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[osamuslvt]

Could I request Dazai x reader, with a reader who unknowingly becomes Dazai’s partner just because they’ve been together for so long but they don’t realize it until someone else points it out?

When he leaves the port mafia he takes reader with him because they make living bearable and he’d hate to see them get further corrupted by the mafia, after living underground together for a few years they become closer than ever: reader is sweet to him, they take care of him when he can’t even get out of bed, they make warm meals for him even if he ends up only taking a few bites, and Dazai for once let’s himself love because even if the world wants to cruelly rip them away from his grasp he’ll fight with everything he’s got. After a while of being in the agency like some time after atsushi comes in Dazai forgets his bento at home and reader brings it to him.

Dazai being Dazai they think readers just an old fling until they see how Dazai’s eyes soften and his usual smug demeanor is nowhere to be seen. Reader drops off the bento and bids him goodbye only to be pulled into Dazai’s embrace and get one too many goodbye kisses. Dazai introduces them as his spouse and reader is just as stunned as everyone in the agency.

Sorry it’s so long😭

THE ONE HE DIDN'T REALIZE HE CHOSE

pairing: osamu dazai x gn!reader wc: 2.3k 𑣲note: thank you for requesting!! I hope you like it!! (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)

You never knew when exactly you and Dazai became a pair.

It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t even a moment. It was just… him. Following you like a shadow. Letting you drag him out of bed. Expecting you beside him after missions. Sitting too close. Sharing his food with you even though he barely ate. Pulling you behind him when things got dangerous, even if your combat ability outmatched his.

And you? You never questioned it. Dazai was Dazai — dramatic, complicated, half-feral and half-genius, a hurricane in human form — and being with him simply felt natural. Too natural, maybe.

It wasn’t until one evening, when you were patching up the twentieth minor cut he had acquired that week, that Chuuya pointed a finger at you two and barked:

“Are you two dating or what?”

You had choked on your tea. Dazai had blinked once. Twice. Then turned his face toward you like you might have the answer.

And neither of you said anything.

Chuuya rolled his eyes hard enough to sprain something.

“You idiots don’t even know you’re together.”

You had stammered out something weak. Dazai had only shrugged, lips twitching like he found the entire thing amusing.

But later that night — when everyone else had left — Dazai had walked home beside you in rare silence.

He didn’t reach for your hand. But his sleeve brushed yours the entire way. And when you unlocked your door, he followed you in without asking.

Like always.

Like it was the only home he had.

⸻

When he left the Port Mafia, he didn’t ask you to come with him.

He simply said:

“Pack your things.”

You had blinked. “Why?”

Dazai didn’t look at you. He was wrapping bandages around his arm, the ends uneven from shaking fingers.

“Because I’m leaving.”

That should’ve been it. He could’ve gone alone. He was going alone — until he added, so quietly you almost missed it:

“I won’t survive without you.”

Your breath caught.

His voice… wasn’t Dazai’s usual voice. Not playful. Not mocking. Not cold.

Just honest.

Terrifyingly honest.

“You make things bearable,” he said. He didn’t look at you. He couldn’t.

“And if you stay in the Mafia… it’ll eat you alive. I can’t let that happen.”

You couldn’t speak for a moment.

“…So you want me to come with you?”

His shoulders lowered by a fraction — relief slipping out before he could stop it.

“Yes.”

So you went.

Because where he went, you went.

And he knew that long before you did.

⸻

Years underground turned into a quiet life of warm meals and cold mornings.

You lived together in the deepest parts of Yokohama’s forgotten corners. Old subway tunnels, abandoned basements, safehouses hidden between the walls of buildings — anywhere the Port Mafia couldn’t reach.

Dazai didn’t smile often back then. He slept too much. He ate too little. Some days he could barely sit up in bed.

But you were always there.

You brushed hair out of his eyes when fevers hit. You coaxed him to eat, even if it was just three bites of soup. You sat beside him when nightmares dragged him onto the floor gasping.

And he let you. God, he let you.

One evening, after a rare moment of peace, Dazai rested his head in your lap, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.

“Why are you so kind to me?”

You didn’t answer immediately.

“…Because I care about you.”

His fingers curled into your shirt — startled by the softness of it, terrified of how easy it felt.

“You shouldn’t,” he whispered. “I’ll ruin you.”

You shook your head. “You won’t.”

He swallowed.

“I already have.”

You leaned down and pressed your forehead to his.

“No,” you said softly. “You saved me.”

Something in him cracked. A sound escaped him — tiny, broken, desperate.

He never looked at you the same after that.

His touches grew softer. His eyes lingered longer. He started eating more — because you cooked it.

He started living — because you were there.

Every night, he fell asleep with his fingers tangled in yours. Every morning, he whispered a greeting only you could hear.

And one night, long after the world above forgot his name, Dazai murmured into your shoulder:

“You’re the reason I’m still here.”

You didn’t know it yet, but that was his version of saying:

I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time. You’re mine.

⸻

When Dazai joined the Agency, you followed him again.

Not because he asked.

Because he reached for your hand as he stepped through the door.

Like he always did.

Most of the Agency didn’t know what to make of you. Some assumed you were a friend. Others thought you were a former accomplice.

A few whispered “ex” under their breath.

Dazai never corrected them. Not loudly, at least.

Because in his mind, you and him were… a given. A constant. A fact of the universe.

You didn’t need labels.

Not until the day he forgot his bento.

⸻

The Bento Incident

The moment you arrived at the Agency with the carefully wrapped bento box, everyone looked up.

You bowed politely.

“Dazai-san forgot his lunch.”

Atsushi blinked. Kunikida raised his head. Ranpo openly stared.

And Dazai — the man who dramatized everything, who lied without blinking, who lived to tease — froze.

His entire body went still. Eyes softened instantly, melting into something warm and quiet. Shoulders dropped. Breath eased.

His smile wasn’t smug. Or playful. Or theatrical.

It was small.

Real.

Intimate in a way that made everyone else in the room feel like intruders.

He walked over to you with steps that were almost gentle.

“Thank you,” he said softly, fingers brushing yours as he took the bento.

You nodded, a little shy. “I thought you’d forget to eat. Again.”

He hummed. “You’re always looking after me.”

You smiled. “Someone has to.”

You turned to leave—

—and his hand grabbed your wrist.

He tugged you back. Straight into his arms.

You gasped as he pressed his lips to your forehead. Then your cheek. Then your temple. Then one, two, three kisses along your jaw.

The Agency watched in stunned silence.

You whispered, flustered, “D-Dazai… everyone’s—”

He ignored that completely, burying his face in your neck like you were the only person in the building.

“I’ll see you at home,” he murmured softly.

“Okay,” you breathed.

You pulled away, but Dazai’s hand lingered against yours until the very last possible second before you slipped out the door.

The room was silent.

Atsushi’s mouth hung open. Ranpo blinked rapidly. Kunikida dropped his pen.

Finally, Yosano said what everyone was thinking:

“…Dazai. Who was that?”

He blinked.

“Ah.” A soft smile spread across his face — the kind that no one had ever seen before. “My spouse.”

Silence.

Total, absolute silence.

Atsushi choked on air. Kunikida nearly fainted. Ranpo wheezed.

“Your—YOUR WHAT?!” Atsushi shouted.

“Spouse,” Dazai repeated, calm as ever.

“You’re MARRIED?!” Ranpo blurted.

Dazai gave a noncommittal shrug. “More or less.”

Kunikida slammed his notebook shut. “When did you get MARRIED?!”

Dazai tilted his head, thoughtful.

“…We never technically talked about it.”

Ranpo sputtered. “YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW?!”

Dazai laced his fingers over his chest and sighed dreamily.

“When you live with someone for years, share a bed, care for each other, risk your lives for one another, and can’t imagine breathing without them—” He smiled slowly. “—what else would you call it?”

Atsushi covered his mouth with both hands.

Kunikida muttered, “I need to sit down.”

Ranpo pointed accusingly at the door you had exited through. “THEY DIDN’T EVEN KNOW THEY WERE YOUR SPOUSE!”

Dazai’s smile turned secret, tender.

“Mm. I’ll let them know when I get home.”

⸻

And later that night…

Dazai curled up against you on the couch, head resting on your shoulder, your fingers absently stroking his hair.

“Dazai?” you said softly. “The Agency thinks I’m… your spouse.”

He hummed. “Mm. Yes.”

You stared at him.

“…Are we?”

He pressed a kiss to your collarbone.

“Yes,” he answered simply.

Your heart skipped.

“You never asked me.”

Dazai looked up, eyes warm in the dim light.

“I didn’t need to,” he whispered. “You’ve been mine since long before either of us realized it.”

Your breath trembled.

“And I?” you asked softly. “Am I yours?”

Dazai smiled — soft, fragile, unbelievably sincere.

“You always have been.” He cupped your cheek gently. “And I’ll spend the rest of my life proving I’m yours too.”

And when he kissed you, it felt like years of quiet devotion finally blooming into something warm enough to light even the darkest corners of his heart.

osamuslvt™

comments / reblogs much appreciated <3

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

FEATURING: dazai osamu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your eye twitches in irritation. 

You pull the trigger. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You pull the trigger again.

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

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

You just tried to-

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

You just tried to kill Dazai.

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

You almost killed Dazai.

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

You would have killed Dazai if not for sheer luck. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He should know better. 

He does know better.

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

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

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

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

That’s all.

That is not all.

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

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

You don’t know why you’re still here. 

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

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

But you won’t.

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

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

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

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

What the hell are you doing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You… understand, don’t you?” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dazai-”

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

Oh.

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

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

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bar?

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

Dazai thinks he might rather die. 

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

Ouch.

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

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

The safehouse in Sakae?

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

How did he get here?

He needs another drink desperately.

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

What?

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

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

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

Just enough to see you.

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

“Will you be here in the morning?”

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

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

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

The safe house is empty.

You’re nowhere to be found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 FIRST LIGHT

FEATURING: beast dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai severely overestimated his self-control. it takes approximately six days and thirteen hours for him to break, seeking you out again. when he does, he knows that nothing will ever be the same. {wordcount: 14.5k; fem!reader; romance & tragedy}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: PART TWOOOOOOO, we have one of my fav parallels in this one, i know you guys will catch it immediately but u still must tell me when you do. also, there's another hint about badlands!reader & dazai's relationship in this chapter that happened after the events of the last installment so u must let me know if you catch that too. reblogs are always appreciated! thank you guys & i hope you guys love this as much as i enjoyed writing it

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

SEE: UNREAL UNEARTH SERIES MASTERLIST READ: BADLANDS SIDE A

He understands now the temptation that Eve must have felt in the Garden of Eden with the forbidden fruit dangling right in front of her face. Traditional interpretation of the Bible places the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden on day six of creation; Dazai’s restraint has thus far rivaled that of the two Biblical figures. He’s on day six now, in fact; it’s been exactly six days, twelve hours and forty six minutes since he met you in the hallway of the club and each passing second has been more agonizing than the last. 

He isn’t sure how much longer he’s going to last. 

His office is dark and suffocating, the atmosphere so cold and unwelcoming that it has him craving the return to your warm and homely apartment so intensely that he thinks it might be making him sick. He turned off the light earlier when he felt a migraine coming on, hoping that the darkness would let his eyes and mind rest enough to catch it before it fully came on, but he’s realized that it probably wasn’t the light causing his headache, rather it was you.

He sighs as he tilts his head back, willing the migraine to go away even though he knows it's to no avail. But he can’t even rest his eyes in peace, because every time they slide shut, the image of you burns the inside of his eyelids—your soft gaze and bright smile, the way you held your hand out to take his and the way your lashes fluttered as you leaned into his touch. 

Six days, twelve hours and forty seven minutes. 

He thinks he would prefer the nightmares of his other lives to this. At least with those, they fuel his drive to press forward with his master plan, the reminder of your fates in the other worlds would scorch away any desire to seek you out in fear of bringing it upon you again in this one.

Now, every night for the past six days he’s been plagued with dreams of you—pleasant dreams. Dreams that when he wakes from them, he finds his cheeks wet and his chest heavy with such an intense longing for you that it makes him physically ill. He dreams of having you in his arms, kissing the top of your head as you do your best to study even with him making every effort to distract you. He dreams of watching sunrises with you, seeing the way the early morning colors wash over your face, your skin glowing and eyes glittering in such a vivid way that Dazai swears he can even picture it now. He dreams of a ring, and he dreams of his palms sweating as he walks with you down to the beach you met on to watch another sunrise, and he dreams of getting down on one knee in front of you just as the sun breaks over the horizon. He never dreams of a wedding, so Dazai theorizes that you never made it long enough for one to take place. 

And the realization of that alone should be enough to make the yearning for you evaporate but it’s not, because dangerous thoughts have been circulating through his head since the night he left you. Thoughts of how maybe this could be different. Dazai is the boss of the Port Mafia in this life, he has enough resources to protect you—more money than god and enough armed forces behind him to rival the nation’s government. He has the power to keep you safe in this life, more than he ever had in any other. 

If there was any life that he could be with you and ensure your safety, it’s this one. 

Six days, twelve hours and forty nine minutes.

Does he really want to give this up?

Dazai rests his arms on his desk, lowering his head down, eyes sliding shut again. He can see you again, the image of you from last week, laughing wildly at something he’d said—he can’t even remember what it was, he was so nervous that he can’t even recall half of the night, but he doesn’t really care at all what he said anyway, too enraptured by the way you react to it. 

He wonders if you’re there now. At the bar. Because what he does remember, of course, is your teasing grin as you tell him that of course, you’re scheming out a second meeting between the two of you because naturally you’ve decided that you already like him. And he remembers the hope thinly veiled behind your eyes, as you look over him, knowing that if the two of you are to meet again, it would be reliant on whether or not he decides to come back to the club, because you’ve already made your intentions clear.

Six days, twelve hours and fifty minutes.

Dazai’s throat feels swollen, his nails dig into his palms. He imagines you waiting there, he imagines the disappointment on your face as you slowly realize he’s not going to show up. And you’re so damn beautiful, radiant even beneath the shitty lighting of the club—he’s sure you saved a seat at the bar for him, and you’ve probably had dozens of interested men who’ve offered to buy you drinks, asking if you’d come to the club alone. And you’ll probably turn them down at first, telling them that you’re waiting on someone, but he wonders how long it’ll take for you to finally take one of them up on their offer after you’ve realized that Dazai isn’t going to show. He wonders if you’ll follow them out to the dance floor, he wonders if you’ll give them the same teasing smile you gave him. He can picture slim fingers caressing your hips, pulling you closer. He can picture your lashes fluttering as they lean their head down to ghost their lips against your neck, swaying to the music. He doesn’t want to picture anything else, but his mind, as always, betrays him. 

He wonders if you’ll take them back to your apartment—would you get right into it or would you sit and talk with them for a while? His head spins as his thoughts take an increasingly more dangerous spiral. It’s a bitter cold night out, maybe you’ll take the opportunity to make them the hot chocolate you’ve made him hundreds of times, thousands of times before—no, he corrects as the lines start to blur in a treacherous way, you’ve never made it for him in this life. Maybe it’s so cold out that you’d forgo small talk altogether, instead seeking out the warmth of someone else’s body—you’d take them by the hand, lead them into your bedroom and lay them back on your bed. 

Would you be gentle with them? Like you were with him? No, he reminds himself again, you’ve never been with him like that, not in this life. The pages of the Book pile around him, memories flooding him with an intensity that he’s never experienced before; he can hardly even remember what his reality is, all of the others blending and shifting together in his mind, making it impossible to decipher the lines between them. 

You’re dragging him to the beach to watch your first sunrise with him and you’re telling him that you want to see as many as possible with him—he wants to tell you that he thinks he might love you but he doesn’t know how to say it  You’re laying him back against a bed, asking him if he trusts you—of course, he does, how is that even a question? You’re leaning your head against his arm, standing before a familiar grave and accepting him for all that he is even after he strips bare down to all of the worst parts of himself for you—you shouldn’t, he wants to say desperately, but instead he’s telling you that he loves you, even though he knows it might kill you. And then-

And then he’s ripped violently from his fall into the pages of the Book as his phone vibrates and it’s not him anymore, it’s someone else, someone unworthy and undeserving, a stranger that you’d turned to because Dazai wasn’t there.

Dazai nearly heaves. He never should have indulged in you that night. He should have known he was never going to go back to normal after it. The difference between the memories and actually having seen you and heard you and touched you and smelt you was so much more severe than he ever could have expected. Now, the memories aren’t enough; he wants a life with you, he wants it to be his reality. He thinks that it’s not fair that he’s the only one who can’t be with you. He wants to make new memories with you so he no longer has to struggle with the blurred lines, so he doesn’t have to yearn for a life that he’ll never be able to experience, having to watch every single other Dazai get to have what he can’t.

Six days, twelve hours and fifty eight minutes.

He can do it, his thoughts are a bit manic as he tries to ground himself after the spiral. He has the knowledge. He has the power. He has the resources. If there’s any life that he’s able to be with you and keep you safe, it’s this one. He doesn’t have to hide from you, he doesn’t have to deny himself of you to protect you—he has the knowledge, he has the power, he has the resources. He can keep you safe. Instead of being the only Dazai who never gets to be with you, he’ll be the only Dazai who can actually spend his life with you—a long one, a happy one. He’ll have what none of them did. He can do it.  

Before he can stop himself, he speaks.

“Gin-chan,” Dazai calls softly, knowing that he doesn’t have to speak any louder for the girl to hear him. As soon as he hears the door to the backroom open, he continues with, “Have Albatross be ready downstairs with one of the cars.” 

“Of course. Where to, sir?” 

To Gin’s credit, she doesn’t sound at all caught off guard by Dazai’s sudden request, as if it’s normal for Dazai to randomly decide to leave the Port Mafia base even though he can count on one hand the number of times he’s left the base since he ascended to the position of boss four years earlier. 

“... The club we own in Naka,” Dazai says after a few moments, fingers thrumming against the mahogany of his desk for a moment before he adds, “... Don’t tell Chuuya.”

“... Yes, sir. I’ll have Albatross get everything ready immediately.”

At exactly six days and thirteen hours, Dazai’s self-control shatters. 

You sigh. 

The seat next to you remains damningly empty despite the many attempts of handsome strangers trying to join you at the bar. You’re sure you must’ve turned down half a dozen by now in hopes that the stranger from last Friday will end up showing up but those hopes are very quickly disappearing. You want to convince yourself that maybe you’ve just missed him—it’s a rather large club, after all—but it’s not half as packed as it was last week; you think that if he were here, you would’ve spotted him by now. Or he would have spotted you.  

Dazai Osamu, you remember his name, eyes sliding shut briefly as you take a sip of your water, wondering if you should just switch to alcohol and drink your sorrows away, seek out one of the men who’d approached you already so you don’t end up spending the night alone. The thought leaves you unsatisfied, a pout rising to your lips around the rim of your glass as you finish off yet another glass of water. 

You swear that you’re not usually this pathetic—especially not over a man—but there’s just something about this Dazai Osamu that has you acting up. Like honestly, who even are you? Going to the club alone on a Friday night with nothing but some faint hopes that the man you’d met here last week would show up too? It’s so embarrassing, you think you might die—but somehow you’re not embarrassed enough to leave because you’re still hoping that he shows up. 

God, you think again, who are you anymore? You barely even know this man. You know his name and you know he’s handsome. And that’s just about it, but here you are, sitting bummed at a club because he isn’t showing even though he has absolutely no reason to. 

The bartender raises his eyebrows with a small smile and you pass the glass over to him, letting him refill it. He’s the same one from last week and he recognized you as soon as you took a seat at the bar, making sure to get you what you need and keep you company whenever there’s a lull in patrons flagging him down. It’s a stark contrast from the treatment that you got early in the night last week, where it had taken you twenty minutes to get a single drink and even then you could barely hold his attention long enough to tell him what you wanted. You can’t help but notice that he seems hyperaware of the open seat next to you.

As the bartender passes you another glass of water, you flash him a wavering smile, unconsciously sparing another awkward glance to the empty seat next to you. While the club isn’t quite as packed as it was last week, it’s not exactly empty and you’re starting to feel bad hoarding the seat when plenty of others probably want to sit down too. 

“I’m sure he’ll show,” the bartender tells you before he’s waved down by another patron. You wonder if he’s guessed who you’re waiting for or if it’s just meant to be some general comfort. “Probably just running late, he’s a busy man.”

Oh, you think, eyes widening, but before you can question him as to what he means, he’s rushing to go refill the drink of a blonde man on the opposite end of the bar.

A busy man. 

Who are you, Dazai Osamu? 

Even in your drunken state, you knew from the moment you met him that there was something off about him. The way he held himself, the way he looked at you, the way people treated him—it all screamed danger. Once you’d sobered up, you remembered all of the things you didn’t notice while you’d been intoxicated. You remembered the way people would rush to get out of his way or show him complete deference, eyes a bit wide and faces a bit pale. You remembered the way Takeda looked sick and scared when Dazai told him to go, and Takeda is usually a bull-headed and fearless man, it takes a lot to make him back down. You remembered his driver—he had a driver!—and how when he stepped out of the car to open the door for the two of you, you swore you caught a glint of gunmetal holstered at his waist before Dazai gave him a cold look and he quickly covered it up.

And you’re not usually a girl who seeks danger out, for as much as you went on your spiel about living life on the edge the last time you spoke to him, you’re usually a pretty careful person. If you were smart, you would have woken up the next morning and pretended that you were too drunk to remember the night before, forget all about Dazai Osamu and his dangerous smile and intense gaze. 

But you aren’t smart, evidently, because instead of forgetting about him, you spent half of the next day mourning because he didn’t even leave you his number and the other half of it scheming out the best way of running into him again. 

You sigh, resting your cheek on your hand as you prop your elbow up on the bartop, idly tracing the rim of your glass.

What is it about you, Dazai?

One meeting and you’re captivated. He must be some kind of witch, or siren, there’s no other explanation for how you’re so utterly enchanted by him. He spoke your name with the familiarity of a lover, watching you with gentle eyes even though they become cold and empty whenever they avert to someone other than you. And you—you felt as if you’ve known him your entire life. You’ve never had such an instant connection with someone like that before, you’re convinced that it’s fate at work, even if he’s adamant against the thought.

You want to see him again. You wonder if it was maybe just your drunken brain misconstruing things, although somehow you doubt it. You need to talk to him again to know if the connection is real, and if it’s real-

“Is this seat taken?”

At first, the voice doesn’t register as familiar, so you let out a soft puff of air, trying to figure out if you should deny another person. But as you turn to face the newcomer, your eyes widen a bit as you catch sight of the long, burgundy scarf hanging in your peripheral, stark against a long, sleek black suit jacket.

Your lips part in shock, head snapping to the side so you can fully look at the person to your left. Dazai Osamu stands there, hands resting comfortably in the pockets of his jacket, head tilted to the side, a small smile curving at his lips and a soft look in his eye as he looks down at you, comforting and warm compared to the cold emptiness you vaguely noticed from him at certain points last night.

You try to say no, it’s not taken, but no words leave your lips, so instead, you shake your head, eyes following Dazai as he takes a seat next to you at the bar. The bartender rushes over, all but abandoning the couple he’d been helping on the opposite side of the bar, pouring Dazai an expensive glass of whiskey and giving him a nod before going back to who he’d been helping before. Your eyes follow the man curiously before you turn your gaze back to Dazai, not speaking for a moment as you observe the way he stares down at the glass of whiskey for a second, the warmth in his eye slowly dissipating.

You don’t like it, and not because it makes you uncomfortable or anything, but rather because you just don’t like how alone he seems. So, you lean forward, smiling, and say, “Fancy seeing you here.”

Dazai turns his gaze back to you and the warmth returns, pools of honey rather than the endless void. You melt beneath it. 

“I vaguely remember a beautiful woman mentioning scheming out a second meeting,” Dazai drawls, dark eye lidded as he looks down at you, a half-smile decorating his face. “It would be quite remiss of me to be the cause of her failure.”

Your cheeks feel a bit a hot as you grin down at your drink. “While we’re on the topic of things I may or may not have said last week, I have to be honest with you. I totally lied about something,” you say with a laugh, leaning on the bar. He raises his eyebrow curiously. You give him a sheepish smile as you continue with, “I have absolutely no idea how to charm someone, drunk or sober, I was entirely speaking out of my ass, so keep your expectations low.”

The smile that curls to the corner of his lips is soft enough to make your heart skip a beat. “I think you just being yourself is plenty charming,” he murmurs.

You let out a noise caught between a groan and a whimper, face going hot. “Oh my god, you’re the charmer,” you accuse loudly, burying your face in your arms. “I’ll never survive. Handsome and charming, a deadly combination.”

As you peer your eyes open to look at him, you can’t help but notice the way his smile briefly falters at your words. You promptly decide to change the subject with: “Thank you for making sure I got home safely last week.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that,” he says, one pale, lithe finger tracing along the rim of his glass. Your eyes linger for a moment on the digit, mind wandering, before you force your gaze up; you can see the bandages peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his dark coat as your eyes drag his arm back to his face. There’s a knowing expression on his face, the smile on his lips a bit more sensual. Your breath catches as you avert your gaze, feeling quite like you’ve just been caught doing something bad.

“Sure I do,” you try to make the words sound casual and easy but despite your most sincere attempts, your voice is strained. “Not many people would go out of their way like that for someone they just met.”

Something akin to amusement flashes through his eye. You’re not sure what he finds amusing, but you decide you don’t care because you very much prefer it to the distant look that had been painted in them before.

“An unfortunate world we live in, then,” he says softly, but there’s a lilt to his tone that makes you feel like he knows something that you don’t. He doesn’t give you much time to dwell on it though as he asks, “Are you going to have anything to drink?”

You startle slightly at the question, glancing down at the glass of water you’re drinking before you tell him with a laugh, “I don’t know if I want to force you to deal with me drunk twice. Didn’t I promise I’d stay sober this time?”

“If I remember correctly, you only said ‘not quite as drunk,’” he says, lips tilting up a bit and god, the way he’s looking at you has you flustered, gaze lidded and intense, as if you’re the only one in the room and not in a club with hundreds of other people. “Let me order you something, I think you’ll like it.”

“Oh, that’s bold,” you warn, tossing him a teasing smile. “I'm very particular about my drinks, I’ll have you know. I’m almost curious what you have in mind that makes you so confident.”

“I have a good feeling about it,” Dazai says, tilting his head to the side as he waits for your decision.

You give a heavy sigh, pretending like it’s a difficult decision even though you know it’s not. “Fine, but only if you promise to cut me off after two. Whenever I hit three, I hit the floor.”

You extend your pinky toward him, waiting for him to take it, and when he does, you swear a jolt of electricity shoots up your arm. As he wraps his finger around yours, your heart skips a beat, your eyes meet his and you think you might get lost in the dark pools, you don’t think you would mind if you do and that scares you. You’ve never had someone make your heart flutter and mind haze like this, especially not so quickly.

“Promise,” he breathes out, barely audible above the thundering music and crowds. 

You dip your head down to press your lips against your thumb to seal the deal, and you think you fall even more when you don’t have to tell him to do the same, following your lead and kissing his own thumb to seal it. And you briefly wonder if this man might be your soulmate because he didn’t give you a single odd look and didn't hesitate for a second whereas when you’ve made pinky promises with some of your other friends and past partners, their expression always twists a bit in confusion or oddity at the second part.

Rather than letting go of your hand, he swaps to his other hand, intertwining his fingers with yours and resting it on your lap before he flags the bartender down—quite easily, might you add—and leans over the bartop to say something quietly to him. The man nods and rushes off, and you give Dazai a scandalized look as he turns his attention back to you, hyper aware of the warmth of his fingers against yours.

“You won’t even tell me what it is?” you gasp in mock offense. 

Dazai rests his other elbow on the bar top, resting his chin on his hand as he watches you through his lashes. You couldn’t drag your gaze away if you wanted to, tunneled onto him.

“It’s a surprise,” he says with a smile. “You’ll like it, trust me.”

“Quite confident for someone that hardly knows me, aren’t you, Dazai?” you giggle, raising your hand to cover your lips, and god, he looks so amused again, and so handsome. You might die. “That’ll be for me to judge.”

“Very confident,” he agrees, and you think he winks but you can’t tell because one of his eyes is covered by bandages. 

“So,” you begin, waiting for the drink. “You’re from around here then?”

You hope he is, at least, because you’d like to keep seeing him. Something about him is just so intoxicating, like a drug you just can’t get enough of. You think he must be, from the way he seems so familiar with the bartender and other patrons, but you could always be wrong.

You hope you’re not wrong.

“Mhm,” Dazai agrees, humming around the rim of his glass as he takes another sip. You hope the excitement you feel doesn’t flash across your face. “Yokohama born and raised… you?” 

Distantly, a part of you feels like the question is just an afterthought, as though he already knows the answer and you wonder if you’re that obvious, but you pay no mind to that, instead nodding. “Same,” you say, and then, “... I wonder if we have crossed paths before then. You’re so familiar, I can’t imagine that we’ve never met before… Maybe uni? Did you happen to go to UTokyo? I graduated there last year.”

Dazai seems to hesitate at the question, as if considering his answer. You wonder why, but he leaves you little time to figure it out because he finally replies, “No… I was in Tokyo for business for a while a couple years ago though.”

Your eyes light up. “Really?” you ask, leaning forward as you speak. “Where did you work? I know the area pretty well.”

He hesitates again, this time more blatantly, and you can see the confliction that briefly flashes across his face. How curious. 

“It wasn’t a particular storefront, or anything, just my line of work had me in the area for a while.”

You’re about to press into what his line of work is, desperate to know more about the man sitting in front of you, but you’re interrupted by the bartender returning with a martini so stunning that if it tastes half as good as it looks, you might fall in love. 

But you’re not going to make it that easy. 

“Go on,” Dazai says, leaning a bit back in his seat as he watches. He looks at you as if he already knows that you’re going to like it and you’re adamant on destroying his assumptions, you will hate this drink if it’s the last thing you do. “Tell me what you think.”

You lift the martini glass up to your lips carefully, the dark liquid so close to the brim that you’re nervous it will spill over the sides. He watches you expectantly, you pointedly hold his gaze as you take a sip of the drink and-

“Oh my god.”

Dazai looks utterly vindicated, raising his chin as you take a sip of the drink and stare at it in shock. It’s so… tasty. It’s creamy, and sweet, and you can hardly taste the alcohol but you can feel the tingle on your tongue and the light burn in your throat. All thoughts of the conversation you were having before the drink showed up disappear, and you’re focused solely on the glass in your hands and the man before you.

“So?” God, he’s evil. He almost purrs the word, as if he knows exactly what your response is going to be. He leans forward a bit, looking down at you through his lashes. “Give me the verdict, Your Honor.”

“It’s good,” you say, raising your chin in spite, hoping that your expression doesn’t betray but from the way his lips spread into a wider smile, you fear that you completely failed. 

“Just good?” Dazai croons. 

You pause for a second, debating on lying and telling him yes, just good, but the words you intend on speaking do not leave your lips. Rather, you say, “Okay. It may or may not be one of the best drinks I’ve had in a while. You have to tell me what it is so I know what to ask for.”

“Hmm.” Dazai lifts a finger to his chin, as if considering your words. “I don’t think I will.”

“What!”

His smile becomes a bit softer, his expression more teasing. “I think I’ll hold that information hostage, so you have to come out with me again if you want to drink it.”

A jittery feeling spreads through your chest, heart fluttering, cheeks hot. “Oh? Look who’s scheming out our third meeting already,” you taunt lightly. “How the tables turn.”

“Of course, I’m scheming out our third meeting, maybe our fourth and fifth too,” he mimics your words from last week shamelessly. “I’ve decided I already like you, bella.”

The pet name rolls off his tongue easily, as if it’s second nature to him, and your face is on fire but Dazai looks like he’s shocked even at himself. You fumble with your words for just a second, it takes you a moment too long to recover but you think that Dazai doesn’t even notice in his stunned state. 

You decide to return fire. 

“I hope all of our dates aren’t just going to be at clubs,” you tell him with a smile that edges on flirtatious, cocking your head to the left.

Your words hardly register until you notice that his cheeks have become bright and rosy, hand instinctively coming up to hide his face. He looks entirely like he’s at a loss for words, lips parting and closing several times. It’s so endearing that you think you might really die now, but then the gravity of your words hit you like a train.  

Oh god. A date? A date?? This is only the second time you’ve met, that was way too soon. You-

“I’ll make sure the next place we meet is somewhere special,” he finally says, voice smooth and gaze gentle and- 

And just like that, you’re a goner.

You’re not sure how long you sit there talking to him. Hours, probably. It feels like no time at all and forever all at once. You lose yourself in his gaze, and his smile, and you think the whole world could be burning around the two of you and you’d have no idea just because you’re so tunnel visioned on him. The music drowns out, and all you can hear is his voice. The people around you blur out of focus, and all you can see is him. 

It’s insane, you think. You’ve never felt like this with anyone before. You’ve had so many flings and so many boyfriends over the years, but the way your stomach twists and turns and the way your head feels fuzzy with Dazai is so incomparable to how you felt with anyone else. 

You feel like you’ve known him forever. 

You feel like you’ve only just met him. 

How is it possible to feel like you know someone you’ve only just met so intimately? When you know you don’t actually know much about him personally but it still feels like you can read into the depths of his soul?

God, you don’t know, but you do know one thing, and it’s that you never want to lose this feeling. 

And that’s how it began. 

Every Friday for weeks, you find yourself at the club, sipping cheap martinis at the bar until a certain handsome man in a dark suit decides to finally grace you with his presence. Sometimes, the two of you would just sit at the club’s bar until the sun threatens to rise, when you finally go your separate ways and you make your way back to your apartment, falling asleep with a smile on your face and waking up with a giddy feeling still sparkling in your chest. Other times, he only comes by the club to pick you up, fulfilling his promise of making sure to take you somewhere nice when you find yourself fine dining at the fanciest rooftop restaurants in the city. 

He never stays over your place, even when he does drop you off. Sometimes he’ll hang around for an hour (you made him your favorite hot chocolate, he liked it so much that he nearly cried although he vehemently denied that was the reason why his eye got all misty), but he always leaves. You try not to let it bum you out, convincing yourself that it’s just because he doesn’t want to keep his driver waiting (albatross, you remember his name, he’s funny. you like him), but sometimes you can’t help the heavy feeling set over you when he makes his abrupt leave, wishing for just a bit more. He hasn’t even kissed you yet, for god’s sake. 

You also distantly note that you don’t really know much about him, even after all of these weeks his personal life remains a mystery to you. The closest you were able to get to prying anything out of him was when he showed up so late that you were on the verge of leaving because you doubted he would even show, he apologized and said a work meeting ran late. You asked him what about and he hesitated, as if he was about to say it, but then gave you some vague response and steered the conversation to something less personal.

That’s what’s happened every time you try to learn a bit more about him. You don’t really notice it in the moment because he’s smooth and charming about it, but he always manages to turn the conversation to you or some other general topic. You want to respect that he doesn’t want to talk about his personal life because maybe he’s coming to you to have some sort of escape from it, but you also want to know him beyond just the flirting over drinks and the slim things you can gleam from his reactions, words hidden between the lines of what he actually says.

Your friends think you’re crazy. They think he’s bad news. They’ve come with you to the club a few times to wait with you until he shows up and every time they see him you can see the weary looks that they shoot at one another. You don’t care what they think—or well, that’s a lie, you do care what they think, you’re just too enamored with Dazai for their words to have any weight. Which probably should be concerning, but that’s something for you to think about another day. 

Because now, you’re focused on him again. He’s been talking more tonight than he usually does—most nights, he’ll spend the majority of the time just listening to you, a soft smile on his face and a captivated look in his eye, but tonight, he’s been rather vocal, people watching with you and making sly advances that you think is just plain cruel considering he hasn’t even kissed you yet. 

But tonight, you’ve decided, will be the night. 

You’ve been trying to figure out how to go about it, if you should just invite him back to your apartment—something you’ve done before, so there shouldn’t be any nerves but you still find yourself wavering because you don’t know how you’re going to proceed once you get to your apartment. You are not a seducer. You have no experience in seducing. In fact, you are usually the one being seduced. So every time your lips part to ask if he wants to leave the club, you find yourself withering and faltering, waiting for a ‘better’ chance as if one will magically arise.

It does. 

It’s when a fight breaks out on the dancefloor a bit too close to where you’re sitting, certainly the result of some sleazy man trying to put his hands on a woman who already has a date, when you finally force yourself to stop pussying out. You let out a shriek as you stumble forward off your barstool when one of the men careens a bit too closely to you, and it’s only by Dazai’s swift reaction, arm wrapping around your waist as he pulls you to him and steadies you, that you don’t go toppling onto the floor. 

Your eyes widen as you watch the fight escalate, a bit entertained now that you’re safe in his arms from becoming collateral damage, but Dazai looks distinctly unimpressed by the scene taking place a few feet away, lips twisted into a deep frown. You watch as he shoots a sharp look to one of the bouncers lingering by the door, and you note how the man immediately moves forward to break up the fight. Interesting. You’ve noticed that the people at the work tend to be respectful to him, but that’s the first time you’ve seen them seemingly take a silent order from him.

You steel your nerves and you decide to try your hand.

“Would you… maybe want to get out of here?”

You look nervous, Dazai watches you carefully as he leads you across the club to the exits, so he figures that there’s something else going on in your head right now. You’ve been quiet most of the night, he realizes, and he wonders if something is wrong. If something happened. His mind immediately catapults to the worst case scenario: that someone found out about the two of you, despite how careful he’s been in making sure that the places he’s brought you to were locked down by the Port Mafia before you arrived with him, and you’re being threatened.

His thoughts race. Albatross should still be waiting where Dazai left him, so if something goes wrong, he’ll be ready. Dazai glances at you again, and he slowly realizes that you don’t seem nervous because you’re fearful of something, and his anxieties slowly are edged away. 

But that only gives rise to new anxieties because then what’s making you so nervous then? What did you mean by get out of here? Do you want to go somewhere else? (but where, the longer he’s out in the open, the more of a risk there will be without him taking precautions beforehand like he usually does) Do you want to be dropped off back at your apartment? (that’s what he initially assumed, but he doesn’t want the night to end yet) Do you want to invite him to your apartment? (it wouldn’t be the first time, but it doesn’t leave him any less nervous. he’s terrified of making the wrong move) Do you want him to invite you to his apartment? (god, he hopes not)

The last option cannot happen. You’re already suspicious from the way the bartender and the other club patrons have been treating him the past few weeks, and now you’re doubly suspicious, Dazai can tell from the way your eyes squint as the bouncers at the entrance of the club nod their heads to him. If he brings you back to his place, the tallest of the five towers making up the Port Mafia base, there’s no way you won’t put together that something’s up with him and the last thing he wants is to scare you away. Even if you don’t know what the buildings are exactly, you’ll definitely question him about his occupation, go back to the dangerous line of questioning you’ve been treading on lately, and when he can’t give you a straight answer, it’ll become all the more apparent that it’s something shady and if you’re smart, you’ll make an excuse to leave and then never seek him out again.

Realistically, he probably won’t be able to hide this from you for long, but it just has to be long enough for him to woo you so the news isn’t so jarring that it makes you cut off all contact with him. Although, Dazai isn’t sure if any amount of time will make the knowledge that he’s a mafia boss not jarring enough to flee. His heart feels a bit heavy, wondering if this is all a mistake because how the hell is he supposed to just accept it when you inevitably decide to leave? And isn’t that what he should want, anyway? He wants you to keep yourself safe, no matter what the cost, and if you’re the one to cut him off, then he won’t be tempted to come looking for you again. He can protect you from the distance as he initially planned with the memory of the nights he’s spent with you pushing him forward. So maybe this is for the best.

You accepted all of the other Dazais, the traitorous part of his mind tried to convince himself that isn’t a hopeless cause, even though he knows that there’s a stark difference between who he is in this lifetime, the face of Japan’s underworld, drenched in blood and rotting from the inside out, and who he was in all of the other lifetimes, desperately trying to make himself a better man so that Odasaku would be proud of him. 

Maybe you’ll understand, he thinks weakly as the two of you leave the club. It’s drizzling now, and his eyes cut across the parking lot looking for Albatross, but his thoughts are lost—you understanding would mean he would have to tell you everything. He can’t do that. Not just because you would probably think he’s delusional, or psychotic, but because it would put the very fabric of this reality at risk. He can’t tell more people than necessary and stage five… 

His plan. 

Dazai’s gaze shifts back over to you, the sudden remembrance of what he’s been planning since he came in contact with the Book so many years ago spreading like ice through him. He should take you by the hand and lead you to the car, the rain is going to start coming down harder any second now, but Dazai is frozen because in his manic state, when he’d decided he can protect you in this life, be with you in this life, he hadn’t even given any thought to what would become of his plan, and he’s been so consumed by thoughts of you the past few weeks that it’s hardly crossed his mind.

He has to force himself to move forward, ignoring the way his mind is reeling—if he decides to live, what does that mean for Odasaku? For Atsushi and Akutagawa and Chuuya? For the world? Would he be condemning everything he’s worked to protect? He still thinks he can do it—protect you, that is—but would it be at the cost of everything else? He feels sick, trying to figure out if he’s going to have to plot out a whole new plan, as if this one hadn’t taken him years to come up with and implement. 

But you don’t move to follow him to the car where Albatross is waiting when he steps forward. Instead, you tilt your head up to the sky, lashes fluttering as rain begins to drizzle down from the dark sky. 

And Dazai’s spiraling thoughts halt. 

He thinks you look beautiful—you’re always beautiful, but he thinks there’s something magical about the picture of the small smile on your lips as rain drops slide across the smooth skin of your face. He tries to force himself to look away so he doesn’t seem creepy staring at you, but he can’t bring himself to.

You don’t seem to mind though, because you turn your attention to him, eyes lit up in a way that makes his heart race. “Dance with me,” you say suddenly, holding a hand out to him, the soft smile on your face is a bit mischievous now.

Dazai looks down at you, raising his eyebrows. “Here?” he asks, voice tainted with a hint of incredulity. “Now?”

“Mhm,” you say, unperturbed, holding your hand out more insistently. 

Dazai thinks he isn’t capable of denying you much of anything, but he can’t help but hesitate. Not because he doesn’t want to dance with you—he would sell what’s left of his wretched soul for just a single dance with you—but because the longer he’s out in the open, the more of a chance there might be an assassination attempt on him. Every time he goes out, he’s gambling his life. It would put you in danger, and it’s not like he brought Chuuya along for if something goes wrong. Albatross is capable enough, but his ability is not combat centric. 

Being seen with you in general could put you in danger, doubts begin to sprinkle through his head again, his heart lodged in his throat as remembers that Fyodor Dostoevsky and Agatha Christie aren’t the only threats to your life. He’s been as careful as he could be but even with all of the precautions in the world, there are still risks. He’s made new enemies in this lifetime, hundreds of them over the years, and if any one of them caught wind of you and his apparent attraction to you…

“If you wanted to dance, shouldn’t we have done that inside?” Dazai drawls instead, trying to play it off. Inside, where it’s significantly safer. Inside, where Dazai knows that there’s less of a chance of unsavory eyes falling upon the two of you because the club is owned by the Port Mafia and everyone let in is screened. Inside, where Dazai can still convince himself that he has the power to keep you safe. You’re entirely unbothered by his question, so he continues before you can shoot him down, “Where it’s not raining, and where there’s actually music.” 

“Haven’t you seen all of the romance movies?” you complain, smile widening. “Dancing in the rain is romantic, Dazai. Who needs music anyway? C’mon, dance with me.”

And how is Dazai supposed to say no to you when you look at him like that? Eyes wide and imploring, smile gentle—you look at him in a way that Dazai’s only dreamed of, and he knows that he’s a goner. Well, he’s known since he first met you, but it’s being made abundantly more clear right now with the way his heart, which he usually has such keen control over, beats rapidly in his chest. His lips part because he still wants to try to deny you—for your sake, not his—but no words leave them.

You don’t wait for his response anyway, hand darting out to catch his so you can drag him out into the parking lot. His eyes widen, stumbling forward and trying to catch his balance—you only laugh, intertwining your fingers with his while your other hand finds his waist, spinning the two of you in a reckless circle. 

“Keep up!” you tell him with a smile that causes his breath to catch. 

Dazai thinks he might die. His head feels fuzzy as you lead him in a wide ballroom dance, sweeping across the vacant parking lot with ease. He thinks he must look like a fool being dragged along in your dance like a puppet, hardly able to keep himself from tripping over his own feet. 

He’s not sure how you’re able to keep yourself so graceful, heels splashing in puddles as you lead him through spins and turns and pivots, but Dazai thinks you’re beautiful. Again. Extraordinarily so, even. Rain is pouring down over the two of you, the drizzle quickly becoming torrential, and your hair is wet and matted to your face, mascara a bit smeared underneath your eyes, but you’re laughing, and Dazai thinks you’re divine. Heavenly. Too ethereal to be tainted by the likes of him and yet here he is, the putrid skin of his fingers intertwined with your untarnished ones. You raise your arm and his, beckoning for him to twirl beneath it.

He does, and it’s awkward and clumsy because he’s too tall to comfortably perform the move, but you giggle loudly so it makes up for the embarrassment. And for a moment, Dazai can almost convince himself that this isn’t a life where he’s been forced to let the dark consume him for the betterment of the world; rather, it’s a world where he’s gone unsullied by the dark, his blood still runs red and you’re beautiful and you’re alive, and he’s just a boy who’s fallen so terribly in love with a girl so far out of his league that he thinks he might be dreaming when you return his interest. As he spins, he notices that his cheeks feel a bit strained and sore, and he realizes that there’s a smile on his face that matches your own, the muscles of his cheeks and jaw unused to stretching in such a manner and he hopes, anxiously, that it doesn’t look quite as unbearable as it feels.

If it does look unnatural, you don’t seem to mind. The rain blurs his vision and he’s forced to blink away the raindrops that keep falling into his eye, and for a split second, you’re standing before him in a pretty red dress on a sidewalk, and he’s the one leading you in the theatrical dance, dipping you down as lightning webs across the sky above the two of you, and he’s about to beg you for a kiss, he knows it but then-

He’s drawn out of his thoughts when you pull your hand back from his, but you don’t give him time to mourn the loss of your touch because then you’re slipping your arms around his neck, loose and casual. You’re pressed up close to him, chest brushing his and head tilted back so you can look up at him—a slower dance, swaying to the music of the wind and rain—and Dazai can hardly breathe. You’re so close. So close that he could kiss you if he wanted to. God, he wants to. He’s wanted to for weeks but every time he tries to gather the nerve to do it, he backs out.

“Where’d you go?” you ask softly, and he can barely hear you as thunder rumbles in the distance, brows furrowed in confusion, unsure of what you mean. You tap his temple twice gently, “Left me for a second there.” 

Oh, his throat feels a bit dry, realizing that you must’ve noticed when he started to slip back into the pages of the Book. Terrifying. Beautiful and terrifying, that’s what you are, if you can read him that well after meeting him once a week for a few weeks, he dreads to know how well you’d be able to read him once you start spending more and more time with him. But would it be so bad? To have someone that knows him so profoundly? He’s so alone all the damn time in this world, and you’re giving him a taste of a life where maybe he wouldn’t have to be. It’s terrifying. Tempting. He forces another smile onto his lips, and this time your eyes narrow, as if you know this one isn’t as genuine as the last. 

“How rude of me,” he murmurs, lifting his hand to tuck a stray strand of hair behind your ear. He’s so close, he realizes again, hyper aware of the way his lips are almost brushing yours. He could kiss you if he wanted, he repeats, and he wants so badly but he doesn’t want to scare you away. “To leave behind such fine company.”

You don’t look content with his apparent attempt at avoiding the subject, and Dazai’s throat feels tight because it’s not really a conversation to have with you here. Now. Ever, really. 

For once, mother nature appears to be on his side, because before you can press on the subject, lightning strikes dangerously close to where the two of you are standing, making you jump, eyes wide. He takes the opportunity to wrap an arm around your waist, guiding you over to where he left Albatross earlier in the night. 

The car is already running, Albatross is leaning back in the seat scrolling on the phone and Dazai nearly commits an atrocity when he sees that the man has his gun laying haphazardly on the dashboard. As if Albatross can feel Dazai’s murderous intent, he looks up from his phone and his eyes shoot open when he sees you with Dazai and he scrambles to holster his gun back at his waist. 

Luckily, you don’t notice. Or maybe unluckily, because your attention is still fixated on him and Dazai is not ready to have that discussion with you because how the hell is he supposed to say “Sorry! Lost in some worlds that don’t exist, and just so you know, we almost got married in some of them! And just so you know, I got you killed in all of them!”

Yeah. That would go over well. 

Instead, he opens the door to the car for you, letting you hop in the backseat. He follows after. Albatross slides his glasses to the bridge of his nose, an unscrupulous smile on his face that instantly has Dazai suspicious. He hopes the man knows that no friendship with Chuuya will save him if he decides to purposely embarrass Dazai in front of you. 

“You’re back!” You recognize Albatross immediately, a smile spreading across your face at the sight of him. Dazai is almost jealous until he remembers that you’re still holding his hand. “You weren’t driving last time.”

Right. Because of the raid on one of the Scarlet Gang’s warehouses in Tokyo. A mission that Dazai definitely should have been more available for on the off chance that something went wrong, but he was far too busy indulging in you. In his defense, he had no doubts that the mission would go according to plan—the Scarlet Gang is dangerous, yes, and Kawabata is a force to be reckoned with, but he’s simply not Dazai.  

“D’aw, didn’t think you’d recognize me, doll,” Albatross grins, tossing you a wink. “Good to see you again too. You’re significantly more sober tonight, aren’t you?”

Dazai’s eyes narrow a bit at the pet name, but he’s more focused on the way you throw your face into your hands with a groan, reminded of just how drunk you’d been the last time Albatross was playing chauffeur. You’re a messy drunk, he remembers fondly, he doesn’t remember ever seeing you drink in any of his other lives with you, and he feels a bit giddy at the thought that he gets to experience a side of you that the others never did. Even if he was spending half of the night holding your hair back while you threw your guts up, spluttering apologies through sobs and heaves. He would do it again. Without even the slightest hesitation, he would do it again. 

“I wasn’t that bad, was I?” you ask, peeking one eye between your fingers to look at Dazai for confirmation. 

Dazai doesn’t even have the chance to assure you that no, you weren’t that bad, because Albatross is speaking again. Of course. 

“You were pretty damn bad, doll,” he grins, and you groan even louder, leaning your body over to rest your head on Dazai’s bicep. Dazai’s heart nearly leaps out of his throat. “S’alright though, boss took care of you.” 

“Did he?” you ask with a teasing smile, eyes glittering as you look up at Dazai, who suddenly feels a bit embarrassed, but Albatross rescues him. 

Maybe he does deserve the vacation he’s been bitching about wanting. 

“Where to?” Albatross asks, putting the car in gear, gaze flickering between you and Dazai briefly. 

Dazai is about to tell him your apartment when he catches the sudden apprehension on your face. He hesitates and waits for you to say whatever you want to say, but you don’t, instead you let out a puff of air and let your eyes slide shut. 

“Where do you want to go?” Dazai asks you.

You still look uncertain, but then you finally say, “I was meaning to stop and get some groceries at the convenience store on the way home. There’s one a few blocks away from my apartment. I can just walk over there if you drop me off at my place though, it’s fine.”

As if. The idea of you walking anywhere so late at night makes his skin crawl, especially considering there’s been a rise of violent crimes in the city that the Mafia has yet to get a handle on. He needs to push for that to be taken care of if he has to worry about you leaving your apartment to wander around so late. He makes a note to himself to bring it up to Chuuya later. 

“We can stop there on the way there. It’s no trouble.”

Albatross gives him a look, as if he’s asking if the boss of the Port Mafia is really about to go grocery shopping with a civilian in the middle of the night, forcing the Mafia’s best getaway driver to be their chauffeur. Dazai only gives him a cold, sharp look in return—if you need groceries, then they’ll stop for groceries. Simple as that. In a life where Dazai thought he’d never even be able to look at you, the chance of doing mundane chores like grocery shopping with you is not something he’ll just pass by. 

He can pretend to be normal. If only for a little longer. 

Until he has to go back to the base, and his lungs are clogged with corrupted air, being slowly suffocated by his surroundings.

Until you figure out who he is, and he’s alone again, being consumed by the void in his chest once more. 

He hardly considers the fact that he’s going somewhere with you where his subordinates haven’t made extensive efforts to ensure that no one suspicious is around to see the two of you. 

“Alrighty,” Albatross agrees, backing down as soon as he sees the expression on Dazai’s face. “To the convenience store.”

Your eyes brighten, a smile lights up your face. “Thanks,” you say relieved, and Dazai wants to say that you don’t ever have to thank him for everything and that he’d give you the entire world if given the chance, but he thinks that might be a bit weird so instead he settles on just giving you a small smile. “I’ll make you the best hot chocolate of your life when we get to my apartment. Just wait.” 

Dazai’s chest feels warm. “I don’t doubt it.”

“Wait here,” you tell both Dazai and Albatross as Albatross pulls into the parking lot of your apartment complex and stops the car outside of your building. Dazai, who’d been about to follow you, pauses from where he’s ducking beneath the doorframe to step out of the car, looking at you and waiting for an explanation. “... My apartment is a mess… I, um, wasn’t expecting company. Let me just… tidy up before you come in. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Dazai’s visible eye crinkles up in amusement as he sits back down in the backseat of the car and you immediately take off up toward the steps leading up to the second floor of your apartment, giddy and excited, grocery bag swinging and bumping against your hip as you make your way quickly up the steps. You don’t know what’s gotten into you. You feel like a schoolgirl dealing with her first real crush, flustered and giggly, hardly able to hold a conversation without stuttering over your words. 

He’s just so… you don’t know how to describe it. Intense. But intense isn’t even the right word, because he’s not so intense that it makes you uncomfortable or overwhelmed, and that’s usually what you think of when someone is intense. Or maybe overwhelmed is a bit fitting, because you swear every time he sets his soft gaze down on you, your heart might leap out of your chest. Intense. Familiar, you don’t know how it’s possible to feel like you’ve known someone you’ve only met a few times your entire life.

Your fingers fumble as you try to unlock your door. One, two, three, it takes three attempts for you to finally slide the key into the lock, pushing open your door and stepping inside, free from the torrential rain and wild wind outside.

You sigh and rest your back against the door as you shut it behind you, eyes sliding shut. 

Who are you, Dazai Osamu?

Someone important. 

Of course, you noticed how he was treated by the workers of the club—the bartender, the bouncers, even just the regular patrons. The restaurants he’s brought you to the past few weeks, they all treated him the same way. There were plenty of men there that were dressed in expensive clothes and held themselves highly, but none were treated the same way Dazai was.

Someone dangerous. 

You’d also caught a glimpse of the gun on the dash of Albatross’s car. (His driver, another point to note because who has a driver except very important people) Only three types of people have guns in Japan—military, police, and criminals, and you’re pretty sure he’s not part of the military or police force…

Someone you probably shouldn’t be so drawn to.

That should be enough to make you run. It really should be. You have no explanation or excuse for why you’re not besides the fact that you might not be as smart as you herald yourself to be. You shouldn’t feel giddy when he smiles softly at you, you should be nervous. You shouldn’t be longing for his touch, you should be avoiding it. Instead, you’re leaning against your door, smiling like an idiot after making him wait for you to clean up your apartment so you don’t embarrass yourself. 

Oh, you’re such a fool. But how could you not be with how he treats you? Tucking hair behind your ear, setting a gaze so soft on you that you think it might make your heart stop, dancing with you in the rain clumsily with rosy cheeks and wide eyes. How is it possible for you to reconcile the way the man acts with you to the way others treat him? Or maybe that’s just delusion speaking. It could be, honestly. You think if your brother was living with you, he’d be horrified, might lock you away for the rest of your life; you think your friends already want to put you in a psych ward and they’d only become all the more insistent if they knew half of the things you’ve noticed. 

But your brother left you and your friends don’t know, so nothing is stopping you from making what might be a terrible decision. 

You let out a breath as you push yourself off the door, placing down your grocery bags on the table by your door so you can scramble to pick up all of the stray clothes you’d tossed around your apartment as you frantically tried to find an outfit earlier in the night. You reach over to turn on your light, flicking the switch once, then twice, and then three times.

No way.

You sigh deeply, head falling back against the wood door of your apartment, knocking the back of your head against it twice in frustration. Letting out a irate puff of air, you push yourself off of the door and force yourself to get to work. It’s not the end of the world, hopefully it'll come back soon, the providers are usually quick with getting the outages fixed, even in your shitty area. 

You force yourself to move forward, frowning deeply as you scoop up all of the paperwork spread out on your coffee table, making sure to keep it all in order as you move them over to the desk you have by your window seat. You drop the pile down and cast your gaze out to all of the clothes strewn haphazardly around your apartment, cursing yourself for having been so messy earlier when you were trying on just about every outfit you own and then flinging them around frustrated when you decided they weren’t good enough.

You scowl as you bend down to pick them all up, deciding you’ll just stuff them messily in your closet and fold them later when you don’t have company. As you zoom around trying to snag all of the dresses and different pairs of bras and underwear scattered about, your mind races. Your stove should still work because your landlord refuses to install any modern appliances into your apartment, for better or for worse, so you have an old model that shouldn’t be affected by the outage. But you think it’ll be awkward sitting in the dark, you think you have a few candles stored away in your room—you’ll have to find them and set them up. 

Candlelit evening, how romantic! you think to yourself, a bit dreamily. You wonder if Albatross will be coming up to join the two of you in your apartment, you’d offered to make him a drink too but you figure it’ll be Dazai’s decision if he’ll be waiting outside or…

Or maybe, he’ll send him home. 

You get giddy at the thought—candlelights, slightly tipsy after a night out, you take a peek under your dress to try to figure out which underwear you’d decided on earlier and if you should change into a different pair but are delighted when you realize that you’d gone with your pretty red ones. 

You think he’ll like them. 

Hopefully. 

You like them, they’re your favorites.

Oh, you have to clean your bedroom too, you think to yourself in partial agony because you don’t know how the hell you’re going to clean up everything in there without making Dazai wait out there for an hour. You get anxious at the thought, worrying that if you take too long, he might leave, so you pick up the pace. You snatch the last stray bra hanging on the arm of your couch before taking off into your bedroom.

You hardly get a step into the room before you’re freezing in your tracks.

No way.

You stare at your bed, arms falling loose to your side, lips parted in shock. The clothes you’d cleaned up all drop aimlessly to the floor around you. Your bed is drenched with water—your sheets soaked, your mattress soaked, the ceiling heavy with rainwater from a leak you didn’t know you had.

“Oh my god,” you breathe out to yourself, unsure of what exactly you should do, never having had a problem like this before.

You think this is what you get, seeking out the cheapest possible apartment complex to stay in because you’re trying to save all of the money you have for school. Now, your mattress is ruined, your ceiling looks like it’s on the verge of collapse and oh my god, you left your laptop on your bed. 

A noise caught between a whimper and cry of frustration leaves your lips as you dive forward, fishing your laptop out of the massive pool of water flooding your bed. You hold it in front of your face between two fingers, watching as water drips from it down to the ground. 

There goes your laptop too.

You think you might be sick. 

Now, you have to deal with a landlord who is decidedly not helpful when it comes to issues in the complex and you have nowhere to sleep. Maybe you can call one of your friends to stay at their place, but it’s already the middle of the night and you know two of them have their own entrance exams tomorrow for the programs that they’re applying to.

Unless…

Your gaze shifts to the window in your room, looking between the blinds to see Dazai and Albatross still waiting outside in their car. 

Okay. Most urgent problem temporarily fixed. Maybe.

Dazai has a place. He has to. He’s clearly rich. It’s probably a much nicer place than yours too. You can go there, at least for the night. He wouldn’t just leave you with nowhere to go… right? No, of course he wouldn’t. You need to pack then, instead of cleaning. 

Okay, this is fine. 

It’s fine. 

It takes you about five minutes to grab a few spare pairs of clothes into the duffle bag laying at your bedroom door, occasionally tossing dirty looks at the leak ruining your bed. When you finish throwing your clothes in the duffle—unfolded and hastily, of course, they’ll be terribly wrinkled—you rise to your feet and swing the bag over your shoulder, making your way back to your door and grabbing your groceries. 

You don’t know what to say to him when you get back to the car. You’re probably being a bit presumptuous. Okay, a lot presumptuous—Dazai has never invited you back to his place, you’ve invited him to yours—but you don’t really have another choice.

You exhale as you step back into the rain, locking your apartment and making your way back down the steps to the complex’s parking lot. You don’t let yourself hesitate as you dart across the parking lot toward the car, fearing that if you take a second to actually think about what you’re doing—inviting yourself into someone else’s home!—you’ll probably back out.

You open the car door. You slide back inside, taking a seat behind the passenger seat. You drop your duffle bag on the floor between your feet and place your groceries back down between you and Dazai. You can feel both Dazai and Albatross staring at you. You stare ahead.

“... My apartment is flooded,” you finally say after a few moments.

Dazai doesn’t say anything, brows furrowing as he watches you. You can hardly bring yourself to look at him, trying to peek at him from the corner of your eye as best as you can without being too obvious about it. He’s not responding. Albatross isn’t moving the car. You’re getting the urge to bolt, to run upstairs and drown yourself in the puddle of water on your bed. 

Finally, Albatross clears his throat. “Boss?”

Dazai still doesn’t respond. You think you might be doubly sick now, and embarrassed. An awful combination, really. You know that he knows what you came back here hoping for, and you realize that he might just send you back to your flooded apartment instead because he obviously did not sign up for taking in some random girl that he’s met a few Fridays for the night because she has nowhere else to go. 

You finally turn your face to look at Dazai head on and you can feel that your eyes are glassy, chewing on the inside of your cheek. You don’t know how pathetic you must look for Dazai’s expression to shift the way it does, his conflicted expression crumbling as he turns away from you. You don’t want to know how pathetic you must look, you’d only feel even more humiliated.

After what feels like an eternity, Dazai finally says: “Drive.”

Albatross’s eyes shoot open, he physically turns to look at Dazai, “But-”

You don’t catch the look that Dazai gives Albatross, too busy basking in the relief of having somewhere to stay for the night, but whatever it is, it makes Albatross turn back to face the wheel without another word, turning the car back on and shifting it into gear before pulling out of the parking lot. 

As soon as you’re on the move, you turn your attention back down to your phone, trying to figure out if you should message your landlord now or in the morning, dreading the inevitable argument you’re going to have with him. You fiddle with the device, occasionally sparing looks at Dazai, but the man is lost in thought next to you, visible eye distant and conflicted.

You can’t bring yourself to say anything so the whole drive to Dazai’s apartment is long and quiet. Even Albatross, who’s had no difficult sparking conversation the whole drive to your place, stays silent.

You’re bummed, all of the excitement you felt about bringing Dazai back to your place is long gone, feeling the stress of having to replace everything that’s been ruined by the leak and the anxiety of dealing with your landlord; all you want to do is sleep and die. Okay. That’s dramatic. But you’re exhausted and you really do want to sleep. Maybe not die, but definitely sleep. 

You lay your head against the window, eyes starting to droop shut, and you can feel Dazai glancing at you now but you can’t even bring yourself to look over at him. Instead, you keep your eyes trained outside the window, only perking up when Albatross finally starts slowing to a stop.

And then, you’re suddenly not tired at all. Your eyes widen as he pulls to the front of the tallest of the five black buildings that tower over the Naka ward, lips parting as you crane your head to look up out the window and then look pointedly back at Dazai, stunned.

Dazai refuses to meet your gaze, staring ahead. 

… You think that your instincts about this man must be spot on. 

Too bad you’re not listening to them.

“You’ve gone crazy.”

Dazai’s gaze draws up from the paperwork he’s definitely not doing, far too preoccupied with thoughts of you; it’s cold and cutting as it lands on Chuuya. His executive enters the room without any type of announcement, his voice just as cold as Dazai’s expression—he supposes it’s testimony to how angry he is, because Chuuya is only frigid in his anger when he’s really been pushed to the brink.

Naturally, Dazai only smiles, a slow and taunting one that he knows presses all of Chuuya’s buttons from the way the man’s bicolored eyes flash with fury. Chuuya storms over to Dazai’s desk, making his way until he’s standing right in front of him. 

“How so?” Dazai drawls, folding his hands over his lap as he leans back in his chair, tilting his head to the side questioningly. 

“How so?” Chuuya spits out, slamming his hands down on Dazai’s desk. Dazai raises his eyebrows and then lifts his chin, looking pointedly down to where Chuuya’s hands are splayed against his desk. Chuuya doesn’t flinch—of course he doesn’t, he’s Chuuya—but he does pull his hands back to himself, albeit snarling as he does it. “The hell are you bringing some random woman back to our base? Back to your room? Going out alone the past few weeks when you know you’ve got a bounty on your head higher than most world leaders? I was letting it slide but this is too far, why the hell is she here? You’ve gone crazy, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Careful, Chuuya,” Dazai warns, voice quiet, expression growing a bit flinty when he brings you up. Dazai doesn’t care if Chuuya wants to rail on him for being reckless, but he’s not allowed to drag you into it. He decides to not acknowledge the comment about you, focusing on the end of his tirade, “I was with one of the Flags, I wasn’t alone.”

“Albatross isn’t cut out for that type of combat and you know it,” Chuuya snaps, glaring at Dazai. “If one of those bounty hunters came after you, you both would’ve been killed. What’s gotten into you? Never took you for the type to be this reckless. You get a taste of a woman’s c-”

“I said careful, Chuuya. Know your place,” Dazai repeats, voice icy. The warning is gone, only a threat remains—Chuuya doesn’t need to finish his sentence for Dazai to know where he was going with it, the way the man’s eyes darted over to Dazai’s bedroom was more than enough to confirm it. 

“Is this a goddamn joke to you?” Chuuya asks, keeping his voice low, his lips flat and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t get it. You’ve always been so careful, more than anyone else. What the hell does one random woman have that’s making you risk all of this?” 

“I’m not risking anything,” Dazai tells him coolly, “and she’s not just some random woman.”

Chuuya’s expression shifts, brows furrowing deeper; Dazai can see the tiny cogs working behind his eyes as he thinks. He wonders if Chuuya has been drinking tonight, catching the pink hue to his cheeks and the hazy look coating his eyes. 

No wonder he’s so angry then, Dazai muses, he must have been out with Kouyou when he got word that Dazai left the base again without any protection detail and then brought someone up to his room who in Chuuya’s mind, could be an assassin for all he knows. 

Suddenly, the confusion clears and something closer to realization sweeps across Chuuya’s face. His gaze turns back pointedly in the direction of Dazai’s bedroom.

“That’s her,” Chuuya says, disbelief dripping from his tone. “The girl you’ve had Kouyou looking over for years. What the fuck, Dazai? I thought the whole point of having Kouyou look after her was so that you kept away from her.”

Dazai stares at Chuuya, only for a moment, because then his gaze drifts back to the door leading into his bedroom, mind drifting. He supposes that he shouldn’t be surprised that Kouyou told Chuuya about it—Dazai wasn’t explicit enough with his orders, only telling Kouyou to ensure that Dazai himself never knew anything about her. Of course, the woman would bring it up to Chuuya, probably hoping Chuuya had some insight into why Dazai is so insistent on your protection. 

Chuuya didn’t, of course, but he guesses that only made the topic of you and Dazai’s apparent random attachment to you even more of an interesting topic for their wine sessions. Honestly, he’s surprised that Chuuya didn’t realize earlier that the girl he’s been seeing is the one he’s had Kouyou assigned to. Kouyou surely should have known by now.

You’re fast asleep by now. He got lucky because of how exhausted you were over the stress of the whole situation: he didn’t have to deal with the questions that he was certain would arise as soon as you caught sight of the Port Mafia base. You were all but falling asleep on your feet as the two of you stood in the glass elevator leading up to Dazai’s apartment, the penthouse in the centermost of the five buildings consisting of the Port Mafia base. Dazai thought he was about to have a heart attack when you swayed on your feet and ended up resting your head on his bicep, eyes drooping shut. You only managed a few sleepy protests as he led you to his bedroom, asking where he was going to sleep if you take his room (the fact that you worry about him when you’re even on the brink of falling asleep on your feet made his fingers tingle), but you gave in quickly at his insistence. 

He should feel some sort of pity, or sympathy, because he could see the weariness in your eyes and the fatigue plaguing your body. Dazai might not be capable of feeling pity or sympathy for most people, but if he could feel it for anyone, it would be you. But he does not, and it’s for a selfish reason, of course: your misfortune led to you turning to him for help, and the thought of that alone makes his chest feel light and giddy. 

Yes, he’s going to have to figure out some sort of excuse tomorrow for when you wake up and inevitably have questions—he is not ready for you to know about his position in the Port Mafia—but right now you’re sleeping in his bed and you’re relying on him for help. His fingers thrum against his desk, jittery with excitement, he almost forgets Chuuya is there until he hears the man let out a sharp noise of disgust at Dazai's apparent exhilaration. 

Distantly, very distantly, he knows this is bad. You’ve been smart and observant in every universe, you’re going to put together that something is seriously wrong—you were not supposed to come back to his place, but how was he supposed to say no to you when you were looking at him with teary eyes and nowhere else to go? The thought itself feels like sacrilege. 

“You know what we are and what we do,” Chuuya says, voice calmer now as he shakes his head and fishes a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it with his free hand before he turns to leave. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but you’re putting this girl in danger after the lengths you went to keep her safe. I don’t get it.”

He squints a bit as Chuuya’s words ring through his head. That’s what he had thought too, but he’s the last person to admit to Chuuya that he might be right. A cold feeling starts to set over him, spreading through his chest like ice. If he’s going to think about this realistically, you’re probably already in danger just from being around him. The likelihood of someone catching sight of the two of you the past few weeks is higher than he’s comfortable with, even with the precautions that he’s taken, especially with tonight outside the club and at the convenience store. The thought is terrifying, enough to immediately kill off the jittery excitement that had been running through his body. 

Dazai’s index finger traces the outline of his lips, his mind races. What does he do? If you’re in danger, he can’t just let you go back to your apartment and leave you undefended in a sketchier part of the city. His enemies will jump on it. They’ll target you. But he can’t just keep you here. It’ll be too risky, you’ll figure out who he is and what he does, and that’s not even considering the fact that maybe you won’t even want to stay. You might wake up in the morning and head to someone else’s place—you’d made a vague comment about not wanting to intrude and going to a friend’s house tomorrow but the thought makes his stomach twist a bit. 

God, he’s so conflicted. 

But the first thing to handle is making sure that you don’t go back to your apartment alone. The rest he can figure out later on—he has to decide if he’d rather try to keep you around the base and risk you figuring out what he does (god, he wants to keep you around) or if he should just send you off to a “friend’s” (he still stands by the fact that your ‘friends’ are shitty because what sort of friends leave their drunk friend alone at a bar with a stranger—even if he knows that he’d rather let the world burn than see harm come upon you, they don’t know that) with an extra protection detail. One that you wouldn’t know is there, naturally. 

But how does he make sure you don’t go back to your apartment after the leak is fixed? 

He thinks to himself, an idea coming to him swiftly. It’s a bit dark, yes, and he’s sure that if you knew, you’d run for the hills but… to keep you safe, he would do whatever it takes. Even if you’d hate him for it if you knew. 

But what you don’t know won’t hurt you. 

“Chuuya,” Dazai says before the man can leave his apartment. Chuuya stops dead in his tracks, not turning to look at Dazai, but waiting for whatever he has to say. “I’m going to text you the number of her landlord… make sure he doesn’t get her apartment fixed any time soon. And let Gin-chan know I might have a guest for the next few days so she’s not caught off guard tomorrow.”

Chuuya scoffs. “You’re a freak, Dazai.”

Dazai only smiles idly to himself, eyes sliding shut as he leans back in the chair at his desk, Chuuya leaves without another word, Dazai loses himself in thoughts of you. 

A freak? Yeah, maybe. In love? Definitely. 

Should he convince you to stay with him? The thought bounces around his head frantically. He doesn’t know the answer. The more careful part of him screams no, tells him that it’s too dangerous to keep you around. It’s dangerous for you, because the longer you’re around here, the more at risk you’ll be of getting hurt. It’s dangerous for him, because the longer you’re around here, the more at risk he’ll be of getting exposed,

But the less logical part of him, the one that’s consumed by the idea of you, and the chance he has of being with you, is much louder. 

You came to him, he reminds himself. You found him. He tried to be good. He did everything he could to stay away from you, but you still found him. And you chose to seek him out again. You chose to. It’s easier to blame it on you, convince himself that you brought this upon yourself, as if you had any idea what sort of sick and fucked up person Dazai really is, as if you have any idea what’s happened to you in every other universe because of him.

He can never go back to how he was living before meeting you; he can’t. 

You came to him. 

Why should he have to let you go now?

With that thought in mind, Dazai thinks the answer to his question is made abundantly clear. 

[osarina]

taglist: @kissesmellow21 @annoyingpainterprincess @cheriiyaya @fiannee @skullyz1 @karyk1tty @hikikaimar @nakahras @minomikn @flowerpersephone @little-miss-chaoss @ceranchi @warcelia @bellodazai @cupidszvlvr @t3chn0chan @atlasnessie @lilylylalil

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 OFFICE ESCAPADES

FEATURING: dazai osamu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[remlionheart]

Split Decision

* ˚ ✦ MDNI ✦ ˚ *

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ i woke up this morning w a slutty, feral, urgent need for some soukoku x fem!reader smut and this fic just kinda poured out of me (literally), 3.7k words. porn with a plot. (hope u like it nasty) you're an intern, ending your last day in Yokohama when you're approached at the hotel bar by two men who have one very pressing question for you: red or white wine? i was melting into an actual puddle writing this so lemme know whatcha think, luv u ♡ (and as alwaaayysss, thank u to the loml @bratbby333 for proofreading and being just as fucking pumped for this to come out as i was ♡) *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ

You were tired, exhausted after a day filled with meetings that you barely contributed anything to. You were grateful for your internship, happy that it held the promise of a job right after graduation but being in Yokohama for the last two days had been a bit lackluster.

You sat at the bar of your hotel with lazy, muffled jazz music dancing around you as you fiddled with the straw in your empty cocktail glass.

The trip itself hadn't been all bad. The days were long, but you'd managed to make the most of your nights. The firm you were interning for was gracious enough to make it an all-expenses paid trip and you'd definitely taken full advantage of that over the last week.

You'd spent your nights in the most upscale restaurants the city had to offer, taking yourself on little dates to pass the time. You'd found yourself sitting alongside powerful businessmen and prominent executives that made you feel important even though you were still very much on the outskirts of their social circles. You had been a fly on the wall, quietly observing a world that you could only hope to one day be a part of.

It'd been a learning experience if nothing else. A secret glimpse into how rich men behaved when they thought no one was watching. There was something intoxicating about it all. Something that made you want to try harder when you got back home. You were determined to have this sort of life for yourself one day and you would.

That's what made being responsible tonight all the more important. Your flight back home was set to leave at 6 am. Your bags were already packed and waiting for you in your room. As tempting as it was to venture out into the city again, you needed to be well-rested and level-headed when you woke up tomorrow. So, you'd kept your promise to yourself and settled on slipping into your last clean black dress and grabbing a few drinks at the hotel bar to end your makeshift vacation.

Your legs dangled from your stool, the strap of your dress slipping down your arm as you yawned. The bar had been mostly vacant all night. People passing by, but never actually staying for more than one drink. The vintage grandfather clock at the corner of the room watched you tauntingly, another sway of its heavy arms indicating that it was nearing midnight.

You knew it was time to head back. Your hand reached out to bell for the bartender when two opposing, but equally powerful drinks were suddenly placed at either side of you.

A deep, rich red wine on your left and a deceptively alluring white wine on your right. Your eyes hesitantly drifted between the two men that were now occupying the seats next to you, the warmth of their bodies radiating off of them as they sized you up.

"Which one will it be, angel?" His voice was like velvet, a dangerous smirk creeping across his face as his brown eyes met you. His partially bandaged fingertips slowly pushed the Chardonnay towards you. "You look like a woman of good taste. Honestly, I think you'd like this one much better."

A gloved hand rested on the small of your back, gently turning you around to face him instead. His disheveled red hair and azure gaze were hard to ignore as he nudged the Cabernet closer to you. "Tch, you're too pretty for that cheap shit." He smirked. "Besides, I bet you're wantin' something that would hit way deeper than that, right?"

Your breath was suddenly lodged in your throat, an ache burning between your legs at the sheer shamelessness of it all.

The brunette's smile was piercing, his stare slicing into the man on your left as he let out a low laugh. "You've always had quite the imagination, haven't you Chuuya?" His eyes maintained the same sharpness, dragging back to yours with fervor. "I think what she really needs is something that would leave her begging for more and that's not something that measly little sweet red of yours would do."

The air between the three of you was suddenly suffocating.

You crossed one leg over the other, finding yourself actually having to clench while they carried on with their salaciously threatening banter. Their fingers roaming along your back and the top of your hand. Both inching closer and closer, still spilling out corrupt little nothings about which one would taste better going down your throat and which one would fill you up until there was no more room left.

You needed to be in bed. You needed to keep your wits about you. You needed to tell them both that you didn't have time for this, but your insides were on fire the harder they fought over you.

After being ignored at every meeting you'd gone to this week and being nothing more than a wallflower at the dinner parties you'd attended, having two admittedly depraved but attractive men competing over you like this was enough to make you forget about trivial things like time and responsibilities.

They were still going on. Still gently petting and praising you while their insults towards each other grew heavier and headier.

Your blood rushed through your veins as you looked down at the contrasting wines sitting in front of you. You knew the minute that you took a sip of either, your fate would be sealed for the night. You'd be declaring yourself to one of them. The only smart option you had would be to push both drinks aside, to choose yourself, and to leave the two of them to carry on with their degenerate rivalry with the next unsuspecting girl that waltzed in here.

But you weren't going to settle for either.

As you glanced between them, it dawned on you that there was an alternate, much more menacing 4th option at your disposal.

Their voices came to a pause when they noticed your hand finally raise, hovering directly in the center of the two glasses. Your eyes danced from the brunette back to Chuuya, a hazy smile pulling at the corner of your mouth despite the fact that your heart felt like it was capable of ripping straight through your chest at any given second.

You rested your palm over both, letting your middle finger slide into the Cabernet and your index finger slide into the Chardonnay in perfect unison.

The tension was palpable as they watched you slowly pull out and bring them to your lips. You cocked your head to the side, your tongue generously gliding against the mixture of red and white before you brought them all the way into your mouth, spit slightly dribbling down your chin while you looked between the two men.

A smile cut across your face as you noticed the two sets of blown out pupils staring back at you. "Does that answer your question?"

"No," Chuuya was the first to break the silence. "No fuckin' way am I letting that asshole anywhere near the same room as us."

But it only seemed to pique the brunette's interest more.

A grin that could rival that of the devil's began to pull at the corner of his mouth. "Oh c'mon, Chuuya. You're really gonna deny this angel what she wants?"

"Don't start with me, Dazai." he snarled, his eyes softening a bit when they reached yours. "Look, I'd love to fuck you, but -"

Dazai took full advantage of the redhead's decision to opt out, spinning your barstool towards him so that your back was abruptly facing Chuuya before he could even finish his sentence. "Well," he smirked with a dangerous sense of wit in his voice. "Guess that just leaves us then."

"Wait a minute, that's not how this works!" Your chair was once again being flung in the opposite direction. A gloved hand gently cupping yours as he tried to reason with you. "You're gorgeous, y'know that, right? Even if you end up leavin' by yourself, I promise it'd still be better than endin' up with that mackerel over there."

It should've been an insult. In fact, you were certain that it was an insult, but for some deranged reason, it made Dazai all the more persistent to get you what you had originally asked for.

"Okaaay, okaayy." He conceded as he stood up. "There's no need for petty nicknames. If you're too self-conscious to share a beautiful woman's body with me, that's all you have to say."

"Self-conscious?" The edge in Chuuya's tone only gave Dazai what he wanted. "I'm not self-conscious, you arrogant bastard. I just don't trust you."

Dazai leaned into your ear, his hand shielding his mouth though his voice was far from a whisper. "It's because of his height, I'm afraid. Quite sad really."

"Alright, cut the shit." It was enough to finally bring the redhead to his feet.

He stood up, grabbing your hand to help you off your chair, eyes now locked firmly with yours. "You really want us to fuck you?" He asked, completely ignoring the absolutely vile smirk Dazai was sporting.

A mix of fear and arousal pooled between your thighs as you realized that this was your one chance to back out.

You looked between the two of them one last time before promptly grabbing the drinks that were left on the counter and knocking them both back one right after the other.

"My room or yours?" You asked.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

The three of you had ended up in Chuuya's suite which was at least three times the size of your room. It was lofty, decorated with high-rise windows that were covered by thick, black privacy curtains. His king-sized bed made up in pristine white sheets that you feared would soon be ripped to shreds with the way the two of them could barely share the same elevator without almost killing each other, let alone share you.

Chuuya took off his gloves and hung his coat in the closest next to Dazai's as you slipped out of your heels and left them by the door. Your heart was suddenly in your throat now that you were actually here.

You were still by the entryway, not entirely sure how this was going to start while Chuuya went around and began dimming the lights, making a snide comment about how the less he had to see of Dazai, the better. The brunette just smirked, taking a seat on the edge of his bed, motioning for you to join him.

He spread his legs, lightly guiding you to stand in front of him as he kissed the back of your hand. His brown eyes trailed over you intently, his slender fingers tracing along the curve of your hip. "No need to be nervous," he whispered, tangling his free hand into yours.

There was something so tantalizing about the way he was looking at you. Eager but thorough, like he wanted to memorize every single inch of you. "See how pretty she is, Chuuya?"

You felt him approach you from behind, his calloused hands holding your hair into a makeshift ponytail while his breath fanned across the top of your shoulder. "Care if I unzip this?" he asked, his lips pressing softly against the side of your neck as you nodded. He continued to kiss and nip at you, carefully dragging the zipper down your spine before letting it fall to the floor.

"Fuck."

It was perhaps the one thing that they'd agreed on all night.

Dazai had the full-frontal view of you and Chuuya had the back. You were on full display for them both due to the fact that you'd opted for no bra or panties when you'd left your room earlier, thinking that you'd be coming straight back anyway. What a lie that had turned out to be.

Dazai's hand roamed along your stomach, goosebumps dancing across your skin as his fingertips dipped a bit lower. Chuuya's mouth was still on the nape of your neck, his grip tightening around your hips, drawing the poutiest little whimpers out of you.

"And to think you almost made us pass this up." Dazai taunted. "That would've been suuuch a shame."

"Shut up." Chuuya grunted, pulling you closer so that your ass was flushed perfectly against him. Your back arched feeling how hard he was, another little noise you couldn't quite control escaping you.

Dazai raised an eyebrow at this, realizing how easy it was to make you squirm.

"Oh, our girl's sensitive, isn't she?" He smirked, his fingers making their way to your center, just barely touching the outside of your folds. "Hmm," He hummed, surveying your desperate, dripping cunt. "What kind of sounds do you think she'll make if I do this?"

His finger ran along your clit, only giving you a moment to adjust to the sensation before he immediately plunged it inside of you.

"Nngh ~!" You whined, ramming yourself further into Chuuya's bulge. He held you steady, stuck somewhere between severely hating that Dazai had made you moan like that and fucking loving that you did it while grinding against him.

"Aw, look at that. I think she likes you, Chuuya." Dazai mocked, sliding into you again without warning, jealousy washing over him at how you were holding onto the redhead for support.

He went deeper, adding in another finger, to redirect your attention down to him as you mewled. "Feel good, angel?" he asked through heavy lashes.

You nodded back at him so pitifully, it made him groan, rubbing his thumb against your clit as his other two digits continued their assault on you.

You felt Chuuya undoing his belt behind you, his pants quietly dropping to the ground.

"You're doing so good," he praised into the softness of your neck, stroking himself with one hand and palming at your chest with the other. Squeezing a nipple between his fingers as you filled the room with more heavenly noises. "Think you can do me a favor, baby?" His voice felt like blissful static against the shell of your ear.

"M -" you struggled, your eyes nearly crossing at Dazai relentlessly hitting your g-spot. "Mhmmm." you finally managed.

"Can you bend over f'me?"

You tried your best to comply, but Dazai wasn't making it easy. In fact, he was making it impossible. Every time you tried to move, he'd go deeper, practically pulling you towards him from the inside with the curl of his long fingers.

Your vision was blurry, your body forgetting how to move altogether as the two men fought over you like you were a toy that they were willing to break in half as long as it meant the other person couldn't have it anymore.

"I -" you whined, noticing the absolutely feral smirk spread across Dazai's face. "I'm gonna - fuck, I can't -"

As much as Chuuya wanted to murder him for making you cum first, he knew his turn was next and he was going to fuck you into oblivion. "I've got you." he breathed, still playing with your nipple and holding you in place. "You're okay, baby. Let it out. Oh, just like that. Good fuckin' girl."

Dazai panted as you soaked his fingers, greedily trying to draw another one out of you before Chuuya intervened. "Alright, enough." he said, carefully pulling you away from him. "Here." he said, guiding you so that your ass was arched up for him and your face was on the mattress.

He was just about to put it in when Dazai stopped him, swiftly wriggling himself out of his pants before sitting on the edge of the bed again and placing your head above his dick.

Chuuya ran a frustrated hand over his face, the last fucking thing he wanted to see was your pretty mouth wrapped around Dazai while he was inside of you, but he knew he didn't have a choice.

"Be easy on her," he warned him.

You looked up at Dazai with glazed over eyes as he smiled down at you, proud of his work. "You know I wouldn't hurt you, right angel?"

Your pussy throbbed at the way he was able to make such a reassuring question feel so sinister.

His cock was long and thick and you were quickly realizing just how hard it was going to be to not choke on it. You started off slow, letting him tangle his hand into your hair as you lolled your tongue out and pressed it against him.

"Oh, fuck." Dazai groaned watching you make your way up to his tip, graciously opening your mouth wider to accommodate him.

Chuuya was wildly annoyed but not at all surprised at how vocal Dazai was. He blocked it out by rubbing his tip between your folds, reeling in the way your back arched for him as he softly massaged your abused little clit.

You were moaning, doing your best not to lose your concentration from how intoxicatingly tender Chuuya was handling you.

Whereas Dazai had practically bullied an orgasm out of you, Chuuya was prepared to play the long game. He'd fuck you slow and deep for hours if that's what you wanted. He was determined to make you feel so good you wouldn't be able to remember any other words besides his name.

Once he was satisfied with how wet both of you were from your cum, Chuuya lined himself up with your entrance. "You ready baby?"

"Y - yes." You struggled, Dazai only letting you come up for air for a second before your head was promptly pushed back down again.

You whimpered, completely forgetting what you were doing when Chuuya entered you. His cock stretching you out more than you knew you were capable of. "Oh - mygod." You choked out, eyes pleading as you looked back at Dazai.

Surprisingly, he wasn't jealous. Wasn't instantly shoving your head back down to get you to focus on him. He was in a euphoric daze seeing how fucked-out you looked. Your eyes were full-on watering, your pussy wrapped so tight and snug around Chuuya.

Dazai's grip in your hair lightened, pulling you up but only so he could watch you from a better angle. He held your head in one hand and began stroking himself with the other. "Oh, angel. You love being fucked like that, don't you?"

You nodded pathetically, completely overstimulated by the feeling of Chuuya pounding into you and the beautiful sight of Dazai jerking himself off to you getting railed. "Say it." He smirked. "Use your words."

Chuuya groaned, it was the first time all night that he wasn't tuning Dazai out. His hips thrusted into you harder as you whined. "I - love." Your eyebrows knitted together, your mouth dropping open at how deep Chuuya suddenly was. "I love - it." You cried out. "I love it so fu - cking much."

Chuuya wasn't sure if Dazai was trying to hurt or help him by coaxing such depraved things out of you, but he was lost in the sound of your moans.

Your legs began to shake, your cunt pulsating as Chuuya's tip knocked against your cervix. "I -" your head shook, you felt like you were going to pass out. "I can't - s'too much, I'm gonna -"

"Let me feel it, baby." It was almost more of a beg than a command. "Let me feel that pretty pussy soak my cock."

Dazai's breathing hitched in his throat watching the two of you. The tears that were spilling down your pretty face and the guttural noises you were forcing out of the redhead so effortlessly. The way neither one of you were coherent anymore, too lost in the way your bodies were aching for one another to know anything else.

Dazai wasn't sure why it was doing this to him. Wasn't sure why he couldn't stop himself, but just as you started to cum, he did too. He shoved your mouth back around him, reveling in the shock and pleasure and absolute awe on your face as you swallowed every last drop he shot into your mouth.

Your body felt like it was convulsing. The three of you had somehow all managed to reach your climax in perfect, lewd, synchronicity. Dazai's cum was pooling down your chin while Chuuya filled you up from behind. A combination of both of your fluids mixing together and then squirting out of you when he finally pulled out with a heavy, "Oh, FUCK."

You collapsed into Dazai's lap, your legs refusing to hold you. Chuuya helped pull you up onto the bed as the three of you fell into the mattress with a thud. You laid in the middle of them, your head rested peacefully against Dazai's chest as you tried to stop the room from spinning.

"And you told me to go easy on her." Dazai mused, running his fingers through your hair.

Chuuya rolled over on his side, wrapping his arm around your waist as he placed a kiss on the back of your neck. "'Least I didn't get off watching her get railed by another dude." he sneered.

"Yeah, you're right." Dazai tsked, "Only thing that could've made it better is if it was by a taller man."

"Dazai, I swear to god -"

But their bickering came to a quick end when you began to shift against them.

"Hey," you mumbled dreamily, causing both of them to immediately revert back to petting you and leaving light kisses along your skin. "Could you shut the fuck up? I've gotta be up at 5 tomorrow to catch my flight."

Chuuya smirked and set an alarm on his phone. Truthfully, he was willing to let you talk to him however you wanted with what you'd done to him tonight.

He reluctantly pulled the comforter up over the three of you. As much as he didn't want Dazai in his room for another minute, you looked too content to move.

You had never felt more safe or secure than you did being smushed between the two of them. Their words were hazy as you began to doze off, two sets of strong arms wrapped around you.

"Y'know, I think I'll kinda miss her." Chuuya breathed.

"Me too," Dazai smiled, looking down at you. "She's our girl."

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

[osarina]

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. 

[osarina]

taglist: @kissesmellow21 @annoyingpainterprincess @cheriiyaya @fiannee @skullyz1 @karyk1tty @hikikaimar @nakahras @minomikn @flowerpersephone @little-miss-chaoss @ceranchi @warcelia @bellodazai @cupidszvlvr @t3chn0chan @atlasnessie

i kept the taglist for badlands!! i wasn't sure if any of you still wanted to be tagged, so if you don't, just shoot me an ask and i'll remove you!

[osarina]

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 (coming april 5th!)

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

[osarina]

taglist: @kissesmellow21 @annoyingpainterprincess @cheriiyaya @fiannee @skullyz1 @karyk1tty @hikikaimar @nakahras @minomikn @flowerpersephone @little-miss-chaoss @ceranchi @warcelia

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 HE'S THE SERPENTINE, HE'S MY COLLAR!

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: you're finally back in yokohama after spending four years abroad dealing with mori's foreign business. the last person you want is to see dazai osamu, the wounds of his abrupt betrayal still too fresh for comfort. unfortunately, he decides to take matters into his own hands by showing up at your office in the middle of the night.

(wordcount: 7.1k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia executive!reader, f!receiving oral, gunplay, knife play (ish), spitting, pussy drunk!dazai (as always), light choking, overstim, office sex, semi-public/public sex, unprotected sex, switch!dazai, switch!reader, undertones of angst (happy ending). lmk if anything is missing!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys. GUYS. i had so much fun writing this, this is finally usurping in paper rings and picture frames as my fav fic that i've written. HAHAHH. i hope you guys like it too!!

You hear the door to your office swing open, and you press your lips together tightly, irritation swimming through your head as your grip tightens on the pen you’re using to fill out your paperwork. It’s already late—you’re tired and your head hurts, but you can’t leave the building until Akutagawa comes to hand you the report for his failed mission so you can pass it up to the boss. And you know that whichever subordinate this is, it’s definitely not Akutagawa because the boy would rather claw his own throat out than walk into your office without knocking. 

Which means it’s some upstart new recruit who has no manners and is likely going to make your night worse. You think being away for so long did some real damage to your reputation—four years ago, the lower ranked mafiosos avoided your floor like the plague, they didn’t barge in like they owned the place, but then again, four years ago, you also had a certain dark-haired executive (ex-executive now, you remind yourself bitterly) lurking around your floor constantly trying to get your attention, and if people weren’t nervous enough about you, they were definitely terrified of him.

“Five seconds to explain why you came into my office without knocking or I’m putting a bullet through your fucking skull,” you say, voice acerbic, not even bothering to look up, the fingers of your free hand closing around the gun you have holstered at your side. 

“There’s a few too many cameras in the hall for my liking to stand out there and wait for you to open the door.”

The fact that he manages to dodge the bullet shot in his direction is testament to his skill, but you’ve known Dazai Osamu long enough to know that when he dodges to the side, nine times out of ten, he dodges left, so you drop your pen as soon as you pull the trigger and swipe the knife laying haphazardly on your desk, launching it in his direction. You watch as his eyes widen just a bit when it impales the wall right next to his ear, just barely nicking his skin—both a warning and a threat.

“My, my, bella, you’ve gotten faster the past few years,” Dazai grins, unperturbed, smile as reckless and lazy as the day he left four years ago as he plucks the knife from the wall. “I’ve missed you too.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Dazai?” you ask, voice cold and sharp as your finger rests against the trigger of your gun. “How did you get up here?”

“Security’s gotten lax since I’ve been gone, I guess,” Dazai shrugs, but his eyes dance with mirth as he makes his way over to your desk. “You should probably do something about that.”

“Dazai,” you say, keeping your voice low and trying to reign in your temper. There are no cameras in your office, but the hall leading here is littered with them, hidden ones that were recently installed that he wouldn’t know about, if any one of them caught his face and it’s reported to Mori… “You think I won’t drag your ass to Mori myself? What the fuck are you doing?”

You’d have to, or it would be your head on the line for betraying the Port Mafia—you know better than anyone the treatment that traitors get, considering you were the one that dealt with them up until you were sent abroad four years ago to handle Mori’s foreign politics. 

“I don’t know, will you?” Dazai counters, head tilted to the side as he takes a seat on top of your desk next to you, a smile on his face that makes you think he knows something that you don’t. It makes you a bit sick to your stomach—you’ve only been back in Yokohama for a few days and you feel as if you have yet to even adjust to Dazai’s defection from the Port Mafia because you were away for so long. Him showing up like this opens up wounds that are too fresh for comfort—it reminds you of the days that feel like yesterday when he would show up at your office to distract you from your work, pouting and throwing himself on your couch when you blow him off to finish up your reports. 

“Maybe,” you answer, finger twitching on the trigger as you keep your gun pointed in his direction. 

Dazai is completely unbothered, leaning down until his nose is nearly brushing yours, lips tugged up in an unbearable smirk. 

“Then do it,” he challenges, and you glare at him, jaw tight and eyes hard. He reaches out, fingertips brushing your skin, and you feel like you’re on fire beneath his touch. You hate that your body still betrays you to him. “Don’t look at me like that, bella. I won’t even resist, I promise, as long as you promise to be the one to put a bullet through my skull, so your face can be the last thing I see. Ah, that would be a lovely death, wouldn’t it?” 

“You’re a fucking freak, Dazai,” you spit out, but make no move to get up or grab your phone. “What is wrong with you?”

Dazai doesn’t respond, only winking at you. Instead, his gaze shifts to the side and his hand drops from your face to his lap again. You hate even more that you miss his touch immediately. 

“You still have my couch,” Dazai notes to himself quietly, an odd tone to his voice as he stares at the dark couch in the far corner of your office, where he’d bundle himself up under blankets to avoid Chuuya, because Chuuya used to avoid your office like the plague when the three of you were younger.

“It’s my couch,” you say tightly, even though you know no one has touched it since Dazai left, and the ugly orange blanket he liked so much is still draped over the back of it, and it probably still smells like him. Your throat feels swollen, and you steel away your emotions and continue with, “I haven’t been back here since you left, anyway. What do you want, Dazai?”

“I heard you were finally back in Yokohama,” he says. “I wanted to see you.”

“Fuck off,” you say roughly. “So you decide to break into the main base of the Port Mafia and come all the way up to my office? You know where my apartment is, you could’ve shown up there. What do you really want?” 

“It’s the truth,” Dazai says easily, and his dark eyes meet yours—both of them, you note, and wonder when he decided to shed the bandages that covered his right eye. “I was at your apartment for a bit, I got impatient and came here instead.”

He’s telling the truth.

Oh, you realize—the clogged feeling in your throat is coming back, you force it away again and lean back in your chair, looking away from him to turn your gaze to the window. It’s well past midnight already, the moon is high in the sky and the stars are glittering above. In the distance, you can see the Ferris wheel of Cosmo World glowing a bright purple color and a string of flashing red and blue lights as the police chase after someone.

“Why?” you ask finally, breaking the heavy silence that had settled over the two of you. 

“I told you,” Dazai says quietly, and your eyes turn back to him. He looks… happier, you can’t help but note. A sick part of you feels jealous—you’re not sure if you’re jealous because he’s free and you’re still stuck in this place, or if you’re jealous because he’s happier and he’s happier in a life without you. You think it might be the latter. “I miss you.”

“Don’t give me bullshit, Dazai,” you snap, still trying to push away all of the feelings you’ve repressed for so long. “Get out of here before you find yourself killed. I’m not going to turn you in, but I’m not saving you if you get caught.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Dazai tells you, voice sharp in a way that it only ever is when he’s starting to get annoyed. “I-”

A knock at your door cuts Dazai off mid-sentence. Both of you freeze, Dazai looks at you as if waiting to see what you’re going to do, and you can so easily finish this now, let whoever is at your door in and drag Dazai back down to the torture room where he belongs, but instead you find yourself reaching for him. Your hand intertwines with his hair roughly, and you revel a bit in the hiss that escapes his lips as you yank him off the desk and roll your chair backward, kicking the back of his knee so that he crumples to the ground and you can push him beneath your desk. 

You lower your gun to your lap so you can keep it pointed at him and then glance down at him—he looks caught off-guard and disgruntled at being manhandled, but you think it's a bit funny how cramped he looks under there. 

“Not a single word,” you warn before fixing your chair and raising your voice. “Come in.”

Akutagawa wastes no time stepping into your office, nodding his head in respect as he makes his way over to the chair on the opposite side of your desk, a bundle of papers in hand. He doesn’t hand you the pile right away and he looks uncharacteristically nervous, and you raise your eyebrows, wondering what the issue is. 

“I am… unsure how to fill out some of the report,” Akutagawa says, unable to meet your eyes as he stares at the windows behind you. “The operation was… not a failure but not a success. The whole mission was in disarray, I do not know who was doing what at certain points.”

You stare at Akutagawa. “What do you want me to say to that?” you ask him, leaning back in your chair. “It’s your job to know that as the field officer for the mission. If you can’t handle that, Hirotsu will take back the position on the next major operation.”

Akutagawa bristles. “I can handle it,” he says, voice clipped. “This mission was just more chaotic than-”

“Than usual?” you ask idly, watching as he stiffens as your interruption. “This was child’s play, it’s unlike you to make excuses, Akutagawa.’

“I’m not making excuses,” he says immediately, “but…”

Akutagawa continues talking, but your attention is ripped away when you feel Dazai shift beneath the desk. You press your lips together tightly, stiffening as his hands rise to your thighs, spreading them a bit so he can settle between them. You glance down, he’s already peeking up at you, dark eyes glittering in a way that has you on edge. 

Don’t you dare, you warn silently, but Dazai only takes it as further encouragement, pressing his lips to your clothed inner thigh, you can feel the warmth and wetness through your slacks. It takes all of your self-control to not inhale sharply when he starts trailing open-mouthed kisses up your thigh until his mouth is hovering right above your cunt. 

You press the muzzle of your gun against his temple. 

He smiles. 

Your jaw clenches as he licks a long stripe between your legs through your slacks, making sure to press his tongue down hard over where your clit is hidden through your clothes. Akutagawa is still talking, oblivious to what’s happening beneath your desk as he airs his complaints about the mission. You could stop Dazai, place your foot on his shoulder and push him off of you, but you don’t, notably—you don’t want to acknowledge that though. You only vaguely hear Akutagawa’s issues, something about interference from a third party—the SDUP? What the hell were they doing there?— and Kajii blowing up an escape route. 

“Give me the report,” you say, cutting him off mid-sentence, and holding out your hand. You’re grateful that your voice comes out steadier than you feel with Dazai trying to tongue fuck your through your pants. 

As you lean forward to rip the papers from Akutagawa, you tense, feeling something sharp press against your inner thigh. Sitting back in your seat and glancing down, your eyes cut down to Dazai, who still has the knife you’d thrown at him and is using it to cut open your very expensive slacks.

You have half a mind to drive your foot into his face, but you refrain. If only barely.

It’s a miracle that you can keep your breath steady, because as Dazai cuts your pants, he kisses every inch of open skin that’s revealed to him. His lips are warm, wet, familiar—so familiar that your legs are instinctively spreading for him, giving him more room to work.

Your eyes scan the report but the words are just jumbled letters and not making any sense. Every time you try to understand, you feel Dazai’s teeth graze your thigh as he marks up your skin. You tense when you feel him bring the knife much closer to your cunt, to finish cutting off the material—you press the muzzle of your gun harder into the side of his head, warning him to be careful. You glance down only to see a hazy smile on his lips as he winks up at you, as if he’s drunk just off of the idea of what’s about to happen.

He works efficiently as always, freeing your lower body of your slacks and panties as quickly as possible, and he wastes no time burying his face between your legs. Your lashes flutter and the grip you have on your pen tightens dangerously, you think it might snap. Dazai’s tongue slides between your folds, lapping up the slick that had begun to pool—you know that if Akutagawa wasn’t sitting a few feet away, Dazai would be making a snide comment about how he knew you wanted him.

Dazai’s tongue flicks over your clit—you can feel him staring up at you, watching for every little reaction, the way your lip tightens as you bite back moans, the way your eyelids unconsciously start to slide shut, the way your breath is just a bit heavier than it usually is. 

This is so dangerous, you think to yourself desperately. If Akutagawa of all people figures out that Dazai is here-

You nearly choke when Dazai shifts a bit underneath the desk to kneel at a better angle, grateful that Akutagawa seems to be too busy wallowing in his own mistakes to notice your struggle. Your gaze  snaps down again, his eyes have fluttered shut as he buries his face deep into your cunt, nose pressed to your clit as he pushes his tongue into your hole and you can feel the way he lets out a silent, but shaky breath, barely holding back a moan.

You notice his free hand slide from where it was propped on your thigh down to his beige pants, fingers fumbling with the button as he desperately tries to slip his hand beneath his waistband to touch himself. You kick his wrist hard, using your foot to pin it against the side of your desk, watching him wince and withdraw his hand, looking up at you with those big brown eyes you can never say no to. 

God, he’s pathetic, his lashes are wet and his cheeks are flushed, eyes glossed over with pleasure as he looks up at you and you know you’ll let go of his wrist if he looks at you like that any longer, so you turn your gaze back up to Akutagawa, who’s staring at his lap and waiting for you to finish the report.

“Get out,” you tell him, voice sharper than you intended. Akutagawa’s eyes snap up to you, brows furrowed in confusion. “Go, I’ll handle this.”

“But-”

“Your job is to take orders, not question them,” you bite out, watching frustration flash across the boy’s face as he rises to his feet. You’re not usually this harsh with the kid, but you’re not sure how much longer you’re going to last and Akutagawa cannot be in here when you cum. You can feel the heat pooling in your stomach and that familiar hazy feeling clouding your mind. “Out, Akutagawa.”

Akutagawa inhales sharply but nods, turning stiffly on his heel to leave your office. As soon as the door to your office clicks shut, Dazai is pushing the chair backwards until the back of it hits the windows behind you, shifting into a more comfortable position as he resumes fucking you with his tongue in earnest. 

He moans into you, wanton and shameless, any restraint he had because of Akutagawa’s presence is long gone. While he was careful to not make noise before, now the sloppy sound of his tongue dragging in and out of your cunt drowns out any other noise in your office, he sucks and slurps, he’s so disgusting, like he can’t get enough of the taste of you, a man who’s been starved for years.

The knife clatters to the ground as he reaches up with both hands to grab your thighs, sliding them over his shoulders so he can push his tongue even deeper inside of you. Only sheer pride drives you to push away the creeping fog as Dazai’s tongue slides back up between your folds to draw figure eights around your clit.

“I should pull the fucking trigger, pulling this shit when he was in here,” you spit out, head falling back as a breathy noise escapes your parted lips when Dazai sucks gently at your clit. He moans again, as if the idea itself turns him on—it probably does, he’s always talked about wanting to die between your thighs. “You’re a fucking freak, Dazai.” 

He lets out a puff of air, you can’t tell if it's a laugh or another moan, maybe a mixture of both, but he’s too focused on drowning in your cunt to respond. Four years without him and you’ve forgotten just how good Dazai is with his tongue, working your body as easily as he did when the two of you were eighteen and seeking each other out before meetings and between missions for a quick fuck. You hate it—you hate that he’s treating you as if nothing has changed and you hate even more that your body is this responsive to him. 

Betrayal, you think, your own body betrays you for him. Again.

“Fuck,” you gasp the word out when Dazai rolls your clit between his teeth gently, sending a jolt through your body that throws you off just enough for that fog you’ve been fighting off to finally win. You choke over a moan, head pressed back against your desk chair, forearm coming up to press against your forehead as your eyes slide shut. Your free hand finally finds its place in his hair, tightening around his dark locks, he lets out a whimper against you, tongue flicking over your clit. “Like that. Just like that.”

You can hardly keep your head on straight as he traces letters around the sensitive bud, you try to figure out what he’s spelling but you’re too far gone. Your head is light and your chest is heaving. You’re barely able to bite back moans as your thighs tighten around his head, hips rocking against his face. You don’t even know if he can breathe, you don’t think you care, so close to the edge that your entire body is tingling and trembling; you don’t think he cares either from the way he’s moaning into you.

It takes one last suck, one last swirl around your clit, and you’re crying out his name, spots dotting your vision as your grip on his hair tightens, pushing his face impossibly deeper into you as you grind your hips against his face. God, it feels never-ending, a noise too close to a sob nearly escapes your lips as Dazai ardently laps up all of your cum, not letting a single drop go to waste. You can’t remember the last time you’ve cum this hard—with him, probably, you realize bitterly. None of the one-night stands you’ve had over the past few years have ever compared to him.

You’re still reeling even as you force yourself to straighten in your seat, not willing to let him know just how badly you’re thrown off by how intense your orgasm was. Your head is still spinning, vision still blurring, but you lift your leg and press your foot to Dazai’s shoulder, kicking him back and forcing him out from his position between your thighs. 

He grunts, looking thoroughly disgruntled as he falls back on his ass, pouting up at you as he tries to catch his breath. He looks debauched, lips swollen and wet, your cum smeared on the lower half of his face. His cock is straining against his beige pants and his eyes are still glazed over; he’s looking up at you with an expression that’s nothing short of reverent. 

God, he’s gorgeous. 

You hate him. 

You’ve missed him. 

You shift in your seat and Dazai is lifting himself to his knees, immediately leaning closer, a hazy smile on his lips as he angles his face up and pointedly parts his lips, sticking his tongue out. You know what he wants and the heat that had been slowly dissipating returns with a vengeance, breath catching as you look down at him.

“You’re gross,” you tell him, watching the corner of his lips quirk up even as he keeps his tongue out and waiting.

You don’t deny him. You never can. 

You shift forward, rising to your feet and reaching out to grab his chin, angling your face down. Your grip is too tight, it’ll leave bruises behind and you think that’s the least he deserves so you only tighten it a bit more as you lean over him. You don’t give him what he wants, not right away, letting the saliva gather on your tongue as you observe him, the way his pupils are blown wide and his chest is hardly rising and falling, as if he can’t even let himself breathe in anticipation.

Disgusting, you think again, but it’s fond this time, much to your displeasure.

You decide to put him out of his misery, letting the spit dribble from your mouth down to his. His eyes roll back as soon as it hits his tongue, and your hand slides from his chin to curl around his neck—not tight, just firm enough to feel the way his throat bobs as he swallows.

He lets out a shaky breath, eyes fluttering back open as he looks up at you, entirely blissed out. Your hand slides down more, curling around the ugly bolo tie he’s wearing in place of the black one you’re used to. You tug it hard, beckoning him to his feet; he acquiesces, albeit on shaky legs. 

Immediately, his hands find your hips as he pushes you against your desk, spinning you around to face it before his hand presses between your shoulder blades, pushing you down to bend you over it. Your eyes widen at the sudden change in demeanor, something you’ll never be able to get used to no matter how many times you fuck him; it always caught you off guard back then, it still catches you off guard now. He pulls off the remnants of your destroyed slacks and immediately is grinding his bulge against your ass, a low moan spilling from his lips. 

“How many people have you been with?” he suddenly asks, and you can hear him fumbling to unbutton his own pants. There’s an edge to his voice that you don’t like—something caught between jealousy and possessiveness, and you nearly want to scoff at it.

“What the fuck, Dazai?” you spit out, appalled and not expecting the question. “None of your damn business.” 

You turn your head to the side to rest your cheek on the desk, looking back at him from the corner of your eye. His eyes are still a bit hazy but there’s a tight expression on his face, reminiscent of the one that would be directed toward you whenever he stumbled in on you entertaining anyone other than him years ago. 

“Humor me,” he says, voice cold and eerily familiar. If you weren’t looking at him and if you couldn’t see the tan coat and bolo tie, you’d think you were talking to Dazai Osamu, Port Mafia Executive, and not Dazai Osamu, Detective. 

“A lot,” you finally tell him, feeling the way he stiffens behind you. “I don’t keep count. You?” 

You think he has some nerve asking when he’s probably slept around t-

“None.”

“Bullshit,” you snarl immediately. “How many? Don’t fucking lie to me, Dazai.”

“None,” he says again, gaze lifting from your back to meet yours, his eyes are dark—too dark, too still. Maybe he hasn’t changed as much as you assumed, because the way your chest swells with a confusing mixture of fear and arousal is far too familiar. “You’re the only one allowed to touch me.”

His gaze drags back down, with his pants unbuttoned, he lifts his free hand to caress the swell of your ass, a contemplative expression on his face as he stares down at you, his other hand still pinning you down to your desk. If your heart wasn’t thudding in your ears from sheer anticipation, you’d be irate over the fact that you were letting Dazai Osamu fuck you over your own desk in your own office, but you can’t bring yourself to care now.

“They never made you feel like this.” It’s a statement, not a question, and you want to scoff at his arrogance, but you can’t because he’s right. “They don’t know your body like I do.”

This time you do scoff. “You don’t know shit, Dazai. It’s been four years.”

Dazai’s eyes flicker back up to you, the way his lips curve up into a smile is dangerous.

“No?” he questions. 

A challenge. You never back down from one, not from him. 

“No.”

His smile sharpens.

“I know that after you cum for the first time,” he murmurs, rolling his hips forward. You bite back a moan when you feel the tip of his cock slip between your folds. “The second time comes right after.”

True to his words, your jaw falls slack and your entire body seizes as Dazai thrusts into you, splitting you right open on his cock. The moan he lets out is pornographic, and you wish you could see the way his head falls back and his eyes roll into his skull, but your own vision is white and you’re choking over a sob as you feel the familiar stretch of his cock against your walls.

“There you are.” Dazai has the nerve to let out a breathless laugh and another groan as he stills with his hips flush to your ass, feeling your walls spasm around him as you cum just from the feeling of him pushing inside of you. The hand he has placed between your shoulder blades slides up to curl around your throat. With a firm grip, he pulls you up so only your thighs are pressed against the edge of your desk, back flush to his chest as you gasp, reeling from the suddenness of your second orgasm. You can feel him smile as he nudges his nose against the side of your head, lips pressed to your ear. “The third time takes a bit after the second, but I’ll fuck you through it. Maybe a fourth too.”

“Dazai,” you gasp, eyes blown wide as your head falls back against his shoulder. You don’t know what you’re trying to say, maybe hold on, or wait, because you know you’ll embarrass yourself if he doesn’t give you a second to recover.

He hums in response, and the slow rolls of his hips, the drag of his cock against your walls, it has your head in the clouds, body trembling. Your lips part to speak but no words leave them, and right when you think you can finally force the words out, Dazai draws his hips back and snaps them back against yours hard. Your lips part in a silent moan, only the hand around your throat and the one pressed to your lower belly holds you up as Dazai fucks you at a brutal pace. 

His face drops to the crook of your neck, he moans into your skin, teeth scraping hard as he kisses recklessly up and down every available inch. He’s going to leave marks, you realize, and that’s dangerous now that you’re back in Yokohama because you don’t need any of the other executives to get suspicious, but even if you wanted to tell him not to, you don’t think you’d be able to. Whatever little coherency you had left in your thought process does not translate when you try to speak, the only things leaving your lips being shaky moans and gasps of Dazai’s name.

“Made for me,” Dazai groans. His grip on your throat tightens just enough to make the air you breathe in shallow, your head feels light and you’re not sure if it’s because of his grip or if it’s the feeling of his cock bullying so deep into you that you can feel his tip pressing up against your cervix. “Waited so many years for this, feels even better than I remember, pussy’s made for me, isn’t it?”

Dazai babbles into your ear as he fucks you, tongue just as filthy and unbridled as the day he left. Shameless. He’s so shameless. Doesn’t even care that anyone could walk into your office and catch the two of you; doesn’t care that if anyone does, he’ll end up executed. He’s fucking you in a building full of people that want him dead and all he cares about is how your cunt feels wrapped around his cock.

Your breath hitches as Dazai shifts you to bend over just a little more, still keeping your back flush to his chest but fucking you at a new angle—one that nearly sends you spiraling over the edge for a third time. 

“Gonna give me your third now?” he pants. His hand on your lower stomach slips down, lithe fingers dipping between your folds to search for your clit—your back arches against him when he finds it, a sob spilling from your lips, vision swimming with tears. Dazai laughs again, this one is strained, catching over a moan as your walls convulse around him. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, you’re so tight.” 

Unconsciously, his grip on your throat tightens, cutting off even more air. You can hardly breathe, you can hardly think—each thrust of his hips has your head spinning, ripping the little air you can inhale right out of your lungs. The tip of his cock rubs against that spongy spot inside of you every time he snaps his hips against yours, the quick circles he rubs on your clit are electrifying. 

Your cheeks are wet, breath ragged, vision spotty. One last thrust, one last circle, and you’re wrecked, sobbing out his name as your legs give out, only held up by the way he has your thighs pinned to your desk and his hand on your neck. You cum all over his cock so hard that you think you black out for a second, your mind fuzzy and pins and needles pricking all over your body.

Dazai doesn’t stop. He fucks you through your third orgasm, relishing in the way your body twitches and trembles, too sensitive for his touch. 

“Your fourth will come quick,” he gasps. His pace is erratic now, chasing his own release. Your ears are ringing, heartbeat thudding in your ears, the wet, sloppy sound of his cock driving in and out of you resounding through your office. “I don’t think I’ll last for five. Shit, shit, I’m close.”

You have to force yourself to move. You want to see him when he finishes. Your hand wraps around his wrist, nails digging into his skin to try to get his attention. It takes all of your will power to push the two words from your lips: “Flip me.”

He does. Without any sort of hesitation, his hand drops from your throat to your waist. His cock slips out of you for a split second and your cunt aches at the loss, but Dazai is immediately pushing himself back into you as he hoists you up by the thighs, sitting you down on your desk and wrapping your legs around his waist. 

Even through your blurry vision, Dazai is a fucking sight. His dark hair is matted to his forehead, pink lips swollen and wet, cheeks flushed. His eyes glazed over and half rolled back as he chases his high. God, he’s stunning. You’ve missed him. You’ve missed him.

You’re not thinking as you lift your hand to cup his cheek, sliding around to the back of his head to pull his face down to yours, moving on pure instinct. You drag him down to press your lips against his and Dazai is gone. The moment your lips touch his, he’s moaning into your mouth, hips stuttering against you as he spills his cum deep inside of you, and he’s right, because the moment you feel his cum filling you up, warm and thick, so much of it that you can feel it dribbling around his cock, the stickiness smearing against your thighs and ruining your desk, you’re pushed over the edge for the fourth time.

This one is weaker than the rest, not a single noise escapes you but your jaw goes slack and Dazai whimpers into your mouth when he feels your walls tightening around him again. But he takes advantage of your pliancy, pushing you back gently so that your back is flush to your desk. He follows you down, keeping his chest pressed to yours as he maps out your mouth with his tongue. He rolls his hips against yours, slow and deep, fucking his cum deeper into you as the two of you slowly come down from your highs. He slants his lips against yours to deepen the kiss, hand coming up to cup your cheek, his other sliding up and down one of your thighs. 

It’s too intimate. You tell yourself that you only let it happen because you’re reeling from overstimulation but you know it's a lie.

You don’t even know how long you stay in that position with him. It could only be a few seconds, a few minutes, it could’ve been an hour for all you know, laying on your desk with him pressed on top of you, kissing you so passionately that it makes your head spin as much as the orgasms did. 

Finally, you press your hand against his shoulder, signaling for him to get off of you. He does, albeit with a reluctant sigh. You stare up at the ceiling as Dazai shakily rebuttons his pants, making his way over to the closet where you still keep your spare clothes from when you have to stay over at the office to work. 

What did you do?

You’re hyper aware of how swollen your lips are, of the marks littering your neck, of the cum dribbling out of your cunt, staining your desk. 

If anyone finds out about this-

You don’t get to finish the thought, because Dazai comes back over to you. Neither of you speak as he takes a tissue to clean up his cum from your thighs and as it dribbles out of you, nor do you speak when he shifts you into a sitting position, helping you pull on a new pair of panties and a new pair of slacks.

He stands in front of you, dozens of indecipherable emotions rocketing across his face as his dark eyes search your expression for something. You don’t know what, and you don’t even want to look at him but you can’t draw your gaze away from him.

After what feels like forever, he finally speaks.

“I missed you,” he says, voice hoarse as he lifts a hand to cup your cheek. 

You turn away from his touch, ignoring the hurt that flashes through his eyes. 

“Why don’t you believe me? You think four years has changed how I feel about you? I thought you knew me better than that.”

“It’s been four years,” you say, and you hate that your voice wavers a bit. You blame it on still being hazy after your orgasm but you know it’s a weak excuse. You hate that he still has this effect on you after all these years. You hate that you always give into him, and you hate that you know you’ll never get enough of him. You want to hate him, but you can’t. “Knowing how to fuck me isn’t the same as knowing me as a person. I barely know you anymore. You barely know me. And it’s not like you were open with how you felt four years ago. So, forgive me if it’s a bit hard to believe, Dazai.”

“You wear the same perfume. You still shoot with your non-dominant hand for some god forsaken reason. Your lips still twitch whenever you get annoyed even though you do your best to stop it. You-”

“Stop.”

“You still talk to me like you hate me even though your eyes are all soft and you’re leaning in toward me.” Dazai doesn’t stop, and to your horror, he’s right—you had begun to lean in to him instinctively as he spoke. You try to shift away from him, but he follows, fingers grazing your cheek, chest brushing yours. You don’t pull away this time. “I still wear the same cologne you bought me for my sixteenth birthday because it reminds me of you—I spent two months trying to figure out where you bought it when it first ran out. I don’t carry a gun around as often, but when I do, I still try to do that stupid flipping trick you tried to teach me when we were seventeen—I still can’t do it, almost shot myself in the knee last time I tried.”

The laugh he lets out at the last sentence is hollow. He hesitates, as if he wants to continue but isn’t sure if he should. You can feel his blunt nails scraping gently against your skin, his palm warm against your cheek. You want to pull away but you’ve missed him, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, and you find yourself sinking into his touch. You’ve always questioned why Mori sent you away for so long, angry because you figured he thought you were weak when it comes to Dazai and he didn’t want to risk anything. 

Only a few days back in Yokohama, and you’re already proving him right.

“I’m not the same person,” you tell him, something desperate edges at your tone. Desperate to convince him, or yourself, you’re not sure.

“I still love you,” he rasps, voice quiet as if he’s scared to admit it even to himself, and your heart is suddenly lodged in your throat as you stare up at him with wide eyes, the words he refused to tell you back when you were teens ringing through your head over and over again. “I’ve always loved you. Thought about you every day. I missed you so much.”

“I should hate you,” you say, swallowing thickly, unshed tears blurring your vision. “You didn’t even say goodbye. When Mori said you defected in the middle of a mission, I laughed in his face. Not because I didn’t think you’d never betray the Port Mafia, but because I didn’t think you’d ever leave me without saying anything.”

“If I said goodbye to you, I never would have left,” Dazai tells you quietly, the admission echoing in your years. “And I had to leave. I had to.”

“I should hate you,” you repeat, voice a bit weaker now, and you feel pathetic for falling apart like this in front of him. But it’s Dazai, he’s always had this effect over you. You suppose some things haven’t changed, because that certainly hasn’t. 

“I know,” he murmurs. 

You inhale deeply, shaking your head as you push yourself off your desk and straighten out your clothes, trying to get your head back on straight. You should’ve known better than to think you’d be able to come back to Yokohama and pretend that Dazai Osamu didn’t exist, for better or for worse, the two of you would always find your way back to each other. Mori was right to send you away, although you suppose the man is rarely wrong anyway.

Dazai doesn’t say anything, watching you with an unreadable expression as you search through the ruined piles of paper on your desk for the report that Akutagawa had handed you. Your eye twitches when you realize that it’s stained, realizing that you’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing because you can’t submit a cum-stained report to Mori.

Dazai snorts behind you, as if realizing your predicament. The look you give him is lethal, he silences himself quickly. 

“Don’t get yourself killed on the way out,” you tell him, grabbing your black jacket off your chair and swinging it over your shoulders as you look back at him. “If you make it out of here alive, I’ll see you at my apartment later. Then we can talk.”

His face twists. “What? Wait, don’t leave me here,” he panics, nearly tripping over his feet and your desk chair to follow after you. “Help me sneak out.”

“You got in here yourself,” you say dismissively. “Get out yourself.”

The noise he lets out is pathetic. “You do hate me,” he accuses. 

“No, I could never,” you admit quietly. His expression softens a bit, but you give him a sharp smile. “But I’m definitely not going to make things easy for you. Akutagawa is still out here prowling around. So is Chuuya, actually. Said he’d be at the office all night today. Good luck, you’re gonna need it.”

[pearlpost]

minute moments ⸻ d. osamu

abstract : dazai osamu hates a lot of things, but with you, he tucks them close to his heart. warnings : - statistics : 0.6k words | standalone

The sky is dark over Yokohama tonight, all shadowed blue and the faintest flecks of stars. Dazai reaches for you, slips a hand over the curve of your waist and tucks his nose into your neck. You smell of blood and smoke and rain. All the things he does not particularly like.

But Dazai likes your laugh. Especially when you laugh because of him. The staccato of it is a tender, melancholy thing, he feels it more than he hears it, at the moment, the sound vibrating soft in your throat. He nuzzles deeper into you.

"Hi," you murmur, lace a gentle hand into his hair. The touch makes his cheeks warm, makes him raise his head to catch a glimpse of you. The knife-sharp bright of your eyes, your pretty smile, the way your hands are all delicate veins and soft skin as they settle so carefully over the dip of his neck.

He buries back into you, breathes you in like a drowning man.

He is drowning, sometimes, it is almost all he knows.

Sometimes, he drowns a little less when he can touch you, like this.

Feels less like being pulled under when all he can smell and taste and hear is you you you and Dazai thinks he can sink into your bones, ball himself so small and so tight that he fits into the spaces of your ribcage.

He wishes you would, sometimes. Wishes you would break all his bones and fold him up, tuck him away entirely for yourself.

You sigh at his silence, smooth a thumb over his temple. The touch precedes a kiss, a faint, lingering note of warmth that blooms beneath his skin and coils down into his chest, thorns into his heart. He gasps, something almost raw in the sound, and tilts his head towards you for more.

You laugh again, quieter, more sad this time. Indulge him, the next kiss barely grazing the curve of his eye, your half-smile ghosting his lashes. He thinks of how sorrow rims your eyes too often and presses you tighter against him, holds you there until he is sure that, even after you are long gone, the imprint of you can be found on his bones.

I love you he wants to tell you. Wants to say those words so badly they hurt to keep on his tongue, sears into the back of his throat like acid.

I love you.

Stay with me.

Please.

He hopes you know. Prays to gods he has no belief in that you always know the words he cannot say, always know that he is entirely for you, even if you never want him back. Even if you never get the chance to hear the words from his lips.

He raises his head. Looks at you and aches when you look back, all broken-star beauty and that pretty smile. The night shadows you, draws you back out into something little more than a dream, your edges softened between the hours of dusk and dawn. You are wispy like this, all faded and yet too much for him.

"Hi," he whispers back. You smile at him, soft and sweet and all the things he hates unless it is in you, from you. He knows you know, feels the ache of it burn through him and hates himself a little less, here against your skin.

He does not mind all these things he hates, if he gets you with them.

I love you.

minute moments. © pearlpost, 2024 — written for komorebi by @shibaraki.

[osarina]

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 (coming april 5th!)

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.

[osarina]

taglist: @kissesmellow21 @annoyingpainterprincess @cheriiyaya @fiannee @skullyz1 @karyk1tty @hikikaimar @nakahras @minomikn @flowerpersephone @little-miss-chaoss @ceranchi @warcelia

[nakahras]

᯽ wet dreamz • osamu dazai

synopsis • you’ve been having some dubious dreams about one (1) osamu dazai and you let it slip.

warnings • swearing, lucid dreaming, fem!reader, ņsfw, dazai (he needs his own warning, yes), nickname “bella” is used, hair pulling, some light hand stuff/teasing, oral (f -> m), no set dynamic (both parties switch), masturbation (f), clothed sex, edging, finger sucking, slight choking, creampie, overstimulation, pussy drunk dazai, this is a long one >.<, also mildly unedited

wc • 6.8k

a/n • ahahahaha i don’t know

his hands are all over you, all at once, but it’s still not enough. you can’t pinpoint why because in all honesty it should be borderline overwhelming. but it’s not.

maybe you’re just greedy. you’ve been waiting for this for so long that you’ve been dreaming about it. dreaming? something washes over you and, once again, you can’t place it. you shake it off internally. how could you pay anything much attention when what you should be paying attention to is the man underneath you pawing at your skin.

he’s demanding all of your attention and you’ll gladly give it to him. you don’t remember how you got here, or how you got his shirt off but you dip down and kiss his exposed and surprisingly sun kissed skin. everything is blurry, the feeling of his skin under your lips, the image of him shirtless underneath you and the sensation of his nimble fingers kneading at your ass. 

before you can overthink it, he gets impatient and guides your hips to grind down on his hardened crotch. your mind is the next thing to become blurry. you straighten up and throw your head back as the sensation of the friction overtakes your senses. you want more, need more.

as if the brunette could read your mind, he’s tugging at your panties. it’s only then that you realize, he’s pantless as well. things felt like they were going too fast and also too slow all at once. you sit yourself back down on his length and continue to grind down on him.

your head is swimming and distantly you hear ringing in your ears. you ignore it though, the sounds of his moans drowning out any other noise. his grip on your bottom tightens and he lifts your hips up expertly aligning himself with your entrance.

he’s about to sit you back down and stretch you out but the ringing gets louder and everything goes white.

᯽•᯽

you woke this morning in a pool of your own sweat — thighs rubbing together desperately seeking out the same sensations you experienced in your dream. 

now you’re sitting at your desk feeling extremely embarrassed and, frankly, frustrated that you had yet another wet dream about your coworker, dazai osamu. 

you let out a huff while typing up a report on yesterday’s case. of all people in this office it just had to be the most insufferable of them all. why did he have to be so gorgeous? why couldn’t you think the same of kunikida? hell, even ranpo would have been a better choice than dazai. you think your subconscious is cruel. laughing at you, making fun of you by giving you wet dreams. you felt like a fucking teenager. hell, you don’t think you even had wet dreams when you were an adolescent going through puberty. how utterly embarrassing.

you let out yet another exasperated sigh, brows furrowed and fingers typing furiously. you were making a spectacle and your deskmates had long since noticed your sour mood. atsushi and kunikida were the smart ones, they simply let you be, figuring if you wanted to talk about it you would bring it up. 

dazai, however, is nosey. his natural curiosity always getting the better of him. he builds a simple paper airplane and shoots it through the air. it lands right on your keyboard and your aggressive typing finally ceases. you stare at the airplane as if you’ve never seen one in your entire life. you refuse to look up, fearing that if you look at dazai you’ll be reminded of what your subconscious thinks of him. you don’t think you can handle that quite yet.

dazai watches, slightly perturbed, as you seem to try to make his little creation spontaneously combust. no matter how unsettling, dazai still isn’t deterred. atsushi shoots him a warning look, as if to say this wasn’t a good idea. the brunette blatantly ignores the boy and wheels himself over to your part of the desk, which was a show in itself since you’re on the complete opposite side of where he was sat. that means dazai has to push himself past either atsushi or kunikida. of course, him being the menace that he is, dazai chooses the harder path of going around kunikida.

you don’t see it because you’re still having a staring contest with your little gift but kunikida’s eye twitches as dazai swivels past him. the blonde was going to take the high road though. he was going to let it slide since you seemed to need the distraction. but dazai was clumsy and clipped his wheels on the ones of his partner’s chair. kunikida’s eye twitches and he can’t help himself.

”dazai…” it’s a simple warning. one that the brown eyed detective promptly ignores.

dazai makes it to you without another hitch and gingerly reaches over to replace the airplane with a paper rose.

you blink. stare some more. then finally look up. “dazai, what the fuck?” 

“oh c’mon, bella. you’ve been in a mood all day. i thought a rose would cheer you up enough to tell me what’s got you in such a sulky mood.” dazai pouts at you and it takes everything in you to look away for your sanity.

you can feel your cheeks heating up by just the small interaction. if these dreams persist, you’re not sure you can keep your composure. you were barely hanging on by a thread as it was. you distantly think maybe it’s your subconscious telling you that you need to get laid. you almost scoff at the thought.

yes. it has been some time since you last slept with someone, but there is no way that was causing the dreams. if that was the case you would be having dreams about more than just dazai. he was simply plaguing your mind and you think you might go insane if this kept going on. 

so instead of dealing with it like a sane person, because you aren’t right now, you decide to take it out on the very man that has been haunting your mind. “i’m trying to get my work done and i’m certainly not in the mood. go bother atsushi if you’re bored, dazai.”

you hear a small complaint come from across the desk and look up to see atsushi giving you an accusatory expression. you immediately feel guilty for throwing him under the bus and finally relax for the first time all day. you toss the weretiger an apologetic smile then whip around to glare at dazai for a moment.

”i changed my mind. you’re buying me lunch at the cafe. let’s go.” you don’t give dazai any time to answer. you save your work, shut your laptop and promptly stand up and walk off. you weren’t going to give dazai any room to argue. you figured if he didn’t follow then he wasn’t that curious and you got to enjoy a break in silence.

unfortunately you hear dance-like footsteps coming from behind you, indicating that dazai was, in fact, following. you both step into the elevator and about halfway down dazai finally opens his mouth.

”so, what’s got a beautiful woman such as yourself in such a mood today?” his smile is lazy and eyes dull.

you hate this. you hate when he acts like this. you do genuinely like dazai, just not this version of him. the shut off version, the one that puts on a facade and plays with people for fun. you don’t have much time to think about it though. the elevator jolts to a sudden stop and dings, indicating that you’ve made it to the ground floor. you scurry out of the small space and make your way to the cafe. 

when you enter your mood instantly sours seeing that it wasn’t lucy in today, but rather the waitress dazai is always making eyes at and wistfully requesting her to perform a double suicide with him. you muster up a smile to offer the owner and wave at him before taking your seat at one of the booths. dazai plops himself on the other side across from you.

the waitress comes over and you brace yourself for the encounter that’s about to transpire. dazai watches you closely, head tilting to the side curiously. 

“welcome, detectives, what can i get you started with today?” her smile is sweet and you feel bad for your previous annoyance. it’s not her fault dazai doesn’t understand the art of subtlety. 

dazai speaks up before you can get a chance to. “go on, bella, you order whatever you want.” dazai addresses his attention to the waitress next. “everything will be going on my tab, miss waitress.”

”how very generous of you, mr. dazai. i assume you finally invested in that life insurance policy i recommended?” her smile is sweet but her words are clipped and condescending. you let out a little snort as dazai starts to sweat a little. 

before dazai can quip back, you order. “i’ll take an iced latte and the sandwich of the day, please.”

“of course miss. what about you, mr. dazai?”

dazai almost shrinks at her faux warm demeanor. “i’ll just take a cup of coffee.” 

you raise your brow at him disapprovingly and before the waitress can scurry off you quickly get out, “can you make sure my sandwich is cut in half?”

she smiles at you genuinely and nods her head. after she walks off you catch dazai staring at you once again. you know he’s about to speak again and you dread whatever it is that’s going to fall from those surprisingly full lips of his. 

“so, are you going to tell me what’s gotten your panties in a twist all day?”

nice.

how eloquent of him. 

you scowl at him and hiss out, “could you not refer to it as that?”

”sorry, bella. would you rather i ask why you’ve been so sour all day in a different way?” dazai grins at you clearly pleased at getting a rise out of you. 

you huff and roll your eyes. “would you believe me if i told you it’s because i had a dream of you?”

”oh? did you now? what was the dream about? you must regale me with all of the details.” dazai sets his elbows on the table in between the two of you. his fingers intertwine and he rests his head atop his hands. 

it’s almost eerie, the way he’s looking at you but you can’t quite place why. you wince internally realizing your mistake. how the hell are you supposed to tell dazai that you fantasized about— no. you didn’t fantasize, it was a dream. a creation of your subconscious. not of your control. you want to shrivel up and die. 

how the hell are you supposed to explain that to dazai?

you don’t. it’s the only sane reasoning you can come up with. but now you have to scramble to come up with something to dazai. the longer you just blankly stare at him the more suspicious he’s going to get. you can see it in the way his eyes become hooded and his right brow shifts up.

dazai perks up a bit and, oh god, here it comes. the realization you’ve been dreading. “don’t tell me you dreamt about me in that way.” he hums dramatically. “what a naughty girl, thinking about your colleague in such a way~”

you involuntary freeze. sure you knew this was coming but there is no way he saw through you that easily. he came to that conclusion so fast and you know for a fact you aren’t an easy person to read unless you want someone to. he couldn’t have just picked up on your thoughts like that. no, you have to remind yourself this is dazai osamu. he could have done exactly that. regardless, you refuse to admit it to yourself, let alone dazai.

“absolutely n-“ you’re cut off by the waitress dropping off your drinks and the sandwich. 

clearly she understood what you meant by your earlier request because she brings you an extra plate. you thank her one more time before she walks off. placing the slightly bigger half of the sandwich on the extra plate and scooting it towards dazai.

“eat.” he looks at you curiously but obliges when you give him an expectant glare.

you know he won’t drop the previous subject but luckily for you he’s too busy with eating to make much conversation. you both enjoy your respective halves of the delicious sandwich in silence. it was peaceful, a stark contrast to what usually transpired when you’re with dazai. you observe him quietly, subtly, as you chew on the last bite of your food.

he’s picking at the bread after only two bites. his coffee was finished within the first few minutes of it being set in front of him. a clear avoidance. keeping himself busy with sipping on his coffee so he wouldn’t have to eat. the few bites were to appease you. unfortunately for him you know all of those tricks, maybe a little too well.

you cross your arms over your chest and think about this tactically, you know if you scold him outright he’ll brush it off easily. you have to think like him for a moment. what would he do if your positions were switched.

playing dumb. “you know, it’s not very polite to let a lady eat more than you…” 

you pout and look away from him, trying to seem embarrassed. you’re not sure if it’s worked. you’re honestly too nervous to look. you think it must look real because you’re now actually embarrassed by the probably god awful acting you just displayed.

but then you hear distinct chewing and peak over to something that pleasantly surprises you. he’s taken another two bites, significantly larger than the last two, because he’s almost finished with the sandwich by the time you fully turn to look at him. 

for the first time all day you finally crack a smile at him and let out a fit of giggles. dazai almost chokes on the sandwich from the sound alone. it’s a sound he’ll never get used to nor will he ever get tired of it. you’re too busy trying to calm your giggles to notice dazai’s internal struggle as he finishes off his own food all the while staring at you in amazement.

you take a few calming breaths and look at him, still all smiles. dazai resists the urge to clutch his chest, something in it stirs — an extremely alarming and foreign sensation for him. dazais nerves are suddenly on fire. he suddenly recalls what you said earlier, how you dreamt about him. he knows you planned on denying his earlier implications but the way you paused makes him think you were having those types of dreams about him. 

dazai’s fingers twitch at his sides. he’d be lying if he said he didn’t think of you like that. hell, he’d probably have the same types of dreams if he actually dreamt. dazai’s breathing shallows and he need to get away from you. his self control thinning with each passing second he thinks about you in the most intimate of ways. 

he knows it’s wrong. at least in your case you can’t control it. but here his is, shamelessly fantasizing about you like you aren’t sat right in front of him. dazai disgusts himself. he wants to bash his head in, his thoughts swimming, making it hard for him to focus. vision blurring and ears rushing like there’s water stuck in them.

dazai abruptly stands up and announces, “we should get back to work. kunikida will get on us if we take any longer.”

you’re so perplexed because when has dazai ever cared about what kunikida thinks about? then you notice it, the unmistakable bulge straining against the crotch of his pants. you swear you didn’t mean to look, it was just currently at eye level. you’re suddenly given an opportunity, something you need to make a decision on and quickly. 

as calmly as you can, you slide out of the booth and wave to the owner and waitress before grasping onto dazai’s hand and dragging the brunette away with you. dazai is far too dazed to protest at how assertive you’re being. you lead the way to the elevator and the ride there is painstakingly quiet and slow. the second the contraption dings and the doors begin to open you’re slipping through with dazai still in tow.

the lanky man is thoroughly confused when, instead of going back to the office, you shove the two of you in the supply closet. he wants to ask but something tells him he doesn’t need to. your body language gives way that you’re going to explain yourself.

thank god there’s a lock on the inside of this room. you really did not want to relocate to the bathroom for this. dazai is still dazed, unsure of what’s happening, just letting you toss him around like a rag doll. everything is still on fire making him feel detached from his body. the sensation is almost numbing.

“you know what’s so frustrating?” your breathing is just as shallow as his is now. the ride on the elevator working you up far more than it should have. 

although he’s detached, your voice anchors him. he looks down at your flushed face and he almost whimpers at the sight. he croaks out, “what is?”

“you. you’re so frustrating. your stupid act, your stupid need to play dumb, your stupid big brown eyes, your stupidly long fingers, your stupidly handsome face and your stupidly careless actions. y’know, you’ve had a hard on since you stood up at the cafe. practically shoved it in my face.” you have him trapped, his back is hitting the end of some shelves.

you don’t touch him yet. you look up at him and gauge his reaction. he seems to be battling with what he should say and you could laugh in triumph. you’ve never seen someone render the dazai osamu speechless, but you just did it with a few suggestive sentences. 

dazai takes a shuddered breath collecting his wits before grinning down at you after fully processing your words. “my apologies, bella. that wasn’t my intention, but what is yours? this is quite the damning position you have me in.”

your confidence falters but you quickly recover and click your tongue. “it would be rude of me to not help you calm down… especially if i was the cause.” 

you look away, embarrassed by your own proposition. dazai takes a moment. he knows what you’re implying, he’s sure of it, but he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around it. after what feels like an eternity— it’s not, you’re just being dramatic— it finally clicks in dazai’s head. you’re being serious, if the look on your face is any indication. 

the detective hums and reaches out. his hand cups your face and glides up into your hair, fingers tangling with the strands and tugging just a little too harshly to be considered gentle. he was needy, you could see it in the endless sea of honey that are his irises. something was stirring. 

“how am i supposed to say no to that? i’m a weak man, unable to deny a beautiful woman when she makes such an enticing offer.”

you don’t have time to bite back with a witty comment because his lips are quite literally crashing into yours. the second his chapped lips make contact with your own every single touch and action from him comes from a place of desperation. although skilled, his actions are sloppy and almost rushed. his free hand grips your waist and draws you even closer. 

your hands land on his chest to brace and balance yourself. you try to catch your breath but dazai is proving that difficult with how his tongue dances along your own. his actions steal your breath away from you and make your lungs burn, screaming for relief and air. 

the lack of air and the sensation of dazai’s tongue tangling with your own dizzies your head. you can’t get a proper thought out. instinctively your mouth is moving with his, tongue smoothing over his, and hands fisting at the cloth on his chest but you couldn’t move out of your own volition. 

dazai pulls your head back by once again tugging at your hair. you let out an involuntary whimper, making sure to stay quiet as you gasp for air. dazai dips his head down and speaks in between littering kisses on your neck.

“i thought you were going to help me calm down, bella. so far i’m doing all the work and now i’m far more worked up than i was in the cafe.” 

his words bring you crashing down to reality and you scowl. of course he would still tease you. he loves getting a rise out of you. 

you don’t entertain him, though. instead your hand travels down his torso and starts tugging at his shirt. you pout at him mockingly. “i didn’t realize some mild kissing would work you up so much. ‘didn’t realize you were so sensitive -- so needy.” 

dazai wants to quip back at you but as you’re talking you’re undoing his pants and your last word is emphasized by you shoving your hand down his pants. your hand almost falters when you realize he’s not wearing anything underneath. instead, though, you take your index finger and teasingly run it along his length. it feels endless, he’s long, you realize. you briefly wonder just how far, how deep, he could reach inside of you. 

dazai shudders at the feather like touches to where he needs attention the most right now. you lean up and with your free hand you tug on dazais collar to bring him down to your level. your breath fans over his ear and, god, he shudders again. 

you hum. “‘s this where you need attention right now?”

“yes.” dazai breathes out the word. clearly affected by the way your finger is twirling around the leaking tip of his cock.

you maintain eye contact with dazai as you sink to your knees. the implication alone has dazai’s nerves coiling tighter. he brings his hand up to cover his face, head falling back as he groans. his breathing becomes more erratic as you withdrawal your hand, he barely contain a whimper from falling past his lips at the loss of contact. but you make quick work of shocking his pants halfway down his thighs and finally freeing his strained length.

your mouth begins to salivate involuntarily. his cock is surprisingly pretty and just as you suspected — his length is impressive, definitely above average. the leaking tip is flushed pink and his veins are visibly throbbing. you want nothing more than to choke on it but first, you think you need to tease him some more.

you rest your cheek on his trembling thigh and stare up at him innocently. “osamu.” he could cum, right then and there with the way you say his given name.

dazai looks down at you. the sight in front of him bringing him embarrassingly closer to release. all dazai can muster is a hum of acknowledgment and even that sounds a little pained.

you smile at his obvious desperation. “if i help you out here you need to follow a couple rules. be quiet and no touching. think you can do that for me?”

dazai tries so hard to pay attention to your words but barely registers them. did you say no touching? no touching what? and him being quiet? a bold request of him.

you seem pleased with how quick he is to nod at you in obedience. you waste no time, ready to indulge both of your fantasies. you lick a long stripe along the vein on the underside of his cock. dazai is twitching at the one action alone. how embarrassing of him — you both have the same thought. 

the brunette’s fingers itch to touch you but his mind is coherent enough to remember your stipulations. no touching. how cruel of you. to resist that temptation when you’re making him feel this good is just downright wicked.

you don’t miss the way his fists clench in a desperate attempt to keep his word. how could you not reward him for that? listening to you like such a good and obedient puppy. your tongue darts out to swirl around his flushed tip. the taste of his precum floods your tastebuds and you’re instantly hooked like an addict to their drug of choice. dazai’s taste was your new vice. 

your lips wrap around his head and you hollow your cheeks. dazai is panting. his head spinning from the pleasure at just the slightest of touches from you. his head hangs back and he brings his fist to his mouth and bites down. he wants to groan, wants to whimper, wants to moan your name. but you’ve denied him that privilege and he has a feeling that you would be merciless if he gave in and disregarded your requests. 

you take more of him with each bob of your head and with each stroke of your tongue you unravel the tight coil that had formed in dazai’s stomach. he was already so close. what a sight it would be to watch you choke over him as he spills everything he has directly down your throat. the thought almost undoes him. he bites down on his fist harder and he thinks he may have broken skin.

you observe dazai and it’s all so hot. his pants, his facial expressions, the way sweat is starting to form on his face and cause his hair to stick to it. you can feel yourself getting worked and you’re impatient. thank god the weather permitted you to wear a pencil skirt instead of the usual slack you usually wear. you use your free hand to bunch up your skirt at your waist. the actions makes your movements on dazai’s cock a little sloppy. he hadn’t noticed yet but his brows furrow as if he’s starting to. you try to fix your pace but it’s too late. he is already picking up his head and peering down at you. 

you were trying to touch yourself. if his head wasn’t already spinning this is what would be what sent him into a spiral. you had the audacity to call him needy but then in turn do something like this. it was unfair. 

Dazai can’t help himself. “bella, are you trying to touch yourself?” it comes out as a teasing whisper. you don’t miss the amusement in his voice. 

you suppose you asked him to stay quiet, not to stay silent.

still, your brows furrow and you ever so slightly graze your teeth against his cock. the sensation is something dazai sickeningly loves. his eyes are rolling back into his head and he let’s out a short moan. it’s quiet and you’re quite annoyed that he’s found a loophole. 

you can’t deny that his noises aren’t doing something for you, though. you’re even more desperate than before to slip out of your panties. you maneuver around and manage to shimmy them off. it’s almost embarrassing how wet the crotch of them are. you try to care but you just can bring yourself to do so when dazai’s hips begin to thrust and force the small bit of his length you’ve been unable to touch down your throat. 

you gag around him and dazai’s grasping at the shelves behind him for leverage. you spread your legs the best you can, being on your knees like this and sneak your hand up your thigh. you can feel the heat radiating off of you. you run a finger through your slick and moan around dazai when the digit brushes your clit.

“fuck, fuck, fuck ‘s so good, bella. your mouth ‘s so perfect for me.” his voice is hushed and breathy.

you’re not even listening to his babble as your nose continues to brush against his pelvis every time your sucking him back into your mouth. gagging, choking, on his cock. your eyes are watery, tears spilling from that and the sensation coming from below your pelvis. your finger makes expert work of your clit.

it’s too much.

you can’t breath right, dazai can’t think right, you gag with every thrust, dazai can’t control his stuttering hips, your one hand is playing with yourself and the other reaches up to cup dazai’s balls. 

it’s not only too much for you, it’s too much for dazai. the added sensation makes nerve, every cell, every fiber that makes up dazai ignite. he was about to cum, he needed to warn you. he needed to open his mouth and say something but it just flapped, no noise was coming out.

you bob your head back and peer up at dazai, his erratic breathing becoming suspiciously loud. the look on his face is absolutely breathtaking — it’s flushed, almost beet red, tears of his own trickle down his cheeks in droplets. he looked like a fallen angel, beautiful and dangerous all at the same time. 

you moan at the sight. fingers traveling down to your entrance and slowly pushing through. you suck in a breath and fold your lips over your teeth to keep yourself from grazing his length with them. the initial stretch feels divine but your fingers themselves aren’t enough. you need dazai’s twitching cock inside your cunt.

you note that dazais cock is throbbing painfully and starts to twitch quite a lot.

oh, you realize, he’s going to cum. 

you smirk deviously. you push your mouth down on dazai until his tip is hitting the back of your throat. with your eyes still on him you hollow your cheeks and swallow. dazai almost yelps at the added stimulation. his head snaps up and finally his attention is on you.

“shit.” he hisses, this time a little louder, so you glare up at him. “sorry- sorry but- fuck- gonna cum, please, ‘m so close.”

the second those words leave his mouth you’re backing up and removing your fingers from yourself. dazai let’s out a mangled noise, something between a sob and laugh. it was almost unnerving but the blissed out look on dazai’s face tells you he’s enjoying this game far more than the average person.

you watch his chest heave, his breathing heavy. his face is as red as a blooming rose. you think it’s a sort of beautiful sight to see. dazai never gets flustered, so seeing him like this, you can’t help but to feel special. 

you stand up as you pout at him, mock empathy written all over your face. “sorry, did you wanna cum? don’t think i can have that quite yet. not when you haven’t even fucked me. right, osamu?”

there it is again, the sound of his given name falling from your lips. something in dazai snaps. the thread of his sanity that you’d been stretching thin ever since the cafe finally tore in two. his eyes darken dangerously and you only have a moment to realize the shift before he’s picking you up by your thighs and wrapping them around his thin waist. you can feel his stiff cock lightly bouncing against your ass as he flips you around and pins you against the shelves.

his head dips down and he lips scant across the skin of your neck. he’s careful to only leave feather light touches. scraping the rough skin of his mouth on one of your most sensitive areas sends a shock of electricity through your body. you so badly want to tug at his hair but you’re coherent enough to realize your fingers are still coated in your own slick. 

you smile slyly at the detective as he peers at you through his ridiculously long lashes. you grab his chin delicately and bring your soiled fingers to his lips. his eyes light up in immediate realization. he wordlessly opens his mouth, tongue lolling out a bit as he happily waits for his treat like a puppy, you can practically see his tail wagging. you let out a breathless laugh, because you think you may be screwed. dazai osamu has you wrapped around his pretty and lithe fingers and you think he already knew that. 

you think about making him beg for it but you’re so momentarily mesmerized by the brunette that you find yourself leaning in and gently interesting the digits into his mouth. dazai is quick to appreciate your offering. his lips encase your fingers and his tongue makes quick work of lapping up and savoring your taste.

dazai’s hip involuntarily rut into yours and you can’t help yourself. all the pent up frustration you’ve felt since the dreams started finally gets to your head. you’re desperate to feel him inside of you. a sensation you were always denied of, waking up before actually getting fucked by the very man holding you each time. you reach down to guide his cock then expertly shift your hips and he becomes perfectly aligned with your entrance. dazai is sucking on your fingers but his actions become sloppy as he watches what you’re doing with intense concentration.

you waste no time sinking yourself down on his length, he’s already well coated in your slick and eases into you. you bite on your lip to avoid making any obscene noises but dazai snaps you into reality when he carelessly moans loudly. you panic and shove your fingers further into his mouth. he hums appreciatively and if his hips rocking into yours didn’t feel so good you’d hop off his cock right then and there and leave him blue balled. you could bring yourself to do that though, not when you’ve been waiting for this for so long.

you settle for hissing out, “shut the fuck up, dazai.” 

dazai gives you a shit eating grin as he snakes an arm under your ass and squeezes before slowly shifting his hips away from yours, leaving you virtually empty, before sliding himself back into you at the same painstakingly slow pace. he repeats the slowed movements a few times before you’re slipping your fingers out of his mouth and bracing yourself on his shoulders. you try to move your hips on your own but dazai is quick to catch you.

“ah, ah, bella. can’t have you doing whatever you want right now. unless you want me to get louder, you’ll let me set the pace.” his voice is slightly strained and hushed, but despite his seriousness, you can hear the tiniest bit of teasing mixed in.

you let out a whine but resign to him setting the pace. in the meantime your fingers find their way to his hair and tug. dazais hips stutter, showing you that he is far too needy to take full control. taking full advantage of just how distracted he is, you grind your hips into the detective’s with each thrust and dip your head to leave sloppy wet kisses along his jaw and down his neck.

“shit, you’ve been so wound tight all the time lately that even your perfect cunt has a vice grip on me. it’s so perfect, feels so good.” you can tell how hard dazai is trying to be quiet and you note that you should reward him for that later.

it doesn’t take long for his pace to increase, his rapid movements making the shelves behind you rock and creak. dazai still seems displeased with the pace, his brows knitting together in concentration. you catch his eyes flitting to your neck and lingering there. 

you’ve always worn your tie loose, the first couple buttons if your dress shirt undone. it drives dazai mad. your neck and cleavage are always on display in the most tasteful way. he wants nothing more than to run his hand over your velvety soft skin and wrap his nimble fingers around your neck. now that he has the chance to do so, he can’t pass up the opportunity.

your grip in his hair tightens as he shifts you, keeping you up with one arm as he keeps his pace. you have no room to question him when the new positioning has his cock nudging your sweet spot so deliciously. your head becomes dizzy and your mouth falls open in a silent moan. 

dazai’s hand travels up your body, palm flush with your skin so he can feel every bump and curve. he starts at your upper abdomen and slithers it up. he completely ignores your breasts which you vaguely think was his goal. you have no time to act surprise over it bc his hand is gently wrapping around your neck. he wants to squeeze, fingers twitching, but he resigns to a light grip to simply test the waters. 

your response is something he wasn’t expecting. your eyes roll back and you let out a hushed whimper. that’s when he realizes, he wants to do this forever. he wants to fuck you senseless so he can see that beautiful expression on your face forever. so he can feel you tightly wrapped around him forever. dazai wants you forever. the fleeting thought scares him just a little but he has no time to dwell on it because the coil in his stomach is unraveling once again.

“dazai-“ your interrupted by him bringing you in for a sloppy kiss. you think the noises from the kiss alone are far more obscene than the noises from him bullying his cock into you, which is a hard feat considering those are, by no means, quiet or pure. 

when the brunette detaches himself he breathes out. “osamu- shit- ‘s osamu…”

“osamu. ‘m gonna cum. so close- please.” you let out a quiet sob as you babble.

dazai has no time to respond. it’s embarrassing, the way he can’t even give you any other warning but him shoving his face in your shoulder, grip tightening around your throat ever so slightly. the whimper he lets out tells you everything you need to know before he starts spilling his cum inside of you.

the throbbing of his cock and sensation of him filling you up has your walls contracting and you’re diving off the deep end yourself. you bite your lip hard. desperate trying to keep yourself from making more noise than the whines sticking in your throat. your vision blurs and and hearing goes muffled as your senses become overwhelmed by your high.

dazai is still rutting his hips into you, guiding you through your orgasm despite his twitches and obvious overstimulation. when you come back to your senses, dazai is whimpering a lot louder than previously. his grip on your neck is lost as he leaves soothing strokes on your side. you tug at his hair to lift his head so you can look at him.

his face is somehow even more flushed than earlier, you’re almost concerned. the look in his eyes though makes something stir inside of you. his glazed over and hooded eyes, completely unfocused. his lips parted as he’s letting out short and shuddered puffs of air. dazai has lost all senses but the feeling of him inside of you. 

“osamu. hey- look at me. you need to calm-“ you his when his rutting becomes more intense, thrusts becoming less shallow but hips and cock still twitching wildly, you have to stop him otherwise you’ll both lose yourselves in this supply closet and you can’t afford to do that when everyone is still in the office next door. “osamu we need to get back.”

dazai seems to have regained some of his consciousness. “again.”

you let out a breathless laugh, eyes glimmering in genuine amusement and adoration. “not right now. later. we need to get back. i have a case i need to finish working on.”

dazai finally fully comes back to you and he lightens up at the promise of later. that means this isn’t just a one time thing. something in that back of his head always told him if he crossed that line with you, things wouldn’t be the same, he’d only have one shot. but your words are such a relief he could cry. he can’t help himself, he has to clarify.

“later? after work and… again anytime after that?” his eyes are pleading and hopeful and you can’t help but melt under his soft gaze.

you nod and open your mouth to affirm his statement but you're rudely interrupted by a loud rapping at the closet door. “you two better have not done any of that by my emergency snack stash and you better clean up after yourselves. hurry up, i can't keep stalling and kunikida needs staples.”

ranpo’s voice rings throughout the room. you groan in embarrassment and bury yourself into his chest. dazai lets out a gleeful laugh still dizzyingly drunk on the idea of your promise.

[moomv-deactivated20240724]

take me to the ocean | dark era dazai osamu

You had been the quiet roar of the sea to Dazai. 

You had lived in his thoughts day in and day out, your mind a fuzzy keepsake that roared with the ocean’s tides and the pearlescent glimmer in the afternoon sunlight.

Dazai remembers your smile and the way you danced, he remembers that your hair smelled of salty ocean and sunlight, a hint of sweet caramel, and he remembers the way you you spoke in soft hues that eclipsed everything and all, the very world bent to your will like putty — like he bent to your will like putty. 

For someone who had lived in the darkness, who lived in the back alleys and backstreets, the calling of home a distant thought that Dazai didn’t dare partake in, you had called him out to the sea with your voice and drowned him in your affections; stolen glances and fleeting kisses. 

You were a siren and you had caught Dazai wholly and completely — even if you weren’t his like he was yours. 

Dazai finds his actions foolish, he had no time for romance and he had no time for the simple sentimentality of bathing in such actions, he was foolish, he cannot deny that and just as simply he cannot deny that he loved you so completely. 

He loved everything about you, he loved you to the tips of your hair to the ends of your soul, he loved you in a way he didn’t know he could. 

And in the end, he thinks that’s what got you killed. 

He still remembers the way you said each syllable even after your passing, your voice curving around the words in perfect melody, and he remembers the way you had never been to the ocean and he remembers the first time he took you, you had looked at him like you really loved him, and he remembers when you kissed him under the setting sun that day and he remembers the way your lips tasted of sugar and a home Dazai couldn’t attain.

You had never a person to be tied down, you were all over the place, from your career to the people you loved, you were as rough-edged as the ocean but as gentle as the waves, you were all shades of the kaleidoscope, and Dazai loved that about you too.

He had never told you about what he did, he didn’t think he needed to, but if he did, perhaps you would have still been by his side with your lips rosy and your hair of salty oceans. 

You had died a night in June. 

The weather was hot and the buzz of bugs echoed like a faraway call. 

You had died a night in June when you were supposed to sing, Dazai was supposed to watch and he thinks that’s what also killed you. 

You died a night in June and ever after June Dazai still thinks of you. 

You died a night in June and Dazai still visits your grave even long after he left the Port Mafia. 

You died a night in June and Dazai still blames himself for killing you. 

[osarina]

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 (coming april 5th!)

“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.”

[osarina]

taglist: @kissesmellow21 @annoyingpainterprincess @cheriiyaya @fiannee @skullyz1 @karyk1tty @hikikaimar @nakahras @minomikn @flowerpersephone @little-miss-chaoss

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 MID DAY NAPS WITH DAZAI!

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai does not nap. he hardly sleeps in general. so how is it that he's dozing off in your lap like this? you're a witch, he's decided. there's no other logical explanation. (wordcount: 800ish; sfw; fem!reader, mentions of alcohol & sleeping pills)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: very short & sweet but i toldddd you guys that i had a dazai nap time drabble in the works. i love my naps, so that means i obviously have to do nap time with all of the favs. perhaps i'll do jouno next. or maybe there's someone u guys want.

Dazai doesn’t sleep well. He never has, and he’s certain he never will. The only time he can manage to get some semblance of sleep is when he’s taken a few too many sleeping pills or he’s drank himself to oblivion. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a fact of life, and he thinks that he’d prefer to stay sleepless anyway if it means he can avoid the memories that plague his dreams.

Dazai can simply not remember when the last time he willingly slept was, which is why he’s so confused now, head resting in your lap, eyes heavy as he looks up at you. He can hardly hold them open, he can feel himself falling asleep and he’s alarmed because he does not sleep unless his body is drugged, drunk or dying.

“What kind of spell have you placed on me, bella?” Dazai says through a yawn—he yawned???

“What do you mean?” you ask quietly, fingers still carding gently through his hair as you look down at him, brows furrowed. 

He wants to reach up and rub out the wrinkle between your eyebrows but his arm feels too heavy. A part of him wonders if he’s dying, but he supposes if this is how he’s meant to go out—laying in your lap with your fingers brushing through his hair, staring up at your pretty face beneath the afternoon sun—then he couldn’t ask for a better death.

“‘m falling asleep,” he murmurs, and his voice slurs a bit over the words. His eyes feel even heavier, drooping shut as he tilts his head to the side to make himself comfortable on your lap. 

You giggle lightly, and Dazai swears the sound is angelic. “‘cause you’re so sleepy, obviously,” you say, a teasing lilt to your tone as you bring your freehand to his face to trace his cheekbone.

“I don’t sleep,” he protests weakly, leaning into your touch. 

He thinks that before he met you, he might not have ever experienced a gentle touch in his entire life, and now he simply cannot go without them. He craves them at every waking moment and gets severely distressed when he cannot obtain them. But only if they’re from you—the thought of anyone else touching him the way you do makes his skin crawl. Your touches make him feel vulnerable in a way that’s dangerous, and you’re the only person he trusts enough to see him that way.

“Everyone sleeps, silly,” you disagree softly, and Dazai wants to protest, to tell you how significant this is, but he can’t find the words. His mind feels muddled and hazy as exhaustion creeps through his bones and claws at his chest.

He supposes he doesn’t really need to tell you anyway, you probably already know—you always know somehow. You can always figure out when he’s having one of his bad days, no matter how hard he tries to hide it from everyone. You can always tell when he needs a break from everything, even when he tries to mask it with smiles and jokes. You can always tell when he’s sick of playing the role of a clown to make people overlook all of his faults and darkness, and you’re always there to be an escape for him. 

It used to be scary—he’s never had someone that could pick through all of his masks to see through his emotional state, his real one. A part of him wonders if it’s somehow a secret part of your ability but he knows it’s a ridiculous thought, because there’s no explanation for how you can do it whenever he’s laid up in your arms or draped all over you, which is 99% of the time he’s with you.

It used to be scary (emphasis on the past tense) but now, he thinks it might be a bit comforting to know that you’re always there and you know what he needs even when he himself doesn’t know. You’re like a buoy in the middle of a raging sea, a lighthouse shining through the dark. he hasn’t had someone he could genuinely rely on in… a long time, and even then…

Dazai lets out a puff of air, eyes finally sliding shut as he all but melts into you with your hand cupping the side of his face and your thumb caressing his cheek and your nails gently scraping his scalp. He thinks he might be in heaven—he doesn’t know what he’s done to deserve it, to deserve you, but he’s a selfish bastard at heart and he’ll be damned if he ever lets you go. 

The last thing he feels is your lips ghosting his temple before he finally dozes off. He sleeps peacefully for the first time he can remember. 

[lovedazai-archived-deactivated2]

03. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE . . . dazai finally gets everything he’s ever wanted: you. in return, he tells you the truth.

ft. beast!dazai + f!reader, pm boss!dazai, civilian!reader, possessive behavior, spoilers for beast au light novel & manga, reader ignores red flags, oral (both receiving), unprotected sex, dazai cries, multiple (two) rounds…mdni !! 4.7k w.c.

SERIES MASTERLIST

dazai never considered himself a lucky man, until now.

you don’t seem to care that you only just met him yesterday morning as you let him trail his hands along the silky fabric of your dress, caressing your hips with the tenderness of a lover. he only lets you go to allow you to pull his jacket off his arms, and his hands are already back on you again before it even hits the floor. you unbutton his vest enough to slip your hands beneath his shirt, reaching up to kiss him as you strip him down. your tights find their way to the ground with his tie, and his belt follows right after.

your giggle vibrates against his mouth as his fingers spread against your ribcage, trying to hold as much of you as he can fit in his hands, and he pries into your smile with his tongue. you cup his jaw, not letting him separate from you as you guide him down the hall toward your bedroom. your hands fumble with the doorknob, wincing when you accidentally bump him against the edge of the door.

“sorry,” you smile shyly, but he swallows the words, not wanting to be apart for another second. he doesn’t even feel it anyway; he thinks if you pulled out a gun and shot him at this moment, he might’ve even thanked you.

you intertwine your fingers with his as you lead him into the dark of your room, and he’s suddenly surrounded by everything that is so quintessentially you. he commits it all to memory: the title of the book on your nightstand, the delicate splay of jewelry on your dresser, the pajama shorts hanging over the side of your hamper in the corner. he wants to belong here with you so badly, to forcefully carve a space for himself in your life, even if it was jagged and splintered.

he jolts out of his thoughts when you cup his cock through his trousers, grinning when you feel he’s already hard. you kiss a line across the sharp edge of his jaw to the delicate curve of the column of his throat, remnants of your lipstick staining his bandages a pale pink. you place a kiss on every new piece of exposed skin and cotton as you unbutton his shirt, your lips traveling down his chest and his stomach until you reach his waistline. the sight of you on your knees for him, paired with the warmth of your palms sliding up his thighs feels like enough for him to cum all over your pretty face. he forces himself to think of anything else as you unzip his pants: that meeting he canceled yesterday, chuuya and his stupid hat, anything. this had to last.

he slips the more you touch him, practically throbbing against your hand as you pump his cock. you lick up a stripe up his length, catching the pearly drops that leak from its head on the tip of your tongue. he watches, pretty brown hues seeped in adoration as you let his balls settle in your palm, fondling them softly as you press wet kisses along his length. you suckle on the tip, leaving him slicked with your spit as you stroke him steadily.

he cups your jaw with a trembling hand, running his thumb along the plush of your bottom lip as his cock pops out of your mouth. you flutter your lashes up at him, kissing the tip of his finger. everything that’s happened these past two daysーbut especially thisーis so much more than he deserved; even still if he doesn’t get more, he swears he’ll die. he slips his thumb into your mouth, past your teeth until he presses down onto the cushion of your tongue, pulling your jaw open.

you keep your eyes locked on his visible one as he pushes inside you. your lips wrap around him pliantly, tongue soft as it rubs along the underside of his cock. your hands stay on his thighs, thumbs rubbing soothing strokes along the sensitive skin beneath his hipbones as you engulf him in your mouth as best as you can. he strokes your hair as you bob your head up and down his length with care, swirling the tip of your tongue around the head of his cock before you take him the slightest bit deeper.

he feels himself getting closer towards the point of no return embarrassingly quick, inhibitions melting away into sizzling hot need like butter in a pan. he thrusts his hips forward, moaning as he feels the tips of your nails dig into his skin and hears your soft gag. your eyes are dilated, the blacks of your pupils glistening with tears the further he pushes and the more he takes from you, bumping against the back of your throat.

he closes his fingers around a bunch of hair at the crown of your head, feeling you constrict around him as you try to breathe around his length. it’d be so easy to cum down your sweet little throat just like this, but he can’t let this end already, not when he’s so close to making you his.

“wait,” it takes everything in him to pull you back, your hair still wrapped around his palm and tangled in between the gaps of his fingers. there’s a string of saliva connecting you to the head of his cock, and he watches as it snaps when you lick your lips, parted and panting. “let meー i want to…please?”

“you’re so cute like this,” you lean forward and kiss his tip, and he tugs at your hair softly. you rest your cheek against his thigh as you press little kisses to his hips lazily. “tell me what you want.”

you’re still wearing your clothes, and his eyes trail down to your chest, watching the rise and fall of your heavy breaths. he can see the rhythm of your heart in the dip of your breasts, racing so fast it beats through your skin.

he trails his fingers through the ends of your hair, brushing them over your shoulder. his thumb catches on one of your straps, and he slides it down your arm, exposing one breast and then the other, watching as they drop from the fabric of your dress. your nipples perk against the chilly air, only hardening more under his attention as he skims the pads of his thumbs over them, squeezing your tits in his palms greedily. he swallows, feeling the saliva pool in his mouth, indulging in the dreamy exhale that falls from the back of your throat as your shoulders melt beneath his touch.

he’s never held something so soft in his hands before. he joins you on the ground, knees pressing uncomfortably into your hardwood floors. he takes one of your breasts into his mouth, kneading the other between his fingers. he keeps your nipple rolled between his teeth with just enough pressure to have you instinctively arching forward, and he soothes it with his tongue, circling the delicate peak of your tits. he matches your soft whimpers when you dig your fingers into his messy hair, nails scratching against his scalp and sending sparks shooting down his spine. your skin glistens with spit as he pulls back to squeeze your tits together, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the nook of your cleavage.

he trails his hands down your back, peeling the rest of your dress off your body as he sucks the pretty pink of your other nipple between his lips. you cling to his shoulders as he lifts you by your ass, spreading you open just enough to pull a moan from your lips, dropping you onto the edge of your bed. you look down at him with hazy eyes, letting out a breathless, blissed-out giggle as you brush his bangs out of his flushed face.

he traces the lace edge of your panties, delicate enough that he could sink his nails into the silken fabric and tear them right off your body. he brushes his finger over your crotch, elated in the knowledge you picked them out for his eyes alone. they’re beautiful, covering your most intimate part with translucent fabric, the small bow threaded into the waistband like you were a gift for him to unwrap, but all he needs now is for them to be out of his way.

he drags the elastic down your hips, finally revealing your glistening pussy, and he nearly moans out of sheer desire. he presses you back into your bed by your thighs, kneeling before you like an altar. he’s lost count of how many times he’s fantasized about you, spread out in front of him like this, in the dark of his room beneath his sheets, or behind the locked door of his office, cock fisted in frustration.

“you’re the most gorgeous woman i’ve ever seen,” he says, pressing a kiss to the soft, delicate skin of your inner thigh, resisting the urge to skin his teeth into you. he strokes his thumb along the curve of your ankle as he pulls your legs open even further. “can you keep those pretty eyes on me?”

you nod frantically, mapping the shape of his skull beneath your palm as he presses his lips against your swollen clit, flicking it with the tip of his tongue. he grins as he watches your dreamy smile melt away into lips parted in bliss, inhaling sharply. he presses his tongue flat against your cunt, dragging it down meticulously. he lets the spit collect in his mouth as he circles your dripping entrance, drawing his tongue along your folds. your brows pinch, lashes fluttering, but you keep them open obediently, staring at him with glassy eyes.

he eats you out like the two of you didn’t just come back from dinner, lapping up everything you give him greedily and then coming back for more. he wants to push you over the edge so badly, if only to prove to you that he could make you feel so much better than anyone else. you taste so much sweeter than any dessert he could’ve ordered, like honey down his throat. the soft mewls that fall from your lips caress his ears and tighten the knot growing in the pit of his stomach.

the tip of his nose rubs against your clit as you grind your hips down onto his face. his eyes roll back as you tug on his hair desperately, the firm grip on his roots almost as deliciously painful as his throbbing cock, weeping and begging to be touched between his legs. he considers dropping his grip, letting you suffocate him between your thighs until he cums all over the unstained white sheets hanging from your bed.

he feels your muscles twitch and tense beneath his palms, and watches in awe as you finally break his gaze to throw your head back and gasp out in euphoria. your cunt flutters against his mouth, leaving remnants of your pleasure dripping down his chin like nectar as you push his head away weakly.

“dazai,” you whine. he trails his lips upward, kissing your stomach, feeling the way it expands and collapses with each shaky breath. “i need you so bad. i want all of youー inside me, please.”

your legs are still trembling when you crawl backward on your bed, switching positions to get onto all fours. you spread your knees wide, arching your back, taunting him. his thighs bracket your own as he gets behind you, hands shaking as he rubs his cock through your folds and soaks up the remnants of his spit and your slick.

“i’ll give you everything,” he whispers. “anything. i’ll give you the whole world.”

he watches as you split open around him, impatiently pressing your ass back to ease him inside, dropping your head toward your chest with a satisfied sigh. inch by inch of his cock disappears into your cunt, engulfing him in wet, sticky warmth. your gummy walls feel like heaven, molding around him perfectly; you really were made for him, weren’t you?

he smooths his hands down the space between your shoulder blades, urging you down onto your stomach until you’re completely at his mercy, laid flat beneath him with only your ass lifted and pressed against his hips. his chest is flush against your back, bandages loosened and sticking to him sloppily. he slides his palms down your arms until he reaches your hands, intertwining his fingers with your own and pinning them down against your pillows.

he wants to go slow and give you the proper, passionate moment he knows you deserve, but you’re squeezing around him like you want to pull him in even closer, and he just can’t help himself. his body moves on its own, fucking into you with harsh snaps of his hips. his body covers yours completely, pressing you deeper into the plush of your mattress. he wants to keep you like this forever, sheltered against his chest, always within his reach. he can barely hold back the i love you that threatens to fall from his lips, and he presses a searing kiss to your shoulder to keep it inside, teeth nipping at your skin.

you hide your pretty face in your sheets, muffled whines and the steady slap of his skin against yours like a symphony created just for the two of you. he keeps his ankles hooked on your shins, holding you open for himself to take. the years of yearning for you, the numbing despair that he never would’ve chosen this life for himself, he lets it all out inside you, and your cunt clings to him with every stroke.

“dazai,” you cry, nails digging into his skin as you squeeze his hands desperately. he hopes you do it hard enough to break through his skin, make him bleed, and leave a scar; he needs a permanent reminder that this happened to him. he wants to fuck you hard enough that you’ll feel it afterward and remember him, too. his thighs ache as he tries to thrust even deeper, almost scared you’ll disappear from right beneath him like a mist, but you’re squeezing around him too tightly to be anything but real.

“call me osamu,” he whispers, forehead falling to your neck. “please.”

“osamu.”

the syllables of his name break around a moan, but he thinks it sounds even better that way. he pries his hands out of your grip to cling to your waist, hand splaying against your stomach, trying to pull you even closer, even deeper, as his lungs ache and heave. his nails dig into the soft skin of your hips as the pressure behind his eyes builds and overflows, and he cums inside you with hot, thick spurts, shuddering against you with breathy whines. he can hardly breathe, completely overwhelmed by the sheer emotion he feels swell in his chest after years of feeling nothing at all. his tears melt into your skin, dripping off his chin as he presses his lips wherever he can reach; he kisses up the curve of your shoulder blade, the pulse point on your neck, the warmth of your cheek, the baby hairs stuck to your temple. he meets your lips when you lift your head, looking over your shoulder.

“dazai…?”

he sniffles pathetically, finally relaxing his hold on you. he’s still halfway hard as he slips out of you, letting you sit up and cup his face. the pads of your thumbs wipe at the tears pooling down his right cheek, the other stroking the damp cotton of his bandages.

“it’s okay,” he buries his face into your palm, pressing his lips to the inside of your wrist. you tuck his hair behind his ear, touching him more softly than anyone else ever has in his entire life, and it makes him convulse with another sob. “you’re okay. was that too much?”

he looks away, instinctively hiding behind his messy, overgrown bangs. you always were the only one who could make him feel so stripped down, able to look past his layers and see the bare essentials of the mess of a man he was. he lets his gaze drift down lazily to the sheets, drawn to the pretty pink of your cunt between your thighs, slightly parted as you sit back on your ankles. he watches, memorized as his cum drips out of you in small, pearly beads.

you follow his eyes, hips jolting up in surprise as he collects it with the tip of his cock, catching on your clit. you let out a whimper as he presses back into you, still sensitive. you let him lay you back down against your pillows, and he sighs dreamily as you flutter around him. you looked like an angel with your smooth back so prettily arched, your hair splayed across your shoulders, and your ass bouncing off his thighs, but what he really wants to see is how your face melts in pleasure beneath him, because of him. he sighs in satisfaction as his hips rest flush against yours, sheathed completely inside of you once more.

“wait,” you push against his chest when he leans down to kiss you, and his heart stalls; did he ruin this? “are you sure you’re up for this right now? we don’t have to. i promise it’s okay.”

it wasn’t the look of contempt or fear that he was so used to receiving; it was concern, pure and genuine in your furrowed brows and big eyes. when was the last time someone had been truly worried over his well being? maybe it was that morning when odasaku had found him on his front steps six years ago.

“yes,” he whispers. “i can do it. let me make you feel good,” he kisses the corner of your mouth pleadingly. “i’ll take care of you. i need itー i need you.”

your cautious gaze is blurred through his watery eyes, already obscured by his bandages. you take in his long, damp lashes, his rosy cheeks still dewy with tears, and he resists the urge to hide again. you drag your nails up his chest until you reach his bandaged shoulders, curling your fingers around the back of his neck, pulling him down and pressing your lips against his.

“even if it’s just for tonight,” you whisper, wrapping your legs around his torso. “i’m yours.”

his heart stalls again for an entirely different reason. something instinctual burns bright in his body, and he kisses you deeply, sliding his tongue against yours as he thrusts his hips forward. he can feel his own release inside you as he starts to fuck you again, so soft and wet and fucking perfect. he grips the plush of your thighs between his fingers, pressing them open toward your tits, bouncing with each of his movements. you keep his cheeks cradled between your palms, licking into his mouth and tracing your tongue along the edge of his teeth.

he drops onto his forearms, angles his cock a little deeper, and you gasp out, toes curling as you dig your heels into his lower back.

“there,” you nearly yell, voice pitchy. “keep doing that, osamu, please.”

you fall into the act of making love with him so well; he has a desperate, delusional hope in the back of his mind that maybe you really did feel the connection the two of you shared, so deep it spanned universes.

he slips his hand between your bodies, rubbing your clit in steady, pressured circles. he moans when you suck his bottom lip between your teeth, velvet walls clenching around his cock so tightly, it almost hurts. he knows he’s pushing himself, his most sensitive nerves burning from sheer pleasure, but nothing makes him ache more than the thought of being away from you. he doesn’t even remember how he survived without you before yesterday morning.

your ankles hook around his lithe waist, trying to force your legs even wider, keeping him completely anchored inside you. your breasts squish against his chest, perked nipples grazing the fabric of his bandages. you cling to him desperately, and he watches with hearts floating in place of his pupils at the way your eyes glaze over and water with pleasure, breathy cries falling from your lips as your muscles release all of their building tension, trembling against his torso. your cunt gushes around him as you melt into his body, and he feels that warmth bubble up inside him again: i love you.

he wants it all with you; every lingering touch and fleeting look, every inside joke and bite of food stolen off your plate, starting every early morning with your body against his and ending every late night the exact same way.

no one would ever take you from him again. there was a string of fate tying the two of you together, even if he had to fight the powers that be and tighten the knot around your finger himself.

his control crumbles, peeling away piece by piece like wet pieces of paper. he doesn’t bother to ask where he should finish this time, but it hardly matters anymore, and you don’t seem to care either, lifting your hips in time with his as he feverishly thrusts into you. your soft moans melt into a whine as he stalls inside you as deeply as he can, indulging in the nasty little voice in his head, chanting a mantra of mine, mine, mine as he cums inside of you for the second time.

it’s quiet in the afterglow, just the two of you in the universe you created in your small apartment bedroom. the soft cotton of your sheets is threaded with stardust, the lingering trails of your perfume orbits around him, and the sound of you, living and breathing beneath him as your lungs expand and constrict, ebbs and flows in your own personal tide. you smile up at him so fondly, he wants to melt between your fingers and let you put him back together again.

he collaspes, forehead falling to your collarbone. he shakily finds your hand, dropping it on top of his head, greedily wanting as much intimacy as you’ll be willing to give him. his eyes flutter close in bliss as you thread your fingers through his strands, indulging in that touch he’s only ever felt the ghost of in his sweetest dreams. laying with his nude body against yours, only a few strips of cotton seperating the two of you, feels so intimate, it was as if he wasn’t a complete stranger to you. the realization prickles at him like the biting winter air, and he feels something desperate tighten against his ribs.

“would you believe me if i told you that in another life, we were lovers?” he waits for you to pull away in confusion; maybe you’d even be disgusted, throw his clothes at him and tell him to get out. the only thing more painful than being haunted by the memories of his other life would be knowing he was so close to getting what he wanted and failed, letting you slip right between his fingers. he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to recover from the rejection.

“yeah, i would,” your answer is almost immediate, and he can’t remember the last time someone has taken him by such surprise. he lifts his head from your chest, one visible eye wide as he looks down at you. you meet his shock with a shy smile, still massaging the crown of his head beneath your fingertips. “there’s just something about you. i don’t know if i can explain it. is that weird?”

his nose bumps against yours as he dives down and kisses you, tilting your jaw upward to slide his lips between your own. he has so much lost time to make up for, but he’d give you the rest of his life, he swears it.

“you have no idea what i had to go thorugh to get back to you,” he whispers, pulling back and letting his lips just barely brush over yours, breathing you in. you couldn’t possibly understand, but he tells you anyway, about the you and him that exists in another universe, the one where everything is different. he spares the detail about him being the leader of the port mafia, but he promsies himself he’d tell you the rest later on, when he truly knows you won’t run from him. maybe over breakfast at your favorite café a few months from now; a proper coffee date, with footsie under the table and vanilla flavored kisses. “there’s a piece of you with me in every universe, my belladonna.”

you’re at a loss for words, he knows. all you can do is stare at him, eyes big as he brings your hand up to his lips, kissing each fingertip.

“i know i’m not the same man you fell in love with,” he presses his cheek into your hand. “but i’m still just as selfish as he is. i’m not sure if i’ll be able to let you go after this.”

“i don’t really know what you’re talking about,” your lips curl into a sympathatic smile, and they’re magnetic; all it takes is you brushing his bangs back for him to kiss you again. he pouts when you pull away from him. “but i know that i really like you.”

“really?” he asks, voice almost childlike in its disbelief.

“really,” you skim the edge of his bandages curiously, fingertips slipping beneath the first layer. he doesn’t stop you from slowly unraveling them, leaving his face completely bare. he has so much love for you, and it overflows and shines through his eyes as they both look down at you for the first time.

“you’re really pretty,” you stroke your thumb beneath his eye, and his skin tingles from not being touched for so long. “so, so beautiful, osamu.”

your lips are so soft, kiss-bitten and plush beneath his own. you hold as much of him as you can in your hands, caressing his face like he was something worth being gentle with.

“you’ll stay, right?” your eyes flutter open, hopeful and pleading.

“i should be the one asking you that question,” he smiles bittersweetly. you tilt your head, wrapping around his shoulders and pulling him down next to you.

he lays back on your sheets, as if he truly belonged there. he’s quick to touch you again, cautiously draping his arm around your waist. you really are there, physically beneath his hand as he splays his fingers against the soft skin of your tummy.

he doesn’t take his eyes off of you for a single moment, watching as you slowly drift off to sleep against him. he smiles, knowing you felt so safe around him already. you should; he’d guard you with his life, and no one would ever dare to take you from him now.

“are you awake?” he whispers after what could’ve been hours of mapping your every feature to his memory, watching for any signs of consciousness. your lashes rest against your cheeks, breath coming out in even, warm beats against his chest. his heart throbs as you let out a small, sleepy noise, instinctively curling closer toward him as he brushes a finger across your forehead, pulling back the strands that fall too close to your eyes. once he’s completely certain you won’t hear him, he tilts his neck down, pressing a kiss between your eyebrows. he whispers the words against your skin as if he could imprint them into you. “i love you.”

he feels like he can rest easier tonight than he ever has. he always knew you’d be there, keeping him company in his dreams, those flashbacks of another life with you. now, he almost dares to hope you’d stay long enough by his side for there to be memories of his own making. you’re the last thing he sees before he closes his eyes; for the first time, he knows for certain you’ll be the first thing he sees when he opens them in the morning.

p.s.! ⊹ ࣪ ˖ wow i can’t believe it’s over !! i poured so, so much love into this series, it’s the longest fic i’ve written so far & something i’ve worked on for a long time. it’s v much a love letter to beast dazai who i adore w all of my heart. i can’t put into words how grateful i am for every comment, rb, & ask i’ve gotten regarding this series, but pls know each one means the world to me. i truly hope u enjoyed reading atu as much as i enjoyed writing it ᰔ

BSD MASTERLIST

taglist . . . @dazaisfavgf @bakananya @acommonstargirl @little-miss-chaoss @walking-simp @cheeszsecakee @settingssun @baizzhu @vivigoesinsane @shigarakisgamergirl @squigglewigglewoo @deadflycomputerlogs @auraxins @pois0n3dh34rt @chuuyrr @kentopedia @ttaehyxx @motel6btch (if u werent tagged, its bc i lost my original taglist for this chapter :< im so sorry !!)

[osarina]

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 (coming april 5th!)

“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.”

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 YOU AND ME (ALWAYS FOREVER)!

FEATURING: dark era!dazai osamu

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

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

In your defense, you were never dating Dazai Osamu.

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

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

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

Well, not until recently, at least. 

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

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

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

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

But no one took it as poorly as Dazai.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he wasn’t Dazai. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then he does. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A coward.”

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

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

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

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

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

An offering. A white flag. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I was a coward.”

Oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God, you missed him the past three months. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” 

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

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

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

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

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