Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty-four

"Dazai," the other started again on the other side of the line, the false name slightly slurred in a soft way that the other man had never spoken it before, as if he was about to speak of something that he didn't want others to hear. "I love you."

The breadth in my lungs was stolen as words that I never thought I would hear from the other were spoken, whispered into my ear as if the other was right here to do so.

Closing my eyes, I will away the pain rising in my chest, the familiar hands that always came as anything that I had ever wanted was stolen before I could even hope to grasp it, tearing it from me like children fighting over a toy. Because while drunken words might be sober thoughts, I wasn't foolish enough to believe that the older man would ever think such a thing of me - even less so in the way that I wanted the other to.

A day at the beach brushed across my mind, muscles kissed harshly by a war that would never be written of in any history books. Words spoken carelessly that reminded me that the way that the pair of us had been living at the time wasn't the reality that we knew, that in Yokohama Chuuya wouldn't ever voluntarily allow himself to hold me in such a way as we did in those days. It made me feel unclean to know that, shame and disappointment coiled in my gut at the memory alone.

I've loved him almost since the day that we met, and Chuuya has made it clear that his feelings were not the same.

Not then at least, but certainly not now after so many years of pushing the other away.

I'd still let him kill me though, if that was what he wished. I'd rather it be his hands that I fall to than anyone else's.

"Yeah, Chibi, I'll be right there," there was a smile in my voice, but it didn't take the World's Greatest Detective to know that there wasn't one curved across my lips.

Chuuya mumbled some sort of goodbye into the phone, seemingly unaware of the words of his that I had so willfully ignored as the other side of the line went dead. Unaware of the way that my heart ached at even the idea that it might not just be some drunken mutterings.

Sighing, I thought through my limited options before dialing a new number, one that I knew as well as my own and all of the others from before.

"D-Dazai?" The new voice questioned, unsurity mating their voice as if they thought that this was some sort of dream, the words spoken with the roughness of sleep. I knew that depending on the mission that the younger had taken this week, they just might have been.

"Hello Akutagawa," I spoke formally, the words kept low so that not even those with the advanced hearing of tigers might perceive them. "It's about Chuuya."

The other side of the phone went quiet before a rustling sound could be heard for a long few moments. If I were to garner a guess, it would be that the younger was moving to somewhere more private where Gin wouldn't be disturbed by the conversation that would surely worry the assassin if she were to hear only half of it.

"What's wrong?" The boy questioned quickly, his voice laced with worry just beneath the monotone that it usually held when anger or desperation didn't control it. I knew that the younger cared for the mafia executive as most in the Port Mafia tended to after being exposed to the older man for so long - it was hard not to - and I knew that the Hatrack would have sought him out while I was away, kept an eye on the children that I had brought in. It was the reason that I had called him.

A soundless sigh escaped my lips, draining my body of what little energy I possessed. "The slug called me drunk," I explained, not bothering with the false cheer that I would put on for others, not when the boy already knew how false it was at the end of the day after countless attempts of trying to teach the younger man how to do something similar himself in the early days after Akutagawa's joining. "I wanted to see if he was in his office, or at a bar."