hii! can i request dazai with a reader who's kind of an amateur photographer? like just someone who films him with a digicam sometimes to remember. :)
hi sweetheart!! i took this and ran with it while listening to august by taylor swift
since it's the end of summer and the song just gave me major nostalgic beach vibes, i wanted to write smth like that! ive never had a digital camera so i hope i didn't write anything inaccurate! i only have a polaroid camera but these are terrible at taking proper photos outside, soooooo
it's fluffy bc i like fluffy dazai,,, as angsty and sad as his tragic being is, i like to think of happy moments with him <33 hopefully this is something you'd enjoy!
more under the cut!
═══════★˙⋆˙⟡ ̟ summer smile.
The salt air tickled your nostrils each time you breathed in. The slight sting, though, was worth it when the view was this gorgeous — the vast expanse of the blue water in front of you stretched out like a blanket, covering the space in front of you. The salt crystals in your hair looked like glitter and the breeze kept trying to steal your straw hat; it was more than perfect. Your fingers fumbled with your trusted companion, slick with residual sea water. You should have wiped your hands on your towel before reaching for your cam, shielded from the beaming sun in your beach bag, yet you always forgot to do so in the heat of the moment.
You'd snuck it there when everyone was too busy arguing about the destination, back when your work holiday had only been but a dream. Recently, you'd found yourself recording moments and pieces of the people around you when you least expected it — the subjects of your newest hobby had zero clue when you'd pull your memories-recorder, even though they were pretty much seasoned detectives at this point. Except Atsushi. Poor Atsushi still had a long way to go.
The camera's focus pinned on a bandaged creature half-buried in the sand, just across from you. Through the tiny screen you watched the scene unfold but your finger pressed Record before you could even think twice about it. There, surrounded by a very enthusiastically focused Atsushi and a particularly agitated Kunikida, Dazai found himself in a pickle. Or, at least, you'd have believed so had he not looked this damn pleased with himself. Even the camera, from this far away, could pick up the pure glee on his face. Your ears caught snippets of the words spilling out his mouth, but your camera missed nothing: the way Atsushi's open shirt fluttered in the breeze, speckled with sand, the way Kunikida’s biceps strained with the urge to throttle Dazai or scold him for already ruining the Agency’s short-lived vacation, and the special appearance of Ranpo's hair at the edge of the screen.
“—Kunikida-kun, of course burying someone in the sand is beneficial for their skin! Think about all the birds in—”
You didn't hear the rest. Not because Dazai stopped yapping, but because you were too focused on capturing the warm moment. The suicidal maniac, of course, had tried to use this as an opportunity to coerce Atsushi into burying his head under the sand but Atsushi was used to his mentor’s eccentricities at this point. Still, even the weretiger looked twisted between complying with Dazai to shut him up or just to make him stop fucking with Kunikida.
The sun painted Dazai's hair in that special golden summer hue, the sand clung to his bandaged neck, and you swore you saw Dazai laugh with the whole of his heart when the tide slapped against Kunikida's back out of nowhere. It was a sight for sore eyes, to say the least — the man rarely laughed this sincerely. You could count on one hand the amount of times Dazai's laugh hadn't sounded… empty. Had it not been for your digicam, you would have never been able to relive this moment over and over again that night, under the thin covers of the hotel bed by the beach.
Other moments you loved to capture certainly made for a fun beach vacation montage: Yosano dropping her ice cream on the way to the beach bar, then stealing Ranpo's just to make him whine and have Dazai share his with the older detective; Kyouka and Kenji building a sandcastle only for Demon Snow to accidentally cleave it with her katana (Dazai swooped in with a hand ruffling Kyouka's hair to nullify Demon Snow and then rebuild the castle ten times faster than the two teens had); Kunikida and Fukuzawa tanning under the sun, only for Kunikida to get tan lines spelling SCHEDULE on his chest because Ranpo and Dazai thought it would be hilarious. Every time Dazai stirred the pot, you were there to catch it. The sound of the waves in the background, the blurry quality of some of the shots, the genuine, unburdened laughter of Tanizaki and Naomi splashing each other with water and then turning on Dazai the moment they spotted him near them. It was a mosaic of nostalgia yet to bloom in your heart whenever you looked back on these moments.
But your favorite clip was neither of these, nor the time Dazai chased you around the beach with seaweed and devilish ambitions. Your favorite moment came wrapped in the soft cocoon of a shared hotel room, the glow of a side lamp, the breeze sneaking in through an open window, and the distant lapping of waves mixing with the turning of book pages. Your camera caught a moment you'd sell your soul to pin inside your memory.
Dazai was sitting in the armchair by the open window in nothing but that disgustingly green pineapple shirt, a set of fresh bandages, and shorts redder than Chuuya's temper. His hair was fluffy, salt crusted and soft, strands occasionally lifting in the air whenever the breeze decided to caress him. His eyes, ever so in tune with everything around him, had lines around the corners from the exertion the day had presented. But, even through the camera's pixelated screen, you could see it: his smile held the kind of warm exhaustion only a good day at the beach could bring.
You didn't remember when the camera had slipped from your fingers and landed on the mattress beneath you. Nor did you recall with clarity when your eyelids had begun to grow so heavy.
But Dazai did.
He'd watched you watch him through the lenses, even if his eyes had been glued to that boring chapter of Great Expectations — the replacement book for The Complete Guide to Suicide, just for this particular vacation. Closing the book with utmost care, he placed it on the side table next to the armchair. As he lifted up from his seat, the old furniture gave a sigh of relief, lost under the creak of the floorboards as the bandaged man moved to the side of his bed. His eyes tracked the slow rise and fall of your chest, the way your lips parted just so with each slow breath, and the blink of that little red dot on your camera's darkened screen.
The mattress dipped under his weight as he sat beside you. Dazai's fingers plucked the camera from the mattress and angled it at you, zooming in on the flutter of your eyelashes. Then, the tiny screen showed a blurry motion as he panned it to himself. Right before he pressed Stop, the last frame of the clip showed a sneak peek at the sight you'd fallen asleep to:
