Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter Fifty-eight

Dazai POV

Modern music thrummed in my ears as weak London whiskey burned itself down my throat at a dingy enough bar that they didn't bother asking for an ID.

It would have been all too easy just to turn straight for camp, to attempt to throw myself back into the world that I had fueled about as much as I had craved. But that wasn't really an option when the people that I was running from now know exactly where it is that I would be running to. Mori may have been the knife to push me out of the Port Mafia, but that didn't mean that he was going to willingly leave me alone now that I was gone. So I stopped in London, and promptly found the nearest place to get absolutely pissed.

My eyes lazily scanned the crowd, not expecting to find anything interesting in the dim city. Sometimes it seemed to me as if all of the wonders of the place had disappeared with Sherlock Holmes, everyone here now just bustled about from place to place in a hurry, too proper or posh to let their anger thorium into a decent fight.

Not even here a week and I already longed for the ever changing world of the Demon City.

But I knew that I couldn't go back just yet unless I wanted to see that very city burn until the boss's bones became ash. A sight that I would pay every fortune to see, but didn't yet want to face the consequences of what was sure to follow if I did so.

After all, I had a promise to keep.

The crowd moved, changing slowly as time passed and new clients came to fill in the seats of those long gone. Glasses clinked as the music turned up even louder than it had been only a moment before, the mass of bodies shifted and I saw a pair of eyes that mirrored my own.

We stared at one another, the interest there clear as the stranger slowly made his way closer, weaving through the crowds as if their touch was not something that the other could stand. Something that felt so achingly familiar that the press of bodies at my back almost became unbearable as well.

It definitely became vile when a hand snaked itself around my waist as if it had any right to do so.

The disgustingly older man stunk of cheap beer and looked to easily be in his forties. "You're such a lovely thing," the man drunkenly cooed, his breadth hot against my neck in a way that made me physically ill. In a way that made me wonder just how long I had to wait until it would appear 'justified' if I were to hit a bottle over the other man's head.

Not long.

"Let go of me," I snarled, my knuckles white as it held the bottom heavy glass. If I had still been in Yokohama, a city where abilities were so much more common than anywhere else and the mafia ruled the streets, that would have been enough to scare anyone with a decent mind away.

The man before me was a complete imbecile.

He held on tighter. "A feisty little thing too," he laughed as his hand traveled lower. The other patrons looked away when I tried to meet their eyes.

Fucking Bastards.

And then the world became a beautiful shower of red.

Screams tore through the air as everyone else in the sleazy bar ran for the door, a wide breadth being created around the stool that I was occupying. Everyone except for a man dressed almost completely in all white, his clothes splattered with blood just like my own, and his glinting with that same dangerously intelligent light that no one else had ever quite measured up to.

He did.

"Am I supposed to thank you?" I asked, carefully placing down my glass onto the now stained table as I spun in the seat to meet the other fully and stood, headless of the blood pooled at each of our feet.