Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter fifty-five

Chuuya POV

My body felt light, almost as if it had been lit on fire as I walked across the training room and over to the large, floor to ceiling windows. Fighting with Ane-san has always had this effect on me each time that we've done so. The executive was quick with a blade and effortlessly graceful in every move that the assassin made. She fought as if she'd been born with a blade in her hand, which wasn't so much of a strict h when one considered the ability that the woman held. But what always made the encounter almost intoxicating in nature was the one simple rule that the other had put in place a year ago when we had first started soaring like this:

'No abilities.'

I had balked at the words when the mafia execu had first spoken them to me, almost sure that I'd misheard the woman, but then she had placed a dagger in my hand and told me that I would need to be quick. And I should have been because the next thing that I knew I had been effortlessly thrown onto my back, a sword placed lethally at my neck and my dagger halfway across the large room.

I hadn't even had time to breathe.

I had been nowhere quick enough.

Right then I knew that if it was Dazai on the other side of the blade, or someone with an ability that acted like his or like the little freak brat that he'd been put in charge of when we were fifteen, I would have been dead.

After that I'd never questioned the training again, taking to it as eagerly as I could. Something that had served me well enough in the New York Incident, as I liked to call it in my mind. The few times that I thought of it.

I'd especially taken to the training after learning how it felt to wake up and find my body had been torn apart by my own ability not so long ago, something that I never wanted to feel again but knew that I one day would. There wasn't exactly a shortage of strong ability users after all.

I knew like I knew the scars on my body that I would never be able to beat the other executive in a fight like this, not for a while at least, but that never stopped me from coming back for lessons each time that they were offered.

But every high eventually comes crashing down and mine did the moment that I looked out of the window, down at the street below.

There was a tall man with a lanky figure to him walking out of the front of the mafia building. His hair was red like the blood that I've spilt, though it lacked the shocking effect that Ane-san and I tended to possess with ours. His clothes were all shades of tan and browns, lacking the darkness that the Port Mafia members always possess. He didn't look like a mafioso at all.

But the boy that left the building behind him clearly did.

Dazai was bounding down the street next to the man, his arms moving in an excited manner that was so genuine that it almost made me choke. I couldn't see the younger teen's face, but a part of me thought that if I had been able to I would find a real smile there, hidden between the bandages. The kind of smile that I hadn't seen on the other boy's face in almost a year.

Something dark coils in my chest at the sight, gripping at my heart like some kind of beast. And I don't know what brought the emotion on, but it only gets stronger still as I watch the causal way that the bandage waste's arm brushes against the strange man's as they walk together. The way that Dazai didn't automatically recoil from it , almost as if they had done so a thousand times before.

A thousand touches with the boy that hates ever being touched at all.

"Lad, ah-" Ane-san stops speaking just as suddenly as she'd started, as the older mafioso joins me at the window, a look of disappointment marring her beautiful face. It takes me back to realize that the look was directed at me and not at the boy below. "You shovel leave the spying to that partner of yours," the older woman chides not exactly harshly, but certainly not kindly either.