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It wasn’t uncommon for the Demon Prodigy’s partner to be absent after a particularly harsh mission. Of the few people who knew about Corruption, even less knew about the toll that it took on Chuuya’s body.
That was why Osamu found himself supporting Chuuya to his apartment near the Mafia headquarters, his partner practically a dead weight against him. The slug had an arm slung loosely around Osamu’s shoulders that Osamu was forced to reposition every few seconds as Chuuya fades in and out of consciousness.
After a considerable amount of time and some half-hearted bickering, the pair eventually reach Chuuya’s front door. Osamu considers, for a second, simply leaving his partner on the couch and dealing with the repercussions in the morning, but. Sleeping in clothes sodden with blood couldn’t be comfortable. And Chuuya would certainly not forgive him if he let his couch be soiled.
After a moment or two of deliberation, he deigns to wake the hatrack and ask him himself.
“Chibi! ..Hey, chibi! Wake up!” Osamu pokes his partner’s cheek a few times for emphasis, and also just to be annoying.
Chuuya blinks into awareness slowly, bleary eyes landing on Osamu and scrunching up in annoyance. Adorable, Osamu thinks, and then shakes his head a little as if to clear it of such silly, traitorous thoughts.
He gathers himself, and says, “Clean yourself up, slug. Take a bath or something, I guess. I don’t really care.”
Chuuya scrubs at an eye with his fingers and yawns, obviously barely managing to stay awake. Osamu really doesn’t know what to do. Dump his partner on his bed, covered in blood and in pain? Or should he help him at least change clothes? Run him a bath?
His mind is made up for him as Chuuya forces himself upright, removing his arm from Osamu’s shoulders. Osamu silently mourns the loss of contact until he feels a warm hand grip his arm for support. Chuuya had always run hot, ever since Osamu had met him. Something to do with the god granting him his powers? Osamu hadn’t really listened.
Chuuya begins to tug him towards the bathroom, and what can Osamu do except follow? He turns on the bath as his partner slumps down on the toilet seat. It takes about five minutes for the bath to fill properly, and in that time Chuuya has fallen asleep twice, only woken up by his head falling. Chuuya has far more bath products than Osamu will likely ever have, so he just dumps in some soap from a bottle with ‘body wash’ written on it. That should do, right? He eyes the jars labelled ‘bath salts’ suspiciously, and decides to avoid them. Who puts salt in their bath?
Osamu leaves for a minute or two to get a towel, and comes back to a pile of bloody clothes on the floor and a grumpy mafioso up to his chin in bubbles. He is particularly confused about that, because he swears he didn’t touch the bottle labelled ‘bubble bath’. No matter.
Osamu ends up staying in the bathroom, if only to make sure his partner doesn’t drown or something in the bathtub. That happens, right? Small children shouldn’t be left alone in the bath in case they drown? Dogs are similar to small children in terms of sentience. Osamu is just making sure his dog doesn’t drown! Double Black isn’t really ‘double’ if there’s only one member, after all.
Chuuya sits up after a while, and Osamu hands him the towel before leaving to get him some clothes. He sifts through reams of suits and loungewear, and ends up just grabbing some comfy-looking clothes randomly. Chuuya doesn’t really answer when he knocks, so Osamu pokes his head around the door to check his partner’s still alive. Luckily, he’s just zoned out, sitting with the fluffy towel wrapped around him for warmth. Osamu breaks him out of his reverie by chucking the clothes he brought unceremoniously at Chuuya’s face, earning him a glare.
After leaving Chuuya in the bathroom to dress himself, Osamu figures he should do something about his own clothes. They’re soaked in soapy water and in Chuuya’s blood, and generally very unpleasant to be wearing. He does a quick once-over of the apartment to locate the washing basket, and dumps the mess of clothing in. Not his problem anymore!
One quick raid of his partner’s wardrobe later, Osamu is clad in only slightly too-short pyjamas, silently thanking Chuuya’s taste for oversized sleepwear.
He meanders back to the bathroom to find Chuuya dressed and looking a little more alive and coherent, which probably means he will survive tomorrow. Unfortunately.
“You have any fatal wounds, hatrack?” Osamu crouches down as he talks, watching Chuuya roll his head in his direction.
“No..” Chuuya groans. “The bleeding’s all internal.”
“Well that’s where the blood is meant to be, you’re fine. Just sleep it off.”
“If you said that to literally anyone else, I’d think you were trying to kill them.”
Osamu blatantly ignores Chuuya’s glare. “Well I said it to you, and your strange accelerated healing, so shush. Besides, maybe I am trying to kill you. You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“Shut up.”
“Nope! Time for bed, chibi!”
Chuuya flips him off.
“Where th’ hell’re you goin’?” Chuuya’s voice echoes, cutting through the silent room like a warm knife through butter. The sound of sheets rustling reaches Osamu’s ears as Chuuya props himself up and peers at him.
Osamu turns around and cocks his head to the side, confused. “The living room? Contrary to popular belief, Chibi, I do need to sleep on occasion.”
Chuuya sits up properly at that, bringing up a hand to scrub at his eye. “There’s no blankets in the living room,” he says slowly, “You wanna get frostbite, be my fuckin’ guest, but don’t come crying to me ‘cause ya decided to sleep on the couch in the middle of winter.”
Osamu crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “And where would you have me sleep then, genius?”
Chuuya has the audacity to mirror his facial expression. “Uh, in the bed? The one with sheets and pillows on it? That bed? Where else, ya blockhead?”
Osamu squints at him further. “Do you have a spare room or something that I don’t know about?”
“Oh my god, you absolute dumbass,” Chuuya groans. “You’re so embarrassing. Get over here, ya bastard.” He shuffles over a bit in the bed. Osamu pads over slowly, not believing what he was hearing. “An’ don’t wake me up, I’ll make you do my paperwork for a month.” As if Osamu even does his own. Chuuya’s so funny.
Nevertheless, he slowly slides under the covers next to his partner, who’d already flopped onto his pillow and passed out.
Osamu falls asleep that night staring at the ceiling, in a warm, soft bed for the first time in his fuzzy memory, damned-near comfortable.
Osamu blinks into semi-awareness when something shifts next to him. A weight he hadn’t noticed moves off of him, taking all the warmth with it. He curls in on himself a little to make up for the sudden chill. He hears a quiet laugh, as if the person laughing doesn’t want to be heard. The duvet is pulled up back to where it was before, and Osamu feels his grasp on consciousness slip from his fingers.
The last thing Osamu registers before drifting back to sleep is the unmistakeable sensation of someone pushing his hair out of his eyes.
Chuuya sighs as he flips the omelette he’s making. His asshole of a partner was sleeping in for maybe the first time in his life, leaving Chuuya to make breakfast. Which. Probably safer than letting the idiot mackerel cook, but it’s the principles of the thing! The principles!! He almost died yesterday!!
As if summoned, the mackerel in question shuffles into the room, looking like he really should still be asleep, but is too stubborn to admit it. Business as usual, then. Chuuya can work with that.
“Morning, sleeping beauty. I’m surprised you weren’t up already.”
Dazai sits down and eyes the plate across from him sceptically. “Maybe I would be if Chuuya hadn’t been so roughed up yesterday, making me take him back home.” He pokes the rice mould.
“Oi, I didn’t make you do anything!” Chuuya removes the mould and slides the first omelette over the rice on Dazai’s plate. “You’re the one who chose to help me.” He gracefully avoids Dazai’s stink-eye as he goes to fetch a knife.
“Whatever. I bet Chuuya’s food is basically inedible, anyways!”
“Oh, well fuck you too, I guess. I’ll have to eat this all by myself, what a hassle.” Chuuya rolls his eyes. He glides the knife over the omelette, letting it fall over the rice.
“Okay, Chuuya shouldn’t get ahead of himself, now.” Dazai scoots his chair in a little, staring at the omurice intently.
Chuuya deigns to ignore him. He has his own breakfast to make, after all.
“Hey, Chuuya, you didn’t poison this, did you? It’d better be painless, or I’ll haunt you until you die.” Chuuya turns to see his partner poking the omelette sceptically with his spoon. He sighs.
“No, shitty mackerel, I did not poison your omurice. Eat it before it gets cold, already!”
“Shame. It could be fun to haunt you, I’d make you burn all your food. Or knock your stupid hat off whenever you’re trying to look cool.” Dazai sticks his tongue out at Chuuya, prompting him to flip him off and turn back to aggressively scrambling his egg mix.
Dazai doesn’t say anything for a bit, which is never a good thing. He almost always goes quiet before doing something fucked up, or annoying, or both. Chuuya hears him scrape around his plate a little, before actually taking a bite. He also makes a little noise of wonder that gets Chuuya to actually turn around to stare at him.
And as for what he finds, well. He finds Dazai staring down at his breakfast, eyes wide and starry, knuckles whitened around his spoon. Chuuya continues to watch incredulously as his partner’s face flushes slightly, his eyes flickering from Chuuya to his plate before landing again on Chuuya.
“You put-“ Dazai pauses to swallow. “You put crab in mine? You have crab in your fridge?”
Chuuya pauses. “What’s it to you?” He finishes folding his omelette, cursing that he burnt a side in his staring, and quickly drapes it over his rice.
“Nothing, I just didn’t expect Chuuya to have such good taste. There may be hope for you yet, slug.”
Chuuya rolls his eyes again and slides his plate in the empty space next to Dazai’s. His hand moves before his brain does, landing in his partner’s messy hair instead of the table. Dazai freezes. Oops. Chuuya finds himself frozen, too, but he recovers quickly. He ruffles his hand through Dazai’s hair, politely ignoring the way the boy pushes back into his hand.
Eventually, Chuuya pulls his hand away and gets to eating, batting away Dazai’s hands when they try to sneak some of his portion. He ends up having to abandon his plate to get Dazai more of the rice mixture, because he staunchly refuses to make another omelette. Per usual for them, the rest of the meal is spent bickering, the calm of the evening before having blown over once again.
Chuuya thinks, very quietly and privately, that this isn’t the worst morning he could have had.