#ive been sick okay | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sickficideas · 2 months ago

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if time is a healer || atsushi sickfic w/ dazai

ao3! 6.8k + trade for @thankshermin <3 - please refer to the tags in the link for content + warnings! sicktember 2024, day 12: "you're not fine, you're throwing up/coughing up a lung"

Dazai wasn't expecting to see Akutagawa drenched in sea water, too.

“Decided to go for a swim?”

Akutagawa has never thought that Dazai's jokes were very funny, and recently, he's started to ignore them entirely. He doesn't even roll his eyes, he just stares, waiting for him to acknowledge the unconscious form that he's protectively knelt in front of.

The breeze at the Port always feels nice. Dazai often forgets to take advantage of the nice parts of Yokohama. He always ends up down here when he actually needs to do something. Right now, he doesn't actually have any time to sit around and take any sights - Atsushi is unconscious and soaking wet in front of Akutagawa, who is visibly confused by Dazai's lack of urgency.

“He passed out after he coughed out the water. And he's been unresponsive since,” Akutagawa tells him. This must have happened after he first called Dazai about twenty minutes ago. All Dazai knows is that a confrontation with their enemy landed them in the water, and Akutagawa requested Dazai come get Atsushi, who was underwater for much longer than what was safe. The unconscious bit is new. “I'm sure there's water in his lungs.”

“Hm. And you jumped after him?” Dazai observes, arms crossed over his chest as he looks over Atsushi. He's not too terribly off. His color looks okay and his expression is relaxed, at least right now, but he'll certainly take him to Yosano to get looked at.

“I'm fine. Take your subordinate home,” Akutagawa huffs as he stands up, a little unsteady on his feet.

Akutagawa's clothes and hair are still visibly damp. He's not entirely sure he can take his word for it. He's never demonstrated great swimming skills either, and he would definitely do much worse in Atsushi's situation than Atsushi himself.

Dazai kneels down and lays the back of his hand on Atsushi's cheek. His eyes twitch and flutter open, glazed over and not even remotely with him. He's warm. Dazai isn't sure, but he almost thinks he may have been running a fever before this happened.

“Did he hit his head?” Dazai asks. This reaction doesn't quite match what he already knows about the situation. He shouldn't be this out.

“I don't know,” Akutagawa mumbles. He sounds nervous. “There was too much going on in the last few minutes.”

“I'm sure I taught you better than to get overwhelmed,” Dazai says, nonchalant, taking note of the tiny bit of subconscious guilt in Akutagawa's tone.

“Don't talk to me like that,” Akutagawa growls, turning his body away, towards the ocean before he coughs a few times into his hand. Dazai cringes at the way his chest rattles with each cough. He knows he generally doesn't do well breathing in the air down here at the port, between the sea air and the various port-related fumes, but rescuing another drowning person certainly didn't help. “I'm leaving. Don't let him die, I need his life to end by my hands.”

“Right, right,” Dazai says, scoping Atsushi up into his arms. Atsushi whines curling up against Dazai's chest like he's shaking some warmth. “Take care of yourself.”

Akutagawa scoffs, only briefly turning to get a look at Atsushi's unconscious form one last time before walking off, fairly quickly disappearing from Dazai's view.

“I don't need you to ruin your lungs too, so hang in there for me, Atsushi,” Dazai tells him gently, heading off to the edge of the park, where Kunikida is waiting for him to take Atsushi back to the Agency. It's not a long walk at all, but they had no idea of Atsushi's conditions and decided not to waste any time.

As Dazai approaches Kunikida's illegally parked car, half on the park's outer sidewalk, Kunikida rounds the car and opens the passenger door for Dazai to lay Atsushi on. He thinks he's going to make a comment on Atsushi's saltwater-soaked clothes getting into his cloth seats, but there's deep concern written all over his face.

“Shit,” Kunikida says, teeth grit as Dazai carefully lays him down. “He doesn't look good.”

Atsushi whines when Dazai lays the buckle across his lap. Hopefully he's not injured, but anything physical would be taken care of soon enough by his ability.

“He'll be alright. Let's just get him back,” Dazai says as he shuts the door and climbs in the backseat.

Kunikida gets them there within minutes with a shoddy parking job, telling Dazai just how worried about his coworker he is. They waste no time getting Atsushi out of the car and through the building's front doors, Kunikida going ahead to open the elevator doors.

“You with me, Atsushi?” Dazai asks him, concerned with how he's still half-unconscious, and Atsushi gives him no indication that he can hear him. He's just huffing out hot and uncomfortable breaths.

“Dammit,” Kunikida mumbles, opening the Agency's office door and then subsequently the infirmary door, where Yosano eagerly waits with her hands crossed over her chest, concerned eyes scanning over Atsushi as soon as he's in her line of sight.

“Let me get some things together for him,” Yosano says, heels clicking as she makes her way over to a cabinet. Kunikida signals Dazai over to a cot he's prepared for Atsushi, covered in a few towels.

“Go fix your parking job,” Dazai tells Kunikida after gently laying Atsushi on the cot, brushing some of his damp hair from his face.

“I can't believe the ex-Mafia is telling me to adjust my parking,” Kunikida huffs, taking his keys from his pocket. He bites his lip, looking over Atsushi, clearly hesitant to leave him.

“I'm a law-abiding citizen, mister detective,” Dazai teases, before meeting Kunikida's concerned gaze. “I'll take care of him.”

“I know you will,” Kunikida says, slowly making his way toward the infirmary door, “let me know if either of you need anything.”

“Thank you, mom,” Yosano says from where she's shifting some things around on a tray near her desk.

“Not you too,” Kunikida groans, “one Dazai is enough.”

Yosano giggles as Kunikida leaves, and she makes her way over to Atsushi's cot. She lays a tray over on the stand beside her chair, effortlessly preparing her stethoscope to examine Atsushi. Dazai doesn't need to be told, he unbuttons Atsushi's damp shirt and sits him up the best he can. Yosano gives a silent thank you before she presses the ice-cold stethoscope to Atsushi's chest, and sliding it under his shirt to listen through his back, too.

“Has he coughed up any water?” Yosano says, clicking her tongue, evidently not happy about what she's hearing.

“That's what I was told,” Dazai answers as she pulls her stethoscope away and swings it back over her neck. Dazai slowly lowers Atsushi back down. Atsushi groans quietly, a pained noise, his eyes screwing shut in tandem.

“I'll need to ultrasound his lungs. I can't remember where I put the damn thing,” Yosano says with a sigh, “it doesn't sound like he's cleared it. I'm worried about -”

“Pulmonary edema,” Dazai says just as she does, agreeing before she can even finish the thought.

“Right,” she says, “good guess.”

“Not my first rodeo, doctor,” Dazai teases. He's suffered from the same thing more than once, and she's well aware of that.

“Next time, I'll give you my license,” Yosamo teases back as she stands up, “I have some gowns we can dress him in, I really don't want him to be in those soaked clothes with the fever I suspect he's running.”

Dazai thought the same thing. He lays the back of his hand against Atsushi's cheek, still as warm as before. He remembers oral thermometers being in the drawer beside the bed. He takes one out and takes Atsushi's jaw to gently part his lips and slide the thermometer under his tongue. He whines quietly, weakly coughing before Dazai slides it back out for the reading.

“One hundred even,” Dazai says as Yosano makes it back.

“He must've already been running a temperature,” Yosano says. She lays the gowns at the edge of the bed, and Dazai starts to peel off his shirt, tie, dropping it off to the side of the cot, much more wet than he was expecting. Atsushi is vocally against all of this even half-concious, whining and whimpering, but quiets down a little as Yosano dabs at his damp skin with a fresh towel before covering him with a gown, and quickly, he's fully undressed and wearing her clinic's gowns.

Atsushi seems a little more awake now with the movement, eyes fluttering but now, evidently focused on worsening nausea. He grunts and wraps an arm around his stomach, barely managing to prop himself up before he gags and chokes up a watery mixture of salt water and bile. Dazai lays a hand between his shoulder blades and rubs circles as Atsushi coughs and sputters, only throwing up a mouthful or so more of what's in his stomach before his arms give out on him and he collapses back onto the bed.

“Looks like you swallowed quite a bit of water, huh,” Dazai says, brushing over the hair that's stuck to his face from the sweat. He's too delirious to answer, he just groans and lays a hand back over his stomach. Dazai decides to carefully lift him and move him to the neighboring cot, being that the other is now soaked with vomit and salt water-dampened towels.

Atsushi's eyes fall just again with no energy to do much else, his eyes twitching from discomfort. Dazai rubs his arm with a sigh.

“It's good that he's getting it up,” Yosano says, “but this confirms my concerns about his lungs.”

“Go find your ultrasound machine. I'll get the rest of his vitals,” Dazai tells her. She looks surprised that he's offering, but shrugs and heads off to her supply closet.

Dazai takes a sheet of note paper from the drawer and writes down Atsushi's temperature, taking note of the frequency of his respirations, rolling over the blood pressure monitor and wrapping it around Atsushi's too-warm upper arm to get a reading. All slightly concerning measurements, but nothing that would currently land him in a hospital. He takes a stethoscope off of the hook to read his heart rate too. Atsushi whines at the cold touch as Dazai slides it under his gown.

Steady. A little fast, but within normal range. He writes it down.

He jumps a little at the sound of what sounds like several books and miscellaneous other objects falling in Yosano’s office. He thinks Atsushi’s okay by himself for long enough for him to at least make sure Yosano hasn’t buried herself.

He peers into her office where she frustratingly gathers a stack of medical journal collections and sets them on the shelf with a huff. There’s several others strewn across the already-overcrowded floor. Yosano has never had incredible organization skills, but it seems to work out for her, at least.

He feels a shiver run down his spine, remembering a similar state of chaos from Mori’s medical office, before he became the Port Mafia’s boss.

“Use that height of yours to get that down for me, before the whole cabinet falls,” she groans, gesturing to the ultrasound machine tucked into a high shelf, evidently previously surrounded by books. He puts the pieces together and gathers she must have tried to get on her adjacent desk to reach it.

Unfortunately for her, Dazai very easily slides the equipment out of the shelf and sets it down on her desk. She shoots him a very annoyed, definitely jealous look before she opens it, slides open a drawer on her desk to look for a password, he’s guessing.

“Seems like you should invest in a ladder,” he teases, and she just huffs again.

“I don’t need two Kunikidas, thank you,” she groans, typing in the password to open the software. Dazai hears a pained whimper from the infirmary room, and he’s quick to head back to the cot, not wanting Atsushi alone for too long when he’s so out of it.

Atsushi whines and twists his body without much strength behind his movement, clearly uncomfortable but not conscious enough to do much about it - Dazai sees saliva drip from the corner of his mouth. He must still be nauseous, but he has a feeling Yosano won’t be able to provide him any medication for that, since they’ll want him to cough up any water in his system. The nausea will help him do that.

Dazai sits on the stool beside him and pushes his hair out of his face, which has plastered to his forehead and stuck up in all sorts of directions from the dampness.

“Dazai…?” Atsushi mumbles, his voice wobbly, eyes having so much trouble focusing on the figure in front of him. It’s becoming painfully clear that he has a head injury, his fever isn't nearly high enough right now to be causing this kind of confusion. He thinks his healing abilities will take care of that soon enough, but they’ve learned in the last that it takes him much, much longer for him to heal from anything illness-related.

“You alright there, Atsushi?” Dazai asks, observing how he’s become much more visibly nauseous, and before Dazai can move fast enough to get the trash bin under his chin, Atsushi has already propped himself up and gagged unproductively over the floor. Nothing more than the clear saliva pooling in his mouth comes up.

Dazai takes the opportunity to pick up the trash bin from behind him and hold it up to Atsushi, whose arm wobbles under the pressure of holding his head over the edge of the bed. He breathes heavy, the bag rustling with the movement.

“Throw up if you need to, alright? Coughing’s good too,” Dazai tells him, sneaking his free hand onto Atsushi’s shoulder to give him some comfort. Atsushi has a lot of anxiety around being sick, and vomiting especially - Dazai’s hoping that he’s a little too out of it to realize how sick he’s feeling, but he’s holding onto some of it, subconsciously. Dazai watches his eyes screw shut even tighter. “Don’t hold it in, Atsushi. You’ll make it worse.”

Dazai rubs his shoulder with a little sigh, thinking for a second it’s going to be a lot harder to get him to stop fighting the nausea than he realized, but just a few seconds after the thought crossed his mind, he hears the water hit the bag rather forcefully, followed by a round of several wet coughs that bring up quite a bit of saltwater as well.

Atsushi’s breaths start to pick up pace before he gags again, just spitting up a thin stream of water that time. He doesn’t have much control over the coughs and gags that follow, but it seems like he’s brought up all he can for right now.

“That’s good. You did good,” he tells him gently, gently guiding him to lay back against the pillows as Dazai lowers the trash bin. Atsushi groans quietly, wrapping his arms around his middle. He’s sure that Atsushi is still wildly uncomfortable.

“Did he throw up?” Yosano asks, sliding the ultrasound machine over on the opposite side of the cot on a wheeled cart.

Dazai nods. “He coughed up quite a bit of water too.”

Yosano begins the process of the ultrasound. She slides up Atsushi’s gown, which he resists to some degree, but Dazai lays a firm hand on his shoulder to keep him in place. He’s pretty out of the loop on what’s going on, sure, but they did to do this.

The lubricant gel she has to use for the probe makes Atsushi shiver rather violently. Dazai watches the hairs on his arms stand. He imagines he’s more sensitive to the cold gel than normal because of this fever he’s running.

She finds out exactly what she needs too - there’s already inflammation in his lungs, which makes it very possible that he’s developing pneumonia. But with Atsushi, it’s impossible to tell what his ability will assist him in healing, and what he’s on his own for - so unfortunately for him, all they can really do is wait and find out.

Dazai opts to stay with Atsushi, realizing this may be a several-hour long ordeal, and he’s not sure he wants to task Yosano with dealing with this by herself, with the mountain of other things she has to do - but, really, he just doesn’t want Atsushi unattended while he’s like this.

The hours pass, slowly, quietly and without much incident. Dazai sneaks out briefly to take a book from his locker that he’s been meaning to read, but never finds himself with time to actually crack it open. Atsushi’s fast asleep for a while, and Yosano stays tucked away in her office as Atsushi sleeps to get her work done.

It’s just about an hour before the Agency closes when Yosano comes by to check Atsushi over herself, this time. She sits on a stool on the other side of the cot, pressing her stethoscope up to his chest. She pauses for a second, still listening, but reaches over to hand Dazai the thermometer, silently asking him to check Atsushi’s temperature.

He miscalculates how far it is, and just gently grasps the space right in front of her hand before he realizes that she’s holding it a bit further back than he can tell, and he slides it from her hand.

Dazai’s been blind in his right eye for several years now, but the depth perception is something he’ll never really get over, no matter how long it’s been, and especially when he’s caught off guard like this. Yosano gives him a suspicious look as she lifts her head, and she’s making Dazai nervous enough that he’s just staring back at her with an awkward smile, still holding the thermometer.

“Sorry, sorry. Terrible depth perception,” Dazai says with a nervous laugh, but he realizes too late that he's already said too much. He started to reach over to put the thermometer under Atsushi’s tongue, but Yosano interjects.

“Is it because of your right eye?” Yosano asks suddenly, tilting her head. “I've noticed you have trouble seeing out of it.”

Dazai has never said anything about that eye to her before. He thought he was pretty okay at hiding his vision problems - he's never had to address it before, but Yosano makes him so nervous that he slipped up and said something he shouldn’t have.

It’s not a problem, really, if anyone finds out. He can get by perfectly fine, it’s nothing more than an inconvenience at this point in his life, and he can certainly lie his way around what happened, just like he does with everything else.

“Has it always been that way? Or is it an old injury?”

But for some reason, he can’t open his mouth to spit out the lie he was going to tell Yosano. The moment she asks that, he feels a shiver shoot up his spine, suddenly overcome with nausea. What happened to his right eye is something he still hasn’t quite attempted to work through, mentally, and he can’t do it in front of Yosano.

Even though he knows that she knows Mori just as well as he does.

Whatever face he makes is enough to get her to ease up.

“I'm sorry,” is all she says. She lowers her head, busying herself with checking the rest of his vitals as Dazai slides the thermometer under Atsushi’s tongue, and they’re in silence again.

Dazai silently shows her the thermometer reading once it beeps without even checking it himself, because there’s a throbbing pain behind his blind eye that he can’t ignore. He’s trying not to think about it, but the more he tries to trick himself into thinking of something else, the more he feels it.

Mori’s new favorite tool, digging around his eye socket when he was just fourteen, with no anesthesia or even any mild sedating medication, under the promise that it would lead to a very quick and painless suicide. That was one of many in a series of promises by Mori to assist him in ending his life, only to leave him suffering more than he was the day before.

Yosano disappears from view. He hears her ask a question that he doesn’t understand but nods to anyway, and suddenly, the lights come off.

He holds a palm up to his eye, pressing against it in some hope that this strange phantom pain he’s feeling will disappear. He hasn’t felt this in such a long time. He thinks Chuuya would scold him for not using the opportunity to talk about things like he always says he should, he just can’t bring himself to do it.

It’s worse, for some reason, because he knows Yosano suffered under him to. It’s not comforting to know that. He doesn’t want to put images of him in her mind, because he wouldn’t want that from her, either.

He feels awfully dizzy. He’s considering lying down on the empty cot, at least until the feeling subsides, but Atsushi shifts, and Dazai realizes he’s been too distracted to notice that Atsushi is trying to get up. He’s not sure where Yosano went - it’s still dark and the orange light coming in through the windows from the sunset is starting to dim.

“Stay down, Atsushi,” Dazai tells him gently. He almost reaches a hand out to lay on his chest and make sure he doesn't get up, but he doesn't need to. Atsushi hardly has the strength to hold his head up, and he collapses back onto the pillows with a shaky sigh from the exertion.

“Where's…Akutagawa?” Atsushi murmurs all feverishly, eyes darting around the room. He doesn't seem to recognize entirely where he is.

Dazai almost wants to laugh. A few months ago that question would've been asked out of fear, but Atsushi sounds concerned, despite how terribly he's feeling himself.

“He's fine. Don't worry about him,” Dazai assures him with a half smile. Sure, he can’t confirm that, but he hopes that at this point in his life, Akutagawa would speak up and take care of himself.

The irony is lost on him, though.

“Dazai,” Atsushi breathes out, for some reason, not at all comforted by those words. He takes in a few deeper breaths, like it’s hard for him to get the air that he’s looking for. His eyes are locked on Dazai. “He…he jumped in after me. I'm just…his lungs, I'm…”

“I'll call and check on him. Worry about yourself right now,” Dazai tells him, trying to ignore how his stomach sinks with that information. He hadn't considered that. Akutagawa seemed perfectly fine when he saw him with Atsushi - soaking wet, sure, but he was conscious and communicative. Dazai doesn’t have to worry about Atsushi, most of the time, with his healing abilities and all - but Akutagawa has none of that.

Surely that’s why Atsushi is concerned, too.

He takes his phone out, and decides he’ll step over to the counter to make the call, not wanting to bother Atsushi with the static of a phone call or any voices raised above a whisper or quiet tone. His eyes follow him, but not long enough for Dazai to pull up his contacts list. Atsushi’s eyes fall shut, screwed shut tight like he’s in pain, but then relax.

“Akutagawa's that Port Mafia kid?” Yosano chimes in, scaring Dazai, not enough to make him flinch but enough to lift his head. She’s in the doorway of her office, backlit by the honey-colored light, evidently listening to his conversation with Atsushi.

“That's him,” Dazai says, leaning against the counter. “They were working together this morning.”

Yosano nods, remembering the briefing she was given before Atsushi arrived in the infirmary.

“You knew him, didn't you? Before you joined us,” she asks. Quietly.

“He was my subordinate,” Dazai answers, turning to face her just a bit more. Yosano's come into contact with him once before, he’s sure. Most of the Armed Detective Agency members were familiar enough with Akutagawa to know him by name, by the time Dazai joined.

Just as Dazai finds Akutagawa’s contact to call him, Yosano’s brow furrows and opens her mouth to say something, but Dazai turns away when the line clicks.

Akutagawa always answers a little too quickly.

“Bite the dust yet?” he says. Maybe a bit of an insensitive joke, considering Akutagawa’s condition. He’s distracted for a moment, peering out the window. The sky’s starting to look rather dark, even for the evening. The orange meets with black clouds overhead.

“What do you want?” he answers with an annoyed huff.

“Your boyfriend wanted me to make sure you're okay,” Dazai taunts, deciding that's probably a joke that Akutagawa can't ignore.

“Dazai -”

“I think he has every right to be concerned with how terrible your lungs are. And he's bordering on pneumonia over here,” Dazai tells him with an exasperated sigh. He’s sure Akutagawa doesn’t care about any of that, but Akutagawa doesn't say anything for long enough for Dazai to realize he's not sure how to react to that information.

“Is he - ” he pauses. “Surely he’ll be fine.”

Hm. Interesting.

“He'll be fine,” Dazai says. Despite Atsushi’s current condition, he certainly will be fine - those Tiger healing abilities will always pull him through. “Go see your doctor. The last thing your useless lungs need is another bout of pneumonia.”

“I don't answer to you,” Akutagawa grumbles, but a few coughs that he didn’t seem to expect betray his biting tone.

“Want me to tell Chuuya? ‘Cause you know exactly that he'll hound you to your grave about it.”

Akutagawa groans. “I’m hanging up. Your voice is giving me a headache.”

Dazai wants to make a joke in return, but Akutagawa truly does hang up the phone. Dazai’s a little more than surprised. But he’s certainly more surprised that little Akutagawa has the capacity to worry about someone other than his sister. And his enemy, no less.

He smiles to himself, but suddenly, the sharp pain in his eye returns.

“Dazai,” Yosano says with a huff, still standing in the doorway with her brow knotted together, “does that happen often?”

Dazai blinks. He’s not sure how she could possibly know that his eye is causing him any pain, so he wonders if maybe she’s asking about something else. Yosano is a detective, but she’s not a mind-reader by any means. “Calling my former subordinate? Well, unfortunately -”

“No, Dazai. Your eye,” she clarifies, her eyes fixed on that eye specifically. It does feel wet, now that he’s thinking about it. But he doesn’t think a tear has slipped out. The tips of his fingers graze over it, the motion causing a sharp pain there, but when he pulls his hand back, he sees blood.

“Oh,” Dazai says, “well…it used to. Happen often.”

“I don’t mean to stop on your toes. But I’d prefer if you let me have a look at it,” Yosano says, but she doesn’t move from her spot in the doorway. Dazai squints trying to look at her, the bright light proving to be far too much for his sensitive eye at the moment. He’s nauseous at the idea of another doctor proding around at his eye.

Dazai wants to tell her no. He wants to say it’s fine, he’s been dealing with chronic paina nd random bouts of bleeding there for years, it’s just slowed down a lot since joining the Agency. He’s not worried about it.

But he thinks that she’s concerned because she knew Mori just as well as he did.

“If you have to,” he says as casually as he can muster, smiling awkwardly to break the tension. “But no needles or anything.”

“I don’t need needles to examine your eye. Go sit down in my office chair and I’ll find my ophthalmoscope,” she says, heading for some drawers on the opposite side of him.

Dazai awkwardly shifts around beside trudging into her office, sitting down in a chair that probably needs replacing. At least that way he doesn’t feel like he’s in a sterile doctor’s office. He’s just in Yosano’s work office. Her desk is littered with piles of unfinished paperwork, little trinkets and broken tools she’s working on fixing.

She walks in, adjusting the head of the opthalmoscope before looking at Dazai. She turns back to take some gauze from the counter and reaches to carefully dab at Dazai’s eye, to wipe off some of the blood.

“Is it painful?” Yosano asks.

Dazai was hoping she wouldn’t ask, but at this point, there’s no reason to lie to her. “Very.”

She peers through the opthalmascope after reaching back to turn off the office light. He knows the drill, he just stares forward, tries not to move, and at this point, he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t throw up. Yosano is nothing like Mori, but at the same time, she’s exactly like him.

“Hey,” she says, lowering the scope and looking at him with a very concerned gaze. “Breathe, okay? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just looking.”

Dazai didn’t realize he was being that see-through just now.

He doesn’t say anything, he just does what she’s asked - breathes, something he forgot to do moments ago. He takes in a long, deep breath, holds it, and lets it out. He has to force himself to breathe out each time, or else he just ends up holding his breath and feeling worse.

It’s over, soon enough.

“You really can’t see from that eye,” she says, like she’s surprised to be able to confirm her theory, lowering the scope. “I’m not sure why it’s bleeding though. It might be a good idea for you to have it checked by an eye doctor.”

He smiles back awkwardly, with absolutely zero intention of following through on that. Yosano turns back to switch the lights back on, but all of it at once it too much. He shrinks away, his eyes forcing themselves shut, just the one throbbing through an intense stabbing pain.

Yosano shuts the light off as soon as she seems to register that his reaction is out of pain, and she disappears for a moment before coming back with something in her hand. The light coming off helped the pain subside rather quickly.

“Are you completely blind there? Or can you still see shapes, register lights?” Yosano asks.

“The second part,” Dazai answers, and Yosano presents him with a medical eyepatch.

“Put this on for a while. That way the light isn’t too much, and it might be a good idea to keep it covered while it’s bleeding like that,” Yosano suggests, and Dazai takes it. He’s certainly no stranger to these. The idea of putting it on isn’t something he;s thrilled about, but she’s right. It might help for a while.

So he puts it on.

He thanks her, quietly, before he wanders back to Atsushi’s cot, where the latter is thankfully fast asleep, but not looking much better.

Kunikida pokes his head in to ask how Atsushi’s holding up, to pass on the message to his very concerned colleagues. Dazai assures him that Atsushi will he just fine, he just needs someone to stay with him while he’s not feeling well, because he can’t handle it alone. Kunikida says that Kyoka offered to sit with him in place of Dazai, but Dazai insists that Kyoka getting sleep is more important.

The sun eventually sets completely as their coworkers file out of the building, leaving it eerily quiet. Yosano turns on the radio to fill the silence, just calming instrumental in her office, and she stays there, not coming out aside from peeking at Atsushi. The silence is long gone as wind starts to pick up around the building, whistling through the screened windows. He’s sure there’s a storm coming.

Eventually, Atsushi’s eyes flutter open.

Dazai doesn’t bother him with conversation right out of his sleep. He’s sure he’s confused and frazzled with that fever he’s been running, one that has Yosano concerned that he isn’t healing himself like they had hoped. She said she would give him until midnight before she would decide if he needed to be hospitalized.

Dazai hopes that’s not the outcome. Atsushi would handle that just as well as Dazai would.

“Dazai,” Atsushi murmurs feverishly with a pained groan, an arms over his middle, his eyes heavy with exhaustion, “I don't feel good.”

“I know, Atsushi,” Dazai tells him, reaching forward and patting his hair. “Wish we could make it go by faster for you.”

He's met with vague memories of himself being fever-riddled in the shipping container he used to call home, through the aftermath of some hurricaine that had not treated Yokohama kindly. He's sure he had pneumonia then too, but he was so sick he can hardly remember being treated after. He just remembers then fifteen-year-old Akutagawa showing up with Chuuya in tow, finding him drenched in sweat and coughing so much that it was making him vomit. He’s not sure how either of them ever found out he was so sick.

He remembers asking them to leave him. He felt so awful that he would have rather his body completed the process of killing him, which he was so certain would have been the outcome had no one found him. He begged both of them, over and over, to make it stop. To end it faster.

“I wish I could make it be over faster,” Chuuya has mumbled at some point. Then, Dazai had assumed Chuuya was making a remark to assist him with suicide, but he realizes now that Chuuya just wanted his suffering to end. He wanted him to feel better.

He’s not sure why Chuuya would have ever wanted that for him, but he feels that way about Atsushi. Atsushi at least deserves to feel better.

Dazai hears the thunder start to roll overhead, confirming his suspicions of a storm. Thankfully it’s not nearly as loud in the Armed Detective Agency’s building as it would be in their dorms, but they can still hear the thunder very well.

“I wanna go home…” Atsushi murmurs quietly, laying on his side, defeated with a quiet huff. He shifts uncomfortably, shivers.

“You can't yet, Atsushi. You've gotta stay here for a little longer,” Dazai tells him kindly, brushing his hair out of his glassy, fevered eyes. “We can’t let you go anywhere in this storm, anyway.”

He shivers at the sound of the thunder, curling up like a scared dog. Dazai half smiles, taking the end of the sheet and bringing it up to cover his shoulders, so he’s a little more secure.

“I didn't ever realize that you were scared of thunder,” Dazai says with a fond smile.

“I'm not scared,” Atsushi murmurs with a harsh shiver, “I just…I just don't like it…”

Dazai almost laughs. He’s heard those exact words from Akutagawa, years ago. He understands their negative associations. Akutagawa’s past living on the streets never gave him a good memory with a storm, and he’s sure Atsushi’s in the same boat, where he was trapped in the orphanage for most of the time, all by himself.

“You’re safe in here,” Dazai assures him, his tone that of a teacher trying to comfort a kindergarten student, making a little more teasing than he intended, but he hopes Atsushi knows that he means it. Dazai’s still trying to learn that too, but they are safe here, in the Agency.

Atsushi barely makes it over the side of the cot to vomit.

Dazai rubs his shoulder gently, telling him it’s fine and not to worry. It’s still just water, of course, there’s nothing else in his system. Yosano peeks out at the sound of the commotion, and gets to work with setting up IV fluids for him.

Atsushi breathes heavy over the side of the cot for a few minutes, visibly nauseous but without much energy to do anything other than gag miserably. Dazai doesn’t take his hand off of him. He must feel terrible right now, being so visibly sick isn’t something he shows willingly a lot of the time. Dazai tucks the longer pieces of his hair out of his face when he gags and coughs, bringing up nothing more than spit and water.

“Any better?” Dazai asks when Atsushi trunks himself onto his back, to which the latter shakes his head, closing his eyes. He looks terrible. Dazai reaches forward to adjust his hair, it’s stuck to his forehead in all sorts of directions.

“I wanna go home,” he says again through a quiet burp, visibly distressed, “’m fine…”

“You’re not fine, Atsushi. You’re still throwing up,” Dazai tells him, rubbing his shoulder. “Just let us take care of you for a little while longer.”

Yosano takes Atsushi’s hand and starts to place an IV as gently and quickly as she can. Dazai busies himself with distracting Atsushi, who is already starting to drift back into a sleep, unbothered what Yosano is doing for the most part - Dazai is more bothered than Atsushi is, up until the needle part is over. Dazai holds Atsushi’s free hand.

Yosano is gentle in the way that she finishes up the job, with adjusting everything, placing the tape. Her hands are quick and efficient, but not oblivious to the feelings of the person that she works on. Very unlike Mori, who never cared much if he was hurting a patient more than he should have been. That’s comforting, at least.

“Mori used to talk about you,” Dazai says.

She looks up. Dazai always has a hard time telling what she's thinking. She must have learned that from Mori, because Dazai has heard it’s very difficult to tell what he’s thinking, too.

“Never by name, but…I put the pieces together,” he says, rubbing circles into Atsushi’s hand with his thumb, thinking maybe it’s more soothing for him than it is for sleeping Atsushi. “The way you wrap bandages, give injections…”

“I've thought the same of the way you do things,” she says quietly. “I'm sorry you had to suffer with him for so long.”

“I'm here now,” Dazai shrugs. He has to be nonchalant about it, any other way makes him feel like he’s losing his mind, but he’s grateful to be here now. “And so are you.”

Yosano smiles back at him.

…

The next morning, Dazai feels himself wake up with the morning light spilling in through the windows. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he has his book in his lap, and he’s on the cot beside Atsushi.

And Atsushi’s still there, looking like he’s starting to wake up, too.

Dazai stretches his limbs out, surprised by the feeling that he’s gotten a fairly good rest. And Atsushi is still here - that means he’s improving, at least, and Yosano decided he didn’t need to be hospitalized. He moves to the chair where he was before beside Atsushi. His eyes are blinking open, slowly, carefully.

Dazai reaches forward to lay the back of his hand on Atsushi’s cheek, and he’s still feeling a little warm, but not nearly as hot as before. That’s good. He probably just needs a few more hours of rest and he’ll be good as new.

Atsushi groans, eyes screwing shut for a moment, wrapping his arms around his middle.

“Everything okay?” Dazai asks him.

“Nauseous,” Atsushi murmurs quietly.

“Hmm. The antibiotics,” Dazai says with a nod. He says Yosano adding quite a bit to his IV, and he’s sure it’s helped his condition, but the side effects are never fun to deal with. “I’m sure Yosano can add something for your nausea if you’re still feeling sick.”

“Did you ever call Akutagawa?”

Dazai’s surprised to hear him ask for a follow-up, when he’s clearly still not feeling well. He’s still out of it, too, he’s just saying what’s on his mind.

“I did. What he does is his own choice, though,” Dazai says with a half-smile. “He’s never listened to me.”

Not that I ever gave him good examples to follow.

“I wish…wish he’d ask for help,” Atsushi murmurs, fighting his own exhaustion as he stares at the ceiling and tries desperately to keep himself awake. “He doesn’t have to…to do everything alone…”

“You’re right. He doesn’t,” Dazai tells him. Advice Dazai could surely use himself. “Go back to sleep, Atsushi. You’ve got some more resting to do before you’re back to yourself.”

Atsushi doesn’t need to be told twice. Even if he wants to stay awake, his eyes betray him, and he starts to fall asleep again.

Dazai supposes he has some lessons to learn after all.

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