Work Text:
Kunikida Doppo could easily be described as a workaholic. He was the first person to arrive at the office in the morning and the last person to leave in the evening. Aside from the President, he was the person who put the most time and effort into making sure that the Agency was running smoothly. He built his entire life around his work, and because his work was dealing with catastrophes, nothing short of his own death could keep him from showing up.
Thus, the rest of the Agency assumed that the end of the world was coming when Kunikida called in sick.
And it might as well have been, as far as Kunikida was concerned. What had seemed at first to be a simple cold had quickly spiraled into a nasty stomach flu that seemed to feel like death itself. Kunikida spent half of his time sleeping and the other half feeling like he was sitting inside an active volcano even while kneeling on the cold tile floor of his bathroom, puking into his toilet for twenty minutes at a time. He hardly had the energy to keep himself clean and fed, let alone to run around solving near impossible cases.
At least Kunikida was in peace, though. It was quiet in his little apartment, and there was nothing to keep him from focusing all of what little energy he had on rest and recovery. There were no papers rustling, no fax machines running, no Dazai getting up to all sorts of hijinks…
Or, so Kunikida thought.
He was rudely awoken from his deep, exhausted slumber by an incessant knocking on his front door. The walls of his apartment were not very thick, so sound travelled easily through them, and he could hear someone hammering away at his front door even with the door to his bedroom shut. He groaned loudly as he pulled one of his pillows over his head to try to block out the sound.
He hadn’t been expecting any visitors today, or any time in the near future, for that matter. He was also incredibly annoyed, even angry that his sleep had been interrupted and that he was having to deal with this noise. It was making the migraine that he had hoped would disappear when he woke up ten times worse. He hoped that if he ignored the knocking, whoever was doing it would eventually go away, but the more time that passed, the more persistent they seemed to get.
“Kunikiiiidaaa! Are you even still alive in there!? Don’t tell me I’m going to have to break in here and call an undertaker, or something!”
Kunikida’s body ran stiff. Or rather, stiffer than it had been. The absolute last thing that he had wanted to hear today was the voice of his obnoxious partner. He couldn’t even get a break when he was sick!? If there was a God somewhere out there, He must certainly hate Kunikida for some reason to have made him so ill and then sent Dazai of all people to pester him.
“I’m going to give you until the count of five, and then I’m going to kick this door down!!”
Shouted with a playful lilt in his voice.
Kunikida would have growled in frustration if it weren’t for how dry his throat was.
“One…!”
He gathered all of the strength that he could muster and shoved his pillows and blankets aside.
“Two…!”
He pushed himself into a sitting position and then swung his legs over the side of the bed so that he could stand up.
“Three…!”
He trudged towards his bedroom door, opened it, and then trudged out into the main room of the apartment, leaving his glasses behind on the table beside his bed.
“Four…!”
He trudged to the front door and unlocked the knob lock while leaving the chain in place so that when he opened the door, it wouldn’t be all the way.
“Fi-- Oh, there you are, Kunikida!” Dazai exclaimed with a jovial smile as Kunikida glared at him from behind the door.
Kunikida couldn’t see very well without his glasses, but he could at least make out the general shape of his partner standing in the hallway with that stupid grin of feigned innocence on his face. It also appeared that Dazai was carrying shopping bags, though, Kunikida couldn’t tell where they were from or what was inside. It didn’t really matter, though. Kunikida didn’t care. All he wanted was to find out what Dazai was here for and then send him away as quickly as possible.
“What on Earth are you doing here, Dazai? Didn’t the President tell you that I’m sick?” he grumbled.
“Of course he did! That’s precisely why I’m here!” Dazai said matter-of-factly. “I’ve come here to take care of you!”
Kunikida’s eyes widened for a split second, and then narrowed. “Oh hell no,” he said, and promptly shut the door in Dazai’s face.
Or, at least he tried to. But Dazai shoved his foot against the door and managed to hold it open with the sheer strength of his leg. Kunikida switched tactics, and instead of trying to close the door by simply pushing it shut with his hand, he turned to the side so that he could lean into the door with his shoulder. Dazai, unfortunately, ended up doing the same thing.
“Kunikidaaa! What’s wrong? Why don’t you want me to take care of you?”
“I don’t need anyone to take care of me, idiot. I was doing just fine on my own before you decided to wake me up with your knocking and yapping!”
“But if you decided to miss work because of your sickness then it must be really, really bad! It would be irresponsible for me to leave my partner all by his lonesome when he’s cripplingly ill!”
“I’ll be fine, my illness has nothing to do with you and I won’t let you turn it into an excuse to slack off!”
“I won’t be slacking off, Kunikida! I’m doing a very important job by making sure that you recover as swiftly as possible!”
“Go away, Dazai. I. Don’t. Need. Your. Help!”
Kunikida backed away from the door for half a second, and then shoved into it with all of his might. Thankfully, he had finally managed to gather enough force to shut the door on Dazai. He quickly locked the knob lock again and then turned to press his back against the door, sighing loudly with relief.
Surprisingly, Dazai seemed to take the hint after that. Kunikida should have been suspicious that Dazai didn’t knock on the door again, or keep yelling at him, or try to open the door or pick the lock or anything, but he was too tired to question Dazai’s surrender. All he wanted to do right now was to go back to sleep. So, he pushed himself away from the door and began his slow walk back to his bedroom.
Kunikida didn’t even bother to close his bedroom door again after he had walked into the room. He practically toppled over into his bed as soon as he was close enough to it. He didn’t bother rearranging his pillows, either, and instead just grabbed his comforter and wrapped himself up in it like a sick, tired sushi roll.
He only managed to get about twenty minutes of sleep before he was rudely woken up again.
This time, it was not from incessant knocking on his front door, but from some kind of scratching on his bedroom window. He didn’t quite register it at first, being only half-awake when he first heard it, but he was startled out of his sleep completely when he heard the sound of the window being opened. He sat bolt upright in his bed and snapped his head towards the window, only to see Dazai standing on the ledge outside of the window, with the straps of the plastic shopping bags tied around his wrists, trying to climb through the window.
“What the hell!?” Kunikida shouted.
His voice startled Dazai, and Dazai lost his balance. He staggered back a little, with one foot on the edge of Kunikida’s windowsill and the other on the edge of the ledge below it. Kunikida, realizing that Dazai would fall if he didn’t do something quickly, darted out of bed so that he could grab Dazai by his coat and pull him into the room.
With a surprised yelp, Dazai pushed Kunikida aside after he had been pulled into the room, and both of them fell to the ground beside each other. Dazai’s plastic shopping bags ripped after being thrown around with so much weight inside of them, and cans of chicken soup as well as cartons of orange juice and bottles of various generic-brand medications spilled out over the floor.
Kunikida sat up as quickly as he could manage and leaned over to smack the side of Dazai’s head. “What the hell were you doing, you suicidal maniac!? You could’ve gotten yourself killed! How the hell did you even get up here!?” he demanded.
Dazai sat up slowly with a groan, rubbing the side of his head where Kunikida had hit him, and pouted at his partner. “Don’t be silly, Kunikida. If I killed myself today I’d be leaving you to manage your illness on your own, and you’d also have to deal with being interrogated about a suicide that happened in your apartment building, right outside your bedroom window! I couldn’t possibly leave the world that way; it would put far too much of a burden on you. Don’t you know that I want a clean suicide? I thought you always wrote these kinds of things down,” he said.
Kunikida did not bring up that he had, in fact, written that little tidbit down in his notebook somewhere.
“You’re putting a burden on me by just being here in the first place,” he snapped instead. “I already told you, I don’t need your help and I certainly don’t want it. Just leave me alone so that I can recover in peace!”
“Nonsense,” Dazai said as he shifted onto his knees and started to pick up the items that had spilled from his shopping bags. “When was the last time you had something to eat?”
“Uh… Last night?”
Dazai clucked his tongue. “How many glasses of water have you had today?”
“Two…”
Dazai pursed his lips. “Your voice sounds terrible. Have you taken anything for it?”
“No... “
Dazai sighed and shook his head. “You’re doing a terrible job at taking care of yourself, Kunikida. At this rate you won’t recover for at least a month. I’m staying here and I’m taking care of you until you’re all better. No ifs, ands, or buts,” he said as he stood up, carrying his shopping bags in a way that they could still be functional even though they had been ripped.
“But--”
He bent down and released one of his hands from the shopping bags so that he could point a finger in Kunikida’s face, almost touching his nose. “No buts,” he said assertively.
Without another word, Dazai turned and left the room, readjusting his grip on his shopping bags again. Kunikida blinked a few times as he watched Dazai go before deciding to get up off of the floor and grab his glasses off of his bedside table. He shoved them onto his face and quickly followed Dazai out into the main room of the apartment.
Dazai had already disappeared into the kitchen by the time Kunikida had made it out of the bedroom. Not seeing Dazai anywhere in the living room, Kunikida decided to trudge his way into the kitchen, where he found Dazai digging through his cabinets in order to put away the groceries that Dazai had been carrying. Dazai paused when he heard Kunikida enter the kitchen, and turned around to face Kunikida with a frown on his face.
“What are you doing? Get back into bed, Kunikida. It’s bad for you to be up and about when you’re sick like this,” he scolded.
“Dazai, you can’t just-- You can’t just barge into my home uninvited and start causing all sorts of trouble when I’m supposed to be resting! I don’t have the time or the energy to be dealing with you right now!” Kunikida protested.
“I’m not causing any trouble and I’m not keeping you from resting. I came here to take care of you while you’re sick and you’re just going to have to deal with it. Now, I’d suggest you get back in bed while I make you something to eat or I’m going to have to pick you up and carry you there myself, got it?” Dazai asked.
Kunikida knew that he was fighting a losing battle. Dazai had broken into his apartment through the bedroom window, for God’s sake. If he had put that much trouble into getting into Kunikida’s home so that he could take care of Kunikida, there was no way that he was going to leave any time soon. Arguing with Dazai would just give Kunikida more of a headache, and prevent him from getting the rest that he needed. So, with a heavy sigh, he did as Dazai had told him and went back to bed.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy for Kunikida to go back to sleep now that he knew that Dazai was bumbling around unsupervised in his apartment. It was stressful enough just having him here, let alone not being to see whatever shenanigans he was pulling off while Kunikida lay helpless. He groaned lowly, feeling his temples throbbing as his headache continued to get worse and worse. Dazai always found some way to cause Kunikida to think too much.
In another twenty minutes, Dazai came into Kunikida’s room carrying a plate that he was using as a sort of tray, holding a bowl of soup and a glass of orange juice on it as well as a few different colored pills. Hearing footsteps in his bedroom, Kunikida begrudgingly opened his eyes and turned from his side onto his back so that he could see Dazai approaching his bed. He pushed himself into a sitting position and grabbed his glasses off of the nightstand so that he could put them back on again.
Dazai grinned broadly at him again. “Sorry to have to keep waking you up, Kunikida, but you really do need to eat something. I promise I’ll let you go back to sleep after you finish, okay?” he said.
“How can I possibly sleep when you’re doing God knows what in my apartment all day?” Kunikida grumbled as Dazai set the plate down on the nightstand where Kunikida’s glasses had previously been.
“And what the hell are these pills for?” he added as he carefully pulled the plate off of the nightstand and set it down in his lap.
“The pink one is Benadryl, it’ll help with your nausea. The blue ones are ibuprofen, they’re for your headache, and the red one is just a cough drop to help with your throat,” Dazai informed.
Kunikida gave Dazai a hard look for a moment before he scooped all but the cough drop into his hand and then swallowed them down along with the glass of orange juice that Dazai had brought him. The cough drop would wait until after he had eaten the soup that Dazai had made. Dazai smiled again and sat down at the edge of the bed as Kunikida started to eat.
Kunikida wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was beginning to think that maybe it was a good thing that Dazai had come here, after all. He’d been so tired that he really had been neglecting to properly take care of himself. He wasn’t bothering to eat much or keep himself hydrated or even take medication that would improve his condition. Maybe it would be a good idea to have someone around who could at least make him something to eat or get him a glass of water when he was too exhausted to get out of bed to do it himself.
But at the very least, he owed Dazai a thank you for the soup if he wasn’t going to say anything else. “Thanks for the soup…” he said, and then continued to spoon it up and eat it as quickly as he could manage.
“Oh, it’s no problem, Kunikida! That’s what I’m here for, after all! I’m going to keep you fed, medicated and hydrated until you’re all better, got it?” Dazai said determinedly.
Kunikida sighed heavily. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do to convince you to leave, is there?” he asked.
Dazai shook his head, folding his arms over his chest. “Not a thing,” he declared.
“Then just make sure you don’t do anything to get into trouble while you’re here. I don’t want to have to be cleaning up your messes after I’ve recovered. Just having you here is bothersome enough without having to deal with all the chaos you’ll leave behind,” Kunikida said.
“I’m not here to cause trouble for you, Kunikida! I’m here to help you! All I’ll be doing is watching TV and reading my suicide handbook, listening for you to call me if you need anything. I’m your servant until you recover; I’m at your beck and call, okay?” Dazai promised.
“Whatever,” Kunikida said, waving his hand dismissively. “Just get out of here so that I can finish eating in peace and then go back to sleep.”
“If that’s what you want,” Dazai said, standing up from the bed and sticking his hands in his pockets. “Just let me know if you need anything, alright? I’m only a call away,” he sang.
Kunikida continued waving Dazai off until he had left the room. Once Dazai was gone, Kunikida finished off his soup and his orange juice and then sucked on the cough drop until it had dissolved completely in his mouth. After he had finished with it all, Kunikida put the plate with the bowl and the cup back on the nightstand and laid back down in his bed.
He took his glasses off again and set them beside the plate. He kept his eyes open and his ears alert for a few minutes to see if he could hear anything that Dazai was doing, but the apartment remained completely silent until Kunikida eventually heard the low sound of whatever was playing on the TV in the next room. It seemed as though Dazai really didn’t have any intention of causing a ruckus while Kunikida was trying to rest. Still suspicious but partially satisfied for the time being, Kunikida closed his eyes and finally managed to get back to sleep.
The medications that Dazai had given Kunikida made his throat feel a little better and chased his headache away, but they only gave temporary relief to his nausea. He slept until about four in the evening before he woke up sick to his stomach and immediately darted out of bed to get to his bathroom. Since the bedroom door was still open, Dazai could hear from the living room that Kunikida had run out of bed and threw the bathroom door open. Figuring that Kunikida’s nausea had come back, Dazai got up from the couch to get more medication for him, as well as a glass of water.
When Kunikida came out of the bathroom, Dazai was sitting on the bed with a glass of water in one hand and a Benadryl pill resting on the open palm of the other. Kunikida, for the first time that day, didn’t seem annoyed to see his partner in his room. He sighed and used his arm to wipe away the excess water that remained on his face from when he had washed his mouth out in the sink, walking towards the bed as he did so. He took the glass and the pill from Dazai’s hands after sitting down on the bed and quickly swallowed the pill along with the water.
“Thanks…” he said quietly after setting the glass down on the nightstand, next to the other dishes that had yet to be cleared away.
“Hmm, I might have to wake you up every couple of hours to take more medicine so that you don’t keep throwing up. Is that okay?” Dazai asked, tilting his head a little.
Kunikida nodded, pulling his feet up onto the bed and shifting so that he could lay down again without being in Dazai’s way. “Yeah, that’s fine,” he said.
Dazai gave him a sympathetic smile. “I’ll bring you something to eat in a few hours and give you another pill then,” he said.
Kunikida groaned quietly. “I don’t want anything to eat,” he said.
“Obviously you wouldn’t want anything to eat right now, that’s why I said later,” Dazai said.
“I really don’t want to eat anything else at all today,” Kunikida insisted.
“Well, tough luck, because you need to. You don’t need to eat a lot but you need to eat something. You can’t starve to death just because you’re sick,” Dazai protested.
“Whatever… I want to go back to sleep,” Kunikida grumbled.
“That’s fine,” Dazai said, standing up from his bed once again. “I’ll bring you some food in a few hours. Let me know if you need anything before then.”
Kunikida gave nothing but a low hum in response. Dazai walked to the nightstand to grab all of the dishes off of it. He carried the plate, the bowl, and both of the glasses out of Kunikida’s room and took them to the sink in the kitchen so that he could wash them.
At about 7:30, Dazai came back into Kunikida’s room with more soup, more water, and another pill. He quietly and carefully set down another plate with a bowl and a glass on top of the nightstand, avoiding Kunikida’s glasses, which were already set there. He leaned down and gently put a hand on Kunikida’s shoulder so that he could shake Kunikida awake.
Kunikida was reluctant to wake up and it took a few minutes before Dazai could actually get Kunikida to open his eyes. Dazai decided to turn on the lap that was on Kunikida’s nightstand. The light from the living room was shining into the bedroom, but it was still pretty dark. He figured that turning on the lamp would help Kunikida stay awake.
He woke up wordlessly. He was silent as he sat up, rubbing his eyes and squinting until they could adjust to the light of the lamp. Dazai sat next to him and set the plate in his lap once he was awake enough to start eating. However, Kunikida could only stay awake for long enough to drink down the water and the pill that Dazai had brought him and eat a few spoonful’s of soup before he ended up falling asleep again while sitting up against the headboard.
Dazai couldn’t help laughing softly as he watched Kunikida drift off again. He didn’t try to wake Kunikida up again. Instead, he stood up from the bed, removed the dishes from Kunikida’s lap, and set them on the nightstand. He then guided Kunikida into laying down again and draped Kunikida’s blanket back over him. Finally, he grabbed the dishes again and carried them out of the bedroom.
An hour later, Kunikida was still asleep. It was getting late, and Dazai hadn’t brought and overnight bag to Kunikida’s apartment. He needed to go back to his own place and grab some things, but he wouldn’t leave Kunikida without warning, so he came back into Kunikida’s bedroom to leave a note on his nightstand.
I forgot to bring my overnight things when I came over earlier today, so I have to go back to my place and get them. If you wake up while I’m gone, I’ll be back soon. Try not to get into any trouble while I’m gone.
-Dazai
After leaving the note on Kunikida’s nightstand, Dazai turned to take a glance at his sleeping partner. Surprisingly, Kunikida didn’t look completely miserable at the moment. He actually looked quite peaceful as he was sleeping. Dazai smiled softly at the sight, finding it utterly adorable.
Dazai hesitated for a second, then leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Kunikida’s hair before turning and leaving the room.
---
Dazai ended up staying at Kunikida’s apartment for another week. It was a week of Dazai watching TV while Kunikida slept for hours at a time. It was a week of Dazai making cans of chicken soup and buying ice cream and applesauce for Kunikida to eat. It was a week of Dazai holding Kunikida’s hair back while he threw up because the medication just wasn’t enough to dispel his nausea. It was a week of making sure that Kunikida didn’t fall asleep in the shower. It was a week of Dazai pressing kisses to Kunikida’s hair before leaving Kunikida’s bedroom and sleeping on the couch in the living room for the night.
Once Kunikida’s fever had gone away and his nausea had seemingly disappeared, Dazai said that he would stay for one more day just in case any of it decided to come back, though, Kunikida hadn’t missed how Dazai seemed almost disappointed at the prospect of having to leave. But on that day, Kunikida was finally feeling functional, and for the first time that week, he was awake and feeling well rested early in the morning while Dazai was still sleeping on his couch. Kunikida came out of his bedroom, dressed and ready for the day, only to come across Dazai curled up under a thin blanket and snoring softly on the couch.
Kunikida honestly felt a little guilty. Dazai had spent his entire week taking care of Kunikida and had actually taken it seriously the whole time. He’d been cooped up in a small apartment and forced to sleep on a couch that was too short for him to lay properly on, with a blanket that did little to keep out the cold for a whole week.
Kunikida had acted less than grateful for it, he knew. But since he was feeling better, and Dazai was still sleeping, Kunikida figured that maybe he could make it up to Dazai by making him breakfast in bed, as he had so graciously done for Kunikida every day this week. So he quietly crept into the kitchen and began to make something for both of them to eat.
Dazai woke up to the sound and smell of sizzling bacon coming from the kitchen. Kunikida had already made plates of rice and eggs for him and Dazai, and poured glasses of orange juice. When the bacon was done cooking, he served strips onto both his and Dazai’s plates, and then grabbed two pairs of chopsticks from his silverware drawer. He set all of the dishes onto a real tray that Dazai hadn’t been able to find in one of the cabinets, and carried all of the food out to the living room just as Dazai was sitting up on the couch and rubbing his eyes.
He blinked a few times in surprise when Kunikida sat down next to him and set the tray down on the coffee table. “Kunikida… You made breakfast for us this morning…?” he asked softly, trying to stifle a yawn.
Kunikida nodded, humming as he grabbed one of the plates and pulled it into his lap. “Mmhm.”
“But you should be resting… If you wanted something fancy for breakfast you could have asked me,” Dazai said, looking at him.
Eggs and rice was hardly what Kunikida would call a fancy breakfast. Maybe the bacon was a little more out of the ordinary, but it was still part of a pretty standard breakfast. Then again, Kunikida knew that Dazai tended to live off of instant meals and had probably only eaten a balanced breakfast three times in his whole life.
He took a bite of his food and looked back at Dazai evenly. “I feel fine, I don’t need to rest anymore. Besides… I wanted to do something to pay you back for all you’ve done for me this week,” he said.
“Kunikida, you don’t have to pay me back for anything. I took care of you because I wanted to. It’s not like it was a burden on me,” Dazai said, leaning forward to grab his own plate off of the tray on the coffee table.
“But you stayed with me and looked after me all week and I hardly gave you a thank you for it,” Kunikida said.
“It’s fine, Kunikida, don’t worry about it. It wasn’t an inconvenience for me at all,” Dazai insisted, and took a bite of his food.
Kunikida put his chopsticks down and stared at Dazai intently. Dazai noticed it out of the corner of his eye, and when Kunikida didn’t break it even after nearly a minute, he slowly put his own chopsticks down and turned his head to meet Kunikida’s gaze. “What?” he asked, tilting his head a little.
“Thank you for taking care of me, Dazai,” Kunikida said.
Dazai smiled softly at Kunikida, and then, he decided to do something that was perhaps a little bold.
He moved his plate out of his lap, back onto the coffee table, and then leaned over to press a soft kiss to Kunikida’s hair.
“You’re welcome, Kunikida.”