Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all started with a sore throat. It was one of those completely inconsequential sort of annoyances that comes with the territory of being alive.

Chuuya didn’t pay it much mind. It was probably his own fault anyway. 

He had been smoking a lot over the past week, a quick fix for the constant adrenaline that had made a home under his skin. 

Plus, he had spent the whole day yelling at subordinates and dock workers and just about anyone else he had come in contact with. None of that was anything new or noteworthy for a mafia executive. Shipments went missing all the time. It’s just that when they did, finding out why always seemed to fall into his lap.

It was just a little sore throat and a bad day. Nothing a glass of chilled white wine and some stupid reality tv show couldn't fix.

-----

Chuuya woke to the sound of scratching at his front door. 

He blinked blearily around the dark living room of his penthouse apartment, illuminated only by the blue glow of his tv.

Like an instinct, his hand came up to his throat, checking for a source to the strange aching pain that was there. Was there an enemy? An emergency? How quickly did he need to act?

Chuuya tried to take in a deep breath to slow down, to think clearly. But the back of his throat felt like it had been cut to ribbons, complete with the sensation of blood pouring lazily out of a wound. He gagged for a moment around his dry tongue and cracked lips, his attempt at exhaling turned into a dry aching cough.

Not blood, then, if the glob of mucus he spit up was anything to go by.

Chuuya let his head fall back in defeat. He couldn’t be sick. Not now. Not like this. Not that there was anything he could do about it but take some medicine and play fine. His neck ached from falling asleep sitting up on the couch, still fully dressed with his choker on.

The scratching came again from the door.

He tried to groan but all that came out was a soft wheezing sound. Of all the nights.

Chuuya took his time standing up and assessing the damage. His throat was the main problem, so painful he couldn't tell if it was actually swollen or if that was just the sort of mildly panicked thought that always crossed a person’s mind when they woke up suddenly sick. He couldn't breathe at all through his nose and any attempt to try only left him with a pounding headache, a symptom insistent enough to finally get himself standing up and off the couch.

A glass of water from the kitchen brought him a moment of clarity in which he was able to acknowledge he was fucking exhausted.

It was just a head cold. Maybe a chest cold, Chuuya amended as another coughing fit came over him leaving his chest aching and his head swimming.

Eventually, the abject suffering passed and Chuuya found himself stumbling to the front door where he stopped and listened for a moment. There were two shadows under the door, a pair of feet blocking the light from the hallway. There was another scratch, slow and deliberate. Entirely aware that he was standing right there.

Chuuya flung the door open as fast as he could, best to get this over with.

“Are you a stray cat? Why don’t you just knock?” he winced at the pain that laced every sound, the way each word came out slow and muddled, the effort obvious.

Dazai didn’t comment on it as he brushed past Chuuya with a flippant gesture.

“And hurt my delicate hands?” His own words sounded cottony and strangely nasal, but he made a point of turning back to Chuuya once he was in the house, no longer at risk of Chuuya slamming the door in his face. He held one limp wrist in front of him to mimic a cat. The shadows under his eyes were heavy and sore looking.

Chuuya could still kick him out. He could grab Dazai by the back of the stupid, wrinkled button up shirt he was always wearing, no matter what state he was in.

Instead, he closed the door and stepped over to Dazai, placing a hand on his shoulder. It was too much effort to say it, but Dazai understood immediately. He bent down and allowed Chuuya to press his lips delicately to his forehead.

They stood there in silence for a moment, the tv playing softly in the background.

“You have a fever.”

“I thought so.”

In all honesty, Chuuya didn’t know how to feel for a fever. It was something he had seen Yuan do once to another kid, the lips to forehead gesture. The young boy had erupted into a fit of giggles, the only medicine she had to offer him at the time.

The first time Dazai had shown up at his door like this, 16 years old, cheeks red and tongue loose with fever, Chuuya had been in a complete panic. He had pressed his lips to Dazai’s forehead and declared his illness likely terminal based on nothing but the odd glassy shine of his brown eyes and the fact he kept seemingly forgetting where he was.

Dazai had been nothing but delighted by the prospect of his imminent death. Many months later, Chuuya felt bad for hitting him when he said that. Maybe that was the reason he didn’t kick him out the next time he did the exact same thing.

Chuuya knew better, now. If Dazai protested and fought him, he did not have a fever. It was only when he bent willingly and let Chuuya hold him for a moment without even a comment on his height, that’s when they were in hot water.

Chuuya released Dazai who stood back to his full height, an annoying little growth spurt he’d had a couple months ago that Chuuya was starting to wonder if he would ever catch up to.  He hadn’t grown even a centimeter in over a year now.

Dazai’s hand came to cradle gently against the side of his face and tilted his gaze up by the chin. He used his other hand to smooth Chuuya’s bangs out of the way and hold him there despite the annoyed look on his face.

“Chuuya has a fever as well.”

Ah, well, that at least explained some of the strange, fuzzy feelings overtaking his thoughts.

Chuuya went to swallow and winced at the pain again. If he could just stop that.

Dazai released him and stepped back, clapping his hands together like he always did when he had a terrible idea.

“Let's have a sleepover.”

“No.”

But Chuuya’s hand was rubbing around his throat again and he was already making his way to the kitchen. Tea and honey were much more important at the moment than exerting the energy to get this asshole out of his house.

“You said it yourself, I have a fever. If you kick me out, who will take care of me?” Dazai’s voice trailed from the direction of the bedroom. No doubt he was stripping all the blankets he could find in Chuuya’s room to make a nest on the couch.

“Take care of yourself.” Chuuya mumbled under his breath as he set out two cups for tea.

As always, Dazai somehow managed to hear him even from the other room. Chuuya had theories that this was some secret secondary power that he possessed, super hearing. But in times like these, it did come in handy. He really didn’t feel like raising his voice. Actually, he didn't feel like talking at all. It was just something about Dazai that forced the words out of him.

“Alright,” Dazai said, voice lower and smoother as he dumped the handful of bedding on the couch and made his way to the kitchen to inspect Chuuya’s work.

“Who will take care of you?” 

Chuuya felt the heat of Dazai’s chest against his back as he reached a large arm around him and tried to replace the ginger tea Chuuya had grabbed with mint.

Chuuya made a point to lift up the hot metal kettle and cast a warning glance over his shoulder. 

Dazai tactfully retreated. 

“I’ll take care of myself.”

“Oh yeah?” Chuuya felt a tickle on his cheek and knew immediately that Dazai was playing with his ponytail trying to annoy him.

“Yeah.” He tried to focus on pouring the tea as Dazai slowly undid the band in his hair. The sudden relief was enough to still his hands. He had forgotten that he tied it back. It felt like a band of tension being removed from around his temple as his hair fell forward around his face.

“Like last year when you caught the flu?”

“I didn’t ask you to come that night. In fact, I think I told you to leave just like I’m doing now.” Chuuya let his eyes close as Dazai traced four longer fingers up the nape of his neck and in his hair to start massaging.

“Oh, come on. We had so much fun.”

“You kept playing old movies and insisting I put my feet up.”

“So much fun.”

“Until I threw up on the ground because you wouldn’t let me stand up.” 

“I can’t help if you’re a very unclear communicator.”

Chuuya scoffed but regretted it immediately as he bent over coughing. Dazai wrapped an arm around his shoulders and guided him to the couch.

“I thought,” More coughing. More regret. “Reading people was your whole thing, Mr.super genius.”

Not his best work but maybe the coughing fit was worth it for the way he felt Dazai’s chest shake and spasm with laughter against his shoulder.

“Chuuya thinks I’m a super genius? He thinks I can read minds?”

“More like super annoyance.”

Then his knees were hitting the back of the couch and the only thing Chuuya could focus on was how good it felt to sink back into the cushions. It felt almost like his body had hit a wall. No matter how many times his brain yelled at him to “get up” or “fight this” or “Dazai is in the kitchen unsupervised!!” Chuuya’s body just sunk heavier and heavier away from his control.

His eyes fluttered open again an indeterminable amount of time later to the feeling of Dazai pressing a warm cup into his hands. He brought it to his lips and took a sip before letting his face twist up in disgust.

“Peppermint.”

“It’s good for sick people.”

“So is ginger…Did you make a whole new pot of tea?”

“Chuuya knows I don’t like ginger. He always makes me drink it when I’m sick.”

“Maybe I’m hoping you stop showing up to my place every time you get sick.”

“Couldn’t be that.” Chuuya nearly fumbled his cup of tea as he felt the couch dip right next to him.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting comfy. I’m sick too, you know.” Not that Dazai ever seemed to show it anywhere.

Chuuya felt a suspiciously arm shaped weight come to rest over his shoulders.

“Why are you sitting so close?”

“So we can share the blanket, of course.”

Of course. Like there weren’t at least ten blankets piled on the couch with them.

In Dazai’s defense-since when had he started thinking in Dazai’s defense?- most of the blankets were small, lap-sized throw blankets and had already been put to use propping up heads and feet as well as to build a small wall between them.

The blanket Dazai was referring to was Chuuya's very plush bedroom comforter that should've been on his bed, not in the living room where it trailed on the dirty floor and was slowly becoming infected with sick.

But for the first time since waking up, Chuuya actually felt warm. He shimmied his shoulders, making a point to land at least one boney elbow right in Dazai's stomach through the wall of fabric.

“Just don’t go getting me sick.”

“Chuuya’s already sick.”

“Don’t get me double sick or whatever.”

“Can that happen?”

“How would I know? Man.. that would fucking suck.”

-----

“Who’s this guy again?”

Dazai blinked some of the haze from his vision. It was hard in the mostly dark room to stay conscious, not that it was easy to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time without gagging awake.

It felt like every time Dazai was just about to drift off his lungs would spasm into a wet coughing fit. The one time he had managed to fall asleep before caving and dragging himself to Chuuya’s apartment, the draftiness of his storage unit, a leading suspect in his current predicament, had made him wake up shivering.

Even before then, he hadn't been sleeping.

The past few days, Dazai had had terrible and strange nightmares about extra limbs growing out of his body, large bugs chasing him down and eating him, and the worst of all conversations between him and the people he knew, the sort that follow you even days after you dream them up tainting everything like the disease itself.

“Dazai?”

Chuuya was looking up at Dazai from under his arm. There was a blanket balled up between them but if it wasn’t there Chuuya would be laying his head on Dazai’s chest. The weight of him was reassuring in a way few things were these days.

Chuuya blinked hazy blue eyes slowly as he looked up at him before glancing back to the TV and the grey rabbit currently doing a bit in full drag. He tilted his chin up to gesture. In Chuuya speak, this roughly translated to “What’s the deal with that?”

“Oh, that’s Bugs Bunny.”

“Bugs?”

“It was a nickname for one of the animators. Ben.”

Chuuya seemed to mull this over for a bit.

“Is that common knowledge or are you a nerd?”

Dazai couldn't help but laugh even with the way it sent his head aching and made his teeth feel like they were shifting around in his gums.

He held his hand up in an imitation of the boy scout’s three finger salute as though he were reciting an oath.

“I, Dazai Osamu, am a major looney tunes nerd. I have seen all the episodes of all the shows and know every bit of trivia about the show.”

It took a moment for Chuuya to process this before Dazai felt shaking under his arm. He peered down to see Chuuya laughing and wheezing as he curled into himself. His nose had started running.

Dazai passed a box of tissues to him as he slowly calmed himself down.

“Fuck, I hate being sick.”

“Me too.”

Dazai let the sentiment echo through the dark room, one of those mutual things nearly everyone in the world could agree on. But he didn’t. Hearing his own voice, vague and distant as it poured from his mouth, Dazai realized he didn’t believe himself.

“Why the puny tunes or whatever they’re called.”

“Looney Toons. I just said it. Does chibi need his ears checked?”

“I try not to listen too closely when you talk…” the room was dark but Dazai could still make out Chuuya’s face from the light of the T.V. He squinted his eyes and smacked his lips together dryly for a moment as he pieced the words together. 

Dazai waited patiently, mesmerized by these little expressions as time and reality slipstreamed around him.

“I just always pictured you as one of those shin-chan kids with the annoying little boy humor.”

“You pictured me mooning people as a kid?”

Chuuya’s nose wrinkled in disgust. “Is that what he does?”

“You never watched it? Ah, of course not. Chuuya was too busy being a little rich girl.”

“I told you that in confidence." 

It was true, somewhat. Chuuya had gotten particularly drunk one night at karaoke and confessed to Dazai that his favorite song was Rich girl by Gwen Stefani, a confession he followed with numerous death threats was Dazai to ever play it.

The real confession was one that came later in the night, that Chuuya had been dumpster diving when he found an abandoned ipod around the age of nine. It was completely intact but only had one song downloaded on it. Rich girl by Gwen Stefani.

He and his friend Yuan learned all the lines despite them being in English and would collect scraps of old clothes to put on fashion shows for each other.

Dazai had not and would never let that go, especially after convincing Chuuya to do his “rich girl impression” that one time.

Although, Chuuya had somewhat of a point. He had told Dazai a secret and Dazai had not repaid him, yet.

“When I was a kid, we had a huge collection of the Looney Tunes on VHS tape. I watched them nearly every day.”

“Oh..”

“Not what you expected?”

“I always assumed you grew up in an orphanage.”

“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”

“Cryptic motherfucker.”

Maybe Dazai didn’t mind being sick so much because, somehow, Chuuya was always there.

Chapter Text

“Careful.”

“Right. Cuz I might fall. How awful that would be.” Dazai responded sarcastically with a roll of his eyes so dramatic and over exaggerated it might as well have had a voice of its own.

Stop being stupid. It’s unattractive, Chuuya. What girl would want to marry such a nag, It said.

Chuuya should’ve hit him. Instead he just watched as Dazai climbed further up on the metal bars of the gate, the only thing separating them from the rushing river beneath them. He perched on the edge of it like a bird.

Chuuya jumped, landing on the edge with his foot before sitting next to Dazai.

“Chuuya is the one who should be careful. If I had grabbed your ankle just then, you would’ve fallen.”

“Yeah and I would’ve dragged you in with me.”

“I didn’t know Chuuya was a romantic.”

“Shut up. I’m about the furthest thing from romantic.”

Dazai just hummed in response, likely too focused on picking whatever snarky response he wanted to say before the conversation could flow in another direction.

“Chuuya is the last person I’d want to die with anyway. He would ruin the whole atmosphere.”

There it was.

Chuuya looked down at the rushing water beneath them and felt his hands tighten against the bar. It wasn’t quite fear. It was something deeper, a biologically known hesitance.

That will kill you, it said despite rationality. Chuuya knew he could catch himself before the water touched him. He knew he could float himself to the top even if it did. Even in the aerated water, he could control the weight of the molecules, squeezing the gaps closed and pushing the air out until all the movement stopped.

It didn’t stop the sweat from springing up in the palms of his hand.

“You’d really jump in there?” He hadn’t meant to say it. Chuuya’s mouth was always running off ahead of him like that. Kouyou had told him time and time again over the past 3 months that it was something he would have to work on.

Dazai looked down at the torrent and shrugged dispassionately.

“It wouldn’t be my first choice. But if fate saw fit that I were to slip..” as though to illustrate this, he tipped forward slightly, grip loosening on the bar. Chuuya felt himself jump, reaching out to catch him with the same sort of irrational impulse that had told him earlier to hold tight.

Dazai tipped back to safety and laughed. It wasn’t his genuine laugh, though it wasn’t ingenuine, the cold crackling sound he reserved for enemies. It was just air rolling over on itself, emotionless. It was like the wind was attempting to mimic human noise.

“Chuuya would really follow me in?”

“No. Shut up. Don’t be stupid.”

Dazai chose not to dig into that and Chuuya was grateful for a moment before remembering he was never grateful for Dazai.

“Is Chuuya scared of the water?”

“Of the water? No.”

“But your hands are sweating right now.”

Chuuya ripped his hand off the bar to rub it against the fabric of his pants. He remembered he was wearing expensive slacks and paused. Kouyou was going to kill him. He loved having nice clothes but old habits died hard.

“Quit being creepy!”

“Is it creepy if I’m right?”

“It’s creepier because you’re right.”

Dazai paused for a minute, looking at the sky in thought before pounding a fist against his open palm. “I suppose you’re right.”

Chuuya couldn’t revel in the success. He was watching Dazai who had let go of the bar completely to make that gesture.

Brown eyes landed on him and softened.

“I’m not going to jump in.”

“I didn’t say you would.”

“Then quit looking at me like I’m going to.”

“You really don’t feel anything? No vertigo? No pulse racing? Nothing that tells you not to jump in there?”

“Now that you mention it… I do. There’s this annoying little gnat buzzing around me that keeps telling me to be careful.”

Chuuya punched him in the shoulder and then buried his fist in the fabric of his jacket as the motion made Dazai’s torso lean dangerously. Dazai sighed. He took Chuuya’s hand from his shoulder and pressed it over his chest.

“Do you feel my heartbeat?”

Chuuya tried to swallow but his mouth had gone suddenly dry.

“Yeah.”

“Feel like it's racing to you?”

Chuuya tried to focus. If he was being honest he had never really thought about Dazai’s heartbeat. Still, the live, warm thing under his hand was…unexpected.

Dazai’s pulse thrummed like a drum beat steady and terribly loud in his head. Not that that meant anything in their current situation. Chuuya wasn’t a doctor. He didn't know how a heart was supposed to sound.

But Dazai was looking at him, eyes determined in the same way they always were when he was counting on Chuuya to pick up on something unspoken. The sun was setting behind him and it gave the horribly, sickening illusion that they were glowing.

Chuuya closed his eyes and focused on his own heart beat. He found it there, fluttering in his chest. One, two, three until he could hear both beats laid over each other, slowly aligning themselves.

He pulled his hand back.

“Yeah. I get it. You’re fine.”

“I used to be afraid of heights.”

The admission ran through Chuuya like a shiver. It was probably just the temperature dropping with the sun.

“Used to be?”

“It was awful.” Dazai turned back to look at the water, theatrical whimsy back on in full force, but his eyes had gone soft, strange and far away.

“I used to feel my heart race so fast it hurt. My hands would sweat. One time, I looked over the edge of a cliff and I just dropped to the ground in a ball. My legs wouldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t walk.”

Chuuya couldn’t actually picture it. He had never seen Dazai look so much as hesitant. The image of him genuinely terrified was impossible to conjure. Of course, Dazai had faked terror such as that to distract people before, but it was always theatrical. Chuuya had the oddest feeling that Dazai’s true terror would be quiet.

He couldn’t picture a face but he could picture that, silent, consuming terror.

“What happened?” His voice came out quiet, almost a whisper.

Dazai blinked and looked at him, looking all at once childish and then blank.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Dazai rocked for a moment, tipping himself forward and back in a way that made Chuuya want to smack him, or tear him down, or maybe just grab him and hold him and tell him to stop. Please, stop moving.

“One day, I was looking out the window of a high rise building and I didn’t feel anything at all.”

Chuuya looked away. The sun had gone down and, in the distance, he could see street lights flickering on.

“We should go. Mori’s going to want a report on today’s mission.”

Dazai pouted and jumped down after him.

“Ah! I just remembered! My wrist! Ooh. Ow.” He groaned, grabbing at the limb dramatically. “I hurt it really bad earlier. Probably can’t write. I might need a cast. Ah.” 

He wasn’t even trying to sound genuine. He kept pausing and glancing over at Chuuya looking for a reaction.

“I’ll message the boss and tell him you volunteered to do it verbally.”

“No. Please. Chuuya is so cruel to me.”