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Mori’s burgundy eyes bore into him. Traces of fear in Dazai were met with resistance. He wouldn’t show it. No matter how terrifying the man before him was.
But Mori always knew of the internal struggles Dazai faced and saw fit to punish him accordingly. Or perhaps he just enjoyed tormenting him.
A reflection of pain, fear, shame in Dazai’s eye followed with another thin red line on his body. The worst part about it was what it looked like. No one would know they were externally inflicted, so he hid them beneath his bandages.
The Mori of the present was getting bored with how apathetic he had become. What’s the point of a punching bag if it doesn’t move?
“Sir?” Was Dazai’s response to the anger boiling in Mori’s eyes.
The slightest slip in his intonation. The slightest tremor in his voice.
Mori smiled like the devil. A grin stretched across his face.
Pain was all Dazai could remember next.
Not only did new cuts litter his arms and legs but now there were burns and bruises.
All that for a show of emotion. As if Mori was trying to make his ability name true. To make him, no longer human.
When he was done with him, he sent him off to his small home in the port.
And that’s where he was now. Trembling in his small bed, wrapping bandages around his arms in a silent stupor.
Tracing patterns of rust on the shipping container walls until he fell into an uneasy sleep.
It was before he had met Chuuya, at 14. His world had been empty and he couldn’t feel anything. With no parents nor home, he had been burdened with the weight of nothingness.
So he took his life.
Or tried to.
“Well aren’t you a lively one, Osamu.” A completely sarcastic voice sounded from the side of the hospital bed.
Dazai warily tilted his head, a man with dark hair and the rarest garnet eyes was smiling at him from the chair beside his bed.
“Who are you?”
He hadn’t expected to open his eyes again, in fact he put in a lot of effort so that he could finally rest. But for some reason, someone—most likely this man—prevented death from pulling him under.
The man leered at him.
“I’m Ougai Mori.”
By this point he had fully woken up and was acutely aware of the shackles binding him to the bed.
Fear bloomed in Dazai’s chest as Mori approached him. He was helpless. The shackles tying him down and leaving him to Mori’s mercy.
All he could remember were hands. Taking any moment to hurt, use or abuse him. His vision blurred as he pulled fruitlessly away from the sadistic man before him.
Then pain as the bed shifted with Mori’s weight.
Dazai awoke drenched in sweat, shaking and throbbing.
He wasn’t there. It would be okay. The sweat still lingered and his arms still hung tight around his body. It wouldn’t be okay. Mori would continue to seek him out after missions, and make sure that he had some sort of injury.
That time in his dream was hardly the only time Mori had taken advantage of him. In fact, after he had met Chuuya, it had gotten worse. Mori wanted that soulless child unaffected by emotions back.
His legs shook beneath him. He had to go to work. If Mori found him here… Dazai shuddered.
~~~
“-zai?”
Mori’s hand reached out and touched his shoulder. He jolted back, pressing himself against the wall with wide eyes like a cornered animal.
But it wasn’t Mori. Concerned pools of sapphire looked him over.
Dazai pushed himself off the wall as he tried to regain his composure but couldn’t hide how badly he was shaking.
“Dazai?” Chuuya tried again.
“Yes Chibi~?” But the nickname seemed forced, and the tone flat.
Dark circles underlined Dazai’s eyes. His hair was a mess. And his posture slouched.
For once he couldn’t hide that something was wrong.
“Can I touch you?” He nodded after a beat.
Chuuya hesitated for a moment, before slowly reaching out a hand to take Dazai’s own.
The brunet was shivering, even if it didn’t seem like he was. Chuuya gazed at the door, anyone could enter at anytime, although Chuuya was grateful there was no one in the room to begin with, He didn’t know how Dazai would take to anyone else witnessing this… Whatever this was.
“Wanna go somewhere more private?”
Dazai looked Chuuya in the eye, expecting mockery or distaste despite the red-head’s words, but instead he found something akin to care.
“Okay.” He let his facade fall, even though Chuuya had already seen through it.
Chuuya gently pulled him away from the wall and led him through the less used corridors of the Mafia building until they finally reached Chuuya’s private executive office.
“No one will bother us here, it’s my day off.”
Dazai was drawn back to the present, but his thoughts still swirled around in the back of his mind. He had let his guard down and now Chuuya knew something was wrong.
They sat on the floor by his desk.
“Hey,” Chuuya said softly, “Are you okay?”
Dazai, who hadn’t said a word since the room change muttered, “I’m fine.”
Chuuya weighed his next words carefully. The boy beside him had built up walls around his heart which Dazai seemed to think were there to hide the emptiness beyond them but Chuuya believed he was scared of letting them down again.
“Osamu-” Dazai flinched at the use of his first name, he never let anyone use it, insisting on ‘Dazai,’ as Mori had made it his own.
Chuuya frowned, he hadn’t made much progress in helping Dazai out of his shell and in an attempt to connect with him had pushed him further away.
“Dazai,” he tried again, “Something is clearly wrong… Please, talk to me.”
No response. Dazai’s eyes were glazed over and his expression tainted with sorrow. He was no longer in the present but back with Mori, Chuuya’s office was quite similar to the dark room he associated with pain and violation.
“How many times do you need to be reminded that this shouldn’t hurt, and if you really are in pain… hide it, it’s pathetic.” Mori spat at him.
Pathetic. That’s what he was. He couldn’t even hide his messy, vulnerable self from Chuuya.
He recognised deep pools of blue worry hovering above him.
“Chuuya?”
The boy in question had tears running down his face, as he tried to pull Dazai’s fingers away from where they were digging into his arms while repeating Dazai’s name under his breath.
How odd. He hadn’t realised he was hurting himself; the pain wasn’t registering.
“Dazai, you’re here, I’m here, not wherever you think you are.”
“Chuuya.”
Dazai unclenched his hands and dragged them away from his skin, Chuuya gently brought them up to his cheeks despite the blood and skin gathered beneath his nails.
They made eye-contact, soft oceans meeting empty coffee. Their breathing began to slow and synchronise, it was unknown who was comforting whom.
“That’s better.” Dazai gave Chuuya a half-hearted smile.
“Idiot,” Chuuya responded, but it was tinged with fondness, and Dazai, with initial discomfort tilted his head so it rested on the shorter boy’s shoulder.
“Hey Chuuya…?”
“Hmm?”
Dazai huffed out a sigh, before admitting something that hurt his very soul to admit.
“I don’t know what to do.”
Chuuya turned his head to the boy beside him, gently resting his own head atop the brunet’s.
“About?” He prompted.
Dazai, paused, unsure of how to go about this, but then started tugging on the edge of his bandages until they loosened. Chuuya remained still, he knew Dazai was finally opening up to him and didn’t want to jeopardise it.
In a way, his bandages were similar to the walls he built up around his heart. Of course the fact they were shielding the world of Dazai’s secrets but they were also alike in the fact that if one fell, the other was likely to fall with it.
So Dazai was not only sharing this secret with Chuuya but baring his tattered soul as well.
White bandages unravelled and fell to the ground; contrasting with the red of the carpet.
His scars—both old and new—were on display for the one person closest to him to see. Some were lighter and smaller while others still bleeding and seemingly deep. The number of which he had lost count over the years as ‘sessions’ with the older man had bled into continuous moments of pain.
Dazai hadn’t looked up, hadn’t wanted to see the look of disgust he was sure framed Chuuya’s eyes.
“Did you do these?” Chuuya’s voice was barely a whisper, but it was still full of a deep caring for the brunet.
Dazai wouldn’t lie and say none of his scars were self-inflicted, but the ones Mori left littered not only his skin but his mind, and they hurt more. In fact his own attempts were something he believed he deserved; they were justified, whereas surely Mori didn’t know what was best for him?
“Some.”
The red-head pulled him close.
“And the others?”
His cheeks were wet. He was crying.
“They shouldn’t hurt this bad Chuuya,” he said, echoing Mori’s words and then pausing for a moment, “Do you think I’m weak?”
It was strange, normally he would hold back his emotions, but there was something about Chuuya’s warm embrace which encouraged him to let them out.
“No, you’re the strongest person I know, being in pain doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
“But I don’t have a heart, I shouldn’t feel.”
Chuuya looked Dazai in the eye, “Dazai, who hurt you?”
The brunet finally looked up into Chuuya’s glassy eyes.
They sat in silence for a moment, neither daring to speak before the other. Until Dazai finally relented.
He whispered so quietly, “I think you know who.”
What pained Chuuya is that he did.
After another long silence it was Chuuya who spoke.
“When we were 16, before we defeated Verlaine, you said something to me.”
Dazai tried to rack his brain but was too tired after a restless sleep to even compute last week’s memories.
Chuuya continued, “You gave me a choice, based not on anything that would benefit you. You gave me the option to not use Corruption because you knew that if I did I would lose possibly the only way of learning whether I was human or not. I think that proves you have a heart.”
Dazai was feeling considerably warmer after that. Chuuya had reminded him of that day, the day he’d decided to push away the apathetic demeanour he always carried and show the older boy a small part of the affection he held in his heart only for him.
In a way he felt better, and knew life would move on. Albeit differently this time, because he had a certain red-head who would protect him from Mori.
“Thank you… Chuuya.”
They fell asleep in each others arms, it was the most peaceful sleep he’d had in years.
He might have dreamt, but it was full of warmth, red hair and soft blue eyes.