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cressidagrey · 3 months

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Unknowing

Summary:

“If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her.”

What if… Azriel actually takes Rhys at his word? And does exactly what his High Lord ordered? With unexpected consequences.

This is the Inner Circle finding out about said consequences. Azriel is very good at keeping secrets

Warnings:

(This is a doozy.) Mention of Sex Work, Unexpected Pregnancy, Mention of Faerie Genocide, Mention of Faerie Wings being used as leather, Mention of Sex

Note:

This was a thought experiment that kinda started to grow a life on its own.

(super pretty divider by @saradika-graphics)

Azriel slid into the Dining Room of the River House nearly on the cusp of being late. Mostly because he hadn’t been able to pull himself away from what he had been doing that afternoon.

Nobody in his situation would have wanted to leave.

It had involved his wife and the flower field in their backyard… their daughter sleeping peacefully in her willow basket a few paces away, cradled in a bubble of her mother’s magic that would keep her asleep and safe from anything that could happen to her.

Fed, changed and as happy as a clam to fall into her usual milk-induced coma, he knew that she would only wake up if she wanted more milk.

Which meant that her parents had some quality time for each other…and they had made the best out of that.

The result was a little shimmer of magic all over Azriel that he couldn’t get scrubbed away. Not that he had tried particularly hard either. He liked having that proof of his wife’s pleasure all over him.

His wife, his mate, the mother of his child…his fucking sanity . There were many words he had for Embelia.

She was the bright spot of his life, untouched by the darkness that leeched around him. A secret he gladly kept.

And if the glimmer of her magic followed him and showed everybody that he was hers…well, then that was the case. Azriel didn’t particularly care what anybody else thought of it.

Azriel was out of fucks to give, to be honest. Had been, for the better part of two years…ever since that Solstice.

He was pretty sure that something inside him had splintered apart at Rhys’ order.

That fucking order had been the reason why he had ever even met Embelia though. He had taken Rhys literally. If you need to fuck someone, go to a pleasure hall and pay for it, but stay away from her. That had been Rhys’ words.

Her had been Elain.

Azriel had listened to Rhys. He had followed the order to the fucking letter, giving the High Lord of the Night Court to complain about. He had left Elain alone…who had figured things out with Lucien. Both now happy and ensconced in Day Court, with Helion, Lucien’s actual father.

And he had gone to that pleasure hall. He had asked for any female that wasn’t afraid of him…and then Embelia had claimed his hand with hers. And that had been that.

Granted, he hadn’t known her name then. For months, all he had known her as had been Blossom. That’s who she had been to him for months .

Just Blossom. Every Thursday, he had gone to that pleasure hall and paid for her company.

And then she had gotten pregnant.

Not quite what either of them expected.

He hadn’t even bothered with a contraception draught and while she had, apparently it hadn’t stood up to Azriel of all faes.

He should probably thank the mother on his knees for that .

But Embelia had told him about the pregnancy and had been very clear from the start that while she wanted the child, she wasn’t going to ask anything of him. Which was simply unacceptable.

He had grown up a bastard. He was not going to put his child through the same if he had any choice in that matter.

And he had been a little bit in love with her then already. So taking her from that pleasure hall and making her his wife…moving her into a cottage he found and making a life with her…that had been the easiest decision he had ever made.

They had just fit together…

She had come to live with him, and had given up her job, though that wasn’t something that bothered her all too much. More than anything she was happy that she no longer needed to do that to keep alive, to make a living…

And he got to hear the story of how she had come to Velaris and to the pleasure hall.

Embelia was a Floresco Fairie. One of the few survivors of that breed of Lesser Fairies. The rest of her family had been slaughtered in the Spring Court Centuries ago.

She had escaped and had ended up in Velaris of all places, traumatised and alone. Still half a child to her people, not having a trade or anything of that sort. The natural ability of a Floresco Fairy made it possible for her to grow flowers and life wherever she stood but none of that particularly lent itself to a well-paid job.

So the pleasure house it had been. With a glamour, of course.

The first time he had met her, she had left the glamour fall away, showing him a pair of iridescent pink wings sprouting out of her back.

Even then he had thought that she was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen.

That opinion had never changed. If anything…after the birth of their daughter, after the mating bond had snapped for both of them, sometimes between cutting the cord and pressing a kiss to their daughter’s blood-covered head, covered in downy black curls…and he had watched Emmie cradle the baby against her chest, watched her coo to her, not caring one bit about blood and sweat and anything else, because there was their little girl that they had hoped and prayed for…somehow at that point, love seemed such a weak word for what he felt for them both.

Somehow…somehow they had become the light of his life, the only guide he needed. And he protected that ferociously.

Maybe even more than was necessary.

He kept them away from his job and from anything and anybody that may would know him as the terror of the Night Court.

They were his. His. His .

The first thing in his long life that was his and his alone .

And maybe that was too possessive, but…he had never wanted to listen to anybody else’s opinions about his and Embelia’s relationship.

And everybody would have had their opinions.

He knew that.

Instead…he had kept them a secret.

To this day, nobody knew. Not Rhys, not Cassian, not Mor, not Amren…not Feyre or Nesta.

Though of all people, sometimes he thought that maybe Nesta suspected something.

But even if she did…that was fine too.

He had made Embelia his wife, and his mate and the mother of his child and nobody could take her away from him. Nobody but herself, and she was gloriously happy in their little flower-covered cottage, where she was…content to dabble at being a housewife.

After the life she had, he could understand it. She revelled in the normal, in doing nothing but dote on their daughter and try and cook him dinner, which had started as absolutely disgusting but these days often turned out at least mostly edible…to tend to her garden of flowers, which were all she ate anyway…

To just exist there, in that little slice of paradise they built.

And instead of being with her…he attended a family dinner at the River House that evening. He would have gladly just stayed at home, made himself dinner, or maybe let Embelia try to feed him, which never quite worked out and then walked their daughter to sleep.

It would have been perfectly fine to him. To press a kiss to their daughter’s black curls and stroke her iridescent purple sparkling wings that were carefully folded and laid over her back…her heart-shaped mouth would open into a perfect o and she would yawn and he would fall in love all over again. It wouldn’t just be perfectly fine. It would be everything he had ever wanted.

And then he could lay her in her crib and he could walk the few steps to their bed and crawl into it next to his wife, and she would give him that smile…and he could cocoon both of them in his wings and fall asleep, safe in the knowledge that she would be there the next morning.

Maybe kiss her some more and hear very perfect noise that left her throat and feel her warm body against his, skin like silk and small warm hands that could take him apart in seconds.

But no. Rhys had ordered him. Like he was sometimes prone to be doing these days. Maybe because he didn’t know how Azriel spent his free time and clearly him being a loose cannon was way more believable than anything else.

Oh well. Azriel wasn’t in the mood to clear that up.

If anything he was in a brooding mood, wanting to go back to his afternoon in the flower field.

“For cauldron’s sake,” Cassian complained, just as he started to violently sneeze. Multiple times. “Did you roll around in a flower field or something?” his brother demanded and Azriel was amused besides himself.

“Yes,” he agreed drily, taking his seat next to Cassian who just glared at him and then grumbled under his breath, swapping seats with Nesta because otherwise he was probably not going to stop sneezing.

“The Lord of Bloodshed taken to his knees by some flower pollen,” Amren drawled from across the table and Cassian glared at her.

Nesta just snorted in amusement.

Rhys and Feyre appeared at that moment and at least the discussion of flower fields was tabled for the moment.

Which was just as well.

Azriel mentally wondered if he could get away with skipping dessert if he cited some headache or something. He could get dessert at home. It promised to be much better than anything that would be served at the table anyway.

Or maybe that was just going to make Rhys think that he was on the brink of some sort of breakdown even more than he already was. Who knew?

Was it worth the mental berating that it promised to give him? All under the guise of worrying about him or checking in on him?

Azriel had his own opinion about that these days.

He couldn’t help but flinch as Nesta suddenly reached out to touch his hair.

“What are you doing?” he asked her drily as Nesta pulled back her hand, Embelia’s glimmer sticking to it.

“You have…glitter in your hair,” Nesta gave back. “What did you do?” she asked him with a grin. “Is that some kind of fashion choice now?”

“It’s not glitter,” he gave back. It wasn’t. It was the flakes that Embelia’s wings shook loose when she trembled. It did look like glitter though. Sparkling, catching the sunlight…gorgeous, like every inch of her.

“Az, I don’t know if you are ready to hear it, but it definitely looks like glitter,” Nesta told him with a snort. “Don’t worry, it suits you,” she said graciously, biting back a laugh.

Mor was watching the whole thing. “It’s not glitter,” she finally said, mustering his hair with far too much interest. Azriel forced himself not to twitch under the assessing gaze of her brown eyes. Once upon a time, he would have given nearly everything to have her look at him like that, but nowadays…there was nothing there anymore. He would always lover her but sometimes during centuries of yearning for her it had settled into a deep and abiding friendship. Into loyalty. No longer the bright burning of desire, of…anything like that. “Though I would really like to know where you found a Floresco Fairy to talk into your bed, Az,“ she said with a wink.

Azriel didn’t react.

“A what?” Feyre asked, curiosity piqued.

“Floresco Fairy,“ Mor repeated. “They used to live in the Spring Court…centuries ago.”

“They don’t anymore?” Feyre wondered and the conversation around the table dropped.

“Tamlin’s father had them slaughtered and used their wings for leather,“ Azriel said, his voice forcefully even. It was even more horrific than it sounded like. A whole breed of faeries was killed off because of their wings. Floresco Faeries had never been violent or a fighting breed. They kept to themselves, raising their families and growing their flowers and their crops…and then it had been ripped apart into a bloodbath.

Embelia had been right in the middle of that. She had escaped, her youngest sister in tow…who had later succumbed to her injuries and all Emmie had been able to do was to bury her into the icy ground in Winter Court. She hadn’t outright said it but Azriel had known that for years she had wished to bury herself right there alongside her sister.

Feyre just stared at him, blue eyes wide. “That’s horrible,“ she whispered, swallowing.

“Yes,“ he agreed. It was.

Horrific.

“Not all died, a few escaped,” Mor said, trying to make it seem less horrific than it had been. “It happened a very long time ago. But still, they are quite rare. Where did you find her?” She asked Azriel, clearly trying to find something else to talk about.

He wasn’t stupid enough to lie to Morrigan, whose gift was Truth.

“Today? At home.” He answered honestly.

“Home?” Mor repeated, sounding amused beside herself.

“Is she the same one you bought that solstice gift for?” Nesta piped up.

He had asked her for advice, more out of desperation than anything else. She had been quite helpful though.

He hadn’t been anted to ask Mor for obvious reasons, Armen would have probably bitten off his head and Feyre…well then Rhys would have known. But Nesta? Nesta had listened to him when he had asked politely and had then told him that if she liked him, she would like whatever he would buy her.

Not that useful but oh well.

So he just nodded.

“Which one did you end up picking?” Nesta asked him, curious.

“I just bought both,” he admitted with a shrug.

A hair comb that Emmie still wore nearly every day, silver and pink stones intertwined, keeping blush hair pulled back from her face and a pair of earrings that she also wore sometimes.

She liked things like that, even when she never seemed to spend much money on them. And he liked buying her stuff like that because then she wore it and had that pleased little smile on her face, content and happy…

“Lucky girl,” Nesta told him with a secret smile, elbowing his ribs and he bit back down a smile for himself.

“Az got a girlfriend?” Cassian asked, sounding shocked.

“I do not,” he disagreed with a roll of his eyes. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He had a wife. Very different.

“So you just buy…What did he buy, Nesta?” Cassian asked.

“He was waffling between a jewel-encrusted hair comb or a pair of lovely earrings. Apparently, he got her both,” Nesta answered her mate with a sigh. “You should take some advice from him,” she told him drily, making Cassian roll his eyes.

“So if you don’t have a girlfriend, you just buy hair combs and jewellery for any female you come across?” His brother asked him drily.

He just shook his head, not saying a single word. His shadows tightened in response, crawling closer to him from where they had skittered away.

They liked Embelia, though they had taken a special liking to his daughter, tendrils oftentimes coming to play with her or checking on her through the night. With Emmie they kept a respectful distance, though they liked to hide and play with her, like they basked in her pure presence.

It wouldn’t surprise him all too much if that’s what they did.

“Flower and Bud are safe” they whispered at that moment, even when he hadn’t asked.

Right. Safe.

“Leave him to it, Cassian. Though maybe next time wash off the glimmer. Or don’t have one of your amorous adventures before you show up to dinner,” Rhys drawled.

It shouldn’t have upset him like that. It shouldn’t have.

It was harmless. Mostly at least, but Azriel couldn’t help but feel the icy rage burn bright in his chest at Rhysand’s words. At his brother’s words.

He didn’t have many good things in his life but he had Emmie and he was not going to let anybody take her away from him. He was not.

That was simply unacceptable.

“If you try to forbid me from bedding my wife, Rhysand, we are going to have a problem,” Azriel snapped back icily.

A real problem, because he was not willing to give up Embelia under any circumstances. Not her and also not the pleasure they shared.

He regretted his words instantly. One could have heard a pin drop in the Dining Room of the River House at that moment because this was the last thing anybody had expected.

The last thing.

He had kept his wife and his daughter hidden and he had been completely content with that because it had kept them safe and secure and he hadn’t wanted to listen to anybody trying to talk him out of it or telling him it was a bad idea.

It was his fucking choice and he had never regretted it once.

“Your wife ,” Amren was the first that recovered. “Your wife?!”

“Yes.”

His wife. His daughter. His family.

The family he claimed. They were his.

“You don’t have a girlfriend but you have a wife ?” Mor repeated.

He just nodded.

“You got married. When?” she continued asking him and he met her gaze.

“About a year ago,” he answered. It had been just the two of them…and well, the babe slumbering in Emmie’s womb, but that was the whole reason for the wedding in the first place, right?

“You didn’t even invite us to the wedding!” Cassian complained, having suddenly recovered his ability to talk. “You got married and you didn’t tell us?”

Clearly.

“And you never thought that that was something we may want to know, Azriel?” Rhys asked, his voice icy but Azirel met the gaze of violet eyes with his own.

“If you believe it or not, I can just about manage my personal relationships or my amorous adventures without the input of you, High Lord,” he drawled.

There had been no reason to tell anybody. Least of all Rhys.

“That was not what that was about and you know it,” his brother hissed at him, but Azriel just shrugged.

Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was.

Maybe it had really just been a political worry for Rhys, but that didn’t mean that what he had done, hadn’t hurt…didn’t mean that he hadn’t pulled rank with Azriel in a way he had only done so very rarely.

Rhys had gotten what he had wanted in the end. Elain and Lucien had figured it out…Day and Night were closer than ever.

And Azriel…well, he was still pissed off about what had gone down in Rhys’ office that Solstice. Fucking furious, to be honest. Even after Embelia had come into his life…even after she had married him. Even after the mating bond had snapped. He loved his wife, but he was still fucking furious about being treated like that.

Furious and hurt.

And maybe that had played into his decision as well.

There was no reason to tell Rhys what happened. No reason whatsoever.

Rhys must have caught that thought because the shimmer of night started to swirl around him, but Azriel wasn’t scared. He just raised a single eyebrow in question.

“No reason?” Rhys questioned harshly. “You are the Spymaster of this fucking court, Azriel! You don’t think that maybe I should know who you are cohabiting with? Who you share a bed with? Who you married? How long did you even know this female before you married her?”

“A few months,” he answered drily. “What do you think I talk about when I am with her? Bring up the secrets of the Night Court as Pillow Talk? Oh, I tortured a couple of faes from Hewn City this afternoon, oh, harder, love? ” He questioned with a roll of his eyes.

Feyre choked out a laugh.

Rhys did not find it amusing.

“Where did you even meet her?” he demanded.

“Why, Rhys, I just followed your orders. You told me to go to a pleasure hall so I did,” he shot back. He had followed that order to the fucking letter.

“So she’s a whore,” Rhys said and Azriel just looked at him.

Embelia wasn’t ashamed of what she had been. Quite frankly, neither was he. She had done what she needed to do to survive. He was never going to give her the fault for that. The fault was on Spring for slaughtering her family and on the Night Court that they hadn’t given better support so that she would have never gotten into a situation like this where that was the only way out.

But Embelia? She had been a whore. It was a simple fact. And she wore that proudly.

“She was. Yes,” he agreed and he could see it on Rhys’ face what he thought about that.

“You ordered Azriel to go to a pleasure hall?” Cassian asked. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because he fancied himself in love with Elain of all faes and I couldn’t have him bring our court to the brink of war because he couldn’t keep it in his pants!” Rhys growled. “So I told him to go to a pleasure hall and pay for it to get it out of his system.”

“Rhys!” Mor snapped, shock colouring her voice

“Clearly, I was right, because your infatuation didn’t last long after you were told no. How long did it take you until you were in that pleasure hall?” Rhys demanded. “A Day? A week?”

“Around 6 months,” he answered, his voice even. “After it became obvious that Elain was going to give in to Lucien…Once it became obvious that she wasn’t interested in me. Then I started visiting the Pleasure Hall. I married my wife 4 months later.”

“By the mother, Azriel, did all your good sense leave you?” Rhys asked him, shaking his head. “What were you thinking?” he demanded.

“That I love her,” Azriel said calmly. “I love her,” he repeated.

“Wow, she must have really been worth the money you spend on her,” Rhys drawled.

She had been. Every gold coin. Every fucking clipped copper he paid for her company. Everything had been worth it, just for Embelia’s company.

He didn’t even react to it. He had heard worse. But he could feel his rage grow with ever fucking word Rhys uttered.

“She is worth more than you will ever understand,” Azriel said quietly, his voice laced with steel.

Rhys glared at him. And then he said something so utterly inappropriate that the rage exploded.

“So that’s what you needed all the time? Some pretty female that opens her legs and suddenly she leads you around by your prick?”

It felt like somebody had sucked all the air out of that room.

Azriel’s blood boiled with anger and hurt, seething inside, his control barely keeping the darkness at bay.

He wanted to kill Rhys at that moment. He couldn’t remember ever being this angry before.

Having their relationship reduced to that…

Embelia’s face appeared in his mind, her smile, her laughter, the warmth of her touch.

His sanity.

He had made his choices, and he would stand by them. No one, not even Rhys, could make him regret loving Embelia.

“You can say whatever you want about me, but you say a single thing about my wife or my child and I’ll rip out your fucking throat, and don’t think for one moment that I won’t,” he snapped back harshly. “And yes, for the record, she was worth every fucking clipped copper, I spent on her. She was worth everything. I wanted to marry her. I asked her. I made that choice. She has done absolutely nothing but love me .”

“You got a kid too?!” Cassian piped up. “Az?” he asked and Azriel ground his teeth.

“Yes,” he bit out.

“How old?” Cassian asked quietly.

“3 months tomorrow,” Azriel answered honestly. Cassian stared at him, hazel eyes harsh.

“Boy or Girl?”

“Girl.”

“I got a niece and you haven’t told me?!” Cassian demanded. “How dare you! I owe her three months' worth of gifts and cuddles!”

“Cassian!” Nesta said sharply and Cassian started pouting.

“Are you sure that the kid is yours?” Rhys drawled.

He didn’t even bother to answer that question.

“Where are you going?” Rhys demanded as he stood.

“Home,” he gave back clippedly. “I’d rather walk my daughter to sleep than listen to you insult her mother and ask if she’s actually my daughter.” His voice was dripping with disdain. “Like there ever were any questions about it. She got her mother’s wings and my colouring.”

***

Nobody followed him home. Which was a good thing because Azriel wasn’t in a particularly forgiving mood at the moment. He was still furious. Utterly furious.

Even as he walked through the door of the cottage… right until he saw Embelia sit in the living room, in that overstuffed armchair and nurse their daughter. She looked up as he entered, smiling.

And suddenly, every bit of anger just went up in smoke, because he couldn’t care less.

Not when his mate was sitting there nursing his daughter, and it was so easy to just cross the room and drop to his knees before her, to let her reach out for him and run a hand over his hair and jaw and he leaned into her touch, breathing in the smell of earth and home and love.

Home. He was home, he was with her and that was all he cared about. He stared at his daughter, happily drinking…dark eyes closed in concentration, one pudgy little fist pressing against Embelia’s breast, clearly making sure that her source of milk was going nowhere and he pressed a kiss to her downy soft hair, breathing in the combination of scents of himself and Emmie that clung to her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Embelia asked him softly and he just shook his head. No. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted to be with his girls. He just wanted to…He just wanted to be right there.

“You are the best things that ever happened to me,” he whispered hoarsely.

A gift from the mother herself, and he still wondered every fucking day how he deserved both of them.

Emmie ran a hand through his curls, staying quiet, as their daughter stopped drinking and he reached out to take her.

Embelia happily relinquished her hold on her, but not before pressing a kiss to his cheek, and a soft touch to their daughter’s wings…iridescent black.

Her wings. His colouring.

No question about it.

He walked her to sleep like he always did when he could be there, pressing her little body tight to his chest, a scarred hand holding her as carefully as she was made out of spun gold.

Emmie had laughed at him at the start, at how carefully he held her, telling him that she was a baby and would survive it if he kissed and cuddled her. Still, he had been terrified of hurting her.

She was so small, and his hands were so big and broad and scarred and…

But sometime during the last few weeks, he had realised that his daughter…his daughter would never look at his hands as anything other than the hands that had held her and comforted her. She would grow up with these scars…she probably wouldn’t even notice them.

They would just be a fact of life to her.

So he walked her, the slow swaying circles around their living room that he always made to calm her as much as him, as Embelia tidied around the living room, got ready for bed, and made herself comfortable for the night.

He could hear the bath running as he felt the touch against his mind. It wasn’t Rhys.

It was Feyre.

He was surprised enough that he let her slide in, just a little bit, and he knew that she caught a glimpse of the baby in his arms as he felt the surprise register.

“She’s beautiful.” It was nearly a coo in which she said that, much to his amusement and pleasure, taking in the iridescent wings that lay folded over her back.

“She got it from her mother.”

It was the truth. Embelia was the most beautiful fae he had ever laid eyes on. The kind of beauty wars were fought over, that brought males trembling to their knees…Azriel easily admitted that he also met that particular criteria.

“You missed a knockdown drag-out fight between Rhys and Cassian…And then Mor and Nesta decided that they should also get a word in.”

That was not what he had expected, to be quite honest.

He had half expected that he was going to end up taking his wife and his daughter and find someplace else for them to live.

“Amren stopped them from levelling the city,” Feyre said drily. It should have amused him, but it didn’t. Not really.

“You should have come to me after that solstice, I would have told Rhys that he was being ridiculous,” Feyre told him drily. “I’ll deal with him. I promise.”

“It’s fine,” he waved her off. It was fine.

Right now at least. He never could stay angry when he got to be home when he got to hold his daughter. How could he be angry when he got to hold her?

He didn’t want to be angry when he held her…He just wanted to breathe in her scent and feel every bit of tension bleed out of him.

A snuffling sound came from his daughter, then a heart belch…and her little body relaxed against his, clearly on her way to the land of dreams.

“No, it’s not, he should have never done that,” Feyre cut him off. “Or talk to you like that for that matter. Neither on Solstice nor today. I’ll make sure he understands that. It won’t happen again. You can expect an apology tomorrow.”

Now he was amused. It bled all over Feyre, who just huffed. “What, do you doubt that I can make him apologise?” she challenged him.

“Of course not, High Lady,” he promised her. If anybody could get Rhys to weaken in his stance, then it would be his mate. And that was exactly why he had never told Feyre, never wanted to bring her into a position where she was in disagreement with her mate.

“So congrats on that wedding,” Feyre said suddenly. “We owe you a gift or two, I think…Who knows what Mor is gonna come up with…” He could just hold back the snort at that but could feel Feyre’s amusement leech all over his mind. “Can I…” she trailed off, unsure for a moment. “May I see her?” she asked, curious and delighted for him all the same. He could feel that.

He pushed a memory at her, from that afternoon…of his wife and his daughter in that spring sun, in that flower field, their wings glittering and fluttering, Embelia’s pink hair falling to her waist in soft waves and curls, their daughter with his dark hair and her wings, curled up in her mother’s arms, grinning gummily at her…Happiness was oozing from every second of that screenshot.

“You are beyond lucky,” Feyre said quietly.

“I know.”

He knew that with every fibre of his being.

“What’s her name?” Feyre wondered. “She’s beautiful.”

She was. Gorgeous in fact. And that wasn’t just coloured by the fact that she was his wife and his mate…but she was gorgeous.

“Embelia,” he answered Feyre. “Family calls her Emmie though.” He called her that, some of her friends did as well. It was what she was most comfortable with.

“And your daughter’s? What’s her name?” Feyre asked.

It had taken them months to settle on a name, and then finally, it had been so easy.

“Aster.”

“A Star and a Flower,” Feyre realised with some amusement.

“Embelia thought it was just fair.”

#acotar fanfiction #the Unexpected series #unknowing #my writing #azriel x oc #azriel x reader #acotar #azriel fanfiction #azriel fanfic

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osarina · 5 months

Text

ᡣ𐭩 DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: seven months after his defection, you run into dazai osamu by sheer chance. you know in your heart what you should do—traitors are to be disposed of, regardless of any previous relationship you might've had with them... but can you bring yourself to do what must be done? or will you be more driven by the questions you desperately need answered?

(wordcount: 7.1k; fem!reader, pm!reader, angsty (i promiseeeee i have some happier ones coming up with pm!reader and pmzai), alcoholism, dazai is in a particularly bad mental state)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: this one was suchhhh a doozy. the third installment of my pm!reader & pm!dazai universe, this is why i had to retcon he's my collar because originally pm!reader didn't see him at all during the 4 years but i got the idea for this fic like 2 ?? weeks ago and it was too good to not use - tomorrow i think i'll put up the masterlist for it so you guys can see the chronology and planned installments

Against all odds, you run into Dazai Osamu seven months after his defection.

You should put a bullet in his skull. You watch absently from the mouth of the alley as the ex-Port Mafia executive groans, trying to push himself to his feet only to crash back onto the pavement, blood smeared across his face from a crooked nose and split lip, bile pooled on the ground where he’d landed.

Gross, you think, lip curling up in disgust as his lithe fingers smear through the vomit, blunt nails scraping against the pavement as he attempts to push himself up again but fails. His shoulders are heaving, breath slow and labored as he lets out another wretched sound, crumpling back to the ground.

You click the safety off of your gun, pulling it out of your pocket as you quietly make your way deeper into the alley, over to where he’s still struggling to get off the ground. He doesn’t even acknowledge your presence until he hits the ground hard again after nearly making it to his feet. This time, he falls onto his shoulder and gasps in pain as he rolls onto his back, blinking up blearily through glazed-over eyes that can hardly focus on you or the gun pointed at his head.

You should just get it over with, pull the trigger, and leave the body for cleanup to handle. It’d be a better fate than he deserves, cleaner and quicker than he’d ever give himself, and not even half as painful as it’ll be when the Port Mafia inevitably get their hands back on him.

You’d be sparing him, really; it would be a mercy.

And it’s what is expected of you. Letting a traitor as high profile as Dazai Osamu go free when you have a clear chance to execute him would be more than enough to have you stripped of your rank and thrown into the torture chambers, body dumped in the river when the Port Mafia is done punishing you.

But still, for some reason, your finger hesitates as you move to pull the trigger.

“You…” His voice is so slurred that you can hardly make out coherent words, but you use his words as an excuse to bide even more time, curious to see what he’s going to say. You can smell the whiskey on him from where you’re standing, his skin is paler than it usually is, and you notice, idly, that the bandages on his right eye are gone and you wonder when he chose to shed them. “You’re not real.”

Your eye twitches in irritation.

You pull the trigger.

If he was sober, he would have expected the reaction from you and dodged the bullet, but he’s not sober, so his eyes fly open in shock as the bullet grazes his ear and embeds itself in the pavement next to his head. He doesn’t look any more sobered up by the pain, which you suppose is a testament to how drunk he really is, but he does look significantly more confused.

“You shot me,” he says, pale lips parted as he stares up at you—too pale, you notice absently, brows furrowing a bit as you try to consider what to do.

“Yeah,” you say, voice rough with irritation. “Real enough for you?”

Dazai blinks, you don’t even think your words are registering and you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.

Get it over with, you tell yourself again, this time positioning your gun over his forehead. A clean kill. You won’t move it to the side at the last minute again. You remind yourself that this is what he deserves—he’s a traitor to the Port Mafia, to you. Killing him now would be a mercy compared to what the Port Mafia would do to him, compared to what he’d do to himself.

He stares up at you, brown eyes wide and glassy. He parts his lips to speak but you can’t give yourself the same excuse; you don’t wait for his words this time.

You pull the trigger again.

But Dazai is moving. He rolls over onto his side trying to push himself back to his feet and the bullet lodges right into the ground where his head had once been lying. You stare down at it in disbelief, gun falling to your side as your fingers start to feel a bit numb and clunky, breath catching as you realize what you’d almost just done—what you tried to do.

Dazai makes it to his knees and he tries to reach out for you but you step back out of reach. His brows furrow before he keels over again, dry heaving now—there’s enough bile around him for you to realize he’s probably thrown up everything in his stomach and then some. He leans against the wall, the glassiness of his eyes spilling over his cheeks as he continues to dry heave but your gaze is still trained down on the ground where the bullet is embedded in the ground where his head had just been laying.

You just tried to-

You think you’re the one who feels sick now. The dinner you’d had out with Chuuya and Kouyou rises to the back of your throat as you take another step away from Dazai. Your vision blurs as your gaze turns to him again, but instead of the tattered and vomit-stained clothes he’s wearing now, he’s back in the dark suit you’re accustomed to, crumpled on the ground still, but not because he’s drunk because he’s been wounded on a mission that he took on so you wouldn’t have to.

You just tried to kill Dazai.

Dazai, who’s been your closest friend since the two of you were sixteen and at the center of the most violent conflict to rock Yokohama’s foundations. Entirely inseparable, forever entwined since the moment the two of you met; the type of instant click that most people could only ever dream of experiencing in their lives.

You almost killed Dazai.

Dazai, who promised to put a bullet in Ace’s head if the man ever came near you again after he found out the newly promoted executive had insinuated putting one of his collars on you during a confrontation between the two of you. He knew that even he would face consequences for threatening another executive, that he would face even more if he dared to follow through with his threat, but he didn’t care and he had every intention of following through if it meant keeping you safe.

You would have killed Dazai if not for sheer luck.

Dazai, who used to kiss you with trembling fingers and quivering lips, because for as much as his reputation as the Demon Prodigy had spread throughout the country, he was still just a teenage boy who’d never had his first kiss until the two of you got drunk on champagne after a successful mission when he made the mistake of admitting to you that he’s never kissed anyone before. The two of you’d spent the entire night giggling between chaste kisses, getting through just about two bottles of champagne before you started throwing up.

He held back your hair and laughed at you as you leaned over the toilet, miserable. But he was gentle with you in a way that Dazai Osamu is never gentle with anyone, fingers carding through your hair, rubbing absent circles on your back to soothe you as you choked over sobs and gags.

Then there’s you. You, who not only a moment ago, looked down at him with your lip curling up in disgust, unable to hold your grimace at the way he laid in his own vomit. You lifted the barrel of your gun in his direction not once, but twice, and you pulled the trigger not once, but twice.

When you showed vulnerability to him, he showed you a type of tenderness that everyone thought was long lost to the notorious Demon Prodigy.

When he finally shows vulnerability to you, you only show him cruelty in response.

You try to convince yourself that it’s different, that the circumstances are different now but the words ring hollow in your head, taking no root, because you think the circumstances shouldn't matter. This is Dazai. Dazai. There are no circumstances that justify executing him.

Your head spins and you take another step away, you don’t know where you dropped your gun and you don’t want to know. You don’t want to look at it. You don’t want to touch it. You’ll send someone else after it later. You blink, and for a moment, you can visualize what almost happened: you can see Dazai motionless on the ground, blood pooling around his head and a bullet wound piercing through his forehead. You gag, pressing your hand to your mouth as you force back the bile that nearly comes up.

“Wait,” Dazai garbles out, pushing off the wall toward you but he propels himself right into the ground again, face first, scraping his cheek on the concrete. “Don’t leave again.”

Again? The word nearly pulls you out of your daze, the bitterness that’s poisoned you for seven months returning with a vengeance as your eyes focus on him.

Dazai, who left you without a word or a warning. Not even the slightest goodbye. He abandoned you like you meant nothing to him.

“I need to-” he gags again as he pushes himself to his knees. He tries to reach forward again but his whole body sways, eyes half-rolling back as he tries to steady himself, on the verge of passing out. “I need to tell you this time. I need to-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, slumping back over onto the ground unconscious—in a puddle of his own blood and vomit, naturally. The logical part of you knows you should just leave him there. You’re already playing with fire by not executing him on the spot, but you also know if you leave him here, it’ll be as good as a death sentence. If he doesn’t die on his own from alcohol poisoning, then he’ll certainly be found by the Port Mafia patrols. You think Dazai is a fool for drinking so much so deep in Port Mafia territory, for not being careful enough to make sure he didn’t wander out in the open.

He should know better.

He does know better.

A part of you wonders if it was intentional, if he thought that he’d stumble into Port Mafia territory and he’d run into someone eager to lay claim to the fame of being Dazai Osamu’s executioner.

If that’s the case, he nearly got his wish—that thought alone almost sends you spiraling over the edge again, having to shove away more nausea. You force all thoughts of the Port Mafia and betrayal to the back of your mind as you fall to your knees next to him, gathering him up into your arms and pushing yourself back to your feet. He curls into you instinctively, even while unconscious, smaller than you remember, smearing blood and bile all over your suit. Your grip on him tightens, a shaky breath escaping your lips when you realize that this is the first time you’ve touched him since the night he left.

You shake your head to clear your mind, desperately trying to focus. You can’t stay out in the open with him for long otherwise you’ll risk someone seeing you with him, and that’ll open a can of worms you’re not prepared to deal with.

You’ll drop him off somewhere safe, and then you’ll get back to base.

That’s all.

That is not all.

The safehouse in Sakae that the two of you would run to whenever you wanted to avoid Mori is just how you left it the last time you spent the night with him there over half a year ago. One of his jackets is still draped over the couch, one of your ties thrown haphazardly on the ground—you remember the night vividly, the way he smiled against your lips as he lead you into the back bedroom, stumbling over each other and fumbling with buttons as you tried to undress the other while walking to the room, high off the success of a mission that everyone had said would fail because the odds were so stacked against the two of you. Even Chuuya had laughed in your face when you said you’d take the mission, but you knew so long as Dazai had your back on it, it would work out in your favor.

He’s woken up several times, you don’t even know what he’s saying in his incoherent babbles. Every time he wakes back up, he’s calling for you, stumbling out of the bed you laid him in after getting him cleaned up and crashing to the ground before he reaches the hall. It’s irritating, you have to go back to help him back into the bed every time and he starts babbling again, passing out before you can figure out what he’s saying. You finally had to move yourself into the back bedroom with him so he didn’t try to get up again.

You don’t know why you’re still here.

You lean your forehead against your hand as you sit on the bed next to where he’s lying, one leg tucked beneath you while the other hangs over the side. You tell yourself it’s because you don’t want him to get up drunk trying to look for you and then crack his head open, but it’s a weak excuse because Dazai Osamu is not your issue anymore. It’s not your job to watch over him when he gets shit-faced drunk, it’s not your job to patch him up when he gets hurt, it’s not your job to look out for him.

He left you, not vice versa, You don’t owe him anything. He lost that privilege when he betrayed you. Fuck the Port Mafia, he betrayed you when he left without a word. You deserved better than that. You deserved a goodbye. You don’t owe him shit. You should leave him here to rot in his own vomit and blood but-

But you won’t.

Your gaze drifts back over to him. He’s still out cold—cleaner now, because it had never just been ‘get him somewhere safe and then go back to the base,’ as soon as you got him into the safehouse you wrangled him into the bathroom to clean him up. He was uncharacteristically pliant as you manhandled him into the shower. You suppose it was because he was unconscious for half of it but even for the moments where he was awake and blearily blinking the water out of his eyes, looking up at you through wet bangs with those stupid big eyes of his, as if he was still unsure if you were actually there.

Instinctively, you reach out to brush the back of your knuckles against his swollen, split lip, wondering if it was just from him being clumsy while drunk or if he’d managed to piss someone off at a bar. Both are equally likely—Dazai is a rather cantankerous drunk when he’s alone and drunk on whiskey, and even after cleaning him up and dousing him in soap to get out the reeking scent of his vomit out from where it’d sunken into his skin, shoving a toothbrush into his mouth to brush his teeth and scrubbing so they don’t rot from the bile, you can still smell the whiskey on his breath.

You wonder how much he drank. His skin is still pale, his breath shuddered, and he’s shivering even though you wrapped him in three thick blankets. Some degree of alcohol poisoning, that’s for sure. You tell yourself that’s why you’re not leaving—you don’t want to leave before you’re sure he’s pulled through the worst of it. You’re not going to admit to yourself that you don’t want to leave because you’re worried it’ll be the last time you see him for real this time.

You hesitate right before your knuckles brush his skin, swallowing thickly before you withdraw your hand back into your lap, eyes sliding shut as you sigh.

What the hell are you doing?

If anyone from the Port Mafia knew what you were doing right now, you’d be hunted down right alongside him, branded as a traitor and sentenced to death. Chuuya would kill you if he knew what you were doing right now—and not because you betrayed the Port Mafia by helping Dazai, instead because you’re a fucking idiot. You’ve done a lot of stupid things in your life, but this might take the cake for the stupidest, sticking your neck out for someone who didn’t even care enough to tell you goodbye.

You rub your forehead, tired. You try to summon the anger you felt when you first found out he betrayed the Port Mafia from Mori and Chuuya—from the hot fury you felt in the direct aftermath, screaming and breaking everything you could get your hands on as you cursed his name and burned everything he left in your apartment to the cold rage you felt when you finally calmed down, bitter and lonely and betrayed by the one person you never thought would betray you—but you can’t. And you think it’s pathetic because what use is all of that anger if you can’t utilize it when the reason for it is lying right before you?

If Chuuya were here right now, he’d drag you out by the hair and leave Dazai to suffer on his own. You left your phone in the kitchen after turning off your location, because he was already buzzing incessantly wondering where you are. You’d told him that you wanted to stop by one of the fishing ports in Kanazawa to check on a small weapons shipment that should’ve arrived earlier in the night before heading back to your shared apartment—you’d moved in with him after Dazai’s betrayal. He made the executive decision himself, not giving you a choice in the matter because he realized that you living on your own in the apartment that Dazai had practically moved into with you was not conducive to you healing from his betrayal.

Plus, you think he was lonely too without Dazai around anymore, but he’d never admit that.

You should’ve been back an hour ago. You’re sure that he’s getting suspicious and it’s only a matter of time before he tries to track you down. You don’t think he knows about this safe house in particular, Dazai had threatened you with piling up mission reports onto you if you told him about this one, but you wouldn’t be surprised if Chuuya learned about it through other means—somehow, he always seems to know everything.

You sigh again, heavier this time as you try to figure out what to do. You know what you should do, but you also know you’re not going to do that. Your gaze drags back over to him and your breath catches when you realize he’s awake again, bleary brown eyes trained on you, brows furrowed.

His lips part to speak again and you tense, waiting for whatever he has to say, unsure if you’ll even understand it.

“You… came with me. You never come with me. Are you… really here?”

Even though his eyes are still glazed over and muddled, his voice is less garbled than it was before. You think that’s a good sign, but even so, you let out an even heavier sigh, this one more irritated, and a bit confused because you don’t even know what that means: you never come with me.

“Yes, Dazai,” you say sharply, but then you let out a puff of air. The same memories that hit you before coming right back to you, remembering all of the nights Dazai would stay up having to take care of you, patient in a way that he never was with anybody. You soften your voice a bit as you say, “Yes. I’m here.”

Dazai looks at you like he doesn’t believe you. He blinks once slowly, then his brows furrow deeper and his lips turn downward.

“You don’t call me Dazai.” He speaks the accusation slowly, as if to make himself sound more coherent, but you can still hear the clear slur in his voice. “You never-”

You turn away because if you don’t, you think you might lose your temper. He’s drunk, you remind yourself, but he’s still ripping open wounds that never properly healed, because how dare he expect you to still call him by his given name after everything. It had taken months for you to get used to calling him Dazai again and-

You feel your chest start to cave in again and your throat spasms. Your eyes flutter shut and god, you want to hate him. You thought you did hate him, you convinced yourself of it in all of the bitter rage and acidic betrayal you’ve felt the past seven months but now that you’re confronted with him again, you know that it was never hate. You could never hate Dazai Osamu. You'd just missed him so terribly that the pain was easy to mistake as hate; love and hate has always been a treacherously thin line, and Dazai more than anyone else wavers on either side of it.

Your heart feels like it’s about to leap from your chest and crawl right back to him, you have to physically place your hand over your chest as if to hold it in place, to make sure the traitorous thing can’t go back to the very man that tore it shreds. You force yourself to breathe, in and out, steady, trying to settle down.

This was a mistake, you realize, this was a mistake.

Just as you’re about to push yourself up, you feel lithe fingers curl around your arm. You freeze, not even daring to glance back at Dazai. You can hear him pushing the covers off of him as he crawls closer to you, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. His movements are unsteady, and you can’t bring yourself to push him off of you when you feel him slump against your back.

His weight is familiar, comforting in a way that it shouldn’t be. If you close your eyes, you can imagine that you’re back at the Port Mafia base seven months ago and Dazai is draping himself across your back, complaining about being overworked by Mori and trying to convince you to take over his paperwork. You’d have to drag him halfway across the base trying to get to your office with his dead weight hanging onto you, you remember all of the wary stares from your subordinates as they try not to let their gaze linger on the two of you but let their curiosity get the best of them regardless.

You hate that you don’t push him off right away, that you’re letting yourself indulge in his touch again. You’ve moved on from this—from him. It’s been seven months. You’re over all of this.

“You… understand, don’t you?”

You barely hear the words muffled against your back, but you do and you can’t help but stiffen at them. He shifts against you, fingers biting into your skin as he pulls himself up a bit more to bury his face in the crook of your neck, arms looped around your waist as he leans all of his weight onto your back. You can feel his breath warm and shuddered against your neck, making your hair stand on end, and his hands are limp in your lap now, fingers brushing against the material of the clean slacks you’d pulled on after getting Dazai showered.

It’s all so familiar that it could make you sick.

“How could I?” you ask bitterly, even though you know you shouldn’t take out your resentment on him while he’s so drunk; he probably won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway. There’s no point, you’ll just be wasting your energy.

His arms tighten around you, breath hitching against your skin. “I had to, Odasaku-”

The noise you let out is such a sharp scoff that you can feel Dazai flinch behind you. You almost shove him off of you but you refrain, taking in a deep breath to calm yourself down. You never really had any feelings about Odasaku—he was always just there, you heard about him from Dazai occasionally and he seemed pleasant enough the few times you encountered him—but after all of this, you can’t help but hold a grudge against him, irrationally blaming him for Dazai leaving you.

“Odasaku wasn’t your only friend,” you say tightly. “You had me. Chuuya. You-”

“It’s not the same,” Dazai protests, clinging to you as if he hadn’t just driven a knife right through your back into your heart.

This time you do shove him off, barely sparing him a glance as he lets out a surprised yelp, sprawling back onto the bed. You push away the mistiness that threatens your eyes, breathing in and out slowly to try to keep yourself calm. It’s not the same, you repeat his words, bitterness poisoning your blood and clouding your head. What the fuck does that even mean? You know logically you should take his words with a grain of salt, that he’s so drunk he probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but you just feel so angry that it’s hard for you to keep that in mind.

You hear him scrambling behind you: a thump as he hits the floor hard and then a rush of movement as he pushes himself to his knees. His fingers curl around your ankle before you can get further away and you have a half a mind to kick him off of you and leave.

You don’t.

“Don’t leave,” he pleads. He drags himself to his knees, pulling at your pants and it takes all of your self-control to not look back down at him. “I didn’t-it came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?” you ask him, even though you by all means should not even bother to hear his shitty explanation.

“I just-I didn’t mean it like that.” You’ve never heard Dazai’s voice crack before, but it does now. “Don’t leave. I miss you.”

“You miss me?” you spit out, and you finally turn to look down at him—a mistake, of course, because he’s on his knees in front of you, looking up at you with those stupid, big brown eyes and you almost let your anger fizzle away at the sight of it. He’s drunk, you remind yourself again, but it doesn’t stop you from snapping at him. “You left me, Dazai. You have no right to miss me.”

“But I do.” His fingers fumble for your hand, grabbing one of yours with both of his. “I miss you so much, I think about you all the time.”

His lashes flutter, fingers brushing along your forearm as he presses his lips to your knuckles and then to your pulse point before leaning forward to rest his forehead on your thigh. You can’t even look at him, keeping your eyes trained on the wall, because your lashes feel wet and heavy and you know that you’ll give into him if you look at him now and he doesn’t deserve that.

“I couldn’t go to you before I left,” Dazai whispers and he sounds oddly coherent now even though you know he’s not. “I would’ve asked you to come with me.”

For some reason, that hurts worse than if he’d just admitted he didn’t care enough to say goodbye. Because what does that even mean, I would’ve asked you to come with me, would that have been so bad? He didn’t want you with him? Why wouldn’t he have wanted you with him? If you had left, he would’ve been the first person you ran to, begging him to come with you.

“How terrible that would’ve been,” you say, and you’re proud that your voice remains cold and steady, not betraying the hurt ripping through your chest.

“I wouldn’t have been able to handle it,” he says, voice breaking over a hiccup. “Odasaku had just died and-”

He cuts himself, and you dare to look down at him when you feel him lift his face from your thigh. You regret it immediately. Glassy, glazed-over eyes beg for you to understand, and you scare yourself because you want to understand when he shouldn’t even matter to you anymore. You’ve moved on. You have. It’s been seven months. He left you without a word. So why do you care so much for what he has to say right now?

“You wouldn’t have come with me,” he says, shaking his head. “You would’ve said no. You never would have chosen me over the Mafia.”

Your lips part to deny the allegations, to say that of course, you would have come with him, but the words fizzle out before they even form on your tongue because-

“You can’t even bring yourself to deny it, can you?” Dazai asks, and although he sounds more cogent now, you can’t help but notice that he’s starting to look sick again, the back of his throat making that faint clicking sound it always makes when he’s about to throw up. “You never would have chosen me.”

You would choose Dazai Osamu over a lot of things. You would choose to save his life before yours if put in the position, and you would choose to trust him over anyone else in the whole world. You’d follow him to the depths of hell and deep into the shadows, until your blood is black and corrupted and you’re entirely irredeemable, but you can’t follow him into the light.

You can’t choose him if it means betraying the Port Mafia. With his defection, the two have become mutually exclusive: Dazai or the Port Mafia, there’s no way of having both anymore. The boy you’ve come to love or the only home you’ve ever known. The only family you’ve ever had. A shitty family maybe, but a family nonetheless. If you don’t belong with the Port Mafia, you don’t belong anywhere on this earth, and as someone who’s always had a desperate fear of alienation, the thought makes you sick.

You stare at him, throat tight, and then you say, colder than you intend for it to come across, “... If that’s really why you didn’t say goodbye, then I’m glad you didn’t put me in that position.”

The expression that crosses Dazai’s face is something caught between ruin and shock—and you can’t help but wonder if he held out hope, thinking maybe he was wrong in his assumptions. That there had been a chance that you might’ve chosen him if he’d given you the option. That he’s been living his life in the what-ifs for the past seven months and now that he’s finally gotten the chance to bare his heart to you, you’ve crushed it.

Your chest tightens, your throat spasms and it takes all your self-control to not immediately take back the words, regret flooding you so intensely that it nearly makes you physically stumble. Because it’s true, you never would have picked Dazai over the Mafia, but he didn’t have to know that—especially not now, when he’s drunk and vulnerable in a way that he’s never allowed himself to be before.

You hope, for his sake and your conscience, that he doesn’t remember any of this in the morning.

His lips part to respond again but his hand is flying to his mouth instantly, doubling over, and you’re cursing, reaching for the trash bin you’d brought into the bedroom and falling to your knees next to him, helping him kneel upright and holding the trash bin in front of him as he starts gagging again.

“I would’ve-” He’s still trying to talk through the bouts of nausea, gasping over air, body trembling as he leans into you for balance.

You don’t want to hear what he has to say.

“Dazai-”

“I would’ve chosen you,” he finally forced out, voice breaking over the words and you’re not sure if it’s a sob or another heave that escapes his lips as he continues. “If the positions were reversed, I would’ve chosen you.”

Oh.

The words echo in your head so loudly that it makes you want to cover your ears even though you know it won’t do anything. You want to accuse him of lying, tell him that he’s full of shit and just trying to make you feel guilty, but you don’t think he’s capable of lying right now and you don’t think this is anything Dazai would have ever admitted to you if he was sober. He guards his heart more carefully than anyone you’ve ever met—in the two and a half years you’d known him, he never admitted he cared about you. You knew it just from how he treated you, but you think he might’ve ripped his own tongue out before actually admitting it.

You wrap an arm around him as his whole body shudders through another gag and he tries to push you off—angry, upset, you don’t know what he might be feeling because you’ve never seen him like this before—but your arm only tightens around him and Dazai crumbles.

He heaves again, clutching the small garbage can to his face as he throws up all of the water you’d managed to get in him before he passed out earlier. Tears spill over his cheeks, his face is pale and his lashes are fluttering again, on the verge of passing back out. You swallow thickly as he leans into you, letting him collapse into your chest after he’s finished vomiting.

“Will-” he tries to say, but his voice is slurred and weak. He’s desperately trying to stay conscious, you can tell, but he’s fighting a losing battle. “Will you be here in the morning?”

No.

You don’t want to say it, you think you’ve done enough damage for the night, but there’s no need. As soon as the words leave his mouth, Dazai is slumping over unconscious, head laying limp on your arm, lashes brushing his cheek. You sigh as your grip around him tightens before you adjust him in his arms to carry him back into the bed, laying him comfortably beneath the covers.

You don’t linger for long after that. After another hour or two passes and Dazai doesn’t wake up again, you make your way back into the bedroom, raising your hand to his face to brush away the dark locks in his eyes before cupping his cheek. Even in his sleep, he leans into your touch, and it makes your chest feel so agonizingly tight that you think you might be having a heart attack.

You lean down to press your lips to his forehead, to his nose, and then to his lips, indulging yourself one last time. Your forehead rests against his as you consider your words—there are a million things you’d like to say to him before you leave, but you don’t have nearly enough time to get them all off of your chest.

Instead, you tell him softly, “I hope you don’t remember any of this in the morning.” You don’t move your hand from where it’s caressing his cheek as you stand straight again, thumb drawing absent circles on his skin. Your voice is thick with emotion, eyes welling with tears that don’t spill over. “We’ll meet again one day.”

Dazai wakes up the next morning with a hangover so bad that he thinks he might die.

He sits up in bed and is instantly groaning, hand flying to his forehead as his brain throbs inside of his skull. He needs to figure out where he is—the last thing he remembers is…

The bar?

His eyes slide shut as he tries to think, but it only makes his head hurt more. He flops back onto the bed, arms splayed out. He still feels nauseous, he can feel it rising to his throat and he desperately does not want to throw up again—it’s one thing vomiting when he’s too drunk to remember, it’s an entirely different thing to vomit while he’s sober and conscious.

Dazai thinks he might rather die.

He lets out a heavy sigh as he begs the nausea to go away, breathing in and out deeply. He lifts his hand to brush a lock of hair away from where it’s tickling his ear and-

Ouch.

Dazai’s eyes fly open again, confused now, as he rips his hand away from where he’d touched his ear to stare up at the ceiling. He’s used to waking up with odd injuries after a night of blacking out at whatever bar will still have him, but his ear is a particularly strange place to be wounded, isn’t it?

Driven by curiosity now, he forces himself into a sitting position, and it’s only when he pushes himself out of bed, does he finally start to recognize the room he’s in. His lips part in a distinct mixture of shock and confusion as he looks around the room slowly, making his way over to the mirror.

The safehouse in Sakae?

His chest feels heavier instantly, and a tight feeling rises to his throat as he catches sight of an old jacket of yours draped on the desk chair, the one that had ripped during the last mission you went on together—just the way you left it the last time the two of you were here. A pair of his old dress shoes are lying haphazardly outside the closet door, he’s sure that if he peeks into the closet, all of your suits will be hanging there because you refused to share the closet with him so all of his spares are stuffed in the dresser. Dazai suddenly feels sick again and he doubts it’s from the hangover this time.

How did he get here?

He needs another drink desperately.

But first… Dazai leans over the dresser to look into the mirror—a bit dusty after so many months with no one stopping in—he lifts his hand to brush his hair behind and then-

What?

His jaw drops and his brows furrow, his fingers graze over where the top of his ear used to be, only to find the whole upper quarter of it missing.

What the fuck? He mouths as he stares at the missing cartilage, and then he looks back around the room, and just as his eyes catch a trash bin that should be in the bathroom, his vision blurs, and his head is aching. He’s suddenly stumbling down an alley, he’s lying in a puddle of his own vomit, unable to stand up straight. He can hear someone approaching and he knows he should get up, find some dumpster or crevice to wait out the night until he’s sober enough to get the fuck out of the heart of the Mafia’s territory in Yokohama, but he can hardly move.

He can lift his head from the pavement just enough to-

Just enough to see you.

Dazai can hardly cope with the emotions that rattle his chest. Longing, because he’s missed you so terribly the past seven months. Disbelief, because you shot his fucking ear off. And… and Dazai isn’t quite sure what the other emotions are. They’re heavy and light at the same time, his chest feels bubbly but his ankles feel chained—it’s a weird mixture of hope and dread, he thinks, because the safehouse is eerily quiet, seemingly void of any life other than Dazai himself, but the chance that you might still be here…

“Will you be here in the morning?”

The faint memory of the last words he spoke before he passed out the last time rings through his head, and his feet drag against the ground as he forces himself to move from the bedroom into the main room of the safe house. His fingers hesitate against the wood of the door—scared that he’s going to open it and you won't be there, scared that he’s going to open it and you will be there. He doesn’t remember the things he said to you last night, but he knows that he’d been staring at old pictures the two of you took before he blacked out. He can hardly imagine the things he might’ve said to you when given the chance.

It takes all of his strength and all of his willpower to push open the door.

It takes even more to actually step out of the bedroom.

The safe house is empty.

You’re nowhere to be found.

Dazai’s feet are moving before he’s fully even registered what’s happening.

He makes his way into the kitchen to rummage around for another bottle for him to drown away his sorrows, but he doesn’t pull out the untouched bottle of his favorite whiskey he knows is sitting in the cabinet—he goes straight for the wine fridge. He nearly shatters three bottles of whites before he finally gets his hands on your favorite red, the one you’d asked him to stock up in there for you three days before he left, knowing that the two of you had a mission coming up and you’d be celebrating here, as always. Not knowing that he’d have betrayed you by then.

He struggles to uncork it, the frustration causing his headache to return with a vengeance. It takes an embarrassingly long amount of time for him to finally get the bottle open, but when he does, he brings it to his lips immediately, eyes sliding shut as he downs a few generous gulps.

The taste is familiar. Pleasant. It makes his heart ache with such an intense longing for you that it nearly makes him throw up.

He can almost imagine that he’s tasting it off of your lips instead.

He leans over the counter, elbows digging into the marble as he tries to push away the ugly feelings ripping apart his chest. He can’t. He never can. He hasn’t been able to since the day he left you behind seven months ago. He can only numb it.

With a hand closed around the neck of the bottle, Dazai slides down the cabinet to sit on the ground. His cheeks feel wet, but he doesn’t dare lift his hand to acknowledge the tears sliding down them.

Instead, he lifts the bottle to his lips again and drowns himself in the memories of you for another night.

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