Chapter Text
III - it hurts and it hurts and it hurts
“A seizure?” Mori asked, upon leading the two into his private medical chamber.
“Something like that,” Oda replied, “I thought he was having a panic attack since he’s had those before but…” he trailed off, looking at the frail, collapsed figure that lay on the table before him, “this was different. He froze then collapsed. I brought him to my car and when I put him in the seat he started convulsing.”
“Hm.” Mori nodded, mouth in a tight frown as he looked the boy up and down, dissecting him with scarlet eyes. Odasaku felt guilty as Mori ripped off his clothing, without a shred of respect to what Dazai would have wanted. Of course he recognized Mori as a medical professional, but knowing just a sliver of the things that happened behind closed doors, the eagerness in the older man’s movements felt offensive. A mockery. Look what I can do? Look who has all the power?
Look who will never let him be free?
“He isn’t eating,” Mori stated with irreverence that accompanied a sly grin. Oda said nothing, his silence only confirming the accusation. “He’s emaciated. What a bother.”
Odasaku froze in his place, forcibly keeping a practiced, blank face.
Unwilling to concede to Mori’s manipulative antics.
“Even his resilient body can’t handle it,” Mori continued, “truthfully I’ve never seen him this far gone.”
“What do you mean?” Odasaku asked, solicitude drowned in his attempts at masking emotions.
Mori considered his reply. Had it been Chuuya asking, the boss would have kicked him out before entering the chamber. Alternatively, Oda was an advantageous from all angles.
His ability to predict what to come was more than mere convenience. An irrefutable back-up plan, should Dazai awake and stir trouble.
“He always complains about wanting a painless suicide. Starvation seems torturous,” Oda eyed his friend’s pale, weak body as his chest crept slowly up and down. Despite stripping him almost entirely, save for his undergarments and bandages, Mori made no move to procure a treatment, simply staring with an uncanny glint in his eyes.
Though the seizure, or whatever that bizarre physical experience was, had subsided, Dazai yet to awake. Mori was unconcerned, “knowing Dazai-kun, this is simply part of a larger scheme. Malnutrition weakens every aspect of the body, increasing the success rate of most suicide attempts. That is, assuming his anorexia doesn’t kill him first. It’s his very own fail-safe.”
Dazai, anorexic?
Oda didn’t like the feelings that fluttered at the thought. Guilt mingled with anxiety, the conversation from the previous night flashing in his mind:
Long-term bad habits have long-term consequences and I expect that would add up to more pain than they’re worth.
I suppose you’re right. Which is why I should mix them…that would increase the probability…
He had thought it was a weird thing to say, but Dazai was just being Dazai, wasn’t he?
Culpability wracked his conscience. Since when was “Dazai just being Dazai” healthy or safe? His best friend had never been known for his self-compassionate choices.
Oda’s silence wavered, like a flag hung at half-staff, picked a part by the vindicative red of prying eyes and ill intention.
“Do you have any idea when Dazai-kun’s little plan started?” Mori asked, malice seeping conspicuously through an otherwise endearing tone.
Oda wanted to lie.
To refuse any further information, regardless of consequences. To expose Dazai’s personal life would be a cruel manifestation of betrayal. And yet.
Yet…
He understood the grisly reality that came when causing trouble for the boss of an organization such as the Port Mafia.
Of course, he was not so naïve as to believe the doctor had Dazai’s best intentions in mind. But, he was a doctor. One who knew Dazai intimately.
Intimately.
A gross, hot shame stuck in the back of Oda’s mind, the sheer anxiety of perpetuating a problem and giving Mori exactly what he wanted even under the guise of protection. The guise of safety.
Of doing the right thing.
He wanted to do the right thing.
What even was that? And who was Oda, but a once-assassin, to determine the “right” way to help a friend?
Mori continued like a predator playing with its pray, “You and Dazai-kun seem to be quite close. I assume you prefer having him in your life more alive than dead? And he you?”
Oda sighed, a verdict made sans choice.
“He mentioned something a few weeks ago that was concerning.”
Oh. No. I don’t do that anymore.
Don’t do what?
Sleep! I stopped a few weeks ago. Along with some other things.
“Odasaku-kun,” Mori addressed him with a loving lilt.
“I have a mission for you.”
To call it a “mission” was a stretch. Uneventful, nearly boring at that.
Though, Odasaku supposed it’s not every day one is paid an exuberant amount of money to go grocery shopping for the Port Mafia’s youngest, most threatening executive.
A “dissociative seizure” is what Mori called it.
“We can’t be entirely sure since he wasn’t hooked up to an EEG, but I’ve tested him for epilepsy in the past and the results were negative.”
“Is it dangerous?” Oda questioned, biting his tongue to stop external anxious tells from appearing.
“No, not really. So long as they don’t last too long and he’s doesn’t hit his head, it’s not a threat to his overall health. But, given his position here, we can’t be too careful.”
The penthouse glimmered in the sun, shimmery with a sheen that only came from unused newness. Though the penthouse had belonged to Dazai since the time of his promotion, for reasons unknown the young executive avoided the place as if it were a scorching ring in Dante’s inferno.
Oda had disarmed bombs, saved mafia personnel, and ran many a life-threatening errand for the Port Mafia, yet filling Dazai’s brand-new, empty refrigerator paid more than half those jobs combined.
Dazai’s sudden yet not-so-sudden illness had knocked the young executive out of commission for the week, though unsurprisingly he bounced back with a vengeance.
On waking, Dazai’s first order of business was to wreak absolute havoc.
In a matter of minutes, Mori’s private infirmary was dismantled beyond recognition.
Of course, the destruction akin to the wrath of a tsunami occurred during the five minutes that Oda had entered the bathroom adjacent to the sick be. The entire interaction was timed with scary precision, as Dazai waited exactly 7 seconds after hearing Oda begin to pee, so the older man wouldn’t be able to predict his moves until his position was compromised.
Dazai soundlessly ripped his feeding tube, destroyed his IV, and hacked into all of Mori’s camera and audio surveillance, dubiously redirecting the traffic.
Ignoring the blood trailing down his forearm, he raided the medicine cabinets, silently cursing their abundant emptiness.
As planned, Oda’s ability didn’t detect the calamity until it was too late.
“Shit,” he cursed to himself. Swinging the door open to see his vision of Dazai collapsed and bloody appear in real-time.
Though it felt wrong, Oda was secretly thankful that Dazai’s resiliency only went so far. Following his tantrum, his sickly frame could barely stand nonetheless protest as Odasaku began to patch him up.
Once Mori arrived and the mess was cleaned to the best of their abilities, Oda was sent out to complete his errands and Dazai’s penthouse suite was prepared.
Hours later, Dazai was fast asleep in his technically already-owned, but brand-new bed, snuggled in layers upon layers of blankets, with a fully stocked kitchen and medicine cabinets as bare as a child’s empty piggy bank. Oda sat tiredly at his side, reading the one book he always had on-hand. Despite incriminating exhaustion, Oda was thankful to be tasked with being Dazai’s temporary caretaker, even if only for the next 48-hours.
“To ensure he stabilizes,” is how Mori put it.
After all, he had more than his fair share of experience caring for the suicidal boy, even when the younger was consumed by mania. Had any other errand-boy of the mafia been assigned to such a task, Dazai would have quickly showed off his well-deserved title as the Port Mafia’s youngest executive and Demon Prodigy.
Oda sighed, reading page 36 for the third time in five minutes.
“I know you’re awake. No use trying to hide it. I’m not even allowed to use the bathroom without requesting backup.” We’ve learned from that mistake, is what he left unsaid.
At that, an unbandaged eye peeled open. Snaking into a seated position, Dazai studied his surroundings. Instinctually, Oda knew Dazai had been up for quite a while, but forgo bringing it up.
“How are you feeling?” Oda asked, on principle. He knew the answer would be a lie.
Except it wasn’t.
“Happy.”
Silence spread, blood hitting water.
“Dazai…”
“Odasaku,” his dark eye sparkled, “it’s working.”
His heart lurched.
“Dazai, you need to eat.”
The boy smiled, his sardonic gaze glaring into his lap, “I can’t stop now.”
“Really, you need—"
“I’m so close! I can taste it,” Dazai paused, chuckling, “Exclusively metaphorical, of course.”
Knuckles turned white from the clenched grip he didn’t realize he was holding. Oda cautiously exhaled and consciously forced an inhale. Repeating the motions, he stood slowly.
“I’m making dinner. What are you hungry for?” Dazai refused to look up. Oda shook his head, feeling waves of something he couldn’t quite describe.
Anger? Disappointment? Guilt?
Crab simmered next to him as he spent the next several minutes trying to figure it out. Dazai could have taken this opportunity to do something irreversible, but tired tugged on his limbs and he didn’t have the heart to fight back. Dizzily, he sat up and held his head in his hands.
With Odasaku, he could smell the sweet-scented fruits of his labors.
On his own, he realized just how awful he felt.
Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
The hole in his chest was back, deeper and darker than ever. It whispered, an ASMR of self-neglect and loathing.
Hurting and aching and filling him with scream upon shriek upon suffocative cries that spoke only of his worthlessness.
These thoughts were by no means new, only amplified with ardent adversary.
He’d been used to the dark thoughts that lived within his cavernous mind, and they fueled him as a plan began taking shape.
A plan to finish what he started.
A plan to make the hunger permanent.
A plan to top being such a burden to Odasaku.
A plan to—
The sounds of footsteps brought him back from dangerous teetering on the outskirts of reality, to the present. The scent of homemade crab filled the air. The warmth of plush, silk blankets, the sunset in hues of pink and coral, beauty that accompanied newness, it invaded. Enveloped him.
Enjoying it all was contradictory to his nature.
No, he missed his shipping container.
Odasaku strolled in with two plates of food. Abiding Mori’s orders, he served Dazai a plate with a small, child-size portion, careful not to upset his stomach if he were to miraculously eat it all.
Wordlessly, he gifted the plate to Dazai, who accepted it without protest.
They both looked down at their respective dishes.
Oda began to pick at his food with his chopsticks, uncertain if and what he should say if he did.
Dazai and his food stared in tandem, and for the briefest of moments, his mind and body yearned, wanting nothing more than to take even the smallest of bites.
He was so hungry.
But the more he thought about it, the more this inexplicable bubbled welled up inside.
As if paralyzed, unmoving, unable to move, unable to process what was around him, unable to control his limbs
As if he were back on Mori’s drugs
The ones that removed all autonomy
As if he was spasming like the seizure
As if his mind couldn’t talk to his fingers
As if he was no longer in control
And he began to wonder again
For the second or third or fifteenth time that day, that week
Who was in control?
Was he winning yet?
He was still alive. He was in pain, in so much pain. Alive and in pain, in pain and alive.
Odasaku finished his food and looked up at Dazai, about to speak.
There was a scream, louder and sharper than Odasaku had ever expected.
A cry sadder and angrier and uglier than Dazai intended.
The breaking of a plate being smashed against pristine, white wooden floors.
The scent of spilled noodles and crab and sadness and guilt and defeat and fury and defeat and anger and defeat and defeat and defeat and—
And he was playing the one game he could not win.
Dazai could not win.
And it made him seethe. Made him agonize.
Inflicted a cruel chaos in his already uncontrollable, insufferable trap of a mind.
Self-hatred was all that remained as the dark-haired boy with the empty dark eyes cleaned up the mess he had made.
As he waved Oda’s help away and swept diligently. As he went to the kitchen and prepared a new plate with a new child-size portion. As he sat silently at the kitchen counter, chopsticks in hand and determination in his throat.
As he took a single bite and fought for that feeling, that spark of control he once wielded as the most voracious weapon.
He held back vomit, swallowing one bite after another until his child-size portion was nearly diminished.
He held back vomit, as Odasaku came and took the plate away, washing it gingerly.
He held back vomit, as his best friend came and pulled him into a hug tighter than he deserved.
He held back his thank you as his mind played tricks and laughed at his weakness.
Held back the urge to slam his head against the wall.
Held back his need to break all the brittle bones in his body.
Held back the need to break out of his skin and rip the world to shreds.
To rip his world to shreds.
To scream words he didn’t mean.
To lose himself in a miserable misery.
He let himself be held, and for a ghost of a moment, that was enough.
The ADA was dark, as winter called for an early evening. Most of the agency members were preparing to leave, head out for the relaxing weekend that awaited.
Four years out of the Mafia, and Dazai was still confused by the concept of weekends. Back then, crime never took a break, so neither did he.
He was crime, after all, in its youngest and most devious form.
But he was a lot of things, and crime was only one of them. He knew that now, in a way his younger self never could, in a way the Port Mafia never allowed.
“Dazai-san! Are you coming to dinner?” The delicate voice of his secretly cherished colleague broke his philosophical reverie.
“Hmmm?” Dazai replied, forgetting the question instantaneously.
“Dinner!” Atsushi repeated nervously, “We were thinking of all going out to eat and I wanted to invite you.” Dazai smiled his prized, plastic smile, so fake it could melt in the sun.
“Thank you Atsushi-kun, how kind of you!” For longer than he cared, he hesitated. Not long enough to be noticed by anyone but perhaps Atsushi, who could not conceal the anxious glean entering his eyes. “I’m not really hungry and I have to finish setting up an elaborate prank on Kunikida, so I’ll have to pass. I do appreciate the offer though~”
Atsushi’s expression was a nervous one.
“Uh, Dazai-san?” He asked softly, as if spoken any louder, his words might cause physical damage to the man in front of him, “I noticed you didn’t have lunch today.”
Dazai blinked.
“…again.”
“Oh.”
Inhale, exhale, screams filled his mind but nowhere else.
“I...” he hesitated. Then, “I suppose my plans could wait a bit.”
Atsushi nodded enthusiastically. Dazai hid behind his most dependable mask, ignoring how much it hurt.
How much the entire situation still hurt.
“Atsushi-kun?” He spoke, in a tone that mimicked the younger’s earlier tip-toeing.
“Yes, Dazai-san?”
Multicolored eyes looked up expectantly, only to be abandoned by Dazai’s dark ones, filled with unrecognizable sights.
“Nevermind,” is what he said.
Thank you, is what he meant.