Soukoku One-Shots

Sweetest Frostbite

a/n: this was a request from BoredSav10; i apologize it's so late and a bit short! i've been dealing with a concussion from a skiing accident, which has made writing a bit tricky. hopefully, i'll be able to wrap up death & destruction next week and start posting more regularly. in the meantime, i hope this meets your expectations!

Dark Era

In hindsight, Dazai knew he should have told Mori to go fuck himself.

The mission he and Chuuya had returned from was gruesome—they were caked in dirt and grime and the blood of hundreds, and every one of their bones ached. It was the moment they stumbled into the Mori Corp building, wrapped around each other to keep from collapsing, that they'd been escorted to the highest floor. Mori had told them to sit—Dazai had barely managed to keep some of his dignity as he restrained himself from crumpling into one of the chairs like some kind of rag doll—and smiled that sticky, sickly smile of his.

"You two will be visiting the Hidaka Mountains."

"What? It's like a frozen hell out there right now," Chuuya exclaimed, gripping the arms of his chair tightly enough that the wood began to groan.

Mori's passive expression didn't waver. "Ability user Yasunari Kawabata is currently living there. He has ties to a rival organization overseas as an informant, and you two will be apprehending him." Mori handed Dazai a smooth manila folder—he was too tired to leaf through it, though, and Chuuya was too tired to take it from him.

"There's a mafia-owned cabin there for you to stay in, stocked for three days. It shouldn't take you any longer than that."

It sounded innocuous enough, the way he said that, but Dazai saw it for the threat that it was. He knew Chuuya did, too.

"Anything else we should know, Boss?" Chuuya asked, barely bothering to mask his apprehension.

Mori smiled again. "No, you're dismissed. Good luck."

As they were told, Dazai and Chuuya ended up in the mafia-owned cabin, which was indeed stocked for three days. What they were not told was that the cabin had the insulation of a dog house, or that the "stock" they were promised consisted almost exclusively of canned beans and grains that were likely older than they were.

"Goddammit. It's fucking cold," Chuuya hissed, wrapping the moth-eaten blanket around his shoulders like a shawl. Dazai, not for the first time since they'd arrived, was too inclined to agree.

The first day they'd arrived in the Hidaka mountains was primarily recon. Dazai had been very helpful as Chuuya practically dragged him all over the mountain—it was unsettling to feel his cold fingers because it was usually Dazai who was cold—kicking up snow and getting them lost at least three times. Now, on the night of day two, they were both thoroughly frozen; Dazai couldn't even throw the damp wood into the fireplace if he wanted to, which he absolutely didn't.

"Oi, get off your ass and help me," Chuuya grumbled, and Dazai watched him as he continued to poke uselessly at the pile of wood.

"No."

"Do you do anything on these missions?"

"If you hadn't forgotten to put the wood inside before we left, this wouldn't be a problem." Dazai wrapped his own blanket tighter around himself, curling his knees into his chest as if that would bring feeling back into his fingers and toes again.

"That—" Chuuya cut himself off, exhaling loudly through his nose, and did not continue. Normally, this would strike Dazai as strange, but he understood the exhaustion weighing on Chuuya at the moment—it weighed on him, too. Most of the time, their missions were ones that took less than a day, because they were Double Black, and they were the best. But because of the wide, unfamiliar expanse of the Hidaka Mountains, Chuuya's gravity could do little to improve the terrain, and not even Dazai's genius would make them any warmer. Perhaps they were getting too comfortable—three years of straight success might have been making them intolerant.