Work Text:
The mahogany table in the Port Mafia’s main briefing room was polished to a mirror shine, reflecting the tense, sharp faces of the executives gathered around it. Mori Ogai sat at the head, his chin resting neatly on his fingers, his voice a calm, rhythmic tone as he continued to ramble about some upcoming mission.
It was an important meeting. A very strategic meeting.
And Dazai Osamu was doing his absolute best to ruin it.
"Mori-saaaan", Dazai groaned, his voice dragging like a cloud in the sky on a windy day. He was slouched so low in his leather chair that his chin was practically resting on the edge of the wood. He looped a white fountain pen between his fingers, letting it drop onto the table with a loud, deliberate clack as he wrapped his arms around his head putting it down on the table with a thud. "My limbs feel like trucks drove over them, and your voice is like a lullaby today. A very boring, very dusty lullaby. If you don't wrap this up soon, my soul is going to escape through my body and I’ll be forced to haunt this miserable agency forever, oh, how terrible."
A vein visibly throbbed in Chuuya’s temple. Sitting directly across from the brunette, Chuuya crossed his arms, his gloved fingers digging into his wavy red hair as he had his held his hands in his head. "Shut the hell up, Dazai," he muttered under his breath, his blue eyes flashing with warning. "Some of us are actually trying to listen."
"But Chuuyaaa," Dazai whined, turning his head toward his partner. His eyes were wide, glassy, and fixed in a look of exaggerated misery and great suffering. He dramatically pressed the back of his hand to his forehead. "You have no compassion. I feel extremely light headed. I think I’m contracting a fatal, tragic disease. My heart is beating so fast, it might just burst right out of my chest! Oh, the agony of being a fragile genius..."
"If your heart bursts, I’ll throw a party," Chuuya snickered, his voice rising enough to draw a mild, amused glance from Mori. Chuuya slammed his palm on the table. "You do this every single week. Last Tuesday it was a 'fatal papercut.' The week before that, you claimed your ears were bleeding because you had to look at my hat. You're a twenty fucking year old executive, not a toddler. If you're going to act like a brat, go do it in the hallway so the grownups can finish."
*Ugh whatever.*
Dazai let out a soft, huffed chuckle, his shoulders dropping. He didn't fire back with another one of his usual razor-sharp wit. Instead, he just slumped a little deeper into his chair, burying his face into the collar of his black coat. "Fine, fine. The slug is grumpy today. No appreciation for the acts."
Chuuya rolled his eyes, ignoring him for the remaining twenty minutes of the briefing. He noted the strategic placements, the supply lines, and the headcount. He was completely focused. He didn't notice that Dazai hadn't fiddled with his pen again. He didn't notice that the tall boy's breathing had become shallow, or that the hand he had pressed to his forehead wasn't just a dramatic gesture—it was an attempt to stop the room from spinning.
When Mori finally dismissed them, Chuuya stood up immediately, gathering his papers. "I'm heading down to finish the rest of my work," Chuuya said, not bothering to look at Dazai as he walked past him. "Don't follow meand go do your paperwork, I know you haven't finished it, you lazy bandage waste toddler."
Dazai didn't move from his chair right away. He just gave a vague, dismissive wave of his hand. "Yes, yes... off you go, tiny dog..."
His voice sounded incredibly faint, but Chuuya was already halfway out the heavy double doors, too annoyed by the hour long theatrical performance to look back.
why the fuck did dazai have to act like a kid?
Three hours later, their half shared penthouse was dark when Chuuya unlocked the door, he was hungry but so tired he didn't want to eat anything, he just wanted to lay down and drift off into a deep slumber.
The rain had started up again, a steady, depressing drizzle that blurred the city lights outside. Chuuya kicked off his boots, tossed his hat onto the kitchen counter, and unbuttoned his vest with a heavy sigh. His shoulders were stiff from sitting in meetings and drafting reports all afternoon.
He expected the apartment to be empty. Dazai also had his own place or in other words container house that Chuuya despised...but the idiot had a habit of breaking into Chuuya’s penthouse to steal his expensive wine or fall asleep on his couch just to be a pain in the ass, though he'd really have him stay over at his place than go to his cold container.
When Chuuya flicked on the hallway light, he noticed a pair of scuffed black dress shoes thrown carelessly near the entryway. One of them was upside down.
Chuuya sighed, a scowl forming on his face. He let out a sigh before walking into the living room. "I swear to God, if you even touched the sake I bought last week, I'm going to throw you off the balcony myself."
There was no answer heard except the crickets chirping.
The living room was as dark as possible, the only illumination was the one coming from the faint gray light of the storm outside from the window. He turned on his dim phone torch light. astonished to the sight of a large, irregular shape buried under a mountain of blankets on the farther end of his white velvet sofa that he had just gotten cleaned abouuuttt 2 weeks ago. It looked like Dazai had dragged every single throw blanket from the closet and piled them on top of himself.
I mean... he looked kind of okay and up to his antics about four-ish hours ago?
"Hey. Bastard. Wake up," Chuuya said, walking over and kicking the foot of the sofa. "Get your legs off my cushions. I told you, I'm not your maid."
The pile of blankets didn't stir. But as Chuuya stood closer, he heard it.
A ragged, rapid sound.
Hah... hah... hah...
It was the sound of someone breathing through a throat that felt like sandpaper. It was too fast, too shallow, and entirely wrong.
Chuuya’s irritation vanished in a split second, replaced by a cold, sharp spike of pure gut instinct. He stepped forward, grabbing the edge of all the wool blankets at the same time, and yanked it down. "Dazai?, you good buddy?"
The sight underneath made Chuuya’s breath catch in his throat.
Dazai was curled into a tight, shivering ball, his knees tucked all the way to his chest. His white button-down shirt was completely unbuttoned at the collar, the fabric damp and clinging to his collarbones. His skin wasn't just its usual pale tone ,it was a sickly white, contrasted sharply by a violent, burning reddish flush that painted his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose. His lips were dry, shoved in his knees, cracked, dry and parted as he fought for air.
"Dazai," Chuuya said, his voice dropping all its rough edges, instantly shifting into something urgent. He dropped to his knees by the side of the couch and reached out, pressing the back of his bare hand directly against Dazai’s forehead.
He pulled it back almost instantly with a sharp hiss.
"Holy fucking hell," Chuuya breathed. Dazai’s skin was radiating a terrifying, dry heat. It felt like touching the front of a car that had been running for hours in the dead of summer. "You're burning up."
Dazai's long eyelashes fluttered, wet with sweat, as his glassy, unfocused dark eyes slowly rolled toward Chuuya. He blinked several times, his pupils dilated so wide they almost swallowed the brown of his irises.
"Chuu... ya?" Dazai whispered, but didn't move. The voice didn't even sound like him. It was a broken and raspy. He immediately tried to pull away, shrinking back into the corner of the sofa, his hands weakly pulling the blanket back up to his chin. "Don't... look. Go away. Don't touch."
"Like hell I'm going away!" Chuuya’s voice cracked with a mixture of rising panic and absolute fury...fury at Dazai, but mostly fury at himself.
He was whiny during the meeting.
He said his limbs felt like trucks had driven over them.
He said his heart was racing.
He had his head hurt.
And... *I* told him to shut up and *die*.
The guilt hit Chuuya like a physical blow to the stomach, turning into an aggressive, hyper focused wave of adrenaline. "You absolute piece of work," Chuuya growled, his hands moving automatically as he grabbed Dazai’s shoulder to keep him from turning away. "You were like this this morning, weren't you? You sat through an hour long tactical briefing with a fever that’s probably pushing a 104 degrees, and you didn't say a damn word!!"
"I... I told you," Dazai mumbled, his head rolling back against the armrest. A violent shudder rippled through his entire body, making his teeth chatter loudly. "I said... I was tragically ill. You... you said you'd throw a party..."
"Because you...you fake things like this every single day!" Chuuya shouted, though he immediately lowered his volume when Dazai winced violently, his eyes squeezing shut at the sound. Chuuya bit his lip, forcing his voice down into a tense, harsh whisper. "You idiot. You stupid, self destructive idiot. Where does it hurt? Is it a flu? Did you get stabbed and hide it again?"
Dazai didn't answer. He just let out a weak, pathetic groan, his hand subconsciously moving down to clutch at his right side, just above his hip.
Chuuya’s eyes followed the movement. Without a second thought, he lunged forward, grabbing the hem of Dazai’s damp shirt and yanking it upward.
"No... stop... Chuuya, don't..." Dazai whimpered, trying to swat Chuuya’s hands away, but his movements were incredibly slow, his arms heavy and uncoordinated, like his brain had stopped working.
Chuuya ignored the weak resistance. He pushed the shirt up to Dazai’s chest, and the moment he saw the bandages around Dazai's torso, his blood ran cold, his lips went into a thin straight line.
The clean white under Dazai's shirt was ruined. It was soaked through with a sickening, yellowish green fluid and dark, sluggish blood. The skin surrounding the bandage was tight, angry, and a deep, bruised purple color. Red streaks...oh no, no. no. no. *no*,the unmistakable, terrifying signs of lymphangitis, a spreading bacterial infection were already making their way up toward his ribcage.
It was an old wound from a mission four days ago that Dazai had claimed was "just a scratch" before refusing medical attention and going back to his office.
"You didn't change the dressing," Chuuya said, his voice trembling with a rare, raw terror. "You. left. the. dirt. in. You. let it rot."
"Didn't... didn't have time," Dazai panted, his eyes rolling back toward the ceiling. He was shivering so hard the entire sofa was vibrating. "Too much... paperwork... Mori wanted..."
"Shut up. Stop talking." Chuuya stood up so fast his chair nearly toppled over. The guilt was completely consuming him now, transforming into a fierce, commanding, red, aura. He was an executive, he knew how to handle a crisis, but when it came to Dazai, the stakes were always entirely different. If Dazai died because Chuuya had been too blind to notice he was actually dying, Chuuya would never survive it, he...he would- not the time to think about this right now.
Chuuya stormed into the bathroom, ripping open the medicine cabinet. He grabbed a bottle of strong, broad spectrum antibiotics, the kind the Port Mafia kept on hand for severe battlefield trauma, they were what he needed right now, there was no time to bloody fuck around, along with a bottle of liquid fever reducers, a fresh bucket of ice cold water, and a stack of clean towels.
When he returned to the living room, Dazai had collapsed sideways, his head hanging off the edge of the cushion, his breathing becoming dangerously ragged.
"Dazai, sit up. Right now," Chuuya commanded, his voice rough, leaving absolutely no room for argument. He set the bucket down with a loud bang and grabbed Dazai from under his arms, hauling the taller boy upward.
Dazai felt completely limp, like a marionette with its strings cut, and chuuya was the puppeteer. He let out a sharp, breathless cry of pain as the movement pulled at his infected side. "Ah! God... Chuuya, stop, please... it hurts, everything hurts...", Dazai's eyes were already filled with tears and chuuya didn't even do anything yet.
"I know it hurts! That's what happens when you let blood poisoning take over your entire body!" Chuuya snapped, though his hands were surprisingly steady as he propped Dazai against the back of the sofa. He unscrewed the antibiotic bottle and forced two large pills between Dazai’s pale, trembling lips. "Swallow. Right. Now."
He pressed a glass of water to Dazai’s mouth. Dazai choked, water spilling down his chin and wetting his shirt further, but Chuuya kept the glass tilted until he heard the distinct, heavy swallow.
"Good. Now don't move." Chuuya grabbed a pair of medical shears from his pocket. With a swift, practiced motion, he snipped through the filthy, crusting bandages around Dazai’s waist.
The moment the gauze peeled away from the wound, Dazai flinched so violently his head struck the back of the couch. A choked, strangled half shriek half sob tore from his throat, his fingers digging frantically into Chuuya’s shoulders, his nails biting through Chuuya’s shirt. "Stop! Stop, stop, stop! Don't touch it!", he whined with the tears now flowing freely down his cheeks.
"I have to clean it, Dazai! If I don't flush this out right now, you're going to go into a septic shock before midnight!" Chuuya’s voice was cracked, a fierce, aggressive determination burning in his eyes. He didn't break the grip. He pinned Dazai’s good shoulder back against the leather with one hand, using his entire body weight to keep the thrashing boy down.
Dazai was weeping now. It wasn't the theatrical, dramatic sobbing he did when he wanted attention. These were silent, hot, involuntary tears of sheer physical agony and total exhaustion, pouring over his flushed cheeks and disappearing into his tangled brown hair. He had no strength to fight Chuuya’s gravity accommodating muscles. He was completely trapped, completely vulnerable, and he hated it. He hated the weakness of it.
"I hate you...It hurts, it hurts so bad...so much..." Dazai sobbed, his voice cracking as Chuuya pressed a sterile pad soaked in antiseptic directly against the swollen, infected flesh. "I hate you, Chuuya... let me go... just let it kill me...please," Dazai whimpered.
"Like hell I will!" Chuuya growled back, his own jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He worked with furious, terrifying efficiency, ignoring Dazai's agonizing cries as he cleared away the infected fluid, flushed the deep cut with saline, and packed it with antibiotic ointment. "You don't get to die like this. Not from a stupid, careless infection because you were too proud to ask for help. I won't let you."
With a final, firm motion, Chuuya secured a fresh, thick sterile dressing over the wound, wrapping it tightly to ensure no further contamination.
The moment Chuuya pulled his hands away, Dazai collapsed completely. The fight left his body all at once, his joints turning to jelly. He fell forward, his forehead striking Chuuya’s shoulder with a heavy, dull thud. His entire frame was vibrating with heavy, pathetic dry heaves, his breath coming in short, terrifyingly hot gasps against Chuuya's neck.
Chuuya didn't push him away. The aggressive, furious energy that had carried him through the medical treatment suddenly dissolved, leaving only a profound, aching emptiness and relief- with a heavy side of guilt.
Slowly, Chuuya reached up, peeling off his ruined, stained shirt and tossing it to the floor. He grabbed a clean towel, dipped it into the ice-cold water, and began to gently, meticulously wipe the sweat and grime from Dazai’s face, his neck, and his burning forehead.
"Shh... it's over, The worst part is over," Chuuya murmured, his voice dropping into that quiet, rhythmic lullaby register. He smoothed the damp curls away from Dazai’s eyes. "Breathe, dummy. Just breathe." he went on. "It's okay...you're okay"
Dazai let out a long, trembling groan, his fingers weakly clutching at the fabric of Chuuya’s undershirt. He was too tired to maintain his usual silver-tongued facade. The walls were completely gone, leaving only a sick, broken twenty year old boy who was terrified of the dark.
"Chuuya..." Dazai whispered, his eyes tightly shut as the cold towel lowered his skin temperature by a fraction of a degree. "It burns... my chest... everything burns..."
"I know. The medicine is working," Chuuya said softly. He tossed the towel back into the basin and shifted his weight. Carefully, minding the freshly bandaged side, Chuuya climbed onto the sofa, pulling Dazai with him. He sat lengthwise, dragging Dazai’s dead-weight body back against his chest, wrapping his arms securely around the taller boy’s waist. He didn't care his sofa was ruined- hell he didn't even notice.
He pulled the thickest, driest wool blanket over both of them, tucking it securely around Dazai's shivering shoulders.
Dazai tensed for a brief second, his instincts screaming at him to pull away from the intimacy, to hide his weakness behind a mask of mockery. But the fever was a heavy weight pressing down on his brain, and Chuuya’s body was a solid, undeniable anchor in the middle of a swirling, painful void. With a faint, defeated sigh, Dazai let his head sink back into the hollow of Chuuya’s neck, his shivering slowly beginning to ease under the combined warmth of the blanket and his partner.
"When will chuuya make fun of me..." Dazai mumbled, his voice incredibly faint, his eyelids so heavy they refused to open again.
"Chuuya will not...Chuuya promises," Chuuya replied, his voice incredibly gentle as he rested his chin on top of Dazai’s messy, damp hair. His fingers tightened loosely around Dazai's middle, keeping a constant watch on the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. "I'm also not telling anyone you nearly died of a scratch. It’s bad for my reputation as your partner."
"Mm..." Dazai breathed, his breathing finally slowing down, settling into a deep, healing sleep as the antibiotics and fever reducers began to take hold of his system.
"Sleep...we'll be talking about this later", Chuuya closed his eyes, listening to the steady patter of the rain against the penthouse glass. The guilt in his chest hadn't entirely vanished, but as he felt the burning heat of Dazai's skin slowly begin to break into a cool sweat, he finally let out the breath he had been holding all afternoon.
Outside, the storm continued to roar, but inside, wrapped in the quiet darkness of the penthouse, the only sound was the synchronized, steady breathing of the Port Mafia's most dangerous duo, finally at rest.