#lots of thoughts about unreal unearth today

[adamshallperish]

all of hozier's songs are about love, but i'm not entirely sure if it's the kind of love everyone seems to think it is. i think his love shines out in that he cares for the world and the people in it so much that it can only inspire anger and mourning at how things like capitalism, greed, colonialism, war, homophobia, and racism damage and corrupt them. it's almost like as he points out these deep systemic issues, he has to then turn to the light and praise the things that are good and beautiful as to not let the flame burn out. i think a lot of people may only know him for the high adulations of love presented in many of his ballads, and those are still wonderous, sure, but what interests me far more is his enduring love for the downtrodden and the marginalized, and how he uses language to try and lift them away from the things that oppress them.

[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.

[aemonds-fire]

Another Chance?

Lyrics from Abstract [Psychopomp] by Hozier Unreal Unearth

A Oneshot for @arcielee and her ☆ arcie's 1k challenge!! Congratulations!!

i read the lyrics while listening to the song, and this scene played in my mind like a movie. Hope you like it!

Not beta read. Any mistakes are my own.

Modern Aemond x Reader

Warnings: None

Word Count: 640

At least it stopped raining. You didn’t think to bring an umbrella with you today, and you would have been soaked by the time you made it to your apartment building. You walk with your head lowered, looking at the lights reflecting in the wet streets and puddles. Another two blocks, and you will be home. You’re tired after a long day of classes and a shift at your job. You just want to crash, needing to lose yourself in sleep.

You look ahead, stopping when you see him. He’s leaning against a light pole in front of your building with his knee bent and his foot resting against the metal. There’s no doubt it’s him, tall and lanky, his blonde hair pulled back in a messy bun, and his head down with a cigarette between his lips.

 I will not be great

But I'm grateful to get through

The feeling came late

I'm still glad I met you

You shake your head. You do not want to deal with him now. He looks up, turning to flick his cigarette into the wet street, and sees you.

You should have known better than to get involved with a guy like him. You saw the red flags, but your heart wouldn’t listen. You fell for him, and you fell hard.

The memory hurts

But does me no harm

Your hand in my pocket

To keep us both warm

"Why are you here?" you ask bluntly as you approach.

"You won’t answer my calls," he replies dejectedly. "Can we talk, please?"

"There's nothing to talk about. You wanted to break up, so we broke up. The end," you tell him, trying to walk past him to enter your building as another round of rain begins.

"Wait," reaching for your arm. "I fucked up. I’m sorry. I want this; I know that now."

As he moves under the lamp post, you can see the light dancing off his sapphire blue prosthetic eye.

See how it shines

See how it shines

Sometimes there's a thought

Like you choose what you're doing

But it comes to nought

When I look back through it

I remember the view

Street lights in the dark blue

The moment I knew

I'd no choice but to love you

"I love you. I got scared and tried to ignore it, but I can’t. I miss you so much," he continues, sadness and pleading on his face as rivulets of rain roll over his cheekbones to drip from his jaw.

Both of you are getting soaked now, and your tears begin to mix with the raindrops falling on your face. A few months ago, hearing him say that he loved you would have made you the happiest girl in the world. Now, you’re the one who’s scared.

You pull your arm away, your temper flaring. "After months of not knowing what I mean to you, if I really meant anything to you, you just end it," your voice rising. "Now you want another chance. That’s asking a lot; for me, there’s a lot of hurt and no trust. I don’t know if I can."

Darling, there's a part of me

I'm afraid will always be

Trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life

The weeds up through the concrete

The traffic picking up speed

All my love and terror

Balanced there between those eyes

He moves closer, standing right in front of you and looking into your eyes. "Tell me what I need to do; I’ll do it. I’ll earn your trust back. I don’t care how long it takes. You’re in charge, we move at your speed."

You don’t resist when he wraps his arms around you, pulling you against his chest. The two of you are embracing in the rain, under the light.

See how it shines

Fire's Taglist: @arcielee @persephonerinyes @valeskafics @boofy1998 @echos-muses @artemisra @marthawrites

[pcprminibigbang]

PCPR Mini Big Bang Fic Claiming Time!

Today’s the daaaaay!

Under the cut, you will find the summaries of the fanfics our Writers have been working on. They have been posted anonymously, labeled only by number.

Artists, go through the summaries carefully and figure out which ones you’d like to work on the most! Please pick three choices and then hop on over to your email to send your fic claiming email to pcprminibigbang@gmail.com! If you are confused as to how this process goes, please check your email inbox for emails Mod has sent concerning the full details on how to claim a fic.

For those not participating in this event, please feel free to read through the summaries as well to get a sneak peek of what our Writers have been working on!

Okay, that’s enough talking from Mod. Here are this event’s fics!!!

FIC #1 : CLAIMED!!!

He shuffles to the door, reaching for his gun just in case before he pulls it open, startling the short man who was waiting on the other side.

"Goddammit, Burger!" Vang0 hisses, leaning a little closer, eyes darting to the sides. "Can I come in?" He asks bluntly, as if they had been talking just a couple minutes ago and this wasn't their first chat in about a week. We're not that codependent.

"Wh- why are you out this late? And with a bag?" He frowns when he sees the uncharacteristic plain green duffle bag hanging from Vang0's shoulder, completely contrasting with the man's clothes, even if this time he went for more subdued colors.

"Let me in and I'll tell you," the blonde retorts as he puts a foot in the corner, ready to push himself inside as soon as Burger gives him room for it.

And Burger can't say no, has never been able to say no to Vang0, so he just rolls to the side and lets Vang0 in before slamming the door closed again.

"Why are you here? Not that I don't appreciate ya visiting, just... it's late and yer carrying a bag," he points out, tilting his head a little. "Y’know you can talk to me, Vang0, right?"

"Y-yeah, that's why I'm here, I-" he pauses, taking a deep breath "I got in trouble, I hacked into something I shouldn't have and I need to lay low for a while"

-

Vang0 Bang0 messed up, big time, he needs help to get off the radar for a while, and of course that his best friend Burger Chainz would help him, and a road trip seems to be the best way to make him drop from the face of earth until things have quieted down. But the empty roads bring nostalgia and an unearths feelings both of them thought deeply buried. They say that road trips change you, why should that be different in the cyberpunk future?

-

Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz, getting together fic, Teen rating, no ao3 warnings needed, maybe some minor canon violence. It's a slightly introspective fic, more focused on how Burger realizes some stuff and how he deals with it.

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC #2 : CLAIMED!!!

Turtleneck Heathen Today at 8:15 PM …… did u just ping me to ask if i wore heals

Badass Business Bitch Today at 8:16 PM *heels yes i did and do you?

Turtleneck Heathen Today at 8:17 PM not usually?? ill wear em if its like a big thing or w e i guess (Edited) i mean i havnet really had the oprotuntiy to wear em

Badass Business Bitch Today at 8:19 PM are you intentionally misspelling words to make yourself seem cooler to me?? Vang0 I watched you lick a stranger’s nose

-

Vang0 doesn't remember his birthday. Or his age. Or his interests, his likes, his dislikes, the password to his CollegeBoard account.

(Well, one of those is less important than the others.)

That being said, Burger wants to throw him a birthday party. Dasha is interested, despite herself. A series of assumptions are made, some feelings are hurt, and some lessons are learned.

-

Ships: Vang0/Dasha/Burger if you squint but pretty much a gen fic

Rating: Probably G, bordering maybe on T for swearing

Sensitive content: Canon-typical amnesia, a little bit of angst, some oblique canon-typical gun mentions, maybe a panic attack later in the fic- I haven't quite decided if that's gonna happen or not yet?

Other info: It's a pretty lighthearted fic focusing on the relationship between the three of them! No AU, pretty much just comedy and fun all the way through. I haven't ironed out all the details of what's going to happen yet, but that's gonna stay pretty consistent- there'll be some angstier/less funny bits here and there, of course, though.

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC #3 : CLAIMED!!!

Vang0 chewed his lip, feeling uneasy.

“What’s up, friend? You’ve got a big ol’ frown on your face.”

Vang0 blushed. “I’m not- I’m just- thinking. I mean, Joltik usually travel with their mother Galvantula, and it’s unusual for them to be seen without one, so these ones might have been separated from their mother.”

Burger frowned. “Well, that ain’t good.”

Vang0 nodded. “And Galvantula can get very angry when separated from their young.”

Burger opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off by someone yelling loudly.

“BURGER! Burger, where the fuck are you!?”

Vang0 watched as Burger spun around and started towards the basement door.

“Burger!? Are you down here? There’s a huge fucking-”

“No, don’t come down-”

Burger was cut off as the door flew open, and someone catapulted into the basement.

Vang0 stared, eyes wide.

“Burger,” he said, “why the hell is Dapper Dasha in your house?”

-

Seven months ago, Vang0 woke up in a half-destroyed laboratory with no memories of his life before that. He's made something of a life for himself fixing people's technology, because he somehow knows how to do that really well.

And Burger Chainz is just another one of his clients. That is, until it turns out Burger's hiding ex-Pokemon Contest star Dapper Dasha in his house - who hasn't been seen in two years and just so happens to be Vang0's role model.

Vang0 definitely isn't freaking the fuck out. And he definitely isn't falling in love with Burger, either.

-

Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz. A Pokémon AU where Burger owns a farm, Dasha is an ex-contest star in hiding, and Vang0 has no clue what's going on. Rating: Teen. Warnings: mentions of blood and violence, nothing explicit

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC #4 : CLAIMED!!!

clink!

clink!

clink!

Vang0 Bang0 jumped in his seat as the van hit a bump in the road, speeding upon the old, graying highway. The trinkets they had collected over their various traveled crashed and banged, one almost hitting the window. The loud trinkets and music blaring from the car stereo didn’t phase Vang0. They weren’t sure where he was going, but it sure wasn’t home.

Vang0 wasn’t focused on the road, he was focused on something...else. It wasn’t the other cars; there weren’t any. Most people stayed in Night City, so the roads weren’t full a lot, he knew that. But this road doesn't have anything, anything that would ever prove that anyone had ever existed near here. Not even a bottle.

-    

After an eventful drive, Vang0 Bang0 finds themself on a beach with no discernable exits. No stairs, no ladders, not even a boat. Confused, Vang0 comes to terms with what he’s found in Night City, and what they’ve lost along the way. (Also they/he pronoun Vang0 rights)

-

There are no ships in this fic. I am likely to rate it Teen and Up audiences, since while there is no explicit or intentionally upsetting content, it might get a little sad at times. I’m not 100% sure about the exact direction my fic is going to go, there might be a car crash (not to graphically described, Vang0 is not hurt very badly, since this is [spoilers] a dream or metaphor about Vang0 coming to terms with memory loss). And since it is a dream sequence with no clear exit, this may be an unreality situation.

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: Only minor Artists can claim this fic.

------------------------------

FIC # 5 : CLAIMED!!!

Upon Burger barging into Dasha’s bedroom and announcing that he got tick- stop screaming Vang0, it’s just me, got tickets to a film festival tonight, are you guys in, Vang0 informed him that they had “a job tonight, Burger, did you even check the zoogle calendar, we’ll go tomorrow or something,” and no, of course Burger hadn’t checked the calendar, that’s Dasha’s job, and sure we can get tickets for tomorrow too but the Winston Rider film is only showing tonight and I thought you guys might be interested -- “Winst- do you mean Winona Ryder?” -- and after about five minutes of schedule comparisons Dasha simply shoved Vang0 out of the bed and declared that she was going to the movie with Burger, Vang0 was finishing their job, and Burger was going to make her some coffee because “it’s too fucking early for this” even though personally, Burger thought 11:00am was a perfectly reasonable time to be awake -- he was probably missing something, or maybe Dasha had just been up late, Vang0 was definitely a blanket hog and Burger knew from experience that sharing a bed with them would be more likely to result in a semi-conscious tug of war than a decent night’s sleep -- so Vang0 got up to do their job and Burger went and made some coffee and Dasha relocated to the couch, where she downed the coffee and some eggs and promptly fell back asleep for another three hours.

-

Burger loved Dasha, of course he did, he loved spending time with her and he thought she was beautiful and the idea that they might be dating -- might have been dating for a while -- sat warm and comfortable in his chest, but, except, it just was that, he hadn’t realized that how they interacted might be how two people that were dating behaved, he was just hanging out with his friend, he did stuff like this with Vang0 all the ti- -- now wait, wait a second, now hang on just a second --

a.k.a. 5 times Burger missed the point +1 time he caught a clue

-

Dapper Dasha/Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz, Rating: Teen, content warnings for implied violence, drinking, implied sexual content

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: Only adult Artists can claim this fic.

------------------------------

FIC # 6 : CLAIMED!!!

“What is this? What’s going on? Why am I dressed like I’m straight?” Vang0 hisses, gesturing to everything around him and the wrongness of it all.

“Seriously?” Candella rolls her eyes, unimpressed. “You couldn’t have scheduled your existential work breakdown until after our shift? You don’t see my lesbian ass complaining while I’m on the clock, do you?”

“I—What? Am I speaking another fucking language? You answered none of my questions!”

“Yeah because it’s 9am and the morning rush just ended so I do not have enough energy to indulge just,” Candella gestures at all of Vang0. “whatever is going on with you right now.”

“What’s going on with me right now is that I’ve found myself in a bougie caffeine establishment fever dream that just so happens to have the shittiest store playlist in the history of ever.” Vang0 says, bordering on manic as he looks up at the ancient speaker up in the corner of the shop. “Seriously, what is this terrible song?”

“Hey, Soul Sister by Train.” Candella still, amazingly, does not look alarmed or worried.

-

Or the one where Vang0 is a barista at Zero and One’s Cafe...except he’s not.

This isn’t his fucking job, this isn’t his fucking life, and it takes a quick look around the horrifyingly low tech coffee shop he’s in and the fact that he’s missing a USB port on his neck to be painfully aware that this isn’t his fucking universe. This is a 2010s over idealistic portrayal of adult mundanity that he and his friends are stuck in and Vang0 has to get them all out of this nightmare before he commits customer service acts of violence.

Bring it on, Coffee Shop AU. Bring. It. On

-

Dapper Dasha/Vang0 Bang0/Burger Chainz. An absurd existential romantic comedy where the trio somehow get transported into a Coffee Shop AU against their wills. Rating: Teen. Content warnings for slight absurd horror and canon typical violence.

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC # 7 : CLAIMED!!!

“That guy in my english class,” Dasha could hear through the speakers the distinct sound of combat boots stepping on cement. What was Vang0 doing outside at this time, alone? “The one I told you about! Burger-” “The one you’ve been crushing on for months and you’re too much of a coward to ask out?” Dasha already knew everything about this guy, Vang0 saw him on the first day of senior year in his english class and he hadn’t shut up about him ever since. 5’10, large and muscular shoulders, nice to everyone and just dense enough that everytime he said something you would automatically think “wow… thank fuck you’re attractive,” but not in an irritating way, you know? Vang0 exhaled, which Dasha interpreted as a yes. “Well I couldn’t ask him out even if i wanted to,” “Huh?” Dasha could hear the cogs in her own brain turning, trying to process what was being said to her. “Because he’s dating a blonde g-” she heard Vang0 stop on his steps and his tone becoming more dry, “are you even listening to what I’m saying?” Dasha yawned audibly and tried sitting up again. This time she succeeded, “yeah, yeah, I’m listenin’. How did you find out about this and why did you decide to call me at nearly 2 am instead of just waiting until tomorrow?” “I followed them and I saw them talking.” “You’ve lost it.” - Dasha received a call from Vang0 at 1:47 am one saturday night, and everything went downhill from there. They were not friends, she couldn’t understand why Vang0 acted like they were, but they weren’t, because Dasha didn’t have any friends. Except that, when she sees Vang0 struggling, for the first time in 18 years of life she decides that maybe this one idiot is worth getting soft over. And so she helps him bleach his hair over a cup of coffee and a can of Spunky Monkey. Because why the fuck not. - Main pairing is platonic Vang0/Dasha, background ship is Vang0/Burger. The whole story is from Dasha’s POV. Genre is just a very typical teen romance story except that it’s focused more on platonic bonding rather than the actual romance. Vang0 calls Dasha late at night, tells her he wants to bleach his long dark curly hair and cut his bangs after seeing Burger with a blonde girl, and he goes to her place. She helps him do the deed in her bathroom (she’s still elite) as they realize how much they care about each other. Initially inspired by that one scene in Scott Pilgrim where Knives Chau dyes her hair. Rating: general audiences, content warnings: lots of swearing, implied addiction/addiction enabling, shoplifting mention. CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC # 8 : CLAIMED!!!

vang0 officially disappears on march 23rd, 2040. exact time unknown, but whatever conspires that morning takes place before burger wakes up.

if he’s being honest with himself; he’s seen it coming for a little while now. vang0 isn’t the routine type, he’s young and whip smart and drinks so much redbull that the stuff must pump through his veins.

burger’s an old dog. older than vang0 by at least 2 years, he’s sure. he doesn’t have much, and god doesn’t that sound cliche, but he’s stupid and optimistic- and really. he must’ve known somewhere that the kid wouldn’t stay. he’s got a nasty drug habit that burger cant support and a look in his eyes like he wants the world- burger cant even buy him a fake ID.

this happens sometimes, the coming and going. vang0’ll disappear for a week if he’s lucky, a month if he’s not, but never longer than that.

no use crying over spilled milk.

-

vang0 goes missing, burger velmently pretends nothing is wrong until he doesnt, and dasha has to pick up the pieces.

-

missing person fic, burger/dasha/vang0 implied, but nothing explicitly mentioned or talked about, drug use mentioned, mature, canon typical violence, kidnapping, and other canon typical shit- it is night city after all lmao, kind of introspective, alot of burger just thinking back on his relationship w vang0 and shit, but there is some plot as well ig

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: None

------------------------------

FIC # 9: CLAIMED!!!

“Anyway, dude, what’s up? Or did you just come over for a cola because you ran out of your own?”

“Oh, right,” Vang0 says. He is still thinking about the man, and Dasha, and Dasha and that man, and Dasha’s long fingers and Dasha’s hair falling over her face as she purses her lips and blows upwards, her breath scattering strands of brown hair around her sharp cheekbones. “Um, there was something on the forum, I think - I think there’s a thing. For us. Should we call Burger?”

“Oh, Burger’s here,” Dasha says. “Somewhere. Burger!” she yells.

“Burger - but he spent the night?” Vang0 says, brain processing too slow somehow.

Dasha doesn’t respond.

“Did you -”

“Have a threesome?” Dasha asks, in her usual blunt way. Her face is pretty expressionless, eyes severe under the liner and blinking less than a person should, but Vang0 knows her pretty well, he can see the corners of her mouth turning up. That means she thinks something is funny. “I don’t think so. Burg!” she calls over her shoulder. “Did we?”

-

When Vang0 sees a JumpTrash post about vandalism at a club down town, he figures it will be an easy job for the trio - find out who did it, have Burger intimidate them, done. But things are more complicated than they seem, and the gang ends up drawn into a complex scheme involving the Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss, conspiracies and hit men, and people from their past they thought were long gone. Along the way, they'll have to decide what they want out of this job - and what they want from each other....

-

This is basically an elaborate CAPER, with a bunch of feelings and shit thrown in. It's a job and then it's a crime story! Its kind of a noir? Can I write a noir? WE"LL FIND OUT. It's gonna be fairly long assuming I can get my act together and put in all i want to put in. Like every good story, it's got plot and whatnot but the plot is just a fulcrum around which to wrap some found family polyamory shit, baby. It's Vang0/Dasha/Burger, duh and it takes them a minute to get there but they'll get there! Its gonna have canon-typical violence, basically - none of the trio die or anything, but other people do, and there's blood. There's gonna be a sex scene because I'm not an AMATEUR. Drug use, too, but mostly in happy fun ways. I haven't fully sussed out some of the flashbacks, but probably some oblique references to past traumas, probably Vang0. Nothing explicit, no reliving events or anything. Also i'm 1000 years old, be warned!

CLAIMING RESTRICTIONS: Only adult Artists can claim this fic.

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 I'm having a conniption fit in connection with Weight Loss.

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