimpers, small groans, rapid breathing, Dazai hardly got any sleep on the nights that Chuuya managed to dream, too busy watching over his partner with concerned eyes that he would never wear if the other was aware enough to see them.
For all the sound Chuuya made at night, he never spoke in his dreams. He never let any sound out of his mouth, he didn’t hiss or yell, he never screamed. The most sound that would come out of his mouth would be during the half-awake half-asleep moment when Dazai decided the dream was too bad to let him ride it out, when Chuuya would take a heaving gasp of air before forgetting what he was going to scream for.
It was odd, that such a loud, vibrant presence was reduced to muted noises of protest, his mouth tied shut as he dreamt about his own personal hell. This strange dichotomy was mirrored in his movements; on normal nights, Chuuya slept as though he were trying to take up as much space as he could—which wasn’t much, Dazai always thought fondly after huffing in annoyance and shoving Chuuya's limbs aside to get in bed himself. But on bad nights, he would slowly curl into a ball as he fell asleep, unaware of the action, before going entirely limp. Dazai found out that he could push and pull Chuuya as much as he wanted during these nights, something he had the first time started to gleefully use to get the chibi into stupid poses he planned to photo and use as blackmail. That is, before he noticed that doing so caused Chuuya to whine more, fear evident on his face and tremors going along his arms, but not resisting.
Dazai had found it rather less appealing, then.
Instead, he had settled for grumbling and moving his partner into a more comfortable position—it still caused whining and fear and Dazai felt that his insides were burning because he caused that—before covering him in a few more blankets than strictly necessary. Dazai had taken sentinel on the bed then, keeping a careful eye on chibi. It would do no good for Dazai if Chuuya broke down, after all.
(And whether or not he really believed that it would break his chibi, or if he just didn’t want the other to suffer alone, no one would know.)