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The image of bloody, dismembered bodies is still burned in Dazai’s brain when he opens his eyes with a gasp.
Instinctively, his hand drifts to the spot next to him in bed. He’d never say it out loud, lest his little slug gets a big head about it, but just knowing that Chuuya is right by his side always makes him feel better.
No such luck this time, however. The spot where Chuuya should be is empty, and judging by the noise Dazai can hear coming from the kitchen, he’s been up for a while.
He’d really like to go back to sleep, but if Chuuya is awake and almost ready to go, Dazai should probably start getting ready, too.
With a sigh, he gets out of bed.
Familiar arms wrap around Chuuya’s waist as he waits for his coffee to be done, and he instantly melts into the chest behind him.
He closes his eyes as he relaxes in Dazai’s hold, and he’s so content that he pretends not to hear the laugh that his asshole of a boyfriend unsuccessfully tries to hide. They’re having such a lovely morning, why ruin it with their usual bullshit?
“Someone’s quiet today,” Dazai observes. Chuuya hums. “Unusual for a hyperactive doggy like you.”
“I’m in a good mood,” Chuuya says without opening his eyes. “Don’t ruin it.”
Dazai leans down and drops a barely there kiss on Chuuya’s neck, just above the choker. Before he can stop himself, Chuuya tilts his head to expose more of his skin, and his boyfriend is happy to instantly shower him in slobbery kisses.
It’s not often that Chuuya lets Dazai have at it outside of the bedroom, since the dumbass always ends up going overboard, but he’s feeling generous today.
Predictably, Dazai isn’t satiated by kissing his neck for too long. Chuuya can feel one of those bandaged hands slowly make their descent down his abdomen and to the button of his pants, so he takes that hand and brings it back to its original position before it can do anything.
Even without looking at him, he knows that Dazai is pouting. He always does when he doesn’t get his way.
“Chuuya is cruel.”
“Chuuya doesn’t have time for a quickie,” he reasons, opening his eyes so he can look at his boyfriend, who is, in fact, pouting. “I don’t wanna be late.”
“Boo!”
The coffee maker makes a beeping sound to announce the coffee is done, and Chuuya shoves Dazai’s arms away to pour some of it into his thermos.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Chuuya says, rolling his eyes. He takes a mug out of the cupboard and fills it with coffee, then hands it to Dazai. “You’ll see me tonight. You always do.”
“I wanna see Chuuya the whole day,” Dazai protests, unreasonable as ever. He blows on his coffee before he takes a sip of it, but he still burns his mouth, judging by the instant grimace.
“Well, too bad. I’ve got shit to do, and so do you.”
There’s a glint in Dazai’s eye. Chuuya doesn’t trust it.
“I could-”
“You’re not assigning any of your responsibilities to any of your subordinates just so you can stalk me the whole day, you fucking creep. You’re an executive now, act like it.”
“Why is Chuuya so mean to me?”
Chuuya has issues, he knows. He sees this weirdo pout at him, and his heart immediately clenches, desperate for a way to fix whatever made him so upset, even if he knows that it’s an act and this asshole is just trying to get him to agree to his bullshit.
He’s not in the mood to have Dazai follow him around the whole day, but he can extend an olive branch.
He wraps his arms around Dazai’s neck, and bandaged hands find their way to his hips automatically. It’s not the first time that Chuuya has to trick his boyfriend into being a responsible executive, and it won’t be the last.
“If you do your job I’ll wear that outfit you bought me, how does that sound?”
Dazai inhales sharply. Chuuya already regrets extending such a generous offer, but he knows that some sacrifices have to be made during negotiations.
“With the headpiece and all?”
“Yes, pervert. The whole deal.”
A big smile breaks on Dazai’s face, and he kisses Chuuya’s lips before he can take any of it back. “Okay!”
“Great. I’ll see you later, idiot.”
“Bye, slug!”
Most of the men who will be joining Chuuya on the mission leave the room once the briefing is over, but a few remain behind to go over some details, or simply to chat.
Chuuya walks out to the hallway with them, talking about the weapons at their disposal and potential plans after the mission. Some of the men are talking about a bar near the bay, and while it does sound like fun, Chuuya has plans.
Some very embarrassing, very lacy plans, but they’re plans all the same, and he knows that Dazai won’t be too happy if Chuuya ditched him to go to a bar instead.
“Chuuya-san!”
The men around him freeze for a brief second before they’re essentially jumping out of the way so none of them are near Q as they walk up to Chuuya.
He’d find their reactions funny if they were at least subtle with it, but as it is, even Q recognizes what they’re doing, and judging by the way their expression falls ever so slightly, it upsets them.
Chuuya wants to lecture them about it, about how they may not be able to help being afraid of Q’s power, but they could at least play it off a little bit. For now, he keeps quiet. He doesn’t want to get into it or think too much about why seeing people react to a little kid like they’re a monster feels so personal.
Besides, while he may not like it, he understands people’s caution where Q’s ability is concerned. He knows that mind control is a dreadful thing, and Q’s unpredictability only makes people fear it more.
Trying to reason with something as irrational as fear is pointless.
“Yumeno, hi,” he greets, offering a smile to the kid glancing up at him with their doll clutched tightly against their chest.
It doesn’t look like Mori or Dazai are with them as usual, but Chuuya assumes they must be nearby. They never let Q out of their sight; not out of some sort of affection, but as a precaution.
“Wanna play with me?”
Chuuya winces, because as much as he tries to make some time to play with Q –or even Elise– when they ask him to, he really can’t do it right now. This mission will only be a success if he can get it done in record time.
“Can’t right now, buddy,” he says. He feels overwhelmingly guilty when the grin on Q’s face fades into a sad frown, but he forces himself not to backtrack. “I’ll tell you what, we can play for as long as you want when I’m back from my mission, how’s that sound?”
Chuuya’s spreading himself thin with all these promises today, he knows. He also knows that both Dazai and Q are whiny toddlers who won’t hesitate to throw a fit if they don’t get their play time, so he has to give them something to work with.
While they’re evidently not thrilled by Chuuya’s offer, Q nods.
Then, they step closer to Chuuya and hug him. It’s not the first time that Q initiates any sort of physical contact, so he doesn’t think anything of it and pats the kid’s head.
Just as quickly as they’d hugged him, Q steps back and waves at him, smiling like nothing happened.
“Bye-bye, Chuuya-san!”
“Bye, kid.”
Chuuya turns around and begins heading out, immediately followed by his subordinates.
He was so caught in his own mind he didn’t notice the blood seeping through Q’s sleeve as they waved, much less the empty look in their eyes.
The mission is nothing too complicated, but it is elaborate.
Mori got word that there was an organization trying to gain terrain in Yokohama, and while they make a name for themselves, they’re occupying abandoned buildings around the edges of the city.
Chuuya may not be an executive yet, but that promotion is clearly coming soon, and this operation is a test.
A test involving an enemy organization with a handful of powerful ability users in their ranks, and nearly two hundred Mafia goons willing to follow Chuuya’s command. No pressure.
It’s fine. He knows he can handle it.
Besides, it can’t possibly be that hard, or Mori would’ve assigned this mission to Double Black, not just Chuuya. He does like showing off his weapons every once in a while, though, to be fair, he’s toned it down since Dazai became an executive.
Chuuya has to hand it to these people; they chose a good place to lay low. This entire area is full of abandoned warehouses, factories and shipping docks. If you don’t know where to look, you’ll have to check out every abandoned building around, and it would definitely give the rats enough time to run and hide.
Unfortunately for these particular rats, Chuuya knows where to look.
His men are all stationed in the area, hiding between buildings and under abandoned cars with machine guns in their arms. It’s not fully dark out yet, but that’s part of the plan.
Anyone would expect an attack in the dark; it’s such a safe approach it has become predictable.
The Mafia doesn’t need safety, but their enemies certainly do.
Chuuya takes a deep breath. He reaches for his intercom, but before he makes any commands, he pauses. In front of him, in the sliver between two buildings, he can see the warehouse where the enemy is. Nothing seems amiss. They don’t suspect a thing.
“Now.”
His men come out of their hiding spots to barge into the warehouse.
Dazai whistles happily as the elevator goes up to Mori’s floor.
His day has been more of the same: meetings, plans, executions. All very boring, yes, but knowing that he’ll have a very interesting night makes it all worth it in his book.
Whenever he starts getting bored of his job for the day, all it takes is the mental image of Chuuya in the cheap maid outfit he bought on a whim for him to pick up his slack.
If Chuuya offered incentives like that more often, Dazai would be Boss by now.
Speaking of, the elevator doors open, and Dazai has to consciously wipe the dopey grin off his face before he steps out to face the guards outside of Mori’s office.
Used to seeing him around, the guards immediately step aside and let him walk in.
“You know, I’m a very busy man,” Dazai says, fixing the coat over his shoulders as the guards close the door behind him. “This better be-”
“You didn’t happen to see Q on your way up, did you?”
Dazai’s eye grows wide as he takes Mori in.
The Boss is standing in the middle of the room, like he’d been pacing around before Dazai showed up, and contrary to his usual, pristine appearance, some of his hair is out of place and his tie is loose. He’s the very picture of a man in a crisis.
“You lost Q?” Dazai asks. It takes a gigantic effort for him to stop any panic from leaking into his voice, but even so, he knows that Mori hears it.
He’s afraid of Q’s power, too, after all.
“I doubt they went too far,” Mori replies, as if that was the main concern. “They’re young, and they’ve never gone outside without supervision.”
“Even if Q was just outside the building, they’re dangerous,” he points out. Mori stays quiet, which is as close as Dazai will get to having him admit that he’s right. “How long have they been gone?”
“Around three hours. I noticed a little after-”
“After Chuuya left for his mission.”
A line appears between Mori’s eyebrows, and Dazai knows that both of them are thinking the same thing.
Dazai turns around and leaves Mori’s office as quickly as he’d come in. As if it wasn’t already obvious, the lack of complaints about insubordination from the Boss is telling enough: if they’re right, Chuuya and his subordinates are in danger.
Unfortunately for them, they’re always right.
Chuuya walks around the warehouse to make sure they’ve not missed anyone, and once that’s taken care of, he steps outside.
His men linger in the street, chatting among themselves as they smoke some well deserved cigarettes. Now that he’s seeing them smoke, all relaxed and content after a job well done, he really wants a cigarette, too.
He reaches for the packet inside his pocket, but a noise makes him freeze.
Is someone laughing?
Seeing that something’s bothering him, one of his subordinates throws the remainder of his cigarette on the floor and approaches him.
“Is something wrong, Chuuya-san?”
“I thought I heard something,” he explains. “Wait here.”
Chuuya walks back inside the warehouse, eyes wide and alert. The smell of gunpowder and blood is thick in the air, and after being outside for a bit, it’s nauseating, but he ignores it as best as he can to take another look around.
The old stairs creak under his feet as he goes to the second floor, avoiding the corpses on the way.
Seeing nothing different from his first stroll around, he goes up to the third floor.
He’s checking under one of the desks when the sound of the stairs creaking alerts him, and he turns around to see the same man who’d talked to him before standing there.
“Go back outside,” he commands. “Relax. You earned it. I’ll take care of this.”
He turns back to the desk, but the sound of a gun’s safe being removed makes him glance towards the subordinate instantly.
How did this turn into a gun being pointed at his head?
“You brought us here to die, Chuuya-san,” the man accuses.
“What are you talking about? Mission’s over, no casualties,” he argues, genuinely lost. He didn’t see any Mafiosos on the ground or any body bags outside; he really has no idea where this man’s anger is coming from. “If you got an issue with the mission, why didn’t you say anything before?”
“You brought us here to die!”
The man pulls the trigger, but Chuuya easily stops the bullet with his ability. He lets it drop to the floor, among the pieces of wood that the enemies tried to use as shields and the bloodied guns that these amateur criminals never got to shoot.
“What are you doing?” Chuuya asks, more confused than anything else, because before he walked back into the warehouse, it looked like everything was fine.
He takes a step closer to the man still pointing the gun at him.
It’s so dark Chuuya can barely see the man’s face, but he swears that it looks like there’s blood dripping down his eyes, and he finally gets it.
He’d never seen Q’s ability in action before, but Dazai told him about it: the trigger, the doll, the mark on people’s neck and the blood in their eyes.
Chuuya doesn’t think that any of his men ever got close enough to touch, much less hurt Q when they were talking to him in the hallway, but he can’t focus on that while his people are in danger.
He reaches for his phone to call Dazai, but as his fingers wrap around it, he hears more steps rushing up the stairs.
A dozen of his men appear, all of them with the same blood-rimmed eyes and guns in hand. Chuuya scowls. Even if he was a real danger for them, shooting at him would be a really stupid strategy. He’s bulletproof, what are they trying to achieve here?
Just as the thought crosses his mind, the guns pointed at him change direction: they all point to the column holding up the ceiling. Chuuya braces himself.
The sound of over a dozen guns going off at the same time is deafening, but it’s nothing to the loud, booming, damning sound of the structure breaking apart and bringing the ceiling down with itself.
Chuuya holds up the bricks and metal raining down on his subordinates and him with his ability.
He glances at his men to make sure that all of them are safe, only to find them scrambling down the stairs.
Making sure to drop the debris away from him and his path, he follows after them. He’d much rather have them try to kill him again and again than letting them go on a rampage in the city.
They don’t keep shooting as they make their descent back to the ground floor, and Chuuya wonders what their play could be. If they’re not trying to bury him under the rubble anymore, what are they trying to do?
As soon as he takes a step outside a car passes by right in front of him, going so fast it may as well have been flying.
And because this mission is a bad joke and his subordinates can’t seem to calm down, he hears steps coming up behind him. When he turns around, he sees one of his subordinates with a knife in hand. He frowns.
“Come on, you don’t wanna do this,” he tries, even if he knows that it’s pointless.
It really feels like a huge, cruel cosmic joke that he’s, once again, being attacked by the people he’s been fighting to protect for years. It may be because of a mind control ability this time, but he always ends up in this position no matter what he does, uh?
The sound of a car engine starting brings him back to the present.
When he turns to the noise, he sees that all of his men have jumped inside the vehicles and are making their way back into the city. The alarm bells that have been going off in his mind since he realized what was happening inside the warehouse only grow louder.
Chuuya tries to take off to get ahead of the cars and put some sort of obstacle in front of them, but a sharp pain in his middle makes him stop before he can take a single step forward.
Glancing down, he sees the sharp end of a knife coming out of his abdomen.
When he looks over his shoulder, he sees his subordinate standing right behind him, face blank of all emotion as he twists the knife in Chuuya’s body.
Chuuya closes his eyes, and sends the man away with his ability. He tries not to be too harsh, afraid to injure someone who can’t control their actions, but he really has no time to waste on a knife fight.
When he opens his eyes, he’s completely alone in the street in front of the warehouse, and he immediately takes off to follow the cars full of brainwashed, armed mafiosos.
As he runs, he watches the headlights grow smaller and smaller as they get further away, and he realizes, as his heart sinks down to his stomach, that he can’t stop them with the base level of his ability alone.
Truth be told, he’d much rather not turn to his last resort, but what choice does he have if the alternative is letting a brainwashed horde wreak havoc in Yokohama.
He stops running. Then, he takes his gloves off and throws them to the ground, along with his hat and his coat.
“Oh grantors of dark disgrace…”
Zou-no-hana park is mostly empty now that it’s dark out. The fact that it’s so windy, being directly by the sea, also helps.
It means that there are no civilians around, hence, no one can make a fuss about a bunch of armored vehicles showing up, much less about the dozens of men in suits that come out of said cars holding weapons.
As soon as Dazai steps out into the street he can hear it: the hellish laughter coming from Q’s creepy doll. It sounds like it’s coming from every corner of the park, but also like it’s all inside Dazai’s head. It’s driving him insane.
He runs around the park until finally, he spots what looks like that horrendous doll hiding under the blue elephant that kids always fight to climb on during the day.
For the first time since Mori forced him to babysit Q every other day, Dazai is glad that he’s always stuck looking after the damn kid, because at least it helped him guess where Q could’ve gone after their escape.
Really, he thought that Q may have learned a thing or two from him after three years under his wing. Going straight to the one place you always beg to go to when you’re allowed to step outside? It’s stupid. Q was basically begging him to find them.
Dazai runs to grab the doll and takes it in his hands, despite the irrational urge to shoot it a few times just to be petty before making it disappear. Chuuya’s safety is more important than pettiness, he knows, but the idea is tempting.
The doll disappears between his fingers, but he knows that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
If Chuuya was affected by Q’s ability, it’s safe to assume that the hallucinations backed him into a corner to the point that he believed that Corruption was the only way out, and if that’s the case then he really doesn’t have much time.
Dazai stands up, ready to run to a car and make his way to Chuuya as quickly as possible.
“Hey!”
Out the corner of his eye, Dazai sees Q scowling up at him, pissed that he showed up and put a stop to their fucked up ability. This monster has always loved their creepy doll too much.
His subordinates point their guns at Q in an instant, and while he knows he should tell them to step back, seeing the kid make themselves smaller under the threat is very satisfying.
“You know you’re not supposed to use your ability against the Mafia,” Dazai says, barely managing to keep his voice even. He’s so furious he really wishes he could shoot the kid dead right then and there, but he knows that Mori would not appreciate it.
He may shoot them later, though. He’ll decide if he wants to deal with a bitch fit from Mori or not when he finds Chuuya.
“But I was bored,” Q argues, like that justifies anything. “Mori didn’t let me play with Elise, and Chuuya-san said he was busy, but I really wanted to play with him-”
Dazai glances at his subordinates, all still pointing their guns to Q.
“Take them to Mori,” he says. His men all exchange glances, evidently hesitant to approach the psycho in front of them. Dazai huffs. “They can’t do anything without their doll, and I just took care of it. You’ll be fine. Now, go!”
The men start moving immediately, spurred on by Dazai’s command. He turns to one of the cars as they drag Q away.
“No, I wanna keep playing!” Q cries. “I don’t wanna go back, Dazai-san! Please, I just wanna play!”
Dazai gets into the driver’s seat, and when he closes the door, all noise from the street is muted, including Q’s cries and the booming footsteps from his men running around to get back into their own vehicles to head back to headquarters.
Inside the car, he can only hear his own erratic heartbeat and his loud breathing.
Chuuya will be fine. He has to be.
He’s forced to leave the car behind and continue the rest of his path to Chuuya on foot when he comes across roads blocked by debris and destroyed cars.
He jumps out of the car and glances around. He knows that his partner is nearby, he just can’t figure out the exact location he should be going to. This entire area used to be abandoned buildings, but it’s now all ruins and corpses.
It’s hard to pinpoint where a hurricane is if it keeps going around destroying everything in its way.
“Dazai-san!”
He turns to the voice calling out his name, and he sees one of Chuuya’s subordinates limping his way. The guy has clearly been beaten to hell and back, but the fact that he’s alive at all means that he’s one of the lucky ones.
Dazai runs the rest of the way to the man. The quicker he gets an answer, the better.
“Where is he?”
“I saw him that way,” the guy replies, pointing to a spot between some still-standing shipping docks with a shaky hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but Chuuya-san-”
“I do,” Dazai says. He’s not dumb, he knows that Q’s existence could be an advantage for the Mafia someday, but right now, he really wishes he could kill them. “Stay here. Some of our best doctors should be arriving soon.”
If the man replies, Dazai doesn’t hear it. He’s already running to Chuuya.
Even if he hadn’t run into one of the subordinates assigned to this mission, Dazai would’ve had no trouble finding the right way to Chuuya.
It’s obvious that he’s heading the right direction when he starts seeing wrecked cars and dismembered body parts on his path. The entire area may be eerily silent and deserted, but Dazai knows for a fact that Corruption didn’t magically turn off when he got rid of Q’s doll.
Unfortunately, he has to reach Chuuya to put an end to Corruption, and if Dazai can’t see or hear him –the unhinged laugh that never fails to escape his partner’s lips when he uses his full power, to be specific– it means that Chuuya is close to his limit.
It means that not even Corruption is enough to keep him going, and he’s hiding somewhere so he doesn’t have to keep fighting.
Dazai has to admit that the scene in front of him is not the easiest to stomach, even for him.
It’s not like he’s unfamiliar to the stench of blood, fire and dust, but it’s different when it’s his own people; or rather, when it’s Chuuya’s people, and he knows that his partner didn’t want to do this.
Q is responsible for every single corpse on the ground, for every head hanging from the exposed metal structures of the buildings all around, but he knows that Chuuya won’t see it like that, no matter how much Dazai tries to make him see things objectively.
Grief is never objective, and his boyfriend has the unfortunate, irrational habit of blaming himself for others’ cruelty.
After a while, Dazai pauses.
He’s standing in the middle of what he believes to be ground zero, judging by the craters in the ground, yet there’s no sign of Chuuya.
He’s about to turn around to search a different area when something between two half destroyed pillars catches his eye: a flash of red, duller than the blood staining the ground and the pieces of rubble scattered all around.
Chuuya’s hair is unmistakeable, even in a red sea.
Dazai takes cautious steps to the secluded corner of the ruins where his little slug is hiding, but he still makes sure to let his arrival be heard. He doesn’t want to startle Chuuya and cause himself –or his injured partner– any unnecessary pain.
He doesn’t speak until he’s only a couple of steps away; not because of any reason other than the fact that he wasn’t sure if Chuuya was still breathing until he got close enough to hear his painful wheezing.
His ribs must be broken, and his lungs are probably about to collapse. The worst part is that those are most likely not even the most urgent of his injuries.
Dazai shakes his head to stop catastrophising and forces himself to smile at Chuuya.
“Hi there,” he says. White, empty eyes stare at him without a hint of recognition. Chuuya’s body begins glowing red, as if to warn him to back off, even if he’s clearly in no state to fight. “That won’t be necessary. I’m not here to fight.”
Predictably, Chuuya doesn’t listen. He jumps up from the comfortable piece of rubble he’d been sitting on to attack Dazai.
It’s a true testament to his sheer exhaustion and all the pain he’s pushing through that he doesn’t even try to go the flashy route with one of those black-hole-spheres he loves throwing around when he’s in his Corrupted state.
Instead, he just shrieks as he pushes his body even more above its limit to throw a punch at Dazai.
A punch that he effortlessly stops with a touch of his finger.
As soon as his skin brushes against Chuuya’s knuckles, his blue irises appear in his eyes again, and the Corruption marks burning beneath the most superficial layers of skin disappear. His legs give up beneath him, but Dazai catches him before he can touch the ground.
He made sure to ask for medical assistance as soon as he started making his way here, so help should be arriving soon, but Dazai can’t stay still while he waits.
The marks may have disappeared, but they left Chuuya’s skin raw and tender like he just walked through a fire. There are open wounds everywhere, making blood soak through his clothes. His white shirt is completely red now, and Dazai doesn’t even want to think about what his torso may look like.
He kneels down, making sure to position Chuuya in a way that he can use Dazai’s legs as an improvised seat so he doesn’t have to touch the cold, dirty floor again.
He’s sure that his boyfriend wouldn’t mind, but he would.
Chuuya opens his mouth, no doubt wanting to ask one of a thousand questions popping up in his mind, but what comes out instead are garbled noises and a bone-chilling amount of blood.
Dazai makes sure not to let his face show the bone-chilling fear the image makes him feel as he wipes the fresh blood off Chuuya’s chin.
“Shhh, it’s okay, slug,” Dazai reassures him in a low voice. He sees Chuuya trying to glance around, and he hugs him closer so he can only see him, nothing else. He doesn’t need to see the wreckage that Q caused. “Help is on the way. You’ll be okay.”
Chuuya tries speaking again, but his body gives up before he can say a single word.
Dazai can only watch, with his blood running cold in horror, as Chuuya’s eyes roll to the back of his head an instant before he loses consciousness and his body goes lax in his arms.
He looks dead, being as pale and covered in blood as he is, and even though Dazai can feel his heart beating weakly under his hand, he has a hard time convincing himself that he isn’t holding the love of his life’s corpse.
Help arrived shortly after Chuuya lost consciousness, but Dazai has a hard time feeling relieved when his boyfriend looks much like the bodies left on the ground.
So when Chuuya’s been stabilized and he’s resting on one of the medical wing beds, Dazai excuses himself to pay Mori a small, friendly visit.
Contrary to their usual dance, the guards standing outside his office don’t look exactly willing to let Dazai walk into the room. They look nervous, and that’s confirmation enough for him to know that the person he’s looking for is behind the door.
He takes out his gun and shoots both of the guards.
As soon as they drop to the ground, he lets himself in Mori’s office.
And there they are…
Q, tied to one of Mori’s chairs. Thick ropes wrapped around their arms, legs and torso keep them pinned in place, while tape on their mouth makes sure not a sound escapes their lips. It’s unnecessary, which tells Dazai that he’s not the only one furious over what happened today.
The doll lays forgotten on the desk, like it wasn’t the trigger to all this and equally as dangerous as Q.
Mori is standing in front of Q, and he has two of his guards standing on either side of him. He doesn’t acknowledge Dazai’s presence at first, so he clears his throat to get everyone’s attention.
The two guards approach Dazai, mistakenly thinking that they can drag him out of the room.
He shoots both of them in the face, and their corpses fall to the ground with a loud, synchronised thud.
Mori sighs tiredly. “Was that really necessary?”
“Q got over a hundred men killed today,” Dazai says, pointing his gun at the kid. “They went against orders when they left the building, then again when they used their ability against our own. Kyuusaku Yumeno is a traitor, and they should be executed as one.”
Mori eyes him for a second, as if considering his words; as if there was anything to consider. Next, his eyes drift to Q, and he shakes his head.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Rage fires up inside Dazai. “You can’t let this go unpunished!”
“I won’t,” says Mori, calmly, as if he was talking to a child throwing a tantrum. “What happened today is unacceptable, but surely someone with a brilliant, strategic mind like you can see the downsides of getting rid of a weapon the likes of Kyuusaku Yumeno.”
“Keeping a weapon you can’t control is just asking for disaster,” Dazai argues.
“The same could be said about Nakahara Chuuya, don’t you think?”
Dazai’s heart stops for a second. Mori’s lips twist into a smirk, and when he looks away from Q, his eyes are cold. Calculating.
Neither of them have told him about the true nature of their relationship, but they know that he knows. There’s no hiding something like that from Mori, and it’s made obvious by the way he’s looking at Dazai right now.
Like he’s not above using Chuuya against him to get his way.
“Q’s ability wasn’t the one that killed all those men,” Mori reasons, calmly, “it was Corruption.”
“Only because-!”
“Technicalities can’t change the facts. Q’s ability doesn’t have the power to kill anyone, but Corruption does.” As he speaks, Mori walks closer to Dazai. When he’s right in front of him, he raises a hand and slowly pushes Dazai’s arm down until the gun is pointed at the ground instead of Q.
Nausea creeps up Dazai’s throat, but he swallows it down to fight Mori’s dumb argument.
“Chuuya wouldn’t have activated Corruption if he hadn’t thought the mission was compromised, and that was all Q’s ability.”
“Correct. Still, he wasn’t instructed to use Corruption, was he?” Mori asks. Dazai hates it when he plays dumb. “By your logic, that makes him a traitor. I should have him executed, isn’t that right?”
“You wouldn’t dare-!”
“Perhaps not,” Mori shrugs. “Are you willing to risk it?”
No, he isn’t, and both of them know it.
Dazai glares at Q, who’s been watching the exchange with wide, terrified eyes and tears rolling down their face. If they weren’t responsible for Chuuya’s critical status and the thousands of men returning to headquarters in bodybags, he would’ve almost felt bad for them.
Now, he only wishes he could kill them. At the very least, he wishes he never had to see them again. If Mori plans to continue their training as if nothing happened, Dazai can’t promise not to shoot them as soon as they’re alone with him.
An idea comes to mind.
“We can’t keep training them as we have so far. Clearly, it caused more harm than good,” he says. Mori frowns, intrigued. “You don’t want to kill them, fine, but letting them roam free is a mistake, and I think you know that.”
“What do you propose, then?”
“They can’t hurt anyone if no one hurts them and if we keep the doll away from them.” Dazai gestures at Q, tied to the chair like they tie all their prisoners. “Keeping them tied up is a good start, but I think something more drastic is needed.”
Mori hums, and Dazai knows that they’re finally on the same page.
“Solitary confinement?”
“And you keep the doll locked, too,” he adds, with a nod. “Somewhere no one but you can take it.”
Instead of replying, Mori turns around and begins walking away. Dazai expects him to go to Q, but he makes a beeline to his desk and sits on his chair. He has to stop himself from pushing for an answer or some clue about what the man is thinking, knowing that he can’t mess with Mori’s already thin patience.
“Okay, then,” Mori agrees, finally. Dazai could’ve collapsed from sheer relief. “Kyuusaku Yumeno will be locked until the Mafia needs their ability. Now, go. I’m sure there are other places you’d rather be.”
Dazai is out of the office in an instant. He knows it’s unlikely that Chuuya’s conscious already, but even so, he doesn’t want to risk him waking up all alone in the medical wing.
The hospital wing is still chaos when he returns, as expected.
Outside the makeshift walls surrounding Chuuya’s bed, Dazai can hear the nurses and doctors yelling out orders, heart-rate monitors going wild, hurried steps passing by all around him.
It’s been hours since the incident, and still, it sounds just like it did when the initial wave of injured mafiosos came in.
Even so, his attention remains on the book in his hands and the slow rise and fall of Chuuya’s chest, no matter how difficult it is to look at his boyfriend right now.
The nurses wiped all the blood and grime off his skin to the best of their abilities, but his hair is still matted with it, and he’s bled through some of the bandages and band-aids on him. There’s a cannula under his nose and an IV under his skin, and he’s so pale he matches the cheap white blanket covering his body.
He looks smaller and weaker than he’s ever looked, and it feels wrong.
Dazai itches to go find Q’s new cell and make them pay for causing this, but he can tell that Chuuya is about to wake up when the rhythm of his heartbeat changes ever so slightly, so he puts his book down, pushes the idea of killing Q away, and approaches the bed.
Chuuya’s eyes open slowly, and like a moth to the flame, they fall on Dazai without diverting anywhere else first.
“Hey, love,” Dazai starts, reaching out so he can carefully push some of the red locks away from his face. “How are you feeling?”
Blue eyes track the movement of his hand, and when he lets the back of his fingers linger on an injured sliver of skin on Chuuya’s cheek. Even now, after one of a thousand near-death experiences, his skin is soft and warm.
When Dazai’s hand retreats, Chuuya speaks.
“How many?”
Dazai freezes.
He expected that question; he knows that his boyfriend is one of the smartest people in Yokohama, and no matter how badly he tried to hide the gruesome scene left behind after Corruption, he never was arrogant enough to think it worked.
He had hoped, however, that it would be a little longer before Chuuya asked about it.
Dazai shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. It was all Q. Their ability made you think you were being attacked, and you had to defend yourself, it’s-”
“How many?” Chuuya repeats, stubbornly.
While Dazai would love to sugarcoat it and give him a much lower number, he knows better than to lie to Chuuya about this. Knowing him, his boyfriend would ask others, and if the numbers don’t match up, he’ll be furious that Dazai hid the truth.
Besides, it may be better if he hears it from him.
“The estimate is 129,” Dazai replies, slowly. Chuuya’s eyes instantly fill with tears, but he forces himself to keep going. He knows that his boyfriend won’t appreciate any comfort until he’s gotten all the information. “It could be less. We still have teams scouting the area, and-”
“Where is Q?”
While taken aback by the question, Dazai replies. “They’re with Mori.”
“Will he kill them?”
“No,” Dazai instantly denies. He wonders if Chuuya would be pissed if he knew that he’d suggested they were executed at first. “Mori is locking them up, but he doesn’t want to kill them.”
Chuuya frowns. He looks furious, and Dazai finds himself completely at a loss.
“This is their fault!” he growls. His voice breaks at the last word, but it’s hard to tell if it’s because of the tears or if it’s because of how damaged his vocal chords are. “He should kill them!”
“Chuuya-”
“Why won’t he kill them?! They made me do it! They-!” Chuuya’s words dissolve into a sob, and Dazai’s wrapped his arms around him in an instant. “I killed my people. All those men-”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Dazai reassures him, though experience tells him that it won’t be enough to drill that into Chuuya’s mind. “It was Q. It was all Q.”
Chuuya doesn’t reply, he keeps crying into his arms, and while Dazai hopes that he has no recollection of killing his men, he knows that the mind can be cruel. Flashes of his men’s terrified faces as he attacked them may come and go in dreams, in the quiet moments when he’s waiting for his coffee to be done brewing or as he walks to his bike.
He also knows that there’s nothing he can say to bring back the dead or make Chuuya feel better when the pain is so raw and his wounds are fresh, so he just holds him and hopes that every second of solitary confinement is agony to Q.
Contrary to doctor’s (Mori’s) suggestion, Chuuya’s back at the job as soon as he’s discharged from the medical wing.
Dazai wouldn’t have expected any different, knowing his workaholic of a boyfriend only functions as long as he has a job to do.
Predictably, there are few ups and several, brutal lows.
Chuuya wakes up screaming most days, sobbing some others. He clings to Dazai like a lifeline as soon as he opens his eyes, and even after he’s calmed down enough to pretend to be okay, his face is purposefully void of emotion. It’s chilling, even for someone as heartless as Dazai.
It’s not fair that someone as human as Chuuya has to make himself act like a doll to keep going after the horror Q put him through.
Despite Dazai’s constant attempts at making his boyfriend laugh or yell at him, nothing works. Chuuya remains stubbornly emotionless, barely even frowning when he makes jokes about his height or complains about the dog movies he watches in an attempt to calm himself down before going to bed.
Which is why he can’t help but smile when, after over a month of an emotionless Chuuya, he walks into the apartment to the lovely sound of his boyfriend mumbling all the curse words he can come up with as he navigates TV channels from the couch.
Dazai rushes to sit next to him and grins when Chuuya offers him a beautiful glare before he focuses on the screen again.
“Someone’s in a bad mood,” he comments, bracing himself to hear a long rant about paperwork, or running out of cigarettes, or a puppy running away from him when he tried to give it one of the treats he always carries in his pocket.
But Chuuya doesn’t say any of that.
“Mori is sending me away,” he explains with a scowl.
Dazai has to be very careful with what he lets his face show. Chuuya keeps looking at him, waiting for him to react, and he doesn’t know what the right answer to give him is.
So, he tries getting more information. “Away?”
“Yes, away. A mission overseas. Some dumb organization he wants me to take care of, can you believe it?” Chuuya scoffs, shaking his head. “You think he just wants to kill me?”
Dazai’s heart drops to his stomach, and he pulls Chuuya in for a tight hug before he can see those blue eyes filled with tears.
He was the one who suggested Chuuya was sent to that mission overseas when Mori brought it up during an executive meeting earlier, but he didn’t even think that Chuuya could mistake the offer to go away for an execution plan. Looking back, he should’ve known.
Of course Chuuya would think that Mori wants to get rid of him after what happened; he’s still drowning in guilt, he’s still replaying the agonizing screams of his men and the image of their corpses in the ground every time he closes his eyes.
Fuck, Dazai completely messed up.
“No, Chuuya, that’s not what this is,” Dazai murmurs as he rubs circles on his boyfriend’s trembling back. “It’s a legitimate mission. He brought it up during a meeting today; he said he wanted an executive to deal with these enemies in the west.”
“Why send me if he wanted an executive to do it?” Chuuya asks, clearly not buying it.
Now, Dazai is a grown man. He can recognize his mistakes, he can own up to his shit. He does have weaker defenses when it comes to arguments against his love, however, so it feels like pulling his teeth out one by one when he explains.
“...I was the one who suggested he sent you instead.”
Unsurprisingly, Chuuya pushes him away as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
Looking at him feels like torture when those blue eyes are glaring at him with such clear feelings of betrayal, but Dazai forces himself to maintain eye contact so Chuuya can hopefully see that he really didn’t mean any harm; quite the opposite.
“You want to get rid of me?” Chuuya asks, with such a tiny voice that it makes a sharp pang of pain shoot in Dazai’s chest. It almost convinces him he has a heart.
“No, that’s not what this is,” Dazai argues, nearly tripping over his own words in his urge to explain. “I know you’re in pain. I know that staying in Yokohama is only making it worse. I thought a change of scenery would be good for you.”
Chuuya’s face slowly turns red from sheer fury. “It’s not your decision to make!”
“Are you really saying no to a chance to get away from here for a little bit?” asks Dazai, confused. He’s seen the way Chuuya studies his surroundings to make sure he’s not about to run into Q; guilty or not, he thought his boyfriend would be eager to get a break from the constant surveillance.
“I don’t want to be alone,” Chuuya admits, in a barely audible voice.
“Don’t think about it like a mission, think of it like a paid vacation in Europe. I’ll be here when you get back, and I’m cashing in that promise of wearing the maid outfit I bought you with my hard-earned money.”
Chuuya tries to grimace, but he can’t bite down the laughter for too long. The knot of anxiousness in Dazai’s stomach comes undone seeing his boyfriend smile.
“Fine. I’m going. It’s not like I have a choice, anyway.”
Dazai cheers and pulls Chuuya into another hug, this one much more relaxed but not any less loving than the first one. “That’s the spirit!”
Chuuya lets himself be hugged and showered in what he calls ‘slobbery kisses’ until Dazai’s lips are sore from kissing him so much, and even then, he doesn’t let go of his boyfriend for even a second. He has to get his fill before he has to go away for his mission.
The next day, Chuuya gets on a plane to Europe along with a handful of his most trusted subordinates.
Since he doesn’t have a slug to go home to, Dazai goes to Lupin after work.
Something’s off, and he can’t quite put his finger on what it is, but he demands a picture with Ango and Odasaku for good measure. He’s feeling sentimental without Chuuya, give him a break.
The day after, Ango Sakaguchi is kidnapped.