Sinner

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/31555568.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Category: M/M
Fandom: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Relationships: Dazai Osamu/Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa
Ryuunosuke/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai
Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), (past relationship)
Characters: Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungou Stray
Dogs), Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke
(Bungou Stray Dogs)
Additional Tags: Inspired by Killing Stalking, Dazai-Typical Suicide References (Bungou
Stray Dogs), Choking, breath play, Violent Sex, Abuse, Abusive
Relationships, Top Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Bungou Stray Dogs), Bottom
Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs), POV Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray
Dogs), Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Eventual Comfort, Slow Burn, Captivity,
Rape, Rape Recovery, Graphic Description, Dazai is Fyodor's prisoner
and he's being mind-fucked, Emotional/Psychological Abuse,
Psychological Torture, Pain, Self-Hatred, Self-Harm, Trauma, Angst,
Disturbing Themes, disturbing imagery, Dazai Osamu is a Mess (Bungou
Stray Dogs), Fyodor Dostoyevsky-centric (Bungou Stray Dogs), Explicit
Sexual Content, Touch-Starved, mention of anemia, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Being an Asshole (Bungou Stray Dogs), and by that i mean he's horribly
cruel but then..., Blood and Injury, Dehumanization, BDSM elements,
Burning, ADA and Port Mafia cameos, References to Canon,
Psychopathology & Sociopathy, psychopathic behavior, Suicidal
Thoughts, Dazai-Typical Suicide Attempts (Bungou Stray Dogs), Suicide
Attempt, Stockholm Syndrome, crippling, ADA cameos, Port Mafia
cameos, Whump, Whumptober, very dark much scary, Not for the faint
of heart, Crutches, Drugging, Whumptober 2021, Dead Dove: Do Not
Eat, Eventual Happy Ending
Language: English
Collections: Whumptober 2021
Stats: Published: 2021-05-27 Completed: 2023-09-03 Words: 169,497
Chapters: 40/40
 Sinner
by TheBloodySadist

Summary

It all started with the clocks. They stopped working. They froze. Dazai knows time still
exists. He knows. But somehow, he's ended up a prisoner of the Russian whose hands bring
death to all but the one man who craves it, and he can't figure out how he got there.

Fyodor says it's because they're in his reality; Dazai doesn't believe it. But the longer Fyodor
claws out emotions Dazai has never felt before, the more he forgets who he was and becomes
who he must be: a sinner, subject to the punishment Fyodor brings.

...And just when he starts to give in, something strange happens to the Russian.

Or, Dazai is Fyodor's sick hobby until Fyodor accidentally feels something, too.

Read at your own risk. ⚠ Includes extreme and graphic depictions of trauma, violence, rape,
and psychological abuse. ⚠ (But with a satisfying ending, I promise)

Notes

Please read the tags carefully before proceeding with this fic. It's intense; consider it a
psychological thriller with sex. If you're into shit like Togainu no Chi, Sweet Pool,
DRAMAtical Murder (lmao all BL romance games), then you know what to expect. You'll
love this.

Also don't bitch to me in the comments about writing toxic relationships (i won't bite
anybody, just the trolls, love you). The whole point of this fic is to portray an unhealthy,
abusive relationship and all us adults here know that. If you continue reading this and you've
got a problem with it, that's on you fam. :P

Much MUCH thanks to the writer who inspired this with the work they made about
Fyodor/Dazai! Their fic is fucking amazing, go check it out!

Also gifting this to my favorite BSD writer on the planet, dgalerab. If you read it, I hope you
do enjoy :) I will always love your depiction of Dazai and Chuuya the best.

See the end of the work for more notes

Translation into Español available: Sinner by Eros0
Translation into Italiano available: Sinner by pomelvi
Inspired by residue by alaruya
 Frozen Clocks
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes

“Stop breaking the clocks.”

“You know very well I haven’t broken anything, Dazai,” Fyodor says, looming over the
bandaged boy who sits on the bed.

“You spend your time tampering with minds. I know what you’re doing.”

“You do? And what am I doing, then? Dazai?”

“Stop saying my name like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like it’s pretend. Like it doesn’t exist.”

Fyodor smiles at him calmly, the thin upturn of his mouth like a blade of white in the dark of
the bedroom.

Dazai holds the clock, an old-style antique with little hands of rusted brass and a curvature of
oak. The hands are frozen, and Dazai is picking at them, never taking his eyes from Fyodor.

“If you don’t stop freezing them, I’ll break them all.”

“You will not.” Fyodor holds out a gloved hand to Dazai, who is seated on the edge of the
bed. “I will punish you.”

Dazai tightens his grip on the clock, lets the thin brass of the small hand dig under his
fingernail. He feels nothing. But his throat twitches. His head aches. He’s tired of this game.

“Give me the clock, Dazai.”

“I want to go back.”

“You are not allowed to go back.”

“I want to, though.”

“I know.” Fyodor’s face is pale, the moon smearing him with its light from the window above
the bed. “Give me the clock.”

Dazai studies his black gloves. He wants Fyodor to take them off, but the Russian does not,
not even in the house. Not even when he sleeps. He refuses to touch sinners, he says, and
Dazai is a sinner. “I don’t want to give you the clock.”
“You would like me to punish you, then?”

Dazai hates that word. Punish. It makes him feel like a child, like a very small child, who is
helpless to defend themselves against a taller, stronger adult.

“I would like to punish you, Dazai,” Fyodor says, and his smile is there again, the blade in
the darkness that seeks to cut open Dazai’s lips. He’s already covered in bandages, and they
show under the long shirt he’s been given to wear. A cocoon around his arms and his legs,
and his torso, and his neck, and everywhere that the skin shows itself, because Dazai hates
his skin. His skin is trespassing. His skin does not belong on him.

Wrapping himself is the only form of clothing Fyodor will allow him, apart from the white
shirt. When it needs to be washed, Fyodor forces it off of his body, and makes him go around
naked as he launders it with the other clothes. He won’t allow anything else in the way of
mercy for such a sinner as Dazai.

“I don’t want to be punished,” Dazai says softly. But he cannot release the clock, even when
Fyodor steps closer, and he can see the crimson of his boots in the light. His eyes pierce him,
tired and worn and violet. They wish to cut him more than the blade of Fyodor’s lips.

“You will be, unless you can show me that you are good.”

“I am not good. You know this.”

“Then you must be punished. There is no other way.”

Dazai watches him with eyes of faded chestnut, dull and hollow, devoid of the emotion he
longs for. He is vulnerable with only the shirt on and Fyodor towering above him, his
outstretched hand splayed in the light like God reaching down to Adam. A holy being and a
sinful creature.

Dazai raises the clock in both hands, until it’s high above his head, the nonexistence of its
tick erasing all thought of time passing. And Fyodor watches, silently, his hand still
outstretched, his smile ever growing, as Dazai lets it fall to the ground. It splits in two,
vomiting up the bowels of its gears and its gadgets and its rubber and rings. They spill over
the wooden floor like tiny children, fleeing from their broken mother. Some of them settle by
Dazai’s bare feet, metal bodies as cold as the temperature Fyodor keeps his house.

Fyodor lowers his hand, and it melts into the shadows of his cape. “Lie down, Dazai.” His
voice has not changed, but Dazai knows he’s displeased.

He lowers his hands to his lap. He does not obey him. His heart is as loud as a choir of angels
screaming. He feels that Fyodor is indeed God, and that he is all of Mankind, rebelling
against their Creator, the One who holds their very lives in the palm of His hand. If he could
feel, he would feel regretful, he thinks. He would feel terrified.

“You wish to force my hand.”

Dazai holds himself, knowing that whichever response he makes will be useless. No matter
what he says, the outcome is decided. Fyodor’s action is set in stone. The god has made his
choice, and the sinner is at his mercy.

Oh, how Dazai hates being the Sinner.

“Very well,” Fyodor says, and this time his smile looks deceptively sad. But Dazai knows
that Fyodor cannot feel. Just like Dazai, he is hollow inside. There is nothing there to support
the creation of those things normal people call feelings. If perhaps, someday Dazai does have
feelings, maybe then, then he will be a sinner no longer. He will know which way is right and
which is wrong.

Fyodor leans over Dazai, until he’s at the other’s level, and his hands reappear to grasp the
hem of his white shirt. He makes a sound and resists the man, grabbing at wrists that are bony
and lifeless under the gloves. Fyodor pins him with his expressionless face, eyes glowing
deep amethyst.

“Do not resist me. If your shirt tears, you will walk this house naked for the rest of your
foolish existence.”

Dazai lets go of him at once. Fyodor pulls it from his body, temporarily blinding him as it
captures his face and jerks his arms up. He can’t breathe for a moment, and Fyodor knows it,
Dazai knows, and he lets the material suffocate him in the dark, pressing his fingers under
Dazai’s nose. He does not stop until Dazai is trembling and twisting under his touch.

Dazai gasps as the shirt is snapped from his head, hair tumbling over his forehead and
cheeks, arms still suspended as Fyodor pulls the shirt down them. They fall free, back where
they belong in his lap, and he’s naked, now, except for the bandages. He’s cold. Fyodor won’t
ever turn the thermostat above 50 degrees. Dazai’s tried to change it before, and it’s only led
to the same thing happening now. Punishment.

“This is not your world, Dazai,” Fyodor says, his hand on Dazai’s chest, pushing him back.
“This is my world, and you’re not grateful for existing in it. I’ve even given you the mercy of
a name, and still you curse me by disobeying.”

“You didn’t give me that name,” Dazai tells him, even as his stomach clenches and the sheets
are cold against his bandaged back. “It’s my name. I had that name before I met you.”

Fyodor leans over him, grinning, one hand vanishing behind his back. The heavy cloak
around his shoulders doesn’t look any warmer than a blanket of ice. He’s not wearing his
ushanka, and his hair hangs about the planes of his face, dark and grim like raven’s wings.
“Who told you that, silly boy? I gave you that name. I can just as easily take it away.”

Fyodor turns from the bed to the cherrywood dresser beside it, the curves silky and auburn
under his pale touch. He pulls a silver key from his coat to unlock the top drawer, and Dazai
wishes to sink through the bed and into the ground.

“Please…” He realizes the whisper belongs to his own mouth.

Fyodor’s amethyst eyes slide to fix upon him over the fur lining of his cloak as his hands
move in the drawer. “You of all people should know that pleading does not change the
outcome of fate.”

“I just wanted you to stop breaking the clocks.” His throat hurts.

“I am not the one who dropped a clock on the floor, Dazai.” Fyodor draws out a long coil of
hemp ropes from the drawer, and Dazai feels his stomach lurch inside of him. “Did you
forget?”

“But you made the hands stop, so I would think I wasn’t in reality,” he whispers. “You did
that.”

“I did not.” Fyodor draws the ropes through his fingers with some semblance of grace,
coming up on the bed to kneel by Dazai’s body. “You are existing in my reality, and in my
reality there is no such thing as time. The clocks do not go. The days do not turn. There is
light and dark, but there is no day or night. There are no months, or seasons, or years, or
decades. There is only the present, and the present will stretch until I stop it with death.” As
he speaks, he takes Dazai’s bandaged arms in his unrelenting hands, and stretches them high
above him, until they are strained and painful, until Dazai whimpers involuntarily and tries to
move to relieve the pain. But Fyodor stills him with sharp eyes, the promise of torture and
humiliation behind them.

“You’re wrong,” Dazai argues, weakly, the skin under his eyes tight with pain as Fyodor
secures his arms to either post of the headboard.

“You would refute God?” Fyodor hisses at him. The wrists are secured, the knots are tight.
Dazai is a lamb spread out for slaughter, a sacrifice for his own sin.

“I would, if God is you!” Dazai yells, and his voice grates on his ears, too loud, too harsh.

Fyodor slaps his face. Dazai flinches, and heat blooms in his cheek, spreading to his ear. It
stings like nettles.

Fyodor climbs atop his slender body and straddles it with his legs, settling on Dazai’s crotch
so that his heat is crushed at a painful angle. Dazai grits his teeth while Fyodor prepares more
rope, circling it into a noose. His gloves are like black goo on the twists, melting as darkly as
sin itself, drenching it with shadows.

“You always wish to die, Dazai. But I am in charge of your life, not you. Your existence is at
my command. You’re not allowed to die.”

The words are like so many daggers, already stained with his blood, yet returning for more,
more to drink up from Dazai’s withering body. The noose is placed about the boy’s bandaged
neck, a crown of glory and a collar of shame. Fyodor does not respond when Dazai whimpers
in misery. They both know what is coming, and how the other will respond. It’s an endless
game of predictions and strategies, but never surprises. No, never surprises.
Fyodor wraps the free end of the noose over the top of the headboard and through a hole
created by its flowery, carved design. When it’s threaded, he pulls the end back towards him.
If he pulls more, it will tighten and choke out the boy in its hold, and when he releases, it will
loosen again.

He is the wolf to eat the lamb, a creature Dazai so perfectly imitates, wrapped in white gauze
and trembling beneath him. Fyodor leans forward until his cloak drapes along Dazai’s arms,
and the sensation makes Dazai hold his breath, eyes transfixed within the violet above.

“Did I stop the clocks, Dazai?” Fyodor asks, sweetly.

Dazai narrows his gaze, but his very heart shudders within his breast, sinking lower and
lower the more he stares into those empty reflections. “Yes,” he almost growls, “I know you
did.”

Face inches away from Dazai’s, Fyodor hardly moves. He must have jerked his hand swiftly
and out of sight, because before he knows it, Dazai is strung up by the noose, head slamming
the wood. Unable to claw at his throat, his hands jerk and twist in their restraints as he
sputters, the slender shape of his body going rigid. His vision flashes with white lightning,
and Fyodor’s face is among the streaks, his mouth open, and Dazai imagines he can hear him
chuckling as he struggles for air. The weight of the man’s body keeps him anchored to the
bed, such that he cannot relieve any of the strain on his neck or his arms.

The razor of the man’s lips slice into Dazai’s, crushing him into the headboard as the noose
pulls yet tighter, until Dazai is sure his neck will be cut through. He makes a strangled
attempt at a cry, but it’s lost inside of Fyodor’s unforgiving kiss. There’s a velvet tongue
invading, feeling every part of his paralyzed mouth, petting it and caressing it.

Lights go off in magenta and amethyst now, sparkling through his mind and erupting in his
stomach. If his throat were not constricted, he would scream. He doesn’t want Fyodor’s color
inside of him. He’s his own color, he is Dazai. He is not an extension of Dostoevsky’s
existence.

There’s a sharp, nauseating pain between his legs, and Dazai realizes that one of Fyodor’s
gloves is gripping his cock, crushing it. He kicks his legs wildly, squirms and bucks.

Fyodor breaks the kiss, a strand of blood connecting their lips as he lets the noose out, and
Dazai wheezes and coughs for air. Fyodor lets go of his cock, sitting back on Dazai’s legs. He
is not heavy, but the bones of his seat jab uncomfortably above Dazai’s knees, and he can’t
stand it. He breathes so much air he thinks he might inflate and fly away, and his head drops
against his chest as he groans.

“Huuurtsss…that hurtsss…! Uhn…”

Fyodor grunts softly and shifts his weight forward again. The pain flees from him like a bad
spirit. Is it mercy Fyodor has granted him? Dazai is never shocked by the Russian—no, not
even now—but he is a little bit behind in his predictions. His mind is too blurry to focus like
it’s supposed to.
Fingers slide along his jaw, lifting his head, until he’s right back to gazing at the gemstones of
the man’s eyes. “Yes it hurts,” Fyodor soothes, “I know. Truth is painful. Penance is yet more.
Your sins are many.”

“Don’t talk to me in riddles,” Dazai moans, blinking to clear the picture of the pale face in
the moonlight, “I’m not…coherent enough.”

“Come now.” Fyodor is closer, nose cold as it touches Dazai’s cheek. By contrast, his tongue
is warm, licking blood from the corner of Dazai’s injured mouth. He’s been bitten, it seems,
during Fyodor’s kiss. “There is no other way to speak.”

“There is,” Dazai insists, against the tongue that’s stroking his lips. “Plainly. You can speak
plainly.” It’s difficult to talk with Fyodor’s tongue in the way.

“Riddles are very plain when they’re spoken to you. ” He feels the man grin against his lips.

Dazai is about to spit “Fuck you” at the Russian, when the noose tightens again. Fyodor must
have predicted his words.

“You shouldn’t curse your God,” he purrs. Dazai thrashes soundlessly against the ropes. He
holds longer this time, to suffocate, because Fyodor loves to watch the lamb’s face twisting in
agony. He holds until Dazai’s eyes begin to roll back, and then he releases like before.

He slumps against the headboard.

“Did I stop the clocks, Dazai?”

He can’t answer at first, coughing and wheezing for air. “No,” he croaks, unwilling to keep
telling the truth when lies might shorten this torture. “No, you never touched them.”

The noose yanks him up again, and Dazai feels his eyes beginning to water like tiny
fountains of heat.

“You don’t believe that.”

Fyodor is right. Of course he doesn’t.

The noose continues in a cycle of pull and release, pull and release, and Dazai is jerked back
and forth, a struggling fish on the Russian’s line. How Fyodor loves to see the agony written
in his face, the physiological tears that never quite resemble true emotion. It’s almost like
emotion, though, and Dazai thinks he understands why Fyodor does it.

Because it’s almost like emotion.

He makes it worse. Dazai hates being able to read his mind. He hates knowing what’s coming
and dreading it before it happens. He wishes he could be surprised for once.

But no, Fyodor is too much like him—only dirtier, darker, more intelligent.
Fyodor presses a hard heat against the nakedness between his legs, and Dazai tries to find the
strength to kick him off, but the noose has run him limp and gasping, his mind floating just
above to watch what happens to his poor, frail body. And so, he watches, and mourns for
himself, crying out in agony as he’s pressed inside of. No matter how many times it happens,
his body will not properly stretch enough to keep him from injury, and the blood trickles
because Fyodor has no care for his comfort.

He sobs now as Fyodor moves inside of him, his actions quick and harsh, wracking the bed
until it cries just as loudly. He fears the noose will pull again—he needs his oxygen so very
badly right now. But Fyodor leaves it alone, bending lower and lower across the length of
Dazai’s form until his panting breaths are spilling sweetly across his cheek. Creak, creak,
creak, goes the bed. He tries to make his mind go away. It does not work.

Fyodor kisses him.

He begins to wonder if it’s indeed his reality. He begins to wonder if he truly is alive, if he’s
truly in a world with time and numbers and names and worthless things like that.

That’s when the Russian stops hurting him. He hasn’t even finished inside of Dazai, but he
slides out regardless, focused on Dazai’s flushed face. He’s noticed the shift, he’s seen
through to his thoughts, and Dazai can’t imagine how, but he supposes that’s why they’re not
in reality. Fyodor can read his mind in this place. It’s his reality, after all—or so he says.

Fyodor scrapes dark hair back from his sweaty forehead and hums, reaching to undo the
ropes holding Dazai up. When his arms fall, he cannot move them. He can only stare
helplessly at Fyodor and plead mutely for help. Fyodor will know what he wants. Fyodor can
read him.

The Russian does know, and he is gentle with his lamb as he pulls Dazai’s arms down from
over his head, arranging them over his own cloaked shoulders. The man kisses him, and
murmurs kind, soft things in his ear, and strokes through his hair. His mouth leaves forgiving,
warm blossoms on his cheeks and his neck, under his earlobe. It seems the pain never existed
at all, and Dazai only remembers that it does when he feels the warm wetness of his blood
seeping down the inside of his thighs.

“Did I stop the clocks, Dazai?” Fyodor whispers against his cheek.

Dazai shakes his head. No, there is no such thing as time counted by clocks. There is no such
thing as night and day. There is only light, and dark, and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s reality. Dazai
is merely a creature allowed to live in it. This is the truth.

Fyodor praises him, and sits him up, and lets him rest inside of his arms. Dazai manages to
pull himself up into the man’s lap, and as Fyodor sits back against the headboard, Dazai leans
on his chest and rubs at the rope indentations on his wrist. He lets Fyodor stroke the ones on
his neck. He lets Fyodor do whatever he wants. It’s much better than the hollow darkness
growing in his chest. Fyodor can fill it, when he makes kind noises and gives Dazai soft
touches.
“I’ve been punished,” Dazai says presently, still finding his voice among the murkiness of his
mind, “so you forgive me now, don’t you?” His long fingers look like pale spider legs along
Fyodor’s dark clothes.

“Yes,” Fyodor reassures him, “I forgive you.”

“If I’m forgiven, am I allowed to sleep in the bed with you?”

Fyodor plays with Dazai’s curls. “You are.”

“If I sleep in the bed with you, will you take off your gloves when you hold me?”

“No, Dazai. I will not take off my gloves.”

Dazai’s body throbs sorely as he sits there cradled in Fyodor’s arms. It’s so, so cold around
them, and even though Fyodor is wearing clothes, he’s not very warm. Dazai begins to cry,
looking up at the man’s face. “You won’t take them off?”

Fyodor puts his hand on Dazai’s forehead. “No, Dazai.”

“Why not?” he cries. “Why not, why not?”

“That is a privilege you must earn.”

“How can I earn it? Tell me, and I will do it!” He pushes into the gloved palm, yearning to
feel the warmth of the skin beneath it, if there’s even skin there after all.

The Russian smiles. “You want it so badly?” Fyodor’s fingers slide down his temple, then
under his eyes, brushing away the tears. “You must obey me.”

“That is how?”

“That is how.”

Dazai looks down into his lap, falling back against the man’s chest, sniffling as more tears
arrive. “I’ll never feel your skin, then.”

Fyodor traces his leg, bruised from where the man gripped him while he was being taken.
“You will not obey?”

“I can’t help myself. It’s impossible when I’m a sinner. That’s what you say, isn’t it? I can
never obey as fully as you want me to.” The thought makes him feel very hollow inside,
more than usual. He thinks he could be…sad.

Fyodor hums in thought. “I think you will, eventually.”

“I can try.”
 Dazai sleeps with Fyodor in the bed. Fyodor does not allow him to go to sleep, at first,
making him count cracks in the ceiling as he lies on his back with the Russian’s arm
pillowing his head. The blanket is very warm, but Dazai thinks Fyodor would be warmer still,
if only he’d undress. He’s convinced that Fyodor’s hands are the warmest part of his body,
and that’s why the man refuses to take off his gloves.

After he’s counted fifty-eight cracks, Fyodor tells him to stop, and says that he may sleep
now.

Dazai knows full well that the point of the counting is to make him stay awake until Fyodor’s
say-so. But it’s alright. They’ve done this before. At least Fyodor lets him off at fifty-eight
this time, instead of two hundred.

There are so many cracks in the ceiling. The moonlight always makes them show up like
fissures in bone, eating across the paint.

Dazai folds his arms against his chest and presses his face into Fyodor’s shirt. Fyodor holds
him close and rests his chin atop Dazai’s hair. He doesn’t quite realize how exhausted he is,
until they’re like this, and he knows he can relax—he knows Fyodor is finished hurting him.
He melts, until he’s just a puddle of dark water in the man’s arms, stagnant and serene.

Chapter End Notes

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 Restricted Voice
Chapter Summary

Fyodor goes out to buy food and locks Dazai in his room. When he comes back, Dazai
accidentally gets himself into more trouble.

Chapter Notes

Read carefully, enjoy at your own risk.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The next day, Fyodor goes out of the house to buy food. He locks Dazai in his room.

It’s cold like a grave in winter. He’s taken Dazai’s shirt, maybe to wash—? he doesn’t know
for sure this time. He’s normally there to see where it goes, but this time Fyodor’s done it
while he slept.

Dazai has never really felt things like humiliation or abandonment before. But there’s…
something about being in the room naked that makes him feel…he doesn’t know. Insecure.
Yes, that’s it. Like he’s being watched by someone he can’t see, and the someone is disgusted
with Dazai.

It gets so bad that he eventually curls up under the covers and pulls them over his head to
block out the sensation, staring into the darkness and wishing he could sleep. He tries to for a
very long time, closing his eyes, squirming around to try and fit into the little warm spots his
body makes on the mattress. He can feel time pass, even though Fyodor says there is no time
anymore. Maybe he believed it last night, but he doesn’t this morning. That’s how it always
goes. When Fyodor is away, he gains back a little of his sanity, he thinks, and remembers
things he’s supposed to remember.

He remembers things like the Detective Agency, and that he was there before he ever came
here with Fyodor. He remembers that there used to be working clocks, and other people—
other than Fyodor Dostoevsky—and the sun meant day and the moon meant night.

He remembers a little tiger with purple-and-yellow eyes, a stupid redhead with an explosive
temper, a four-eyed freak who was obsessive about his schedule. It’s been so long that it
makes his chest tighten when he thinks of them, but he can’t remember much about them,
except that it was nice to see their faces. Much nicer than seeing only Fyodor’s all the time.
He hears Fyodor come back, but he stays under the covers, because it’s finally warmed up a
little, and he doesn’t know if he wants his mind to go back to the fog when he sees the
Russian again. Every time, it happens. He loses himself in trying to handle the stress of
interaction, and he’s helpless to do anything else. Nothing matters but Fyodor and what
Fyodor wants.

Fyodor unlocks the room and opens the door. Dazai hears it all from under the blanket. It’s
getting difficult to breathe. Still, he doesn’t want to come out.

“Dazai?”

He doesn’t answer Fyodor. He thinks about last night, how the man claimed it was he who
had given Dazai his name. Odd how it seemed so silly only moments ago, and now that
Fyodor is back, it seems right again. Natural. As soon as the Russian arrives, everything he
says is Truth.

Dazai…really doesn’t like that.

A weight rests on the curve of his back, and Dazai stares soundlessly into the dark as he
recognizes the shape of Fyodor’s gloved fingers.

“You’re not sleeping. What are you doing under there?”

Dazai stays silent. He doesn’t know what he’s doing under there. And now that Fyodor is
asking him, it makes him feel silly and childish.

“Come out. Come out and answer me.”

Dazai grips the covers and shakes his head.

The hand tightens on him, digs cruelly into his back. “Ёшкин кот, you little fuck. Get out of
there.”

Dazai’s heart lurches into his throat. That tone is not normal for Fyodor, and neither are the
Russian words, an obscene expression. It’s unnerving to hear the growl in the man’s voice,
when he’s always so rigidly calm and collected.

Dazai pulls off the covers at once, eyes wide as they fix on the man, whose violet gaze is
narrow and icy. He’s in a white cloak and ushanka, a glaring contrast to the inky darkness
Dazai sees in those eyes. Darker than his hair.

It doesn’t seem to appease him at all that Dazai has obeyed. With angular chin lifted, he snaps
his fingers at Dazai and waves him out of the bed.

His body throbs and shivers with the onslaught of cold, but he takes down the covers and
pulls his naked body from the bed, until he’s standing in front of the Russian.

“I brought you food.” Fyodor is very close, the tickle of his breath hot along Dazai’s cheek
and nose. “I brought you food and the first thing you do is act foolish.”
“I just—”

Fyodor smacks him on the thigh, and Dazai shrinks back in confusion.

“You refused to answer me. You will not speak now, until I give you back your voice.”

Dazai looks up at him with furrowed brows, holding his thigh—which is now blooming with
a red handprint. “But—”

Fyodor’s hand catches him on his already bruised cheek, and he cries out.

“Козел!” Fyodor curses. “Did you not hear me?”

Dazai holds the back of his hand to his cheek and doesn’t look up, trembling. He tries to
understand why Fyodor is in such a mood. He’s using Russian phrases. He’s…yelling. Or as
close to yelling as Fyodor gets. He can’t make sense of it. He wants to apologize, but he’s
unable to speak without raising more hell for himself.

Fyodor grabs his upper arm and pulls him into a walk beside him. He’s muttering in Russian,
and Dazai feels his stomach start to clench, because he doesn’t understand what’s being said
now, and it’s disconcerting him. He feels very alone when Fyodor does that.

Dazai makes a singular helpless noise in hopes of Fyodor’s attention, so he can show him his
apologetic expression. But the Russian only hisses out of the corner of his mouth and grips
the back of Dazai’s neck, forcing his posture lower as he takes him to the kitchen.

He shoves Dazai towards the seat at the kitchen table—which has two solitary wooden chairs
for them alone. Dazai sits, and clenches the seat in his hands, too shocked to look into
Fyodor’s eyes. He doesn’t know what to do with himself if he can’t speak. He can’t even find
solace in Fyodor’s lilting, sickly-sweet tone. It all but disappeared under the flavor of his
native language.

Fyodor goes to the counter and rifles through a plastic bag, likely from the store. Dazai
watches him very discreetly, not wanting to be caught looking for fear of retribution. Fyodor,
however, is very intent on his work. He pulls out a bowl of microwaveable instant porridge.
He opens it and tears off the plastic sealant. The native words finally die on his lips as he
prepares it, filling it in the sink before he puts it in the microwave.

He slams the microwave shut, and Dazai jolts in his seat.

“It was such a small matter, Dazai,” he says, a numb expression hiding the flames he sees in
the amethyst eyes.

He lowers his head, shoulders tense. Oh, he wants to speak. He wants to speak so badly.

“You went and made a big problem out of it. Because that is what you do, is it not? You enjoy
setting me off.”

Dazai bites his tongue.

“I have come to think you enjoy being punished, too.”

Dazai tastes blood, tangy and sharp in his mouth.

Fyodor slams his hand against the table, making Dazai cower in his seat. “Сволочь! Look at
me when I’m talking to you.”

Dazai knows that word. Scum. Hot moisture pricks his eyes. He digs his nails into the wood
of the seat, and slowly forces himself to look up into the man’s gaze. It’s so cold and
unforgiving that it physically hurts to look at.

The microwave goes off, each beep like a shrill siren in his ears. His head is throbbing.

Fyodor ignores it for five seconds—Dazai knows because he counts every one of them,
holding his breath—and then he turns to the microwave, and Dazai slumps against the table.
His nakedness is beginning to bother him. He wants to ask for his shirt. He’s so cold, and
with Fyodor in this mood, it makes him somehow more…degraded, maybe. He’s grateful for
his bandages, but they only do so much. They don’t cover his private parts.

Fyodor puts the steaming porridge on the table in front of him. Dazai waits for a utensil.

Fyodor doesn’t give him one. No, he stands there with arms crossed, looking down on the
boy and raising his inky brows.

Dazai folds his hands in his lap to cover himself. Fyodor has a direct line of sight to what’s
between his legs. His stomach is tingling, more with anxiety than hunger. He’s never felt
emotion quite so acutely as he does now, so rigid in the chair that his muscles begin to burn.
He can’t speak, he can’t speak…he needs to speak.

“Well, Dazai? Are you going to eat what I made for you?” Fyodor asks.

He looks up at the man with troubled brown eyes. The porridge is steaming so thoroughly
that his face is beginning to gather moisture from it. It tingles, but he’s not about to move
away from it. Fyodor knows exactly what he’s doing, what Dazai is thinking. Dazai knows
that.

It makes it somehow worse, then, when Fyodor goes to his cupboard and returns with a salt
shaker. “You must want something in it, then.”

Dazai’s eyes widen a fraction, and he involuntarily reaches out to stop Fyodor as the man
begins salting the porridge, shaking his head wildly.

Fyodor slaps his hand. “Back,” he spits. “Sit down, Dazai.”

Dazai pulls his throbbing hand back with some difficulty and incredible control, jaw working
silently as he forces his body back into the chair. He gives a long, suffering whine as Fyodor
leans over the bowl, shaking in more and more salt. It begins to pile up, until it’s a tiny
pyramid on the oats.
Fyodor pauses a second, only to incline his ear to Dazai as if he’s a child, cupping it. “More,
you said? A bit greedy, aren’t you?”

Dazai squeezes his hands together in his lap until they turn white and squirms in the seat, face
twisted as he tries to shake his head again. He begs for mercy with his eyes, but this seems to
make Fyodor happy, and he smirks like the devil himself.

He unscrews the shaker head and blinks once, before he turns the entire thing over, dumping
every last bit of salt into the meal. “There,” he says, and his voice is low and smooth like
honey, “that’s all I have. Do not ask me for more.”

Dazai’s body vibrates uncontrollably in frustration, his throat closing up at the thought of
having to eat this. Sweat breaks out between his bare shoulder blades, cold and ticklish. But
he’s been so good and quiet! Even when he doesn’t have to, when all he has to do is speak up
and provoke Fyodor into beating him senseless. Why must the Russian torture him so?

He wants to cry.

“Now, I suppose you need something to eat this with.”

Dazai turns his hollow gaze from the mound of salt to the man. Fyodor picks a spoon out of
the drawer and holds it out to him with a subtle smile. Dazai somehow manages to peel his
hands apart so he can take it, but they’re clammy and stiff in the cold of the house. He rests
his wrist on the edge of the table and stares down into the salted porridge. He cannot eat this.
He’ll vomit. He closes his eyes and whimpers in misery.

“Okh, I almost forgot. Climb up on the table, Dazai. I want to inspect you while you eat.”

Dazai’s face contorts, and he knows any minute he’s going to sob, or start screaming, or
throw something. But he doesn’t. Not yet. He’s promised he would try and obey. Obey! Why
is Fyodor making it so hard for him? Maybe this is a test, and Fyodor will be kind to him if
he follows through and shows he can listen.

Slowly, every movement like a match burning in his skin, Dazai climbs up the table on all
fours, then sits back on his heels with the porridge and spoon, doing his absolute best to hide
his nakedness. Fyodor watches all this with some sort of satisfaction, his eyes flicking across
the boy’s body unguardedly, hands clasped behind his back.

Dazai has never wanted to die quite so much in his entire life. And there’s nothing he can do
about it.

“Not like that,” Fyodor says, and he comes closer, making Dazai’s shoulders hunch as he
reaches out to pinch the back of his neck. “Bend over, until your end is out.”

Forced down on his hands, Dazai squeezes his eyes shut until there are stars in the dark,
gritting his teeth until his jaw aches. His throat longs to scream, to beg and plead. Stop. Stop,
please. You’re breaking me.His end is cold and exposed in the air now, his face nearly inside
of the porridge bowl.
Fyodor stoops over until his face is in Dazai’s. Dazai looks at him, only because he’s afraid
of being yelled at if he does not. His stomach quivers. He makes an involuntary noise of pain.
“Do you feel, Dazai?” Dostoevsky asks. “It’s almost like you’re experiencing emotions. How
unnerving.”

Dazai’s lip trembles. No, he’s not. It’s just…everything Fyodor is doing. It’s physiological
responses. How could any living being not respond under so much agony?

Fyodor is near whispering now. “I wonder how much stronger it will get, when we continue.
Will you cry, do you think?”

“Mmh—” Dazai groans, wishing so badly to hear any other sound than Fyodor’s voice.
“Mmmhhhhh…” He shakes his head.

“Sshhhhh,” Fyodor hisses, raising a white-gloved finger to his razor-blade lips. He points to
his food. “Eat.”

He straightens, and Dazai makes his spoon hover over the bowl, breaths wheezing as he tries
to convince himself he can do this. He must. He has to. The spoon’s head disappears into the
mush.

Fyodor takes a step to the side, and suddenly there’s a gloved hardness gripping his backside,
a thumb near his entrance, spreading it. Dazai feels fire rocket through his body, throbbing in
his face, and he jerks forward, crying out without warning. “Ah-ah! Ah—!” He doesn’t want
this. He doesn’t want to be touched. He doesn’t want to be on this table, or in this house, or at
Fyodor’s mercy anymore.

He really, truly, does not want to be alive. And certainly not in Dostoevsky’s reality.

“Eat, Dazai,” Fyodor growls, and when Dazai looks frantically back at him, he grips harder.
He feels the dried blood from last night on his skin, flaking under the man’s touch.

He struggles to regulate his breathing. His legs are weak, his skin is crawling. He shakily lifts
the first scoop of porridge, but there’s so much heat pooling in his mouth, he has to keep
swallowing. He’s sick. This hurts. This hurts worse than anything, worse than physical pain.
He’s afraid the arm holding him up will give out, and he’ll faceplant in the porridge. Maybe
if he does, he can suffocate himself in it before Fyodor can pull him out.

No. He’s being irrational. He can’t underestimate the Russian like that.

Dazai opens his mouth. The porridge touches his tongue—no, the salt. It’s all salt. Oats and
salt. It sears him, it makes him gag. He sobs, keening forward, unable to chew. The spoon
drops with a clatter on the table, and he vaguely hears someone swearing over the rush in his
ears.

A smack hits him on the ass, and Dazai jolts at the stinging pain.

Fyodor’s voice hits him like icy water. “Chew.” It’s very close to his ear.
But Dazai cannot chew. The salt is closing his throat, flooding his mouth with reflexive
saliva, gripping his cheeks and the sides of his tongue until he’s afraid it’s on fire. He groans,
loud and long, hoping Fyodor will listen to him. His eyes are hot, but they won’t shed tears.
He doesn’t want them to.

Fyodor smacks him again, and it’s a terrible, terrible feeling. He feels like a vulnerable,
naughty child, being spanked for not eating his vegetables.

He really does not want to cry.

Fyodor spanks him again. So many things well up inside Dazai at once that he cannot process
it. He has no tools, no methods to push it back down, to quell it, to stop it. Like a raw vessel,
he overflows, he bursts. He screams. With fingers digging into the table, salt dripping from
his tongue, he screams so loudly it hurts his ears, tears at his throat, rings in the glasses inside
the cupboards and in the sink and in the walls. His whole body shakes with the force of it,
and before he understands what he’s doing, he slaps the bowl off of the table. It thuds and
splatters all across the kitchen floor, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s naked and this is
excruciating.

When the scream is gone and all the air from his lungs, Dazai presses his forehead against the
warm spot on the table where his food was. His teeth chatter. He gasps and heaves with dry
sobs, swallowing down the salt to get rid of it. He knows Fyodor’s silence is only a matter of
time. He knows he’s going to be punished, that he’s going to regret doing this.

But no, he thinks he will not regret it. If this is what feeling feels like, he never wants to feel
again.

Fyodor’s silence stretches longer than Dazai expects, and he opens his eyes to stare at the
table and try to catch sight of the Russian in his peripheral. There’s a white form there, yes,
and he’s standing still. It shifts. One move from him, and Dazai’s body panics. He’s falling,
off the table, in his hurry to get away, he’s falling. His back and side hit the ground hard
enough to knock the breath from him, and he cries out and scrambles back as Fyodor’s
crimson boots start toward him, holding his arms over his head and yelling incoherent
phrases. Distantly, he recognizes he must be begging for mercy, but his ears refuse to hear his
own words. They’re ashamed of him.

His stomach and chest clench and hitch, he feels the sobs wracking his throat. There are
tears, now, because he’s powerless to stop them, and he’s looking up at Fyodor’s
expressionless face, wondering if he’ll be killed, hot floods drenching his cheeks. His tongue
is moving and tangling. “Pleasedon’t, pleaseletmego I’msosorry, I can’t I can’t, ah-hah-haa,
pleeeassseee! I can’t breathe!” His spine hits the handle of a low cabinet, and he curls up
against the wood.

He sees the red boots stop in front of him through the open slat of his arms, blurred by tears
and twisting in his feverish vision. He feels dizzy, like he’s dropping through the floor. All he
can think is how he’s never felt like this before, he’s never felt and it doesn’t feel good, not at
all, not at all.

Fyodor crouches in the slat, and the way he says his name is very different. “Dazai.”
Dazai whines miserably and curls tighter.

There’s a glove reaching out for him, but it pauses, and Dazai doesn’t remember ever seeing
the man hesitate before. It retreats out of his vision. “You spilled what I made for you.”

“I know I’msosorry—”

“Why did you spill it, Dazai?”

“I—I don’t know! I’m sorry—”

“Do not apologize to me. Answer my questions.”

Dazai grips his hair so tightly his scalp stings. His mind races, but not with answers. Only
with fears, rational and irrational, wild and throbbing like an animal in heat. He releases a
mournful groan, and Fyodor speaks over him.

“Where is your mind going? You’re not thinking straight.”

“I can’t!” Dazai sobs.

“You will. If you value your safety, you will. Would you like me to put you back on that
table, and make you eat the porridge scooped from the floor? Just because you’ve done this
doesn’t mean I will make it end.”

“No! No, please, no, I don’t want to, I don’t want to!” Dazai’s heart throbs, struggling to get
out of his chest.

“Then answer my question.”

Does he mean if Dazai obeys, he won’t be put back on the table? He struggles harder to
focus, motivated by the thought, scrambling for words before Fyodor gives up on him. “I-I-I
spilled it because I—ah, I—” He conjures a hasty answer. “–couldn’t eat it!” Yes, that’s it. “I
couldn’t eat it–!”

“Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t like it?”

It’s such a dangerous question. Dazai clenches his teeth and sobs through it as he tries to find
the right answer.

“You’re thinking too hard. You’re making lies in your head.”

“Noooo!” Dazai wails, shaking his head.

“Dazai. Answer me.”

“I did like it!” he bursts out.

“Why would you throw something you like, why would you scream like you did?”

“You wouldn’t let me speak!”

“Oh, come now. That was your choice, Dazai. Perhaps I told you that you could not speak,
but I did not restrict your voice. You could have spoken.”

“No, no,” Dazai continues shaking his head, shallow breaths rasping in his throat. “You’d hit
me.”

“Now you’re grasping at straws. You’re not reading me like you usually do. What’s gotten
into you, I wonder? You’re weeping. You screamed at me. Are you feeling something,
Dazai?” The red boots gave a creak as the leather soles shifted along the ground.

He shakes, sinking deeper, deeper against the cabinet. Folding inside himself.

His silence is answer enough. “Ahhh…” Gloved fingers wrap around his forearms. They pull
his arms away from his tear-stricken face, merciless when he fights it and whimpers.

His throat burns from the salt, from the gasping and the weeping. He’s so thirsty.

Fyodor’s face is different. His eyes are stoic, but his face is loose, open. He’s interested.
Dazai can sense it.

“What is the feeling that you’re experiencing?” he asks. It’s an illness to him, an anomaly.

“I don’t know,” Dazai says reflexively, sniffling and rubbing his face on his extended arm.

Fyodor’s fingers dig into his wrist, and he grits his teeth. “You do know.”

“I don’t!”

Fyodor grabs his face, leaning close, and his purple eyes are knives carving into Dazai’s
mind. “I know you do,” he hisses.

Dazai’s lips part as he’s run through. His voice croaks when he speaks again. “I do…but…”

Fyodor’s chin inches up. “Name it.”

The word rings in his head, over and over, bashing his skull until his headache is worse than
before. He doesn’t want to name it. Not to Fyodor. Fyodor will make the feeling happen
again and again, he’ll use it as a weapon for his amusement, he’ll punish Dazai with it, he’ll
make a new level of hell with it. “I can’t.”

Fyodor’s expression does not change or shift. He doesn’t even blink. Dazai knows he’s
expected this answer. “I will isolate you. You will not get your shirt back. It is such a simple
question, Dazai. Answer it, and I will not hurt you.”

Dazai’s lip trembles. He bites it. He does not want to be hurt. Fyodor has never promised this
before. “Humiliated,” he whispers, and the answer may have come so easily to him, knowing
the conditions. “I feel hum-humiliated.”

Fyodor’s eyes fill with light until they’re glistening. “And that’s what made you scream?
What made you knock over the food?”
“Yes.” His voice quivers, and he doesn’t like it. “Yes, and I’m sor—”

“Do not apologize to me, cволочь.” Scum.

Dazai does not understand why it strikes pain in his chest when he hears it. He sniffles, but
his tears have stopped. Slowly, Fyodor releases his face, and he crumples back to the kitchen
floor.

Fyodor lets him lie there for a second. Then he stands. “Get up, Dazai.”

Dazai looks at his towering, shadowed figure in the small string of light from the sink
window. Little dust floaters surround him, poke over his back in the light. It makes a
geometric shape in the corner of his eye.

“You will not hurt me?” he asks. This feeling, this humiliation—it’s refusing to fade.

“Weren’t you listening?”

Dazai blinks a few times. He grabs onto the cabinet and climbs to his feet, covering himself
with one hand. Fyodor’s eyes shift down, he notices. His brows furrow.

“What is this? What are you doing?”

There it is, again. That tone that makes Dazai feel like a child. “I’m…” He trails off and
doesn’t answer, because, well—is it not obvious? Dazai knows that Fyodor is aware of what
he’s doing. He’s unsure why it makes it worse that he’s forcing Dazai to say it aloud.

“Are you hiding an erection? Are you touching yourself?” Fyodor’s lip curls ever so slightly,
and not kindly. “Is there some need you want me to fulfill?”

“N-no,” Dazai stammers, fighting the strong urge to jerk his hand away. Fyodor’s eyes are
glistening, because he’s seen it. He knows everything in Dazai’s head.

“Then take your hand away, if there is nothing to hide.”

“I...I don’t want to.”

“Must you really argue with me over everything?”

“It’s because I’m cold, then! May I please have my shirt back?”

“No, you may not.”

Dazai swallows hard and looks away.

“Come here, Dazai.”

Movement brings his gaze back. Fyodor opens his arms subtly, and Dazai’s stomach lurches.
He takes a hesitant step. His heart is pounding very fast. Fyodor makes no other indication,
 so he takes another, then another…until he’s standing very close to the man in white. These
clothes are much warmer than the others he wears. They’re furry and thick.

Fyodor’s arms fold around him. Dazai stiffens at first, mouth parted as his head is guided to
the Russian’s shoulder to rest. He blinks at the wall across from them, rapidly, attempting to
adjust. By degrees, his body deflates, and Fyodor holds him tighter. He feels the man’s cheek
against his hair.

“Are you cold now?” Fyodor asks, and his voice is like red velvet.

Dazai lets out a very very soft whine. The warmth of Fyodor’s cloaks works slowly, but they
envelop him in heat, until the uncontrollable shivers begin to calm, and his heart slows
down.

“No,” he breathes.

Fyodor’s gloved hands fondle him where he had smacked Dazai before, and it makes him
shift uncomfortably. But he does not protest. “We should give you a bath, to clean you up.
And some water for your throat. I’m afraid you’ve quite ruined your meal, but that’s alright.
We’ll have food some other time.”

Dazai swallows with difficulty. His mouth is very dry. “Okay,” he rasps.

Chapter End Notes

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 Hot Water
Chapter Summary

Dazai is tricked.

Chapter Notes

As always, read carefully, and always check for new tags if you're sensitive to certain
topics. :) *wiggles hands and fades away into the darkness*

enjoyyyyy....

When he’d been told he would get a bath, he’d expected something nice.

Instead, Fyodor drags him by the wrist into the bathroom, where the water is already running
and the tub is practically full. The steam hangs thick enough to crawl over his naked body. He
stumbles on the slippery tile, but Fyodor’s grip only squeezes harder, and he’s yanked up.

When they come to the tub, Fyodor shoves him in, kicking Dazai’s legs out from under him
so that he falls backwards with a great splash, his skull banging the edge of the tub. The
water is hot, so hot, so hot—! But only because his body is so chilled from the temperature of
Fyodor’s house. The flash of heat is intense at first, but quick to fade.

When he breaks above water, he hears the sound of a drain in the corner, viciously suckling at
the overflow. He gasps and coughs, swiping at his eyes. His vision is blurry, when he can see
again. The blow to the head makes him dizzy.

Fyodor’s looming form kneels beside him, and Dazai flinches, too afraid to look directly at
him, but keeping him in the line of sight. His heart is running, running, it wants to escape his
body.

Fyodor has removed his white coat. He’s in a charcoal turtleneck; the only white left is his
gloves. Dazai wonders if it’s on purpose—the color—to make it more noticeable that he’ll
never touch Dazai with bare hands.

Sinner.

Fyodor’s hand grasps his jaw, the thumb and forefinger jabbing sharply under it. It hurts.
Dazai makes an unconscious, mournful cry.
Fyodor lets him go. It seems he’d been about to do something—the showerhead is in his
hand, his thumb on the switch. His face goes blank and searching when Dazai dares to look,
one bandaged hand pressed under his jaw where it throbs.

It takes a long moment of panting to calm himself enough to talk. The shock of everything
makes his head whirl, and it’s difficult to grasp words.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” is what eventually comes out, and his voice is so small that
he can barely hear himself. He reaches out unsteadily for some sort of purchase, finds the
edge of the tub and grips the ridge until his knuckles turn pale.

Fyodor’s hair is beginning to dampen with steam, blacker still as he stares at Dazai with
purple gems. “I did. And I did not hurt you, for a time. It will not extend into forever. Surely
you know that.”

Dazai sinks a little deeper into the water, until it laps around his shoulders. His bandages rise
to the surface, unraveling to float around him like tangled webs. A cold sensation seeps
through him, and it shouldn’t be there in such hot water. He doesn’t want the bandages to
come off. He doesn’t want Fyodor to see him truly naked. He doesn’t want to be hurt.

But Fyodor is right. Before the bath, he’d left Dazai in the kitchen, he went out. Somewhere.
He didn’t know where. Maybe to smoke. But he’d given Dazai a glass of cold water, and let
him sit in the chair, and hadn’t told him to clean up the mess he’d made.

Dazai had stayed there for a long time, and Fyodor hadn’t returned. He’d sipped at the water,
his stomach uneasy from things he didn’t understand, and he’d stared at the granite counter
around the sink until all he could think of were the tiny veins of gold and brown he saw there
in the stone.

And Fyodor had not harmed him, because he wasn’t there.

When he’d come back, he’d taken off his red boots, covered in snow. He’d smelled like
smoke.

He’d removed what was left of Dazai’s water, and poured it in the sink, and then wordlessly
he’d beckoned Dazai to come to the bathroom. He’d made him wait outside; he’d filled the
bath.

And he hadn’t hurt him, all that time. Maybe it was just more time than Dazai had realized.
The time is up, now, and Dazai does not deserve more. It’s simple, if he thinks about it. And
he thinks he understands, too.

A spray of water needles him in the face, and Dazai sputters and cries out, thrashing out of its
way, but it follows him where he goes. His hands slip and slide on the tub; his body plunges
downwards and water splashes around his ears.

Wet gloves grip his body under the arms, hauling him back up, shoving him against the
sloped back of the tub. The spray pierces his face again, but this time Fyodor holds him
tightly by the hair, no matter how much water he splashes, no matter how much noise he
makes.

He hitches, accidentally sucking water into his nose. His mouth. He spits, coughs. Sputters.
He jerks against the hold on his hair, pulling himself with leverage on the tub’s edge.
Fyodor’s hand does not budge, and there’s too much hair in his grip to allow Dazai to rip it
out to escape.

His face goes numb.

Fyodor releases him, and he gasps in great heaves of oxygen. With shoulders hunched, he
holds his face in quivering hands, coughing up water, hearing the plip-plip-plop of droplets in
the midst of Fyodor’s chilled silence.

His heart, assaulting the insides of his ears, will not slow. His muscles quiver all over,
goosebumps prickle on his skin. He doesn’t want this. He wants more than the few moments
of peace he was allowed to have in Fyodor’s absence. He just wants to rest.

“Why did you do that?” he asks tremulously, when he can concentrate on words again. “What
did I do?”

“The face you were making was undesirable. I thought I would let you know.”

Dazai slowly lifts his face until his eyes peek over the tips of his fingers, form still tense with
the expectation of another blast to the face. “You did not tell me what face to make.” Is he
supposed to have known? Is there no way to keep Fyodor from hurting him on a whim? Is
there no way to stop sinning?

“You did not ask me which face I wanted to see.”

Dazai’s heart throbs inside of him; his mind searches for a quick solution. But it’s all so…it’s
confusing. He doesn’t know what to think or where to look for an answer. If there was
anything obvious, it would not be correct, and he will only gain himself more punishment if
he tries. He must simply survive. He must go along. Perhaps he’ll figure out on the way, what
Fyodor wants.

“What face?” he asks timidly.

“Not the one you made.”

Dazai wilts, a flower trampled on one too many times. “I don’t know what face I made.”

“Of course not. You weren’t looking at yourself.”

“Then how am I to blame?”

Fyodor’s expression is one of stone, so lacking of empathy that it makes Dazai feel like the
human. And he hardly ever feels human. The shower head, resting in the man’s grip on the
wetted fabric of his pants, is as threatening as a weapon. Dazai won’t look directly at it, but
he is not focused on Fyodor’s face.
The moment Fyodor raises the shower head again, Dazai sucks in a breath and scrambles up,
feet slipping under water that drags at his limbs like a trap, pulling him back down. He
clambers to grapple the opposite side of the tub. But just as he gains a foothold and stands
halfway, the shower head thwacks him across the hipbone, the metal cracking. The pain takes
his breath away, the shock takes his thoughts.

His legs turn to jelly, he falls into Fyodor’s waiting grip. “You do not learn,” the Russian
hisses, and Dazai is strangely distracted by the feel of warm breath against his earlobe. It’s
comforting, somehow, to know that Fyodor’s breath—if nothing else—is warm. Like a
human’s.

He doesn’t struggle, he lets the Russian lower him back into the water. Once released, he
turns his head away, catching his breath and letting the understanding of what happened sink
in. His hip bone throbs underwater, begging him to touch it, press on it, so it will stop. But he
doesn’t want to move his arms right now from where they’re wrapped around him, keeping
him safe.

No, not safe. He’s not safe here with Fyodor. But if no one else will hold him, he will hold
himself.

A shadow stretches over him, rippling with Fyodor’s amethyst eyes in the water’s surface. He
sees his own face, he sees the sudden change that comes over it. He sees the way his brows
furrow, the pupils shrink inside chestnut, and that’s the moment he knows.

This is the face that Fyodor wants to see.

This is the source of all his troubles. Not that he’s a sinner. Not that he’s fought against
Fyodor sometime, in a past that’s only a blurry photograph. This face is the only problem.

So, it does make sense.

Fyodor’s hands close around his upper arms, and he leans until his lips are by Dazai’s ear, his
darkness rippling more with the shudder of Dazai’s body. “What are you looking at?”

Dazai feels it broil in the pit of his stomach, at first. And then it spreads, until it’s dragging up
the corner of his mouth. As he looks at his reflection, droplets scattering the image over and
over, he starts, vaguely, to feel something he’s felt before. Triumph.

“I know what you want,” he says, yet somehow his voice cannot rise above a frosty whisper.

Fyodor’s hands tighten around his arms. They’ll bruise, soon, under sodden bandages. “Oh?”

Dazai turns against him, to see the real face of the Russian. The long, inky lashes, flattening
over smoldering eyes. The knife mouth that’s always a step away from slicing him. The
angular planes of his white face, the sweeps of dark silk. He’s dripping with water that Dazai
splashed on him. His clothes are almost damp enough to cling, to show the shape of the body
underneath.
Dazai mimics the face he’d seen on his reflection. He’s had so much practice, mimicking,
that it comes easy. He furrows his brows, and softens his eyes, parts his lips ever so slightly.
“Is this what you want? You just want to see pain.”

Fyodor’s fingers dig into his arms. The face is no longer a mimic—Dazai closes his eyes as
honest pain screws up his face. He laughs through it, a choking sound. Hollow and wet.

“Do not assume to know the intentions of god.”

Dazai raises his hand, as if he’s going to try and fight, but he second-guesses himself and
grasps the shirt at Fyodor’s chest, breathing hard and long. “But I do know. I do know. That’s
why you’re angry with me.”

“Angry? There is no anger, only correction. You should never pretend to know what I want,
Dazai.”

“I’m not pretending!” Dazai insists, his voice ragged and loud.

“You are the one who is angry, Dazai. Do not project your feelings onto me.”

The triumph slips from his grasp, the wan smile fades from his face. Fyodor’s very words
have scared them off, replacing them with the anger that he’s told Dazai he’s feeling. He
thinks, yes, he is angry, and that it’s Fyodor’s fault for planting it inside him.

“Why don’t you let me be? Why do you torment me?” he pleads. “It’s only to see me hurt, it
has to be. There’s no other reason why you would do it! Why don’t you admit it? Why?
Because it’s shameful that I found out before you told me?”

Fyodor turns him around, roughly, to face him. Dazai’s knees bang the tub’s wall underwater.

Fyodor takes up the showerhead in his hand again. He reaches over Dazai’s shoulder to turn
the knob on the wall, and when Dazai whips his head over his shoulder, he sees it turn all the
way into the red.

“I do not like being told what I want by someone so ignorant of who I am. My intentions are
not for you to solve.”

Panic lights in his limbs like a wildfire. There’s a wet sploosh as Dazai lurches forward, then
the sizzle and billow of steam from the showerhead. He makes a strangled noise, hands
blindly scraping for purchase on something, anything. Fyodor’s body is all that’s there, and a
crushing grip yanks him forward, so his back is exposed, bandages floating away. His
forehead collides with Fyodor’s chest. His feet hit the other wall of the tub.

Scalding water gushes between his shoulder blades, ripping a startled scream from his throat,
making him arch violently and claw at Fyodor’s shoulders. The Russian holds him steady,
and when he thrashes and shrieks in desperation to get away, tightens his grip until it seems
his fingers touch bone, threatening to snap it.

He jerks and writhes but can’t escape, the water burns and burns until the pain is as sharp as a
bucket of razor blades. His skin is melting. He’s sure of it.
“How long will it take for you to understand?” Fyodor’s voice is a straight line above his
jagged one, managing to remain the loudest in the room without even raising its volume.

The water shuts off and Dazai gasps for air, sinking down into the water until Fyodor hauls
him back up, head hanging. He drags Dazai’s over the edge of the tub, the edge catching and
rubbing against every rib. He tumbles to the floor on his stomach without the strength to
catch himself. “Agh!”

“How many times must I punish you before you learn?” There’s a whoosh of cold air across
his naked back as Fyodor stands. Goosebumps spread over the backs of his thighs.

A boot hooks him under his scrotum, wet and cold, dragging him up into another scorching
torrent of needles. Dazai chokes on his own cry, clawing at the floor in an attempt to get
away, unable to dislodge himself from the angle of Fyodor’s boot.

“How long must I be gone for you to realize I am your life?”

He can feel his skin tighten and shrivel under the acidic rain. His throat feels dry. His cry is
hoarse. “St….p….top….!” he tries to scream, but it’s only a whisper. His fingers drag along
the rough, water-slicked tile until they’re raw, until they bleed.

It stops again. The boot lets him down, and he sprawls, boneless, on the floor. His chest
heaves, dragging at air that’s barely there. Trembling, seeing Fyodor’s ghostly form in the
corner of his vision, he tries to think of something to say that will stop the pain from
happening a third time. But there is nothing to say. There’s no way to stop him.

Fyodor kicks him in the ribs, rolling him over. His arm hits the tub with a dull crack against
bone, his thighs flinch as he’s exposed, stripped and defenseless. Not even his bandages are
there to protect him, their soggy remains clogging the drain. All the scars on his body,
exposed to the light, they scream for protection. “…n’t…do…n’t…”

He knows what’s going to happen. He hates knowing what’s going to happen. He hates being
able to read the body language so clearly.

Fyodor is backlit with the bathroom light, shrouded in bright white, a jagged-haired
silhouette looming over him. The showerhead in his hand, flicking out. The shape of his
thumb as it flips the switch again. The raise of a booted foot, a flash as it descends, crushing
his stomach to pin him to the ground.

Then searing, unforgiving pain between his legs. His most sensitive place being burned. His
mind explodes with a million stars, his eyes swim, his body arches and his legs kick at the air.
He hears himself scream, hears it deteriorate into violent sobs, feels it scrape against his
throat. He clutches at his cock with half-paralyzed hands, trying to shield it from the
onslaught of fire, burning his hands in the process. But Fyodor grabs his wrists and jerks
them away. Dazai can’t stand it, he can’t bear it.

He struggles, sobs until he’s in mindless hysteria. It seems to continue forever. He writhes
under the press of the boot, his stomach cramps around its shape, taking his breath away.
He would rather die than endure the pain any longer. He’d rather be buried alive.

Dazai feels the agony sucking the brain from his head, pushing it into the air, making it go
somewhere else, somewhere far away, to escape. His eyes begin to roll back, he sees the
ceiling above him, twisting. Falling.

Then, it stops.

It stops.

The pain stops. The water turns off.

He can hear the hiss, as if rising from a deep ocean, it fades in. His skin, he thinks, is making
the sound. It’s probably on fire.

Dazai raises his head, dizzy and feverishly hot. He sees himself, his hands reaching for red,
burned skin. It’s splayed along his hips, his inner thighs, his cock. Fyodor’s shape comes into
focus, still faceless in the backlight, kneeling between his legs, one hand on Dazai’s knee to
hold it open. He’s speaking words, like bubbles in the air. Translucent, thin. Almost
completely indiscernible past the storm of blood in Dazai’s ears.

It doesn’t matter what he’s saying. Dazai’s losing consciousness. Throbbing all over, his head
falls back without him meaning for it to fall, and it cracks on tile.

Darkness swallows him up.

 Missing Bandages
Chapter Summary

Dazai wakes after the shower incident.

Chapter Notes

unfun fact: This chapter and the one before it were actually chapters I lost in a fucking
apple repair where they replaced something in my computer (without telling me) and
completely reset it, wiping everything I didn't have a backup of off of my computer. (and
with horrible wifi out where I am, I lost pretty much everything because it can't handle
making an entire iCloud backup.)

Yeah fuck you apple, I almost released a Kaname x Zero torture fanfic into the world
and you took it from me. >:T (Lol it's okay I probably would've deleted it myself
anyways *cries*)

Anyways, enjoy yourselves. This is a quieter, shorter chapter. I hated re-writing it

though.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When he wakes, his skin screams numbly at him. His muscles are tight and sore, clenching
with every attempt to move as if they’re going to stop him from moving at all. He blinks up
at the same ceiling he blacked out on. He feels slick, chilled tile under his back, and at least
it’s some solace that it soothes the burn between his shoulder blades.

He was left on the floor in the bathroom. Naked, in a tiny pool of water and soggy bandages.
He stares up at the ceiling, at the blinding white circle of light where the bulb hangs. He
wonders where Fyodor has gone.

Tears would be welcome, but it seems his limited supply ran out during the torture.

Dazai rolls gingerly to his side, fighting through the cramps, and swallows multiple times as
he tries to get up. He slips on the water once and collapses to his knees, trying to re-orient
himself.

When he finally makes it to his feet, he stumbles until he finds the wall with his hands.

Fyodor is not in the kitchen, when he staggers out of the bathroom hallway. He’s freezing,
hair still dripping with water, limbs quivering and overrun with goosebumps. He couldn’t
find a towel anywhere. He couldn’t find his shirt.

He wants his shirt. He feels so small without it.

He sits in the chair, and it takes a long moment of staring at the object in the center of the
table to realize that it’s a roll of bandages. It’s not a new one. Most of it’s already been used
up, but there’s enough left, maybe.

His eyelids are heavy. He has to pull together the courage to lift an arm across the table, to
pull the roll towards him.

He wraps himself back up, slowly but surely, picking off the remnants of the water-stained
gauze that sticks to scalded skin. He starts with his ankles, to get the difficult part over with.
The reaching, the bending that hurts his sore body. He wishes he had ointment for the
damaged skin on his lower torso, his inner thighs, his buttocks, between his shoulder blades.
He wishes for lots of things he cannot have.

He runs out of bandages in the middle of wrapping his right arm. The carboard tube pops free
and bounces across the floor, white gauze barely covering a scarred wrist. He looks dully at
it. His stomach twists, with hunger or with anxiety, he does not know.

He ties it off there.

When Fyodor opens the front door, Dazai is still sitting at the kitchen table. He turns his face
quickly away as their eyes meet, tucking his unbandaged arm close to his body.

He wants his shirt.

Fyodor has a plastic bag in his hand, which means he’s gone out for his regular grocery trip.
He keeps the cupboards bare and buys meals one at a time, so that Dazai cannot eat unless
Fyodor decides to buy food. Sometimes, Dazai doesn’t get to eat anything at all.

“You’re awake, I see.”

Dazai stares at the cardboard tube on the ground.

Fyodor stomps snow off his boots on the doormat. Dazai knows he’s doing it even though he
won’t turn to watch. He always does it.

“Are you hungry?”

Dazai shakes his head sluggishly. He doesn’t know why. He is very hungry.
The plastic bag thuds on the table. Dazai shrinks slightly against the back of the chair at the
closeness of the man’s presence. He’s brought the chill of snow with him, frosting the air
with his movements. It only makes the lingering wetness of his skin more difficult to bear.

“You didn’t even dry yourself off.” Fyodor’s tone is dangerous. “Is this your best attempt at
being presentable for dinner?”

“I couldn’t find a towel,” Dazai croaks. “You took them?” He only phrases it as a question
because he’s too weak to accuse the man. They both know what he did with the towels.

“Did I? I don’t recall.” The plastic crackles raucously as Fyodor rifles through, pulling out a
microwaveable carton of pelmeni—a ravioli dish. He sets a bottle of tea beside it. “I would
think you’d be capable enough of finding another way to dry yourself off, if the towels have
disappeared. But I suppose not.”

Dazai lifts heavy chestnut eyes to meet his. The deadness of his expression is enough to
resemble a glare.

There’s only one carton of food and one bottle of tea. The meal is not for Dazai, even though
his stomach pangs with a hunger so deep it threatens to make him nauseous. He must have
known that Dazai would say he wasn’t hungry. How can he see through his skull like that?

“You look horrible,” Fyodor hisses.

“It’s not my fault.”

Fyodor whips the back of his hand across Dazai’s cheek. Dazai releases a taut cry, gritting his
teeth and squeezing his eyes shut. He lowers his head.

“You know better than to talk to me like that.”

Dazai’s cheek throbs, and he blinks back water from his gaze, slumped and despondent in the
chair. The chair is uncomfortable on his burned ass. It feels numb. He wants to leave. He
wants to go somewhere by himself, to hide in the dark and hold his unbandaged arm close,
out of sight. He doesn’t want to be where Fyodor can hurt him. He wants to sleep.

“I won’t do it again,” he says raggedly.

Fyodor unwraps the pelmeni, goes to the sink to fill it with water. “Do not lie to me.” He
opens the microwave with a metal clack, puts the carton in. The numbers bleep when he
presses them. It hums as it starts.

“Sit up straighter, Dazai. You look like a sack of potatoes, hunched over like that.”

He doesn’t think to obey, but his body does it instinctively. He stiffens, guarding himself with
cupped hands. “My body hurts.”

“Something I did?”
Dazai’s brows furrow. He feels an odd ache in his throat. He studies the grooves in the table.
He doesn’t feel like he’s in any condition to argue, naked and sitting while Fyodor looms
above. Arguing takes power, takes confidence and self-possession. He has none of that,
stripped and still damp, shivering in the air. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he
whispers, shakily.

He can feel Fyodor’s burning gaze on him. The microwave beeps shrilly, making Dazai’s
hands flinch, and the man opens it to remove the food. The smell bursts out like fragrant
perfume, thick in Dazai’s nostrils, warm and beefy with the tang of salt and onion. “What do
I want you to say? It’s not as if I expect something of you. I’m merely engaging in
conversation. Is it that difficult for you to keep from causing conflict?”

His throat grinds against itself as he swallows. His stomach is as hollow as an abandoned
cave. Can small be a feeling? An emotion? Or only a sensation? He feels very small.

Fyodor sets the pelmeni down on the table. Dazai watches a droplet of condensation trickle
down the bottle of tea beside it. He’s not sure what he’s done to deserve being deprived of
food. “I’m hungry,” he says, weakly.

He dares to look up through his hair, and finds an odd expression on Fyodor’s sharp features,
something not unkind. Perhaps not kind. But a neutral, between the expression of distaste and
interest. “Yes?”

Dazai interlaces his fingers in his lap, allows some of the plea to slip into his gaze. It feels so
silly, so vulnerable when he’s naked. What does Fyodor want? He is unable to wrap his mind
around it right now. Or perhaps, it’s that he is too afraid. After being punished for pretending
to know what Fyodor wanted, the thought of causing a punishment like that again is
crippling. Knowing he doesn’t even have his shirt as a barrier for Fyodor’s eyes, knowing
that the man can look anywhere he wants, that alone hurts.

His body hurts when he pulls his bared, unbandaged, damaged arm tighter against his naked
torso. The skin of his body shivers on the surface. Don’t look.

Fyodor’s brows inch up, inked lines between the veil of his raven hair. He turns away, opens
a drawer of silverware to get a fork. He sticks it in the pelmeni. “Are you going to be good?”

Dazai’s chest tightens. He feels the hair raising on the back of his neck. Good? What is
Fyodor asking? What does he mean? What will an answer do for him? “I…” His heart begins
to climb a staircase. “…I don’t under…understand.”

“Is the question not simple enough? There are only two answers.”

No there’s not. There are never only two answers to Fyodor’s questions. His intuition, or
perhaps his instinct, prods him like an electric rod, and a sudden answer tumbles from his
lips. “Yes. Yes, I’ll be good.” His brows flinch together the moment after, veins running
hotter by the minute. He feels looked at.Amethyst eyes hollow enough to take in the full sight
of silly, weak Dazai, sitting in the chair with no clothes on, pretending he still has a shred of
humanity in him. Obeying like a child obeys his father. Like prey obeys a predator.
 Fyodor’s face gives way. Loosens, but doesn’t soften. He turns away from the table, releasing
Dazai of his watchful eyes and walking into the living room, where his cello lies beside a
fireplace that has never been lit. “Eat, then, Dazai. You’re going to need it.”

Chapter End Notes

:) love you guys, love your comments. Thanks for being with me as I write this. Oh my
gosh and special thanks to the person who left the comment wondering about what
Dazai's friends back home were thinking about all of this. Because of that comment, I
created both a chapter and a major plot point that made this story...a lot longer but also
xD (hear me out) some hopefully very dramatic scenes. Future chapters will now
contain Chuuya and Akutagawa action, my other favorites. >:D
 Unexpected Absence
Chapter Summary

Fyodor decides his sinner is being a burden to him.

Chapter Notes

Yeah I came back real quick with this next chapter XD

TW: Self-harm at the end of this one.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dazai does not remember if he falls asleep in Fyodor’s bed with him, or if he falls asleep
alone. But when he wakes up, the other side is empty.

His white shirt is folded at the end of the bed. Dazai’s chest hurts when he sees it, and he
throws back the covers, shivering in the air blowing from the overhead vent. Fyodor is not
around to ask if it’s alright to wear it, so Dazai pulls it on over his head, and lays back down
on top of the covers, curled up, feeling the material cover his skin. Somehow, being without it
makes it feel different when he has it back. Nicer. Softer. Warmer.

The pain of his burns hasn’t calmed a bit, and every time the skin between his shoulders
shifts against the material of his shirt, it feels like hot needles. But he needs his shirt. So it
does not matter that it’s excruciating to wear. He thinks some might have hit the second
degree. The one on his back, especially. But he is grateful that even though closing his legs
brings waves of nauseating pain, it’s only first-degree there and everywhere else. Like a
horrible sunburn.

He lies for a long while, and doesn’t think of anything. It’s still cold. Fyodor is still gone. But
he has his shirt back, and it smells fresh, like cotton and daisies. And the heat from his burns
spreads a little and keeps him from freezing to death.

Fyodor’s presence is suddenly apparent to him, and he doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes
until he opens them. He sees the Russian standing above him, dressed in dark clothes and
black gloves. He does not say anything about Dazai’s shirt.

“I am going away for a while.”

Dazai looks up at him from over the fists he’s pressed to his face. At first, he does not
understand. Fyodor, when he does choose to tell him he’s going out, doesn’t normally say it
quite like this. For a while.

“You will stay here.”

He always stays here. He does not go out, not ever, not even to see the sun. He isn’t sure if
he’s become agoraphobic by now or if he’s too bothered to ask Fyodor if he may.

He feels his brows crease. He’s sure there’s more. Fyodor is deliberate, he’s telling Dazai this
for a reason.

“I don’t understand,” he tells the Russian. His voice is muffled by his icy hands.

Fyodor’s face is like an ivory statue’s. Only his eyes carry what little life there is to be seen.
He does not touch Dazai. He hardly moves. “I will not be back tonight.”

“You will be back after that, though?”

“No, I will not. I am going away for a while.”

For a while.

His mind comes to a grating halt, if it was ever moving at all. He can hear his heart, ramming
his ears until he fears they will bleed. He wants to cling to Fyodor, but his body is paralyzed
in a heap on the bed. It’s a bad dream, one he cannot fix or control.

“Why?” he whispers.

“The burden of the sinner is becoming too great for me. I must take a leave to recover my
thoughts and my intentions.”

The sinner. Him. He’s the sinner. “I hate riddles,” Dazai whimpers, “please don’t talk in
riddles.” But he knows what the man means. He just wants to understand why.

“There is food in the cupboards for you while I am away. You will eat two of them a day and
drink half a bottle of tea with them, and you will keep track of it with the notepad in the
kitchen. If you try to deceive me, I will know. Do not disobey me.”

Dazai’s eyes are beginning to burn. His throat feels tight and his voice wavers when he tries
to speak. “How many days?”

“As many as I see fit.”

It hurts. It hurts more than it should. “Is this my fault?”

“Yes, Dazai.”

He tightens his fists until his fingernails make marks in his palms. His skin throbs under the
bandages. Maybe Fyodor just wants to make him cry. Maybe this is not real, maybe this is
just a game. But he must play it, or it will never end. “I tried very hard to obey.”
“But it’s quite easy to obey when you are getting what you want, isn’t it?” Fyodor says.

Getting what he wants? The oxygen in the room is shrinking into a tiny bubble. He tries to
gasp it in, but it’s difficult. He makes himself sit up, legs crossed and toes clenched. The
agony is nearly unbearable, swarming in his limbs, making him shake. He doesn’t know what
he should do, but he reaches out for Fyodor. “Don’t go,” he whimpers.

Fyodor looks at him until he feels like an infant. “You will obey while I am gone.”

Dazai’s lip trembles. He lowers his arms and swiftly covers his face. He will not cry. He will
not cry. “How many days?” he asks again, tremulously.

“I will not answer that question again.”

He shrinks.

“Do not turn up the temperature in the house while I am gone. If you disobey me in any way,
it will not go well for you when I return.”

A foreign weight pulls inside Dazai’s chest. “Will you hold me before you go?” He doesn’t
care about the pain. If he’s just held for a moment, it might make him feel better. It might be
worth it.

The floor creaks as Fyodor turns away, towards the door. “No, Dazai.”

“Please!” Dazai feels the word well up within him like a fountain of desperation, the learned
magical word that most children were taught would get them anything they wanted. It’s never
worked for Dazai. He hopes to God that it might, this time. Just once. “Please?”

Fyodor’s profile is sharp and undeterminable as he looks over his shoulder. The pitch-black
wings of his hair block his eyes. “No, Dazai.”

Dazai has never felt lonely. When he opens the cupboards in the kitchen, and sees them
stocked full with microwaveable food, he realizes this. He does not cry, but he thinks if his
heart had eyes, it would cry for him.

The house is very quiet. He makes lots of noise as he pulls out two packets of food.

It’s still very quiet.

He sets one aside, for later, and the other he prepares like he’s seen Fyodor do so many times.
It’s hard. He’s never done it before. Fyodor always does it for him.
The microwave buzzes when he turns it on, and he stares through the screen with his nose
pressed to the glass as the food goes round and round inside.

When it’s done, he goes to the fridge and finds it full of bottled tea. Every shelf, lined with
them. He takes one and only drinks half of it with his meal.

He forgets that there’s another meal to eat later today, and now he cannot drink anything with
it.

He comes close to crying again, but he’s too hollow to conjure tears. So he laughs instead.
But it sounds so very loud in the room that he thinks maybe he likes the house quiet, and he
shouldn’t make so much noise.

He finds the notepad Fyodor spoke of on the granite counter, and a pen beside it. He gets
caught up looking at the sharp tip, dabbed with a pearl of black ink. It might work inside his
neck, but it’s too painful.

For a second, he wonders if he wants to see Fyodor before he dies.

He writes down his meals in the notepad. He leaves the pen beside it.

He doesn’t go back to his room. He goes to the cupboard and the packages of food, and he
pulls them all out, gigantic armfuls of paper cups and plastic lids. He heaps them on the
kitchen table. His movements are ginger. Needles stab his back with every shift.

There’s not enough room on the table alone, so he puts more of the cartons along the
counters. He cordons them off into pairs, two by two, counting. How many days?

When he’s done, there are twenty-two pairs.

Twenty-two days.

Dazai slowly lowers himself into the chair, wounded buttocks flinching, and sits for a very
long while with his hands folded in his lap, staring at the twenty-two pairs. They stare back
from the counters and the table, mocking him, taunting him. He can hear their snickers.

He wants to run out of the house. He wants to search for Fyodor. And when he finds him, he
wants to be punished, because being punished is much better than being alone. Crying is
much better than being hollow.

Twenty-two days is too many days to be alone. Twenty-two days is too many days for the
house to be quiet.

He gathers up all the food and puts it carefully back in the cupboards, because he doesn’t
think Fyodor would like the mess, if he knew.
At midday, when the sun is like a dingy canary starburst through the grey clouds, Dazai goes
into Fyodor’s bathroom to look at his burns. The one on his back has become too painful and
tender to wear the shirt anymore, so he takes it off, gritting his teeth through the agony of it
sticking to blistering skin. He folds it ever so neatly and tucks it into the corner of the counter
for safekeeping.

He turns and looks over his shoulder, straining as well as he can to examine the damage.

It looks frightening. It makes him feel sick, just looking at it. None of the burns are as bad as
this one. The skin is mottled and dark, dark red, with angry areas beginning to blister. Any
worse and Dazai would likely get an infection. But he thinks he’s only barely escaped that
danger.

He doesn’t know what to do. It isn’t the first time he’s been burned, but there’s nothing in the
house to treat it, and he can hardly reach to touch it.

Didn’t he know a doctor, before?

Yes. Maybe.

How else would he be able to explain the one thing that comes to mind, to keep the skin
moist to make healing easier? It will likely heal in two to three weeks. That comes to mind
next.

He wishes he knew where it came from.

Nevertheless, he decides to try his luck with Fyodor’s bathroom cabinet. He finds the bottle
of ferrous sulfate pills that Fyodor has to take for his anemia, and that’s all he expects to see.

Except that there’s another product behind it, a cream. Dazai pulls it out and reads the label.
It’s antibiotic cream. There’s no reason it should be there, except if Fyodor has bought it
specifically for the burns he caused.

Dazai feels a strange tingle in his chest, realizing this.

Dazai decides, when he grows tired that night, having treated his burn as best as he could
with limited reach, to sleep in Fyodor’s room. It’s not that he’s had a separate room all this
time, but sometimes he’d been told to sleep on the couch or the floor.

He hunts in the drawer of the bedside table for the rough rope of the noose, and he doesn’t
notice until he’s closed it again that Fyodor had unlocked the drawer before he left.
He knows why. Or thinks he does. It’s becoming more and more difficult to predict the
Russian the longer he stays in his house. It somehow feels less stable without his presence
here, without the threat that he’ll return in the night and torment Dazai.

He puts the noose around his neck and sleeps with the rope trailing off the edge of his pillow,
down the side of the bed. It’s comforting that way. Maybe he’s touting the fact that Fyodor
isn’t there to pull it tight. But there’s nobody to tout it to except himself, so he isn’t sure why
he does it.

The next morning, he eats what he’s supposed to, and doesn’t forget to leave tea for the
second meal.

Halfway through the day, when the sun won’t come through the clouds in the kitchen
window, Dazai feels his throat ache. But he does not cry, only stares out the window at the
clouds and the gray, dreary light. It reminds him of Fyodor’s ushanka, fluffy and somber.

He sits by Fyodor’s cello in the evening, which always rests beside an unused fireplace,
dusted by ashes and cobwebs. The glossy Maplewood feels good on the pads of his fingers,
and the tight ridges of the strings make his nerves tingle. He wonders what it would be like to
break them, but he cannot—not when touching them is so much like touching Fyodor’s
hands.

Fyodor takes his gloves off when he plays the cello. Dazai knows this because he’s seen the
gloves lying on the coffee table when the cello is gone. But Fyodor always plays in another
room, with the door locked, and Dazai is not allowed to come in and listen, or see the hands
move across the wooden neck.

He plucks at the lowest string, so gently that it only makes a slight sound, but it bounces
around in the fireplace, muted and tender. Dazai feels his heart flutter, and he plucks the other
strings, too.

He’s never touched the cello before. He likes touching the cello.

On the fifth day, he takes a bath instead of a shower, in the hallway bathroom where Fyodor
first washed him instead of the shower in Fyodor’s room. He settles into warm water and
agony pierces him. His own cry of pain sounds oddly foreign to him—perhaps it’s been too
long since he’s heard it. Deliberately, he submerges himself in the water, and when pricks of
heat threaten his eyes, he touches them in anticipation…but they are not tears. They do not
spill.

He doesn’t stay in the bath very long.

When he gets out, overheated and groggy, bandages coming apart on the edges of the tub, he
sees himself in the mirror over the sink. He looks like a lobster, red with heat and burned in
so many places.

It hurts more than it had in the tub when he sits at the kitchen table in his shirt and fresh
bandages. The wood of the chair is harsh against his tender thighs, but at least he is warmer
now, and the pain of his burns has mostly faded except for the one on his back.

He thinks of something. After tracking his meals on the notepad, he tears a white sheet from
the middle of the book and draws a grid with numbers in the squares. He numbers twenty-
two of them, and puts an x in the first five.

This way, he can keep track of the days until Fyodor will come back.

His gut twists when he looks at all the empty squares. He’s not supposed to remember time,
or count it, and he knows Fyodor wouldn’t be happy if he knew.

But Fyodor does not know.

Days become weeks. Dazai is very aware of time, now. Maybe the Russian’s absence helps
make that sharper. When Fyodor is here, he has no need for time. Fyodor keeps track for him,
and it’s non-important, even if Dazai believed that it was in the beginning. Maybe there is no
such thing as time when Fyodor is here, but not when he’s gone.

Had he dreamt of escaping in the beginning? It’s so far away now. He’d wanted to go home,
back to the company of the white tiger, and the blonde man with glasses who’d always yelled
at him, and thought time was very important.

What were their names? Dazai forgets. Fyodor made him forget.

He wonders if he might feel sad, if he thinks about it more, and so he tries very hard. But all
he can dredge up is numb, pale flutters of apathy. It doesn’t mean anything to him that he
can’t remember.

The little grid on the ivory paper is beginning to fill with x’s. The sight of it makes Dazai
pace more often. He walks around the house, lap after lap, because he has nothing else to do
except eat his meals and take baths and pluck at Fyodor’s cello. The burn on his back heals
with more applications of the cream, and the others fade away.
He sits in front of the door for a long, long time, next to a painting on the wall depicting a
young, soft-faced boy with dark curls, leaning on his arm and gazing off at the sky. The
colors are dark and umber around him, his hat is worn, his clothes are crisp. He has a tool in
his hand, and the place where he rests is a bit of flowers and moss on a rock. His intricately
calm expression intrigues Dazai.

He does not remember examining this painting before, or finding much detail within it. But
the boy’s expression haunts him. His lips are parted, his brows are non-disturbed. It seems,
on all accounts, not an expression at all, but the lack of one.

At least, it would be, if not for the dark chocolate of his eyes.

Dazai finds himself drawn to his feet to look closer, until his fingers are against the ridged
canvas of the painting, touching the boy’s eyes. There’s a light, there—the smallest dot of
white paint, and that’s all it takes to create what Dazai sees—what Fyodor sees.

Longing.

Dazai sinks back to the floor; he feels boneless and exhausted now. He doesn’t move from his
place by the painting. He feels the day shift around him, the light fading to orange, then red,
and then cold, pale blue in a patch across the floor.

Dazai looks for other paintings around the house. The little boy is the only one of interest.
The others are broad and encompassing, women with scarved heads in the fields, men
gambling in street corners or sitting among the dust of alleyways with stolen watch chains
hanging from breast pockets.

There aren’t even watches in the paintings, Dazai realizes, only their chains, as if Fyodor had
picked them strictly for the temptation of time, and the absence of it.

Dazai records his meals, records the days, records his meals, records the days.

Time starts to blur again, despite the x’s in the grid. He can’t stop thinking of the Russian, of
how much he can’t stand the sound of his own breathing at night, alone, without the
accompaniment of Fyodor’s. He’s a melody without lyrics, a songbird without a voice, a
parched animal without a spring.
His burn turns into a scar, and he covers it with bandages. He unfolds his white shirt from the
bathroom counter and puts it on again.

Why has Fyodor cared to make it so difficult for Dazai to be away from him? It should not be
so. It is a curse, Dazai reasons. When Fyodor is here, Dazai only wants to get away from him.
When he is gone, Dazai only wants him to come back.

The grass is greener; the heart wants what it cannot have. Dazai would not be satisfied either
way.

But without Fyodor, he cannot cry. And his eyes ache every day to cry again. His body feels
so useless and hollow without it. There’s nothing more he hates than being empty. Fyodor, at
least, made him feel full, if only in bursts of sudden color that faded like fireworks.

The house seems colder, today. He checks the thermostat, and sees that the temperature is the
same.

Perhaps he is going mad.

After his meal the next morning—which is beginning to make him feel sick—Dazai marks
the x in the box and his eyes take a minute to realize what number is there in the corner.

It’s the twenty-second day.

Dazai throws open the cupboards so roughly that their metal handles clack together and the
doors bounce back.

The shelves are empty.

When he opens the fridge, the last tea bottle is all that’s left.

He sits at the kitchen table and stares at the open fridge, a cloud of cold wafting from the
refrigerator into the light.

It’s the twenty-second day.

He grows restless. His heart pounds in his ears, and will not stop. He goes to the bath and
takes a shower, thoroughly scrubbing himself. His healed skin still tingles when he touches it,
but that’s all.

He dries himself off and arranges his curls so they don’t look disheveled. He re-wraps all of
his bandages with the roll Fyodor left for him. He puts his shirt in the laundry, and sits in
front of the washer, watching it go round and round until it’s as clean as he is.
And then he sits at the kitchen table, facing the front door, and he waits.

He waits for a very long time.

Every sound startles him, down to the twig scratching the kitchen window or the air flicking
on in the vents. He hardly feels the cold anymore. He’s gotten used to trembling consistently.
Still, he sits very quietly on the chair, watching the door that will soon open.

But soon becomes further away with every hour.

The light changes. The yellow of morning gives way to the dreary grey of afternoon. Dazai
sees snow trickle past the windows in soft white flurries.

He grows restless again. He remembers that he hasn’t recorded his morning meal, so he gets
up to find the notepad. The pen is running low on ink, scratchy and faint on the paper.

There’s something wrong, when he writes it down.

He’s supposed to have two meals a day.

But the cupboards are empty. He checks again. There’s still one tea bottle with a little left in
the fridge, but no second meal. Did he count wrong? Did he eat an extra meal on a different
day? Did he forget to log what he ate?

He flips back through the notepad in frantic swipes, scanning every line, calculating the
information in his head. No, it’s all correct. Or it seems so. He’s eaten twice every day, and
drank the right amounts with it, except for the first day when he accidentally had half of the
tea with his morning portion.

His head spins. He feels like he’s floating for a moment. He sits back down on the chair with
the notepad, the numbers and the words jumbling in his head. Twenty-two pairs means forty-
four. He ate the right amounts. He didn’t forget any days. He can’t wrap his mind around any
blank-outs he may have experienced. Besides, the days are all one mass by now. He can’t
pick them apart individually.

Fyodor will understand. He must. It is only one meal. Maybe he won’t even notice. He knows
what he counted, at the beginning.

Dazai writes down the log, an evening meal. Fabricated. The cupboards are bare. He hasn’t
eaten.

But Fyodor will not know.

He puts the notepad down in the center of the table with shaky hands, and then decides that it
mustn’t go there, it’s too obvious. It’s better on the granite counter, under the shadow of the
cabinets.

He hasn’t had any black-outs. He hasn’t forgotten anything. Surely then, he counted wrong
on the first day.

Night comes. The moon peers out of the clouds to light the snow at the window, making a
little square of white on the kitchen table, dotted by tiny falling shadows of snow flurries.

Dazai still sits in his chair, legs folded under him, hands in his lap, and he watches the light
and shadow play on Fyodor’s table.

He hasn’t come back yet. But it’s the twenty-second day. He’ll be here sometime. Anytime,
now. Soon.

Soon.

Soon.

…Soon.

He does not come back.

But it’s impossible. Surely, he will? It’s the twenty-second day! Dazai has not miscalculated
anything. He hasn’t messed up his grid of days, and the cupboards are bare, now. Maybe the
moon has descended, maybe the sun has begun to rise for the twenty-third day, but it’s just
impossible.

Fyodor, surely, will be here any second now. The door will open, and he’ll come in with
snow on his shoulders and stomp the flurries from his boots, and he’ll look at Dazai and
Dazai will cry again.

He thinks about it, he plays the scene out in his head so many times that he wonders on the
last vision if it’s really real, and has to blink a few times to clear Fyodor’s ghost from his
sight.

He’s tired. But not tired enough to go sleep in the bed. Besides, it’s morning now, and how
can he sleep when Fyodor will be here soon?

His stomach starts to hurt, tossing and turning, colder than his fingers and toes. Shivering in
the chair, he refuses to take his eyes off of the door, even when the sun kisses at his face
between the branches outside the window, bathing his cheek in heat.

“Go away,” he mutters hoarsely at it, “leave me alone. Bring back the moon. The moon!”

When the moon was here, he wasn’t so cold and shaky. When the moon was here, Fyodor felt
closer.

“He’ll be here.” Even his own voice is rusty, mostly unused in twenty-two…twenty-three
days now. It lands hesitantly on his ears, asking to be let back in, accepted as his own voice.
His ears don’t exactly trust it.

The sun grows brighter, hotter, stronger.

It must be the afternoon.

Dazai gets up from his chair so suddenly that it crashes to the floor behind him. The sound
makes him flinch, even as he begins to pace in a tiny line before the table, back and forth,
back and forth. “Why isn’t he here?!”

He glares out the window at the sun, digging fingernails into his palms. Shaking with
something more intense. “He’s supposed to be here!” His heart throbs mercilessly in his
throat, his head is full of weight. “What’s wrong with him? Where is he? Doesn’t he know?”

The sun is at fault, probably. It’s not supposed to have risen this high before Fyodor came
back.

Dazai storms to the front door and puts his hands on the lock, as if to open it. But the feel of
the smooth metal under his fingers stops him dead in his tracks, and he checks himself. A
sharp, uncertain noise leaves his throat, and he draws his hands back, and turns elsewhere.
“No, no. I can’t leave if he’ll be back.”

He’s not allowed to leave.

It’s rather funny to him that talking had seemed so foreign before. Now that he’s started, he
can’t stop.

He stalks around the house, down the halls, in and out of rooms, walking off sudden energy
that seems to never run out. He mutters to himself, words of encouragement in one breath,
cursing himself in the next. Obviously, he’s messed up. Fyodor is testing him, or perhaps
punishing him.

Is it the missing meal he’d logged? That must be it. Fyodor knows, because he always knows.

No, it’s the cello. He wasn’t supposed to touch it, maybe, and Fyodor has decided to stay
away longer because of it.

He regrets everything. He pulls at his curls and growls and grinds his forehead against the
wall, and hates himself for doing anything out of the ordinary. Because anything could have
been why Fyodor isn’t back, and it’s his fault, and he could have prevented it if only he’d
been smarter.
Eventually, his energy runs out, when he sees the sun setting. No, not just his energy. All the
rest of him, too. His mind, his heat, his agitation. It’s all sucked up into a vacuum somewhere
out where the sun drops behind snowy hills, pulling in the night and the stars.

Dazai sinks into a heap on the living room floor by Fyodor’s cello. He’s too scared to pluck at
the strings. He rests his cheek against the curve of maple wood and runs his hand across it’s
back, soothing himself with the motion.

He’s so very tired, now. He should be hungry. After all, his evening meal packet was missing.
But he’s not hungry, not at all. He’s numb again. He doesn’t want to think about Fyodor
anymore.

His skin throbs, and throbs, and throbs under the bandages until it’s all that Dazai can think
about, the crying out of his skin. It’s painful. He has to release it.

He goes for the kitchen drawer, and finds a pair of scissors. He takes them back with him to
the bathtub. He sits in the empty basin, looking down at his bare, bandaged legs, and the red
handle of the scissors in his hand. And then he cuts, first the bandages that he’d wrapped so
nicely for Fyodor.

And then his skin. He cuts that, too. He gets a little bunch of it between the blades, right
above his knee, and he snips it open. He watches the blood well up, warm and thick on his
hand when he touches it, then splitting into baby rivers that run along his thigh and drip into
the bathtub.

One isn’t enough. His skin throbs more. His eyes water fiercely from the pain, and he wishes
—gods, he wishes!—that they were tears. But they are nothing without Fyodor.

He pinches and cuts again and again, slicing through his legs and then his forearms when
they demand his attention, too. He doesn’t like pain. No, not at all. He hates pain. But he also
must suffer it, because it’s the only way to stop his skin from shrieking.

It stops his mind. It calms him. Seeing the blood run in crimson-black rivulets is comforting.
Maybe this will bring Fyodor back to him. He’s paying his sinner’s debt, and so the burden
won’t be so heavy on the god’s shoulders, now.

He does not snip his wrists. The backs of his forearms, and his torso too, and the edges of his
elbows, but not anywhere dangerous. He wants to see Fyodor before he dies, and when he
does die someday, he wants to go out spectacularly, like a firework bursting in the sky,
shimmering and warm, not cold and lonely.

Who is he kidding? He’ll never get to die that way.

He bleeds in the tub for a long time. It hurts so much that Dazai can barely think, and it’s nice
that way. He likes not being able to think.

He holds his knees to his chest, and rests his face in them, smudging himself with wet blood,
trembling in the weakness that overcomes him from blood loss.
 He drifts in and out of awareness. His mind is only a collective screen of white static,
buzzing and empty.

Eventually, as if out of a great black hole, he comes to himself again and the mess he’s made.
More rational now, he takes off the white shirt that he’s made so bloody, and lays it over the
side of the tub. He didn’t mean to ruin it, but he wasn’t thinking.

He’s thirsty. His body shakes. He drinks a little water from the tub faucet, and wishes there
was food to eat. He feels so horribly empty. Of food, of thought, and now of blood.

He showers in lukewarm water, to wash away the partially-dried mess sticking to his body. It
slides away and dissolves under the flow.

When he gets out, his body feels like it’s on fire, every movement sending a jolt of biting
pain. He walks tenderly, tense and stiff, whimpering softly and wishing he’d gone a little
easier on himself.

He can’t wear his shirt and he doesn’t feel up to washing it. It’s difficult to re-wrap all the
bandages. He finds himself oddly grateful that the roll doesn’t run out. It seems the most
important thing to him.

When he finishes, he walks unsteadily into Fyodor’s room, supporting himself on the wall as
he goes. Any minute, his legs might give out and send him crashing to the floor. He’s weak,
so weak, like he usually is after doing these things.

But that’s silly. Of course he is. He’s lost so much blood.

He lies down on the bed. Now he must take care of himself, and not think of Fyodor, and get
to sleep.

For now, Fyodor is not coming back.

Chapter End Notes

I had a bit of a great time writing this one. It all flowed out one night, after I researched
the five stages of grief and thought "wouldn't it just be painful if Fyodor left Dazai all on
his own and didn't come back when he knew Dazai would figure out when he
SHOULD?" heheheheheh

I like keeping our cruel Russian mysterious, but I'll say that in this chapter, Fyodor
wanted to make the point that Dazai needs him to be survive. Common abuser tactic.
Toxic relationships 101. But then again, I didn't want to hurt or bore my readers by
keeping Fyodor away for too long, so never fear, he will return in Chapter 6!
Do leave me your yummy comments. I eat them up like chocolates. :) <3
 Delayed Return
Chapter Summary

Fyodor comes back. Dazai isn't sure what to do with himself.

Chapter Notes

Much thanks to my beta reader on this one, but also apologies to you guys because I re-
wrote the chapter to make it better, so it took longer to post! :) Please enjoy.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai opens his eyes, the window in Fyodor’s room is dark, and there are stars
blinking back at him.

He doesn’t want to get up. He wants to lie down forever. Or until Fyodor comes back, if he
ever does. There’s nothing to do when he gets up, except walk around the house and take a
shower, and change his bandages, and touch the cello.

And now there’s no food, and his stomach is so empty that it’s eating itself. Maybe two days
have gone by, maybe one, maybe five. It doesn’t really matter to him. The grid on his notepad
means nothing. The numbers mean nothing. The absence of food means nothing. There’s
only the sickening reality that Fyodor predicted exactly what he’d do, and made sure Dazai
could not uncover his intentions. He'd managed to catch Dazai off-guard.

Eventually, he gets up, because he can’t go back to sleep.

Well, not right away. He stays in the room for a while, sitting on the edge of the bed as if he
might get up, if he can only overcome the cold that grips him when his feet brush the carpet.
What is there on the other side of that door for him? Nothing. There is no reason to get up. If
he gets up, he’ll only exit to an empty array of rooms, gaping at him like the missing eyes of
a rotting skull. What is this house without the Russian who owns it? What is it without his
smell, without the velvet timbre of his voice, without the pad of his felt boots on the
hardwood?
He can’t stand the sounds he makes anymore. Even the intake and exhale of his breathing
sounds lonely. The rustle of sheets, the gentle stick of the soles of his feet along the same
hardwood Fyodor walked, they’re only a reminder that he’s alone. Isn’t it understandable that
he wants to stay in bed and go back to sleep?

He just can’t sleep.

At some point, he makes his toes press into the carpet, until he’s able to breathe steadily
enough to handle the chill. Until his legs are steady enough to support him, when he levers up
from the bed.

He makes for the door like a wounded animal, shaking and weak. He gets his hand around
the knob with considerable difficulty. It’s cold as ice against his fingers, almost as cold as
Fyodor’s skin. He goes out into the hall, and limps for the kitchen.

When he comes around the corner, there’s a figure in white sitting in the living room. He’s
wearing a ushanka; his inky hair is like raven’s wings. When he turns his head, eyes of
amethyst fix intently on Dazai. And he is suddenly certain that the world stops rotating.

“Good evening,” Fyodor says.

What little strength he had goes out of Dazai’s legs, and he sinks to his knees on the floor,
and covers his face with his hands. Nothing happens right away. Only the shock, sucking him
dry.

There’s a long, deathly silence, like a whale’s stomach. Hollow. Damp.

“Dazai.”

The sound of Fyodor’s voice after so long makes his spine tingle with warmth. Has he missed
it, or dreaded its return? He wishes it were the latter. He wants to speak back, he wants to
move, but all he can do is kneel there and breathe shallow, labored breaths.

His throat tightens; he feels dizzy. There’s sharp, biting liquid in his eyes. His lip begins to
tremble, and he realizes too late that he’s truly going to cry, because his god, his master, is
back. “Fyodor—” he whispers. And maybe it’s the first time he’s said that name without
gritting it out.

“Come. Why are you kneeling there on the floor?” The voice is soft. “Come up here with
me.”

Dazai wants to obey, he wants to be beside Fyodor, he wants to be in his arms. But he can’t
move from where he’s collapsed, and his shoulders are shaking with sudden, heaving sobs.
There are tears, burning his skin more than the cuts he’d given himself. But it feels good, it
feels so good. Because he’s crying. Perhaps it’s hollow in his chest, where there should be
thralling heat and blooming feelings, but there is nothing. Not right away. It’s a flash of
lightning, blinding, leaving everything white, taking time to fade from his eyes.
“Dazai…” Fyodor’s voice, above him, is closer. Dazai almost mistakes his tone for genuine
sympathy, and for a minute he’d like to believe it is.

He feels the heat of the Russian’s presence in front of him, crouching to his height. He looks
up through his fingers, ashamed that he’s crying, yet somehow relieved, too. His vision is too
bleary to make out more than the steady gaze of his eyes. He’s taking off his ushanka, putting
it aside. He’s reaching out for Dazai.

“Come. You look so weak.”

“I—” Dazai hiccups, and doesn’t go on, because the sobs interrupt him. Fyodor’s arms
envelop him, and he grasps blindly at them, clinging tightly. They feel so warm, after not
feeling them for so long. Any body is warmer than empty space.

He’s lifted against the Russian’s body, not quite carried, but supported enough to be dragged
to the couch, where Fyodor sits him down against the cushion and studies him.

Dazai won’t let go of his arm, holding the gloved hand to his cheek and weeping into it. His
brows contract so tightly that it makes the muscles ache, and just when he thinks he might be
able to stop crying, the thought that Fyodor lets him keep hold of his hand brings a fresh new
spring of sobs.

He’s not sure what it is, the intrusive thoughts that begin flooding as the lightning fades.
Thoughts telling him he should be angry, he should be distant, he shouldn’t let Fyodor coddle
him like a pet. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe it’s a false sense of self-worth. Fyodor left him, he
left for so long, and now he comes back acting as if Dazai should thank him for it.

It does not matter, none of that. Logic does not matter. And perhaps that’s what confuses him.
He doesn’t care that he’s been mistreated or tricked or starved. Fyodor is back, now, and
those things can be put behind him. He can smell Fyodor’s alien scent, he can hear the man’s
breathing, he can touch the man’s body. He is not alone, now. He is not alone, and that is why
he cannot be angry. He’s going to be fed. He’s going to be tended to, if he’s lucky.

The couch dips, Fyodor’s weight as he sits beside Dazai. Dazai keens toward him, and
Fyodor speaks softly, directing his head down. “Here, in my lap. Let me soothe you.”

He feels the pillow of Fyodor’s thick clothing under his cheek, and he melts into it,
whimpering nonsense, words he can’t even process before they spill out with the tears. Words
he’s not even sure Fyodor will understand. “You’reback, I thoughtyouweregone, I
didn’twantyoutogo…I thought…you weren’t coming back!”

Fyodor draws his hand out of Dazai’s shaky grasp, and just as he whines miserably, he feels
fingers in his hair, and he shudders. It’s a new feeling. Nobody touches his hair. Fyodor, most
of all, has never touched his hair. Grabbing and wrenching and pulling hair is a different
thing than touching.

The movement is subtle, but Fyodor doesn’t have to do much. It floods him with comfort,
with relief, and the violent sobs begin to calm, descending into hitching breaths. The wave
subsides, eventually small gasps are the only sounds.
His tears slow. The crying doesn’t last long, but it’s a baby step. He got to cry again, and that
alone was alleviating.

Fyodor simply sits, still and quiet, with Dazai’s head in his lap. Every so often, his thumb
brushes through Dazai’s curls, or against the back of his neck, or over the edge of his ear.

“Why do you cry, Dazai?” There’s something unmistakably fonder about his voice than
before he’d left. Or maybe it’s just that he hasn’t heard Fyodor speak to him in so long.

“I don’t know,” he answers, his voice congested and thick in his throat. He sniffles and wipes
his face.

“You know.”

Dazai only lies there, exhausted and trembling. He can’t think enough to analyze himself.
Fyodor is back. His voice is here with him. How is he supposed to do anything else but hold
onto him and close his eyes? How is he to bring himself to have a conversation, or uphold the
anxiety of being interrogated? He just wants to wait, until he feels in control, until the shock
of Fyodor’s return fades. Then he can speak again. Then he can find the right words to say.

“Are you pleased to see me?” Fyodor asks.

He should know that Fyodor will never let him simply sit in silence, being comforted. There
is always an ulterior motive, why should that change? He nods against the man’s thigh,
sniffling.

Fyodor’s fingers shift along the side of his neck. They slide down his bare arm, over his
elbow, until they clasp his wrist. It’s sore, still, and Dazai flinches as Fyodor pulls it up from
where it rests. As he examines it, Dazai turns to see why, still fighting through the fog that
lingers in his head.

There’s a faint crisscross of blood stains running up them. When he glances at the rest of his
bandages, they match. Oh. He’s not changed them out for clean ones, yet. How…
unpresentable of him. Will Fyodor reprimand it? His nerves tickle along his arm, the inside of
his elbow.

Fyodor turns him over a little in his lap, to make Dazai face him, and he fingers the edge of
the bandages as if he might pull them all off. He suddenly feels as if all the cuts he’d made on
his body are lighting up like fluorescent neon tubes, calling to Fyodor to see what he’s done.
Dazai stiffens, fighting every urge to recoil when Fyodor pulls on the gauze, unveiling the
first cut, jagged and frayed along his skin. The amethyst eyes on the result of his loneliness
feels like being stripped of all his skin until the muscle shows. Raw. Unpresentable. Foolish,
even.

Fyodor’s eyes remain fixed on the bandages for a moment. Then they slide towards Dazai,
expectant.

He swallows, feels it push against his throat, against the bandages there. “I missed you,” he
whispers. He doesn’t mean for it to sound so weak, so dependent. But he thinks that Fyodor
likes his dependency, so why not try to please him? The longer he’s exposed, the more he can
feel his heart shuddering. The fog obscures the logic, and the anger he should feel moves ever
further from his thoughts, until there is nothing left to defend himself with.

Fyodor glances at him. He pulls Dazai’s wrist to his mouth, he speaks so that his breath runs
along the exposed cut. “You should be punished for it…” The coral, petal-softness of his lips
press against the open wound, sending a shard of glass through his veins. “…for hating
yourself so much.”

Dazai is certain his heart is crumbling away within his chest, becoming boulders heavy
enough to weight his lungs. It’s an act, isn’t it? “But you hate me. I am worthless, even in
your existence.”

“To hate requires emotion. If I hated you, you would be dead.” The words are simple. The
meaning is not.

“To hate me is to keep me alive. To hate me is to refuse me death.” His voice trembles. “You
know this.”

Fyodor smiles so subtly that it’s difficult to discern behind the shape of his hand, and Dazai
feels his fingers twitch and the breath stall in his throat as he longs for another kiss. Fyodor
knows this, too.

“But,” Dazai begins, “why did you leave? Why did you take so long to return?”

Fyodor looks at him for a long moment, his gaze dusky enough to look like a sunset. “I never
told you when I would return, did I? Did you try to add up how long I should be gone? Did
you count the resources I left for you? I thought you might, when I structured the days for
you. Of course, I did not think you would so blatantly turn against my rules. There is no such
thing as time, here.”

Dazai feels the sudden need to avoid his eyes. He has already slipped. Now he stands on the
edge of a very great precipice, and doesn’t know what lies below him. In his distress at
Fyodor’s delayed return, he’d not thought to get rid of the calendar on the notepad, or realize
that Fyodor would know he’d expected the return on a certain day. “I…”

“I saw what you made on the notepad paper. Both of them.”

…Both? The confusion that word sparks in him wipes away the shame he should be feeling.
He’s still so disoriented. He is in no condition to deal with all of this.

Fyodor puts Dazai’s hand back down to rest. Dazai doesn’t want him to let go. “Was it that
easy to forget you are in my reality, and not your own?”

His chest hurts. His head pounds with the trickery of Fyodor’s statements. He knows he
should be on the alert, he knows he should be fighting back, but he can’t find the mental
capacity to find the right words. So the defense comes out instead.
“I missed you,” he says, weakly. Because he did, and that’s what matters, and he doesn’t want
to think about the other, complicated things. His fingers toy with the unraveled bandage until
it covers his slashed skin. “I missed you.”

Fyodor looks at him, and his eyes, though chilled, begin the process of deepening to
something less frightening, less hollow. “Did you.” There’s something vaguely different
about the tone, but Dazai is too exhausted to understand it. He’s just glad for the way
Fyodor’s eyes have changed.

“I wanted to know how many days,” Dazai says, quieter. He closes his hand around his
wounded wrist, slowly, firmly.

“And I had told you it was not important.”

He twists away in Fyodor’s lap to further avoid his eyes. His chest quickens with breath. “I’m
sorry.” The deepening of Fyodor’s eyes doesn’t mean he’s safe. And now is no time to handle
a round of pain.

Gloved fingers touch just under his jaw, and Dazai clenches his teeth in reflex, holding
himself very still. “Hmm.” Fyodor runs his hand down Dazai’s throat, fingering his
collarbone, tracing the exposed skin of his chest between bandages. “Where is your shirt?”

Dazai closes his eyes. “It got dirty.”

“Dirty?”

“Bloody.”

“I see,” Fyodor says.

“Where did you go?” Dazai asks, shifting in discomfort under the tease of Fyodor’s
touch. The last thing he wants to do is talk, but if he has to, he might as well try and alleviate
his mind from the thousands of questions boiling there.

“That is of no consequence.”

His brows pinch as he looks up at the man. “I know, but…”

Fyodor shakes his head, his gaze stern and final. He reaches further down, under Dazai’s
back, cupping his bottom. Dazai’s toes curl and he locks up. “Ghh—” His back arches a
fraction, involuntarily. The shock is enough to clear up some of the fog. He can hear better,
see better, take in Fyodor’s body language better.

“What did you do while I was gone?”

His foot slips on the edge of the precipice. Pebbles clatter down into a great blackness. “I did
—what you told me t-to,” Dazai says, his voice strained.

“Did you touch my cello?”

“No.” The word springs out of him on cold air, ice from his gut.

“No? Your fingerprints are on my cello.”

Heat, the uncomfortable, blushing sort of heat, rises in him at once. Fyodor knows. Fyodor
always knows. It’s strange how easy it is to choke up when Fyodor is with him. Dazai presses
his palms against his cheeks. They’re burning. Fyodor’s hand is squeezing him, where he’d
rather not be squeezed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Ёлки-палки,” Fyodor huffs in exasperation, his fingers digging into the handful of Dazai’s
ass, “do you think an apology will suffice? Do you think that is all I want to hear from you?
How many times must I repeat myself?”

The more Dazai says those words, I’m sorry, the more they become a sort of habit, an easier
response than anything else. Apologizing means he doesn’t have to think, he doesn’t have to
answer. And this time, with every vein opening to a flush of adrenaline, he sees clearly a
reaction to those words, the way the sun sets in Fyodor’s features, plunging it into night. It
fascinates him, and perhaps he’s scared, too. He’s never seen this before. It’s like the phrase
is a trigger.

Fyodor abruptly releases him. Dazai has to be careful about thinking. Fyodor always knows
when he’s thinking.

Gloved hands roughly pull Dazai out of Fyodor’s lap and into a sitting position. He whines,
softly, uncertainly. His ears tingle.

“Get off of me. Sit on the floor.”

Dazai keeps his eyes on his feet and quickly does as he’s told, but there’s an undeniable ache
rising up inside of his stomach, and it’s making him burn for Fyodor’s contact. This is new.
Before he burned because of the Russian’s contact. Now he burns in the absence of it.

This is not a nice feeling. He doesn’t like how reckless it makes his thoughts.

Sitting cross-legged near Fyodor’s boots, he picks at his fingers and stares at the black laces.
Waiting. Quivering.

Fyodor rearranges himself on the couch, until he’s leaning on the arm, propping his face in
his hand. He gazes down at Dazai, a slave at his feet. A sinner. A disposable. “Are you doing
it on purpose now? Why?”

He means apologizing. Dazai isn’t exactly doing it on purpose…just consciously, as of a few

minutes ago. When he says it, Fyodor’s features shift like the wings of a butterfly. Hardly.
Gracefully. But noticeably. There’s something about the word, something that bothers
Fyodor, or interests him, or perhaps unnerves him. He decides, startlingly, to tell the truth.
“Your face looks different, when I say it.”

Fyodor studies him. Dazai imagines can hear the snow melting on the kitchen window,
despite that it’s in another room. And then, as per his usual routine, Fyodor changes the
subject. “Tell me why you touched my cello.”

“Do you not like it when I say I’m sorry?”

The couch squeals as Fyodor leans forward, his knives for eyes carving into Dazai’s, making
him shrink back. “I come back to find you have logged your meals improperly, that you’ve
attempted to recreate time, and that you’ve marked your skin without my permission.”

The last detail startles Dazai, because why would he care about his cutting habits? But
Fyodor continues too quickly.

“I had the mercy to delay your punishment, to examine your intentions first, and this is how
you repay me? You tread thin ice. It would benefit you to watch your step.”

His ears ring as if Fyodor has just screamed at him. Dazai kneads his hands in his lap, feeling
colder, more naked. Slowly, he becomes more aware of his exposure, his position on the
floor, the ache in his bones for resumed contact with Fyodor. Even if the contact is painful,
even if it’s punishment. His chest rises and falls with shallow breaths.

Why does his body yearn for Fyodor? It makes no sense to him.

“I-I touched it because you touched it,” he offers shakily. He searches the man’s face for
acceptance, for the spark he’d seen only a few times there. There is nothing. Not even a
blink.

“What does that mean?”

Dazai shakes his head, first a little, then more as he thinks of it himself. “I don’t know.”

“But you knew I wouldn’t have liked for you to touch it. Or did you think you were worthy
of touching it because I did?”

“No, no that’s not it,” Dazai spits out, having trouble forming words around a tightening
throat. His limbs are shot through with adrenaline. He knows the tension is rising in Fyodor,
and it will come to a peak, soon, if he doesn’t respond correctly. He can feel it, buzzing in the
air like bumblebees between them.

“If you know what it is not, then you know what it is. Tell me.”

Dazai makes a soft noise, unable to be still on the floor, shifting and swallowing. “I don’t. I
don’t know that. I just know what it isn’t. Please—”

“That word.” Fyodor looms over Dazai, his shadow like dark water. “What emotion is
making you use that word?” One gloved hand hovers on the very edge of the man’s knee.

“I don’t feel,” Dazai insists, too loudly. His arms begin to tremble. His neck is cold. His
forehead is damp. “I don’t.”

Fyodor smiles a strange, hollow smile. “Your eyes are liars, Dazai. Your tears are not. I make
you feel.”
Dazai remembers when he was in the bath, staring at his rippling, broken reflection, seeing
the pain there. How he’d known then what Fyodor wanted. How Fyodor had silenced him
then, as if it were wrong to know. But not now. Now, he wants to share it.

It comes into sudden clarity, a faint writing brought into the light. This is Fyodor’s triumph,
his power, his motivation, his intention, his reason. He makes Dazai feel. And that is why he
went away, and stayed too long, and came back too late. That is why he brought Dazai here,
and erased who he was, and stripped him of time. To push, to stab, to stifle, to strangle him
until he felt.

It shouldn’t have worked. It shouldn’t now. Except it does.

Dazai thinks Fyodor must be the most terrifying demon in the world. He is certainly no god.

He sinks back, shoulders lowering, face blank as he looks up at the Russian. The word is
necessary, when he speaks it, even if he doesn’t expect an answer.

“Why?”

It floats between them, it drifts away. It dissolves into the frigid air. The buzzing has stopped.

Dazai imagines he can see Fyodor’s breath when the man lets it spill from curved lips. “You
are fascinating, when you feel.”

Dazai wonders with a jolt how much of their interactions have purely been fashioned to make
him feel. He wonders how many things that Fyodor said were lies, if he truly believed Dazai
was a sinner and that he was god. He wonders what has been real about any of this. But
maybe it doesn’t matter, not at all.

But if the man only wants to make him feel, then why? Why is it pain and suffering he wants
Dazai to feel? Is it something he’s done to the Russian before his memories were taken away?
Was it something he did before coming here? Or being brought here? Or however he ended
up in this demon’s house?

“Why do you make me feel only bad things?” Dazai asks him, a little feebler than the last.

Fyodor leans slowly back, until the couch is supporting him again, and his elbow is resting on
its arm. “You must start with the bad to earn the good. That is why. The bad, the negative,
comes easier, more naturally.” He touches his chin, gloved bones for fingers. He slides a
thumb towards his lips, then pulls it away, as if he’s attempting to stymy a reflexive habit of
some sort.

Start with the bad. Start?

“You’re implying that…” Dazai hesitates, he loses the words on his tongue. Is he afraid to
say it aloud?

“I know what I am implying.”

 That you will make me feel the good things, too. He is afraid to say it. He releases a
shuddering breath. Good things. Fyodor might make him feel good things, soon.

Fyodor does not interrogate him further.

Chapter End Notes

All your lovely praises, predictions, muses, and general excitement have given me
SOOOO much motivation for writing this, and I am so grateful to all of you for doing
that for me. Seeing those email notifications that you guys have left comments are the
highlights of my day. 😩 Love you all so very much.

Oh and Chuuya and Akutagawa are officially entering the story in Chapter 9, as well as
cameos from other members of the Port Mafia and ADA!
 Painful Lies
Chapter Summary

Fyodor confronts Dazai about something he found in the notepad he left for Dazai.
Dazai doesn't remember it. Fyodor does not believe him.

Chapter Notes

Hiiiii I am finally back with the next chapter, I'm sorry it took me so long! My beta
reader told me that this was a chapter I needed to let sit for a little while and then come
back and edit. So I did, and I think he was very right in saying so. The intensity of it
needed that. Thanks for hanging in there with me, and even though you might not
particularly *enjoy* this chapter, I do hope you'll find my writing and portrayal of it to
be well-done! <3

Read carefully, my loves.

TW: Extreme and graphic rape, violence

(if you are someone who can handle scenes like this, but only with a comfort scene at
the end of it, I would say wait until the next chapter comes out. There is only slight
comfort or relief in this one, it might go over better when you have the next chapter to
read.)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

They sit in the taciturn, dim living room until the sun shines again, in complete silence.
Fyodor simply picks up a book to read, and Dazai watches him read it, letting himself process
the fact that it’s not some dream, that the man is truly back, that he’s here. And nothing bad
has happened thus far.

He watches the light paint shards of luminance down the bridge of Fyodor’s nose, along the
sharp edge of his jaw, in the silken sweep of hair against his shoulders. It turns strands violet-
black, it glimmers like his eyes which move so tenderly across the book’s pages. If only he
could be looked at like that, like the pages of the man’s book.

But what is he imagining? He should not think such foolish thoughts. He shouldn’t be
attached to Fyodor. He’s just relieved, probably, relieved that his provider is back to bring
him food, to keep him company, to give him another voice besides his own to listen to.
Another body to keep him warmer at night. He almost laughs at himself. Right.
Dazai goes to bed, without Fyodor, because he’s exhausted and processing, and the Russian is
not interested in sleep. The dark curtains are easily drawn to block out the morning, and the
room is as empty and murky as an eel’s cave.

He does not get much sleep.

Dazai wonders if he’s slipped out of reality when he wakes to the smell of bacon, but the
sheets underneath him are undeniably real.

“You slept through the day and the night,” Fyodor tells him when he comes into the kitchen.

He’s standing at the stove with a pan’s handle in his grip, sizzling and crackling with heat.
Dazai wants to put his hands in it. There’s another pan, on the back, cooking eggs.

Dazai sits numbly in the chair, fingers and toes tingling. “I was tired,” he says, and his words
are white in the air.

“Your body is frailer than it was before I left. You’ve lost a large amount of blood.” The tone
is accusatory. Fyodor’s eyes remain on the stove. They still glitter, in the streak of sunlight.

Dazai stares dully at the man. Then, he abruptly avoids Fyodor’s indirect question with a
different subject. “Did you come to bed?”

“I didn’t.” Fyodor staves at the bacon with a spatula. “I hope you did not stain my carpet.”

Dazai is quiet momentarily. “I bled in the tub.”

“Good.”

His stomach slides down into his toes, and he doesn’t know why. He sits in silence, listening
to the pop and sizzle of grease, the tap of the spatula against the pan. He studies the gloved
hands that remain so impeccably clean, avoiding every stain and splash of liquid.

The bacon and eggs are not for him, he finds out. They’re scooped onto one plate, and that
one plate is laid before Fyodor’s chair.

Dazai gets up to leave. He can’t stand the smell of bacon.

“I did not dismiss you.”

“I did not ask to be,” he spits back on impulse. He feels childish saying it. He feels weak
standing there, hesitating, not leaving. He feels silly for having come to the kitchen expecting
something in the first place.

He hasn’t eaten in so long. His stomach hurts.

When he turns around, Fyodor is looking steadily at him. He doesn’t have to say it. The
words are in his eyes. Would you like to be punished, then?

Dazai’s fingers throb.

“Come, Dazai. If you sit beside my chair, I will let you eat, too.”

All he’s had is tea and microwaveable porridge, for weeks. For twenty-two days. He tells
himself that it doesn’t matter what he has to do to eat, as long as he eats. So, he obeys. He
begins to sit back down on the chair.

“Not there,” Fyodor says, and Dazai is briefly reminded about the last time he ate not there,
in the chair. “On the floor.”

Like a dog, he should have said.

Dazai quietly kneels, his limbs fragile and tremoring on his frame. His head settles near
Fyodor’s thigh. It makes his stomach churn.

“No protest this time?” A glove threatens to touch his hair, but only brushes it, merely a
phantom of the previous time. Dazai stares intently at his lap. His neck prickles with the
tease. “Maybe I should leave you alone more often. You argue less.”

Dazai’s throat clenches. “Please don’t.”

“Please…” Fyodor echoes, softly. “Hmm.” His fingers slide under Dazai’s chin, they lift his
face until he’s looking up into Fyodor’s, the skin under his eyes tightening in response.

Dazai shouldn’t have said please. It gives Fyodor so much power.

Fyodor drops a sliver of bacon, hot and steaming, on the floor, right past Dazai’s lifted face.
“Eat.”

Why had he expected to be hand-fed? Fyodor surely knew, and that’s why he dropped it
instead. Fucking Russian. Dazai wants to hate him. He closes his eyes, he feels Fyodor let go
of his chin.

He lowers his head and picks up the bacon from the floor. It doesn’t matter. He’s starving. He
can worry about these sort of things at another time. He must keep Fyodor happy. He must
protect himself. He must try to…survive. Why? Yes, why should he, anyways? What is his
goal, if not to escape?

He does not want to escape. But he isn’t certain why. Where would he go? He’s seen out of
Fyodor’s window. He’s seen the stretching white blanket and the flat horizon. There is
nothing, there is no one. No one that would stand against Fyodor. The man is too smart.

Fyodor goes to the market, or some place for food. But how far is it from here? And if he got
there, who would care about him? This is Russia! Dazai is not from Russia, he’s from…

From…

Somewhere else. But not Russia.

How strange, that he doesn’t care to know or think about who he was before Fyodor. Of
course, why should it matter to him, what he was before? He is stuck here, now. Here, he
must find a way to survive, to keep himself comfortable, until something changes. Until he
can find another plan.

Fyodor did not feed Dazai much at all. But he doesn’t realize until later, when his stomach is
unsettled and he’s lying back against the cushions on Fyodor’s couch, that he’s withheld the
food for good reason.

If Dazai had eaten any more, he’d be retching in the sink.

Fyodor sits across the room in a chair to himself, by a bookcase Dazai had only briefly
explored when left alone for the twenty-something days. He’s reading again, a book with a
red cover, the thin sound of paper being turned filling the space between them. There should
be the popping of a fire in the hearth, at least something normal about the environment.
Something warm. But the fireplace is as dry and gaping as ever.

“I found,” Fyodor begins, and waits until Dazai’s eyes are on him to continue, “something
interesting that you made while I was gone.”

His stomach churns, it ties itself into a knot. His mind speeds through the last few weeks in
fast-play, examining it for mistakes he could have made. But he doesn’t want Fyodor to see
the panic that springs to his breast, so he furrows his brows to cover it. Lamely, flatly, he
asks, “You did?”

Fyodor does not look up from the red book. “I did.” He takes a slip of something that’s
unmistakably paper from the notepad, and slides it across the coffee table between them.

Dazai looks at it from where he sits. He does not want to touch it. He does not want to move.

It’s a picture—or something like a picture, maybe—that somebody has scribbled out in the
pen that Fyodor left for Dazai. A face with a black bar across the eyes. Hands, reaching,
skeletal. And the word “please” written everywhere. Over and over, in different shapes and
sizes, buzzing on the paper like carpenter bees, pleading, pleading…

“This isn’t mine.”

“Oh?” Fyodor laughs, the bark of a dying dog. “Then I suppose the monster under your bed
did it.”

Dazai stares at him across the room. His fingers trace the edge of the bandage at his knuckles.
The last word he said to Fyodor before he left was please. But no, he didn’t draw that.
Because he doesn’t remember drawing it.

He never blacked out during the twenty-something days. He never lost any memories.
No. He didn’t. Even though there was a meal missing, he didn’t. He couldn’t have.

“It’s a very nice picture,” Fyodor says. He’s mocking him, even if the tone of voice isn’t there
to indicate it.

“No, it’s not.” Dazai is much better at mimicking emotional tones of voice. He used to do it
all the time, back before Fyodor, when there was the white tiger and the man with glasses and
schedules.

Fyodor’s eyes slant over the edge of the red book. A translucently thin page wafers to the
other side.

Dazai pulls the hem of his shirt a little further over his crotch.

“If you cannot tell me the truth, how will you learn to obey me?” Fyodor asks mildly.

“I do know how to tell the truth.” Dazai’s skin itches.

“But you did not draw that picture.”

“No.”

“And, I suppose, you did not touch my cello.”

Dazai’s chest goes hollow. His pulse begins to whir in his ears like the flying chain of a
bicycle.

“You must think it’s very easy to deceive me, Dazai.”

A single breath runs from his throat. “I don’t,” he whispers. “Of course I don’t.”

“Then surely, you’re not implying that I’m the one who drew that picture, only to trick you
into thinking it was you?”

Dazai blinks rapidly. He holds a ginger hand to his temple to steady himself, the throbbing
under his hair. He shakes his head. “But I don’t remember…”

“Why did you write please? Does that word mean something to you? Did you think it would
do something to me, if you wrote it enough times?”

He’s getting dizzy. Or maybe the world is just turning that fast. He wishes Fyodor would
leave him alone, in peace, just for one day. So he wouldn’t be like this, so he wouldn’t live
every moment expecting to be accused of something new, so he wouldn’t crave the next
moment he’d be allowed to cry. “I’m s…I’m…”

He’s tired. He’s sick. That’s all.

“I just don’t feel good,” he hisses.

Fyodor is silent for a long time. Then, he gets up from the chair, and approaches, and Dazai
ducks his head in fright, scrambling to shield himself with upraised arms. “You don’t feel
good?” The familiar gloved grip catches him by the wrists. Dazai’s vision crackles with
yellow. Every other instance of being grabbed just like that resurfaces in a burst.

“Nngh!” He struggles, immediately.

“Why are you fighting me?” Fyodor grips a handful of the center of his shirt, tugs as if to pull
it off. He flails wildly. He falls back into the cushions, gaining purchase with his bare feet
against Fyodor’s thighs. They push, they slip.

“Stop—” he gasps, “let go, let me go!”

Fyodor speaks over him, steadily gaining ground as he climbs onto Dazai’s body and the
couch. “Are you going to continue lying to me? Are you going to keep pretending you are too
weak to remember? I will make you remember, then. I will show you your place.”

Dazai cries out and wrenches at the grips that tighten on his wrists, so much that his bones
ache. He shakes his head, he tries to speak, but his tongue can’t form words. He tucks his
head against his chest, not daring to look into the Russian’s knifing eyes. His heart races,
sickeningly, frantically.

“You want this. You looked at me all day like you did. I delayed your punishment to see what
you would do. And here you are, practically begging for it by lying to me.”

A frustrated burn grows in his face, clenches in his throat. He shakes his head harder, lungs
stretching for air that comes in short supply. Fyodor’s presence devours the oxygen between
them, suffocating, restricting Dazai.

The man leans close, until his sharpened lips are at the boy’s ear, frigid. His hair tickles
Dazai’s bandaged neck. His voice comes out like venom, smooth, black. “Bend over the
couch.”

The words send a shock through Dazai’s body. He goes rigid under Fyodor, eyes wide and
fixed over his shoulder. “No!” he whispers, “P-please—”

Fyodor seizes his face, so hard that it makes Dazai cry out. His eyes smolder like hot coals.
“Enough with that word,” he hisses. “It will gain you no mercy from me.”

The fingers dig into his jaw, his cheeks, and Dazai can feel the prick of pain tears in his
scrunched eyes. “I don’t remember,” he whimpers, “I wasn’t trying to deceive you. I want to
be good! Pl…nngh, I just want to be good, I don’t want to lie.”

Fyodor’s mouth twitches. He searches Dazai’s glossy eyes, looking for something there—he
can feel that—and he tries to open his gaze so that Fyodor can see…but it does not work. Or
it does not matter. Either way, Fyodor does not see the truth.

Fyodor shoves his face aside and down against the couch arm, climbing off of him in the
same motion. Dazai cowers, holding his face once the Russian releases him. But Fyodor is
not done. Fyodor is not letting him go.

Hands grasp his shirt and yank it up, pulling his body half off the couch in their ferocity until
the garment is ripped over his head. “Over the couch at once.” It’s said with such mild
intensity that it makes Dazai’s core shudder like a falling icicle, and he whines in misery as
he crawls to obey. Anything to appease Fyodor before it’s too late. Anything.

Fyodor’s dark garments fling outwards as he whirls, stalking into the kitchen. Even the way
he walks is angry. Where is he going? What is he doing?

Dazai hesitates, the couch arm lodged against his chest beneath his armpits. He clutches the
edge of the couch, painfully twisting his head over his shoulder to watch for the Russian’s
return.

It’s loud in the kitchen. Fyodor’s footfalls are brash. There’s a clunking, wooden noise. A
crack and snap. A great, explosive crash like one of the kitchen chairs has fallen to the floor,
and then Fyodor’s shadow in the hallway, pulsing like black liquid, stretching larger and
larger until he’s back. The violet of his eyes burns in the shadows.

When he sees what’s in the Russian’s hand, Dazai’s body seizes with panic. His vision sucks
inwards. Vertigo twists his stomach.

There’s a splintered, wooden chair leg in the man’s grip.

Fyodor is going to kill him. He’s going to kill him. He’s going to kill him!

Dazai feels sick. Fyodor was right about him lying, before. He hadn’t felt bad then. He feels
bad now. He feels death clawing out of the ground for him, and he feels for the first time like
fleeing from it, like sprouting wings and hurdling away. Run. RUN! His mind screams at him.
But he can’t move.

He erupts with sudden cries, loud enough to ring in his ears as he clambers out of position.
“No, no no no no no no no no no no no!” It’s all his brain can muster. Only one word. There
is nothing else to say except please, and his mouth won’t let him form that word. He presses
into the cushions, twists himself into the smallest ball, knees against his chest. “Noooooo!”

He hears every footfall as Fyodor eats up the ground with his boots, until he’s towering over
Dazai, and it must have grown darker when he entered, for it feels like night now, and there
was probably never any daylight in the world to begin with. There is no such thing as
daylight, as sun, as time. There is no such thing as anything, but Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dazai crunches tighter into himself, shaking, unprotected, terrified out of his mind. Terrified.
Yes, he thinks, he is terrified. If Fyodor asks, that’s what Dazai will tell him, because he
must, because he wants to be good, and he doesn’t want to die. Please, he doesn’t want to die.

“перебей руку, дерьмо бесполезное, бесполезный кусок дерьма!” Fyodor kicks the side of
the couch. Dazai wails. Fyodor curses, degrades him, yells at him in Russian, and nothing
makes sense to him.
Fyodor seizes him by the hair and yanks his body over the couch arm until it catches him
under the hips, slamming his member against it so brutally that his stomach flops. The cry
chokes in his throat. He can feel a gloved hand manhandle his thigh, tight enough to pinch.
His hands dangle. “NOOOO!” He squirms, grappling at air, at the floor that is one inch too
far away. His legs kick and thrash. The blood swims to his head, pounding and rushing in his
ears. But Fyodor’s hand keeps him from escaping.

A violent blast of pain hits him, throwing his hips into the wood under the cushioned arm. It’s
Fyodor whipping him with the chair leg, he realizes, splinters catching him, tearing bandages,
tearing skin. A wracking sob slashes through his throat. His hands find the side of the couch,
digging into the taut fabric until it rips beneath his fingertips.

Another, harder this time, chewing into him like rows of teeth. He gasps in wordless,
hysterical agony. Tears spring from his eyes, hot, burning, dripping from his lashes to the
floor beneath. His vision un-focuses on the splotches they make in the carpet.

The next one comes down vertically, between his cheeks, spanning his entrance to his
perineum. His tailbone erupts in agony, he’s certain he can feel it fracture. He’s certain. His
mouth opens, throat convulsing, eyes squeezed to slits. His hands ball up and shake in his
attempt to contain the torment.

There’s a liquid trickle of fiery warmth. He’s bleeding. Oh god, he’s bleeding already. The
edge of the leg is sharp and jagged.

It all happens so fast, so intensely, that his body refuses to move, to do anything but lie there
and take it. Frozen. He wants to move, so badly. But he can’t. He’s frozen.

Fyodor hits him again, again, and again, each one more difficult to bear than the last. Every
muscle locks up, paralyzing him, every minute that passes it becomes harder to breathe, to
even to remain conscious of what’s happening. His throat loosens, he shrieks with every
blow. He sobs between. In his mind, he begs for help. He begs for mercy, for kindness, for a
hand to cling to. There is nothing but a void that greets him, a great inky void. He wants to
swim to it, he wants to drift away from here. He wants to feel nothing again.

Over and over. His thighs, his buttocks, his lower back. Droplets of sweat stream out along
his skin. His body feels numb, aching at the muscle, worn on the surface. He’s been hit on the
tailbone so many times that he’s afraid it will shatter. His legs spasm. He feels full of lead. If
not for the crushing grip on his thigh and the couch lodged against his hips, he might have
slipped to the ground and passed out.

It seems to stretch on forever. Forever…pain and agony, and he cannot stop it.

But when it ends—

When it ends. It’s over as abruptly as it started.

He doesn’t realize that it’s stopped at first, until Fyodor’s voice penetrates the sound of his
frenzied sobs, and he feels hands grasping his sore, throbbing hips. It hurts. Why is Fyodor
touching it? He wants to be done, now. He wants Fyodor to leave. What’s he saying? Dazai
can barely make it out. His vision is playing with the carpet, turning it around and around,
twisting it into silly shapes and colors. He tries to answer whatever is being said, and it
comes out in a long, high-pitched groan.

The voice fades into clarity, but his head does not. “…must have grown tight while I was
gone, don’t you think? I know you did not do it yourself. No, you are too shy for that.”

He feels hands prying at his cheeks, at the rim of his entrance, pulling him open. He feels the
agony of being handled so roughly as the cuts and the bruises scream in protest. He tries to
move, but a crushing weight traps his legs. Fyodor is sitting on him. Vaguely, he notices the
rough texture of wood lying against his thigh on the couch. The end is wet, sticky. Cold.

“Consider yourself fortunate that I had the mercy to use lubricant. I will not be doing you any
other favors.”

It’s not over. It’s not over. Oh, god! Fyodor isn’t done. His mouth tries to form words. It
cannot form them. Sobs interrupt at every breath. His brain oozes out of his ears, millimeter
by millimeter. His head is so heavy that he’s glad his brain is going. He needs it and the blood
to drain, so he can think. Right?

Oh, help. Help. He can’t make sense of anything.

A shape presses against his entrance. But it’s the wrong shape. It’s square. It’s not hot and
silky. It’s rough, slippery, cold, but it’s wrong. There are four sharp edges, rough and
splintered.

The chair leg. It’s the chair leg it’s the chair leg—

Dazai’s body jerks involuntarily. He tightens his thighs, his entrance, he clenches his toes
until he feels the circulation cut off. “No! NOOOOO PLEASE, HAVE MERCY, MERCY,
PLEASE, I’M SORRY!! I’M SORRY!!” The words might not even be his, but they spurt out
nonetheless, raking his throat dry, vibrating in his chest. He squeezes his eyes shut, begging
with everything in him. He claws at the ripped fabric of the couch.

“P-PICTURE, I DREW, I DREW…AGHHH, I DID DRAW IT, I REMEMBER NOW, I

PROMISE I DO!! I DO!! PLEEASSE! STOP, STOPPP!”

“You remember now?” Fyodor taunts him from somewhere behind. A smack lands on his
bruised skin. He cries out in agony. The chair leg pushes more insistently at his entrance, the
gloved thumb pulls at his cheek. Tiny splinters of wood jab him, the lubricant gooey and
dribbling. “Loosen yourself,” the voice hisses, “before I tear you apart.”

Dazai’s mind goes red at the thought of it entering him, star-stricken, flickering red. Pass out.
Pass out, before it goes in. Let the panic take you until you pass out. Hold your breath.

“Do you really think an admission of guilt will save you now?” The implement breaks the
surface a few inches, clawing along the inner walls of his entrance. He cries out, hoarsely, at
the white-hot agony.
“Loosen yourself, Dazai! Do you wish to be torn open? Do you wish for it to hurt so much?”

He can’t understand. He wails louder in reply. “Caaaan’t! I caaaan’t, it huuurts! You’re going
to kill me! Please! You’re going to kill me!”

“Let us see if you die, then. After all, was it not you who said to keep you alive was to hate
you?” A hand pressing the small of his back, unforgiving. Rough.

“Pleeeaaassee!”

Fyodor shoves the wood inside of him. It can’t go all the way, it gets stuck.

Dazai’s entire body jolts; the blood turns to fire in his veins. Wood scrapes through his walls,
leaving splinters behind, tearing him open. He can’t take it. It’s too much. His brain
overloads, falling into an abyss of agony, drowning, drowning. He can’t see. He can’t feel.

The strength seeps out of his body like lava, every limb sinking, every sense muddling. His
vision flickers like a lightbulb going out. He feels himself going limp. And then…darkness.
Unconsciousness.

Or so he thinks at first. But it’s only black for a moment, dragging out like an endless rolling
of dark cloth from its wheel. He tries to follow it to its beginning, where he might hide inside
of it, and forget it all. But he slips on the way, and he tumbles back. He hears sound as if he’s
swimming underwater, a sharp, high pitched whine overlaying it.

“…as if I’m going to let you escape. No, you will endure it until I am finished with you, this
time.”

It might as well be in Russian. He’s yanked from the water, breaking the surface to a new
torrent of agony. Fyodor pulls back, he shoves forward again. It goes further in by force of
will alone. His throat seizes with a new screech of agony. He can’t breathe. He can’t fight.

“This is how it feels when you lie to me, Dazai. Does it make sense?”

They’re letters, pushed together. They don’t make sense. Another thrust, deeper, deep enough
to make the lights go out in his vision for a second time. Everything is boiling, cramping with
aches. Tiny slivers of sharper pain claw through, the places where he’s cut, where he’s
bleeding. He can feel it oozing everywhere, staining the couch as it trickles down his scrotum
and the inside of his thighs.

“I knowwww, I know,” Fyodor coos in response to what must be his wails. “It really is quite
painful. But how else was I to make you understand how much you wound me when you
lie?”

“I wonnn….’t….” Dazai’s tongue is thick, his eyes swimming. The sound of his voice is
foreign, clawing his throat, croaking in his vocal chords. “…wonnnn’t!” Is that what he
should say? Is that right? Has he made any sense?

Fyodor thrusts again and holds it there, and Dazai barely has the strength to cry out. He sobs
instead.
“What, Dazai, what? You won’t do it again? Truly?” His voice is so very far away, but it’s
velvet, so dangerously velvet.

He gurgles sorrowfully in agreement, shivering and flinching with choking sobs. He can’t
move anything. His arms hurt from dangling, his head throbs.

The chair leg is suddenly yanked from him, and any strength left in his body convulses at
once to make him lurch, clawing at the couch to utter a single, lasting cry. He collapses
against the chair arm, bruising his ribs. He chokes and sputters. Only sobs fill his mouth. It’s
the only sound he can hear, drumming in his ears.

Fyodor is quiet behind him. The agony does not return. He tries to breathe again. It doesn’t
work. He tries a second time. It still doesn’t work.

It creeps up on him like a slow drizzle of oil, tickling the edges of his mind. It’s over. It’s
over…

His punishment is over.

He sags into the couch, dangling, would have fallen completely without the man’s weight
holding him down. He’s been broken. His body is unresponsive to his mind, still stuck
screaming at him to run, to escape, to hide, to fight, to do something, anything. Even though
it’s stopped. Even though Fyodor must be done. Oxygen comes back to him. He wheezes,
sweat trickling between his shoulders, dampening his hair. He’s hot, so, so hot. It hurts, so, so
badly.

Hands touch his hips once more, but they’re soft, now. It doesn’t matter, he jolts anyways,
wailing with fright. His body is pulled, dragged back up to the couch. He falls face-first into
the seat, suffocating. Pain wracks him so forcefully that his eyes roll back, his vision spots,
and a ragged groan leaves his lips. There aren’t any working bones in his body. His muscles
are jelly. He’s lifted, rearranged. He sees dizzying flashes of the ceiling, the walls, the empty
fireplace.

“Calm down…” The Russian’s voice is soothing honey, careful with his ringing ears. “You’re
alright.”

He’s not alright. He’s still convulsing with half-hearted sobs, weak, limp, and he thinks he
must be cradled inside of Fyodor’s arms. There’s a support under his shoulders, another
wrapping along his side, keeping pressure off of his wounded body. It’s not enough to stop
the crushing pain. His head, dangling back, makes it difficult to breathe. His face is wet, his
eyes heavy and exhausted with tears. All he wants to do is sleep and forget. Sleep and forget.
But Fyodor will not let him sleep and forget.

“Everything is alright now.”

Dazai warbles something incoherently. He’s not sure what it is. He sounds like a wounded
animal.
“That’s it. Isn’t this better.” The voice is close, and when Dazai drifts back from the edge of
unintelligibility, he realizes that he’s looking up into Fyodor’s face. It doesn’t look cruel at
all, no…no there’s something resolved there. Something that wasn’t possible before. What
exactly has he done? He’s too dumb to see it, among the spinning shapes of pain. Fyodor
probably broke everything, even his ability to reason. His ability to function.

He tries to say something. He’s not sure what. But it comes out between his lips, stuttering
and tangling. It’s nothing but a jumble of syllables. Has he forgotten how to speak? He
chokes on another groaning sob. It hurts.

Comfort, comfort. He wants relief. He wants drugs, ointment, unconsciousness, anything.

Anything to make it stop throbbing, to make the blood stop dribbling between his thighs.

Fyodor carries him to the bed. Dazai imagines it behind closed eyelids more than he sees it.
He hears his breath wheezing in and out, he’s wracked with unnamable agony with every jolt
of step. He’s laid out on his stomach, on freezing sheets that feel good for once against his
feverish body. He wishes they were ice.

He doesn’t realize how much he needs Fyodor’s arms around him until they vanish, leaving
him alone on the bed. The panic rouses his mind, yanking him from the edge of sleep. Had he
not been paralyzed, he would have clawed his way out of the bed and tried to find the man in
the dark.

“B…ck,” he croaks, hoarsely, blinking open bleary eyes to search in the dark for the white
ghost. “Come…back…!” His breaths come heavier. His throat is parched. He tries to move
his arm. It shifts only slightly. He feels he might cry. He might cry, if Fyodor does not hear
him.

A streak of white, a pale figure. Violet eyes. Fyodor is there, crouching just in front of his
face. “What is it?” His voice is soft.

Dazai’s face twists in need, and he’s only able to lift leaden fingers to grasp the edge of the
man’s garment. “Mmnnn…” His breath trembles.

“You want me to stay?” Fyodor says, and there’s something unstable about the way it
sounds.

Dazai feels the tension leak from his body, his brow loosen with relief.

Fyodor knows. Fyodor always knows. This time, he is grateful for it.

The man reaches out a slow hand, touching Dazai’s chocolate hair, tousled by sweat and
struggle. Dazai groans, regarding him with drooping, fluttering eyes. He doesn’t fully
understand or think of what he sees, through blurry slits. But Fyodor is looking at him very
 intently, he imagines, and strokes back his hair again and again, sometimes letting his hand
play along the nape of his neck.

At first, Dazai starts to drift into unawareness under the comfort. But then he grows anxious,
because he isn’t often allowed such things, and he wants so desperately to be awake to feel it
for as long as he can. He wants so desperately for it to make the pain go away, and somehow,
he believes that it will.

When he tries, though, to keep his eyes open, Fyodor’s voice comes to him over a great
wave. “Sleep.” His accent is thicker. “Sleep, do not struggle.” He touches with thumb and
middle finger the space just under Dazai’s eyebrows and strokes downwards, shutting his
eyes.

“I will still be here, when you wake,” he whispers.

The last thing he feels is Fyodor’s weight shifting the bed, and then a body lying next to his,
freezing and comforting.

Chapter End Notes

Translation of Fyodor's Russian line in this chapter (in case anyone was curious) was
along the lines of "Get over the couch, you little fuck" Which sounds corny on it's own
to me lol. But within the scene, it's the only thing that showed off his actual anger other
than his actions. Anyways, that's all! I'll see you in the next chapter, please
PLEASEEEE leave comments for me because I was very insecure about this chapter and
the impact it might have. :')
 Odd Conversations
Chapter Summary

The comedown from Dazai's traumatizing incident goes a little differently than he
expects.

Chapter Notes

It's a very short chapter, my apologies. :P

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The days pass oddly. There is less tension in the air. When he’d awoke after the night of the
ordeal, Fyodor had indeed been there, not asleep—for it seemed he made it his goal to never
be asleep while Dazai was awake—and lying on his back with a hand across his waist,
examining the ceiling. Dazai had thought he might be counting the cracks, like he’d made
Dazai do before bed, sometimes.

Like he hadn’t made him do the night before.

He’d been too tired to scoot closer and too tired to speak. The Russian must have felt the
chestnut eyes on him and turned his head. They’d shared silence like two beggars in an alley,
too weary to speak with words so speaking with looks instead.

And perhaps that’s what had been odd about it. That they’d felt like equals, for just a
moment. That Fyodor had allowed him to feel that way, even after being beaten bloody the
night before.

Fyodor had broken the gaze, and later he’d helped Dazai out of bed, kept him naked and had
him turn so his wounds could be examined. Dazai could barely stand. He’d clung to Fyodor
as long as he could for support. Fyodor had sat in a chair, eventually, and Dazai had stood
before him, enduring gloved fingers that touched and prodded between his cheeks, between
his legs. Along the bruises on his lower back and his upper thighs, over dried blood on the
inside of them, they felt, leaving nothing untouched. He’d fought to keep still, he’d fought to
keep his legs from weakening. But Fyodor hadn’t done anything to hurt him.

Instead—most likely satisfied that he hadn’t done any permanent damage past tearing
copious amounts of sensitive flesh—he’d briefly touched Dazai on the hip and risen to
murmur in his ear.
“You did well. Come, I will wash you.”

Dazai’s eyes had widened and he’d looked at Fyodor with a certain fear, which had made the
Russian’s lips soften.

“No scalding water. I will take care of you.”

And he had. The cleaning had been, understatedly, agonizing. Dazai had been allowed to lean
against Fyodor’s charcoal turtleneck as the man worked with soap-slicked and medicated
gloves, pushing inside, pinching out splinters. Dazai had worn out fabric in his shaking fists,
stretching the material as he sobbed and wailed. Fyodor had not reprimanded him for it, and
he thought he’d felt the man’s arm tighten around him at times, in support.

“Endure a little longer,” he’d whispered at one point, “I have almost finished.”

When it was over, he’d been permitted to sleep more, tucked under an extra layer of covers
and Fyodor’s dark woolen coat on the bed.

And so, things proceed on in a much gentler tone, like shades of baby blue. Or the eerie green
before a tornado. Fyodor does not stay around the house much, likely gathering outside air to
be able to breathe inside the house, since Dazai is the only one used to the corruption of it in
his lungs. He doesn’t blame Fyodor. He is difficult to be around.

The days hold odd conversations. Lopsided, uncompleted ones. Like pages missing from an
abstract story. Most of them pass between opposite sides of the living room, with amethyst
eyes slanting at him over a book, but some of them pass in bed beneath the sheets, when
Dazai lies on his stomach to avoid his bruised, healing back.

Fyodor always makes Dazai sleep in the bed, now. It’s never been official, but Dazai
remembers the beginning, when the Russian would make him sleep on the floor if he’d been
bad. Regardless of whether he’s obedient, regardless of whether he pleases Fyodor or irritates
him, Fyodor always takes him to bed, now. Even if they sleep with their backs to each other
most nights. Even if some nights Dazai tries to crawl inside his arms.

Some nights, Fyodor lets him, too, and takes hold of his smaller body, pressing it close under
chilled white sheets.

One of the nights like this, a particularly grey conversation passes between them.

Dazai asks, following a disjointed conversation which even now he barely recalls, “You have
never felt emotions before? We’re not robots. We’re human. Maybe the capabilities for the
feelings were removed from us, but you’ve already recreated pieces of it in me. You can feel
it, too, if you tried.”
 Fyodor does not answer right away. His hand toys absently with the hair at the nape of his
neck, shards of black against white fabric, the arm cocked against his pillow, and he searches
the cracks in the ceiling. “I have never felt things. Small things, interests, little shocks, little
anxieties. Frustrations over plans or doses of triumph. But the true feelings have never visited
me.”

“You have never cried? Not once?”

“I grew up on the streets, here, where we are now. My childhood was but a series of winters,
dull and frigid...mindless. To cry tears would be worthless. They would freeze on your face.”
He shifts his gaze, until the gem sparkles at the corner of his eye. “But you, Dazai, your eyes
have known tears before. You are perhaps, not so empty as I.”

Dazai feels strange hearing this, and he gingerly scoots his body closer to Fyodor. “I would
like to be. If I could not cry, I would not hurt.”

The Russian’s profile, sharp against the shadows, looks paler in the moonlight than before.
“It is better to cry.” There’s a watery smile tormenting his coral lips.

“Why?”

“It simply is. That way, the hurt has somewhere to go.”

Dazai rests his head on the man’s shoulder, aware of his breathing, aware of the hand he
tucks inside of Fyodor’s clothing. “Do you hurt, Fyodor?” he whispers carefully, quiet
enough to make sure that no one else, spirit or human, can ever hear such a dangerous
implication. That Fyodor Dostoevsky could hurt.

Fyodor turns his head away into the pillow, the ink of his black hair swelling about to veil
him. His voice sounds very far away, when he speaks.

“I do not.”

Chapter End Notes

*Whispers* How do you guys feel about this chapter? Let me know. I want to hear your
thoughts on Fyodor. :D I'm sooOOOooo happy to see all you guys' comments you've
been leaving, in general! It's always the highlight of my day to see what you guys have
to say.
 Worried Friends
Chapter Summary

Chuuya pulls together a meeting with the ADA and the Port Mafia about Dazai's
disappearance. Akutagawa is the first to arrive.

Chapter Notes

Please enjoy this little looksie into what *actually* happened to Dazai, and what his
dear friends and frenemies are gonna do about it! Featuring: Akutagawa because I do
love my broken characters as POVs >:P

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Chuuya Nakahara is the one who arranges the meeting. He’s not even with the Armed
Detective Agency. He’s hardly with the Port Mafia, lately. He runs around and does his own
thing, he bar hops most evenings. The people whisper that he’s anxious about something. He
starts fights and no one can do anything about it, not when his ability is so powerful,
devastating if unleashed without the one man who can stop it.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke is the first to show up at the meeting, black coat fluttering, the bags
under his empty grey eyes darker than usual. Higuchi is close on his heels, deathly silent for
once.

Chuuya had chosen the spot, being rather between sides and playing a neutral party as of late.
It’s a fancy restaurant that lies amongst both sides of the Mafia and Detective Agency
territory, a line that neither side lays claim to. He’s reserved a spacious round table in the
back, behind a curtained partition, where none will hear, and none will see.

When Akutagawa sits in one of the many chairs, he notices the bottle on the table. Black
glass, the crimson wax of the seal on its neck. The long white label with the intricate, old-
fashioned design. A 1989 Petrus. The same wine Chuuya had opened the day Dazai turned
coat.

Ironic. Significant. Because now he’s missing again.

Correction. He’s been missing. For longer than anyone has expected, wanted, or could safely
endure.
It’s one of those things that brings opposite sides like the Agency and the Mafia together,
more disastrous than The Guild, deadlier than the arrival of The Rats in the House of the
Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s organization.

Fyodor. Dazai has gone missing over Fyodor.

Chuuya saunters in from between the burgundy curtains, slim and sleek in his usual cropped-
jacket and grey-vest combo, black slacks tailored to his body under the trench coat with
unused sleeves. The striking orange hair does a lot to veil the darkness on his face, somber
under the shadow of his satin hat. It’s rare to see the volatile ginger so gloomy.

“So you’re the first here,” he mutters, “why am I not surprised?”

Akutagawa frowns slightly and lifts his chin, casting his eyes down. “The boss was detained
handling Elise. I saw no reason to wait.” He usually has good eye contact, but Chuuya makes
him nervous these days.

Chuuya snorts. He takes a seat at the head of the table, leans back and crosses an ankle over
his leg. He rests his elbow on the chair’s arm and supports his head with two black-gloved
fingers. Akutagawa can see torment in his cerulean eyes. The relaxed posture is only a front.

The others arrive before anything more passes between them. Only the important members of
the Detective Agency: President Fukazawa, Kunikida with his long blonde ponytail, Atsushi,
twisting the dangling end of his belt in hand as if it’s his tiger’s tail, and Ranpo, the only one
who seems as upbeat as ever, smiling with those mysterious slitted eyes.

It’s a skeleton crew. Akutagawa expects Mori will bring more.

And, he’s correct. Mori arrives, without Elise—always a welcome sight, in anyone’s opinion.
The long scarf about his neck lies half-clutched in his hand, a coat silken black to match his
hair and the two strands of bangs that fall over his eyes. Koyou, beside him with the armed
Mafia subordinates, is and always will be a bane of composure in any era of doubt. Her
kimono seems the only flowery, bright piece in the room, and she takes a moment to lean her
closed parasol against the table as she takes the seat beside Chuuya.

Chuuya greets her affectionately, soft words murmured across the room missed by
Akutagawa’s ears as he draws her hand to his lips. It’s been a while since Chuuya’s been
around. Akutagawa hasn’t missed him. Seeing him reminds him of Dazai, and brings back
the unwanted anxiety over his whereabouts.

Gin slips in and stands in the shadows by the curtains, eyes sharp over her white face
covering. Her hair is as dark and wild as her brother’s. The subordinates take up posts on
either side.

Chuuya eyes them and the Detective Agency in turn from under the brim of his hat. “Now
that we’re all here, I guess I’ll begin.”

Akutagawa feels like someone’s missing.

Ah. Ace. The executive who’s spot they have yet to fill, after Dostoevsky convinced him to
hang himself in the belly of that ship.

If only they’d put a smarter man in charge of that damned Russian. Maybe Dazai would not
be missing if they had.

Chuuya motions to Gin as the curtain rustles, a timid waiter in a three-piece suit attempting to
enter. The girl steps aside to let him in, and he brings a tray of hors d’oeuvres, opens the 1984
Petrus with a flourish and lets another waiter—filing in behind him—set out wine glasses for
each guest.

“I’m sure you’re all wondering what’s happened to him,” Chuuya starts, “the most valuable
ability user of the century.” The candlelight of the partitioned room plays with the smooth
planes of his face, flickering in shapes about his eyes, his temple. His eyes meet
Akutagawa’s. “Some more than others.”

Akutagawa tightens his hands to fists in his lap, begging his face not to warm, begging the
other heads to stay in Chuuya’s direction.

He has nothing to fear. Even if his cheeks do redden, nobody looks.

“So you do know where he went,” Mori muses, the low silk of his voice like a snake among
the silence.

The waiter fills Chuuya’s glass, and he takes it immediately, chuckling roughly and with no
mirth at all, before he takes a long drink.

It clinks against his plate when it meets the burgundy tablecloth again. “As if anyone ever
knows what Dazai is truly up to.”

“But of anyone to know,” Koyou says softly, hands folded demurely in her lap, red lips
curled, “it would be Chuuya.”

“Where has he gone?” Atsushi says at once, the gold-and-purple of his eyes glimmering, his
hands poised on the table as he leans forward. He is the first of the Agency to speak up, and
Akutagawa struggles to restrain his snarl at the impudence.

Speaking before a superior member. Does the little weretiger think he’s so important because
he’s been brought to an executive meeting? Akutagawa has witnessed his power. It’s nothing
special without Rashomon’s help.

“Why wait all this time to tell us now?” President Fukazawa follows up, as Kunikida shakes
his head at Atsushi, motioning him back.

Atsushi sags back in his seat, troubled.

Chuuya fingers the rim of his glass, examining those who speak, patiently waiting for the
wave of reaction to subside.
“Dazai,” he begins, his tone mellow, “is a wild card. You never know how he’s going to play.
Granted, he told me what he was going to do. But you can’t take him at his word. It’s all
about the game, and who needs to know what to play into it.”

“Quit stalling, Nakahara,” Kunikida demands, stern as he glowers across the table, back
straight as a rod. “We didn’t come here to listen to you ramble.”

The tension hangs thick in the air for a moment. Akutagawa inwardly curses the blonde man.
Chuuya is no joke, he’s not someone to mess with. Anyone would argue he is the most
dangerous ability user, formerly Arahabaki, and Dazai’s Twin Dark. With corruption one
bounce of emotion away, the fact that he could destroy the entire city with a single
provocation is not lost on them.

Most of them, anyway.

Chuuya holds eye contact with Kunikida. “If you’d rather leave, I won’t stop you.”

Kunikida sighs loudly, adjusting his glasses. “Very well.”

“Dazai is no longer in Yokohama.”

Clothing rustles. A fork clinks against a plate. Akutagawa feels his toes tingle in his boots.
He swallows carefully and watches for any twitch of Chuuya’s deadened face. There is none.

“When he told me what he was going to do, we got into a fight. I did my best to stop him.
But Dazai will always be Dazai, and there is no such thing as putting a stop to that fiend once
he gets an idea in his silly little head.”

“It’s about Dostoevsky, isn’t it,” Akutagawa says, his voice croaking. He fights the urge to
cough. Somewhat of a nervous habit aside from the medical condition, his cough always
worsens when he’s near Dazai. When he’s thinking of Dazai.

Chuuya stares at him for a long moment, through the sudden intakes of breath and murmurs
around the table. He feels the connection across the empty space, a string through the glasses
of wine. Akutagawa’s lies untouched, Chuuya’s almost empty. There is somewhat of shared
experience, shared closeness with Dazai. They’ve both encountered parts of the man that no
one else had seen, Chuuya because he was a romantic partner—if one could call any
relationship with Dazai truly a relationship. Akutagawa because, well, he was a student. Of
sorts.

“Yes,” Chuuya says, silencing all other voices. They die. They bury themselves in the
information. “It is Dostoevsky. That goddamned Russian.”

“Last we knew, Dostoevsky was in Yokohama somewhere underground,” Kunikida interjects,

a crinkle of confusion in his brows.

“Last you knew,” Chuuya corrects him, tensely now. His gloved fingers are tightening around
the edge of the table. He loosens them, with some effort, it seems, to reach for the stem of his
glass, downing the last swirl of dark liquid.
Kunikida blinks and frowns, narrowing his eyes.

Mori hums, brushing his chin and gazing thoughtfully. “So, then. Tell us exactly what has
happened. Chuuya.”

Chuuya swipes his mouth with a fist, and the glass bangs this time against the table. He
leverages half-out of the chair to reach for the neck of the Petrus. He squeezes it in his fist as
if it’s Fyodor’s throat—or perhaps Dazai’s, Akutagawa would not know—and pops off the
cork. “You wanna know what that bastard told me? He told me he was going after Fyodor
alone. He told me not to tell the others, that he trusted I wouldn’t, and that he had it under
control. He had an idea, the little bandaged freak.” Wine glugs loudly, pooling like spilled
blood into the glass. “He was going to get into Dostoevsky’s head, and play with him like
he’d played with the men he’d killed, and he was going to win. Because he’d befriended the
demon once, when the Mist came to Yokohama.”

“You mean when they killed Dazai?” Mori asks, as if amused. Akutagawa feels lava in his
veins at the glimmer of a smile he wears. He cares nothing for Dazai, save for his own gain.
He’d tormented Dazai enough when he was a boy.

Chuuya drinks deeply of his fresh glass. He exhales and adjusts his hat, glowering at the table
as if it offends him. “Yes, when they killed him. And of course, he said that it was all part of
his predictions, but I don’t fuckin’ believe him. I’m the one who saved his ass that day.”

“And he’s the one who had the antidote capsule in his teeth,” Koyou reminds him, calmly.
Pointedly. “Because he knew they would poison him, and he knew you would strike him
when you came to his rescue.”

Chuuya growls, looking off at a wall and plucking at his lip.

“I think Dazai is more capable than you give him credit for,” she adds.

“Of course he is!” Chuuya bursts out, and the glasses rattle as he jerks the table in his earnest
to glare at Koyou. It doesn’t remain there long. It fades in the presence of her motherly gaze,
and Akutagawa thinks he understands.

He feels like he should say something, so he does. “But Dostoevsky is more dangerous than
we originally thought.”

The entire table looks at him. Higuchi clears her throat, and Akutagawa can’t help it. The
cough rises quickly in his throat, it comes out into his swiftly-lifted hand. He glances away.

Chuuya leans back again in his chair, brooding for a second, nodding. “My concerns are the
same as Ryunosuke’s, I imagine. Dazai’s been gone for too long.”

“How long, exactly?” Mori queries, lifting his glass to his lips and studying the redhead over
its knife-edged rim.

“Seven months and nine days,” Akutagawa says reflexively, before he can catch himself.
Fuck.
The whole table is looking at him again. He coughs harder, feeling it rattle and wheeze in his
chest. This time, he keeps eye contact with Chuuya.

“He’s exactly right.” Akutagawa can see the pain coming out again, leaking from his clouded
gaze like dark smoke. “And he intended to be back within six.”

“And back from where, exactly,” Kunikida asks softly.

Chuuya sighs long and slow, briefly closing his eyes. He stands, swoops the wine glass from
its place. His coat whooshes about him like a wing; his shoes clack on the wooden floor as he
walks away, Gin parting the curtain for him with a lowered head.

“Dazai…is in Russia.”

The table erupts as Chuuya ducks out of the room.

Akutagawa sits straight and silent in the midst of it. They blabber and move around him. But
the shock takes time to seep through Akutagawa’s brittle bones.

Dazai is in Russia.

With Dostoevsky. With Fyodor Dostoevsky.

And the Russian, most certainly, has horridly turned the tables on Dazai, and taken his
beloved mentor’s broken mind for himself.

Akutagawa finds Chuuya alone in an adjoining hallway, draped in murky lighting from
mounted candelabras. The walls are dark like blood. Like old blood. Chuuya looks like a true
villain against it, leaning back with his wine glass, his profile edged in orange and yellow.
However much the light warms his features, it does not reach the blue of his eyes. No, the
pain is too imminent there, it sucks up the light like a great black hole, and comes back
empty.

He approaches slowly. Timidly, maybe. He’s not used to speaking with Chuuya alone. Not
like this. Not about Dazai.

“Bet they didn’t notice you leave,” Chuuya says, doing nothing else to acknowledge the
boy’s presence.

The words hurt. Akutagawa feels them struggle in his chest like dogs, snapping at his false
sense of pride. “I want to go after Dazai.”

“Of course you do. How else would the mad dog of the Port Mafia respond?”
 Akutagawa’s scant brows lower, he balls his hands and fiercely studies the ground. “Very
well. If you do not wish to help me.” He turns, digging his hands into his coat pockets,
feeling the hems of his clothing tingle with Rashomon’s fury.

“Oi, Akutagawa. Wait. I was harsh.”

He slows his step, until he’s stopped completely without really meaning to. He doesn’t want
to leave. He doesn’t want to do things alone, this time. Not when he knows how much
stronger the Russian is than all of them. But he would go, anyway, even to his death, if it
would mean that Dazai would see him and be proud.

Chuuya sighs, and Akutagawa hears the wine slosh in his glass, a single step as if he’s come
away from the wall. “I’m not angry, not with you. We want the same thing.”

He turns slowly, regarding Chuuya’s fixed gaze with some trepidation. “Do you know how
useless we all are, without Mister Dazai?” His voice comes out tight.

Chuuya lets out a soft, affectionate grunt, looks down into his glass. “You counted the days
like I did. I think we both know. We don’t stand a chance against anyone without his help. No
matter what side he’s on, he somehow protects us all.”

“Protects us while he’s drowning,” Akutagawa hisses. “He always told me never to hate
Rashomon, never to be disgusted by myself and what I could do. But his bandages never
went away. He never stopped loathing his own body.”

Chuuya’s brief smile fades. His eyes darken a little more. “There are some things that are
broken that can’t be fixed. Believe me, I tried my hardest.”

Dazai is stronger than that, Akutagawa knows it. Otherwise, he would not have survived this
long. He lets out a rough exhale that turns into a coughing fit.

He feels a gentle hand settle on his head. The coughing dissolves, a sharp tingle shoots
through his spine. He slowly raises his eyes.

“I’ll rally them, Aku, don’t you worry. I’d rally all of Yokohama if I had to.”

Akutagawa lowers his head slightly, hoping his pale cheeks won’t darken. Chuuya scrubs at
his hair, then clasps his shoulder, his eyes bright as he gives the boy a determined glare.

“We’ll fucking find Dazai, and we’ll bring him back home, safe and sound.”

Chapter End Notes

Comment about your favorite character in the ADA or Port Mafia (you know, aside from
Dazai...). Or just, like, you know comment as usual-

I think my favorite characters aside from Dazai and Fyodor would be Chuuya,
Akutagawa, Mori, and Odasaku. Chuuya had to grow on me though, I was annoyed with
him at first xD all that yELLinG. But I think of those, Akutagawa is definitely my top
favorite. Even though he's a little overdramatic in the anime, he's such a dark and
hurting creature, especially in the manga, and I think he's adorably desperate for Dazai's
attention. It's very charming.

Also SPEAKING OF THE MANGA. You guys should fucking read it

omgggg....especially the new chapters coming out and the Beast manga. It's SO DARK.
And so much less kid-friendly than the anime made it out to be. (there are f-bombs
*gasp*! lol) Plus the Beast side-story reverses the roles, so that Atsushi is the villain and
Akutagawa is the hero. Very neat. Anyways shutting up now lmao-

See you next chapter!! (We'll get back to Fyodor and Dazai)
 Old Trash
Chapter Summary

It happens in the living room one day; the end of the lull between Dazai and Fyodor.

Chapter Notes

The support I've been getting for this fic is enormous to me, and I just wanna thank all
of you guys for it. You've motivated me to fully explore the idea and the story I've
created, to enjoy it, and have given me so much joy in posting it and seeing your
reactions. To every one of you who is waiting for that next chapter notification: I love
you, thank you for subscribing, and here you go!! <3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It happened in the living room one day; the end of the lull between them.

Dazai is sitting on the floor by the fireplace as if it’s actually harboring a fire, his body
mostly healed from Fyodor’s previous assault, his feelings back to normal. Though there are
still a few tender spots here and there, it’s nothing he can’t handle, and he thinks he’s willing
to take a few risks again.

Fyodor hasn’t hardly touched him. There hasn’t been anything exciting. Only a straight, grey
line, stretching on for forever. No dips, no jumps, no stutters. Something different would be
nice.

“Fyodor?” he begins, softly, tasting the name on his tongue.

Fyodor looks across the room at him, his fingers on the spines of books in their shelves,
hunting for a new one to read. All he does is read, read, read, when he isn’t going out or
disappearing behind the locked room to play his cello. “Yes…? What is it?”

“Why do you keep it so cold in the house?” He wants to be warm, again. He thinks that
maybe, with how things are going, and if he asks sweetly enough, Fyodor will turn on the
heat.

“You think it is cold?”

The answer reminds him that Fyodor hasn’t changed just because their recent interactions
have been less explosive. He is still the demon he was when they began.
“If I had half the clothes you did, I don’t think I would.”

The silence that falls opens jaws full of teeth. Dazai’s heart picks up. It’s not what he should
have said. It’s not exactly what he meant to say.

Fyodor digs his finger into the top of a book, in that space between the spine and the glue that
holds the pages together. “And here I thought you might be grateful for the shirt I’d spared
you, the bandages. You could be naked right now. Would you like to be naked?” The book
leans out under Fyodor’s pull, it flops into his waiting hand.

He doesn’t want to lose his shirt. Never, ever, he’ll do anything to keep his shirt—!

Dazai is not foolish. The injustice of the statement is apparent to him. The manipulation
behind his words is apparent to him. But what else can he do except disagree? What else can
he do? He must act out of self-preservation; he’s not sure why he’s risked starting another
fight.

But he always starts fights.

No, that’s not true. Fyodor is the one who starts them. He only tells Dazai it’s the other way
around. To confuse him. Dazai knows this. He thinks, after a while of not experiencing it, that
it’s clearer to him, that Fyodor starts it.

If he knows, surely then, he’ll be able to resist its effects.

So, he doesn’t answer the question. “Is it that you want me to be cold? Does it make me
weaker? Is that why you like it?” Why not a counter-attack, after all, instead of a play-along?

What the hell is he doing?

Fyodor’s eyes twitch, fixed on the book in his hands, face encased in the shadow of the
bookshelf. He’s partially turned from Dazai, but he can still see that this isn’t the expected
response. His stomach flutters like a butterfly from a carnation. Triumph? Maybe. It’s too
early to tell.

“Do you think it makes you weaker?” Fyodor’s accent is thicker. Purring at him. He knows
he still has the high ground. “Perhaps I should make it colder.”

Punishment. No matter what he knows, no matter what he tries, Fyodor will always have the
advantage. Dazai is his prisoner. He holds the power. If he doesn’t like what Dazai says, he
can make the situation worse. There’s always a worse.

And a tiny voice—a voice he knows Fyodor has created—tells him he should be grateful for
the little he has, now. Fyodor has left him mostly alone the past few days, Fyodor has allowed
peace, he’s offered food, he’s let Dazai care for himself and clean in the shower without
bothering him…

But these are necessities. Right? Yes, they’re necessities, that every human being should be
allowed to have.
Dazai picks at strands of carpet yarn beside his bare leg. His shirt barely covers his nether
area, but he hardly even flinches now when he knows it’s visible below the hemline. He’s
gotten painfully used to this. Used to the mistreatment.

So why does his body ache so badly for Fyodor’s touch? What has the Russian done to fuck
him up so much that he can’t even control his body’s desires? He weeps for the Russian, he
experiences agony for the Russian, he lives every day thinking about how he’s supposed to
please the Russian. He tells himself it’s his will to survive, but that’s not all that it is. There is
desire there. For Fyodor’s touch specifically. Everything is a game of rat and mouse. A
slightly more devious opponent against his smaller counterpart. And this growing feeling? He
is crawling into the open jaws of a monster.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” Fyodor asks.

Dazai looks up. Fyodor is still standing there at the bookcase, unopened volume in hand, face
white under the black shape of his hair.

“No,” he murmurs.

“Then continue, and finish quickly.”

But Fyodor is not asking for him to say his part and be done with it. He wants the fight as
much as Dazai does. Perhaps they’re both hungry for it, for intrigue and games to play in the
dark. As much as he doesn’t want to humor the Russian, he wants to humor himself, and to
do that…he must humor the Russian. So it isn’t really a choice, when he finds the rest of his
words, and they come spilling from his mouth.

“Will you ever let me die?”

Razor lips cut into a smirk. It’s a little odd how much the sight excites him.

“You do not do much around this house, Dazai. It is like you are already dead.” The words
play guilty melodies in his ears. Fyodor turns from the bookcase with his prize, and the gray
blue of the hardcover looks pleasing against his white shirt as he approaches the reading
chair.

“That’s not an answer.”

“The…trash, in the kitchen,” Fyodor begins mildly, easing into the armchair as if he’s
performing in a stage play, “is overflowing. Why don’t you prove yourself useful and replace
it for me?”

Dazai’s brows furrow before he can stop them. His question was ignored so Dazai’s question
gets ignored, is that it?

“What do you want from me?”

“I assume you are not quite so foolish as to pretend you do not know. I just told you.”

“You want something else.”

Fyodor opens the book, leaning back into his chair, eyes narrowing between locks of his hair.
“I do hope you’re not presuming to know the intentions of god for a second time. Was your
first lesson not adequate? Did your most recent punishment not bruise you deeply enough?”

Dazai’s body physically reacts, down to the very muscles themselves. He feels paralysis, like
a freezing stream of dry ice in his blood, root him to the floor. He struggles to speak. He
struggles even to think past the blaring alarm in his head, shrieking at him to protect himself.
He feels the memory of scalding water on his back, of the chair leg and the splinters inside
him. “No,” he blurts, his voice on a tightrope, “it did. It was.”

Composure begins to unstitch. The string is pulled, the tapestry of his self-possession
unravels. He loses the game too quickly, and it’s Fyodor, Fyodor, Fyodor all over again.

“I’m glad,” Fyodor murmurs, and it sounds genuine. “Lessons and punishments are in place
so you can learn.”

Dazai is busy picking at his bandages, the worn ones at his knuckles. Silly nonsense. Silly,
silly nonsense. But what can he do? Nothing. Nothing at all.

“The trash, if you please.”

“I don’t want to,” Dazai whispers, too quickly to analyze his reason for it. He plucks more
violently. His skin throbs, itches, tingles all over with the legs of cutter ants.

“Causing trouble so early in the day, aren’t we? Are you that desperate to break my
semblance of peace?”

“Peace,” Dazai laughs, his voice breaking, “what peace. There’s no such thing.”

“No, not when you are here.”

“What is it that you want? Why are you keeping me here, if I only bother you? Why did you
take me from where I was before?”

Why is he asking such things?

Fyodor turns a page in his book. “The trash, Dazai.”

“I don’t want to take out the trash! I don’t want to! Why won’t you answer me? Look at me!”
The words hurt, yanked from his throat, burning in his eyes. His fingers dig into the carpet.
“Please!” he cries. “Look at me!”

The forsaken please. It’s a hook that catches Fyodor’s amethyst gaze, reeling it up under dark
lashes.

Dazai gasps for breath, fighting to keep moisture from growing in his eyes, trying to keep
from letting Fyodor win. He wants to win, for once, goddamn it. But he can never win.

The book lowers to the man’s thigh. His face, though blank, is not cold, and Dazai trembles.
He might have ground, here. But what does he want? What the hell can he ask for? Fyodor is
waiting, he’s listening.And he’s always winning.

“There. I am looking.” Velvet, like the melodic twist of a whispered song.

His lower lip trembles. He bites the inside of it and swallows against a dry, aching throat,
before he tries again to speak. “I want you to touch me.”

Fyodor’s face shifts, just as Dazai feels his heart plunge into an icy casket. He hadn’t meant
to say that. He hadn’t meant to. But it changes Fyodor’s expression, playing with his dark
brows, making them twitch. Dazai sees the soft bob of the man’s throat under his shirt collar,
buttoned so high and restrictively tight. His neck tips back, his jaw loosens as if he might let
his lips part. His eyes remain rooted to Dazai, unblinking, like he’s forgotten how.

Dazai’s breath is shallow. Fyodor has never hesitated quite so long, never looked at him in
such a manner.

“Do you?” Fyodor asks at last. It’s brittle, as if the smallest gust of air might snap the words
in two.

It’s both difficult and incredibly easy to remain on his knees beside the fireplace, running his
hands back and forth along his thighs, glancing around the room. “I don’t know, I think so. It
doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Come.” Fyodor lies the book aside, leaning forward in the chair with a forearm across his
knee. The other hand he extends between his legs, relaxed, beckoning, an owner calling his
dog.

Dazai sits very still, tightening his hands to fists on his legs, until his fingers dig into the
bandages, until the gauze stretches. A flush of heat spreads from his neck to his ears, then
down through his limbs, until his whole body is hotter than before, until the cold is not cold
enough in the room. His chest, tight and constricting, rapidly heaves for air. “Are you going
to hurt me?” he whispers.

The gloved hand is patient, the eyes not unmerciful. “Would you like me to?”

His stomach tells him the answer immediately. “I don’t think so.”

“Then I will not hurt you.”

Dazai’s pulse throbs in his ears like the beat of a drum. “I don’t believe you.”

Fyodor’s brows push a fraction together, not unhappily, something more like confusion.
Dazai doesn’t believe that it’s genuine. It must be contrived. To manipulate. “Would it be in
my interest to lie to you?”

“Yes.”
“How?”

“You like punishing me. You have fun.”

“Fun? No, Dazai. I only like to make you feel.”

“Then how can I be sure you won’t hurt me again, to make me feel?”

Fyodor tilts his head. It makes Dazai feel smart. “I suppose you cannot. But you must try, or
you will never know.” He opens his hand a little more, and Dazai thinks he can see the blue
veins in his wrist begin to stand out. “You must try, or you will never be touched.”

“You’re asking me to trust you.” Dazai’s throat is tight.

Fyodor’s gaze softens, again, and Dazai feels so many dangerous things rising inside of him.

“Perhaps.”

“I don’t want to trust you,” Dazai breathes, brows painfully contracted under his brunette
curls, the barest sheen of sweat on his skin. “I don’t want to.”

But his body betrays him. He leans forward onto all fours—because what’s the point of
pretending he has any dignity left to stand?—and begins to crawl. The carpet feels rough
under his knees and his palms. The aches of bruises and the threat of cuts reopening remind
him of everything that’s been done to him. But still, he crawls, because Fyodor’s eyes are a
deep well he wishes to fall into. Because Fyodor’s eyes look different, and soft, and that’s
something. That’s something.

Between Fyodor’s legs, Dazai kneels, looking up into the man’s face, clutching the hem of
his shirt in numb hands and telling himself over and over that he’s foolish for doing this.
Fyodor, having retracted his hand the closer Dazai came, spends a long moment examining
Dazai as if he’s evolved into something new. Something more than a sinner.

Fyodor begins to work off his left glove.

Dazai’s eyes widen. His heart goes absolutely still inside of his chest, floating in his blood,
silent. He doesn’t breathe. His ears ring, a high-pitched squeal, and he’s afraid to move as
Fyodor slides the material off finger by finger. A great pool of ivory paint spreads across the
surface of his mind, wiping out his thoughts.

Numbly, he registers the violet gaze fixed on him as the other glove comes off, too, and
Dazai cannot seem to get over how…normal…his hands are, revealed. Pale, slender…
perfectly human. The barest hint of a green-blue vein here or there. Clean fingernails.

Fyodor sets the gloves calmly aside and reaches out with both hands. He gently cups Dazai’s
face. Sparks ignite from where the skin meets his own, soft and cool against his flushed
cheeks. His gasp stutters in his throat. He sees himself reflected in Fyodor’s eyes, he sees the
tiny flicker of light there.
 “Is this what you want?” Fyodor murmurs, so tenderly that it might not be his voice at all, but
a figment of Dazai’s feverish imagination.

His eyes flutter shut. He begins to breathe again, a gradual, growing thing. His heart, leaden
with shock, beats sluggishly. He can feel Fyodor’s hands to his core, and they’re not warm,
but they make his body overheat nevertheless.

“What do you feel now?” the Russian whispers, closer, his breath by Dazai’s ear.

A shaky exhale leaves him. “Safe.”

“The emotion.”

It forms on his lips, takes a minute to speak aloud. “Relief,” he breathes.

“Relief?” Fyodor repeats it with a note of disbelief. “From the mere touch of my ungloved
hands?”

Dazai, still unwilling to open his eyes, lets his brows furrow slightly. Maybe Fyodor doesn’t
know, how much the gloves drove him mad. How much he yearned for this, to see the skin,
to know Fyodor was, in fact, human. “I’ve wanted them so badly. Like this.” His voice
quiets. He grows timid, because it sounds silly aloud. “I know it’s strange.”

A long, calming silence. He hears Fyodor breathe.

“No,” Fyodor says, “it is not strange.”

Dazai opens his eyes and accidentally sees the softness in the Russian’s face, inches from his,
before it’s wiped away. Their breaths mingle and occupy the space between lips, and Dazai
thinks of all the times those razors sought to cut into him, taking him without permission,
taking him unwillingly. But now, if only…

He would, he thought. He would, willingly.

“You see?” Fyodor’s thumbs shift along his cheekbones. “I did not hurt you.”

Dazai’s mouth parts. He inhales, as if he’s afraid of breaking the fragile sensuality of touch.
“I don’t want to be hurt anymore.” His throat constricts. “Please.”

“I understand.”

Chapter End Notes

Weeeeelllll? What did you think of Dazai's little victory? Are you anxious about
Fyodor's response, do you think he has something up his sleeve?
 Dangerous Rope
Chapter Summary

Living goes back to a straight, numb line. Dazai becomes troubled by a desire that
resurfaces because of it. A desire that drives him to the noose in Fyodor's bedside table.

Chapter Notes

TW: Suicidal angst

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The event proves itself to be only a bump in the straight line of emotions, a splash of red in
the canvas of periwinkle. Fyodor does not remove his gloves again, even when Dazai tries to
influence him to. But he continues on in relative numbness, only speaking quietly to Dazai.
He is sometimes cruel, but not like before. There are smaller discomforts. A missed meal. A
day spent naked, without his shirt. The temperature in the house adjusted to make it chillier.
An unwarranted slap for a minor offense, a provocative statement.

There’s something curious about it, though. The way Fyodor does it. It’s like he’s trying to
overcompensate for something, like he’s trying to prove to someone that he’s still cruel, that
he hasn’t changed.

He puts the clocks back, he lets them run, and looks at Dazai strangely when he asks why.

“Do you not want the time?” he asks in return.

Dazai does not answer him. Time back. Do you not want the time back. That’s what Fyodor
should have said. And the way he treats it is off-kilter. As if it’s nothing to him, that he’s
pretended all this time that there was no such thing as day and night or years or months, only
to casually place the clocks back where they belong, and pretend that it never happened.

He wonders if Fyodor has grown tired of the game, if he doesn’t mean much of anything to
the man anymore. He wonders every time Fyodor walks out the door if he will come back, or
if he’ll leave Dazai to find some other hobby.

But he always comes back, and when he sees the ghostly figure in the snow-covered boots,
Dazai stops biting his nails and picking at his wounds.

A familiar want resurfaces in him, with Fyodor’s lack of attention. One he’s dealt with in the
past, before Fyodor, before everything. It floods him, drawing him back into an old habit. It
drives him to the drawer in Fyodor’s bedroom, where the rope lies coiled. It drives him to the
medicine cabinets, where Fyodor keeps the ferrous sulfate pills for his anemia.

Both options would be painful, both would be bothersome. But to whom? Only Fyodor, and
really, what does Fyodor care? He’s never cried in his life.

He doesn’t do anything with the pills or the rope, and when Fyodor returns and finds the rope
lying on the bed, he tucks it neatly away in the drawer without a word to Dazai.

It drives him deeper, strangely.

He starts leaving the rope out more often, just because he wants to see if Fyodor’s face will
change.

On the fifth night of this, Dazai stands at the bathroom door after washing up, carefully
watching Fyodor notice the rope on his pillow. Putting his roll of bandages on the sink
counter, he continues winding the wrapping around the leg he’s hiked up.

“Dazai.”

He focuses harder on the bandages, pulling the gauze in half to tie it off. “Yes.”

“Stop taking out my rope.”

His scrotum tingles, oddly. Of any of the responses Dazai has run through his head, this is not
one of them. What is it he imagined the man would say? Are you alright? Maybe, Why do
you keep leaving this here? Is there something you would like to tell me, Dazai? But certainly
not this…detached, unfeeling, uncaring command. As if he doesn’t mind at all why Dazai
would be toying with it.

His fingers falter. Yes. Perhaps he makes Fyodor into something kinder in his head. He
shouldn’t, but what else can he do when he lives with a monster?

Straightening, he takes his time lowering his leg and turning towards the bedroom. His eyes
stray from Fyodor’s the moment they make contact, and he walks into the room on pins and
needles, searching for something to occupy him so he has an excuse to look nonchalant.

“Why?”

It’s dangerous to play games with demons. Maybe he’s acquiring a taste for it.

He finds the bedsheets are his only distraction from the sudden bloom of anxiety in his
stomach, so he pulls them back and begins to smooth them where they don’t need
smoothing.

“Why? Because there is no reason for you to take it out if you’re going to leave it here for me
to put away.”

Dazai’s fingers ache and throb. He smooths ridges in the sheets faster. He grabs a pillow to
fluff, diligently keeping his eyes away from Fyodor’s knives. “You want me to use it, then?”
Fyodor laughs.

Dazai’s body locks up. He grinds to a halt, staring at the perfectly smooth cream of the
bedsheet. The base of his skull throbs dully. His chest rises and falls.

Fyodor laughed.

Mocking him.

Laughed at him.

Dazai’s eyes shift to the rope, yet undisturbed by his hands, a ring of darkness on a pure
pillow. An unnamable thing swells in him, red-hot and impulsive, coursing through him like
adrenaline. Alright. If Fyodor is going to laugh. If Fyodor is going to mock him. He lunges
forward; he grabs the rope.

Fyodor releases a string of muttered Russian, but Dazai ignores it.

He thinks it’s funny that Dazai wants to die. He must think Dazai doesn’t mean it.

Dazai whirls from the bed. He hears footsteps behind him. He storms into the bathroom. He
slams the door in Fyodor’s blank face. He nearly slips going to the shower, throwing the end
of the rope over the curtain rod.

“Dazai,” he hears from the other side of the door, muffled. “Dazai, come out.” He says it like
they’re having a conversation at a dinner party.

Dazai’s body rushes with icy heat as he fastens the rope around the base of the shower nozzle
with fluttering hands. This one isn’t like the shower down the hall. This showerhead is fixed,
sturdy.

Knuckles rap on the door.

“Fuck you!” Dazai yells, the words gritty in his throat. He can’t feel, not really. There’s
nothing there but sensations, bubbling in his blood.

He seizes the noose. Yanks on it to check it.

The door bursts open. He forgot to lock it.

Fyodor sweeps in, and Dazai fumbles to fit the loop over his head, achieves it just as gloved
hands grasp his arms, yanking him forward. The noose jerks at his throat; he chokes and
fights the man.

The purple eyes shine dark and hollow, his hands the only part of him portraying anger. He
yanks Dazai again as if expecting him to break loose, then grapples with the rope, fighting
against Dazai’s thrashing to pull it off. His body collides with Fyodor’s chest.

Dazai feels primal and wild, scratching and striking, his feet slipping on the tile as he yells
and Fyodor pulls. He can’t think of words.
Fyodor drags him step by step out of the bathroom, wrenching his arms hard enough to
dislocate them.

Dazai feels how slender and small he is, even compared to an anemic. He feels weightless,
unable to resist the manhandling. He cries out in frustration as Fyodor twists him around,
hooks an arm around his middle, and sits on the side of the bed, yanking Dazai down into his
lap, trapping him.

“Stop fighting me,” Fyodor says, calmly.

Dazai lurches forward, pushing his feet against the side of the bed with all his might, clawing
at the arm trapping him. He twists back and forth, straining, shivering. He doesn’t like
Fyodor’s clothes against his naked body. He growls, ferally.

“What is the matter with you?” Fyodor hisses.

“Stop!” Dazai yells, fighting harder, hair flying about in chocolate curls.

“Listen to me.”

“No!” Dazai’s fingernails tear into the fabric of Fyodor’s thick woolen sleeve.

“Dazai!”

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” The cry takes all the breath from his lungs.

Fyodor’s arms curl up under Dazai’s, seizing his throat in both hands and squeezing, forcing
his head back against the man’s shoulder. Dazai sputters, kicks his legs, arches. He claws at
the hands, with wide eyes. “Ghhhhhkk!” The pit of his stomach turns to ice.

“You’re not thinking right,” Fyodor hisses in his ear, his breath burning hot, “calm down. Be
still.”

“Angh! Agh!” Dazai feels water collecting in his eyes. He digs his fingers into the man’s
knuckles under the gloves. He wants to breathe. His heart races like a warhorse.

“Are you going to obey, or am I going to have to choke you unconscious?”

He resists more desperately, writhing, jerking, thrashing. Nothing works. The hands tighten.

He can’t feel his toes.

By excruciating degrees, Dazai loses his grip, vision fading in and out, darkening at the
edges. His hands slip from Fyodor’s. The fight runs out of him. He lets his arms fall open in
surrender. His shoulders twitch.

The next moment, he can breathe again.

Gloved hands lower to hold his hips.

He folds over, gasping, coughing. Fingers dig into his pelvis. Oxygen isn’t enough. He wants
it injected into his lungs.

“Speak. Now.”

He can’t speak. He’s still breathing. “Leave me alone,” Dazai croaks, coughing raucously, but
his attempts to fight are half-hearted and quickly dying. He can’t stop wheezing.

“I will not,” Fyodor says, with a startling amount of passion. “You will tell me what is
wrong.”

“You’re wrong!” He feels childish again. “I hate you!” He digs one of his palms into his eyes
to clear them.

Fyodor leans backwards, dragging Dazai down to the bed with him. He rolls to his side,
Dazai’s naked, squirming body trapped against his, and wraps his legs around Dazai’s to
hook them down, to restrain them. Dazai thrashes his head because it’s the only thing he can
move at this point, but it does no good. He growls a long, drawn out cry of frustration.

Fyodor reaches with one hand for the covers. He yanks them up and uses them to further
stifle Dazai’s fight. “Stop.”

“Get off of me!”

“Stop.”

Dazai feels dry, hot sobs rising in his throat. His muscles burn as he pushes and writhes. “Let
me die,” he whispers, “let me die!”

Fyodor’s cool cheek presses against his, the last restraint that traps him in the man’s grip. He
cannot fight with anything, now. He’s helpless.

“Stop,” Fyodor whispers back, and it sounds strange this time.

Dazai’s strength seeps away. He goes limp like a wilting rose; he begins to weep. His tears
run into the skin of Fyodor’s face, which won’t stop pressing against his cheek, and he
wonders if the man likes to imagine that they’re his own tears.

“I hate you,” he sobs miserably.

A frigid whisper leaks into his ears. “You don’t. Not me. You hate yourself.” The arms
tighten around him, the covers pull tighter around his shoulders. “I want you to stop.”

“You don’t care. You laughed at me.”

“Shhhh.”

“You did!”

“That’s enough. I am not laughing now.”

Dazai clutches a handful of sheets, pulls at them because there’s nothing else to let out his
frustration on. His other hand finds a handful of bandages.

“No, Dazai.” Fyodor’s gloves pry at his fingers, until they stop digging into his scarred skin,
until they stop raking off the gauze. He doesn’t understand why. It doesn’t make sense that
Fyodor is trying to preserve him.

He grabs Fyodor’s hand, clenching the fingers around it, holding it fiercely under the sheets.
Sobbing.

“I want to die,” he cries.

Fyodor’s cold cheek moves the smallest bit against his hot one. He thinks maybe it’s meant to
be a nuzzle. “I will not let you.”

“You’re torturing me! I can’t bear it! I can’t!” Dazai strains against his grip, all of his muscles
trembling with the effort, his stomach clenching. “I don’t want to be tortured anymore! I want
to go!”

“No,” Fyodor says, and his voice has risen a notch.

“Pleaaaase!” Dazai yanks his hands away, he fights the covers and tries to elbow Fyodor. He
lands one against the man’s ribs. Fyodor does not react.

“No.” Louder.

“I’m going to do it! I’m going to when you can’t stop me!” Dazai feels the man’s hold give a
little, he shoves against it and breaks free. “I will!”

“NO!” Fyodor catches him with a clawed hand, throws him to his back on the bed, sheets
flying above as the Russian’s white-faced form settles over him. His arms cage Dazai’s body,
his chest heaves. His eyes look wide in the lamplight, his hair tangled. “If you leave, I will be
alone.”

Dazai’s heart drops through the floor.

“If you leave, I will be alone,” Fyodor repeats, in the same tone of voice. It’s torn, weak, like
a ragdoll that's been thrown in the garbage.

Dazai’s breath shudders in his throat. He blinks rapidly. Remnant tears trickle from the
corners of his eyes.

Fyodor’s face seems to pale further. His brows twitch strangely; his lashes flutter. “I don’t
want to be alone,” he murmurs. “so stay.”

Dazai’s chest aches. He reaches, unconsciously, for Fyodor’s face, but the man moves away,
averting his gaze, and lowers himself to his back on the mattress. The movement sends a gust
of cold air under the covers, cooling hot skin. Drying tears on his cheeks.
“Sleep,” Fyodor says softly, “You must be tired.” He turns away from Dazai on his side, the
headboard creaking. He can hear snowflakes on the window pane, tapping. They hiss as they
melt.

“I’m not tired.” Dazai’s stomach quivers inside. “I’m not, come back.”

Fyodor scarcely turns his head, the barest sight of his profile visible over his shoulder. “I am
trying to make you feel good things, now. But I do not know exactly how. So I am learning.”

Fyodor hasn't ever sounded so…vulnerable.

Dazai reaches for him. Slowly.

“You were ignoring me,” Dazai whispers. “I didn’t want to be ignored.”

Fyodor shifts, turning away again. “I was trying not to hurt you.”

“I thought you were tired of me.”

“You should not think such things.”

“Fedya,” Dazai breathes, shakily.

Fyodor’s body stiffens. Dazai’s fingers rest on his arm, on the thick clothes. The clothes that
Dazai thinks he wears to protect himself.

Fedya is a diminutive of his name. It’s too affectionate for a captor, for a demon. But Dazai
remembers calling him that, once. His memories are doused in water, they’re blurry and
unstable, but they come to him in pieces, sometimes. Like a random selection, a claw
grabbing for toys in an arcade booth.

He hears Fyodor swallow. His accent comes out as thick as butter. “What do you want?” The
words are silky.

“I want a hug,” Dazai answers, uncertainly.

“Not tonight.”

Dazai tugs on his sleeve, feeling more tears leak from burning eyes. “I want a hug,” he
repeats, quieter.

“Do not manipulate me. I have been foolish enough for one night.”

“Fedya.”

“Do not call me that.”

“Why? I remembered it.”

“Do not say it again.”

 “Fedya! I want a hug, Fedya.”

Fyodor whirls over in a flurry of white and black, his amethyst eyes alight with strange fire.
His arms engulf Dazai’s body, pulling him painfully close, until he’s crushed against the
man’s chest. They quiver around him. Dazai hears a breath rustle his curls.

“Will you stop now?” Fyodor hisses.

Dazai hears the rapid beat of the man’s heart, ear pressed against the soft clothing. He
clutches back; he feels incredibly warm.

“Fedya,” he mutters into his chest.

“Silence.”

Chapter End Notes

And now...now, dear reader, what is it that you feel? Tell me what you feel, and I will
not hurt you.

-Fyodor 2021

Love you guys lol. I am also very attached to this story, and I'm excited to be posting
this chapter, which kinda starts the beginning of the shift. I have a favorite chapter I've
written and I canNOT wait to fucking share it with you guys. For now? Drown yourself
in my angst.

Also yes, I brought up Fedya, which has been a trend in Fyodai fanfictions that I was
quite taken with. Whoever came up with that (unless someone actually called Fyodor
this in canon and I didn't remember/realize??), bless your fucking soul.
 Forbidden Longing
Chapter Summary

Dazai asks Fyodor what it's like outside, one day.

It's not a good idea.

Chapter Notes

The next chapter is my favorite chapter and omg I can't wait to post it, but with that said,
this is my second-favorite chapter to have written, so I hope it hits you hard and leaves
you dabbing at tears!!

>:)

TW (at this point who cares about TW you guys know what you're getting into psh)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The longing starts as a small tingle in Dazai’s chest, when he looks out the snow-packed
kitchen window at the great grey sky above, dotted with the soaring black figures of birds. He
doesn’t remember what it’s like to breathe anything but the stuffy, chilled air that gushes from
dusty vents, recycling itself through his lungs and the house until it’s a single bubble of used
oxygen. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to feel a breeze sift through his curls, misplacing
them over his eyes until they tickle his temples and forehead.

He does remember, though, how the outdoors smells. The way it hangs thick in his nose with
the scent of cherry blossoms.

But that’s not the scent of Russia. That’s the scent of…

Of somewhere else. His mind blanks it out. There’s nothing there. Just a drifting, warm
aroma. Didn’t he have friends before Fyodor? There were people before him, weren’t there?
Even lovers, he thinks. Before, he’d recalled two people at least, maybe three. But now he
can’t conjure their hair colors in his mind. He can’t see their faces. They’re only pale blotches
of skin in oval shapes, hollow and out of reach.

Fyodor hasn’t spoken a word to him since last night. He’s returned from the outside world
with breakfast and is eating it quietly on the opposite side of the table.

Dazai’s own food lies untouched before him. The birds are so captivating today, outside.
He watches a tiny sparrow on the sill, separated only by glass as it pecks at a twig. Maybe it’s
building a nest for a family. Dazai would like to be part of a family. Didn’t he grow up with a
family?

Fyodor hasn’t taken off his ushanka, or his coat, or his boots. He’s just sitting there, focused
on his food as if it’s the most important thing in the world, snow melting from the brim of his
furry hat and dripping onto the table.

He wears too many clothes. Dazai hates it.

“You’re getting the table wet,” he says.

Fyodor glances at him, chewing. He doesn’t respond. Another pile of snow slides down his
hair, hitting the table with a muted tmp.

“What does it feel like, outside?” Dazai asks, abruptly.

Fyodor’s gaze doesn’t change, as if he hasn’t heard Dazai at all. But he has.

Fyodor takes another bite of his food.

Dazai turns his chestnut gaze back to the window. He digs a fingernail into a groove of the
wood. “Is it colder out there than in here?”

No answer. The barest shift of a shrug lifts in his peripheral. Bastard. He won’t even tell
Dazai what it feels like.

Heat pools in his stomach, then on his tongue, rough and boiling, aching to be let out.

He lets it out.

“Do you want to know what I feel right now?”

Fyodor’s hand hesitates halfway to his mouth. They make eye contact, and Fyodor’s violet
gaze looks so startlingly devoid of life that he wonders, for a moment, if the man is actually
dead. Perhaps walking outside takes the soul out of his body, if it was there to begin with, and
tosses it into the wind. Maybe it takes a while to come back into him, maybe it only does at
night.

He feels insane for thinking about it like that.

“I’m angry.”

Fyodor’s brows push together, and he plops the spoon back into his microwaveable porridge.
“Why is that.”

It comes out so flat that it doesn’t even sound like a question.

“You haven’t said anything to me until now.”

“There was nothing to say,” Fyodor responds.

“I don’t want to play games with you.”

Fyodor's eyes darken. “We will always play games.”

Dazai frowns. “Tell me what it’s like outside.”

“Why would you want to know? You are not going out there.”

Those words dig a grave in his stomach. He tightens his fingers around a bandage,
swallowing against a scratchy throat. “Because I want to imagine that I can.”

“There is no reason to imagine things you will never have,” the Russian says, just a little
louder.

Dazai’s hands curl into fists. They tremble. “You’re being cruel,” he whispers.

Fyodor stands abruptly, taking his meal to the trash. “Cruelty has nothing to do with it. You
are being dramatic.” He shoves the carton deep into the bin. The plastic bag crackles
furiously.

“No I’m not! If you’re going to keep me here forever, and you’re not going to let me die, then
I deserve to know what it’s like to feel the sun!”

Fyodor whirls on him, cloaks fluttering, hair splaying all about him in inky shards. “I am
your sun! I am your god! It does not matter what the world feels like outside of this house,
you are here, you will stay here, and you will never, ever leave. You are mine, you belong to
me!”

Dazai’s ears ring. The shock takes his breath, and he stares unblinkingly at the Russian’s face.
But despite that, despite the way his fingers have gone ice cold and his heart pounds in his
chest…a smile begins to take form along his lips. The sensation is foreign to him, but he feels
as if he remembers it while it grows, remembers what it means to make his lips curl and
twist.

“You’re angry,” he says, straightening in the chair and feeling bolder than before.

“I am not angry,” Fyodor hisses, but his eyes are not dead any longer. They’re blazing with
magenta and crimson.

Dazai rises from the chair. He grasps at Fyodor’s sleeves, gazing deep into his eyes. Eyes that
have suddenly come to life. Eyes that look like they belong to a living, feeling human. He
wants to drink them. He wants to breathe the sparks that fly from them.

“Yes you are,” he whispers, “don’t you feel that?” He can feel the pulse even through the
man’s sleeves, the rapid beating of a beast’s heart.

Fyodor yanks his arms out of Dazai’s grip, grabs him by the throat. Squeezes. He says
absolutely nothing, his lips pressing into a sharp, deadly line.
Dazai clutches at his hand, choking, trembling. Panic sprouts in his chest and flops around, a
bird in a cage, fluttering to get free. His vision sparkles.

But as soon as it starts, it ends.

Fyodor pushes him, and Dazai stumbles back into the table, clutching the disheveled
bandages around his throat. He wheezes, water in the corners of his eyes—or are they tears?
—as he works to calm himself. This sort of thing happens all the time with Fyodor—he
should not be so shocked by it. He should have mastered the calming part by now. He should
be used to it. He shouldn’t even flinch.

But Fyodor’s fingers were so driven, so hot. They might have burned through the gloves in
their burst of passion.

Fyodor has his back turned when Dazai manages to raise his eyes. He wants it back. The fire,
the color. He can feel Fyodor turning cold again, as cold as ashes in a stone hearth. If only he
can stoke it before it dies.

“What do you feel?” he spits out, openly mocking Fyodor’s common question to him. His
voice is hoarse. His mind is not working as quickly as it should. “I’m not the only one who
can feel now.”

Fyodor’s figure is like a statue of ice, melting and coming to life under a beam of sunlight.
He braces himself on the granite counter, and Dazai can feel the spark flare again under his
prodding. It’s a dark star. A swelling explosion. Lava seeping from a volcano’s mouth.

“Be silent, sinner,” Fyodor hisses.

The use of the label after so long stings like nettles. Dazai’s hands tremble. He struggles to
remain self-possessed, struggles to keep his goal in mind, instead of stumbling to appease
Fyodor. The man will hurt him, he knows he will be hurt. But it’s worth it. For the firework
of light he’d seen in the Russian’s eyes, it’s worth it.

“You must start with the bad to earn the good. That is why. The bad, the negative, comes
easier, more naturally.” That is what Fyodor had told him.

“I will not be silent. Not until you tell me the truth. You felt something that time. You felt it. I
know you did.” The wooden table edge is rough against his bare skin. It makes him
remember all the pain Fyodor could inflict on him, all the ways his body was wounded and
only just healed from in the last week. It makes him remember the chair Fyodor had to
replace.

He thinks the numb flow of tension in his veins is probably fear. He’s acutely aware of the
cold air blowing from the vent above—he can feel it underneath his shirt.

“You forget your place,” Fyodor growls. “Do you need me to remind you of it?” His back is
still turned. He refuses to face Dazai, and Dazai knows—he knows—that it’s because the fire
is feeding on him, growing again, because Fyodor never hides.
He finds himself exhilarated with a sudden wash of adrenaline. What is this? This craving,
for what’s happening now? For the burst of colors, the jagged lines, the rise of something
resembling emotion? What is it called? He doesn’t know, nothing is clear to him, except that
he wants Fyodor to burst into colors, he wants the man to yell and to hit him and to feel and
ah, but that’s it. He wants Fyodor to feel, like he made Dazai feel. He wants revenge. Or
maybe relief.

“I do not wish to hurt you, Dazai.”

He stays silent for a moment too long, he misses the chance to reply before Fyodor says
more.

“Do not make me hurt you. You told me you did not want to hurt.”

“Do it,” Dazai says, and he begins to laugh softly, because he is going to win, this time, at the
cost of his sanity. “I dare you to do it.” It’s scratchy. His voice.

Some wretched, low hiss rips from Fyodor, and he swings around. His hands grasp Dazai’s
hair, they yank it back until his neck is stretched and the laugh chokes in his throat, turning
into pain. He loses his balance, grasps at Fyodor’s clothing, damp with melted snow. The
table’s edge bites into his lower spine, Fyodor’s thigh lodges up between his legs, hard,
trapping him.

He clenches his teeth; he cringes up into violet eyes full of blinding, blessed light. A bloom
of unwanted pleasure spreads in him, the warmth of it numbing his senses.

He remembers. Something like those eyes, full of anger, full of color. Eyes he loved to set on
fire. But they were cerulean, not amethyst. They were bright, sparkling blue.

He misses them, and the feeling is like a dead flower budding inside. He does not know who
they belong to. He does not know where they are. But he loses a little part of himself,
remembering it, he thinks.

And he wonders, for the two seconds that the light remains, what the hell Fyodor Dostoevsky
has done with his memories.

But then Fyodor’s fire leaves, and his eyes are cold, mounted gravestones, and things do not
feel quite so triumphant anymore.

Fyodor shoves him down by the chest. His spine hits the table, his shoulders, his head. His
bandaged legs dangle off the edge, thigh-down, Fyodor’s still lodged between them. The light
is gone. There is no reason for this now. Not when the light has faded and dissolved.

But there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He’s stuck. He’s trapped himself. And it’s not worth
it.

Dazai struggles with gloved hands, unable to keep his features from twisting, his throat from
clenching. “No,” he whimpers. “Wait. I take it back. I take it back.”
Fyodor calmly seizes him under the knees, forcing his legs up until they’re folded against his
shoulders. He writhes; he fights wildly with his hands, struggling to claw at the man’s face.
He can’t catch his breath enough to speak. His hands slap skin, slap clothing, but they slip,
they don't do any good. They don't stop Fyodor.

Fyodor releases his legs, catches both of Dazai’s wrists in unmerciful hands and forces them
down above his head. They slam the table; his bones shudder with the impact. He tries to
kick, but his legs clash only against Fyodor’s shoulders—the man’s body is angled too
perfectly to catch them. He kicks his heels into the man’s back, but that only brings him
closer, and he’s too padded by clothing to make an impact.

Fyodor’s face becomes stone, inches from Dazai’s, and his own frantic pants bounce back at
him, the only source of heat.

He feels the cold air between his cheeks, on his most sensitive place, and he feels so much
more naked than before. It pinches at his composure, at his eyes until they fill with tears,
humiliation. Humiliation. That’s what he feels. He shouldn’t have done this.

Exposure, helplessness. Knowing he can’t stop Fyodor. Knowing he’s done it to himself on
purpose, this time.

A dry, rough sob rises in his throat. He thrashes harder, but his legs are hooked so that
struggling only lifts his body, exposing him more. His shirt has rolled above his chest under
Fyodor’s caging arms. His torso shivers. His member lies unprotected.

And Fyodor just watches him struggle, holding him down, his gloved fingers digging into the
delicate bones of Dazai’s wrist until they burn.

“Do you not feel it, now?” the Russian taunts, and Dazai accidentally shrinks at the sound of
his voice, a whimper escaping him. “You are mine. You are powerless and dependent. You
cannot leave me. You will not leave this house.”

“I never said I wanted to l-leave,” Dazai cries, trembling violently enough that his voice does,
too. He gasps in an uncontrollable sob, and shies from Fyodor’s gaze like the animal he feels
like.

“You want me to rape you. You dare me to hurt you.”

“No!” Dazai twists and stiffens in his grip, tears leaking now. “Nooo, I don’t!” He clenches
his toes, pushes down on Fyodor’s shoulders with all his strength, voice straining through his
teeth. But Fyodor doesn’t budge an inch. Dazai is much weaker than he realizes.

But of course he is. He’s half-starved. He doesn’t see the sun except through windows, and
even then the days are more gray than orange.

“Why would you tell me you do not wish to be hurt, and then dare me to hurt you? You want
my attention? You want my violence?” Fyodor asks him, eyes narrowing. “I will give it to
you. If the good is not what you seek, I will give you the bad.”
He drags Dazai’s arms up on the table across rugged wood, until his wrists meet each other
above his head, until his body stretches, and he shifts his grip to one hand to restrain them
both. Dazai clenches his hands, he arches his back and pulls, he cries out in frustration when
it doesn’t budge an inch.

“Pleeease! Nooo!” He chokes on his own rising panic. Fyodor’s words are blurry. He thinks
he might be going insane. He’s disoriented, he’s going to be fine, but he can’t think.
Everything is fine. He just can’t think.

He’s fine. Everything’s fine.

He just needs Fyodor to stop, so he can respond correctly. So he can put together the right
words and make him understand.

So he can make him stop. Stop.

He hears a buckle clink. He glimpses Fyodor’s free hand disappearing downwards, below the
sight of his exposed genitals. He feels fuzzy material tickle the rim of his entrance and he
cries out, tightening until his muscles tremble with the force of it. His whole body flushes
with ice.

Think! Think! If he can think, he can answer! But he can’t think!

His gasps come shallowly, broken by sobs and involuntary whimpers. His skin flushes, sweat
begins to slide down his chest, his sides. His throat is dry.

Help. He wants to scream for help. It’s silly, though, there’s nobody around.

But he wants to beg Fyodor, that color inside of Fyodor, to help.

He notices Fyodor’s face, through blurry vision, studying him strangely. For once, he wants
Fyodor to see through him, he wants the man to see his thoughts.

“You are afraid,” the Russian mumbles.

A silky heat, hard and terrifying, presses between his parted cheeks. He feels Fyodor’s gloved
thumb on one side, pulling to stretch him. He tightens himself more; he kicks his legs and
grinds the back of his head into the table, whining loudly. Lost, lost in his panic.

“Pleease!” he cries, blank of any other response. Unable to think. “Stop, stop, stop, please
stop, please, no!”

Fyodor leans closer, and his hair tickles Dazai’s face. He doesn’t want to look, not at hollow
eyes that will not pity him. Not at the face of ice. He squeezes his eyes shut, he turns his head
and sobs.

“Are these the only words that you can say to me?”

“No! Please don’t, please—” Dazai cannot stop himself before it jumps from him again in
blind response.
Fyodor’s hardness pushes stronger against him. “Stop. You are mindless,” he hisses. “Look at
me. Say something to me. Answer what I have said to you.”

Dazai is choking, smothered under the weight of terror. He can’t make his body listen or stop
thrashing. He can’t focus past the flashes of hot and cold, past the loosed adrenaline that
makes his heart race in his throat. He can’t get away. He must get away.

“Dazai.” Gloved hand, gripping his face, sending shockwaves through his body.

His eyes come open, wide, very wide. He can’t see any colors. Tears burn on his cheeks.
Fyodor’s face looms above him, dark, colorless.

“Breathe.”

The command, he doesn’t understand. Not the word, but the intention. He tries. But it seems
it must harm him, if Fyodor is telling him to do it. It must have horrible intentions, so he
doesn’t try any longer. His gasps scatter and catch, they suffocate in his lungs. He hears
sounds he’s making but can hardly feel them vibrate in his chest. They sound weak and
childish.

“Dazai, listen to me.”

He registers that the voice is softer. He remembers the other times it was softer. He
remembers what it means when it’s softer.

“Breathe, Dazai.” A whisper now. The silken hardness is gone, it’s not touching him
anymore.

His scrunched toes loosen. The cruel fingers relax on his face. He stares up at the hollow
amethyst eyes, hardly seeing them. He’s made a terrible mistake. He shouldn’t have tempted
the man, he should never, never dare Fyodor to hurt him again. Never, never. He will not
forget it.

He feels his breath going in and out, in and out. He finds the more he thinks about how it
comes and goes, the more steadily it does so. In, out. In and out. His breaths have noise, they
wheeze and whine. They tremble with sobs. His eyes are so wet that they’re beginning to
swell.

Feeling is the most terrible thing in the world. Awful, awful. He doesn’t want to feel
anymore.

“That’s it,” Fyodor murmurs. His thumb moves along the edge of Dazai’s jaw. Gently,
caressingly. “You like it when I speak softly, don’t you.” It’s not a question. It does not
require an answer. He’s glad it doesn’t. He can’t answer.

He sniffles and feels thought begin to come back. The black-and-white in his vision starts to
fade; now it slowly begins to fill with color. It starts with purple. Amethyst purple. It spreads
out from Fyodor’s eyes, paint on a canvas.

“You are calming down, now. That’s better. Now you can think?”
The thing he wanted to say before, the sentence he’d meant to scream before Fyodor made
him panic, it comes back to him in a burst. It rushes up his throat and out of his mouth, loud,
as if his body had gone back to the moment he’d meant to say it, when Fyodor was going to
rape him. His gaze widens, his body strains upwards with the flashback effort to escape, and
his brows scrunch. “I don’t want to be hurt! I want you to feel, too! I want you to feel! I don’t
want to be hurt!”

When it’s out, his strength and will dissolves, and he sags back against the table, his legs
slowly sliding down Fyodor’s shoulders, across his encircling arms. He weeps; he tries to
relax and not think about the exposure of his body. He tries to comprehend, so he can
understand what’s going to happen to him.

Fyodor’s gaze flickers. Black eyelashes dip slightly. By some effort, they relax his gaze. He
is hiding behind it, Dazai can feel it. He’s hiding a bigger reaction. He’s unsure whose favor
it’s in.

The grip around his wrists opens enough to assuage the pain. But he does not let go. He is not
ready to let Dazai free.

“You sought to arouse feeling by challenging me.” Fyodor’s shoulders rise and fall with
heavier breaths than Dazai expects. “Am I right? I will believe you if you say no. I will take
you at your word.”

This is unlike Fyodor. To give him freedom of determining his own truth. This is new and
unpredictable. It makes his stomach restless.

It takes a disgusting amount of focus just to arrange the words. His vocabulary has crumbled
to pieces. “Yes. Y…right…y-you’re…right.”

“I have never heard you stutter before,” Fyodor whispers. Dazai hears the mimic of awe in it.
He blinks rapidly and tries to look away, but the Russian stops him with a touch against his
cheek. He’s an experiment. He knows. But the attention is better than the emptiness. The
thrill, when it fades, feels like an accomplishment instead of a mistake.

“I want to get up,” Dazai whimpers, “please. I want to go to bed.”

He thinks Fyodor has gotten used to the word please, but it still does something to the set of
his lips, when he uses it. Perhaps he was too blind with panic before to see its effect, when he
screamed it over and over.

“I am not through.” Fyodor tightens his hand around his wrists.

Dazai’s breath comes quicker again, his heart turns to ice as it throbs. “You’re going to hurt
me,” he cries in despair.

Fyodor shakes his head. His gloved hand slides down Dazai’s neck, past his shoulder, past
where the shirt has rolled up on his collarbone. He shivers; he whines in fright. Since when
has he become such a coward? Under Fyodor’s hands, he is distraught. He cannot control
himself. His body knows what Fyodor’s touch is like. It will not forget the pain so easily.
The fingers, the slightly rough material of the glove, take hold of his nipple, where his
bandages part just enough to let it through. Dazai’s breath shudders when he gasps, and it
feels strange when Fyodor rolls it between his touch, pinching.

“I think I am bored of hurting you,” Fyodor says thoughtfully. “I have wanted to make you
feel the good things. Let me try, Dazai. Be good, and let me try.”

Dazai’s body trembles all over again, if it ever abated in the first place. There’s something
new and odd blooming, but it’s confusion, and it’s not nice. It’s not nice at all. It’s muddled
and wrong.

“What are you doing?” he whispers tremulously.

Fyodor’s mouth is firm in concentration. He studies Dazai and pulls gently. The texture of the
material—it sends spiders of sensation down through his groin. It tickles numbly in his hips.
He feels the rim of his entrance twitch. He doesn’t like it.

“Please stop.” Dazai twists his head, swallowing thickly. Heat rises in his cheeks, spreads
into his ears. “Stop.”

“Is it comforting to you?” Fyodor asks. “You look like you are melting.” He pulls harder,
twists and tugs on one, then the other. He flicks it. Dazai’s body lurches.

“It tickles,” Dazai gasps, “I don’t like it. Stop, stop, I don’t like it.”

He’s felt it before. The sensation reminds him. The cerulean eyes. He’s been like this before
under another man. He’s been comforted by it.

Why would he feel good so suddenly under Fyodor? It’s wrong, so wrong that it’s painful.
Fyodor should not make him feel good, not when he’s a demon. There’s something wrong
with him. Does he want it? Why? Why would he want to feel good under the touch of a
monster?

It’s such a harsh switch from the pain to the strangeness now that it twists up his thoughts like
a tye-dye shirt, leaking colors too melded to define.

Wet warmth startles him into opening his eyes. He makes a noise and flinches. He sees
Fyodor’s head of ebony hair, lowered to his chest. He feels cold breath under bandages that
the man is pulling away; he feels a tongue pressing his nipple.

“Angh!” He squirms and throws his head back, cringing. His knees press into his shoulders,
where Fyodor’s body has pushed them. His lower body trembles as he tries to tense himself
closed. It feels hot. Throbbing. He doesn’t like it. No, no, he hates it.

“Fyodor,” he gasps, hoarse with the sensation, “stop it. Please, stop it. Please.” One of his
hands slips free from the Russian’s fingers, and he pushes urgently against the man’s head,
ribbons of black silk tangling in his grip.

Fyodor lifts his head, eyes firstly fixed on the hand in his hair, then slowly coming back
down to Dazai’s. “What is it,” he murmurs, “that you do not like? What is it? Tell me
something that will make you comfortable and warm, something that will not make you
panic.”

Dazai retracts his hand as if it’s wounded, cradles it to his chest as Fyodor restrains the other.
His mind fails him, his mind thinks that Fyodor is being very nice and that is not true at all,
it’s not! How can it be true after Fyodor threatened to rape him not less than a minute ago?
He wheezes for air, he starts to cry again, little sobs coming up in his throat. He sniffles and
looks at Fyodor’s blurry face, and he sees it affect the man differently.

The way he used to look when Dazai would cry, it was hungry. It was curious and mad with
interest. It was experimental and cruelly so. It wanted more.

But now, Dazai thinks he must have cried enough to wear out the thrill of this emotion, and
Fyodor looks troubled by it. His expression becomes cloudy, his brows push together slightly
as if he can feel the sobs in his own chest, and knows that they are not good.

“Пиздец,” he whispers, a curse towards himself, “I am still doing something wrong.” The
fingers of his left glove splay across Dazai’s cheek, just under his eyes. As if to stop the tears,
as if to soak them up before he can see them.

Dazai does not understand this, and his lip trembles. A tiny gasp of a sob jumps in his throat.

But there’s a spark suddenly in Fyodor’s eye, and his lashes lift just a fraction, as if he’s
remembered something important. “Ah. Ah, here. I know something.”

Before Dazai knows what’s happening, Fyodor has let go of him, and is scooping him up
with felted arms, relieving his spine of the hard table, enveloping his nakedness in soft, furry
clothes. His cheek meets the man’s shoulder, his nose tucks in his collar, and his arms dangle
uselessly as Fyodor’s embrace wraps him like a heated blanket.

“You like hugs, don’t you?” Fyodor asks emptily, but it sounds like he’s standing on a
tightrope, looking down at the ground below.

Emotion, yes, blissful, hot emotion, swells up inside of him and comes pouring out in more
sobs. He doesn’t have the strength to lift his arms and hug the man back, but he wishes he
did, and he wishes he wouldn’t cry so that Fyodor would know that this was better, this was
good.

Fyodor’s arms loosen. He makes an unhappy sound. He starts to pull Dazai back, but Dazai
wails for him and strains against the hands until he’s put back against Fyodor’s chest. “Good,
good!” he sobs, because he can’t find the words to say it correctly, “good.” He presses tightly
into his neck, where it is very, very warm.

The tension goes a little out of Fyodor’s body, and he holds Dazai to him, slightly bent over
the table’s edge, to where Dazai knows that he is uncomfortable. But he says nothing of it,
nothing at all, and he does not hardly breathe except to pull Dazai closer.

“Good,” he says gently.

Fyodor takes him to bed. But Dazai won’t let go of him when he’s laid out among the sheets,
shivering and sniffling, because the man is too warm to let go, and he doesn’t want to be
alone. He wants Fyodor. He wants him.

He should not want him.

Fyodor hesitates.

Dazai’s shaking fists clutch handfuls of white clothes at his shoulders. His wet, red face stays
buried in his chest. He whines, no shame left to feel for himself and what he has become. He
begs Fyodor to stay, stay. His horrible, horrible captor.

Fyodor lowers himself onto the bed, sitting beside Dazai, supporting him with one arm
around his back to hold him to his chest. He rests his chin on Dazai’s curls.

Everything that’s left of rational thinking screams at him to let go, to make Fyodor leave and
find a way to make his head clear again. But his feelings do not tell him this. His feelings tell
him Fyodor is a very kind man, that he will continue to be kind, if Dazai can just be good
enough to keep him happy. He knows he’s smart, he knows he can find every way to keep
Fyodor happy if he’s aware enough.

His feelings are better now. There is nothing left of the fear and the terror. There is something
swelling and warm instead, something that brings his mind into the clouds and lets him float,
lets him believe that Fyodor is the most wonderful person in the world.

What is it? It’s colorful, it’s so intense that he soars on it as if on a cloud, where the birds
might be if he could go outside. But that’s alright, he doesn’t need to go outside or think
about going outside, now. Not when Fyodor is here beside him. Not when he can soar in his
arms.

Fyodor has not hurt him. That’s what his feelings cry. Fyodor has almost hurt him, and Dazai
was just being dramatic, like he always is about such things. But really, Fyodor’s never done
much of anything to hurt him. All his bones are intact. All his fingers and toes are still here.
Fyodor is holding him, now, Fyodor is soft and gentle and warm, and no real demon can ever
be so soft and gentle and warm like he is.

If Fyodor is a demon—and maybe, maybe he is not, maybe he can change—then Dazai

thinks that he is a very special demon.

Perhaps Fyodor only wanted to bring him to this moment, perhaps everything was a lie—the
threat, too, was a lie—and Fyodor wanted to make him feel this, this—what is it? Damn it,
what is this feeling?

Euphoria.
Fyodor wanted to make him feel euphoria.

Dazai is very smart, still, but probably not smarter than Fyodor. Fyodor knows how to outwit
Dazai. Dazai respects that.

He finds himself breathing hard into the man’s clothes. Hot. His cheeks tingle as the skin
tightens with salty tears. He can hardly get any air tucked so close to Fyodor’s chest, but he
doesn’t want to move.

“What are you thinking about?” Fyodor whispers. Dazai’s spine stiffens at the sound of his
voice.

“I feel insane,” he whispers back, very quickly, gripping tighter to Fyodor’s clothes. “I’m
scared. I feel insane.”

“Insane?” Fyodor’s arms curl around him. They draw him up, until he’s sitting in Fyodor’s
lap, legs off to one side, limp. He feels like a rag doll. He drowses on Fyodor’s shoulder,
gazing off at nothing. His head is so empty, so dark. He doesn’t know what to do with his
limbs, because really, Fyodor can handle that all on his own. What does he need to move,
anyway?

“I think I’m broken.” His voice comes out very small.

“Did I break something?”

Dazai is too high in his clouds to understand which way he means it, or if he’s playing a
game, or if he’s being serious at all. He laughs a sad, painful laugh, and feels like he might
cry again.

Fyodor’s hand tightens slightly on his spine. It rubs. First up, then down. Slightly. Barely. But
enough to make his muscles melt a little.

Fyodor’s voice is hesitant beside his ear. “Forgive me, I…am unsure how to respond. I find it
difficult to understand complicated emotions. When you laugh, but you sound like you are
going to weep, will you tell me what it is that you feel?”

The question is too hard. “I’m tired,” Dazai mumbles, and his throat is thick. He sniffles. His
eyes feel so swollen already. He doesn’t want them to swell more with new tears.

“Yes,” Fyodor says softly, and he sighs a little. “What else?”

“Euphoric.” It sounds like such a big word, compared to anything else he’s been able to say
all day. But he has to tell Fyodor, so he knows that it’s not bad. Even if he does go crazy.

There’s a brief pause as Fyodor must be taking in the glow of a new emotion. “That is good,
is it not? A good sensation. Euphoria. Like you are floating.”

“Like I am floating…” Dazai whispers. The wall of Fyodor’s room blurs ever so slightly. His
rumpled shirt is bothering him. He wishes to smooth it out. But still, he can’t move. He’s
floating. Maybe Fyodor has put him in a trance.
Or maybe he’s just tired. Maybe this is all a dream, and he will wake to Fyodor having raped
him and left him on the kitchen table to bleed.

“You do not sound good,” Fyodor murmurs.

Dazai’s feels himself shifted, held in strong hands that lower him to his back on the bed. And
there is Fyodor’s face, looking down on him from above. He’s beautiful. Has Dazai never
noticed that? He looks like an exotic prince from a fairytale book with gold bindings. He
looks like a thoughtful marble statue, one that is hard to understand, but still understandable.

Nobody will know Fyodor like Dazai knows Fyodor. There is something unutterably special
about that, isn’t there? Fyodor will never do this to anyone else. Dazai is his first pick, his
only pick. Dazai is his partner, in a sense.

No, not in a sense. They’ve had sex. More than once, yes, they’ve had lots of sex probably,
even times Dazai can’t remember very well. So that makes him a romantic partner. That
makes him…

That makes him Fyodor’s…

Well, lover, doesn’t it?

Because lovers have sex. You don’t have sex with just anyone, and certainly not the way
Fyodor does with him.

Dazai almost stops breathing. He thinks his heart might fail in his lungs. Fyodor’s glove is
doing something with his body, pulling at his shirt, and he looks down at it on his chest, and
he has a revelation.

Nobody would kidnap Dazai and keep him locked in their house like this, and let them sleep
in their bed, and have sex with them, and put so much time and effort into making them feel.
Not if they didn’t like them, at the very least. Fyodor has let him wear a very nice shirt.
Fyodor has let him sleep under the covers right next to him, and Fyodor has let him wash in a
shower and lay around all day doing nothing but spending time with him. He goes out to get
food for him. He doesn’t ever chain Dazai up. He trusts Dazai, he knows Dazai will be good
and he will not run away.

With all the things Fyodor does for him, it’s not a simple attraction, Dazai realizes. It’s love.
This, this must be what love is like. And Fyodor is probably shy about those things, or maybe
he doesn’t understand enough to say what he means, and that’s why he’s never said he loves
Dazai.

So it all makes sense. Fyodor must have been trying all this time to get Dazai to see. He’s not
Dazai’s captor. He’s his lover.

It may be a little unhealthy, but no romance is perfect. Life never works that way, it’s not like
it is in the fairytales. No, Dazai is certain that this is real, true, gritty love. This is his kind of
love. He likes this. It’s risky and wrong, but he likes it.
He likes it when it’s like this. When Fyodor…

Ah, but he’s zoning out.

Where is he?

No, he’s on the bed, of course. Still. Lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling.

Where is Fyodor?

He’s beside Dazai—he still is, ah, good. He’s still there, he's just moved from Dazai’s line of
sight, so he turns his head a little to see. Fyodor is speaking to him. He looks curious. What is
that he’s saying? The words spill out of his mouth in visible letters, blurry and jumbled,
leaping around like devilish children.

Oh, god, he probably is going insane. He’d meant to keep his sanity. He’d meant to.

“Dazai.”

A soft whisper. The jumbled letters suddenly make sense. They line up as Fyodor leans
forward; they scatter and vanish.

Fyodor’s brows are furrowed.

“What’s wrong with me?” Dazai asks him, and he can tell his voice is trembling.

There’s a hand—it appears out of nowhere in his hair—or he doesn’t see it, when it comes—
but it strokes him, and he whimpers because it feels good.

“I think I have put too much on you. I think your body is trying to process everything. It is
alright, do not rouse yourself...be calm. I am here.”

Why does Fyodor look so melancholy? Why does he sound as if he’s capable of being
troubled over Dazai?

“Fedya.”

Fyodor blinks at him, and his face is soft along the edges where they’re usually hard. Is it the
lamp on the table behind him making him glow? Or is that just Dazai’s imagination?

“What is it?” Fyodor whispers. The fingers in his hair had stopped at first, but now they
move again.

“Can I ask you...a question?”

“You can.”

“Are you keeping me here because you love me? Is all of this because you love me?”

Dazai feels a little out of breath after saying it, and his chest heaves. He notices that his shirt
isn’t there anymore to cover it. He’s naked, with only his bandages to cover him. He doesn’t
 remember Fyodor pulling the shirt over his head. But he feels covers just below his torso, and
his legs are warmer than the rest of him.

Fyodor’s whole body goes still. Dazai can feel it happen more than he can physically see it,
and he thinks the hand in his hair might be quivering. But it must be a figment of his
imagination. Fyodor does not quiver.

“I cannot love,” Fyodor’s voice is as tight as a rack pulling a man apart, “or hate. I cannot
feel these things. I have told you, and you know this is so.”

“Yes but if you could,” Dazai pleads, his voice becoming more watery by the moment, “if
you could, do you think it would be love?”

He can feel Fyodor’s breath coming to and fro against his forehead, quickly now, quickly,
like his own.

“Do you think, Fedya?”

“Perhaps,” Fyodor whispers, so softly he can barely hear it. “Yes, Dazai, perhaps it would be
love.”

Chapter End Notes

Favorite moment of this chapter? Comment below if you feel like sharing 8D I would
kill to know.

My favorite part to write was Fyodor's line: "Forgive me, I…am unsure how to respond.
I find it difficult to understand complicated emotions. When you laugh, but you sound
like you are going to weep, will you tell me what it is that you feel?”

Because I felt like I had used the information I knew about psychopaths--namely, one of
the biggest signs of one--to explain a little bit about why Fyodor has been doing all this.
*does a little jig down a runway* Heeheeeheeeee YAssss

Anyway. Enough about me. x.x

 Slow Insanity
Chapter Summary

Dazai's plunging headlong into Stockholm syndrome. Meanwhile, Fyodor decides to let
Dazai into the locked room, where he plays his cello.

Chapter Notes

Ok this WAS my favorite chapter, but now I've read it over so many fucking times to
make sure it was perfect that I AM SO TIRED OF IT xD

However, I hope you'll enjoy it LMAO. Waiting a year before I ever lay eyes on this
chapter again, good grief.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai opens his eyes, he wishes he could close them just as easily again, and fall back
asleep. He’d been dreaming about the color blue, cerulean blue, and he’d thought that he’d
been on the brink of remembering who it belonged to, but then there had come the sun
through the curtains, and the color had fled.

He’s clinging to Fyodor’s arm.

“You cried out in your sleep,” Fyodor says softly.

He rubs his face against Fyodor’s sleeve and feels tears still hovering at the edge of his
lashes, but they do not spill. He sniffles. “A dream.”

“Did it frighten you?”

Dazai presses his eyes shut. He tries to burrow closer to Fyodor’s warmer body, underneath
the protection of his arm. Fyodor lets him. “No.”

But maybe it frightens him that he’s here, and not with the blue eyes. It frightens him that it
was so clear in his dream, and it’s blurry now that he’s awake with Fyodor. His mind. His
mind was so clear in the dream, it was free. It wasn’t happy, but it was working correctly, and
now that he’s awake, he remembers that it’s not.
Not thinking correctly becomes more and more evident to him as the days go on—so many
days, he’s not even sure how many now, or if the days just feel as long as weeks.

But good things happen, the longer that he doesn’t think correctly, and living is a little bit less
stressful when he lets himself think incorrectly. Fyodor is softer with him, kinder. And Dazai
can’t stop thinking about how they must have fallen in love—sort of—along the way. A
strange, twisty, dark sort of love. But it’s his kind of love. It certainly is. Dazai remembers at
least that he’s never been a moral person, and this is just the type of relationship he deserves
to have, if that’s what he’s like. They are both amoral, both selfish, both deviant. And so they
can be towards one another. It’s only natural.

However, that old urge of Dazai’s sticks around no matter how he’s thinking. The urge that
constantly tempts him to get out Fyodor’s rope when he’s left alone, nags at him to beg
Fyodor to do it for him. But it seems silly that he wants to die. It didn’t before. Yet now that
he knows there’s someone trying to keep him safe like a pet, a very special pet, it seems silly
that he’d still wish to die.

But it’s difficult, too. It’s difficult to bear the weight of being Fyodor’s subject of interest. He
doesn’t know what love feels like and he never will. Neither of them will. Soulless beings
have no place with love or being loved, those feelings are for humans, and no matter how
many emotions Fyodor creates in him, love is too ambiguous to feel, he thinks. Yes, love is
simply an encompassing word for lots of good and bad emotions, the culmination of all those
things that make up a relationship as rocky as this one.

Love is terrifying.

But it’s also wonderfully free, in the moments when he floats. In the moments when Fyodor
stops being cruel and starts being kind, starts to see him instead of staring with hollow eyes.
He likes being seen very much. It makes him grounded; it keeps him insanely sane. He’ll do
anything to reach for those moments. No amount of pain makes it not worth it.

Then again, he’s learned to dread the pain.

He dreads it every second he’s around Fyodor. He knows that when it’s over, good feelings
will visit him like soft snowflakes. They will visit him, and he will be allowed to understand
them. He will be allowed to enjoy them.

He can accept that Fyodor will always hurt him, if he manages to feel good when it’s over.
He can accept that.
One day, Fyodor unlocks the room he normally disappeared in to play his cello. Slipping the
small key back into his coat pocket, he turns over his shoulder to examine Dazai, and he asks
calmly if Dazai would like to be let in. He says he’s going to play his cello, and that Dazai
can listen if he likes, and of course Dazai is quick to agree, twisting the hem of his white shirt
in his hands.

He gets up from the couch. He hesitates in concern that Fyodor might want him to bring his
cello along. But no, he’s not allowed to touch it, and so he watches the man retrieve it from
its place beside the hearth. He watches the way Fyodor treats it like a child, fingers curled so
carefully about its frame.

He follows behind very quietly. When he enters, he takes in the startling view of a new, fresh
room.

It’s very large. Much larger than it should be, he thinks. But he doesn’t remember the way
Fyodor’s house looks from the exterior, so how is he to know how big it should be?

It looks so incredibly different from the rest of the house that it almost feels like Dazai has
stepped outside. This makes him freeze up in the entrance with a tremble in his limbs. He
stands still; he looks all around him with great, wide eyes.

The ceiling is so high, and the floors are so polished. It’s dark, but richly dark, dotted by the
thousand colored lights of a gigantic computer system, sprawled across a glass desk. A blue
screen light here, stretching across the ground, another few blinking ones there. It’s so
luminous and beautiful, compared to the dullness of the rest of Fyodor’s house.

He hardly realizes that he’s halted in the doorway until a large click turns on a spotlight in the
back of the room. Under it, a single chair lies in wait for Fyodor to fill it.

Fyodor stands on the very edge of the spotlight, his hand still on the light switch, half of his
face bright yellow and the other half dark blue.

“You do not mean to stand so far away, I hope?”

Dazai clams up and does not answer. He comes forward only a little. Fyodor is so
breathtaking in the light. He’s never really seen such incredible colors on him. His heart
begins to thrash rapidly, like it does so many times in a day with the man. And he thinks what
a lovely thing it is to be allowed to see Fyodor, to see all of this. A hollow, soulless vampire,
now imbued with the trick of light. He does not look so hollow now—or perhaps it's that he
does, and finally the emptiness is something to admire.

It feels like a dream here. It feels like a nightmare. He doesn’t know what it feels like. But he
wants to hear Fyodor play.

He makes himself move, step by sluggish step, eyes roving all about to take in the glitter and
sparkle of lights, of stained glass in frames—not windows to the outside, no, this room has no
windows. But the glass reflects the light in shards of brilliant reds and yellows, the colors of a
spring he could never see outside of this room, and oh…oh, what he would give to be able to
come here every day and look.
The chair creaks, dragging his wandering eyes back to the man in his dark cloak and his fur
collar, in the raven hair and the violet knives. He doesn’t own anything on his body, his soul
is a naked soul, and these things only try their best to hide them from Dazai. He feels
unworthy in this freshened presence, he feels small and bare and humbled.

He does not deserve Fyodor.

Dazai sinks to his knees before the chair in the shadow of Fyodor’s glossy cello as the man
sits. He gazes up with clenched fists on his knees, and his breath shivers with each gasp for
air. A smile, large as blades in his cheeks, stretches painfully across his face. He can feel
himself losing what he is. He can feel his mind straying to pieces. He can feel his
consciousness and his worth wrapping around the serpentine demon that sits before him, and
there is nothing he can think or do that will stop it.

He is going insane.

“You are smiling,” Fyodor says, and his voice echoes as if on polished marble. The room’s
acoustics are as surreal as the lights. “Are you alright?”

What a silly question. As if Fyodor doesn’t know, as if he cannot see. “Congratulations,”

Dazai whispers, shakily.

Fyodor’s eyes search him. He slips off his gloves as if it means nothing, as if he doesn’t know
that it will make Dazai’s nerves split to see the snow white of his skin. He lifts a bow from a
table shrouded beyond the spotlight. The horsehair glimmers. Rosin dust floats from it like
the cloud of Fyodor’s breath when he comes in the door with groceries.

“You’ve ruined my mind,” Dazai continues, “I hope you’re happy.” He watches the slender
fingers wrap about the cello, the way the skin pales even more when he presses a string. His
knuckles, delicate, are bluish in the light.

Fyodor lifts the bow ever so slowly, until it fondles the lowest string. His lashes veil his gaze
for a split second as he glances down, arranging his fingers across the neck, tightening them.
“Is that so?” he asks gently. “How?”

“How?” He can’t keep his eyes off of Fyodor’s fingers.

“Mm.”

“How am I to explain? Can’t you see it when you look at me? Can’t you see it, Fyodor?”

Fyodor’s gaze lifts, spidery across his features. “That I have destroyed you? If that is what
you think of my intentions, then I should remind you of what they are not. I should punish
you.”

Dazai’s throat tightens; his brows furrow. “No—” His voice breaks.

“Shhh.” Fyodor shakes his head a fraction. “I know. Listen. Listen to me play.” He draws the
bow across the string like a knife across a man’s throat, torturously slow until the sound is
pulled free like a soaring soul. And it does soar, up into the rafters high above, into the walls
and across the floor in a wave of rich, deep notes. They lift Dazai’s chest, they pull the air
from his lungs. He’s never heard such a thing, never. Not like this. Not the way that Fyodor
plays.

“You are not something I have destroyed, Dazai,” Fyodor murmurs above the curving lines of
notes. “You are a being who has changed himself, you have let yourself be molded, you have
become something new.”

Dazai wants to believe it, and the music makes him feel as if he can, as if he can believe
anything while it plays. His ears fill with it until they yearn every pause between notes for
more, they grasp and ache until it comes again. He sits still with his hands in his lap, legs
tucked under him, heels pressing into the bare skin of his seat, and he watches Fyodor’s
fingers move and stretch across the strings.

His lips part. At first he cannot summon up his speech, but the second time, he can. “I have
only become more worthless than before.”

Fyodor frowns subtly. His fingers grip the strings harder, they move faster and the notes soar
louder. “I think that you do not think as highly of yourself as you should.”

“I am nothing!” He doesn’t mean to shout it, but it leaps from him to join the twirling shapes
of Fyodor’s music without his bidding. It sounds good, it sounds right with the notes. “You
have told me the same, before. Do not lie to me. I know what I am, I know that I’m a sinner.”
The word comes out bitter and tangy on his tongue.

“Yes, Dazai, yes! A sinner. Do you not understand what that means?” The music races, it
grows and it spreads petals full of shimmering raindrops. “A sinner was made for me, for a
god, yes, a sinner can only belong to me. You are not worthless. You are mine. You are my
sinner, and that is the highest value you could ask for.”

Dazai looks at him, really looks at him. His eyes are full of the spotlight, and they don’t look
so much like daggers when they glow at him from between the locks of his straying hair. No,
they don’t at all. Not when the music is slowing into elongated draws of the bow, velvet and
tender. Not when his mouth has loosened and doesn’t look so sharp. Not when his cheeks
seem to have color—youthful, healthy color.

He thinks the Russian means it. So he hadn’t been telling Dazai he was worthless, all this
time. He just hadn’t understood. Or perhaps Fyodor had changed the rules, because he was
god, here. He could do it, of course, any time he wanted.

“Why am I important to you?” he asks, and it almost is lost among the sound of the cello,
except that Fyodor’s playing falters for the briefest second. His heart aches. He can feel it
clenching in his ribs.

Fyodor is less unwavering these days. When Dazai asked things like this before, he would be
hurt for it.

“Do you like my music, Dazai?” Fyodor asks him, and for a moment it seems like the way he
presses his cheek against the side of the instrument’s neck is a veiled attempt to hide
something in his face.

The flash of his pink tongue between his lips makes Dazai’s blood run hot. He blinks rapidly.
“Yes.”

“Good.”

“You have no answer for me?”

“What is there to say?” The music becomes grittier, Fyodor’s bow digs into the bottom string,
slow but rough. Horsehairs snap and hang like glowing wires from the end of his bow. “Who
can ever explain the elusive motivations of man?”

“But you are a god, Fyodor. A god, aren’t you?”

Fyodor turns his face closer to the hand around the cello’s neck. His jaw muscle tightens.
There’s a twitch in his brow. The music grows so loud that Dazai can hardly believe its
volume. “Am I?” Surely, the man believes it to be drowned by the music, but Dazai’s ears are
so hungry for his voice that he thinks he could hear it if Fyodor was halfway across the
world.

He doubts himself. Fyodor, he’s doubting what he has claimed so adamantly to be. No, what
he’s shown himself to be, to Dazai. It trembles wildly in his veins, the fear that Fyodor will
lose that. Or perhaps it’s the fear that Fyodor could lose that, that he could be human, if he
was vulnerable for long enough.

He reaches carefully up towards the soaring bow, until his fingers catch Fyodor’s bare hand,
ruining the song. He holds his hand open and steady, Fyodor’s hand gone in seconds but the
feeling remaining, the feeling of his vampirically icy skin. It must be the anemia. He's like a
living marble statue.

Fyodor’s head snaps sharply towards him. The bow slips from his fingers and clatters to the
floor, the music sliced in half.

Dazai doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Trying to think of some way to continue is more difficult than he expects, with Fyodor’s
widened gaze sucking him in like two great black stars.

His hand begins to tremble. He can’t lower it. Fingers splayed, breath shuddering, he begins
to regret doing it. But he sees it in the man’s eyes. The understanding that Dazai heard what
he’d said. The realization that Dazai witnessed his momentary doubt.

“I’m sorry,” Dazai whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not touch me,” Fyodor hisses.

“I’m sorry,” Dazai cries softly. He lowers his head towards his shoulders. He pulls his
bandaged arms against his shirt. He was too eager, too greedy. Too selfish. He should not
have done this.
But he wants to sit in Fyodor’s lap, he wants to be his cello for him. He wants Fyodor to play
him, to make him soar like the notes do. He wants to feel free in Fyodor’s arms. Surely,
surely that is better than going outside, better than dreaming of the clouds and the smell and
the wind on his face. He doesn’t need that. Fyodor is enough.

“You have stained me, Dazai.”

Dazai pulls himself tighter inwards, staring down into his lap with troubled eyes.

“How will I remain myself if you try to bring emotions to me? A god should never feel. It
will taint his justice.”

Dazai meekly raises his eyes, the weight of those words slow to dawn in his mind. He is
admitting that Dazai did bring emotions to him. No. Is he? He said try. Try to bring emotions.
But then, that implies that Fyodor is capable of them. That he knows Dazai poses a threat to
his barrier. “You don’t want them?” he dares to ask.

“I will not have them.”

“But you can?”

Fyodor hesitates, and Dazai can see the words on his tongue, the magenta ferocity in his eyes.
He led himself into a trap, he sees that, and Dazai doesn’t remember being able to set a trap
that Fyodor could fall into. Fyodor has his guard down, perhaps because Dazai has been
broken.

Is that an advantage?

Dazai is petrified. He stammers over words in the absence of Fyodor’s. “If you could…if you
do, I would be…I would be happy. I don’t like feelings, sometimes, not bad ones, but they’re
better than the hollow. They are, I think so. You told me before that it is better to cry—”

“I cannot cry,” Fyodor spits out so venomously that it startles the words away from Dazai. He
sits ramrod straight, eyes fixed on his hands. “I cannot feel. I will never feel.”

“Okay,” Dazai whispers.

“Do you understand me?”

“I do. Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Give me my bow.”

Dazai instinctively scoops it up and offers it to him in both hands. His arms prickle with
goosebumps when he feels Fyodor’s fingers meet his as he takes it.

The next moment, there’s a whoosh of air. The bow whips across his cheek. He cries out so
loudly that it rakes his throat, doubling over and holding his face with both hands. Pain tears
spring to his eyes. The sharp, plunging pain is delayed by the initial shock, but when it sets
in, it throbs with heat. He hisses through clenched teeth and whimpers softly. He doesn’t
want to be hurt, not ever, but he deserved that. He feels bad for causing it. He knows Fyodor
doesn’t want to hurt him, either.

Blood. There’s blood on his fingers, wet and warm and sticky. A thin line has opened across
his cheekbone.

“I’m sorry, please. I’m sorry,” he begs Fyodor. He doesn't want to be hit again.

The tip of the bow taps under Dazai’s chin, prodding him to lift his face. He’s burning with
shame. He doesn’t want to be looked at. But he keeps his eyes lowered, and he obeys the
silent command. He sniffles. He can feel the slow trickle of blood down his jaw.

“You and your words, your please and your sorry. What do you hope to gain by using them?”

Dazai’s breath comes in gasps. He wills himself to be still, to be calm. It’s difficult to think
when all his mind is doing is reminding him of all the times he failed Fyodor before, of how
he’s been punished for it. How is he to explain it to someone who doesn’t understand what
those words are meant for? When Fyodor doesn’t know what they beg for in response?

“I didn’t meant to upset you,” he whispers, and immediately regrets it.

“You did not upset me,” Fyodor grits between his teeth. Dazai looks up, he catches the man’s
eyes in his timid gaze. Fyodor’s lashes flutter, he sighs. He lowers the bow from Dazai’s chin
and sets his cello down along the floor at his feet. “That is enough for today.”

Dazai nods, a statue as Fyodor moves, tending to his bow. Every shift of his clothing, every
inch of space devoured between them makes his body heat and leap and tingle. He’s
expecting something—he doesn’t know what, something terrible, something wonderful.

“I liked it,” Dazai forces himself to say, but it trembles when it comes out. “The song.”

Fyodor glances out of the corner of his eyes at him, twisting the silver knob on the end of the
bow to loosen the hair. His gaze is neutral, neither black nor white, an indeterminate gray of
frightening depth. “Mm.”

“Will I get to hear you again?” He doesn’t mean to grab the bandages on his thighs quite so
hard, when he asks it. His legs flinch. Fyodor notices. It makes his wrists throb.

A drop of blood splashes on the back of his knuckles from the edge of his jaw, staining the
bandages. He looks down at it, dully. The floor feels harder against his shins, bathed in the
stark yellow of the spotlight that he doesn’t want to be in anymore. He’s too exposed here,
when Fyodor isn’t playing, when the only focus is Dazai.

Cold fingertips touch his cheek, and Dazai’s eyes leap upwards. He sucks in a breath when
Fyodor’s face comes into view inches from his, raven hair dangling, face shrouded in the
harsh shadows the spotlight casts.

Bare fingers. No gloves.

His own blood begins to seep into those fingers. The wound is likely bruising by now. It’ll
hurt if Fyodor slaps him again, or touches it, or digs his fingernail into the opening.

“I will tend to this,” Fyodor says delicately. “I hit you harder than I meant to.”

Dazai’s body releases him muscle by muscle. He deflates, exhausted by the tension of his
uncertainty. A slow, calming breath leaves his lips. He should say thank you, for Fyodor’s
mercy, for his kindness.

But that, he thinks, is a very foolish thought, considering Fyodor was the one who had made
the mark in the first place.

Fyodor’s fingers leave his face, and his chest clenches painfully at how quickly they’ve come
and gone. But he is not strong enough to ask for them back.

Fyodor sits him on the bed in their room, once he’d locked up the chamber with the lights
and put his cello back by the fireplace. The sheets are cold under his bottom, but he’s too
preoccupied watching Fyodor to care about it. He gently kicks his legs back and forth against
the edge of the bedframe, hands folded obediently in his lap.

Fyodor disappears into the bathroom, leaving the door cracked enough to see the edge of his
shoulders as he rummages through a cabinet. It’s the same cabinet that holds his pills—yes,
Dazai knows because they are the same pills that taunted him with thoughts of overdosing.
He’s never seen Fyodor take them. He wonders why.

It would look wrong to see him take them. It would make him look human. Yes, that must be
why.

Fyodor returns with a little white box. A first aid kit. The bandage rolls Fyodor buys for him
are always inside this box, so he’s very familiar with it. This is odd, though, very odd, to see
Fyodor with it. Has the man tended to him before?

He was unconscious, most likely, the times when Fyodor had. The memory chimes like a dull
bell in his mind, brings up fragments of feelings and images. His throat goes dry and his
fingers lock up around each other.

Fyodor sets the white box on the bedside table and turns on the lamp, bathing his clothes in a
yellow glow that makes him look atrociously softer.

There’s something so relaxed about all of this that twists Dazai’s stomach into knots. This is
not how their interactions go, normally. The tension is always pulled like a razor wire, ready
to snap the moment it’s pulled on, ready to dissolve into a burst of color and riot.
It’s so quiet. There is only the tap-tap of the snow on the bedroom window, dark with the
night outside. Outside, where Dazai cannot go. Where he does not want to go. Because he has
Fyodor, and there is no reason to go outside.

A small plastic pop sounds as Fyodor opens the kit, dark-gloved fingers pushing and sorting
through materials until they find the square package of an antiseptic wipe. Dazai hates those.
They smell sharp and remind him of—

—Of!

Oh! Is he having a memory?

M…

There’s an M lingering in his mind, suddenly. The letter takes on shape, it swells and grows
as Fyodor tears open the package, releasing more of the antiseptic tang. But the deeper he
tries to think on it, the further away the letter flies, until it’s out of his grasp so completely
that hot frustration bubbles up in its stead. He almost remembered something.

Here he was, so comfortable and ready to succumb to Fyodor, and this reminder that he has
no memories comes to wreck his fragile sense of stability.

Fyodor is looking at him.

Dazai sits a little straighter on the bed; he swallows carefully. He averts his gaze. The
Russian has taken the antiseptic wipe out of its foil-lined package. The smell is
overpowering. But the M has become abstract and unreachable. There is nothing left to
accompany its smell.

Fyodor’s steps are incredibly loud to him, as the man approaches. He closes his legs subtly.
He pushes his hands deeper into his lap.

“Do not hide from me,” Fyodor reprimands him, reaching out to pull away one of his hands.

Dazai’s stomach tightens. He looks sharply up. Fyodor is forceful, but that’s not what
frustrates him. It’s the fact that he cannot relax when he knows Fyodor is only here to help
him at the moment. He cannot let himself be seen, even though he knows the man has seen
him countless times. Does that make him a bad partner?

Fyodor releases his hand, and Dazai deliberately rests it flat on his thigh. The other hand,
however, remains stubbornly clasping his nakedness, guarding it from the one who so
obviously owns it.

Fyodor gazes at him. Dazai’s cheeks fill with pulsing, burning heat. He makes a small,
uncertain sound and tries to avoid the man’s attention. But there is nowhere to go where
Fyodor will not watch; there is nowhere to move where Fyodor cannot follow. There is
nowhere to think where Fyodor cannot listen.

“Are you not grateful that I haven’t taken your shirt?” Fyodor asks, leaning down with the
wipe raised, enveloping Dazai’s form in shadow. “You could be more vulnerable, if I wished
it.”

The wipe feels good, cold on his flushed cheek, a bite of pain to wash away his thoughts,
however briefly that it does. The hand flat on his thigh flinches, and he wants so badly to pull
it back where it belongs. But he will try to be good.

Obeying a monster like a pet. What the hell has he become, anyways?

He feels Fyodor’s other gloved, bony hand grasping his. The one left covering him. He feels
his stomach shrivel; he whimpers involuntarily. He squeezes his eyes shut tight.

The antiseptic wipe halts mid-stroke. Fyodor’s velvet voice penetrates his fogging mind.

“That is enough.”

The hand tugs at his. Fyodor will not force it, no, worse than that. He will force Dazai to do it
himself.

“Please,” he stammers.

“None of that word. Open your eyes. Look at me.”

Dazai obeys, eyes fluttering in hesitancy, face screwed in pain as the fluids of the wipe sting
more harshly in his cut. Fyodor will not take it away. He can feel his eyes becoming wet, his
vision blurring. He does not want to cry, not now. There is no reason for it.

Fyodor is so frighteningly calm all the time. Dazai used to be able to do that too. He’d give
anything to do it now.

“What is it that you fear, so?” Fyodor murmurs.

How ironic, that the monster would ask him who scares him.

“Nothing,” he blurts, because he doesn’t want Fyodor to see the answer in his eyes.
“Nothing.”

Fyodor lifts his chin slightly. His brows lower an inch. “Trust me.”

The words rattle in Dazai’s head. His pulse races. His eyes fill with more water. “I do,” he
insists, “I do.”

“No,” Fyodor replies, “you do not. I am the one that you fear.”

Should he say no, or yes? Should he nod, or cower, or curl up in a ball and weep? What is it
that Fyodor wants him to do, what will make him happy? What will appease him, what will
give him the power he wants over Dazai, what? What? Dazai can do it, whatever it is, he can
please Fyodor, if he can think of what he wants!

The antiseptic wipe is driving him mad, still pressing into the cut. Fyodor’s hand still covers
his where it lies against his flaccid shame. Protection. Yes, because he is afraid. Afraid of
pain, afraid of being seen, afraid of the demon he is beginning to long for.

The indecision is the only answer that Fyodor gets, and it is not the one Fyodor wants, Dazai
knows that for certain. He cries out in frustration, in hopelessness, in vain longing. “I don’t
know what to say! I don’t know! I am afraid.”

He begins to shake, bodily. Once it starts, he cannot stop it. Saying the words makes them
clearer to him, and his body realizes it. His blood turns cold and icy, it tells him to run and
hide from the man tending to him.

Fyodor pulls away the wipe, and Dazai feels it like a shock of electricity, his eyes flashing to
the source of movement.

“Dazai,” Fyodor says gently.

Dazai likes it when the man calls him like this, he does, but his stomach does not. It flips and
turns. He feels tentative tears begin to trickle down the rims of his eyes. “I don’t mean to fear
you,” he whispers, desperately. “I know that you won’t hurt me, when I’m good. I know
that.”

“And yet you shake when I touch you. Is my gaze so terrible? Are my hands so fearsome?”

“No! I want to be touched. I do. I’m sorry.” Dazai curls subtly over himself, his one hand still
trapped in Fyodor’s, unmoving, while the other frantically wipes at his eyes. “I’m being
dramatic.” How terrifying to him, to hear the man’s own words come from his mouth.

“A little,” Fyodor says, and Dazai is relieved that he has gotten one thing right. The Russian’s
other hand joins Dazai’s against his face, stroking away the tears. Fyodor looks at how it wets
his glove, his expression indeterminable. “But still, you feel. You feel much easier than you
used to.”

Dazai feels like he’s accomplished something great and wonderful, when Fyodor says it like
that.

“Do you remember,” Fyodor goes on quite conversationally, picking up the antiseptic wipe
again and stroking Dazai’s cheek with it, “when I had to get you up on the table, and spank
you like a disobedient child, just to make you cry?”

All of the tentative color is suddenly sucked out of him. Tension pulls through his muscles
like tiny, invisible strings. A bird takes flight in his stomach. His mouth turns to sand. He
stares at Fyodor, breaths coming shallow, images racing in his head.

Fyodor is pretending it means nothing, he’s acting unaware, he’s even smiling with razor lips,
refusing to look Dazai in the eyes. He imitates a motherly prodding at Dazai’s cheek instead,
cleaning the dried blood that he drew himself.

He thinks, irrationally, mindlessly, that it means Fyodor will do it again. He will. He’ll do it
again, that’s what he’s saying, isn’t it? Is this a threat? Is this supposed to tell him that he
should never trust the Russian? That nothing will ever be enough to keep him safe from
Fyodor’s games?

“But I am not like that anymore?” Dazai asks, begging for reassurance.

“No,” Fyodor agrees, forcibly tearing Dazai’s protective hand away from his body and
pressing it into the sheets beside his leg. Exposing him. “You are not like that anymore, are
you?”

Dazai fiercely lowers his head, pressing his legs together until it hurts. His lungs heave.
Fyodor is so close, and last time, last time—! He was on the table, his legs spread. He was on
his back, Fyodor was trapping him, he was stuck. He was helpless. He was in pain.

“No, no, no,” he wails tremulously. “I’m not like that, I’m not like that.”

“Raise your head. I am not through tending to you.”

His voice is so cold, like an icicle through his stomach. Can he not see that Dazai is
distressed? Does it mean nothing to him that Dazai is feeling, he’s feeling very, very much,
like Fyodor always wants him to?

It takes immense courage to lift his head, to control himself, to keep his free hand from flying
to protect what Fyodor can see now. The shirt still covers him a little, and his legs, too, but
it’s not enough. Not at all.

His other hand, trapped under Fyodor’s vise grip, curls up, tangling in the sheets. He can’t
stand Fyodor’s eyes. Everything in him quivers.

Fyodor returns to tending his cheek, slowly, torturously. He can’t feel a thing. His toes curl
up, he presses his heels into the bedframe. He does his best to sit still. But his breath comes in
spurts and gasps, shuddering in his throat. He wants to cry. Now is not the time to cry. He has
already cried. Fyodor will think he’s being dramatic. Fyodor has grown tired of tears, he is
convinced of that. Humiliation, shame, that is his new endeavor. That’s why he brought up
the day in the kitchen.

He can taste the memory in his mouth. It makes him sick.

Fyodor finishes cleaning Dazai’s cut. Dazai remains as still as a trapped, small animal, a
rabbit quivering in the bushes, waiting to be snapped up. Fyodor puts the wipe aside, and
doesn’t pick up anything else from the first-aid box. He doesn’t release Dazai’s hand, either.

He turns back to Dazai. Does he ever get tired? He’s half-bent over just to level with Dazai’s
height on the bed. Do his legs not exhaust themselves with how still he stands? Do his hands
never tire of holding Dazai down?

Why is he looking? Why is he staring at Dazai, so quietly? He can’t bear it. Fyodor is trying
to drag him into dark waves of anxiety. Why? He was trying so hard to be good.

“You imagine every second that I will hurt you,” Fyodor says. He doesn’t sound displeased.
He sounds…troubled.
Dazai quickly shakes his head, but it’s more of a tremble than anything.

“Then show me that you are not afraid. Show me that you know I will not hurt you.”

Dazai opens his mouth. He cannot think of what to say. He’s shaking violently, he is petrified.
His mind screams at him, run, run! Hide yourself, run from his gaze. He’s a demon, he is no
friend of yours. He is no lover.

But the mind is so desperately wrong, Dazai thinks. The price of feelings is that you must
feel all the wrong things, when your body thinks you’re in danger. There is no danger, here.
It’s only Fyodor.

“I don’t know how,” he whispers. Show me how. Give me a way, and I will do it! All these
things he wishes to say, but can’t.

Fyodor releases him. He straightens to his full height and looks down at Dazai. “Spread your
legs, then.”

Dazai’s breath catches in his throat. He chokes on sudden tears, because he knows he cannot
do it. Please, don’t hurt me, springs to his lips. He cuts himself off, biting his tongue until he
tastes blood. He knows that Fyodor will not hurt him, if he says he won’t. It’s just that, all the
other times his legs have been opened, all the other times—!

“I can’t,” He sobs.

Fyodor frowns slightly. “You act as if I will punish you for it. What is it that you fear, then, if
you cannot open yourself to me?”

Yes, what? What is it that he fears? He feels so silly. He feels so foolish and simple. He is
such a child.

Fyodor touches both of his knees. He pushes.

Dazai cries out and digs his fingers deep into the bed, grasping sheets, resisting Fyodor’s
force. It makes it worse, but he doesn’t understand why. He doesn’t want to be rushed. Maybe
he can do it, if he’s not rushed.

“I will not hurt you!” Fyodor yells, so loudly that Dazai cringes back. His eyes widen. The
color, the color! The raging sparks in Fyodor’s eyes are back. “What must I say to convince
you? I ask of you the simplest thing, and you act as if the world will crash around you!”

“I’m sorry,” Dazai whimpers, “I’m sorry, I’m trying.”

“Trust me! Trust me, do you not, Dazai, will you never trust me?”

“I will! I do!”

Fyodor slams both of his hands into the bed on either side of Dazai’s body, his eyes glittering
with wild, raucous light. “Then spread your legs,” he commands, fiercely, in a way that Dazai
has never heard before.
He is too shocked to even feel the rising panic, for a moment. He sees things behind Fyodor’s
gaze, things Fyodor doesn’t seem to care are becoming exposed, pain and frustration and
things that should not be inside of a soulless, unfeeling psychopath.

Dazai raises his hands to his face, trembling and whimpering; he covers his eyes. He tenses
his legs; he forces them to obey. They spread, ever so slowly, flinching back every second,
fighting his will. Obey! If he obeys, Fyodor will be happy.

“Take your hands from your face. You have no need to hide.”

A sob, weak and hoarse, rises in Dazai’s chest. “I beg you,” he whispers, “please. I can’t, I
don’t want to see!”

Fyodor’s gloved hands cover his. His voice is closer. Softer. “Do it.”

Quaking so violently that his muscles begin to cramp, Dazai sobs out again and lets Fyodor
pull the hands from his face.

“Down at your sides,” Fyodor whispers.

“Please!” Dazai cries in agony.

“Shhh…” Fyodor slowly but surely guides Dazai’s hands down to the mattress on either side
of his legs. His opened legs. He makes the mistake of looking down, of seeing his own body,
and a compulsive string of panic tightens his throat.

Somehow, he feels himself lose control. Like a kite string slipping from a child’s grasp,
flying off into the sky, he loses his grip on his own awareness, his logic, his mind, his body.
Cold flashes send waves of ice up his arms and shoulders. He cannot think. He cannot move.
He cannot do anything but sit there and watch himself with Fyodor.

The man touches Dazai’s chin to lift it from where it pressed against his chest, and Dazai
moans in fright, tears growing in his eyes, bubbling out. Nothing has ever, ever been harder
for him than to keep his hands pressed on the bed in this moment, fighting every instinct to
flee the room and hide in some dark cabinet, away from Fyodor’s violet gaze.

“You are feeling so violently,” Fyodor murmurs, and past the noise of blood in his ears, Dazai
can hear the awe. Every sense attunes to Fyodor. Fyodor. Fyodor. He must survive, he must
obey Fyodor.

Fyodor will be kind to him, if he does. Fyodor is always kind, if he obeys. Isn’t he?

He squeezes his eyes shut. The room is an artic cave.

“Dazai,” Fyodor whispers.

He whines in misery.

“Dazai…”
Dazai pulls away, tucking into his shoulders, balling his hands to fists on the mattress. “I
don’t want to,” he grits out, “I don’t want to! It hurts. I’m scared, Fedya!” He begins to cry,
thick warm tears down his throbbing cheeks. “Fedya, I’m sc-cared.”

There’s silence, the kind that drives Dazai mad, the kind where he can feel something about
to break, like the clock he dropped so long ago. He begins sobbing, loudly, deafeningly. He
shakes. He can’t look up. He can’t open his eyes. He feels alone.

“Do you want a hug?”

“No!” Dazai yells, so vehemently that his voice breaks. He sucks in a breath, he fixes a
terrified gaze on Fyodor and twists the sheets in his sweaty hands. “No, I don’t! I want to
sleep! I want to hide! I want to stop!”

It all comes out on impulse. He doesn’t know what else to say, because his mind is blank.

Fyodor’s face slackens, eyes widening slightly. His hands, half-raised, hesitate. They fall
back to his sides. Is he shocked that a hug will not fix it? Will he be angry? Has Dazai
messed up?

He can feel the breath choking in his throat, it comes so fast. He can’t hold onto the sheets
any harder. His fists shake, he wants so badly to grip his throat, to stop the air from rushing in
and out. He’s going to hyperventilate. He can’t stop. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m
sorry, I didn’t mean to say that, please don’t be angry…”

“Tell me,” Fyodor says, his voice like purple static in the air. “Tell me what is wrong. You are
panicking.”

“I can’t breathe,” Dazai sobs, “I can’t breathe.”

Fyodor clothes rustle and shift with some urgency, but Dazai’s vision is going in and out of
focus. He can’t see what’s happening. He can’t think past the pulsing in his head.

A second later, a second only, and then he feels cold palms against his face, holding him.
Bare hands. Fyodor’s hands. The cut throbs with electric pain on his cheek, it shoots through
his skull and shocks him back to awareness.

It’s like a sudden storm of waves has been calmed. The water falls back, crashing into
stillness. Clouds dissolve. Buttery light blooms.

He gets lost inside of Fyodor’s eyes. His pupils have shrunken inside of their amethyst cages,
they’re tiny pinpricks, now. He feels trembling in the man’s fingers. He senses the intensity
of the expression on his face. Like he’s focusing, like he’s confident and disturbed all at once.
And his breathing, his breathing is shallow, too.

Dazai’s heart stops thrashing in his chest, little by little. It slows down, he feels like he can
breathe again. He does breathe, in huge, gulping heaves.

The feel of Fyodor’s skin sinks into him, melding with Dazai’s own, soft and chilled and
human.
“There,” Fyodor breathes, his eyes still shifting between Dazai’s, searching every inch of his.
“There, that is better…yes?”

Dazai cannot answer, so Fyodor nods slightly to himself, the whites of his eyes still showing.

“Better,” Fyodor repeats, softly. “You do not have to be afraid.”

Dazai feels the tears sliding down his cheeks, he feels Fyodor’s hands on his face, and that is
all. But his breathing becomes slower and slower, until it’s back to normal, shuddering and
catching in his throat.

Fyodor’s body inches closer to him. Dazai’s stomach turns like fresh dirt. He’s not done. He’s
not going to let Dazai run away.

Had Fyodor’s bare hands not been cupping his face, Dazai would have whirled away, he
would have fled, he thinks, he would have screamed and balled up on the bed. But the man
had chosen the only thing that anchored him to the spot, and now he’s stuck there, at
Fyodor’s mercy.

Fingers slide down Dazai’s neck, making his shivering form jerk and flinch, expecting his
throat to be strangled.

“I will not hurt you,” Fyodor insists, gently, and his brows are making a crease in his
forehead.

Dazai simply breathes, looking at him, sheets gripped in his fists and sweat trickling down
his back. It’s difficult to swallow. Fyodor will not hurt him. Fyodor will not hurt him. He
repeats it to himself, trying to understand what is going on, trying to process.

Fyodor’s eyes cloud. He runs his hands across Dazai’s shoulders, Dazai unconsciously
twisting, wishing to escape but unable to let himself do so. Fyodor will be mad, if he does.

“I want you to trust me,” Fyodor says, and it looks as if he’s still trying to figure out why
Dazai is acting so strange.

Dazai nods, vaguely, unnaturally. It seems the right thing to do.

Fyodor’s touch leaves him. Dazai’s lungs inflate, his eyes flutter slightly. It’s gone, now. It’s
gone, and even though it was terrifying when it was there, he wants it back.

Fyodor reaches for him again, but this time much, much lower, low enough to send a jolt of
lightning through his spine. The moment Fyodor’s hand touches between his legs, Dazai
slams his legs shut. His hands whip up, they grip Fyodor’s arm and wrist. His fingers dig into
his sleeve. There’s a moment of deafening silence.

It does not make a single difference in the world. Fyodor is determined. He knows what he
wants to do.

“It’s alright,” Fyodor mutters.

He can feel the naked skin of Fyodor’s fingers wrapping around his length.

“Don’t,” Dazai cries, hoarsely. His eyes are on fire. “No! No, don’t!”

“Does it hurt you?”

Pain throbs in his skull. “No, but—but—”

“But you are afraid that it will.” Fyodor’s fingers shift, brushing his scrotum, sending a
needle of uncomfortable numbness through his hips.

“I don’t like it!” he cries out. “That’s all. I don’t like it.” He digs his fingers harder into the
man’s arm, as if it will stop him, as if his thighs can somehow crush him hard enough. He
starts gasping for breath again, and it’s more ragged this time, his throat dry and worn from
the first panic. Why? Why must he be put through this again? Why must Fyodor force him to
do such terrible, terrible things?

“You do not want my touch?”

“That’s not—! Angh…” Dazai squirms and heaves out a fresh sob, lowering his face and
pulling at Fyodor’s arm. It won’t budge. “I do, but not like this. Not like this, please, Fedya.”

Fyodor grasps one of his hands with his free one. He starts digging up the fingers around his
arm. “Let go of me.”

“I can’t!”

“You are hurting me. Is that what you wish to do?”

Dazai keeps his neck bent to hide the re-forming tears in his eyes. He shakes his head
fiercely, clenching his teeth to keep back the noise. It bottles up behind them. You’re hurting
ME! he wants to scream.

“Then let me go.” Fyodor pulls one hand away by the clawed fingers. Dazai isn’t strong
enough to resist him.

Dazai clutches his arms to his chest, gripping his shirt like a comfort object. His knees ache
where they press against each other. He cannot loosen a single muscle in his body.

Fyodor’s fingers shift again between his legs, wrapping him fully, and a high-pitched moan
leaps in the back of Dazai’s throat.

“You said that you think I am keeping you here because if I could love, I would love you.”

Dazai keeps his mouth sealed shut, hiding beneath his hair, trying to be as small as possible.
He jams his fists against his mouth, to try and keep everything back. But he cannot control it
now, the whimpering. His heart beats in hard, sluggish bursts. His body feels hot, so hot.

“Did you not say this, Dazai?”

“Yes,” he blurts, voice muffled against his fists, “yes, but Fedya—”

“Enough of that name. Do you know that lovers do these things? You do, Dazai, you know
this?”

“Yes, I do, I do, but—”

Fyodor’s cold cheek presses against his temple, cutting him short. The breath from Fyodor’s
lips rustles his curls. “Do you know, that if I could try to feel one thing, it would be love?”

Dazai goes still. The tremble in his limbs dies. He hears ringing, squealing in his ears. Then,
muffled sounds. It feels like cotton has been stuffed in his head, muting the world. If Fyodor
could try to feel. Try to feel.

Is this how he is going to try?

His vision spots as he stares dully at Fyodor’s arm, disappearing between his legs. He loses a
little of his strength, and his legs slacken. His spine sags. Vertigo, in his head. He’s falling,
spinning.

Yes, this is it. This is the moment, when it all unravels and it all feels strangely wonderful.
This is the moment when he loses, when he gives up, and Fyodor takes over.

“I will be gentle with you,” Fyodor whispers, “I will make you feel good things, this time.”
Fyodor tightens the grip around Dazai’s length.

He swallows so hard that it makes a knot in his stomach. His thoughts turn into a great black
whirlpool, churning too quickly to chase. He goes blank. Dark. Empty.

When Fyodor pushes at his legs to spread them, he doesn’t fight it. He flinches and sniffles,
but he doesn’t push him away.

Fyodor begins to move his hand up and down, making his vision shimmer, his back arch. He
tips his head, gasping, surprised at the warmth that spreads through his thighs like melting
butter. He needs something to hold onto, so he grabs Fyodor’s shoulders.

“It’s alright.” Fyodor’s voice is so close to Dazai’s ear, so tender and gentle, that it sends
tingles down his back. His hips flinch, and he doesn’t know why, but the rawness of his
nerves creates a burst of sensualism. He doesn’t want it there—no, he does…he does, there’s
just something so wrong and he can’t place what. But it doesn’t matter, not when he’s
swelling in Fyodor’s hand.

This is better. This is not like terror. This is nicer than being petrified.

He thinks he remembers the feeling, this one, of being aroused. But not with Fyodor. No, it’s
new, it’s violent and swarming with Fyodor. It’s a relief, feeling something so nice. It’s
different, it’s better than the euphoria he felt last time.

And the more he thinks about Fyodor’s ungloved hand touching him, the faster he hardens
under the man’s touch, gasping and pressing his forehead into Fyodor’s shoulder. “Nnh,” he
whimpers, “Nnh, good…”

Fyodor releases a soft hum as soon as the word leaves Dazai’s lips, and it makes Dazai throb
with heat. It’s a pleased sound. He’s doing well, he’s making Fyodor happy! That’s all he
wants. He wants to stay like this. Pleasing Fyodor.

Fyodor tugs a little more insistently at Dazai’s heat, and his thumb begins to fondle the tip,
pressing at times. Sparks of liquid excitement stutter through his veins, and he can’t help
when his hips shift slightly in response, pushing at Fyodor’s grip. He whines into the man’s
shirt, doing his best to muffle the sound. His breath is warm and heavy against the material.
He wishes it were Fyodor’s skin, there, that he could nestle against. Cold skin to cool his hot
face. His cheeks are salty with dried tears, his eyes tired and thick, his lashes still dewy when
he closes his eyes.

Sensations build in his thighs and his hips very quickly, a pressure that needs release, and it’s
granted very soon, as Fyodor wraps his arm around Dazai and pulls him close. He’d tried to
keep silent all this time, most especially when it comes, surging through him with
uncontrollable force. But there is no stopping it when his mind bursts into color. No, his
mouth comes open at once, and he cries out hoarsely in Fyodor’s arms, body curving against
him. He feels a splash of thick liquid across his bare stomach as his thighs tremble. It sticks
to the underside of his shirt. He claws at Fyodor’s clothes.

Fyodor slows his hand. He eventually pulls away when Dazai has finished, holding him to his
chest for a moment as Dazai calms down.

When he hears Fyodor’s voice again, it sounds new, somehow more perfect and soft. His
mind buzzes.

“There…that was not painful. Yes?”

Dazai can’t answer right away, still catching his breath, still gathering the thoughts that
scattered when he climaxed. It’s all over so quickly, so vibrantly. He wishes he could have
had it longer. But he’s so tired, now. So, so tired. “…sss…” he sighs, turning into Fyodor’s
neck. “Y…sss…” His fingers slacken, they slip from Fyodor’s garment.

The night becomes a moving picture in a blurry telephoto lens. He finds himself on the verge
of passing out, though the darkness alludes him still.

Fyodor is very gentle with him, lying him out on his back in the bed, lifting his shirt to wipe
his belly with a cloth. Dazai watches between the blurred slits of his eyes, blinking at his
face, always his face. He doesn’t know what he looks for there, except that he doesn’t want to
miss any change of expression.

He sees it, too, as Fyodor cleans him off. He sees the man’s eyes come to life, as if they do
not know that a sinner is watching him, and he appears so intrigued by his work that it makes
Dazai feel special.

He’s glad, he thinks, that all this happened. Even if he was scared. It’s worth it, and Fyodor is
satisfied, which pleases Dazai. He gets to float again, on that lovely cloud where there is no
 pain and anxiety, where he doesn’t have to do anything but let Fyodor have control.

Love. This is definitely love. He’s sure that Fyodor can feel it too, now. The culmination of
the good and the bad, the high and the low.

This is exactly what Fyodor wanted.

Chapter End Notes

I made an artwork for this but you guys don't get to see it 'til the end of the fic, to
celebrate hehehehheheheeeee
 Anxious Arrival
Chapter Summary

Chuuya and Akutagawa arrive in Russia and set up in the safehouse. Chuuya tells
Akutagawa how Dazai was caught.

Chapter Notes

you get a quick update because this is a very short chapter lol

A little insight on how Dazai got to where he is, and the progress the redhead is making
on getting him back.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Chuuya, supervising a gaggle of men as they unpack and check loads of weapons, sees
Akutagawa coming from a few feet away. The familiar clatter and clack of metal-on-metal in
the underground safehouse is a welcome ruckus to his ears, promising action, loyalty, and
hope to get Dazai back.

He’d spent every night of those first few months in the emptiness of a warm bed, waiting to
hear the tentative knock on his door. Keeping himself awake to listen for it. He hardly
worked for the Mafia anymore. Nobody could control him; he wouldn’t let them. He made
his way around town, he put his energy into hunting criminals, busting gangs, whatever he
could do to feel busy.

But he came back every night to an empty flat.

Well, he thinks, not anymore. He’s bringing Dazai Osamu back to the world he belongs to,
even if its suicide.

“Evening,” Chuuya greets Akutagawa. The boy slows to a stop beside him, empty gray eyes
sweeping the concrete chamber. Stark light from a lantern on a stack of crates highlights the
darkened skin beneath those eyes, and Chuuya tightens his hands to fists in the pockets of his
dress pants. He knows how Akutagawa feels about Dazai, how he must have spent all the
same nights in turmoil that Chuuya did.

“Where are the others?” Akutagawa’s voice is coarse with obvious lack of sleep. Or yelling
in his sleep, perhaps.
“They’re on their way. Russia is a tricky place. Mori came first with Koyou, the rest of us are
following in staggered arrivals. Raising any kind of suspicion would send Fyodor packing at
a moment’s notice.”

“I know that,” Akutagawa says gruffly, and for a moment it seems he might go on. But he
pauses, glancing down and rubbing the back of his hand.

Chuuya can tell he wants to say something, but it’s going to need a place where he can be a
little less guarded, somewhere away from the hum and clamor of activity. Chuuya nods
sideways. “Come.”

Akutagawa wordlessly obeys, following Chuuya to a corner out of the lamplight, where
there’s a tray with crystal tumblers and a bottle of wine sitting on a round table. Two sealed
crates full of machine guns frame either side as if they’re fancy chairs. Chuuya takes a seat
on one and motions Akutagawa to the other.

Akutagawa always waits for a command. Chuuya is used to that by now.

The boy in ebony sits as if the crate is full of dirty needles, the white-tipped shards of his hair
draping in front of his lowered face.

His walls are high at the moment. Chuuya knows that much.

“It’s a ’64 Romaneé,” he says of the wine, taking the already-opened bottle by the neck to
pour them both a glass, methodically. It’s calming for him, the whole drinking process. The
watery splash of wine hitting the bottom of a glass is his favorite sound. “Shit’s expensive,
Aku. Might as well make use of it.”

“I don’t feel like drinking.”

“Your nerves need it. Come on, now.”

“No. It makes my head muddy.”

“Just a few sips. Not enough to do that. I need you calm and attentive.” Chuuya reaches
behind him and employs a burst of gravity to drag a double-stack of crates against his back.
He leans against it, cocking his hat forward, regarding Akutagawa from under the shadow of
its silken brim. He crosses one ankle over his knee and swirls the wine in his tumbler.

Akutagawa glowers at him.

Chuuya motions with his glass. “It’s an order, if that makes you feel better.”

Akutagawa sits in dead, gnawing silence, and then takes the glass like one would do at
gunpoint, raising it to pale lips. He drinks, carefully. “I don’t think this is going to work,” he
says, when he lowers it again. He doesn’t raise his eyes.

Chuuya huffs out a laugh, lifting his own glass and murmuring into it. “That is not what I
want to hear, right now.”
“Dostoevsky, he’s—”

“Practically Dazai without boundaries or reservations? One inch more demon, one step closer
to hell? Yes, I know.” Chuuya takes a long, savoring drink. The wine warms and tingles in his
throat.

Akutagawa’s shoulders dip slightly. He stares down into the glass in his lap, legs stiff on the
ground, back curved in bad posture. He looks ill.

Chuuya sighs gently. Too brash. He needs to work on his delivery. Dazai always chastised
him for that. “The point is, I spent months planning this. Months, Akutagawa. I gained
contacts here in Russia, I hunted down ability users that would shelter us. We’ve got an
ability user here now, disguising our location and the locations of the other five safehouses.
I’m doing the best I can. Besides, how much do you think Dostoevsky can do against
Corruption and Rashomon?”

The last part is half-jest, really, but Akutagawa looks like the entire world has just landed on
his back. “That’s what I thought about Mister Dazai.”

The statement physically hurts to hear, pinching like a bad taste in Chuuya’s mouth. A
ventilation fan, turning side to side in slow rotation on its place in the corner, wafts cold air
across his heating skin. He takes another, long drink, slams the tumbler back on the tray a
little harder than he means to. Blood-red liquid sloshes over the side and runs down his
knuckles. “We all did.”

Akutagawa goes painfully silent.

Chuuya rubs his forehead under the heavy thickness of his orange bangs.

“I want to know how it happened.”

Chuuya glances at him. “How what happened?”

“How Fyodor caught him.”

Chuuya turns from him. He watches the men’s bodies move to and fro from the crates a few
feet away. He does his best not to see it in his mind’s eye. The images, the ones he’d
imagined over and over again. “You remember after Dazai used the Eyes of God to find him.
In the café.” It wasn’t a question. All of them were stunned by the bandaged man’s foresight.
“Sakaguchi arrested him. Fyodor killed one of the men when they touched him. You
remember.” Chuuya rubs at his bottom lip. “That night, on the boat. After he celebrated the
stray dogs with the Detective Agency. He came to me. Knocked on my door at two in the
morning. Said he was gonna hunt the bastard down. I told him he was stupid. I yelled at him.
I hit him, bruised his arm, I think. Ango’s men had him. What could he do, you know?”

Akutagawa shifts on the crate, looking down at his shoes.

“And of course he knew. He always knew. Fucking Dazai.” The last sentence comes out
bitter on his tongue. He plucks at his lip and swallows against the roughness in his throat.
“Fyodor disappeared from his cell. Nobody knew how. We still don’t. Gone. Escaped.
Somehow Dazai knew he’d go back to Russia.”

The boy, of course, knows this much—about Fyodor escaping, but Chuuya is grateful that he
listens anyway, as if it’s the first time he’s heard. The only part he doesn’t know about is
Dazai’s involvement.

“Why did he go alone?” Akutagawa asks quietly.

“Because I wouldn’t go with him. Because I didn’t fucking believe him, that’s why.” Chuuya
clenches his hands to fists, the thin leather of his gloves creaking. He reaches for the
Romaneé abruptly, grasps it to pour another glass. “Yeah, he asked me to go with him.
Corruption is a valuable asset, he said. I swear to hell, he loves seeing me two steps from
death.”

Chuuya downs more of his drink in a searing gulp.

Akutagawa falls into a coughing fit across from him, gripping his mouth. Chuuya watches
him in silence. He thinks he sees a flash of moisture in the boy’s eye, but perhaps it’s just the
coughing that causes it.

“Drink some more,” Chuuya says, harshly, mostly because he despises drinking alone.

Akutagawa shakes his head, breathing deeply. He lowers his hand from his face.

Chuuya lets his head fall back against the crate behind him. He stares up at the ceiling, flat
and gray. “I sent men to follow him when I found out where he went, to keep watch. But I
refused to go myself. Shitty…fucking pride of mine. I wanted to show Dazai he couldn’t do
everything alone, that he should’ve waited and gathered an army.” Gravity surges within him,
forming around his fingers in a red glow. “I’m sure Dazai knew they were there. But they
kept their distance. They reported to me, the day that they lost him.”

“What happened?” Akutagawa asks.

“They met. In a café. Like they were on a damn date. That’s what happened.”

Akutagawa’s eyes widen, then narrow. “Their conversation?”

“Never heard. My men were too terrified to come within thirty feet of the café. They said
Dazai had something about him, something dark. I don’t know what they could have seen.”
Chuuya smiles bitterly at the ceiling. “But they told me it was like he was trying to get
himself killed. Like he knew what he was doing to himself.”

He shifts his head to look askew at Akutagawa. The boy’s hands are clenched in his lap,
they’re trembling. His eyes look soulless and void, and there are tiny, unmistakable teardrops
on the edge of his lashes. He blinks, and they disappear. But then they’re replaced.

“Oi,” Chuuya says gently. Akutagawa is looking past him. “Aku, it’s alright.”
 Akutagawa starts to shake his head, a tremble at first, but it grows. He sniffles, wringing his
hands, bending his head. “Fyodor’s hurting Mister Dazai. I know he is.”

Chuuya sits up. He puts his glass down with notable control and leans forward over his knees
to get in Akutagawa’s line of vision, inches away from him. “Look at me, Aku. Look.” He
waits until the boy obeys. “Dazai’s gonna be just fine. It’s not the first time he’s been
tortured.”

The boy furiously rubs tears from his eyes before they can trickle out, shame burning in his
cheeks. “But it’s Dostoevsky! It’s Dostoevsky!”

The sound of that name pierces Chuuya in the skull, and he fights back a snarl for
Akutagawa’s sake, reaching out to place a hand atop his dark head. “Yeah. And I’m gonna
kill the Russian bastard and set him free, and we’re gonna do whatever it takes to patch Dazai
up again. He’ll be fine. I know he will.”

But Chuuya doesn’t. Chuuya’s heart sinks with every lie he spins for the one who’s so
attached to Dazai. The horrors that Fyodor Dostoevsky can inflict on him are far greater than
any other criminal they’ve faced. Fyodor killed Dazai once. He almost killed him a second
time.

Chuuya won’t let there be a third. But there’s no telling what condition his partner—his lover,
when they feel like it, for fuck’s sake—is going to be in when they tear him from Fyodor’s
grasp. And not knowing? That’s disturbing enough.

“The rest of the Mafia are arriving soon, Aku. Go take a breath and drink some water, if you
won’t have my three-million-yen wine.”

Chapter End Notes

This was really just a necessary chapter for me, to inform readers, but I still hope you
guys found it enjoyable!! I'll be back soon with Fedya and his prisoner in the next
chapter :)

(there's rope involved) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 Complicated Jealousy
Chapter Summary

He wakes up...bound. Gagged. Alone.

Unless there are more people here than he realizes.

Chapter Notes

The ongoing support and commentating from all of you is really, really something to
me. The new friends I have made that have met me in the DMs because of this story are
so incredibly special to me. And if that was the only thing I got from this fic, it would
make me happy. But I get so, so much more, and forgive me for being sappy and
dramatic, but I love you guys, and my only wish is to continue entertaining you and
making you feel deep, complex things.

And maybe some things that you don't want to feel, just yet. :)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai wakes, he can’t move his arms. It dawns upon him slowly, all the sensations that
tell him what state he’s in. Like blood spreading across hardwood, he becomes aware of his
body. First his arms, stretched over his head, then the rough rope around his wrists, sealing
most of his upper body against the headboard. His neck he feels next; the noose there,
trapping his head against the wood and preventing his sudden impulse to thrash in panic.

The breath picks up in his chest. He hears it wheeze through a filter—there’s a gag in his
mouth, tied tight around his face. His mouth is stuffed with it. His tongue is dry. It’s difficult
not to choke.

His hearing is blocked, the sounds are underwater. He feels packed cotton in his ears.

The room is empty. Dark. Only the tiny sliver of light from Fyodor’s curtained bedroom
window tells him that it’s day—a grey, grey day.

What’s happening? Why is he restrained here? Where’s Fyodor? His heart thrashes wildly,
bubbling in his ears beneath the cotton as if it might hammer it right out.

Calm down. He’s fine. He’s not hurt. There must be good reason for this, else Fyodor would
not have done it. He doesn’t do needlessly cruel things, not like he used to. Think, Dazai.
Maybe he’s done something wrong? No, no. He doesn’t remember doing anything wrong.
Then what?

Ice in his veins. Dazai begins to tremble. He clenches his hands in the ropes, he tugs on them,
but they’re so tight that they hardly allow that much. There’s one around his waist, too, he
realizes, when he looks down at himself. It’s over his shirt, tight enough to make the fabric
pucker.

If he has his shirt, he must not have done anything too bad.

Why can’t he remember? He has never experienced memory gaps with Fyodor here, has he?
No! He’s sure he hasn’t. He remembers everything. It’s just before Fyodor that he can’t
remember.

Has Fyodor gone out, maybe? But he’s never tied Dazai up like this, he’s never gagged him.

Dazai swallows with some difficulty, coughing through another shallow breath. Fyodor
gagged him. The only reason he would be gagged is to keep him quiet, and with the way he’s
tied tight enough to prevent much movement—and cotton stuffed in his ears…! Then, there
must be someone he has in the house with him. Someone he doesn’t want hearing or knowing
of Dazai, someone that he doesn’t want Dazai to hear, either.

Dazai holds himself so still that he can feel the pulse throbbing in the backs of his knees. He
inhales softly and listens with all his might, every fiber of his being. He listens. He closes his
eyes.

Muffled sounds, like traveling through a great void and hearing something far off in the
distance, come to him, slowly. It’s incredibly difficult to hear past the rabbit-like hammering
of his pulse, and at this point, there’s no way to stop it.

But he hears it. Fyodor’s velvet voice, and he thinks that if he didn’t know Fyodor so well, he
would not have heard any voice at all, but only a distant warble. His blood warms and thaws
at the sound, it rushes in his veins. It’s Fyodor! He is here. He’s speaking.

It’s terrifying, somehow, to know that he is speaking to someone else. Someone who is not
Dazai. His attention given freely to another man—or woman, maybe. He decides he is
uncomfortable with that, but he’s unsure why. It’s just disconcerting. Dazai is supposed to be
the one he cares about. Only Dazai. So who is this other person?

No, he’s foolish. He is being ridiculous. He can’t even hear another voice, right now. He’s
only imagining that there’s someone there, with no evidence.

But why else would Fyodor be talking, why else would Dazai be gagged and restrained?
Unless it’s that he’s been bad? Has he done something awful? But he would remember that,
wouldn’t he, if he’d angered Fyodor? He would remember.

And Fyodor never talks to himself.

It seems like an hour passes before Dazai realizes Fyodor has stopped talking, and another
sound takes its place. Warbling, just like the inflections of the Russian’s sound. It’s deeper,
grittier, and it must be another voice.

But as soon as Dazai hears it, a sudden blast of classical music makes him jump out of his
skin, drowning all other noise and enveloping him in the muted orchestral rollick of a
dramatic composition. Fuck. Fuck!

Fyodor knows. Fyodor always knows. Fyodor is too smart to let Dazai have any chance at
advantage or knowledge. Where even is the music coming from? It’s outside of the bedroom,
but it sounds like it’s coming through speakers. He doesn’t remember seeing any sound
systems in Fyodor’s house. But that does not matter. He would have taken every precaution.
He might have gone out and simply bought one, just for this occasion.

What is he doing out there, with another man? What could he be talking about? Dazai sags in
the ropes and exhales until there’s no air left inside his lungs. His head droops against his
chest. The rope pulls uncomfortably against his windpipe. To think he could have had the
chance to see someone else, someone from outside! He might have smelled them, he might
have been able to touch skin that wasn’t cold as marble, he might have seen eyes that were
not so much like black holes. But Fyodor will not even allow him that.

Dazai is certain that he’s listened to hours of deafening classical music, before it abruptly
stops, jolting him from a dazed stupor. His mind, blank and dark like an unplugged
television, flickers to life immediately. He raises his head with widened eyes. He stares at the
door.

Moments later, there are footsteps, still challenging to hear past the cotton in his ears, but
they’re there. Quiet, velvety footsteps, yes, they’re Fyodor’s. They must be.

The door opens. Dazai’s entire body fills like a balloon, rising, straightening in his bonds as
he sees the familiar shape of his master enter the room. He’s dressed differently. No cloak.
Just the loop-buttoned white shirt and white pants. And those frustrating red boots. Dazai is
glad that he doesn’t wear them to bed.

Fyodor carries a new sensation with him, something thick and ushered in by the opening of
the door.

Heat.

Is the heat on? Did Fyodor turn up the temperature in the house, for his visitor? Or is it the
visitor’s heat that he carries on him? Did he touch the visitor? More than he touches Dazai?
Would he do such a thing?

Fyodor approaches him lethargically, his eyes roving Dazai’s body, as if he’s admiring the
way he’s tied up.

Dazai makes a soft, uncertain sound. He pleads with his eyes even as he instinctively retreats
against the headboard. “Mnnph…”
“I thought you might wake,” Fyodor says, and Dazai finds himself unable to look away from
the man’s eyes. They seem deeper, somehow. When he looks into them, he feels as if he’s
falling down an endless well. “Did it frighten you? Waking like this?” His heart thuds faster
behind the cotton earplugs that muffle Fyodor’s voice.

Dazai clenches his hands as Fyodor bends over him, every nerve tingling as the man touches
his wrist and the ropes there. “Mmh…”

Fyodor’s eyes shift sideways to find him, as his fingers begin working with the knot in the
rope. “I suppose it would.” He pauses, reaching with both hands for Dazai’s ears, slipping in
his slender fingers to drag out the cotton. The clarity of sound brings tremendous respite. He
feels less endangered, being able to hear, again, after the muffled music he’d been put
through.

He whines softly through the gag, lifting his chin towards Fyodor, asking wordlessly to have
the cloth taken out. He’s so thirsty, his throat rubs like sandpaper whenever he tries to
swallow. He wants to ask so many things. But having the man back in the room is as
relieving as it is concerning. Heat clings to Fyodor’s clothes, and Dazai cannot make himself
understand that Fyodor has turned on the heat for someone else. Something he never did for
Dazai. The heat is too strong to be from another body alone. It’s trickling through the
doorway like a buttery cloud. It feels so foreign to him, so wrong for Fyodor’s house.

Dazai wants to climb into Fyodor’s warm clothes, when he’s free. He wants to rest in them
and pretend all of this never happened. He wants to remind himself that he’s the one, that
Fyodor has kidnapped him and needs him. They need each other, only. Because that’s fair,
right? If Dazai should only see Fyodor, Fyodor should only see Dazai.

Fyodor ignores Dazai’s wordless plea. His razor lips curl slightly, but he turns back to the
ropes instead to untie Dazai’s first hand.

A bloom of frustration opens in his chest. Dazai pulls his hand from Fyodor’s gloved grip; he
reaches for the gag to remove it himself.

A sharp blow to his cheek throws his head sideways. His throat jerks against the noose; an
outcry is muffled by the gag. Panting, he finds that the blow encourages him instead of
deterring him. He reaches again.

“Сволочь!” Fyodor catches his bandaged wrist, he digs his fingers into the pressure points
there. “What do you think you are doing?”

Pain shoots through his entire arm. “Mnphhh!” He squirms as much as he can in the ropes,
closing his eyes and turning away, twisting his wrist frantically to try and escape. Fyodor’s
grip does not give in the slightest.

“You are going to be difficult? Really? After all the time you spent making yourself a better
waste of space?”

“Nnnnn!” Dazai bites down on the gag, slinging his head forward so that the noose yanks
against his throat. So that it wounds him. So that it might break free, maybe. He doesn’t
know. He just wants Fyodor to see. He wants Fyodor to notice that he’s hurt. Waste of space.
Is that all he is to Fyodor? Really?

“Stop that,” Fyodor hisses.

Dazai yanks harder. He strains against all of the bonds, kicking his legs in the bedsheets,
crying out into the gag.

“STOP!”

Gloved hands latch around his throat, they squeeze and claw at his skin, they slam him back
against the headboard. Dazai lurches in fright and then goes still, gasping through the cloth.
He looks up wearily into Fyodor’s eyes, pools of shimmering amethyst. Great, black stars.
They sparkle with color, and for once he is unsatisfied with that. But now, now he has
Fyodor’s attention.

He can’t breathe. He chokes, writhing slightly, shoulder blades digging into the hardwood
behind him. He blinks twice. He feels water spilling out, trickling down his cheeks. Sobs rise
in his chest, stuck under Fyodor’s grip.

Do it, he wants to beg Fyodor. Do it. Kill me. If I’m a waste of your space. Kill me.

Fyodor always knows. And Dazai imagines he must see the words written in his eyes. Or
maybe it’s the tears that make his face turn whiter in the semi-darkness of the bedroom.

Fyodor’s hands loosen and Dazai wheezes through the gag, reaching for one of Fyodor’s
hands with his free one, weakly grasping it. His throat throbs. His pulse flutters eagerly
against the man’s fingers. The trapped sobs come pouring out in heaves. Look at me. See me.
Please.

Fyodor’s eyes change. A fog pulls away from them, clearing. He lowers his hands from
Dazai’s neck. Dazai clings to his hand and doesn't let it go. The heat from Fyodor’s clothes is
so close that it grates on his nerves, because he cannot lean towards it. He strains against the
ropes and whimpers. His cheek throbs.

Fyodor swallows. He silently reaches for Dazai’s restrained arm, and he doesn’t move the
hand that Dazai clings to. With surprising speed, his fingers loop and pull until the rope falls,
and Dazai’s arm with it, reaching up for Fyodor.

The noose and the rope about his waist trap him, but he throws both hands up anyways and
wrenches against them until it hurts, clutching at Fyodor’s shoulders.

“Be still,” Fyodor mutters, dropping his gaze to undo the remaining bonds.

But Dazai doesn’t listen to him. He claws his fingers into Fyodor’s back, trying to drag him
closer, closer. He moans helplessly, his voice hoarsened by the noose on his throat. Fyodor
does not budge.

He presses a firm hand against Dazai’s chest. “You are choking yourself. Stop fighting.”
Tears make the gag wet and salty. He can taste it. Finally, the bonds come loose, and Dazai’s
body lurches forward with the release. He collides with Fyodor’s body, but the gag is still in
his mouth. He bends his head into Fyodor’s lifted hand, pulling away when the gag is yanked
from him.

He cries out and throws himself completely against Fyodor, arms wrapped around his neck,
head tucked into his shoulder. His breath comes hot and thick, much warmer than the
remnant heat on Fyodor’s clothes. He feels tangled and complicated. He sobs, out of anger,
out of frustration, clutching ever harder to Fyodor when the man attempts to pull him back.

“What are you doing? Let go of me.”

“No!” he cries. “No, I won’t!”

Fyodor loses balance, he wobbles and sits abruptly on the bed with a grunt, hands on Dazai’s
body to steady them. Dazai pants into the crook of his own elbow and Fyodor’s warm
clothes. The bandages turn wet against his nose.

“Why did you do that? Why did you do that?” he whispers. His throat is sore, now.

There’s a silence, fragile and shivering between them, before Fyodor answers.

“You mean tying you up? There was something I had to do. It was necessary.”

“Someone else was here! Why? Why, Fedya?”

“What do you mean, why? It is of no concern to you.”

“I want to know!”

“You may not know.”

He grits his teeth for a full minute, squeezing his eyes shut and drawing a deep breath. Then
his mind sorts through a million responses like a slot machine, eventually landing on one he
doesn’t think about before speaking. “Hold me.” His voice breaks. He hates his lack of
control. Dazai tightens his embrace until his arms shake. He can’t stand the way Fyodor’s
gloves barely touch him.

“Not now.” Fyodor’s body shifts and becomes stiff underneath his.

“Yes, now! Yes! I want a hug.” Frantic colors race in his mind.

“You are being troublesome,” Fyodor says through his teeth.

“Please,” Dazai sobs, frustrated that he is unable to have an effect on the man. Has his
emotion caused so little excitement in Fyodor lately? Has he grown tired of him now? Will he
run off with the other man he heard and leave Dazai forever?

“You must know by now that such words mean nothing to me.”
Dazai rubs his face in Fyodor’s clothes and makes an unintelligible jumble of words that, to
his own ears, sounds too much like the whining of a starved puppy. But he’s not exactly
letting himself think, at the moment. He’s inside of his feelings, being carried along. He
doesn’t understand what he’s doing, except that he’s acting on any and every impulse, verbal
or physical. He has to do something, something to make Fyodor interested in him again.

Fyodor huffs out a noise that sounds frighteningly like a laugh. His gloves shift ever so
slightly along Dazai’s shirt, moving towards his spine. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Dazai sniffles loudly. He pushes down a new impulse, to tease. To try and joke his way into
acquiring affection. Unnaturally so. As if his body is attempting to make light of the
situation, because the emotions are so strong and dangerous. He squashes this impulse.
Besides, when he thinks about it, he’s so incredibly sad. So sad that it becomes a pressurized
bottle waiting to burst in his chest, but it cannot burst.

What is this? He hates this. There’s no way to pinpoint the emotion, to clarify it for himself
or Fyodor. It’s a muddled heap, a puddle of dirty water.

Fyodor was more interested in another man than him. He tied Dazai up in his room, he hid
him from the man so the man wouldn’t see—as if Dazai is something to be ashamed of. And
he was left here for hours! Hours, it must have been.

And now Fyodor refuses him even an embrace.

“You don’t like me anymore,” he tells Fyodor, with some certainty.

“What?” Fyodor, to his credit, sounds genuinely taken aback. “What would make you think
such a thing?”

“You turned on the heat for someone else!”

Fyodor’s hands flinch on his body. “And why shouldn’t I?”

“You wouldn’t turn it on for me.”

“You are not my guest, Dazai.”

His toes curl. Ah. Right. “I’m just a waste of your space.” Dazai spits it out, because it’s a
bitter flower growing in his throat. New feelings storm up to replace the previous ones. He
has a new impulse. He shoves Fyodor away; he untangles himself and scowls. He crosses his
arms and draws his knees up to his chest, turning away from the Russian to hide in the
pillows. “That’s fine. You don’t need me then. I’ll just be wasting space until you leave.”

He waits through a moment of silence, and then he peeks slightly from the corner of his eye,
under the shadow of his hair, to see what Fyodor looks like. Not that he’s checking for a
reaction. He’s just looking, looking to make sure he’s not in danger. Yes, that’s all.

Fyodor has the vaguest perplexed expression on his features. For some reason, this makes his
stomach a little lighter. Yes, Fyodor is paying attention to him now. If he keeps letting
himself be strange, letting bold and silly words spill from his lips, Fyodor will remain
interested in him. Maybe he will regret having the other man in their house.

“I am going to put you back to bed. I believe you might be disoriented.”

“That’s all you have to say?” Dazai blurts. He grips a pillow, crushes it in his hands. He
wants to throw it at Fyodor. But he can’t make himself do it. No, the consequences are too
great if he does that. “You don’t care at all?” He doesn’t expect his voice to break on the end
of the sentence, and when it does, he realizes how much it hurts.

Fyodor regards him with a searching gaze. “Would you like me to care?”

“Of course I would! Last night, you said you wanted to try to love me. Didn’t you mean that?
Didn’t you?” Dazai grips a handful of bedsheets in shaking fists. “You have to care!” He
blinks rising moisture from his eyes. “You have to.”

Fyodor’s face turns so frosty that Dazai feels a chill run through his body. “If you think,” he
begins darkly, “that you can use those things I said in any way you like, to manipulate me,
you are mistaken. If I love, I will love on my own terms. It is not for you to tell me how.”

“What are your terms? I want to know.” Dazai feels his body become more vulnerable, as if it
knows that he’s stepping out on the thin ice between safety and Fyodor’s mercy. “When I
want you, when I ask for you to make me feel good, you refuse me. But when you want to,
when I’m afraid and I can’t handle it, you force it on me. Are those your terms? You’ll only
try to love me when I don’t want it?”

Fyodor’s eyes narrow. “I see. You are saying that I am not enough for you, then. When you
ask for good things, you ask me for simple hugs, for silly, useless things, and I give them to
you.”

“You don’t! You didn’t!”

Fyodor’s nostrils flare. He raises his chin. “You are an ungrateful sinner,” he hisses, “you
only see what you want to see.”

Dazai tells himself to stop, but his mouth opens anyways. “You tied me up so you could talk
to some other man! What did you do with him? What did you say to him?”

Fyodor’s brows flinch. “You…”

“Tell me!” Dazai cries, wringing the sheets in his fists. His mind fills in the blanks with a
million different possibilities, a million different ways Fyodor might have had his way with
another man while Dazai was neglected in the bedroom. Why is he so bothered about this?
Why? It’s unfair. But did he ever expect Fyodor to play fair? It’s cruel. But does he deserve
anything less than cruelty? He feels like he should. He feels like he’s been good enough to
deserve something less than cruelty. He feels like he should mean more to Fyodor by now,
since he’s tried hard enough and done enough to earn it. Does Fyodor not see that?
“Know your place, Dazai,” Fyodor says, his voice oddly off-kilter, “and do not try to
command me.”

Crimson bubbles up in Dazai’s blood, staining his cheeks and his mind alike. “I have done
everything for you! I’ve obeyed every word! I’ve felt for you, I’ve trusted you! Why is it not
enough? Why do you still torture me like this?”

“Torture you? I have not hurt you in weeks, Dazai. What am I doing to you? Why is it so
important that you know? This is my private business, it does not concern you, and you will
not ask of it again. Do you understand?”

This is pointless, all of it. Dazai is getting nowhere. His words aren’t hitting. Have his
arguments become so weak? Is there no basis for this…this anger, this emotion? He wants to
say so much more, he wants to yell at Fyodor until he figures out what he’s trying to say, how
to say it to make Fyodor understand him. But he’s done. If Fyodor’s not going to listen to
him, then he can go on his way and leave Dazai alone.

Dazai whirls away from Fyodor, he clutches the pillows to his chest and buries his face in
them. He tucks himself against the headboard. “You won’t even try to hear what I’m saying,”
he mutters into the pillow, “and you expect me to understand you? Just go away.” The
exposed skin under the hem of his shirt tingles, warning him, reminding him that he’s naked.
That Fyodor could and might hurt him for doing this.

He hears the leather creak of Fyodor’s gloves tightening into fists. His stomach hardens into a
ball of ice. It sinks down to his hips. It’s difficult to breathe in the pillow. But he’s frozen. He
can’t move. He can’t lift his head.

A brush of cold air wafts under his shirt and crawls up his spine like a black spirit. He digs
his fingers into the pillow. No. No. No. He should have been good. Is that Fyodor coming
closer? Is he going to be beaten?

He thinks about apologizing, about getting on his knees and begging Fyodor to forgive him,
lying that he understands and that this will never happen again. He thinks about it, but he
can’t bring himself to do it. There’s a chance that this might make an impression on Fyodor.
What if it makes him realize how he’s hurting Dazai? What if it makes him change his mind?
What if later, Fyodor realizes what it is that Dazai is trying to say? What if later, Dazai
realizes it, too?

The sound of the bedroom door closing makes him jolt in fright.

Fyodor left. He actually left. Without saying anything, without reprimanding him, without
hurting him? Dazai could die of relief. The amount of restraint it must have taken, for Fyodor
to keep from hurting him, it must have been extraordinary.

Dazai slowly uncurls from the pillow, shoulders loosening. He takes in great heaves of air,
melting into the headboard face-first, cheek against the cold wood. He did it. He said what he
wanted to say, and didn’t get hurt. How kind of Fyodor. How utterly merciful of him. He can
hardly believe the man did it.
 It only lasts a moment—the relief. Nipping at its heels comes a persistent canine guilt,
grumbling at him. He thinks about what exactly he said, he runs it through his head once,
twice. Leave me alone. You won’t even try to hear what I’m saying. He was harsh, wasn’t he?
But this is Fyodor he’s saying it to. Fyodor doesn’t even feel. How could he be harsh to a
man who has no sensitivity to it?

But Fyodor left, without saying a word. He didn’t hurt Dazai. He didn’t tell him he couldn’t
come out. He just left. As if…

Well, as if the words injured him.

For some reason, that makes Dazai sick to his stomach. Maybe he should apologize. Maybe
he should run after him and cling to his coat, and tell him that he’s not angry anymore.

Then again, why should he? Fyodor is the one who tied him up in here. Fyodor is the one
who excluded him.

Is it Fyodor’s fault, though, that he got so worked up over it? Fyodor wouldn’t understand the
emotions Dazai might have felt, how could he? Maybe Dazai is the one who was
unnecessarily cruel.

It certainly feels that way, when Fyodor is the one who leaves in silence, without laying a
finger on Dazai.

Chapter End Notes

Don't be afraid to come say hi to me. :D At least four of you have shown up on my
socials, now, and being able to talk with you is so very special. You're not bothering me
in any way, you won't be talked down to, and I don't talk to people just to self-promote.
Come talk if you want, if you need someone to listen, and I won't give a damn whether
you're following me or liking my posts. <3

Sweets for all of you. 🖤 I'll be back with Chuuya and Mori next chapter, making a very
important discovery that will unveil a little more about Dazai's situation.
 Remote Abilities
Chapter Summary

Chuuya's men capture a suspicious individual. Mori's the only one who sticks around for
the torture.

Chapter Notes

Because this is such a short chapter (and because my lovely amazing perfect beta reader
has done two chapters today for me, and I can), I'm posting the next chapter
immediately after this one! Yay! So you get to enjoy Fyodor and Dazai and this doesn't
feel like a false update. Hehe. But as for this chapter, enjoy the info dump and
unraveling of a few mysteries!

They’ve been in the underground safehouse for two weeks, and nothing has happened until
today, when a group of the Mafia’s armed subordinates return with news…and a bound man
in tow.

Chuuya, Akutagawa, and Mori are standing in the hall before Chuuya’s room, on the second
level down of the safehouse, conversing in low tones, when the men approach. They’re
having an after-dinner smoke—well, Chuuya and Mori are, at least. Akutagawa is just
leaning against the wall, doing more listening than talking. It’s Chuuya who turns first,
because he hears his name called, and the scuffle of feet that follows it is panicked at best.

“Mister Nakahara, sir!”

Chuuya raises his brows slightly, smoke trailing from the cigarette in his fingers. He sees the
dark-clothed man restrained by two of his own, being hurried forward behind their leader.

“My,” Mori breathes behind him, “it appears we’ve found a lead.”

“Don’t get too excited yet,” Chuuya mumbles, starting forward to meet the men and adjusting
his hat. “Who is this?”

The leader, out of breath, pulls at the collar of his leather jacket. His eyes are wide, his
temples dribble with sweat under an array of black hair. “I think we’ve found someone who’s
been in contact with Dostoevsky, sir.”
“With Dostoevsky?” Chuuya’s heart leaps out of his breast. He looks over his shoulder, sees
Akutagawa straightening with wide eyes, Mori smiling with hands behind his back.

He turns back to the men. “Secure him in the cargo chamber. I’ll gather the others, and then
make your report. Understood?”

The man makes a military bow from the waist. “Sir.”

The report is brief. Apparently, Ranpo had hired Katai—the man with a hacking ability and
an affinity for futons—to look into the records of every grocery store in Russia from the past
six months.

He’d found a regular order, recurring every few weeks or so, that was then ordered in a much
larger batch. It was forty-four cups of microwaveable porridge and a massive batch of bottled
tea.

Upon seeing the order, Ranpo had sent out men to track down the person who had made the
purchase—who was, quite obviously, no one familiar. But the man had been followed to the
very outskirts of the city, to a long stretch of forested terrain that had gone on too far for
Ranpo’s men to safely track. Under the threat of bad weather conditions, they returned with
the information, and Ranpo went about investigating the man by the name he’d purchased the
items under.

What he had found was that wherever the man had gone off to with his food supply was not
his place of residence. Later, they had questioned locals about the man, had found him
residing in a run-down spot in the village.

When the locals were likewise questioned about what lied beyond the forest path, they had
been met with startled looks and cautionary dismissals.

Ranpo had sent his men back for the man, to bring him in for a questioning, of sorts.

Except that Chuuya wasn’t interested in questioning.

Chuuya was interested in torturing.

He does just that, much to the chagrin of nearly all the others—but to which they have no
grounds to fight Chuuya, as he is obviously the most powerful force in the room. Besides,
everyone is a little more desperate than they want to let on, and even Kunikida chooses to bite
his tongue and walk the other way.

The man—a rugged, bearded thing of boxy stature and going under the name Artyom Volkov
—is a stubborn piece of shit and not at all motivated by fear.

He’s in the middle of exploring the man’s body with a knife when it happens.

The attempt to use an ability.

He feels it, first, and though he was focused on the man’s bare, bleeding chest, his head snaps
up to the man’s snarling face. The ability frays from Volkov like invisible tendrils, grasping
not for Chuuya, but past him, where Mori stands observing—the only one with guts enough
to stay for the torture. Volkov’s eyes are fixed on Mori, not Chuuya, and he turns wildly
around, knife glittering in his outstretched hand.

“What’s that,” Chuuya growls, “what are you doing? Boss?”

Mori’s eyes are narrowed, fixed within the prisoner’s gaze, and as soon as Chuuya looks into
them, and Mori looks back at him, he feels something…wrong. Something tugging in the
back of his mind, as if it’s a ball of yarn, with a string beginning to pull loose.

“Oi, oi, what the fuck is that?” Chuuya stammers, blinking rapidly and pulling back, “what’s
wrong with your eyes?”

Mori tilts his head. “Is there something wrong?”

“Do you feel that?” Chuuya’s head tingles inside. He feels the string being tugged, and
images begin to unravel, the images of just a few moments ago, when he was torturing
Volkov. The longer he keeps eye contact with Mori, the further the thoughts unravel. “Mori,
stop looking at me. Mori.”

“Beg your pardon?” Mori seems amused.

“Look away, you bastard!”

Mori’s eyebrows raise. He averts his gaze to the ceiling, cutting off the effect immediately.
“Better?”

It stops tugging. Mori’s eyes stop sucking him in like two great, black holes. Half an image
and a thought remain in his mind from moments before. No, not just the image. The memory.

Chuuya whirls around towards the prisoner, and finds himself startled by sliced flesh and
blood that he forgot was there. “You,” he hisses, flipping his blade up under the man’s chin.
“You’re an ability user.”

Volkov glares down at him, breathing labored, black eyes flickering with strange light.

“Oh?” Mori purrs. “And here I thought I was making you shy.”
Chuuya bares his teeth in disgust and tries to shut Mori up with a side-glare. He presses
closer to the man, digging his blade into the delicate veins of his throat. “You were taking
away my memories. How?”

Volkov, of course, does not answer, and Chuuya is too disoriented to care. He hisses and
pushes away from the bound man, pacing back and forth with a hand under his bangs.

“A memory-wiping ability, is it?” Mori says, coming forward with hands clasped behind his
back. “Why didn’t it affect me? I was the one he was looking at.”

Chuuya slows in his tracks. He looks up. Mori’s eyes are still edged with the effects of the
ability, but they’re quickly fading, and no longer reaching for Chuuya’s memories. “I don’t
know…you’re sure you didn’t feel anything?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“Then…”

He and Mori seem to reach the same conclusion at once, and Chuuya sees it in Mori’s
widening gaze. “Ah.”

“A remote ability,” Chuuya whispers, turning to the bleeding figure in the shadows.

The only kind Dazai could not nullify.

“You seek the man who asked for my ability,” Volkov croaks, and the both of them pull to
attention, Chuuya keeping his knife tight and ready at his side. He’s still disturbed by his lack
of memory concerning the wounds. “You seek the man who kills those he touches.”

Chuuya feels the thudding of his heart in his ears, racing with exhilarant hope. “Yes,” he says,
“Fyodor Dostoevsky. You will tell us? You will tell me where he is? And his prisoner?”

“Show me your ability. If you give your word to protect me from him, I will tell you. I will
tell you everything. I will take you to where the Demon is hiding.”

“Fucking hell,” Chuuya breathes.

Mori crosses his arms and nods subtly.

 Troubled Apologies
Chapter Summary

Fyodor is acting strange. Dazai doesn't know how to process it.

Chapter Notes

I had fun with this chapter 8)

Which basically means 'hello, prepare for another Dazai panic attack'

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai comes out of the room the next morning, he is fraught with anxiety. He’d stayed
in the bedroom all day after Fyodor left him there, too afraid to come out. He’d slept for a
few hours, too.

Fyodor had never come to bed.

He ventures tentatively through the hallway, wincing with every creak of floorboards,
dreading that Fyodor will be waiting for him with some new idea of punishment.

At the entrance to the kitchen, he lingers close to the wall, just barely peeking around its edge
to see if Fyodor is there. And he is, standing at the kitchen window with the light all in his
hair, his back to Dazai. He is quiet and still, so still that he doesn’t seem to be breathing at all.

A fist of cold clenches in Dazai’s gut. He wants to eat. He wants to ask Fyodor for food. But,
then again, he doesn’t want to talk to Fyodor. He’s still angry, he’s still holding to the
injustice of yesterday morning. He doesn’t want to let it go for the sake of breakfast.

But what is he going to do, then? He can’t stay in the bedroom all day again. Fyodor will be
suspicious or displeased. He might think Dazai is planning something. And maybe he wants
to be cruel, just a little. Let him think! Maybe he will learn to treat Dazai better in the future.

Ah, but what is he saying? He gazes at the Russian, at the glowing edges of his black hair,
and he doesn’t feel so hungry anymore. He thinks he might be sick if he were to try and eat.
How could he let himself act so childishly? Fyodor couldn’t feel, that was all. It wasn’t his
fault that he’d hurt Dazai, or made him angry.

“How long are you going to stand there and watch me?” Fyodor’s voice sends shards of panic
up Dazai’s spine.
He flinches. He steps back a fraction, clasping his hands, squeezing them. He stutters. “Um, I
—I just…”

Fyodor turns his head. The edges of his violet eyes glitter in the sunlight. It’s so bright
outside, so warm-looking for the snow. Dazai feels like it must have been forever since he
last saw the sun like that.

He expects Fyodor to say something else. He doesn’t. He simply looks, and then, as if
dissatisfied with the view, he turns back to the window.

Dazai shifts his feet. He tangles his hands in the bottom of his shirt and pulls. Angry. He’s
still angry. He has to remind himself that he is, and he’s not scared. He’s just angry.

He inches into the kitchen, though he tries to make it feel more confident than that. Only, it’s
hard when Fyodor looks at him again, and his gaze saps the strength from Dazai’s legs. It’s
not hollow like it normally is, and when Dazai looks, he feels like he can see a replay of the
last time that they spoke, sitting there in the pool of violet, accusing him, and troubling
Fyodor. But why troubling? That’s the part he doesn’t understand.

Is Dazai beginning to imagine things to fit his narrative? Is he beginning to pretend that his
demon has emotions, too, that he feels things?

It gives him great relief to finally grab hold of the back of his chair at the table, steadying
himself and the tremor in his legs. When did he get so weak? Fyodor is probably starving
him, bit by bit. Maybe Dazai has dreamt up meals he’s eaten, maybe he hasn’t been eating
lately? Or is it the mental exhaustion?

Fyodor, once again, turns from him, but opposite the window this time. He lazily wanders to
the cupboards and opens one door. Dazai’s gaze settles briefly on the microwaveable porridge
nestled inside. Just one of them.

He’s so sick of porridge.

“Are you waiting for me to tend to you?” the Russian asks, and even though his voice is as
mild as a summer evening, the structure of the sentence reaches deep inside Dazai’s chest and
stabs at his heart. “Here is food. You may eat it. It is for you.”

And that is when he realizes. His skin…he touches it, feels it, to be certain, glancing down at
himself, still clothed in only his shirt…his skin is warm. It’s warm, almost hot in the house.

The heat is on.

Now that he notices, he can sense it blooming from the vent above him. He can smell the
baked coils that probably haven’t been used in years. Years? Has he been here years? What a
funny thought. Maybe he has.

When he lowers his eyes from the vent, Fyodor is still looking at him, his gaze like two tons
of metal, heavy in his face. Are there shadows beneath his eyes? Is he alright? He doesn’t
look alright. Besides that, he’s still dressed in all the same thick clothes as he would be on
any other given day, when the house is frigid. Isn’t he sweltering under there? Dazai already
feels uncomfortable, unused to the warmth. His body is quickly acclimating, it’s growing
sticky between his shoulder blades.

“You—” he starts in a breath, but Fyodor cuts him off.

“Are you going to eat what I bought for you? There is tea, in the fridge.”

His bare toes tingle. He’s not really hungry, now. Not when he knows there’s only that
sickening porridge to eat. Can Fyodor really not find it in his heart to buy anything else?
Can’t he be more creative?

Fyodor turned on the heat for him.

Is that really what happened? He knows, if he asks, that he likely won’t get a straight answer.
But he doesn’t want to believe it. After all this time, Fyodor let him win by getting angry,
Fyodor let him change a rule of the house? Or was it a rule? He doesn’t recall. But Fyodor
had always refused.

“I’m not hungry.” That’s what comes out, eventually, and Dazai can hardly breathe when he
thinks about that choice of response. He digs his fingers into the back of the kitchen chair; he
swallows.

Fyodor blinks, lethargically. Dazai is certain he sees the man deflate, just an inch or two, with
a sigh. “Very well,” he growls under his breath, and whirls away, cloaks flying, to go into the
living room.

When he goes, Dazai feels a string of tension trying to pull him after, a desperation he doesn’t
expect, a longing, a regret, perhaps. And when Fyodor’s presence is gone from the room, the
light of the sun through the window becomes more apparent to him, but it does not make him
feel anything. Yes, it’s very bright outside, but he thinks he likes it better murky and gray,
with clouds like Fyodor’s ushanka.

Now he does not know what to do but stand there leaning on the back of the chair, looking at
his bare feet, and not feeling cold for the first time since he’s been here. There’s sweat
dribbling down his spine, tickling his sides, and it’s odd—it’s very odd, that it doesn’t feel
good to him. He’d always imagined it would be different, having the heat back. Why now?
Why in this way? Is he playing with Dazai? Giving him a little of what he wants, only to
wrench it away when his fun is over?

That’s not what this feels like, though. Fyodor would have been smug, when he’d come into
the kitchen, if that were the case. Fyodor would have been prepared. Fyodor had been
different; he must have been troubled about…anything. Maybe it’s not even Dazai he’s
troubled over. Maybe it’s that confounded visitor he’d had yesterday.

It is suddenly too much effort to stand. Dazai drags the chair back from the table, over to the
window, and sits down, accustoming himself to the warmth of the wood under his skin. He
settles his arms on the counter that sits at the window’s height; he rests his chin in them, and
takes in the outside world. It’s a painting, no more than a painting of yellow sun reflecting on
mounds of snow and turning trees caramel-green, devoid of smell or taste or touch, only a
picture to look at. When he places his hand flat against the window pane, it’s hot, too, and
that is startling to him, that the sun can do so much even in deep winter.

He should go to Fyodor.

The intrusive thought makes him retract his hand. He lets out a long breath, lets it drag out
the tremors in his stomach. It’s so odd not to shiver every moment, to feel heat so easily,
without having to chase Fyodor for it, or beg to be held in his clothed arms. He might have
told himself that it was all he wanted out of the man, before this moment. He might have lied
to himself about a number of things. But now it seems clear to him that he’s done something
wrong by overreacting the other day, and he feels horribly sorry about it.

He should speak to Fyodor.

The man looked so…so…what was the word for someone like Fyodor? Distraught?
Despondent, maybe? Like a black cloud was holding him captive, hanging in his eyes.

He should apologize to Fyodor.

Dazai can’t find him in the living room, when he finally leaves the chair to look. But the
door, the door to the room where Fyodor plays his cello is open. Cracked, really. There is no
sound of playing, and when Dazai looks, he sees that the instrument is lying beside the empty
fireplace, as usual.

Dazai rubs at his ear to quell the throb there, putting his hand against the crack in the door.
It’s a lot cooler in there. The thought of that makes him less on-edge. Cold is familiar, and the
heat doesn’t feel quite as good as he’d romanticized it to be, in his head.

Fyodor would not have left the door open if he didn’t want Dazai to come in, right? Surely,
he’s allowed, even if he’s never specifically asked.

He stands there for what seems a long time, fingering the edge of the door and standing
practically inside of the crack, feeling the output of cold air in a line down his body. He rests
his forehead against it, too, feels it sift his curls. It’s a little bit like being outside, he thinks,
when he feels it in his hair.

His fingers tremble on the door as he eventually begins to pull it open, and his entire body
fights back, attempting to make him stop, to paralyze him before he can go in. Yes, he’s been
in the room once, the very dark room with twinkling lights and stained glass. But only
following behind Fyodor. Even then, it was difficult.

He sees a dark shape, by the thousand computer lights to the left side of the room, a place
he’d walked past before. It’s a man—it’s Fyodor, of course—but he looks so strange sitting in
the chair, his fingers tap-tapping along a keyboard like dying butterflies. The screen is filled
with glowing blue boxes of opened tabs, hundreds of them, and a second screen relaying
loading symbols stands just to the right of it. Symbols and letters and shapes. They fly by so
quickly, under the command of Fyodor’s gloved hands. What is he doing?

Dazai closes the door so quietly behind him that even he doesn’t hear it. His hands shake
wildly, and he holds them closer to his chest, creeping in the direction of Fyodor’s silhouette.
Green and blue and red lights flicker all over the man’s shadow, the edge of his face, his
shoulder.

Lines of code. That’s what’s on the screen. He understands, now.

He doesn’t want to bother Fyodor. But he needs to, because if he turns around now, he’ll hide
for the rest of the day and won’t be able to apologize.

“Fyodor?” he says, in such a small voice that it cracks into a whisper.

The tip-tapping of keys stops. Fyodor’s fingers hover. His head turns a fraction to the side.
He can’t see more than the beginning of his nose, and a sweep of black lashes. “Why are you
in here?”

The computer blinks rapidly, messages popping up, alerts, warnings. Dazai’s breathing
becomes shallow, and he grasps at the collar of his shirt, stretching it. “B-be…because…” He
hesitates, not really because he doesn’t know how to go on, but because he wants Fyodor to
turn around and look at him.

Fyodor looks at his screen, instead, at the messages popping up. But he doesn’t do anything
about them.

“Fyodor,” Dazai tries again, more insistently, more desperately. Is he whining?

“What is it?” he hisses. “Do not call me if you are not going to speak.”

“Can you please look at me?”

Fyodor turns around in the swivel chair, digging his fingers into the edge of the desk, pulling
his other arm along the chair’s back. His eyes are harsh, unsettled, and it drives a stake
through Dazai’s stomach. His heart shudders violently in his chest. It was a mistake to ask for
that. A mistake. Now he really can’t make his tongue move.

“Um—I, there’s…ah-“ His chin trembles. He blinks rapidly, glancing sideways, at the
ground, at the ceiling, anywhere, anywhere but Fyodor’s face. Still, he can’t say anything. He
grits his teeth, shuffles. He begins to shake his head, heart melting down into his feet.
“Never…nevermind. Nevermind.”

He turns around so fast that he almost stumbles, flinging his hands out for balance as he
heads back for the door. Maybe he’s going to be sick.

“Stop.”
Fyodor’s command freezes Dazai as effectively as a knife in the back. He totters a little. The
computer starts beeping faintly, a warning sound that trills in his head. His throat burns with
rapid breaths.

The chair squeaks. Heavy clothes rustle. Fyodor is getting up.

“I don’t have anything to say, I didn’t mean to bother you,” Dazai whispers, “really, really I
didn’t.”

“Your emotions,” Fyodor says softly, and his voice draws nearer with every padded step
behind him, “are complicated to me just now. I do not understand what it is that you want.”

“I don’t want anything,” Dazai says quickly, shivering in place and grasping his sides.

“If this is about the heat, I would not be displeased if you thanked me.” He adds, “If that is
what you think.”

Dazai shakes his head quickly. Fyodor has come to a halt behind him; he can feel the
presence of the man’s body blocking the air, sucking up the oxygen. But then he realizes, yes,
he should thank Fyodor, shouldn’t he? For the heat. “Thank you.”

“But this is not what you came to say.”

Dazai is quiet. He shakes his head, a quick tremble.

“What, then?”

“Nevermind,” he whispers, “I don’t know.” He makes as if to go, but cold fingers catch his
arm above the elbow, digging into the skin, pinching him. He lets out a faint sound of pain,
but they do not loosen.

“What, then?” Fyodor insists.

Dazai pulls, but so does Fyodor, until Dazai’s body is twisting around, and he’s forced to face
the man. Fyodor tilts his head slowly to line up with Dazai’s lowered one. It’s not playful,
misleading as it is to see. It’s methodical, flat, and it makes the shadows under his eyes
deeper.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dazai tells him. “You won’t care.”

“I would like to know what it is that does not matter.”

Dazai looks at him, tentatively, meekly. His brows furrow, his heart pounds, and he shakes
his head again, a little less fiercely this time. Fyodor will not care. So why, why would he
make himself sick over trying to apologize? Fyodor had thought he’d come here about the
damned heat. Maybe that was why he’d looked troubled, maybe that was why he was acting
so strange. It was just the heat, the different environment. Wasn’t he sacrificing for Dazai?
Didn’t he like the cold?

“Why are you shaking?” Fyodor breathes.

Dazai doesn’t realize he is, not until the man asks about it. “I don’t know,” he blurts.
Fyodor’s fingers are making white splotches in his arm. It hurts.

“Is it bad? What you came to say to me?”

“No! No, it’s not bad.” His heart flutters. He half-consciously touches Fyodor’s fingers on his
arm, pushing at them gently, trying to pry them off without actually prying them off. “It’s not
bad.”

“You are afraid, though. Am I scaring you?”

Fyodor’s wrong. He’s not afraid. He’s just used to shaking. He’s used to knowing what to
expect from the man. “You’re hurting me,” he says softly, when Fyodor’s fingers don’t budge
on his arm.

They loosen at once, leaving bruises behind, surely, but it's almost as if Fyodor was waiting
for him to speak up, so he could give Dazai what he wanted. Or did he not realize when he
was hurting someone?

Dazai pulls his arm close, rubbing at it as he holds eye contact as best as he can. He doesn’t
understand Fyodor’s expression, the way that it’s so blank and yet so full at the same time.
It’s thick, but void. How to describe it? Like there’s something trapping it.

“I wanted—” Dazai hesitates, his throat squeezes. A bloom of heat erupts in his chest. Why is
it so difficult, just when he decides to speak up, to get out what he wants to say?
“Yesterday…”

Fyodor’s body pulls a little straighter. He inhales, slowly, steadily. “I am not going to tell you
about the guest, Dazai.”

His eyes flutter, he tightens his hand into a fist. “I know that,” he says weakly, “I’m not…
asking about that.”

“Ah.” Fyodor’s eyes settle in his again. They uncloud slightly.

Dazai stares at him for a long time, it seems, swallowing repeatedly, trying to open his
mouth. No, it’s not going to come out. No matter how long he stands there, bearing the
weight of Fyodor’s gaze, it’s not going to come out. Because as soon as he says it, he knows
he’ll regret it. What is there to apologize about, or for? Dazai couldn’t actually hurt the man’s
feelings. There aren’t any there to hurt.

“Very well,” Fyodor sighs, turning around, in that same motion that drug out Dazai’s nerves
in the kitchen. “You may go.”

No words. The panic sucks them from his mouth. He lifts his hand, but Fyodor moves out of
reach, and he cannot stop him. The man goes all the way back to his computers, he sits at his
desk and begins tap-tapping again, but Dazai just stands there in shock, watching. Gradually,
both his arms fall to his sides. His shoulders loosen and sink. His breathing begins to
regulate.
He does not want to go.

Tap tap tap go the keys on the computer, a music all in its own. It’s calming, really, and a
gentle sound on his disordered mind. He finds himself sinking to the floor, cold, so cold
against bare skin, but that’s better than the heat in the rest of the house. He won’t sweat, here,
at least. And he can be closer to Fyodor. He might even get up the courage to apologize, if he
stays long enough. For the sake of apologizing. For the sake of himself, to get it off his chest.

Tap tap tap.

Dazai draws his knees up to his chest, he wraps his arms around them and watches Fyodor’s
figure move and shift in the swivel chair.

You may go.

You may go, he’d said, as if it mattered more that Dazai wanted to keep it to himself than it
mattered that Fyodor have his answer. He doesn’t remember that sort of thing happening
before.

Some time passes, and Dazai drowses in his place on the floor, lulled by the darkness of the
room and the clacking of Fyodor’s keyboard. He’s not sure if Fyodor has known the entire
time that Dazai never left, or if he’s just recently noticed, but he eventually stops tapping. He
turns about in his chair, and he gazes at Dazai—whose vision has become blurry with
exhaustion. He’s so tired nowadays. Tired and weak.

“You should eat, Dazai.”

He doesn’t want to move.

“Eat the porridge that I bought for you.”

“I don’t want it,” Dazai murmurs into his drawn-up knees. “Porridge makes me sick. It tastes
awful.”

Fyodor’s fingers tighten on the edge of the chair. “You have never told me that before. Why
not? I thought you liked porridge.”

Liked porridge? Liked it? When has he ever said that?

“It’s all you ever get for me!” he doesn’t mean for it to come out so loudly. “Haven’t you ever
grown tired of something, Fyodor?”

The Russian just looks at him in silence, but his pointer finger is scratching the back of the
chair.

Was Fyodor buying him porridge all the time because he thought Dazai liked it? And the tea?
That too? Dazai sits up a little straighter. He hugs his knees tighter, but raises his head. What
is going on with them lately? Dazai is having all these new revelations about Fyodor,
revelations that aren’t really bad or good, but…but they’re something. They’re not what he
expects.
“You should have told me sooner,” Fyodor says, finally. “How am I to know what you like or
do not like unless you tell me?”

“You used to read me, Fyodor. You used to know what I was thinking. You used to call
yourself a god. I don’t know what to do. Has that changed?”

“Nothing has changed,” Fyodor spits out. He gets up, he moves towards Dazai with a purpose
to his step. Like he did that night in the living room, that night that he broke the chair.

Dazai feels a flash of icy heat; he scrambles back and inhales sharply.

It affects Fyodor immediately. The man hesitates mid-step. He slows to a walk, reaching out
as if to a wild animal, which makes Dazai feel foolish for reacting. Lowly, he says, “I am not
going to hurt you.”

“I know that,” Dazai replies hoarsely, trembling on the floor and leaning back on his arms. “I
know.”

Fyodor extends his gloved hand palm up. “Come. You need to eat.”

“I said I don’t want it.”

A nest of butterflies hatches in his stomach. He shouldn’t have said that.

“I will get you something else.”

Dazai feels his brows furrow. His mind races, searching for answers, solutions, reasons for
Fyodor doing this. “S…something else?” Any minute now. Any minute.

“Yes. Now, come. You have not eaten in a while.”

Just a few seconds more, and Fyodor will hit him, he’s sure of it.

A few seconds go by.

Fyodor does not hit him.

Dazai’s chest heaves. Taking Fyodor’s hand feels like stepping off of a hurtling train, but he
does it. Fyodor pulls him up. As soon as he lets go, Dazai realizes that his energy isn’t there,
and neither is his strength. His legs tremble beneath him, and when he tries to walk as Fyodor
leaves his side, they buckle. A small, helpless cry leaps from him.

Fyodor turns on a dime. Wide-eyed, he catches Dazai in his arms. Dazai clashes against his
chest, panting. “S…orry, I’m sorry,” he gasps, and he’s not sure why. He just feels badly, for
doing it.

“You have not done anything wrong,” Fyodor says softly.

Dazai can hear the man’s heart beating, and it’s fast. It makes him want to cry. There is a
heart, there, still. He clutches handfuls of Fyodor’s clothes, unable to catch his breath. His
face burns. “I’m sorry,” he whimpers, because he could try to walk again, but he doesn’t want
to.

Fyodor’s hands tighten on his arms. Then they shift around his lower back, drawing all of his
body against the soft clothes. “It’s alright.”

Dazai wants to believe they both understand that it’s not about falling, but about yesterday,
what he said to Fyodor then. How it ended.

“Can you walk?” Fyodor asks him, presently, his voice feathery beside Dazai’s ear.

Dazai shakes his head against the man’s chest, almost nestled there, against his neck. It’s sort
of a lie. He might be able to walk, if he made himself. He might be stronger than he feels
right now. But he’d rather not be. It feels good to be whispered to. It feels good to lean on
Fyodor, wrapped up in his pillowy clothes. And it feels sort of good to be weak.

“Can you walk if I help you?” Fyodor asks, even softer.

Dazai is silent for a moment, unmoving. It’s a good compromise. He nods.

Fyodor helps Dazai into the living room with an arm wrapped about his thin waist, and
deposits him gently on the couch.

The moment Dazai’s skin touches the fabric, hot shivers take hold of his spine in vise grips.
He stiffens and grabs at his shirt to tug it down. He doesn’t think except in a red space of
sensations, remembering being on the couch that night that Fyodor broke the chair. It’s hot,
very hot, too hot. His face burns up at once, his stomach, too. There’s a chill in his shoulders
and a loud rush in his head. Fyodor turns blurry before him, a smudge of pale skin and inky
hair, of gloved hands that are reaching for him as if to choke the life out of him.

“Don’t!” he cries hoarsely, clutching at his own chest, bunching the white shirt. He squirms
back into the couch, feeling it resist and press him back towards the Russian.

There’s a voice, saying his name, but it’s too kind to be Fyodor’s. Who’s calling him?

“Dazai.”

Blue. Cerulean blue. That’s not Fyodor. Someone else used to say his name like that.

He whimpers. His heels slip on the edge of the couch as he tries to scoot deeper into the back.
He clamps hands over his ears.

“Dazai.” The voice is muffled, now, and so close, but surely it cannot be Fyodor’s.
His skin grows clammy, hot enough to be aflame.

“The heat,” he cries, “the heat! Why is it so hot?”

Gloves touch the hands over his ears, so calmly that it terrifies him. He jerks away. “Stop!
Stop it, stop it! I don’t want to be touched!”

The touch disappears. Again, his name, “Dazai,” so gently. He blinks rapidly, and Fyodor’s
face goes in and out of focus, bleeding out all over his vision. His breath is shallow, rough,
coarse.

“Easy….”

“I don’t want to sit here, I don’t want to,” he rambles, gripping his ears all the harder at the
humiliating sound of his own pleading.

“Dazai, listen to me.”

“Stop saying my name!” Dazai bursts out, the words grating against his throat. His eyes are
watering. “I’m scared! I’m scared, I don’t want to sit here!”

Fyodor’s face swarms into focus, black brows wrinkled subtly, tiny pupils swimming in
violet. The blade of his lips are softened and parted. His hands are hovering just away from
Dazai’s face, not touching him, but ready to. Dazai feels boxed in, trapped. He wants to get
up on his own but he’s too feeble, and his legs are shaky and limp.

“I will move you, if you let me touch you.”

“No!” he yells, gasping for air.

“How else am I to help you?” There’s a strain in the man’s voice.

“I don’t know!” Dazai spits back, and his voice breaks. “I don’t know. Get away from me.
Get away!”

Fyodor’s chest rises and falls shallowly. He falls back, hesitating at first, then going to his
knees on the floor beside the coffee table, sitting back on his heels. His hands lower to his
sides, perfectly poised on his knees. His gaze fixes on Dazai, nearly at the same eye level.

Dazai takes in great heaves of air, bigger and longer each time, trying to bring himself to a
point where he can make himself move, get off of the fucking couch. He needs to move. He
needs to get off.

“Tell me what is wrong,” Fyodor says.

The sound of his voice rubs Dazai the wrong way, lifting hair on the back of his neck. His
own fingernails dig into the skin behind his ears, his temples. He grits his teeth until they
ache. “YOU HURT ME HERE, THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG, YOU HURT ME!” His voice is
a shrill scream, animalistic.
Fyodor flinches. His eyes flutter.

A spark lights Dazai up from the inside. A reaction. He got a reaction! He yanks his hands
down from his ears, gripping handfuls of the couch as he crouches forward, feeling his eyes
blaze. “Do you think that just goes away? Do you think I can stand to sit here when you
threw me over this couch and shoved a-a chair…” It tangles in his mouth for a moment, sears
his throat and fills his eyes with tears. “…a ch-chair leg full, full of splinters inside of me?
Do you?” He’s sobbing, suddenly, the sounds wrenching at his throat like gagging heaves of
air. Everything is shaking. Tears bubble down his face. A headache splits his head with pain.
Still, he can’t move. He can’t move, even full of adrenaline. He yells out in frustration,
bashing his head against the chair arm.

Fyodor tilts and fringes in his sight, but the man’s face is drawn and pale, and his lips are
pressed into a very tight line. “I can help you,” he whispers, “I will help you.”

“Shut up,” Dazai hisses, quaking with his own fury, and the terror he keeps pushing down.
Why isn’t Fyodor leaping at him already, to beat him, to punish him for speaking this way?
Why is he still sitting there and offering instead of forcing?

“You do not look well. You can barely hold your head up, Dazai. Let me touch you.”

“What’s stopping you?” Dazai mocks, raggedly, “my lack of consent?” More sobs grip him in
convulsions. He clutches his mouth and tries to hold them back, to swallow them, and it
makes it more difficult to breathe with tears dribbling down his cheeks. He digs his nails into
his face.

Fyodor moves, finally, a swift thing that sends Dazai into a hysterical panic. He folds over,
crunching into a ball, hiding his face in his knees. Involuntary whimpers lace his sobs. He
waits for the pain, he can almost feel it. More adrenaline shoots through his veins.

Hands roughly handle his body, he shrieks things he can’t even hear and writhes away from
their touch. He can’t escape them. He’s dragged away from the couch, grasped in an
inescapable grip against Fyodor’s body. He kicks his legs, but there’s only air. He claws at
Fyodor’s chest, yelling obscenities, screaming himself hoarse. Fyodor keeps walking with
him in tow, walking backwards. Through his tears Dazai sees the living room growing
smaller, he sees the hall, the kitchen. Fyodor keeps dragging him. Dazai thrashes and beats at
his arms. Every muscle in his body screams with exhaustion. His throat isn’t making noise
anymore, not correct noises. They’re supposed to be loud, but they’re cracked and whispery.
His face is soaking wet, his nose is running.

Into the bedroom, Fyodor wrestles Dazai. Past the bed, his toes digging and kicking against
carpet. Past the bedside table and the drawer with the noose. Into the open bathroom,
Fyodor’s hands grope him lower, pulling bare skin as he tries to raise Dazai’s slipping body
back to its place.

“I was trying to give you a choice,” Fyodor says, “so you did not have to feel afraid. But I do
not think it works that way for you.”
Dazai doesn’t listen to him, fisting his shirt and ripping at it until he hears fabric tear from
their seams. He squirms and refuses to look at himself in the mirror as Fyodor wrenches him
toward the bathroom counter. “Let me go!” he screeches, “put me down!”

The faucet runs, Dazai glimpses Fyodor’s hand on the knob. What is he doing? He isn’t ready
for pain, no more pain, he doesn’t want pain. Fyodor told him no more pain, didn’t he? Was it
too long ago? Was he lying? Is Dazai insane for thinking he’s ever going to be safe?

Fyodor’s pulling a washcloth from a stack, thrusting it under the water. Dazai tries, he tries
with all his might to fight against the arm left holding him, but his efforts are too feeble, or
Fyodor is too strong. He sobs louder, more insistently, choking on the sounds in his
frustration.

He rips more fabric, he slams his forehead against Fyodor’s shoulder. He hears a low grunt,
and he’s shifted roughly, then a wall is behind him. He’s shoved against the wall, cold on his
back, making him arch. He gasps, he struggles anew, but Fyodor grabs his face.

Wet. It’s wet. The washcloth envelops his face, cold and wet, dripping and mingling with his
tears, covering his mouth and nose. He suffocates, jerking and clawing at Fyodor’s hand. He
screams out into it, but Fyodor presses harder. His head aches against the wall. He flails,
chest hitching, hitching.

His thoughts dissolve. His vision blackens. His ears ring.

And then, he goes still, mouth open against the cloth, face throbbing but cooling underneath
the cold water. He holds to Fyodor’s wrist with all his might. His body shudders, his mind
goes flat and blank, like opening a door to an empty space. Nothing but soaring, gliding
emptiness. A thousand colors erupt in his vision, but he stops struggling, every muscle tensed
and still.

The cloth pulls away. Dazai drags in a gasp so deep that it burns his lungs. Several others
follow, but they’re deep instead of shallow, sluggish instead of racing. He’s looking straight
into Fyodor’s eyes. His body starts to relax.

“Enough,” Fyodor murmurs, the cloth pressed beside Dazai’s shoulder. “Enough, Dazai. You
are not on the couch anymore. You do not have to be afraid.”

Dazai continues staring up at him, wheezing. His hands slip away from Fyodor’s wrist. He
feels the air tickle his wide eyes, tastes the tears that still slip down his burning cheeks. Soft,
uncontrollable whimpers twist his throat. He swallows; his tongue is sandpaper.

“You look ill,” Fyodor breathes. He reaches behind him without turning from Dazai, to the
water faucet that still runs. The cloth drenches under it again. Dazai watches it, petrified.

“Nnghgg—” He flinches back when Fyodor lifts it to his face, choking on a moan.

“Shh,” Fyodor shakes his head a fraction. Dazai doesn’t know where he learned to shush like
a mother.
 The washcloth, freezing cold, presses against his forehead and his cheek, under his dampened
curls. A long, drawn-out groan wrenches from Dazai, because it feels so good, so good he
could melt, against the overwhelming heat of his skin. It helps him stop sobbing, helps him
stop the adrenaline in his blood, helps him stop pushing and writhing against Fyodor’s form.

“Maybe the temperature change was too much for you. Perhaps you are overheated.”

Dazai still looks at him, drowsier by the minute, melting under the tender touches of the wet
cloth on his face. His body starts to slide down. Fyodor gathers him up again, lifts his knee
between Dazai’s legs to keep him supported against the wall. Dazai ends up half-sitting on
his thigh, slumped back against the wall, limp and uncomfortable. But nothing really matters,
except the ice cold of the cloth, the way it gets refreshed every time Fyodor reaches behind
him to wet it again.

Fyodor takes it across Dazai’s lips, and some of the water trickles against his tongue. At
once, Dazai leans into it, sucking at the washcloth for more, more of the water. A desperate
mewling sound slips out in his haste.

Fyodor cups the back of his head and lets him suck it dry, and when Dazai frantically
blubbers and pleads for more, he fills the cloth again and puts it back to Dazai’s lips. He
sucks again, again, a third time, a fourth, a fifth. He grasps it with trembling fingers.

Finally, he falls back, exhausted.

“Better?” Fyodor asks him, and it’s truly a question.

Dazai looks at him, and does not answer, gasping and wiping at the tears left on his face.
Fyodor lifts the washcloth and sponges them away instead. Dazai’s breath hitches and he
closes his eyes.

“Good?” Fyodor says, softer. The word strikes a chord in his chest.

“Good,” he rasps. “Mmhnng, good…”

“Alright.” Fyodor pulls him into his chest by the back of the neck, and Dazai only barely
resists, stiffening in his arms. But it feels good, despite the warmth he doesn’t want, despite
the unnatural kindness. He loosely wraps his arms around Fyodor’s waist, groaning as all the
aches in his body return to his consciousness.

“Do not resist me,” Fyodor whispers.

Dazai doesn’t. Everything has been sapped from him, his ability to reason, to understand, to
do more than cling to Fyodor as the man lifts him up and carries him into the bedroom once
more.

Chapter End Notes

If you like this story (and if you've come this far, I suppose you do hehe~), I just wanted
to let all you sweets know that I've started an original work on Tumblr, a fantasy whump
series about a boy and his master. His very *very* cruel master. And the emissary from
another Island that wants to help the slave boy.
 OUTSIDE
Chapter Summary

He shouldn't have done it.

Chapter Notes

TW: this is the most intense chapter of the entire story. If you are bothered by extreme
violence/emotional anguish, I would advise you to prepare yourself. This will not, by
any means, be an easy ride, or censored, glossed over in its intensity, and made less
graphic.

And those are probably the words that just made most of my readers salivate. >:}

You'll enjoy this, ya little whumpaholics.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai next wakes, it’s cold again. Sprawled on his back under the covers, staring up at
the fissured ceiling paint, he’s not exactly sure how long he’s actually been awake. He comes
to his senses like this, and gets the feeling that he’s been staring up at the ceiling for quite
some time, zoning out, drifting in his own mind. It bothers him. He shouldn’t be doing that.

He sits up in bed too quickly. His stomach does a flip and his head spins like a carousel. Is it
possible to feel even weaker than he’d felt yesterday? He didn’t think so until now, as he tries
to move his leg and it drags like dried concrete. He never ate yesterday. Maybe that’s it.

He should eat. He really, really should eat.

The covers slide halfway down his body. He wonders if he’s gotten skinny and horribly
emaciated, so he gives himself a look. But no, he looks just fine. He can barely see his ribs,
but he’s always looked that way, rather lanky and slender. How could he look the same and
feel three times weaker?

He stares at himself a moment longer. Something’s wrong.

Dazai can’t quite imagine what it is. He can’t put his finger on it. He stands up out of bed,
holding onto the table beside it. His legs look fine. His arms look fine. His chest and his
stomach look fine. His skin looks healthy as ever, clean, even. Does Fyodor bathe him while
he’s asleep? Or is showering so boring and habitual that he doesn’t remember stepping in and
stepping out?
Ah, going insane is such fun.

Dazai realizes he can stand when he thinks hard enough about it, and eventually lets go of the
bedside table. He wants Fyodor. Where is Fyodor? And why can’t he ever stay in bed so that
Dazai can wake beside him? He would like that. Things would be so much clearer, waking up
with Fyodor. He would feel less disoriented, because Fyodor would be there to tell him what
was going on and how long he was asleep, what time of the day it is and what meal he should
eat.

Dazai picks his way across the room, still feeling off. He takes the handle of the bedroom
door in his hand and squeezes it. It’s so cold, like it usually is, like it should be. He’s glad for
the heat not being on anymore. How stupid he was to make such a scene over Fyodor turning
it on for a guest. Fyodor always knew what was best. Fyodor is in better condition than him.
Fyodor is more clear-headed. Even if he didn’t particularly know that turning on the heat
would affect Dazai so much, it turned out that he was right to keep it cold. Even when he’d
sacrificed for Dazai’s sake.

Ah. That’s it.

Dazai is standing with the doorknob still clutched in his hand, looking down at himself, his
bandaged body. His bare body.

His shirt is gone.

A small noise escapes him, low and weak. He touches his body, pats it and looks around the
room. No shirt, not at the end of the bed, not on the dresser, not folded on a corner chair or
any other furniture. Gone. Completely gone.

Has he done something wrong? He must have. Fyodor must be punishing him for something.
Is it the heat? Because of being ungrateful and having an outburst?

Where is Fyodor? He needs Fyodor.

Dazai opens the bedroom door, he stumbles out into the hall and peeks at the kitchen.
Nobody is there. Dazai’s heart pounds in his ears. His mouth goes dry. He holds his hands
against his stomach and creeps into the kitchen, looking around for any sign of the man.

Nothing.

He looks in the living room. Fyodor is not there, either, not in the reading chair, not on the
couch, not by the empty fireplace. The door to the other room is sealed shut. The cello is in
its place, no gloves on the coffee table. Fyodor’s not in there, either.

Dazai’s chest tightens. He presses a fist against his mouth and hears his breath rasp against it.
He blinks, keeping his eyes wide so he won’t miss any sight of Fyodor. He scans the room
several times.

Did he leave? Is he out for groceries? Dazai doesn’t want him to be gone. Not now. He really,
really doesn’t want Fyodor to be gone. He needs him. He needs him so he can know why his
shirt is missing. He needs him so his head can clear, so he can relax and not feel butterflies
hatching in his stomach.

Dazai turns from the living room and stalks down towards the front door, past the kitchen
again, past the painting of the boy who looks a little bit like him. The front door stands before
him, sturdy, tall. A barrier he’s never crossed since whenever he came here. Is Fyodor out
there? How far? Could Dazai come out, or maybe just open the door? Would it be alright, if
he just opened the door to look? Would Fyodor hate him for that? Would Fyodor punish him
for that?

Dazai looks back over his shoulder. The house, it feels so very dark. And the halls feel so
narrow, the air so frigid. Is it just his imagination, the way the walls are squeezing together?
Is it?

The house is a little darker than it should be, even though the kitchen window shows the
color of moonlight. Is this a dream? Has he woken up, truly, or is he stuck in his head?

He’s backing up, without fully realizing it. His spine hits the door and it’s freezing cold. He
gasps. He turns to face the door, if only to escape the crushing emptiness of the house behind
him, and puts his hands against it. His lips tremble.

The house shrinks behind him. He can feel it blackening. His heart rushes so violently in his
ears that they begin to ache.

His breath wheezes. Weakly, he pounds the flat of his palm against the door. “Fedya,” he
whispers, then, louder, “Fedya!”

His eyes begin to burn. He fixes his gaze on the handle of the door, the handle he knows is
unlocked, but he cannot turn. He cannot! He’s forbidden. But even just to look? Even to look
outside for Fyodor? Is that still forbidden?

“Fedya!” His voice shakes. It echoes across the hardwood and the walls pressing in behind
him, sneering at the boy who wants to leave, at the boy who wants to turn the handle and
cannot.

Dazai pounds on the door, he pounds over and over, and shouts, “Fedya, Fedya! I’m sorry,
Fedya!”

Is he hearing things behind him? Is that just the rushing in his ears, the wildness of his own
voice, or does he hear laughing, too? Are the walls laughing at him? Is the house laughing at
him?

He wants out, he wants out, he wants out out out.

He can’t go back now, not into the house that wants to eat him, not into the empty space
where Fyodor is not. He has to go out.

Dazai grips the handle. The house hisses at him. He lets out a cry of frustration, at himself, at
the emptiness, he doesn’t know. He’s shaking so fiercely that he can barely keep his grip. His
fingers slip, they’re clammy on the freezing metal. He grips it again.

And then, it turns. It turns!

He knew it would turn, but it feels so strange that he inhales in response, and stares at it with
round eyes.

It’s unlocked, and he can leave, he can go out. He can find Fyodor. He can apologize, and
explain, and beg for mercy, it doesn’t matter. It will matter once he gets out, but he must get
out first. Yes! Out.

Dazai yanks open the door with all of his might, and a gust of snow-filled wind whips it into
the hallway wall with a great crash. Dazai stands, petrified, arms spread, as the gust returns to
blast his body, rushing upwards through his hair, pelting his naked skin with tiny darts of
snow. He breathes it in, all the way into his lungs until it burns. And it’s cold, it’s so much
colder than inside that it makes him shake all the more. But he loves it. There’s something
about it that makes him feel less alone, less empty than staying in the house.

Gripping both sides of the doorframe, Dazai comes back into himself and looks out down the
pathway before him. It’s dark. There are lots and lots of snow-covered trees. Bushes, too.
This isn’t at all like the view from the kitchen window, with the flatness and the distant
mountains and the sky full of furry clouds. He can hardly see the sky here. There are too
many branches and evergreens. Here and there, he catches a twinkling star between drafts of
falling snow.

Dazai is overcome. It’s so beautiful, all of it is so beautiful. The dead grass of the pathway
that leads down from the house, it’s a lovely, prickly brown. How long has it been since he’s
seen grass, or trees, and been a few inches from stepping on it with his own feet? Years,
probably. And the wind, the wind is his favorite thing. It’s so icy, but he’s used to the cold.
Missing his shirt, perhaps, but….

Oh, his shirt.

His shirt. Fyodor! He’s come out here to find Fyodor.

But he cannot see any sign of Fyodor out here, either. He looks down at his feet, at the
threshold where his toes are clenching and turning pale. Should he step down? There’s a
porch, covered in snow—just a little one before the steps turn down to the pathway. Maybe if
he goes as far as the porch—just that far—it’ll be alright. He could see better from the edge
of the porch, couldn’t he? The pathway has footprints, but he’s not sure how recent they are.

His brain is sitting atop thousands of knives. “Fyodor…?” he lets out into the wind. It hardly
goes farther than his own bubble of space. Where is he? Has Fyodor left Dazai here again,
like the time he went away for so long? But he didn’t tell Dazai. Wouldn’t he tell Dazai?
Doesn’t he care at all about Dazai?

It smells so wonderful outside. So, so wonderful. Like pine wood and like foliage, of dirt and
fresh snow, and all the things he could never smell from the inside.
His body begins to lock up. His fingers are going numb. Are they blue yet? He can’t see them
in the dark. There’s a little light on above him, a porchlight, he notices, that casts the faintest
glow on the pathway. Fyodor probably needs it to find the house. There’s nothing else around
but woods and snow.

Dazai feels so abandoned.

The thought strikes him like the cold head of a hammer. His eyes water with a new gust of
wind, pelting him with ice, needling his entire body. He’s going to freeze out here, but that
might be kind of nice, if Fyodor has really left him.

Can’t he have one more chance to apologize for whatever he’s done wrong, one more time to
cling to the man and beg to be loved? Is that such a hard thing for Fyodor, really?

Dazai is so lost in the experience and the chilliness of being outside, that it takes him far too
long to notice that there’s a figure on the pathway. It’s not the shape of a tree, as his mind has
reassured him the last few times he glimpsed it. No, he sees it now, he sees it fully, and it’s
the most familiar figure he’s ever seen.

It startles him, the black shape becoming apparent. A tall, cloaked figure in the trees on the
edge of the pathway. It startles him so violently that his heart stops beating, and he can’t
move. Standing right there, where the trees open up like a caving ribcage, is the Russian
himself.

“Fedya,” he whispers tremulously.

Fyodor is standing still. He sees Dazai. Dazai knows it, even though he can’t see the man’s
eyes, yet. He sees Dazai standing on the threshold, and oh, god, but he’s made a mistake.
He’s made the worst mistake of his life.

Dazai brings a shaky hand to his forehead, muttering at once to himself, thousands of curses,
nonsense words and obscenities.

What has he done, what has he done?

Fyodor begins to walk up the pathway to the house. Step by step. The branches of the trees
scrape and creak like dying banshees. His steps, they crunch in the snow like jaws of teeth on
bone. The wind moans, a corpse rising from its grave.

The porch light lands on Fyodor’s eyes, first, illuminating them like violet storm clouds. The
dark shards of his hair cast stretching, ghastly shadows on his pale face.

He stops at the first step on the porch, one crimson boot poised on top. His gloved hand
comes to rest on the rail, and the snow flees from his grasp as it tightens enough to make the
wood crack.

“What are you doing?” Fyodor asks, and his voice is so deathly quiet that Dazai’s ears ring.
“Are you trying to leave? Are you breaking my rules?”
Dazai’s brows tighten and furrow. His hand flails until it finds the doorframe. He wills
himself to speak up. To tell Fyodor why he’s done it, why he had to do it. But it all sounds
very silly now. He doesn’t think that it will make any sense now. It’s all so foolish. So, so
foolish.

“I…n-no, I…I—!” He backs up. One foot off the threshold, numb to the bone with frost. “F-
Fedya…please, I—”

Fyodor climbs the steps, running his gloved hand flat over the railing. The snow goes
everywhere, flinging out into the wind. Fyodor looks only at Dazai.

There are no bags in his hand—so he hadn’t left for food.

Dazai steps back again. He stumbles into the door. The handle catches him in the ribs.
“Fedya,” he whimpers.

“You filthy, disgusting little creature.”

Dazai cowers.

Fyodor crosses the porch, crunching through snow Dazai never touched. But he might as well
have.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry,” Dazai babbles, pressing up against the hallway wall, sliding
backwards against it. “Please don’t be angry with me, please—"

“Stay where you are!” Fyodor yells. His voice rings in the trees.

Dazai yelps, nearly folding in two. His feet stop moving. His toes curl up beneath them. He
trembles. “Please! It’s not what you think! I wasn’t trying to leave! I wasn’t!”

Fyodor steps into the house. He grabs the door handle. He slams the door shut. The entire
house rattles, floor to ceiling.

Dazai whines, gripping his hair.

“You selfish, lying bastard. You want me to take pity on you? You want me to believe you?
You opened the door.” Fyodor reaches out, he crushes Dazai’s wrist in his grip.

Dazai jerks. He shrinks back, shaking his head. “No no no no, noooo!” He can’t put his
thoughts together. They scatter every time Fyodor speaks. He’s just an animal, a filthy,
disgusting animal, trying to escape punishment. “Not to leave, not to leave!”

“Come, Sinner.” Fyodor drags him down the hallway. Dazai kicks and digs in his heels, he
gasps for air and presses his free hand against Fyodor’s back, trying to lever out of the
unforgiving grip. But it doesn’t work, and Fyodor continues to drag him.

“I’m not lying, I promise I’m not lying, please listen! Listen!” He twists his arm in the man’s
grip. He’s getting worked up, the breaths clashing in his throat, choking him. “Fedya, plea-
hease!”
The fingers dig into the veins of his wrist until they hit pressure points, sending shards of
pain up through to his elbow. He cries out, stumbling as Fyodor jerks him closer.

Fyodor’s teeth flash in a snarl. “Do not call me that again,” he grits out. “Never call me that
again.”

Dazai keeps his head tight in his shoulders, cringing away. “I’m sorry,” he sobs.

Fyodor throws Dazai to the ground. Dazai sprawls, crying out. He claws forward, he tucks
his knees and buries his face between his arms. He shakes violently, mindlessly babbling for
mercy. “Please, please, please please—!”

A felted boot strikes him in the ribs, knocking the breath from him. He grasps at the injury
and chokes on air. His eyes water, wide and unseeing.

“Do not beg for what you do not deserve,” Fyodor growls. “Useless, betraying creature.”

Dazai’s chest throbs. His veins pulse with a frigid rush of adrenaline. He wheezes and stares
up at the Russian with stricken eyes. Tears, searing hot, line his lashes until they spill
frantically down his cheeks.

He cannot speak. He cannot think. There is nothing.

Nothing he can do.

Nothing he can say.

Fyodor grabs him by the hair. Dazai squeals with fright and pain, thrashing as he’s dragged
into the kitchen. His body clashes against a chair, it falls with a raging crash. The hardwood
rakes into his skin.

Fyodor wrenches open a drawer. Silverware jangles inside. Dazai moans and squirms,
digging fingers into the man’s wrist. His scalp throbs, it bruises under the unforgiving grip. “I
don’t w-want to be huuurt,” he cries. “Pleeeaaase, I don’t want to be hurt!”

Fyodor slides a silver utensil from the drawer. He slams it shut again, forks spilling out and
clanging around Dazai.

The razor-sharp blade of a carving knife gleams in a streak of moonlight.

For a sickening, stifling moment, Dazai nearly blacks out. His voice bursts from him in
panic. There are no words, not conscious ones. His vision blurs and topples. He claws at
Fyodor’s legs, clambering on his knees, begging, pleading, violently gasping. His heartbeat is
the loudest thing to him, throbbing in his ears. Nausea broils in his stomach, fierce and cold.

Fyodor wrenches back his head by the hair, forcing him backwards, peeling him off. He pulls
so far that Dazai falls, and Fyodor shoves him. His back hits the floor. His head bangs a table
leg. Again, his vision topples and twirls with colors and stars. He feels himself sobbing, the
muscles of his throat clenching and convulsing, his chest crunching and hitching. He tries to
move, to get up, but his arms only raise and are heavy, falling back over his head, his face.
His body twists but can’t lift.

A white-and-black blur above him, the glint of steel. Hands grab his body, rolling him to his
stomach, grinding his forehead into the floor. He bawls like a child, unaware of what will
happen, blinded to Fyodor’s movements.

A weight crushes his shoulders—Fyodor sitting on them, he realizes. His lungs flatten. The
screeching and sobbing tangle inside, choking him. He digs his fingernails into the floor and
thrashes with all his might. Fyodor doesn’t budge.

Hands, cold as ice, clench around one of his legs. He kicks, he tries to twists his arm far
enough to beat at Fyodor’s form.

Fiery agony pierces him. A blade, slicing into the back of his ankle. A loud, sickening pop.
The jarring snap of his tendon releasing. What’s going on? What’s going on? He can’t move
his foot. He writhes wildly and shrieks in pain, but his foot uselessly dangles.

Fyodor is grabbing the other leg. Dazai bucks and caterwauls, but he can’t stop it. The second
one pops in two, the same slice of bladed pain tearing open his skin.

“AAAAAHHH! Stop it! Stop, please stop! What did you do?! What did you do?!” His throat
burns, his head rattles with agony. His body jerks and crawls and shudders of its own accord.
He’s lost control. He doesn’t understand, his mind won’t process.

The weight leaves his back, and Dazai feels himself scraping forward, wheezing, sobbing,
half-drowned in his own tears. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He’s just moving, getting
away. He has to move, to run, he’s going to die, he’s going to die!

His feet are useless.

He can’t even feel them.

Dazai’s head hits a wall. He pulls his body up against it, spine curled, grasping at his legs.
“What did you do, what did you do?” he babbles, hands slipping in blood. It leaks out under
him in warm red syrup. He sees his legs, the yawning open cuts on the backs of his ankles.
Gaping. The Achilles tendon completely severed. Bunched in his calf muscle.

He’s going to throw up.

Dazai falls forward to his hands. He hears footsteps. Blearily, he raises his bobbing head, sees
the figure standing above him with a blood-stained knife. His mouth is moving, his lips
snarling, his eyes narrowed, but all Dazai hears is Russian, Russian, and the gut-wrenching
heaves of his own sobs.

Fyodor grasps hold of the bandages around his neck and yanks. They snap and unravel. Dazai
lists sideways, too weak to hold himself up. He collapses on his side. Again and again, the
hands return, finding new bandages and tearing them up like weeds in a garden. Dazai jerks,
 shudders, trembles. At times he tries to make himself move, but it doesn’t work. So he weeps,
he weeps until he can’t see past the tears. He weeps until his eyes swell.

Fyodor lays him completely bare, and when the bandages are around him in heaps, the
Russian stumbles back, gasping for breath.

“Fucking, foolish little sinner.”

Dazai goes numb, tears running like endless streams, his eyes dead beneath them. Cheek
pressed to bloody hardwood, his limbs useless and limp, he gazes at the man, dull and
lifeless. Every security has been ripped to shreds; every hope lies about him like the
bandages. Is he still alive? He feels as if he’s fading. Surely, he won’t live much longer.
Surely, the release will come very soon.

His mind has been crushed. But he’s not too deaf to miss the ragged sound, the raw cry of
Fyodor’s voice above him.

“Stupid, disgusting creature. Curse you. Curse you!”

He’s not too blind to miss the way Fyodor’s eyes are red-rimmed in the moonlight, blood
splattered across his cheeks.

He plummets into darkness.

Chapter End Notes

8) *snickers* pain.

You guys had better tell me how you felt about this one in the comments. Get in there
and interact, dammit!! I need my food!
┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘
 Crippling Misery
Chapter Summary

I mean, feet aren't all that important, right? -Fyodor

Chapter Notes

Yes, you get a quick update, because I love you and also--a huge pet peeve of mine is
not being able to continue a story while I'm in the mood, you know? Like having to wait
so long for the next chapter that you forget that adrenaline rush...that feeling...that
stress...the angst...wanting to know what happens...

:) I'm a kind sadist, after all.

[also:]
I am absolutely stunned by how shocked you guys were at the last chapter XD (DID
YOU NOT SEE THE ADDED TAGS LIKE A MONTH AGO THAT SAID
'CRIPPLING'?????)

lol I'll just say I was so very pleased, and the amount of comments I got made me so
excited. It was super awesome to hear everyone's opinions and feelings about the
chapter. So thank you!

Um also a minor note: yeah I totally absolutely definitely forgot about the chair leg
incident chapter when calling last chapter "the most intense". No, the chair leg chapter
was definitely more intense. xD The manner of violence was a little bit different.

Anyways!

I think you're really gonna enjoy this one. For those of you dying to know what's going
on in Fyodor's head...here you go. A much bigger glimpse, this time.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dazai wakes to a nightmare.

He tries sitting up first, and flails. His head is spinning in three directions at once, his body
throbbing. He falls back against a hard surface, a wall. His body is cramped against it. He can
hardly breathe without wheezing.
It’s the kitchen. He’s on the kitchen floor where he blacked out, half-sitting against the wall
in a dried mess of his own blood.

He flounders in confusion, gasping, his body fluttering with violent panic. He lets out a
strange sound, then another, louder one. A cry, almost a word, but he’s unable to make his
mind focus into a singular word. His eyes dart all around at his completely-stripped body, at
the bandages lying in shreds, the streaks of blood and the disheveled kitchen. Forks are
scattered below the kitchen counter, sparkling in faint sunlight. One of the chairs is on its
side, lodged under the table.

None of that matters. None of it.

What matters is that when he moves his legs, his feet drag uselessly along behind. They
dangle. They don’t move. They don’t even feel like part of him anymore.

They’re broken. They’re completely fucking broken. He can’t walk. He’s crippled.

“I can’t walk,” he whispers, “I can’t walk!”

He pulls one a ragged gasp, then a second one. It quickly becomes a handful of them, rasping
in and out, laced with high-pitched whimpers. He screams. He raises his hands to his head,
grasping his curls, and he screams. It’s long, it’s loud, and when it ends, it dissolves into a fit
of violent sobs.

“Heelllllppp! Heh-heellpppp!” he wails. “Hel-lp me-e, ple-hea-aseeee! Hel-p m-me!”

He stares at his legs with wide eyes, at the swollen, angry red of his ankle, at the blood
smeared all over the backs of his heels and the soles of his feet. He screams again, even
though there is nobody here to help him, even though he is trapped with a demon. He
screams because there is nothing else he can do.

And then, there are footsteps.

Dazai cowers instantly upon sight of the Russian, throwing his hands up to shield himself and
weeping all the louder. “Help, please, please don’t hurt me, I can’t walk I can’t w-walk!” His
chest fills with pain.

“I cut your Achilles tendons,” Fyodor says, with a measured, tense calm. “You will not be
able to walk on your own anymore.”

Dazai tries to swallow the sobs, looking up between his arms with the skin under his eyes
bunched in a pained stare. He makes a noise of incoherent anguish. He looks down at his legs
again, he tries to make it make sense.

He’s crippled. He’s crippled! He can’t process the information.

Panting, shuddering, he finds the wall with his hands. He drags himself against it, closer,
hugging it as if it will save him from this. He wants to die. He wants to die and get away
from this hell.
“You broke my rules,” Fyodor says behind him. His voice is strange and hollow, it sends
shards of ice through Dazai’s body.

He screws his eyes shut. “Please, please, I c-can’t,” he moans, “I can’t d-do this right n-n-
n…” He chokes on the word, stuttering until the sound dies under a sob. He can barely speak,
how does Fyodor expect him to be coherent enough for more berating? “I n-need-d, n-need h-
help.”

Fyodor is silent. Dazai hears his feet shift, the floor creaking. He whimpers in misery.

“I will not help you. You tried to run away.”

“I didn’t!” Dazai bursts out in anguish, tears rushing to his eyes and overflowing. “It was an
accident! I wasn’t trying to leave! I was looking for you, I needed you and you weren’t there,
I was trying to f-find you!” His weeping becomes hysterical, wracking him with shudders.
“I’m s-sorry-y, I tr…I tried, s-so hard. I tried and I g-got scared, and I n-n…I just—! Needed
you…”

Even through the tears, he finds himself turning to Fyodor, imploring him with tear-stricken
eyes.

Fyodor listens with a face that slowly blanches, eyes that widen a fraction, and then a fraction
more. “You expect me…to believe that you were not running away?” he asks, breathlessly, as
if he is lost. His brows twitch downwards in confusion. “You expect me to believe that?
Why? Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’ve never lied to you before!” Dazai wails. “Never!”

Fyodor blinks rapidly. “You needed me. Explain. What does that mean?”

Sniffling and groaning, Dazai begins to crawl away, dragging his legs behind him. Anywhere,
it doesn’t matter. Away. “I woke up-p, and you weren’t here. You t-took my sh-shirt. I thought
that you were an-angry with me. I just wanted…to look. I just wanted to look for you,
outside.”

He’s in so much pain. Mentally, physically. He doesn’t even understand how he’s
functioning. Survival is all that rings in his brain. Survival, until he can find something to kill
himself with. His breath comes in ragged, hard gasps.

Fyodor takes a step towards him. “Stop. Stop moving. You will open the wounds again.”

Dazai screams out, “I CAN’T DO ANYTHING ELSE, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? I

CAN’T BEAR THIS! YOU HURT ME! YOU HURT ME, FYODOR!”

“YOU BROKE MY RULES!” Fyodor yells back. His eyes sparkle with fireworks of
crimson.

“I needed you and you weren’t there! I needed you, don’t you see?” Dazai pounds his fist
against the floor, burning inside, brows screwed in pain. He’s shaking, shaking violently.
Fyodor goes wordless a second time, in some mimic of shock. Their breathing is loud,
Dazai’s rasping, Fyodor’s full and thick.

“You did not want to run,” Fyodor says quietly. His brows twitch, until finally, finally, they
furrow. It’s sinking in. “You were looking for me? You were not trying to get away from
me?”

Dazai wishes he could lash out again, wishes he could keep yelling, but he is too terrified of
the Russian. His bravery is gone, his will and his strength and his fight. He can’t go on. “I
wasn’t,” he croaks. “I wanted you to come b-back. That’s all.”

Fyodor studies him.

“Kill me,” Dazai tells him, tremulously, “just kill me, Fedya. Please, kill me. Please. I can’t
bear this any longer.”

Fyodor faintly shakes his head. “I do not want to be alone,” he murmurs. It seems he should
go on, but he stops.

Dazai looks at him with pain in his eyes. He says nothing.

“Stay. I will help you.”

Over the next few days, Fyodor repeatedly uses chloroform to put Dazai under. In the kitchen
was the first time. After choosing to help, he’d approached Dazai, and Dazai had plunged
into hysteria. The very act of Fyodor reaching for him was like daggers being shoved into his
throat, and nothing of the good memories that had so distracted him before could fix it. He
had screeched and thrashed, fought and injured himself, and eventually Fyodor had gone into
his room and returned with a wet cloth that he pressed under Dazai’s nose.

He’d awoken in Fyodor’s bed. He’d panicked, clawed at Fyodor’s face, trying to rip his violet
eyes from their sockets. Fyodor had swiftly crammed the cloth back under his nose.

He’d awoken again with his arms tied to either post of the headboard and tight bandages
around his swollen ankles. The very sight of them had sent him back into a feverish wailing,
and Fyodor’s presence in the room had put him to yanking at ropes and slamming his head
back against the wood. The moment blood had begun to trickle, Fyodor was back with the
wet cloth, plunging Dazai into black bliss.

There had been a number of times after, each one ending the same way or in variations of it,
so many that Dazai began to anticipate the moment when he would be sent into painless
drifting.

When he wakes this time, though, things are different.

He’s drugged. He realizes it right away, the heavy feeling in his blood, the fog muddling his
thoughts and shimmering in his vision. His body is unnaturally relaxed. His hands have been
untied, and lazily he takes in the indentations of rope on his wrists. A pillow is stuffed in his
arms. He’s lying on his side, hugging it.

He blinks languidly. His eyes are heavy.

“I am not going to hurt you.”

Dazai hates the way he’s missed the velvet of Fyodor’s voice. When he hears it, his chest
aches, longing for more. “Ffff…dya…” he mumbles, tongue thick in his mouth.

Fyodor comes into focus, rising from a chair at the bedside with hands raised, palms to him.
“Relax…relax, and do not be afraid.”

Dazai blinks sluggishly at him. His nerves are dull with the drug and unable to react like
before. Even when the gloved hand touches his forehead, open-palmed and cool, he feels
only distant trepidation. “Feeett…” he groans.

Crippled. Can’t walk. Can’t move them.

It’s so odd to remember these things and to not physically feel the fear. It’s as if he’s become
numb again, without emotions, as if he’s looking at the word fear on a piece of paper, and
that’s all he has to go by.

“Try not to move them.”

He hadn’t realized his legs were shifting under the covers. Not until Fyodor presses a hand
against his thigh.

“Mmmmnhh…”

Fyodor’s eyes shift to meet his swimming ones. “What is it?”

Dazai doesn’t know. He stares at Fyodor. He breathes, he swallows, he stares. He wants

something to say. Nothing comes to him, though, nothing that he wants to tell him. But he
feels as if he’s on the verge of tears, that if he dares open his mouth, all that will follow is a
sob.

Fyodor’s jaw tightens slightly. A long, drawn sigh sifts between his lips. “I am tired. You and
your screaming, you have worn me out.”

Dazai’s throat screws up. His lip trembles. “Sorry,” he whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Fyodor grips the covers, wringing them subtly in his hands. He shakes his head, and his eyes
look soft. “No. That is not what I wish for you to say. Things were not as I had assumed. I
punished you before I understood. I am the one who made you scream, and perhaps it is
something I would have been proud of, had you tried to run. But you did not try. You did not
intend to try.” He looks away, then down at his hands, fingering the design of the sheets.
“You did not intend to, and I believe that.”
Dazai’s chest crunches in a heart-wrenching sob.

Fyodor’s gaze snaps up, eyes flared.

Dazai hugs the pillow against his body, squeezing and weeping all at once, pressing his face
into the softness to muffle it. All he can do is cry, cry, cry. Why can he not be stronger and
tell Fyodor what it means to him, that he is believed?

“What is it? What have I said to make you weep?” Fyodor asks breathlessly, and Dazai feels
his tension simmering in the air, concern and other things that should not be coming from the
Russian.

Dazai cannot answer, crying mindlessly. He feels gloved fingertips in his curls, against the
soreness of his abused scalp.

“Tell me…” Fyodor’s clothes shift until the presence is much closer by Dazai’s head. “Dazai,
tell me, and I will fix it.”

Dazai shakes his head sluggishly, gasping, he raises his weighted hand to grasp Fyodor’s and
pull it to his wet face. He turns into it, he holds it to him and weeps weary tears into the
man’s palm. “I…‘m dramatic,” he moans.

“You are not dramatic,” Fyodor murmurs gently.

“I’m weak, weak and f-foolish, I couldn’t go two minutes without you,” Dazai sobs against
his fingers.

Fyodor’s other hand comes to rest on his head. “I am not angry anymore.”

He says it so quietly that Dazai almost misses it, the words splashing into the dark puddle of
his brain. But then it replays, because something is off, and Dazai’s eyes slowly open, sticky
with tears and exhaustion. He stares ahead, at first, at the white material of Fyodor’s pants.
Slowly, he raises his eyes.

Fyodor is looking back at him, steadily. He knows what he said.

Anymore.

“You were angry,” Dazai whispers, and his heart shudders with unmistakable thrill. “You felt
it. You felt.” He remembers the sight of red-rimmed eyes. He remembers the rawness of the
man’s cry. Curse you, he’d said. Curse you.

Fyodor does not answer. He only looks back into Dazai’s eyes, neutral and calm, and his
fingers shift faintly, toying with Dazai’s hair.

The breath rushes out of Dazai’s mouth. He blinks, taking it in. The moisture in his eyes
begins to reduce. “You felt angry. I made you angry.” He can hardly believe it, even telling
himself out loud. “And n…now…?”
Fyodor shakes his head a fraction. “Not now. There is nothing, now. Except…allusions to
others. Things I do not know.”

Dazai feels very, very tired, knowing all of this. It’s so much to understand, and all while
enduring the knowledge that his feet do not work anymore. His hand slips from Fyodor’s. His
head sinks against the pillow. His consciousness blurs. “There are things you do not know?”

“I have never known everything.” Fyodor sounds far away, but his face is yet clear in Dazai’s
vision, the long, dark lashes, the paleness of his skin. The subdued amethyst of his gaze.

“Lay with me,” Dazai begs him in a whisper. “I don’t want to be in the bed alone. Please….”
He wants more, more of the pale white skin. He wants to touch all of it, and perhaps it’s the
drugs that are making him so desperate.

Fyodor considers him for a moment, glancing at the darkened window where the moon
hovers. Dazai grasps his hand, not realizing that he’s even reached for it until the gloved
fingers are tangled with his, and it brings Fyodor’s gaze back, softer than it should be.

When Dazai pulls at his glove, he only watches it, until the material has slipped off and fallen
to the sheets. Dazai touches the blue veins, the cold ridges of his knuckles, the silk of his thin
skin.

Fyodor eventually sits on the bed, still thinking about it, deciding, it seems, as Dazai caresses
his palm and wrist with hungry, starved touches.

“Will you take them off?” Dazai implores of him.

Fyodor takes it to mean his other glove. He pulls his hand from Dazai’s and focuses intently
on the sight of his own bared fingers as he shimmies it free.

“More,” Dazai breathes.

Fyodor stills on the bed. His lips flinch faintly and he shakes his head. There is something
deeply vacant and almost…almost sad, about his eyes. Perhaps the drugs are putting more
there than reality suggests. Or Dazai has finally gone completely insane, enough to think that
Fyodor has admitted to feeling something.

“Please,” he murmurs absently, as if that will help at all. His lips are too free in this state, his
mind too dull of the terror that should be there. His feet are useless. His feet are useless.

It means nothing to him.

Fyodor gathers up his gloves, he leans over Dazai’s head to lay them neatly atop the dresser
on the other side of the bed. Dazai does not think. He just reaches up to the loops on Fyodor’s
shirt, and pulls two of them free.

Fyodor flinches back, grunting. He clasps both of Dazai’s hands within one of his and pushes
them away. But not before his shirt’s high collar drifts open. A pocket of skin, the edge of a
collarbone, perfect and ivory, is suddenly available to him. The breath rushes in his chest,
when he sees. Shivers of heat travel down through his spine. It’s Fyodor’s skin. He wants
more. He wants to be engulfed by all of Fyodor’s skin, all of his broken body wrapped inside
Fyodor’s whole one.

“Fedya—”

Fyodor presses fingers against his mouth briefly. “It is not for you to see.”

“Then who?” Dazai pleads against his fingers, trembling. “Who sees?”

“No one sees,” Fyodor insists. He pulls his hand away.

“Why?’ Dazai asks him, pain throbbing in his lungs. “Why does no one see?”

“Hush, Dazai, you are a child to ask such things. Hush, now, and sleep some more.”

“Lay with me, then. Lay with me, or I can't sleep.”

“Can’t you?” Fyodor purrs, but there is a tenderness about the way his lashes cast over his
eyes.

Fyodor is right: Dazai’s eyes swim even as the man says it. “I don’t want to, alone. I don’t
want to wake up alone, and need you, and find you gone.” His voice breaks on the last word.

Fyodor’s brows screw slightly, and for a moment there is a flash of something quite like pain.
Dazai doesn’t believe that he’s actually seen it. He blinks to clear it, and it works.

“I see,” Fyodor murmurs.

“You will lay with me?” Dazai’s muscles begin to quiver with unnatural excitement. His
stomach hollows out.

“I will lay with you.”

“You will hold me, too?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t leave?”

“I won’t leave. When you wake and need me, I will be beside you.”

Dazai fumbles with the sheets, pushing them down, clutching for Fyodor’s bare hands as he
sits partially up. “Fedya.”

Fyodor grunts, blinking at him. “What is it? Lie down.”

“Fedya.”

Fyodor glances at the hands that so desperately grip his, jostled and brought closer by Dazai’s
touch. He looks into Dazai’s eyes, inches away. Their breaths mingle unsteadily between
them. Dazai is certain he hears a heartbeat in Fyodor’s chest. Loud, very loud.
 “I love you.”

Fyodor stares at him as if he’s lost his mind. Which is alright; he has. “You what?” he asks
blankly.

“I love you.”

Fyodor is quiet. They both are, for a long, long time, staring at one another, Dazai’s eyes are
glazed and feverish, Fyodor’s are flat and uncomprehending. Eventually, Fyodor speaks.

“You are drugged. You are not thinking right.”

“I know,” Dazai whispers, “but…”

“Lie down.” Quieter.

Dazai obeys him, slowly, every limb heavy with overexertion. Fyodor carefully climbs over
him, drawing down the sheets and sliding between them. At first, he lies on his back, staring
at the ceiling. But Dazai mewls and tugs on his clothes, and he rouses as if from a deep
trance. He turns on his side and lets Dazai tuck himself inside of them, against the opened
space where his collarbone peeks through the unbuttoned shirt.

He wraps Dazai a little closer than usual once he’s done settling, and Dazai falls asleep to the
sound of Fyodor’s breath in his hair.

Chapter End Notes

Okay now I REALLY want to know what you guys think--dare I say *more* than the
last chapter??? What do you think of Fyodor?? It's very imperative to me that I have
your delicious comments to chew on in the night, okay, like, if you don't you're basically
starving me to death and I won't live another day to post the rest of the story.

ਉ_ਉ
*whispers in horror* you animals.

lol anyways I will be watching my emails with eyes peeled waiting to reply to
comments. Love you all, thank you for reading, and I hope this chapter made you
satisfied and intrigued! And hopefully all the more wrongly attached to Fedya...

(also I took this BSD online test a good friend of mine showed me and I got Fyodor and
she thinks it's very wrong but I'm not convinced. This pleases me. I am the most evil
Russian in the world, mm yes. Or maybe I've just been in his head so long with this
story that I have become him *looks down at hands in despair*)
 Strange Warmth
Chapter Summary

Something's happening to Fyodor.

Chapter Notes

For that one person in the comments who told me they loved Fyodor staring at Dazai
and wanted more--this is for you <3

Enjoy this relief-but-still-breaking-down chapter!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai wakes, Fyodor is still there, just as he promised. The drugs have worn off, and
Dazai’s hazy thoughts are a little clearer, now, as well as the jolt of turbid distress at being so
close to the body of the man who terrifies him.

He’s lying atop one of the man’s arms, heavy with exhaustion. Fyodor is still asleep. And,
Dazai realizes, this is something he’s never seen before.

Fyodor is lying on his side the same way he’d fallen asleep, breaths deep and long, body limp
and relaxed—so different from the stiffness when he’s conscious. The pillow, tucked up
under his face, is painted with long, messy tousles of black hair, draping across his forehead
and eyes. They match so perfectly the lashes that brush his white cheeks. His mouth, ever the
bladed line of cold, is softened and slightly parted, pinked along the inner rim. His ear,
peeking through a tangled bit of hair, is tinged with red warmth, warmth that spreads ever so
subtly across his cheekbone and the smooth line of his jaw.

There’s sunlight coming from the window behind Dazai, muted and hazy with the curtain. It
scatters, orange in tiny patches across Fyodor’s skin. Tiny flurries of dust float about him like
sandy sparkles.

His collar still hangs open, where Dazai had unbuttoned it. Who would have imagined that
something as simple as that sight alone was enough to imbue him with atrocious desires?

Is it disgusting, to want someone like Fyodor? It’s a little like falling in love with a lion, he
thinks. A ferocious, hateful beast, but beautiful beyond reason. And last night, last night…
he’d said he’d felt. He’d felt anger, and…’things I do not know.’
Fyodor is changing. It doesn’t matter how slow, but Dazai has changed, and now Fyodor is
changing, too, so isn’t it alright to love him because of it?

Love is all that he wants to call it. He’s too terrified to call it anything else.

Dazai’s hand trembles as he reaches towards the next loop on Fyodor’s shirt. He pinches the
button, pops it free without hardly a sound, then the next one, and the next, until Fyodor’s
shirt is open just below his chest. His breath comes and goes in unsteady gasps as he looks at
it—a tiny sliver of visibility, but flawless and smooth as marble. The way it rises and falls in
tandem with Fyodor’s breathing fascinates him. It looks so warm, compared to the rest of the
Russian’s body. He wants more, to see more, to understand why Fyodor said it was not for
anyone to see.

He makes a mistake with the next button—he accidentally jabs Fyodor in the ribs while
trying to undo it. Fyodor inhales and grunts, stirring on the mattress. His eyes flutter. Dazai
has no time to put it back as it was, frozen with shock as blurred, violet eyes blink open.

Fyodor pulls his arm out from under Dazai and props himself halfway up, staring down at
him and blinking for what seems a full minute of confusion, before he glances at his opened
shirt. He lets out a sharp tsk. Rolling over and sitting up, he fumbles with the buttons once,
twice, then gets them fixed together again. His breathing is uneven.

He glances at Dazai, and Dazai can’t move, curling under the covers and pleading with his
eyes to be left unhurt.

The violet gaze is still cloudy with sleep, unfocused on Dazai’s cowering form. “Пиздец,” he
croaks. “I was asleep?”

Dazai nods timidly, gripping the pillow under his burning cheek.

Fyodor looks even more confused at this, strangely, and frowns as he shakes out the arm
Dazai had been sleeping on top of. He mutters under his breath in words that Dazai can’t
understand, but he doesn’t seem annoyed. Merely…talking himself into clarity.

The man pulls himself to the edge of the bed and just sits there, back to Dazai, hair falling
about his ears in soft tangles.

“Fyodor?” Dazai murmurs.

“Mm.”

“…Goodmorning.”

Fyodor turns to look over his shoulder and regards Dazai blankly. What is he looking for?
Something more? Does the greeting bother him?

“You should not have touched me like that,” he says, finally.

Dazai bunches a handful of covers against his face and sinks towards them, brows furrowing
in hurt. “Sorry,” he whispers against the sheets.
Fyodor doesn’t seem to know what to do with that. He sighs heavily and pushes up from the
bed, hiding a slight stumble as he gains balance. Dazai thinks it incredibly odd to see him so
disoriented. It makes sense to him now, why Fyodor must have always tried to wake before
he did.

Or was it that he never slept at all?

“I was asleep?”

Fyodor looks at Dazai again while picking up his gloves from the bedside table, searching his
face with an empty gaze. Dazai has absolutely no idea what he’s thinking, so he sinks a little
deeper under the sheets.

“Is there something wrong?” Fyodor asks.

“No,” Dazai says.

Fyodor unconsciously touches his hair, as if noticing just now that it might look unkept, and
then curses under his breath and turns towards the bathroom. When the door closes behind
him, Dazai releases a long sigh, letting go of the sheets.

He sits up, then. As if he can get out of bed and walk. Because for a solid twenty minutes,
Dazai has completely forgotten that he’s crippled.

Instantly going numb to the bone, Dazai swallows. He pulls away the sheets, until he can see
all of his body, his stripped body, bare of bandages or clothing now except for the thick
wrappings around his ankles.

His hands start to shake. His body floods with icy cold as he sees them again, as he’s
reminded of everything that happened to make them this way. His heart flutters and pounds,
his head thrums with thoughts, millions of thoughts. That’s right, he can’t walk. That’s right,
he’s helpless. That’s right, he’s pathetic. That’s right! He’s completely at the mercy of
Fyodor, of his every whim, slave to wherever he wants to drag Dazai, defenseless, unable to
run, unable to fight back.

Breath runs through his lungs in ragged spasms. Faster, faster, each time heavier, trembling in
his throat. He raises his hands to his head and holds it, closes his eyes, trying to make it stop,
trying to make the panic go away. He thought that he would be used to it by now, after
waking up over and over in Fyodor’s bed and crying because he remembered, it should be old
hat. But it’s not.

He’s nearly choking on his own gasps by the time the bathroom door opens.

Fyodor stands there, looking at Dazai. His brows slowly furrow as Dazai manages to look at
him, a step away from hyperventilating. His vision is swimming.

“Can’t g-g-get up-p,” he whimpers, quaking. He digs his fingers into his hair and pulls. A dry
sob leaks out. “I w-want t-to get u-up, pl-please.”
Fyodor moves a little faster than usual. Coming around the side of the bed, he puts his hands
on Dazai’s body and almost tenderly pushes him back. “Эй Эй Эй,” he chides softly, “calm
down.” He crouches to Dazai’s height, grasping his sides, his face shifting in and out of
clarity when he leans into Dazai’s line of sight.

Dazai whimpers and pulls at his hair. Fyodor takes his hands in bare, silky ones and squeezes
them. “Нет, Нет, do not hurt yourself, little one.” Shaking his head slightly, Fyodor focuses
so intently on Dazai that he can see nothing else but the softened, amethyst orbs. His labored
breathing at first does not calm, but the longer that he looks and feels safe, the more his
breath stutters and slows. Little one. Was it a trick of his imagination, hearing that? Was it a
need of his own, manifesting itself in Fyodor’s voice?

Fyodor’s chin inches up, brows lifted in suspense, lips parted as it seems he feels the calm
coming over Dazai, and is attempting to encourage it by breathing deeply of his own accord.
It’s a little like…empathy, maybe. And it works. Dazai begins to imitate the deeper breaths.
Fyodor nods. “There…that's it…”

Together, they breathe deeply, matching each other inhale for exhale. Their breaths mingle
warm between faces, their eyes remain locked. Fyodor’s hands clasp his a little tighter.

“I know it is difficult,” Fyodor whispers between the next exhale, “but you will be alright. I
can fix it.”

Dazai doesn’t answer, still breathing, still watching Fyodor’s eyes. His chest fills with the
next inhale, and he glances at Fyodor’s chest as it expands under his buttoned shirt.

“I am not going to hurt you anymore,” Fyodor exhales.

He wants to believe it. “You said that before,” Dazai whispers, and Fyodor’s breath falters.
He blinks a few times, and rights it again.

“…I know.”

Dazai’s chest fills with heat and clenches. His breath stutters, this time with the shortness of a
hitched sob. “You said that before,” he insists again, helplessly, because he doesn’t know if
Fyodor understands.

The violet eyes twitch, shifting rapidly between his own as Fyodor takes it in. “I was not
right to hurt you, but it was unclear to me. I did not understand. It was the first time that I felt
anger.”

“Okay,” Dazai says shakily. It’s a good enough apology for him. It’s a good enough excuse.

Finally breathing at a normal level, Dazai feels the throb of a headache in his temples. He
lowers their joined hands into his lap. He looks down at them, chin trembling. He says
nothing more.

Fyodor is quiet, too, for a moment, and Dazai can feel his gaze on their hands, lying atop
Dazai’s bare thighs.
“Good, now?” Fyodor asks hesitantly, reminding Dazai that the man still has trouble with
things like emotions. Reminding Dazai that he always needs to be told what it is that Dazai
feels, if the emotion is more complicated than fear or anger or humiliation.

He looks up. Fyodor is intently focused, and Dazai can’t recall the last time his attention felt
more calming than terrifying. His gaze doesn’t look so hollow. His hands don’t feel so cold.

“I think so,” he rasps.

“Then—” Fyodor’s hands tighten suddenly around his. A shard of panic pierces his stomach.
“—then…I have something for you. Something that will help.”

The panic melts away, slowly. Something that will help?

Dazai feels blank, lost for words as Fyodor pulls away. He goes back around the bed and into
the bathroom. There’s rustling noises, then a metal sound that makes Dazai’s pulse rise,
thrashing in his ears. He doesn’t move an inch, but the sound of metal doesn’t ever sound
good to him. It could be any number of horrible things. Handcuffs, or knives, or barbed wire,
or screwdrivers, or nails, or staplers or—

Fyodor re-enters the room, carrying a pair of crutches.

Crutches.

Fyodor’s brought crutches for him. So he can walk.

Dazai’s lip trembles. His face scrunches and his eyes fill with warm tears. He sniffles, ducks
his head and fists at his eyes. A tiny, helpless little sob leaves his throat. He sucks in a
quivering breath.

“What?” Fyodor strains. “No good? You do not like them?”

Dazai covers his face and shakes his head, trying to form words past the rising tears. “No,
they—they’re…thank you. Thank…” He trails off, pushing down the tears, recovering
himself, leaving it unfinished, because…well, what does please and thank you mean to
Fyodor, anyway?

“Пожалуйста.”

Dazai turns very slowly to look up at him, lashes still damp, the back of his hand still
hovering by his cheek. Пожалуйста meant you’re welcome. Dazai remembered that much.

Fyodor’s gaze skitters away from Dazai’s. He busies himself with the crutches, putting them
together with a clack and carrying them across the room.

He’s too numb with shock to do much more than follow along as Fyodor pulls him to the side
of the bed, drawing his legs out and down the side, even though Dazai could have done that
much on his own. He guides Dazai’s hands to the handles. And then, finally, his lashes lift,
and he studies Dazai as he places gloved hands on his waist.
“Ready now?” he asks.

Dazai nods his head softly.

Somehow, the way Fyodor’s hands tighten and support him sends a wave of heat through his
chest, and Dazai leans towards the man as he’s pulled to his feet. He’d forgotten just how
much they were aching until his heels touch hardwood, and pain sears up through his calves.
He bites his lip, stumbles against Fyodor’s chest, and whimpers feebly.

Fyodor lodges the crutches under Dazai’s arms, grasping him against his body in aid. “Try
not to put so much weight on them. There are stitches holding the tendons together and we do
not want them to snap.”

Dazai’s eyes widen, breath stuttering as he tries to listen, arranging himself against the crutch
pads. It hurts, putting all of his weight on his armpits, but it’s not so bad with Fyodor this
close.

“See? You can walk,” Fyodor says, as if he’s attempting to reassure Dazai.

It falls on him like a load of bricks. He starts to laugh, bitterly, and it sounds more like dry
sobs. His cheek is pressed against Fyodor’s chest, he hears that heart beating again. “No I
can’t.”

Fyodor, in the midst of steadying Dazai, slips a hand up around the back of his head, as if by
accident. It’s close enough to a caress that Dazai’s chin trembles, and he bites his lip. He
can’t get footing, not with the pain. His full weight is on the crutches and Fyodor.

“What I mean is you will heal, that is all,” Fyodor says.

His breath is hot, bursting in and out against the thickness of the man’s clothes. It’s warm,
very warm, inside the man’s arms. “You’ll let me?” he asks.

“It was a mistake, Dazai,” Fyodor replies, very quietly. “A mistake. I fixed it. It will heal, if
you are careful.”

Dazai closes his eyes, tightening his hands around the metal bars and pressing closer to
Fyodor’s chest. A mistake.

Fyodor practically hauls Dazai in his arms just to take a step, and ends up setting aside one of
the crutches to take its place, wrapping Dazai’s arm around his shoulders and hooking his
waist. In the end, they make it to the kitchen table, but the crutch is hardly of use, since Dazai
is more interested in clinging to Fyodor.

Fyodor slips the other crutch out and leans it against the table, before lowering Dazai’s body
into the kitchen chair. It’s colder out here, it seems, or maybe Dazai is more aware of his
nakedness sitting in the chair than he was in bed.

“Are we going to eat?” he asks Fyodor, deliberately ignoring the clenching in his stomach as
he glimpses the residual color of his own blood on the floor. His shoulders jerk in a rapid
shiver.
Fyodor nods, going to a plastic bag on the counter. Dazai doesn’t know when in the world
he’d left the house to get it, not when Fyodor had been sleeping by his side all night. Is he
even hungry? He thinks he must have lost touch of the feeling—of which pain is the one that
means he’s hungry. Either that or the bloodstains are ruining his appetite.

Fyodor removes a carton from the bag, and Dazai expects to see the label of the porridge the
man always buys, but it’s not there.

Fyodor has bought him something new.

Dazai leans forward on the table, straining to read it with wary curiosity. “What is it?”

Fyodor, somewhat intrigued with Dazai’s interest, holds it out where Dazai can see, turning
the carton to show him the little words on the label. It’s in Russian, of course, but Fyodor
translates aloud. “Solyanka. It’s a soup. If you do not like it, I have stroganoff instead.”

Dazai leans back in the chair, regarding him quietly and beginning to fidget. “Okay,” is all he
can think of to say. What is he supposed to do with this version of Fyodor? He can’t read him
—not that he always can, but there’s usually somethingbeneath the expression of calm,
something Fyodor is after. Right now, he can’t sense anything hiding behind the man’s eyes.

Should that worry him, or relieve him? His body seems to think the former.

But nothing bad happens, not when Fyodor warms up his food, not when he places it in front
of Dazai’s shivering body, steaming and fragrant, and gives him a spoon. Not when he offers
Dazai tea and tells him that he should try to relax a little, and not look at him with such
caution in his eyes. Not even when he scoots Dazai’s seat closer to the table, so he can reach
better.

Nothing bad happens at all. Aside from the pain in his ankles and the tightness of his
muscles, Dazai is hardly even uncomfortable. And it feels wrong. The only thing he wishes
for, as he feels the steam on his cheeks, are bandages. He hates seeing all of his scars out in
the open air, knowing that Fyodor can simply glance, and see them all, too.

Especially when Fyodor isn’t glancing. He’s staring. Standing at the window, with his back to
the murky light that shimmers through, his eyes are fixed on Dazai’s quaking body, quietly
pondering.

He sinks a little in the chair, fingering the handle of his spoon. He looks up beneath his
eyelashes, stomach tightening, throbbing for a taste of the food that smells like beef broth and
olives. But he’s worried he won’t be able to swallow, if Fyodor keeps looking at him.

He pulls his eyes from the violet ones, digging his fingernail into the table, shifting and
making a soft noise.

Fyodor keeps watching. Dazai hears his clothes rustle as he folds his arms. What is he
waiting for? For Dazai to try the meal? That must be it. But why? Has he put something in it?

Has he put lots of salt in it?

Dazai’s stomach knots up with nausea, and he fumbles to clamp his mouth, terrified of
ruining the meal by retching in it. The tiniest of sobs slips away from him, more out of relief
that the sensation fades than any kind of anguish.

Fyodor doesn’t ask him if he’s alright. He doesn’t say anything at all.

Fyodor’s gaze makes him feel strange and sensitive, foolish and frustrated. He slowly takes
his hands away from his mouth, reaches for the spoon and tries to focus on steadying his
hands. His breath begins to rasp in his throat. The metal is cold.

“Where did they come from? Your scars.”

The sound of Fyodor’s voice makes him jerk. The spoon clatters to the floor, deafening to his
ears.

Fyodor’s brows raise an inch.

Dazai stares at the spoon on the ground, balling his hands up in his lap, hunching his
shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he croaks.

“Oh?”

Dazai kneads his hands together. Stop looking at me, he wants to scream, stop looking!

“Would you like a new spoon?”

Is he toying with Dazai? He shakes his head, fiercely. He doesn’t need a new one, Fyodor
doesn’t have to go through the trouble. The spoon is right there, by the leg of his chair, he can
reach it if he bends over far enough. But there are so many scars on his back. Fyodor is
looking at them, seeing them, thinking about them, how they might’ve gotten there. Dazai
hates it, he hates it so much that he wants to run.

But his feet don’t work.

“Dazai.”

Not now. He’s trying to get up the courage to grab the damned spoon. He can’t argue right
now.

“Is there something wrong?”

Dazai means to say something else, but words tumble past his lips before he can stop them.
“When can I have my bandages back? Do I have to wait a very long time?”

Fyodor hesitates—Dazai can feel it shimmer between them in the air. His shadow shifts on
the ground. “I think…that you look…good, without them.”

“Don’t say that,” Dazai whispers, the breath catching in his throat. His eyes burn. He
squeezes them shut. “Please…don’t say that.” He used good like he always did when
checking Dazai’s emotions. Good, as if he didn’t know what words to say, or how to express
what he meant.

“Why not?” Fyodor asks, softly, as if he’s sincere. But Dazai has memorized the timbre of
Fyodor’s voice when he’s playing his games, and this one doesn’t match.

“It’s not true,” Dazai hisses, and makes himself bend over, to reach for the spoon. Except, he
does it too quickly, hoping to swipe it up and straighten again, and he loses his balance. A
short cry of panic bursts from him, he grapples for the edge of the table. His feet slide
backwards. The chair slips away from him. His knees hit the ground, then his hands.

“Пиздец,” Fyodor curses, and it’s only a handful of seconds before Dazai feels gloved hands
under his armpits, lifting him back up. “Are you hurt?”

Dazai claws at the Russian’s neck, embraces it with all of his might, burying his face to
escape everything that so suddenly crashes upon him. He’s not hurt—he’s embarrassed, he’s
angry. He’s drowning, floundering in dark waves that seek to suffocate him. But he shakes
his head against Fyodor’s neck. His legs dangle against the floor, limp. His arms will soon
give out and he’ll fall, if Fyodor doesn’t hold him.

“Hug,” he whimpers, “please, hug.”

It’s the wrong thing to ask.

Fyodor wraps him in his arms, but the comfort that might have been there quickly flees.
Fyodor’s hands are touching his bared scars. They tickle like thousands of needles. He arches
and whines. He releases Fyodor’s neck, pushes against his chest to try and break free.

“What is it?” Fyodor asks, and grunts when Dazai is unable to stop squirming away from the
touch. “Dazai—don’t, I will drop you—”

His vision flashes brilliant white. Dazai can’t stop himself, not until the hands are off of his
scars, and when he falls, the chair is under him. He doesn’t know how Fyodor pulled it back
—it doesn’t matter. He braces himself against the edge of the table, the smell of the solyanka
thick in his nose, and tries to get ahold of himself.

“Why did you ask me to hug you if it hurt?” Fyodor is casually backing away from him,
returning to the window, a strange look on his face.

“It didn’t,” Dazai says hoarsely. His heart is still hammering away in his ears, threatening to
burst.

Fyodor’s brows furrow slightly. He leans back against the window sill.

Dazai fumbles to explain. “You were touching them.” His voice sounds so weak when he
says it that he wants to curl up and cover his eyes.

The Russian’s gaze brightens in an unmistakable flash of understanding. He hesitates. “Ah.”

He’s off, today. Dazai doesn’t know if he likes it or is terrified by it. His skin is tingling.
“Are you going to eat?” Fyodor asks him.

Is he being impatient? He might as well have asked ‘Are you done being dramatic?’, the way
it comes out.

Dazai rights himself in the seat and swallows a few times, waiting for his heart to stop
shuddering. When it calms, and he can pretend for just a moment that Fyodor’s eyes are on
some other spot in the room, he reaches for his spoon. It’s somehow ended up back on the
table. Must have been when Fyodor was wrestling him into the seat.

He scoops a small, tentative portion of the soup, eyeing it in the light. Beef, and vegetables. It
smells very good, a little salty, not a lot. Not a lot. He’s fine. He can do this. He can trust
Fyodor, can’t he? Salt isn’t bad. It’s not. It’s just…a memory, that’s all.

Dazai takes a bite.

It’s not just a memory.

The salt burns his tongue, a sensory brand on his mind that takes him back. It sears through
his tastebuds, lodges in his throat. It transports his body, all at once, back to the day near the
beginning on the table, on the table eating briny porridge, being slapped and humiliated. He
can feel Fyodor’s chilled breath in his ear, he can hear the commands and the taunts, the
sound of his gloved hand hitting his bare flesh. He can feel the wood under his palms, his
kneecaps; he can feel the pounding of his heart in his head.

When the flash of memory recedes, Dazai is rigid in the chair, hands braced on the table,
body bent over his bowl. He’s coughing, sputtering, he feels water in his eyes. He digs his
fingers into the grooves until they ache. He hears Fyodor approaching and smacks himself in
the face, angry, frustrated. He cries out, face hot with shame and panic. He hits himself again.

“You do not like—”

“I do!” Dazai splutters, gasping and trying to beat the foolishness out of himself with another
blow to his face. He sobs, shortly. “I do, I do, I do-o…” Fyodor’s made such effort just to buy
him something new, he’s listened and given Dazai something he wanted, and all Dazai does
in response is remember things because of a simple ingredient. Why, why? Why is he so
fragile, why can’t he appreciate something? Why can’t a single day go by without him
bursting into tears?

He hits himself, again and again, he tries so hard to beat it out. He will eat Fyodor’s meal. He
will make himself eat it, he’ll do whatever he has to do to show Fyodor that this is good, it’s
good, and Dazai should be grateful—!

Two strong hands clamp Dazai’s wrists. A voice fades into clarity, hissing his name.

“Stop it, Dazai, stop, stop…why do you hurt yourself?”

Dazai looks up at him, tears dribbling from his eyes, breath hitching in his throat, and he
doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how to answer anything. His temple throbs. His hands are
clammy.

Fyodor crouches in front of him, not releasing him. His fingers are wrapping old scars,
thousands of ridged white lines. Dazai resists him and wants so badly to keep hitting himself,
until he blacks out, until he can forget that all he can do is mess up, mess up, mess up. He’s
crying, because he’s a ridiculous, brittle human being—if even that—and he wishes he could
re-do the past few moments and never let Fyodor know that he’d panicked at the taste of table
salt.

“Why do you hurt yourself?” Fyodor whispers again, letting go of one of Dazai’s wrists to
reach up and touch Dazai’s throbbing temple. Dazai doesn’t mean to lean into it, but he does,
almost involuntarily. “There is no reason. There is nothing you have done wrong.”

Dazai sobs, sniffles and shakes his head. “I like it, I l-like it, it’s good…”

“You do not have to like it, Dazai. Did you think I would be displeased with you?”

Dazai drags his forearms across his eyes, gritting his teeth, choking down another feeble sob.
“You did something good for me! I wanted to be grateful!” He grabs his hair with his free
hand, ripping, trying to tear it out. “Nnnnghhh!”

Fyodor is quick to pry it loose, chiding him. “Нет, Нет, how many times must I tell you? It
is no matter to me that you do not like it. I have other food. Dazai, look at me.”

He keeps his eyes squeezed shut, twisting his hands back and forth in Fyodor’s grip. Surely,
the man isn’t this kind, this tolerant. Surely, he’s not actually changing, or caring. It has to be
a trick. A trick!

“Look at me.”

The way he says it, like the night on the bed when he told Dazai to spread his legs, it knifes
deep down into the pit of his stomach. Hot, simmering, unable to be disobeyed. He whines
softly, but opens his eyes and looks at Fyodor. And the man’s expression is forgiving,
undemanding. Genuine and open. All the things Fyodor’s expression should never be.

“What was it you did not like?”

“Nothing—”

“Dazai,” Fyodor warns.

He chews on his tongue, hands trembling in Fyodor’s hold. “Salt,” he whimpers at last, “the
salt made me think…of…”

Fyodor’s eyes briefly close. They flutter back open and he glances sideways. “I see.”

“I’m sorry,” Dazai stammers, because he’s so used to apologizing, hoping it will make any
difference in the world.

Fyodor studies him in silence, considering. His brows flinch. “Why?”

Why? There are so many reasons why. He should be getting punished right now, shouldn’t
he? He’s sorry for that, for deserving it and not receiving it, because Fyodor has promised not
to hurt him. Why not was the better question. “Because I’m a bad Sinner,” he whispers at
last, shaking. “I don’t deserve your mercy.” But he doesn’t want to be hurt. He just feels like
he should be, and doesn’t know why.

Fyodor’s gaze deepens, his body shifts forward. “Because a taste reminded you of something
you wanted to forget?” He shakes his head softly, and Dazai finds that his wrists are slipping
out of the man’s loosening grasp. Fyodor brushes his knuckles along the very edge of Dazai’s
face, an awed, curious touch that feels dangerously like a caress. “That is no crime. I have
only ever wished for you to tell me the truth, to feel and to tell me what you feel.”

Dazai’s heart is racing like rabbits. Fyodor is close, too close. Too soft. Too unlike himself. “I
don’t un…understand,” he whispers, helplessly. “Before…”

“Before…?” Fyodor breathes, and his eyes shift towards Dazai’s lips, ever so briefly. “Before
is before…what is now is what is…important…” He leans in, slowly, hesitantly, gently.

His lips press against Dazai’s. They’re soft and cold, yet they’re warm on the inside, where
his tongue lies.

Dazai’s breath flees from his lungs, his heart shudders and drops. His body goes stiff, locking
up, petrifying him. The taste…is sweet, sweet like melting honey in his mouth. He doesn’t
move. He can’t. He can’t kiss back—he doesn’t remember how. He feels as if he should,
because that’s what one’s supposed to do in these situations…but Fyodor does not seem to
mind.

Fyodor’s fingers slide back against the nape of his neck, through his curls, raising shivers
along his spine. Dazai’s breath hitches. He feels himself pressed against the chair, Fyodor
leaning closer, the other hand resting on Dazai’s cheek.

He realizes his eyes are open. He flutters them closed. He’s suffocating, he thinks, but not in
an entirely bad way.

“Ffffdyyymm…” he stammers against the man’s lips.

Fyodor kisses the very edge of his top lip, once, twice, and pauses to murmur back to him.
“Do not speak.” His voice is more velvet than Dazai has ever heard and it terrifies him. It
terrifies him that he loves it, that his heart flutters and lifts when he recognizes the sound.

This time, when Fyodor kisses again, Dazai’s lips part, just so. He feels Fyodor hesitate for
the briefest moment, before he resumes, careful with Dazai, almost to the point that Dazai
thinks he’s…exploring. Exploring what it feels like to kiss someone and to understand it.

There’s a silky-textured warmth that presses between Dazai’s lips, and he realizes it must be
the man’s tongue. He doesn’t like it, at first, the way it’s wet and slippery and invades the
space of his own tongue. But then, it’s so incredibly warm—no, not warm, but hot—that his
blood races with fire and his pulse makes him heady with intoxication. Heat, heat…ah, how
he loves the heat of Fyodor, when it decides it wants him.
Dazai leans into it slightly, testing himself, trying to do something other than sit like a
ragdoll, stunned and shivering. Fyodor inhales through is nose; his hand slides back around
Dazai’s neck, thumbing just under his jaw as if he might grasp it and squeeze. He can’t tell if
it’s a warning or a threat…or if it means nothing at all. So, he tries to kiss back.

There’s a rhythm to it, he understands, and if he finds it, he can follow along, but Fyodor
doesn’t exactly keep a steady pace. It’s sluggish, curious, it starts and then it trails off, only to
be brought back with a little more depth. His tongue slides up against Fyodor’s, he presses it
on the underside and feels the way it makes his stomach tingle in response.

Fyodor’s hand tightens on his neck. It presses against his pulse, which Dazai hears pounding
so insistently in his head. “Mmnhg,” Dazai whimpers, pulling back at once, his confidence
erased and thin strings of tension pulling at his nerves. The breath rasps in his throat, he
clutches at Fyodor’s hand—doesn’t pull at it, but wishes he had the nerve to.

Fyodor studies him, his gaze still so wide open that Dazai can’t put a finger on what it means.
For a long time, it seems he struggles with something. And then, his grip loosens, his thumb
stops digging under Dazai’s jaw. His pupils are blown and filled with strange light.

“Do not move…” Fyodor whispers.

Dazai blinks at him, shifts in the chair. He clutches his bare stomach and makes a soft noise
of discomfort. “But…”

Fyodor’s thumb quiets him, brushing the edge of his jaw. Dazai drops his gaze to his lap,
pressing his knees together, wincing at the sight of his scars.

“Fedya,” he says, tremulously.

“Shhhh…” He leans closer.

“Fedya,” Dazai repeats, helplessly, “I want my ban…”

Fyodor kisses the words from his mouth. Dazai’s eyes droop, heavy with the feeling. The
warmth that comes back is more potent than before. It floods his mouth, rings in his skull,
throbs in his throat. He mewls into it, lost completely for an instant in the way that it burns.
Hot. It’s so, so hot. When did Fyodor become so hot?

It breaks from his lips, only to spread along the corner of his mouth, down to his jaw. Fyodor
kisses, again and again, as delicately as the wings of a butterfly against his skin. It’s so
strange, it’s all so strange, and Dazai doesn’t know what to do but to give in and to wonder at
its effect.

It spreads further. Fyodor kisses his neck, spending his time there, cupping the back of
Dazai’s head. Dazai lets his head roll back, he lets his eyes droop nearly shut and looks
between fuzzy slits at the ceiling above him. His breath comes out unsteady and quivering,
lilting at times with a troubled whimper.
Warm lips on his neck, pressing, tickling. A wet heat between them, flicking at him in such
ghostly touches that the sensations hiss in his hips and rush through his blood. And how the
blood rushes, quickly, down, down where Dazai does not want it to go, because he is afraid of
what it will bring.

Fyodor hesitates, the fingers in his hair tightening. He feels the man’s face turn downwards.
Feels him looking. Looking at what Dazai has let happen, what he didn’t mean to let happen.
He squirms, sitting upright again, panting for air and putting his hands on Fyodor’s shoulders
to push him away. “Don’t,” he cries in distress, “don’t look at me, don’t mind it! Please.”

Fyodor pulls his hand from Dazai’s curls; he glances up with knifing eyes of violet and
presses both hands on Dazai’s thighs. It sparks tingles in him, both hot and cold; it sends
more blood between his legs, throbbing and painful. “A-a-aahh, nnn, Fedya—I...” What to
say, what to say? “I…!”

Fyodor shifts back, only to view Dazai more fully, crouched by his chair with his hair slightly
disturbed over his face. It’s strange, very very strange, when he gazes back into Dazai’s eyes,
and his lips curl in the ghostly impression of a smile. It’s still not like any other smile Dazai
remembers seeing—it’s hollow, imitating other smiles and not belonging to his own lips—
lips still flushed from kissing—but it’s more than Dazai has ever seen before.

“Fedya…” he breathes, awestruck and trembling as he lifts his hand, to feel the smile, to
make sure it’s really there, to understand the texture of it on his fingertips, because his mind
cannot. He blinks rapidly, fighting water in his eyes. He swallows against the heat pooling on
his tongue. “you’re smiling…you’re smiling…”

“Am I...?” Fyodor murmurs against his fingers. His thumbs press gently into Dazai’s thighs,
feeling them, making Dazai shudder and retract his hand. He grasps both of Fyodor’s,
instead, biting his lip, making an uncertain sound. He doesn’t dare look at his own arousal,
hot and silky against his stomach.

“You like it,” Fyodor says tenderly—no…it’s impossible for him to be tender, but there is no
other word—“you like what I was doing, just now.”

Dazai holds his hands tighter, feeling the ridge of the Russian’s knuckles under the gloves,
the small lines of his tendons. He shakes his head, slightly, unsure of himself.

A breath, short and amused, leaves Fyodor’s lips. He leans into Dazai’s space, he pushes their
hands up his thighs, until his fingers are touching Dazai’s hips. Dazai’s voice hitches in the
smallest of sighs, and he doesn’t mean it to sound sensual, but it does. The warmth of a blush
floods his cheeks, the tips of his ears, his shoulders, even.

“Fyodor…” he whispers.

“What is it?” the man whispers back, thumbs pulling against the sensitive skin of his inner
thighs. He shivers, flinching forward, grasping harder to try and stop him, or slow him, he
doesn’t know what.
But Fyodor smiled. He smiled when he saw how he’d affected Dazai. He smiled, knowing
that it was good. Dazai doesn’t want that to fade. He doesn’t want to stop, not really, not
when Fyodor looks so different and speaks so softly to him.

Not when the color is back in his eyes, in a different shade. Before, he’d only been able to
cause fireworks of magenta and crimson, anger and rage. Now he sees pastels in the man’s
eyes, subtle blues and calm pinks. It still seems he’s struggling under the surface, to grasp
what he’s doing or how to do it, or maybe what exactly it is that he’s toying with. But for the
first time, Dazai genuinely doesn’t want him to back away. He wants him closer, simply
because he wants him, and not because Fyodor desires him to.

“Speak to me…” Fyodor probes him, and his hands squeeze Dazai’s thighs so sweetly that
Dazai feels a pearl escape the head of his arousal, thick and sticky. It makes him embarrassed.
“Tell me what it is that you feel.”

Water rises in Dazai’s eyes, blurring the edge of his vision. His lips quiver, he has to think
very hard to escape past the sensation and to understand further than good. But it is, good, so
good that it’s the only word he can form around the response in his body. “I don’t know…
how to tell you,” he stammers. “I don’t know…”

“No?” Fyodor trails two of his gloved fingers up the shaft of Dazai’s arousal, and his mouth
flinches open as he starts and whimpers in surprise.

His hand has escaped Dazai’s, so he grabs for it, feebly, and only manages to hang on as
Fyodor touches him more. His voice escapes him. “I-It’s…w-warm. Warm.”

“Do you like warm?”

“Yes,” Dazai breathes, “very much.”

“Very much?”

“Very very much…” Dazai blindly keens into Fyodor’s firmer grasp, shuddering in the seat,
lifting both hands from the Russian’s to clutch at his shoulders. His breath bounces back at
him against Fyodor’s chest. He keeps his head angled down, not looking at himself, but not at
Fyodor either, not anything but the floor beneath him, and the stain of his own blood in the
rivets. How funny it is, that it glistens with the effect of Fyodor’s touch, and looks so much
less terrifying in this state. How funny it is, that it almost makes him happy, to know that the
stain of his blood led them to this moment.

Fyodor slips his hand away to his own mouth, and Dazai whines in startled yearning for it to
return. But Fyodor is only biting the finger of his glove to pull it off, revealing the snow-
white skin with the delicate blue veins. Dazai’s eyes droop and glow with the sight. He feels
drugged, like the world is glistening in his eyes.

Was pleasure always like this for normal people? He doesn’t remember the strength of the
sensation.
The other glove, too, comes off, and Fyodor places them aside on the kitchen table. Dazai
looks at them, because he’s too afraid to look anywhere else, and digs his fingers into
Fyodor’s shoulders. His gut begins to tighten with unnamable tension, something a little like
fear, a little like worry, a little like anxiety.

“You’ll be gentle?” he asks timidly, daring to look at Fyodor’s face from under his lashes.

Fyodor’s bared knuckles brush along the edge of his cheek like before, and this time he’s
quite convinced that it’s a caress. Fyodor’s gaze shifts between his, rapidly, thoughtful. “Do
you like gentle?”

Dazai glances away. “I don’t know,” he says softly. He thinks he does. But has Fyodor ever
been gentle?

The graze of Fyodor’s fingers brings his eyes back. “You do.”

Dazai’s stomach tightens in a shiver. Fyodor knows?

“When I am gentle, you become like this.” His hand slides back along Dazai’s thigh, he
thumbs at the softness of his scrotum until Dazai mewls in response and squirms away from
the feeling. He rests his forehead against Fyodor’s shoulder. He nods—a tiny, shy thing.

“I like gentle.”

“Then I will be gentle,” Fyodor murmurs, and his lips press against Dazai’s hair. “But you
also must eat, before you waste away.”

Dazai frowns, pressing closer into Fyodor’s clothes. “I’m not hungry.”

“You have forgotten what it is to be hungry. You must eat, now. I will still be gentle, and
make you warm, and hold you. But I cannot have you foregoing another meal, if you are
going to recover.”

Dazai doesn’t understand why he’s treating him like this. “What happened to you, Fedya?” he
whispers. “You sound like you care.” He feels cruel, saying it like that.

Fyodor’s voice hollows out; his heart begins to pound and Dazai can hear it. “Do I?”

Dazai crumples the man’s shirt in his hands, and does not reply.

For a moment, the sound of Fyodor’s heart is all he can hear, and then, Fyodor carefully
pushes him off. “Let me get you something else, something you will like.” When he rises
from his position, Dazai’s hand remains hooked on his buttoned collar for a moment, until it
slips away as the man turns towards the fridge.

He lets the hand fall to his lap, watching Fyodor with a blank, white mind. He doesn’t think
about anything at all except the vision before him, Fyodor’s black hair, his snow-white hands,
and the slender neck that disappears into the collar of his shirt. More. More skin.
He’s aching between the legs where Fyodor has so cruelly left him unattended, and it’s
strange to be this way, to feel needy for it to be finished, because he doesn’t remember being
aroused but once in Fyodor’s company. Which, he thinks, makes him a little unhappy. He has
lost his mind, along the way, and it’s strange to look at it now and regret that he didn’t lose it
sooner. Perhaps he wouldn’t have gone through so much trouble and so much pain, if he’d
just let himself go in the beginning.

Fyodor finds what he’s looking for in the fridge and he returns, the chill of the temperature
clinging to his clothing. In his hands, there’s a small, plastic-covered yellow cake, with sticky
red strawberries on top.

Dazai’s eyes widen. He folds his hands very patiently in his lap and shifts, watching Fyodor
place it on the table. “What is that? Is it cake? Is that cake, Fedya?” He looks up, fairly
vibrating with a rush of nervous excitement. He asks only because he’s afraid of being
wrong, somehow, that the food isn’t really what it seems, that he’s being tricked. He
remembers cake. He likes cake.

Fyodor seems taken with his response. “Медовик. Honey cake. It is not salty, so you do not
have to remember.” He takes the solyanka soup away when he says it, carries it to the sink
and pours it out.

Dazai fiddles. He can smell the sugar from under the plastic cover, and he thinks it reminds
him what hunger really feels like. “Can I eat it now? Right now?”

Fyodor’s eyes sparkle oddly, as he comes to Dazai’s side and pops off the plastic cover. “Let
me get you a fork, impatient one.”

Dazai stares at Fyodor’s back as he opens the silverware drawer. He stares very blankly.
Impatient one.

Fyodor brings him the fork, and Dazai lets him place it on the table, before he reaches for it.
The cake smells good, the cake smells so good. He has no problem forking out a very large
bite, and it’s sticky and sweet and strawberry in his mouth. It’s perfect. It’s cold, thick,
syrupy. It’s heaven. He’s taken a bite of heaven.

Fyodor’s eyes are still catching light like fireflies in a violet meadow. “You need a drink.”

“Gmmfd, Fffdyhh—”

Dazai forks down another bite. Is that his stomach that growls?

Fyodor brings him a cold bottle of water, and sweeps up a napkin from a tiny stack on the
counter. “Eat slower.” He reaches out with the napkin and wipes something from Dazai’s
face, but he doesn’t really care what Fyodor is saying or doing right now. He’s eating, it’s so
good, and he keeps chewing and shoveling and he doesn’t know exactly what else is going on
around him.

The strawberries are his favorite. There’s a little dribble of the red goo running down the
cake, pooling around the bottom like fresh blood. Dazai scrapes at it with his fork until it’s
 covered in the stuff, and licks it off. Fyodor keeps patting at his face with a napkin every time
he takes a bite.

All the strawberries are gone, first. Not very much is left of the cake.

His head sort of…fills, with a rush of blood, and he pauses in eating, suddenly very, very
overwhelmed. Blinking through the dizzy sensation, he looks up.

Fyodor is sitting beside him in the other chair, an elbow on the table, his chin rested in his
palm. He’s still, elegant, and if it were not the devil himself, Dazai would have called him
peaceful.

“Drink some water, Dazai,” he whispers.

Dazai picks up the ice-cold water bottle, and he drinks some, looking over the rim at Fyodor
all the while.

He startles when Fyodor touches his thigh. The water sloshes over his hand.

He looks down. He’s not hard anymore. The cake sort of distracted him, just a bit. He thinks
his stomach might hate him for it later, but it’s worth it.

Glancing back at Fyodor, Dazai slowly puts the water down and watches Fyodor dab the
napkin over his wet hand. He feels funny inside. Nothing’s going right, not the way he thinks
it’s supposed to go, in his head. Fyodor acts like someone has taken over his body for the day,
someone kind and on the cusp of being human.

Does Fyodor want to finish what he’d started before the cake? Dazai hopes not. Eating took
him out of the mood—he’s full now and sluggish, exhausted with the exertion. He’d much
rather go back to sleep in their bed, inside of Fyodor’s arms.

Fyodor studies him for a moment. He’s certain the man’s opening Dazai’s head, reading the
thoughts like a telegram message spitting out of its feeder.

After a while, Fyodor rises from the chair, and his hand settles warmly on Dazai’s curls for a
moment, before he turns away, murmuring, “Finish your cake, Dazai. I will return to help you
back to bed.”

Dazai watches him go. Then he studies the stain of his blood on the floor.

Chapter End Notes

Honey cake and strawberries ☺☺☺

Apologies if any of my Russian is wrong. I'm just googling after all ;-;
 Painted Feelings
Chapter Summary

Cutting makes everything better--doesn't it?

Chapter Notes

TW: for cutting obviously x.x

You know me, my scenes don't skimp on details. This is graphic self-harm and a lot of it
is taken directly from my own feelings during similar incidents. I hope you guys will
enjoy this and take comfort in it! Please feel free to leave comments that share your own
pain if this resonated with your experiences. I'd love to be there for you to offer comfort,
understanding, or just a listening ear!

Idk why this just turned into like...a compassion project but lmao ┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Cutting always makes things better.

Dazai can’t get it out of his head today, and he doesn’t know why. It scrapes at him like sharp
claws. He wants to know why. It makes no sense to him that he wouldn’t know. Why would
someone experience an urge with no reason?

Maybe the reason is buried too deep in the void of his mind. It’s driving him, haunting him,
but shutting off what causes it. There’s too little there, and yet…isn’t it too much?

Isn’t it because he’s overwhelmed, and needs to release it with pain? Like cutting open his
flesh to let the darkness filter out?

No…it’s not that. It’s something else. Or it’s a little bit of that, but more of something else.

Whatever it is—and maybe he doesn’t even care—cutting will make it better. Cutting will fix
it. This much he knows.

Dazai doesn’t want to cut, though. It hurts, and he hates pain, and if Fyodor sees, won’t he
think Dazai wants to be hurt? He doesn’t, it’s awful, it’s terrifying to be hurt by Fyodor. At
least with the blade in his own hands, he can control the pain he feels. He can decide when it
stops, when it’s too much, when it’s not enough, how it happens, where it goes. He can
control how much he deserves.

Deserves.

Is it punishment, then?

Fyodor has not hurt him in days. Fyodor has been strange and quiet and attentive for days.
Fyodor has been soft and gentle, and all the things Dazai asked him for. Why is it so hard,
then, to be content with that?

Fyodor will not punish him, so he must, is that it?

How long has he been sitting in the bathtub, anyway?

He’s in the bathroom down the hall, where Fyodor had sprayed him with scalding water near
the beginning of his stay—where he’d cut when Fyodor left him alone for longer than
twenty-two days. It’s quite silly, actually, how he’s set the room up and settled himself in the
bath as if he’s about to indulge in something nice.

He’d dragged in a small lamp from Fyodor’s room, with a little beige shade on it, and
plugged it into the wall above the sink. The actual bathroom lights are too bright. He doesn’t
want to see himself so much, just enough…enough to know what he’s doing. The brown tiles
on the floor are softened with yellow light. It’s such an industrial bathroom, really, with no
curtain for the tub and no decorations. Fyodor takes to paintings in the hallways and corners,
not in the bathroom. There’s just a bathtub, white and boring, sitting amongst tiles with a
drain. Fyodor’s probably killed people in here. That’s what it looks like it’s made for. Blood
must wash away so easily into the drain.

Fyodor won’t mind, then, if he makes a mess. He won’t stain anything, like the kitchen floor.
Fyodor wouldn’t care, anyway.

Dazai thinks of something else while lying in the bathtub. Fyodor never gave back his
bandages, and if Dazai cuts, he’ll have nothing to cover them with. Fyodor will see, and
they’ll burn every time they’re touched, they’ll stretch and sting if Fyodor decides to hurt him
again.

Though, Dazai has not checked the cabinet in the other bathroom for bandage rolls. Maybe
they’re there, waiting for him, maybe he can do his cutting and get his wounds dressed before
Fyodor is back?

The Russian had gone off into the locked room some time ago, to play his cello. From what
Dazai remembers, he plays for long, long amounts of time when he decides to play, so he
thinks he’s in the clear for a while.

Is he being too logical about things? He feels so blank that it seems it’s the only option. To
cut, or not to cut.
His stomach tightens. He hasn’t felt his body all this time, not really; he’s been drifting in the
void of his mind, thinking about what to do. He realizes he’s shivering, he’s cold, a razor
blade pinched in his fingers, body strewn out in the empty bathtub. His arms are boneless
beside him, his legs drawn up and leaned against the tub’s sides. His neck fits very nicely in
the lip of the bath, that perfect space at the nape of his neck.

What do you feel?

He wishes Fyodor were next to him, asking him. Maybe he would find out if the man yelled
at him for a little while, or petted his hair, or told him what to do. Why is it that he has no
idea without him?

Then again, he’s not all that desperate for Fyodor’s company, right now. He feels bad that he
isn’t. But he’d been longing since this morning to get away from Fyodor, for just a moment,
so he could do what his mind kept badgering him to do. That’s all. Really, that was all.

He’s spent enough time hobbling with the crutches just to get to the bathtub. After Fyodor
aided him a few times, he mostly stopped being terrified about being crippled. Enough time
and healing passed that he figured out how to maneuver by himself without putting much
weight on his broken feet. Dazai doesn’t know what the Russian had done while he’d been
unconscious, over and over after the incident, but he’d done it well, and Dazai is healing very
fast.

Dazai glances at the crutches, leaning against the wall beside the tub. It’s going to hurt, if he
cuts—maybe when he musters the strength to cut—to struggle back into the bedroom with
the crutches. He’ll have to be very careful where he decides to slice.

What the hell is he thinking? Dazai drops his head back, studying the ceiling. His eyes begin
to fill with water, his throat twists. Why does he want to cut? He just does. He doesn’t want
to hurt, but he needs to. Because it will help. It always helps. He’d been distracted with
Fyodor’s assistance, into navigating highs and lows and euphoria and adrenaline rushes.
There had been no need for cutting in the wake of Fyodor’s pain and punishment. But now
that has faded, there is no pain, and Dazai doesn’t understand how to accept this…this new.
This new that isn’t right at all. Not for someone like him.

He’d thought he’d wanted it.

Was he wrong, again? Was Fyodor right all this time in hurting him, did he know that Dazai
wanted it deep down, even though Dazai did not?

Does Dazai want to be hurt?

He groans in the torment of his confusion, squeezing his eyes shut, touching his face with a
clammy, trembling hand. He just needs to cut, so all of this will go away. The consequences
can matter later. Fyodor seeing them is an unfortunate result.

Physical harm always has a way of bringing his body back into itself, when he’s in control of
it. It’s all there, he can experience the sensations without the fear of the unknown, he can
remind himself that he’s inside of a human body, he is still human, and there’s no room to
think about being numb during the pain.

Dazai sits up a little in the tub, lifting the razor. He lets his hand lead more than his mind,
finding the top of his forearm. But he hesitates, with the blade poised against scarred skin.

Does he want Fyodor to see? Does he want Fyodor to care? To say something? To run his
bare fingers over Dazai’s wounds, and murmur in velvet tones to him that he shouldn’t do
such things? Isn’t what he’s about to do more of an artistic expression, displaying the
thoughts in his mind that he can’t make sense of, for Fyodor to sort out for him?

Yes. Yes. That’s it.

Dazai sucks in a breath. He slices—a quick, vigorous thing that leaves a welling line of
crimson among the ruined skin. Skin that doesn’t belong to him. It’s Fyodor’s skin, if
anything. It’s Fyodor’s. He’s doing this for Fyodor. So Fyodor can see him.

He slices again. Again. Again. He crisscrosses up his forearm, until he finds more interest in
his other arm, cutting through scars, through puckers, through old burns. It’s such a dull
feeling, the tiny bites of the blade, made in a pure white space of nothing. Just cutting,
cutting, no thoughts to bother him, just the vision of his skin being torn. And it’s wonderful.
He feels the rhythm in it, he sees the beauty of the lines and how he places them just right.
It’s not a thing of anger or sadness, or any emotion that he can place. It’s art, and his skin is
the canvas for what he wants Fyodor to interpret.

The breath is rasping in his throat, heavy and shuddering. It’s starting to hurt a little.

His arms are shaking, blood dripping and oozing from them in rivulets, but he feels his lips
curling just a little when he sees how they look. He can’t stop, now. This is good. This is
really, really, good, for some reason. The reason doesn’t matter. It’s just good, and even
Fyodor would understand that. Wouldn’t he?

The skin on his torso comes next. It’s easy to reach, and he doesn’t want to do anything to his
legs. He needs to walk, at least, and he has trouble enough with that already.

His torso looks prettier than his arms, with the gashes he digs across them. He pushes a little
deeper with the razor there, especially when his body flinches in response. He likes making
himself flinch. It feels like he’s really doing something. It hurts. It hurts so much worse than
his arms. He’s flinging blood everywhere, from the tips of his fingers, his elbows, smearing it
against the sides of the tub.

He’s heaving with gasps, there’s water trickling down his face. His vision gets blurry, so he
blinks rapidly to clear it, and keeps carving lines. One catches his navel, and he cries out
sharply, startled. The blade slips in the blood on his fingers, it clatters into the tub, sliding
under his leg. He paws blindly for it, sniffling, blinking rapidly, gritting his teeth.

He can’t fucking find it. It was right there. He saw it fall, it was right there.
His arms throb. His hands keep sliding in the blood beginning to pool. He feels faint and
dizzy, but the blood is rushing like hot fire in his body. It feels good. He’s fine, he’s not
wrong for doing this, it’s just an expression. Just for Fyodor. It’s just because he doesn’t
know what else to do.

“Dazai.”

It takes him a second to register the voice, that there’s someone here in the bathroom, that he
left the door open and wasn’t paying attention to how long he’s been here. He didn’t hear the
footsteps, he didn’t hear anything, Fyodor is just there, standing in the doorway with his hand
on the frame, staring at him. His eyes are wide, they’re dark and blank.

Dazai halts, shaking all over, breaths shuddering, holding his hands out in front of him with
the palms turned up, blood dripping and black. He can’t find words, he can’t put together any
thoughts, so he just blinks back at Fyodor in shock, tears running cold down his cheeks.

“What are you doing?” Fyodor whispers, so feebly that Dazai can barely hear it.

The adrenaline never stays for long, the rush never lasts when Dazai pauses, so it all begins
to drizzle away and the reality begins to set back in. It’s the pain, first. It crushes in on him all
at once, in a million different places, and it takes his breath away. His eyes fill with more
water, he doubles over on himself and groans long and loud, bewildered at the intensity of it.
His ears ring, his hands clench. His vision hazes, and he screws his eyes shut.

When the initial agony passes, he grapples for his awareness and opens his eyes again, seeing
fuzzy stars. He looks languidly at the door where Fyodor was, grasping for the edge of the
tub.

He’s gone.

Dazai’s heart sinks all the way down to his toes. Sobs rise in his throat. The hacking, self-
deprecating sort of sobs, that are almost like laughing. He’s gone! He doesn’t care at all about
Dazai, he doesn’t give a single damn in the world. Look at that! He’s been right all along.
What is it he expected? Something different? If he expected this, then why does he feel so
abandoned when it happens? Why?

Dazai covers his face with both bloody hands, metallic scent burning in his nostrils, and he
breaks down in sobs. Every one of them brings searing agony from the mauled skin of his
torso, dredging up the regret right along with it. Now look what he’s done. He’s gone and
made everything worse for himself, he’s gone and put himself in more pain. The wounds are
going to last for at least the next two weeks, if not longer. Without Fyodor’s help, how is he
even going to get out of the tub? He should have thought of that. He should have thought
about how deep he was cutting. He should have paid attention to how many he was making.

He’s so stupid. He’s so, so, so—

“Here, here, солнце,” a velvet voice startles him, as an ungloved hand rests on the back of his
neck. Another pushes a roll of bandages inside his bloody fingers. “I am here. Did you want
these?”
Dazai clutches the roll of bandages and wheezes, still hitching with sobs and pain, not
processing what’s going on. Fyodor, Fyodor is back? Fyodor hasn’t left? He’s back with
bandages, he’s back with a little pile of supplies and the first aid kit. He’s close and warm, his
hands are bare, and he’s looking down at Dazai with gentle, amethyst eyes. His head is tilted
just so to line up with Dazai’s hunched posture, and his fingers are pressing softly at the back
of Dazai’s neck.

“Look at you, you have made such a mess, haven’t you,” he murmurs, and Dazai begins to
weep louder.

“I’m s-sorry…” He wipes at his eyes with bloody hands. The bandage roll flops out, but
Fyodor catches it before it gets drenched in blood.

“I only left you for a little while. Is that so troublesome to you?” Fyodor frowns at Dazai’s
torso, examining the damage done and picking up a large gray towel from what he’d brought.
He sets the bandages beside him, for now, and presses the towel against the cuts in Dazai’s
stomach.

Dazai cries out in pain, clenching his teeth and trying not to squirm. He grasps ahold of
Fyodor’s shirt, pushes his throbbing temple against the man’s shoulder. “Nngh, was-sn’t, th-
that,” he croaks through the tears. “Agh!”

“No?” Fyodor murmurs, gaze fixed as he keeps pressure on the towel, which is soon
blooming with crimson. Dazai is quiet but for the sobs, unable to speak through the pain, so
Fyodor’s gaze strays to the crutches, and he goes on. “It must have been a great deal of
trouble just to get here. Were you so determined to injure yourself?”

Too many questions. “Do…don’t kn-know…” Dazai hitches. Then, realizing that he’s getting
blood on Fyodor’s white shirt, he pulls away with a feeble sound of panic.

Fyodor glances down at it, brows twitching, and looks delicately back at Dazai. “No matter.
Try to relax.”

Dazai can’t, though, and remains cowering in the bath. He doesn’t want to mess up Fyodor’s
shirt. He doesn’t want to stain anything else with his blood.

Fyodor reaches for him, carefully pulls him back. And who is Dazai to resist him? He
quakes, gingerly resting his face against Fyodor’s warm shoulder, whining softly when the
man reinforces pressure on the towel. “Is it the bandages? Were you trying to ask for them?”

Dazai doesn’t know, he doesn’t want to think about the reason. He just wants to patch up,
move on, and pretend it doesn’t mean anything. Wouldn’t the old Fyodor do that? Wouldn’t
the old Fyodor scowl at him and tell him he should be punished if he wants pain so badly?

Is there such thing as the old Fyodor? Is this Fyodor different? Is this even Fyodor, anymore,
or has Dazai lost his grip on reality and slipped into an endless fever dream?

“Dazai,” the velvet pulls him back.

Dazai hides from it in Fyodor’s chest, burying his nose and wanting to suffocate. It hurts, it
hurts so badly, his head and his body. His temples throb with angry heat. He can pick apart
the pain of every single cut on his body, stinging and sharp.

Cool lips brush his ear, and Fyodor’s face aligns against his cheek. “Dazai,” he whispers, and
shivers prickle along the back of his neck like tiny needles. “You do not have to be afraid of
me.”

He whimpers softly. He’s not! He’s not afraid, that’s not it, Dazai isn’t afraid of him anymore.
He’s afraid of himself. Yes, and what he’s become. How mindless and empty and dull that he
is, when Fyodor isn’t like his usual self.

“Speak,” Fyodor murmurs, the breath warmer than usual in Dazai’s ear, “speak to me,
Dazai.”

“Don’t make me, please don’t make me,” Dazai begs him, curling deeper against Fyodor and
welling with fresh tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

Fyodor’s hand trails down his shoulder, his arm, until he’s gently lifting Dazai’s hand in his.
He hums softly. “I see.”

No, he does have something to say. It’s beginning to form in his mind, piling up in his chest,
clogging his throat with so many things at once. As the Russian pulls out the sprayer and
turns on the water to a low pressure, Dazai tries to sort out the thoughts until they make
sense. Until he can work up the courage to tell Fyodor about them.

He tries not to let himself remember the last time Fyodor used the sprayer.

Fyodor pulls the towel away and runs water over Dazai’s cuts, sending knives of red-hot
agony through his body. He sees stars, crying out and fumbling for purchase on the edge of
the tub. He jerks back, trying to escape out of reflex, trying to stop it, shoving at the shower
head and practically screaming in panic. “Aaah, hurts, hurts, please, stop—!”

Fyodor pulls it away at once.

For a moment, they both stare at each other, blank, wide-eyed, Dazai panting and shivering
and wet, Fyodor letting the sprayer trickle down the tub’s edge.

“I was not trying to hurt you,” Fyodor says carefully.

“I know,” Dazai croaks. He feels very acutely the blood oozing down his skin. He feels awful
for reacting. The water wasn’t even hot. It wasn’t even warm.

“I startled you.”

Dazai nods timidly.

Fyodor’s face is far too open and deep. It makes Dazai’s heart flutter strangely. “I see.”
Dazai slowly, slowly offers out his shaky arms, and all the blood dripping from them. He
doesn’t say anything—the nervousness chokes the words away.

Fyodor’s amethyst eyes are shifting in the light, little pops of color and expression flitting
through them as he takes in Dazai’s action. Just as slowly, he brings the sprayer back, and
almost hesitantly puts his hand under both of Dazai’s, as if to offer him something to hold on
to.

Dazai takes that offer at once. The water falls over his cuts, the burn sets in with fury and he
curls forward, hissing between clenched teeth. Sobs follow, exhausted and hoarse.

“Good,” Fyodor murmurs softly, “you are being very good, Dazai.”

The words hit him very deep and very strong, in a place Dazai hasn’t had attention for a long,
long time. His brows screw up; his lip trembles. Fyodor told him he was being good. Using
the word like that is different, entirely different from the ways he’d used the word before.
Dazai, good? Even wrapping his brain around that concept tears him apart. More tears, tears
he doesn’t want coming out right now, tears that aren’t because of the pain trickle down his
face. He squeezes Fyodor’s hand very tight and tries to focus on the way the skin feels
against his.

Fyodor is done with his arms soon, the gashes reduced to lines through paled flesh, glossy
and stalled of their bleeding. Fyodor’s inky lashes veil his gaze when Dazai looks to him for
guidance, a little less enthusiastic for the cuts on his torso. He quietly releases Fyodor’s hand,
lowers his arms and fidgets.

Fyodor holds the sprayer at bay, lowering his own hand and flexing it subtly. “More is
alright?” he asks, rather cryptically, though Dazai knows what he means. The man still
doesn’t look up at him, only at the cuts on his torso. They are awful, and he feels awful about
them. But Fyodor sees, doesn’t he? Is he reading what Dazai wrote there? Is he understanding
what Dazai can’t say? Is that too foolish of him to hope for?

Dazai looks down, awkwardly crammed against the tub in his attempt to face Fyodor, long
legs folded against the rim.

“I will be gentle,” Fyodor reassures him, which sounds a little less wrong than it usually
does, coming from him. Dazai hopes he’s not beginning to get used to this version of Fyodor.
It certainly won’t last long.

“It needs to be clean before I can wrap you.”

“I don’t like pain,” Dazai blurts, far too suddenly, and the rasp of his voice makes him cringe.
When he looks up, Fyodor’s eyes have raised, fixing delicately on him.

“I know.”

Dazai glances away, he glances down, he glances back at Fyodor. “Can you see?” The words
tremble. Dazai knows he’s not saying it right—that out of context, how could Fyodor know
what he means? He tries to fix it. “Can you see what…what it says?”
Stupid. He’s still not saying it right. He balls his hands into fists, squeezing them until his
forearms throb. The breath shudders in his throat.

Fyodor tilts his head subtly, blinking at the marks in Dazai’s torso. His brows twitch. “What
do you mean?”

He’s ridiculous. Dazai is absolutely ashamed of how ridiculous he is. A tiny, wavering sob
escapes him, and he sniffles. “Nevermind, it’s nothing. It’s nothing.”

Fyodor looks at him. Deeply. The tinkling water from the sprayer fills the silence for a
moment. “No. I do see.” He waits, waits until Dazai is sure the man knows his breath is
baited. “Not words. You were…painting.”

Dazai’s eyes widen. He can feel the air tickle them. “Yes,” he breathes, though in his mind it
was a triumphant cry.

“That is what you mean.”

“Yes—!” Dazai leans slightly forward, the words a choked sound.

Fyodor’s face loosens with the insight. “I understand. It is not because I have hurt you, your
feelings?”

Dazai tightens his hands. “No.”

This seems to bring a cloud out of Fyodor’s eyes, that Dazai hadn’t realized was there before.

“I see,” the Russian says, quieter. “You were…confused, then? You did not understand what
you felt, so you painted it?”

Dazai’s lungs fill with air, until he feels heady and light. He blinks several times, gazing up at
Fyodor with what feels like stars in his eyes. He understands. He sees, just like Dazai wanted
him to. “Yes…yes, that is why, that is why.”

Fyodor nods softly, some form of satisfaction easing his features. “I understand. But you do
not have to do it, anymore, not like this. You may tell me, instead. About the things you do
not understand. I would be…” The man hesitates, awkwardly, and he’s never done that
before, eyes searching the air as he tries to land a word. Dazai has the itching feeling that he
was about to say happy, and he’s glad the man doesn’t, because he might have broken if he
had. “…it would be better, for you to tell me.”

“Okay,” Dazai whispers. He opens his arms a little, and steels himself for the sprayer.
“Okay.”
Fyodor cleans Dazai up and bandages him thoroughly when he’s dried, a little rough in his
handling, but Dazai thinks it’s purely out of inexperience. Besides, no matter how he’s
handled, it’s nothing like before, nothing like what Dazai is beginning to accept as the old
Fyodor. New Fyodor is terrifying in different and unpredictable ways, but Dazai thinks he
prefers it to the other version.

After helping him through the hall and re-situating Dazai in the bedroom on the end of the
bed, Fyodor sits with him in silence for a long time. Just sitting. It doesn’t seem words are
needed, and Dazai doesn’t miss them. He has nothing to say, either, and he’s so tired from
everything he’s done that it feels better to slump against Fyodor’s shoulder, kicking his feet
gently against the bedframe.

Fyodor doesn’t seem to mind the weight.

Dazai feels fresh, sterile and tight with bandages, every nerve at ease now that he has them
back. Fyodor had dressed him in his shirt, too, smelling of lavender dryer detergent and as
pure white as the man’s skin. His cuts still throb, but not so much when they’re not being
touched.

They sit some more, and Dazai watches the man’s bare hands, folded in his lap. They’re clean
from the washing Fyodor had given them after patching Dazai up, not even remnants of
blood left under the fingernails. His shirt, however, is still stained—but it doesn’t bother
Dazai quite as much as he thought it would.

It’s more like a…proof, of Fyodor caring just a little bit. Or maybe a lot bit, for Fyodor.

Dazai is beginning to drowse on Fyodor’s shoulder, when the man speaks up, finally.

“I am going to take you outside.” Fyodor says it carefully, like he’s testing it out in his mind,
the way it sounds. “I mean, I am going to take you somewhere with me, for just a little while,
tonight.”

Dazai’s brain takes a moment to process that. When it does, he feels like all of his organs
have tangled up and tumbled down into his toes. He lifts his head from Fyodor’s shoulder,
looks up at him, trying to see if it’s a joke, or a taunt, or some kind of trick. There’s nothing
there but quiet, calculated blankness. Like Fyodor is actually hiding something, for once,
instead of being emotionless.

“What?” he blurts.

Fyodor’s lips make a thin line, lashes downcast, directing his gaze at the hands in his lap. The
black curtain of his hair frames his face, and the shadows don’t look so deadly as they used
to. “Must I repeat myself?”

Dazai’s heart thrashes. “Wh…” he blinks quickly and looks away, clutching the hem of his
shirt. He searches the far wall for the thoughts that dissolved from his head. His stomach
unsettles; he feels a little dizzy. He wants to take Dazai outside. Outside? Where he’s never
supposed to go? Where Fyodor punished him for going? He wants to take Dazai there, now?
He wants them to go together?
Fyodor turns towards him. “I know it is strange. But you do not have to be afraid.”

Strange? Strange is putting it mildly. What is he supposed to do, what is he supposed to

think? What does Fyodor mean by it? Why does Fyodor want to take him outside? Dazai’s
jaw works at air for a good moment before he can form words again. “I-I don’t understand.”

“Yes.” A flash of something like a wince crosses the Russian’s features. “I know.”

Why is he so different? Dazai doesn’t know what to do with it, not at all, not at all. “But…
last time—” He stops, because he doesn’t want to go on, and Fyodor knows, he nods, so
there’s no need to.

“I know,” he says.

“But—” His throat is twisting.

“Do you not want to go?” Fyodor asks him, a little sharper, like he’s impatient. He looks
sidelong at Dazai.

“I don’t know,” Dazai whispers, stretching his shirt hem.

Fyodor’s eyes narrow, but not in an unkind way. “You know. Tell me.”

Dazai’s breath shudders. “I do. I-I do. I’m sorry.”

The man’s face loosens, and he looks back at his folded hands. “Good.”

“But what about my feet?”

“We will not go far. They should be alright.”

“But the snow, the snow is cold. I don’t have any clothes.”

“You will,” Fyodor says, “I would not make you go out like this.”

He wouldn’t? Really? Dazai’s never seen his other clothes. Fyodor always wears the same
thing, and he’s not sure what’s in the dresser by the bed other than the locked drawer.

A startling, crippling thought crashes into him, then, and nearly has Dazai shaking. His chest
winds tight. “Will…will I have to see other people? There won’t be other people outside, will
there, Fedya?”

Fyodor’s brows lift as he regards Dazai. “No, солнце. There will be no other people.”

Dazai doesn’t know what the Russian word is. But it sounds sweet, it sounds like strawberries
on Fyodor’s lips. The tightness in his body slowly releases, fades into the background, and he
breathes a long exhale of relief. Though, he’s not sure why he’s afraid of seeing other people,
even by chance. It’s just, he doesn’t want to be seen, by anyone except Fyodor, because only
Fyodor understands him, and other people will not.
 Yes. That’s why.

“Okay,” he says softly.

And that’s all there is to it.

Chapter End Notes

Normally it's the hurt people who read hurting stories. Normally it's the hurt people who
write them.

I think we're all hurting here.

I think-

I'm just daddy deep thoughts today

FEEL MY LOVE! ☜-(ΘLΘ)-☞

****edit: Fyodor's Russian in this chapter, солнце, is a term of endearment that means
'little sun'.**** Thanks to Reonabs for the reminder to include that in the notes!
 Northern Lights
Chapter Summary

Fyodor takes Dazai outside, and it's not the only new thing Dazai gets to experience.

Chapter Notes

My beta reader was super cool and did TWO chapters this week, so you're gonna get a
quick update after this one, stay tuned!!

I also have a song I will be linking in the middle of one of the scenes, because it's the
song that inspired this and changed the entire plot of Sinner when I was first writing it! I
have been waiting so very long to get to this part, and I hope it lives up to itself! :D

(let me know if it doesn't work, I'll try and fix it!)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Fyodor pulls many clothes from the bottom drawer of the dresser. Others he fishes for off in
the locked room with the stained glass, returning with a pile of them in his arms. The things
he puts on Dazai do not seem like things Fyodor would ever wear—they’re not his colors, or
his style, or his fit.

It’s almost like they’ve been bought for Dazai…or…or maybe like these were the clothes that
he had worn, before Fyodor had stripped him, so long ago.

Dazai doesn’t want to take off the white shirt that smells like lavender, so Fyodor lets him
keep it, pulling a thick beige cardigan over it. Or maybe it’s a sweater? Dazai isn’t sure. It has
big buttons that feel good when Fyodor fiddles with them, trying to fit them into their holes.
Dazai remains sitting on the end of the bed so the crutches don’t get in the way, and Fyodor
puts off the pants portion of dressing for the moment.

He wraps Dazai’s neck in a cherry red scarf and hesitates when Dazai flinches, murmuring
gentle reassurance. Which is silly. It’s a scarf, not a noose. Fyodor isn’t going to choke him
with it. Dazai knows that.

The wrapped cuts on his arms and torso burn horribly whenever the fabric shifts against it, so
it makes moving a very stiff ordeal. Fyodor pulls him up onto the crutches. Dazai stands
there, leaning heavily on them and trying to accustom himself to the pain in his ankles—still
unable to put more than a feather’s weight on his broken feet.
Or at least—he thinks so. Perhaps he could put more, if he tried. He’s just terrified to try.
Fyodor probably likes them broken, anyways. If he gets better, he won’t have such a good
reason to cling to the Russian for support. Maybe Fyodor will go back to being cruel, when
they’re healed.

Fyodor is looking down at the pants in his hands, glancing at Dazai’s feet and back. Maybe
Dazai should sit back down.

“It might hurt,” Fyodor says. “But only a little.”

Because of his feet. Right. He didn’t think about that. He didn’t think about wearing shoes,
either. It would be agony. “Then,” he announces, deciding between the lesser of two evils, “I
can go without them.”

Fyodor blinks. “You will freeze.”

“Fedya will keep me warm.”

Fyodor’s hands tighten on the pants until the seams stretch a little. His chest rises and falls
with a few breaths. “…Yes.” He glances down, as if stalled and unsure of what to do. Which
is not at all like Fyodor. But Dazai is getting used to those not-like-Fyodor actions more and
more.

Dazai nods, not keen on thinking very deeply about it. The cardigan-sweater reaches to at
least mid-thigh. He won’t mind the cold. He lives with Fyodor. The house is nearly as cold as
the snow.

Fyodor puts the pants away, still glancing at him every few moments, as if the clothes make
him a different person. He feels like a different person.

Maybe he just feels like a person.

Fyodor adds another jacket to Dazai’s bulky clothing—or he tries to, except that Dazai
whimpers at how tight it is on his arms, and the man reluctantly shimmies him out of it again.
Which is a very kind thing to do, he thinks.

Fyodor steps back, finally, bundles himself in his fur-lined cloak and ushanka, and looks
Dazai up and down.

Dazai regards him from underneath his lashes, gripping the handles on the crutches and
trying to look…well…nice. Something like that. Pretty. Like Fyodor always does.

Does Dazai look pretty in clothes, too?

Fyodor steps close, tugs on the scarf. Pulls it up around Dazai’s ears. He tries to stay still, to
not flinch like his body always tells him to. It won’t last, his mind whispers to him, this nice
Fyodor. One wrong word and you’ll go right back to where you started.

“Good,” Fyodor murmurs, looking down into his eyes, “I think we are ready.”
The edge of Dazai’s mouth quirks nervously, as if he’s going to remember how to smile. But
he doesn’t.

Dazai remembers walking to the door. Dazai remembers Fyodor opening the door. Dazai
remembers the ringing in his ears, the wild thrash of his heart.

And then, Dazai doesn’t remember. Not what’s happening in the present, anyways.

He remembers Fyodor coming slowly up the steps, the words “foolish, disgusting creature.”
He remembers screaming, being dragged into the kitchen. Falling and clinging to Fyodor’s
legs. Begging. The knife in the moonlight, Fyodor’s burning eyes.

His body pulls away from itself. His mind retreats, leaving his shell behind. He can’t feel
anything, can’t process sensations in his skin. But he knows Fyodor is guiding him out the
door. He knows he’s hobbling blankly with the crutches, and seeing nothing. He’s looking
down on himself from above, witnessing what’s happening, yet unaware of what’s going on.

He knows that he’s gone, for about half of the walk. Something like that. And when he comes
back into himself, Fyodor’s house is nowhere in sight. There is only a long, glittering white
stretch of snowy hill beneath a canopy of stars. His feet are numb. His bare legs are numb.
His mind is numb.

~[for those interested in listening along, I imagined a song for this scene starting now.
YouTube version here if you don't use Spotify]~

Fyodor’s arm is tight around his waist as he holds Dazai, one of the crutches in his gloved
hand. The grip feels strong enough that Dazai thinks he must have been dragging Dazai
through the snow, and the staggering tracks behind him confirm it.

“Can you hear me now?” Fyodor’s breath curls out from between his lips.

Dazai slowly turns his head to look at him. He feels limp, drawn, but his arm is moving as if
controlled by another being, in rhythm with Fyodor’s slow pace.

Fyodor’s cheeks are flushed pink, frosted with the glow of melted snowflakes. Dazai blinks
at it.

“Still floating, perhaps,” Fyodor whispers.

The wind bites Dazai’s skin, frigid but gentle. Dazai can’t stop gazing at Fyodor’s face. There
are little flakes of white landing all over the Russian’s hair and lashes, staying for only a
moment before they dissolve. He’s so intent, focusing on the path as he struggles with
Dazai’s weight.

He looks…human, just like Dazai felt with the clothes on. He looks human outside, with rosy
color in his face, and snow glittering in his hair like moondust.

Nausea twists in his gut, the signaling that he’s has come completely back, now, and can feel
things again. His face screws with the feeling, and he drops his gaze to the ground, wrestling
with all the pressure of a million thoughts at once. Being outside like this, beside Fyodor,
hobbling up a hill together under the stars is very overwhelming. He feels the snow flicking
at his face and landing on the top of his scarf. He’s grateful that his ears are warm, and buries
his mouth deeper in the scarf.

He’s terrified, he thinks. Being outside before meant Fyodor was enraged and yelling, hurting
him, hurting him so badly that he can hardly walk now. But now, it doesn’t mean that. Fyodor
hasn’t played a trick on him yet, hasn’t told him this was a test he’s failed and must be
punished for, or left him out in the snow to die.

“Are you alright?”

Velvet, velvet, velvet. How he loves that sound. How he lives for that sound, to bring him out
of the depths and clear his mind.

Dazai has trouble making his mouth move without feeling sick, so he lists a little blindly
towards the sound of Fyodor’s voice, until his head falls against something soft. It’s cold with
frost, but Fyodor’s breath is warm in his hair. Fyodor slows, pulling Dazai closer, drawing
them to a stop.

“Feeling sick, still? I did not mean for you to feel this way.”

Dazai’s head is blurry. But the smell of outside next to Fyodor is very nice. The darkness and
the moon are very nice. The canopy of glistening stars above them is calming. It’s only that
he doesn’t feel like he should be out here. That’s all. So he clings to Fyodor a little, until the
man gathers him up in his arms, leaving the crutches in the snow as he moves a ways up, to
what must be their destination.

Dazai is afraid to look, when Fyodor stops again. His bare legs are deadened with the
temperature. His knees look blue—but maybe that’s just the moonlight. It doesn’t really
matter. The rest of him is warm.

Fyodor nudges him gently with his shoulder and shifts Dazai in his grip, angling him towards
the view before them. “Look, солнце,” he whispers. “Look, and maybe it will make you feel
better.”

Dazai slowly, hesitantly turns his head, gripping Fyodor’s shirt with all his might, and looks
up into the night sky.

And there are colors. So many colors—! Vibrant greens and warm magentas, shimmering
amethyst like Fyodor’s eyes.
Dazai’s entire body lifts in a weightless, soaring sensation. His eyes widen and he shifts,
craning to look at the hues that spread above them like the strokes of a painter’s brush.
They’re dancing together, little trills and flutters of light. Rippling, growing, spreading above
them. Dazai feels himself shaking, fixed and awed by them, the beauty of it. It takes his
breath, it takes the words he wants to say. He digs his fingers into Fyodor’s shoulders and
inhales the cold air, inhales until he can’t anymore.

Is he going to cry?

No, no, they’re just lights in the sky. Why does he want to cry because of their beauty? He
doesn’t understand it, not at all. His chest rises and falls, he reaches one hand up, stretching,
stretching, wishing he could feel the light’s glow between his cold-numbed fingers.

If he were to die, here, on this snowy hill with Fyodor under the lights…he thinks that it
would be the most wonderful death in the world. He thinks he would go happily. Maybe he
would even remember how to smile, again, before his heart ceased to beat.

When he turns back around to see what the Russian thinks of the lights, there’s something
sparkling on Fyodor’s face. He reaches for the snowflake to touch it before it melts, but his
muscles lock up.

It’s not a snowflake.

Dazai’s breath goes still in his throat. His heart quiets. All is silent around them, suddenly,
save for the sluggish thudding of Dazai’s pulse in his ears. There’s no wind, no gentle
pattering of snowflakes, no sound except for the hitched breath that leaves a trail of fog from
Fyodor’s parted lips.

Dazai’s hand shakes. He touches it—that sparkling thing that was not a snowflake…and it’s
wet. It’s warm. It rolls down his finger, splashing against his blued knuckles.

Fyodor’s face is colored by the lights above, and his bright, violet eyes are glistening with the
sheen of…of tears. He’s crying.

“Fedya,” he whispers, tremulously.

Fyodor flinches, as if just realizing Dazai’s touch, the wetness running down his cheek, and
blinks rapidly to clear the ones still stuck in his gaze. If he hadn’t been holding Dazai,
perhaps he might have reached to brush them away, but he only looks down and makes a soft
noise of what must be shock. A rough, soft-spoken string of Russian follows it.

Dazai can’t help but put both of his palms against Fyodor’s cheeks, pressing the tears there,
his pulse rapidly rising, thrumming like a tiny rabbit’s. “You’re crying,” he says in shock,
“you’re crying—” His voice chokes, it breaks, twisting inside of his throat until his eyes are
wet, too. “Why are you crying?”

“I think…” Fyodor starts, and his voice sounds ragged and broken, so unlike him that it
makes Dazai’s stomach cold. “I think I would like to apologize.”
The breeze sifts through Fyodor’s hair, straying it in black streaks across his face and eyes,
whipping it against Dazai’s hands. The tears are still warm under his palms. They’re the only
tears Fyodor has ever cried. If they go away, Dazai won’t know what to do with himself. He
never wants them to dry. Which is wrong, isn’t it? Is it wrong to feel this way, to have wanted
Fyodor to cry? Why does it feel so right, then?

Why does it feel like what he’s wanted all along? What he’d thought was impossible of a
god?

Of a man. A human…like Fyodor. Fyodor has been human all along. Just like Dazai. Fyodor
can cry.

“Dazai,” Fyodor croaks weakly. He hasn’t asked for Dazai to remove his hands, but if he
does, Dazai won’t do it.

“What?” he breathes.

“I am…” Fyodor’s eyes shift, nervously—nervously? Frantically, almost, the tiniest back-
and-forth before they rest again on Dazai, full of a kind of constricted emotion Dazai has
never seen before. “I am sorry. I’m sorry for what I have done to you.” The water is still
there in his eyes, but there are no more tears.

The words don’t sink in, not at first. And at first, Dazai tries to deliberately keep them out.
They don’t mean what he wants them to mean—surely, they do not mean what he wants them
to mean. Fyodor has never apologized. Fyodor has never regretted something this much.
Fyodor has never cried.

“What do you mean?” he hears himself whimper, but the words feel so far from his mouth.
He can’t even taste them on his tongue.

“I feel…” Fyodor blinks more, lowering his face into Dazai’s hands, “I feel bad. For
everything I have done. I regret it. I do not know…h-how to…explain it. I…I am so sorry, for
every time that I have hurt you, and I never—” He squeezes his eyes shut, lashes sparkling
with dewy tears, and a second droplet finally rolls into Dazai’s waiting fingers, eliciting a
quivering gasp from his lips. “—I never want to hurt you again.”

Dazai feels like he’s falling backwards, into an open, black mouth of darkness. Vertigo
swarms in his head, wracking him with numb, pounding shock. He believes it. He believes
every word, as much as he believes the tears on Fyodor’s face.

Which is not at all.

His mind cannot even wrap itself around the implications. The weight. The sincerity.

His vision tingles, blackens at the edges. Is he going to pass out? If Fyodor is apologizing and
regretting everything he’s done—that means all of the punishment, the hurt, the pain, it was
wrong, and Fyodor was never right to do it to him, which means…which means—!
Should he have ever loved Fyodor at all, then? Should he have fallen for that whom he
thought was god, whom Fyodor told him was his only law, his time, his world, his
everything? If every time he’d hurt Dazai he’d been wrong, then he had sinned more than
Dazai ever had.

And that meant that all this time, Fyodor had been the Sinner, and Dazai his willing victim.
There had never been a god in control of time, there had never been an all-knowing creature
with him in that house. There had only ever been a psychopathic Russian and his mindless
toy.

Dazai feels sick. His stomach twists and clenches. He takes his quivering hands from
Fyodor’s face, wet with human tears, and draws in deep, shaking breaths. “You’re…sorry?
You’re sorry? But I don’t—But…!” The rest comes out in an anguished sob, despite his eyes
being dry of tears. They’re wide as he clings to Fyodor, so wide the air is cold against them,
and he cannot calm the gasps that race in his throat, back and forth, back and forth.

Fyodor’s arms wrap him tighter, and he feels the warmth of skin, pressing against his
forehead. Fyodor’s face inches from his. Their foreheads press together, Fyodor’s long hair
gathering around them like curtains, shielding them from the snow as the man looks into
Dazai’s terrified gaze. Dazai wants away, he wants to escape and hide and understand. He
wants to react in the right way—but what is the right way now? If Fyodor is not god, there is
no right that Dazai knows. Dazai has no right or wrong, all he has is Fyodor, Fyodor—!

“I don’t know what to do!” he cries softly, seeing the flickering colors in Fyodor’s gaze, all
earth stilled around them. He inhales a sob.

“It’s alright,” Fyodor murmurs, and this time, Dazai knows that his voice is tender. And it
breaks him. It breaks him more than the pain ever did.

He fumbles for Fyodor’s neck, finds it with both arms, pulls himself up against the man’s
neck, nestling his cheek against the skin there. He still can hardly breathe, the gasps tangling
and hitching in his throat. He’s numb to the bone. What does it mean, what does it all mean
for him? For them? What will happen to them? Will they even be them, anymore, if Fyodor is
as much a sinner as Dazai?

Fyodor’s hand moves up around his back, doing the slight back-and-forth that he’d tried days
before, a little more insistent this time. A little more conscious, a little more sincere.

“You do not have to be afraid,” Fyodor whispers, “of what it means. I will be better to you. I
will be good to you, and good for you.”

“Fedya,” Dazai sobs.

“I know,” Fyodor soothes, slightly turning his face against Dazai’s curls. “I have shocked
you. I do not yet understand everything, myself. But I will. I will, in time. And we will get
better.”

Dazai nods against Fyodor’s shoulder, and thinks he might be able to bear it. He might be
able to take it in, to understand what’s happened, and move forward. If Fyodor is there with
 him, no matter who he is now, he can likely do anything.

And that’s when he sees the burning crimson light in the sky.

Chapter End Notes

Fedya cry, go boo hoo. This is literally the scene that made up the entire plot of Sinner
xD it kinda cracks me up every time I think about it, that I wrote 22 fucking chapters
(....22....HUH...isn't that an interesting number? I swear I didn't plan that...) just to get to
this ONE moment.

Anyways crimson light go brrrrr

 RESCUE
Chapter Summary

Chuuya Nakahara status: Corruption

Chapter Notes

No, the crimson light was a plane

It's not a very long one, but the break is necessary for the scenes to come next chapter!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It falls down like a shooting star, fast and burning, but it’s bigger than any star in the night
sky, glowing red, as big as a human being.

Everything happens so quickly.

Dazai’s heart clogs his throat. His body begins to shake. He feels the motion of Fyodor
turning with him in his grip, and he instinctively pulls away from the Russian to face the
direction of the incoming star.

Not the star. The glowing boy with a silken black hat, who drops from the sky above them
into the snow, kicking up a mountain of white waves that dissolve into the air. Crouched, one
hand on his hat, eyes glowing in the whipping flurries of snow, he has a snarl etched into his
mouth.

Dazai’s heart leaps further up his throat. He chokes, shakes Fyodor, whispers his name. His
legs slip out of the man’s grasp. He stands, numbly feels a bite of pain in his heels, but he can
stand, and that much is all but lost to him in the presence of the person—the other human
being.

There are others, quickly joining the orange boy on the hill, crawling out of the trees like
ants. Big, menacing ants.

Dazai stumbles, grasps Fyodor’s arm—Fyodor, who is standing as still as a statue, face blank
and pale in the moonlight.
“Fedya,” he whimpers. He clambers behind Fyodor’s back, clinging to him for dear life,
shivering from his shoulders to his toes. His stomach is curling and dropping further every
moment. “Fedya!”

Fyodor wordlessly reaches behind to touch Dazai, a protective, outstretched gloved hand. It’s
not shaking. Dazai tells himself that it is not Fyodor’s hand, shaking.

“Ебать,” Fyodor spits out, taking a step back on the hill, Dazai easily going with him.
“Ебать!”

Dazai shrinks until he's barely peeking over the man’s shoulder.

The boy with the hat approaches, slowly, his chin lowered, his arms spread. The snow
shudders and sifts around him, as if in response to his glowing hands. And the closer he
comes, the more Dazai feels his heart closing within a coffin of ice.

The boy has blue eyes. Cerulean blue. And where…where has he seen those eyes before…?

Dazai’s mind is suddenly being pried open, and images, thousands and thousands of moving
images are flooding his brain all at once, rushing with such speed that he can’t even breathe.

“No,” Fyodor hisses, “No!”

Someone is jostling him. But Dazai no longer cares. His eyes flutter, rapidly, to the pulse of
the thousands of images, and sounds—of the memories that are returning to him in droves of
color, light, and sparkling clarity. He hears an angry voice, shouting his name, telling him
he’ll kill him. He knows that it belongs to the boy walking towards them now. Chuuya, his
mind tells him. Chuuya Nakahara.

He hears gunshots in his memories, he tastes pain and feels hollow, he feels empty of all
emotion, a creature of horror and numb sadism, who killed without thought and cut the pain
out with knives in his skin. Who smiled and tested all who came close to the pain, those who
threatened to see through, and dismissed them with grins of empty joy.

“Ch…uuya,” he croaks, anguished and stricken, falling, he thinks, since the ground rushes up
towards him. He puts his hands out, lands on all fours in the snow, gasping and coughing.
There are crunching footsteps, a rapid-fire of angry, screaming voices around him, and
Fyodor’s velvet.

But he cannot hear what is being said. More memories, still coming, wrack him with
agonizing strength, knocking the words from his ears. Screaming, high-pitched ringing. The
tiger, Atsushi, the boy he trained, Akutagawa, the men in black that surrounded him with
their guns when he went out under command of the man who hurt him, Mori, the man who
sliced him with scalpels behind doors and laughed at his sobs. Mori, the man who made him
a monster. And Akutagawa, the boy Dazai made a monster.

Odasaku, the man who saved him from the monster. The man who died because the monster
could not save him.
Kunikida, Fukuzawa, the rest of the people that made up the Detective Agency, the place
where Dazai did not deserve to end up. The place where he tried to become something,
someone, and still could not.

The breaths rasp in Dazai’s throat, harsh and raw, laced with horrified sobs. All of this, all of
this he could not remember? But why now? Why? What happened to him, how had he
forgotten all of his life before Fyodor? How could he have ever forgotten those cerulean eyes,
that had watched over him during his nightmares, had been beside him when he was ill, had
comforted him when he was bleeding with razors in his grip, sprawled out in the tub?

Why was it the cerulean eyes, and not the amethyst? Why had he forgotten them? How could
he, when Fyodor…Fyodor was the one who was against them all?

Dazai slowly turns his head to look up at the Russian towering above him, the Russian eyeing
him with wide, glinting eyes, their pupils mere pinpricks. He remembers, now, what Fyodor
is. Who Fyodor was before Dazai was ever in his house. He remembers being shot by the
Russian’s sharpshooter in the alley, falling to the streets and watching the man walk away, a
specter of white and black in the shadows. He remembers being stabbed in the back by the
Russian’s friend, blood pooling beneath him on a shimmering floor, Fyodor’s face the last
thing in his sight before he slipped into darkness.

And the boy—Chuuya—with the cerulean eyes, the one who woke him from that slumber,
had pulled him back into the life he did not wish to live, but had to, for the sake of others.

“Dazai,” Fyodor whispers above him, the sound strangled in his throat. And Dazai realizes
that he knows. He knows that Dazai forgot, and that he has remembered.

His eyes burn with tears, tears that well and trickle, stinging his cheeks. “What have you
done to me?” he cried. “What did you do?”

But Fyodor is not able to answer—he looks forward, drawing Dazai’s gaze to Chuuya’s
menacing approach, the power of gravity burning in his fingertips. He’s close, now, only a
step away, and the rest of the people that Dazai does not want to look at surround him and
Fyodor, guns trained on the Russian. They’re all black shadows in Dazai’s vision. He does
not let them clear into people. They’re shadows, shadows, only, and he wants to be anywhere
but inside of their deathly ring.

Chuuya growls under his breath a singular, all-encompassing word that resonates with the
force of a million voices on the snowy hill. “Demon.”

Then his eyes flood with white, blotting out the existence of his irises. Snakes of glowing red
curl and twist along his arms, bursting into spirals along his skin. Corruption. Dazai hears the
word in his head, and it triggers something deep in his stomach, propelling adrenaline
through his body, warning him. Corruption is dangerous, corruption is something that Dazai
is supposed to stop.

Dazai struggles to his feet.

Chuuya is lifting his arm high in the air—there’s an ear-piercing squeal as his hand fills with
red, circular energy, flashing white-hot with light.

Fyodor is raising his chin, holding his hand out, to touch Chuuya.

Dazai knows what he can do, then, he knows and he’s leaping between them, screaming,
“Nooooo!” and frantically clawing at Chuuya’s red-burned arms, grasping one wrist between
both of his hands, holding on for dear life. He feels Fyodor’s fingers press between his
shoulder blades.

“Shit!” Chuuya barks. The blue of what Dazai remembers is his ability spreads over Chuuya,
washing away the Corruption. “Fuck, Dazai! What are you doing?”

It’s so strange to him, to hear his name on Chuuya’s lips—on anyone’s lips, other than
Fyodor’s. It brings back the memory of his last name, Osamu, and it burns in his head like
hot brands, searing out the feeling. He’s hollow, as hollow as the ability that nullifies
Chuuya’s, and it plunges through him like icicles.

“Don’t,” he whimpers, breathlessly, “don’t. Don’t.” He just needs everyone to be still, so he

can process this.

There’s another boy behind Chuuya, with his clothes poised and curling around him like
monstrous blades, shimmering red at the ends. Akutagawa. His grey eyes are wide, hair
strewn about his pale face, and it hurts to see him.

It hurts to see all of them. To see them trying to kill Fyodor.

He’s falling against Chuuya, who’s uttering curses and motioning to the others. “Fuck, fuck,
help me with him—Dazai! Dostoevsky, you bastard, stay where you are! Men! On him, now!
Nobody touch him, you hear me? Nobody touch the demon!”

“Don’t,” he hears himself crying hoarsely, “don’t, don’t do it, Chuuya, don’t hurt him,
please!”

“What the fuck happened to you?” Chuuya whispers, and Dazai’s heart twists painfully at the
agony he sees in the cerulean eyes. “Why are you dressed like that?” Chuuya’s gloves cup his
face, and they just remind him of Fyodor’s hands.

“Fedya,” he whines, turning and twisting in Chuuya’s grasp to look at the Russian.

Fyodor is surrounded by the black shadows, every gun barrel locked on him, every dark gaze
fixed on those deadly, gloved hands, raised so harmlessly in the air. Those hands that had
touched him so many times, and never killed him. Those hands that he had wished would end
him, and had only harmed and comforted instead.

“Fedya!”

Fyodor looks at him, streamers of inky black hair about his face, darkness in his expression.
Dazai knows what he sees, there, in Fyodor’s eyes. It’s nothing like emptiness, nothing like a
god. He has the gaze of a mother whose children are being torn from her arms, the face of a
boy whose kitten is being crushed under a boot, the anguish of a man losing the one thing he
allowed himself to love.

And Dazai feels it, in that moment. He feels loved, for the first time in his life.

Sobs break free from his chest, heaving in his throat and wracking his body. He reaches,
stretches for Fyodor, but arms take hold of him from behind, many of them, latching around
him, trapping him. He calls out, over and over, screaming the man’s name, his precious,
precious name, and keeping his eyes inside of Fyodor’s. He’s dragged backwards, bare feet
slipping in the trampled snow. He trips on one of his fallen crutches, nearly incapacitating
himself with agony as his injured feet spasm.

His numbed legs go limp. Someone is turning him in their arms, hauling him, babbling words
that he doesn’t understand. He wants Fyodor, he just wants Fyodor. Why are they taking
Fyodor away from him? Can’t they see what’s happened? Can’t they understand the love in
the man’s eyes?

Can’t they understand that he’s different now?

“Let go, let go of me!” he shrieks, sobbing and beating at the man holding him. “Let me go to
him! Fedya! Fedya!”

“Shhhhh, hey hey,” the man holding him tries, but his grip does not loosen, and Dazai’s feet
are cramping with the pain that’s unknowingly being caused by the struggle.

“You’re hurting me,” he sobs, “I c-can’t walk, I can’t—aaaahhg! Let go…”

His heart is pounding in his ears, deafening and fast. His eyes are burning with tears, his face
wet and freezing in the cold. His body is shaking so violently he can barely gasp for air.
There’s too many people, too much pain, too much going on. He wants Fyodor! Where is
Fyodor? He can’t even see him, he can’t even move. His vision is swirling with colors,
crackling with stars.

“You can’t what?” that familiar, harsh voice asks him, “Dazai, hey, stay with me, woah woah
woah—!”

Dazai feels his head tipping, his body falling backwards, arms trying to hold him but his
weight only bringing the other man with him. The grip slips, and Dazai wishes he could
move, but his eyes are rolling back, he’s paralyzed now, fading too quickly to understand
what’s happening. His back thuds against the fluffy ground, jarring the breath out of his
lungs.

The last thing he sees is the vision of the night above him, glimmering with the northern
lights, green and amethyst like the eyes of the Russian he loves, more than anything. More
than anything in the world.

Even with his memories returned to him.

Chapter End Notes

The rescue is heartbreaking and bittersweet--at least, that's what I was going for. What
did you feel about this chapter? Is it hard to decide when Fyodor apologized and shed
tears for the first time?

I sure hope so >:) not that I'm sadistic or anything-

Also I thought it was hilarious because my beta reader (who hasn't seen Bungo Stray
Dogs), commented on the passage in this chapter of Dazai recalling his memories:

"He hears gunshots in his memories, he tastes pain and feels hollow, he feels empty of
all emotion, a creature of horror and numb sadism, who killed without thought and cut
the pain out with knives in his skin. Who smiled and tested all who came close to the
pain, those who threatened to see through, and dismissed them with grins of empty joy."

My beta reader said: "i don't know the characters or the lore or the language by canon,
so i don't actually like the end of this sentence. like, false mirth is a thing, and a
complicated concept to unpack, but 'grins of empty joy' just doesn't sound right to me. is
'normal' dazai a complete sociopath? trauma makes him an emotionless killer who
pretends to be happy?"

So I sent him this: https://youtu.be/R7RFJCkmJgw

and this: https://youtu.be/ta5-hIPgyyc

And I was like "Yeah. Basically." ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

 Crumbling Self
Chapter Summary

Dazai doesn't know what to do with so many people in the room. Luckily, Chuuya is
there--he's just not velvet...

Chapter Notes

Your usual 3am, sir

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dazai rouses to the jostle of his aching body, throbbing with cold. He’s in someone’s arms,
pressed against a warm body, and he hears voices, far too many voices, clambering about in
his brain like prattling, angry hornets. He’s dizzy. The world is flying by him in colors.
Whoever is carrying him is walking very quickly, every step jarring pain through his weak
limbs.

He gasps for air, clawing at the man who is decidedly not Fyodor. Chuuya, he realizes.
Chuuya with the cerulean eyes whom he now remembers and wishes he didn’t. “Sl-
sloooww…slow down, please,” he croaks, “please, it hurts.”

Chuuya looks down at him with wide eyes, breathing labored. “You’re awake—shit, I’m
sorry, hang on. Just hold on to me, okay? I’ve got you. You’re safe. You’re fine. Just try to
relax.”

No he isn’t. He’s not safe at all, not with the people surrounding him, not without Fyodor
beside him.

They’re all shouting, following behind Chuuya like dark wraiths, clamoring for attention.
They’re calling his name and asking him questions, but he doesn’t want to listen to any of
them, not the tiger or the boy he abused in the Port Mafia, not the man who hurt him with
scalpels or the blonde who always yelled at him for being lazy. He hates them all, he hates
remembering who they are, who he was to them, he hates everything.

He just wants Fyodor. He wants to forget them all over again and only remember Fyodor.

Chuuya stops, bending over, and Dazai realizes he’s being put down on a bed. The mattress
isn’t very soft, not at all like Fyodor’s bed, and there’s only a dull yellow lamp to light the
room. And yes, it seems they’ve entered a room, a rather small room with horrible grey walls
and a cement floor.

As soon as Chuuya lets go, Dazai scampers back against the pillows, drawing his legs up
against his chest. The people surround him, a sea of drawn, furrow-browed faces. The blood
in his veins begins to freeze, it’s too hot in the room, the people are too close, everyone is too
loud, he can’t hear himself think. His breath wheezes, and Chuuya is ordering people around,
pushing them back.

Shouting, shouting, there’s too much shouting!

“Is he going to be okay?” Atsushi cries.

“Mister Dazai!” Akutagawa says, fighting Chuuya as the redhead attempts to push him back,
grey eyes wide and fixed on him in terror. “Tell me what he’s done to you! Tell me, and I will
do it all to him in return. Please, talk to me, Mister Dazai, please…tell me you’re alright.”

Dazai shivers helplessly on the bed, and cannot answer him. All he can do is stare, clutching
his legs and deliberately thinking of nothing. White, empty space. His ears are ringing.

Mori is standing off to the side with hands in his pockets, eyes scrolling over Dazai’s body,
making him feel exposed. Making him realize that he’s still naked under the sweater, and
that’s not something he should be, not here. Not outside of Fyodor’s house.

Dazai whimpers and grasps at the pillows, pulling them around himself, building a barricade.
He puts his hands over his ears to shut them out, until he can hear only the thrashing of his
heart. His fingers tingle, his toes curl, numb and blue from the snow.

“Stop,” he whines, but it’s hardly more than a whisper, his voice broken and hoarse from the
screaming.

There’s too many people, too many, too many! They’re crowding the room, suffocating him,
cornering him, yelling at him. He can’t bear it.

“EVERYBODY, SHUT UP!” Chuuya growls, and a shockwave of gravity knocks everyone
back, staggering.

Dazai curls up on the bed, clinging to the closest pillow and burying his face in it, stifling the
heaving breaths. He feels sick. He wants to vomit. He wants to die. Go away, go away, go
away! Give me Fedya back, I want Fedya!

Their voices clamor, directed at Chuuya now. Chuuya yells more, and Dazai squirms into the
pillows until they’re covering his head and his ears, blocking everything out. He screams into
them, desperately, just trying to make them stop, trying to make this awful dream end so he
can wake up inside of Fyodor’s arms.

“Get out! Everybody out, now. You’re fucking terrifying him!”

“Who gave you the right to order us around? I won’t leave Mister Dazai!”
“You will, or I’ll tear your head from your shoulders, you bastard!” The room shakes again.

Dazai feels tears choking him, sobs heaving in his chest.

His sobs are so loud and so wracking that he doesn’t realize when the room goes quiet,
doesn’t realize that his oxygen is running out and he can hardly breathe under the pillows.

A soft hand—a gloved hand—gentle and still, rests on top of his hair.

“Osamu.” It’s a soft voice, tender and kind, but it’s not velvet.

Dazai continues to sob, opening his eyes to the darkness, gazing at nothing through his blurry
tears. But he’s listening. The name still doesn't sound like it belongs to him, not when he's
only been Dazai or Sinner for so long.

“Hey…it’s alright now. They’re all gone. You can come out.”

Shaking, gasping, Dazai just barely lifts his eyes over the pillow, turning his face enough to
see Chuuya. He says nothing, unable to form the sentences he needs in his mind—not when
Chuuya’s face is so pale, when his eyes are so dark with concern.

“Shit,” he whispers, as if just seeing him for the first time, “you’ve lost so much weight.”

“Don’t look at me!” Dazai wails, curling his legs against the pillows. He squeezes his eyes
shut and hitches. “Don’t look…”

“Woah, I’m sorry—hey, hey, alright, I won’t. It’s okay. You remember me, right? You
remember who I am, who everyone is?”

“I didn’t want to remember!”

An unsteady pause ensues, in which Dazai’s stomach attempts to eat itself from the inside
out.

“Look, I don’t know what that bastard did to you in that house, but I swear—” Chuuya’s
voice wavers, it breaks, and he forces it onwards, “—I’m gonna fucking fix you, you hear
me? I’m gonna take care of you, and protect you from that demon.”

Dazai squeezes the pillow with all his might, clawing into the pillowcase, and shakes his
head. He doesn’t want to be fixed! He wants to go back to Fyodor, Fyodor can fix him,
Fyodor can take care of him and protect him, not Chuuya. Chuuya is his past, Fyodor is his
future.

It’s too hot in the room. Too hot, sweltering. He can’t breathe in his clothes. He wants them
off.

“No?” Chuuya asks, “What the hell do you mean? What the hell are you shaking your head
for?”

“I want Fedya!”
“Fedya?” The hand leaves his head, and Dazai misses it, because it feels like Fyodor’s.
“What the fuck is that? A nickname?”

He’s angry. Dazai can hear it in his tone, and it makes him terrified. He shrinks away,
sobbing, wishing he could sink into the mattress and hide there, where nobody could find
him.

“No no, wait, I’m sorry. Hey, I’m sorry.” Chuuya’s voice softens. “Look, it’s okay, Dazai, I
understand you’re in a lot of pain. You’re not really in your right mind, and it’s stupid of me
to yell at you. I’ve just…I’ve never seen you like this before.”

Dazai doesn’t want to think about that, about how humiliated he feels when he remembers
what he was like before. It barely makes sense what he’s saying now, and the feelings
collapse in his chest like cards being knocked down.

“Listen, I’m going to get Mori in here to check how much damage has been done, alright?
And you don’t have to be scared, I’ll make sure there’s someone watching so he doesn’t take
liberties with you. Yeah?” Chuuya touches his head again, and Dazai’s breath hitches weakly.
“Sound good?”

No it doesn’t, not at all. Dazai doesn’t want anyone examining him, especially not Mori,
because he knows everything that’s wrong with his body, he just can’t tell Chuuya with
words.

His arms are throbbing, his torso under the sweater is burning with the cuts he’d made. He
doesn’t want those to be seen—they’re not for anyone but Fyodor.

Dazai shakes his head, harder than last time, afraid to look up at Chuuya in case he gets angry
again.

“Hey,” Chuuya soothes, crouching beside the bed, until there’s nowhere Dazai can look but
straight into his eyes. “I wish I could have Yosano give you a look, but she’s not here, and
we’ve got nobody else. There was a limited amount of people we could take with us, or
Dostoevsky would have found out about it.”

Dostoevsky. That’s Fyodor. He realizes it with an electric jolt. “What did you do to him?”
Dazai rasps, “Where is he? I want to see him. I want to see Fedya.”

Chuuya sighs, and the cloud hangs heavy in his eyes as his fingers sift through Dazai’s hair.
He briefly glances away, at the wall behind Dazai. “I’m sorry, Osamu. I’ll tell you about it
when you’re better. For now, rest, okay? Rest, and we’ll put you under and get you all fixed
up.”

Dazai goes silent, defeated, lost for anything else to say, staring dully at Chuuya. He’s not
going to let him see Fyodor. Why? Why would he be so cruel? The gloved hand strokes his
face, but he’s so overheated that it only feels icky and clammy there. “Hot,” he whispers, “it’s
too hot…”

“Yeah, I’ll get some air going in here. It must be a shock from the outside cold. Sorry.”
Chuuya seems sad, and it hurts Dazai. It hurts too much to understand, clawing at his chest
until it opens and spills. Chuuya keeps apologizing, but none of this is his fault, if Dazai
remembers. No, this is all Dazai’s fault—Dazai is the one who left without Chuuya, who
went into the café and met Fyodor and made the deal with him, the deal that led to the
drugging, the kidnapping, waking up in Fyodor’s house, bound and in agony.

“I’m sorry, Chuuya,” he gasps, pain in his throat nearly hindering his voice, “I didn’t mean
to. I didn’t mean to.”

Chuuya’s brows furrow with sympathy, and he exhales through his nose, a more determined
expression fitting across his features. It’s so fascinating to Dazai, to see someone who
displays emotions so freely on his face, no matter what they are. He thinks that’s what he
liked so much about Chuuya, in the past. Being around him felt like he understood emotion.

“It’s not your fault,” Chuuya says. “You’re not the one who failed. I just didn’t come after
you quickly enough.” Chuuya rises, coat fluttering, and Dazai’s chest tightens.

“Rest, Dazai,” Chuuya tells him gently, giving him one last cerulean-eyed look, before he
whirls away.

Chuuya has been operating within a blank, formless space ever since he’d seen Fyodor and
Dazai on the hill. Dazai had been in Fyodor’s arms, like the bride of Death himself, his legs
and feet cruelly bare to the frigid temperature, his arms locked about Fyodor’s neck. He’d hid
behind Fyodor like a frightened child, hid from him, from all of the friends that had come to
save him, as if they were the intruders.

Volkov had led them to the Russian’s house as promised, once Chuuya and Akutagawa had
shown him their abilities, then Mori, Fukuzawa, even Kunikida and Atsushi, until the man
was convinced that they could stand against Dostoevsky. But when they’d arrived, the house
was empty, the lights were off, and for a long moment he had feared they’d gone, and he’d
almost lost his temper with Volkov.

He’d almost ripped his heart out.

But the man had pointed out tracks in the snow, tracks that were careless and that no one had
bothered to cover behind them, so much so that Chuuya had been wary of a trap.

And then there was only the two of them on that snowy hill, watching the northern lights like
a starry-eyed couple.

Volkov had explained how his ability worked, before they’d left to hunt down the Russian
demon. His ability was only in effect until the moment the victim saw a key person from their
past, after which every memory blocked would return in full force. The only exception to
this, of course, was that the person remotely in control of the ability—that is, those whose
eyes emitted Volkov’s memory blocking—could not be a trigger for the return of memories,
no matter if they were known by the victim previously or not.

The ability had an expiration date, during which the user would have to come into contact
with Volkov once more to reactivate the memory effect, every two months. Volkov had
accurately recounted every meeting with Fyodor, whether outside the house or—as it so
happened, once—inside of Fyodor’s house, while Dazai was nowhere in sight.

Volkov had also told them that Fyodor had left the house—for exactly how long, he hadn’t
known, but he’d been instructed to purchase the bundle of goods that had ultimately led
Ranpo to his location, and it had been around twenty or so days’-worth. Volkov, being one of
his only trusted contacts and the source of the remote ability, had been told by Fyodor that
he’d wanted to test Dazai, to see if he would recall anything while he was gone.

The sick fuck. Chuuya aches to get his hands on him, to wring the answers and the life from
his slender little neck.

He'd planned to unleash Corruption, to swarm in, knowing that Dazai would remember him,
hoping that it would be enough to bring Dazai back to himself, back to fight.

And Dazai had stopped him. Begged for Fyodor’s life. Screamed his name over and over
again, fighting everyone who had tried to pull him back. It had been hell just seeing him that
way, lost, reaching out for the demon who had broken him.

Chuuya had hardly realized the full chain of events that had happened, not until he was
walking from Dazai’s room in the underground safehouse.

He nearly collapses in the hall, one hand on the wall, breaths rushing in and out of him. He
slides down, down to his knees, and blinks rapidly.

What the fuck had just happened, anyway? Dazai’s here in the safehouse. He’s secure,
Chuuya actually managed to save him, he’s accomplished his goal. But what has he saved?
Dazai is not Dazai at all, Dazai is another broken creature entirely, in a way he’s never seen
before in all their years together. Half-naked, shivering, barely walking.

Fyodor’s scent all over him.

Akutagawa finds him in the hall, rushes over to him in the dimness, his voice congested like
he’s been crying. “Mister Nakahara.” He struggles with Chuuya’s arm in his grip, trying to
help him up.

Chuuya stands, albeit shakily, staring at some unseen spot ahead of them. “Is that even Dazai
we found, Akutagawa? Is it? Tell me, did you fucking recognize him?”

Akutagawa’s eyes are red-rimmed, when he can finally look at the boy, and he almost
reflexively touches his face, rubbing a thumb under it. “You’ve been crying,” he murmurs.
 Akutagawa jerks away, breath catching in his throat, and pulls the collar of his coat a little
closer to his face. “No,” he rasps.

“Don’t fucking lie to me,” Chuuya says, weary of everything.

Akutagawa lowers his face, brows furrowed. He fidgets with nail-bitten fingers.

“Where’s Dostoevsky?” Chuuya demands. “Where’ve they put him?”

“In the lower level. The soundproof room,” Akutagawa mutters. “They managed to get him
in the straitjacket, only five men dead.”

“Five?” Chuuya barks. He runs a hand through his hair, pulling off the hat, crushing it in his
grip. “Fuck. Fuck!”

“He was furious, Chuuya,” Akutagawa whispers, looking up at him from under his lashes.
“You should have seen it.

Chuuya fits the hat back on his head, eyeing the boy. His fingers tingle and fill with heat as
he imagines the things he’s going to do to that Russian. “He’s going to suffer. I’m going to rip
him apart.”

“I want to come.”

Chuuya hesitates. Akutagawa stares at him, grave and silent. “You can’t come,” he says,
finally, “as much as I’d like you to. Not this time. I want you to go for Mori. Tell him to bring
sedatives to put Dazai under while he examines him, and stay in the room while he does it.”

“I don’t want to watch that damned creep examine Dazai.”

“Well you will, because you’re the only one I trust to do what’s necessary if Mori crosses any
lines.”

Akutagawa scowls at the ground, and Chuuya can hear the distant mutter of voices in another
room. “Fine.”

“That a boy.”

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter--Fyodor's POV

(BUCKLE UP KIDDOS)
I also have people making fanart for Sinner now?? and like I just wanna say, any and all
fanart is welcome so long as you FUCKING SEND IT TO ME ;-; OMG like this makes
me so happy. SO HAPPY! I will hopefully be posting either the art itself after the last
chapter or at least links to it, if Ao3 doesn't want to let me post images without a hassle.
So fanart is encouraged and will be properly showcased by your ecstatic author-san!!!

...did I really just say author-san

 Fyodor Dostoevsky
Chapter Summary

Fyodor's past is a cruel one...but he doesn't hold it against them.

Chapter Notes

hi yes hello content warning ⚠

This is a completely original backstory (aside from canon references obviously lol) for
Fyodor that all came sprawling out one day. 8) I hope you enjoy it and I sure hope the
manga hasn't made reveals to his backstory that weren't in the anime because that would
be annoying. I like to be as canon as humanly possible. :P lmao

Anyways, enjoy!!

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Fyodor never meant for it to happen.

He’s used to having control over things in his body, every nerve ending, every shift of
muscle, every heartbeat.

What the heat means, he does not know. All he knows is that it was Dazai who brought it.

Dazai, Dazai. The frail, bandaged, wisp of a human who used to be as soulless as Fyodor.

Was it Fyodor, who grew the soul in him? Or did he cultivate something that already existed?

Why are there so many things he does not know? He used to know everything.

As Fyodor rests, bound in a suffocating straitjacket and chained down to a chair in the
darkness of a soundproof chamber, he reflects. On everything he’s become, the ways he’s
twisted himself out of shape on account of the bandaged boy.

Is he even Fyodor Dostoevsky anymore? That god, that cruel, hollow god, seems so far from
him now. Maybe he was never a god: this much, he doubts. But for a good portion of his life,
he’d managed to convince himself otherwise.

It had started when he was very young—how young he does not remember anymore.
His mother had been a cold, brutal woman who’d hated everything Fyodor was—because he
was a child, and she’d never wanted children. Why even have him, Fyodor had always
wondered, if that was the case?

But, ah, it was a useless subject to pine over. He was simply a divine mistake.

His father had been obsessed with the concepts of crime and punishment, using the smallest
of infractions to unleash disproportionate reprimands. Fyodor had held nothing against him
for it. He’d had something he believed in, and Fyodor had been a frail being at the time,
useful as an outlet for the man’s moralities. He’d been beaten more times than he could
count, deeply enough to leave ugly scars on his back and arms. They were the traces of
broken bones that had snapped and healed again, only to be snapped a second time, a third, a
fourth, tearing skin in its wake. There was a long, jagged mark up the back of his right leg,
where his father had driven a hatchet into him and dragged it as he’d tried to crawl away.
Fyodor’s skin, the very sight of it, was disgusting to him and unbefitting of a god.

So he’d never shown it to anyone.

The day he’d touched his father was the day he’d learned of his ability. Neither of his parents
had been touched by him before, and whether they’d known of his gift or not, Fyodor did not
know. His father and mother had touched him plenty of times, had manhandled him and hit
him with their hands, but Fyodor had never touched them in return, until that day in the
stables.

He’d gone there to hide, bleeding and blue-veined, dizzy with agony and too blank to think.
He’d been curled in the hay, trying to make it stop—the crimson flowing out of him—before
it was too much, before he died. Anemics did not have the luxury of bleeding, after all. He
would die if he did not wrap his wounds.

His father had kicked down the door and everything had flashed quickly before his eyes, like
a sparkle of white lightning.

His father had reached for him. Fyodor had reached back, seizing him in a tiny fist with all of
his might.

Blood—not his blood—had burst from the contact, splattering across his face, his body, his
hair.

His father was dead and gone in mere seconds, and Fyodor had stared at his hands for hours
in shock and wonder. He’d stopped the bleeding with the torn-off fabric of his father’s shirt.

He’d touched the horse in the first stall as an experiment. The animal, just like his father, had
squealed and huffed, a slice through its neck to the very bone, and had toppled against the
stable wall, thrashing and kicking until it died, too.

His mother had been mortified, but she’d tried to hurt Fyodor; so Fyodor disposed of her
next. He did not need her. She had done nothing for him. She had done nothing a mother was
supposed to do.
The village kicked him out. Fyodor had spent weeks and weeks in the snow, in the forest,
near death. Those frigid days in the darkness of the night, he’d told himself that he was no
human like them. He had not the emotions that they did, he felt nothing and cared nothing for
other humans, like they did. He’d cared for nothing at all but surviving the taciturnity of
humans and nature around him. That was how it had always been.

And so he had figured himself a god. For that was what he must have been, with the gift he’d
been given: the ability to choose who should live, and who should die. The very essence of
his gift was the concept his father had drove so hard into him: crime and punishment. So that
was what he’d called it. Crime and Punishment.

He had come back to the village when he’d grown a little in the woods, surviving on the
animals and scraps he’d come upon, sometimes the very bark of frozen trees, when there was
nothing else. The village people had tossed many things to the wild dogs, and Fyodor had
often stolen from this.

He was stronger when he was older, and his gift was, too. So he’d gone throughout the
village, touching them all, each and every one, until they’d lied in bloody heaps all about,
their crimson life leaking out into the snow.

He’d declared himself god of the village. He’d picked the very nicest house, away from their
decaying, ugly bodies, and had made himself a home there, alone.

Nobody had ever told him where he’d come from, if his mother had even given birth to him.
And he had not thought so, not when she was so unlike the other mothers in the village, who
doted on their children and kissed their pink cheeks.

He’d killed those children beside their mothers, simply by touching their foreheads.

Should he have been regretful of it? He hadn’t known, then.

He hardly knows, now.

He’d passed many years alone in that village, long enough that the bodies had returned to the
dust they’d come from or been eaten by wild animals. Fyodor had grown tired of the silence;
he’d run out of food from the grain houses and pantries.

So he’d moved on to another village, further north. He had been a young man at that time,
very young, and they had accepted him with wary eyes into their communes, unknowing of
his godhood or his power over their souls.

But Fyodor had not been interested in punishing anyone else, then, not when they had done
nothing to sin against him.

Eventually he’d acquired a house, and studied the people around him, and had done his best
to live like them, talk like them, mimic their expressions. But the things they’d seemed to feel
he could not feel, and the people did not like that about him.
He was alienated, but of course he’d never held that against them, either—no god was
welcomed in his own country, after all. And that’s what he’d told himself, whenever they
abandoned him. He was a god, that was all, a horribly unfortunate god, whom no human
would ever understand.

Then one day, an animal had come to his doorstep.

Whining and pitiful in the night, full of matted brown fur and pleading, soft eyes, Fyodor had
let the little dog in out of the cold. He’d fed it salted beef from his pantry and watched it with
curiosity. He’d let it curl up on a blanket from his bed, a blanket he’d meticulously coiled for
it as it sat nearby.

He’d given it water from his tap every day, careful not to let it freeze over in the nights.
Fyodor liked the cold, he’d always been accustomed to it, to wearing many layers to protect
his body. But the dog had not seemed to like it, so he’d done his best to keep the coiled
blanket tucked into the corner where it was warmer.

He’d had the dog for seven days.

On the seventh day, he’d been sitting in a chair by the fireplace, studying a Japanese book. It
had been as simple as any other death, really, though it had affected him considerably more.
Perhaps because it was not what he’d intended to happen, this time.

The dog had padded up to him, wagging its tail and reaching towards his hand with a little
wet nose.

Fyodor had unthinkingly reached to pet him on the head, curious what the brown fur felt like.

There had been a pitiful, ear-piercing yelp, and then there was nothing but mangled, bleeding
flesh in his hand.

He had stared at it for a long while, that tiny body on his floor. He’d stared at it all night, until
the sun had risen the next day.

Then he’d risen from his chair, put down his book, and had gone to the sink to wash the gore
from his hands.

He’d buried the innocent creature just outside his bedroom window. Every time he’d looked
at his bare hands after, he’d remembered its death.

There had been more accidents following that, each one more and more numbing to him.

In an aisle beside a little girl in pink, he’d been reaching for something on the store shelf, and
she’d tugged on his coat and asked to be lifted to reach a condiment for her mother.

Fyodor had not thought, and had lifted her in his hands.

She had turned to black-cherry gore in his grip, just like the dog. He had not meant to. Not at
all.
He’d left the store before her mother had come back, and had sat in his chair for hours,
staring at the empty fireplace. Seeing the image of her in his hands before she’d gone, over
and over and over in his head. The dark smear of her organs on the shelves.

Sometimes in the night, he’d hear the splatter of her body hitting the floor, and would jostle
awake to realize it was only the memory.

There had been others, still, those he’d tried to call his friends.

He’d begun wearing gloves, to remind himself what he was, what he could do. But the
accidents had continued to happen.

There was a boy he’d grown quite accustomed to seeing, a young man with kind, green eyes,
who had often sat at his table for meals with him. He’d been one of the only people that
hadn’t judged him for not feeling, and understood more than anyone else.

But he had embraced Fyodor one night by the fireplace.

Fyodor had been startled, unaware what the touch meant, pushing him away. So, his
companion had gone, too, in another gruesome heap on his floor.

Fyodor had buried him next to the dog.

Some of the villagers had seen him with the mangled body. But he had not cared, and he had
not minded when they’d banished him, like the last village. He had not come back to punish
them as he had the first.

This time he’d retreated, to the house where he’d lived thereafter, far away from the village in
the forest that encompassed it. He’d been alone, but not lonely, for he had not known what
loneliness felt like. But he’d been empty. So very empty. The innocents he had ruined had
come back to him in his dreams, and he’d wished he’d had their bodies properly buried with
him, instead of down in the village where they did not belong.

There had been a blur of years in which he’d created the Rats in the House of the Dead, to
give himself a motive and a purpose. To erase the sin of ability users from the earth. Within
those years, he had met the one man he could not kill.

Dazai Osamu, of the Port Mafia.

He was an ability nullifier—and by this time, Fyodor had hunted abilities of all sorts and
colors and shapes, and had never considered a boy like that could exist. And so beautiful a
boy he was, wound in bandages, carrying death in his gaze, a mimicked smile on his lips.

He’d been just like Fyodor, emotionless and hollow, and he’d felt it from the first day he’d
looked into the man’s eyes. In a black coat and suit, their objectives had clashed, and Fyodor
had touched a being for the first time without killing him.

It was in an alley, the dark streets of Yokohama—a city Fyodor had been lurking in for his
operations. Fyodor had taken hold of his shoulder to dispose of him. There had been blue
waves, a cool sensation on his gloved hand, and the numb realization that his power had been
returned to his body, harmless and unreleased.

“Ah…” Fyodor had breathed, and the boy smiled at him, one eye twinkling, the other
covered by bandages, “a nullification ability, is it?”

“That’s right.”

After everything, after the conflicts with the Armed Detective Agency in the following years,
when Fyodor had infiltrated the guild to gain Dazai’s attention once more, he’d been led to
the meeting in the café. In Russia. When Dazai had tried to strike a deal with him, a very
clever deal, and Fyodor had pretended to be deceived.

Dazai had offered to re-join Fyodor in his eradication of ability users. “We failed the first
time,” he’d said, “only because my partner brought me back to life. I have always wished for
death. When you killed me the first time, I was free. I want that again. I want to die, for
something greater than myself. Something that will bring life to the rest of the world.”

It might have convinced Fyodor, too, if it hadn’t been for the capsule he’d known Dazai had
in his teeth the day he’d been stabbed. The capsule with the antidote for Shibusawa’s poison.
Dazai would never work for him, not unless Fyodor did something drastic to change it.

But he hadn’t been interested in making Dazai work for him. He had already failed once too
many times in exterminating the ability-users of the world. It had been high time for him to
possess and twist their benefits, instead. If he could not cleanse the world of its sin with the
Book, he’d simply make his own reality to live apart from them forever.

And he would have No Longer Human by his side to make certain it remained that way.

He had taken Dazai selfishly, telling himself it was for his new cause. In some part, maybe it
had been. On the other hand, he hadn’t known what else to do with the precious object, the
one thing that would not die when he touched it. He’d wanted it. He’d wanted to keep it.

Dazai had not expected or been able to predict Fyodor’s motive. It had been too unlike him,
to the point that it’d even bewildered his own mind. Fyodor himself could never have
predicted it, so Dazai had been at a greater disadvantage.

That was why it had been so easy. Since Dazai had offered up his life to Fyodor—or such had
been the role he’d played—he had come willingly to Fyodor’s house. Fyodor had thought it
might have been better if he’d chosen a separate place than his own home, masquerading it
for the sake of security, but he’d had no particular attachment to the place. It had simply been
the best option, secluded and off-grid as it was. His friends would not have found him there,
if it hadn’t been for Fyodor’s foolishness.

He’d always underestimated the devotion of humans to their friends.

He’d had a database of all the ability users near and far—at least, the ones he’d been able to
locate. When he’d brought Dazai, he’d already set his plan. He’d hired the only type of
ability user that could have effect on the boy, one who activated it through the use of another.
Artyom Volkov had been a gruff man of little words. But he’d been easy enough. In it for the
money, quiet for the sake of his wife and child, he’d feared Fyodor as much as the rest of the
villagers had, the god who killed with a touch. He’d possessed no pity for the Japanese
stranger whose memory he would blot out.

Fyodor had gone to see Artyom after the first day he’d let Dazai into his home. Dazai had not
left, of course, because Dazai had been charged with playing the role of colleague, and had
practically bound himself to Fyodor’s will. This alone had been enough to seal his fate, and
when Fyodor had returned with Volkov’s ability tied to his eyes, he had realized his
predicament too late.

Stabbing Dazai had been the easy part. He’d done it without warning, catching the man up
against him—a thing done with steeled nerves—and burying the five-inch blade into his left
underside. It had been for the purpose of incapacitating him alone, so he couldn’t escape the
house.

The hard part had been making Dazai look him in the eyes.

He’d let Dazai bleed out enough that he’d been weakened severely, then he’d dragged him
into the living room and chained him to the stone cropping of the fireplace he’d never used.
He’d sat in front of the man for days on end, tormenting him with words, refusing to let him
have food or water or sleep until he’d opened his eyes and stared into Fyodor’s.

Eventually, when Dazai had given up, when the pain of starvation had been too much for him
to strive for the mercy of death any longer—knowing that Fyodor would give him enough to
make him live—he had looked at Fyodor and had let his memories slowly melt away. Only
then had Fyodor let him out of the chains.

In the early days of Dazai’s captivity, when the bandaged human had fiercely rejected him,
struggled to remain aware of who he was and his own reality, Fyodor had considered
disposing of him, so bothersome was his fight. Volkov’s ability had worked quickly, but not
quickly enough to drown out twenty-two years in a day. Months went by, and still Dazai
would recall things—cerulean, the white tiger, the memory of a friend’s death he had tried to
stop. A letter, half of a name, the texture of someone’s hat between his fingers. He would go
mad trying to remind himself of it. Fyodor had often pinned him down, forcing his eyes open
until the ability had infected the pieces that remained.

It had been those times that he’d thought most of killing Dazai, instead of struggling so much
to tame him.

But the thought of getting rid of the one being he could touch—it had pained him. There was
nothing else he knew to do with the gift that had given itself to him. So he’d begun afresh,
experimenting and tampering with Dazai’s emotions, his mental landscape. He’d wondered if
the boy would feel things, if he could feel things, if Fyodor tried hard enough to create those
feelings. And if he could, would it mean that Fyodor could, too?

If Volkov’s ability could clean Dazai’s slate of the man he’d been before Fyodor, could not a
god rewrite his persona to be that of a creature with emotion?
He’d wondered, also, what the bandages were for and what lay beneath them. The thoughts
that had resurfaced when he’d looked at the mangled skin, so much like his own…it had
bonded him to the boy, perhaps unhealthily.

It had taken so long, so much energy and strategy, before Dazai had experienced a feeling for
the first time. From then on, Fyodor imagined it must have been a very sluggish process, that
warmth that had grown inside his own soul. The boy was his солнышко, his little sun,
burning even while he hung so close to death in Fyodor’s hands.

It had tingled sometimes when he’d watched the boy sleeping in his bed, the gentle rise and
fall of his chest, the looseness and peace on his face. When he’d hurt the boy, though, it had
grown the most, spreading inside of him, filling him with life he’d never had. Touching
someone, wounding them without killing them, like his parents or any other human had
wounded Fyodor, was like divine repayment. On the universe, perhaps, for treating him so
coldly, or the people that inhabited it. Dazai was the representation of all those people.

Volkov’s ability and the repeated use of it had caused a few unforeseen aftereffects in Dazai’s
mindscape. Sometimes he’d forgotten things Fyodor had wanted him to remember, moments
between them, or had suffered momentary blackouts of memory or time. Combined with
Fyodor’s conditioning to convince the man he was trapped inside of Fyodor’s own reality
without time or space, it had created a bit more damage than he’d originally meant it to.

At times he’d been unnecessarily cruel, toying with this side effect. The worser he’d been to
Dazai, the more it had encouraged the stirrings in his chest.

So he’d intentionally bought mismatched pairs of meals when he’d away gone to test the
memory ability’s survival, knowing Dazai would count them. He’d drawn a picture on the
notebook paper the day he’d returned, Dazai’s frequent word please scrawled across it, and
had accused the boy of making it himself.

He’d still found it curious that Dazai hadn’t accepted that he’d made it. Fyodor’s forgery of
his handwriting had been flawless. And he was certain Dazai was aware that there were other
things he hadn’t remembered, other things Fyodor had done to him. It hadn’t always been the
result of Volkov’s ability. At times, they’d simply been things Dazai’s own mind had pushed
out.

Eventually the hurting had not been enough. Dazai’s emotions had not been enough. There
had been more inside of him, more warmth, more color, budding and confusing him with
their luster. He’d wanted different things for Dazai, he’d wanted to feel and to understand
what feeling meant in his own soul, and that was not at all like a god should think, he’d
known.

He’d known, and yet he’d continued to reach for it, to seek the sparks of light when Dazai
had clung to him or sobbed in his arms, or let Fyodor do to him the things he’d only seen
others do with their feelings.

On that day, when Dazai had been at the door, when Fyodor had stepped out to check the
perimeter for intruders…that day, he had felt more. More than warmth. He’d felt searing, hot
color. He’d felt anger, fully-realized anger, and he’d acted upon it without restraint.
He’d nearly killed Dazai because of that first feeling.

But the burn had faded when Dazai had lost consciousness. Fyodor had cleaned the knife and
placed it back in the drawer. He’d sopped up the blood under the table until only a stain was
left. He’d left the forks; he’d not bothered to right the fallen chair.

He’d left the room and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, at the violet eyes he’d
infected with Volkov’s ability. At the colors he’d found, swirling inside of them. The new
colors.

Later, he’d heard Dazai screaming in the kitchen. When the boy had explained—ah, what a
thing. What a thing it had been, to hear the words that shook free from the boy’s throat. “I
wasn’t trying to run away.”

Why had it meant so much to him, those words? The mystery of it still troubles him. He did
not want to be alone. He did not want his little sun to leave; he would freeze to death without
it.

After hearing them, he’d been unable to return to who he’d been before. He’d not thought to
hurt Dazai again. Instead, he’d wanted to do other things…warmer things. Touching. Kissing.
Strange things that had meant nothing to Fyodor before, when he’d forced them on Dazai.

The kiss in the kitchen had opened the hollowness of his chest, it had poured syrup made of
sugar in his ribcage, until Fyodor was full of it. Until Fyodor had brimmed with it, had
wanted to do something with it. How to explain? There was no way to explain.

It was good, and it was soft, and it did not dissolve into gore when he touched it.

And now, they are here.

But Fyodor doesn’t want to think about the events that got them here. Fyodor had been
foolish. He’d let his guard down, he’d lost himself in the things Dazai was generating in him,
and had gotten them imprisoned.

How empty he feels without the boy in his arms. How empty and lost.

The door to the chamber opens with a squeal of metal, and Fyodor’s gaze locks on the black
figure in the threshold. Without the lights, without the sound of a voice, he knows
immediately who it is.

Chuuya’s silhouette enters the room with measured, calm steps, slamming the door behind
him. But he is not calm, not in the least. Fyodor can hear the labor of his breath, the squeak of
fisted leather gloves. He’s enraged, enough to make Fyodor’s lips tug towards a smile.

Fyodor is quiet when the light flicks on, a bright, white one that casts dark shadows across
Chuuya’s features. Fyodor’s quiet when the boy approaches his chair with every muscle
bunched, every inch of his face itching for a snarl.

Fyodor likes how much emotion seeps from the boy’s presence, shuddering in droves of
brilliant energy. He’s a lightbulb that feeds on itself, with no need for outsourced electricity.
Chuuya puts a boot on the chair, between the little space where Fyodor’s legs are parted,
metal around his ankles keeping it that way.

Fyodor glances down at it.

Leaning forward over his knee and propping an arm, Chuuya lets the snarl loose across his
lips. “Dostoevsky, you are a very unlucky man,” he hisses, and there’s gravel in his voice.

It’s a very dramatic, novel-worthy entrance. Fyodor raises his brows, the corners of his lips
tugging further. This close, Chuuya’s eyes shine in the light, vivid, sapphire blue—no…
cerulean. That was how Dazai described them.

“Ah,” he murmurs, connecting the dots in his head. “So yours are the blue eyes that he
missed.”

Chuuya’s chest rises and falls, every sense trained on him. He’s a fixated listener. Fyodor
enjoys that.

“He spoke of you often, in the beginning.” Fyodor remembers the screaming, the nightmares,
the tears when the boy woke and the pleading for blue, blue, how Dazai wanted to remember
the blue. “I worked many nights on him to make him forget, even with the ability. But Volkov
brought you to me, so you know, do you not? It is no wonder you were the one that broke the
spell. Your memory was the strongest with him.”

There’s red buzzing at Chuuya’s fingertips. It hisses and curls, pulsing with Chuuya’s careful
breaths. His eyes are flat—intentionally hollowed-out. Fyodor knows the difference between
feigned emptiness and true emptiness. “I would have killed you on that hill,” he says between
clenched teeth, so quietly that it carries every ounce of wrath he refuses to exhibit. It’s a
bubble of color, a swollen balloon.

Fyodor wants to poke it until it bursts.

“Then it is a pity that Dazai stopped you. I might have died a free man.”

“You will die a prisoner, like you deserve. The same way you tried to kill Dazai.”

This does not sit kindly with Fyodor. How he hates being misunderstood, misjudged,
misrepresented. “My intention was not what you assume.”

Chuuya’s fingers curl into a fist. His lip twitches, his jaw shifts. “What the fuck does that
mean?” There’s a hoarse edge to his tone.

Soon. Soon, enough, he will burst. Fyodor can play the waiting game. “I did not take Dazai to
kill him, or he would have been dead already.”

Chuuya continues to stare down at him, rigid, feigning laziness in his posture. He’s very bad
at it. “What did you take him for, then? A house pet? A roommate, perhaps? Or do Russians
prefer punching bags that weep and beg for mercy?”

His voice is getting rougher by the second.

Fyodor forces out a grin, the kind he’d learned to imitate. “A playmate.”

Chuuya inhales, and Fyodor predicts the next moment, but doesn’t dodge it. The boy punches
him in the face, throwing his head sideways with enough force to leave a throbbing bruise in
its wake.

Chuuya pulls himself back into position, adjusting his glove, swallowing. “Go on.”

It’s been so long since he’s been hit. Chuuya is fortunate Fyodor’s in a straitjacket.

Fyodor turns his head slowly, twisting his neck to work out the pain, and looks under his
lashes at Chuuya. “How much do you wish to know?”

Chuuya’s fist tightens, and his muscles tense as if he’s going to hit Fyodor again.
“Everything,” he grits. “You’ll tell me fucking everything.”

“Then I suggest you stay your hand.”

“Oh, you’d like to think you’re the one in charge, here, wouldn’t you?”

Fyodor studies him, internally amused, outwardly blank. Isn’t it obvious? Chuuya is the one
with emotions.

“I know people like you, Dostoevsky. I know how you think.”

A common mistake. “You must mean Dazai.”

Chuuya snatches him by the first strap of the straitjacket, yanking him close enough to see
the depths of those cerulean eyes. “Say his name again and I’ll crush your throat,” he snarls,
so vehement that his voice comes out raw.

It’s a nice thought, but not a logical option. “Well. Do you expect me to tell you everything
like that?”

“Bastard!” Chuuya’s hand trembles.

“Dazai is not like me. Treat me as such and you will find the result lacking.”

“Don’t speak to me in riddles, demon.”

“I prefer god, if you must use names.”

A sound of animosity rips from Chuuya’s throat, and he throws Fyodor back against the
chair. He raises his fist, punching Fyodor once, twice, three times, four, then again and again
until Fyodor is not interested in counting. The stars pop and crackle in his vision. He adjusts
somewhat to the rhythm of it, until it’s more soothing than painful. Back and forth, this way
and that. He entertains himself with the thought of reaching to touch Chuuya, watching the
redhead clench up and spurt with red sludge.
When it ends, his face feels numb. There’s a trickle of warmth inching down his brow. That’s
going to be a bother with no hands to wipe it.

“Are you finished?” he asks the boy, who’s breathing as hard as Fyodor should be, right now.
But Fyodor is very good at regulating his breathing.

Chuuya, teeth bared and brows crunched over flaming eyes, looks like he’ll start again, but
Fyodor thinks he’s too interested in answers. Or has he come to try and break Fyodor? He’s
not sure which is more important to the redhead just yet.

“What the hell did you do to him? Why does he call you Fedya? Why does he ask to see
you?”

It’s the wrong thing to ask, if Chuuya wishes to remain in charge of the conversation.
Fyodor’s chest tingles—with the distinctive warmth. “He asked to see me?” he says,
carefully. Maybe it’s a trap question, meant to prod that place in Fyodor. But he doesn’t think
Chuuya’s smart enough to have figured that out.

“Answer me!” Chuuya demands, far too loudly.

Fyodor half closes one eye, glaring at him. His face is beginning to ache. His mouth is numb.
“If I tell you what I did to him, you will not make it through ten seconds before you lose your
temper.”

“I don’t care,” Chuuya spits, clawing a handful of Fyodor’s hair and wrenching his head
close. “You’ll tell me, anyways!”

“I made him feel,” Fyodor hisses, oversimplifying it. He doesn’t fancy explaining himself to
someone who would never understand.

Something like an intrusive thought peels through Fyodor’s consciousness. Dazai. He wants
to see Dazai. And Dazai wants to see him, too.

He’ll escape from here. Men make foolish mistakes, and Fyodor kills with a flick of his
finger. They haven’t got the elaborate facility needed to contain Fyodor and Dazai, so they
will inevitably misstep, and Fyodor will take advantage of it.

Is he consoling himself? How petty of him.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Chuuya’s hand tightens in his hair until it tugs painfully at
his scalp, wrenching Fyodor’s head back by degrees. He does this while leaning into the
chair, so that Fyodor is looking straight up into the redhead’s face, and the boy’s boot is still
planted too close to his groin.

Fyodor raises his brows. “If that was too complicated to understand, I don’t see how you’d
expect to comprehend a full explanation.” Fyodor’s neck is being stretched. It’s not his
favorite sensation.

Chuuya steps on his crotch. Fyodor’s stomach clenches up in reaction, muscles pulling
painfully taut. He grits his teeth in silence. It’s no struggle to keep his face blank, but it’s
 difficult not being able to move or fight back. Nobody hurts Fyodor. Nobody in a long, long
time.

Dazai. He misses the boy’s presence.

Chuuya’s lips twist, and Fyodor’s quite certain he’s irritated with the reaction, which is
satisfying in itself, but not enough to blot out the searing agony as Chuuya presses down.
Fyodor flinches in spite of himself, a grunt slipping between clenched teeth.

“Пошел ты к черту,” he hisses through it, venomous. Damn him and all of his men with
him. Fyodor will escape soon enough. Chuuya will regret this.

He will have Dazai once more in his arms. Safe. His. No longer looking at him with those
terrified, devastated brown eyes. He will be happy, and good, because Fyodor will make him
good.

Chuuya growls a curse and slams his foot down between Fyodor’s legs, gravity manipulation
propelling the impact.

A strangled, unstoppable cry rips from his throat, completely foreign to his own ears. His
vision swarms with darkness, plunges underwater. No, no, he doesn’t want to lose himself
right now. Now is not a good time, not in front of Chuuya…

But his vision refuses to clear, slowly blackening around the redhead’s flaming eyes into
emptiness.

And Fyodor supposes that emptiness is better than awareness without Dazai.

Chapter End Notes

*grinning like the Cheshire Cat*

Would love to hear lots of your feedback for this one. I hope I've answered all questions!
If not, feel free to ask them and I shall answer if they're not due for later reveals or
spoils! :D

Thank you for all your wonderful support of this story! I can't believe you all love it as
much as I love writing it!! <3
 Debilitating Desires
Chapter Summary

Akutagawa worries over his boss, Chuuya nearly murders someone, and then Dazai
nearly murders someone else. It's all Dazai's fault. He's certain of it.

Chapter Notes

HIIIII! I am super excited to gift you with this LONG chapter. :) Lots of happenings!

EDIT: goddamnit I forgot to add--special thanks to my lovely kitten on Discord who

gave me the idea for this chapter!! (Irony)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Akutagawa stays with Dazai in the room after Mori leaves. The exam had gone smoothly,
apart from the fact that he’d stood close enough to Mori that the doctor had told him to back
off, claustrophobic with the hovering.

“You’re sucking the thoughts out of me,” he’d grumbled.

Now it’s only him and Dazai in the room. He’s free to stand as close as he likes.

He can only bring himself as near as the chair beside the bed. He sits in it. It feels cold and
rigid beneath him.

The exam had not taken long, but Akutagawa had seen more than he’d ever wanted to see of
Dazai’s broken body.

Even Mori’s eyes had gone dark at the state of things. Especially when it’d come to Dazai’s
ankles. Severed Achille’s tendons, he’d said.

Akutagawa couldn’t imagine the pain. But maybe that isn’t the peak of what bothers him. It’s
the awful cuts under the bandages Mori unraveled, the bandages that still lie stained and
tangled on a crate by the bed.

Mori had said they were self-inflicted, in the dull sort of way one might comment on the
weather. Or perhaps as someone who’d seen it countless times before.

Yes, Akutagawa had known this is what the bandages hid. But he’d never seen, and that, he
thinks, is something quite different.
Mori had left Dazai naked on the bed, without even the courtesy of putting him under the
sheets. He’d said it was because Dazai’s body was overheated. Akutagawa doesn’t believe
that. But he’s too paralyzed by the notion of doing something wrong to try and wrestle
Dazai’s form beneath the covers. So he sits there in the chair and fidgets, watching the man’s
face.

This eventually becomes too difficult for him, so he gets up to unwind the white shirt from
Dazai’s pile of clothes, and lays it across his hips.

He’s been wrapped in new bandages, and Akutagawa is glad for it. He looks more familiar
when he’s unconscious and bandaged, when Akutagawa can’t see the terror in his eyes and
the pain twisting his features. When his bandages are clean and white instead of streaked with
blood.

Akutagawa sits with him for a long, long time, telling himself it’s because Chuuya told him
to, that he likely wouldn’t want Dazai left alone. He picks at his coat and twists the ties into
knots to pass the time. He prays for the man to wake. To wake as his former self, and not the
fretful creature that has taken over his body.

Dazai shifts nearly an hour later, inhaling sharply.

Akutagawa straightens in the chair, blinking. It only occurs to him just then, the utter
embarrassment of being in the room with him alone while Dazai is naked. The panic is quick
to come and quick to go, fleeing when he remembers that Dazai has been half-clothed since
they’d rescued him, anyway.

There’s a drawn-out groan, hoarse and weak. Dazai twists on the bed, sluggish with the
leftovers of Mori’s sedative. He’d fought wildly when Mori had forced it on him, shrieking
and begging to be left alone, repeating that he didn’t want to be hurt.

Akutagawa had nearly torn the doctor to pieces, hearing it. How he despised that man and all
that he’d done to Dazai and Elise. Maybe the words were learned from Fyodor’s treatment,
but he knew Mori was responsible for half of the trauma Dazai had suffered before Fyodor.

He just wants to put his confusion and his hatred into someone. Anything to stop it from
boiling and growling in his head.

“Mister Dazai,” he tries, and he’d thought he could speak louder, but it comes out in hardly a
whisper.

Dazai’s limbs begin to tremble. Akutagawa’s sure Dazai isn’t overheated anymore, that he’d
be better off under the sheets. He’s sure of it, but he can’t fix it when he’s paralyzed in the
chair, waiting for Dazai’s eyes to clear.

When they do, Dazai slowly turns to him, chocolate eyes taking him in. Akutagawa sits very
still while he processes. He’s not going to rush Dazai. He’s not going to say anything wrong.

God, he’s naked. Akutagawa feels so bad. His intention is not to humiliate the man, and all he
can hope is that Dazai won’t care.
The longer Dazai looks at him, the more Akutagawa’s throat tickles. There’s a tiny buzz in
the center of his stomach like a hovering bumblebee, waiting to zip through every vein in
search of an outlet. What is he supposed to say? Should he say anything? Shouldn’t Dazai be
the first to speak?

Dazai blinks…once, twice…three slow beats in succession, lashes casting shadows across his
cheeks. His hair is messy, certainly, but it always tends to find itself in those fine, gentle curls
along his cheeks and nose. His face is flushed, so why is he trembling so much? He doesn’t
look as cold as his body suggests.

“Where is he?” Dazai croaks, so suddenly that Akutagawa flinches.

For a second his mouth doesn’t work. “Who?”

A cloud of something far too painful to belong to Dazai crosses his features. He turns away.
“Please don’t.”

“Don’t?” Akutagawa asks.

“I can’t…play games. I want to know. I want to see him, please, I want to see him—!” The
more Dazai says, the louder he gets. “I want to know where he is, I want to know, I want
them to leave him alone! Where is he? Please, tell me!”

Akutagawa stands from the chair, startled, heart racing. “Mister Dazai—” He can’t go any
further than that, so he stands awkwardly, blinking at Dazai with wide grey eyes, hand half-
poised as if to touch him in comfort. “Please, don’t exert yourself. You’re badly injured.” His
voice is shaking. There’s a coughing fit working its way up his throat, threatening to
interrupt. He tries to quell it.

Dazai’s posture has tightened, shrinking into the pillows as he looks up with those horribly
frightened eyes. “I don’t want to be hurt,” he whispers.

It rakes a hole inside of Akutagawa’s ribs. “N-no, no I would never hurt you, s-…” It feels
too strange to call him sir right now. “…I won’t hurt you. Please believe me.”

Dazai clutches pillows to his body like he’s hugging another person, shaking so violently that
it worries Akutagawa he’s nearing some sort of seizure. The white shirt is slipping down his
hips. What to do, what to do? This isn’t something he’s prepared himself for.

“I-I, the um,”—Akutagawa gestures towards the shirt—“if you want, you can put on the shirt
you were wearing.” He shouldn’t have phrased it that way. It sounds ugly and condescending.

Dazai glances at it, recognizes it, grasps it in both hands and presses it to his face. His eyes
close. A soft, uncertain sound comes from him. “Why did he take it?”

“W-well, ah, Mori—Mori was the one who took it. I mean, so he could examine you and
patch you up.” This is not Dazai he’s talking to. His mind keeps telling him, this is not Dazai,
this is a shadow of him, this is a child. A victim. What is he supposed to do with that? Should
he be doing something different? Should he be here at all?
A small relief comes when Dazai wrestles the shirt over his head, squirming into the garment
and curling in on himself like he’s trying to cradle it against his skin. His ruined, cut skin.

“I’m not in…in trouble?” Dazai’s voice is muffled in the sheets and the pillows. The way he
looks up at Akutagawa, tucked in a ball, pitiful and confused, it seems he recognizes at least a
small amount of the question’s oddity. His brows flinch.

Akutagawa fishes for words. “…No.” In trouble? Surely he’s just disoriented. Surely this will
all clear up in a moment.

Before anything else can drive Akutagawa mad with bewilderment, the door opens, preceded
by a raucous screech.

Akutagawa sits down in the chair a little too hard.

Dazai squirms and hides under the pillows, until only his limp feet are poking out.

It’s Chuuya. He’s red-faced, seemingly winded, but his expression is neutral as his gaze fixes
on Dazai. “Who the fuck left him undressed?”

Akutagawa burns inside out with embarrassment, butterflies in his stomach as he looks down
at his feet. “I didn’t want to touch him,” he says hoarsely. “Mori didn’t put his clothes back
on.”

“What the hell. Get out of the room.”

“I’m sorry Chuuya, I wasn’t—”

“Did you hear me? I said get out.”

Akutagawa’s stomach twists. He clenches his hands and swallows down the threat of a
violent fit. He hates this. He hates everything. Chuuya isn’t like himself, Dazai isn’t even
Dazai, and the rest of the Port Mafia just continues to shun him like they always have. Why
can’t he do something right?

He gets up, never once raising his eyes, and storms past Chuuya, bumping shoulders on the
way out.

When the door slams, Dazai’s entire stomach lurches into his throat. He whimpers
involuntarily, clenching his toes. He’s done something wrong, he’s done something wrong!
People are angry, it must be his fault. Mustn’t it? He remembers Akutagawa, but he doesn’t
want to. He hurt Akutagawa, so Akutagawa must hate him.

Chuuya must hate him.

Everyone must hate him; Dazai hates him.

There’s a long sigh from the person left in the room. Dazai doesn’t want to see. He keeps his
face in the pillows, trying not to think about the discussion of his exposure or how little
clothing he’s wearing. They don’t like it; it makes them uncomfortable. He’s ashamed. He
doesn’t know what to do, what to wear when he’s not with Fyodor. He remembers in some
distant part of his mind but there’s nothing he can do with the information. He isn’t even
strong enough to sit correctly in bed, not when someone else is watching him.

Someone that isn’t Fyodor.

“Are you alright?”

Chuuya’s voice is barely above a whisper. He’s soft. He’s not velvet, maybe, but he’s soft,
and that’s something. “I must’ve hurt you on the hill, dragging you around like I did. I’m
sorry I didn’t realize—I could barely think, you know, and so…so it was stupid of me. Mori
told me everything about the injuries. They’re awful.”

Dazai curls a little tighter. They’re not awful. They’re Fyodor’s. Fyodor said he was wrong to
do it, and that burns Dazai’s brain more than anything he’s done, and that’s why he needs to
see him again, to ask, to understand—but it still showed Fyodor things. The injuries meant
something. The pain was worth it.

Dazai would let him do it again, too, maybe—probably…maybe not. He doesn’t know. He
thinks he would, if it would help Fyodor to see more. If it would help Fyodor cry again. Even
if the tears were terrifying.

“Can you hear me?”

Dazai digs his fingers into the softness of the pillow. “I want to see Fyodor,” he muffles out.

There’s a pause. “You can’t see him, Dazai.” The chair creaks. Chuuya must be sitting down
in it.

Dazai doesn’t like the sound of chairs.

“I want to,” he whispers, “I want to see him, though.” Can’t he think of anything else to say?
There’s only one thing that he wants, that’s all, that’s all. Fyodor always likes it when he tells
the truth, when he asks for the right things. Fyodor would understand.

“Why? Huh? Why would you want to see him? We saved you, you’re free, now. You don’t
need to see him ever again.”

Ever? Dazai’s heart beats rapidly, thrumming in his ear. The pillows are harder to breathe in,
but he can’t come out yet. “I want to see him again, I-I have to.” His fists are shaking, pulling
at the sheets.

“Oi, you’re gonna suffocate yourself under there. Come out. Come out and tell me why.”
“No!” Dazai squirms around to his other side, facing away from Chuuya’s voice, and buries
himself deeper. “I don’t want you to look at me! Go away! Give me Fedya!”

The chair creaks again, and Dazai flinches. He’s getting up, surely, getting up to hurt him—

No. No, Chuuya is not Fyodor. His brain knows this but his body doesn’t believe it.

“You’re shaking so much,” Chuuya says, softer. Dazai likes softer. Dazai remembers softer.
“Are you cold?”

Are you cold?

Something I did?

The breath thickens in his throat, coming too fast. He doesn’t think he’s shaking any more
than usual. He’s not cold, he’s hot. His skin aches everywhere that Mori touched him. His
muscles are exhausted.

A gloved hand slips beneath the pillows, fingers touching his ear. Gloves. Gloves. He wants
skin.

He doesn’t know what comes over him. He grabs Chuuya’s hand, gasping. He flails and
claws for his arm, pulling himself out of the pillows, seeing the flash of Chuuya’s wide,
cerulean eyes. He grabs Chuuya’s gloves, both of them. He tears them off.

The shocking sight of Chuuya’s hands stops him, shuddering and heaving. They’re strong,
they’re not pale, they’re not traced by blue veins. They’re not soft. But he clings to them,
desperately; he puts both of the palms against his cheeks and holds them there. He squeezes
his eyes shut and feels moisture on his lashes.

Better.

This is better?

You like it when I am gentle.

Leaping, churning sensations increase in his stomach. Is he going to be sick? This feels good,
doesn’t it? This feels better. These aren’t gloved hands, they’re bare, but they’re too warm.
They’re not icy and soft, they’re not cruel and commanding.

His throat is dry as he opens his eyes, timidly peeking up at the blurry vision of Chuuya. He
doesn’t know what he’s doing. He doesn’t want to process what he’s doing. He’ll feel awful,
he’ll feel humiliated if he does, and the bad feelings are agonizing without Fyodor to
understand them.

Chuuya is silent, looking at him, his breathing labored too. He’s sitting on the edge of the
bed, as if pulled there by Dazai.

“I don’t know what…what he did to you in that house, Dazai,” Chuuya murmurs, sounding
winded, “but I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” His blue eyes begin to shine, glassy with emotion—too
much emotion. Dazai isn’t used to seeing it anymore. “If only we could’ve gotten to you
sooner, then—then maybe—” His voice gets strangled into silence. “I don’t know.”

Dazai’s chest burns. His blood is simmering. “He took care of me,” he whimpers, helplessly.
Because Fyodor did, maybe not at first. Maybe not so well, but when he learned, he did, and
Dazai asking to see Fyodor again is proof of that, isn’t it?

Chuuya chokes, as if he’s eaten something awful, and the hands on Dazai’s cheeks pull back,
trying to escape his grip. “He nearly crippled you for life, you fool!”

Dazai clings to his hands and whines, trying to pull him back, knowing Chuuya is the only
safe person to do this with, the only one who can possibly give him back to Fyodor. The only
one Dazai has touched in his past and managed not to mistreat. “It was a mistake! He told me
he regretted it,” he cries, “he told me he was sorry!”

“Well he lied, Dazai!” Chuuya yells, so loudly that Dazai’s ears ring. He strangles the collar
of Dazai’s shirt, yanking him forward. “The man’s a fucking monster! He enjoyed every bit
of making you suffer!”

Dazai ducks his head, cringing away and whimpering. He grasps Chuuya’s hands. It feels like
being burned where they touch him, where the knuckles press into his tender skin. His brain
reminds him that Chuuya does this a lot and Dazai normally isn’t afraid of it, but just as
before, there’s nothing he can do with the knowledge except loathe himself for his
helplessness. The negative feelings, the muddy, bad ones, they resurge in his chest and warn
him to find Fyodor before they overtake him. He’s not safe, he’s not welcome around normal
humans like Chuuya when he feels things. They don’t expect them from Dazai; he’s not
supposed to make them uncomfortable like this.

He used to be their leader.

The breath shudders in his dry throat, wavering. His lip trembles, his nose burns. When he
makes himself speak, it comes out fragile and congested. “I want to see Fedya.” He despises
himself for saying it. He wants to die for saying it to Chuuya, once again, when he knows it
only makes it worse.

Chuuya’s hands tighten on his shirt, until he’s sure the soft fabric will be ruined, and for some
reason that makes him want to cry more than anything else. His breath hitches, but he does
his best to hold it back, squeezing his eyes shut and willing the bad feelings away. He wants
to go back to being numb.

“Fine,” Chuuya hisses, and it’s not a kind sound. Not at all. It’s so unkind that the word itself
doesn’t even take effect like it should. It shocks him, holds him captive and throttles the
words out of his throat when he looks up with wide eyes. But it doesn’t feel good. No,
especially not when Chuuya’s features are twisted into a nasty snarl.

A quake that hasn’t really stopped in his body begins to grow more violent, wracking him
from shoulder to toe. “Ch-Chuuya,” he whispers, and he’s not entirely sure why, “please…”
What is he begging for? Chuuya to stay calm? He’s just agreed to let Dazai see Fyodor, he’s
going to see Fyodor—!
So why are his veins laced with ice? Why is his stomach hollowing out?

“No, I said fine, Dazai. Fine!” Chuuya releases Dazai roughly enough that he falls against the
pillows, and his voice is too loud, his brows are too low, his eyes are too dark. “You want to
see Dostoevsky?” He gestures wildly. “Fine. I’ll let you see him. I’ll take you, even. Get up
on your fucking broken feet and follow me down there. Yeah? Do it, Dazai. I know they’re
healing. You can walk on them with a little help.”

Dazai slowly pulls his fists under his chin, tucking his body into what he hopes is an
impenetrable ball. He doesn’t understand what’s happening.

“Mori said Dostoevsky was as good as any surgeon, the way he fixed you up. Said he did it
like he cared. You wanna see if Fedya cares? Huh? Let’s go see him and see if he cares, now
that whatever plans he’s made have failed.”

Dazai’s breath shudders out in the smallest of sounds, and he’s not sure if he was attempting
to speak or if he’s…appealing to be heard in some way, so Chuuya will stop looking through
him and see. He’s hurting. He doesn’t like hurting anymore.

“GET UP, I SAID!” Chuuya barks, lurching forward to grab Dazai by the back of the collar.

“Ahn—!” Dazai’s body clenches up painfully, but Chuuya doesn’t mind. Chuuya yanks him
off the edge of the bed, until he’s stumbling on his feet. He feels more naked than before and
clutches at his body to hide it. His ankles spark with tiny knives of pain, and it feels like a
long time since he’s walked properly. He can feel the pull of the stitches in his tendons.

Chuuya barely lets Dazai process the fact that he’s on his feet again. Even when he trips over
Chuuya’s shoes and grabs for his arm, Chuuya keeps dragging him to the door. He twists the
handle, throws it open, and there’s people on the other side so Dazai struggles back with a cry
of misery, but Chuuya hauls him right through, naked as he is.

He isn’t thinking, now. Chuuya has done these things before. He has. They’re familiar, even
to his limbs, the way he’s dragged and jerked around. Otherwise Chuuya wouldn’t humiliate
him like this in front of the other people.

“Nakahara!” He hears, loud and severe as Chuuya hauls him out. It’s Kunikida’s voice, and
there are footsteps clacking behind them. “What the hell are you doing? Stop!”

“Oh my god,” someone else breathes.

Chuuya’s eyes slide back towards the man, sharp as knives. He doesn’t stop. He makes a
violent, slicing motion through the air with his free hand, the force of its effect flaring his
coat out around his shoulders.

A shockwave of gravity blasts Kunikida backwards.

“You will not follow us,” Chuuya growls, and his voice booms in the air. “I’ll kill any bastard
that tries!”
Dazai’s feet ache with each step, his breaths rasp in his throat, his hands clutch at Chuuya’s
clothes. “Chuuya,” he sobs, “Please, please—”

“Shut up!” Chuuya cries, jerking him faster, rattling the dark halls around them. “You’re
getting your fucking wish, you have nothing to complain about!”

Dazai whines in fear. Why is he so angry? He doesn’t remember him ever being this angry,
not at Dazai. Not unless he’d done something awful, and even then…

But no, maybe it’s just that he was stronger, back then. He was able to handle it. It wasn’t as
painful as it is now.

They come to a solid, heavy metal door. Chuuya yanks keys out of his pocket, and Dazai
realizes a that he’s notating things in his head without being conscious of it, like how many
steps they’ve taken, what the walls look like, which pocket Chuuya took the keys out of and
which other ones have items stuffed in them. This door isn’t far from his room.

He’s going to see Fyodor. He’s going to see Fyodor!

He can’t believe it. What is Fyodor going to look like? He’ll look the same, won’t he? Will
he be in chains? Dazai doesn’t want to see him in chains.

The keys rattle and turn. The door opens with a suctioning sound—a sealed chamber. Dazai
sees the padding on the walls, the soundproofing.

How awful, how awful for Fyodor to be kept in this! A god should never be treated this way.
A god—

I think I would like to apologize.

But Fyodor is not a god anymore.

Chuuya heaves him inside and slams the door behind them. The sound is sucked away by the
walls. Dazai’s body floods with blessed, icy cold.

And there he is. Sitting on a chair, bound up in a straitjacket with black straps, every limb
fastened and restrained, is Fyodor. His head of raven hair is lowered, their silky tresses
tangled. His hands aren’t even visible within the restraints. Dazai can’t see if he’s wearing his
gloves.

Fyodor looks up very slowly, violet knives red-hot under his hair, narrow and severe.

At least, they are at first, until they take in the sight of Dazai.

“Fedya,” Dazai whispers tremulously.

Fyodor’s eyes widen.

“There he is, Dazai,” Chuuya snarls, throwing him forward so that he stumbles to his knees
with a yelp. “There’s your precious Russian. Do you think he cares about you? Do you think
he wants you for anything other than his fucking strategies?”

Dazai, gasping and fighting back the tears that claw at his throat, looks up under his hair at
Fyodor, almost, almost near enough to touch. Fyodor’s gaze is shifting rapidly across his
features, as if looking for injury, for damage of some sort. He blinks a few times. The straps
seem to strain around his body, as if he’s subtly pulling against them. He says nothing.

His face is bruised, reddened along his jaw and cheekbone. A string of hot concern pulls
through Dazai’s veins at the sight. It looks wrong.

“Fedya,” Dazai says again. He wants to hear his name from the Russian’s lips, he wants to
hear the velvet. His mind is so hungry for it, for anything but Chuuya’s rage. He feels
miserable, he feels awful for all of this, because it’ll be his fault if everything goes wrong,
and it feels like everything’s going wrong.

Fyodor turns to Chuuya and his brows furrow slightly. If Dazai did not know him so well, he
would have missed the way his gaze shifts in quality. The way they pierce and fasten on
Chuuya as if to tear him apart. His arms shift in their restraints.

Dazai is afraid to get up.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Chuuya barks, storming up to Fyodor and grabbing a
handful of his black hair. Fyodor blinks rapidly; his mouth shifts.

A cry escapes Dazai’s lips. He reaches for them, too shocked to do anything more, frozen
with the sight of Fyodor being harmed. “Chuuya—stop—”

“STOP?” Chuuya’s eyes are becoming Arahabaki’s eyes. The cerulean is melting away. He
flicks out a large knife from his under his coat, twirls it in his grasp so that the light glares on
the blade. “Me, stop? Isn’t this the bastard that did all this to you, Dazai?! Did you not
remember? Did the memories not return to you? I’M THE ONE WHO’S ON YOUR SIDE!
I’M THE ONE WHO LOVED YOU! I’M THE ONE WHO TOOK CARE OF YOU! And
what, you run off to Russia and I let you go, I practically offer you the chance to fuck
yourself over without a fuss, because I trusted you, and this is what I get in return? Excuse
me for being selfish, but you were mine when you left for Russia!” His voice cracks along the
edges, roughened by something constricting his throat. “You were MINE! Now look at you!
This motherfucker owns your entire mind! He broke you, Dazai, and you’re thanking him for
that?! Damn you!”

Dazai’s shoulders hitch. He feels choked sobs in his throat, but can hardly hear them. There’s
heat in his face, burning liquid in his eyes. His heart is clenching, coiling with guilt and
shame. He knows those emotions well enough by now. But this is worse. This is worse when
he remembers.

Tears trickle down Dazai’s cheeks one by one, burning his skin. He sobs out a broken,
miserable sound. He wishes he was not forced to remember these things; he wishes that he
could’ve lived ignorant of the past that he’ll never get back. The past that’s tainted with
Fyodor’s violet.
Chuuya’s teeth are bared, his form encased in a crimson aura. He has the blade poised under
Fyodor’s chin, too close, too close—!

“Chuuya, please,” Dazai begs hoarsely, “Please don’t hurt him. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what
I did to you! I want to change it, I w-wish…that I could.” His voice strangles, then, and he
can’t go on, shivering and clawing at the floor. “B-but—”

Chuuya reels back, arm cocking far behind his head, and slams his fist into Fyodor’s face so
hard that the chair would’ve tilted if not for the bolts keeping it in the floor.

The breath leaves Dazai’s body. His limbs go cold. His heart flutters in his ears like the wings
of frightened birds.

Fyodor coughs, his breathing heavy. He keeps his head low, and Dazai only sees his profile
from the nose-down under the curtain of black hair. A thick trail of crimson oozes down his
lips, until it drips and splashes onto the perfect white of his pants.

A stream of gritty Russian leaks from Fyodor’s mouth, as good as deadly spells in the air.

“Shut up, you piece of shit!” Chuuya screams, and his voice is not his own, his eyes are no
longer cerulean. Veins of dark red curl and engrave themselves into his arms. He punches
Fyodor again, and again and again, anywhere his balled hands can make contact.

“Да что ты о себе возомнил?” Fyodor’s voice is strained with discomfort, but fiercely spat
through gritted teeth.

Chuuya sparkles with red energy and keeps beating him, gripping him by the hair, yanking
him forward, striking him. Throwing him back, thrashing him mercilessly. Blood flecks
spatter all over his face, reflect in his whitened eyes. Corruption makes the room tremble, the
low bass of its sound drowning out Fyodor’s grunts.

The bottom drops out of Dazai’s stomach. “STOP!” he screams, “STOP IT, PLEASE,
CHUUYA, STOP!” He can move. He’ll make himself move. He has to move! “CHUUYA!”
His voice cracks, hoarse and ragged.

It’s tearing him apart to see Fyodor being hurt, worse than anything that has ever happened to
him. Dazai remembers it was the same before, that seeing those he spent the energy to care
about injured or mistreated made him nauseous. Now with fully realized emotions, he feels
so physically incapable of seeing it happen that those sensations are the least of his worries.
No, this slashes at the very strings holding him together, at the walls protecting him from
losing himself. It crushes his mind inwards until he can’t think, he can’t think, all he knows is
that it must stop, and he’ll do whatever he must to make it stop.

He will make it stop!

Dazai struggles, claws at the floor until he can get his feet under him. He wobbles, his ankles
burn with pain but it doesn’t matter. He lurches forward and throws himself between Fyodor
and Chuuya, catching one of Chuuya’s punches in the chest and falling back into Fyodor’s
lap.
He hears rough breathing in his ear, a startled hiss of Russian. He feels warm liquid drip
against his neck, roll under the collar of his shirt. He feels half-realized sobs in his own chest.

He clambers up at Chuuya, whose attack momentary stalls, Chuuya whose eyes are milky
white, Chuuya who’s hurting the one man Dazai feels that he loves. He falls against him and
grapples with his arms, weak but infused with the numb pulse of adrenaline through his body,
wrenching the knife out of his hands, seeing the sparkle of its paper-thin edge.

Chuuya chokes out an angry string of curses, all of them only white noise. The blue waves of
Dazai’s ability spring out. It encompasses them, cancelling out the crimson. Chuuya screams
more; Dazai listens to nothing.

They stumble together, they fall. Chuuya on his back, Dazai on top of him, gasping,
scrambling to sit up. He straddles Chuuya, clutches the knife handle in both hands. He swings
it high above his head, chest aching. He stares down at Chuuya with wide eyes, stop, stop,
stop running through his mind like deadened shocks of electricity.

The eyes are cerulean again. The pupils are pinpricked; the whites are showing around them.

Dazai’s stomach twists into knots, his head hurts, his bandaged arms tremble above his head.
His fingers are cold as ice.

“Dazai,” Chuuya gasps, and he’s quaking. He’s quaking beneath Dazai’s legs. He must be
drained from the outburst. Good, he can’t fight.

But his eyes. The cerulean. The gaze that had once been so precious to him, precious enough
to remain even when Fyodor did all he could to beat them out, to twist the perception he’d
had of them. They still care. They still look at Dazai like he’s a living, breathing human, as if
he’s not a monster, as if he’s something to be valued.

Dazai’s throat constricts. His heart deafens him. He remembers, now. The ability blocking
those memories of Chuuya has gone. There are no feelings to accompany it because he hadn’t
ever felt before Fyodor. But the memories make him feel, now.

Flashes run through his mind of Chuuya in the past. Chuuya and him, together.

Clinging to him in bed, shaking, sweat on his body and sobs in his throat. The edges of terror
from a dream he’d woken out of. Chuuya’s body against his back, the warmth of strong arms
that clasp him. The heat of breath in his ear as Chuuya speaks tenderly to him. The words,
you’re safe. Knowing he’s bruising Chuuya’s arms with his fingers but unable to loosen them.
I’m here. I’ve got you.

Chuuya pouring wine for him, sitting him down in a chair and petting through his hair.
Murmured words, fingers on the edges of his bandages. Concern in cerulean eyes. Blood on
black-gloved fingers. Insistence that he let Chuuya see; shaking his head and begging Chuuya
not to look.

Chuuya guiding him backwards, hands on his waist. Smiling even though Dazai feels
nothing. Telling Dazai he doesn’t have to show emotion if it’s too much to ask. Being pushed
against the wall. Soft lips on his, seeking out a reply. Trying to figure out how to convey what
coils in his chest. Pushing back, letting go. Hoping he’ll understand if Dazai can’t dredge up
those things called feelings.

Chuuya lying over him in bed, heated skin against his. The clamminess of fingers brushing
over the sides of his face, down his neck. The hot ache of Chuuya pressing inside, holding
him when he squirms. The roughness of his thrusts, driving Dazai out of his mind, as much as
he asks for. Hands squeezing around his neck, cutting off the air. Thinking how nice it would
be if Chuuya never lets go. Tasting Chuuya’s scent in the air, sweet wine and roses. Never
able to get past the numbness, but seeing Chuuya thrive with intensity beyond his own
capacity. Seeing foreign colors in his eyes, passion and care.

Knowing that somebody loved him, monster or not, heartless or perfectly human. Numb or
feeling.

Dazai breaks down, lowering his arms and cradling the knife against his chest. Sobs heave
and choke in his throat, shoulders wracked with each one. It’s loud, ugly and loud, and he
can’t stop it. It keeps tumbling out, stealing his breath as the tears burn his face. He doesn’t
deserve to love Fyodor, not when someone like Chuuya has loved him all this time. He
doesn’t deserve to, and he despises himself for doing it anyway.

He can’t help it. He wants to, but he can’t.

He never felt for Chuuya. It bewilders him that Chuuya fell in love anyway, with a heartless
creature who’d barely had a soul to call friend. His only friend had died, and Chuuya he’d
seen as his partner. Whether he was loved or not had made no difference to him then. He
could not fathom love—how could he?—all he could do was try to tolerate it, to allow it.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs, barely above a whisper. “I didn’t know how it felt. I didn’t kno-w. I
didn’t mean to love him. I didn’t t-try to. It just happened. It happened. And I can’t st-op it. I
can’t…”

Chuuya lies still beneath him, panting, staring at Dazai as tears patter against his chest.

“You’ve never felt anything for me,” he says blandly. His voice is like a gray line in the air.
Straight, flat, purposely rent of emotion. “Right? That’s what you’re telling me? You never
did feel.”

Dazai clutches the knife so tightly that his fingers burn. He wants to put it through himself,
impulsively, to shove the blade into his sternum and bleed out for the both of them. Would it
make him care, if he did it? Would it change anything? Would they see?

He just wants Chuuya to see, like Fyodor does.

Chuuya’s hands are resting on his bare, trembling legs.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Chuuya says. “You were always so good at acting. I thought
maybe you did.”
“I’m sorry,” Dazai whines. “I’m sorry…”

He can feel Fyodor’s eyes on them. His senses are attuned to it, but he doesn’t want to look
right now. He doesn’t want to do anything but weep. He wishes he could crawl inside of
Fyodor’s arms and forget. He wishes he could look into the Russian’s eyes and have it all
wiped away.

Chuuya pats his leg. “Get off of me,” he says quietly. “I’m calm now.”

Dazai doesn’t feel that he can move. His limbs seem detached from his body, willing to obey
but incapable of it. He just trembles a little more and sniffles, trying to blink away the tears,
trying to make them stop. He doesn’t deserve to cry. Crying is uncomfortable in front of
Chuuya. Crying makes everyone else uncomfortable.

“Dazai.” Chuuya’s eyes are fixed in his, softened at the edges. There’s water in his eyes,
water that’s not going to spill, but it’s shimmering there, anyway. “It’s okay. Get up.”

His lips press together. He tries not to sob anymore. He wipes his eyes with a forearm,
dragging the knife with it. His fingers are icy.

Chuuya’s hands slide up his legs, gently clasping his hips. He pulls Dazai sideways and
Dazai thoughtlessly follows the movement, kneeling on the floor with his head drooping low.
The cuts on his thighs burn like tiny lines of fire.

“Give me the knife,” Chuuya whispers. His hands cover Dazai’s. “I won’t hurt him anymore.
I’ll let you talk to him. Just give me the knife.” He sounds tired.

Dazai looks at their clasped hands. His tears drip from aching eyes and splash on Chuuya’s
gloves. Finger by finger, he loosens his grip, until Chuuya is able to pull the weapon out of
his hands.

“That’s a good boy,” he soothes, however dully his voice sounds. It makes Dazai’s head
droop lower; it makes his chin tremble. The floor feels hard and cold beneath him.

Chuuya sits still for a moment. He puts the knife back under his coat. He pulls his legs a little
towards him, rests his arms on them. He pulls his hands roughly through his hair, knocking
off his hat, and sighs long and hard.

“You. Bastard.” Dazai flinches, but it’s not for him. Chuuya’s addressing Fyodor. The
direction of his voice is projected over Dazai’s back.

Dazai tilts his head as little as possible to see Fyodor out of the corner of his eyes, vision
mottled by tears and tangled hair. Fyodor is looking at them very quietly, blood still inching
down his face, his expression intently focused. Especially on Dazai, despite the fact that
Chuuya speaks to him.

“I’m gonna let you talk to him. Don’t get it in your head that it’s for you. You don’t fucking
deserve his feelings, you hear me? And maybe I don’t either. But out of all the people Dazai
could’ve had in the world, you’re the one I hate the most.”
He seems…Dazai isn’t sure. Fyodor’s expression is both veiled and open at the same time,
some form of…pride…that’s not it, maybe—fascination? As if he was impressed with Dazai
just now. As if he was stunned by what he’d done.

A certain warmth coils in his stomach, pushing some of the shiver from his body. The amount
of control it must take for Chuuya to let them do this, it’s something he can hardly
understand. Why would he do it? Why would he be so considerate, moments after he’d hurt
Dazai so much, after Dazai had nearly killed him?

He feels a gloved hand gently grasp his chin, turning it until he’s looking timidly at Chuuya’s
cerulean eyes. They’re still glassy. His throat aches. He drops his gaze.

“Hey,” Chuuya says firmly, “don’t hold it against yourself, okay? It’s not your fault that you
got fucked up.” His jaw clenches momentarily, shifts back and forth as his eyes grow a little
more watery. He glances away, cupping Dazai’s face with both of his hands, now. “I still love
you. I still do, even if you never felt anything for me.”

Dazai tries to lower his face in Chuuya’s hands, breath rasping in a growing sob. “I’m sorry,”
he begs, “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t.”

“Yeah.” Chuuya pulls Dazai closer, pressing soft, warm lips against his cheek where the tear
tracks are. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he murmurs, “but I can’t help it either.”

“I’m sorry,” Dazai whispers again. It’s all he can do—burn with shame and apologize.

Chuuya sighs and releases Dazai, getting heavily to his feet. He places his hat back on his
head, shakes off whatever emotion is clinging to him, and gives Dazai’s head a passing touch
as he turns to the door. “Say what you need to say to each other. We can’t let him go. He’ll be
executed two days from now.”

He’s walking out the door before the words even make it across the space to Dazai. When the
door slams, they hit him in the chest, sinking like a dead weight.

His breath shudders in his throat. He turns his head slowly to Fyodor, eyes wide, brimming
with new tears. They’re alone, now. He feels safe again, finally, finally safe with only
Fyodor’s gaze on his horrible body.

Executed.

They’re going to kill Fyodor. They’re going to take away his Fedya, Dazai’s Fedya!

Fyodor’s eyes are solemnly fixed on him. The Russian is quiet but his expression is open,
lowered slightly as if he’s struggling to keep it up. His face…his face! He must be in such
pain. It burns in his blood, so violently that Dazai doesn’t know what to do. His hands quiver
against his stomach, clutching it to keep the nausea back. He twists a finger until it twinges
with pain.

He can’t bear seeing him like this.

“Come to me, солнышко,” Fyodor whispers, his voice ragged with exhaustion. “Come, do
not sit so far away.”

Dazai’s legs are jelly; he can’t get up. He crawls, instead, weak and sore with each
movement. He’s hardly noticed every slice in his skin has been throbbing under the bandages,
not until now. The waves of emotion are calmer. He can feel all of his body again.

Fyodor watches him silently, his eyes ever so slightly drooping. He must be tired, as tired as
Dazai; he must be tired of Dazai, and all this pain that he’s caused.

He kneels at Fyodor’s bound feet, then feels the heat bunch up in his throat. He clings to
Fyodor’s waist, burying his face in the Russian’s lap. He sobs against the rough material of
the straitjacket. “I don’t want them to take you,” he cries, “I don’t want them to kill you! You
can’t l-let them kill you-u. I won’t let them!”

He knows in his heart that he can do nothing. He is weak, helpless. He can’t even think the
way that he used to. He’s a ruined, broken thing; there is nothing he could ever do to stop
them from taking his velvet.

Fyodor shifts in the chair and his arms strain against the jacket as if he wants to put them
around Dazai. “I am sorry, little one,” he says softly. His breath is more audible than usual.
“There is nothing…that I can do for now.” His voice sounds so rough, so far from the velvet
composure Dazai has grown to love…to love…but it’s still his Fedya. “I will not let them kill
me.”

When Dazai raises his tear-stricken face to look at Fyodor, the man’s chin is against his chest.
His eyes are half-masted, emptied and dulled. The bruises on his face are dark—the blood
still seeps from his cut lower lip and the small gash on his cheekbone. The pallor of his face
is so pale that it startles him. “Fedya,” Dazai whispers in fear, “your face—”

“Do something for me, Dazai,” Fyodor strains, practically wheezing breaths out, now, “stop
the…blood.” His eyes flutter, his brows briefly scrunch.

Dazai’s chest goes icy cold. He reaches for his shirt, wrestles it off of his body. He squeezes
closer against the chair and hesitates with the shirt inches away. His hands are shaking too
much. He’s afraid to touch Fyodor, to accidentally hurt him.

Fyodor struggles to focus on him. “Do it quickly,” he whispers faintly, “I have…anemia, you
know.”

Dazai’s breath catches. He pushes the shirt against Fyodor’s face with sudden, frantic
pressure. Fyodor’s exhale falters and he flinches a little, but relaxes into it very soon, before
Dazai can feel sick. Anemia! He’s forgotten. How could he? He remembers the iron pills in
Fyodor’s cabinet. He’s been bleeding all this time— “Are you okay? Are you going to die?
It’s not going to make you die, is it?” He sniffles, wiping his face on his bared shoulder. “I’m
sorry, Fedya I’m sorry.”

Something oddly like a smile plays unenthusiastically at the Russian’s mouth. “I will be
alright. I’m only a little dizzy.”
More tears rise in Dazai’s eyes, pushing past his rapid blinking to stream down his face. A
small sob makes it out as he cradles Fyodor’s cheek in the white cloth, feeling it soak under
his palm. Fyodor’s blood is warm.

“Don’t cry,” Fyodor whispers, his eyes barely open. His head rests heavily in Dazai’s hands,
hair draping about like black silk. “Your friend let us speak alone…and I am like this…I
wonder why it makes me feel so bad. I would like…to have been in better condition…to
speak to you.”

Dazai’s muscles burn. His throat burns. He continues to weep, swallowing against the hitches
of breath. Since when has Fyodor become like this—so soft? Is it just the pain? The
exhaustion? He’s changed so much, and Dazai has not loved him less for it. Dazai thinks he’s
only grown more attached. And now…now it’s much more difficult, knowing Chuuya and
the others have only tried to help. Their help will mean nothing except to drive him and
Fyodor closer together.

And he will not be executed. If Fyodor has said he won’t, then it must be so. Fyodor is
smarter than all of them.

“I don’t mind it,” he tells Fyodor, waveringly. “I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m sorry.”

The blood is not soaking the cloth so much anymore. It should stop, soon, he hopes.

Fyodor’s eyes meet his, blurred but a little less dead than before. “When you apologize, now,
it makes…my stomach turn cold. Tell me…what that feeling is? Is it?...A feeling?”

Dazai’s lungs fill with a slow, steadying breath. “U-uhm, I-I…” he wipes his face with his
free hand, struggling to think, to place the answer. Fyodor is asking him about a feeling, a
feeling that he’s experiencing! What could it be? He wishes he could be more excited for it,
that he could smile for the man and hug him, and be held in return. “Maybe guilt…maybe—
disappointment. Maybe—ah, I-I don’t know…maybe it’s annoyance. I don’t know.”

“No,” Fyodor says with some certainty, his brows pushing a little lower as he eyes Dazai,
more sternness to his violet eyes. “It is not annoyance. This much I know. Do not…think of
yourself so lowly. You are…солнышко—my little…” Fyodor hesitates, as if struggling to say
it aloud. He drops his gaze. His face takes on the slightest pink of color, so subtle that Dazai
thinks it’s his imagination. “My little sun,” he whispers. “You cannot bother me.”

Dazai’s lip trembles. He lowers his head. So that is what it’s meant, all this time. Little sun.
“Fedya…”

“Hush, now. Hush…” Fyodor murmurs, beginning to slump forward in the chair. He rests his
forehead on Dazai’s shoulder, and Dazai’s eyes widen. The blood has stopped, and he pulls
the stained shirt away, numb with shock. “I am saying too much. Do not flatter me with
anything in return.”

Dazai remains silent, partly out of obedience, partly out of shock. Hesitantly, he lets his hands
rest against Fyodor’s chest. He feels it rise and fall, slow and thick.
“What is it like to miss someone…?” Fyodor whispers, his breath stirring Dazai’s hair. “Tell
me. Tell me if you missed me? It is strange to me, so strange…we have only been apart a
little while, and yet…I wanted you back with me. Without you, what is there to think about?
What is there to see? I feel nothing when I am not with you. Nothing at all…and as soon as
you return, so do the colors. The colors…you are so many colors to me, Dazai, so many…”

Dazai slowly turns his face into Fyodor’s tangled hair. Though the tears have calmed, they
simmer inside of his chest like warm waves, both tiring and comforting to him. His eyes,
swollen and hot, drift as Fyodor goes on, saying things that hardly sound like him at all.
Things that should not be so genuine, so kind. Words that should not be spoken to him. “I
missed you, too,” Dazai whispers into his hair, the fragrant smell making his eyes flutter. “I
missed you.”

“I will not force you to come with me. Tell me it is not the same with you and I will leave
you be. If it is light that you wish for, I will let you go.” Fyodor’s voice softens further,
whether from pure exhaustion or affection, he does not know. “You would not be…happy
with me, Dazai. You know this.”

“I want to be with you, Fedya,” Dazai breathes, tears clogging his throat. “The light does not
want me. I don’t think that happiness…is something that you or I could feel.”

“Perhaps not.” Fedya raises his head slightly, brushing his cheek along Dazai’s as he does, as
if by accident alone. He looks Dazai in the eyes, a little more steady than before. “But good,
at least. Good I can feel when I am near you.”

“I’m not sure…what it feels like.” Dazai’s fingers tingle.

“Something warm,” Fyodor says. “Something better than cold.”

Dazai nods softly, feeling himself grow weaker. He slides downwards, back towards Fyodor’s
lap. He slumps against the Russian’s leg. The shirt slips from his dangling hand. “Love…” he
slurs, “that’s love, I think.”

Fyodor’s bound arms settle on Dazai’s head. “Yes…” Fyodor breathes. “I think so, too.”

The metal door squeals open unceremoniously, loud in their shared softness.

“Dazai,” Chuuya calls. “It’s time. Come on.”

He tightens his grasp on Fyodor. His hands shake. “I don’t want to go,” he whispers.

“Osamu—”

“Go with him, little one,” Fyodor murmurs, and he sounds nearly on the brink of sleep. “It
will not be long before we see one another again.”
Their walk back is silent. Chuuya had frowned and winced seeing Dazai stripped to his
bandages, the bloody shirt on the floor. Dazai didn’t want to leave the shirt, it was a gift from
Fyodor.

Chuuya makes him wear his coat, apparently more worried by his nudity than he was earlier.
Dazai clutches the balled-up shirt against his torso and walks with his head down, sluggish
and floating in his subconscious. They pass an antechamber where the others—the Port Mafia
leaders and the Detective Agency—are sitting together, tersely arguing with one another
under their breaths.

He does his best not to hear any of the words that they’re saying.

He glimpses Akutagawa on a crate in the corner, shrouded in the shadows as he watches

them. He shies from the gaze and pulls closer to Chuuya, if only to block himself from the
boy’s gray eyes.

Chuuya glances from him to Akutagawa and does nothing, just keeps walking.

When they come to his room, Chuuya makes him sit down on the bed and goes to a crate in
the corner. He pulls out a bundle of clothes, clothes that Dazai…recognizes, when he sees
their colors—beige, a blue-striped shirt, a bolo tie. Chuuya has brought them. Brought them
for Dazai. Or maybe he’s washed them, maybe they were in Fyodor’s house. He’s certain
they raided it.

He sets them beside Dazai on the bed, rubs a thumb across his forehead and hesitates before
he turns back to the crate again, fishing for something else. “Those are for you when you feel
like it. But you probably want to rest, now. I’ll get you something comfortable.”

He pulls out another pair of folded clothes, heather gray briefs and a long, worn-out blue tee.
His face is touched with pink when he brings them to Dazai. “Don’t fucking judge me,” he
mutters. It’s a familiar outfit.

“That’s Chuuya’s shirt,” Dazai whispers, as Chuuya kneels in front of him. He remembers
when he took it, too, to make the redhead mad. How disorienting, the way the memories
return to him now, distant and detached.

“Yeah. It is.” He carefully lifts up one of Dazai’s legs just above his healing ankles. “Fuck.
They’re swollen. God, I’m—” He huffs and rakes the back of his neck. “—do they hurt?”

Dazai doesn’t answer, looking down at Chuuya’s hat as the man fits one foot through the first
leg of the shorts. His chest hurts. He can’t really feel his feet.

Chuuya glances up at him, his voice turning rough. “I’m such a piece of shit.”

Dazai tries to swallow, mustering up courage to say something, anything, while Chuuya
guides his other leg into the briefs.

Chuuya’s dressing him.

“You’re not,” Dazai whispers.

Chuuya sniffles harshly, but he can’t see any shine in the cerulean eyes when he pulls the
shorts up under Dazai’s rear, half-standing and jostling him a couple times until they settle
snugly around his hips. Dazai clasps his arms and rests lightly against him while Chuuya
adjusts the material. He can feel the man’s breath rustling his hair, warm and shaky.

“I can’t believe you fell in love with the fucking devil.” The way he says it isn’t angry
anymore, it’s defeated and and sad. He must be disappointed.

“It was an accident.”

“I know,” Chuuya says softly. “I know. I’m sorry we have to do this. You know that, right?”
He pulls back, leaning to look into Dazai’s lowered face. “Tell me you know.”

“I know.”

He brushes an almost hesitant hand across Dazai’s cheek, fingers in his curls. “I lose myself
sometimes—a lot—but I can fix you. I can lead you back to the man you were before, when
Dostoevsky’s out of the way. You don’t have to love me, I understand that, I see that. It
fucking hurts, but it’s not your fault. Just let me try.”

Dazai’s pulse dully pangs over and over, throbbing in his head. He sees Chuuya’s eyes before
him, soft and caring, but he can’t bring himself to feel anything but dread. Even that emotion
is far removed, bubbling quietly in the background. They’re going to try to execute Fyodor,
and they’re going to fail. Chuuya won’t ever get the chance to fix him.

He doesn’t want Fyodor to kill Chuuya. He wants Chuuya to go on to live and be happy on
his own. He wants Chuuya to find someone better, someone who will love him back.

Like Akutagawa. He remembers the looks shared between them sometimes, Akutagawa’s
blushes. He’d always sought for Dazai’s approval, no matter how much Dazai had hurt him,
but he’d looked differently at Chuuya. Maybe as an older sibling—Dazai didn’t know then.
He’s not sure he’d be able to find out, now.

But he doesn’t want any of them to die. He just wants them to forget Dazai exists, to let him
and Fyodor go back.

“Chuuya,” he says, his voice flat with fatigue.

“Yeah.” Chuuya releases him, reaching for the blue shirt.

“If…Fyodor escapes, what will you do?”

Chuuya tucks the shirt in a bunch up against the collar, stretching it wide as he lifts it over
Dazai’s head. “Arms up.”

Dazai raises his bandaged arms, shrugging the coat off, following Chuuya with his eyes as
the man stands over him.
 “What do you mean, Dazai?” he murmurs. He pushes the arm holes over Dazai’s hands.

“We’ve never been able to kill him. If this time is—is different, it wouldn’t line up with the
odds of his escape.”

Chuuya pulls the shirt over his face, blinding him for a moment until it pops over his head.
Chuuya’s face is close and level, and Dazai blinks at him, a little startled.

“That sounds more like you.”

A knot curls in his stomach. He doesn’t want to go back to the old him. The old Dazai was in
constant pain and couldn’t feel a thing. The old Dazai was awful to everyone around him,
longing to die, longing to be alone. He doesn’t ever want to feel that way again. He lowers
his head.

Chuuya guides Dazai’s arms down and settles the shirt around his body. He fixes Dazai’s hair
with gentle hands that comb and section the tousles. “I would hand his ass over to
Corruption, that’s what I’d do. He won’t win if he can’t touch me. What’s he gonna do? He
can’t throw his ability. And you’ll be there to stop me before I go too far, won’t you?”

Dazai’s recall takes him through the countless other times he’d grasped Chuuya’s wrist to
nullify Corruption.

“Yes,” Dazai says hoarsely. “I’ll stop you.”

Chapter End Notes

*steeples hands, nods slowly at you across the table*

We're riding this love triangle so hard lmao

Meanwhile...*sad Akutagawa noises*

 Restless Sleep
Chapter Summary

A bit of healing is in order.

Chapter Notes

Hello hello! This one took a bit to come to me as far as what I wanted to do, but it's a
long one! Do enjoy yourselves :)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Chuuya leaves Dazai’s room, having tucked him under the sheets and instructed him to
rest, Akutagawa is waiting for him.

He sighs heavily and walks past the fidgeting boy, not ready to put up with him right now.

“Mister Naka…hara…sir.”

“I’m not in the mood to talk, Ryunosuke.” He has a whole flight between him and his room
and he knows—he knows—Akutagawa is going to follow him like a lost puppy.

He’s not wrong. As soon as he walks away, he hears the timid footsteps pattering behind him
and a rough series of restrained coughs. Chuuya jams his hands in his pockets and makes a
faster beeline for the elevator.

“Sir, please.” More coughing.

“Leave me alone. I’m fucking tired and I don’t give a damn about what the mafia has to say
of my behavior.” He jabs the button for the elevator, multiple times.

Akutagawa sidles up beside him, something painful twisting his features. “It’s not about
that.”

Chuuya doesn’t want to hear it. He tries to ignore the boy as the elevator doors open.

“Sir—”

Chuuya steps inside and mashes the close door button. They don’t go fast enough;
Akutagawa makes it inside and draws back into the corner, looking down at his hands as he
wrings them against his torso. It takes a lot of balls for someone like him to do what he just
did. Chuuya glares at him as the doors clang shut.

“What,” he demands. “What do you want?”

Akutagawa doesn’t look up. “What did you do to them in there? Why didn’t you tell me…? I
thought you would have come to me. I’m sorry if I made you angry when I was with Dazai.
But you told me to watch over him. I didn’t mean anything by it. I gave him his shirt.”

Chuuya’s throat feels like sandpaper. He sighs raggedly and drags a hand over his face.
Fucking hell. The things he does when he’s worked up to the poor souls around him. “You
didn’t make me angry. Dostoevsky made me angry. Dazai isn’t himself, and I can’t…fucking
explain it to anyone, you understand? No one knew him like I did, no one except
Sakunosuke, really, and he’s dead. What I made was a rash decision. I couldn’t have warned
you if I’d tried.”

Akutagawa remains silent, looking at his feet. The elevator jerks to a stop and the doors pull
open to the first flight.

“It’s best if you just leave me alone,” Chuuya mutters, exiting the elevator. “I can’t promise
you anything but frustration if you try to make conversation.”

Akutagawa follows him regardless, the soft clatter of the elevator doors echoing in the
concrete expanse before them. There’s a hall with makeshift quarters for Chuuya, Mori, and
Akutagawa on this level. All the others are up above. Chuuya wishes briefly that they
would’ve set Dazai up in the room next to his, instead. Closer to him. Safer.

But at least Mori is on a different level.

Chuuya stops at the door to his room, pulling out his keys and sending Akutagawa a side-
glare. “Is that not all? Just say what you’ve got to say and get some sleep. You look tired as
hell, Aku.”

“I can’t stand it,” Akutagawa says roughly. His voice is tight with emotion that wasn’t there a
moment ago.

Chuuya falters with the key in the lock and looks at him—really looks at him, without glaring
this time.

Akutagawa’s good at reigning in his emotion. Chuuya has only seen him cry once or twice.
His face is forcibly blank, but he swears he sees the boy’s chin quivering. His hands are fists,
clenching hold of his black coat.

“I can’t stand seeing him like that—and seeing you. Like this.”

Chuuya feels his eyes widen slightly. He shifts his weight, inhaling and glancing down the
hall. He wrenches the key in the lock and opens the door. He doesn’t go in. “What,” he
murmurs, “seeing me like what?” He stuffs the key in his pocket.

“Broken.” Akutagawa swallows. “Dostoevsky broke more than Dazai.”

The very implication makes Chuuya’s mouth curl into a snarl. Broken? He begs himself not
to lose it, not to burst into crimson for the umpteenth time today, but it doesn’t work. He
shakes his head in disbelief and yanks Akutagawa close by the collar of his jacket. “He didn’t
fucking break me,” he hisses. “I’m going to execute him two days from now! I’m going to
end him, and fix Dazai, and we’ll win this one just like I promised, Akutagawa. You hear
me?”

Akutagawa looks at him with empty gray eyes—the circles so much darker than they were
yesterday. His breathing fills the air between them, rough and shaky. He’s still holding back
emotion. Chuuya can feel it. He’s so sick of people holding back, making up, pretending
they’re things they’re not.

Pretending they’re in love just to make up for someone else’s feelings.

“You found out today, didn’t you?” Akutagawa says. “That’s why you were angry.”

“The hell are you talking about?” Chuuya growls, pushing him back. The boy stumbles,
meekly adjusting his collar.

“You found out that he didn’t love you.”

Chuuya’s blood surges up through him, boiling. He hardly knows what he’s doing for a
moment, vision sparking with fireworks of angry color. He punches Akutagawa in the face,
sending the boy against the wall, crying out. And he hates himself for it, he does. Because he
always lashes out before he can make himself think. He always hits someone before he’s
ready to understand the situation.

He heaves with breath, fighting it down, pushing it back before he does more. Before he
explodes again. He rakes his hands back through his hair, tearing off his hat, putting it back
on again.

Akutagawa coughs and splutters, holding his face. Downcast, he raises his eyes, and it only
makes it worse when Chuuya sees no malice in them.

Chuuya’s knuckles burn. He rubs them, turns sharply away. “Leave me, Aku. I’m sorry. It’s
nothing personal. I just can’t control myself tonight. I can’t, and I’d rather not hurt you.” He
steps into his room, starting to push the door closed behind him.

A weight stops it—Akutagawa’s foot in the doorway.

“Fucking—”

“Chuuya,” Akutagawa whispers.

He turns, ready to yell at him, ready to do anything he needs to in order to protect the boy
from his wrath.

But before he can, a rough kiss connects with his lips. It stops him in his tracks.

It quite possibly stops his pulse.

Chuuya feels the surge of anger die in his chest, replaced by a cold pang of shock. He inhales,
widened eyes fixed on Akutagawa’s blurry, connected face. Akutagawa pushes him back—or
maybe Chuuya stumbles and he follows, hands reaching for Chuuya’s shoulders.

“MmAk—u, Aku!” Chuuya stammers through the kiss. He finds the coordination in his limbs
to push the boy away from him. Breathing a little labored, he takes a step back, holding out
his hands as if to fend him off. “What…the hell…what the hell?” He wipes half of his mouth
with the back of his hand, sudden questions running rampant in his head. “What are you
doing?”

Akutagawa—was he attracted…? To him? To Chuuya? Does that make sense? Had he not
been seeing the signs? Had he been seeing them and telling himself not to? Is he stupid? Is
Akutagawa stupid? Does he know this is the shittiest timing in the world?

Holy shit.

Akutagawa just stands there, looking down at his feet like he doesn’t know what to do with
himself. Like he’s not sure what happened any more than Chuuya does.

“I…” he starts, weakly. He wrings his hands. He pushes back some of his dangling hair. “Um,
I—sorry. I’m, I was just…” He lifts both hands to his face, covering it, squeezing it. Chuuya
hears a roughness to his breathing, something like a cough stuck in his throat.

Chuuya pushes at air with his hands, taking another step back, blinking rapidly. Trying to find
a spot to sit down. “Look, this is not…fucking hell, Aku. I can’t do this right now, you know?
Fucking hell!”

“I’m sorry, Chuuya, I’m sorry,” Akutagawa rambles behind his hands. It’s coming through
clenched teeth. “I just thought—”

“What did you think?” He knows he shouldn’t interrupt; he knows that it’s horrible
communication—he knows, but—this is kind of a major kick in the ass. “What, Aku?”

“I don’t know!” Akutagawa shakes his head, backing away further, until his back bumps the
wall beside the exit. It makes Chuuya uneasy, somehow. Doesn’t he want Akutagawa to
leave? Maybe not in this state. Maybe that’s why his stomach clenches.

Why would he be cursed with two tough decisions in the same day? First Dazai confessing he
never loved him, now Akutagawa confessing…whatever the hell this was.

Chuuya put a hand against his forehead, dug his fingers and thumb into his temples. “This is
horrible timing. This is really awful timing, Ryunosuke.”

“I just wanted to help,” Akutagawa says.

“Help? How? How is this helping? A kiss to make me feel better?” Chuuya throws his hands
up. “This is stupid, everything’s stupid. I’m not about to make you my rebound, Aku, you
mean more to me—than…” Is he trapping himself now? Is this a Freudian slip or a comical
breakdown? “…than that. Fuck.” Fix it, goddamn you, Chuuya! “Fuck!” He swipes at a table,
knocking off a pile of books.

When he finds the patience to look up at Akutagawa once more, the boy has lowered his
hands from his face. He’s staring at the ground. He feels so much further away than the eight
feet between him and the doorway. There’s a sharp agony in the twist of his features—subtle
—but coming from someone like Akutagawa, it knifes straight into the depths of Chuuya’s
ribs.

“I just wanted you to feel better.”

Chuuya starts to speak again, but Akutagawa continues.

“I wanted you to know that there’s still someone who cares about you, e-even if it’s not the
one you wanted it to be.”

Chuuya is startled into silence. His mouth hangs slightly open. His eyes flick across the
expanse of Akutagawa’s face—his very raw expression, full of pain. Oh, this hurts. This
really, really hurts. Chuuya hates it. He digs the heels of his palms deep into his eyes, rubbing
them, hoping to erase that sight from his memory. “I can’t believe this,” he whispers hoarsely.

“I’m sorry. That’s…that’s all. I’ll go. I’m sorry for being out of line.”

He wants to yell at Akutagawa. He wants to tell him to fucking stay until Chuuya can
understand this muddle of feelings, until he can fix the situation so that both of them are
relieved and accepting of what happened—but he’s not quick enough. He hears the soft
footsteps, the closing of the door, and he can’t even bring himself to look up.

He just sits there on the bed, holding his face in his hands, and curses under his breath until
he can make the pit of ice in his gut melt away.

The knock on Chuuya’s door comes past midnight. When he opens blurry eyes to the sound,
his clock reads something like three—he doesn’t know; he doesn’t look long enough to find
out. He rubs his eyes, twists onto his back. He’s groggy. He fell asleep late. He’s in boxers
and an undershirt.

He doesn’t even remember undressing.

The knock comes again.

“Whaaat?” he yells in a groan, fumbling around for the bedstand lamp. “Who the hell is
knocking?”
“We have a problem,” replies the muffled voice of Mori. “You’re the only one who can fix
it.”

Chuuya finds the lamp and switches it on, sitting up in bed. He tosses back the covers and
swings his legs out to the side, huffing out a great sigh. “Of course,” he mutters, “Chuuya,
yes, Chuuya can fix everything. Great. Wonderful.” Then, louder, “Open the door.”

Mori enters the room, fully dressed and adjusting the crimson folds of his scarf. “It’s Dazai.”

Chuuya nods, still trying to get his eyes to focus. “Of course it’s Dazai. What’s wrong?”

“He’s been screaming half the night, pounding on his door and begging to be let out.”

It takes a second. “You locked him in his room?”

“We had to. I think it’s reasonable to assume it was necessary,” Mori says, tilting his head a
little as he examines Chuuya.

“Stop looking at me like you’re going to fuck me.”

Mori raises his brows, amusement playing at his lips. “What?”

“I’m not a child.” Chuuya pushes up from the bed, inhaling and fumbling around in his
nightstand drawer for something more to wear.

“Hmm.”

Chuuya yanks out a pair of sweatpants and starts wrestling them on, glaring at Mori as he
casually stands by and watches. “How the fuck did you hear him anyways? You’re a level
below him.”

“I didn’t. Fukuzawa was the one that heard him, so he came to me.”

“And why not directly to me?” Chuuya demands, jerking the waistband around his hips.

“Well.” Mori grins. “No one quite approves of the way you treated Dazai, or your little
incident. We had planned to transport Dostoevsky back to Japan before we issued an
executive decision on his execution or imprisonment. But you seem to think you’re the only
one making the choices, here.”

“I am the one who’s making the fucking choices. And I said we’re executing him two days
from now. That’s the decision.”

“Yes, so we heard over the speakers.”

Oh. Right.

Dostoevsky’s holding chamber was under surveillance. He forgot everyone was listening in.
“And what, the others have a problem with that? We’re dealing with a mass murderer,
someone who’s slippery enough to have escaped multiple times from our grasp. I’m not
keeping him alive this time, not long enough to let him get away again.”

“I suppose the rest of us have come to agree with you on the subject, yes. But they’re not
exactly happy about the way you took matters into your own hands.”

Chuuya closes the distance between them and leans up into Mori’s face, shoving a finger
between them. “I could kill every one of you, and you know it. They all know it. You’re just
going to have to accept my word as law this time. I’m up for discussion on any other matters
besides this one. I’m not interested in negotiating. I’m not budging on it. He dies in two days.
Fight me if you dare.”

Mori hardly reacts, watching Chuuya with careful, calculating red eyes. He always gets the
same look on his face when he’s being threatened. He understands the hazard of working
with powerful abilities. He has a healthy fear of them—it’s what makes him such a good
boss. Chuuya’s content to leave him in that position—he knows when to step back, and he
does so now, nodding shortly in response.

“Understood, Nakahara. You’ve made yourself clear. I can’t say I’m not on your side. It
would simply be best for you to consider diplomacy in the future, if you wish to remain in the
Agency’s good graces.”

Chuuya sighs shortly, turning, checking his clothes. “Right. In the future. Take me to him.”

“Hmm.”

Chuuya hears the screaming as soon as the elevator doors open. It’s hoarse, shaky, and it
doesn’t sound a thing like Dazai, so much so that his skin prickles with chills when he hears
it. He hesitates in the elevator as Mori steps out, the latter completely unaffected.

The doors start to close, and Mori turns to catch them, sending Chuuya a sweeping glance.
“Are you coming out?”

Chuuya blankly steps out of the elevator, eyes fixed on the hall, on Dazai’s door at the end of
it. He flexes his fingers. The sound…it’s awful. It makes him want to break down the door, it
makes him want to tackle Dazai to the ground, to hold him tight enough to make it stop.
There’s sobbing, too, he realizes, hysterical sobbing.

Atsushi is standing near the door, fingers in his mouth. He’s pacing back and forth.

Kunikida is sitting against the wall not far from him, both hands raked through his hair,
clenching handfuls of it. Maybe he’s covering his ears and trying not to make it obvious—
Chuuya doesn’t stare.
Fukuzawa is off in the adjacent room, sitting in a chair with tea in his hands—tea he’s staring
into, even when Chuuya and Mori pass him in the hall.

Akutagawa isn’t here. It’s good that he’s not, really—however strange it is considering the
man screaming behind that door.

He feels white, empty space in his head, pushing out the thoughts. In their place comes cold,
nauseating shock. That’s all that’s left. He walks slowly, because if he lets himself go any
faster, he’ll run and make himself look ridiculous.

Atsushi stops his pacing to look at him, rubbing the legs of his pants like his hands are
clammy and he’s trying to dry them. If his tail were out, it would be twitching, he’s sure. His
eyes flash with a spark of gold.

“You’d better not hurt him,” the tiger says weakly. “I’m not going to let you stay in there if
you hurt him.”

It fills Chuuya with disgust. “Get out of my way,” he hisses. He feels fire in his eyes when he
narrows them at the boy, and Atsushi cowers under his gaze, backing away like the cornered
animal he is. He looks down at his bare toes. “What can you do for him, Nakajima? I’d like
to see you try.”

Atsushi clenches his pantlegs, hunching his shoulders. “I’ll do what I have to. Dazai means a
lot to me.”

The door rattles and pounds with the force of the man on the other side. The sobs are terrible;
the screams are worse.

Let me out. Let me out. Please.

Chuuya forces them into plain letters in his head, nothing but words floating through. He
doesn’t want to accept the amount of emotion, the amount of terror he hears in them. The
hitches that break the words apart. The shaking voice that shouldn’t ever come from Dazai’s
mouth.

“Get away from the door, all of you,” Chuuya commands them, looking over his shoulder,
waiting for them to obey. “I want privacy.”

Mori is standing tall not far behind, examining Chuuya for a moment before he jerks his chin
at Atsushi. The boy doesn’t look fond of obeying anyone—especially not the degenerate boss
of the Port Mafia, but he goes when Kunikida rises without a word, all of them following one
another into the next room where Fukuzawa waits.

Fukuzawa is the wisest man, the most respectable person Chuuya has ever met. He knows the
Agency’s boss will keep them put no matter what goes on, and it gives him some semblance
of confidence as he sends his ability into the doorknob to unlock it, manipulating the pins
until the door clicks.
“Dazai,” he says through the metal, twisting the handle but holding steady through the
barrage of pounding. The door vibrates against his shoulder. “Move back. I’m coming in. Can
you hear me?”

The voice falters, the sobs hitch and stifle for a second. The banging ceases. He hears a slight
scuff of feet.

Chuuya opens the door slowly, slipping into the smallest space he can so that Dazai won’t
unexpectedly run out of the room.

It’s dark inside. He shuts the door with a gentle click behind him and blinks in the darkness
for a moment, trying to make his eyes adjust.

There’s a hunched shadow not a foot away from him, shivering and clenched in on itself,
kneeling on the floor.

Alright. Okay. That’s Dazai. Fuck.

“Hey,” Chuuya whispers. He means to say it louder. He can’t. “Hey, it’s me, buddy. It’s
okay.”

The shape shakes and whimpers, tiny restrained sobs still coming out in heaves. He’s as
hysterical and terrified as a child. Chuuya thinks he could believe it’s Dazai a little more if
the lights were on—if he could see the face that he recognized. Right now, all he can imagine
is a little boy. The little boy Dazai was years ago.

Well. Little-er. Fifteen wasn’t so young as it seems, now that they’re older.

“I’m going to…find your lamp, okay? I can’t see shit in here.” There’s a tremor lingering in
Chuuya’s hands. The whimpers are getting to him more than he wants them to. It’s
disconcerting to hear them in Dazai’s voice.

Dazai doesn’t answer, doesn’t even move as Chuuya picks his way across the room, except to
flinch when he steps too close.

He pats around the nightstand until he finds the lamp, knocked over on its side. The bulb isn’t
shattered, so he fingers the cord until he locates the switch and flicks it on.

A small burst of yellow spreads across the room, and Chuuya is almost afraid to turn around
and see Dazai.

He makes himself do it, muscles tight and stiff.

Dazai is looking up at him, the lamp’s glow making a tiny shine across dark, dripping wet
eyes, red-rimmed and pinpointed with fear that doesn’t belong there—not when he’s looking
at his old partner. His lover, for fuck’s sake. He’s crouched on the floor, arms tucked against
his chest, fists under his chin. His knees are folded under him, body curved as if he collapsed
out of sheer exhaustion. His hair is a mess of dampened chocolate curls, sticking to his
flushed face where the tear tracks are. His entire face is wet. He has scratches—fingernail
scratches, it looks like—across the tender skin of his neck and his arms. The bandages have
come unraveled, torn in most places, dangling about the pastel blue shirt and briefs.

Chuuya’s throat is dry. He takes in as deep a breath as he can muster, but it trembles slightly
when he exhales again. “What’s going on?” he says softly, slowly lowering himself to a
crouch. “What’s wrong, Dazai?”

Dazai takes in a staggering breath, cringing away, further into himself. When he speaks, his
voice is congested and completely ruined from his screaming. It crackles and breaks. “Wh-
why did they lock me in? What did—did I do?”

Chuuya’s entire gut twists into cold, shivering knots. He scoots closer, he wants to touch him,
to hold him so badly. But Dazai keeps bowing away, and it sends needles of self-loathing
through his skin. “Hey, hey. You didn’t do anything. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you. I
never told them they could lock you in here. Okay? I never told them that. They weren’t
supposed to.”

“I c-can’t…can’t,” Dazai shakes his head, looking at the floor, trembling so violently that his
body is twitching. “Sleep. Can’t. I’m—scared. My—my head…hurts. A-and…my f…feet.”

Fuck. Chuuya’s hands grow clammy. He rubs them against his sweatpants. He shifts an inch
closer, and Dazai seems hyper aware of it, flinching again. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’m really sorry
they scared you like that. Can I touch you? Can I help you?”

“Noooo,” Dazai whines. He turns his head into his shoulder.

Chuuya forces himself to keep his hands on his legs, rubbing them harder until the friction
burns his palms. “Got it. Okay. Um…” He blows out a breath. “Talk to me a little more. Can
you try to calm down? You’re really worked up right now.”

This only seems to make Dazai’s torment worse. He sobs out a pitiful sound; he starts crying
again. He pushes his fists up against his mouth, breath wheezing past them. “I’m sorry!
Sorryyy…”

“No, no!” Chuuya raises his hands and holds them out to try and steady Dazai, peering up
into his face as best he can, trying to keep eye contact, but Dazai keeps looking away.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about—you’re not doing anything wrong. You just sound like
you’re hurting yourself with all the hysterics, okay, and I really want you to stop feeling so
scared. I’m not here to punish you or do anything like—like that.” Like Fyodor. What Fyodor
must have done.

Chuuya can’t get worked up. He can’t allow himself to imagine the things Dostoevsky must
have done to completely ruin Dazai’s sense of self. The fact that he’s acting like a child right
now, it says a lot about what must have been inflicted on his partner. The ways he must have
hurt Dazai.

Sexual. Mori had mentioned the sexual trauma he’d found evidence of in his examination.
Fresh scars. Tearing in the walls of his rectum. Something that had left marks in him,
something foreign, something that should never be forced into a body. Something that had
been used violently.

Twisting hatred that will grow into a hot rage if he doesn’t quench it bubbles in the back of
Chuuya’s thoughts, but he makes it stay there. He makes it stall, keeping it from boiling over.
He’s not going to let his emotions drive him this time. He’s going to be strong for Dazai. He’s
going to be what Dazai needs, instead of being selfish and letting the anger in.

It’s harder, though, when he remembers that there had been hints of this kind of behavior in
the past. The childlike terror, the curling up in corners. The kneeling on the floor. Times
Chuuya had walked in when Dazai was huddled in a corner, shivering but not crying. Staring
into empty space, hardly any clothes on his body, bandages torn and bloodied.

Mori. It’s as if Fyodor had brought out all of the little tics that Dazai had suffered through
when he was younger in the mafia, replacing his personality with his rare and vulnerable
side. Making his vulnerable side his entire personality, and then adding emotion, the strength
of which shouldn’t be endured by someone who’d never learned to feel before.

Chuuya rubs at his chest, at the tightness there in his lungs, trying to breathe easier, to be
calm for Dazai’s sake. He sits back on his haunches, shifting with the discomfort, wracking
his brain for a method to use while Dazai sniffles and shakes before him.

“Can you…do you want to talk?” he murmurs, studying Dazai’s teary, flushed face. “About
anything? About the way it hurts?”

Dazai wipes his face over and over, unable to make eye contact. His eyes are blurry, almost
like he’s not even present right now in his own mind. Like he’s dissociating.

“I don’t know how,” he whispers, “…when he’s not…with me. It’s h-hard to feel. He
always…makes it clear.”

Chuuya clenches his teeth until his jaw aches. Yes, right. Fyodor. Because Fyodor makes
everything better. God, this is awful. He just wants to help, and he’s not letting himself
understand the fact that Dazai is going through normal reactions to trauma—that he’s bonded
to the Russian because of what the man put him through. He’s in love with him because of it.

“Okay,” he says gently. “Let me try and help you, then. You look terrified. Are you scared of
something? Are you scared of me?”

Dazai kneads his hands under his chin, sucking in another sob as he squirms. He nods, and it
tears Chuuya’s heart apart.

Chuuya falls back to his rear on the floor, drawing up his legs and looking off at the corner of
the room. He rests his elbows along them, sighs, rubs his face with both clammy hands. “I’m
really sorry, Dazai. I’m sorry that I scared you and treated you like shit. I’m sorry that I didn’t
stop to understand how much pain you’re in right now. You’re not yourself—I shouldn’t have
treated you like you were.”
Dazai seems incredibly uncomfortable with the apology, starting to claw and scratch at his
skin again, tearing away more bandages on his arms. He shakes his head, over and over. His
fingers claw into the fresh scratches, digging them deeper until Chuuya’s body flinches with
phantom pain.

“Okay, let’s not do that. Dazai, hey. Look at me—stop hurting yourself.”

Dazai whines. His face screws up and he claws even more, drawing blood.

He’s going to have to touch him. This isn’t going to fly with Chuuya. He’s not going to watch
the most precious person in the world rake open his own skin. He inhales and gets back to his
knees. “Hey,” he says more firmly.

Dazai recoils immediately, squirming backwards when Chuuya leans towards him. “No! No,
I don’t want it! Don’t!” he cries hoarsely.

“Stop doing that and I won’t touch you!” Chuuya yells without meaning to, trying to be heard
over Dazai’s resurging panic. He hovers inches away, but Dazai keeps scratching, almost like
he can’t even make himself stop it.

Almost—almost—like he wants to be stopped.

Does he?

Dazai groans tremulously, but his body stays put somewhat. His body language begs for the
opposite. Is he asking for the help, or is he stuck thinking he can’t refuse it?

Dazai is not rejecting him, he’s acting on a familiar verbal response and needing something
else. He can practically feel it in the air between them.

“Okay. Come here. Come on,” Chuuya murmurs gently, grasping Dazai by the wrists, pulling
him into Chuuya’s chest. He forces the shaking arms around his back, the clawed hands into
his spine. “You’re okay,” he whispers into Dazai’s damp, warm hair, “I’ve got you. I’m right
here. You can scratch me if you need to. There’s no need to do it to yourself. You’re hurt
enough.”

Dazai writhes and drags out muffled sobs against Chuuya’s chest, wetting the shirt with his
hot tears, his open mouth. He tries to pull away, but Chuuya only scoops up his body against
his own, wrapping his legs around him to keep him there.

And Dazai does scratch him. He’s never done it before—he’s really never hurt Chuuya unless
it was a mutual fight. Even then, he’s resorted to dodging instead of engaging. But it seems
tonight he’s perfectly fine with taking Chuuya’s invitation to let out the pain, and he digs
through Chuuya’s shirt hard enough to make him wince.

Still, Chuuya feels better for it. Chuuya buries his face in Dazai’s hair and rubs his back. He
looks through the rising blur in his eyes at the unraveled bandages, at Dazai’s skinny legs,
haphazardly sprawled against the floor in their awkward embrace. He feels the hitches in
Dazai’s body, the way the cries are absorbed by the hug. He tries to make himself think that
he’s being helpful, somehow.

It’s just a hug. He’s probably triggering all sorts of things. But maybe it will fade, as long as
he holds Dazai. Maybe it will fade. He doesn’t know what else to do.

At some point—Chuuya doesn’t know how long it takes—Dazai’s hands slow, failing in their
scratching, slipping down towards the floor. Chuuya lets out a breath he doesn’t realize he
was holding, a slow, long one that ruffles the man’s curls. “That’s it…that’s better.”

“Better,” Dazai says faintly, through a few choked snuffles. “…better…”

Okay. Good. So he’s done something right for once. The response lightens Chuuya a bit,
makes him tilt his head and pull back to get a glimpse of Dazai’s face, stroking a hand
through his hair. “Yeah?”

Dazai’s profile is mostly long lashes and a rosy nose from this angle, tears dribbling away as
he blinks sluggishly. He must be exhausted.

“Do you…” Maybe it’s better not to phrase things as a question right now. Maybe Dazai
needs something more stable to feel comforted, a person who’s in charge of the situation. “…
Let me help you into bed.”

Dazai groans feebly. He’s not sure if it’s an agreement or a protest. He doesn’t move at all,
just hangs limp against Chuuya as he manipulates the thin body off of his chest, turns it
around until he’s able to scoop him up under the legs.

Dazai’s head drapes against his shoulder, tucked into his neck. It’s warm.

“That’s it,” Chuuya mumbles, “Good boy.” It’s a bit of a struggle to get to his feet, however
small of a weight Dazai’s body contains, but he does it successfully at any rate, wobbling a
moment before he gains balance. He shifts Dazai up in his arms, trying not to jostle him too
much.

And then he just…stands there beside the bed for a moment.

He doesn’t want to put Dazai down.

Dazai has stopped shaking. His body is down to a tremble—the least he’s trembled since he
was rescued. His breaths are slower, deeper. Chuuya can’t see his face but he feels the soft
blink of lashes against his neck. He feels the heat of each exhale on his skin.

Dazai’s arms are folded against his chest. But they’re relaxed. The fingernails are bloody, but
he’s not clenching them or clawing at himself anymore.

Neither of them says anything for a moment. Chuuya just holds him against his chest, and
Dazai lies there with his face in his neck.

“Are you alright, now? Do you feel okay?” Chuuya murmurs.

“Good,” Dazai croaks. It’s odd—the way it sounds like a reflexive response. But Chuuya can
accept it. It’s good enough for him.

He lowers Dazai into the tangled sheets, draping his limp head against the pillow. Dazai
won’t look at him, eyes drooping and heavy, trained on his hands. “Are you sure?”

“Good,” Dazai repeats in the same exact tone.

Chuuya swallows against a dry throat and tugs the sheets from under him, straightening them
out and covering him to his waist. “Is that warm enough for you? Are you hot or cold?”

“Warm,” Dazai rasps, “good. Good.”

The responses make him uneasy. But what is he supposed to read into them? They’re still
responses, affirmative ones. He’s communicating just fine. He’s not sure why the way he says
it bothers him. Dazai feels like he’s a world away, in a whole different dimension.

His arms are still bloody, crimson smeared along his skin and probably Chuuya’s clothes, too.
Chuuya tugs a half-bandaged arm out and Dazai doesn’t resist him. He starts fixing up and
re-doing the gauze until they sufficiently cover the injured skin. The scratches aren’t too deep
—not dangerous enough to worry about cleaning them.

He does the same with the other arm, constantly glancing over Dazai’s face to see if he’s
being looked at.

Dazai never raises his eyes.

“Are you going to sleep in the bed?” Dazai asks, so quietly that Chuuya nearly misses it.

Chuuya looks at him, startled. “The bed? This bed?”

“With me,” Dazai says. “Please.”

Chuuya drags his hand along the shape of Dazai’s form under the covers. He slowly sits
down on the edge of the bed. “O-oh.” He’s not sure…what else to say. What to think. What to
do with himself except stare at Dazai, who won’t look at him back.

“Please?” Dazai begs, more feebly.

“Uh yes—yeah. Sure, I can…I can do that.” He scratches his forehead, twists a little and
scoots up against the headboard. He’s not quite ready to lay down. He’s not sure he can make
himself just yet.

Dazai sniffles. “Can you hold me, too? I’m cold.”

Chuuya’s chest starts to ache. “Thought you were warm a second ago.”

“Chuuya is warm. Fedya is not here to keep me warm.”

Chuuya musters all of his self-control to beat down the rising response to that. He’s going to
have to accept this—this…mind thing Dazai is dealing with. He’s not allowing himself to get
angry over it anymore. He’s just going to give Dazai what he needs and hope it does…
something. “Is that why you couldn’t sleep?” he says, forcibly quieter, so Dazai won’t hear
anything wrong with his tone.

Dazai pulls his hands out of the covers, starts fingering the edge of the sheets at his waist.
“Chuuya will be angry if I say yes.”

Chuuya drops his head back against the headboard, briefly closing his eyes. He reaches out
until he feels Dazai’s forehead under his hand. He strokes back through his hair. “No. Chuuya
will not be angry. Chuuya promises to stop being angry. You’re going through a lot of stuff
that’s really hard for Chuuya to understand. That’s all.”

“Okay.”

Good enough. “Are you tired?” Chuuya asks.

“No.”

“Really?”

Dazai is silent.

Chuuya lifts his head again and looks at him. He’s still playing with the covers, motionless
under Chuuya’s touch, lashes covering most of his eyes. At least he’s calm, now. He’s barely
even trembling. “Do you want to talk about it? About why you were scared and pounding on
the door?”

Dazai shakes his head slowly. But then, after a few moments, he nods.

Chuuya can’t deny his heart flutters a little at that. Good. This is good, right? Therapy stuff,
kind of. Talking about feelings.

“I can’t sleep without him.”

Chuuya presses his lips together and taps his palm against the sheets, nodding and trying to
transfer the bulk of his prickling jealousy to some other part of his body then the hand resting
in Dazai’s hair. “Got it. Right. Okay. So you…”

“I wanted to come out. But it was locked, so…so…” His voice drops to a frail whisper. “I
thought I was in trouble.”

This makes Chuuya’s heart shudder. It takes the energy away from his jealousy. His brows
furrow in sympathy. He rubs a tiny circle with his thumb into Dazai’s scalp, watching his face
carefully. “No,” he says softly. “You weren’t in trouble.”

“Okay,” Dazai whispers shakily. “I was loud because I knew that…that Chuuya would come
help me, if he wasn’t still mad.”
Is referring to everyone in the third person helpful to him, somehow?

Chuuya’s throat tickles with the beginning of an ache. He blinks a few times, glances away at
the door. “I’m not mad. I won’t be mad anymore.”

“Okay,” Dazai whispers again. “Can you hold me now, please?”

Chuuya’s heart lurches. He inhales and quickly nods, maneuvering under the covers next to
Dazai’s feeble form, clasping his waist and drawing him against his chest.

Dazai turns towards him as he does it, and their eyes meet ever so briefly before Dazai’s drop
again. It’s just long enough for Chuuya to see the blown-out size of his pupils, nearly taking
over his eyes. Almost like he’s drugged. It scares him, because he knows Dazai hasn’t had
access to anything, which means the state is purely his own mentality displaying itself. And
that’s terrifying. He’s far gone from his own body—or blissed out on whatever emotion high
he’s just been through. Chuuya can’t tell for certain. Maybe a little of both.

It makes him wrap Dazai closer to him. It makes his vision blur as everything that’s happened
catches up to his thoughts. He feels like this is his last chance, the last time he’ll ever be able
to hold Dazai like this. He’s not sure why. It’s just a sinking, impending dread in the center of
his stomach, weighing him down and sapping his energy.

Dazai’s body is overheated, oddly, even though it’s not very warm in the room. Chuuya had
turned it down when Dazai had mentioned the heat before.

“Was it cold in Dostoevsky’s house?” he murmurs into Dazai’s hair, as Dazai wraps all of his
limbs around Chuuya’s body, sealed against him. He rubs the man’s back, venturing very
carefully under the shirt and hoping to soothe him with the skin-on-skin contact.

Dazai nods into his shoulder.

Chuuya raises his brows at the wall across from them. He has to admit he didn’t expect a
response. “How cold?”

“Cold cold,” Dazai croaks.

That must be why—why Dazai’s body continuously trembles like it’s thirty degrees in the
room.

Chuuya’s entire body sinks a little deeper into the bed. “Fucking hell,” he breathes, “that’s
awful. He didn’t let you wear much either, did he?”

“Fedya gave me a nice shirt,” Dazai says. “I like it.”

“That’s not enough, Dazai. He should’ve let you wear all of your clothes.”

There’s a pause before he speaks again, and Dazai’s voice is quieter. “I know.”

Chuuya senses anguish in his voice and moves his hand up to the back of Dazai’s head. “It’s
okay,” he whispers, “it’s not your fault. You didn’t have a choice.”
 “He said he was sorry.” Dazai clings to him a little tighter. His voice is nearly inaudible in
Chuuya’s shoulder. A tiny gasp of a rising sob hitches in his chest. “Fedya feels things now.
Fedya loves me now.”

Chuuya’s throat twists up. His eyes burn. He squeezes them shut. “Dazai,” he chokes out.

“He does! He says so! Fedya loves me now!” Dazai insists, crying the words out, jerking at
Chuuya’s clothes to emphasize them. “I made him feel things!”

Chuuya’s mouth trembles. He tries to swallow, but it won’t happen with the lump stuck in his
throat. He squeezes Dazai until the tears begin rolling down his own cheeks. He listens to
Dazai’s hitched breath, the tiny sounds of sobs and the wetness that seeps into his shoulder.
He doesn’t let himself make any noise; he just weeps silently along with his partner. He
weeps for the man he used to be. He weeps for the things Dostoevsky did to take that away
from him—from both of them. He weeps for the feelings Dazai never had towards him.

Most of all, he weeps for the love that he’d never have. The love that Dazai gives to a
monster that doesn’t deserve it.

A monster that will die two days from now.

Chapter End Notes

:D I never get tired of writing this fic. Hopefully it'll the next chapters will come to me
just as quickly as they have been, even during the holiday season! <3 But I do have a lot
on my plate so it may not be exactly weekly like it was. At any rate, I can't wait to see
what you think of the small comforts in this one @.@
 Careful Mercies
Chapter Summary

Dazai just wants something sweet.

Chapter Notes

Life has been kicking my ass, but I finally found the time for this chapter! Can't wait,
the big finale is coming SOOOOONNNNN :D

See the end of the chapter for more notes

When Dazai wakes, he’s alone in the bed. Alone.

Alone…in the bed.

He touches the empty sheets where Chuuya was last night. If he was there? The covers have
been thrown back, rumpled and cold against his fingertips.

Did Chuuya leave as soon as Dazai fell asleep, then? Or was it hours ago?

How long did he sleep?

How many days has it been? He hasn’t slept more than one night, right? His body isn’t off?

It’s not time for Fyodor to be executed yet, right? It hasn’t been two days, right?

He doesn’t think so—no, he’s sure that it hasn’t. His sense of time is functional. It’s only
been a night. Fyodor is safe and whole.

But the thought lingers in his mind. It drives tingles through his stomach like a herd of tiny
ants. It makes him feel sick. It makes him restless when he tries to lie on his back and close
his eyes. It makes it impossible for him to sleep any more.

Dazai rises from the bed, still shaky on what feels like tender ankles, but which are probably
perfectly fine ankles that he’s dreaming up pain for. At this point, Dazai can’t be sure of
anything, especially when it comes to pain. His entire mind’s functioning seems off for it.
Either he doesn’t feel the pain that should be there, or he feels excruciating pain that
shouldn’t. It’s not a matter of right or wrong, really, it’s a matter of feeling or not feeling, and
feelings are very important to Dazai.
Wearing the clothes Chuuya has given him is disconcerting. He’s still dressed in the light
blue shirt and briefs. He wants Fyodor’s white shirt on his body. He wants the reassurance
that everything is alright and he hasn’t done anything wrong that he doesn’t remember.

Dazai doesn’t remember much, even now. There’s a space that inserts itself between his mind
and his body. Before he realizes it, he’s standing at the door to the room. When he looks
down, he’s wearing…

He’s wearing something too familiar, yet at the same time…not familiar in the least. He
dressed himself? When did he take off Chuuya’s blue shirt?

If he thinks hard enough, he can remember the sensation of its fabric against his palms,
pulling at it.

He’s put on this new outfit quite improperly, leaving a few things out, but he doesn’t recall
how they go together. There’s a vest, and under that a blue-striped dress shirt. The buttons are
done on the shirt. The vest however is hanging undone. The bolo tie with a stone the color of
Chuuya’s eyes is lying on his bed. Pants are on his legs but they’re sagging. Have they gotten
bigger? No, he’s gotten smaller, hasn’t he? The beige trench coat on his shoulders is very
warm, but Dazai pauses before opening the door to properly roll up the sleeves to his elbows.
His bandages show that way. It looks more…like him.

Something like that.

Dazai feels himself fall through space again, detaching. When he comes to, he’s standing in
the hall a foot or so from his room, looking into an antechamber that seems farther away than
it should be. People are littered across the small sofa and chairs in its center—worn furniture
that’s tattered at the edges. There’s too many of them—which is to say there’s more than one.
Chuuya is there.

If he focuses on their faces separately, he can identify them all, but whenever he looks at all
of them, their faces blur. Only one stands out at any given time.

There’s Kunikida, Atsushi, Fukuzawa, Chuuya, Akutagawa, Mori, and Ranpo—whom he

hasn’t seen until now. The people are all circled about Ranpo, as if they’re greeting him. But
they’re using loud voices, so Dazai doesn’t go in. They must be angry about something.
Dazai pulls back to the very edge of the opening in the hallway, peeking around it.

Down the hall—though he doesn’t look—the door to Fyodor’s room stares at him. Chuuya
has the keys. They’re in his left pocket—if he’s put them in the same place they were before,
that is.

He wants to see Fyodor. Will they let him see? They sound too angry right now.

Akutagawa is looking across the room at him.

Dazai notices it so suddenly that all the faces scatter in his head, only the boy’s grey-eyed
stare left in perfect clarity. He’s sitting stiffly on the couch, hands folded in his lap. The black
of his clothes makes the rest of his body look like a shadow.
Dazai’s heart lodges in his throat. He pulls back around the edge of the wall and curls up
against it, pressing tightening fists under his nose. His breath wheezes out against the
knuckles. He hadn’t meant to be seen. He feels like he should be doing something when
someone looks at him like that. Especially Akutagawa. But what is he supposed to do? His
ears won’t allow him to listen to the argument going on—or is it his mind blocking it out? It
doesn’t matter. Whatever they want from him, he cannot do it, and when they see him, the
thought pierces his skin like knives.

Dazai hears footsteps and flinches, drawing back along the wall towards his room.

Chuuya rounds the corner, the edges of his coat fluttering. He looks at Dazai a little blankly.
His eyes take in Dazai’s body as he stands frozen, one hand pressing the wall.

“Good morning,” Chuuya says quietly. “You’re wearing your clothes.”

Dazai flexes his hand. He tries to calm the fluttering pulse under his ribs. He takes deep
breaths. “Yes,” he answers, but his voice wavers. That’s good, right? That’s what Chuuya
wants. Chuuya won’t hurt him. He’s being good.

“I’m glad.” Chuuya takes a careful step forward, and Dazai forces himself to stay still even
though his stomach goes cold.

“Sorry,” he blurts.

Chuuya questions with his eyebrows.

“For watching,” Dazai explains, hoarsely.

Chuuya shakes his head. “It’s fine. Ranpo has just arrived and the rest were filling him in.”
He takes another step towards Dazai, one of his gloved hands open by his side and slightly
lifting, as if he’ll grab him. “We must have frightened you with all the yelling. You don’t
have to worry. They just didn’t like me staying the night in your room, but I’ve got it all
sorted. The bastards were already mad at me for deciding to execute Dostoevsky so—”

Dazai claps his hands over his ears. He doesn’t mean to, it just happens. His body jolts with
electricity. “I wasn’t listening,” he cries softly, hardly able to hear past his cold hands. Pain
throbs somewhere in his body, he can’t tell where. But is it real pain? Is it just emotion? Are
his emotions coming out physically now?

Chuuya lifts both hands, carefully pushing at the air as if he’s pleading with Dazai not to run.
His mouth moves, and Dazai can’t help but read his lips, words garbled in his ears. “It’s okay.
Sorry.”

“I want to see Fedya.”

Chuuya’s hands lower. His face slackens, his eyes turn with something that looks like
disappointment. His shoulders heave with a sigh.

Dazai takes his hands off his ears. He fidgets and glances at his feet. It’s silly. He knows it’s
silly. All he wants to do is see Fyodor, talk to Fyodor, hold on to Fyodor. He believes Fyodor
will escape before he’s killed, but what if he doesn’t? What if these two days are really their
last?

He can’t feel properly when he’s not with the Russian. He feels strange and forgets things. He
doesn’t like that at all. He wants to go back to the routine they had, back to not worrying
about other people or duties he used to perform before he was in Fyodor’s house.

“Dazai, you just saw him. Please—”

“There are only two days,” Dazai strains, feeling the words scrape his throat. He looks
timidly up at Chuuya. He tries to look as innocent as possible, as convincing and meek as he
can.

Ah…what is he doing now? He feels like he’s forcing more emotion than he feels. This
seems…fake, but familiar.

Is he trying to manipulate Chuuya? But he’s just asking. He just wants to be with Fyodor.

Chuuya’s eyes soften, and it twists Dazai’s stomach into a knot. At the same time, a heady
sensation expands in the rest of his body. Triumph. Is it working? Chuuya responds to this in
a way that Fyodor doesn’t. Did Dazai remember that on his own or is that his subconscious
doing the work for him?

Chuuya slides his hands into his pockets and glances over his shoulder. Is he thinking about
the rest of the people in the other room or considering letting Dazai into Fyodor’s chamber?

Where are the keys again? The impression is there in Chuuya’s pocket. He sees it. He notes it
without meaning to. If Chuuya doesn’t let him…he can swipe the keys, can’t he?

No, no. That’s a bad thought. He shouldn’t do such things. He’ll cause trouble.

It’s just that…it would be so easy, wouldn’t it? Chuuya doesn’t pay much attention to his
surroundings when he’s distracted, and Dazai remembers that he can usually come up with a
good distraction.

“You need to eat breakfast first, at least.”

“I’m not hungry,” Dazai says hastily. His heart is loud. It pounds on his chest like it wants to
be let out. His stomach is hollow—he doesn’t remember feeling hungry. Should he?

Chuuya frowns, and Dazai feels like he’s said the wrong thing. “You’ve barely eaten anything
since you’ve been here. I need you to eat, even if you’re not hungry.”

Salty. Salty things are food. Will it be salty? It probably will be. Dazai doesn’t want anything
to do with food. He doesn’t want it at all. He shakes his head hard and fast. “No.”

His nerves jolt. Did he say no? Was that him? Oh. Oh, he shouldn’t have said that. Chuuya’s
going to hurt him—no, not hurt him, Chuuya promised, he said he wouldn’t. But he will be
angry, won’t he?
“Yes, Dazai. Hey—wait, don’t…stop backing away.”

Is he backing away? Dazai feels his ankles aching, and thinks he must be—since Chuuya is
coming forward now but not getting much closer. His mind swarms. His vision flickers. He’s
fine, though. Chuuya’s not actually going to get angry, right? That’s just his body telling him
lies.

His hands are shaking.

“Dazai,” Chuuya says firmly, just as Dazai’s back thuds against something hard and stable.
The wall? His door? There’s metal jabbing his spine. A door handle. “It’s alright. I’ll get you
something good to eat, okay? You’ll feel better.”

“Salt,” Dazai croaks. He shakes his head, staring with glazed eyes at Chuuya’s twisting face.
His eyes are scrunched. He must be confused. That’s okay—Dazai is, too. “No salt. I don’t
want salt.”

Fyodor would understand, but Chuuya looks at him like he’s insane. He’s very close to Dazai,
his body heat spreading out towards him, so different from Fyodor’s cold. Dazai feels
suffocated against the door, blocked in. Chuuya’s face is inches away—he’s shorter than
Dazai, but he feels taller. Or is that just because Dazai is slumping lower than his height
against the door?

“That’s…fine. I mean, as long as you eat, I can find you something that isn’t salty.”

Something not salty. Yes! There are things that Dazai has eaten that weren’t salty. That’s
right. “I want cake!” he chirps, but his voice still scratches against a dry throat. What’s it
called again? The food Fyodor gave him when he was good? “I want honey cake!” His whole
body is shaking. He wants to make it stop.

“Honey…cake?” Chuuya blinks rapidly and nods a little, shifting slightly backwards. “Well
—yeah, I could find you something sweet. Is that all? You don’t have to be so scared to tell
me what you want, you know.”

“I want,” Dazai affirms, struggling with the words, “honey cake. I want honey cake.”

“Yeah—okay. Calm down. I’ll find you honey cake.”

The right word comes to Dazai. He remembers. “Медовик. Медовик!”

Chuuya’s mouth hardens, his eyes darken. “God, Dazai, don’t speak in Russian to me,” he
snaps.

Ice picks pierce his stomach. Dazai shrinks against the door and looks down at his feet. His
throat aches.

Chuuya growls. “Ah, fuck. Fuck. I’m sorry.” A hand lands on Dazai’s head, soft and heavy.
“I’m not good at this…this whole…healing thing. I’ve got to stop being a dumbass and get
used to this version of you.”
Dazai doesn’t reply, picking at the bandages around his knuckles. He likes the weight of
Chuuya’s hand on his head.

“I’ll send one of the men out for honey cake.”

Chuuya’s man has no problem locating a store nearby that sells honey cake, quickly returning
with one that Chuuya sets on the makeshift dining room table on the first level of the
safehouse. He pulls up two chairs to the table for them.

But Dazai lingers at the entrance to the room, wringing his hands and looking at the chairs.
His pupils seem too small, his movements too jerky. Is it the entire floor between him and
Fyodor that has Dazai shaken?

Chuuya stands by the other chair and motions to the honey cake on the table. “Come on. You
can sit. I’ll get you some milk, if you want it. Or coffee, I don’t know.” He doesn’t fucking
know at all. What does Dazai drink these days? He used to drink beer with Chuuya.

Dazai’s eyes shift to him quietly, then back to the chair, then around the rest of the room.

“We’re safe. Nobody’s here but us.” Chuuya doesn’t understand what the issue is, and it
makes his nerves itch.

Dazai opens his mouth—once, then twice without sound—before he can get out the words. “I
don’t, I-I don’t like chairs.”

It makes absolutely no sense. But you know what, Chuuya has grace for him. It must be
something important, something to do with the Russian, as usual.

And in all honesty, the way Dazai says it hits him like a hot needle, and he feels a little frantic
to accommodate his partner. He drags the chair away from the table, but it makes an awful
screeching noise, and Dazai cowers, stumbling back against a pile of crates.

Chuuya curses himself under his breath and picks the chair up, sending a concerned glance to
the bandaged man as he hurries first one chair, then the other out of the room. When he
comes back, dusting off his hands, Dazai looks a little less like a frightened kitten.

A little less.

He’s sitting on the crates, wiping his face with the backs of his hands. Chuuya hears a sniffle.

His neck prickles. “Oh—shit,” Chuuya blurts, crouching in front of him with hands on his
knobby knees. “Are you crying? Are you okay?”
Dazai’s eyes are red. He keeps wiping them, so Chuuya can hardly tell if he’s actually crying,
but his voice comes out congested. “Sorry, Chuuya.”

“Don’t be,” Chuuya murmurs, brushing at Dazai’s disheveled curls. “You can sit here and eat
the cake, alright? Tables are overrated.”

“I caused Chuuya too much trouble.”

Chuuya’s stomach clenches. Hearing Dazai refer to him by name over and over again is so
disconcerting. It’s like he doesn’t really remember who Chuuya is, he’s just rattling the name
off because he knows it now. “You did no such thing. If you don’t like chairs, you don’t like
chairs.” He tries to keep his voice light. “I’m happy to eliminate everything you don’t like,
you just say the word. Hear me?”

Dazai’s head trembles in a nod. “Okay, Chuuya.”

Chuuya brings him the honey cake, and Dazai seems to have no trouble eating it after one
mournful cry of, “There’s no strawberries…!”

Chuuya tries to make him drink some milk, but Dazai can only handle a little, scrunching his
nose and swallowing hard like he doesn’t remember the taste. Maybe he should’ve brought
beer.

Chuuya wishes he could just know everything, all of the horrible things that happened in that
house with Fyodor. So he didn’t have to bite his tongue to keep from asking Dazai. So he
didn’t have to constantly worry that this or that would be a new trigger to make him scared.

But one day, he’ll know, he supposes. He can make himself patient until Dazai is ready.

He can do that much.

Chuuya lets Dazai visit Fyodor after speaking with the others—essentially insisting that they
let him, like it or not—but he doesn’t go into the room with Dazai this time. Instead, he goes
to the control room where they’ve set up monitors for the cameras in the cell and watches the
two interact.

It helps him contain the anger. Watching Dazai kneel by Fyodor’s metal chair and cling to his
leg, watching him rest his head in Fyodor’s lap. Watching Fyodor lean down to speak to him
like he matters, watching them look at each other like lovers. If he were in the room, he’d be
teeming with Corruption.

He keeps the volume muted on the monitor. He likes to think he does it to give them privacy,
to be moralistic and not so controlling.
But it’s not because of that.

The time drags by. Chuuya still sits at the small desk in the chair that gets harder and harder.
He watches the green-tinted camera feed with glazing eyes. They’re talking an awful lot, he
thinks. Dazai doesn’t talk to him this much. He’s not required to, though. Chuuya has no right
to feel jealous.

After all, Fyodor’s only the kidnapper who caused all this. What right does Chuuya have to
hate him?

The irony makes him grin to himself in the glow of the monitor. Yeah. Fuck his luck.

He keeps watching, though. He doesn’t let himself turn away.

There’s something so magnetic about the way they interact. The way they touch, despite
Fyodor’s restraints. The way they look at each other—even from the semi-distant view he has
of them. How is he to interpret it? There’s duality there. Dazai sometimes shrinks and ducks
his head like he’s afraid of the Russian; other times he reaches out of his own accord and puts
his fingers on a portion of Fyodor’s face like it’s the first time he’s seen it. Still others, he
hides in Fyodor’s lap, seeming as comfortable with him as a child and his father—or clings to
his gloved hand, tucked as it is into the leather straps.

Chuuya hates the way Fyodor watches Dazai. He hates the way those bruise-purple eyes look
full and human, when Chuuya only saw them hollow and cold as he stood before the man.

Fyodor doesn’t look like he doesn’t care for Dazai. That’s what he hates the most.

Fyodor looks like a man who has found a purpose.

Fyodor doesn’t look like a monster.

Chuuya hears a woody crack. Startled, he jerks and looks down at his hand on the edge of the
desk, splintered into bits in the shape of his fisted hand. “Fuck!” he blurts, releasing the
crumbled dust that was, moments ago, polished wood.

The edge of the desk looks like a wild animal took a bite out of it. Chuuya shakes out his
offending hand and glowers at the splinters in his fingers.

“Chuuya.”

Chuuya inhales sharply and twists toward the door. A thin figure in black is standing there,
grey eyes heavy with lack of sleep and a bruise darkening his cheekbone.

There’s no way in hell Akutagawa Ryunosuke is actually here to talk to him. There’s no way.

Really? Now? Right now?

How big are these man’s balls, anyway?

Chuuya strangles a sigh in his throat and turns back to the monitor, thudding his elbows on
the desk and scrubbing his face with both hands, splinters and all. “Hi, what is it? What do
you need?”

He’s not going to think about last night. He’s not going to.

There’s still someone who cares about you, even if it’s not the one you wanted it to be.

Fuck it. He is.

“I don’t know. I came to check on you.”

Chuuya sits there, silent for a long moment, willing anger and foolishness down into his gut,
willing his mind to work instead. Akutagawa is being kind, despite last night. He’s treating
Chuuya the same as before.

Damn this hopelessly clingy man. Damn him to hell. He’s going to be the death of Chuuya.

He’s accustomed to people like Dazai—like Dazai used to be, that is. Selfish. Unemotional,
detached, a job to pursue, prey to hunt, a challenge to run into the ground. Someone who
didn’t take kindnesses and didn’t give them.

Akutagawa is the opposite of these things. Maybe he was a different man too, once, before all
of this happened with Dazai. But the brashness and the mad dog antics faded when his
mentor disappeared. It was like he’d worked for Dazai’s approval alone, and now that the
man wasn’t there to see what Akutagawa did, that purpose had paled.

Chuuya remembers the way he’d found the boy wandering aimlessly around Port Mafia
territory, his fight gone, his will in shambles. He wouldn’t even seek out Atsushi to wreak
havoc. When Chuuya had tried to rile him into uses for his abilities, Akutagawa had simply
sighed and gazed off. He’d taken verbal abuse from anyone, absorbed it and nodded in
agreement with it. When Mori threatened to demote him, he’d told the doctor he was right; he
wouldn’t mind if Mori cast him out completely. Mori had been stunned, and did not follow
through.

One night, the boy had come to Chuuya. He’d sat before him on the lounge while Chuuya
drank a glass of wine, folded his hands in his lap, and asked Chuuya to dispose of him.
Calmly.

“I have become useless to the Port Mafia,” he’d said. “I am weak, now. If you don’t mind, I
would like to be eliminated. Starving dogs shouldn’t be kept by their owners.”

Chuuya had nearly dropped his glass. He most definitely had choked on his wine.

The days following, he’d somehow or another re-fashioned Akutagawa into his mad dog. He
hadn’t done it consciously, really. He’d simply thought Akutagawa was too valuable to kill,
so he’d become his new mentor. He’d taken the place of Dazai, giving the boy tasks and
trials, pushing him to his limits and sharing a bottle with him when he’d gone too far.
And Akutagawa had followed him like a pup. Just like he had with Dazai. Except with
Chuuya—with someone who was brimming with emotion and hatred every other second of
the day—he’d grown more attached. Maybe because Chuuya had given him attention when
he’d wanted it. He’d been kind when Akutagawa needed it. He hadn’t turned the boy away
like Dazai had. He hadn’t left the boy to serve another side.

Akutagawa’s voice brings him out of his reverie, quiet and subdued. “I can go, if it bothers
you.”

Chuuya’s spine tingles. He takes a deep breath. “No. Come in and sit. We can talk.”

Akutagawa hesitates. Chuuya keeps his face in his hands, but he hears the scuffle of feet. The
pause before they come closer. “Are you sure?”

When he sits down in the chair beside Chuuya, he lifts his head and studies the boy’s face.
Has he ever had feelings for this boy? He doesn’t even know. How can he, when all he’s been
focused on is Dazai all this time? Getting him back, fixing him, making him feel, trying to
love him, and now trying to stop him from loving a psychopathic Russian who looks like
more like a human than he should.

He doesn’t know, but looking at Akutagawa’s bruised face—the mark that Chuuya caused
with his mindless anger—makes his heart twist up inside his lungs until it burns.

“Aku, you don’t fucking deserve to deal with me. Do you know that?” he croaks, his body
heavy in the chair as he lifts the back of his hand to rest against Akutagawa’s bruise.
“Nobody does, but especially not you.”

Akutagawa stares at him, sitting stock still in the chair. His breath filters out of his nose in
slow, controlled drags. He doesn’t answer, and after a moment, his eyes drop.

Chuuya retracts his hand again, exhaling. He glances at the monitor, but doesn’t really take in
the image. It doesn’t matter.

“You let him see Dostoevsky,” Akutagawa says.

It does sound stupid, when he says it. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

Chuuya lifts a hand towards the monitor. “Look at them. Just look.”

Akutagawa does, and Chuuya watches his profile, lit by the green glow. His expression
doesn’t change, but it’s obvious he sees exactly what Chuuya has been staring at all this time.
Still, he keeps staring at the screen for a time, quiet. His eyes look heavy. His shoulders are
sagging.

Chuuya never turns to watch the monitor feed with him.

Eventually, he says, “I’m sorry about last night.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Akutagawa replies far too quickly, not turning to Chuuya.

Did he come to not talk about that? Chuuya swallows thickly. He drums his fingers against
the desk, fingers tender with the splinters he doesn’t care to pull out.

“Really, Chuuya,” Akutagawa says, his voice softer now, “it’s okay.”

Chuuya starts to suspect that it’s much more than just not okay. Akutagawa has come here for
a reason, and it’s not to beg Chuuya for affection. It’s not to berate him for the way he was
treated—because of course not. Akutagawa has no self-esteem. Attention gives him purpose,
a reason to do things. Whether he gets what he wants from the attention is a mystery to
Chuuya—it seems that no amount of it will ever satiate him, and he’s reconciled himself with
that fact. Does attention make him feel like he exists? Does attention remind him that his
actions have consequences, and people are affected by those consequences?

Chuuya sits back in the chair and crosses his arms against his chest, turning so that he’s
facing Akutagawa and not the monitor at all. Diagonal in the chair. Waiting for Akutagawa to
turn. “Look at me and say that.”

“That’s not necessary.”

Chuuya blinks. “I say it is. Look at me and say it, Ryunosuke.”

Akutagawa’s breathing thickens. It rasps. He shakes his head slightly. His eyes skitter across
the monitor. “It won’t change anything.”

“Then do it. I want to see the truth in your eyes. People don’t just confess things like you did
and feel fine when it’s trampled on.”

Akutagawa’s hands shift on the desk. He blinks a few times, and his eyes look glossy. “If you
don’t need me, you don’t need me. It won’t help to have my feelings in the way.”

And that right there, that’s the problem. That’s the line that sets him off, brings everything to
clarity in his head.

Chuuya feels a flash of heat engulf his body. He uncrosses his arms, swings forward in the
chair, and grabs Akutagawa by the chin, forcing his face toward Chuuya’s. “I need you,” he
hisses, inches from the boy. Akutagawa’s face is pale, his eyes large. “Do you need me?”

Akutagawa’s mouth hangs parted, trembling breaths rasping in and out. He stares at Chuuya,
straight in the eyes, and Chuuya sees the truth he was hiding. In the grey, in the wide, stricken
gaze, he sees pain and humiliation, hurt and betrayal. “I—” His voice fails. The boy tries
again in a whisper. “I don’t want to stop being useful.”

Because my feelings got in the way. That’s what Akutagawa doesn’t say, but his eyes do, and
it pierces Chuuya like a handful of nails. He can feel his hand trembling, but he doesn’t let go
of Akutagawa’s face. “You’re not useful,” he grits out. “You’re my best friend. You’ve been
the closest person to me since Dazai went off to Russia.” His voice roughens. “And that
means something to me, you bastard. That fucking means something to me.”
 Akutagawa’s eyes sparkle with moisture, but he yanks away from Chuuya’s grasp before
Chuuya can accuse him of crying, turning away and fiddling with his hands. “I…I see.” His
voice is croaky. “I’m glad. Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

“I do need you,” Akutagawa says quieter.

Chuuya snorts and smirks grimly at the ugly green glow of the monitor, where Dazai is still
resting his head in the Russian’s lap. “Yeah.”

“Do you think they need each other too?”

Chuuya blinks. Akutagawa has never been one for tact. When he looks at the innocent grey-
eyed boy, it’s very difficult not to grasp his skinny little neck and wring it. He doesn’t answer,
and Akutagawa starts coughing.

He turns back to the monitor, and he watches, silently. He watches and thinks about the
question, and hates Akutagawa for asking it.

They do need each other. They do.

Chapter End Notes

Love you guys! What did you think of Chuuya and Aku's backstory? x) Hope you liked.
I've never been a Chuu Aku shipper, but it's very fun to explore the dynamics of Dazai
being gone and Chuuya taking his place. It all came to me one night and I hope it fits as
well as I felt like it did! <3
 EXECUTION
Chapter Summary

Dazai is losing it. Chuuya might be, too.

Chapter Notes

YEEEEEE Happy New Year's Eve, my loves, it's been quite a while since I've updated
this! Holidays and work had me SO busy, but I am finally back. :)

Well, this and the next chapter is it. The climax we've all been waiting for. (Not "it" as in
the end of the story, btw, there's more to come, don't worry.)

Gosh, I hope you like it. I spent lots of time puzzling over just how to do it, and I hope it
comes out satisfying for you! <3

~Also~

A few chapters ago, someone in the comments (when I posted the “questions” chapter
that I’ve since deleted) asked which painting was on the wall in Fyodor’s house that
Dazai observed when Fyodor went away for longer than twenty-two days. I couldn’t
find it then, but now I’ve finally stumbled across it! In case you’re interested, here it is
(it’s a link to the artwork so you can see):

“Young Gardener” (1817) Artist - Orest Kiprensky

And the artist is Russian, but—can you believe—it was a complete coincidence? I went
looking for wistful paintings, found it and thought this would be the perfect one, and
somehow it turned out to be a Russian portrait painter. Damn.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

The day arrives with less ceremony than Dazai expects it to.

He merely sits up in bed, staring across at a barren, dark wall, and realizes that this is the day.

This is the day they will try to kill Fyodor.

Try. Try.

Try .

Chuuya moves swiftly down the hall, nearly all of the Port Mafia and ADA at his heels,
teeming and babbling with ideas and warning and advice—so many things Chuuya doesn’t
need to hear. He glowers straight ahead of him, coat flapping behind, hat set low over his
eyes. His heart is already pounding. His head is already full of too many concerns, doubts,
fears, expectations. The last thing he needs is his friends giving them voice, cramming their
way through the halls after him like hellhounds.

Today is the day Dostoevsky will die.

“What are we going to do if he manages to escape?” Atsushi asks frantically, his steps like
the pitter-patter of rain on cement beside Chuuya.

“He won’t,” Chuuya barks.

“We should be prepared,” Akutagawa says from his other side, sweeping along at Chuuya’s
pace with far less clatter than the tiger. He shoots Chuuya a glance that speaks of anxiety,
flashing and guarded.

“We will be,” Chuuya says.

“But how?” Atsushi demands. “If Dostoevsky touches us, we’re dead!”

“He won’t.”

“You can’t know that,” Kunikida pipes up from behind them, “we need a better plan before
we start.”

The red bubbles in Chuuya’s stomach, that warning that always comes before the storm—
which he’s been trying to listen to, lately. Chuuya walks faster, growling under his breath, but
they have no awareness of the mortal danger they might be in and continue to pester.

“It may do you well to heed their advice,” Fukuzawa suggest in his low voice, composed as
ever. How that man manages to remain in a complete state of Zen no matter what transpires
confounds Chuuya to no end.

He approaches the anteroom from the hallway that leads to Dazai’s door and rounds into it.
He paces around the table, where half of someone’s morning breakfast still sits, then back to
the little refrigerator in the corner, then again towards the table and beaten sofas on the other
side.
The others enter in his wake, finally hesitating, a few of them spreading out while Kunikida
just glares at him from the threshold.

Fukuzawa takes a seat at the table, as slow and regal as an old king.

Atsushi fidgets and paces a reckless line in front of the wall. Akutagawa stands near the
corner, watching Chuuya. Their eyes lock whenever Chuuya looks around, and it makes him
a little less aggravated, seeing the forced calmness in those grey eyes.

Mori saunters into the room as if today is Elise’s birthday—not the execution date of a
Russian criminal—sighing and making his way to the seat beside Fukuzawa. He grins at the
grave man in the green yukata. Fukuzawa does not smile back.

Chuuya stops pacing to work his jaw and control his breathing, flexing his hands as he
watches Mori. “I have a fucking gravity ability,” he says, to no one in particular.

They look at him. They all do, but it doesn’t mean anything. He doesn’t see trust in their
eyes, or confidence, or anything substantial.

“I have a fucking gravity ability!” he yells, slamming his hand against the table. The plate of
food rattles. “Do you think that Russian beanpole is going to stand a chance against a gravity
blast? Is that really what you think?”

“He’s escaped us before, and again, and again,” Kunikida says sternly, narrowing his eyes
through his rectangular glasses. “We can’t afford to let it happen this time. Not with Dazai
like he is.”

“I was never there!” Chuuya roars, digging his gloved fingernails into the grain of the
wooden table until they burn. Heat plunges towards Chuuya’s arms. “He escaped you! Not
me! He will not escape me!”

Mori raises his brows, the others falling into a shifting, hesitant silence.

“He has a point,” Mori says.

“Shut the fuck up,” Chuuya barks, jamming a finger in Mori’s direction. “We all know you
don’t give a shit past your own pleasure.”

Kunikida awkwardly coughs, and Akutagawa gives Kunikida a withering look, as if he feels
like the man is mocking him.

Mori smirks, maroon eyes shifting as he grunts in quiet disdain. “I merely trust your
judgement, Nakahara. You were one of my best executives. You’ve rarely been wrong in the
past.”

Chuuya’s scowl only deepens. He doesn’t appreciate Mori being the only man on his side.
That doesn’t make him feel good—it makes him feel worse. One never feels especially moral
when the criminal doctor is the one supporting them.

“Where’s Ranpo?” he demands. “Ranpo will convince the rest of you fuckers.”
Kunikida adjusts his glasses and blinks. “He’s sleeping, I believe.”

“Wake him up, then!”

“Chuuya,” Akutagawa starts, stepping away from the wall.

Chuuya’s focus immediately latches to him. They stare at each other. It grounds him, pulls
him out of his raging self and back into the moment. Some of the anger fades to a guilty
simmer. He inhales slowly, letting the air cool him off from the inside. “Yeah.”

“Ranpo already knows about the plan. I believe he agreed with Chuuya, didn’t he?”
Akutagawa turns his narrowing gaze to Kunikida.

Kunikida mutters under his breath and shifts, smoothing back his tight ponytail. His lack of
response makes it very clear.

They all just hate Chuuya. Aside from Akutagawa and Mori, that is. Either that or they don’t
believe he’s powerful enough, which is far more insulting.

“Well then it doesn’t matter what all of you think. Somebody get Ranpo while I get Dazai.”

“Dazai?” Akutagawa asks in surprise. “Do you think he’ll want to…watch?”

Chuuya adjusts the coat on his shoulders and sniffs, raising his chin. “I don’t know. But I’m
not about to execute the bastard without telling him about it. He can choose if he wants to
watch or not.”

“How are you going to do it?” Atsushi asks.

He says it rather bravely, standing tall on his side of the room with arms crossed, gold-and-
purple eyes flashing. Everyone turns to look at him, then slowly back at Chuuya, waiting for
his reply.

Chuuya’s fingers tingle strangely. His spine prickles. His brows flinch downwards. “Does
that matter?”

“We can’t touch him,” Atsushi goes on, “so it makes it harder and more dangerous for us to
use our abilities. I can’t use mine at all, and Kunikida is limited. Akutagawa can’t get too
close, and your boss can only do so much with Elise. So how are you going to execute him?”

Chuuya hesitates, balking under the blankness in his head, the realization that absolutely no
violent image comes to mind. Where’s all the spunk he’d had the previous days for creatively
killing the Russian? He narrows his eyes, about to bark something stupid in reply, except
there’s a movement in his peripheral that distracts him, and then a gentle, bony thud against
his back. Every face in the room goes blank with surprise, eyes fixed on something beside
him.

He turns.
And there’s Dazai, looking very small, clutching hold of Chuuya’s clothes and hiding behind
his shoulder. He’s looking up at Chuuya like he’s the only one in the room, eyes groggy and
timid. He’s wearing that white shirt Chuuya had tried to get rid of, and he’s not sure how he
got it back, but at least he’s wearing it under his beige coat—nevermind that it’s just the
white shirt and briefs and his legs are bare, bandaged twigs. Chuuya isn’t sure why he doesn’t
feel anything—a pang of surprise, an overwhelming frustration that Dazai is half-naked in
front of everyone, an anxiety over how he’s doing if he’d come out here on his own. He just
registers that Dazai is there, reaches over to pet his fluffy hair, and says, “Hey, buddy. Have
you eaten?”

“Not hungry,” Dazai croaks, quietly enough that only Chuuya can hear it—or at least he’d
like to think so. But everyone hears; the entire room is staring at Dazai in utter silence,
holding their breath.

“Okay. Are you feeling alright? Need anything?”

Dazai nods and shakes his head, blinking a lot and coming off disoriented, but calm, at least.
“Need Chuuya.”

God, he wishes Dazai wouldn’t say things like that, not when he doesn’t mean it the way
Chuuya wants him to mean it. Chuuya pinches the bridge of his nose and nods. “Gotcha. Are
you okay hanging around in here? The others haven’t seen you very much.”

Dazai shrinks a little more, pasting himself against Chuuya’s back. “I know,” he whines,
voice muffled by Chuuya’s clothes.

After hesitating, glancing around at their small crowd of pale, wary faces—aside from Mori,
that is—Chuuya asks a little quieter, “Do you remember what day it is?”

Maybe it’s cruel to ask him. But Chuuya doesn’t want to trigger him into a full-on breakdown
if he’s had a slip of memory, going on and on about killing his Russian kidnapper-lover.

Dazai nods wordlessly into his shoulder blade.

The little bastard tiger scurries closer, trying to peek around Chuuya and see Dazai. He
reaches for him, beginning to talk, but Chuuya violently slaps his hand and barks, “No. No
touching.”

Rubbing his knuckles with a hurt expression, Atsushi glances back at the expressionless
Kunikida before he goes on with what he’s come to say. “D-Dazai? How have you been? Are
you doing any better?”

This clueless son of a bitch and his useless questions. Chuuya wants to throttle him, but lets
him off for the sake of courtesy, trying to empathize with his feelings. He’s probably
confused and befuddled seeing Dazai like this—they all are.

He feels Dazai’s fingers tighten so much that the clothing pulls restrictively at his shoulders.
“Don’t talk to me, please,” Dazai says, in a dead, frantic sort of way, like he’s practiced this
seven times in the mirror before he came out of his room. Like he prepared this as a response
to anyone who spoke up.

Atsushi’s eyes lose their glimmer. If his ears were out, they’d be drooping. “O-oh…sorry.”

“Sorry,” Dazai mimics him, his voice hoarse and ragged.

Maybe Chuuya has been deluding himself, or maybe he really hasn’t realized how messed up
Fyodor has left Dazai until now. He has a one-track mind, only space in his head for one
person, one thing at a time, one conversation. Fyodor presides everything else, but Dazai has
lost his functionality for sharing a space with a room full of people. His mind has been taught
to focus on one subject for so long that it must be stuck that way. Chuuya wonders how the
hell he’s ever going to get over that.

But he certainly doesn’t have to get over that right now, and Atsushi is about to try for it
again.

“Back off,” Chuuya says, forcibly calm with his tone.

Atsushi does cower, but he does it in a way that’s more like a threatened, angry animal than a
wounded one. “We’re just worried about you, Dazai. I hope you get better.”

Chuuya grits his teeth as he feels Dazai press closer, his breath hot and quick in Chuuya’s
shoulder. He wants to yell at the boy to fuck off and shut up. But the tiger is already leaving,
drawing back to re-join the others.

Everyone is silent. Chuuya hears Dazai make the slightest of whimpers, and forces himself to
speak up to cover it. “Kunikida, I thought you were going to wake Ranpo.”

Kunikida—who’s been staring so fixedly at Dazai this entire time that his glasses have slid
down his nose—straightens up, squinting. He frowns. “We’re not ready, yet. I’ll wake him
when we’re on the way to—when it’s—time.”

“It is time,” Chuuya says, folding his arms. He’s done here. He wants to get this whole
fucking thing over with.

Doesn’t he?

Why is there that pocket of cold in his stomach, then, whenever he considers the execution?
Is he nervous that the Russian will escape?

“We are not ready!” Kunikida bursts out, throwing his hands in a wide gesture. “We can’t just
walk in there without a plan!”

The room erupts in a cacophony of opinions that’s most likely been prodded by the confusion
and panic over Dazai’s appearance in the room. It’s like they’re trying to talk themselves
away from the reality, distracting their minds from the truth with old habits. The Agency has
always been one for detailed plans, organization, calculated risks. The Mafia was never so
structured, not with Akutagawa on the loose and Chuuya running his own show.
He feels the slender body behind him begin to tremble. Dazai tugs on his sleeve, trying to get
his attention, and Chuuya immediately grants it to him. Turning his head over his shoulder,
all he can see is Dazai’s headful of curls. He can feel the nose in his back.

“Chuuya,” Dazai whines tremulously.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Chuuya murmurs. He would take him inside his arms if it
weren’t for everyone else frowning upon it in the room. Sure, fuck them, but Dazai doesn’t
like to be stared at, pre-Fyodor or post-Fyodor.

“Make them stop, please,” he begs.

Chuuya touches his hand where it throttles the material at his elbow, rubbing his thumb over
the slender fingers. “I’m sorry, just hang in there for a moment. I’ll fix it.”

“I don’t like yelling.”

“I know, buddy. I know.” He’s still not sure why Dazai has even dredged up the courage to
come into the room. He hopes it’s not because he thought Chuuya would try to sneak off and
execute Fyodor before he had the chance to say goodbye. “You know, if you say something,
they’ll all stop. And then I won’t have to yell over them.”

Dazai make a long, drawn-out noise, rubbing his face in Chuuya’s shoulder.

Chuuya gets it—he really does—but he wants to try and push Dazai just a bit this time. He
thinks it might help. Maybe if he breaks the ice he’s put up for himself by addressing all of
them—and at the same time, addressing none of them in particular—he’ll be able to shift to a
better state of mind.

Maybe? It’s worth a try.

“If you do it, I’ll make everyone sit down so it’s not as scary,” Chuuya tries to bribe him,
“and you can sit in my lap. If you want.”

“Nooo,” Dazai moans, but it doesn’t sound convincing.

“Come on, it’ll keep me from yelling so you don’t have to hear it. Nobody will be mad.”

“Nooo!”

“Please?”

“May I have more honey cake if I do?”

Chuuya blinks. Then, wondering if Dazai is actually considering it, he carefully says, “…
Yes.”

He hears Dazai suck in a large, rattling breath. He pushes against Chuuya, until he rises, until
Chuuya is reminded how awkwardly taller Dazai is than him when he’s not hunching to make
himself look like he’s not. Looking straight ahead at the bickering others and deliberately
giving Dazai privacy for whatever reason, Chuuya waits inside of the few moments of
pregnant silence.

“I’m going to kill Fedya!”

The room falls silent. Chuuya’s eyes go so wide he feels air tickle them. His stomach drops
out. He whips his head towards Dazai, who has already hidden again, this time completely
behind Chuuya, arms locked in a death grip around his waist and nearly suffocating him. He
can feel panting between his shoulder blades, great heaves that rock Dazai’s body against
him.

Chuuya stands with his arms half-extended, frozen as everyone faces them in dead
astonishment.

“No he’s not,” Chuuya clarifies. “Uhhh…everybody take a…take a seat.” He points at the
wrecked sofas near the adjoining hall. “And shut the fuck up. Dazai doesn’t like yelling.”

Despite the situation, despite the odd energy permeating the room, they shuffle to do as
Chuuya says, taking seats on the couch while Fukuzawa and Mori remain at the table, the
only ones who’d been quiet in the first place. Mori is tip-tapping his hands on the wood,
seconds away from whistling a little ditty, Chuuya’s sure.

Bastard.

He tries to walk with the spindly bandaged weight named Dazai dragging along behind him,
and it’s not awkward in the least when everyone watches him hobble for the open seat on the
sofa.

“I’m going to kill Fedya,” Dazai muffles in his shirt, oddly sing-song, like the old Dazai used
to be. Or a trace of it, anyway. It offsets the beat of Chuuya’s heart. He doesn’t like that.

“No you’re not, Dazai,” he mutters, struggling to pry his bony fingers loose. “Let go so I can
sit.”

“Want honey cake.”

“Not yet. Don’t talk like a baby,” he says before he can catch himself.

Dazai hugs him harder, painfully, like he’s doing it on purpose. “Not,” he whispers, “I’m
not.”

Chuuya huffs. “Let go, please.”

Dazai lets go—and goes completely ragdoll, falling to the ground in a heap by Chuuya’s legs.

Everyone stares. Chuuya curses, reaching down to pick him up under the arms. “Good grief,
Dazai, what’s wrong with you?” he says under his breath.

Dazai just hangs from his grip with a pained look on his face, turning his head every which
way to avoid Chuuya’s gaze and refusing to help as Chuuya sits down and props him up
sidesaddle on his left thigh. He can feel everyone’s eyes boring into them.

Dazai is practically throwing a temper tantrum and Chuuya is being insensitive. Sure, he’s
probably acting this way because of everything going on, but it doesn’t make it any less
difficult to deal with. Especially when Chuuya has the same number of problems going on.

But can he blame Dazai? He’d probably act the same way if it was his lover being executed.

When Chuuya manages to settle, glaring at anyone who makes eye contact—and Akutagawa
is decidedly not—Dazai is slumped over against his chest, hands dangling between his
bandaged legs, head tucked below Chuuya’s chin.

“You don’t have to look so worried,” Mori tells him. “That’s more like his usual self. He used
to do that when he was stressed.”

Dazai squirms in his lap. He happens to be facing Mori, and Chuuya can feel him actually
make eye contact when he addresses the man. “Mori!”

Chuuya fights the murderous urge that rises in his chest for Dazai’s sake. Don’t talk to him.
Of all people, Mori is the one he chooses to address?

Mori leans causally on the table and smiles with raised brows. “Yes?”

“Hi, Mori.” His voice is very low, but very solid. If anything, Chuuya hopes it means he’s
making progress.

“Hello, Dazai.” Mori seems proud of himself, adjusting his scarf and glancing at Fukuzawa,
who nods solemnly.

“Why wouldn’t he talk to me?!” Atsushi whines, and Kunikida frantically shushes him,
staring at Dazai in mute interest. Maybe he thinks Dazai’s going to magically become himself
again and make the plans for all of them.

“Mori likes it when I play doll,” Dazai says. It sucks the air out of the room.

Akutagawa looks down at his lap.

Mori clears his throat and shifts in his chair, smile vanishing as he averts his gaze, fiddling
with the plate and fork on the table. Fukuzawa levels a quiet, two-ton glare on him.

Chuuya wraps his arms around Dazai and holds him. “That’s enough now,” he murmurs into
his hair, throat dry and scratchy, “we’re going to talk about what to do, okay?”

Dazai fingers the buttons on Chuuya’s vest and doesn’t reply. But every time someone raises
their voice, even a little, Dazai starts babbling or tugging Chuuya’s clothes or repeating
words in Russian, and most of all just chirps “I’m going to kill Fedya!” on a loop like a
broken record, until Chuuya puts a hand over his mouth and tells him very deliberately to
stop or he’ll have to leave the room.

And he stops, and they go on, doing everything in their power not to raise their voices.
It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

They’re going to kill Fyodor.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

They’re all going to die.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine.

Dazai said something funny just now. He knows he did. He said he’d kill Fyodor, which is a
joke, it’s a very good joke and he hopes they know he doesn’t mean it.

Is he conscious? Is he breathing? Is he touching someone? Is that warmth or empty space? Is

he safe? Is Fyodor still here? Is Fyodor alive? Is Fyodor okay?

Does Fyodor still love him?

He does. He does. He does. He does.

But Fyodor will love him much more if he manipulates them. Fyodor will be proud of him if
he kills his friends, he thinks. Wouldn’t Fyodor be proud?

He would. He would. He would. He would.

But not necessarily.

Is he floating? Is he intoxicated? Has someone given him something? Is he dying? Fyodor

won’t die, will he? He won’t let Dazai die, will he? Will he?

He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He

won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t.
He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He
won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t.
He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He
won’t. He won’t. He won’t. He won’t.

Dazai doesn’t want to die. If he does, he’ll go somewhere without Fyodor. He doesn’t ever
want to leave Fyodor. He doesn’t ever want to be taken away from Fyodor. Even his friends
can die if they must. He’ll gladly leave them for Fyodor.

Even if it hurts.

And it hurts.

It does hurt.

It hurts.

Dazai floats in an open space of nothingness. Yes, but there are things going on around him
that he can hear, he can see, he can understand—but then again, he can’t.

At times his throat rattles and he talks to those things going on around him, but he’s not sure
what he says, or if he issaying it at all—it’s only a minute before he forgets what he was
doing and goes back to the open space.

Fyodor is not going to die. Fyodor is not going to let Dazai die.

They’re both going to get out of here alive. It doesn’t matter—even if it does—what happens
to those things going on around him that he’s been talking to. If they did matter, he would
lose himself.

Well, he has lost himself, hasn’t he?

It’s alright. Fyodor will bring him back. Fyodor always brings him back. And Fyodor will
take them away again—the friends. The things going on around him. Fyodor will remove it
from his memory like he did the first time, when Dazai realized he was becoming fragile and
weak and asked for them to go away forever.

Didn’t he ask Fyodor to take them away the first time? Wasn’t that how it happened?

Long-term effects. Whatever drugs and memory abilities and purple knives Fyodor used to
carve out his friends before must’ve permanently ruined his recall.

That’s okay, too, though. He won’t need it when he escapes with Fyodor.

He doesn’t need them, either—his friends. He only needs Fyodor.

At some point, those shapes start moving around him again—his friends, he reminds himself
—and he’s being picked up and dragged around and he’s yelling something silly but it’s
alright it’s alright it’s alright it’s alright it’s alright it’s alright—that’s what Fyodor would tell
him. It’s alright.
Fyodor has control. Dazai only needs to wait for everything to happen. Everything will
happen and it will be fine.

They’re walking, aren’t they? Dazai keeps tripping. Someone is scolding him. That’s orange
hair, that’s Chuuya. Chuuya is a kind person.

But Chuuya is not Fyodor.

Dazai only needs Fyodor.

“What the hell is going on with you?” Chuuya murmurs to Dazai, catching him for the third
time as they’re walking down the hall. He’s not usually been so brash as of late, but Dazai is
bringing it out in him today. He’s acting so strange. It’s oddly like his old self, but as a
puppet-on-strings version, reciting lines and then dying when he’s not looked at, only to
revive when interacted with again.

They’ve decided how to proceed, and it’s hardly a plan—more of a buffer for anything that
should go wrong—but Chuuya is tired of dealing with it and everyone else is tired of putting
up with Dazai’s raucous behavior. He appears to be losing his mind, quite literally.

It buries Chuuya’s confidence under a heavy wave of nausea. Dazai totters along beside him,
wiry and unfocused, grasping at his arm like it’s the one thing keeping him from drowning.
He keeps mumbling now as they’re all in procession towards Fyodor’s holding cell. He
seems only half-aware of what’s going on.

And the mumbling is in Russian—or a word soup that sounds vaguely like Russian.

When they pause, Chuuya lets one of the others open the door.

Ranpo has joined them, and he gives him a worried glance as Chuuya takes Dazai by the
shoulders and tries to look him in the eye. Dazai’s head sinks forward, but he finds Chuuya,
gaze blank and dazed.

“Hi, Chuuya,” he croaks.

“Hi,” Chuuya says hastily, guarding him somewhat from the others as he backs the bandaged
rascal into a corner. “Let’s talk for a second.”

Dazai performs a wild attempt at a smile. It makes him look like a dying clown. But it’s been
so long since Chuuya has seen him smile that it yanks his heart clean out of his lungs. It clogs
in his throat.

“Hey, what’s going on with you, buddy?” he asks, fighting back the squeeze of pressure
behind his eyes. “Can you talk to me clearly? Can you tell me?”
Dazai’s brow twitches. “It’s fine,” he hisses. “It’s fine, Chuuya.”

“No I don’t think it is.”

“Why are you whispering to me?”

Ranpo moves towards them, hesitantly. He hangs back in respect, nodding at Chuuya and
adjusting his glasses, but peering in narrowed perplexity at Dazai.

Chuuya wants Ranpo to figure it out and explain. He wishes that his deduction was an actual
ability, that it wouldn’t matter what could or could not be seen, that Ranpo would just know
and by extension Chuuya would know. Then Chuuya would be able to fix it.

“What’s going on with him?” he asks the dark-haired boy.

Ranpo huffs and shifts. He tilts his head.

Dazai won’t look at Ranpo—his eyes are glued to Chuuya. “It’s fine. It’s fine, Chuuya, it’s
fine.” His hands feebly touch at Chuuya’s clothing like he’s trying to keep himself on the
ground. Like he thinks he’s a balloon that’s going to float away.

Chuuya shakes his head. “Dazai—”

“It’s fine.”

“You don’t have to keep telling me—”

“It’s fine!”

“It’s not f—”

“It’s. It’s!” Dazai’s brows skew. He breathes. “Fine.”

Chuuya growls and kneads his temples with the heels of his hands. His eyes continue to burn.
His throat is sore. “I don’t want to take him in there like this, Ranpo,” he moans. “I really
don’t.”

Ranpo adjusts his glasses. He speaks in a calculated, calming tone, as if unperturbed by

anything going on, and that helps ground Chuuya a bit. “He appears to be dissociating. Do
you see how glazed his eyes are? His pupils are blown out like he’s on drugs. His emotions
are strange. I’ve never seen him do this kind of thing. Right now, it seems his usual
personality is trying to replace the emptiness he’s leaving behind. Whether he’s pushed out
his mind himself or it’s done it on its own to protect him from what he’s about to see, I don’t
know.”

“Should I let him see it?” Chuuya’s hands go back to Dazai’s shoulders, tightening. Dazai
doesn’t respond.

Ranpo inhales slowly. “That would be your call, Chuuya. But make it a wise one. He looks
fragile enough to snap.”
“Snap?” Chuuya’s stomach twists.

Ranpo slides his hands into his pockets, glancing at the others. They’ve unlocked the door to
Fyodor’s holding chamber and are hesitating in opening it, muttering amongst themselves.
“He could reach psychosis. Or he could be experiencing that now. We won’t know until he
comes back to his senses.”

“It’s fine,” Dazai squawks, “it’s fine, he does, he will. I’m alright.” He briefly screws his eyes
shut, give his head a shake like he’s dizzy. “I-it’s okay.”

“What’s psychosis?” Chuuya demands. He’s not a therapist, goddamn it.

“Psychotic break. When a brain can no longer process the amount of stress being put on it, it
can lose its functionality and its ability to perceive reality. It’s not permanent. He would
recover eventually, with help.”

“Chuuya,” Dazai chirps. He’s absently lifted one of his hands and is running his fingers over
Chuuya’s gloved knuckles as they squeeze his shoulders.

Chuuya looks at him with tears clawing at his eyes, breath rasping against a sandpaper throat,
head swimming in chaos. “What the hell am I going to do with you?” he whispers brokenly,
dragging the limp body into his arms and crushing it with all his might. Dazai’s chin thuds on
his shoulder.

“Chuuya,” Dazai repeats. “Chuuya.” His hands touch Chuuya’s sides. They slide around to
his back. They tighten ever so slightly. When he speaks again, his voice is softer, lower. Less
mechanical. “Chuu…ya.”

Chuuya buries his nose in Dazai’s bandaged neck, screwing his eyes shut against the tears.
One leaks out anyway, painting his cheek in hot liquid. “I’m here.”

“Chuuya is kind.”

“I’m not,” Chuuya sobs, “I’m sorry. I’m not kind at all.” He’s killing Dazai’s only lover in the
world. He’s destroying the mind of his closest friend—someone he’d come to love. He’s
worse than Fyodor. He’s worse than any murderer in the world.

Dazai pats his back very gently. “That’s okay, Chuuya. I’m going to kill Fedya.”

He says it like it’s a funny joke, something to lighten the mood, and it’s ridiculous. It makes
Chuuya cry more, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists to keep the raging heat of
Corruption down. “No you’re not, Dazai! I am. And I’m sorry that I am. I’m really, really
sorry, okay? God.”

“Okay,” he says weakly. “Does Dazai get to see Fedya before he goes?”

That fucking third-person thing he’s doing is going to drive Chuuya insane. But he nods into
Dazai’s shoulder, rubbing his back. “Yeah. But you have to leave after that, okay? Can you
promise me that you’ll leave?”
 “No, Chuuya.” He sounds confused.

Chuuya swallows hard, rasping, “Why not?” as he drags his sleeve over his eyes, pushing
Dazai back to look at him.

Dazai looks startlingly more present. He raises his brows. “I have to stop Chuuya.” As if he’s
reminding Chuuya of something he’s said.

“Whaddyou mean, stop me?” He sniffles.

Dazai calmly points to the red veins threatening Chuuya’s forearms, and Chuuya hisses out a
curse in frustration. “Fuck. Right…yeahhhh, you’re right. Okay. Then at least—at least…”
He’s not sure, now. What the hell should he do when Dazai has to stay there so Chuuya
doesn’t die?

“Nakahara.” Akutagawa’s voice startles him, and he turns to find everyone with pallid faces
and wide eyes, staring into the holding cell they’ve just opened.

His entire body tingles. “What is it? What’s…what’s wrong?”

They don’t answer. They look like ice sculptures, frozen in place. Chuuya’s blood turns cold.
He lets go of Dazai; he strides towards them. He pushes through them to look inside the
gaping holding chamber.

There stands Fyodor Dostoevsky, leather straps undone and hanging from the chair,
straightjacket folded neatly on the floor. His face is a void, empty mask of white. His hair is
hanging over his raggedly-sparkling eyes of violet. His bare, free hands are hanging by his
sides, the sleeves of his white undershirt rolled to his elbows.

“Where is Dazai?” Fyodor asks.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter is ready to be posted, so honestly expect it either later today (because my
ass is impatient), or tomorrow! But either way, very very soon. WHAT DID YOU
THINK OF THE ENDING TO THIS ONE MMMM?????

(also I'm doing my best to respond to new comments I've seen along all the chapters of
the work! Please don't feel ignored if I haven't responded to yours, yet. :D Whether I get
the chance to do so or not, I always read them and am very happy.)
 Shifting Loyalties
Chapter Summary

The velvet brings him back.

Chapter Notes

okay okay, so--lots of links. This is the biiiiiig chapter, and I of course had lots of music
in mind.

Look out for the notes along the way if you'd like to listen along! I will have Youtube
and Spotify options. If you are a Spotify user, I suggest you put these two songs in cue
for the beginning portion:

Reach - Eternal Eclipse (Spotify)

Redemption - Eternal Eclipse (Spotify)

For those listening on Youtube, you'll see my notes in the story for the links!

I hope you enjoy - this chapter was SO fun to write >:D

See the end of the chapter for more notes

~[Youtube link for Reach - Eternal Eclipse and honestly you could just play this one on
repeat if you don't want the hassle of multiple songs. It fits the whole chapter.]~

When Dazai hears the velvet voice, he comes back into himself. It’s like the suctioning of a
great force at his soul; Fyodor draws him back and wakes him from his insanity, a magnet for
his mind that stabilizes his awareness.

His spine stiffens. He looks around him.

Chuuya, Akutagawa and the others are standing at the door to Fyodor’s chamber, gawking.

He feels his feet moving before he realizes what he’s doing. He feels his hands pushing aside
bodies before he knows how to stop it.
Fyodor is standing like an angel in white, freed from his bonds, the straightjacket lying on the
ground.

So the plan had worked, after all. Dazai has been good, he’s done well—and they’re going to
win, now. His chest fills with an unnamable, triumphant heat.

Fyodor had asked him the night Chuuya let him visit. After the honey cake. Fyodor had asked
him to undo the locks on his bindings. Dazai hadn’t known how, but Fyodor had told him that
he could take one of the buttons off his vest—that he could twist it just so in the special
locks. It had worked, and Dazai had done his best to hide the loosening of it, Fyodor
murmuring softly to him as he tucked the straps with shaking hands. The straightjacket was
easy enough, loosened by its sliding metal clamps. He’d been afraid it wouldn’t be sufficient,
but Fyodor had reassured him. He’d made sure the cameras would not see.

He knew he shouldn’t have doubted Fyodor from the beginning. Now, as their eyes find each
other in the midst of the frantic energy that has become the other people around him, Dazai
feels buckets of warmth pouring into his lungs, spreading through every limb.

He can’t even find the breath to whisper his name before the entire room erupts in chaos.

“Back, everybody, back!” Chuuya yells, fighting his way through the others to the front,
grabbing Dazai by the arm. “You need to leave, you have to leave,” he says rapidly, his eyes
wide and full of an awful terror. Dazai knows what that feels like. “Dazai!”

He smiles softly. “It’s fine, Chuuya,” he whispers. “It’s fine.”

He can hear himself say it now. He’s aware of it. He’s conscious. Fyodor is here—how could
he not be?

“It’s not fine!” Chuuya screams, and it turns Dazai’s body numb, but he bears it. “Get back!
Now!”

Dazai feels the energy of abilities being unleashed into the air. He looks about him. There’s
Atsushi’s tiger tail flicking, his eyes swallowed in gold, his arms thick with white-and-black
fur. There’s Kunikida’s diary flipped open, words spilling out of his mouth to activate it.
There’s Elise, bathed in a pink glow, hovering with fury over Mori’s smug face with her
weaponized needle. There’s Fukuzawa, his katana drawn and poised. There’s Akutagawa, his
face full of dread, the crimson darkness of Rashomon crawling from his cape like sin
incarnate.

And there is Fyodor, waiting for him on the other side of the room, bare hands deceitfully
harmless at his sides.

Chuuya is glowing red when Dazai looks at him, his arms swarming with Corruption, terror
and hatred fighting in his eyes. “You don’t want to see this, Dazai,” he hisses.

Dazai feels nothing as he reaches out his hand. He says nothing as he places his fingertips
against Chuuya’s forehead.
Chuuya jolts, inhaling a ragged breath. Blue waves explode from Dazai’s touch, springing out
like rings in a disturbed pond. They wash away the red from Chuuya, ripping it from his eyes,
his veins, his hands. Chuuya cries out, falling away, stumbling backwards, horror on his face.

Dazai does not feel a thing.

“What the hell?” Chuuya gasps, “Dazai? What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?”
He sounds so desperate, his voice breaking, his chest heaving. His pupils shrink inside of
their cerulean chambers.

“I’m stopping you, Chuuya,” Dazai whispers.

Chuuya balks, his jaw working at air. No sound comes out. He looks weak, his body
staggering as if he might fall over.

~[ Redemption - Eternal Eclipse ]~

Dazai turns slowly from him to face Fyodor—maybe to reassure himself of what to do.
Fyodor’s face is calm. It soothes him as he inhales the raging energy of the abilities in the air.
It keeps him steady as he walks to the Russian’s side, his beige coat falling from his
shoulders, slipping down his arms. It wisps away from his hands, skidding across the floor
towards the Port Mafia and the Detective Agency.

They can keep it. Dazai will not need it where he is going.

Fyodor bends his head ever so slightly to touch Dazai’s forehead with his as he joins him.

Then Dazai turns to face all those on the other side. His friends. His friends that will die if
they must.

He hears them screaming his name; he sees their faces twisting with horror and rage, their
arms flinging out towards him and Fyodor, sending their abilities out to rescue him, they
think, by killing his Fyodor.

They will not rescue him this time.

Chuuya stumbles back amongst them, his body held from falling by the surging power of
Arahabaki alone. Dazai’s touch has only quelled it for a moment—now he is releasing his
ability without constraint, letting it take him over. It floods his eyes with white—his pain-
stricken, raging eyes. There are red, bloodied tears seeping down his cheeks, mingling with
the veins across his body.

Dazai feels nothing—he desperately feels nothing at all. He steps in front of Fyodor as their
abilities rush for the man, and he stands in front as a human shield, raising his arms wide and
lowering his head to catch their abilities. He inhales a massive, readying breath and feels
Fyodor’s cold hands touch his waist from behind to steady him.

Fyodor’s breath cools his ear, lips brushing the edge as he whispers. “It will be alright, Dazai.
This will last only for a little, and then it will be over. We will go home. We will be free.”
Dazai feels the heart pounding in his chest, the heart that does not belong there. He wants to
feel again. Right now, he cannot allow himself to feel. They both know that. When they go
home, he will feel again. He will feel the right things, and Fyodor will be pleased with him
for it.

Fyodor will tell him how to feel, and everything will be alright.

The abilities rush towards him in so many colors—red, blue, pink, gold—their waves of
energy a rushing fury that could rival the winds of a thousand storms. They hit him in the
chest and burst along his entire body, shimmering, biting, tingling, making him throw his
head back and gasp as he falls against Fyodor’s supportive frame.

“I have you, солнышко,” Fyodor says in his velvet voice, filling him up with cold that
combats the sudden, crushing weight of something being torn from him.

He feels it suffocate him—the rushing, clawing sensation. As if his insides are being yanked
out, as if every part of his being has become a hollow, scooped-out shell. As if he’s been
tipped over, and all his parts have come tumbling out like gears in a clock. As if he has
ceased to exist, his soul emptied into a bottomless pit.

As if he has become something that is no longer human.

No Longer Human.

He feels himself slumping back against Fyodor’s body—Fyodor, who holds him tightly, who
whispers in his ear so many things he cannot hear past the ringing. His head lolls back against
the man’s shoulder as the abilities keep flooding him, as they keep pushing out all that is
inside of Dazai’s body to make room.

Every one of them becomes quelled by a raucous, shuddering explosion of blue rings.
Springing out as before, but this time so big that they encompass the room, they vibrate
around Dazai and Fyodor’s bodies, warping the air and Dazai’s vision.

It feels like looking through a glass tank full of water, seeing the frantic, shimmering forms of
all of them—Dazai’s friends—on the other side, washed by hollow rings. Their colors
dissolve into nothingness. Their abilities fade. His blue warbles and pulses with a beating,
violent rhythm.

The building rumbles around them, like an earthquake has started in the ground. Dazai feels
nothing. He watches the thousands of pebbles begin to plink and clatter around them, but all
that matters is that he and Fyodor are safe amongst the blue.

Safe.

They failed; they could not kill his Fedya. They will not ever kill his Fedya.

“Just a little longer, now,” Fyodor whispers. “Just a little longer.”

~[There are two options for this section - Fallen Rain - Hans Zimmer (tragic option) or Lost
But Won - Hans Zimmer (dark heroic). Play your pick on browser Youtube version for easy
listening!]~

Chuuya is lost inside of Arahabaki’s rage, his mind wavering in its stability. He sees Dazai
and Fyodor engulfed in No Longer Human, the shimmering, flooding blue, heading towards
him to push out Corruption. When it hits him, it’s stronger than a shockwave, blasting him
back against the wall. The concrete shudders; it begins to wobble as Chuuya falls to the
ground, coughing and groaning.

The red veins in his arms fade by force, trickling away into nothingness. He can hear his
mind rushing to clarity in frantic, vibrating panic. Dazai has turned on them all. He has, and
likely not by any will of his own.

Why did he not consider this? Why had they all been so blind to the one, most obvious
outcome?

Of course Dazai would choose Fyodor. Of course he would try to stop them all from killing
him.

Chuuya rises to his feet, heaving for breath, looking at the stunning sight of them in the
center of the room. Dazai is limp and slumping against Fyodor’s white, sinfully angelic form,
his arms trembling as he stretches them wide, absorbing the weight of every ability in the
room. His eyes are no more than buttons in the face of a doll, hollow and soulless. The
muddled colors of every ability are plunging like angry smoke into his chest, making his frail
body arch and shudder.

Chuuya has been near him countless times when he’d used his ability so violently in the past.
It’s never been to this scale, never against the leaders of the ADA and Port Mafia together. He
can’t imagine the feeling. He can’t imagine the scale of emptiness.

Chuuya’s throat burns as much as his eyes and every other part of his body. He hears the
screaming and scuffle of his friends close by. He hears Akutagawa’s voice rise among them,
yelling himself hoarse.

“Chuuya! Chuuya, please! Please listen to me! Chuuyaaa!”

He feels hands jostling his arm and turns in sudden realization, the blurred sounds crashing
down on him. Akutagawa’s terrified face is lit with blue and smeared with blood. “The
building is coming down!” he yells, “we have to do something!”

Chuuya sees the dust erupting, vomiting out from the ceiling with its chunks of rock and
metal, landing on the scrabbling, ability-stripped team around him. They’re all staring at
Dazai in horror.
He feels the ground shaking beneath his feet, louder than the rumble of his own heart. It’s No
Longer Human, he realizes, shaking the building with its shockwaves. The sound of it is like
a warping, metallic bass, scraping over and over in rhythm to the pulses that rock them now.

Fyodor’s violet eyes burn out from the center, broken only by the whipping strands of his
inky hair. Dazai’s curls are tucked against the side of his neck.

“We can’t do anything,” Chuuya croaks, beginning to breathe again. He sees it all so clearly,
now. He understands what to do. “They need each other, Akutagawa. They need each
other…”

“What? No, listen to me!” The jostling it rougher. Chuuya can’t look away from Dazai and
Fyodor. “If we go after him, maybe we can pull him away while he’s weakened! All we have
to do is make sure he doesn’t touch us!”

“We have no abilities,” Chuuya says dully. One of the pillars is beginning to crumble,
spewing out its innards across the scrabbling figures of Atsushi and Kunikida. Atsushi falls
with a piercing cry, his leg trapped beneath the rubble. Mori and Fukuzawa rush to their aid;
Ranpo stands against the wall, clutching his chest, his brows written with terror and shock.

“They need each other,” Chuuya says again. “Let them go.”

“No!” Akutagawa screams over the din. He yanks at Chuuya until he has to look at the boy,
at those tear-ridden, grey eyes. “We’re not letting them go, not after everything we’ve done to
save him!”

Chuuya finds himself touching Akutagawa’s face. Poor boy. He smiles a watery, gentle smile.
“We didn’t save him,” he whispers, feeling the rough strain in his throat, “we took him away
from what he wants. We tried to tear him from the one thing he’s ever let himself love. That
fucking monster…that fucking…” he trails off, gazing at them again among the blue waves.
His chin quivers.

The chamber shudders and gives a great, warning groan. The ceiling caves in at its center.

“Chuuyaaa!”

“I’m going to open the door,” he whispers, and doesn’t know if Akutagawa hears him. He
feels hands clawing at him, but the boy is not strong without the use of his ability, and
Chuuya only drags him along with as he goes to the shuddering door of the chamber. He gets
his fingers around its cocked edge, heaving it open as wide as he can, putting all his energy
into it. He feels the breath in his lungs, but not much else. Maybe it’s No Longer Human
affecting him. Maybe that’s why he can’t feel anything.

When he turns wildly, with his coat fluttering in the mess of blue, Fyodor is looking right at
him. Chuuya flings out his hand to the opening. He feels the word rush up inside of him,
expanding and rising until it comes out in a singular, tearing scream over the noise.
“GOOOO!”

“Chuuya, no!”
“GO, YOU BASTARD!”

All of the others turn, some on their knees in the falling debris, Atsushi being pulled out from
under the pillar, Mori’s red eyes narrowed, Fukazawa’s yukata torn. He can’t take any of it in.
All he knows is that they must leave. They belong together.

They must leave.

He will not take that away from Dazai again. That look that Fyodor gave him. That softness,
that humanity, that love that Dazai spoke of. He will have it just as he likes—who is Chuuya
to decide what is best for him?

He can live his life as he pleases, broken or not.

Dazai has always been broken. It’s no longer their duty to try and fix him.

Akutagawa is on his knees in tears, clutching hold of Chuuya’s pantleg, his hair flying about.
He seems to have been knocked over, or perhaps he crumpled because Chuuya has
disappointed him.

He can hate himself later. He will hate himself later.

For now, this is what he must do.

~[ Music option, works best if Fallen Rain was chosen for last scene: True Love's Last Kiss -
Eternal Eclipse (it's going to take you to a specific part of the song, hopefully) ]~

The redhead opened the door for them.

Fyodor watches this. He takes it in with a dull, encompassing pang of cold. The redhead—
Chuuya, Dazai’s old partner—is letting them go.

How curious. How awfully, terribly curious.

Fyodor clasps the trembling figure of Dazai’s body against him. He begins to move for the
door, one step at a time, absently murmuring to the bandaged boy in his arms. The
nullification of Dazai’s ability has rendered them all useless—perhaps this is why the redhead
is letting them go. He sees now that it’s useless to try anymore.

Fyodor had thought to kill him before. He had thought to touch him and watch his throat cut
itself out in a spray of gore. After all, he is the one who took his little sun away. He should
not, by any means, still have a life in his body when Fyodor and Dazai leave.
 But he has opened the door for them, and the closer that Fyodor guides Dazai to it—the more
he sees Chuuya scream at the other, rushing members of his team to stay back, fighting the
ones with his own hands that do not listen—the more he realizes that he is not going to kill
this boy.

The redhead has set them free, willingly. He has seen something that made him change his
mind. That is good enough for Fyodor. He can have his life for as long as he wishes. It is
sufficient repentance for one he’d thought was only a sinner like the rest.

As Fyodor pulls Dazai through the door, a singular, crushing burst of the blue detonates like a
bomb, slinging out into the chamber behind them. Fyodor does not look back. He holds his
солнышко close to him, the frail, precious body, and keeps walking. He does not stop
because Dazai’s feet drag. He does not stop because the boy is going limp.

Dazai’s breaths rasp and hitch. He mutters in incoherency, clawing and leaning against
Fyodor’s chest. His head droops, and Fyodor wants to touch his curls, to clear them of the
layer of fine, concrete dust.

The chamber rumbles and falls to bits behind them. He keeps moving forward. He
remembers where the stairs are. He remembers the way out.

Dazai told him what he could, before, and Fyodor knows the rest simply because he
recognizes the craftsmanship of the safehouse. He knows the design is one he has seen before
on paper.

Dazai staggers along beside him as he strives on with purpose. The tiny bloom of warmth
pulses in his chest. The colors are there, too. Dazai is here to make them. They go flashing by
in pinks, in blues, in oranges.

They are going home. He will be at peace with Dazai as before.

And this time, he will not treat him as a Sinner. This time, he will treat him as he is—as,
perhaps, they both are.

Human. If he can bring himself to believe it.

Chapter End Notes

There is more to come, have no fear...but finally, the big moment has been written. What
did you think?? :D

I hope all the links wasn't distracting xD but I wanted the full experience for those who
are music-oriented.

lol the fact that I introduced Ranpo into the story kinda for no reason except that I had
planned to have him arrive later on and forgot makes me cackle. He’s got no role except
to explain what psychosis means to Chuuya xD. He had a bigger bit part in my first
plans but then the plans changed a bit…the end of the last chapter wasn’t originally
going to be that Fyodor freed himself. And then I was like “but imagine the drama”

It’s okay, Ranpo don’t need no special attention, stupid non-ability-having candy-
sucking motherfucker
 Foreign Familiarities
Chapter Summary

They come home. It's just as cold as he remembers.

But maybe that's not a bad thing, anymore.

Chapter Notes

I promise, I stg—there *will* be a sex scene.

This is just 7.3k words of *not* that yet. Ummm, building up to it. Anyways.

GOOD GRIEF I'M SORRY I WENT ON HIATUS WITHOUT WARNING BUT MY

JOB SUCKED THE SOUL OUT OF ME AND I GOT WRITER'S BLOCK AND
FREAKED OUT FOR POSSIBLY A MONTH OR SOMETHING IDK I HAVEN'T
CHECKED THE DATE

*clears throat* moving on.

Two songs to go with this one (soundtrack)~

Death - Angels of Death

Life - Angels of Death

Ikr, I'm suuuuper symbolic n stuff, even with my soundtrack choices (a coincidence)

okay one more--

Dainichi Mikoshi 3 - Genshin Impact

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dazai does not know when it ends or when it begins. He does not know when his feet leave
the ground or when they touch it again.

He does not know when the time stops or starts.

But he knows when the velvet speaks to him. From the hollows in his chest, where his heart
is supposed to be, the velvet layers itself inside, padding his ribcage until it no longer pangs
with the chill of death or the lack of a soul.

He is aware, presently, that No Longer Human is the culprit of this absence—something he is

still remembering the feeling of. No—the lack of feeling. Is this entity, which dares to call
itself an ability, the cause for his years as a void? Is this the black hole that siphoned out his
mortality?

No Longer Human made him long for death. The velvet has offered him life—painful and
cruel as it is—yet still a life to be lived in full capacity, feeling as human as he could be.

Is he being carried, now? His mind still lingers in the blackness of his ability’s clutches,
drowning in a never-ending chasm. But he has the vague vertigo of a rocking sensation, as if
steps are being taken. As if he’s inside of those steps without moving his own feet, drifting,
drifting along with whoever is taking them.

Velvet, his memory reminds him. Velvet is keeping you safe.

Who does the velvet belong to, again? Right now, he hardly even knows who this body
belongs to. No Longer Human makes him forget that he’s Dazai, that he’s a he, that he’s a
body at all. He’s an it, and it floats in an abyss of numb anguish with no direction, no
purpose, no light.

But velvet comes whispering along his veins like the tendrils of fine threads. He knows this
velvet. He knows more than the fact that it speaks to him.

“Dazai,” it hisses, “Dazai, Dazai,” until he remembers that it has a name, that it has a body,
that it is being addressed. Ithas never had to take on so many abilities at once. It is still
recovering from the gulf opened in space and time to swallow them up like weeds chasing
roses. It cannot respond just yet.

It waits and waits, listening to the velvet. It waits for the velvet to bring him back.

The velvet takes its time. They rock and rock for a good while, steps dragging out into
periods it can’t name, it can’t fathom.

Eventually, the velvet returns like a glimmer in the distance, small but captivating enough to
reach for. And it does reach. It reaches as far as it can.

“Dazai,” the velvet whispers.

This time, he remembers who the velvet belongs to. He remembers that he is, he exists. The
chasm was just a temporary emptiness, and now…he is allowed to return.

So, he returns.

He sees a sky at first, dark and shimmering with falling snow, its navy-blue expanse peppered
with the ivory gems of stars. Tiny dots of cold tickle his frozen face, clinging to his lashes
and melting on his lips. He hears snow crunch under soft boots; he feels a support under his
shoulders and legs.

“Dazai,” comes the whisper once more, and he sees the smoky cloud of someone’s breath in
the air. “We are home.”

The name rises to his lips as he turns his head, as he looks up into amethyst eyes framed by
raven hair. No Longer Human tatters away in disgust, retreating in the knowledge that it will
not be needed anymore. A spark, a flicker, a shock of feeling—it alights in his chest with the
vigor of a current, carrying along through his blood the swelling familiarity of sensation.

“Fyodor,” he breathes, his voice a scratchy rasp.

The world, the sky, even the air itself is silent and frozen around them, crisp with the fresh
snow and waiting to be broken once more.

“I am glad you have come back,” Fyodor tells him gently, shifting Dazai in his arms and
lowering his bare feet to touch cold, wooden slats. “I feared that you might be gone entirely.”

Dazai looks down at his feet, trying to make them work as Fyodor releases his legs. They’re
numb. He clings to the Russian with one hand. They won’t move at all, but that’s alright.
Fyodor is there to hold him, still.

“You cannot walk just yet?” Fyodor inquires softly. His hand flutters somewhere near Dazai’s
waist. It clasps him very gently.

Dazai carefully makes his head shake back and forth.

“Ah, that is alright. I can guide you.”

Dazai makes the mistake of looking up. Of looking up at a door—a large, dark door, standing
in the flickering yellow of the porch light.

He remembers this door, and everything behind it. He remembers this life, and everything
he’s been away from. He remembers that Fyodor, that one he was long ago.

And he feels as if his organs have knotted. The first feeling he feels, now that he feels again,
is wrenching, sickening terror.

His mouth slips open to make way for strangled gasps. His fingers dig into Fyodor’s clothes,
until he’s feeling muscle and bones. “Ffff…” He can’t get it out. His chin is trembling. His
limbs are shaking, locking up. He can’t control himself—he’s panicking, he’s
hyperventilating. It all happens so quickly—to be jerked out of near unconsciousness into this
feeling, so deep and feral—it’s a shock his body is not equipped to handle. It feels like being
yanked from a hot bath and plunged into ice water. His teeth begin to chatter.

He hears a string of startled Russian—he feels hasty hands on his body, gathering him against
the soft clothing of Fyodor’s chest. “What is wrong?” comes the whisper, “What is wrong,
солнце? I have you, you are safe. You are breathing so quickly.”

Dazai makes a startled, muddled noise of confusion, half-pushing at Fyodor’s body with
weak, shaky hands. His vision flashes in raucous, memorized colors, the blacks of Fyodor’s
stretching shadow along the wall, the violet of his burning gaze amidst the white blizzard of
snow.

Fyodor does not let him go. “eбать,” he hisses, “You are safe. Do not fight me, Dazai. Do
not fight.”

His vision is being swallowed by darkness. Whether it’s Fyodor’s embrace or the panic, he
does not know. But Fyodor’s voice sounds so frantic that it makes things worse, because
Dazai thinks he might be feeling, too, and one of them has to stop or he’ll fall apart.

Yes, he remembers. He remembers everything, too much of it, and it crams itself into his head
with flashing stars and raking screams, the sensation of blades in his skin and the bark of
Russian words.

Fyodor is not like that now, he tells himself. Fyodor will not be like that again. This is
Fyodor. This is the man he’s changed himself to be, and this one is safe. This one is cold, in
the way that soothes Dazai’s burning nerves. If he goes through that door, it will not bring
back all these memories. It will not bring back the old Fyodor—he tells himself that it will
not.

Dazai releases a whimper in the back of his throat, but Fyodor still holds him, arms pressed
tight around Dazai’s back, and though his ribs expand rapidly against them, he does not
loosen his grip.

Fyodor’s lips press into his curls, leaking breath along his scalp. They’re words, Dazai
realizes, whispered strings of words, and when he listens to them, they being to tamp and
soothe the bubbling fright in his veins.

“I will not hurt you again. Those things that you are seeing, they will not recur. The past is
the past, I do not intend to change my mind. I will be kind, now, and soft, and all of the things
that make you feel good. When you are good, Dazai…” Fyodor’s voice softens further. Dazai
thinks that it even trembles, just a little. “…When you are good—I am, too.”

Dazai’s chest begins to hitch and thicken with relieved, calming sobs of breath. He grasps
Fyodor’s spine and mewls in affirmation, nodding his head wildly to make sure Fyodor
knows. Remembering is awful. Remembering is like stabbing his head with knives.

“Come, then,” Fyodor murmurs, scooping up Dazai’s thin, shaking frame in his arms. The
weightlessness makes him breathless, and he goes limp in some form of relief, resting his
head in the crook of the Russian’s neck, tucked where it’s comfortably cool against his heated
brow.

“I will fix it, as soon as we are inside,” Fyodor tells him. “I will make you feel good, if I can.
I will try.”

He cannot let go of the material at Fyodor’s collar, which shows so much more of his neck
than usual, disheveled as it was by the fight. There’s a little tear in it that makes Dazai
anxious because they are Fyodor’s favorite clothes, and it exposes the pale curve of his throat
to Dazai’s fingers, and all he wants is to put his hands against it, but he’s too afraid of what
Fyodor will say.

Fyodor fumbles the doorhandle while still clinging to Dazai’s body, working it open and
walking in with that same, gentle pace that lulled Dazai out of his unconsciousness moments
ago. Or was it hours ago?

When the door shuts behind them, it seals out the frightening, open world, the howling wind
and the snow. Flakes and bunches of it slide off of their bodies as Fyodor stamps his red, felt
boots, sparkling in the light from the kitchen window—the light where the moon comes out
in stretched, rectangular panels.

Even the sound of Fyodor stamping his boots sends Dazai’s mind reeling through the
countless other times he’s heard that thump against hardwood. Sitting at the table, chewing
on his nails or scraping at old scars, staring up at the Russian and waiting to be hurt. Staring
at the Russian and waiting to be berated. Waiting to be fed.

Waiting to be loved.

Now he has it, doesn’t he? Love. That elusive, ambiguous collection of feelings that the
world tried to pin down in four letters. He has it in the velvet, in the only way he deserves—
which is complicated and painful, and maybe not love at all, but it’s a love that Dazai can
accept because of that.

He doesn’t deserve the kind of love that regular people experience. This love is just fine with
him.

Fyodor murmurs tenderly to him, shifting Dazai in his arms. “You are doing alright? The
bedroom is alright for you to rest in? You will not mind if I take you there?”

Dazai feels a tremor of nervous energy run through his frame, but he makes a soft sound
despite it, pressing his nose closer to Fyodor’s neck, until he can smell the lavender on his
skin. “Yes,” he croaks. “I’m tired, I’m so tired…”

“You are remembering too much. Perhaps I should try to distract you from that.”

It sounds good, whatever Fyodor means. He would rather be distracted from the cloying,
snarling thoughts in his brain. He would rather have the cloth with chloroform pressed to his
face, and drift back into that dreamless sleep Fyodor had put him under so many times after
slicing through his tendons.
Fyodor carries him past the kitchen—past that faint color in the slats of wood that Dazai
remembers is his blood—down the hall, away from the cello by the empty fireplace, the chair
where Fyodor reads and the couch where Dazai had been hurt more than he could handle.

The bedroom, when they enter, is strongly evocative in itself. The sheets of the bed are
slightly rumpled. The lamp is still on, leaking warm colors across its surface, too warm.
There are clothes left out from when Fyodor had dressed him to see the northern lights.

So many awful things, so many wonderful things. They all happened here. So many quiet
conversations in the night, so many mornings waking to a cold other side—but the cold was
Fyodor’s body, after all. And there were so many nights spent clinging to that cold, being
held inside the arms that support him now. So many breakdowns and panics and screams, and
arousal, too.

Arousal.

He remembers when he sat, and Fyodor tended to his wounds, and how afterwards, he’d
touched Dazai, and whispered confusing things to him, and made him feel wrong but wrongly
right. Is it wrong to want that again? Is it wrong to want Fyodor to distract him with that?

Is it wrong that he still wants to see all of Fyodor’s skin, the white figure—his angel, his god
who’s become human?

Fyodor lays him down among the sheets, and Dazai shifts himself to a sitting position against
the headboard, curling his arms around his legs and drawing his frozen knees close to his
chest. He watches Fyodor as the Russian bends down, carefully picking up the clothes on the
floor. Fyodor puts them in the bottom drawer of the nightstand, glancing around absently for
any other mess.

But there’s a certain cast to his eyes. There’s something glassy about them, as if he’s not
focused at all on cleaning up the bedroom, but on keeping his gaze from Dazai’s as he tries to
think of what to do. Is Dazai seeing it right? Is the man hesitating out of uncertainty?

But he is never uncertain. He always knows what to do. Seeing him waver now makes Dazai
uncomfortable.

“Fedya,” he calls softly.

Fyodor looks at him. His lips shift against each other, a slight purse, almost. “What is it?”

Dazai struggles for something to tell him. He comes up empty, and glances at his toes.
They’re blue-grey from the cold. He’s still only in a shirt and briefs, after all. He’d left his
beige coat behind in the rubble of the safe house. “I don’t know.”

Fyodor makes half of a sound that stops in the back of his throat, and comes to the bedside,
sitting down on the edge, turning to face Dazai.

Dazai raises his eyes carefully to meet the amethyst ones, and the unspoken words aren’t
needed aloud.
You know, the amethyst says. Tell me.

Maybe he does know, but it’s too abstract to describe it aloud. Maybe his call was only a plea
for attention—for Fyodor to look at him, to see him and not the room. Maybe it was an
invitation, to let Fyodor know that he could do what he pleased.

Does that desire make it to his gaze? He thinks it must have, for Fyodor’s eyes shift ever so
fleetingly to Dazai’s lips, studying them before he turns half-away in the semi-darkness.

“We escaped,” he murmurs, blankly. “We made it out. We came home.”

Fyodor’s hands rest white and slender against his legs. The ocean-green veins look like
threads of pure emerald. Dazai longs for their touch so much that he aches, physically, deep
in his ribs. But he sits very, very still against the headboard, clenching his legs ever tighter as
he waits. He will be patient. He will not do something rash or presumptuous. He doesn’t even
know if Fyodor cares about that part of their relationship. He doesn’t even know if Fyodor
wants him like that.

After all, the night when Fyodor played the cello for him—the night he tended to the cut he
left on Dazai’s cheek, and did other things to him…he’s not sure if that was some sort of
fluke, or another power play, or as real for the Russian as it was for him.

Does he want Fyodor like that? He’s not sure of that, either. He thinks that he wants whatever
Fyodor would want—which is likely the most unhealthy thing in the world, but he doesn’t
mind that so much anymore. Even with his memories floating in the back of his head, he
doesn’t mind.

“You came with me,” Fyodor says, softer now. His gaze shifts until he’s regarding Dazai
from the corner of his eye, his profile tense and sharp. His lips are parted. The hair falls about
his shoulders and his ear, still dusted with snow, still tangled from the ordeal at the safe
house. “You do not regret it? Not even now?”

Is it melancholia that turns those words into hues of blue? Azure and indigo, cobalt and
sapphire, the questions lie heavy in the air, damp on Dazai’s ears.

Dazai blinks at him and considers it, taking careful, slow breaths. But he shakes his head,
mouth pressed to his knees, and his brows furrow slightly. “No,” he says, and believes
himself for it. “I don’t.”

“You will let me hold you?”

“Yes,” he whispers.

“And you will not suffer because of it?”

It is melancholy, after all. Fyodor cannot hide it.

Will Fyodor be considerate? Will he be soft and care for Dazai?

“I don’t think so.” The words come out tremulous.

Fyodor’s body shifts a little deeper into the bed, until he’s facing Dazai and bending one leg
among the sheets. His eyes flick again towards Dazai’s lips, but very unconsciously, it seems,
as if Fyodor doesn’t realize that he’s doing it. “Are you afraid of me, still?”

And the way he asks that singular question—as if it’s the most raw and vulnerable thing in
the world—it strikes through Dazai, deep into his core. They’re made up of the darkest navy,
dripping with self-conscious insecurity.

It’s as if Dazai has been forgetting all this time, and the emotion makes itself known to him
clearly, having thrummed in the background until this moment. Dazai is not afraid.

Dazai is terrified, because Fyodor has been so different for so long that his mind is certain the
façade is about to shatter, leaving him with the old, monstrous Fyodor and taking away his
precious, precious velvet.

His lack of answer is not answer enough for Fyodor, as it might have been for anyone else. It
reminds him that Fyodor still struggles with identifying those complicated things called
emotions, that the one constant about him has always been that Dazai must name it for him to
understand.

“Yes,” he breathes, almost reluctant to give voice to it, as if that alone might trigger Fyodor’s
recession into the cruel demon he was before. “I am scared.”

Fyodor’s façade does not shatter, though. His eyes do not darken with malice or disgust. His
fingers do not claw with the intent to tear him apart. His face, instead, loosens—there is no
other way to describe it—and becomes something gentler, something compassionate,
perhaps, if he is capable of such a thing.

Perhaps he is starting to be.

“I see,” Fyodor murmurs. His eyes flicker and lower, shifting under long, inky lashes.

It’s an odd thing, sitting on the bed with him, now. Dazai’s memories are fully intact—as
much as they can be with him constantly shoving them away, that is. But he knows who he
was, and he thinks a part of that clings to his state of being whether he likes it or not, the
same thing that emboldened him to walk to Fyodor and spread out his arms, to absorb the
abilities and protect his velvet. That sense of self is with him, now, erasing at least some of
the confusion he’d been muddled with, otherwise, and letting him see Fyodor in a deeper
light of sexuality.

Sexuality is frightening, yes, but he thinks it was more frightening when he wasn’t certain
who he was. Now that he knows, he wants. He wants Fyodor to do something with the
dancing glances at his lips. He wants Fyodor to fill him with chilling warmth. He wants to be
with Fyodor, completely, and seal the contract to an unproven arrangement. If not for himself,
for Fyodor. So he can understand.

It will distract him, and give him closure, and help him shift back into this…new. This new
normal. This revised old. This foreign familiarity. Besides, it’s not exactly the affectionate
part of it that he desires. It’s Fyodor’s hands on him, Fyodor’s body pressing against his,
reminding Dazai that he still has a body, that he’s not alone, and he doesn’t have to feel the
way he’s felt in that past he still vaguely remembers.

Dazai reaches out, waveringly, until his fingers are at Fyodor’s collar. “Can I please—?” he
asks softly, so softly that Fyodor could pretend he doesn’t hear it, if he wants to, and Dazai
would not ask him again.

Fyodor stiffens like his veins have been infused with frost. His eyes flare, the violet taking on
a sudden twist of light as he inhales. “No,” he says immediately, but there’s something
hesitantly desperate about it, like he’s telling himself more than Dazai. “No.”

Dazai shrinks a little, his eyes fluttering with the harshness of the word, and feels a pressure
in his head, telling him to back away, or run, or hide. That sense of self isn’t so powerful the
moment Fyodor rejects it. Confidence is not an easy thing to regain, once broken.

He chooses to hide, folding his arms over his knees and burying his face into them, shutting
himself into a suffocating, throbbing darkness. His stomach twists until he feels sick. “Sorry,”
he whispers, brokenly. Of course, he’s read Fyodor wrong. Fyodor doesn’t want him like that.
He must think it’s disgusting to even suggest it. He was only saying no to the clothing—
Dazai knows that—but it has to mean the rest, too. To not wish to be naked in another’s
presence, it must mean that the other is not worthy of it, or too inexperienced, or too low of a
level to stoop to.

After all, his cerulean had never said no. If anything, it was Dazai saying no, and being
ignored. But he pushes that memory aside with the others. It is not welcome when velvet is
here.

A gentle, cold press of fingers rests on his forearms. He feels breath against his skin, and a
soft, fragile voice that shouldn’t belong to Fyodor.

“Forgive…forgive me. I am…only unused to such things. But it is…it is not for you to see.”
A whisper, now, at the end of those words.

Not for Dazai. Because he doesn’t deserve to see? Because Fyodor doesn’t want to share it
with him?

“Is there something I can do to earn it?” Dazai begs, his voice wavering on the edge of what
he doesn’t want to be a sob. “I’ll do whatever you want, whatever you want, Fedya, please…
I want to be worth something to you.”

“Worth something?” Now he sounds offended, almost. It’s difficult to tell without looking at
him, but the words come out harsh and clipped.

“I know,” Dazai whines, shrinking away from it, “I know I can’t be—” The thought alone
sucks out a slough of memories he’d stuffed into the recesses of his mind, countless other
times he remembers being worth nothing to people he’d wanted to be something to. He thinks
of Mori discarding him for Elise, when all he’d wanted was an affirmation, a pat on the head,
a kind word, anything to tell him he was doing it right, because he’d never had a grasp on
which was right and which was wrong. He thinks of Chuuya, forsaking him in favor of a
mission, because Dazai had never been good at mimicking emotions or expressing when he
was losing himself in No Longer Human. He doesn’t want to make the mistake of dreaming
he’ll be worth anything to anyone anymore. Not when it hurts more now than it ever did. Not
when he has emotions to feel when he’s rejected.

“Why would you say such things?” Fyodor whispers, and Dazai realizes that the Russian’s
hands are in his hair, gently stroking his scalp. “You think it is because I do not want you?
You think it is because you mean nothing to me?”

“Isn’t it?” he sobs, gripping his knees in frustration with himself, digging his nails into
bandages and muscle. He’s waiting for Fyodor to say it, to confirm it. Fyodor, out of anyone,
will tell him the truth, after all, no matter how painful. He doesn’t have the empathy to
express otherwise.

Fyodor silently draws Dazai’s arms away from his face—forcefully when Dazai flinches back
and resists, trying to dip his head lower to hide. “Please,” Dazai whimpers, “please, I can’t
bear it. Just tell me, tell me! I don’t want to look.” He doesn’t want to see the cold sincerity in
Fyodor’s eyes when he says, yes, that is why. Did you think any differently?

“Look at me,” Fyodor prods him, gently. “Dazai…look at me.”

“No, please—”

“Shhh…” Fyodor lets go of Dazai’s hands and tries to capture his face inside them instead,
making Dazai whine and squeeze his eyes shut, expectant of quick, slicing pain. “Look,”
Fyodor whispers, “please.”

The word please leaving Fyodor’s lips startles Dazai so jarringly that he does look,
instinctively. His eyes flutter open—he stares at Fyodor with rapid, rasping breaths. His chin
trembles as he sees the expression there. The soothing, penetrating fondness—that is the only
word for it.

Fondness.

“It has nothing to do with that,” Fyodor tells him. “Under these clothes…I am not the same. I
am not…what I would like to be.”

What does that mean? Dazai cannot grasp it. His chest rises and falls. He holds his shoulders
tight to keep them from shaking, to keep his attention attuned to Fyodor.

And Fyodor is hardly the same Fyodor he had grown to revere. Dazai seems to have caught
him in the rarest of vulnerabilities, like seeing a snake shedding its skin, clawing off a layer
of itself that it hates, now that it’s grown a new one underneath.

If Fyodor murmuring please wasn’t enough to show him that, the look in the Russian’s eyes
certainly is.

They’re…drooping. They’re saddened and heavy, dragging his lips into a soft frown, his
brows into a pained furrow. “You must understand…” he whispers, sullenly. Slowly, he lets
his hands slide away from Dazai’s cheeks and turns half-away, resting them in his lap and
gazing into the lamp’s light. His mouth opens…then it shuts again. He lets his body drain of
stiffness and energy with a great, dejected sigh, and closes his eyes.

Dazai can’t feel his fingers or toes. He can’t move. He can’t think of what to do. He can only
watch, and listen, and witness the novelty of Fyodor—the unmovable, rigid Fyodor—
shedding his snake’s skin to reveal the weary, hollowed soul beneath.

“Perhaps I am too selfish,” Fyodor croaks, the voice nearly inaudible. The room feels darker,
so much darker. It feels drenched in the blackness that seeps from the Russian’s figure. “I
have not shown anyone. It is not a matter of…of your worth to me. You are the only thing
that has been of any worth to me in my wretched life. But this…this body, that I am
contained within—it is shameful for what I have always claimed to be. It is something I have
hidden, while pretending to be god. Something I still cannot reconcile with, now that I am
only a creature, after all. A…sinner, worse than I thought you to be.” Fyodor stares into open,
tremoring hands. “Perhaps I am too selfish,” he repeats, “because I want you to continue to
see me as something better than that. Even though I can touch the things that you feel, now.
Even though I can see the colors that you exist inside of.”

Fyodor sluggishly turns his head to look to Dazai for an answer, and he looks lost.

It makes Dazai panic, numbly, inside a world of confusion. It makes the breath tremble in his
throat. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know the right way to respond. He doesn’t
know how to help, how to fix it for him. He doesn’t know what to do with the warmth and
the sadness that those words infuse him with, or how to process his role in what it means.

He begins to shake, putting trembling hands to his head, overwhelmed with it all. There’s
been too much surprise, too much shock, too much stimulation nagging at every corner of his
consciousness, and he’s already so, so exhausted from everything that’s happened.

“I-I don’t…I don’t understand,” he says, the words berating him for being so useless to help.
“Sha-shameful?” Even speaking the word aloud horrifies him. That Fyodor would use the
word in reference to himself, to his own body? “But—how, how, Fedya? How?” He tightens
his hands into fists in his curls, thinking as hard as he can. It burns in his eyes, his nose, his
throat. “How could it be shameful? It’s—it’s your body, it’s yours! It doesn’t matter to me
what it is or is not, it’s still y-you, isn’t it? And you, you are perfect. You are not…like, like
me. You are…”

He trails off, because Fyodor gazes at him, shoulders low and brow heavy, with the most
sorrowful shade of amethyst he’s ever seen. More than anyone normal, more than anyone
Dazai remembers who had felt feelings. There is nothing that compares in part or in whole to
the sorrow he sees there. Nothing.

Something like the shadow of a smile—perhaps the bitter aftertaste of it, instead—tugs at
Fyodor’s pale lips. “Ah…” he murmurs, hoarsely. “If only I was as I had claimed for so long.
If only I was…” The curve fades away entirely. “Feeling…these…feelings, they are an awful
thing, Dazai. I cannot imagine why I had the cruelty to make you suffer through them so
many times. Knowing what they are like—at least in some part, I assume—I pity you for the
things I put you through. The things you must have suffered, at my hand.”
Dazai goes silent, sucked dry for words, or any thought of uttering them. He listens to them
breathe in the stillness. Fyodor’s is unsteady.

The Russian closes his hand into a loose fist that he taps against his thigh. He sighs gently. “I
think…as recompense, the least that I can do is offer you myself. Whether or not you still
wish to see me in the future…that is your decision. I will let you—” Fyodor struggles, then,
with speech at all, and it freezes Dazai’s blood to see it. Even his eyes tighten with the pain.
“—I will let you leave me still, if that is what you desire.”

Dazai feels his eyes widen, until the air is cold and dry on them. Even now—even now?
Fyodor is allowing him the choice to leave? Does he really think Dazai would?

Is what lies beneath his clothing really so awful? It makes him shake, thinking about it.
Perhaps he isn’t human, after all. Perhaps Dazai has been right all this time. Perhaps he is just
a soul, underneath. Perhaps he has scales, or a row of spines, or…

No, it couldn’t be. Dazai knows this can’t be the case.

But it doesn’t really matter when Fyodor has seemingly offered Dazai what he’s longed for
all this time. Has he heard him correctly, after all? Has Fyodor really agreed to this?

“You…” The words barely make it out. “You mean I can…?”

Fyodor does not look at him, only at his lap. The light makes soft, glowing highlights on his
lowered, sorrowful profile. It dances in muted, amethyst eyes. It spreads across his paling
cheeks, the gathered brilliance of his black hair. “If you wish,” he breathes, almost wistfully,
as if he’s given up on clinging to anything of his older self.

Dazai doesn’t realize at first that he’s leaning away from the headboard. He doesn’t feel at
first the sheets against his hands and knees as he crawls towards the man in white. He doesn’t
accept at first that he’s about to attempt something far too bold for someone so fragile, so
ruined—by the very being that sits on the bed with him, no less.

But all of that comes to clarity when he’s perched beside Fyodor, legs tucked under his body
so that he’s sitting on his frostbitten feet. The tendons still ache where they’ve been repaired.

When Fyodor lowers his head a little further, opening his posture and turning over his hand
so that his palm is an invitation to Dazai, he feels disoriented. An invitation to strip, to unveil,
to reveal, all that which Fyodor has warred so long to hide.

With trembling fingers, Dazai touches his wrist, just under the hem of his sleeve. Cool, nearly
translucent skin.

Fyodor shifts and averts his gaze further from Dazai, turning his head away like he doesn’t
want to see it happen. Like he’s not even looked at himself, all this time.

Dazai is startled when he recognizes that feeling, that gesture. When he recognizes it as
something he did himself. Avoiding mirrors. Avoiding his own skin, except to tear into it on
occasion. He swallows unsteadily and there’s a sickly twist in his gut. It feels wrong.
It feels wrong to force this on Fyodor, and wrong to recognize a feeling of the Russian’s as
one he could relate to. Fyodor is nothing like him. Where Dazai is broken and useless,
Fyodor is whole and valuable.

But Fyodor has done so much to him when he didn’t want it. Is this not adequate
recompense?

“Do you mind?” Dazai stammers in a whisper, reaching sufferingly for the loops holding
together Fyodor’s collar. The little tear in the disheveled material reminds Dazai of the
underground cell, of the rubble collapsing all around and the pulse of his blue, overwhelming
ability. But it does not bother him this time. It reminds him of what he did to help Fyodor,
instead.

Fyodor does not answer him, but he sits still even when Dazai’s fingers undo the first loop.
Even when they undo the second, the third, and down and down until Dazai can’t breathe and
there’s a strip of Fyodor’s skin visible in the light, all the way to the hem of his pants. There
is nothing there to be worried over, nothing at all—but the shirt is still only dangling slightly
apart. Dazai’s hands hover at the laces, paralyzed. He keeps imagining tearing the garment
away, revealing him all at once, but cannot go through with it. His hands touch, then startle
backwards, as if they’ll be punished. He can’t control it.

He feels the overwhelming moisture of sweat begin to creep along his body, icy and
uncomfortable.

“You don’t mind?” he begs, this time, a plea to leave him unharmed for doing this.

Fyodor does not turn his head to look. He does not respond at first. He does not move at all.
But his fingers press into his thighs, the fingertips turning white. He seems to hear it in
Dazai’s voice, unlike his usual misunderstanding of emotion. He hears the implication. “I will
not hurt you,” he whispers faintly.

His voice is hoarse. Dazai’s ears nearly close up in rejection of the weakened sound. He
hears ringing, distantly.

He makes his fingers close around either side of the unlaced shirt. “Fedya—”

Fyodor cuts him off with a brush of ice-cold fingers against his knuckles.

Dazai pulls. The shirt goes sliding down Fyodor’s shoulders like a curtain being opened to
some forbidden painting. White, pale skin, as bright as snow, faded-pink nipples, and—

And—

Dazai’s hands go weak and release the shirt of their own accord. He startles backwards,
catches his breath against a dry, papery throat. The shirt falls into the crook of Fyodor’s
elbows. Dazai’s chest rises and falls with rapid, trembling breaths; his eyes widen and burn.
He nearly falls back.
There are marks—there are lines in that skin, of ropey, damaged tissue. Some are pale, some
are ruddy, some are small, some are stretching across the entire expanse of his torso. They’re
scars. They’re everywhere. On his arms, across his shoulders—and, when Dazai cannot make
himself stop, he sees they’re lining his back, too, in jagged, deep rivulets.

Dazai’s hands begin to shake. Fyodor’s head is turned so far away that his head is only a
curtain of black hair.

Dazai feels heat, crushing, aching heat in his throat, and the sting of tears in his eyes. He can
hardly breathe enough to make a noise, much less speak, but whatever is left of his voice
comes out anyways, shuddering in the air. “Fff…Fedya…”

They’re everywhere. They disappear beneath the hem of his pants, even.

Fyodor finally moves, but it’s not what Dazai expects him to do. It’s not a sudden, violent
grab for Dazai’s head, to push thumbs into his eyes and blind him to what he’s seen. It’s not a
quick swish of the arms that brings the shirt back up to cover the mess, the vulnerability
Fyodor has let out.

It’s a shift of his shoulders, a straightening of his limbs, letting the shirt slide completely to
the bed. “And now you see,” he murmurs, so dimly that it hurts Dazai’s ears. His head hangs
low. “But you are not finished.”

“Fed—”

“Finish, Dazai,” Fyodor whispers. “Finish.”

Dazai’s cheeks sting with hot, searing liquid. He absently presses his fingers against it,
swipes through wet tears. He inhales shakily. He tries to make himself listen. But he can’t
stop murmuring Fyodor’s name under his breath like a plea or a prayer, a mantra to calm him
or distract him—he doesn’t know which. Soon, his fingers are touching Fyodor’s pants, and
he doesn’t even know if he’s himself anymore, he doesn’t even know what he’s doing
anymore. “May I?” he whimpers, but doesn’t feel the emotion in his chest. It’s a swarming,
expanding pond of black water, seeping through the cracks of his composure.

“I will not hurt you,” Fyodor hisses. “Do it.”

Dazai’s chin trembles, and he can’t bear it any longer. The sobs leak through, shaking his
body, wracking his shoulders. “I can’t,” he sobs, “I can’t do it, I can’t, Fedya.”

A sigh filters through the air above him, and one of those restless, white hands comes to rest
in Dazai’s curls. Dazai cannot look up at him, and Fyodor does not ask him to. He only tugs
against Dazai’s hair, until all that Dazai can do is press his face into the bare skin of Fyodor’s
chest, the shapes of scars under his flushed cheek. He weeps against them, he weeps for
them, he weeps because of them.

Not because they are ugly. Not because they are horrible.

Because they are just like his.

Pathetically human, brutally beautiful, when Dazai could never see his own in the same light.
On Fyodor, they look like decorations. On Fyodor, they look like veins of pure gold. To know
that he owns only the same horror that etches Dazai’s body—that he’s seen Dazai’s, knowing
that they shared it—it’s nearly too much to take in.

“Fedya is like me,” Dazai exclaims in a sobbing heave against the man’s cool skin, “Fedya is
like me…”

“Yes,” Fyodor says, and his voice is like melting ice. “I am afraid so. Does it make you sad?”

Dazai is terrified to touch the Russian’s skin, but he puts his hands against the lean, bony
structure of his waist and slides them around until they touch Fyodor’s spine, which stiffens
and shifts under his grasp. “No,” he whispers desperately, “not sad.” How is he to explain
what it makes him feel? To know a man he regarded as a god is only, truly human after all,
and as much of a victim of life as he is? That his scars are the best proof of that? The one
thing he knows isn’t a trick of his mind?

The colors are not of any shade that he can describe. The sensations are not capable of being
boxed within the confines of language. There is only the phrase, the phrase. Fedya is like me.

We are the same. We are human.

“You do not find me despicable? You do not find me undeserving?”

“No, Fedya,” Dazai whispers, holding him tighter. The tears run down his cheeks—they drip
along Fyodor’s collarbone.

“You do not wish to leave?” Fyodor asks, quieter.

“No, Fedya.” Never. Not after seeing him like this. Not after knowing what he truly is.

Fyodor’s body relaxes just a bit. “You are certain? You will not change your mind?”

Dazai shakes his head and closes his eyes, pressing as close as he can. “Never,” he breathes.

There is a long moment, in which Dazai isn’t sure what Fyodor is thinking or experiencing.
And then…then, there’s the softest touch against his spine, carefully grasping him. Fyodor’s
hand is as chilled as ever, but it does not make him shiver. It does not make him
uncomfortable.

It feels good. It feels right.

He finally feels as if he’s been completed in Fyodor’s new, growing character, aligned with
neither one of them above or below the other. They are on the same playing ground, with the
same hand of cards at their disposal.

And Fyodor’s coldness is only a comfort to him.

Chapter End Notes

*Flutters eyelashes, sips a mocha* Next chapter SHOULD feature Chuuya and Aku and
the fate of the ADA, but I may change my mind who knows. I can't promise it won't
take as long as this one (I work in customer service okay I don't do guarantees), BUT I
WILL TRY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN. God this emotional constipation is really getting
to me...

Lol I'm glad to be back and I hope you enjoyed the chapter though--I SOOO look
forward to seeing your comments! I've missed you guys, the only thing my comments
have been lately is "hi ;A; where is the chapter sensei" and I have made I swear like ten
replies that all sounded like "*incoherent blubbering* I am so sorry *more blubbers*
depression *more weeping* writer's block *hysterics* been watching Euphoria instead"
etc. etc.

Or you know something like that idk what apology videos are like

EDIT: OH YEAH ALSO DID YOU GUYS KNOW I HAVE A READER OF SINNER
MAKING A FANART COMIC OF CHAPTER 19??? She is SUCH a dear and a
dedicated to making the art super gorgeous, and I am so fucking excited that I literally
can’t even convey it to everyone. Go check my Twitter or Instagram for peeks! The

🖤🖤🖤🖤
artist has already done another fanart that I nearly wept over (it was so beautiful) that I
posted for the world to enjoy
 Wrathful Colors
Chapter Summary

Akutagawa doesn't come away from Dazai's betrayal unharmed. But neither does
Chuuya.

Chapter Notes

FINALLY! This is the second-to-last chapter, and I'm sorry it took so long!

The last chapter is already written and beta-read, so happy days, it will be uploaded
tomorrow, most likely, or at least within this week!

Anyways, enjoy the final check-in with Chuuya and Aku :) I didn't include any other
character appearances, cuz they wouldn't have anything very relevant to add to the story.
LOL

See the end of the chapter for more notes

“You let him go!”

Akutagawa nearly screams it, his voice confined inside the tight space of Mori’s makeshift
hospital room. He’s twisting against multiple velcro restraints, IVs dangling from the crook
of his elbow, bandages making him look like someone else Chuuya would rather forget right
now.

“Lay back, Ryunosuke,” Chuuya says as calmly as he can, pushing Akutagawa’s shoulders as
the boy struggles to lift himself from the bed, deathly pale and trembling with weakness. His
eyes are full of crimson, burning rage.

“How could you?!”

They’re back in Yokohama, stuffed in Mori’s private treatment center to recover from the
damage of the…the event. Chuuya had escaped with little-to-no-damage, but only because—
well. Because the idiot lying in the hospital bed had covered him with his entire body, with
no help from Rashomon. The debris had come crumbling down atop him. There had been
blood everywhere, soaking Chuuya’s clothes, his hands. Akutagawa had screamed with the
pain, trapped and convulsing against Chuuya, and all he’d been capable of doing without
corruption was hold him, repeating in shock that he was alright, he was going to be alright,
until Akutagawa had sunken into unconsciousness.
Corruption had only activated what felt like an eternity after, the effects of Dazai’s
nullification wearing off at a snail’s pace. There had been chaos all around. Chuuya had only
barely been able to make out the figures of the others through the dust, dark and stumbling.
The moment he’d regained his ability, he’d surged out of the cement blocks and broken
wood, Akutagawa’s broken, limp body in his arms. He’d found all the others still alive.

The doctor had sprained an ankle and that was all. Atsushi was had broken an arm. Ranpo
had been battered by a falling wooden beam, a bruise on his shoulder and a few slashes down
his stomach. Fukuzawa had only suffered a minor concussion, and Kunikida had only lost his
glasses.

Nobody had been injured as badly as Akutagawa.

Akutagawa and Chuuya had been in the worst of it, only because Chuuya had been the only
one to stay put while the building was caving in, while the others had been smart and had
sprinted for the closest shelter to be found.

Chuuya had refused to give him up to anyone on the long journey back to safety. They’d
made temporary emergency procedures on him, bandaged him up. There were punctures
throughout his torso, five broken ribs. There was more internally, but only Mori knew what to
look for in that respect, and he’d refused to tell Chuuya what he’d found, even when he’d
cursed the man several times over in rage.

They’d traveled back to Japan as soon as Mori had hunted down a connection to send a
private jet, and Chuuya had almost lost Akutagawa on that flight. He’d spent every hour
white-knuckled and fighting off fits of rage.

Mori had threatened to sedate him, at one point. The plane had been vibrating with the effects
of his rising emotion. That had only made it worse, though—he’d screamed at Mori, the
plane had nearly lost its course, and then Mori did sedate him.

He’d been drunk every day they’d been back, waiting for Akutagawa to wake up. Dreading
that he never would. He’d sat in the private room beside the boy’s bed every moment he
wasn’t being rushed out, pacing the floor in an intoxicated stupor, running his hands through
his hair and gritting out obscenities, as if it would bring Akutagawa back the more
threateningly he swore at Death.

Mori had operated on Akutagawa three times. Chuuya hadn’t asked what it was the doctor
had been fixing. He only asked each time if Akutagawa would live, and Mori had patted
Chuuya’s shoulder and gravely assured him he could kill him if he didn’t.

And now, he’s awake. He’s awake for the first time since that awful day, and the first thing
that crosses that pale, sickly face is utter, accusatory rage. The relief Chuuya wants to feel is
short-lived. It’s still there, inevitably, just shoved to the back of his hazy mind to make way
for a defense against a sudden, more painful clash of emotions.

They’re alone in the room, Chuuya only half-inebriated, numb with shock and trying to keep
Akutagawa’s feeble little body from injuring itself further. “Lay back,” he repeats, his voice
edged with hoarseness. “You fool. Lay back. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Akutagawa doesn’t care, or doesn’t hear him. Most likely the latter, since he’s fairly
screaming at the top of his lungs, his voice the perfect definition of all the wrath Chuuya had
been feeling these past few weeks. “You bastard! You fucking bastard! Why did you give up
on him? Chuuya! Let go! Let go of me! Agh—!” Akutagawa winces in sudden realization, it
seems, that there’s a crushing agony in his body, and lifts his arm to see the IV dangling from
it. His eyes swim for a moment, and Chuuya lets go of him. He sinks back against the
pillows, his breathing ragged.

“Yeah, you’re hurt, you idiot,” he hisses, blinking hard in an attempt to keep his vision clear.
He’s glad he’s a little tipsy. It makes some of the pain less difficult to bear, and most likely is
the one thing keeping him from screaming back at the boy. “Fucking jumped in front of a
falling ceiling.”

Akutagawa fiercely turns away, staring at the cement wall. A cold, white lamp is the only
thing illuminating the room, highlighting the ends of his hair. They look whiter. Is that
possible? Is it the stress?

“You’re disgusting,” Akutagawa chews out, his voice rough and broken.

Chuuya huffs out an angry laugh and falls into the chair by his bedside, scraping back a
mound of disheveled orange hair. “Yeah, yeah.”

“You’re weak.” Akutagawa’s head turns ever so slightly towards him, brows lowered almost
impossibly low, as scarce as they are.

Chuuya’s eyes narrow. The chair’s back feels uncomfortable and rough against his spine as
he hooks a weary arm over its edge. “Anything else?”

“You’re a quitter. A failure. I can’t believe you gave up on him.”

It grinds on Chuuya’s mind like an overturned bag of gravel. “You know what? Me neither,
Aku. Me fucking neither.” Chuuya kicks a booted heel against the ground, sucking his tongue
over his teeth. “I ran out of options, alright? It was either let him go or get us all killed. Sorry
I decided to spare our lives, I guess. Sorry I thought we were more important to him, when all
he wanted was to go back to Fyodor.”

Akutagawa’s frail, bandaged hands tighten into fists on the stark white bedsheets at his waist.
His mended chest, bare in patches under the dressing, rises and falls rapidly. “That’s not why
you did it,” he snarls between clenched teeth, still refusing to look at Chuuya.

Chuuya stares at the faint outline of the boy’s nipples under the bandages. His brain fires off
several responses, none of which Chuuya attempts to say. None of which Chuuya can say.
His throat clenches. He wants a smoke. He wants a drink. Something other than this…
performance from Akutagawa, so difficult to see after he’d been counting the moments
before those eyes would meet his again. But if he’s given the chance to drink anymore, he’s
going to get very drunk, and that won’t be good for anyone. He’ll probably bring Mori’s
makeshift hospital to the fucking ground if he does that.

So he gets up roughly from the chair and goes for the door, gritting his teeth.
A voice that doesn’t match Akutagawa’s previous tone suddenly brings him to a halt. It’s
quick—frantic, even—and very, very wounded.

“Where are you going?”

Chuuya stops with his hand on the door, fingers paled by his grip, metal biting into his palm.
He turns ever so slightly over his shoulder, until he can see the boy sitting up, his body
shaking, his head low. One hand is curled around the metal railing, like he’s going to fucking
get up and follow Chuuya.

“To get a cigarette, you bastard,” he says lowly, but even as he does, he knows it’s not what
he’s going to do, now. Not with that image of Akutagawa burning in his mind. Not with that
pitiful plea ringing in the boy’s voice, that unspoken “don’t leave me” inside his benign
question.

Akutagawa is silent. He sits very still, and his body looks so delicate and dying that it makes
Chuuya’s chest tighten.

“Do you want me to go?” Something in Chuuya’s head screams make him say it, make him
admit that he wants you here. He wants to believe he deserves that, at least, for all the
suffering he’s gone through on Akutagawa’s behalf. But that’s fucking selfish of him, and he
knows it. Akutagawa has been through far more, both before this incident and during it.

Akutagawa’s breath rasps. He shakes his head, merely a tremble that makes his jaggedly-cut
hair sway against hollow cheeks. The shadows are deep over his eyes, disguising them,
dragging out the circles beneath them.

And Chuuya remembers that he’s a sucker for needy people that pretend to be strong, or
happy, or alright. What else can he do but turn around? What else can he do but oblige the
boy his company?

He approaches the bed again with slow steps, murmuring, “You gonna stop yelling at me,
then?”

Akutagawa nods. His shoulders are trembling, and Chuuya tries not to notice that they’re
bare, or how pale and nearly-translucent the skin looks there. As if it might split if he touches
it.

“Are you gonna be good and lie down for me before you bust a kidney or something?” He
pushes softly at the boy’s shoulders, tells himself it’s not because he wants to know what
Akutagawa’s skin feels like.

But it’s soft. It’s cold as ice. Akutagawa’s breath trembles when his fingers brush it.

He lies back, restraining a noise of pain, Chuuya can tell. It comes out in a jagged string of
words instead. “I don’t think you can bust a kidney.” He doesn’t look at Chuuya or show his
face. He’s hiding it.

“Yeah well, I’m not a fucking doctor so…”

Chuuya trails off, standing over Akutagawa. The boy has turned his head all the way to the
wall. Chuuya’s fingers tingle, and it’s probably not the alcohol. He senses a sort of agony in
that avoidance, and knows Akutagawa takes a different sort of coaxing than Dazai to open
up.

A little different, at least. He’s weak to touch, they both are, but Akutagawa is touch-starved
where Dazai is wounded, needy for more where Dazai numbly rejects it. Akutagawa talks big
and tough but softens quickly under a gentle hand. Dazai lets touch happen to him, but
doesn’t let it affect him.

“I’m going to sit on the bed with you.”

“No,” Akutagawa says thickly. “I don’t need that.”

“Well I’d love to see you try and push me off.” Chuuya, despite being insistent, is extra
careful when he pulls back the sheets, working them free of Akutagawa’s shaking fists, gentle
and slow when he sidles into the bed, sitting against the metal frame. It feels strange, feeling
the warm figure against the side of his leg.

Every muscle in Akutagawa’s body is tense.

Chuuya crosses his arms over his chest, peering at the boy, stretching his neck to try and get a
glimpse at his expression. He can’t, but Akutagawa is making very strange little hitching
sounds, his breath rough and quick.

“Do you want any extra painkillers?” Chuuya asks softly. “I can throttle some out of Mori.”

Akutagawa shakes his head against the pillow he’s clutching.

Chuuya isn’t very good at keeping his hands to himself, clear-headed or intoxicated. But
especially not intoxicated. He reaches for Akutagawa and pulls the thin shoulders and tucked
head over and into his lap, cautious about jostling his mending body.

Akutagawa curls right into him as if he’s been waiting for someone to do it his whole life.
Fuck. It’s so dramatic of him to think this must be the first time anyone has done it. Surely
Chuuya isn’t the only person who’s ever cared enough to comfort him. Higuchi, at least, had
to have done something at some point, right?

No…Higuchi didn’t seem to be that type of devotee. She was more of the service type, he
supposed, which meant Akutagawa would’ve had to ask her for something like this. And
Akutagawa would never ask.

The hitching noises are louder, now. Akutagawa is pressing his hand against his mouth.

His other hand is sliding beneath Chuuya’s thigh, hugging it to his chest, gripping his pants.
He forgot about that part—that distinction, in Dazai and Akutagawa. Akutagawa returns
affection. He knows how it works.

Chuuya’s throat feels incredibly tight. He touches Akutagawa’s hair, hesitant at first—not
everyone likes their hair played with like Dazai does, he reminds himself—but it seems like a
 good move.

Then the coughing fit begins. And it sounds an awful lot like…

Chuuya leans over, and finally tugs away enough of Akutagawa’s hair and shielding hands to
see his face. There are tears, running in little rivulets down pale cheeks. His thin lips are
trembling, parted to gasp in breaths. He coughs louder as if to hide the sobs, as if he can
convince Chuuya his eyes are running for some other reason.

He’s fucking crying, though. He’s fucking crying.

Chuuya leans over the boy in his lap and cradles his head in an embrace, pressing his cheek
against Akutagawa’s tangled hair. “Tough being tough, huh?” he murmurs tenderly. And it’s
probably the first time he recognizes a spark in his chest, an unnamable sort of…fondness,
maybe, or affection, for the boy. More than pity. More than a desire to protect him from a
world that hurt him too often. More than that same drive that set him after Dazai over and
over again. It’s different, softer, less passionate than what he’d had for Dazai but in a better
way than he’d imagined.

He feels Akutagawa nod, one of his skinny little hands coming to rest on Chuuya’s elbow.

“I’m sorry, Aku,” Chuuya goes on. “I’m sorry for giving up on him.”

Akutagawa whispers, “I know. But we both saw it.”

Chuuya lifts his head, looks down at Akutagawa. The gray eyes fix on him, a little less
hollow than they usually look, a little less dead.

“They needed each other,” Akutagawa finishes.

Chuuya turns his face. He cups it in his hand. He lets his eyes scroll across those drawn, tear-
streaked and weary features, and leans down to kiss his mouth. Akutagawa stiffens under
him, his hand jolting, then skittering across Chuuya’s jaw. Then he melts into it, kissing back,
inexperienced but affectionate, hungry for it, accepting it as another sort of apology.

Maybe it’s the start of something new. Something more rewarding than Dazai. Something
that can never be compared, but doesn’t have to be.

Life without his suicidal companion is going to be tough. But it won’t be so bad with
Akutagawa by his side, he thinks.

No, not so bad at all.

Chapter End Notes

Next chapter, final chapter....;-; ahh! I can't believe I've written this story for so long
now.

Hope you enjoyed this last scene with the odd ChuuAku ship! xD believe me I never
saw it comin' either
 HUMAN
Chapter Summary

There's just one last thing Dazai feels anxious about.

Chapter Notes

Ahh, finally. The sex scene to end this wild, consuming story. I can't even imagine
where I would be without writing this story, and getting all the support from all you
wonderful people because of it.

I hope you enjoy this completion of what was almost a year's worth of the most heartfelt
writing I've ever done. This story was my own coping mechanism through a world of
my own emotions (or lack of them), pain, and self-hatred. (yeesh, dramatic xD)

Anyways, here's a couple soundtracks to accompany you on the final journey!

Farewell - To Your Eternity

Ruts - To Your Eternity

Lmao the second song's name cracks me up. Yes, please listen to "Ruts" while Fyodor
ruts in Dazai

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Dazai does not remember what he dreams of while drowsing against a thin, deeply-breathing
shape. But the dreams are not kind to him, filled with shadows and endless pools of black
water, muck that clings to his limbs and drags down his feet. Memories, he knows, only
memories that cannot hurt him anymore. Not when he sleeps beside his velvet.

He realizes, when he opens his eyes to the somewhat blinding yellow of the bedside lamp,
that he is still sitting up, lying against Fyodor’s back with his cheek pressed against one of
the man’s shoulder blades, arms draped limply about his hips.
Fyodor is still sitting on the edge of the bed. He doesn’t react when Dazai stirs, but his eyes
are open. He’s looking down at Dazai’s hands in his lap.

Dazai feels weak with sleep. His neck hurts. His legs are cramped. When he speaks, his voice
hardly comes out in the stillness.

“Have you been awake?” He blinks a few times, instinctively looking for light in the
curtained window. There is none. “What time is it?”

It takes a moment for Fyodor to answer. He seems busy studying Dazai’s hands, tracing one
of his fingers with his own. “I do not know the time,” he murmurs. “But the sun has not
risen.”

“I kept you awake?” Dazai asks him in some distress, beginning to pull away so Fyodor can
lie down if he pleases.

Fyodor grasps both of Dazai’s hands to stop him. “Sleep troubles me,” he says faintly. “I have
lost things while I slept.”

Dazai’s hands feel cold inside of Fyodor’s. He carefully rests his chin on the man’s shoulder,
still unused to such things, but trying his best to accommodate. He feels Fyodor breathe,
heavy and slow, as if he’s developed a rhythm to match Dazai’s as he’d dozed.

“Are you…are you lonely? When I sleep?” Dazai asks hesitantly, a small tingle of anxiety
trickling along his skin. Should he ask that?

Fyodor’s eyes drift upwards, a heaviness to them that makes them sluggish as they fix on the
wall across the room. He nods, so slightly that Dazai barely recognizes it as an answer. When
he does, though, his heart leaps a little against his ribs, and he unconsciously presses his
cheek against Fyodor’s neck, hoping that it’s warmth might soothe that chill in Fyodor, even
for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I wish I could stay awake with you.”

A soft breath huffs from Fyodor’s lips. He lowers his head. His hair tickles Dazai’s ear. “It is
kind of you to say such things.”

Dazai tries to hold Fyodor a little tighter without insulting him with worry, and feels a hot
thrill when Fyodor does nothing to resist it. If anything, he almost accepts it. Or at least
allows it to happen to him.

“You are different,” Fyodor murmurs, “holding me like this. What has made you so bold?”

“Is it bold?” Dazai asks in fear, almost loosening his grasp. He feels that familiar shrinking
sensation, the need to hide or to run before something snaps between them. Will it snap this
time? Now? After everything?

Fyodor must feel Dazai’s rapid pulse against his back. He reaches absently for Dazai—
doesn’t exactly make contact with any part of his body, but reaches, still—and says, “Have I
startled you?”
“No,” Dazai says at once. “No…” He watches Fyodor’s hand drift back to his lap. He wishes
it hadn’t.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” Fyodor assures him softly. “The boldness does not bother
me.”

Dazai waits until his heart calms down, reassuring himself with every breath that this is real
and Fyodor means that. He tries, maybe, to be even bolder.

But in the end, he is unable to be as bold as he’d like. In the end, all he does is pull at Fyodor
until the man lies down beside him in bed, when all he wants is for the cold hands to touch
him, to possess him, to tell him without words that he belongs to something more than a
monster now. He belongs to someone.

They sleep—or Fyodor pretends to close his eyes and drift off while Dazai actually does,
nestling under his arm with his face hidden in the man’s chest.

Dazai doesn’t let go of him for the entire first week they’re back. He clings to Fyodor
wherever he goes, and when Fyodor politely asks him to let go, so he can use the shower, or
go to the restroom, or warm up food, Dazai curls up against the nearest wall and chews on
every fingernail he has until he finishes.

He doesn’t mean to be co-dependent. He doesn’t mean to be weak. He doesn’t mean to be

needy. But when Fyodor is not bothered or frustrated or fussy like other partners might be,
when Fyodor continues about his business and rests a hand ever-so-carefully on Dazai’s head
or his waist, when Fyodor murmurs calm, absent answers to Dazai’s hungry questions, it does
not seem so bad to continue his behavior.

After all, it seems the only one it bothers is himself, because he’d rather not be so
troublesome, even if Fyodor does not tell him that he is. There really isn’t a point in trying to
stop, especially when Dazai feels powerless to do so.

So he lets himself continue.

One day, it leads him to disrupting Fyodor’s conduct in the room with the stained-glass
windows. But Fyodor does not seem to mind when Dazai scoots between him and the desk
with the keyboard he tap-taps on. He only pulls his hands back to let Dazai in, and stares
calmly as Dazai sits on his lap. He waits until Dazai has made himself comfortable against
his chest—though Dazai’s heart beats so fast he fears he’ll be sick—and when he is settled,
Fyodor reaches around his body for the keyboard again and keeps typing as if nothing has
happened.
Dazai asks him very meekly what he is doing, gazing up at the amethyst eyes, filled with the
tiny dots of multicolored lights, and Fyodor only responds, “Nothing of much importance,”
and continues on with his work.

Dazai does not mind. It’s comfortable like this, knowing Fyodor isn’t angry. It’s relaxing to
hear the plastic clack of keys and feel the subtle bump of Fyodor’s arms against his body.

He finds himself sleeping often. There isn’t much else to do when he and Fyodor are relaxed
in one another’s presence, and Fyodor often reads or talks to Dazai, or cleans the house.
Overall, he is a very quiet man when he’s not interested in tearing emotions from Dazai
anymore, and it’s a strange thing to get used to. Dazai thinks Fyodor might allow him to wear
more clothes, even, but he never asks, and Fyodor never offers. After all, he feels most
comfortable wearing the shirt and bandages. The shirt makes him feel safe. The shirt was
given to him by Fyodor, after all.

Other things are different than before.

Fyodor keeps the cupboards and the fridge full. Dazai can eat what he wants when he wants,
and if he asks Fyodor to buy him something else, Fyodor does.

Then again, when he goes out for food, Dazai counts the minutes and trembles in his seat at
the kitchen table, scratching grooves into the wood until his fingers bleed. But it’s not that
Fyodor won’t let him come along. It’s that Dazai is too afraid to leave.

Because last time—last time, he got his tendons slashed apart. Last time, his friends came to
take him away. It’s too hard to open the door—to see the white expanse of snow, to remember
the things he longs to forget. So he stays inside. Even if it distresses him to see Fyodor close
the door behind him, shutting Dazai inside the house all alone. Even if being alone still
makes Dazai feel insane, until he’s resorted to repeating his thoughts in loops to get them
straight.

He’ll come back. He will. He will. He will.

He still wants me. He does. He does. He does.

I’m human. I’m human.

I’m human.

The moment Fyodor returns, Dazai feels worse than ever, because he can’t help but cling to
him for the rest of the day, asking for things—for too much—for attention, for words, for
thoughts to fill the raging space of his mind.

But Fyodor is gracious and gives him whatever he asks for, most of all the attention. He sits
with Dazai and does not push him away. He talks in soft murmurs about the things Dazai
worries about, and doesn’t mind when Dazai begins to cry. He gently wipes the tears with the
backs of his knuckles.
He cries often, too. He cried often before, but it was for different reasons, then. He suffered,
then. Fyodor treated him like a curiosity, then, an experiment. It’s a different suffering, now
—a kind he cannot explain, and one that Fyodor tries and fails to understand.

He doesn’t deserve this Fyodor, he thinks, but if he says it aloud, Fyodor only squints at him
in perplexed silence. He only feels a little, compared to Dazai’s feelings. This makes Dazai
more guilty. Shouldn’t Fyodor have room for feelings, too, instead of always taking care of
Dazai’s? They had begun to bloom inside him, but he’s afraid that his own emotions will be
the weeds to choke them out, always forcing Fyodor to tend to them, first.

Sometimes Fyodor plays his cello. He slips away into the room and closes the door behind
him when he does, but he doesn’t get angry when Dazai comes in anyway.

Tonight, when Dazai comes in, he approaches Fyodor from behind, watching the man’s inky
hair glisten and glimmer in the spotlight. The cello sings to the air, drawn and wistful,
longing for some unnamable passion. Does it ask for feelings to feel? Does it mourn for the
empathy Fyodor tries to attain?

Dazai feels especially bold—more clearheaded and careless than he usually is. He slides his
arms over Fyodor’s shoulders and rests a cheek against the back of his neck. He waits for the
music to fade. It hesitates, first, catching on Fyodor’s bow, and then only the echo is left in
the chamber, wisping away like the tail-ends of ghosts in their ivory gowns.

Dazai curls his arms only a little around the Russian, a hesitant embrace, and breathes in the
gentle lavender of his clothes.

Fyodor turns his head in Dazai’s direction. His lashes droop low and thick over his gaze. His
voice is gentle when he speaks. “What is it, солнышко?”

“Do I tire you, Fedya?” Dazai whispers against his neck. “Do I ask too much? Do I give you
enough in return?”

Fyodor’s shoulders shift as he looks a little closer. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t think I know what to do with myself when I’m not afraid you’ll hurt me.” Dazai feels
the words warn him like daggers to his throat—but they leave his lips anyways, no matter the
danger. “All I do now is sleep and follow you around.”

Fyodor is silent for some time. He fingers his bow where it rests across his leg, and Dazai
remembers when it was whisked across his cheek. He remembers the wound it gave him,
how it led to Fyodor removing the gloves he used to wear so often—the gloves he doesn’t
bother to wear anymore. He remembers listening to the cello for the first time, seeing that
first spark of self-doubt in Fyodor’s eyes. Wondering if he was a god, after all.

“Is there something you would like from me?” The words land like a needle dropped to the
floor—delicate, sharp, hardly noticeable.

Dazai’s breath trembles. He does not move so that he doesn’t have to look at Fyodor’s face
when he replies. “Is there something you can give to me?” he whispers.
Fyodor seems to consider it, and Dazai hopes he understands the intended purpose of the
question. He’s too shy to speak in anything but vague, broad terms. Riddles, really—but
riddles are no stranger to Fyodor or Dazai.

“I do not know if it would please you.”

“What, Fedya?” He is almost desperate, now.

“What I have to give.”

Those words ache in Dazai’s chest like an old wound. “Why?”

“It might make you remember.”

“Remember what?” he pleads.

“What it is like to be afraid of me—of being hurt.”

Dazai’s stomach tightens with an icy chill. They are talking about the same thing, aren’t
they? Why would it make him remember? Won’t Fyodor be gentle? Won’t he be soft? Hadn’t
he said so before?

“I don’t understand,” Dazai tells him waveringly. Their shadows seem to stretch in the
spotlight, a merged darkness that puddles on the floor like black, transparent blood.

“I do not trust myself.” Fyodor’s voice is taut and forcibly calm—a more recent method
Dazai has recognized in him for hiding his self-doubt. “I have only used such things to hurt
you. I am not experienced with…how to make it…good.”

Dazai squeezes his eyes shut and remembers in painful flashes. He remembers that he’s the
only one Fyodor can touch, and that Fyodor has never done such things with another for
reference. He’s only used it to hurt, to hurt Dazai, and that is all.

“I don’t mind,” he says between his teeth, and tries not to let them grind together. He tries not
to feel the sickening twist in his gut. Because, at his core, he wants it anyway, despite Fyodor
knowing how to be kind or not. He wants it, because he needs it to go on, to tell himself that
this is what binds them to the other.

Perhaps if he has it, it will lessen his need—and then he can stop pestering Fyodor. He can
give Fyodor breathing room, leave his emotions space to grow on their own without choking
them out.

Then again—he might just be hungry for the risk that it presents. He doesn’t want to be hurt,
but being threatened of it reminds him of the raging colors Fyodor used to bring him, how it
burned through him to rise to euphoria and bliss. It made him feel like he’d earned the good,
the right to cling to Fyodor and ask for softness. It gave him good reason to.

Fyodor does not seem to want anything like Dazai does. Being content feels wrong, not
wanting feels wrong. Fyodor has always wanted in the past. Wanted Dazai to feel, wanted
him to be honest, wanted Dazai to stay in the house with him.
Maybe he’s just a little afraid—afraid that their life together will turn into a straight, gray line
of existence, that they will tire of it until Fyodor hurts him again, because they have nothing
else to do. Dazai is almost certain he will eventually make Fyodor hurt him, just to stop
everything from turning mundane, and Fyodor will willingly give him the colors of pain and
fear as before.

This isn’t exactly what he wants, though. Half of his mind is still stuck in the past, the other
grounded in the present, the memories that were returned to him and the knowledge that it
gives him. What does he want? He doesn’t know.

No. He does know.

To be closer. To be sewn physically into Fyodor’s being, to become part of him. Pain is worth
that, he thinks. Risk is worth that.

So that is why he asks, and why he waits so sufferingly for Fyodor’s answer. But when it
comes, it is not as easy to hear as he hopes.

“I do not think you mean what you say,” Fyodor says carefully. “You would mind if I hurt
you. You have minded before, even if you tested me and tried to make me do it. You have
regretted it, before.”

Yes, he has. Dazai closes his eyes again, pressing his face closer to Fyodor’s neck to feel the
cool skin against his warming cheeks. More flashes—the hard table under his back, Fyodor’s
body forcing its way between his legs, hands pinning him down by the wrists. Yes, he
regretted, that day. Yes, he begged for forgiveness. It makes sense that Fyodor would
compare this to that.

But he does not know what has changed in Dazai, and can only base his logic on those
previous experiences.

“It’s different,” Dazai whispers, “this time, it’s different. I don’t think you will hurt me. I
won’t provoke you like I did before. I won’t bring out the bad.”

Fyodor rises slowly from the chair and Dazai releases him, letting him slip away and looking
up at his grave face when he rests the cello against the seat. The spotlight plays tricks across
his features, stark pale here, moody shadows there, half his eyes bathed in transparent lilac,
like jewels held up to the moon.

He draws nearer to Dazai and takes him gently by the shoulders. “I do not trust myself. I do
not wish to harm you in any way. I do not wish to hear you scream again.”

Dazai feels panic swarm his blood, bringing with it the flush of rabid, irrational confidence.
He grasps Fyodor in turn, crumpling the clothes at his waist, and feels breath tremble past his
lips in bursts. “You won’t,” he insists, “you won’t! How can you harm me? If you don’t
desire to, you won’t, because you don’t want to, and I don’t want you to—and…and—”
Dazai loses steam, realizes that his throat is swelling with emotion, choking his words. He
blinks rapidly and tugs on Fyodor, as if to communicate through that alone, gazing up at him
with pained eyes. “It won’t be like before!” he whispers violently. “I swear that it won’t, just
please—please…”

Fyodor studies him with a stricken expression, hands loosening until they are but mere
feather-touches on his shoulders, as if he thinks of Dazai as a fragile bird that might take
flight, but should not be crushed.

Dazai is afraid of what he might learn, afraid that he is pushing Fyodor too far, that Fyodor
doesn’t want anything like this at all, and so, he asks, “Do you want to?” And it’s a pitiful,
strangled question that makes his eyes blur with tears. “Have you thought about it, since
we’ve come back?”

“Yes, I want to,” Fyodor breathes at once, his eyes skittering back and forth across Dazai’s
features, looking for something—he doesn’t know what. “I have thought of it often.” His
gaze steers away, then, and his hands pull back, meeting Dazai’s at his waist in an anxious
gesture. Yes—anxious, and trembling, maybe, his fingers cold against Dazai’s knuckles. “I
did not think…I thought that perhaps…” He inhales and his eyes flutter; he glances at the
ground. “I thought that it would terrify you, if I told you.”

Dazai does not reply to him with words. He does not think except in balmy colors, oranges
and pinks, pastel blues and greens. He falls upon Fyodor’s neck, pressing his body against the
other and wrapping his arms tightly, hiding his shuddering breaths against the man’s fragrant
hair. “I’m glad,” he sighs in angst, tears clinging to his lashes. “I’m glad…I’m so scared,
Fedya, but it’s not bad. It’s a good kind of scared. It’s good, I promise.”

Fyodor’s hands rest softly along Dazai’s back. He tucks his chin—as he’s seemed to learn to
do—into Dazai’s shoulder. “I do not think I understand,” he murmurs, “but I would like to.”

They go to the bedroom, because Fyodor tells Dazai he wants him to be comfortable, and
doing things on the floor under the spotlight is not ideal. Dazai does not tell him that the bed
is the right place for such things, only lets the man pull him along by the hand, holding it
tightly. It is, perhaps, the first time Fyodor takes his hand instead of Dazai taking his, and the
action is gentle yet insistent, longing yet hesitant.

Dazai sits on the bed and fingers the hem of his shirt, watching Fyodor contemplate the
lighting until he finds it best suits the mood to turn off the lights and leave only the lamp to
bathe them in rings of gold. He looks to Dazai for validation of this, and Dazai nods at him,
curling his toes in the carpet.

After this, Fyodor goes about the room with the graceful sort of clumsiness that Dazai has
found himself becoming more used to, pausing here and there as if he’s looking for
something, or double-checking to be certain that everything is perfect. When Dazai finds the
voice to ask what he is doing, Fyodor stares at him for some time, struggling with words.

“I do not—” he begins. Then he glances here and there, running a hand over his knuckles. “I
do not know. Thinking.”

Dazai hesitates. “Are you nervous?” he asks in a small voice.

Fyodor’s brows pucker, and then he squints, shaking his head. But the motion slows. It stops.
He inhales slowly and says in a faraway voice, “Yes.” He looks away again. “I think so.”

Hearing him say yes to a question of emotion feels like opening the door to a summer
evening, warm and dusky in his chest. Already, Dazai is less like the weeds choking out
Fyodor’s blooming colors.

“Will you sit on the bed?” he asks Fyodor next, his voice little more than a whisper.

Fyodor wrings his hands briefly, lifts a thumb to his mouth and chews on the nail as if he
might tear it out. He takes it away the moment after, looking disgusted with himself for doing
it. Dazai remembers, now that he has his memories back. It’s a habit Fyodor used to indulge
when they had met in the past. He wonders what made him stop.

Fyodor wordlessly comes over to the bedside. He sits down, rigidly. He puts his hands
deliberately on his thighs.

Dazai rubs his palms against the sheets, swallowing with difficulty and trying to look at him
with some semblance of confidence. “Will…will you undress me?”

Fyodor studies him, his eyes sharp in the soft light, his face tense with indecision. He reaches
forward as if he’s about to put his hands into a pit of fire, tender and slow when he touches
Dazai’s hips. Dazai tenses every muscle against the flinch that itches in response to it—for
Fyodor’s sake. But his arms are shaky when he lifts them. His breath trembles when Fyodor
slowly draws the material of his shirt over his face, and he remembers the night that he broke
the clock, how Fyodor made him suffocate inside the shirt before taking it off.

He opens his mouth, to ask him to hurry, or to stop—but then the material slides over his
head, and he sees Fyodor’s face, so different from that night. He lowers his head to cover a
brief expression of pain, fighting the unnatural wash of cold across his skin as Fyodor puts
the shirt aside.

“The bandages, too?” Fyodor asks him softly, unaware of Dazai’s thoughts.

Dazai shakes his head. He doesn’t think he can handle that tonight. Every time the bandages
go away, he’s nothing but raw skin clinging to a broken body. It doesn’t matter if Fyodor
shares scars somewhat like them. It doesn’t matter whether he finds them beautiful or
disgusting. Dazai will never feel comfortable in his own skin if the bandages aren’t there to
hold him together.
“Alright,” Fyodor murmurs. His body shifts closer to Dazai on the bed, as if sensing by some
coincidence that Dazai is beginning to lose faith in his decision. He takes hold of Dazai’s
hands—and if he feels them trembling, he does not mention it—and leads them to the loops
on his shirt. He leans closer still, until his lips are nearly against Dazai’s forehead. “Now
me?” he whispers.

Dazai’s breath trickles out between his lips, unsteady and hot. He fixes his gaze on the loop
that lies beneath the slim shapes of their fingers. Knowing that this part will be difficult for
Fyodor to endure, knowing that he will see all of Fyodor this time—it makes his heart pound
against his ribs. He begins to undo the loops from their buttons in the same way he’d done
not so long ago, staring just as horribly as he’d stared the first time at the pale, decorated
skin.

He holds his breath until all the loops are undone. He drops his hands against Fyodor’s legs
and lets it out, fighting off the nearly incapacitating anxiety that claws at him, now. You have
regretted it.

Fyodor’s fingers slide across his temple, cold against flushed skin, brushing back unruly
curls. Words come to mind, words he thinks he should say. I don’t deserve this. You can hurt
me, now. We can go back to what we were. We can stop pretending.

Dazai lowers his head, unable to bring himself to pull the undone shirt from Fyodor’s
shoulders.

“Something troubles you,” Fyodor says gently. “I can see it in your hands.”

His hands won’t stop shaking. Curse them. He wants to hide it from Fyodor. He wants
Fyodor to feel free, to feel like he can be the truest form of himself. He wants Fyodor to
enjoy this.

“Are you afraid?” Fyodor’s fingers stroke around the shell of his ear, tracing it as if it might
crumple beneath his touch like a flower petal. It tickles, raising prickles along the side of
Dazai’s neck. His eyes flutter.

“I don’t know,” Dazai whispers, and for the first time, it’s not a lie or a hesitation.

And, for the first time, Fyodor doesn’t insist that he does know. He doesn’t force Dazai to tell
him what it truly is. He doesn’t expect Dazai to find out. This time, he draws Dazai’s face
upwards, until he’s looking into velvet-soft eyes, and presses his lips to Dazai’s forehead in a
chilled kiss. For a few moments, it swells between them, and Fyodor whispers back at him
against his skin. “Alright.”

The kiss ends hesitantly, Dazai keeping his eyes shut a moment longer, if only to bask in the
strange sensation it leaves behind. When he opens them again, Fyodor is removing his shirt,
laying it across the end of the bed. His scars glimmer in the light as if painted with silver and
gray-pink, as good as jewelry to Dazai.

Fyodor avoids his gaze, rising from the edge of the bed to undo the button on his pants. His
hand slips; he tries again, but only fumbles with it. He blinks rapidly and glances at the lamp,
perhaps considering turning it off.

“You can,” Dazai finds himself saying breathlessly, afraid that Fyodor will stop if it becomes
too much for him.

Fyodor meets his gaze, though there is something sharp and fragile in his eyes that makes
them look much unlike his eyes at all.

“If it makes you more comfortable—we don’t have to see each other.”

Fyodor considers this with a slight furrow to his brow. He looks down again. “I have seen all
of you.”

Perhaps it’s simply Dazai’s selfish desire to see it that keeps him silent, but he thinks Fyodor
is decided enough. He wants Dazai to see, if only to even the scales.

It doesn’t take away the unnerving twitch in his body when Fyodor strips away the last of his
clothing, the last of his defenses, in the golden light of that lamp. He is striking like this, his
body lithe and pale, thin in a way that makes his hipbones jut in a pleasingly harsh set of
lines, his thighs slim, his knees bluish—as if his very blood is ice and they’re touched by
frostbite. A thick, jagged scar slices through the back and side of his right calf, ending at his
ankle. Dazai does not linger on it. His toes are the same blue-violet tint, and he doesn’t know
if it's the consequence of living through Russian winters or the effects of anemia that has
turned them such a color.

Fyodor lowers his head, chest expanding with a deep breath as he delicately runs fingers
through his inky hair. “This is strange,” he whispers, and Dazai thinks it sounds very broken.

“You are beautiful, Fedya,” he tells the man in angst, feeling empathy for the man swell in his
throat. “You are perfect.”

Fyodor’s brow furrows with a pain Dazai doesn’t want him to feel, and he joins Dazai on the
bed with slow, tense motions, one of his hands hovering over the most sensitive part of him—
between his legs—as if he’s trying to fight his impulse to hide it, but failing. Dazai isn’t
staring at it. Dazai doesn’t care if he sees it or not—only that Fyodor relax.

“I am…” Fyodor hesitates, hiding most of his expression from Dazai, every limb rigid. His
voice comes out like sudden venom. “…disgusting…and cruel, monstrous to all who have
dared come near me—worthless, insane, unloving, unfeel—”

A violence of hot revulsion drives Dazai into Fyodor, fingers grasping at the man’s body as
he shuts off the sinful words with his own lips, kissing Fyodor to swallow the blackness, the
depravity of such phrases—the same names he calls himself. They should not be coming
from Fyodor’s lips. Fyodor should never feel such awful, awful feelings, he should not be
allowed to give voices to such turbid thoughts—not when every one of them is so untrue that
they slice through Dazai’s ears like razorblades.

He hears Fyodor inhale, feels hands grasp at his body in return—first as if to stay him, then
as if to welcome him closer, accepting the kiss and letting it become a deeper, slower one,
laced with the hot rush of their breath.

Dazai does not break it to tell Fyodor he is none of those things. He doesn’t have to.

Fyodor accepts his wordless rebuttal. He lets their fumbling, shaky bodies press against one
another. He follows Dazai down into the sheets, sheets that are cold against Dazai’s back,
sending chills through his blood. They gasp one another’s air.

A hot rush of adrenaline surges at the near-familiarity of Fyodor’s body meshing into him,
fitting between legs that Dazai steels himself into opening. His pulse flutters in his ears.
There is skin against every part of him, Fyodor’s cold against his burning expanse, and it
hurts. It pains him, it terrifies him. It’s so intense that it restricts his lungs, so bright that it
over-exposes his mind with memory, memory, memory that he can never undo, memory that
will always come to him because of their past, and Dazai dreads what he knows is coming
because of it.

“Gentle,” Dazai whispers thickly, the word leaping from trembling, kissed lips. He can’t
control it, nor the quiver taking him, nor the way his hands grasp blindly for the after-images
of where Fyodor would be in his memories, to stop it from happening, to swipe it away.
“Gentle, please, please be gentle…”

His fingernails drag against Fyodor’s chest, and Fyodor’s white face blurs into view, the
amethyst of his gaze wide and attentive, the brush of his knuckles on Dazai’s cheek soft and
careful.

“I will not hurt you, солнышко,” he whispers back, his voice as velvet as it’s ever been. It
sounds far away, drowned in muck. Dazai’s wheezing breath is too loud.

Dazai wishes that were all it took to calm his body. Dazai wishes it were not so difficult to
accept the words as truth. He wishes his memories would not scream they were lies.

He fights the impulse to stop this, to push Fyodor back and apologize, to run and hide in the
corner of the room in a ball of self-loathing, cursing himself for making the same mistake
he’s made in the past.

Gasps begin to tangle in his throat, rasping and quick. “Fedya,” he begs, “Fedya…!” And he
doesn’t know what he can say, only that he wants Fyodor to put an end to it, to work him past
the terror into bliss, the way he always had before.

A kiss is pressed against Dazai’s clammy brow, under dampened curls that are stroked back.
Another against his cheek, his jaw, then along his ear until it makes him gasp. “I am here,”
Fyodor breathes. “I will be gentle.” His naked body slides against Dazai’s, closer, softer,
cooling the panic in his veins.

Fyodor continues as if by raw instinct alone, fondling Dazai’s shivering figure, kissing his
throat and his collarbone, grasping the curves beneath his lower back until Dazai arches and
sighs out in response. It feels strange and exciting, invigorating past the fright of his
flashbacks, and he tries to push everything else away so that he can indulge in it, writhing
beneath Fyodor in the sheets.
Fyodor slides his hand down Dazai’s stomach, between his legs to cup his scrotum. Dazai
reflexively clings to his shoulders, digging his nails into delicate skin and crying out half in
fear. His toes curl, his thighs clamp, shaking against Fyodor’s waist, and he murmurs some
incoherent plead for mercy that doesn’t match Fyodor’s careful touch.

“Easy,” Fyodor soothes, his eyes as velvet as his voice, their pupils blown and kind in the
light. “I have you.” He trails his fingers up Dazai’s shaft, making Dazai strain his head back,
eyes fluttering.

“Khh…” The blood rushes quicker and warmer, now, erasing some of the anxiety and
replacing it with pleasure—swelling, thickening pleasure that hardens him beneath Fyodor’s
hand. But the most difficult part is yet to come. For now, with Fyodor’s hand wrapping his
cock, the memories fade into gloomy reds, waiting to return. Dazai lets the sensation
overtake him, the feel of Fyodor’s body against his, of the kisses pressed to his lips to drown
his whimpering breaths, of the rhythmic squeeze and slide of Fyodor’s caress.

He can’t stand too much of it, though—the attention towards his own pleasure is stifling. It
always has been. Perhaps that’s why he’d been so close with Chuuya in the past. Dazai would
much rather sacrifice himself on the altar of his partner’s pleasure than feel as if they were
doing so for him.

But what are these thoughts, these reflections? It’s been so long since Dazai has remembered
things about himself, about the way he used to go about things. But the thought makes him
reach for Fyodor’s pleasuring hand to make him cease, to push him into taking Dazai before
he has a chance to stop all of this.

Trying to please him, after all, is a worthless cause. Chuuya had never been able to, and now,
with so much anxiety sending adrenaline through his blood, it would be impossible. Perhaps
it wasn’t, when Dazai didn’t remember who he was, but that is no longer the case. It’s more
important to seal their new relationship, to let Fyodor take him fully, and leave out the rest of
what could be considered normal during such things.

Fyodor stops the moment Dazai pushes at his hand, acutely focused and searching Dazai’s
face. It’s difficult not to break under the care the Russian deigns to show him, and even as he
tries to speak, the emotion wells inside of his throat and eyes like blood from an open wound.
“I’m okay,” he strains, “I-I don’t need that. I’m okay.”

Fyodor shifts a little over his body, dark lashes fluttering in a blink as he considers this. “And
why is that?” he murmurs, in a way that’s almost tender.

When did he become so…so human? Dazai was so sure that he’d been choking Fyodor’s
growth with his own difficulties, like a needy child draining their parent. But it seems…it
seems this hasn’t been the case at all.

“It won’t…” Dazai hesitates in discomfiture, mouth trembling as he casts his eyes away,
voice hoarsening. “It won’t work. Not now.”

Fyodor’s body presses closer. His hand slides beneath Dazai’s back, the other lower between
his legs, until Dazai flinches and sucks in a breath. “Perhaps later, then?” Fyodor offers
softly, as if he understands. As if he can see through Dazai the way he had in the past.

Dazai closes his eyes to hide the rising tears, trying to compose himself as he feels fingers
against his entrance, sharply reminding him of worser memories. His hands find Fyodor’s
arms, arms that are tight with tension. “I don’t know-w,” he whispers. His voice shakes too
much. He hates the sound of it.

Most of all, he despises the return of these things—his deep-set self-hatred. Even in the midst
of such offerings of vulnerability from another, from one better than him that he does not
deserve to keep, it reigns in his head like a looming, black cloud. Somehow it’s more
apparent when Fyodor is so close to him, somehow this is when it hurts the most.

“Dazai,” Fyodor breathes, in a way that makes Dazai want to weep freely in his arms.
“Солнышко…you are thinking too much.”

“I’m sorry,” Dazai half-sobs, grasping Fyodor’s arms all the harder as those cold fingers
press carefully at his entrance. He tries not to resist it, but his body clenches in reflex,
flushing with panic. “I’m sorry, I can’t—I can’t stop—I’m scared, Fedya…”

“Well…” Fyodor pulls his hand away, drifting it along the inside of Dazai’s thigh, like he’s
examining the softness of the skin there, wherever the bandages aren’t hiding scars. It’s
unbearably forgiving. “That is no good.” His gaze meets Dazai’s as he hesitantly opens his
eyes to look. There’s something about his lips—a gentle, slight curve that makes his face
soften with…

Is it fondness?

Dazai cannot bear that. Taking a shuddering breath, he grasps for Fyodor’s shoulders, pulling
the man down so he can hide his face in Fyodor’s neck. Fyodor comes willingly, turning his
mouth against Dazai’s burning cheek. “Just do it,” Dazai hisses in anguish, “make me, so that
I can’t push you away.”

“It would hurt you—”

“It doesn’t matter!” Dazai cries into his cold skin. “It doesn’t matter. It can’t be helped.” He
knew he would do this, eventually. He knew it would come to this. How utterly pitiful of him.
He’s pushing Fyodor back into his old self, because it’s the only way he can accept it. Has he
really not come so far as he’d imagined?

“No.”

The word rings like clashing metal in Dazai’s ears. For a moment, he feels as if the oxygen
has been ripped out of his chest. “B…but—”

Fyodor’s arms tighten almost fiercely around his body. “You have said you do not wish to be
hurt. I have promised you that I never would. That will not change.”

“But,” Dazai repeats, beginning to break down. “But I…”

Fyodor grasps between his legs, drawing out Dazai’s lust in sudden decision. It breaks the
words on Dazai’s tongue, twists them into a sharp whimper. His body lurches against the
man.

“Fedya—”

“Do not ask again,” Fyodor says softly, but his command is firm. His hand slides and presses
at Dazai’s slowly-hardening erection. He lies Dazai back against the pillows, and Dazai lets
go of him to hide his face with a forearm, breathing thickly. His mind shimmers with white
and pink; numbing, guilt-ridden pleasure tremors in his hips. It won’t work, he wants to
remind the man. He isn’t like that, anymore.

“I see, now, what it is,” Fyodor goes on, “I did not know in the beginning. You feel as if you
cannot have such mercies. You wish for them, but you cannot accept when they come, not
without great suffering. Perhaps it is my fault you feel this way, perhaps it is someone else’s.
But I will not let such things overtake you now.”

So, it is Fyodor who has grown, after all. Dazai has only been choking out himself since
they’ve come home. There’s something about it that makes warmth spread through his chest,
opening him to the chance at relaxing, at giving in, at letting Fyodor have his way in the way
that is best for both of them this time, not just the Russian.

Dazai makes a soft noise as Fyodor presses more insistently at his erection, drawing out a
bead of liquid. It does feel good, if he lets other things fade away. It does feel better when
Fyodor is the one telling him to accept it.

A kiss presses tenderly against Dazai’s bandaged forearm. And Dazai lets himself go.

He uncovers his face. He arches into Fyodor, clinging to the man’s thin body. Fyodor strokes
him until there’s enough liquid to coat his fingers, and moves back to Dazai’s entrance,
patient and calm and quiet as Dazai shakes with panic beneath him. It’s not so bad, not if
Dazai focuses on the present, and even when Fyodor breaches his entrance, even when the
sensation terrifies him, Dazai only clings tighter and whimpers, working with the Russian
until he can accept it.

All the while, Fyodor moves slowly, holding Dazai as close as Dazai holds him, whispering
praises and encouragements until those words are louder than Dazai’s thoughts, drowning the
dark colors with glowing pastels. Fyodor works him open, twisting and pressing with one
finger, then two, allowing the ache to subside before he ventures deeper.

Dazai’s arms shake. His gasps become less anguished and more relaxed, more desiring. He
finds himself gazing hazily up into Fyodor’s face, only half-aware of the sight or the
sensations pulsing through him, his mind empty of thought and brimming with numb
indulgence. It has never been this way before. How has he been pushed off the edge like this,
into bliss he doesn’t understand? Without suffering? Without anguish?

Fyodor’s fingers slide out. The man lowers his head momentarily, shifting between Dazai’s
legs, taking a breath as if he’s nervous himself. Is he nervous? Would he feel such things
now? Even when Dazai can hardly speak beneath him, lulled by the melody of his touch?
Fyodor strokes himself, although he looks disturbed about the action, his brow tight and his
eyes nearly dark with concentration. It makes Dazai long to comfort him, somehow, but he
cannot bring the strength to his arms to reach out. He doesn’t look at Fyodor, either, worried
that it will make it worse for the man if he does, when he seems so…ashamed, almost, of it.

Dazai notices, while Fyodor still tries to prepare himself, that his hand is lying very near
Fyodor’s in the sheets. He absently drifts his fingers against the man’s knuckles, sees
Fyodor’s violet gaze fix on it. His fingers move in response, tickling against Dazai’s palm.

He thinks, in that moment, that it’s his favorite thing in the world. Those hands. The response
to his touch. If he could have only one physical thing from Fyodor, perhaps he would only
long for that.

Dazai holds Fyodor’s hand. He hardly even realizes when the silky heat presses against his
entrance. He hardly thinks of the past. He only sees Fyodor’s white, ocean-veined hand
covered by his bandaged one, and arches back with fluttering eyes as the man enters him.

And then Fyodor’s lips are against his, stifling his groan, sweet and more velvet than they’ve
ever been. He can hear Fyodor too—his rapid breath, his barely-audible grunt as he slides a
little deeper. It does hurt, at some point, if Dazai lets himself linger on the sensation, and his
body tries to remind him of more pain, but somehow these things dissolve under Fyodor’s
kiss.

Fyodor waits whenever Dazai tenses, hesitates when Dazai’s noises come out too loud,
asking in a hoarse whisper if he’s alright, if he should slow down, if he should wait. Dazai
cannot answer any such questions except to grasp Fyodor closer, to curve into him, to
encourage him on even if it burns in his chest.

The burning is not so bad, when he accustoms to it. Though it builds and spreads, tracing
every nerve, every vein until he is scorched by the heat, it’s good, it’s new, and it’s not a bad
pain at all. He feels as if he’ll reach some new understanding if he continues, and so he does,
and Fyodor obliges him.

Fyodor’s breaths become heavy and rough. His eyes flutter and tighten, brows flinching as if
he doesn’t understand. Has he ever gone so far before? Dazai doesn’t remember—Fyodor has
always stopped before climax, for some reason or another, perhaps because it was never
about pleasuring himself.

Seeing him near that ecstasy is frightening and beautiful, the rhythm of movement carrying
Dazai along like a dream. When it overflows inside, Fyodor’s mouth opens, there’s a
shuddering, weak intake of breath, and his body trembles for a moment.

But his eyes—his eyes brighten into gems of glimmering lavender, soft and blurred with a
completely new birth of feeling. Dazai’s throat tightens in response. His nose burns; his eyes
fill with tears, and he begins to weep at last, his sobs shaky and soft.

And he thinks to himself, he thinks…he has finally seen love.

Fyodor slides out of him, gasping in recovery, and nearly collapses onto Dazai, his body
burning with the same heat that Dazai had reached, hot for once, trickling with sweat that
mingles with Dazai’s. He lowers himself onto his stomach in the sheets, half pressed to
Dazai.

They say nothing to one another, only breathe the same air in the dim light of the lamp, which
seems so bright to Dazai now, glowing in his starry vision. The tears run free and warm down
his flushed cheeks, and Fyodor’s hand is there to absently brush them away.

Dazai does not expect the man to think of him, the hardness that still lies against his stomach,
aching for release. But Fyodor reaches for him, grasping oversensitive skin, and Dazai’s body
rewards him immediately, sending his mind into blank crimson noise as the rush swells up in
him. He rakes at the sheets and his hips jerk. His head pushes back into the pillows; his eyes
flutter at the blurry picture of the ceiling. He feels a hot stream of liquid across his torso, and
then it’s as if all the strength goes from his body completely, and he slumps, boneless and
winded.

“There,” Fyodor whispers into his ear, covering Dazai’s body with his arm, holding him
close, “it does work.”

Dazai tries to catch his breath, head lolling towards Fyodor’s voice, until he finds that Fyodor
has pulled it into the hollow of his collarbone. He breathes in the lavender of the Russian’s
scent, basks in the flushed heat of his human, scarred body, and knows that the singular best
choice he’s ever made in his miserable existence was coming back to Fyodor. He is, perhaps,
the one man who will no longer hurt him—even if he begs for it.

“Fedya,” he whispers, grasping weakly at the shape of the man’s thin arm. Fyodor’s face
turns slightly towards him, shifting his curls with a questioning breath of sound. “Are you
glad?” Glad that he came back with him? Glad that he stayed? Glad that they did this
together?

Fyodor cups his face in one hand, his bared fingers warmer than they’ve ever felt—warm,
and in a way that doesn’t burn or ache in his skin. His head shifts forward, until it lightly
meets Dazai’s forehead. He looks down into Dazai’s eyes, and his amethyst ones are full of
colorful, glimmering light.

“Yes, Dazai,” he whispers back. “I am glad.”

And Fyodor smiles.

END
Chapter End Notes

THEEEEE EEEENNNNDDDD ;-;

I have a credit song, and you MUST listen, puhhhleeease, it's so perfect and I've been
listening to it non-stop

Eric - Mitski

I literally like only two or three of Mitski's songs, but this one is just *chef's kiss* for
that weird, creepy Sinner vibe.

Thanks everyone for going on this journey with me, and for all the love you've given me
along the way!! <3 I hope to see you guys on future BSD or other fandom fanfics! It's
always exciting to recognize the usernames. x) Also heads up, there will be two more
bonus "chapters" posted after this one, but it won't be continuing the story. The first will
be an Author's Note about some of my thoughts behind the story as I was writing it,
especially the psychological aspect of it, so for those of you who are interested, I'll be
posting that soon! (I know it's basically like I've written an actual novel lmao I crack
myself up)

The second bonus chapter will basically just be a listing of all the fanart of Sinner,
whether my own or the works of other readers! It will continuously be updated if any
other arts pop up, so definitely be sure to tag me if you make any so I can add it to the
list!!

Alright, love you guys. :) I'mma stop rambling.

 Author's Note: The Arc and Symbolism of Sinner
Chapter Summary

In which I ramble like I'm an actual author or something about a story with characters
that aren't even mine (pathetic)

Chapter Notes

This has only been shared because I've been offered so much love and support from the
lovely fandom and fans of this work. If not for you, I wouldn't have felt comfortable
sharing this bullshit (hehe).

You're the best. I just want you to know that. x)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Welcome to the end of Sinner, a story that came as a coping mechanism for personal closure
on an experience that I’ll only vaguely reference in broad and floaty terms. If I don’t already
sound like a dork, I probably will by the end of this note.

You know how art works? Like a huge, exaggerated representation of things that happened to
you. Like a puddle of black paint represents how you feel—not depressed. Not a color. Just…
black. Nothing. Non-color. You don’t feel.

Don’t know where I would go with that because I wasn’t planning to talk about a black
puddle—what I meant to say was that this story is a largely overstated and amplified version
of a traumatic experience that a greater amount of people than you’d expect have suffered.
Not particularly with all or even most of the same elements that happened in this story. But in
general, this encompasses the general theme, the general feeling (or lack of it) that comes
with being trapped with an abuser.

Except in literally the dorkiest way possible, because it’s a fanfiction, about—fucking—
anime characters, lmao. But regardless, the topics you either suffered through or enjoyed in
this fic I wanted to present in as much reality as possible, because it’s my passion—
depression, self-harm, abusive lovers, complex relationships, trauma, PTSD,
sociopathy/psychopathy…I feel a lot of these concepts get mishandled by media, turned into
cute character quirks or your run-of-the-mill villain traits. Me, I like to explore heroes with
sociopathy. I like to see villains with compassion, with backstories that make them make so
much sense that you actually want them to get better—and then you get to see them get
better.
Because that’s another thing I like and don’t get to see so much—villains who change.
Villains who, by the end of the story, might not even be the villain of the story anymore. And
not in the childish “we can’t kill him in a PG movie so let’s make him a hero” type of way,
but in a way that leaves us remembering that we’re all human.

Even criminals and villains.

Now enough of the reality blabber—I’ll get into the actual details of the characters and the
little things you may or may not have noticed changing or showing up.

In the beginning of the story, Fyodor was much different than he was by the end. Of course—
this is expected, since there was a character arc, but I wanted to point out and discuss a few of
the major differences and what Fyodor’s mindset was behind some of the torment he created
for Dazai, since we didn’t get a complete reveal of this in Fyodor’s backstory chapter alone.

When the story starts, anyone who has read the entire story and then gone back to the
beginning will see quite a difference in Fyodor’s dress, mannerisms—even his speech
patterns. Some of this is due to the fact that the first chapter was originally designed with the
intent of a one-shot, so I wasn’t planning ahead for a large story. However, the more I had
thought about it, the more I wanted to flesh out the abuse and play with psychology and
manipulation. I wanted Fyodor to be so curious about emotions that he would strive to create
them in what he saw as a fellow psychopath, Dazai.

In my version of Dazai, however, I feel he is (canonically, too, perhaps) more of a sociopath

than a psychopath—that is, instead of someone being born with the physical incapability of
empathy or morals (due to scientific structure of the body or lesions on the brain), he has
suffered such childhood abuses and withdrawn from society so much (and refused to feel for
so long) that he has lost the ability entirely. At least, that’s the basic clinical summary of the
difference. So it’s more likely for Dazai to feel than for Fyodor to experience feelings or
empathy.

I like to think Fyodor unconsciously detected this when he’d first come into contact with
Dazai. He was someone like Fyodor, yet clinging to a potential to be somewhat unlike him.
He could feel, if pushed. So Fyodor wanted to push.

However, in the beginning, Fyodor is not completely himself. His behaviors—in order to
encourage emotion from Dazai—are somewhat mimicked and adopted by the research he has
done. He wears black, if you noticed, and dark colors more often, only using white in his
gloves—if even that—to highlight his detachment from even touching Dazai. This is not a
canon outfit—Fyodor doesn’t wear gloves. His speech patterns are altered in an attempt to
cause anxiety. Whereas I had him shift into his own personality later when he began to feel
things for himself, in the beginning, he uses contractions (don’t, won’t, etc.), which he does
not regularly use later on. His usual speech patterns, as I saw them, were not littered by
contractions. This also just serves to make a character sound smarter or more aloof, in my
opinion, but that’s beside the point.

There isn’t really an evident shift in the descriptions of his clothing, as Dazai is not attuned to
them, and in his spacey awareness, it’s not something I wanted the reader to recognize was
happening. However, by the end, and especially in the EXECUTION chapter, I wanted to
highlight that Fyodor was now “an angel in white”, very much shifting from a villain to
something more of an antihero.

Other, more subtle descriptors changed over the course of Dazai and Fyodor’s arc. Dazai
stopped referring to Fyodor’s mouth as knives seeking to cut. His cold was no longer chilling,
but comforting. His hair went from raven’s wings to black silk.

There are a few things I never pointed out specifically when answering questions about
Fyodor’s attentions and habits, one of them being how he seemed to never sleep, according to
Dazai. The passage in Chapter 8, ‘Odd Conversations’, in which Dazai mentions that is “…
Fyodor had indeed been there, not asleep—for it seemed he made it his goal to never be
asleep while Dazai was awake—and lying on his back with a hand across his waist,
examining the ceiling. Dazai had thought he might be counting the cracks, like he’d made
Dazai do before bed, sometimes.” This was a nod to Fyodor’s yet-unrevealed backstory I had
planned to give light to, as well as the illustration of a feeling that victims commonly
experience with abusers. In my own experiences (as well as many others), it seems there is
never a time when the abuser is not aware of what you are doing, and it feels as if they never
sleep at all. Like in the movie The Invisible Man, it’s as if their sole purpose is watching you,
waiting for you to mess up. Even if it isn’t physically true, it feels like it in the mind of the
victim.

Even when or if you leave them, you still feel them watching you. You’re still afraid when
you do something they wouldn’t like.

Besides that part of it, there were other relations to the lack of sleep. Fyodor hates
vulnerability, a trait common in psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists. For him, being
unaware of his surroundings with another person in the house—sleeping with another person
in the same bed—that is the most undesirable position for him, if he wanted to keep his
invincibility. Though this is more subconscious, this is the reason he hardly sleeps. And I’d
like to think that—after his past incident with his puppy that he accidentally killed—he has a
nagging, irrational worry that if he falls asleep, he’ll repeat the mistake with his new…well,
puppy.

And, speaking of Chapter 8—this was the chapter where everything began to shift for
Fyodor. After the violent assault of Chapter 7, ‘Painful Lies’, when he raped Dazai with the
leg of the kitchen chair, he was affected by his own actions. It wasn’t guilt in the beginning
(considering a psychopath’s lack of empathy), but there was certainly a spark of something…
not right. Something uncomfortable. And that began Fyodor’s hunt for something different—
or, in his own words, “colors.” With the inability to describe sensations of his own,
witnessing Dazai’s trauma take shape and his feelings rise out of it could only be translated in
pockets of warmth in his chest, or colors he’d never seen before.

(Another detail on the use of colors for emotions—it’s been documented that psychopaths
dream in black and white, so I thought it would be fascinating to use the descriptions of
emotions in the form of colors, to represent the bloom of humanity among the psychopathy.)

It was much different than seeing the emotions of regular, everyday people, because Dazai
was someone without emotions to begin with. Fyodor’s triumph in creating these feelings in
his captive later turned to guilt and regret in the ‘Northern Lights’ chapter, after realizing the
amount of torment he’d put Dazai through. However, the knowledge that Dazai had the
ability to feel—unlike his own psychopathy—was there in the beginning, and mentioned
briefly in Chapter 8 when Fyodor says “But you, Dazai, your eyes have known tears before.
You are perhaps, not so empty as I.”

It is said of psychopaths that some have experienced a desire for the emotions that they lack.
Fyodor is certainly one of those. One of the passages where I specifically had this in mind
was:

“…The Russian’s profile, sharp against the shadows, looks paler in the moonlight than
before. “It is better to cry.” There’s a watery smile tormenting his coral lips.

“Why?”

“It simply is. That way, the hurt has somewhere to go.”

Dazai rests his head on the man’s shoulder, aware of his breathing, aware of the hand he
tucks inside of Fyodor’s clothing. “Do you hurt, Fyodor?” he whispers carefully, quiet
enough to make sure that no one else, spirit or human, can ever hear such a dangerous
implication. That Fyodor Dostoevsky could hurt.

Fyodor turns his head away into the pillow, the ink of his black hair swelling about to veil
him. His voice sounds very far away, when he speaks.

“I do not.””

Here, Fyodor’s expression of “I do not” in the averted manner which he used was not because
he did hurt, but because he didn’t, and hurting was something that he envied in others.

It’s no secret that the words please and I’m sorry serve as a kind of buzz word when Dazai
starts using them. This is because these are rare words for Fyodor’s world of vocabulary, and
he’s never heard them used properly, or in such a way as Dazai uses them. To beg with please
or to apologize with I’m sorry takes empathy.

When Dazai tells Fyodor that he wants him to touch him in Chapter 10, ‘Old Trash’, Fyodor
is legitimately taken aback. There is no act, there. Being asked to touch someone is
impossible for him in any other case but Dazai’s, and is a very sensitive subject to him—one
that brings him the closest to experiencing colors and warmth. Aka, possible empathy.

I also wanted to make a shift in temperatures as the time with Fyodor went on. In the
beginning, Fyodor is obviously very “cold” all the time, even his breath I described as chilled
quite a few times. But after the tendon-slicing incident in “OUTSIDE”, as Fyodor begins to
change and explore Dazai—both physically and perhaps romantically—he becomes warm.
Dazai mentions this upon their first, real kiss at the kitchen table. Everything is warm, as it
should be.

This shifts once again, becoming a different kind of cold after Dazai is rescued by the ADA
and kept apart from him. The cold is no longer scary or chilling. The cold is a comfort, and
distinctly Fyodor’s. The cold is familiar to him, and makes him happy. The warm—of his
friends and the room temperature—is the stranger now, the discomfort.

Who knows if this is all just a head thing to Dazai, or if Fyodor ever really became warm in
the midst of the cold…

I’ll leave that up to you.

When he’s rescued, I wanted the feeling of ‘warm’ to shift with the viewers. I wanted it to
highlight the separation of Dazai from his now-beloved ‘cold.’ Chuuya was warm, always
warm, and Dazai couldn’t stand that constant from him. There’s lots of confusion, of course,
in this portion, since Dazai truly begins to lose himself here.

Also a random small note when reading through my older chapters: I had Fyodor use
lavender dryer detergent because—it’s purple. LOL. Hard to figure that one out, I’m sure.

“ Dazai feels fresh, sterile and tight with bandages, every nerve at ease now that he has them
back. Fyodor had dressed him in his shirt, too, smelling of lavender dryer detergent and as
pure white as the man’s skin. His cuts still throb, but not so much when they’re not being
touched.”

I wanted Fyodor’s speech to sound more or less alien to the readers, to lend him an air of
mystery throughout the book, especially when he begins to feel. I wanted him to still read as
Fyodor, even as he began to act very not like the Fyodor we knew so far. I wanted his speech
to become almost more alien as he spoke about feelings and being gentle with Dazai. Because
it feels so far from the truth—both for us and Dazai—to see him genuinely going through
these things. I wanted him to weaken, but still have that power of presence and (hopefully)
the charming vagueness of language that makes him seem off. Above us. Academic. But still
vulnerable underneath—reachable despite his aloofness. Clinging to Dazai beneath all those
layers of cold. He has a lover, after all, at last. That’s the only thing he strove for throughout
his life—someone he could touch, someone who could touch him back without hurting him.

I struggled with this idea of making Dazai quite a bit different in the end. In Chapter 31, after
escaping the safe house and coming back home with Fyodor, all of his memories are intact,
and he keeps pushing them away. I had toyed at first with a different scenario, that when
Fyodor finally became vulnerable, Dazai’s old nature would push through and he would
pounce on that inkling of weakness. It wouldn’t have fit what I wanted for the outcome, but
gosh it would’ve been a fun angst scene, that’s for sure. Imagine Fyodor finally admitting
that his body was shameful, and Dazai just ripping into him for the demon he’s been all this
time, calling him the true Sinner, accusing him of the things that Fyodor has now admitted to
being.

But I don’t think that would’ve brought about the right conclusion. I wanted Dazai to be who
he was with Fyodor, because it was more realistic in the situation of returning to an abuser, to
fall back into that pattern. And with the readers, that is what is most familiar to you. We’ve
seen Dazai this way since the beginning, and it should’ve been hard to watch him crumble
around the ADA, when we expected that to be his rescue. So, returning to this old familiarity
 —or in Dazai’s own reference, “foreign familiarity”—we feel (again, hopefully) a conclusion
with the return to his new life with Fyodor. Knowing that he won’t be hurt again, knowing
that Fyodor has been the one to change, we’re safe now, even though Dazai remains in his old
self, the self that Fyodor created when he erased Dazai’s memories. They feel equal, even
though the circumstances that brought him to this point were not.

So from here to the end, Dazai is extremely dependent, and can hardly exist outside of the
bubble of Fyodor’s presence. But even though this is unhealthy in the same way it was
before, it feels much better now, because we know that Fyodor is not the abuser that he was.
Kidnapper, yes, toxic, yes, but none of that matters. Dazai has returned of his own will,
influenced by the way Fyodor fucked him up or not, he has still chosen to return, and Fyodor
is devoted to caring for him now. Yes, it’s impossible for Fyodor to heal him. I wanted that
fact to be evident. But Fyodor will be there for Dazai, now, and not there for himself or his
own desires.

If anything, they’ll be together, just as toxic as you or me in our own complex relationships.
Because if you made it here, you most likely empathize with or have experienced something
similar, whether in literal or emotional (or lack of emotional) ways, and that’s why you liked
it. That’s why you liked Sinner. And that’s why I created it.

Just let me tell you one last thing—if you liked it, don’t let anyone tell you you’re fucked up
for it. Because you’re not.

You’re only human, after all.

~Sadist

P.S. One day I would like to make this into an actual book. Turn Dazai and Fyodor into my
own characters, make it original. I think that would be nice. Then, maybe you can have it on
your shelves, after all. :)

Chapter End Notes

If you read all of it, man...

I feel special. :D

thanks for sticking around to hear me ramble about psychopaths! It really does mean a
lot to me. Next and ACTUALLY final addition to this will be the links for the fanart!
See you soon <3
 Bonus Chapter: Fanart Links
Chapter Summary

A list of links to the artworks based on Sinner - will be updated whenever there's a new
one!

Chapter Notes

The actual last hurrah for Sinner: the fanart section! Will be updated as or if new fanart
gets produced for Sinner, whether by me or by the fans! :)

EDIT: It was not the last hurrah.

I have to say, I am most excited about the comic adaptation of Chapter 19 being made by on
of my lovely readers - they are such a great artist and I love what they're doing with it. So far,
I've seen the entire draft of what they have prepared to create, and ahhhhhh T_T it's just so
beautiful. I can't wait for it to be shown to you all! For now, there isn't a completed version,
so I'm going to start out this chapter by linking all of the previews so far that @yuu_ya22 on
instagram (and their alternate account) has provided! (Love you, friend <3)

Storyboard

Inking Concept/Panel Preview

Fyodor's House layout (second and third in the highlight)

Edit: These links no longer work, as my old account has since been deleted! However, Yuuya
is still at the same @, so go follow them!!

They have also done another gorgeous artwork for Chapter 26 (with Fyodor in captivity and
Dazai's breakdown), for which I'll link the Twitter versions, as my old Instagram has since
been deleted.

Twitter - Chapter 26

Here are other artist's fanart so far:

Meme by @chuggzy

Dazai and Fyodor by @dabbieeuwu

Moment from Epilogue 2 by @nightmaresinvi

And, lastly, my own artwork! :)

Twitter - Sinner Cover

Twitter - Trapped

Twitter - Epilogue 2 (chapter 37 - contains spoilers for chapters posted after this section!)

Twitter - Random

Twitter - Power Imbalance (my personal favorite and an updated cover!)

Unfortunately people don't get notified if a chapter is edited (well actually I'm glad for that
lmao or you'd have hella notifications about me fixing previous chapters xD), so you'll have
to check back on this one to see if there's artwork in the future, or just follow me on my
Twitter or Tumblr - I post regular art on my Twitter and on Tumblr you can see my writing-
related updates, as well as my original story there and other things about trauma.

With that, we've come to the actual, official close of Sinner! Thank you all for coming along
for the ride, I couldn't have done it without you. Because of your involvement, this might
become an original novel in the future, heavily adjusted to fit new context, but still retaining
the personalities and the theme and the ending result of Sinner.

You all are amazing. I will be answering all the comments, too, but thank you for all the ones
I haven't gotten to yet!! You guys are so sweet, as usual, and the fact that I've literally only
had one and a half haters for this is mind-blowing to me, but I'm hoping my tags did the work
on that end. XD

Much love, and I hope to see you in my future endeavors!!

Sadist <3
 🥰
P.s. For those who don't know - if you click subscribe to my profile, you will be updated for
any future works I list.
 Bonus Chapter: Epilogue Special
Chapter Summary

A glimpse of Fyodor's relationship with Dazai throughout the following year.

Chapter Notes

HI THERE! I can't get Sinner out of my naughty little head, so it came back to ask me
for an Epilogue from Fyodor's POV! There's really nothing I enjoy more than writing
chapters of Sinner, so I think that's a good curse for all of us. Consider this an Easter
special, I guess, and enjoy! >w< This is not beta-read like my other chapters, so if you
catch any mistakes, feel free to let me know! <3

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Fyodor finds humanity slightly less difficult than before, the first year he spends with Dazai.

His companion is quiet. His companion is tense around him, wary, drawn up like fishing line
that’s been reeled too tight. His companion is a wound, open and bleeding and afraid to be
touched, yet knowing that touching is the only way to heal.

Fyodor tries to sew him back together. It mostly does not work for more than a few hours.
His companion constantly comes unraveled again, and Fyodor must study the damage to
learn what it means, how to stop it.

But he doesn’t learn how to stop it. He eventually reasons that there must be no way to stop
it.

So, he learns to handle it instead, to sew up Dazai more than he unravels, to shield his fragile
composure from anything that might break it.

Even when Fyodor is often the one who does.

Dazai spends terribly long stretches of time staring into space when Fyodor is not speaking to
him. Sometimes, Fyodor watches his still, bandaged figure from the next room, and is
troubled by the way Dazai nearly ceases to exist when Fyodor is not there beside him.

Fyodor is not certain why this bothers him. But there’s a color—a color that Dazai has spoken
of, before, in reference to what he calls emotions—a color that Fyodor thinks he feels, when
he thinks about Dazai’s prolonged silences. The color is grey, the color of a cloud heavy with
misery and storm. If misery is what he feels, Fyodor does not like it. If misery is what he
feels, Fyodor wonders what Dazai feels.

Their living routine is simple and methodical, hardly differing day by day. Fyodor wakes
first, because he hardly sleeps, despising the dreams of black and white. He goes into the
kitchen and prepares breakfast, and Dazai comes to eat when he awakens to the smell.

Dazai always moves his chair as close to Fyodor’s as he can, since Fyodor always puts them
back when they are through, unhappy with the unsymmetrical appearance of two chairs on a
singular side.

But he doesn’t mind Dazai sitting so close to him, or the way that Dazai presses his head,
drooped with sleep, against Fyodor’s shoulder while he eats. Fyodor likes the color of his hair
in the dusky glow of morning. It’s sandy umber, soft and tousled.

After breakfast, Fyodor goes to his computers to work, and if Dazai is bold, he follows
Fyodor there, but more often, he goes back to bed, sulky and quiet. Fyodor tries not to work
for too long. He only does it to keep his mind sharp, after all.

When Fyodor finishes work, he often finds Dazai on the couch by the fireplace, staring at the
door as if he’s been waiting for it to open. It used to startle Fyodor. But he has grown
accustomed to it by now.

Sometimes, there are fresh cuts bleeding on Dazai’s body, showing through the white shirt he
wears—the white shirt Fyodor had given him. Sometimes the cuts are on his arms, other
times on his torso or his thighs. Whenever he sees them, Fyodor tends to them at once,
though often in silence. Dazai does not like to speak about them, and Fyodor only assures
Dazai that he understands what is being said, and that it is difficult for Dazai to verbalize.
This seems to be enough for his companion.

But sometimes, there are cuts between his legs, and when Fyodor tends to these, he is not
silent. Though he whispers nearly everything, concerned about the sound being too loud for
the subject, he tells Dazai that he doesn’t want him to treat his body so much like a canvas,
that if he must paint this suffering, he should paint it on paper, instead. Such delicate parts of
the body should not be mutilated—or so he tries to insist as Dazai clings to him and shakes.

After these portions of the day, Fyodor will remain with Dazai, most especially if he has
turned up with new cuts in Fyodor’s absence, and he reads new books he’s collected, or takes
Dazai into the room to play the cello for him, or offers to take him outside, in case he’s
changed his mind about things.

But Dazai never agrees to go outside, and Fyodor lets that be.

Halfway throughout the day, there is almost always something that goes wrong, and Dazai
crumbles and hides from Fyodor and begs, as if for his life. It’s not that Fyodor does anything
to him out of malice or intent to harm, but it happens like an accident—or perhaps, more
accurately, it happens as a habit of Dazai’s own making. Fyodor has had apt time to study it
by now. He thinks Dazai crumbles because there’s a need to, something that Fyodor willingly
takes the blame for in his own mind. After all, he is the one who drove into Dazai the need to
experience emotions in ways that are traumatic and violent, emotions that explode so that the
recovery feels like a high. The breakdowns are an addiction—no, more than that, a need—
that Dazai must feed daily, lest he lose his sanity to peace.

This hypermania ranges from minutes to hours, sometimes even to days, if Fyodor is not
careful with his reactions. The problem lies within Fyodor’s recently-growing sense of
morality, in which it’s become increasingly difficult to treat Dazai with anything but
gentleness and patience. And when Dazai experiences these episodes, it often takes a firm
hand to bring him back. That means that Dazai screams, whether Fyodor is hurting him or
not.

Fyodor cannot bear his screams the way he used to. So he does his best not to do that, and
thus has to endure days of Dazai’s cowering, his fearful eyes, his tiny voice, his flinches with
every word Fyodor speaks. During those periods, Fyodor cannot leave his side, much less the
house, for fear that Dazai will slice himself to bits.

Aside from these episodes, Dazai is meek and affectionate. He touches Fyodor more than
Fyodor touches him, often holding onto his arm if Fyodor is cooking, or nestling his head in
Fyodor’s lap like an animal when he reads. Fyodor does not mind this at all—he enjoys it, he
thinks, because he likes the warmth of his companion’s body as much as his companion likes
the cold of his own.

If he is coming down from his hypermania, Dazai often weeps and apologizes, and seems to
think that it means Fyodor will not love him any longer because he is too much “trouble”, as
he puts it. Fyodor does not understand this part.

Nothing Dazai does changes what Fyodor wants with him. In a way, he thinks he wants the
episodes as much as he wants anything else from Dazai, since it makes Fyodor feel a little
less alone, a little less useless, when he has someone to tend to.

Fyodor takes comfort in tending to Dazai.

They sleep together in the bed every night as before, and though Fyodor holds Dazai to help
him sleep, Dazai often suffers through night terrors even while Fyodor is drifting off, and
Fyodor does his best to soothe away their effects when Dazai wakes, shivering and sweating.
He learns the only remedy that works to this end is running his fingers through Dazai’s curls
until he falls back to sleep. Fyodor never inquires about the nightmares.

He knows exactly whom they’re about.

As the months pass, Fyodor finds that the hardest part of living with Dazai is leaving Dazai.
Going out to buy food, going out of the house simply to check for watching eyes or prying
ears, doing anything that requires he close the door behind him that seals him off from his
companion…it borders on debilitating. Fyodor realizes on these outings that he’s grown as
attached to Dazai as Dazai has to him, if not more, even, in his own range of capability. He is
obsessed, he imagines, but this fact does not trouble him.
One day, Fyodor grows tired of seeing Dazai in white, so he buys him a shirt the color of the
sky. The color looks appealing, paired with his companion’s eyes, and it makes his skin look
a little less washed-out when he lets Fyodor pull it over his head. They’re sitting on the
couch, and Fyodor has lit the fire, hoping to ward off any episodes, since he’s doing
something new. And Dazai is not so good with change, not if Fyodor doesn’t take extra pains
to prepare him for it. Warmth sometimes helps with that.

Dazai says nothing about the gift at first, but when he looks down at it, his eyes well with
glossy tears, and in the smallest, most mournful voice, he says, “Blue…”

And Fyodor feels the most he’s felt in a long, long time. Not good things, no, because Dazai’s
reaction is far from good. No, Fyodor feels a weight in his stomach, so cold and heavy that he
fears he’ll be ill, and he reaches for the shirt in sudden realization. “Take it off,” he says
softly. He should not have chosen blue.

Dazai does not obey him, wrapping his arms around himself, the sleeves of the shirt hanging
over his knuckles, and he leans into Fyodor’s body until Fyodor is forced to take him in his
arms.

“No,” Dazai whispers, shaking his head back and forth, in a way that tickles Fyodor’s chest.
“Fedya gave it to me. I like Fedya’s gifts.”

“I did not mean to remind you of him,” Fyodor whispers back, gazing into the fire and
holding onto Dazai. He hopes it will be enough to prevent any episodes.

“I miss blue,” Dazai says shakily. His breath shivers, when he breathes in.

Fyodor’s lungs tighten. Dazai never says his name anymore, the name of the redhead boy, the
one who let them go. “That is alright.”

“It doesn’t make you angry?” Dazai pleads, kneading his hands in the folds of Fyodor’s shirt.
“It’s okay to miss him?”

The weight gets heavier in Fyodor’s stomach. He lowers his chin against the crown of
Dazai’s head. “It is alright to miss him,” he says. “Do not be afraid of me.”

“Never, never,” Dazai whispers, shaking his head and squeezing closer, as if nothing is close
enough until Dazai is plastered to him. “I’m never afraid of you.”

Fyodor gazes at the fire and thinks of the hypermania. He wishes that were true. “Do you like
to think of blue?” he asks.

Dazai is silent for a very long time, and Fyodor worries when he feels the small body begin
trembling against him.
“Dazai?” he prods, gently.

“It is okay if I say yes?” Dazai asks, even though he need not beg Fyodor’s permission to tell
the truth.

“Yes,” Fyodor murmurs, sliding his fingers over the boy’s shivering spine, until they find the
nape of his neck.

“Th-then…” Dazai doesn’t finish, curling into Fyodor’s lap, leaning into Fyodor’s hand when
he moves it through chocolate curls.

“I understand,” Fyodor whispers. He doesn’t need to hear the rest.

The next time Fyodor goes out of the house, he comes back with another gift. He brings it to
Dazai as soon as he’s put the food away, who is sitting in the living room beside Fyodor’s
cello.

“You’re back,” Dazai croaks, looking pallid and weak. The blue shirt is nearly swallowing
him up, thick and reaching to the middle of his thighs.

Fyodor pities him. It seems as if it’s been particularly hard on him this time, waiting for
Fyodor to come home. Perhaps he has taken a little longer than usual.

“I have something for you.”

Dazai’s eyes widen a little, and they shift when Fyodor extends his hand, blown-pupiled and
curious. Fyodor watches only Dazai’s face as he opens his fist, revealing the wooden, gourd-
shaped doll inside.

Dazai raises both his hands like a child asking for food, cupping them together and fixedly
waiting for Fyodor to put it in his palms. He says nothing, but Fyodor is unsure if it’s awe or
confusion. He still has trouble identifying the more complicated emotions, especially when
Dazai is not so expressive about them.

He lays the doll inside the boy’s hands and murmurs, “It is called a matryoshka doll.”

Dazai pulls his hands close to his chest, looking down at the gift, and nods.

“You know of them?” Fyodor asks, carefully lowering himself to a crouch, so as not to
frighten his companion. He seems fragile in the moment, like a vase made of glass too thin,
like if Fyodor touches it, it might shatter. He’s not sure what has caused this, if perhaps it’s
his last gift’s color or something deeper than that, but he is certainly not inclined to do any
harm to what little composure Dazai is clinging to.

Dazai only nods again, and Fyodor notices that his shoulders have gone tense, his head
ducking—if only slightly—as if he might be trying to keep his expression away from
Fyodor’s attentive gaze.

Fyodor tries to keep his voice as gentle as possible. “The name comes from the Latin word
for mother.” He reaches to touch the doll, opening it inside of Dazai’s hands to reveal the
next doll inside, smaller, painted with bright colors. He cannot help but notice how cold
Dazai’s hands are when his fingers brush them. “To me, they symbolize the search for truth
and meaning.”

He lets Dazai open the next one, revealing the still smaller doll inside, and so on and so on,
until Dazai has found the smallest one at the bottom, hardly any bigger than his thumb.

All is quiet aside from the simple clack of wood, the rustle of their clothes, the cadence of
their breathing. Dazai has not lit a fire in the hearth they sit beside. He never does when
Fyodor is out.

Fyodor shifts to sit fully on the floor, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap.

Dazai spends a lot of time staring at the smallest doll, pinched between his thumb and
forefinger. Eventually, he lifts it and looks Fyodor in the eyes, his dark ones soft and timid.
“This one is me,” he says.

“Oh?” Fyodor studies him, attempting to read through those eyes, but finding nothing to
show for his efforts. “And why is that?”

Dazai blinks a few times, and Fyodor remembers just how long his lashes are, how pretty
they make his eyes look. He averts his gaze, and his throat bobs in a swallow. He attempts to
shrug, but Fyodor sees through that one, at least.

“Because it is the smallest?” Fyodor wonders.

Dazai stares at the ground. He puts the doll back inside all the others with a plunk. “Because
there is nobody inside,” he says. His voice is hoarse.

Fyodor blinks a few times. Then he shifts on the floor. Then he grows puzzled over the
growing ache in his ribs. He leans forward, quite suddenly, and clasps the second doll over
the small one. “That is only because he is inside of this one,” he tells his companion, “and
this one is not so lonely because he has the smallest one to keep him company.”

Dazai’s brows furrow, in a way that turns his eyes glassy. He presses his lips together, and his
hands are very still underneath Fyodor’s. “But how is the smallest one any use if there’s
nothing inside?”

“Because he gives the bigger doll something to protect.”

“But that won’t be interesting for forever.”

 Fyodor searches for a response, and finds his mind stumbling to keep up, panicked for a
reason he cannot rationalize to himself. “But the small one is the prettiest one, he has the
most color.”

Dazai’s lips are trembling. “That doesn’t matter.”

“Dazai,” Fyodor implores him, “if his smaller companion left, the bigger doll would no
longer have someone inside, and the bigger doll would then be very sad.”

Dazai’s eyes are childishly innocent as they fix on Fyodor again. “The bigger doll would feel,
if the smallest one left?”

Fyodor thinks that his hands might be shaking. He knows that Dazai knows what they are
doing, that they are communicating through metaphors only because they cannot
communicate this otherwise. “The bigger doll would feel very much. The bigger doll would
be lost without anyone to take care of.”

“But, does the bigger doll like taking care of him?” Dazai’s voice is so faint it sounds like a
dead soul, reaching back for comfort. He looks lost, so bent and worn with guilt that it turns
his expression into a mixture of shadows, of miserable grey that leaks from his skin.

Fyodor loses his grip on the right reply, or the correct composure, or perhaps anything related
to rationality and grace. He draws Dazai close by the arm, leans until his cheek brushes
Dazai’s temple, and murmurs in Russian, because he has no thought for any other language,
murmurs in something too passionate for Fyodor Dostoevsky’s lips. “Я люблю тебя… я
люблю тебя.” Indeed, he is too much of a coward to speak them in words Dazai would
understand, perhaps even more than a coward. But he squeezes Dazai’s arm, and he goes on,
trying to erase the flash of color that rises to his breast. “Yes, Dazai…yes…I like taking care
of you. I will never tire of such things.”

Dazai is hitching with weak breaths as Fyodor rubs his thumb over old and new scars through
thin bandages, the matryoshka doll clutched between them. Fyodor feels warm tears wet the
side of his neck, and does his best to remember how it goes, that kissing is a sign of affection
and should be pressed to Dazai’s ear and his curls to make him feel better.

Soon enough, Dazai slumps into Fyodor’s arms, the doll still against his chest, and Fyodor
must then remind himself that tears can be relief, too, not only suffering, and that Dazai is
surely relieved, comforted by Fyodor’s words.

And, perhaps, this is what loosens the tight knot in Fyodor’s stomach, and turns the grey into
balmy pinks.

Chapter End Notes

Я люблю тебя means "I love you"

x) <3

There might be more chapters of Fyodor's POV that come as a continuation of this,
knowing myself! We'll see! :D (I miss you guys) I feel like a mangaka or something,
doing special chapters, except like...the Killing Stalking mangaka (Koogi) doing a
Christmas special that's too fluffy for the world it's set in, you know? XD
 Bonus Chapter: Epilogue 2
Chapter Summary

Dazai can't stop. This time, Fyodor wants to help in a different way.

Chapter Notes

So literally every time I have a mental breakdown or I'm struggling with my emotions
(or lack of them), I come back to Sinner. I get into Dazai and Fyodor, and I write out the
pain.

True, there are other outlets I turn to, but coming to Sinner to write more is always the
most helpful. And knowing I have the audience surrounding this fic that will be happy to
see a new chapter just makes it so much more rewarding.

So, here you go. A little self-indulgent 2nd epilogue in which PEOPLE CRY.

:)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

They sit on Fyodor’s bed in the young, tender hours of the morning.

They sit on Fyodor’s bed in the dark. Dazai is in Fyodor’s arms. His fingers feel as cold as
ice.

They sit on Fyodor’s bed atop sheets soaked with blood. The blood has turned the comforter
stiff by now, dried and molded into the shape of their figures.

Dazai is shaking. His back is nestled against Fyodor’s chest. He’s hardly thinking, hardly
feeling, hardly breathing. He’s staring at the far wall, blank and unseeing.

Fyodor has his arms around his waist. Fyodor has his arms around his waist. He knows that
he is safe. He remembers that now. They’re whispering to one another in the dim hollow of
Dazai’s mind, passing words to each other like notes in the dark. Fyodor has bandages in his
hand. He’s wrapping them with gentle, chilled fingers.

“Raise your leg, солнышко,” he’s murmuring, “just a little, if you can.”

Dazai looks down at his leg, at the blood running out from it in tiny rivulets, black in the
darkness. Fyodor’s hand is stayed halfway around his thigh, guiding white bandages that look
like stripes of moonlight.

Dazai raises his leg. It doesn’t hurt.

Fyodor cups it just under the knee and helps it along. He wraps the bandages like Dazai is
made of porcelain. Dazai finds it stabilizing. He feels like porcelain. He’s appreciative that
Fyodor knows that.

Dazai has cut more than the slices across his legs. More, this time. But he refuses to look at
it. He’s cut where Fyodor hates the most, where Fyodor chides him for it, where his violet
eyes shift with something so burdened and suffering that Dazai craves it. He craves it.

He doesn’t like to see Fyodor suffer, but he likes that he’s the reason for it.

Besides that, he cannot stop.

He cannot.

He hurts too much. He feels awful for hurting too much.

He feels awful for hurting too little.

So he makes up for it. He balances it with sharp objects.

“You have heard me say it so many times, Dazai,” Fyodor whispers, his voice like a velvet
kiss. It thrums next to Dazai’s ear, and his cheek rests against Dazai’s neck. Dazai wants to
lean into it, but he cannot. “Shall I tell you again?”

Dazai doesn’t move. He keeps staring at his leg, at the strips of moonlight Fyodor wraps
around it.

“Yes,” he croaks, and his voice scratches like sandpaper.

“Does it make you happier, when I say it?”

Fyodor has been learning words in regards to emotions. He’s getting better at expressing
them, and Dazai is getting worse.

“I don’t know,” he says.

Fyodor continues wrapping. He doesn’t respond for some time. Even the air is stale and
shuddering in the room, pressing in on Dazai and making his head buzz with white noise.

Sometimes, he worries that he’ll stop existing, if Fyodor stops talking for too long.

Dazai squeezes Fyodor’s arm.

“What is it?” Fyodor whispers.

“Hurts,” Dazai tells him, nonsensically. What will it do for him, saying that? Nothing at all,
nothing at all. How can it? Hurt is something that could be anything—physical, emotional,
psychological, abstract, specific. How can hurt be the only word he has to describe what’s
there—what’s missing—inside?

Fyodor should be what is there. Fyodor should be enough. One word from Fyodor and Dazai
should be able to stop. One threat. One punishment. Dazai would be fine, then.

Instead, it hurts. It just…hurts.

“What hurts?” Fyodor asks softly, but he keeps wrapping the bandages, like he knows that it’s
never a physical thing, not quite, for Dazai.

“I don’t know.” His voice is weak. It doesn’t work properly, like the rest of him.

“Is that alright?”

“Is what alright?” Dazai rasps.

“To not know. Does it bother you?”

“I don’t…know. I can’t feel anything.”

“Can you feel me?” Fyodor’s gentle chill presses closer against his spine, making him inhale
softly.

Dazai slightly turns his head, turns it against Fyodor’s face, letting his lashes flutter to clear
the numbing cobwebs.

Fyodor lowers his head slightly to welcome the touch. He’s gotten much, much better at
things like that.

“I can feel you.” Dazai’s throat grows sore.

Lips brush his temple, frosty and soft. “Good,” Fyodor whispers. He touches between Dazai’s
legs, checking the bandaging he’s wrapped there, if only to stop the bleeding. It makes Dazai
flinch. “You are safe,” Fyodor reassures him, in a voice as faint as yellow watercolor. “I will
not hurt you.”

But Dazai knows that. It’s just his body that forgets.

He feels bad for all of this. He knows Fyodor likes taking care of him, now, after the gift
Fyodor gave him. He knows it makes Fyodor feel good. And that’s a dangerous thing to
know, especially when Dazai is allowed to roam a house with knives in the drawers and
staplers in the desk and scissors in the cupboards.

It’s not that he does it just to make Fyodor care for him. It’s just easier, knowing that he
doesn’t mind. Knowing that it gives him something to care about.

It makes Dazai feel useful. That’s all.

“How would you find out?” Fyodor asks him, while he’s beginning to wrap Dazai’s other
thigh, lifting it as carefully as the first. “Those things you do not know.”

Dazai watches Fyodor’s hands, slender and pale in the dark, ungloved. His mind doesn’t
comprehend the question.

Fyodor puts it another way. “If you paint them, will it help?”

Dazai’s brows furrow. “Paint,” he echoes, wearily. “I already have.”

“On a different canvas.”

“I can’t cut pain out of canvases,” Dazai tells him. It’s becoming difficult even to converse, at
this point. He feels exhausted in every possible way. If it were up to him, he’d lie back and
stare at the ceiling until he felt his mind meld into the shadows.

“Not that kind of canvas, солнышко,” Fyodor gently corrects. He finishes Dazai’s wrappings
and ties them off with deft fingers—fingers that have learned by now how to mend Dazai’s
weeping body.

Dazai turns his head to look for violet eyes. When he finds them, they are soft, catching what
little light there is in the room and twisting it into concern. But his expression is still difficult
to read, despite what progress Fyodor makes in his emotional output. He lets Dazai look, and
looks back in a way that makes Dazai feel listened to, even if it takes a moment to make
himself speak up.

“What kind?” he asks.

“Another person, perhaps.”

Dazai’s insides curl at the notion. He sees images in his head, stained by the past he tries to
forget. He casts his eyes away, a little defeated. “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Not anyone,” Fyodor says, his voice alone managing to bring back Dazai’s eyes like a hand
on his chin. “I do not have the resources to find someone for you at this hour. I mean me,
Dazai.”

“No, Fedya,” Dazai says at once, flinching at the bite of panic that clenches in his gut. “No,
Fedya. I wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t.”

Fyodor’s eyes shift to look over his head, and he leans to press his lips to Dazai’s forehead.
He murmurs against the skin, “It is not a test, солнышко.” His hands brush up the sides of
Dazai’s arms. “You are safe.”

Yes, he is safe, he is safe. He knows that. His mind doesn’t like the sound of it, though, or the
images it creates, or the danger it poses.

But he is safe. He knows.

It’s just that—it’s just! It sounds like a game. A game Fyodor would play, before. Before
now.

But that is the past. Dazai knows that.

“I could be the canvas for once,” Fyodor goes on, “if it would help. Perhaps I could
understand, then, and know what it is like when you paint on yourself.”

Dazai has resorted to shaking his head, but his brain is still processing the notion, regardless,
Fyodor’s words conjuring fantasies in his mind. “No, no,” he’s hearing himself whisper, but
he’s already guilty of considering it. Because Fyodor has a way…he has a way of presenting
the most terrible things with a tongue so velvet it sounds like a solution. He has a way of
convincing Dazai, before Dazai can admit that he’s convinced.

“No, no?” Fyodor murmurs to him, a fondness to his tone as he tilts his head and looks at
Dazai to keep their eyes talking. “You do not think it will help? Or you do not think I can
take it?”

Dazai begins feeling again, feeling concern in batches of tingles along his skin. “Can you?”
he whispers.

“Can I?” There’s a strange, unspoken smile in Fyodor’s eyes, and they look warm in the
darkness. “Can I what?”

“Take it?”

Fyodor tilts his head the other way in thought, studying the ceiling. “If my little sun can take
it, then, so can I. Yes? Do you not think so?”

Dazai stares at him, stares until he feels his throat ache and his eyes tickle, stares until
Fyodor’s eyes drift back to his in the silence, and he sees the things Dazai struggles to say.

Fyodor lifts his hand and puts the back of it against Dazai’s cheek, a comforting chill against
Dazai’s hot face. “So…?” he says softly. “You will try it, then? You will let me take it for
you?”

Dazai feels his lips trembling. He closes his eyes, leans into Fyodor’s hand, then back against
his chest, tucking his head under the Russian’s chin. “Maybe,” he whispers.

“Good enough,” Fyodor murmurs against his hair. “When it comes upon you next time, then,
you can show me how you paint.”

“Next time,” Dazai half-agrees, worn with relief and sinking into Fyodor’s chest. “Maybe.”

Fyodor rests against the pillows and lets Dazai stay on his chest, helping him turn his heavy
limbs in a way that makes it the least painful to lie down. And he strokes Dazai’s curls—in
that learned, conscious way that he’s seemed to understand Dazai enjoys—until Dazai is
lulled by the touch into a trance of slumber.
When it comes upon him again, Dazai does as he’s told.

At first, he’s in their bedroom, trying to read a book on the bed. But his mind stumbles over a
paragraph, a thought that the character in the novel feels—one that Dazai relates to, one that
Dazai cannot handle—and the character feels it so intensely that it spreads through Dazai’s
own body, and it shocks him. It shocks him so greatly that his body feels like the body of the
character, and the character…the character wants to die. The character is standing on a
precipice, smiling at the depths beneath him, at the raging storm and the sea, and he’s longing
to fall. He’s kicking pebbles off the edge, watching them plunk into salted cerulean-and-navy
waves, capped by the froth of white bliss.

Dazai wants it, as suddenly as the character wants it, and Dazai’s eyes well, his stomach
lurches, and he drops the book.

But Dazai does as he is told. Dazai does as he is told. He stumbles out of the bedroom, nearly
blind to anything but the scene of the boy on the precipice, and he goes searching for Fyodor.
His fingers are throbbing, longing to claw at the delicate skin of his arms, but he doesn’t let
them, he makes them stop, because Fyodor said so, because Dazai told Fyodor maybe, and
Dazai intends to try.

He has to try.

Fyodor is not in the living room, and it makes Dazai’s heart pound in his ears. Fyodor is not
in the kitchen, and it makes him sick. Fyodor is not—Dazai will not look at the front door,
the door that goes outside, because Fyodor is not…there. He tells Dazai when he goes there,
he makes sure Dazai knows.

He goes to the other door, instead, the one in the living room, where Fyodor must be, he must
—if he’s not in the bathrooms, he must be working, then, in the room with the stained-glass
windows and the computers, the room that’s cool and dark, the room where he plays his
cello.

And Fyodor is there, he’s there, and Dazai staggers through the door without the Russian
noticing, coming up behind his chair.

He tugs on Fyodor’s sleeve in the middle of this day, disrupting Fyodor’s work, disrupting
everything. He feels awful. His mind is dark with spiraling emptiness, an abyss of cavernous
emotions, their jaws open so wide that he can’t even tell what they are anymore, just that they
exist and they’re trying to eat him and they hurt, they hurt, so, so badly.

Fyodor turns from his computer with all the grace of a dancer, multicolored lights sparkling
behind him like lightning bugs, on and off, on and off, but his eyes are the brightest of them
all. “Dazai,” he says softly.

“Fedya,” Dazai whimpers, on the brink of his composure and beginning to shake.
Fyodor’s eyes widen slightly. He stands from his chair, inclining his head and reaching out.
“What is it?”

Dazai finds it hard to look anywhere but the floor and his curled, white toes, breath picking
up in his chest with shaky heaves. “It’s just…I don’t…know, I don’t…” His voice is already
twisting, mangling into something higher, something weaker. He squeezes his eyes shut,
because they’re hot, they’re dry, they’re burning. He’s leaning heavily against Fyodor, and
Fyodor is grasping him gently—ever so gently—by the arms.

“Speak to me,” Fyodor urges him in tender tones, “tell me, I am listening.”

Dazai rests the top of his head against Fyodor’s chest, struggling for breath, trying to focus
on the floor again as it spins and warps towards him like a raging sea. He grits his teeth. “I
want…I-I want…”

“What do you want?” Fyodor whispers, closer, filling his ears with cotton.

A wrenching, pained sob tears from him, dry and without their tears, but as deep as any knife
in his gut. “It hurts,” he groans, “I want to tear it out. I want to rip open where it hides and
carve it out of me, Fedya, please…please! Let me tear it out.”

“Ahhhh,” Fyodor coos—like a mother, like a mother, he sounds, and a kind one, too, one that
understands. “I see, now. I see…” A hand strokes through Dazai’s hair, the other tickling on
his shoulder, soft and firm all at once. “And you have come to me to let me try and take it
from you.”

“Yes,” Dazai gasps, “yes, I’m sorry, yes—”

“Hush,” Fyodor breathes in his ear, “hush, do not apologize…this is what I have offered to
you, and if there is any fault or blame, it is mine alone.”

Dazai grasps Fyodor’s clothes, kneading them in his hands, and nods against the man’s chest.

“Alright?”

“Okay,” Dazai whispers.

Fyodor pushes on his shoulders, and Dazai follows their silent command, bending his knees
until Fyodor is helping him sit on the floor. The concrete is cold, but it feels good on his
bandaged legs. Fyodor crouches in front of him, his eyes like glowing beacons in the semi-
darkness.

“What do you need?” Fyodor asks him, carefully examining him.

Dazai looks sideways, one way, then the other, then at the ground, cringing at the very
thought, at the pain of having to say anything aloud. “I-I don’t—”

“There are scissors, there are knives in the kitchen, razors in the cabinets—you know your
options. Let me retrieve one for you.”
Dazai shakes his head, over and over, he shakes his head. “I can’t say—I don’t…want to
choose, Fedya.” He grasps the man’s sleeves in his hands, shaking, swallowing in difficult
gulps. “I can’t, it doesn’t matter.”

“Then I will choose for you,” Fyodor assumes, calmly.

This option feels better to his reeling mind. He starts to nod, slowly, lashes fluttering with the
hesitation. He still can’t look up. He still can’t make eye contact. “Please,” he says, purely
out of helplessness to say anything else. “Please.”

Fyodor leans close and smooths back a swath of Dazai’s curls, pressing lips against his
forehead. “Stay,” he murmurs afterwards, “and do not panic. I will be back as soon as I can.”

Dazai tries to loosen his fingers, to make them uncurl, breathing harder. “Okay,” he hisses,
“hurry.”

“I will,” Fyodor says.

“Hurry,” Dazai pleads, voice catching in a dry, hoarse sob. He stares at his lap, at the hands
he’s managed to pull away from Fyodor’s clothes, hands that are trembling like frightened
birds in his lap.

Fyodor touches his head briefly and stands. Dazai watches his boots move away, soft on the
ground, hardly making a sound. But the silence is deafening when the man is gone. The
silence closes in like a bubble of black tar, deflating and deflating until there’s no oxygen left
to breathe in. Until Dazai is the only thing that exists inside of that bubble, and yet the bubble
still shrinks, as if he’s not there at all.

He feels his extremities begin to tingle, like he’s losing limbs, like they’re dissolving, or
perhaps separating from a body they don’t want anymore, a body they detest just as much as
Dazai does. His vision is beginning to sparkle and buzz with static. His mind becomes a
cavern of nothing. The emptiness is so encompassing, the hollow so deep that it takes over, it
reaches with numbing hands, crushing Dazai in its grasp.

When Fyodor is not here, Fyodor no longer exists. Dazai’s brain insists on it. If Fyodor is not
here, perhaps he was never here at all, and he was only a figment of Dazai’s imagination.

Dazai breathes out of his mouth in bursts, attempting to keep it under control, to keep himself
from raking at his bandages and the skin beneath them, raking out the pain before Fyodor can
come back for him.

He doesn’t hear the footsteps. He just realizes, suddenly, that Fyodor is standing in front of
him, saying his name over and over as he kneels before Dazai, a glinting, silver kitchen knife
in his hands.

The same knife he once used to slice Dazai’s tendons.

“Dazai,” he’s whispering, just as Dazai is beginning to think Fyodor is the cruelest man in the
world. “I am here. I am with you, now. Take this. Listen to me, take this…”
“That’s—” Dazai stammers, his tongue so thick that it chokes him up, and he can’t go on, his
face twisting in anguish. “F…Fed…”

Fyodor’s eyes are stars. His hands, offering out the knife and guiding Dazai’s clawed,
shaking fingers to the handle, feel compassionate. “I know. I want you to use this one. I want
you to show me.”

“Sh…ow…” Dazai grasps the handle, feels his eyes burning, then watering, then leaking like
faucets of scalding water. “How…?”

Fyodor gazes into his eyes, and he’s rolling up his sleeves, now, and offering out his arms,
and oh, oh…Dazai doesn’t think he can do this. Nothing else matters, nothing but the pale,
blue-veined arms, but Dazai doesn’t think he can hurt them. He doesn’t think it will help.

He’s terrified of cutting them with the blade in his hand, and the knife shakes so badly he’s
sure it will clatter to the floor. If he cuts there, he might slice open veins, he might injure
Fyodor enough to make him bleed to death, and then—

Then he will be alone, truly. Dazai will be crushed by the hollowness, if he is left alone. He
cannot—he cannot. He will not.

“Not there,” he sobs out through his tears, clenching his teeth until they ache. “Fedya, I can’t,
I don’t want to hurt you, not there, not there-e…!”

Fyodor must hear the distress, because his brows turn slightly with concern, and he draws
nearer to Dazai, lowering his arms. “No need, then, no need,” he soothes, “if this is too much,
I can offer something else.”

“I don’t know,” Dazai whines, “I can’t do it, Fedya, I can’t!”

Fyodor glances down. He fiddles with the top of his shirt, until he’s undoing the latches
holding it together, opening it to more white, scarred skin. “You must not worry over me,” he
murmurs, “it will not hurt as much as you think. If you try it and it does not work, we will
stop.” He glances up, undoing the last latch. His eyes are shimmering. “Yes? Only once—
only once, Dazai, and if it makes it worse, we will not go on.”

Dazai’s veins are full of pulsing, rushing adrenaline, cold in his bloodstream. Dazai makes an
intelligible sound, something mournful, something full of pain, and tries to find a way around
this, a way to beg Fyodor for another release. He wants the knife in his skin, in his, not
Fyodor’s, not hurting the one he’s grown to love so much, the one who makes all of this
anguish easier to bear.

But it doesn’t matter, not when Fyodor leans into his space, his shirt undone, his chest bare in
the multicolored lights, his breath cool against Dazai’s burning face. He brings his hand to
Dazai’s cheek, and whispers, “It’s alright, Dazai…” And then, his lips press Dazai’s, soft as a
cloud, gentle as a dove, taking the breath of his sobs away and drawing it into the careful
desire of a kiss.
It’s like a light, lifted into the fog. Orange, golden, blooming upon the midst of Dazai’s
agony, a fire in the night. And it stings like the sparks he sees behind his eyes when he
squeezes them shut.

He feels a hand in the small of his back, supporting him, pulling him a little closer. He feels
another on his wrist, guiding the knife upwards, and he reflexively fights it, flinching and
whimpering against Fyodor’s mouth.

But Fyodor kisses him deeper, slower, gentler, absorbing the fear from Dazai’s body like a
sponge. How is it, how is it? That such a thing can do so much? That such a simple touch can
draw out the terror from Dazai’s veins?

The antidote works slow, but it works all the same, relaxing his tight limbs until he’s trying to
move in response to the kiss, trying to think about the kiss instead of the knife, the knife, and
Fyodor is moving that knife against the bare skin of his chest, urging Dazai to cut, cut without
regret.

Dazai feels his guilt, his fear, his hesitation all fading. Instead of I should not, I should never,
he thinks, can I? Will I? Will it make me better? And he thinks these things until he’s
responding to himself that yes, yes, he thinks he can, he thinks he should try, at least, like
Fyodor says, and if it does not work, they will stop.

This is not like the past. They have the power to stop. They can, if they need to. If they want
to, even. They have that power together. Fyodor is not the only one, anymore.

Fyodor is giving himself to Dazai.

Dazai lets his eyes flutter halfway open, fixed and blurry on the knifepoint that slides against
Fyodor’s chest.

Fyodor’s breath is heavier. His kiss breaks to move to Dazai’s cheek, letting Dazai breathe,
letting Fyodor mouth away the tears.

Dazai feels his last string snap, and perhaps it’s only his sanity, finally crushed underfoot, but
he cuts. He presses the sharp edge of the blade into Fyodor’s ivory skin, and he drags it
down, feels Fyodor flinch, hears the intake of breath, the restrained sound of pain. His heart
pounds in his lungs, an earthquake of adrenaline—pure, white-hot adrenaline—and he sees
the line of blood, the beads of it forming where the knife presses.

He stops. He watches. He heaves out breaths against Fyodor’s neck while the man’s cheek
rests against his, and Fyodor’s voice wavers near his ear, slightly hoarse. Dazai doesn’t hear
it at first—it’s only a warbled, drowned sound amidst the ringing in his head. But it clears.
The voice penetrates as Dazai watches blood trickle across Fyodor’s nipple, and it starts to
make a little sense after a minute. But only a little.

“You can…” Fyodor is saying, “make more, if you need to. Make more, Dazai, if it feels
better.”

Dazai can hardly move. His breath is rasping as much as Fyodor’s.

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

“No,” Fyodor lies. Dazai can hear it in his voice, can feel it in the way his hand grips Dazai’s
thigh, trembling.

“Yes it does,” Dazai whispers, “I can tell, Fedya. I can tell.”

Fyodor’s nose brushes the place under his ear, cold and jarring. Lips touch his cheek, and
Fyodor murmurs against his skin, “It does not matter…it makes no difference to me.”

Dazai’s eyes well with fresh tears. They run. They spill. His hand tightens around the knife’s
handle. He thinks about the tendons Fyodor cut with it. He thinks about the chance he’s being
given, the deliberate chance to make Fyodor feel his pain, the same way that Dazai feels it.
Painting.

Dazai drags out another, hot red cut, crossing over the first. An X.

Another, soft sound in his ear from Fyodor. Another flinch in his shoulders. Another intake of
breath.

Dazai feels something different this time. He feels a loosening, a release. A leaking, sinking
feeling—as if his anguish is being communicated properly, more properly than words can
describe, shimmering through the blade like electricity, drawing themselves in bleeding red
lines, yet without the stinging pain of tearing through his own skin.

“You are relaxing,” Fyodor says breathlessly, “keep going.” He draws Dazai’s body closer,
until Dazai is pulling at the Russian’s shirt, pulling it down his shoulder to reveal his back,
more accessible and visible than his chest.

“Can I?” Dazai whispers, sliding the flat of the knife over Fyodor’s shoulder blade.

“Yes,” Fyodor answers, far too quickly, “keep going. You can. I will not stop you.”

There’s something strained about his voice, but Dazai wants to push it aside. He wants to…to
keep going. He does keep going. He’s only made two cuts and already his shoulders are
losing their tension. His breath is beginning to regulate. His eyes are beginning to clear. His
emptiness is beginning to shrink, to make way for the return of himself, himself as Fyodor
sees him. Whole. Functioning.

Human.

Dazai cuts into Fyodor’s back. He makes it long, he makes it slow, and he doesn’t realize
right away that Fyodor is shaking, and that Dazai is not shaking anymore.

“A-ah—” The sound is cut off as soon as it comes, strangled into silence, replaced by
Fyodor’s shaky breaths.

The cut is deep. Dazai stares at it with wide, riveted eyes, at the deep, welling slice across the
back of Fyodor’s shoulder. The blood seeps like crawling, liquid agony, and it’s accurate. It
feels like Dazai’s feelings. It looks like Dazai’s desires, except without the addition of more
pain, as there would be if it were his own skin.

Dazai is finished, then. He is finished. He’s done enough, and hurting Fyodor any longer will
only drive him to a different emotion. Especially when the man is not as calm as he’s
pretending to be.

Dazai drops the knife, and the clatter of the blade is ear-piercing amidst their shared
reverence. It breaks the mood, breaks the delicate tension between them, and Fyodor’s body
slowly begins to unreel.

Dazai hadn’t realized Fyodor was so tense. He pulls back a little, looking for Fyodor’s
expression as the man begins to sit back, kneeling fully on the ground with him. When he
sees it, though, it looks different than he’d imagined it would.

It’s starkly pale, paler than Dazai has ever seen. Fyodor’s lips are parted for unsteady breaths,
his eyes cast only at the ground, his lashes…his lashes…dewy, with moisture. And what little
amethyst Dazai can glimpse of his eyes are glimmering with unshed tears.

“You—” Dazai stammers, hoarse and unsure. He doesn’t finish. He can’t finish.

Fyodor’s mouth bends in a wavering smile. He doesn’t look up, and a huff of agonized
laughter slips from him. “I thought perhaps you might…you might plunge the knife through
my back, while you had the chance,” he whispers, hardly audible. “I thought, perhaps, you
might finally end all that I have done to you. I thought…” Fyodor grows even quieter. “…
perhaps, this might bring out what you may have wanted all along.”

Dazai cannot speak. His throat is so dry it hurts. He stares, wide-eyed, hardly
comprehending.

“But it seems…” The smile comes back, watery but genuinely…relieved. “It seems you did
not want such a thing, after all.”

“No,” Dazai whispers, “no, Fedya…!”

The blood trickles down Fyodor’s chest from the ends of the etched cuts, painting crimson
lines. Fyodor finally looks up, eyes full of blurred sorrow. He is suffering. It’s so thick that
Dazai nearly feels it in the air, hanging over Fyodor in a humid, navy cloud. “Did it help,
then?” Fyodor asks, weariness dragging his voice at the edges.

Dazai stares at him, vacantly, for some time, watching the glimmers through his eyes,
watching the tears threaten but never fall.

At some point, he says, “Yes.” And Fyodor glances back down at his hands.

“I am glad.”

“Fedya—” Dazai hesitates. He reaches towards the man, towards his shaking hands. He
closes them inside of his own, and watches Fyodor shut his eyes, inky lashes pressing against
 his cheeks. He watches the pair of tears spill out, paint his face, drip away as if they were
never there. “I’m sorry,” Dazai whispers.

“I’ll be alright,” Fyodor tells him, weakly. “I did not expect to…to feel anything. I did not
expect to imagine you might end me, and wish for a moment that you would.”

“Because I made you—you feel that way?” Dazai’s gut twists at the very notion.

Fyodor keeps his eyes closed and shakes his head. “No. Because…” His brows furrow in
some kind of pain. “…I thought that maybe…I deserve it.”

“You don’t,” Dazai says in near distress. “You don’t, though!” He clasps Fyodor’s hands
tighter.

“Don’t I?” The smile returns briefly, sharp and strained, and Fyodor’s eyes flutter back open,
fix on Dazai’s.

Dazai lowers his brows, for once feeling a new emotion rise in response to Fyodor’s
vulnerability. He feels stern, he feels in control for a moment, and almost as if he might be
angry, angry at the cause of Fyodor’s doubt in his own worth.

“No, Fedya,” he hisses, narrowing his eyes.

Fyodor looks strangely at him, eyes flicking rapidly between Dazai’s, searching them and the
new reaction.

“No, you don’t.”

And Dazai believes that more than anything in the world.

Fyodor lifts Dazai’s hands in his, pressing the backs of them under his chin, where the tears
are still wet. He lowers his head until Dazai is unable to see his expression anymore. But he
imagines…he imagines it’s something he’s never seen before.

“If you say I do not,” Fyodor whispers, “then…I will believe you.”

[EDIT] Illustration for this chapter! On Twitter

Chapter End Notes

LOVE YOU! I ran a poll on my Twitter about renaming Dazai, and what I would
rename him (to make this an original story to publish), and the highest votes (out of
three options) were for Yuuta and Yozo, of which I was personally going for Yozo. Yozo
is the name of the real Dazai Osamu's protagonist in his book No Longer Human, and
I've always wanted to use that name in place of Dazai to honor the inspiration, as well as
(literally) my favorite book I've ever read.

What do you think of that name? Are there other suggestions you have to rename Dazai
and Fyodor? For Fyodor, it's extremely difficult. There are not many Russian names
pretty enough to take over his, and it needs to be Russian, since I'll be keeping Fyodor
the Russian that he is. Apparently I could barely find any F Russian names apart from
Fyodor, so like....UGGGGHHHHHHH. Anyways :D
 Bonus Chapter: Epilogue 3
Chapter Summary

It seems that Dazai is trying to manipulate him.

Chapter Notes

This is a little quickie, just a snippet, just a dose of dopamine. I missed Fyodor's POV a
lot, and as I'm rewriting the original version, I'm having to build up a whole beginning
portion without Fyodor, and I'm growing irritated waiting to get to the kidnapping!!
UGH!!

Many thanks to Goodbye_Aliens, who hasn't made it here yet, but has been commenting
on every single chapter that they read as they go along and has been a source of intense
motivation for me, as well as reminding me what I wrote in the chapters while I'm
originalizing the story. Supremely helpful! Whenever you get to this chapter, I hope you
enjoy it as much as the others.

And to Fushi's_Fur, well...you know I'll be thrilled to see you. Miss you, солнышко. 😊

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Fyodor’s troubled companion is trying to manipulate him.

He’s noticed it lately, and it’s quite queer to him—the way that Dazai hides it only well
enough to convince himself he’s not making it obvious. He wonders if the man thinks that
he’s being clever about it. He wonders if the man thinks it’s going to work.

It started out soft. Dazai said one thing to Fyodor out of ten things that didn’t sound very kind
or like him at all. It would be a muttered forget it, you wouldn’t understand, after Fyodor’s
pained interest in something bothering him. It would be a snappy leave me alone when
Fyodor entered the bathroom unannounced, aware that Dazai had lingered too long, aware
that he would be bleeding and shaking.

They stand out like cactuses among rose beds—sharp and misplaced, something grown by a
different seed. It is not a Dazai Fyodor is familiar with, and he knows at once that something
is amiss—that it’s not a natural response—instead, a conjured miscellany of vague threats.

No…not even that.

Provocations.

It’s the way Dazai’s eyes linger on Fyodor after he says such things. It’s the tensing of his
muscles, the bob of his throat as he swallows.

It escalates after the first three or four tries without result (Fyodor was very careful to not
produce a result, knowing it to be a test), becoming physical in nature and—at the very least
—a little disconcerting. Fyodor finds it curious more often than not. Dazai would slam a
cupboard hard enough to raise his brows, or unapologetically drop a book on Fyodor’s foot,
or exit a room as soon as Fyodor would enter it, leaving him in frosty silence. He would use
the shower for hours, making Fyodor enter to check on him out of sheer befuddlement,
expecting a dead body to be all that was left of his companion, floating face down in the bath.
But instead he would find a very living Dazai, side-eyeing him from the spill of water
through dark hair, wary and challenging.

If Fyodor had been in any other state of mind, he might have demanded on the third try to
know what Dazai wanted. If he must play the child, why could he not say it directly, and what
was it that he wanted Fyodor to know?

But perhaps he’s been mellowed by his caretaking status, like an old father who is used to his
son’s games. Whatever the cause, Fyodor has no reason to grow irritated, and the longer he
holds out in inquisitive composure, the more reckless Dazai becomes.

But again, that’s not correct—it’s not recklessness, is it? It’s something a bit more
complicated, something harder for Fyodor to detect—desperation, he thinks. It must be.

By this time, Fyodor has decided for himself what exactly Dazai must be trying to provoke.
It’s not as if he hasn’t alluded to such things in the past. Their cycle, which so often began
with Dazai flying into a panic for hours or days at a time, then becoming lifeless, then
melting into Fyodor’s comfort, was now shifting into bold spurts of this goading, distancing,
and then—mostly in the small hours of the morning—curling into Fyodor and crying silently,
saying not a word about it, simply clinging to him with Fyodor at a loss for what to do but
pretend to be asleep.

Thus, the problem is not that he doesn’t know what his companion wants. He knows. It’s that
he doesn’t know how to approach the subject with a solution that will quell the need. Not yet.

Not until tonight, when it happens again, and Fyodor decides he’s had enough.

He’s sitting on his side of the bed in nightclothes, watching Dazai’s willowy figure in the
opened bathroom as he brushes his teeth. Dazai is in nightclothes, too, wearing pants that sag
on his skinny frame—something he’s started doing lately—only his arms and neck sporting
their wound-up bandages where they poke through.

Fyodor hasn’t failed to notice that they’ve been quite clean, lately, and Dazai hasn’t come to
him since the night he’d let the man cut him instead of himself.

Dazai rinses and spits, and Fyodor notices the sideways glance towards him, meeting his
watchful eyes with something like a glare. Dabbing water from his mouth with a towel, Dazai
straightens and tosses the thing to the floor after its use, saying, “What do you want? Why are
you looking at me that way?” in the specific tone that is the cactus among the rose bed. It’s
absurdly unlike Dazai.

Fyodor blinks lazily. “Are you going to leave the towel there?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Why does it matter to you?”

Again, the cactus. Fyodor smiles ever so slightly, so that it’s more in the tightening below his
eyes than his mouth. His little sun enjoys testing his luck, does he? Even when Fyodor begins
to question him on it? Perhaps he is beginning to turn into a little moon.

He will try something, then, and see if it does anything.

“Come here, Dazai.”

It’s instant: the shift on Dazai’s expression. Fyodor sees his hands flinch towards his stomach.
He sees the tension in his neck, the overbrightness of his eyes. He watches the glare vanish
like a tiny frightened creature.

“Why?” His voice is tight. Restrained. Fyodor hears the anticipation behind it. Dazai thinks
he’s going to get what he wants this time, doesn’t he?

Fyodor pats the bed a singular time, flattening his gaze into something cold and unrelenting.
Let him think. “Sit down, on the bed. Now.” Now, he says, the way that parents coerce their
children into believing they’re in trouble. He can mimic, if he pleases. He can mimic, if that’s
what Dazai wants.

Dazai does come, at once, and he fiddles with his hands while he does it, and seems to shrink
smaller and smaller the closer he gets. When he sits down, he does not look at Fyodor, but
keeps his head low between his shoulders.

When he speaks, his voice quivers. “I’ll pick it up.”

“I did not tell you to pick it up.”

Dazai’s elbows flinch inwards. “Okay.”

Fyodor wants to stroke away the lines upon his brow, to soothe the rigidity of his limbs, but
he will not. Not at this moment.

Not yet.

He is getting somewhere. Ignoring it has done nothing so far. He will not ruin his chance to
learn what behaviors his companion desires from him, and how to handle it without breaking
the fragile promise between them: I will not hurt you.
“Strip,” he tells Dazai.

Dazai turns to him with startled, glittering eyes. How pretty they look in the yellow light,
chocolate and amber and deeper than the cosmos.

“You heard me.” Fyodor will not falter. He is getting somewhere.

This, too, Dazai obeys, though his hands flutter and his breath is audible as he pulls down his
pants, perhaps too weak in the knees to get up as he does it, unclothing himself until he is
naked and small and half-shivering on the bed. His shirt and pants are dropped into a pile at
his feet, and then he doesn’t exactly look at Fyodor, only twists his head in his general
direction, eyes flared with worry and trained on the floor.

“Stand up.”

An unsteady exhale; a curling of fingers. The stuttered attempt at opening a mouth to speak,
only to think better of it and shut it again. Dazai rises in silence, clamping both hands over
his groin.

Fyodor does not enjoy it, exactly. It’s not that he wants to cause his companion any reminder
of their previous situation. But he will never cease to take a small amount of pleasure in the
exertion of control, and if Dazai is this willing to hand it to him after a purposeful infraction,
well…Fyodor is well versed in the nature of it, and it comes easily when he has a clear goal.

“Stand in front of me.”

Again, the attempt to speak occurs and ceases to occur, and Dazai’s eyes skitter towards
Fyodor’s with shrunken pupils. But he comes meekly and stands before Fyodor, and it tastes
sweetly of submission. It seems that this is what he wants, after all.

Fyodor keeps a steady eye on him, refusing to emote as he reaches for Dazai’s hands, the
offending party.

Dazai inhales sharply, most likely because they are close to an area he doesn’t like touched,
and Fyodor understands that with a prickle of something like regret. Still, he lets his fingers
rest on the man’s bandaged knuckles, and Dazai does not move.

“Remove them,” Fyodor commands him next, though for this one he lets his voice gentle, as
he’s not interested in terrifying his partner. This is an experiment, after all, in response to
Dazai’s testing. His intent is not to trigger but to warn, perhaps frighten a bit, or at the very
least offer a taste of what he thinks Dazai wants.

Then again, Fyodor is fairly certain that Dazai has no idea what he truly wants.

“F-Fe…d…”

It’s the first Fyodor hears from him. He tilts his chin up slowly, dropping his lashes in
acknowledgement.
Dazai’s face has paled. But he doesn’t finish. He just takes away his hands, and Fyodor puts
them at his sides and leaves them there, trembling.

Then, he sits back. He sits, and he waits, and he looks up and down at Dazai’s body—not
because he is fascinated with looking, but because he is trying to make a point.

Perhaps not even that.

He is trying to make Dazai uncomfortable. That is it. He wants to push Dazai into a balance
just between distress and security, teetering on the edge of safety.

He wants apprehension but not anxiety. Dread but not panic. Doubt but not shame.

And for now, it seems he gets exactly that.

Dazai squirms under his gaze before long, and Fyodor waits for him, knowing he will talk.

He is incredibly timid when he does. “Wh…what’s wr-ong?” It’s barely even a whisper.
None of his false rebellion is there anymore.

It will only work with a push-and-pull—that balance that Fyodor desires.

“Nothing is wrong,” he murmurs. “You are very obedient.”

Unlike before is too much to add—not yet, not now. Let Dazai think his game is working for
a while longer. Fyodor doesn’t mind participating.

Dazai is not so pale, suddenly. His face burns with color.

Now Fyodor stands up, and points to the bed. “Lie down on your stomach.”

This changes the mood of his companion entirely. The air sparkles around him with colorful
emotions, so many of them that Fyodor cannot identify which. “Why?” Dazai whimpers,
shrinking from his gaze. “Fedya, why? What are you going to—”

Fyodor clasps his hand to stop him, and the immediate vise-tight grip he gets in response tells
him it was the right decision, that Dazai is more unstable than he appears and needs
reassurance to keep the balance. Noted. Fyodor will file it away for future attempts.

“Hush,” he breathes. “Obey me.”

Dazai’s limbs begin to shake. His fingers press hard enough on Fyodor’s hand to hurt. Fyodor
does not let it show on any part of his face. It is imperative to maintain the control in this
moment, to employ dominance and expressionless insistency, if he is to win.

The man only looks at him for a moment longer, his brows turned up in distress, but when
he’s done, he looks furtively at the bed and considers it, decides in his head that he must
obey.
“Let go of my hand,” Fyodor instructs, just as calmly, just as softly. If anything, Dazai will
not fear his voice.

Dazai does what he says with concentrated effort, each finger coming loose in succession
until it’s enough to slip out. Then he climbs onto the bed as if he’ll be sacrificed on it, his
breath stuttered and tight, his hands twisting the sheets into spirals of misery.

Fyodor watches him lower his naked body until he’s little more than a pale curve of shoulders
and buttocks, of bandages and scars. He cannot deny that it’s picturesque, the way his
companion looks in the light, despite—or perhaps because of—the apprehension in every
muscle.

Now, with his cheek to the pillow and his eyes peeking over his arm, he looks beneath
quivering lashes at Fyodor, entirely subdued. It is good of him, the way he regards Fyodor.
It’s been some time since he’s felt the weight of another’s surrender. He hasn’t realized that
he’s missed it until now.

He’s missed it from Dazai in particular.

Ah, what vile things his companion makes him think. He should not be compelled to do so.
Fyodor wishes that he would not—but it’s his doing, isn’t it? He is the one who’d created the
cycle, the craving, the need for constant turmoil to feel alive. It’s a pity that Fyodor was not
kinder or smarter back then. It’s a pity that Fyodor was only interested in himself.

Fyodor methodically sits on the bed, keeping his legs on the edge and leaning on one hand
into Dazai’s space, to assure they see one another clearly, focusing, neither wandering in their
own head.

Dazai is afraid, now. Fyodor can sense it on the air, refreshing in its warmth—a warmth he
could never produce. Dazai likes to be afraid—or he convinces himself that he does. He likes
the emotional high. It feeds him.

Fyodor thinks it’s not entirely evil if he can provide it without harm.

He reaches out with his other hand and touches the space at the middle of Dazai’s back.

Dazai flinches violently; his eyes widen. But Fyodor keeps his hand there, letting him
assimilate to the intrusion.

“You press me, lately,” he hisses intimately, when he feels that Dazai has accustomed
himself. “Do you not?”

He is very unsteady now. Fyodor can read it in his eyes alone, shuddering within their depths,
remembering many things, but not panicking—and that is supremely good of him.

“I did something bad,” Dazai whispers.

They are getting somewhere, after all.

“And do you think that doing something bad deserves a response in kind?”
The question triggers something unsavory. The man’s breathing escalates, becoming rapid
bursts. Fyodor tightens his hand on Dazai’s back a little, hoping that it’s warm enough to pass
as reassuring. But it does not seem to make a difference.

There is no answer, because Dazai is becoming more than afraid. Fyodor narrows his gaze,
studying him. “Would you like me to pretend that I am angry with you?” It is time for
answers, now. He’s given the man a taste—now the match must be broken in pursuit of a
motive. Dazai must understand that he will not and should not win such a game of self-
destruction.

The umber eyes glimmer and fill. Dazai sniffles. “I don’t think so,” he says weakly.

“Then would you like me to pretend to punish you? Not to truly harm you. It would be
gentle. It would not cause any real pain, or come from any genuine place of emotion. I would
not be angry, and you would have no need to fear for your safety. You would be confident in
my control and I would be careful with your trust. Is this what you seek from me, мое
солнышко? A game to appease your soul?”

Dazai is quiet, but his breathing is loud, and he reaches for Fyodor’s leg, gripping it with a
desperation that is very apparent. He does not want to say it aloud, Fyodor thinks, or perhaps
he doesn’t quite know himself, but the touch is enough to let him see that he’s progressing
correctly with the situation.

“You can say yes or no.” He slides his hand downwards on Dazai’s body, recalling for the
both of them the hurt and comfort that he has brought, soothing away memories as much as
he rekindles them. “If you say yes, do not think that I will be convinced that you enjoy pain
—only that I’ve wrongfully caused your own body and mind to crave a cycle…a cycle of
which we will not fulfill, but you will repeat without thinking. If we spend enough time
healing it, perhaps we can train it to become something better. Something that is not entirely
unhealthy for you.”

Dazai’s grip tightens on his leg, and he nods timidly, his eyes full of water and beginning to
drip when he blinks. His gaze remains elsewhere, cast away from Fyodor’s and too
humiliated to return. That is alright. Fyodor will not press him too far. He’s already agreed.

“Good,” Fyodor murmurs, leaning closer even as he raises his hand from Dazai’s body.
Remaining close enough to feel the heat emanating, he brings it down again, firmly enough
to mimic a reprimand, and Dazai’s body jumps in response, breath catching in his throat—a
soft gasp that sounds like a choked sob of relief. His fingers dig into Fyodor’s thigh, and
Fyodor does not let his lips smile, but he wants to.

It is, to him, the perfect balance. Control without pain; punishment without regret. It serves to
satisfy the both of them.

Fyodor understands that—even if brief—the placid slap must be amended with affection, and
so he presses his lips to Dazai’s temple. “That is enough for tonight,” he whispers. Dazai still
grips him with need. “You will be good, now, won’t you?”
 Dazai nods beneath his mouth, and the breathed-out, “Yes, Fedya,” is soothing in its
meekness. It is calm and not afraid. It is exactly what Fyodor wants it to be.

“Go pick up the towel and put it where it belongs. Then come back to me, dress yourself, and
come to bed.”

Dazai turns his face slightly into Fyodor’s, brushing their cheeks together. Fyodor feels his
lashes against his cheekbone like the tiny legs of a butterfly. “And then you will hold me?” he
asks.

Fyodor believes that he can feel something, when he says that. Something a little like the
sensation of ice cubes beneath the sun, loosening under a temperature that’s not theirs.

“And then I will hold you, cолнце. I will hold you as close as you’d like.”

And when Dazai has obeyed, putting back the towel as Fyodor sits against the headboard and
observes—when he has returned and dressed himself with shy movements, the tension gone
from his features and resolved—Fyodor pulls back the sheets and reaches out to his
companion and pulls him tenderly into his arms. He lets Dazai arrange himself against his
chest and collarbone, tucked under his arms and clinging to him, and listens as he whispers,
“I love you, I love you,” and replies by stroking his hair.

He gazes at the cracks in the ceiling, and he thinks he is satisfied with himself. Because
perhaps he has truly done a good thing, this night, a thing that he can be proud of.

Chapter End Notes

Hope you enjoyed the little power play! I know it was short and very subtle, but I might
add more where they mess with this dynamic.

In any case, be sure to keep up with me on Twitter if you wanna see the upcoming
Bottom Dazai Weekend art in October! I'll be doing Fyodor and Dazai for at least the
first prompt, a short four-panel comic featuring their specific personalities as portrayed
in Sinner.

Love you all. Thanks for bringing me through the roughest time in my life with your
beautiful comments and blooming friendships with me! I made so many friends through
this work and I wouldn't have come across such lovely people otherwise. Kisses! xoxo
 Bonus Chapter: Epilogue 4
Chapter Summary

Dazai hides in a refrigerator in the middle of the night.

Chapter Notes

A shorty (I think?) and probably lackluster, because I am feeling absolutely insane and
depressed for no reason, and I don't know what else to do but order myself a dopamine
hit from the comments that will be left by my beloved readers.

Just kidding though, nothing I do is lackluster. I just haven't edited this one 15 times.
That's all. I've edited it like 3 times.

See the end of the chapter for more notes

It’s weeks later before Fyodor has reason for alarm concerning his companion.

He’d thought for some time—perhaps egotistically—that he’d solved the issue the first time,
in the bedroom, commanding Dazai into obedience as a play.

But it seems this isn’t the case. Of course, it isn’t that he expected not to perform in such a
way again. It’s something else, entirely. A different regression that concerns him.

He finds Dazai hiding in their refrigerator.

In the middle of the night, a sound wakes him from paper-thin sleep, and he touches Dazai’s
side of the bed, and feels cool sheets.

His first thought is of Dazai running on spindly legs from the porch, down the steps, into the
forest. The black swallowing him up, grinning at Fyodor for losing his most precious
possession, repeating the past.

He gets out of bed, twisting his cloak about his shoulders against the brisk temperature that’s
certain to meet him outside, but ends up hesitating in the kitchen, a light catching the corner
of his eye.

It’s a sliver of yellow-white along the floor, a cracked-open white door with a fine mist
seeping out. The refrigerator is not shut properly.
Fyodor steps close to it, sensing something more is wrong, and waits, staring for some time.
There’s a dent of a shadow in the stripe, here and there, not food, something bigger.

He pulls on the door, and it doesn’t give. It catches on something.

At first it makes sense, and then it doesn’t, and then it brings a wave of cold that could be
called panic. He pulls on the door again, and it comes free, but reveals the slumped figure of
Dazai, squeezed and jammed and folded into whatever little space of the fridge that he can
fit, shelves digging into ribs, condiments stacked aside to make room.

His face is white as a sheet. His eyes are heavy, unfocused, drooping. His lips are blue-grey.
His head is draped sideways, resting on an awkwardly-bent arm.

“Dazai,” Fyodor says evenly, to get his attention.

The eyes drift sluggishly to meet his. They are hollow.

He doesn’t answer.

“What are you doing?”

“I was hot,” he croaks, slurred and dry-throated.

Fyodor can taste the lie, sharp on his tongue. “It is freezing in the house.”

Dazai stares at him.

“Come out.”

“No.”

Fyodor reaches for his arm, touches it, and it seems Dazai is too cold to move away. He’s not
even shivering. “How long have you been here?”

“Leave me alone,” Dazai rasps.

Fyodor does not appreciate the response. “Come out,” he says again, a little more firmly. He
tugs Dazai’s arm.

Dazai groans, screwing his eyes shut like it pains him. “I want to stayyy…feels good, Fedya.
It makes me happy.”

“Do not lie to me.”

Dazai slumps a little more and doesn’t reply.

Fyodor looks for something to prop open the door—lets go of Dazai to take a wooden box of
apples from the counter. He lodges it as wide as possible to give him room to crouch in front
of his companion and hopes it will circulate out the cold as well.
Fyodor settles very close to Dazai’s wan figure, studying him, trying to calculate out a valid
reasoning for sitting in the refrigerator.

“Солнышко.” Fyodor speaks as gently as possible, concerned about the tiniest strings of
energy in his voice. He constantly cultivates himself to the best version of what he has to
match and assist Dazai, but sometimes he finds it challenging to locate the correct elements.
“Will you open your eyes for me?”

Dazai’s brows knit subtly, but his lashes lift, though heavily, and Fyodor watches black pupils
grow and shrink inside of their russet cages.

“You have not done anything like this before.”

Dazai continues to look without speaking.

Fyodor thinks about this response, and takes it into account. Dazai is just as telling when not
speaking. He’s aware that the man tests him at times, but this is not such a feat. This is
genuine regression into an old habit, he’s sure, and as then, Dazai almost physically cannot
speak of the reasons why. It’s necessary for Fyodor to read him and interpret things himself.

Before, it was translating the pain Dazai had left in his own skin.

Now…it’s of the same vein, but a different method.

Fyodor reaches out, and Dazai’s eyes follow. He brushes his fingertips across the man’s
forehead, among the thick hair that covers his gaunt face. The forehead wrinkles; the eyes
drop to the floor in shame.

“You understand I am not angry with you,” Fyodor murmurs.

Dazai nods faintly.

Fyodor understands he cannot ask why Dazai has climbed in here, or even question how he
feels. Rather, his questions should include assumptions of his mental state, so as to offer
Dazai a clear option of yes or no, which would lend him enough security to share, in less
words, how he feels.

“Are you ashamed of something?”

The reaction to this question is not exactly ideal. Dazai’s face tightens with a certain anguish
that Fyodor has only dreamed of experiencing on his own expression, and his eyes mist over
as he looks away.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

Fyodor drags his thumb along the man’s jaw, absorbing the cold with his own. Yes or no is
not always the option Dazai chooses, he remembers, as it seems their conversations always
begin this way, with I don’t know. And perhaps Dazai truly doesn’t, not until Fyodor can open
the layers of his mind for him.
It’s of no trouble to Fyodor, after all. He quite prefers being able to dissect his companion for
the both of them. One day, perhaps, Dazai will come to an understanding of himself—but
perhaps not, and just as well. It would not matter to Fyodor how long it might take, or if it
never mended itself at all.

Fyodor would still look after him.

“Did you plan to sit in here so long?” he asks Dazai next, grazing the backs of his knuckles
along Dazai’s bandaged neck. He’s quite aware that physical touch is important to his
companion—whether it’s to bind him to reality itself or to remind him he’s still human,
Fyodor isn’t sure. But he’s learned enough to use it wisely.

“I want to sit in here forever,” Dazai mumbles, with a touch of sharpness that makes it sound
almost childish. Like a boy stomping his foot and lashing out at his mother, just to make her
leave him alone.

Curious.

“But I am not in the refrigerator,” Fyodor begins, a little coy in tone to play his companion’s
game. “Would you stay there even without me?”

Dazai looks troubled by the notion, and perhaps Fyodor has read his meaning incorrectly.

“No,” he says hoarsely.

“Then you hoped to die, sitting in here?” Fyodor does his best to keep the question restrained
and considerate, but it’s nearly impossible given the nature.

The selfsame anguish of a moment ago returns with great force, twisting more than Dazai’s
face—reaching his body, too, curling him up in a ball against the shelves, his lungs heaving
with growing emotion.

Fyodor keeps his hand close, slides it down his arm. Dazai needs not answer, not after the
physical display of yes, and Fyodor doesn’t ask him to.

“I see,” he says softly.

He considers for a moment all of the things he could possibly have done wrong, to upset
Dazai this much. For a second, at least, his heart clenches up in his chest with cold, and he
doubts himself, and doesn’t know if he’s done anything right, if this is what his companion
has ended up wanting.

“Is there something I’m doing that you do not like?” he asks, in a moment of weakness. “I
will stop, if it makes you feel like this.” He starts to pull away, in case he’s too close, too
suffocating, in case he’s doing something wrong now, and misunderstanding everything he’d
thought was certain.

Dazai turns frantically and catches his hand before it slips away; presses his forehead against
it, clutching so tightly that the bones ache, brittle with Fyodor’s bad health. “I’m sorry,” he
whimpers, his voice thin and fragile. “I’m sorry, Fedya. Please don’t go. Don’t go. It’s not
like that.”

Even cold, Dazai feels warmer than him.

Fyodor does not move. He gathers himself together again, nods, and curls his fingers around
Dazai’s. The fridge leaks air cool enough to make them both freeze, he thinks, but he’s too
used to it to mind, and his cloak is made for Russian snow.

“I will not go,” he assures his companion.

“You’re kind,” Dazai says, but it’s not the current situation that he alludes to—instead it’s an
answer for Fyodor’s previous question. “I’m still…not used to it, I don’t think. I don’t feel
like…my body doesn’t…” He struggles, and even though his head is buried against Fyodor’s
hand, he can sense the man’s shame in the posture alone. “I don’t think I can understand why
you won’t stop.”

Fyodor waits patiently when Dazai struggles in silence, most likely too exhausted by the chill
in his body to further explain. But he reasons out the words he has to work with, and comes
to a conclusion that makes a little sense, if he’s considering Dazai’s sensitive emotions.

“You are angry at yourself for accepting my kindness.”

Fyodor will never fully grasp the complexity of it, but it’s something Dazai has brought up in
the past many times, and he thinks that it makes more sense now than it did then. “You feel as
though you don’t deserve this?”

The tension ebbs from Dazai’s shoulders, indicating Fyodor is correct, and he breathes a little
easier when he sees it.

Dazai nods against his hand.

“I see.”

Dazai’s hands tighten around his, unsteady and stiff.

Fyodor thinks for a moment. “Can I not choose for us both if you deserve it?”

Dazai flinches, like the words themselves pierce through his body, and there’s a sound that
slips out—a sound much like the beginning of tears.

And, following this, a wetness touches Fyodor’s wrist. He tilts his head slightly, examining
the man’s crumpled figure.

“I don’t know,” Dazai whispers.

Fyodor touches the back of his head and pulls him in, tipping his face to his companion’s
silky curls, cold like frozen waves in the sea. He kisses them, nevertheless, and pauses to see
if his physical affection helps.
Dazai lets go of his hand, melting slowly into his arms, wordless and beginning to shiver, as
if just noticing the state of his own body.

“Come back to bed,” Fyodor whispers to his hair, finding Dazai’s prickly spine beneath his
bare fingers. “Perhaps we shall find out what you deserve, there.”

Dazai nods against his chest in agreement.

“Besides,” he adds, “I do not think the fridge could kill you unless it was sealed shut. So you
are only hurting yourself when you could wake me, instead, to listen to you.”

Dazai sniffles, hiding now in Fyodor’s arms, burying his face to escape. “I didn’t want to
wake you,” he whimpers.

“You are afraid?”

“No.”

Fyodor thinks. “Nervous?” Isn’t that a lesser form of fear? Dazai always seems reluctant to
say he’s afraid of him anymore.

Dazai hesitates. “It’s hard for you to sleep. I didn’t want to disturb you, because…”

Enough is said by this alone. Fyodor admires his consideration, his—what is it called—
empathy? Dazai always thinks of him.

Fyodor moves his hand along Dazai’s back a little, though it’s a concentrated effort and not
something he finds natural, but also an action that makes the man burrow closer, grasping at
Fyodor’s cloak to bring it around the both of them.

“It is kind of you to think this way,” he tells his companion gently, “but it is not my wish that
you suffer while I sleep.”

“Okay, Fedya,” comes the timid reply. “I’m sorry.”

He struggles a bit with the words, but puts together something vaguely helpful at least, he
hopes. “And I am…sorry…that your mind is so cruel to you.”

But, I probably made it that way.

Fyodor closes his eyes and holds Dazai closer.

But, your mind likely imitates a past version of myself.

Fyodor thinks he’s beginning to realize the full weight of that feeling called regret.

At least he still lives to make up for it.

He will do all he can to continue.

Chapter End Notes

And then they went and laid in bed and spooned and nibbled each others' ears.

sorry I didn't have the energy left to write that part. I'm a little hasty tonight.
 Epilogue 5
Chapter Summary

Fyodor has a feeling.

Chapter Notes

*BUSTS DOWN THE DOOR* HIIIIIIIIIIIIII *SKIPS IN WITH FLOWERS* HOW

ARE YOU GUYSSSS IT'S BEEN A WHILE HUHHHHH?

I came back for another round though I honestly wonder if I should've written
ANOTHER ONE but hey it's okay, I think this one is just for the fans and it won't go in
the original-ized version of the story once I finish that. That's what I'm telling myself!!

I feel like my writing has been a little rough (a lot) lately, and like my skills are lacking
BUT! I hope this still does what it's supposed to and makes you guys feel something.
Just felt like exploring what would happen with Fyodor in this situation. GEE I SURE
HOPE THERE AREN'T ANY FLAWS OR TYPOS OR GRAMMATICAL ERRORS
OR ANYTHING (I'm sure I'll find like ten when I read this over again in four months)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Fyodor’s companion has been exhibiting anomalous behavior again.

Dazai disappears from their bed more often. He’s not sleeping well, and Fyodor isn’t used to
both of them being this way. Somehow or another, Dazai used to exhaust himself by the end
of their days, but lately, he’s been avoiding Fyodor with more vigor. Perhaps the wakefulness
is part of this, but Fyodor wouldn’t assume. After all, he still can’t tell when Dazai is doing
things out of feelings or habit, or some concoction between which Fyodor fails to grasp.

More often than not, Dazai has only gone to the living room to sleep on the couch. Fyodor
wonders if he might need his own space, his own room, and he’s silently asking Fyodor to
give him that because saying it aloud might be terrifying to him.

Fyodor spends a large portion of one day sitting in the kitchen, staring out the window and
wringing his hands. He isn’t one to fret, but he would describe this as fretting. Dazai has been
asleep on the couch for several hours, now, his body likely trying to make up for the lack of
sleep during the previous night.

Fyodor hasn’t had the courage to wake him.

It’s not often that he doesn’t feel courageous. Dazai alone is quite capable of doing this to
him, though, and the more he does it, the stronger that sensation grows.

It might even have become a feeling, by now. It drags Fyodor’s muscles until they feel raw,
bone-dry. It sews fishing lines through his veins that tug uncomfortably, twisting them into
knots.

Helplessness, he thinks. That could be what it is.

If regret is bad, helplessness is death.

Fyodor’s hand-wringing promotes itself to finger-dragging against his mouth. As the next
hour passes, he resists an old, old urge to bite the ends of his nails, nails that already do not
grow anymore from past abuse. What is he to do? The logic is not so easy in these situations.
He hasn’t a spare room to put a bed in for Dazai. He could have the living room if he wanted
it, but Fyodor doesn’t imagine that would suffice long-term. After all, won’t he remember
things he doesn’t like, there? He used to be very sensitive about the couch. Fyodor
understands that—even if that sensitivity has dulled a little—it will never truly fade.

He doesn’t know if it’s alright to ignore that Dazai has been choosing to sleep there instead of
Fyodor’s bed.

Is Fyodor’s bed uncomfortable for him, or is Fyodor making it so?

Does he lie too close, maybe? Does he move too much, too little? Does he feel like a corpse
when Dazai decides to hold onto him?

Fyodor is no good at physical affection, not unless he tries very hard. He can do small things,
but he’s not sure how he measures against normal men in normal relationships. Shouldn’t he
be more forward with Dazai, then? Is he not doing enough? Wouldn’t he scare Dazai if he
started doing more?

Or is Dazai losing sight of their bond because Fyodor doesn’t do more? Should he try to
progress instead of remaining stagnant? Should he push Dazai a little so he feels encouraged
to heal?

Fyodor puts his head in his hand, scraping and squeezing at a cold forehead. He cannot heal
Dazai. He cannot heal anything. He doesn’t know why he thinks of such things. As someone
who had once caused unmeasurable distress, there’s no road he can pave that will change that
core of their relationship. The entire foundation of their current bond is trauma. If Fyodor
cannot first undo that, he is helpless to rewrite it with a cure.

In the past, he might have taken this in stride. In the past, he’d say let him forget, then, and
bring Volkov in to wash away the pain. But he is different, now. He thinks of ethics more
often. Because of this, Dazai must keep his memories.

A stir of sound turns the hairs up on his neck. He raises his head sharply; finds Dazai
standing in the kitchen, bathed in a stripe of sun. He’s squinting blearily.
“Fedya,” he mumbles, and Fyodor attempts to shake off the shock on his face.

Dazai looks too closely at him. Dazai looks startled when he sees.

Fyodor was too slow.

“You are awake,” Fyodor hastens to say, before Dazai opens his mouth again.

Dazai closes his mouth. He turns his head before his eyes move to the fridge. His steps are
slow as he opens the door and bends down to look for food.

Fyodor sees guilt in his posture and wrenches his gaze away. For once, he does not wish to
see. He looks outside at the snow and the trees. His breath feels thick, his body tight. He
pushes the flat of his hand against his sternum to ease a strange, sharp pain.

“Um…” Dazai hesitates, behind him. Still, Fyodor cannot look. He hasn’t put himself back
together just yet.

He’s not very used to coming apart.

“…I-if you’re angry with me about…last…last night, then—”

Pressure numbs Fyodor’s skull. He shakes his head, but his voice is not steady enough to
make sound. A flutter of cold goes through his limbs. Stop, he wills it, but it doesn’t have
ears.

He knows Dazai isn’t going to believe him, not if he can’t turn around. He knows Dazai will
interpret his actions as cold and punishing.

His brow feels tight. His throat feels crushed. He must, mustn’t he? Dazai has to know that
he’s not doing this on purpose, else he’ll grow worse, and Fyodor’s agenda to help him will
be trampled underfoot by his own mistake.

Fyodor grasps the edge of the table and rubs his mouth, twisting around.

His companion is staring at him, eyes a little oversized, kneading his hands against his
stomach. The fridge door hangs open.

Fyodor shakes his head again and waves his hand, stalling until he can locate the proper
vocal register. “I am not angry.”

Dazai looks like a mouse caught in a trap, waiting for the poison that will slaughter him.

Fyodor feels helpless, again. “Would you like me to cook you something? For breakfast?”

Dazai doesn’t take that the way Fyodor means it. He burns in what must be a sudden flush of
shame, cowering away. “N-no,” he stammers, “I’m sorry.” He grasps the fridge door and
bends to look again, almost frantic in his movements.
Fyodor’s head pounds. Dazai thinks he’d been scolding him for leaving the fridge open, for
taking too long.

He would like to stop…feeling, if at all possible. It’s making them clash, making him blind to
what Dazai needs him to say.

Fyodor puts his elbows on the table, pressing clasped hands to his mouth. He thinks very hard
of what words to use, studying the grain of the wood.

“Dazai,” he starts, gently.

His companion’s head flinches towards him, eyes still round and insecure.

“Is it alright…if I make you something?”

Dazai’s jaw flexes. His mouth stays slack. A small, uncertain noise comes from the back of
his throat. He glances rapidly between Fyodor and the fridge. “Y…yes. Okay.”

Maybe Fyodor’s posture is foreign to him. Usually, he doesn’t move so much or so often.
Usually, he doesn’t put his hands anywhere near his mouth. But he can’t put them down. He’s
trying to cover his face as much as possible without being obvious.

Is he being obvious?

Fyodor gets up. It makes Dazai wince, and Fyodor tries to approach without scaring him off.
He touches Dazai’s shoulder. Gently. Touch more, his mind fires at him, and Fyodor thinks,
touch less. He removes his hand by accident—places it back. Squeezes a little, just enough.

“Ah, maybe…sit down,” he tries, hoarsely.

Dazai stares. He staggers a little when he goes to sit, twitching his shoulder as it slips from
Fyodor’s grasp.

Fyodor stops looking at him by way of necessity. He scoops two eggs from the fridge door
and closes it. There’s a tickle in his throat as he goes to the stove. There’s a weakness in his
hands as he pulls out a pan. His eyes feel dry. His tongue feels thick.

He turns on the stove, listening to the sharp clicks of the lighter before it spurts into flame.
Metal clinks on metal—setting the pan down. He cracks the eggs one after another, too early.
The pan isn’t even warm, yet. He’s forgotten butter so it won’t stick.

Where is his spatula?

Fyodor rifles through a drawer. The sound of silverware and utensils is deafening.

He makes the mistake of glancing back at Dazai. To check on him, he thinks, or check on
how he’s being perceived.

Dazai looks like he’s watching a murder. The eggs are Fyodor’s victims, and Fyodor is a
sloppy killer.
Now it’s Fyodor’s eyes that feel too wide. “Лох,” he curses himself under his breath. Stupid.
He’s being incredibly stupid. “Eh—the…” He finds his spatula and bumps the drawer shut
with it. “…the eggs might be—disappointing. I hope you do not mind.”

Dazai watches him in silence. He’s wearing that blue shirt Fyodor had given him, soft pants
underneath. “Are you okay, Fedya?” he whispers, fragile and stiff.

Fyodor fumbles only once with the spatula, but stirs around the eggs, focusing his attention
on the soggy-looking yolk. The more he tries to correct, the further he drives this strange
frustration at himself. He is scaring Dazai. He must stop. He must.

He’s nodding, he realizes a moment later—nodding too hard, too jerkily.

He stops.

He’d popped one of the yolks by accident. It’s running out in the pan like orange blood.
Fyodor’s fingers throb hard, the beat of his heart in their tips. He wants to bite them to stifle a
sudden pain.

There’s a shuffle of movement behind him, a warmth, a shock of solid weight that presses
against his back. It runs a shiver through his body like a snowy chill—the realization that
Dazai is behind him, wrapping his arms around Fyodor’s torso.

He swallows with great difficulty and drags his fingers across his mouth, dropping the spatula
altogether.

Dazai’s cheek nestles against his neck. Is he trembling? Both of them are trembling. Fyodor’s
is odd and confined to his hands, and he looks down at them in some type of shock.

He feels Dazai looking at them, too. When he speaks, he sounds supremely unnerved.

“I made Fedya upset.”

Is this being upset? Is Fyodor upset? Maybe Dazai knows about emotions, but Fyodor doesn’t
think that’s what’s happening to him, now. He doesn’t think that he’s upset with Dazai, or
because of Dazai, but only because of something he’s doing to himself.

The eggs pop and hiss like angry snakes in the pan. Fyodor puts his hands on Dazai’s arms.
He’s warm. Fyodor is very, very cold.

“Let me finish,” he stammers, almost wild in his attempt to redirect attention. He’s not used
to anything remotely like this, and it feels like something awful and shameful, something he
should experience in private without Dazai fussing over him for it.

This feeling business is about to cause more problems for them than anything Dazai had ever
done. How is he supposed to let that happen?

“Please let me stay,” Dazai whispers against his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Fedya. I
didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Hurt?

This will never do.

The eggs are screaming at him, now, well-cooked and stuck to the pan as much as each other.
Dazai’s arms feel like lead weights, in one breath just as helpful as they are ensnaring, when
all he wishes is to run.

“I am not—hurt,” he tries, but the words are mangled, and he flounders in his attempt to turn
off the stove. He goes to scrape the eggs at the same time. He’s not sure what goes wrong,
only that—in the next moment—there’s a sudden, searing cold against his palm, and he
realizes too late that he’s touched the pan.

Disoriented, he pulls back as Dazai cries out in alarm. He doesn’t hear the words, only knows
that Dazai is talking loudly, that hands are all over him, pulling him from the stove, cradling
his hand, his face, his hair. He only…stands there, dully, his mind not processing at the
proper speed, and all he can think of is that he’s ruined it, he’s ruined it, and Dazai’s face is
not right, and it’s Fyodor’s fault.

Soon, he is being pulled down by the shoulders, arms encircling his neck. His mouth is
buried against Dazai’s shoulder, and he notices much too late that he’s made his companion
cry.

“Fedya, Fedya,” he’s sobbing, “I was bad, I’m sorry! You’re acting so strange—I didn’t mean
to do it, I didn’t know it would bother you—” It devolves into violent, body-deep heaves, far
too harsh for the situation. He’s scared. Dazai is very scared.

Fyodor forgets he knows English, fumbling out, “Конечно нет, нет—” Of course not,
Dazai’s done nothing of the sort. How could Fyodor let him think so? He reaches for Dazai’s
head, hoping that he can soothe his companion by stroking his hair, but something about
being held like this injects weakness throughout his body. It’s never really affected him,
before—though, he supposes, it hasn’t truly happened, before. Not like this. He’s always
been somewhat in control of their touching.

He can smell the eggs burning behind him, just as much as he can smell his own flesh.
Dazai’s sobbing is loud. He does not like that he’d caused it with his clumsiness.

To hell with the eggs.

Fyodor lets Dazai hold him, trying to return the favor as well as he can. He feels like an
infant or a toddler. What possesses him to close his eyes and press close to Dazai, he does not
know. But his breath comes out shakier; his brows furrow. He feels stiff all over, vibrating
with irritation.

“I was…only wondering about you, I think,” he tries to explain, but his voice is worse off
than before.

“Is Fedya feeling something bad? Truly, truly? I didn’t mean to make Fedya hurt. I’m sorry,
Fedya. I’m so sorry.” Dazai is frantic. His voice is high-pitched, wild with terror.
It’s not his fault. The man hadn’t meant to. But should he say that aloud? Will that help?
Fyodor’s head is too muddled to decide. He forgets his logic, forgets what to do. He can do
nothing but shake his head and fight the ache in his throat.

“The eggs are burnt,” is all he can muster, whisper-quiet now as Dazai sobs.

“I hurt Fedya, I hurt you, I’m so sorry—”

“Shhh,” Fyodor strains, sliding his hands somewhere near Dazai’s back, hoping to keep him
there. Hoping to make himself come back to life, when it feels like the functions in his body
have died.

Dazai wails, “I didn’t mean to—”

“I know.”

“I’ll sleep in the bed again every night, I promise!”

“No need, Dazai, I think—”

“I mean it, Fedya! Please! Please.”

“C-calm…down, cолнце, it’s alright.” Fyodor tries to hold him tighter, noticing the throb in
his hand, delayed somehow by whatever he’d been…feeling, he supposes. It’s slowly starting
to fade to the background, tickling at the edges of his nerves. Eventually, he’ll be in control
again, and this shameful behavior will cease.

“What did I make Fedya feel?” Dazai pleads, not letting him go when Fyodor attempts to pull
away.

Fyodor stops. Dazai is still shivering under his grasp, so maybe he needs to stay. “I…I am
not…certain.”

“You know! Don’t you? Don’t you know?”

Ah. Fyodor’s stomach is turning inside-out. How strange. Dazai is using his techniques
against him, mirroring his usual questions. Is it on purpose, is it not? It’s strangely
comforting, at the least. If he can call simple words that.

“Give me…a moment. Perhaps I can learn. It is—only me, though, and you are not to blame.
You understand this?”

Dazai isn’t crying so violently, anymore. Fyodor can feel him wiping his eyes and sniffling,
as if he’s trying to compose himself—perhaps for Fyodor’s sake. It puts an edge of guilt on
top of the other feeling, and he decides to unwind the man’s arms from his neck so he can
see.

Dazai’s face is all red. Fyodor is dismayed by how distraught his expression is, the hazy way
that he totters and hitches for breath. He gently takes the man’s cheek in one hand to stop
Dazai from wiping it again.
“I scared you very badly, didn’t I?” he says softly.

Is he a failure? Is he becoming worse the more human that he becomes? Would this have
happened at all if Fyodor had maintained a tight rein on his emotions?

Dazai seems to want to shake his head, but—maybe because he’d rather not lie to Fyodor—
nods, instead, holding onto Fyodor’s wrist. His eyes skitter away.

“I was not angry,” Fyodor strains.

“I knew you weren’t…after a little, I did, but then I was scared because it was—it was new,
and you seemed so…”

Fyodor draws in a slow breath and nudges his thumb across Dazai’s cheek. “I am not good at
placing what I feel. Not the way you do. This is the first time, I think, that I have lost control.
It was not my intention.”

Dazai’s gaze deepens, steadier now. “I can’t control mine either, Fedya. Not when they’re
strong.”

“Ah—I see.” Fyodor studies him and feels a little silly. Of course they can’t be controlled,
that’s the nature of emotions. They’re supposed to be strong enough to overtake the body at
times. He should know that—he did it to Dazai for—

Fyodor flutters his eyes shut and focuses on stopping that flow of thought.

“Fedya,” Dazai says, carefully.

“Mm?”

“Can you sit down, please, so I can…can talk to you?”

“The eggs,” he murmurs absently, still closing his eyes.

“I’ll clean them up.” Dazai tugs on him, makes him move until there’s a seat under his
weight, a table beneath his arms. “Please try to rest.”

Fyodor wants to laugh. Why does feeling take so much energy? He’s not some frail,
inexperienced creature, is he? Can’t he handle a burst of color? It’s the same as a flaw in a
plan, isn’t it? It’s fixable.

Strange. He doesn’t think these things when it comes to Dazai’s emotions, only his. Why
would that only apply to him? Why does it feel right to do that? He isn’t Dazai, so he’s
different, which means he should function differently under the strain of emotions.

Shouldn’t he?

Fyodor will run himself ragged like this. He puts his head down on his arms, listening to the
noises of Dazai cleaning. Cleaning his mess, his burnt eggs, his fault, his mistake. It smells
awful. Smoke is turning the air rotten.
“Dazai,” he calls, his voice unsteady.

The noises stop, a pan hitting the sink.

The words are like glass in his throat, difficult to sort out, easy to choke on. He’s not sure
what he’s doing, only that he isn’t thinking so well at the moment. “I think…maybe—I need
you. Over here, if you do not…mind.”

Dazai moves quickly, by the sound of it, and soon there’s a hand on his hands, grasping him
tightly, avoiding the burn mark, and the sound of a chair being scooted around the table.
“What’s wrong?”

He sounds afraid, again.

Nothing is wrong, he wants to scoff—at himself, not at Dazai. Because truly, what’s so wrong
that he has to have Dazai close by? What’s so wrong that he can’t even pinpoint what it is
that’s causing his overreaction?

He laughs a little helplessly. “I do not know.” He lifts his head, brows tight and furrowed.

Dazai’s eyes look starry, overbright. Is he alright? He’s thinking very hard about something,
that much is clear. “Is it about me?” he asks.

“Of course,” he agrees. That much he knows.

Dazai hesitates. His hands are very warm. “Is it about me not…coming to bed?”

Fyodor has the sudden need to look elsewhere. He does it without thinking and catches
himself off-guard. He can’t make himself look back, just yet. What was it that he’d been
lamenting over, earlier? It was about that, but not in the way that Dazai will think if he says
yes. “Perhaps we should not talk of me, for now. I wondered about you, that is all. I would
rather know why you’ve found it hard to sleep with me.”

Dazai shrinks—an instinct, he knows—but it still puts a needle of cold through his throat.

Fyodor traps his hands so that he won’t pull away. Then, shortly after, he realizes that they
are holding hands. Both of them, now, participating in the act. He doesn’t remember doing
that before. It feels odd and also normal, too. Is it right that he’s reached out like this? Is it
right for him to share emotions with someone who needs his care because he destroyed their
sense of safety?

“I don’t know, either,” Dazai tells him in a small voice.

“Ah…we both are at a loss, then,” Fyodor tries to jest, detachedly wondering if he can
lighten the mood.

Dazai’s cheeks flush and he hunches his shoulders, the fingers in Fyodor’s hands curling a
little tighter. “Do you think we can figure it out if we talk more?”
It’s a very good idea. Only, Fyodor is less inclined to talk about his side of things. If he puts
more on Dazai’s head to agonize over, he’ll never find peace, will he?

“Perhaps it is best to keep mine to myself.”

That doesn’t go over so well. Dazai’s face falls. He swallows hard, appearing wounded.
“Okay,” he rasps, but his grip loses strength around Fyodor’s hands. He’s retreating.

“Wait,” Fyodor corrects himself, squeezing Dazai’s fingers, “you are right. We should both
share. It would not be fair to let you do it alone.”

Dazai straightens and looks at Fyodor like he’s found a beautiful painting amidst layers of
dust. He seems happy—excited, even.

Fyodor hasn’t seen him excited. It makes his eyes widen. It makes the hair prickle on the
back of his neck. Color, warmth. He senses it brewing in his chest. He’s done a good thing,
saying that. He should doubt himself more often, he thinks. Out loud, in front of Dazai.
Maybe it makes him look more human when he does.

“Okay,” Dazai says. “Can I ask you questions, then?”

Fyodor’s throat tightens uncertainly. “Да—eh, yes,” he corrects himself, annoyed that
Russian is creeping into his language. Dazai can’t understand that, you fool.

“Was Fedya angry with me for leaving him alone?”

Angry is the wrong word. Fyodor shakes his head.

Dazai’s shoulders relax a little at this. “Was Fedya sad that I was gone?”

It’s harder to hold hands with his companion, just then. Fyodor loses his grip and retracts his
own, unconsciously reaching for his mouth. He hesitates, tries not to touch—and then fails
immediately, trying to keep his expression in check. “It is only…a little, I think, but not
exactly…” He struggles too long, huffing in frustration. He doesn’t have the right word.

“It’s something else that’s louder?” Dazai tries, timidly. His hands are lying on the table
where Fyodor left them, eerily still.

Fyodor nods faintly. When he dares to look up, Dazai’s face is pinched in thought.

He’s really trying too hard for Fyodor’s sake. He needn’t press himself so much on the
account of a man who’s only having a fleeting issue.

“Was Fedya…maybe lonely?”

That one rings uncomfortably true, much as Fyodor would like to deny it. Dazai shares a
house with him and every waking moment. It’s incredibly selfish to feel lonely because of a
few nights spent alone.

Since when did he start thinking this way? He feels so far away from himself.
“I may have been. But I do not think this part is important, or…any responsibility of yours.”

Dazai stares at him for some time, as though he’s trying to work something out. Whatever it
is seems to be positive, at least, judging by the way his eyes flicker with light. But still, he
says, “I’m sorry, Fedya.”

Fyodor waves him off. “There is nothing to apologize for.”

“I don’t want you to be lonely.”

Fyodor hesitates, words caught up in his throat like tangled string. “Wh—I…that is…” he
gentles his voice, studying Dazai. “…that is an inevitable thing, I think. There is no need to
prevent it when you need time away from me.”

A cloud passes over Dazai’s expression, and he curls his hands towards his lap, shrinking in
the chair, no longer half as confident as he’d been moments ago.

Fyodor misses it, just a little.

“I felt like…” Dazai struggles with his words—already barely audible as is. “…I don’t know
without your help, but…it was painful to be near you. I didn’t know what to do.”

Fyodor’s unruly tirade of feeling has faded enough that this doesn’t affect him as deeply as it
might have twenty minutes ago, but there’s still a bolt of distant panic that flashes at this
statement.

So it was his fault.

“What did I do?” he asks carefully, keeping his voice steady.

Dazai shakes his head. “Nothing.” His eyes stay elsewhere, flitting from his hands to his feet,
then back to his hands. “Not really.”

“Not really?”

“I felt like I was bothering you too much.” Dazai fidgets. He gets quieter. “That’s all.”

“Ah,” Fyodor breathes.

“Was I?” Dazai meekly raises his eyes, shoulders hunching again like he expects to be
scolded.

“No,” Fyodor whispers, letting his brows knit. “I thought perhaps I was…doing something
wrong.”

He sees Dazai’s mind click, then, a puzzle attaining its last piece. “Then was…was Fedya
worried about me?”

He looks down at the table, drawing in a breath. It’s the right answer—he knows it is
immediately—but, for some reason, it’s the most difficult one to admit to.
 Eventually, he nods. “But do not let that trouble you. I only wish to help. Whatever you
choose to help yourself is of no concern to me, unless you are harmed by it.”

Dazai is quiet for a long time, watching Fyodor. When he speaks again, his voice is feathery
and weightless. “I didn’t know you’d worry about me.”

Fyodor glances up.

“I thought you wouldn’t mind, or wouldn’t notice.”

He grimaces at this, the edge of guilt returning like the thin poke of a knife. “I—it shouldn’t
have. I am not sure—”

“Please,” Dazai stops him, fervently staring up at his face.

Fyodor hesitates, taken aback.

“It makes me feel good that you noticed.”

Tension that Fyodor hasn’t realized was in his shoulders seeps away like a melting cube of
ice. “How is that?”

“If you never feel very much, but you felt something towards me, then…” Dazai’s eyes are
becoming glassy. “…I don’t know,” he whispers. “I don’t know, Fedya. It helps. It feels
good.”

Fyodor doesn’t know what to say. There’s unnatural warmth in the tips of his fingers. “I
would like to help,” he murmurs.

Dazai lowers his head until it touches Fyodor’s burnt hand on the table. He sounds a little
strangled when he talks again, but Fyodor doesn’t move an inch. “Thank you. Love you.”

In the end, Fyodor’s first complicated feeling isn’t entirely so bad of an experience, after all.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you guysssss 🥰 I hope you fans are doing well. And I have good news for those
interested in the original version - the entire first half of the book (adding onto what
happened to lead up to the first chapter of the Sinner you know on this site) has been
written!!! Everyone has new names, altered parts to play in the story, and more that
needs to be written for when Dazai gets rescued, but the bulk of the work has been
completed and I'm very excited about it. Hope you'll come see me on Twitter to keep up
with it so that I can let you know when it's doneeeee!!!!

*Blows kisses to everyone*

Hopefully I can find time and strength and presence of mind to answer comments, but if
not, I appreciate them so much and they always make my day. <3
End Notes

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