sunfishsunfishsunfish

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

AQUARIUS

synopsis: in which the both of you get partnered for a mission, but not just as work partners.

pairing: chūya nakahara x fem!reader | wordcount: 2.7k | content & warnings: fluff, mention of chūyas past , choppy writing + no proofead (you can tell when i got lazy + its 3am does it looks like im gonna proofread), unestablished relationship, they work at the pm, cursing (son of a bitch), chūya calls reader a term of endearment once (doll), dual pov | prompt: fake dating | onseshot

event: STARCROSSED 2024

tags: @azullumi hi beloved super cool azul ure so super duper cool. dont flip out but azul liked and rbed ur posts. me: (whys theres no backflip emoji) (we're literally friends). but omg i acc dont have friends im a mess im a loser im a hater im a user

a/n: i finished this at 3am also boo gingers perish /j. hope yall enjoy!!

“so? what are we here for, boss? 

the auburn haired man asked. his left hand is glued to his side, resting on his gray waistcoat, his right hand was loosely shoved into the pocket of his dress pants. chuuya cocked his head to the side as he questioned your boss. 

“i’ve made my decision.” 

the man who was seated in front of you in his claret bergère chair announced. his slender fingers were encased in white adhesive gloves. the palms of his hands were facing down as he rested his chin on the back of his hand, magenta eyes flickering from chuuya and then to you before exhaling quietly and closing his eyes, pale skin draping over his eyes.

“after some back and forth, i’ve come to the conclusion that the most suitable person for this mission will be our dear miss [name]. she’ll be your plus one to the ball, accompanying you to your mission thus also carrying it out with you. gather information about our target and return as soon as possible. understood?” 

the man before you asked, a playful smile had found its way on his face and his head was slightly angled to the side as he awaited your agreement. 

“understood.” the both of you said in unison. chuuya took off the fedora that was placed atop of his head with his left hand and put it onto his chest as he closed his eyes and the both of you bowed down.  

“very well then. i await good news.” mori continued to smile as he gestured to both of you to take your leave by waving.

-

when you arrived back home, you immediately spotted two big boxes that were placed in your living room. one of them included a gorgeous dress, although it was a bit plain - a monochrome dress, it was beautiful nevertheless. as you stood up to see how the piece of clothing would fit you, you took notice that it was quite long, the expensive fabric immediately meeting the floor. the material of the dress was sewn a bit tighter to make the waist stand out a bit more. 

the other box contained a pair of matching heels in the same color. they weren’t too extravagant but still it seemed like the boss went all out when choosing the clothes. admittedly, you were a bit excited to see what chuuya would wear, would his outfit match with yours?

even though the both of you have worked together in the port mafia for so long and have been executives for a couple years now, the both of you never went on missions together, at least not when it was just the two of you. 

chuuya gained the title of portmafia executive at the ripe age of 16, one year after he had joined the portmafia. while you on the other hand have only been an executive for a few years now. chuuyas strength is immense, not only the power of his ability but also his physical strength. he's not only respected but also feared among the members of the portmafia. 

so to say that you were a tad bit nervous would be an understatement. 

-

you set foot inside the big mansion, stepping towards the ballroom that was located right behind the doors of the entrance. a big chandelier adorned the ceiling, it illuminated the big room in a saffron-like color. the kaleidoscopic marble floor glittered beneath the opaline light and the large windows were shielded by white translucent curtains, behind them the moon and the stars were sparkling gracefully.

but they don't compare to chuuya - not in the slightest. he’s dressed in a suit that matches your dress, beneath his blazer there was a waistcoat and he doesn't wear his fedora or any other hat.

chuuyas eyes glow like a sapphire, the azul pair of eyes hides so much beneath them, they reach until the depths of the ocean, that is full of mysteries waiting to be uncovered - just like chuuya.

chuuya tenderly held your gloved hand with his left one, leading you to the side of the dance floor where everyone else stood, drinks in their hands as they chattered and laughed. the both of you came to a halt and the conversations stopped, attention solely on you and chuuya.

“my, some new faces. and who might you be? an elderly woman asked, as she took a small sip of her champagne.

“well, my name is chuuya nakahara. it's a pleasure to meet you.” he reached out his right hand to shake hands with the elderly lady. “ah i see. well then, nice to meet-” “the pleasure is all mine!” before she was able to finish her sentence someone interrupted her, chiming into the conversation. you turned your head over to the source of disturbance, a young man who was dressed in all white, hair a bit unkempt as he gave you a boyish smile. 

“the pleasure is all mine!” the man repeated happily. “well, i'm sure it is.” chuuya murmured under his breath, giving the man a look that said “we heard you the first time.”

“may i ask who the lovely lady next to you is?” the man asked excitedly as if he had a hard time waiting. “oh you may.” chuuya responded in a faux courtesy tone. “she’s my spouse, my wife actually.” chuuya held up his left hand that was still intertwined with yours. 

“chuuya..” you glanced at him from the side, whispering through gritted teeth, as you continued to smile nicely at the other people who were conversing and you could only listen. 

“hm what is it?” the auburn haired answers, slightly raising his eyebrow as he turned his head to face you.

“it was supposed to be girlfriend, the boss never said anything about being married.” your voice croaks a bit, overall it seems like tonight your voice has betrayed you, sounding awkward everytime you exchange a word with chuuya. 

“oh.” chuuya uttered.

“yeah, oh.” you sighed. the man seemed to take his leave and you continued your talk. “well, what's done is done. it doesn't matter now. let's just continue, carry out the mission successfully and report back to the boss.”

“yeah.” chuuya nods in agreement. “let's split up for now and gather intel and information about our target.” 

“alright, i'll go to the other side of the room then and you stay here?” you ask. 

“sure thing.” chuuya responds and calls over the waiter, asking for a small glass of wine, so he can pass the time a bit and doesn't only have to mindlessly listen to their boring conversations. after the waiter takes his leave, chuuya notices that you’re still here, next to him. glued to your place, not moving an inch. 

“wasn't it your idea to split up? why are you still here? he furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

you let out an exasperated sigh. “well, you see, i was trying to. but, someone's hand has been holding onto mine very tightly for the past minutes and won't let go.” 

chuuya seemed to catch on pretty quickly and immediately let go of your hand. “m’sorry.” he mumbled. “ah, don't worry.” you cast him a small smile before leaving and step towards the other side of the room. 

chuuyas eyes can only follow you. (they always have.)

-

after you left, his hand felt empty. 

(but it's not like they’ve ever felt complete. he hides his hands to conceal his ability, the one that causes tumult and destruction, the one that makes him question if he can even be considered as human. his humanity is one thing chuuya still struggles with, it haunts him like a hunting animal, a wolf running and seeking out its prey, shredding it into pieces and devouring it without any mercy. but in this case chuuya can't help but wonder if he's the wolf who always seeks for the prey - the validation and the reassurance if he's human or if he's the prey that gets tormented by the constant feeling of knowing that he’ll never be (human) enough. for others, himself and you.)

the wine glass that he now holds in his left hand doesn't compare to your hand, it doesn't fill the endless void that chuuya sinks into. (he wonders when he’ll completely be devoured by it and eventually drowns.) your hand was the one that held out to him, the hand that’d pull him out of it, if he himself wasn't able to do so. 

(chuuya is used to doing everything on his own, everything that once belonged to chuuya was stripped away from him, like a sheep that has its pelt ripped away from a wolf. his family, his friends, his humanity, they were once his. chuuya nakahara also belonged to him once - now he belongs to the port mafia. it has always been like that; it will always be like that.)

he can't help but grip his glass in envy as he watches you from across the room as you ecstatically laugh and chatter with a woman your age, it looks like you’re enjoying yourself, having the time of your life.

the way you laugh, move around so that the frills of your dress twirl with you, and eyes glimmer make you look majestic. 

to chuuya you're not an outworldly creature like an angel that was chosen by the gods and descended from the heavens or a fairy that has magical powers to bewitch him. 

you’re human - you’re more human than anyone else chuuya has ever encountered in his life, perhaps that is when chuuya really realized what it meant to be a human.

the raw and pure nature of humans was perfectly depicted in you.

the way you flawlessly managed to do every task you were assigned with and always came back with a bright grin plastered across your face, the way you always looked out for everyone, the way you sometimes went completely batshit during missions. you’re what chuuya has always imagined under being a human. (or perhaps all of his beliefs of being human have changed as soon as he saw you.)

you’re the large white and empty canvas that waits patiently until it gets filled with tons of colors. chuuya is the artist who holds the paintbrush in his hand, fingers trembling as he draws paint strokes along the canvas. pouring his heart out into the painting, vivid colors full of emotion, that say more than a thousand words ever could. chuuyas art makes paintings come to life - you. his muse, whom he could stare at for an eternity during an art exhibition, just like now during the ball.

you’re beautiful.

“mr. nakahara?” a male voice made him snap out of his haze, upon seeing who it was, chuuya almost spat out the red wine. great, it was the guy from before. “yes? how can i help you”? chuuya gives him an unimpressed look as he twirls the alcoholic liquid in his glass around. “I just wanted to ask if i’d be permitted to dance with your spouse. she's a really lovely woman, i felt quite bad for her because you didn't invite her to one single dance yet, even though you're her husband!” the man looks at him unapologetically. 

son of a bitch.

but again, who was chuuya to judge? chuuya isn't in any position to forbid you to dance with someone, after all, the two of you weren't even together, the two of you were just partners, work partners to be precise. 

still, there was something that stirred inside chuuyas gut that made him feel uneasy. an ugly feeling that made his gut churn. is this how jealousy feels? sure, chuuya has felt jealous a few times. seething in envy as he saw people with good relationships to their friends and families, people who were allowed to live a normal life, living just like a normal civilian, doing normal things, without having to worry. chuuya couldn't help but feel jealous. 

but this time  it's another type of jealousy, he’s not jealous of other people because they own something he doesn't but he’s jealous of the people who’re just as smitten for you as him.

“ah, well you see. i was just about to go and ask her for a dance. please excuse me.” his words are bitter and the glass of red wine is long forgotten, placing it onto the round table which is covered by a big white table cloth. 

chuuya makes his way over where you stand, your cheeks are tinted in a rosy color, from the alcohol he assumes. your hair is a bit disheveled, have you played with the strands of your hair? but nevertheless, you continue to shine as beautifully as ever.

he tips you onto your shoulder and upon that you slightly flinch and turn around, eyes widening a bit when you see chuuya. “what are you doing here?” you whisper.

the auburn haired man doesn’t respond to your question, instead he bows down and reaches out his hand out to yours. “may i ask for this dance? after all, it takes two to tango.” chuuya thanks the gods that instead of facing you right now, he's facing the floor. he's not sure if he'd be able to bear it if you saw his flushed face. 

your mouth shapes into a little “o” before responding. “sure.” you hum as you happily place your hand into his, intertwining your fingers. upon feeling your touch, chuuya immediately pulls you towards the dance floor. your movements start off clumsily but chuuya helps you gain and maintain your balance, swaying you around the dance floor and twirling you around, as the both of you dance hand in hand. one of his hands is placed on your waist and your hand has found its home on his shoulder.

chuuya continues to sway you around during a slow classical music piece. “i'd prefer some  hard rock music.” you can hear chuuyas' little remark and cant help but laugh upon that, it distracts you from keeping your balance and tempo, almost tripping over the long fabric of your dress.

“careful, doll. you're gonna slip.” chuuya whispers. his warm breath fans against your ear, the heat rises through your whole body, making you shudder and your goosebump hairs stand up. you can only hum at that, too taken aback by the term of endearment, to properly respond. 

the both of you slow your pace, your hands wrapping around his neck and his hands snaking around your waist to sway around. you put your forehead against his chest first, until you fully lean into his embrace. 

this moment feels too intimate. that’s everything chuuya can think about, he’s scared that one day you too will also be ripped away from him, he doesn’t want that. chuuya likes you a lot, he adores the way you hum the sweet melody against his chest, the way your hands accidentally keep slipping off his neck but still return there every time, the way you sometimes step onto his foot but he stays quiet, yeah he’s absolutely whipped for you - he loves you. 

but, is someone who’s out of this world, a non-human, who only moves in the shadows of the world, allowed to love a human, who lives their life freely?

chuuya doesn't know. 

your line of work is dangerous, you could always encounter dangers that’d have a terrible outcome and chuuya wouldn't be there to prevent them, again, he’d lose everything that makes him human. chuuya isn’t sure if he’s able to live through this once again. 

the both of you are work partners, crossing this line would come with its consequences.

but he allows himself to indulge in this moment, just this once. humans are greedy and selfish aren't they? it's in their nature. so being selfish for once, just this one time, just for you, wouldn’t mean committing a sin, would it?

chuuya buries his face into your hair, inhaling your shampoo, it smells sweet - the saccharine scent makes him relax. he presses a chaste kiss on top of your head, before gently continuing to sway you around. 

after all, this is what work partners do, right?

e/n: tbh i didnt like this at all. it was so choppy just sentence after sentence without a real plot imo. i just didnt like how this turned out at all but i dont think id be able to write smth else or else itd turn out even worse

© TOORURS 2024. stealing, copying, translating, reposting my works on other platforms is not permitted.

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

I LIKE THE WAY YOU KISS ME !

Dazai knows he's a pretty boy, flaunting his looks and gaining the attention of everyone around him with nothing but a handsome face and a smooth, charming tongue. He also knows he drives you crazy.

just a few flirtatious glances and sly remarks thrown your way has you fisting your palms in your lap and your throat tightening and dazai knows this so well, he thinks your adorable like that.

He likes to use it to his advantage.

"hm? you seem to be a little warmer than usual dear...are you sick?" dazai hummed, nimble fingers running through your hair as you curled up nice and pretty on his lap while you two watched a movie. Although it was hard to when your bastard of a boyfriend made you hyper aware of him- an arm looped around your waist and his thumb rubbing circles on your hip, occasionally dipping lower to brush your thigh. his warm breath, tickling the back of your ear and neck, and those pretty lips of his that brushed up against your jaw whenever he moved even a bit had heat rushing up your neck and blooming on your cheeks.

You knew he could feel your rushing pulse- how could he not, when he was so close to the delicate, fluttering skin?- and you knew damn well that he knew what he was doing, dazai just wanted to watch you melt in his arms.

and it was working, dammit.

"I'm fine, osamu." you managed out, throat constricting around the words as you forced them out. dazai merely smirked and hummed, eyes set on the movie in front of you. you tried to focus on it but his touch, his scent, everything about dazai threw you off course.

"really? are you suuuure? I'm pretty sure atsushi was a little unwell yesterday, did you catch something from him?" he smirked, leaning his cheek against the side of your neck, "accidentally" dragging his lips down your jaw that made you shift in his lap. "wouldn't want ya to get sick, now would we?"

you didn't even need to look at him to see that stupid, shit-eating grin and that glint in those melting golden hues of his irises that make you weak in the knees. you knew he was looking for a reaction and you think one day you'll die because of this man.

"I'm not sick..." you mumble, swallowing thickly as dazai's thumb presses harder into your hipbone.

"are you sureeee?" he tilted your head towards him, breath blowing across your lips as his eyes stared into yours, lips tilted up and god did you want him to kiss you. "can't have you getting sick bella', can we?"

the thing that pushed you over the edge from his taunts was how his voice went a little lower, a lilt to his voice that had your spine shivering and brain a little fuzzy.

you stared at him wide eyed and blankly, too flustered to say much. you stammered out a few words that you couldn't register saying and suddenly dazai's kissing you, sucking the breath from your lungs as he tilts your head back to deepen the kiss. it was an awkward angle, head turned ungracefully to face him but you didn't care- how could you when you could taste his lips on yours?

after a moment dazai pulled back, took a breath and kissed you short and sweet. he held your face in his palm, thumb rubbing the corner of your lips as he smiled at you with warmth in his eyes.

"how was that? or is there nothing in that pretty little head of yours, hm?" dazai giggled, pressing his lips to your temple. you blinked once or twice and looked up at him, cheeks burning.

"god, shut up...you're insufferable!!" the movie had buzzed out in the background, neither of you paying attention. dazai simply laughed and nuzzled his face against your neck, squeezing you closer to him and pressing a quick kiss to your racing pulse.

he whispered, voice muffled against your neck.

"sorry, couldn't help myself darling."

©Cheriiyaya 2024.

REBLOGS ARE APPRECIATED !!

#ermmm what the scallop #i died and came back only to die again (dazai could never) #this makes me want to explode and die (compliment) #i hate him sm i hate his ass !!!!! (sticking posters of him on my wall) #so anyway i was reading this during class and i had to stop myself from smiling and givgling wha da fawk

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

"once more to see you" ; aventurine

summary — to him, love was like a religion waiting to be discovered and he’ll find god in the way the sun looks on your skin; alternatively, aventurine thinks he’s rotten work and tiring to take care of but not to you, not if it's him (please get the reference).

pairing — aventurine (w/ gender-neutral reader)

tags — established relationship (but aventurine wants to de-establish it), somewhat fluff, slight angst with comfort, never proofread never what?!!, 1.3k ; ficlet

note — 2.1 broke me (the whole quest knocked at the door of my house, shook my hands, congratulated me, and invited itself into my home before pouring water on my face, slapping me, throwing me around, and left with the door open, all the while, my family watched). this is day 1 of writing for aventurine until i have him.

“you have a lot of moles.” his voice, despite a gentle whisper, tears through the silence of the night like a drop of water that ruptured and disturbed the surface of the pond. “especially here.” he gently taps on your skin; they seem like stars, he swallows the words back down. 

you feel aventurine’s finger trace on the back of your neck and the curve of your shoulders, seemingly drawing—or connecting something. it was ticklish, the way he gently drags his hand and ghosts over your skin, a soft laugh slipping past your lips (you’ll capture his touch on your skin as if you were a sinner remembering how forgiveness tasted on your lips). there was something intimate that lingers in the air between you two as you lay in his bed with him, a fleeting moment that will be inked into your mind. 

(the both of you leave your titles behind, mixed together with the scattered objects on the floor, laid on the cold ground to be picked up and worn later like a shiny medal even if you weren’t proud to have them.)

“they say it’s where your lover kissed you the most in your past life.” you stir in your position as you speak, coming to face him and meet his pretty jewel-like eyes—how alluring it was, painted with vivid colors yet it never shines. the sound of mirth laughter bubbles from his throat, a pleasant melody to your ears.

he asks, curiosity tracing the tone of his voice, “and from where did you even hear that?” and you shrug, bringing your form closer to him as you seek for more warmth, “i can’t recall. perhaps i heard it from topaz or maybe from one of the members of the ipc? they’re the only ones i often see and talk to.”

“the doctor?” he wraps his arm around your figure, his hand settling on the small of your back.

“that man will only scorn at that idea and call it stupid. he’ll most likely say that ‘only fools would believe such concepts.’” you mimic the way the esteemed doctor spoke, from the serious expression that he always don on his face to the deepening of his voice. your seemingly successful imitation earned a chuckle from the blonde-haired man before you.

“i’m sure he will.”

silence falls between you two and you took this time to adore each and every line of his being. a few strands of hair fall over his eyes—beautiful, captivating, mesmerizing, you could list out every word to describe his eyes but it would never be enough. you had always wondered why he would hide it until you witnessed the reason why he does so. 

aventurine seems to study your expression at the same also, a soft look on his face as he did, and you can’t help but be curious. “what are you thinking about?” you ask him, breaking the silence that nurtured itself in the space between you and him.

you, he wishes to answer. how you look at this moment in his embrace: you were wearing one of his shirts, albeit, not exactly to your size but you insisted, saying that you liked it as it smelled like him. how gentle, loving, adoring, you were everything; he looks and thinks of you as if you were his everything (he doesn’t deserve you). but he doesn’t say it—the thought weighs too heavily on his mind, claws at his throat, and suffocates him—, instead he utters something entirely different that creates a shift in the air between you two. 

“i don’t think i can do this.” he turns his head to look away from you, staring at the ceiling instead. it seems to extend itself far and far away from him.

the horrible part of being human is the tendency for destruction that lies in your bones. stained palms, calloused pads, despite the gentleness of your touch and the comfort of your caress. the desire to devour flesh and bones, to understand the underlying thoughts and meanings behind words and unexpressed feelings by consuming them. to submerge and drown in the depths of one's despair and desire (too close that the line blurs into one). the horrible part of being him was his tendency to destroy—hesitation and doubt lies in his being and aches at his chest, tugging on his heart’s strings, and settles on his throat—, it’s not like he doesn’t want to hold you, it’s just that he can’t.

“do what?”

“this.” you know exactly what he was referring to, know what he’s afraid of. he has laid himself bare and vulnerable in front of you countless of times that you have memorized the constellations that adorns his skin. you know him, you have known him enough to recognize the fear that tugs on his voice and see the walls that he tries to build up in front of you. you know him enough to know what thoughts are plaguing his mind.

“why do you think so?”

“don’t you think i’m too much to take care of?” he tries not to choke on his words and bite his tongue, careful not to let his voice crack lest he crumbles underneath your caress. i am undeserving of it. worthless. failure. selfish. discarded. coward. loser. nothing. you are bound to leave. 

“not for me.” you caress his cheek and guide him to look at you—instead of the ceiling that seems to appear farther than it originally was in each passing second as the walls glean over him like a shadow—, to meet your gaze and see the sincerity that lurks deep within. “never will i get tired of you. so, let me carry your burden.”

he takes a few seconds to answer, uncertainty lingering in his tone: “it’s not yours to have.”

“it may not be.” you answer with no hesitation, “but it doesn’t mean that you must shoulder them alone.”

he opens his mouth to speak but unable to find the words to say, he closes them. there was a moment of stillness shared between you two. comfort, relief, assurance seeps into the ache of his bones and you say something too heavy even for this steady and silent night to hold, the words too much to be held—light spills in like a flood as if it was pouring out from the sun itself.

“i love you.”

“you utter such words as if it’s something easy for you.” as if loving him was just as simple as waking up in the morning and adoring the way the honey-light hugs your form as the dust settles in the corner of your room. when he’s stripped of everything and left with nothing, would you still love him the same? would you still kiss him as gently as you did? would you still hold the shards of his form even if it makes your hand bleed? 

you spoke in a gentle yet firm croon, gaze unwavering, “because it is.”

you see the falter in his expression: his face, that once was crumpled, relaxed and so did his gaze soften. and you smile at him with only adoration in your eyes—like a devout follower to a divine being. “are you still afraid?”

“i don’t know.” he whispers.

“it’s alright. you have all the time in the world.” your hand weaves itself into his own, fingers lacing with one another, and you gently squeeze. it was a form of reassurance, a way of telling him that you’re here with him through all of it.

the warmth has settled in your being and you spill yourself into the cracks of his vulnerability. “i love you.” you say once more and you kiss the mark on his neck—lingering and soft as if you wish that it would take all his hurt away. the way he shudders underneath your touch, the hitch of his breath soon followed by a gentle sigh as he cradles you closer to him tells you everything that you wish to hear.

for once, he sleeps as if he had nothing to carry, nothing that shackles him to the stars that forsakes him.

© azullumi — do not plagiarize, copy, repost, nor translate any of my works.

#what if i cried op #what if i sobbed #this makes me want to explode and die (compliment)

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

⠀「 Waking him up in the middle of the night, asking for food 」 

Reblogs are greatly appreciated !!

trying out a different format for content when im strapped for time lmao

"Babe." You nudge him in the shoulder with a finger. His arms are wrapped around you, asleep with his face half-buried in the pillow. He doesn't respond the first time, merely twitching slightly, so you try again with more force. "Babe," you say with more urgency, and he grumbles under his breath, rousing from sleep.

"What?" he asks, voice raspy.

"'m hungry," you tell him quietly, whispering not to break the tranquility of the night.

"What?" He leans closer, and your eyes narrow.

"I'm hungry. Food please," you tell him, louder this time.

He grumbles under his breath, burying his face further into the pillow, ignoring you. His hands tighten around you so much that you nearly squeak. You gasp, affronted, and keep poking his shoulder until he finally gives in.

"You're lucky i love you," he mumbles into the pillow. With a tired groan and a glare tossed your way, he releases you and tosses the blanket off of himself. He pulls on his slippers, runs his hand through his hair, still swearing, and stands. He turns back to you, a hand outstretched to help you out of the sheets, and you grin at him victoriously.

"Fine, what do you wanna eat, you menace?" He asks around a yawn, tired, but too tightly wound around your finger to actually ever tell you no.

— Wriothesley, Alhaitham, Cyno, Scaramouche / Wanderer, Xiao, Childe

He wakes up a little bit more at your request, blinking once or twice. He frowns at you, glancing at the clock on the wall, before levelling you with an exasperated stare. "At this hour?" he asks dryly. "It couldn't wait until breakfast?"

You shake your head resolutely. "Nope. I don't think I'll be able to sleep."

He sighs, but doesn't contest further, instead pressing a kiss to your cheek, and then one to your lips. "You're so spoiled," he says it fondly though, and you beam up at him. Because really, when it comes to him, you definitely are. He slips out of bed. "I'll make you that toast that you like, okay?" he asks, and you nod enthusiastically, already clambering out of the sheets after him.

— Kaveh, Diluc, Neuvillette, Kazuha, Ayato, Albedo, Kaeya, Thoma, Zhongli

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

Hii! 😊 I just read your latest post with Kayden x childreader and Jiwoo and it was as good as the previous parts 👌🏽 Especially I liked the little scenarios based on the actual story and how well you managed to put childreader into it. My absolute favourite part was when reader had a conversation with Ameyong in the hospital and she was SO SASSY 😂 (the “I throw you out the window” part had me cackling 🤭) It actually reminded me of Kayden’s character so much.

Sooo… here I am with an idea based on this, asking if you could write some little scenarios /headcannons /little fic (literally whatever you choose) with childreader that took over majority of Kayden’s character traits (she’s with him since she was very little so it’s likely that she took after him) and it shows so openly 🥹 I picture this moment after Kartein joins them, so when they all see her acting like mini Kayden version, Kartein points it out to him and Kayden has his ‘proud dad moment’ 😭❤️

Sorry for it being so long but I got really excited after I read your post and got this idea. If it’s something you don’t feel like writing it’s fine, I just though that I share it with you! Take care! 🥰

I'm glad you like my fic and it's a really cute idea as well so here's come head cannons and a few short fics

Head Cannons

*Child reader always copies the hair style Kayden wears. She also has little baby hairs that stick out, which she clips back with clips that look like lightning bolts

* child readers transformation is a little 2 month old orange kitten, she has the same stripes as Kayden. Unlike Kayden she's really small and fluffy, she can fit in Jiwoo's front pocket.

* she doesn't use this form at home unless guests are around ( Baekdu doesn't know you can transform they saw you walking outside with Jiwoo in human form)

* at first she complained like Kayden about being carried in kitten form, but she started liking it cause she can feel warm and feel Jiwoo's heartbeat in his pocket.

* after the kidnapping incident she stays in Jiwoo's pocket and hisses at dangerous people who come near to Jiwoo.

* Kayden carries her by the scruff in kitten form, he catches himself cleaning you on various instances.

* like Kayden when she first talked to Inhyuk in human form she also expected treats, since Inhyuk would give her little kitten form treats. Inhyuk gives her little sweets whenever he sees her since he thinks she's cute.

* she sleeps on top of Kayden in kitten form.

*when she first transformed the older cats coddled her, at first she would back away hissing. After finding out they helped Kayden she was nicer and they always end up grooming her.

Short fics

Y/n isn't very intimidating being a child and even less intimidating in kitten form .

She has tried to intimidate people like Kayden, but they just think she's cute so she'll try to threaten them in the most outlandish way.

Exhibit A

It had been right after Jisuk had discovered Kayden and you could talk. You decided to scare him after Kayden.

" if you tell anyone about me, I will drown and boil you in apple juice"

You say to a kneeling Jisuk

"I won't reveal anything about you to anyone!"

" ok you're free to go, remember I can always find you."

After that you prance back inside, leaving Jisuk to wonder many things.

Where would you get enough apple juice to drown and boil him? How would you carry him? How would you knock him out? What would you put him in to boil him?

He's having nightmares while you haven't even thought that far. Jisuk now brings high quality kitten food for you.

Exhibit B

You got really obsessed with penguins of Madagascar, Riko and Private ended up being your favourites. So you learned how to summon a gnome that could magic you up small items.

You were hiding with Kartien behind a wall as Royst tried challenging Jiwoo, and you summoned a gnome.

"Riko, one lighter and gasoline stat."

The gnomes gives you the lighter and a small tin of gasoline. You're about to go out of your hiding place towards Royst before Kartien picks you up by the scruff.

"don't even think about it"

" he's mocking big brother!"

" you'll get Jiwoo and your dad in trouble if he catches you"

" but-arggh fine! I won't set him on fire"

"hand over the lighter and gasoline and unsummon the gnome"

"but-"

"no buts, hand it over and unsummon the gnome. I know you'll come up with another scheme to get back at him."

"alright, fine!"

You say sulking and obeying him.

Kayden being proud scenario

Pluton had recently moved into the home, and you made a fun discovery; he was the easiest person in the house to trick and convincing. He's in dog form and you're in human form.

"Mr.Pluton can you give more cookies please?"

"what did Kayden and Kartien say?"

"papa said I can only get four cookies, and uncle Kartien said I can only have the 4 cookies after I ate an apple."

"how many cookies did you eat so far? and did you have the apple?"

" I had 4 cookies and I already had the apple"

" I can't get you extra cookies, you'd be going against the 4 cookies rule"

" but I had two apples, so I can get 4 more cookies"

"I don't think it works like that"

"but Mr.Pluton the apple is to go against the unhealthy cookies, so I can get 4 more cookies and suffer nothing"

" I guess, but I can't break Kayden's rules for you"

" but then you'd be breaking uncle Kartiens apple rule"

"I- that is true but I can't give you the cookies"

"*sigh* okay I guess you're too scared of papa"

"I'm not scared of Kayden!"

" it's okay Mr.Pluton, papa is incredibly strong it makes sense that you're scared."

You say gently pating his back

"I'm not scared of him! I'll get you those cookies"

Pluton transforms back human and gets you the cookies

"there I'm not scared of Kayden"

" thank you Mr.Pluton"

You happily walk away as Pluton is proud that he proved his bravery.

"she tricks people like you do, literally a mini you."

"of course, I raised her and she takes after her dad well"

Kayden says with a smirk

"Plutons is an idiot for falling for that. I would never fall for such a trick"

"sure, of course you won't."

You did get scolded by Kartien later for having 8 cookies.

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

Has anyone considered or even thought about Sunday texting. Like we’ve seen him receive letters, which probably means he also writes some himself— but what about texting???

He probably has two phones (one for personal uses and one for work). He uses proper grammar and punctuation even when he texts. Almost never uses abbreviations/initalisms.

Eg.

[Y/N]

Look!

(A moment later, an attachment pops up. Sunday taps it to open it up full-screen, and he’s met with a photo of a periwinkle and white origami bird.)

[Y/N]

Doesn’t this one look like you?

[Sunday]

Ahahaha

Once he used ‘Lol’. You thought his phone got stolen.

Doesn’t strike me as the type to use many emoji’s. Maybe ☺️ or 🙂 every now and then. And he’ll send a ❤️ in response to any selfies or at the end of his messages.

[Sunday]

❤️

[Sunday]

You look lovely.

Or…

[Sunday]

Good morning, dear.

I brewed a kettle of tea before I left. It should be cooled off on the stove and ready for you to drink. It’s a chamomile and ginger blend which will help with your headache.

Keep yourself hydrated and get some rest. Please text or call if you need anything. ❤️

Only a select bunch have his personal number (Robin, you, The Dreammaster, The Family Heads). He doesn’t have anything in his photo gallery on his work phone. No apps. Just the ones needed for contact.

On his personal phone, his photo gallery is not as barren. There are quite a few pictures of you. Selfies you’ve sent, pictures of you together, etc. He has a bunch with Robin as well. Some were taken together during her visits, and some were taken by herself (images of the places she'd been or cool things she'd encountered during her journey) and sent to him via message.

And of course you’ll find the random odd pictures. Maybe a quick snap of the spine/title of a book he wants to look into. Or a screenshot of an interesting quote or fact from an article he was reading.

His photo gallery is also neatly divided into albums.

He doesn’t play any mobile games. He probably downloaded Doodle Jump or Temple Run back when he first got his phone, but he hasn’t touched either in ages. The only reason he hasn’t deleted the app is because you go on his phone to play it sometimes.

Sunday will text your during his free time. He’ll ask how your day’s been going and share a bit about his own, discuss lunch/dinner plans, and if he’s sure there aren’t any other guests scheduled to meet, then he’ll ask you to come to Dewlight Pavillion so that he can see you.

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

Hiii~

Can I request aventurine and Dr ratio (separately or together ur choice) with klee reader

Maybe Sunday too?

I just want chaos to unfold-

Take care ☺️

ꜱᴜɴᴅᴀʏ, ᴀᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀɪɴᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴅʀ ʀᴀᴛɪᴏ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ ᴋʟᴇᴇ! ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

pairings - sunday & klee! reader / aventurine & klee! reader / dr ratio & klee! reader

content - reader is gender-neutral/ klee! reader/ platonic relationships/ familial relationships/ chaos

warnings - a bit of angst (?), might be ooc i'm sorry guys T_T

⋘ ʟᴏᴀᴅɪɴɢ... ⋙

↻ Whether you met Sunday because you’ve been unknowingly stirring up trouble in the dreamscapes or you met him by chance, he’d be a bit worried and concerned about a child roaming alone in Penacony

↺ He may or may not slowly adopt you into his routine as he always finds himself being greeted by you on the streets of Penacony (or called by a family member because mayhem has been occurring in certain parts of the dreamscapes)

↺ Gazing upon the damage you had done in the dreamscape as you stared at him with wide innocent eyes, he couldn’t be upset with you but rather surprised by how much power this unknown child has

↻ Sunday would be a lot like Jean, but he’d be a little more lenient when it comes to you

↺ He’d probably have a small area/room that’s your designated play area whenever you’re with him and sometimes he’d have to give you a time-out for blowing up something in the dreamscape

↺ Said time out wouldn’t last long as he’d feel guilty looking at your saddened state

↻ Sometimes whenever the other family members had a meeting with Sunday, they would see you playing around with your favorite stuffed animal but wouldn’t dare question your presence (you had quite the reputation for being.. explosive…)

↻ I think when it comes to each character with a Klee! Reader, they’d have those animal backpacks with the leash attached to it just because you’re so chaotic

↺ One moment they would be walking with you and then the next you’ve run off to somewhere that caught your attention

↺ For Sunday’s mental well-being, he got you this backpack to help him keep an eye on you whenever you were distracted

↻ As I mentioned in previous posts, Sunday, whenever he’s anxious or worried for you, would pace around his office with his feathers just puffing up and some of them popping right off due to his stress

↺ When you are found safe and sound, he’d give you a tight hug and you’d start playing with the feathers that were scattered on the ground

↺ He’s.. amused by it

↻ Honestly, Sunday had no idea what to do with you as you were found to be alone and it didn’t seem like you knew any of your family members (Just going to ignore Albedo and Klee’s mother for my sake…)

↺ Eventually, he warmed up to you a lot and considers you his little sister, which Robin also adores having around

↻ Sunday would be very protective of you but a little.. nervous about your abilities, he knew to an extent you were capable of handling things yourself

↺ But you are still a child so he’s extra cautious about the dangers in the dreamscapes and makes sure that you don’t get into trouble

↺ Otherwise, he’d have to confiscate your bombs.. which he really didn’t want to do because then you’d be super upset

↺ He tried to confiscate them one time but that ended up with you ignoring him for the remainder of the day and you were sulking in your playroom

↻ Sunday, during the Charmony Festival, would keep a very close eye on you because of what has been going on within Penacony

↺ He’ll keep you in his line of sight at all times, whether it’s him personally accompanying you around or having you sit near him in his conference room, he wouldn’t want you wandering too far off

↺ You’d find Sunday mumbling to himself while looking at some documents, but you never really understood them so you always stuck to what you were doing

↻ Sunday is very fond of you, and he’d do anything to ensure your safety

-----

Sunday was seated at his conference table, hand holding his chin in thought as he scanned through the multitude of documents. He carefully looked them over and over again, thoroughly reading through the letters written by a family member he assigned an assignment to. 

With the Charmony Festival coming in full swing, Sunday wanted to make sure that things would run as smoothly as possible, despite the growing concern that was nagging him from the depths of his consciousness. He couldn’t afford to become distracted…

That is what he thought, but yet he still found himself engaging in your little antics. Although things were growing busier and busier by the day, he wanted to ensure that you were alright and safe, playing a couple of your games when you pleaded for him to stay. He didn’t find the idea of playing with bombs safe, but if it was what made you happy, then your wish was his command.

As he stood up to roam the halls of his mansion, he gazed out into the open through the grand windows, a million thoughts racing through his mind. The future of Penacony contained countless outcomes and he could only grow restless every time he thought of it. But having you around to distract him from his worries with your silly antics, even if for just a fleeting moment, made him feel as if everything was going to be alright…

He would make sure of that.

-----

↻ Aventurine would also find your chaotic nature interesting, in fact, he might even indulge in it by taking a role in your little schemes

↺ He’d be a little concerned when you go a bit too far with your bombs and antics, so he’d try nudging you into a not-so-concerning situation

↻ Aventurine would find you when you got into a little scuffle with his subordinates, somehow destroying some IPC property and getting an earful from his coworkers

↺ Those IPC grunts would be terrified of you if they saw what you could do, especially because you’re a CHILD playing with BOMBS (They’re seriously concerned about who raised you and why you are the way you are.. or how you even managed to have bombs on you??)

↻ He’d send them off to go do something else (or to go bother someone else..) and bend down to your level to ask about your guardians or caregiver

↺ When you are confused about what he is talking about, his concern would only grow before he’d take you to find a trusted person to watch over you as he was busy with an assignment

↺ However, he would only come back to find that you escaped a worker’s watchful gaze and were playing with that bomb toy you had on you (Docodo? Cododo?? Whatever you said its name was…)

↻ When Aventurine hangs around you a little more during his free time (whether he’s done with work or doesn’t feel up to gambling), inquiring about the little fella you had on you and about your background

↺ He’d kind of take you under his wing from there on out, having you accompany him on missions if he determined they weren’t dangerous and were minor assignments

↺ Topaz would find it surprising seeing him around with a little kid, she’d even be wary about his intentions with you as he had suddenly popped up with a small kid out of nowhere

↺ She’d introduce you to Numby who, to your delight, would play and spend a bit of time with you

↻ Sometimes you’d accompany Aventurine on his casino trips, but he’d try leaving you out of them as it wasn’t really a kid-friendly setting

↺ So sometimes you’d in up in a more appropriate setting like a small daycare where you were safe (yet you’d sometimes pop up next to him in a game and catch him off guard)

↻ Aventurine, as someone with a lot of money to freely spend, would spoil you with a variety of things that he’d think you would like

↺ You aren’t necessarily a spoiled child, but he’d still get you the things that have caught your interest, whether you voice what you liked or not

↻ When he passes by a shop that has a showcase of kid backpacks, he would see one with a plush animal and a leash and he’d automatically get it for you 

↺ You wouldn’t really care about the leash part as you’re too distracted by the cute plush animal backpack, so it really was no problem for Aventurine

↺ He’d be walking around the IPC’s headquarters or Penacony with the backpack leash in his hand, you following him yet straying whenever you saw something

↺ He’d have to give the leash a small tug to make sure you weren’t wandering too far off though

↻ If you did something dangerous such as blowing up something that belongs to the IPC, Aventurine would vouch for you, becoming your partner in crime (Him sending a sly wink your way as you giggle innocently, hands covering your mouth to stifle your laughter) 

↺ Topaz would be the one scolding you before Aventurine tries defending your honor, but then he’d end up getting scolded by her too

↻ Aventurine would try his best to protect your innocence, not wanting you to see the dangers that linger on the different worlds he ends up on or what may invade the IPC’s headquarters

↺ He’s seen and witnessed firsthand hand of losing his innocence at a young age, those memories of his past still haunt him to this day and he doesn’t want you living with the same burden so he tries his best to protect you from danger (even if you’re somewhat capable of protecting yourself)

-----

“_____, did you destroy a piece of the IPC’s belongings again!?” Topaz asked, a stern look on her face as you stood there innocently with your hands tucked behind your back. 

“No… I didn’t do anything I swear! You can even ask Dodoco!” You answered, shoving Dodoco out in front of you as if to emphasize your statement. Topaz sighed, shaking her head.

“_____… I know you want to play around but sometimes you need to be careful of where you are. You could get hurt or, well.. damage things that aren’t yours.” Crossing her arms, Topaz looked at you with a softer gaze. You persisted in your stance. 

“But I swear! I didn’t do it!” You cried out, holding Dodoco closer to your chest. “Y-you can even ask Mr. Aventurine!”

“I heard my name?” Aventurine slinked to the spot right next to you, giving Topaz a questioning yet sly look. Topaz couldn’t help but groan when he popped up next to you, feeling as if she was on the verge of being teamed up against. 

“Mr. Aventurine! Please tell Miss Topaz that I wasn’t the one who blew up some of the IPC’s equipment!” You begged, tugging at his coat as he looked down at you with his cat-like eyes. 

He gave you a closed-eyed smile, patting the top of your head. “Is that what’s going on? Well, I have unfortunate news for you Topaz, as little _____ here was busy helping me out with an assignment.” Aventurine had a smug smile on his face as if to tease Topaz and tick her off, which worked.

Topaz, rolling her eyes, heaved a deep sigh. “Fine, I believe you, _____. You can go run off and play now.” 

With a joyful smile on your face and a cheer, you thanked Topaz before turning to thank Aventurine, bowing slightly with a quiet giggle.

“Thank you Mr. Aventurine! Promise we’ll play next time?” 

“I promise, _____. Now go play with Dodoco in your room, okay? I’ll check up on you later when I’m done with work.” 

“Okay!” 

-----

↻ Dr Ratio wasn’t necessarily fond of children…

↺ He understood that they weren’t the brightest of stars, but he could barely handle some of the behaviors they exhibited

↺ I imagine he’d be so disgusted because of how kids can be known for doing the weirdest stuff… (Picking their boogers, touching a variety of items, being unsanitary... the list goes on)

↻ When he meets you for the first time, he’s curious about the construction of your bombs and how you were able to make them

↺ To his disappointment, you are only able to draw crude drawings of the construction of your bombs and poorly explain how you built them

↺ He takes it upon himself to sample one of your bombs to see what they’re made of and how they’re made

↻ You’d invite him (more like drag him) to help you create and play with your bombs and he’d reluctantly follow you to where your room is

↺ Aventurine walking in on you playing dolls (or your bombs) with Ratio

-----

“How are you doing?”

“Mister Ratio, say it in your girl voice.”

“Sigh… How you doin’? 💅”

*Aventurine laughing before Ratio throws the doll he’s holding at him*

-----

↻ Ratio, knowing him, would tutor you if you went to a daycare or school, helping you understand your homework and teaching you about different subjects

↺ You wouldn’t comprehend half the things he’s teaching you but you follow along anyway

↺ Ratio would be genuinely happy if you were able to learn something new from him and apply it to your life

↻ Ratio is the type of teacher figure to give you random quizzes to test your knowledge and understanding but he rewards you with things like snacks or trinkets he gets from his trips

↻ Ratio would be delighted to talk about his trips to you, explaining the history and geography of the planets he has traveled to you when he comes back

↺ He would draw a small map for you to understand the general location of the places he’s visited

↻ You’d be excited to learn about what places he’s seen and you’d ask him a myriad of questions to which he’d patiently listen and answer 

↺ The thought of Ratio being patient with a young child warms my heart, this is how he’d find out that maybe he can tolerate specific kids

↻ Ratio reading stories to you to help you fall asleep, but those stories would probably be academic books he uses to teach his students

↻ If you were to get in trouble for blowing something up, he’d show his disappointment and sternly give you a punishment that isn’t too harsh on you (he’d give you school work lol)

↺ Ratio would check in on you here and there when you’re in your room, if he finds that you’re asleep he’d tuck you in before looking over your work

↺ This makes me think of Ratio walking in to see that you had drawn him an artwork of the both of you with Dodoco (who he came to know as your prized friend)

↻ Ratio doesn’t have a clue who your parents or guardians are, so he tries to locate them at first to no avail (he ends up pretty much adopting you as his own kid)

↻ Sometimes you’d sit near his desk in his lecture hall when he was teaching his students, swinging your legs back and forth as you eyed everyone in the room

↺ His students find you adorable and get distracted by your presence at first before their professor sends them a chalk their way

↺ His students give you little gifts or snacks as they leave the room, a part of them hoping that Ratio’s rampage on his grade book will be softened by your happiness at the gifts you received

↺ He finds out what his students are doing, but lets them do it anyway since it’s making you happy (he’d probably set some limits though before you get way too much stuff)

-----

Veritas had just finished up his lecture with his students, organizing their work into neat stacks on one side of his desk. Once the last student had left his classroom, he took off his plaster head and sat it in front of him. In his peripheral vision, he saw a small empty chair to the left of his desk. It was where you normally sat. 

The violet-haired man was then reminded of your absence due to the sudden sickness you had caught the day before. With a sigh, he turned back towards the ungraded stacks of paper on his desk and got to work. He’d try to be home before midnight. 

…..

By the time he finished, it was already 9. Walking out of the campus, he was met with the emptiness the night brought with it. Students were already long gone, the handful of teachers that had stayed late already packed up and left for dinner, but he was running a bit late. So with a brisk pace, he set off in the direction of his home, the cool night air hitting his skin.

Once Veritas reached his destination, he quickly unlocked the door and went inside, the warmth of his home greeting him. His shoulders fell, the weight that had been put upon himself leaving his body as he could see a faint light coming from your room. 

Slipping off his outerwear, he quietly walked across the hardwood floors and stopped outside of your bedroom door. Veritas listened for any signs that you might be awake, but nothing. He placed his hand on the door and gently pushed it open so he was able to enter. 

You had left your bedside lamp on, with a couple of papers and crayons scattered across the desk you normally drew at. His eyes had landed on your small, curled-up form, snoring away beneath the comforters of your bed. He softly chuckled to himself, walking towards your bed and lifting the blanket so it reached your shoulders. You had stirred but only shuffled to get comfortable. Placing a small kiss on your forehead, Veritas got up to put away the crayons and papers you had left out.

While picking up and putting away the crayons in the correct order that was directed on the box, the bright, grainy colors on a paper caught his eye. He gently picked up a piece of paper that you seemed to have been working on while he was gone. It was a drawing of the both of you in a field of flowers, your best friend, Dodoco, in between the both of you. Veritas had to admit that it was cute, a small smile appearing on his face before he gathered the rest of your drawings and slid them into a folder. 

When he had finished making sure that everything was neatly put away, Veritas moved to turn off the lamp, wishing you sweet dreams. 

-----

⋘ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ! ⋙

note - hey ya'll.. nice weather we've got here... 😀 i really need to blast through my requests-- wearesobackipromise.

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

ᡣ𐭩 ALL THINGS END

FEATURING: beast dazai osamu

SUMMARY: all of dazai's carefully calculated plans come to an abrupt halt when you run into him at a club. he thinks fate is a funny thing, that despite all of his desperate attempts to stay away from you, it still leads you right to him. one night, he decides, is all he'll allow. one night of indulgence, and then things will go back to how they were. that's how it has to be to keep you safe. {wordcount: 11.8k; fem!reader; romance & tragedy}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: wow we're starting side b—side b can be read separately from side a but you’ll get some neat references if you read both (｡♡ ‿ ♡｡). i'm so nervous actually HAHAH i put my heart and soul into side b and trying to characterize beast!dazai properly. it was really hard because the majority of the fic is from his pov and getting into his mind is a lotttt harder than canonzai imo. anyway, reblogs are always appreciated! thank you guys & i hope you guys love this as much as i enjoyed writing it

GENERAL WARNINGS: dazai struggles a lot with disassociation/derealization & losing himself in the pages of the book, it's going to be a common theme throughout the series so i'll leave the heads up now. + as always please let me know if i forgot any warnings!

SEE: UNREAL UNEARTH SERIES MASTERLIST READ: BADLANDS SIDE A

Dazai Osamu thinks that his touch might be noxious, indiscriminately rotting all he comes in contact with until only putrid remains are left of what had once been lively souls. His gaze drags across his fingers from where they’re splayed on top of the table, absently tapping out a familiar name over and over again, the only thing grounding him to the meeting taking place around him in one of the second-floor VIP rooms of the Port Mafia’s most elite nightclub. If he looks hard enough, he swears he can see that the tips of his fingers are blackened, ready to lay the curse of decay upon the next person he brushes them against. 

He can feel eyes on him—the impatient glares from the foreign emissaries and the tense stares of his executives, as they wait for him to respond to the offer, laid out to him by the top brass of the Russian kingpin called Nabokov, an old ally of the Port Mafia courtesy of the previous boss. Dazai was already annoyed coming into this meeting, thinking that the Russians were presumptuous for assuming that the Port Mafia should come to their defense in the three-way territorial war going on in their motherland, but the fact that Nabokov couldn’t even bother to come speak to him himself after Dazai’s executives insisted that he be the one to personally handle this only made him even more bitter and irate. He hates having to leave the headquarters.

He takes a long drag from the cigarette hanging between his lips, lifting his free hand to pull the end from his mouth before putting it out on the table in front of him. The buzz of the nicotine isn’t enough to keep him present anymore. He keeps tapping, steady and controlled, the same bunch of letters again and again—everything around himself feels hazy and blurry. The only thing clear that he can focus on is the uniform drumming of his fingers, his voice doesn’t even sound like his own as he speaks: 

“Why should I even entertain your offer when Nabokov couldn’t bring it to me himself?” 

The first words that he speaks during the entire meeting are cold and harsh, as they should be in response to the disrespect shown by the Pale Flame, but Dazai just wants to be done with this and return to the base before anything can go wrong. His executives are vaguely pleased by his words, evidently taking more offense to Nabokov’s failure to show than Dazai himself does, and the three emissaries of the Pale Flame bristle, sharing looks as they try to figure out what to say in response to Dazai’s remark. Dazai doesn’t even care to hear what they have to say, lost in his thoughts as he glances up at the ceiling. 

He thinks that if his touch isn’t entirely noxious, as there have been a few people who haven’t faced ruin after being exposed to it, then his presence makes up for it in its draining effect. The black hole in his chest is just as indiscriminate as the corroding touch of his fingers, emptying people of hope and exhausting them of energy. A part of Dazai mourns over the fact that those who can survive his touch are drained by the void—(chuuya. atsushi. their names weigh heavy on him, knowing that he’s dragged them so far down with him in this life)—while those who can withstand the void are inevitably killed because of their proximity to him—(you, odasaku, your names ring through his head, cruel and taunting. he pushes away the longing that rips at his chest, as he always does.)

His fate is to be alone, a cruel design drawn out by whatever sadistic gods reign above.

In every universe, it’s proven to be true. Even in this one, he can’t spare people from the effects of his existence. Atsushi, Kyouka, Chuuya—as years have passed their eyes have become dull and their souls have become as black as the blood that he forcibly injected into their veins. He considers whether or not he might just be better off dead, that way he can give those who have been the most affected by him, in this life and all of the others, a much-needed reprieve from him. But he can’t, not when he’s unsure over whether or not those who’ve been condemned by his touch will actually survive if it means he’s gone. 

“... okov sends all of his reg…”

The tapping becomes a bit harsher, faster. If he was writing out the name rather than tapping it, the script would be jagged and unclear. His surroundings start to fade out again, Nabokov’s executives are speaking but the words are going in one ear, out the other. His head feels fuzzy and his free hand is starting to go numb.

Odasaku. You. He’s sure that there are plenty of others, but you two are the only ones that matter to him. He doesn’t know if killing himself would mean that the two of you could live out your lives to the fullest. You could both die anyway, for all he knows, and then he would’ve died for nothing and he can’t risk that, not when this is the only universe where he’s aware of the fate that you and Odasaku face in every other world.

He can work to protect the two of you in this world; he’ll do what must be done from the shadows to ensure that you and Odasaku can finally fulfill your dreams. A life without you, and a life without Odasaku, is a small price to pay if it means that you two can actually live out your lives. You’ve granted him enough good memories from every single other universe that the least you guys deserve is one without his presence bringing you ruin. 

“... the previous b…”

Sometimes, he longs so badly for a life with the two of you that it makes him sick. A world in which Odasaku lives and Dazai can be with you, a world where he’s untouched by the shadows and the tarry substance corrupting his blood. He thinks that Odasaku would adore you if he’d ever been given the chance to meet you—you both have a similar dry humor and an intrinsic desire to help people, even those who decidedly don’t deserve it. On nights that are a bit too dark and a bit too heavy, Dazai imagines dragging you to Odasaku’s place so he can introduce you to him and he imagines how his face would flame up in embarrassment when Odasaku tells you all of the humiliating stories of Dazai’s youth that he knows the man has stocked up. 

Moments like this, when everything feels a bit too far away and his mind can’t connect to the present, lost in the pages of all of the other worlds he’d seen, he swears that he can feel the ghost of your touch running across his skin as you trace patterns along his arms and brush kisses against his jaw. He thinks it’s cruel that his mind tortures him with the unattainable; taunts him with the knowledge that the only person he’s ever entirely given himself to, and was accepted by, is out there waiting for him, but the moment Dazai gives in to the aching in his chest, it’ll be ripped away from him again. 

“… disorder in the motherl…”

He can’t feel his left arm, and that awful numbness is starting to spread across his chest to his right arm; with nothing left to consume, the black hole in his chest is devouring him again. Now is not the time, not when his executives are around, and especially not when outsiders are around. He taps more intensely—your name, over and over and over again, the only thing that can ever pull him out of these states. It’s the reminder that you’re out there, alive, and that even if it’s not in this world, you love him in every single other one, no matter how absurd the idea is. 

“... will not be contained to…”

He needs to focus. He knows what the Pale Flame emissaries are saying even if Dazai can’t actually hear and process the full conversation—whatever is happening in Russia will spread, and it will spread to Japan, certainly, if Dostoevsky comes out on top. This conflict never occurred in the other universes and Dazai doesn’t know what exactly he did in this one that caused this change. Figuring it out and adapting needs to be his first priority because Dostoevsky’s arrival in Yokohama will put everything he’s built at risk. 

It will put you at risk. 

How many times have you died at his hand? Too many. Too many for him to risk this. 

He was able to handle Odasaku’s fate years ago when he got ahold of that painting and convinced him to join the Armed Detective Agency. Odasaku’s fate was easy in comparison to yours, that painting and the Port Mafia have been the cause of his death, removing them from the equation will be enough to keep him safe until Dazai follows through with the final phase of his plan. 

Your fate is always more arbitrary—Fyodor Dostoevsky will be the first trial he has to overcome to ensure your survival and then depending on how things play out after that, Agatha Christie will be the second trial. They’re the two leading causes of your death besides Dazai himself. Once the two of them have been taken care of, Dazai can move on to Phase Three, the beginning of the end.

The darker part of him, the one that has festered and corrupted and spread to every inch of his soul without the light you and Odasaku had brought to him in all of his other lives, wonders if he should have you kidnapped and tucked away until he can make sure that Dostoevsky is six-feet-under and unable to disrupt the world he’s built for you and Odasaku. Unlike Osasaku, you have no ability to protect yourself with if everything starts falling apart. You’ll be the most vulnerable, the most at risk. 

But he knows he can’t for the same reason that he knows he’ll never be able to approach you in the same way he did Odasaku so many years before: Dazai has never had any sort of self-control when it comes to you and he doubts it’ll be any different in this universe. Even when he knows you’re better off, even when he knows that each second he spends in your life is slowly destroying you, he can never bring himself to part from you. He fears that even the slightest look of you will condemn him and all of the work he’s done, that even just the knowledge of where you are will tempt him into wandering the area in hopes of running into you.

He’s done everything he can to ensure that he never has any contact with you or any information about your life. He assigned Kouyou to look over you, being the best suited for such types of missions. She’s spent years making sure that you’re safe and nothing from the underground disturbs your studies or everyday life. The woman was naturally curious about the request, even more so when Dazai instructed her to never give him any updates on you unless it was a life-or-death situation, but she knew better than to question him. 

At this point, only the hand of god and sheer chance could lead him to you, which is why he’s particularly against meetings like these where he’s forced to leave the shadows of his towers and dally into the public. Dazai doesn’t beg, and he certainly doesn’t pray, but whenever he has to leave the Port Mafia base for extended periods, he gets damn close to it because each moment in the light risks everything. 

“... oevsky and Tolstoy…”

The ice spreads to the wrist of his right arm and just as Dazai thinks he’s about to be fully swallowed by the void, his gaze drifts to the window looking down on the main floor of the club and he catches sight of a figure leaning on the bar, and it’s ludicrous, really, because how does his gaze tunnel on one person in the sea of hundreds before him. But his mouth goes dry and his body stills as recognition floods through him, replacing the numbness so quickly that his body is almost palpitating in the sudden shock of it. Flames burn through his veins and the fingers that had been steadily tapping out your name jerk so abruptly that Chuuya, Kouyou, and Gin are all casting him hesitant looks. 

He rises to his feet suddenly, ignoring the fact that all eyes are on him and that he’s completely disregarded whatever the Pale Flame emissaries had been explaining. He waves Gin off as the girl instinctively moves to follow him, the room is spinning and closing in on him so swiftly that he doesn’t even think he’ll be able to make it out of the room before his mind and body collapse in on themselves. 

If there is a god, Dazai realizes, then he’s abandoned Dazai since the moment he was born, because standing there with glittering eyes and a smile so painstakingly familiar and foreign at the same time is you. 

There’s a hazy smile on your face as you stumble out of the main room of the club, and down a side hall toward where you’re pretty sure the restrooms should be. You lean against the wall as you try to regain your bearings, inhaling the air greedily—you hadn’t realized how deprived of it you’d been in the stuffy club, where there were more bodies than pockets of air, and even those were smogged with thick, floral perfume and sweat.

You think you’re having a good night—for the most part, at least. You and your coworkers have been at the club for an hour already celebrating your acceptance into Waseda’s prestigious graduate program. You’d been pressured into inviting one of your more unsavory coworkers, having been told you would seem rude and ill-mannered if you invited everyone else except him. You think now that it really shouldn’t have mattered to you, you’re leaving the office soon to prepare for school anyway, but you suppose you’re easily peer pressured. Sometimes. 

But you’re free now, momentarily, at least. One of your friends had distracted Takeda so could sneak off to the restroom to freshen up. God knows he probably would’ve tried to follow you there if he didn’t.

You push yourself off the wall with a sigh, wishing that you’d tied your hair back before coming to the club because you can feel it sticking to the back of your neck. Maybe you’ll run into a girl in the bathroom who has a spare tie for you, but you frown as you look around, noticing that the hallway is a bit too empty for it to lead to one of the club’s restrooms.

You pout when you realize that you must’ve gone down one of the halls leading to the VIP suites on the second level, but as you turn to make your way back into the main area of the club, your eyes catch a figure leaning against the wall dressed in a long black coat and sleek dark suit that probably costs more than your life savings. 

He’s tall, you note absently, drawn to the man a bit more than you probably should be for no good reason, handsome, too. He hasn’t noticed you standing there, so you just observe for a moment—he has dark hair and smooth, pale skin, partially covered beneath bandages. He’s struggling to light a cigarette, frustration twisting his face; his lighter won’t light no matter how many times he tries, and you think it’s a bit funny that for all of the expensive clothes he wears, his lighter won’t work. 

Finally, you take a few steps forward, moving closer to him and fishing into your purse for your own lighter before you hold it up and ask, “Need a light?” 

The man freezes, gaze cutting toward you—his eye is so dark and so empty that it almost chills you, an endless abyss that threatens to consume you. You swear the black is so intense that it seems to be swallowing the dim lighting of the hallway, and you watch as something akin to recognition flashes deep within it. He hardly reacts to your presence otherwise, only his gaze shifts as it roves over you, vaguely reminiscent of a parched man in the desert setting eyes on a distant oasis, unsure if it’s just a figment of his imagination. You raise your eyebrows, feeling a bit exposed underneath his stare, and wave your lighter pointedly. 

He doesn’t make a move to reach for your lighter as you hold it out to him. You can’t tell what the expression on his face is as he watches you, it’s entirely indecipherable, his lips are pulled flat but his eye is swimming with emotions that you just can’t quite place. Just as you’re about to take it as rejection and put your lighter back in your purse, he suddenly closes the distance between the two of you, leaning his head down, cigarette dangling between his lips and gaze trained on you, expectant. 

Oh, you think to yourself a bit breathlessly, throat spasming as you falter under his gaze. He looks amused, watching you carefully, and you can’t help but notice that the dark pit of his eye starts to lighten as he watches you get flustered. When you struggle to light it the first time, you want to blame it on the martinis you’ve been drinking with your friends, but you know from the way your cheeks feel extra hot and your fingers shake that it’s definitely because of the man standing in front of you.

The scent of his cologne floods your senses, you can almost taste the old whiskey on his warm breath, which you can feel fanning lightly across your fingers, making goosebumps rise to your arms—you pray he doesn’t notice, but from the way his eye flickers up a bit to your arm and the corner of his lip quirks up, you think he probably does. 

You thank every god that might be listening when your lighter finally lights, catching the end of his cigarette. Your breath catches as he makes eye contact with you and you think you might be able to get lost in his gaze if you’re not careful; your lips part a bit as if to say something to occupy the silence but no words leave them. 

After what feels like eternity, he finally stands straight and you can breathe again, watching as he leans back against the wall next to you, head falling to the side a bit as he takes a long drag of his cigarette.

His gaze doesn’t leave you once. 

“You smoke?” He finally speaks, and his voice is low, raspy, and hoarse as if he doesn’t use it much. There’s a lilt to his tone, something caught between subtle criticism and surprise, reminiscent of a disapproving old friend who’s taken aback that you’ve picked up such a bad habit. 

“Sometimes, why?” you answer, a bit defensively when you catch the edge to his tone. 

You don’t smoke—you carry around your brother’s old lighter as a memento, safekeeping for if he ever decides to come back to you, you’re honestly surprised the thing still works as well as it does—but you feel like you have to prove a point now because he sounds a bit judgmental about it.

He only shrugs lazily. “Don’t look like the type.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Is there ‘a type?’” you ask sarcastically.

He pointedly looks over you, gaze raking up and down your body once in a slow, borderline sensual way. You can feel your cheeks heating up again, you curse your body violently for betraying you. 

“Yeah,” he drawls after a few moments. “Not you.” 

You scoff loudly, looking away, and you blame the alcohol when you find yourself admitting, “… I don’t smoke.”

The man smiles thinly at the three words, a triumphant spark shooting through the brown of his eye and an expression on his face that tells you he somehow knew it without you having to say it out loud but appreciated the confirmation.

“Told you,” he says. “Don’t look the type.”

“Hmph,” is all you respond with, flipping your lighter shut and slipping it back into your purse. 

You don’t leave right away; you don’t think you could even if you wanted to, you feel like a deer caught in headlights beneath his gaze, feet glued to the ground. But the problem lies in the fact that you don’t want to leave, there’s something about him that has you drawn in like a moth to flame and you don’t even know why because you don’t even know his name yet. And you probably shouldn’t be, you’ve always had a keen sense of self-preservation and there’s a dangerous edge to this man that should concern you—you can see it in the way he looks at you, the way he dresses, and the way he holds himself. 

Dangerous, you think to yourself, but you’re charmed by it—you know you should probably get back to the bar where your friends are, but your feet don’t budge. He’s watching you curiously, not making any move to say anything, just observing you and you feel like you might crumble beneath his gaze. You can’t tell if he’s searching for something or if he’s just looking at you to look at you; the air between the two of you is tense but not in an awkward way. But you decide to break the silence with: “What’s your name?”

He hesitates, gaze narrowing just a bit as if he’s considering whether or not he should tell you, and you feel a bit embarrassed, tongue pressed against the roof of your mouth as you anxiously wait for his response. 

“Dazai,” he finally says, and you can’t help but notice he sounds a bit breathless. “Dazai Osamu.”

The name feels so achingly familiar that it almost makes you question whether or not you’ve ever met this man before even though you’re sure that you would remember if you did. You give him your name in return and watch as his lips curve upward slightly as he repeats it out loud, making your chest feel warm and your mind a bit foggy. He says your name as if he’s spoken it dozens of times before, the intimacy of it nearly has you reeling.

It has you reeling so badly that you speak without thinking, longing to drag the conversation out. 

“Would you… maybe want to have a drink with me?” The words spill from your lips before you can stop them and instantly, you want to swallow your own tongue, shifting a bit nervously on your feet. Usually, when you drink you’re more outgoing, but with this man, you feel like a teen girl fumbling over words with her school crush.

His lips part to respond but no words leave them, conflict swims in his gaze so flagrantly that it makes you a bit embarrassed, realizing he’s probably trying to figure out the best way to reject you. You notice, distantly, that some other foreign emotion flashes on his face and it’s so brief that you almost miss it, but you swear that it’s something akin to a reality slap from the way his eye widens and lips part a bit. 

Heat rises to your cheeks as you wait for the inevitable rejection, he casts a look backward, in the direction of the steps that lead to the second floor’s high-end VIP rooms that only the most elite of Yokohama can afford and you realize that this man is probably a bit more important than you thought if that’s where he came from, throat a bit dry. 

You start to try to make up some excuse and rush back to your coworkers with your tail between your legs but then he finally says: 

“We can get a drink.” 

Your eyes widen a bit, a smile splits across your face. You catch a sour look crossing his face as soon as the words escape him as if he regrets them right as they’re spoken. For a second, it’s almost as if he’s fighting an internal battle, and you wonder if he’s trying to figure out if he should take back his words. You hardly think anything of it in your tipsy state, too excited to even fully register it all. 

“Yeah?” you ask so eagerly that you want to rip your own tongue out because the last thing you want is to seem desperate.

But clearly, he loses the battle, because his dark eye only softens a bit at your enthusiasm. The corner of his lip curls upward and you swear you see something else in his expression—something caught between grief and longing that makes your throat swell even with the alcohol clouding your mind.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

You hold your hand out to him; you’re not really sure why and you think you might’ve just embarrassed yourself again when his gaze cuts down to it intensely. You withdraw your hand with a sheepish smile. 

“Sorry,” you say quietly. “Got ahead of myself, I guess.”

Dazai doesn’t respond for an agonizing amount of time and when you’re about to head back to the main part of the club and hope he follows you, he decides to hold his hand out to you. 

“No need to apologize,” he tells you, voice a bit more hoarse now. 

You reach out to take his hand, fingers brushing his bandaged wrist, where his suit jacket is riding up his arm just a bit. His pulse is erratic and rapid beneath your touch, a complete 180 from the calm, aloof expression on his face. His fingers intertwine with yours as you lead him back into the club—his grip is a bit too tight, but you don’t mind. For some reason, it feels a bit comforting.

You and Dazai make your way back down the hall in the direction of the main room of the club. As soon as he pushes open the door, he pulls his hand from yours but before you can even process the action enough to pout at the loss of contact, he’s slipping his arm around your waist to tuck you into his side to not lose you in the crowds of drunken clubgoers and you think you might feel a bit faint at the way his fingers press into your lower hip through the thin cloth of your dress.

You can’t help but notice the way people seem to part for the two of you, even with the majority of them drunk out of their minds, it’s like they catch one glance of Dazai and move out of his way. It seems instinctual, almost, as if he’s exuding an aura that no one can bring themselves to come near. 

You peer up at him curiously, watching his eyelashes flutter as he looks down at you as if he can feel you looking at him. Your face is hot when he catches you looking at him so you immediately avert your gaze; you can feel him let out a puff of amusement, but he doesn’t say anything as the two of you finally reach the bar.

“A gentleman,” you tease when he pulls out the stool for you to sit. He waves the bartender down and you watch, a bit surprised, when the man instantly makes his way over to you, gaze flickering to Dazai. 

It had taken you twenty minutes to wave the man down earlier to get your drink. 

You also can’t help but notice that he doesn’t even ask Dazai what drink he wants, pouring him whiskey on the rocks, a luxury brand that probably costs more than your monthly rent. 

You feel a bit embarrassed ordering your cheap martini after, distracting him with idle conversation.

“Do you come here a lot or something?” you ask him curiously, lifting your drink to your lips to take a sip of your drink once the bartender passes it over—it tastes better than it did before. Smoother.

“Or something,” Dazai agrees cryptically, the corners of his lips tilting upward as he looks over you. “Why?”

“So mysterious,” you say playfully, before shrugging. “I’m just curious, he seemed to know you… maybe I’m also trying to figure out if I’d be able to run into you again here.”

You watch him hesitantly, wondering if it was a bit weird to add that, cursing your lips once again for moving before your brain can process. But Dazai doesn’t look weirded out by your comment—he looks a bit surprised, yes, but in a pleased way rather than a disturbed way. 

“Already trying to plot out meeting me again?” he drawls, watching you from the corner of his eye with an indecipherable look that doesn’t match the curl of his lips. “What if you decide you don’t like me? If I end up being dangerous?”

“Oh, you’re definitely dangerous, Dazai Osamu,” you say firmly with a laugh, eyes glimmering. “I could tell that from the moment I saw you. I’m not that drunk.”

His eyebrow raises a bit as he tilts his head to the side. “And yet you invited me for a drink anyway,” he notes, his index finger on his free hand thrumming steadily on the bartop. 

“Maybe I like danger,” you say, leaning in a bit closer just to test the waters.

Dazai doesn’t pull away, your heart races in your chest as his gaze traces your face, so close that you can feel the warmth of his breath fanning across your lips. You think you might’ve been wrong before when you compared the color of his eye to an abyss—now, beneath the lighting of the club, you think they’re far more reminiscent of a starry night, just as endless as the abyss, but not quite as dark and hopeless with the celestial bodies glittering within them.

“Maybe you should be more careful,” he murmurs, and there’s an odd shift in his voice—a warning, as if he knows something that you don’t.

“Maybe,” you agree idly, “or maybe I enjoy living life on the edge. It’s short enough as it is, isn’t it? I’d prefer to live it to the fullest than die having barely lived at all.”

“Living life to the fullest involves inviting shady men to drink with you and scheming out a second meeting without even having decided if you like them?” Dazai questions, voice low and amused.

“Shady?” you grin. “Well, I guess you said it, not me. Anyway, I’ve decided that I already like you, Dazai Osamu, so, of course, I’m going to scheme out a second meeting—hopefully, one where I’m not quite as drunk so I can actually charm you, I’m very charming when I’m sober, I’ve been told. I don’t fumble over my words quite as much, or lighters, for that matter.”

You’ve literally never been told once in your life that you’re charming when you’re sober, so you don’t know where that came from, but you decide to roll with it and hope for the best. 

“I’ll have you know that I’m quite charmed already,” Dazai says, lips tilting up into a smile that seems a bit more genuine, reflecting in the way his eye curves up too. “If you get any more charming, I might just be in danger.”

“Well, do you like danger then?” you ask, resting your elbow on the bar so you can prop your chin on your hand, looking up at Dazai through your lashes. “We’ve already established that I enjoy it, are you going to join me on the edge, Dazai?”

For some reason, for a split second, it seems as if you’ve asked Dazai the most difficult question in the world—the space between his brows creases and the easy smile on his lips flattens, the starry sky painted in his eye dulls back into the terrible abyss. Your lips part to say something, because even with the fuzziness of your drink clouding your head, you know you made a mistake somewhere. 

“I usually stay far from the edge,” he admits quietly, “... too much at risk for that.”

“... Usually?” you press, latching onto the word quickly as you toss him another teasing smile, trying to lighten the mood. “Am I enough to tempt you closer to it, then?”

“You have no idea,” he breathes out so quietly that you think you’re not meant to overhear it. As if he realizes he might’ve said it a bit too loud, he tilts his head to the side and gives you half of a smile as he asks, “What makes you so sure you like me already, anyway?”

You match his smile, making a show of humming, dramatically thinking long and hard about it. Then you shrug, smile widening, “Don’t know. Maybe I just decided. Or maybe, I’d like to think it’s fate.”

Andddd you’ve made a mistake again. You falter when you see how his expression closes off instantly and you wish you could bite your own tongue off because, of course, it’s just your luck to have misspoken twice in a span of two minutes. This is why you don’t socialize with people.

“I don’t believe in fate,” he finally says, voice a bit tighter than it was before.

“Why?” you ask curiously, brows furrowing a bit.

He hesitates, gaze lingering on you for a moment before he turns his gaze away, lifting it to the ceiling instead. All he says is: “I don’t like the idea of my life being predestined by some higher power—if there’s a fate, then I’ll exhaust everything I have trying to defy it.”

“Okay,” you agree, still not entirely understanding why he’s so against the idea of fate—you think it’s rather romantic but to each their own. Either way, you raise your glass to him, waiting for him to click his against yours. “To defying fate then.” 

His throat bobs as he swallows at your words, an odd look in his eye as he repeats quietly, “To defying fate.”

Dazai is in trouble. 

He thought he could indulge himself just for one night. If it’s his fate to meet you, then let it happen only once so he can be done with it—one night, and then everything will return to how it should be. He’ll fall back into the shadows and you’ll live your life in the light, a long and fulfilling life where he isn’t putting you in danger just by being around you. But he’s realizing, very quickly, that he severely overestimated his self-control, which is a feat in itself, really, because Dazai knew that his self-control would be abysmal when it comes to you but he still somehow managed to critically misjudge just how abysmal it would be.

He thinks he probably looks like a fool—you’re rambling about your work and the graduate school program you’d just been accepted into, you’re switching between topics so quickly that Dazai can hardly keep up, but he doesn’t care, he’s content just hearing your voice, slurred and excitable as it may be.

It’s different hearing it in person than it is in all of the vague memories of the other worlds—you’re different. You’re brighter. More alive. A shining star in a sea of midnight. The warmth of the sun giving life to a rotting corpse. For the first time in twenty-two years, Dazai Osamu feels like he’s finally breathing. The misty memories didn’t do you justice in any regard, and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to return to the shadows alone after having felt the brief glow of your light, warm and comforting against his skin, because Dazai already can’t seem to get enough of it. He thinks you must be like a drug or something because there’s no other explanation for the way he’s so utterly entranced by the sight and sound of you. 

A part of him wonders if all of the other Dazais have met this same fate at your hands: bewitched and spellbound, unable to draw their eyes away from you, hardly even able to remember to breathe in your presence. He thinks that they must have—he can see flashes of their lives and feel echoes of their emotions, and it’s always most intense whenever it involves you. 

It’s a struggle just to remind himself to play the part of the ordinary man with you around so as to not scare you off, pretending he's like any other human being and not a monster wearing the skin of a man, like you haven’t been the object of his obsessions since the moment he came in contact with the Book. He tries to keep himself pliant and inviting with a loose posture and warm gaze, free of the intensity curdling through his body. He keeps his smile small and gentle, hiding the sharp and bloodied teeth decorating his mouth, and he keeps his touches brief, hardly ghosting your skin in fear that you’ll start rotting beneath it. He doesn’t know if he succeeds. He honestly doesn’t even know if you notice, you’re way more intoxicated than you originally made yourself out to be; he can tell from the way your ever-present smile is lopsided and the way your eyes are a bit glazed over, if it wasn’t abundantly apparent by the slur to your words.

“... and then, Hinata kept talking even though everyone else was… Dazai Osamu, are you even listening to me?”

He hums quietly as you abruptly turn your gaze back onto him and for a moment, Dazai is breathless—his name rolls off your tongue with the familiarity of a pair of lovers who’ve been together for years, and he swears that your eyes glitter beneath the lighting of the club as you look at him, and he doesn’t think anyone in his life has ever looked at him the way you do in this moment. Dazai Osamu has always been a name that no one would rather hear, attached to a man that no one would rather see. He’s not used to being talked to like this. He’s not used to being looked at like this. 

He wants to be used to it. 

He so, so desperately wants to be used to it. 

You lean in when he doesn’t respond to you, a bit too close because he can smell the faded scent of your perfume and the gin on your tongue when he takes in a sharp breath to respond—it goes straight to Dazai’s head, his words dying before they can even formulate in his mouth. Everything feels fuzzy and light and Dazai thinks he might actually pass out. You’re such a far cry from the numb void that he’s used to, overwhelming his senses with the sight and touch and scent and sound of you, overwhelming his mind with emotions that he doesn’t know how to cope with and he just can’t get a handle on himself no matter how hard he tries. Every time he thinks he does, you throw another curveball at him like leaning in so close that Dazai swears if you were any closer, his lips would be brushing yours. 

He’s never yearned like this before, not when he found himself in Odasaku’s house years ago as he tried to get ahold of that wretched painting and not during the long, dark nights when he found himself gasping awake, torn from dreams of lives he’ll never experience, the ghost of your lips still smiling against his skin. He can feel it deep in his chest, clogging his lungs and throat. He feels like he’s fighting the strings of a marionette as his fingers twitch at his side, begging him to reach out and feel the skin of your cheek beneath the palm of his hand, cup the side of your face just to see if you’d lean into his touch, craving it the same way he craves yours. 

He yearns and Dazai Osamu doesn’t know if he has the strength to deny himself of you now that he’s finally gotten a taste of what he could have. He tries to remind himself of what’s at stake, he tries to conjure the images that have plagued his nightmares so many times before—the sight of you crumpled in his arms, cold and still, and the sound of your cries for help, jarring and agonizing to his ears. But all he can muster is the sight of the wide and genuine smile that only you have ever directed toward him in all of his other lives and the sound of your bright laughter ringing in his ears, two things that he’s been deprived of entirely in this life until now.

“... if the phone call is that important, you can take it, y’know? You don’t have to sit here pretending to listen to me when you’re focused on that.” 

Dazai is hardly able to drag himself back to the conversation at hand, your words processing slowly, as if his thoughts are being dragged through thick tar, but he forces himself to focus because even in your drunken state you sound a bit irritated. 

He glances down at the bartop, where he had placed his phone down after taking a seat next to you, watching as it vibrates against the hardwood and as Chuuya’s name flashes across the screen. A few seconds pass, and his phone goes still and the missed call notification pops up on his screen—evidently along with nine others. 

Dazai winces. He wishes the phone call had been what was distracting him—unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell you that he’s spiraling because of you without sounding psychotic. 

As soon as the call ends, his phone is buzzing again, Chuuya's name flashing across the screen once more, persistent as ever. Dazai’s gaze cuts backward to where the two of you had come from, up to the windows on the second floor that look down on the main floor, and then he glances back down at his phone.

“I’ll only be a moment,” Dazai tells you quietly, reaching for his phone.

You toss him an easy smile that nearly has him faltering, whatever irritation you may have felt is gone in an instant. 

“I’ll be waiting,” you tease, and Dazai’s heart is in his throat as he hesitates for just a second too long, as familiar words echo through his head, memories that aren’t his own from a life that he’d never be able to experience. 

“I’ll wait for you.”

He lingers too long evidently because you shoo him away, spinning on the bar stool to face the bartender as you try to flag him down for another drink that you probably should not be having, seeing how you’re swaying a bit on the stool. Dazai only shakes his head as he makes his way away from the bar closer to the edges of the club, where it’s a bit quieter, if only marginally. 

As soon as he leaves your presence, the familiar cold numbness returns, spreading like ice through his chest and he’s desperate to be back in your vicinity already, missing the warmth. Oh, this is trouble, he laments to himself, trying to push away the longing feeling spreading through him and instead turns his attention to purposely waiting until the last ring to answer Chuuya’s call, if only to be a bit spiteful because the other man’s persistence is the reason he had to leave you.

Lifting his phone to his ear, he asks coolly, “Do you need something, Chuuya?”

“Where the hell did you go?” Chuuya immediately hisses back, fury dripping from his words. He’s speaking quietly and Dazai can’t hear any conversation in the background, so he can only assume that Chuuya had stepped out of the room where the rest of the Port Mafia and Pale Flame executives were having their meeting. “You’ve been gone for forty minutes, Kouyou and I have been handling the meeting. Do you even have anyone with you right now? Hirotsu? Tachihara? Atsushi?”

“I’m sure you and Ane-san have been conducting the meeting perfectly fine without me,” Dazai says dismissively, leaning against the wall as his gaze cuts through the crowds to the bar he’d left you at but he can’t catch sight of you through the masses of people. He frowns, pacing a bit down the room to try to get a better angle.

“Bastard,” Chuuya spits out with a venomous type of disrespect that he only attacks Dazai with when he’s exceptionally frustrated. “Answer my question. Where the hell are you? Do you have a protection detail on you? What are you doing?”

“I’m in the club still,” Dazai says distantly, and he’s sure Chuuya can tell that he’s barely paying attention to the conversation because the man lets out a noise caught between a snarl and a growl, much like the dog he is. “I’ll be fine, we have men stationed all over—you’re always so uptight, Chuuya, you should pull out the stick every once in a while.”

“You-” Chuuya says loudly and sharply, cutting himself off abruptly, evidently having realized he’s let himself get too loud. Dazai is hardly listening at this point, getting increasingly more agitated as the masses of crowds block his line of sight to where you should be sitting. “I’m coming down there.”

That catches Dazai’s attention.

“Do not.” The two words leave his lips, a command so cold and cutting that he can practically hear Chuuya jolt in surprise at the sudden shift from the absent tone he’d been speaking with before. He forces his voice to take upon a more teasing lilt as he says, “I met a girl, Chuuya. If you come down here, your ugly mug will scare her right off.”

“What?” Chuuya sounds so baffled it’s almost comical. Dazai might’ve found amusement in it were he not so irritated with his current predicament. “I-you-what?”

“You sound so shocked, Chuuya. Some of us talk to more women than just Ane-san and Gin-chan, you know?” Dazai drawls, noticing that there’s a gap in the crowds up ahead that should give him a direct view toward the bar, beelining toward it immediately.

“Shut up,” Chuuya seethes. “Who the hell would even give you the time of day? And since when do you seek out women? You’ve never shown any interest before.”

“Are you jealous?” Dazai croons. “It’s an ugly look on you, Chuuya.”

Chuuya splutters. “The fuck is wrong with you tonight?” he demands. “You’ve been acting like a damn freak ever since we left the base. Mood swings left and right.”

“You know I don’t like…” Dazai trails off as he finally gets a direct view of the bar, dark eye focusing in on where you seem to be arguing with an unfamiliar man. The smile that had been curling to the corners of his lips falls flat and his gaze goes cold—ice spreads through his chest again but this time it isn’t a result of the numbness, rather it’s a much more dangerous emotion that threatens to erupt. “I have to go.”

“Bastard, if you hang up on me-”

Dazai doesn’t wait for him to finish the sentence, hanging up the call and slipping his phone into his pocket, ignoring it when it immediately starts buzzing again. He doesn’t waste a second before he makes his way back across the club to the bar.

If people had avoided him before, it was nothing compared to now, watching them scramble out of his way even in their drugged-up and intoxicated states. He doubts that most of them even know the significance of who he is, they can just feel the cold fury rolling off of him in waves. It’s a bit impressive, honestly, how quickly he’s able to get back to you, and his hand darts out quickly, fingers wrapping tightly around the wrist of the man who was grabbing your forearm, if his grip was any tighter, the man’s bones would be cracking beneath his touch. 

The reaction is instantaneous. Your gaze draws up to him, relief flooding your eyes at the sight of him—distantly, Dazai notes that he thinks that this might be the first time in his life anyone has ever been relieved to see him, but he’s more preoccupied with the man who was bothering you, who’s now turning toward him with an irritated expression.

“Look, man.” Dazai’s hidden eye twitches at the casual address, but he makes sure that the annoyance doesn’t show on his face. “Just trying to get her home, the rest of our coworkers left already.”

Dazai’s vice-like grip doesn’t budge, but his mind races. This is his out. If he lets you go home with your coworker, then he can go back up to the meeting taking place on the second floor and he can try to scorch his mind of the yearning that’s been plaguing him so intensely. Things can go back to normal—his one night of indulgence over, no matter how agonizing the thought of that is. He can return to the Port Mafia base, back in the shadows, and he can use the memory of this night with you to fuel his dedication to his grand plan of protecting this world. It’s a perfect setup, honestly, if he disregards two critical issues: 1) he’s probably incapable of scorching his mind of the yearning you’ve brought on and 2) more importantly, you’re staring at him with an expression nothing short of pleading, seemingly begging him not to leave.

The words escape his lips before he can think to stop them: “Don’t worry about it. I’ll take her home.”

The faux-concern that the man had been directing toward you disappears as soon as Dazai speaks, shifting into an expression that probably would have been concerning to anyone who wasn’t a literal mafioso, and Dazai is not just a mafioso, he is their boss and he has dealt with people who were objectively much more powerful and concerning than a regular civilian who thinks he’s tougher than he is. So Dazai only tilts his head to the side a bit, the corner of his lip curves up in amusement as he pointedly looks over the man once. The cool metal of the gun hidden in his jacket weighs heavily as a reminder that it’s there and ready for him to use; his fingers twitch toward it, but instead, he pockets his hands, deciding against it, if only because he thinks pulling out a gun might scare you away. He doesn’t want that.

“Who the hell are you?” the man asks furiously—Dazai wonders, a bit absently, if this is that Takeda fellow you were complaining about earlier, he certainly fits the picture with the beady eyes and weaselly face. 

“An old friend,” Dazai drawls—not entirely a lie, just in a different life, and definitely more than friends, but he doesn’t need to know that. “We’ve been catching up. You can go.”

It’s not a request, and evidently, the man isn’t stupid enough to keep pressing Dazai because his confidence falters as he takes a step back, letting go of your arm. Or more probably, he caught a glimpse of the glint of metal hidden by his coat when Dazai shifted to look at you. Either way, Dazai doesn’t care because the man stutters out a few words and a ‘see you Monday’ to you before turning tail and leaving. 

Dazai doesn’t bother correcting him—he definitely will not be seeing you on Monday. He ensures that through the silent order in the sharp look, he gives Tachihara Michizo, who’s been lingering on the outskirts of the club for five minutes now, no doubt trying to keep an eye on him under Chuuya’s command. Tachihara doesn’t hesitate as he nods his head, gaze following the retreating figure of the man before he slinks right after him.

He thinks you have bad friends. Coworkers. Whatever. All of them leaving you drunk and alone with someone who’s a stranger in their eyes. Yes, he scared the only one that tried away, but if it was Dazai in his position, not even god himself would be able to scare him away from making sure you get home safely. 

They don’t deserve you, he decides firmly, and those dark thoughts from earlier return, whispering that he should just take you for himself, tuck you away in the tallest towers of the Port Mafia base. He’d keep you safe. He’d make you happy. You’d never have to want for anything ever again, he’d give you the entire world if you so pleased. He shuts off the train of thought before it can become any more tempting, knowing that his thread of self-control concerning you is waning at best.

Dazai promptly turns his attention back to you and all of the irritation that he might’ve been feeling about your coworkers and that man washes away when he catches the dazzled look on your face as you look up at him, elbow propped on the bartop and chin resting in your hand. 

“Thanks,” you say so softly that Dazai barely hears you over the thundering music and clamoring people around the two of you. “That was Takeda… I don’t know, maybe he didn’t mean any harm but… I just don’t want him to know where I live, I guess.”

You look sleepy now, eyes a bit heavy and shoulders slumped; the alcohol must’ve worked its way through you already. Dazai also can’t help but notice that the front of your dress is drenched with what looks like the rest of your drink; it must have spilled in the brief struggle between you and your coworker. 

“You’d rather a stranger know, then?” Dazai can’t help but ask, making sure to keep his voice teasing, watching you carefully for a response. 

He’s curious to know if you feel even half as drawn to him as he is to you, to know if this really is a mutual bond that transcends worlds or if it’s a sick obsession on his part triggered by the revelations of the Book. Or it could be both. It’s probably both. Dazai is pretty sure what he feels for you isn’t normal or healthy, and he’s not sure if it’s any healthier in any of the other universes or if every other Dazai is just as twisted when it comes to love as he is. 

“You don’t feel like a stranger,” you admit quietly, looking up at him through your lashes and Dazai’s heart leaps into his throat, clogging his airways and threatening to suffocate him. “Is that weird?”

“No,” Dazai breathes out instantly, the confirmation that your words give him lights a dangerous fire in his chest, one that he needs to put out but can’t bring himself to. “I feel the same.”

Your expression softens, eyes tracing his face, and Dazai thinks he would set the entire world on fire just for you to look at him like that again. Then, he realizes, throat a bit tighter now, that the words are not quite the empty promise that they would be coming from anyone else’s lips—he might just be setting everything he’s built on fire just for you, and your warmth is not enough to push away the cold awareness that suddenly spreads through his body, putting out all of the fires that his time with you has set within him. 

He reaches out, knuckles grazing your cheek. Your lashes flutter as you lean into his touch and instantly, he’s set aflame again, it’s raging through his chest and melting the ice and Dazai thinks he doesn’t care if this is a bond that transcends worlds or a sick obsession. He thinks it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he needs you so desperately that it might kill him if he doesn’t have you. 

It might kill you if he does have you. 

Fire and ice wage a brutal war within him, a futile battle because no matter how much the ice tries to spread, the flames melt it away, and he realizes that he can’t be around you when the war is inevitably won because he’ll never be able to drag himself away from you. 

One night, he reminds himself, sharp and scolding, one night of indulgence. That’s all.

“Come on,” Dazai murmurs. “Let’s get you home.” 

Dazai wonders how a place he’s never been to can feel so much like home. 

Or, well, he assumes this is what a home would feel like, it’s not like he’s ever actually had one to compare to. The penthouse suite of the Port Mafia base is closer to a prison than something he can consider a home. He doesn’t remember enough of his childhood to know if he lived somewhere back then that he considered a home. The shipping container he lived in during his teenage years is probably the closest thing he has to compare to and even then, he never felt safe or warm or comforted there, he just had the distant reassurance that no one would ever bother him while he was there and that was more than he had anywhere else. 

And this is… 

He doesn’t really know how to describe it, the words just won’t come to him—a rare occurrence, considering Dazai’s always been known to have a tongue of the purest silver, acquiring the most lucrative deals for the Port Mafia despite egregious odds and hostile parties solely because he’s learned to read and charm people to the best of his ability. His brain and his tongue have been the driving force behind the Mafia’s rapid and exponential expansion across Japan and into the mainland, yet both fail him now. 

Courtesy of you and your influence, naturally.

The curve to his lips is fond as he trails his fingers across the back of the couch in your living room. It’s all so achingly familiar, as if he’s been here a thousand times before—if he lets his eye flutter shut, he can almost picture you cross-legged on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate tucked neatly between your hands, dozing off as he regales you with nonsensical stories. 

Everything is just how he remembers it from the vague memories. Your desk is set up near the window on the far side of your room, next to the bench where he would sit and watch you while you study, pouting until you finally decided to give him attention. Papers are strewn all across your coffee table; he flips through them idly, realizing that they’re all study materials for the entrance exam to the graduate school you’d just been accepted into—he makes sure to leave them in the same order that you’d left them in, recalling how often you’d end up yelling at him for messing up your piles. A picture hangs on your wall near the door of you and your brother—familiar, why is he so familiar? His gaze lingers for a moment, brows furrowing before he shakes his head, putting the thought in the back of his head as he wonders if he ended up passing in this universe too. 

He wanders over to the kitchen and his eyes narrow just a smidge, noticing that there are two dirty mugs in your sink, the ones you’d always use to make those fancy hot chocolates of yours. He hums to himself softly as he traces his finger along the rim of one, recognizing the same shade of lipstick you wore tonight staining the brim. The other mug has no such stain. His throat tightens a bit, gaze flickering up to the cabinet he recalls you usually putting your ingredients and when he opens the cabinet, he thinks he might feel a bit sick, seeing them all up on a shelf too high for you to reach on your own—you always put them on the lower shelves. 

His jaw tightens as he pointedly puts them all back down on the lower shelf before shutting the cabinet, a bit more tense now than he was a few moments before. His gaze cuts across your apartment, searching for any sign of who you might’ve been having over—someone important enough for you to make your favorite hot chocolate for—but he finds none until his eyes land on a jacket crumpled in the corner of the room that’s definitely not yours, hidden halfway beneath one of the pillows on his window bench. He has to remind himself that it’s not his and he’s never been here before now so he has no claim over anything.

He makes his way over to it, yanking it out and lifting it to his nose. It doesn’t smell like you, it’s an unfamiliar woody scent that makes his stomach churn for more than one reason—the most primary one being that he doesn’t know whose it is and why they’re leaving clothes at your apartment. It’s a man’s, certainly, he can tell that much from the scent and the size and Dazai thinks he might feel a bit light-headed at the idea of you having other men over your apartment. His only solace comes in the fact that there doesn’t appear to be any other signs of his presence, but it’s a small solace at best. 

He has to leave. The longer he lingers in your apartment, the more he’s struggling to decipher the already blurred line between the lives he remembers and his unfortunate reality. 

One night of indulgence, he reminds himself for the nth time because the night is over. You’d passed out long before even arriving at your apartment, after you gave the address luckily because for better or for worse, that had been one of the few things Dazai hadn’t retained from the vague memories he has of the other universes. 

He trails back over to the door that leads to your bedroom, a heavy feeling settling over his chest as he leans against the frame. His gaze draws to where you’re fast asleep beneath the covers, still dressed in the outfit you’d worn to the club because although all of the other Dazais would have changed you into something more comfortable when you’re too drunk to do it yourself, he does not retain that privilege in this world. The last thing he wants is for you to think he’s some perverted creep. 

Dazai sighs, eyes sliding shut as he lets himself bask in the moment for just a little longer, dreading having to return to the harsh reality of a life without you, fated to be alone until he’s sure that he’s secured the safety of this world when he can take the final step in guaranteeing that you and Odasaku will be able to live out your lives peacefully. Without him. 

He wants to touch you one last time, brush his fingers against your cheek, enjoy the way your warmth spreads through him, but he thinks he’s tested his self-control too much for one day. He fears that if he pushes it anymore, he’ll never be able to go back to how it was, so it’s with a heart that pleads for him to reconsider and a body that resists his every move that he turns away from your bedroom, making his way over to your kitchen counter to grab the key that he fished out of your purse. 

It takes all of his restraint to not look back, jaw clenched so tight that he thinks his teeth might grind down to dust. He steps outside and the fresh air feels like poison to his lungs, he wants to step back inside, drown himself in the familiar scent of you, the familiar scent of the only home he’s ever known in any lifetime, the one he has to deny himself of for the sake of preserving this world, for the sake of saving Odasaku and saving you. 

His fingers tremble a bit as he slides the key into the lock and turns it, checking twice to make sure it locks properly so no one can sneak in while you’re sleeping, before kneeling down to slide the key beneath the crack of the door back into your apartment. 

As soon as the key is out of his reach, Dazai feels cold and empty; the black hole within him expands now that he’s vulnerable again without your presence fighting it off, and the force of it is ten times as lethal now that he’s experienced what life might be without it constantly consuming him. He stares at your door for a second after rising to his feet, his mind and heart and body all at war with each other. The parts of him that haven’t festered and withered over the years beg him to just go back to you, tell you everything, and crumble in your arms and pray that you don’t think he’s delusional and call the police on him; the parts of him that have been corrupted by the time he’s spent in the darkest parts of the world whisper more dangerous words, telling him to go back in and take you back with him, it doesn’t matter what you want if it means he can keep you safe, and he knows that one day you’ll understand why he did it, you’ll even be happy because you’re meant to be happy with him, no matter how it comes about. 

And he thinks he’s a fool because the only fortunate thing about his circumstances had been that no matter how vividly he remembered you and your apartment, the Book had not passed on the knowledge of its location, so he’d never been tempted to “accidentally” seek you out by wandering in locations that you frequent because he had no idea where you were. Yokohama isn’t a small city and he was never going to cross the line of purposely seeking you out through the use of Port Mafia resources because that meant he was purposely putting you in danger. 

But now, he’ll have the knowledge of your location dangling in front of his face for the rest of his life, however long it may be. Every day will be a struggle to resist the urge to seek you out, as if everything isn’t hard enough for him already. 

Frustration builds in his chest as he makes his way down to the parking lot of the apartment complex. Realistically, Dazai had plenty of options that would have objectively been better than this. He could have sent you with his driver alone, but the thought leaves a sour taste in his mouth. It’s not that he doesn’t trust Albatross, the Flags remain among the most loyal members of the Port Mafia, but Dazai doesn’t think anyone is worthy enough to lay their hands on you. He thinks that if Albatross had reported back to him that he had to carry you into your apartment and put you in your bed, he might’ve put a bullet through his skull and then he’d have to deal with mutiny and he can’t afford a mutiny when things are already so tenuous, stability in the Port Mafia has to be paramount until he can get through all five phases of his plan. 

But even if he didn’t send you with Albatross, he could have had Kouyou handle this. Kouyou already knows of you, she’s the one that he assigned to make sure you’re never threatened by Yokohama’s underground, and she knew where your apartment was already. It still leaves a sour taste in his mouth but not as strong as the thought of sending you with Albatross. He could’ve had Kouyou take care of this and he could’ve been free of the temptation already looming over him but-

But Dazai is selfish. Dazai is selfish and reckless when it comes to you; even when he knows what’s at stake, even when he knows the destruction that he brings. Fate, the word rings through his head, mocking him. Fate, fate, fate. It’s his fate to always be drawn to you, like a bee to honey and a moth to flame, irresistible and inexorable. He can’t avoid it and he can’t control himself no matter how hard he tries. You’re tied together by threads that the gods shorten with every passing second and they laugh down at him as they watch him trying to resist it. 

It’s his fate to be drawn to you. 

It’s his fate to be your destruction.

Dazai slips back into the backseat of Albatross’s sleek black car, shutting the door just a bit too harshly, gaze immediately drifting back toward the apartment complex, up to the closed door on the second level where he’d left you. He waits for the car to pull away, but it doesn’t. Irritated, he turns his gaze to the rearview mirror in the front of the car, catching Albatross staring at him curiously, dark glasses hanging on the bridge of his nose. 

“What?” Dazai asks, voice low and icy. 

Albatross is unperturbed—of all of the members of the Port Mafia, only he and Chuuya never flinch at his unapproachability. “Ya gotta girl now, boss?” he asks curiously, tilting his head to the side as he waits for Dazai’s response.

“No.”

“Hm.” Albatross only hums as if he’s disappointed by the answer. “You seemed happier, s’all. Never seen you like that before. Was nice.” 

Dazai’s jaw tightens again at the man’s words, biting words threatening to escape his lips but he swallows them. Instead, he becomes acutely aware of the jacket that he’s still holding in his left hand. His expression twists and then he tosses it into the front seat at Albatross, who blinks and catches it, looking down confused.

“Whadya want me to do with this?” he asks, baffled. 

“Burn it.” Is all Dazai responds with. “Take me back to the base.”

“... You got it, boss,” Albatross murmurs, and he still sounds disappointed, but an order is an order so he doesn’t hesitate as he starts the car back up and pulls out of the complex’s parking lot. 

Dazai’s gaze doesn’t leave your apartment door once until Albatross finally turns down a street out of sight of the building. 

One night of indulgence, he reminds himself for the last time. One night of indulgence and then he’ll never encounter you again. For better or for worse, that’s how it has to be. 

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

amazing dialogue

STOPPPPPPP IM SCREECHING AIFHASIUFHSUDIFHSUD ATSUSHI'S FACE IN THE BACKGROUND AND KUNIKIDA JUST BEING LIKE "WHAT THE FUCK" USHDFASIUFHDU THEIR FIRST UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, DIRECT ENCOUNTER WITH THE REMNANTS OF PM!DAZAI AND THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH IT

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

ᡣ𐭩 YOUNG GOD

FEATURING: dazai osamu

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

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

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

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

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

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

An incomplete home, but a home nonetheless. 

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

You. 

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

He doesn’t even know if you’re okay. 

Queen captured.

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

You could be dead. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wonders if he’s hallucinating. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you calling me ugly?” 

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know where he’s been? 

Do you know his past? 

Do you know everything he’s done?

He pushes the thoughts away. 

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

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

“... I was purposely trying to trip you, you know?” Dazai admits, voice hoarse and weak and the smile curling to the edges of his lips is lazy but it’s real for the first time in what feels like forever. “I thought it would be funny.”

You gasp loudly. “I knew it! You’re such an asshole.”

Dazai laughs, letting his head fall into the crook of your neck—he wants to bask in the light feeling that’s replacing the emptiness in his chest, but a part of him can’t help but feel like this is only the eye of the storm. 

Back in the car, Kunikida looks a bit worried as you struggle to get Dazai onto your back. 

“Should we go help her?” he asks quietly, glancing over at Yosano.

But Yosano doesn’t respond to him. She has an uncharacteristically soft expression on her face as she watches you laugh loudly at something Dazai says. He finally looks somewhat coherent again now that he’s with you, still in pain but that detached, disconnected look in his eyes that had been terrifying Atsushi is gone. 

“No.” Atsushi is the one to respond to Kunikida, smiling lightly as he finally drags his gaze away as he watches a genuine smile twitch to the corners of Dazai’s lips as you nearly trip and fall under his weight. “Let’s head back to the office.”

Dazai has been sleeping for hours.

You let out a soft puff of air as you idly comb your fingers through his hair, eyes tracing his face. His right eye is completely swollen, his lip is split, you can see bruises littering his neck that disappear beneath the bandages he wears, his leg is broken and splinted. Despite all of that, he still somehow looks at ease as he rests in your lap.

You’re not as at ease.

Well, a part of you is, against all of your common sense. Having Dazai back in your arms is far more comforting than it should be, with the conversation that needs to be had looming over you. The sight of him sleeping peacefully in your lap, the feel of his heart thrumming beneath your hand, the sound of his steady breathing, it’s all enough to alleviate your body and mind of the stress and anxiety that has been crippling you for the past two weeks.

He’s alive. He’s okay. He came back to you. 

You find consolation in the thoughts—in the few days you were detained by the Hunting Dogs, all you could do was think about Dazai. Your mind raced with worst case scenarios and crippling fears. In spite of all of the allegations placed against him, you still love him—you’d known it well before he left and the relief you felt seeing him again before was enough to confirm it.

You think it’s dangerous, and maybe a bit stupid; a part of you knows that you should run for the hills, the crimes that Jouno Saigiku listed out are nothing to scoff at, and even putting aside morality, his former position as an executive of the Port Mafia should be more than enough to have you fleeing, if only because that puts you in danger too. No one gets to the position that he supposedly obtained without gaining masses of enemies and no one leaves it alive without doubling said enemies. 

But you’re not running for the hills—not because of his crimes, and not because of the risk of being with him—and that scares you a bit. You’re having trouble reconciling the Dazai you know with the one you’ve been told exists. Even when you recall all of the times you woke up to find him staring out your window with an unsettlingly detached expression, eyes too still and too black to be normal, as if they absorbed all sound and light around him; when you recall all of the man’s strange idiosyncrasies that just don’t line up with the front he puts up; when you recall that night in Kyoto where he refused to divulge what his previous job was, you just can’t. 

The logic fits, your brain can see it and piece it together, your heart just won’t accept it.

Your knuckles graze the side of his face, a conflicted expression crossing over your own. 

You don’t know what to do.

A part of you doesn’t want him to wake up, because you know that when he does, you’ll be forced to have the talk that you’ve been dreadfully anticipating since you learned about his crimes and imprisonment. You don’t know what you expect from the conversation, you don’t know how to approach it, you don’t know what you want to know nor why you want to know it, you don’t even know if you should continue with your relationship with him and you don’t even know why that’s still a question in your mind because obviously you shouldn’t continue a relationship with him. 

Your brain feels like it might implode.

You take a step back.

As you always do when you’re faced with conflict and feel yourself getting overwhelmed, you try to take a more logical approach. First, you make yourself a chart: pros and cons, always a favorite of yours, centering around Dazai and your relationship with him. Then, you make a list: everything else you need to know to properly weigh into each of the pros and cons.

Pros: 

Dazai makes you happy. (An important pro, you think, maybe it’ll outweigh all of the rest.)

Cons: 

138 counts of conspiracy to murder.

You pause. 

Distantly, you wonder what your life has come to—making a pro/con chart with one of the cons being 138 counts of conspiracy to murder. You press your hand against your mouth, staring ahead as you reconsider every action you’ve taken to lead to this moment. Promptly, you decide to scrap the pro/con chart and move right on to the list of things you need to know. 

What do you need to know?

First off, you need confirmation over whether or not the allegations are true—if they’re not, then you’re spiraling for nothing and you can move on happily in your relationship with Dazai.

If they are?

You swallow thickly. You need context—you’re not sure what type of context would justify those crimes, you don’t think there’s any justification for them, honestly, but there must be a reason as to why you cannot reconcile the Dazai that you know with the one you’ve been told exists. You like to believe that you’re good at reading people—although you’re definitely questioning it now—so there must be some context that you’re missing as to how the “alleged Dazai” became the “known Dazai.” 

And maybe—just maybe—if you can understand that, then maybe you can still move on in your relationship with him. Because even if his crimes aren’t justifiable, people can change and it would be beyond you to scorn someone trying to do their best to become a better person. It’s not like you’re some squeaky clean, paragon of virtue anyway: your university and grad school is mostly being paid off by your brother’s blood money from the underground rings, and yeah, it doesn’t really compare to being a former executive to the most dangerous gang in Yokohama but it definitely narrows your room to judge. 

You glance back down at Dazai.

Your eyes meet wide, tired brown ones that immediately shut as soon as he catches you looking at him, as if pretending to still be asleep.

“Dazai Osamu, we are not playing this game again.”

Dazai reopens his eyes with a sheepish smile but he doesn’t say anything for a moment. Slowly, his expression shifts, the corners of his lips furling downward as a mixture of realization and resignation pools in his eyes. 

“You know.”

The two words are so unassuming yet so damning, your heart lurches and your stomach churns. Dazai isn’t looking at you anymore, he’s staring up at the ceiling, waiting for you to speak.

Is that confirmation? Just like that?

“I don’t know anything until you tell me,” you decide to say, your voice a bit tighter than you intended for it to be.

Dazai’s eyes draw back to you, studying you carefully. He looks conflicted—over what, you’re not sure. You think if he tries to blow this off rather than explaining it to you, you might lose your mind. You’re giving him a chance to explain on his own terms and if he doesn’t take it-

You reach out instinctively as Dazai starts to push himself off of your lap into a sitting position, fingers brushing his back worriedly. 

“You shouldn’t be moving around,” you tell him quietly.

He only shakes his head, finally speaking, his voice so quiet that it’s barely audible. “Let me take you somewhere.”

S. ODA

The four letters engraved into the headstone before you have been weathered by time, you can see lichen creeping across the slate and stone flaking at the edges—enough for you to put together that whoever has been put to rest here has probably been gone for a few years. Questions itch at the tip of your tongue but you bite them, waiting for Dazai to say something instead so that he can lead the conversation.

He has yet to say a word. From the moment that he slid into the passenger seat of your car, the only words that he’s spoken have been directions to the cemetery. The conflicted expression that had been etched onto his face has finally disappeared, smoothing out into an eerily blank one that you can hardly stand to look at because you know only dark thoughts must be racing through his head. 

You wrap your arms around your waist as another chilly wind whips around the two of you, grateful that you’d thrown a jacket on before leaving your apartment. Dazai is only dressed in his trench coat, too thin for the cold but he refused to wear anything else. You’re not sure why, but you have caught him burying his nose into the collar and inhaling, memorizing your scent as if it’s about to disappear. 

“I officially joined the Port Mafia when I was fifteen,” Dazai finally says. You raise your eyebrows a bit, wondering just how much autonomy a fifteen year old has to willingly choose to join the Mafia, but you don’t voice your thoughts, waiting for him to continue. “I met Nakahara Chuuya, a current executive of the Mafia, that same year and we earned the moniker Double Black for being the most lethal pair in Yokohama’s underground. At sixteen, I was put in charge of the boss’s personal covert ops unit and I was promoted to executive for all of my accomplishments, youngest underboss in the Mafia’s history. I’d eliminated countless rival organizations, opened numerous new distribution channels for all of their illegal trades, and had a hand in planning nearly all of the major operations both within and outside of Yokohama.”

His voice is void of any emotion, a cold monotone as he speaks the words like a bland recitation of a prewritten speech; his eyes are too empty and far too still as he stares ahead at the grave in front of the two of you. It’s unnerving; somehow, you think you like it even less than the actual matter of what he’s saying.

“Until I was eighteen, I continued to be the driving force behind the Mafia’s rapid growth and ironclad control over Yokohama; while I was an executive, no foreign organization dared to try to usurp control over any of our territory. They’d give up their territory if they knew I was the one heading the expansion operations, because they were scared of me and because they knew it was a lost cause trying to defend against me. Whatever you heard about me, it’s all true and probably way worse than you could ever imagine.”

The silence between the two of you following his words is damning—the wind is too loud and the distant sounds of cars honking and brakes screeching is jarring. You can hear your heart thudding in your ears, you can feel your gut twisting, your fingers tremble from where they’re stuffed in your pockets. Dazai is a statue next to you, his eyes haven’t budged, his limbs are stiff. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think him a corpse

Your lips part to speak but no words leave then. You take a moment before trying again. “How did you end up with the Mafia?” you ask, your voice is much weaker than you intended for it to be. 

Because that’s what you need to focus on—the context, that’s what you’d decided before he woke up and that’s what you’ll stick to, not what he’s done, but first how he ended up there and then why he left. You can’t imagine a fifteen year old willingly choosing to join the Mafia, so you think there must be more to the story. 

For the first time since the two of you arrived at the grave, Dazai moves—it’s subtle, a twitch of his fingers and a tug at the corner of his lips but it’s gone in an instant, you almost miss it. 

“I tried to kill myself when I was fourteen.” Bile rises to your throat almost as soon as his words process, you finally turn to look up at him but his expression hasn’t shifted at all. “The doctor tending to me ended up becoming the new leader of the Port Mafia. I was kept around as an insurance policy, and partly by my own volition, but I joined willingly at fifteen after turning him down several times.”

“Why?”

“I… thought something would happen. For so long, I just… couldn’t feel anything, and I didn’t see the point in living because of it. I thought that maybe the more extreme emotions—violence, death, desire—all of the things that are found in abundance in the Mafia… I thought that if I could be around people who display all of these things so plainly, that I would be able to see and understand what makes humankind human. I thought that maybe it would help me feel more human, and find some sort of reason to keep living.”

You exhale, eyes sliding shut for a second. You feel nauseous—hands lighty trembling as you desperately try to digest the large pill he gave you as quickly as you can because you still have more questions but god, what type of fourteen, fifteen year old feels so empty inside that he turns to the Mafia to try to feel something?

“You were a kid, Osamu. You’re not some incarnate of evil for ending up where you did, you were failed by all of the adults in your life,” you finally say quietly; you’re the one staring ahead now, and you can feel his eyes on you but you don’t dare to turn to look at him because you know that it’ll make you crack and you need to continue. Clearly something else happened when he was eighteen that led to him leaving the Mafia but what? Your gaze trails back to the grave in front of you, a sinking feeling in your chest. You take a deep, steady breath before asking your next question: “What changed at eighteen?”

“I didn’t leave the Port Mafia because I had some great epiphany as to the immorality of my actions,” Dazai snaps. His voice is tight and borderline antagonistic, emotion finally seeping into the monotone, as if he’s trying to convince you that he is what you claim he’s not. “I-”

He cuts himself off abruptly, his voice cracks, you lift your gaze to his face and your throat spasms when you notice the black pits have been replaced with the warm brown you’re used to, a vast array of emotions swimming within them, too many for you to pinpoint a single one.

“He was my friend,” Dazai finally says softly. “My only one, maybe. When he died, he told me that if both sides are the same to me—evil and justice—that I should become a good person, I should save people. So, do you understand? Nothing about me has changed since back then, and the only reason I’m on the side of the ‘good’ is because someone else asked it of me, not for any altruistic reason. I’m still the same now as I was then.”

“... I don’t think that’s quite true,” you tell him after a few seconds of silence, and you can feel him look at you and you can practically hear the bitter ‘what do you know?’ that he’s about to let out, so you force yourself to continue before he can. “I think that if someone had told me all of this a few weeks ago, I would’ve laughed in their face. I never once-”

Dazai scoffs. “So, you don’t understand,” he says, voice reverting back to that empty tone you hate, but his body is tense and he’s looking anywhere but you. “I’m good at putting up fronts, wearing masks depending on who I’m around; it’s how I learned to blend in with people. The man you know doesn’t exist. I’m a fraud, my blood runs black; when I’m pushed into a corner, I invariably fall back into old habits. I’ll never leave the dark and I don’t belong-”

“I think you’re wrong,” you interrupt him, recalling Yosano’s words from two weeks ago—he’ll never believe it himself. “I don’t think you’ll ever see yourself from an objective standpoint. I don’t think you want to believe that you’ve changed for the better, but I think you have. I’m not stupid, Osamu, and I’ve never been one to fall for people’s acts, no matter how good they might be. I’ve known something was up with you since that first night when I woke up and found you staring out the window, and still, I have never once doubted that you were a good man.”

“I killed people to get out of Meursault, I was willing to torture people to get information when the Guild showed up in Yokohama and then again when the Decay of the Angel arrived, I’ll manipulate anyone and everyone around me to see my plans through, I…”

Dazai is still listing off all of the reasons why he’s still a bad person, and maybe you should be listening but you can hear the way his voice is becoming increasingly more tinged with desperation, as if he’s intent on convincing you to change your viewpoint on him. You wonder if he thinks you’ll run, and then, you wonder if he’s trying to make you run—each sentence he speaks becomes more descriptive than the last. 

He’ll find himself sorely disappointed, because you’ve already decided that you won’t run. You’re still not convinced that this is the smartest decision on your part; Dazai is dangerous and being with him is dangerous, not because of him himself, but because of the threats that still linger from his past, but you suppose love always drives people to do stupid things in its name anyway. Even now, as he lists off all of these terrible things, you can’t imagine your life without him—you think a life without him will be dull and gray, and you’ll always look back to the time you spent with him as the happiest you ever were, regretting the decision you made here. 

You’re not the type of person to live a life full of regrets. 

And whether he sees it or not, you think he has changed. You’re not the only one—Yosano, Atsushi, all of the members of the Agency see him in a similar light as you, but he’s so blinded by his past that he refuses to see himself in the present. Even the things he says now, all of it was done in the name of protecting the people he cares about, and that’s not something you’re going to condemn him for. 

“I think he’d be proud of you.” You cut off his tangent with seven quiet words and Dazai goes utterly still and utterly silent next to you. “I didn’t know him, of course, but I think he’d be proud of the man you’ve become, Osamu. Change doesn’t happen overnight, you were surrounded by the dark for so long, and from such a young age, that it might take decades to remove its influence over you, but you’re trying and you’re saving people. I wish you could see yourself the same way I see you. I think he would be proud.”

You wonder if you pushed too far, sparing a glance his way. His brows are furrowed so intensely that you can’t hope to try to imagine what might be going through his mind, brown eyes flooding with emotion as he looks down at his friend’s grave.

“I’m not someone that was born to be with people,” he finally croaks out. “Romantically or platonically. I’m not right in the head. Manipulative, constantly trying to kill myself, prone to jealousy, pettiness and casual cruelty. There are so many people trying to kill me that I stashed guns in your apartment when you weren’t home just in case they came after me while I’m there—I don’t care if they get me, but they might go after me when I’m with you, or even go after you to get to me. Sometimes, I regret leaving the Mafia because I feel like it’s the only place I actually belonged because it’s the only place where I was actually good at what I do.”

You don’t speak, instead letting him list off everything that he thinks is wrong with him, laying out bare all of the things that he tried so hard to hide from you over the past few months. He can’t look at you, eyes trained ahead and you can see the way his fists are clenched in the pockets of his trench coats. He lowers his face into his collar again, burying his nose in the fabric before continuing. 

“During really bad slumps, I can barely get out of bed even though I can’t sleep; sometimes I won’t eat for days unless someone notices and forces me to and if they do, I usually get nasty with them; and I’ll do just about anything to die. Atsushi-kun has had to fish me from more rivers than I can count, Kunikida-kun has had to drag me to the hospital after trying to overdose on pills or drink various types of poisons, Yosano-sensei has spent days watching over me because she didn’t trust me not to try again once one of them saved me.”

His voice has mostly returned to that cold monotone, but there’s a hint of emotion clinging to the edges that he just can’t wipe away, something caught between desperation and pleading. Your throat feels tight and swollen and you think that your heart might be shattering a bit with how he’s so set on pushing you away and convincing you that he’s simply too horrid to be loved. 

“I can’t cook. I don’t clean. I hardly shower. I’m more often drunk than I am sober. I can barely go a week without trying to kill myself at least once. I suck at saving money because I figure I’m going to die soon anyway, so I don’t see the point in it. I have an awful lifestyle and more unhealthy habits than I can count. I've tried to change it but I always fail. I don’t know how to comfort people and when I’m confronted with conflict by people I care about, I’ll avoid them until I can act like nothing's wrong. I’ll be more of a bother than anything else, really.”

“I still want you,” you finally say quietly, watching as a distressed expression sweeps over his face.

“You really don’t,” he protests weakly. You wonder if he’s trying to convince himself of it, or you—maybe both.

“I do. I’ll take care of you.”

“It’s rotten work,” he breathes out, a last ditch attempt to persuade you away. 

“Not to me,” you tell him firmly. “Not if it’s you.”

“I don’t deserve this.” Dazai shakes his head, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him. “I don’t understand—everything I told you and you’re still… I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you.”

“I disagree, but regardless, that’s hardly relevant,” you say absently, finally reaching out to loop your arm in his, resting your head against his bicep. “Do you want this? Do you want me?” 

“Yes.” His voice is so hoarse and so low, as if he can barely bring himself to say the words out loud.

“Then it’s yours. I’m yours.”

Dazai’s jaw is clenched so tight that you’re worried he’s going to damage his teeth, he brings his hand to his eyes as if to cover the upper half of his face. You squeeze his arm a bit, comforting, eyes sliding shut.

“Everything I touch withers and turns to ashes,” Dazai rasps. “Anything I never want to lose is always lost. I’m scared that by being with you, I’m also killing you.”

“I’ll take that risk, if it means I can be with you,” you tell him, watching as he shakes his head, still refusing to look at you.

“You’re so damn stubborn,” he exhales quietly.

“You love me for it,” you tease lightly.

“I do,” he admits, and your eyes shoot open a bit at his words. You glance up at him, but he’s looking ahead, expression downcast. “And I’m sorry about that.”

“Are you apologizing for loving me?” you ask, a bit incredulously.

“Yeah. I am.”

“Osamu…”

Your voice is soft, you’re not sure what you want to say but you falter when Dazai suddenly looks down at you. His eyes are so exhausted, he looks like he hasn’t had any rest in years—his shoulders sag and his arms hang limply at his sides. You think that maybe you shouldn’t have agreed to all of this when he’s still recovering, but you also think that the fatigue is not just physical.

 “I’m so tired,” Dazai suddenly whispers, resting his forehead on the top of your head. His voice cracks a bit over the word, you slip your arms around his waist, letting him lean into you.

“Then let’s go home, yeah?”

“... Yeah, let’s go home.”

When you get back to your apartment, it’s still dark but you know dawn will break soon; as Dazai stumbles over to your bed, you make your way to the window. You close the curtains so that Dazai will be able to sleep easily even after the sun rises, and then move over to your nightstand to turn on the dim lamp so you can at least see a little bit. 

Dazai drops his coat onto your desk chair before he takes a seat on the edge of your bed, feet planted on the floor as he stares ahead at the wall. He looks lost, conflicted; you don’t know what to say to draw him out of it, so you decide not to say anything. Instead, you make your way over to him and take a seat next to him—your thigh brushes his, arms ghosting each other’s, and Dazai immediately leans over to rest his head on your shoulder, eyes sliding shut.

You lift your hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers idly carding through his dark locks. You feel him let out a shaky breath, the air hot against your skin, and you turn your head to the side, pressing your lips to the top of his hair, lingering for a moment before resting your head against his.

“Lay down and get some sleep,” you tell him softly. “I’ll stay with you.”

Dazai exhales, but he doesn’t budge from where he’s leaning heavily against you. “... I need to take off my bandages,” he finally says quietly. “They’re drenched in sweat and blood, haven’t had a chance to change them since I left… I don’t want to get in bed with them on.”

You pause and then ask, “Do you want me to go grab the new roll I bought? I can step out.”

“I don’t have the energy to put them back on,” he finally murmurs, and then a bit more hesitantly, he adds: “Can you help me take them off?” 

You think your heart is in your throat. In the months you’ve been with Dazai, the only glimpse you’ve gotten of his body beneath the bandages was that day he showed up at your doorstep bleeding out and you had no choice but to cut through some of them to patch up the wound, and even then, you only saw the sparest bits of his body, only what was necessary to stop the bleeding. He’s been so careful to keep it hidden from you and now…

“Yeah,” you breathe out. “Of course, I can.”

You shift a bit so that you can kneel behind him on the bed, fingers curling around the hem of his white long sleeved shirt. You tap his arm gently, a silent ask for him to raise his arms, and when he does, you slide the thick cloth off of his body, leaving him in his pants and the bandages that cover every inch of visible skin besides his face and hands.

He was right, they do look disgusting—most of them are yellowed and frayed at the edges, as if they’d been drenched with water and dried several times over. There’s blood staining the bandages on his side and a black tarry substance clinging to the bandages wrapped around his waist. You lean forward and press your lips against his shoulder, over the somewhat clean bandages that are covering the skin there, and you can hear Dazai let out a sharp, shaky breath in front of you.

“Ready?” you whisper, fingers grazing the clip fastened to the bandages on his neck, holding them in place. 

He only nods, so you press another soft kiss to him, this time to the crook of this neck, and unfasten the clips to unwind the bandages from around his neck. To your credit, your fingers don’t falter when a rugged, discolored scar is revealed, looped around his neck; it’s mostly faded, but it’s still rough beneath the pads of your fingers. Your eyes linger though, there’s no question as to what caused the scar and your mind instinctively draws back to all of the offhand comments and jokes that Dazai has ever made about ceiling beams and nooses and your throat feels a bit tight.

You dip your head down to press your lips against the nape of his neck, right over where the rough skin crosses. You can hear his breath hitch, you can feel the way he shivers, but you don’t say anything as you continue to unwind the bandages around his chest and torso. You’ve seen most of the scars that litter his back from when you’d had to patch up his bullet wound, but it’s different seeing them without the fear of him bleeding out fogging your brain. 

They look much harsher against his pale skin now—the worst is still that deep, jagged one that runs from his shoulder to the corner of his hip, but you can’t help but notice that there are more that you hadn’t noticed that day. Most of them are various types of cuts and slashes, some deeper than others, and healed bullet wounds, your gaze is particularly drawn to the most recent one on his upper back. It’s fresh compared to all of the others, still red and easily agitated—your fingers brush over it for a moment before you lean in to press another kiss to his shoulder blade, right over where the worst of the scars begins. 

You shift from behind him to sit at his side, dropping the bandages that had been covering his chest, torso and neck haphazardly onto your bedroom floor before reaching out for his right arm.

Dazai withdraws immediately.

His expression is guarded, you think that his eyes seem a bit glassy but you can’t tell with the dim lighting. You don’t say anything, and you don’t reach out again; after a few moments of him studying you, his shoulders slump and Dazai moves his arm so that it’s back in your lap. Your eyes trace his face one last time, making sure he’s okay, before you lift your fingers to start unwrapping the bandages, starting at his bicep. 

The skin of his bicep is mostly clear—there’s one light scar cutting through its side, as if a bullet had grazed him. When you move down to his forearm, Dazai is stiff and you can see the discomfort on his face, but he doesn’t pull away, so you continue. 

And you falter, because as you loosen the bandages to remove them, you catch sight of the deep scars lining his wrist and forearm. The skin is uneven and discolored, there’s hardly an inch of visible skin on his lower arm that’s not covered by the vertical scars. He’s staring at you, dark eyes heavy and inspecting your every reaction—he’s looking for something, and you don’t know what, but you just decide to do the same thing you’ve done every other time you finished taking off a set of bandages and lean down to press your lips against his pulse point, moving over to do the same to his other wrist after unwrapping the bandages there too.

Your gaze flickers down to his legs, where you can see the bandages on his ankles peeking out from the white pants he’s wearing, a bit too short for his long legs. You pat his thigh gently and say, “C’mon, let’s get you out of these ugly things.”

Dazai shifts up just enough for you to help him slide the loose plants off so you can toss them off to the side, leaving him in his briefs and the bandages wrapped around his thighs and calves. You move to kneel in front of him, instantly getting to unwinding them, starting at his ankle. 

“Do you remember what you told me back then?” Dazai asks quietly, looking down at his lap instead of you. “The day we met?” 

“I told you a lot of things that day,” you say lightly as you glance up at him, careful as you unwrap the bandages around his calves. You kiss his knee. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You said you’d change the trajectory of my life,” he murmurs, twisting his fingers absently. 

Vaguely, you remember the words, smiling a bit in amusement. 

“About the hot chocolate?” you question, laying a kiss to his other knee before shifting up to unwrap the bandages on his thighs; you make sure not to let the pain show on your face when you notice that his inner thighs are as littered with scars as his wrists and forearms, all of them dangerously close to his femoral artery. 

“Yeah.” He lets out a puff of air akin to a laugh, but when you glance up at him, you see there’s very little amusement on his face. In fact, he looks more wistful than anything else. “You really did, you know? Not with the hot chocolate, obviously, but just… you. You did.”

You sit back on your heels as you look up at Dazai, taking his hand into yours before lifting it to your lips, kissing his knuckles softly. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. When he continues, his voice is hoarse, bordering on a plea, “Don’t ever go somewhere I can’t follow.”

“Somewhere without you?” you ask, a teasing lilt to your voice as you kiss the palm of his hand before letting go so you can move to unwrap the bandages from his other leg. “Sounds dreadful, I would never.”

He lets out a noise as if he doesn’t entirely believe you, as if it’s some inevitable fate that the two of you will face. So when you finish unwinding the bandages and push them off to the side with the rest of them, you lean up on your knees to cup his cheek, pulling him down a bit to you so you can press your lips to the corner of his. 

“You’re stuck with me.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” he croaks out, and the wry laugh he lets out falls flat. 

You squeeze his hand again before you rise to your feet, and when you do, Dazai’s throat spasms as you stand in front of him, looking down at him. He’s stripped bare in front of you now—physically, emotionally, and he looks at you with an expression that lets you know that you have the power to utterly ruin him. He’s trusted you with his heart, handed it over to you on a platter after having guarded it so desperately and carefully for so long, and you can see the vulnerability in his dark eyes as he watches you restlessly, waiting to see what you’ll do with it. 

You lean forward again, pressing your lips against his forehead softly and then to his own, a chaste, innocent kiss that lasts no longer than half a second. 

“I love you,” you tell him quietly. 

Humans cannot live without a heart, so if he’s to give you his, it’s only fair that you give him your own—though realistically, yours has already been his for a long time. Your heart beats in his chest now, and his in yours, and you wonder if he understands the gravity of what that means but you think he does, if the way his expression crumbles has anything to say about it. His hands fly to your waist, dragging you down onto his lap. His fingers bite a bit too deeply into your skin for it to be comfortable, but you only wrap your arms around his shoulders and let him bury his face into the crook of your neck. 

“I think I might’ve been born just so I could meet you,” Dazai admits, words thick and throaty, muffled against your neck.

You smile lightly, toying with the hair at the nape of his neck, turning your head to the side to kiss his temple. “I feel the same,” you whisper, because there’s no way anything but destiny led you to Dazai Osamu on that beach—one way or another, you were fated to be with him. 

Dazai pulls his face from where he’s had it tucked in your neck to press his lips to yours; he kisses you desperately, hands rising to cup your cheeks. In one swift motion, he has you pinned down on the bed, hips and chest flush to yours, hand slipping behind your head to tilt your head so he can deepen the kiss, and you’re reeling at his sudden switch up, struggling to keep up with him. His tongue traces the inside of your lip, deceptively gentle compared to the way he has body pressed against yours.

Your hands fly to his waist, sliding over his bare skin, over all of the rough ridges of his scars and his body shudders against yours violently, unused to the feeling of someone touching him without his bandages as a barrier. He pulls back, tugging at your bottom lip softly before moving just far enough away for your lips to be brushing, sharing the same sliver of air. You can feel his breath fanning across your lips, it smells of the peppermints you have littered across your desk and distantly, you can’t help but wonder when he managed to steal one, but the thought is only fleeting. It’s dizzying, hot, so intimate that you think your heart is about to fly out of your chest.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” Dazai breathes out, dark eyes searching yours as he speaks.

“Me neither,” you agree, and then you smile, leaning up to steal another kiss from him, and then another, and then another. “Good thing we have the rest of our lives to try.”

Less than a week later, you stand in the chaos of the Armed Detective Agency as they argue over a new case—and by they, you mean Yosano and Kunikida with Dazai occasionally making antagonistic comments to try to make Kunikida blow a fuse. You don’t really know what you’re doing here, you suppose the Agency doesn’t really care and you have nothing better to do anyway —you lost your internship at the Ministry of Defense, obviously, with all of the chaos that went down and classes have yet to start up again, and Dazai begged and pleaded for you to come with him to work because he ‘can’t stand having to look at Kunikida-kun’s ugly mug all day,’ but you figure it’s only because he wants to sneak off to you whenever Kunikida is distracted.

Like now.

Dazai has flopped onto where you’re lounging on the couch as he watches Kunikida and Yosano go at it, head resting on your chest, giggling to himself as Kunikida’s face goes red and Yosano looks increasingly more entertained. You’re idly playing with his hair as you scroll through your phone, distantly listening to the argument that you’re pretty sure Dazai instigated just so he could slink away from his desk.

It’s only a matter of time before Kunikida notices Dazai’s scheme and drags him off of you, but it’s nearly the end of the day anyway and you and Dazai are going to the theme park in the Kanagawa prefecture once he can leave work, so you’re excited. You think you’re going to ask Atsushi, Kyouka and Kenji to come along with the two of you, even if Dazai pouts and scowls over it, because they’ve spent most of the day talking to you when Kunikida was forcing Dazai to actually do his work. 

“Ranpo will be here soon,” Yosano goads Kunikida. “We’ll see what he says.”

Kunikida’s eye twitches and he parts his lips to speak but before he can, the door to the Agency flies open and a familiar dark-haired man comes bounding in, snacking on a bag of sweets. Tanizaki follows behind him, looking exhausted if not a bit relieved to be back. 

“Tanizaki got us lost three times,” Ranpo complains, making his way through the reception area toward the interior. Tanizaki looks disgruntled, as if he doesn’t entirely agree with Ranpo’s statement but is beyond arguing about it. Ranpo pauses next to the couches where you and Dazai are lounging. “It’s you.”

Your eyebrows raise a bit when you notice the thinly veiled irritation in Ranpo’s voice. Dazai looks up, eyes a bit narrowed, and both Yosano and Kunikida pause from where they were about to bring their argument to Ranpo, sharing a look with one another. 

“Ranpo-san, don’t be ru-” Dazai starts to complain, although you can tell there’s a hint of tightness to his voice. 

“First, everyone in the Agency ignores me when I tell them not to take this case; then, I go out of the way to warn you about the Hunting Dogs and instead of listening to me, you throw yourself into the heart of Yokohama and make yourself easy pickings for them,” Ranpo rants. “I don’t even know why I try.”

Realization strikes fast, your face feels a bit hot. Dazai sits up from where he’s laying on you, looking between you and Ranpo, a bit confused. 

“... You were R,” you realize sheepishly, wondering how you hadn’t put it together sooner. 

Ranpo all but sneers. “Aren’t you supposed to be an honors student at Waseda? I swear, sometimes I think I’m the only person in my life with brain cells.” he says snidely, pointedly raising his chin and looking away from you as he adds: “I suppose your arrest wasn’t entirely a bad thing, though—made the police force more willing to open their eyes with their wives and family members going off the deep end about the Hunting Dogs. But still, after all the effort I went through to get that warning to you…”

He finishes with a loud scoff, but you’re more focused on the aghast expression on Dazai’s face as he looks at you, and you brace yourself for the conversation that’s about to come, wondering how the hell you’re going to get out of it.

“You got arrested?” Dazai blanches, eyes wide and face a bit pale.

You wince, laughing a bit sheepishly. “Yeah… ha, look at us, in jail at the same time! Couple goals, huh?” 

Dazai doesn’t look half as amused—a mix of disbelief, guilt and a hint of anger all visible on his face. You don’t know where the guilt is coming from, but you figure he must blame himself for it somehow, which you think is a bit ridiculous because it was your choice to let yourself get arrested when you had the chance to flee. You think that your trip to the amusement park is going to be tainted now, because you know that as soon as Dazai gets the chance, he’s going to bully you into an interrogation over what happened, so to salvage the night and spare yourself the headache, you finally make your move.

“Atsushi-kun, Kyouka-chan, Kenji-kun, Osamu and I are going to the amusement park later, you should join us!” 

The look Dazai gives you is nothing short of betrayal, but luckily, Atsushi, Kenji and Kyouka, who’ve all lit up at your words, excited, can see it from where they’re sitting. You smile sweetly up at Dazai, leaning up to steal a kiss; he is disgruntled, narrowing his eyes at you.

“Oh? The one in Kanagawa?” Yosano suddenly asks, interested. “We’ll come too.”

Dazai buries his face in your chest, letting out a muffled groan. Yosano tosses you a wink, seemingly having forgotten about her argument with Kunikida as she throws her arm around the man and gives him a sharp look.

“Won’t we, Kunikida?” she asks with a terrifying smile. Kunikida looks as if he’s going to protest but before he can, Yosano’s arm around him tightens. “Won’t we?”

“Fine,” Kunikida bites out, looking none too pleased. “I need to hurry and finish this report then, so let go.”

Ranpo points at you. “You’ll fund my cotton candy for the night as an apology for the unnecessary headache,” he declares and you let out a huff of laughter in agreement.

“Can Naomi and I come too?” Tanizaki asks, a bit hesitant as he glances at you and notices the way Dazai has slumped into your chest, defeated. “We’ve only been once when we were kids. It’d be fun to go back.”

“‘Course,” you agree easily. “Dazai and I are gonna head out now though, I have to run to the store before we go.”

Kunikida only waves you off—he probably doesn’t even register what you asked, too focused on getting his report done—so you push Dazai off of you and rise to your feet, stretching because your back has become a bit sore from lounging around all day. Dazai nearly topples onto his ass, shooting you an accusing look before standing up straight.

You hold your hand out to him, he takes it, looking a bit mollified. 

“See you in a bit,” you tell the Agency, and you get various different goodbyes as you leave the office.

As soon as the door shuts behind the two of you, Dazai is scowling at you. “You’re devious,” he claims. “Inviting them all to avoid a much needed conversation. Diabolical.”

“Learned from the best,” you coo, leaning into him and nudging his arm with your shoulder. He rolls his eyes, you grin. “Please, you and I both know you would spend the whole night trying to talk about it if we go alone and it would piss me off. We can talk about it when we get home.”

“And now.” The smile that Dazai gives you is all teeth, you grimace. “How did you get arrested?”

You just shrug. “They asked me for information, I refused to give it. I figured if they were going to come after me one way or another, it’s better that it happens in public—people don’t really take kindly to watching someone get arrested for associating with an organization that they’ve all associated with at some point or another because they’ll get scared that they’re next.”

Dazai looks at you, distinctly impressed. “You are devious.” He sounds proud, your cheeks heat up a bit, but then his expression drops again. “But still reckless. You could’ve been killed.”

“But I wasn’t.” You wave him off and then absently bid goodbye to the cafe owner and his wife as the two of you leave the cafe and make your way down the street to where you’d parked this morning. 

“But you could’ve been,” Dazai stresses the words, he’s a lot more tense than you expected, his jaw is tight. He catches the way you’re looking at him and shakes his head, letting out a puff of air. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” you ask, brows furrowed.

“It’s my fault,” he tells you, and you immediately scoff, rolling your eyes. “It is, you don’t understand—I was with Dostoevsky in Meursault, I had to make a decision-”

“Shut up,” you tell him, irate. His mouth shuts instantly. “Stop acting like I have no autonomy. I knew what I was walking into, I chose to do it anyway. That’s the end of it, stop blaming yourself for every little thing that goes wrong, Osamu. You’re only human, you can’t control everything.”

You can tell that Dazai doesn’t believe you, but that’s an argument for another day. Luckily, Dazai doesn’t look too keen on pressing the subject anyway. Instead, conflict sweeps over his face as he studies you.

Finally, he asks quietly, “You never doubted the Agency?”

You let out a sharp laugh. “Are you kidding? There’s no way anyone’s going to convince me that the people in that office building are terrorists. That’s absurd, I figured there was something supernatural going on, just didn’t know what.”

Dazai looks at you, disbelief painted on his face. You’re not sure why until he lets out his own laugh, shaking his head. “The Decay of the Angel had a reality altering book,” he explains, eyeing you as the two of you continue down the sidewalk. “And you managed to somehow subvert the reality they created with it.”

You can’t tell if it’s a question or not, and for some reason, you feel distinctly seen as he looks down at you with an indecipherable expression. So you just shrug. “They shouldn’t have written such a ludicrous reality, then,” is all you say, a bit awkwardly.

Dazai only laughs again, slinging an arm around your shoulder. You lean your head into him, smiling softly. You bask in his presence, letting the warmth of the setting sun wash across your face as you share a few moments of silence. 

As the two of you reach the parking garage you’d parked in, Dazai suddenly stops, looking down at you. “Do you believe in fate?” he asks quietly, uncertainty in his eyes as he watches you for a response.

“Yeah,” you tell him. You’ve always believed in fate, and you believe in it a bit more after meeting Dazai, because somehow you know that you were always destined to meet him, that your fates have been intertwined since the moment the two of you were born. You simply cannot imagine a life without him, not in this world or any other. “String theory, multiverse, I think the world’s a lot bigger than just ours. Why?” 

You glance up at him curiously. “You do?” he asks a bit distantly, leaning down to ghost his lips against your forehead. Then a bit more hesitant, he continues, “If you think there’s more worlds like ours… do you think we’re together in all of them?” 

You snort, which is obviously not the reaction Dazai expects from the way he jolts, but before he can take offense to your reaction, you speak.

“Definitely,” you say so confidently that he almost looks taken aback. “I’ll find you in every universe, you can count on it.”

You think he looks beautiful right now as the sun finally sets over the horizon, the pale orange tints of the coming dusk making his skin glow, his eyes soft and fond, full of longing as he looks down at you. You’re struck with a distinct urge to kiss him, but he looks so divine in this moment that you can hardly bring yourself to move, spellbound as you admire him.

“Yeah,” he finally breathes out, “I will.”

i don’t even really have words guys 🥹 i’m literally about to weep i can’t believe it’s over

#I CANT BELIEVE ITS OVER WUUUUUUUUU I HOPE MC CAN HANDLE THIS PATHETIC LOSER MAN BEST OF LUCK #hold awn enlightenment struck. since dazai is in a relationship now....SHIN SOUKOKU CAN FINALLY DATE RAHHHHHHHHH

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

ᡣ𐭩 COMING DOWN

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: something is up. you know it. dazai is being far too romantic and you're absolutely not buying the excuses he keeps giving you. it's whatever, you think, you'll enjoy the fancy dinner and fancier hotel, even with the imminent threat of the looming bomb about to drop. {wordcount: 13.4k; fem!reader, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: here is part 4!!! i can't believe we're already so close to the end of this one, i'm so excited for side b you guys have no idea, i'm almost done writing part 4 of side b and then part 5 is going to be a beast in itself, PUN INTENDED. i'm going to be posting a poll a bit later on that i'll need your guys' opinion on concerning part 4 of side b, so please keep an eye out for that!

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR 17 & UNDER FOLLOWING THE SERIES: i was conflicted as to how to go about this because as per tags on masterlist, there was always going to be smut in this series. i'm not going to ask y'all to not interact/read a whole 13.4k chapter just because there's like 2-3k words of smut, but i am going to say here the smut is in the FOURTH scene. there is very little, if any, plot development in the smut itself, so i ask you guys to respectfully scroll past it. i'll make the sentence when the smut starts red like this so you know that's when it starts, and then you can continue reading at the next divider. thank you for understanding! i'll summarize the little plot development in the smut at the end of the chapter for you guys.

SMUT WARNINGS: mostly vanilla-ish, fingering, dazai has a dirtyyy mouth, a bit of edging, mentions of f!masturbation, pussy drunk!dazai - he's a bit pathetic HAHAH, unprotected sex. i think that's all, if i'm missing anything please let me know!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

You’re a bit alarmed when you wake up and realize that Dazai is nowhere to be found. Usually, you wake up to the warmth of his arm draped over your body, his tall and lithe form curled around you and his face buried in your hair. It’s a process trying to get out of bed, because even in his sleep he clings to you tighter whenever you try to free yourself, and he always lets out muffled noises of complaint and displeasure at the slightest disruption to his sleep. 

Normally, the man wakes up hours after you—and even then, you still have to drag him out of bed so he’s not abysmally late to work—so this is… strange to say the least. He’s gotten better the past few weeks, sometimes he wakes up early to join you at the beach to watch the sunrise and usually it’s a bit easier to get him out of bed even when he wants to sleep in, but he never wakes up before you unless he just doesn’t sleep, but you know that he slept last night because he fell asleep while you were finishing up some emails to prospective employers for your summer job. 

You’re suspicious when you slip out of bed and stretch, curious to figure out what he’s doing—you wonder if he had to get up early to get to the Agency for a mission, but you’re pretty sure Dazai would rather face a raging Kunikida and death by fire than wake up before dawn for work. Still dressed in your night clothes, you make your way out of your bedroom and into the main room of your apartment.

He’s standing there in your kitchen, brows furrowed and already dressed in black slacks and a button up and tie—not his typical attire, you can’t help but note, and your suspicion grows. He looks handsome though, and you would spend a few moments just admiring him but you don’t like the way he’s staring at your stove so you decide to speak up before he can do something destructive.

“Dazai,” you call his name, still half-asleep, watching as his eyes shoot open as he turns to face you. “What’re you doing up so early?”

Dazai doesn’t even respond. Instead, he snatches something from the counter and makes his way over to you—you draw back a bit, confused and increasingly more alarmed but too out of it to effectively dodge his rapid approach, and you part your lips to ask him what the hell he’s doing and why he’s acting so weird but he only takes the opportunity to shove an unwrapped protein bar into your mouth. You choke a bit in surprise, trying to chew on the bar, but you’re reeling as he presses his hands to your back and pushes you back into the bedroom. 

You’re barely registering what’s happening as you finally take a bite of the protein bar and remove it from your mouth—watching as he strips you of your pajama top and shorts in abject horror. You want to ask him what the fuck he’s doing but you’re still trying to chew through the thick bar, almost gagging on it. 

You watch, standing there in your panties, braless and topless—you want to complain because you’re cold but you’re more occupied with watching Dazai Osamu, a man clearly on some sort of mission as he snatches the dress hanging on your closet door. You’re certain that you hadn’t left it there, in fact you don’t even remember picking it up from the dry-cleaners, so he must’ve picked it up on his way home from work yesterday and you just didn’t notice when you were focused on finishing up your emails.

“Up,” he says, motioning for you to raise your arms and you just stare at him in disbelief, absently raising your arms. 

Without hesitation, he slides the dress over your body, adjusting it so that it’s laying against you nicely—and then he shifts to stand behind you, zipping it up. Usually, he would linger for a bit, press a few kisses to the crook of your neck and wrap his arms around your waist, but this time he zips it up and darts back off to your closet, where he’s evidently also laid out a pair of heels for you.

He snatches them up and kneels in front of you, grabbing your ankle to lift your leg and slip your heel on—he fastens the buckle, and this time he does linger a bit, dipping his head down to press a chaste kiss against your ankle before shuffling over a bit to do the same for your other foot. 

“Dazai, what is going on?” you ask, voice riddled with disbelief and confusion as you stare at him, taking another bite of the protein bar he’d given to you.

“I’m taking you somewhere,” he says, as if that isn’t obvious enough.

“You’re dressing me.”

“You’re taking too long.”

“You didn’t even give me a chance,” you protest, scowling down at Dazai, but he only looks up at you.

He props his chin on your abdomen as he looks up at you, a soft expression on his face. 

“Sweet bella,” he sighs dreamily, “not even the millions of stars in the sky can compare to how brilliantly you shine. The most beautiful being I’ve ever had the fortune of laying my eyes upon. I can’t believe you’re mine.”

You roll your eyes—no matter how often Dazai gets all poetic and theatrical, it never fails to fluster you, but you know he’s only trying to dodge your interrogation this time. You tug a lock of his hair and he hums softly, turning his head to kiss your palm before leaning into your touch. 

“I need to do my hair and makeup,” you tell him. “Where are we even going?” 

Dazai leaps to his feet instantly. “Nope!” he says loudly, and your expression twists in irritation, watching as he bounds over to your desk, grabbing… your make-up bag? “Do your makeup and hair when I get to the office, I have to stop there for a few minutes before we leave. I put everything together for you.”

“Where are we going?” you repeat as you try to reach for your makeup bag but Dazai holds it above his head so that you can’t get to it. You squint and you have half a mind to jump up on him to try to pull his arm down but from the way his eyes are glittering, you have a feeling that he wants and expects exactly that.

So instead, you let out a pointed sigh and turn your head away. Dazai pouts, but you figure either way it was a losing decision for you because his pout disappears in an instant as he grabs your hand and drags you out of the bedroom. 

You’re all but stumbling after him, trying to keep up with him in the dark heels he’d dressed you in, and Dazai is merciless, not slowing down for even a second until he skids to a stop at your door, grabbing the keys to your car that you left hanging next to your jacket. 

He turns to you, giving you an expression that’s more fitting of a wet dog than a human being, not wanting to give up the keys. You close your eyes and sigh. 

“Answer my question,” you finally say.

“I can’t,” Dazai complains, “it’s a surprise.”

“Dazai,” you warn, voice low. 

“It’s a surprise,” Dazai repeats instead, frowning slightly as he looks down at you, and you can see the earnestness in his eyes as he looks down at you, lacing your fingers together as he squeezes your hand gently, as if begging you to not make him ruin it.

Again, you sigh. 

“Do not get into another accident, Dazai.”

His face lights up. 

You regret everything.

“Dazai, I thought you were-”

“Shhhhhh!”

You’re a bit amused as Yosano Akiko holds up her hands in mock surrender from where she’s lounging at one of the booths in the cafe beneath the Agency. Dazai looks thoroughly distressed, waving his own hands and panicking at Yosano almost giving up his top secret plans. 

“I’ll be back down in a few minutes,” he says to you before turning to squint at Yosano. “Don’t say anything.”

“I won’t,” Yosano promises, holding her hand to chest as if to convey her honor. 

Dazai’s eyes narrow a bit more, as if he doesn’t trust her, but then he glances at the clock and flees up the steps to the Agency without another word.

As soon as you hear the door slam upstairs, signaling that Dazai entered the Agency, you make your way over to where the other woman is sitting, propping up your phone against the wall to use as a mirror before unzipping your makeup bag. Impressively, Dazai managed to make sure he got all of your everyday makeup and even the ones you keep to the side for special occasions, you hum a bit in appreciation before getting started. 

“Can you give me a hint?” you ask, eyes flickering up to Yosano, who’s studying you with a fond expression as you start shifting through your makeup bag, looking for a particular concealer.

Yosano’s lips curve up into a smile. “He’s actually been working the past two weeks to make sure Kunikida can’t complain about him taking time off for this—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so excited for something.”

Your chest feels a bit warm, a smile itching at the corner of your lips as you pause from where you’re applying your makeup. “Yeah?” you ask, eyes lingering on her for a bit longer before you go back to looking back down at your phone to continue doing your makeup.

Yosano lets out a quiet noise of agreement. “Honestly,” she says quietly, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him as happy in general as he’s been the past two months, so thank you. I’m glad he has you.”

You falter a bit, glancing up at Yosano as you recall Atsushi’s words from back when Dazai got shot: “I’m really glad that Dazai-san has you. He’s been a lot happier the past few weeks.”

“You think so?” you ask softly, twirling your mascara wand in hand as you look down at the table. 

You wonder what exactly Dazai was like if now two of his coworkers are mentioning how much better he’s been since meeting you. You have your own suspicions, just from knowing how the two of you met (twice) on top of his flippant attitude regarding suicide, but that’s all you have: suspicions.

“Know so,” Yosano corrects absently, taking a sip of her coffee mug—although you can’t help but notice that it doesn’t look like coffee in there. She sighs, tilting her head back against the booth. “He’s good. He doesn’t believe it himself—probably never will—but he is. He deserves this… I doubt he’ll ever believe that either though. Be good to him.”

“You guys are all really close, aren’t you?” you note, half to yourself.

“Like family,” Yosano confirms with a grin and then pauses before saying, “... we are family.”

You smile a bit wistfully. “I’m almost jealous,” you admit, “but it makes me happy to hear that he has you guys. Sometimes he just seems so…”

Lonely, you finish quietly. 

On nights where he can’t sleep and you happen to wake up, you sometimes find him staring out the window just like you did that first night you met. He always looks lost and alone—he tries to hide it when he notices that you’re up too, masking it with a smile that never reaches his eyes. You think his mind haunts him a lot more than he lets on—well, you know it does, you remember how you met him and you remember his chilling, offhand comments, but you think it haunts him even more than that, to the point that no matter how many people care for him, it’ll never allow him to see it.

“Yeah,” Yosano agrees quietly, you don’t have to finish what you’re trying to say for her to know what you’re getting at. She lightens up after a moment though. “Make him bring you around more, you’ll be part of our ragtag little family in no time.”

You smile brightly. “I think Dazai would have a heart attack—did you see him at the event last month?” 

Yosano’s smile is sharp and dangerous. “That’s the point.”

Laughing loudly, you nearly mess up your mascara, and as you open your lips to respond, you pause when you catch sight of a familiar, suspicious face poking around the corner of the doorframe leading up to the Agency. As soon as you catch sight of him, he tries to disappear and pretend that he isn’t there. 

Your eyes narrow. “I saw you, Dazai,” you say loudly and Yosano whirls around to look over the booth just as Dazai reluctantly steps out into view.

“Dazai, you damn creep, were you eavesdropping?” Yosano accuses, throwing a stray teaspoon in his direction. 

“Yosano-sensei,” Dazai complains, “can you blame me? I see my two favorite women laughing, of course I’m going to be curious.” 

You snort as you finish up with applying your lipgloss—the strawberry one that Dazai loves so much that you’ve caught him trying lick the wand when you’re not looking. Rising to your feet, you put your makeup bag back together before looking back over at Dazai, who finally made his way over to the table. 

There’s a soft, adoring look in his eyes as he looks down at you; you think that it’s a bit unwarranted because you’re pretty sure your makeup must look terrible from how quickly and half-assed you'd done it, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d think Dazai was looking at someone glammed up for the red carpet. 

It almost makes you feel a bit flustered. 

“You look beautiful,” he says quietly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. 

“I haven’t even had a chance to brush my hair yet,” you counter, looking up at him through your lashes with a half-smile.

“And you’re beautiful still,” he teases softly, leaning down to press his lips to yours in a chaste, deceptively innocent kiss.

“God, you two are gross, get a room,” Yosano grumbles, throwing a packet of sugar at the side of Dazai’s head. 

Dazai tosses Yosano a wink. “Oh, we will,” he leers and Yosano dramatically gags.

You smile lightly, but then your mind starts to drift because you’ve been with Dazai for two months now and the two of you have hardly gotten further than heavy petting and kissing. Not for a lack of trying, and it’s kind of become a borderline taboo subject between the two of you, because he always stops it before it can get too far. You don’t know why, and you’re afraid to ask because you’re beginning to get anxious that there’s something wrong with you because why else would he constantly pull away whenever things start to heat up between the two of you? You know damn well the man isn’t a saint from what you’ve heard from his coworkers and how grateful they were that you reigned in his “womanizing” tendencies, so why are you different? It’s been two months, why won’t he touch you? 

Your thoughts start to spiral, as they always do when you think too hard on the topic. You can feel him give you a concerned look but you only turn to Yosano, bidding her goodbye as Dazai leads you out of the cafe and the woman raises her arm in a lazy wave in response. Once you guys are out the door, you turn to Dazai before he can interrogate you on what’s wrong. 

“Where are we going now?” you ask, nudging your shoulder into Dazai’s side as the two of you make your way back to your car. Dazai slings an arm around you, pulling you into his side and dipping his head down to kiss the top of your head. 

You feel his lips curl up into a dangerous smile against your hair. “The train station.” 

You turn your head to look up at him as soon as the words register, eyes a bit wide. “The train station? Where are we taking a train to?” 

“Mhm,” he agrees, not fully answering your question, eyes glimmering as his arm tightens around you, pulling you closer into him. “We’re spending a night away from here.” 

“I didn’t pack anything,” you say, a bit panicked. “Daz-”

“I packed a change of clothes and pajamas,” Dazai grins. “Relax, I’ve got you, bella. Don’t you trust me?” 

“Of course, I trust you,” you scoff immediately, noting the way his grip around you falters a bit as soon as the words leave your mouth. “But I also know you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dazai laments. “You hate me.”

You roll your eyes. “I definitely don’t hate you, Dazai,” you murmur, resting the side of your head against his bicep for a moment—three words threaten to burst from your lips, you swallow them.

As if Dazai can sense the sudden change in mood, he leans down to kiss the top of your head again—this time softer, and he lingers longer. As he does so, he reaches to swing open the passenger door to your car.

“Shall we?”

Kyoto. 

He brought you to Kyoto. You’ve never actually been despite having wanted to visit for years, too busy with college and then preparing for graduate school. Dazai has spent the entire day bringing you from place to place, letting you play the gawking tourist as he drags you everywhere from the botanical garden to the shrines and temples places throughout the city. He’s spent the entire day embarrassing you, one way or another, by announcing in public that his ‘darling wife is pregnant!’ so that you’re flooded with older women cooing over you and making loud and poetic proclamations of love and distress in Nishiki Market, pretending to be a scorned lover bemoaning the cruelty of the woman he loves. 

You can’t even find it in yourself to be angry about it, because you remember Yosano’s words about how excited he’s been and you can see the way his eyes shine brightly whenever he sees the dread rise to your face as soon as you realize he’s about to do something shameful. 

Now, the two of you are sitting in a rooftop restaurant of a luxury resort that you know damn well neither of you can afford, and you’re not even sure how Dazai had managed to book a reservation at it—you’re not even sure if he had booked a reservation at it. The whole situation is honestly a bit weird. The hostess seemed to have recognized Dazai’s name as soon as he gave it to her, rushing to seat him at the best table in the restaurant, and once you’d been seated, the owner had come over to greet Dazai. 

You wonder if Dazai secretly comes from old money, generational wealth—you think if he does, you might kill him, because you can’t even count the number of times you’ve had to spot the asshole for coffees and snacks. If he was sitting on piles of money the whole time? You swear that you’ll rip into him.

You tried to ask him about it already, but he waved off the question with a non-answer and a charming smile that doesn't quite work on you anymore. When you tried to press, you got the same dismissal, so with much restraint you finally let it rest so you could enjoy your dinner. 

“Are you going to tell me what the occasion is now?” you finally ask, taking a sip of the after-dinner martini you’d ordered as you watch Dazai carefully. 

“We’re celebrating,” Dazai grins, reaching across the table to take your hand into his; he brings yours to his lips, kissing your knuckles before laying both of your hands over the table. 

“Celebrating what, exactly?” you tease, tilting your head to the side as your fingers lace through his—he’s gotten a lot more touchy the past few days, you’ve noticed

“You finished your finals, obviously,” Dazai says, as if it were obvious, “I can’t believe you didn’t figure it out yourself.”

Your fingers tighten around his hand as you let out a puff of laughter. “Really?” you ask a bit doubtfully. “All of this because I finished finals?” 

“My sweet belladonna thinks I’m a liar,” Dazai complains, head falling back dramatically. “You’ve been so stressed the past few weeks, I wanted to do something nice for you.”

 Although you can’t help but notice that his fingers tense against yours, as if he’s not telling the full truth, you decide to leave it and press later, instead smiling softly and squeezing his hand.

“Oh yeah? You could’ve just brought me out to dinner back home, spend the night at some cheap hotel that we can actually afford,” you snort, looking around again at the extravagant rooftop restaurant the two of you are eating at. With the dim, romantic lighting and luxurious furnishing, you think this might be the fanciest place you’ve ever been. “... How are we going to afford this, Dazai?” 

“When are you going to start calling me Osamu?” Dazai pouts as if to try to avoid the question. 

You ignore the way warmth bubbles at your chest, instead correcting, “How are we going to afford this, Osamu?” 

His name tastes frighteningly familiar on your tongue—as if you’ve said it a million times before—and you can see from the way that his eyelashes flutter it seems to have affected him just as much as you.

“You won’t tell me what you and Yosano were laughing about, so obviously I’m not gonna tell you about this,” Dazai teases, thumb circling the back of your hand. You roll your eyes, so he continues with, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it, that’s for me to handle”

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” you drawl with a side smile. “Unless you’ve been hiding some secret wealth from me—which if you have, we’re going to have serious problems, I’ve paid for you too many times for that—we’re going to be washing dishes at this place for the rest of our lives.”

“You have no faith.” Dazai pushes his bottom lip out even further. “You said you trust me.”

“I do trust you,” you say and you can see from the way he squints that he knows there’s about to be a ‘but’, “but-”

“Dazai-sama.” The waiter that has been diligently tending to the two of you bows deeply to Dazai—you give Dazai a pointed look, as if saying, see!, but he only winks at you. “Is there anything else that you and your fiancée need? Or shall I get the two of you the bill?”

Fiancée, you think to yourself a bit surprised, shooting Dazai another sharp look, noting how his cheeks flushed a bit after hearing how the waiter addressed you.

“Charge it onto the usual card,” Dazai tells the waiter, who nods and bows again before rushing off.

You stare at Dazai as soon as the man leaves. “Dazai Osamu, who are you?” you ask, a bit jokingly, a bit not jokingly because he really has thrown you for a complete 180 with this whole extravagant date. 

His smile falters, as if you asked a question that he doesn’t want to answer, but you think he was stupid to bring you on this date if he didn’t want you asking questions about it. You wish that you had some idea of what the answer might be but you don’t, and it worries you a bit, because there’s clearly something he’s hiding from you and he’s anxious about how you’re going to take it.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says quietly, holding his arm out to you. 

You sigh a bit as you rise to your feet after finishing your drink, looping your arm into his. He tugs you a bit closer, and you watch, hawk-eyed, as the waiters of the restaurant nod their head in respect to Dazai and the owner himself bids him a brief goodbye and a ‘it was good seeing you again, Dazai-sama’ before the two of you reach the elevator leading back down into the hotel.

As soon as you’re within the closed doors, Dazai turns to you, bringing his hand up to brush his knuckles against your cheekbone. You lean into his touch, looking up at him, eyes wide and a bit imploring, asking him to explain without verbally voicing the words. 

He sighs. “I came here a lot for my previous job, before I joined the Agency,” he explains quietly. “We brought… associates here a lot for business.”

“You’re going to charge our date and stay here on your old boss’s card,” you ask, a bit horrified at the prospect, not even thinking to ask what his previous job might be in your panic. “Daz-Osamu, are you crazy?”

“Trust me,” Dazai grins as he says the two words you’ve been hearing all night from him. “He won’t do anything about it.”

The words sound a bit ominous, you don’t really know how to take them, so instead you shake your head and rest the side of your head against his bicep as you wait for the elevator to open up on your floor—a penthouse suite, naturally, one that you’re sure must cost at least one to two hundred thousand yen a night. 

After a few moments, you ask quietly, “What was your previous job?” 

Dazai stiffens beneath your touch. You glance up, watching as his face closes off and his throat spasms beneath the bandages covering it. You can feel his fingers dig a bit deeper into your hip from where his hand had been idly resting against you.

He doesn’t want to tell you, you realize—you don’t know why he doesn’t want to tell you, you know deep down that it must be something that he’s ashamed of, or it’s something he thinks would make you think differently of him. A part of you wants to assure him that nothing would change how you care for him, but Yosano’s words still ring through your head: “he doesn’t believe it himself—probably never will.”

So instead, you hook your arms around his waist loosely, leaning up on your tiptoes to press your lips underneath his jaw.

“It’s okay,” you say quietly, resting your head on his chest and letting your eyes slide shut. “You don’t have to tell me now, I hope one day you feel ready to share it with me.” 

You hear Dazai let out a breath from above you. “I don’t understand why you’re so patient with me,” he murmurs, leaning his head down to rest his forehead on the top of your head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

A soft laugh escapes your lips. “Because I care about you, Osamu. A lot. Nothing you tell me would ever change that.”

“... That’s not true,” he says quietly, more to himself than to you.

“It is.” You only tighten your arms around him and then continue with, “Are you going to click our floor or are we just going to sit in the elevator all night?” 

Dazai’s face flushes. “Click our floor,” he says sheepishly

You laugh, Dazai leans over you to click the button before draping himself over you. You feel warm again, but there’s still a cold hole still spreading through your chest: even with the implication of his previous job, and the realization that it might just be something unsavory enough for him to fear you changing how you see him, you just can’t seem to brush away the feeling that there’s something else he’s hiding from you.

“I lied before.”

The admission comes bluntly and quietly from Dazai, who’s laying next to you on the massive king-sized bed of the nicest suite in the hotel—you think you’ve never stayed in a more comfortable bed, all the two of you have been doing for the past few hours is lounging around watching shitty movies and sharing kisses. 

You’re still resting your head on his shoulder, eyes idly tracing the television screen where a girl is crying over a boy she’d just met the other day before you turn your gaze up to him. 

“About what?” you ask.

He’s not looking at you, he’s staring up at the ceiling instead with a conflicted expression; he opens his mouth to say something but nothing spills from his lips. Finally, he sighs, “I didn’t do this just to celebrate you finishing finals.”

Your heart drops a bit, inhaling sharply. You don’t look up at him, wrapping your arm around his waist and settling against his chest, bracing yourself for whatever he’s going to say. “I figured,” you say, your throat feeling a bit tight. “It was a bit… too grand of a gesture to just be for celebrating finishing finals.”

Neither of you speak for a moment, and you wait for him to explain, eyes sliding shut as you listen to the sound of his heart beating steadily in his chest to ground your creeping anxiety. 

“I’m going to have to leave for a while, I think,” Dazai says softly. “Things are… going to get bad. I don’t know how it’s going to go down yet, I don’t know when I’ll be back—I don’t know if-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, cutting himself off before the words can fall from his lips. He doesn’t have to, you know exactly what he was going to say—he doesn’t even know if he’ll be back. 

Your throat feels tight as you stare ahead at the wall. “That’s okay,” you say, your voice sounds a bit stronger than you actually feel. “I can wait.”

From the corner of your eye, you see his head snap in your direction and you don’t have to look at him to know that he probably has that twisted, conflicted expression on his face. He starts to say, “But I don’t know if-”

“I know,” you interrupt him because you don’t want to hear him say it out loud. “I know. I can wait. I’ll wait for you.”

Dazai doesn’t say anything in response, you don’t know what’s running through his head—you’re not sure if you want to know, or you suppose that’s not really true. You’d kill to understand what exactly goes on in Dazai’s head, you want to understand him better, you want him to rely on you like you do him. You want him; you want him for all that he is, no more masks and no more hiding. Just him. 

You’re not given the chance to linger in your thoughts. Dazai moves closer to you, lifting one hand to cup the back of your head and turn your face toward him; he doesn’t waste a second before pressing his lips to yours, they’re chapped and familiar, you’ve kissed him hundreds of times since that party but this one feels different. It feels desperate, as if he’s afraid to forget the taste of you or the feeling of your touch.

He shifts his body closer to yours, pushing you back gently until you’re laying flat on your bed with him hovering on top of you—his lips don’t move away from yours for even a second. It’s dizzying, honestly. He kisses you like he wants to consume you, like you’ll disappear at any given second; his tongue brushes against your bottom lip and your lips part instinctively for him.

His body slides on top of yours, narrow hips slotting between your thighs—there’s no space between the two of you, you can feel the heat of his body radiating against yours, you can feel his fingers intertwining just a bit too tightly into your hair, causing a pleasant sting to spread through your scalp, you can feel his bulge pressing against your pelvis. 

Oh, you think to yourself, sighing into his mouth as his tongue traces the inside of your lips, as if trying to create a map of your mouth. It’s soft and gentle, you think he might be tracing letters on your tongue but you’re so hazed out that you can’t concentrate enough to figure out what they are with the added feeling of the fingers of his free hand tracing up and down your side.

And then, as if he’s had enough of the slow pace, he deepens the kiss. You think there’s something distinctively filthy about the way that Dazai’s tongue drags against the roof of your mouth before he separates your mouths so he can trail wet kisses along your jaw, the gentle traces on your side becoming a much more firm grip on your hip as he hooks one of your legs around his waist to tentatively roll his hips against yours.

Your body aches at the feeling of his bulge nudging up against your core, the friction setting all of your nerves on fire. This isn’t the first time that the two of you have started to take the next step—kisses becoming just a bit too heavy, touches becoming just a bit too desperate—but every time he ends up withdrawing, and god, you think you might die if he does now too. His lips drag down your neck, he’s reckless with his teeth as he scrapes them against your skin, tongue tracing patterns down to your collarbone where he sucks at your skin hard, drawing a choked, breathy moan from you.

His fingers bite into your skin as his lips trail down lower—lower than they ever have before, down to plump flesh of your breast, to the low cut line of your dress—your lashes flutter and lips part and you want to beg him ‘please, don’t stop’ but you don’t think you’re capable of speaking right now, mind fogged with desire. He keeps the pressure on your cunt with slow and lazy rolls of his hips, each movement putting more and more friction on your clit and-

And he’s stopping??

Your breath catches when he suddenly rests his forehead in the crook of your neck, catching his own breath as his body stills and you can feel his arms tensing as he prepares to push himself off of you.

You don’t let him. 

With the leg you still have hooked around his waist, you flip the two of you over. His pupils are blown wide as he stares up at you, a surprised ‘oof’ escaping his lips. You think he’s beautiful. You really do. His lips are pink and swollen and wet with spit, his cheeks are flushed, hair an unruly mess haloed around his head; you lean down to press your lips against his, taking the lead yourself now, and you relish in the muffled groan he lets out into your mouth as you grind your hips down against his clothed cock.

It’s a short kiss for how sloppy and debauched it is, tongues sliding against each other’s and lips clashing messily, hips rocking in sync—hot, blood curdling, but you have questions that need to be answered before you continue. He chases your lips when you pull away, a distressed noise forming in the back of his throat. 

“Why don’t you want to fuck me?” you finally ask the words that have been plaguing you for almost two whole months. 

Dazai stares at you as if you’ve grown two heads, and you’d be embarrassed at asking the question if the past two months haven’t been weighing so heavily on your shoulders. He looks pointed down his body, to where his cock is hard, straining painfully against his black slacks, and then he looks back up at you as if to say, what are you talking about? But you aren’t letting it go that easily.

“Don’t give me that,” you snap, your nails digging crescents into his shoulders through his dress shirt, wrinkled now from your time lounging about and indulging in one another. “You know what I’m talking about. We’ve been together for two months and every time we’re about to take the next step, you stop it, you were about to now too, weren’t you?” 

Dazai grimaces suddenly and that’s all of the confirmation you need. You pull back, a bit hurt, but before you can withdraw completely, his hand darts out to grab your bicep, stopping you. 

“It’s not… you,” he finally says, voice a bit hoarse—you don’t know if it’s because of the way you’re caught in a position where you’re still half grinding down on his cock or if it’s because he doesn’t want to have this conversation, but you’re instantly rolling your eyes.

“Okay, if you’re going to hit me with the ‘it’s not you, it’s me,’ we’re going to have problems, Osamu.”

The grin he gives you is wry, his eyes still half-lidded as lays back against the bed again, letting out a sigh. He lets go of your bicep, hand falling down to your thigh to rub absent circles with his thumb as he stares up at the ceiling.

“I…” he trails off, as if considering his words, and you’re patient because you can tell he’s trying to be open and honest with you, vulnerable in a way he rarely ever is. “I’ve slept around a lot, and I know that you’ve probably heard that from the rest of the Agency and even if you haven’t, we’ve ran into a few… uh… we’ve ran into a few ex-acquaintances of mine while out on dates. I’ve never actually had a relationship. I don’t really know what I’m doing, I just don’t want you to think I only wanted you for sex.”

Your eye twitches. 

“Dazai Osamu,” you say with a heavy sigh, leaning forward to cup his cheeks with both of your hands. He looks up at you with those big brown eyes that you can never say no to. He leans his face into your hand as his lashes flutter, you stroke his cheekbones gently with your thumbs. “For someone so intelligent, you really are the stupidest man I’ve ever met.”

You don’t give him time to get offended by your words, leaning down to kiss him again. This kiss is slower, just as intimate but not quite as depraved—lips gliding against each other’s, tongues teasing in a slow dance. His hands rest carefully on your hips and yours stay cupping his cheeks, you kiss him until your lungs scream for air and even then, you kiss him longer, reluctant to separate from him.

When you finally do, you rest your forehead to his, eyes fluttering shut as you share a thin sliver of air, dizzy from the feeling of breathing in one another’s air. Your thumb caresses his cheek, fingers intertwining with his dark locks, you press one more kiss to his lips, this one short and sweet, and then you say, “I want to have sex with you. Please fuck me, Osamu.” 

He’ll deny it later, but the noise that slips from his lips is nothing short of a whimper as his grip on your hips tightens and he leans in to steal another kiss. He doesn’t move to switch your positions, seemingly content to stay beneath you, so you press him back down until he’s laying flat against the mattress, hands sliding down from his cheeks to rest against his chest as you tilt your head to the side to deepen the kiss, letting out a pleased hum against his lips when you feel one of his hands play with the hem of your dress, fingers dipping beneath the cloth, teasing. You kiss the corner of his mouth, and then down to his jawline, nipping at the sensitive skin and feeling him shiver. 

“You’ll wait for me?” he asks suddenly, voice soft, biting back a groan as you roll your hips against his. He sounds hesitant, as if he doesn’t entirely believe you. 

“Yes,” you tell him, lifting your head from his jaw to hover over his face again, fingers tracing his cheekbone, leaning down to press another chaste kiss against his lips. He tries to chase after your lips as you pull away, but you only give him a playful smile before leaning back again.

“Why?” Dazai asks hoarsely—he looks at you as if he’s desperate to know the answer, and the words linger dangle off of the edge of your tongue.

Because I love you. 

You think you love him more than you’ve ever loved anyone else in the world—he makes you laugh when you can’t even bring yourself to smile, he makes you feel light when you swear you have the whole world weighing down on your shoulders, and he does it even though you know he struggles himself. And you want him to let you be there for him the same way that he always is for you, but he always closes off when you try.

Except now. 

“Because you’re worth waiting for,” you say instead of those other three damning words.

“I’m not.” Dazai shakes his head, and it almost sounds like he’s trying to warn you, but you only cup his cheeks again and force him to still.

“Don’t tell me what is and isn’t worth it,” you say, giving him another teasing smile before adding, “I decide that for myself, and you are.”

“I’m really not,” he stresses, “I-”

You don’t let him finish, instead leaning down to cut him off with another kiss—he barely kisses you back, but you don’t really care because you only meant to stop him from talking anyway. 

“You are,” you murmur, your lips graze his jaw again and you can feel him shiver beneath you again.

His fingers tighten around your hips and he’s flipping you onto your back in an instant. Your vision spins, a gasp pulling from your lips, and he gives you no time to regain your bearings as he bunches your dress to your hips, lips finding yours as his fingers fumble to push your panties to the side before he slides his middle finger and ring finger deep inside you, without all of the practiced ease you expected from him, more akin to a nervous boy who’s terrified of making a mistake.

Your jaw goes slack, head pressing back against the pillow, back arching up. Dazai’s lips move to the next available part of your body when he loses your lips: sucking at the skin on the underside of your jaw. As soon as he hears the choked gasp of his name, sees the way your body reacts to his touch, he seems to instantly lose his nerves. You can feel a wicked smile edge at his lips against your skin and as he presses soft kisses to your skin in lieu of the harsh sucks, he makes up for the gentleness there by fucking you with his fingers so brutally that your lips part but you can’t even make a single noise. 

“This what you wanted, bella?” he purrs, but his voice is rough, exposing just how affected he is as he watches you writhe under his touch. “To think, here I was trying to be good and all you were thinking about was when I was finally going to split you open on my cock. How long did I keep you waiting, hm?” 

You don’t respond. You can’t respond. All you can focus on is the drag of his long, lithe fingers against your walls, the sudden stretch, the sloppy sound of his fingers driving in and out of your cunt. It’s wet and filthy and you can barely even breathe, much less speak.

You wanted this. You wanted this so bad. You remember all of the nights you’d spent desperately fucking your fingers, trying to pretend they were his but yours aren’t nearly as long, they can’t hit all of the places his do. You remember coming home with your face on fire, body itching with desire from the casual advances he made but never acted upon. You remember throwing yourself into bed, careful to keep a hand pressed to your mouth or your pillow over your face so he can’t hear from the other room as you let out muffled whimpers. You’ve wanted this so bad, you’ve imagined it so many times before but it pales in comparison to actually having him. His fingers feel so much better, dragging against your walls and pushing back inside of you hard. He’s so much prettier, dark hair matted to his forehead, pupils blown wide and lips still swollen and puffy from kisses; his voice is edged with so much wanton need that you could probably get off from it alone.

The heat spreads through your body fast. Your head feels all light and hazy. Your abdomen twists and coils and god, there’s no way you’ll cum just from this, there’s no way, but your breath becomes quick and pitched, your lungs start to burn and-

And he stops. 

“I hate you,” you sob when he purposely stills his fingers inside of you after hearing you reach the edge, feeling the way your walls were starting to clamp down on him. “Osamu-”

He clicks his tongue, lifting his face from your neck to hover above you. His eyes are suddenly mirthful and cruel, his smile is sharp and dangerous—a monster, you’d unleashed a monster. 

His free hand comes up so he can brush his knuckles against your cheekbone, fingers tracing the contours of your face before coming to land on your bottom lip, plump and wet from all of his kisses.

“Answer my question,” he says as he traces the outline of your lips. “How long? Fuck, you’re so wet, sliding in like it’s nothing, could probably fuck you as you are right now but I wanna feel you come apart on my fingers first. Tell me, how long have you wanted me to fuck you?” 

You don’t even know what you’re saying, forcing something out about your date at the Sankeien Garden two months ago and you remember the way he’d looked so pretty beneath the sakura blossoms and you felt so dirty because all you could think about was dragging him back to your apartment and having him in every way possible. His eyes widen when you admit the date, breath hitching and lips parting.

“That long?” he whispers, eyes searching yours as if to make sure you’re not lying and you think he’s stupid because you hardly have the headspace to think much less lie. His smile widens, teeth looking distinctly close to knives under the dim lighting of the penthouse suite of the resort. He leans down to graze his teeth against your neck. “Well, far be it from me to keep you waiting any longer.” 

He lifts his head again before he continues the thrusts of his fingers, so he can watch you, surely—not as harshly, this time he’s precise and steady, each stroke has the pads of his fingers rubbing up against that soft spot inside of you, forcing your head into the clouds and your eyes to roll back.

“Did you get yourself off to the thought of me?” he breathes out, pupils blown wide, you try to rock your hips in time with his fingers but his free hand comes down to your pelvis, pinning you down with that deceptive strength of his. “Press your hand to your mouth to cover the noise, fuck yourself with your fingers while I was sitting in the next room over before we started sharing a bed?”

A broken sob spills from your lips, Dazai’s thumb presses against your clit when you don’t respond. Your thighs tense and tremble, instinctively going to clamp down on his hand but Dazai’s knee wedges between your legs before you can, forcibly keeping them spread. You think you should be embarrassed, you sound so wet, so sloppy, each thrust of his fingers and you can feel the slick splattering across your inner thighs, if you were any more coherent you’d be humiliated but Dazai looks absolutely reverent.

“You did, didn’t you?” he laughs breathlessly. “I heard noises sometimes, I thought maybe you were having nightmares, was tempted to go in and check on you sometimes. Good thing for you I didn’t then, yeah? Would’ve caught my dirty girl fucking herself to the thought of me, wouldn’t that have been a sight?” 

Spots dot your vision, your nails claw at the sheets of the bed and you press your face halfway into the mattress as you desperately try to push away your rapidly approaching high, not wanting to cum so quickly, but it’s a losing battle with Dazai’s filthy words ringing through your ears and his fingers splitting you open. 

“You must have been so desperate when we started sharing a bed, couldn’t even get yourself off at night anymore. Poor baby, if you’d have just said something I would’ve buried myself between your thighs from sunset to sunrise,” Dazai coos, and you don’t even have to look at him to know his grin is suddenly much more lecherous. “... Unless you just waited until I fell asleep. Did you ever get yourself off while I was laying asleep next to you? Tell me.”

You won’t tell him. You won’t tell him. He’ll never let you live it down but you’ve lost control of your body, your mouth moves before your brain can tell it to stop: “Once,” you choke out, “only once.” 

And Dazai moans, it’s unabashed and wanton, eyes fluttering shut as soon as your words register and then he’s picking up the pace of his fingers, precise and ruthless and you don’t even know what you’re trying to say but it doesn’t matter because the only noise that spills from your lips is just another moan, garbled between his name and a please. Distantly, you think the bandages on his wrist and his expensive slacks must be ruined, the lewd sound of his fingers pushing in and out of you drowning out all other noise.

“I’m gonna-” you try to gasp out to warn him, head tossed back and hair matted to your forehead, they’re the only intelligible words to leave your lips but Dazai gets what you’re trying to say, of course.

“Yeah, you are,” he rasps, watching with the devotion of a disciple to his god as your back arches and cries of his name escape your lips. 

He scissors his fingers inside of you, presses down hard on your clit, and you’re gone, you cry his name so loud that you think you should be embarrassed because there’s no way the other resort guests can’t hear what’s happening but in the moment, you’re too fucked out to care. You think you might be dying, your heart thudding in your ears, your body on fire, you don’t think you’ve ever cum so hard in your entire life.

Your body spasms, trembles; he rides out your high, fucking his fingers slowly into you, watching the way you whimper and writhe, you think tears might be spilling over your cheeks, reeling from the intensity of your orgasm, and your thoughts are confirmed when Dazai leans over you, tongue dating out to lick away the tears. 

Your breath hitches and your thighs quake, a jolt spreading through your body when he finally pulls his fingers out of you, your walls still convulsing around the digits. He sits up straight again, thighs straddling your hips and you can feel his cock pressing against your pelvis and you feel insatiable because you just finished and it’s not enough. Even as your body screams with sensitivity, not ready for anymore stimulation, your lashes flutter at the thought of his cock stretching you out, fucking so deep into you that you can feel him in your belly, thicker than his fingers, longer.

He brings his fingers up to his lips, sucking them into his mouth and you watch as a low, muffled groan escapes his lips, eyes rolling back as he sucks your cum right off of his fingers, not letting a single drop go to waste. Filthy. He’s so filthy. Utterly shameless. And god, do you need him. 

As if he can read your mind, his hands fall to his belt, fingers fumbling to undo the buckle and pull it off. He flings it over to the side haphazardly, and you reach up, grabbing his dark tie and pulling him down to kiss him again. He moans into your mouth, one arm coming to rest on the mattress by your head to prop himself up and the other still stuffed between your bodies, desperately trying to unbutton and unzip his slacks.

God, he kisses you like you’re about to disappear, as if any moment could be your last. His tongue flattens against yours, sweeping against the roof of your mouth, mapping it out until it’s scorched into his memory; you can hardly do anything but lay there and let him, fingers fisted weakly around his tie. 

When he finally does get his pants unbuttoned and unzipped, he doesn’t even bother to pull them off. He shoves them down just enough to free his cock, and your breath hitches when you feel the way it slides against your lower stomach. Your dress bunched up to your chest, you can feel the precum smearing against your skin—he’s so long, you can tell without even looking and for a split second, you wonder if you’ll even be able to take him all the way. 

Dazai hardly gives you enough time for the fears to fester. His fingers wrap around your panties to pull them off but the material is thin and lacy and it only tears under his frustrated yank. You don’t even care, you can’t bring yourself to—you’ll make him but you new ones. He won’t complain about that of all things, in fact, he’ll probably have the time of his life. 

As soon as your panties are out of the way, Dazai is lining himself up with your cunt—he doesn’t fuck you, not yet, and you think he’s evil for the way he rolls his hips slowly, letting his cock slide between your folds, pelvic bone grinding against your clit. You let out a whine—a whine, you’ve never whined before in your life but you don’t know how else to describe the noise that escapes your lips. Dazai can’t even tease you for it, though, because his whole body shivers at the feeling of his cock slipping between your folds, breath shaky.

“Oh fuck,” he breathes out, and then he free hand curls around your thigh, wrapping it around his waist, and he finally thrusts his hips forward, pushing inside of you. 

The stretch burns, it burns so good even with how thoroughly he prepped you with his fingers and Dazai lets out such a pornographic moan that you think you might cum just from the sound of it. His lashes flutter, pink dusts his cheek, he rests his forehead against yours, breath so shaky that you think maybe he might be about to cum.

“Feels so good,” he gasps, next to your head, his fingers twist the sheets of the bed until his knuckles are white. “What’re you doin’ to me?” 

His words hardly register, but when they do, you’re perplexed.

“What d’ya mean, Osamu?” you breathe out, and the way his body shudders above yours at the sound of his name leaving your lips is fucking heavenly.

“I’ve never-” he chokes over another moan and your throat feels dry when you realize he really might just be about to cum, “it’s never-”

“Hm?” you press when his voice trails off and his eyes half back. You tilt your head up to ghost your lips over his jaw, nibbling over the bandages covering his Adam’s apple. It bobs beneath your teeth and he lets out another shaky noise.

“It’s never felt like this,” he pushes out, the words sound like a near slur. “I feel so-”

“So what?”

“So good.” God, his voice comes out close to a sob, broken and cracking, and when you try to move your hips, desperate for him to finally move, he lets out a panicked sound: “I’ll cum. I’ll cum. Don’t move yet, don’t-”

You still if only out of sheer shock of how worked up he already is. His whole body is trembling, he’s gnawing at his bottom lip, you can feel his cock twitching inside you, as if begging for release already. And your body is aching, your tummy is hot and your head is fuzzy, but it pales in comparison to the sight of Dazai crumbling above you just from the feeling of being inside of you. All of smooth talking and filthy words are gone, leaving behind only a man on the brink of falling apart.

“Feel like a virgin.” This sounds distinctly closer to a sob now, and you can’t help but notice that his cheeks are red and hot, his lashes are wet as they flutter shut—you wonder if he’s embarrassed. “S’tight, and-and wet. Fuck, fuck, what’re ya doing to me, bella? ‘s never happened before.” 

Your hands slide up his body to cup his cheeks, dragging his face back down to press your lips against his, and when he moans into your mouth as soon as your lips are touching, he’s finally rocking his hips up into you. The pace is harsh and erratic, as if he’s already desperately trying to chase his release, and you can’t breathe, you can’t think. The tip of his cock bullies so deep inside of you that you think you might die, you think he might actually be splitting you open.

Your lips part in a noiseless moan, your head spins, Dazai fucks you harder, faster, so deeply that it almost hurts because each thrust has him brushing closer and closer to your cervix, hips slapping against your ass and thighs so roughly they’ll probably be bruised tomorrow; it tears the air from your lungs, you think you might pass out because you can’t seem to catch your breath. All of his finesse and touches driven by practiced ease are long gone; there’s something about this so carnal, driven by sheer lust, that it has your head in the clouds. And Dazai is always loud, he fills every silence he stumbles upon, but he’s especially loud now as he moans your name and claws at the sheets next to your head, gasping and panting and cursing each time he feels your walls convulse around him. 

You don’t even realize it when you cum. There’s no build up this time. One thrust sends you over the edge as his cock presses up against that soft spot inside of you and his pelvic bone grinds just right over your clit, and instantly you’re spasming beneath him, your nails dig into his dress shirt and your body arches against his, head tossed back against the mattress and vision going spotty. Your lips are moving but you don’t know if screaming his name or if there’s no noise leaving you at all.

All you do know is that as soon as you’re cumming on his cock, walls tightening around him, Dazai’s eyes are rolling into the back of his head, hair matted to his forehead as he tosses his head back, jaw falling slack. There’s no warning when his hips still against yours and he’s suddenly pumping you full of his cum.

He slumps on top of you, body limp and shoulders still trembling in the aftershocks of his orgasm. You’re desperately trying to ground yourself again, trying to catch your breath and slow your heart rate, Dazai’s face is buried in your neck and you can feel how his back rises and falls rapidly as he tries to catch his own breath.

“So embarrassing,” you hear him slur from where he’s pressed against the crook of your neck still. “‘s never happened before.”

You can’t help the giggle that spills from your lips and he groans against you.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he complains, rolling off of you so he can pull you into his chest. Your eyes flutter shut as you rest half on top of him, letting out a soft sigh. “Next time, I’ll show you. You’ll regret laughing.”

“I’m sure,” you say, more to placate him than anything else, and he grumbles but doesn’t respond.

The two of you bask in each other’s presence for a few moments before he finally asks again, “You’ll really wait for me?” His voice is so soft that you might not have heard it if you weren’t so close to him.

You turn your face to the side to kiss his chest, smiling against his skin. “Only if you promise not to forget me while you’re gone.”

He lets out a breathless laugh, tilting his head down to kiss the top of your head. His voice is hoarse and stripped bare to of his unbound emotions for the first time as he says, “The thought of you will be the only thing that gets me through this.”

However bad that Dazai might’ve thought the weeks without you were going to be, it’s been worse. Only sheer willpower and the image of you waiting for him back home is pushing him through the trials and tribulations that Dostoevsky continues to push him through. 

At first, the mind games and taunts and the puzzles of misdirection and manipulation were fun; Dazai has never conversed so long with someone who can keep up with his every thought and every plan. Fyodor Dostoevsky is impressive, Dazai can’t deny that, but the fun of the games is swiftly coming to an end the longer he has to stay in this wretched cell with even more wretched company.

He doesn’t have much to do—he has around four square meters to move around in, which is barely enough for him to comfortably stretch. All he does is lay in bed all day, waiting for Ango’s signals as he tries to anticipate Dostoevsky’s each and every move. His brain throbs and aches, having been placed on overdrive for weeks without rest because he knows one mistake on his part will lead to the fall of the Agency, the death and ruin of the few people he might actually consider friends.

The rare moments he allows it to rest, he thinks of you. He wonders what you’re doing back in Yokohama—maybe having coffee at that cafe near your apartment building, or meeting some of your friends from university for drinks. He wonders if you’re holding true to your words, if you’re actually waiting for him or if you moved on the moment he disappeared—he hopes that you are, because the thought of you, and getting to be with you again, is the only thing that’s keeping the gears of his worn out, exhausted brain turning.

A part of him wonders if you know what’s happening. Well, he knows that you must have some inkling—the Decay of the Angel’s plot has been a vastly public one, and you’re typically on top of current events. He wishes that he knew your thoughts on it. He wonders if you’d fallen victim to the Book, believing that the Agency are the terrorists that they’ve been written to be. He wonders if you were able to fight against the Book’s influence, because he knows that the Book can’t possibly be infallible—nothing is, there will always be cracks for exceptions to seep through. He hopes that you’re one of them.  

He wonders if his crimes had become public knowledge too. 

The thought makes his stomach churn uncomfortably, regret creeping through his chest because if you were going to learn about his past, it should’ve been from him, not from a random news outlet that’ll make him out to be the treacherous monster he really is, the one he’s taken so much care to hide from you. At least if he’d been the one to tell you, he could’ve framed it in a way of his choice—though he’s not sure how exactly he could frame something like that in his favor, it at least would’ve been better than the news. 

He wants to ask Ango, but he knows that he can’t—not when the more pressing matter is the Agency and clearing its name. His own personal matters have to be pushed to the side until that’s handled, no matter how much his heart screeches at him otherwise.

This is why he hates emotions.

“Dazai,” Dostoevsky suddenly says and Dazai is immediately ripped from the brief respite he’d allowed his brain, although it wasn’t much of a respite considering he spent the whole time anxious about you. A smile graces Dostoevsky’s face that Dazai instantly doesn’t like. “Let us switch chess boards for a moment.”

Dazai’s eyes narrow. “To which one?” 

“Yokohama,” Dostoevsky says absently. “... Knight from D5 to E3.” 

Dazai stares for a moment—Knight from D5 to E3? The move is somewhat appalling in Dazai’s mind, but only because he can’t put together the reasoning behind it. It’s a dangerous push onto his side of the board, and for what reason? Most of Dazai’s pieces are setting up on the opposite corner of the board for an attempt to take out Dostoevsky’s bishop, which is what Dazai expected Dostoevsky to focus on protecting. 

Dazai sits up in his bed, unable to hide the way his brows furrow a bit as he visualizes their chessboard, eyes darting around to each piece, trying to figure out what exactly in this game has slipped past his weary brain, lost in the dozens of chess games that he’s currently playing against Dostoevsky. And as he looks from piece to piece, he begins to understand.

There are only two pieces left vulnerable to the play that Dostoevsky is about to make. 

Dazai’s expression hardens, Dostoevsky’s smile widens. 

If Dazai doesn’t continue with his plan on the opposite side of the board, the opportunity will be lost and the Agency will not get another like this. Dazai clearly underestimated just how little Dostoevsky cares about his pieces—he doesn’t care whether or not his bishop is captured—he has a greater aim anyway. 

The chessboard of the game he’s visualizing begins to crumble before his eyes and his vision starts to tunnel, a chill spreads through his chest, to his arms and to his fingers. 

He needs to contact Ango, but Dazai’s heart is racing on its own now and he can barely control himself enough to send a message to the older man. In one move, Dostoevsky will be able to position his knight in a way that will have Dazai’s king in check and his queen left vulnerable. And Dazai will be left with no choice—allowing Ranpo to be captured by the Hunting Dogs is not an option, everything will fall apart. He needs to contact Ango. But he realizes that even if he does get the message through, he doesn’t know if Ango will receive it or if he’s too busy with plans at the Sky Casino. And even if he does receive it, Ango might not even be able to do anything. 

“Dazai, dear, you’re taking quite a long time with this move—don’t tell me I have you in a corner already. It would be very disappointing, I expected better from you,” Dostoevsky’s faux-congenial voice mocks him from the other cell, and Dazai wants blood. 

“Rook from B5 to F5,” Dazai’s voice sounds hollow and cold to his own ears as he continues forward with the plan he had set in motion at the cost of the one person Dazai doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle losing. The tips of his fingers feel numb as he waits for the inevitable. 

Dostoevsky’s teeth are like knives.

“How callous and cold-hearted of you. I must say, I’m impressed—I really didn’t think you had it in you, you truly are the prodigy they all claim you to be. Knight from D5 to E3. Check to King at F1.”

“King from F1 to F2.”

“Knight from E3 to D1.”

And just like that, the one piece that Dazai has refused to touch the whole game falls. His ears ring and his brain throbs painfully, his throat feels dry and scratchy but he refuses to give Dostoevsky the reaction that he’s waiting for. The Russian finally speaks the words that finalize the play:

“Queen captured.”

“138 counts of conspiracy to murder. 312 counts of extortion. 625 counts of assorted fraud. Numerous other known crimes, countless unknown crimes. A former executive of the Port Mafia known as the Demon Prodigy, the youngest underboss in the history of the Mafia.”

You think it’s ridiculous. Or, you want to think that it’s ridiculous. You want to condemn the words as ludicrous as the idea of the members of the Armed Detective Agency being terrorists. These whole past two weeks have thrown you for a loop—you were sitting at your laptop watching a reality show to pass time when you got the notifications on your phone regarding the terrorist attack on the Ministry of Defense, the very place you were supposed to start working at soon. 

You’d been watching with your heart in your throat until they were finally unveiled, and the moment they were, you were caught entirely off guard because what on earth? You saw it with your own eyes, but you still can’t bring yourself to believe it because what do you mean Mister Fifty-Eight Ideals with a moral high ground taller than the peak of Everest, Kunikida Doppo, is a terrorist? Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, the sweet boy who joins his sister down in the cafe with you when you’re waiting for Dazai to finish getting scolded by Kunikida, buying you a coffee and pastry? Izumi Kyouka, the young girl who looked at you with stars in her eyes when you brought her a crepe from the bakery near your apartment? Yosano Akiko, the woman who loves so hard and so deeply even if she does hide behind a rough facade, taking you, a stranger, in without hesitation just because of how happy you make Dazai?

There’s no way. You live in a world where men can transform into tigers and women can bring people back from the brink of death—there has to be something supernatural going on, you can’t bring yourself to believe that this is reality. 

But are you equally as sure about the allegations against Dazai?

You try to make sure that the conflict doesn’t show on your face as your mind races—you remember the night in Kyoto when you asked him about his previous job and how he reacted to it, you also remember how the waiters and the hostess and even the owner had treated him. Your heart sinks and your throat tightens a bit, you have to force yourself to focus on the conversation at hand.

The young man dressed in a burgundy military uniform sitting before you has a smile that can only be described as cruel, the red tips of his hair brushing his chin as he tilts his head to the side. “I do hope you understand how critical it is for us to obtain as much information as possible. We are authorized to go to any lengths to prevent the deterioration of this situation—if someone is suspected of giving refuge to any of the terrorists, or assisting them in any other way, they will be charged with conspiracy against the government and the aiding and abetting of global terrorism. We have full power to act on our own discretion and take in anyone who presumes to be uncooperative to our questioning.”

“Is that a threat?” you finally ask, absently circling your coffee mug. 

There are people looking at you—you’d chosen to sit outside of the cafe, and the streets are busy. You recognize two elderly women who frequent the cafe giving you concerned looks; three high school students sharing intrigued looks as one of them starts to video the encounter, knowing that any footage of the famed Hunting Dogs and the ongoing international crisis is a quick ticket to going viral; a businessman and his wife meeting for an early lunch before he goes back to work. 

Good, you think. 

“Only if you have something to hide,” the young man, who introduced himself as Jouno Saigiku, replies easily, smile sharpening a bit. “Do you have something to hide?” 

“Why would I have something to hide?” you ask instead of replying, eyes narrowing. 

“You tell me.”

“I have nothing to tell you.”

Distantly, you can hear the chatter of passerbyers walking down the sidewalk, the screeching of brakes as a car comes to an abrupt stop a few blocks down, the soft music coming from inside the cafe, but your gaze is tunneled on the young man sitting in front of you. His face is deceptively calm, eyes turned up and expression smooth, but you can see how the corner of his lip is pulled taut. More people begin paying attention to your conversation—you recognize some of them as regular patrons of the cafe who you’ve spoken to multiple times. 

“I think you do,” Jouno says idly. “Even if it weren’t for the way your heart is racing… this is damning enough, isn’t it?”

You raise your chin as Jouno slides over a manila folder to you. You don’t move to look at it for a moment, eyes lingering on his face before you finally flip it open, lips pressing together tightly. Dozens of pictures of you and Dazai lay within the envelope, pulled from CCTV tape all around the city—most of the pictures are innocent enough to pass off as two acquaintances having a cup of coffee, but there are a few questionable ones. 

And god, you miss him. Just seeing his face is enough to make your heart long for him, it’s only been what? A week and a half? But it’s been hell going from seeing him every day to not even knowing what happened to him until now… with all of this, learning about his crimes, finding out he’s imprisoned in the highest security ability user prison in the world, as you’re being interrogated by a member of the country’s most elite military unit. 

It’s too much, you think. What the hell are you even supposed to think of it all? 

You don’t even have time to think, not with this rabid dog sitting in front of you ready to leap for your throat at the first sign of weakness.

“How so?” you ask after you get your head back on straight, flipping the folder shut. “I’ve met with Dazai Osamu before. So have dozens of people in this cafe, hundreds of people around the city. Misaki-san, the older lady over there, has lunch with Kunikida-san twice weekly. Sayuri-chan, the high-schooler sitting two tables over, goes to Yosano-sensei for check-ups because her parents are hardly around to bring her to the doctor’s office. Takeuchi-san has tea with Fukuzawa-dono every Wednesday. Half of the city is intimately connected with the Armed Detective Agency, in one way or another—they’re active citizens, frequent faces around the streets, always helping when given the chance. Are you going to interrogate every citizen who has ever spent free time with a member of the Armed Detective Agency? Accuse them of conspiracy against the government and the aiding and abetting of terrorism?”

Your words cause a bit of a subtle shockwave across the eavesdroppers—a range of emotions from anxiety to indignance crossing faces, just as you hoped would happen. You figured that there would be no way of you really getting out of this, but you hope at least to trigger a bit of unrest. You know that a lot of the city’s civilians haven’t been fond of how the Hunting Dogs are handling this situation, despite them having authority from the Prime Minister to go to any lengths to regain control over the crisis.

And it’ll hit them hard seeing an upstanding, regular civilian being targeted for vague affiliation with a group that thousands of people in the city have had a vague affiliation with. Because if it happens to an upstanding, regular civilian, it can happen to any upstanding, regular civilian, and if it can happen to any upstanding, regular civilian, it can happen to them. You think most of the civilians in the city have been biting their tongues out of fear of the escalating terror, but once any civilian that’s ever affiliated themselves with the Agency becomes at risk for being under suspicion, under threat, then they’ll be forced to voice their discontent lest they be targeted next. 

“So, we’re going to do this the hard way then,” Jouno notes pleasantly, his smile is tight and there’s a tinge to his voice that you can only decipher as a threat. “Good, I was hoping it turned out this way.”

You remember the warning you’d gotten the night before: ‘The Hunting Dogs will come after you next, get out of the city - R’ and a part of you wishes that you’d taken the warning more seriously and gotten the hell out of Yokohama in the middle of the night before you could be interrogated. You’ll lose your internship, it might affect your standing in your university. You wonder if your brother would be disappointed, he spent his whole life trying to build a better one for you—sacrificing his happiness, morality, and eventually his life—and here you are about to throw it away.

Are you really going to do this?

You swallow thickly, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. You think of Dazai—you think of the chilling list of crimes and his current imprisonment, you think of the promise you made before he fell off the face of the earth, you think of the nights you spent together, you think of the past few months you’ve lived with him. You realize that they’ve been the happiest you’ve been in your entire life, and you think that your brother might understand, because more than giving you a better life, he wanted you to have a happy one. 

Yeah, you’re really going to do this. 

You’ll get your answers from Dazai himself. You know in your heart that something bigger is going on, there’s no way that the members of the Agency are the terrorists that the world claims them to be and you don’t know if something else could possibly be going on with Dazai and the allegations against him as well. You think you know deep down that there’s likely some semblance of truth to them, but you owe it to him—and more importantly, to yourself—to hear it directly from him. 

Until then, your loyalty stays with him. 

“I guess so,” you agree softly, before turning your gaze up to Agatsuma Misaki, who’s looking increasingly more distressed by the whole situation. “Misaki-san, would you please let Hotaru-san and Hideyoshi-san know what happened here? I’m sure they’ll be worried when I don’t return home tonight, I don’t want them to lose any sleep over me.” 

Agatsuma Misaki clutches her necklace to her chest as she nods, her wrinkled face bunched up in concern, and the woman sitting with her looks equally horrified. The three high schoolers sitting two tables away are sharing wide-eyed looks with each other, whispering under their breaths as they point to the one boy’s phone, still evidently recording. The businessman, Takeuchi Isamu, is watching with hawk eyes, but his fingers are tapping away at the phone he’s hiding beneath the table. 

Jouno Saigiku rises to his feet, smile sharp and bordering on malicious as he says your name and then: 

“You are under arrest for conspiracy against the government and aiding and abetting the Armed Detective Agency in their terrorism against the State of Japan and the entire world.”

— the only development in the smut scene itself is reader very briefly acknowledging that she loves him (internally, she doesn't tell him) and dazai acknowledging that he's avoided any intimacy because he's been worried that she's going to think he only was into her for sex because they've had encounters with ex flings of his & she's heard about him sleeping around from the rest of the agency. so a bit of openness from dazai and a brief acknowledgment of real feelings from reader.

#this chapter makes me want to explode and die (compliment) #happy ending when happy ending when #happy ending whe

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

ᡣ𐭩 I WALK THE LINE

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: an easy day of studying is interrupted when your boyfriend—yes! boyfriend!—shows up at your doorstep bleeding out. you think he's an idiot. you think you're even more of an idiot for falling in love with him. shit, did you really just think that? {wordcount: 8.2k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: part threeeeeeeee, starts off a bit abruptly at the start of the cannibalism arc, but i really didn't want to rehash the entire scene. HAHAH. the last scene IS my favorite scene actually, i just finished writing the uu parallel of it im so excited for you guys to read it! reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

“Your vitals weren’t hit because you still have a part to play in telling the Agency about the upcoming clash with the Mafia.”

Dazai’s fingers bite into the pavement, pain webbing through his body as the shock of the bullet wound laid into him by Dostoevsky’s sniper begins to fade away. It takes all of Dazai’s will to push himself onto his elbows, chest heaving as he gives him a moment’s pause to try to recuperate before rising to his feet. 

“You and I are similar, you said,” Dazai says, voice deceptively strong compared to the blood pooling around him. He forces himself to his knees, pressing the palm of his hand against the wound to slow the bleeding. No matter how much he may have expected Dostoevsky to pull something like this, he could never prepare for the pain that came along with it. “Certainly, we’re of the same kind, but we differ in one way—people are sinfully stupid, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, a hint of surprise washing through his face. “You… Did you know that the sniper was there? And yet you purposely came here to get this information?” 

Dazai smiles pointedly, confirming Dostoevsky’s question without even answering. He ignores the blood that dribbles from the corner of his lips. “What do you want with the Book?” 

“Hm,” Dostoevsky says, that impassive expression returning to his face as he turns to leave. “I’d like to use it to make a world without the sin of ability users.”

Dazai barks out a laugh, his chest screeches in protest at the action but still, he forces out: “Please, give that a go—if you even can, that is.”

The look that Dostoevsky casts over his shoulder is lethal, Dazai’s smile sharpens, but his mind is becoming muddled the longer he allows himself to sit here in pain, he needs to get to a hospital. He can barely breathe as he forces himself to his feet. He holds his hand to the bullet wound tearing through his chest, keeping pressure on the wound to slow the blood flow—it went all the way through, which is a good thing because at least he won’t have to deal with someone digging it out of him, but the pain is excruciating. His mind feels foggy and his body is pleading for him to rest but he knows he can’t, not yet, at least, he needs to warn the Agency before the Port Mafia attacks. 

His eyes are cutting as he turns his attention back to Fyodor Dostoevsky, who evidently has had enough of him considering he’s walking down the alley away from Dazai. Dazai glares after him, mind racing as he tries to figure out how exactly he should get back to the Agency, but even as the thought crosses his head he hears:

“Dazai-san!” 

The panicked voice comes from a nearby street, a bit aways from the alley. He recognizes Atsushi and withholds a sigh of relief, realizing that he just needs to wait for the boy to sniff out the blood and track him down.

“Ah, before I forget.” Dazai barely refrains from grimacing as the Russian’s voice rings through the alleyway. Fyodor Dostoevsky looks over his shoulder, an eerily amused expression on his face as he smiles thinly down at Dazai—Dazai instantly feels his blood go cold, knowing he isn’t going to like whatever leaves the man’s lips next. “I met your lover earlier today. She was quite… enchanting. She had interesting views on the world, I was very intrigued. It’s a shame, I would’ve liked to speak to her again.”

“What?” Dazai’s voice is hollow even to his own ears as he stares after Fyodor. 

“We’ll meet again in the promised land, Dazai.”

“Dazai-san! Where are you?”

Fyodor disappears from view as he turns out of the alley and Dazai leans against the wall trying to hold himself up, eyes wide and breath heavy. He tries to force himself to move forward, ignoring the way his wound screams for him to stop jostling around. His mind is on overdrive, panic beginning to consume every cell of his body as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head. A part of him wonders if it was just a way to throw Dazai off, but Dazai doubts it—if he knows Dostoevsky even half as well as he believes, then he knows that there’s likely at least some truth behind his words, and that means that Dostoevsky had some sort of contact with you today.

And that thought terrifies him. 

But he pushes away the panic, evening out his breathing as he focuses on getting to Atsushi and then to you, but he finds his knees buckling as another wave of pain hits him, squeezing his eyes shut as he waits for it to pass. 

But it doesn’t pass, and as much as he wants to try to grit his teeth and keep moving forward, spots start to swim in his vision and he’s forced to stop moving because he can’t afford to pass out before he warns Atsushi about the virus and tells him to bring Dazai to your apartment. He doesn’t even know if you’ll be there; he doesn’t even consider that if you’re not there, he’ll probably bleed out. He needs to know you’re okay.

He doesn’t know how this happened. He told himself over and over again that he wouldn’t let himself get attached to you, a part of him still wants to try to convince himself that he’s not attached even though the thought of denying it at this point is ludicrous. Evidently even Fyodor Dostoevsky has come to figure out how much you mean to him, which is exactly what he had come to fear the more he spent time with you because now you’re in danger just for your proximity to him.

Atsushi turns the corner and Dazai watches as his eyes widen—Kunikida is with him, luckily, and Dazai can barely hear himself speak over the sound of his heart thudding in his ears as he doesn’t even wait for them to ask what happened or if he’s okay, pushing out the words to explain what Dostoevsky had said to him and ask them to bring him to you, all the while his mind is flooded with thoughts of you. 

One kiss turned into two, two turned into three, three turned into a dozen, and a dozen turned into Dazai having an insatiable appetite for your strawberry chapstick and soft lips. Dazai has all but moved in with you, he can’t remember the last time he slept at the Agency’s dorms—weeks ago, probably. He hadn’t actually noticed how attached he’d become to you until now, fearing that Dostoevsky had targeted you as a means to get to him.

He lets out a weak breath as Kunikida wraps an arm around his waist to help him make his way to his car. The other man is still saying that there’s no way they’re not going to bring Dazai to a hospital but-

Past tense.

The realization hits him like a ton of bricks as Dostoevsky’s words echo through his head one last time. He’d been speaking in past tense about you.

You were enchanting.

You had interesting views on the world.

He would have liked to speak to you again.

Ash fills Dazai’s mouth, leaving it dry and heavy, his words crumbling as the entire world stills around him. He thinks that this is Odasaku all over again—that every person he ever comes to care about ends up dying. He thinks his touch is rotten and corroding, killing everything he touches. He needs to get to you, he needs to make sure you’re okay, because he can’t let this be like Odasaku again. 

“Bring me to her apartment or so help me, I’ll rip open the bullet wound so badly that not even getting me to the hospital will save me,” Dazai suddenly threatens, voice rough and so sharp of a command that Dazai is almost drawn back to the dark memories of his time with the Mafia, that it has both Atsushi and Kunikida staring at him with stunned expressions. Dazai hates pain, but he has every intention of following through with his threat if the two don’t do as he says.

“... I hope you know what you’re doing, Dazai,” Kunikida finally says tightly as Atsushi helps Dazai into the back seat of the car, keeping pressure on the bullet wound. “Repeat again what Dostoevsky told you while we drive.”

His eyes feel heavy and his body feels sluggish, he knows that Kunikida is only telling him to repeat himself to try to keep him from passing out but he can hardly think of Dostoevsky anymore, mind focused on you because he thinks that if Dostoevsky did something to you, Dazai might never forgive himself for ever inserting himself into your life and putting you in danger. Every time his eyes slide shut, he can picture your smile and the way you’d roll your eyes whenever he goes off on tangents about double suicide and fated lovers, he almost wants to hiss at Atsushi to leave him be whenever the boy shakes his shoulders to prevent him from falling asleep because every time he does, the image of you fades away.

His words are slurred as he explains to them what Dostoevsky had said again, and what it means for the Agency, all the while directing them to your apartment. He wants to sleep—he’s exhausted and in pain, but he knows that he can’t. Not yet. Not until he knows you’re okay. Once he knows that, he can allow himself to rest. 

Kunikida gets to your apartment complex in record time. If Dazai was any more coherent, he would make a gibe at the man for breaking the law by speeding but in his half-conscious state he can hardly even stand much less formulate an articulate thought. He isn’t even sure if either of them understand what he’s saying as he fumbles out your apartment number, but evidently they’re able to make it out as they haul him up to the second level and rap at your door loudly.

Dazai thinks that it feels like eternity waiting for the door to open. He thinks that if you don’t answer—if Dostoevsky did something to you because of him—then he deserves to bleed out here at your doorstep, because there’s no world in which he should live when you die because of him. 

The door to your apartment finally opens, his eyes meet yours, and the relief that washes through him is debilitating enough to finally make his body give into the lull of the spreading numbness throughout his body.

Your breath catches as Atsushi and Kunikida fumble to grab Dazai before he slumps over unconscious, fingers trembling as you open your door wide to let them through, motioning to the couch in the center of your room as you rush to the bathroom to grab the first-aid kit that you have stashed away beneath your sink. It’s been years since you’ve had to use it, and the familiar weight of it in your hands makes your throat clog and your heart ache from wounds that never properly healed.

“What happened?” you ask as you leave the bathroom and rush over to the three of them. They had placed Dazai on the couch, his blood seeping into your gray cushions, and your mind is drawn back to all the long nights you spent as a teenager with your brother in the same position and-

You take in a deep breath, a gulp of oxygen to clear your head before you move forward closer to the couch—you can’t afford to allow yourself any room to spiral. Atsushi is on the verge of tears—or, well, he is crying, actually. He’s sniffling as he rubs at his eyes while Kunikida kneels next to Dazai, keeping pressure on the wound. You exhale the breath you’d taken in and motion for Kunikida to move over so you can kneel in front of the wound.

“He was shot,” Kunikida says, voice tight, and you want to hit him with an obviously, but you’re more preoccupied with trying to roll Dazai over so you can figure out whether or not the bullet went all the way through. Kunikida obviously recognizes what you’re trying to do so he helps you roll him onto his side, you exhale in relief when you realize that it did, having Kunikida help you take his trench coat off before letting him rest back on the couch, wincing when you notice that he’s grimacing in pain even while unconscious.

“And you brought him here?” you ask, voice a bit louder and more hysterical than you mean for it to be but in your defense, the last thing you expected when you finally sat down to study for your upcoming finals was for your boyfriend—boyfriend, you still think giddily, as if he hadn’t formally asked you out almost three weeks ago and isn’t currently bleeding out on your couch—to show up at your door with his coworkers with a bullet wound. 

You slip on a pair of gloves and fumble for the sanitizer you’d brought with you out of the bathroom and Atsushi hands it to you when it falls on the ground. You let out a quiet thank you before dousing your hands in it—it reeks like shitty tequila and it nearly makes you gag.

Kunikida looks frustrated. “Take it up with him,” the man says sharply, eye twitching. “He threatened to open up his wound even more if we didn’t bring him here.”

You give both Kunikida and Atsushi odd looks. Kunikida is scowling and Atsushi gives you a helpless shrug, but you only shake your head as you force yourself to focus on the issue at hand. You hesitate for a moment before unbuttoning and sliding off his shirt as best as you can. The bandages covering his torso and chest are soaked with blood and frayed—you hesitate, because even though you and Dazai have been together for weeks, you’ve never seen what’s beneath his bandages. He’s always careful to keep them on, only changing them in the bathroom, and from the way Atsushi and Kunikida are both averting their eyes, they realize what you have to do and also feel uncomfortable.

It’s for the sake of saving his life, you tell yourself before taking the scissor that came with the first aid kit and cutting through the bandages. You try not to stare—you really do—but it’s hard not to when you realize that his entire chest and torso is covered with scars, big and small, jagged and clean. Instead, you again make yourself focus, reminding yourself that the longer you take, the more at risk Dazai is to bleeding out—the wound isn’t bleeding profusely, it must’ve been a clean shot, missing all of the major arteries luckily, but you don’t want to risk it.

You grab a gauze pad and douse it in the saline solution you’d bought years ago—you hope the solutions don’t expire, that would be bad. But you gently dab it onto the wound, doing your best to not cause him anymore discomfort. As you do so, your eyes trail down from his chest to his abdomen again and your mouth feels a bit dry, wondering how the hell he managed to get all of these scars. 

You turn your attention to Kunikida. “Can you clean here?” you ask quietly and Kunikida doesn’t respond, rather he just takes the gauze pad from you to mimic what you were doing, and you reach for a cloth, turning your attention to wiping the rest of the blood staining his skin so that when you’re done cleaning the wound and dressing it, you can wrap him back up. 

“You’ve done this before,” Kunikida finally says, and you can’t help but notice that he’s still not looking down at Dazai’s body, eyes trained on you as he dabs at the wound—he must have the self-control of a god because you can tell from the way his eyes are twitching that he must be curious to see what’s beneath his bandages. Atsushi, too, has his back to the couch, as if not to tempt himself to look. 

“Mhm,” you agree idly, a lump in your throat, eyes flickering up to the picture you have set up on the wall on the other side of the room. “My brother… he got involved with some underground fighting rings to make us money, he used to come home injured a lot, it was dangerous. Never had to deal with a bullet wound but I mean, I know the basics.”

Kunikida lets out a noise of acknowledgement and you motion for him to move again once you feel as though his torso and chest are clean enough to at least be able to bandage without instantly ruining them. You grab the dressing pad and apply it over the wound, layering it a few times just in case the blood starts to soak through before taping it to him.

“Help me sit him up so I can clean his back,” you say, grabbing your supplies and shifting places with Kunikida so that you can tend to his back.

You don’t say anything else as you begin to repeat the process on his back, cleaning the wound with a gauze pad before wiping away the blood staining the rest of his skin. You think that his back might be even worse than his chest and abdomen—there’s a jagged scar from the corner of his shoulder to his opposite hip, deep and painful-looking, and countless other smaller ones littered on every inch of visible skin. 

“Your brother… he got out of that life?” Atsushi finally speaks up, he’s still not facing the three of you, and the twinge of hope in his voice makes your heart plummet.

“He tried,” you tell him after a few moments of silence, taping another dressing pad to his back before reaching for the roll of bandages that came with your first aid kit, scowling when you pick up one that’s practically already empty from the number of times Dazai has reapplied his bandages after showering at your place. 

You grab another one, a new one, and then begin the arduous process of ensuring that every inch of Dazai’s torso and chest is covered in bandages again—you’ll have to get him to the hospital, you doubt your own sloppy patch-up will be good enough, but it’ll do until you get him there. 

“Oh,” Atsushi says softly.

“I’m sorry,” Kunikida murmurs, voice a bit more gentle and genuine now that Dazai’s wounds have mostly been handled. 

“He knew what he was getting into,” is all you say in response, making sure that bandages keep enough pressure over the wound to keep the bleeding slow and to a minimum. “He’s going to have to go to a hospital. This should be good enough for now but he needs actual medical attention.”

“We can’t stay,” Kunikida tells you, a twinge of regret in his voice as his eyes rake over Dazai now that you have him rebandaged. “The President is in danger, we have to go warn them before the Port Mafia acts.”

The Port Mafia, you think, a bit chilled by the thought of them, but you only nod at Kunikida. “He’ll be okay,” you say, trying to reassure yourself as much as them. “I’ll take care of him.”

Kunikida nods and then motions to your phone, which haphazardly had fallen onto the ground in your panic. “May I?” he asks quietly and you pick it up to unlock it for him, passing it over with a curious look. “I’m putting my number in, text me which hospital he’s admitted into and the room number so we can come see him as soon as things calm down.”

“Gotcha,” you whisper, resting Dazai back into a lying position. Your eyes linger on his face, bringing your hand up to wipe away the blood dribbling down his chin with your thumb, a heavy feeling settles in your chest—you think he’s too pale, his breath is too shallow, you’ve never seen him look so weak. 

You glance back up at Kunikida when he doesn’t immediately leave, questioning. He looks as if he wants to say something, face conflicted, but instead he shakes his head and turns to leave, calling for Atsushi to follow. The boy does immediately, but he hesitates in front of you before nodding his head down a bit in an awkward show of respect.

“I’m-” he begins awkwardly before clearing his throat and saying, “I’m really glad that Dazai-san has you. He’s been a lot happier the past few weeks.”

Atsushi doesn’t say anything else before rushing after Kunikida, shutting the door to your apartment behind him. You let your gaze stay on Dazai’s face for a second longer before you lean down and press your lips to his forehead in a soft, lingering kiss. You let out a sigh against his skin, eyes fluttering shut for just a moment before you finally reach for your phone and dial for an ambulance. 

Dazai wakes up in a hospital room, the pale walls and the scent of antiseptic burn his nostrils unpleasantly. His throat immediately tightens as a wave of rage sweeps through him because of course, Kunikida couldn’t do the one thing he asked of him. Some unwelcome mixture of fury and panic spreads through him instantly, it takes all of his self control to maintain the steady pace of his heart so that the monitors attached to him don’t go off and alert the nurses that he’s awake—what happened to you? Are you o-

His train of thought screeches to a halt as he sits up, disregarding the pain in his chest, intent on finding his phone to call you only to catch sight of a figure slumped over on the couch next to his hospital bed.

His lips part in a silent breath of relief, all of the heat rising through to cloud his head dissipates immediately when he sees you curled up on the couch next to his hospital bed, and he indistinctly remembers being dragged to your apartment, and the image of your alarmed expression looking down at him as he finally lets himself collapse after learning that you’re okay. Your laptop is open on the table near the couch and one of your textbooks is haphazardly dropped onto the ground near where your hand is hanging off the couch, as if it had fallen from your hands after you drifted off to sleep. 

The sun is setting outside, the kaleidoscopic red and orange and yellow colors casting a fiery glow over your resting face—you look exhausted, there are bags beneath your eyes and your brow is furrowed a bit even as you sleep. Not for the first time, Dazai is utterly enraptured by you: the way your hair looks beneath the sunset, the ethereal radiance it gives to your skin, he thinks if you were awake, your eyes would have him entirely entranced. 

He can hardly drag his eyes off of you even though he knows he needs to reach out to the Agency, figure out what’s going on and how long it's been since he was shot so that he can properly help them. It takes all of his self control to drag his eyes away from you and search for his phone—yours is laying on the couch next to you, but Dazai doesn’t think he can sit up and move to grab it. But his own phone is right on his nightside table anyway so he doesn’t need to. 

He grimaces as he reaches over to grab his phone from the nightstand, pain shooting through his chest, but just as he’s able to dial Tanizaki’s number, a voice clears their throat from the door to the room. Dazai’s gaze lifts to a stern, older nurse standing in the frame, staring at him, he withers.

“No phones after surgery, Dazai-sama. Rest quietly,” she scolds, arms crossed. 

“Ah, but it’s an emergency-” he tries to throw the woman off with a charming smile, but her frown only deepens, dark eyes sharpening.

“No exceptions,” she says tightly, and Dazai sighs as he leans back against his pillows again, realizing he’ll just have to wait until the nurse leaves to try again, or until you wake up. His head falls to the side at the thought of you, dark eyes dragging over your body again. “You have a good girl, Dazai-sama. She has been by your side since she brought you here, refused to leave. Argued with the department head for two hours when he tried to get her to.”

Dazai swallows thickly—he doesn’t respond to the nurse, but he also doesn’t look away from you. He doesn’t quite think he’s ever experienced the light feeling that spreads through his chest, and he’s not sure why he’s feeling it or what it is, he thinks it’s uncomfortable but he doesn’t think it’s uncomfortable in a bad way, but he also hates it. 

It’s been three and a half weeks since he brought you to that event where he kissed you for the first time and since then, he’s faced an increasingly more dangerous storm of new and uninvited feelings whenever he’s around you. Dazai usually has stringent control over himself—his physical self and mental self—but it’s thrown out the window when he’s with you. He finds his heart racing and his lips unconsciously twitching up when the two of you talk, and now he has this feeling, where he feels like his heart is in the clouds and his mind is fogged with fondness.  

He doesn’t even notice when the nurse leaves again, his throat clogged and his eyes half-lidded as he looks over you. He thinks his attachment to you is dangerous, and if he was a good person, he’d leave you—save you from his fucked up life because so long as you’re associated with him, you’ll be in trouble, whether it’s because of old enemies from his time as a Port Mafia executive, new enemies as a detective for the Agency, or himself, because Dazai is self-destructive and his own fucked up mind is usually his worst enemy. 

But Dazai is not a good person. He is selfish. He is greedy. He is irresponsible. And you’ve made the mistake of showing him what it’s like to be cared for, why should he refuse it? Why should he push you away when you made the choice to give it to him? It’s easier to blame it on you, convince himself that you brought this upon yourself the moment you agreed to be his date to the event, as if you had any idea what sort of sick and fucked up person Dazai really is.

“You’re awake.” 

It’s your voice that tears him out of his thoughts, drowsy and thick with sleep. Dazai hates how the sound of you quells the storm inside of him, eyes rising to meet yours as you throw him a sleepy smile. 

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” he teases, even though the sun is setting.

“I think I should be the one saying that.” You let out a laugh, but then your smile falters as you look over him and ask, “Are you good?”

Dazai wonders if you’re a fucking mind reader or something because how the hell do you always know when something is up with him? It’s starting to disturb him, honestly, he prides himself on being able to masking himself from people and your existence just casually shreds that pride. 

“I got shot,” Dazai says dryly, tossing you a charming smile.

“Not what I meant,” you respond, just as dryly, but you don’t push—you never do, he’s grateful for it. “How long have you been up?”

“A few minutes,” Dazai tells you, watching as you stand up from the couch and stretch, letting out a yawn before shuffling over to take a seat the chair closest to Dazai’s bedside. 

Dazai’s heart is lodged in his throat when you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his—the action is so offhand and so thoughtless that it genuinely throws him off. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the casual intimacy that you show him, no one in his life has ever touched him in the way you do: gently, without fear or concern. He’s used to anxious looks, he’s used to discomfort, he’s used to people giving him a wide berth; even after leaving the Port Mafia, not much has changed regarding that in the Agency. Not because they fear him, or are anxious because of him, but because his ability is uncomfortable, no one likes the feeling of being stripped of the one innate defense that they have. 

“How are you feeling?” you ask, peering up at him carefully. 

“Like I got shot,” Dazai repeats, winking at you. You roll your eyes, so he continues with. “I feel fine, they must have me on plenty of pain meds right now.” 

“I’m sure they do,” you say dryly. “Since you’re feeling okay, let’s talk.”

All of the air whooshes from Dazai’s lungs.

“You know what, I think I’m feeling a bit tired again, I’m-”

“No, you’re not.”

“I really kind of am-”

“No, you are not.”

Dazai withers under your stare and he thinks that this is it—most people would run after something like this happens, so he shouldn’t be surprised that this is your final straw. A part of him wants to fight it, his fingers instinctively tighten around yours, as if to physically hold you in place, and he thinks again about the blurry line between obsession and love, and your ever-wavering place on either side of it.

His throat spasms as he swallows, trying to brace himself for the inevitable words: you breaking off the relationship, because why the hell should someone like you—with a promising future and a good heart—risk everything for someone like him? It would be on track for him, because every time Dazai finds something that he might genuinely want, it’s always lost the moment he obtains it. 

But instead of the ‘I think it would be best if we didn’t talk anymore’ or ‘I don’t think I can do this,’ you hit him with, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Dazai stares at you, he blinks once, and then says a bit hesitant, “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific, there’s a lot of things wrong with me.”

Evidently, you’re unamused, your lips flatten and your eyes twitch. Dazai is a bit alarmed. “Why on earth would you ever come to my apartment when you’re bleeding out? What if I didn’t have the right supplies to patch you up? What if I didn’t know how to patch you up? You would have died, Dazai. You would have died in my fucking apartment, on my fucking couch—which is stained with your blood, by the way, you’ll be cleaning that—and I would’ve only been able to watch. What is wrong with you? Why did you tell them to bring you to my place?”

Dazai’s lips part to respond but no words leave them, which clearly irritates you even more, so he forces out, “I thought you were hurt. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“You were bleeding out, Dazai,” you stress, your voice rising in frustration—his grip tightens on your hand, thumb rubbing circles over the back of your hand in an attempt to calm you down before the nurses come back. “You could’ve died, getting yourself help should’ve been the priority.”

“It wasn’t,” Dazai tells you tightly, watching as your expression shifts into one that he cannot read and that severely unnerves him. “I was bleeding out and all I could think about was you.”

You go quiet after that—that indecipherable look is still on your face but there’s something intense swimming behind your eyes that makes him swallow thickly. 

“Why?” you finally ask him and Dazai grimaces as Dostoevsky’s words ring through his head again. “Why were you so worried about me that you-”

You cut yourself off and look away. Dazai doesn’t think that he’s ever seen someone look so visibly distressed at the thought of him dying. He isn’t sure how that makes him feel—warm, maybe, but also nervous. He’s not used to it, and he doesn’t like things he’s not used to. 

“Did you meet someone today?” And then he questions whether or not it’s even the same day as when he got shot, adding a: “yesterday?” 

“Yesterday,” you say idly. You’re frowning as you look over him—distantly, Dazai thinks that he really should try to get in contact with the Agency soon. “You’re going to have to be a bit more specific.”

There’s a wry smile on your lips as you mimic the same words that he told you just a few moments before. Dazai’s smile is half-hearted, unable to muster the energy to actually smile back—you seem to be able to sense his exhaustion and Dazai’s eyes fall to where your hands are connected as you begin to trace his fingers. The motion is comforting in a way that almost throws Dazai off, he watches as you slowly drag your finger along the length of each of his fingers, nearly forgetting to explain his question.

“His name is Fyodor Dostoevsky,” Dazai finally says, voice taking a more serious tone—recognition flashes in your eyes, Dazai hates it. 

“The Russian from the teahouse,” you note. “I played a game of chess with him. Lost. We talked for a bit… he’s dangerous?”

Dazai lets out a huff of laughter that is very much not amused, intertwining his fingers with yours again and lifting your hand to his lips, kissing your knuckles. His eyes flutter shut a bit as his lips linger there, and he thinks that he jinxed himself before by claiming that he was too tired to talk because the sleepiness is hitting him again. 

“Very,” he says softly. “I thought he killed you. I-”

I thought that it was like Odasaku all over again—that thought echoes through his head again, but he doesn’t speak it out loud. You don’t know who Odasaku is anyway, so it would be meaningless to you. His thoughts darken a bit at the reminder of his old friend. He thinks that Odasaku would’ve liked you, if given the chance to met you, and there’s a pit of longing in his stomach for a life that he would never live: being able to bring you to Odasaku, introducing you as his girlfriend, having to sit and endure hours of torment from him and Ango as the two of them regale you with embarrassing tales of his youth. 

Dazai thinks that he might throw up, so he promptly turns his thoughts elsewhere.

“Next time, take care of yourself and trust me to handle myself,” you tell him after a moment, voice quiet—Dazai wants to tell you that there’s no way in hell that will ever happen, but he doesn’t want to argue about it right now, and he still needs to get in contact with the Agency, so instead he focuses on the other part of your statement.

“Next time?”

You furrow your brows at him, as if unsure as to what he’s asking.

“You know,” Dazai says, feigning a joke to hide the insecurity still tainting his mind, “most people would run after something like this happens.”

“Please,” you say with a snort, as if the idea is entirely ridiculous. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Dazai thinks that it’s absurd how one short sentence from you can entirely shake his world. He lets out a breath, trying to hide the way that your words affect him. A few moments pass where the two of you just enjoy each other’s presence, you’re beautiful beneath the sunset and your skin is warm and comforting against his. Dazai feels at peace for the first time in his life, he thinks, and it’s so dangerously deceptive because he knows the world outside is at war and the Agency is in danger. Even knowing that, he thinks he would stay here forever, if given the chance—that thought also scares him because he’s never been one for any sort of commitment like this.

But he can’t stay here forever, the Agency needs him—and the way his phone is incessantly buzzing on the table next to the hospital bed is proof enough of that.  

He sighs and then he looks over to you as an idea sparks in his head. You’re already looking at him, your brows are furrowed and your eyes are narrowed, as if you already know he’s about to say something that you’re not going to like. A mischievous smile dances at the corner of his lips, your expression worsens.

“Wanna do me a favor, sweet bella?” he coos. 

“... What is it?” 

“Help me get out of here?”

Your eyes shoot open, you pointedly look down at Dazai’s chest and then back up at his face. 

“Are you insane?” you ask irritably, and then your face twists as if you already know the answer to the question—it nearly makes him laugh. 

“Please?” 

“... I hate you, Dazai Osamu.”

Dazai does laugh now—wild and carefree and utterly genuine in a way that he rarely allows himself to be. 

“We both know you don’t mean that, bella.”

“Up!” you say, kneeling on the bed next to Dazai as he sleeps. You know he’s going to let loose a string of complaints and pouts—he’ll use his recovering injury as an excuse, even though he claims that it’s healed whenever it’s convenient for him. “Get up, Dazai!” 

Dazai groans, throwing out a hand and lazily trying to push you away, rolling over onto his stomach to bury his face into your pillow. You are relentless, grabbing his shoulder and rolling him back over, and he gives you a look that’s nothing short of withering as he finally cracks one eye open to look at you.

“I’m wounded, let me sleep,” he grumbles at you before pulling the covers back over his head. You yank them off and he groans, flinging his arms over his face. “Why do you hate me?” 

“I don’t hate you,” you say immediately, grabbing his wrist and promptly trying to pull him out of your bed. He’s as uncooperative as possible, laying still as a log as you do your best to get him up. “If you get out of bed and come with me, I’ll tell Kunikida that you’re sick on Monday so you don’t have to go to work and won’t get yelled at for it.”

Dazai’s eyes shoot open, and you know that you’ve got him—you think that being with Dazai is a lot like having a child, with the bargaining and negotiation, but you will happily leverage the fact that his coworkers don’t trust him to not lie about being sick over him because they do trust you not to lie for him. Their mistake.

“Fine,” he agrees, rolling out of bed, albeit still tired considering how he nearly stumbles into your dresser. 

You snort out a laugh and he scowls at you, but when you reach out to grab his hand, his face immediately smooths. His fingers lace with yours instinctively, and he rubs at his eyes with his other hand before asking, “What are we doing?”

“Going outside,” you tell him, dragging him out of the bedroom and into the main room of the apartment, tossing one of your sweatshirts at him before grabbing one for yourself. 

He slides it on and then squints as he looks out the window as he pulls on a pair of slippers. “It’s still dark out,” he gapes, horrified, “What time is it? You’re evil.”

You grin at him, tugging your sweatshirt over your head before flinging open the door of your apartment. “Come on.”

Dazai lets out a sigh of utter suffering before following you, you shut the door closed behind him and immediately start making your way to the steps leading down out of the complex. It’s cool outside—the chill of the night still hangs in the crisp air, the moon only just beginning to set over the horizon. There’s still another ten minutes to sunrise, so you have plenty of time to get to the beach. 

You startle out of your thoughts as Dazai lets out a noise akin to a shriek, turning to catch sight of him nearly slipping down the steps, the heavy dew making the steps to the second level of the apartment building slippery. You barely muffle the loud laugh that pushes from your lips, hand flying to your mouth to physically stop yourself because the last thing you need is your neighbors whispering even more about the two of you.

Dazai looks at you, thoroughly betrayed and incredibly insulted, but you reach out to intertwine your fingers with his again and he looks partially mollified, swinging your arms theatrically as the two of you walk out of the complex and down the road. 

“What’re we doing outside?” he finally asks, absently lifting his arm and spinning you beneath it as you continue down the street. You look up at him with a smile as you pull him onto the path that leads to the beach—he still looks tired, but there’s a soft look in his eyes as he looks down at you. “Bringing me back to the beach to finish me off right where you found me? Oh, bella, you know the way to a man’s heart.” 

“We,” you begin—this time you lift your own arm and Dazai’s lips curve up as he ducks his head down to spin beneath your connected arms, sand flies beneath his feet as he does and distantly, you think you should’ve worn sandals even though it’s a bit chilly because you’re going to have to deal with sand in your sneakers, “are going to watch the sunrise.”

Dazai squints instantly. “You woke up at this unholy hour to watch the sunrise?” he accuses loudly, throwing his head back in annoyance but you can see from the way his eyes are crinkled at the corners that he’s only teasing. “I’ve seen hundreds of sunrises.”

“But have you really?” you press, swinging your legs around in front of him and grabbing his other hand so that you’re holding both of his and standing before him, forcing him to look back down at you.

Dazai lets out an exaggerated sigh as he turns his head back down to look at you, hands tightening around yours as he pulls you a bit closer. He bends his head down, hovering his face over yours before whispering, “I’m going to throw you in the water after we’ve watched your sunrise.”

“Dazai, I will destroy you,” you instantly threaten.

His smile sharpens, he winks at you and says, “Sexy.”

“You’re gross,” you complain and then free one of your hands from his to continue dragging him closer to the water. 

In the far distance, you can see the light of the sun beginning to peek over the horizon. 

“Come on! We have to settle before the sun breaks the horizon, it’s the best part!” you say hurriedly, getting as close to the water as possible without being hit by the push and pull of the sea and sitting yourself into the dry sand, dragging Dazai down with you. You’ll have to shower before you leave your apartment for the day, but you don’t mind—you’ll have to replace your first aid kit soon though because you’re pretty sure all of your bandage rolls have been entirely used up and Dazai is going to shower after this too and have to rewrap himself. 

Dazai plops onto the ground next to you, but instead of sitting shoulder by shoulder, he shimmies down into a laying position and drops his head into your lap, looking out toward the sea.

“Pet my hair, bella,” the sleepy brunette sighed, half-lidded eyes looking up at you pitifully. “Pleeeeease.”

“If you fall asleep, I’ll cry,” you tell him, because you can’t deny him when he’s looking at you like this. He only lets out a noncommittal hum, a pleased smile on his lips as soon as your fingers start combing through his soft hair.

You think he’s a lot like a cat, honestly, with the way he’s curled in your lap—if he was capable of purring, you’d think he’d be doing just that right now, soft sighs escaping his lips every time your nails scratch gently at his scalp. His eyes droop shut but he never allows them to close, keeping his eyes trained ahead on the horizon—one of his hands comes up to rest on your leg, thumb idly rubbing circles on your thigh, and you wish you could freeze time in this moment because you feel so at peace that you never want to return to the real world. 

Dazai’s lips part to say something—you wonder if he’s going to complain about it taking too long, but the words seem to falter on his lips as the sun finally breaches the horizon and paradise arrives. You think you should be looking at the sunrise with him, admiring the sea of fire that the sun releases onto the surface of the water, ingraining the image of the endless pink clouds and orange skies into your brain because you love sunrises—you think there’s beauty to the fact that no singular sunrise is ever the same as another, and you’ve made it your life’s goal to etch the image of as many as possible into your brain before you die. 

Instead, you find yourself watching the sunrise through Dazai’s eyes—watching the reflection of the burning sun through wonderstruck dark hues, watching the ethereal glow that the golden rays cast over his skin. His wide eyes are pools of melted honey and molten gold and you can watch in them how the colors shift and intensify as the sun rises. If there’s beauty to the individuality of every new morning’s sky, there’s an even greater beauty to Dazai in this moment—you think you’d much rather replace the image of each new sunrise with how each new sunrise reflects in his eyes, and distantly, you wonder if it’s possible to convince him to wake up at this time every day. 

You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look so at peace—it’s almost childlike, the way that his eyes sparkle and shine, entranced by the way the morning sun distorts the world into a scene worthy of the heavens. His thumb has paused in the steady circles that he’d been tracing on your thigh, his entire body and mind consumed with absorbing the picture of the sunrise.

You smile to yourself as you continue carding your fingers through his hair. You speak softly so as to not disturb the moment, “I thought you’ve seen sunrises,” you tease gently.

“Not like this,” he whispers after a few moments, breath catching a bit over the words, “it’s…”

You’re still looking down at him when you say, “… beautiful.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, breathless, eyes lingering on the scene for just a moment longer before he turns his head to look up at you. Emotions you’ve never seen before race through his eyes—a million thoughts, a million questions, but he only asks one: “Why did you bring me here?”

You think he might be looking for a particular answer, but you don’t know what it is, so you answer honestly and hope for the best. 

“No two sunrises are ever the same,” you tell him quietly, “I want to see as many as I can before I die… and I’d like to see them with you.”

You think that whatever answer he was looking for, you must have given him, because his entire expression shifts and collapses at your words. As if you’d taken any semblance left of the mask he wears and shattered it against the rocks that line the far side of the beach. 

Longing, adoration, desperation, fear and hope all cross through his eyes before Dazai suddenly turns his face back toward the sunrise, the hand on your thigh reaching to the one you have resting on his chest so that he can entwine your fingers again. He keeps his palm to the back of your hand so that your own palm can stay flat against his chest, feeling the steady thrum of his heart.

“He’s wrong” he says so softly that you think that you might not be meant to overhear it, “this is the promised land.”

You don’t know what he means, but you think that’s as close to an agreement that you might get from him, so you smile and finally turn your eyes up to watch the sunrise yourself.

You can only enjoy it for a few seconds.

“I’m still going to throw you in the water,” he suddenly claims, and then adds, just a bit more quietly, “… but let’s just sit here for a few moments longer, okay?”

You smile softly.

“Okay.”

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

ᡣ𐭩 DRIVE

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: against all odds, you come across dazai osamu again, and you somehow find yourself roped into being his date for an event celebrating the armed detective agency. you're not falling. you swear. (you're lying). {wordcount: 9.2k; fem!reader, sfw, romance}

AUTHOR'S NOTES part 2 is hereeeeee! i hope you guys enjoy, this scene had one of my favs to write so i hope you like it too!! reblogs definitely appreciated!! i’ll reblog with the taglist as soon as it decides to show on the dash & in the tags!

SEE: BADLANDS SERIES MASTERLIST READ: UNREAL UNEARTH SIDE B

“We really need to stop meeting like this.”

You aren’t sure how you feel as you stare at the man hanging upside down, tangled in a tapestry—amused, concerned, partly puzzled, a combination of all three really. Dazai Osamu looks half out of it as his gaze focuses on you; you wonder how long he’s been hanging like this, and how he managed to get in this position in the first place. 

For the second time in two weeks, the man manages to catch you off guard, this time on your way home from a date that had gone horribly, horribly wrong with a classmate; you’d already spent the past two hours wandering the streets upset over all of this and you were ready to get home, but now you find yourself hesitating.

“Ah, my sweet, sweet belladonna, my lovely savior,” Dazai sighs, directing a quick, flirty smile toward you. “Won’t you help a poor, suffering man?” 

“How did you manage this, Dazai?” you ask, letting the entertainment slip into your tone to distract yourself from the stress of the failed date as you look around and try to figure out the best way to get him down from where he’s entangled. You’d have to climb up onto the nearby dumpster to get enough reach to cut him down but you don’t even have anything to cut him down with. 

“I tried to jump off that building,” he sighs, and you follow his gaze up to the tall building right to the left of the two of you. Your lips part in shock, you suppose you should have figured something like that because how else would he end up tangled upside down in a tapestry, but it’s still jarring to hear. “But I hit this on the way down and got stuck. I’ve been here for way too long, so many people have passed me by without helping—what a cruel, cruel world.”

“You are either the luckiest or unluckiest man alive,” you murmur, catching sight of a jagged piece of metal underneath the dumpster, picking it up and doing your best to climb onto it, but it’s difficult in heels and a dress. “Why are you so intent on dying?”

“Why are you so intent on living?” Dazai hits you with a question back instead of responding, peering up at you as he slowly spins in the air while you do your best to cut through the thick tapestry. 

You frown at the question, brows furrowing. “Because I have things I still need to accomplish. Goals to achieve. Don’t you?” 

“The only goal I need to achieve is finding a beautiful lady to do a double suicide with,” Dazai says, lips curling up into another charming smile but the effects of it are diminished because of the way he was still hanging upside down, spinning in slow circles. “Would you like to join me, bella?”

“Maybe in fifty years,” you say dryly. 

“I’ll-”

Dazai doesn’t get to finish his sentence as you finally cut through the tapestry and he tumbles down head first to the ground. You bite back a smile as he lets out a loud yelp, crumpling on the ground in an unceremonious heap. You lower yourself back down to the ground, eyes settling on him as you watch him push himself into a sitting position, rubbing the back of his head. 

He looks up at you through his lashes, the charming smile on his lips a bit more lazy and casual as he looks over you. “My, aren’t you dressed pretty? What’s the occasion?” As you prepare to give a bullshit excuse, he holds up his hand and says: “Wait! Let me guess. A long day of work and no one to go out with after, so you decided to get all dressed up and walk around the city to see if fate would lead you to someone, and since our fingers are tied by that thin red thread, naturally, you were led right to me. Oh, my fated, no wonder I’ve evaded death so easily despite so many attempts, destiny refused to let me die as we’re predestined to be together.”

You stare at him, watching as he presses the back of his hand to his forehead, tilting his head back because what the fuck?

“I was on a date,” you say, ignoring the entire rest of what he said to answer his question, truthfully at that because his whole tirade about destiny and fate had thrown you off. 

Dazai wilts, but then straightens up again and says, “Well, it couldn’t have been a good one if he didn’t at least walk you home.”

You grimace. “I think I should be insulted by how pleased you look at my night being ruined,” you mutter, holding your hand out to him to help him up. 

Dazai places his hand in yours; long, thin fingers wrapped around your hand as you help him to his feet. He doesn’t let go immediately, nor does he back away, brown eyes lidded as he looks down at you, so close that your clothes were brushing his. The corner of his lips tilt up, his fingertips grazing your inner wrist. “How about we make the most of a ruined night then?”

You raise your eyebrows—you think you should get back to your apartment, get some work done to make up for how much of a mess the night had turned out, but you find yourself hesitating because do you really want to go wallow alone now? 

“How do you plan we do that?” you ask instead of giving him an answer, although he evidently takes it as an answer considering his face lights up at your words.

“Come on,” he says, tugging your arm as he turns to make his way down the sidewalk, dragging you along with him. “I’ll show you someplace.”

“O-okay,” you fumble over your words in surprise, but it isn’t like Dazai is giving you much of a choice considering the way he’s pulling you along with him. 

Your face feels hot when you notice the people still prowling the streets shooting the two of you odd looks—Dazai doesn’t seem to care, focusing on getting you to whatever destination he has planned, but you can feel their eyes burning into you with every step you take. 

“Ignore them,” Dazai says, as if he can read your thoughts. He tosses his head over his shoulder as he looks at you, the corner of his lips curling up into another lazy smile that makes your breath catch. “They don’t know how to have fun.”

“Yeah,” is all you reply with, a bit doubtfully as you turn your gaze up to the dark skies, where the dark clouds you had noticed earlier in the day are now gathered over the city. “It’s going to rain.”

Dazai only raises his eyebrows, face riddled with disbelief as he turns fully to look at you, walking backwards without a care in the world as he forces people to walk around him. “Now, you care about rain?” he asks, referring to your first meeting.

You let out a puff of laughter. “I guess you have a point.”

“Naturally,” he says, teeth gleaming beneath the streetlamps as his grin widens. “I’m one of the Agency’s sharpest detectives, after all.”

“How humble,” you note, but your voice is light, teasing, and you’re almost embarrassed. 

Dazai is unbothered by your playful dig, spinning back around to turn down the sidewalk onto a busier street, carelessly pulling you along with him and causing people to swerve around the two of you. You try to fumble out apologies as people shoot the two of you dirty looks but Dazai barely gives you enough time to speak the words as he continues down the street. 

“Have you heard?” Dazai asks, returning to walking backward so he can look at you, garnering even more angry looks. “We’re heroes now.”

You have heard, of course, it’s all over the news. You hadn’t been in Yokohama when everything happened, you were visiting a friend outside of the city, but you’d seen it all going down on the TV as it was happening. And naturally, it’s impossible to avoid all of the news articles honoring the Armed Detective Agency and their part in taking down the threat to the city afterward.

“I have,” you drawl, and then add after a moment’s hesitation: “Shouldn’t you be out celebrating instead of…”

Instead of trying to kill yourself.

“This is me celebrating,” Dazai says mournfully, so casually that it takes you aback as he tilts his head back in grief. “It was supposed to be successful this time.”

“Well…” You aren’t sure what to say to that, the words dying on your lips as the first raindrops begin to fall from the sky. “I’m glad it wasn’t successful,” you finally decide upon, averting your gaze as Dazai’s face shifts into one of surprise as he looks down at you.

His lips part as if to say something, but seems to decide against it, instead letting a smile slip onto his face as he says: “Speaking of celebrations, my sweet belladonna, this hero needs a date to the celebratory event that the government is hosting for us in two weeks. Join me?”

You raise your eyebrows, unimpressed, as the rain begins to come down harder—a flash flood, you realize. You watch as people start scattering around you, running for cover, but you and Dazai remain standing in the middle of the sidewalk, him awaiting your answer and you trying to figure out how to politely say you’d rather die than go to a celebratory event with people you don’t know.

You wonder if Dazai suspects your answer because he does not, in fact, give you the chance to speak.

Your eyes widen as he tugs you closer to him. “What’re you doing?” you stutter over your words as his free hand finds your hip and he spins the two of you around recklessly, forcing several people to dodge again as they run past the two of you and into a store to wait for the sudden rain to pass. Only his firm grip on you keeps you from slipping on the puddles forming on the sidewalk beneath the two of you. “Dazai!” 

“Dancing,” is all he replies with, eyes shining as he lifts his arm to twirl you beneath it, your heels splashing in a puddle as he drags you along with his dance like a puppet. “It’s supposed to be romantic—dancing in the rain—I’ve seen it in movies, are you romanced, yet?” 

You aren’t sure what makes you want to laugh, maybe it’s the absurdity of the situation or the way Dazai keeps having to blink away the raindrops that fall into his eyes, but before you know it, you're biting your lower lip to withhold the giggles rising through your chest. 

“Are you laughing at me?” Dazai gasps in mock offense as he spins you outward once. You nearly trip over your heels but before you can, he’s spinning you back toward him, arm wrapping around your waist as he dips you down. “And here I was thinking I was doing a good job romancing you.”

His voice drops an octave as he lowers his voice, dark eyes searching yours, and you think that there’s absolutely nothing romantic about this. Rain is pouring down over the two of you, his hair is wet and matted against his forehead, dripping in your face as he hangs over you, you can feel his breath fanning against your lips and his body heat radiating against yours. Lightning webs across the sky above him, illuminating his face in a way that has your breath catching. You’re in heels and a dress and you can so easily trip and break your ankle, it’s only his hold on you preventing that from happening. It’s dangerous, and stupid—and maybe it’s a little romantic.

“I-”

You aren’t even able to get the admission from your lips because as soon as you begin to speak, someone slams into Dazai from behind. You yelp and his eyes widen as he stumbles forward, twisting the two of you around so he takes the brunt of the fall. He hits the ground hard with an ‘oof,’ half in the muddy grass and half on the sidewalk, and you fall on top of him, lips parted in shock.

“Well,” Dazai finally says after a few moments of stunned silence. “This is distinctly less romantic.”

And you laugh. Unable to hold it back now, you burst into laughter—hands braced on his chest, body flush against his, there’s mud splattered across his face and you’re pretty sure your makeup must be running down your cheeks from the rain. You think that your heels are probably ruined and you’d have to spend hours getting the stains out of your dress, but you laugh because you can’t remember the last time you actually had fun and weren’t stressed about school and the future, and your night had been going so horribly that you’d lost any hope of it taking a turn for the better. You might’ve been crying a bit too, you aren’t sure why, but it’s raining so you hope that he doesn’t notice.

You notice Dazai’s eyebrows lift a bit in surprise before his face seems to soften, a small smile tugging at his lips as he lets his head fall back against the mud.

“So,” he says, “about that date?”

“Nobody believes I have a date for the event,” Dazai complains two weeks later as he enters your apartment and throws himself onto your couch, watching as you dab on some dark red lipstick—an occurrence you’d become quite used to the past two weeks, because evidently Dazai Osamu does not need a key nor invitation into your home, he just picks the lock and comes right in. At least you’re expecting him this time. “Atsushi-kun laughed in my face. He laughed in my face! Can you believe it? After everything I’ve done for him, the nerve.”

You grin, glancing up into your mirror to catch his eyes. “To be honest, I still don’t believe you have a date for the dinner and I am your date.”

Dazai blanches, throwing his arm over his face as he slumps into the couch. “Et tu, bella?” he sighs sorrowfully and you laugh, spinning around in your chair to face him. 

“Think of it this way,” you say, twisting your lipstick back into its container and placing it into your purse. Dazai peek up from the couch, eyes focusing on you as you speak. You almost feel a bit flustered under his gaze, it’s more intense than you expected. “You’ll get to see the looks on their face when they realize that you do actually have a date.”

Dazai brightens a bit at your words and then, as if a sudden thought passed through his head, he begins cackling like a madman—although you’re beginning to think the description is far more apt than you believed, Dazai Osamu is simply not sane. “Kunikada-kun is going to be so mad that I have a date and he doesn’t.”

“You’re wrinkling your suit, sit up straight,” you say and turn your attention back to the mirror, discreetly watching as Dazai lets out an exaggerated sigh before doing as you ask. Your eyes linger on him for a moment—he looks different dressed up nicely in a sleek, dark suit than his typical tan trench coat. He still wears those odd bandages all over his body, but you suppose that’s just a him thing, and no fancy event would get him to take them off. You can’t quite place what the exact difference is but you find that your gaze keeps dragging back to him. 

He catches you staring and winks, you roll your eyes and look away, grateful that your embarrassment doesn’t show on your face as you glance one last time at yourself in the mirror to ensure that nothing is out of place

Dazai, you have learned over the past two weeks, can’t stand silence, so you aren’t surprised when you hear him start complaining about something else as soon as the conversation dies down. 

“Did you know I pushed two of my little protégés to work with each other?” he asks, reaching out to grab the papers on your coffee table when he thinks you aren’t looking. You throw one of your makeup brushes at him. He yelps and draws back his hand.

“That’s nice,” you say absently. “Do they work together well?” 

“Oh, they work together great,” Dazai says, and you glance back at him when you notice the sheer bitterness in his tone. “I think they love each other now.”

Your brows furrow, unsure of why Dazai seems so irritated by this. “That’s… great, isn’t it?” you asked slowly.

“No!” Dazai says so vehemently that you think he might leap to his feet in outrage. “That is not great. They are not allowed to be in a relationship before me. I forbid it.”

Your lips part a bit, a noise caught between a laugh and shock escaping them as you look over at Dazai again. “Okay,” you say, dragging out the word in amusement. Dazai shoots an affronted expression toward you in response, but you don’t give him the chance to speak again. You rise to your feet and swing your purse over your shoulder, glancing at the time, realizing you had about fifteen minutes to be at the City Hall, which is a forty minute drive without traffic and it’s a Saturday evening, so there’s always traffic. 

“Oh god, we have to-”

You turn to leave only to bump right into Dazai. Blinking in confusion, you look up at him to ask what he’s doing but the words die on your tongue.

He’s too close as he looks down at you, you can smell the faint scent of his cologne and you can feel his body brushing yours, the corner of his lips twitching up. “Have I earned a kiss yet?” he hums, leaning his face down a bit so that his lips are almost barely grazing yours. 

“Maybe,” you say, eyes flickering down to his lips for the sparest second before you watch his eyes light up only for you to take a step back, “but even if you did, you’re not messing up my makeup.”

Dazai looks as if he’d been shot in the heart, head dropping back as he groans and pouts at your words. “You’re so mean, bella,” he sighs, voice a long whine. “Won’t you indulge me with just a taste?”

“No,” you say, slipping past him to make your way over to the door where the keys to your car are hanging on a small hook. “Are you ready? We’re going to be late.”

The exaggerated grief that paints Dazai’s expression instantly disappears as he eyes your keys with a look that’s nothing short of devious. Distantly, you frown and close your fist around your keys, putting them out of his sight, but Dazai is undeterred, walking over to you.

“I can drive us,” he says, that same expression on his face as he holds his hand out. You don’t trust the look on his face, nor do you trust the way he’s all but bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s the least I can do, right?” 

You’re doubtful, looking down at his extended hand as he waits for you to drop the keys in them. “I can drive,” you say, but Dazai immediately pouts at your words, looking genuinely bummed out, and you feel a little bad because you don’t even like driving, you just don’t trust Dazai to be a good driver. You hesitate. “Do you even know how to drive?”

“Of course,” Dazai says hurriedly, dark eyes lighting back up.

You exhale, reaching out to place your keys in his hand—the smile on his face is wicked, dread builds in your gut. You think you might have made a mistake.

You’re surprised that your car is still in one piece as Dazai parks crookedly across three spots in the parking lot of the city hall. You’re surprised that you are in one piece. You don’t move for a second, fingers still biting into the leather seat you’re buckled in, eyes wide and barely breathing. As Dazai turns the car off, you finally turn your head to the side to look at him before getting out of the car, grateful to be standing on solid ground.

“Never again.”

Dazai’s unbothered, as always—his smile is wide and restless, eyes exhilarated as they dart around the car, fingers clutching the keys as he finally steps outside. He looks as if he’d just won the lottery, that gleeful over having been given the chance to drive. You knew you should have gone with your gut when the man first asked if he could drive, and as miserable and anxiety-inducing it was racing through the streets, in between cars and half on the sidewalk, you think it might’ve been worth it, a bit, considering Dazai’s reaction.

“Maybe once more,” Dazai bargains, holding out his arm to you.

“Never again,” you repeat, but your voice is light as you take his arm and let him lead you up the steps to the city hall. “I cannot believe you didn’t get us pulled over.”

“Must not have been that bad then,” Dazai says, proudly. 

“Ha! More like they didn’t want to risk their own lives trying to stop you.”

Dazai pouts terribly and then adds petulantly, “But it was fun.”

“It was something alright,” you agree idly. You aren’t sure if you were having fun in the moment, you were more scared for your life and your car, but you suppose looking back on it was a bit entertaining. 

“You’re so mean, bella,” he sighs exaggeratedly. “You refuse my well-earned kiss, you mock me, now you insult my driving skills.”

“The only thing insulted tonight was my car,” you mutter to yourself, glancing back once more at it before Dazai steps forward to push open the wide doors to the city hall. 

Instantly, you’re met with the sound of loud chatter and laughter and a young, unfamiliar voice calling, “Dazai-san!” excitedly. 

Your gaze drifts up from Dazai to where a teen with silver hair and pretty eyes rushes up to the two of you. He’s so tunnel visioned on Dazai that he doesn’t even notice you until he’s standing right in front of you, and when he does, his eyes go so wide that you think they might pop right out of his skull. He looks between you and Dazai questioningly, lips parting and closing like a fish out of water.

Dazai looks like the cat that got the canary, eyes gleaming at the expression on Atsushi’s face and lips twitching up into a wicked smile. 

“Atsushi-kuuuuun,” he drags out the boy's name in a long sing-song. “Meet my sweet belladonna, the one you so rudely claim didn’t exist.”

Atsushi looks flustered as he turns his attention toward you, eyes wide with panic and redness rising to his cheeks. “I didn’t-I mean-I just-” he stutters so badly that you’re forced to take mercy on the poor boy.

“Don’t worry,” you say with an easy grin. “I wouldn’t believe I existed either coming from Dazai.”

Dazai gapes. Atsushi snickers, hand coming up to cover his mouth to hide his smile. Atsushi glances once at Dazai and then looks back at you and whispers, “Is he paying you?”

Dazai looks thoroughly offended.

“Unfortunately, he doesn't need to,” you say with a snort, "but I'm sure he would if he had to."

Dazai gasps. 

Atsushi snorts loudly and then looks a bit embarrassed. A woman with pretty eyes and short dark hair comes up behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. She throws a sharp grin at you. “You must be the infamous woman that Dazai has been talking about nonstop for two weeks,” she says, ignoring how Dazai looks like he wants to wither as you raise your eyebrows at him. “Blink twice if you need help.”

Dazai looks appalled now. “Yosano-sensei,” he complains, “That’s so-”

You pointedly blink twice. Yosano barks out a laugh and nearly chokes over it, Dazai gasps again, louder and far more dismayed. He slumps over your shoulder, burying his face into the top of your head. 

“You’re supposed to be on my side,” he grumbles, voice muffled against your hair. 

You pat his waist as another man approaches the group of you, blonde hair tied back neatly in a ponytail and glasses hanging on the edge of his nose. His eyes are sharp and narrowed as he looks at where Dazai is draping himself all over you. “Oi, you shitty waste of bandages, have some decorum, would you? We're at a government event, stop throwing yourself at people.”

Dazai perks up, that unscrupulous smile instantly returning as his gaze focuses on the blonde. “Kunikida-kuuun,” he now sings the other man’s name, arm slipping around your waist to tug you into his side as he says. “Come meet my date. She’s a grad student at Waseda University.”

You have a distinct feeling that he’s rubbing it in Kunikida’s face, and from the way the man’s expression twists in genuine surprise at Dazai’s words, you figure that said feeling is correct. Kunikida turns his attention toward you. “And you’re with him?” he asks so distastefully that you almost laugh. “How did you even meet him?”

You give Dazai a side-eye, considering whether or not you should tell the truth. You notice the pleading expression on his face and squint, but before you can make your decision, he speaks up, voice loud and exaggerated: “A fateful encounter under the moonlit shore of the Zushi Beach, we stumbled into each other as if guided by the hand of god himself. I-”

Suspicious now of the sideways explanation he’s giving about your own meeting with him, and recalling the tale he regaled you of his meeting with the very boy standing a few feet away from you, you cut off Dazai and turn to Atsushi. “Atsushi-kun, how did you and Dazai meet?”

Dazai flounders, hands flying in front of as if to wave Atsushi off from answering, but Atsushi only scowls and says, “I had to jump into the Tsurumi River to free him from where he was floating upside down in a barrel trying to drown himself. Then he had the nerve to yell at me for it.”

Pointedly, you look at Dazai, who at least has the decency to look sheepish as he glances at you. “I did take him out to dinner after though,” he offers.

“With my money,” Kunikida rages loudly and Dazai throws his head back with a loud sigh of complaint. 

“None of you have my back. Not a single one of you,” Dazai accuses. “I would be a good wingman for you guys.”

Kunikida looks downright insulted. “You are the opposite of a wingman,” he spits. “In fact, you go out of your way to embarrass me in front of women, you lousy liar-”

“I will not have you make me look bad because you’re jealous any longer,” Dazai proclaims, holding his hand up as if to silence Kunikida. 

“Jealous?” Kunikida booms after Dazai, but Dazai is already dragging you away, stealing two flutes of champagne from a passing waiter and handing one over to you with a misleadingly innocent smile. 

“It’s true, he’s jealous,” Dazai says, lacing his fingers into yours as he idly walks around the event hall with you, sipping at his champagne. “He has fifty-eight criteria for his ideal woman, you fit at least forty of them. He’s probably soooo mad you’re here with me.”

You blink and look at Dazai, wondering if you heard him correctly. “I’m sorry, what?” you ask with a laugh. “Fifty-eight-”

“Criteria, yeah,” Dazai confirms, “and he wonders why he can’t get a girlfriend—blames it on me.”

You laugh, shaking your head. “I’m sure you don’t help.”

Dazai pouts but then his amusement fades a bit as his eyes scan the crowd of people, dark eyes taking upon an uncharacteristically serious visage. His lips tighten and the corner of his eyes wrinkle as he squints, as if something about the whole event is bothering him.

“You okay?” you ask and Dazai looks at you, a bit startled.

“Yeah,” he says, and you watch as he smooths his face out—as if you’d seen something you weren’t supposed to see and now he was trying to play it off and pretend you didn’t. “Why wouldn’t I be?” 

You’ve noticed over the past two weeks, as you’ve gotten to know Dazai Osamu a bit better, that he’s far more complex than he likes to portray himself to be. He puts on a theatrical show with bright smiles, loud words and over-exaggerated clownlike behavior, and he’s very good at making sure that the mask he puts on rarely wavers. You’ve only caught it faltering a few times, including that first time you met when you’d woken up in the middle of the night and caught his empty expression as he stared out into the storm. 

He doesn’t take well to people pointing it out though, you’ve realized. You tried to once a week ago when you caught him looking a bit lost and alone at a picture you had of you and two of your friends at a bar downtown. He’d broken into your apartment, as you’ve grown unfortunately used to over the past two weeks, and he was waiting for you to get back from class, snooping around while he waited. You weren’t supposed to be back until much later but your five o’clock class had been canceled, and he was so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even heard you enter your apartment until you were a few feet away and asking if he was okay. 

He promptly fled with a half-assed excuse about an urgent mission and he didn’t come back to your apartment for two days. When he finally did, he acted like nothing happened. You think that it’s not really your right to push and you don’t want to step over any boundary of his, but a part of you is starting to long to figure out what exactly is behind the mask he wears and that scares you. You find yourself smiling a bit too much whenever Dazai is around, your face always feels a bit hotter and your brain always feels a bit fuzzy—the tell-tale signs of falling are starting to appear and you want to know the man behind the carefully constructed mask before you start to fall only to realize that there’s no one there to catch you. 

“You looked a bit lost in thought,” you finally say, testing the words on your tongue and scanning his face to see if even that would be too much of a push for him. 

It is.

“You see right through me, don’t you?” He laughs it off as a joke, but you can all but taste the bitterness in his tone and you can see the mirth thinly veiled behind his eyes. “I’ll be right back, the boss is calling me over.”

Dazai doesn’t wait for you to respond, he tosses you a wink and another casual smile before he sets off across the room but you aren’t fooled by the faux-charm this time, knowing that he’s fleeing because you got a bit too close to asking something that he doesn’t want to answer. Lifting your champagne glass back to your lips, you idly watch him make his way over to a handsome, silver-haired man who’s in deep discussion with a young man with messy black hair. 

You sigh and wave over a server to grab another flute of champagne before you even finish the one in hand, disappointment sweeping through you as you realize that the night is likely going to be a very, very long one.

You’re finishing your fourth glass when you hear someone call your last name and pause a bit in confusion, turning around to face a tall middle-aged man with graying hair. Your eyes widen a bit as you recognize Tonan Tanzo, the Vice Minister of Justice, making his way toward you with a glass of wine in hand. 

“Tonan-san,” you greet, nodding your head a bit in respect for the older man, who you spoke to briefly at the Ministry’s panel at your university a week and a half ago. “It’s good to see you again.”

“And you,” the man replies distantly, more a nicety than anything else. “I must say, I didn’t expect to see you here tonight. You’re acquainted with the Armed Detective Agency?” 

There’s an edge to his voice, one that you’re not sure if you like. You wonder if he has an issue with the Agency, but you don’t see why he would, they’ve been nothing but helpful in fostering peace in the city.

You only smile idly. “Vaguely,” you respond, not giving away all too much. You wonder if Dazai knows anything about whatever the man’s issue is—you’d have to ask him later. 

Tonan hums, as if your answer wasn’t satisfactory, and then he says, “I was meaning to email you about the internship you were hoping for under Minister Hasegawa—all of the chaos of the past week has prevented me from doing so. I’ll be sure to do so by the end of this week so we can work to finalize something for winter break and the summer. Perhaps we can figure something out with your schedule to get you some training at the office before the semester ends.”

Your lips part a bit in shock at the suddenness of the offer but you school your expression quickly, mind racing as you force out, “I would appreciate that very much, Tonan-san. I’m sure we can work something out.”

Tonan Tanzo only hums again, nodding at you once before his eyes flicker up above you, a bit distastefully, just as you feel fingers brush your lower back. Tonan doesn’t even bother to greet Dazai as he turns to leave with a faint parting to you. You look up at Dazai, whose expression is cold as he stares after Tonan until the man disappears down a nearby hall. 

“What was that about?” Dazai asks, the cold expression melting as soon as he looks down at you, dark eyes warm and curious as if he hadn’t just abandoned you for almost an hour. You almost feel a bit flustered beneath the gentle stare. Almost. 

“I think he just offered me the job I was trying to get at the Ministry?” you say, still a bit dazed. “Although, I don’t think it’s necessarily because he wants me there, but it doesn’t really matter, I just need it for my resume.”

“Hm,” Dazai says to himself before his lips flicker up into a smile. “Well, congratulations are in order, I suppose. Good thing I grabbed us some more champagne.”

He lifts his other hand pointedly, showing off the two flutes he’d grabbed on the way back and you grin a bit, taking one from him, feeling a bit giddy now even though you’re pretty sure Tonan only hit you with the offer because of your affiliation with the Armed Detective Agency. 

“You should probably slow down,” you note as you sip your own glass. “You’re on like seven now.”

“I’m fine, and you have no room to talk,” Dazai shoots you a playful smile. “Dance with me.”

“What?” you ask, eyes widening as Dazai takes the glass from you before you even take a second sip, placing it down on a nearby table with his as he grabs your arm and drags you to the center of the room, onto a dancefloor that nobody is using. “Dazai, no.”

“Dazai, yes,” he corrects with a wild grin and your face is aflame as eyes begin to turn in the direction of the two of you, curious as to what’s going on. 

You want to die when Dazai forcibly spins you under his arm, much like that night out on the streets of Yokohama when the two of you ended up drenched and muddy except now there were dozens of eyes on you whereas then, people were more focused on trying to get to cover from the torrential downpour.

“I’m going to kill you,” you hiss, embarrassment flooding through you because for as thin as Dazai is, he’s deceptively strong and you cannot break free of the grip he has on your hand and waist. 

“Please,” he breathes out longingly. “A death at your hands would-”

“Stop.”

Dazai pouts, and then as if punishment for interrupting him, Dazai launches you into a dramatic dip, leaning down with a grin that would put the Cheshire Cat’s to shame as he nudges his nose against yours before pulling you back up and spinning you beneath his arm again. 

“This is embarrassing,” you say, but Dazai is paying no mind to the attention that the two of you are gaining—in fact, he looks utterly pleased with himself. “I-”

“Look! Yosano-sensei and Atsushi-kun are joining us!” Dazai cheers, turning the two of you just enough so that you can catch sight of Yosano physically dragging a protesting Atsushi out onto the near-empty dance floor.

“Yosano-sensei, please, I’ve never danced before,” Atsushi pleads, tugging his wrist away from the older woman but her grip is iron clad as she tugs the boy toward her, taking the lead in a wide ballroom dance.

“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai sings. “Don’t look so nervous.” 

Atsushi shoots Dazai a withering look, clearly blaming him for the unfortunate turn of events, and you relax a bit as you realize that Yosano pulling Atsushi onto the dance floor triggered a wave of several others: a dark-haired girl dragging an orange-haired boy onto the floor, the president of the Agency holding a hand out to a young girl who keeps shooting longing looks in the direction of the people dancing, a few older couples.

“See, everyone was just too nervous to be the first,” Dazai preens, tugging you close as he shifts from a wide and theatrical ballroom dance to a slower and more intimate one.

Your breath catches as he wraps an arm around your waist, his thumb rubbing slow circles on your lower back as his hand flattens. His other hand slips from where it’s intertwined with your to join his right on your waist. You’re so close to him that you can smell the faint scent of champagne on his breath as you loop your arms around his neck with a small smile. 

Dazai’s dark eyes are glittering as he looks down at you, warm as melted honey and soft as velvet, you’re almost entranced. His lips are curved up into a gentle smile—you think you want to kiss him, and you swallow nervously as soon as the thought crosses your mind. You also think he might be able to read your mind, because his smile becomes a bit more mischievous as he leans down. 

He doesn’t kiss you, but you think he might as well from how close he is to you—you swear that his lips are all but brushing yours. You feel a bit dizzy, and although there are enough people swaying and spinning around the two of you that you don’t really have to worry about any attention being on the two of you, you still feel a bit flustered by the thought of so many possibly seeing this. 

“Now, do I get my kiss?” he whispers, and your lips part to respond but no words leave them. You think that’s dangerous because you definitely should not kiss him right now but your brain will not cooperate in formulating the words. Dazai lets out a small puff of laughter, his breath is warm against your lips and you want to kiss him even more—dangerous, you think again. “Fine, fine, I’ll wait just a bit longer.”

He doesn’t back away though and your heart feels like it’s lodged in your throat as he hums along quietly to the music playing, swaying back and forth with you tucked neatly in your arms. You think this is far too intimate for two people who aren’t even technically dating (you won’t admit that you’d been questioning it earlier with how often he frequents your apartment and his casual intimacy with you and felt a bit embarrassed when he made his comment about his proteges being in a relationship before him), and you think you should probably back away, but instead you find your fingers toying with the hair at the nape of his neck.

There’s something indecipherable in his eyes—conflicted and confused, but with a far heavier emotion thinly veiled behind it, something caught between longing and adoration but with a hint of melancholy. You want to ask him what’s wrong, but you figure that now’s not the time and he’ll probably just blow you off in the same way he did before.

So instead, you just give him a small smile and watch as his dark eyes widen a fraction at the action—you wonder if he realized that you noticed that something’s up with him and more importantly, you wonder if you weren’t supposed to notice. With bated breath, you wait to see whether or not he’s going to close off. 

Around the two of you, the President lifts his arm to let the young girl spin beneath it, Atsushi is still letting out panicked protests as he and Yosano sweep across the dancefloor, an older couple laughs loudly as the man dips her and the teenage girl with dark hair is giggling as she takes the lead in the dance with the orange-haired boy. 

Dazai doesn’t react for what feels like an eternity. 

But then he smiles—it’s light and soft around the edges, matching your own, and though that indecipherable look is still in his eyes, maybe even more wistful now, you can’t help but notice that his shoulders feel much less tense beneath your arms.

You consider it a win.

Dazai thinks that he might be in trouble. 

His gaze lingers on you as you make your way across the room in the direction of where Atsushi and Kyouka are talking. Atsushi had waved you over after everyone finally made their way off of the dance floor, Dazai’s a bit insulted because Atsushi and Kyouka both made it abundantly clear that they only wanted you to join them, which Dazai thinks is quite rude but what does he know?

And Dazai’s heart is racing, his cheeks feel warm, his lips are tingling, and he wants to blame it on the alcohol but he knows deep down that the alcohol is not the issue, you are.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

The thought rings through his head as he watches you walk away, eyes tracing your figure while an emotion that borders on longing wreaks havoc on his heart. His throat feels clogged with it, his lungs feel as if they’re filled with ash. You make it to Atsushi and Kyouka and Atsushi is immediately talking, animated and excited.

He thinks you look beautiful—you’re wearing a red dress and it clings as if it was made perfectly for you even though he’s pretty sure it’s a dress you’d found on Uniqlo’s clearance racks, he remembers you raving about your luck with it last week, and as you look over your shoulder in his direction, your eyes glitter as brightly as the rhinestones sitting on your collarbone, teeth gleaming as you smile at whatever Atsushi is saying to you. Dazai doesn’t dare to ponder what his protege could possibly be telling you to make you look at him like that, he doubts it’s anything good, but he finds that he doesn’t even really care because he thinks that he’d sacrifice all of his pride and dignity if it means you’d continue to smile like that in his direction.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. 

It was meant to be a little fun once he realized that you were just a civilian with no connection to the underground—a distraction, a way to gloat a bit to Kunikida because of course Dazai can pull a girl that fits almost every single one of the man’s ideals while Kunikida himself can hardly dream of it. He convinced himself that he was playing a long game by spending every waking second outside of work at your apartment, wooing you so that he could get a kick out of Kunikida’s inevitable explosion. He convinced himself that the fluttering in his chest whenever you laughed at him was just some strange heart palpitations that have arisen as a chronic consequence of one of his attempts, paying no mind to the fact that it only happens when he’s with you. He convinced himself that his face is warm whenever he’s around you because of the weather even when the temperature chills and the wind is bitter. 

But it’s hard to convince himself now—his lips tingle from where they’d just barely been brushing yours, there are goosebumps on his skin where your fingers had once been, and the image of your smile is branded behind his eyelids, the gentleness of it and the understanding. And he thinks it’s ridiculous honestly, because he doesn’t think that there’s anyone left in the world that could possibly understand him, but since that first day he met you, you’ve seemed to be able to see through him in a way that few people have ever been able to, going out of your way to try to make him feel more comfortable in a way that no one ever has.

When did he start to…

He can’t even finish the thought because acknowledging it means that it’s real and if it’s real, then Dazai is in trouble because Dazai is not a man who is capable of love anymore—or maybe he still is capable of love, or something close to it at least, what he feels for the members of the Agency proves that at least, but he’s not a man who’s capable of being loved. 

Not for who he is.

Even if you do fall for the facade he puts up—the smiling jester who laughs and jokes and never lets anyone close enough to realize that the only thing within him is a black hole that consumes anything and everything he touches—you’ll realize one day that the man you fell for is a fraud and you’d leave. Dazai has been left behind once, in a way that was so excruciating that it’d almost entirely killed off Dazai’s withered heart, and he’s decided that he’ll never be the one left behind again. He’ll run before people can leave him, and he’ll keep everyone else at arm’s length. He’s probably wrong anyway; he doesn’t care for you, not like that, the line between obsession and love has always been dangerously blurry for him. He-

“Atsushi’s taken to her pretty fast, don’t you think?” 

Dazai starts at the sudden sound of Yosano coming to stand next to him, a half-empty glass of wine in hand. There’s a lazy smile on her face as she watches where you, Atsushi and Kyouka are all chatting—well, you and Atsushi, mostly, but Kyouka seems enraptured in whatever conversation the two of you are having. 

“Yeah,” Dazai agrees, and his voice is a bit more rough than he meant for it to be. He pointedly takes another long swig of his drink. “That’s a first.”

“Isn’t it?” Yosano laughs loudly, drawing some attention to the pair. “A good sign, he’s got pretty good instincts.”

Yosano nudges his shoulder playfully but Dazai can hardly gather the energy to mask the sudden and unwelcome sorrow weighing on him. He manages, if only scarcely, but it’s unconvincing if the way Yosano’s brows furrowed has anything to say about it. 

He speaks before she can question it in an attempt to distract her from her concerns. “She’s quite the catch, I know. My sweet bella, if only she would join me in a double suicide, I don’t think I could even dream up a better way to go.”

Yosano only waves off his comment, and Dazai knows that she’s right—maybe it’s his tiger senses or maybe it’s just his intuition, but Atsushi usually has a good eye for good people. His lack of reservation around you, when he was even reserved around the Agency at first, is certainly a nice sign, even if it is partly because he’s had a few glasses of champagne. But Dazai also just can’t find it in him to be pleased over it because yeah, it confirms that you’re a good person but Dazai, no matter how hard he tries to be, is not one and he’s not sure if anything will ever change that.

The thickness in his throat returns, his eyes flutter shut momentarily as he tries to regain some semblance of control over himself.

When he opens his eyes again, his gaze instinctively is drawn back toward you and-

Oh, Dazai thinks, his breath catching and lips instinctively turning up as he watches you start to giggle and lean into Kyouka, who must have finally joined the conversation, while looking over at him. There’s a hazy look in your eyes, courtesy of the constant stream of champagne Dazai has been supplying you with all night, but you can’t seem to draw your eyes off of Dazai and Dazai can’t seem to draw his from you. 

Yosano nudges his shoulder again to try to get his attention but Dazai can’t look away from you so he hums as if to tell her that she has his attention—if only partly. 

“Enjoy it, Dazai,” Yosano says quietly and Dazai finally glances over to her, catching the oddly coherent look in what should’ve been drunken, glazed over eyes. “Don’t sabotage this for yourself. Enjoy it.” 

Dazai thinks maybe he was wrong about you being one of few to be able to see right through him. Maybe he’s not as subtle as he thinks he is—or maybe it’s just his shared connection to Yosano through Mori that has her able to read him so easily. He avoids Yosano’s gaze as he looks back out into the crowds. Naturally, he finds himself seeking you out again, and you’re already looking at him. There’s a soft expression on your face as you admire him, not having realized he’d caught you staring yet, and you look as if you’re barely listening to what Atsushi is saying, and Dazai’s heart seizes because no one has ever looked at him that way before.

Well, he decides, maybe Yosano is right. He might as well enjoy it while it lasts. Once you realize that the front he shows you is just a mask to hide the rotting carcass that lies beneath, you’ll turn tail and run, and then everything can go back to normal again. He just can’t let himself get more attached than he already is—that way it won’t hurt when you leave.

Dazai catches his lips turning up as he watches you start giggling at something Atsushi and Kyouka say, Dazai’s heart does that damning flutter again, and immediately, he averts his gaze.

Still, he thinks, he’s far too sober for this. 

Later in the night, when people have begun to say their goodbyes and you start to make your way to the restrooms to freshen up before heading out, Dazai corners you against the wall of the hall leading out of the event venue. You don’t even hear him following you or notice his presence until you feel his fingers snatch your wrist as he yanks you back toward him. 

Your eyes widen but you’re able to bite back the yelp that nearly escapes your lips when you recognize his dark eyes looking down at you, mischievous and glittering beneath the soft lights. 

“Do I get my kiss now?” Dazai breathes out. The wall behind you is cool against your back, and you can hear the chatter from the event down the hall as the event begins to come to an end. You part your lips to respond to him, with what? You aren’t entirely sure, but it doesn’t seem to matter because no words leave your lips regardless. “The party’s over, no need to worry about messing up that pretty makeup now, bella.”

“Only one,” you finally say, voice a bit more throaty than you would have liked but it’s hard to concentrate with Dazai’s fingers grazing your hips and his body brushing yours. You wonder if the man has ever learned about the concept of personal space—you severely doubt it. “Make it good, and maybe you can have a second.”

The smile on Dazai’s lips is nothing short of sinful as he brings one hand up to cup the side of your neck, thumb running along your jawline and fingers entangling with your hair. He doesn’t waste a second as he dips his head down to press his lips against yours, they’re warm and soft, and taste distinctly like the champagne that had been served earlier in the night. You let out a quiet noise of surprise against his lips, eyes fluttering shut. 

The kiss is tamer than you expected it to be—he makes no move to deepen it, lips moving slowly and gently against yours as if he’s hesitant to take it any further, but Dazai Osamu has never been hesitant about anything in all of the times you've encountered him. Your hands rest on his forearms as he keeps you pressed up against the wall, unconcerned with the fact that all of his coworkers and many government officials are naught but half a hallway away. 

You think to yourself, a bit embarrassed, that you might be able to spend an eternity kissing Dazai Osamu and never grow tired of it, and you wonder why it's taken you so long just to give in to his request from nearly a month ago.

You aren’t sure if ten seconds, ten minutes or ten hours have passed by the time he finally separates his lips from yours. He doesn’t move far away at all—his nose still nudging yours, his soft lips still brushing your own, he leaves no space at all between the two of you as he asks: “Good enough for a second?”

Your lips curve up into a smile, eyes meeting his dark ones as you look up at him through your lashes. Though, you have half a mind to agree, your previous thoughts still ringing through your head, you can't help the teasing words that spilled from your lips: “I’m not sure. I guess I’ll sleep on it and let you know my answer the next time we see each other.”

The laugh that Dazai lets out is breathless. 

“Deal.”

#EOWMEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW I LOVE THIS SERIES DAZAI OSAMU HES SO PATHETIC RAHHHHH

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

columbina with a sibling who is just as graceful and ethereal as her; not identical in their looks but both sharing the same peculiar demeanor.

columbina whose sibling, just like her, has something not quite right about them; be it the listless gaze that drifts aimlessly across their surroundings, or how they walk with silent footsteps like they are gliding across the air, almost as if they're not even human.

columbina who hums lullabies to her sibling to get them to sleep, singing haunting melodies that echo right into their dreams.

columbina who lets her sibling weave braids into her hair, because they are always careful not to disturb her wings.

columbina whose sibling is safe to wander freely through the fatui headquarters, for everyone knows not to incur the wrath of the damselette.

columbina who would gladly burn the world to keep her sibling warm.

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

FAMILY (OF SORTS) — Platonic Fatui Harbingers & reader.

i. SUMMARY: The Fatui Harbingers have a soft spot for Arlecchino's child. ii. CONTENT WARNINGS: None! iii. NOTES: STRICTLY PLATONIC, headcanons, fluff, parent!arlecchino, house of the hearth!reader, all of the harbingers are reader's weird aunts and uncles, gn!reader, they/them pronouns used, 1.6k words. iv. A/N: the fatui are just a dysfunctional found family and i will die on this hill. shoutout to @romaritimeharbor for listening to my rambles about this idea 🫶🫶 also pierro and pulcinella aren't here because i could not think of anything to write for them :')

All of the harbingers knew about Arlecchino’s child; the one that appeared in Fatui Headquarters stuck to her side, eyes cast to the floor. They all saw the way that Arlecchino had held a soft grip on their shoulder, guiding them through the halls with the gentle touch of a parent from the gentle hands of a monster.

The Knave always swore she didn’t play favourites, but from an outside view it was clear that they held a special place separate from the rest. Anyone could see the way they appeared so much more frequently by her side. They were permitted to sit in on meetings, following her like a shadow. Some of the Harbingers guessed that she had picked them to be her successor; that their frequent shadowing was training them to take over once she was gone. Others joked about Arlecchino’s apparent soft side taking over. Whatever the reason, time went on, and the Fatui saw more and more of them.

All of them varied in their opinions of them—some indifferent, some fond—but the Harbingers all cared for them in their own ways.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Columbina simply adores them. They’re just so small and cute, so tiny and fragile! Admittedly, her idea of ‘tiny’ is rather skewed—applying to anyone she deems weaker than her (notably, this label also gets given to Capitano and Tartaglia, despite their larger size and physical strength. The Damselette is truly an enigma.)

Whenever Arlecchino allows her to watch over them, she is delighted. She has a penchant for pet names, so ‘angel’, ‘my sweet’, and ‘lovely’ are all more commonly used than their name. Sometimes there’s a ‘baby’ or ‘bub’ if she’s feeling particularly affectionate, but no matter the name, it is always dripping with sweetness. She’ll sing to them too, to calm them down or get them to sleep. Her voice is gentle, laced with as much love as she would show her own child.

Some Fatui believe Columbina is a woman formed from hollow sweetness; that behind the lazy smile and soft voice, lies a callous and unfeeling heart, but her insistence on singing them to sleep comes from a place of genuine affection.

When they have to return home, she’ll kiss their cheeks and sweep them into a hug, making them promise to visit her soon.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

The fact that Arlecchino would tear out his throat with her bare hands if he dared to look at them the wrong way is the only thing stopping Dottore from roping [Name] into one of his experiments. Even then, he can’t help but investigate them a bit. Nothing extreme—please put the knife down, Knave—just some simple trials to see how they work. A quick strength assessment, a test of their reflexes, enough to judge the effectiveness of the House of the Hearth’s training.

The segments all had different opinions of them, varying from Prime’s general indifference to some of the younger segments fondness towards them. The latter were less likely to try to trick them into the lab—not that Arlecchino would allow them anywhere near it without strict supervision—and instead focused their efforts on convincing them to help mess with the rest of the Dottores. They proved to be an excellent partner in crime to thoroughly ruin the older segment’s day.

Despite his assertion that he won’t harm them, Dottore tends to be the one Arlecchino trusts least around her child. His unwillingness to get on her bad side doesn’t stop her from insisting Columbina or herself accompany them whenever they visit his lab.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Tartaglia loves them. The days he gets to see his siblings are few and far between, so he’s always eager to play the older brother for them, and for any other House of the Heath kids that stop by. In fact, whenever any of the children visit, he makes sure to buy them plenty of sugary treats and candies before quickly sending them back to their Father.

(Arlecchino was not happy the first time this happened. It didn’t stop him from doing it every time, though.)

He was the first to convince them to call him Uncle, a feat that he bragged about to the rest of the Harbingers. This small incident would inadvertently lead to a petty competition to see who their favourite is, an event that would quickly spiral out of control with bribery and promises coming from all sides.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Sandrone is very particular with who she allows in her workshop. When the rare guest was allowed inside, they had to follow three simple rules: do not touch anything, do not move unless I tell you to, and do not talk to me while I work. When [Name] first stumbled into the room, she was prepared to discourteously shoo them out the way she did whenever Tartaglia poked his head in to see what she was working on. But after some extensive begging, she relented and sat them down in a corner to watch her work. 

Even if she is far less fond of them as some of the other Harbingers, she still audibly squeaked the first time she was called Aunt Sandrone. This was covered up with a cough, but nothing could stop the warmth blooming in her chest. It was the first time a living creature had addressed her with such a familial title; some of her synthetic creations had a habit of calling her Mother, but this was a living, breathing person.

After they started calling her that, she quietly told them they were free to visit when she was working—provided they did not interfere with anything. 

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

As much as he denies it, Scaramouche has a big soft spot for kids. He’ll swear up and down that he doesn’t care for them at all, but he treats them noticeably gentler than he treats any other member of the Fatui. Arlecchino once caught them huddled against him, using his wide-brimmed hat to shelter from the rain. She never let him forget that moment—the fearsome Balladeer, who notoriously never let anyone close enough to touch him, allowing her child to use him as an umbrella.

They remind him a little too much of the young boy he once considered his family. Whenever he spends time with them, there is something inside that both urges him to protect them in the way he couldn’t protect that child, and warns keep them at arm’s length before they betray him too. But his endearment towards them prevailed, and he begrudgingly allowed them a place in his heart.

Unlike Columbina’s affectionate pet names, the only nicknames Scaramouche gives them are ‘kid’ and ‘brat’, depending on his mood. On good days, they might even get called by their name, though it is a rarity. He cares for them, truly. In his own, strange way.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Capitano is the best at giving advice out of all the harbingers. He is much more down to earth than Columbina and Dottore, and far less cynical than Scaramouche and Sandrone. He’ll let them ramble about their frustrations freely before offering gentle suggestions on what they should do to help. Even if they aren’t looking for a solution, he’s patient enough to hear out their thoughts, however jumbled and incoherent they may be.

He also likes teaching them skills he deems important for a young person to know. These include cooking—Tartaglia is not allowed to join them in these lessons after he almost burnt down the kitchen trying to ‘help’—as well as sewing and mending clothes.  

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Pantalone never would describe himself as parental. He never cared too much for kids; he hadn’t enough patience to deal with constantly crying babies or needy toddlers. Arlecchino’s child was thankfully far above that age, so they were less unbearable to deal with.

He was quite happy to spoil them with extravagant gifts and treats to win their favour, but the most effective way he does so is simply spending time with them. Trips to luxurious restaurants for lunch, allowing them to shadow him while he works. He also likes to give them advice—completely unasked for—about life, and relationships. Unlike Capitano however, his advice is of a much less helpful; he has a habit of advocating for blackmail for solving problems.

In exchange for a box of the most expensive pastries in Teyvat, he got them to call him their favourite uncle in front of Tartaglia. The miniscule dent in his funds was worth the look of betrayal on the younger Harbinger’s face.

⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

Signora easily took the longest to warm up to them. When she first met them, it was easy enough to label them as Arlecchino’s brat and move them from her mind. But they kept appearing, in and around the headquarters. At first they were always glued to the Knave’s side, but eventually Signora began to see them wandering alone through the halls. She took note of them—not out of any attachment to them, only out of self-preservation knowing that if Arlecchino found out her child landed themself into trouble while she was close by, it would be her funeral soon.

The sense of obligation faltered when she started to grow fond of them. They were irritatingly innocent, a rarity within the Fatui. Something about the spark in their eyes reminded her of when she was young—when she still had warmth in her heart and blood in her veins. For the first time in centuries, her frozen heart began to thaw with care towards another person, and begrudgingly, she began to accept that they were not as unpleasant as she once believed.

reblogs and comments are appreciated! ♡

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

FAMILY, OF SORTS. — in which kafka, blade, and silver wolf are an odd but quite special found family to be a part of.

— trigger & content warnings. mentions of unspecified injury.

— pairings & notes. fluff, found family. kafka & teen!reader, blade & teen!reader, silver wolf & teen!reader. 1.3k words. reader is a stellaron hunter. reader is gender neutral (they/them pronouns used).

— author's notes. the sillies <3 APHE POSTING???? APHELION POSTING REAL AND TRUE????????? i had a request for this on my old blog (from my dear beloved moot @starryshinyskies <3) so i decided to finish it 💪 nd tagging @www-brontide since i know you were excited for this post HEHE anyways how are we feeling about this formatting? if you guys don't like it i'm very open to changing it back. i'm just experimenting with my post format is all 🫶

kafka seems strangely motherly to me. caring and doting in her own unique ways, but also quite strange and odd in those same ways. an enigma of sorts.

she is the kind of person to always send the stellaron hunters' youngest member texts throughout the day; these texts range anywhere from silly and inconsequential to sweet messages letting [name] know that she was thinking about them.

(her doting nature is not dissimilar to how she thinks of and regards the trailblazer... hm.)

KAFKA

My coat got stained again :(

Won't you help me clean it when you get home, little one?

[ 1:22 PM ]

KAFKA

I saw a new movie today.

It made me think of you. It was quite to your tastes.

Perhaps we should go see it together sometime, hm?

Ah, but you're probably asleep by now...

That's fine. You do need it more than the rest of us.

Sleep well, darling.

[ 11:34 PM ]

she thinks of her little one quite frequently and has been known to pick up little trinkets from different planets that reminded her of them. a phone charm, a set of rings, something more practical like a new weapon... she once returned with a nice coat that matches one of hers. her gifts are always unpredictable but nonetheless very thoughtful.

and when or if they get injured, she is the one who treats their wound(s) with a tender hand.

she does chide them, however.

"you are a stellaron hunter, little one," she reminds, pulling the bandages wrapped around their wound a little tighter, making them wince. it is akin to a slap on the wrist—not enough pain to seriously harm them, but enough to force them to take her words to heart. "if it is not a part of the plan, try your best not to get caught or injured, hm? silver wolf doesn't like to see you this way, and it causes a unique stir in bladie. your getting injured causes quite the unrest among us all! do be more careful next time."

if there is ever a night during which they are struggling to sleep, they are more than welcome to seek out kafka's company.

she would be willing to read them to sleep, if that is what they desired.

however... a far easier method that would ensure they would stay asleep? her spirit whisper ability, of course.

they know kafka would not use it to harm them.

kafka finds their earnest trust beyond endearing. the trust of a little one like them is quite an important gift! the least she can do, she thinks, is assist them when her assistance is needed.

and sometimes, that just means lulling them to sleep.

blade is quite a difficult person to read, regardless of whether he intends to be so or not.

some days, he is distant and prefers to keep to himself. others, less so.

this, though, should not be mistaken for a lack of care. in fact, he cares quite deeply. his care is simply very quiet and he desperately, earnestly, truly does not wish to cause [name] harm.

he is also most likely the one who spars with them and trains them in the ways of combat, which... he isn't exactly the gentlest at doing. training sessions can be quite frustrating in that they often emerge sore and with new cuts and bruises (but really, these injuries are small and insignificant; they are confident in saying that blade would never truly hurt them, nobody in their family would). he does mean well in his tough methods, though.

the universe is not kind or gentle. it will never treat them that way. therefore, he does his best to prepare them so that they can effectively handle the universe's cruelty and defend themselves from it.

one of the ways in which his quiet care manifests is through his treatment of the small wounds he gives them during training. kafka has said many times that she can treat them, but blade always insists on doing it himself.

out of all of their coworkers, blade becomes the most restless when they're away. he gets particularly antsy when they've been gone for a long period or when they're out there alone. kafka always giggles and points out to him how utterly restless he becomes when such circumstances occur.

(he should be assured that they can handle themselves, given that he is their mentor—there is surely nobody else who would know their skills as well as he would—but somehow he simply isn't.)

blade is also, generally speaking, the most protective.

should they come back injured... if it is anything other than a shallow scratch on the cheek, a rage hotter than the brightest star burns under his skin. in those moments, he almost does not dare to touch them, for fear that he might harm them unwittingly... but he does. his hands are somewhat rough when he snatches their face and tilts their chin around to get a better look at the blood (is it theirs? he hopes not) and grime dirtying their face. there is a terrifying threat present in his voice when he demands, not asks, "who did this to you?"

(if kafka was not present in these moments, he might worry that his mara would get the best of him. thankfully, kafka is intentional and present in such situations.)

unless the ones responsible for the wound have already been adequately... taken care of, he will do so himself. there is nowhere in the universe that the perpetrators could hide from him.

it's about protecting them, but it is also about sending a message.

something along the lines of "anyone who lays hands on them will suffer a fate worse than death," perhaps.

death is anything but a terrible fate to blade, but he knows that it is the worst imaginable to some. he will be certain to deliver something infinitely worse, something beyond imagination, to those daring to hurt his younger teammate.

silver wolf is perhaps the least enigmatic of their little family. she isn't an open book, per se, but she's easier to read than kafka or blade... at least, for someone like [name], anyway.

she never fails to harrass them to play a few rounds (which tends to spiral into many, many rounds...) of a game or two with her. why them, specifically? she insists that blade isn't good at them and kafka is kafka. really, it may very well just be that she enjoys spending time with them, but she—of course—will not simply say that.

however... she bullies them terribly about how bad they are. it comes from a place of affection!

she is also the type to win them every single prize at carnivals, just because she likes the joy it seems to bring them. when she encounters rigged games, however, she becomes all the more motivated by her unadulterated annoyance to beat them.

what do you mean she of all people can't beat this awful and horrible rigged game? her???? the silver wolf????? seriously????????

unfortunately, it does not always end in her victory, even when she is infinitely motivated by her anger.

...and she really isn't above just taking one of the prizes when the stall's owner isn't looking. she has done so multiple times for [name].

she would definitely try to teach them hacking (keyword: try) if they aren't already familiar with it. since it has come in handy for her, she figures that they might also find use in it. it's her quiet way of looking out for them.

(her more obvious way of looking out for them is often seen when she is on missions with them. most commonly, it manifests as her snatching their arm and pulling them out of the way of an enemy before obliterating said threat.)

silver wolf is totally the sort of person to pinch their cheeks (to different degrees, kafka and blade also do this!). they are very cute to her.

overall they are a weird but very special little family to be a part of <3

please consider supporting your writers by reblogging and leaving a kind tag or comment. it really helps me out!

#YAAAHHHHHH STELLARON HUNTERS MENTIONED WTF IS A BAD FOUNF FAMILY #i love dis ty for yhe food 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️

[sunfishsunfishsunfish]

BEING BEST FRIENDS WITH NAKAHARA CHUUYA HCS

rua’s notes: omg this was so sweet I had sm fun writing it ;-;

requested by; @silverbladexyz

currently playing…

okay. honestly? being best friends with chuuya just might be one of the best things ever.

he’s a really nice person once you get to know him and he’s so?? supportive of you?

he also pays for almost anything. oh. you don’t have any more money to pay your bills? they’ve been paid. and your meal? yeah, those too!

uhm..but I can say that you two are troublemakers :D aka bombing places and stuff. those happened more frequently when you were teenagers to be honest.

he’s also aggressively nice. like when you get into a car accident or smth like that I feel like he would slap you before mumbling a “I was so worried you idiot. don’t do stupid shit like that or I’ll kill you” and then would flick your forehead.

he’s kinda like a older brother (if you’re younger than him) or like a younger brother. in short: the two of you are like family, one is rarely seen without the other.

you would probably be the one to go to his house at 3am to ask him if he would like to watch movies with you. or maybe destroy some building. or just ending a group of gangsters you came across earlier that pissed you off.

life was chaotic, but it was nice.

uhm…I heard if you reblog, chuuya would give you a gift on Christmas Day! :0

@ruanais! do not repost, translate, or plagiarise!