#dazaishipweek19

[inkantigen]

Dazai Multi-ship Week 2019

Day 3: Fireflies

For @dazaimultishipweek2019

[onidzuka]

Dazai Multiship Week 2019

Day 1 - L’appel tu vide (the call of the void)

@dazaimultishipweek2019

[manako-no-yami]

when your soulmate has too much health insurance

Rating: T Relationship(s): DazAtsu, a bit of sskk Tags: Hospitals, Soulmates, Fluff and Humor, Nursing Student!Atsushi, Dazai-Typical Suicide References Summary:

Atsushi, nursing student at the Yokohama hospital, is having a bad day. A bad few days, actually. In a world where soulmates share each other’s pain, Atsushi has had the bad luck of being paired with someone who is constantly getting hurt. On top of that, he has to deal with one particularly annoying patient—who seems determined to come back to see him at every chance he gets.

for day 8 of @dazaimultishipweek2019​!

-

Atsushi is having a bad day. His side aches like a bitch, he has a headache, he’s barely slept in three days, and all he wants to do is lie down and maybe illegally administer himself some morphine.

He shifts, and his side gives him a sympathy twinge. He sighs.

I wonder if you’re having a bad day, too, he thinks to himself. And why on earth do you keep getting hurt?

Maybe it’s illogical to worry about someone you’ve never met, but, well. Soulmates defy logic, anyway.

Imagine this: the universe gives you one clue to who your “other half” is, and that clue is—of all things—pain . There’s probably some message there about people being brought together over shared suffering, but, well, if that’s so, Atsushi isn’t sure if he wants to know what the universe thinks of humanity.

So he deals with phantom aches and pains that he receives from his soulmate, tries his best not to get hurt himself, and studies hard to get a job in the medical field.

(Maybe it’s illogical. Maybe it’s just the universe’s fucked up sense of irony. But Atsushi can’t help but worry, sometimes, about how often his soulmate seems to get hurt.

And if that’s one of the reasons why he decided to go into medicine, well…who’s going to know?)

“Atsushi!” Yosano-sensei calls. Atsushi quickly stands up from his seat by the nurse’s station, rubbing his eyes to get rid of the drowsiness.

“Yes, sensei?”

“Attend to the patient in room 107.”

Atsushi tilts his head in confusion. He’d been so sure he’d covered all the rooms assigned to him…

He nods, anyway, giving the doctor a quick bow as he passes.

He stops by the door, and gives himself a quick pat down—his scrubs are a bit wrinkled, but they’ll do (they’re dark blue with a repeating pattern of little white tigers running all over it—a welcoming gift from the team when he first started here as a nursing student). Finally, he slaps his cheeks lightly, puts on his best customer service smile—bedside manner is important, after all—and opens the door.

“Hello! How are you doing tod—oh it’s you again.”

The man sitting on the hospital bed gives him a cheerful wave.

Dazai Osamu. Also known as: the hospital’s most frequent client and visitor, a nightmare for insurance, chronic malingerer, professional pain in the ass, and the most annoying patient Atsushi has ever had the misfortune to tend to.

“Atsushi-kun!” Dazai calls out delightedly. “Looking well today, I see.”

Atsushi is quite sure he looks like absolute crap, actually.

“Thanks. So are you. Which begs the question: what are you here for this time?”

Dazai holds up a bandaged arm, and points at it emphatically with a dramatic pout.

Atsushi blinks.

Dazai is always covered in bandages. Just what is he supposed to be looking at?

“Would you believe it? I left the window by the kitchen open, and a stray cat came in! I tried to pet it, but then it scratched me and knocked over the pot that was cooking.”

Atsushi frowns.

“Is the cat okay?”

“Is the—yes, the cat’s okay. But aren’t you worried about me, Atsushi-kun? I am bedridden from this terrible disaster!”

Atsushi hugs his clipboard close, narrowing his eyes at Dazai.

“Dazai-san, with all due respect, this is the fifth time you’ve come in this week, and none of it was for a legitimate reason. I’m surprised they keep letting you occupy beds at this rate.”

And why does Yosano-sensei keep asking me to tend to you? Since when did I become Dazai-san’s designated caretaker??

Dazai gasps. “I’m wounded!”

Atsushi rolls his eyes. “If only. How bad is the burn?”

Dazai shrugs. “I’m not quite sure.”

There’s a pause. Atsushi squints at him again, edging nearer to inspect Dazai more closely. Bandages don’t quite look fresh, so they haven’t been newly dressed, no pinkish or reddish skin, no visible discomfort from chafing...

“Dazai-san…” Atsushi pinches his nose. “Did the pot or its contents actually hit you when it was knocked over?”

Dazai flashes him an absolutely cherubic smile.

“Are you hoping for some grave injury to befall me so you can keep me to yourself longer? How sly of you. Why, Atsushi-kun, if you wanted to spend time with me, you could’ve just said so! By the way, I’m free Friday after five.”

Ah, yes. In addition to being a total pain in the ass, Dazai is also resident hottie and fuckboi. All the nurses like to moon over him, and he’s definitely aware of it. His looks? Sublime. His attitude? Atrocious. His favorite pastime? Teasing Atsushi.

Atsushi sighs. He knows from experience that there’s not much he can do to get Dazai to leave faster—he’ll either cause a dramatic and embarrassing (for Atsushi) scene, or he’ll find a way to get injured and come back before the day is over.

Atsushi’s learned to just ignore him.

It’s not like he’s serious about any of his advances, anyway, he thinks to himself.

“That’s a no, then. I’ll never understand how you even manage to weasel your way into this part of the hospital, Dazai-san.” Atsushi gives him a judging look, hands on his hips, but relents. A job is a job, after all, and Yosano-sensei asked him to attend to the patient in this room, so that’s what he’ll do.

“Is there anything you need, Dazai-san?”

“Coffee, please.”

“The usual?”

“If you could, thank you.”

Just as Atsushi is about to turn and head out the door, he notices something. He leans in, hand reaching up to gently turn Dazai’s jaw to the side. Dazai follows obediently, compliant under gentle fingers, tilting his head when Atsushi pokes his cheek. Atsushi’s eyebrows furrow even further.

Is that blood , dripping from his hairline?

“Dazai-san.” Atsushi straightens. Before he can pull away, Dazai grabs the hand that had been on his cheek with both of his, tugging him back in.

“Yes, Atsushi-kun? What is it?” His eyes sparkle. “Don’t tell me! You can’t bear to leave me alone like this! It hurts you just to see me lying here—”

“ Dazai-san. Do you have a head injury?”

Dazai lets go momentarily to scratch his head, then pulls his hand away to look at the blood that collected under his nails, and blinks.

Atsushi’s headache intensifies.

“Why, it seems I do! Atsushi-kun! How did you know?” He gasps. “Could it be, that we’re connected? Like soulma—”

Atsushi tugs his hand away and is out the door before Dazai can finish, calling out for a doctor.

 -

After the initial panic over Dazai’s now-treated head wound (God knows how long he sported it without noticing ), Atsushi finally manages to find a moment to sit down. And of course, the moment he sits down, he’s called to go check on another patient.

He pauses outside of the door of room 111 and takes a deep breath.

“Hello! How are you tod—” Atsushi gulps.

The man in the bed is glaring balefully at him, as though he’d personally murdered his dog.

“Do you often ask your patients that?”

Atsushi quails under the icy scrutiny, and peeks at the charts in his hands.

Name: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke. With a slew of chronic respiratory problems, he’s just been released from OR after being treated for...a gunshot wound??

“I am in a hospital,” Akutagawa continues. “I was shot. My subordinates didn’t follow my orders. I am apparently being treated by an idiot. I am doing terribly today. Must you ask?”

Atsushi shrinks back.

“M-My apologies...Akutagawa-san.”

“Tch.”

Atsushi felt the disdain behind the force of that ‘tch’ down in his very bones.

“W-When did you sustain your injury?”

Atsushi barely holds back a squeak of fear when Akutagawa pins him with another glare.

“Early this morning, at around three am.”

Huh. That’s weird, that’s around the time Atsushi had woken up, gasping at the sharp eruption of pain in his side. He hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep for the rest of the night, unable to ignore it nor the worry for his soulmate.

...Could it be?

Atsushi gulps.

How...how does he confirm it, though?

“You...you wouldn’t also happen to have a headache, right now, would you?”

“I’m looking at one right now,” Akutagawa spits, staring him right in the eye. Atsushi winces.

Right. Hospital patient. Having a terrible day. A headache is a given under those circumstances, right? Besides, maybe the headache is caused by Atsushi, from acute sleep deprivation. If that’s true, he definitely doesn’t want Akutagawa to know that he’s the reason. If they are...soulmates.

But he can’t bring himself to leave it alone. If this man is his soulmate...he’d never forgive himself if he didn’t find out, and let him go.

“May...May I see your injury?”

Akutagawa is silent. Then with a sigh, he shifts and lifts the blanket, gesturing towards his lower left side.

Exactly the area near where Atsushi’s soulmate pain originates from. What are the chances of two people getting hurt in the exact same area at almost the exact same time?

 Atsushi walks forward, and lifts his hand—only to realize, he’d have to lift Akutagawa’s hospital gown to look at it. Lift it...above the hips. When he may or may not be wearing anything underneath it.

His hands shake. Akutagawa continues to stare balefully at him.

Oh no, he thinks to himself. Oh no.

“I just—”

Atsushi steps away, and decides to just go for it.

“It’s just that I...I um. I’ve been having a sharp pain near that area as well...since early this morning. As well. Like you. I have it. Too. So. I thought. Ah…”

“You think you could be my soulmate.” Akutagawa deadpans.

Atsushi nearly bursts into flame right then and there.

“R-right, well, yes. Yes—that. That’s what I thought. Too.”   

Akutagawa gives him a quick once-over, clear disgust taking over his features.

“Well?”

Atsushi gapes.

“Well, I mean, we could—we could be—!!”

“Soulmates, yes, we’ve established that. What do you want to do about it?”

“Well, I...When people first meet their soulmates, they…”

What do people do when they meet their soulmates?

“They...they go on a date?”

The silence that follows is deafening. Akutagawa looks like he’d rather murder small children than go on a date with Atsushi. Well, actually, he looks like murdering small children would be like a walk in the park for him. He looks like Atsushi had just asked him to cook him dinner and massage his feet, or do whatever else it is that normal, healthy people do instead of murdering small children.

Finally, Akutagawa sighs, and coughs into his hand.

“All right.”

“Wait, really?”

“Must I repeat myself? Yes, really.”

“Okay!” Atsushi flashes him a quick smile, immediately brightening. Finally, they were getting somewhere! “Where would you like to go?”

Akutagawa looks pointedly down at his body, where it lies on the hospital bed.

Oh. Right.

Gunshot wound. Hospital stay.

“We can...wait until you’re discharged?”

“No. Let’s get this over with.”

Well, that doesn’t leave them with many options.

“Oh...well. I can take my break soon. And I guess we could...go down...to the cafeteria? Grab some coffee?”

Akutagawa closes his eyes and sighs.

“Fine.”

“Great!”

 -

Atsushi closes the door behind him, and heaves a sigh of relief.

“Ah, Atsushi-kun!” Dazai greets. Atsushi jumps, hand flying to his chest.

“Dazai-san! Don’t scare me like that.”

Dazai leans against the wall by room 111, fresh bandages wrapped around his head, covering his right eye.

“I just wanted to see you,” Dazai says.

“Well,” Atsushi gestures to himself, “now you’ve seen me.”

Dazai tilts his head until it rests on the wall.

“And you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Dazai responds with a grin. “Or eye, in this case.”

Atsushi sighs, and elects to ignore his comment.

“Have you been discharged? Or are you staying overnight for monitoring?”

Dazai gives him a wink. (It doesn’t work. Only one eye is visible.)

“I’ll be staying overnight in case of further complications. You have another shift tomorrow, right, Atsushi-kun?”

“Dazai-san...how did you know that.”

Dazai perks up at that.

“We’ll be seeing each other again, then!” He seems very happy with this conclusion.

Atsushi sighs.

“So? What are you doing here?”

“Ah, I was looking for the toilet!”

...Suspicious.

“I’d think you’ve been here enough times to know where the toilet is, Dazai-san. It’s in the opposite direction, down that hallway over there.”

Dazai crosses his arms in front of his chest, hunching over, as though feeling...self-conscious?

“Ah, you got me. I was actually looking for you because I wanted to ask you a question.”

Atsushi is caught a bit off guard. No “Ah, but your blinding brilliance must have made me stray off my course!” or “But how could I remember something as mundane as where the toilet is when my mind is filled with only the beautiful color of your eyes?” or some other ridiculous, Dazai-typical statement?

Atsushi eyes him warily.

“Oh. What is it?”

“Your break is soon, right?”

“...Yes? How did you—”

“Would you,” Dazai steps closer, so that there’s only a few inches of space between them, “like to come with me somewhere?”

Atsushi hesitates, feeling uncomfortable, and shrinks back.

“Dazai-san...don’t you think this joke has gone on long enough?”

A beat of silence.

“What joke, Atsushi-kun?”

Atsushi’s heart thuds.

What a good liar, he thinks. He almost seems sincere.

“W-Well, either way, I already have plans. Sorry.”

Dazai studies him for a moment before his eyes flick to the door behind him. An unreadable expression crosses his face.

He takes a step back. Something in Atsushi clenches as the space between them widens.

“Well, that’s too bad,” Dazai says agreeably. “Rain check?”

Atsushi bites his lip. Dazai’s eyes flicker down to watch.

Really, Atsushi thinks to himself, this man is too good-looking for his own good.

“...You should really get going, Dazai-san. It’s not good to linger in the halls, especially when there may still be complications with your head wound.”

Dazai almost looks disappointed.

“Well then. See you, Atsushi-kun!”

“Bye.”

Atsushi lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. With yet another sigh, he heads back to the nurse’s station.

 -

“So…” Atsushi begins, as he pushes Akutagawa’s wheelchair down the corridor.

It’s time.

Atsushi’s on his break, and he’s pushing Akutagawa in a wheelchair. They’re on a ‘date’.

A date to the shitty hospital cafeteria, to get the same kind of shitty hospital coffee he could make at the machines by the nurses station, but a date nevertheless.

The elevator door dings behind them and slides closed.

Silence reigns supreme.

Atsushi gulps, and tries again.

“So...how’d you get shot?”

Akutagawa doesn’t even look at him in acknowledgement.

Atsushi winces. Sore topic, maybe?

Stupid! Of course he doesn’t want to talk about how he got shot, what kind of opening line is that?

Atsushi continues to sweat as the silence stretches onwards. What do people talk about on dates again? Oh yeah, that’s right, he’s never been on one , so he has no idea. Who does he know that might be good at this?

Immediately, Dazai’s face flashes in mind, and he flushes.

No. Nope. Don’t think about it, Atsushi.

Dazai’s method of flirting definitely won’t work if Atsushi tried it. In the first place, it only works because Dazai has the advantage of being ridiculously attractive.

Why couldn’t the elevator go faster? Why couldn’t it just drop them to their imminent deaths? Why must he suffer like this?

The elevator dings on the ground floor, and Atsushi takes a right towards the cafeteria.

They find an empty table to sit at.

They sit.

...and continue to sit.

Atsushi could die from the sheer awkwardness of this encounter. Never in his life has he been more uncomfortable. What’s more, Akutagawa looks like he couldn’t give a damn, content with continuing to attempt homicide through his eyes alone.

“WellthenI’llgogetsomecoffeehahaI’llbebackbye!”

He makes his escape as quickly as possible, spends as much time dawdling by the coffee machines as possible, and drags his feet the entire way back.

Is this some kind of joke? He asks the universe. This is the furthest thing from a perfect match I’ve ever seen.

He dreads going back, but eventually he catches sight of Akutagawa again, and sits down in his seat, passing the drink back over to him.

Akutagawa takes a sip.

“It’s cold.”

“Oh, well...yes.”

“And sweet.”

“...would you like me to grab you another?”

Please say yes.

Anything to escape this sheer discomfort.

Akutagawa doesn’t reply, and just continues to sip at his coffee with a frown.

“Why would you make a cold coffee?”

“Ah, that’s…”

Atsushi flushes in abject horror.

That would be...because of Dazai.

Without realizing it, he’d instinctively gotten Dazai’s usual order. Cold coffee, but with no ice. Extra milk, and double the sugar. Decaf.

For himself, he’d gotten a regular old medium roast straight from the machine.

Gosh, what had he been thinking? He should’ve asked Akutagawa what he wanted, but he’d been in such a hurry to leave… A part of him must’ve just, instinctively…

“...Sorry,” he finishes lamely.

Akutagawa just closes his eyes and crosses his arms, as though he’d already accepted that Atsushi is a total idiot, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Atsushi squeezes his hands together, his nerves skyrocketing as the silence stretches.

Something to talk about...something...anything…

“Ah, what do you do for a living, Akutagawa-san?”

Akutagawa snaps his eyes open and stares at him with a startlingly intense look.

“Why do you want to know?”

Atsushi pales. Another sore topic?

“Ah,” he flounders, “I’m sure that whatever it is, it must be more exciting than my job, haha! Not that working at a hospital is boring, of course, and not that I don’t like my job, I love my job! Even though the hours on top of school is a lot and I’m always tired and I don’t sleep well because my soulm—” He gulps.

“—ah, but that’s not interesting! I’m sure you’d like to hear about something else, something interesting, uhm, like, uh…”

Akutagawa, if anything, looks increasingly unimpressed.

“...Did you know that we have a regular?”

Akutagawa’s face finally changes from complete boredom to something like resignation.

“A...regular?”

“It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Because it is! We have a regular!” Immediately, Atsushi gets fired up, seizing upon the easy topic of conversation.

“A regular patient who comes in every other day, whining about some minor injury or another, while completely neglecting to mention the important things!”

Akutagawa raises an eyebrow, and slurps his coffee.

“Furthermore, he keeps tormenting me, and I don’t know why! It’s like he specifically has it out for me and for whatever reason, I’m always assigned to his room! If I didn’t know better I’d think Yosano-sensei and he were in cahoots!” Atsushi slowly grows more and more heated, gesticulating with his hands as he rants on and on.

“You know, just this morning he came in for a fake injury and then neglected to mention he had a head wound ? Last week he came in for a ‘terrible chest pain’—which was also fake, by the way—while walking around on a twisted ankle! And he told no one! All he said was ‘Oh, Atsushi-kun, this pain must be from my broken heart, please, only you and your gentle radiance can possibly cure me!’ Everyone laughed at me! He’s infuriating ! And did I mention that he targets me especially? Because he does! He keeps making fun of me, and thinks I don’t know what he’s doing! I swear, the guy is an annoyance and a complete waste of all of our time. The next time Yosano-sensei asks me to attend to Dazai-san I’m going to say—”  

Akutagawa stands abruptly, nearly knocking his coffee over, and then doubles over, clutching his side.

“Akutagawa-san?! Akutagawa-san, what are you doing?! You can’t be getting out of your wheelchair—it’s dangerous! Sit back down!”

Atsushi rushes over to press him back into the chair.

“ You. ”

Atsushi freezes at the pure vehemence in his voice.

“You...you just said… ‘Dazai-san’, didn’t you.”

“I...yes. Do you...know him?”

Oh god, does Akutagawa have some kind of grudge against Dazai? Atsushi wouldn’t put it past Dazai to have gained a number of mortal enemies, given how infuriating he can be.

“You...just said Dazai-san is an annoyance and a complete waste of time .”

A prickle of shame makes its way down Atsushi’s arms. His cheeks must be in flame right now, and he has the urge to look around and hide.

Akutagawa growls.

“You. You know— nothing . Nothing about Dazai-san—about— ”

He doubles over, coughing.

“Akutagawa-san! Please, calm down, this isn’t good for your hea—”

Akutagawa slaps Atsushi’s hand away.

“Dazai-san...Dazai-san is…”

He never finishes his sentence, but the look of desperation that comes into his eyes is answer enough. He pants, wincing and gripping his side.

“Dazai-san is a thousand times more than whatever you could hope to be in your entire lifetime. He is—Dazai-san is—You know nothing .” Akutagawa repeats.

...That’s true, isn’t it.

Atsushi...what does he really know about Dazai?

Nothing.

“You—you have what I would kill for. What I would die for. And you’re throwing it away? Treating it like trash? Calling it an annoyance and a complete waste of time ?”

That... had been rather harsh, hadn’t it? But—but after all the teasing he’s had to endure because of Dazai-san—after all the beatings his self-esteem has gone through, knowing that Dazai-san couldn’t possibly be serious—after everything—    

“I—”

He has no words to say.

The cruel one isn’t Atsushi. It’s Dazai, for knowing what effect he has on people, and using it to make fun of weak people like Atsushi.

Right?

Akutagawa scoffs.

“We’re done here.”

Atsushi gapes.

“W-wait, but…”

“My soulmate would never speak such a way about Dazai-san. We’re done here. Take me back to my room.”

 -

After the disastrous date, Atsushi is back at the nurse’s station, when Yosano-sensei calls upon him again.

"Atsushi," Yosano says. "Room 107."

Atsushi knows who's in that room. He gulps.

When he pushes open the door, Dazai is looking out the window, unusually quiet.

"Atsushi-kun," he says. Strangely enough, Dazai doesn’t look over at him. He seems...subdued.

"...Dazai-san." He nearly chokes on the name, the syllables like ash in his mouth, his guts roiling with nerves. He feels irrationally paranoid, like Dazai could take one look at him and know about all the bad things he’d said about him in a fit of nerves and frustration. The conversation with Akutagawa ricochets inside his head.

You know nothing.

Dazai-san is a thousand times more than whatever you could hope to become in your entire lifetime.

"Have you come to relieve me of this tiresome, banal world?” Dazai finally turns to look at him through his one eye. Atsushi, inexplicably, feels a shiver run down his back.

He hands him a cup of water, in lieu of a reply.

“No coffee this time?”

“Water is good for you.” Atsushi doesn’t really want to make more coffee right now.

Atsushi hesitates, hovering. Dazai isn’t acting like he normally does and Atsushi finds that he...misses it. He doesn’t know what to do with this strange, quiet Dazai. Without him to fill the silence, Atsushi feels as though something heavy were weighing him down. Like something’s missing. He fidgets a bit more, then bites his lip.

But does he have the right to ask, when he so clearly knows nothing about Dazai? When he’d bad-mouthed him less than an hour earlier? When he’s just a random nobody in Dazai’s life?

He’s just a nursing student at the hospital Dazai frequents. Just a bystander that Dazai sometimes gives attention to out of amusement. What right does he have to ask him what’s wrong?

And yet, despite all that, he finds himself opening his mouth to speak.

“Dazai-san...what do you do for a living?”

Dazai looks up in surprise.

“I work as a private detective,” he answers with a smile.

“A private detective, huh… Well that explains the number of injuries, I guess,” Atsushi says with a small laugh, scratching his cheek.

Dazai leans his cheek upon his hand and gazes at Atsushi through his bangs.

“What’s with this sudden interest in my life, Atsushi-kun? Wondering if I’m single? Want to know about my past lovers?”

Atsushi rolls his eyes and resists the urge to smack him with his clipboard.

“No just...wondering.”

“Wondering…what?” Dazai leans forward eagerly, eyes twinkling.

Atsushi knows he's flirting again. His first instinct is to recoil and blow him off, but Akutagawa's words float into his mind.

He thinks about everything that Dazai has said and done to him, about the weeks and weeks of taking care of him and putting up with his wild antics...and realizes something.

“Wondering...why you almost never have any visitors.”

The only visitor Atsushi has ever seen is an angry, blond, be-spectacled man who, judging from his yelling, is a coworker. But even he is a rare sighting. Most of the time Dazai comes and goes, with no one but Atsushi and the other nurses and doctors to notice his passing through.

Atsushi had always assumed it had just been because Dazai gets injured so often that people have stopped coming by to check on him but...even that is sad.

“Ah,” Dazai puts on a cheerful facade, but his tone is bland. “Well, I do have an adoptive father, but we’re not on speaking terms.”

...Is that all?

Even Atsushi, an orphan, has a few friends that would come see him if he were ever hospitalized.

And Dazai is constantly hospitalized.

“So...you never knew your real parents?”

“Yup! Though I never really wondered about them, anyway.”

Atsushi wishes he could say the same. He shuffles his feet, pushing back memories of crying behind the orphanage garden, beneath the covers, in the library, always wondering why he didn’t deserve parents like other children.

“Does that mean that...at one point, you and your father were close, then?”

“Oh, absolutely not. Mori-san was...well.” Dazai turns to look out the window again, and his hand comes up to brush at the bandages that cover his eye. “Mori-san had certain...expectations. It’s why we don’t speak anymore.”

That sounds so...cold. And lonely.

Both of which are feelings Atsushi is not unfamiliar with—and that’s why it’s so distressing to him.

“I...I never knew my parents either.”

Dazai hums, and cocks his head in interest. Atsushi looks away, unable to meet his eyes. With no small surprise, he finds himself speaking up again.

“I...was an orphan. Grew up at an orphanage. It was...well. The director there also had...expectations, of a sort.”

He expected Atsushi would fail at everything he ever did, and would wind up as the trash of society. A burden. Useless.

“Did you fulfill them?” Dazai’s eyes are strangely knowing. Usually that would make Atsushi feel uncomfortable, or wary. But somehow, he feels...calm. Maybe he just got used to Dazai’s presence after seeing him so often, and he's mistaken the familiarity as a sense of security and trust. Maybe hearing that they have something in common made Atsushi lower his guard.

Or maybe there’s just something about Dazai that makes Atsushi want to be known.

Atsushi clutches at his clipboard, fingers turning white.

“I...maybe. I don’t know.”

Dazai reaches up to press his fingers into his bandages again.

“I fulfilled Mori-san’s expectations rather easily. Too easily, I think. But in the end, I decided not to be the person he wanted me to be. Even if, maybe, that was who I was born to be.”

Atsushi finds that he would do anything to erase the carefully controlled, fragile expression on Dazai’s face.

He finds that he wants to know. Know more, about Dazai. About everything.

“Why didn’t you want to be that person?”

Their lives may have begun similarly, and yet...they are so different. Atsushi would’ve done anything, at that time, to earn the director’s approval. Now, he wonders why.

Dazai smiles, nails digging into the bandages on his head.

“A friend told me I could be better.”

Atsushi wonders what happened to that friend, for Dazai to make such a pained expression, and for Dazai’s bedside chair to always remain empty. He knows, instinctively, not to ask.

“Are those bothering you?” Atsushi asks, indicating the bandages.

“Ah, no,” Dazai pulls his hand away, “It’s fine.”

Atsushi frowns.

“I can redo them for you, if you’d like.”

Dazai pauses, an unreadable look crossing his face.

“...If you could, then.”

It’s strangely intimate. The way the bandages unravel and collect in a bundle on the blankets. The way Atsushi brushes aside his hair, or brushes past his ear, his skin. The slow reveal of Dazai’s features. The moment when the bandages come off and Dazai gazes, with both eyes, straight at Atsushi, who is nearly cradling his face.

Atsushi grabs new bandages and re-wraps his head, this time leaving his eye clear.

“Not too tight?”

Dazai shakes his head lightly.

“Perfect.”

Atsushi gives himself a mental pat on the back.

“I’m not sure why they decided to cover your eye, anyway. Maybe they thought putting more bandages on would keep you from hurting yourself again.” Atsushi jokes.

“...Thank you. Really.”

Dazai is already looking more like his normal self, color returning to his face, his cheeks lifting lightly and eyes squinting at the corners. It's as though the bandages had, before, turned him into a lost child.

“It’s no big deal, really.” Atsushi assures him. “Were they bothering you that much?”

Dazai’s expression slips a little.

“Yes, they were.”

The sun is beginning to set outside the window now, light filtering through the sheer curtains.

“They reminded me of...a younger me.”

Atsushi doesn’t quite understand, but he thinks he can fill in between the lines.

“You’re...I’m sure you’re not the person your father made you into, Dazai-san.”

Dazai looks up at him.

“And how would you know that, Atsushi-kun?”

Atsushi finds that his voice comes out stronger and clearer than he ever knew it could be.

“I think, if you were who your father thought you were, your friend wouldn’t have advised you differently. He was an important friend, right? He must’ve known you better than your father, who didn’t see who you were, but only who he wanted you to be. I won’t lie, you’re a rather annoying person, Dazai-san, but I think...you aren’t a bad one. So I think, you don’t need to be afraid of becoming whatever it is you are afraid of becoming. Because Dazai-san is a good person, so no matter whatever else you are, that’s what’s most important.”

Dazai stares at him, mouth slightly parted.

After another pause, Atsushi’s brain finally catches up with his mouth, and he pinks.

“I’m so sorry! I stepped out of line, that was rude of me. I’ll. I’ll just be going now… S-See you tomorrow, Dazai-san…”

He rushes out the door, and slams it closed behind him, leaning against it with one hand on his beating chest and the other pressed against his hot cheeks.

I can’t believe I just did that! Bad Atsushi! Bad Atsushi!

Dazai watches him go, silhouette framed by the dying light of the sun. He looks down at his hands, which are curled around the old bandages.

“Oh, Atsushi-kun,” he murmurs, “you’re really too much for me.”

 Atsushi groans as he finally lies down in his bed, feeling the way his spine stretches out.

It’d definitely been a long, long day. He congratulates himself for getting through it alive and arguably in one piece.

Some of it definitely could have gone better, Atsushi thinks, as he stares up at the ceiling, chewing his lip.

There’s no two ways about it. The date with Akutagawa had been terrible. They barely talked, and if possible, left on worse terms than they’d started.

And they’d started on awful terms.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe Akutagawa’s injury was just a coincidence.

Secretly, he hoped so. Akutagawa seemed like an unpleasant person and not at all like someone Atsushi would want to spend the rest of his life with. Either the universe had made some kind of mistake, or Atsushi did, and the latter is much more likely.

What was he going to do if he does turn out to be his soulmate though? How does he mend that bridge when he’d so obviously offended Akutagawa?

My soulmate would never speak such a way about Dazai-san.

And anyway, what was it about Dazai that had Akutagawa so angry and...obsessed?

Atsushi thinks about the delicate features of Dazai’s face. The slender yet sharp jaw, aristocratic nose, glimmering, deep brown eyes. His porcelain skin, the wicked curve to his lips, the soft angle of his cheekbones. His deft, clever hands. The way he glides when he walks. His soft, messy hair, which glows russet in the right lighting. The fact that he always smells good.

Okay, so maybe there was a lot to Dazai that could be obsessed over. But that’s all just physical stuff! Not important!

And then he thinks about Dazai bursting in on the scene with some ridiculous excuse in the middle of a boring work day. Dazai showering him with extravagant compliments and (albeit unwanted) attention. Dazai smiling at him even after Atsushi brushes him off.

Dazai’s fragile expression when he talked about his adoptive father. His solemnity when he talked about a dear friend who’d passed away. The way he always listened to everything Atsushi had to say, even if he tends to choose to ignore the complaints, the way he hadn’t pitied Atsushi the moment Atsushi had told him his story.

Atsushi thinks that now he may understand, just a little, the desperate look that had been in Akutagawa’s eyes.

Even without comparing him to Atsushi, there were possibly a few, or possibly a lot, of things about Dazai to be desperate over.

Wouldn’t be nice, he thinks to himself, if Dazai were my soulmate, instead of Akutagawa?

When he realizes where his train of thought had lead, he immediately groans and buries his face in his hands.

Why? Why, brain? Why would you take that train of thought in that direction? Why would you even think—

Atsushi freezes.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh god, do I like him? No, no, no, no… You promised yourself not to let that happen! It’s not possible! No!

  ...Okay.

So maybe he’s grown a bit fond of Dazai’s antics, and maybe he worries about how good Dazai is at hiding his real injuries.

Maybe he isn’t as immune to Dazai’s charms as he acts.

But, it’s impossible. There’s no way. None of that has to mean he has a crush on Dazai. It doesn’t! Him with Dazai-san? Dazai-san with him ? That would never work. It’s best to shut it down before he can begin to hope, and save himself the heartbreak.

He curls up on his side, mind whirling.

He needs to sleep. He has morning classes, three exams coming up, and he agreed to cover someone else’s shifts at the hospital, to boot.

Atsushi’s exhausted. He wasn’t built for this kind of stress and drama.

His side suddenly erupts in pain, and Atsushi gasps.

“Just what are you getting yourself into?” He asks the empty air, knowing he’ll get no response.

At this rate, his soulmate is going to die before they ever get to meet.

Assuming that it isn’t Akutagawa, at least.

“You need to take better care of yourself,” he whispers. His side continues to radiate pain, as if in direct response to his words.

Atsushi sighs, and prepares for another sleepless night.

 -

Atsushi didn't get another wink of sleep that night.

“Here’s the juice you asked for,” he says quietly, handing it over to Akutagawa.

That’s right.

Akutagawa is staying at the hospital for the time being, and due to where he’s located in the hospital, Atsushi is still tending to him.

Talk about awkward.

Atsushi sighs, feeling heavy from exhaustion. He can't even muster the energy to feel alarmed by the stink eye Akutagawa gives him.

“Did you...sleep okay, last night?”

He thinks about the sharp pain that he’d experienced, that had kept him awake even when he'd been in tears, praying for sleep.

Akutagawa takes the juice without a word, and haughtily turns his face away, with his eyes closed, as though being forced to even look at Atsushi was a personal affront to his very being.

“I slept fine. They administered painkillers, so I felt nothing.”

“Ah, that’s good…”

Silence.

“...Let me or one of the other nurses know if you need anything else…”

He runs out as quickly as he can.

As he goes, Akutagawa’s words catch up to him.

Wait...he didn’t feel any pain last night? Then does that mean…

Was it really a mistake after all?

 -

“Sooo, Atsushi,” Naomi kicks the ground and rolls her swivel chair over so she can lean closer to Atsushi’s ear. “How’d the date yesterday go?”

Atsushi winces. “It went...okay, I guess.”

“Hmm, really?”

Atsushi groans and covers his face.

“Who am I kidding, it went terribly .”

“Aw, what? I thought you said he could be your soulmate!”

Atsushi mentally scolds himself for telling her that.

“That’s...I’m not so sure anymore. I kind of...hope he isn’t. I can’t imagine living my life with someone like that… He acts like he can’t even stand to look at me.”

“Didn’t you just go in to check on him?”

“Yes, and it was extremely awkward!”

Naomi laughs.

“Oh, come on, it can’t have been that bad.”

Atsushi blows a piece of hair out of his face. “It was. You have no idea.”

He pauses for a moment, then looks at Naomi consideringly.

“Naomi-san…”

“No,” Naomi says, without pause.

“Naomi-san...please? Please, can you take over for just his room? Just until he’s discharged? Every time he speaks I get scared for my life, Naomi-san. I’m serious!”

Atsushi whines as Naomi laughs at him.

“Naomi-san, this is serious! If I have to tend to him any longer I think I’ll die! He hates me! So much! You have no idea .”

“All right, all right. But you have to tell me more about the details of your date later, okay, Atsushi?”

Atsushi groans.

He does not want to relive that experience. But if it means he can avoid Akutagawa for the rest of his stay...

“Fine. Deal.”

Naomi glances over at him slyly, and leans against the desk.

“I kinda feel bad for the dude though. He never really had a chance, given that you’re...biased. Don’t you think?”

Atsushi cocks his head to the side.

“Biased about what, Naomi-san?”

“Well… You know.”

Atsushi blinks at her. “What do I know?”

Naomi stares at him. “Seriously? Isn’t it obvious?”

“Isn’t what obvious?”

Naomi groans. “Oh my god you’re hopeless.”

“Fine then. Don’t tell me.” Atsushi pouts.

Naomi heaves a sigh and holds back a groan. “Dazai, silly.”

Atsushi frowns. Why is everyone constantly bringing him up?

“Dazai-san? What about him?”

Naomi rolls her eyes. “I’ll admit, you’re good at pretending, but you can’t hide from me. I know you like him, Atsushi.”

Atsushi gapes at her, then flushes up to his ears.

“I—I do not!”

A distant figure rounds a corner, and begins to walk down the hallway adjacent to them.

Naomi giggles at him.

“Oh, look at you, you’re so cute. Stay in denial if you want, then. It’s funny.”

“I’m not in denial!”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so!”

Their voices echo.

“All right then, Atsushi.” She winks at him.

Atsushi’s still blushing, looking anywhere but Naomi.

“W-Who would like someone like Dazai-san, anyway? He’s over-the-top and a flirt! He’s constantly harassing me, doesn’t take no for an answer, and in general is just—a nuisance! I don’t like him. I don’t!”

Something uncomfortable grows in his stomach as the words come out of his mouth. He thinks about bandages falling away, two eyes pinning him with an earnest gaze, a fragile smile.

He doesn’t notice Dazai standing, frozen, just around the corner of the hallway.

“You talk about him a lot for someone who doesn’t like him, though.”

“That’s—! That’s because he’s—he’s insufferable! I really just wish he’d leave me alone.”

Dazai clenches his hand into a fist, staring at his shoes.

Naomi looks at Atsushi with pity.

“Is that how you really feel?”

Atsushi looks away, fiddling with his fingers. He tries to imagine coming to work and never seeing Dazai again. Never dealing with his shenanigans, never hearing his voice, never again being able to know how he’s doing and whether or not he’s recovering from his latest injury.

No, he thinks to himself. No, it isn’t.

“...Yes.” he says, instead.

Naomi gives a skeptical hum, but pushes herself away from the desk and returns to her own work.

“Okay, okay. I’ll drop it. For now.”

Atsushi slumps into his chair. “Thank you.”

Unbeknownst to them, Dazai turns and walks away. His expression is blank, wiped clean.

“Okay then, Atsushi-kun,” he whispers to himself. “If that’s what you want.”

 -

Atsushi is on the computer, trying to ignore the continuing pain in his side and looking up a patient’s room number so he can redirect a small family of three, when he hears it.

Dazai’s voice, laughing merrily from somewhere down the hallway.

“That’ll be on the third floor, room 317,” he says with a smile, accepting their thanks with grace.

After they leave, he waits.

And waits.

 Strangely enough, Dazai doesn’t head towards the nurse’s station looking for him. No one calls him over specifically to tend to him. Occasionally, he thinks he catches the sound of Dazai’s voice as he rounds a corner, but he isn’t bothered or harassed like he usually is. Not even once.

As the hour goes on, Atsushi gets more and more uncomfortable.

Why is he making a big deal out of this? This is what he wanted right? For Dazai to leave him alone, so he can finally get over his stupid crush? To stop having his feelings played with?

He opens the cabinet where they store extra blankets, and frowns.

He’s tired. It’s nearing the fourth day he’s gotten little to no sleep. He’s ready to pass out, but he can’t. He has things to do, and whatever injury it is that his soulmate has, has apparently not been healed yet, because he can still feel it. A dull, throbbing, constant pain.

At this point, he’s relatively certain it isn’t Akutagawa. Naomi administered more painkillers at his behest, and yet the pain in Atsushi’s side has yet to abide.

Meaning that entire ordeal was completely pointless, unless the goal was to shoot Atsushi’s anxiety even higher than it already is.

He tugs at one of the blankets, standing on his tiptoes to reach. The door next to the cabinets opens. Atsushi turns to look, and freezes.

It’s Dazai, and another nurse, Sasaki-san.

Sasaki giggles, hand daintily going up to her mouth, and Dazai leans closer to whisper in her ear. His right arm is in a cast.

She’s really pretty, Atsushi thinks. They look good together.

“I’m free Friday after five,” Dazai says with a quirk of his lips.

“Oh, that’s perfect,” Sasaki says, “I get off my shift right around then.”

Dazai turns, and meets Atsushi’s wide-eyed gaze.

Atsushi feels sick.

“Oh, Atsushi-kun,” Sasaki says, before pausing. “Atsushi-kun, is everything all right?”

To his horror, he realizes he’s about to cry.

“Oh, I—I, yes—”

He stumbles back, but in his hurry, he tugs at the blankets too harshly and brings them tumbling down on his head.

He stands there, blankets draped over him and strewn across the floor, and thinks to himself, Could you be any more pathetic?

“I—sorry, I just, was grabbing some blankets…” He kneels down, carefully hiding his face, and begins picking them up and re-folding them.

He’s hastily wiping at his eyes when he realizes someone has knelt down to help him.

“No, it’s okay, I can—” Atsushi looks up.

“D-Dazai-san,” he squeaks in surprise. What is he doing?

“Dazai-san, stop. You have a broken arm.”

Dazai gives him a wink.

“Oh this? This is nothing. At least, it’s nothing compared to the pain of seeing a beautiful creature such as yourself in distress.”

Atsushi can’t help but sniffle, face screwing up.

Typical Dazai. Being kind, yet cruel, all at once.

He takes a deep breath and mentally steels himself.

“Dazai-san, really, I’m fine. And you can’t do much with one arm in a cast like that, anyway.”

He reaches out, meaning to help Dazai stand up, hand braced under Dazai’s elbow.

“Atsushi-kun, wait—”

Atsushi lands with a thwump back on his butt.

He stares down at the cast in his hand, then looks at the empty space where the rest of Dazai’s arm is supposed to be.

And screams.

 -

“I’m sorry! I’m really sorry!”

“I can’t believe you! You faked another injury?! To do what? To flirt with the nurses? What is wrong with you?!”

“Well I didn’t think you’d grab someone by their broken arm…”

“So this is my fault? Is that what you’re saying? Get out.”

“Wait, but—”

“You don’t actually have any pressing injuries, right? That means you can’t be here. Get out.”

“Wait, Atsushi-kun, I said I’m sorry—”  

Atsushi is livid.

After tugging off Dazai’s fake cast and nearly having a heart attack, thinking he’d pulled someone’s arm off, Dazai revealed the rest of his arm, which he’d tucked up in his sleeve, and admitted that it was “just a prank”.

He’s had—

“Enough. I’ve had enough. If you don’t get out, now, I’m calling security.”

“I can explain—”

Atsushi turns and begins to stomp down the hallway.

“Wait, Atsushi—”

A hand grabs him by the elbow and he whirls, ready to yell again, when he stumbles off-balance and bangs his other elbow on the wall.

“Ow!”

“Ow.”

Atsushi opens his mouth, then pauses.

  That second “ow”? That hadn’t come from Atsushi.

Dazai and he stare at each other. Slowly, the pieces click together.

But—how can he be sure? What if—what if this is another prank?

...There’s only one way to find out.

Atsushi lifts a trembling hand—

“Atsushi-ku—”

—and does what he’s been aching to do for weeks now.

He slaps Dazai Osamu right across his pretty face.

Dazai stares at him, open-mouthed, hand reaching up to rub at his cheek.

Atsushi blinks right back at him in disbelief and lifts his own hand up to his own face, feeling where the echo of the force of his own slap radiates from.

He felt that.

He’d slapped Dazai, and in that very same moment, felt that very same pain on his own face.

“Oh my god.”

This can’t be real.

He lifts his hand again, and Dazai backs up.

He needs to check. Just one more time. To make sure.

“W-Wait, Atsushi-kun, I really don’t think that’s necessary—”

“It is.”

“There must be some other way—”

Atsushi pauses for a moment, thinking.

If they’re soulmates, and they share each other’s pain, then that means…

He narrows his eyes.

“Dazai-san.”

Dazai gulps.

“Oh, would you look at the time!” Dazai flashes him a fake smile and looks at his bare, watch-less wrist. “Wouldn’t want you to call security on me! I’ll just be going then, haha—”

“ Dazai-san. ” Atsushi’s suspicions have been all but confirmed. “Take off your clothes. Now.”

“I don’t really think that’s appropriate, Atsushi-kun—”

Atsushi stomps forward, and Dazai continues to back up, holding his hands up in a placating manner.

“Now, now, Atsushi-kun, we can talk about this—”

“Take off your clothes! Now!”

Dazai breaks into a flat out run, with Atsushi chasing after him.

“Get back here!”

True to his expectations, as Dazai runs, the pain in Atsushi’s side flares.

They skid to a stop at the end of the next hallway, panting, both of them clutching their sides.

Atsushi pushes Dazai up against the wall, tugging at his shirt.

“Atsushi-kun I think we’re moving a little too fast don’t you think—”

Atsushi pauses, and glares at Dazai’s bare stomach.

“Dazai-san. What is that.”

Dazai gulps.

“...Nothing.”

“I’ve been feeling it for two days, it isn’t nothing .”

“...may have run into a knife.” Dazai mumbles.

“You got STABBED?!” Atsushi screeches.

“If anything, it’s the knife’s fault.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that it’s completely your fault for making someone want to stab you. What I want to know is why you felt the need to fake a broken arm to get in here when you’ve already been stabbed. ”

“It’s not even that bad—”

Atsushi screeches again, and grabs Dazai by his arm, dragging him back the way they came.

“That’s it, I’m bringing you to Yosano-sensei.”

Dazai suddenly stops, clinging onto Atsushi’s arm and dragging his feet.

“But I can only be healed by the gentle touch of your love!”

“Oh, stop that. Don’t be ungrateful. Though her methods of practice are...unique... Yosano-sensei has a very high success rate!”

“But I’d really much rather stay by your side—”

“You’re not getting out of this one, Dazai-san.”

Dazai grows more desperate, recalling all the rumors he’d heard about Yosano’s “treatment” and his past luck in dodging it.

“But you’ll have to suffer with me!”

“Gladly.”

They jerk to a stop.

Atsushi huffs in annoyance, ready to ask “What is it now”, when Dazai interrupts him.

“Even if I’m a compulsive liar with trust issues who sometimes can’t bring himself to get out of bed in the morning?”

Atsushi is taken aback.

“W-what?”

“Would you gladly suffer with me even though I’m annoying and I don’t know how much is too much and I embarrass you in front of everybody?”

Atsushi gapes at him, mouth opening and closing silently.

“I—”

He looks away, and tightens his grip on Dazai’s arm.

“...Yes. Even then. You’re my... soulmate, after all. But…”

Dazai watches him, studying his features in the fluorescent lighting.

“But?”

“...But even if you weren’t. I wouldn’t... couldn’t just leave you to suffer alone.”

The beginnings of a delighted grin begin to creep up onto Dazai’s face.

“You like me. You actually like me.”

“Don’t push it.”

The grin continues to grow as Atsushi begins to squirm uncomfortably.

“...Okay fine! Maybe I do like you. A little. But we really need to get that stab wound looked at so let’s just...get going, already.”

He blushes.

“Okay,” Dazai sing-songs.

Atsushi sighs, feeling the waves of exhaustion crashing over him.

“What am I going to do with you?”

“Well,” Dazai says, walking next to him amiably now, “I’m free Friday after five.”

Something warm pools in Atsushi’s gut, and a small smile sneaks its way onto his face.

“That works just fine for me.”

[dazaimultishipweek]

Dazai Multi-ship Week 2019!

Here are the prompts for the Dazai Multiship Week 2019! From June 16 to June 23, we shall include a variety of themes and quotes + a free extra day at the end of it.

Click below to find more information on the prompts and a guideline for participation!

Prompts

Day 1:   L’appel du vide* | Unwritten

“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

Day 2: Blossom | Serendipity*

“Did we part Yesterday or a thousand years ago? Even now I feel Your hand on my shoulder.”

― Yosano Akiko

Day 3: Fireflies | Symbiosis*

“I am a cage, in search of a bird.”

― Franz Kafka

Day 4: Birthday |  Desire 

“I shall be nothing, the wind, the sky.”

― Dazai Osamu ★

Day 5: Whiskey | Saudade*

“..he understood far more deeply than anyone else the loneliness that lurked beneath his jaunty mask.”

― Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Day 6: Schadenfreude* | Storm

“My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”

― L.M. Montgomery

Day 7: Freudenschade* | Monster

“The human feelings, which had never been very deep in him, grew shallower every hour, and every day something more dropped away from the decrepit wreck.”

― Nikolai Gogol

Day 8: Free Day!

Definitions

* L’appel du vide: “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

* Serendipity: The development of events by chance in a beneficial way; a happy accident.

* Symbiosis: An intimate, long-term interaction between two individuals, often (but not always) mutually beneficial to both.

* Saudade: A profound melancholic longing for something that is absent; the love that remains after someone is gone.

* Schadenfreude: The experience of joy, pleasure, or satisfaction of watching someone fail; happiness over someone’s pain.

* Freudenschade: The inverse, the feeling of distress over someone’s happiness.

Guideline

Feel free to choose more than one prompt to work with, the purpose of the prompts is, after all, to help inspire you all! Let your imagination roam!

On the Free Day, you are free to work with a prompt or quote of your choosing that wasn’t included in the previous days. Use this to perhaps work in an AU or under a different favorite quote!

ALL Dazai-ships are VALID! Please refer to our rules for specifications on what is and is not allowed. 

We will be reblogging works for One Month more after the week is finished, so don’t worry if you’re busy during June, you got one more month to submit your work!

You may begin posting when it’s June 16 UTC+14:00 (the first timezone of the world).

Please tag your post with #dazaishipweek19 within the first five tags and @dazaimultishipweek2019 so your post will be reblogged onto our blog. Feel free to use the same tag in twitter so it can be retweeted if you prefer to post there. We’ll also be sharing all works in our discord server so it can be appreciated by our members!

Have fun!! Send us any questions you may have, and good luck on working in your content. We’re looking forward to celebrating Dazai’s birthday with you all!!

― Attentively, Dazai’s Harem Mod Team

[manako-no-yami]

anything but clean

Rating: T Relationship(s): Odazai Tags: Grief/Mourning, Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, a teeeeeeeeeeeeeny tiny bit of Suicidal Ideation Summary:

Dazai knows better than anyone that blame is a fickle mistress, flitting back and forth and never settling in one place. The finger of accusation points everywhere and nowhere, all at once. But just because it has no direction doesn’t mean his sorrow disappears. Instead, it festers.

Dazai sits at an empty bar, and mourns.

for day 5 of @dazaimultishipweek2019!

-

There’s something about quiet bars. Something about the early morning hours, when the night is still bleeding away, when the only remaining patrons are those who either have nowhere to go or something they’re hiding from. There’s something about the way the light reflects off a glass, filtered through chilled whiskey, turning golden and warm. Like sunlight but muted, tailored for the nocturnal creatures that hide from the light.

Dazai turns his glass this way and that, rotating it between his fingers, poking the ice that bobs inside, the taste of bitter nostalgia souring on his tongue.

“Work was sooo boring today...” he whines. “So monotonous .”

His companion remains silent, watching him with sharp blue eyes, slowly nursing his own drink.

“Odasaku...” Dazai whines, resting his head on one hand, peering out at him through his right eye. “Tell me about your day. I’m sure it must’ve been much more eventful than mine.”

Oda hums, as though turning the statement over in his head.

“Been bothering your coworkers again, have you?”

Dazai sighs theatrically.

“Of course not!”

Oda cracks a small smile at that, hidden. You’d only know it was there if you knew where to look—just a small crinkle at the corner of his eyes—and Dazai knows where to look.

“Kunikida-kun is ever-grateful to have me as his partner. I even did paperwork today! He should be thanking his lucky stars for having the chance to work with someone like me , right, Odasaku?”

That small, hidden crinkle at the corner of Oda’s eye goes as quickly as it came. Just a flash, a moment of warmth. Like a candle sighing. Without it, Oda seems to melt into the background, his quiet seeping into the material of his being.

“You didn’t give him any...trouble, today?”

Dazai’s grin is sharp, rueful.

Three spontaneous, over-the-top death plans, five moments of “I’d rather be dead”, but no actual attempts, today. For once.

Joy.

“A death a day gives the coroner pay, am I right,” he laughs.

A haze of smoke passes between them, and Oda’s figure seems to shimmer a bit, indistinct.

“Dazai…” Oda’s face remains impassive, unsurprised, but his hands clench. He seems at a loss for words. Finally, after a long pause, he settles upon, “You really shouldn’t worry your colleagues like that.”

It’s a weak quip.

His voice strains near the end, like he’s choking on everything else he means to say (that they both know he wants to say), like he has to force down the truth in order to maintain the precarious peace that wavers between them.

Dazai shifts his weight, spinning in a circle on his barstool, humphing.

“Atsushi-kun should just stop worrying so much. It’s not my fault he hasn’t gotten with the program. No one else cares.”

Oda’s hands do that little clench again, a habit that Dazai noticed he has when he’s trying to control his emotions—like he’s trying to remind himself that he doesn’t need to reach for a gun.

“But they do. You know they do.”

“Like you do?” Dazai’s chuckle sounds like the tinkle of glass shattering.

For a second, all of his edges stand out, sharp and raw, before he forcefully relaxes his shoulders, that blithe smile like another layer of bandages to wrap around him and hold him together.

Oda looks resigned. Ever unperturbed. Still the only one who knows Dazai well enough to not be caught off guard. Like he’d seen this coming, the way he sees all disasters before they come. And what is Dazai, but yet another disaster?

The silence is damning, because they both know that Oda knows he can’t say anything to that—he no longer has the right.

They nurse their drinks, the silence between them thick and heavy, yet filled with a mutual understanding that Dazai wishes they didn’t have.

“…Why?”

Oda turns towards him, countenance like that of a man before the jury. Like he knows he’s committed a crime, and is willing to face it head-on.

Dazai loved that about him. Hates that about him.

“Why’d you do it?” Dazai sounds weary, like he’s older than he should be.

Oda takes a moment to savor the taste of his alcohol, contemplating. “Why do you keep trying?”

“You know it’s not the same thing. What I try to do and what you did is not the same thing,” Dazai bites back.

A clean suicide. One that doesn’t trouble anyone—and who’s fault is it, now, that he cares about troubling others?

“I suppose…I lost hope. There was nothing left to save,” Oda replies.

He doesn’t flinch when Dazai throws his drink at him, hands slamming against the bar, the glass shattering against the opposite wall.

“Bullshit. What about me?”

His eyes sting. But he doesn’t cry. He’s angry, but he doesn’t cry, because he knows it’s useless.

“You lost those orphans and decided there was nothing left in this godforsaken world worth saving?! Orphans die every day, Odasaku! Your failure meant nothing! Those kids were barely a blip on the radar! If that was all it took to break you, none of your efforts were worth anything in the first place!”

Dazai is the blood splatter upon the wall, the choked off scream that gurgles up a slit throat. He is the mess left behind. That Odasaku had left behind.

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not. How could you be sorry?”

His next words burn up his throat, like salt on an open wound. “You’re dead.”

As long as he remains alive, to him, Oda’s death is anything but clean—anything but forgivable.

And whose fault is that?

He’s a sad sight. Pathetic. The remaining patrons look over, but say nothing. The bartender begins to mop up the spill, looking like he wants to ask him to leave.

“If you’re allowed to die, then why can’t I?”

His voice is naked, plaintive.

His chest heaves and his vision swims, but the tears don’t fall. He’s at the cusp, waiting for the invisible cracks to converge so that he can finally, finally fall apart, but it never comes. He heaves, wishing so badly that he could cry, that he could feel human , but he isn’t, is he? This—this thing inside of him, this emptiness and this ugliness, could it possibly be human?

“Because you’re better than me, Dazai.”

A lie.

Odasaku had been the best of them, always.

A lie. That’s all that can be offered to him, and a bad one at that.

“Was I just not worth it? You couldn’t stay and—and—”

“You never needed my help.”

Another lie.

“I was a kid, too, you know,” Dazai whispers.

“…I know.”

Dazai sinks back onto the chair, composure wavering.

“Then why? Why wasn’t I worth living for? You still had one more kid you could save, and you left anyway.”

You left me.

“I’m sorry,” Oda says again. “I should’ve known better. I didn’t think.”

“No, you didn’t. You just died.”

But it’s too late now.

Maybe there wasn’t anything left of Dazai to save, anyway. Maybe Dazai was already a ghost, and Odasaku already forgotten. Maybe there isn’t a point to any of this. Maybe none of this is happening at all.

In that moment, it’s as though everything were submerged under water, floating away. Dazai is the only thing alive ( so unbearably alive ) in the middle of a dusty, forgotten tableau.

I’m drunk, he realizes, belatedly. Terribly, terribly drunk.

He sways on his seat, then leans forward. The bar surface is cool under his cheek.

“Why won’t you let me join you?”

For a second, he can smell him. His warmth. The scent of cigarettes, mingling with leftover gunsmoke. Cheap cologne.

“Because you can do so much more than I ever could.”

Dazai buries his face in his arms, and lets out a wet laugh.

“That’s unfair of you, isn’t it, Odasaku? Leaving your own ambition to another dying man?”

Silence greets him.

“I’m not suited for this. I never was. So why me?”

He asks the question to the empty air.

“Why me, Odasaku?”

He’s tired. So tired.

He closes his eyes to rest, just for a second.

 .

And when he looks up again, no one’s there.

[manako-no-yami]

when life begins at a grave

Rating: G Relationship(s): Past Odazai, DazAtsu Tags: First Dates, Fluff and Angst Summary:

A first date, but not a first love. Dazai says goodbye, and then hello. Sometimes, it’s better to let go.

for @dazaimultishipweek2019​ day 2!

-

Dazai closes his eyes, breathing in the scent of sea brine and leans back against the coolness of a familiar gravestone. If he closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that someone else is there, sitting next to him in comfortable silence.

“Did you know this would happen?” he asks, quietly.

Did you know what I would find, over here, on the other side?

There’s no response.

His smile turns wry.

“You must’ve.”

In the end, even I couldn’t have won against you, he thinks to himself.

After all these years, even with all of his cunning, even in this tired and hackneyed world that feels like spinning in circles around and around and around again...people still find ways to surprise him. There is still yet wisdom that is out of his reach. Things that even he, with all of his wretched intellect, has yet to learn.

The joys of being alive, eh?

It is quiet here, except for the distant sound of waves breaking and seagulls.

“This is what you would’ve wanted, right?”

A familiar ache settles in his chest, a wound he continuously scratches open, a pain that he clings to if only to never forget.

He thinks fondly of rough stubble beneath his fingers, straw-like hair the color of burnt sienna, and large, calloused hands on his own. A breeze brushes by and shifts the shadows of the tree above him; a patch of sunlight settles on his shoulder. The warmth is like that of an old friend’s hand.

Go, it whispers. Go to him.

How selfless. How cruel. How cruelly selfless a thing it is, love.

He doesn’t deserve it.

He stands, one hand trailing along the edges of the gravestone.

That painful ache echoes inside the locked chambers of his chest, and he lingers, for just a second longer than he knows he should.

But it’s time.

Reluctantly, he turns to leave, and that same breeze pushes him along, at his back.

 .

The warm light of the setting sun catches on Atsushi’s silvery hair. He’s smiling—gently, fondly. Not for the first time, nor for the last, Dazai thinks he has done nothing to earn such a thing, so freely given.

“Atsushi-kun,” he greets, and is surprised at the affection in his own voice.

“Dazai-san,” Atsushi greets back, and his glow intensifies, ever-bright.

When Dazai returns his smile, Atsushi looks away, flustered. Dazai wonders what he must’ve seen on his own face, to have gained such a lovely reaction. Boldly, he leans forward, and tucks a wayward piece of hair behind the shell of Atsushi’s ear, lingering for just a moment to feel the way it burns as he blushes beneath his touch.

Precious. Unbelievable.

Atsushi is like the morning dew collecting on the petals of a lily, but with all the strength of the tiger hidden within. His will to live burns like a star, whose light outlives even its own death.

So different from the quiet strength and contemplation he once found comfort in. Worlds apart from the bewildered indulgence that once humored him. And yet—they’re so similar in their silent, unwavering drive towards an ambition so mundane it hurts.

How strange it is, this remarkable living while striving for the ordinary.

But you aren’t him, a part of Dazai admits.

“D-Dazai-san,” Atsushi repeats, “why have you called me here?”

Dazai blinks.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?”

Atsushi tilts his head and furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

“I’ve called you here for our first date!”

“Ah, I see—wait, what?”

Atsushi splutters, hands coming up in some half-aborted motion as he looks around him wildly in panic.

“W-what? ” He repeats.

His delayed reaction is so colorful , so full of life, so uniquely Atsushi that Dazai can’t help but smile and let out a laugh.

You are so different, Dazai thinks. Even as laughter bubbles up his throat, his chest continues to ache. You are so different from him.

He hums, locking his fingers together and resting his chin upon them.

“It’s just as I said. You better mark the date down, Atsushi-kun. We’re on our first date.”

“Since when? You? Me? Wha—How did you—?”

Dazai doesn’t bother to hide his glee, kicking his feet beneath the table like a little kid.

“You’re so cute, Atsushi-kun.”

“Dazai-san!” He sounds scandalized, and at this point he’s so red he looks as though he’s a second away from passing out. “Please don’t play tricks on me…”

That vulnerability that Atsushi always carries with him, a beating heart sewn on his sleeve, makes itself known.

No one else Dazai has had the privilege of knowing has ever been quite as vulnerable, nor quite as resilient, as Atsushi is in moments like these.

Dazai makes sure his voice is soft and sincere. Gentle, in a way he didn’t know he had in him to be.

“This isn’t a trick, Atsushi-kun. What kind of senpai would I be, leading my cute little kouhai on like that?”

The way Atsushi's mouth parts in a soft ‘o’, the way his eyes glimmer with hope, the blush riding high on his cheeks—the way he immediately accepts his words, with an infinite well of trust—Dazai makes sure he memorizes it, brands it into his mind. He wants to preserve this moment forever, tuck it into his wallet. He wants to talk about it after they’ve gone on their twentieth, thirtieth date, reminding Atsushi of how flustered he’d been, how adorable. He wants to be able to bemoan the fact that Atsushi won’t remain this shy and sweet once the novelty of their relationship wears off. He wants their familiarity to grow, to bloom.

 .

He wants to tell his best friend about it. They’d get on like wood and fire, he and Atsushi. They’d get on like whiskey and late nights. Like children and storybooks.

He stretches his arm across the table, palm up. Atsushi looks down at it, then back up at him, and then carefully slides his fingers across his, trying and failing to hold back a small smile.

He suspects that, given a little time, Atsushi will be the one leading their relationship, that once he gains confidence he’ll be the one demanding things and keeping him in line. Pushing him forward.

He finds that a part of him can’t wait.

(And yet, another part of him still holds back, wishes to stay in the past. Unwilling to let go.)

Atsushi startles like a frightened mouse as Dazai gets up and sidles into his side of the booth.

“W-What? What is it?” He shrinks away.

“Nothing,” Dazai says, pleasantly. “I just decided I wanted to sit next to you.”

He allows himself a moment to enjoy this, gently teasing Atsushi and watching the way he squawks with indignation at his theatrics.

“Ah! But Atsushi-kun!” Dazai fake-swoons, watching for Atsushi’s reaction out of the corner of his eye, “Could it be? That you feel a deep, burning passion for me, your beloved senpai? What would Kunikida-kun say?!”

Atsushi’s face, much to Dazai’s amusement, immediately morphs into an expression of exasperation. He also relaxes, the jitters flying away as they slip back into their usual banter.

“Excuse me?”

“It must have been so difficult for you! To have been so charmed by my dashing self, to pine day in and day out, to hope so dearly that your feelings would be returned…” He languishes dramatically upon cheap vinyl upholstery.

“Dazai-san...” Atsushi pinches his nose, “please shut up. The other patrons are looking.”

“Ah, but fear not!” Dazai yells, purposely raising his voice. “I am here to confess! Your hopes have been fulfilled, A-tsu-shi-kun! Your burning passion is all but matched by the flame that smolders within my very own breast!”

“You can take your confession elsewhere, Dazai-san, I don’t want it anymore.”

“Oh? ‘Anymore’, you say? Meaning you did want it at some point!”

Atsushi groans.

“Please don’t remind me of my past mistakes, Dazai-san.”

As the night goes on, he watches for the way Atsushi hesitates before carefully leaning his head upon Dazai’s shoulder, feels the way Atsushi’s hair tickles his neck when he leans closer to listen when Dazai lowers his voice to just above a whisper.

By the end of the day, Atsushi has relaxed, belly full of food and laughter.

I did that, Dazai marvels, when he catches sight of Atsushi’s delighted smile.

“Dazai-san…” Atsushi starts.

“Hmm?”

“Does this mean we’re…that we’re…”

“Boyfriends? Dating?”

Atsushi nods, suddenly looking very small.

“I’d like that, yes. If you would, too.” Dazai says.

He keeps his tone light, nonchalant. Hides his own uncertainty behind that same mask he’s always used—the one that might as well have been made of glass for all it hid from his first and only friend, if only because that friend had had a mask of his own.

Atsushi has no such mask. He doesn’t suspect a thing. He just...accepts the words, as they are.

It’s gotten late now. The moon rises above the metropolis, her glow muted by the city’s light pollution.

“Have you…done this before?”

Atsushi’s expression is open, easy to read. Uncertain, indecisive, afraid. Hopeful. Kind. Trusting.

And his question shatters through every layer of carefully constructed composure that Dazai had. He swallows, and struggles.

This power, this naked honesty, this bare earnestness with which Atsushi wields his unassuming curiosity, is a force that Dazai cannot reckon with. It’s something that none of his experiences could have prepared him for.

It’d do you some good to get used to honesty, the ghost says.

You’re right, Dazai thinks.

But acknowledging it doesn’t make it any easier.

“…There was someone else, once,” Dazai says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “But, no. Between the Port Mafia and the agency, no. I’ve never been in a serious relationship before, though I’ve been on a few dates in the name of gathering intel or for a mission. You?”

Atsushi relaxes a bit, and thankfully, doesn’t ask.

“You already know the answer to that, Dazai-san.”

“Ah, but you see, I don’t. A cutie like you? Single his whole life? Preposterous!”

“Oh, stop.” He flushes again, but a pleased smile lights upon his lips. Besides that date with Kyouka, he’d never been in a relationship either.

So this will be new for both of them, then.

Dazai lets himself relax a little, ghost settling back in his bones.

See, that wasn’t so bad, was it, the voice whispers. You can trust him. You can open up to him, if you wanted to.

But it will hurt, he argues. It will hurt, because you never needed to ask any questions to know their answers, and it will hurt because you won’t be there.

There’s a pause, a comfortable lull in their conversation. They’re only a block or so away from the agency dormitories when Atsushi speaks up again.

“Can…can we hold hands?”

Dazai’s steps falter for a moment. He hadn’t expected Atsushi to be so brave as to ask, this first night.

“Of course.”

Their hands brush once, then pull away, as though they were both surprised at the feel of another’s skin, before coming back together, fingers linking messily. Atsushi’s smile glows in the moonlight. Dazai has to stop himself from gulping, barely catching himself before his feet could fumble beneath him. It takes him a second to remember to smile back, but when he does, he’s rewarded with another blush, and a returning clench of their hands.

They stop outside of Atsushi’s room, loathe to part.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Dazai-san,” Atsushi says, at last.

“See you, Atsushi-kun.”

When Atsushi has disappeared back into his room, Dazai lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Well, that went well enough, didn’t it?”

No one answers him, of course. After all, there’s no one there. No one and nothing but a gentle breeze, blowing back his hair with a gentle sigh.

And yet, he chuckles out loud anyway. Perhaps, just for his own benefit.

 .

It’s so strange. After a lifetime of solitude…he doesn’t feel alone anymore. It still hurts—he suspects it will always hurt—but the ghost that had haunted him has finally been laid to rest. The voice in his head is quiet, and in the silence is something like sorrow. Something like sorrow, and acceptance.

It’s like the smile you wear as you wave goodbye to a friend. A very old, and dear friend.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

Thank you, Odasaku.

Thank you, and goodbye.

[manako-no-yami]

well played, god.

Rating: T Relationship(s): DazAtsu Tags: Suicide Attempt, Suicidal Ideation, Hospitals Summary:

Dazai has been here, countless times before. Get up, try again, fail, game reset. What he didn’t account for was the fact that he’s no longer alone.

for day 6 of @dazaimultishipweek2019!

-

Jumping from a building. Must be at least ten stories, the higher the better. Land somewhere concrete. Difficult to do in secret, risk of being seen and causing distress in passersby. In case of failure: risk of severe injury that may result in paralysis or other forms of maiming. Not to mention, someone will have to mop up my splat.

   He doesn’t want to open his eyes because he knows where he is. It isn’t hell, and it sure as fuck ain’t heaven. He knows the feel of these scratchy, thin sheets. He knows the reddish color of light filtering through his eyelids. He can feel the sunlight through the window. Hear the beeping of the machines.

What he doesn’t understand is the sound of weeping coming from his bedside. The warmth encasing his right hand.

The moment stretches on, and he wonders if he can stay like this, eyes closed, unmoving. Fake it till you make it, right? If he plays dead for long enough, eventually, he’ll die, right?

But he’s been playing dead his entire life—if he was ever even alive in the first place. If that was going to work, it would’ve worked a long time ago.

 -

Carbon monoxide. Breathe it in, fall unconscious, suffocate. Not incredibly difficult to obtain. Painless. In case of failure: risk of brain damage. Also risking the health of those who discover the body, as carbon monoxide is odorless, colorless, and tasteless.

   He wakes, painfully. Looks to the side.

Atsushi sits there, eyes puffy and red, holding his hand.

“D-Dazai-san,” he gasps, when he notices that Dazai is awake.

Dazai just stares at him blankly.

Atsushi’s eyes screw up again, but he looks as though he’s already been all cried out.

“Drink some water,” Dazai croaks. “If you cry too much you’ll get dehydrated.”

Atsushi chokes out a laugh. “I’m supposed to be the one offering you water, Dazai-san.”

I don’t want it , he doesn’t say. I don’t want anything. I don’t want a single other thing. It’s too much. I want to die.

Ignorant, Atsushi leaps forward to bury his face in Dazai’s chest.

 -

Bullet to the brain. High success rate, no pain. Probably traumatic to find the body. Also my face would be blown off. And wouldn’t that be a shame?

   “It was a close one this time,” Atsushi says. “But…but I’m so glad you’re okay.”

The relief on Atsushi’s face, the way his shoulders begin to relax more and more the longer he speaks with Dazai and confirms for himself that Dazai is really still alive—this, is perhaps Dazai’s greatest regret.

“I’m so…so glad,” Atsushi says. “So glad you’re okay, Dazai-san.”

He throws his arms around Dazai’s neck, and nuzzles his collarbone. His sniffling is loud. He strokes Dazai’s hair with one of his hands, tangling it between his fingers. He holds Dazai, like he never wants to let him go.

Dazai doesn’t know what to say. It wouldn’t be hard to crack a smile, to joke with him. To pretend this was just yet another prank, another one of his silly fantasies and endeavors. Another bout of playing with fire, the way he’s wont to do.

Dazai’s chest feels heavy as Atsushi pulls back and squeezes his hand again.

Why is he so happy? Dazai wonders. Why is he so happy I’m alive? Can’t you see that I’m suffering?

Do you enjoy my suffering that much, Atsushi-kun?

 -

Hanging. If done right, can result in broken neck. Asphyxiation sounds unpleasant, but it wouldn’t last hours. Would my face swell? Eyes bulge out? That sounds rather unpleasant to look at. Why do so many methods involve risking my good looks?

   He doesn’t realize he’d said that out loud until the silence falls, heavy and suffocating. Atsushi draws his hands back into his lap.

The silence lingers. Dazai can’t bring himself to look at him. He’s afraid of what he’ll see—of what he’s caused.

“Yes,” Atsushi says, finally. “Yes, I do. I enjoy your suffering. I like it when you’re forced to get up in the morning and come to work. I like it when your body pushes you to eat dinner, because it means you’ll come with us to Uzumaki, or eat with us at the agency. I like it when you’re forced to smile even though you don’t want to, because it means you’re here. It means you’re alive. It means you’ll stay with me. If that makes me selfish, so be it.”

Atsushi’s voice does not waver. His eyes burn with righteous fire. He grabs Dazai’s shoulders, shakes him.

“I’m unbelievably happy right now, Dazai-san. I am so happy you’re alive.”

Dazai stares past him, eyes empty.

“How cruel of you,” Dazai whispers.

 -

Jumping in front of a train. Must be a high-speed one—pretty easy to find in a big city. Timing has to be right. Make sure the train is still going fast, not slowing down to a stop. Most ideal situation: decapitation. There was a little girl at the station. Didn’t want my blood to splatter on her dress. Left.

   Atsushi sniffles, and hastily wipes at his nose with the back of his hand.

“I don’t care,” he answers.

“Not everyone is like you, you know,” Dazai says, somewhat spitefully. “Not everyone is glad to be alive. Don’t you think it’s a bit much of you to expect everyone to feel the same way that you do? To try to force other people to live the same kind of life as you? To ask them to suffer for the sake of a philosophy that only you have?”

“I don’t care,” Atsushi repeats. “I’m going to live. I’m going to see tomorrow. And I’m going to make you come with me. That’s just how it’s going to be from now on. You can hate me if—if you want.” His voice trembles a little, at that. Dazai can feel a phantom heartbeat in his palms, an imagined fluttering between his fingers. He knows that he’s holding onto Atsushi’s heart.

He crushes it in his fists, throws it away and stomps on it with malice, and says, “Maybe I will.”

And then he turns to look at Atsushi. At the way the sunlight loves him, caresses the edges of his silhouette, catches on his hair. At the way the light clings to him.

Atsushi’s determination falters a moment, a frustration creeping in at the edges of his eyes.

“Then hate me,” Atsushi says. “You can hate me, and I can continue being glad that you’re alive. That’s—that’s just how it’s going to be, then.”

“You’re okay with that?” Dazai’s curiosity is a farce. His question is torment, another hot poker jabbed into Atsushi’s side.

He can see the way it hurts Atsushi, to hear him talk like this.

This is how he knows he’s still alive.

This is his proof of living.

The ability to hurt.

“You’ve left me no other choice,” Atsushi whispers.

 -

Drowning. Probably rather unpleasant. Can’t know how to swim. Low success rate. Can, in some cases, be resuscitated afterwards. Plus, it would remind Atsushi-kun too much of when we first met.

   Dazai and despair are fast friends. Waking up, alive, is a particular brand of despair that he lives with day in and day out.

To think that someone else would relish so much in it. To think that Atsushi-kun would hug him, hold him, stroke his hair.  To think that as he lies there, in a hospital bed, hoping so desperately for death, someone else would defy his wishes so much that they’d try to save him.

To think that Atsushi’s love would extend this far for a broken, broken man like him.

“What a joke.”

I have a guardian angel, he thinks deliriously. I have an honest to God guardian angel.

Well played, God.

“Laugh then,” Atsushi dares, and weaves their fingers together again.

Dazai squeezes back as his shoulders beginning to shake. His other hand comes up to cover his eyes, and he feels his mouth split into a grin.

He laughs.

He laughs, and laughs, and laughs, until he’s curled up on his side, clutching the sheets, and Atsushi is running a gentle hand down his back.

He laughs, and he despairs.

[manako-no-yami]

a kindness

Rating: T Relationship(s): DazAtsu Tags: Major Character Death, Suicide, Angst Summary:

“Eventually, whether or not we like it, all of our successes and failures will amount to nothing more than dust in the wind. Everything you hate, everything you love. In the end, it all will be wiped clean.”

“I guess…you’re right.” It’s Dazai-san, after all. When has Dazai been wrong? “But I think people’s feelings are still important. Even if in the future no one will remember and no one will care, people don’t have a choice but to live, and to feel.”

for day 4 of @dazaimultishipweek2019!

-

“Atsushi-kun.” Atsushi looks up, tilting his head.

“What do you think is man’s greatest tragedy?”

Atsushi settles down next to Dazai, folding his legs beneath himself, and thinks for a moment. Man’s greatest tragedy? Meaning…the saddest thing that can happen to a person?

“I think it’s…to be alone. To be alone, and forgotten.” To be alone again...for no one, not even the other Agency members, to acknowledge that he exists and that he’s alive… Just the thought sobers him, makes him want to curl up into a ball.

“That’s right. To be forgotten.” Dazai smiles ruefully. “But everyone is forgotten, eventually. It may take longer for some than others, but eventually all will fall victim to obscurity. That’s man’s greatest tragedy—and our greatest relief.”

Dazai looks calm, at peace in the soft light of a sunset. Inscrutable. A strange feeling wells inside of Atsushi, something that he can’t place.

“But what do you mean by that, Dazai-san?”

 -

Atsushi looks around the office, holding a stack of files.

“Where’s Dazai-san?” He asks.

Kunikida lets out a derisive snort.

“Off being Dazai, probably.”

Atsushi opens his mouth, ready to ask, Shouldn’t we look for him? but then thinks again, and remains silent.

After all, how many times has Dazai done this? Pulled a disappearing act, run off to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what, only to reappear later that week, none the wiser? Atsushi sets the files down on his desk, and gets to work organizing them. He glances over to his left, where Dazai’s desk sits, empty, and tries to ignore the paranoia clenching in his gut.

 -

“Nothing, really. Just that, eventually, whether or not we like it, all of our successes and failures will amount to nothing more than dust in the wind. Everything you hate, everything you love. In the end, it all will be wiped clean.”

Atsushi rocks back, tilting his head to look at the sky.

“I guess…you’re right.” It’s Dazai-san, after all. When has Dazai been wrong? “But I think people’s feelings are still important. Even if in the future no one will remember and no one will care, people don’t have a choice but to live, and to feel.”

“‘ And that’s what it means to be human ’...is that right?”

Atsushi looks down at where his fingers are twisted in his lap.

“That’s what I think, at least.”

Dazai hums thoughtfully.

“‘ No choice ’, huh…I suppose that’s an interesting thought in its own right.”

“What do you think, Dazai-san?”

Dazai gazes expressionlessly at the city lights.

“About what it means to be human?”

Atsushi nods.

“I think…you’re better off asking someone else, Atsushi-kun.”

 -

As the day wears on, Atsushi gets more and more agitated.

“Hey, brat,” Kunikida says. “Are you paying attention?”

Atsushi jerks upright.

“Huh? Oh! Yes, sorry, Kunikida-san. I’m paying attention. Could you repeat that, please?”

Kunikida sighs.

“If you need me to repeat it, that means you weren’t paying attention.”

“…Sorry, Kunikida-san.”

Kunikida pinches his nose. “Listen, you need to stop spacing out like that. All Agency members should be on top of their duties, follow the rules, and uphold the collective good image with the best of their ability at all times. I know you look up to him and that he’s your mentor, but don’t be like Dazai, that guy is a terrible example. Instead, you need to—”

“Now, now, Kunikida,” Yosano interrupts. “I think it’s just been a long day. Atsushi is just a little tired, yes?”

Atsushi gulps.

“N-no, I’m fine, I can still work—”

“Don’t be silly, you’re worried, aren’t you? Kunikida, let him go. None of those things are pressing matters at the moment, anyway.”

Kunikida flounders.

“But—”

“Atsushi, go on now. You can leave for today, I’ll deal with this guy.”

Atsushi looks between a fuming Kunikida and an unruffled Yosano, and slowly stands up.

He gives them a small bow, a quiet “have a good day,” and is out the door before the minute is up.

 -

“Atsushi.”

“Yes, Dazai-san?”

“I think you should know…your senpai is a very tragic person.”

Atsushi laughs lightly.

“I think you’re a very dramatic person, Dazai-san. But if you say so.”

Dazai chuckles.

“I suppose you’re right about that.”

Atsushi squints a little as a gust of wind blows past them, making his eyes water. He holds his hand up to block it, and through the gaps of his fingers the last dying rays of sunlight glimmer, before the sun sinks below the city’s skyline.

“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai says again.

After a pause, Atsushi turns to look at him, quizzically.

“What is it?”

“Atsushi-kun, someday…” Dazai sighs and lies down on his back, head pillowed by his hands, and closes his eyes. “Someday, you’ll forget me, too.”

 -

It’s one of his favorite places to walk. In hindsight, he wonders if that’s why Dazai chose it.

The riverbank, where he first met Dazai. Where he thought he was going to die, and decided not to. Where Dazai had thought he’d go to die, and then didn’t.

It’s the perfect time of day, too. Sunset. The sky glows pink and orange, and the water reflects it in fluid shapes. The sound of the water rushing fills his ears, and Atsushi takes in a deep breath of fresh air.

He notices a group of people collected near one of the riverbanks, whispering and chattering amongst themselves. Curious, he walks closer to see what they’re pointing at.

 -

Something in Atsushi freezes, stiffens. The lights around them begin to flicker on as darkness takes over, and the wind suddenly feels much colder. Biting.

“No,” he hears himself say, firmly. “No, I won’t. I could never forget you, Dazai-san.”

How could he even say that? Think that?

“As long as I live, I’ll never forget you, and what you’ve done for me.”

I love you, he wants to say, but he doesn’t.

Somehow, Dazai seems to hear it anyway.

“You just feel that way because I rescued you. But you forget, Atsushi-kun, that there are other good people out there. People much better than I. If it’s the goodness of that action that fuels you, know that it doesn’t come from a goodness in my person.”

Atsushi wants to leap onto his feet and shake him. He wants to grab his hand. He wants to lie next to him, close enough that when they look each other in the eyes, they can taste each other’s breath.

What’s the difference between a bad person doing good things, and a good person doing good things? Why must Dazai make that distinction? Why does it feel like sometimes, he’s the only one who sees the light that shines inside of Dazai?

“But it wasn’t someone else, Dazai-san…it was you.”

And it will always be you, he thinks.

 -

At first, it doesn’t register. He blinks, staring at the rope dangling from the top of the bridge, the way the shoes drag limply across the surface of the current.

His first thought is, Is this a joke?

His next thought is, Is this a set-up by the Port Mafia to throw us off their trail?

He doesn’t realize he’s stumbling past the group of people until the shock of the coldness of the water seeping through his pants stirs him from his trance. He stands there for a period of time, he’s not sure how long, the cold current brushing past him, simply staring in complete incomprehension. He thinks he whispers his name.

“Hey, kid,” Someone says, and tugs his arm. “Kid, did you know that guy?”

Did he know him? Of course he knew him. Those bandage-covered wrists. Those hands. That coat, that shirt. The dark brown hair. The pants, the shoes, everything.

Of course he knew him.

He’s being tugged out of water, back onto the bank, hands gently steadying him as he sways on his feet.

This can’t be real, right? This can’t be real. Absolutely not.

None of this is real.

“This isn’t happening,” he murmurs to himself. “Dazai-san, this isn’t happening, right?”

But then he remembers what Dazai had told him.

 -

“You are too kind, Atsushi-kun. One day, that kindness will hurt you. When that day comes, you’re better off hating me,” Dazai whispers, eyes distant.

“Or forgetting me, like everyone else.”

 -

Atsushi knees weaken. Everything is blurred, coming together, converging as tears collect in his eyes and begin to drip down his face. His palms scrape the pavement as he collapses. The image of the rope swaying, dark brown hair swinging in the wind, bandages unravelling around limp wrists and trailing through the water is branded in his eyes.

He can hardly breathe around the tightness in his throat.

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

“But I can’t,” he sobs. “I can’t, Dazai-san. I just can’t.”

[manako-no-yami]

he’s a hardcore romantic

Rating: T Relationship(s): Dazai Osamu/Akutagawa Ryuunosuke Tags: Unhealthy Relationships, First Kiss, Pining, Power Imbalance Summary:

Wanting Dazai is like wanting to possess emptiness. It will swallow you whole, inside out. It will pull you in.

Dazai is the tug, the compulsion. The desire for self-destruction, embodied.And destroy himself Akutagawa does.

for Day 1 of @dazaimultishipweek2019​

-

It feels like anger.

It burns hot, blinding. It overtakes his senses until there’s nothing left but the source of heat—nothing left but a poisonous hope. A clean, bright, destructive flame that razes through everything and leaves it all a uniform, charred black. An all-encompassing, achingly familiar wrath.

Is this love?

He thinks maybe not. How could it be? But he has no other word for it, and he thinks that whatever this is, it’s the closest to love he’ll ever get.

“Get up,” Dazai says. “Do it again.”

The dismissive tone in his voice fuels the fire, the need, the want.

But wanting Dazai is like wanting to possess emptiness. It will swallow you whole, inside out. It will pull you in.

Akutagawa coughs, the taste of iron on his tongue. He looks up, watching Dazai watch him, searching those eyes that are empty voids, deep and black and unfathomable.

Loving Dazai is like flinging yourself off the edge and into that void; falling, falling, falling…for so long it feels like you’ve just been suspended in mid-air, forever trapped in a downward motion.

Dazai is the tug, the compulsion. The desire for self-destruction, embodied.

And destroy himself he does.

He gets up. He tries again.

“That was pathetic,” Dazai says, and Akutagawa’s vision tunnels so quickly, focusing so intently on his obsession that he thinks he may have gone momentarily blind. “If you keep this up, I won’t give you what you want.”

“And what is it that I want,” Akutagawa spits, and isn’t it funny, that even this is something he’d let Dazai decide for him?

Dazai smiles humorlessly, the curl of his lip as cruel as a steel blade.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, raising the gun and pointing it at him again. “A lover’s kiss, maybe?”

Akutagawa freezes.

He knows. Of course he knows. How could he have ever thought he could hide it?

The gunshot is deafening, and the bullet whizzes by his ear as he dodges.

“With your ability ,” Dazai says, and shoots again.

Maybe it had been planned all along. Maybe Dazai chose Akutagawa knowing he had this weakness, knowing he had the disposition that would let him follow that tug into the emptiness. Maybe he knew that Akutagawa’s anger, his directionless pain, would be a serenade to the darkness that writhes and howls inside of Dazai.

Maybe Akutagawa never loved Dazai of his own volition, at all.

The worst part is, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.

Nothing matters except for the words that fall from those lips. Nothing matters except the mission. Nothing matters except Rashoumon lashing out with a ferocity that matches his desperation, his humiliation.

This obsession that stole his soul—love?

How could it not be?

For this, he stands back up.

For this, he tries again, and again, and again.

“It’s not enough,” Dazai says, and Akutagawa embraces the despair. He swallows knives to sharpen the blade in his heart. He attacks.

His efforts disintegrate under Dazai’s touch, in the same way Akutagawa’s willpower folds like a house of cards when Dazai breathes in his direction. Dazai cancels out everything, antimatter to the enormous mass of emotion that Akutagawa flings his way.

Akutagawa burns endlessly, but Dazai remains untouched. Frozen.

He tries again.

Dazai grips his hair in his hand, and Akutagawa grits his teeth against the pain.

“Look at me,” Dazai commands.

Akutagawa has never been able to look away.

He’s a panting, sweaty, disgusting heap of flesh and cloth puddled at the feet of Dazai’s cool indifference.

Dazai is so close. The porcelain of his skin, the pull of the void in his eyes. The words he wants him to whisper into his ear. Right there, within reach.

Akutagawa will remember this moment for the rest of his life. This split second of indulgence, the spark that will from then on never die out.

Dazai presses his lips to his, hand still a painful clamp upon his hair, and Akutagawa shudders, mouth opening easily under his. His heart surges into his throat, as if trying to make the leap from inside him to inside of Dazai through that one point of contact. He tastes like blood, like gunsmoke, like death—like everything Akutagawa has been searching for. Like salvation.

It lasts less than a second.

Akutagawa stares into Dazai’s deep, cold eyes and can feel himself falling, tumbling down into them further.

“I gave you a taste of what you wanted,” Dazai says. “Now that you know what it’s like, I expect you to do better to get the rest of it.”

Come, he’s saying. Give it your all. Give me everything you have, your time, your dedication, your loyalty, your anger, your hatred, your love. All of it is mine.

Rashoumon reacts before Dazai can even finish speaking, blades and black teeth converging in a vicious snap, enough to bisect men twice Dazai’s stature.

Dazai bats it away, throws Akutagawa down and steps on his chest. Akutagawa struggles and gasps, ribs creaking.

“Predictable. You need to keep your emotions in check.”

How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to do that when you’re here?

 .

But he was right.

Ever since getting that taste, Akutagawa has never been the same. He dreams of it, obsesses over it. His fascination over everything Dazai doubles, mounts. The agony is unbearable now that he knows the flavor of fulfillment, and he will spend the rest of his life chasing it.

This, too, must have been part of Dazai’s plan. This, too, must have been part of his machinations, as inescapable as night swallowing the earth.

“All right, we’re done for today,” Dazai says and steps away, coat already fluttering behind him as he makes his retreat.

“Dazai-san,” Akutagawa says, and the shape of his name on his tongue feels like being kissed all over again.

Dazai stops, but doesn’t turn to look at him.

There are many things Akutagawa wants to say, none of them which he knows how to articulate. Countless contradictions and paradoxes whirling inside of him, remnants of the confusion and mystery that Dazai always leaves in his wake.

“I will not disappoint you.”

Dazai turns over his shoulder to give him a cold smirk.

“We’ll see about that, Akutagawa-kun.”

[dazaimultishipweek]

Hellooo beautiful Dazai-lovers~!

Thank you so much for the wonderful submissions last week, both here and in our ao3 collection! ꒰˘̩̩̩⌣˘̩̩̩๑꒱♡

Just as a reminder, we are still reblogging up to a month after the event, so if you have late submissions, please feel free to tag us here and add your work to the ao3 collection!

-Mod Kunikida

[dazaimultishipweek]

Prompt Submission Form

Hey guys, we’re looking for some submissions from you guys for the Dazaibowl Holiday Event Week!! Please click on the link below (or even DM us!) and send in your holiday/Winter-themed word prompts (1-3 words) or quote prompts! Try to keep it mostly SFW so the minors can join in too! We loved seeing everyone’s creations from the last event week, and we want you guys to be more involved! We can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with~ <3 You can even send in more than one submission (though we gave plenty of room and gave you 5 prompt spaces to work with)! This form will be reset and reused for the next Event Week after the end of this event. You can also find this form under the Submission Form link on our page. Submission Form: https://forms.gle/1bfN6GCMXD5Gfm1E6

[manako-no-yami]

the cost of forgiveness

Rating: T Relationship(s): Past Dazai Osamu/Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, some present DazAtsu Tags: Denial, Unrequited Love, One-sided Love, Rejection, References to Unhealthy Relationships Summary:

Atsushi and Dazai go on a date. Akutagawa is the fallout of their happiness. 

for day 7 of @dazaimultishipweek2019​!

-

They’d never gone on dates. The idea seems absurd, anyway.

He told himself that they weren’t that kind of couple. That the hungry kisses that left his lips bruised, the cool, indifferent smirk that was always thrown his way when he was the only one left flushed and panting, the game of power that they’d always play, and that he’d always lose—that was just par for the course. It was just what was normal for them. He knew what their relationship looked like to other people, but it never mattered because he didn’t need approval from other people.

Only one person’s opinion had ever mattered. There’s only one person who’s back he’s forever chasing, only one person that can decide his fate.

He’s staring at that person, right now, and it feels like his fate is that of trash on the side of the road. Like newspaper floating in the sewer, soggy and disintegrating.

He watches through the window in disbelief, as Dazai smiles and laughs.

It looks like a genuine laugh. Dazai is a good actor if he wants to be, but there had always been an edge to him. A coolness, a distance. This warmth that Akutagawa sees in the picturesque little cafe isn’t at all like the Dazai he knows. It’s something that Akutagawa knows can’t really be faked.

You are either part of that world, or you aren’t.

Dazai isn’t. Wasn’t. Couldn’t be.

Nakajima is laughing too, hunched over across from Dazai, lowering his head so that his fringe covers his face a little. Dazai reaches over, placing his fingers under his chin to nudge it up, so that they’re looking in each other’s eyes.

He has a soft expression on his face. He pinches the weretiger’s cheeks and stretches them, his amusement and fondness glowing as Nakajima flounders and pouts.

It’s touching, really.

If it didn’t make him feel so sick.

He stands outside the cafe, in the cold, and watches.

I’ll wait until they leave, he decides. Until Dazai is alone, and then I’ll speak to him.

So he waits.

The streets of Yokohama are apathetic. The people bustle by, unfeeling, not bothering to stop and look at those that they pass by. It’s an apathy that Akutagawa knows well, from his time in the slums. The self-absorbed need to only care about oneself, to ignore the misery around you.

Cruelty isn’t a lack of feeling—it’s a survival tactic.

Maybe that’s why Akutagawa strives to be the most cruel of all. Maybe that’s why Dazai is so strong, so untouchable—his cruelty knows no bounds. He wields emotions like a scythe with an inviolable hand, steel doors locked around his heart so that he can safely juggle others’.

That must be what he’s doing with Nakajima.

It has to be.

As if on cue, the door to the cafe opens, and they walk out together. Dazai’s arm is slung casually around Nakajima’s shoulders. The tips of Nakajima’s ears are pink, the curl of Dazai’s mouth gentle.

And then it happens.

Dazai leans down and Nakajima rises to his tiptoes, fingers curling around the lapel of Dazai’s coat. Their lips meet, and Akutagawa stares, eyes wide.

It’s nothing, really. The barest brush, just a gentle press of their lips together. It’s short, sweet.

Tender.

They’re slow to part, noses brushing as they smile at each other, laughing together for no discernible reason, for no reason other than that they are happy.

It’s not hungry, it’s not possessive. It’s not a battle where one loses and the other wins, there’s no power imbalance at all. It just is.

Dazai never kissed Akutagawa like that.

 .

This is… wrong. This is blasphemy.

Dazai isn’t capable of that kind of feeling. He isn’t capable of that kind of gentle love.

And if he was, the weretiger isn’t the one who deserves it. He isn’t the one that spent years, his entire life practically, chasing after Dazai. He isn’t the one that ripped himself apart, over and over, time and time again, out of yearning. He did nothing to deserve this. Nothing.

So why him?

Akutagawa is shaking, fraying at the seams. Rashoumon prickles against his skin, reacting to his distress.

So he turns to the only salvation left to him.

Anger.

He keeps it bottled up like a solid chunk of metal in his chest, and trails after them, keeping a distance between them and ducking into the shadowy corners of the buildings.

Not that it matters.

Dazai must know he’s there already.

“I have something I need to take care of. Atsushi-kun, you go on ahead.” Dazai says. Nakajima frowns, but relents.

“Okay. See you later, Dazai-san.”

Dazai tsks.

“What did I tell you to call me, Atsushi-kun?”

Nakajima blushes.

“See you later…Osamu-san.”

Dazai gives their linked hands a swing and a squeeze, then lets go. It’s obvious from the way they both linger that they’re reluctant to part, but eventually Atsushi crosses the street and Dazai stands at the corner, watching him go. Then he turns in the opposite direction and casually strolls past the various storefronts, until he arrives at a discreet alcove, a nook between buildings.

Akutagawa follows, brushing past other pedestrians, eyes intent on his goal.

And then he’s there. He has him in front of him, and they’re alone. Together.

“So? What did you want?”

He—

Suddenly, Akutagawa is left wordless, bereft. Why had he come here? What did he want to accomplish? Why, why did—

“Why did you do it?”

Dazai looks past him. Akutagawa hates that.

Look at me, he wants to say. Watch me. Everything I do is for you.

“Why did I do what?”

“Why did you…kiss him.”

Dazai sighs, stuffs his hands in his pockets.

“Because I like him. Because we’re dating.”

Something in Akutagawa stops working. He goes blank.

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s not.”

“It has to be a lie. You’d never. You wouldn’t, not with—not with someone like that.”

In an instant Dazai’s eyes are flashing.

“Someone like what, Akutagawa-kun?”

This, he knows how to deal with. Akutagawa instinctively takes up a defensive stance, familiar with the steel in Dazai’s tone.

This, is the Dazai he knows.

“Someone like him. Someone who’s weak.”

Someone…soft.

Someone from the light.

Someone like Nakajima...with someone like Dazai?

If this is what Dazai wanted, then…what has Akutagawa been doing all this time? Has everything—is everything he is—is it all wrong? It can’t be.

It can’t be.

“Atsushi-kun isn’t weak,” Dazai says. “And I think you know that. He’s stronger than anyone gives him credit for. And it’s the very thing that you despise in him that makes him strong.”

Akutagawa doesn’t understand. None of this makes sense.

Dazai sighs.

“For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Akutagawa-kun.”

…What for? This is all the weretiger’s fault. Dazai has done nothing wrong. It has to be Nakajima’s, because if it isn’t—if it isn’t Nakajima’s fault then—it must be his. Akutagawa’s.

For not being good enough. For failing.

But even so, he can’t just give up. He has to continue trying.

He refuses to let go.

“I’m sorry for what I did to you. For how I treated you,” Dazai continues.

The words are like a shock of cold water. He doesn’t understand how to respond, so he chooses to ignore it and say what he came here to say.

“Dazai-san, I can do better,” he says, taking a step forward, voice rasping in his throat. “Just give me a chance. I can do better! I can be better than him. I’ll do—anything. Anything you want.”

Dazai sighs, something in his eyes dimming.

“And that’s exactly why it will never work, Akutagawa-kun.”

He almost sounds...forlorn. Regretful. Like it hurts him to have hurt Akutagawa.

This is wrong. This is wrong. This is all, all wrong.

Dazai is not kind. He is not gentle, or caring, or forgiving.

He is skin rubbed raw, blood underneath your nails, a stern command that you must throw your entire being into fulfilling. Dazai is the unreachable, the untouchable. Being with Dazai is closer to worship than anything else.

And yet, he recalls the way Dazai had carded his fingers gently through Nakajima’s hair, pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Akutagawa-kun,” Dazai says again. “But I have to be going now. Take care.”

No. Wait.

He stumbles forward, hand outreached.

You can’t leave me like this. Not like this.

Dazai’s feet come to a stop.

“Akutagawa-kun,” he says. “Allow me to tell you one last thing. Think of it as a parting gift, from your senpai.”

He turns to look over his shoulder and pins Akutagawa with a gaze so open it’s terrifying.

“Self-worth doesn’t come from the outside. It comes from within.”

The breath in Akutagawa’s chest hitches.

“Goodbye.”

[dazaimultishipweek]

Da Rules

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