Work Text:
domestic sick for chuu
plan uh: chuu sick hmm zai worried + doesn’t know how to take care + fluff ok
Chuuya barely registers the muffled roar of traffic far below his floor-to-ceiling windows, it’s usually a comfort of how far he’s gotten, but tonight it only grinds against the pounding inside his skull. The living room lights are dim, not by design but because getting off the couch to adjust the switch feels like an impossible task.
He’s cocooned in a thick throw blanket, the edges dragged up to his chin, yet the tremors rippling through him don’t stop. Every shiver rattles his ribs, sending a dull ache spreading across his back and shoulders like bruises.
His fever comes crashing, heat rolling off him as if his blood is boiling, but his fingers remain ice-cold where they clutch the blanket. Sweat beads at his hairline and trails down his temples, dampening the copper strands clinging stubbornly to his forehead. He tries to wipe them away, but his arm gives out halfway, dropping limply onto his stomach. Even that weak motion leaves him breathless.
“Shit,” he mutters, but the word grates in his throat like sandpaper. His voice is so hoarse he barely recognizes it.
His chest tightens with another shuddering cough—violent, racking—and he curls in on himself, vision swimming. When the fit finally eases, his lungs burn and black spots speckle his sight. He can feel heat radiating off his skin: cheeks flushed a stark red, nose raw and pink from constant rubbing earlier when he still had the strength to move. Now even lifting his hand feels like lifting concrete.
The apartment around him is a disaster for someone who prides himself on hygiene. A half-empty bottle of wine lies on its side just out of reach, condensation leaking a dark ring into the wood floor. A mug—cold tea he made hours ago—sits abandoned on the coffee table beside unused medicine blister packs he never managed to open. A discarded scarf hangs off the arm of the sofa like a defeated flag, and his coat is crumpled near the entryway where he dropped it on his slow, stumbling path inside.
He tries again to push himself upright, hands shaking as they dig into the couch cushions, but his body refuses to cooperate. His elbows buckle instantly, a weak gasp tearing from him as dizziness clamps down hard. The room tilts, and his vision blurs until he’s forced back against the sofa cushions, breath shallow and uneven.
He’s freezing—bones aching with cold—but his skin burns so intensely it stings. Sweat soaks through the collar of his shirt, chilling him further whenever the air touches it. He tucks his knees closer to his chest, pulling the blanket tighter, face buried in the edge of it as another tremor wracks through him. His heartbeat pounds unevenly in his ears.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been lying there. Hours, maybe. Time slides in and out of focus just like his sight.
He blinks slowly, lashes heavy and sticking together, and whispers something soundless, more air than voice. He isn’t sure if it’s a plea or a curse.
A sharp, heavy pound rattles the front door—once, twice—each impact slicing through the throbbing fog in Chuuya’s skull like a blade. He flinches, jaw clenching, a low groan slipping past cracked lips. The sound reverberates inside his head, worsening the nausea swirling in his gut. He squeezes his eyes shut, wishing the noise would stop, but the third hit lands hard enough to make the doorframe tremble.
“Oi, Chuuya! I know you’re in there,” an unmistakably smug voice calls through the thick wood—muffled but still grating enough to make Chuuya’s headache spike.
Of course. Of fucking course.
Chuuya tries to muster enough strength to bark back, to tell Dazai to piss off and go die in a ditch where he belongs, but all that comes out is a pathetic rasp—barely even a sound. He’s too exhausted to lift his head from where it’s slumped against the couch cushion.
Then comes a metallic scrape—sharp and deliberate. The unmistakable sound of a lockpick working.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Chuuya mutters. Or tries to. It comes out broken, barely audible.
The lock clicks. The door slams open a second later, crashing against the wall with a violent bang that makes Chuuya physically flinch and curl tighter into himself.
Footsteps—not hurried, but casual—cross the entryway.
“Well, well,” Dazai’s voice drips with amusement, “looks like the mighty executive has finally been taken down by a microorganism. Tragic.”
Chuuya forces his eyes open, vision swimming until Dazai’s silhouette comes into view. The bastard stands in the doorway, hands tucked lazily into his coat pockets, brown eyes sweeping over the apartment before landing on the shaking bundle on the couch.
Dazai’s smirk widens.
“You look horrible,” he observes cheerfully.
Chuuya tries to sit up, driven purely by spite, but the effort sends white-hot pain lancing through his muscles. His elbows buckle and he collapses back into the cushions with a strangled sound. His breath stutters, chest constricting with a harsh cough he can’t suppress.
Dazai watches, expression unreadable for a moment.
“I didn’t think you could make dying look any more dramatic, but here we are.”
“Ffuck off,” Chuuya croaks. It barely registers as words.
Dazai raises an eyebrow and steps closer, heels echoing against the hardwood. He nudges the overturned water bottle with the toe of his shoe, glancing around as if assessing a crime scene.
Chuuya glares weakly, but his vision flickers again, and the room tilts alarmingly. His lips tremble with another cough, but he swallows it down, chest heaving.
Dazai clicks his tongue, leaning forward slightly.
“You can’t even sit up,” he notes, almost impressed. “Hm, impressive.”
Chuuya’s response is a breathy, shaking huff—half rage, half defeat. He hates the way his limbs feel like lead, how his heartbeat thunders unevenly in his ears, how every breath scrapes like knives.
Dazai’s gaze lingers on the flushed cheeks, the sweat-soaked hair, the shaking hands gripping the blanket. Something shifts in his expression—subtle, quick—but then it’s gone, replaced with a dismissive wave.
“Honestly, what kind of partner dies unattended on a couch without warning? I wouldn’t leave you without saying something.”
Chuuya coughs again, head falling back, chest burning. “Didn’t… want you here,” he forces out.
Dazai smirks, straightening. “And yet, here I am.”
He steps around the coffee table and crouches down just enough to get a proper look at Chuuya’s face. The warmth radiating off him is staggering, the fever palpable from inches away.
Chuuya’s eyelids drag closed, too heavy to keep open. His breathing shudders unevenly and his fingers twitch where they clutch the blanket. He’s trembling uncontrollably now, trying to hide it and failing.
Dazai watches with an unreadable look, then sighs in exaggerated annoyance.
“Don’t pass out,” he warns, poking Chuuya’s forehead lightly with one gloved finger. “I didn’t break in here just to have you die on me. That would be awfully inconvenient.”
“S’not… dying,” Chuuya slurs.
Chuuya tries to stare, but his body won’t cooperate. Everything spins, tilting sharply, and his breath stutters again.
Dazai’s smile lingers, sharp and infuriating. “Come on, little Chuuya,” he says, tone mocking but quieter now. “Stay awake. It’d be embarrassing if I had to carry you.”
“Go to hell,” Chuuya whispers, barely audible.
Dazai laughs—genuine, bright, irritatingly amused.
Dazai hadn’t planned on staying—he never did. But as he straightened, eyes sweeping the apartment’s disarray again, something knotted unpleasantly in his chest. It wasn’t sympathy; he didn’t do sympathy. More like irritation and something that felt weirdly like guilt.
Chuuya looked awful. More than awful—fragile, in a way that felt wrong. Wrong for Chuuya.
Dazai clicked his tongue and stood, rolling his shoulders back. He wasn’t about to sit here and watch Chuuya choke on air. He’d dealt with worse—on himself, mostly. Mori’s sterile fingertips and saccharine voice still clawed in his memory: Sit still, Dazai-kun, let me take care of you. It made his skin crawl even now.
So he learned to deal with it alone. To stop shivering long enough to clean wounds. To keep his hands steady enough to stitch his own skin. To lower a fever without help.
Which is why he was here now, he told himself. Because the idea of someone else hovering over Chuuya—Mori or otherwise—was somehow even more intolerable than doing it himself.
He exhaled sharply and turned toward the hallway.
“Don’t die while I’m gone,” he said over his shoulder, tone light, mocking.
Chuuya didn’t respond. He might not have heard. His head was slumped against the couch cushions, eyes half-closed and glassy, breath ragged. A flicker of panic shot through Dazai before he shoved it down.
He crossed into the bathroom, flicking on the light. The cabinet door resisted before giving way, revealing neatly arranged towels and supplies. Dazai grabbed a clean flannel and ran it under warm water, watching steam fog the mirror for a moment.
The water spilled between his fingers, and he tested the temperature the way he’d done countless times on himself—warm enough to soothe, not hot enough to shock. He wrung it out, folding it tight, and headed back to the living room.
Chuuya hadn’t moved. His breathing was shallow, his brow furrowed in unconscious misery. Dazai crouched again, hesitating only a second before laying the damp cloth against Chuuya’s burning forehead.
“Relax,” Dazai muttered. “It’s not like I’m choking you.”
He held the cloth in place until the tremor under it eased slightly, then he set it carefully across Chuuya’s forehead and pushed himself up again, joints popping.
The kitchen was a few steps away.
He flicked on the electric kettle and opened cabinets until he found tea—Chuuya’s expensive taste on full display in labeled tins. Dazai snorted.
He grabbed one, pried it open, and dumped leaves into a mug. He didn’t bother measuring. He opened another cabinet until he found honey—figuring fever or not, Chuuya would complain about bitterness.
The kettle clicked to a stop, and he poured slowly, watching steam coil upward and curl around his fingers. The warmth seeped into his palms, grounding and strangely familiar. He stirred the mug lazily with a spoon, listening to the faint metallic clink echo through the quiet room.
When he returned, Chuuya’s eyes were half-open, unfocused, tracking movement only vaguely at the edge of perception. The blanket had slipped slightly, exposing a sweat-soaked shoulder.
Dazai set the mug on the table and leaned over, adjusting the blanket with brisk hands. Practical. Efficient. Not gentle.
Chuuya blinked slowly, lips parting. “Didn’t… ask you,” he murmured, voice ruined, barely sound. “..to make this.”
Dazai smirked. “And here I thought you’d be grateful.”
Chuuya’s eyes slipped closed again, breath shallow The cloth on his forehead had already begun to cool; Dazai pressed it lightly back into place, feeling the heat radiating off him like a furnace.
He clicked his tongue, settling back on his heels.
“Try not to pass out before you drink the damn tea. I didn’t go to all the trouble of breaking into your apartment.”
Chuuya let out a soft noise—somewhere between a groan and a laugh—and Dazai watched him, jaw tight, expression unreadable.
Dazai started pacing without realizing he’d moved. Back and forth across the living room floor, steps quick, hands buried in the pockets of his coat.
He hated not knowing what to do. It wasn’t like pain was foreign to him; he had spent years forcing himself upright when his limbs went numb, choking down boiling tea and shots of alcohol to stop his hands from shaking.
But Chuuya wasn’t like that.
Dazai stopped pacing abruptly, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. Doing nothing felt unbearable. Watching felt worse.
He turned sharply and headed down the short hall to the master bedroom. Even fever-drunk, Chuuya kept the place immaculate—sheets perfectly pulled, duvet smooth and heavy, pillows arranged with military precision. The faint scent of sandalwood clung to the air, familiar in a way that made something tighten in Dazai’s chest.
He grabbed the duvet in a messy sweep, yanking it off the bed so aggressively that half the pillows toppled to the floor. The thick fabric was heavier than expected, and dragging it behind him felt like hauling a corpse. He grit his teeth, kicking open the bedroom door wider with his heel, the duvet trailing behind him.
When he returned to the living room, Chuuya hadn’t moved at all. The damp cloth on his forehead had slipped to the side.
For a moment, Dazai stared. The air felt thick. He felt almost as clinical as mori was.
He swallowed hard, pushing the thought away with physical force. Not the same. Not even close.
He stepped forward and swung the duvet over Chuuya in one motion, letting it fall like a weighted shield. It swallowed him entirely, shaping around the curl of his body. Chuuya made a weak noise at the weight but didn’t resist, only shivering harder beneath the sudden warmth.
Dazai crouched, one hand bracing against the back of the sofa as he shifted Chuuya’s shoulder—not gently, but carefully, guiding him to lie fully on his side instead of slumped upright. Chuuya’s head lolled against the cushion, breath stuttering at the movement, but he didn’t fight it. His limbs moved without coordination, pliant and unsteady.
“Come on,” Dazai murmured, more to himself than to Chuuya. His voice was low, tight, stripped of its usual sing-song theatrics. “If you’re going to be useless, at least don’t suffocate sitting up.”
Once Chuuya was settled, Dazai hesitated only a moment before toeing off his shoes, letting them thud quietly against the floor. The cold from the wooden boards bit through his socks and up his spine, but he didn’t care. He pulled the edge of the duvet up, sliding beneath its heavy weight.
The warmth hit immediately—Chuuya was a furnace, heat radiating off him in waves strong enough to burn. His whole body shook with violent tremors, muscles jumping beneath the blankets as if he were freezing despite burning alive.
Dazai shifted closer, slipping an arm beneath Chuuya’s shoulders and using the other to anchor the duvet around them both, creating a cocoon of heat. Chuuya sagged into the contact instinctively, his forehead brushing lightly against Dazai’s collarbone, breath hot and uneven.
He didn’t speak. Neither did Chuuya.
Silence settled. Dazai stared at the wall ahead, jaw tight, eyes narrowed as if something far away required all his focus.
Chuuya’s breathing hitched again, and without thinking, Dazai’s hand lifted, resting against the back of his head, fingers threading lightly through sweat-damp hair. Definitely not soothing.
The tremors eased—not stopped, but softened enough that Chuuya’s body loosened, tension bleeding out.
Dazai exhaled, long and quiet, chest sinking as though he’d been holding his breath for hours.
He didn’t like this feeling. It was responsibility. The gnawing pulse of worry. The tightness in his throat every time Chuuya’s breathing faltered.
The room hummed softly. Snow tapped faintly against the window. And Chuuya curled instinctively closer.
Dazai shut his eyes.
Just for a moment.
And he stayed.