formiito

[formiito]

moon, 12:04 am

synopsis: sometimes, picking up the pieces isn't enough.

author's note: i blacked out and a spirit possessed my body to type this. totally didn't crash out today and put all that frustration into this fic. 

read on ao3

dazai x gn! reader. wc: 1.3k

The sound of restless pacing is all that sounds in the hallway at night.

Forwards, stopping, backwards, stopping, turn. The movement is soothing to a restless mind. Despite a slowly fraying thought process, the mind attempts to keep itself rational despite heading into a slow descent. A pounding headache, tired eyes, the feeling of warmth in the waterline. The tear waits to fall, and it isn't wiped. It feels like something, and it feels real. It encourages the spiral further, and you do. A rare moment of feeling something more, even if it may be loathing. Despising the weightlessness of a cloud, of the seemingly carefree nature of your existence, because it didn't feel enough. Moving through life in a trance like state, moments of fugue that settle in the skull like cotton candy and mist. Drawing out the agony feels better, that loneliness that claws it's way from the inside and holds the injury apart with it's jagged nails. It feels like something, and despite the tension of the moment and the stress, it feels good somehow. You attempt to squeeze out a tear from your lashline. It doesn't work, all that is left is a pathetic smudge of something wet underneath your eyes. All the harsh words and a bitter knife like tongue, the little gust of wind that spins into an emotional tornado; this was all it could elicit.

Release. It would feel so much better if you had access to such a thing. If the sound of footsteps did not immediately alert you to wipe your eyes despite the moisture being far too little, to attempt to compose your thoughts for a coherent response. You wished you were left alone for just a little longer, to perhaps stew in the all too rare outburst of emotion. But weren't you being unreasonable? You understand the weight of the words you said, none of which you meant. You'll apologize this time. It wasn't intentional, not very much, simply the culmination of the meaningless day in and day out of the past few months. Nothing bothered you much. Everything was alright. You knew that. You wondered if this argument was just a desperate attempt to feel something, even if it were only anger.

Anger and sadness are best friends. Anger and guilt are lovers. Preparing yourself for a bandaged hand on your shoulder and an apology that'll come far too easily to your lips because you knew your faults better than anyone; it feels odd to have nothing. Only a pause that stretches out far too long. The thought is slightly relieving. Could you get away with feigning resentment for a few more minutes just to have something to cling on? Can this wound not close too early?

Your throat betrays you before your mind does and the coughing fit that follows leaves a sharp pain in the back of your throat and the centre of your chest. It's strangely difficult to say anything without the tingling in your throat rising up again and so you say nothing. Instead, you choose to focus on the weight of the stare into your back. Mentally, you try guessing what you will see. Empty eyes like twin abysses that look through you as though you were a ghost? A charming smile that asks if something is wrong while playing the night's events off like an ill timed joke? Disappointment in not understanding him? Indifference to the matter?

Every option brought its own new fear, yet you felt strangely relieved. All of them would mean moving beyond this, the precarious line that separates those that care and those that don't. Maybe this would have Dazai pulling away from that delicate line. You couldn't be sure; he had a way of laughing expectation in the face. You couldn't tell what he was thinking. A fact that sometimes causes you grief. No, you do not understand. As his hand reaches out with a nearly imperceptible tremble to his fingers—when you silently ask yourself if it took far too long for you to notice?—holding your hand where it is always free to be held, you don't understand how to ease his sorrow. A brilliant mind is somewhat of a prison to be in. But you don't have the key. Dazai often watches you attempt to make him see your perspective with some sort of sarcastic amusement. As if he knows that neither of you truly know what you're doing. Dancing all the right steps, despite themselves, but never in sync. The moment of vulnerability for you only comes when his ends, and his begins where yours finish. Too bad you can't understand. Too bad you can't see where his sadness begins. If he's sick, what ails him? If he isn't, how do you make yourself the same way?

You don't know what the shape is of the creeping shadows of his past when they stick their fingers into the back of his mind. You never needed a reason to be alive, or to question your humanity. What are you to tell him? That you did not care? That everything had long since blurred into one singular misty thought; how do I help you?

In truth, you don't know why Dazai clings on. Why you do either. Why it's so easy to apologize and why he accepts it as though it's the punchline to this joke of a relationship. Maybe he welcomes you back because it doesn't quite matter anymore, does it? Not when the both of you are too embroiled in this personal irony to clearly see what's in front of you both.

What's in front of you now is a resigned smile, a mouth that forms uncanny words and asks you playfully if there's a reason you're having trouble sleeping. You don't look at him with pity in your eyes. Something worse. Shame. As if you truly believed your worthlessness to be the same as his. To him it's a cruel joke.

Times like these, you somewhat begin to understand why he craves death so much, only for different reasons than his. In truth, you had many reasons not to die, but most of those reasons you have traced back to one thing — cowardice.

The fabric of a familiar coloured beige coat soaks up tears that aren't quite there yet. He observes your tired eyes and looks at you like he understands. You can't do the same for him. It kills. But do you know how to be a warm body, so you hold onto the back of the coat and the shell within tight. Dazai lets you, knowing that it's the only thing at the moment that you trust yourself to do right; the other hand reaching up to entangle in your hair. The moonlight out the window reflects in his eyes, and there's a small glimmer of something in his eyes when he feels the shaking of shoulders and the trembling of a broken ego. This feels real. Like this, you feel real.

It's somewhat soothing, feeling your silence turn into real sobs. That the emotion is given a noise, even if it's incoherent and you can't say what you really want to because you don't trust yourself right now. Everyone must entangle the strings of their own mind by themselves or live with a knot where their head should be, this you know. For a moment you wonder how fickle your beliefs are if you can toss them away so easily for being held like this. Dazai wonders how long you will try before you grow tired of your work. Will you end up seeing yourself to the same degradation as him? Everything he cares about has been growing cold in his fingers, since that day the bandages covering him fell loose. His fingers trace where the wound of your loneliness should be. Your blood is warm, tears warmer, and he wonders if there's a way to somehow kill a person while they're still alive.

[formiito]

hanagatami songfic with dazai soon hm.

also you put up anon but i KNOW who you are

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redoing my taglist again! if you want to be tagged in my works, askbox is open for them. you can also specify which fandoms you want to be tagged in (hsr or bsd fics).

my masterlist

ask box

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FOR YOU I HOLD MY BREATH

⟢ sunday x gn! reader

SYNOPSIS: sunday's solaces between the thought of you, the sparkling soap bubbles, and that long, endless dream. 1.3k words. AUTHOR'S NOTE: requested by anon, 'how about taking a bath with sunday and washing his hair for him?' this is pre-astral express sunday by the way <3 i hope i characterized him right. reblogs appreciated. READ ON AO3

It's quiet in the dream when he finds you.

For a moment, swept in the moment of revelry and champagne supernova, Sunday forgot himself between the rubbing of shoulders and voices of people he couldn't recognize. A perfect dream host to many, and the numbers grew each day.

For this reason, perhaps the relentless hedonism that marked every street and smoke filled corner in Penacony was true to what it was meant to be. Essential sins in the search for ceaseless joy.

Even the vapid and hollow desires had a place to be realized in Penacony. This was the end result of all the credits and wine and people that poured in from every corner of the universe—the promise of a new life that contained only happiness.

Then it seemed slightly ironic, the way he felt then among all those people with drinks in their hand that flowed continuously. Under the glare of the golden lights, a dull pain shot through the side of his head, as if someone had stuck their fingers inside his brain. Speaking softly through a tight smile, he kept his hands wrapped atop his lap, nails digging into his own skin. It was embarrassing—staring like a child and heart thrumming against it's flesh confines, all while trying to put up an illusion of control he couldn't feel.

Yet, nobody seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Even when mind was melting inside it's skull, everything functioned as clockwork. The people were still moving. The songs continued.

In that chaotic moment, hands on him that he couldn't name, Sunday was elsewhere. In the crevices of memory, all he could think about was you. Perhaps if he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself right there with you under the dim starlight, head tucked in your shoulder. But he didn't have that luxury, not now.

The thought was his panacea for those hours, as he watched the patrons dance to the endless droning sounds of the orchestra. Sunday watched the sleepwalkers of the night, lost in delirious joy and stepping on each other's feet. Blurs of colorful dresses and newly pressed suits cut through the ribbons of smoke from cigars and cigarettes.

He felt each and every chord in his weary bones.

—

The suite room in which you resided was fairly quiet. In Sunday's eyes, it was a place untouched by the blinding light that gripped the endless night of Penacony. A pocketful of dreams that were locked away in the past—save for you and him, it was empty. Over time, it became his sanctuary.

When you opened the door, Sunday crumpled in your arms.

He knew he shouldn't have needed you like he did. A man in his position should have been able to shoulder the burdens that came with it alone.

Yet, all the time it only felt like he held his breath for you, hours upon hours of nothing but the thought of you to keep him company. He wondered if you did the same. In your little corner where time had stopped, did the ghost of him linger in the empty side of the bed?

Did it ease the loneliness, like you did for him?

You held him tight when he fell, arms looped around his waist and neck. It was pointed, pathetic irony that you were able to hold him in a firm grip he's never had on anything in his life.

Sunday was just glad you let him share in your peace so often. To him, it was sacred, and you could feel it when he reached out to you. How tentatively he would touch, how reluctantly he would admit to needing you. As if his mere presence would pop some sort of invisible bubble and ruin everything. The illusion would be broken the moment he acknowledged those buried affections.

Even then, in the end, his heart did not lie with Penacony, or the elusive concepts of Harmony and Order. It lied in the concept of home.

The solace of his days.

And Sunday knew what had to be done, what must be done; at the end of the day nobody could deny that his fate was ordained already. Yet, if only for a moment he could fall in your arms, then perhaps even just a night of peace was enough. A few hours of bliss that he knew you would always allow him. He held onto your sleeve like a prayer, and your fingers tangled in his hair felt like the touch of a fleeting angel.

It wasn't right to have tears prickling at the corners of his eyes when he should have been happy to stay.

Nor was it right that you never asked questions, never prodded at his exhaustion and the guilt that lay just under the surface of his heart.

As if you already knew that he couldn't talk about certain things, no matter how the words seared on his tongue.

—

It was a simple enough routine. It was hard to have a sense of time in a place suspended in endless night, nor could one fall asleep in a dream, but this routine marked the end of the day for him. The shedding of soft clothes, warm bubbles sparkling with soap, clinging to his skin like an embrace. The water took his weight, and for that moment his soul felt less heavy.

He returned the favor, of course. Enveloped in soap and steam, Sunday would usually offer to wash your hair for you. Most of the time, he did it quite mindlessly—such repetitive were soothing for him. That, and he could never quite stop doing something with his hands. Something restless always buzzed under his fingertips, like an itch he couldn't scratch.

Tonight, he was too tired for even that. In his mind he couldn't help but feel a little guilty, but the smile on your face reassured him just a little. There's foam on your cheeks, glitter in your gaze and Sunday is once again reminded why people spend entire fortunes to stay in this collective dream.

When you tug on his hair, hands entangled in the soapy gray-blue strands, he doesn't question it. "It's no problem if I do it myself, you know, you don't have to."

He was aware that you never had to do anything. Loving him was unnecessary.

But you'd choose to do so, everytime, and for him that was enough.

You answer him with a noncommittal hum, pouring out the shampoo in your palm. He flinches a little when your touch strays too close to the base of his wings, trying to ignore the heat on his cheeks when you pluck out the broken and crooked feathers. Fingertips smoothing away the day's headache. A quiet sigh between hushed words.

Away from the everyone, tucked away in the quiet space you had made a home out of; he had nearly forgotten how it felt to forget the looming threats of the future just for a minute.

Only a few hours worth of happiness, in this long, infinite dream…

Sunday couldn't help but feel that even such a short time would be enough, so long as it was with you.

—

Dried off and clad in soft linens, the two of you looked out into that never ending night sky from the suite window. Outside, the orchestra still played, though you could not hear it from the distance. With them, the men and women dancing to the endless melody looked like little dots of colour flashing by across the floor. The little swirls of fabric created a moving painting.

As Sunday watched the scene from behind the window, chin rested on the ledge, you quietly observed him and his lingering, wistful gaze.

You couldn't piece together what he was thinking about then, and he never had the courage to say it. Still, you must have known how he felt, right?

That a dream such as this was imperfect, endless and exhausting…but if it held a home for the two of you, then Sunday would rather stay asleep forever.

taglist: @ejkreader, @gravitatives

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Hi hi!

You seem cool!

HOW did i not see this ong thank you...

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Formiito it's like 4am rn I'm sick and supposed to be asleep but hru (also 💌 please I have been bored out my mind the past few weeks)

Seasonal fevers are so annoying ╥﹏╥

aagh i just woke up and saw this... i feel you, im pretty much out of commission all winter -_- i hope you get well soon! drink honey tea if your nose is fucked up. also here's your excerpt of a wip <3

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sorry for all the delays in requests btw it takes me like anywhere from two days to a week to complete one idk

my requests are always upwards of 1.1k words... i've been thinking maybe i should make them shorter to put them out more frequently? or keep the longer wordcounts?

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WHITE LEATHER SINNERS ; NIKOLAI GOGOL

⟢ nikolai gogol x gn! reader

SYNOPSIS: nikolai attempts to sever the threads that connect him to the world around him. yours seems to be the only one he struggled to cut for good. 1.2k words AUTHOR'S NOTE: sorry that this request took so long, anon! the request was 'please make more fics with nikolai, maybe something like your last fic but with him being dependent on the reader and after one of those dark impulses he comes back to himself?'. i tweaked it a little to fit my interpretation of him. this reads more like a character study, i hope you like it. CONTENT WARNINGS: depictions of violence. READ ON AO3

"This is what you wanted. So why are you crying?"

Your voice sounded hoarse, words lost somewhere between the monotonous ringing in your ears. The constant static resounds in your mind, rattling within the empty space where thoughts should've been. There's a dull pain in the back of your head, but it pales in comparison to the sharp sting in your stomach. The sensation of it was sticky, disgusting, and warm. Warmer than anything you had felt in a while.

Nikolai kept his grip tight on the end of the sharp shard of stained glass lodged into your stomach. The window had a hole shattered in it, through moonlight streamed into the room and gleamed on his face in iridescent purples and blues. He could feel the sting through his pristine white gloves, the tips of which were slowly being stained red with fresh blood, trickling down his wrist slowly.

He did not twist the blade in further—something that seemed peculiar to you. You weren't unfamiliar with Nikolai's handiwork; he perfected the craft of murder with the loving touch of an artist. To delicately extract pleas and screams of pain while taking the victim hand in hand towards the end. To aim to entertain even without captive audience and live out macabre performance.

It was violence perfected to a nearly erotic form.

The aftermath wasn't clean. It could never be. The brilliant crimson stain upon white cloth was an imprint of a sin no soap could ever wash away. His conscience was steeped in it and guilt mulled into it fine enough to slip through the cracks.

His guilt, unavoidable as it was, often reared its ugly head now and then, and Nikolai felt it acutely during those long nights where no one could witness it's hold on him. Like a parasite that fed on the mind, it latched onto those memories and poisoned them all. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of the kill—all of it was tinged by a bitter aftertaste. Yet it is precisely this guilt that drove Nikolai to his violent ways. To overcome one's mind was an expression of freedom.

Yet, the compulsion to fight against one's base instincts was also a sort of self inflicted cage of the mind.

The serpent bites it's own tail, and in that there is eternity.

Nikolai was not oblivious to his own contradictions, nor to his lack of apathy, but so long as his search for freedom lasts—and he knows it will until his death—he must take pleasure in the suffering he inflicts. Not only override his guilt, but to bend his mind to his own absolute will, without the burden of morality and loss weighing on him. Until his own demise comes, he will live out this self inflicted contradiction; a need to contradict and a need to conform all the same.

He wondered often if you would be someone who would give him up laughing.

It's a shame he'll never know.

It's a shame too that at this time you are so acutely aware of how his body betrays him in his own efforts. His knife-hand trembles, and his laughs have becomed garbled. Like an animal in pain, his voice was split between choked sobs. In the reflection of the stained glass, he could not recognize his own self.

The man who looked back at him from his peripheral vision was disgustingly real. Too much like the person you saw when he was stripped away of the overcoat, the cards and never ending performance—his tearful expression is raw.

Oh, one's flesh is a prison.

Why does he cry? It's a good question. Nikolai has all the reason to be glad; in your death he would move another step to freedom. He was so fast this time, you couldn't even touch him before he stuck the jagged piece of window-glass into your stomach and the disgusting sound of flesh being torn into reached his ears.

Yet, it felt like the world was closing in on him again as he watched your voice grow soft, broken by quiet whimpers of pain. You endure it well, he thinks, as he watched the blood trickle out of your open wound and into his palm.

It felt like the closest he had ever been to you.

The closest he could ever be to anyone, for that matter.

And he should have been happy, he really should have been, but he can taste salt on his tongue and see you grow blurry in his gaze.

When you hold his cheek, and ask him why he cries, he feels even more bitter about his own lack of control over his emotions. He knows well that look on your face; it makes him falter, for he knows that even now, pulse fading and breathing labored, you are taunting him. Yet all the more so he leans into your palm, and in your wrist he could hear the faint heartbeat.

Nikolai always knew that act of his, save for his own death, would only further solidify his connection to the physical world. You looked his philosophy in it's eyes, like a dare. As if to say,

Go on. Try to save yourself in the only way you know how. Try to see how long you can run from yourself.

It's bitter resentment and desire all the same that holds his remaining sanity hostage. When he falls back to the familiar comfort of your lips, he feels it like a brand on his very soul instead. He puts up the shackles to his own bones, even as his hands attempt to sever them. When his wax wings melt, you are the ground he shatters his soul upon.

He can still hear the pain in your trembling words, the way your hand presses on the bleeding wound. Nikolai doesn't take out the blade. It's a slow end, drawn out and painful, but as you fade in and out of consciousness, the pain gradually becomes dull, till it only registers as a faint throbbing sensation. A warm ache in the centre of the body. He swallows your voice like it could heal the contradiction of his soul. As if it could make his mind give into his heart without feeling further entangled in the web of all the lies he told himself.

In his ouroboros trap, forever self consuming, his affection is as entangled with the world that binds him as you are. Yet, when you ask him, Kolya, why do you cry?, he thinks all the same that only you could hold him down to such a wretched world.

His gloves were drenched in red by now. With death holding your right hand and him the other, you felt real. Brought to the edge between the damned and the saved, the filthy and the clean—he wished he could have held you there for longer, for it's the only way he felt he could allow himself to.

The way you say his name reminds him of a home he had buried in memory a long time ago.

The stream of blood glistens in the pale moonlight, and in its reflection he could see his fraying resolve.

—

You lived to see the daylight, but Nikolai was gone.

He left no taunting note or playful calling card, only cotton in your wound and a warm sting in your eyes. Your quiet sigh melted into the cold morning air.

You looked out the hole of the broken window. A mourning dove on the wire cocked its head at you before it spread it's wings and left for the pale blue skies.

taglist : @ejkreader, @gravitatives, @poekaryote (i'm only tagging you for this one because i know you like nikolai. :3)

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head in my hands with a new chuuya fic idea which may or may not be doomed

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Do you mind people printing your posters for their own use? They're really cute and prettier than any official posters.

i don't mind! all my posters are free to use <3

they're not meant for commercial use is all!! so i dont sell.

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they need to put my bad bitch fyodor in more thick coats he serves so much cunt in them...

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Kuni in casual clothes

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this isn't very good but uh. dazai poster by me.

5400 x 7200 made on ibis paint and photopea.

click for better resolution.

psd by @gravitatives (petpetpetpet and mystery)

[formiito]

WHITE LEATHER SINNERS ; NIKOLAI GOGOL

⟢ nikolai gogol x gn! reader

SYNOPSIS: nikolai attempts to sever the threads that connect him to the world around him. yours seems to be the only one he struggled to cut for good. 1.2k words AUTHOR'S NOTE: sorry that this request took so long, anon! the request was 'please make more fics with nikolai, maybe something like your last fic but with him being dependent on the reader and after one of those dark impulses he comes back to himself?'. i tweaked it a little to fit my interpretation of him. this reads more like a character study, i hope you like it. CONTENT WARNINGS: depictions of violence. READ ON AO3

"This is what you wanted. So why are you crying?"

Your voice sounded hoarse, words lost somewhere between the monotonous ringing in your ears. The constant static resounds in your mind, rattling within the empty space where thoughts should've been. There's a dull pain in the back of your head, but it pales in comparison to the sharp sting in your stomach. The sensation of it was sticky, disgusting, and warm. Warmer than anything you had felt in a while.

Nikolai kept his grip tight on the end of the sharp shard of stained glass lodged into your stomach. The window had a hole shattered in it, through moonlight streamed into the room and gleamed on his face in iridescent purples and blues. He could feel the sting through his pristine white gloves, the tips of which were slowly being stained red with fresh blood, trickling down his wrist slowly.

He did not twist the blade in further—something that seemed peculiar to you. You weren't unfamiliar with Nikolai's handiwork; he perfected the craft of murder with the loving touch of an artist. To delicately extract pleas and screams of pain while taking the victim hand in hand towards the end. To aim to entertain even without captive audience and live out macabre performance.

It was violence perfected to a nearly erotic form.

The aftermath wasn't clean. It could never be. The brilliant crimson stain upon white cloth was an imprint of a sin no soap could ever wash away. His conscience was steeped in it and guilt mulled into it fine enough to slip through the cracks.

His guilt, unavoidable as it was, often reared its ugly head now and then, and Nikolai felt it acutely during those long nights where no one could witness it's hold on him. Like a parasite that fed on the mind, it latched onto those memories and poisoned them all. The thrill of the chase, the satisfaction of the kill—all of it was tinged by a bitter aftertaste. Yet it is precisely this guilt that drove Nikolai to his violent ways. To overcome one's mind was an expression of freedom.

Yet, the compulsion to fight against one's base instincts was also a sort of self inflicted cage of the mind.

The serpent bites it's own tail, and in that there is eternity.

Nikolai was not oblivious to his own contradictions, nor to his lack of apathy, but so long as his search for freedom lasts—and he knows it will until his death—he must take pleasure in the suffering he inflicts. Not only override his guilt, but to bend his mind to his own absolute will, without the burden of morality and loss weighing on him. Until his own demise comes, he will live out this self inflicted contradiction; a need to contradict and a need to conform all the same.

He wondered often if you would be someone who would give him up laughing.

It's a shame he'll never know.

It's a shame too that at this time you are so acutely aware of how his body betrays him in his own efforts. His knife-hand trembles, and his laughs have becomed garbled. Like an animal in pain, his voice was split between choked sobs. In the reflection of the stained glass, he could not recognize his own self.

The man who looked back at him from his peripheral vision was disgustingly real. Too much like the person you saw when he was stripped away of the overcoat, the cards and never ending performance—his tearful expression is raw.

Oh, one's flesh is a prison.

Why does he cry? It's a good question. Nikolai has all the reason to be glad; in your death he would move another step to freedom. He was so fast this time, you couldn't even touch him before he stuck the jagged piece of window-glass into your stomach and the disgusting sound of flesh being torn into reached his ears.

Yet, it felt like the world was closing in on him again as he watched your voice grow soft, broken by quiet whimpers of pain. You endure it well, he thinks, as he watched the blood trickle out of your open wound and into his palm.

It felt like the closest he had ever been to you.

The closest he could ever be to anyone, for that matter.

And he should have been happy, he really should have been, but he can taste salt on his tongue and see you grow blurry in his gaze.

When you hold his cheek, and ask him why he cries, he feels even more bitter about his own lack of control over his emotions. He knows well that look on your face; it makes him falter, for he knows that even now, pulse fading and breathing labored, you are taunting him. Yet all the more so he leans into your palm, and in your wrist he could hear the faint heartbeat.

Nikolai always knew that act of his, save for his own death, would only further solidify his connection to the physical world. You looked his philosophy in it's eyes, like a dare. As if to say,

Go on. Try to save yourself in the only way you know how. Try to see how long you can run from yourself.

It's bitter resentment and desire all the same that holds his remaining sanity hostage. When he falls back to the familiar comfort of your lips, he feels it like a brand on his very soul instead. He puts up the shackles to his own bones, even as his hands attempt to sever them. When his wax wings melt, you are the ground he shatters his soul upon.

He can still hear the pain in your trembling words, the way your hand presses on the bleeding wound. Nikolai doesn't take out the blade. It's a slow end, drawn out and painful, but as you fade in and out of consciousness, the pain gradually becomes dull, till it only registers as a faint throbbing sensation. A warm ache in the centre of the body. He swallows your voice like it could heal the contradiction of his soul. As if it could make his mind give into his heart without feeling further entangled in the web of all the lies he told himself.

In his ouroboros trap, forever self consuming, his affection is as entangled with the world that binds him as you are. Yet, when you ask him, Kolya, why do you cry?, he thinks all the same that only you could hold him down to such a wretched world.

His gloves were drenched in red by now. With death holding your right hand and him the other, you felt real. Brought to the edge between the damned and the saved, the filthy and the clean—he wished he could have held you there for longer, for it's the only way he felt he could allow himself to.

The way you say his name reminds him of a home he had buried in memory a long time ago.

The stream of blood glistens in the pale moonlight, and in its reflection he could see his fraying resolve.

—

You lived to see the daylight, but Nikolai was gone.

He left no taunting note or playful calling card, only cotton in your wound and a warm sting in your eyes. Your quiet sigh melted into the cold morning air.

You looked out the hole of the broken window. A mourning dove on the wire cocked its head at you before it spread it's wings and left for the pale blue skies.

taglist : @ejkreader, @gravitatives, @poekaryote (i'm only tagging you for this one because i know you like nikolai. :3)

[formiito]

ONCE TWICE MELODY ; DAZAI OSAMU

⟢ dazai x insomniac! gn! reader

SYNOPSIS : coffee, novellas, neon lights— as the world turns to see the sun once more, your strange relationship unfolds in broad sketches. 2.2k words. AUTHOR'S NOTE : sleep meds aren't working for me anymore so i had to write this instead. partly inspired by the movie chungking express (1994). god i love lonely people in neon cities. this can be read as both platonic and romantic, i intended it to be somewhat qpr coded. CONTENT WARNINGS : dazai-typical suicide references, mention of scars, themes of alienation. READ ON AO3

3:36 AM.

The amber glow of the lit lamp drenched the kitchen in warm light and long shadows. They reflected on his face, warmth scattered over the ridge of the nose bridge and diffused in the side of the cheek. You were sitting on the kitchen counter, quietly sipping your mug of coffee. Too much sugar, not enough milk, and there's something in it that makes it tastes like a horrible idea.

That's probably the vodka.

When the hell did that get in?

There was the smell of something burnt in the air, and Dazai was still scraping the remains of the pan. What were supposed to be sunny side ups ended up as weird splotches of … a thing that was at once both undercooked and burnt. Messing something up this bad should be a skill of it's own, you thought, but held your tongue. Only smiled.

"That's the third one. Let's just give up and make cup noodles. We gotta have one of those lying around, right?"

"The only thing you've got in your cupboards is expired poptarts and vodka. We're not eating that."

"It ain't that bad. Maybe we can dip the poptarts in vodka."

"…You disgust me. I like it."

A few minutes later, biting into poptarts that were definitely not fit for consumption, you grimaced at the dry texture. That, and the chocolate flavor that tasted like it was some sort of factory imposter pretending to be chocolate. Which it probably was.

You both just looked at each other, at the same time. "This ain't right."

The box was thrown away, and all that was left was disappointed sighs and sipping awful coffee. You brought it up to your lips, but he just tilted it towards himself and stole your sip instead. "…Not too bad, actually,"

"You're crazy."

"You wound me! Here I am staying up with you out of love, and you're calling me crazy."

You scoffed at the fake outrage and puffed cheeks, but handed him the cup. Back and forth the sips went, and for a moment, you paused again. "I didn't call you, though. You never have to stay."

"But you know you want me to, right?"

You didn't dignify that with a response, but in the back of your mind, you knew it to be true. It was better to have him around than stew in that strange loneliness all night. The spiral that fed into itself, unchecked self destructive thinking; his presence made it easier to not think for a while.

You cut the silence cleanly.

"…Yeah, I know."

—

The room was dim, but just bright enough for you to see your sketchbook, and him to read some random novella picked off your little shelf. The Complete Suicide had wormed it's way in between the spines, old and worn in comparison to the newer paperbacks and cloth covers. These days, he reached for it less and less. There's only so much a person can entertain themselves with one book, you assumed, especially one that has already been read so many times over. You don't bat an eye at the sight of it anymore—classics and contemporary fiction shoved in with stuff like How To Not Get Hurt Out Of Nowhere and everything else that he brought over.

The sketchbooks were kept separately. Dusty and shoved in the far back, you weren't particularly inclined to keep them on display. Of course, you couldn't prevent Dazai's curiosity; he ended up finding them anyway. The sketches of places around the Agency, other members… and him. As the pages filled up, he ended up in it more often than not. He felt a certain way about it. It's hard not to, seeing his likeness reflected on the page. His likeness, not him exactly, because those softly pencilled strokes and lost edges made him too aware of the difference between how you perceived him, and what he knew he was. It felt strange to look at the man on the paper, who looked much like him, but carried the burden of admiration the kind only an artist can hold for anyone.

He wondered if he'd stop taking up place on the pages if he ceased to be something beautiful in your eyes.

He wondered what that would take, because he knows you don't turn away from the sight of him—body scarred irreparably and neck burned from the noose. If you knew the full extent of his sin, what then? If he laid out all his cards down in front of you with reckless abandon, what would you think? Would it be so bad?

That thought was dangerous.

Your pencil was still, gaze fixed to the screen. The collection of DVDs you two bought a while back laid sprawled on the coffee table. Recently, your days were spent together more often than not. Even through the mind numbing tasks of the day in and day out, because it was easy to keep him around. You liked to think he found it easy to be around you too.

Dazai looked bored of life, yet he followed you street to intersection even if it didn't hold his attention at all. At some point, his presence had become an extension of yours, and where you were, he usually wasn't too far away.

Perhaps that's what friends did, but you had no real idea of what that meant. It wasn't quite loneliness that plagued you, or atleast not the typical sort, but there was a sort of cluelessness that comes with being alone for a while. The idea of normalcy shifts to include a world where no one else exists.

But it's easy to be lonely in a place like this, one marked by neon lights and empty kindness of strangers. It's even easier to perfect the art of loneliness while being surrounded by so many people. A comfortable little distance separated each and every person, no matter how close they were physically, and you could feel it.

There was a way to be miles apart even when shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin.

The rest of them—sleepwalkers in the night of a city that doesn't rest—remained in the little worlds of their own creation. Narrow and suffocating. You had longed then, more than ever to break on through to the other side, but it was as if the earth had kept spinning without taking you with it.

Even still, despite the dizzying spin that blurred the days into one another, he had made his place almost effortlessly in your life. Dazai phased in and out of what you had considered at first to be merely your world. The bare first aid box had too many rolls of bandages to count now. The careless rounds of caffeine pills had been replaced by two cups of coffee. Your clothes got mixed with his often, and neither of you questioned it anymore whenever you wound up wearing his coat or when he wore your belt. Everyone else's questioning gazes? Those were irrelevant. It was hard to define such a strange connection, and neither of you tried. There was no need to put up appearances for anyone else, because both of you cared little for that unreachable outside world.

It was a strange feeling to no longer be entirely alone. If it came down to it, you knew you could always get along just fine on your own. You had for some time, and it wouldn't have bothered you to do it all over again. But for the first time in a while, you didn't have to. It was easy to get used to that.

Looking back at your sketchbook, at the bandages and soft graphite curls; the thought in your mind was unfamiliar, but real.

Maybe this one will stay.

—

The blister packet in your hand crinkled softly as you cracked open four pills. Two for him and two for you. Sleep medication.

You knew you should've been taking it more often than you usually did, and you knew he should've been taking it way less than he usually did. It left a bad taste in your mouth, a reminder of emergency calls and uncertain conversations on the bathroom floors, trying to keep him from passing out. For him to just make it through the night.

Those incidents seemed like such a long time ago, even if they were recent enough from the beginning of the year. Even then, you don't think you regretted any of those sleepless nights.

Friends help each other out, don't they?

And never once had Dazai called you a friend, but then again, he'd never told you what exactly he thought you were either. As far as anyone was concerned, the both of you simply existed together, and that's just how it was.

At the exact same time, you were both a stranger and the one person who was closest to him.

It didn't bother you much; it never had to be spoken aloud. The two of you had your own ideas of what you meant to each another—why reconcile at all?

People are always happier when they think they know everything. So he never questioned it, neither did you. After all, you wanted the same thing as him, did you not? A reprieve from loneliness.

Eventually, he began to have that same, unfamiliar thought.

Maybe this one will stay.

He washed the pills down with water, and you did the same. It was already too late to be taking them, and you knew you were going to be barely functional in the morning, if at all. Working on a case was out of question entirely. Nearly half dead on your feet, even just paperwork would be difficult, but even little sleep was better than none.

The medicine was weak, but it made you more sluggish. On the flipside, he was wide eyed awake even hours after.

"Don't close your eyes just yet! I can't carry you to bed if you pass out here, you know."

He complained, holding you upright by the shoulders—eyes glittering in the dim light and still as awake as he was when the night started. You just deadpanned.

"That's fine. Just kinda drag me on the floor or whatever."

"You know I'm too lazy for that."

"That checks out."

You just sighed, settling back down onto the couch—the hard cushions barely dipping under your weight. There's probably a spring out of place on that old thing too, but you were honestly too tired to care. The bright television screen was still on, but it didn't sting your eyes because you weren't looking at it anyway.

It was the window.

The night outside was only full of falling lights, fluorescent blues and greens smeared across the glass. Little shapes were marked in the film of dew, finger doodles that weren't there earlier in the evening. Outside, the rain of late July washed it all away.

The world outside seemed to move faster than it did inside the four walls of your home, and maybe it did. You only knew that when the morning comes, you'd feel a ridiculous melancholy. A certain mourning. Another night of missed opportunities, unobserved beauty and solitude—only that this time that solitude was shared between two. A mutual loneliness sweetened by small rooms and empty coffee cups.

When daylight filters through the open windows and the streets begin to dry, that little bubble of peace would be popped. As ridiculous as it was, that thought brought a strange sadness.

Dazai was aware of it too. The sensation of home never really lasted long enough for the peace to settle in his bones.

The novella and sketchbooks were thrown carelessly on the coffee table, and by this point, your eyelids felt heavy as leather. Thoughts were beginning to blur into one another, but you wanted to hold on for a little longer. Glancing at him once more, you only found him looking back at you with a small smile on his face. Impish and hinting underlying mischief, as ever, but strangely soft.

"Just rest, I'll be here when you wake up."

—

You had doubted it at first, but for once, he was true to his word. In the afternoon sun, Dazai was still next to you, now unconscious. Perhaps the medicine did work after all. The room was still obscured by shadow, except for a single strip of warm yellow light that ran up the wall. Straining your vision to observe his face, coloured in hue of bright orange-yellows, you didn't move, not once. You couldn't afford to shatter that small, fragile peace.

A peace untouched by the pull of memories that shouldn't have followed him into the present, of the loneliness that clung to his soul like a disease.

It was easier to face a new day without feeling like you had lost something essential the night before. It still gnawed at the back of your mind, but the melancholy was no longer all consuming.

You pulled the askew blanket over his shoulder, before closing your eyes once again, slumped one over the other. As close as any two people could be with each other.

People are fickle, like the neon city lights that glow brightly for a while and die down in the wake of the morning. Yet, as you slipped back under the line that separated reality and dreams, it became easier to believe in that strange thought from earlier.

Maybe this one will stay.

taglist : @ejkreader, @gravitatives (to be added or removed, send in an ask.

[formiito]

THATS MY BOY WELCOME BACK KING

[formiito]

dazai osamu as david lynch’s blue velvet

—

reuploaded this but only like five people saw this so its okay. i improved the lighting, hue adjustments and added my watermark. god i love painting dazai (unfortunately). sorry for deleting my last post, seven am with no sleep is NOT a good time to post your art… as always, click for better quality and texture. tumblr compression sucks.