Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter seventy

Dazai POV

Yosano was waiting for the pair of us outside the clinic door, holding it open with the heel of her foot with a look of annoyance on her face that I knew too well to truly believe, when we finally made it up the stairs.

"Everything should be ready in there," the older woman said in a voice a little too soft for someone pretending to be vexed with the men before her for not allowing her to do her job.

Sometimes, when I was drunk and the walls around my thoughts were too thin for me to stop them from coming, I thought that this must be what it would be like to have a sister. I already knew that I was going to miss it.

Chuuya's arm was still wrapped around my frame as he helped me sit down on the clinic table, a ripple of unease running through me when the other man pulled away. Even after all of these years, a clinic was still the last place that I wanted to be. But I said nothing, didn't try to draw the other man back to me, it was my fault anyways for letting such old wounds fester for so long as this.

I watched as the other ability user walked to the door and looked up at the Agency's doctor with a too cold gaze for people that would likely get along had this been a kinder world that we were born into.

"We're good here," the older man said with a flat voice that I knew that he must have learned from Ane-San because it lacked everything that made the gravity manipulator Chuuya. He went as far as to make a small shooing motion with his gloved hand, something that I knew that he had learned from me. The thought sparked something within me that I kept hoping would die. "You can go now."

I watched with a surprised smirk as Yosano ignored the man before her and let her eyes slide to me. All it took was a nod for the doctor to turn sharp on her heel with one last threatening glare towards the mafioso, and leave the room. My judgment was enough for her, and so was the fact that we both knew that Ranpo would never have let the mafia executive step foot inside the Agency with me like this if he hadn't known that it would be safe.

"The infirmary is the next room over when you are done, Nakahara. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," the woman called from down the hall before Chibi closed the door behind her.

"Your doctor is..." the mafia executive started as he shook his head and trailed off, changing out his leather gloves for surgical ones.

"She's barmy," I supplied helpfully, my voice undeniably fond. I hated it.

(I didn't)

Chuuya raised a brow at the foreign word, a British slang term that I had picked up first during my time in London and had done so once again after being around the Kane siblings for too long. It was the sort of expression that reminded me of our childhood, of days walking down ruined streets as if we had some sort of right to exist as we were, power lying just beneath our skin as we each spoke of things that the other could never have hoped to understand, his life on streets much different from my own after camp.

I looked away first.

The other man grabbed the blade with a practiced hand before pulling it out in one smooth motion, as pain flooded through my body.

"Di immortalis," I cursed as the small blade was deposited onto the metal tray that had been set out and prepared just for it. "Fuck, that hurt."

"Don't be a baby," the other man growled but I could tell that his heart wasn't into it, the insult lacked the bite that it usually held. It lacked anything at all really.

I unbothered the shirt that I was wearing, scowling at the blood on it and the fact that I wouldn't be around to have to buy a new one as I threw it to the floor with little care. The Hatrack was already moving as I thought about what to do with the bloodied bandages lining my skin, pressing a pair of medical scores into my palm, knowing better than to suggest that he cut them himself, not after New York. It was only a matter of seconds before the bottom layers of the once clean cloth was being discarded on the ground along with the button up.