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“I want to die.” His voice was clear, his breathing laboured as spit made its way down his mouth.
“I know.” Chuuya didn’t touch him as Dazai writhed on the floor, alternating between curling upon himself and trying to snap off his limbs, the painful screech of his screams as he tried to get rid of his pain. It would have been easier, perhaps, if the entirety of his body hadn’t been the cause of his pain but all of the blood flowing through his veins was the cause of his misery.
“It hurts.” Dazai wasn’t begging him for help, Chuuya knew, because Dazai never begged no matter what. He could be starving and he wouldn’t beg Chuuya for a part of his meal, he wouldn’t ask either, he would starve. Because Dazai believed that what he endured alone while weak made him the strongest he could ever be.
“I know.” Dazai’s eyes were filled with tears, flowing down his cheeks as his dilated pupils wildly looked around, looking for death, perhaps. Every time Dazai’s episodes flared, he would look around, as if a gun would appear and take care of his suffering.
Chuuya always made sure that didn’t happen, he kept everything far away since the time Dazai used what little energy he had to spring across the room and try to shoot himself.
His fingers had shook that day and he had missed by inches. Chuuya never let him near one afterwards.
One night Dazai had explained to him how it felt, when Chuuya was trying to quieten Arabahaki screaming in his mind. It had felt like compassion that day, an attempt to distract Chuuya, but sometimes he thinks that maybe Dazai had been selfish as ever, and he had simply wanted to tell someone.
“It feels as if all of your bones and skin are misplaced, like a tooth growing from your arm but all over your body and inside your veins.” He had told him as they sat on opposite sides of the bed Chuuya had been attempting to sleep in for hours now.
“Like someone who doesn’t know anything about humans cut you up and put whatever they thought would fit in a human under your skin and instead of the blood you need, you end up with acid and you just want to scratch it out because it’s so purely wrong and your body rejects it and it hurts.”
Arabahaki had quietened that day, without Dazai having to touch him.
He never told Dazai that his pain had appeased the god of chaos itself, Dazai would have probably just looked at him blankly and nodded, had he been told, but he didn’t.
It simply felt like when he writhed on the floor, Dazai finally looked the slightest bit human, and it made Chuuya feel better about believing Dazia was human, deep inside.
“It hurts.” At first, when Chuuya had first seen Dazai in that state, he had thought the brunette would truly die in front of him, so he did nothing and after a few hours, Dazai passed out.
The second time it happened, he had been briefed by Dazai in his usual way. “Chibi doesn’t need to worry, if it hasn’t killed me yet, then it’s probably not going to.” Dazai had insisted on the probability, like the chance of death was his solace, the only reason he fought through.
He had tried to touch him, sometimes Dazai would hold him when Arabahaki was too painful for his mind, and he had thought returning the favour was the least he could do.
Dazai had been engulfed in a blue light the second Chuuya made contact and he had screamed with his guts, Chuuya had wrenched away and Dazai had ever so slightly settled down, the scream morphing into his usual gasps.
Chuuya didn’t try to touch him after that.
“I know.” Dazai never quite looked at him during his episodes, once in a while he would raise his head and his eyes would seem to lock onto Chuuya’s, but the fog over them and the pain clouding his breathes always made Chuuya believe Dazai wasn’t looking at him, he was simply looking.
“It hurts..” His voice would quieten after a while, when he got used to the pain and the words served less as a statement and more as an anchor into the physical world, a way to remember he was still there, if he ever truly was.
“I know.” Chuuya had learned that just as Dazai frequently repeated the same words, it seemed to help to repeat his own, it never seemed to calm Dazai down but when he had tried to chat, to ask questions or to reassure him, Dazai had started yelling incoherent words.
So he had kept to his words, not making Dazai blow up during his episodes was nearly impossible, but after the tenth time, Chuuya had gotten exceedingly good at it.
“I want to die.” Spit trickled down his chin from his open mouth, the gasps forcing it open and keeping him from swallowing. It got increasingly harder to understand him, objectively at least, Chuuya knew every word he uttered, it was always the same. He knew soon enough, Dazai would succumb to his pain and give in to the darkness.
“I know.” Dazai looked at him, truly this time, a rare sight.
“Will Chuuya hold me?” He didn’t move, he couldn’t very well answer as he always did, it felt different this time, though the episode seemed the same always, Dazai's eyes were colder.
“No.” The last time he had attempted to hold him, Dazai had been in so much pain Chuuya had been worried he was about to kil- oh. Dazai was asking Chuuya to kill him.
“How cruel.” he let out between raspy breaths, his eyes fluttering as his body twitched, like a man tased by a thousand volts.
“I know.” Dazai chuckled, like Chuuya’s desperate attempts to help him were funny. Unlike usual, where it felt like Chuuya was actively bothering Dazai.
“It hurts.” It wasn’t a whine, a whine would have made Chuuya laugh or made him hit Dazai over the head or maybe even kiss him if he felt soft. This was a plea, a plea for his suffering to end.
Mori had tried to stop the pain, less out of benevolence for his protegé and more out of morbid curiosity for what caused Dazai such immense pain when most abilities were painless and even comforting to their users, or at least Chuuya had assumed it was so.
Dazai had accepted after a particularly difficult episode, he didn’t know what happened in that office, but Dazai refused to be touched for weeks afterwards and his episodes were spent locked up in a bathroom instead of on the cold floor at Chuuya’s side.
“I know.” Dazai stopped looking at him, the time of acknowledgment was over, his hands twitched, sweat dripping from his brows. His eyes were closed but the small whimper escaping from his lips betrayed his consciousness.
Chuuya never asked why he refused to take the medication Mori prescribed to pass out when his episodes started.
He doesn’t think he would get an answer.
Dazai’s eyes opened and closed periodically, it would be over soon, Chuuya recognized the signs, the tremble of his lips seized, the clutch of his hands softened against the hardwood floor.
“Goodnight, Dazai.” He didn’t know when Dazai’s next flare up would be, but hopefully it would be weaker.
Afterall everyone knew that one day, either his ability will kill Dazai or Dazai will kill his ability.
And no matter the fate, Dazai would be gone and no longer be in pain.