Archive of Our Own

There were daisies, and they were floating unceremoniously in a vase. And the vase was on a small square table, and the small square table sat in the middle of what had to be the world's dingiest room. The carpets were stained with god-knows-what, the lights on the ceiling were never on, but the lamp in the corner was. Pink curtains were shredded around a lone window.

The daisies had long wilted. Dazai didn't know why they remained in the vase, and he considered them with something like disdain as he sat there, legs bouncing underneath the table, chin resting on top. The disdain soon gave way to indifference. There was nothing he could do for the daisies. They were already dead. They'd already been dead. Wondering why they don't get switched out for something yet to bloom will not reverse their fate.

There was a little piece above the water line in the vase, a piece with a spider web crack in the glass. He tapped his fingernail against it and the incessant ping, ping, ping was the only sound in the room. He never breathed audibly. Even when he walked, he never made a sound. Ping, ping, ping. If he were to do this long enough, maybe the whole thing would shatter. He could glue the pieces back together after that, maybe. Create some kind of unavailing kintsugi. Would he put the daisies back inside, after that? He didn't know.

If you asked Dazai now, he wouldn't be able to tell you what he was waiting for back then. Couldn't tell you what he was waiting in. He knows it was less about waiting for something to start and more about waiting for something to end. But this dream always starts the same way, and it ends the same way, too: The distinct, heavy footsteps fade into his awareness and he sucks in a breath like it's the last he'll ever take. The door opens and shuts too gently, and he knows he can't protest but can't, for the life of him, remember why. Not retrospectively, at least. He wonders when he last had the full picture and when it finally fell from his hands, when the edges got burnt off and when the faces and details were cut out. He doesn't even remember remembering. But there's no time to poke and prod at the black holes in his mind where information should be, because by the time he thinks to examine it, the dream version of him is already fixated in on the night sky through the window, clutching the view like a cornerstone, and the stars are beautiful.

This dream – which didn't start until after his first year with the ADA – always ends there.

He wakes up hard and fast, sitting up with wide eyes and phantom fingers and breath on his skin. He always does. His heart never seems to mind, always keeping a steady pace while the rest of his senses go haywire. He drags himself to his balcony, hoping the cool air will rid him of the sweat. He stares up at the stars, half hidden by clouds and smog and what's left of the city lights and he pulls out a cigarette.

-

He feels like a ghost for days, sometimes weeks afterwards. Like his body is rotting somewhere cold and isolated and his spirit never got the memo.

He's loud at work. He has to be. Has to break through this barrier that's keeping him miles away from everybody. He folds his reports into paper airplanes and throws them at Kunikida's head. Today it takes seven before the man finally yells at him. Makes a big show of throttling him in front of the whole office, screaming into his face and finishing him off with a smack to the side of the head. Later on the two of them will share a cigarette before they head to their dorms for the day. Kunikida only ever takes one drag, and Dazai always smiles because he knows Kunikida hates the things, just wants to look like he's part of something.

He tells Dazai chainsmoking is bad for his health, and Dazai will light another out spite and tell him, "And worrying is bad for yours, so looks like our crime is our sentence, isn't it?" And then his head will get smacked again. Much lighter this time, because they don't have an audience.

Kunikida never says that he knows Dazai needs loud and physical to bring him back. "I expect you to be here an hour early tomorrow so you can compensate for the work you didn't do today," says enough.

Dazai never thanks him for it. "I'll be here two hours late just to piss you off," says enough.

-

For Dazai, it's never really been that he doesn't possess emotions. It's more so that emotions don't often possess him. Emotions tend to come to him the same way a fact does, he knows he feels something the same way he knows the sky is blue or that the sun will rise. He just can't step into his emotions, and when he can, it's something fleeting.

Terror, however, seems to be an exception to this rule. Terror doesn't come to him often, perhaps even when it should, but when it makes itself known, it's all he can see.

Maybe it's because terror is primitive. Maybe it's because one can't survive if they are incapable of fear. You can't escape if you feel there's nothing to run from. Fear is necessary, and Dazai curses the notion, because terror always comes to him like a life sentence, paralyzing every cell in his body, leaving him dazed and ineffectual.

It's during these periods that he renounces his usual desire to isolate, and actually does come into work an hour early. He'll announce obnoxiously as he walks through the door, "Always imposing on my beauty sleep, Kunikida, forcing me in so early," grateful for this perfectly laid trap, this lie everyone is kind enough to pretend they can't see through. He'll hang around the office until everyone's gone, and then he'll wander the city until it, too, is empty. It's in these periods that Ranpo keeps a closer eye on him.

-

Dazai has never minded the fact that he was a machine. A weapon, a tool. That is the life that he has always known, after all. He did well in the mafia. He was not forced into that life. He was not coerced. Mori always knew he only had as much power over Dazai as Dazai would allow for. This didn't mean they didn't surprise each other sometimes, though. No, Dazai never felt himself to be at the mercy of the port mafia. It was always the other way around, and he relished the feeling. Mori didn't keep him there. He simply gave Dazai a viable outlet for the ice-cold destruction he'd always had coursing through his veins, helped Dazai hone a craft that'd been sewn into the fabric of his nature before he was old enough to learn subtraction.

Dazai had loved it at the time. Not real "love," the kind he knows most people refer to when they use the word. The soft kind, the warm kind, the kind that serves as more of a home than a firing line. No, he loved his work in the mafia the way one might love rollercoasters, or jumping into icy waters from an almost-too-high-place, or petty theft. Thrill seeking, that's more akin to what it was. But there was more to it, too. It wasn't the kills that he lived for-- it was everything up until the kill. He loved knowing he could orchestrate disaster instead of submit to one.

He loved the game. Curating and extracting fear. Paralysis. Despair. Any emotion he wanted, he could bear witness to. And after that came the real thing. The thing he couldn't directly cultivate, the thing that came after he'd laid the foundations and toyed with whoever was sorry enough to meet him some night under the most beautiful stars in the sky. Raw and unfiltered, just as the grave was hurtling towards this living thing, they'd confess. Anything and everything. They'd confess. Grief, regret, actual crimes, spitting hatred, or total indifference and apathy -- it was all a confession, the truest of any you'd ever find. He always let their last sentence be cognizant. Conscious. Aware. Anything they did or didn't say was a confession, and they - Dazai and whoever was at his mercy - were the only ones who'd ever know, and then he'd carry it alone forever. It was interesting, too, when people actually begged for mercy-- even the most hardened criminals, the ones who swore they had nothing to lose, ones with higher kill counts and bigger guns, would cry for their mothers at the end. Sometimes. Not every time, of course. But it was fascinating, almost beautiful, when it happened. Knowing that everyone leaves the world the same way they entered it-- a helpless child. He loved being in total and complete control, getting to see how exactly God makes a killing, and doing it for a purpose.

The kill itself never did much to him. Never shook him to his core, never made him feel guilty, never saddened him. But it wasn't what he looked forward to, either. Dead people can't be interesting, after all. The kill was simply part of the job. The manipulation, the games before the kill, that was his doing. That was his.

Only one death had ever shaken Dazai to his core, and it was Oda's. Shook him enough to lead him into the light, so to speak. He didn't feel he had to be a good person. He didn't think Oda needed Dazai to be a good person. It wasn't so complicated. It was simply that Dazai had been searching for fascination in unsustainable places. Dead things can't be interesting. And more than this, it was simply that Dazai had to live, and he was so at home in the port mafia he would have died before he hit the age of twenty, with how fast he was going. With how reckless he could get in the name of catching a thrill. Life with the ADA helps him find interest in the here and now. Being around genuine people, people who are kind because they choose to be -- that's interesting. That is sustainable. And turns out, helping other people interesting, too. Less thrilling, sometimes, but it was a trade-off he'd grown comfortable with. His helping others doesn't usually come from a place of compassion, and certainly not one of empathy, and he's okay with that. This is a game, too. Ranpo has always been the agency member to understand this perspective best.

"Do you do this to punish yourself?" Chuuya once asked Dazai when they were seventeen. He was holding Dazai's naked and scarred arm by the wrist, inspecting it. He'd met Dazai's eyes and then they both laughed.

No, Dazai had never been one for self-punishment.

He was a machine. He was programmed for violence, for destruction, but that didn't mean he couldn't un-cross certain wires and reroute them.

Sometimes he catches himself missing the thrill he'd get in his beautifully cultivated game in the port mafia, but he doesn't think he could ever choose to return to it, either. He could do it if he were forced to, but it wouldn't fit. Not anymore. And he wouldn't want it to fit. He was authentic back then, but he was focusing on all of the wrong things. His world was so small. And sometimes he likes the softness in him, now.

--

Even now, though, as he sits on his futon and drags a blade into his arm with a near clinical precision, he thinks back to Chuuya's question about self-punishment. He'd considered the notion. Was he subconsciously searching to atone for what most people would call sin? No. He wasn't. Yet he isn't quite sure why exactly he does it. He's never been able to wholly figure it out, that magnetic pull to anything that hurts.

He'd just had the dream again, the one with the vase and the daisies and the waiting and the stars. He woke up and the pull was there again. Heavy, captivating, intoxicating. Blades, pills, one night stands, suicide-- he still needed it all. It's not shame, it's not guilt, it's not repentance, but it's something. Another cut. He's not sure why he can't let this go. Why he's unwilling to let this go. He just needs out, sometimes.

Something in the dream always hurts. A memory more than a dream, really, but still. There's something in it that always hurts. And he was young. He doesn't think he had a choice in the hurt back then. But he doesn't want to think about that, refuses to consider that there may have been a time in which he was helpless, a time in which he had no control over anything, and so he drags the blade in deeper, just to distract himself.

There isn't any hurt in his present life. And yet, he hurts every day. The fact irritates him. Especially after these dreams. He's surrounded by kindness, practically enveloped in it, and yet, the grave calls for his bones all the time. He's unable to just let this go.

He doesn't bother bandaging his cuts. Just falls limply into his futon and stares ahead, at the cracks of light from the hallway shining under his door. He expects to hear footsteps, he realizes, and something in him goes rigid. He thinks he might be the only person left alive on earth right now. He's not sure what time it is. Really late night. Really early morning. Same thing.

He's fixated on the door, now. He's waiting again. He feels small. He can't move at all anymore.

He just waits.

His body aches and it's numb all the same. He is so tired of remembering. He is tired, too, of not knowing exactly what he is remembering.

All he has to do is wait this out, wait for this black hole to pass. It always does. But it feels endless when it's here, and he hates that. Makes him feel trapped. Trapped like he was in that dream with the vase. Trapped like he was a million times before then and a million times after that.

The sky is just beginning to turn a dark shade of blue when he's finally able to just barely move again. He uses all of his strength to turn his body and he looks out of his window at the fading stars. They're beautiful.

He doesn't realize the sun has been up for hours until there's a knock at his door.

"You alive in there?" Ranpo asks from the other side. Bored.

"No," Dazai responds, feigning a dramatic sort of cheeriness. "I actually tragically passed away in my sleep. Don't mourn me or cry or anything, though. I'd laugh at you." He thinks for a moment. "On second thought... do cry for me, actually. It's nice to know you're appreciated sometimes."

"There's only one reason I'd cry if you died," Ranpo's voice echoes into his room, "and it'd be so that people would take pity on me and bake me things. I'd be too distraught to remember to eat, you see."

A pause.

"I'm coming in, so don't be doing anything weird," he chirps, opening the door. He stands in the entrance for a minute, tsk tsk-ing at the state of Dazai's arm. And the blood on the futon. And the blade he hadn't bothered throwing away.

Dazai doesn't feel the need to hide this sort of thing from Ranpo even if he did have the energy to move. Ranpo can see right through him, for one, so there's no point. But Ranpo, similar to Dazai, isn't exactly empathetic. He doesn't let emotion get in the way of matters like this, and so Dazai never feels uncomfortable.

"So what brings you here, my beloved colleague?" Dazai asks.

"Drop the act, idiot," he says, but he doesn't actually give Dazai time to drop the act. "I want candy, and the store selling it is seven miles away and I don't know how to get there, and clearly, you have nothing better to do."

That's Ranpo speak for "You'll just keep spiraling if you're left frozen here, and since I really do want candy and really can't be bothered to learn how to go places on my own, I can knock out two birds with one stone."

"Aww, so I am cared for. How touching."

"Yeah, something like that. Now let's go."

-

Sometimes he wonders if Mori hadn't wanted him to get better. If that's why he took such an interest in Dazai, who hadn't known getting better was even an option. And if all that pain that's always plagued him is what let him work as magnificently as he once did, it would make sense. And it wasn't personal. It was pure dumb luck. Dazai had been good for the business, and that was that.

The mafia wasn't inherently unsustainable. Only for those who have something else in mind does it manage to fuck over. A death wish, a power trip, a desire to figure out what humans are really all about, you name it. But plenty of people there get by wonderfully, because they see it as they should: just a job. An important part of their life, maybe, but not their sole quest for the meaning to it.

Mori never scared him. Not really. But there were times, when he was new to knowing the man, where he'd get scared nonetheless. Mori didn't scare him. But Mori carried things that were reminiscent of something else that once did. A hunger, a keen ability to control, to get exactly what he wanted, no matter the cost. A barely concealed, carefully wielded sadism that breeds other sadists. And Dazai would know. After all, it was someone similar who--

Ah. His neck is being bitten. He leans into it, moans, forces himself to stay present with this... this guy whose name he's already forgotten. It's fine, though. He'll never see him again. He's hot with lust and sticky with sweat and as he's being pinned down he catches a quick glimpse at the sky through the curtains, and the stars are beautiful tonight.

He feels bored when he leaves. Empty, maybe. But bored is a more apt descriptor. The guy he'd been with was fast asleep. He was good, really. Inflicted just about anything Dazai wanted, and the marks were a gift. But once the guy had fallen asleep he'd started cuddling Dazai, which made him want to retch. So he'd left. Stole a cigarette, too, and smoked in on the walk home. Something in him ached again, a dull thrumming in his sternum saying you must remember this.

His desire had been stronger lately. That desire for skin-on-skin and slapping and forced entry and hands around the throat. Sometimes he was the dealing hand, the one to deliver all of that. Sometimes he was on the receiving end. Both served a purpose. He found being on the receiving end left his skin crawling lately. Maybe it'd always been that way. Being the dealing hand always gave him the power trip of a lifetime. Total control. But receiving was control too, wasn't it? That that was the intent, at least. When he was the one being used, he was still choosing it. And technically, he could use the safe word any time he wanted, further affirming the fact. He was choosing it, and yes, he does have a say in what happens to his body.

So why is his body protesting? It's a weak fight, really. More a timid request than a protest. But he didn't like the real protest, so maybe it's learned it won't be listened to and it's given up trying to be a proponent for change.

It was only when he was receiving something from Chuuya that he felt something was being given to him instead of taken away. He shook his head, rid himself of the thought. No, he was always choosing it. Always. He was always in control. Chuuya was safety, but that didn't mean he wasn't safe during his other excursions.

He downed a bottle of sake when he got home and then passed out on his futon.

In his dreams were heavy steps, doors closed in secret, an empty vase, flickering lights, hot breath, saying no, no, no, no—-

He wakes up fast and his body shakes. He wonders how his heart can still be so steady. Beating just fine. Slow and soft. It makes no sense to him.

A feeling overcomes him suddenly, and with silent steps he runs into the bathroom, and he vomits.

Stands up.

Washes his hands.

Thinks about hanging himself.

Cuts himself instead.

He wonders why he can't just let this go.

—

"Dazai?" Yosano barely conceals her startle response, turning to face him like she hadn't been caught off guard. "I can never hear you when you come up behind me. Tsk."

"Sorry, honey," he replies, smiling, not really sorry.

"I've told you not to call me that."

"Which is precisely why I still do."

She's on the agency's roof, smoking a cigarette. Sweat pants and a loose shirt, that and her hair blowing in the breeze. She looks almost human. She's less unnerving this way. The moonlight softens most of her features, except her eyes, which always look harder in the dark.

He doesn't have to ask her what she's doing up here. She's just thinking. Just reveling in something quiet, peaceful if you pretend, for once. Dazai stands next to her, looks at the same view, this mostly sleeping city. He pretends he's looking at it all through her eyes, imagines he's thinking her thoughts.

She steps on her cigarette and he hands her another, one of his this time.

"The stars are beautiful tonight," he says.

A blink, a draw-back, dark eyes meet his own and for a moment, not a word is said, just a hitch of the breath, her shoulders go back and then relax again. They both look at the city again.

"I know," she replies. Mostly to herself. Quiet.

"Sometimes I think we're the only people who have ever seen them."

She takes a long drag. Exhales it slowly. Flicks the embers off. Some of them fall onto Dazai's shoes, and he watches as they dim and disappear.

"When it's over, you're supposed to know," she says. To herself and to him.

"Did you ever know?"

"Yes. And also no. Sometimes I still wake up with my own hands around my throat, and I cry like I never grew up."

"How do you deal with it?" he asks. Casually. Like he's asking what kind of sweater she wears on a particularly cold day.

"I make room for it. And when that fear starts to do the thinking for me, I take action. I run. I run until my legs give out. In doing so, the fear runs through and away from me. All that pain," she says, "it's frozen inside of us. It can't tell time. We have to let it catch up to now. We have to release it."

"But how does that work?"

"Now we're talking science," she says, giving him a half smile. She throws the cigarette off the roof, down to the pavement below. She's always liked explaining things. "There are three primitive stress responses everything with a nervous system is wired towards: Flee, fight, and freeze. You're familiar with that, right?"

"Yes," he replies.

"It's more complicated than fight or flight or freeze. 'Or' implies there's choice. There isn't. It's more like this: to flee is our first instinct. If that doesn't work, we fight. If that doesn't work, then we freeze. Make sense?"

He nods. He's twirling an unlit cigarette in his hand, just so he has something to do. Watches it like it's the most fascinating thing in the world.

Yosano continues, "When we're being taken from, the way we were back then, our natural instinct is first to run away. But we were too young to run away. And we were too small to fight. So we froze. And we stayed frozen, because the threat didn't go anywhere. And once we got older? Once the threat was gone? Our bodies never got the memo. Our nervous system was so used to being on lockdown, and we were too frozen to process what had happened, so it lived in us. Replayed itself over and over, and the fear from that convinced our bodies there was still a threat to hide from."

"That makes... a lot of sense," Dazai nods. He feels his fingers tingling.

"So how do you stop freezing?" she asks rhetorically. "How do you let yourself catch up to what's here and now? You have to take action. Play those responses out in reverse. Our bodies try to on their own, already. It's why we get those dreams. Why we feel that fear. Fear asks us to take action, action we weren't capable of back then. You have to listen to the fear. The feelings come, and you experience your age old terror. And your instinct is to hide from that terror. But you can't hide from it, because it lives inside of you. And people like you and me don't always handle that knowledge easily. I turned to the bottle to flee, I turned to sex, and you turned to..." she doesn't finish her sentence, but gestures at the bandages Dazai never stops wearing, and they both nod. "We turned to some of the same things."

"We did, didn't we," Dazai mutters. Not a question. Just a statement.

"But those coping mechanisms don't fix what we're running from — if anything, it only makes it so that our body must protect us from ourselves, too — so we get sent right back to freeze. And that cycle repeats, back and forth until we're finally ready to fight. Fighting means getting angry. Fighting means action. It means moving. That is when the feelings can finally find a place to rest. You have to move your body, you have to yell, you have to pretend you're really fighting something. It tells your body, 'I have control now, and I can be saved.' And once you've fought, the feelings that have been frozen can finally make their exit. They can flee. It can be scary, having them flee. You're feeling what you should have felt back then, right now. All of it. It all comes online. But if you let it pass, you'll find that you're lighter. Breathing easier. It's not a one time deal, it doesn't heal you over night. But any time you can fight, and let the feelings leave, you should."

She takes a deep inhale, and continues, "So yes. I Run. Hard. I scream from the bottom of my stomach, too. Over and over. It makes me cry every time, though," she says, hiding her face momentarily. "I don't usually admit that, but it does. I cry and I cry and I cry and maybe I scream some more, but at least in these cases it's a true release and not merely a reaction. So the second you feel that terror," she says, "you run."

"I've been running in all the wrong ways," he says quietly to the city.

"You know what's interesting?" she asks.

"What?"

"Animals in the wild don't get PTSD. When they're overpowered by a predator, and they know they can't flee or fight, they play dead. That's freeze. But they have the whole world to roam. They're not trapped with their predators. So when the predator leaves, you'll see that animals like deer get up off the ground and they shake. And then they move on. That shaking, it's their nervous system discharging the stress, having played flight, fight and freeze in reverse. We're humans, more complicated, but we have nervous systems too. Sometimes we're the scared animals, and sometimes the predators live right there with us in the same four walls. We don't have the whole world to roam."

"... Oh."

-

A few nights later, when Dazai jolts awake from another dream he does just what Yosano talked about. He leaves no time to even put his bandages on. Not even his coat. He's lucky he remembered in his fervor to even put on shoes. While the fear and the disgust and the pull to a grave are still hot on his skin, he just runs. He can't remember if he even shut his own front door.

He runs out of the building, nearly tripping over himself, runs down the sidewalk through the night, breath gasping, steps loud and heavy with purpose. He runs through the town and through the wind and around some bends and through the park and he banks on adrenaline alone to get him to the beach. He stops for a moment, slows to a walk. Quick check-in. His hands are still shaky. So are his legs. It's not exertion from the running. He still wants to escape. Anger bubbles in his chest. He wants to kill the first person who ever laid hands on him. And every person after that, too. He lets the anger push him, and he runs again.

And he runs, and he runs, and he runs. He can taste the air and he can feel the wind in his hair and on his skin and on his cheeks and nose and in his eyes. Crisp. Alive.

And before he's had time to even process it, his feet are wet, a cold tide washing over him, so he runs just a little more until the water reaches his knees and slows him down and there, he finally lets himself collapse, and the chill kickstarts something inside of him, and he's too busy catching his breath to even gauge where his mind's at, but distantly he's shocked that he managed to run so far. He thinks about the stories he's heard of mothers suddenly being able to lift cars when their child is caught under it, and he wonders if this is akin to that.

He's still sucking in air when he hears a voice behind him, and he can't tell if it's muffled from the ringing in his ears or the wind in the water. "I was wondering where the hell you were running to."

He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut. Still trying to catch his breath. There's lead in his legs, he thinks. He's not sure if he'd curse or laugh if he was able to breathe right now. His lungs still burn. He needs to lie down. He drags himself just to the shoreline and lets his body give way and he falls backwards into the wet sand and puts his hand over his chest, shocked and damn near elated to find it racing. Pumping so hard he wonders if Chuuya can hear it, too. He can't remember a time where his heart worked this hard for anything. There's something beautiful in that, he thinks.

He hears Chuuya kick off his shoes, hears the crashing of the waves, and when he finally opens his eyes Chuuya's towering over him, staring down with a derisive expression that only half-masks his true concern.

"I'd just finished a job when I saw you," Chuuya explains, voice a little too steady. Contrived. Kind of like the way you walk slow through a mine field, tip-toeing just in case your next step is your last. "I'd have called out for you but you seemed pretty determined, so I followed you instead." Dazai sits up, finally taking in his first full breath just as Chuuya tentatively crouches down. "Wanna explain what the hell is going on?"

Dazai finds that his mouth has started moving before he's consciously conjured up an answer, and his voice is thin and airy when he says, "I was just..."

Something's caught in his throat. Another breath in, and before he can reel himself in, re-construct is typical cold indifference, he's sobbing, and oh, this is what Yosano was talking about.

He should feel humiliated at such a reckless display of emotion, snot all over his face, wailing without abandon while his whole body shakes. He's crying for the him tapping at the vase of daisies, the him that was damned to a frozen life, the him that begged for anything that could promise release, the him that got buried screaming and then lived as a ghost for years to come, the him that perpetually existed in smoke and mirrors, his effortlessly shallow construction, the him that spent his teenage years looking for salvation in all the places he first lost it, the him that felt he was always taking something back by submitting to all of the things the smallest version of him once had no choice in. His body was always remembering. Always telling him this is what happened. And in his unwillingness to accept the truth, he misread those signals as desire. And every time he indulged in this perceived desire, he was only throwing gas on the fire that'd been started in him in his early years.

Now the fire was raging, and it was scorching him from the inside out. It's happened many times before. So he'd drag a blade across his skin as if the fire could leak out that way, stop the burning. He'd drink and he'd take pills like it'd snuff the flames entirely. He'd try to kill himself so he could free himself from it for good. He didn't want that now. He wanted to finally let this go.

He finds that he's even crying for the him that's able to cry now. So frozen for so long, he had no idea his body could even produce tears.

He used to wonder if his own tragedy predated him. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn't. Maybe he added to it. It didn't matter now. He could still live. Yosano said this was a process that would be repeated, over and over. Probably until it's all left his system, until it's all been processed. The fear would come back. The agony and the desire. At least he knows what it means now. Maybe this is what control really is.

It hurts. The crying does. He didn't realize he was screaming, too. This was an agony he'd never quite felt before. Hot on all of his bones, crushing his chest, heartbeat seemingly in his skull. But Yosano was right, too. This wasn't merely a reaction. This was everything he should have felt back then. It's safe to feel it now. This is release. Liberation.

Chuuya's holding him in his arms. He hadn't noticed until he accidentally hit him. Chuuya doesn't say anything about it.

-

"The stars are beautiful tonight," Dazai says under his breath, long after the crying has finally stopped. His head is in Chuuya's lap, and they're still in the sand. He's dizzy and half-numb, but not the kind that leaves you dead. And he doesn't really think about it, what he'd just said, and the words only just missed the threshold that would have left them safe and sound, unheard and unaddressed. But they got caught somewhere in the streamline breeze, and Chuuya does hear them, and the world doesn't end.

"Yeah?" Red hair falls over moonlit eyes, a glimmer of something else Dazai can't quite place, but it's peaceful. He could stare at Chuuya forever.

Sometimes there is nothing to ponder, nothing to pick apart at the seams. Only what you are given, only what you are shown, and suddenly a missing piece clicks into place.

"They look the same as ever to me," Chuuya declares.

And that's it. That's all.

Chuuya stands up, and then holds out his hand for Dazai to take. "Let's go."