#‘this makes no sense’ BUT CLAIMING DAZAI IS ELEGANT DOES????

[zukkaoru]

everyone talking about this with dazai…. guys i think i know who chuuya is REALLY talking about here

[dazaran]

Simulated Heaven

ship: Dazai Osamu/Shibusawa Tatsuhiko rating: G genre: fluff / domestic fluff AO3 link: here! warnings: DEAD APPLE SPOILERS

summary: If he could speak to that unfair, mocking Eros above, he would ask: why this person? Though, Dazai knows he would not get an answer. This sort of thing is always left unanswered.

The concept of a gentle awakening is something Dazai finds so foreign, even after the strings keeping him as a puppet for Mori’s mafia had been severed. Every time he opens his eyes, something inside him - a simple thought, instinct perhaps - says that he is waking up because there is a knife to his throat, the barrel of a gun between his brows. Waking up to sunlight filtering through translucent curtains swaying in the breeze that filters in through the window, that’s away to wake up he feels is too generous, too elegant for someone as sinful and tarnished as him.

His reaction is delayed because of this, staring up at the off white ceiling of an apartment that’s not his own, in a neighborhood that is not his own on the other side of the city - nowhere near the agency’s dorm.

It’s for his - their - own good that it isn’t, all things considered.

He exhales slowly through his nose before sitting up, running a hand through his hair. A few strands tickle his nose from the ongoing breeze, cause the curtains to catch on one of his shoulders. Dazai studies the fabric: it’s a translucent white, covered with a layer of golden dust. They were two colors he never thought would suit him.

He’s used to black - blood stains are less noticeable, easier to ignore; you can slip into the shadows and disappear; when you’re a monster - inhuman - it’s where you belong. White is bright, pure , not suited for things like demons or monsters.

... Or, so he thought.

A tilt of his crown, then a shift of caramel hues. They focus on the figure sharing the single-sized bed with him, sleeping on their side with their back turned to him. It makes him want to laugh at the irony , as well as the sheer naivety the person can still display. (Or perhaps it’s because this person is neither here nor there, waxing and waning between life and death - a balancing act Dazai wishes he could understand, but his facade is only so deep. He knows that in the face of this person, he is more transparent than he’d like to be; he knows that this person can tell death is not what he truly desires... not anymore. It is a similarity between them that has been stripped by the time spent apart.)

The body stirs, white hair fluttering against the bed with the movement from where their hip curls inward.

Dazai stares, watching, waiting, as if expecting something. When nothing comes, he presses a palm against the bed, using the other to pull away the hair that shields their face. Three long claw marks scar their face - the footprint of the desperate struggling to live, a reminder of their past cruelty they hold no guilt towards. That they can wear such a thing without remorse, without pride, merely acknowledging its existence as thus - it’s a level of indifference Dazai wish he could have.

His own body is a canvas of mistakes, of scars, reminders and repaid debts . He could have gone without many if he chose any life but the one he had lived, but the repercussions of that is not something he even wants to indulge in metaphorically.

(There would be no conversations and laughter echoing into the night at an alley bar, no desperate plea for him to feel he should aim to be a better man, no - whatever this is, this cathartic and slow-spreading poison he acknowledges as a simmering, then sweltering emotion that burns in his chest. If he could speak to that unfair, mocking Eros above, he would ask: why this person?

Though, Dazai knows he would not get an answer. This sort of thing is always left unanswered.)

“Shibusawa,” Dazai speaks in a voice that is nothing above a whisper, as if the very name would invoke the cry of an angel, the hiss of a demon. “You’re awake, aren’t you?”

Shibusawa does not stir this time. His eyes open without the sluggishness of starting the day, staring across the small bedroom for a few moments before red eyes shift to glance up at Dazai. “How unlike you, to wake after me.”

Dazai smiles lightly, amused. “Perhaps it was a good omen for the day.”

Shibusawa stares up at him, tilting his head with a blink. It still holds that same curiosity as the short time spent together in that crumbling castle, looking at Dazai beyond the mere words he speaks and the smile on his face. “... Someone like you - doesn’t believe in omens, Dazai-kun.” he turns, lying flat on his back with hands folded against his chest.

He looks as if he’s a corpse laid out for his funeral, accepting his fate, knowing no one will come to mourn him. He lives and breathes tragedy, and that in itself pulls Dazai in even closer .

“You’re right,” Dazai agrees after a pause, moving a hand to brush Shibusawa’s bangs out of his face, trace a cheek with a thumb before stopping to twirl a few strands of hair around his fingers. “But, today holds some value above the norm.”

“I will humor you: what value is there?”

A chuckle, accompanied by just the smallest flash of teeth. “It’s your birthday. You’re 30 now, aren’t you? How lucky you are, you look as if you’ve barely aged a day since we met.”

Shibusawa gives a muted ‘ah’. His expression does not change, outside the small raise of his brows. “That sort of thing became irrelevant to me a long time ago. The body I owned after my first death was fabricated, and returning to the missing part of my body - I suppose it’s carrying where it left off. Or, maybe it won’t move forward at all, given all that I am.”

“Are you saying you won’t celebrate? My, and here was I, hoping to do something fun with you!”

“How much can be done, when I am wanted by your allies, your enemies, and everything in between?”

Dazai’s smile widens, something dark glittering in his eyes - a darkness Shibusawa finds comfort in, however strange it may sound. “Silly of you, to doubt my ways. When have you or myself had trouble with slipping away?”

“Slipping away sounds too romantic.”

The brunet hums pensively, laying back down on his stomach this time, the upper half of his body against Shibusawa’s. There’s something strangely soothing in feeling the rise and fall of the man’s chest - perhaps Dazai doesn’t want to look into it too far and normalize it because it will lead him to admit he’s in love. (Perhaps he’s already admitted it somewhere and conveniently made himself forget.) “How disappointing. You could be quite the romanticist, if you had the desire.” he says, cupping the older’s cheek with a gentleness unbecoming of a demon prodigy . He doesn’t do anything at first, merely staring into those carmine hues, until finally - he gives up, he closes his eyes and leans forward, claiming the lips of a man who is the closest thing to death.

Kissing Shibusawa is sometimes dangerous in itself. Gentle pecks hold no problems, but anything further and there’s the possibility of a split lip on the courtesy of his sharp incisors - Dazai never minds it, maybe even welcomes it when he feels the sharpness cut into his lip enough to bleed. He’s never liked blood in his mouth, but doesn’t mind it if the person who draws it is Shibusawa, doesn’t mind it if it’s like this. There’s a gentleness in this slow murder of his heart he somehow wants to indulge in.

When Dazai leans back, Shibusawa cups his chin, tracing a thumb over the cut on his lip and smudging the new blood that surfaces.

A thin, eerie - yet ethereal, in the same breath - smile makes its way onto Shibusawa’s face. “Thank you, Dazai-kun.”

Dazai stills for one beat, two, three - and he succumbs to the embarrassment he will not speak of as he flops back down on the older’s chest. (He’s glad Shibusawa isn’t quite so cunning in such an area, or Dazai is certain he’d be done for.)

“On second thought, let’s just stay here together instead,” he suggests, kicking his feet into the air idly while a hand moves to fiddle with one of Shibusawa’s braids. “You’re better off here, for my eyes alone.”

Shibusawa scoffs in amusement, and Dazai feels his heart stutter. “You never stop finding ways to tether me to you.”

I’m fine with that, is the unspoken thought they share in unison.

AN: This is an au based off of Shibusawa having survived at the end of Dead Apple because his self that was fabricated by Draconia merged back with the parts of him that was missing (his memories / his skull) so he gained his body back... If that makes sense I guess. Because it's his original skull again, the scars remain. Bones are fucking cowards for not giving Shibu those sexy scars. Or sharp teeth since he was turned into a scaley twice. I gotta do EVERYTHING around here smdh.