#ᡣ𐭩 carina’s archives

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 EAT IT 'TIL YOUR TEETH ROT!

FEATURING: dazai osamu, fyodor dostoevsky, nikolai gogol, suehiro tecchou & jouno saigiku, nakahara chuuya

SUMMARY: oral with the bsd boys! (wordcount: 4k; ņsfw; fem!reader; lowercase intentional/notes app smut ahaha; more warnings at the start of each section!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: plsss someone help me with this divider issue i beg, why can't i use dividers on my fics (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ i got carried away on chuuya's <.<

DAZAI OSAMU

fem!receiving, edging (650 wc)

your breath is shaky, eyes sliding shut as your thighs tremble, keeping them spread apart. one buck of your hips, your thighs clamping down around his head, even letting a moan spill from your lips, and you would lose.

dazai is having the time of his life. you can feel the way his lips curl up into a wide smile against your cunt, the tip of his tongue tracing circles between your folds. you long to bury your hand in his dark curls and force him down between your thighs, burying his face between your folds, but you refuse to give him the satisfaction of winning again.

your breath catches as he flicks his tongue over your clit, lips parting in a silent moan. but instead of keeping the pressure on, dazai pulls back, brown eyes peering up at you through his lashes, deceptively innocent.

“did you say something?” he asks, leaning his cheek against your inner thigh as he watches you. 

“osamu,” you warn, but your tone was far less threatening than you intend for it to be considering you’re breathless and it’s tinged with an embarrassing amount of neediness.

“bella,” he coos, “you’re making this so difficult for us both. just agree, and we’ll both get to feel good, yeah?”

difficult for us both, you want to scoff at his words. you can see the sick enjoyment thinly veiled beneath the faux-sympathy—he’s enjoying this, watching you squirm as he edges you over and over again, and that pisses you off even more.

but there isn’t much more of this you can take. your head feels hazy and your vision is blurry—if you look to the clock sitting on his desk, you know it would say it’s nearly seven o’clock, the sun setting long ago. the two of you have been at an impasse for nearly an hour now and-

“fine!” you spit out as dazai’s warm breath ghosts over your cunt again. “fine, i’ll do your goddamn paperwork, you lazy piece of-“

dazai doesn’t even hesitate, pressing his open mouth back against your cunt and sliding his tongue between your folds. this time, you let your thighs clamp down around his head and your hand fly down to grip his dark locks, pressing his face down impossibly closer against you as your back arches up off his desk.

dazai moans shamelessly against you, hands coming up to hold your thighs as he buries his face into your cunt, fucking his tongue deep into you once before sliding up to focus on your clit.

dazai is exceptionally good at using his tongue—usually, he uses it for nefarious means, like talking circles around kunikda until the man gets frustrated enough to storm off or antagonizing chuuya to the point of the port mafia executive erupting, but every once in a while, he puts it to good use.

like now.

you think it should be humiliating how quickly your hips are stuttering against his face, how you’re so quickly breathing out his name, how your mind becomes muddled and empty of anything but the feeling of his hands and his tongue, but you can’t bring yourself to care. 

“osamu,” you gasp. “osamu, i’m close, i’m-“

dazai sucks gently at your clit, teeth grazing the sensitive bud, and you’re gone. your jaw falls slack and your stomach tightens, hips jerking up and thighs tightening, as you come undone on his tongue.

he lets you ride out the waves of your high, tongue lazily sliding beneath your folds as he laps up all of your cum, careful not to let a single drop go to waste.

as soon as you‘ve mostly settled down, heart still racing and ears still ringing, he leans back.

his eyes are lidded and his cheeks are flushed pink, lips swollen and wet—utterly debauched as he stared up at you. 

“one day, you’ll let me die between these thighs, bella.”

•••

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

male!receiving (850 wc)

you smile softly as you press a soft kiss to the tip of his cock, relishing in the way it instinctively jumps at your touch, reacting in a way that the cool and collected man above you certainly will not.

fyodor’s long, thin fingers toy with your hair as you nuzzle your nose into his thigh. he’s more focused on the computer screens in front of him that gives him a bird’s eye view of the events happening yokohama, but every once in a while you can feel the way his fingers pause in their ministrations, proving that you have a bit more of his attention than he’d care to admit.

“fedya,” you murmur, glancing up at him from where you’re kneeling but he barely spares you a glance, frowning at something on the screen. 

you sigh dramatically, turning your attention back to where you had managed to free his cock from its confines. you never thought you’d describe a cock as pretty before you saw his for the first time, but it is. it stands tall and pale with a pretty, leaky pink tip that you can never stop yourself from poking at with your tongue, a vein on its underside that you can never stop yourself from tracing. 

you hum softly as you lean in again to do just that, letting the tip of your tongue trace up the underside of his cock along the vein before letting your lips close gently around the tip of his cock, flattening your tongue against the beading precum.

fyodor’s thighs tense beneath your hands. your eyes gleam, peeking up to see him glancing down at you, an unreadable look in his purple eyes. 

he doesn’t tell you to stop. so you don’t.

reverting your attention back to the job at hand, you let your eyes flutter shut as you take fyodor deeper into your mouth, lips sliding down his cock. your eyes water a bit as your throat adjusts to the stretch—taking fyodor all the way down your throat is always a struggle—but you hear the quiet noise that slips from his lips and immediately, you’re blessed with a newfound willpower because fyodor dostoevsky’s moans might be the prettiest sound in the whole world, and the rarest, but you are determined to hear them tonight.

“temptress,” you hear him sigh. “i indulge in you far too much.” 

your hands slide against his thighs as you shift on your knees to get a better angle, and you feel his fingers slide against your hair, caressing you in a way that makes you want to melt into him. 

you force your eyes back open as you lift your head up, watching as he tilts his head back, lips parted in a silent moan. you kiss up his length messily, and you think that you could spend an eternity on your knees in front of him worshipping his cock if it meant you’d be blessed with the symphony of his soft, breathy moans and gasps. 

sinking your mouth back down around him, your tongue teases his slit before swirling around his length. you feel his cock twitch in your mouth, hips bucking slightly—and you know he’s close. you take him all the way down your throat, only sheer willpower stopping you from gagging around his length, but your efforts prove worthwhile when you hear a choked, obscene moan escape fyodor’s lips at the sudden feeling of your tight throat spasming around him. 

his thighs tense again, fingers pressing just a bit more firmly against the back of your head as he spills his cum down your throat with no warning. you hum around him, swallowing every drop before pulling off of his cock with a pop, tongue darting out to lick your lips as you look up at him.

his expression is fond, if not a little flushed as he holds his hand out to you, beckoning you to join him on his chair. 

you take his hand, letting him help you up from the floor and into his lap, and you shudder when you feel his cock slide against your panties as you settle against his chest, still half hard. you move to try to subtly grind your hips but his hands snap to your waist firmly, keeping you still.

he clicks his tongue in a chiding manner. “insatiable,” he murmurs, cool lips grazing your neck as he leans down to brush them against your skin. “but you have to wait this time, things are finally getting… interesting.” 

you turn your head to the side to look over your shoulder at him, noticing that he’s watching one of the upper screens with rapt fascination. following his gaze, you see a timer counting down from two minutes, and his finger hovering over a button that you know will override the cancellation command should it be hit. 

you lay your head down against his shoulder and mourn, because you think this is going to be the longest two minutes of your life. 

•••

NIKOLAI GOGOL

fem!receiving, a bit of blood play and pain play, nikolai is so debauched & i love it (850 wc)

nikolai buries his face between your thighs like a man whose been starved for weeks. he’s sloppy, rough, ravenous. he bites your inner thighs so hard that you bleed, and then he licks it up, face smeared with a depraved mixture of spit, cum and blood. 

your breath is shaky as he looks up at you with eyes that are so wide and adoring that it almost looks unfitting on such a crude scene. you reach down, fingers grazing his cheek, and he leans into your touch so instinctually that it makes you want to pull him up and devour him yourself—but instead, you press two fingers to his lower lip and watch as he takes them into his mouth, making a show of lewdly sucking them, eyes fluttering shut and tongue swirling around the digits. you press down hard on his tongue and he moans, high-pitch and whiny, hips instinctively jerking to grind against the bed.

pulling your fingers back from his lips, nikolai doesn’t hesitate as he drops his head back down between your thighs. you let out a breathy sigh as he licks back along the bite on your thigh, lapping up the blood that had spilled while he was sucking your fingers.

your head falls back against your pillow as nikolai drags open mouthed kisses up your thigh to your cunt, eyelids heavy and lips parting. you gasp, feeling nikolai’s tongue sweep between your folds. 

the grip he has on your thighs borders on painful, and you know you’ll have marks in the shape of his fingerprints decorating them in the morning, but it feels good—the bruising grip, the stinging wound on your inner thigh, the feeling of his tongue circling your clit and his lips sliding against your cunt. he’s so messy, so eager, that you can barely think straight.

your fingers twist the sheets beneath you, back arching up off the bed as your hips jerk when nikolai sucks your clit—always playing the dangerous game with his teeth as he lets them graze the sensitive bud, just enough to let a shock run through your body.

he moans against you, loud and obscene as one of your hands fly from the bed to his hair while the other swings to cover your mouth, muffling the noise that nearly slipped through your lips.

a mistake, of course, because nikolai’s instantly reaching up to grab your wrist, pinning it down to the bed next to you. he doesn’t look up at you, too focused on fucking his tongue deep inside of you, nose nudging your clit. your thighs instinctively tighten around his head and you glance down when you hear him let out another muffled groan, this one even more whiny than the last, taking on a lilt that it only takes when he’s close to release, you can tell even with his face buried in your cunt.

“oh, fuck,” you breathe out, eyes widening when you see nikolai grinding his hips against the bed, desperate and erratic, trying to get himself off in time with you.

the sight of it sends a shock through your body, a gasp escaping your lips as you press the back of your head into the pillow, lashes fluttering and thighs trembling on either side of his head. you can feel heat spread through you like a wildfire, your hips instinctively jerking up to grind hard against his face. your wrist strains against his ironclad grip, squirming as his tongue drags in and out of your cunt over and over again.

he pants against you, wanton and shameless, hips snapping against the bed faster, each thrust timed perfectly with his tongue plunging in and out of you. your vision feels blurry and your thigh muscles burn as he tongue fucks you closer and closer to release. 

you try to tell him that you’re close, head falling to the side and saliva pooling at the corner of your lips—your head feels foggy and your body feels hit. the lewd sound of his moans and the creaking of the bed and the sloppy, wet sound of his tongue driving in and out of you, swiping up between your folds, flicking over your clit, it’s all too much for you. you can’t keep up. you’re pretty sure the warning comes out as a garbled slur of incomprehensible words.

your entire body seizes when you cum, thrashing in his hold, your free hand flying up to grab the pillow behind your head as you cry out his name. distantly, you realize that he must have cum too, you can feel the way his hips still against the bed after one last frantic thrust, you can hear the pornographic moans muffled against your cunt—god, he’s shameless, you think again as you lay limp against the bed, reeling from your intense orgasm. 

in your half-dazed state, you feel nikolai rest his cheek you thigh and say: “quiz time!” and you swear you might just suffocate him down there next time.

•••

JOUNO SAIGIKU & SUEHIRO TECCHOU

male!receiving, face fucking, jouno's a bit mean & guides you through it, 'princess' pet name (600 wc)

“that as deep as you can go?” 

jouno has the nerve to sound disappointed as you struggle to take tecchou’s cock down your throat. you want to glare at him, or spit out a vile string of words that would put his mouth to shame, but you can barely even breathe with your lips and throat being stretched like this. 

your nails are biting into tecchou’s tense thighs as you try to keep yourself steady, and you can hear the man breathing heavy above you, his own fingers digging into the edge of the bed he’s sitting on as if he’s afraid to touch you.

you can’t even bring yourself to look up at him, focused on trying to take tecchou deeper because the last thing you want is to give jouno something else to lord over your head. 

“c’mon, princess.” the sweet pet name sounds so degrading and insulting the way jouno says it. you hear his heels clicking against the floor as he makes his way over to the two of you, dread builds in the pit of your stomach as you feel his familiar, thin fingers entangle in your hair, pressing gently against the back of your head. “i taught you better than this.”

“jouno-“ tecchou tries to say. you hardly have a chance to relish in how utterly broken the strongest hunting dog sounds above you, voice breathy and cracking over your boyfriend’s name, because in an instant, jouno’s fingertips are digging into the back of your scalp as he pushes your head down hard, forcing your nose to tecchou’s pelvis. 

your throat spasms at the sudden intrusion, choking and gagging, trying to pull off but jouno’s far too strong for that to be successful. tears spill over your cheeks and your body trembles as you try to adjust but you can’t because tecchou let’s out a strangled gasp as his hips jerk up instinctually, the tip of his cock hitting the back of your throat hard. 

you can’t breathe, you realize, panicked as black dots swarm your vision. you try to reach back and slap off jouno’s arm but that only spurs him on more. he pulls your head back, making you think he’s going to give you a bit of relief, only to push it back down instantly. cruel. he’s always so cruel.

your nails drag against tecchou’s thighs, leaving deep red lines in their wake as you struggle to remain conscious. you feel pricks and pins all over your body, your head feels fuzzy. 

distantly, you can hear tecchou’s obscene moans and garbled words and you wish you have more awareness because you want to be able to remember this. it’s not everyday you have the meteor slasher crumbling beneath your touch and god knows when, or if, jouno will let this happen again. 

it feels like it’s been an eternity and a second all at once when tecchou’s hips finally stutter and still against your mouth, spilling his cum deep down your throat. you barely even hear his choked warning before the warm, thick liquid is coating the inside of your throat. 

you struggle to swallow, and you think you must look disgusting as jouno finally lets you lift your head from tecchou’s cock and you crumple against his leg, clutching at the red material of his pants to try and hold yourself up—but tecchou looks at you with such a devoted expression that it makes you hot and flustered, and jouno’s fingers are carding gently through your hair as if to make up for the roughness.

“lay down.” you hear him say to tecchou, voice sharp and commanding. “now it’s her turn.”

•••

NAKAHARA CHUUYA

male & fem!receiving (69), face fucking, 'doll' and 'baby' pet name (1.1k wc)

you aren’t sure how chuuya managed to convince you to do this. 

your thighs tremble on either side of his head, straining to not drop all of your weight on his face as you lean forward over his lithe body, lips hovering above his cock. you feel him pinch your outer thigh hard and you yelp, body jerking instinctively. 

“c’mon, doll,” chuuya coos, trying to coax you into lowering your hips so that you’re sitting on his face, rubbing your thighs soothingly. “you know i can handle it. relax.”

his tone is soft, but you can hear the edge to it, almost as if he sounds insulted over the fact that you don’t trust in his capabilities and you would roll your eyes if you weren’t so nervous.

“i don’t want to suffocate you,” you snap at him, thigh muscles already burning painfully.

“don’t piss me off.” chuuya’s temper finally starts to waver after five minutes of trying to make you relax. his words are biting, as if your fears are utterly ludicrous. “stop holding yourself up or i’ll make you stop.”

“chuuya,” you complain, a bit more pathetically this time.

chuuya doesn’t even deign you with a response this time. you gasp when you feel his arms hook around your thighs, toned biceps tensing as he physically forces you down on his face. your eyes shoot open, lips parting in a silent moan when he immediately buries his face into your cunt, tongue licking a blazing stripe between your folds.

“chuuya,” you cry when you feel his lips close around your clit, rolling the sensitive bud between his teeth gently. 

chuuya hums around you, the vibrations making your abdomen coil and your hips unconsciously grind down against his face. he jerks his hips up, as if he’s impatient, and you vaguely remember what you’re supposed to be doing, laying a wet, open-mouthed kiss against his length.

you can hardly think straight as chuuya’s tongue swirls around your clit, heat spreading through your body rapidly. it takes three attempts, but you’re finally able to wrap your lips around the tip of chuuya’s cock, the familiar taste of his precum overwhelming your senses.

you try to focus on sliding your lips down his length—a difficult endeavor considering chuuya is evidently doing his best to make it impossible for you with how he plunges his tongue into your hole, one hand sliding up your thigh so he can press his thumb against your clit. 

your head feels light and airy, and with a bit of diluted horror, you realize you might be close to cumming already—with the taste of chuuya on your tongue, the sound of him groaning against you, the feel of his tongue and fingers working deftly to bring you closer to release, it’s almost too much for your body to handle. 

you don’t even realize that you’re barely sucking him off until chuuya gets impatient, this time snapping his hips up so abruptly that he drives his cock halfway down your throat. your eyes shoot open, a muffled moan spilling from your lips at the unexpected action, because chuuya is hardly ever forceful when you give him head, always letting you take the lead. 

“fuck,” chuuya breathes out, gasping as he kisses your thigh, panting for air before he dives right back in. “you liked that, didn’t you? want me to fuck your face, baby? felt you tighten ‘round my tongue.”

you don’t respond—can’t really. chuuya’s hips snap up again, forcing his cock deeper down your throat, your lips flush to his pelvis, his tip shoved down the back of your throat. you gag around him, tears spilling over your cheeks as your nails dig into his thighs, trying to adjust to his length stretching you.

“so fucked out already that you can’t even do one job,” he sighs softly, lifting his head to ghost his lips back against your clit, your entire body shivers as you let out a muffle sob around his cock. “s’okay, doll, i’ll do all the work.”

he hardly gives you a second to process his words, not that you’d be able to even if he did give you the time. you’re choking over him as he thrusts his hips up again, fingers digging into your ass cheeks as he drags you back down so he can smother himself in your cunt. 

your head feels foggy—you’re not sure if it’s from lack of air and the feeling his cock bullying your throat and his hips rutting against your face, or if it’s from the way chuuya’s tongue is drawing circles around your clit so quickly that you can barely keep up, dragging between your folds to fuck deep inside of you before repeating the process over and over and over again. 

you’re so gone. you’re so gone, you can’t think straight, your body feels like its on fire, thighs straining around his head, chuuya is moaning against you, thrusts erratic and frenzied as he chases his release. you’re still sputtering around him, your face must be a mess of drool and cum, and you think you might be cumming already, you can’t tell, you’re trying to focus on getting him off but he wasn’t lying when he said he’d do all of the work, you can scarcely even flatten your tongue along the vein that runs on the underside of his cock.

you don’t need to though, because the moment chuuya feels you moaning his name around his cock with your cum staining the lower half of his face, his hips stutter and still against your face, cumming so deep down your throat that you genuinely think you might drown in it. 

you should pull off of him, you’re struggling to breathe through your nose, your vision is spotty, but your limbs won’t cooperate with you, laying limp on—you wonder if you’re about to pass out.

luckily, chuuya still seems to have enough sense for the both of you.

he reaches down, hands wrapping around your waist so he can twist you around so that you’re laying comfortably on his chest. still desperately trying to recover from your orgasm, you settle against him, listening to the steady thrum of his heart as you try to ground yourself.

“see, baby.” his chest rumbles gently as he speaks lowly, a comforting familiarity, you’re still so out of it that you find yourself starting to dose off. you can hear the soft smile on his face as he tilts his head down to ghost his lips against your hair. “not so bad, was it? don’t be so nervous next time.” 

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 TELLING THEM THEY'RE PRETTY!

FEATURING: dazai osamu, fyodor dostoevsky, nikolai gogol

SUMMARY: telling the bsd boys that they're pretty! (wordcount: 3.5k; sfw; fem!reader)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: i had cute dividers but this won't show up in the tags if use them D: ! i had sooo much fun with this! i hope you guys enjoy! :D

DAZAI OSAMU

You can’t seem to drag your gaze away from him. 

As a long day of work comes to an end, you rest your head on your arms and lean on your desk. Kunikida is still tapping furiously away at his computer, Tanizaki and Naomi are whispering about something together, Ranpo is sorting through his candy, and Atsushi and Kyouka are looking through files. But your eyes are tracing over Dazai Osamu as he leans back in his chair, lazily spinning and bobbing his head to the music he’s listening to. 

The setting sun casts an ethereal glow over him, his lips idly turned up and his lashes brushing his cheeks as rests his eyes waiting for the day to end. Dazai Osamu is pretty—you’ve always acknowledged that—but there’s something about the peace of this moment, the domesticity of the office and the ambience of the lighting that has you utterly enraptured.

He looks so at ease, and Dazai Osamu is never at ease. Even when he throws up that clownlike mask of his and spends his day entertaining under the guise of joy and humor, you can always see the strain in the corner of his eyes and lips. It’s subtle, almost imperceptible really—if you were anyone else, you’d miss it, but you’re not anyone else, much to his displeasure, because you know he hates how easily you can see right through him.

After a few minutes, Dazai peeks his eyes open—and you’re almost breathless, because his eyes are like melted honey beneath the sunset, warm and gentle, glittering with amusement. You think you can stare at him forever and never tire of it.

He rolls his chair closer to you, resting his forearms on your desk so that your arms are brushing and laying his head down on them so that his face is mere inches from yours, matching your position. There's a smile on his lips, soft and teasing as he whispers, "You've been staring at me for five minutes."

"Mhm," you agree, voice just as quiet as if to not disturb the tranquility of the office. You can feel his breath light against your face from the proximity he's laying at and you can smell peppermint on his breath from the candy you’d seen him swipe from Ranpo’s desk earlier when the other man had gone to speak to Fukuzawa.

“Is there something on my face?” he asks playfully, dark eyes glimmering as he waits for your response.

You can tease him back and say yes, as you usually do and is probably what he expects—and you fully intend to do just that but the words that leave your lips are not that. 

“You just look really pretty today,” you say softly, watching as his eyes widen just a bit at your words, pink dusting his cheeks. 

His lips part to say something but no words leave them. He opens and closes them a few times and you marvel because Dazai must know that he’s pretty from all of the attention he gets from women, so you don’t understand why he’s so thrown off hearing you voice it out loud. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him genuinely speechless before now.

“So you don’t think i’m pretty every other day?” Dazai pushes his bottom lip out into an over-exaggerated pout, recovering swiftly from your words, though you expected nothing less from him. But you can’t help but note that his cheeks are still a bit pink and there’s something indecipherable in his eyes.

“Prettier than usual,” you amend and watch as the flush on his cheeks darkens and he instead resorts to completely burying his face in his arms with a frustrated groan.

“I am supposed to be the flirt, bella,” he complains, voice muffled by his arms as he hides his face from your view. He cannot hide the way his ears have gone bright red, and you have half a mind to reach out and tug at them

You lift your hand to your lips to hide the giggle that rises to your lips, scooching your chair a bit closer so you can knock your shoulder against his. 

“I’m not flirting,” you say. “Just stating a fact.”

He turns his head to the side, just enough so that he can give you a heavy side eye—you can only barely see the red hue coating his cheekbone. 

“Not mutually exclusive,” he says grumpily, and you lean down to press your lips against his now exposed forehead, smiling softly as his eyes instinctively flutter shut and his body relaxes as the touch.

Then, you receive a pencil to the side of your head. You yelp as your hand flies to where it had made contact with you, scowling at your assailant who is none other than Ranpo, smiling widely as he waves at you and then motions to Kunikida, who is red faced and staring at the two of you. You can’t tell if it’s in embarrassment or anger.

“Not during work hours,” he snaps, and you realize that he’s definitely embarrassed, so you share a short look with Dazai, who has regained that mischievous look in his eyes as he glances over at Kunikida and back at you.

Without saying a word, or giving any other sort of warning, he leans in to press his lips against yours. It’s a short and chaste kiss, but his lips are soft and taste of candy, and you think you might be able to kiss them forever if you get the chance.

Now you’re the one flustered, you can feel heat rising to your cheeks as you stare at Dazai, who is evidently thoroughly pleased to not be the one uncomposed if the unscrupulous grin on his lips has anything to say about it.

He tosses you a wink before rolling his chair back over to his desk, animatedly complaining about Ranpo and Kunikida being lonely and bitter and getting in the way of Dazai’s chance at true love because of it—you only roll your eyes at his dramatics, as you usually do when Dazai goes off on tangents, but it’s with much more fondness this time. 

•••

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

You are not listening to a single word that he’s saying. 

It’s a dangerous situation to be in with Fyodor Dostoevsky, you’re sure he’s noticed by now and he will be petty enough to finish his brief about his plans and your involvement and then ask you to repeat what he said, but you just can’t focus. 

He tied his hair back, you note, still quite a bit awed by the sight. There are two locks framing his face and his bangs are falling between his eyes, but the rest of his hair, which has grown a bit long in the weeks that he’s been ardently preparing for the final stages of his plan, is pulled back into a lax bun. 

He looks so casual, and Fyodor Dostoevsky never looks casual. He’s dressed in a turtleneck and loose pants as he leans back in his chair. There’s a folder resting on his lap that he’s idly flipping through and he keeps glancing up at you occasionally, pale lips flat and violet eyes disapproving, but you just nod along to his words even though you know that he knows that you’re not paying attention. 

And you think, distantly, that you probably should be paying attention because he’s talking about your upcoming mission and what you should expect from it but you figure you’ll be fine—it’s a simple infiltration mission, nothing to worry about. And you’d much rather prefer to appreciate Fyodor’s rare repose than to listen him droll on about boring topics. 

Sometimes, you think if he just kept his mouth shut all the time, he’d be perfect. But you think you’d miss his sharp-witted comments and the lengthy debates the two of you have after a few glasses of wine.

He looks extra pretty tonight, even beyond the casual hairstyle and clothes and his uncharacteristically relaxed demeanor, and you think it’s because of the way the flames of the fireplace are casting an enchanting orange and red glow over his face. It makes the violets of his eyes burn alive in a way that they usually don’t, you’re far too used to the glacial visage they take whenever he puts his attention on someone. Every time he glances up at you, you swear that you can get lost in them.

“… And you are not listening to a word that I am saying, are you?” 

Fyodor is giving you the heaviest side eye as he finally calls you out, expression unamused. His brows are furrowed and his pale skin is taut with thinly veiled irritation.

“Of course, I am,” you dismiss, waving your hand. “Infiltration mission, detective agency, get close to the tiger boy.”

Fyodor looks distinctly unimpressed by your words, brows deepening—you figure you must have spoken wrongly, you probably shouldn’t have been so indifferent, and you bite back a sigh before reaching forward to press two fingers between Fyodor’s eyebrows, as if to forcibly smooth away his annoyance.

He blinks and draws back, out of reach of your arm, and then casts you an even more irritable look.

“You’re not taking this seriously,” he accuses. “This mission will be dangerous, you’ll be at risk of being exposed every moment you are in the agency and if you are exposed-“

“Your plans will be ruined,” you finish, forcing yourself not to roll your eyes. “I kno-“

“You could be killed,” Fyodor corrected, voice cold and sharp, and you look back over to him. He looks unusually intense, and you’re not sure if it’s because of the appearance that the flames of the fireplace are giving him as they flicker dangerously across his face or if it’s because he’s that displeased with you being distracted. Either way, you find your mind drifting again because wow. “Dazai Osamu is not a man to be taken lightly. When he manages to figure out who you are and what you’re doing, we will need an immediate extraction plan.”

“Careful, Fyodor,” you drawl, watching as his violet eyes narrow briefly, “almost sounds like you care.”

Fyodor’s lips twist but he doesn’t respond. You raise your eyebrows, he looks away. Your eyes shoot open.

“You have a bigger role to play,” Fyodor finally says, but he’s no longer looking at you. “You cannot be killed yet.”

“Yet,” you repeat, amused. Fyodor’s jaw tightens, he doesn’t look at you, his eyes are trained on the fireplace to the side of the two of you and you can vaguely see the flames reflecting in his eyes, burning ardently against the familiar violet.

You lean forward again, shifting off of the couch to sit on the coffee table between the two of you so you can reach him. You reach forward to brush your knuckles against his cheek—he doesn’t move away this time, but his eyes cut to the side to watch you carefully.

You don’t say anything for a moment, absently tucking one of the locks of hair framing his face behind his ear. His hair is soft, freshly washed—for once—it smells faintly of lavender and vanilla and you wonder if he stole your conditioner.

“You look very pretty tonight, Fyodor,” you say quietly, and then smile. “It’s hard to focus when you look like this.”

The expression Fyodor directs toward you is extraordinarily blank, except for the faintest specks of pink that glare compared to the pallor of his face. 

He shakes his head, looking away from you yet again. 

“… You cause me much suffering,” he murmurs, and somehow, you know that might be the closest you might get to an admission of love from Fyodor Dostoevsky.

You smile to yourself. “And you to I,” you say, voice a bit teasing, and then you add, “Now, can you tell me again what to look out for?”

The moment is ruined. Fyodor’s eye twitches and he’s giving you that unamused look again, and you think having him repeat himself might be a mistake because now you’re even more distracted, but Fyodor sighs and starts on his lecture again so you force yourself to listen.

It takes about three minutes for him to release a sigh of utter suffering when he realizes that your eyes have glazed over yet again. 

•••

NIKOLAI GOGOL

Nikolai has a wild sort of beauty about him. He’s unpredictable and dangerous, and it’s widely apparent in his frenzied laughter and chaotic behavior. His eye glitters and his teeth gleam sharply beneath the glow of the moonlight as he waves his hands around, animatedly describing to you all of the details of the things he’s been doing while you were away. 

Fyodor’s masterplan has involved Nikolai apparently taken upon an infiltration role at the ministry of defense—you think it’s a bold move for Fyodor to use Nikolai for such a tenuous mission, but he’s apparently been having the time of his life with it. Though he thinks his boss is deplorable and one of his coworkers has evidently pissed him off beyond repair, because now he’s telling you about how he’s been ‘pranking’ the man in righteous vengeance. 

You think Nikolai’s idea of pranking varies from yours, because you’re pretty sure him using his ability to break into the man’s house constitutes a crime not a prank. But you don’t have it in you to make that distinction when he’s so excitedly telling you about how every day he’s been going into his house to move around all of his stuff and hide some of his belongings to make the man squirm. He’s succeeding outstandingly in his ambition, if the videos he’s waving in front of you have anything to say about it. 

You watch as he frantically scrolls to the next video—“this one is the best,” he claims, as he has for every video thus far. You watch with an amused smile as his dark-haired coworker steps into his apartment and nearly starts crying when he realizes that all of his stuff has been moved again, scrambling for his phone to call the police, who have—according to Nikolai—apparently already told him multiple times that there’s nothing they can do about it. The video is shaking wildly, as if the person filming can barely hold the camera straight, and you’re convinced that’s exactly what it is because you can hear Nikolai’s muffled laughter coming from recording.

Nikolai naturally finds it much funnier than you do, half-way keeling over as he wheezes, his laughter shattering the peaceful night. The two of you are sitting at a park near the apartment that Fyodor had leased for you for the duration of the Yokohama operation. The moon is high in the sky, casting a bewitching glow over the lake in front of you and there’s a chill in the air—it’s a nice night all around, you think there will probably some frost dusting the grass in the morning but the cold hardly bothers you now with Nikolai pressed to your side as he laughs himself into a near-coughing fit over his harassment of his coworker. 

“Why aren’t you laughing?” Nikolai suddenly complains loudly, scowling at you, but even then he keeps having to bite back residual laughter whenever he glances back down at his phone. “It’s funny.”

“It is funny,” you agree. Nikolai gives you a look as if he doesn’t believe you. “It is.”

“Then why aren’t you laughing?” Nikolai accuses doubtfully, and then adds, even more accusatory, “You hate me.”

You’re not sure why you aren’t laughing, honestly. Usually you’d be burying your face into his shoulder trying to smother your snickers, because even though you might not entirely agree with Nikolai’s idea of a prank, you can still find some humor in it. Because it is kind of funny. Kind of. 

But then you realize that you’re probably not laughing because you’ve been spending most of the night admiring Nikolai rather than listening to him prattle on about his escapades and watching his poorly recorded videos, so you can’t fully appreciate the humor in the videos. With his cheeks flushed from copious amounts of laughter and his eyes glowing with excitement, you think he’s very pretty tonight—Nikolai is always pretty, but the angle at which he’s sitting leaves the moon haloing behind his head, and maybe it’s just because you’ve missed him the past few weeks when you’ve been abroad dealing with a territory dispute with Tolstoy, but you think there’s something special about tonight. 

“I don’t hate you. I guess I’ve been too busy admiring you,” you finally say, a playful smile on your lips as you tilt your head to the side to look at him. “You look pretty tonight.”

Nikolai blinks, eyes wide and owlish as he processes your words. The longer he goes unresponsive, you acknowledge that a quiet Nikolai is far more unnerving than a loud and erratic Nikolai, you’d expected a more… theatrical response to your comment. A swish of his cape, him leaping to his feet with a twirl and an agreement, even just a wild laugh; instead, he looks away abruptly. He doesn’t even just look away, he physically turns his whole body away from you. 

You blink.

“Nikolai?” you ask, a bit astonished when he literally ignores you. You lean forward, trying to get a look at his face, but then he swivels around even more and your lips part in shock. “Nikolai.”

You’re only met with a face full of his soft white hair, impeccably braided, as per usual—you have half a mind to tug at it hard to try to get a response from him, but you aren’t in the mood for the lewd comment that would likely spill from his lips after. 

“Koly-“

“Poor me, poor me,” Nikolai suddenly cries loudly, “The little koshenya mocks me when all I do is try to make her laugh. Poor me, poor me.”

His hand flies to his face, melodramatic as he bemoans your alleged cruelty. You stare at him, mind trying to piece together what exactly is happening—Nikolai is always hard to predict, but you feel like this is a bit strange even for him, and that’s saying something. 

“… What?” you start to ask but Nikolai has thrown himself into a loud and theatrical tirade about how he doesn’t deserve such injustice and how he was only trying to make you laugh, and how it’s so, so cold-hearted of you to taunt him when this is the first time the two of you have seen each other in weeks. 

Nikolai is impossible to bargain with when he gets like this, so you only sigh and tilt your head up to the sky, his words flying in one ear and out the other as you wait for him to settle down on his own. 

Instead, you swear the world is against you because rather than settling down, he becomes increasingly more noisy and distressed, and his accusations become even more asinine. Now, he’s saying that you’ve always had it out for him and how you weren’t laughing at his jokes because you hate him and want to report him to the police and how he should tell Dostoy about your betrayal, or better yet, he should stuff you in his cloak and leave you there?

You side-eye Nikolai heavily as he continues on, slightly alarmed, but brush off the casual threat as just Nikolai being Nikolai. You don’t know how to shut him up, you think you might be out here all night listening to him, and now you’re the one bemoaning your fate because how did a simple compliment turn into this. 

Finally, an idea strikes. 

You brace yourself, questioning your sanity and your entire existence before you interrupt him with a loud, “Quiz time!”

Nikolai goes silent instantly, head snapping toward you, eye even wider than before. 

You think you’ve hit an all time low as you say, “Was I trying to mock you before?” Nikolai opens his mouth to respond but you cut him off before he can. “What’s that you say? I wasn’t? Ding ding! We’ve gotta winner!” 

You think Nikolai might be having an internal crisis. He’s staring at you as if he’s seeing you for the first time in his life—his lips are parted, his eye void of the usual mischief dancing in it. He looks as if he wants to say something but he doesn’t know what. 

You let out a long breath as you go to speak up again, but before you can, his eye is glittering again, sharp and dangerous, and his lips are curving up into a slow smile. 

Nikolai inhales and then he takes a complete one-eighty as he bursts into loud cackles and says, “Ahahaha! I knew you loved me!” as if he wasn’t just lamenting your irrational hatred for him moments before.

Your eye twitches. He begins a second tirade, this one far more embarrassing for you than the last. 

You regret everything.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 SNEAKIN' A PIC (ATTEMPT: FAILED)!

FEATURING: fyodor dostoevsky

SUMMARY: you never get to see him like this. is it really so awful that you want to capture the moment eternally? evidently to him, it is. (wordcount: 1.4k; sfw; fem!reader)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: i'll never not make fun of that one panel of him sitting at his computers with his greasy ass hair even if he does look like a pretty princess in every other panel he has. my obsession with naps is being translated into my fics, i already posted a nikolai one posted and also have a dazai one in the drafts HAHA

When you wake up, you feel a weight on your bicep. Your brows furrow a bit in confusion, glancing to your right to where your arm is extended across the bed, but then your eyes fall upon Fyodor, fast asleep and using your arm as a pillow, and you can barely stop the small smile that rises to your lips.

Your arm is numb, but you don’t dare move in fear of waking him up—the clock on your nightstand reads nearly eight am, and you wonder when he finally came to bed last night. You know that he’s been pushing himself day and night to finalize the last parts of his plans, denying himself both sleep and food as he sits at his computers dealing with meetings and preparations 24/7. 

He hadn’t even changed into a pair of pajamas before falling into bed with you, nor had he bothered to get beneath the covers. a part of you wonders if he even meant to sleep, or if he’d just pushed his body too far and only barely made it to the bed before it gave out on him. 

It wouldn’t be the first time. 

You bite back a sigh as your gaze traces over the stubborn man—he always looks delicate in his sleep, in a way that he never does when he’s awake with his eyes shut and his long, dark lashes brushing his cheeks. His expression is the picture of serenity rather than the cold and unapproachable face he wears when he’s awake. 

You think that he’s pretty all the time, but there’s something special about being able to witness Fyodor Dostoevsky in his most vulnerable moments, knowing that you’re the only one he allows to be with him in them. 

You’re half-tempted to reach over to your nightstand with your free hand to try to grab your phone and snap a picture of him. You look over, wondering if you can reach it without jostling your other arm around, but before you can even consider your chances, you hear: “Do not.”

Fyodor’s voice is still thick with sleep. you glance over at him, surprised, but his eyes are still shut, and he hasn’t budged an inch. You wonder if you imagined it, but then his eyes crack open, thin slivers of purple glaring at you.

“Just one for me?” you ask quietly. “No one else will see.”

“No.”

You pout softly but roll back to look at him. He still looks exhausted, the bags beneath his eyes are dark and heavy, and he can barely even hold his eyes open. You reach out, cupping his cheek gently and watching as his eyes slide back shut, a soft exhale spilling from his lips as he lets the side of his face sink back into your arm, dozing back off.

You smile lightly, shifting forward a bit to press your lips to his forehead, stroking his cheek lightly with your thumb.

“I need to get up,” he murmurs, but his eyes are still shut and his voice is thick with sleep. “I need to finish-“

“You will not finish anything adequately in this state,” you chide gently. “If you get proper sleep, you’ll be much more efficient and effective.”

Fyodor looks as if he wants to argue, brows furrowing at your words even with his eyes shut. You only jostle him a bit closer, watching as he shoots you an irate look, but then settles down when he realizes you’re only dragging him closer so that he can rest his head on your chest—a place far more comfortable than your arm.

“Wake me up in an hour,” he finally orders, and you agree absently, knowing that you absolutely will not.

You think, as Fyodor lets himself doze off on your chest, that it’s hard to remember he’s quite literally one of the most dangerous men on this planet. That if he so pleased, he could activate his ability and kill you without a moment’s warning. That he’s a man who is so terrifyingly intelligent that it sometimes comes across as prophetic, and you can’t help but wonder if he speaks the truth when he claims to be led by the Hand of God. 

Your hand smoothes across his back in steady circles, tilting your face down to press your lips to the top of his head. His hair is a bit oily, as he usually lets it get when he deprives himself of basic necessities while he works. You’ll have to convince him to take a bath with you when he wakes up, but you figure it’ll be a battle because you already convinced him to sleep in a little longer, he’ll not want to waste any more time. 

You almost want to pinch him, wondering why everything with him has to be a war when it comes to taking proper care of himself. He rarely even remembers to take his iron supplements on the daily without your prompting, and he knows if he doesn’t take them, he’ll be prone to dizziness and fatigue. For all of his intelligence, you feel like sometimes that you’re a mother dealing with a stubborn child, not your lover. 

“Stop that,” Fyodor sighs, shifting a bit to get comfortable. “Dim your thoughts, dusha moya. I can feel you getting yourself wound up.”

You scowl. “You know, Fedya, maybe you should just drop the whole terrorist plot and become one of those preachers on the radio who pretend to be prophets. Build yourself a cult, make some money. You already seem to know everything, wouldn't be too hard."

Fyodor tilts his head up to look at you, expression so deadpan and unamused that it nearly makes you snort, but you only dip your head down to kiss between his eyes.

"Sleep,” you say, voice softer. “You need it.”

Fyodor doesn’t respond, and when you tilt your head to the side to look at him again, you find that he already dozed back off again, shoulders rising and falling steadily underneath the arm you have wrapped around him. 

You smile lightly and you tighten your arms a bit as Fyodor lets out a puff of air in his sleep, turning his head to lay the side of his face on your chest. In this position, you can see the way his eyes flit beneath his eyelids rapidly, his brain still running rampant even in sleep.

You bring your fingers to his hair to card them through the dark locks, slow and soothing in the way you know he likes, watching as his eye movements slow and his body relaxes into yours. 

Your smile widens a bit before it abruptly falls, laying your head back against the pillow as you finally begin your next challenge: drawing out a battle plan for convincing Fyodor to take a bath with you when he wakes up. 

You sigh to yourself heavily, knowing well that you're about to be facing the most difficult argument of your life with the most stubborn man alive. You can already feel the headache, and you think that you deserve a new picture for your lock screen from how much trouble Fyodor gives you on the daily, but as you side eye your nightstand again and try to calculate whether or not you can reach your phone without waking him up, you feel fingers wrap around your free hand.

You gape in disbelief as you look down to see Fyodor grab your hand in his sleep, as if he knew what you were planning even when not conscious.

Unbelievable, you think bitterly, plan entirely thwarted, but your gaze softens at the sight of him fast asleep on your chest, clutching your hand with one of his.

Maybe you don't need a picture, you realize, because you think there's no way you'd ever allow this image to fade away from your mind.

Still, you think he should severely reconsider his line of work.

Even more so now, in fact, because there is something entirely abnormal about his seemingly perfect foresight, evidently flawless even in his sleep too.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 OFFICE ESCAPADES

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai decides to take advantage of everyone leaving the office for lunch to get some much needed time with you. you know it's a mistake, and that you're going to get caught, but you can't bring yourself to deny him—you never can. (wordcount: 1kish; nsfw)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: i was going to give you guys a long one shot today but i got cold feet unfortunately </3 maybe next week i'll have the balls to post it. for now, take a lil drabble i wrote

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, public ??? not sex but it was getting heated

“They’ll all be back any minute,” you whisper, voice breathless as you feel Dazai’s lips drag down your neck, soft and wet as he sucks and nips at your skin. 

He only responds with a hum, and you know your words probably aren't even even registering through his head. You think that you should be more insistent—push him back and get off of his lap, because Kunikida will be livid if he comes back to the office to find the two of you in a compromising position, and Yosano and Ranpo will never let you hear the end of it. But it’s hard to focus with Dazai’s tongue tracing patterns on your neck, with his fingers digging into your hips as he grinds you down on his cock.

His touch is dizzying, fogging your mind of all common sense, and he’s been testing your limits all morning so really, how can you blame yourself for finally giving in to a little release?

It started with subtle brushes and lingering touches that set your skin aflame, then came the lidded stares as he watched you instead of doing his work, and finally, just before lunch break, when you went into the kitchen to grab some water, he followed you right in under the guise of grabbing a snack from one of the upper cabinets. He caged you against the counter and pressed his body against yours as he reached above you, the outline of his cock pressing into your ass for a few seconds too long before Kunikida started yelling for Dazai to hurry up. 

“It’s fine, bella,” he finally murmurs against your skin, acknowledging your words. “Relax.”

“It’s not-“ You try to say, but Dazai doesn’t even give you the chance to finish the sentence, lifting his head from your neck to capture your lips with his. 

And if his touches are dizzying, his kisses are addicting. Your eyes flutter shut when you feel his lips moving against yours, painfully slow but you feel like you can’t even breathe, tongue brushing along your lower lip to get you to part them for him. You think you could kiss him forever and never get enough of it. 

His hands slip beneath your shirt, warm palms sliding up and down your sides as if to try to calm you down.  

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, breath hot against your lips as his eyes trace yours, lidded and hazy. “Heaven-sent.”

“Osamu,” you protest, a bit flustered. Dazai is always poetic and flowery with his compliments but heaven-sent?

Dazai lets out a soft noise, you can’t tell if it’s a moan or a shaky breath as his hips jerk up enough to make your body shudder. God, this is so bad, you know it and you know he knows it even if he won't admit it. This needs to stop before anyone walks in but neither of you can drag yourself away from the other.

“It’s the truth,” he replies, reverence dripping from his tone as he stares up at you, dark eyes wide with an emotion so intense that it has your breath catching. “You’re divine, utterly angelic. You’re not meant to be with someone like me. I’ll ruin you.”

You can’t tell if it’s a warning, a threat or a promise—maybe a combination of all three. Your fingers trace his cheekbones as you cup his face, eyes searching his as you ask with a teasing smile, “What if I want you to?”

The reaction is instantaneous—Dazai’s eyes darken, pupils dilating as he stares up at you. His grip on your hips tightens just a bit. 

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Dazai rasps, his voice is a bit lower, a far cry from the loud dramatic tone he usually took—heat pools in your lower stomach as you let out a soft puff of air.

“I do,” you reply, leaning down to nip his jaw, relishing in the way he instinctively lets his head fall back, baring his throat for you. You kiss down to where his bandages peek out from under his shirt, before trailing back up to the spot behind his ear that makes him writhe, smiling against his skin when you hear the soft, pitched moan that spills from his lips. “I want you to ruin me, Osamu. In every possible way you can.” 

Dazai’s lips part to respond, but he doesn’t get the chance. The office doors slam open and Kunikida is shouting: “You two have no decency!”

You throw yourself off of Dazai’s lap, flustered and hot as you fix your shirt and make your way back over to your own desk, ignoring Yosano’s cat calls and Ranpo’s snickering.

Your fingers tremble as you log back into your computer, but it’s hard to concentrate when you can feel Dazai’s gaze on you even as Kunikida shouts at him. 

You peek over one last time—he’s resting his head on on his hand as he stares in your direction, gaze lidded and so intense that you can barely bring yourself to imagine the thoughts that might be running through his head. 

When he catches you looking, the corner of his lip quirks up into a smirk, and you think, balefully, that there’s no way you’re going to last another six hours of work with him looking at you like this.

And more importantly, there’s no way you’re going to survive the night with him now that he's being given six hours to come up with countless ways to ruin you. 

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 YOU AND ME (ALWAYS FOREVER)!

FEATURING: dark era!dazai osamu

SUMMARY: more than friends, not quite lovers. that's been your relationship with dazai osamu for as long as you can remember. you didn't want to push him, and you gave him plenty of chances, but there's only so long you can wait for someone. you thought you would be better off moving on—you were wrong, of course. (wordcount: 4.8k; sfw; angst (???) but with a happy ending)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: dark era dazai </3 my heart, i got a sudden urge to write for him and i wanted it to be fluff but then i got this idea and just had to go with it (warnings: fem!reader, smoking & drinking, suicide attempt mentions)

In your defense, you were never dating Dazai Osamu.

Not for a lack of trying on your part, of course. You’ve made your interest in him clear since you met him at sixteen during the Dragon’s Head Conflict, when Mori Ougai pulled you back from where you were stationed in Kyoto dealing with his associates to help with the declining situation in Yokohama. And you’d thought he felt similarly to you. You really did. The two of you had become inseparable within weeks of knowing each other, such a swift and strong connection that it almost felt unreal. You’d heard rumors of him, of course, before coming back to Yokohama—the infamous Demon Prodigy that Mori had brought in and groomed into becoming his heir, ruthless and cold and so terrifyingly intelligent that he had the entire upper echelon of the Port Mafia on edge. 

By the time you got back to Yokohama, he’d already taken the Colonel’s place as an executive—a shame, really, the Colonel was always your favorite of Mori’s five executives, he always brought you gifts when he came to visit you in Kyoto. But he never really felt like the monster that everyone claimed him to be.

He and Nakahara Chuuya had been the one sent to retrieve you from Yokohama Station, an area very close to the heart of the gang conflict, and even from the first meeting, he’d always been… well, you’re not going to say normal because he’s not normal. He’s always had an unnerving air about him, eyes a bit too cold and dark, smile a bit too teethy, but he’s always come across as just another kid your age. Maybe a bit lonelier than most, which could be off-putting to other people, but it never bothered you. And yes, you’ve seen the way other members of the Mafia treat him—they’re scared of him, go to extreme lengths so as to not cross paths with him, but you’ve never seen him in the same light they do.

Well, not until recently, at least. 

Again. In your defense, you were never dating him. 

But you’d known he cared about you as more than a friend. And you’d cared about him as more than a friend too. And you waited. You waited almost two years for him to say something. You didn’t want to do it yourself, you know Dazai is flighty and he’s not used to emotions, and you didn’t want to make him uncomfortable, but god, there’s only so much waiting you can take before you start to give up.

When the two year mark hit, you’d become convinced that Dazai was never going to act on his feelings for you; instead, he’d prefer to wait it out until they passed, and if they never did, he’d just pretend they didn’t exist at all. You can’t really blame him, the Mafia is not a place conducive for relationships, it’s only a matter of time before your luck runs out and one of you end up dead by a bullet through the head or captured by the enemy, and the thought of getting attached to someone only to lose them is enough to scare anyone away. 

But you don’t want to live your life in fear, no matter how short it may be, and you also don’t want to live it alone. So when an opportunity arose at a cafe near the main headquarters, where you met a civilian around your age who showed immediate interest in you, you jumped on it. And it’d caught a lot of people off guard—Kouyou was surprised, Chuuya was baffled and questioning what a civilian could possibly have that interested you, even Mori gave you a double take and an odd look the first time he overheard Elise interrogating you about your new boyfriend.

But no one took it as poorly as Dazai.

Your throat feels tight as you remember the hurt expression that crossed over his face when you told him. It was so brief and so foreign of an expression to see on his face that you’d thought you’d imagined it, he was quick to school his expression back into a cold and closed-off one (one that he’d never directed toward you before that moment), but there was no mistaking the way the corner of his lip twitched and the way he suddenly couldn’t meet your eyes. 

How nice, he’d told you, voice frighteningly icy, acidic, even, before he made a half-assed excuse about a mission that you knew he wasn’t assigned to. And it was so unlike him to offer himself up to handle missions, usually Mori has to force him with threats of giving Chuuya his executive position for him to do anything that makes him extend the barest amount of effort . But he did, and he handled it, very bloodily and uncharacteristically inefficient, as if he was releasing all of his pent up rage onto the unfortunate souls who happened to stumble into Port Mafia territory.

You were never, at any point, dating Dazai Osamu. 

You think you’ve told yourself it hundreds of times over the past three months, throwing yourself into your work and enjoying a relationship with a boy who clearly was invested in you and cares about you in a way that Dazai Osamu would never allow himself to admit. You also think that Dazai Osamu has no right being as bitter and angry as he is—you gave him two years to come to terms with his feelings and make a move, you’ve made your own subtle hints that he promptly ignored. If he wanted to be with you, he blew his chance a hundredfold, and he can go screw off if he thinks he can be upset about it only after you’d found someone else. 

Which is what he did, pretty much, and it was a lot harder than you expected—going from talking to him every waking second of every day, seeking him out whenever you have free time and vice versa, to only seeing him during the joint meetings between the executives and sub executives, where even then, he wouldn’t even spare you a glance. It was hard, and deep down, you don’t think being able to experience an actual relationship was worth losing your best friend, but the damage had already been done by that point, so you could only lie in the bed you made. 

And you did enjoy the relationship. The boy you’d met was sweet. He was good. He was impressively smart—a government and law major at one of the most prestigious universities in this part of the country—and humble to a fault. 

But he wasn’t Dazai. 

You knew in your heart that you didn’t want sweet or good, no matter how much you tried to convince yourself otherwise. You didn’t want the type of smart that he was, top of his class and on track for law school, seeking out a job as a public defender in Tokyo. You wanted the type of smart Dazai was, wicked and devious, putting together vicious and efficient strategies to take down enemies of the Mafia, on track for taking over the position as boss in the future. You wanted him for all of his twisted moralities and questionable thoughts.

And it was unfair to you, and it was unfair to Dazai, and most importantly it was unfair to the boy you kept leading on, that you’ve refused to acknowledge this for as long as you have just for the chance of experiencing a real relationship. 

Which is why you stand here now, outside the infamous Bar Lupin that you know Dazai has been drinking himself into oblivion at everyday for the past three months, notably single and possibly about to meet your end at the hands of a drunken and scorned Mafia executive. 

You think you must look like a fool right now. You’ve been standing right outside the door in the rain for fifteen minutes debating on whether or not you should actually go in. You’re nervous, and that makes you sad because you’ve never been nervous to talk to Dazai before, and you’re not nervous because you’re scared of him, you’re nervous because you don’t think you have the balls to actually confront him, knowing that you’d genuinely hurt the boy that everyone claimed didn’t have the emotions to be hurt. He let you in when he doesn’t let anyone in, and you chose to be careless and you chose to give up, and you hurt him. 

And you remind yourself again: you were not dating Dazai Osamu. You remind yourself that you gave him chances, he had opportunities, and he chose not to take them. You remind yourself that he’s just as at fault as you are for the falling out, but you can’t help but also remind yourself that he was the one that came out the most hurt by the situation. Yes, him cutting himself off from you was upsetting, but you didn’t have to watch him go around happy in a relationship with someone else. He did. 

With that thought in mind, you push the door open to the bar. A soft bell rings above you and instantly, three heads swivel in your direction: the bartender, and two men that you recognize as Sakaguchi Ango, one of the Port Mafia’s special intelligence agents, and Oda Sakunosuke, who you only know through Dazai’s high praise of the man from when the two of you were still on speaking terms. The only person in the room who matters to you doesn’t even bother to look to see who entered the bar, one hand circling the glass of whiskey in front of him while a cigarette dangles from the other. You watch as he lifts it to his lips to take a long drag, head falling tilting back to look up at the ceiling as he exhales a cloud of smoke, seemingly unbothered by your presence.

Already, you feel as if you’ve made a mistake, but you force yourself to continue.

The bartender nods his head in respect to you, although you can’t help but notice he flashes a wary look to Dazai. You wonder, pitifully, how much he’s said about you in this place. Sakaguchi and Oda share a look with one another. Both of them speak a low murmur of your name, inclining their head dutifully—you’re not quite an executive yet, but with the Piano Man of the Flags dead, you and Chuuya are fighting for the next spot to open up. Chuuya will likely be the one to get it, which you think he deserves from all of the heavy lifting he’s done on operations the past two years, but you feel a bit awkward when they give you your due respect when you're here with your tail between your legs trying to talk to Dazai.

Sakaguchi and Oda take their leave when you arrive, giving short goodbyes to Dazai, telling them that they’ll see him another day, and the bartender makes a fumbled excuse about going to the back to restock, leaving you alone with Dazai. Internally, you wither just a bit because you think if they’d stayed, Dazai might keep a handle on himself because you know he views Oda highly; instead, they left you in the lion’s den alone. Which you might deserve, but you digress.

You let out a quiet puff of air as you make your way over to the bar stool next to Dazai, taking a seat in it carefully. Still, he doesn’t look at you, but you look at him and the aching in your chest returns tenfold as your gaze sweeps over him fully for the first time in months. During the joint meetings between the executives and sub-executives, you were always sure to keep your glances short and sweet, not wanting to risk any lingering looks, but now, you can look at him in his entirety for the first time since that fateful discussion three months ago. 

He hasn’t changed much. Or, well, that’s a lie. He’s definitely changed. The circles beneath his eye are darker, his expression a carefully constructed blank mask. You think he might’ve lost some weight, his coat has always been big on him but the way it hangs over his shoulders now is looser than it was before. If it weren’t for the way his fingers were tense around his glass of whiskey, you’d have thought he was entirely unperturbed by your arrival.

You don’t know what to say, and you know you need to be the first to speak because you’re the one that showed up here to talk to him, but now that you’re sitting in front of him you’re floundering for words. You could just come out and say that you broke up with your boyfriend, but you feel like that would be a bit weird, and he’d probably laugh in your face and make a comment about how he doesn’t care. You could ask him how he’s been, but you think he might genuinely put a bullet in you for trying to make small talk with him like that right now. 

The longer you stay silent, the more awkward it becomes, and you want to cry because you’ve never been awkward with Dazai before, and for a brief second, you wonder if things really have changed too much to go back to how they were. 

Finally, you decide to just come out and say, bracing yourself for the inevitable derisive words that are going to leave his lips. “I broke up with him.”

Dazai’s scoff is loud and instantaneous, you bite your tongue, eyes sliding shut as you turn to face ahead instead of looking at him. Cowardly, you know, but you don’t want to see the sneer on his face when he asks you why he should care. 

But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say anything at first. If you were looking at him, you’d see the way his cold expression shifted into a more conflicted one, still staring ahead because he can’t bring himself to look at you. You count each passing second, and it’s agonizing waiting for him to speak, a part of you thinks that maybe he won’t, and you’ll just have to leave the bar with your tail between your legs, humiliated. 

But then he does. 

“Why?” he finally asks coolly, and your eyes snap open and your gaze slides over to him when you realize he did not, in fact, hit you with the derogation you expected.

He still isn’t looking at you, and you watch as he lifts his free hand back to his lips, taking another long drag of his cigarette as he waits for your response. You swallow thickly when you try to figure out what to say next. 

What you want to say is ‘because he wasn’t you,’ but you’re not ready to bare yourself vulnerable in front of him like that when he’s still so unpredictable. Just because he didn’t immediately hit you with the harsh words you expected, doesn’t mean he isn’t going to lure you in just to slap you in the face with it, which is how you’re sure he perceived what you did three months ago. 

Rather, you say quietly: “He was boring, I guess.”

It’s a lie. Well, a partial lie, at least. He was a good guy, he was just boring compared to what you wanted, and what you wanted was Dazai Osamu, who no one in the world could hope to compare to. 

“He was boring,” Dazai echoes your words, a cruel and mocking lilt to his voice, and you brace yourself now, taking the sudden switch in tone as the flicking off of the safety. But he shakes his head as he lets out a puff of air, you can’t tell if it’s another scoff or a laugh. “How cold-hearted of you. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, given your track record.”

Two paths lay before you: you can take the words as well-deserved, trying to avoid the inevitable fight, or you can spit back equally venomous words, dive in headfirst so the two of you can get everything off of your chest. Both choices are double-edged. If you avoid the fight, it means avoiding the topic altogether, and even if the two of you choose to speak again, the resentment of what had happened will only poison and fester. If you dive into the fight, there’s a chance of saying words you can’t take back, and everything might fall apart anyway.

What do you want? You want to ask him, because you aren’t sure what the right decision is. Three months ago, if you and Dazai got into a disagreement about something, you would know in an instant whether or not he wanted to fight it out to let off steam or just pretend it didn’t happen. Now, you aren’t so sure. He’s still not looking at you, so you can’t use the look in his eye as a hint, but his shoulders are tense beneath his jacket, and his knuckles are white around his glass of whiskey. Your gaze drags up to his face, catching the way his jaw is tight, teeth probably grinding together, and you know. 

You look ahead again, leveling your vision on a particularly nice bottle of wine on the third shelf of the wine rack as you say: “I’d rather be cold-hearted than a coward.”

For the first time since you’ve arrived, Dazai’s gaze cuts in your direction, head snapping to the side. You turn your head toward him just enough for you to eye him from the corner of your eye, catching glimpse of the way his lip curled up into a snarl and the way flames now rage in the browns of his eye—a far cry from the bottomless void, but you prefer the anger to the emptiness. 

“A coward?” His voice is low, cold, dangerous. 

You’re treading on thin ice, but you choose to stoke the flame more, gaze sliding back to the wine racks ahead.

“A coward.”

The silence that hangs between the two of you is tense and damning, you have to force yourself not to react to it, keeping your expression as stony as his as you wait for his response. He’ll either hit you back with more venom or he’ll settle down, one will lead to a blow out fight and the other will lead to a very tense conversation. 

You don’t want to fight him, but if that’s what he wants, you’ll give it to him. 

After what feels like an eternity, Dazai makes another scornful noise but he doesn’t say anything, gaze snapping back ahead as he takes a drag of his cigarette, this one clearly fueled by anger, far more aggressive than the last one. As if to piss him off even more, he hardly gets half of a smoke, down to the nub already. Frustrated, he puts the lingering cinders out on the bartop before reaching for the pack in his pocket, pulling out a new cigarette and his lighter.

You watch as he tries to flick the lighter on, cigarette dangling between his lips, but the old thing refuses to cooperate. Distantly, you wonder why Dazai is so damn stubborn: working with an old lighter, living in a shitty shipping container, wearing the same few pairs of clothes every day when he probably has more money than god hoarded from his executive paycheck. But you only force yourself to not roll your eyes as you pull out your own lighter, flicking it on and holding it out to him without looking at him. 

You watch from the corner of your eye as he stares at your hand suspiciously before he exhales from the side of his mouth, dipping his head down to light the cigarette before he faces ahead again. He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he reaches out for his glass of whiskey, still mostly full, and then he slides it over to you.

An offering. A white flag. 

You barely withhold the breath of relief that nearly escapes you, accepting the drink and taking a long sip of it. It’s his favorite brand, smooth and familiar on the tongue; you haven’t been able to bring yourself to drink it since your falling out with him. 

“Was it really because he was boring?” Dazai finally asks. He’s not looking at you again, but you can see from the way his fingers are tense against the bartop that he’s probably waiting for a certain response from you.

You let your eyes slide shut. “No,” you admit.

“Then why?” he presses, as if he doesn’t already know. 

“You know why,” you say tightly, shaking your head and looking down.

“Tell me anyway,” Dazai responds quietly, you can feel his gaze on you but you can’t bring yourself to look at him. Irrationally, even though the atmosphere between the two of you has shifted, you wonder if this is it: he’s going to get you to admit it and then laugh in your face, cruel but probably deserved. 

“Because he wasn’t you,” you finally force out.

He doesn’t respond. Your heart sinks to your stomach, a sick feeling churning. You brace yourself again—you don’t know what for, maybe a laugh or a derisive comment, but he does nothing of the sort. 

A long exhale, smoke billowing around his face, a heavy look in his eyes. He doesn’t look at you as he says: “You’re right.”

You don’t respond because you’re not sure what he’s referring to. Finally, he tilts his head to look at you, a wry smile on his lips—your chest feels warm at the sight, you can’t remember the last time you’ve seen him smile. Probably not since the falling out. 

“I was a coward.”

Oh.

The frustration you felt all of those months ago returns with a vengeance. You had danced with possibilities back then: that you were reading too much into things, that he didn’t actually care for you the way you did for him, that he simply did not want to be with you even if he did care about you that way. Now, faced with confirmation that he had felt the same but was just too pussy to act on it, your chest swells with that familiar anger. You force it away. 

“Why?” you ask after a few moments of silence, nails digging into the palm of your hands as you rest them on your lap. “I… I waited for two years, Dazai. I gave you so many openings. You knew how I felt.”

“I know.” His voice is quiet, barely audible. 

“Then why?” you repeat his words back to him, pressing hard just like he did. His throat bobs beneath his bandages as he swallows, averting his gaze, or trying to, at least, because you don’t let him. You reach out to grab his chin tightly, forcing him to look at you, and the pads of your fingers burn against his skin, hyper aware of the fact that this is the first time you’ve touched him in three months. “Why?”

His hand comes up to grab your wrist as if to pull your hand off of him, but he doesn’t, grip firm around your wrist, fingers pressing against your pulse point, and you’re acutely conscious of the fact that your pulse is probably racing but you can’t bring yourself to care. 

“I told you why,” he says, voice uncharacteristically soft. Vulnerable in a way that you’ve never seen him before. “I was a coward. I… didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship... I don't have many friends. You know that. I would’ve rather just ignored how I felt and kept you as a friend, because I didn’t think there’d be a chance of losing you that way. I thought if I acted on how I felt, one day you’d eventually see me for what I am and I’d lose you altogether.”

“Some good that did you.” You can’t help the resentful words that spill from your lips, but you feel guilty when he winces, hand dropping back to your lap, his grip slipping from your wrist. “You think I don’t already see you for who you are? We’ve known each other since we were sixteen, Dazai. I know all of the sick and twisted thoughts that run through your head, I knew exactly what I was getting into.”

Dazai shakes his head, as if to deny your words. You get frustrated.

“I spend hours at your recovery bed after your attempts, I’ve caught you in the middle of them myself, do you know what the first thing I did was after I told you I had a boyfriend?” you demand, and he stares at you, unsure. “I put a protection detail on him because I thought you’d try to have him killed, or try to kill him yourself.”

Dazai winces. You shake your head and look away, settling down again. 

“For someone so smart, you really are so goddamn stupid sometimes,” you sigh, taking a long swig of his drink before placing the glass back down on the table. “I saw you for who you are, and I wanted you anyway.”

“Wanted?” Dazai asks, an uncertain expression on his face as he zeroes in on the past tense.

“Want,” you correct, voice little over a breath, and something akin to relief sweeps across his face as his gaze drops down to the bartop.

The silence that hangs between the two of you is more comfortable this time. Reassuring, even, because maybe things might still be awkward between the two of you for a while, but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, one much brighter than the one the two of you lived in three months ago. 

“I can’t believe you went for a civilian,” Dazai suddenly says, almost sounding indignant. “A civilian. You!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” you snap when you hear the incredulous tone he takes when he says ‘you’.

“You’re a stone cold bitch,” Dazai accuses and you gape, but you can’t find it in yourself to be offended because his eyes are lit up for the first time in months, a lopsided smile painted on his face. “And you’ve got as much blood on your hands as I do. You. A civilian. I think I would’ve been less offended if you went for Chuuya.”

“We both know that’s a lie,” you snort, and then you add, a bit amused, “you know what he wants a job as?” 

“Tell me,” Dazai drawls, resting his chin on his hand as he leans on the bar, watching you with such a fond expression that it makes you feel warm all over. 

God, you missed him the past three months. 

“He wanted to go to law school. Become a public defender.”

Dazai chokes over the smoke he inhales, and you press your hand to your lips to smother your giggles as he desperately wheezes between laughs. You’re not sure if he’s actually choking, you think he might actually be dying from how red his face is getting.

“Maybe you should keep in contact with him then,” he gasps between laughs, “we might need one of those one day.”

“As if you’re sloppy enough to ever get caught,” you say dryly.

He winks at you, his grin sharpening, and you know you’re not going to like what he’s about to say. “Oh, I’m not. By ‘we’, I meant you.”

“Douchebag.” You roll your eyes, letting another silence settle over the two of you, a smile on your lips now as you take another sip of your drink. He’s the one to break it again.

“... Odasaku convinced me not to, by the way.”

“What?” 

“To kill him. I was going to. Odasaku convinced me not to.”

You let out a sigh of utter suffering, giving Dazai a pointed look—see, you say silently, I know you. He has the decency to look a bit sheepish as lifts his cigarette back to his mouth in lieu of responding to your unspoken words. 

“Stop with the self sabotage, Dazai,” you finally say, tired. “For both of our sakes’.”

He doesn’t respond, and you know him well enough to know that he’ll probably never stop with the self sabotage, but he does reach out to lace your fingers with his, and the warm feeling that spreads through your chest is enough to satiate you. 

Little steps, because no, the Mafia is not a conducive place for relationships and yes, it’s only a matter of time before luck runs out for one of you, but if your life is destined to be short, there’s only one person you want to spend it with.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 IN PAPER RINGS AND PICTURE FRAMES!

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai has never been a true believer of murphy’s law, not until today at least. he swears the world is out to get him, all he wanted was to give you a nice valentine’s day... and maybe something a little extra special. (wordcount: 6.7k; sfw; very brief mentions of dazai's attempts, fem!reader)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: valentine's day fic for my sweetest boy

“What do you mean I can’t have the day off?” Dazai cries out, staring down at his phone in abject horror. A pillow is flung at his head and Dazai sputters out an apology to you before lifting his phone back to his ear, making a point to lower his voice as he says, “Kunikida-kun, it’s Valentine’s Day. Not even you can be this heartless.”

“Dazai!” Kunikida says, voice stern and sharp, and Dazai knows that the man is serious because he’s not spitting out insults about Dazai’s laziness and lack of drive to do anything but lounge around and avoid work. “Trust me. It brings me no joy to make you come in today—not for your sake, but for her’s. But we have to finish up the final preparations for Tanizaki and Atsushi’s upcoming mission before they leave for Kyoto tomorrow morning. Get to the office now.”

“Kunikida-kun,” Dazai complains, feeling a bit more panicked, “but I-”

“Maybe if you had actually done your work the past few days, I could’ve covered for you,” Kunikida spits out angrily. “But we have double the workload to finish by tonight because you’ve been slacking off the past week. Anyway, you shouldn’t be calling the day of asking for a day off. Be to the office asap.”

Kunikida doesn’t even wait for Dazai’s response, hanging up the phone and leaving Dazai standing in your apartment staring at his phone with parted lips and wide eyes, unable to comprehend what just happened. A noise escapes his lips, something caught between a scoff and a whimper, and Dazai thinks he might cry. He feels like a wounded puppy as he turns his attention over to where you’re still curled up in bed, eyes barely cracked open as you watch him with furrowed brows.

“Bella…” he pouts, making his way over to you so he can sit next to you on the bed. “They’re making me go into the office.”

You only roll toward him, eyes heavy with sleep, barely able to hold them open, and Dazai’s chest feels tight and warm with a lovely feeling that he’s only ever experienced with you. He reaches out to cup your cheek, fingertips grazing your skin—your lashes flutter as your eyes droop back shut, and Dazai doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the feeling of someone seeking out his touch, trusting his hands as if they aren’t rotted and blood-stained.

“Then go,” you say with a yawn, leaning into his touch and pulling the dark comforter back up around your shoulders from where it had slipped down your body.

Dazai pushes his lip out even more. “It’s Valentine’s Day. I wanted to spend the day with you. You took off today too.”

“It’s okay,” you tell him and Dazai wants to tell you that it is decidedly not okay but he can’t tell you that because you’ll ask why and he can’t tell you without ruining everything. “I’m tired anyway. Someone decided to keep me up half the night.” 

Dazai can hardly even muster the vulgar smile and dirty joke that should have come to him with ease, and evidently, that’s proof enough to you that something must be seriously wrong because you crack your eyes back open and peer up at him, concern slowly eclipsing the tiredness. Another thing he’ll never be used to: having someone genuinely worry over him even over the smallest things. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask him softly, yawning again as you reach up to run your fingers through his hair. The comforter slides down from around your shoulders again, revealing the smooth skin of your bare shoulders and collarbone, and Dazai wishes for nothing more than to slip beneath the sheets with you, wrap his arms around you and bury his face into your chest.

Instead, he lets himself lean into your touch for a moment, eyes falling shut as he basks in the feeling of your fingers carding through his dark locks, nails gently scraping his scalp. He thinks he could stay in this moment forever, but alas, the serenity is utterly shattered when his phone starts buzzing again.

Dazai lets out a heavy exhale, dark eyes dragging from you to where his phone is laying on the bed next to him, seeing Atsushi’s name flash on the screen—surely having been told by Kunikida to follow up and make sure that Dazai is actually going to show up at the office. 

“I just wanted to spend the day with you,” he says, a bit of a white lie, but he can’t tell you the real reason why he’s so disappointed. “He’s had it out for me ever since we got together. He’s jealous. This is his way of getting one over me.”

You smile lightly at him, pulling his face down a bit so that you can press your lips against his. Dazai sighs into your mouth, eyes sliding shut again as he kisses you, hand coming up again to cup your cheek as his lips move against yours. The kiss is slow and intimate, but far too short for his liking. You pull your lips away from his and Dazai gives you a wounded look when he tries to chase your lips only for you to dodge with a giggle. 

“Go, Osamu,” you tell him and Dazai lets out a groan, letting his head drop to your chest. You toy with his hair and Dazai wants to tell you that doing that is only going to make him want to stay even more but he also doesn’t want you to stop so he decides against it. “The faster you get there and get your work done, the quicker you can come home.”

Home. Another word he might never get used to, his chest feels warm and fluttery as he tilts his head to the side so he can peer up at you. “Or I can just not go in at all and deal with Kunikida’s righteous fury tomorrow.”

“No,” you say firmly, tugging at his ear and making him yelp. “Go, Osamu. Don’t be ridiculous. Let me sleep.”

Dazai sighs, rising to his feet and letting you curl back beneath the covers. He wants to tell you that it’s not that simple and that he has a whole plan and he needs to follow it strictly otherwise he’s scared that everything will go wrong, but there’s no way of explaining that to you without having to tell you why which would ruin everything. Lamenting to himself, he shrugs his coat onto his shoulders and leans down to press his lips between your brows as you start to doze off again, brushing your hair behind your ear and letting his eyes linger on your face, skin glowing gently beneath the early morning sun. 

It takes all of his willpower to step away from you and make his way out of your apartment, the ring in his pocket weighing more heavily with every step he takes.

•••

Dazai is really trying his best not to let his frustration spoil the night. The sun has already long set. What should have been a short day at the office finishing up paperwork ended up with him working overtime because of an emergency mission on the far side of the city concerning an ability user who could mimic appearances. Everybody else is still at the office trying to finish up preparations for Tanizaki and Atsushi’s upcoming mission in Kyoto but the President had taken one look at Dazai’s abysmal expression and told him to go home and be with you.

And Dazai should appreciate that, honestly, otherwise he’d be stuck at the office until god knows when, leaving you at home alone all day and all night on the one day he was planning to spend the whole day with you, but he’s so bitter that he can’t even summon the appreciation he should feel. You’re taking it in stride, of course, telling him that it’s okay and you’re not mad even though Dazai insists that you definitely should be. He called you while on the train with Kunikida, curled up in a seat pouting as he shot his partner dirty looks and mourned his shitty luck because of course this would happen on the day he was planning to make the biggest decision of his life, and yours.

Not that he could tell you that part, obviously.

Kunikida had been rightfully guilty, apologizing to Dazai for the day taking as long as it did and continuously shooting him ashamed looks, but Dazai couldn’t even bask in the knowledge that Kunikida is actually apologizing to him for making him work because he’s so frustrated about how the day has gone compared to what he had planned.

It’s still salvageable, he reminds himself, glancing down at his phone. The reservations he placed for the restaurant aren’t for another hour and a half. He has plenty of time to walk back to your apartment and change so he can take you out for the night, and the thought of taking you out for the night makes all of the frustration he’s feeling absolutely disappear, entirely overshadowed by the giddiness tingling through his limbs and the nerves that tighten his chest. 

Tonight.

He twists his hands in front of his body, eyes catching on a convenience store at the corner of the block, a wide range of chocolates and flowers on display at the main window. With only a moment’s hesitation, he speeds up his pace, flinging open the door to the convenience store and beelining right to the dwindling Valentine’s Day display, weathered down by other frantic partners who were late to get their beloved gifts.

He lets out a relieved puff of air when he sees that your favorite flowers and chocolates are still available, although he’s a bit irate because the flowers aren’t as healthy as they should be, but he supposes it’s his own fault. Of course they're not going to be in perfect shape after being on display all day—if he wanted perfect flowers, he should’ve bought and brought them to you first thing in the morning.

Which he could have done if it weren’t for Kunikida, he thinks bitterly, deciding to place all of the blame on his coworker instead.

He drops the flowers and chocolates at the cash register, where an older man is working, and Dazai pulls out his wallet, flipping through to grab a few yen and place them on the counter.

The older man lets out a bit of a chuckle as he scans the chocolates and the flowers. “You’re a bit late, aren’t you, boy?” he notes. “Can’t have a happy lady at home, I know mine is angry as a bull. Hope you have more than this to appease the girl.” 

Dazai winces and then mutters, “She’s not angry, I got pulled into work. She understands.” 

It sounds pathetic even to his own ears. The man finds it amusing, evidently, from how he has to smother another laugh as he gets Dazai his change.

“Mine said she was fine with it too,” he says, “but I know I’m coming home to the cold shoulder. They never say what they mean, son.” 

Dazai’s mood falters again, the giddiness and nerves slipping away into something colder because he’s feared since he left this morning that you would be bitter over him having to go into work today. And he knows deep down that you’re not like that, that if you say it’s fine, it really is fine most of the time, but a part of him can’t help but wonder if you’re only saying it because you don’t want to stress him out even more, because he’d made it abundantly clear this morning that he wasn’t happy. 

“There you go,” the older man passes over his change and the flowers and chocolates. “Good luck.”

Dazai can barely even bring himself to give the man a proper thank you, making his way back out of the convenience stores with the flowers and chocolates in hand. His eyes flicker down to his phone again, catching the time before he continues down the street—the pit stop had only taken a few minutes, but Dazai is doubly anxious to get back home to you now. Not just because he’s worried that you’re not quite as okay with it as you’ve made yourself out to be, but also because he misses you and just wants to get back home to you, this day has been too long and it’s been especially hellish and jarring because he woke up this morning thinking he’d get to spend the entire day with you.

He’s ready to get home to you. He’s ready to take you out to dinner. He’s ready to take you down to the gardens and he’s ready to-

God, he’s ready to propose. After all of these damn years, he’s finally ready and he will not let a shitty day at work ruin that for him. He still has the whole night, and that’s what’s important because…

He stares at his hand, where a droplet of water had splashed against his skin. A dreadful feeling arises, dark and slithering as it spreads through him. He turns his gaze up to the dark sky—dark because the sun has set, yes, but he realizes now, with a pit in his gut, that it’s also because storm clouds seem to be gathering above the city. He hadn’t even noticed them in his pitiful spiral, nor had he noticed the way the wind had picked up. 

He hardly has time to react before the rain comes down. Hard. Torrential. He stands on the sidewalk, too riddled with shock and disbelief to even move for cover. He stares ahead, wondering just how much more terrible this day can get. He’s never been a believer of Murphy’s Law or any of those other dubious, paranoia-induced “laws of nature,” but he’s severely starting to question his standing on it because of all days, of course it’s today where it seems that the entire universe must be against him.

He stares at the drenched flowers he had just bought you, crumpled and ruined from the force of the rain—he can’t even bring himself to feel frustrated, if anything he’s starting to feel a bit numb with exhaustion, half-certain that there’s a god up there sabotaging him. He tosses the flowers in a nearby garbage can along with the soggy box of chocolates in his other hand, and almost robotically, he makes his way to stand under an overhang, pulling out his phone to call you.

You pick up after the first ring, you always do.

“Osamu?”

“Can you pick me up?” Dazai asks, voice hoarse and empty.

“... Of course. Where are you?”

•••

The car ride has been damningly silent and Dazai feels bad because you’ve tried to make conversation with him but he can’t bring himself to speak. You’ve given up by now though, resorting to just focusing on the road, occasionally sparing him concerned glances. His head is starting to hurt and he fears that if he says something his voice might crack, so instead he just leans his head against the passenger seat window, letting the cool glass spread through his brain and ease the pain as you intertwine your fingers with his. 

“We’re never going to make the reservation,” Dazai finally decides to speak up, voice sounding cold and distant even to his own ears. He nearly flinches—he would’ve preferred it to crack than sound so frigid and aloof. 

The rain pouring down is torrential, lightning webbing across the dark sky and wind howling outside. Already, there’s been road closures, the twenty minute drive from the Agency to your apartment has taken twice as long as it usually takes and you’re still stuck in bumper to bumper traffic trying to take the long way around to the complex. The reservation is set for forty minutes from now, and it’ll take nearly as long to get to your apartment at this rate, and then Dazai still has to dry off and change from work, and then you have to drive to the restaurant which would've taken another twenty minutes without traffic. 

Not that it matters anyway, the storm has already destroyed his plans for after dinner, which was the whole point of the dinner anyway, but still, he would have at least liked to bring you to a nice dinner for Valentine’s Day.

He wonders if this is all meant to be a sign, and the thought makes his chest ache because of course when he finally thinks he’s ready to take the next step in his relationship with you—one that he knows you’ve been waiting patiently for four years now but his own hangups about himself have stopped him from ever doing anything about it—this happens. And you’ve never pressured him about it, you’ve never even brought it up to him because you know the topic makes him uncomfortable, but he’s seen the way you look at all of the happily married couples who come into the cafe when you meet him there for his lunch break and he’s seen the way you sometimes glance down at your own empty finger and Dazai thinks he’s ready. 

Against all odds, he thinks he’s ready—he bought you a ring, he planned out the whole proposal. Anxiety has been eating him alive all week as the days led up to this and now that the day is here, everything just goes wrong. He was going to bring you to the aquarium, because he knows you love to watch the dolphins and the penguins but that was ruined because of work. He was going to take you out to dinner at Le Normandie in Naka, because he’d seen you looking at the menu all longingly a few weeks ago, but that was ruined because of the road closures and traffic. And then he was going to bring you down into Yamashita Park, over to the flower gardens where there was supposed to be a band playing, because they always do on Valentine’s Day, and he wrote up everything, a long and flowery speech about how you’ve shown him what it’s like to really live, what it’s like to be human, but that was ruined by the storm. 

All the preparations he made, all of the plans he had, all of it gone to ruin. Just like that. 

And now he’s doubting how ready he actually is.

He really does wonder if this is a sign, a warning, even—higher powers telling him not to condemn you to a life with him because what sort of sane person would want a future with someone who’s spent most of his life trying to kill himself? Dazai has more issues than he’s worth and he’s still half-convinced that you don’t know what you’re getting into even though you’ve been with him for four years and have seen some of his most egregious lows. You’ve had to cut him down from the noose, fight him for the blade he held against his skin, and Dazai doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to fully free himself of the dark thoughts tearing apart his brain. 

And you deserve better than a future with someone who’s fickle about living and unable to effectively combat the dark thoughts that plague his mind. This is the world’s attempt at reminding him of that before he makes a mistake.

You draw him from his spiraling thoughts as you squeeze his hand gently, lifting his hand to press your lips against his knuckles and Dazai feels even worse because why are you comforting him when he’s the one who ruined your Valentine’s Day. 

“Let’s order takeout then,” you say easily, giving him a warm smile that should have made him feel more at ease but instead it only makes him feel worse because you shouldn’t have to settle for takeout on Valentine’s Day, especially when he planned such a nice day out. “I’m craving pizza. We can curl up on the couch and watch a movie instead.”

Dazai is unconvinced.

“Don’t give me that look,” you complain, but you’re still smiling and Dazai is finding it hard to keep up his sullen attitude with you looking at him like that. “There’s a new horror movie I wanted to watch, it’s available for streaming now.”

“This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go,” Dazai murmurs, finally intertwining his fingers with yours, rubbing a circle with his thumb over the back of your hand. 

“Let’s make the most of it anyway,” you tell him, giving him another radiant smile, and Dazai feels a bit like a fool—he’s never listened to the warnings from higher powers before, so why the hell should he now? When you give him another reassuring squeeze as you rest your joined hands back down on the console, turning your attention back onto the road, his chests lighten and the creeping doubts start to trickle away. 

He thinks that maybe, just maybe, it’ll all work out anyway.

•••

It takes less than an hour for his slim hopes to be crushed yet again.

Dazai stares at the food in front of him, too numb to even think to go chase after the delivery driver and tell him that he got the order wrong. You’re standing somewhere to the side, looking even more concerned—not because of the food, because of him, and Dazai knows that he should reassure you and tell you that everything is fine but he can’t even muster the strength to speak the words. 

“It’s okay,” you tell him, reaching out to grab his hand. He doesn’t even intertwine his fingers with yours, but you’re undeterred, clutching his hand tightly, and he knows he’s being unfair to you but he just doesn’t even know what else to do. “Osamu, it’s fine, really. It’s just some food.”

“You don’t even eat any of this food,” Dazai says, voice tight and more than a bit frustrated. He’s not sure how much more of this he can take, the morning had started off so nice waking up to you fast asleep on his chest and every passing second since then has just gone further and further downhill. “Not one thing has gone right today, and they can’t even get one order done correctly. It’s not fine, I-”

Dazai’s eyes flutter shut when you reach up to cup his cheeks between your hands, squishing his face gently before leaning in to press your lips against his. He sighs against your lips, the frustration slowly starting to dissipate as you rest your forehead against his, stealing one, two, three more kisses before finally pulling back a bit to speak.

“It’s okay,” you reassure him again, and Dazai thinks he should be the one reassuring you because it’s your Valentine’s Day that has been utterly ruined but he only relaxes into your touch, soaking up all of the comfort you offer him. “I have pizza bagels in the freezer, we can throw them in the oven. Honestly, I’ve been tempted to make them all day, anyway, but I wanted to wait for you. It’s not a big deal.”

“... Yeah?” Dazai asks quietly, and you give him that soft, soothing smile that always puts his nerves at ease. He lets out another puff of air, nodding. “Okay, I’ll put them in.”

He steals another kiss from you, and then another, and the tension in his shoulders finally begins to melt when he feels you giggling against his lips, shooing him away to go put the pizza bagels in the oven.

Just as the thought crosses his mind, that maybe the night is still salvageable, he reaches for the door to your freezer and as his fingers curl around the handle, the power goes out. Thunder shakes your apartment complex, lightning webs the sky outside, and the wind outside becomes even more treacherous. And with it, the ability to use the oven to make the pizza rolls you want disappears.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he. Dazai thinks it should be comical at this point but he can find no humor in it, his throat tight and clogged with a million unwelcome emotions. He swears there must be someone up in the heavens laughing at him, finding entertainment in his misfortune and misery, and maybe he deserves it for all of the sins he’s committed in the past but he wishes that they wouldn’t drag you into this. 

He casts a miserable look in your direction, unsure if you even notice because you’re already at work trying to fumble to light a few candles, and Dazai is so tired that he thinks he might die. All he had wanted was to take you on a nice day out, ending the night with dinner and a stroll through the gardens at Yamashita before finally gathering the nerve to get down on one knee in front of you, showing you the ring he’d been so nervous buying and-

And then he pauses.

Where is the ring?

The thought dawns on him so damningly that he feels physically ill, realizing that he hadn’t felt the familiar weight in his pocket earlier when walking home from the Agency, nor had he noticed it when he slipped his jacket off and laid it on one of the kitchen chairs. He rushes over to where he had left his jacket, panic spreading through him so intensely that he can hardly think straight, ignoring how you call his name, worried.

His chest tightens, blood running cold as he fumbles through the pockets of his jacket trying to figure out which one he left it in only to realize that it’s not snugged safely in any of them. Dazai thinks he might throw up, wondering if it had fallen out when he took his jacket off at the office, or if it had fallen out while he was walking to work, or when he stopped at the convenience store and pulled out his wallet, or when he was walking home. If it was the latter three, the ring is gone and he’ll probably never see it again, and he probably should take that as a sign from god to not condemn you to a life with him.

“Osamu?” you ask, voice soft and cautious as you make your way over to him, obviously sensing his distress. 

Dazai wants to cry. Or maybe he wants to laugh. He can’t tell. He leans his elbows onto the counter, hiding his face in his hands, and then he decides to laugh, or maybe he’s crying, he’s not sure honestly, but his shoulders are shaking and you’re wrapping your arms around his waist. Dazai wants to melt into you and he wants to tell you just how abysmally terrible this day has been but he can’t without telling you what he had planned and that only makes him more miserable. 

You coax his face out from where it’s hiding against his hands as you stroke his hair, pressing your lips to his shoulder, and then his temple, and as soon as he turns his face to you, you’re cupping his cheeks in your hands, thumbs wiping away the wetness streaming down his cheeks, and he realizes distantly that he must’ve been crying. God, when was the last time he cried before this? He doesn’t even remember. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask him, keeping your voice soft as if to not startle him. 

He doesn’t want to answer, so he doesn’t. Instead, he wraps his arms around your waist and buries his face into the crook of your neck, hiding himself from view again. As always, you take it in stride, wrapping your arms around him, one hand coming up to cup the back of his head and hold him close, lips pressing against the top of his hair. And Dazai is still so frustrated—he’s so frustrated and upset with himself and upset with the world, but as soon as he’s wrapped tight in your arms, it becomes increasingly hard to remain focused on all of the negative thoughts.

“I’m so tired,” is all he can say, voice hoarse and cracking, blunt nails digging crescents into your back as he clings to you desperately. 

Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. He’s so tired. He just wanted this to be a nice day, and he wanted to finally push himself into giving himself to you entirely, because it’s what he wants. It’s what he wanted. He wanted to be yours and he wanted you to be his. Officially. But if the world really is trying to warn him against it, he’s thinking that maybe he should heed its warnings for once—for your sake, because he’s sure that anyone tied to him must be cursed. 

“Let’s go lay down,” you tell him softly, carding your fingers through his hair gently. The motion is so soothing that it nearly makes his eyes droop shut, exhaustion seeping deep through his bones. “Os-”

There’s a harsh knock at your door. 

Dazai’s eyes slide shut again, frustration coming back tenfold because he can’t even have a single moment with you without it going horribly wrong. You sigh as you break yourself free from him and Dazai longs to be back in your arms instantly, the weight of the day bearing down on him twice as heavily without you there to share the burden with him.

“I’ll go get the door,” you tell him, leaning up on your toes to press your lips to the corner of his. “Go lay down, I’ll join you in a second.”

“No,” Dazai says, capturing your lips in a real kiss briefly before tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “I’ll get the door. You go change into your pajamas.”

“You sure?” you ask him, concern clear in your eyes as you look up at him.

Dazai only nods, pressing his lips to your forehead before ushering you off into the bedroom. You cast him one more worried look but Dazai shoos you away pointedly before making his way over to the door, frowning a bit because who the hell is showing up at your door this late? He thinks that if it’s the restaurant that sent the wrong food, then Dazai might just slam the door in the delivery man's face because the damage has already been done and Dazai is feeling petty.

But no. It’s not the delivery man standing outside your apartment with the right food this time. Rather, it’s an anxious looking Atsushi and a stressed Kunikida. Dazai’s eye twitches a bit—as if his day hadn’t been ruined enough with work, he swears to god that if they're about to bring even more to him on top of dragging him away from you all day, someone might die. 

“Dazai-san,” Atsushi sounds absurdly relieved at the sight of the man but Dazai’s expression doesn’t budge, waiting for them to explain why they were interrupting his night with you. “We were just leaving work and-I wish I’d seen it sooner, I’m sorry-I would’ve come sooner but-I mean we tried to call and text but-”

Dazai has no idea what Atsushi is talking about, so he drags his eyes from the anxious boy up to Kunikida, waiting for a proper explanation. Kunikida’s lips twist when Dazai looks at him and Dazai thinks the man has no right to look at him that way after being the root cause of how awful his day.

Suddenly, Dazai catches sight of the familiar velvet box sitting in Kunikida’s hand, and he’s not sure what amalgamation of emotions rocks his body—fear, relief, apprehension—but he doesn’t like it, reaching out to snatch the box from Kunikida and cradle it to his chest, watching the two of them uneasily.

“You moron,” Kunikida snaps, careful to keep his voice low, but not low enough because horror shoots through Dazai when Kunikida continues with, “why didn’t you say you were-”

“Lower your voice,” Dazai says, panicking, casting a glance back toward where you’re still getting changed in the bedroom.

“Why didn’t you say you were proposing?” Kunikida finishes in a whisper, voice still a sharp hiss. “If you’d mentioned that I would’ve-”

Dazai feels flustered, and he does not want to answer and admit that he hadn’t thought it would make a difference. Luckily—or maybe unluckily, he concedes—he doesn’t have to answer because he hears you making your way out of the bedroom.

“Osamu?” you call curiously, “Is that Kunikida-kun and Atsushi-kun?”

Dazai’s eyes widen when he realizes that he has nowhere to hide the ring as you come around the corner from the hall. He promptly slams the door in both of his coworkers’ faces without even the sparest thank you, ignoring their surprised yelps as panic begins to spread through him, doing his best to hide his hands behind his back when he turns around to face you.

And then-

Then he hesitates. 

The excuse on his lips about last minute mission briefing or Dazai having to sign off on a time-sensitive report dies when his eyes fall upon where you’re standing, dressed in your fuzzy pajamas with your arms wrapped around your waist and a confused expression painted on your face. The only lighting in the room is the few dim candles that you set up once the power went out, and the soft ambience casts an ethereal glow over your face. He thinks, not for the first time, that you might be heavenly, an angel sent to guide him on the path of good because how could he ever allow himself to fall back into his old, tainted habits without tarnishing you as well, and tarnishing you is simply unacceptable. 

All of the doubts that have risen throughout the day wash away as he looks at you, and he wonders, briefly, how he could’ve ever had any doubts? Dazai, for all of his insecurity and fears of commitment, wants to spend the rest of his life with you. He does. He knows it so thoroughly that he can feel it in his bones; he doesn’t want anyone else, he doesn’t want to be alone, he wants you. He wants to wake up to you every morning and fall asleep with you every night, he wants to lounge around on the weekends because you’re both too lazy to get out of bed and do something productive, he wants to be there for your lows when you’re so overwhelmed with work that you can hardly think straight much less properly take care of yourself and god, against all odds, he wants you there for his too, when he feels like he’s being consumed by his own thoughts, spiraling down a dark and never-ending train that might not be as dark and never-ending with you there as a light to guide him out of it. 

“Marry me,” he says, breathless, voice laced with desperation.

You stare at him, eyes wide. He stares back, frozen, unsure of what to do because this was not how this was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be extravagant, romantic, like you deserve, not some half-assed spur of the moment proposal. The words hang heavily in the air between the two of you, but he forces himself to push forward, too far in deep to back out now. 

He fumbles as he tries to shift the velvet box into one hand to bring it in front of him and show you. He drops it. Of course he does. Everything else has gone wrong today so why not this too? But still, he pushes forward, kneeling down to scoop up the ring box and prop himself up on one knee in front of you, throat swollen and tight as he opens up the box to show you the ring inside of it. He’s holding it backwards. Of course he is. So he fixes it promptly, swiveling it around with trembling fingers, waiting anxiously for you to respond. Or even just react. 

You haven’t budged from where you’re standing a few feet away.

What if you say no? God, the thought hadn’t even crossed his head but now his heart starts to sink from his chest down to his feet because you’re not moving and you’re not saying anything and he doesn’t know if you’re just processing his words or if you’re trying to figure out the best way to reject him. 

He starts to fumble out words. “This was not how this was supposed to happen,” he admits, speaking so quickly that he can barely understand himself. “It was supposed to be a nice day, we were gonna go to the aquarium to see the dolphins and penguins, dinner at Le Normandie and then go down to the gardens at the park, and there was supposed to be a band and flowers and I had a whole speech ready and it definitely was not supposed to be like this but everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong, but I want to marry you and I don’t want to wait anymore, and I’m sorry that this is a shitty proposal, you deserve better than this. And I’m probably making it worse, I should have just waited for another day, but-”

But please say yes, he wants to say, but he can’t force the words out; he can only stare at you, expression more open and vulnerable than he thinks he’s been in his entire life. And he realizes, a bit horrified, that you could ruin him right now—he’s laid his heart out on a platter and it’ll only take one swift motion for you to crush it in hand and he thinks he’s terrified but-

All of the air is ripped from his lungs with a harsh oof. In an instant, his back is to the floor and you’re on top of him and Dazai is staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes, trying to figure out what exactly happened.

“You’re so stupid, Osamu,” you cry out and to Dazai’s horror, he realizes that you’re crying, hands propped up on his chest to brace yourself up, tears pooling in your eyes and streaming over your cheeks and dripping onto his own face. “Is this what you’ve been so upset about all day? I don’t need any of that, all I need is you.”

Oh. Dazai can’t breathe, and it’s not because you’re on top of him it’s because your words are processing and he’s realizing that-are you saying that-

“Of course, I’ll marry you, you idiot.”

He lets out a sharp exhale, a puff of air that he does not have in his lungs, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling—elation, relief, exhilaration, all of the above—but he does know that he’s never felt anything like it before and he doesn’t want it to go away. Ever. Dazai swears he sees a flash of a camera from the window, and he swears doubly that he hears Yosano let out a hoot of a cheer and Kunikida hushing her, dragging her away, but he can’t even bring himself to care. 

 Yeah, Dazai thinks to himself, eyes sliding shut as he rests his head back against the floor, the first genuine smile of the day tugging to the edge of his lips as you bury your face into the crook of his neck, clutching at his shirt, sniffling and hiccuping over each breath. He wraps an arm around your waist, using his free hand to slip the ring out of the box and slide it onto your finger. You cry harder. He kisses the top of your head, wondering how he could ever have any doubts or hesitations. 

He could definitely spend the rest of his life like this.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 NAP TIME WITH NIKOLAI!

FEATURING: nikolai gogol

SUMMARY: nap time with nikolai is always eventful one way or another—you've gotten used to it. you think. (wordcount: 900ish; sfw; fem!reader)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: 1) is anyone having issues editing drafts on mobile?? it's not letting me. 2) does anyone know how to fix the dividers not letting posts show up in the tags glitch D: i am suffering

“nikolai.”

“yes, my dove?”

“what are you doing?”

you sigh softly as you card your fingers through his soft hair, absently feeling the man trace patterns on your skin with the tip of a knife. you don’t know where he got it—he isn’t wearing his overcoat so it’s not like he could have grabbed it from where it was stashed in his pocket dimension. 

he’s not nearly tracing hard enough to break your skin—if anything, it feels like a faint tickle—but it had woken you up from where you were dozing off, so you’re a bit annoyed. 

“… nothing,” nikolai replies, voice hesitant and laced with such a suspicious tone that it has you cracking your eyes open to give him an equally suspicious look. 

nikolai looks deceptively innocent as he tilts his head up to look up at you, eyes wide and expression soft. the knife is nowhere to be seen, he must have stuffed it up his sleeve. your eyes narrow, nikolai pouts at the expression.

“nikolai, if you cut me with that knife, i’ll chop off your hair,” you threaten watching a horrified expression cross his face before letting your head fall back against the pillow, intent on trying to get a nap in before fyodor barges in and demands for the two of you to get back to work.

nikolai is silent for a moment, but too soon he says: “no you won’t,” and then cackles and adds, “you looooooove my hair.” 

you peek your eyes back open, a bit more irate now when you catch the wide grin on nikolai’s face, eyes dancing as he looks up at you. “do you know what i love more than your hair?” you ask as you brush your fingers through his long, white locks. when he waits for you to answer your own question, you tell him, “not having my sleep interrupted.”

you tug his hair hard, painfully, and you roll your eyes when nikolai only lets out a moan, eyes fluttering shut.

“you’re disgusting,” you say, albeit fondly, as you release his hair and go back to stroking it softly. “put the knife away and rest.”

you hear a clanging sound as nikolai carelessly tosses the knife off the bed and against the wall. instead of laying his head back on your chest like he usually does when you want to nap but he’s not tired, he scooches up the bed to rest his head on the pillow next to you. you smile when you feel him hook an arm around your waist, tugging you back toward him so your body is flush to his. 

“thought you weren’t tired,” you murmur softly, eyes sliding shut as you melt into him.  it’s not often that you get to lay up with nikolai like this, he’s rarely tired enough to actually nap with you—he usually just lays on you until you fall asleep and then disappears to find someone to harass. 

“hmmm, i changed my mind, little koshenya!” he says, although you can’t help but notice that he doesn’t sound all too tired, a playful lilt to his voice as he nuzzles his face in your hair. 

“oh yeah?” you ask, amused, yawning as your eyes begin to drift shut again. the weight of his arm draped around you is familiar and comforting and you can feel his breath warm against the shell of your ear.

“mhmm!” nikolai agrees, still sounding a bit too energetic for you to actually believe he’s tired—you figure he has ulterior motives but you don’t know what they are, and that slightly terrifies you.

it doesn’t terrify you enough to rouse you, though, because you can hardly hold your eyes open as you bring your hand to where nikolai’s is resting on your waist, intertwining your fingers with his. 

he hums softly, his chest rumbling gently against your back—an old lullaby that you recall him mentioning as one of the few things he remembers from his mother during his childhood. his thumb rubs soft circles on your waist while he nudges his nose against your head, occasionally pressing kisses to your hair between the lullaby’s verses. 

and you bask, because nikolai is rarely as docile as he is in this moment and you want to savor it. a part of you wants to try to stay awake, but it’s hard with the warmth of his body spreading through you and the low, smooth hums of nikolai’s voice in your ear, chest reverberating against you. 

“sleep, my dove,” nikolai coos between his hums. “i have a surprise for you tomorrow.”

and that more than slightly terrifies you because surprises from nikolai rarely end well, but by the time the words finally process, he’s already back to humming and lulling you to sleep—purposely, you now realize sleepily. 

“better be a good one, kolya,” you sigh to yourself, not even sure if the words are intelligible, but if the way nikolai’s hums briefly are interrupted by a sharp, jarring giggle have anything to say about it, they are. 

“of course, it will be,” he promises cryptically. “now sleep, little koshenya.”

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 TO SOMEONE FROM A WARM CLIMATE

FEATURING: beast dazai osamu

SUMMARY: you're with him. you're actually with him. everything all of the other dazais have got to experience, he now can too. in his exhilaration, he almost forgets about the threats lurking on the horizon. until you slap him in the face with it, that is. {wordcount: 18k; fem!reader; romance & tragedy}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: PART THREEEEEEE i had a particularly terrible day today guys hahahh literally everything that could go wrong went wrong </3 i'm very tired, but i hope you guys enjoy this installment. for all of u who read badlands, we have a very anticipated parallel scene in this one. + i added a little surprise pov at the end heheh

GENERAL WARNINGS: again, i'll just leave this warning on every chapter - dazai struggles a lot with disassociation/derealization & losing himself in the pages of the book. + we have a bit more of unhinged thought processes on dazai's end which becomes particularly apparent during one of these scenes. as always please let me know if i forgot any warnings

SEE: UNREAL UNEARTH SERIES MASTERLIST READ: BADLANDS SIDE A

You wake up from what might be the best sleep of your life to the sun peeking through the blinds of an unfamiliar bedroom. 

It takes a few moments for you to regain your bearings, yawning and stretching as you sit up in the bed, trying to figure out where you are. It’s fancy, fancier than anything you’ve ever come across before. The dark sheets are soft and silky against your skin, you swear that this must be what clouds feel like. The room itself is a bit odd—large but empty, there’s a dresser on the far wall and a nightstand next to the bed, but there are no trinkets or knick knacks that usually litter a person’s bedroom. It’s almost reminiscent of a hotel room, you think. 

Your gaze drifts over to the side, where a vast window looks over the city. You can hardly see the view through the blinds, but you can tell you’re high enough that only clouds can be seen below, no sign of the bustling city that you know rests beneath you. Your hazy mind starts to remember what happened last night: the club, the convenience store, your apartment, the leak. Dazai. 

Dazai.

Your face immediately feels hot, hand coming up to curl your fingers around your mouth as you realize whose room you’re in. Your eyes flicker around the room nervously even though you know he’s not in here with you. You wonder what time it is, you reach around for your phone to check but you must’ve dropped it somewhere in your exhaustion last night—hopefully somewhere in his apartment (can this even be considered an apartment? it’s huge!) Maybe he’s waiting for you out in the main room of his penthouse, you hope he is. You also hope that he got some sleep last night, you remember that he insisted for you to take the bed but you still feel bad that you usurped his room from him.

… Although it’s not much of a room. Big and fancy with a view that costs more than your life, yeah, but nothing that makes it his. Like a husk. A house, not a home. The bed doesn’t even smell like him—well, you can’t say you know for sure what he smells like besides the cologne he sported in your past few meetings with him, but you know it doesn’t smell like him because it doesn’t smell like anything. Only the faint smell of old detergent meets your nose, not a single other sign that someone has been living here.

You push the covers off of you and swing your feet over the side of the bed, stretching again as you kick your feet out with another yawn. You think this might be the first time in months that you haven’t woken up with an aching back or sore neck and you can’t help but cast a longing look back at Dazai’s bed, wishing you could steal it and drag it back to your apartment to replace your ruined bed.

You don’t bother changing as you drag your way out of his bedroom; you’re decent enough in a burgundy camisole and matching pair of shorts. Yes, you’d chosen your nicer pajamas because yes, you’d still been hoping maybe something would happen between the two of you. You hadn’t realized how hard the exhaustion was going to hit until too late. 

Maybe something can still happen, you giggle a bit to yourself as you open the door to his apartment and then stop yourself immediately, horrified at yourself. You wonder when you became like this. You swear you don’t usually go around desperate for sex like this, you feel like a bit embarrassed, honestly, that your train of thought keeps leading this way but you blame Dazai because he’s plain cruel for flirting with you as intimately as he does without even sparing you a kiss. It’s like he’s trying to drive you crazy. You’re becoming even more convinced that the man set some sort of spell over you. 

“Gooooood morning!” you sing, your voice still tinged with sleep as you exit the bedroom and catch sight of the object of your desires lounging back on the dark couch in the main room of his penthouse—penthouse, insanity—typing away at his phone with a frown. He’s dressed in the same outfit he was in last night, which is also the same outfit that he wore last week, and every other week before that—you wonder if he just didn’t change or if he has a dozen pairs of the same outfit. 

Dazai doesn’t respond, gaze cutting upward, a bit too wide to be casual. The expression on his face is entirely indecipherable, something caught between shock and an emotion you can’t quite place, but it’s softer, you think, maybe a bit sadder too. You brush it off, wondering if he forgot you were here, which would be embarrassing but also a bit ridiculous. So, you think that maybe you just look like a mess after waking up. You should have brushed your hair before coming out of the room, you don’t even know if you brought a brush with you last night. You can’t remember.

You plop yourself down onto the couch next to him. Laying the side of your head against the cushions and curling up a bit, you position your body to face him as you say, “Your… apartment is so nice.” There’s a longing lilt to your voice as you speak. “If you’re not careful, I might never leave.”

It’s a joke, of course, you don’t want to intrude, but you think your life would be one hundred times easier if you were living in a place like this rather than your small, shitty apartment. Plus, you get a view and you’re not talking about the city. Dazai looks gorgeous beneath the mid-morning light, you think. Well, he’s been gorgeous every time you’ve seen him but you think especially so now, with the way his smooth skin glows and his dark eyes look almost gold beneath the sun rays, but you notice the dark bag beneath his visible eye and guiltily, you wonder if he got any sleep last night. He’d long abandoned his phone, attention on you, and you feel warm beneath his gaze.

“I don’t think I’d mind that all too much,” he murmurs, eye curved up as smiles softly. 

You’re flustered, instantly, and your face feels hot as you avert your gaze to the coffee table in front of you. Your eyes focus on a familiar item sitting on it and you light up, reaching out for it. “My phone! You found it!”

You pull it toward you and unlock it, frowning when you realize that you must’ve left it open on your landlord’s contact information last night, trying to figure out what you should message him. You sigh as your tip your head back against the couch, realizing that you’re going to have to deal with all of this today. Fighting with your landlord about the leak, ordering a new mattress and a new laptop—god, you don’t even think you can afford that right now, you’re going to have to place a deposit down for your seat at school soon and then figure out tuition. 

“You dropped it outside the room,” Dazai notes, drawing your attention back to him as he nods at the phone. “How did you sleep?”

“Better than I have in years,” you sigh wistfully, letting your head fall to the side to look at him. “You have to tell me where you got your mattress. This is the first time I haven’t woken up with a shitty back in forever… especially considering I need a new one because my ceiling decided to drop gallons of water on my bed.”

“Gin-chan would know,” Dazai says, and you can’t help but notice how his gaze seems to track down a bit to your lips as you speak. You try not to smile a bit. You think you fail. You do shift a bit closer. Subtly. You think he notices if the way his tongue darts out to wet his lips says anything about it. His words hardly register until he says, “I have to leave in a bit for a meeting, she’ll come make sure you’re okay and see if you need anything.”

Irrationally, your heart drops with the illogical fear that maybe you’re reading into things because who is Gin-chan and why does she know what type of mattress Dazai has? Maybe it’s not irrational, because that’s odd, isn’t it? Who would know what type of mattress someone has besides like… a wife? But wouldn’t he have mentioned a wife or a girlfriend in the past few weeks? Of course, he would have… right? You didn’t notice a ring, but you don’t want to be obvious and look down to check now. There’s no way he’s the type to cheat anyway, so you assume you’re just missing something—unless they’re not on good terms with each other but haven’t divorced? But… Your thoughts begin to spiral, rapidly and terribly, because you are not a homewrecker, you swear, but you don’t think you’ve ever wanted someone more than Dazai Osamu. 

Dazai’s smile sharpens a bit, dark eye flashing playfully, as if he knows exactly what you’re thinking. He leans his head in a bit more, so close that you swear you can count every single individual eyelash, so close that your breath catches when the tip of his nose brushes yours. “Gin-chan is my secretary, I brought her off the streets when she was a child. She’s a sweet girl, I’m sure you’ll get along.”

Oh, you’re so cruel, Dazai Osamu. 

You hate that you instantly feel relieved. 

You hate even more that he definitely notices. 

He leans in a bit closer, your breath hitches, but just when you swear his lips are about to brush yours for the first time, he pulls back to sit up straight again. His cheeks are dusted red, welcome evidence that you’re not the only one who was flustered by his proximity. 

You clear your throat in a desperate attempt to regain some sense of control over yourself and then try to change the subject. “What type of meeting do you have?” you ask curiously, and then immediately amend the question, realizing this is your chance to question him about his job again, “What do you even do?”

Dazai hesitates, just like he did the last time you asked this question. You think he might try to avoid the question again but instead he says, “I took over my… father’s company a few years ago. I’ve been running it since.”

Your eyebrows shoot up a bit, impressed, although you notice how he seems a bit bitter at the mention of his father. “Really?” you ask, surprised. He can’t be much older than you. What was he eighteen, nineteen when he took over? “What type of company?”

“It’s a… sort of conglomerate. We have stakes in a bunch of different industries,” he tells you, dark hair falling in his eyes as he rests his head back against the couch. His eyes don’t leave you once, almost as if he’s drinking in the sight of you, you can’t control the way your heart races beneath his gaze. He reaches out, fingers brushing your skin in a way that makes goosebumps rise, and you can hardly breathe as he fixes the strap of your camisole, you hadn’t even realized it had slipped off your shoulder.

His fingers linger for a moment before he drops his hand back to his lap; you long for his touch again instantly.

“That sounds like a lot of work,” you say quietly, and suddenly Dazai looks a lot older and much more tired, gaze flickering down to his lap. 

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “It is.”

You’re not sure what to say for a moment, so instead, you decide to reach out and grab his hand, intertwining your fingers with his and squeezing gently. He doesn’t hold your hand back at first, staring at where your hands are connected with a conflicted, unreadable expression, but you don’t let it bother you, holding his hand just a bit tighter before saying: “Well, I’m sure you’re doing a good job.”

He lets out a puff of air, sighing, and then finally, his fingers tighten around yours. 

A bit too tight, but you don’t mind. 

He doesn’t look like he believes you, and you think that’s a bit sad but you’re not sure what else to say, or even if there’s anything else to say. Dazai’s gaze flickers back up to meet yours and you think that you might not be breathing again. You’re hyper aware of his touch, the way his fingers curl around yours, thumb absently rubbing soft circles on the back of your hand. He’s close—you hadn’t realized just how close the two of you had gotten as you spoke. You’re leaning forward and he’s leaning in, both of your heads resting against the back of the couch. 

You could kiss him, the thought rings through your head again. Your throat feels tight, the silence between you is comfortable but tense, as if he can sense the thoughts ricocheting through your head and is battling with his own. He shifts forward a bit more, gaze dropping down to your lips, and you brace yourself, tilting your face up a bit and then-

“Sir?” 

You draw back right away, embarrassed, eyes cutting across the room where a girl with long dark hair stands, cheeks flushed and gray eyes averted up to the ceiling. She’s young, no older than seventeen or eighteen, and dressed in a sleek black suit. Is this Gin?

“Gin-chan.” Dazai confirms your suspicions as he greets the girl easily. “Is something the matter?”

“Chuuya-san is in your office,” Gin says, careful to keep her voice formal despite the way her face is on fire. “The executives have been waiting in the conference room on the thirty-eighth floor for twenty minutes. He says if you don’t come out, he’ll come in here and drag you out.”

Dazai sighs dramatically, eyes sliding shut. “Chuuya always has the worst timing,” he complains, rising to his feet. “Gin-chan, tend to my lovely guest while I’m gone, would you?”

Gin finally turns her gaze on Dazai, a bit surprised. “You don’t want me coming with you, sir?” 

Dazai waves her off. “I’m giving you a more important job. I’ll make the slug take meeting notes. He’ll love that,” he says with an easy smile before looking down at you. “I’ll be back later tonight… wait for me?”

You stare up at him, breathless. You have to force yourself to nod. “Yeah,” you finally agree, voice wavering. “I’ll wait for you.”

The smile he gives you is brilliant, eye shining in a way that puts the night sky to shame.

You think you could stare at it forever. 

His fingers burn. 

Dazai can hardly pay attention to the meeting taking place around him as he stares down at his hand, the ghost of your touch still warming his skin. He feels giddy, his chest light and heart erratic in his chest. You’re upstairs. You’re in his room. You were in his bed this morning. You told him good morning. You came out and joined him on the couch while you were still in your night clothes. You almost kissed him. You almost kissed him. He almost kissed you. He would have, had Gin not showed up. 

God, it was like something out of one of his dreams, one of the vague memories that haunt him when he’s at his lowest. When he’d wake up with wet cheeks and a tight chest, throat thick with aching desire and longing for a life that he never thought he’d have. 

But he has it.

He has it. 

He has you.

“Where is Gin-chan?” Kouyou’s voice tears Dazai from his thoughts. Dazai turns his gaze onto the woman, careful to keep his expression void of any of the emotions coursing through his body. “She is supposed to be attached at your hip, no?”

Dazai tilts his head to the side. “Gin-chan is busy with more important matters,” Dazai says dismissively. 

Kouyou lets out a noise caught between a puff of amusement and shock, covering the lower half of her face with her fan as she watches Dazai with calculating eyes. Dazai wonders if she knows that you’re here, if Chuuya had mentioned anything to her already and this is just a test to see his reaction to her prodding.

“More important matters than the first meeting with all five of your executives in the same place in two years?” Kouyou presses, fanning her fan lightly as she tilts her head to the side. 

“Yes,” is all Dazai says in response, not leaving any more room for conversation on the topic. He sees Chuuya roll his eyes from the corner of his vision, knowing just what Gin is up to.

“What is this meeting about anyway?” Ace suddenly speaks up, looking irate from where he’s sitting at the round table, leg folded over his knee as he looks around the room disdainfully. “This is disturbing my casinos, I had integral meetings with shareholders this morning that I had to reschedule.”

“If your casinos are so easily disrupted, perhaps they’re not quite as valuable as you keep making them out to be.” Piano Man gives Ace a demure smile as he speaks, veiling the venom dripping from his words—the most recently promoted of the five executives has no mercy when it comes to taking digs at the self proclaimed Jewel King. 

Ace’s head snaps in Piano Man’s direction, lips turning down and eyes icy. Dazai wonders curiously if the man would snap something back with Chuuya sitting right next to him—that would be the end of that, Chuuya has always been viciously protective over his Flags. Dazai never liked Ace, knowing that the man is loyal only to himself, but he’s brought in masses of money and information to the Port Mafia. He considers whether or not he should step in, but decides to just watch idly, unsure of if he’s entertained or bored, folding his hands on the table and letting his head fall to the side lazily.

He wants to go back upstairs. Back to you. He’s tired of this already, every day it’s been something new the past few weeks—issues with the military police, issues with low ring organizations that seem to think they can play with the big leagues, issues internally. He wonders what you and Gin might be talking about, and then bitterly, he thinks it should be him sitting up there talking to you.

“This is about the Russians?” Verlaine drawls, looking severely unimpressed with the tension at the round table as he looks between Kouyou, Chuuya and Dazai. “I’ve heard from some of my birds that Nabakov’s men were spotted in the Sakae and Kanagawa wards. Interesting, no?”

Sakae and Kanagawa? 

Dazai suddenly is a lot more attentive to the conversation at hand, if only because your apartment is around those wards. He was already reluctant thinking of letting you go back there, knowing that it’s not the best area in the city, but now? The thought makes his stomach churn, blunt nails digging into the wood of the round tables. 

It’s not an option.

It’s not.

Kouyou raises a parchment between two fingers to show off to the rest of the executives before passing it over to Dazai, who stares at it distastefully for a moment before plucking it from her hand. He scans the words rapidly, lips twisting down into a deep frown the more he reads. 

“What is it?” Chuuya asks impatiently, fingers thrumming on the table as Dazai reads.

“A missive from the Pale Flame,” Kouyou tells him, voice smooth and curious, eyes not leaving Dazai once as she waits for his reaction to it. “Nabokov wishes to personally apologize for not coming to the meeting himself two months ago. He claims that he’s coming to Tokyo to handle an issue regarding one of his major narcotics suppliers in three weeks and wants to host us under the guise of a business event to make amends and prove his dedication to our continuing alliance.”

The war in the mainland is over, the realization hits him hard, like he’s been doused in freezing water and struck with a train all at once. His vision begins to tunnel, just a bit, but enough for him to know he has to pull himself back together before it gets worse, but it’s hard because the implications of that-

“That’s not suspicious at all,” Piano Man sighs whimsically. “Since when does Nabokov care for apologies and amends? The man’s pride goes beyond the heights of the moon.”

“War must be going that badly,” Ace scoffs, amused. “I suppose we chose right in declining their pleas for support.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Piano Man says flippantly, side-eyeing Ace blatantly. 

Ace’s expression twists, but as soon as it does, it smooths out again, and a slow smirk is curling at the edges of his lips. He parts his lips to dole out a side comment and Dazai chooses to tune out the petty arguments, focusing on his own dilemma.

It can’t be a coincidence. Right when he finally starts accepting you into his life, the three way war plaguing the Russian underworld comes to an end and the threat that Dostoevsky poses to you becomes all the more present. Fate, the word haunts him, curses him, he wants to spit in its face but every passing day reminds him that the gods must be laughing down at him. 

Doubt begins to riddle his chest, festering and spreading—should he send you away? Pretend that the past few weeks never happened and send you off to one of your friend’s apartments? But what if someone already saw him with you? If the wrong person saw, and he sent you away, he’d be signing your death sentence himself. 

“What do you think?” Kouyou addresses him, drawing Dazai from his spiraling thoughts.

“The war between Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Nabokov ended,” Dazai says, staring down at the table as his mind races. “The missive is a declaration of war.”

“Why would Nabokov declare war on us?” Ace asks doubtfully, leaning back in his chair. “For not giving him support?”

“Nabokov is a puppet.” Dazai’s tongue slides against the back of his teeth, trying to piece together what the best course of action to take would be. He’d been sure that the territory wars in Russia would last at least another two to three months. He’s sure that Dostoevsky is behind the missive, he doubts that Tolstoy would make a move into Yokohama, he’d prefer to move west, but he needs confirmation. But if it is Dostoevsky… Why has this timeline sped up so much? Dostoevsky isn’t supposed to officially make a move in Yokohama until after the Guild. The thought is cold and unnerving, he doesn’t like it. He’s been basing all of his plans around his knowledge of the other universes, so why is everything changing suddenly? He turns his attention to Ace and Verlaine, “Find out if Tolstoy or Dostoevsky came out on top.”

He has his suspicions, but he needs it confirmed before he makes any more plans. He has to be careful now, excruciatingly so. He can’t risk anything now that you’re with him and the threat of Dostoevsky has become exceedingly more imminent. However cautious and meticulous he’s been the past seven years, he needs to up it tenfold. He needs Dostoevsky six feet under. He needs Christie six feet under. 

And most importantly, he needs to keep you safe, locked in the ivory tower, ignorant to the looming threats until Dazai has properly handled them.

But to do that, he needs to convince you to stay. 

How is he supposed to do that without setting off alarm bells? 

“What of the business event that we’ve been invited to?” Piano Man asks, white hair falling into his face as he tilts his head to the side. “Do we attend or tell him to shove it?” 

“How eloquent,” Ace digs, but goes silent when Dazai gives him a icy look, no longer in the mood for their petty back and forth. 

“We attend,” Dazai answers, exhaling as he turns his attention to the side, looking out the bulletproof window giving a vast view of the city’s busiest ports. “If it’s under the guise of a business event, there will be plenty of legitimate corporations there to use as shields should things go wrong, but the Russians aren’t stupid enough for that regardless. They won’t spill blood on foreign land in view of people who live in the light, it’s the fastest way for them to get the Special Division or the Hunting Dogs sicced on them. This will be the easiest way to gather information… and to try to take out the mastermind.”

Chuuya does not look happy with Dazai’s declaration, likely already tallying all of the things that could go wrong. It’ll be the easiest way to get to Dostoevsky, yes, but it’ll also be the easiest way for them to get to Dazai. Dazai is not stupid and he knows he has to be especially vigilant now, but no progress will be made unless some gambles are made—Fyodor Dostoevsky is slimy and slippery in every universe, for Dazai to get his hands on the man, he’s going to have to take a few risks. Dazai just has to ensure said risks are minimal, because every risk he takes is a risk to you too. 

God, he feels sick, his head hurts so badly that he thinks he might die. If he was any other version of himself, he could drag himself to you and bury himself in your arms, a surefire way of making the pain disappear. But he’s not any other version of himself—he’s him, and he’s so bitter, because even when he has you, he doesn’t really have you, not in the way that he wants.

“Meeting dismissed,” Dazai says coldly, hardly sparing his executives another look. He’s ready to go back upstairs and be with you, even if he’s not ready to put that mask back on yet, terrified of scaring you away. “Get me the information I asked for.”

There’s a few spattered agreements and farewells. Verlaine, Ace and Piano Man all file out of the conference room. Kouyou and Chuuya stay behind. Dazai’s eyes slide shut, waiting for whatever the two have to say. 

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Chuuya finally says, voice gruff and Dazai doesn’t have to look at him to know that his fingers are probably digging into his palms in frustration. “Things are about to get bad. Don’t let some girl distract you from what’s important.”

Dazai looks up at Chuuya now, slowly, gaze glacial. If Chuuya were anyone else, he would’ve backed down or apologized, but Chuuya is Chuuya, so he only raises his chin, jaw tightening when he realizes that he pissed off Dazai with that comment. 

You are what’s important, is what Dazai wants to say in your defense. He’s done all of this for you—you and Odasaku, but he bites the words back, resorting instead to turning his gaze to Kouyou, dismissing Chuuya without a word. Chuuya scoffs loudly and then he spins on his heel with a swish of his coat and storms out of the meeting room. 

Dazai tilts his head to the side, daring Kouyou to mention it. The woman only raises her eyebrows, a knowing expression painted on her face, as always. 

“One of my girls got their hands on a Russian suspected of being a member of the House of the Dead,” Kouyou says, fanning her face gently. “We’ve been unsuccessful so far in getting him to reveal any information. It could be useful in figuring out whether Tolstoy or Dostoevsky came out on top.”

Dazai exhales, because of course he can’t go right back to you, when has life ever been so easy for him? He pushes himself to his feet, body on automatic as he makes his way out of the meeting room and toward the elevator. 

It’s fine, he tells himself, he’ll be back to you soon.

He just has to make this fast, and Dazai is never as efficient as he is when he has you as motivation.

Dazai is careful to make sure that no blood stains his face or hands as he leans back against the wall of the elevator. Getting the information out of the rat hadn’t taken too long once he got there, but the following conversation with Kouyou took an eternity. He watches the floors tick upward from the twenty-second floor all the way up to the forty-sixth, back to his penthouse where you’re hopefully still waiting. An irrational fear claws at his chest, that you slipped away and left the building, descending back down into the city that’s quickly threatening to become an imminent warzone. He knows it’s illogical, Gin would have told him if you left so you must still be up there, but a part of him can’t bring himself to believe it.

“I’ll wait for you.”

Your face blends with another version of yourself as he lets his eyes slide shut. The image of his apartment shifting into an unfamiliar hotel room. The atmosphere is much more somber in the hotel room, Dazai feels anxiety swelling in his throat and hope bubbling in his chest no matter how hard he tries to push it away as those very same words ring through his head. In a desperate attempt to sideline the emotions he can’t seem to control, he leans in to press his lips against yours. His own breath catches as the memory floods through him—he can feel the pads of his fingers burning as he pushes you back against the bed, his heart racing as his body hovers above yours, his mind foggy and dizzy as he kisses you so deeply that he think he might die from lack of air to his lungs. His tongue brushes against your bottom lip, his body slides on top of yours, hips slotting between your thighs and then-

Ding. 

His eyes snap back open as he’s forced back to reality, the sharp trill of the elevator drawing him from the maze of the pages just as the doors slide open. He’s hardly able to settle down, sweaty palms wiping at his black jacket and tongue pressing to the roof of his mouth as he steps out of the elevator and into his penthouse, praying he doesn’t look half as frazzled as he feels.

It’s so bright, he thinks to himself, unused to having so much sunlight in his penthouse, usually keeping the windows blacked out just as he does in his office, but he figured you’d find that a bit odd so he made sure to fix it before you woke up in the morning. His gaze drags across the room, and he hates that his pulse spikes when he doesn’t immediately spot you, but it’s only a momentary spike when he realizes that you’re laying on the couch with Gin, some unfamiliar show playing in the background as you waves your arms around, talking rapidly. 

He doesn’t move for a moment, standing there, admiring you—the way your skin glows beneath the sun, the way you smile widely, eyes glittering as you speak. You’re so animated. So alive. Dazai just can’t get used to it. He wonders if this is what his life would be like every day, if you stayed around. Waking up to you in the morning, relaxing with you under the early sun before he goes off to deal with his work, coming home to you waiting for him on the couch. Realistically, he knows it’s not that simple—you have your own goals and dreams and Dazai swore that in this life, he’d make sure you’d achieve them, so you can’t just sit around his penthouse all day until he comes back… but maybe it’s a practical enough to hope for the next few weeks until Dostoevsky is handled. 

But first, he has to make sure you stay here and not try to go off with one of your friends, which will be a trial in itself. He’s not sure how to go about it yet, so he just needs to have faith that it’s not something you bring up right away. 

Gin catches sight of him first, rising to her feet instantly, hands locked behind her back. “Sir,” she greets, nodding her head down a bit in respect. 

You perk up at her words, leaning up to finally catch sight of him, peeking your head over the back of the couch and then raising your hand to wave at him. “Welcome back,” you say with a grin. “How was the meeting?”

Gin bids you a quiet goodbye before making her way out of Dazai’s place back into the office, leaving Dazai alone with you. 

“Agonizing,” he answers truthfully, voice a low drawl as the corner of his lips instinctively curls up at the sight of you. He doesn’t come any closer, leaning back against the wall as you prop yourself up on the back of the sofa to look at him, resting your cheek on your folded arms.

A smile spreads across your face at his words, amused, and he wonders distantly if you would be even half as amused if you knew what the meeting was about or what he had to do afterward. The thought nearly makes his own smile falter, throat spasming. No matter how easily you might’ve accepted him and his past in the other universes, he knows that it won’t be the same in this one because it’s not his past. Not for the first time, he’s viciously jealous of all of his other selves—not only because of their relationship with you, but because they hadn’t needed to go to the depths of hell that he has had to in the name of keeping you and Odasaku safe. 

It’s so hard. Lonely. The other Dazais always liked to insist that they were alone but they weren’t—not really. They always had so many people surrounding them even if they refused to accept it, meanwhile he-

He has nothing. Even now when you’re here, he knows that he’ll never be able to have you as intimately as the other Dazais did. He’ll never be able to open up to you like they did, rely on you like they did. He can’t because of the risk it would bring to the fragile stability of this world. He can’t because if you knew the truth, it would drive you away.

He’s so tired.

He’s not sure what you must see on his face, but your expression falls a bit as you look at him. You push yourself to your feet and he can’t help but notice that you’d changed out of your pajamas into a pair of leggings and a burgundy sweater. He also notices, a bit more dreadfully, that the duffle you’d brought last night is sitting outside his bedroom door, packed. 

“I messaged one of my friends,” you say, voice a bit awkward, a jolt of panic shoots through him, realizing that you are bringing this up right away and he hasn’t had time to figure out how to go about convincing you to stay. “She said I could stay with her until my apartment is fixed, so I won’t be bothering you much longer. Thanks for letting me stay the night.”

Dazai hardly refrains from sighing and letting his eyes slide shut in frustration.

He really can’t get a break. 

“I…” he trails off, unsure of what to say. He could tell you that it’s not a bother, but he doubts you would believe that, and how is he supposed to insist without coming across as shady? He has to try though. “It’s not a bother. You can stay here as long as you want.”

It won’t be enough, and he knows it from the way you immediately shake your head, sitting back on your heels to look at him head on. “I appreciate it, but I don’t want to intrude.”

His mind races as he tries to figure out what to say but it’s hard to think with dark talons pulling at his brain, images of you flashing before his eyes—limp in his arms as he tries to shake you awake (futile, your skin was already cold when he got back from work), unmoving on the floor of your apartment as he stands at the door (he’d only stepped outside for a moment), the fear in your eyes as you topple back over the side of the roof (he can’t get to you in time. he never can.)

“It’s no intrusion… Truthfully, it gets a bit lonely here on my own,” Dazai finally admits, his voice sounds faraway to his own ears as he struggles to ground himself from the foreign memories, he hopes it doesn’t come across that way to you. He can see your face shift a bit at his words, brows furrowing and lips turning downward—not pity, thankfully because he hates pity, but more so understanding. Hooked, he realizes and then deals what will hopefully be the final blow: “I really wouldn’t mind the company.”

Your lips part to say something but no words leave them. You stare at him for a moment, looking between your duffle and your phone and then back to him. He waits, breathless, because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if you say no, if you insist on leaving. He can’t let you leave, not until the threats have been dealt with, he refuses to sign your execution warrant—he can live with you hating him, even if the thought makes him sick, he can’t live in a world without you.

Finally, you give him a smile.

“I mean, it would definitely be easier getting my work done here than in her cramped apartment, it’s hardly big enough for her and her boyfriend, much less me on top of that,” you say with a laugh, rubbing the back of your neck. “If you’re sure…”

Dazai has to physically restrain himself from letting out a sigh of relief. 

“I’m sure,” he murmurs. 

You light up and then look back at the television. “Well, I found a few movies I want to watch, if you’re up for it?” you ask with a hesitant smile. 

Dazai gives you a soft, matching smile. “I’d love to.”

Oh, god, how did you end up like this?

You can hardly breathe properly, legs tossed over Dazai’s lap, head resting on his shoulder, his arm curled around you. The movie is still playing in the background but you’re hardly following the plot anymore, too focused on the feeling of Dazai’s thumb rubbing idle circles over your hip. You don’t even know if he’s aware he’s doing it, but it has your entire attention—your heart is racing, you’re sure he must be able to feel it, he’s just being courteous in not mentioning it, and your body feels hot. Every now and then, his thumb dips a bit lower and you swear he must know what he’s doing but he’s barely sparing you a glance, engrossed with the movie playing on the disgustingly large television mounted on his wall. 

The movie that you had been excited to watch but now can’t even recall what the plot is. 

And it’s so odd. You don’t like cuddling. Or, you thought you didn’t like cuddling. Whenever your past partners tried to cuddle up next to you to watch a movie, or at night before bed, you’d grimace and try to subtly shift away, but now? You’re leaning into him, you find comfort in the arm draped around you and the fingers drawing absent patterns on your hip, you find warmth in the way your body is tucked against his. 

It’s absurd, you think, why is he so different from everyone else? 

Your friends think you’re crazy. When you texted one of them to ask for a place to stay until your apartment is fixed, and then abruptly said nevermind because Dazai offered to let you stay at his, you were hit with five calls in a row and a spam of texts ranging from: “wym ur staying with that random guy you met at a bar two months ago???” to “girl ur crazy, this is stranger danger 101. you were literally just complaining about how you know NOTHING about this man. i am NOT coming to ur funeral.”

The last one is a lie, Kei would come to your funeral and she’d cry like a baby while stuttering through the eulogy, but it’s no issue because there won’t be a funeral. Regardless, you still shut your phone off because the vibrations were getting irritating, but now, you kind of wished you still had your phone to peek at because you can’t focus on the movie and you need something to distract you from Dazai’s touch otherwise you’re bound to make a complete fool out of yourself. 

You spare a look up at him—just a quick glimpse, but it proves to be a fatal mistake. 

He’s already looking at you.

There’s a fond expression on his face, a warm look in his eye. When he realizes you’ve caught him, his lips tilt upward and he says, “You haven’t been watching the movie.”

A soft accusation. Teasing. It leaves you a bit flustered. You want to look away but you can’t bring yourself to. 

“Guilty,” you manage to get out, giving him a sheepish smile.

“I thought you wanted to watch it.” His voice is so soft and light that it makes goosebumps rise to your skin. He keeps his tone low so as to not disturb the atmosphere between the two of you, and it only serves to further the yearning you feel for him, eyes darting down to his lips as he speaks. His gaze sharpens a bit, pupil dilating when he notices where your eyes had tracked down to. Your mouth dries.

“I did,” you whisper, leaving the implication in the air that something far more interesting has caught your attention, breath catching as your eyes lift back to his, wishing that you could know what he’s thinking. You can see his mind racing, as if he’s fighting with himself about something and then-

And then he kisses you. 

He leans in just enough to brush his lips against yours, brief and hesitant, as if he’s just testing the waters. And it’s electrifying, you don’t think you’ve ever felt anything quite like it. Every other kiss you’ve had pales in comparison to the faintest brush of his lips to yours. His eye searches your face as soon as he pulls back, as if to make sure you’re okay with this; you can see the hint of something edging on desperation as his gaze flits back and forth between your eyes. He wants to know you’re okay with this, needs to know. 

You don’t waste a second as you lean forward, hand coming up to cup the side of his neck as you press your lips against his. You don’t have the same hesitancy that he does, heart thudding in your chest as your fingers intertwine with the curls at the nape of his neck, your body flush to his. His lips are chapped, but you don’t mind—it feels familiar somehow, almost comforting. You can feel the rough material of his bandages brushing your cheek but you only press closer. He tastes like fine whiskey and faintly of iron, a strange combination but you can’t get enough of it. 

He’s still hesitant, you can feel it in the slow way he kisses you. His fingers twitch from where they’re resting on his lap, as if he’s itching to reach out and touch you but doesn’t know if he should. Your hand slides up from his neck to the back of his head to pull him impossibly closer, tongue darting out to drag against his bottom lip, and that seems to be all of the push he needs. 

His hand comes to rest on your waist, fingers biting a bit too deeply into your skin but you don’t mind. One swift motion and he’s laying you back against the cushions, body sliding on top of yours, his other hand shifting upward, large palm cupping your cheeks as he tilts your head back to deepen the kiss. Your eyes flutter shut, you let out a soft, pleased sigh into his mouth when you feel his tongue tracing your inner lip. 

You think you could kiss him forever, you realize, heat pooling in your stomach and a fluttery feeling spreading through your chest. The hand on your waist slides down a bit to your thigh and your breath hitches when he parts them just enough for him to slot his hips between them, and god, you want him. 

You think your heart might fly out of your chest, and you don’t know why you’re so nervous. You have casual sex all the time to relieve stress but nothing about this feels casual, it feels so intimate; you let out a shaky breath as Dazai’s lips drag from yours to kiss the corner of your mouth, trailing down to your jaw, nipping at the spot behind your ear that always makes you shudder (god, how does he know your body so well already? it’s unfair, you might die), tongue tracing the underside of your jaw lightly, he kisses down your neck, teeth ghosting your pulse point and one of your legs instinctively hooks around his waist, dragging his body closer until you can feel him pressed up against you and-

A screech comes from the television. 

You jolt, he jolts, both of you startled, having forgotten that the movie was even playing in the background, too lost in the feeling of one another. Your chest rises and falls rapidly as you try to reorient yourself, leg slipping from his waist to rest back down on the couch.

The moment is ruined, naturally, all too hyper aware of the scene playing in the background and embarrassed by how quickly that had escalated. Dazai’s cheeks are dusted red as he shifts off of you back into a sitting position, and his lips are wet and swollen, and so very tempting.

You want to kiss him again, so you do. 

You sit up and cup his cheek to tilt his face in your direction, pressing your lips to his in a short and sweet kiss. You smile against his lips before pulling back and tucking yourself back into his side, gaze focusing back on the movie.

He lets out a puff of air that sounds distinctly close to a laugh before he wraps his arm back around you, warm and comforting, casual, as if it’s something he’s done a thousand times before, and you think Kei can suck it, because you’re starting to think that the ‘random stranger at the bar’ might become the best decision of your life.

A few days later, you’re stretching on a yoga mat looking out down upon the vast city below, Akutagawa Gin is sat pretty on a barstool next to where you’re stretching, one leg crossed over her knee, rapidly tapping at her phone as she finishes up some emails for Dazai, who’s god knows where dealing with whatever business Dazai Osamu deals with. 

“It’s a bit weird that they’re taking so long to fix my apartment, isn’t it?” you ask absently, grimacing as you shift into a pose that pulls at all of the wrong muscles. “Usually it doesn’t take more than a day or two.”

You still don’t really know what Dazai’s company is, you were only able to find vague scraps online about the Mori Corporation: a massive, affluent conglomerate that formed seven years ago. Apparently, it has a hand in just about every industry from technology to shipping, so you suppose it makes sense that Dazai is hardly ever around, but you’re finding yourself increasingly bored. There’s only so much time you can spend in the same apartment, no matter how big or fancy it may be. The days have been incredibly repetitive with Dazai leaving for his work meetings, you relaxing and getting some of your work done, talking to Gin, and then Dazai coming back late at night.

“You’re probably not the only apartment that had a leak,” Gin says, astute as always. “Your landlord might just be getting to the others first, and if they’re half as bad as yours was, it’ll probably take a bit.”

You scowl. “It would be just like him to leave me for last,” you say, half to yourself as you sit back on your heels, looking over at Gin. “I swear this man has had something out for me since I moved in. Did I tell you about the time he took three weeks to get back to me about a work order I put in for my sink? Three weeks. I had to wash all of my dishes at my neighbor’s place. How embarrassing is that?” 

Gin looks amused, gray eyes lifting from her phone to look down at you from where she’s sitting. “Multiple times, in fact.”

“Well, I’m going to tell you again,” you say matter-of-factly before launching into a tirade that you can recite word for word in your sleep from how often you’ve vented about it to people over the past two years. In your defense, it was absolutely ridiculous, it never should’ve taken that long, but you digress. 

You like Gin, you decide as she listens intently to the same rant she’s heard at least three times over the past week, nodding along and adding supportive commentary when necessary. Well, you decided you liked her the first time you met her, but you’re just reaffirming it now. For as formal and professional she is, she always gets a certain gleam in her eye when she talks to you, and you can actually see her for the eighteen year old she is, rather than just as the secretary of the boss of one of the biggest corporations in Japan. 

You think she likes you too, you muse as you finish off your rant and go back to laying like a starfish on the yoga mat, not in the mood to do any more stretching. She always lights up a bit whenever Dazai tells her to spend the day with you instead of following him around. You’re not sure why he does it, you figure he’s probably making things harder on himself by not having her around, but you’re not going to complain because you think you’d go crazy with no one to talk to.

But even if she does like you, she’s still not very forward with information about Dazai and the Mori Corporation. She tends to change the topic whenever you bring it up, or sometimes she just gives you that look, the one that tells you that she isn’t going to say anything about it. You think it’s a bit weird that they’re so secretive about it, but you suppose she just doesn’t want to speak on behalf of Dazai when you ask about him, and the whole secrecy about the business probably has to do with trade secrets or something

Although you don’t really think you’re asking questions that could even scarcely tap into trade secrets, but you think that maybe they’re just paranoid. Probably for good reason if the business is half as influential and lucrative as the few things you’ve found online claim it is, but still, knowing that doesn’t make you any less curious.

“Hey, Gin-chan.” You decide to get an early start on today’s attempt to whittle information out of the girl. When she looks at you questioningly, you turn your head to the side to look at her. “Is Dazai okay?”

Gin looks a bit startled by your question, but you only wait for an answer. You think he must be having trouble with something regarding his business because every day he comes back to his place later and more stressed, you can see it in his face when he walks in, the dullness in his eye and the way he can hardly cover it up before you catch sight of him. You don’t know why he’s so intent on hiding the exhaustion from you but you wish he wouldn’t. 

“Why do you ask?” Gin questions carefully, as if she doesn’t know how to answer the question which pretty much confirms that something is wrong. 

“I figure he must be having trouble with something in his company,” you say absently, watching Gin blink in surprise, another confirmation that you might be onto something. “He comes back to the penthouse later every day, and more tired. And even when he’s here, he spends most of the time on his phone unless he turns it off. You’ve been on your phone more often the past two days too, so I figure it’s connected.”

Gin hesitates and then she says, “We are… having difficulty with a rival company,” she finally says, and you sit up to look up at her again, leaning back on your hands. “They are trying to push us out of some key industries in Tokyo and Yokohama. Their… CEO is hosting an event in two weeks that we’re supposed to be attending, along with many of our subsidiaries. We’ve been trying to prepare for it while dealing with some other internal issues. He’s probably just… drained.”

This time, you hesitate, a lump forming in your throat as her words register because how fucked up is it that he’s so drained from work and then has to come back to his penthouse and entertain you? Guilt swells in your chest, you don’t even know where he’s been sleeping because he’s been so dead set on you taking the bed that he won’t even hear your arguments on it.

“Should I… go stay with my friend then?” you ask hesitantly, and when Gin gives you a half-alarmed, half-concerned look, you elaborate: “I just… feel bad, I guess. That he’s dealing with so much work and can’t even have a space to decompress when he finishes because I’m here.”

Gin says your name with so much humor that you’re almost insulted, but there’s a glitter in her eyes as she looks at you, so any complaint you have promptly dies. “Being with you is decompressing to him,” she says quietly, and though warmth spreads through you at the words, you’re still doubtful.

“I don’t know,” you say, unconvinced. “I see the way he tries to hide how exhausted he is whenever he sees me. He shouldn’t have to put in so much effort to mask himself in his home just because I’m here.”

Gin doesn’t respond for a moment, gaze flickering down to the floor, but when she speaks, her voice is soft.

“He’s always so lonely,” she says, more to herself than anything else, but then she raises her eyes to meet yours, “no matter how many people are around him, he’s always so cut off from everyone, refusing to let anyone get close… except when he’s with you. In all of the years that I’ve known him, I’ve only ever seen him happy when he’s with you.”

You stare at Gin, lips parted to respond but no words leave them. 

Instead, Gin continues, “He… had to step up at a very young age. He was sixteen when he found me in Suribachi and even back then he was just so… empty. I’ve never seen him actually acting his age except when he’s with you, or talking about you. So-”

Gin is interrupted abruptly by her phone ringing. She looks down and gives you an apologetic look before answering the call and wandering off to the other room, leaving you to your thoughts. Your throat still feels swollen, but with a far more pleasant emotion now. A small smile tugs at the edges of your lips, hand pressed to your chest as if you can physically slow the erratic pace of your heart. Your face feels warm and a giggle slips from your lips as you flop back down to the yoga mat, staring up at the ceiling.

Or, well, it’s not entirely pleasant. A heavier feeling settles on your chest as Gin’s words about what Dazai used to be like—still is like, whenever you’re not around—process through your head. It’s not like you didn’t have any sort of inkling about it, you’ve known that there’s more than meets the eye about Dazai Osamu since the first night you met him, and the past week you’ve spent with him only has made you more sure of it. His mind drifts off so often, eyes faraway and expression so vacant that sometimes it takes a few tries for you to get him to come back to you. 

You don’t mind, but it does make you sad to know that he’s been like this for as long as Gin has known him, and since the only time she’s ever seen him even partially happy is when he’s with you, you can’t help but wonder how many years he spent depressed and isolated. And you’re realizing, a bit scared, that you’re starting to care for Dazai a lot because the first thought that crosses your mind is that you wish you’d met him sooner so he didn’t have to spend all of this time alone. 

You sit up straight, alarmed by your own thoughts, because yes, you’re enamored by Dazai and you have been since you met him almost two months ago, but you didn’t think you were falling for him yet—not like that at least. It’s absurd, you still hardly know much about his personal life. You don’t know about his family besides for the fact he took over his father’s company, you don’t know anything about said company besides the scraps you found online but… but you remember the way he kisses you gently, and the way his expression always softens when his gaze falls on you, and the way whenever you speak, he’s always giving you his full attention no matter how inane the topic might be, willing to listen to you ramble on about all of the books you’ve read and gossip with you about your ex-coworkers and drama happening in your friend group and-

Oh.

Oh.

Yeah. You might be falling for him.

Your hand rises to your lips, mind racing and spiraling all at the same time and you realize that you really, really need fresh air. Promptly, you remember that you’d meant to ask Gin to order some groceries because Dazai’s kitchen is about as bare as his bedroom, and you’ve been craving some specific snacks anyway; you also wanted to have her order some actual food so you can make something to try to make Dazai eat more because you’ve noticed he doesn’t eat all too much and you don’t think that’s very healthy considering how much stress he’s under. You’re not the best at cooking, but you can make do and just pray that he likes it. 

A perfect excuse. You’ll run out and grab some groceries, maybe take a walk in the nearby park to clear your thoughts and come to terms with the realization you’d just come to, and then come back and do something nice for Dazai.

Decision made, you bound over to the door Gin disappeared into so you can let her know where you’re heading, but when you peek your head into Dazai’s office, you see Gin in deep conversation with someone over the phone, brows creased and frown on her lips as she stares down at some of the paperwork on Dazai’s desk. She looks distinctly frustrated and slightly distressed, so you decide not to bother her. Instead, you just close the door quietly and make your way over to the elevator, stepping inside when it finally reaches the top floor and pressing the button for the lobby.

You won’t be long anyway, you doubt she’ll even notice you’re gone.

The elevator dings as it reaches the first floor of the massive building and you adjust your purse over your shoulder as you step into the lobby—it’s massive and bustling with dozens of people. You haven’t been back down here since he brought you here a few days ago, and you’d been too exhausted to really be able to gather your bearings, plus it had been the middle of the night and not as many people had been around. 

You’re hardly able to peek around for half a minute before someone runs into you. 

You let out a quiet yelp, startled, blinking as your gaze focuses on the man who’d bumped into you. He’s a bit on the short side with fair skin and light freckles dotting his nose and cheeks, bi-colored eyes—one brown and the other blue—narrowed as he studies you. He’s pretty, you think. Not quite as pretty as Dazai, but definitely attractive. Or he would be, if he wasn’t staring at you with such an unpleasant expression. 

You half-think he’s about to demand that you apologize even though he’s the one who bumped into you, and you think if he does, you’re going to have serious problems with him, but instead, a vague recognition flashes through his eyes as he finally speaks. Although, you can’t help but notice he still is looking at you with distinct displeasure even after recognizing you.

“You’re the girl that’s been living up with the boss,” the man says, his voice is cool and guarded and you feel a bit uncomfortable under his stare. You’ve always been particularly good at reading people, and you can tell at first glance that he does not want you here. “Where are you going?”

You don’t know why it’s any of his business, but you say: “Out. I’ve been cooped up for almost a week. Plus, I don’t know how Dazai feeds himself, he has literally no food in his place.”

“Does he know you’re going out?” he asks, eyes narrowing onto you as he tilts his head to the side. 

You bristle, not liking his tone. “He’s not my keeper.”

“No, but he’s gone out of his way to give you a place to stay when he didn’t have to. The least you can do is let him know when you’re going in and out.” The man matches your sharp tone with his own and you wither a bit, because he’s right, even if he is being a bit of an ass about it.

“Gin-chan was busy,” you mutter. “I’ll text him.”

The man lets out a sigh of what can only be utter suffering, lifting his head to look up to the ceiling as if asking a higher deity ‘why me?’ You have no idea what’s going through his head, and you just want to slip out of the building and drink in some fresh air and sunlight, but the last thing you expect is for him to look back at you and ask:

“Want company?”

You blink, wondering if he’s fucking with you, but he only stares at you, expression flat as he waits for a response. 

“I-” You’re about to say no, you aren’t particularly looking for company, but then you realize that this might be a chance to try to gather some more information about Dazai. You quickly amend to a: “Yeah, sure… What’s your name anyway?”

“Nakahara Chuuya,” he tells you, voice a bit brusque. “Just call me Chuuya.”

Dazai comes home to an empty penthouse.

For a moment, he doesn’t react. The unconscious smile that had begun to curve to his lips while taking the elevator back up to the top floor of the headquarters falls instantly as his dark gaze sweeps across the room that you’re usually lounging in with Gin only to find it eerily silent, void of the laughter he’d become desperately used to the past few days. 

He doesn’t let the panic hit right away, not even bothering to slide his coat off before making his way over to his bedroom, wondering if you’d decided to take a nap. He very much does feel a distinct spike in his heart rate when you’re not in there either. He stands there for a moment—Gin is still up here, she would have called down if she had to leave, so where are you?

Where are you?

Dazai suddenly feels sick to his stomach, a bit dizzy on his feet.

 Did you leave? 

Why did you leave? 

Did you go into his office? Find something implicating his position in the Port Mafia? 

Or did you just get sick of staying in the same place so many days in the row? Why wouldn’t you tell him if that were the case? 

Maybe you were just sick of him. 

His vision spins a bit, he presses his hand against the frame of his bedroom door to steady himself. Stop it, he tells himself, inhaling deeply once to try to get his head back on straight. But he can’t, he can feel numbness spreading through his chest viciously at the thought of you leaving. The void returns with a vengeance, consuming him entirely, and it’s only the thought of the chance of you being in danger out there alone that pushes him forward. He needs Gin to tell him what the fuck is going on. 

What does he do if you left on your own voilition? 

Dazai’s head is not sitting on his shoulders properly. It can’t be. Everything looks wrong, everything feels wrong. His hand drops down to his side, resorting back to the technique he had to use before he met you—he steadily taps your name against his thigh as he forces himself to walk across the room to his office, to where Gin must be, to get some answers. But even your name isn’t enough to keep him grounded. 

He’s holding you in his arms. You’re so cold. There’s blood everywhere. They’re telling him to let you go. He can’t. He never can. 

He’s reaching out to you, desperately trying to grab your hand before you topple over the side of the roof. He never makes it. 

He has to make a choice. A life for a life. He always chooses to save you. It doesn’t matter—they always kill you anyway. 

Nausea builds in his throat, he forces it back down, and when he opens the door to his office it’s a bit too aggressive. Gin’s head snaps up from where she was working at Dazai’s desk, flipping through papers with creased brows as she tries to put together the list of suspects. She stands up instantly at the sight of him, lips parting to greet him. He doesn’t let her.

“Where is she?” 

The words come out cold and cutting, a far cry from the awful emotions wreaking havoc on his chest and mind. To his absolute distress, Gin only looks confused at his words, lowering the phone and bidding goodbye to who he can only assume is Kouyou as she asks: 

“... What do you mean?” 

Fuck. Dazai takes a step back out of his office, back into the living room of his penthouse. His head feels all hazy, his vision starts spinning more. Fuck. You had to have left on your own. There’s no way anyone is getting all the way up to the top floor through all of the guards, and if they did, they wouldn’t leave Gin alive. Fuck. 

Where did you go?

There’s blood. Too much blood. Or is it water? He’s dragging you out of the water. And then his fingers are meeting air, the tips of his fingers just barely scraping yours before you plummet down, down, down. 

Why the fuck did no one say anything to him?

He can hear Gin talking, but her words go in one ear out the other. Dazai pulls out his phone, double, triple, quadruple checking to make sure he got no messages. None from you (his chest hurts). None from either of the Black Lizard captains. None from Atsushi. None from Kyouka. None from Chuuya. All people who should have feasibly noticed you leaving the headquarters. 

Dazai has never done well with emotions, negative or positive, but he thinks fear is the worst of all and he’s been plagued with it since the moment he’s come in contact with the Book. Fear of the future, fear of making a mistake, fear of fate. 

Fear is the mind-killer. The quote rings through his head over and over again, damning and true. It’s the one emotion that paralyzes him, puts him into a state that makes him incapable of making decisions. Fear of one thing turns into fear of another—it’s a ceaseless cycle, and a ruinous one. Fear of you leaving him turns into fear of you being vulnerable and then to fear of you being targeted and then to fear of you being dead, and already he can feel numbness spreading from his chest to his limbs. He thinks he feels Gin touch his arm but he can’t even turn his head to look. 

So he does the only thing he knows how to do: he channels it into something else. He funnels the fear into something more familiar, something more welcome. 

First, it turns into frustration—another emotion capable of incapacitation, but one that’s far more manageable. He jerks away from Gin, grip tightening on his phone as he paces back across the room. His thoughts begin to race, a red fog clouding his mind as he wonders why the fuck no one told him that you left, and if no one knows that you left, then Dazai is going to have to have serious fucking words with all of the security details posted throughout the building because that sort of laxness is not acceptable.

He doesn’t even know who he should message. Atsushi? The boy might close in on himself and shut down for failure and Dazai cannot afford to deal with that. Chuuya? Not an option, Chuuya would be the last person to go to about you seeing how often he actively expresses his distaste for your presence in the building, Dazai doesn’t want to give him more ammunition about you. Hirotsu? Might be the best option, the Black Lizards are quick and efficient, they’ll be able to track you down fast, but if he sends the Black Lizards he needs to figure out what he’s going to do.

What is he going to do?

God, he doesn’t know. The red starts to tint blue as a helpless feeling sweeps over him. He doesn’t know what to do. You left on your own, he doesn’t know why and he doesn’t know if you have any intentions on coming back. He doesn’t know what to do if you don’t plan on coming back. His whole reasoning behind the decision to indulge in you was centered on the fact that he could protect you in this lifetime, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to keep you in the ivory tower forever but he hoped he’d at least have a little longer to try to figure out a plan.

And the fact that you didn’t even tell him that you were leaving doesn’t bode well—again, the fleeting, anxiety-inducing thought of you stumbling upon something that you shouldn’t have crosses through his head but he pushes it away. Maybe you left because you were bored, because he wasn’t around and Gin was busy, he can try to fix that. He can fix that. Maybe he’ll even convince you to come back.

But if he can’t…

He has two options: 

He can put protection details on you, it would be an extension of Port Mafia resources that will face a lot of push back from his executives considering they’re approaching a gang war with the now united forces of Dostoevsky, Nabokov and Tolstoy, but he doesn’t give a fuck about what his executives think, you and Odasaku are the only things that matter in this universe so he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re safe. But regardless of what his executives think, the main issue with this option is that your safety is not guaranteed. It’ll only take one slip up for your life to be forfeit and for everything that Dazai has built and sacrificed to be flushed down the drain. 

That leaves option two. Forcing you to stay in the tower. Locking you up until he can ensure that there are no more threats to you (there may always be threats to you). You’d hate him, surely, and is he capable of living in a universe where you hate him? He has to be, if it means your safety. But that isn’t the life that he wants for you. He wants you to live, achieve all of the dreams you were never able to in all of the other universes, you can’t do that if you’re locked up.

Dazai feels sick. Regret starts to churn his stomach. He never should have approached you. He never should have indulged. He never should have convinced himself that he could keep you safe because he can’t. It’s fate. Fate. Fate.

The word twists the cloud fogging his vision, the ugly color that formed of the mixed blues and reds turns darker, until an inky black is creeping into his vision. Fate, he hates the word, he hates the inevitability, he hates himself for dancing right along with the strings that have been placed on him by the cruel gods above, even when he knew what would happen if he did. The weight of the gun hidden in his jacket starts to weigh all the more heavily, his fingers twitch toward it, desperate to feel the familiar weight of it in his hand. And then-

And then the elevator dings. 

Dazai’s gaze cuts to the side, sharp and cold, and it’s only when the elevator doors slide open and your pretty laugh rings through the air that Dazai’s world is finally set straight again. The color returns, the numbness disappears, the void is pushed away for another day. His eyes land on you, and the bright smile painted on your lips as you bound back into his penthouse.

“You’re back early!” you say, delighted, and Dazai can only hope and pray that you can’t tell how badly he’s spiraled because you weren’t around. He thinks you can, of course you can, because your smile falters a bit but then it brightens again as you make your way over to him and-

Oh.

All of the tension in his body melts away as you make your way over to him with a skip in your step and lean up on your tiptoes to wrap your arms around his shoulders. Dazai lets out a breath, too sharp and too shaky for you to not notice with how close you are to his face, but he can hardly bring himself to care as he brings trembling hands to wrap around your waist. He basks in the feeling of your warmth and if any of the numbness had threatened to linger, it’s certainly gone now as he calms himself down by setting his heart in pace with yours as he feels it thump steadily against his chest.

“Where did you go?” His voice is hoarse, as much as he tries to make the question seem light.

“You have no food, Dazai,” you complain, and you don’t seem to care that he’s definitely hugging you for a bit too long, propping your chin on his chest to look up at him. “Plus, as fancy as your penthouse is, I can’t sit around in the same place for days. I wanted to go out on a walk. So I ran to the store to pick up some groceries. I thought I’d make it back before you, I wanted to try to make something for dinner. I saw a pasta recipe while I was scrolling through Instagram that I want to try out, although I should probably test it out on my own before feeding you any. It usually takes me a few tries to get a recipe down and the first few attempts are more akin to toxic waste than actual food…”

You ramble, probably because you can tell how out of it he is and it’s scary how easily you can see through him because he thinks it’s only a matter of time before you see through to what he really is. But for now, he lets his eyes slide shut as he loses himself in your voice, and he feels silly for thinking that you would leave without saying anything.

He knows you better than anyone else in the world. Anyone else in any world. Maybe even better than you yourself. He should have known better. You would never do that, no matter what you learn about him, no matter what he does. It’s not who you are—you’re always so stringent on communication, you can’t sleep until an argument is settled properly. It’s something he’s hated in other universes, because he’s flighty and can’t handle confrontation, but he thinks it’s something that he should rely on in this one, because he knows that no matter what you might learn, you’ll always sit down to give him the chance of a proper conversation rather than just ghosting him. 

He spiraled for nothing.

He’s not drawn back to the present until he hears:

“... and Chuuya is so cool, by the way. Why didn’t you introduce me to him sooner? He has an ability, I’ve never met an ability user before. I made him carry all of the groceries, and he did it like it was nothing. Gravity manipulation? Did you know in undergrad, I wanted to major in physics—I tried to actually, but had to drop 101 because apparently my brain is not cut out for the sciences. Or mathematics. It was kind of embarrassing actually, who has to drop out of a 101 class?” 

In your spiel, only one word—one name—matters. His eyes reopen, he makes sure to keep his body lax in your arms as you lean against him so you can’t feel his sudden shift in mood. His gaze is cold and cutting again, lifting from you to behind you, where he finally lays his eyes upon the person with you.

Chuuya stands there, dozens of grocery bags hanging off his arms, a faint red glow around each of them signaling that he’s using his ability. Dazai’s expression is lethal as he stares at his executive, but Chuuya’s lip only curls up in a half-snarl, as if daring Dazai to say anything, before he makes his way out of the elevator to bring the grocery bags into his kitchen. 

And Dazai can’t say anything, not this time, because he’s already figured out what happened: you must have tried to leave on your own when Gin was busy because you were bored, and Chuuya ran into you and tagged along so you wouldn’t be defenseless should someone target you to get to him, in spite of how he feels about you and your presence in the building. 

Dazai bites his tongue, for once, and instead focuses back down at you. His expression softens when he catches you looking up at him, curious, and he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear.

“You should have texted me,” he murmurs. “I would’ve told you I had a quick day today, we could’ve gone together.”

Your expression twists a bit in irritation. His eyebrows shoot up in surprise.

“I did text you,” you say, indignant, and Dazai’s brows furrow and you immediately draw back to pull out your phone. He misses your warmth instantly, but forces away the longing. Your lips part a bit as you look down at the screen, a sheepish expression on your face as you say: “... I thought I texted you, evidently, it did not go through.”

Dazai lets out a puff of air, half-amusement, half-disbelief, because of course it was a matter of miscommunication, and he thinks again that he should have known better. Logically, what he assumed was so unlikely that it shouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but evidently, you turning him into an illogical and emotional fool is something universal across all of the different worlds.

But he still remembers the one fleeting thought he had earlier—that you were bored, and probably lonely sitting up here all day, especially when Gin is busy dealing with Port Mafia matters. This is bound to happen again, and next time, he might not be lucky enough to have someone catch you slipping out of the building. 

So, he’ll have to do something about it himself, make sure you’re not bored enough to leave the building and unwittingly place yourself in danger, he decides, pleased. 

“Would you…” Dazai hesitates as he looks down at you, uncharacteristically nervous. You tilt your head to the side curiously. “Would you want to go on a date with me tomorrow?” 

A smile splits across your face. 

“Is that even a question?” 

Dazai’s woken up by someone shaking his shoulder. 

Realistically, he knows that no enemy is able to make it to the top level of the Port Mafia’s most well-protected tower—it’s impenetrable, if the masses of armed guards on the lower floors aren’t enough to keep out intruders, then the Black Lizards on the middle floors would be more than enough, and if even they aren’t, Atsushi and Chuuya are stationed on the higher floors, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice. Still, he’s startled, unsure of who would be in his office waking him up at this time and caught off guard because he hadn’t even meant to fall asleep, so instinctively, he’s reaching for the gun hidden at his side, eyes a bit wild as he jolts up, trying to figure out what’s going on.

“Sorry.” He only settles down when he hears your voice coming from his side, apologetic and little over a whisper as to not alarm him anymore than he already is. Instantly, his fingers loosen around the grip of his gun, a lump in his throat when he realizes that he almost pulled a gun on you. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Dazai shakes his head as soon as your words process, still trying to gather his bearings. He’s in his office, he must’ve fell asleep while looking over paperwork at his desk—plans for the upcoming event hosted by Nabokov, and a list of all of the possible informants that could be leaking information to Dostoevsky’s rats because one too many of the Port Mafia’s warehouse’s have been raided by the military police in the past few weeks for Dazai to be comfortable with, and he knows Dostoevsky is behind it because the man has been leaving little clues like it’s some sort of game to him. Dazai thinks that they should just kill all of the suspects and be done with it—if someone is even being suspected of having betrayed the Port Mafia, then they’re doing something severely wrong, but Kouyou advised him to go about this the right way. 

Subtly, so as to not draw your attention, he shifts to cover the papers and then gives you his full attention, curious as to what you’re doing up so early because the sun hasn’t even risen yet. He’s been trying to make sure that he wakes up before you so that you don’t come looking for him in here, knowing where this is the most likely place where you’d stumble upon something that incriminates him as a mafioso rather than a businessman. 

“You didn’t,” he lies through his teeth, voice a bit hoarse from sleep. “Is something wrong?”

You’re still dressed in your pajamas, but you have a fluffy rube wrapped around you and a soft smile on your face that makes Dazai’s chest swell. Your eyes are bright, gleaming with a type of excitement that has him tilting his head in curiosity, waiting to see what you have to say.

“Do you have access to the roof of the building?” you ask him, voice still hushed but tinged with more enthusiasm. When he nods, a smile splits across your face. “Can we go up there?”

Dazai doesn’t have the willpower to deny you anything, so there’s no hesitation as he says: “Of course.” But then as he rises to his feet, pulling on his long, black coat that he’d shrugged off at some point last night, he looks at you and asks, “Why?”

“I like watching sunrises,” you say, bounding over to the elevator and waiting for him to follow. He does, of course. He would follow you anywhere. Everywhere. He dreads the day you go somewhere he can’t follow. It’s inevitable—he doesn’t believe in the existence of heaven, but if there is one, you would go there, and he won’t. There’s too much blood on his hands, staining his skin no matter how much he scrubs it raw, and the blood that runs within him is black and corrupted, beyond any type of remedy. “I want to see one from the highest point in the city.”

Oh. Dazai’s heart leaps to his throat when he realizes what’s about to happen, pulling his access key from his pocket and swiping it against the pad to allow access to the roof. Some things differ across all of the universes: the way you meet him (although you’re always the one to find him), the way you die (he always finds you though), sometimes it takes a while for the two of you to progress past the friends stage, but it’s usually not too long. 

Everything varies except for one thing: the sunrises. In every universe, you have an obsession with them: you like watching them, seeing as many new ones as you possibly can. You explained to him once that it was because it helps you move forward, gives you hope, a reason to wake up each morning. The infatuation with them began after your brother’s death in the other universes when you couldn’t find any reason to keep going on your own so you sought one out in the sunrises—although this is something you only opened up to him about in one universe, in all of the others, you’ve hidden your past struggles with depression from him. He’s not sure why, maybe just because you don’t want to burden him with them. 

It would be just like you, trying to share the weight of all of his burdens but shouldering yours on your own.

He wonders if you’ll tell him in this one. He wonders what made that universe’s Dazai so special. He feels viciously jealous and for a moment, irrationally hates his other self, only finding solace in the fact that all of the other Dazais would probably feel just as scorned over the fact that only one of them got special treatment. 

He thinks you can sense the deterioration of his thoughts, because you reach out and lace your fingers with his as you lean against the back of the elevator, waiting to get to the top floor. His grip on your hand is a bit too tight, he thinks, but it keeps him grounded. You’re here. You’re with him. All of the other universes don’t matter. Only this one does. 

His lips part to speak, to fill the silence, but no words leave them. He thinks he’s spoken more these past two months with you than he has in his entire life. He never has any desire to speak unless he’s with you, and then he’ll find any reason to speak if it means he can hear your voice. 

“You don’t have to sleep in your office, you know?” you say abruptly, voice quiet. You’re not looking at him, he wonders if you’re embarrassed at whatever you’re about to say because you hesitate as you add, “I know I’ve pretty much commandeered your room but… I wouldn’t mind sharing a bed with you. This is your place, you should be comfortable too.”

Dazai thinks his face might be on fire, all of the air whooshing from his lungs at your words because of course, it’s something he’s thought of, dreamed of, but he never imagined you would just offer it up like that. He’s quiet for too long, evidently, because you seem to be more embarrassed. Just as he’s about to force something out, the elevator doors slide open and you’re rushing forward, yanking him along, as if to pretend you never said anything and Dazai can’t help the small smile that curves onto his lips.

“That would be nice,” he tells you quietly, he doesn’t know if you hear but he thinks you do because your grip on his hand tightens. 

The air is bitterly cold as high up as the two of you are, and the wind is wicked. He thinks that you’re definitely not dressed warm enough, a robe isn't nearly enough to shield from this type of cold, but you look unbothered, an exhilarated smile painted on your face as you drag him dangerously close to the edge of the roof, and Dazai can’t help the way his anxiety spikes—not for his sake, but for yours. His grip on your hand tightens a bit but you only plop down at the edge of the roof, tugging his arm gently as a way of beckoning him to sit with you.

He does. Of course, he does. 

His legs dangle off the side of the roof, thigh pressed against yours, and you keep your fingers laced with his, holding his hand on your lap. You stare ahead, eyes bright and excited as you wait for the sunrise. He stares at you, captivated. A part of him is still convinced this is all some twisted dream that his mind conjured to torture him—that he’s going to wake up slumped over on his desk to an empty apartment with only the faint memory of you to console himself with. 

Desperately, he wonders if there were any other universes like this, if this is just another spiral into the pages of the Book, just one more intense and more vivid than all of the rest. He knows there were universes where he stayed with the Port Mafia, universes where he became its boss—but he was older in those, in his mid or late twenties. No, this is his universe, it has to be, right? Right?

He doesn’t realize that his grip on your hand has tightened until you look over at him, and instantly, he loosens it, but you only tighten yours in response. Your eyes meet his and suddenly Dazai is breathless, unsure of what to say or do. You always look at him as if you’re looking into him, not at him, not like everyone else. It’s unnerving. He hates it. He loves it.

“Are you okay?” you ask him, knocking your shoulder into his. 

The smile on his face doesn’t necessarily meet his eyes, but the words he speaks are probably the most genuine that he’s ever uttered in his entire life. “When I’m with you? Always.”

Your expression softens, although he can’t help but notice that you don’t seem entirely placated by his response. He’s grateful that you don’t push though, because he doesn’t want to lie to you. You lean over though, resting your head on his bicep, and his breath hitches when you bring your free hand to your lap too, cradling his hand in both of yours. He forces himself to look ahead again, not wanting you to see the way his visible eye has suddenly become misty. 

You trace absent patterns on his skin as you wait for the sun to break over the horizon and Dazai is lost to his thoughts once more, heart suddenly clogging his throat as he realizes that yes, this is his universe and yes, you are here. With him. He doesn’t have to cling to the vague memories of your warm touch and sweet words, not when you’re sitting next to him and giving him them now. Why is he trying to drift off into the pages when he has you here? In a universe where Dazai was certain he’d never experience the tenderness your presence brought him, he should be savoring this. 

“Gin told me the other day that you guys are having trouble with a rival company,” you say quietly, and that draws him back to the present, brows furrowing as he wonders just how much Gin told you, mind racing as he tries to figure out where exactly this conversation is going. “That you guys are trying to prepare for an event they’re hosting in a week. I don’t want you to… worry about me or anything while you’re busy getting ready for all of that… Maybe that’s a bit presumptuous of me to assume but I just… I don’t know. I know you’ve been stressed about it, I don’t want to put more on you.”

Dazai lets out a quiet puff of air. “You see right through me, don’t you?” he murmurs, voice gentle and fond as his gaze drifts over you. “You don’t have to worry about that. You don’t put any stress on me.”

You look a bit flustered at his words, glancing down at your lap, at where his fingers are still laced with yours. You squeeze them tighter for a second and then look back out at the horizon. “... I’m glad,” you tell him softly. “I’ll keep out of your way the weekend of, though. I already talked to one of my friends, she’s going to let me stay with her for the weekend. Well. Assuming my apartment isn’t fixed by then. I still can’t believe it’s taking so long.”

The fondness is gone. Dazai’s world crashes and burns.

It’s only sheer willpower that prevents his sudden burst of anxiety from showing on his face. He turns his gaze out to the horizon now, staring ahead as he tries to figure out how to tell you no without sounding psychotic. 

His tongue presses to the roof of his mouth, the nails of his free hand scrape painfully against the rooftop as he desperately tries to fumble together a plan. You cannot leave the tower the night of the event. There’s already a high chance that Dostoevsky knows about you—Dazai knows there’s a spy in the Port Mafia and he doesn’t know if they’ve spotted you around the base. You’ve been leaving the headquarters more frequently during the day since that day with Chuuya; Dazai is never able to join you but he makes sure that Tachihara, Chuuya or Atsushi are with you on the chance that you’re targeted. 

If he’s being realistic, there’s no shot that Dostoevsky doesn’t know of you already, and if you’re out and about while the entire Port Mafia is readying for this event… No one would be left for him to station a protection detail on you, and it would be just like Dostoevsky to capitalize on that as he has in so many other universes, having you killed when no one is around to protect you.

God, is this it?

The words ring through his head. Cold. Damning. His bones feel as if they’d been thrown into a blast chiller and stuck back inside of his body. His stomach churns. Is this it? Is this how it’s going to happen?

He can’t let it happen. How does he prevent it?

How does he prevent it?

He thinks there’s only one way, but it leaves a sour taste in his mouth because it’s nearly as risky as letting you go off on your own, the only difference being that he would at least have some semblance of control over the situation. 

“Oh,” he finally forces out, the words sound distant and hoarse even to his own ears.

You look at him. Fatal. You can always read right through him, he has to make his decision quick.

“You sound… disappointed,” you say hesitantly.

He makes his decision, and he prays to any god that will listen that it doesn’t backfire.

“I was… going to ask you to be my date to the event, actually,” he says, careful to not look at you and give you even more of a window into his mind. He feels the way you straighten at his words. Hooked. He continues with, “... but if you already made plans with your friend…”

“Really?” you breathe out, your grip on his hand is tight, he can feel the way your fingers are trembling around his.

“Really,” he tells you softly, finally daring to look at you.

Your eyes are shining, the expression on your face so open and unguarded that Dazai almost feels bad for lying, but you don’t have to know the truth, that the only reason he’s inviting you with him is because he can’t have you going out and about alone. Not now. Not until Dostoevsky is dead.

But once Dostoevsky is dead, then what about all of the other threats? Agatha Christie? All of the enemies he’s made in this lifetime? When does it end?

He can’t think about that right now. He has to tackle the issue at hand first. 

You turn your head to look back out at the horizon, a smile edging at the corners of your lips. “I would love to be your date,” you say so quietly that Dazai almost doesn’t hear you. 

But he does, and he can’t hold back a relieved breath this time as he squeezes your hand.

A comfortable silence washes over the two of you as you wait for the sunrise, and Dazai doesn’t think he’s ever felt more at home. He’s still tired, undoubtedly; he hadn’t meant to fall asleep last night because he knew damn well that he’d only be more tired when he woke up, it would’ve been easier to just stay up the whole night. But now, he’s so at ease with you that he could almost fall back asleep—and that’s a feat in itself because Dazai hardly sleeps, and never feels comfortable enough to do so, he only ever sleeps when he's too exhausted to keep going. You’re so warm, so home, how could his eyes not start drooping shut?

“You know why they’re so great?” you suddenly ask, drawing him out of the drowsy state he was threatening to fall into. You’re still looking ahead, but he’s looking back down at you now.

 It’s close—the sun is about to rise, and he doesn’t care to see it himself, he cares to see you. He wants to see how the orange hues reflect in your eyes, the way your skin glows beneath the golden rays; he thinks it’s a holy experience, Dazai has felt the whirlwind of emotions that all of the other Dazais go through the first time they see you beneath the rising sun and he never thought he’d be able to feel it for himself.

“Because no two are ever the same?” His voice is soft and hesitant, and he’s not thinking as he speaks. He doesn’t even register what he said until you’re pulling your head off of his shoulder to look at him again, eyes wide, delighted.

“Yeah!” You toss him such a stunning smile that it almost physically dazes him. “You get it.”

He doesn’t have the heart to admit that he’s a fraud, closing in on himself a bit, but you don’t notice, head turning straight again. 

“They give me something to look forward to,” you say, a bit quieter again. Your gaze is distant as you look out into the sky, as if you’re seeing something that’s not actually there. “I want to see as many of them as I can.”

Dazai once tried to find the same comfort in sunrises that you did. It was when he first came up with his plan and he realized that he’d never get the chance to be with you, and he’d never get the chance to call Odasaku a friend. He came up here, actually, and watched the sunrise in this very spot. It was bitter and cold. It made him sick to his stomach. It made him feel emptier than he already was. And he realized that there was no beauty or appeal to them unless you were at his side. 

“We should…” 

You trail off as you turn to look at him again suddenly and Dazai’s lips part to warn you that you’re going to miss the best part—your favorite part, as you’ve told him (not him) over and over again. But the words die on his tongue as the sun breaks over the horizon and wow, he understands it. 

He understands it. God, he understands it. Everything he’s felt through the other Dazais pale in comparison to the sight before him and how it entirely devastates the thin thread of control he has on his emotions whenever he’s with you. Enamored. Captivated. His chest feels tight and his throat feels swollen and Dazai is in love. He is so completely and irrevocably in love that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to recover. 

Suddenly, he understands why so many of the other Dazais have come to terms with their feelings for you at this moment. 

The sunrise washes over you and Dazai thinks you’re utterly angelic. Your eyes reflect the myriad of colors sweeping over the horizon, your skin glows beneath the red and gold hues. You’re beautiful, unreally so. Too divine for someone like him to lay his tainted fingers upon. He’s suddenly hyper aware of how his shoulder is brushing yours and how your fingers are laced with his. He thinks he should pull away, spare you from his putrid touch, but he couldn’t even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to, because he’s so wholly selfish that he would rather condemn you to ruin than part from you. 

“We should watch them together,” you finally say, and your eyes don’t leave his and you’re missing the sunrise but you don’t seem to mind, searching his face desperately for an answer. 

It takes an embarrassingly long time for your words to process, but when they do, Dazai thinks there’s no way he’s going to be able to hide the sudden urge he feels to cry. 

“Yeah,” he says. His voice cracks, he can’t even bring himself to care. ��Yeah, we should.”

Nakahara Chuuya is livid when he gets a notification to his phone about the roof suddenly being accessed, knowing damn well only one other person can get up there. The vibrations from his phone wake him up, and then the subsequent spike of panic that shoots through him when he realizes what the notification is and what the implications of it are is more than enough to have him throwing himself out of bed and sprinting up the stairs, realizing that the elevator will take far too long.

It takes him a total of two minutes to get up to the roof from the thirty-second floor, and by the time he gets there, he’s so full of rage that Chuuya feels like he might explode. The last time Dazai went up to the roof, he was six bottles deep and Chuuya was hardly able to grab him before he toppled over the edge, and Chuuya is not in the mood to deal with that this early in the morning.

Chuuya hadn’t thought this would be an issue now, not with you here because although Chuuya still doesn’t know quite who you are or how you’ve managed to get Dazai Osamu under your thumb, he knows that Dazai is not the Dazai that Chuuya knows whenever you’re around. And Chuuya doesn’t get it, you’re nice enough, pleasant to talk to and pleasant to look at, but he doesn’t think that there’s anything special about you. Not special enough to have Dazai so entirely enamored by you that he’s starting to put the Port Mafia second, at least.

Apparently not enamored enough to stop from getting shit-faced and suicidal, though.

Chuuya’s jaw tightens as he pushes open the door to the roof and-

And he freezes. 

The fury slowly starts to dissipate as he catches sight of where you’re sitting at the edge of the roof with Dazai as the sun finally starts to rise. He thinks he should leave, go back down and get a few more hours of sleep before he has to meet Kouyou and Hirotsu at ten to go over the protection details for the event Nabokov is hosting, but he can’t help the way he hesitates, watching how absolutely infatuated Dazai looks as the sun rays sweep over you. Less like the cold and cruel boss of the Port Mafia that Chuuya’s become used to over the past few years, and more like the kid he met at fifteen, the one who disappeared and turned into a shell of himself after a few months of Chuuya knowing him. 

Chuuya never understood why. The only time he ever got close was that night on the roof when he started breaking down after Chuuya stopped him from jumping, but even then Dazai refused to explain anything to him. It pissed him off, honestly, because they were supposed to be partners. Chuuya was supposed to have the asshole’s back, no matter how infuriating he may be, but something changed a few months before Dazai’s sixteenth birthday and whatever it was, it entirely killed off anything left of the Dazai that Chuuya knew. No matter how much he demanded to know what happened, Dazai blew him off—dismissive at first, then cruelly, until Chuuya finally had enough and let it be. 

If he wanted to go off and be a husk of himself, then so be it, far be it from Chuuya to stop him.

But now… 

Chuuya lets out a quiet huff, shaking his head, drawing his eyes from where Dazai is looking at you as if you’re the only thing in the world that matters, stars in his eyes and a soft smile on his lips, to look up at the sky. He supposes it doesn’t quite matter if he doesn’t understand what’s so special about you to make Dazai act like this, just the fact that you do is enough—and if it turns out this is all some scheme by one of the Port Mafia’s enemies to get close to Dazai, Chuuya will do what he has to do. He always does. 

He thinks he should still grab Dazai—if Chuuya remembers correctly, he has a meeting with Ace in twenty minutes, but he takes one last look at where you’re sitting with him and lets out another heavy sigh, shaking his head and deciding that he’ll just handle the meeting. He’s been meaning to have a word with the man about his business in eastern Russia anyway.

He closes the door quietly, heading back inside, all of the lingering resentment and anger washed away; he lets Dazai indulge, if only because he knows nothing good ever lasts in this line of work. It’s only a matter of time before his luck runs out.

[fyorina]

— your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing

carina • italian/puerto rican • twenties • multifandom • personal/writing blog

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current series: unreal unearth {dazai}

coming up: tbd

— i am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 YOUNG GOD

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: after an agonizing two weeks, dazai finally returns to you and a much needed conversation takes place. {wordcount: 11.6k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE AT INSTALLMENT 5 ALREADY!!! this is so bittersweet i'm literally about to cry, i hope you guys have enjoyed badlands and i hope y'all join me for unreal unearth next week!! i got to add one of my favorite quotes in this chapter hehe you guys get extra points if you spot it. reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

WARNINGS: explicit mentions of past suicide attempts + past self harm & scars

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

Dazai is exhausted. His ears ring and his bones ache, his feet are unsteady beneath him and his body pleads for him to rest. Around him, the other members of the Agency are ecstatic, he thinks he’s gotten more hugs in the past hour than he’s gotten in his entire life. A part of him feels warm—he feels like he belongs, and his place in the Agency has always been one that he’s questioned. On bad nights, he used to think that the last place he truly belonged was on one of those three bar stools all those years ago, that being a member of the Agency—more than just in name, actually being a member—was nothing but an unattainable dream, because how could he possibly belong amongst people who are so unfailingly good that it makes his tainted heart stick out like a sore thumb? 

But now, Atsushi cries in relief at the sight of him and Yosano wraps him in a hug so tight that his already brittle bones threaten to snap; Kunikida’s throat spasms as he squeezes Dazai’s shoulder and Kenji and Kyouka throw themselves into his arms. Naomi and Haruno cling to his hands, while Tanizaki tears up in front of him with balled fists as he tells him that he’s missed him. Ranpo shoots him a wild grin and a salute and Fukuzawa pats the top of his head telling Dazai that he’s proud of him, and Dazai thinks he might cry because he feels like he’s finally found a home. 

An incomplete home, but a home nonetheless. 

Because even as he recounts his side of the story, watching hazily as Kunikida writes it all down, his mind is barely connected to his own body. His body feels prickly and his mind is muddled with fatigue, his brain throbs so painfully that he thinks he might actually be dying. He’s overwhelmed and anxious—the strain that the constant games of misdirection and manipulations with Dostoevsky has placed on him is finally becoming too much for him to handle. He’s on the verge of collapse and he needs to be somewhere he feels safe before that happens, and there’s only one place—one person—that fits that criteria.

You. 

He doesn’t even register what’s happening as Kunikida, Yosano and Atsushi help Dazai out of the office and into the back of Kunikida’s car. Atsushi sits with him in the back seat as Kunikida and Yosano take the front—they’re driving him somewhere, but Dazai isn’t even entirely sure where, and his tongue feels too heavy in his mouth for him to even ask. Atsushi is talking to him, he might even be telling Dazai where they’re going but the words sound like a distant hum and as he tries to read the boy’s lips, it all just seems blurry and unfocused. 

He doesn’t even know if you’re okay. 

Queen captured.

The words ring in his head over and over again as they have since the moment Dostoevsky uttered them aloud, but he doesn’t know what Dostoevsky’s capture of you entailed. He doesn’t know if you were killed. You could have been killed. If Dostoevsky had a lover, a weakness that Dazai could target, then they would have been the first person that Dazai aimed to take out to throw the Russian off of his game, and he would show no mercy. You could be dead, for all he knows; no one in the Agency had mentioned whether or not they knew if you were okay, or if they had, Dazai hadn’t heard it. 

You could be dead. 

Dazai’s vision spins again, his stomach lurches as Kunikida takes a turn too wide—he can’t keep himself grounded no matter how hard he tries. He wants to tell Kunikida that he needs to see you, he needs to get to your apartment complex and make sure you’re there, and if you’re not, he needs to talk to your neighbors and make sure you’re at least okay. Until he does that, he can’t rest, no matter how much his body begs him to give in. 

He loves you. He’s sure of it now. He knew it before he left you two weeks ago. He thinks he might have known it all the way back then on the night you rescued him at the shore, when you woke up in the middle of the night and sat with him on the couch after making him hot chocolate. He thinks he fell in love with the bright smile that lifted to your lips when he took a sip of the drink you made him and you realized he enjoyed it—no one has ever looked so happy to see him happy with something before, no one has ever cared enough about him for that.

He is so completely and irrevocably in love with you that Dazai doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to live in a world without you. The thought alone makes his skin crawl and his chest cave in. Before he met you, he had long accepted that he was destined to be alone, that he wasn’t a human but instead a thing caught between monster and man—he had accepted that he was incapable of loving, and even more so, that he was incapable of being loved. 

You had changed his perspective on everything, you had changed it so absolutely that Dazai doesn’t think there’s any going back to how he once viewed the world, how he once viewed himself. He’s started looking forward to sunrises, if it means he could watch them with you. He’s found himself looking around Yokohama and seeing places to take you rather than scouting out places for possible attempts. God, he’s even saving his money—Dazai Osamu has never saved money in his life because he hoped that each day would hopefully be his last. He’s blow it on alcohol and food and stupid trinkets that he didn’t need, but now, he’s caught himself putting aside some of his paychecks so he can save up for a nicer apartment that the two of you can live in together.

Dazai thinks that he can’t breathe, his throat feels swollen and he brings one of his hands up to tug at the collar of the white sweatshirt he’s wearing, tugging at it as if it’s the reason that he can’t breathe properly.

Dazai can’t go back to a world without you. He can’t.

Next to him, Atsushi is reaching out to him, as if trying to get him to calm down and Dazai doesn’t even want to know what the expression on his face might be right now. Everything is crumbling and tunneling around him—Atsushi, Kunikida, and Yosano are all dissolving, the car doors are fading away, the buildings and the streets and all of the scenery is just disappearing. 

Shit, he thinks, trying to figure out how the hell to ground himself. Shit, shit-

The car comes to such an abrupt stop that Dazai would have gone flying into the seat in front of him were it not for Atsushi throwing an arm across his chest to stop it from happening, the brakes screeching loudly and the car skidding. Yosano is pointing wildly, shouting something and Kunikida is shouting something back, something along the lines of her nearly causing him to get into an accident, but Dazai can only follow to where Yosano is pointing too, gaze dragging across the woman’s arm in the direction of the beach to the left of the car.

He wonders if he’s hallucinating. 

His fingers are shaking violently as he reaches out to push open the car door, squirming out of Atsushi’s protective hold. He flings himself out of the car desperately, nearly crashing hard onto the concrete—the fresh air is almost dizzying as he inhales it, pushing himself to his feet as quickly as possible. His broken leg screams in protest, but Dazai ignores it, vision blurring for the sparest moment before it focuses in on the figure standing on the beach in a familiar long, tan coat. 

His lips part to call your name but no words leave them—he’s not sure if it’s because he’s still half out of it or if it’s because he’s scared that if he calls your name and you don’t respond, it’ll confirm it’s just a hallucination. 

But he doesn’t have to say your name, whether it’s just by chance or if you heard the brakes of the car screeching, you turn in his direction. 

You’re wearing his coat; it’s too long on you—the tan edges are dragging against the sand and whipping around you as the wind picks up. But you’re wearing his coat and you’re beautiful; your expression shifts into one of recognition and then shock as soon as you see Dazai in the near distance, the sun is starting to set over the horizon and the soft orange glow casts an unearthly glow over you, and Dazai thinks everything about this is entirely unreal. He thinks that you might be some sort of angel, or some other type of divine being, and he thinks that he doesn’t even deserve to look at you, much less consider you his.

As he makes his way toward you, he can’t even put together all of his thoughts in a coherent manner. You’re alive is the first thought that rings through his head, the relief is almost debilitating. All of the days he spent with his heart in his throat, unsure of whether or not his decision had gotten you killed, have finally come to an end. The next thought that runs through his head is god, because he’s imagined this moment dozens of times since he first had to leave you. He’s imagined running to you, scooping you into his arms and swinging you around, holding you close and refusing to let go because Dazai doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of you again.

Except that’s entirely how it doesn’t go.

Dazai barely makes it to you before his legs are giving out on him, as much as he tries to ignore the pain, it evidently becomes too much for his body to handle. He’s collapsing into you the moment he makes it to you. His head is still throbbing, his leg is screaming, his body is aching, but your hands are instinctively grabbing him to break his fall, his knees crashing against the sand, and Dazai just can’t bring himself to care about the agony. He doesn’t care that his body is coming apart at its seams, he doesn’t even notice as you lower yourself down into the sand with him.

“Osamu.” His name leaves your lips in a breathy whisper, one that’s riddled with disbelief and longing—something else too, but Dazai can’t decipher it in his muddled state. “You’re here.”

He tries to say your name, but he’s pretty sure it comes out garbled and unintelligible. Distantly, he can feel his fingers twisting into the fabric of his jacket, trying to clutch onto you as best as he can in spite of the numbness that still threatens to consume him. Then, your grip on him shifts from the instinctual grab into your arms wrapping around his waist, one hand splayed across his back and the other sliding up to cradle his head to your chest as you hold him close, and Dazai thinks all is right in the world again. He doesn’t want to move, he doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t want to do anything but just let himself melt into you.

The feeling of your touch for the first time in weeks is enough to chase away the creeping numbness and anxiety, and everything still hurts but all of it dulls in comparison to being in your arms again. Dazai’s breath is shaky, he teeters over the edge of collapse now that he’s finally with you, his weary brain betraying him as it uses the comfort of your arms as an excuse to finally surrender. His vision swims—he’s not sure if it’s from relieved tears or exhaustion, maybe both—his nose is flooded with the scent of you, the scent of home.

“You’re here,” you whisper again as if you can’t believe it; Dazai can’t even blame you because a part of him still fears that if he lets go of you, you’ll disappear, a cruel trick on him played by his treacherous mind. You pull away from him and Dazai’s fingers instinctively cling to you harder, trying to get you to stay in place, but his body is far too weak for it to be effective. 

You lean back and bring your hands up to cup Dazai’s cheeks and it takes all of his willpower to not just let himself fall limp. Your expression twists a bit, he’s not sure what you see—nothing good, definitely. Yosano splinted his leg and cleaned up the wounds on his face, but his ability canceling hers prevents him from getting the wounds healed quickly, so his face is bruised and swollen, cuts litter his skin from when the elevator had crashed to the bottom floor. 

He thinks he must look disgusting, he doesn’t even know how you can bear to look at him. But he supposes that’s not a new thought to cross his mind, he’s never understood how you can look at him the way you do.

“What happened to you?” you breathe out, and Dazai’s lashes flutter as your thumb ghosts over his cheekbone, eyes searching his for an answer to your question. Dazai doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t, leaning into your touch. “God, Osamu, you look like you’re about to drop dead.”

“Are you calling me ugly?” 

Even in his objectively terrible state, Dazai is able to croak out the five words, although he’s sure the playful lilt is lost in his fatigue. You stare at him for a moment, as if you didn’t hear him properly, but then your expression shifts into one of disbelief and your hand flies to your mouth to smother the laugh that he’s missed so desperately the past two weeks.

“Can you walk?” you ask after a moment, hand lingering on his cheek before dropping down to his forearm, squeezing gently. 

Dazai winces at your words, shaking his head—he barely even made it to you, he’s not going to make it all the way to your apartment complex.

You let out a puff of air caught between a laugh and a sigh. “Guess we’re doing this again,” you say, a teasing cadence dancing in your tone. Dazai’s brows furrow a bit in confusion, but then you’re grabbing his arm and trying to heave him to his feet. “At least you won’t be pretending to be unconscious this time.” 

Dazai struggles to help you as you do your best to get him onto your back; a nostalgic feeling sweeps through him as he remembers the first time the two of you met, waking up after a failed suicide attempt to find you cursing and complaining as you try to haul him back to your apartment. He wonders if you knew what you know now back then, if you would have still stopped to help him—but that leads him to a line of questioning that he doesn’t want to approach yet. 

Do you know where he’s been? 

Do you know his past? 

Do you know everything he’s done?

He pushes the thoughts away. 

As if the gods above remember the event and want the two of you to reenact it as close to the original as possible, he feels a few drops of rain splatter against his face.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” He hears you complain as you finally get him settled on your back. “Keep your gangly legs to yourself this time, I don’t need them knocking into me this time.”

“... I was purposely trying to trip you, you know?” Dazai admits, voice hoarse and weak and the smile curling to the edges of his lips is lazy but it’s real for the first time in what feels like forever. “I thought it would be funny.”

You gasp loudly. “I knew it! You’re such an asshole.”

Dazai laughs, letting his head fall into the crook of your neck—he wants to bask in the light feeling that’s replacing the emptiness in his chest, but a part of him can’t help but feel like this is only the eye of the storm. 

Back in the car, Kunikida looks a bit worried as you struggle to get Dazai onto your back. 

“Should we go help her?” he asks quietly, glancing over at Yosano.

But Yosano doesn’t respond to him. She has an uncharacteristically soft expression on her face as she watches you laugh loudly at something Dazai says. He finally looks somewhat coherent again now that he’s with you, still in pain but that detached, disconnected look in his eyes that had been terrifying Atsushi is gone. 

“No.” Atsushi is the one to respond to Kunikida, smiling lightly as he finally drags his gaze away as he watches a genuine smile twitch to the corners of Dazai’s lips as you nearly trip and fall under his weight. “Let’s head back to the office.”

Dazai has been sleeping for hours.

You let out a soft puff of air as you idly comb your fingers through his hair, eyes tracing his face. His right eye is completely swollen, his lip is split, you can see bruises littering his neck that disappear beneath the bandages he wears, his leg is broken and splinted. Despite all of that, he still somehow looks at ease as he rests in your lap.

You’re not as at ease.

Well, a part of you is, against all of your common sense. Having Dazai back in your arms is far more comforting than it should be, with the conversation that needs to be had looming over you. The sight of him sleeping peacefully in your lap, the feel of his heart thrumming beneath your hand, the sound of his steady breathing, it’s all enough to alleviate your body and mind of the stress and anxiety that has been crippling you for the past two weeks.

He’s alive. He’s okay. He came back to you. 

You find consolation in the thoughts—in the few days you were detained by the Hunting Dogs, all you could do was think about Dazai. Your mind raced with worst case scenarios and crippling fears. In spite of all of the allegations placed against him, you still love him—you’d known it well before he left and the relief you felt seeing him again before was enough to confirm it.

You think it’s dangerous, and maybe a bit stupid; a part of you knows that you should run for the hills, the crimes that Jouno Saigiku listed out are nothing to scoff at, and even putting aside morality, his former position as an executive of the Port Mafia should be more than enough to have you fleeing, if only because that puts you in danger too. No one gets to the position that he supposedly obtained without gaining masses of enemies and no one leaves it alive without doubling said enemies. 

But you’re not running for the hills—not because of his crimes, and not because of the risk of being with him—and that scares you a bit. You’re having trouble reconciling the Dazai you know with the one you’ve been told exists. Even when you recall all of the times you woke up to find him staring out your window with an unsettlingly detached expression, eyes too still and too black to be normal, as if they absorbed all sound and light around him; when you recall all of the man’s strange idiosyncrasies that just don’t line up with the front he puts up; when you recall that night in Kyoto where he refused to divulge what his previous job was, you just can’t. 

The logic fits, your brain can see it and piece it together, your heart just won’t accept it.

Your knuckles graze the side of his face, a conflicted expression crossing over your own. 

You don’t know what to do.

A part of you doesn’t want him to wake up, because you know that when he does, you’ll be forced to have the talk that you’ve been dreadfully anticipating since you learned about his crimes and imprisonment. You don’t know what you expect from the conversation, you don’t know how to approach it, you don’t know what you want to know nor why you want to know it, you don’t even know if you should continue with your relationship with him and you don’t even know why that’s still a question in your mind because obviously you shouldn’t continue a relationship with him. 

Your brain feels like it might implode.

You take a step back.

As you always do when you’re faced with conflict and feel yourself getting overwhelmed, you try to take a more logical approach. First, you make yourself a chart: pros and cons, always a favorite of yours, centering around Dazai and your relationship with him. Then, you make a list: everything else you need to know to properly weigh into each of the pros and cons.

Pros: 

Dazai makes you happy. (An important pro, you think, maybe it’ll outweigh all of the rest.)

Cons: 

138 counts of conspiracy to murder.

You pause. 

Distantly, you wonder what your life has come to—making a pro/con chart with one of the cons being 138 counts of conspiracy to murder. You press your hand against your mouth, staring ahead as you reconsider every action you’ve taken to lead to this moment. Promptly, you decide to scrap the pro/con chart and move right on to the list of things you need to know. 

What do you need to know?

First off, you need confirmation over whether or not the allegations are true—if they’re not, then you’re spiraling for nothing and you can move on happily in your relationship with Dazai.

If they are?

You swallow thickly. You need context—you’re not sure what type of context would justify those crimes, you don’t think there’s any justification for them, honestly, but there must be a reason as to why you cannot reconcile the Dazai that you know with the one you’ve been told exists. You like to believe that you’re good at reading people—although you’re definitely questioning it now—so there must be some context that you’re missing as to how the “alleged Dazai” became the “known Dazai.” 

And maybe—just maybe—if you can understand that, then maybe you can still move on in your relationship with him. Because even if his crimes aren’t justifiable, people can change and it would be beyond you to scorn someone trying to do their best to become a better person. It’s not like you’re some squeaky clean, paragon of virtue anyway: your university and grad school is mostly being paid off by your brother’s blood money from the underground rings, and yeah, it doesn’t really compare to being a former executive to the most dangerous gang in Yokohama but it definitely narrows your room to judge. 

You glance back down at Dazai.

Your eyes meet wide, tired brown ones that immediately shut as soon as he catches you looking at him, as if pretending to still be asleep.

“Dazai Osamu, we are not playing this game again.”

Dazai reopens his eyes with a sheepish smile but he doesn’t say anything for a moment. Slowly, his expression shifts, the corners of his lips furling downward as a mixture of realization and resignation pools in his eyes. 

“You know.”

The two words are so unassuming yet so damning, your heart lurches and your stomach churns. Dazai isn’t looking at you anymore, he’s staring up at the ceiling, waiting for you to speak.

Is that confirmation? Just like that?

“I don’t know anything until you tell me,” you decide to say, your voice a bit tighter than you intended for it to be.

Dazai’s eyes draw back to you, studying you carefully. He looks conflicted—over what, you’re not sure. You think if he tries to blow this off rather than explaining it to you, you might lose your mind. You’re giving him a chance to explain on his own terms and if he doesn’t take it-

You reach out instinctively as Dazai starts to push himself off of your lap into a sitting position, fingers brushing his back worriedly. 

“You shouldn’t be moving around,” you tell him quietly.

He only shakes his head, finally speaking, his voice so quiet that it’s barely audible. “Let me take you somewhere.”

S. ODA

The four letters engraved into the headstone before you have been weathered by time, you can see lichen creeping across the slate and stone flaking at the edges—enough for you to put together that whoever has been put to rest here has probably been gone for a few years. Questions itch at the tip of your tongue but you bite them, waiting for Dazai to say something instead so that he can lead the conversation.

He has yet to say a word. From the moment that he slid into the passenger seat of your car, the only words that he’s spoken have been directions to the cemetery. The conflicted expression that had been etched onto his face has finally disappeared, smoothing out into an eerily blank one that you can hardly stand to look at because you know only dark thoughts must be racing through his head. 

You wrap your arms around your waist as another chilly wind whips around the two of you, grateful that you’d thrown a jacket on before leaving your apartment. Dazai is only dressed in his trench coat, too thin for the cold but he refused to wear anything else. You’re not sure why, but you have caught him burying his nose into the collar and inhaling, memorizing your scent as if it’s about to disappear. 

“I officially joined the Port Mafia when I was fifteen,” Dazai finally says. You raise your eyebrows a bit, wondering just how much autonomy a fifteen year old has to willingly choose to join the Mafia, but you don’t voice your thoughts, waiting for him to continue. “I met Nakahara Chuuya, a current executive of the Mafia, that same year and we earned the moniker Double Black for being the most lethal pair in Yokohama’s underground. At sixteen, I was put in charge of the boss’s personal covert ops unit and I was promoted to executive for all of my accomplishments, youngest underboss in the Mafia’s history. I’d eliminated countless rival organizations, opened numerous new distribution channels for all of their illegal trades, and had a hand in planning nearly all of the major operations both within and outside of Yokohama.”

His voice is void of any emotion, a cold monotone as he speaks the words like a bland recitation of a prewritten speech; his eyes are too empty and far too still as he stares ahead at the grave in front of the two of you. It’s unnerving; somehow, you think you like it even less than the actual matter of what he’s saying.

“Until I was eighteen, I continued to be the driving force behind the Mafia’s rapid growth and ironclad control over Yokohama; while I was an executive, no foreign organization dared to try to usurp control over any of our territory. They’d give up their territory if they knew I was the one heading the expansion operations, because they were scared of me and because they knew it was a lost cause trying to defend against me. Whatever you heard about me, it’s all true and probably way worse than you could ever imagine.”

The silence between the two of you following his words is damning—the wind is too loud and the distant sounds of cars honking and brakes screeching is jarring. You can hear your heart thudding in your ears, you can feel your gut twisting, your fingers tremble from where they’re stuffed in your pockets. Dazai is a statue next to you, his eyes haven’t budged, his limbs are stiff. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think him a corpse

Your lips part to speak but no words leave then. You take a moment before trying again. “How did you end up with the Mafia?” you ask, your voice is much weaker than you intended for it to be. 

Because that’s what you need to focus on—the context, that’s what you’d decided before he woke up and that’s what you’ll stick to, not what he’s done, but first how he ended up there and then why he left. You can’t imagine a fifteen year old willingly choosing to join the Mafia, so you think there must be more to the story. 

For the first time since the two of you arrived at the grave, Dazai moves—it’s subtle, a twitch of his fingers and a tug at the corner of his lips but it’s gone in an instant, you almost miss it. 

“I tried to kill myself when I was fourteen.” Bile rises to your throat almost as soon as his words process, you finally turn to look up at him but his expression hasn’t shifted at all. “The doctor tending to me ended up becoming the new leader of the Port Mafia. I was kept around as an insurance policy, and partly by my own volition, but I joined willingly at fifteen after turning him down several times.”

“Why?”

“I… thought something would happen. For so long, I just… couldn’t feel anything, and I didn’t see the point in living because of it. I thought that maybe the more extreme emotions—violence, death, desire—all of the things that are found in abundance in the Mafia… I thought that if I could be around people who display all of these things so plainly, that I would be able to see and understand what makes humankind human. I thought that maybe it would help me feel more human, and find some sort of reason to keep living.”

You exhale, eyes sliding shut for a second. You feel nauseous—hands lighty trembling as you desperately try to digest the large pill he gave you as quickly as you can because you still have more questions but god, what type of fourteen, fifteen year old feels so empty inside that he turns to the Mafia to try to feel something?

“You were a kid, Osamu. You’re not some incarnate of evil for ending up where you did, you were failed by all of the adults in your life,” you finally say quietly; you’re the one staring ahead now, and you can feel his eyes on you but you don’t dare to turn to look at him because you know that it’ll make you crack and you need to continue. Clearly something else happened when he was eighteen that led to him leaving the Mafia but what? Your gaze trails back to the grave in front of you, a sinking feeling in your chest. You take a deep, steady breath before asking your next question: “What changed at eighteen?”

“I didn’t leave the Port Mafia because I had some great epiphany as to the immorality of my actions,” Dazai snaps. His voice is tight and borderline antagonistic, emotion finally seeping into the monotone, as if he’s trying to convince you that he is what you claim he’s not. “I-”

He cuts himself off abruptly, his voice cracks, you lift your gaze to his face and your throat spasms when you notice the black pits have been replaced with the warm brown you’re used to, a vast array of emotions swimming within them, too many for you to pinpoint a single one.

“He was my friend,” Dazai finally says softly. “My only one, maybe. When he died, he told me that if both sides are the same to me—evil and justice—that I should become a good person, I should save people. So, do you understand? Nothing about me has changed since back then, and the only reason I’m on the side of the ‘good’ is because someone else asked it of me, not for any altruistic reason. I’m still the same now as I was then.”

“... I don’t think that’s quite true,” you tell him after a few seconds of silence, and you can feel him look at you and you can practically hear the bitter ‘what do you know?’ that he’s about to let out, so you force yourself to continue before he can. “I think that if someone had told me all of this a few weeks ago, I would’ve laughed in their face. I never once-”

Dazai scoffs. “So, you don’t understand,” he says, voice reverting back to that empty tone you hate, but his body is tense and he’s looking anywhere but you. “I’m good at putting up fronts, wearing masks depending on who I’m around; it’s how I learned to blend in with people. The man you know doesn’t exist. I’m a fraud, my blood runs black; when I’m pushed into a corner, I invariably fall back into old habits. I’ll never leave the dark and I don’t belong-”

“I think you’re wrong,” you interrupt him, recalling Yosano’s words from two weeks ago—he’ll never believe it himself. “I don’t think you’ll ever see yourself from an objective standpoint. I don’t think you want to believe that you’ve changed for the better, but I think you have. I’m not stupid, Osamu, and I’ve never been one to fall for people’s acts, no matter how good they might be. I’ve known something was up with you since that first night when I woke up and found you staring out the window, and still, I have never once doubted that you were a good man.”

“I killed people to get out of Meursault, I was willing to torture people to get information when the Guild showed up in Yokohama and then again when the Decay of the Angel arrived, I’ll manipulate anyone and everyone around me to see my plans through, I…”

Dazai is still listing off all of the reasons why he’s still a bad person, and maybe you should be listening but you can hear the way his voice is becoming increasingly more tinged with desperation, as if he’s intent on convincing you to change your viewpoint on him. You wonder if he thinks you’ll run, and then, you wonder if he’s trying to make you run—each sentence he speaks becomes more descriptive than the last. 

He’ll find himself sorely disappointed, because you’ve already decided that you won’t run. You’re still not convinced that this is the smartest decision on your part; Dazai is dangerous and being with him is dangerous, not because of him himself, but because of the threats that still linger from his past, but you suppose love always drives people to do stupid things in its name anyway. Even now, as he lists off all of these terrible things, you can’t imagine your life without him—you think a life without him will be dull and gray, and you’ll always look back to the time you spent with him as the happiest you ever were, regretting the decision you made here. 

You’re not the type of person to live a life full of regrets. 

And whether he sees it or not, you think he has changed. You’re not the only one—Yosano, Atsushi, all of the members of the Agency see him in a similar light as you, but he’s so blinded by his past that he refuses to see himself in the present. Even the things he says now, all of it was done in the name of protecting the people he cares about, and that’s not something you’re going to condemn him for. 

“I think he’d be proud of you.” You cut off his tangent with seven quiet words and Dazai goes utterly still and utterly silent next to you. “I didn’t know him, of course, but I think he’d be proud of the man you’ve become, Osamu. Change doesn’t happen overnight, you were surrounded by the dark for so long, and from such a young age, that it might take decades to remove its influence over you, but you’re trying and you’re saving people. I wish you could see yourself the same way I see you. I think he would be proud.”

You wonder if you pushed too far, sparing a glance his way. His brows are furrowed so intensely that you can’t hope to try to imagine what might be going through his mind, brown eyes flooding with emotion as he looks down at his friend’s grave.

“I’m not someone that was born to be with people,” he finally croaks out. “Romantically or platonically. I’m not right in the head. Manipulative, constantly trying to kill myself, prone to jealousy, pettiness and casual cruelty. There are so many people trying to kill me that I stashed guns in your apartment when you weren’t home just in case they came after me while I’m there—I don’t care if they get me, but they might go after me when I’m with you, or even go after you to get to me. Sometimes, I regret leaving the Mafia because I feel like it’s the only place I actually belonged because it’s the only place where I was actually good at what I do.”

You don’t speak, instead letting him list off everything that he thinks is wrong with him, laying out bare all of the things that he tried so hard to hide from you over the past few months. He can’t look at you, eyes trained ahead and you can see the way his fists are clenched in the pockets of his trench coats. He lowers his face into his collar again, burying his nose in the fabric before continuing. 

“During really bad slumps, I can barely get out of bed even though I can’t sleep; sometimes I won’t eat for days unless someone notices and forces me to and if they do, I usually get nasty with them; and I’ll do just about anything to die. Atsushi-kun has had to fish me from more rivers than I can count, Kunikida-kun has had to drag me to the hospital after trying to overdose on pills or drink various types of poisons, Yosano-sensei has spent days watching over me because she didn’t trust me not to try again once one of them saved me.”

His voice has mostly returned to that cold monotone, but there’s a hint of emotion clinging to the edges that he just can’t wipe away, something caught between desperation and pleading. Your throat feels tight and swollen and you think that your heart might be shattering a bit with how he’s so set on pushing you away and convincing you that he’s simply too horrid to be loved. 

“I can’t cook. I don’t clean. I hardly shower. I’m more often drunk than I am sober. I can barely go a week without trying to kill myself at least once. I suck at saving money because I figure I’m going to die soon anyway, so I don’t see the point in it. I have an awful lifestyle and more unhealthy habits than I can count. I've tried to change it but I always fail. I don’t know how to comfort people and when I’m confronted with conflict by people I care about, I’ll avoid them until I can act like nothing's wrong. I’ll be more of a bother than anything else, really.”

“I still want you,” you finally say quietly, watching as a distressed expression sweeps over his face.

“You really don’t,” he protests weakly. You wonder if he’s trying to convince himself of it, or you—maybe both.

“I do. I’ll take care of you.”

“It’s rotten work,” he breathes out, a last ditch attempt to persuade you away. 

“Not to me,” you tell him firmly. “Not if it’s you.”

“I don’t deserve this.” Dazai shakes his head, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him. “I don’t understand—everything I told you and you’re still… I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”

“I disagree, but regardless, that’s hardly relevant,” you say absently, finally reaching out to loop your arm in his, resting your head against his bicep. “Do you want this? Do you want me?” 

“Yes.” His voice is so hoarse and so low, as if he can barely bring himself to say the words out loud.

“Then it’s yours. I’m yours.”

Dazai’s jaw is clenched so tight that you’re worried he’s going to damage his teeth, he brings his hand to his eyes as if to cover the upper half of his face. You squeeze his arm a bit, comforting, eyes sliding shut.

“Everything I touch withers and turns to ashes,” Dazai rasps. “Anything I never want to lose is always lost. I’m scared that by being with you, I’m also killing you.”

“I’ll take that risk, if it means I can be with you,” you tell him, watching as he shakes his head, still refusing to look at you.

“You’re so damn stubborn,” he exhales quietly.

“You love me for it,” you tease lightly.

“I do,” he admits, and your eyes shoot open a bit at his words. You glance up at him, but he’s looking ahead, expression downcast. “And I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you apologizing for loving me?” you ask, a bit incredulously.

“Yeah. I am.”

“Osamu…”

Your voice is soft, you’re not sure what you want to say but you falter when Dazai suddenly looks down at you. His eyes are so exhausted, he looks like he hasn’t had any rest in years—his shoulders sag and his arms hang limply at his sides. You think that maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to all of this when he’s still recovering, but you also think that the fatigue is not just physical.

 “I’m so tired,” Dazai suddenly whispers, resting his forehead on the top of your head. His voice cracks a bit over the word, you slip your arms around his waist, letting him lean into you.

“Then let’s go home, yeah?”

“... Yeah, let’s go home.”

When you get back to your apartment, it’s still dark but you know dawn will break soon; as Dazai stumbles over to your bed, you make your way to the window. You close the curtains so that Dazai will be able to sleep easily even after the sun rises, and then move over to your nightstand to turn on the dim lamp so you can at least see a little bit. 

Dazai drops his coat onto your desk chair before he takes a seat on the edge of your bed, feet planted on the floor as he stares ahead at the wall. He looks lost, conflicted; you don’t know what to say to draw him out of it, so you decide not to say anything. Instead, you make your way over to him and take a seat next to him—your thigh brushes his, arms ghosting each other’s, and Dazai immediately leans over to rest his head on your shoulder, eyes sliding shut.

You lift your hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers idly carding through his dark locks. You feel him let out a shaky breath, the air hot against your skin, and you turn your head to the side, pressing your lips to the top of his hair, lingering for a moment before resting your head against his.

“Lay down and get some sleep,” you tell him softly. “I’ll stay with you.”

Dazai exhales, but he doesn’t budge from where he’s leaning heavily against you. “... I need to take off my bandages,” he finally says quietly. “They’re drenched in sweat and blood, haven’t had a chance to change them since I left… I don’t want to get in bed with them on.”

You pause and then ask, “Do you want me to go grab the new roll I bought? I can step out.”

“I don’t have the energy to put them back on,” he finally murmurs, and then a bit more hesitantly, he adds: “Can you help me take them off?” 

You think your heart is in your throat. In the months you’ve been with Dazai, the only glimpse you’ve gotten of his body beneath the bandages was that day he showed up at your doorstep bleeding out and you had no choice but to cut through some of them to patch up the wound, and even then, you only saw the sparest bits of his body, only what was necessary to stop the bleeding. He’s been so careful to keep it hidden from you and now…

“Yeah,” you breathe out. “Of course, I can.”

You shift a bit so that you can kneel behind him on the bed, fingers curling around the hem of his white long sleeved shirt. You tap his arm gently, a silent ask for him to raise his arms, and when he does, you slide the thick cloth off of his body, leaving him in his pants and the bandages that cover every inch of visible skin besides his face and hands.

He was right, they do look disgusting—most of them are yellowed and frayed at the edges, as if they’d been drenched with water and dried several times over. There’s blood staining the bandages on his side and a black tarry substance clinging to the bandages wrapped around his waist. You lean forward and press your lips against his shoulder, over the somewhat clean bandages that are covering the skin there, and you can hear Dazai let out a sharp, shaky breath in front of you.

“Ready?” you whisper, fingers grazing the clip fastened to the bandages on his neck, holding them in place. 

He only nods, so you press another soft kiss to him, this time to the crook of this neck, and unfasten the clips to unwind the bandages from around his neck. To your credit, your fingers don’t falter when a rugged, discolored scar is revealed, looped around his neck; it’s mostly faded, but it’s still rough beneath the pads of your fingers. Your eyes linger though, there’s no question as to what caused the scar and your mind instinctively draws back to all of the offhand comments and jokes that Dazai has ever made about ceiling beams and nooses and your throat feels a bit tight.

You dip your head down to press your lips against the nape of his neck, right over where the rough skin crosses. You can hear his breath hitch, you can feel the way he shivers, but you don’t say anything as you continue to unwind the bandages around his chest and torso. You’ve seen most of the scars that litter his back from when you’d had to patch up his bullet wound, but it’s different seeing them without the fear of him bleeding out fogging your brain. 

They look much harsher against his pale skin now—the worst is still that deep, jagged one that runs from his shoulder to the corner of his hip, but you can’t help but notice that there are more that you hadn’t noticed that day. Most of them are various types of cuts and slashes, some deeper than others, and healed bullet wounds, your gaze is particularly drawn to the most recent one on his upper back. It’s fresh compared to all of the others, still red and easily agitated—your fingers brush over it for a moment before you lean in to press another kiss to his shoulder blade, right over where the worst of the scars begins. 

You shift from behind him to sit at his side, dropping the bandages that had been covering his chest, torso and neck haphazardly onto your bedroom floor before reaching out for his right arm.

Dazai withdraws immediately.

His expression is guarded, you think that his eyes seem a bit glassy but you can’t tell with the dim lighting. You don’t say anything, and you don’t reach out again; after a few moments of him studying you, his shoulders slump and Dazai moves his arm so that it’s back in your lap. Your eyes trace his face one last time, making sure he’s okay, before you lift your fingers to start unwrapping the bandages, starting at his bicep. 

The skin of his bicep is mostly clear—there’s one light scar cutting through its side, as if a bullet had grazed him. When you move down to his forearm, Dazai is stiff and you can see the discomfort on his face, but he doesn’t pull away, so you continue. 

And you falter, because as you loosen the bandages to remove them, you catch sight of the deep scars lining his wrist and forearm. The skin is uneven and discolored, there’s hardly an inch of visible skin on his lower arm that’s not covered by the vertical scars. He’s staring at you, dark eyes heavy and inspecting your every reaction—he’s looking for something, and you don’t know what, but you just decide to do the same thing you’ve done every other time you finished taking off a set of bandages and lean down to press your lips against his pulse point, moving over to do the same to his other wrist after unwrapping the bandages there too.

Your gaze flickers down to his legs, where you can see the bandages on his ankles peeking out from the white pants he’s wearing, a bit too short for his long legs. You pat his thigh gently and say, “C’mon, let’s get you out of these ugly things.”

Dazai shifts up just enough for you to help him slide the loose plants off so you can toss them off to the side, leaving him in his briefs and the bandages wrapped around his thighs and calves. You move to kneel in front of him, instantly getting to unwinding them, starting at his ankle. 

“Do you remember what you told me back then?” Dazai asks quietly, looking down at his lap instead of you. “The day we met?” 

“I told you a lot of things that day,” you say lightly as you glance up at him, careful as you unwrap the bandages around his calves. You kiss his knee. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You said you’d change the trajectory of my life,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers absently. 

Vaguely, you remember the words, smiling a bit in amusement. 

“About the hot chocolate?” you question, laying a kiss to his other knee before shifting up to unwrap the bandages on his thighs; you make sure not to let the pain show on your face when you notice that his inner thighs are as littered with scars as his wrists and forearms, all of them dangerously close to his femoral artery. 

“Yeah.” He lets out a puff of air akin to a laugh, but when you glance up at him, you see there’s very little amusement on his face. In fact, he looks more wistful than anything else. “You really did, you know? Not with the hot chocolate, obviously, but just… you. You did.”

You sit back on your heels as you look up at Dazai, taking his hand into yours before lifting it to your lips, kissing his knuckles softly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. When he continues, his voice is hoarse, bordering on a plea, “Don’t ever go somewhere I can’t follow.”

“Somewhere without you?” you ask, a teasing lilt to your voice as you kiss the palm of his hand before letting go so you can move to unwrap the bandages from his other leg. “Sounds dreadful, I would never.”

He lets out a noise as if he doesn’t entirely believe you, as if it’s some inevitable fate that the two of you will face. So when you finish unwinding the bandages and push them off to the side with the rest of them, you lean up on your knees to cup his cheek, pulling him down a bit to you so you can press your lips to the corner of his. 

“You’re stuck with me.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” he croaks out, and the wry laugh he lets out falls flat. 

You squeeze his hand again before you rise to your feet, and when you do, Dazai’s throat spasms as you stand in front of him, looking down at him. He’s stripped bare in front of you now—physically, emotionally, and he looks at you with an expression that lets you know that you have the power to utterly ruin him. He’s trusted you with his heart, handed it over to you on a platter after having guarded it so desperately and carefully for so long, and you can see the vulnerability in his dark eyes as he watches you restlessly, waiting to see what you’ll do with it. 

You lean forward again, pressing your lips against his forehead softly and then to his own, a chaste, innocent kiss that lasts no longer than half a second. 

“I love you,” you tell him quietly. 

Humans cannot live without a heart, so if he’s to give you his, it’s only fair that you give him your own—though realistically, yours has already been his for a long time. Your heart beats in his chest now, and his in yours, and you wonder if he understands the gravity of what that means but you think he does, if the way his expression crumbles has anything to say about it. His hands fly to your waist, dragging you down onto his lap. His fingers bite a bit too deeply into your skin for it to be comfortable, but you only wrap your arms around his shoulders and let him bury his face into the crook of your neck. 

“I think I might’ve been born just so I could meet you,” Dazai admits, words thick and throaty, muffled against your neck.

You smile lightly, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, turning your head to the side to kiss his temple. “I feel the same,” you whisper, because there’s no way anything but destiny led you to Dazai Osamu on that beach—one way or another, you were fated to be with him. 

Dazai pulls his face from where he’s had it tucked in your neck to press his lips to yours; he kisses you desperately, hands rising to cup your cheeks. In one swift motion, he has you pinned down on the bed, hips and chest flush to yours, hand slipping behind your head to tilt your head so he can deepen the kiss, and you’re reeling at his sudden switch up, struggling to keep up with him. His tongue traces the inside of your lip, deceptively gentle compared to the way he has body pressed against yours.

Your hands fly to his waist, sliding over his bare skin, over all of the rough ridges of his scars and his body shudders against yours violently, unused to the feeling of someone touching him without his bandages as a barrier. He pulls back, tugging at your bottom lip softly before moving just far enough away for your lips to be brushing, sharing the same sliver of air. You can feel his breath fanning across your lips, it smells of the peppermints you have littered across your desk and distantly, you can’t help but wonder when he managed to steal one, but the thought is only fleeting. It’s dizzying, hot, so intimate that you think your heart is about to fly out of your chest.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” Dazai breathes out, dark eyes searching yours as he speaks.

“Me neither,” you agree, and then you smile, leaning up to steal another kiss from him, and then another, and then another. “Good thing we have the rest of our lives to try.”

Less than a week later, you stand in the chaos of the Armed Detective Agency as they argue over a new case—and by they, you mean Yosano and Kunikida with Dazai occasionally making antagonistic comments to try to make Kunikida blow a fuse. You don’t really know what you’re doing here, you suppose the Agency doesn’t really care and you have nothing better to do anyway —you lost your internship at the Ministry of Defense, obviously, with all of the chaos that went down and classes have yet to start up again, and Dazai begged and pleaded for you to come with him to work because he ‘can’t stand having to look at Kunikida-kun’s ugly mug all day,’ but you figure it’s only because he wants to sneak off to you whenever Kunikida is distracted.

Like now.

Dazai has flopped onto where you’re lounging on the couch as he watches Kunikida and Yosano go at it, head resting on your chest, giggling to himself as Kunikida’s face goes red and Yosano looks increasingly more entertained. You’re idly playing with his hair as you scroll through your phone, distantly listening to the argument that you’re pretty sure Dazai instigated just so he could slink away from his desk.

It’s only a matter of time before Kunikida notices Dazai’s scheme and drags him off of you, but it’s nearly the end of the day anyway and you and Dazai are going to the theme park in the Kanagawa prefecture once he can leave work, so you’re excited. You think you’re going to ask Atsushi, Kyouka and Kenji to come along with the two of you, even if Dazai pouts and scowls over it, because they’ve spent most of the day talking to you when Kunikida was forcing Dazai to actually do his work. 

“Ranpo will be here soon,” Yosano goads Kunikida. “We’ll see what he says.”

Kunikida’s eye twitches and he parts his lips to speak but before he can, the door to the Agency flies open and a familiar dark-haired man comes bounding in, snacking on a bag of sweets. Tanizaki follows behind him, looking exhausted if not a bit relieved to be back. 

“Tanizaki got us lost three times,” Ranpo complains, making his way through the reception area toward the interior. Tanizaki looks disgruntled, as if he doesn’t entirely agree with Ranpo’s statement but is beyond arguing about it. Ranpo pauses next to the couches where you and Dazai are lounging. “It’s you.”

Your eyebrows raise a bit when you notice the thinly veiled irritation in Ranpo’s voice. Dazai looks up, eyes a bit narrowed, and both Yosano and Kunikida pause from where they were about to bring their argument to Ranpo, sharing a look with one another. 

“Ranpo-san, don’t be ru-” Dazai starts to complain, although you can tell there’s a hint of tightness to his voice. 

“First, everyone in the Agency ignores me when I tell them not to take this case; then, I go out of the way to warn you about the Hunting Dogs and instead of listening to me, you throw yourself into the heart of Yokohama and make yourself easy pickings for them,” Ranpo rants. “I don’t even know why I try.”

Realization strikes fast, your face feels a bit hot. Dazai sits up from where he’s laying on you, looking between you and Ranpo, a bit confused. 

“... You were R,” you realize sheepishly, wondering how you hadn’t put it together sooner. 

Ranpo all but sneers. “Aren’t you supposed to be an honors student at Waseda? I swear, sometimes I think I’m the only person in my life with brain cells.” he says snidely, pointedly raising his chin and looking away from you as he adds: “I suppose your arrest wasn’t entirely a bad thing, though—made the police force more willing to open their eyes with their wives and family members going off the deep end about the Hunting Dogs. But still, after all the effort I went through to get that warning to you…”

He finishes with a loud scoff, but you’re more focused on the aghast expression on Dazai’s face as he looks at you, and you brace yourself for the conversation that’s about to come, wondering how the hell you’re going to get out of it.

“You got arrested?” Dazai blanches, eyes wide and face a bit pale.

You wince, laughing a bit sheepishly. “Yeah… ha, look at us, in jail at the same time! Couple goals, huh?” 

Dazai doesn’t look half as amused—a mix of disbelief, guilt and a hint of anger all visible on his face. You don’t know where the guilt is coming from, but you figure he must blame himself for it somehow, which you think is a bit ridiculous because it was your choice to let yourself get arrested when you had the chance to flee. You think that your trip to the amusement park is going to be tainted now, because you know that as soon as Dazai gets the chance, he’s going to bully you into an interrogation over what happened, so to salvage the night and spare yourself the headache, you finally make your move.

“Atsushi-kun, Kyouka-chan, Kenji-kun, Osamu and I are going to the amusement park later, you should join us!” 

The look Dazai gives you is nothing short of betrayal, but luckily, Atsushi, Kenji and Kyouka, who’ve all lit up at your words, excited, can see it from where they’re sitting. You smile sweetly up at Dazai, leaning up to steal a kiss; he is disgruntled, narrowing his eyes at you.

“Oh? The one in Kanagawa?” Yosano suddenly asks, interested. “We’ll come too.”

Dazai buries his face in your chest, letting out a muffled groan. Yosano tosses you a wink, seemingly having forgotten about her argument with Kunikida as she throws her arm around the man and gives him a sharp look.

“Won’t we, Kunikida?” she asks with a terrifying smile. Kunikida looks as if he’s going to protest but before he can, Yosano’s arm around him tightens. “Won’t we?”

“Fine,” Kunikida bites out, looking none too pleased. “I need to hurry and finish this report then, so let go.”

Ranpo points at you. “You’ll fund my cotton candy for the night as an apology for the unnecessary headache,” he declares and you let out a huff of laughter in agreement.

“Can Naomi and I come too?” Tanizaki asks, a bit hesitant as he glances at you and notices the way Dazai has slumped into your chest, defeated. “We’ve only been once when we were kids. It’d be fun to go back.”

“‘Course,” you agree easily. “Dazai and I are gonna head out now though, I have to run to the store before we go.”

Kunikida only waves you off—he probably doesn’t even register what you asked, too focused on getting his report done—so you push Dazai off of you and rise to your feet, stretching because your back has become a bit sore from lounging around all day. Dazai nearly topples onto his ass, shooting you an accusing look before standing up straight.

You hold your hand out to him, he takes it, looking a bit mollified. 

“See you in a bit,” you tell the Agency, and you get various different goodbyes as you leave the office.

As soon as the door shuts behind the two of you, Dazai is scowling at you. “You’re devious,” he claims. “Inviting them all to avoid a much needed conversation. Diabolical.”

“Learned from the best,” you coo, leaning into him and nudging his arm with your shoulder. He rolls his eyes, you grin. “Please, you and I both know you would spend the whole night trying to talk about it if we go alone and it would piss me off. We can talk about it when we get home.”

“And now.” The smile that Dazai gives you is all teeth, you grimace. “How did you get arrested?”

You just shrug. “They asked me for information, I refused to give it. I figured if they were going to come after me one way or another, it’s better that it happens in public—people don’t really take kindly to watching someone get arrested for associating with an organization that they’ve all associated with at some point or another because they’ll get scared that they’re next.”

Dazai looks at you, distinctly impressed. “You are devious.” He sounds proud, your cheeks heat up a bit, but then his expression drops again. “But still reckless. You could’ve been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.” You wave him off and then absently bid goodbye to the cafe owner and his wife as the two of you leave the cafe and make your way down the street to where you’d parked this morning. 

“But you could’ve been,” Dazai stresses the words, he’s a lot more tense than you expected, his jaw is tight. He catches the way you’re looking at him and shakes his head, letting out a puff of air. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” you ask, brows furrowed.

“It’s my fault,” he tells you, and you immediately scoff, rolling your eyes. “It is, you don’t understand—I was with Dostoevsky in Meursault, I had to make a decision-”

“Shut up,” you tell him, irate. His mouth shuts instantly. “Stop acting like I have no autonomy. I knew what I was walking into, I chose to do it anyway. That’s the end of it, stop blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong, Osamu. You’re only human, you can’t control everything.”

You can tell that Dazai doesn’t believe you, but that’s an argument for another day. Luckily, Dazai doesn’t look too keen on pressing the subject anyway. Instead, conflict sweeps over his face as he studies you.

Finally, he asks quietly, “You never doubted the Agency?”

You let out a sharp laugh. “Are you kidding? There’s no way anyone’s going to convince me that the people in that office building are terrorists. That’s absurd, I figured there was something supernatural going on, just didn’t know what.”

Dazai looks at you, disbelief painted on his face. You’re not sure why until he lets out his own laugh, shaking his head. “The Decay of the Angel had a reality altering book,” he explains, eyeing you as the two of you continue down the sidewalk. “And you managed to somehow subvert the reality they created with it.”

You can’t tell if it’s a question or not, and for some reason, you feel distinctly seen as he looks down at you with an indecipherable expression. So you just shrug. “They shouldn’t have written such a ludicrous reality, then,” is all you say, a bit awkwardly.

Dazai only laughs again, slinging an arm around your shoulder. You lean your head into him, smiling softly. You bask in his presence, letting the warmth of the setting sun wash across your face as you share a few moments of silence. 

As the two of you reach the parking garage you’d parked in, Dazai suddenly stops, looking down at you. “Do you believe in fate?” he asks quietly, uncertainty in his eyes as he watches you for a response.

“Yeah,” you tell him. You’ve always believed in fate, and you believe in it a bit more after meeting Dazai, because somehow you know that you were always destined to meet him, that your fates have been intertwined since the moment the two of you were born. You simply cannot imagine a life without him, not in this world or any other. “String theory, multiverse, I think the world’s a lot bigger than just ours. Why?” 

You glance up at him curiously. “You do?” he asks a bit distantly, leaning down to ghost his lips against your forehead. Then a bit more hesitant, he continues, “If you think there’s more worlds like ours… do you think we’re together in all of them?” 

You snort, which is obviously not the reaction Dazai expects from the way he jolts, but before he can take offense to your reaction, you speak.

“Definitely,” you say so confidently that he almost looks taken aback. “I’ll find you in every universe, you can count on it.”

You think he looks beautiful right now as the sun finally sets over the horizon, the pale orange tints of the coming dusk making his skin glow, his eyes soft and fond, full of longing as he looks down at you. You’re struck with a distinct urge to kiss him, but he looks so divine in this moment that you can hardly bring yourself to move, spellbound as you admire him.

“Yeah,” he finally breathes out, “I will.”

i don’t even really have words guys 🥹 i’m literally about to weep i can’t believe it’s over

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 COMING DOWN

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: something is up. you know it. dazai is being far too romantic and you're absolutely not buying the excuses he keeps giving you. it's whatever, you think, you'll enjoy the fancy dinner and fancier hotel, even with the imminent threat of the looming bomb about to drop. {wordcount: 13.4k; fem!reader, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: here is part 4!!! i can't believe we're already so close to the end of this one, i'm so excited for side b you guys have no idea, i'm almost done writing part 4 of side b and then part 5 is going to be a beast in itself, PUN INTENDED. i'm going to be posting a poll a bit later on that i'll need your guys' opinion on concerning part 4 of side b, so please keep an eye out for that!

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR 17 & UNDER FOLLOWING THE SERIES: i was conflicted as to how to go about this because as per tags on masterlist, there was always going to be smut in this series. i'm not going to ask y'all to not interact/read a whole 13.4k chapter just because there's like 2-3k words of smut, but i am going to say here the smut is in the FOURTH scene. there is very little, if any, plot development in the smut itself, so i ask you guys to respectfully scroll past it. i'll make the sentence when the smut starts red like this so you know that's when it starts, and then you can continue reading at the next divider. thank you for understanding! i'll summarize the little plot development in the smut at the end of the chapter for you guys.

SMUT WARNINGS: mostly vanilla-ish, fingering, dazai has a dirtyyy mouth, a bit of edging, mentions of f!masturbation, pussy drunk!dazai - he's a bit pathetic HAHAH, unprotected sex. i think that's all, if i'm missing anything please let me know!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

You’re a bit alarmed when you wake up and realize that Dazai is nowhere to be found. Usually, you wake up to the warmth of his arm draped over your body, his tall and lithe form curled around you and his face buried in your hair. It’s a process trying to get out of bed, because even in his sleep he clings to you tighter whenever you try to free yourself, and he always lets out muffled noises of complaint and displeasure at the slightest disruption to his sleep. 

Normally, the man wakes up hours after you—and even then, you still have to drag him out of bed so he’s not abysmally late to work—so this is… strange to say the least. He’s gotten better the past few weeks, sometimes he wakes up early to join you at the beach to watch the sunrise and usually it’s a bit easier to get him out of bed even when he wants to sleep in, but he never wakes up before you unless he just doesn’t sleep, but you know that he slept last night because he fell asleep while you were finishing up some emails to prospective employers for your summer job. 

You’re suspicious when you slip out of bed and stretch, curious to figure out what he’s doing—you wonder if he had to get up early to get to the Agency for a mission, but you’re pretty sure Dazai would rather face a raging Kunikida and death by fire than wake up before dawn for work. Still dressed in your night clothes, you make your way out of your bedroom and into the main room of your apartment.

He’s standing there in your kitchen, brows furrowed and already dressed in black slacks and a button up and tie—not his typical attire, you can’t help but note, and your suspicion grows. He looks handsome though, and you would spend a few moments just admiring him but you don’t like the way he’s staring at your stove so you decide to speak up before he can do something destructive.

“Dazai,” you call his name, still half-asleep, watching as his eyes shoot open as he turns to face you. “What’re you doing up so early?”

Dazai doesn’t even respond. Instead, he snatches something from the counter and makes his way over to you—you draw back a bit, confused and increasingly more alarmed but too out of it to effectively dodge his rapid approach, and you part your lips to ask him what the hell he’s doing and why he’s acting so weird but he only takes the opportunity to shove an unwrapped protein bar into your mouth. You choke a bit in surprise, trying to chew on the bar, but you’re reeling as he presses his hands to your back and pushes you back into the bedroom. 

You’re barely registering what’s happening as you finally take a bite of the protein bar and remove it from your mouth—watching as he strips you of your pajama top and shorts in abject horror. You want to ask him what the fuck he’s doing but you’re still trying to chew through the thick bar, almost gagging on it. 

You watch, standing there in your panties, braless and topless—you want to complain because you’re cold but you’re more occupied with watching Dazai Osamu, a man clearly on some sort of mission as he snatches the dress hanging on your closet door. You’re certain that you hadn’t left it there, in fact you don’t even remember picking it up from the dry-cleaners, so he must’ve picked it up on his way home from work yesterday and you just didn’t notice when you were focused on finishing up your emails.

“Up,” he says, motioning for you to raise your arms and you just stare at him in disbelief, absently raising your arms. 

Without hesitation, he slides the dress over your body, adjusting it so that it’s laying against you nicely—and then he shifts to stand behind you, zipping it up. Usually, he would linger for a bit, press a few kisses to the crook of your neck and wrap his arms around your waist, but this time he zips it up and darts back off to your closet, where he’s evidently also laid out a pair of heels for you.

He snatches them up and kneels in front of you, grabbing your ankle to lift your leg and slip your heel on—he fastens the buckle, and this time he does linger a bit, dipping his head down to press a chaste kiss against your ankle before shuffling over a bit to do the same for your other foot. 

“Dazai, what is going on?” you ask, voice riddled with disbelief and confusion as you stare at him, taking another bite of the protein bar he’d given to you.

“I’m taking you somewhere,” he says, as if that isn’t obvious enough.

“You’re dressing me.”

“You’re taking too long.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” you protest, scowling down at Dazai, but he only looks up at you.

He props his chin on your abdomen as he looks up at you, a soft expression on his face. 

“Sweet bella,” he sighs dreamily, “not even the millions of stars in the sky can compare to how brilliantly you shine. The most beautiful being I’ve ever had the fortune of laying my eyes upon. I can’t believe you’re mine.”

You roll your eyes—no matter how often Dazai gets all poetic and theatrical, it never fails to fluster you, but you know he’s only trying to dodge your interrogation this time. You tug a lock of his hair and he hums softly, turning his head to kiss your palm before leaning into your touch. 

“I need to do my hair and makeup,” you tell him. “Where are we even going?” 

Dazai leaps to his feet instantly. “Nope!” he says loudly, and your expression twists in irritation, watching as he bounds over to your desk, grabbing… your make-up bag? “Do your makeup and hair when I get to the office, I have to stop there for a few minutes before we leave. I put everything together for you.”

“Where are we going?” you repeat as you try to reach for your makeup bag but Dazai holds it above his head so that you can’t get to it. You squint and you have half a mind to jump up on him to try to pull his arm down but from the way his eyes are glittering, you have a feeling that he wants and expects exactly that.

So instead, you let out a pointed sigh and turn your head away. Dazai pouts, but you figure either way it was a losing decision for you because his pout disappears in an instant as he grabs your hand and drags you out of the bedroom. 

You’re all but stumbling after him, trying to keep up with him in the dark heels he’d dressed you in, and Dazai is merciless, not slowing down for even a second until he skids to a stop at your door, grabbing the keys to your car that you left hanging next to your jacket. 

He turns to you, giving you an expression that’s more fitting of a wet dog than a human being, not wanting to give up the keys. You close your eyes and sigh. 

“Answer my question,” you finally say.

“I can’t,” Dazai complains, “it’s a surprise.”

“Dazai,” you warn, voice low. 

“It’s a surprise,” Dazai repeats instead, frowning slightly as he looks down at you, and you can see the earnestness in his eyes as he looks down at you, lacing your fingers together as he squeezes your hand gently, as if begging you to not make him ruin it.

Again, you sigh. 

“Do not get into another accident, Dazai.”

His face lights up. 

You regret everything.

“Dazai, I thought you were-”

“Shhhhhh!”

You’re a bit amused as Yosano Akiko holds up her hands in mock surrender from where she’s lounging at one of the booths in the cafe beneath the Agency. Dazai looks thoroughly distressed, waving his own hands and panicking at Yosano almost giving up his top secret plans. 

“I’ll be back down in a few minutes,” he says to you before turning to squint at Yosano. “Don’t say anything.”

“I won’t,” Yosano promises, holding her hand to chest as if to convey her honor. 

Dazai’s eyes narrow a bit more, as if he doesn’t trust her, but then he glances at the clock and flees up the steps to the Agency without another word.

As soon as you hear the door slam upstairs, signaling that Dazai entered the Agency, you make your way over to where the other woman is sitting, propping up your phone against the wall to use as a mirror before unzipping your makeup bag. Impressively, Dazai managed to make sure he got all of your everyday makeup and even the ones you keep to the side for special occasions, you hum a bit in appreciation before getting started. 

“Can you give me a hint?” you ask, eyes flickering up to Yosano, who’s studying you with a fond expression as you start shifting through your makeup bag, looking for a particular concealer.

Yosano’s lips curve up into a smile. “He’s actually been working the past two weeks to make sure Kunikida can’t complain about him taking time off for this—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited for something.”

Your chest feels a bit warm, a smile itching at the corner of your lips as you pause from where you’re applying your makeup. “Yeah?” you ask, eyes lingering on her for a bit longer before you go back to looking back down at your phone to continue doing your makeup.

Yosano lets out a quiet noise of agreement. “Honestly,” she says quietly, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him as happy in general as he’s been the past two months, so thank you. I’m glad he has you.”

You falter a bit, glancing up at Yosano as you recall Atsushi’s words from back when Dazai got shot: “I’m really glad that Dazai-san has you. He’s been a lot happier the past few weeks.”

“You think so?” you ask softly, twirling your mascara wand in hand as you look down at the table. 

You wonder what exactly Dazai was like if now two of his coworkers are mentioning how much better he’s been since meeting you. You have your own suspicions, just from knowing how the two of you met (twice) on top of his flippant attitude regarding suicide, but that’s all you have: suspicions.

“Know so,” Yosano corrects absently, taking a sip of her coffee mug—although you can’t help but notice that it doesn’t look like coffee in there. She sighs, tilting her head back against the booth. “He’s good. He doesn’t believe it himself—probably never will—but he is. He deserves this… I doubt he’ll ever believe that either though. Be good to him.”

“You guys are all really close, aren’t you?” you note, half to yourself.

“Like family,” Yosano confirms with a grin and then pauses before saying, “... we are family.”

You smile a bit wistfully. “I’m almost jealous,” you admit, “but it makes me happy to hear that he has you guys. Sometimes he just seems so…”

Lonely, you finish quietly. 

On nights where he can’t sleep and you happen to wake up, you sometimes find him staring out the window just like you did that first night you met. He always looks lost and alone—he tries to hide it when he notices that you’re up too, masking it with a smile that never reaches his eyes. You think his mind haunts him a lot more than he lets on—well, you know it does, you remember how you met him and you remember his chilling, offhand comments, but you think it haunts him even more than that, to the point that no matter how many people care for him, it’ll never allow him to see it.

“Yeah,” Yosano agrees quietly, you don’t have to finish what you’re trying to say for her to know what you’re getting at. She lightens up after a moment though. “Make him bring you around more, you’ll be part of our ragtag little family in no time.”

You smile brightly. “I think Dazai would have a heart attack—did you see him at the event last month?” 

Yosano’s smile is sharp and dangerous. “That’s the point.”

Laughing loudly, you nearly mess up your mascara, and as you open your lips to respond, you pause when you catch sight of a familiar, suspicious face poking around the corner of the doorframe leading up to the Agency. As soon as you catch sight of him, he tries to disappear and pretend that he isn’t there. 

Your eyes narrow. “I saw you, Dazai,” you say loudly and Yosano whirls around to look over the booth just as Dazai reluctantly steps out into view.

“Dazai, you damn creep, were you eavesdropping?” Yosano accuses, throwing a stray teaspoon in his direction. 

“Yosano-sensei,” Dazai complains, “can you blame me? I see my two favorite women laughing, of course I’m going to be curious.” 

You snort as you finish up with applying your lipgloss—the strawberry one that Dazai loves so much that you’ve caught him trying lick the wand when you’re not looking. Rising to your feet, you put your makeup bag back together before looking back over at Dazai, who finally made his way over to the table. 

There’s a soft, adoring look in his eyes as he looks down at you; you think that it’s a bit unwarranted because you’re pretty sure your makeup must look terrible from how quickly and half-assed you'd done it, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d think Dazai was looking at someone glammed up for the red carpet. 

It almost makes you feel a bit flustered. 

“You look beautiful,” he says quietly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. 

“I haven’t even had a chance to brush my hair yet,” you counter, looking up at him through your lashes with a half-smile.

“And you’re beautiful still,” he teases softly, leaning down to press his lips to yours in a chaste, deceptively innocent kiss.

“God, you two are gross, get a room,” Yosano grumbles, throwing a packet of sugar at the side of Dazai’s head. 

Dazai tosses Yosano a wink. “Oh, we will,” he leers and Yosano dramatically gags.

You smile lightly, but then your mind starts to drift because you’ve been with Dazai for two months now and the two of you have hardly gotten further than heavy petting and kissing. Not for a lack of trying, and it’s kind of become a borderline taboo subject between the two of you, because he always stops it before it can get too far. You don’t know why, and you’re afraid to ask because you’re beginning to get anxious that there’s something wrong with you because why else would he constantly pull away whenever things start to heat up between the two of you? You know damn well the man isn’t a saint from what you’ve heard from his coworkers and how grateful they were that you reigned in his “womanizing” tendencies, so why are you different? It’s been two months, why won’t he touch you? 

Your thoughts start to spiral, as they always do when you think too hard on the topic. You can feel him give you a concerned look but you only turn to Yosano, bidding her goodbye as Dazai leads you out of the cafe and the woman raises her arm in a lazy wave in response. Once you guys are out the door, you turn to Dazai before he can interrogate you on what’s wrong. 

“Where are we going now?” you ask, nudging your shoulder into Dazai’s side as the two of you make your way back to your car. Dazai slings an arm around you, pulling you into his side and dipping his head down to kiss the top of your head. 

You feel his lips curl up into a dangerous smile against your hair. “The train station.” 

You turn your head to look up at him as soon as the words register, eyes a bit wide. “The train station? Where are we taking a train to?” 

“Mhm,” he agrees, not fully answering your question, eyes glimmering as his arm tightens around you, pulling you closer into him. “We’re spending a night away from here.” 

“I didn’t pack anything,” you say, a bit panicked. “Daz-”

“I packed a change of clothes and pajamas,” Dazai grins. “Relax, I’ve got you, bella. Don’t you trust me?” 

“Of course, I trust you,” you scoff immediately, noting the way his grip around you falters a bit as soon as the words leave your mouth. “But I also know you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dazai laments. “You hate me.”

You roll your eyes. “I definitely don’t hate you, Dazai,” you murmur, resting the side of your head against his bicep for a moment—three words threaten to burst from your lips, you swallow them.

As if Dazai can sense the sudden change in mood, he leans down to kiss the top of your head again—this time softer, and he lingers longer. As he does so, he reaches to swing open the passenger door to your car.

“Shall we?”

Kyoto. 

He brought you to Kyoto. You’ve never actually been despite having wanted to visit for years, too busy with college and then preparing for graduate school. Dazai has spent the entire day bringing you from place to place, letting you play the gawking tourist as he drags you everywhere from the botanical garden to the shrines and temples places throughout the city. He’s spent the entire day embarrassing you, one way or another, by announcing in public that his ‘darling wife is pregnant!’ so that you’re flooded with older women cooing over you and making loud and poetic proclamations of love and distress in Nishiki Market, pretending to be a scorned lover bemoaning the cruelty of the woman he loves. 

You can’t even find it in yourself to be angry about it, because you remember Yosano’s words about how excited he’s been and you can see the way his eyes shine brightly whenever he sees the dread rise to your face as soon as you realize he’s about to do something shameful. 

Now, the two of you are sitting in a rooftop restaurant of a luxury resort that you know damn well neither of you can afford, and you’re not even sure how Dazai had managed to book a reservation at it—you’re not even sure if he had booked a reservation at it. The whole situation is honestly a bit weird. The hostess seemed to have recognized Dazai’s name as soon as he gave it to her, rushing to seat him at the best table in the restaurant, and once you’d been seated, the owner had come over to greet Dazai. 

You wonder if Dazai secretly comes from old money, generational wealth—you think if he does, you might kill him, because you can’t even count the number of times you’ve had to spot the asshole for coffees and snacks. If he was sitting on piles of money the whole time? You swear that you’ll rip into him.

You tried to ask him about it already, but he waved off the question with a non-answer and a charming smile that doesn't quite work on you anymore. When you tried to press, you got the same dismissal, so with much restraint you finally let it rest so you could enjoy your dinner. 

“Are you going to tell me what the occasion is now?” you finally ask, taking a sip of the after-dinner martini you’d ordered as you watch Dazai carefully. 

“We’re celebrating,” Dazai grins, reaching across the table to take your hand into his; he brings yours to his lips, kissing your knuckles before laying both of your hands over the table. 

“Celebrating what, exactly?” you tease, tilting your head to the side as your fingers lace through his—he’s gotten a lot more touchy the past few days, you’ve noticed

“You finished your finals, obviously,” Dazai says, as if it were obvious, “I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out yourself.”

Your fingers tighten around his hand as you let out a puff of laughter. “Really?” you ask a bit doubtfully. “All of this because I finished finals?” 

“My sweet belladonna thinks I’m a liar,” Dazai complains, head falling back dramatically. “You’ve been so stressed the past few weeks, I wanted to do something nice for you.”

 Although you can’t help but notice that his fingers tense against yours, as if he’s not telling the full truth, you decide to leave it and press later, instead smiling softly and squeezing his hand.

“Oh yeah? You could’ve just brought me out to dinner back home, spend the night at some cheap hotel that we can actually afford,” you snort, looking around again at the extravagant rooftop restaurant the two of you are eating at. With the dim, romantic lighting and luxurious furnishing, you think this might be the fanciest place you’ve ever been. “... How are we going to afford this, Dazai?” 

“When are you going to start calling me Osamu?” Dazai pouts as if to try to avoid the question. 

You ignore the way warmth bubbles at your chest, instead correcting, “How are we going to afford this, Osamu?” 

His name tastes frighteningly familiar on your tongue—as if you’ve said it a million times before—and you can see from the way that his eyelashes flutter it seems to have affected him just as much as you.

“You won’t tell me what you and Yosano were laughing about, so obviously I’m not gonna tell you about this,” Dazai teases, thumb circling the back of your hand. You roll your eyes, so he continues with, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, that’s for me to handle”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” you drawl with a side smile. “Unless you’ve been hiding some secret wealth from me—which if you have, we’re going to have serious problems, I’ve paid for you too many times for that—we’re going to be washing dishes at this place for the rest of our lives.”

“You have no faith.” Dazai pushes his bottom lip out even further. “You said you trust me.”

“I do trust you,” you say and you can see from the way he squints that he knows there’s about to be a ‘but’, “but-”

“Dazai-sama.” The waiter that has been diligently tending to the two of you bows deeply to Dazai—you give Dazai a pointed look, as if saying, see!, but he only winks at you. “Is there anything else that you and your fiancée need? Or shall I get the two of you the bill?”

Fiancée, you think to yourself a bit surprised, shooting Dazai another sharp look, noting how his cheeks flushed a bit after hearing how the waiter addressed you.

“Charge it onto the usual card,” Dazai tells the waiter, who nods and bows again before rushing off.

You stare at Dazai as soon as the man leaves. “Dazai Osamu, who are you?” you ask, a bit jokingly, a bit not jokingly because he really has thrown you for a complete 180 with this whole extravagant date. 

His smile falters, as if you asked a question that he doesn’t want to answer, but you think he was stupid to bring you on this date if he didn’t want you asking questions about it. You wish that you had some idea of what the answer might be but you don’t, and it worries you a bit, because there’s clearly something he’s hiding from you and he’s anxious about how you’re going to take it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says quietly, holding his arm out to you. 

You sigh a bit as you rise to your feet after finishing your drink, looping your arm into his. He tugs you a bit closer, and you watch, hawk-eyed, as the waiters of the restaurant nod their head in respect to Dazai and the owner himself bids him a brief goodbye and a ‘it was good seeing you again, Dazai-sama’ before the two of you reach the elevator leading back down into the hotel.

As soon as you’re within the closed doors, Dazai turns to you, bringing his hand up to brush his knuckles against your cheekbone. You lean into his touch, looking up at him, eyes wide and a bit imploring, asking him to explain without verbally voicing the words. 

He sighs. “I came here a lot for my previous job, before I joined the Agency,” he explains quietly. “We brought… associates here a lot for business.”

“You’re going to charge our date and stay here on your old boss’s card,” you ask, a bit horrified at the prospect, not even thinking to ask what his previous job might be in your panic. “Daz-Osamu, are you crazy?”

“Trust me,” Dazai grins as he says the two words you’ve been hearing all night from him. “He won’t do anything about it.”

The words sound a bit ominous, you don’t really know how to take them, so instead you shake your head and rest the side of your head against his bicep as you wait for the elevator to open up on your floor—a penthouse suite, naturally, one that you’re sure must cost at least one to two hundred thousand yen a night. 

After a few moments, you ask quietly, “What was your previous job?” 

Dazai stiffens beneath your touch. You glance up, watching as his face closes off and his throat spasms beneath the bandages covering it. You can feel his fingers dig a bit deeper into your hip from where his hand had been idly resting against you.

He doesn’t want to tell you, you realize—you don’t know why he doesn’t want to tell you, you know deep down that it must be something that he’s ashamed of, or it’s something he thinks would make you think differently of him. A part of you wants to assure him that nothing would change how you care for him, but Yosano’s words still ring through your head: “he doesn’t believe it himself—probably never will.”

So instead, you hook your arms around his waist loosely, leaning up on your tiptoes to press your lips underneath his jaw.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly, resting your head on his chest and letting your eyes slide shut. “You don’t have to tell me now, I hope one day you feel ready to share it with me.” 

You hear Dazai let out a breath from above you. “I don’t understand why you’re so patient with me,” he murmurs, leaning his head down to rest his forehead on the top of your head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

A soft laugh escapes your lips. “Because I care about you, Osamu. A lot. Nothing you tell me would ever change that.”

“... That’s not true,” he says quietly, more to himself than to you.

“It is.” You only tighten your arms around him and then continue with, “Are you going to click our floor or are we just going to sit in the elevator all night?” 

Dazai’s face flushes. “Click our floor,” he says sheepishly

You laugh, Dazai leans over you to click the button before draping himself over you. You feel warm again, but there’s still a cold hole still spreading through your chest: even with the implication of his previous job, and the realization that it might just be something unsavory enough for him to fear you changing how you see him, you just can’t seem to brush away the feeling that there’s something else he’s hiding from you.

“I lied before.”

The admission comes bluntly and quietly from Dazai, who’s laying next to you on the massive king-sized bed of the nicest suite in the hotel—you think you’ve never stayed in a more comfortable bed, all the two of you have been doing for the past few hours is lounging around watching shitty movies and sharing kisses. 

You’re still resting your head on his shoulder, eyes idly tracing the television screen where a girl is crying over a boy she’d just met the other day before you turn your gaze up to him. 

“About what?” you ask.

He’s not looking at you, he’s staring up at the ceiling instead with a conflicted expression; he opens his mouth to say something but nothing spills from his lips. Finally, he sighs, “I didn’t do this just to celebrate you finishing finals.”

Your heart drops a bit, inhaling sharply. You don’t look up at him, wrapping your arm around his waist and settling against his chest, bracing yourself for whatever he’s going to say. “I figured,” you say, your throat feeling a bit tight. “It was a bit… too grand of a gesture to just be for celebrating finishing finals.”

Neither of you speak for a moment, and you wait for him to explain, eyes sliding shut as you listen to the sound of his heart beating steadily in his chest to ground your creeping anxiety. 

“I’m going to have to leave for a while, I think,” Dazai says softly. “Things are… going to get bad. I don’t know how it’s going to go down yet, I don’t know when I’ll be back—I don’t know if-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, cutting himself off before the words can fall from his lips. He doesn’t have to, you know exactly what he was going to say—he doesn’t even know if he’ll be back. 

Your throat feels tight as you stare ahead at the wall. “That’s okay,” you say, your voice sounds a bit stronger than you actually feel. “I can wait.”

From the corner of your eye, you see his head snap in your direction and you don’t have to look at him to know that he probably has that twisted, conflicted expression on his face. He starts to say, “But I don’t know if-”

“I know,” you interrupt him because you don’t want to hear him say it out loud. “I know. I can wait. I’ll wait for you.”

Dazai doesn’t say anything in response, you don’t know what’s running through his head—you’re not sure if you want to know, or you suppose that’s not really true. You’d kill to understand what exactly goes on in Dazai’s head, you want to understand him better, you want him to rely on you like you do him. You want him; you want him for all that he is, no more masks and no more hiding. Just him. 

You’re not given the chance to linger in your thoughts. Dazai moves closer to you, lifting one hand to cup the back of your head and turn your face toward him; he doesn’t waste a second before pressing his lips to yours, they’re chapped and familiar, you’ve kissed him hundreds of times since that party but this one feels different. It feels desperate, as if he’s afraid to forget the taste of you or the feeling of your touch.

He shifts his body closer to yours, pushing you back gently until you’re laying flat on your bed with him hovering on top of you—his lips don’t move away from yours for even a second. It’s dizzying, honestly. He kisses you like he wants to consume you, like you’ll disappear at any given second; his tongue brushes against your bottom lip and your lips part instinctively for him.

His body slides on top of yours, narrow hips slotting between your thighs—there’s no space between the two of you, you can feel the heat of his body radiating against yours, you can feel his fingers intertwining just a bit too tightly into your hair, causing a pleasant sting to spread through your scalp, you can feel his bulge pressing against your pelvis. 

Oh, you think to yourself, sighing into his mouth as his tongue traces the inside of your lips, as if trying to create a map of your mouth. It’s soft and gentle, you think he might be tracing letters on your tongue but you’re so hazed out that you can’t concentrate enough to figure out what they are with the added feeling of the fingers of his free hand tracing up and down your side.

And then, as if he’s had enough of the slow pace, he deepens the kiss. You think there’s something distinctively filthy about the way that Dazai’s tongue drags against the roof of your mouth before he separates your mouths so he can trail wet kisses along your jaw, the gentle traces on your side becoming a much more firm grip on your hip as he hooks one of your legs around his waist to tentatively roll his hips against yours.

Your body aches at the feeling of his bulge nudging up against your core, the friction setting all of your nerves on fire. This isn’t the first time that the two of you have started to take the next step—kisses becoming just a bit too heavy, touches becoming just a bit too desperate—but every time he ends up withdrawing, and god, you think you might die if he does now too. His lips drag down your neck, he’s reckless with his teeth as he scrapes them against your skin, tongue tracing patterns down to your collarbone where he sucks at your skin hard, drawing a choked, breathy moan from you.

His fingers bite into your skin as his lips trail down lower—lower than they ever have before, down to plump flesh of your breast, to the low cut line of your dress—your lashes flutter and lips part and you want to beg him ‘please, don’t stop’ but you don’t think you’re capable of speaking right now, mind fogged with desire. He keeps the pressure on your cunt with slow and lazy rolls of his hips, each movement putting more and more friction on your clit and-

And he’s stopping??

Your breath catches when he suddenly rests his forehead in the crook of your neck, catching his own breath as his body stills and you can feel his arms tensing as he prepares to push himself off of you.

You don’t let him. 

With the leg you still have hooked around his waist, you flip the two of you over. His pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, a surprised ‘oof’ escaping his lips. You think he’s beautiful. You really do. His lips are pink and swollen and wet with spit, his cheeks are flushed, hair an unruly mess haloed around his head; you lean down to press your lips against his, taking the lead yourself now, and you relish in the muffled groan he lets out into your mouth as you grind your hips down against his clothed cock.

It’s a short kiss for how sloppy and debauched it is, tongues sliding against each other’s and lips clashing messily, hips rocking in sync—hot, blood curdling, but you have questions that need to be answered before you continue. He chases your lips when you pull away, a distressed noise forming in the back of his throat. 

“Why don’t you want to fuck me?” you finally ask the words that have been plaguing you for almost two whole months. 

Dazai stares at you as if you’ve grown two heads, and you’d be embarrassed at asking the question if the past two months haven’t been weighing so heavily on your shoulders. He looks pointed down his body, to where his cock is hard, straining painfully against his black slacks, and then he looks back up at you as if to say, what are you talking about? But you aren’t letting it go that easily.

“Don’t give me that,” you snap, your nails digging crescents into his shoulders through his dress shirt, wrinkled now from your time lounging about and indulging in one another. “You know what I’m talking about. We’ve been together for two months and every time we’re about to take the next step, you stop it, you were about to now too, weren’t you?” 

Dazai grimaces suddenly and that’s all of the confirmation you need. You pull back, a bit hurt, but before you can withdraw completely, his hand darts out to grab your bicep, stopping you. 

“It’s not… you,” he finally says, voice a bit hoarse—you don’t know if it’s because of the way you’re caught in a position where you’re still half grinding down on his cock or if it’s because he doesn’t want to have this conversation, but you’re instantly rolling your eyes.

“Okay, if you’re going to hit me with the ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ we’re going to have problems, Osamu.”

The grin he gives you is wry, his eyes still half-lidded as lays back against the bed again, letting out a sigh. He lets go of your bicep, hand falling down to your thigh to rub absent circles with his thumb as he stares up at the ceiling.

“I…” he trails off, as if considering his words, and you’re patient because you can tell he’s trying to be open and honest with you, vulnerable in a way he rarely ever is. “I’ve slept around a lot, and I know that you’ve probably heard that from the rest of the Agency and even if you haven’t, we’ve ran into a few… uh… we’ve ran into a few ex-acquaintances of mine while out on dates. I’ve never actually had a relationship. I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just don’t want you to think I only wanted you for sex.”

Your eye twitches. 

“Dazai Osamu,” you say with a heavy sigh, leaning forward to cup his cheeks with both of your hands. He looks up at you with those big brown eyes that you can never say no to. He leans his face into your hand as his lashes flutter, you stroke his cheekbones gently with your thumbs. “For someone so intelligent, you really are the stupidest man I’ve ever met.”

You don’t give him time to get offended by your words, leaning down to kiss him again. This kiss is slower, just as intimate but not quite as depraved—lips gliding against each other’s, tongues teasing in a slow dance. His hands rest carefully on your hips and yours stay cupping his cheeks, you kiss him until your lungs scream for air and even then, you kiss him longer, reluctant to separate from him.

When you finally do, you rest your forehead to his, eyes fluttering shut as you share a thin sliver of air, dizzy from the feeling of breathing in one another’s air. Your thumb caresses his cheek, fingers intertwining with his dark locks, you press one more kiss to his lips, this one short and sweet, and then you say, “I want to have sex with you. Please fuck me, Osamu.” 

He’ll deny it later, but the noise that slips from his lips is nothing short of a whimper as his grip on your hips tightens and he leans in to steal another kiss. He doesn’t move to switch your positions, seemingly content to stay beneath you, so you press him back down until he’s laying flat against the mattress, hands sliding down from his cheeks to rest against his chest as you tilt your head to the side to deepen the kiss, letting out a pleased hum against his lips when you feel one of his hands play with the hem of your dress, fingers dipping beneath the cloth, teasing. You kiss the corner of his mouth, and then down to his jawline, nipping at the sensitive skin and feeling him shiver. 

“You’ll wait for me?” he asks suddenly, voice soft, biting back a groan as you roll your hips against his. He sounds hesitant, as if he doesn’t entirely believe you. 

“Yes,” you tell him, lifting your head from his jaw to hover over his face again, fingers tracing his cheekbone, leaning down to press another chaste kiss against his lips. He tries to chase after your lips as you pull away, but you only give him a playful smile before leaning back again.

“Why?” Dazai asks hoarsely—he looks at you as if he’s desperate to know the answer, and the words linger dangle off of the edge of your tongue.

Because I love you. 

You think you love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone else in the world—he makes you laugh when you can’t even bring yourself to smile, he makes you feel light when you swear you have the whole world weighing down on your shoulders, and he does it even though you know he struggles himself. And you want him to let you be there for him the same way that he always is for you, but he always closes off when you try.

Except now. 

“Because you’re worth waiting for,” you say instead of those other three damning words.

“I’m not.” Dazai shakes his head, and it almost sounds like he’s trying to warn you, but you only cup his cheeks again and force him to still.

“Don’t tell me what is and isn’t worth it,” you say, giving him another teasing smile before adding, “I decide that for myself, and you are.”

“I’m really not,” he stresses, “I-”

You don’t let him finish, instead leaning down to cut him off with another kiss—he barely kisses you back, but you don’t really care because you only meant to stop him from talking anyway. 

“You are,” you murmur, your lips graze his jaw again and you can feel him shiver beneath you again.

His fingers tighten around your hips and he’s flipping you onto your back in an instant. Your vision spins, a gasp pulling from your lips, and he gives you no time to regain your bearings as he bunches your dress to your hips, lips finding yours as his fingers fumble to push your panties to the side before he slides his middle finger and ring finger deep inside you, without all of the practiced ease you expected from him, more akin to a nervous boy who’s terrified of making a mistake.

Your jaw goes slack, head pressing back against the pillow, back arching up. Dazai’s lips move to the next available part of your body when he loses your lips: sucking at the skin on the underside of your jaw. As soon as he hears the choked gasp of his name, sees the way your body reacts to his touch, he seems to instantly lose his nerves. You can feel a wicked smile edge at his lips against your skin and as he presses soft kisses to your skin in lieu of the harsh sucks, he makes up for the gentleness there by fucking you with his fingers so brutally that your lips part but you can’t even make a single noise. 

“This what you wanted, bella?” he purrs, but his voice is rough, exposing just how affected he is as he watches you writhe under his touch. “To think, here I was trying to be good and all you were thinking about was when I was finally going to split you open on my cock. How long did I keep you waiting, hm?” 

You don’t respond. You can’t respond. All you can focus on is the drag of his long, lithe fingers against your walls, the sudden stretch, the sloppy sound of his fingers driving in and out of your cunt. It’s wet and filthy and you can barely even breathe, much less speak.

You wanted this. You wanted this so bad. You remember all of the nights you’d spent desperately fucking your fingers, trying to pretend they were his but yours aren’t nearly as long, they can’t hit all of the places his do. You remember coming home with your face on fire, body itching with desire from the casual advances he made but never acted upon. You remember throwing yourself into bed, careful to keep a hand pressed to your mouth or your pillow over your face so he can’t hear from the other room as you let out muffled whimpers. You’ve wanted this so bad, you’ve imagined it so many times before but it pales in comparison to actually having him. His fingers feel so much better, dragging against your walls and pushing back inside of you hard. He’s so much prettier, dark hair matted to his forehead, pupils blown wide and lips still swollen and puffy from kisses; his voice is edged with so much wanton need that you could probably get off from it alone.

The heat spreads through your body fast. Your head feels all light and hazy. Your abdomen twists and coils and god, there’s no way you’ll cum just from this, there’s no way, but your breath becomes quick and pitched, your lungs start to burn and-

And he stops. 

“I hate you,” you sob when he purposely stills his fingers inside of you after hearing you reach the edge, feeling the way your walls were starting to clamp down on him. “Osamu-”

He clicks his tongue, lifting his face from your neck to hover above you. His eyes are suddenly mirthful and cruel, his smile is sharp and dangerous—a monster, you’d unleashed a monster. 

His free hand comes up so he can brush his knuckles against your cheekbone, fingers tracing the contours of your face before coming to land on your bottom lip, plump and wet from all of his kisses.

“Answer my question,” he says as he traces the outline of your lips. “How long? Fuck, you’re so wet, sliding in like it’s nothing, could probably fuck you as you are right now but I wanna feel you come apart on my fingers first. Tell me, how long have you wanted me to fuck you?” 

You don’t even know what you’re saying, forcing something out about your date at the Sankeien Garden two months ago and you remember the way he’d looked so pretty beneath the sakura blossoms and you felt so dirty because all you could think about was dragging him back to your apartment and having him in every way possible. His eyes widen when you admit the date, breath hitching and lips parting.

“That long?” he whispers, eyes searching yours as if to make sure you’re not lying and you think he’s stupid because you hardly have the headspace to think much less lie. His smile widens, teeth looking distinctly close to knives under the dim lighting of the penthouse suite of the resort. He leans down to graze his teeth against your neck. “Well, far be it from me to keep you waiting any longer.” 

He lifts his head again before he continues the thrusts of his fingers, so he can watch you, surely—not as harshly, this time he’s precise and steady, each stroke has the pads of his fingers rubbing up against that soft spot inside of you, forcing your head into the clouds and your eyes to roll back.

“Did you get yourself off to the thought of me?” he breathes out, pupils blown wide, you try to rock your hips in time with his fingers but his free hand comes down to your pelvis, pinning you down with that deceptive strength of his. “Press your hand to your mouth to cover the noise, fuck yourself with your fingers while I was sitting in the next room over before we started sharing a bed?”

A broken sob spills from your lips, Dazai’s thumb presses against your clit when you don’t respond. Your thighs tense and tremble, instinctively going to clamp down on his hand but Dazai’s knee wedges between your legs before you can, forcibly keeping them spread. You think you should be embarrassed, you sound so wet, so sloppy, each thrust of his fingers and you can feel the slick splattering across your inner thighs, if you were any more coherent you’d be humiliated but Dazai looks absolutely reverent.

“You did, didn’t you?” he laughs breathlessly. “I heard noises sometimes, I thought maybe you were having nightmares, was tempted to go in and check on you sometimes. Good thing for you I didn’t then, yeah? Would’ve caught my dirty girl fucking herself to the thought of me, wouldn’t that have been a sight?” 

Spots dot your vision, your nails claw at the sheets of the bed and you press your face halfway into the mattress as you desperately try to push away your rapidly approaching high, not wanting to cum so quickly, but it’s a losing battle with Dazai’s filthy words ringing through your ears and his fingers splitting you open. 

“You must have been so desperate when we started sharing a bed, couldn’t even get yourself off at night anymore. Poor baby, if you’d have just said something I would’ve buried myself between your thighs from sunset to sunrise,” Dazai coos, and you don’t even have to look at him to know his grin is suddenly much more lecherous. “... Unless you just waited until I fell asleep. Did you ever get yourself off while I was laying asleep next to you? Tell me.”

You won’t tell him. You won’t tell him. He’ll never let you live it down but you’ve lost control of your body, your mouth moves before your brain can tell it to stop: “Once,” you choke out, “only once.” 

And Dazai moans, it’s unabashed and wanton, eyes fluttering shut as soon as your words register and then he’s picking up the pace of his fingers, precise and ruthless and you don’t even know what you’re trying to say but it doesn’t matter because the only noise that spills from your lips is just another moan, garbled between his name and a please. Distantly, you think the bandages on his wrist and his expensive slacks must be ruined, the lewd sound of his fingers pushing in and out of you drowning out all other noise.

“I’m gonna-” you try to gasp out to warn him, head tossed back and hair matted to your forehead, they’re the only intelligible words to leave your lips but Dazai gets what you’re trying to say, of course.

“Yeah, you are,” he rasps, watching with the devotion of a disciple to his god as your back arches and cries of his name escape your lips. 

He scissors his fingers inside of you, presses down hard on your clit, and you’re gone, you cry his name so loud that you think you should be embarrassed because there’s no way the other resort guests can’t hear what’s happening but in the moment, you’re too fucked out to care. You think you might be dying, your heart thudding in your ears, your body on fire, you don’t think you’ve ever cum so hard in your entire life.

Your body spasms, trembles; he rides out your high, fucking his fingers slowly into you, watching the way you whimper and writhe, you think tears might be spilling over your cheeks, reeling from the intensity of your orgasm, and your thoughts are confirmed when Dazai leans over you, tongue dating out to lick away the tears. 

Your breath hitches and your thighs quake, a jolt spreading through your body when he finally pulls his fingers out of you, your walls still convulsing around the digits. He sits up straight again, thighs straddling your hips and you can feel his cock pressing against your pelvis and you feel insatiable because you just finished and it’s not enough. Even as your body screams with sensitivity, not ready for anymore stimulation, your lashes flutter at the thought of his cock stretching you out, fucking so deep into you that you can feel him in your belly, thicker than his fingers, longer.

He brings his fingers up to his lips, sucking them into his mouth and you watch as a low, muffled groan escapes his lips, eyes rolling back as he sucks your cum right off of his fingers, not letting a single drop go to waste. Filthy. He’s so filthy. Utterly shameless. And god, do you need him. 

As if he can read your mind, his hands fall to his belt, fingers fumbling to undo the buckle and pull it off. He flings it over to the side haphazardly, and you reach up, grabbing his dark tie and pulling him down to kiss him again. He moans into your mouth, one arm coming to rest on the mattress by your head to prop himself up and the other still stuffed between your bodies, desperately trying to unbutton and unzip his slacks.

God, he kisses you like you’re about to disappear, as if any moment could be your last. His tongue flattens against yours, sweeping against the roof of your mouth, mapping it out until it’s scorched into his memory; you can hardly do anything but lay there and let him, fingers fisted weakly around his tie. 

When he finally does get his pants unbuttoned and unzipped, he doesn’t even bother to pull them off. He shoves them down just enough to free his cock, and your breath hitches when you feel the way it slides against your lower stomach. Your dress bunched up to your chest, you can feel the precum smearing against your skin—he’s so long, you can tell without even looking and for a split second, you wonder if you’ll even be able to take him all the way. 

Dazai hardly gives you enough time for the fears to fester. His fingers wrap around your panties to pull them off but the material is thin and lacy and it only tears under his frustrated yank. You don’t even care, you can’t bring yourself to—you’ll make him but you new ones. He won’t complain about that of all things, in fact, he’ll probably have the time of his life. 

As soon as your panties are out of the way, Dazai is lining himself up with your cunt—he doesn’t fuck you, not yet, and you think he’s evil for the way he rolls his hips slowly, letting his cock slide between your folds, pelvic bone grinding against your clit. You let out a whine—a whine, you’ve never whined before in your life but you don’t know how else to describe the noise that escapes your lips. Dazai can’t even tease you for it, though, because his whole body shivers at the feeling of his cock slipping between your folds, breath shaky.

“Oh fuck,” he breathes out, and then he free hand curls around your thigh, wrapping it around his waist, and he finally thrusts his hips forward, pushing inside of you. 

The stretch burns, it burns so good even with how thoroughly he prepped you with his fingers and Dazai lets out such a pornographic moan that you think you might cum just from the sound of it. His lashes flutter, pink dusts his cheek, he rests his forehead against yours, breath so shaky that you think maybe he might be about to cum.

“Feels so good,” he gasps, next to your head, his fingers twist the sheets of the bed until his knuckles are white. “What’re you doin’ to me?” 

His words hardly register, but when they do, you’re perplexed.

“What d’ya mean, Osamu?” you breathe out, and the way his body shudders above yours at the sound of his name leaving your lips is fucking heavenly.

“I’ve never-” he chokes over another moan and your throat feels dry when you realize he really might just be about to cum, “it’s never-”

“Hm?” you press when his voice trails off and his eyes half back. You tilt your head up to ghost your lips over his jaw, nibbling over the bandages covering his Adam’s apple. It bobs beneath your teeth and he lets out another shaky noise.

“It’s never felt like this,” he pushes out, the words sound like a near slur. “I feel so-”

“So what?”

“So good.” God, his voice comes out close to a sob, broken and cracking, and when you try to move your hips, desperate for him to finally move, he lets out a panicked sound: “I’ll cum. I’ll cum. Don’t move yet, don’t-”

You still if only out of sheer shock of how worked up he already is. His whole body is trembling, he’s gnawing at his bottom lip, you can feel his cock twitching inside you, as if begging for release already. And your body is aching, your tummy is hot and your head is fuzzy, but it pales in comparison to the sight of Dazai crumbling above you just from the feeling of being inside of you. All of smooth talking and filthy words are gone, leaving behind only a man on the brink of falling apart.

“Feel like a virgin.” This sounds distinctly closer to a sob now, and you can’t help but notice that his cheeks are red and hot, his lashes are wet as they flutter shut—you wonder if he’s embarrassed. “S’tight, and-and wet. Fuck, fuck, what’re ya doing to me, bella? ‘s never happened before.” 

Your hands slide up his body to cup his cheeks, dragging his face back down to press your lips against his, and when he moans into your mouth as soon as your lips are touching, he’s finally rocking his hips up into you. The pace is harsh and erratic, as if he’s already desperately trying to chase his release, and you can’t breathe, you can’t think. The tip of his cock bullies so deep inside of you that you think you might die, you think he might actually be splitting you open.

Your lips part in a noiseless moan, your head spins, Dazai fucks you harder, faster, so deeply that it almost hurts because each thrust has him brushing closer and closer to your cervix, hips slapping against your ass and thighs so roughly they’ll probably be bruised tomorrow; it tears the air from your lungs, you think you might pass out because you can’t seem to catch your breath. All of his finesse and touches driven by practiced ease are long gone; there’s something about this so carnal, driven by sheer lust, that it has your head in the clouds. And Dazai is always loud, he fills every silence he stumbles upon, but he’s especially loud now as he moans your name and claws at the sheets next to your head, gasping and panting and cursing each time he feels your walls convulse around him. 

You don’t even realize it when you cum. There’s no build up this time. One thrust sends you over the edge as his cock presses up against that soft spot inside of you and his pelvic bone grinds just right over your clit, and instantly you’re spasming beneath him, your nails dig into his dress shirt and your body arches against his, head tossed back against the mattress and vision going spotty. Your lips are moving but you don’t know if screaming his name or if there’s no noise leaving you at all.

All you do know is that as soon as you’re cumming on his cock, walls tightening around him, Dazai’s eyes are rolling into the back of his head, hair matted to his forehead as he tosses his head back, jaw falling slack. There’s no warning when his hips still against yours and he’s suddenly pumping you full of his cum.

He slumps on top of you, body limp and shoulders still trembling in the aftershocks of his orgasm. You’re desperately trying to ground yourself again, trying to catch your breath and slow your heart rate, Dazai’s face is buried in your neck and you can feel how his back rises and falls rapidly as he tries to catch his own breath.

“So embarrassing,” you hear him slur from where he’s pressed against the crook of your neck still. “‘s never happened before.”

You can’t help the giggle that spills from your lips and he groans against you.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he complains, rolling off of you so he can pull you into his chest. Your eyes flutter shut as you rest half on top of him, letting out a soft sigh. “Next time, I’ll show you. You’ll regret laughing.”

“I’m sure,” you say, more to placate him than anything else, and he grumbles but doesn’t respond.

The two of you bask in each other’s presence for a few moments before he finally asks again, “You’ll really wait for me?” His voice is so soft that you might not have heard it if you weren’t so close to him.

You turn your face to the side to kiss his chest, smiling against his skin. “Only if you promise not to forget me while you’re gone.”

He lets out a breathless laugh, tilting his head down to kiss the top of your head. His voice is hoarse and stripped bare to of his unbound emotions for the first time as he says, “The thought of you will be the only thing that gets me through this.”

However bad that Dazai might’ve thought the weeks without you were going to be, it’s been worse. Only sheer willpower and the image of you waiting for him back home is pushing him through the trials and tribulations that Dostoevsky continues to push him through. 

At first, the mind games and taunts and the puzzles of misdirection and manipulation were fun; Dazai has never conversed so long with someone who can keep up with his every thought and every plan. Fyodor Dostoevsky is impressive, Dazai can’t deny that, but the fun of the games is swiftly coming to an end the longer he has to stay in this wretched cell with even more wretched company.

He doesn’t have much to do—he has around four square meters to move around in, which is barely enough for him to comfortably stretch. All he does is lay in bed all day, waiting for Ango’s signals as he tries to anticipate Dostoevsky’s each and every move. His brain throbs and aches, having been placed on overdrive for weeks without rest because he knows one mistake on his part will lead to the fall of the Agency, the death and ruin of the few people he might actually consider friends.

The rare moments he allows it to rest, he thinks of you. He wonders what you’re doing back in Yokohama—maybe having coffee at that cafe near your apartment building, or meeting some of your friends from university for drinks. He wonders if you’re holding true to your words, if you’re actually waiting for him or if you moved on the moment he disappeared—he hopes that you are, because the thought of you, and getting to be with you again, is the only thing that’s keeping the gears of his worn out, exhausted brain turning.

A part of him wonders if you know what’s happening. Well, he knows that you must have some inkling—the Decay of the Angel’s plot has been a vastly public one, and you’re typically on top of current events. He wishes that he knew your thoughts on it. He wonders if you’d fallen victim to the Book, believing that the Agency are the terrorists that they’ve been written to be. He wonders if you were able to fight against the Book’s influence, because he knows that the Book can’t possibly be infallible—nothing is, there will always be cracks for exceptions to seep through. He hopes that you’re one of them.  

He wonders if his crimes had become public knowledge too. 

The thought makes his stomach churn uncomfortably, regret creeping through his chest because if you were going to learn about his past, it should’ve been from him, not from a random news outlet that’ll make him out to be the treacherous monster he really is, the one he’s taken so much care to hide from you. At least if he’d been the one to tell you, he could’ve framed it in a way of his choice—though he’s not sure how exactly he could frame something like that in his favor, it at least would’ve been better than the news. 

He wants to ask Ango, but he knows that he can’t—not when the more pressing matter is the Agency and clearing its name. His own personal matters have to be pushed to the side until that’s handled, no matter how much his heart screeches at him otherwise.

This is why he hates emotions.

“Dazai,” Dostoevsky suddenly says and Dazai is immediately ripped from the brief respite he’d allowed his brain, although it wasn’t much of a respite considering he spent the whole time anxious about you. A smile graces Dostoevsky’s face that Dazai instantly doesn’t like. “Let us switch chess boards for a moment.”

Dazai’s eyes narrow. “To which one?” 

“Yokohama,” Dostoevsky says absently. “... Knight from D5 to E3.” 

Dazai stares for a moment—Knight from D5 to E3? The move is somewhat appalling in Dazai’s mind, but only because he can’t put together the reasoning behind it. It’s a dangerous push onto his side of the board, and for what reason? Most of Dazai’s pieces are setting up on the opposite corner of the board for an attempt to take out Dostoevsky’s bishop, which is what Dazai expected Dostoevsky to focus on protecting. 

Dazai sits up in his bed, unable to hide the way his brows furrow a bit as he visualizes their chessboard, eyes darting around to each piece, trying to figure out what exactly in this game has slipped past his weary brain, lost in the dozens of chess games that he’s currently playing against Dostoevsky. And as he looks from piece to piece, he begins to understand.

There are only two pieces left vulnerable to the play that Dostoevsky is about to make. 

Dazai’s expression hardens, Dostoevsky’s smile widens. 

If Dazai doesn’t continue with his plan on the opposite side of the board, the opportunity will be lost and the Agency will not get another like this. Dazai clearly underestimated just how little Dostoevsky cares about his pieces—he doesn’t care whether or not his bishop is captured—he has a greater aim anyway. 

The chessboard of the game he’s visualizing begins to crumble before his eyes and his vision starts to tunnel, a chill spreads through his chest, to his arms and to his fingers. 

He needs to contact Ango, but Dazai’s heart is racing on its own now and he can barely control himself enough to send a message to the older man. In one move, Dostoevsky will be able to position his knight in a way that will have Dazai’s king in check and his queen left vulnerable. And Dazai will be left with no choice—allowing Ranpo to be captured by the Hunting Dogs is not an option, everything will fall apart. He needs to contact Ango. But he realizes that even if he does get the message through, he doesn’t know if Ango will receive it or if he’s too busy with plans at the Sky Casino. And even if he does receive it, Ango might not even be able to do anything. 

“Dazai, dear, you’re taking quite a long time with this move—don’t tell me I have you in a corner already. It would be very disappointing, I expected better from you,” Dostoevsky’s faux-congenial voice mocks him from the other cell, and Dazai wants blood. 

“Rook from B5 to F5,” Dazai’s voice sounds hollow and cold to his own ears as he continues forward with the plan he had set in motion at the cost of the one person Dazai doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle losing. The tips of his fingers feel numb as he waits for the inevitable. 

Dostoevsky’s teeth are like knives.

“How callous and cold-hearted of you. I must say, I’m impressed—I really didn’t think you had it in you, you truly are the prodigy they all claim you to be. Knight from D5 to E3. Check to King at F1.”

“King from F1 to F2.”

“Knight from E3 to D1.”

And just like that, the one piece that Dazai has refused to touch the whole game falls. His ears ring and his brain throbs painfully, his throat feels dry and scratchy but he refuses to give Dostoevsky the reaction that he’s waiting for. The Russian finally speaks the words that finalize the play:

“Queen captured.”

“138 counts of conspiracy to murder. 312 counts of extortion. 625 counts of assorted fraud. Numerous other known crimes, countless unknown crimes. A former executive of the Port Mafia known as the Demon Prodigy, the youngest underboss in the history of the Mafia.”

You think it’s ridiculous. Or, you want to think that it’s ridiculous. You want to condemn the words as ludicrous as the idea of the members of the Armed Detective Agency being terrorists. These whole past two weeks have thrown you for a loop—you were sitting at your laptop watching a reality show to pass time when you got the notifications on your phone regarding the terrorist attack on the Ministry of Defense, the very place you were supposed to start working at soon. 

You’d been watching with your heart in your throat until they were finally unveiled, and the moment they were, you were caught entirely off guard because what on earth? You saw it with your own eyes, but you still can’t bring yourself to believe it because what do you mean Mister Fifty-Eight Ideals with a moral high ground taller than the peak of Everest, Kunikida Doppo, is a terrorist? Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, the sweet boy who joins his sister down in the cafe with you when you’re waiting for Dazai to finish getting scolded by Kunikida, buying you a coffee and pastry? Izumi Kyouka, the young girl who looked at you with stars in her eyes when you brought her a crepe from the bakery near your apartment? Yosano Akiko, the woman who loves so hard and so deeply even if she does hide behind a rough facade, taking you, a stranger, in without hesitation just because of how happy you make Dazai?

There’s no way. You live in a world where men can transform into tigers and women can bring people back from the brink of death—there has to be something supernatural going on, you can’t bring yourself to believe that this is reality. 

But are you equally as sure about the allegations against Dazai?

You try to make sure that the conflict doesn’t show on your face as your mind races—you remember the night in Kyoto when you asked him about his previous job and how he reacted to it, you also remember how the waiters and the hostess and even the owner had treated him. Your heart sinks and your throat tightens a bit, you have to force yourself to focus on the conversation at hand.

The young man dressed in a burgundy military uniform sitting before you has a smile that can only be described as cruel, the red tips of his hair brushing his chin as he tilts his head to the side. “I do hope you understand how critical it is for us to obtain as much information as possible. We are authorized to go to any lengths to prevent the deterioration of this situation—if someone is suspected of giving refuge to any of the terrorists, or assisting them in any other way, they will be charged with conspiracy against the government and the aiding and abetting of global terrorism. We have full power to act on our own discretion and take in anyone who presumes to be uncooperative to our questioning.”

“Is that a threat?” you finally ask, absently circling your coffee mug. 

There are people looking at you—you’d chosen to sit outside of the cafe, and the streets are busy. You recognize two elderly women who frequent the cafe giving you concerned looks; three high school students sharing intrigued looks as one of them starts to video the encounter, knowing that any footage of the famed Hunting Dogs and the ongoing international crisis is a quick ticket to going viral; a businessman and his wife meeting for an early lunch before he goes back to work. 

Good, you think. 

“Only if you have something to hide,” the young man, who introduced himself as Jouno Saigiku, replies easily, smile sharpening a bit. “Do you have something to hide?” 

“Why would I have something to hide?” you ask instead of replying, eyes narrowing. 

“You tell me.”

“I have nothing to tell you.”

Distantly, you can hear the chatter of passerbyers walking down the sidewalk, the screeching of brakes as a car comes to an abrupt stop a few blocks down, the soft music coming from inside the cafe, but your gaze is tunneled on the young man sitting in front of you. His face is deceptively calm, eyes turned up and expression smooth, but you can see how the corner of his lip is pulled taut. More people begin paying attention to your conversation—you recognize some of them as regular patrons of the cafe who you’ve spoken to multiple times. 

“I think you do,” Jouno says idly. “Even if it weren’t for the way your heart is racing… this is damning enough, isn’t it?”

You raise your chin as Jouno slides over a manila folder to you. You don’t move to look at it for a moment, eyes lingering on his face before you finally flip it open, lips pressing together tightly. Dozens of pictures of you and Dazai lay within the envelope, pulled from CCTV tape all around the city—most of the pictures are innocent enough to pass off as two acquaintances having a cup of coffee, but there are a few questionable ones. 

And god, you miss him. Just seeing his face is enough to make your heart long for him, it’s only been what? A week and a half? But it’s been hell going from seeing him every day to not even knowing what happened to him until now… with all of this, learning about his crimes, finding out he’s imprisoned in the highest security ability user prison in the world, as you’re being interrogated by a member of the country’s most elite military unit. 

It’s too much, you think. What the hell are you even supposed to think of it all? 

You don’t even have time to think, not with this rabid dog sitting in front of you ready to leap for your throat at the first sign of weakness.

“How so?” you ask after you get your head back on straight, flipping the folder shut. “I���ve met with Dazai Osamu before. So have dozens of people in this cafe, hundreds of people around the city. Misaki-san, the older lady over there, has lunch with Kunikida-san twice weekly. Sayuri-chan, the high-schooler sitting two tables over, goes to Yosano-sensei for check-ups because her parents are hardly around to bring her to the doctor’s office. Takeuchi-san has tea with Fukuzawa-dono every Wednesday. Half of the city is intimately connected with the Armed Detective Agency, in one way or another—they’re active citizens, frequent faces around the streets, always helping when given the chance. Are you going to interrogate every citizen who has ever spent free time with a member of the Armed Detective Agency? Accuse them of conspiracy against the government and the aiding and abetting of terrorism?”

Your words cause a bit of a subtle shockwave across the eavesdroppers—a range of emotions from anxiety to indignance crossing faces, just as you hoped would happen. You figured that there would be no way of you really getting out of this, but you hope at least to trigger a bit of unrest. You know that a lot of the city’s civilians haven’t been fond of how the Hunting Dogs are handling this situation, despite them having authority from the Prime Minister to go to any lengths to regain control over the crisis.

And it’ll hit them hard seeing an upstanding, regular civilian being targeted for vague affiliation with a group that thousands of people in the city have had a vague affiliation with. Because if it happens to an upstanding, regular civilian, it can happen to any upstanding, regular civilian, and if it can happen to any upstanding, regular civilian, it can happen to them. You think most of the civilians in the city have been biting their tongues out of fear of the escalating terror, but once any civilian that’s ever affiliated themselves with the Agency becomes at risk for being under suspicion, under threat, then they’ll be forced to voice their discontent lest they be targeted next. 

“So, we’re going to do this the hard way then,” Jouno notes pleasantly, his smile is tight and there’s a tinge to his voice that you can only decipher as a threat. “Good, I was hoping it turned out this way.”

You remember the warning you’d gotten the night before: ‘The Hunting Dogs will come after you next, get out of the city - R’ and a part of you wishes that you’d taken the warning more seriously and gotten the hell out of Yokohama in the middle of the night before you could be interrogated. You’ll lose your internship, it might affect your standing in your university. You wonder if your brother would be disappointed, he spent his whole life trying to build a better one for you—sacrificing his happiness, morality, and eventually his life—and here you are about to throw it away.

Are you really going to do this?

You swallow thickly, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. You think of Dazai—you think of the chilling list of crimes and his current imprisonment, you think of the promise you made before he fell off the face of the earth, you think of the nights you spent together, you think of the past few months you’ve lived with him. You realize that they’ve been the happiest you’ve been in your entire life, and you think that your brother might understand, because more than giving you a better life, he wanted you to have a happy one. 

Yeah, you’re really going to do this. 

You’ll get your answers from Dazai himself. You know in your heart that something bigger is going on, there’s no way that the members of the Agency are the terrorists that the world claims them to be and you don’t know if something else could possibly be going on with Dazai and the allegations against him as well. You think you know deep down that there’s likely some semblance of truth to them, but you owe it to him—and more importantly, to yourself—to hear it directly from him. 

Until then, your loyalty stays with him. 

“I guess so,” you agree softly, before turning your gaze up to Agatsuma Misaki, who’s looking increasingly more distressed by the whole situation. “Misaki-san, would you please let Hotaru-san and Hideyoshi-san know what happened here? I’m sure they’ll be worried when I don’t return home tonight, I don’t want them to lose any sleep over me.” 

Agatsuma Misaki clutches her necklace to her chest as she nods, her wrinkled face bunched up in concern, and the woman sitting with her looks equally horrified. The three high schoolers sitting two tables away are sharing wide-eyed looks with each other, whispering under their breaths as they point to the one boy’s phone, still evidently recording. The businessman, Takeuchi Isamu, is watching with hawk eyes, but his fingers are tapping away at the phone he’s hiding beneath the table. 

Jouno Saigiku rises to his feet, smile sharp and bordering on malicious as he says your name and then: 

“You are under arrest for conspiracy against the government and aiding and abetting the Armed Detective Agency in their terrorism against the State of Japan and the entire world.”

— the only development in the smut scene itself is reader very briefly acknowledging that she loves him (internally, she doesn't tell him) and dazai acknowledging that he's avoided any intimacy because he's been worried that she's going to think he only was into her for sex because they've had encounters with ex flings of his & she's heard about him sleeping around from the rest of the agency. so a bit of openness from dazai and a brief acknowledgment of real feelings from reader.

[fyorina]

ᡣ𐭩 I WALK THE LINE

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: an easy day of studying is interrupted when your boyfriend—yes! boyfriend!—shows up at your doorstep bleeding out. you think he's an idiot. you think you're even more of an idiot for falling in love with him. shit, did you really just think that? {wordcount: 8.2k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: part threeeeeeeee, starts off a bit abruptly at the start of the cannibalism arc, but i really didn't want to rehash the entire scene. HAHAH. the last scene IS my favorite scene actually, i just finished writing the uu parallel of it im so excited for you guys to read it! reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

“Your vitals weren’t hit because you still have a part to play in telling the Agency about the upcoming clash with the Mafia.”

Dazai’s fingers bite into the pavement, pain webbing through his body as the shock of the bullet wound laid into him by Dostoevsky’s sniper begins to fade away. It takes all of Dazai’s will to push himself onto his elbows, chest heaving as he gives him a moment’s pause to try to recuperate before rising to his feet. 

“You and I are similar, you said,” Dazai says, voice deceptively strong compared to the blood pooling around him. He forces himself to his knees, pressing the palm of his hand against the wound to slow the bleeding. No matter how much he may have expected Dostoevsky to pull something like this, he could never prepare for the pain that came along with it. “Certainly, we’re of the same kind, but we differ in one way—people are sinfully stupid, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, a hint of surprise washing through his face. “You… Did you know that the sniper was there? And yet you purposely came here to get this information?” 

Dazai smiles pointedly, confirming Dostoevsky’s question without even answering. He ignores the blood that dribbles from the corner of his lips. “What do you want with the Book?” 

“Hm,” Dostoevsky says, that impassive expression returning to his face as he turns to leave. “I’d like to use it to make a world without the sin of ability users.”

Dazai barks out a laugh, his chest screeches in protest at the action but still, he forces out: “Please, give that a go—if you even can, that is.”

The look that Dostoevsky casts over his shoulder is lethal, Dazai’s smile sharpens, but his mind is becoming muddled the longer he allows himself to sit here in pain, he needs to get to a hospital. He can barely breathe as he forces himself to his feet. He holds his hand to the bullet wound tearing through his chest, keeping pressure on the wound to slow the blood flow—it went all the way through, which is a good thing because at least he won’t have to deal with someone digging it out of him, but the pain is excruciating. His mind feels foggy and his body is pleading for him to rest but he knows he can’t, not yet, at least, he needs to warn the Agency before the Port Mafia attacks. 

His eyes are cutting as he turns his attention back to Fyodor Dostoevsky, who evidently has had enough of him considering he’s walking down the alley away from Dazai. Dazai glares after him, mind racing as he tries to figure out how exactly he should get back to the Agency, but even as the thought crosses his head he hears:

“Dazai-san!” 

The panicked voice comes from a nearby street, a bit aways from the alley. He recognizes Atsushi and withholds a sigh of relief, realizing that he just needs to wait for the boy to sniff out the blood and track him down.

“Ah, before I forget.” Dazai barely refrains from grimacing as the Russian’s voice rings through the alleyway. Fyodor Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, an eerily amused expression on his face as he smiles thinly down at Dazai—Dazai instantly feels his blood go cold, knowing he isn’t going to like whatever leaves the man’s lips next. “I met your lover earlier today. She was quite… enchanting. She had interesting views on the world, I was very intrigued. It’s a shame, I would’ve liked to speak to her again.”

“What?” Dazai’s voice is hollow even to his own ears as he stares after Fyodor. 

“We’ll meet again in the promised land, Dazai.”

“Dazai-san! Where are you?”

Fyodor disappears from view as he turns out of the alley and Dazai leans against the wall trying to hold himself up, eyes wide and breath heavy. He tries to force himself to move forward, ignoring the way his wound screams for him to stop jostling around. His mind is on overdrive, panic beginning to consume every cell of his body as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head. A part of him wonders if it was just a way to throw Dazai off, but Dazai doubts it—if he knows Dostoevsky even half as well as he believes, then he knows that there’s likely at least some truth behind his words, and that means that Dostoevsky had some sort of contact with you today.

And that thought terrifies him. 

But he pushes away the panic, evening out his breathing as he focuses on getting to Atsushi and then to you, but he finds his knees buckling as another wave of pain hits him, squeezing his eyes shut as he waits for it to pass. 

But it doesn’t pass, and as much as he wants to try to grit his teeth and keep moving forward, spots start to swim in his vision and he’s forced to stop moving because he can’t afford to pass out before he warns Atsushi about the virus and tells him to bring Dazai to your apartment. He doesn’t even know if you’ll be there; he doesn’t even consider that if you’re not there, he’ll probably bleed out. He needs to know you’re okay.

He doesn’t know how this happened. He told himself over and over again that he wouldn’t let himself get attached to you, a part of him still wants to try to convince himself that he’s not attached even though the thought of denying it at this point is ludicrous. Evidently even Fyodor Dostoevsky has come to figure out how much you mean to him, which is exactly what he had come to fear the more he spent time with you because now you’re in danger just for your proximity to him.

Atsushi turns the corner and Dazai watches as his eyes widen—Kunikida is with him, luckily, and Dazai can barely hear himself speak over the sound of his heart thudding in his ears as he doesn’t even wait for them to ask what happened or if he’s okay, pushing out the words to explain what Dostoevsky had said to him and ask them to bring him to you, all the while his mind is flooded with thoughts of you. 

One kiss turned into two, two turned into three, three turned into a dozen, and a dozen turned into Dazai having an insatiable appetite for your strawberry chapstick and soft lips. Dazai has all but moved in with you, he can’t remember the last time he slept at the Agency’s dorms—weeks ago, probably. He hadn’t actually noticed how attached he’d become to you until now, fearing that Dostoevsky had targeted you as a means to get to him.

He lets out a weak breath as Kunikida wraps an arm around his waist to help him make his way to his car. The other man is still saying that there’s no way they’re not going to bring Dazai to a hospital but-

Past tense.

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head one last time. He’d been speaking in past tense about you.

You were enchanting.

You had interesting views on the world.

He would have liked to speak to you again.

Ash fills Dazai’s mouth, leaving it dry and heavy, his words crumbling as the entire world stills around him. He thinks that this is Odasaku all over again—that every person he ever comes to care about ends up dying. He thinks his touch is rotten and corroding, killing everything he touches. He needs to get to you, he needs to make sure you’re okay, because he can’t let this be like Odasaku again. 

“Bring me to her apartment or so help me, I’ll rip open the bullet wound so badly that not even getting me to the hospital will save me,” Dazai suddenly threatens, voice rough and so sharp of a command that Dazai is almost drawn back to the dark memories of his time with the Mafia, that it has both Atsushi and Kunikida staring at him with stunned expressions. Dazai hates pain, but he has every intention of following through with his threat if the two don’t do as he says.

“... I hope you know what you’re doing, Dazai,” Kunikida finally says tightly as Atsushi helps Dazai into the back seat of the car, keeping pressure on the bullet wound. “Repeat again what Dostoevsky told you while we drive.”

His eyes feel heavy and his body feels sluggish, he knows that Kunikida is only telling him to repeat himself to try to keep him from passing out but he can hardly think of Dostoevsky anymore, mind focused on you because he thinks that if Dostoevsky did something to you, Dazai might never forgive himself for ever inserting himself into your life and putting you in danger. Every time his eyes slide shut, he can picture your smile and the way you’d roll your eyes whenever he goes off on tangents about double suicide and fated lovers, he almost wants to hiss at Atsushi to leave him be whenever the boy shakes his shoulders to prevent him from falling asleep because every time he does, the image of you fades away.

His words are slurred as he explains to them what Dostoevsky had said again, and what it means for the Agency, all the while directing them to your apartment. He wants to sleep—he’s exhausted and in pain, but he knows that he can’t. Not yet. Not until he knows you’re okay. Once he knows that, he can allow himself to rest. 

Kunikida gets to your apartment complex in record time. If Dazai was any more coherent, he would make a gibe at the man for breaking the law by speeding but in his half-conscious state he can hardly even stand much less formulate an articulate thought. He isn’t even sure if either of them understand what he’s saying as he fumbles out your apartment number, but evidently they’re able to make it out as they haul him up to the second level and rap at your door loudly.

Dazai thinks that it feels like eternity waiting for the door to open. He thinks that if you don’t answer—if Dostoevsky did something to you because of him—then he deserves to bleed out here at your doorstep, because there’s no world in which he should live when you die because of him. 

The door to your apartment finally opens, his eyes meet yours, and the relief that washes through him is debilitating enough to finally make his body give into the lull of the spreading numbness throughout his body.

Your breath catches as Atsushi and Kunikida fumble to grab Dazai before he slumps over unconscious, fingers trembling as you open your door wide to let them through, motioning to the couch in the center of your room as you rush to the bathroom to grab the first-aid kit that you have stashed away beneath your sink. It’s been years since you’ve had to use it, and the familiar weight of it in your hands makes your throat clog and your heart ache from wounds that never properly healed.

“What happened?” you ask as you leave the bathroom and rush over to the three of them. They had placed Dazai on the couch, his blood seeping into your gray cushions, and your mind is drawn back to all the long nights you spent as a teenager with your brother in the same position and-

You take in a deep breath, a gulp of oxygen to clear your head before you move forward closer to the couch—you can’t afford to allow yourself any room to spiral. Atsushi is on the verge of tears—or, well, he is crying, actually. He’s sniffling as he rubs at his eyes while Kunikida kneels next to Dazai, keeping pressure on the wound. You exhale the breath you’d taken in and motion for Kunikida to move over so you can kneel in front of the wound.

“He was shot,” Kunikida says, voice tight, and you want to hit him with an obviously, but you’re more preoccupied with trying to roll Dazai over so you can figure out whether or not the bullet went all the way through. Kunikida obviously recognizes what you’re trying to do so he helps you roll him onto his side, you exhale in relief when you realize that it did, having Kunikida help you take his trench coat off before letting him rest back on the couch, wincing when you notice that he’s grimacing in pain even while unconscious.

“And you brought him here?” you ask, voice a bit louder and more hysterical than you mean for it to be but in your defense, the last thing you expected when you finally sat down to study for your upcoming finals was for your boyfriend—boyfriend, you still think giddily, as if he hadn’t formally asked you out almost three weeks ago and isn’t currently bleeding out on your couch—to show up at your door with his coworkers with a bullet wound. 

You slip on a pair of gloves and fumble for the sanitizer you’d brought with you out of the bathroom and Atsushi hands it to you when it falls on the ground. You let out a quiet thank you before dousing your hands in it—it reeks like shitty tequila and it nearly makes you gag.

Kunikida looks frustrated. “Take it up with him,” the man says sharply, eye twitching. “He threatened to open up his wound even more if we didn’t bring him here.”

You give both Kunikida and Atsushi odd looks. Kunikida is scowling and Atsushi gives you a helpless shrug, but you only shake your head as you force yourself to focus on the issue at hand. You hesitate for a moment before unbuttoning and sliding off his shirt as best as you can. The bandages covering his torso and chest are soaked with blood and frayed—you hesitate, because even though you and Dazai have been together for weeks, you’ve never seen what’s beneath his bandages. He’s always careful to keep them on, only changing them in the bathroom, and from the way Atsushi and Kunikida are both averting their eyes, they realize what you have to do and also feel uncomfortable.

It’s for the sake of saving his life, you tell yourself before taking the scissor that came with the first aid kit and cutting through the bandages. You try not to stare—you really do—but it’s hard not to when you realize that his entire chest and torso is covered with scars, big and small, jagged and clean. Instead, you again make yourself focus, reminding yourself that the longer you take, the more at risk Dazai is to bleeding out—the wound isn’t bleeding profusely, it must’ve been a clean shot, missing all of the major arteries luckily, but you don’t want to risk it.

You grab a gauze pad and douse it in the saline solution you’d bought years ago—you hope the solutions don’t expire, that would be bad. But you gently dab it onto the wound, doing your best to not cause him anymore discomfort. As you do so, your eyes trail down from his chest to his abdomen again and your mouth feels a bit dry, wondering how the hell he managed to get all of these scars. 

You turn your attention to Kunikida. “Can you clean here?” you ask quietly and Kunikida doesn’t respond, rather he just takes the gauze pad from you to mimic what you were doing, and you reach for a cloth, turning your attention to wiping the rest of the blood staining his skin so that when you’re done cleaning the wound and dressing it, you can wrap him back up. 

“You’ve done this before,” Kunikida finally says, and you can’t help but notice that he’s still not looking down at Dazai’s body, eyes trained on you as he dabs at the wound—he must have the self-control of a god because you can tell from the way his eyes are twitching that he must be curious to see what’s beneath his bandages. Atsushi, too, has his back to the couch, as if not to tempt himself to look. 

“Mhm,” you agree idly, a lump in your throat, eyes flickering up to the picture you have set up on the wall on the other side of the room. “My brother… he got involved with some underground fighting rings to make us money, he used to come home injured a lot, it was dangerous. Never had to deal with a bullet wound but I mean, I know the basics.”

Kunikida lets out a noise of acknowledgement and you motion for him to move again once you feel as though his torso and chest are clean enough to at least be able to bandage without instantly ruining them. You grab the dressing pad and apply it over the wound, layering it a few times just in case the blood starts to soak through before taping it to him.

“Help me sit him up so I can clean his back,” you say, grabbing your supplies and shifting places with Kunikida so that you can tend to his back.

You don’t say anything else as you begin to repeat the process on his back, cleaning the wound with a gauze pad before wiping away the blood staining the rest of his skin. You think that his back might be even worse than his chest and abdomen—there’s a jagged scar from the corner of his shoulder to his opposite hip, deep and painful-looking, and countless other smaller ones littered on every inch of visible skin. 

“Your brother… he got out of that life?” Atsushi finally speaks up, he’s still not facing the three of you, and the twinge of hope in his voice makes your heart plummet.

“He tried,” you tell him after a few moments of silence, taping another dressing pad to his back before reaching for the roll of bandages that came with your first aid kit, scowling when you pick up one that’s practically already empty from the number of times Dazai has reapplied his bandages after showering at your place. 

You grab another one, a new one, and then begin the arduous process of ensuring that every inch of Dazai’s torso and chest is covered in bandages again—you’ll have to get him to the hospital, you doubt your own sloppy patch-up will be good enough, but it’ll do until you get him there. 

“Oh,” Atsushi says softly.

“I’m sorry,” Kunikida murmurs, voice a bit more gentle and genuine now that Dazai’s wounds have mostly been handled. 

“He knew what he was getting into,” is all you say in response, making sure that bandages keep enough pressure over the wound to keep the bleeding slow and to a minimum. “He’s going to have to go to a hospital. This should be good enough for now but he needs actual medical attention.”

“We can’t stay,” Kunikida tells you, a twinge of regret in his voice as his eyes rake over Dazai now that you have him rebandaged. “The President is in danger, we have to go warn them before the Port Mafia acts.”

The Port Mafia, you think, a bit chilled by the thought of them, but you only nod at Kunikida. “He’ll be okay,” you say, trying to reassure yourself as much as them. “I’ll take care of him.”

Kunikida nods and then motions to your phone, which haphazardly had fallen onto the ground in your panic. “May I?” he asks quietly and you pick it up to unlock it for him, passing it over with a curious look. “I’m putting my number in, text me which hospital he’s admitted into and the room number so we can come see him as soon as things calm down.”

“Gotcha,” you whisper, resting Dazai back into a lying position. Your eyes linger on his face, bringing your hand up to wipe away the blood dribbling down his chin with your thumb, a heavy feeling settles in your chest—you think he’s too pale, his breath is too shallow, you’ve never seen him look so weak. 

You glance back up at Kunikida when he doesn’t immediately leave, questioning. He looks as if he wants to say something, face conflicted, but instead he shakes his head and turns to leave, calling for Atsushi to follow. The boy does immediately, but he hesitates in front of you before nodding his head down a bit in an awkward show of respect.

“I’m-” he begins awkwardly before clearing his throat and saying, “I’m really glad that Dazai-san has you. He’s been a lot happier the past few weeks.”

Atsushi doesn’t say anything else before rushing after Kunikida, shutting the door to your apartment behind him. You let your gaze stay on Dazai’s face for a second longer before you lean down and press your lips to his forehead in a soft, lingering kiss. You let out a sigh against his skin, eyes fluttering shut for just a moment before you finally reach for your phone and dial for an ambulance. 

Dazai wakes up in a hospital room, the pale walls and the scent of antiseptic burn his nostrils unpleasantly. His throat immediately tightens as a wave of rage sweeps through him because of course, Kunikida couldn’t do the one thing he asked of him. Some unwelcome mixture of fury and panic spreads through him instantly, it takes all of his self control to maintain the steady pace of his heart so that the monitors attached to him don’t go off and alert the nurses that he’s awake—what happened to you? Are you o-

His train of thought screeches to a halt as he sits up, disregarding the pain in his chest, intent on finding his phone to call you only to catch sight of a figure slumped over on the couch next to his hospital bed.

His lips part in a silent breath of relief, all of the heat rising through to cloud his head dissipates immediately when he sees you curled up on the couch next to his hospital bed, and he indistinctly remembers being dragged to your apartment, and the image of your alarmed expression looking down at him as he finally lets himself collapse after learning that you’re okay. Your laptop is open on the table near the couch and one of your textbooks is haphazardly dropped onto the ground near where your hand is hanging off the couch, as if it had fallen from your hands after you drifted off to sleep. 

The sun is setting outside, the kaleidoscopic red and orange and yellow colors casting a fiery glow over your resting face—you look exhausted, there are bags beneath your eyes and your brow is furrowed a bit even as you sleep. Not for the first time, Dazai is utterly enraptured by you: the way your hair looks beneath the sunset, the ethereal radiance it gives to your skin, he thinks if you were awake, your eyes would have him entirely entranced. 

He can hardly drag his eyes off of you even though he knows he needs to reach out to the Agency, figure out what’s going on and how long it's been since he was shot so that he can properly help them. It takes all of his self control to drag his eyes away from you and search for his phone—yours is laying on the couch next to you, but Dazai doesn’t think he can sit up and move to grab it. But his own phone is right on his nightside table anyway so he doesn’t need to. 

He grimaces as he reaches over to grab his phone from the nightstand, pain shooting through his chest, but just as he’s able to dial Tanizaki’s number, a voice clears their throat from the door to the room. Dazai’s gaze lifts to a stern, older nurse standing in the frame, staring at him, he withers.

“No phones after surgery, Dazai-sama. Rest quietly,” she scolds, arms crossed. 

“Ah, but it’s an emergency-” he tries to throw the woman off with a charming smile, but her frown only deepens, dark eyes sharpening.

“No exceptions,” she says tightly, and Dazai sighs as he leans back against his pillows again, realizing he’ll just have to wait until the nurse leaves to try again, or until you wake up. His head falls to the side at the thought of you, dark eyes dragging over your body again. “You have a good girl, Dazai-sama. She has been by your side since she brought you here, refused to leave. Argued with the department head for two hours when he tried to get her to.”

Dazai swallows thickly—he doesn’t respond to the nurse, but he also doesn’t look away from you. He doesn’t quite think he’s ever experienced the light feeling that spreads through his chest, and he’s not sure why he’s feeling it or what it is, he thinks it’s uncomfortable but he doesn’t think it’s uncomfortable in a bad way, but he also hates it. 

It’s been three and a half weeks since he brought you to that event where he kissed you for the first time and since then, he’s faced an increasingly more dangerous storm of new and uninvited feelings whenever he’s around you. Dazai usually has stringent control over himself—his physical self and mental self—but it’s thrown out the window when he’s with you. He finds his heart racing and his lips unconsciously twitching up when the two of you talk, and now he has this feeling, where he feels like his heart is in the clouds and his mind is fogged with fondness.  

He doesn’t even notice when the nurse leaves again, his throat clogged and his eyes half-lidded as he looks over you. He thinks his attachment to you is dangerous, and if he was a good person, he’d leave you—save you from his fucked up life because so long as you’re associated with him, you’ll be in trouble, whether it’s because of old enemies from his time as a Port Mafia executive, new enemies as a detective for the Agency, or himself, because Dazai is self-destructive and his own fucked up mind is usually his worst enemy. 

But Dazai is not a good person. He is selfish. He is greedy. He is irresponsible. And you’ve made the mistake of showing him what it’s like to be cared for, why should he refuse it? Why should he push you away when you made the choice to give it to him? It’s easier to blame it on you, convince himself that you brought this upon yourself the moment you agreed to be his date to the event, as if you had any idea what sort of sick and fucked up person Dazai really is.

“You’re awake.” 

It’s your voice that tears him out of his thoughts, drowsy and thick with sleep. Dazai hates how the sound of you quells the storm inside of him, eyes rising to meet yours as you throw him a sleepy smile. 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he teases, even though the sun is setting.

“I think I should be the one saying that.” You let out a laugh, but then your smile falters as you look over him and ask, “Are you good?”

Dazai wonders if you’re a fucking mind reader or something because how the hell do you always know when something is up with him? It’s starting to disturb him, honestly, he prides himself on being able to masking himself from people and your existence just casually shreds that pride. 

“I got shot,” Dazai says dryly, tossing you a charming smile.

“Not what I meant,” you respond, just as dryly, but you don’t push—you never do, he’s grateful for it. “How long have you been up?”

“A few minutes,” Dazai tells you, watching as you stand up from the couch and stretch, letting out a yawn before shuffling over to take a seat the chair closest to Dazai’s bedside. 

Dazai’s heart is lodged in his throat when you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his—the action is so offhand and so thoughtless that it genuinely throws him off. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the casual intimacy that you show him, no one in his life has ever touched him in the way you do: gently, without fear or concern. He’s used to anxious looks, he’s used to discomfort, he’s used to people giving him a wide berth; even after leaving the Port Mafia, not much has changed regarding that in the Agency. Not because they fear him, or are anxious because of him, but because his ability is uncomfortable, no one likes the feeling of being stripped of the one innate defense that they have. 

“How are you feeling?” you ask, peering up at him carefully. 

“Like I got shot,” Dazai repeats, winking at you. You roll your eyes, so he continues with. “I feel fine, they must have me on plenty of pain meds right now.” 

“I’m sure they do,” you say dryly. “Since you’re feeling okay, let’s talk.”

All of the air whooshes from Dazai’s lungs.

“You know what, I think I’m feeling a bit tired again, I’m-”

“No, you’re not.”

“I really kind of am-”

“No, you are not.”

Dazai withers under your stare and he thinks that this is it—most people would run after something like this happens, so he shouldn’t be surprised that this is your final straw. A part of him wants to fight it, his fingers instinctively tighten around yours, as if to physically hold you in place, and he thinks again about the blurry line between obsession and love, and your ever-wavering place on either side of it.

His throat spasms as he swallows, trying to brace himself for the inevitable words: you breaking off the relationship, because why the hell should someone like you—with a promising future and a good heart—risk everything for someone like him? It would be on track for him, because every time Dazai finds something that he might genuinely want, it’s always lost the moment he obtains it. 

But instead of the ‘I think it would be best if we didn’t talk anymore’ or ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ you hit him with, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Dazai stares at you, he blinks once, and then says a bit hesitant, “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific, there’s a lot of things wrong with me.”

Evidently, you’re unamused, your lips flatten and your eyes twitch. Dazai is a bit alarmed. “Why on earth would you ever come to my apartment when you’re bleeding out? What if I didn’t have the right supplies to patch you up? What if I didn’t know how to patch you up? You would have died, Dazai. You would have died in my fucking apartment, on my fucking couch—which is stained with your blood, by the way, you’ll be cleaning that—and I would’ve only been able to watch. What is wrong with you? Why did you tell them to bring you to my place?”

Dazai’s lips part to respond but no words leave them, which clearly irritates you even more, so he forces out, “I thought you were hurt. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You were bleeding out, Dazai,” you stress, your voice rising in frustration—his grip tightens on your hand, thumb rubbing circles over the back of your hand in an attempt to calm you down before the nurses come back. “You could’ve died, getting yourself help should’ve been the priority.”

“It wasn’t,” Dazai tells you tightly, watching as your expression shifts into one that he cannot read and that severely unnerves him. “I was bleeding out and all I could think about was you.”

You go quiet after that—that indecipherable look is still on your face but there’s something intense swimming behind your eyes that makes him swallow thickly. 

“Why?” you finally ask him and Dazai grimaces as Dostoevsky’s words ring through his head again. “Why were you so worried about me that you-”

You cut yourself off and look away. Dazai doesn’t think that he’s ever seen someone look so visibly distressed at the thought of him dying. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel—warm, maybe, but also nervous. He’s not used to it, and he doesn’t like things he’s not used to. 

“Did you meet someone today?” And then he questions whether or not it’s even the same day as when he got shot, adding a: “yesterday?” 

“Yesterday,” you say idly. You’re frowning as you look over him—distantly, Dazai thinks that he really should try to get in contact with the Agency soon. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

There’s a wry smile on your lips as you mimic the same words that he told you just a few moments before. Dazai’s smile is half-hearted, unable to muster the energy to actually smile back—you seem to be able to sense his exhaustion and Dazai’s eyes fall to where your hands are connected as you begin to trace his fingers. The motion is comforting in a way that almost throws Dazai off, he watches as you slowly drag your finger along the length of each of his fingers, nearly forgetting to explain his question.

“His name is Fyodor Dostoevsky,” Dazai finally says, voice taking a more serious tone—recognition flashes in your eyes, Dazai hates it. 

“The Russian from the teahouse,” you note. “I played a game of chess with him. Lost. We talked for a bit… he’s dangerous?”

Dazai lets out a huff of laughter that is very much not amused, intertwining his fingers with yours again and lifting your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles. His eyes flutter shut a bit as his lips linger there, and he thinks that he jinxed himself before by claiming that he was too tired to talk because the sleepiness is hitting him again. 

“Very,” he says softly. “I thought he killed you. I-”

I thought that it was like Odasaku all over again—that thought echoes through his head again, but he doesn’t speak it out loud. You don’t know who Odasaku is anyway, so it would be meaningless to you. His thoughts darken a bit at the reminder of his old friend. He thinks that Odasaku would’ve liked you, if given the chance to met you, and there’s a pit of longing in his stomach for a life that he would never live: being able to bring you to Odasaku, introducing you as his girlfriend, having to sit and endure hours of torment from him and Ango as the two of them regale you with embarrassing tales of his youth. 

Dazai thinks that he might throw up, so he promptly turns his thoughts elsewhere.

“Next time, take care of yourself and trust me to handle myself,” you tell him after a moment, voice quiet—Dazai wants to tell you that there’s no way in hell that will ever happen, but he doesn’t want to argue about it right now, and he still needs to get in contact with the Agency, so instead he focuses on the other part of your statement.

“Next time?”

You furrow your brows at him, as if unsure as to what he’s asking.

“You know,” Dazai says, feigning a joke to hide the insecurity still tainting his mind, “most people would run after something like this happens.”

“Please,” you say with a snort, as if the idea is entirely ridiculous. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Dazai thinks that it’s absurd how one short sentence from you can entirely shake his world. He lets out a breath, trying to hide the way that your words affect him. A few moments pass where the two of you just enjoy each other’s presence, you’re beautiful beneath the sunset and your skin is warm and comforting against his. Dazai feels at peace for the first time in his life, he thinks, and it’s so dangerously deceptive because he knows the world outside is at war and the Agency is in danger. Even knowing that, he thinks he would stay here forever, if given the chance—that thought also scares him because he’s never been one for any sort of commitment like this.

But he can’t stay here forever, the Agency needs him—and the way his phone is incessantly buzzing on the table next to the hospital bed is proof enough of that.  

He sighs and then he looks over to you as an idea sparks in his head. You’re already looking at him, your brows are furrowed and your eyes are narrowed, as if you already know he’s about to say something that you’re not going to like. A mischievous smile dances at the corner of his lips, your expression worsens.

“Wanna do me a favor, sweet bella?” he coos. 

“... What is it?” 

“Help me get out of here?”

Your eyes shoot open, you pointedly look down at Dazai’s chest and then back up at his face. 

“Are you insane?” you ask irritably, and then your face twists as if you already know the answer to the question—it nearly makes him laugh. 

“Please?” 

“... I hate you, Dazai Osamu.”

Dazai does laugh now—wild and carefree and utterly genuine in a way that he rarely allows himself to be. 

“We both know you don’t mean that, bella.”

“Up!” you say, kneeling on the bed next to Dazai as he sleeps. You know he’s going to let loose a string of complaints and pouts—he’ll use his recovering injury as an excuse, even though he claims that it’s healed whenever it’s convenient for him. “Get up, Dazai!” 

Dazai groans, throwing out a hand and lazily trying to push you away, rolling over onto his stomach to bury his face into your pillow. You are relentless, grabbing his shoulder and rolling him back over, and he gives you a look that’s nothing short of withering as he finally cracks one eye open to look at you.

“I’m wounded, let me sleep,” he grumbles at you before pulling the covers back over his head. You yank them off and he groans, flinging his arms over his face. “Why do you hate me?” 

“I don’t hate you,” you say immediately, grabbing his wrist and promptly trying to pull him out of your bed. He’s as uncooperative as possible, laying still as a log as you do your best to get him up. “If you get out of bed and come with me, I’ll tell Kunikida that you’re sick on Monday so you don’t have to go to work and won’t get yelled at for it.”

Dazai’s eyes shoot open, and you know that you’ve got him—you think that being with Dazai is a lot like having a child, with the bargaining and negotiation, but you will happily leverage the fact that his coworkers don’t trust him to not lie about being sick over him because they do trust you not to lie for him. Their mistake.

“Fine,” he agrees, rolling out of bed, albeit still tired considering how he nearly stumbles into your dresser. 

You snort out a laugh and he scowls at you, but when you reach out to grab his hand, his face immediately smooths. His fingers lace with yours instinctively, and he rubs at his eyes with his other hand before asking, “What are we doing?”

“Going outside,” you tell him, dragging him out of the bedroom and into the main room of the apartment, tossing one of your sweatshirts at him before grabbing one for yourself. 

He slides it on and then squints as he looks out the window as he pulls on a pair of slippers. “It’s still dark out,” he gapes, horrified, “What time is it? You’re evil.”

You grin at him, tugging your sweatshirt over your head before flinging open the door of your apartment. “Come on.”

Dazai lets out a sigh of utter suffering before following you, you shut the door closed behind him and immediately start making your way to the steps leading down out of the complex. It’s cool outside—the chill of the night still hangs in the crisp air, the moon only just beginning to set over the horizon. There’s still another ten minutes to sunrise, so you have plenty of time to get to the beach. 

You startle out of your thoughts as Dazai lets out a noise akin to a shriek, turning to catch sight of him nearly slipping down the steps, the heavy dew making the steps to the second level of the apartment building slippery. You barely muffle the loud laugh that pushes from your lips, hand flying to your mouth to physically stop yourself because the last thing you need is your neighbors whispering even more about the two of you.

Dazai looks at you, thoroughly betrayed and incredibly insulted, but you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his again and he looks partially mollified, swinging your arms theatrically as the two of you walk out of the complex and down the road. 

“What’re we doing outside?” he finally asks, absently lifting his arm and spinning you beneath it as you continue down the street. You look up at him with a smile as you pull him onto the path that leads to the beach—he still looks tired, but there’s a soft look in his eyes as he looks down at you. “Bringing me back to the beach to finish me off right where you found me? Oh, bella, you know the way to a man’s heart.” 

“We,” you begin—this time you lift your own arm and Dazai’s lips curve up as he ducks his head down to spin beneath your connected arms, sand flies beneath his feet as he does and distantly, you think you should’ve worn sandals even though it’s a bit chilly because you’re going to have to deal with sand in your sneakers, “are going to watch the sunrise.”

Dazai squints instantly. “You woke up at this unholy hour to watch the sunrise?” he accuses loudly, throwing his head back in annoyance but you can see from the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners that he’s only teasing. “I’ve seen hundreds of sunrises.”

“But have you really?” you press, swinging your legs around in front of him and grabbing his other hand so that you’re holding both of his and standing before him, forcing him to look back down at you.

Dazai lets out an exaggerated sigh as he turns his head back down to look at you, hands tightening around yours as he pulls you a bit closer. He bends his head down, hovering his face over yours before whispering, “I’m going to throw you in the water after we’ve watched your sunrise.”

“Dazai, I will destroy you,” you instantly threaten.

His smile sharpens, he winks at you and says, “Sexy.”

“You’re gross,” you complain and then free one of your hands from his to continue dragging him closer to the water. 

In the far distance, you can see the light of the sun beginning to peek over the horizon. 

“Come on! We have to settle before the sun breaks the horizon, it’s the best part!” you say hurriedly, getting as close to the water as possible without being hit by the push and pull of the sea and sitting yourself into the dry sand, dragging Dazai down with you. You’ll have to shower before you leave your apartment for the day, but you don’t mind—you’ll have to replace your first aid kit soon though because you’re pretty sure all of your bandage rolls have been entirely used up and Dazai is going to shower after this too and have to rewrap himself. 

Dazai plops onto the ground next to you, but instead of sitting shoulder by shoulder, he shimmies down into a laying position and drops his head into your lap, looking out toward the sea.

“Pet my hair, bella,” the sleepy brunette sighed, half-lidded eyes looking up at you pitifully. “Pleeeeease.”

“If you fall asleep, I’ll cry,” you tell him, because you can’t deny him when he’s looking at you like this. He only lets out a noncommittal hum, a pleased smile on his lips as soon as your fingers start combing through his soft hair.

You think he’s a lot like a cat, honestly, with the way he’s curled in your lap—if he was capable of purring, you’d think he’d be doing just that right now, soft sighs escaping his lips every time your nails scratch gently at his scalp. His eyes droop shut but he never allows them to close, keeping his eyes trained ahead on the horizon—one of his hands comes up to rest on your leg, thumb idly rubbing circles on your thigh, and you wish you could freeze time in this moment because you feel so at peace that you never want to return to the real world. 

Dazai’s lips part to say something—you wonder if he’s going to complain about it taking too long, but the words seem to falter on his lips as the sun finally breaches the horizon and paradise arrives. You think you should be looking at the sunrise with him, admiring the sea of fire that the sun releases onto the surface of the water, ingraining the image of the endless pink clouds and orange skies into your brain because you love sunrises—you think there’s beauty to the fact that no singular sunrise is ever the same as another, and you’ve made it your life’s goal to etch the image of as many as possible into your brain before you die. 

Instead, you find yourself watching the sunrise through Dazai’s eyes—watching the reflection of the burning sun through wonderstruck dark hues, watching the ethereal glow that the golden rays cast over his skin. His wide eyes are pools of melted honey and molten gold and you can watch in them how the colors shift and intensify as the sun rises. If there’s beauty to the individuality of every new morning’s sky, there’s an even greater beauty to Dazai in this moment—you think you’d much rather replace the image of each new sunrise with how each new sunrise reflects in his eyes, and distantly, you wonder if it’s possible to convince him to wake up at this time every day. 

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so at peace—it’s almost childlike, the way that his eyes sparkle and shine, entranced by the way the morning sun distorts the world into a scene worthy of the heavens. His thumb has paused in the steady circles that he’d been tracing on your thigh, his entire body and mind consumed with absorbing the picture of the sunrise.

You smile to yourself as you continue carding your fingers through his hair. You speak softly so as to not disturb the moment, “I thought you’ve seen sunrises,” you tease gently.

“Not like this,” he whispers after a few moments, breath catching a bit over the words, “it’s…”

You’re still looking down at him when you say, “… beautiful.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless, eyes lingering on the scene for just a moment longer before he turns his head to look up at you. Emotions you’ve never seen before race through his eyes—a million thoughts, a million questions, but he only asks one: “Why did you bring me here?”

You think he might be looking for a particular answer, but you don’t know what it is, so you answer honestly and hope for the best. 

“No two sunrises are ever the same,” you tell him quietly, “I want to see as many as I can before I die… and I’d like to see them with you.”

You think that whatever answer he was looking for, you must have given him, because his entire expression shifts and collapses at your words. As if you’d taken any semblance left of the mask he wears and shattered it against the rocks that line the far side of the beach. 

Longing, adoration, desperation, fear and hope all cross through his eyes before Dazai suddenly turns his face back toward the sunrise, the hand on your thigh reaching to the one you have resting on his chest so that he can entwine your fingers again. He keeps his palm to the back of your hand so that your own palm can stay flat against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart.

“He’s wrong” he says so softly that you think that you might not be meant to overhear it, “this is the promised land.”

You don’t know what he means, but you think that’s as close to an agreement that you might get from him, so you smile and finally turn your eyes up to watch the sunrise yourself.

You can only enjoy it for a few seconds.

“I’m still going to throw you in the water,” he suddenly claims, and then adds, just a bit more quietly, “… but let’s just sit here for a few moments longer, okay?”

You smile softly.

“Okay.”

[fyorina]

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: the chronicles of a chance meeting between a certain suicidal detective and a stressed grad student. {fem!reader, canon compliant, romance, wc: 50k}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: SIDE A BEGINS! eeeeee this one is gonna be so fun, very light and mostly fluffy. i genuinely had the time of my life writing this i adore him so much.

SEE: WATERLOO SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

INSTALLMENT ONE: ROMAN HOLIDAY

SUMMARY: you come across a suspicious figure laying unconscious on the beach near your apartment. concerned, and thinking that they might be dying, you bring them back to your apartment. a mistake, of course... or was it?

INSTALLMENT TWO: DRIVE

SUMMARY: against all odds, you come across dazai osamu again, and you somehow find yourself roped into being his date for an event celebrating the armed detective agency. you're not falling. you swear. (you're lying).

INSTALLMENT THREE: I WALK THE LINE

SUMMARY: an easy day of studying is interrupted when your boyfriend—yes! boyfriend!—shows up at your doorstep bleeding out. you think he's an idiot. you think you're even more of an idiot for falling in love with him. shit, did you really just think that?

INSTALLMENT FOUR: COMING DOWN

SUMMARY: something is up. you know it. dazai is being far too romantic and you're absolutely not buying the excuses he keeps giving you. it's whatever, you think, you'll enjoy the fancy dinner and fancier hotel, even with the imminent threat of the looming bomb about to drop.

INSTALLMENT FIVE: YOUNG GOD

SUMMARY: after an agonizing two weeks, dazai finally returns to you and a much needed conversation takes place.

ART BY @jenoutof10

ART BY @jenoutof10

[fyorina]

FEATURING: dazai osamu {canon; beast}

SUMMARY: infinite universes, infinite possibilities. across them all, only one thing remains constant: you and your fateful meeting with dazai osamu, a whirlwind of love and romance that seems to always end in tragedy.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: i am SO excited for this guys. i've been working on this since early december when i first started seeing the day i picked up dazai leaks trying to get it all ready to post. it's inspired by the whole side a/side b of it. i finally got past the 1/2 point in side b, so i decided to start! it's literally the reason why i decided to make a blog for writing so i hope you guys enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it! ＼（^０＾）／this is my last attempt with dividers :’) reblogs appreciated!!

SIDE A: BADLANDS

SUMMARY: the chronicles of a chance meeting between a certain suicidal detective and a stressed grad student. {fem!reader, canon compliant, romance}

waterloo, i was defeated, you won the war! waterloo, promise to love you forevermore!

SIDE B: UNREAL UNEARTH

SUMMARY: the chronicles of a chance meeting between a suffering mafia boss and a vivacious (almost) grad student. {fem!reader, beast au compliant, romance & tragedy}

waterloo, couldn't escape if i wanted to! waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you!

𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘏𝘐𝘚𝘛𝘖𝘙𝘠 𝘉𝘖𝘖𝘒 𝘖𝘕 𝘛𝘏𝘌 𝘚𝘏𝘌𝘓𝘍 𝘐𝘚 𝘈𝘓𝘞𝘈𝘠𝘚 𝘙𝘌𝘗𝘌𝘈𝘛𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘐𝘛𝘚𝘌𝘓𝘍!