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Chuuya watches Dazai’s retreating back as he wanders out of sight toward the forgotten wasteland where he’s squirreled away a residence, driver dutifully departing to take Chuuya back to his apartment. There’s something off that Chuuya can’t quite pin down, errant details nagging at his awareness until his skin doesn’t fit right over his bones and he’s forced to concede defeat.
He leans forward into the space between the front seats. “Turn around.”
“Sir?”
“Back to where we dropped off that useless son of a bitch. Make it fast.” It’s not his nature to panic, but the time it takes to circle back to where he last saw Dazai ratchets up something anxious in him. Something like dread sour on the back of his tongue. “You can go,” he tells his driver as he pushes out of the car and takes off in a run. If Chuuya uses Tainted Sorrow to speed himself along, that’s his business.
He doesn’t bother with finesse, shouldering through the door of Dazai’s shipping container by force. The world stops spinning, he thinks, everything grinding to a stop. Heralded by white noise and the fuzzy beginnings of tinnitus ringing through his ears. A numbing sort of cold seeping through him at the sight of Dazai’s blood. Dazai looks at him, startled, blade in his hand stayed by the interruption, and Chuuya doesn’t have the spare sense about him to be pleased at having surprised Dazai. Not now.
His body on autopilot. Shouting, “give it to me!” as he lunges for Dazai where he’s sitting at his sad little table under the watery light of the exposed bulb in the ceiling.
“No!” There’s something almost comical about it: the childish way Dazai holds the razor away from Chuuya’s reach, the borderline petulant retort. Except for his dull eyes. Except for the flat hollow of his gaze.
If Dazai knows he’s already lost the fight, he doesn’t show it, even as Chuuya knocks him out of the chair in his scramble to separate Dazai from his own self-destruction. Chuuya’s shoe slips through the blood on the floor and he doesn’t have the time to process the horror of that as he hauls Dazai down with him, arms wrapped around his waist. The steel is unforgiving, the pair of them tumbling to a heap to the ground. Dazai held fast to his chest. Chuuya hooks his legs over Dazai’s. Scrambles to pin his arms down.
“Let me go!” It’s loud for Dazai, a flight drive made audible. The blade bites into Chuuya’s fingertips clean through his glove as he wrenches it from Dazai’s grip and flings it out of reach. “Chuuya, let me go!”
His turn to shout. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” Dazai struggles weakly in his grip—one of Chuuya’s arms around his chest and biceps, fingers of the other wrapped tourniquet-tight around Dazai’s bleeding wrist—tries to headbutt Chuuya.
“Monster!” Dazai growls. “Let go of me.”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Chuuya, please,” he tries instead, plaintively. Whiplash in the tonal shift. The play is clumsy, and Chuuya’s mind fixates on the distress of seeing Dazai made briefly incompetent rather than on the rest. “Just leave me to die.”
Oh, that he can’t just push out of his mind. “I won’t.” Chuuya says through gritted teeth. “If anyone is going to fucking kill you, it’s gonna be me.”
“I hate you so much,” Dazai snarls. Claws at Chuuya’s forearm with his free hand, trying desperately to tear him away. Keens, a high distressed whine from the back of his throat when Chuuya only tightens his grip under the onslaught. “You’re awful and I hate you.” Dazai’s voice breaks over the words. He turns his face like he might try to hide against Chuuya’s neck. It takes a moment longer than it reasonably should for Chuuya to register that Dazai is crying.
“You’re so fucking selfish,” Chuuya rasps. Doesn’t expect his voice to come out so tangled in his throat. “Do you ever think about anyone else?”
“I just wanted to go quietly.” Soft misery. Again, his voice breaking, Dazai breaking, Chuuya breaking.
Chuuya shuts himself down, off, away from the blood and the tears and the utter wreck of Dazai held still by Chuuya’s strength alone. Says nothing. Feels nothing. Just keeps him pinned until Dazai’s breathing slows to a soft hiccuping thing and he stops punctuating his pleas with targeted cruelty.
“Please.”
“I told you, asshole, not a fucking chance.”
Dazai shudders at that, strings cut, going limp in Chuuya’s grip as all the fight abruptly leaves him. Chuuya loosens his hold on Dazai a fraction, and when he makes no move to escape, Chuuya fishes his phone out of his pocket and makes a call. Hand still clamped around Dazai’s wrist.
“I need you.” Dazai folds in on himself just a little more, not quite fitting beneath Chuuya’s chin, but it’s close enough. A strange impulse to cling and be held, at war with his guttered fury at Chuuya’s intervention. Longing and loathing choking the breath out of him. “He’s— I’m— We’re a fucking mess,” Chuuya finally forces out—voice calm and even, but not steady enough to mask the weariness settled into it like lead—vulnerability unabashed and direct. That’ll be Albatross on the other end, then. “As soon as you fucking can.”
The snapping sound of the phone as it closes echoes obscenely in the silence of the container.
“Are you going to cooperate with me?” Chuuya asks, and he’s slipped into his business tone. Clinical and disinterested.
Dazai’s head feels stuffed full of cotton, thinking through syrup, and he’s too far from his tongue to translate his fuzzy thoughts to words. Slowly, carefully, Chuuya unwinds his limbs from around Dazai’s body. Without it, Dazai feels weightless and cold. He'd only just started when Chuuya came barreling in, but perhaps he'd already lost more blood than he’d thought.
Chuuya says something else and the words pass through Dazai unheard. “What?”
“Gonna need stitches, fucking listen,” Chuuya snarls. “Where is your shit?”
Dazai points to the bed where he can just see the corner of the little first aid box. He might even have said so. Chuuya hauls him to his feet and turns the chair upright again before shoving Dazai roughly down onto it. For Dazai’s wrist, however, Chuuya is unaccountably gentle. Thread in practiced hands with practiced grace.
Every new stitch pulling him back together feels like a betrayal.
Time turns funny, disappearing for a while between the pressure of new bandages wrapped around his arm and the rough, “fuck,” that announces Albatross’ arrival. Chuuya, Dazai notes absently, has blood streaked halfway up his forearms where he dangles them off his knees. A sluggish drip from the tips of his bare fingers he seems not to notice—and oh, Dazai had been responsible for that set of injuries, hadn’t he—staring blankly up at the corrugated ceiling.
“Alright, c’mon,” Albatross says, blithely and entirely out of sync with the atmosphere, dragging Chuuya up by a firm grip around his bicep. It’s not gentle or kind, and Dazai thinks, distantly, that Chuuya looks like maybe he needs it to be both of those things instead.
Chuuya who turns to glare at Dazai, murderous, as he stalks over. “Get the fuck up. You’re coming too.”
Albatross adds, “don’t be difficult, man,” aimed at Dazai even as he comes close enough to grip Chuuya’s hip. In warning or for comfort, Dazai can’t parse it. Anyway, he’s too tired to make himself more difficult; all he wanted was to finally be still.
“Don’t bleed on my shit,” Chuuya says, flat and dispassionate, and points at the bathroom. “Leave the fucking door open.”
“I’ve got it,” Albatross says, and the smile he’s wearing is brittle at the edges as he turns to follow Dazai down the short hall.
His mind is empty, nothing but the dull roar on the front end of an adrenaline crash. Washing Dazai's blood from his arms is a mechanical affair. Chuuya doesn’t let himself think about it. Stands at the sink. Focuses on the muffled sounds of Albatross and Dazai down the hall. The sharp sting of soap in his wounded fingers cuts through the persistent numbness that’s dogged him since he burst into Dazai’s hovel. There aren’t any butterfly bandages in the first aid kit stashed under the kitchen sink and he’s not stepping foot in the bathroom now.
An inconvenience. The heralding of crisis.
A momentary weakness as he dries his hands on a paper towel: all buckled knees and a light-headed tilt to the room. Chuuya lowers himself to the floor to sit before he falls, and the hysteria climbs up the back of his throat like bile. Anxiety he thought had passed, now festered into something cold and horrifying. The first breath of panic is a gasp, a choked thing he forces himself to inhale properly before he slipslides into hyperventilation. Another. Another—hiccuped this time and too irregular to tame—and Chuuya feels himself begin to shake.
Laughing or crying, he can’t quite tell, but his hands are leaves in the wind and no amount of clenching his fists makes them tremble any less. Chuuya props his elbows on his knees and buries his head between them, vision blurring as he stares at the tiles and the first sob comes tearing through his chest. By the time Albatross finds him, Chuuya has long passed the point of no return on his meltdown.
“Hey,” Albatross murmurs, crouches down in front of him, “pull yourself together, yeah?”
He’s gentle about it, and that’s somehow worse than just being seen like this. For all that Chuuya wants to do just that—pull himself together into some semblance of a person who is stoic about his feelings—the careful way Albatross reels him in only further undoes Chuuya. He can be embarrassed about it later. For now, he digs his fingers into the soft fabric of Albatross’ shirt and buries his face in Albatross’ neck.
Albatross bracketing Chuuya into the space between his bent knees. “What would I have done if I lost the bastard?” Arms around Chuuya’s shoulders, waist. “I almost didn’t go back.”
“But you did and he’s fine.”
“He’s not fine.” Chuuya sounds unhinged to his own ears. Pitchy and miserable. He tries desperately to regulate his breathing with little success.
“Okay, yeah. True,” Albatross concedes, fingers threaded through Chuuya’s hair. “But he’s alive.”
“And he hates me for it.” Chuuya chokes on his own certainty, a fresh wave of hysteria squeezing the air from his lungs.
Albatross pulls back, cups Chuuya’s face in his hands. “Do you think so?”
“I don’t know.” It shudders out of him, cracked and stuttered through his sobbing breath. Mortified. “I’d hate me.”
“No need to get hung up on it.” So infuriatingly matter of fact about it as he brushes the tear tracks off Chuuya’s face with his thumbs.
“I can’t stop it from running through my goddamn head,” Chuuya snaps. Wipes his face with his wrist. “Stop looking for a fucking silver lining for me.”
“Alright, alright, chill. I’ve got you.” Albatross loosens Chuuya’s remaining grip on his shirt. “C’mon. Let me take care of your hand.” Helps him stand and drags him to the living room to sit on the couch. Sits on the coffee table in front of him and bandages up his fingertips one at a time in silence.
After the flashfire energy has burned out of Chuuya, he sinks backward against the cushions. “I’m tired, Albatross.”
Albatross scoots over from where he’d sat down on the couch to give Chuuya more space, gesturing at the arrangement. “You can sleep. I’ve got you both.”
Chuuya nods, head feeling at once too empty and overfull. He lays down and curls up small on the couch, arms tucked into himself, his nose buried against Albatross’ stomach and head pillowed on his thigh.
“You’ll get a kink in your neck like that.”
“Don’t care.”
“You do you.” Albatross runs his hands slowly through Chuuya’s hair.
There’s an emptiness hollowed into the space between Chuuya’s ribs. Like something vital has been cut out. “This isn’t the last time this is going to happen, is it?”
“Probably not, no,” Albatross confirms.
“I don’t understand a goddamn thing, and I hate that I can’t do anything but hope that if I can’t stop him again that he fucks up and fails.” Chuuya pauses to take a shuddering breath and bites his lip nearly hard enough to bleed, just to keep himself from crying again. “Even if he actually hates me for it.” Silence, Chuuya slowly sinking into the exhaustion of the night. “I saw the blood on his floor and it was the Flags all over again,” Chuuya whispers. “Haven’t we lost enough?”
Hand stilling in Chuuya’s hair, Albatross’ breath catching on a sharp inhale for a moment. “Man, you know it doesn’t work like that. There’s no accounting for it, no books,” Albatross says. He traces the shell of Chuuya’s ear with his fingertips. “I know you’re real good at those, but this isn’t business.”
“What would you know about it?” Chuuya asks—teeth and claws misdirected—and wishes immediately that he hadn’t.
Albatross sighs, and his voice is thick with feelings Chuuya hadn’t meant to surface. “Being the only survivor is hard to live with sometimes.”
“Albatross…” He rolls over to look up at him.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Albatross says in a poor facsimile of brightness. “I’m just fine.”
“You’re not fine either,” Chuuya murmurs, reaching for him, tugging him down at a terrible angle to press their lips together.
“No,” he agrees in the space between that holds their breath, “but that’s okay.”
“The annoying thing no one ever bothers to say out loud is that we all belong to other people.” Albatross doesn’t look at him, as Dazai wedges himself into the corner of the couch, knees tucked up to his chest. “Everything you do matters to someone. And it’s a fucking burden, but you carry it whether you want to or not.”
Dazai forgets sometimes that Albatross is capable of not being a clown. That having spent time with the Flags—older and more experienced, all but Chuuya—gave him a leg up on a degree of emotional intelligence Dazai has yet to pin down for himself. To be on the receiving end of that incongruous maturity is unpleasant. Especially now, raw and fully exposed as Dazai is. Feeling small is just another thing to feed to his ravenous self-loathing.
“Are you going to call me selfish now too?”
“Nope. I’m just saying that even if you don’t care about your life, we do,” Albatross replies, still in that soft way that doesn’t seem like it should fit inside his mouth. Dazai doesn’t miss how he says we. Or how he lays his palm over Chuuya’s ear, strokes his thumb across Chuuya’s temple, like a shield. “And cut Chuuya some slack, yeah? He was scared and confused. He didn’t mean it.”
Surprising, that. “Scared?” Dazai is certain Albatross is wrong. “He was angry.”
That pulls Albatross’ attention from Chuuya’s face up to Dazai’s. His confusion when he asks, “is that what you think?” is real.
“Chuuya isn’t afraid of anything.” There’s an insistence in Dazai’s voice that he didn’t mean to put there. Like he could make it true if he says so with enough conviction. And it has to be true, because Chuuya has always been steadfastly brave. Any alternative to that true north means Dazai is more lost now than he was two hours ago when Chuuya wrestled him to submission and the burden of living.
“Dazai,” patient, horribly patient in a way Albatross never is, “he was terrified.”
“Why?” It doesn’t make sense.
“Smart guy like you really needs it spelled out?”
Dazai doesn’t deign to respond to that—doing his level best not to let the feelings pass across his face—because, yes, he does need it spelled out. Because the idea of Chuuya in fear is distressing enough, without accounting for the notion that Dazai himself was at the root of it somehow.
When in doubt, deflect, redirect.
“You don’t seem all that upset.”
Cool, casual, as if he isn’t bothered that Albatross seems unphased by either the fact of Dazai’s blood in his backseat or Chuuya—wrung out to exhaustion by that very same thing—sleeping, curled up half-fetal with his head in Albatross’ lap. A feedback loop of discomfort, because Dazai doesn’t want to be bothered by it at all. Just like he doesn’t actually want Albatross to be as distraught as Chuuya was, apparently. And that is another unwelcome turn down this spiral in which Dazai is caught.
The look Albatross levels him is foreign on his face. One part serious and two parts wounded where there ought to be a disarming grin. “Yelling about feelings is Chuuya’s thing,” he murmurs, and for such a soft thing it lands bruisingly against Dazai’s awareness. “It doesn’t mean I’m not hurting too.”
There’s nothing to say to that, no words Dazai can muster that reassemble all the things the confession has dislodged in him. No comfort to be had and no comfort available to give.
After a long stretch of uncomfortable silence, Albatross asks him, “is being cared for really that bad?”
Dazai’s voice is thin, straining against the words, “I can’t think of anything worse.”
It’s not clear how long he’s been awake for, but Dazai sees more than hears the hitch in Chuuya’s breathing at that. The long shuddering exhale. The tremor in his shoulders and the wet sniff. Dazai doesn’t have the wherewithal to watch Chuuya cry—he doesn’t—especially not on the heels of knowing that Dazai scared him. That they were, together, both capable of that achievement.
“Chuuya…” Dazai says. There’s no thought behind it, no message he intends to send on its heels, just a helpless reflex to reach for him.
Albatross lifts his arms to let Chuuya push himself up off his lap. Chuuya doesn’t bother to look at either of them, face hidden as he scrubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms. Dazai wants it to stop. Wants Chuuya to lash out angrily like he always does, because anger is a reaction Dazai knows how to navigate.
“Stay if you want,” Chuuya mumbles, gravel tumbling through his words.
He stands on unsteady legs, and Albatross looks for a moment like he might reach out before thinking better of it. It’s enough that Chuuya is so stripped bare down to his vulnerability without drawing further attention to it. It stirs a little pang of unhappiness in Dazai to know that someone else understands Chuuya so well. For all that it shouldn’t be a surprise, it hits like one anyway. Salt in a wound.
Even if he can’t bring himself to ask for it, Chuuya wants them both to stay. Wants the reassurance that Dazai doesn’t actually hate him, for all that they have always said as much. Wants all the incongruous softness Albatross keeps offering him. It won’t last until morning and Chuuya wants it while he can have it, as though he could store it in some kind of reserve for when he needs it later.
Chuuya’s head is fuzzy, stopped up with grief and the insufficient little sleep he slipped into before Dazai’s voice woke him. He takes the time to strip down out of the bloody clothes he’s still wearing before climbing into bed. It’s probably seeped into his couch, now that he thinks about it. A problem for future Chuuya. A shower would be advisable, but Chuuya is too goddamn exhausted to muster enough energy for it.
Sleep overtakes him before he’s even fully comfortable.
The shifting of the mattress wakes him abruptly, and Chuuya blearily watches Dazai settle in under the sheets beside him. Face to face in the darkness of the room, weak light from the living room filtering in around the cracked open door. Chuuya steels himself for some sort of fallout that never comes. When Dazai doesn’t do more than watch him from across the distance, Chuuya breaks the silence.
“Do you resent me for it?” He can just make out Dazai’s expression, catches the way his eyes widen enough to register surprise. The smile Dazai paints on is lopsided and small. Rueful. It hurts to watch.
“A little, yes.”
Chuuya has to close his eyes against that answer, can’t look at Dazai directly just then with such a blunt truth offered without restraint. “Alright,” he sighs. The shuffle of fabric is the only warning he gets before Dazai scoots closer to him, just shy of touching. Curled into each other, parentheses around all their trauma, their shared history.
“This is the part where I’m expected to tell you I’m sorry, right?” Words heavy with resignation.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” Chuuya breathes. “But I don't think I want one even if you meant it.” A lie, one Dazai may or may not catch. It’s not something he’s owed, Chuuya knows, but some selfish part of him wants Dazai to be sorry for it. Wants him to regret the attempt and for Dazai to want to live.
He watches Dazai close his eyes, takes in the sleepless bruising beneath his long lashes. "I wasn't thinking about anyone else."
Chuuya curls in on himself a little tighter, guilt and regret welling up in him. Whispers, "I shouldn't have called you selfish." Uncorked feelings spilling over.
"Why are you crying?" His voice is empty—no curiosity or reprimand or agitation in it—and it only upsets Chuuya more to hear Dazai so hollow. Dazai, erecting walls around himself again already. In the moment of being shut out, Chuuya realizes how much he wants to be let in and can’t seem to find a way to say it.
"Shut the fuck up, 'm not," Chuuya mumbles, hiding his face into the crook of his arm because Dazai is right. And now that Chuuya has started again, he's not entirely sure he can stop.
"Chuuya…"
Dazai rests his hand carefully on Chuuya's head, pets at him, tentative about it like he's not sure whether he's doing it right or if it's even allowed. This isn’t a time when Dazai should be put upon to comfort Chuuya, probably, but Chuuya welcomes it. Wants more of it. Decides pride and dignity and decency be damned in the moment, in the context. He shuffles forward into Dazai's space and tucks his head under Dazai's chin—nose buried in the fabric of the shirt he's wearing, borrowed from Chuuya, the last point of contact between them—where he can hide from Dazai's view. A false sense of safety.
"Just...shut up, okay?" His voice is unsteady and Chuuya hates that he can't rein it in. He whispers, "I was almost too late." The wet sound of grief wrapped around his words like a vice.
Chuuya can't bring himself to say that he doesn't want that outcome, lest this brief contact in the darkness become some awful, tactile memento mori in his memory. More pressing, he doesn't trust himself not to say more than he's allowed; not with Dazai small animal skittish on a good day, and definitely not now, only a scant few hours past Dazai's own brush with mortality.
Maybe there's a universe where Chuuya tells Dazai he doesn't want to live in a world without him, but this isn't it.
Dazai is still wide awake when the light clicks off in the living room and Albatross pads into the bedroom in the dark. Chuuya fell asleep sometime in the last hour—finally cried himself out—and left Dazai alone with his thoughts. Unsafe territory still. Rather than the danger of his own mind, he’s been doing his best to focus on the soft snuffle of Chuuya’s breath against his throat, the rhythm of his pulse where Dazai has his fingers pressed against Chuuya’s neck.
With Albatross’ entrance comes the shuffle of fabric, the drop to the floor, and Dazai can’t predict which side of the bed he’ll be crawling into next. Tactically it would have been smarter for Dazai to have stayed close to the edge of the bed earlier, rather than meeting Chuyua in the middle. That choice, naturally, comes back to haunt him in the form of Albatross climbing under the sheets and spooning up behind Dazai. Arm around his waist, mouth at the nape of his neck. Dazai tenses at the contact, and Albatross huffs through his nose.
“Just let us have this, alright?”
It isn’t fair and Dazai isn’t happy about it, the way he feels like there’s an expectation that he should feel guilty about wanting to die and having been barred from it. That’s not what they’re doing, not purposely at least—he knows them both better than that—but he can’t help but experience the dissonance anyway.
“Us?”
“It’s for you too, you touch-starved jackass.”
Dazai ignores the gentle jab and the less gentle observation about his existence that he’d rather not think about. “You’re taking liberties.” With Dazai’s fragile defenses. With his weapons disarmed.
“Yeah, I might be.” There’s no embarrassment or remorse in Albatross’ tone, which is so aggressively typical, it’s almost comforting.
“And what are you getting out of it?”
“Something, something, trauma,” Albatross dismisses. “Don’t worry about me.”
“Someone has to, since you don’t do it yourself.” Dazai hadn’t meant to say that.
Maybe he does feel some measure of regret for having hurt them both, after all. Not for his actions—he doesn’t owe anyone an apology for those—but for the hurt they caused. Another cosmic sort of cruelty, unfair that he should feel this way. When did he let them close enough to worry about their feelings? Close enough to welcome the warmth of Chuuya’s body curled into his and Albatross’ breath across his skin.
Albatross smiles against the back of his neck. “That’s awfully nice of you. Are you trying to lower my guard so you can stab me in my sleep?” It’s meant to be a joke, but it doesn’t sound like one. Tired and wary. Sad.
Dazai doesn’t like this any better than their conversation on the couch earlier. It makes Albatross fit wrong in Dazai’s understanding of him. Wrong because Albatross never gets defensive, except with his fists and a knife. Avoidant, sure, but this isn’t feigned ignorance or playing up his own stupidity.
“Don’t deflect.”
“That’s your job, right?” Albatross murmurs. Somehow the remark isn’t unkind, for all that it stings.
Dazai sighs, weary to his bones, “something like that.”
Albatross presses his lips to the top of Dazai’s spine where his bandages have slipped, once, and brushes, “do you want me to be honest with you or keep my fucking mouth shut about how I feel?” directly over his skin.
So close on the heels of failing to escape it, Dazai hates the way all the contact—the familiar intimacy of it—makes him feel like he properly fits into his own body again. The way being held always soothes something broken in him that he never realized he might appreciate being fixed. Albatross touches him now like it’s a peace offering, despite the lack of fight in either of them.
And Dazai considers taking it. In spite of that, he says, “I always want you to keep your fucking mouth shut.”
“Hey man, that’s totally fair.” This sounds more like Albatross. His voice like hands raised in placating surrender, light and earnest.
A heavy silence blankets them while Dazai chews over the idea of hearing what Albatross has to say. The nagging desire to die has yet to abate and the strain of all this emotional labor is reaching a breaking point. Here, in the liminal space of the dark, though—caught between the warmth of the pair of them, his partner and whatever exactly Albatross is to him—for now, he might be able to manage the weight.