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He wakes up with the sour taste of Corruption on his tongue.
It’s hard to describe, not that anyone has ever asked him to try. But he thinks about it now, waiting for his other senses to start registering anything beyond numbness and static.
There’s the hot, iron-copper tang of blood. One doesn’t puke blood as their organs fail without the taste lingering behind, of course.
The sharp bitterness of bile.
The dry, grittiness of pulverized concrete and windows and office furniture. If his life as a mafioso doesn’t kill him first, inhaling all this crap won’t do his lungs any favors down the line. But that’s a pretty big if.
Hiding behind the acidity of his own blood is another flavor. It’s putrid, but licking it away only gets him feelings, not flavors.
Loneliness.
Rage.
Betrayal.
Despair.
He coughs, trying to expel them, wishing he could vomit up the god inside him.
A deep voice purrs a question at him, not really in words, but that’s how he hears them. Even if being without me meant your precious Yokohama would have been destroyed? Even if it meant you let him die, powerless to stop it?
He tries to bat the voice away, but his hand is caught before he can move it far. He shudders as an emptiness that has nothing to do with black holes soaks into him, wrapping him in a cool embrace that drives back the unbearable weight of gravity.
“Ah, ah,” a familiar baritone intones. He’s not sure if it’s a comfort or an admonishment. “You back, Chuuya?”
That’s right. He’s Chuuya Nakahara. It’s not like he’d forgotten, but as he drifted, all he could think of his own identity was not-Corruption. He’s Chuuya. A Port Mafia Executive. A former member of Double Black. And the former partner of…
“Is it over…asshole?” he says, having to spit the words out along with a congealed glob of blood and saliva and grit. He doesn’t bother opening his eyes. He’s not entirely sure he’ll be able to see yet.
Touch is back online though, as the numbness has given way to pain that’s dangerously close to exceeding his admittedly high thresholds. He’d bite his lip to stifle the whimper, but he’s not sure he has the control to not slice himself open on his own teeth. He’s curled on his side, head tucked against what he knows from experience is Dazai’s hip. The hollowing effect of No Longer Human doesn’t help with the pain, but its familiarity offers the same double-edged comfort as its wielder. The overcoat tucked over him, covering his hands in lieu of his gloves, also helps.
“Not yet. Soon though. I have faith in them.”
The concept of Osamu Dazai having faith in anything is almost laughable, but Chuuya isn’t going to throw that in his face. Not right now, anyways. He rolls over onto his back, and his eyes pop open of their own accord as agony bows his spine. He doesn’t scream; can’t, with the way air has fled his lungs. His ears ring as he stares up at the mist-shrouded sky. Dazai loses his grip on him for a moment, and a velvety darkness whispers Destroy directly into his brain.
Then Dazai slams his right hand against Chuuya’s throat, thumb and forefinger pressing nothingness below his choker until the voice dwindles to silence. He’s left gasping, ragged chokes of air pushing away little swirls of fog.
Dazai say nothing as he presses the back of Chuuya’s head down into his lap. Words of comfort have never been his style. Chuuya’s not even sure if Dazai knows how to comfort someone. Either way, it’s almost unbearably sad.
Eventually, Dazai lets up on the pressure, but he doesn’t remove his hand from his neck. What he does do is trace his thumb along the leather-and-satin smoothness of Chuuya’s choker, his other fingers forming a searing brand along Chuuya’s neck. Chuuya breathes, chokes, and breathes again.
“I…” he says when he has breath, then forgets what he wants to say.
“I wonder,” Dazai says, and he sounds uncomfortably serious.
Chuuya has learned to fear that voice outside of battle. It’s the voice Dazai spoke with as he recovered from slitting his wrists the last time Chuuya knew about. He’d been utterly calm as he laid on a bed in the Port Mafia’s infirmary room, detailing to Chuuya how empty he felt, eyes unfocused and newly stitched-up wrists turning the ever-present bandages pink.
Chuuya tenses unconsciously, gasps as he’s reminded of why that’s such a terrible idea right now, then relaxes.
“Wonder?” he whispers, not that Dazai needs the prompt. After all, the other man rarely ‘wonders’ anything. He calculates, plots, and schemes. Wondering almost seems…beneath him.
“You’re more affected each time you use Corruption. Is it that you’ve been using it for longer periods recently, or…?”
Or that his body is breaking down quicker each time he uses it? It’s always been a possibility. He can’t remember if he or Dazai was the first to give voice to it, but he remembers the setting of that conversation. He remembers Dazai’s ridiculously large and comfortable black leather sofa, a plush blue blanket wrapped over them both, a half-full wineglass where the Chardonnay was shot through with the brilliant red and muddled black of the clotted blood he’d coughed up, and genuine fear hidden by the disgust in Dazai’s visible eye.
His eyes drift upwards to Dazai’s now, but Dazai is looking out across the wreckage, expression unreadable. There’s a bright red bruise already blooming with the faintest hints of purple on his too-sharp cheekbone from where he’d punched him. Chuuya is glad to see it, even as his stomach churns at the same time. He glances at the rubble. They’re not where they landed, rather a few feet away against a large chunk of rubble. Dazai must have dragged them there for cover.
He lets his gaze return to the sky. How strange is his life that he’d leapt out of a plane without a parachute to fight a dragon? How is it even stranger that the craziest part of that plan had been trusting the bastard who betrayed him…betrayed the Port Mafia?
He licks his lips, grimacing at the blood and dust he finds there.
“I’ll…cross that bridge…come to it.”
“You never were good at planning ahead.”
“No use worrying about…” he gasps, then continues, “the inevitable.”
Dazai makes an odd noise at that, but Chuuya closes his eyes rather than try to suss it out from facial expression alone. Dazai doesn’t press further. What he does do is let his other hand drift to Chuuya’s forehead, fingers massaging controlled circles into his temples.
“Ah,” Dazai says, minutes or eons later, when Chuuya is starting to think he’ll either pass out again or fall asleep. “The fog is lifting.”
Chuuya pries his eyes open. It’s still night above him, but he can see a few stars burning through Yokohama’s ever-present light pollution and the dissipating mist.
“Good.”
Dazai’s hands don’t leave him though. Chuuya’s not sure why, but he’s frankly too tired to fight the bandage waster off. In a deep, private part of him, one he’s always surprised he still harbors when it surfaces, he’s not sure he wants to fight Dazai off.
He listens to their intermingled breaths and the crumbling of the rubble instead. He looks at the distant stars, and Dazai’s shadowed caramel eyes, and the dumb way his stupidly soft brown hair is styled differently than normal, with some of the locks pinned back in an attractive fashion. He also takes the time to fully evaluate Dazai’s new attire.
“White doesn’t suit you,” he finally pronounces after a lengthy examination. The overcoat is still covering Chuuya, despite his earlier thrashing. He looks down its length to judge its quality. It takes him an overly long moment to clock that the bloodstain centered across the back didn’t come from him. Once he does, Chuuya goes unnaturally still. “If you’re about to die from blood loss, I’m about to be very, very pissed.”
Dazai has the nerve to chuckle. “Not yet. Shibusawa stabbed me in the back with an anesthetic-laced knife. Your punch took care of giving me the antidote. As for the stab wound, well…”
There’s so many answers Chuuya could fill out the rest of that sentence with. Different enemies had inflicted worse. Mori had inflicted worse. Hell, Dazai himself had inflicted worse.
“Don’t you dare die from something as…as appropriate as being stabbed in the back,” Chuuya hisses.
“Of course not, Chibi. I’m aiming for a double suicide,” Dazai responds cheerfully. But his tone goes wistful and so quiet as he continues that Chuuya’s not sure he was supposed to hear. “It was a nice death while it lasted though.”
And it shouldn’t be a shock, but it always is to hear Dazai talk about how much he wishes for death. Chuuya has threatened to kill him more times than he can count, but somehow, he never finds the will to see the deed through. Never walks the fantasy through to Dazai’s funeral, Dazai’s grave, Dazai’s permanent and total absence from the world and from Chuuya’s life.
There’s nothing he can say to that, nothing that will have a greater impact than it might have had four years ago. In place of whatever might have been meaningful once, he says, “Let me go.”
“Huh?”
“My ability…” They both know this lie. It’s not his ability he’s talking about. “can’t start with the accelerated healing while you’re still touching me.”
It’s the wrong thing to say. A painful reminder for them both that Chuuya’s secret can keep him alive like the monster he is, and that Dazai steals away what makes extraordinary people special. It’s the wrong thing to say, but he still has to say it if he wants to live.
And Chuuya? Unlike Dazai, Chuuya has always wanted to live. (Even if, sometimes, he wasn’t sure he had the right. Even if, sometimes, his own actions were dangerously suicidal, like activating an unstoppable ability with no guarantee that the only person in existence who could neutralize it wasn’t already dead.)
Dazai’s hands fly away from Chuuya’s face and neck. The delicate appendages flutter like birds for a moment in a way that makes Chuuya’s own fingers itch for a pen so he can start scribbling down proper verses to describe them.
He lets the thoughts of poetry die as he shuts his eyes. Concentrating around the pain is a chore, particularly as it plays his nerves like cello strings and electrifies them like lightning.
For The Tainted Sorrow is easy to touch without Dazai’s influence. For once, the god hiding behind it seems almost docile. A trick, a trap, but maybe it realizes how close its vessel was (is?) to death.
Heal me, he thinks, and sighs as the storm inside him begins, ever so slightly, to calm.
When he blinks his way back to the world, he believes he won’t pass out if he sits up, so he does. Dazai doesn’t protest, eyes too acutely fixed on him, still calculating behind a sheen of pain and exhaustion Chuuya’s sure is present in his own gaze.
“Going to puke?”
“Going to croak?” Chuuya retorts, looking pointedly down at the overcoat’s sizable stain since he can’t see Dazai’s back.
“I’m certainly not a fan of being stabbed, even if the anesthetic was a nice touch.”
Chuuya sighs, turning to the side and drawing his legs under him in the same movement. He gestures at Dazai’s back, the lower part carefully held away from the rubble he’s leaning against. Dazai doesn’t pretend like he doesn’t know what Chuuya wants, although Chuuya sees the spark in his eye that indicates he was considering it. Instead, he curls to the side, fingers unbuttoning his white vest. Chuuya pushes up the vest before pulling the black button-up out from where it’s tucked into the white slacks.
He has to roll the fabric up when he meets resistance. Dazai hisses under his breath as Chuuya carefully exposes the puncture. It’s roughly five centimeters across with an ugly gape that’s already clotted some, the edges of Dazai’s regular bandages sticking to the lips of the wound.
“You said the knife was laced with something. Any idea where it went?”
“I think it fell out somewhere. Or one of them pulled it out. I’m really not sure what happened in between then and you punching me.”
There’s an odd look on his face again, as though he does remember something from after he was stabbed, but Chuuya is too tired to press him on it. After all, he’s trying very hard to ignore the fact that he vaguely remembers tearing a skyscraper off its foundation or that he’d screamed Dazai’s name, the syllables stripping his throat in a way the unhinged laughter, vomiting, and incoherent screaming of using Corruption never have before.
He simply hums in acknowledgement as he palpates the flesh surrounding the laceration. He has no real means to stitch Dazai up, but his careful prodding around the area leads him to believe that Dazai isn’t bleeding out internally, and his external bleeding has slowed.
“You wanna sacrifice any bandages to throw on this?” he asks. It won’t be sanitary by any stretch, but neither will bleeding out and dying.
Dazai holds out his right hand and Chuuya blinks at it for a moment even as his own hand automatically moves to the handle of his sheathed knife. Dazai just nods, and Chuuya draws the knife and hands it over. How crazy, that he doesn’t even think before giving the traitor his weapon.
But Dazai doesn’t do more than gingerly lean forward. Chuuya notes absently that the bindings around Dazai’s wrists have unraveled, spread out around them like macabre streamers. He slices through the gauze a few inches from each of his wrists. The length on the left he wraps up into a somewhat neat rectangle, while the one on the right gets rolled up. Chuuya watches the entire operation in a daze, wondering how many wraps of gauze Dazai wears now to have still not uncovered his skin.
Dazai presenting both gauze pieces and his knife snaps him from his idleness, as does the accompanying, “Make yourself useful, Slug.”
Chuuya snorts derisively, but takes the knife first, sheathing it before accepting the gauze.
“At least I did something while you were napping like a useless princess. Who I rescued from a freaking dragon, by the way!”
“But violent princes who punch their beautiful maidens don’t get, ah!” Chuuya may not be as gentle as he could as he presses the gauze pad against the wound. Dazai, however breathlessly, still finishes his sentence with, “don’t get happy endings.”
Chuuya doesn’t bother with a comeback. He works his unsteady fingers so he can pass the gauze around Dazai’s front, who helpfully pulls up his clothing, angles the gauze how it’s needed, then passes it back. They repeat this motion until the small roll is depleted. Chuuya tucks the ragged end into one of the bandage layers, not sure how to feel when Dazai shivers as he accidentally brushes his bare skin.
Exhausted, he shifts until he can lean back against the rubble. Dazai does the same, dragging the overcoat over both of their laps, fussing with it until Chuuya’s hands are covered.
“Did they kill him?” Chuuya asks idly. He will admit to no one that the question is just an excuse to lean into Dazai’s side, their pinkies brushing so No Longer Human runs over them both.
“I think he was already dead.” And somehow, that statement doesn’t even register as the oddest thing Chuuya’s heard today. “But yes, I’d say his death is a little more permanent this time.”
“Good,” Chuuya says viciously. He has a feeling Corruption would overtake him if he wasn’t touching Dazai right now. The Dragon Head Conflict took far too many of his friends, and Shibusawa was directly responsible for several of those deaths.
“He was…interesting,” Dazai says. Chuuya flinches. Dazai’s definition of ‘interesting’ is a far cry from a sane person’s.
They sit there after that, listening to the debris crumble down and, from further off, yelling and the almost ethereal wail of emergency sirens. Eventually, Chuuya moves his pinky so he can start healing again. Something in his gut wrenches hard a moment later, but then the pain eases to the point where he can take a breath without wanting to vomit up his lungs. He’ll likely be laid up for a few days, if not longer, but he instinctively knows he’s out of the worst danger now.
Dazai is the one to break their silence (and he’s always the one to break things between them, isn’t he?).
“I should probably track down Atsushi and Kyouka and the rest of the Agency.”
Chuuya can’t stifle a laugh. “Sort of wish I could see you trying to dance your way through joining the enemy, you damn mackerel. Ought to be a hell of a show.”
“Ah, Chuuya! I didn’t know you cared so much!”
It’s a throwaway line, a familiar rhythm in their song of antagonism. But Dazai could have been dead. He himself could have died, anywhere from leaping out of that airplane to choking on his own blood to potentially having to fight a manifested For The Tainted Sorrow (or Corruption, or both).
So he throws away his sheet music, because he’s exhausted, and aching, and he still trusts Dazai, even if the traitor has given him no reason to.
“Maybe I do, you bastard.”
Dazai, who had been getting to his feet, promptly overbalances and has to flail comically to catch himself. When those sharp brown eyes land on Chuuya, they’re overly keen, like Dazai has been genuinely surprised and is trying to backtrack to pick up the clue he missed. Chuuya meets his scrutiny with a reckless grin.
“After all, a prince who doesn’t care would have just let his crappy Snow White stay poisoned and sleeping in the dragon’s clutches.”
Dazai smiles at that, small and genuine.
“Mmm, so he would have.” He looks over the broken landscape, squints, then laughs. “Oh! How convenient.”
He picks a path through sidewalk pieces and bits of office building. Chuuya watches as he bends down (carefully, accounting for his wound) and picks a black briefcase out from where it was half-buried under a shattered pillar. The moment he pops it open, a familiar tan monstrosity comes spilling out.
Chuuya’s giggle might have a slightly hysterical edge as Dazai sets the briefcase down, shakes out his trench coat, and hugs it to himself like a puppy or a kitten or something equally soft and cute. “Of course we landed next to your awful clothes. Of course we did!”
Dazai’s already stripping though, his skinny, bandage-swathed limbs appearing from the white-and-black-ensemble only to disappear back into white and tan and brown and black.
“You were right that white doesn’t suit me,” Dazai says as he returns to Chuuya’s side, crouching down to him in the eyes as he fiddles with the blue pendant of his bolo tie. “But neither does black. I think a nice brown is right in the middle. A mix of both.”
It’s not a subtle metaphor.
“Keep telling yourself that.” Chuuya thinks of tacking something else on to let him know how foolish he is. ‘Former Mafia Executive’ or ‘Demon Prodigy.’ But they saved each other’s lives and, more importantly, their city. He can afford not to be cruel, even if he doesn’t want to be kind. “You’re a fashion disaster.”
“Pots and kettles, Chuu~ya!”
“Screw you! At least I have taste.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Hat Rack.” Dazai reaches a hand forward, resting it against Chuuya’s cheek. Both of them pretend not to notice when Chuuya leans into the touch or when Dazai’s thumb lingers as he brushes away a bit of blood and soot from Chuuya’s chin. “Will you…pretty please tell me you’ll choke on your own blood if I leave you here alone?”
He stands up, albeit slowly, and Chuuya makes a half-hearted swipe at his ankle that Dazai simply steps back from.
“Next time we meet, you suicide freak, you’re dead.”
“Promises, promises, Slug,” Dazai says gleefully, obviously taking the threat for the reassurance it is. He lingers though, obviously grappling with some sort of feeling if the pinched, constipated look on his face is anything to go by.
Chuuya straightens up a little more, hiding the wince at the pain through willpower and practice. He moves his optimistic estimate of being laid up for a few days firmly into the “week” category.
Maybe a vacation is in order. He’s fairly certain one of Kouyou’s soaplands has a hot spring and a suitable wine list. He takes a moment to snort at himself when an actual bath and booze are the first things he desires when he thinks of visiting one of Ane-san’s establishments. But as he looks at Dazai, stupidly tall, utterly infuriating, and absolutely, beautifully alive, his outline limned in gold by the rising sun, Chuuya decides he’s not willing to stir that particular viper’s nest today.
“Get out of here, shitty Dazai. You’ve got people waiting for you, right?”
Dazai looks surprised again, then gently amused.
“That’s correct. I guess it’s true what they say.”
Chuuya knows it’s a setup, knows it, but still asks, “And what do they say?”
“Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
It’s an effort, and he doesn’t dare activate his ability, but Chuuya manages to quickly wad up the bloody white overcoat into a tight ball and throw it hard enough that it smacks Dazai squarely in the face.
“Go before I get up and murder your ass!”
“Awww, did I make Chibi all weak in the knees?” Dazai taunts as he pulls the coat off his face and ditches it down into an open sewer grate.
Always, Chuuya thinks immediately, then stuffs the thought down so he can examine it later through a haze he’ll induce with at least two bottles of a fine Malbec (if not more).
Out loud, he says, “I don’t need to be able to stand to destroy you.”
Unspoken, but obviously heard from the way Dazai’s shoulders relax a fraction is, I can defend myself if you leave me here. He’s not sure why Dazai cares, if that’s really what this odd hesitation is. After all, it hadn’t seemed to bother him when he’d left him behind after Lovecraft (even if he had gone to the trouble to clean the blood from his face and track down his hat and coat and leave them next to him).
“You’re so short, I can hardly tell when you’re standing anyways.”
“Get the hell out of here!”
And Dazai relaxes the rest of the way, so rapidly Chuuya has to pause to figure out why. Chuuya had only threatened him a few times and ah…that’s it, isn’t it? They’re back to their new normal: death threats and violence and Double Black still functioning on a trust that should, by no rights, be as rock-solid as it is.
Dazai turns on his heels before Chuuya can comment, the pivot on the rubble making his dumb coat flare out behind him like the tiny red ballgown Mori had bribed Elise into wearing last week.
His dumbass, suicidal princess, flouncing away to fill up the last slots in his ballroom dance card. But not before calling over his shoulder with a loose handwave, “Chibi better not do something so ugly as die after showing me something so beautiful!”
Chuuya chokes on nothing as Dazai disappears behind a broken streetlamp and part of a demolished storefront. Damn him for getting the last word. Damn him further for being so achingly sincere, even with his entire flippant demeanor. He still hates him. He does.
But maybe…
He’s distracted by two things happening simultaneously: pain pulsing through his entire nervous system like napalm, and a clattering sound reaching him past the rushing in his ears.
Ahead of him, Akutagawa slides into view. He’s roughed up, but no worse than he’d been after Dazai used to toy with him on his worst days. And, wonder of wonders, there’s Chuuya’s hat, not more than a handful of yards away.
Chuuya licks his lips, tasting dirt and blood and Corruption and the warm, sea-salt tang of a Yokohama morning. As he looks out over the ruined landscape, preparing to force Akutagawa into helping him if the proud little mafioso doesn’t offer, he thinks it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted.