Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s been a little more than a month since everything almost went to shit, since the Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia faced off against Dostoyevsky, since Yokohama almost lost its fragile, balanced peace.

It’s been a little more than a month since Atsushi and Akutagawa’s team-up against Goncharov allowed the other allied Agency and Mafia members to capture Pushkin and deactivate his cannibalism virus, saving Fukuzawa and Mori; saving the pair of them, infected during the chase, as well.

It’s been a little more than a month since Ranpo trapped himself in a mystery novel as a sacrifice play to take the Port Mafia’s heaviest hitter off the board, and more than a month since Dazai used the Eyes of God to locate Fyodor Dostoyevsky in a cafe, rather than at the mining site.

Dostoyevsky is in prison, locked in an Ability-proof cell whose mechanisms even Sakaguchi Ango doesn’t know. The cell won’t stop Dostoyevsky forever, but it’s slowing him down, and that’s what they need for now.

And it’s also been just about a month since Ranpo emerged from Poe’s book, all pride and glowing accomplishment for solving 500 murders in a week, and just a passing comment about the other guy losing patience and starting punching people.

Dazai isn’t worried. The balance of power in the city isn’t so reliant on Chuuya that the Port Mafia will collapse without him: he was in Europe for longer than this. So what if Kouyou and her Golden Demon have been seen in the field more often in the last month than in the eighteen previous months combined. So what if the Black Lizard are racking up more shoot-outs than statistically indicated for this time of year, this level of crime in the city. So what if Akutagawa and Rashomon have been engaging in more large-scale displays, and fewer covert assassinations.

Atsushi told Dazai about their agreement, after all, and about the six month no-kill trial. Everything that’s happening falls within acceptable parameters. It would be foolish for Dazai to be worried about events he predicted, even if they are stretching into the lower percentages of projected probability.

Dazai doesn’t regret having given Ranpo the information he needed to trap Chuuya. They would never have gotten Fukuzawa into Anne’s Room safely if For the Tainted Sorrow had been on the board, if Chuuya had been able to confront them, to track them down. They couldn’t have done it even with Light Snow, with all of Dazai and Ranpo’s combined ingenuity and the Agency’s Abilities combined.

So Dazai doesn’t regret it. It was necessary, it led to the best possible outcome, and it saved lives. He’s on the side that saves lives: that’s what he does. He can’t regret it.

(There are a lot of things he can’t regret. What’s one more?)

But when his phone makes a peculiar buzzing sound, and then barks once, the short sharp yap of a terrier, Dazai pulls it out of his pocket without a moment of thought. He automatically shunts Kunikida’s voice to the back burner of his brain, to process on its own while he focuses his attention on the phone, on something more urgent. He’s good at multitasking: he’s always been good at multitasking, at letting his brain run a few tracks on autopilot while he does something else with his focus.

Maybe Dazai should be paying more attention to Kunikida, to the neighborhood around the two of them. They’re currently working on tracking down the last of a gang of toughs who have a grudge against Francis, and by extension, a grudge against Dazai. But that yap, that’s an alert Dazai set for the Eyes of God, and he only fed the version he stole two faces. Or one face, in two states: Chuuya, and Corruption.

The alert noise wasn’t a wolf howling: that much is good. Chuuya’s mind is intact, and he’s in control of his Ability, of Arahabaki. But that the alert pinged at all means he came out of the book somewhere other than Mafia territory. Mori has encrypted all of the CCTV cameras in Mafia areas beyond Dazai’s ability to easily circumvent. If he hacks in any more aggressively than he has already, Mori will know for a certainty that Dazai — and by extension, the ADA — has a reason to need his cameras, and determine that they have access to the program. That’s not an acceptable risk, not when the alliance is still so tentative. Operating under the assumption that Chuuya would be safe if he reappeared on Mafia territory, Dazai decided not to hack in, not to risk tipping his hand to Mori.

As he thumbs his phone open, Dazai takes the opportunity to check in on his short-term memory, to unroll his diverted focus at double-speed so he can catch up. Kunikida has been running through a list of the potential nobodies who might be involved in the latest upset in this neighborhood. Dazai recognizes one or two of the names as old suspected members of the Sheep who didn’t join GSS, and makes a note to add them to the ADA’s paperwork later. He makes an intentionally exasperating, complaining kind of noise, so Kunikida won’t think anything is wrong. Then he puts Kunikida and the environment around him on hold again and scrolls through the footage of Chuuya that’s been collected by the Eyes of God.

Chuuya is clear across town, nearly as far from his apartment as he could be while still being in city limits, well out of Mafia territory. He looks like he hasn’t slept for the entire time he’s been gone. His coat is a mess, and his shoes look like they’re in terrible shape, but his hat is fine. Good, Dazai thinks, flipping to another app. A single ping confirms that the microscopic tracker chip he embedded in the felt just over four years ago is still working.

It’s been a month — thirty four and a quarter days, Dazai’s mind says, impatient with inaccuracies even in his own thoughts — since Chuuya went into the book. The flow of time in Poe’s books doesn’t seem to be entirely consistent from book to book, and they have only two examples from which to extrapolate. Still, Dazai forcibly redirects the part of his mind trying to calculate how long Chuuya has had to spend punching people before he comes up with a solid range of numbers. He doesn’t want to know. Once he knows, he can’t stop knowing.

Dazai shrinks the tracker program, makes an affirmative noise at Kunikida without paying much attention to him, because his partner isn’t yelling, and he’s not silent: that means there’s no danger and no real need for Dazai’s full attention right now.

Instead Dazai flips back to the Eyes of God images, scanning the grainy security footage greedily, checking Chuuya over for visible injuries, for the limp that means a pulled muscle or strained ligament, a hidden source of pain.

Chuuya seems to be moving fine, or at least well within mission-acceptable parameters.

Dazai doesn’t feel a weight rise from his chest. He doesn’t feel relief, or a rising bubble of hope, or optimism, or a lightening of his spirit. He didn’t expect to feel those things: he never has before, and there was no reason to expect this series of events, a fairly predictable set of stimuli, to produce new emotional reactions in him.

He hovers his fingers over Chuuya’s face, just for a moment, tempted to pinch, to zoom in, to be sure.

Kunikida shouts, alarmed. Dazai snaps to attention: that’s important.

Then tires are squealing, a transmission whirring; a woman is screaming. Dazai has a moment to think, “Shit, the van thefts were related after all, Ranpo will be—“ before a lean body slams into him, rolling him across the pavement toward a recessed doorway.

The transport van — it’s the one reported stolen two weeks ago, Dazai thinks, memorizing the license plate as they roll and skid, unable to stop processing information even as he bites back a scream from the scraping pain of concrete against his exposed cheekbone — the van barrels into Kunikida’s body, braced over his own.

Dazai just has time to think: This will be such a mess. That isn’t how I wanted to go.

The world goes bright, then black.

* * *

The less said about Chuuya’s time in the book the better.

Well. That’s probably not entirely true. Chuuya will have plenty to say to that asshole Dazai the next time their paths cross. (And isn’t it strange that he’s planning for that kind of thing now, that he can think of Dazai in the present tense again, that he can tentatively think of him in the future tense, these days.)

As for the next time he sees Edogawa Ranpo, well, that brat had better hope someone else from the Agency is present to keep Chuuya from socking him in the face, because he absolutely deserves it. Not for putting Chuuya in the book in the first place: that was work. Chuuya’s a professional. Of course Ranpo’s challenge had been galling: an Ability-less, famously childish, so-called master detective taking on Nakahara Chuuya in front of the Port Mafia’s headquarters and all of his assembled men? But the bastard had devised a solid plan. And, really, Chuuya should have guessed that someone whose intellect had so clearly earned Dazai’s respect would have a plan.

No. It’s not sealing them into the book that’s earned Chuuya’s anger. Instead, the brat’s getting slugged for how he acted once they were both inside the book: for laughing at Chuuya, and for leaving him behind to fight his way out.

Chuuya glances around: he’s on the southwest edge of Yokohama, near Kanai Park, and well off Mafia territory, out of sight or smell of the harbor. This might be close to one of the areas the remnants of GSS is clinging to, or it might not be: the streets aren’t clearly marked, and it’s nearly dark. Twilight flattens the world around him, and Chuuya sighs.

His phone broke while he was in the book, and he’s pretty sure the battery would be dead by now anyway. It’s been a long time for him, but hopefully not as long out here as it was in there.

Chuuya considers borrowing a phone, calling a taxi, calling a subordinate, calling Kouyou, calling Dazai. He considers hotwiring a car or a motorbike. Then he squares his shoulders and starts walking, each step intentional, solid, uninflected by Tainted. He can feel Arahabaki roiling, pressing, muttering, making itself known again in the back of his mind, in the marrow of his bones, along the bends of his joints. He hadn’t known how omnipresent the god was until it was gone for so long.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, to himself, to the god, to Corruption. “Welcome back, I guess.”

By the time he reaches Mafia territory, Chuuya’s step has lightened, gravity pressing down on him less than it did in the book. There are a few craters in the sidewalks and streets behind him, but that’s nothing but a sign of temper, if anyone connects it to him. Only Mori and perhaps Ane-san (and Dazai, always, always Dazai, and when did that start being a comforting thought?) will think to connect the Ability-nullifying time in the book to any potential loss of control.

Chuuya shakes his head at the sunglasses-and-suit-wearing subordinates who rush up to him the moment he crosses the invisible boundary line. He had been fairly sure his approach was being watched. This only confirms his suspicions.

“Just a phone,” he says, when the man hovers, looking uncertain.

The woman hands one over without question, without a word, without so much as a stray facial expression. Her partner looks twitchy and is worse at hiding it. His machine gun is quivering, very faintly, in his white-knuckled hands.

They've been worried, then, Chuuya thinks. They still are. Maybe they're scared for him; maybe they're scared of him. It could be either. It could be both. He flicks the phone's screen awake. When he sees the date, more than a month after the last date he remembers, only long years of practice keep his expression calm. It’s been longer than he’d hoped, longer even than he’d expected.

Chuuya enters a number he knows by heart and is only a little surprised when Mori picks up on the very first ring. He’d have programmed this number into his phone before giving it to anyone; he might be watching Chuuya right now, through local cameras.

“Boss,” Chuuya says. “I’m back. When do you want a debrief?”

Mori calls him in immediately, has the suits who met him bundle them all into a car, to headquarters, up the elevator to Mori's enormous office. Chuuya walks in, footsteps soft on the carpeting, and sees Mori in his usual chair. Unusually, there's another chair set out, and a table, and a full meal laid out on it: more than a single serving, and all of it dishes Chuuya recognizes as Mori's preferred recovery foods, as if he thinks this might be parallel to recovering from using Corruption. Elise is nowhere to be seen and Chuuya allows himself the faintest flicker of relief for her absence.

"Boss," Chuuya says, announcing himself, waits for a nod, and sits down in the second chair.

He recounts events from his point of view, hands clasped in his lap, and doesn't so much as look directly at the food until he’s done.

"It was a brilliant tactical move," Chuuya admits. "If Poe remains allied with the Agency, even tenuously, we'll have to account for such tactics in the future."

Mori nods.

"How much of a hand did Dazai have in the planning of it?" Mori asks.

He sounds flat and incurious, as if the answer doesn't matter to him. Chuuya knows better: Mori is always visibly implacable except where Dazai is concerned. Others don't seem to see it, besides perhaps Ane-san, but Chuuya does: something flickers beneath those deep waters when Dazai's name comes up, ripples the surface.

So Chuuya gives Mori the truth, because Mori has his loyalty. Chuuya gives Mori the truth because Mori likely knows it already, and to do otherwise would be an unwise risk in such unfamiliar circumstances. And Chuuya gives Mori the truth because Dazai gave Edogawa Ranpo the information he needed to trap Chuuya in that damn book, and it's been more than a month, out here, and more than a year, in there, and Chuuya is angry enough at the lanky shit not to try to cover for him.

"Ranpo told me Dazai gave him advice," he says.

It seems like that conversation on the steps of the Port Mafia building happened forever ago.

Chuuya forces himself to add, because it's also the truth: "He might have been lying. He might not."

Mori nods.

"It's been a month," he says. "Eat up, and I'll fill you in on the essentials. You're not back on the roster for a week, at least, while Arahabaki settles."

Chuuya nods. Only years of hard-earned muscle memory keep him from tearing into the food like the half-starved kid he was before he joined the Mafia, before Dazai, before Mori, before Ane-san taught him how to walk, how to talk, how to dress, how to eat, how to use his body as more than just a blunt weapon.

Mori summarizes the situation, the conclusion of the fight between the Agency and the Mafia, the resolution of the virus, of the golem, of Dostoyevsky himself. The persistence of the now less-tentative alliance with the Agency. Chuuya listens, and takes notes mentally of which events he'll get another point of view on, and who he'll check in with first. Even if he’s off the roster, he’ll check on his team, on Ane-san, on the various branches and sub-sections of the Mafia that he's been keeping an eye on ever since he was made an Executive.

It occurs to him, hearing Mori half-complain about the jinko's bad influence, that Akutagawa might be a very suitable sparring partner in the next few weeks, if he's trying to learn better non-lethal control.

Finally, the plates and bowls before him are empty, the teapot drained dry, and the water glasses decidedly less than half-full.

"Keep the phone," Mori tells him. "It has your contacts programmed in from the usual backups."

Chuuya nods. The phone is bugged, of course, but he doesn't have the energy to care about that right now. He’ll have to at least attempt to circumvent it later, or Mori will be suspicious. Dazai explained it, once, seemingly entirely sincere in his labyrinthine description of the layers of deception and manipulation required to convince Mori something wasn’t a threat. Chuuya had thought him mad, until Ane-san had agreed, had tried to explain the layers of Mafia politics yet again. Chuuya knows he still doesn’t fully understand the layers: he does his job. Isn’t that enough? But that’s a problem for tomorrow, at the earliest. For now, Chuuya heads home.

When he finally gets there, dragging himself out of the back of a chauffeured car and up the stairs, Chuuya finds that his apartment is dust-free, freshly aired out, and has clean sheets on the bed.

He hangs up his hat and toes off his ruined shoes, which will probably have to go directly into the trash. Then he selects and uncorks a good but not exceptional bottle of wine to breathe. His clothes, when he examines them, are mostly unsalvageable, and so he drops them on the floor in a pile, strips, scrubs himself down vigorously, rinses off, and pads out into the kitchen to get himself a large glass of wine.

It's a pity, Chuuya thinks. That had been a bespoke suit from a tailor in Paris, and replacing it will be annoying. He shrugs and returns to the bathroom, where he settles in to savor the red wine while he soaks in achingly hot water, head tipped back against the porcelain side of the tub while he feels his muscles begin, gradually, to un-knot.

He doesn't fall asleep in the bath, though it's a near thing. Only Dazai's voice in the back of his mind (Oh, a drowning suicide, a classic for the chibi) forces him to drag himself up, empty wine glass in hand, re-cork the bottle, and crawl into bed without setting his alarm.

* * *

Chuuya wakes at dawn, as always, stretches away the overnight aches and pains, and tosses together a quick breakfast. Whoever was sent to air out his apartment and refresh the linens also stocked his fridge fairly competently. He suspects he has Ane-san to thank for that, though she wouldn't readily admit it.

That done, he checks the time: it's still too early to bother anyone truly nocturnal, but it sounded like Akutagawa has been liaising with the Agency more often than not, so he's likely to be awake. If not, Chuuya thinks, already dialing, that's just too bad: the kid was Dazai's trainee. He's definitely dealt with worse than Chuuya waking him up to spar.

The phone rings three times before it's picked up.

"You didn't put it on silent?" a voice hisses, sounding almost scandalized.

It's got to be the jinko, Nakajima Atsushi, Chuuya thinks. He should probably try to start using the kid's name: they're all of them more than just the measure of their Abilities. Chuuya ought to know that better than most.

"Shut up!" Akutagawa says. Then, much more respectfully, "Yes, Chuuya-san?"

So, Chuuya thinks, Mori definitely cloned his old phone, made sure the number didn't change when he created this replacement. It means he can be sure anyone whose number is programmed in will pick up when Chuuya calls. It's the kind of detail Mori thinks of, the kind of attention that keeps him secure at the head of the Port Mafia.

"Hey," Chuuya says. "I take it you're busy?"

"No," Akutagawa says, and there's a short set of noises that sound an awful lot like the kind of scuffle Chuuya and Dazai used to have, when they were reckless teenagers. Chuuya cuts off that line of thought with the reflex of long-honed habits, before nostalgia or anger can sink in.

"Yes he is," says Nakajima, only slightly breathless, while Akutagawa makes protesting noises in the background. "We're on a stake-out, Nakahara-san. He can't talk now, I'm sorry."

"You just had a whole conversation with Kunikida!" Akutagawa squawks, clearly grabbing the phone away from the other boy, and his voice is far too loud: if they're actually staking someone or something out, they'd better hope their target is incredibly incautious, deaf, or just plain stupid.

"That's different!" Nakajima protests, loud enough that Chuuya can hear him clearly. "Yosano-sensei said I needed to talk to him, you know he's feeling worried because Dazai-san hasn't woken up yet! You're worried too!"

Akutagawa huffs, but it's the sound he makes when someone's right, and he doesn't want to admit it. It's also, Chuuya thinks, the sound he makes when he's pretending he doesn't have feelings anymore, pretending that Dazai finished beating them all out of him before he left along with any other perceived weaknesses.

"Wait," Chuuya says, honing in on the important part of that statement. "What about Dazai?"

"Oh shit," Nakajima says, and he sounds genuinely appalled at himself. Someone needs to teach this kid how to lie, and fast, or he's never going to make it in their world, but that's definitely not Chuuya's problem. "Uh, sorry, Nakahara-san. But. That's kind of a secret?"

"Dazai-san got himself and Kunikida hit by a van last night," Akutagawa says. "The doctor swears he'll be fine, but she can't heal him, because —" he makes an indistinct noise of frustration, all too clearly directed at No Longer Human. "He'd better be fine," he says. He sounds worried, beneath the bluster.

"Right," Chuuya says, and hangs up without another word.

Getting to the Armed Detective Agency isn't a blur, and Chuuya doesn't go on autopilot, or into a fugue state. He finishes dressing, moving carefully, puts on his second-favorite pair of motorcycle boots, grabs his hat, and snags his keys on his way out the door. The motorbike is the fastest reasonably discreet way to get to the Agency: he can’t show up in a Mafia car, refuses to wait for transit, and as much as running, jumping, or flying there is tempting, it’s full daylight. The ride is much shorter than it would be if Chuuya had obeyed pretty much any traffic laws, but long enough that he's had time to concoct a million scenarios out of escalating anxiety before he's arrived.

Chuuya parks the motorcycle, locks it, and takes the stairs two at a time. It's tempting to just drive the motorcycle up the side of the building, to walk up it himself, to arrive hovering at their window in a red blaze, but that would draw even more attention, and if Dazai is out of commission, Chuuya's not putting any more of a target on his head than he has to. Besides, he hasn't tested Tainted since getting out of the book, and he's not willing to push it if he doesn't have to: that was what training with Akutagawa was supposed to accomplish.

Of course, Chuuya thinks, steeling himself as he pushes open the door to the dinky office full of people that Dazai chose over him, maybe he'll get lucky. Maybe he'll get a fight out of this after all.

The room is half empty.

The blond boy from the tunnel grins at him, popping to his feet with a seemingly friendly wave. As far as Chuuya can tell, this kid always looks friendly, even when he’s being peppered by a half-dozen machine guns, so that means absolutely nothing.

Seated at the office’s central desk, Edogawa Ranpo peers over a magazine, then smiles, slow and almost feral with amusement and satisfaction. Chuuya considers pushing him out the window, and dismisses it as a distraction likely to engender too much ill will. Everyone at the Agency is almost absurdly protective of Ranpo, like he’s some kind of mascot. It's almost like they think his persistent helplessness is something they can afford to find endearing, rather than a target on all of their backs.

"Took you long enough," Ranpo says, and goes back to his magazine, as if that's it, as if that's even a remotely normal thing to say to another human being who has lost a month (a year?) of his life because of you.

At the desk beside Ranpo's, the redhead with the illusion ability — Tanizaki — grimaces.

"I'm sorry, Nakahara-san," he apologizes, as if he has anything to apologize for, as if he's accustomed to running damage control for his asshole genius coworker. On another day, Chuuya might feel sympathy for the kid, might have a sense of fellow feeling. Right now he's too focused on his reason for being at the Agency at all.

"Where is he?" Chuuya hears himself demand. His voice is harsh, and his accent slipped: Ane-san would be disappointed at the lack of vocal control.

The blond boy walks towards him, hands out, clearly trying to look unthreatening, just as clearly trying to make himself the primary target of Chuuya’s anger.

"Where's who?" the boy asks, but he's as bad a liar as Nakajima: he glances toward a closed door to his left.

Ah, Chuuya thinks. Back there. So he just has to get through that door with a minimum of property damage, and zero fatalities. Casualties might be tolerable, given the doctor’s Ability. He probably shouldn't bring down the roof, though. Structural damage might endanger Dazai.

"Nakahara-san, a word?" says a calm, low voice. The certainty of its tone cuts through Chuuya's focus and demands his attention, inescapable as a black hole.

Fukuzawa Yukichi stands before another closed door. Behind him, a black-haired girl in a school uniform scuttles to the redhead's desk.

"Naomi!" the illusion-user protests.

She hisses something else back at him, but Chuuya ignores their bickering to focus on the head of the Armed Detective Agency.

"Sir," he says, and nods just enough to be proper, not enough to be offensive to either Mori's authority or his own.

"Atsushi told us you might be coming," Fukuzawa says.

Ranpo snorts, but says nothing else: Chuuya ignores him, focusing on the head of the Agency, who is the most urgent threat in the room both for his swordsmanship and for his authority over everyone else present.

Fukuzawa's face is nearly as expressionless as Mori's. Somehow, instead of seeming flensed of unwelcome humanity, of weaknesses like emotion, he seems calm, nearly placid, as if he's been distilled down to the core of himself.

Chuuya blinks.

"Did he," he says after a moment, because Fukuzawa seems to expect some kind of reply.

"Indeed," the Agency head replies. "If you'll follow me? Dazai-kun is still unconscious, but Yosano assures me he will make a full recovery, given appropriate care and a suitably calm environment."

There's no malice in his words, none of the casual tingling danger that's so common in the Port Mafia. At the same time, Chuuya knows down to his bones that that statement was not a threat, but a promise, and that if Chuuya so much as threatens to disturb Dazai's recovery, there will be consequences.

* * *

The first thing Chuuya thinks upon stepping into the room is this: Dazai looks terrible.

Worse than that, Dazai looks small.

The hospital bed they've put him in isn’t any larger than any other one Chuuya has seen. Logically, it shouldn’t be any different than any other time he’s seen Dazai unconscious. Dazai is in a hospital gown, his arms laid over the sheets at his sides for ease of IV access. Chuuya's brain starts whirring: why does he need an IV, why does he need two?

But first: he can see that Dazai’s forearms and neck are bare of bandages.

“What the fuck,” Chuuya says.

He glares at Fukuzawa, at Yosano, at Kunikida, who sat up straight from Dazai's bedside when they walked into the room, notebook at hand. He, at least, looks prepared to treat Chuuya as a threat. It's hilarious that he thinks he'd have a chance in a fair fight, or even an unfair one, but Chuuya can appreciate the intention to protect an injured partner, at least.

Chuuya doesn’t wait for an answer, just strides over to Yosano, who is sitting at her desk, and holds out a hand.

“Bandages,” he demands. “You’ve got to have backups on hand. He won’t thank you if he wakes up like this.”

Yosano blinks at him.

“Ah,” she says, and spins her chair to rummage in a cabinet to her right. “You know how—“

“Yes,” Chuuya snaps.

Behind him, he hears whispers, then the door clicking. The decreased background noise of human breath, the decreased sense of presence, tells him before he turns around that Fukuzawa has left an Executive of the Port Mafia alone with three of his agents, the most effective of whom is out cold.

It might be an act of trust. It might be a test. It might be faith in his operatives. Dazai would be running the numbers right now, would have ranked probabilities for each potential likelihood, weighted by past behavior, current events, the weather, things Chuuya would never consider related. Right now, Chuuya doesn’t care which it is. He grabs the roll of bandages Yosano holds out, gestures for another one, and heads over to the bed.

“They’re normal-length IV needles?” He asks Yosano, because that will affect how he moves Dazai’s arms. Mori sometimes used longer ones. Chuuya learned the hard way to ask, first.

“Yes,” she says.

She’s sitting still, now, hands clasped on her crossed legs, the perfect picture of poise. She might be smiling slightly: she looks a little bit like Ane-san, in that posture.

Kunikida, on the other side of the bed, just looks baffled. Chuuya glares at him, goodwill evaporating. What kind of partner is he, to let Dazai stay uncovered like this, naked to the prying eyes of anyone who might come in?

“Good,” Chuuya says, and lifts Dazai's left wrist, holding the end of the bandage in place with his thumb.

He falls into the near-trance of wrapping Dazai’s arm, moving it gently, holding the bandage in place with the ease of long practice. With another person, he’d be able to lift and hold the arm in place with Tainted, and use both hands to wrap. But that’s never been an option with Dazai, even when he’s out cold, even when he’s drugged to the gills, even when he’s in a near-coma, even when he’s awake and trying to suppress No Longer Human.

Left arm, done. Chuuya gestures at Kunikida to get out of the way, and is only mildly surprised when he does so without a word.

Right arm, done. The neck will be more challenging alone. Chuuya makes a decision.

“Help me sit him up,” he says to Kunikida, who has been hovering, less distracting than Chuuya had expected. “One arm behind his shoulders, the other bracing his head. I’ll manage his hair.”

“Is this really—“ Kunikida starts, and Chuuya glares. The man swallows, and nods. “All right,” he agrees, and he must be stronger than he looks, because he holds Dazai’s limp torso in place without any visible sign of strain.

“Put him down,” Chuuya says, and tucks the last edge of the bandage under itself.

The wraps aren’t as neat as when Dazai does them, but Chuuya hasn’t done this in more than four years — in more than five years, maybe, if the book counts. He’s still not sure if the time in the book counts. He's not sure if he wants the time in the book to count.

“You’re good at that,” Yosano observes. Her tone is calm, impartial: an observation, not a criticism, just a comment.

“Yeah,” Chuuya says, tossing the remains of the second, half-used roll back at her. “Well.”

He feels tired, all of a sudden, weary and drained in a way that he associates with overusing Corruption, except that his nerves aren’t singing, and he’s not about to pass out from the pain.

He doesn't want to explain himself, to open up the years of partnership with Dazai, the ways they'd moved into and out of each other's lives seamlessly, without any conscious thought on Chuuya's part, orbiting each other without effort. He doesn't want to think about it at all, most days, lest he make himself aware of the loss. It's even worse now, here in the Armed Detective Agency's medical bay, surrounded by Dazai's new co-workers, being stared at by the man Dazai now calls his partner, a man who didn't even know how to wrap Dazai's bandages.

“Would it be overstepping if I asked why you feel so strongly about this?” Kunikida ventures.

Chuuya lowers himself into the chair by Dazai’s bedside, the one Kunikida was sitting in when he entered the room. He can feel the old, familiar ache of Arahabaki settling into his joints again, stiffening up his muscles. It seems like he didn't stretch well enough this morning.

“He cares about it,” Chuuya says. He's too tired to lie, to verbally side-step, to play the information politics game with any kind of skill. “Isn’t that enough reason?”

As a teenager, Chuuya had been certain there was some dire secret hidden under Dazai’s bandages, horrible scars, evidence of suicide attempts. The bandages must conceal something shameful, something that had to be hidden. He was determined to discover it, to find a weak spot in someone he considered an adversary.

Then, gradually, he became Dazai’s partner in truth. And after the Dragon’s Head incident, earned some measure of his trust. And Chuuya learned that yes, there are hidden scars. But everyone in the Port Mafia acquires scars. Perhaps some of the silvery lines on Dazai’s wrists might have been self-inflicted, but they might equally have been from torture, or injury. The majority of Dazai's skin is unmarked, unmarred, showing nothing to spark shame or dread, nothing that needs to be hidden.

“Ah,” Kunikida says, and it sounds like he almost understands.

He shuffles his feet, tucks the sheet in around Dazai's chest. He looks unmoored, like he might float away, like only willpower is stopping him from fidgeting.

“Stop looming and sit down, already.” Chuuya snaps. “You’re even taller than this asshole, and I refuse to get a crick in my neck looking up at you while he sleeps.”

Yosano makes a sound that might be a laugh, picks up the phone, and a moment later the schoolgirl comes in with a second chair. Her eyes are sharp, but she doesn't say a word before she leaves. She'll report back to the others, Chuuya is sure: he doesn't know a lot about her, but he's willing to bet she's smarter than she pretends, since she works at the Agency. Dazai may think he’s stupid, but Chuuya didn’t get where he is by trusting just anyone.

When Kunikida sits down, Chuuya nods.

“What happened?” Chuuya says. It’s not, his tone implies, a question. It’s a demand.

To his surprise, Kunikida explains. Chuuya takes the opportunity to look him over as he speaks. For someone who usually pays nearly as much attention to his appearance as Chuuya does, the detective looks bad. His hair is limp, and though his gaze is sharp and his suit cleanly pressed, he holds himself like someone who hasn’t slept, and worse, like someone who isn’t accustomed to missing sleep.

Kunikida pauses, and Chuuya meets his eyes.

“The van?” Chuuya prompts.

“It was too fast,” Kunikida says. He looks down, breaking Chuuya’s gaze, not looking at Dazai. “I wasn’t quick enough.”

“You seem to have gotten out of the way just fine,” Chuuya snaps, because while Dazai has gauze taped to one side of his face, clear signs of road rash, and a lump under the covers that may well be a cast on one leg, bandages around his ribs that suggest bruising, if not outright breaks, Kunikida looks unhurt.

Chuuya can feel his Ability rising alongside his anger, can see the faint tint to the air that means he’s limned in red light. He almost embraces it, almost throws Kunikida across the room to vent his frustration, but he can feel Arahabaki stretching its spidery limbs and he can’t allow that, not now. He grabs for the back of Dazai’s hand, careful of the splinted fingers, and holds on, allowing the blue haze of No Longer Human to rinse his anger away, to help him bottle the god back up in its cage.

There’s a moment of silence. Yosano cuts in before Kunikida can reply, before Chuuya can say anything else.

“Gotten out of the way?” She demands. “Kunikida took most of the damage. I almost didn’t get there in time, and I wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t had the sense to use his Ability to create and deploy an emergency beacon while rolling Dazai under himself to protect him.”

Kunikida still doesn’t look up.

“I wasn’t quick enough,” he repeats. “Dazai still hasn’t woken up.”

“And you nearly didn’t wake up at all,” Yosano snaps. “I had to use my Ability on you twice, and you’re still not completely healed, so stop with the martyr bullshit.”

Chuuya blinks, and lets the facts rearrange themselves in his mind as he cautiously lets go of Dazai’s hand.

“You took the hit for Dazai,” he says. It’s almost, but not quite, a question.

Kunikida shrugs.

“You took the hit from a speeding van for Dazai.” This time it isn’t a question. “Are you fucking suicidal, too?” Chuuya demands.

He’s seen what impact with that size of van can do: if it was going fast enough that someone as skilled as Kunikida couldn’t dodge, it was definitely going fast enough to do more damage than Chuuya wants to consider.

“Yosano-sensei can’t heal Dazai,” Kunikida says. “He was the primary target. It was my job!”

Chuuya pauses, because he’s said similar things often enough to Mori, to Ane-san, even to Dazai, once or twice. I’m just doing my job, he’s told them. It seems sensible when he says it. It seems a little different, more reckless, less reasonable, when he hears Kunikida say it.

“You’re an idiot,” Yosano replies. She sounds tired now, not angry. “This is that subway bomber all over again. You can’t keep doing this, Kunikida. Someday I’m not going to be fast enough.”

Kunikida just shrugs.

“It won’t matter to me, if you’re not,” he says. “I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I let someone else die in front of me.”

That, Chuuya thinks, is naïveté of the highest order. People die, and people leave: you keep going.

You keep going, he thinks, and glances at Dazai, who left, who also kept going, whom Chuuya hasn’t seen this badly injured since they were kids, if ever. Chuuya has half a mind to walk out, to leave them behind the way Dazai left him behind four years ago.

Still, this idealistic idiot did just save Dazai’s life, and very nearly at the cost of his own, if Yosano is to be believed. That’s not nothing, and Chuuya pays his debts. He used to pay Dazai’s too, and it looks like that’s another habit he hasn’t managed to break.

“How bad was it?” Chuuya asks Yosano, tipping his head at Kunikida, who splutters something about doctor-patient confidentiality.

“Bad enough,” she says. “You know what my ability can do? That damn lemon bomber told you about my healing myself on the train?”

Chuuya nods. Yosano had been at ground zero of an explosion, after being half-dead already, and had stood up, visibly hale and hearty. It had terrified Kajii more than he’d wanted to admit in words: Chuuya had been able to see the disquiet in his face as Kajii reported in, afterwards.

“Well,” Yosano says, shrugging. “He’s still injured after two passes. Even if he won’t admit it,” she adds. The glare she aims at Kunikida contains enough malice that Chuuya moves her up his Agency threat list and makes a note not to get on her bad side.

“Got it,” Chuuya says. “And he hasn’t slept?” He directs the question at Yosano, which makes Kunikida sputter again.

“I went back to the dorms!” He protests.

“He hasn’t slept,” Yosano confirms, and turns her glare on Kunikida. “You were gone exactly as long as it would take you to arrive there, shower, change, and return. You’re not the only one who can read an agenda, or set a timer.”

Kunikida clearly took care with his appearance: he’s just as clearly exhausted. His fresh clothing seems to be serving as a kind of armor for him, and Chuuya can appreciate a man who understands tailoring, even if it’s clear from Kunikida’s suit’s fabric and cut that the ADA pays far worse than the Mafia. Still, he’s not going to be an effective bodyguard if he’s dead on his feet.

Chuuya sighs.

“Go sleep,” he says, and nods at Dazai’s unconscious body. “I’ll babysit this asshole for a while.”

Kunikida blinks at him.

“What?” He asks, clearly baffled.

Yosano turns back to her desk, clearly dismissing them. Chuuya is willing to bet she’s even more exhausted than Kunikida, but she carries it better. From what he knows of her history, from Mafia rumors and the files he’s been allowed to pilfer, Chuuya suspects she has much more practice running on fumes than anyone else in the Agency besides Dazai. Ane-san wouldn’t have let Kyouka start that branch of training yet, young as she still was.

“You’re standing guard,” Chuuya says. “Which is smart, even if the people you’re worried about would be staggeringly stupid to attack the Agency. There are plenty of other people who might come after Dazai, if word gets out that he’s injured. But you’re no good until you’ve slept. Nakajima and Akutagawa will argue and fight if you let them in, which is why you have them on a fake stake-out, right? And everyone else is the front line of defense, in the main office. So go get some fucking sleep. I’ll stay.”

Kunikida looks honestly baffled by this elementary analysis of the situation. Chuuya takes a deep breath, remembers Fukuzawa’s emphasis on Dazai’s need for a calm environment, and lets it back out without yelling.

“He’s right,” Yosano says, an unexpected ally. “I have a spare futon in the storeroom. It’s not comfortable, but it’s good enough. Go rest, Kunikida. The sooner you sleep, the sooner you’re back. We’ve got this.”

Kunikida looks at Chuuya again, seated at Dazai’s bedside, and back at Yosano, who gives him a nod.

“Four hours,” Kunikida allows, heaving himself to his feet.

“Twelve,” Yosano retorts immediately.

“Eight,” Chuuya says, all too accustomed to haggling over rest. “And we’ll get you if he wakes up.”

Kunikida brightens at that, and Yosano scowls, but lets him go.

“You’re not planning to wake him up, are you,” she says, after the door has closed. You just lied to him, she doesn’t say. He can’t tell if she approves or not.

“I won’t need to,” Chuuya says. “You’ve got Dazai drugged to the gills, and he’s out cold. Even if you took him off the sedatives right now, he’d be out for more than eight hours.”

Yosano turns in her chair to stare at him.

“The IV bags are unlabeled,” she says. It’s a question. It’s almost a demand.

“And he didn’t so much as stir when I wrapped his wrists, despite splinted fingers, or when Kunikida sat him up, despite cracked ribs. How badly is his leg broken?”

She gives him a long, measuring look.

“You’re taking this almost alarmingly calmly,” she says. “Why are you taking this so well, Nakahara-san?”

Chuuya shrugs.

“He’s not dead,” he says. “And you’re clearly doing your best to make sure he stays that way. Did you expect me to bring the roof down, or kidnap him?”

Yosano’s wince tells him that yes, she had expected that, or something very like it.

“He wouldn’t thank me for bringing him to a hospital,” Chuuya says. “And he’d never forgive me for putting him in Mori’s debt. You may have a flashy Ability, but you’re clearly also a competent doctor.”

He leans back, stretches slightly to loosen up his shoulders, kicks his feet out under the hospital bed to stretch his legs a bit. He definitely didn’t stretch enough this morning: he got so used to not having to do more than the bare minimum, in the book.

“He’s not going anywhere near Mori,” Yosano says. Her voice is sharp, almost brittle in its ferocity. “I know a discreet hospital, if it comes to that.”

“Okay,” Chuuya says, keeping his tone carefully easy, his posture languid and relaxed.

He’s never been particularly impressed with Mori’s bedside manner, but no one in the Port Mafia expects a gentle touch from their Boss, if they’re unlucky enough to be injured when he’s in a medicking mood. Yosano’s refusal is more than that, he’s sure, but unlike some people, Chuuya knows when to stop digging, when to leave well enough alone. There are secrets you can’t unlearn, and Chuuya has a job to do.

Yosano relaxes fractionally.

They lapse into silence. When it becomes clear she’s not going to say anything more, Chuuya pulls out his phone, and texts his team, Ane-san, the Black Lizard. He tells them he’s back, he’s fine, he’s off the roster for a week on the Boss’s orders. He tells Ane-san he’ll visit when he can, but not to expect him immediately.

Then he texts Akutagawa.

“I’m back,” he texts, even though they spoke earlier. Leaving Akutagawa off his list of people to contact would look wrong, and he doesn't want anyone to have reason to go digging for details about their call. He guesses his new phone is bugged, but doesn’t know how much Akutagawa’s is. He doesn't say more: Dazai won’t want anyone to have written proof that he’s injured. “I’m off the roster for a week, no injuries worth worrying about. Swing by later, I want to spar.”

Then he pulls up a novel on the phone (it really is a full clone of his old one, which should probably worry him more than it does) leans back in the surprisingly comfortable chair, and settles in to read.

* * *

Some time later the schoolgirl (Naomi, Yosano calls her, and that jostles his memory, reminds him that she’s Tanizaki’s sister) brings in a pair of supermarket bentos, bottles of green tea, and sweets.

Yosano eats mechanically, which Chuuya thinks is pretty much the only way to eat this kind of meal, and then gets up to check the IV bags, to replace one that’s nearly run out.

Chuuya takes a breath, and then, figuring there’s no delicate way to ask this question, dives right in.

“Who does he trust most at the Agency?” Chuuya asks, hoping that Yosano will be distracted enough by her focus on the IV tubing to give him an honest answer.

Instead Yosano finishes her task, and then sits down in the chair opposite him, the one Naomi brought in for Kunikida.

“That depends on what you mean,” she says, meeting his eyes without a hint of fear or surprise. “Dazai doesn’t trust easily, and he’s only been here two years.”

Two years is practically a lifetime to have the same people at your side in the Port Mafia. It’s also a blink of an eye when compared to the immense span that makes up Dazai’s trust issues.

It occurs to Chuuya that he still doesn’t know exactly why Dazai left when and how he did. Oda’s death and Ango’s defection during the affair with Mimic are certainly indicative, and there have been rumors. He’s even heard some of the rumors, over the years, despite most people clamming up about Dazai whenever Chuuya passes by. Still, nothing has seemed quite like enough of a reason, and Chuuya has sometimes allowed himself to wonder if there was more to it than Mimic, than Oda, than a snap decision.

“When he’s injured, who does he tell?” Chuuya tries, because that’s what he really needs to know.

Yosano laughs, a harsh, bitter thing.

“What makes you think he tells anyone at all?” She asks. “It’s a good day if I catch him stealing medical supplies and can get someone to sit on him. Otherwise he handles it himself.”

Chuuya blinks. He’s been assuming, from the easy banter Dazai tosses back and forth with his co-workers, from the light smiles and arms slung around shoulders, that Dazai had settled into the Agency, that he’d stopped running. It looks like maybe he was wrong.

“Oh,” he says.

He squashes down the rising anger, the incipient rage at the idea that these people haven’t yet earned Dazai’s trust, the knowledge that they don’t deserve him. His hand twitches, but he doesn’t reach out for Dazai’s touch: his control is so much better than it was four years ago, even after the book. Yosano’s eyes flicker down to his hand, even at that small movement, and that awareness, that attention to her surroundings, that knowledge that she sees Chuuya as a potential threat? That helps, oddly enough.

“Then I’m definitely staying.” Chuuya decides.

His phone buzzes with a text from Ane-san, a welcome distraction from Yosano’s attention. When he opens it, it says only: “Take care.”

She might know about Dazai, or at least suspect, Chuuya thinks, looking at the lack of detail, the vagueness of her instructions. Ane-san has never been long-winded, but she’s never stinted on telling Chuuya when he’s not looking after himself properly, and she knows more about Arahabaki than anyone else in the Mafia besides Mori. She should be worried about him, unless she’s using this chance to tell him to look after Dazai, too. She never did try to get Dazai back, not the way Mori did. She’s not trying to get Kyouka back, either.

While Chuuya is staring at his phone, wondering what this might mean, Yosano gathers up the detritus of their lunch, and calls Naomi back in to take away their trash. Chuuya thinks perhaps he should be offended that she won’t leave him alone with Dazai even for long enough to throw things away; instead he’s reluctantly appreciative.

“No,” Naomi says to someone else outside the door as she’s leaving. “You’re not to go in there. President’s orders. Come on, I’m doing the shopping, you can come pick extra snacks.”

The voice that complains in reply can only be Ranpo, but it trails away from the door.

Chuuya clenches his fists, reminds himself that he hasn’t tested Tainted yet sufficiently since he’s been out of the book to be sure he wouldn’t bring down the building on them all if he lashed out at the brat. And leaving the room to strangle him in person, while satisfying, would almost certainly break his implicit promise to Kunikida, and disappoint Ane-san.

“You don’t need sleep?” Chuuya asks, not because he’s unaware of her fatigue, but because he wants to know how she’ll answer.

“I do,” she admits. “But not urgently enough to wake Kunikida. I’m used to it.”

And she goes back to her desk. Chuuya would be impressed at her turning her back on him if she didn’t have a mirror in plain sight, if she weren’t functionally invulnerable to physical harm. She knows he won’t hurt Dazai, and she knows she can recover from anything he does to her, not to mention any such noise would alert the others.

Chuuya shakes his head, and goes back to his book, wishing he had a proper cup of tea to rinse the artificial bottled-tea taste out of his mouth.

He’s gotten through another chapter and a half when the door slams open.

Chuuya is on his feet in the same instant as Yosano. Chuuya knows he's limned in red, can feel Tainted thrumming under his skin, telling him the position of every object in the room, their weights, their relative masses. Yosano has scalpels between her fingers in a pose eerily reminiscent of Mori.

Akutagawa storms in as if he thinks he has any right or reason to be here, as if he hasn't been updated on Dazai's condition, as if Nakajima couldn't have been convinced to call for more information. He stops dead in his tracks when he sees Chuuya, confusion clear on his face.

“You can’t just —“ Nakajima protests, hot on his heels. He shuts up abruptly when he slams into Akutagawa’s back.

“Chuuya-san,” Akutagawa says, obviously surprised. He reels in Rashomon a bit. “Where's Dazai-san.”

Chuuya nods at the hospital bed behind him, even more glad now that he’d done Dazai’s bandages up properly.

“Damp Rashomon all the way down,” he snaps. "And be quiet."

To his left, Yosano hasn’t relaxed a bit, though she must know she’s no match for Rashomon. She’d fight to the death for Dazai, Chuuya thinks. It’s a bittersweet realization.

“Hey,” Nakajima says, and puts his hands on Akutagawa’s shoulders, turning him around like a parent moving a toddler, like he has any right to touch the Port Mafia’s most terror-inspiring assassin, like doing so hasn't been very nearly a guaranteed death sentence for anyone other than Gin. Akutagawa must really be trying not to kill people, as Mori said. Chuuya can't imagine why he allows it.

“He’s okay," Nakajima says. "I told you Dazai-san was okay. Chill out.”

And Nakajima actually gives him a small shake, like he thinks he's a mama cat scruffing a kitten. Akutagawa scowls in response and shoves Nakajima's hands away from his shoulders.

"Like I'd trust you, jinko," he snarls, but there's no real heat to it, and he's keeping his voice down.

Chuuya doesn't allow his utter disbelief to show on his face, and he doesn't sit down, but he does step slightly aside to allow the two of them to enter the room. Both of Dazai's proteges will want to be sure he's alive. More importantly, Chuuya's pretty sure that Dazai would want them to know, to stop worrying.

"Keep your voices down, or I'll throw you out," Yosano says, tone harsh, but the scalpels have disappeared.

"As if you could," Akutagawa scoffs, and Chuuya glares at him.

"That's irrelevant," Chuuya says. "We both know I could." He keeps his voice low and conversational, almost casual except for the part where he hasn't released Tainted entirely, not yet.

"Nakahara-san!" Nakajima exclaims, surprised, too loud, and then makes a hasty zipping-his-lips gesture when Yosano glares at him. "What are you doing here?"

Chuuya resists the urge to roll his eyes. Akutagawa as Dazai's trainee, he can understand: Mori hadn't given Dazai much choice about being the one to train him to use Rashomon. Between No Longer Human and Dazai's willingness to do what was necessary to achieve Mori's aims, it had seemed an obvious match. But Nakajima? The kid seems like Dazai's polar opposite, all cheer and optimism and oblivious trust. He doesn't seem to be prone to flinching away from Dazai, either, which makes Chuuya curious about his training despite himself.

"He's standing guard over Dazai-san, idiot," Akutagawa hisses. "Close the door."

Nakajima closes the door with exaggerated care, and then turns back to see Akutagawa seated across from Chuuya, and no chair left for him.

"Why?" Nakajima asks, and folds himself onto the floor without protest, seating himself where he can see both of them, but still well within their offensive range. This kid seems to have virtually no self-protective instincts: Chuuya is tempted to hit him with something, just to force him to pay more attention to his surroundings.

Akutagawa frowns down at Nakajima.

"Why what?" he asks.

"Uh." Nakajima scrubs one hand across the back of his head, visibly embarrassed, and looks to one side, but still answers the question. "Why is he standing guard over Dazai-san? I mean, no offense, Nakahara-san, but you're not part of the Agency. So why are you here? I'm pretty sure Dazai-san said you would be mad at him? You don't seem mad."

Chuuya can practically feel Yosano's gaze on him, and he's not sure how to answer such an earnest question. It's more than a little bit of a relief when Akutagawa laughs and answers for him.

"So what?" He says. "They were partners for longer than Dazai-san has been part of the Agency, weren't they?"

It sounds perfectly sensible, when Akutagawa puts it like that. It sounds like he really thinks Dazai leaving didn't create an unbridgeable chasm between the two of them. And maybe it didn't, for him and Dazai. Maybe Dazai's absence hasn't been a horrible, sucking void at the center of his life. But Rashomon isn't really like For the Tainted Sorrow, and it isn't anything like Arahabaki. Akutagawa has never needed Dazai the way Chuuya did, the way Chuuya still does, as much as he tries not to think about it.

"Oh," Nakajima says. "Okay! I'm glad Dazai-san has such good friends."

He leans back on his hands, clearly willing to just accept that explanation, to fit Chuuya into his picture of Dazai's life as a good friend, someone who will stand guard for him as a matter of course.

Chuuya wants to smack the complacency out of him, wants to shake him until his teeth rattle, wants to crush him until the tiger's regeneration can't help him anymore. How dare Nakajima treat this situation as if anything about it, about Chuuya and Dazai, could possibly be so simple.

(Maybe it could be, Chuuya thinks, if the two of them could manage to let go of old grudges. But Dazai never lets go of anything that might be of advantage to him, hoards facts and tidbits and old bets like ammunition, pulls them out with nearly surgical precision, always the right tool for the job at hand. So Chuuya has learned to stay on his guard: he'll never be able to stop Dazai from hitting him in his weak spots, from trapping him into making the choices Dazai wants, but he tells himself it hurts less if he expects it. He can't imagine what it would feel like if he let himself trust Dazai.)

Akutagawa coughs, and Chuuya glares at him.

"What?" Nakajima demands, looking between them.

"Nothing," Akutagawa says.

"It's not nothing," Nakajima says, sitting up, virtually quivering with visible indignation. His voice is rising. "That's your 'I'm not saying something' cough!"

Chuuya blinks, and sees a faint flush rise in Akutagawa's cheeks. Oh, he thinks. It's like that, then.

"No it's not," Akutagawa snaps, and he's clearly forgotten about being quiet as well.

"It is!" Nakajima nearly yells, popping to his feet in a fluid, nearly-inhuman motion. Akutagawa stands up, too, and they face each other at arm's length.

"Boys," Yosano says. She doesn't raise her voice. She doesn't need to: both of them freeze, and then turn their heads to look at her. "Get out," she says, pleasantly.

"But!" Nakajima protests.

"But nothing," Yosano replies. "You've seen that Dazai is here. Go bicker somewhere else."

Nakajima opens his mouth, and Yosano's glare intensifies. Nakajima grabs Akutagawa's wrist and starts hauling him toward the door.

"Akutagawa," Chuuya says, voice soft, and the boys both pause. "I'm sure I don't have to remind you of how much trust has been extended to you by allowing you in here. Dazai-san would be very disappointed if he found out you'd said anything that would violate his privacy. To anyone. Are we clear?"

Nakajima looks confused, but Akutagawa nods, expression going stiffly determined.

"Yes, Chuuya-san," he says, and allows himself to be towed out of the room.

Yosano sighs.

Chuuya leans over and pokes Dazai in the upper arm, testing. If Dazai didn't react to that level of noise, either he's faking it, keeping his heart rate slow and his breathing steady in order to listen in, or he's still drugged out of his mind. Chuuya pokes him again, then flicks him on the forehead. Dazai's breathing doesn't change, and he doesn't flinch away from the flick.

"You've got him very heavily sedated," Chuuya observes.

Yosano nods.

"He has a fractured tibia," she says. "Bruised ribs, two broken fingers, contusions and abrasions, possible head trauma. Keeping him sedated gives him time to reset, so to speak, and lets me keep the inflammation to a minimum."

Chuuya winces at the list, though he'd guessed most of it already. He's very much not a doctor: he's never been able to follow the kinds of conversations doctors have around and above him after he's used Corruption, though Dazai always seemed to keep up with the details just fine. Chuuya chalked that up to Dazai having worked in Mori's clinic. He knows inflammation in the brain is bad. He also knows Dazai hates being sedated.

"Is it still necessary?" Chuuya asks.

"Maybe, maybe not," Yosano says. She nods at the door. "Who will he tell?" she asks.

"Akutagawa?" Chuuya asks. "No one. He knows how to keep his mouth shut, and he's still utterly terrified of disappointing Dazai."

"And who have you told?" Yosano asks.

Maybe Chuuya should be offended, but she's not beating around the bush, or implying he has twisted loyalties: she's just demanding information that will help her keep her coworker safe. Keep Dazai safe.

"In so many words? No one," Chuuya says. "Kouyou probably guessed. She'll keep quiet: if she wanted to hurt Dazai, there's been plenty of time since he left the Port Mafia, and plenty of other chances recently."

"No one's told your Boss?" she asks. Her tone is oddly flat, as if she's compressing all the emotion out of it, as if she's forcing herself to be unaffected by the questions she's asking.

"Not to my knowledge," Chuuya says. "I called Akutagawa to see about sparring when I woke up, and Nakajima let it slip in the background. My phone could always be bugged, or Akutagawa's, but no one who knows is going to submit a formal report."

He still needs to set up sparring with Akutagawa. He didn't remember to bring it up earlier, and he can still feel Arahabaki stirring, more restless than it's been in years, more unsettled. His bones ache with it, and he's stiffer and more tense than he's been in a long time. He needs to find his current limits, and soon. Sparring will be the best way to do that.

It would be better if Dazai were there, just in case, but that hasn't been an option for years. One fight against Lovecraft isn't going to change things that much. Chuuya's willpower and code-phrase have been enough to cut Corruption off before it starts, these last four years, to resolve any situation and keep his gloves on. It's had to be.

"But he'll find out," Yosano says. She sounds grim.

Chuuya drags himself back into the present moment, into the conversation about Dazai, about who knows he's injured, about controlling the flow of information to Mori. Yosano sounds far more concerned about this than Chuuya would have expected.

"Yes," Chuuya says, because Mori finds out most things that happen in Yokohama sooner or later, if he cares enough to try. "But not from the three of us. Not today."

She shakes her head.

"It'll have to do," she says. "Bad timing, though."

Chuuya just shrugs. He could tell her there's never a good time to have a broken leg, but there are bad times, and there are worse times, and there are catastrophic times. He's honestly not sure which of these this is, and he doesn't want to speculate.

"He's going to be insufferable," Chuuya says, looking at Dazai. "And he'll be worse if he wakes up with serious painkillers still in his system. He hates how much they slow him down."

Yosano looks at him.

"You're not just trying to fuck with him," she says. It sounds like she thought that was a serious possibility.

"What?" Chuuya demands. "No!"

"You're telling me to withdraw painkillers from someone with a broken leg," she points out. "Forgive me, Nakahara-san, but given your somewhat adversarial history with Dazai, I had to be sure."

The door opens, and Kunikida slips in, and shuts it behind himself. He looks slightly rumpled, but clearly better for having slept eight hours. Chuuya keeps the majority of his focus on Yosano.

"I'm telling you that Dazai hates waking up on any kind of IV-delivered painkiller. If you keep giving him anything you'd give to a normal person for a broken leg, he's going to be furious with you," he says.

"But he hates pain," Kunikida protests, stepping into the room, giving Dazai a quick once-over.

"Yeah," Chuuya agrees. "So what? Everyone hates pain. This is Dazai we're talking about. He hates being unable to think clearly way more than he hates pain."

Kunikida pushes his glasses up his nose; Yosano stares at him. Chuuya stares back.

"You didn't know that," he says.

It's such a basic thing, he thinks, such a completely baseline part of his understanding of Dazai, of how Dazai works. How can they not know this, after two years? Of course Dazai wants to be able to think clearly, of course he'll tolerate pain to have a clear head.

"He complains about how much he hates pain all the time," Kunikida offers. He sounds uncharacteristically subdued.

Chuuya snorts.

"And you listen whenever he complains about anything?" he asks.

Of course, he thinks. Of course these soft Agency fools take Dazai at face value, of course they listen when he whines and protests and puts up a facade of discomfort.

"No," Kunikida says, and he sounds offended. "He complains constantly. He never means it. But he hates pain, he's made that very clear!"

Chuuya shakes his head.

"He only complains when it doesn't matter," he says.

Now he's absolutely sure he believes what Yosano said earlier about Dazai sneaking in to steal medical supplies instead of telling her when he's injured, if they haven't even figured this much out. If Dazai hasn't allowed them to even figure this much out.

"It's when he's not complaining that you have to pay attention," Chuuya says.

Yosano nods, looking strangely meditative.

"How do you not know this?" Chuuya demands, and Yosano and Kunikida exchange a blank, slightly surprised look.

These people are supposed to have Dazai's back, they're supposed to be on his side, to keep him safe now that Chuuya can't. Dazai left, and that's fine, that was his choice, but he chose the Agency, and if they don't even know this? Well, Chuuya doesn't know what to do with that. He grabs for Dazai's wrist again, centering himself with the cool blue wash of his Ability, feeling like a failure for needing it, for wanting it, for finding it reassuring, like proof of life, proof that Chuuya's not in the book anymore.

"He doesn't get injured very often," Kunikida says.

He looks terribly guilty, as if he's blaming himself for not knowing this about his partner, and Chuuya feels tired all over again, exhausted, because of course Dazai hasn't told anyone about this, of course he's played his cards close to his chest with a shit-eating grin and over-the-top complaints to keep them all at arm's length.

Chuuya nods. Yosano comes over and starts doing doctorly things on the other side of the hospital bed. Kunikida hovers, hands twitching at his sides, and Chuuya lets go of Dazai's wrist and leans back.

"Well," he says. "Like I said. It's when he's not complaining that you have to worry. He'll try to walk on that broken leg within the week, and he won't tell you it hurts if he thinks you'll try to stop him. He might not even notice it hurting: sometimes he gets too focused on other things to remember he should be in pain." He shrugs, and makes eye contact with Yosano and Kunikida in turn. "But if you let him wake up feeling blurry, he's not going to trust you enough to even think about telling you he needs help, not when it matters."

Yosano nods.

"Mori raised him," she says, looking intently at the IV line. It's not a question, not exactly.

"For a while, yes." Chuuya agrees, because even he doesn't know exactly how long Dazai was under Mori's care before they met at fifteen. Long enough to have attempted suicide several times; not his whole life.

"Then he'll wake up as clear-headed as I can manage," she says.

Not for the first time, Chuuya wonders what her history with Mori is: clearly there's something, and just as clearly, asking about it would be a mistake.

Yosano moves around briskly, checking several things, making notes on a paper chart, and when she's done, there's only one IV bag on the stand, and only one needle in Dazai's left arm.

"That's just saline," she says. "Now, if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I'm going to sleep for a few hours. Send Naomi to get me when Dazai wakes up. I'll be paged if any of the alarms go off."

* * *

Yosano closes the door quietly on her way out, which leaves Chuuya seated, and Kunikida still hovering.

"Sit down," Chuuya says. "You don't need to keep trying to loom threateningly. It's not impressive enough to alarm me, in the first place, and I haven't got any immediate plans you'd object to, anyway."

He's a little surprised to realize that's true: he's not even planning on writing on Dazai's face, or on his bandages, as he did when they were kids, or on fucking with him when he wakes up. Maybe it's personal growth; maybe Chuuya's still tired from being in the damn book, and glad to talk to real people, who really exist, who have personalities and motivations more complicated than whatever Poe dreamed up.

"You're still here," Kunikida says, lowering himself into the chair. His legs are clearly too long for it, and he props his elbows on his knees, looking a bit like a bespectacled praying mantis.

"I said I would be," Chuuya points out.

"You've no reason to be," Kunikida replies.

He sounds half-concerned, half like he's solving a logic puzzle. It's so very different from Dazai, whose mind works at lightning speed, who has always reasoned every step out within a heartbeat, who knows the answer before Chuuya is certain of the question. Dazai must run circles around him, this new partner of his, and enjoy every minute of it.

"I said I would be," Chuuya repeats. "I don't make a habit of lying. Unlike some people."

Chuuya lies infrequently, in fact, a habit that has driven Ane-san to despairing sighs more than once, and caused Mori to threaten him with interrogation training exactly once. He doesn't usually need to lie. Dazai was good enough at that for the both of them, for one thing, and by the time he was gone, Chuuya had a reputation as someone whose word was good, as far as the Mafia trusts such things.

Kunikida sighs, and looks at Dazai, who is still unconscious, who still looks uncannily small. Chuuya resists the urge to tuck his hair out of his face, to be sure both of his eyes are uncovered.

"I suppose you don't," Kunikida says. "Unlike some people." He sounds particularly exasperated, the tone of it familiar from Chuuya's own thoughts.

Something about it makes him bristle. It's the familiarity, perhaps, the idea that anyone else might have that kind of insight into Dazai, that anyone else might think they understand him in this way.

"He doesn't lie when it matters," Chuuya says.

He's surprised by how hostile it sounds, even as he hears himself speaking. Dazai would make something of that, if he were awake. But he's not awake: he's out cold, and that's the whole problem, isn't it.

"No," Kunikida agrees, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose. "You're right, he doesn't. It's like you said. It's when he stops talking that we should be most worried."

Chuuya shrugs, feeling the pull in his shoulders, the reminder that he's not been active enough today, the tension settling into his bones, tendons, muscles.

"He lies as easily as breathing," Kunikida says. He sounds baffled, like he doesn't understand the very concept. "It's like the truth doesn't matter to him."

"Why would it?" Chuuya asks. "Most things depend on how you look at them, don't they?"

Dazai's a spiteful asshole who left Chuuya up shit creek and enjoyed blowing up his car; Dazai left the way he did to keep Chuuya safe from Mafia politics. They're both true. They're both lies.

Kunikida blinks.

"I can't think like that," he says. "Right and wrong exist."

He sounds like this is a linchpin of his worldview, like it's the fulcrum on which he relies to be able to move everything else.

Chuuya shrugs again.

"Not for Dazai," he says. "He's better at pretending, now, I think, but —" he stops himself.

If Kunikida hasn't realized yet that Dazai doesn't have an internal moral compass, that Dazai is acting, as far as Chuuya can tell, on guesswork and extrapolation, well, Chuuya isn't going to tell him. There was a time when Chuuya would have told Kunikida more, would have delighted in the attempt to destroy something Dazai might hold dear.

"But how much of it is still pretense?" Kunikida says. It's almost not a question.

"You'd have to ask him when he's too tired to lie," Chuuya replies, tipping his head back, leaning back in the chair. He's tempted to put his hat over his face, to let Kunikida keep watch. He's been awake longer than this on less sleep, but not in a while, and not often when he's already running so close to empty, when Arahabaki is so demanding.

“He’s never too tired to lie,” Kunikida says.

He sounds baffled, and still exhausted even after eight hours of sleep. Chuuya can’t tell if that’s the lack of sleep in the last two days, the after-effects of Yosano-sensei’s healing ability, or the mere idea of dealing with Dazai. It might be all three.

“No,” Chuuya agrees, sitting back up. He thinks he's glad that Kunikida has realized this much, at least, about his partner, and simultaneously annoyed that he hasn’t realized more. “You're right. He isn't ever too tired to lie. But he can be too tired to care enough to bother with it, under certain circumstances.”

Kunikida looks at him over his glasses.

“Hm,” Kunikida says. He sounds skeptical. “I’ve never seen him that tired.”

Chuuya almost laughs.

“You don’t have anyone on staff whose Ability needs to be nullified non-stop, do you? No cases that needed that? After a couple of days straight, he stops caring enough to lie.”

Kunikida looks shocked.

"Several days? That level of sleep deprivation would be torture," he protests.

Chuuya blinks at him, genuinely startled that this is what Kunikida chooses to object to.

"It's the Port Mafia," he says. "Do you really think we care about, what, obeying the Geneva Convention? I'm pretty sure the only time anyone in the Port Mafia has heard of that was when Dazai used their lists as a starting-point for devising more efficient interrogation procedures for Ane-san's staff."

Kunikida flinches a little bit, perhaps at the reminder that his partner used to be one of the bad guys, that he did terrible things. Good, Chuuya thinks fiercely. Dazai might be different now, but his blood still runs black. Every day Dazai works for the Agency is an active choice, and they should appreciate that instead of pretending he sprang unblemished from the soil only two years ago.

"Fair enough," Kunikida says after a moment. "But that level of sleep deprivation is inhumane."

Chuuya had been awake for most of it, once or twice. He can't exactly disagree.

"It was necessary," he says. "The Boss uses the tools at his disposal to achieve his ends."

Kunikida looks pained, but doesn't say anything immediately. His silence is rebuke enough, and the silence that falls between them is strained, awkward with all the things neither of them is saying.

"If that's what it takes to make Dazai stop lying," Kunikida finally says, breaking the silence with a faint, almost tentative smile. "I think I'm not going to have much luck getting the truth out of him."

Chuuya quirks a grin at the very idea of Kunikida attempting to out-stamina Dazai where sleep deprivation is concerned.

"Not really your style, no," he agrees. "Besides, it doesn't make him stop lying entirely. Just makes him care less about bothering with it."

He stops, remembering shifts in Dazai's demeanor, minor changes when Mori would come in to check on them. He remembers differences in how Dazai had reacted to other people, to Mori. He'd always cared enough to keep up a facade with Mori, no matter how many days it had been, no matter how flimsy the pretense.

“Well,” he amends. “Mostly. Very few things make him stop lying entirely. Including being hit by a car.”

Kunikida blinks at him.  

“Isn’t that right, Dazai,” Chuuya says, and pokes Dazai in the ribs, where he knows it’s bound to hurt.

“Owww,” Dazai complains, which is a good sign, because it means he’s feeling well enough to complain. “Such a violent hatrack.”

"What!" Kunikida exclaims, and shoots to his feet. "Dazai!"

"Quiet," Chuuya hisses. "Keep your voice down. Either go get Yosano, or send Naomi to get her like she asked."

Kunikida hovers for a moment, then goes to the door.

Dazai watches him go, looks around the room, clearly taking in his surroundings and doing a situation assessment. His eyes are tracking, which is good; he's not still complaining, which is bad.

"Condition report," Chuuya says, voice clipped, as if he's talking to one of his subordinates, as if he's gone back in time, as if it's four, five, six years ago, and Dazai's gotten himself hurt. (It didn't happen often, but it happened often enough that this isn't entirely new, just new enough to be strange in the differences.)

"Leg, ribs, fingers, headache," Dazai says, almost automatically. "I can work." Then he blinks, and looks up at the IV stand. "I can't work," he says, contradicting himself, and there's an undercurrent of something to his tone, something Chuuya doesn't like. "Don't tell him I can't work. I can work soon."

Chuuya shakes his head.

"The Agency is used to you not working," he says, scolding. "No one here expects you to do real work, idiot."

Dazai blinks at him again, and maybe his eyes aren't tracking quite as well as Chuuya had thought.

"That's just saline, right, Chuuya?"

Chuuya looks at him, really looks at him. It looks like, despite Yosano's efforts, he’s still drugged more heavily than Chuuya has seen since before the Dragon’s Head incident.

"Yeah, Dazai," Chuuya says. "It's just saline. You were out almost 24 hours. You scared your people pretty bad."

Dazai blinks at him, and something seems to occur to him. It must be happening in extra-slow motion, inside Dazai's mind, for Chuuya to be able to see it so clearly.

“You’re here. You're here? Chuuya. You came back.”

He means more than just being at the Agency, that much is clear. Chuuya shakes his head.

“No thanks to you or Ranpo,” he says, but there’s not as much bite to his tone as he’d intended.

“Knew you’d get out of the book,” Dazai says, but he still sounds a little confused.

He reaches a shaking hand out. Chuuya takes it automatically, feeling No Longer Human wash over him for a moment, glowing blue in an achingly familiar way. Arahabaki shuts up for a moment, retreating to get away from Dazai’s Ability.

“Good,” Dazai says, forehead scrunching up in concentration. “It’s not — that’s good.”

And he passes out again, hand falling back to the hospital bed.

“Well,” Chuuya says to Kunikida and Yosano, who are standing in the doorway, one gaping, one contemplative. He feels unsettled for reasons he can’t pinpoint. “He's going to be fine. I’ll be off now.”

Neither of them protests as he walks out, shuts the door carefully behind himself.

In the main office, most of the Agency staff are still there, though Ranpo is sleeping on his desk, and the others appear to have made small nests on the floor. In one corner, the farm boy and Kyouka are curled around each other like kittens.

“He’s asleep again,” he says before Nakajima can finish getting to his feet from next to Kyouka and do anything foolish like rush in.

Thankfully, Akutagawa seems to have been sent packing. That is both a surprise, and a relief: Chuuya didn't want to have to coerce him into leaving Dazai alone.

“With this kind of injury, he’ll wake up again in between four and six hours," he tells Nakajima, deciding against going back into the office to tell Yosano the things Dazai won't tell her. He can delegate. "He’ll need to be bullied into eating for at least a week. Miso soup with extra tofu is a good bet: it's easy to digest, and he can’t hide it in his pockets, pour it into a plant, or otherwise lie about having eaten it.”

Nakajima blinks at him, clearly surprised.

“What?” Chuuya demands. “You know Dazai doesn’t eat properly when he’s not feeling well.”

Apparently he didn’t, because Nakajima just looks more surprised. Chuuya shakes his head, and pulls out his phone.

“Give me your number," he says. "I'll send you idiot-proof instructions. God knows that asshole can’t be trusted to take care of himself, and you’re halfway competent.”

Nakajima practically beams at that, as if he thinks it's a compliment. Given Dazai's training, how Akutagawa responds to the faintest hint of praise from Dazai, it might well be. Chuuya shakes his head, taps the numbers in, pockets his phone, and leaves without another word.

The motorcycle ride back to his apartment takes a little longer when Chuuya follows speed limits and doesn't run red lights. He parks, and forces himself to take the stairs to his apartment to stretch his legs. He's almost tempted to take a flight on his hands just to see if he still can, but it's been a long day, and he's more interested in cooking dinner and stretching than in performative acrobatics for an audience of zero.

His apartment is empty when he gets there, as it always is. Ane-san has a key, but she's never used it, only visited when expressly invited.

Chuuya removes his boots, hangs up his coat and hat, and pads into the kitchen, where he pulls out yesterday's bottle of wine. More awake now, he can see that it's a perfectly acceptable Argentine Malbec, not particularly old, nothing special. He pops the cork, pulls down a red wine glass, and peers into the fridge.

His phone feels like it's burning a hole in his pocket, but he doesn't pull it out until he's cooked and eaten dinner, stretched the soreness out of his shoulders, until he's settled in an armchair with the last glass of wine from that bottle, until he can't avoid it any longer.

Chuuya downloads a simple encrypted messaging app, and enters Nakajima's number.

"This is Nakahara," he says, and starts writing. When he's done, the list of instructions he's compiled is longer than he'd expected. Chuuya looks at it, and frowns. He's a little surprised at how much he remembers: which foods Dazai will tolerate, which he can't easily pretend to have eaten, which painkillers he can take, which he will refuse, how to make him prove he's taken a pill.

Chuuya has spent so long trying not to remember this kind of detail, because it only serves to remind him of how things were when he and Dazai weren't at odds. They'd been at each other's throats, more often than not, and they'd never been friends, not really, not the way Dazai and Oda and Sakaguchi were, but there had been a seamless ease to their partnership that Chuuya's never found since. He works solo now. If he doesn't think about it, he can't miss it.

Chuuya shakes his head, and hits send.

"Don't let him steamroller you," he sends, after a moment, though he has little enough hope of it working. "He's a wet noodle. You're strong enough to make him behave, even without the tiger's help."

Because Dazai is well enough to use No Longer Human, which is going to make his recovery that much more of a trial for everyone around him.

Chuuya puts his phone down before Nakajima can reply, takes a sip of wine, and looks out the window at the Yokohama skyline. He can almost feel the chill of No Longer Human working through him, all over again, a memory, a sense-echo. And Dazai had checked on him, as soon as he was awake enough, as soon as he knew where they were, hadn't he. He'd known Chuuya had been in the book, and his first impulse was to test that Arahabaki was controlled, that Chuuya wasn't on the edge of losing control.

That means, of course, that Dazai predicted that coming back from the book might fuck with Chuuya's balance with Arahabaki. Chuuya's pretty sure he's going to be livid about that later.

But right now, watching the lights on the Ferris wheel spin, Chuuya remembers that shaking hand reaching out to him, and the sheer relief in Dazai's voice when he'd been sure Chuuya was okay.

* * *

A week into his recovery, Dazai finally makes the effort to slip away from Atsushi's babysitting. He ditches his crutches — too visible, too easily tracked in a crowd — makes his way to the edge of Mafia territory, and breaks into Chuuya's apartment while he's still at work.

Dazai's pretty sure he's not supposed to know that Chuuya was on forced leave for a week after getting out of the book, but if Akutagawa wants to keep people's secrets, he shouldn't tell Atsushi. The boy is well-meaning as the day is long, and he is also without question the worst liar Dazai has ever met. And that's when he even remembers to try to hide the truth at all.

Dazai takes the elevator, out of concession to the air cast, and the fact that he can tell his leg probably wants to hurt, if he could be bothered to pay attention to it. He's sure Yosano will have something to say to him about walking several kilometers without crutches, but it was a hairline fracture, and it's been a week. He's done more strenuous things while handling worse injuries.

Admittedly, many of those times he'd had no other choice, but Dazai is bored, and everyone at the Agency is disconcertingly well-informed about his usual deflections and dodges. He's pretty sure he knows who to blame for that, too.

Chuuya's security system is appallingly easy to circumvent. Dazai tsks under his breath, and lets himself in. His coat nearly brushes the ground when he hangs it up on the low row of hooks and he leaves his shoes sprawled out in a mess because he knows it will annoy Chuuya.

Then Dazai looks around.

He hasn't been here before: Chuuya packed his stuff up into storage before going to Europe, and only moved in here a few when he got back. Dazai can tell someone hired a decorator. Probably Kouyou, before Chuuya's return, because Dazai can also tell that Chuuya is in the process of gradually replacing carefully chosen, picture-perfect showpieces with things he actually likes.

Dazai considers raiding the kitchen, but he's not actually here to piss Chuuya off, not really. Not as his primary goal. Instead he steps into the living room area, which is divided from the kitchen by a stone-topped island. It's soapstone, he thinks, tapping it with a finger, not granite, easier to maintain, possibly more expensive. He shakes his head, and throws himself into an armchair that has a footrest, propping his right leg up and allowing himself to take stock of his body for a moment before deciding that was a bad idea, and he'd rather not know.

When Chuuya lets himself in, Dazai hears him trip over a shoe and start swearing.

"Dazai!" Chuuya yells. "You waste of — how the fuck did you get in here, anyway."

Ah, Dazai thinks. So when he slipped the leash, earlier, Atsushi told on him: Chuuya's not nearly surprised enough by his presence for anything else. That confirms Dazai's suspicion: Chuuya was the one Atsushi's been texting all week, the reason the entire Agency seems to know how to wrangle Dazai when he's in a temper, when he's in pain. Worse, Chuuya is why they seem to realize all of a sudden that Dazai's silence is more of a warning sign than his complaints ever could be.

"Chuuya," Dazai carols, but he doesn't get up. His foot, now that he's not walking, now that he's been sitting still for a bit, really does hurt rather a lot. "Is that any way to treat a guest?"

Chuuya stomps into the room, eyes blazing, and Dazai watches him. There's no red limning his figure, no hint that gravity is misbehaving around him the way Yosano described. He'd been hovering on the edge of control in those hours when Dazai had been dead to the world, when Chuuya had sat at his side to stand guard against foes real and imagined, when Chuuya had grabbed for Dazai's hand to calm his Ability down, the way he hasn't needed to do since they were fifteen, sixteen years old.

"Guests are invited," Chuuya snaps. "Housebreakers are, therefore, by definition, not guests."

Dazai waves an airy hand in a way he knows irritates Chuuya.

"Semantics," he says, as if he hasn't used similar arguments against Chuuya in the past, as if he won't again, now that they're on speaking terms, sort of, or at least on arguing terms.

"What are you doing here, Dazai," Chuuya asks, arms folded. His hair doesn't show the imprint of the hat he's been wearing all day, which Dazai finds faintly unfair: he never could manage that trick, and he's never been willing to ask. He's still not willing to ask, so he shoves that train of thought aside.

"Visiting!" Dazai announces.

"Right," Chuuya says, and pulls out his phone. "If you're not going to tell me the truth, I'll just get Nakajima to come pick you up."

Dazai scowls.

"Half the city will know where you live inside a week," Dazai points out, and Chuuya shrugs, giving him a familiar cocky smile over the phone.

"Good thing I don't like this apartment that much," he says, and Dazai can see him start typing.

"I really am visiting," Dazai admits. "I'm bored. Someone told everyone at the Agency how to handle me, and it's like they think I need to be wrapped in cotton wool all the time. I'm bored. And Chuuya is never boring. So I'm visiting."

Chuuya puts the phone back in his pocket.

"There," he says. "Was that so hard?"

Dazai wonders what expression will be best, here, whether contrition would be believable, whether he should try to play on Chuuya's clear willingness to help him. In the end, he lets habit guide him.

"I can't believe you told them I'd pour soup into the houseplants," Dazai whines, stretching dramatically.

"So you did try it," Chuuya says. "And it didn't work. Was it Yosano who caught you? She seemed to have some sense."

From Chuuya that's practically an endorsement. As Dazai watches, he walks into the kitchen, and pulls out a bottle of white wine from a wine fridge under the island.

"Chuuya! So mean!" Dazai exclaims. "All my best tricks, and none of them worked!"

Chuuya pulls down a wine glass — Dazai can tell it's a white wine glass, and he doesn't know why that detail has stuck, except that all details stick, don't they, and he's never known why — and pours himself rather less than Dazai usually sees people pour into a wine glass.

"Are you on painkillers?" Chuuya asks, back still to the room, facing the rows of glass-fronted cabinets that show off his absurdly extensive stemware collection.

When Dazai shakes his head, makes a negative sound, Chuuya pulls down a sake cup, and pulls a bottle of sake from another below-counter fridge.

"It's less than you deserve," Chuuya says, walking over with the glasses and bottles hovering in his wake. "Maybe next time you'll think twice before you trap me in a book without my Ability for a year, hm?"

Dazai blinks at him. He's been so careful about not doing the math.

"A year?" he asks. His voice is softer than he wants it to be. He sounds almost shocked.

Chuuya hands the sake and cup to Dazai by hand, instead of making Dazai catch at them when No Longer Human negates the gravity holding them in mid-air.

Dazai doesn't know what to say, so he busies himself, pours himself some sake, sips it. It's good — far better than he ever gets for himself these days. Being on the side that saves people might be more emotionally fulfilling — if Dazai knew what that was supposed to feel like — and it's definitely in line with Odasaku's wishes, but it pays a hell of a lot worse than being a Port Mafia Executive. Dazai used up a lot of his money keeping off the radar for two years. Besides, if he's drinking these days, the goal isn't to impress anyone, it's to force himself into unconsciousness, and cheaper stuff works better for that anyway.

"A year," Chuuya confirms.

He settles cross-legged onto the couch, putting the wine glass on a coaster on the side table, the wine bottle on a dish that looks a bit like an ashtray, which Dazai thinks must be there to catch condensation as it drips off the sides of the chilled bottle.

"Should I bring Ranpo over to apologize?" Dazai asks, taking another sip of the sake, letting the warmth of it drip down his throat. "He can keep a secret, after all, unlike Atsushi. No one but Fukuzawa would find out where you live from him."

Chuuya snorts. He doesn't seem nearly as angry as Dazai expected, which is strange: Dazai isn't sure what to do with it, with a Chuuya who isn't yelling at him, isn't at his throat with barbed words and strong hands.

"Sure," Chuuya says. "And then you can pay my security deposit, when I wreck the place yelling at him." He takes a sip of his wine, clearly savoring it.

He's always been such a casual hedonist, Dazai thinks. That one bottle of wine, which Chuuya clearly considers an everyday after-work drink, probably costs more than Atsushi's monthly food budget. So does the sake Dazai is drinking, to be fair, and he's not planning on complaining about that.

But Chuuya just sips the wine, and looks at the skyline, keeping Dazai in his field of vision, not pressing, not demanding, not reacting at all as Dazai had expected.

"Chuuya is behaving strangely," Dazai says, after a long silence, when the curiosity becomes too much, when he can't find an angle into this situation, when he's not sure which approach will be most profitable, most advantageous.

He doesn't have a plan, after all: he came here without one, without a goal, with just the idea that he was bored, and that Chuuya was interesting, and that, he thinks, is the problem. He doesn't have a plan, or an objective, for this meeting. He doesn't have a victory condition, or a metric by which to measure success. Is this, he thinks, mind coming to a standstill, how most people approach socializing. No wonder Kunikida so clearly finds it exhausting.

Chuuya snorts.

"What?" Dazai demands, and lets a little bit of a whine slip into his tone.

"Drink your sake," Chuuya advises. He's still looking out the window. "I'll yell at you tomorrow, if you want," he says.

Dazai takes a sip of the sake. Only Chuuya can be so confusing. It's not fair.

"I will absolutely yell at you later," Chuuya says, looking into his wine glass. "That book was fucking terrible, and Arahabaki's been a bitch and a half since I got back. But you didn't know how long it would be. And you checked on me when you woke up."

Dazai blinks at him. He vaguely remembers Chuuya being there when he woke up, the first time, though he'd been bleary, fogged with painkillers that Yosano told him later Chuuya had demanded she restrict. He thinks back to that moment, to waking in the Agency's infirmary, to seeing Chuuya there, to the momentary spike of reassurance-panic-calm he'd felt at seeing Chuuya, at not knowing where they were, realizing finally that they weren't in Mori's clinic, or in the Port Mafia medical ward, but in Yosano's infirmary. Dazai hasn't considered why Chuuya's presence was comforting, why seeing him had brought a bone-deep sense of comfort before any of the fear of Mori or the Mafia had kicked in. (Once he knows why, he can't stop knowing — some things are better unexamined.)

He had checked on Chuuya, Dazai thinks. He'd known, even then, that Chuuya had been gone, that he needed to be sure Chuuya was all right, that Corruption wasn't going to take over. That he wasn't going to lose Chuuya again.

"Okay," he says, for lack of anything better to say.

"Now I know you're fucked up," Chuuya says, but there's hardly any bite in it. "Just that. 'Okay'?"

"Okay, Chuuya," Dazai carols, and pours himself more sake. "I'll let my dog bark at me, if it makes him happy. After all, I'd hardly be a good pet owner if —"

Chuuya throws a slim book at him.

Dazai catches it without spilling any of the sake, and grins before turning it around.

"French surrealist poetry?" Dazai asks. "Really, Chuuya. You're such an old man. Couldn't you read something published this century!"

He starts to throw the book towards the trash; Chuuya makes a gesture, and the book swoops back to his hand, clearly under the control of his own internal gravity. Dazai feels himself smiling, really smiling.

Maybe he was right, all those years ago, and anything worth wanting slips out of his hands. Maybe he'll lose this, too, maybe soon. But, Dazai can't help thinking: not all good things have wilted in his grasp. The Agency is still here, two years later, after Dostoyevsky, after the Guild. And Chuuya came back.

So Dazai drinks his sake, and teases Chuuya about his taste in poetry, and carefully, carefully, doesn't think about why this matters, or what it might mean.

(Once he knows, after all, he can't stop knowing.)

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