Work Text:
Chuuya had always thought blood looked theatrical on Osamu Dazai. Deliberate. Even his ruin demanded an audience. Tonight, beneath the jaundiced wash of the bathroom light, Dazai looked almost translucent.
Blood threaded lazily down the pale length of his forearm and gathered at the bend of his wrist before dripping soundlessly onto porcelain. The tub had already been stained pink. Diluted red curled sluggishly around the drain in thin watercolor spirals, delicate enough to resemble art if Chuuya allowed himself to look at it too long.
He didn’t.
The apartment smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and rainwater. Beneath it lingered something else; antiseptic, blood, damp cotton. Dazai smelled like the copper-rich sting of opened veins. Chuuya hated that he could identify him by scent alone. Hated it even more that some traitorous, starving part of him found the familiarity comforting.
“You’re getting blood on the floor,” Chuuya said flatly.
It was not the correct thing to say when discovering someone half slumped against a bathtub with fresh bandages unwinding from slit wrists, but panic had always curdled strangely inside Chuuya. It emerged sharp edged. Easier to survive when given teeth. Dazai laughed quietly. Even now, the sound was soft and papery, like brittle pages turning.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
The apology landed with enough force to make Chuuya feel briefly nauseous. Dazai almost never apologized. Not like this.
Somewhere outside, a siren wailed through Yokohama before dissolving into distance. The city continued onward with insulting indifference while Chuuya stood frozen in the bathroom doorway, hand gripping the doorknob.
Dazai’s dark hair clung damply to his throat and cheeks in loose waves, curling against the bandages at his neck. Beneath the harsh light, every hollow beneath his eyes looked bruised purple-blue.
Too pale.
Still alive, Chuuya’s mind supplied immediately, Still breathing. He hated that the relief arrived before the anger.
“Idiot,” Chuuya hissed, finally moving.
The floor creaked beneath his steps. Dazai watched him approach with the detached calm of someone observing poor weather through a window. There was no embarrassment. Exhaustion. He crouched in front of him, fingers immediately catching Dazai’s wrist before he could stop himself.
Pulse.
The beat fluttered beneath Chuuya’s fingertips like something small and trapped. Dazai’s gaze lowered to where Chuuya held him. For one awful second neither of them spoke. Chuuya. Not the Boss. Not literally anyone else.
“You cut deeper this time,” Chuuya said quietly.
Dazai tilted his head against the wall behind him. “Observant as always.”
“Shut the fuck up.” The words lacked heat.
Chuuya released his wrist carefully, already turning toward the cabinet beneath the sink. Gauze. Disinfectant. Fresh bandages. His hands moved automatically through the cluttered shelves with the efficiency of practiced familiarity, and that realization struck like a knife slipping unexpectedly between ribs. Practiced familiarity. As though this were routine. The thought made him feel sick.
Behind him, Dazai shifted slightly. Fabric rustled. “You don’t have to stay, Chuuya.”
Chuuya slammed the cabinet shut harder than necessary. “Yeah?” he snapped without turning around. “And leave you here to bleed out in your bathtub like some dramatic fucking villian??” Then, quieter, “...You always make such a mess.”
Dazai laughed again. This time the sound cracked midway through. Chuuya hated himself for immediately turning around. Dazai hadn’t moved from where he sat, but something in his expression had altered-some microscopic fracture in composure visible only to him. Chuuya had spent years learning the architecture of his face. People saw Osamu Dazai and mistook him for untouchable. Chuuya knew better. He knew how exhaustion collected at the corners of Dazai’s mouth. Knew the difference between genuine amusement and deliberate performance. Knew the shape of his silences. Knew which smiles meant danger and which meant despair. Knew, with horrifying certainty, exactly how empty Dazai’s eyes became after nights like this.
“Give me your arm,” Chuuya muttered.
Dazai obeyed immediately. That, somehow, was the worst part. Exhaustion had stripped him down into something frighteningly honest. Chuuya sat on the edge of the tub beside him, carefully unwinding the ruined bandages from Dazai’s forearms. The fabric peeled away sticky with drying blood. Underneath, the cuts opened red and ugly across pale skin.
Fresh.
("Not deep enough.")
Too Deep. Chuuya swallowed hard.
The bathroom light buzzed overhead with all the insistence of a dying insect. Dazai watched him through lowered lashes while Chuuya cleaned the wounds in silence. Alcohol touched torn skin. Dazai flinched, small. Chuuya’s chest tightened violently.
“There,” he said roughly. “See? That means you’re not dead yet.”
“Mm.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
A tired smile ghosted briefly across Dazai’s face before vanishing again. Chuuya focused fiercely on wrapping fresh gauze around his wrists. Layer after careful layer. White fabric crossing pale skin with almost reverent precision. Dazai had once accused him of looking at people like he intended to fight them. The irony, Chuuya thought bitterly, was that Dazai inspired examination instead. Not unlike a body laid open beneath harsh white light; something to be studied despite the instinctive revulsion of knowing you should look away. Except Dazai was warm beneath his hands. Warm and breathing and terribly real. Chuuya could feel the pulse in his wrist every time his fingers brushed skin.
Proof.
Proof.
Proof.
“Why’d you call me?” Chuuya asked suddenly, the question slipping out before he could stop it. For a long moment the only sound between them was breathing.
“You answer.”
Chuuya’s hands stopped moving. Because that was the horrible truth of it, wasn’t it? No matter the hour. No matter how angry. Dazai called. Chuuya answered.
Every time.
“You’re awful,” Chuuya whispered.
Dazai smiled faintly at the ceiling. “I’ve been told.”
His voice sounded distant now. Chuuya finished securing the final bandage before standing abruptly. “C’mon.”
Dazai blinked up at him slowly. “Hm?”
“You need to wash the blood off before you pass out.”
“Bossy.”
“Move before I drown you myself.” That managed to pull another weak laugh from him.
Chuuya helped him out of his bloodstained clothes with rough, efficient movements that avoided gentleness so carefully it became its own form of tenderness. Damp fabric peeled away from cold skin. Bruises bloomed dark along Dazai’s arms and ribs like ink spreading beneath paper.
Too thin, Chuuya thought unwillingly. He looked carved down into something skeletal and half-finished.
The bathtub filled slowly with steaming water. Dazai sat inside it with his eyes half-lidded while pink diluted clouds spiraled briefly around him before disappearing down the drain. Chuuya knelt beside the tub afterward to dry his hair. His fingers threaded carefully through dark damp strands, towel catching water while Dazai sat uncharacteristically still beneath the attention. Neither acknowledged it. The intimacy pressed soft and unbearable through the tiny bathroom. Dazai’s eyelashes fluttered closed.
Chuuya stared at him for a long moment, throat tight. “You’re such a selfish bastard,” he murmured quietly.
Dazai made a soft questioning noise.
“You keep doing this.” Chuuya’s voice cracked despite himself. “And somehow I’m still the one putting you back together afterward.”
Dazai had no clever response waiting. Silence settled between them heavy as snowfall. After a long while, “Sorry.”
Chuuya looked away immediately because something hot and terrible had begun clawing its way up his throat.He hated this. Hated the fragile humanity hidden beneath all that calculated emptiness because it made leaving impossible. Chuuya Nakahara sat beside the bathtub long after the water cooled, listening to the quiet rhythm of Osamu Dazai breathing.
An unwilling witness to survival.
♡
The apartment always felt colder after midnight. The heat still hissed unevenly through old pipes hidden inside the walls, and the bathroom remained thick with steam from the water cooling slowly in the tub. Somewhere downstairs, the building groaned softly with settling wood and ancient plumbing. The cold lingered; A particular kind of emptiness that only emerged in hours too late to belong properly to night and too early to resemble morning. Chuuya Nakahara had always hated this hour. Quiet invited thought. And thinking, around Osamu Dazai, was dangerous.
Dazai slept eventually, or atleast something approximating sleep. His head rested against the edge of the bathtub, damp curls clinging to his forehead and throat. Fresh bandages disappeared beneath the sleeves of one of Chuuya’s spare shirts; too large on him, collar slipping low enough to expose pale skin mottled with old scars and fading bruises.
Even unconscious, he looked exhausted; shoulders still slumping. Chuuya sat on the closed toilet lid nearby with a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. He had not smoked it. The ash had grown long and crooked. Orange ember dimmed softly in the dark. His eyes remained fixed stubbornly on Dazai’s chest.
Rising.
Falling.
Rising.
Every few minutes Chuuya’s gaze snapped back toward him involuntarily, verifying the movement remained. The pathetic thing was that Dazai would probably laugh if he noticed. Chuuya hated how transparent he became around him. Hated how quickly terror stripped him bare.
Streetlights outside cast fractured amber reflections across the bathroom tiles, staining everything the color of old honey and nicotine. Dazai looked ghostly beneath it. Bandages bloomed stark white against his skin like funerary flowers. His cigarette finally burned close enough to sting his fingers.
“...”
He crushed it out harshly against the sink. The sound stirred Dazai slightly. Dark lashes fluttered.
“Still here?” he murmured sleepily.
Chuuya scowled immediately, grateful for the irritation. “Unfortunately."
A faint smile touched Dazai’s mouth. He shifted carefully, wincing almost imperceptibly as he moved his wrists.
“You ripped the stitches,” Chuuya said flatly.
“I did not.”
“You’re bleeding through the gauze again.”
Dazai glanced downward as though only just realizing it. “Ah.”
“‘Ah,’” Chuuya mocked furiously. “‘Ah. You moron.”
He stood abruptly and crossed the bathroom in three irritated strides. Dazai watched him approach with quiet eyes. Chuuya knelt beside the tub again with rough annoyance, catching Dazai’s wrist carefully despite the sharpness in his movements. Fresh red had indeed begun spotting through white bandages near the inside of his arm. Not severe. Still enough to make nausea twist unpleasantly, his stomach flips.
“You couldn’t even stay still for twenty damn minutes?”
“The water’s getting cold.” He said quietly. Quieter.
“That’s your concern?”
“It seemed impolite to complain earlier.” Chuuya shot him a venomous glare. Dazai smiled in return. Something inside Chuuya softened against his will.
Disgusting.
He began unwrapping the loosened gauze with precise fingers. Dazai remained unusually compliant beneath his hands, head tipped lazily against the tub’s edge while Chuuya worked. Their proximity made breathing difficult. Dazai smelled clean now beneath the lingering copper scent of blood. Soap. Damp fabric. The faint medicinal sting of antiseptic still clinging stubbornly to skin.
Familiar.
Chuuya wondered suddenly, with awful clarity, whether he could identify Dazai blindfolded solely through touch alone. The shape of his wrists.The bones of his hands.The texture of scar tissue beneath fingertips.
“You’re staring,” Dazai said.
“I’m trying to decide whether drowning you would improve my evening.”
“Cruel.”
“Annoying bastard.”
Dazai’s visible eye drifted downward toward Chuuya’s hands. “You’re gentle tonight.”
Chuuya nearly jerked backward. “What the hell does that mean?”
Dazai hummed softly. “You usually complain more.”
The bastard sounded genuinely thoughtful about it. Heat flashed immediately up Chuuya’s neck.
“Maybe I’m tired.”
“Maybe.”
Silence settled between them; not uncomfortable. Even at their worst, there had always existed this horrible sort of understanding. A mutual fluency sharpened through years of violence and partnership and orbiting too close around each other’s ruin. Dazai knew exactly where to place a knife to hurt him most. Chuuya knew exactly how to keep him alive afterward.The balance of it made him feel ill. He finished replacing the bloodstained gauze and sat back slightly on his heels.
“There.”
Dazai examined the fresh bandages briefly before looking back at him.
“You’re good at this.”
Chuuya frowned. “At first aid?”
“At caring for people.”
Chuuya’s stomach twisted violently. Because Dazai said things like that; sometimes small, quiet observations delivered without ceremony-and they always landed with surgical precision beneath the ribs. As if he could see directly into the ugliest parts of Chuuya and cup them carefully in his hands.
“You’re delirious from blood loss,” he muttered.
Dazai’s smile turned strange then.
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
Chuuya looked away towards the window.
Thunder rolled distantly over Yokohama.The sound vibrated faintly through the windows. Dazai shifted again, slower this time. His shoulder brushed lightly against Chuuya’s arm.
Accidental. Probably accidental. Chuuya froze anyway. Warm, Dazai was warm now. The bath and blankets and bandages had returned color faintly to his skin. Life had crept back into him piece by piece beneath Chuuya’s hands, and the realization filled him with such unbearable relief he almost felt angry. No. Not almost. Definitely angry.
“You scare the hell out of me,” Chuuya said suddenly, the confession escaping from him.
Dazai stills. Chuuya laughed once under his breath, humorless and exhausted.
“There it is,” he murmured bitterly. “That’s embarrassing.”
But once spoken aloud, the words refused to disappear. So he continued quietly: “You do all this insane suicidal shit and then call me afterward like I’m supposed to…” He swallowed harshly. “Like I’m supposed to know how to fix it.”
Dazai stared at him silently. And Chuuya realized with a sharp twist of panic that he had never said any of this before. Not really. Anger, yes. Violence, constantly. Never this raw, though.
“You always know how,” Dazai said at last.The simplicity of the answer caused him to pause.
Because Dazai sounded so certain. Like there had never been a possibility Chuuya would fail him. Chuuya looked down at Dazai’s bandaged wrists. At his own hands resting beside them. So close together.
Oh.
Dazai tilted his head slightly. "What are you thinking about?”
Chuuya stood immediately. "Nothing.”
A lie so transparent it barely qualified. Dazai watched him carefully from the bathtub floor, dark eyes heavy lidded and unreadable. For one impossible second, Chuuya thought he might say it aloud.Thought he might finally crack open and spill every awful thing living inside him onto the bathroom tiles between drying blood and damp towels.
Instead, he reached for another cigarette with shaking hands.
Coward.
The lighter clicked once.
Twice.
On the third try, flame finally bloomed gold. Dazai’s gaze lingered on the trembling in Chuuya’s fingers. Softened. That was worse than mockery.
“You should sleep eventually,” Dazai said.
Chuuya inhaled sharply from the cigarette. “I’m making sure you don’t die first.”
Dazai rested his cheek against the edge of the tub again, watching him through damp dark curls. "I wasn't trying to die tonight." he said then, very quietly.
Chuuya stopped breathing. The world narrowed abruptly into silence. Dazai looked exhausted saying it. Honest. And honesty from Dazai had always been the cruelest weapon of all.
“Then why-”
“I don’t know,” Dazai interrupted softly.
The answer came too quickly. Something worn smooth from overuse. Chuuya suddenly understood, with terrible clarity, that perhaps for Dazai, the line between wanting death and simply being unable to endure life had long since blurred beyond recognition. The realization hollowed something inside him. Dazai closed his eyes.
“I was tired,” he admitted quietly.
And wasn’t that the most frightening thing of all? The slow erosion of a person from the inside out. Chuuya stared at him for a long moment before crushing the cigarette abruptly into the sink. Then he stepped forward. Carefully. Slowly.
And rested one hand against the back of Dazai’s damp head. The contact startled both of them silent. Chuuya’s fingers threaded loosely through soft dark curls still cool from bathwater. Dazai looked up at him with an expression Chuuya could not survive examining too closely; so he didn’t.
Instead, he said roughly, “Stay alive long enough for me to hate you properly tomorrow.”
Chuuya kept his hand there for a while.