Work Text:
Chuuya wakes up slowly, with a splitting headache. He feels something wet in his hair, clumping it together, running down his neck. He needs a few seconds to orientate himself—noticing that he is bound to a chair with heavy iron chains, legs tied with rope—not recognizing the bare grey walls in the almost dark room. It reminds him distinctly of the dungeons at the Port Mafia Headquarters. There are old stains on the walls, they were red a long time ago when the blood was freshly dried. Now they just look like brown, faded marks. There are more chains on the walls, hanging dark and still without anybody occupying the empty spots.
Chuuya raises his head, blinking the dark spots from his eyes and comes eye to eye with a familiar face. He doesn’t expect Dazai to be here, seeing him dressed in black, giving him an uncomfortable flashback to the time when he was still in the mafia.
“Hello there,” Dazai says quietly, standing directly opposite him. He is surrounded by men in dark uniforms, faces almost completely obscured behind cloth and dark glasses.
His brain is still fuzzy, working slightly off its axis, but memories are coming back slowly. The mission with the Agency, how they separated. He was alone and couldn’t contact the others—why couldn’t he contact them? And then there was black. Pain and nothing. Chuuya thinks now that whoever was able to knock him out with one try deserves a pay raise, but—in his defence—he had been a little distracted by his missing partner.
Fuck, how long has he been unconscious?
“What’s happenin’…” Chuuya slurs, still not fully present in the moment.
Dazai isn’t looking at him anymore, instead, his eyes are flickering to one of the men, the boss, judging from his body language and position in the room. He stands the nearest to Dazai, almost next to him. Chuuya doesn’t know these people, but as his brain comes back online, he can see that they are the ones they were searching for. What was the organization called again?
“You see,” Dazai drawls, “it seems that after all these years, my reputation still precedes me,” Dazai moves so that he’s directly in front of him, “it’s so nice to know that one isn’t forgotten, right?”
Chuuya finally recognizes what kind of voice Dazai is using. Because it seemed familiar, but so confusingly far away. Chuuya swallows as he listens to the voice his ex-partner used as the Demon Prodigy, right before torturing someone. It’s a specific tone, too playful for the kind of violence his words promise; even back then it sent shivers down his spine.
The other men in the room have retreated to the back, four of them in total. Chuuya can distinctly hear the sound of more people beyond the door. He takes a deep breath, gathering his strength to rip those chains off and fucking rip this building apart, but a hand on his neck stops him, nullifying his ability. He wants to yell and scream before he feels a rhythmic tapping against his skin.
Help coming
Hold on a bit longer
It’s in their own code, the one they created with sixteen when Dazai thought morse code was too easy to decipher for enemies and they needed something unique. Chuuya’s eyes flick to Dazai’s face, a blank mask, except for the pleading look in his eyes.
They haven’t been partners for four years, have only recently started working together again with the truce between the Mafia and the Agency, but Chuuya knows Dazai. Which is why he puts his trust in him that he has a plan and that help is coming. And that help is coming before Dazai has to spill his organs onto the floor to keep up the façade.
“You see,” Dazai smiles, once Chuuya gives his nonverbal okay for this plan, “these nice gentlemen need a little help for finding out one or two things about the mafia,” he leans down towards the redhead, “willing to share?”
Chuuya doesn’t say anything, staring at his ex-partner with as much apathy as he can muster. He has the distinct thought that this will be the first of Dazai’s plans that will totally blow up in their faces. Well, mostly his, but that’s just details.
“I thought the Demon Prodigy stopped torturing people some time ago.”
Dazai smiles at him, tucking a loose strand of his fiery hair behind his ear.
“Unfortunately, the pay is quite convincing,” Dazai walks behind him again, this time dragging something across the floor, “and I wanted to have some fun again for a while.”
Chuuya is about to answer something, to say something snarky, when he sees just what Dazai is dragging. The wheels of the small medical table are rusty, most likely jammed by inactivity, but that doesn’t mean that Chuuya can’t recognize what this is.
There are multiple items on the table, knives, pliers, syringes, nails, lighters. His head snaps up to Dazai’s face—nervousness already setting in—and he sees the Demon Prodigy again.
There is nothing left of the warmth Dazai started cultivating four years ago, nothing of the liveliness he is found to carry now in his twenties. And Chuuya doesn’t see anything of the man he woke up next to this morning—his boyfriend if someone wants to tag a name on what they have—and Chuuya knows that it doesn’t matter what happened this morning when Dazai kissed him awake or last night when Chuuya laid cuddling to his chest. Because this is business.
He tugs at the chains encircling his hands. He noticed a few minutes before that the chair is bolted to the floor, not even moving an inch.
“I don’t think I will need more than three hours,” Dazai says calmly, letting his fingers twitch over the different tools of the little table.
Chuuya has absolute trust in his ex-partner’s ability to choose the best course of action in any situation. It is a trust that was painfully built on their missions. Every time he thought one of them would die, they came out alive. Battered and bleeding, but alive. And when they started using Corruption as a trump card, that trust remained. With every time he let himself be submerged by darkness and fury, he never doubted that Dazai would get him out again. He still has that trust, after four years apart. That, however, doesn’t change the fact that Dazai is a formidable actor with a talent for taking on a dozen different faces. Chuuya tries not to get nervous, to beat down the slowly growing fear in his stomach.
Dazai has a plan.
He won’t hurt him.
Help is coming.
“These nice people just want some basic information, Chuuya. No need to put up a fuss.”
Chuuya says nothing, simply watching him. Dazai lets out a deep sigh as if this all was such an incredible inconvenience to him and he would rather be somewhere else, reading a book.
“Do you really want to do this?”
“I’m not a traitor,” he spits, “but I get why this whole ‘loyalty’ thing is hard to understand for you.”
Dazai’s lips twitch a little, trying to suppress a smile; it’s not a nice one.
“You could just tell me now,” Dazai takes up a plier from the table, turning it in his hand, “you know that there has never been someone who didn’t talk after I was finished with them.”
Of course, Chuuya knows. He had been his partner; he has seen what he can do. But Dazai has been different from how he had been in the mafia, he has been softer, kinder. Chuuya had decided months ago that he liked this version of him better.
But Dazai looks too comfortable right now, holding the plier in his hand while going over his other options, picking up a knife. There are bandages going down to his knuckles, eyes flat and without light, making it look like no time passed at all, like the Demon Prodigy is here with him.
He jerks in his chains as Dazai lets the knife clatter to the table, the sound ringing in the mostly empty room.
“It would be a shame to ruin your face,” Dazai mumbles, eyes going to Chuuya’s as if he assesses if the bright blue colour is pretty enough to be allowed to stay on his face.
Chuuya has seen Dazai through many torture sessions, has seen him stop interrogating the people when he started to enjoy it too much. He has seen Dazai break bones and ply off teeth more times than he can remember. He has seen his partner cutting out a man’s eyes, methodical and slow, not even bothered by the screams. Dazai always knows where to hit, where to push and where to cut to make someone talk.
Dazai’s hand is suddenly on his face, making Chuuya twitch violently after spacing out. He didn’t notice it before, but he has started to sweat, feeling drops run down his back, into his clothes.
“Come on, Chuuya,” Dazai says, eyes dark, “they are dying to know more about Arahabaki.”
Chuuya shakes his head. It’s not real, Dazai isn’t going to torture him, he isn’t—
The grip on his face turns painful, nails digging into his skin, not yet drawing blood, but it wouldn’t take much. Chuuya’s eyes flicker nervously to the knives on the table, some of them sharp as a scalpel, others almost dull. Those make the wounds difficult to treat, almost impossible to put ragged flesh back together.
The pliers are suddenly right next to his face, cold metal touching his cheek. Chuuya tries to jerk away, but Dazai doesn’t loosen his grip, he’s trapped. What will go first? His teeth or his nails?
“The mafia really isn’t what it used to be if you’re already trembling,” Dazai says offhandedly.
Chuuya hates to see that he’s right. There’s a slight tremor in his body, not enough to be obvious to the men in the back, but it’s there, nonetheless. Chuuya’s head is terribly muddled. The drugs, the hit on the back of his head make it hard to think, hard to realize where he is and what’s happening. That they both aren’t eighteen. That four years have gone past and that Dazai isn’t going to—
“You know I’m not going to talk.”
“And you know that that’s a lie.”
Chuuya bites the inside of his cheek. He had tried to sound sure of himself, like he couldn’t care less what will happen in the next few hours, but it was ludicrous to think that Dazai wouldn’t see through him. He wouldn’t talk at first, that much is true. Chuuya’s pain tolerance is high, he would most likely hold out longer than a lot of other people, but he isn’t an expert in withstanding torture. And Dazai knows this, which will make him patient.
“You’re always so picky about your nails, chibi,” Dazai says as he touches the fingers of his right hand almost lovingly, “should I pull them all out?”
Chuuya swallows roughly, curling his fingers on instinct to hide his nails. Even though he’s a criminal with many scars, he is still a little vain. He feels stupid that he’s thinking about what he will look like after—will there be scars on his face?—but he can’t stop the thought of becoming some deformed, ugly thing.
“Or I could break the bones in your fingers, make sure you won’t even be able to hold a knife after this.” Chuuya tries to jerk his hands out of the bindings, but to no avail.
Suddenly, there’s a cold blade gliding up his chest, over his throat, until it comes to a stop right behind his ear. It’s a sharp blade, one wrong move and it will scar.
“Give me something, Chuuya, or you won’t leave without spilt blood.”
Chuuya presses his lips together, taking a deep breath, trying to get in as much oxygen as he can manage. He may crack in a few hours, definitely before the day is over, but he isn’t going back to the mafia without the certainty that he didn’t betray them without torture.
“I’m not telling you.”
Before he has time for another thought, the knife is cutting into his skin, a thin line of blood running down his neck. The sharp pain brings him, finally, back to reality. He’s twenty-three, Dazai isn’t in the mafia anymore, there was a mission, he has been ambushed, this is part of Dazai’s plan to get him out.
After another moment, there is noise outside the door, loud enough to penetrate the heavy iron and ring into the room. People start scrambling to get outside—probably to help their comrades—and Chuuya barely has time to register the noise before they are alone. Dazai, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to notice anything. There is a far-away look in his eyes, so Chuuya probably isn’t the only one who took a trip down memory lane. Dazai’s face is so close to him that Chuuya can hear the crackling of the little device hidden in Dazai’s ear.
‘We infiltrated their headquarters, we’re almost there Dazai, it’s over.’
The detective blinks a few times, still not fully out of his role, knife still in hand, eyes lacking warmth. But now that Chuuya looks closer, the differences are on full display. He weighs more, put on fat in the years people around him actually made sure he ate something other than canned crab and sake. The clothes aren’t black either. A dark blue, maybe brown, but not black. He doesn’t wear black anymore. And really, those eyes—
Ah, not the Demon Prodigy, after all.
“Come on mackerel,” Chuuya says gently, “you’re going to hurt someone with that.”
The knife clatters to the floor and then Dazai’s face is buried in his neck. Chuuya can’t really move that much, with how his body is still tied up, but he lets his head fall against Dazai, finally relaxing his muscles.
“Are you getting soft on me, Osamu?”
“Never,” Dazai chokes out, but it sounds pained.
In one moment, he is clutching Chuuya tight, in the next he is gone, leaving the mafioso reeling from the lost contact.
“I will get you out of there,” Dazai whispers, already working on the bindings on his arms. Chuuya says nothing at first, just watching him work.
“Was this your brilliant plan?”
Dazai shakes his head, fingers twitching, and Chuuya knows that on anyone else, that would be a tremor, but Dazai isn’t allowed those kinds of reactions. Well, he is now, but that doesn’t matter much. Dazai takes more than ten seconds to lockpick the chains, which is actually a pretty bad time for him, three seconds is his normal standard.
“Ranpo—Ranpo said that even with the Mafia and Agency working together,” the first chain breaks free, “there were too many of them to plan an attack that would get you out before—”
Before they did irreparable damage. Well, normally Chuuya would mock anyone who even thought that someone would be able to win a fight against him, but considering how he still feels fuzzy and tired…if this hadn’t been Dazai, he would most likely not have all of his limbs right now.
“How long was I out?” he asks blearily because frankly, he would believe any number of hours or days right now.
“Two days,” Dazai swallows. “We couldn’t get in before, we needed time so that I could get in here instead of someone else, and—it took too long, I’m sorry.”
“How—How did you get in here?”
“Apparently,” Dazai laughs humourlessly, “a lot of underground organizations haven’t realised that I…changed sides. They just think I’m not active anymore.” Dazai looks troubled for a second, fumbling with the ropes tying Chuuya to the legs of the chair. “They believed me when I said that I wanted to have some fun with my ex-partner.”
Chuuya just hums, refusing to imagine how this would have ended if that had been true. Dazai finally finishes untying him, chains and ropes falling to the floor. His wrists and ankles are slightly raw, not bleeding, but red enough that Chuuya starts to rotate them to see how much motion range he still has. It’s not as bad as he thought, but it hurts like a bitch. Dazai notices immediately, gently massaging his left wrist between his fingers, trying to get the blood circulating again.
“We should get out,” Chuuya says when Dazai doesn’t make a move to actually leave the room after untying him. He doesn’t know how many people are outside this room, but if the Mafia and Agency are already in the building, the situation should be manageable.
Dazai isn’t moving from his position in front of him, still kneeling from when he was loosening the ropes at his ankles. Chuuya can’t get a good look at his face again, obscured by his hair.
“Osamu?”
“Mh?” He doesn’t look up, only squeezes his wrist a fraction tighter.
“I’m fine,” Chuuya says, smiling a little, “so stop panicking and get us out of here.”
That brings Dazai back to the present, realizing that they are both still in enemy territory, vulnerable in a room with only one exit.
“Can you walk?” he asks while standing up. Chuuya, frankly, isn’t sure, but he will be damned if he doesn’t try walking out of this absolute shithole on his own.
Try is the important part because as soon as he stands up from the chair his legs collapse under him. He would have fallen hard on his knees if Dazai didn’t catch him immediately, holding him tight.
“Okay, new plan.” And with that, Chuuya finds himself being carried fucking princess style out of the room.
“What—Fucking idiot! Someone could see me like this!” Chuuya hisses.
“Play unconscious then,” Dazai grumbles, “I’m not waiting until you can walk again.”
“You could carry me differently!”
“Don’t want to.”
And with that, Chuuya sighs deeply, letting himself relax in Dazai’s arms. It’s not uncomfortable, Dazai’s arms are warm around him and with the way his head is tucked into his neck, he can faintly smell coffee and laundry detergent. Of course, his peace needs to be ruined.
“Dazai-san!”
Chuuya groans inwardly as the stupid tiger-kid comes running to them, clothes a little dirty and ripped in a few places, but mostly unhurt and fine. He briefly contemplates if he should play dead, but he’s fairly sure that Atsushi already saw that he’s awake, so that would make things just more embarrassing.
“Are you and Nakahara-san alright?” Atsushi comes to a stop in front of them, “The guys from the Port Mafia said—”
“We’re fine,” Dazai interrupts with a smile, “I will bring the chibi home and…I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
With one look to Chuuya Atsushi assesses—correctly—that the mafioso should really sleep this off. He’s still pale and has dark circles under his eyes, dirt and sweat all over his body.
“If you see someone from the Port Mafia, tell them that Chuuya is fine and with me, okay Atsushi-kun?” Dazai smiles.
After Atsushi nods Dazai makes his way to the exit, not encountering anyone else from either organization. Chuuya is glad for it, he doesn’t have the energy for anything more than sleep right now.
Suddenly, he feels gentle lips near his neck, putting barely any pressure on the small wound there. Chuuya had almost forgotten about it.
“I’m sorry,” Dazai whispers in his neck. He sounds a little chocked up, mirroring how Chuuya feels right now.
“I’m fine,” he smiles, “thanks for coming for me.”
“I’ll always come for you.”