It was so novel that it felt weird for Chuuya not to feel any pain, especially after over a month of constant barrage. But maybe that was the entire point of heaven, or the after life, or whatever. It would suck big time if there was such thing as suffering here as well.
Feeling, oddly enough, physically invigorated, Chuuya nevertheless felt very tired.
He never knew that death was such a challenging ordeal.
Then Chuuya opened his eyes, and saw a familiar ceiling.
He also notices that despite the lack of pain, he wasn't entirely free of sensation. His right hand, for one, felt distinctly clamped and clammy. He tried to move it, but found that he couldn't very well. Then he turned his head carefully, afraid of sudden movements somehow, and he found the reason for the heavy weight on his wrist and hand.
"Dazai?"
Chuuya said and his voice came out perfectly healthy. Not a trace of hoarseness or soreness from all the screaming. It was so weird almost to the point of being uncanny.
Dazai started awake with a terrible jolt, and he stared at Chuuya like he was seeing a ghost. There were dark bags under his eyes and redness in them. Then his face split into a huge, none-annoying, completely genuine smile and he almost threw himself at Chuuya, hugging the petit mafioso with something akin to desperation.
Chuuya froze for a brief moment, his brain still muddled with sleep.
Then, he punched Dazai full force in the stomach.
"What are you doing here Dazai!? You stupid suicidal mackerel!"
Dazai flew across the room and hit the wall with a painful thud, beginning to cough almost immediately.
Chuuya raised an angry, imperious finger.
"Just because I died didn't mean you have to die with me! Don't you ever understand that sometimes you just want someone you love to just live on even when you can't!? Why, why on earth did you— !!"
Dazai was coughing hard, but then it turned into delighted laugh, something so jarringly out of context for Chuuya that he cut himself off mid-complaint.
"What are you laughing at, mackerel? What's so funny about this?"
"Just— kof— look around, Chuuya." And he degenerated into a fit of laughter.
True enough, when he grudgingly surveyed his surrounding, he recognized it immediately. His own apartment.
Then the confusion sets in.
"But it's not possible." He said, looking down at his flawless, uninjured hand. He started and scrambled to pull the blanket away from his legs, dread filling him, afraid he would see only empty sheets.
But there were the two of his limbs, looking and feeling perfectly healthy. When he tried flexing it, he felt the strength and no trace of soreness whatsoever.
"My legs. I saw them before you came, this is not possible." He repeated, dumbfounded.
Indeed Chuuya's entire body had been to the point of tearing itself apart. He had lost so much blood that without the ability sustaining the life in his body, he would have passed out and died long before Dazai ever reached him.
His muscles were frayed, almost, and they had split open lengthwise in countless impossible manners.
It had hurt. It had hurt so much. This was not possible.
By this time Dazai's fit of laughter had subsided, and he picked himself up off the floor, one hand over his stomach.
"The world have ability users, chibi. You say what is impossible?"
"Yosano Akiko—" Chuuya blurted in realization. "But how—? And I'm in the Port Mafia!"
"Can't let a valuable hostage die, can we? You're far, far more valuable alive than dead, Chuuya..."
Dazai resumed his former position beside the bed, his brown eyes holding Chuuya's blue ones so firmly Chuuya could not have looked anywhere else if he wanted to.
"...especially to me." He finished, to the utter silence of the room.
Chuuya had just become aware of the birds chirping cheerily outside the window, their sounds like gossiping observers watching their every move.
Heat rose in his cheeks, spreading across his neck and face. Suddenly he felt like averting his eyes, but then lift his chin and said defiantly,
"Oh? Now I'm a hostage for your agency?"
Dazai chuckled, and smiled tenderly. He was so glad to see the insolent ojou-chan side of Chuuya again after so long.
"No, not the agency's" Dazai said letting a wicked smile touch his lips, before he leaned in and pressed those same lips into Chuuya's, a quick and chaste kiss. "You're mine."
"Doesn't make things any better." Chuuya grumbled noncommittally, knowing his words would be underplayed by the red in his flush and the un-concealable gentleness in his eyes.
Dazai didn't pull away, but didn't kiss the redhead again either. Instead, he wrapped the smaller man in a tight embrace, their bodies pressed together so Dazai could feel the entire length of Chuuya's body. So he could feel, in that deep part of him that was still whimpering in fear, that Chuuya was really here in his arms, alive, and safe and sound.
As if reading his mind, Chuuya whispered in the gentlest tones he knew,
"I'm here Dazai. I'm right here."
Tears stung the detective's eyes, but he did not know whether to let them fall. He had almost never cried in front of anybody. Only Odasaku's corpse and then grave, sometimes.
And he cried so much already these last few days.
"Don't you worry you'll be late to save me, Dazai." Chuuya said again against his ear, his breath tickling the exposed skin, but his words tickling a long-shut part of his heart that he dared not let out in the open.
Four years is a long time to let a wound fester.
"Don't you worry you'll be late to save me, like your Odasaku."
At the mention of the name, tears finally fall.
"I was so afraid." He confessed brokenly. Despite his best efforts his voice just wouldn't stay still.
"Don't worry, Dazai, because you can never be late to save me."
Chuuya pushed Dazai's body away so he could look up and meet his misty, flooding eyes.
"No matter how late you recognized the danger, no matter how stupid and slow your think yourself to be, you'll never be late to save me... because I'll always wait for you."
Dazai cried, then. Really cried like a little child they both had to hide in the mafia, sobbing loudly into Chuuya's shoulder.
And Chuuya knew, it had been worth the wait, to finally meet Dazai again.
He knew that Oda Sakunosuke would continue to be a large part of Dazai's life. He knew that those bitter times he spent denying his own feelings when Dazai would go to the Lupin and meet his new group of friends wouldn't go away. He knew the fact that Odasaku left a wound on Dazai's heart would not change, that reality would not change for them.
But at least, he knew he was the one to heal that scar.
He also knew that if the same thing happened again a million times, he would still wait for his stupid mackerel to come to his senses, and look down at his side, and notice the short little person with the characteristic mob of red hair standing there, every time.