Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dazai’s been in the hospital for all of eight days. Eight days of pain, morphine, more pain, and barely being able to keep himself awake for more than two hours at a time. Eight days of doctors prodding him, asking way too many questions, throwing terminology he doesn’t understand left and right. 

He doesn’t have many more days left in him, he thinks. A couple at most is his hunch, before his eyes will shut themselves for good and he’ll bid this cruel world goodbye.

He tells Chuuya as such, the evening of day eight, when all the other visitors had left, the redhead being the sole exception (as been the case the entire stay so far). 

“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” is Chuuya’s reply. The harsh words are a stark contrast to his gentle smile - crooked on the left like it’d always been, softer than silk. “You’re not gonna die just cause you’re sitting on your ass and letting yourself heal for once.”

“I’m so bored, though,” Dazai whines. “I’ll perish being stuck here. I’ll wilt away to nothing, just you wait. I’ll turn into a sad pile of ash and you'll have to bring me home in a dustpan.”

“You know what, you were a lot easier to deal with when they kept you knocked out.”

Right - this is his eighth day awake at the hospital. In reality, it’d been close to three weeks, apparently, but Dazai doesn’t like to think about that all that much.

The idea that he’d been unconscious for that long fills him with a dread years in the making - it’s a fear that took root when he was still a child, when Mori dug his claws into him and refused to let go. He has vague memories of an anesthetic mask, of that venomous smile, a saccharine voice full of acid whispering to him that all will be well when he wakes up. 

He doesn’t like being unaware of his surroundings anywhere, yet alone in a hospital, where he can trust no one.

The hand holding his tightens briefly - when Dazai glances in his direction, Chuuya’s mouth is quirked in a little smile and his other hand comes up, slowly, to cradle Dazai’s face, brush his bangs away from his face. I’m here, he seems to say without words.

He’d been there every moment, swearing to Dazai that he won’t let any harm come to him, soothing away the initial tears and the panic. Chuuya is here as he had been for the two weeks of Dazai being unconscious, and the past week that he’d been stuck in the hospital bed. It will be many more weeks of that same bed, but at least Dazai gets the comfort of knowing Chuuya will be there, still. 

Dazai gets to doze off to the gentle sound of his voice, and wakes up to the sight of him doing his own thing in the corner of the room that he’d claimed for himself. 

In the evenings, with visitors gone and doctors away, Chuuya is right here with him, like he is now. He lies his head on the bed, plays with Dazai’s hair, and looks at Dazai like he’s something fragile.

Funny how that is, Dazai used to hate that. Lately, though, it’s been nice - being take care of, cradled like he’s a flower made of glass between Chuuya’s palms.

“How much are you hurting?” Chuuya asks quietly - as if speaking any louder will add to the pain. 

“Same as usual,” he murmurs. It’s not a lie, not exactly.

To a certain extent, being in pain is something that Dazai is rather familiar with.

He’s used to the itching of cuts on his arms as they heal, the sting of new ones as he carves them. He knows the feeling of rope bruising his neck, leaving imprints for weeks to come. He knows the sharpness of being shot, and the gut-wrench of being stabbed.

Falling down an elevator, turns out, hurts a whole lotta worse than all of that combined.

The pain is everywhere - in his lower back, his hips, his legs. His left one - the one that shattered in like three different places - is akin to a million needles being stabbed into each nerve all at once whenever he so much as breathes. It’s constant, it’s persistent, it never goes away. Other parts of his body slowly but surely ache less day by day - the leg is stubborn, it seems, and the pain only seems to get worse as days pass.

Morphine helps  - they have him on strong stuff, since like every part of his body had been fucked up in some way or another. Although, as much as it soothes, Dazai doesn’t like it that much. It puts him to sleep, makes him groggy, confused. 

Even with Chuuya here, knowing that the redhead won’t allow anyone to take advantage of his vulnerability, it’s not easy to let go of the paranoia. 

Plus, as he’d said, and been thinking day in and out - he’s bored. The same walls of the same room is all he’s been looking at and he’s already going stir-crazy.

“I can’t wait to go outside again,” Dazai groans. “I need fresh air. I’ll suffocate here, Chuuya.”

“Yeah? Are you gonna finally go on a hike with me, then?”

The knee-jerk reaction is nu-uh, never in a million years, you’re a masochist. Chuuya likes doing stuff like that - long walks and hikes, climbing mountains, all kind of outdoorsy stuff. Dazai’d always been more comfortable indoors, and he’s not exactly very fit. A small hill is enough to take him out of commission, so he prefers the comfort of his own home and not putting his own body through torture willingly. 

Chuuya’s always so happy when he goes out on those little excursions, though. His hair is all messed up and he’s sweaty and dirty, but he’s glowing and giddy and he talks about it like he’s had the best day of his life just from walking up a damn mountain.

“Maybe we could,” Dazai finally says.

The smile on Chuuya’s face when he speaks is absolutely worth being miserable on a hiking trail. And the kiss that Dazai receives from him? He could go climb Mount Fuji, if Chuuya as much as asked. 

“We’ll do something small, so your poor wittle feet don’t get too sore,” Chuuya mumbles with that awful baby-voice he likes to use whenever Dazai whines about anything that’s physically straining. “And we could have a picnic.”

“Will there be cake?”

Chuuya snorts - the shitty hospital lights dance in his eyes, playful, making him look a few years younger. Just as beautiful as always - but without the usual weight he holds on his shoulder. 

“All the cake you want.” Chuuya kisses his forehead once again, then nuzzling his hair briefly. “So get better quick, hm?”

He mumbles something in response, but the painkillers and the soothing feeling of Chuuya surrounding him puts him to sleep before he can comprehend what he’d said. 

Watching Dazai sleep is an oddly therapeutic thing, Chuuya has come to find out.

See, to a lot of people (and Chuuya includes himself in that category at certain times), Dazai is this… untouchable, otherworldly being. A wickedly clever mastermind who sees ten steps ahead of everybody. Someone who has the answer any question you might ask. Someone so brilliant, yet so cold, so shrouded in mystery, that he cannot possibly be human.

To others - to those closest to Dazai, the select few that he trusts, the family that he’d made - he’s an image of tragedy. You look at him and you see all the suffering he holds within himself, the pain he’d gone through, the years of hurt. His frail body, faux smile, eyes that seep sadness wherever they look. They all see a boy who was forced to grow up too quickly, forced to build walls to survive. Someone who was destroyed and never quite managed to rebuild himself.

With Dazai asleep, Chuuya's been finding a new side of him.

He’s calm and silent when he sleeps. It’s the morphine, no doubt, but it does it’s job. Dazai sleeps soundly, quietly, deeply. No crease between his brows or frown to his lips, face relaxed and unguarded. 

He seems undisturbed. He no longer holds the weight of all the expectations he places on himself, no longer feels the void within his chest he refuses to let others fill. He looks young, and carefree. Like he hadn’t had to walk through all the circles of hell to get to where he is now, still with one foot on the precipice.

Chuuya yearns sometimes, looking at him, to promise Dazai that it’ll all be okay now and mean it. All he wants at times is a life that’s a little more soft to Dazai, a little more kind. To them both, ideally, but if given the chance, he’d take all the pain Dazai holds for himself, if he could.

Chuuya finds himself brushing his fingers through Dazai’s hair absentmindedly - just one more time, before he slips out of Dazai’s bed and goes to perch on his own.

The past few weeks, he’s made a bit of a home out of this room.

He gets breakfast in the cafe in the hospital foyer, which is surprisingly good considering it’s a hospital. With Dazai out of the induced coma, he gets the food to go, and always brings something sweet that his boyfriend will hopefully snack on if he feels up to it.

All of his work is done right here, through his laptop and phone, having asked to be relocated to some of the legal Mafia dealings, just for the time being while Dazai heals. The previous events mellowed them all out, it seems - Mori was easy to convince, and Chuuya’s been told to take as much time as he needs. 

Dazai still sleeps a lot, but any moment he’s awake, Chuuya spends with him - they watch shows they’ve always talked of watching, or they listen to audiobooks and make a little two-person bookclub after each chapter, or they play games on their consoles. 

In the past, Chuuya would easily sacrifice some of that time to make sure his work is finished. Now, after everything, he just does as much as he’s able to, and comes back to it the next time Dazai dozes off. Their time together is more important. 

(Plus someone has to make sure Dazai doesn’t set anything on fire out of sheer boredom.)

Late afternoons are reserved for visitors - any given day someone from the Agency will make an appearance, either a group of few or just a single person, but they make sure to send someone every day. Chuuya appreciates the effort - Dazai needs every reminder that he’s loved. Meanwhile, to give Dazai and his friends privacy together, Chuuya spends a bit of time at home: he does chores, gets new clothes for himself and Dazai, and cooks dinner.

Dazai rarely eats at the hospital - something about the trauma and paranoia makes him unable to stomach much. Home cooked meals help, even if just a little bit. Dazai’s far too thin anyway, so Chuuya will take what he can get. He swears he’ll get Dazai to put on some healthy weight once he’s recovering at home. 

In later evenings, they mostly talk. They’ve been talking a lot, nowadays. A lot more than they ever have, both in their teens and before all this mess that got them here. Turns out living through the almost end of the world and one too many near-death experiences make you quite chatty. 

So they talk about everything, really. Small things: favorite colors, random games, hospital gossip, celebrity drama. Or big things. Their anxieties and new fears. Hurts from their past. Plans for their future; rings, cradles, a new house.

Being on strong painkillers, Dazai is always first to doze off while it’s still relatively early. The nurses give him his night dose, and a few minutes is all it takes before he’s out like a light. 

He tries to fight it, every single time - he clings on to consciousness so stubbornly, blinking those doe eyes even as they close on their own and slurring through his words even when his train of thought doesn’t make sense. He looks very cute like that, brows scrunched up and eyes blinking tiredly.

Chuuya may or may not have a couple videos saved, as well as a new wallpaper on his phone. Dazai doesn’t need to know. 

Chuuya keeps awake until much later - both used to a later lifestyle and because Dazai conks out early these days. Sometimes he chats with doctors about Dazai’s progress, sometimes he just sits and reads a book, or talks on the phone with somebody, until fatigue claims him as well and he crawls under the covers. 

It’s one week of this, then two, three. And then something changes.

This particular night Dazai falls asleep much earlier - it’s still bright outside when he started slipping off, having asked for painkillers right after they had dinner. His leg has been hurting worse, it seems. 

Chuuya’s glad Dazai admitted to it - years ago, Dazai would never just ask for pain relievers, even with how much he hates being hurt. The damn bastard is too stubborn, and hates appearing vulnerable. Chuuya is well aware that Dazai is in a huge amount of pain, so he makes sure he gives positive reinforcement, of course - the dozen or so kisses peppered all over Dazai’s face as the nurse left to get the medication should suffice. 

Chuuya is mindlessly scrolling through his phone now - it’s the kind of night that has him restless, so he’s switching from app to app, trying to keep himself occupied and ignore the itch for a cigarette. 

He swore he’d quit. In turn, Dazai promised he’d try going to therapy. So Chuuya bought a bunch of nicotine patches, stopped carrying around a lighter, and he only smokes once a day at most now, if someone outside the hospital happens to be carrying a light. It’s not exactly quitting quitting yet, but baby steps are still steps.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dazai shift in his sleep - little movements from side to side as if he’s trying to make himself more comfortable. Chuuya huffs out an amused sound when he hears a low murmur. It’s been a while since he’d heard Dazai make noise in his sleep - the medication he’s on usually has him knocked out cold. He’s glad that’s back - it may be just a tiny thing, but Dazai makes the cutest damn sounds when he’s asleep. 

Chuuya’s favorite must be the whine he lets out when Chuuya gets out of bed before he’s awake - it sounds like a sad little kitten when it’s scruffed by the neck-

From Dazai’s bed comes a groan, followed by more shifting, the sheets rustling in the quiet of the night. A hitch in breath, followed by another - too quick, though, too shallow.

Chuuya’s on his feet in no time, phone hastily thrown aside and forgotten.

“Osamu,” Chuuya whispers sitting by Dazai’s bedsite, gently, to hopefully not scare him. Through the years, he’s found that the best strategy is to get Dazai awake gradually, not be too hasty. Getting him up too fast is a surefire way to throw him into a panic. “Hey, baby,” Chuuya coos as he gently reaches a hand to Dazai’s hair.

Nightmares, while unpleasant, are nothing new. Chuuya’d delt with them as far back as fifteen years old - he’s somewhat of an expert now.

His hand slowly finds Dazai’s head, brushing away his bangs, ready to speak again when he stops himself. The hair under his fingers is damp, the locks clumped together and stiff in the way Dazai’s hair gets when wet. Frowning, Chuuya’s other hand cradles Dazai’s face, cursing to himself the second he feels the heat radiating off of it. 

He blindly reaches for the bedside light, still trying to shush Dazai as he begins whimpering in his sleep, to no avail. It’s several seconds before he’s finally able to hit the switch.

“Fuck,” Chuuya hisses.

Dazai’s drenched in sweat, beads of it rolling down his face and neck. His shirt clings to his skin, wet under the arms and on the neckline. For how warm he is to the touch, he’d gone sickly pale, paler than any time Chuuya’d seen him the past month. Beneath his eyelids, Chuuya can see his eyes moving rapidly. 

A normal nightmare, Chuuya could take - even a fever nightmare if he was sick and this was expected, but it wasn’t. No one fucking told him Dazai is likely to have a fever so high so quick and out of nowhere, which means it shouldn’t have happened and something is wrong. 

“‘Samu, hey, can you wake up?” Chuuya calls out to him - this time louder, hands firm on his frail figure, one on Dazai’s shoulder and the other on his face. He’s no longer concerned about being gentle - with his skin so warm, Chuuya thinks Dazai will be disoriented anyway. “Osamu. C’mon, wake up.”

A few more shakes to his frame, and Dazai blearily blinks his eyes open - they’re clouded, a hazy mist over the warm hazel. 

“There’s my baby,” Chuuya says anyway, hoping that the sound of his voice will still maybe soothe Dazai a little. Though, to be fair, Dazai doesn’t even seem rattled by the nightmare - he’s clocked out completely, his eyes showing no recognition even with Chuuya right in front of him. “I’m gonna get you help, okay?”

Dazai’s still looking around confused, and as much as it pains Chuuya to let him go, he has to. He ignores the squeeze in his chest at Dazai’s whine when he withdraws his hands and rounds the bed to quickly press the button for the nurse. 

The few seconds make all the difference, it seems. Dazai must be seeing something in the corner of the room, and whatever it is, it’s enough that he starts breathing rapidly, clawing at the sheets with clumsy hands and mumbling intelligible things.

Chuuya gives one more press to the button before he drops it. He’s by Dazai’s side in no time, grabbing one of his hands as gently as possible. 

“It’s okay,” he shushes, smoothing Dazai’s hair with his other hand, fingers trembling as they brush through the wet curls. God, the heat is radiating from Dazai’s skin. The only other time Chuuya’d ever felt this was back when he was a kid, before Dazai, in the slums, holding kids that would never make it til dawn. “It’s okay, love, you’ll be okay. There’s nothing here, there’s just me, you’re safe.”

It lasts eternity - Chuuya mumbling little nothings into Dazai’s ear, desperate to bring him back but unable to, Dazai shaking like a leaf in his embrace, breath stuttering unevenly, Dazai’s fingers digging into his shoulders, weak but holding on as he gasps incoherently. 

Chuuya doesn’t notice the nurse arriving - he’s only aware they’re not alone in the room anymore when someone speaks his name.

It’s blurry, after that. 

He’s asked out of the room - someone pries his hands away from Dazai and leads him into the hallway. Then there’s a flurry of activity - a doctor arrives, then another, everyone piling in the room, leaving Chuuya in a shitty plastic chair and with no knowledge of what’s going on.

It lasts a few minutes, he thinks. Or maybe more. There’s nothing for a really long time, though, until all at once the doors open again and Dazai’s bed is being wheeled out with the doctors snapping orders at each other, words Chuuya doesn’t understand.

Emergency surgery is all he catches, before a double door he cannot follow them through, and he’s left with no answers and an empty hallway.

He sits there for an hour, then two. Maybe three. Nothing but the hum of the lightbulbs, the sting of the hard white light on his eyes, and the past day repeating in his head over and over, looking for an answer. 

A doctor goes through the doors at some point - one of the ones that initially was there in Dazai’s room. He’s one of the emergency room surgeons, he says. Dazai is okay now, but he needed immediate surgery, he says.

“He wasn’t bleeding anywhere,” Chuuya replies then. “He has a fever.”

The surgeon sits down next to Chuuya. Another doctor joins - someone Chuuya’d never seen before. The psychiatrist on call today, he’s told. 

“He’s not dead,” Chuuya tells them, and they both quickly agree. So he doesn’t need a damn psychiatrist, he needs to be told what’s going on and what on Earth could Dazai need surgery for when he’s been fine all these weeks.

“It’s a big change-”

“-extremely sudden-”

“-decided it’s the best choice-”

“As a loved one, you might, and probably will, struggle as well-”

“-and your life together will change-”

“Dazai-san will require support-”

“-if you have any questions.”

It’s a long time until Dazai is awake. Chuuya doesn’t sleep at all.

Chapter Text

The world feels funny when Dazai's consciousness comes back, in a way that’s eerily familiar. 

Everything is muted, slow-motion. The noises around him are drowned out, almost like he’s sitting on the bottom of a pool. His eyes refuse to budge open at first, and his limbs do not move even when he wills them to, too heavy to cooperate. He’s aching everywhere, but behind a pane of frosted glass. He feels it, yet he doesn’t, not really.

He can’t connect the dots for some reason - he doesn’t remember what he was doing before he fell asleep, and why he could possibly be feeling like this. He’s still in the hospital for sure, but that’s all he’s got. His mind is blank, no matter how hard he tries to figure out what could’ve happened.

It must be the morphine, he finally decides. Maybe they gave him a bigger dose than usual. Or maybe he just slept for a really long time and he's simply groggy. 

When he does pry his eyes open after a good few minutes, the room is too bright, and he’s left squinting until someone blocks it off. He recognizes, vaguely, the sounds of the blinds being drawn down, and then footsteps back.

Blinking a couple times, the shapes and colors clear gradually - a figure sitting next to him, long hair pulled into a messy bun, the copper strands curling wildly all around. A strong jawline and pretty face littered with freckles. A pair of sad blue eyes, a smile that doesn’t quite reach them.

“Hey,” Chuuya says softly, so softly Dazai could melt with the gentleness of his voice. “How’re you feeling, sweetheart?”

“We’rd,” Dazai mumbles - his tongue, too, seems strange, uncooperative. Like it’s been years since he last spoke. He tries clearing his throat - Chuuya leans into his space, a cup of water in his hand out of nowhere. He has Dazai sip from it slowly until it’s empty, and his throat is no longer made of sandpaper. 

Chuuya stays close still, even after he puts the cup back on the nightstand. He’s holding Dazai’s hand in his bare ones, caressing the skin slowly. Dazai’s always found that soothing - how Chuuya’s fingers draw mindless shapes on his palms, trace the callouses and scars and veins. 

Chuuya’s never liked his hands - it’s a strange insecurity to have, but he supposes all insecurities are strange when you think about it. To Chuuya, the sight of his bare hands spells death. Corruption begins in a spiral on his palm before it spreads to the rest of his body, still visible in thin scarring if you look closely. 

Dazai, on the other hand (ha), finds them lovely. They’re untouched, other than the spiraling Corruption scars, protected from the elements by Chuuya’s gloves. His skin is soft, a shade lighter than his arms, his fingernails always cut short and neat. He has the hands of a pianist - long slender fingers and a delicate, melodic touch. Unused to skin-to-skin contact, whenever Chuuya touches him without the gloves, it’s special - he’s gentle, exploratory. Always as if it’s the very first time he feels Dazai’s skin beneath his bare fingertips. 

His hands are so warm, too. Dazai always has cold hands and feet - something Chuuya complains about all the time if they sleep in the same bed - but Chuuya’s hands are perfectly warming in his own.

“You had a fever yesterday,” Chuuya tells him then. “From an infection.” 

His voice is wobbly. Soft, too, but not the kind Dazai had grown used to lately - soft like Chuuya can’t will himself to speak louder. Like when he’s trying not to cry.

Dazai wills his eyes to focus more, his head to work a bit quicker, trying to reach for an answer he has no leads towards. Why does Chuuya sound so sad? 

“Your doctor wants to talk to you about it.”

“Later,” he immediately replies, "'m so tired.”

“I know,” comes Chuuya’s reply - again, his voice sounds so... odd. When Dazai looks closely, Chuuya doesn't meet his eyes. He’s looking at their joint hands, his mouth trembling just like his fingers. He’s gripping Dazai’s hand much tighter than before. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

His frown deepens. Why’s Chuuya sorry? 

And the pet names, too - it’s weird. Chuuya rarely talks to him like this. In bed sometimes, or when he’s drunk, or when Dazai’s like actively dying slash hurt extremely badly, but he’s fine right now.

Well, he’s broken like twenty bones and everything hurts like he got hit by a truck, but that’s old news. Chuuya was all baby and sweetheart and bunny the first day or two, but then stopped when it seemed to finally click that Dazai’s really not doing that terribly, all things considered.

“What’s the infection from?” he asks. It must be it, right? And his fever must’ve been high if Dazai can’t remember anything about last night. The dull throb in his head must be a residual of the fever. His left leg feels weird, too, but glancing at his body, all Dazai noticed is that it’s not longer suspended up like it was yesterday. “‘s it the broken leg?”

Seems like the most logical place to randomly flair up, with the break being so ugly. 

Chuuya’s body is tense next to his, rigid and sudden. His mouth forms a tight line, jaw clenched as he shuts his eyes briefly before they land on Dazai again.

“It was,” he replies. 

“Was,” Dazai echoes. Was is good - means the infection is gone. “So it’s fine now. Cheer up, you’re acting like I died.”

Something about that statement hits wrong - Chuuya’s hand spasms in his, fingers briefly digging into Dazai’s skin. Chuuya’s mouth wobbles, and for a horrible second, Dazai’s worried he’s gonna cry.

“It would’ve killed you, if they hadn’t done anything.”

The wording has Dazai tensing this time. He doesn’t feel anything different - no pull of stitches or additional bandages - but now he can connect the confusion and his cottony head to coming out of anaesthesia.

“What did they do?”

No answer. 

“Chuuya. What did they do to me?”

“I-” he begins, and then stops.

He takes another slow breath, and although his eyes are glassy with unshed tears, he looks Dazai in the eye when he says it.

“They had to amputate.”

…

what?

“They said it was that or you would’ve died,” Chuuya whispers, when Dazai blinks at him confused. “The infection was really bad, and your body wasn’t fighting it, a-and they couldn’t get your fever down, I’m so sorry-”

Before he can even think, Chuuya’s hands are knocked away as Dazai grips the covers and throws them out of the way. 

He looks for a long time, but the image still doesn’t make sense. 

His leg was fine. Sure, it was shattered, and they told him the bone fragments will cause him pain, but the doctor said just a few days ago it was healing nicely. It hurt like a bitch, but it was there and it was fine.

There’s nothing, now. His knee is bandaged tightly, too tightly, but what should be below it is gone, even though Dazai doesn’t feel the difference. The numb pain is still there pulsing, and if he focuses he swear he can feel and move his foot-

His body jolts, and he can no longer look at it. With a shudder, he hastily covers that, eyes cast upwards at the harsh white light. 

It’s the light that makes his eyes water. That must be it. 

Next to him  Chuuya is talking, crying, but Dazai doesn’t hear him through the fog in his head.

A rapid infection, the doctor later explains. Caused by the bone fragments that were imbedded in the flesh, too small and in too large of a number to be picked out. They rebelled, violently and quickly. Something had to be done.

There was no way to break the fever fast enough and for long enough for Dazai to make the choice himself - they tried, but he remained unresponsive. Since he and Chuuya are unmarried, he couldn’t be asked either. The medical staff decided instead, and they went with what they deemed the safest choice.

The odds were less than 15% that Dazai’s body would be able to fight the infection off, apparently. His immune system has never been strong, but it’s been further weakened by the months of stress, the malnourishment of the prison, the poison just a few months ago. It was a rigged battle right from the beginning.

Even if he did miraculously survive it, walking would be unbelievably painful, what with the breaks he sustained. It would hurt every step, and radiate up. He’d always need a mobility aid. Maybe it would turn out he’d need it amputated anyway.

The choice was logical, in Dazai’s mind. Keep your patient alive, albeit with a small cost, or risk him almost surely dying just to have him be in pain for the rest of his days, with his mobility affected more than it would’ve been if the limb was gone.

He understands it. If he was in the doctor’s shoes, he would’ve done the same. That was, logically, the better choice, in every way.

Then why does he feel so bad? 

He doesn’t understand why he feels so off about the whole thing. There’s nothing to be upset over. It was cut the leg off or die, and Dazai’s been looking forward to seeing what’s ahead lately. He should be grateful. 

Instead, there’s a numbness in his chest. A different kind than what he’s used to. He doesn’t quite know what to make of anything, watching everything through someone else’s eyes. Talking to people is done automatically - speaking to the doctors, the nurses, Chuuya, his brain processes questions and words and answers with none of the content getting back to him. Looking at people, he can’t focus - his gaze drifts, fixes on random spots with everything else blurry and desaturated.

The day is long. The surgery was done in the early hours of the morning, he was only awake by the afternoon, yet the remaining time last lifetimes. Examinations, too many conversations, so many pitiful eyes cast on him.

For once he’s glad he has a catheter, and that - for today, at least - nothing requires any movement. His body feels heavy, something at the center of his chest pulling and keeping him down. 

He can pretend, at least for today, that he exists outside this body, that it’s not his own. It’s not a new feeling, but it thrums stronger than ever. 

Maybe it’s karma, although Dazai doesn’t believe in such thing. Maybe all his sins caught up to him. Maybe it’s revenge, the universe telling him you never took care of this body, you always mutilated it - why do you care now that someone else did your job for you? 

Or maybe it’s his own mistake. A miscalculation on his part. He knew the odds going into the prison, ran the numbers, picked apart strategy after strategy until he had all possible contingencies, odds, until he knew what he was getting into. 

He predicted being part of collateral, of course. He knew the upcoming months would be full of pain and hospitals. In the elevator, he knew that there’s a high chance he’ll end up with some irreparable damage, likely mobility related.

He’s not a doctor, though - hell, he avoids medical knowledge like the damn plague, the thought of willingly knowing anything Mori might’ve liked for him to know making his skin crawl. He knows the very basics, first aid, he’s able to stop bleeding and do CPR but that’s about it. Never would he think a broken leg could result in… this. 

Serves him right, Mori would probably say. Ignorance has consequences. It’s his mess, and now he’ll have to live with it.

It’s a bitter thought, when the nurse checks the dressing on his leg - he keeps his eyes sharply up, asks the nurse to make Chuuya leave. He doesn’t look once. When she asks if he’s in pain, he tells her yes, although it barely seeps past the chasm between his body and mind. 

She tucks the covers around him again, smiles a God-awful pity smile, and administers something into the IV. 

He’ll need a good night’s rest for tomorrow, she tells him, then babbling about something or other - probably to Chuuya more than to him. Dazai didn’t even notice him coming back. One moment he wasn’t there, and now he’s back at the bedside, a fiery guardian angel.

For now, a little voice in Dazai’s head sings, as the morphine is slowly taking effect, blurring the world around him. Chuuya’s here now. Probably will be there tomorrow, the day after, and the day after. 

How long exactly is he gonna stick around, Dazai doesn’t know. The forever he dreamt up yesterday (and, fuck, that was just yesterday) is no longer tangible, no longer really there. A span of a couple hours and their entire future went and shattered.

Dazai would probably laugh about it, if he had the energy. The second he starts thinking that maybe he’d like to stick around, something proves him wrong. 

He doesn’t believe in cosmic signs - maybe he should start. Maybe this is a sign, that a creature such as Dazai is not meant for happiness. 

The clock in his head starts ticking again as he drifts off - an invisible timer he can only vaguely hear when life overwhelms him. It’s comforting, in a way. Giving himself time like that, setting a deadline only he’s aware of. A reminder that this is temporary, and he can cut it short any time he wants to.

Living on borrowed time is all he knows, after all.

The following days are deeply exhausting.

Dazai will heal very slowly. Chuuya was aware that he would - he’s the one always talking to doctors, listening to the numbers and odds day in and out, and they were clear about what was to come after the surgery. The residual limb takes about two months to heal, and given that Dazai’s state is still rather poor, recovering from everything else atop the recent infection, he can’t be released home until next week at earliest.

A part of him wants to see Dazai out of all the additional bandages and away from all the machines he’s hooked to. Sleeping in his own bed, surrounded by the comfort of his own home.

A bigger, louder voice in his head is relieved. Here, there’s no way for him to hurt himself; at home is another story. And Chuuya doesn’t know if he could handle the sight of an attempt right now.

There would be one if an opportunity presented himself, he’s sure. He’s been around Dazai long enough to know the signs, recognize the patterns. He may not be as smart as the bastard, but there’s some things that are easy for him to put together. 

Dazai doesn’t do well with big changes. Oh, he acts like he does - he pretends that shit changing is fine, that he can adapt to anything, the great strategist that he is. But he’s scared of change, and he hates when something catches him unawares. 

And something like this? Any regular person would be fucked up about it, yet alone someone with an underlying depressive disorder. Being suicidal after they chopped your limb off without even asking beforehand sounds almost rational, weirdly.

Hell, Chuuya’s feeling like shit about it and it didn’t even happen to him. 

It’s not the end of the world, he knows, and of course a part of him is glad it was just Dazai’s leg. Chances are he was going to die, and Chuuya wept for fucking hours that night when that finally sunk, that after all this time he could’ve lost him. It could’ve been a lot worse. 

Dazai will recover from this - he will. Chuuya knows that, in a year, maybe even less, Dazai will be up and walking again, causing mischief like he always does. 

Chuuya knows that. Dazai, on the other hand, always had trouble looking at the long term when it comes to his own life.

The initial day, he was quiet. The doctors told him it’s to be expected - it’s the shock. You don’t wake up without a limb every day. Still, it was an eerie sight. Chuuya’d seen Dazai dissociate before, but never to such an extend, for that long. It was easy to tell everything he did was manual, on impulse. His words were clipped, simple, his usual expression gone. He was quiet, blank, unresponsive. Cried only a little at first, but after that, he retreated into himself.

The days after, though, Dazai clocked right back in with all the usual bravado. He smiled at the nurses, joked with the doctors, flirted with the physical therapist. Seemingly over it already.

Which Chuuya knows he’s not. He sees it, in a thousand little ways he’s sure Dazai isn’t even aware of. 

It’s the way he tightens his jaw when it’s time for physical therapy. The way he artificially relaxes his shoulders when a nurse checks his bandage, and the way he refuses to look when she changes it. The eager way he asks for painkillers in the evening, like he’s glad to fall unconscious. The way he doesn't talk - not honestly, not about their future together, like they did before the surgery. Chuuya says home and Dazai’s eyes glaze over like he doesn’t know what that means anymore.

No matter. Dazai might give up on himself, but Chuuya isn’t gonna do the same. How he’s gonna convince the stubborn bastard of it, he doesn’t know, but he’s always been good at diving into the unknown. 

The catheter comes out on day three after the surgery. It’s a small thing, one would think, but that’s exactly what makes the facade crack.

And the thing is, Chuuya loves Dazai - obviously. He’s been mad for him since 18, he’d kill and die for him, he’d do fucking anything. 

But that doesn’t change the fact that Dazai is an insufferable bitch sometimes. 

“I’m gonna throw you over my fucking shoulder,” Chuuya hisses out, when it’s 7 in the fucking evening and Dazai still proclaims he doesn’t need to go to the bathroom. “Do you want to get a fucking UTI?”

“That’s not how that works.”

“Yes it fucking is,” he barks back, drawing a breath in and reminding himself that this is one of the rare times Dazai isn’t acting out on purpose. “You either come with me or it’s gonna be real funny having to call the nurses in to change the sheets tomorrow morning.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want you to watch me pee,” Dazai returns. “I’m in  a lot of pain and I don’t feel like satisfying some fetish you just figured out you have.”

In on three, hold, out for six. 

“I’m not even gonna be inside,” Chuuya says, calm as ever. “Listen, I know you hate this, okay? I get that this sucks, because it does, I’m not gonna lie, it really fucking does, and I also wish this didn’t happen to you. But it did, and we can’t fucking do anything about it now!” he rushes to say - he can see that Dazai wishes to interrupt him, so he waves a hand before the other man can even start. “It’s not forever, it’s just for now.”

“As far as I’m aware they don’t sew this thing back on,” Dazai quips lowly. His fingers twitch on the blanket.

At least he can’t fucking run away from the conversation. It’s probably fucked up of him to be thankful for that, but he doesn’t care.

“You’ll get a prosthetic!” Chuuya exclaims. “And then you can walk to the bathroom all you want! You can go to work, you can go jump off a damn bridge, hell, you can fucking walk away and dump me and never see me again!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Dazai immediately says. 

Good - the comment was a bit silly considering they’ve been talking about getting married recently, but Dazai’s eyes are no longer so dangerously close to glazing over like they were before.

“All I’m saying is this,” he waves a hand between them, hoping it gets the point across. “This ain’t how things will be forever. I know you like to catastrophize shit in your head, and I know it feels like eternity will pass until you can be on your own again and that’s probably why you’re thinking of shooting yourself the second I leave you alone-” Dazai opens his mouth to protest, “-do not fucking tell me I’m wrong. I know how you tick, I saw you nick a razor from a nurse earlier.”

Dazai’s left hand twitches. It’s all that Chuuya needs to stride towards him and yank the pillow next to that hand - and just as he’d said, when he shakes it, a shiny blade falls out onto the bedsheets. 

Chuuya looks at him pointedly. Dazai closes his mouth into a tight line, eyes straying away.

“Osamu,” Chuuya finally says, gently, as delicate as he can muster. Sitting on the bed, he grabs Dazai’s hands, rubbing them until Dazai eventually looks at him again. “Listen. I know you’re hurting, and that it’s not just the pain. I know. And I hate seein’ you like this, trust me. I don’t need you to be happy about this, but you gotta work with me a little. You don’t have to like it, but you need taking care of right now. So let me take care of you.”

Dazai’s mouth starts to wobble a bit, before he takes a shaky breath and tries to control it. His hands tremble inside Chuuya’s own. 

“You just need to give yourself time, love,” he adds quietly. 

Tension breaks - with it, first tears fall down Dazai’s cheeks, slowly glistening down his pale skin, one after the other until there’s too many to count. 

“It’s so long,” Dazai meekly says, swallowing back the tears. Chuuya extracts one hand to cup his face, trying to wipe some of the falling droplets away. “I thought- I thought I could, before, but now- I can’t do anything, and it’s humiliating, and I don’t want this.”

Chuuya understands that, better than anyone - after Corruption, his body is pretty much useless. The first day, he can’t move at all, and the next two or three, he can maybe walk a few steps without collapsing. It’s not easy, to have someone else take care of you, when you could never rely on anyone else before.

He used to despise using it, only half because of how inhuman it made him feel, and half because he knew he’d have to rely on Dazai in the aftermath. 

It makes you feel shameful, and small. Being at the mercy of somebody else is a special kind of torture for people like them.

Dazai, especially, values his freedom a lot. He takes a lot comfort in having space, he likes to retreat when he’s uncomfortable or anxious. He needs alone time. He gets restless when he’s cooped up for too long.  

“I know,” Chuuya whispers. “And I can’t even begin to think how hard this is and is gonna be for you, but… We’ll just take it one day at a time, how does that sound, hm?”

He leans close, squeezing Dazai’s hand as he tilts his head a little forward, pressing a gentle kiss to Dazai’s forehead, letting the other man bend himself down and fall into him.

“You don’t have to promise you’ll last until you can walk,” he goes on. “Just one day. You’ll give me one day, we’ll work through it, and then you’ll see if you can give me another one. That way it won’t be so bad.”

“You’ll get tired,” Dazai meekly sniffles. “It’s a lot of days.”

“It is,” Chuuya agrees. “But I promise I won’t. We’ve been through so much already, this ain’t gonna break us.”

“And what if…,” Dazai peaks out, glancing at Chuuya with one eye - and gosh, that reminds Chuuya of back when they were kids. Fifteen and so volatile, sixteen and confused, seventeen and broken, eighteen and so desperate. Dazai from years ago and now are two different people, and yet… deep down, it’s still the same broken boy. “What if I don’t want to do one more day? What do we do?”

“I’ll still be here,” Chuuya answers immediately. “I’ll hold you, I’ll talk to you. We can figure out what to do so you’ll want to stick around til tomorrow. Whatever you need to make it til the next day, that’s what we’ll do. And then we start again, until we won't have to anymore."

Eventually - mercifully, Chuuya feels a weak nod against his shoulder.

“I can try.”

“That’s all I want,” Chuuya replies with a small smile. “You just gotta try, kay?”

“‘kay.”

Chuuya can only hope that trying will get them somewhere. Maybe it’s foolish of him to do - many people have told him, time and time again, that Dazai is a helpless case, that there’s no point attaching yourself to someone who looks at life as just a stepping stone to his own grave.

He doesn’t care if it’s foolish, or hopeless, or if he ends up getting his heart shattered. At least he’ll be able to sleep at night knowing he tried. Dazai’s too important to him for Chuuya to just give up.

He kisses Dazai’s forehead, and delights in the little smile he receives in return.

One step at a time.

“Now,” Chuuya exhales, pointedly glancing down. “That outta the way, are we finally ready to do the bathroom?”

A miserable groan, as well as a fist thudding him in the chest. He takes that as an opportunity to hop down from the bed.

“Chuu-ya, we were having a moment! You ruined it!”

“You know what would’ve ruined that? You pissing your pants. Come on.”

“Ugh, and the whole vibe is just gone. Maybe I’ll ask the physio to help me instead, I bet he’s a lot more romantic than some people he-ah!”

With no real issue or strain, Chuuya hoists Dazai up into a bridal carry. Dazai flails for a moment before he throws his arms around Chuuya’s neck. He tries to glare - the attempt is foiled entirely by the blush on his face. 

“And can the physio lift you like you’re nothing?” Chuuya asks with a self-satisfied grin. “Bet he can’t.”

Dazai mumbles something unintelligible, squishing his face into Chuuya’s shoulder. Chuuya takes that as a win.

The walk to the bathroom is short, just across the room - once they’re there, Chuuya deposits Dazai on the toilet seat and flicks on the light. Years of experience with Dazai have him sweeping his eyes across the small room on instinct, but he doesn’t see anything that could be harmful.

“I won’t drown myself in the toilet, I promise,” Dazai says, rolling his eyes. “You can go.”

“Call me when you’re done, okay?”

Once again, Dazai rolls his eyes.

“No, you know what, I won’t, I’ll just crawl back. Of course I’ll call you, now shoo,” he ushers him away, waving his hands. 

“Brat,” Chuuya mumbles, but he closes the door with a quiet click, and retreats to sit on the bed, letting out a sigh. 

For a good few minutes, he just sits there, letting the last few hours fade away, trying to relax his shoulders, rolling his neck to try and make himself a bit less tense. He’ll need a massage by the end of this week at this point.

He takes his phone then, quickly typing up a few messages. He sends one off to the group chat he has with the Agency doctor and detective, letting them know how things have been. He’s been updating them periodically - and via them, the entire ADA - but they’ve been nagging more and more since the amputation, since Chuuya banned them from visiting for the time being. 

Both of them agreed, at least, apparently to the dismay of everyone else. But they seem to get Dazai - maybe not as much as Chuuya does, but the three of them are clearly close with each other. Both Yosano and Ranpo seem to understand that Dazai needs to process everything first before he can even begin figuring out how to react to the people he knows (people he loves) seeing him like this.

Today was a good day - some progress was made, but it’ll still be a while before the sight of anyone familiar won’t have Dazai spiraling into anxiety. 

Still, he lets them know how Dazai is doing, albeit vaguely, to still maintain a bit of privacy for the both of them. 

Ten minutes pass like that - Chuuya isn’t worried about Dazai intentionally hurting himself. It’s that Dazai’s uncomfortable asking for help, so if he slipped to the floor, he would just sit on his ass without a word until Chuuya magically appeared.

So he gets up, dusts off his pants, and quietly walks up to the bathroom door. He’s just about to knock, a gentle ‘hey’ on his lips, when he hears it-

A noise. A sob.

It’s small. Almost doesn’t go through the door, but Chuuya strains his ears and hears a sniffle, then a shaky exhale. More sobbing - muffled, like Dazai’s face is pressed into something, tiny and ghastly.

Something brittle shakes in his chest, and he almost opens the door on impulse. He stops his hand right before it touches the handle.

Six years ago, when he was insecure and didn’t know Dazai that well, Chuuya would take it to heart - would consider this a sign of distrust, that Dazai needs to lock himself away to cry.

As is now, with a good few years of adulthood under his belt, he understands it.

Dazai’s been watched day in and out for the past month. People have been constantly surrounding him - even Chuuya, though it’s out of care, has been hovering in his peripheral at all times. This is the first bit of privacy he’s been allowed ever since his entire life changed in the blink of an eye. 

The urge to comfort him is strong - but then, sometimes, a person doesn’t need comfort, but a moment alone to cry.

So Chuuya retreats to the bed. He takes his phone back in hand, opens up some work emails, types without care for the time that passes.  Once he’s done with everything he can do without opening up his laptop, he scrolls on Netflix to see if there’s something that Dazai would like to watch later.

Close to half-hour passes before Chuuya hears his name meekly called out from the bathroom. When he comes in, Dazai is sitting on the closed toilet lid once more. 

He doesn’t point out the still-visible tear tracks, or the damp spot he sees on Dazai’s pants. Neither of them talk about how much time had passed.

Chuuya just carries him back to bed, gentle when he lies him down, making sure to cover his legs - they’ll have to face that Dazai can’t look at them eventually, but not tonight. They’ve already made more progress than Chuuya thought they would, anyway. 

He turns on his laptop, letting Dazai browse the list of movies he’d made while they wait for the night nurse to come make her rounds and give Dazai his dose of meds. They’re not quite as strong as before, with him in much less pain now that the main source of it is gone, but it’s still good to have something to help him fall asleep.

Dazai, of course, picks a movie they’d seen together at least six times. Chuuya groans about it as usual, pretending he didn’t add it to the list on purpose.

Chuuya thinks the movie is alright. Good, but he wouldn’t watch it as many times as he had if it weren’t for Dazai. 

Dazai, who recites the dialogue and knows every scene and always has something to add cause he read the source book.  Who snickers about the botched marriage proposal like it’s the first time he’s heard it, sighs at the pretty score, oohs and aahs at all the visuals.

He always cuddles up close in the second half, staying just like that up until the credits, his head on Chuuya’s chest, fingers tangled in his shirt, hair tickling Chuuya’s nose. 

“It’s kinda nice,” he says, when the man calls his wife by their now shared last name, “you’d think with how it started, that they’d never get the ending that they do.”

“Yeah,” Chuuya agrees, his eyes having strayed from the screen close to ten minutes ago. “Guess life is full of surprises like that.”