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A red song lulled out of his mouth like rainfog as he felt the buzzing of Corruption under his skin. He could feel his bones breaking, his blood boiling as the sweet sorrow of the darkest part of his ability pulled him into its net like a siren on the cliffside. He could sing. He could die.
The foam at the corner of his red wine lips reminded him of seafoam, forming at the bottom of the waves as they clash into one another on the stormy surface. His eyes, oh his eyes - once blue, now he could feel the red of his capillaries bursting in his irises under the force of the Tainted Sorrow exploding with all its might. His skin, pale as milk, was now drawn-over with spirals and angry red lines, as it reminded him faintly of someone’s he knew. Who, though?
Corruption made him lose himself. Corruption made him a starving man in the desert, just a set of bones wandering around, looking for its skull, all while not realising the desert was his own mind. Twisted and joyful were his screams as his ability made him forget.
“Chuuya!”
The voice was distant, but something in his moved like the tide - if you stare at them long enough, you can recognise the pattern of the waves even without the moon to guide you, and so the boy recognised the voice as if it was his own true north.
But sadly, it changed nothing - his laughter turned hysterical as he felt the force of his teeth crashing into one another as he shook like wheat in the wind. His bones were melting, he could feel them merging with his muscles, the Tainted Sorrow becoming one with him as it should have been from the start. His blood boiling, his skin liquefying and the white of his eyes spilling over the flesh of his face; his brain unbinding, his lungs shrinking so that his cartilaginous thickenings burst, his stomach turning in on itself, his intestines unraveling around his veins like a protective barrier. And his mind - it stretched, looking out of his head, feeling the sweet silence, filling the void of his surroundings, finding answers to his questions as suddenly he was whole again with blue light marring his vision.
There was a body in front of his feet.
“Chuuya.”
The voice echoed through his empty skull like in a chamber and he could feel the rushing of blood in his ears - inside of them, outside of them, dripping beneath his temples, as red as wine.
“Oh, Chuuya.”
A soft groan escaped his lips as his vision began swimming like a diver and not a sailboat in the storm, finally taking in his surroundings - the cut open trees, the burned grass, the stench of death that seemed to lay heavy in the air. He could barely register the screaming through the buzzing in his ears, could barely make out the shallow crater in which he was laying. Next to him, he could feel a presence, and for maybe the first time in his life, he was grateful for it immensely - Dazai Osamu .
“Come on, let’s get you up,” he heard a voice as if through a veil - but it was a thin veil and his face was always on the other side, pressed up against Chuuya’s defences. He tried not to think about the millions of ways that the Mackerel had breached them when he felt the man’s arms, stronger than they looked, lift him up under the knees.
A soft groan escaped his lips, protesting, but the brunet was shushing him in the matter of seconds. “Not right now, Slug. There are people around.”
People, of course - the fight ( who had he been fighting again? ) had been public, since they couldn’t manage to get the enemy alone. That much he knew, though Chuuya could not remember who they were for the life of him. Not with Corruption still singing under his thin epidermis. His mind blurry and his body broken, he could not see the horrified stares of the passersby as Dazai, with Chuuya in his arms, ran straight for the abandoned backstreets of Yokohama.
“It’s okay, I’m gonna get you home,” he heard a soft murmur coming from the burnet’s lips and Chuuya’s mind barely registered the word, but it burned a whole new fire inside of him - home . He moaned softly, letting the brunet know he was in pain, so much pain, and all the taller man could muster in response was: “I know, okay? I know, it’s okay.”
Chuuya let his head fall back on onto the man’s chest, feeling the roughness of bandages peeking from under his shirt. He wanted to run his fingers over them, a soft smile playing on his lips, a hysterical, scared laugh waiting to be let out - they were finally the same.
“Chuuya, stay with me. We’re almost there.” The words sounded like an order, though shivering, and that Chuuya could listen to. He could always listen to orders, guns and his own pathetic remorse, he was good at that. But acknowledging the slight tremble in Dazai’s voice, thinking about what it could mean, that he could not do and was never good at. He let out another groan as the brunet’s fingertips squeezed his body tighter as if fearing he would disappear.
His mind was made up of the same red song his teeth let out while he was Corrupted - the same tragic song for of tainted sorrow as he danced to it for all the degradation in this land. And Dazai, his partner, was the only one able to make him stop singing, red and blue mingling with each other like they were always meant to do it exactly like they did.
Chuuya’s whole body hurt. His limbs felt like lead, poisonous and heavy, his head was punding as if someone was smashing a hammer on it. His muscles were tired, so tired, and so Chuuya laid like a broken doll in his partner’s arms, waiting to be repaired only to break again and again and again. He was sick and tired of exhausting his ability to the end, and as it was a part of him, Chuuya wholeheartedly believed that his time was inexplicably running out.
A sudden urge to cough rattled through him, and as he leaned to the side and let his throat empty itself, there was blood staining the dirty pavement. He groaned and silently cursed himself for letting it go that far, cursed Dazai for not getting to him faster, that shitty Mackerel.
But the brunet was holding him so tenderly, as if Chuuya was a glass figurine, and he could almost forget about all the pain inside his stupid, stupid vessel. He could almost get the pain out of his mind where Dazai’s hands cradled his ribs as if he made Eve from one of them, as if he bore sin and died for it, as if he was something sacred. And Chuuya missed God.
“Shh, we’re here. Look, we’re here.”
Slowly, he turned his head so that it hung over his shoulder, and even such a slight motion shot a red pain through his spine. Through the tears that began shining in his eyes, there he could make out a row of houses, each one identical to the other, with white facade and black doors - the Port Mafia neighbourhood, and such also Dazai and Chuuya’s safehouse.
“But… Mori,” Chuuya managed to croak with confusion. All the other times when Chuuya harmed himself using Corruption, Mori was always the one that patched him up, the only one who knew how to, and then sent him back to the field. Chuuya’s exhaustion was a setback, a liability, a weakness, and Mori always made sure he knew that - made his stitches a few too little, not popping the shoulder back in place right, letting his burns get infected. It was a way for Chuuya to learn to be stronger, and he took it without complaining.
But this… Both of them will suffer if Mori is not the first one to see to Chuuya’s injuries, the man made that very clear to them the first time the boys tried to patch Chuuya up without his help. This was not a good idea, not a good plan, but then again, when did Dazai ever have of those? Like an angel’s halo a streetlight illuminated the man’s face, serious and calculating as always, but no doubt in his gaze.
“I learned from him. We’ll be alright.”
And Chuuya, as helpless as he was at the moment, believed him.
What else could he do as Dazai, as quickly as he could, with a barely conscious redhead in his arms, crossed the street and made course for the house on the far right, almost at the end of the street, one of the few not illuminated by the bright lights inside. The brunet didn’t even fumble through his pockets for the key, since the bastard apparently left the door unlocked, and slowly and barely noticeably from the dark street, slipped inside.
The house smelled of whiskey and saline solution. That was Chuuya’s first thought, since he closed his eyes a while ago, and slowly opened them to a dark corridor, fit for a ghost. And that was exactly what Dazai was at the moment, with his silent steps and even silent breathing, unlike Chuuya’s, which was ragged and ignited a fire in his alveoli every time he drew a breath.
Slowly, the brunet lowered Chuuya onto their too-big red couch, and disappeared somewhere, seemingly to gather supplies for treating Chuuya’s wounds. But the redhead, groaning and with tears of pain in his eyes, crawled to the bathroom. It was more poetic, wasn’t it? To die in a bathtub rather than on a couch. At least that was what was going on in his delirious mind, clouded with pain, as he couldn’t even muster the energy to lift himself into the bathtub, opting to sit in front of it instead.
Corruption was going to kill him either way one day, he thought. Might as well have been that day.
“Chuuya, you idiot, where did you-”
The voice stopped and so did the footsteps that Chuuya barely could hear, and slowly, so slowly a body lowered itself down to his height. Big chocolate eyes stared into his own marred irises and the feeling in them were too complex for Chuuya to decipher in his current state - but the most obvious, the rawest emotion behind those eyes was concern.
“Chuuya?”
Dazai, concerned for him? That would confuse Chuuya if he could think, if he could even keep his eyes open, that would make him laugh and dismiss it without a second thought - but right now, in that moment, all his body could do was sent tears spilling down his face.
“It hurts, please make it stop, please,” he babbled, his voice out of his control as hiccups began spilling out of his mouth. Never in millions of years he thought he would be crying in front of his partner, but Corruption was a bad, bad dog, and Chuuya was a cruel, cruel man who deserved all that came for him. He deserved that pain and all that came with it, he deserved to cry in that bathroom with only ghosts to keep him company.
And Dazai. Always Dazai. His partner, the man who got him out of so many messes, pushed him into dozens of more, the man who was now able to do nothing more than stare at his smaller partner, sobbing ugly tears and shrinking in on himself more and more by the second.
“Chuuya, look at me,” pleaded the brunet, taking Chuuya’s hand into his own and squeezing it tightly - it was cold as a corpse’s, cold as if winter was creeping upon them. His eyes met the redhead’s, bloodshot, tired and so, so dead. “It’s gonna be okay, you know? Let me help you.”
A slight nod, barely noticeable, came from his partner, and Dazai set to work - bandages, saline solution, rubbing alcohol, needle and a thread, everything was laid out in front of him like war prizes, and then, as Chuuya’s head swung back and forth as if fighting to keep consciousness, Dazai slowly cut his clothes off him - Chuuya can yell about that later.
The pale skin beneath was tainted with blood, though Dazai couldn’t tell where it was coming from - there were no visible gashes on his partner, and Dazai was panicking more by the second. Where was all that blood coming from? Like a bottomless well, it piled up on his smaller partner’s skin, and Dazai, who looked over every single centimeter of Chuuya’s skin, couldn’t for the life of him figure out why there was so much of it.
“Mori…” groaned Chuuya, delirious and at the edge of consciousness, his voice pulling out of his mouth like wildfire. The song of Corruption was a tedious one and not many people knew how to sing in harmony with it, but Dazai considered himself and exception - until that moment.
“Where are you bleeding from, mon beau cadavre ?” whispered Dazai, his voice not mirroring the panic he was feeling. Chuuya can’t die, no, Chuuya had used Corruption many times before that but never like that, what was different this time? And why, why wouldn’t he stop bleeding?
“Mori… Don’t…” His voice was frail, so fragile, and Dazai didn’t know what to do. Did he make a mistake bringing him here? Should he have taken him to Mori?
“Don’t you dare bring… Me to… Him,” Chuuya managed to croak out, now more present, as if he could hear Dazai’s thoughts. He didn’t know, he didn’t know , and Chuuya was at his mercy. Chuuya never, never wanted to let Mori take care of him after Corruption again, because the black haired man, the boss of the Port Mafia, didn’t know how to sing with it. He didn’t bother to learn, he didn’t know how it should sound, but he tried, oh how he tried to make peace with it. But Corruption was a bad, bad God and Mori was nothing but a man.
“Don’t you… Dare, Osamu.”
“Okay,” whispered his bandaged partner. “Okay, I won’t. You’re safe, shh, you’re safe.”
To doubt is human, but neither of them had even a speck of humanity inside of them - Chuuya was not a man and Dazai was everything but nothing, though neither of them wanted to believe the other didn’t deserve kindness. And so, Dazai’s tender hands managed to bandage Chuuya up and just pray to whatever God was listening, that his lover, his partner, his everything, would stop bleeding.
Please, let it stop. Please.
–
In the morning, a man opened his eyes.