Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter twenty-four

Our flight was called over the airport intercom after not much longer, a bored sounding woman that seemed like she needed a cup of coffee calling out the boarding groups right after the announcement.

"Come on," the taller teen says, already walking away towards the boarding gate without looking to see if I was following or not.

I stared at the other teen's back feeling my anger levels rising at the taller boy's blatant dismissal.

"Hey!" I yelled, following behind the other teen to the boarding line, picking up speed as he did. "Don't order me around, you shitty walking roll of bandages!"

I was expecting some type of quip about my height to come shooting back at me, maybe something about seeing if we had enough time to buy milk real quick, or if they offered it on the plane, but nothing like that ever came. The only response that did come was one that almost made me screech to a halt in the middle of the airport.

"Fine," Dazai agreed easily.

The teen continued forward, not seeming to notice or care about the consequences attached to the teen's words. About the strangeness of them.

Just, what the hell happened to you?

Dazai, since the day that we met, when I crashed him through a building or two, the other teen always seemed like he didn't care about anyone else, only caring about himself and his perfect, painless suicide. To say that he cared about himself was stretching it all a little far as well.

The only reason that the other boy seemed to tolerate me was because he found my willingness to argue and fight with him, with someone that most in the Port Mafia were wary of before he even officially joined, entertaining enough to keep around. That and I'm one of the few people that can read the teen well enough for him to not have to explain all of his convoluted schemes and scams to me for me to understand what he wanted from me.

But now...

The other teen's behavior was something that couldn't even be properly described as cold. To be purposefully cold to some, that takes emotions from the other person, but the boy before me didn't seem to have any to spare. It was almost like he didn't care about anything at all, like I was nothing to him at all. But for that to be true, it meant that the bot standing in front of me did care before, cared about me of all things. And now, he doesn't. Now he can't.

I don't really know how I was supposed to feel about that.

—-

Chuuya POV

We boarded the plane, finding our middle class seats towards the back of the machine. Dazai let me through first, willingly giving up the window seat without any type of fighting as he put my bag in the overhead luggage, choosing to keep his own at his feet.

There was no one else in the row with us, so when the other boy sat down, he took the far right seat, leaving the middle empty of everything but whatever emotional baggage we seemed to be carrying hanging between us.

I glanced out the window, taking in the night scene of the airport. The flight is supposed to be about sixteen hours from here to New York, something that I was tired just thinking about. Whether we're going somewhere else after New York or staying there, I didn't know, but I did know that I was going to try and sleep during this long, awkward flight, jet lag be damned, as New York is thirteen hours behind us.

I glanced beside me, bored at the sight out of my window, we haven't taken off yet, so it was just a bunch of commercial planes taxiing around the airport, the sight beside me was much more interesting than any of that.