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Dazai has always looked, to Oda, like a pitiful, burnt black cat.
To make such an unbecoming comparison of the feared Demon Prodigy is arguably a betrayal, but not one Oda can be blamed for, not really. Yes, were Dazai to hear of his own likeness to a sorry cat, he would likely bristle and hiss unhappily. Not a helpful reaction, what with the point he’d be trying to negate. It is not helpful for his case either that Dazai, more often than not, shows up on Oda’s doorstep exactly as a stray cat would.
Pathetic, soaking wet. Pupil blown, morose. Always after a river attempt.
Once, he’d turned up with a dead fish. Oda had had to muster all the strength of his stoicism not to laugh. It would have only been too perfect had Dazai been holding it in his mouth.
The young mafia executive puts on a convincing act of terror, to be sure, and Oda knows the darkness and death his existence is steeped in are no trivial rumors, but all he has ever seen when he looks at Dazai is a child.
A sad, scrawny, cat-like child.
In spite of this, it is true that it is only when Oda is alone with Dazai that the boy truly looks his age. Unbandaged eye round and glassy, hair tousled from Oda’s affections as a kid’s should be — he doesn’t ever give off such an innocent impression to anyone as he does in Oda’s living room.
Their tentative friendship is approaching a year, but it took Oda no more than a few weeks to figure out that Dazai dissociates a lot, even if Dazai has never said it himself, even if Dazai doesn’t seem to be aware of it when it’s happening.
Sometimes Oda can tell when Dazai has left, slipped out of his body and gone somewhere else, often when they’re in the middle of conversation. It’s seamless enough that Oda doubts hardly anyone else would notice it happening. He wonders how often Dazai does that around other people, how often he exists in that not-there state where nobody in the world knows he is gone while he is standing right there.
Other times, Dazai shows up like that, so spooked out of his own body from things he keeps hidden where not a soul can reach them, or so physically and mentally exhausted from another failed suicide attempt, that he can’t hide or control his dissociation if he tries.
Or maybe he can, and Oda is merely being allowed the most precious of gifts.
Rarer still are the seemingly trivial, inconsequential moments where Oda offers touches of casual affection. And it’s those unthinking touches that make Dazai appear to Oda the most like a child, fragile and vulnerable beyond belief.
The first time, Oda had done nothing more than settle a blanket over Dazai’s shoulders.
The reaction was instantaneous. Like a flame having been snuffed out, the kid went lifeless. Like he’d been switched off. Oda had maintained his unfazed expression for Dazai’s sake, that first time, but beneath the facade was a cold fear. The prospect of bringing Dazai to Headquarters in that state, catatonic and right after an attempt, was not… Oda didn’t really want to think about it.
While he’s never been permitted the gory details of Dazai’s relationship with the Boss, that Dazai is still so young has always told Oda that the Boss must act as some sort of caregiver over him. Whatever caregiving entails coming from a man at the head of a ruthless criminal organization.
Dazai is always so battered to hell, there’s no way anybody is actually looking out for the kid.
Oda is not stupid.
He knows that Dazai is being abused, in more ways than one, by the Port Mafia boss.
And so the last thing Oda could possibly do is deliver an incapacitated Dazai directly to him. As much as killing the man would pose as light work for someone like Oda, doing so would not save Dazai, nor would it protect him from suffering. It would not release him from the shackles of the Boss, from the shackles of the Port Mafia and its bloodties. The only way Oda can protect Dazai is to be there for him, to be someone safe; someone Dazai can come to.
Oda doesn’t know why Dazai has taken to him. It’s as much of a mystery as Dazai himself. But when he thinks of the kid as a lonely little stray cat, it kind of makes sense. A stray will seek out anyone who won’t hurt it. Seek out someone gentle.
And Oda doesn’t know that he’s gentle, but he wouldn’t hurt Dazai with a gun to his head. He’d sooner slaughter the entirety of the Port Mafia. At some point, he became as fond of the kid as the kid might be of him. At least, Dazai hangs around Oda’s place now more often than not, when he’s not on missions or with the Boss or wherever else a fifteen-year-old mafia executive goes during his free time. The arcade, maybe.
It hadn’t taken long for Oda to piece it together.
Dazai has only ever gone that blank and inanimate when Oda exhibits any sort of tenderness toward him. Pressing a warm mug of hot chocolate into his hands; grazing fingers as Oda passes Dazai a roll of gauze. Oda is patient and yielding with him, sitting impassively beside Dazai until he’s present in his body again. Endearingly, Oda can always tell when Dazai is back by the way his ears go a tinge red and he starts to sulk a little.
What reason he has to be embarrassed or flustered, Oda has little idea. Perhaps Dazai considers it unseemly for the frightening Demon Prodigy to lose his composure over what he no doubt deems insignificant acts of humanity.
Still, Dazai always burrows a tad further into the blanket. Draws the heat of the mug up to his face, cradles the gauze for a second longer than necessary before he begins to unwind it, like it’s something precious.
Oda is not stupid.
He knows that Dazai is touch-starved. Knows that Dazai is touch-averse.
His guess is that when Dazai has been touched, it has not been kindly. Dazai flinches from touch, but he seems starved for it.
The first time Oda touched Dazai, Dazai had gone very quiet and still. A rare instance of his bubbling laughter had faltered as Oda’s hand settled atop his head, ruffling the curls, and Dazai’s one eye had glazed over — it was an imperceptible shift, but Oda had been getting better at reading even the vaguest, most nanoscopic hints in Dazai’s body language — and he withdrew his hand at once. And this time, noticeably faster than he normally snapped out of it, Dazai was blushing and glancing away, a familiar pout gracing his features.
Huh, Oda thought. That was different.
He’d tried it again a few weeks later, when Dazai had taken the initiative to sit closer to him on the couch than he normally deigned to while they watched Dazai’s favorite cartoon. He was being a whiny brat — his favorite thing to do, especially around Oda — so Oda had decided to get back at him by tousling his hair to mess it up. And Dazai, again, went stock-still, russet iris glazing over. Like the last time, Oda withdrew his hand.
But in a bizarre break from character, Dazai let out a low, affronted whine, pouting at the loss of contact and tilting his head toward Oda in silent demand.
The awareness of his own (admittedly, cat-like) reaction in that moment seemed to hit him, and he became mortified at once. Before Oda could catch up to what was happening, Dazai had shied away from him where they’d sat side-by-side on the couch and drawn into himself, bony knees pulled up to his chest. His gaze flitted anywhere but Oda.
Oda watched him for a moment.
“Dazai,” he said.
Dazai tensed.
This was new ground, to be sure. Oda had to approach with caution. If Dazai was like a stray cat, then he was on the verge of being scared off right now. By Oda, no less.
“Dazai,” Oda tried again, and this time Dazai’s single eye shot over, locking on him like a lifeline.
Oda considered how to best phrase what he wished to say to Dazai. Asking what Dazai wanted, while it seemed like the right thing to do, would only lead to Dazai rejecting anything he actually wanted out of some twisted feeling that he didn’t deserve it, keeping it to himself that he even wanted it at all. Simply offering to do something for Dazai didn’t work, either, because he’d allow even things he didn’t want, even things that hurt him.
“Did it feel good?” Oda tried. “Or bad?” Assuming that it felt good just because of Dazai’s reaction would be a mistake.
Dazai looked slightly taken aback by the question. He fidgeted with the edges of his bandages, deep in thought. Eventually he said, unsure, “Good. I… think.” He frowned.
Oda had thought so, but he wanted to hear it from Dazai himself.
And so he’d started to do it more often. He was cautious, of course, observing Dazai’s reactions to ensure he wasn’t pushing him too far, pleased with himself when Dazai began to stop dissociating every time it happened and even began seeking out more of the touch when it stopped.
Dazai still has bad days, days where he turns up shaking so violently Oda knows a single touch will shatter him. Days he’s soaked in blood and not river water, days with slices in his marred skin far too precise to be self-inflicted, and days the suicide methods he attempts are more violent than the average, and still failures anyway. Days he can’t distinguish Oda’s hands from those of another.
But most of the time, touch seems to have become something that brings Dazai comfort. Something he craves, at least when it’s Oda.
Earlier, he’d lingered on Oda’s doorstep for slightly longer than usual before knocking. Oda can always sense when he’s arrived — having been an assassin for many years, intuitive skills like this are ingrained into him — but he lets Dazai have his routine out there in private. Sometimes he paces, sometimes he merely mopes and stares. He always knocks once he’s ready to be let in.
Like a stray cat.
Tonight is an ordinary night — that is, ordinary for two mafia members that make an oddball pair. Ordinary entails a failed attempt by Dazai, and Oda’s subsequent first-aid.
This time Oda can’t tell what Dazai tried to do.
His bandages are no more frayed or disheveled than usual after an attempt, and there’s a startling lack of blood. Not nearly enough to come close to killing him.
This is not a mistake the Port Mafia’s top torturer would make.
Where he sits lifeless and docile on the couch, Dazai lets Oda unwind the bandages around his wrists to inspect the damage, staring emptily off into the distance. It’s rare that Dazai allows him to see what he hides beneath the endless layers of gauze. It takes a certain level of exhaustion, or maybe it’s just resignation. Even then, he refuses to let Oda treat anything aside from his arms.
Glancing briefly up at the haze in Dazai’s visible eye, Oda thinks, Where are you right now?
The majority of the damage on Dazai’s arms is old scarring. Years worth of previous suicide attempts and self-harm dating back to an age Oda probably can’t fathom; many of the scars are disturbingly clean, near-surgical in their precision. But however Dazai had attempted tonight, he clearly hadn’t intended to bleed out to death. The lacerations he made are few in number and not the worst of Dazai’s butchering work.
At least even when Dazai is off in some other place like this, Oda can tend to his wounds. It’s somewhat unpleasant — he’d prefer if Dazai weren’t so dissociated while they did this that he went mute — but he’s accepted the fact that Dazai coming to him at these times is permission to care for him in and of itself. He still keeps his work minimal, and has Dazai do as much as he’s capable of doing himself.
As he goes to fetch the first aid kit, Oda finds himself wondering, not for the first time, where Dazai had attempted on this latest try. Where he attempts on any of his tries. An uncomfortable gut feeling tells Oda that rarely does someone find Dazai in the midst of his attempts and stop him. He just seems… unable to succeed. That is the only reason he has yet to die. Something about the image of him failing alone, untangling himself from the mess alone, dragging himself to Oda’s place alone — a desperate sadness claws at Oda’s chest at the thought of this.
Dazai is just a child.
He never forgets it, but each time Oda is reminded feels like a crushing blow.
Dazai is so young, and he is far more helpless than anyone thinks he is. Even himself.
After cleaning Dazai’s injuries as gently as he can, Oda begins stitching the wounds where they run deeper. He isn’t sure whether it hurts, whether Dazai feels much of anything when he’s dissociated, but it hardly matters. Dazai doesn’t like pain (even if Oda has never met someone more prone to being injured) so he does his best to minimize the possibility of causing him any.
But Dazai doesn’t move throughout the entirety of the process. He doesn’t so much as flinch, and yet Oda isn’t convinced that Dazai isn’t in pain just because he makes no reaction to it. He wouldn’t know, but it seems like a suicide attempt would be draining on one’s body in general, and he doubts Dazai feels anything close to good right now even if he’s not in pain.
Done with the stitches, Oda begins rewrapping Dazai’s forearms in fresh gauze. He’s not as good as Dazai at this, but the job will hold up well enough until Dazai has the energy to redress them himself.
When he glances up at Dazai’s face to check on him, he’s surprised to see that void-like eye already gazing back at him. The vacant, subdued look has yet to fully fade, but now, at least, Oda knows Dazai can hear him.
“Hey,” he says.
Dazai blinks slowly.
He continues to bandage Dazai’s arm. “Is this all you did tonight?” he asks.
He’s found it helps Dazai not slip back into dissociation if the questions he asks while Dazai’s coming out of it aren’t too direct or explicit. Dazai is smart enough to know what he means either way.
It takes him a minute, Oda watching as the gears and cogs in his brain start to whir, as his body becomes solid and real again, before he sighs a little. “Ah, you would think I’d know a little more about pharmacology by now, growing up around Mori-sensei…” Dazai laughs emptily. “Just some morphine, Odasaku. Not enough to get what I want.”
Dazai’s voice still sounds off, like it’s missing the usual lilt.
“You’re sure?” Oda verifies, and Dazai nods, a small and tired thing.
“Am I a liar, Odasaku? Hm?” — And he is, but Oda doesn’t mention it — “If anything, I can finally get some good, honest shut-eye! ~God, it’s been ages since that Mori-sensei changed the locks in the infirmary to those pesky electronic ones, I can’t have anything anymore ~~”
But again, it falls flat.
“Dazai,” Oda starts, “When was the last time you slept?”
Dazai shifts, uncomfortable. “I don’t know?” he tries, and Oda sighs.
It isn’t completely unsurprising that he wouldn’t be able to recall the last time he slept — Dazai sometimes goes quite awhile without it, more than the average human, and he’s often on missions that last for days on end where the young mafia executive no doubt has little, if any, time to sleep. What sleep he does manage is likely not peaceful.
Ordering Dazai to sleep is a lost cause; he refuses every time like a petulant child. Oda assumes there is more to it; Dazai must have nightmares. So instead he says, “If you lie down, I’ll play with your hair.”
Now negotiation and manipulation — that’s Dazai’s language. It’s a poorly disguised ploy, the both of them know it. But Dazai has a weakness for Oda’s physical affections even if he’s stubborn about it. It’s not like Oda uses it against him often, or to be mean. Never that. Really, it’s just incredibly endearing. And Oda wants to give Dazai something he obviously craves, despite his refusal to ask for it himself.
At the suggestion, Dazai grumbles, huffing and feigning exasperation like it’s the worst thing Oda’s ever asked him to do. But Oda waits him out, expression unchanging, hands lax and unthreatening in his lap. Dazai squirms a little on his side of the couch, eyeing Oda warily, eyeing his hands, before he decides to give it up and give in.
It’s only when Dazai’s head is about to land in Oda’s lap that he lifts his hands. He holds them in the air above Dazai while Dazai wriggles around, adjusting his bony gazelle legs. He’s only allowed this once before, and he’d kept a safe distance from Oda — this time he’s clearly trying for more, so Oda pays close attention to his body language. Mostly to make sure Dazai doesn’t push himself too far.
Finally, the kid settles, but there’s a buzzing tension coiled in his body Oda can see even beneath the blanket he draws up over his form.
“Can I touch you?” he asks, aware that this likely already feels like a lot for Dazai.
Dazai nods, hiding his face in Oda’s lap. He taps his fingers in a slow, odd rhythm against the side of Oda’s thigh — maybe it grounds him, Oda thinks. It’s good to know he’s present enough to do something like that, either way.
He begins to card a hand through Dazai’s hair, gentle enough that he won’t tug on any of the tangled locks. Dazai’s hair is surprisingly always soft and clean, each time Oda has touched it. It seems to only be dirtied by blood and gunpowder, river water on occasion.
“If the tapping stops, I’ll stop,” Oda murmurs, as he flicks the TV on for background noise. It’s already set to Dazai’s favorite cartoon.
At the sound of the theme song Dazai shifts, a lone wide eye peeking out just enough to watch the cartoon as Oda continues to rake soft fingers through his hair. Oda isn’t sure if he imagines the response, but Dazai’s tapping grows more insistent momentarily.
Oda has only ever played with Dazai’s hair, but slowly, with Dazai wilting as the tension seeps from his body, he allows featherlight fingertips to trace over Dazai’s forehead, down his cheek, across the shell of his ear. Dazai, to his credit, doesn’t react much. A slight shiver runs through him, and his strange tapping pauses for an instant, but he resumes before Oda can withdraw his hand.
He thinks Dazai likes this. He doubts that the kid has ever been touched in this way; he doubts anyone has tried. It’s something he does to the orphans, something he vaguely remembers being done to him, but who that someone was is locked somewhere Oda can’t reach. But Dazai’s eye has fallen shut now, and he looks younger and so painfully unsullied by the blood staining his hands.
Oda has to remind himself that Dazai is a deadly weapon. He has done as many horrible things to others as have probably been done to him. But in Oda’s house, on Oda’s couch, with Dazai falling asleep in his lap — Dazai is a mere scared, abused child, blameless and in dire need of protection and love. Oda can’t help it, but he likes when Dazai is soft and childlike around him. It’s how he should be. Had evil people not stolen Dazai’s childhood, had the darkness that lurks within Dazai not stolen whatever could have been salvaged, this is what Dazai might look and act like all the time.
It’s somewhat of a shock when Dazai’s tapping peters out. If Oda had not been paying such close attention, he’d have stopped at once, but Dazai’s tapping had been slowing down, faltering, for at least the last two episodes. As hard as he’s been fighting to stay awake, Oda’s plans are winning out.
And they are winning against him, too. Petting Dazai is soothing not just for the boy but for Oda too. Without letting up, sure that even in his sleep Dazai would whine for Oda to continue were he to stop, Oda lets his eyes slip shut as his head falls back against the couch.
Dazai may have attempted again tonight, but he didn’t seem to try that hard. And he sought comfort from Oda, took a chance on a new level of physical touch and affection he’s evidently been working up to. Allowed himself the vulnerability of falling asleep.
That counts for something. That means in some small way, Dazai is getting better.
The kid beneath Oda’s hand shifts, snuggles further into the safe warmth that is Oda. He mumbles something in his sleep, something that sounds a lot like Odasaku.