this is the only world where he’s alive and writing novels.

diana. brazilian. she/her. 22. gemini. istp.

[osarina]

FEATURING: chrollo lucilfer x fem!reader, former kurapika kurta x fem!reader

SUMMARY: sun and moon, dragon and phoenix, heaven and earth. in kakin tradition, a bonded pair is a union of opposites that make a perfect whole. you and chrollo lucilfer, though, feel like the exception, so ill-matched that it borders on divine irony. only the gods may know why you’re fated to one another.

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, kakin prince!reader, soulmate au, canon divergent, enemies to lovers, abusive relationship with tserriednich/grooming (not intended to be read as sexual), character death (not chrollo or reader), dark themes (carne levare, imperialism, etc), world & character building (i took some creative liberty with what we know for Plot purposes—particularly kakin, meteor city, the mafias, and many of the characters) angst with (mostly) happy ending, wc: 210k so far, 4 more chapters to be written. additional warnings to be added in each chapter.

AUTHOR’S NOTES: hi guys! im rlly excited to share this with you all, i hope you enjoy it im very proud of it. i don’t think i’ll be online much often anymore, but i always appreciate all asks and comments and i will read them all even if i’m not able to respond. i think some other important things to note: i have taken canon and changed a bit to fit what i had planned for this fic. it's nothing too drastic. some minor things about the set up of the succession contest & the princes being free to walk around instead of being confined to rooms. i fleshed all of the princes out a bit more obviously, particularly, benjamin, tserriendich, and luzurus, as well as king nasubi. i took some liberty with the eight queens as well. i switched up a little with the guardian spirit beasts because iirc, the princes can't attack each other bc of them. it diverges from canon pretty quickly, but i think that's to be expected with an additional prince LOL. some other things that i'm sure will be made clear throughout the fic. all this to just essentially warn you again that this is canon divergent, so i'd prefer if people didn't start commenting like "oh that's not how it works" dihfsdfuhasd because i probably am aware i just changed it for plot. i also want to add that reader is very flawed and its apparent early but becomes FAR more apparent in part 2 ….... just a warning

PART ONE: DIES LACRIMOSA

VERSE ONE: KATABASIS, OR JOURNEY OF THE FOOL

VERSE TWO: MATTHEW 10:34–36

VERSE THREE: WELL FED DEVILS AND FAMISHED SAINTS

VERSE FOUR: PARABLE OF THE TWO DEBTORS

VERSE FIVE: WATER OF THE WOMB, BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

VERSE SIX: WHEEL OF FORTUNE

VERSE SEVEN: THE IRON PRICE

VERSE EIGHT: THE HANGED MAN

PART TWO: DIES IRAE

VERSE ONE: WEEP LITTLE LION MAN

VERSE TWO: THE DEVIL

VERSE THREE: THE COWHERD AND THE WEAVERGIRL

VERSE FOUR: BLESSED BE, CHILDREN OF CAIN

VERSE FIVE: JUDGMENT

VERSE SIX: A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH

VERSE SEVEN: REVELATION 6; COME YE, HORSEMEN

VERSE EIGHT: ANABASIS, OR DEATH OF A PRINCE

REQUIEM ARANEA, a series of scenes from chrollo's point of view

[notninani]

𝒀𝒖𝒓𝒊 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒅𝒐𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒂...

Contexto:

[nenunaiad]

見ざる | 聞かざる | 言わざる see no evil | hear no evil | speak no evil i finished this a while ago and then forgot to post it (￣-￣|||)

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 I BITE MY TONGUE, IT'S A BAD HABIT

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai doesn't care about stupid holidays, but when he sees everyone but him being gifted chocolates from you, he starts to find himself severely bothered. it's the principle, he tells himself—nothing more, nothing less, just the principle.... right?

(wordcount: 6.9k; fem!reader, sfw, dazai is jealous and silly. unedited.)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: HAPPY LATE VALENTINE'S DAY, take pmreader and dazai being silly teens in love who refuse to tell each other how they feel in words. i had this posted on valentine's day but then turned into a big baby and deleted </3 i am still a big baby but i am a big baby who is going to leave the post up this time HAHAAH

Dazai doesn’t care about stupid holidays. 

In fact, Dazai can count the things he cares about on one hand—he cares about Odasaku and Ango because they’re his friends, he cares about crab because he likes eating crab and he can recite every known fun fact about them off the top of his head, he cares about the arcade a few streets over because his favorite video game is there and he beats Chuuya every time and it’s funny watching him get mad, and he cares about you because you’re also his friend and you gave him a room in your apartment even though he could have his own but is just stubborn about not wanting to be in Mori’s building.

So, he’s not sure why his feet are rooted to the ground in Mori’s office as he stares down at the small round box of chocolates sitting on top of his desk. There’s a note on top of it that’s partially blocked from his line of view, but he can very much see your signature at the bottom of it. 

You complain about Mori all the time, so it doesn’t take him long to put together that there must be a reason why you went out of your way to get him chocolates even though he knows you’ve been busy with some conflict happening in Russia. It’s not Mori’s birthday, and Dazai’s mind quickly tracks back to the stands of chocolate he saw set up on the same corner that the arcade is on.

Valentine’s Day, he realizes, eyes narrowing down on the chocolate.

“Such a dear she is. She dropped it off for me this morning,” Mori sighs when he realizes what Dazai is looking at. “Elise-chan hasn’t gotten me chocolates yet.”

“That’s because you don’t deserve chocolates, stupid Rintarou,” Elise’s familiar pitched voice comes from Dazai’s left—he hadn’t even noticed her sitting on the ground coloring because his gaze was pinned to the chocolate the moment he stepped into the room. Elise looks up at Dazai with a smile that’s just a bit too sweet, “Aw, she didn’t get you any? That’s too bad, Dazai-kun.”

Dazai’s jaw twitches at the snide comment, and he looks away from Elise back to Mori, who looks oddly intrigued by Dazai’s reaction, which is enough to let him know that he’s over-reacting, so he’s quick to smooth out his expression, even if the irritation in his chest continues to swell. He doesn’t even know why he’s so bothered—he doesn’t care about stupid holidays, and he doesn’t care about chocolate. It’s really not a big deal, but he can’t seem to snuff out the growing annoyance.

“I’m sure she’ll give you one later, Dazai-kun,” Mori says with a placating smile that almost sends Dazai over the edge. “No need to fret.”

“I’m not-” he starts to say, but is cut off quickly by Elise.

“Or, maybe she just doesn’t like him enough to give him any,” Elise says with gleeful giggle. “How did she word it again? Oh, yeah, you forced your way into her life, didn’t you?”

Dazai doesn’t take anything anyone says to him or about him to heart, but he especially knows not to take anything Elise says to heart, considering the girl’s ardent distaste for him. He’s never been sure why she hates him so much, but he figures that it’s because he can make her disappear with his ability, and he’s half-tempted to grab her arm and do just that, but he knows it’ll only make Mori even more interested in why he’s so emotional over this. That’s the last thing he wants considering he doesn’t even know why he’s getting so worked up about it.

But what did Elise even mean? Why would you tell them that he forced his way into your life? If anything, you’re the one who forced yourself into his life when you showed up at his shipping compartment during that winter storm a few months ago. He just… capitalized on it, that’s all. You would’ve kicked him out if you didn't want him hanging around, but you didn’t. And Elise is known for twisting the truth, but then… Why didn’t you give him chocolates? That’s the whole point of the holiday, right? To show appreciation for the people in your life?

It’s not the holiday that’s bothering him, it’s the principle. 

Dazai is suddenly ten times more antsy than he was when he first noticed the chocolates. There must be a logical explanation for this—maybe you really are giving him them later, or maybe you’re only giving them to Mori because you have to. Snidely, he notes that the chocolates you gave him looked like they could be bought at a convenience store, so it’s not like you put much effort into it. 

“Elise-chan,” Mori chides, although he still sounds terribly amused, violet eyes glittering as he scrutinizes Dazai. “Don’t say such cruel things. I taught our hime to have good manners, Dazai-kun will get chocolates from her, even if they’re just obligatory.”

Obligatory, Dazai has to force himself not to physically blanch at the word. He thinks he would almost prefer not to get chocolates from you. How are you just going to give obligatory chocolates to someone you live with? You guys are friends, aren’t you? He doesn’t know much at all about Valentine’s Day, but he does know that there’s different types of chocolate depending on your relationship with the person, and he thinks he’ll jump off the roof if you give Chuuya nicer chocolates than him.

Chuuya.

“I have to go,” Dazai says abruptly, turning to leave.

“Goodbye, Dazai-kun,” Mori sings, much to Dazai’s surprise. He was half-expecting Mori to tell him to sit back down so they could go over whatever he was called to his office for. He still doesn’t even know why the man called him up here—maybe it was just to flaunt the chocolates he received, Dazai thinks bitterly. “I wouldn’t worry too much.”

“I would!” Elise calls after him as he lets the door slam shut behind him, but Dazai doesn’t pay her any mind.

Surely Chuuya wouldn’t have gotten chocolates if he didn’t, right?

———

“Give me those right now.”

Chuuya pauses from where he’s about to pop a round chocolate into his mouth, eyes cutting to the side in irritation when he realizes that Dazai is standing in the doorframe of his office. Dazai is tense and jittery all at the same time—he’s not even looking at Chuuya, he’s staring at the set of chocolates sitting open on his desk and the familiar handwriting on the note next to it. Chuuya’s set is much nicer than Mori’s; they’re his favorite truffles, imported in from Belgium, and there’s a red wine on his desk to go along with it.

It makes Dazai sick. 

“The fuck?” Chuuya asks, sitting up a bit straighter and giving Dazai a weird look before pointedly eating the chocolate in his hand. Dazai’s eye twitches. “What’s your problem this time, you freak?”

“I said give me those right now,” Dazai repeats, inhaling deeply as he takes a few steps closer. “Give me them.”

Chuuya looks a bit concerned now, grabbing the chocolates you gave him and dragging them closer to him. Dazai is undeterred, stalking forward and reaching quickly for them. Chuuya reacts faster, snatching them off the table and holding them close to his chest.

“Fuck off,” Chuuya spits, sounding confused and irritated all at the same time. “What the hell is your problem?”

Dazai could think of an excuse—they’ve been tampered with, poisoned, you accidentally gave him the wrong ones and you sent him here to grab them before Chuuya ate them all—but the only thing that escapes his lips is the same demand.

“Give me the chocolates.”

“What?” Chuuya demands. “No, you fucking psycho, get out of my office.”

Dazai’s hand instinctively twitches in the direction of his gun, and Chuuya catches it from the way his eyes shoot open.

“Yo,” Chuuya says loudly, rising to his feet. “What the fuck, Dazai?”

Logically, Dazai knows that whether he gets the chocolates from Chuuya or not, it won’t change anything. It’s the principle of it that’s the issue. Even if he manages to get his hands on the chocolates, you gave them to Chuuya and you didn’t give them to Dazai, but still, the sight of Chuuya with them is setting Dazai off in ways that he just can’t seem to get under wraps. 

“Give me-”

Chuuya’s face twists in irritation and he slams the chocolates down on his desk before walking around it in Dazai’s direction. Instead of making a smart decision and running out of his office before he can get a faceful of Chuuya’s fist, he takes the opportunity to dart forward and grab the chocolates he put down, throwing them onto the ground and driving his heel right into the box. 

“You bastard,” Chuuya shouts, grabbing Dazai by the collar of his jacket hard and throwing him hard into the side of his desk. Dazai barely withholds a wince as the corner of Chuuya’s desk drives deep into his side, crumpling to the ground hard. Chuuya kneels down to see if there’s anything left to salvage of the chocolates you gave him, but finds himself sorely disappointed. “What’s your fucking issue, Dazai?”

Stubbornly, Dazai doesn’t respond, raising his chin and meeting Chuuya’s gaze, trying to pretend that there is no issue and like he isn’t acting deranged over chocolates. 

Not chocolates, he reminds himself, the principle.

“I knew you were weird about her but jeez,” Chuuya scoffs, picking up the mess of chocolates on his floor, brows furrowed in irritation. “You can’t even handle her giving someone else chocolates on Valentine’s Day. You need some serious fucking help, man. It’s the whole point of the goddamn day. You gonna go around and take everyone’s chocolates, you possessive freak?”

Dazai cringes and can’t stop himself as he asks quietly, “How many people has she given them too?”

Instantly, he knows he’s made a mistake—his voice came out all wrong and Chuuya notices it from the way he squints and frowns. He forces his expression to clear of any possible emotions and rises back to his feet, tilting his head to the side as he dares Chuuya to point out that his voice wavered when he asked the question.

“I don’t fucking know,” Chuuya shrugs, side-eyeing him suspiciously but choosing not to point out the weird tone he asked the question in. “She came in with a ton this morning, figured I was the last since she didn’t have any left with her when she came up here before.”

Oh, Dazai thinks, staring at Chuuya absently. Dazai didn’t anticipate that. At once, both of his theories to explain why you didn’t give him chocolates are disproven, and Dazai falters. If you came in with all of them at once and had none left by the time you got to Chuuya, then all signs pointed to that you’re just not giving Dazai chocolate for Valentine’s Day.

But why? Dazai doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong lately—in fact, he’s barely even had time to talk to you lately because you’ve been busy talking with your informants in Eastern Russia. You spent most days in Tokyo, and by the time you got back to your apartment, Dazai was out on his own missions. He hasn’t had the chance to do anything wrong, unless him just being around you is wrong.

How did she word it again? Oh, yeah, you forced your way into her life, didn’t you?

Elise is known for twisting the truth, she doesn’t usually lie about things—why did you tell them that he forced himself into your life? Do you not want him staying at your apartment? Mori did mention that he taught you to have good manners and he never says anything without there being an ulterior motive behind it. Was he trying to imply that you’re just being polite in letting him stay? Dazai doesn’t know; he’s always struggled to read you, but you’ve always made him feel welcome and wanted more than anyone else. It disconcerted him for a while, but he’s grown used to it in a way that he probably shouldn’t have. 

Now, he’s doubting it all.

Chuuya’s eyes suddenly widen, his small brain clearly realizing something it wasn’t meant to. Dazai’s gaze hardens as he waits for Chuuya to say whatever it is he wants to say, but instead of speaking, the slug snorts. His hand flies to his mouth to smother the noise, but he just can’t stop himself from bursting into laughter. Dazai bristles.

“What?” he demands.

“You’re so fucking stupid,” Chuuya howls, eyes tearing up as he laughs so hard that he wheezes. Dazai stiffens but otherwise doesn’t say anything, and that’s evidently an answer enough for him. “God, shitty Dazai, you’d think you of all people would know better. Get the fuck out of my office.”

Dazai doesn’t want to admit he has no idea what Chuuya’s talking about, but he also isn’t going to let Chuuya order him around, so he stands there stubbornly until Chuuya rises to his feet to grab Dazai by the back of his jacket again. Dazai instinctively drives his elbow hard into Chuuya’s chest, but he’s unbothered by it, shoving Dazai forward through the door of his office.

Chuuya gives him a mocking smile and goads, “How about you go ask her why she didn’t give you chocolates?” 

Before Dazai has the chance to shoot back a snide comment, Chuuya slams the door right in his face. It’s not the principle that’s bothering him, Dazai realizes glumly, it’s the implication that maybe he’s been wrong about his friendship with you this whole time.

———

Dazai doesn’t even get out of the main building before he runs into someone else who has chocolates that are definitely gifted by you considering it’s your new partner. Itou Asahi is lounging in the lobby of headquarters with Hirotsu and a few members of the Black Lizards that Dazai doesn’t recognize. Dazai has never particularly liked the man—in fact, Dazai despises him and he despises how you seem to think the world of him—but now, his jaw is tight as he glares at the man from across the lobby.

Itou seems to be able to feel the daggers being shot in his direction. He looks up as he pops a chocolate into his mouth, eyes narrow as he tries to pinpoint who exactly is staring at him so intensely and pauses when he notices Dazai. He nudges Hirotsu, and to Dazai’s horror, he realizes that Hirotsu also has a set of chocolates that he hasn’t opened on the couch next to where he’s sitting with a note that Dazai can’t read from the distance but is the same pale pink parchment that Mori’s and Chuuya’s were written on.

Mori. Chuuya. Itou. Hirotsu. Why not him? What did he do?

Dazai sneers in Itou’s direction when the man lifts his hand and awkwardly waves, turning on his feet to leave the building. He had been planning on going to your apartment to sulk to see if you notice that he’s wildly irritated over the fact that he’s not received chocolates from you, but instead, he’s going to go grab a cheap bottle of whiskey from the nearest liquor store and drown himself in his misery back at his shipping container.

He doesn’t know what he did to you, and he thought if he did something wrong, you would’ve said something to him instead of icing him out. Isn’t that what you preach to him? Communication? Yes, Dazai sucks at it and has made no attempts to be better about it, but since you’re the one preaching it, you should at least have the decency to act as you preach. 

You’re such a hypocrite, Dazai thinks bitterly, his throat feels clogged and his chest feels tight and his side hurts a shit ton—he doesn’t like any of this, and with each passing second, he’s becoming increasingly more bothered by this situation. 

He’s not irritated anymore, he’s just hurt.

———

Dazai doesn’t end up going right to the shipping container. It’s late afternoon on a Friday, so when he’s halfway to the convenience store, he decides to make a pitstop at Bar Lupin to see if Odasaku and Ango are already hanging there. Luckily, one thing can go right for him today, because the two of them are in fact already sitting in their designated stools drinking their alcohol of choice.

Neither of them have said much of anything to him since he’s arrived besides greeting him. He wonders if he interrupted them—very extremely sour, he thinks that he wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case considering he seems to be a burden on just about every single person he thinks is his friend. 

“I didn’t think you’d be free today,” Odasaku finally says. “We would’ve texted you.”

“I didn’t have a mission scheduled for today,” Dazai replies flatly, unable to muster the energy to put on an energetic front for the two of them. Usually, he doesn’t need to fake it around them because he does genuinely have a good time with them, but he’s just in such a bad mood because of everything with you and all of the newfound doubts plaguing him that it’s impossible for him to take his mind off of it. “Why would I be busy?”

Odasaku and Ango share a look with one another, Dazai catches the way Ango subtly shakes his head and is instantly suspicious. Odasaku either doesn’t pick up on it or doesn’t care, because he says, “It’s Valentine’s Day. I thought you’d be spending it with…”

Odasaku trails off when Ango’s headshakes become more frequent, but Dazai already knows what he was about to say. Stiffly, he asks, “Why would I spend Valentine’s Day with her?”

Ango’s smile is unsure as he shares another look with Odasaku before turning his attention toward Dazai and prodding, “Did something happen?”

“No.” Neither of them respond to his sharp answer, and after a few moments, Dazai blurts out, “She doesn’t want me living at her apartment anymore.”

“What-” Ango begins before seemingly rethinking his question, letting out a sigh. “Did she tell you that?”

“No,” Dazai says after a second, “but I know.”

“How do you know?” Ango presses. “Did you overhear her talking to someone?”

“Well, no,” Dazai responds awkwardly, “but I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she didn’t get me chocolates,” Dazai finally explodes, voicing the words that have been bothering him all day. “She got Mori chocolates. She got the slug chocolates. She got her moron of a partner chocolates. She even got Hirotsu chocolates, but she didn’t get me chocolates. And Elise said that she told her and Mori that I forced my way into her life. Isn’t that rich? She’s the one that forced her way into my life. I don’t need her, I never did. I just liked her stupid apartment. I could get my own if I wanted to, I just didn’t want to put in the work.”

Dazai thought maybe getting all of his complaints out would make him feel better, but he only feels worse, because half of that isn’t even true. He likes being able to bother you at night instead of rotting alone in his shitty shipping container, and he likes when you make him coffee in the morning before heading out to a meeting. He likes Friday night movies and he likes forcing you to play video games just so he could beat you and brag about it. You told him that you were his friend, so shouldn’t you like doing all of that with him too instead of it being a burden?

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?” Odasaku asks bluntly, never one to mince his words. Dazai slowly turns his head to look at the older man, barely catching the way Ango briefly shuts his eyes in exasperation. “I mean, you don’t even know if she’s not getting you any yet. You’re just assuming. The day isn’t over.”

Odasaku is usually logical, and he’s one of the few people who Dazai will take the advice of without question, but this time, Dazai shakes his head. He knows that’s not the case, you brought all of your chocolates to headquarters, and you handed them all out and didn’t give any to him. You knew he didn’t have a mission today so it’s not like he was busy, and even if he was, you could’ve given them to him this morning before he left. And either way, it’s not like that explains what Elise said.

“You should head back to her apartment,” Odasaku continues. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

“You know what, you’re right,” Dazai says, becoming increasingly more incensed with each passing second. He knew befriending you was a bad idea—nobody actually wants to be Dazai’s friend once they get to know him, it’s been true his whole life, he’s still half-convinced that Odasaku and Ango only humor him because they think he’ll just kill himself. Once people start to see how odd and fucked in the head he really is, they start to distance themselves from him; you can’t distance yourself from him since he’s living with you, so this is just your way of silently telling him you’ve had enough. He knew things would turn out this way, and he hates the way it still makes his chest hurt. He rises to his feet abruptly, “I am going to head back to her apartment—so I can pack my stuff and leave.”

“Dazai,” Ango calls after him, but Dazai doesn’t respond, storming out of Bar Lupin without another word.

He doesn’t need you, he tells himself again, willing the pain in his chest to turn into something more manageable—anger, resentment, but preferably, he just wants to be indifferent. He doesn’t need you and he knew this was going to happen, so it’s time for him to just take the hint and go on his way, back to how things were before you forced yourself into his life.

———

You’re not there when he gets back to your apartment and you’re not there by the time he gets his things together and leaves. He was especially frustrated when he found himself disappointed by that, because he realized he was unintentionally wasting time packing his things because he was hoping you would show up and stop him. 

But you didn’t, so Dazai is now back at his shipping container huddled under a blanket because it’s cold. He’s almost done with his first bottle of whiskey, trying to numb the pain in his side and all of the shitty emotions he just can’t seem to rid himself of. It’s been three hours since he moved his stuff back into his shipping container; you should be back at the apartment by now—it’s thirty minutes off when the two of you watch your Friday night movies, and you’re usually back at your apartment getting snacks together with him by now.

You’ve realized he’s gone by now. Dazai hasn’t checked his phone, mostly because he doesn’t want to know if you cared enough to reach out. If he’s right about all of this, you’ll just take it as a blessing and move on, not wanting to risk an opportunity arising where you’d have to be polite and ask him to come back. As if he would. If Odasaku is right though… No, Dazai isn’t even going to go down that route, the last thing he needs is-

He’s startled when he hears three loud bangs on the metal wall of his shipping container. Instantly, his gaze focuses on the door. He knows it can only be one of two people, because you and Chuuya are the only ones shameless enough to come by without warning. Odasaku and Ango would text first and everyone else is too wary of him to come anywhere near the shipping yard, much less bang right on his door.

“Dazai, open up! What the hell?” He hears you shout from the other side of the thin wall. “It’s cold, come on! What are you even doing out here?”

You came looking for him, Dazai realizes, swallowing thickly. Dazai isn’t often wrong about things, so he doesn’t dare get his hopes up and he doesn’t respond to you. The roll up door rattles as you try to pull it up, but Dazai doesn’t budge to help you. It’s locked, so you won’t be able to open it and Dazai just waits for you to leave so he can go back to sulking in peace. 

“Dazai, come on,” you complain. “What’s wrong? I was waiting for you back at the apartment, why didn’t you come home?”

Though Dazai intended on just ignoring you until you went away, he can’t help the snide comment that escapes his lips, “Home? You mean your apartment?” 

He immediately takes another swig of whiskey, but the burn of the alcohol does nothing to take away from the bitter taste the words leave on his tongue. From the way you pause, you seem to realize something is wrong—extra snidely, he wonders when you became as slow as Chuuya.

“Yeah, my apartment, the place you’ve been living at for three months?” you say incredulously and Dazai winces. “What’s your problem?” 

“My problem?” Dazai asks coolly. “Maybe you should be answering that instead. You’re a hypocrite.”

He knows that will set you off—he’s always been good at getting under people’s skin—and he’s noticed how you bristle whenever Mori hits you with “Now, dear, let’s not be hypocritical.” He can almost imagine the way you go stiff and the way your face goes cold, but it doesn’t bring him the malicious satisfaction he expects.

 Instead, he only feels heavier.

Unfair, he thinks tightly. You’re always so unfair.

“Can you let me in?” you ask after a few moments of silence. Dazai is even more bothered now that he didn’t get the reaction he expected, gaze lowering to the ground. “I’d prefer not to freeze to death out here.”

This time when you ask, Dazai finds himself rising to his feet. He hasn’t drank enough yet to be unsteady, but he can certainly feel the blood rush to his head as soon as he stands up.

He makes his way over to the door, only fumbling once with the lock. He doesn’t slide it open for you just to be petty, but he doesn’t need to anyway—as soon as you hear the lock click open, you’re pulling open the door and Dazai pointedly turns his back to you before you can step in.

“Seriously?” you ask. Much to Dazai’s pleasure, you do sound a bit irritated now. “Dazai, what the hell? Why are you acting so weird?”

“Me?” Dazai demands, voice shrill at the sheer audacity you have coming to his shipping container and insulting him after what you did. Didn’t do. Same thing. He whips around to face you, a barrage of snide comments about to fall from his lips only to hesitate when he sees a fancy box in your hands. “... What is that?”

Your gaze sharpens and your brows furrow. You move the box out of sight behind your back, but Dazai dances around you to try to get a better look at it. The two of you play a game of swivels and twists for a few moments, but Dazai has to call it quits when the pain in his side gets worse and the alcohol goes right to his head. 

You give him a concerned look, but don’t press about the way he winces. Instead, you say, “Tell me what your problem is first. Why are you drinking here alone in the dark?”

“... No,” Dazai says after a second. “What’s in the box?”

Dazai really doesn’t want to get his hopes up, so he chews the inside of his cheek and rocks back and forth from his toes to heels, hands clasped behind his back as he tries to distract himself. You roll your eyes, but your lips curl up into a fond smile that almost eases all of the stress Dazai has felt all day. Almost.

After what feels like an eternity, you pass the box over to him and Dazai immediately darts forward to grab it before you can change your mind. Though he knows what it is before he opens it, he can’t control the relief that floods him when he sees the expensive chocolates sitting inside the box—most of them are shaped in the typical Valentine’s Day heart, but some of them are-

“They’re crabs,” Dazai says gleefully, a genuine smile spreading widely across his lips as he reaches down to pluck one out of the box and pop it into his mouth. The chocolate is soft and creamy, it melts in his mouth the moment it touches his tongue and he lets out a delighted hum. He eats another, and then another after that. “How did you get them crab shaped?”

You don’t answer the question; you stare at the chocolates, conflicted, and Dazai isn’t sure why. You seem to be trying to decide whether or not you want to say something, but you let out a sigh, seemingly deciding against it. 

Instead of whatever you were debating on saying, you rest your hand on your hip and ask him, “Why did you take all of your stuff out of your room?” 

Your room, Dazai swallows the chocolate in his mouth as he tries to figure out how to respond to your question. He doesn’t really want to admit that he had a meltdown triggered by the chocolate that you just handed him, and you do seem genuinely put off by the fact that he left. Maybe he was wrong, he thinks, pressing his lips together as he considers the possibility. He’s hardly ever wrong, but he supposes it wouldn’t be the first time that you’ve managed to surprise him; since the day he met you, he feels like his mind is dulled when you’re around. He hates it.

So, he throws Elise under the bus.

“Elise said that you told her I forced myself into your life,” he says, voice coming out far more bitter than he intended for it to. He raises his chin stubbornly. “I wouldn’t want to keep imposing.”

Your expression flickers momentarily and you look a bit hurt, Dazai immediately swallows another chocolate, hopeful that he’ll swallow the sudden guilt he feels along with it. He doesn’t.

“Mori was trying to get me to convince you to live in the apartment he has set up for you in the main building,” you explain quietly after a few moments, crossing your arms over your chest. “I told him that he was better off trying to convince you himself because it was your decision to stay at mine. I didn’t have much of a say in it.”

Dazai lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and because he has no self control, he starts to ask, “But if you did have a say in it…”

Your expression softens in a way that makes Dazai’s stomach turn in on itself and your eyes flicker down to the box he’s holding before you quickly look back up at him. The box of chocolates in his hands suddenly feels a lot heavier, and his grip instinctively tightens around it.

“I… my apartment is a bit too big to live in alone,” you answer, and then add, “I would prefer you stayed.”

Dazai doesn’t respond, but his gaze does dart down to the three bags of clothes he brought back to the shipping container with him, all still packed. It wasn’t all of his stuff, just enough for it to be noticeable to you when you went to his room looking for him. Maybe he had been hoping you would come bring him back.

“I don’t have a movie picked out for tonight, if you want to pick,” you offer when the silence stretches on.

Dazai glances down at the chocolates you gave him again and then he says, “The Discovery channel has a new documentary on -”

“No.”

“What?” Dazai demands. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“I am not watching another crab documentary, Dazai.”

“The last one was good.”

“The last one bored me to tears.”

Dazai rolls his eyes, leaning down to pick up one of his bags and you grab the other two after sending a narrowed look to his left side, slinging them over your shoulder as you step outside of the shipping container. Dazai follows you, rolling the door back down before giving you a mocking look.

“So you just want to watch one of those stupid superhero movies again? The only one actually entertained by them is bird-brained Chuuya, anyone with two brain cells knows how it ends just from the first scene,” he says snidely, enjoying the way you immediately scowl at him.

“Just because you know how it’s going to end doesn’t mean it’s not entertaining,” you argue. “You can be entertained by something predictable.”

“Not me,” Dazai sings as he follows you out of the shipping container yard and to the road. Much to Dazai’s displeasure, he realizes that you did not come here alone—your new partner is sitting in the front seat of the car waiting on the side of the road, scrolling through his phone. Distastefully, he demands, “Why is he here?”

“He drove me,” you say like it’s obvious. “What’s your problem with him anyway?”

“Nothing,” Dazai mutters, making sure to give the older boy a dark look as he slides into the back seat. 

He expects you to get into the passenger seat, but instead you move to sit in the back with him. Before you do, he stiffens as he remembers his clothes were not the only thing he stole from your apartment. Your eyes narrow in suspicion and you place your hand on your hip.

“What else did you take before leaving?”

Dazai sulks at how easily you figured out what the issue is and lies when he repeats, “Nothing.”

“If we get back home and immediately have to come back out here, I’m going to waterboard you, Dazai,” you say flatly.

“I’ve been waterboarded before,” he says stubbornly.

“Not by me,” you threaten.

 Dazai sighs dramatically, letting his head fall back against the headrest.

“I stole all of the remotes in the apartment,” he admits, shifting to push himself up to walk back over to the shipping container, wincing again when he shifts the wrong way. He pauses when you roll your eyes and hold your hand up to stop him.

“I’ll get them,” you say. “Stay here.”

“Don’t leave me with him,” Dazai complains, but you slam the door in his face.

Instantly, the light and playful expression drops from his face as he turns his attention to the rear view mirror, eyes locking with Itou Asahi. The blonde raises his eyebrows tauntingly, as if he’s daring Dazai to say something to him, and Dazai has half a mind to reach for the gun stuffed in the pocket of his black jacket. He refrains if only because he doesn’t want to piss you off even more.

After a moment, Itou twists in his seat to look at Dazai. Dazai’s eye twitches in irritation, realizing that he’s about to speak to him.

He nods to the box of chocolates. “She spent a month at my place trying to get it right.”

Though Dazai planned on ignoring him, he can’t stop the quiet, “What?” that slips from his mouth.

“The chocolates,” Itou says like Dazai is stupid, which irritates him but he’s still confused so he’s forced to wait for him to explain. “She tried custom ordering the crab shaped ones but had a tantrum because they looked ugly. So she spent a month learning how to make them so she could mold them on her own. She only just finished this batch today—still isn’t satisfied with how they came out, but ran out of time.”

Dazai’s throat swells up as he stares down at the chocolates, an odd warmth spreading through his chest that he can’t snuff out. Scrutinizing them more carefully now, he sees all of the tiny imperfections that wouldn’t be there if you’d store bought them—the hearts aren’t all perfectly even, some of the legs on the crabs are longer than others, there’s an indent on the back of the heart shaped chocolate he’s holding like you’d touched it while it was too soft.

His fingers close around it carefully, lips parting to speak but he can’t find any words. When did you have the time though? You’ve had so many missions lately-

Oh.

“All the missions in Tokyo…”

“Her missions were learning how to fucking make chocolate and they were in my apartment, not Tokyo,” Itou scoffs. “I’m never going to be able to eat chocolate again in my life the amount she’s force fed me. I can hardly stand the smell of it now. I had to send her to Nakahara for him to taste test the last few batches.”

Dazai’s gaze sharpens, obscenely bothered at the thought of Itou Ashi and Nakahara Chuuya being your taste testers and Itou is complaining about it. “You should be grateful you got to try her chocolate,” he snaps immediately.

Itou’s jaw drops and he immediately shakes his head. “You two are so fucking-” he starts to say but cuts himself off when he sees you approaching the car again. 

Dazai squints at him, almost wanting to dare him to continue, but his expression lightens when you open the door, remotes in hand and an irritated expression still painted on your face.

He only moves over enough to give you room to sit instead of moving to sit behind the driver’s seat. You squint at him, but Dazai gives you a small smile and says quietly, “My chocolates are much nicer than Chuuya’s.”

Your expression immediately softens and your lashes flutter as you avert your gaze—the telltale sign of you being flustered. Dazai’s lips part to say something else, but no words come out, gaze pinned on the pretty glow the moonlight casts over your face. You look like you want to say something as you look down at the chocolates again, but again, you seem to decide against it.

“How do you even know what Chuuya got?” you ask suddenly, clearing your throat. Dazai freezes. “And what happened to your side? Every time you move you’re wincing.”

“I… stopped by his office and saw them?” he offers, his next smile is too sweet, and you catch it from the way your eyes narrow. Defensively, he says, “The slug didn’t deserve chocolates from you.”

“Oh my god, Dazai,” you complain, burying your face in your hands. 

Dazai’s face flames up, and he shoots a dirty look in Itou’s direction when the older boy bursts into laughter. 

“Slugs can’t eat chocolate,” Dazai insists. “I was helping him, really.” 

“I can’t stand you,” you sigh, but when you shift in your seat, you shift so that you’re sitting a little closer to Dazai, shoulder pressed against his and thighs knocking together.

He glances down at the box of chocolates in his lap again, and the chocolate heart resting in his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, he passes it over to you. You give him a questioning look, but Dazai pointedly looks away as he wills his cheeks not to reflect his flustered thoughts, waiting for you to take it. His breath catches when your fingers brush his hand as you take it from him.

“Thanks,” you say softly.

Instead of directly responding, Dazai prods, “So, about the crab documentary…”

You let out a heavy sigh as you side eye him. “Fine,” you agree, “but you’re doing the garbage this week.”

“What?!” he demands. “It’s not my turn.”

“The price you pay for forcing me to watch nature documentaries for movie night.”

“It’s not just nature, it’s crabs.”

“Deal or no deal?”

“Fine. Deal.”

“Good,” you say with a saccharine smile that Dazai doesn’t like because he knows you’re thinking something bad. “Deal.”

After a few moments, you add, “I would’ve put it on even if you didn’t agree.”

“I’m going back to my shipping container.”

You laugh loudly, and Dazai’s heart skips a beat at the sound of it. He very much ignores the way Itou shoots an amused look back at them, focusing instead on the way your eyes glitter as your laughs fizzle into soft giggles.

“As if,” you say, knocking your shoulder into his. “I’ll just drag you back again. You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.”

His lips curl up into a small smile in response to your words, gaze dropping back down to the chocolates sitting in his lap, and then back to you.

“Will you?” he asks quietly, a bit too seriously.

Your smile softens, and Dazai’s heart lodges right in his throat. “Count on it.”

[inaflashimagine]

after learning about nagumo rejecting any confessions by lying & saying he has multiple partners, it felt right to include this in a v-day fic (wc: 3k...please don't judge) (sigh)

“Nagumo-senpai! Please accept these chocolates I made just for you!”

“Hm?” The man of the hour–and frankly, of the day, based on the mountains of gift boxes surrounding him–finally looks up mid-bite from the dark chocolate bar in his hands. He glances at the furiously blushing girl for half a second before shrugging languidly and giving his signature closed eye smile known to enrapture every JCC girl caught in the Nagumo Yoichi stratosphere.

The same smile that irritates you to no end. 

Like a spoiled child on his birthday, he grabs the gift first before expressing any shred of gratitude. “Wow, that’s so nice of you!”

A beat passes as he opens the fuchsia heart-shaped box, a charge of giddiness felt in the air despite him performing the same action for at least the hundredth time today. 

Square chocolate truffles that resemble the dice Nagumo always fiddles with during class. Such creativity would’ve earned your impressed nod, Sakamoto’s brief–but altogether curious–glance, or perhaps a slight brow raise from Akao. Unfortunately, any factor of originality became lost after some first year from the public relations department had gifted him nearly identical ones a few hours earlier. (Not to mention, the same concept was already executed exactly one year ago.)

To your pleasant surprise, Nagumo is considerate enough to take a bite and not immediately chuck the gift into the large cardboard box of chocolates he’s been wheeling around all day. You’re afraid that this year, he might actually have to bribe someone from the weapons manufacturing department with his never-ending supply of chocolates in exchange for another hand truck to hold all the remaining confectionery he has and will continue to receive in the next twelve hours. Maybe he should’ve considered doing a parade float to catch all the chocolates at once. Akao stopped keeping count two hours ago (“I ran outta space!” she huffed before shaking her sharpie to add yet another tally to her arm), but you’re quite confident he’s easily passed the 200 threshold he had set last Valentine’s Day. At the very least, he’s certainly passed the limit of 152 chocolates he got two years ago. 

After three years at the JCC, it’s become both a well-established tradition and record-breaking event. 

(There’s a reason why Nagumo holds no qualms in declaring it as his favorite holiday.)

“Thank you, these are soooo good!” It comes off as sincere to everyone but those currently sitting at the table, and it takes all your willpower not to have your eyes roll into the back of your head. “Oh, also, do we know each other?”

Akao, who sits on Nagumo’s other side, chokes on her drink as she fails to hold in the rowdy laughter that makes her shoulders shake. You guess you spoke too soon, beginning to notice all the other...quirks…his countless admirers easily gloss over. He doesn’t even have the decency to wipe off the dark crumbs coating the corner of his mouth, a melted mess you have to avert your gaze from lest your twitching fingers find themselves in a place they shouldn’t be. 

And your heart almost aches for the girl, who quickly recovers from her crestfallen expression while she musters a determined smile. “We were paired for an assignment in History of the 20th Century Assassins Industry.”

“Nagumo attending class? This jerkface? You sure it wasn't a dummy in his spot?” Akao asks while she grabs an extra piece of steak from the plate of a frowning Sakamoto. However, her disinterested tone makes it sound less like a question and more like a recitation of a textbook she's been forced to read.

The girl’s mouth opens and closes like a flailing fish gasping for water. But even then, she’s gorgeous, with an angelic face framed by long lashes and full, glossy lips. Her nails are perfectly manicured, the dark red color matching the color of her headband, which helps hold her shiny hair into a sleek ponytail. You can see the gears in her head turning–perhaps the conversation she recalled with Nagumo that fateful day in class was a figment of her imagination–but she persists. 

“O-of course it wasn't! He wouldn’t do that!”

“Yeah, of course I wouldn’t! I’m a diligent student and assassin, first and foremost,” he agrees with an emphatic nod, though for some reason those large, dark eyes don’t meet hers and instead remain on you.

Ashamedly, you’re the first to break the gaze, trying to ignore the strange flutter in your chest by joining Akao in eating the new chocolates now placed on the lunch table for everyone to consume. 

You regret trying it the moment the die-shaped chocolate melts on your tongue. It’s too bitter, and you surmise that the waxy, almost crayon-like texture ruining the taste is due to the lack of lecithin. The aftertaste is so unpleasant that you attempt to wash it down with a reluctant bite of your dreaded JCC bowl. 

Nagumo has always sworn not to accept chocolates from students in the poisons department. Although your background might make you slightly biased, you rather risk dying from the very slim odds of ingesting a poisonous set of chocolates (and sure, chances may be non-zero, but they are slim!) rather than trying hundreds of cheap, crappy ones.

“Not to kick ya out or anything,” Akao says while switching to the tomo-choco you had given her earlier today, a smug smile on her face while she swats away Nagumo’s greedy hands, “but we’re almost done with lunch, and this line keeps getting longer.”

What had been something you ignored earlier can no longer be dismissed; in fact, you swear the line of about ten eager girls now doubled in the five mere minutes since this alleged Assassins History classmate–who you still don’t know the name of–offered her crudely made chocolates to Nagumo.

“My apologies!” Her face turns a shade redder than you think is possible. Every JCC student, regardless of the department they're in, knows not to mess with Akao. “I just have one more request.”

“Oh?” An agreeable Nagumo tilts his head before lying on his palm, clearly amused. “And what’s that?”

“Please let me make you miso soup every day!” she exclaims with a sharp bow that causes your own face to flush from embarrassment.

Akao spits out her drink, Sakamoto unamused by the spray of green tea that ruins his shirt and hard-earned steak. However, some of the girls who also want to give chocolates to the aloof silver-haired man stay in the second line that has more recently formed behind him, chocolates still grasped tightly in their hands while remaining undeterred by any rapid changes in the inclement weather.

“No way! A marriage proposal, that’s a first!” Akao guffaws, wiping away the tears in her eyes. “And here I was thinkin’ I had already seen everything. Whatever happened to just going on a date?”

“Like going to a shooting range?” Sakamoto inquires.

“No, you idiot,” she says in between Nagumo’s breezy laughs, which do not betray a hint of jumbled nerves you’d undoubtedly feel if some random stranger had asked to marry you. “I mean like going to an aquarium or hell, even doing something as cliche as watching a movie together.”

“Nagumo does like Christopher Nolan movies,” you mutter, more to yourself than anyone else. He had expressed a rather alarming level of excitement over the latest trailer of Inception, especially after finding out parts of it were filmed in Tokyo and Kyoto.

Yet what surprises you more is not that you echoed your thoughts aloud but that you instantly feel a heavy arm wrapped around your shoulder.

Suddenly, your face is squished against the crook of someone’s neck.

“And I’m sorry, but this is exactly why I must reject your kind offer!” Nagumo chirps, and you can feel the way his neck tightens so he can give that wide, carefree smile to the girl whose dreams he’s about to shatter. “Because I’m already dating someone!”

All at once, you feel your blood simultaneously freeze and boil.

You’re somewhat relieved that the loud pounding of your heart blocks your ears from fully hearing the chorus of groans, cries, and gasps around the lunch table. Your frenetic train of thought halts temporarily when you notice the new tattoo on the bicep wrapped around you.

An inverted black and white triangle comprised of rectangles, some decorated with words and others remaining blank spaces he has yet to fill out. Your eyes remain fixed on the letters that spell out ‘FRIEND’, your mind wracking for the reference this new art project is making.

“Neat, huh?” he whispers, uncaring for all the surprised reactions to the recent (and more importantly, fake) news that threaten to swallow you two whole. “Still need to work on my lettering, but I’m getting there. It should be ready before Inception comes out. Hopefully, it’s as good as Memento. By the way, we should watch that together!”

The warmth of his breath tickles your skin, the smell of chocolate overwhelming. Though your mouth tries to form some words of protest, nothing comes out. And the more you try to squirm out of his grasp, the more he holds you flush against him, an effective finger trap there is no escaping from.

Amidst all this, you can feel the calm beat of his heart, unperturbed by the mess he’s created. By the chaos that even the god of mischief would struggle to unleash so easily.

“You’re dating each other?” the girl finds the courage to ask, but not before casting a strange look your way. You only wish your mouth could work to tell her there is no reason to be jealous. And with the constant somersaults in your stomach, you wonder if your face is as green as her envious one. 

“I can’t believe it!” another student shouts.

“There’s no way!” someone else pipes in, voice shrill with indignation.

“And someone from the poisons department?” 

“My, my, let’s not be rude,” Nagumo interjects, and perhaps it’s the lack of oxygen getting to your head from the way his arm is practically suffocating you, but you swear you hear an edge to that saccharine voice. “But yes, the object of my affection is reserved for the poisons-making student who made the best chocolates this year, by far, might I add!”

You’re not sure why that is the statement that snaps you out of your stupor, but you find it imperative to whisper, “I didn’t give you chocolates this year.”

“I meant last year!”

“But I didn’t–“

“Now, let’s not rub salt in the wound! Not again!” he chides, not unkindly. You feel his arm tighten at the same time his heart seems to skip a beat.

Your brows furrow. Surely, the man who received over 150 chocolates from the assassin’s department alone–and the same man who will likely have double that amount by the end of today–isn’t still bothered by the fact that you once refused to give him chocolates. Chocolates that his stupid, arbitrary principles would prevent him from accepting.

Not to mention, it was a year ago! 

Before you can say anything, the persistent girl whose name you’ll probably never know throws her last hat in the ring.

“I-I don’t mind if you’re dating, truly!” she insists, strands of her ponytail coming loose from her vigorous nodding. “I would make you happy! Even as a second partner!”

“No need!” Nagumo says swiftly and confidently, “Because I already have a second girlfriend!”

Akao barely lets him snake his arm around her before she whacks him in the head. He decides to let her go after the third bump forms on his head–and he has the gall to laugh despite the injuries–but his grip on you remains steadfast.

“But I thought you only had one object of affection!”

“You heard wrong,” he lies smoothly. “I have many objects of affection! I’m a loving and kind person, after all!”

When the girl finally retreats and gives up, another girl pops up in her place, and you feel your dizzy head grow lighter. “Then that means I would be honored and happy to be your third–“

“Well, funny you mention that”–Nagumo chuckles with an amicable grin as he glances at his spectacled friend across from him–“because actually–"

“No,” Sakamoto cuts in, quiet but resolute. “Don’t even think about it.”

“There you are!”

Your shoulders tense, only to sag in relief upon seeing your roommate Asami.

She sits next to you, letting her toes dig into the sand while she waits for you to speak. When you prefer to quietly observe the waves retreating into the ocean, she decides to break the silence with, “You always have the worst Valentine’s Day, huh?”

“All I’ll say is that I’ve never been more grateful for Sakamoto Taro,” you grumble with an eye roll. Nagumo would never shy away from poking a bear, but there was no mistaking the slight flash of dread and regret in those usually mirthful eyes when the decision to continue his infinite partners prank was met by a fierce tackle from JCC’s strongest assassin-in-training. 

Akao joined in at the last minute, too. ("Finally, something fun is happening today!" she had exclaimed, her golden eyes glowing with excitement as she jumped the two bickering men.)

Their silly fight gave you a few precious seconds to run away from the girls chasing you to learn more about your relationship with Nagumo. As if you knew the answer yourself.

While they did chase you out of your own bedroom, at least they gave up once you headed to the poisons-making wing. Poisoning them would’ve been your last resort, but maybe it was good to feed into (relatively) baseless rumors once in a while.

“Grateful for Sakamoto-kun, hmm? Would you say he’s the object of your affection?”

Afraid that the resolute shake of your head isn’t a sufficient answer, you feel the urgent need to elaborate. “We’re not doing this again. I don’t, wait, hold on. Sakamoto-kun?“

Your body shifts, eyes narrowing at a smiling Nagumo. “Ever heard of the saying, ‘Once a creep, always a creep’?”

He wags a disapproving finger. “So that’s certainly not how you pronounce ‘master of disguise,’ but I strongly believe even the dullest knives in the kitchen can learn quickly.”

“Spoken like a true creep.”

“Ah, don’t be mean!” He tilts his head, daring to act innocent with a wink accompanied by a small grin. “Not when you secretly love my costumes.”

“The same way you secretly love all those terribly made chocolates?”

The laugh he barks out as he doubles over is loud, uncharacteristically harsh when it comes from such a graceful person like him. The realization that you might be one of the few to have heard him laugh like this makes your chest constrict so tightly that you exhale quickly to expel any lingering thoughts. 

“Well, I wouldn’t have to pretend if you just gave me enough chocolates to munch on instead. You know, a single piece might hold me over to the next year.”

“Next year?!” Such nerve! “After that trick you pulled today, you’re lucky if you live to see next week.”

“You’re such a terrible liar,” he breathes out with a chuckle, “that I would struggle to lie about you being a good one.”

“And what makes you say that?”

His reply comes in the form of his arm, once again, finding its home around your waist. When you turn to look at him, faces so close you can still smell the chocolate on his breath, he breaks the closing gap with a small, white tin box.

Eyes widening, your hand instinctively goes to the now empty canvas bag that lay beside you. “How did you know?”

“To be honest, which I always am, I actually wasn’t sure. But I’m glad you confirmed it for me now!” He shakes the box lightly, his lazy smile widening as he hears the sound of multiple pieces of chocolate hitting the metal like a pinball machine. “I may have also seen you give these same boxes to Akao, Sakamoto-kun, and Asami…so, simply by process of elimination, I guess that leaves me.”

If it’s one thing Nagumo will never be in short supply of, it’s his audacity.

But more often than you’d like to admit, you forget how observant Nagumo is. How observant he is of you. Strange enough, you’re unsure if the shiver wracking your spine is from fear or a pleasant jolt of surprise and intrigue. 

Perhaps both.

“And if I told you they were actually for me?”

His smile is softer, yet not a trace of amusement leaves his gaze. “Then maybe you’re not that bad of a liar.”

The roll of your eyes is half-hearted as you gently prod at his fingers to take the box from him. Removing the lid, you finally offer him a piece of chocolate.

Similar to the ones you’ve given the others, it’s simple in design. The truffle doesn’t assume the shape of dice but of a sphere, and the ganache center of cream and raspberry makes Nagumo’s eyes briefly widen in wonderment before they close contentedly. 

“It’s the best chocolate I’ve had today, maybe ever! And to think you were gonna kill me before I could taste this!”

Against your best judgment (and self-control), your chest puffs from pride. “Well, it should kill you in the next ten minutes if I guessed your body weight correctly.”

Nagumo shaves that time a lot more quickly when he practically chokes on his second truffle.

“I was kidding!” you clarify with a firm pat to his back, poorly masking your laughter with a sigh of exasperation. “Do you think so little of me?”

“This is why I don’t take chocolates from you conniving poisons assassins!”

“Fine, sorry that I gave you a taste of your own medicine. Happy now?”

He recovers from his choking incident at a faster rate than you anticipate, suddenly lifting his head so you can see how the mischievous gleam in his eyes hints he is far from satisfied. 

“Only if we go see Inception together.”

“Seriously?” you scoff, hoping your face isn’t as hot as it feels. “That’s not coming out for another few months, at the earliest!”

“Then I guess I’ll be mad at you for that long.”

“Fine, fine, you insolent child.” Giving in, you both stand up and begin to make your way back to school grounds. “We’ll watch it together…”

Nagumo happily eats another chocolate, and you wonder if you’re hallucinating the slight skip to his steps. “I can’t wait–“

“–And I’m sure my second and third girlfriends Akao and Sakamoto will also be excited to join us!”

It’s a miracle your words made him freeze for the next few seconds before he lets out a surprised ‘Hey!’, giving you some much-needed time to run to Sakamoto for protection.

[seasaltkoffee]

I still think about this

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 YOU'RE TOO SWEET FOR ME

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: one chance encounter at a bar and suddenly you're seeing dazai osamu everywhere you go. you must have truly done wrong in your past life for you to run into him at so many places so frequently. you can't let this go on—for his sake and for yours—but the stupid civilian is worming his way into your life, blissfully unaware of who you are and what you do.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: AHHHHHHHH GUYS I HOPE UR EXCITED BECAUSE I AM, i've been obsessing over this literally since the idea first came to me, i'm rlly hoping you guys enjoy this half as much as i've loved writing it. civzai is truly becoming my roman empire. please leave a reblog! always appreciated!

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, port mafia executive!reader, civilian!dazai, dazai's struggles w suicide & sh, reader partakes in mafia business, dazai isn't dazai without a bit of obsessiveness and possessiveness (the possessiveness doesn't come til later but the obsessiveness starts from day 0).

SEE: WASTELAND, BABY! SERIES MASTERLIST

If you had known stopping at some random bar in the southern part of Hodogaya-ku would lead to a fucking college student attaching himself to you like a goddamn leech, then you would have gone to a different bar. You should’ve known better; this area is close to YNU, but you figured it was lowkey enough that most of the college students wouldn’t know about it. 

It’s just your luck that the most irritating one just so happened to.

Your eye twitches as you take another sip of your whiskey, pointedly ignoring the brunette who’d made his home on the barstool next to yours. He’s talking about something—an assignment for his creative writing class that you could hardly give half a shit about—and your head hurts. You’d been hoping for a quick drink before having to go back to headquarters and give Mori the rundown on the negotiations with Mishima.

You don’t want to go back. Mori pissed you off by scheduling this meeting without notifying you of it until literally thirty minutes before. But you also think that if you stay here any longer, you might murder this kid—and that’s saying a lot for someone who usually refuses to get her hands dirty.

“... but you see, I just have no inspiration,” the student—he said his name, but you ignored it—complains loudly, slumping over dramatically onto the bartop. “How am I supposed to write with no inspiration? I have no muse, no drive, no will to live. What do I do, bella?”

You side-eye him heavily before turning your attention back toward the bartender, Kobayashi, a man who knows who you are and what you do since this is a place that the lower ranking Mafiosos frequent, and is watching the scene taking place with an expression that’s nothing short of concern. You recognize some of the other bar patrons as well—one is an informant of yours that you’ve been meaning to get in contact with, two of Chuuya’s subordinates are here, and one of Kouyou’s.

“Luckily, I’ve run into you, bella,” the man sighs dreamily, big brown eyes peering up at you from where he’s draped across the bar. “You’ll be my muse, won’t you?” 

For the first time since you’ve arrived at the bar, you address him, “I think I would rather die.”

He blinks once. Twice. And then he laughs so loud that it draws half of the patrons’ attention. “Would you allow me to die with you?” he pleads, hands clasped together as he leans in closer to you. “I knew you were the one for me—it could be beautiful, a double suicide on the banks of Tsurumi. I-”

“Okay,” you say more to yourself than him, placing your wine glass on the bar and rising to your feet. “I’m leaving.”

He pushes his lip out as he watches you rise to your feet. You tell Kobayashi to put your drink on your tab before turning on your heel and making your way out of the bar. Much to your extreme displeasure, the student seems to follow you, scrambling after you.

“Wait! Won’t you give me your name? Number?” he cries. 

You slam the door to the bar in his face, but he’s unperturbed, yelping and pushing it right back open. You grit your teeth when you realize Albatross is the one who came to pick you up and bring you back to base, which means you’re never going to hear the end of this from him or any of the other Flags. You can already see him peering out the closed window, trying to figure out who’s chasing you.

“No.”

“How will I find you again then?” he laments, and to your horror, he catches up with you, trying to grab your wrist to stop you from leaving. You toss him a flinty look before snatching your wrist back. 

“That’s the point.” You smile sweetly. “You won’t.”

You get in the car and slam the door shut, pointedly locking it before turning your attention to Albatross, who’s already chewing on his bottom lip, trying not to laugh.

“So,” he starts with a tone that lets you know you’re very much not going to like whatever he’s about to say.

“Albatross, shut the fuck up.”

Dazai stares after you curiously, watching as you slam the door shut to a car that probably costs more than everything he’s ever owned in his entire life. He doesn’t think he’s ever met someone like you before, and he doesn’t even know what it is about you that’s drawing him in. 

You’re beautiful but cold, aloof but magnetic. He hadn’t been the only one affected by your presence—he’d noticed the lingering stares of other men in the bar, the way the bartender always rushed to ensure that your glass was full, hardly able to meet your eyes. Something itches in the back of his head, a gut feeling that maybe he’s missing something, but Dazai disregards it, leaning against the brick wall of the building behind him, tilting his head up to look up at the vast night sky. 

He does know one thing for sure, and that’s that he thinks he’s found his muse. After four years of the worst writer’s block he’s had in his life, Dazai’s fingers finally twitch for a pen.

He finds a smile curling onto his lips—a genuine one—and the muscles of his cheeks strain from the unfamiliar stretch.

For the first time since Odasaku’s death, the emptiness that has been endlessly plaguing Dazai’s chest is pushed out by a warmth that he hasn’t experienced in years. Letting out a shaky breath, giddy and excited in a way that leaves a skip in his step, Dazai makes his way back to his apartment rather than the bridge as he planned, intent on trying to figure out a way to find you again.

Maybe another day, Odasaku.

The gods are sick and cruel. You’ve known this since you were a child—seven years old and sitting in the center of piles of corpses after your village got caught in the crossfires of the Great War, rescued by a man who promised to send you right back if you couldn’t prove your worth to him. Your entire life, you feel like you’ve been the laughing stock of whatever higher beings there are, which is why you’re aggrieved but not surprised when that boy from the bar shows back up in your life.

You don’t even notice him at first. You’re exhausted—you’ve spent the past forty-eight hours awake and on comms for Akutagawa Gin and Tachihara Michizou as they infiltrated one of the low-rung gangs trying to move into the northern wards of Yokohama. It took longer for them to get to the leader than you thought it would, you were confident that it would be an in-and-out, less than twelve hours, but here you are two fucking days later, and you can’t even go back to your apartment and sleep because someone is demanding your immediate presence.

You wonder, sometimes, if death would be easier.

A part of you wants to just straight up ignore Mori and go back home to sleep. You personally think you deserve it, considering the mission went off without a single issue besides the unexpected length of it, but you also don’t want to hear the man bitch and make snide comments about insubordination, so you give your coffee order to the barista—your voice a bit too harsh, so you make up for it with a generous tip and then go wait for it at the opposite counter.

“Wowwww,” an unfortunately familiar voice croons from a nearby table. “Look at those bags. Someone didn’t sleep well last night.”

You think maybe death would be easier.

“As if my night couldn’t get any worse,” you say tightly, lips pressed together in a strained smile as you stare ahead, refusing to even turn to look at the irritating college student.

“It’s actually morning,” he says astutely.

“Find someone else to bother.”

He ignores you, naturally, and you let your eyes slide shut as you will yourself some patience when you hear the chair scrape against the ground, signaling him rising to his feet. You keep your gaze trained ahead even as you hear him approach you.

“Do you believe in fate, bella?” he hums, leaning over your shoulder to look at you.

You squint as you stare forward, rushing desperately for the barista to hurry up with your coffee, and you pointedly step away from him. “No.”

Well, you don’t actually know the answer to that question. Do you believe in fate? You don’t think you do. You like the idea of being able to carve out your own future without the meddling hands of gods trying to interfere, but can you really believe that everything in your life that’s happened to you is just by sheer chance? You’re not so sure.

“Well, I believe in fate,” he begins, and you already know you’re not going to like where this is going. “If I didn’t before, I certainly do now. What else could have led me to you again so soon? The red string tied around our fingers is demanding our love to finally bloom; it no longer tolerates the distance between us. My fated, no wonder I’ve evaded death for so long; it refused to embrace me because it knew I belonged in your arms instead!”

You almost don’t even register what he says, blinking a few times as the words process. 

“Genuinely, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

You turn to face the brunette, appalled, and he gives you a sweet smile before saying, “You’ll have to be more specific. There’s a lot of things wrong with me.”

“Clearly,” you scoff, shaking your head and taking your coffee from the barista.

You can already feel your phone buzzing incessantly in your pocket. You don’t even have to look to know it’s Mori asking where you are, probably Chuuya bitching about having to cover for you too. You can’t waste any more time lingering around, so without another thought or word, you promptly leave the cafe.

“Hey! Hey, wait!” he calls after you. Much to your displeasure, he scrambles to grab his over-the-shoulder backpack before, much to your displeasure, chasing after you. “My name is Dazai. Dazai Osamu.”

“Did I, at any point, ask?” you ask irritably, making your way down the street in the direction of the headquarters, hoping that he leaves you alone before you get there because the last thing you want to do is get there with him trailing you like a lost puppy. Albatross already saw him following after you once. If he catches the kid around you again, he’s going to start making assumptions, and that’s the last thing you need because he’ll immediately go gossip to Chuuya and Lippmann about it.

“Well, no,” Dazai says, “but won’t you give me your name in return?”

“No,” you say, giving him a smile as equally sweet as the one he gave you before. You roll your eyes as you take a sip of your coffee. “Don’t you have more productive things to do than bother me? Like, I don’t know, finishing that assignment you spent two hours bitching my ear off about a few nights ago?” 

“You remembered.” Dazai stares at you with stars in his eyes, face lighting up. “I thought you weren’t paying attention.”

“It’s hard not to pay attention when you’re babbling in my ear,” you say dryly, a bit put off by how surprised and pleased he is over you remembering what he’d been talking about. “Why are you still following me?”

“I want your name,” Dazai pouts, words drawn a bit long as if to make a point, but it only makes your eye twitch. “Your number, if you’re feeling generous.”

“Well, I’m in a decidedly bad mood, so you’re getting neither,” you say, giving him a faux sweet smile that makes him push his lip out even further. “You look ridiculous.”

“Ridiculously cute?” 

“No. Ridiculous.”

“Your beauty blinds me to your cruelty,” Dazai sighs dramatically. “I will not be driven away.”

“You should have more self-respect,” you say flatly, giving him yet another facetious smile before letting it drop and giving him a side-eye. You look him over once as you do; he’s dressed casually in a cream sweater and corduroy pants, a brown bag slung over his shoulder. Cute, but sickeningly… civilian. He seems to notice your judgment of him and looks offended—you speak before he can complain. “I have to go to work, so it’s time for you to leave.”

“To work?” Dazai blinks as if he hadn’t expected that from you, brows furrowing. “You look dead on your feet. You should be going home.”

I wish, you think mournfully. Even just the thought of your bed makes your body heavy with exhaustion. You just want to sleep, but Mori won’t even allow you the relief of that. You can’t help but wonder if you pissed him off because you have no idea why he’s being such an asshole. You don’t even think you did anything this time; you disagreed with him at one of the executive meetings last week, but you weren’t even rude while doing it. And you thought your idea was good. 

You realize that Dazai is still waiting for a response from you, and you try to recall what he’d said, rolling your eyes when you do.

“Wow, thank you.” Your voice is dry and sarcastic. You give him a withering look that he meets with a stupid smile. “The longer you hold me up, the longer it’ll take for me to get home and sleep, so kindly fuck off.”

Dazai sighs. “The things I do for love,” he says mournfully, stopping in his tracks and giving you a downcast look, brown eyes wide and sad and lips curled down. You’re actually a bit surprised that he gave in, letting out a hum of appreciation—you almost didn’t think he would. “The next time we meet, you have to give me your name.”

“We’re not going to meet again,” you say firmly, and you mean it this time because if you see this guy again, you’re going to flee in the other direction. For his sake and your dignity because it’s only a matter of time before unwelcome eyes catch you with him.

“We will,” he sings. “Fate demands it of us. Goodbye, bella. Have a good day.”

You don’t respond to him when you walk away. Dazai is still undeterred. He’s hardly stopped thinking of you since that night at the bar a few days ago. Every time his mind drifts off, he finds himself picturing your face, longing to talk to you again. He thinks maybe it’s a bit weird for him to be so enamored by you after just two brief meetings, but there’s just something about you that’s drawing him in like a moth to flame.

His eyes linger on you until you turn the block and disappear from view. He’s a bit put out over the fact that he still doesn’t have your name, but he thinks that the meeting is still a win in his eyes. First at the bar, now at this cafe, you must live or work somewhere in the eastern part of the Kanagawa Prefecture—Hodogaya-ku or Minami-ku, maybe Nishi or Naka. He’s leaning toward the latter, considering you’re heading eastward to get to wherever your work is.

And it would make sense. Naka-ku has all of the high-end corporations, and you must work for one of them. Your outfit the other day, your outfit today—not gaudy wealth, but wealth for sure. He thinks the black suits you wear cost more than his tuition, and the rings adorning your fingers cost a liver or three. You can’t be much older than him if you even are, so you’re probably just a nepo-baby—father owns one of the big corps and gave you a high-up position right out of school. Probably never had to work a day in your life, he thinks bitterly of all of the time he’s spent working odd jobs just to afford rent in the area, surviving off cheap ramen and canned crab.

But it’s a bit odd, isn’t it? You look like you haven’t slept in two days, maybe longer. Dazai almost felt bad for badgering you just because of how exhausted you seemed. Dazai can’t imagine any type of business demanding that type of energy from one of its workers—especially a nepo-baby.

Dazai finally shakes his head, glancing down at his phone to see the time, sighing when he realizes it’s time to get to class for his poetry workshop, a bit more pleased because, for the first time since classes started three months ago, he actually has something to give to the professor.

The next time you run into Dazai, you see him first. Despite vehemently telling yourself that you would run in the other direction if you happened upon him again, you find yourself hesitating. You don’t even know why you’re hesitating; you shouldn’t be hesitating. 

You’re stopping at one of the libraries at YNU to meet with an informant of yours—the son of the leader of your political opposition in the House of Councillors—all it took was a few sweet words and teasing smiles to have the boy wrapped around your finger, giving you all of the dirty details of his father's dealings for you to use against him when trying to sway the swing votes to your side.

It’s supposed to be an in-and-out meeting, and you don’t want to spend more than 15 minutes in this building if you don’t have to. You still have to meet with one of the oil barons from Venezuela that Mori is trying to get in bed with, and you’re hoping to meet with Mishima before the new military bill passes through the House of Representatives in two months—you suppose you can do that tomorrow, but you’re pretty sure he’s leaving to go deal with some issue with his narcotics trade in western Europe in a few days so you don’t want to leave it to the last minute.

The kid—you don’t even remember his first name, you only know that he’s Kimura’s asshole son, and he cares more about getting his dick wet than the sanctity of family secrets (not that it bothers you considering you’re benefiting from it, but you digress)—is surely already upstairs in one of the private study rooms waiting for you, but your feet are rooted to the ground.

Dazai Osamu sits at one of the study tables in the back, brows furrowed as he reads whatever textbook is in front of him, dressed in a cozy brown sweater. He looks distinctly displeased, tongue poking out between his lips as he scribbles away at his paper—you can’t tell what he’s reading or writing, but it notably does not look like creative writing.

He also looks distinctly lonely. He’s sitting alone at a table meant for four, and there are dozens of groups of students around him, chatting and laughing in their study groups. There are tables for one person lining the walls, so you can’t help but wonder if he chose the larger table specifically to spite the people coming in groups so they have to cram at a smaller table or if he’s meeting people here.

Before you can stop yourself—because you should stop yourself—you find yourself making your way over to him. He doesn’t even notice you at first, not until you’re right in front of the table and peering down at the textbook he’s reading: Intro to Engineering.

“That doesn’t look like creative writing,” you say dryly, lips quirking up in amusement when Dazai physically startles at your appearance, looking up at you with wide eyes and parted lips. Almost cute, if he wasn’t so annoying—you think maybe if he was one of Kouyou’s girls, you might’ve given him a chance.

For a second, Dazai looks as if he’s going to make a quip—you expect a loud comment about fate and love, but instead, his expression softens after a minute as he looks down at his textbook, making you tilt your head to the side curiously at the change in demeanor.

“Intro to Engineering,” he finally says with a wry smile, motioning toward the book. “A required class, much to my extreme displeasure.”

“Sounds terrible,” you say absently, gaze flicking around, noting all of the prying eyes now not-so-discreetly eyeing your table. 

You’re used to people staring at you, you have eyes on you pretty much at all times, and a bunch of nobody college students are nothing compared to the eyes of politicians and foreign mafiosos, half of whom want your head piked. Dazai, on the other hand, doesn’t look quite as comfortable beneath the stares of so many of his classmates, which is surprising to you, considering how bold he was with you at the bar and in public the other day. 

“Are you meeting people?” you ask curiously, glancing at the empty chairs around him.

For a second, Dazai looks flustered. You watch as his eyes dart from the chairs and back up to you, the faintest pink hue spreading across his cheeks. His lips part to respond, but no words leave then, and he finally pushes out, “Yes.”

A lie. A blatant one at that, and he can tell how poorly it came out from the way he winces. You blink, curious as to why he doesn’t want to admit he’s at the library alone, but then shrug because you don’t really care.

“Why are you here?” You raise your eyebrows at the sheer attitude in the question, almost caught off guard by it. Dazai clearly did not intend for it to come out that way, so he immediately shrinks and then adds too quickly, “You don’t go to school here, I mean.”

“Yeah… okay,” you say dryly, a bit offended, wondering why you even came over here. Dazai looks remorseful at his words but only averts his gaze down to the table. Finally, you sigh, choosing your words carefully because you don’t want him—or anyone—to know you’re meeting someone because if anyone finds out Kimura’s kid is feeding you information, you’d be in a shitty position. Instead, you go with, “I own this building. I come to check on it from time to time.”

Any remorse on Dazai’s face is gone as he stares at you flatly. “You… own this building?”

“I donated the money to have it built, yes,” you say, unsure of why he’s giving you such a deadpan expression. 

And it’s the truth: you did it three years ago when you first realized Kimura’s son was attending YNU as a freshman. You needed an excuse to come to campus and ‘run into him,’ so you decided to just have a library built with the reasoning that your deceased father attended the university, and you wanted it in his name. 

Did your father attend YNU? You have no idea—hardly even remember the man—but you had Piano Man forge some records to show that he did.

“Why?” Dazai asks.

“I was in a good mood,” you say sarcastically to evade the question.

“You were in a good mood, so you decided to spend hundreds of millions of yen on a library for a university you don’t even attend?” he questions doubtfully.

“I was in an exceptionally good mood,” you amend smugly.

The expression on Dazai’s face is nothing short of bitter and withering. “The next time you’re in a good mood, you should pay for my tuition and rent,” he says snidely.

“Well, my next project is a zoo,” you say, and you can tell from the way Dazai’s eyes narrow that he knows he’s not about to like what you’re going to say. “We can fit you in with the rest of the baboons, I suppose. That’ll be your new apartment.”

“Haha. Very funny.”

“I thought so.”

As you banter, there’s something sharp and calculating in his eyes that you don’t like—you vaguely noticed it in the past two meetings with him but are only really catching it now as he stares steadily at you, trying to figure you out. Which you can’t let happen, obviously, so you give him a faux-sweet smile instead and lift your hand to wave your fingers in a goodbye, preparing to make your leave and go find Kimura’s kid upstairs. 

“I have to go,” you say, and then add belatedly, “hope this never happens again.”

Dazai pushes his lip out into a pout reminiscent of the one he gave you the other day outside of the cafe, but his heart doesn’t seem to be in it this time. His eyes are distant as they flick around the vast library again, disappointed almost. Lonely. You don’t know why you’re still standing there and you especially don’t know why you find your lips parting to speak.

You very much don’t know why your name comes out, and when Dazai looks up at you, eyes wide and with a shine in them that wasn’t there before, a question ready on his lips, you almost hesitate. Almost find yourself at a loss for words. Something that hasn’t happened to you in… years, actually. 

What the fuck?

You play it off quickly. “You wanted my name, didn’t you?” you drawl, looking down at him unimpressed as if you’re not entirely horrified with yourself right now.

Dazai looks at you as if you’ve handed him the stars, sun, and moon on a silver platter, and you decide it’s time to leave before he can say anything else—more importantly before you can say anything else—lifting your hand lazily to wave at him over your shoulder without looking back. 

Once you’re well out of sight—all the way up the stairs leading to the private study rooms with the one-way glass windows looking down into the main section of the library—you finally allow yourself one last look.

Dazai still sits the same exact way you left him, staring at where you’d left with a stupid smile on his face and a starstruck look in his eyes. You roll your eyes, and you firmly choose to ignore the faint smile curving at the corners of your lips.

Your name rings through his head on repeat, a giddy feeling spreading through his chest. His whole body feels light and his fingers thrum across the wood of the table he’s sitting at, unable to stop the smile that rises to his lips. You approached him this time and you gave him your name—progress, good progress. In his exhilaration, he can almost ignore the dozens of curious eyes lingering on him wondering who you were and how you knew Dazai of all people. 

He supposes he can’t blame them for being curious—you’re someone who’s clearly not cut from the same cloth as the rest of them; if your clothes didn’t make that apparent enough, the way you hold yourself does. And to approach him… Dazai isn’t particularly liked by the other students in his year—they think he’s odd. Which, he is odd, but they could be more discreet about it.

“Hey, Dazai-kun, who was that?” one of the third-year boys asks, leaning over from his table to try to get Dazai’s attention, intrigued gaze pinned on where you’d disappeared to.

Dazai pointedly does not acknowledge him. Partially because he’s not about to encourage competition, you’re Dazai’s muse, and Dazai is not keen on sharing you, but mostly because he doesn’t even know the answer to that question. 

Who are you? 

Dazai knew you were wealthy just from the way you dressed, but the way you so casually mentioned that you’d donated the money for this library to be built a few years ago was absurd. You can’t be much older than him, so what? You were eighteen or nineteen, donating hundreds of millions, billions of yen to have a library built? And for what? It doesn’t make sense. Dazai prides himself on his shrewd mind and ability to read people, but he just can’t figure you out. 

He must be missing something

He pulls out his phone, clicking on the safari app before hesitating. You only gave him your first name—he doubts that he’ll actually find anything on you, but a part of him holds out hope because you clearly have more money than god, and anyone with that much money must have some heavy sway on politics and society. Rich people have the media following them like dogs looking for a bone.

So, he tries, and he’s sorely disappointed when only websites about name etymology and pronunciation pop up. He sighs as he flips to a new page in his notebook, giving up on trying to figure out these engineering formulas for now. 

Instead, he writes your name at the top of the page, tapping his pen to his lips as he tries to figure out who exactly his new muse is. 

You don’t see Dazai for two weeks after that. You don’t have the chance to—you’re busy getting ready for the gala the government is hosting to honor some agency based in Tokyo. An excuse so they can gather all of the House Representatives and Councillors in one spot for both sides to advocate for or against the major military bill passing through the National Diet in a month and a half. You’ll be attending to represent the Mori Corporation, as always, and you’re hoping Mishima sends Kiyomasa on behalf of Age of Blue Co., his own front for the Sun and Steel. You think with the two of you taking on the burden of convincing the swing votes, you’ll get it done.

Now, though, you’re in a foul mood because you have to waste time you don’t have out of your day to deal with one of the landlords the Port Mafia is leasing property to. He’s been skimping out on payments owed and, evidently, has grown balls that he certainly shouldn’t have, considering he had the nerve to turn away two of your subordinates when they came to collect. He obviously thinks he can get away with it because it's a low-priority issue compared to all of the other things going on with the military bill and developments in China and Russia with Cao Xueqin and Vladimir Nabokov. You have half a mind to stuff a 24 in his mouth and pull the trigger just to show him how low of a priority he really is. 

You might, honestly, depending on his decisions in the next ten minutes.

You get to the complex in Hodogaya-ku half-past six in the morning, wanting to get this done and out of the way well before Tolstoy arrives in the city at ten to meet with you about the rising issues in the mainland. For once, luck seems to be on your side because when Albatross pulls up to the complex, you see Mado on the phone outside, in a heated conversation with someone.

“Have fun,” Albatross sings as you push open the car door to make your way over to the older man.

Mado catches sight of you instantly, eyes widening and pallor taking on a ghastly color as he hangs up on whoever he is talking to so he can take a step back closer to the front doors of the complex. You tilt your head to the side, pointedly shifting your suit jacket so he can catch sight of the gun holstered at your side before hiding it again.

“I wouldn’t do that,” you say with a thin smile as you draw closer.

“You’re-” Mado begins but cuts himself off quickly.

“Mado-kun,” you greet, hands clasped behind your back as you watch the man carefully. “I hear you had an issue with two of my subordinates.”

“I-”

“Or, well, there was no issue because you quite rudely turned them away,” you amend dryly. “I’d love to know your reasoning. I’ve got a few running theories of my own.”

“You misunderstand-”

“The most plausible theory, in my opinion, is that you think you can slide under the radar because there are more important things going on right now. You think you can make quick money by shaving off the money owed to us to keep for yourself,” you continue, smile falling off your face. “If that’s the case, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. The Port Mafia always repays its debts, and we always collect upon them.”

Mado takes in a stunted breath, then steps back again. “N-No. No, you misunderstand-” he tries again, and your lip curls up in frustration, eyes darting around the complex. 

It would be risky. Very risky. The Mafia controls all of the cameras in the complex, and you’re not in sight of any of the windows, but it’s broad daylight, and there’s always the off chance someone walks out while you’re in the process of putting a bullet through his skull. You’re just so fed up, and Albatross is right there…

You let out a puff of air, almost amused, as you take a step back and nod to yourself. Whatever, you think to yourself. It’s better than listening to him stumble over weak excuses, wasting even more of your time. Just as you’re about to reach for your gun, the door to the apartment complex slams open, and you halt.

“Really?” A familiar voice says, loud and frustrated. “You’re going to hang up on me now?”

You blink, head snapping to the side for your eyes to focus on Dazai Osamu, dressed in gray sweats and a black-tshirt, bandages wrapped all the way from his wrists disappearing under his shirt. He’s angry, brows furrowed as he glares at Mado, doesn’t even notice you standing there. Your irritation instantly fades, replaced with mild curiosity and entertainment.

“Dazai,” you greet easily, an amused smile curling at the corners of your lips. You ignore the stunned look Mado casts between the two of you. “You live here?”

Dazai freezes as soon as he hears your voice, brown eyes wide as looks at you, finally registering your presence. “You-what are you doing here?” He sounds caught off guard, in disbelief.

Almost the same question, almost the same tone as the way he asked why you were at the library two weeks ago, the smile on your lips now is decidedly mocking as you repeat the answer you gave him back then. “I own this building. The whole complex, actually.”

“You’re joking,” Dazai says flatly.

“Hmm,” you say, as if you’re thinking to yourself. “No, I don’t believe I am. Ask Mado-kun here, I’ve had to take time out of my day to come speak to him because he refuses to pay for the property we lease to him.”

You give Mado a faux-sweet smile, watching as he looks even more aghast as he looks between you and Dazai.

Dazai looks incensed by your words. “So not only do you refuse to fix my water problems, but you can’t even pay for the property?” he says snidely. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

You raise your eyebrows, glancing at Dazai and then back to Mado. “Is that so?”

“Dazai-san,” Mado laughs nervously. “Don’t be hasty now-”

“Hasty?” Dazai demands. “I’ve gone two weeks without water. Every time I call you about it, you blow me off.”

“How fascinating,” you say lightly, giving Mado a cool look. “Well, the complex will have a new landlord soon. Mado-kun, please head to the car so we can work out the details of terminating the contract.”

Mado stares at you as if you’ve just signed his death sentence. Which you suppose you have. Terminating the contract is a gentler way of putting terminating his life. You raise your eyebrows and lift your hand to shoo him away, making eye contact with Albatross who had stepped out of the car as soon as Dazai had come outside.

Albatross tosses you a wink and nods toward Dazai; you give him a withering look, directing your attention back to Dazai as Mado walks over to the sleek black car you’d arrived in.

The look Dazai gives you is akin to a kicked puppy, and his words are drawn out long as he speaks, a quiet whine that shouldn’t do something to you but it does. “I was suffering in your building for two weeks,” he pouts. “I should be compensated.”

You roll your eyes. “I’ll send someone to fix your water,” you say dryly. 

“You should give me your number,” Dazai says sweetly. “Just in case this happens again.”

“I’ll get you a new landlord and I’ll give you his number,” you say just as sweetly, relishing in the way he pushes his lip out even more.

“But what if it’s another bad landlord? I should have your number so I can call you just in case,” Dazai presses, tilting his head to the side and batting his lashes at you so blatantly that you have half a mind to snort and walk away.

Instead, you find yourself letting out a huff of laughter as you shake your head.

“Fine,” you say before you can stop yourself, which he clearly doesn’t expect from how his eyes shoot open, and you don’t expect from the way your heart rate spikes as soon as the words register. 

What the fuck?

You justify this by telling yourself that Mado’s inability to properly run the complex has, in turn, made the Mafia look bad, making it seem as if you’re unable to manage your own properties. It’s better to have someone who will instantly start complaining as soon as things go wrong so you can fix it right away.

Dazai scrambles to pull his phone from the pocket of his sweats and your lips quirk up a bit when you see the way his fingers are just barely trembling. 

Cute.

You can see him watching you anxiously from the corner of his eye as you type your number into his phone quickly with your first name and hand it back to him. A bit embarrassed by how quickly you gave in to him, you make up for it with: “Don’t bother me unless it’s urgent.”

“Mhm,” Dazai agrees as he takes his phone back from you, looking down at your contact information with bright eyes. Then he suddenly pouts, “You didn’t even give yourself a cute contact name. Just your first name. That’s so boring.”

You watch as he immediately starts typing and squint at him, “What did you change it to?” you ask suspiciously, trying to look, but he pockets his phone before you can, tossing you a saccharine smile.

“You should waive my rent too,” Dazai adds, voice soft and honeyed.

The fucking audacity of this kid, you think to yourself, almost laughing in disbelief. You just gave him your number against all better judgment—he has to have more than a few screws loose, maybe all of them. The worst part is, you think the more time you spend around him, the looser yours become, too, because somehow you’re actually considering it.

You shouldn’t even be having this conversation with him. He’s a civilian. You’re an executive in the Mafia. You shouldn’t have given him your number, you shouldn’t have given him your name, you shouldn’t have entertained any of this at all. He’s a civilian, and you can’t be giving him special treatment because he is a civilian. A normal guy going to university to live a normal life. The more time you spend around him, the more likely he is to become one of the nameless bodies dumped in the abandoned shipping container yard by the ports, caught in the crossfires of an underworld conflict that he shouldn’t be anywhere near just because he was seen with you.

This shouldn’t bother you. It shouldn’t. You’ve been the reason for countless deaths, pulled the trigger yourself on most, so why is it when you think of Dazai Osamu’s stupid big brown eyes glassy and empty—body forgotten and rotting in a pile of corpses in that dumping ground—do you find your mouth dry and your chest tight?

It’s an effort for you to force out a laugh and wave him off over your shoulder as you turn to leave. 

“Yeah, as if.”

There’s a skip in Dazai’s step as he makes his way back into his small studio apartment, fingers curled around his phone. As soon as he shuts the door, he flings himself onto his futon, pulling his phone out of his pocket and smiling at the new contact in it.

My Muse is what he’d changed the contact to from the boring name you’d entered it under as if you were only just an acquaintance to him and not his muse, his inspiration, his will to live. He clicks the message button on your contact and quickly types:

Dazai: hi (＠＾◡＾)

Instantly, it pops up that you read the message, and he waits anxiously for the three dots to appear, signaling that you’re typing a response, but they never come. He pouts to himself when he realizes that you’re not going to respond. A part of him wonders if maybe you gave him a fake number, but he doubts it. Still, Dazai wanted to get more information on you anyway, so he quickly pulls up a different contact. Dazai might not have a lot of friends, but he does have a lot of people who owe him favors.

Dazai: kataiii, remember when i helped u get a date with that brunette at the cafe? :P Katai: What do you want?

Dazai types in your number and promptly sends it to him. 

Dazai: tell me whatever info u can find about the person who owns this number.

Katai doesn’t respond, so Dazai figures that he’s already on the hunt. Instead, he grabs his notebook and flips right to the page where he’s been listing all of the things he’s noticed about you. 

Rich. Nepo baby?

Demanding job? What type of nepo baby has a demanding job?

REALLY rich? Built the nice library on campus, donated hundreds of millions of yen at 18/19 to build it—weird. Evaded answering when asked why.

Dazai taps his pen to his lips, trying to figure out what he wants to add on the next bullet point, and just as he thinks he’s formulated his next observation, his phone buzzes again.

Katai: No information. At all. Not even a name. Dazai: really? Katai: Yeah. Kind of weird, honestly. Usually I can find at least something small to go off of. It’s like this number doesn’t exist.

Interesting, Dazai thinks to himself, even more intrigued now as he sits up in his futon and starts making his next note. Wealthy, distant, cold, and apparently a ghost to even Katai Tamaya, who can usually find anyone and everyone with the smallest bit of information. 

Who are you?

You’re in a meeting with Mori, Kouyou, and Ace when you get the text. It’s from an unsaved number, but one that you already have ingrained in your head, considering you get several dozen texts a day from it. You don’t even know why you bother to check this time—you usually just ignore them until you have nothing better to do than see what he’s yapping on about. Maybe this time, it’s because it’s only a single message; you’re used to getting them en masse, eight or nine messages in a row, unnecessarily split up when they could’ve been combined into one message.

As Ace drones on about whatever issues he’s having at his casinos, you spare a glance down at your phone, unlocking it to click on the message. You halt when you see that the only thing Dazai sent you is a ping with his location. Your eyes flit back upward to make sure no one is looking at you, and then you type a quick message back.

You: ?

You wait, tongue scraping against the roof of your mouth as the three bubbles pop up on your phone. His response is quick, and your stress levels skyrocket when all he sends is a “help.” Your mind races as you try to figure out what to do—if you leave the meeting now, you’re bound to draw Mori’s attention, but…

You shouldn’t care. What are you doing? You should not care. He’s a random kid that you happened to run into a couple of times, who has somehow managed to convince himself that the two of you are fated. He’s delusional and annoying, and you’d probably be better off with him gone and unable to bother you. His existence puts you in danger as much as it does him, and the fact that you’re sitting here actually contemplating going to this location to see what’s wrong is proof enough of that.

Shit.

Once again, you’re forced to justify your own actions to yourself as you find yourself rising to your feet. You tell yourself you’re only heading there to put an end to this, to tell him that he has to stop bothering you, to stop texting a dozen times a minute, several times a day. To tell him that he has to forget about you and go back to whatever he was doing before he ran into you at the bar that night.

With all eyes on you, the cogs in your mind turn quickly for an excuse. You only come up with a vague and weak one, one that you know Mori will question later on.

“Something urgent just came up,” you say, smiling thinly at the three other executives at the round table. You pointedly ignore the curious look in Mori’s eyes, knowing nothing good ever comes from drawing his curiosity. “I have more important things to do than listen to Ace whine about his own failings.”

“You-” Ace spits out, face going red as he stands up, but you’re already leaving the conference room.

You: Have the car outside in 2 minutes. Albatross: not ur personal chauffeur 😒 i’m busy

You roll your eyes at the response as you make your way into the elevator, clicking the button to bring you down to the first floor. Each second in the elevator feels like an eternity, and you find yourself glancing back down at your phone frequently to see if Dazai sends another message, but he does not.

What are you doing?

You find yourself shaking your head, a bit lost and taken aback by your own actions, as the elevator doors slide open to the first-floor lobby. You ignore your subordinates and the other Mafia underlings as you make your way to the front doors of the headquarters. 

Albatross is dutifully waiting outside for you.

“Not my personal chauffeur, huh?” you say sarcastically as soon as you open the door to sit in the passenger seat. “What happened to being busy?”

“You take me for granted,” Albatross complains, head lolling to the side against the headrest to toss you a side-eye. “Where we goin’, doll?” 

You show him the location sent to you, and you pointedly ignore the knowing look Albatross gives you at the unsaved number in your phone. He takes it in his hand to zoom into the precise location and raises his eyebrows.

“The hell is he doing on that side of the city?” Albatross says more to himself than to you, putting the phone down and shifting the car into gear. You also pointedly ignore how he immediately knows who you’re rushing off to help. “‘s a ten minute drive. I’ll get there in three.”

Oh god. It’s not like you haven’t been in car chases with Albatross before, but you don’t think anything can prepare you for the lurching in your stomach as he takes off. They’re fun usually, but you’re also usually with Chuuya, and you’re also usually distracted trying to gun down whoever is giving chase, you’re not paying attention to how dangerously he’s weaving in and out of traffic to get from place to place.

Albatross looks entirely exhilarated. There’s a wide smile on his face, pupils blown wide, sunglasses hanging off the bridge of his nose as he leans forward. He lets out a wild laugh as he takes such a jarring turn that your shoulder slams against the car door. You toss him an angry glare, but Albatross is entirely unperturbed, doesn’t even notice as he lets out a whoop.

That side of the city. You hadn’t even noticed while in the meeting, sparing a glance back down at your phone. Dazai’s up in Tsuzuki-ku—all of the city is under the Port Mafia’s control, all of the city and well beyond, really, most of Japan is under the Port Mafia’s thumb, but the northern wards are frequently tested by lower-rung gangs hoping to try to sliver some of the Mafia’s heartland away from them. They always fail, but sometimes it can get messy, and recently, there’s been another making moves in Aoba-ku.

Your chest tightens in a way that it definitely shouldn’t. It wouldn’t be the first time a wannabe rival to the Mafia targeted someone close to an executive to try to get their hands on one, and you hadn’t exactly been subtly approaching him that day at the library. Two years ago, an organization called the Serpent’s Tongue targeted a girl Chuuya’d been talking to trying to get him to turn himself in—a civilian girl, actually, one that he dragged into this life just like you’re unintentionally doing with Dazai. He turned himself over for her; they killed her anyway, and the whole organization paid for it with their lives. So did all of their families. You don’t think Chuuya’s ever gotten over it.

You’re not trying to start a gang war for a civilian that you’ve met a handful of times, but…

“Should we call for backup?” Albatross asks you, uncharacteristically serious, as the two of you draw closer to the location sent to you. “What if it’s a trap? That Yakuza syndicate’s been pretty active up here in Aoba and Tsuzuki,”

“No,” you say, because you’re not fucking calling in the Black Lizards for this civilian. That’ll make this a whole operation, and then Mori will find out, and then everything will go to shit. “... I’ll text Chuuya.”

You: Where you at? Chuuya: Checking in on the ports in Kanagawa. What’s up?

You: Be on standby?

Chuuya: ??? Ok. What’s going on?

You don’t respond, slipping your phone back into your pocket and resting your head on the window. If Chuuya’s at the ports in Kanagawa-ku, then it won’t take him more than three or four minutes with the Tainted Sorrow to get to your location. You don’t need him barreling over here now if this is something you can handle on your own. The less people that know about Dazai fucking Osamu, the better.

“Uhhh,” Albatross begins. “I don’t think your boy’s in trouble, doll.”

Instantly, your blood pressure spikes.

You follow Albatross’s gaze to where he’s looking at a strip of shops, pulling to a stop in front of an affordable men’s warehouse. You stare blankly. Albatross looks like he’s about to start laughing.

“I’m going to kill him,” you breathe out, stepping out of the car and slamming the door shut so hard that you hear Albatross cursing at you from inside, even when you get all the way to the door of the store.

Your phone is buzzing incessantly, so you pull it out before you go into the building.

Chuuya: Hello?? What’s happening? Where are you? 

Bitterly, you type out a response.

You: Forget it. False alarm.

As soon as you open the door, you’re met with the overwhelming scent of shoe polish and cheap dye. A store attendant comes up to you to ask if you need help with anything, but you’ve already spotted Dazai in the back, looking lost as his eyes card between three black suits.

“You,” you spit out loud enough to get his attention. Dazai’s eyes widen as he looks up at you. “You have some nerve.”

“Bella.” Dazai ignores your ire, a smile lighting up his face. “You came!” 

“You said help,” you accuse angrily. “You said help and sent me a location with no explanation.”

“I do need help,” Dazai pouts. “I don’t know anything about suits. You wear such nice ones all the time, I figure you can help me pick one out.”

“Do I look like a goddamn stylist, Dazai?” You raise your voice, livid, blood still running hot from the panic you felt when you saw the text, how you’d exposed yourself in front of Mori, from the anxiety of trying to figure out if you needed to bring in the Black Lizards if this was a trap.

Dazai draws back a bit now as if only just realizing that you’re genuinely pissed, and you think you should take your gun and stick it in your own mouth because why are you feeling guilty when he’s the one in the wrong? You haven’t felt guilty for anything a day in your fucking life.

A sick part of you that you want to carve out and throw away defends him. How is he supposed to know the implications of what those messages could mean to someone like you? He’s a college student whose biggest problem of the day is working out the answers to his class assignments, and he has no idea who you are and what you do. He doesn’t know that the first thing that comes to your head is the sight of Chuuya’s girl’s head rolling on the fucking ground, watching him scream over her body. Doesn’t know that there are people out there with blood that runs as black as tar that are trying to hunt you down, would jump at the chance of any weakness to exploit.

You force yourself to calm down. You take a breath, take a step away, look up to the ceiling, and pray to a god you don’t believe in to give you the patience to get through this day.

“Well, since you’re here already…” Dazai tries, giving you a sweet smile and batting his long lashes.

Your eye twitches.

You drag your gaze from his face to the three suits he’s considering. Your lip curls up a bit in disfavor as you reach out to pinch the material between your fingers—it’s stiff and scratchy to the touch, surely uncomfortable to wear.

“What do you need this for?” you finally ask, glancing at him.

“I’m going on a date,” Dazai says proudly. You snort and look him over once. His jaw drops in offense, “That was so rude, what does that mean?”

“What do you really need it for?” you ask dryly. 

Dazai withers, shoulders slumping. “My journalist professor is having me attend some event with him. Told me to get something nice to wear so I don’t look out of place.”

“And you think this will do the job?” you ask distastefully. “This looks like something a high schooler would wear to a school dance.”

Dazai looks helplessly at the suit you’re judging. “How can you tell?” he whines. “It’s just a suit.”

“The material and the color. It’s washed out.”

“Why are rich people so pretentious?” Dazai mutters, more to himself than you, and you raise your eyebrows as you watch him pout, clearly taking in the differences between the suit he picked out and the one you’re wearing. Still, he continues bitterly, “It’s just a suit.”

“You’re going with a journalist. He’s going to want you to blend in so people aren’t careful about what they say around you,” you note offhandedly, tilting your head to the side as you look over him. “The more you dress like them, the less likely they’ll be to notice you and the looser their lips will be.”

This is your field of expertise, you learned all of this when you were thirteen and fourteen, just learning the ropes of mafia politics. The first lesson you learned was that of the importance of being able to camouflage yourself in any crowd—the importance of not only acting and sounding like you belong but looking like you belong. If one thing is even a little off, you’ll be sniffed out by bloodhounds. You don’t even notice how you’re absently lecturing him on it until you catch sight of him from the corner of your eye.

Dazai’s looking at you, curious and taking in your words. You don’t like the sudden intense attention from him, so against better judgment, you sigh and change the subject. 

“Come on,” you say. “I’ll take you somewhere else.”

Dazai’s mouth is dry as he trails after you into a luxury boutique in Nishi-ku. Everything about the place makes him feel uncomfortable and sorely out of place, from the way even the store attendants are dressed in suits that Dazai couldn’t dream of affording to the way he catches them casting looks toward one another as their eyes drift between you and Dazai.

“Yeah, uh, maybe we should go back to that warehouse? I can’t afford this,” Dazai says hesitantly, nearly tripping over a stand because he isn’t paying attention to where he’s walking.

“Obviously,” you say flatly, and Dazai would feel offended, but when he tries to peek around for the price on one of the suits near him, he finds, to his mortification, that there’s not even a price tag to look at. “Kido-san, can you get the backroom set up to take his measurements?”

Measurements, Dazai mouths to himself, feeling a bit lost.

An older man, who must be Kido, nods his head in acknowledgment. “Of course, hime.”

Dazai’s head snaps to the side, watching as your eye seems to twitch at the honorific. 

“Hime?” Dazai whispers urgently, growing more confused by the second. He thought he had a general idea of who you are but finds that every meeting with you leaves him more and more bewildered.

“Don’t call me that,” you scowl before turning to look at him. 

Dazai feels strangely seen under your stare, shifting on his feet from side to side as your gaze trails down from his face to his waist. You squint and then reach out, pinch the fabric of his cotton shirt, and pull it to the side; Dazai bites back a surprised yelp, which you seem to catch from how you give him a distinctly unimpressed look.

“I-” Dazai starts to say, but he doesn’t even know what he wants to say, so he just trails off awkwardly. 

You don’t seem to notice either way because whatever you’re looking for, you seem to have found, letting out a pleased hum as you make your way to the back of the store, leaving him alone with two female store attendants who are observing him like he’s some unknown specimen.

“So, how do you know her?” One finally approaches him with an excited gleam in her eyes, eager for some gossip. “Hime has never brought anyone to us before, not even Nakahara-sama.”

Dazai doesn’t know how to respond to that. Partially because he’s still caught on the way they address you as hime and partially because he’s caught on whoever ‘Nakahara-sama’ is and why they’re so impressed that you brought him here and not them. He feels smug about it, actually, so smug that he entirely forgets to respond until the woman draws back.

“Oh! We won’t tell anyone,” the woman rushes out, shaking her head as if thinking that’s why Dazai isn’t answering her question. “We have a completely confidential policy with our clients, and hime is our most important. We wouldn’t ever risk betraying her trust.”

Dazai’s mind is whirling, trying to store all of the information he’s receiving so he can put it down in his notebook when he gets home. Hime, the reverence in the store attendants’ voices when they talk about you, going to a boutique with a confidentiality policy… that’s all a bit weird, isn’t it? Dazai isn’t sure—rich people are weird in general, maybe it’s not unheard of for high-end boutiques like this to have policies in place in case clients come in and have to talk about their business. Nobody would want to go somewhere where attendants leak trade secrets for a quick buck. 

Hime, though, why-

“Stop badgering him.” Your voice rings through the small boutique as you step out from the backroom, arms folded across your chest as you give the two attendants a sharp look. “Dazai, come.”

Dazai feels like you’re treating him like a pet dog, but he does dutifully follow after you. You motion to a pedestal in the middle of the room and Dazai makes his way over to it, feeling a bit embarrassed as he stands on top of it. You lean against the wall, and Dazai isn’t really sure what to do when Kido waddles over with a measuring tape, so he holds his arms out.

You instantly snort and look away, Kido flattens his lips.

Dazai is embarrassed, but lowers his arms.

“Take off your clothes, Dazai-sama,” the older man snaps his fingers together.

Dazai freezes, hardly even taking note of the honorific because he’s mortified by what’s being requested of him. He does not want to do that because he doesn’t want you to see that he covers his whole body with bandages. He’s had more than enough people see the bandages and immediately cringe away, imagining what monstrosity must lie beneath them for Dazai to hardly even allow an inch of visible skin. Sensing his discomfort, he watches your eyes track down to the bandages peeking over his collar and sleeves, and then you pointedly turn around to face the wall, sighing as you pull out your phone.

Dazai’s lips part a bit in shock, not expecting you to immediately recognize the issue and move to try to fix it. He thinks maybe only one person ever in his life has been able to read him so easily, and he’s been gone for four years. 

For the first time since Odasaku’s death, Dazai feels like someone is actually seeing him.

“Shirt, Dazai-sama,” Kido urges impatiently, and Dazai swallows thickly as he pulls off his sweater, noticing the man pause when he sees the bandages wrapped around Dazai’s whole torso and chest.

“I don’t ever go without them,” Dazai says awkwardly, “I-”

“Take the measurements as is, Kido-san,” you say sharply from where you’re still facing the wall.

Kido doesn’t argue with you, immediately getting to work on measuring Dazai’s waist and hips. As he does, Dazai feels particularly uncomfortable with you still standing there facing the wall, so he finds himself talking.

“The day we met at the cafe, I was going to a poetry workshop,” he says suddenly. “For uni. It’s one of my classes this semester.”

“Yeah?” you ask, and Dazai is almost surprised that you’re indulging his conversation, a stupid smile twitching on his lips. “What’d they have you doing?”

“Our professor had us write free-verse,” Dazai continues, fingers thrumming against his thigh as he speaks—a nervous habit that he can’t seem to break. Kido slaps his hand to get him to stop when it messes up the measurement of his hips, and Dazai promptly stills. “I prefer free verse. It’s my favorite style of poetry.”

Dazai doesn’t really know why he’s rambling about this, but he can’t seem to shut himself up. He can feel his cheeks getting hot, realizing this probably isn’t a conversation you’d be interested in partaking in, and just as he’s about to awkwardly change the subject, you speak up.

“… I prefer sonnets,” you tell him after a few moments of silence.

“You read poetry?” Dazai asks, a bit too doubtfully, from the way you click your tongue in irritation.

“Not often. I don’t have the time for it, but I am not uncultured,” you say, and Dazai smiles a bit—he can practically see the scowl that’s on your face. “Il Canzoniere. Francis Petrarch. That’s my favorite.”

Dazai tilts his head to the side, considering you in a new light. “Huh,” he says more to himself than you. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Put your shirt back on and remove your pants, Dazai-sama,” Kido orders and Dazai nearly jumps, almost having forgotten about the man in his conversation with you. Dazai quickly does as asked, feeling a bit uncomfortable standing there in his briefs with his bandages wrapped around his legs. “I’ll be quick.”

“Why is Il Canzoniere your favorite?” Dazai asks curiously when Kido gets to work measuring each of Dazai’s thighs and calves.

You hum to yourself and then answer, “I think the Petrarchan view of love is very… accurate. How it’s so coveted despite how painful it may be. Among all of his other ideas, of course, but that I think is the most meaningful to me.”

Dazai’s lips part to respond, but for a second, no words leave them. Finally, he clears his throat and forces out, “Yeah… Yeah, I agree with that, too.”

“You’ve read?” you ask.

“Of course, I’ve read.” Dazai is almost offended by the question. “It’s Petrarch.”

“Have you really read it, though? The translations don’t do it justice.”

Dazai blinks. “You can speak Italian?” 

“Several languages,” you drawl, as if it’s nothing. “Useful for business.”

Before Dazai can respond, Kido rises to his feet and motions for Dazai to pull back up his pants, noting down the measurements on his pad. “The rest I can do with your clothes on. You’re free to turn back around, hime.”

You do, and Dazai’s breath hitches at the unreadable expression on your face as you lean back against the wall and look over him. “What made you choose to go into English? Not exactly a useful major unless you plan on going into law or publishing.”

Oh. Dazai hesitates, throat bobbing as he swallows, lashes fluttering as he averts his gaze down toward the floor. “My friend… he passed away a few years ago. Right before I was about to enter college, actually. He asked me to finish his book for him—I told him I don’t know anything about writing and that it’ll turn out bad if he had me do it, but he insisted… and I mean, I can’t really say no to my dying best friend, can I?”

He thinks this might be the first time he’s talked about Odasaku out loud since his death. He didn’t go to the funeral, hasn’t talked to Ango since it all happened. He’s emotionally isolated himself from everyone for years, and Dazai is feeling more than a little vulnerable because he doesn’t even know why he’s telling you all of this. He just can’t seem to shut his mouth.

“I think you’ll do it justice,” you tell him after a few moments of silence.

Dazai looks up at you, dark eyes wide and imploring. He searches your face to see if you’re just fucking with him but only finds sincerity—you immediately look away, focusing on the wall instead. A smile tugs at the corners of his lips and he’s positively vibrating at your words until Kido lets out a heavy sigh.

“Dazai-sama, please stop moving so much.”

Dazai stills immediately and instead focuses on trying to help Kido finish up the measurements as quickly as possible. Dazai’s only been to this part of Nishi-ku a handful of times, but if he remembers correctly, there’s a cafe two blocks down, and this is his chance. 

This is his chance to ask you on a date. He has to take it. He hasn’t felt this giddy, this happy, this hopeful since before he lost Odasaku. Dazai hasn’t looked forward to the future like this in years, just surviving each day, wishing each passing one was his last, but not wanting to disappoint Odasaku by not fulfilling his last request. He’d been at his breaking point that day at the bar, but then he met you.

Then he met you. And yeah, you hadn’t shown much interest in him that night. Not at all, actually, but Dazai had never been drawn to someone like he’d been drawn to you before in his entire life. He’d known something was there, even if that did make him a little delusional. His heartbeat is erratic in his chest, and he’s clumsily trying to help speed things up, but he thinks he might be doing more harm than help. 

When Dazai looks over to you again, he finds himself flustered by the expression on your face. Your head is tilted to the side as you observe him, lips curved up, and a look in your eyes that can only be described as fondness. You don’t notice that he caught you staring, so Dazai tries to burn this image in his head as quickly as he can. He’s used to contemptuous, judgmental looks, he doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at him so affectionately before. It makes him feel warm, like he’s someone who’s capable of being loved. 

The look disappears as soon as you realize he caught you—Dazai misses it instantly. He watches instead as a flurry of conflicted emotions crosses over your face, and he wishes he could read your mind, know what you’re thinking, but he does know that he doesn’t like the painfully neutral expression that settles there, a dreadful feeling growing in his stomach that makes him feel as if something is wrong.

“Are you okay?” Dazai asks, trying to figure out what had changed so quickly.

You don’t respond to him—rather, you look at Kido instead, making his stomach drop.

“Is that all?” you finally ask as Kido rises to his feet.

“Yes, hime,” Kido tells you. “I’ve finished with the measurements.”

“Good,” you say, and then turn on your heel to leave without even sparing another glance toward Dazai. Caught off guard, he readjusts his shirt and nearly trips over his own feet, trying to rush after you. “When do you need this by, Dazai?”

Dazai doesn’t like the sudden distance in your tone, a far cry from the easy conversation the two of you had just been holding, but he forces himself to respond. “Uh, by the end of the month, I think?”

“Kido-san will have it done for you by the end of the week,” you say, tapping something into your phone, hardly paying attention to him. “Come back and pick it up then. Charge it to my card when you’ve figured out the pricing for it, yeah?” 

“Of course, hime,” Kido agrees and Dazai feels a bit unsettled.

“You’ll come with me to pick it up, bella?” he prods, nudging your shoulder and trying to peek over to see what you’re typing, trying to figure out if something is wrong, if he’d done something to cause the abrupt change in attitude or if you’d gotten a text about work or something instead. He feels a bit nervous, his tongue swollen in his mouth, watching you carefully.

You stare at him, and for a terrible, terrible second, Dazai thinks you’re about to tell him no. But then the tension in your brows disappears, letting out a soft puff of air as your expression smoothes out.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “Yeah, I will.”

When Dazai smiles, feeling light and relieved, hopeful that maybe for the first time since Odasaku’s death, he won’t have to be alone, he misses the way your expression drops as you look away from him. 

“This needs to stop.”

You stiffen at the sound of Chuuya’s familiar voice coming from the door of your bedroom, your shirt half-unbuttoned as you get ready for bed. You raise your eyebrows, turning to look at him over your shoulder, a bit thrown off because you hadn’t even heard the elevator come up to your room.

“Please, enlighten me as to what has you so worked up that you’re barging into my bedroom while I’m half-dressed,” you say dryly, giving Chuuya a cool look as you turn to face him, crossing your arms over your chest.

Chuuya looks uncharacteristically angry at you, lips curled down, eyes cold. It almost makes you draw back, mind racing to try to figure out what you might’ve done to piss him off. You can’t remember the last time he’s been mad at you like this—you’re not sure if he ever has been.

“Dazai Osamu. Fourth year literature student at Yokohama National University. Graduated from Kanagawa Sohgoh High School four years ago. Currently living in building number 10511898050 in the residential area of Iwaicho in Hodogaya-ku, unit number 409. He has an eight am class Mondays and Wednesdays, a two pm class Tuesdays and Thursdays, a-”

“Enough,” you cut him off, voice clipped and heartbeat thudding in your ears as you stare at Chuuya, watching as he gives you a sharp look. 

“It took me less than ten minutes to get all of that information on him,” Chuuya says, voice low, “and no, I didn’t have Albatross help me. What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything,” you say, jaw tight. “He’s just some random fucking kid who I bumped into once and won’t leave me alone now, that’s-”

That’s a lie, you know it, and evidently, Chuuya knows it too from how he scoffs at you and shakes his head. Your expression twists, throat spasming as you swallow. You’d known you were in trouble since you left the boutique—when you’d caught your gaze lingering on him as he fumbled to help Kido with the measurements, only making more work for the poor man, a warm feeling spreading through your chest when you saw how he gradually became more and more comfortable as you entertained his conversation, rambling about poetry and literature, the solemn look that crossed his face when he spoke about his friend.

“I think you’ll do it justice.”

You hadn’t even noticed the way you instinctively made an effort to reassure him, not until he looked back up at you and you saw the pretty flush spreading across his cheeks, gaze flitting to the ground, too flustered to meet your eyes. It’d been like someone tossed cold water right over you, drawing you from your thoughts and smacking you right back into reality.

You had every intention of rebuking him as soon as you finished finalizing the details of the order with Kido—you did. You were going to tell him not to contact you again, that if he did, you’d block his number. You were going to tell him to forget about you and go back to whatever he was doing before he met you that night at the bar—you were. But when he looked down at you through his lashes, unsure and hesitant, as if he knew what you were about to say to him but had the slimmest hope that maybe he was wrong, and-

And you couldn’t do it.

Fuck.

Who even are you anymore? You’re so bitter that you can taste it in your mouth, it’s an ugly and uncomfortable taste. You don’t even know where this is coming from—the reluctance to hurt this kid, the weakness. Because that’s what this is, it’s a weakness, one that you know better than anyone that people will exploit, and you are still putting him in danger.

“Yeah?” Chuuya lets out an unamused laugh, taking a step forward and pulling something out of his pocket. His gaze is challenging, and you have a pit in your stomach, one that tells you you’re not going to like whatever he’s about to say. “The fuck is this then, huh?” 

He slaps a copy of your own credit card transactions down into your hand. Your blood boils when you see the red circle around the recent payment you made to Kido; above that, the 50k yen wired to the new landlord of the complex.

“You’re going to get this fucking kid killed,” Chuuya tells you, leaning in close. “You must realize that by now. You’re going to get him killed. If I could get all of this information so easily, it’s only a matter of time before one of our enemies does. That syndicate in the northern wards. The Red Chamber. Cao Xueqin will have him chopped into pieces and send you on a fucking treasure hunt across the city to get all of his limbs together for a proper burial. And for what? You’re bored? Is that it? You’re gonna have this kid tortured to death because you’re bored?”

You don’t answer, glaring at him as you try to calm yourself down, but you’re unusually rattled by Chuuya’s words. You find your mouth dry, your fingers shaking in your pockets. The sharp, snide words you would usually smack him back with die on your tongue, and you feel like a fool staring at him.

Your lack of response seems to trigger some sort of realization in Chuuya and you watch as his eyes widen briefly, leaning back.

“You actually care about him,” he says quietly, and now he’s the one who looks uncertain, averting his gaze to the side as he thinks.

“No, I don’t,” you correct immediately, shaking your head. “I don’t, Chuuya.”

“You do,” Chuuya murmurs. “It doesn’t matter. You can’t continue this. Cut it loose now, before it gets any further, before you end up getting him killed.”

“I’m not you,” you spit out, a low blow, you know. To Chuuya’s credit, he doesn’t react beyond a sharp inhale, nostrils flaring briefly.

“No, you’re not,” he agrees. “I wouldn’t be so fucking stupid to make the same mistake twice.”

“That was your mistake,” you hiss. “Not mine.”

Chuuya laughs, a huff that’s more mocking than amused, as he takes a step away from you. You’d think you’d prefer anger or hate more than the thinly veiled pity within them now. 

“It’ll be your mistake too soon,” he warns, stuffing his hands in his pocket as he turns to leave. “You’re smarter than this.”

You are. You are smarter than this. You know this will turn out the same way it did with Chuuya. You can picture it sometimes. Dazai’s body in place of hers, bruised and beaten, lacerations lining his cold body and his head severed from his neck—a trophy to be taken by your enemies. His blood stains your hands and clothes, no matter how much you scrub your skin raw and no matter how many new outfits you buy. Whenever you look down, you see his blood dripping off of you.

“I’m not reaching out to him again,” you finally say, ignoring the way your chest tightens. “Get the fuck out of my apartment, Chuuya.”

Chuuya looks back at you, not even bothering to hide the pity this time. You have half a mind to slap it right off of his face.

“For your sake and his, I hope you don’t.”

“Dazai-kun, are you even paying attention?”

Dazai startles out of his own head, blinking rapidly as his gaze focuses on Professor Ui, who’s watching Dazai with a disapproving frown. Dazai gives the older man a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Sorry, Ui-sensei. I was distracted,” Dazai apologizes, glancing once more back down at his phone, smile softening a bit when he sees you read his messages complaining about such a late meeting on campus. You don’t respond, naturally, but Dazai can practically picture you rolling your eyes at him.

“Please focus,” Professor Ui says tightly. “It’s essential that you understand our plans going into this event. We have two weeks left to prepare.”

Dazai sighs as he puts his phone down, looking up at Professor Ui and the two other students who are going to be working this event with him, both of whom look irritated by Dazai’s lack of focus.

“The event we’ll be attending is going to be hosted at the Tocho for a special agency in Tokyo that handles violent crimes associated with criminal enterprises. They made huge progress in pushing the Scarlet Gang out of the Asakusa Ward—the government wants to celebrate them for it,” Professor Ui explains, for the second time clearly, seeing how the two other students share a look with one another. “The whole event is pretty much just a mask for Representatives and Councillors in the Diet to gather and advocate for and against a major military bill about to pass through the Lower House.”

Dazai can already feel himself losing focus again, itching to text you yet another update that you won’t respond to, but he knows you’ll read. He wonders what you’re doing right now—whatever rich people do at seven on a Thursday night, he supposes. Probably out drinking with people, he thinks, jealous that he’s stuck on campus getting the rundown on this stupid assignment. He pouts a bit to himself, wondering if you’re with other guys right now, listening to them ramble on in the same way Dazai did to you, but before his thoughts can spiral too much in that direction, Professor Ui clears his throat.

“Our goal during this event is to find viable proof to move forward with an exposé on a crime syndicate known as the Sun and Steel,” Professor Ui says, and Dazai suddenly straightens, interested in what his professor is saying. “We’ve received a tip that one of their executives is going to be attending this event under the pretense of being an interested party—invites have been sent out to a lot of major corporations who have stakes in the bill. We believe that the Sun and Steel is using a company called the Age of Blue as a front for its criminal activities—if we can find proof and expose them for what they are, it can be a major stepping stone to taking down some of the bigger organizations in Japan.”

“Ui-sensei,” Hinami says, leaning forward in her seat. “The government wouldn’t really let some mafias attend an event for an agency that’s dedicated to taking them down. That’s a bit…”

“Ironic,” Ayato snorts, folding his arms over his chest. “I mean, if there’s no proof of their front company being involved in shady shit—oh, uh, sorry, sensei—shady stuff, it’s not like they can just pick and choose which to invite. Or, well, they can, but it won’t be a good look.”

“Exactly,” Professor Ui says, “and the government can’t do anything about them until they have due cause.”

“That’s what we’re for,” Dazai notes, “... but why us? You’re an adjunct professor—work for Ivory Eagle, that newspaper company that everyone’s been talking about. You have a whole team, why do you need a bunch of college students?”

“Does it matter?” Ayato says with a sharp grin. “Imagine if we pull this off? Our careers would be set. We’d have helped with the takedown of a mafia.”

Dazai thinks it does matter, eyes settling on the unreadable expression on Professor Ui’s face. His two classmates might be giddy with anticipation over such a ‘cool’ assignment, but mafia business is dangerous. Dazai might be fond of the idea of death, but he’s got a final wish to fulfill before that—plus, the idea of being tortured to death isn’t exactly appealing to him. He’s not sure that it’s just a coincidence that Professor Ui chose three students who have no family to help with this assignment. Otsuka Ayato, a second-year student who was orphaned during the Dragon’s Head Conflict six years ago; Koda Hinami, a third-year student who's been in and out of the foster system since she was a baby; and Dazai, whose mother killed herself when he was seven and whose aunt abandoned him, whose only guardian died four years ago.

No one would come looking for any of them if things went poorly. 

“You won’t be in danger,” Professor Ui assures them. “Just think of it as a way to test your skill in information gathering while in a conversational setting—go in there, observe, make small talk, and see what you can find out. They’ll have their guard up around my fellow journalists and I, you three are new faces. All you’re going to do is go in there and talk. No danger.”

Dazai isn’t convinced.

“Ui-sensei, you said this is meant to be a stepping stone?” Hinami asks curiously, changing the subject before Dazai can press any further. “A stepping stone for who?”

Professor Ui smiles thinly. “The Port Mafia.”

[room25-morgue-street]

More Shirodad stuff no one asked for 🐿️

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 SOMETIMES ALL I THINK ABOUT IS YOU (LATE NIGHTS IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE)

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: realizing you have no idea when dazai's birthday is, you and chuuya embark on a massive quest to figure it out. and you do—but you also find out something far more worrying in the process, making you question if you ever really knew dazai osamu. the issue? you have no way of bringing it up to him. but you'll have to worry about that later anyway. first things first: you have to plan a birthday that dazai will never forget. {sfw, 14.8k}

AUTHOR'S NOTES: AHHHHHHHH HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY BOYYYYYYYY im so proud of how this fic came out genuinely its my favorite thing ive written to date. i hope you guys enjoy it as much as i enjoyed writing it (warnings: fem!reader, mostly fluff with some angst sprinkled in at the beginning and end)

“Hey, do you know when Dazai’s birthday is?” 

“Jesus fucking Christ, do you ever stop thinking about him?”

Your jaw drops as Chuuya lets out the loud complaint, head snapping to the side to focus on where he’s sitting in the chair at the tattoo parlor near headquarters, cheek pressed against the headrest, glaring at you as the artist continues to work on the right half of his upper back, finishing up the last section of the art spanning across his entire back. It’s his biggest one yet, you can hardly see an inch of unmarked skin—bright reds of camellia flowers and different types of animals and objects centered around the skull of a ram decorate his back. It’s beautiful, you have to acknowledge that, you don’t think you’ve ever seen such a stunning tattoo before and Chuuya is beyond pleased with how it’s turning out considering how he’s constantly pulling off his shirt to look at it in a mirror whenever he gets the chance.

To honor the Flags, he’d told you when he dragged you along for the first session. You didn’t know most of them—you’d worked with Lippmann a few times considering his job within the Mafia, and you’d met with Iceman to give him the rundown on targets that needed to be handled when Mori would send him to you in Kyoto, but that was about the extent of your interaction with them. Chuuya’d been closer to them—he didn’t like to talk about them at first, but he’s gradually been more and more open with it.

You think it’s because he’s afraid of forgetting them.

“You’re an asshole,” you snap after getting over the shock of his rude comment, turning your head away to look out the window.

Dazai evades the two of you whenever Chuuya has one of his sessions scheduled. You think it’s kind of funny, honestly; you know he does it because he hates pain and he knows that if he joins you guys, Chuuya will somehow goad him into getting a tattoo with a dare or a challenge that he won’t be able to back down from. So, instead, he makes excuses for missions that you both know damn well he doesn’t have.

“No, I don’t know,” he finally says irritably. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”

You give him an appalled look. “He’s your friend, and your partner. What do you mean you don’t know?”

“That bastard is not my friend,” Chuuya instantly hisses, but you can’t help but notice that he suddenly looks troubled by the realization that he doesn’t know Dazai’s birthday.

“Yeah, okay.” You roll your eyes, knowing damn well that it’s a blatant lie. “That’s a fucking lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Is not,” Chuuya spits.

“Is too.” 

Chuuya would have kept going with the back and forth, but he’s given a sharp look by the tattoo artist working on his shoulder and he settles down, but not before shooting you one last withering look.

“I bet he knows your birthday,” you add after a few moments of silence, just to trigger Chuuya again.

It works.

He lets out a noise more befitting of an animal, head snapping back to the side to look at you. “He definitely does n-” He cuts himself off before he can even finish the sentence, glaring at you. “That’s because that freak knows everything somehow.”

You only give him an easy shrug. “Just saying, it’s a bit…” You give him a twisted expression, nose wrinkled and lips pressed together rather than saying the word out loud, and Chuuya looks murderous. 

“It’s a bit what?” Chuuya demands. “You don’t know his birthday either.”

“I’m not his partner,” you counter to hide the fact that you are very bothered over not knowing his birthday.

“No, you’re just his girlfriend,” Chuuya says snidely.

Your face heats up. “I am not his girlfriend, Chuuya,” you scowl. “Shut up.”

“Yeah, okay,” Chuuya replies sarcastically, giving the tattoo artist an apologetic look when he gives the ginger another sharp warning with his eyes. “If Dazai wanted us to know his birthday, he would have told us. Y’know how secretive he gets over his personal life—he’d be shouting it off every rooftop if it was something he wanted us to do something about.”

You’re not quite as convinced.

At first glance, Dazai doesn’t shut up—he finds any and every reason to hear himself speak, whether it be random facts about crabs or ranking methods of suicide from least to most painful. Because of his tendency to run his mouth, most people don’t realize just how secretive he is about his personal life. You’ve realized that he probably uses it as a tactic to evade questions, because when people do poke and prod about his personal life, he becomes avoidant, expertly redirecting the conversation to something less personal by subtly changing the subject or pissing off whoever (Chuuya) is talking to him. You always catch it—conversation manipulation is your thing, you’ve finely honed your skills in guiding discussion to your discretion, it’s a skill that comes in handy at the negotiation table and in politics. You know he knows that you catch it too, always watching you carefully to ensure that you don’t call any attention to what he’s doing.

You don’t, of course, you’re not going to put him on the spot like that, but you don’t understand it. Well, you can to an extent—if you had random people prodding at your personal life, you’d also evade the topic. But you and Chuuya aren’t random people. You’re his friends, and you can’t for the life of you understand why he won’t open up to the two of you a little.

Every time you bring up the subject of him to him, he starts acting strange and cagey, like he knows that his evasion tactics won’t work with you and he wants to say something, but simply can’t get the words out. Maybe it’s his mistaken belief that he doesn’t deserve all of the things other people take for granted: comfort, friends, happiness. But still, you can’t imagine that Dazai doesn’t crave the experience of a normal birthday—well, as normal as things can get for teenage mafiosos—because you know that Dazai at his core simply wants to be a normal teenager.

As to why Dazai would rather deny himself happiness than to let you and Chuuya closer than arm's length? The answer alludes you even you.

When Chuuya grimaces, letting out a heavy breath and averting his gaze, you think that he’s come to the same conclusion as you.

“I assume since you’re bringing it up, you have some sort of plan?” Chuuya sighs, tired.

You smile.

“Naturally.”

You think Chuuya might kill you after this.

You can’t help but snort to yourself as you kneel on the floor next to Mori’s desk, rifling through his drawers to find the key to his file cabinet. Chuuya is somewhere downstairs trying to keep the man distracted with a fake medical condition while you try to find Dazai’s file in his office. You can hear him in the ear piece you’re wearing, flustered and stuttering over his words. You can almost picture how red his face is. 

Chuuya isn’t a bad liar, usually—in fact, he can act his ass off on missions—but lying to the Boss is an entirely different story. You think that you probably should have been the one to keep Mori distracted, but you worried that if Mori got up here and Chuuya was still searching, he wouldn’t be able to play it off. So, this was the lesser of two evils. 

Mori is getting increasingly more irritated as Chuuya keeps miswording the symptoms and backtracking, then blaming it on how ‘his head just hurts so bad, he can’t think.’ You’re sure he’s starting to suspect something—or more likely, the man probably figured it out right away—but you also know he’s too hyper-paranoid about losing his strongest ability user to dismiss Chuuya’s blatant lies for what they are.

You let out a victorious puff of air when your hand encloses around the key you’d been searching for, immediately shuffling over to the file cabinet, unlocking it as quickly as you can to shuffle through them, trying to find Dazai’s.

Mori has too many files, you think to yourself frustrated, eyes scanning as fast as you can as you flip through them, trying to spot the one you need, becoming increasingly more frantic when you hear Mori and Chuuya enter the elevator, not sure if they’re coming up to his office or if Mori’s dragging Chuuya down to one of the lower floor infirmaries.

Fuck, you think, finally flipping through to the D’s and letting out a frustrated groan when his file isn’t even there. You go through it again, more carefully this time, and nearly tug out your hair when you realize that either Mori misplaced Dazai’s file or there isn’t one. But you can’t imagine either of those options being true.

Getting increasingly more anxious as the seconds pass, and knowing that Chuuya actually will kill you if he embarrassed himself like this for nothing, you start rifling through the other letters in a panic. From the A’s all the way to the Z’s, it’s only on your second scan through that you pause, spotting a thick, unnamed file in the T section.

You stare at it for a moment, brows furrowed, a gut feeling twisting inside you as you try to pull out the file. It’s a struggle—the file is thick and the drawer is stuffed, but when you finally get it out and flip it open, your eyes widen when Dazai’s face stares back at you in the top left corner of the first paper in the file. He’s younger in the picture—no older than thirteen or fourteen—both eyes uncovered, black and void of life.

You let out a shaky breath, heart racing as your eyes scan dismissively over any information that’s not his birthday, because you know damn well Dazai will not take kindly to yours and Chuuya’s snooping and you want to mitigate the damage, only to halt when your gaze catches on blacked out information right above the date.

His name?

You pause, eyes focusing momentarily as you try to understand what you’re reading.

NAME:  ████████████████ 

ALIAS: Dazai Osamu

What?

You don’t know how long you stare at the file, lips parted and a torrent of emotions clawing at your chest. Mainly confusion, but also something else—tighter, more unwelcome. You don’t even have time to try to figure out what you’re looking at because at once, the remote in your pocket is buzzing, the last signal from Chuuya that Mori is on the floor of his office.

You let out a string of curses, putting the file back where you found it, locking the cabinet and putting the key back before darting to the other side of the desk. You mask the confusion and nerves rattling your mind and body with an irritated expression just as the door opens.

“… ggest that you take some time to rest, Chuuya-kun. Physically, there is nothing wrong with you.”

You look over your shoulder, eyes meeting Mori’s as you frown deeply. “You’re late,” you say. “I’ve been waiting here for ten minutes.”

“Ah, apologies, I’m afraid young Chuuya-kun has spent the past twenty minutes following me around with nonexistent health issues,” Mori replies with a thin smile, purple eyes carding over you before he looks around his office curiously, as if he knows you’d been up to something but doesn’t know what. Chuuya cringes next to him and gives you a withering look, he opens his mouth to protest but Mori is speaking again before he can get anything out. “What did you want to discuss?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the situation in Vladivostok,” you say, eyes following Mori, waiting for him to sit down so you can. You watch as he glances around his desk, as if trying to figure out what you’d been doing before he showed up. You almost smile when his eyes narrow after coming empty handed. “I think it would be in our best interest…” 

As you sit down across from Mori, you slip your hands behind your back, giving Chuuya a thumbs up, letting him know that his humiliation was not in vain.

Step one, complete. June 19th.

“I will never fucking forgive you for that,” Chuuya hisses when the two of you finally leave Mori’s office. “Never. That was humiliating.”

You snort. “It was pretty bad.”

“Fuck you,” Chuuya snaps. His face is still on fire, has been for the past twenty minutes as you explained your plan for the new organization rising to power in eastern Russia. “Well? When is his birthday?”

You cringe and Chuuya is instantly glowering at you. “Don’t even tell me you didn’t find it. You gave me the thumbs up. I’ll-”

“No, I got it,” you say dismissively. 

That’s not what you’re cringing over—you’re cringing for two reasons: 1) his birthday is less than five days away and you have no idea how the two of you are going to figure something out before then, and 2) the reminder of Dazai’s file, its misplaced location and the blacked out information where his name should have been, the alias labeling what you thought was his real name.

Your lips part to bring it up to Chuuya, but you hesitate because you don’t know if you should. The last thing you want to do is upset Dazai because you let something out that he didn't want anyone to know.

“Well?” Chuuya demands. “What is it?”

“June 19th,” you say, watching as Chuuya blanches. “Yeah, I know.”

“What the fuck are we supposed to do in four days?” Chuuya hisses, grabbing your shoulder and forcing you to look at him. “I don’t even know what that bastard would want.”

You’re just as lost, grimacing as you rub the back of your neck. “I don’t know,” you admit. “Dazai never really… wants for anything.”

You stare ahead listlessly, leaning against the elevator wall as the two of you head down to the first floor. Dazai likes playing video games, but he gets bored of them quickly. His room is stacked with games he’s played once and then tossed to the side. He likes crab, but you’re not going to get him canned crab for his birthday. He likes suicide, and you’re pretty sure a new edition of that wretched book of his came out, but you also don’t want to get him that for, well, obvious reasons.

“Maybe we can get him a pet crab?” Chuuya frowns.

“He’ll kill it,” you dismiss, “and then he’ll spend months whining over it. And blaming us.”

“Fair enough.”

The elevator door slides open as the two of you reach the bottom floor, and you watch as the subordinates meandering about incline their heads toward the two of you as you pass by. You only absently wave them off, mind racing as you try to figure out what to do for Dazai’s birthday. Crab, suicide, video games—what else could Dazai possibly like?

You think the only other thing is-

Oh. Oh. You have an idea.

A smile spreads across your face. “Chuuya,” you say, relieved, “I have the best idea-”

“There you guys are,” Dazai’s familiar voice rings from the right, and immediately, Chuuya gives you a sharp, panicked look and you shut your mouth, stiffening. “I was…”

Dazai trails off, and you briefly shut your eyes, because wow, that was entirely unsubtle. Dazai’s smile is more strained now and the shine in his dark eye fades, the palpable excitement withers away in a matter of seconds.

Fuck.

“I see,” Dazai says, voice cool and withdrawn. “You guys are busy. It wasn’t important anyway.”

“Dazai,” you call after him, taking a few steps, but the boy has already whirled around, stalking off the way he came. He ignores your call of his name. “Shit.”

“He totally took that the wrong way,” Chuuya says, as if that wasn’t obvious.

“How astute, Chuuya,” you say dryly, chest tight as Dazai disappears around the corner.

“You know, for someone who brags about not needing anyone, he’s pretty fucking sensitive,” Chuuya notes.

“Don’t be a fucking asshole, Chuuya,” you snap at him, but the redhead only shrugs carelessly in response.

“It’s the truth. Anyway, what was your idea?” 

Even with the weight of Dazai clearly being upset heavy on your chest, the reminder of your idea for his birthday still causes a sly smile to spread across your lips.

“You’re gonna love this.”

Not only was Dazai upset, but he was upset enough that he hasn’t come back to your apartment in three and a half days. You figure he must be back at his shipping container, or maybe staying with those other friends of his, but you feel lonely without him. It’s weird not coming back to your apartment to find him lounging on your couch eating your favorite snacks; it’s different when he has missions and can’t be here, right now? He’s choosing to not be here, and that makes you feel gross and uncomfortable.

You feel bad, and no matter how many times Chuuya tells you to look on the bright side—that you guys can plan his birthday without him constantly hovering, figuring out what the two of you are doing—it just makes you feel worse. 

You’re sitting in your apartment waiting for Chuuya when the elevator bings, signaling someone coming up to your apartment—and considering there’s only two people who the front desk let up without your explicit permission, and one of them is still dealing with issues at one of the ports, which flooded from all of the rain the past few days, there’s only one person who it can be.

Your eyes widen as your head snaps up, looking to the elevator as the doors slide open, revealing Dazai fumbling with something in his jacket as he steps out. He doesn’t even notice you until you rise to your feet, and when he does, he’s instantly guarded. 

“You’re supposed to be on a mission,” he accuses, voice low.

You’re a bit hurt that Dazai only showed up to your apartment because he thought you wouldn’t be here but you mask it with a tilt of your head and a curious expression.

“I am on a mission,” you say, and it’s not a lie—the mission is finalizing the plans for Dazai’s birthday, step two starts in four hours and you need to confirm things with Chuuya before it begins. What awful timing, you realize mournfully, because you do want to smooth things out with Dazai but right now you can’t afford to. “It’s one I can do at home.”

Dazai makes a dismissive noise in the back of his throat, gaze focusing on the folders laid out in front of you. Closed, luckily, you’d been skimming through one but you got bored while waiting for Chuuya and decided to scroll on your phone.

“I only came to pick up my other jacket,” Dazai finally says, voice still cold and distant—you hate it.

Your eyes track down to Dazai’s coat, noticing the blood that’s dripping from it onto your wood floor.

You cringe, but then extend an olive branch by asking, “Want me to throw it in the wash?”

Dazai hesitates, a reluctant expression crossing his face but he nods, slipping it off his shoulders and padding over to you slowly, handing it to you carefully so as to not get the blood on your couch. Your fingers brush his as he does and your throat spasms a bit.

Dazai draws back quickly, but then he looks down at the files in front of you, and then back to you and asks, “… Want help with that?”

Shit.

This is Dazai’s olive branch, and you have to reject it. Because then he’ll realize this is no mission, and all of the plans for his birthday will go to waste.

“Nah,” you say easily. “It’s fine. It’s quick, where were you heading out to?”

Dazai looks a little put out by your rejection, but he doesn’t look too bothered, so he probably took your lie as truth.

“Bar Lupin.”

You roll your eyes.

Dazai gives you a dirty look.

“I don’t know why you get so jealous about them,” Dazai says pettily, obviously trying to get a retaliatory dig in for whatever wound he thinks he received the other day. Your eye twitches at the accusation. “I knew Odasaku before you.”

You pause at that.

Does Oda know Dazai’s real name? You’re hit with a wave of vicious jealousy, and faced once again with the back and forth you’ve been dealing with the past three days—do you really know Dazai? He’s always hid a lot from you, you knew that, but to realize that you only know him by an alias… You don’t understand it—is it by choice? Does he just no longer want to associate with that name? If that’s the case, then you don’t even want to ask and make him uncomfortable. 

But what if it’s not? What if Dazai Osamu is just a fake persona he’s built to hide his real self? You doubt he’s a spy, Mori would obviously know but… if it was Mori that forced him to take on a new name and identity? If he wants to let people in but can’t? You remember all of the times when you ask him things and he stares at you as if he wants to answer but doesn’t know how.

“You shouldn’t think too much, your small brain will implode.”

“Fuck you.”

Drawn from your thoughts, you glare at Dazai, who only gives you a simpering smile in return, eye regaining that little bit of shine it’d lost when he ran into you and Chuuya that day. Then he hesitates again and you raise your eyebrows.

“I’ll call things off with Odasaku and Ango? … You picked out that movie last week, we never watched it. We can watch it after you finish up?” His voice is quiet, uncertain and you feel like a cunt, because you have no way of saying no without being a cunt. 

You’d already told him that the mission wouldn’t take long, so you can’t use that as an excuse. You think maybe you should just call off tonight with Chuuya, meet at his apartment later on to try to get things for dawn, when everything is to take place. It would be risky, you don’t know if you can pull off such an elaborate scheme with such little preparation and Dazai, of all people, as the target, but you think you’d rather risk that then say no to him right now. 

Your lips part to agree, mind already racing trying to figure out how to get all the folders out of here before his nosy ass can peak at one of them, but you’re interrupted by your elevator binging. Again.

Oh, fuck.

Dazai stills as his gaze cuts backward, eye sharp as the elevator doors slide open and reveal an irritated Chuuya, soaked up to the waist and covered in mud.

“Fucking hell,” Chuuya seethes. “I’m never helping out at the ports again. They’re fucking incompetent, I-”

Chuuya pauses when he sees Dazai. Dazai doesn’t budge. For a split second, not a single one of you dares to move. You can see the quick cogs within Dazai’s mind turning as he pieces together an answer—why you didn’t accept his help, why you took so long to respond. Dread piles in your stomach as you try to figure out what to say only to come up empty-handed. For someone known for a quick tongue and sharp brain, you always somehow find them failing you when faced with conflict with Dazai. 

Finally, Dazai breaks the silence with a cool smile and a mirthful look in his eye, glancing back at you.

“That’s why you wanted me out of here. Okay.” He leaves no room for questions, doesn’t even bother to go into his bedroom to grab his other jacket before stalking forward and entering the elevator Chuuya just came out of, not even acknowledging his partner before smacking the button to the first floor.

“Dazai!” you call after him, taking a few steps toward the elevator but he only turns his chin as the doors slide shut. You shout after him angrily, “And you say I’m the jealous one!” but you doubt he even heard it.

“That bastard has the worst fucking timing ever,” Chuuya says as soon as he’s gone, unperturbed.

You give Chuuya a withering look, wanting to curl up on your couch and die. So you do that. The weight on your chest that had only just finally started to relieve itself from you returns with a vengeance, and you suddenly feel like you want to cry, unsure of how everything has gone so wrong the past few days when you just want to do something nice for him. You tuck your knees to your chest and wrap your arms around them, placing your chin on top of them.

“Relax,” Chuuya says, tossing himself onto the couch next to you; you don’t even have it in you to be annoyed by the water and mud, shoulders slumping as he tosses an arm around you and lets you lean into him. “It’ll be fine. Blockhead won’t even know what hit him tomorrow. C’mon, let’s get this finished so we’re ready to go.”

“… You want us to… kidnap the Demon Prodigy?”

Your subordinates stare, expressions pale and aghast as they share looks with one another. You stand resolute, head held high, and Chuuya raises his eyebrows next to you. Your eye twitches at the moniker that follows Dazai everywhere.

“That’s what we said, yes,” you say, frowning. “Was I unclear?”

“No, hime-” You roll your eyes at yet another one of Mori’s ghastly titles.

He must find it quite amusing, pleased with himself every time he watches you turn green with disgust when he insists on using the term. Even worse, it seems he’s somehow managed to coax your subordinates into using the shitty moniker too. The old man must really enjoy pissing you off, he’s certainly very skilled at it. 

Your lip curls up in irritation when your subordinate continues.

“It’s just-what if-”

“You will not be punished for targeting an executive,” you say dismissively. “I’ll make sure of that.”

“We fear that the Demon Prodigy will… draw his gun when threatened,” the man continues, grimacing as if trying to choose his words carefully. You don’t recognize him—you think you should probably get to know your subordinates better, you’ve left most dealings with them to your partner, Itou… who you also have to get in contact with for this plan to work. You wince, realizing you still have much more to do within the next few hours. “How should we proceed if he does?” 

“Dazai probably will.” You stress his name, giving the man a withering look. To his credit, he winces and looks away. “But he will also be drunk, and slower, taken off guard, so you will… Well, I suppose you wouldn’t have the advantage over even a drunk and surprised Dazai, but there are more of you, so there’s that.”

“Way to inspire confidence,” Chuuya mutters dryly.

You shrug, “I’m not going to delude them before sending them out. They should be prepared to take a bullet or two. Hopefully nonlethal—you have bullet proof vests.”

“You’re fucked up,” Chuuya snorts, before turning his attention to the dozen or so gathered subordinates. “There will be minimal risk, and remember, nobody is to know about this. Nobody. Not even the other executives, or the Boss.”

“Especially not the Boss,” you add. “For the next day and a half, you’re relieved of duties. Go back to your families, or get shit-faced drunk, but don’t come back to headquarters. Under any circumstances. Clear?” 

The men exchange looks with one another, uncertain. “And if he draws his gun?” the man prods again. 

You share a look with Chuuya from the corner of your eye. “He’s not to be injured,” you finally say, voice firm, not leaving any room for doubt. “Under any circumstances. Inject him with this, you’ll be fine.”

You pull from your pocket a sedative that you’d pocketed from Mori’s office before, dangling it in front of them, waiting for one of them to reach out and take it. When they do, you lean back on your heels and look at them.

“This has to be successful,” you tell them, finally starting to feel the pinpricks of anxiety run through your chest the closer it gets to go-time. Dazai is so mad at you right now, and if this fails, it’ll make things ten times worse. Failure isn’t an option—it never is, but especially not now. “I won’t accept anything less.”

“Yes ma’am,” one of your subordinates murmurs and the rest echo, half of them look as if they’re marching off to their death and you absently make yourself a note to give them a big bonus this month. “Can we at least know why we’re kidnapping the De-Executive Dazai?” 

You smile. 

“It’s his birthday gift.”

Dazai is in a bad mood.

Oda watches curiously as the boy downs his seventh (eighth?) drink, wondering if he should tell him to slow down. From the corner of his eye, he sees Ango cringing, lips parted as if to speak but then reconsidering as he shakes his head and takes a sip of his own alcohol, looking thoroughly concerned. Dazai hasn’t said a word since he showed up two hours ago in a foul mood, and every time Oda opens his mouth to ask, Ango gives him the sharpest look and Oda instantly shuts his mouth.

“I think the slug is dating-” Dazai finally speaks, voice rough, right hand clenched around his glass of whiskey. It’s as if he can’t even bring himself to say the words and Oda’s eyes narrow as he studies him, trying to figure out what’s wrong. “I think the slug is dating… her.”

Her. He must mean you. You’re pretty much the only ‘her’ that Dazai ever refers to—goes on about you nonstop whenever he gets a few drinks in him.

“That’s nice,” Oda says without thinking, until he sees the horrified look cast his way by Ango. “That’s awful.”

“It is awful,” Dazai agrees with a hiss. “It’s awful. I hate it. It’s disgusting.”

Oh, Oda realizes, a bit more amused, grateful that Dazai is too busy glaring into his drink to see the smile that curls to the corner of his lips. Oda had suspected that Dazai has a crush on you just from the way he talks about you—going from long winded rants of how agonizing you are to live with (as if he doesn’t actively choose to live with you) to wistful recounts admiring your missions (although those quickly shift into rants, as if Dazai catches himself yearning and has to make up for it by acting like it never happened). 

Oda and Ango realized that Dazai was obsessed with you months ago—back before the Dragon’s Head Conflict even ended, not long after you showed up, actually, when he first started talking about you. Oda assumed that it was a kiddie crush that he’d grow out of, but here he is a year later, just as infatuated—if not more so.

Cute.

“What-” Ango begins only for his voice to waver, glaring at Oda when he sees the smile on the man’s lips. He sighs, pressing his fingers to the bridge of his nose before retrying. “What makes you think they’re dating?” 

“The other day I went looking for them and I found them together, and I was gonna ask them to go to the arcade with me, but as soon as they saw me, they got all stiff and uncomfortable like they didn’t want me there.” 

Dazai almost sounds hurt by it—words strung out a bit long, lips curved down. It’s not often that Oda gets to see him act like the sixteen (seventeen now? Oda realizes he doesn’t even know the boy’s age and makes a note to ask) year old that he is, and while it’s unfortunate that this one is stemmed by him feeling rejected by his friends, he also can’t help but smile at it. Which Ango catches from the appalled look that the other man gives him.

Oda smothers the smile again instantly.

“That doesn’t mean that they’re dating,” Ango begins, trying to be reasonable, but is cut off when Dazai tosses him a sharp glare.

“And then,” Dazai continues, “I went home before because I thought she was going to be on a mission, but she was there working on it, and I offered to help her with it so she could finish faster, but she said no. And I didn’t think anything of it, but then I said I was going to reschedule with you guys for another day so we could watch a movie, and she didn’t respond at first, and I thought that was weird, and then guess what? The slug showed up. She was blowing me off to hang out with him.”

Wow, Oda thinks to himself. That’s a lot to break down. 

Home. Oda is careful this time to not let his lips quirk up into a smile but it’s impossible to hide the fond look in his eyes as he looks down at a sulking Dazai, who has slumped over the bar top, absently playing with the spherical ice in his drink. Oda has never heard Dazai refer to anything as home before. His shipping container had always just been the shipping container, and up until, well, today, your apartment had always just been your apartment. Ango catches the wording too from the way his eyes widen a bit.

And then on top of that, Dazai? Offering to help someone with work? Oda thinks there’s a better chance of fire raining from the sky. Oda is realizing that this really is more than a kiddie crush—not that Dazai would probably ever acknowledge that. Oda wonders if he should help him get there. 

“That doesn’t mean they’re dating,” Oda finally says, taking a sip of his drink and ignoring the way Ango gives him a side eye, focusing instead on how Dazai turns his head to the side to look at Oda. If Oda didn’t know any better, he’d say the boy is pouting. “They might be planning something for you, don’t want you around for it. You had that mission recently, didn’t you? The one everyone said would fail?”

Oda realizes, a bit too late, that if that is the case, he just ruined the surprise and silently apologies for it. But Dazai doesn’t seem to take him seriously anyway, rolling his eye as he returns to bouncing the ice in the glass.

“Yeah, right,” he says dryly. “No one does anything like that for me.”

Oda purses his lips, not responding, and Ango sighs as he looks away. Oda tries to figure out what to say, testing some words on his tongue but they all feel wrong.

Finally, he chooses to just be blunt. “Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”

The noise Ango lets out is all but a whimper, he buries his face in his hands as if to disappear. Dazai’s gaze cuts to the side, head turning slowly as he focuses on Oda.

“What?”

Oda thinks maybe he should stop talking, but he doesn’t, naturally. “Y’know—you could just tell her how you feel,” Oda repeats, seeing the way Ango is shaking his head frantically but he continues anyway. “Telling her would save you from doing this once a week.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” Dazai says icily, taking a tone that he rarely uses with Oda as he pushes himself off of the barstool and turns to leave. “I’ve had too much to drink. I’m heading out for the night.”

Dazai doesn’t wait for either one of them to say goodbye as he all but storms out of the bar. Oda sighs, taking a sip of his own drink.

“That could have gone better.”

Ango slaps the back of his head hard.

“I can’t stand you sometimes.”

“Alright, it’s time.”

You watch the live CCTV cameras from the sleek black car you and Chuuya are huddled in. Your partner, Itou, sits in the front seat, rubbing his temples as he spares you guys a short look. You raise your eyebrows at him but he only shakes his head.

“I don’t know what goes through your head sometimes,” he tells you, tired. “I want no part in this beyond this right here.”

“You’re no fun,” you say, squinting at him, “and we still need you to get the footage from the headquarters.”

Itou sighs so heavily that you think he might be trying to expel his lungs from his body. He glares at you from the corner of his eye. “Nothing beyond that. You’re insane for this. You’re going to get us all thrown in the torture chambers.”

“Relax, don’t be so serious. It makes you ugly. You’ll be fine,” you complain, focusing back down on Chuuya’s laptop, straightening as Dazai finally comes into view on the screen. 

You and Chuuya exchange an excited look with one another, a smile twitching onto your lips as you wait for the scene to unfold. You pointedly ignore the noise Itou makes when he notices how thrilled the two of you are at the prospect of kidnapping Dazai—but Itou doesn’t get it, he doesn’t know Dazai. Dazai will love this, and he’ll love it even more when you get your hands on the footage of Mori’s and Kouyou’s reactions to the kidnapping.

You’ve got your subordinates disguised impeccably as members of a low-rung gang that’s been trying to make moves into the northern wards of Yokohama. You had a meeting with them a few days ago to determine whether they’d be worth absorbing or if Mori should just send Dazai and Chuuya to deal with them. You decided on the latter, and the two of them are supposed to go in and exterminate them next weekend.

You figured they would be the perfect cover to pose as Dazai’s “kidnappers.” They’ve been aggressive and violent in Port Mafia territory, making increasingly larger steps into the Naka Ward. You were honestly curious to see how far they’ll try to go, but you doubt Mori will let it get any farther than he has already anyway, so you thought you might as well get some use out of them to stage a realistic-looking kidnapping.

You think Mori will probably assume this was intentional at first when he gets the report. He’ll call you and Chuuya, the two of you will act bitter and angry as if you’re not on speaking terms with Dazai currently—which, you suppose it’s for the best that he stormed away from the two of you that day in headquarters, because it’ll make it seem legit—you’ll hang up and tell him that you’re busy for the night, tell him not to bother you again. 

When Mori realizes that neither you or Chuuya know what’s going on, he’ll start to get suspicious. He’ll seek out the tapes and see Dazai drunk and lost in thought wandering home, see the way he genuinely struggles against his “captors” before being knocked out—none of the casual arrogance he usually has when getting himself captured by the enemy—and then? Then, you don’t know how Mori will react. You assume that he’ll call you and Chuuya again, get the two of you on it, but by that point, your phones will be off.

You’re giddy as you, again, focus back on the screen, watching as Dazai meanders down the street. His movements are slow and unsteady, and your giddiness fades when you see the downcast expression on his face. It’s hard to tell from the footage, but he’s clearly bothered about something. You wonder if he’s that pissed about what happened earlier, or if something else happened with his other friends—he’s usually at Bar Lupin for at least another two hours.

“Okay,” Chuuya says into his earpiece. “Begin stage one of the operation.”

“He looks kind of upset, doesn’t he?” you murmur when Chuuya takes his fingers off the button on the earpiece.

Chuuya rolls his eyes. “He’ll be fine.”

You ignore the curious, knowing look that Itou gives you through the rearview mirror and instead tunnel your vision onto the laptop screen… although you find you don’t really want to look at that either. You grimace as your subordinates finally make their move—and it’s testament to how lost in his own thoughts he is because Dazai hardly notices what’s happening until they’re on him.

He goes for his gun instantly, but your subordinate—Kirishima, you learned his name was—is quick to disarm him, knocking the gun out of his hands and reaching for his arm. Dazai is still swift on his feet, nimble even with a dubious amount of alcohol in him. He’s able to worm out of Kirishima’s grip, darting backward. The expression on his face is lethal, gaze cold as he tries to assess his situation, and you watch as the realization that he might be in trouble finally hits.

Just as Kirishima is about to motion for two of the others to go for him again. Dazai slips his phone out of his pocket and dials a number.

“Fuck!” Chuuya spits. “If he calls the Boss-”

But Dazai evidently did not call the Boss, which would have been the smartest decision on his part considering Mori would have gotten one of Verlaine’s special ops units to him within a max of three minutes, because after a second, your phone starts ringing.

Oh.

You stare at it, heart lodged in your throat, unsure of what to do.

“Shit,” Chuuya says, just as caught off guard. “I didn’t think he’d call you. You can’t pick up.”

You shoot Chuuya an accusatory look. “I have to pick up,” you hiss. “He called me when he actually thought he was in trouble. I can’t just ignore him, that’s fucked up.”

“We staged the kidnapping, it’s already fucked up,” Chuuya snaps right back, “and he can read your ass like a book. If you pick up, that bastard will figure out it’s us.”

“Chuuya,” you bristle, ready to ignore him and reach for your phone but he’s quicker than you, arm darting forward to grab your phone before throwing it out the window. You stare at him horrified, “Chuuya!”

You think you might throw up when you watch Dazai take one last glance at his phone before an unreadable expression crosses his face. He elbows one of them hard in the gut to get away, but Kirishima is on him with the sedative before he can make a run for it. Dazai grimaces when he feels the pinprick in his neck, and you finally look away when he slumps over onto the ground.

“Don’t start feeling bad now,” Chuuya says, glaring at you. “What did you think would happen?” 

“I don’t feel bad,” you lie, and when Chuuya gives you a doubtful look, you sigh and say, “He just looked so…”

Human. 

He looked surprised, uncertain—it’s rare for Dazai Osamu to be caught off guard by anything. You think in the year or so that you’ve known him, you’ve only ever seen him genuinely thrown off like this once, and it was when the Colonel’s operation against the Bishop’s Staff went haywire during the Dragon’s Head Conflict and you got caught in the crossfire, captured by the enemy.

You’ve always been of the belief that Dazai is one of the most human people you’ve ever met. You’ve fought people over it, you’ve fought him over it. The issue is that he’s also ridiculously intelligent, likes to portray himself as inhuman, be it to intimidate his subordinates or enemies or to fulfill whatever fucked up image he has of himself, you don’t know, but he’s good at it. It’s only when he’s put into situations like this, where he’s got no shot of keeping up his mask, surprised and trying to push away the rising panic when he realizes that there’s no way to think, talk or fight his way out of a situation, that you really see his humanity. It’s stark compared to his usual demeanor, almost palpable.

You sit there simmering in your own thoughts until Kirishima knocks hard on the window to the car. Dazai looks small in his arms—he’s tall, but thin and lanky because he doesn’t eat properly no matter how much Chuuya belittles him for it and you try to get him to eat. His frame is small, and it’s especially apparent without his coat to create the illusion of a larger stature, when his face is lax, visible eye slid shut as he lays limp and unconscious in his arms.

You push open the door and Kirishima bends down to shuffle Dazai into the car with you. His body slumps against you, head falling onto your shoulder and you push your lip out a bit as you reach up to brush his hair out of his face.

“The sedatives?” Chuuya asks, leaning around you to focus on Kirishima.

Kirishima lifts the empty syringe, glancing at Chuuya before focusing on you. “Are we free to go, hime?”

You scowl at the nickname but you nod, more focused on shifting Dazai into a comfortable position. “Go get drunk or go to your families, I don’t care. Don’t come back to headquarters ‘til Monday, but be there early, we’ve got a mission.”

“Yes ma’am,” Kirishima replies, inclining his head to you before shutting the car door and leaving.

As soon as the door shuts, you sigh and let Dazai’s body fall over, head resting in your lap. He looks so completely at peace that you almost forget that it’s because he’s been drugged. He never sleeps well, even now that he’s staying at your place—you hear him wandering around at night, restless, and the few nights he does sleep, he seems to be plagued with nightmares. You rest your hand on his hair and absently brush your fingers through his damp locks before turning to look at Chuuya, who’s watching you with an expression nothing short of judgmental.

“What?” you demand.

“Nothing.” Chuuya rolls his eyes. “How long do you think the sedative will last?” 

“It’s a pretty high dosage,” you say with a frown, looking down at Dazai. “But Dazai’s got some mutant metabolism. Remember when he walked off a whole ass horse tranquilizer during Dragon’s Head. I give it like four hours max.”

“We need to get moving then,” Chuuya sighs, and you nod.

You lean over the center console and give Itou a sweet smile, careful to not jostle Dazai around too much.

“I’ll drive you there, but then I’m gone,” Itou sighs, giving you one last warning look before he puts the car in drive. “Don’t involve me in this any further.”

“Thank you, Itou,” you coo, sharing one last look with Chuuya before letting out a sigh and turning your attention back down to Dazai, gaze lingering and a soft smile on your face.

Chuuya makes a noise of disgust in the back of his throat.

You ignore it.

The beach house the two of you have usurped for the weekend is nicer than you could’ve imagined. You don’t know how Itou found it for the two of you, maybe a friend of his—you’ve found that he has friends everywhere, it’s been quite handy for when you have to deal with politics—or maybe he killed someone for it, you really can’t be sure with him. It’s a neat little place south of Higashikoiso, a little over an hour out of Yokohama—the house is near a cliff overlooking the sea, with an easy path down toward the beach.

There are only three bedrooms though, which is unfortunate considering you and Chuuya plan to coerce Dazai’s other friends into showing up. You might not be the fondest of them for petty reasons, but you think Dazai would like that, so you’ll bite your tongue and suffer through it. Either way, three or four people are going to have to share rooms depending on the set up and you’re fully intent on not being one of them; you already have your argument that you’re the only girl in the house and you think it will be solid enough, unless Dazai decides to be stubborn. 

“This is kind of fucked up,” you note while setting the scene.

Dazai is still unconscious, it’s only been an hour and a half so you should have some time before he wakes up, but you want to get this done as quickly as possible, because you don’t want him to wake up while you and Chuuya are halfway finished to setting up the room to make it look like a ransom scene.

“This is definitely fucked up,” you correct, but you’re smiling as you finish up typing the ropes around Dazai’s wrists, sitting him up in a rickety wooden chair.

You and Chuuya had dragged him down to the basement—Itou had luckily had some interrogation tools in the trunk of his car, and was not inclined to ask any questions when you asked for them, passing them over to you with the most concerned expression you’d ever seen on the nineteen-year-old’s face.

The basement looks like any average torture chamber—stone walls, damp and dingy, so it’s easy for you and Chuuya to transform it into an acceptable backdrop for your picture. You adjust Dazai in the seat again, fingers ghosting over his neck from where his head is falling forward, hoping he’s not too uncomfortable.

“This is your idea,” Chuuya shoots back, tilting his head to the side with a frown as he examines the scene. “He’s not roughed up enough. We’ve gotta do something, did you bring makeup with you?”

“No,” you admit, rubbing the back of your neck before an idea pops in your head.

You slink over to Chuuya and grab the knife that he carries at his side, ignoring the perturbed look on his face as he instantly takes a step away. Making your way back over to Dazai, you grimace as you cut the palm of your hand, smearing some blood on Dazai’s face and shirt to make it seem as if he’s been roughed up. You readjust the ropes, tighten them a little more and make sure some of your blood drips down onto the floor above where Dazai’s face is hanging before you take a step back to admire your handiwork before turning to your accomplice.

“... Do you have the burner phone?” you ask Chuuya, wrapping your hand with cloth, figuring you’ll just bandage it up later. 

He rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

“Take the picture,” you tell him, stepping out of the way to hover over his shoulder, watching as Chuuya squints his eyes and tries to angle it properly so Dazai looks as in bad shape as possible. 

When he’s finally satisfied, he looks to you. Your lips curve up, “I’ll read off the number of that friend of his, you type it in. This’ll get them here for sure.”

As you do that, Chuuya starts snickering, clearly as entertained by this whole situation as you are. “You’re fucking psychotic for this, y’know?” he says, typing out the message to be attached with the image before pressing send and tossing the phone away.

“You helped me,” you accuse, but you're grinning, giddy again as you grab a towel to wipe the blood off of Dazai, pulling off the ropes and forcing Chuuya to help him back to the couch where he can be comfortable.

“Yeah, but it was your idea, you crazy bitch,” Chuuya tells you again with another snort. “What do we do now?”

“Wait.”

Everything happens at once.

Sakaguchi Ango and Oda Sakunosuke get to the beach house much sooner than you thought they would, and Dazai starts stirring an hour earlier than you expected—mutant metabolism, you think again. Luckily, it all happens at around the same time, so you get to see all of their reactions at once.

Neither Sakaguchi nor Oda have made a move into the house, probably trying to figure out the best course of action. Dazai still hasn’t woken up, curled up on the couch while you and Chuuya play cards at the table in front of him, sitting cross-legged on the floor. You’re winning, of course, and Chuuya is becoming increasingly more frustrated from the way he keeps slamming his cards down onto the coffee table.

“They’re about to come in,” Chuuya says, giving you a withering look as tosses his cards across the table—another losing hand. You give him a smug smile and Chuuya bares his teeth at you. “Come here.”

You sigh as you shuffle over around the table so that he can put his hand on your shoulder, ready to activate the Tainted Sorrow in case Sakaguchi and Oda come in guns blazing. On the couch, Dazai starts to shift, a low groan escaping his lips, and your eyes draw back to him, focusing on his face and the way his brows are furrowed and his lips are turned down.

“Here they are,” Chuuya hums, lips quirking up into a sharp smile. “Ready?”

“Yup,” you agree, popping the ‘p’ as you lean back on your hands and stare at the door. “How long do you think it’ll take them to actually open the door?”

“I give it five more seconds,” Chuuya snorts, and you shiver when you feel the familiar sensation of the Tainted Sorrow spreading across your body, an impenetrable barrier to protect you from whatever may come your way.

Just as Chuuya predicts, five seconds later, the front door is kicked open. You frown, hoping that they didn’t break it off of the hinges, because you don't want to hear Itou bitching about it later on. Oda Sakunosuke comes in first, gun steady and finger on the trigger, but the man is cautious and tilts his head to the side when his eyes fall upon you and Chuuya.

“What is it?” Sakaguchi asks from behind the other man, taking a step into the beach house to follow Oda’s gaze to you and Chuuya. “I-what?”

“Sakaguchi,” you say, lifting your hand to wag your fingers; maybe you’re a bit petty when you don’t acknowledge Oda. “Long time no see. I was grateful for your help when dealing with Nishiki and his cronies.”

“I, ah, hime-” You sigh at the moniker, eyes fluttering shut. “What is… going on? We got a picture and a…”

Sakaguchi trails off when he sees Dazai stirring on the couch, and you turn your attention toward him. You watch as he finally lifts his arm to rub his eyes, sluggish and slow. After a split second passes, you notice him stiffen, as if remembering what happened, and his eyes shoot open, cold and sharp.

You smile. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” you coo. “Took you long enough.”

The icy mask slips away into genuine confusion, his brows furrow and his lips part. Next to you, Chuuya snorts, “Now, that’s a fucking sight. I almost want to take a picture.”

“What…” Dazai begins, then notices Oda and Sakaguchi still standing near the front door, blinking a few times. “What is going on?”

You’re sure that must’ve been the most painful question for Dazai Osamu to ask—admitting he has no idea what’s happening. Chuuya snickers and Dazai shoots him a contemptuous look, diluted by the fact that he still looks half out of it from the sedative.

“Yes,” Sakaguchi asks dryly, “what is going on?”

You smile proudly and then say, “We kidnapped you. Seemed pretty realistic, didn’t it? Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

Dazai blinks, you can see him trying to force his brain to start moving faster so he can put together the puzzle pieces you’ve handed him. His gaze calculating and lips tight. “You… set up the kidnapping?”

Oda then says: “See. I told you they were planning something.”

“Planning a kidnapping,” Sakaguchi sighs, tired. “Did you guess that too, Oda?”

“Well, no.”

Hardly listening to Oda and Sakaguchi’s bickering in the background, you keep your attention on Dazai, who’s watching you with an unreadable expression on his face. You waver for a second, wondering if he’s mad at the two of you—you’d figured it could be an issue, that he might be put off by being kept in the dark about this. He really does hate not knowing things. 

“Why?” Dazai asks quietly, and you note how Oda and Sakaguchi share a look with one another before quieting down, waiting for your response.

“I’m glad you asked!” you say brightly. “It’s your birthday present!” 

You relish in the way the room goes quiet. Dazai’s dark eye widens, taken off guard for the second time in a matter of a few minutes. You’re even more gleeful when you see how Oda’s expression shifts into one of surprise, how Sakaguchi draws back, stunned. At least your fears of Oda and Sakaguchi knowing more about Dazai than you go unfounded.

“Yeah, shitty Dazai, say thank you,” Chuuya goads, a smug smile on his lips.

Dazai doesn’t respond, staring at the two of you with yet another indecipherable look, an odd shine to his dark eye. You feel a bit exposed under his stare, wondering what he could be thinking.

“How did you know?” Dazai finally asks, and oh, you realize that’s not the question he’s asking. Dazai knows that there’s only one way the two of you figured out his birthday—his file in Mori’s office. What he wants to know is which of you got hands on it.

“It was a grand plot,” you say, tossing your hair over your shoulder as you look up at him. “Chuuya kept Mori distracted while I ransacked his office looking for your file… part of your gift is going to be the recording of Chuuya trying to distract him. It was quite funny.”

“Hah?!” Chuuya demands, whirling on you. “That wasn’t part of the deal.”

You ignore Chuuya, keeping your gaze trained on Dazai instead, trying to figure out what he’s thinking. Is he angry at you? Upset? It’s impossible to tell from the heavy gaze he has laid on you, thousands of conflicting emotions swirling behind the black of his eye. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips, chewing the inside of your cheek as you wait—god, only one person evokes this type of nervousness in you and you swear he enjoys it.

After what feels like an eternity, Dazai finally lights up, flinging his arms out to his side, a wide, borderline facetious smile painting his face as he says, “So, I get an entire day to order you guys around to do my bidding.”

“Hey!” Chuuya shouts, equally incensed by Dazai’s words as he is by yours, head snapping to look at him. “That’s not the fucking gift, bastard.”

“What’s the plan then?” Oda asks curiously, and then adds, “... I’m glad you brought us here… as unconventional as the method may have been.”

You notice Dazai gives Oda and then you a curious look, but before he can ask, Chuuya is leaping to his feet, talking quickly as he waves his hands around, making subtle digs to get a rise out of Dazai, but Dazai is more focused on you.

You push yourself to your own feet, trying to ignore Dazai’s lidded stare and focus on what Chuuya is saying but it’s hard, especially when you see Dazai standing from the corner of your eye. He’s still a bit unsteady, movement slow and sluggish, and you’re sure that’s the excuse he has for when he meanders a few steps over to you, dropping his chin on your shoulder. You don’t dare to turn your face to the side to look at him, his lips brush your ear as he murmurs:

“Talk later?”

“... ‘course.”

Luckily, later doesn’t come for a long while. Chuuya was insistent on going out to the beach—you think he was more eager to see Dazai wear the ugly Hawaiian shirt that the two of you had brought along for him more than anything else, but he quickly found interest in the large waves coming in from the sea, running back to the beach house to seek out the boards that you’d found in the basement.

Dazai doesn’t go in the water, but you think he’s having a good time considering there’s a shine in his eyes that’s rarely there. Right now, he’s sitting in the sand in front of Oda and Sakaguchi; the former listening to Dazai ramble on about whatever he’s talking about, the latter tapping away on his computer and occasionally nodding along.

You spend most of your time watching Chuuya cheat at surfing, using his ability to keep him on top of the surfboard as he seeks out the biggest waves. You’re standing in the water yourself, no further than knee-deep because you don’t want to get your clothes and hair wet. You’re kind of annoyed that Dazai’s been spending all of his time with Oda and Sakaguchi when you and Chuuya were the ones who did all of the work, and again, you can’t help but wonder if he might be mad at you. He didn’t seem to be on the walk down to the beach but you can honestly never know with him.

You drag your gaze from where Chuuya is hooting and hollering as he catches another big wave, rolling your eyes when you see the red emanating around his feet and the surfboard, so you can look back at Dazai. He’s stopped talking, listening to whatever Oda is saying instead as he stares at you with a contemplative expression. You feel distinctly seen beneath his stare, lost as to what he might be thinking. He doesn’t even notice that you caught him looking, or if he does, he doesn’t care.

You shake your head when you hear Chuuya coming toward you again, turning your attention back onto him.

“Did you see that one?” Chuuya demands, exhilarated, board tucked under his arm as he brushes his hair out of his face. “Did you?”

“I did,” you say dryly. “It would’ve been much more impressive if you hadn’t been cheating with the Tainted Sorrow.”

Chuuya looks scorned. “I don’t see you getting out there to try,” he scowls, lifting his chin. “You’re more preoccupied with staring longingly at shitty Dazai.”

Your face heats up, you kick the water at him and make sure it gets in his face. “I am not,” you hiss. “Don’t be annoying, Chuuya.”

“I give it another ten seconds before you look back at him again,” Chuuya croons, a wide smile on his face that you have half a mind to slap right off.

To make it worse, you do feel an itch to look back at him now. Your eye twitches as you force yourself to keep looking forward at Chuuya just to make a point, but an odd feeling starts to stir in your gut when you see the way Chuuya’s gaze keeps darting behind you, looking increasingly more pleased with himself.

Finally, you give him an accusatory look before turning your head over your shoulder sharply to where Dazai had been with Oda and Sakaguchi only to find-

That he’s not there?

You hardly have enough time to register what you’re looking at before you see a rush of movement from the corner of your eye.

No-

All you hear is Chuuya’s wild laughter and the sound of the ocean waves reverberating through your skull as Dazai tackles you back into the water hard. The water cushions your fall as your back finally hits the sand. You lift your hand to press your palm against Dazai’s face, pushing him away from you, lungs burning and decidedly soaked as you push yourself out of the water, gasping for air.

“Dazai!” you shout, throwing yourself at him with every intent to throttle him. 

Dazai tries to dodge, but is too busy wheezing over laughter to actually do so. He lets out a dramatic cry when you wrap your arms around his shoulders and successfully knock him into the water face down. He flails dramatically, arms and legs kicking as you hold him down beneath the water.

When you finally drag him back up above the surface, he inhales a lungful of air before giving you an indignant look. “You can’t do that,” Dazai shouts, pointing at you. “It’s my birthday.”

“I’ll do it again,” you shout right back, hair sticking in your eyes and clothes clinging to your skin from the seawater. “I wanted to go into town after this.”

Dazai looks just as messy—the cheap Hawaiian shirt you and Chuuya had got him is drenched, and the colors are bleeding into his bandages, making the previously pristine whites become a colorful swirl of oranges, blues and pinks. He looks like a shitty attempt at a watercolor painting. The bandages around his eye look especially uncomfortable from the way his visible eye keeps twitching and immediately your anger fizzles away into amusement.

You share a look with Chuuya that Dazai instantly catches, looking suspicious and alarmed.

“Chuuya, go get the camera.”

Dazai doesn’t even wait for another word. He instantly turns on his heel to bolt back to the beach house, but you’re chasing after him in an instant.

“Chuuya, go!” you yell again as you lunge forward, fingers curling around Dazai’s ankles to make him faceplant back into the water.

You scramble forward to straddle his waist to keep him in place but he worms out of your hold, trying to make another break for it but fails because you’re still clinging to his leg, dragging him back down with you. Distantly, you think you should’ve gone for the camera while Chuuya kept Dazai in place.

“Chuuya’s right,” you spit out. The two of you are out of the water now, you can feel the sand in your shirt and grating against your skin as you roll around with him trying to keep him still. “You really are like a slimy, slippery fish.”

“You can’t do this,” Dazai screeches. “It’s my birthday. It’s my birthday!”

“I got it!” Chuuya shouts from over by the chairs, racing back over to the two of you. 

“Took you long enough,” you yell right back at him, realizing that you’re going to have to sacrifice your own dignity to get Dazai in this picture, otherwise he’s going to try to run away again. 

Chuuya can hardly hold the camera straight through his snorting, and you’re sure you probably look equally as embarrassing as Dazai. There’s sand on your face, in your mouth, in your hair, in places where sand definitely shouldn’t be, but at least you don’t look like a kaleidoscope. Dazai lets out a pitiful noise when he realizes there’s no escape, trapped between your arms. He tries to hide his face in your neck, probably for plausible deniability that it’s an imposter trying to make him look bad, rather than it actually being him himself.

“Say cheese, mackerel,” Chuuya mocks.

“Fuck you,” Dazai complains.

But you can feel the smile twitching on his lips against your skin.

Oda and Sakaguchi set up a fire later that night. 

Well, by Oda and Sakaguchi, you mean Oda while Sakaguchi sat there and played dictator, telling him how to make a campfire that Oda clearly already knew how to make from the way he seemed to be hardly listening to the man.

Dazai and Chuuya are off trying to figure out how to use sparklers, which you think is a bad idea. You think the two are more likely to set each other on fire than actually use them properly, which is why you’re staying far away, tapping away on your phone near the campfire, relaxing under the sea breeze.

Itou: everything going ok?

You almost roll your eyes before responding with.

You: Yes. Why?

Itou: just curious :p

You: Could’ve stayed if you were curious. We offered.

Itou: yeah, maybe if u wanted to find me dead in a ditch. ur boy hates my guts.

You’re grateful that no one is around to see how you let out an embarrassed puff of air at how Itou refers to Dazai, instantly clicking out of his messages to see what other messages you have. Before you can, you feel a presence hovering above you and look up, raising your eyebrows.

Oda Sakunosuke stands next to you, studying you curiously, and you look to the side and then back toward him, unsure of what he wants.

“Yes?” you ask slowly. Sakaguchi is still sitting closer to the house, scowling as he bats away bugs.

“This is nice. What you did for Dazai,” Oda says simply. “I haven’t seen him this happy in… well, ever.”

A bit embarrassed, you shrug. “It’s whatever,” you say awkwardly. “Just happy it all worked out.”

“I don’t think Dazai’s ever had someone do something like this for him before,” Oda admits. He’s not looking at you anymore, fond gaze trained behind you to where you can hear Dazai and Chuuya arguing about how to use the sparklers. “He never told Ango or I his birthday… or anything personal about himself, really. I’m grateful that you brought us along.”

You wish you could sink into the ground and die, knowing that if it was up to you, you never would have invited either of them but forced yourself to for Dazai’s sake. Again, you shrug, and say, “Was for Dazai. Thought he would like it.”

“Well, I’m grateful anyway,” Oda says dismissively, looking back down at you. “You should stop by the curry place where I take Dazai every once and a while. The kids I brought in stay there, Sakura is the only girl, I’m sure she’d like having another girl around to talk to.”

You blanch. “I don’t-uh-I don’t know if that would be the best idea, I’m not exactly… a good influence for kids.”

Oda shrugs. “Maybe not conventionally, but you’re tough. Work ten times as hard as any of the others in the upper ranks of the Mafia to keep your position. It’s impressive. If Sakura was even half as strong as you are when she grows up, I’d be proud of her.”

Your lips part to speak but no words leave them. You think, maybe, that this is the first time anyone has ever acknowledged this. Your position has never been as secure as anyone else’s—you think maybe that it’s part of the reason why Mori is so insistent on people using that stupid fucking title, as much as you hate it.

Your own subordinates respect you, the rest of the upper echelon who know of your contributions do, but everyone else? Hierarchy is absolute and the Boss’s orders are paramount, but when subordinates see a chance to push themselves higher up the ladder, it’s like sharks with blood in the water. Without a powerful ability like Chuuya’s, or a mind and presence like Dazai’s, as a girl, you’re on the lowest rung, the first one they’re circling to try to get ahead.

You prevent gang wars, keep the government off the Mafia’s ass, but that’s all behind the scenes—none of the lower ranked mafiosos see any of that. They see Dazai and Chuuya bringing down entire organizations overnight. Ace bringing in billions of yen. Kouyou’s perfect record of assassinations. Hirotsu leading the Black Lizards. Akutagawa and his ability. All they ever seen in you is-

All they see in you is a seventeen-year-old girl who happens to be favored by the Boss.

Although you don’t necessarily care for Oda’s presence, even if only for petty reasons, you do appreciate his words. Your shoulders slump and you want to reply, say thank you at the very least, but nothing comes out. You think he notices, and being the infuriatingly kind person he is, he gives you an out. Oda Sakunosuke pats your head like you’re a dog. You give him a side-eye and cringe away from his hand, but he’s unperturbed. 

“I’m glad he has you,” Oda tells you, before wandering back over to Ango, leaving you there flustered and caught off guard.

Your gaze draws back to where Dazai has finally got his sparkler working, and for a second, you’re entranced. You can hardly drag your eyes from the bright gleam and soft smile on Dazai’s lips as he eyes follow the bright pink and gold sparks flying around as he waves the sparkler around in front of him. It’s childish, almost, innocent in a way that Dazai Osamu never gets to act.

You have to force yourself to look away from him, turning your attention back to your phone to go back to what you were doing before Oda interrupted you.

Several texts from Kouyou and Mori demanding you to pick up your phone, one concerned one from Hirotsu—you’ll have to apologize to him later—and several from an unknown number that you don’t recognize. Akutagawa? Dazai’s subordinate? You’re going to have to have a serious talk with your subordinates later about giving out your number. You click back to your message thread with Itou, pointedly ignoring the last message as you type.

You: How the hell did Akutagawa Ryuunosuke get my number?

Itou: pretty sure he threatened a couple of our subordinates, wounded one of them. i have to deal with it tomorrow. have dazai train his dog before letting him wander around unleashed.

You roll your eyes and then tilt your head back to shout over your shoulder, “Dazai, train your fucking subordinates properly.”

The bickering from where Dazai and Chuuya were arguing behind you halts, and you hear the two of them approach you.

“What happened?” Chuuya asks curiously, peeking over your shoulder at your phone. You promptly close it before he can catch sight of the other message that Itou had sent about Dazai.

Dazai comes to hover next to you, waiting for you to explain, and you tilt your head up to meet his gaze. “Akutagawa injured one of my men and threatened others trying to get my number when he heard you were missing. Get him under control.”

Dazai’s visible eye twitches. “Untrained mutt,” he spits out. “I’ll deal with him.”

You share a short look with Chuuya from the corner of your eye, wondering if you’d just condemned Akutagawa to Dazai’s violent wrath, but you’re distracted when your phone buzzes again.

Itou: check ur email.

You straighten in your seat, immediately flicking out of your messages app to your email to find one from Itou with a video file attached.

“No way,” you breathe out, excited, not having expected Itou to get his hands on it so quickly. You turn to look at Dazai, a wide smile on your face; you miss the way the irritation on his instantly fades, visible eye widening and lips parting at the sight of your smile. You also miss, in your excitement, Chuuya’s grunt of disgust. “Dazai, you wanna see your real present?”

Curious, Dazai peers over your shoulder to see the email you got. “What is that?” 

“Watch and see,” you croon, clicking on the video to show the surveillance tape from headquarters.

Instantly, Dazai seems to realize what it is, eye lighting up. “No way,” he says, half sitting on top of you in your beach chair, ignoring your irritated hiss.

“Get your bony ass off of me, Dazai,” you snap at him, but Dazai ignores you, settling down as he snatches your phone to watch the video. 

Chuuya joins him, crowding in on your other side to lean over his shoulder to watch the video. Rolling your eyes, and unable to see the video on your phone, you instead lean back into the chair and watch their reactions to it instead.

Chuuya looks amused, a sharp grin on his face as his eyes remain pinned on the video, and Dazai looks delighted, he cackles and shifts to lean forward, making you grimace when he ends up digging more into your thigh to push himself up.

“Look at his face,” Dazai screeches. “He really thinks it was real. Ane-san looks like she’s going to have an aneurysm.”

Chuuya looks back at you, smiling but there’s a hesitant look in his eyes. “We’re going to be in so much trouble when we get back,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

Yeah, you agree silently, more focused on the bright shine in Dazai’s eyes and the wide, genuine smile on his lips. He’s so giddy that he’s almost vibrating in your lap, and when he finally looks back at you, he looks at you as if you’ve given him the world. Worth it, though.

Despite ardently arguing why you should be the one who doesn’t have to share a room and succeeding—forcing Oda and Sakaguchi (who didn’t seem to mind) and Chuuya and Dazai (much to their distress) to share a room instead—you find that you can’t sleep at night anyway. 

It’s almost midnight when you finally decide to wander out of the house, making your way to the path leading up to the clifftop—everyone called an early night, the excitement of the day, and the lack of sleep, leaving everyone exhausted before the clock hit nine-thirty.

The seabreeze is cool against your skin, the moonlight’s illumination the only guide you have as you make your way up to the cliff’s edge. Your hands are stuffed in the pockets of your sweats as you drag your feet against the dirt path.

You don’t notice someone sitting up there at the edge until they turn their head to the side to look at you, startled by your arrival.

“Dazai,” you say quietly, standing there awkwardly for a moment. You haven’t spoken to him alone yet, you’d meant to earlier but then Chuuya got his hands on wine before bed and that plan went out the window.

Dazai sighs whimsically when he catches sight of you. “So, hime forces me to share a room with the slug only to not even use her own room. She’s so greedy,” he whines, lashes fluttering as he looks up at you.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you tell him, making your way over to sit with him, legs dangling off the edge, swinging absently. Your thigh is pressed against the side of his, feet occasionally bumping into one another, when you rest your hands against the ground to lean back on them, your thumb brushes his. “You wanted to talk.”

Dazai lets out an unintelligible noise in the back of his throat, and you watch as his gaze turns down to his lap, an unreadable expression on his face. He’s pretty beneath the glow of the moonlight, peaceful in a way you hardly ever see him. His expression is free of the numerous masks he wears to protect himself, eyes dark but warm and full of various emotions as he chooses his words carefully.

“Hime read my file,” Dazai finally says, voice soft, almost hesitant. You catch the way his jaw tightens and untightens, the corner of his lips tightening and quivering; a subtle tell to his nerves, one that most people wouldn’t catch, but you do.

“I did,” you agree. Your own heart races in your chest as you wait for his reaction; you don’t think that he’s angry, you think you’d be able to tell if he were angry by now, but you can’t help the anxiety plaguing you.

“So, you saw,” Dazai hums, but there’s a bit of a wobble to his tone. He pointedly doesn’t look at you now, staring ahead out toward the sky and distant sea. “Aren’t you going to ask?”

“No. I figure you’ll tell me if you want. If not, it’s okay.”

It’s decidedly not okay, but you don’t want to pressure Dazai into telling you. You want Dazai to open up to you, but you don’t want to force him to, so you force yourself to be content with the fact that he’s at least acknowledging this, instead of pretending it didn’t happen.

“I can’t,” Dazai says. 

His throat bobs beneath his bandages, dark eye uncertain as he stares down to the turbulent sea. You think a storm must be coming, the waves have become rocky, whitecaps staining the horizon, crashing into the jagged rocks at the bottom of the cliff. Dazai shifts, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

“By choice?” you ask after a few moments. “Or is someone—” Mori “—forcing you to?”

“... Both,” Dazai responds after a few moments. “I…”

Dazai doesn’t finish whatever he was going to say, voice wavering. After a few minutes of silence between the two of you, he continues.

“I don’t have good memories associated with that name,” Dazai finally says, and you don’t dare to speak, hardly even dare to breathe because you don’t want to ruin whatever spurred this decision of his to crack himself open to you, afraid that if you make the wrong move, he’ll withdraw again. “... Sometimes, I miss it though.”

“That’s normal, I think,” you tell him after a moment, looking to the side to focus on him, watching the way his eyes lower at your words. “You have… better ones as… Osamu?” 

It’s your first time referring to Dazai by his first name, and from the way he inhales sharply, he recognizes it as well. There’s something distinctly vulnerable in his expression as he turns his face to you.

“I have you,” Dazai says quietly, and it’s so instant that it catches you off guard, lips parting. As if catching his own lapse in control, he blinks and then rushes to add, “And Odasaku. Ango. The slug.”

You smile a bit to yourself. “Yeah,” you agree. “You do.”

Dazai looks as if he wants to say something, his lips are parted and his gaze is uncertain. You give him a questioning look, wondering what could possibly be running through his head right now, but then he speaks.

“Shuji,” he says so softly that you barely hear him. “My name was Shuji.”

Your eyes shoot open at the admission, Dazai’s goes just as wide, as if he hadn’t actually meant to say it out loud. You open your mouth to say something but Dazai doesn’t even give you the chance to.

“You can’t use it ever, okay?” he says, voice tinged with a type of panic you’ve never heard in the boy before, dark eye filled with desperation. “Never. Not when we’re with people. Not when we’re alone. Not ever. You can’t.”

You don’t think Dazai has ever begged anyone for anything in his life, but he’s begging you now… a part of you can’t help but wonder if it’s for his sake, or yours.

“Can I say it once? Right now?” you ask quietly, swallowing thickly.

Dazai looks unsure and hesitant, but he finally nods. “Then you have to forget it, okay? You can’t ever let anybody know it. Nobody can ever know it. And nobody can know that you know, okay? No one, especially Mori.”

You don’t really like the sound of that, your gut tugging uncomfortably at the stress on Mori’s name, but you don’t want to press anymore than you have, so you agree.

With the winds howling around the cliffs to drown out your voice, and only Dazai and the stars to bear witness, you shift to face him. You reach up to cup Dazai’s cheek, fingers brushing against the bandages on the right side of his face, watching as he inhales sharply at your sudden touch. Before you can lose your nerve, you lean in to ghost your lips against his cheek. 

“Happy birthday, Shuji,” you whisper softly, pulling back to sit next to him. Your face is on fire, and Dazai doesn’t react beyond a shaky breath and his fists tightening in his lap.

Finally, instead of responding, he reaches out to grab your hand, lacing his fingers with yours. Your smile is soft, and you can feel Dazai’s fingers trembling, body uncharacteristically lax as he rests next to you.

Your free hand brushes a stray rock at your side and you turn to look at it curiously, noting the jagged edge and then getting an idea. Dazai frowns when you pull your hand from his and shift away, giving you a questioning look, but then you shift to your knees, grabbing the rock and etching your first initial into the flat rock that the two of you are sitting on. Dazai watches you carefully and when you hold it out to him, he hesitates before taking it from you.

He doesn’t do anything for a second, staring down at your initial with the jagged edge of the rock resting against the ground next to it. Finally, he takes in a steady breath before carving a ‘+ S’ right next to yours. You chew on the inside of your cheek and your eyes are a bit misty as your hand falls to trace the letters.

After a few moments, you let out another breath and settle down next to him again, a bit closer than you were before, thigh pressed firmly against his and shoulders brushing. You reach for his hand again, intertwining your fingers with his, looking up to the vast sky above.

Your lips part to speak, but the words catch in your throat, fingers tightening around his for the sparest second. He gives you a curious look and you don’t dare to look at him as you finally force the words from your lips.

“The moon… it’s pretty beautiful tonight, isn’t it?” you say quietly, throat tight as you stare up at the sky, the glittering stars and the full moon glowing above. 

You can feel Dazai’s gaze on you as he responds. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “I think if I died tonight… I would die happy.”

Three years later on the early morning of June 19th, Dazai Osamu sits on the cliff’s edge in the same spot he did with you all of those years before, watching the sun break over the horizon. His fingers trace over the two engraved letters next to him, and not for the first time in the past two years he’s spent underground, he yearns. 

He yearns for you so bad that it makes his chest hurt, his stomach turns in on itself; he yearns so desperately that it’s hard for him to breathe without you, the thought of you weighing so heavily on his mind that he thinks the pressure of it might kill him. As he’s gotten closer to finally being able to leave the underground and join the Armed Detective Agency, he finds that he thinks more and more of you.

He wonders what you’re doing—if you’re thinking of him, if you hate him, if you’ve forgotten all about him. He can almost imagine you sitting here with him, shoulders brushing, thigh pressed to his, fingers intertwined.  He doesn’t know how long he’s spent sitting in that spot, fantasizing that you were there with him, longing for days with you and Chuuya and Odasaku and Ango that are long gone.

Before his thoughts can spiral any further, his phone rings—only one person would be calling him right about now, so he lets it get to the final ring before picking up.

“Fukuzawa-san is ready for you,” Ango says as soon as Dazai picks up the phone, waiting no time for pleasantries.. “Make your way over to the Armed Detective Agency when you can… Happy birthday, Dazai.”

Dazai doesn’t respond, hanging up the phone and letting out a soft breath. He shoves his phone back in his pocket and his eyes linger on the engraved initials, worn with time but still clearly visible, for only a few seconds longer. He pushes himself up to his feet and walks back down toward the beach house with the thoughts of you still clouding his head.

Yeah, Dazai thinks a bit dryly, chest heavy and aching as he looks back at where the two of you once sat three years ago. Happy birthday.

fun facts!

the inspiration for this fic came from the summer vacation bungo mayoi cards with dazai, oda and ango LOLLLL

the inspiration for the "dazai osamu not being dazai's real name" comes from the fact that irl!dazai was a pen name—his real name was tsushima shuji.

i'm gonna drop some pm!reader universe lore here too. in the pm!reader universe, i decided to go with the popular theory that dazai was the previous boss's son/grandson, which is why his word held so much weight when he vouched for mori. when everything calmed down after the death of the previous boss and after most of the old regime of loyalists had been disposed of, mori had shuji change his name to dazai osamu, to shred any connection he might have had to the previously reigning mafia family, just in case more loyalists popped up. in the present pm!reader universe (from 16-22), only kouyou and hirotsu know who dazai really is.

[lumiraette]

black void wet pathetic cat ❤️🖤🐈‍⬛

[iztea]

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 I LAUGH LIKE ME AGAIN (SHE LAUGHS LIKE YOU)

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: four years apart and the ultimate question is about to be answered: do you and dazai really still know each other, or are you clinging to a fantasy of the past? you decide to put it to the test with a game of wits and questions when dazai gets back to your apartment—but as the game drags on, dazai starts to wonder if maybe he was wrong. worse, if maybe he would prefer to be wrong.

(wordcount: 14.5k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia executive!reader, jealous!dazai, possessive!dazai, smoking & drinking, unprotected sex, switch!dazai, switch!reader, undertones of angst (happy ending). lmk if anything is missing, im rushing to get this out!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys here it IS - sorry it's late, but TRUST it's worth it. i'm so proud of this fic, genuinely one of the things im most proud of writing. this is technically a part 2 to he's my collar but can be read as a standalone

It takes far too long for Dazai to make it out of the Port Mafia headquarters, with both Akutagawa and Chuuya prowling about like the dogs they are. He wonders if you tipped either of them off—Chuuya, in particular—because the slug had been looking around like he was searching for someone. He thinks you’re entirely wretched for it, knowing that if he got caught, he’d be trapped in that damp and filthy torture chamber until he managed to finagle his way out, and he plans to make it known to you just how entirely displeased he is by the situation. 

The path to your apartment is achingly familiar, and the giddiness in his chest is something he hasn’t felt since the day he left. He knows that he should probably be more careful—he’s still in Port Mafia territory, your apartment spans the top floor of the easternmost building of the five towers—but he also knows that you’re the only one with direct access to the cameras in this building so he’s more reckless than he would’ve otherwise been. 

The floors tick up agonizingly slowly, Dazai swears that there must be something wrong with the elevator because it’s never taken this long before to get up to your place. His fingers thrum against his thigh, and his foot taps the ground impatiently. He paces from corner to corner within the small space like a caged animal. He thinks that maybe he should be taking advantage of the time alone, come up with some better excuses as to why he didn’t say anything to you before he left.

“I wouldn’t have left,” isn’t going to cut it. As true as it might be, it’s not the full truth, and Dazai knows you’ll be able to sniff it out in a matter of a few seconds with a clear head. He’s not walking into a cheerful reunion between old lovers, he’s walking into what’s about to be a stressful game of chess against a strategist whom Dazai has always considered a near-equal, a battle of wits against a woman whose whole life has revolved around political warfare. If he wants to keep his dignity intact and his secrets safe, he’s going to have to be incredibly cautious with what he says to you and even with how he reacts to what you say to him.

Still, he can’t help the giddiness. The excitement. He’s missed you. He’s missed you so much that it hurts. He’d thought that over time, the longing for you would go away, but it never did. If anything, it got worse because, over time, the pictures of you started to lack the soothing feeling they used to bring to the aching in his chest. Over time, he started to forget the sound of your voice and the sound of your laugh.

He’d known that you’d been sent away on foreign business not long after his last call to you, but he didn’t think Mori would actually keep you abroad for three whole years. He’d been hoping, maybe, that he could stumble into you one day. Or maybe just watch from afar, get close enough to hear the sound of your voice again. He’s been grossly denied of you for too long, and he knows that it’s of his own doing but that only makes it worse.

When the elevator dings, announcing his arrival on your floor, Dazai is sorely unprepared for the conversation about to take place. He steps into your penthouse, eyes drifting around the familiar vast space.

Like your office, not much has changed since the last time he was here. Your coffee table is still set down a few centimeters too close to the couch in the living room—the same couch he had his first kiss on with you when the two of you were sixteen and drunk on champagne celebrating a successful mission. You still hang your black jacket over a chair instead of properly on a hanger, it’s why it always has a crease on the back—he’d noticed it when you left your office, and he can’t help but smile slightly at the confirmation as his eyes linger on where it’s draped over one of your kitchen chairs. 

You tried to convince him that you’ve changed in the years the two of you have been apart, but Dazai doesn’t think you’ve changed much at all.

You’re leaning against the windows, looking down on the city—he knows you must’ve heard the elevator, but you haven’t bothered to look his way yet. There’s an indecipherable expression on your face and a glass of wine in your hand. You’re still dressed in your suit and Dazai notices there’s a glass of whiskey on the rocks untouched on the kitchen table. He shrugs off his trench coat and drapes it over yours, hoping that the scent of you seeps into it because he’s gone too long without it.

His fingers curl around the glass of whiskey you’d left out for him, and for a moment, he swears that he’s eighteen again. He’s making his way to your penthouse after a long mission with Chuuya, you’re expecting him—you always are—and he can never push away the fondness that squeezes his chest when he finds you lounging back on your couch, flipping through channels to find something to watch, a glass of his favorite whiskey set down on the coffee table next to where your feet are propped up as you wait for him to show up.

He wonders if you even care to remember what his favorite is. He wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.

He makes his way out of the kitchen and back into the living room, and he’s reminded that he’s not eighteen and you’re not waiting for him to show up after a mission because you finally look at him, and his breath catches in his throat.

He thinks you look a bit older now than you did four years ago—to be expected, of course—and there’s a coldness to your eyes that hadn’t been there before. Impossibly, he thinks that you’re somehow even more beautiful than you were when he last saw you, and he realizes again, throat tightening, that even after three years of no contact with you, he’s just as in love with you now as he was the day he left.

He knew it back then before he left, even if he never said it. When he was eighteen and could only feel any inkling of pleasure when he was with you; it wasn’t like he’d never tried to have sex with other people, he’d whore himself out for information at any given chance and slept around frequently after you started dating a civilian to distract himself from the bitter jealousy he felt, but he’d never known how good it was supposed to feel until he slept with you for the first time. When he was seventeen and could only ever feel comfortable in your presence, seeking you out at any given chance when he couldn’t handle being around people anymore; he’d curl up in your office with your orange blanket, napping as you did work, knowing that you’d keep people away from him. He thinks he might’ve even known when he was sixteen when the two of you first met on the streets of the Kanagawa prefecture.

He wonders if you even believed him when he said it earlier—he doubts it, you don’t seem too keen to believe anything he says, and he doesn’t blame you for it. 

But whether you believe it or not, it’s yours—that rotted heart of his, shriveled and shabby, riddled with holes and decay, half-eaten by maggots and worms it might be, but it’s still yours. He thinks that it was meant to be yours since the moment he was born, and it’ll be yours even after the two of you are long dead. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to go without you again—he doesn’t think he can. He knows that despite the tentative ceasefire, the Port Mafia and the Agency are still enemies, but he knows in his heart that he won’t be able to leave you again. Even just the sight of you has condemned him completely. 

Then you speak, and at once, his entire world falls apart.

“I’m leaving again in the morning,” you finally say, tone flat and eyes sharp and shrewd as you look over him. He reminds himself that this is not a reunion, that he needs to get his head on straight if he wants to make it out of your apartment in one piece, but it’s hard. “I was only brought back to smooth things over with the government after the whole fiasco with Fitzgerald and his American cronies. I’ll be leaving for Russia in the morning to meet with Tolstoy and Nabakov. Hopefully, gain some intel on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s plans before the man makes another move on the city.”

He… did not anticipate that you’d be leaving again so soon. Something cold and sharp latches to his heart, like jagged nails ripping it apart. He makes sure it doesn’t show on his face.

“Be careful,” he tells you quietly. “Dostoevsky… he’s not someone to underestimate. Just-Just be careful.”

You raise your eyebrows, unimpressed, “I’ve worked with Dostoevsky before. I don’t need you to warn me about him.” 

Your voice is cool. Sharp. Dazai sighs, knowing that anything he might’ve said to you earlier in the night is lost to you, and he doesn’t know if he’ll have it in him to bare his heart again, only for you to scorn it. He’s not meeting with you as he knows you—as his closest friend, as his lover; he’s meeting with you as the Port Mafia executive. Not the version of you that treats with allies, wining and dining them with glittering eyes and playful smiles as you use your ability to ensure they never turn on the Port Mafia; the version of you that sits at the round table with enemies, with a quick mind and calculating eyes as you decide whether or not they’re worthy of being absorbed into the Port Mafia or if Double Black will be sent out to eradicate them. 

“I told you everything I had to say back at the office,” Dazai tries, and he wonders if you’ll let him get away with it—he doubts it, but it’s worth a shot, and it will at least stall for a few moments as he tries to forcibly turn the cogs in his mind to figure out the best way of appeasing you. “I missed you. I… couldn’t say goodbye to you, not if I was to leave. I…”

I love you.

He doesn’t say it; he thinks he was only able to push it out earlier in the night in the heat of the moment, the orgasm-induced haze fogging his brain enough to let it slip out in desperation to make you give him a chance. And it worked because you gave him a second chance when you invited him back to your apartment, but Dazai doesn’t know how to make the most of the opportunity. He thinks he’s a fool for not preparing for this before getting here.

You click your tongue sharply, lip curling up in something close to disgust, and Dazai is glad he didn’t speak his ‘I love you’ because he thinks he might’ve actually cried if that was your reaction to him saying it.

“The only things you told me earlier in the night were half-truths and sweet talk. I didn’t invite you back to my apartment to hear you beg for another chance, Dazai,” you say coolly, and Dazai desperately misses the sound of his given name on your tongue. The corner of your lip curves up into a half-smirk, eyes suddenly glittering beneath the dim lighting of your penthouse as you add, “Although, I wouldn’t be opposed to it after we talk.”

He thinks the fact that you’re already considering an after might be a good sign. He can feel his cheeks flush a bit at your words, but instead of letting himself get rattled, he takes a step forward, well into your personal space, as he dips his face down so close to yours that his lips nearly brush yours as he speaks.

“I’d beg pretty for you,” he whispers, letting his voice drop an octave as his gaze tracks down to your lips. “I’d even get on my knees.”

Unfortunately, you are entirely unbothered by the proposition. “We’ll see, I suppose,” you say, and then raise your eyebrows, signaling for him to take a step back.

He does, and he feels distinctly put out and rejected by your reaction, but he sighs and asks, “What did you invite me here for then?” 

He very much does not like the way your eyes glitter now—shrewd this time, more amused, dangerous, as if you know the two of you are about to tread down territory that he’s going to be unfamiliar with. You nod for him to follow you into the kitchen, taking a seat at the head of the table and motioning for him to sit opposite you.

He does.

“We can play a game,” you finally concede. Dazai settles back against his chair, fingers still tapping rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, a terrible habit that Dazai has accrued whenever he feels cornered. Not a frequent occurrence, but damning when it is. Your eyes linger on them, and he knows you’ve pinpointed the tell. He forces himself to stop, but from the way your lips curl up, he can tell it doesn’t matter. “Ten questions each. Yes or no answers only.”

Dazai notices that you pointedly leave out any rule about the honesty of each answer—intentional, surely, so he probes.

“How do we determine the winner?” Dazai asks. He finally takes a sip of the fine whiskey you’d poured for him, and his question from earlier is answered. His favorite. There’s a warm feeling in his chest at the realization that you’ve remembered it even after all of these years.

Your lips curve up into a sharper and wider smile, teeth glimmering like knives beneath the soft lighting of your kitchen. The glass of wine in your hands is suddenly more reminiscent of a gun being pointed at him than your choice of alcohol, and he feels as if he’s already made some egregious mistake in your eyes.

“After we give our answer, the other has to decide whether or not it was truthful. In the end, we’ll both see how many the other got right. A test to see how well we still know each other,” is all you say in response. You’re mocking him and his insistence that the two of you are still the same, but Dazai intends to prove himself right. You tilt your head to the side and then say, “The prize is to be determined by the winner. I’ll ask the first question.”

Dazai winks, a lecherous comment already on his tongue about the prize, but the withering look you give him is more than enough to make it die before he can let it loose. He pointedly takes another sip of his drink and sinks in his seat.

He thinks that this should be an easy win. You’re quite the adept liar, but you’ve always had a glaring tell. Well, he amends, it’s glaring to him, at least. Not many others would be observant enough to catch it, and even if they were, only someone with an abundance of experience with you would be able to put it together. His gaze flickers up to meet yours, wondering if your lashes flutter right before you tell a lie. It’s such a simple and subtle tell, so casual that it took Dazai a year and a half to put together, but it was hard to miss once he did.

You hum to yourself as you give off the appearance of thinking about a question, but Dazai knows you better than anyone, and he’s certain that you already have all ten prepared, so he rolls his eyes at the faux show of uncertainty. 

“We both know you know what you want to ask,” he finally says. “Do us both a favor and quit with the theatrics.”

Your lip quirks up in amusement. “And here I was being gracious giving you more time to formulate whatever lies you’ll try to get away with,” you drawl, and Dazai nearly flinches.

“You know me so well,” Dazai sighs to hide how disconcerted he really is. “The question?”

You stare at him for a moment, and your lips curl up into a deceptively soft smile that almost throws Dazai off because, god, he’s missed you. And he knows you’re looking at him like this just for this specific reason because you’re a despicable bitch who knows that he’s always been easily unsettled when people show any semblance of affection toward him, but he can’t help the way he falters.

He tries to brace himself for whatever invasive question you’re about to ask regarding his reasons for leaving. Tries to prepare himself to lie cleanly because he’s sure you’re as aware of his tells as he is of yours. 

Then you ask: 

“Did you defect because of something Oda asked of you?”

Jesus. Right for the throat. You really don’t pull punches. 

Dazai’s throat tightens at the mention of his old friend, but he’s able to keep his expression clear of the sudden pain that your question brings on. You’re watching him carefully for reactions, gaze hawklike as you study his face, and Dazai is not about to let you pinpoint any more of his tells so early in the game.

He figures that this is an easy question; you already know the answer but want to hear the confirmation from his lips, so he decides to tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“The truth,” you say, an indecipherable expression on your face. He wonders if you want to ask what Odasaku asked of him, but that’s not part of the game and Dazai has no intention of answering that.

Be on the side that saves people. If both are the same to you, become a good man.

You might laugh in his face—Dazai Osamu, the Demon Prodigy, a good man? The idea is blasphemous, and he thinks it might actually hurt him if you scoff or laugh in response to hearing that, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t give away more than he has to, hoping that you don’t just straight up ask him.

You open your lips to speak, and Dazai braces himself for the prying question, but instead, you only probe, “First question?”

He wonders if your whole first question and the implications of it was just a means of trying to throw him off because now he’s fumbling trying to remember what he wanted to ask you before you hit him with it. He wouldn’t put it past you to play dirty like that—bringing up his dead friend and his last request just to unsettle him to give you the edge.

“Did we meet during my underground years after I defected?” he finally asks, and yeah, he knows the answer to this question. The missing half of his ear and waking up in the old safe house he used to hide out at with you is more than enough evidence for him to come to a definite conclusion, but he wants to hear it from you.

“Yes.”

Dazai inhales sharply and then murmurs, “That’s the truth.” And then, more loudly and far more affronted, he accuses, “I can’t believe you shot half of my ear off.”

He expects you to toss him a wink and a sharp grin, unrepentant and even finding amusement in his offense, but instead, your expression falters for the first time since he’s arrived. Something strange crosses your face; for whatever reason, his words leave you conflicted and Dazai suddenly feels even more nervous than he already was because now he can’t help but wonder what he might’ve said to you in his drunken state. 

He supposes that’ll have to be another question, but first, he’s going to have to figure out how to phrase it to get a yes or no answer first, without being vague enough for it to be a waste of a question or easy for you to misconstrue.

You hum after a few moments, taking a pointed sip of your wine. Dazai watches curiously—you’re bothered still, you’re not even trying to hide it. He knows you have better control over your facial expressions than this, so he thinks maybe it’s a ploy to get him to start spiraling down a path of useless questions. Put off by his sudden inability to discern your schemes, a part of him wonders if maybe you were right because the him of four years ago would’ve seen right through you right now.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” you sigh with faux regret, but he can tell from the way the smile on your lips doesn’t reach your eyes that you’re not into the banter. “Were you able to fulfill Oda’s request?” 

Fuck. This time Dazai can’t withhold the grimace that spreads across his face. He tries to keep his voice light with a deflecting comment, “My, bella, you’re really hitting with the deep questions tonight, aren’t you?”

You raise your eyebrows, tilting your head to the side as you wait for an answer, not giving him any room to formulate a response to your question. He finally sighs and shakes his head, taking a long sip of his whiskey. He wishes he had a pack of cigarettes on him, suddenly desperately longing for the pleasant burn of the smoke against his throat; he needs the buzz badly right now.

As if you could read his mind, you shift in your seat a bit and stuff your hand into the pocket of your slacks. It takes a few seconds but you fish out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, sliding them across the table over to him. If he wasn’t already so in his head over the question you asked, he’d make a quip over the fact that you still know him so well despite your insistence otherwise, but he only pulls out a cigarette and lights it, looking curiously down at the familiar brand.

“Since when did you start smoking these?” he asks quietly, eyes fluttering shut as he tilts his head back and takes a long drag of it. He exhales slowly and then adds, “Thought you liked the other ones, in the green box.”

“Teal,” you correct, and then frown a bit. “... Switched after you left.”

Dazai’s eyes flutter back open as his gaze focuses on you, wondering if the implication you left up in the air is something he can take at face value or if it’s just another way of trying to get him to lower his guard. But from the way you suddenly don’t meet his eyes, Dazai thinks you might be being honest: you switched because they reminded you of him.

Dazai’s chest suddenly feels heavy again.

“... No,” he finally responds to your second question. “Not yet, at least.”

“... Truth,” you say, and Dazai’s lips curl into a wry smile.

“Unfortunately.” The word slips out before he can stop it.

Your gaze flickers back up to him, curious, but Dazai doesn’t give you the chance to dwell on his comment, asking his next question: “Did I… admit anything to you that night that I wouldn’t have said while sober?”

His fingers tap rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, half-empty now; he’s anxious to hear your response.

“You did,” you confirm.

Dazai grimaces because that’s another truth, and that is not good. But just like how he doesn’t offer any context for his answers, you don’t either. He doesn’t know what he might’ve admitted or how you might’ve taken it—he’s going to have to waste another question on this topic.

“Truth,” he murmurs.

You hum and then ask, “Do you still blame yourself for what happened to him?”

“Come on,” Dazai complains sharply, tossing you a dirty look now. His jaw is tight. He wonders if you keep asking about Oda as some sort of sick revenge for him leaving, ripping open wounds that never properly healed so you can dig your fingers into them and twist around. You don’t look bothered by his outburst, waiting patiently for a response. He lets out an angry sigh, looking away and taking another long drink from his glass and another drag of his cigarette. 

He voices his first lie, “No.”

You let out a puff of air, rising to your feet and making your way over to the opposite counter, you grab the bottle of whiskey and bring it back over to him, topping off his now-empty glass before pointedly holding out your hand. He passes the cigarette over to you, tilting his head back to watch you bring it to your lips—a part of him longs to lean forward, to slide his hand behind your neck and cradle your head as he brings his lips to yours, inhaling the smoke as you exhale it, dizzy off the proximity to you, high off the buzz of the nicotine, just like the two of you would do when before he left.

He refrains, if only barely.

You exhale the smoke, a small cloud billowing around you—Dazai mourns the waste—and then you pass the cigarette back over to him. Your fingers brush his as you do, and a spark shoots through his arm at the touch.

“A lie,” you finally say, looking down at him with a frown. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could’ve done to save him.”

“You don’t know that,” Dazai says tightly, averting his gaze from you as you make your way back over to your seat across from him. “If I’d been faster-”

“If Mori wants someone dead, then they’ll die,” you interrupt him, a grimace on your face as you look down at your wine glass. “Trust me, Dazai, there was no saving Oda Sakunosuke.”

Dazai pauses instead of snapping again, catching the expression on your face. Haunted, as if you’re speaking from experience. He tilts his head to the side and then asks quietly, “Are you talking about your ex-partner? Itou?”

If Dazai remembers correctly, he died on a mission when you were seventeen. You never told him the circumstances, and he never asked, but it was the first and only time you ever broke down in front of him.

The corner of your lips tightens, “Is that your next question?”

Dazai barely withholds a frustrated sigh. 

“No,” he says quietly, and then asks, “Did I tell you why I couldn’t say goodbye? The real reason?”

He holds his breath now as he waits for your response. One way or another, this question is a double blade: if he did tell you why, then he’s at another disadvantage because he’s going to feel distinctly bare and vulnerable; if he didn’t tell you, he just admitted that he lied back at your office, at least partially. 

After what feels like an eternity, you finally say, “Yes.”

The truth. Dazai wonders when you’re going to utter your first lie, if you will, or if you’re trying to make some sort of point by being honest with him. He voices his answer and then waits impatiently for your next question as his mind races.

He desperately wants to know how you responded to him back then. Would you have come with him had he come to you before he left? Or would you have chosen the Port Mafia? He wonders if he should ask, make it one of his remaining seven questions, but he doesn’t know if he has the guts to hear your answer, so maybe he’ll just change the subject.

“Are you enjoying yourself at the Agency?”

For the life of him, Dazai cannot figure out your angle. First, the prying questions about Oda and now asking about the Agency. He doesn’t know what he expected at the start of the game—you’ve always been unpredictable, but even more so now. He’s never had such a hard time reading you or your intentions before.

He starts to feel even more doubtful, wondering if you were right.

Maybe he doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does anymore.

But this is an easy question, so he says the truth with little hesitation, “I am.”

Dazai swears the corners of your lips curl up into a soft smile, but it’s gone so quickly that he might’ve imagined it.

“Good,” you say quietly. “I’m glad.”

Dazai’s lips part, a warm feeling spreads through his chest at the honesty in your tone. Desperately, he wants to know what’s going on—where’s the rage and the betrayal he expected from you? The hate? Why do you seem… okay with all of this?

Irrationally, he starts to wonder if everything from the office was just a heat-of-the-moment conversation. If now that you’ve had time to sit on your thoughts, you’ve realized… realized what? That you’ve moved on from him? That you don’t care what he does anymore? That you’ve accepted that he’s no longer a part of your life? The warmth in his chest disappears, edged away by a sudden coldness and desperation because he thinks he’d rather die than go back to a life without you.

Even more irrationally, he remembers the comment you made back at the office, the admission that you’ve slept around since he left. Oh god, what if you really have moved on?

He knows his next question.

“The people you slept with—were they all one-night stands?”

He doesn’t want to know the answer unless it’s a yes.

You raise your eyebrows at the abrupt shift in his line of questioning, and then, to his absolute horror, you say, truthfully, “No.”

“What do you mean no?” he asks angrily—he thinks if he was a bird, he’d be puffing his chest out in irritation. He feels antsy suddenly, he needs to move around. He starts tapping his foot against the floor, his fingers against the glass. And again, he thinks you’re a despicable bitch because you only look amused at his question as if he’s not beside himself with righteous fury.

“It’s not your turn,” is all you respond with, and Dazai has a distinct urge to throttle you. Then you ask, “Do you feel like you belong there?”

He halts.

His fingers freeze from where they’re tapping against the glass, his foot freezes mid-motion. His lips part as he’s confronted with the very question that he’s been struggling with for two years now. He wants to yes, if only to maybe be a little spiteful, to rub in your face that he’s somewhere good and he’s somewhere where he belongs, and it’s not somewhere with you. A cruel dig to get back for the aching in his chest at the thought of you being with other people, but he knows that you’ll catch the lie, and more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt you like that.

Maybe he has grown a bit because the Dazai of four years ago nearly killed your civilian boyfriend when he found out that you were dating someone besides him and then promptly made a show of sleeping around to try to get back at you.

So, instead, he says quite honestly, “I don’t know.”

You tilt your head to the side. “Not a yes or no answer, but I suppose it works. How curious.”

He hates your cryptic comments. Pointedly, he side-eyes you as he takes another long drag of his cigarette. Already, it’s nearly down to the nub, so he puts it out on your table, ignoring the distasteful look you give him, and then reaches for another to light as he asks: “Were you in a relationship with any of them?” 

You roll your eyes at his prying, and he cannot hide the abject horror that crosses his face when you say, “Yes.”

“That better be a lie,” he complains, and when you look at him as if to ask if that’s really his guess, he makes a show of pushing out his bottom lip and looking away as he says: “I cannot believe you dated other people. Cheater.”

“We were never even dating, Daz-”

“Yes, we were,” Dazai protests instantly, entirely aghast at your words. “We absolutely were. What does that even mean? Of course, we were dating. Everybody knew it. Ask anybody. Ane-san knew. Gin-chan knew. Chuuya knew. Even Mori knew. We were so dating, you-”

“You never officially asked me to be your girlfriend, which is, unfortunately, the most fundamental step of dating,” you interrupt him, and Dazai stares at you in disbelief.

“I bought you flowers, we fucked exclusively,” Dazai complains, aggrieved. “We were definitely dating, and you definitely cheated on me because we never broke up.”

“If we were dating,” you emphasize the if very pointedly, and Dazai is distinctly put out by it, “then we broke up the day you left without saying goodbye.”

Dazai withers. He has no witty comment to return fire with, so instead, he just takes another sip of his whiskey, grateful for the combined buzz of the alcohol and the nicotine to distract him from the overwhelming guilt he feels whenever you bring up how he left you.

“Do you feel like you belong more with the Agency than you did with the Port Mafia?” 

Your next question is an amendment to your previous on, and it leaves Dazai just as lost.

He wants to belong with the Agency. He does. Desperately. He wants more than anything to feel as at home and comfortable in the light as he does in the dark. He doesn’t want to question his place among them anymore, he doesn’t want to wonder if he sticks out like a sore thumb. He wants to enter the office and feel like he doesn’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not, just so he can keep his place with them. He doesn’t want to have to fear at every corner that he’s going to revert to old habits, and they’ll see him for the monster that he is: a monster that should have never left the dark crevices that he crawled out from, a monster with blood so black that it strikes fear in even the most terrible mafiosos.

“No,” he admits the insecurity that’s plagued him to the one person he feels comfortable enough with to voice it aloud. He can’t bring himself to look up at you, wondering if the admission will give you some sort of sick satisfaction, if you’ll be happy that he’s not finding a place he can be comfortable in without you. Instead, he decides to rush to ask his next question: “The one you were in a relationship with, did you love him?”

He thinks that the question came across as far more timid than he meant it to be, and his eyes slide shut as he waits for your answer.

“There were multiple I had relationships with—” Dazai scoffs, of course, there were multiple. “—...but no, I did not.”

He lets out a soft puff of air, shoulders slumping a bit in relief. But his fingers are still tense around his glass, waiting for whatever question you’re going to ask next that’s going to dig deep into open wounds, stripping him of all of his masks and armor to force him to lay himself entirely bare in front of you.

“Did you really blow up Chuuya’s car before you left?”

His eyes fly open at the sudden change of pace in your questions, noting the smirk curling at the corner of your lips and the amusement glinting in your eyes. He accepts the olive branch quickly as he gives you a sharp smile and asks: “What do you think?” 

Your hand flies to your mouth to muffle a laugh, and the smile on Dazai’s lips becomes a bit softer as he watches you desperately try to get yourself under control. “You’re insane, you know that?” you finally say, still trying to bite back giggles. “He was so mad. Raged about it for weeks.”

Another question pops into Dazai’s head at the mention of Chuuya, and before he can consider whether or not he actually wants to know the answer to it, he asks: “Speaking of Chuuya, was he one of your trysts while I was gone?”

Suddenly, you are not laughing, and suddenly, Dazai regrets speaking.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Do not tell me-”

“He was,” you confirm.

Dazai’s glass of whiskey is empty. 

He grabs the bottle and drinks right from it, miserable.

“I think I would’ve rather been stabbed through the heart,” Dazai says mournfully, and though he keeps a faux-light tone with you, his throat feels like it’s swollen, and he feels a bit sick to his stomach.

He’s always been jealous of the bond you have with Chuuya. Absurdly jealous, even. You clicked with him quickly—you clicked with both of them quickly, and maybe it was a matter of the three of you being the youngest of the Port Mafia’s uppermost echelon, but Dazai doesn’t want to attribute it solely to that—but the way you clicked with Chuuya was different from how you clicked with Dazai. Two people so completely human locked away in the dark, clinging to one another to maintain some sense of normalcy; your and his casual humanity made Dazai’s lack of it irrefutable and glaring.

Regardless of the why, he never liked how close you were with Chuuya. 

Even before you were dating him—because you were dating him—a part of him had always felt sidelined whenever the three of you hung out together. Not because of either of your wrongdoings but just because it was hard for him to keep up with the two of you. He always felt a bit lost trying to, unable to follow along when the two of you would start laughing at jokes that he didn’t understand even when you explained them to him, when you would share glances with one another that spoke whole conversations he wasn’t privy to. The two of you got along in ways that Dazai would never be able to get along with anyone because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with him at his core. Chuuya, for all of his talk and fear regarding the question of his humanity, has always been so unfailingly human in ways that Dazai, to this day, cannot fathom to understand.

After you started dating him—because you were dating him—it only got worse because he’d see you with Chuuya and wonder if you were better off with someone like him instead. Dazai doesn’t know how to treat you right, clearly. He can’t even treat himself right; and Chuuya has always been the epitome of a gentleman, loathe Dazai is to admit it—Ane-san drilled that into the other boy where Mori only taught Dazai how to be cruel and unforgiving. The line between love and obsession has always been a terribly blurry one for him, and you have always wavered on either side of it—and Dazai, unfortunately, does not love healthily and obsesses so entirely that it would have most people running for the hills. 

For better or for worse, you’re not most people.

In his spiral of insecurity, he doesn’t catch the way your brows furrow as you put together some puzzle pieces. “Dazai,” you say suddenly, drawing him from his thoughts abruptly. There’s an accusatory look in your eyes that he really does not like. “Were you the one that booby-trapped my fucking apartment?”

Dazai snorts.

“You bastard,” you snap at him, and Dazai can’t help but bite the palm of his hand as a means of trying to stifle his laughter. “Mori thought it was a goddamn assassination attempt. He kept me under watch for weeks because of you. I couldn’t leave the towers without half of the Black Lizards with me.”

“Sorry,” he coos, not sorry at all. Dazai, because he clearly doesn’t know when to learn his lesson, then he promptly asks, “Am I better fuck than Chuuya?”

“Jesus Christ, Dazai, get off the topic of Chuuya and my sex life, it’s clearly only upsetting you,” you snap at him instead of answering the question. Dazai wants to argue and retain some dignity; he’s not upset, but then his entire world is shattered by your next words: “I am not answering this question.”

Dazai blanches. He can feel the blood drain from his face. He’d thought this was an easy question to make him feel a bit better. What do you mean you won’t answer? Does that mean Chuuya-

No. Dazai refuses to believe it.

 “No way,” he says, shaking his head. “He’s not a better fuck than me. You can’t possibly-”

“He’s not,” you finally say, and Dazai audibly lets out a sigh of relief. “But if you ever mention anything along the likes of that to him, you will never fuck me again, Dazai Osamu. Do you understand?”

Dazai is too relieved to even argue. “Yeah.”

“No more questions about my sex life,” you say firmly, and Dazai doesn’t respond, but he does agree internally because he doesn’t think his heart can handle any more scares like that. Your eyes sharpen again, and Dazai braces himself. “Were you the one to tell Mori I lied about being sick so I could skip out on the ball Mishima hosted when we were seventeen?”

Dazai’s eyes narrow right back at you and rather than answering, he shoots one of his own questions at you: “Were you the one to tell Mori I had his contact in my phone as ‘ignore’?”

You take his lack of an answer as an affirmative, correctly so. Dazai has no regrets about ratting you out to Mori because he was not about to attend Mishima’s event without you on his arm. He’d rather die. 

“You bastard, do you know the lengths I went to fake being sick? I wanted one night to relax without people breathing down my neck.”

“If I had to go, you had to go,” Dazai retorts petulantly. “I was not about to suffer with only Chuuya as company. You had no reason to tell Mori about the contact name besides to be petty. I fought with Chuuya for weeks because I thought he was the one to do it.”

You choke on a laugh. “Chuuya was so mad, he had no idea what you were talking about.”

“He tied me to a pole and swung me around for three hours,” Dazai complains, but there’s a smile on his lips as you burst into laughter, unable to stifle the giggles that spill from your lips.

“I know,” you wheeze, “I got it on video. We watch it sometimes when we’re bored and can’t find a movie.”

Dazai gapes, and you laugh harder, but for the first time in four years, Dazai finally feels… at home, he feels comfortable in his own skin again. He’s back in your penthouse, he’s drinking his favorite whiskey and smoking his favorite brand of cigarettes, you’re sitting at the kitchen table with him and laughing your head off at his expense, and for a moment, Dazai feels as if nothing has changed: he feels like himself again, eighteen and entirely enamored by the sight and sound of you, and you feel like you again, all of the doubt that had begun to rise to his chest as the two of you played the questions game long gone.

He falls in love with you all over again. Harder this time. Faster. He thinks he’ll fall in love with you again and again every day for the rest of your lives, each time more than the last, no matter how impossible it might seem.

He thinks maybe it’s not that he feels like he belongs with the Port Mafia more than the Agency. He thinks that it’s you. You’re the one he feels at home with. You’re the one he’s comfortable enough to be himself with. You’re the one he belongs with, always has, and always will.

After a few moments, you finally manage to get yourself under control, still giggling a bit as you look back up at him. Your smile is softer now, eyes gentle, more genuine than the smile you gave him before asking the first question. Dazai’s breath catches because when was the last time you looked at him like this—the last time anyone has looked at him like this? A warm feeling spreads through his chest; Dazai thinks he would stay in this moment forever if given the opportunity.

“Are you happy?” you ask quietly

Dazai blinks, startled, and an odd feeling spreads through his chest once your question registers. His lips part to answer, but no words leave them; he draws back as if he’s been slapped, a bit flustered and confused because that’s the furthest thing from what he expected you to ask. He wonders if you’d asked the last three questions to lull him into a false sense of security.

“I-” he starts to say but cuts himself off. “What kind of question is that?” 

He tries to deflect instead of properly answering, frowning, but you only raise your eyebrows, pointedly keeping your lips sealed to let him know that you expect an answer. He shakes his head and then sighs, bouncing the question in his head a few times before going for a cop-out: “When I’m with you? Always.”

You’re not pleased by his decision, frowning as you look away from him—he knows that’s not what you asked, not really, but you should have been clearer with your question if you wanted him to give you the answer you expected. But he doesn’t like the sudden disappointment on your face, it leaves his skin itchy and his chest longing for the soft look to return.

So he sits there, ruminating on the question. Is he happy? He should be, right? He’s saving people. He’s on the way to fulfilling Odasaku’s final request. He has a whole group of people whom he can rely on without having to fear being taken advantage of or betrayed at every corner. He’s happy.

But is he trying to convince himself of it? Why is he still trying to kill himself if he’s happy? Why is there a part of him that feels lonely no matter how surrounded he is by people? Why is it that when he’s at his lowest points, the only two people he wishes he could be with are you and Chuuya? Why does he ache for the days he’d spend dragging the two of you around Yokohama, causing trouble for Mori—the closest he’s ever felt to enjoying life?

“I don’t know,” he finally amends his answer, looking down at the bottle in front of him and the cinders of the cigarette dangling between his fingers. He lifts it to his lips again, taking one last drag of it as he tries to figure out what his last question should be.

There’s only one pressing question he has left, but he hesitates, unsure if he really wants to know your answer.

He forces it out anyway.

“Would you… would you have come with me back then?” His voice is quieter than he intended, cracks over ‘me’, and to your credit, you don’t react to the question, expression as eerily still as it was before, as if you’re considering your words.

A yes or no. It shouldn’t take this long for you to answer. Each second that passes feels like an eternity, and Dazai suddenly feels anxious, he doesn’t know why he asked this question because if the answer is no—if it’s no, then…

Finally, you let you a soft sigh, taking a sip of your wine as if to prolong his agony.

Your lashes flutter before you speak.

You lie for the first time that night.

“Yes.”

Dazai’s voice sounds far away as he says, “That’s a lie.”

“I guess you were right,” you say softly, but you sound so distant, like you’re on the opposite side of a long, empty tunnel and not sitting right in front of him. “We do still know each other decently well; you got them all right.”

Dazai doesn’t care. In fact, he would have gladly conceded a loss in this game, and he would’ve gladly admitted that maybe the two of you don’t know each other as well as you used to if it meant that he got the last question wrong because then he would’ve just given you a coy expression and asked if you’d let him get to know this new version of you too. You would’ve said yes, and he would’ve made quite the pleasurable night out of it for the two of you. Instead, he had to insist that nothing has changed, and now he has to come to terms with the fact that he was right and he had known you well enough back then to know not to ask you to leave with him because you would have chosen the Mafia over him. 

He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t even notice you approaching him until you’re leaning on the table next to him, index and middle finger coming beneath his chin to tilt his face up toward you. He looks up at you through his lashes, eyes searching your face, but he only finds another blank slate that he can’t read. His breath hitches when your hand slides from his chin to cup his cheek, and he can’t help the way that he leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut.

“I would choose you over so many things, Osamu.” You speak his given name for the first time in years, but he can hardly find any comfort in it because he knows he’s not going to like what you’re about to say. Your fingers card through the tips of his hair, brushing the dark locks behind his ear as your thumb sweeps over his cheekbone. “But not over the Port Mafia. Just like how you didn’t choose to stay for me.”

“It’s not the same,” he says, voice hoarse. “It’s-”

“It is,” you interrupt, voice deceptively gentle, and he thinks you’re entirely unfair because he can hardly focus with your touch distracting him. He’s missed it so much—he’s gone four years without it, without any type of touch that wasn’t him getting his shit kicked in by Kunikida or an enemy. “You didn’t choose to stay for me. I wouldn’t have chosen to leave for you.”

“Why?” Dazai asks tightly, and he hates that when his jaw tenses, you smooth your fingers over it, and he unclenches it immediately.

There’s a sadder look in your eye now as you give him a small smile. “You know why.”

Of course, he knows why. He feels the hatred deep in his gut as his mind draws back to Mori. Because that’s who the issue is. It’s not the Port Mafia. It’s not your friendship with Kouyou. It’s not even your friendship with Chuuya that’s the issue. It’s Mori and your undying loyalty to him. No matter how much you claim to despise him, bashing him every chance you get, sneering at him whenever he tries to treat you like his daughter, Dazai knows that when it comes down to it, you’ll always choose him. You’d throw yourself on a sword if he asked it of you, and not for the first time, Dazai wants to spit in the man’s face for making you feel as if you’re eternally indebted to him for rescuing you from that warzone so many years ago; for making you feel as if you’re nothing without the Mafia, nothing without him.

“You don’t owe him anything,” Dazai says tightly. “You have to know that by now—you don’t owe him anything.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation, Dazai,” you sigh, sounding tired. Your hand drops from his face, and Dazai longs for your touch again instantly. His fingers twitch from where they’re resting on his lap; he only barely stops himself from reaching out for you. You try to smile as you change the subject, but it hardly meets your eyes, “It’s a tie then. No prize for either of us, hm?”

Dazai is not so inclined to switch the subject. He wants to press on this now that he has the chance; he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to rip you out from beneath Mori’s thumb, but he needs to at least try… but you’re leaving again in the morning, and Dazai also does not want to ruin this night with you. He doesn’t know when he’ll get another.

So, instead, he matches your half-assed smile as he looks up at you and says, “I didn’t say you got them all right. You only said that I got them all right.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Did I get any wrong?” you ask, amused.

No.

“Yes.”

“Liar,” you say, but there’s a fond lilt to your tone as you let out another puff of air, the smile on your face finally reaching your eyes as you look down at him. The soft lighting of your kitchen casts a pretty glow over your face, your smile is so entrancing that Dazai thinks he could stare at it forever.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes out, the words slipping from his lips before he can stop them. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He’s sure he must look like a fool right now, entirely enamored by the sight of you, unable to even fathom drawing his gaze away. He wonders if you’ll protest again, call him a liar, and shift away from him.

You don’t.

The smile on your lips falls, and a wrecked expression crosses your face as your eyes search his. Your lips part to speak, and he waits with bated breath for whatever you’re about to say—he thinks that if you deny him again right now, it might completely shatter all of the walls he’d so carefully built to protect himself.

“I’ve missed you too,” you whisper as if you’re scared to speak the words out loud—and how can he blame you when the last time you dared to speak them, he hung up on you, never hearing from him again until tonight.

God, the guilt he feels whenever he thinks of you returns with a vengeance, so intense that Dazai starts to feel sick to his stomach. He can’t handle it, so he does the only thing he knows how to do to distract himself from it.

His movements are clumsy as he pushes himself up to his feet, nearly tripping over the leg of his chair, and his fingers feel clunky as he lifts them up to cup your cheeks. For a second, he fears that you might move away from him, but you don’t, so he leans in to press his lips against yours.

There’s no tenderness to his kiss. Dazai kisses you like he wants to consume you, lips sliding messily against yours, blunt nails indent crescents into your cheeks as he holds you close. Usually, he would be embarrassed by his blatant desperation and lack of finesse—he’s never been a sloppy kisser, when the two of you were younger, you would always let out pleased hums into his mouth, lashes fluttering as he worked his lips carefully against yours, tongue sliding against your own as he traces his name on it. 

All of his finely honed skill is thrown out the window now as he kisses you like a man who has been starved for years. He has been starved for years—the quick fuck in your office did nothing to quell the longing he’s felt for you the past four years. He could kiss you for hours. Days, even, and it still won’t be enough. Nothing short of an eternity with you would be enough to make up for the four years he’s been deprived of you.

He lets out a low groan into your mouth as you nip at his bottom lip, hands sliding from your face down to your hips. He’d take you here. Right now. But he remembers the last time he tried to fuck you on your kitchen table, it ended with him choking on the barrel of your gun as you yelled at him for being gross (“I eat on this table, you heathen!”) and he’s not particularly in the mood to set off your temper now that he finally has you in his arms again, so it’s with much restraint that he grabs you by the hips to walk you back into your bedroom.

He can hardly concentrate as your fingers twist the hair at the nape of his neck, soft moans slipping from his lips, muffled against your mouth. It’s only sheer instinct and muscle memory that has him making his way from the kitchen and down the hall. He can’t bring himself to separate his lips from yours for even a second. And he’s a mess because he’s not coherent enough to force himself to breathe properly through his nose, so his lungs are burning and his head feels a bit light, but he doesn’t care so long as it means he can keep kissing you.

Turn left, turn right, second door from the end of the hall. 

His fingers fumble for the knob of your bedroom door, pushing it open a bit too hard, considering the way he hears it slam against the wall and how you tug his hair hard in retaliation. He doesn’t care, moans a bit louder even when your nails scrape his stinging scalp, and you let out a derisive noise against his lips before biting down hard enough to draw blood.

The taste of iron makes a slow smile curl at his lips, walking you back toward the bed, and it’s only when your knees hit the edge that you finally pull away from him. “If you broke my door, you’re fixing it, Osamu.”

Dazai’s smile is lecherous. “I’m gonna break something alright,” he croons, relishing in the way you immediately roll your eyes at him. It’s all so familiar—he can almost pretend that he never left, that nothing has changed since the two of you were eighteen, dumb, reckless, and in love.

Before he can press you back against the bed, he feels your fingers drop from around his neck to his waistband, curling around his belt loops. In an instant, you’ve twisted the both of you around, and suddenly, it’s the back of Dazai’s knees pressed against the edge of the bed as you push him down onto the mattress. He hits the sheets with an ‘oof’ and a hazy smile, surrounded by the scent of you, drowning in the sight of you. He thinks he might be in heaven. 

You shift on top of him, straddling his waist; Dazai’s hands instantly come to rest on your thighs, sliding up the sides to grab your ass and pull you more firmly onto him. He groans when he feels you grind down against his cock, and god, he’s already hard just from kissing you. He hears you snort above him, but Dazai doesn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed.

His lips part in a silent moan as you lean down to ghost kisses along his jaw, hands sliding up his chest. He feels you wrap your fingers around his bolo tie and tug it, you let out a sharp noise of distaste against his skin before murmuring: “I hate this ugly thing.”

He lets out a huff of laughter that quickly breaks off into a moan when your lips trail to the spot behind his ear that always makes him writhe. His fingers bite into your hips, pushing you down on him as he rocks his hips up into you—shit, he might be able to cum just from this. His cock is straining painfully against his beige pants, twitching as he grinds up against your clothed cunt. He thinks maybe if he fucks his hips upward a few more times, he might be able to push himself over the edge, but as desperate as he is to chase his release, he refuses to cum anywhere but inside of you.

Plus, he thinks he’ll be shamed to hell and back if he finishes in his pants with you hardly touching him. 

“Then strip me out of it,” he gasps, lashes fluttering as your teeth graze his pulse point right above the edge of his bandages. Fuck, he’d give anything for you to bite down—riddle him with marks he can’t cover so he can flaunt them off to everyone who looks at him. Dazai knows that there are countless men and women out there who’d die to be able to be called yours, he wants them to know he’s the only one who can take that honor. “What’re you waiting for?” 

You hum and then sit back on his hips—he bites his bottom lip raw as you unintentionally put even more pressure on his cock. He’s half dazed out, not realizing that your grip tightened on his bolo tie until you straight up yank it off of him, snapping the string around his neck.

“No!” he complains, watching with wide eyes and parted lips as you fling the now-broken bolo tie off to the side of your room. “Noooo, why’d you do that? I’m going to have to order a new one.”

“Boo-hoo,” you say dryly, hardly paying attention to him as your fingers curl around the hem of his vest, pulling it up over his head, snorting when he lets out a puff of irritation as his nose gets caught around the collar. 

“This is so unsexy,” he protests, rubbing his nose. “Shouldn’t you be more gentle?” 

“Stop wearing so many layers of clothes,” you retort, but Dazai is placated when you lean back down to kiss the corner of his lips, lashes fluttering as his eyes slide shut. He lets out a pleased hum as you kiss down his jaw, nimble fingers unbuttoning his final layer of clothing. He wishes he wore an undershirt just to watch you huff in annoyance. His breath catches as you nip at his skin and then murmur, “This better?” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, voice wavering as you get down to the last button of his shirt, sliding it off of his shoulders and easing him out of it. His body shudders as your hands slide over the bandages wrapped around his abdomen. Fuck, it’s been so long since anyone’s touched him beneath his clothes, even with the bandages still acting as a layer between the two of you, his nerves are on end, sensitive to everywhere your fingers touch.

He wonders if you’ll pull off the bandages—it’s a line that the two of you only crossed once back then, and although the idea of it has him brimming with anxiety, he longs for the feeling of your skin flush to his.

He almost feels a bit embarrassed when you sit back again to admire him as if there’s not a scar-ridden body hidden beneath the bandages. You look at him like he’s beautiful, like he’s not a monster disguised as a man, like he’s human. Dazai has always felt distinctly seen beneath your stare like you can see through all of the masks he wears and see him for him, and that has not changed over the past four years.

He’s missed the comfort of it. He has. It used to unnerve him back then, thinking someone could see him so clearly when he tried so hard and so carefully to hide himself beneath layers of impenetrable masks, but after going four years alone, with no one for him to turn to, no one he could look at and have them just know what he’s thinking… 

Yosano once mentioned offhandedly that to be loved is to be seen, and Dazai thinks the only time he’s ever been seen—truly seen, down to his core, deep in his soul—is when he’s with you.

It was a very lonely four years without you.

“I thought about you every day,” Dazai tells you softly, the grip on your hips easing up as he looks up at you. “Made a list of places I wanted to bring you and then burned it because I never thought I’d get the chance to be with you again. Stared at old pictures of you all the time, couldn’t sleep without thinking about memories with you. Drank your favorite wine just so I could pretend I was tasting it off your lips.”

You bring your hand up to cup his cheek, and Dazai leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut again. He kisses your palm, humming softly when your thumb runs along his bottom lip.

“There wasn’t a single day I went without you crossing my mind,” you admit quietly and Dazai’s breath hitches as he stares up at you, dark eyes wide and lips parted. He thinks he should say something, anything really, but it’s a lost cause. You don’t seem to mind, luckily, because you only lean down to brush your lips against his again.

This kiss is softer than the last, lips trembling against yours as your tongue dances along his inner lip. He thinks his cheeks might feel wet but he doesn’t dare acknowledge it; you don’t either, only using your thumbs to brush away the tears as they spill over his cheeks.

“Are you really leaving again in the morning?” he finally asks, and he hates that his voice cracks over the words.

You hum in agreement, still hovering over him, still running your thumbs along his cheekbone. His lashes droop shut, but he forces them back open as you speak. “I am. Bright and early. Flight leaves at six.”

His gaze flickers to the left, over to where your alarm clock is set up on your nightstand. 

12:35

He looks back at you, eyes swimming with desperation.

You give him a soft, wry smile. “We should make the most of the night then, hm?”

He doesn’t waste any time on that.

His grip on your hip tightens, and in one swift motion, he flips the two of you around, elbows resting on the mattress on either side of your head as he hovers above you. Your eyes glitter as you give him a coy smile, and again, Dazai falls in love.

Then, he ruins the moment.

“Tell me how you fucked Chuuya.”

Your smile drops. “Osamu, what the fuck?”

“Tell me,” he pouts, nudging his nose against your cheek and peppering soft kisses on your cheek and down your neck. His knees drop to the bed on either side of your hips, holding up his weight as he reaches down to unbutton your slacks, sliding them off your body. A smile flickers onto his lips as his fingers graze your panties—drenched, finally, evidence that he’s not the only one so affected by this. “Tell me. Were you on top? Did he take you from behind? Was he rough? No, it’s Chuuya-”

“If you care so much about how Chuuya fucks, Osamu, how about you go fuck him yourself?” you interrupt him.

Dazai gags.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he says and then returns to his mission, fumbling with his own pants now as he tries to yank them and his briefs off, unable to hold back the relieved sigh when he finally frees his cock, unceremoniously tossing them to the floor. “Tell me.” 

“Why do you care so much, hm?” you ask, reaching up to brush his hair out of his eyes. “I told you that you were better.”

You’re only trying to deflect from the question and he almost lets you succeed, partially placated, but he stays strong, leveling an unrelenting stare onto you as he waits for your answer. You sigh heavily, and he knows he’s won.

“Not rough,” you say as if Dazai hasn’t already come to that conclusion. Chuuya’s had a crush on you since the three of you were sixteen. Dazai assumed he had grown out of it, but evidently, he was wrong, considering he took the opportunity to sleep with Dazai’s girlfriend—because you were his girlfriend—the moment Dazai was out of the picture. What a little snake. Dazai needs to vandalize his apartment again. Maybe set up a few more bombs. He’s only drawn back from his mental spiral when you start talking again: “He took the lead. Wanted to see my face the whole time, make sure I was okay.”

“How gentlemanly of him,” Dazai says—he’s not bitter. He’s not.

“It was,” you agree, too genuinely.

Dazai squints at you hard. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” you say. “You asked.”

“You don’t need to sound so wistful.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Osamu, I’m not wistful.”

“How-”

“Are we going to talk about Nakahara Chuuya all night, or are you going to fuck me?” you interrupt immediately, looking increasingly incensed. Dazai only raises his chin at you pointedly—you’re the one that slept with Chuuya. “Time is dwindling, Osamu.”

Okay. 

Dazai’s gaze flickers back to the clock and then back down to you, withering a bit under your irritated stare. He sighs and leans back over you to kiss the corner of your lips, fingers curling around the hem of your panties to slide them off your legs.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against your skin, his kisses linger against your skin now as he drags his lips down to your jaw. “The thought of him being with you…”

It makes Dazai want to do terrible things. The part of him that he locked up deep within rattles at the bars of its cage, furious and bloodthirsty. The trigger finger he’s been so careful to tame twitches with a desire he hasn’t felt in four years. The thought of anyone being with you makes Dazai sick to his stomach—Dazai is the only one who should get to see you like this, be with you like this—but the thought of Chuuya being with you is so much worse.

“You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Osamu,” you tell him quietly, fingers intertwining with his hair as he nips at your neck. “No matter how much I slept around, nothing was ever able to fill the hole losing you left. Not even Chuuya.”

Dazai exhales, shaky—the guilt returns, and so does the doubt because what right does he have sitting here being petty about what you did while he was gone when he was the one who left you behind without so much as a word? His eyes flutter shut, he spares a few more chaste kisses across your throat before lifting his face back to yours, kissing you gently.

“Let me make up for lost time then,” he says softly.

He doesn’t hesitate now, one hand dropping down to your thigh, lifting it to wrap around his waist as he presses his hips into you. His breath shudders when his cock slips against your folds, a low moan spilling from his lips. He has to reach down to angle himself properly, tip pressing against your tight hole.

The fingers of his free hands are shaky as he lifts them to cup your cheek. “Look at me,” he says, heat spreading through his abdomen when he realizes you already can hardly hold your eyes open, quick breaths escaping your lips as you try to keep yourself from cumming already. “Look at me, I want to see you.”

Your eyes flutter open, lidded and heavy as you look up at him, and Dazai thinks that maybe he could cum just from the expression on your face alone, inhaling sharply as his thumb drags across your bottom lip. He thinks maybe he should try to get ahold of himself, fearing that if he pushes inside of you now, he might cum on the spot, but his cock is aching so badly that Dazai thinks he might die if he doesn’t feel your heat around him immediately.

It takes all of his strength to keep his eyes from sliding shut as he pushes inside of you, desperate to see the way your face twists and your breath catches. Your lips tremble, chest rising and falling rapidly, he can feel your thighs tightening around his waist, and Dazai groans when your heels dig into his lower back, forcing his hips flush to you, burying his cock deep in your cunt. He chokes, grip on your thigh bruising; his abdomen tightens, and his head feels light.

No way, he thinks, gritting his teeth as he tries to hold back the waves of pleasure threatening to tear through him. He hears you let out a huff of laughter beneath him, and Dazai would shut you up with a sharp thrust of your hips, but he’s still desperately trying to regain control over himself, so he thinks that’s maybe not the best idea.

His forehead drops to rest on the pillow next to your head, lips brushing your ear as he lets out a low moan. He can’t even savor the way you let out a full-body shudder, fingers coming up to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. Fuck, you’re so tight—Dazai can feel your walls tightening around him, spasming, his breath is shaky, and he tries to distract himself by pressing his lips to your skin, mouthing messily at your skin, sucking and nipping and counting to ten as he tries to settle down.

But it’s hard with the soft sighs you’re letting out, the way your fingers catch on his tousled hair, tugging enough to make his scalp sting. His head is so fogged that he can hardly think straight—god, he’s missed this, he hasn’t had the comfort of letting himself go like this in… since he left, really. His mind is always turning, plotting out ten, twenty, thirty steps in advance in fear of making a mistake, slipping up and letting the rest of the Agency see him for what he is, slipping up and their lives being the price just like with Odasaku. It’s only with you that’s ever comfortable enough to finally let the cogs in his brain slow and shatter, lose himself in carnal pleasures, lose himself in you; it’s been four years since he’s last had a reprieve from his own brain.

But he only lets himself slip halfway—tonight isn’t going to be about him, it’s about you. He has four years to make up for and he intends on getting a good start on it tonight.

He pants quietly as he lifts his head enough to bite your earlobe, tugging it gently before pressing his lips to your temple. “I’ve missed this,” he admits, voice raspy and clogged thick with emotion. “I’ve-”

He can hardly get the words out, and his breath catches when your hands slide from behind his head to cup his cheeks, forcing him to look at you. He thinks he must look wrecked—he can already feel the sweat beading on his forehead, and he knows his eyes are probably glazed over. You still look stunning, a soft expression on your face as you look up at him as if he’s not buried to the hilt inside of you. 

Unfair, he thinks mournfully. 

“What're you still holding onto, hm?” you ask, and Dazai only barely registers your words, sinking into your touch as you brush matted hair out of his eyes. He can finally bring himself to roll his hips—experimental, slow, trying to make sure he can actually move before trying to fuck you. Then you sigh softly, and he’s too out of it to try to make out the expression on your face as you say: “You work yourself so hard… always have. I’ve got you, you can let go, Dazai. C’mon.”

“No,” he hums, but his voice is strained, evidence of his struggle. “Tonight’s about my favorite girl.”

“Favorite?” you tease, lifting your shoulders off the bed to ghost a kiss against his lips that nearly has his hips stuttering—the conversation so reminiscent of one that the two of you had at seventeen it almost makes him smile.

“Only,” he amends quietly, kissing your nose, then the corner of your lips, and then nipping your jawline.

Just when he thinks he’s good to actually start picking up the pace, intent on fucking the thoughts out of you until you forget about your stupid flight in the morning, he catches a suspicious expression on your face, one that has his eyes narrowing.

“What?” he asks dubiously; your eyes are glittering in a way that he knows from experience is dangerous. 

You don’t say anything, just look pointedly at your thighs, then up to his shoulders. Dazai tilts his head to the side, recognizing what you want, and after a moment’s hesitation, he slides your legs up above his shoulders, folding them to your chest, eyes nearly rolling back at the new angle. Fuck, his hips do stutter this time, breath hitching. He has to readjust again, mentally focus on not cumming on the spot, and then-

And then you say: “He had my legs like this.”

A trick. 

Dazai knows it. 

You’re trying to make him let go of the thin thread of self-control he still has. To give in. To let all of the gears in his brain finally fall apart for the first time in four years.

He knows it.

He falls for it anyway.

Dazai’s jaw tightens, gaze snapping down to you only to catch a goading look in your eyes, a sly smile on your lips that Dazai has every intention of fucking right off your face. He inhales sharply, one hand sliding up your body to grab your chin, blunt nails digging a bit too deeply into your cheeks.

“Yeah?” he says, voice rough. 

Your lashes flutter and lips part as Dazai pointedly jerks his hips up. Your breath catches over a moan, and Dazai knows that this new angle is affecting you just as much as it is him.

“Mhm,” you agree, and just like that, the thin thread snaps.

He snaps his hips into you so hard that your bedframe bangs loudly against the wall behind it, quickly setting a steady pace, nice and deep, quick enough that you can’t even get a breath of air to your lungs before Dazai is fucking it right out of you. Already, he’s so fucked out that his mind is in shambles, one hand settling on your hip to hold you in place as he thrusts his hips into you, hitting that sweet spot with each stroke while his other hand, still cupping your face, slides down to your neck.

He doesn’t squeeze—wouldn’t dare to cut off the pretty noises spilling from your lips, moans of his names, choked gasps and cries between each rock of his hips—but the fact that you trust him, him, enough to have his fingers wrapped around your throat is always a quick way make him topple over the edge.

His eyes dart down to your chest, realizing, very unfortunately, that you haven’t taken off your button-up yet. He nearly bites down on his tongue in frustration as his hand comes down to your chest, careful to keep the pace of his hips as he hooks his fingers around the first button just to yank down, popping off half of the buttons of your expensive dress shirt and haphazardly pulling it off of you to toss it to the side before fumbling with the clip of your bra.

“Osamu,” you hiss, and Dazai revels in the way your voice wavers with each thrust, biting back moans. “That’s the second-”

You don’t get to finish your sentence. Dazai tosses your bra over with your discarded shirt and dips his head down to wrap his lips around your nipple, tongue swirling around the sensitive bud before rolling it between his teeth, and you’re gone—Dazai lets out a muffled groan around you as your back arches up into him, crying out his name, walls tightening around him as you cum on his cock.

“Oh-f-hah-fuck,” Dazai gasps as he rests his head on your collarbone, grip on your waist tightening. 

He has to physically force himself to lift his head, bracing his forearm on the mattress next to your head, desperate to see the way your eyes roll back, he can already feel himself teetering over the edge—the lewd sound of skin-on-skin, the sloppiness of his cock driving in and out of your cunt, he can feel your cum dripping down his cock, smeared on his pelvis.

His hand slides behind your head, lifting it from where you have it pressed against the mattress. Beautiful—the only thought that can run through his hazy brain is of you and how perfect you are, lips swollen and bitten raw, parted as pitched moans escape them, tears spilling from the corner of your eyes as he fucks you through your orgasm and right into a second. He’s the only one that should ever get to see you like this, with your clever brain fucked right and dumb, body writhing against the bed as you cling to him.

He leans down again, trailing sloppy kisses against your neck, gasping as he starts to feel his high approaching.

“No one makes you feel like this,” he says, or maybe he begs, he’s not sure if he’s making a statement or pleading for you to tell him it’s the truth. “Tell me. T-shit-tell me.”

“No one,” you sob over another moan, and Dazai can feel your pussy fluttering around him—he wonders if he’s already fucked you into a third. Usually, it takes longer. “No one, Osamu, you’re the only one.”

And that’s the only thing he needed to hear to give him that final push. His steady pace shifts into a more erratic one, sloppy and desperate, as he chases a high that’s just out of reach. His moans are muffled against your skin, teeth scraping your collarbone, mind a jumbled mess of thoughts of you. He feels your fingers trembling as you lift them to his cheeks, pulling his face up to press your lips against his, and that’s all it takes: he lets out a wanton moan against your mouth, pressing your legs further into your chest as his hips still against your ass, finishing deep inside of you.

Spots dance in his vision, head buzzing and ears ringing; he swears his orgasm lasts an eternity, body shaking and shuddering above you, letting out breathy moans into your mouth. He can feel his cum dribbling out of you, pooling onto the sheets beneath the two of you, so much of it that you can’t even keep it all in you. 

He doesn’t let his lips leave yours once—the kisses are messy and sloppy, devoid of all of the finesse that the two of you usually have, teeth nearly clashing, tongues sliding against each other’s. 

It’s only when his vision finally starts to clear and his head feels less on the verge of passing out does Dazai finally trails kisses from your lips to your jaw and down your neck before he finally collapses on top of you, mind entirely gone, like he’s floating on clouds. He pants as he tries to catch his breath, eyes lidded as he absently trails kisses along your chest and collarbone. He thinks the world could be ending around the two of you, and Dazai wouldn’t even have the capacity to notice. For the first time in four years, he really, truly allows his brain to rest.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, eyes drooping shut as he lets himself be enveloped by your arms, drowning in the comfort of your scent.

He doesn’t want to know. He’s scared to look at the clock and check.

“Tonight was supposed to be about you,” Dazai finally complains, burying his face in your chest as he pouts.

You only let out a soft laugh above him. “We have the rest of our lives for that… You deserved a break, Osamu.”

The rest of our lives.

Dazai’s throat tightens, vision blurring a bit at the thought—he can only barely bring himself to respond, and the words that slip out are not what he means to say: “I never thought I’d get to be with you like this again,” he admits, voice hoarse. “I never thought-”

“I know,” you interrupt, voice quiet, a bit shaky. “... I know.”

Of course, you know.

He can’t bring himself to say anything else, so he doesn’t, sinking into your arms and allowing himself the comfort he’s deprived himself of for so long. He almost starts to drift off—and god, he can’t remember the last time he’s dozed off willingly, only able to sleep after drinking copious amounts of alcohol or taking an even more copious number of sleeping pills. It’s not until you speak again does he stir back awake from the brink of sleep.

“What did he ask of you? Oda, I mean,” you finally ask, fingers brushing through his dark hair, lulling him further to sleep.

Dazai thinks that you’re cruel, asking him while his mind is still fogged from the exhaustion following his high, and he’s still half asleep in your arms, trying to regain his bearings. The words slip out before he can think twice, forgetting his fear of you laughing at the idea of him trying to be a better man.

“He asked me to be on the side that saves people… if both are the same to me, he wanted me to be a good man.”

The words dawn on him too late; he can hardly bring himself to look up at you, scared that he’s going to find an amused expression on your face or a derisive sneer. He wouldn’t blame you, he’s thought the same about himself ever since he left the Port Mafia, doubt and self-loathing riddling him with every step he takes in the light. He waits for the scoff, he waits for the laugh, he waits for-

“... I think he would be proud of who you’ve become, Osamu. I think you’ve fulfilled his request.”

Dazai does look up at you now, feeling particularly vulnerable, still scared that he might find a mocking expression on your face but he doesn’t. Only an uncharacteristically soft expression is painted on your face as you look up at the ceiling, a genuine one—a small smile and a look in your eyes that makes his heart feel warm. You don’t notice him looking until he lets slip out:

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers. 

(I love you, he means)

“I’ve missed you too,” you say back quietly.

(I love you too)

[osarina]

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: a series of connected one-shots set in the same universe that can be read as standalones or all together, centered around port mafia member (eventually executive)!reader and dazai's relationship progressing over the years.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: as promised the master list for the universe i’ve been talking about for almost a month now!! they're all in chronological order! and as i said above, can be read as standalones or all together. keep in mind there might be some minor discontinuities but for the most part, there shouldn't be any. although i might adjust things here and now as i get new ideas so keep that in mind!

CHAMPAGNE KISSES | AGE 16

summary: to be added

YOU AND ME (ALWAYS FOREVER) | AGE 18

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.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS | AGE 18, POST-DEFECTION

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?

KNOW IT'S FOR THE BETTER (ALL I WANTED WAS YOU) | AGE 19

he can't stop himself from calling; you can't stop yourself from answering. he never speaks, but he doesn't have to—just knowing he's there is enough to lure you in. that's how it remains for weeks. that is until you mention that you're going on a risky mission and dazai has to to make an equally risky decision to keep you safe.

HE'S THE SERPENTINE, HE'S MY COLLAR | AGE 22

you're finally back in yokohama after spending three 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

I LAUGH LIKE ME AGAIN (SHE LAUGHS LIKE YOU) | AGE 22

four years apart and the ultimate question is about to be answered: do you and dazai really still know each other, or are you clinging to a fantasy of the past? you decide to put it to the test with a game of wits and questions when dazai gets back to your apartment—but as the game drags on, dazai starts to wonder if maybe he was wrong. worse, if maybe he would prefer to be wrong.

GOOD OLD FASHIONED LOVER BOY/KILLER QUEEN | AGE 22

summary: to be added

NOT CONNECTED

PLEASE DON'T GO, I'LL EAT YOU WHOLE (I LOVE YOU SO) | AGE 17

summary: to be added, may 7

[newsfrom-theworld]

happy mothers day to the mothers of palestine who have lost their children and to the mothers who were forced to give birth and be separated from their children in congo.

[curry-and-gunpowder]

Dazai "everyone's project" Osamu

(Plz don't @ me with any suggestions or "corrections", thank you.)

Edit: holy shit this blew up way more than I ever imagined lol. Thank you to all who reblog, your tags are everything ❤️

[kokoasci]

been experimenting with my style

[lovedazai-archived-deactivated2]

01. ACROSS THE UNIVERSE . . . while reminiscing, dazai finds you again.

ft. beast!dazai + f!reader, pm boss!dazai, civilian!reader, dazai is a little bit manipulative, spoilers for beast light novel & manga

SERIES MASTERLIST

dazai knows this coffee shop.

it didn’t matter that he’d never set foot inside the building. it was all burned into his mind: the counters lined with expensive equipment and machines, perfectly washed white mugs next to paper ones with lids, the small tulip dining tables peppered around the floor and circled by wooden chairs, the scent of ground beans and homemade dough, freshly baked cookies and croissants enclosed by glass; most importantly, he remembered the ghost of your face, smiling at him from across the table.

he makes a point for his driver to go past it every day, even if it makes the route to headquarters take a few minutes longer, just to catch a glimpse of the white exterior and the fabric awning ruffling in the wind.

he never dared to go inside, until today.

he feels like an imposter as soon as he steps through the door, even more so when he takes his seat at the same table you would sit at together. the smooth bottom of the chair beneath him felt sacred. it’s the one by the window, and he can recall the soft expression on your face as you watched the people walking past in the afternoon, your knowing smile as you teased him about any dogs that trotted by. in the evening, you sought it out after a hard day’s work, tugging him with you so you could admire the way the sun’s dying rays coated his features in dripping gold.

he could see why you found such a place so comforting, the atmosphere nothing but warm and inviting. he didn’t feel like he belonged, destined to dwell in the shadows of the city.

the coffee tastes the same as he remembered, pleasantly fragrant as he brings the mug up to his lips and smooth against his throat as he swallows it down. the pastry he can still recall wiping off your cheek is plated in front of him, barely touched. it isn’t nearly as sweet without you smiling across from him, intertwined ankles swinging beneath the table, the flavor of vanilla glaze on his tongue as he kisses away the crumbs on the corner of your mouth.

he takes another sip, licking the remnants of frothed milk off his lips. his one visible eye glances to the door when he hears the tinny jingle of a bell as it opens. his mug nearly slips from his hand, tiny curved handle squeezed between his fingers desperately when he realizes who’s arrived.

it’s you.

his fantasy of you was nothing compared to how you truly looked. you’re the kind of gorgeous that steals the air from his lungs and makes it impossible not to stare. it’s in the way your hair falls down your back, his nails digging into his palm as he imagines how the strands would feel between his fingers. the smooth curve of your neck, his mouth watering as he imagines the feeling of your fluttering pulse against his lips. the cute puff of your cheeks as you politely smile at the barista welcoming you inside.

he’d only seen you in haunting memories, the lingering image of your face in his mind when he wakes up and feels for a body that isn’t actually there. he spends his time yearning for someone who he’d never had, or even known, yet here you are, within his reach.

this wasn’t manifestation; he knew that you’d be here, that’s why he came inside, after all. seeing you with his own eyes should’ve been enough to satisfy him, as if he didn’t already know everything about you, inside and out.

his gaze follows your figure as you walk to the counter when a dark something catches in the corner of his eye. it feels almost painful to look away from you, but he’s so grateful he does because that’s when he sees it: your wallet, lying pitifully on the tiled floor, right next to him. he thinks this must be some kind of a glitch, an error. 

his eyes flicker back to you. seeing you may have been enough for anyone else, but he’s always been a greedy man.

the trap practically sets itself. he extends his leg, discreetly sliding your wallet over to his side with the sole of his shoe. he bends down and picks it up, safely placing it in his coat pocket, eyes never leaving you.

“oh no,” your lips curl into the prettiest pout, hand deep in your bag as you rustle through it. his legs are already carrying him towards you. “i must’ve left my wallet at home. i swore i had it. i’m so sorry, i’ll just come back later andー”

“excuse me,” when you turn to look at him, it’s like everything has fallen into place. your eyes are even prettier than he remembered, wide and blinking, eyeing his bandages curiously. he smiles, a big, genuine one that curls without his permission. “if it’s alright, i’ll cover it.”

he pulls a sleek, black credit card out, holding it between two fingers as the barista takes it silently. he doesn’t even spare her a glance, completely enamored by the girl in front of him.

it’s like the walls of the cafe are made of paper, crumbling and peeling away, the mindless chatter of the other customers fading into static. it’s just you and him, nothing else exists. how long has he waited for this moment? gathering bits and pieces of your life into a mosaic of knowledge to ensure your safety, all while he spent his days existing within the black void of loneliness that covered him like a sheet he’d pulled over his head, it was all to find his way back to you. it isn’t until the barista clears her throat, holding the card back out for him to take, that he comes back down to earth.

“thank you,” you smile at him, and his heart stalls in his chest. “i don’t know how i would’ve gotten through my day without my coffee.”

he hums. “i feel the same about something a little stronger.”

you giggle, and his face lights up in pride. he steps the slightest bit closer, smiling hopefully.

“it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“it has?” you tilt your head, eyes scanning over his face. “i don’t remember meeting you before. i’m sorry.”

“my mistake, you’re right,” he presses his lips together, smile turning bitter. “of course you’re right. we haven’t met before. my name is dazai.”

he frowns as you’re interrupted by the barista calling your name. he watches the way your fingers curl around your cup delicately, trying not to burn your hand. the realization that your conversation is already about to end makes panic settle in his stomach, unfamiliar and heavy beneath his ribs.

you’re searching around the café aimlessly now; nearly every table is occupied by another patron. he pulls the seat from his own table out, offering you the one across from him, just like he remembered. he looks at you expectantly, tilting his head.

“are you sure?” you run your finger around the rim of your mug, looking down at your drink shyly. “i don’t want to bother you.”

“i insist,” he tries to smile genuinely, but he feels the way his lips quiver at the thought of losing you when you’re so close to him. “i’d love to have the company of a pretty lady.”

he releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding when you sit down. his knuckles brush against your back as he pushes you in until your waist is level with the edge of the table. this close, he can smell the warm undertones of your perfume, and suddenly, he recalls the ghost of your fingers brushing his hair away, kissing his skin. it stirs something in his stomach akin to homesickness.

“that’s my favorite, too,” you nod to the pastry, still abandoned on the table.

“you can have some if you’d like,” he slides the plate towards you. he sits back in his seat, crossing his legs. he’s careful not to bump his knees on the underside of the table.

you take a small bite, out of politeness, he assumes. he regrets that he can’t feed it to you himself.

“do you come here often?” you ask, mug halfway to your lips. he watches as your lip gloss leaves a stain on the edge, and feels envy curl like thorned vines in his stomach.

“no,” he folds his hands together beneath his chin. “this is my first time.”

“it’s my favorite café,” you sigh dreamily, turning your head and looking out the window. “it’s nice, right? i love the view.”

you look ethereal with the morning sun peeking through panes, emitting an angelic glow around your profile. spots of light project onto your skin, and it catches on your eyes, saturating the color of your pupils. “me too.”

it’s quiet, the kind of natural lull in a conversation that would happen between two strangers, and you’re nearly done with your coffee. he reaches into his coat, fingers wrapping around the smooth fabric of your wallet as he extracts it from his pocket. “i have something for you.”

“my wallet!” he waits for you to grow angry, but all you do is smile, eyes glistening with gratitude. “buying my coffee for me and finding this…you must be my guardian angel today.”

he blinks. his mouth goes dry, but he forces his words out anyway. “do i really look like such a nice person?”

“yes,” you answer it like it’s obvious, and for the second time that day, he feels his heart stall in his chest. “i can’t thank you enough. is there anything i can do? without you, i would’ve been miserable all day.”

“that’s…” exactly what he wanted. “not necessary.”

“please?” you pout. “at least let me repay you for the coffee.”

he has the memory of big bouquets, sugarcoated words, and flustered giggles, but looking at you face to face, all of the apparent suaveness he’d once possessed is gone.

“if you insist,” his smile wobbles. “would it be too forward of me to ask such a pretty girl out to dinner?”

BSD MASTERLIST

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