Chapter Text
When Dazai woke up, he knew today wasn’t going to be easy to get through. His arms felt heavy, like he’d taken a swim in a river again, and itched in a way only scars and healing cuts could, a deep-bone itch that persisted in his mind, urging him to scratch it with a blade and blood. He had woken up early, but laid there for hours unable to do anything but stew in exhaustion, only getting up after he was an hour late already. Letting out a groan as he pushed himself up, he mentally prepared himself to face another day, and another one of Kunikida’s lectures. The brunette was too tired to change, let alone change the dirty yellowing bandages covering a third of his body. He shrugged on his coat over his slept-in clothes and quickly made his way out of his uncared for dorm.
Dazai barely registered making the walk from there to the office, only waking himself up when he saw the familiar building come into view. Smile plastered on his face, he made his usual show of walking in late, it wouldn't be good to alert his coworkers to his current state. Kunikida was yelling at him (right on schedule, at least one thing was), probably something about punctuality and how disrespectful he was being. The bandaged man tuned it out, skipping to his desk and flopping down, his elbows on the desk and face turned to Kunikida who was still going on his rant. After 5 minutes the strict man turned to the clock before sighing and going back to work, apparently determining this wasn't worth any more breath and leaving Dazai to his own devices. It took him a minute to realise he was no longer being lectured and get himself to move from his previous position. He could feel eyes on him and glanced at from the corner of his eye Atsushi who was looking with a curious expression, before quickly being distracted by Kyouka. Ranpo was out, probably getting sweets, considering everyone was here who would normally need to accompany him on a case, with only Junichiro missing currently, along with his sister. Dazai was thankful for this small mercy, as his cover wouldn't be blown immediately.
Deciding to at least pretend to work, he opened his laptop and rustled some papers to give himself time to figure out what exactly he needed to do. His brain felt too slow, like his thoughts were stuck in syrup. He found the document left on his desk about the most recent case, a simple bank robbery involving a special ability user who could make people easy to persuade, but only if they weren't paying full attention. It was a relatively straight-foward case, so why was it so hard to think of the details? It was suffocating in his head, the sharp corners dulled to the point only a small space remained to think in, taking away his only asset. Time was passing and he was just staring at the screen, normally in this case he’d pass his paperwork onto someone else, but there was no one to pass it to, even jokingly. It was a rare case where only him and Ranpo had been there, the latter never did paperwork in the typical sense. The office had long since given up on getting anything of use out of him and normally someone would sit down and go over the hows and whys in explicit detail so that it made sense to anyone without Ranpo’s genius mind who would inevitably have to read it. Dazai had enough real-world experience to figure out what the layperson knew, and how much detail to go into. When he had first started the agency, and still slightly scared of Fukuzawa, he had done his reports perfectly, just how Mori liked, a decision he regretted now.
Time was passing quickly, slipping through his fingers as he tried to make his words work, every time he thought he maybe was getting somewhere, his brain would wipe and he’d be left with a whisper of a thought along with a feeling of dread. His thoughts were getting louder and more distracting, his headphones nowhere to be found so he couldn't drown them out with music, or a TV show. He saw someone get up in the corner of his eye, but paid it no notice until a box of food was placed gently on his desk. A quick glance up found Atsushi standing at his desk, quickly explaining that it was lunch-time and that Dazai looked so focused, that he didn't want to break it by going downstairs just to grab food. Mourning his one excuse for a break, Dazai shot a bright smile at his mentee, theatrically showering gratitude over the boy over the meal brought to him. He opened the box and found rice with fish and vegetables, normally one of the only meals he liked. Quickly shoving a mouthful and over-dramatising how delicious the meal was, despite it tasting like nothing but rubber and ash to him. After watching the performance Atsushi turned back to his desk, a smile on his face. Dazai didn't eat more after that, pushing it around the container with his chopsticks, to give the illusion of eating. He managed to throw the rest out after a few hours, shortly before Ranpo made his way in with armfuls of pastries and sweets. Dazai kept quiet, turning back to his work, but he could feel the stare burning into the side of his head. Deciding that it would be less suspicious to just finish up now, he made his usual dramatic exit, with Kunikida shouting after him all the while. Ranpo still stared, a lollipop in his mouth and his eye open slightly, locked on him as he made his escape.
The bandaged man knew that this wouldn't be the end of it, but for today it was good enough. He made his way back to his dorm much the same way he had arrived. He hung his coat up (no matter what, he couldn't let odasaku’s memory the coat be tainted by him any longer than it needed to be). He shortly collapsed on his futon, which he hadn't bothered to put away this morning. He laid there for hours, the itch from this morning had never fully gone away, but now with nothing to distract his mind, the feeling was back in full force. He tried to ignore it, he really did, but after lying awake for hours with no result he finally dragged himself into the bathroom. Like all rooms in his dorm, the bathroom was sparse, with only the standard bath mat the president had gifted him when moving in, but in the small cabinet above the sink held 2 of his most prized possessions beside the obvious. A mixture of different medications which if taken in combination would certainly kill him, not the painless death he was hoping for but it was there just in case, along with a box of blades, the one he had most recently used was still slightly crusted in blood and poking out the top of the box. He picked it up carefully before sitting with his back to the bath, the ledge uncomfortably digging into his spine. He shifted slightly while unwrapping the bandages around his arms, thinking about it then slowly stripping. Blood was a pain to get out and he didn't feel like finding new ones when he was done. The uncomfortableness of looking at his disgusting body and the pain of the first few slices were always the worst, but he got more frantic as he switched hands, and the pain of both faded to the background.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed, but at some point he had gotten frustrated with how dull the blade was, getting up to get a fresh one. He hadn’t meant to go as deep as he had, but by the end there were several wounds ranging in severity littering both his arms. The sun was up when he exited the bathroom, having stopped the bleeding and rewrapped his arms, still with the dirty bandages as he had forgotten to get new ones when he had last went shopping, or maybe he had, when was the last time he had gone shopping? He went through bandages often enough that he could’ve used them all already. A glance at his sparse fridge and cupboards told him it’d probably been too long. He glanced at the clock as he made his way through the flat, feeling better after the few hours in the bathroom. The good mood stayed steadfast even when the bandaged man looked at the clock and realised he was more than his usual 1-1.5 hours late that he normally arrived to work by. Quickly he shoved on his coat and rushed out the door.
He was able to keep his smile up all the way to the agency, barely dipping when someone ran into him, spreading a sharp pain up his arm, as they grazed him. When he stepped through the agency's doors, he twirled as he made his usual entrance. Kunikida stormed up to him looking ready to go on his usual tirade, but stopped short. Dazai didn't stop the performance until he felt a hand tugging at his arm, bringing it up between them. That's when he saw it, the bump earlier had obviously aggravated his wounds and caused them to start bleeding again, and blood was seeping out in a ringed stain on his sleeve. Someone was saying something to him, but he could barely hear them through the rush in his ears, his breath was stuck in his chest. He felt himself moving but he wasn't sure whether it was him walking or someone guiding him, fully focused on the slowly spreading spot of blood on his coat. Suddenly he was sitting, The room he had arrived in at some point smelled sterile, but the panic of being in what could only be Mori’s Yasano’s Lab was muted under the all consuming despair of his coat being ruined, how was he ever going to get this out? Was this a sign of the end? He’d tainted another thing that represented his time in the light and now they were going to kick him out. He felt the coat be tugged off and his throat hurt, was he screaming? There were tears dripping down his face, the salt dripping into his open mouth. Someone was behind him, holding him down, confining him as they stripped his outer layers. He felt his body fight back but it was muted, like the person moving wasn't really him. The coat was eventually taken off him, but someone was handing it back to him, he grabbed onto it tight, shielding it with his body as he sobbed (screamed?) there was a hand stroking down his back and the person who was holding him earlier now had him in their lap.
As he became more aware of himself, he heard 2 (3?) people speaking above him, and whoever was stroking him was rocking him gently, it was nice but he remembered that his coat was ruined and felt his breath shudder in his chest. The person softly shushed him and continued stroking him while rocking. As he was calming down slightly, a hand was roughly pulling his arm from where it was protectively clutching his coat. The rocking helped, but not enough to calm him from the sudden intrusion, his arm was let go just as quickly and he withdrew. Ranpo came into his field of view, he was talking but Dazai was too upset to make any sense of his words. Ranpo looked annoyed, and Dazai bit back another sob, the detective disappeared from his field of view before quickly returning with a blanket, his coat was quickly snatched from him and he couldn't help but cry out again arm reaching out infront of him as Ranpo walked away with his coat, there was nothing he could do. The body behind hum had stopped moving at some point but was back to rocking and patting him again, offering him a soft-looking blanket in place of his stolen coat, which Dazai had no choice but to accept. The blanket found its way into his mouth, suckling at the soft fabric while the voices started talking above him again.
After a while Yasano came into his vision, much like Ranpo had, but instead of passive annoyance she looked pained while she said something before pointing to the brunette’s arm which was now curled around the substituted blanket. He had calmed down a bit, too tired from all the crying to continue being as upset as before (and with his coat taken what was the point anymore), and was now only letting out hitched breaths, so when his arm was once again softly grabbed and moved away from his body he just let it happen. He whined slightly while his bandages were removed, Yasano looked disgusted while unwrapping the old blood-soaked bandages, Dazai whined again, leaning into the hand still rubbing his back. Yasano looked up, and Dazai couldn’t understand the look in her eyes now. She cleaned up his arm, looking up to the person behind him and speaking softly. Dazai couldn't make out the words she said, but he got the message when she brought out a needle and thread. He turned around slightly hoping to escape, only to see Kunikida who looked upset, the blonde looked down smiling sadly, before dragging Dazai into the crook of his neck, holding out the arm Yasano was currently working on and whispering comfort into Dazai’s ear as he sobbed around the blanket still in his mouth. The process didn't take long, but halfway through Ranpo appeared again, holding out a small plastic object that Dazai didn't recognise, before tugging the blanket out of his mouth and shoving the object in before Dazai could complain, patting him on the head, turning and leaving without saying a word.
Dazai was shifted and the process was repeated on his other arm, before fresh, soft bandages were placed on his arms. By this point Dazai had calmed completely, but was exhausted from the massive meltdown. He drifted to sleep still holding the blanket and sucking on the object gifted to him rudely by Ranpo, listening to the soft voices above him.
When he woke up he was still in Kunikida’s lap being softly rocked, but this time they had moved to the main offices. He shifted slightly and noticed the plastic object was still in his mouth and, more importantly, the blanket had been replaced by his coat. Inspecting it slightly, he noticed the sleeves were free of blood, or any trace of a stain. He snuggled closer to the object and decided it was probably okay to stay like this for a bit longer. He settled back into Kunikida’s chest and curled up again, being rewarded by a hand stroking his back and the normally so strict blonde ducking down to press his mouth to the top of Dazai’s head, before continuing typing like nothing had happened.
Dazai knew later that they would probably talk about this, he still felt like he may be kicked from the light, but right now he enjoyed the comfortable closeness and drifted to a place where his thoughts weren't quite so loud.