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It begins with a cough.
A summer cold, they assume. Mori remains unconcerned, and it's not enough to keep Chuuya down, so they choose to ignore it. But summer becomes the first freeze of fall and Chuuya never comes through to the other side of whatever he's caught.
“Are you trying to piss me off?” Chuuya grumbles at Dazai. “Stop fucking mother-henning me. I'm fine.”
That's objectively untrue, but Dazai would prefer not to be kicked out into the cold this particular evening, so he magnanimously drops it. The worry already hooked claws into him weeks ago, anyway. Hassling Chuuya about it won't relieve his concern or the rudderless dread amassing inside him.
Predictably, the dread coalesces less than a week later when Chuuya coughs the first delicate flower petals into his palm while they're both reading, tucked under the kotatsu.
“What the fuck?”
Behind his ribs Dazai's heart kicks into frantic rhythm. In an instant, he knows what this is, despite never having seen it for himself. Overheard some conversations around town about lovers sprouting inexplicable flowers in their chests. It always starts with the first growing ever more ill as flowers invade their lungs. Sicker and sicker, until, apparently, the fear of loss drives a confession of love. Without exception the other falls ill not long after. Until now it hasn't been a concern of the ADA’s, but Dazai makes a habit of staying abreast of concerning rumors. He assumes Kunikida and shachou both know of it as well, for all the good that knowledge does him.
Dazai thinks back to the night his world briefly ceased spinning. A heart-stopping moment of clarity, with Chuuya’s hand splayed over Dazai's heart, driving into him in that languid, indulgent way that Dazai could barely tolerate the sentimentality of. That intolerable ache in his chest and the fleeting terror of realization dawning as Chuuya breathed his name against the nape of his neck.
Oh, no. I really do love him.
His mind races in place, rutted in a quagmire of unknowns. He never told Chuuya—a blatant departure from all he’s heard whispered about the mechanism of the flowers—so how did it come to this, the precipice of certain tragedy? Dots connected, patterns and speculation converging on a chilling conclusion: an Ability. A contagion. A vile thing that's made a vector of him.
He'd reached for Chuuya. Had drawn him in for a desperate kiss, awkward and fleeting with his head turned over his shoulder and stretching to reach. He's never said it aloud, then or since; but in that profound moment of change, all Dazai's misbegotten affection must have been enough to awaken the parasitic thing lurking dormant in his lungs… He doesn't know, at the end of the stories, whether anyone survives.
Dazai never intended to doom Chuuya.
He never intended to fall in love with him either, but he could hardly help that.
They started so innocuously. A deliberate brush of shoulders, shoes tapped against one another beneath the table. Once—with a destabilizing sweetness about it—Chuuya surreptitiously caught their pinky fingers together as they walked. A plausibly deniable intertwining neither bothered to break. Young and raw and holding on so tightly, tenderly lashed to one another and kept afloat despite the tide of their violence. And all that quiet physical affection sundered Dazai's walls. Besieged. Conquered. As if he ever stood a chance against the whole of Chuuya's incongruous fondness.
If Dazai had known this would happen, though, he would never have allowed himself to grow roots in the intimacy Chuuya so readily offered.
Dazai takes a steadying breath and diverts his attention from the flowers in Chuuya's palm to his stricken face. “How long has this been happening?”
“First fucking time,” Chuuya says, wide-eyed with alarm.
“It will either be fine, or I'll finally be rid of you,” Dazai says brightly, even as he's pushing himself from under the blanket's edge to wrap his arms around Chuuya's waist. Awkwardly propping his chin at an uncomfortable angle against Chuuya's hip bone.
“You'd miss me too much for that comment to be believable,” Chuuya snorts before coughing out a few more petals. “Dammit.”
From there, Chuuya steadily declines. Slowly, at first—a minor inconvenience of undamaged petals—abruptly escalating into an alarming mess. Flowers torn and tinged with blood. Coughing fits Chuuya struggles to bring under control. He does a remarkable job of appearing unruffled, but Dazai sees the signs of his mounting weakness. Worst of all is his increasing reliance on Tainted Sorrow just to maintain his posture and gait.
It does not escape Dazai’s notice that the episodes are at their worst when they engage in any manner of extended affection. A kiss. Chuuya’s hand idly carding through his hair for too long. Dazai wrapped around him like a vine in the soft darkness of Chuuya’s bed. As if the flowers are feeding off of the love; or perhaps it’s a dosage issue, and the intimate proximity to Dazai alone compounds the infection. Neither option is promising.
Whether Chuuya notices that the fits last longer—shake his bones with more violence, dredge up petals shredded and bruised, leave his teeth bloodied—Dazai remains unsure. Chuuya has always been good at setting aside things out of his control and stubbornly holding onto the things he wants. Something as trivial as an illness wouldn’t deter him from keeping Dazai exactly where he’s wanted.
Tonight, Dazai wishes he’d loosened his grasp.
Beside him, Dazai hears Chuuya's breath shift to wheezing. Color rises in his cheeks as he tries to stave off the cough Dazai knows is coming. Despite his best efforts, it hits him hard. Folds him at the waist, twists his spine in a painful looking hunch. A prolonged violence that leaves him gasping for air as wet clumps of petals fall onto his lap from his open mouth. Dazai manhandles him upright with his back pressed against Dazai's chest to help ease the strain on his airway. The cough persists, but at least there's space in his chest for him to suck in breath. Chuuya turns his head away to spit more petals onto the floor.
“Fuck,” he chokes out between heaving gasps. “Fuck, I can't breathe.” Panic in the rasp and wheeze of his voice, and another coughing fit takes him. Something cracks in his chest and Chuuya makes an awful keening sound as he chokes on endless flowers.
There is no fix for this Dazai can provide on his own, but he knows with a grave certainty that Chuuya is going to die here on this couch if he doesn't do something. He fishes his phone out from between the couch cushions and makes a desperate call.
The next 15 minutes are the longest wait of his life. Chuuya’s breathing grows shallow and his mouth is smeared with blood, stark against his blanched complexion. He shivers violently in Dazai's arms despite all the sweat pouring down his face. Truly, Dazai would prefer the rib-cracking cough over the stillness settling over him.
He's half feral with worry by the time he hears Yosano slowly punch in the door code to let herself into Chuuya’s penthouse. She takes in the scene with sharp eyes, mouth set in a tight line as she gets a good look at Chuuya.
“It's an Ability,” Dazai says before she can ask. “In his lungs.”
“Well, this will be a fun new experience for you, I'm sure,” she says with hardly a fraction of her usual glee at the prospect of vivisection. “Take us to the bathroom. This is going to be messy.”
Dazai is grateful Chuuya's shower is large enough for the three of them to crowd in on the floor, because he does not relish the cleanup. As far as he could gauge, Chuuya slipped out of consciousness somewhere between being lifted into Dazai's arms and reaching the bathroom. Clammy skin and erratic pulse. Still coughing up flowers intermittently. Dazai shuts down his fear, an unhelpful impulse they don't have time for. He settles Chuuya flat on his back—head pillowed in Dazai's lap—while Yosano sorts through her tools. She pulls on gloves and looks at Dazai with a strangely grim expression.
“When I get in there, you need to clear out his airway or we’re going to have to do this more than once.”
“We might have to anyway,” he says wearily. “I don't know what's going to happen after I nullify it.”
“This is a real mess you've gotten into,” she says, and it’s more gentle than she usually treats him.
A little spiral of distress, then: distressed by being distressed enough for Yosano to notice. Again, a feeling for which there is no time.
“I am painfully aware,” he says without any inflection. “Can we get moving?”
“Hold his head,” she warns. Dazai bites down on his tongue to keep himself from saying…something, anything, and nods.
Yosano shows more restraint with Chuuya than she generally bothers when getting ready to use her Ability. A medical saw instead of her cleaver or chainsaw. A quick, careful cut through cloth and vital bone, undaunted by Chuuya's howl of pain. His eyes fly open and it's only Dazai's hands clamped to the sides of his face that stop him from properly screaming; Yosano's weight pinning him and his stolen gravity keep his thrashing to a minimum.
Chuuya's pained sounds tear through Dazai, and he folds over to murmur, “I'm sorry. I love you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” against his forehead while his blood splashes Dazai's face. It's a wonder that he holds onto consciousness again as long as he does through all the pain, but Dazai feels the moment of slack as Chuuya finally passes out.
“Dazai, now.”
He eases Chuuya off his lap so he can clear his Ability out of Yosano's way immediately. This isn't the first body Dazai has rooted around in, but it is the first time he's bothered by the act. Yosano watches him like a hawk but doesn't comment on his shaking as he reaches both hands inside Chuuya's chest. Through the blood, Dazai finds Chuuya's lungs root-bound, a dense, fibrous net of them wrapped around both his lungs and heart.
“Oh, god, Chuuya. Shit,” he mumbles, mostly to himself. With great care he splays his palms wide over the strange give of flesh. Feels the intimate horror of Chuuya's heart jackrabbiting as shock sets in. Feels the dissolution of the Ability beneath his hands in the soft blue light of No Longer Human. His own chest burns like the harsh scrape of cigarette smoke, and he knows he was right—that he had been the origin point of the flowers—and that the infection is gone.
“Clear his throat,” Yosano orders him in her sharp practitioner tone.
Actively ignoring the wet sheen of blood up past his wrists—staining his bandages, and he'll panic about that later, too—he urges open Chuuya's jaw to scoop out with slick bloodied fingers the sodden petals filling his mouth and obstructing his breathing.
As he yanks his hands free of Chuuya's body, he barks, “done.” Averts his eyes briefly, left to imagine what Yosano did to him to create such an awful squelch. It is a mere heartbeat before the light of her ability fills the space. Only a moment more before Chuuya gasps, coughs, heaves in great gulps of air as his body finishes stitching itself back together.
“What…” he wheezes.
“Can you breathe normally?” Yosano asks without waiting for him to orient himself to reality. The saw remains at the ready in her hand, and Dazai actively suppresses the shiver that races down his spine.
With all the fighter’s instinct carved into the marrow of him, Chuuya responds without missing a beat. “Fuck,” he says weakly, testing his lung capacity beneath the grounding weight of Dazai's hand on his chest. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”
“Lovely,” she says as she strips off her gloves with the ease of a practiced clinician. “Point me in the direction of your liquor, if you would be so kind.”
“I'll show you,” Dazai offers without stopping to think about it.
“No!” from both Yosano and Chuuya, firm and panicked, respectively.
“Kitchen's off the living room,” Dazai says, cowed by their intensity and alarmed at his own empty-headedness.
“Can't miss the liquor cabinet,” Chuuya rasps. “Help yourself.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” She closes the bathroom door behind her and the click of it sounds immense in the silence of the bathroom.
There’s ringing in Dazai’s ears—the escalating volume of tinnitus heralding an imminent adrenaline crash—and he doesn’t realize Chuuya is speaking until he squeezes Dazai’s wrist hard enough to grind bones.
“What?” he asks, absently. He feels dulled and stupid, all his wits having fled from him some time around the open cavity of Chuuya’s chest.
“Help me up,” Chuuya repeats. He stares up at Dazai with an intense look of scrutiny. “Or maybe you should lie down.”
Distress, distress, distress.
“I rather think not.” Dazai helps Chuuya to his feet, and he looks far steadier than he ought to for a man who essentially just died on his own bathroom floor.
“C’mere,” Chuuya murmurs as he pulls Dazai closer to him. His hands are steady as he unbuttons Dazai’s shirt and eases it off his shoulders to fall at their feet. Its sleeve lands in the pool of Chuuya’s blood, wicking it up through the fibers until the cuff turns violently red. “Eyes on me.”
It’s an order; gentle, but an order just the same, and Dazai does as he’s told. Turning his gaze to Chuuya’s face, his eyes clear and alert and the sickly pallor gone from his complexion. He focuses on counting the spray of freckles on Chuuya’s nose and the feeling of his steady hands unwrapping the bandages—still sticky with blood—from around his forearms.
“I’m alright now,” Chuuya says with a wan smile. “Actually, I haven’t felt this good in a long fucking time. That’s a hell of an ability your doctor’s got.”
“And she only had to split your ribcage in half to do it!” His voice is an instrument out of tune: words hitting the right notes but the sound comes out all wrong. Chuuya grips Dazai’s hands hard enough to hurt. Holds on, grounding, while Dazai becomes aware of his own shallow breathing and trembling body. Oh, there’s the panic he expected.
“I’m fine,” Chuuya insists.
“Turn on the shower. I can’t—” keep standing in your blood.
Chuuya only nods. Releases one of Dazai’s hands to reach for the faucet. The water comes out too cold, but it sends the blood circling down into the drain as it warms, and the band of tension around Dazai’s chest loosens by degrees. It is better still when Chuuya steps in close and wraps his arms around Dazai’s waist, cheek against Dazai’s bare chest. He curls his hand around the back of Chuuya’s neck as the water sluices between the press of their bodies.
“It’s my fault,” he admits, voice soft and plaintive.
“I don’t need to know.” There is no warning in Chuuya’s tone. Not a dismissal. Not willful ignorance of a thing for the sake of avoiding any fury at Dazai it might raise in him. Simply Chuuya making peace with something that has already passed.
Dazai pulls away just far enough to hold Chuuya’s face in his palms, looking him over for any hint of danger. He finds none; only the soft curve of Chuuya’s mouth, unbloodied and upturned a little higher on the right than the left. Everything in Dazai is relief. Reduced to wanting—reassurance and confirmation and Chuuya—that he does not deny himself. Dazai dips down to kiss him with an urgency that must give away more than he’d intended. Chuuya holds them steady, though. Keeps the kiss measured and controls the greedy maw of desperation clamoring inside Dazai.
Drawing back, Chuuya’s eyes still closed and the words brushing over Dazai’s lips, he says, “tell me again.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Not that.” They’re close enough Dazai can feel the slow spread of his smile. “The other thing.”
He considers playing dumb. Misdirecting and dodging the request. Because there’s fear in him now. Even with the unshakable certainty that the infection in his own lungs died with Chuuya’s, the other thing started this weeks-long nightmare. But if Chuuya is asking, it means he already knows. What point is there in pretending?
“I love you.”