Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter thirty-three

"I'll leave it off for now, save some bandages while here," the other boy decided, handing me the box that the bandages had come in from beside his thigh, "and I'll just wear them as I had before back in Yokohama."

"Why?"

The demigod suddenly flicked me in the head as if that was a logical answer. "I'm still blind in that eye, Slug."

I threw the closed box of bandages at the other boy, watching in annoyance as he only swatted it away with the back of his hand towards our bags in the corner of the room.

"One last thing," the other boy said, his tone suddenly a little more serious than it had been only a few moments ago, "Chiron knows."

I looked at the younger teen, a list of things that the centaur could know that we wouldn't want him to know flooding through my mind. "What does he know?"

"He knows about you and Arahabaki," the other teen answered simply. "He could sense it on you."

"What did you tell him?" I asked, wondering what kind of convoluted plan the other teen had created for us to follow this time.

"That you were here to help," the younger teen said, though he said it in a way that seemed to suggest that the centaur hasn't had believed him all that much. "Don't worry about it. And anyways, no more awkward staring contest between you two should be happening... probably."

I rolled my eyes and flicked the other teen in the head as he had done to me not long before. I laid down in the bed, watching as Dazai swept all of the old bandages off of the bed and onto the floor before slipping his shirt on and laying down beside me, a decent distance between us. And it's no one's business if when we woke up the next morning, that distance was all but nonexistent once more.

—-

Dazai POV

Chibi and I walked back to the cabin after breakfast the next day, the pair of us bickering with one another as a thick stack of papers rested in my hands. Chiron, even in the brewings of a war, the centaur was still giving out morning chores to the head consulars of each cabin.

"Tell me why I should help you with reports when there's a rock climbing wall with lava pouring from it that I could be doing instead right now?" The shorter teen asked, crossing his arms in a way that seemed to highlight the absurdity of this situation in the other boy's eyes.

I looked at the other teen, resisting the urge to wince as my blind eye burned beneath the sun that it hadn't seen in a year and a half, watching as the wind gently moved the other teen's longer hair in the breeze. I wanted to tell him that I didn't trust the centaur not to try something or say something that he shouldn't. That even though I know that he's more than capable of handling himself, I don't want to leave the other boy with the other campers and their prying eyes again, but I didn't. Because those thoughts were dangerously airing on the side of humanity, a line that I haven't crossed in two years.

Maybe being back in New York is messing with my head.

"Because you missed me while I was gone," is what I said instead.

"Like hell I did!"

We argued back and forth for the rest of the walk back to the cabin, but I noticed that when I went to sit down on the floor and place the papers down in front of me, the other teen wasn't much farther behind.

We sat on the ground, Chuuya at my side listlessly playing with Riptide in pen form as I read the reports out to the other teen. The older boy would listen as I spoke and make comments on anything that he found interesting while helping me think through a word or phrase when my dyslexia became too much and started getting in the way. It was calm in the way that doing paperwork together into the early morning hours back in Yokohama tended to be.