Revelations {BSD/SKK}

19 : Missing You

Nineteen - Missing You

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Chuuya slept holding Dazai's hand.

He didn't want to sleep at all, really. A deep, childish part of him was so scared that if he did, if he fell asleep for even a second, that he'd wake up and Dazai would be gone again. His mind tried to tell him that Mori would somehow sneak in, right past all his wards. Mori would steal Dazai from right beside him and Chuuya, Chuuya wouldn't even notice because he'd be asleep, he wouldn't notice in time, wouldn't even be able to chase after Dazai until hours and hours later when he finally woke up.

But Chuuya was six centuries old, so he took that frightened, irrational part of himself and told it that no, Mori would not be breaking through the seventy three wards Chuuya had layered up around the hotel, their suite, even the door and walls to this very room. Even if Mori did know how to break down his wards quickly - and realistically, there was no chance in hell he did, seeing as Chuuya had invented over ninety percent of them himself, and the rest he'd pinched off of old friends over the years - the breaking of them would be vicious enough that Chuuya would be alerted, immediately awoken. That's how he'd designed them, that's how they worked, and Chuuya really, really needed to get some sleep.

But what it took to finally get that tiny panicked part of himself to truly settle down was to take Dazai's hand in his own. He held it tightly (but not too tightly) and knew that if anyone tried to take Dazai away from him, the simple physical grip would do far more to alert him than any complex spell could.

That's how he slept and that's how he woke, about fourteen hours later, Dazai still right there beside him and every ward still intact. Chuuya let out a slow breath as relief bubbled in his stomach, rolled on his back to stare up at the ceiling. It was so.. plain. Not interesting like the ceilings of his house had been, not familiar like the comforting swirling patterns crafted from living wood.

He sat up in the bed, ran a hand over his eyes, pushed his hair back. It was a mess.

Kouyou. I miss you so much.

He'd lost so much in that moment. Dazai, of course. But more than that, he'd also lost six lifetime's worth of magical materials, books, trinkets. Letters from old friends. Gifts. Precious memories. The stupid Christmas sweater Yosano had bought him as a prank twelve years ago. The sweet little parting gift his roommate back at the City of the Mother, Paul Verlaine, had given him at their graduation. Gods, all his clothes - Kouyo's coat - centuries of research, all gone in an instant.

There was a chance he could get some of it back. He didn't know what, how much, or even how. His house had defied the laws of physicality, and as an extension of that, so had the objects housed inside of it. It was possible that some stuff was still caught in the in-between world spaces, but he didn't even know how he'd access that with enough precision to...

Chuuya realised all of a sudden that the Arahabaki had been strangely quiet lately. His presence was still there of course, deep inside Chuuya as always, but it was.. subdued. As if the state they'd found Dazai in had thrown the great beast for just as much as a loop as it had Chuuya. It wasn't too much of a surprise, he supposed. Raw overwhelming power wasn't going to be able to help their situation, was it? Things would be so much easier if it could.

Oh, Dazai was starting to wake. Chuuya looked down at him as Dazai's eyebrows pinched together and he groaned. He felt the hand holding his own squeeze a little. And then Dazai did a weird little full-body stretch that reminded Chuuya very much of a cat, and slowly blinked his eyes open with a wide yawn.

It was weird. Dazai had started to relax a lot more towards the end, but he'd never been this slow when waking. It was.. kind of nice, in a way.