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hansoulo · 4 years

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ain’t it a gentle sound (the rolling in the graves) - pt. 5

Pairing: Horacio Carrillo/f!Reader

Warnings: grief, heavy angst, mentions of Hard Emotions and Past Events. it’s not super specific and it’s in the context of healing/working through those things but ik reading that can be hard so pls take care!! also talks about hospitals? no gore or anything but :P reader and horacio have a mini therapy sesh and then make out for a bit >:)

Word Count: 2.6k

A/N: it’s taken almost a month but here u go 💀

masterlist playlist moodboard gif by @el-cheung

You’d been given time off from your shifts at the hospital, courtesy of the whole “kidnapped and experienced blunt trauma to the head” thing, but you were due back soon and knew you couldn’t keep dragging your feet. As much as you wanted to dig your heels in the sand, to bury your head in it until everything was muffled and coarse and static, you couldn’t. Not forever. You had a job and responsibilities and friends and a fucking life to get back to but everything still felt splintered and raw, pieces that were just starting to come together breaking apart again and leaving you, sitting on the cold tile of your bathroom floor heaving gulps of air like a drowning man and feeling just as desperate.

Everything had been too much, too slow and too fast at the same time and you just needed… space. To think. To try and not feel so fucking guilty and rotted from the inside. It had been eating at you, gnawing aimlessly for so long you hardly even noticed it before pushing it back down but now, now it was tearing you apart limb from limb with slow-snapping teeth, screaming everything and everyone you’d been trying to forget since this whole shitshow started. You used to be normal.

You used to make grocery lists and get called pet names and go to dinner parties. You used to gossip with the other military wives, sip wine with a warm hand on your knee and a chest against your back. You used to have so many things. Then… then you didn’t. And you were just starting to be okay with that because you could at least pretend you had him. For a moment, you did. You had him and he had you for a brief, sparking moment that felt like fire and tasted like blood but was the best thing you’d ever known.

Now you didn’t have anything. And it was your own damn fault.

You could hear Dr. Reyes’ voice in your head now, chiding you with a shake of her graying head. It’s not your fault, she’d say to you as you sat on the crinkly fake leather of her office couch, wringing a tissue in your hands until it chafed your palms. She’d called a few times since you’d come back - back, not home, because it wasn’t really home - concerned as to why you hadn’t been making it to your weekly sessions. Her voice was warm, familiar and grounding and a little pitying but you didn’t really mind. It was kind of in a therapist’s job description to pity. Maybe that wasn’t the right word but you appreciated the concern all the same, assuring her that no, you were alright and just not feeling very well. The last part wasn’t even a lie, because the ache knotting something awful in your head had yet to subside.

Horacio had taken you to the hospital after he got you out of the safe house, sitting in the waiting room and dwarfing the little plastic folding chair. He was still wearing his tactical vest, the gun holster digging into your hip as you leaned on him. You could barely string two sentences together with the bright fluorescent lights glaring in your eyes, so you’d screwed them shut and pressed your forehead into his chest, listening as he explained what happened to the receptionist.

You remembered her asking if you were married, feeling the shake of his head as his chin dipped slightly against your hair. Are you in a relationship? Another shake, Horacio’s arms sliding down to help prop you up on your feet. You didn’t really expect him to answer differently. It still stung a little bit, though.

An hour later and you’d walked out with a mild concussion diagnosis and a prescription for some painkillers, pressing the heel of your hand to your temple as Horacio led you back to the Jeep. You tried not to think about the bullet holes in the passenger side door and how tightly his hands gripped the steering wheel.

He probably doesn’t have great memories of hospitals, you’d mused with your head lolling against the window, gaze bleary and unfocused as it swept over dusty backroads. With his wife and all. You hummed as the thoughts churned through your head, making your expression in the glass frown a little deeper. Maybe that’s why he always came back to his apartment so roughed up. Probably doesn’t like going if he can help it. I wouldn’t either, if I had to watch my wife die. I’d hate it.

⫸ -------- ⫷

Horacio sank deeper into the couch cushions, a hand cradling Isabella’s head as she lay across his chest. She was sleeping soundly for the first time in days and he let out a sigh, careful not to jostle her as he reached over to the phone on the table. He’d forgotten how difficult it could be, without you there.

He wanted to call. He wanted to see you, to talk to you, to do something. The plastic cord of the telephone tangled slightly when he held the receiver, thumbnail dragging over the buttons and catching on the shallow grooves of waxy plastic. It warmed under his hand, grown restless and waiting. He set it down again.

Your voicemail left two days prior still fogged his head like the static message of a radio, the signal too soft and too out of reach but still carrying over enough to whisper and root itself in every waking moment. It’s just- it’s just too much right now, Horacio. Maybe we can work it out. Maybe not. I- I don’t know. Take care, alright? I lo-

You’d ended the message then, the dial tone ringing mocking and sour in his ears.

⫸ -------- ⫷

It was Friday night. You were due back on Monday, but it was far enough away that you could pretend not to care. Things were a bit better now. You were eating and showering and doing laundry. Responsible-type things. You could finally sleep through the night, even if you were plagued by nightmares. Sleep was sleep, right?

He wasn’t sleeping much, though. Not tonight, at least. Undercut by the sound of Isabella’s fussy cries, you could hear him pacing. You laughed a bit, not because it was funny but because it was familiar.

Before you could realize what you were doing, you slowly padded over to the door, not caring that you hadn’t brushed your hair or were wearing old pajamas. He’d seen worse, anyways. You wordlessly took the baby from his arms. His eyes seemed sunken in, a bit darker and a bit more hollow. You didn’t say anything, though. Neither of you did. You just stood in the hallway, a quiet agreement to not look each other in the face blanketing the air in a way that made your tongue stick to the roof of your mouth.

She settled quickly against you, hiccuping breaths slowing underneath your touch. The air was hot, humid and sticky with the Colombian summer in a way that made your head soupy. You could hear cars in the distance, sirens and horns and all the violent things that had led him to you and you to him. You pressed a kiss to the top of Isabella’s head, smiling at the way she smelled like the color pink - the innocent softness that you’d grown to love like it was your own. You missed it.

Horacio’s eyes were downcast, broad shoulders taking up most of your field of vision in a way that had your throat closing up. You reached out to place her back in his arms, clearly your throat awkwardly when your hands brushed. He mumbled a thanks and you shook your head, stepping back towards your apartment. Your hand rested on the doorframe, tangible evidence of your hesitancy as you stood with your back still to him.

You turned, the ghost of your profile just catching the way he glanced up when you opened your mouth to speak. “I-” you began and then let the word drift off, hanging heavy and uncertain. A whispered goodbye finally escaped your lips as you turned the knob, the metal searing cold against your skin.

⫸ -------- ⫷

Still Friday night. Or Saturday morning. Hard to tell, in the witching hours when everything was dampened and tilted sideways. You felt tilted sideways. Off-balance. You didn’t even remember leaving your apartment.

Your steps faltered, the few yards from your door to his stretched out until it lay miles away, a distant exit on a road you’d been down before but couldn’t for the life of you remember when or why or how to get back on. Wrenching your eyes shut, you let your forehead fall against the plaster of the wall beside you, the stucco cool and pebbling hard beneath your skin. The air was tight in your chest, shallow breaths doing nothing to ease the choking feeling in your throat. It was like hands were wrapped around you, pushing down on everything until you felt ready to burst.

Legs moving of their own accord, you found yourself standing outside his apartment entrance, the painted wood staring back at you, impersonal. What were you even doing?

The door opened just as you were about to turn away, hinges creaking slightly and making you wince. He called your name, voice soft and slightly confused. It was late. Were you okay? Was everything alright? He didn’t get to finish the last question before you fell into him, arms thrown around his neck and gripping the fabric of his shirt so tight your knuckles paled. “I need you,” you whispered, your voice thick with tears.

You buried your face in his neck and his breath fanned out over your hairline, tickling your cheek when he looked down. “I’m sorry- I’m sorry but I- I just-” He quieted you, whispering comfort into the shell of your ear until your hiccups slowed and the tears dried sticky on your cheeks. You could feel his hand on your back, the other braced against the doorway. Sniffling, you pulled away slightly. “I’m sorry.”

Horacio shifted to thread a hand through your hair, his touch gentle - almost hesitant. The front of his shirt was damp with your crying and you frowned at it slightly, moving your hands to his chest. He shook his head with a small smile, his own hands moving to rest atop yours and you were suddenly reminded of how big he was. It should’ve terrified you, standing there and being comforted by a man like that, a man capable of things you didn’t want to speak aloud, but it didn’t. It never had.

“Don’t worry about it,” Horacio said. Oh. Right. The shirt. Hands reached up to cradle your face, rough fingertips smoothing over the curve of your jaw. You let your eyes fall closed, stepping closer until his feet widened. His thumb caught the downward drag of a tear, wiping it away across your cheekbones. “I’m sorry, too.”

⫸ -------- ⫷

He’d led you back into his apartment, your steps quiet and your voices hushed as you sat down by his kitchen table. Your eyes were still puffy and everything was fogged up, burning a little and blurry the way fighting sleep made you feel. It was dark outside. Your only witness was the moon.

You traced the rim of your glass of water as you spoke, a single finger circling until your nail caught its edge.

“We should talk,” he said as he drew up a chair. His voice was quiet, rounded out on the edges and tired. You laughed a bit as you took a sip.

“Yeah,” you agreed. “Yeah we should.”

So you talked.

“Are you alright?” Horacio asked after a few minutes where you both sort of said things but didn’t really say much at all. You nodded, resting your cheek on a propped hand, the grainy wood digging into your elbow.

“Yeah,” you looked back at him, smiling. You were trying to be, at least. “I think- I think I was just scared, y’know?”

He frowned slightly. “I would never let anything happen to you.”

You shook your head. You already knew that. “No, no, it’s not that.” you began, your eyes downcast and swimming murky in the water glass. “I was scared of myself. Of things all going to shit again. I didn’t want you to-” you blinked back tears, reaching to wipe them away with the heel of your palm. “I didn’t want what happened to him to happen to you. I don’t think I could, I- fuck,” you whispered, cradling your head in your hands. You closed your eyes. “Sometimes I can’t help feeling like it’s my fault. And I know it’s not, I know that it’s just- ”

“It’s easier to blame yourself,” Horacio whispered, his hands coming to your wrists. “Believe me, I know.”

Yeah, he would, wouldn’t he?

He brushed the hair back from your face and you remembered when he kissed you, thinking of spun sugar and amber and other sweet things that could still burn your tongue.

You entertained the idea of facades for a moment, the notion that you could somehow still manage to build something out of brick and mortar and silence and keep him out. He’d already seen you with all your walls crumbling down, though, so that wouldn’t accomplish much. A self-deluded exercise in futility, pretending like you didn’t need him and he didn’t need you. You were fighting a losing battle with yourself, a civil war of body and mind and heart that left you sick and dog-tired, just searching for someone to heal with.

It seems you’d found what you were looking for.

You moved your hands, threading your fingers into his. Ghosting your lips against the inside of his wrist, your words were hoarse and came out before you could stop to think. “Can I kiss you?”

A large palm came to your cheek, coaxing your face closer. Horacio’s chair scraped the tile as he moved but you barely noticed the sound, your eyes closing as his forehead fell against yours. You felt his smile instead of seeing it. His voice wrapped around you, all-encompassing and rushing in your ears like the roar of a heavy ocean wave. “If you want to.”

The first kiss had been nice. Hell, it’d been a lot more than nice but this… this was different. Somehow better. Slower. Quiet and soft but still kindling a smoke in your belly, gentle blue gas flames licking at every inch of your skin until you felt dizzy with heat and with touch. His hands had fallen to your waist, shifting your weight with no argument until you sat draped on his lap. He was strong underneath you, solid and warm and safe.

You recalled the feeling of stubble beneath your hands that first time in the hallway, so you moved to press a kiss to his jaw, over all the contours and shadows you never had the time nor the courage to map out before. You wanted to memorize him, everything from the way his fingers felt on your hip to the feeling of his mouth against the hollow of your throat. You didn’t want to run anymore.

“Stay here,” Horacio breathed as you shifted in his arms, reaching to card your hands through cropped hair at the nape of his neck. You nodded, still hiccuping leftover tears into his mouth as they bled into moans.

“Okay,” you whispered.

permanent: @ah-callie @itzagoodthing @spookypym @opheliaelysia @watsonwise @damndamer0n @amarvelousmandalorian @bunnyart-blog @agirllovespasta @pascalispedro @pascalplease @coffeencontemplation @chelsfic @lesqui @javierpenaspinkshirt @symbiont13 @glowingpena @squidlywiddly87 @1zashreena1 @hiscyarika @lostingoogletranslate @keeper0fthestars @bobafvtt @halfwaythereroyal @starwarsiscooliguess @huliabitch

ain’t it a gentle sound: @paniclana @huliabitch @jayoknrjk28 @raabiac @sparrows-books @popculturepriestess @pascalplease @ididntmeantobutiaccidentally @lockedoutofmyotherblog @multifandom-fiasco @wherethefuckiskathmandu

my tags have been all weird lately so if it doesn’t work/notify you im so sorry 😭😭

#horacio carrillo #horacio carrillo x reader #horacio carrillo x you #horacio carrillo/reader #horacio carrillo fanfiction #maurice compte fanfiction #narcos fanfiction #narcos fanfic #also the sand line at the beginning reminded me of anakin lol #it'S COaRsE aNd RouGH anD GetS eVeryWheRe

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cupidmarwani-archive · 5 years

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The Same (Rhodestead)

Summary: Connor loves too much, and he’s dying. (Hanahaki)

Warnings: blood, violence, mild gore, suicidal thoughts

Word Count: 3592

Every morning, when he awakens himself to the world, the first thing Connor recognizes is the pain. It had been dull at the very beginning, before he realized entirely what was going on. He thought it was a chest cold, a reaction to how cold it was and the fact that he sometimes failed to bundle up when the wind blew and the snow drifted. He took Robitussin, he broke out his childhood inhaler, he pushed through it because he didn’t have a fever and he didn’t look sick. But then it got worse, and worse, and worse, and now he wakes up to sunlight and alarms with the sharpest pain in his lungs, worsening with each deep breath. Painkillers don’t touch it anymore. And he knows, when his airway starts to feel closed off, he has to get rid of it.

Sitting now, upright on the soft mattress, he reaches for the trash can he keeps perpetually by his bed so he doesn’t get blood on his sheets all over again. He made that mistake once, and had to throw the covers away because some stains never come out. With the bin in his hand, he allows himself to cough. But it hurts. Every muscle in his torso tensing, his body trying to physically expel the things growing inside it, the weight of all the blood making it harder to absorb enough oxygen. He’s forcing himself, at that point, because he has to, and after a long moment a clump of flower petals and sticky blood come up, fall into the trash after filling his entire mouth with the taste of blood, as well as a thin coating that feels sticky, thick, disgusting. He almost vomits with it, but instead gets up for the day to clear his mouth and get ready for work.

No one knows how bad it is. No one knows he’s sick, because Connor is good at hiding it and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle the pity and the removal from his job and the way they’ll all try and fix him even though he’s long since accepted that he’s going to die. No one needs to know until it happens, least of all the reason this is happening to him. If Will knew, if he found out, he'd carry the weight of so much guilt, and he'd try to force himself to feel things he doesn't, and in the end it would only hurt everyone involved. So he hides it, even though he can't make it through his shower without coughing up more.

He stands in front of the mirror, stares at himself after turning off the water and wiping steam with the back of his hand. Fingers to cool glass, eyes to what his clothes hide but his pain doesn't. The skin on his chest is red and irritated, blotchy with the spreading infection and the growths inside of him. The flowers. If he squints, he thinks he can see it moving as it spreads. Often, he can absolutely feel it. The curl of a vine around one of his ribs with excruciating pain, petals brushing against the walls of his lungs and sending him into a coughing fit. But the most obvious is the rash from bursting blood vessels and bruised ribs and organs, large and angry and obvious. It’s beginning to creep up from where his shirt covers, and he knows the second it’s visible at work, he’ll lose everything.

“I’m okay,” he tells his reflection, and leaves it behind to get a fresh pair of scrubs.

When he finally arrives at work, walking into the ER, there’s a man arguing in the hallway, and the moment he sees him, Connor sees himself. The man is screaming because he loves someone, loves this girl who’s pregnant with his child and he can’t have her. From a distance, he can see the blood dripping down the man’s shirt, on the floor, a rain of flower petals a halo around his feet. And then he’s hauled off by security, let out of the hospital, and gone with a mild fight, and someone starts mopping up the mess without a thought for the pain that man might be in. If he’s this angry, bleeding this much, it’s likely reached his brain and he could die any day, any hour. It’s not an excuse to terrorize that poor girl, but it has to hurt. Connor would rather die than live like that. For a morbid moment, he hopes the disease will kill him before it turns him into something he’s not.

“He’ll be back,” Connor tells Sharon, reaching for her to stop her from going after him. “He’s got the disease. He’s gonna come back.”

“Let’s hope not.”

She goes after security anyways, and he’s left to watch the young girl talk to Natalie, the blood streak as it’s mopped, the clock tick on the wall like it’s just waiting for something to go wrong. On cue almost, his chest seizes and he practically sprints to the bathroom so no one will have to see this happen. The door slams open and he barely makes it into a stall before he’s hacking, doubling over and quickly falling down onto his knees with a dull thud. Nothing comes at first- it rarely does- but before long comes the blood, and the petals, and after a moment full flowers that fall into the water and blood. And it feels like it’s physically crawling, skittering inside his windpipe and he knows it must be more of the plant taking him over. Spreading. Hurting. When he stops coughing, it’s still there and he knows it won’t go away.

He probably doesn’t have much time left.

Connor gets up, flushes the toilet, and goes to wash his hands and face anyways. There’s blood off the corner of his mouth, dripping from his nose, which is strange because he didn’t even feel it. He reaches up to wipe it away from his face, but just then, someone comes into the bathroom. Panicked, he looks up, and it’s Ethan, walking in slow and looking him up and down in a clinical assessment. He produces something innocuous but obvious from his hands, pale blue and white, commonplace given where they are right now. A mask.

“No,” he says. It’s not a choice. His bloody nose drips onto his top lip. “No, don’t.”

“It’s just for the blood,” Ethan answers, and makes a gesture like pulling his shirt up before extending out the mask.

Connor looks down to see that the collar of his shirt has slipped low enough to reveal a bruise, and he pulls it up before reluctantly accepting the mask. He wears them all the time, but this is different. After wiping his face, he tucks the loops behind his ears and adjusts the mask, pinches it in the right place and makes sure it’s secure over his mouth and nose. Everyone will know. Sick, but not sent home. The disease. They’ll know it’s living inside him, and that before he knows it he’ll be dead, buried, consumed on the outside as well as the inside by forces of nature who understand exactly how much pain he’s in emotionally, and match it by tearing him apart from within.

When he returns to his mirror image, he looks sicker by his flushed cheeks and the mask covering him so he can’t contaminate anyone or anything with the blood building up slowly in his lungs. He’ll drown in it if the rest of his body doesn’t give up on him first. He hates it. Nonetheless, he has no choice but to walk out of the bathroom and continue toward the cardio wing in spite of the mask, the obvious sickness and death getting a firm grip around his spine.

He doesn’t even make it as far as the wing before he reaches his father, arguing with some top dog on the board about something stupid. That’s not important, but he’s wheezing and hits his hand against his chest like it’ll stop whatever pain he’s in. Connor runs forward to check on him, and it’s a decision he’ll later regret. He convinces his father to come down to the ED for a checkup, just to be sure he’s alright. Just like with any other patient, he listens to his breath and to his heart, studies the sounds and the oxygen level when he takes proper vitals. It’s like with any other patient, except then his father wants to leave. But then the man from earlier comes back, and this time there’s a gun gleaming in his hands. He shoots, and by the time Maggie and other staff get to evacuating patients, there’s too much happening and he’s got his hands on the bloody chest of a security guard who got shot in the shoulder.

Kneeling beside Ethan, blood soaking the pant legs of their scrubs, he knows in the officer’s eyes that he recognizes Connor to be the same as the shooter. David, a voice in the back of his head supplies. He is understood to be just like David because of the mask over his mouth and the rash he knows is visible beneath his collar again. Today, everyone will know what he has become. And today, they will assume he is just like the shooter. Mocking him, he feels the plant squirming and expanding in his chest.

“Run,” Ethan says quietly. “Get out before it’s too late. You’re sick.”

Those two words burn like acid in his veins. You’re sick. He isn’t a patient, he’s a doctor, and it’s his job to take care of people, not the other way around. Connor shakes his head and keeps his hands on the officer’s bullet wound so that he won’t lose too much blood. It’s something easy to focus on over the sound of David yelling and the pressure building in his chest again because he’s bleeding heavier in the stress. He needs to cough again.

“Connor.”

Before Ethan can tell him again to leave, Maggie starts locking the doors and Will helps some woman tape sheets up over all the windows. They’re in here for a while, there are two gunshot victims down, the pregnant girl is here, Connor’s father is trapped, and April has a patient hiding in a bay. This is a mess, and there’s no telling how long they’re going to be stuck here, or how many more people are going to get hurt.

He pulls away from the victim to cough again, lifting his protective mask as he stumbles to a trash can because he won’t keep it trapped against his face. If there were any questions before, they must be gone now as he grabs the edge of the bin for stability. His muscles betray him again, tense, shake, force him to cough violently until he manages to clear out his airway at least a little. Blood, full of clots. Flowers. They fall, they sit, they stain, and Connor spits out whatever’s left in his mouth before pulling the mask back down and straightening up as best he can. His ribs ache in protest.

“Connor…”

When he follows the voice, it’s Will. Standing just a few paces away with that pitying look, and unaware of the role he has to play in the pain. It’s not his fault, no more than it’s Connor’s, but it still makes it worse to look at him. Even more so when Will reaches from him, and he flinches away.

“How long?”

He tries to take a deep breath, but it hurts too badly. “A few months.”

“A few months?” Will moves too quickly, gets a grip on Connor’s arm before he can move back again, and it hurts so much. He fights not to make a sound, no matter how much he wants to scream. “Connor- you need surgery, you could die-”

“Hey! Stop talking!”

The gun swings toward them and Will lets go. An ounce of relief. Connor rubs his wrist like it’ll destroy the lingering pain. He meets David’s eyes and, in that moment, there is more recognition.

David lowers the gun slightly and comes closer, mouth open slightly so he can get more air. There’s blood on his chin and in his teeth, down his chest, coming from his ears. He’s dead by the end of the week. It’s too late for him. “You’re just like me,” David says. “You understand. You have to- you can help me out here, you know how this feels!”

Before Connor has the chance to agree or disagree, Lily’s dad gurgles on the floor and spills blood from his mouth. It’s different from the blood that Connor chokes on. Thinner, oxygenated, relatively healthy. Natalie gets to arguing with David while Lily cries, and Connor should try to be useful but all he can do is try not to lose is balance from the dizzying pain as his diaphragm spasms again. When he pulls at his shirt, the rash is darker and varying from red to purple. If he looks closely, he swears he can see bumps where the disease ravishes his body. Or maybe he’s imagining things because it’s finally reached his brain after all this time.

“We need to let people out of here,” Natalie insists. “That officer, and Lily’s father, they need more treatment than we can give them. And Dr. Rhodes is dying.”

“He stays! He’s like me!”

For a sickening moment, the gun is pointed directly at Natalie’s face. But then it’s gone, and Connor almost sighs in relief before it puts too much pressure on his lungs. He has to focus, more than anything, on standing upright and keeping the pain off his face so no one worries. He’s done being worried over.

He misses some amount of time just trying to keep himself from crying, coughing, or collapsing. People are released from the situation. Lilly cries. David yells. Will keeps coming and standing in front of him, presumably trying to talk to him. He doesn’t stay long, and Connor loses the ability to focus his eyes at some point. He isn’t sure when. What brings him back is the sound of an alarm, of Maggie grabbing his arm and yanking him forward sharply.

His father is having a heart attack.

On some level, he knows it should register, but instead he just stumbles to his father and does chest compressions like it’s reflex until Maggie tells him to stop. His father’s heart beats on its own. But he needs to be in heart surgery now, and before Connor can voice that, there’s a gun in his face and a demand to perform a c-section on the screaming, pregnant, terrified teenage girl. All he asks in return is that his father be allowed out, and it actually works, and then they’re all going to his hybrid OR to save the girl and her baby.

One step out of his father’s bay, and he collapses.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been since he’s breathed deeply, but he chokes on his own blood when he tries and feebly pushes himself up on his elbows to get rid of it. Thick blood full of flowers, full of seeds. He’s not going to make it long. Lying on linoleum and staring up, struggling to get oxygen. Will kneels beside him and Connor wants to tell him to go away, but he can’t. All he can do is gesture at his side, form his hand in a circle in hopes someone understands. A chest tube. Get the blood out of the way so he can save the little girl.

By some miracle, Will understands.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Connor,” he says as he cuts between his ribs.

It doesn’t hurt as bad as the disease does. In goes the tube, and with a rush of blood, it gets a little easier to breathe. Easy enough for Connor to sit up and cough some more, dispel some more flowers. He starts to push himself up, go to operate on Lily, but Will pushes down on his shoulder, a pressure that feels like pure fire burning into him.

“You’re really sick, Connor. You can’t-”

“I have to help,” he gets out, and makes it as far as the trash can to throw up. More blood. He’s running out of time. “I can tell you how to operate. She can’t die, Will…”

His legs feel weak, but he makes it all the way to the hybrid OR and leans against the wall, his chest tube drooling blood and petals on the floor as he instructs them with as much clarity as he can. How to cut, how to pull, how to save the baby. With every passing moment, he slurs more of his words, coughs more because he’s still bleeding too heavily even with the chest tube helping to relieve the pressure. There’s a lot of blood that’s not his, and then crying because they saved the baby, and next is Lily as he tells them to stitch her up. He can’t hear himself very well anymore. His head hurts. Everything hurts.

“Connor,” Will says, but he sounds far away.

He’s touching him again, hurting him again, but Connor can’t eke out a protest. The best he can do is reach up to his head because it feels like an icepick is driving into his skull and he swears, he swears he can feel the plant moving under his skin.

The pain turns searing as it reaches his ears. He tries to touch them out of a morbid impulse and they come away bloody, and he can’t hear, and when he looks up Will is talking to him but all he can hear is ringing and something like leaves rustling.

An arm loops around his waist, pure agony, and he’s dragged more than walks to a hospital bed. No. No, he doesn’t want to be a patient. He shakes his head and tells them to let him die, or better yet, kill him, although he isn’t sure if he actually makes a sound because he can’t hear a thing. He makes a loose grab for his chest tube before he’s restrained by a hand so heated it must be Will’s.

“I don’t wanna hurt because of you anymore!” he cries, or at least hopes he does. “Just kill me, make it stop! Make it stop, I just wanna die!”

For a blissful moment, the world is still outside of himself.

Then there’s a face mask and he refuses to be treated like this, to become helpless on a ventilator and kept alive by machines because that wouldn’t be alive. He shakes his head.

But then, Will.

Will smiles at him, brushes his hair out of his face so tenderly. He takes a pen and writes on his own arm, so you die in peace. And that, that Connor can accept, so he nods and allows calloused hands to secure the mask over his face without fight, although every brush of skin is a thousand needles digging deep enough to scratch bone. But he inhales against the mask, even as his lungs fight and he tastes copper, until he’s melting away and the pain begins to fade.

Some time later, Connor wakes up.

He wasn’t supposed to wake up.

The world is silent as he weakly pushes himself up on his elbows and inhales, deeper than he’s been able in a long time, although he still feels a slight rattle in his lungs that tells him the disease still has his body in its grip in spite of whatever happened in the time he missed. Hands shaking, he opens his hospital gown to find a bandage running from his sternum to his belly button, a little bloodstained but not too badly. On instinct, he reaches up to his head as well, and finds a gauze with an edging of haphazardly shaved skin. He was operated on. But he’s still sick, and now he can’t hear a thing, and when he tries hard, the last thing he remembers is the ringing so loud it gave him more of a headache than he had already managed to sustain.

Well, he remembers that he didn’t want to be operated on, didn’t want to be treated, and definitely didn’t want to become a helpless patient like he is now. And after everything, he’s still sick, and he just wanted to die. He’ll do it himself if he has to.

He briefly looks around to make sure he’s alone. He is. No one would want to see him like this, after all. Connor grabs the edges of his bandages, curls his fingers beneath the gauze, and rips upward. The adhesive hurts as it rips off his skin, but then he’s left staring at a long line down his torso. There’s still scabs, still stitches. And he shouldn’t do this. But he’s got at least some painkillers in his system, so he takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and tries to pull the sutures open.

After popping only three stitches, someone comes running. His monitors must be making noise, not that he can hear it in the slightest. Nurses grab his wrists, force them down at his sides and start to restrain him, although he quickly stops resisting because he simply lacks the strength.

His face begins to feel wet, and it occurs to him that he might be crying.

#rhodestead #connor rhodes #will halstead #mine #fic

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selenecrawford · 5 years

Text

Selene Crawford : The lady and the Devil

Warnings: Violence and some cursing ( I think) lol. Have fun.

What started like a nice week turned into an obstacle race to make things work out. Hideyoshi was still nagging about the staplers while Mitsuhide kept taking them. In the end and without any regard she just kept walking into Mitsuhide's office to get the stapler to use it. Each an every time Mitsuhide's half smile infuriates her but she just tried to hide it with a stony smile that didn't even reach her eyes. The tension between them seemed to pass along to Masamune who started to be out at the office more. Misunderstanding the situation he started to drift from everyone and focus more on the field. At times he just pass by Selene but not even a hello was given.

Selene felt the indifference and for some reason started to hurt as time went by. But letting others see how things affected her was a no, no for her. Work must be always first, and she wasn't aiming to get closer to him, was she? The anxiety started crawling it's way on her alongside resentment. At times she wanted to slap Mitsuhide's smile from his face. Others, she just wish to see Masamune's smile and cheerful self around. The invitations to go out also stopped. Being an adult was not fun sometimes. Giving a long sigh Selene started the letter for the fifth time.

(Come on, girl you can't let the ball fall. Since when other people had such a power over you?) she thought working on anything and everything she could keep her mind running.

“Selene, Nobunaga wants to see you.” Hideyoshi said frowning when he saw Selene with sad face. “It's everything OK?”

Startled Selene changed into a soft smile and replied. “Yes, it's just the routine and some little details I need to work out. I'm good thank you.” crossing her fingers she hoped Hideyoshi would not pry any deeper. Ever since the call 3 days ago the nightmares started again. Her daily intake of sleep was reducing little by little. But she needed to rest at least one day of full sleep. (Yeah that should help.) Selene kept thinking how to finish her agenda when she found herself in front of Nobunaga's office.

After knocking the door she entered, and stood in front of the desk. Nobunaga was waiting on his desk to dictate a letter. And going over some details.

A mild headache started making Selene loose her hair a bit to get some relieve.

“Something wrong?”

“My apologies, sir just a mild headache. I just need to get a painkiller. Nothing, worth worrying about.” Selene managed to answer with a professional smile. But inside she was feeling more anxious by the minute.

“Sincerity is a virtue and free something I value deeply. If you are going to be my eyes, and represent me at the entrance door the least you can do is not lie to me am I clear?” the sharp tone that Nobunaga used hit Selene hard.

Lowering her head she tried to blink away the tears that threaten to fall. Giving an affirmation with her head, Nobunaga waited but the office fell into a complete silence. It seemed like minutes went by when Selene finally spoke.

“As you know I have a past, something I thought it was gone. But I just recently I found out is not completely gone...” silence came back.

“ I know that, there is a reason why they call me the The Devil.” Selene's face went up in awe at the soft tone Nobunaga used.

He was not judging her but he was giving her an opening to talk.

“Well, I wished things would had been different. Today is one of those days I feel tired. Is just...” gasping Selene covered her mouth with hands. She was made a mistake, never speak your boss.

“Sir I'm sorry,I...I mean,” seeing the agitation on her voice Nobunaga frown.

“ It's ok Selene I know you are a human being. But instead of fighting who you were and rejecting it you should embrace it.”

“Embrace it?” Selene frown at the comment she never considered it from that point of view.

“Yes, everyone here like to have you around. Including Masamune.” at the mention on his name Selene cheeks took a lovely shade of pink.

“Before you dare to deny it everyone already knows, so it's useless. Its painful to see that man struggling to just let you near. You both are alike stubborn people. Come on, let's eat lunch outside, my treat.” with this Nobunaga, took his jacket and waited for Selene.

“One question, why? Why you are this nice to me?”

“Everyone has a use, but if you are not on optimal conditions you can not be of any use for me.” was the final answer with a cocky smile.

Still confused at her boss behavior Selene went to take her purse while Nobunaga park in front of the building. The trip to the restaurant was quiet. Part of the meal was shared in silence with the occasional comment on weather, society gossip and work. The way things looked like it seemed that Nobunaga wanted her to calm down. Once the meal is over Selene look at Nobunaga gratefully.

“Thank you, for the meal. I feel much better, although there is a lot I need to ponder.”

Nobunaga smiled and surprisingly got closer. His movements seemed like he was giving her a kiss on the cheek when he whisper on her ear. “We are being watched. Try to be normal.”

Selene's instincts kicked in, smiling sweetly she took Nobunaga's offering hand and started walking to the car. The sound of the approaching car at fast speed took them by surprise. Before they were run over Selene pushed Nobunaga to the side and she dive to the other, while rolling on the ground of the parking lot one of the windows opened and a assault rifle started shooting on Selene's direction. The bullets missed by mere centimeters except for one who grace her right arm. The car kept running and left on the next turn.

Nobunaga went running to Selene when he didn't see her moving.

“Selene are you alright?” the panic on his voice was visible.

“I think so, ouch,ugh...” Selene tried to move her arms but a sharp pain on the right made her wince in pain.

Nobunaga took her in his arms and went back to the restaurant to call the police. In minutes the place was full of cops, and an ambulance for Selene. She refused going to the hospital while Nobunaga gave the statement to the cops. After everyone made sure she was ok and it was only a scratch they patched her up and let them both go. Selene was fed up with the day. She just wanted to go home and crawl into bed and sleep for 6 months at least. By the time they arrived to the office the rest of the men where there waiting. Selene went directly to the kitchen, she was tired sore and in pain. She needed sometime alone. She couldn't deal with them not on that state. Grabbing her right arm she tried t calm the trembling that was starting but her resolve was fading. In seconds she was covering her mouth to prevent crying out loud. She didn't heard his voice until he was next to her.

“Selene?”

A pair of arms involved her and her knees started to gave away. Masamune took her into his arms. Little sobs were escaping her while she bury her face on Masamune's chest. He took her to his office. She was trembling uncontrollably. Sitting on the sofa near the window Selene clinging to his jacket trying to cry as silent as possible. Masamune rub her back and rested his chin on her head. No words were needed, he could feel her fear and pain. He kissed her head while hugging her tightly. Soon Selene started to calm down and let Masamune's warmth fill her. Feeling safe she fell asleep in his arms. Without waking her up he left her on he the sofa with his jacket as a blanket. Getting out of the office he found the rest of the guys on the break room with a bottle of whiskey already opened.

“How is she?” asked Hideyoshi

“Sleeping, she was shaken pretty badly.” said Masamune while pouring some whiskey on his glass.

“The cops took the statement but nothing will come out of it.” said Nobunaga pouring another glass of whiskey.

“Why not? This is not the first time someone is trying to take a shot at you.” said Mitsuhide in an enigmatic way.

“Mitsuhide, stop it” snarled Hideyoshi.

“What? Is the truth, Oda takes most of the mafia cases, at some point it was bound to happen.” the matter of fact tone was not lost to anyone.

“ If that was the case I would had known who was behind this.”

“What do you mean by that?” it was Masamune's turn to tense and give Nobunaga a sharp look. “You don't mean...”

“Yes the target this time was Selene. She pushed me to the side and the shoots went to her side. The shoots were aimed to her.” Nobunaga looked directly at Masamune.

“It could be Kennyo...” reply Masamune.

“Nobunaga is right he wasn't the target.”

Turning around everyone looked at the man in front of the entrance of the break room. Wearing a black and red suit Shingen Takeda gave an open big smile while eyeing each and everyone of them.

“So what I need to do to get offered a drink here?”

@colivara @datemasamunemaiwaifu @la-piperina @unstoppablelinda @yeshasays @elievalentine @epicdragonlady @masa-little-kitten @ikesenhell @mikamiw @jennacat84

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izanyas · 6 years

Text

Margin Of Error (Part I)

So I bet you weren’t expecting this to grow into a 20k word monster, huh??? Well me neither

Rating: T Words: 10,300 Warnings: past abuse, mild gore, none of this is medically accurate in any way.

Margin Of Error Part I

Dazai had floated in and out of consciousness since the gunshot, torn with pain through all of his torso and mind too numb to form so much as a coherent thought, but he still recognized the wrongness of his environment as soon as Gin and Higuchi dragged him out of the car.

"This isn't Yosano's office," he mumbled.

The words felt like glue in his mouth, stuck together for lack of ability to articulate. They both still understood him just fine, which shot some sort of bright affectionate feeling through his mind.

Weird.

"Yosano is compromised," Higuchi said matter-of-factly. "Our allies in Tokyo recommended this place, remember? Said they wouldn't make a fuss."

Dazai gargled something. He wasn't sure what he meant by it.

He still managed to shake off Gin when she tried to grab his legs and lift him up. If he was going to be tended to in an unfamiliar place, he wanted to come in on his own feet. He didn't fancy anyone other than Yosano sneering at him for being weak.

Gin shrugged, and muttered, "Stupid."

Wherever they were was obviously a long way from Yokohama. The very air lacked the sting of salt, felt heavier with streetly smells, with gas and heat. Dazai had not stopped sweating icily all over himself since that cut in his shoulder, and now that same sweat stuck shirt and slacks to skin uncomfortably, chafing with every step. That was almost worse than the pain in his side—the nausea, the bright burn through his veins whose origin was easy to guess at.

He faded off, grinning slackly, once they reached the lobby of the clinic. He thought he saw a flash of color by the entrance, the glowing ember of a cigarette being crushed underfoot as whoever had smoked it hurried inside, and then a voice—"Get a stretcher."

Then he passed out.

He came to inside a corner of the ER, laid onto a scratchy bed whose sheets made the fire of the poison inside him flare, Higuchi and Gin standing guard by his sides. Privacy screens separated him from the rest of the room, but not enough that he could not hear the low moans of other occupants, or even the occasional snore. Considering that he was still dressed in blood-drenched clothes and in massive amounts of pain, he couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes.

Gin put a hand on his shoulder when he tried to rise up, shaking her head firmly. Dazai sighed and obediently let himself fall back onto his pillow. The air coming out of his lips burned in his throat the way firesmoke did.

The privacy curtain was shoved hastily aside, and a man wearing a nurse's uniform came in, carrying a tray full of menacing and glistening utensils and bottles.

They didn't gleam as nicely as his hair. Or his eyes.

"Hello, sweetheart," Dazai slurred happily. The man's very blue eyes shot to him immediately. "Not that I don't appreciate the sight, but I think I'm gonna need someone a little more experienced."

He didn't need to look aside to know that Higuchi was rubbing her face tiredly. It almost made him giggle.

The man didn't seem to find the situation so funny. "Bullet wound, right?" he asked, irritation flashing over his handsome face. "I need to prep you for surgery—"

Two guns were aimed at him before he could finish.

Dazai would have liked to take out his own, loath as he was to aim a weapon at someone so good-looking, but his arm shook before he could so much as reach for his holster. He satisfied himself with the sight he must make surrounded by two very powerful women in suits. "No surgery," he declared, fitting himself more comfortably against the rough pillow. He had never been so ill-bedded while Yosano was tending to him, and she was far from having the means that an actual clinic did. Was that where all the taxes he didn't pay go? "Get a doctor here to take this bullet out of me and stitch me up and I'll be out of your hands."

To his credit, the man never showed fear at all. He glared at Higuchi and Gin both and replied, "Get that shit out of my face."

They didn't obey, of course, but even Gin's aim faltered somewhat.

"Fine," the nurse continued, this time to Dazai. Dazai thought he would have felt shivers crawl up his back under the weight of his gaze if not for the fact that he was already shaking all over. "I'll get that bullet out."

"I said I wanted—"

"You get me or you get the fucking cops," the man cut in. His voice had a rough quality, a depth and scratchiness that Dazai would've liked to hear speaking other sorts of words. When he said, "Lie down," Dazai almost made a comment of the kind.

Gin prevented it by holding his shoulder warningly.

The nurse put a cap over his tied hair—what Dazai wouldn't give to see it untied, he thought drowsily—and pulled a pair of gloves out of a box set atop the wheeled table he had carried inside the booth. He leaned over Dazai, unhindered by the gun immediately pressed to his own side, and asked: "I suppose you don't want any anesthetics either?"

"That would be ideal, yes," Dazai replied with a smile. "I'm feeling a little paranoid, you see."

"Suit yourself. It's none of my business if you enjoy passing out from perfectly avoidable pain."

Dazai's next words died when the man pulled up his soiled shirt and touched the wound with his fingers; he couldn't have helped the wheeze of pain that shook him if his life depended on it, and the man made no comment, just kept applying careful pressure around the area until he seemed to find what he was looking for.

"You were shot from far away?" he asked, and wiped the blood off of his gloves to grab something from the table. It left it with a sickening click of metal. "The bullet's not too far in."

"About fifty meters, I believe."

The man looked at Higuchi and said, "Give him something to bite on. Piece of cloth or something." Then to Gin: "And you can both drop the guns and hold him down instead. If he moves too much it'll just make things worse."

Higuchi took off her jacket and twisted one of the sleeves into a tight line. Dazai opened his mouth when she handed it to him, and the taste and texture of cloth under his teeth only made his nausea stronger.

His chest was starting to burn, his heartbeat to speed up. That was probably a bad sign. Maybe he should say something about the poison.

Maybe I shouldn't, he thought, grinding his teeth onto Higuchi's jacket as the man next to him cleaned the wound and held it open with two fingers. He refused to look down at himself this time, not even for the pleasure of the nurse's handsome face. He stopped breathing when Gin and Higuchi's hands pushed down on his shoulders and hips in tandem.

"Not that you need the warning," the nurse said then, voice gone a tad gentler, "but this is going to hurt like hell. Try not to move."

He allowed Dazai a second to breathe before getting to work.

The first drag of metal inside the wound burned Dazai all the way to his throat. The cry he let out was smothered by Higuchi's jacket, and his immediate sideways flinch prevented by two pairs of extremely firm hands. His eyesight flashed white with agony almost instantly; he couldn't hear anything or feel anything past the immediacy of pain, the likes of which he had only ever felt through torture. Dazedly, through moans he didn't recognize as his own and the icy sweat drenching him, he felt the nurse's steady hand flatten itself against his stomach almost in reassurance.

Dazai wanted to pass out. More than anything, he wanted to answer the call of oblivion, the pull of blissful unconsciousness dragging him further and further away from this tough hospital bed. Yet Dostoyevsky's pleased face flashed through his hazy mind; the two hours he had spent without news of Oda or Yosano ground into his brain with enough strength to match the agonizing drag of metal through his bleeding body. He couldn't sleep, not now. Not ever.

He kept himself awake with every spark of energy left in him.

"Done," said the nurse, and then the burning pain was gone.

Dazai barely heard the click of the bullet falling into a metal bowl on the table; he lurched aside immediately, pawing vaguely at Gin to get her out of way so that he wouldn't retch all over her. With more deftness than he would've given him credit for, the nurse shoved a basin under his face. He held Dazai's forehead as he expelled bile out of his empty stomach.

His hand was cool. When it left his forehead and pushed him back down onto the bed, it was careful. The man himself entered his field of vision again once he was laid on his back, and his face showed sincere surprise.

Dazai smiled at him shakily. "I'm tougher than I look," he rasped.

"You should've just passed out," the man replied, back to the same unimpressed voice he had used since his arrival. "I'm sure your bodyguards can take it from there."

"I don't like being unconscious in strange places very much."

"Bit of a control freak, are you," the nurse muttered. Dazai blinked vaguely at him. "I still need to stitch you up, you know. I don't see the point of putting yourself through so much pain, it'd be better if you just slept through the night."

"And miss the sight of you, gorgeous?"

"Boss," Higuchi sighed.

Dazai tried to answer and found himself with a hand over his mouth—the man's hand, pushing pills onto his tongue. "Painkillers," he said. "Just fucking take those at least."

Dazai kept the pills under his tongue, made a show of swallowing on nothing, but the man didn't take his hand away. He raised a thin eyebrow expectantly.

"Very well," Dazai relented. His words died onto the man's soft palm.

He took the glass of water he was offered and swallowed the pills. His torso still ached numbly. Like distorted hearing after a shot fired too close to the ear; as if pain itself had to drag its way up to his brain to settle there and make itself known.

The nurse seemed satisfied with that. He replaced his gloves with new ones, opened a kit over the table and sat next to Dazai again. Without the pressure of the bullet inside him and despite the raw feeling of the wound, Dazai found the strength to actually strain his head downward and look at what he was doing.

The needle and thread hurt, every time they came in and dragged through his skin, and yet Dazai couldn't help but be amazed at the speed and precision with which this man carried his work. He didn't think he had ever seen such a tidy row of stitches. Shutting up the wound took barely more than a minute.

"I hope you realize," the nurse said lowly, "how stupid it is not to check this more thoroughly. You might yet die." He cut off the excess thread with graceful habit and rose up in his chair.

"I'll be fine," Dazai replied amiably.

"Right. I guess professional medical opinions bear little weight for yakuza scum."

Dazai smiled and didn't correct his assumption.

"Is there anything else I should be aware of, besides the bullet?" the man asked Higuchi next. "Anything broken, a blow to the head, a papercut?"

"I'm fine—"

"I think he's drugged," Gin cut in nonchalantly. "And there's a stab wound in the shoulder."

The man stared at her blankly; then he glared at Dazai, once again, with his unnerving blue eyes. "Why the fuck didn't you tell me about this?"

"It's a scratch," Dazai drawled, glancing unhappily at Gin. "It's not even bleeding anymore. And I'm not drugged."

"You were walking weirdly and sweating all over before being shot, boss."

"Where's the wound?" the nurse asked, frowning.

Gin tapped Dazai's left shoulder with more strength than necessary; it jolted at the stitching in his side and the scabbing cut in his back, and he winced.

"Get on your front," the nurse ordered.

"Very forward of you, but I require at least dinner for that," Dazai replied. "Not that I wouldn't love to have you examine me as thoroughly as humanly possible—"

His sentence died with a cry of pain as the man, running out of patience, took his shoulder and turned him over. His strength was surprising, even with how little fight Dazai could give in his current situation. He sucked in a breath when the upper part of his shirt, and the patch of gauze under it, were cut apart to expose the distant ache he felt between shoulder blade and spine.

The nurse's fingers were not kind this time. "This is inflamed," he muttered, poking and prodding at the area. Dazai knew it was swollen, hot to the touch, probably seeping pus or something equally unappealing. "Did you clean that?"

"I did," Higuchi replied, peering close as well. "It didn't look that bad the last time I checked."

"It's really shallow..."

"It's nothing," Dazai said through gritted teeth.

The man didn't listen to him. He questioned Gin about the symptoms he had displayed before being shot, and the way he was leading her told Dazai all he needed to know about what he thought this was.

"Poison of some kind, then," he concluded.

Dazai groaned into the pillow.

"Did you know?" Higuchi asked him, outraged.

"If it was a bad kind of poison I'd be in way worse shape," Dazai replied. "It's nothing—"

"I'm keeping you in for a few days."

This time, Dazai found the strength to take his gun in hand. He leveled it with the nurse's face swiftly, satisfied and saddened at once to find the very first inkling of fear in his bright eyes. Still, the man did not move. He stood his ground even as Dazai pushed himself off of the bed to stand in front of him. He didn't flinch when the cold mouth of the gun rested against his forehead.

"I'm sorry, love," Dazai said between pants. "Much as I regret departing from you, I can't stay here for an hour longer." For good measure, he flicked back the safety. The metallic sound it made rang ominously through the sudden silence; even the neighboring snores and moans seemed to have faded away. "Can't have the police, or worse, knocking at my door."

"Go ahead and shoot me, then," the man replied through gritted teeth. "And I can guarantee that you'll have the police storming this place within minutes."

"Ah, see, this is why I hate upstanding citizens like you. Such naïve faith in law enforcement."

To his surprise, the man laughed.

It was a gruff thing, his laughter, more suited to petty delinquents than one with such quick and healing hands. Dazai lowered his gun slightly.

"You don't know anything about this place, do you?" the man said, grinning brashly—and the sight of it made blood Dazai didn't know he still possessed crawl up his neck and face warmly. "You're not the first criminal I have to patch up. Our boss has a bit of an understanding with local yakuza groups—they come here, we don't blabber, they pay us handsomely. Of course, this means the place is very scrutinized by the police. They'll barge in at the slightest excuse… such as a gunshot." He crossed his arms across his chest and asked, "Who recommended us to you?"

By Dazai's sides, Gin and Higuchi exchanged a glance.

"Fukuzawa Yukichi," Dazai replied.

"You're a friend of Fukuzawa's?" the man said.

"Why do you sound so surprised?"

"The people he sends us are usually way less grating than you."

At this, Dazai had to smile. "What can I say," he drawled. The familiar light-headed numbness of blood loss was starting to get to him, threatening to swallow everything to black. "I like to make an impression."

He tried to say something else, and his legs gave under his weight.

He was caught, not by Higuchi or Gin but by the man himself, who linked both arms under his and pressed him against his front. It wasn't until then that Dazai noticed how much shorter than him that man was, or quite how solid his body felt, more soldier than hospital staff. The man seemed to have no problem at all sweeping him up and putting him atop the bed once more; it took another minute before the room stopped flashing white and black in Dazai's eyes, and a few seconds more for it to stop turning around itself ad nauseam.

"You're staying here," the man said once he was done making sure Dazai hadn't fainted. He snapped the gloves off of his hands and threw them in a plastic bag hanging from the tray. "You're going to at least take painkillers, let me get rid of that infection, and try and figure out what you've been poisoned with."

"I'll file a formal complaint to your superior," Dazai mumbled in answer. "The care here is abysmal. I'll get you fired."

The man quirked another smile, too close to Dazai's own face for Dazai's eyes not to trail over his lips and almost tip his head back for a kiss.

"Feel free to try," he replied.

His breath, smelling faintly of tobacco, washed over Dazai's face warmly.

Dazai didn't remember falling asleep, but he did remember startling himself awake after taking a breath and finding his nostrils filled with unfamiliar smells.

He opened his eyes to a single white room with brightly-lit windows. Gin had curled into a chair by his side and seemed to be sleeping. Higuchi was sitting in another, by the tiny table in the corner on which she had installed her laptop. It took a minute for him to be able to breathe past the splitting pain in his chest and shoulder, where he guessed that nursed the night previous had cleaned the wound again and patched it up properly. A look at the crook of each elbow told him that he had probably been given blood, as well as some sort of a sedative. He was hooked onto transparent liquid now.

"I should have you killed," he croaked in Higuchi's direction.

"Gin did it," Higuchi replied without turning around. "Pretended to be your sister so she could give consent in your stead. Your official name is Tanaka Tarou. Also, I have news of Oda and Yosano."

Dazai pushed himself upright in the bed with a grunt. "Are they—"

"They're both fine. Oda escaped without a scratch, Yosano got a little beat up but she's in a safehouse taking care of herself. Hirotsu and Sakaguchi are handling the organization in your absence."

Relief coursed through Dazai's body, so strong it made his empty stomach clench and growl. Flushing slightly, he asked, "What about Dostoyevsky?"

"No sign of him since he fled yesterday," Higuchi answered. She turned her chair around to look at him and grimaced, probably because of how filthy he looked. At least he had been changed out of his blood-caked suit and into a clean gown. "Sakaguchi says he's probably going to come after you again right away, boss."

"Of course he is," Dazai muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. It was shaking.

He still felt nauseous, though not nearly as much as right after the poison-laced knife had dug into his back. He wondered if someone had found out what he had been poisoned with and administered an antidote.

"Did that nurse come back?" he asked, falling back onto the bed. He regretted the action immediately—his side ached so sharply at the contact that his eyes burned with unspent tears. "The hot one," he forced out despite the pain.

"Once," Higuchi said. "Hooked you up to the IV and everything. He's actually pretty nice to talk to when no one's being an ass to him."

"It's called flirting, Ichiyou-chan."

"I think that was closer to sexual harassment, personally. And that's not counting the death threats."

"A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," Dazai grunted. He looked at the wall clock. "Where the hell is lunch? Do they not feed their patients here?"

The door of the room opened.

"We do feed them," said the woman who had just entered, accompanied by a meek-looking nurse pushing a tray forward. It was stacked with food.

Dazai was too busy looking at her to look at the food, however.

Maybe it was the very sharp cut of her suit, maybe it was that, like the nurse from the night before, her hair shone an unnatural red. Dazai knew how to recognize authority when he saw it. There was no need for a name tag or an introduction when someone entered a room carrying so much presence.

Instinctively, his back straightened. He rose into a sitting position without the help of Gin, who had startled awake as the door had opened; he squared his aching shoulders into the most professional posture he could achieve while bedridden and wearing only a gown.

"You're the head of this place, I presume?" he said amiably, extending a hand.

The woman smiled and shook it firmly, curtly, before letting go. She took hold of the pad stuck to the front of his bed and replied, "You're right. I am Ozaki Kouyou, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Likewise," Dazai murmured. "So is it customary for the big boss to visit every new patient, or should I expect the police to come in after yourself, doctor?"

"He wasn't lying about you being paranoid," Ozaki replied mildly.

She sat in the chair Gin had vacated, close enough to Dazai that he felt a semblance of discomfort. There were too many ways to hide weapons under such a fine-cut suit. Dazai watched her flip through the notes that the unfortunately attractive nurse must have written the night before.

"I'm here first of all because toxicology is one of my specialties," she went on, "and to tell you that although we couldn't identify what exactly you were poisoned with, it seems the dosage wasn't enough to be lethal. Your vitals look good, what we gave you seems to be working just fine. We're keeping you here another forty-eight hours just in case, but if everything keeps going the way it is you'll be right as rain in no time."

"I'd like to be discharged now," Dazai said. "I would hate to take a bed away from someone who truly needs it."

Ozaki smiled. "That's up to Nakahara-sensei," she replied. "He's the one overseeing your case, and he gave the order."

"Surely as his superior—"

"I have complete and utter faith in his judgment. If he thought he could discharge you now without risk, he would have."

Ozaki's tone was nothing short of frighteningly final. With the white light surrounding her, she looked something like porcelain. Her eyes gleamed like painted beads. Dazai wouldn't have been surprised to see her skin turn to wax, her agreeable smile twist into one from a nightmare.

With difficulty, he admitted, "My staying here any longer may put this hospital in danger."

Something sharp flashed through her eyes for a second; and yet she smiled the next, polite and easy as she had been since coming in.

"I'm sure Nakahara-sensei will not let anything happen to you under his care," she replied. "He spent the whole morning in the labs trying to figure out what poison got to you, you know."

"And when do I get to actually meet this Nakahara?" Dazai retorted, thinly holding back his frustration. Yosano was hurt, Oda was stranded, he was a hundred kilometers away from Yokohama—he didn't have time to stay here and recover, a sitting duck for Dostoyevsky's rifle. The hole in his side screamed at the thought alone. "So far I'm not very satisfied with your nurses. The one I met last night was particularly rude."

For some reason, Ozaki's eyebrows raised with faint surprise. "Nurse?"

"Yes. Red hair, very cute, terrible bedside manners."

Ozaki stared at him; then she brought a hand to her lips, hiding them with the tips of her fingers, not fast enough for Dazai to miss the wide grin she was trying to cover. For a second he thought she would start laughing, and he wondered at the ways he could make someone pay for making fun of him while lamenting the thought of harming such a beautiful woman—but then Ozaki lowered her hand, mouth twitching, and said, "My sincerest apologies. I'll be sure to have a word with him."

The next moment was spent in silence, as the nurse who had come in with her placed Dazai's lunch on the mobile shelf attached to the bed. Dazai felt little like eating food whose provenance he couldn't check, but a bigger part of him knew Dostoyevsky would not try poison again while he was in a hospital, and an even bigger one was simply famished.

He ate.

Ozaki made conversation as he did, under the watchful eyes of both Gin and Higuchi. Neither of them said a word, and Ozaki made no comment of their presence outside of visiting hours either. At least the bed was more comfortable here than it had been in the booth he had occupied upon his arrival; some of his relaxation he knew came from whatever medication was being given to him via the needle in his arm. Ozaki gave him a rundown of them when he asked.

The door opened once again as Dazai was considering whether the unappealing piece of pie that constituted dessert was worth biting into, and in came the man from the night before.

Dazai opened his mouth to make a comment—on the man's disheveled hair, on his rumpled clothes, on how much better he looked with daylight bringing color out of him—but Ozaki beat him to it with a warm, "Ah, Chuuya-kun, I've been expecting you."

The man—Chuuya, Dazai thought delightedly—stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her.

"What?" he let out. He looked baffled. Exhausted too.

"Tanaka-san here had some complaints about the way you handled him last night."

Chuuya ground his teeth together and said, "Tanaka-san can shove his complaints where the sun—"

"I think it's high time I left," Ozaki cut in politely. Then to Dazai, "Someone will come fetch your tray in about half an hour. I wish you a quick recovery."

"Thank you, doctor," Dazai replied in kind.

Chuuya stopped her by the door to speak to her in a low voice. The room wasn't quite large enough for distance to muffle noise, however, and Dazai had always had a very sharp ear.

"What are you playing at?" he asked, and Ozaki replied, smiling, "Nothing at all."

The door closed behind her with a soft noise.

Chuuya rubbed his face tiredly. It was even easier now to see the marks of sleeplessness on him; he had carried himself with a strength of will Dazai was used to seeing only amongst his own men, yet now he slouched, his eyes staring at nothing and his hands idle.

"Right," he said at last. "I need to check on your injuries."

"By all means," Dazai replied.

"I also need your bodyguards out of the room."

Dazai smiled and said nothing.

With one last grunt of displeasure, Chuuya approached the bed and pushed the shelf and tray aside. "How's the pain?" he asked plainly, as he shoved the covers down and dragged up the hem of the thin gown Dazai had been put in.

There was no helping the shivers that struck Dazai at the touch of his hands, gloved as they were. He had only ever been so sparsely dressed in the company of a beautiful man in one other set of circumstances, after all.

"Manageable," he replied, which was true.

"Mmh."

Chuuya checked his side first. His fingers were quick despite his obvious fatigue, not shaking for a second as they ripped away the gauze and examined the stitches. Some pain made itself known as he touched their edges. Dazai bore it with a straight face.

"I know you can stand, but I recommend using a wheelchair if you wanna go farther than the bathroom," Chuuya said evenly. "You don't want to tear those up. No excessive movement for at least a week."

"Duly noted."

"Now get on your side, I need to check the cut."

Dazai followed the order with something close to a thrill. The cut didn't hurt as much this time when Chuuya touched it. He applied some sort of lotion over it before dressing it again, and the contact was so careful that Dazai didn't hiss or hold his breath once.

He definitely wanted to feel more of those hands. Without gloves, and with a lot less clothes in the way.

"Everything looks good," Chuuya announced once he was done.

"It's been said often," Dazai quipped.

Chuuya gave him a very tired glance before continuing, "Take a shower around seven if you can. I'll be back at eight to check again. If you've got a problem in the meantime, Kunikida-sensei will take care of it."

"I thought the one taking care of my case was named Nakahara," Dazai said, a little snappishly.

The new dose of painkillers was starting to kick in, and drowsiness was spreading through him, slowing his mind and his body both. Dazai hated medication of all kinds on a good day, and he hated them especially when he was stuck in foreign turf, bedridden, and with an assassin after him. He needed to plan his escape for the night, not fall asleep again.

His thought process was interrupted when Chuuya frowned at him and said, "That's me, yeah."

"What?"

More frowning. "Nakahara. That's me. I'm the doctor in charge of you."

Dazai blinked at him slowly.

"But you're a nurse," he managed eventually.

"I'm not a nurse," Chuuya replied, impatiently this time. "I'm a doctor here. What, you thought they wouldn't have a doctor look at a patient coming in with a bullet wound and poison in their body? Are you stupid?"

"But—"

He looked at Gin, who was filing her nails, then at Higuchi, who was studiously typing on her laptop.

"You were wearing a nurse's uniform," he accused.

"It was the end of my shift, I was about to go home, saw you come in and grabbed whatever was available at the time because I'd already changed," Chuuya replied with a roll of his eyes. "Because of you I had to spend the morning in the labs, for��nothing, since apparently whatever you were poisoned with doesn't fucking exist on this planet. You're lucky Ozaki-sensei figured out what to give you. You got a nasty fever, and your heart gave us a good scare around ten."

Dazai had to take a moment to absorb this information. At least that would explain why he felt so utterly weakened.

"Well," he said. "I'm alive."

"No thanks to putting additional trauma on your body by having me extract a bullet without anesthetics," Chuuya grumbled. "Anyway. Kunikida will take care of you until my shift tonight, so try not to be an ass to him. He's already got plenty to deal with."

"You ask so nicely, it would be remiss of me to disobey."

It was fleeting, barely perceptible, but Dazai thought he saw the shadow of a smile at the corner of Chuuya's mouth. He thought he saw his serious face relax, his features soften, his brow ease.

He swallowed, and felt his heart beat at the roof of his mouth. You're lovely, he wanted to say.

"See you tonight, then, doctor," he said instead. It came out stiffer and more polite than intended.

"Yeah," Chuuya replied. "Don't cause any trouble."

Dazai looked at Higuchi and Gin in turn as soon as the door closed behind Chuuya's back.

"You knew," he said.

Gin shrugged. Higuchi raised her head and replied, "As I said, he's a good conversationalist when no one's hitting on him."

"I just thought it was fun to watch you make an ass of yourself in front of your doctor," Gin said evenly. "Boss," she added as an afterthought.

"I wish I was dead right now," Dazai moaned, falling back onto the bed. "I really do."

"They have a resident psychia—"

"Don't even finish that sentence, Gin-chan."

The doctor named Kunikida went by Dazai's room only once during the afternoon. He was handsome too, in a different way than Chuuya was—tall and severe, the kind Dazai wanted to see flustered more for laughs than out of base desire. He asked some brief questions, never commented on Gin and Higuchi's continued presence, nor the bag of toiletries and clothes Higuchi had gone out to buy for all of them an hour or so earlier. He left once he found everything to his satisfaction. Dazai thought it both impressive and slightly concerning that not even one person had said anything about the gun resting on his bedside cabinet.

"This isn't a yakuza-run establishment," Higuchi explained to him, "but apparently Ozaki Kouyou used to be a pretty famous underground doctor. There's regular patients here too, of course, but most of the staff used to do less-than-legal jobs, and almost all the criminals in the region come here to get patched up when they don't want police to be notified."

"Why have I never heard of this place before?" Dazai asked tiredly.

He hated painkillers. His tongue felt like rubber.

"They don't advertise themselves at all. It's all hearsay."

"Found anything about dear Nakahara-sensei?"

Higuchi closed her laptop and said, "I'm not helping you stalk your crush."

The mousy nurse who had brought him lunch before came by again to ask if everything was fine. Dazai tried to coax her into talking, but Izumi Kyouka, as she was called, was a woman of few words. Her gaze was almost as implacable as Gin's. In the end she left Dazai with no more information on his handsome doctor but a lot of questions about why, exactly, a frail nurse was carrying a badly-concealed knife at her hip.

He got more out of the young man working at the small café-snack corner located in the lobby. Dazai left his room shadowed by Gin, who was so good at hiding her presence that he lost sight of her before reaching the elevators. He would've liked to make the way on his own feet, but the stitches in his side pulled painfully when he tried to stand up in full. He had no choice but to borrow the wheelchair left by his bed by Izumi.

Nakajima Atsushi was a lively young man with uneven hair and an uneven smile, who carried coffee cups and food the way one would porcelain and seemed to count each step he took. Dazai took on a different approach with him than he had with Chuuya or Ozaki. He put on a gentler voice, a softer smile, the kind that had made even Oda blush one memorable time.

The boy spluttered and smiled back helplessly.

"Nakahara-sensei?" he said, once Dazai had convinced him to sit with him. There were no other people to be waited on right now, and Atsushi seemed eager for conversation. "He's great, isn't he? All his patients love him."

"Really?" Dazai asked, with more interest than he should show. "He seems pretty rude, to say the least."

"Ah, well, he can be… he can be a little blunt, but he's one of the best doctors here." Atsushi took a careful sip of his tea, rubbing his thumb over the rim of the paper cup nervously. "One time I… um, I came here with some pretty bad burns, and he was great. It took a while for me to recover, and he was there every day. Even overtime, I think. Just sitting by my bed and talking to me whenever he was on break, to distract me from the pain."

There was a story here that the young man did not want to go deeply into, Dazai felt. He let Atsushi fade out of whatever painful memory had struck him and shadowed his face. He smiled again, then, the kind of smile that crinkled tiny lines around his eyes and made old ladies in the street chuckle at him, very far from knowing the kind of criminal he was.

Atsushi took another shaking sip. It must've gone down the wrong way, because he put the cup down harshly and coughed into his hand, his face completely red. "Anyway," he said once he was done, voice breathy, "he even went out of his way to find me a job here once he found out I was unemployed."

"He seems like a very kind man," Dazai said agreeably.

Atsushi nodded, eager and obviously in love.

Dazai pressed his own thumb onto the side of his cup. He hadn't touched his tea at all, not trusting any food that didn't come directly out of the hospital's kitchen for now. It had been hard enough to convince himself to eat lunch earlier; his chest still ached slightly, as if remembering for him that his heart had almost stopped.

"And what about his life outside of the hospital?" he asked nonchalantly. "Anything of notice?"

This made Atsushi's brow furrow and his eyes glint with vague suspicion. Dazai faked taking a sip of his cup, hoping to look disinterested enough.

"I wouldn't know," the boy replied eventually. "He doesn't really talk about himself much. I heard—"

He shut his mouth loudly, guilt flashing over his face.

"Yes?" Dazai said encouragingly.

"It's, it's really not my place to…"

"I understand. I've been taking too much of your time."

It did the trick; Atsushi raised his hands placatingly, shaking his head and muttering, "No, not at all—I'm sorry if I made you feel unwelcome, Tanaka-san."

"You didn't," Dazai replied cheerfully.

"It's just…" Atsushi hesitated another second. And then: "I heard he went through a bad break-up recently and he was absent from work for a couple weeks and no one really knew what happened except Ozaki-sensei's secretary who got fired after that for spreading rumors," he said in one breath. His face was flushed by the time he finished; he gnawed on his bottom lip until blood pooled out of a tiny cut.

Interesting.

Dazai entertained Atsushi with more small talk after that, steering clear of the topic of Nakahara Chuuya. The fact that he found the young man charming did not come to him as much of a surprise; he screamed of orphan, of the hazardous ways of life that brought the forgotten in places they had not expected. Oda had rubbed off on Dazai for too many years not to leave a fondness for strays at the hollow of his heart.

He took a shower after dinner had been served and once a young nurse named Haruno helped him remove his bandages. The pain of moving his arms lessened the pleasure of finally getting rid of all the grime and sweat he had accumulated, but he still felt better afterward. Slipping into fresh sheets smelling of cleanliness rather than blood was a very specific sort of relief.

Chuuya came by at eight, as promised. This time Dazai refrained from immediately teasing him, contenting himself with the sight of his serious face and the feeling of his hands checking his wounds carefully.

He really had nice hands. Dazai let himself, for a bare second, imagine feeling them bare on his body in places meant for pleasure rather than pain.

"Looks fine," Chuuya said at last, helping Dazai back down. "You'll be free to go the day after tomorrow."

"I'm starting to think I like being here," Dazai replied before he could help it, eyeing the hollow of Chuuya's throat and then the sharp line of his waist, visible through the opening of his white coat. "The view's not too bad."

To his surprise, Chuuya retorted, "Either try to get me fired or try to hit on me, but you can't have both, bastard."

Dazai grinned in delight. "Does that mean I get to have—gah!"

"Oh, sorry," Chuuya said, sounding not sorry at all. He took his finger off of where he had poked it, right next to the bullet wound. "Must've slipped."

"That's okay," Dazai let out, breathless and through gritted teeth. "I like a little pain."

Chuuya snorted—and immediately seemed angry at himself for doing so. His face darkened with embarrassment.

The sight was riveting.

"When's your break?" Dazai heard himself ask, still looking at the tips of Chuuya's ears, which had turned as red as his hair.

"After your bedtime," Chuuya snapped. "Which is about now, so stay put. I'll see you in the morning."

He left with a nod in Gin and Higuchi's direction, the loose white coat he wore unfortunately hiding his backside from view.

It was already night. Chuuya had turned off the light as he went out, and only the glow of Higuchi's phone now kept things visible. The outline of the bed trailed sharp and shifting shadows over the walls every time she moved it. Dazai observed them for a moment, letting his mind err toward the unpleasant thought of Dostoyevsky attacking him in his sleep and the more pleasant ones of Chuuya dressed out of his clothes.

"Oda's coming here tomorrow morning to relieve us," Higuchi said all of a sudden, breaking the silence. When Dazai turned his head aside to look at her, she was squinting at her phone, the light of the screen bleaching her face of color. "He can only take one person with him, so you have a choice between Akutagawa and Tachihara."

"Akutagawa," Dazai replied.

"He'll be delighted," Gin commented tersely.

"Michizou-kun talks way too much. Your brother might hate my guts, but at least he's silent about it."

She shrugged, coiled her body into the space of the armchair she occupied, and settled in for a nap, buried under her coat.

"Ichiyou-chan," Dazai said next.

Higuchi tensed. "No."

"I need you to find out when my delightful doctor takes his break."

"And how the hell do you suppose I do that, boss? It's a miracle I'm even allowed here at night without being a patient myself—"

"That nurse who came in earlier thinks you're hot," Dazai cut in, patting his side carefully. The light pressure of his own fingers still hurt more, somehow, than that of Chuuya's had. "Haruno was her name, I believe."

Higuchi struggled for a second with the way she should answer. She settled for, "You think so?" with a very faint voice

"Mmh. She certainly wasn't looking at your eyes, unless your eyes are somewhere around your chest. Or your thighs."

It was always hilarious to see prim and proper Higuchi Ichiyou lose her countenance about trivial things like this. Dazai embraced shamelessness because he frankly didn't care, but Higuchi could never entertain the idea of anyone being attracted to her without becoming weak in the knees. Considering how handsome she was, how ruthlessly competent and in appearance unashamed of herself, the contrast was cutting.

Dazai concealed his smile at her flailing and added, "She should still be working. I heard her say that she was to spend the evening at the burn unit, so I suggest checking there first."

"Right," Higuchi said shakily. "I mean, if it's an order from you, boss…"

"Obviously you can't refuse."

"Obviously."

"Shut up and go, for God's sake," Gin muttered from under her coat. "Some people are trying to sleep, you horny fucks."

Higuchi came back to the room forty minutes later, lipstick smeared over her mouth and multiple strands of hair falling out of her usually severe bun.

"Nakahara takes his break at eleven," she whispered, trying and failing to adjust her shirt. She had buttoned it wrong. "According to Haru—I mean, from what I could gather, he usually eats in the staff room on the second floor, near the maternity, then has a smoke outside the main entrance. He never takes more than a half hour."

"That's more than enough," Dazai replied pleasantly. "Thank you for your hard work."

Higuchi took the jab for what it was and glared at him. It still didn't erase the flush on her cheeks, nor the satisfaction radiating off of her. Dazai felt a pang of envy at that; much as he wanted to believe Chuuya would fall into his arm that same night, he knew he would have to put in a little more work than that.

That he was even willing to put in that work was frightening.

Dazai left his room ten minutes before eleven, aware of Gin waking up the moment he moved from the bed and blending with the shadows behind him. A hospital at night was a peculiar sight; Dazai had not much experience with those, preferring Yosano's underground office to any sort of official establishment, but he could recognize a haunt when he saw one.

Too many souls had come and gone by here for ghosts not to linger. He felt them on the sanitized air, saw them in each flickering light, each door ajar. The atmosphere distracted him from the pain in his side—he had opted to leave the wheelchair behind, and crutches were out of the question. Each of his steps was tentative. His back was bowed forward to lessen the pull of the stitches.

He found the staff room right where Higuchi had said it would be, door open and light filtering out. When he pushed past the threshold, only Chuuya was inside, back turned to the door. He had his hands in his hair.

Dazai stilled at the entrance, pain entirely forgot, as Chuuya pulled out the tie holding his hair up. He watched the length of it fall onto Chuuya's shoulders, brush the slight swell of where spine turned into nape; he watched Chuuya run quick fingers through it and felt his own tingle, aching to touch.

When he moved forward, it was with the same burn in his chest that he had felt from Dostoyevsky's poison.

Chuuya turned around in his chair the second he heard footsteps—and then he was jumping up, face tense with anger, saying, "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Just taking a walk," Dazai replied, sitting in the chair facing the one Chuuya had occupied. "It's so hard to sleep while in pain, you know. I am tormented every hour."

"You are so full of—"

As Chuuya struggled to find the words to match his anger, Dazai busied himself examining what he had put on the table. A lunchbox, a paper cup full of water, files that must belong to patients of his. With little surprise, he recognized his own.

"Get out of here," Chuuya hissed, falling back into his own chair and rubbing his forehead with his palm. "You're not supposed to walk around at night, you idiot. What if you fall, or tear your damn stitches?"

Dazai smiled darkly and replied, "A man like me is never alone."

Chuuya's look then was the same as the very first; unimpressed, tired, and maybe a little amused.

He truly was lovely. Dazai had ached to see him with his hair down each of the three times they had met, and this ache had been well-founded. It was too easy to imagine reaching across the table and touching his face, too easy to picture dragging him by the nape to crush their mouths together. He could almost feel that hair caught between their lips or making his eyelids flutter.

"Did you come here walking?" Chuuya asked, cutting through the silence.

"I did."

"How much do you regret that right now?"

Dazai's side flared, punishment and reminder alike, and he said, "I could never regret seeing you, doctor."

"Spare me," Chuuya grumbled. "Lift up your shirt."

Any teasing Dazai might have made at the order died as Chuuya crouched by his side and exposed the stitches to the light. He was not wearing gloves this time; his fingertips trailed warmly over Dazai's wound, and Dazai's tongue stilled as if frozen to ice.

Chuuya's hand left his skin with what felt like a caress. Dazai's next breath was precise, controlled.

"So, Chuuya," he said with some difficulty.

"I don't remember being on a first name basis with you," Chuuya replied in a huff, standing up once more.

"You've been closer to me than most people." Dazai pulled his shirt back down. He put his chin in his hand and watched the doctor fall back into his own chair, red hair brushing over his face. "At least most who lived to tell the tale. I gave myself the permission."

"I can see that," Chuuya muttered. He glanced at Dazai's file, spread between them on the table. "Tanaka Tarou-san."

"My friends call me Dazai."

"And you want to be my friend, don't you."

Dazai smiled, soft and lopsided. "So, Chuuya," he repeated. "Aren't you a bit young for a doctor?"

Chuuya opened his lunchbox without looking at him and said, "Aren't you a bit young for a yakuza boss?"

"I am no yakuza."

"Organized crime is organized crime no matter how you wrap it up," Chuuya replied evenly. He took a sip of water; Dazai eyed the movements of his neck as he swallowed. "But I guess it makes sense. All the yakuza I treat are polite to a fault."

"You never answered my question."

The look he was given would have made a lesser man falter. "I'm thirty-three," Chuuya said. "Not that it's any of your business."

It is when I try to bed someone, Dazai didn't say.

Inside Chuuya's lunchbox were neat sandwiches and a salad. Chuuya didn't seem bothered at all that someone was watching him eat; indeed he barely gave Dazai so much as a glance, and if Dazai knew he would be forcefully accompanied back to his room once the other was done with his break, he intended to enjoy every second until then.

He leaned into his chair carefully. The cut in his back was almost forgotten by now, only the wound in his side still bothered him, as well as leftover weakness from the poison. With any luck, and Oda's help, he might be able to leave the following day. That was probably what Oda had planned anyway.

The thought wasn't as appealing as it should be.

"Someone make that for you?" Dazai asked lightly, gesturing to the lunchbox. "A girlfriend perhaps, or a wife?"

Chuuya took his time to finish swallowing before answering, "Is that your convoluted way of asking if I'm gay?"

"Well," Dazai grinned. "Are you?"

He was almost sure that Chuuya was. He wouldn't have been so matter-of-fact about Dazai's flirtation if he weren't, wouldn't carry himself the way he did, wouldn't give Dazai the time of day. Nakajima Atsushi wouldn't have had such an honest and long-lasting crush on him without hope of reciprocation, or at least of being well-received.

Chuuya met Dazai's eyes through the dimly-lit space separating them. He held his gaze for a long time—long enough for Dazai's smile to fade at the edges.

"I'm going to explain to you why you're not going to get what you're after, regardless of whether I'm gay or not," he said lowly. "So I encourage you to listen."

He was closing the box now, though half of the food inside was untouched. Dazai didn't look away from his face and, for once, did not say anything.

"The most obvious reason is that you're my patient, and it would be highly unethical," Chuuya went on.

"I won't be your patient for much longer," Dazai couldn't help but point out.

Chuuya ignored the interruption. "But the one reason I know for sure I could never let someone like you have his way with me," he continued, "is because earlier today, Atsushi came to see me, bordering on a panic attack, apologizing again and again for sharing private details of my life with you."

The anger on Chuuya's face was not for show anymore. It was not simple fatigue, or straightforward irritation. It drew color out of his eyes until they shone like steel.

"I'm sure I don't need to draw you a picture about the sort of life he's had," Chuuya said, almost a murmur, so cold it seemed to slip under Dazai's skin and reach into his bones. "Atsushi's a good guy. He trusts people easily when they're nice to him, because he's so used to people hurting him. Of course he didn't notice that you were manipulating him for information—he couldn't forgive himself for betraying my trust, and insisted I get him fired like I got Kouyou's secretary fired when she spied on our phone conversations just to get gossip material out of my relationship troubles. It took me twenty minutes to calm him down."

Dazai opened his mouth with no plan at all on what to say. He was saved the trouble of coming up with a reply by Chuuya speaking again.

"You know perfectly well that I don't have a wife or girlfriend waiting for me at home," he said flatly. "And since you're so enthusiastic about digging around about my life despite how obliging I have been with your privacy, I'm even going to tell you all the juicy details myself."

"You don't have to," Dazai let out meekly.

He felt as though something had twisted his insides sideways; he felt cold through his stomach, through his chest, as if he had just drunk a handful of streamwater.

Chuuya's smile was a dark and joyless thing. He leaned over the round table, his voice turned secretive, and Dazai leaned in as well, inescapably. "I was in a relationship, you see," he said. His words felt the way his hands did—warm, careful, precise as carved woodwork. "For five years. Until one day the man I was sharing my life with started getting angry that my job took up so much of my time. He got fired from his own workplace, had no luck getting hired anywhere, got angrier and angrier.

"It started with small things," Chuuya continued, mindless of how still Dazai was, of how hard his heart was beating from proximity and apprehension alike. "Aimless arguments, petty insults. He accused me of not really being at work, of seeing other men on the side, demanded I show proof of where I was going and why, went through my phone… You know how it goes."

Dazai did know.

"It escalated until we were arguing every day. Funny how quickly four and a half years of almost perfect happiness can fall apart. I decided to break up with him, and you can imagine how he reacted to the news."

"Yes," Dazai replied quietly. "I can."

Atsushi had said that Chuuya had to take two weeks off of work, after all. Dazai had been curious about it; now he wanted anything but to know exactly why Chuuya, who was so diligent in his job, had to go on a sudden vacation.

Chuuya seemed to want to bear witness to Dazai's full absorption of the news. In his gaze was the same focus he had applied when stitching his skin back together—and there was some irony, some poetry perhaps, in that opening up took for Chuuya the same energy that fixing others did.

"So you see," Chuuya said. "I don't like controlling bastards like you. I could tell the moment you first talked down to me that you're a condescending prick who's never been told 'no' a single day in his life, and who's more than willing to use violence to get what he wants. A pretty face and some smooth talking don't change that."

"I wouldn't—"

"Sure. You wouldn't."

Dazai opened his mouth. Closed it again. He couldn't blame Chuuya for scoffing at him, not with how he had behaved, not with what Chuuya knew of his life. The fact that he was familiar with being controlled and led around was not something he could use as an excuse now.

His side ached when he straightened up in his seat. Chuuya had looked away by now, staring thoughtfully through the window and to the nightly view outside. He turned back around when Dazai spoke.

"I apologize," he said, with the same stone-hard bluntness he used to give orders. "Both for distressing Atsushi-kun and for bringing back painful memories with my behavior. I wouldn't have insisted if I thought you genuinely minded it, but I obviously misread you."

For a second he thought Chuuya would not react at all to his words; but then Chuuya breathed out a chuckle, running a hand over his face and half-hiding a smile.

He had dimples.

"Never mind," he said, cutting through the haze that the sight of him had just trapped Dazai in. "This isn't the first time a patient pulls a gun on me. Don't become so serious all of a sudden, it's throwing me off."

"I guess you're just irresistible to criminals," Dazai joked weakly.

"I'm usually better at ignoring you lot when you try shit like that, though."

His voice was firm, but his eyes bore humor again. Dazai let the line of his shoulders relax. He smiled back.

Chuuya didn't touch his food again. He put it back into a small fridge in a corner of the room, where other meals wrapped in plastic bags or labeled with names sat waiting. Then he gave a light kick to the foot of Dazai's chair and said, "Come on. I'm taking you back to your room."

Dazai stood up, slightly hunched forward. Chuuya didn't try to take his arm or touch him in any way, which he regretted, but he still walked level with him. He still let their arms brush together with each step.

The way to his room felt both longer and shorter this time around. Dazai couldn't feel Gin's presence at all, though he knew she must be in his immediate vicinity—he felt some guilt at the idea that she must've heard what Chuuya had talked about—but the air was less heavy now. Less haunted with the cries of souls in pain.

The light of Dazai's room was off. Higuchi must still be sleeping, for not even the faint glow of her electronics could be seen.

"I'll be there in the morning for your check-up," Chuuya said softly. "Try to actually respect one hospital rule and not walk around by yourself at night."

"That's a long shift, isn't it?" Dazai asked, avoiding the order altogether. "You worked all morning too. Don't you get tired?"

Chuuya shrugged. "It's what's needed. We're not exactly overflowing with staff."

Dazai thought he would leave, then. He couldn't think of another thing to say that wasn't about how much he wanted to touch the underside of Chuuya's chin, to press his lips to his forehead, to unravel him piece by piece.

But Chuuya hesitated upon turning around. He glanced at Dazai's face again and said, "About what you said earlier. Misreading me."

Dazai's heart gave a shiver. "I got it. Don't worry."

"No, I mean…"

It could've been a trick of the light, if there were light to go around; it could've been wishful thinking, if Dazai weren't too used to what he wished for escaping from his grasp. Chuuya tucked some lose hair back behind his ear, and his face had darkened.

"You didn't really," he muttered. "I was pissed as hell about Atsushi, that's why I said all that stuff, but I didn't really… well. I usually don't care about patients flirting with me, but you—"

He was turning redder by the second. Dazai felt his lips curl with delight, his chest give another beat of thrumming heat. "I what?" he whispered, taking a step closer.

The glare Chuuya gave him was entirely worth it. His next exhale, Dazai felt over his chin.

"You didn't misread me," he admitted at last. Then, as Dazai was opening his mouth to speak: "I still think you're an arrogant piece of shit and a control freak, don't misunderstand me. But I wasn't uncomfortable or anything until Atsushi told me about what you did."

"Can you find it in yourself to forgive me?" Dazai asked, failing not to smile too widely. "I only meant to find out more about the man I'm intending to sue for malpractice, I assure you."

"Fuck you, bastard."

"I wish you would."

Chuuya's mouth twitched helplessly; his cheek dimpled again, one line creased into his skin that softened all of him at once, and Dazai's hands burned as if touched by fire.

He resisted the urge to thumb at the corner of Chuuya's mouth. He did not resist that of reaching between the two of them and taking Chuuya's hand in his own, mindful of the minute tremor that shook it. Chuuya did nothing but watch as Dazai brought it to his lips.

"Good night, doctor," Dazai said, brushing each word over Chuuya's knuckles.

For the barest second, so quickly that Dazai could have imagined it, Chuuya's fingers squeezed his own. He took his hand back slowly.

"Yeah," Chuuya replied in a gentler voice. "Sleep well, Dazai."

[NEXT]

#bsd #dazai osamu #nakahara chuuya #soukoku #bungou stray dogs #fic: margin of error

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stripesthesupervillain · 6 years

Text

The Mad Hatter’s Guide to Happiness: Chapter 9

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I meant to post this yesterday, but for the love of god, this chapter turned out to be hella long. Over 5,000 words at that, the longest chapter of the series so far.

Well, enjoy a shit ton of dialogue.

Summary: After nearly killing each other, tensions have fallen as the two finally decide to talk it out together over a nice little game of chess. There are no more secrets.

“Ah! Not so roughly, now,” Jervis hissed, wincing when Jonathan brought the parted flesh together further in a quick tug. He grabbed the edges of his seat tightly with his free hand until his knuckles turned white. His other hand was on his phone, currently on the news surrounding their own predicament. “Well you were the one who refused the painkillers,” Jonathan sighed, adjusting his reading glasses atop his nose and accidentally smudging a bit of the Englishman’s blood on the thin bridge. While it was still a bit dim, he was momentarily glad for the building’s lights to help him see, made possible through the tech expert’s guidance. “Well my apologies if I find it a bit hard to accept pills from you,” Jervis scoffed, wincing again as more of his flesh was pulled together. Jonathan had to admit that the short-statured man was taking the pain fairly well, seeing as how there was a giant gash in his shoulder that he was now sewing together with nothing to dull the pain. The doctor himself felt the aching pain in the bullet wound in his own shoulder, which he had fixed up once Jervis’ own gash had stopped gushing blood. “Pray tell, are there any updates?” he asked, peering over his shoulder for a few seconds to gaze at the screen. “More than a bit,” the patient sighed. “They’ve figured by now where we had headed. That charmed lady we met at the diner? She identified us almost instantly, they said. She came forward and sang like the Duchess after her baby’s had a bit too much pepper. I’d say she’s determined to beat us, as well.” He let out a frustrated sigh. “Now I regret giving the stupid girl a tip.”

“We should be fine for a good day or so. We’ll leave as soon as we’re all ready and fit to go. Alright, I’d say we’re done here,” Crane huffed, cutting the thread and getting to covering up the stitched gash. A bit of pressure had Tetch gasping. “Gah! For a doctor, you’re not very gentle, are you- ngh!” He let out a pained hiss. “You definitely cut me deep, Hare. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you had been trying to kill me.” Jonathan rolled his eyes, cleaning the wound one last time before bandaging it. He no longer minded being called a rabbit, now finding it a good thing when it came to the Hatter. “I was aiming for your head. Besides, I’m a psychiatrist, not a surgeon.”

“Then just how do you know how to patch up a man so well?” he asked, cradling the bandaged wound once the other stepped away and put away the supplies. “Medical school helped me pick up a few things. I also get plenty of practice from stitching up a few of my henchmen. Unlike the drones you keep around, not all of them are expendable. If I can keep them alive, I’d like to,” the doctor explained, closing the lid to the first aid. “Now, about that tea?”

“Ah! I’ll make a batch right away,” Jervis grinned, coming to a stand. He paused for a moment to pull on his dress shirt and waistcoat, quickly grabbing his hat and placing it upon his head. He then dug through his coat’s pocket, pulling out a bottle of very familiar sleeping pills. These caught Jonathan’s attention, and he watched in mild interest to see what would be done with them. Jervis merely glanced at him with a grimace, shaking the bottle and listening to the pills rattle. He then chucked the container across the room and against the walls of the corner. The lid popped off and the small white pills scattered. He looked up at Jonathan again. “If a single one of those pills goes missing off the floor, although it’s very upsetting to say such a thing, I will take you out at the kneecaps with that scythe of yours.”

“Oh you couldn’t even carry it,” Jonathan smirked, turning his back to him and going to wash his hands. He folded up his glasses afterwards, tucking them into his pocket. Humming a light tune, he then moved to the main room to grab his scythe and the gun. For a brief moment, he was tempted to just blow the man’s head off, but that temptation passed quickly. He deserved a better death than that, and should it come to be the Scarecrow who delivers it, he would make sure it would involve having his head separated from his shoulders. Jonathan wasn’t a man to savor a death, but the hatter in question wasn’t just any random thug he’d have killed. Forgetting those dark thoughts, he carried the items back to his room, which Jervis was sharing with him after he had quite violently destroyed the table in his own room. There was a nice table in the space he used now, so hopefully that wouldn’t be hacked to bits either. Speaking of their fight…

“It seems like we still need to have that chat,” he called, walking into the room. “Ah, I know,” Jervis chirped, letting the tea steep as he moved over to his bag. “Luckily, I have a perfect solution for our little predicament.” Jonathan listen in silence, setting the scythe against the wall. “I’m sure you know it well.” He looked over, noticing his peer had set down a chessboard on the table and was now setting up the pieces. Crane couldn’t help but give a small smile, walking over to observe. “Oh, I know it far too well,” he smirked, helping to set up a few parts to the game. Jervis loved this chessboard in particular, it having both red and white pieces instead of the typical white and black. Anything to please the Lewis Carrol fanatic he was, he supposed. “I’ll assume I’m red?”

“Oh no no,” Jervis replied, checking up on the tea. “White. You’re the one who started this, so it’s only fair that you would go first.” Fair enough. Jonathan sat on the white side, watching as Jervis returned with a cup for the both of them. “You remember how this works, yes?” he smiled, setting the cup in front of him before sitting down. “Of course,” was the reply. “A captured piece means one question for the other.” Jonathan hated to admit it, but he wasn’t too thrilled for the oncoming interrogation, most likely because of Jervis’ newfound leverage of inquiries against him. He straightened himself in his chair, adjusting the pieces to face their opponents head on. He might as well make the most of this, all the while giving away his own secrets. Eye for an eye; he didn’t quite like that rule, but it was what he needed to play by now. Though, with how much he had been through with his acquaintance, it wasn’t like he would be able to avoid it for much longer. If he lied any more, Jervis just might have his mind snap in two, this time using a gun instead of an axe. “No lying,” he stated firmly. “And no avoiding the questions. The game does not continue until the question has been satisfied.” The other didn’t argue, seemingly finding it fair, though he was reluctant. They both had their secrets, and tonight, there were none.

Jervis sipped his tea, and with a handshake, the game began.

Both men were thoughtful, no longer wanting to win but just trying to maximize their chances to capture more pieces. As usual, a pawn was the first to be taken, this one belonging to Jervis.

“How did you find out about the pills?” Jonathan asked, crossing his arms on the table and taking a quick taste of his tea. Jervis needn’t even hesitate to answer and he placed his pawn on a red square. “I saw you pour something into my drink while I went to get sugar,” he said simply. “I couldn’t identify it until you passed out in your room, but I figured it wasn’t good if your had to sneak it into my drink.” The other man moved a pawn forward as he continued to speak. “Though, sleeping pills? I would have used tranquilizers if I wanted to put someone to sleep, but your methods are yours.”

Jonathan couldn’t help but feel slightly insulted, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.

There were a few more moves before Jonathan knocked over an opposing bishop, though it would be at the cost of his knight. It was expendable, for he had his strategies laid out to capture his pieces. “Were you genuinely going to kill me?” he asked, though he already knew the answer. He just wanted clarification.

“Oh most definitely,” Jervis hummed, thinking about his next move for a few seconds before placing a piece down into position. “I didn’t want to at first, but after you drugged, well, yourself, I’m afraid I lost myself there. Though, after being stabbed and stricken in the face, those feelings have lessened considerably. I even thought about just filling the room with your toxin and leaving you there.” Jonathan shook his head, placing down his queen. “A nice idea, but I’ve developed an immunity to my own toxin.” Jervis seemed to pout a small bit, but shrugged it off and immediately took up the knight. “Why did you drug me?” An easy question. He must be trying to warm him up before getting to the important questions.

“It was just to ensure you wouldn’t cause trouble in the night,” Jonathan answered simply, receiving a skeptical look in return. “You’re a schizophrenic, Jervis. I’ve seen some of your worse psychotic episodes. When you don’t take your medication at the asylum, you’re an absolute nightmare to have in the neighboring cell, according to Scarface. Remember the Ivy incident? You were utterly deranged when you were found. Not even Nygma could figure out how you got yourself into that predicament. At least while I’m awake, I’m able to tell when you’re about to lose it and prepare for the situation.”

“Fair enough,” Jervis huffed, moving another piece. Jonathan laid his plan out carefully, the small figures on the board becoming more intertwined and separated from their color groups. He captured another piece.

“I suppose we should get onto the more serious questions,” he sighed, straightening up further. “Who is Alice?”

Jervis sat back, staring down at the captured piece, before letting out a tired sigh. “I already told you,” he explained, “she was my best friend. She was there for me when, frankly, no one else wasn’t. She helped me through some pretty tough times in my childhood.” He looked to the side, taking a quick sip of his tea. “As you can piece together from our little spat, not everyone was as enthusiastic about her existence as I was.” Some even denied it, apparently.

Jonathan collected another piece after he had his turn.

“What happened to her, Jervis?” he asked, making sure to keep his voice steady and calm, having a bit more tea. Jervis pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a shaky sigh. “My mother started forcing me to take my medication.” He leaned onto the table, resting his chin on his hand. “Alice never liked that all too much, unfortunately. I couldn’t keep hr around after that.”

Jonathan knew it was disrespectful. He knew it was of poor taste and not at an appropriate moment, but he couldn’t help it. A small smile spread onto his face as he watched another figure be placed on a white square. He was a sadist at heart, he’ll admit; he enjoyed watching his patients become upset, even if it was solely his fault. He moved a rook once again, only to be surprised when it was taken away in a heartbeat by the other’s queen. Okay, perhaps he should be paying better attention to the game at hand.

“Who is Karen Keeny?”

Well then, straight for the kill, was it? Jervis was not a man of mercy, so it seemed.

For the first time, Jonathan didn’t answer, instead preferring to sit back and stay silent for a bit. Jervis didn’t mind, sitting back as well as he sipped his tea. He understood, knowing this was a bit of a difficult topic for him if they had nearly killed each other over it.

“She was my mother,” he finally answered, looking downward at the board and moving his own piece. Jervis was rather surprised, having assumed it was a lover of some sort. Though, then again, the thought of Jonathan Crane being affectionate towards anyone was silly in itself.

“Your mother?” he inquired. “But why-“

“Ah ah. One question at a time,” Jonathan replied. Jervis grimaced, but gave an understanding nod and immediately took up another figurine, much to the other’s slight disapproval. “Did you know her very well?” was the question. “Not at all,” was the answer. Jonathan leaned his head onto his hand propped up on the table. “She ditched me at birth after I was born out of wedlock.”

“Ah, so you had a religious family?”

“Tetch, I don’t know how you keep forgetting the rules, but it vexes me.”

Jervis immediately grabbed up another piece as soon as the doctor had finished his turn, smiling smugly when he heard Jonathan curse a small “damn it” from his side of the table. “So if you didn’t know her all that well, why come all the way here?” he questioned. “That seems almost… pointless, really.” Now this is where Jonathan needed to stop and think, because if he were to be completely honest, he didn’t know all too well himself. However, he had to come up with a suitable answer if they were to move forward any. It was about two minutes before he actually answered.

“Closure,” he sighed, tapping his fingers rhythmically against the table top. “I just… needed to see her. To make sure. I mean, had she not left me where I was, I would have actually had a somewhat normal life. A life full of poverty, but better than the one I had, that’s for sure. Though the idea of even being with the woman makes me want to wretch and my life would undoubtedly have been miserable, it’s still better than what I had.” He noticed Jervis watching him closely. “Oh, and I happened to try and kill her and her infant daughter, so that is also a factor.” This seemed to brighten up the madman. “A sister? I didn’t know you had a sister,” he chirped, moving a rook forward. Jonathan shot him a small glare as he moved his bishop. “Refer to that little hell spawn as my sister again and I’ll kill you here.” Jervis just let out a giggle as they continued moving their pawns around.

Jonathan finally snatched up the next piece. “Do you still have contact with your family?” he asked.

“My sister checks up on me every so often,” Jervis sighed, shifting another figure and finishing off his tea. “But it’s clear she’s not too fond of me. As it turns out, they don’t like seeing me as a criminal.”

Jonathan grabbed the next pawn again, causing Jervis to curse under his breath. “Oh, that one was going to be a queen,” he huffed, watching the doctor put it to the side . “Oh it hardly would have been possible, what with my rook on this side,” he replied, looking over the chessboard. “Now, why did you move to Gotham, and why did you stay? I’d reckon you’d have moved back to England by now.”

“Are you joking?” Jervis chuckled, a smile crossing his face. “I’ll answer the first part, seeing as those are two separate questions. I left because a representative at Wayne Enterprises saw my work and offered me a job in Gotham as a part of their science department, all the way across the pond. It was a lot of money, and more than a great opportunity, so I took it and started my work.” He moved his piece.

Jonathan took up a rook, causing the Englishman to make a face.

“And as to why you stayed?” he hummed, setting the piece down and folding his hands in his lap. “Why wouldn’t I?”Jervis grinned, making use of his turn. “Have you met the people here? They’re grand. And the ones at the asylum are some of the best people I’ve ever met. They… treat me well.”

Another of Jervis’ pieces were taken up. “I’d hardly say that. Please elaborate.”

“They don’t want me to hide who I am,” he chuckled as he finished his turn. “Sure, they get annoyed from time to time, but they never tell me to act normal. They don’t want me to take pills or ‘get help’. They all… they all accept me for who I am.”

“The Hatter,” Jonathan murmured, moving a piece, only to see it immediately snatched up. “Exactly!” Jervis smiled, setting the piece aside. “Now, more about your past. Who did you live with?” He took up another piece off the board. “What made it all so miserable?”

Jonathan became reluctant, the urge to just stop the game here ringing out in his mind. Despite this, knew there was no point in pulling away anymore. “It was my grandmother,” he explained. “The blasted wretch she was. Cared more about some flimsy god that her own grandson. Add the local meat-headed sadists into the mix, and you have what sits before you.”

“What did she do to you?” Jervis asked, taking up a piece after a few moves. This only served to make Jonathan irritated. “All sorts of things. Beat me. Starve me. Just hurt me in general.” He looked away for a moment. “The religious nut was creative, I’ll give her that. I still have scars.” With a few more moves, he took one of Jervis’ pieces. “Now, onto you. You reacted rather violently when you found out about the letter. Why were you so angry.”

“Hare, you brought me on a trip across several states,” he replied, placing down a pawn. “Of course, I thought your first excuse may have been a little flimsy, but I was surprised that you agreed to having me along.” He sighed, looking down at the pieces, then up at his peer. “I know we’ve had our less than pleasant differences in the past, but I was… a little hurt when I found out, to be honest.” Jonathan quirked a brow, but let him speak. “I though… well, I thought there was a trust between us. Of course, I never expected you to tell me the entire story of that letter, but I at least would have appreciated the honesty. It wasn’t like I was going to judge you for it. I might’ve even left you alone if you’d had just given me a brief given me a brief explanation.” He frowned. “I thought we were-“

“Friends?” Jonathan finished, moving his queen. “Is that what you think we were?” Jervis blinked in surprise, a frown forming on his face before he took up the next piece. “Do you consider us as friends?” he asked. Jonathan merely moved his pawn to take out Jervis’ knight. “You’re in the wrong business if you think that,” he replied. “Now, where on Earth did you get an axe?” That seemed to distract Jervis from the previous question. “Oh, that? Well, after our quarrel in the motel room, I decided to take my anger out on a girl whose hair wanted a bit of cutting. The woman there had an axe in the back, so I brung it along and hid it in the trunk of our car.”

Jonathan was about to move, when he suddenly paused. “Wait. You were going to kill me before our fight?” Jervis just chuckled and shook his head. “Sorry, Jonathan. You can’t ask anything when you haven’t taken a piece.” Crane blinked, staring at the man before slowly moving his queen, a piece that was taken up by the other queen.

“Have you ever had a friend?” was the question that was asked. Jonathan didn’t know why he was obsessing over it, but he decided to answer as honestly as he could. “Have peers been nice to me? Yes. Friendly, even. Kind and caring, as rare as it was… but no, I never considered anyone to be a friend to me.” Jervis soon took up another piece with his queen. “So why did you bring me along?”

Jonathan went silent, his brow furrowed as he opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He paused, looking over to the blocked windows, before gazing at the his peer, who waited patiently. “I don’t know,” was the final answer.

“Oh come now, Jonathan.”

“I mean it. I don’t know why I did,” he sighed. “I suppose it may have been from some foolish need to share a burden, but it wasn’t a very bright idea on my part.” He watched the queen take another of his pieces off the board. “So now that you’re here, and the police are now after us, what do you plan to do?”

“Honestly? Leave,” Jonathan huffed. “I was stupid to think this was ever a good idea in the first place. The second we’re ready to head out, we’re leaving.”

The queen took up yet another piece. “So all you ever came for was your mother?” Jervis asked, receiving a nod in return. “Mostly the reason. I wasn’t lying when I said I needed a formula, and I’m sure I’ll be able to find it in an old home of mine, but as of now, I don’t find it to be so important anymore.”

Another piece was taken off by the red queen. Jonathan felt frustration. “So why did you guard this secret like you did?” he inquired. “You got so angry just from me finding out.”

“I’d rather everyone not know about my upbringing,” he murmured, watching Jervis move again. “They don’t need to know. This is especially the case since I made this entire car ride because of a woman I barely know anything about. I felt strongly about it at the time, but should anyone else know, I’m sure they’ll only see it as me having mommy issues.”

“So you’re self-conscious about the subject?”

Jonathan didn’t reply, instead using his bishop to take off that blasted queen. “It’s not your turn. Now, did you plan to kill me before?” he demanded.

“Probably,” Jervis readily admitted, moving his own piece. “I wasn’t exactly in the right state of mind at the time. I’d say I was debating it with myself rather strongly. I suppose I was waiting for you to act out of like again just for an excuse to.” Jonathan quickly took up his last rook with a bishop. “I see. Do you ever wish to go back to England and reconnect with your family?”

Jervis grimaced some as made his next move. “I certainly wouldn’t mind, but as of now? I have no interest.” Jonathan took out the last knight. “Would you say that you’re happy here?”

“Yes. Very,” Jervis smiled, soon taking up that bishop with his own. “Although there are some faults from time to time, I honestly couldn’t see myself as being anything other than what I am now.” He let out a small titter. “I wouldn’t want to be anything else. Now, if I offered to help you get closure once we’re out of the building, would you like to take it? I don’t mind, really. We’ve traveled all this way for a reason.”

“No thank you,” Jonathan replied, moving his own few pieces around. “I’ve had enough of this place as it is, and we’re almost about to he caught. I’d prefer we just leave. It wouldn’t make me any happier anyways.” Jervis visibly frowned.

Within another move, Jonathan had taken up another piece. They were nearing his final question. “Do you ever think you’ll find Alice?”

Jervis stopped as he was about to move his piece, pausing to think about it. He then gave his friend a smile. “Yes, I believe I will. She may not look the same or be what I imagined, but I’ll find her. I know I will.” He moved his piece in position next to his king. Jonathan was quick to snatch it up, setting his rook right next to the other’s king. Then, without warning, he grabbed onto Jervis’ wrist, causing the smaller man to freeze in surprise. Just as he had done long before, he forced up the green sleeve to reveal the thin, faded lines running downwards on his wrist. He knew them well, seeing as his previous occupation required he know the signs. Jonathan then sat back, gesturing to his once torn arm. “What happened?” was all he asked.

Jervis had noticeably difficulty swallowing. He didn’t seem angry, but instead morose about the subject. “It was just an incident,” he murmured, rubbing his wrist some. “I was in a bad place at the time. Could you blame me for such a thing?” He crossed his legs on the chair, moving his sleeve back up. “I was unhappy. I was unhappy and I didn’t know how to make it go away. I felt like I was being suffocated under a pillow, just slowly dying and unable to breathe.” He looked away for a moment. “The doctor said I was troubled. That I needed help. They only prescribed me more pills, of course, telling me to get outside more or make friends. Still, no one ever listened. No one ever bothered. Antidepressants never seemed to work. I was left thinking to myself that if pills could no longer fix me, then maybe just not meant to be happy. As foolish as it may have seemed, I genuinely believed I wasn’t meant to live a happier life, and that it would never get better for me, not matter what I did. I had accepted it into my life, thought it to be truth. And when I told my mother, she never pitied me. She only thought the medication wasn’t doing the job. She believed it was from my schizophrenia, not actually taking into consideration that I depressed. She didn’t think I had any reason to be so.” He sighed, looking back at Jonathan. “Then, one day, I don’t know what happened. I suppose I had a bit of a mental breakdown, and barricaded myself in the bathroom. My sister was the one who had called emergency services. Had it not been for her, we wouldn’t be here talking right now.” He played with the empty tea cup, gently moving in in circles. “Even after all of that, no one could understand why I had any reason to be unhappy.” His frown turned into a smile, and a small chuckle exited from him. “But that’s all over now. That was the past, and quite frankly, I’m better than I ever was.” He took his king, flicking off one of the last of Jonathan’s pieces. “So tell me, Jonathan, have you ever had a time where you were truly happy?”

Jonathan stared down at the board, looking up to make eye contact with him. “Yes. Just once, when I finally murdered and did away with everyone who had tortured me during my childhood.” He smiled softly. “To see their fear and the regret for what they had done to me. To finally be able to wretch the life from their bodies and to hear them beg for mercy. It filled me with excitement and a happiness I’d never known before. Morbid, maybe, but if I were to be honest, that would be the only time I’ve ever truly felt happy. Joyful, even. They hurt me, and now I could finally send their souls straight to hell. I don’t regret it a single day of my life.”

Both men shared a smile and looked down at the board. The only pieces left were the kings. “A stalemate,” Jervis hummed, looking down at all the pieces they had captured. He then moved his hand to shake Jonathan’s, which he gladly returned. “Good game.”

Jonathan finished off the last of his tea with a sigh, getting up. “Well, that was beneficial, I’d day,” he stated, stretching some. “Now, if you’d don’t mind, I’d like to leave.”

“Likewise. I’d say I’m perfectly fit for the venture,” Jervis agreed, already beginning to pack up his things, he pulled out his phone, seemingly to check up on something.

Jonathan moved to the main room, going over to pick up the axe Jervis had left lying at his door. He scooped it up, about to go pack it in the trunk, when he noticed a peculiar flashing light shining through the windows of the double doors up front. The lights shone a vivid red and blue, colors what he knew all too well in his career as a criminal. He swore to himself, rushing back into the room and startling the Englishman.

“Jonathan-?”

“It’s the police,” Jonathan growled, moving over to his bag and shuffling the items around to find what he was looking for. Jervis, immediately worried for his and his friend’s safety, hurried over to the front of the warehouse. A quick peek out of he boarded glass panels revealed no bluff; a few police cars and SWAT vehicles were stationed outside the building, with surely more surround its perimeter as well. Letting out a swear, he clutched the rim of his hat as he moved back into the room Jonathan was currently in. “How did they find us?” he groaned, starting to pace frantically. “What do we do?”

“I suppose there’s only one thing we can do,” Jonathan huffed, his shoulder’s slumping in momentary defeat. They were surrounded by police, and any moment, they were going to barge in and make the entire trip more pointless than it already was. His mind searched for possible exit routes, all of them most likely blocked off. He searched through his bag, looking for a canister of fear gas, before stumbling across a familiar burlap mask. Then, with a sly grin, he looked back up at the panicking haberdasher. “Hatter,” he called to him, immediately catching his attention. “Yes? What is it? We don’t have much time, mind you,” he fretted. Crane just smirked, pulling out a bundle of clothes and, more importantly, Scarecrow’s mask. “Mistress Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

Jervis blinked, silent for a moment, before quickly coming to a sudden jovial state, clapping his hands in excitement. “With cockle-shells and silver bells, and pretty maids all in a row!”

“Exactly,” Jonathan grinned, pulling out the metal cards Jervis kept stored in his bag, handing them over to him. “Now, I suggest we prepare quickly. We’re going to have a few uninvited guests to our tea party.” He grabbed his scythe, twirling it around in his hand for a quick second. “Let’s make them regret that, shall we?”

#MHGH #Mad Hatter #Jervis Tetch #Scarecrow #Jonathan Crane #fanfiction #Batman

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