Chapter Text
The first inclination that anything is wrong happens with Kunikida of all people.
They’d just started investigation on a case the police had turned over and despite it being so obvious, Dazai and Ranpo had both solved it based on the synopsis alone - he was still dragged into helping ‘investigate properly’ as a punishment for lazing around the whole day.
Of course, the natural order of things eventually took hold and Dazai ended up pissing Kunikida off in the middle of an interview. To be fair, he hadn’t gone into it with the intention of making him mad- it was just a nice bonus to trying to get the interviewee to trip up and admit some information that Dazai knew he knew. Unfortunately, Kunikida couldn’t seem to get the hint and interpreted it as him harassing the guy.
“Will you shut up ,” Kunikida hisses at Dazai after excusing them both from the interview to step outside and practically drag Dazai into an alleyway. “It’s the last interview of the day, we just need to finish this and then your lazy ass can go home.”
“But it’s so
boring
,” Dazai whined, crossing his arms together and turning his nose in the air. “It’s just the same story again and again from like eight different people. We could have been over with this hours ago if you just let me take over.”
“There’s a proper way of going about these investigations that don’t work if you and Ranpo keep insisting on deducting answers to everything without doing any of the other necessary steps.”
“We’re detectives. We deduce . It’s in the job title.”
“The courts do not take ‘ my coworker said so ’ as a valid reason for putting someone behind bars, Dazai,” Kunikida says, stressing every word like he was speaking to a toddler. “We need evidence.”
“I can get you evidence!”
“ Legally obtained evidence.”
“Boo.” Honestly, sometimes he missed the mafia.
“The public was convinced we were terrorists a few months ago. You went to jail . We need to be thorough.”
“Hey, jail doesn’t count if it was on purpose.” Dazai frowned. “Besides, we saved the world or whatever. I feel like we deserve some brownie points for that.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“That’s how it should work.”
“We have to finish this job as soon as possible, Dazai,” Kunikida responds, completely ignoring his argument. One of his hands goes to massage his head as if he was getting a headache simply by talking to Dazai. “We already know who is guilty, we just need the proof. The incident clearly had some kind of ability attached to it and we need these testimonies to-”
“Or!” Dazai starts, clasping his hands together loudly. “You can finish the job since you are doing so wonderfully. While I would absolutely love to stay and help, it seems my services simply aren’t needed here and I would hate to intrude on your incredibly vital work. In the meanwhile, I can make myself busy by taking my dear mentee out for some snack shopping. ” For the final kicker, Dazai pulls out the wallet he’d swiped off Kunikida earlier and holds it up with a large grin.
In a moment, Kunikida’s face turns bright red, losing all composure, and his hands reach for Dazai’s neck the same way they had hundreds of times before.
In retrospect to the whole thing, the one thing that Dazai cannot stress enough is that there was absolutely nothing unique about what happened.
Not a singular movement or intention that differed from his previous actions. This has always been just something they did, Dazai would push, Kunikida would eventually explode on him, and he’d laugh it off. It was their dynamic.
But for some reason, this time, the second Kunikidas' hands made contact with his neck, Dazai was immediately reminded of another set of hands that had been there before his.
They were a bit larger than Kunikida, rough after years of medical practice, and strong enough to crush a windpipe.
Those hands had been anything but playful, pressing down until Dazai was gasping for air, and digging his nails into his own skin to prevent himself from fighting back. He’d learnt his lesson on doing that the same month he’d been taken in under the man’s care. They would keep choking Dazai until he was on the verge of passing out, sometimes even until he did, and then drop him on the floor where the only thing louder than his heart racing was the humiliating laughter of the person above him.
He tried to breathe in, but it was as if all of the air had been sucked from the surrounding area and every breath was a stuttering, useless thing that left him lightheaded. He squeezed his eyes shut, knees threatening to buckle underneath him, and leaned against the wall behind him to steady himself before slowly lowering himself to the ground.
His own hands made their way to his neck in some vain attempt at protecting himself, but even with that, he still couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t fucking breathe .
“-zai! Dazai .” A voice called to him and finally, Dazai snaps back into reality. Neither Kunikida’s hands nor his were even near him. Instead, Kunikda was kneeling at Dazai’s level a safe distance away, eyebrows knitted together in what seemed to be worry instead of anger. Not a new look, but definitely not one Dazai had ever seen directed at him before.
Dazai blinks.
“What the fuck was that.”
Kunikida’s shoulders slump in relief and he looks away, seemingly ashamed. “It appears you had a panic attack when I put my hands on you.”
“Huh?”
“In my anger, I tried to choke you and you began having a panic attack. I’m incredibly so-”
Dazai squints at him. “...Are you sure.”
“Am I sure?” Kunikida asks, confused.
“You’re sure that was a…?” He waves his hand a bit, not wanting to actually commit the action into words.
“Yes. I’ve been trained in recognizing symptoms of them. They’re normal, a completely reasonable reaction to-”
“You don’t get it,” Dazai said, interrupting him mid-apology. “That’s never happened to me. That doesn’t happen to me. There has to be some other explanation because I’m not like that.” Kunikida pauses and looks at him with something like pity.
“Not like what?” And Dazai loathes the way that Kunikida says those words, all soft around the edges like he’s talking to some traumatized civilian who got caught up in something they weren’t supposed to.
“You know what I mean,” Dazai insists, pushing himself up to stand at his full height. “I’m not like that .”
Not human. Not built so softly that he was traumatized by his upbringing. Not made of glass or porcelain. Not a thing to be handled delicately. Not someone who was undeserving of what came upon him.
“Dazai-”
“Less talking more snack buying,” Dazai sings, brushing off the hand that tries to make contact with his shoulder. Pretends the touch doesn’t make him suppress a flinch.
“Dazai, you really-”
“The main issue is going to be getting snacks that Ranpo won’t steal which is hard because that’s all he does, but-”
“Dazai!” Kunikida all but yells, and something in the tone of his voice made Dazai finally stop and turn around to face his partner. Kunikida was staring at him like he could barely recognize the person he was seeing and it made something ugly fester inside of him. He never wants to see that look again. Wants to burn his skin from the humiliation of it.
“What.”
“You’re shaking,” Kunikida says, finally, and Dazai looks down at his hands to find that he was correct.
The office around him was dimming, refocusing back every time that Dazai tried to push past the black spotting his vision. He needed to stay aware. Needed to do better. His nails were wet with blood where he’d been digging them into his palm.
Dazai tries to keep them still, but the shaking only gets worse.
The beating of his heart quickens and he quickly realizes that he can’t control it - can’t slow it down the way he’d been trained to. It was like his mind knew what he needed to do but his body just wasn’t getting the message. There was a sort of disconnect between the two, as if his body had finally gotten tired of being used as merely a tool and had turned against him.
Mori pushed him up and lifted Dazai’s feet fully off the ground. Dazai’s hands flew up before he could stop them, grabbing at Mori to push him away, his body succumbing to pure panic at the loss of both the ground beneath him and the air around him.
“Am I on something?” Dazai mutters to himself, turning his hands over so the palms were facing up, showing red indents where his nails had been digging in. “What the fuck is happening?” He tries to laugh, but it comes out more crazed than he intended, edging on hysterically.
“You know better than that, Dazai.” Mori tisks and immediately, Dazai’s hands fall back to his side, limp. “This is for your own benefit. Just calm down. A prodigy that can’t handle a little roughing up is useless to me.”
“Dazai, you need to calm down.” Kunikida’s voice was low and careful. He was keeping his hands away, but still where Dazai could see them. A stupid gesture. Dazai wished it didn’t calm him a bit. “You’re going to send yourself into another panic attack. Breathe.”
Sometimes, there wasn’t even the pretense that what Mori was doing was for his own good.
“C’mon, Dazai. Just breathe.” He’d say in that light, mocking, tone - full of a godawful sadistic delight that Dazai would one day come to replicate.
“Can you shut the fuck up,” Dazai hisses, and he wasn’t sure who it was directed at, but Kunikida’s mouth snapped shut instantly.
Logically, he knew that Kunikida wasn’t wrong. He needed to breathe, and he could. There was nothing really stopping him, he just needed to get control over his fucking body again.
At least back then, it truly wasn’t up to him, but even now that it was and he still felt just as useless as before. He tried to get control of his breath, taking in one long inhale only to feel it stutter in his chest as if it wasn’t meant to be there. Exhaling out was even worse - despite the burning in his lungs, they seemed greedy to keep what they had, as if they were afraid they wouldn’t get it back.
The next round went much the same as the first, taking in air as if it was a foreign concept to him with his back slumped against the wall behind him and hands digging into flesh in a poor attempt to ground himself.
Kuniida stayed the entire time, silent and staring at him as if it was the first time he’d ever seen Dazai. There was conflicted guilt written all over his face, his ideals of not hurting people clashing with the fact that it was Dazai he’d managed to hurt.
Once breathing was finally routine enough for Dazai to not need to actively count every second of it, he wordlessly pushes himself away from the wall and begins heading for the agency.
Kunikida bristles, hurrying to catch up to him and he looked ready to say something, but before any words could come out, Dazai fixed him with a look.
He really didn’t want to talk about whatever the fuck it was that just happened and if Kunikida tried to make him, he would not hesitate in plummeting off the nearest bridge and letting himself drown.
Somehow, Kunikida got the message, pursing his lips together in a way that spelled disappointment and walked a few paces right behind Dazai. His eyes bore into the Dazai’s back the entire way there.
This would be the last occurrence of whatever the hell that was, Dazai promises himself. No matter what it is he needs to do, that would never happen again.
(He comes into work the next few days with bloodied bandages and still, only a few weeks later, it happens again.)