Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter sixty-five

Dazai POV

The office is empty when I get to it, not even Kunikida was stalking the halls of the Agency nor was the President yet in his office. What wasn't missing was the ever growing stack of papers sitting a top my desk waiting for me to complete them, something that I could easily do but never wanted to. It was hard to so thoroughly throw yourself into something that you had been doing since fourteen, even worse when the cases were much more tame and benign in nature than the Port Mafia ones had been at the time.

It was easy though to do so when attempting to outrun the thoughts running inside of your head like some sort of demon trying to drown you.

With a sigh, I sat down at my desk and grabbed the first file, working through it and all the ones that followed as the other slowly began to filter in as time slowly progressed through the day. Kunikida comes in at some point, and I feel the blond's eyes on my frame as shock is so clearly splayed on the other detective's face, but the younger man knows better to say anything lest I stop working as I had been.

Ranpo's gaze is harder when in stettles upon me, less easy to ignore and more scrutinizing in nature as he reads much more from my actions than anyone else in the office could hope to. But the older detective doesn't say anything, he hardly ever does where I am concerned, knowing that it is better to act when needed than speak when not. Too many trips to a candy store or market place purely to keep me from doing something idiotic spoke to that.

It was hours before I laid my head down, the paperwork finished at a speed that the blond partner of mine didn't comment on had he noticed it. My eyes drooped from the lack of sleep the night before; something that wasn't uncommon, but usually fixed by cheap sake, or whiskey, vodka, or wine if some desolate part of me was feeling sentimental in the only way that a demon could - separate and never ending.

If Kunikida complained, I didn't hear it. That should have been the first sign that something would go wrong.

I let my consciousness drift, in and out, never fully one or the other. It was a light sleep that I could come out of at any time if needed, one that I had learned during the mafia and had kept up for quests during my two years abroad before coming to the Agency. I wasn't expecting hands to gasp my shoulders, shaking them to wake me, just as the perpetrator of such an act wasn't expecting the knife that I have kept on my person since fifteen to come at them in a deadly arc, stopping just short of anything fatal.

My mind is buzzing as if it was infested with wasps, stinging over and over as the bees died after the first. My vision was too sharp in one eye and altogether gone in the other, my breathing too ragged to be anything remotely close to healthy but silent nonetheless. Everything was too present, too sharp. Too fresh, as the incident from last night dragged out things that time should have buried with the corpse that had once called me friend.

But it hadn't, and now Yosano was at her office door staring at me with eyes that understood much more than I ever wanted them to as Ranpo's show a confirmation that he never wanted to have. Glancing around the room I find Atsushi leaning against the window behind my desk with the boy's hands on his chest, staring at me as if seeing a stranger while Kunikida stood at his side with a protective hand on the teen's shoulder. Somehow the younger men both managed to hold looks within their eyes that perfectly mirrored the other's equal measure of fear and concern.

Dual colored eyes flicker to my hands, to the blade still sitting comfortably within them as if it was always meant to be there - it wasn't, but another was. With a smooth motion - too smooth, too well practiced for a detective, but perfect for a mafioso. For a demigod as well - I tuck the knife away back into my coat by the pen that never left it.

Silence hangs in the air, something so incredibly rare for the Agency but so potent right now that if I were to draw my blade once more I might have been able to cut right through it.