So Since We’re Making Pacts With The 7 Brothers Again, Do You Think It’ll Be The Same Order?

Part 2. This time its the Tokyo Five (As I named them) Headcanons in the reblog tags appreciated

THEODORE VANDERNATCH SERVING CUNT AS ALWAYS!!!!

Memory Lane Part 3: Between the Lines

Characters focused on: Adeuce, Grim, & GN!Reader

Word count: 3.9k

Summary: You're an innocent isekai victim, but was there something more to you that not even you were aware of until now...?

Or: You wander into another world and meet reincarnations of cartoon villains (who were REAL and also your friends in a past life). Exposition chapter ft. Brain cell Trio.

Masterlist

AO3 Link

"Myaaah! Get out of my room, explodey-hair!"

"Oi! There isn't gonna BE a room if you keep throwing fire all over the place!"

"Myahaha! What's wrong? Scared of'a little fire? Why don't'cha use your wind? Oh, that's right; you can't! Myahahaha!"

"H-Hey, cut it out, you two! Or else I'll make you!"

You open the door, already wide-eyed upon hearing the commotion as you came down the hall, and blanch at the chaos you see inside. Ace is ducking and weaving around jets of blue flame as Grim hisses and growls at him from on top of the bed. The young squire counters with his own taunts, making no effort to douse the little monster cat's fiery rage. The only reason the room hasn't burned down yet is evidently thanks to Deuce, who you can see is scrambling to extinguish the flames using his own spells.

For a moment, you can do nothing but watch in both fascination and horror at the scene in front of you. Of course, after a long day of non-stop events—from accidentally wandering into a fairytale world, being chased by monsters, and then meeting friends who are apparently from a past life—you should've known better than to assume that you'd be able to finally catch a break from all the excitement in your room. You begin to rethink thanking Riddle for generously providing you with a place to stay and instead consider if you should ask him to behead you after all.

That might seem like an exaggerated reaction, but even before you came in here, you already had the feeling that the events in your life are only going to pick up from here if the way your discussion with Riddle and Leona had gone was anything to go by.

----

"Reincarnation and past lives are complicated stuff," Leona drawled, lounged carelessly on one of the misshapen sofas in the sitting room. Across from you, Riddle's smile is strained and you even catch his eye twitching, but he remains seated. "But basically, not everyone can remember the memories of their past lives. Guess you can say that kinda makes us special."

Leona sighed, heavy and weary. He leaned over and skewered a piece of meat from the tray on the table with a claw.

"Makes for a special pain in the ass, if you ask me."

Leona nonchalantly popped the piece of meat into his mouth, unphased by the stern gaze Riddle had trained on him. All this "reincarnation" stuff was making your head spin, but if you understood it correctly, then you might be right to assume that these two (and maybe even the others they mentioned?) had some beef that went back to way before everyone in this room had been born. Riddle's eyes seemed to hold distaste beyond Leona disrespecting basic rules and etiquette and a curious (read: nosy) part of you was intrigued to know the source for it.

"As Leona had said," Riddle continued, his eyes lingering on Leona before settling on you as he faced you, "The ability to recall past lives isn't widespread. While we may encounter people who used to be affiliated with us once upon a time, fellow inheritors are set apart from others."

"So you and Leona are different from everyone else, and because of that you know that each other is different?" you mused, the gears turning in your head as you put this information together in between finger snacks.

The corner of Riddle's mouth lifted slightly and he nodded.

"Correct. Our own inheritor status allows us to identify fellow inheritors. It's how we're able to consistently be associated in other lifetimes."

"Unfortunately," Leona grumbled.

"You mentioned sensing my "essence" earlier," you said thoughtfully. "That's how you do it?"

Riddle nodded again.

"Leona can feel it too."

"Yeah." The lion man—beastman, you think Riddle had called him—yawned, stretching out over the sofa and settling his chin on the back of his hands like a lazy housecat. He peeked at you out of one eye as he continued, "I can feel your essence too, clear as day, but Riddle's sayin' you can't feel us or even remember us."

You shook your head helplessly and Leona grunted, closing his eyes as his pretty features twisted up in a scowl.

"Figures," he growled. "Tamer up and takes off without warning and when they show up again their inheritor doesn't know shit."

It was obvious that Leona was mad at you, and you can do nothing but shift in your seat awkwardly. Riddle was unexpectedly more level headed, but even his own expression was one of dismay and disappointment. You suddenly felt very put on the spot, and you hadn't even done anything! But you guess you technically did in a past life? Regardless, whether or not you did, it shouldn't mean you'd have to deal with all these problems that past-you left behind! You didn't sign up for this!

All you'd wanted to do was get yourself a fancy antique, not... whatever all this is.

Riddle suddenly spoke up, drawing your attention back to him. Leona remained still and quietly seething, but you saw his ear flick in the corner of your vision.

"There's no point in focusing on the drawbacks." There was resignation in Riddle's voice and a determination in his eyes. A part of you wanted to feel concerned for your own well-being, but another part of you also couldn't help but be stirred by his sudden resolve. "Tamer's inheritor may not remember their memories or be able to sense other inheritors, but we can sense them, can't we?"

A deep hum rumbled from Leona's throat. He stayed relaxed where he was, but the quirking of his ears conveyed his interest.

"True," the lion mumbled thoughtfully. "The herbivore doesn't remember us, but they're still an inheritor."

Slowly, his eyes drew open and he looked at you with a lidded gaze. Despite his casual, relaxed, drowsy air, his deep green eyes sparked with undeniable intellect you couldn't possibly fathom.

"Which means... we've got a chance."

----

Grim's next breath of fire breaks off into sputters of blue flame when you suddenly pick him up off the bed.

"Fgna!! Unhand me, henchman!" The cat yowls as he squirms in your hold. Your fingers slip on his silky fur, but you re-adjust your grip and continue to try wrestle him into submission. "Yrow! Let me teach that jerk a lesson!"

The aforementioned jerk retreats from the bed and sighs with relief. His demeanor quickly shifts to one of triumph at Grim fighting against you (and losing).

"Serves ya right, you stupid cat!" Ace laughs. "That's what you get for trying to pick fights with me."

"Grrr, I'm not a..." Grim's retorts trail off into a low growl as you gently run your fingers through the fur at the top of his head. He stops squirming and lets you hold him, but his glare still promises Ace a crispy death. You face him yourself and your eyes immediately land on the heart-shaped collar around his neck.

"Says the guy who got collared because he messed with a "stupid cat"."

Ace sputters a surprised protest. Next to him, Deuce snickers, and he shoots the other squire a glare.

"Grim, when I asked Riddle to let you use your magic again, I didn't mean to burn our room down!" you admonish, but your fingers continue stroking through the wayward cat's fur.

"Mya... I was just tryin' to chase out these intruders!" Grim proclaims with puffed-up fur. "They were hangin' out in here when I got back. I thought this was our room!"

You're not sure when exactly you adopted a stray monster cat, but you find that you don't mind the declaration that this room is in fact yours and Grim's. You guess you're a cat parent now.

"Now that you mention it, what are you guys doing here?" You narrow a quizzical glare at the two boys and Deuce holds up his hands defensively.

"Don't look at me!" He points to Ace. "It was Ace's idea to come in here. I was just making sure he doesn't break any more rules or steals anything."

"Like I'm the one who needs a babysitter," Ace scoffs. Deuce's glare goes ignored as he continues, "Alright, listen; I wasn't tryin' to steal anything, alright?"

You raise your eyebrow skeptically.

"It's the truth!" he retorts quickly. "I was just looking for a place to get away from His Royal Bossiness and the door was unlocked—so I didn't break in!—and since you seem kinda important for whatever reason—" as he says this, his gaze flits over you searchingly and he seems curious but also unimpressed, "—I figured that he wouldn't look in here and bother you."

You tilt your head at him. You don't think Riddle and Leona have told anyone about your "inheritor" status. Since the moment you arrived at the castle, Riddle had been occupied drilling answers out of you and Leona had acted as if just talking about the matter with you and Riddle had taken every ounce of effort in him so you can't imagine him bothering to tell anyone, nor can you think of a reason he'd want to.

"What makes you say that?" If Ace could sense inheritors like Riddle and Leona, you think he'd have said something. You don't normally come off as someone very important in your opinion, and since Ace himself had seen you run out of the woods like a headless chicken just today and seems sceptical of his own deduction, you're curious. Was there always something about yourself that you'd missed?

Ace cocks an eyebrow as if you'd just asked something so blatantly obvious.

"Because Riddle acted all weird when you showed up this morning?" Next to him, Deuce nods thoughtfully in agreement. "And let's not forget that important and expensive-looking box you've got sitting over there."

Ace gestures with a tilt of his head and your gaze follows to—

Oh, that.

"This thing?" You cross the room to a study area where, sitting unassumingly on the study table, is a worn, wooden chest decorated with intricate designs. Grim's ears perk up and he hops onto the table's surface to investigate it more closely.

"Oh yeah, I was wonderin' about this too." Grim eyes the carvings curiously and paws the latch. "You were carrying this around when I ran into you in the forest earlier." His eyes light up and his tail stands up into the air. "Is there treasure in it?!"

"There's gotta be, right?" Deuce's voice is eager and hopeful as he approaches with Ace, his eyes brightening like Grim's. "With how it looks?"

"Yeah, whether or not it has anything inside, the box itself has gotta cost mega marks." Ace's grin has a scheming feel to it that you don't like. "You could probably even score a crazy deal if you gave it to Leona or Riddle."

"Huh? Why?" You pick up the chest and turn it over in your hands. It looks just as old and dusty as when you first saw it. "I found it just lying around in an antique shop. Nobody else wanted it, so I got it for free."

Both boys spring up in surprise and startle you.

"You got it for free ?!" Deuce exclaims. "Man, luckyyy."

"Yeah, that's nuts!" Ace adds hysterically. "Anyone with half a brain cell knows that Great Seven relics are worth a fortune . Museums and historians all over the world are always scrounging around for 'em and sometimes even the Seven's inheritors themselves are willing to pay good money to get their hands on their old stuff. No way you got that thing for free!"

"It even looks like it might've even been from the original Seven's time," Deuce muses, his eyes trained on the chest with deep interest. All you can do is continue looking between them cluelessly.

"I... don't really get it." You look down at the ancient object in your hands that had ensnared your companions' attention. "It's pretty, sure, but... it's just a box."

Deuce looks at you in disbelief while Ace exaggeratedly heaves an exhausted sigh.

"You really don't know anything, huh?" he says in a very put-upon way, earning him an unappreciative expression from you in response. "Look at the carvings on the chest."

You lift the chest to your eyes. Grim rises up on his hind legs to get a look himself. You trace your fingers carefully over the impressions in the wood where you can make out the most distinct shapes, just like you had what seemed like forever ago.

The chest had been tucked at the back of the shelf, hidden behind several other dusty, old-looking antiques. When you'd pulled it out and blew off the dust coating the top, the particles seemed to glitter in the sunlight streaming through the window.

Immediately, your eyes were caught by the detailed carvings on the chest. Following the dips and curves in the wood, chiseled with a precise practice and attention to detail you could never hope to comprehend, you manage to parse out the figures that'd been shaped so carefully:

The first of them was a queen donning a massive gown and a small crown. Next to her was a prowling lion etched with scars. Standing in front of it was what looked like a woman with curling tentacles for legs and bedside her, a tall man in a turban holding a staff styled to look like a snake. Beside them was a second queen, dressed in an impressive gown adorned with peacock feathers. Across from her stood a flaming robed man and finally, on the center of the chest; an elegant, horned woman with dragon wings.

"I bought that during an estate sale years ago," the store owner had said when he saw you looking at it. "It has all these characters on it but seems so much older than when these movies came out. I've never been able to get the lock on it open, though. If you can do it, you can have it and whatever's inside."

"See? It's the Great Seven." Ace points to each of the figures one-by-one. "Here's the Queen of Hearts. There's the King of Beasts, and then the Sea Witch, the Tactician of the Sands, the Fairest Queen, the King of the Underworld, and—"

"Ooh, I know, I know!" Grim hopped up and down excitedly. "The Thorny Fairy!"

"It's actually the Thorn Fairy," Ace corrects with a mocking grin. "But it looks like you've got a brain after all under all that fur."

Grim begins to growl at him, but you smooth down his anger and the hairs on his back with your hand.

"Anyways, yeah. A chest like this that has old magic on it has gotta have been important to the Seven in some way," Ace finishes. He looks at the chest more closely with a thoughtful expression.

"Too bad we can't open it," Deuce sighs. "I'd kill to know—"

Click.

You would've laughed at the way the boys' eyes were bulging out of their heads if you weren't so confused.

"What?"

"Wh— What do you mean, "What"?!" Ace screeches. "How did you just—?"

"Um, you just push it?" To emphasize your point, you click it closed and open it again. Deuce shakes his head in bewilderment.

"No way. That can't be it," he says in a befuddled tone. "It's an enchanted chest! It can't just..."

You shrug. "Dunno. That's just how it works." You reach inside the chest and pull out its sole contents. Or, well, content .

"Whoa." The boys gasp as you carefully place down a large, leather-bound book on the table. Keeping it closed is a single thick strap with its own latch.

"That definitely looks important." Ace leans over to pick up the book and get a closer look.

"Careful! It's really old," you say warily.

"Gotta wonder what's in...side..." He grunts as he pulls on the latch, but it doesn't give.

"Here, let me try." Deuce walks over to take the book from him, but Ace pulls it away.

"I've got it!" He continues to strain with the latch unsuccessfully as Deuce keeps reaching for it.

"You're not pulling hard enough!"

"Yeah I am!"

"Let it go, Ace!"

"No, you let go!"

"Hey, give my henchman back their book!" Grim yowls from the table, blue sparks jumping from between his bared teeth.

The boys continue to bicker as they grapple for the book, grabbing and pulling at it in an increasingly rough fashion. You heave a sigh and push between them, snatching the book out of their hands.

"What are you guys, 12?" The boys once again gape at you as you push down on the book's latch and, just like the chest's latch, it easily gives way beneath your thumb. You hand it back over with an eye roll, but you can't help the amused smile that's paired with it. "Seriously, you can cast magic spells but you can't work out simple physics?"

A slight hint of pink tints the boys' cheeks as Ace snatches the book back from you bashfully.

"It's not that! Maybe it's just... Maybe the book likes you, that's it!" Deuce says with such conviction that you're actually not sure if he means it or not. Ace snickers under his breath. He opens his mouth to say something, but his expression morphs to one of puzzlement. He flips a few of the book's yellowed pages, eyes glossing over the inked words completely before he speaks up,

"It's blank."

" What? " you say in a surprised gasp. Deuce leans over to look as you take the book back from Ace. You feel your entire body slacken at a release of tension you hadn't realised had even gathered in your limbs when you have the book in your hands again. You see for yourself that it was still filled with the scribbles of handwritten words as it had the last time you opened it. "Very funny. You really scared me for a bit there."

Ace, not for the first time that day, unabashedly looks at you like you're crazy.

"Huh? There's literally nothing there," he says again, his eyes flicking from the pages to you as you once more look at him with confusion.

Deuce lifts the pages to look at the ones beyond. "Yeah. It's completely blank, from what I can see."

"What?!"

This entire day, ever since you walked into this magical world, has been a bombardment of unfamiliarity and perplexity and questions one after the other, but you don't think you've felt as mystified as you do now—not even when you saw a walking, talking, fire-breathing cat.

Because, on the pages in your hands, right before your very eyes, are lines and lines of words and paragraphs, all together building coherent messages that in turn tell of the complex, captivating correspondence between two people within the now-yellowed pages of a single book.

"I..." you turn your head to look between Ace and Deuce. "Nothing?"

Deuce shakes his head while Ace shrugs.

"Nothing," the latter says.

"Myah?" Grim scampers across the floor and climbs up your legs onto your shoulders to get a look himself. You examine him closely as he peers at the pages with his wide blue eyes. He tilts his head, but unlike Ace and Deuce his eyes are focused when they look at the pages. "What're you two talking about?! There's a ton of words on there!"

The two squires exchange mirroring puzzled expressions before seeming to come to a sort of conclusion as they both look back down at the book with wonder.

"That solves it then," Ace says with finality. "This book's enchanted."

----

Enchanted. Well, at least you aren't crazy.

Your eyes travel over the collection of words etched into the paper; unassuming and unremarkable, except for maybe perhaps the unusual way the contents are written.

There are two writers. Not only is it said explicitly in the first pages that there are two writers, but also in the writing itself. The script in the book—written in the form of letters, as if the two people were talking to each other this way—has two distinct handwritings and speech styles. One of the writers was more formal and eloquent, their words written in a complex flowery cursive, while in contrast their correspondent's language was more callous and casual and their handwriting mirrored it; less perfect and more crude and uneven.

There was a strange sort of life in this book that you hadn't expected when you had first pulled it out of the chest. Initially, you had expected a sort of journal or historical record, which you're sure can be interesting, but what it actually possessed was something much more beyond your expectations, allowing you not only a glimpse into the long-forgotten lives of these two individuals, but also their friendship. There was just something so compelling about it; slowly learning the characters of and connection between these two old-timey pen pals that you couldn't have the privilege of being privy to otherwise.

And, apparently, you're being given the magical privilege of seeing.

You would never have known that the book was enchanted if Ace and Deuce hadn't looked at it. Now, beyond the lives of the two people tucked within its pages, you wonder what else it's hiding. Why is it enchanted? Why can't Ace and Deuce see it? Why can you and Grim see it?

Most importantly... what was it doing in an old antique shop in your magicless world?

You ponder these thoughts late into the night, even until Grim had gotten too tired to entertain your musings and had fallen asleep, curled up on one of the pillows. Ace and Deuce had long left, but not without convincing you to share the hidden contents of the book with them in the morning.

You'd gotten deep into reading after that, but as engrossing the conversations between the two writers were, you'd barely made a dent in the book's contents and there didn't seem to be a single clue in sight as to the magical properties of the book itself.

A powerful yawn forcing its way out of you finally compels you to look at the bedside clock. It reveals to you that it is in fact the ungodly hour of 1 AM and going into 2 AM.

"Shoot... I'm gonna die tomorrow, aren't I?" you murmur to yourself, remembering that the other inheritors were planning to take you somewhere to possibly resolve your little amnesia situation.

The smart thing to do would be to turn in, but just as you're about to close the book, the page underneath your right thumb suddenly folds inwards. Startled, you pull your hand back, and the book erupts into a cacophony of fluttering pages. Hundreds of pages and words bypass your vision in a blur until suddenly the flipping stops, leaving the book open on the surfaces of two empty pages near its end.

Except, it's not completely empty.

At the top of the left page, slowly etching itself into existence before your bewildered gaze, are words.

Like one of the writers', the writing is neat; the letters almost perfect imitations of each other, except with less swirls. Instead of a full essay of words though, the ghostly writing only forms a single sentence, but it still sends your mind whirling with thoughts.

Are you there?

Source

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@danashehab has been fundraising since may and is just over €15,000 away from their goal l. as stated in the screenshot people are starting to believe the rafah crossing will open so it’s important to make sure everyone has the funds in case they are allowed to evacuate.

thee shehab family consists of dana (13), sahar (14), mona (9), malak (5), yehya (1.5), fahed, (38), reem (32), and grandmother mona (60). they have been shadowbanned and deleted a few times. you can also find this family at @monashehab

EDIT AUG 24:

The family has had to raise their goal to cover their extended family’s evacuation fees since they are unable to make a new GFM.

The new goal is €85,000.

gofundme.com

Donate to Help Sahar and Her Family to Evacuate Gaza, organized by Ahmed Shamia

My name is Sahar Shehab. I am 14 years old from Gaza . I ask you for urgent h… Ahmed Shamia needs your support for Help Sahar and Her Famil

[vetted]

May i ask if luke and percy are the possible love interests in waking up in pjo or im reading the lines wrong? I love your work! Thank you for the works u put out <33

Thank you for reading! I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far :)

It depends on the perspective. I think from Luke or Percy’s perspective, yeah, they totally consider (Y/N) as a love interest.

(And I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but I think I’ve hinted at it, but because (Y/N) is a fertility god everyone around them gets a little i faulted with them. It’s purely instinctual, like pheromones and vibes and body chemistry, nothing anyone can explain with science. But everyone has a crush on them. And it’s really confusing because they’re a child of hades.)

But for (Y/N) I do feel like it’s a little different. For one they’ve been alive for so long. Literal lifetimes worth of experiences. So for them, Percy and Luke and Annabeth and Clarisse are literal children. They feel like they have to take care of them and protect them, and they are friends, but I’m not sure if seeing them romantically is possible. But they’re also a child, and being a child physically affects your mental state too. Especially when you’re surrounded by beings that have been alive for centuries. Much longer than you have.

So it’s really confusing for them, and I don’t think they really know how they feel.

I accidentally took the most threatening photo of Lenny.......

ᡣ𐭩 DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: seven months after his defection, you run into dazai osamu by sheer chance. you know in your heart what you should do—traitors are to be disposed of, regardless of any previous relationship you might've had with them... but can you bring yourself to do what must be done? or will you be more driven by the questions you desperately need answered?

(wordcount: 7.1k; fem!reader, pm!reader, angsty (i promiseeeee i have some happier ones coming up with pm!reader and pmzai), alcoholism, dazai is in a particularly bad mental state)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: this one was suchhhh a doozy. the third installment of my pm!reader & pm!dazai universe, this is why i had to retcon he's my collar because originally pm!reader didn't see him at all during the 4 years but i got the idea for this fic like 2 ?? weeks ago and it was too good to not use - tomorrow i think i'll put up the masterlist for it so you guys can see the chronology and planned installments

Against all odds, you run into Dazai Osamu seven months after his defection.

You should put a bullet in his skull. You watch absently from the mouth of the alley as the ex-Port Mafia executive groans, trying to push himself to his feet only to crash back onto the pavement, blood smeared across his face from a crooked nose and split lip, bile pooled on the ground where he’d landed.

Gross, you think, lip curling up in disgust as his lithe fingers smear through the vomit, blunt nails scraping against the pavement as he attempts to push himself up again but fails. His shoulders are heaving, breath slow and labored as he lets out another wretched sound, crumpling back to the ground. 

You click the safety off of your gun, pulling it out of your pocket as you quietly make your way deeper into the alley, over to where he’s still struggling to get off the ground. He doesn’t even acknowledge your presence until he hits the ground hard again after nearly making it to his feet. This time, he falls onto his shoulder and gasps in pain as he rolls onto his back, blinking up blearily through glazed-over eyes that can hardly focus on you or the gun pointed at his head.

You should just get it over with, pull the trigger, and leave the body for cleanup to handle. It’d be a better fate than he deserves, cleaner and quicker than he’d ever give himself, and not even half as painful as it’ll be when the Port Mafia inevitably get their hands back on him. 

You’d be sparing him, really; it would be a mercy.

And it’s what is expected of you. Letting a traitor as high profile as Dazai Osamu go free when you have a clear chance to execute him would be more than enough to have you stripped of your rank and thrown into the torture chambers, body dumped in the river when the Port Mafia is done punishing you. 

But still, for some reason, your finger hesitates as you move to pull the trigger. 

“You…” His voice is so slurred that you can hardly make out coherent words, but you use his words as an excuse to bide even more time, curious to see what he’s going to say. You can smell the whiskey on him from where you’re standing, his skin is paler than it usually is, and you notice, idly, that the bandages on his right eye are gone and you wonder when he chose to shed them. “You’re not real.”

Your eye twitches in irritation. 

You pull the trigger. 

If he was sober, he would have expected the reaction from you and dodged the bullet, but he’s not sober, so his eyes fly open in shock as the bullet grazes his ear and embeds itself in the pavement next to his head. He doesn’t look any more sobered up by the pain, which you suppose is a testament to how drunk he really is, but he does look significantly more confused. 

“You shot me,” he says, pale lips parted as he stares up at you—too pale, you notice absently, brows furrowing a bit as you try to consider what to do.

“Yeah,” you say, voice rough with irritation. “Real enough for you?”

Dazai blinks, you don’t even think your words are registering and you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. 

Get it over with, you tell yourself again, this time positioning your gun over his forehead. A clean kill. You won’t move it to the side at the last minute again. You remind yourself that this is what he deserves—he’s a traitor to the Port Mafia, to you. Killing him now would be a mercy compared to what the Port Mafia would do to him, compared to what he’d do to himself. 

He stares up at you, brown eyes wide and glassy. He parts his lips to speak but you can’t give yourself the same excuse; you don’t wait for his words this time. 

You pull the trigger again.

But Dazai is moving. He rolls over onto his side trying to push himself back to his feet and the bullet lodges right into the ground where his head had once been lying. You stare down at it in disbelief, gun falling to your side as your fingers start to feel a bit numb and clunky, breath catching as you realize what you’d almost just done—what you tried to do. 

Dazai makes it to his knees and he tries to reach out for you but you step back out of reach. His brows furrow before he keels over again, dry heaving now—there’s enough bile around him for you to realize he’s probably thrown up everything in his stomach and then some. He leans against the wall, the glassiness of his eyes spilling over his cheeks as he continues to dry heave but your gaze is still trained down on the ground where the bullet is embedded in the ground where his head had just been laying. 

You just tried to-

You think you’re the one who feels sick now. The dinner you’d had out with Chuuya and Kouyou rises to the back of your throat as you take another step away from Dazai. Your vision blurs as your gaze turns to him again, but instead of the tattered and vomit-stained clothes he’s wearing now, he’s back in the dark suit you’re accustomed to, crumpled on the ground still, but not because he’s drunk because he’s been wounded on a mission that he took on so you wouldn’t have to. 

You just tried to kill Dazai.

Dazai, who’s been your closest friend since the two of you were sixteen and at the center of the most violent conflict to rock Yokohama’s foundations. Entirely inseparable, forever entwined since the moment the two of you met; the type of instant click that most people could only ever dream of experiencing in their lives. 

You almost killed Dazai.

Dazai, who promised to put a bullet in Ace’s head if the man ever came near you again after he found out the newly promoted executive had insinuated putting one of his collars on you during a confrontation between the two of you. He knew that even he would face consequences for threatening another executive, that he would face even more if he dared to follow through with his threat, but he didn’t care and he had every intention of following through if it meant keeping you safe.

You would have killed Dazai if not for sheer luck. 

Dazai, who used to kiss you with trembling fingers and quivering lips, because for as much as his reputation as the Demon Prodigy had spread throughout the country, he was still just a teenage boy who’d never had his first kiss until the two of you got drunk on champagne after a successful mission when he made the mistake of admitting to you that he’s never kissed anyone before. The two of you’d spent the entire night giggling between chaste kisses, getting through just about two bottles of champagne before you started throwing up.

He held back your hair and laughed at you as you leaned over the toilet, miserable. But he was gentle with you in a way that Dazai Osamu is never gentle with anyone, fingers carding through your hair, rubbing absent circles on your back to soothe you as you choked over sobs and gags. 

Then there’s you. You, who not only a moment ago, looked down at him with your lip curling up in disgust, unable to hold your grimace at the way he laid in his own vomit. You lifted the barrel of your gun in his direction not once, but twice, and you pulled the trigger not once, but twice.

When you showed vulnerability to him, he showed you a type of tenderness that everyone thought was long lost to the notorious Demon Prodigy. 

When he finally shows vulnerability to you, you only show him cruelty in response.

You try to convince yourself that it’s different, that the circumstances are different now but the words ring hollow in your head, taking no root, because you think the circumstances shouldn't matter. This is Dazai. Dazai. There are no circumstances that justify executing him.

Your head spins and you take another step away, you don’t know where you dropped your gun and you don’t want to know. You don’t want to look at it. You don’t want to touch it. You’ll send someone else after it later. You blink, and for a moment, you can visualize what almost happened: you can see Dazai motionless on the ground, blood pooling around his head and a bullet wound piercing through his forehead. You gag, pressing your hand to your mouth as you force back the bile that nearly comes up. 

“Wait,” Dazai garbles out, pushing off the wall toward you but he propels himself right into the ground again, face first, scraping his cheek on the concrete. “Don’t leave again.”

Again? The word nearly pulls you out of your daze, the bitterness that’s poisoned you for seven months returning with a vengeance as your eyes focus on him. 

Dazai, who left you without a word or a warning. Not even the slightest goodbye. He abandoned you like you meant nothing to him. 

“I need to-” he gags again as he pushes himself to his knees. He tries to reach forward again but his whole body sways, eyes half-rolling back as he tries to steady himself, on the verge of passing out. “I need to tell you this time. I need to-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, slumping back over onto the ground unconscious—in a puddle of his own blood and vomit, naturally. The logical part of you knows you should just leave him there. You’re already playing with fire by not executing him on the spot, but you also know if you leave him here, it’ll be as good as a death sentence. If he doesn’t die on his own from alcohol poisoning, then he’ll certainly be found by the Port Mafia patrols. You think Dazai is a fool for drinking so much so deep in Port Mafia territory, for not being careful enough to make sure he didn’t wander out in the open. 

He should know better. 

He does know better.

A part of you wonders if it was intentional, if he thought that he’d stumble into Port Mafia territory and he’d run into someone eager to lay claim to the fame of being Dazai Osamu’s executioner.

If that’s the case, he nearly got his wish—that thought alone almost sends you spiraling over the edge again, having to shove away more nausea. You force all thoughts of the Port Mafia and betrayal to the back of your mind as you fall to your knees next to him, gathering him up into your arms and pushing yourself back to your feet. He curls into you instinctively, even while unconscious, smaller than you remember, smearing blood and bile all over your suit. Your grip on him tightens, a shaky breath escaping your lips when you realize that this is the first time you’ve touched him since the night he left. 

You shake your head to clear your mind, desperately trying to focus. You can’t stay out in the open with him for long otherwise you’ll risk someone seeing you with him, and that’ll open a can of worms you’re not prepared to deal with.

You’ll drop him off somewhere safe, and then you’ll get back to base.

That’s all.

That is not all.

The safehouse in Sakae that the two of you would run to whenever you wanted to avoid Mori is just how you left it the last time you spent the night with him there over half a year ago. One of his jackets is still draped over the couch, one of your ties thrown haphazardly on the ground—you remember the night vividly, the way he smiled against your lips as he lead you into the back bedroom, stumbling over each other and fumbling with buttons as you tried to undress the other while walking to the room, high off the success of a mission that everyone had said would fail because the odds were so stacked against the two of you. Even Chuuya had laughed in your face when you said you’d take the mission, but you knew so long as Dazai had your back on it, it would work out in your favor. 

He’s woken up several times, you don’t even know what he’s saying in his incoherent babbles. Every time he wakes back up, he’s calling for you, stumbling out of the bed you laid him in after getting him cleaned up and crashing to the ground before he reaches the hall. It’s irritating, you have to go back to help him back into the bed every time and he starts babbling again, passing out before you can figure out what he’s saying. You finally had to move yourself into the back bedroom with him so he didn’t try to get up again.

You don’t know why you’re still here. 

You lean your forehead against your hand as you sit on the bed next to where he’s lying, one leg tucked beneath you while the other hangs over the side. You tell yourself it’s because you don’t want him to get up drunk trying to look for you and then crack his head open, but it’s a weak excuse because Dazai Osamu is not your issue anymore. It’s not your job to watch over him when he gets shit-faced drunk, it’s not your job to patch him up when he gets hurt, it’s not your job to look out for him. 

He left you, not vice versa, You don’t owe him anything. He lost that privilege when he betrayed you. Fuck the Port Mafia, he betrayed you when he left without a word. You deserved better than that. You deserved a goodbye. You don’t owe him shit. You should leave him here to rot in his own vomit and blood but-

But you won’t.

Your gaze drifts back over to him. He’s still out cold—cleaner now, because it had never just been ‘get him somewhere safe and then go back to the base,’ as soon as you got him into the safehouse you wrangled him into the bathroom to clean him up. He was uncharacteristically pliant as you manhandled him into the shower. You suppose it was because he was unconscious for half of it but even for the moments where he was awake and blearily blinking the water out of his eyes, looking up at you through wet bangs with those stupid big eyes of his, as if he was still unsure if you were actually there.

Instinctively, you reach out to brush the back of your knuckles against his swollen, split lip, wondering if it was just from him being clumsy while drunk or if he’d managed to piss someone off at a bar. Both are equally likely—Dazai is a rather cantankerous drunk when he’s alone and drunk on whiskey, and even after cleaning him up and dousing him in soap to get out the reeking scent of his vomit out from where it’d sunken into his skin, shoving a toothbrush into his mouth to brush his teeth and scrubbing so they don’t rot from the bile, you can still smell the whiskey on his breath.

You wonder how much he drank. His skin is still pale, his breath shuddered, and he’s shivering even though you wrapped him in three thick blankets. Some degree of alcohol poisoning, that’s for sure. You tell yourself that’s why you’re not leaving—you don’t want to leave before you’re sure he’s pulled through the worst of it. You’re not going to admit to yourself that you don’t want to leave because you’re worried it’ll be the last time you see him for real this time. 

You hesitate right before your knuckles brush his skin, swallowing thickly before you withdraw your hand back into your lap, eyes sliding shut as you sigh.

What the hell are you doing?

If anyone from the Port Mafia knew what you were doing right now, you’d be hunted down right alongside him, branded as a traitor and sentenced to death. Chuuya would kill you if he knew what you were doing right now—and not because you betrayed the Port Mafia by helping Dazai, instead because you’re a fucking idiot. You’ve done a lot of stupid things in your life, but this might take the cake for the stupidest, sticking your neck out for someone who didn’t even care enough to tell you goodbye. 

You rub your forehead, tired. You try to summon the anger you felt when you first found out he betrayed the Port Mafia from Mori and Chuuya—from the hot fury you felt in the direct aftermath, screaming and breaking everything you could get your hands on as you cursed his name and burned everything he left in your apartment to the cold rage you felt when you finally calmed down, bitter and lonely and betrayed by the one person you never thought would betray you—but you can’t. And you think it’s pathetic because what use is all of that anger if you can’t utilize it when the reason for it is lying right before you?

If Chuuya were here right now, he’d drag you out by the hair and leave Dazai to suffer on his own. You left your phone in the kitchen after turning off your location, because he was already buzzing incessantly wondering where you are. You’d told him that you wanted to stop by one of the fishing ports in Kanazawa to check on a small weapons shipment that should’ve arrived earlier in the night before heading back to your shared apartment—you’d moved in with him after Dazai’s betrayal. He made the executive decision himself, not giving you a choice in the matter because he realized that you living on your own in the apartment that Dazai had practically moved into with you was not conducive to you healing from his betrayal.

Plus, you think he was lonely too without Dazai around anymore, but he’d never admit that.

You should’ve been back an hour ago. You’re sure that he’s getting suspicious and it’s only a matter of time before he tries to track you down. You don’t think he knows about this safe house in particular, Dazai had threatened you with piling up mission reports onto you if you told him about this one, but you wouldn’t be surprised if Chuuya learned about it through other means—somehow, he always seems to know everything. 

You sigh again, heavier this time as you try to figure out what to do. You know what you should do, but you also know you’re not going to do that. Your gaze drags back over to him and your breath catches when you realize he’s awake again, bleary brown eyes trained on you, brows furrowed. 

His lips part to speak again and you tense, waiting for whatever he has to say, unsure if you’ll even understand it.

“You… came with me. You never come with me. Are you… really here?” 

Even though his eyes are still glazed over and muddled, his voice is less garbled than it was before. You think that’s a good sign, but even so, you let out an even heavier sigh, this one more irritated, and a bit confused because you don’t even know what that means: you never come with me. 

“Yes, Dazai,” you say sharply, but then you let out a puff of air. The same memories that hit you before coming right back to you, remembering all of the nights Dazai would stay up having to take care of you, patient in a way that he never was with anybody. You soften your voice a bit as you say, “Yes. I’m here.”

Dazai looks at you like he doesn’t believe you. He blinks once slowly, then his brows furrow deeper and his lips turn downward.

“You don’t call me Dazai.” He speaks the accusation slowly, as if to make himself sound more coherent, but you can still hear the clear slur in his voice. “You never-”

You turn away because if you don’t, you think you might lose your temper. He’s drunk, you remind yourself, but he’s still ripping open wounds that never properly healed, because how dare he expect you to still call him by his given name after everything. It had taken months for you to get used to calling him Dazai again and-

You feel your chest start to cave in again and your throat spasms. Your eyes flutter shut and god, you want to hate him. You thought you did hate him, you convinced yourself of it in all of the bitter rage and acidic betrayal you’ve felt the past seven months but now that you’re confronted with him again, you know that it was never hate. You could never hate Dazai Osamu. You'd just missed him so terribly that the pain was easy to mistake as hate; love and hate has always been a treacherously thin line, and Dazai more than anyone else wavers on either side of it.

Your heart feels like it’s about to leap from your chest and crawl right back to him, you have to physically place your hand over your chest as if to hold it in place, to make sure the traitorous thing can’t go back to the very man that tore it shreds. You force yourself to breathe, in and out, steady, trying to settle down. 

This was a mistake, you realize, this was a mistake. 

Just as you’re about to push yourself up, you feel lithe fingers curl around your arm. You freeze, not even daring to glance back at Dazai. You can hear him pushing the covers off of him as he crawls closer to you, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. His movements are unsteady, and you can’t bring yourself to push him off of you when you feel him slump against your back.

His weight is familiar, comforting in a way that it shouldn’t be. If you close your eyes, you can imagine that you’re back at the Port Mafia base seven months ago and Dazai is draping himself across your back, complaining about being overworked by Mori and trying to convince you to take over his paperwork. You’d have to drag him halfway across the base trying to get to your office with his dead weight hanging onto you, you remember all of the wary stares from your subordinates as they try not to let their gaze linger on the two of you but let their curiosity get the best of them regardless.

You hate that you don’t push him off right away, that you’re letting yourself indulge in his touch again. You’ve moved on from this—from him. It’s been seven months. You’re over all of this.

“You… understand, don’t you?” 

You barely hear the words muffled against your back, but you do and you can’t help but stiffen at them. He shifts against you, fingers biting into your skin as he pulls himself up a bit more to bury his face in the crook of your neck, arms looped around your waist as he leans all of his weight onto your back. You can feel his breath warm and shuddered against your neck, making your hair stand on end, and his hands are limp in your lap now, fingers brushing against the material of the clean slacks you’d pulled on after getting Dazai showered.

It’s all so familiar that it could make you sick.

“How could I?” you ask bitterly, even though you know you shouldn’t take out your resentment on him while he’s so drunk; he probably won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway. There’s no point, you’ll just be wasting your energy.

His arms tighten around you, breath hitching against your skin. “I had to, Odasaku-”

The noise you let out is such a sharp scoff that you can feel Dazai flinch behind you. You almost shove him off of you but you refrain, taking in a deep breath to calm yourself down. You never really had any feelings about Odasaku—he was always just there, you heard about him from Dazai occasionally and he seemed pleasant enough the few times you encountered him—but after all of this, you can’t help but hold a grudge against him, irrationally blaming him for Dazai leaving you.

“Odasaku wasn’t your only friend,” you say tightly. “You had me. Chuuya. You-”

“It’s not the same,” Dazai protests, clinging to you as if he hadn’t just driven a knife right through your back into your heart. 

This time you do shove him off, barely sparing him a glance as he lets out a surprised yelp, sprawling back onto the bed. You push away the mistiness that threatens your eyes, breathing in and out slowly to try to keep yourself calm. It’s not the same, you repeat his words, bitterness poisoning your blood and clouding your head. What the fuck does that even mean? You know logically you should take his words with a grain of salt, that he’s so drunk he probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but you just feel so angry that it’s hard for you to keep that in mind. 

You hear him scrambling behind you: a thump as he hits the floor hard and then a rush of movement as he pushes himself to his knees. His fingers curl around your ankle before you can get further away and you have a half a mind to kick him off of you and leave.

You don’t.

“Don’t leave,” he pleads. He drags himself to his knees, pulling at your pants and it takes all of your self-control to not look back down at him. “I didn’t-it came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?” you ask him, even though you by all means should not even bother to hear his shitty explanation.

“I just-I didn’t mean it like that.” You’ve never heard Dazai’s voice crack before, but it does now. “Don’t leave. I miss you.”

“You miss me?” you spit out, and you finally turn to look down at him—a mistake, of course, because he’s on his knees in front of you, looking up at you with those stupid, big brown eyes and you almost let your anger fizzle away at the sight of it. He’s drunk, you remind yourself again, but it doesn’t stop you from snapping at him. “You left me, Dazai. You have no right to miss me.”

“But I do.” His fingers fumble for your hand, grabbing one of yours with both of his. “I miss you so much, I think about you all the time.”

His lashes flutter, fingers brushing along your forearm as he presses his lips to your knuckles and then to your pulse point before leaning forward to rest his forehead on your thigh. You can’t even look at him, keeping your eyes trained on the wall, because your lashes feel wet and heavy and you know that you’ll give into him if you look at him now and he doesn’t deserve that.

“I couldn’t go to you before I left,” Dazai whispers and he sounds oddly coherent now even though you know he’s not. “I would’ve asked you to come with me.”

For some reason, that hurts worse than if he’d just admitted he didn’t care enough to say goodbye. Because what does that even mean, I would’ve asked you to come with me, would that have been so bad? He didn’t want you with him? Why wouldn’t he have wanted you with him? If you had left, he would’ve been the first person you ran to, begging him to come with you.

“How terrible that would’ve been,” you say, and you’re proud that your voice remains cold and steady, not betraying the hurt ripping through your chest.

“I wouldn’t have been able to handle it,” he says, voice breaking over a hiccup. “Odasaku had just died and-”

He cuts himself, and you dare to look down at him when you feel him lift his face from your thigh. You regret it immediately. Glassy, glazed-over eyes beg for you to understand, and you scare yourself because you want to understand when he shouldn’t even matter to you anymore. You’ve moved on. You have. It’s been seven months. He left you without a word. So why do you care so much for what he has to say right now?

“You wouldn’t have come with me,” he says, shaking his head. “You would’ve said no. You never would have chosen me over the Mafia.”

Your lips part to deny the allegations, to say that of course, you would have come with him, but the words fizzle out before they even form on your tongue because-

“You can’t even bring yourself to deny it, can you?” Dazai asks, and although he sounds more cogent now, you can’t help but notice that he’s starting to look sick again, the back of his throat making that faint clicking sound it always makes when he’s about to throw up. “You never would have chosen me.”

You would choose Dazai Osamu over a lot of things. You would choose to save his life before yours if put in the position, and you would choose to trust him over anyone else in the whole world. You’d follow him to the depths of hell and deep into the shadows, until your blood is black and corrupted and you’re entirely irredeemable, but you can’t follow him into the light. 

You can’t choose him if it means betraying the Port Mafia. With his defection, the two have become mutually exclusive: Dazai or the Port Mafia, there’s no way of having both anymore. The boy you’ve come to love or the only home you’ve ever known. The only family you’ve ever had. A shitty family maybe, but a family nonetheless. If you don’t belong with the Port Mafia, you don’t belong anywhere on this earth, and as someone who’s always had a desperate fear of alienation, the thought makes you sick.

You stare at him, throat tight, and then you say, colder than you intend for it to come across, “... If that’s really why you didn’t say goodbye, then I’m glad you didn’t put me in that position.”

The expression that crosses Dazai’s face is something caught between ruin and shock—and you can’t help but wonder if he held out hope, thinking maybe he was wrong in his assumptions. That there had been a chance that you might’ve chosen him if he’d given you the option. That he’s been living his life in the what-ifs for the past seven months and now that he’s finally gotten the chance to bare his heart to you, you’ve crushed it.

Your chest tightens, your throat spasms and it takes all your self-control to not immediately take back the words, regret flooding you so intensely that it nearly makes you physically stumble. Because it’s true, you never would have picked Dazai over the Mafia, but he didn’t have to know that—especially not now, when he’s drunk and vulnerable in a way that he’s never allowed himself to be before.

You hope, for his sake and your conscience, that he doesn’t remember any of this in the morning.

His lips part to respond again but his hand is flying to his mouth instantly, doubling over, and you’re cursing, reaching for the trash bin you’d brought into the bedroom and falling to your knees next to him, helping him kneel upright and holding the trash bin in front of him as he starts gagging again.

“I would’ve-” He’s still trying to talk through the bouts of nausea, gasping over air, body trembling as he leans into you for balance.

You don’t want to hear what he has to say.

“Dazai-”

“I would’ve chosen you,” he finally forced out, voice breaking over the words and you’re not sure if it’s a sob or another heave that escapes his lips as he continues. “If the positions were reversed, I would’ve chosen you.”

Oh.

The words echo in your head so loudly that it makes you want to cover your ears even though you know it won’t do anything. You want to accuse him of lying, tell him that he’s full of shit and just trying to make you feel guilty, but you don’t think he’s capable of lying right now and you don’t think this is anything Dazai would have ever admitted to you if he was sober. He guards his heart more carefully than anyone you’ve ever met—in the two and a half years you’d known him, he never admitted he cared about you. You knew it just from how he treated you, but you think he might’ve ripped his own tongue out before actually admitting it.

You wrap an arm around him as his whole body shudders through another gag and he tries to push you off—angry, upset, you don’t know what he might be feeling because you’ve never seen him like this before—but your arm only tightens around him and Dazai crumbles.

He heaves again, clutching the small garbage can to his face as he throws up all of the water you’d managed to get in him before he passed out earlier. Tears spill over his cheeks, his face is pale and his lashes are fluttering again, on the verge of passing back out. You swallow thickly as he leans into you, letting him collapse into your chest after he’s finished vomiting.

“Will-” he tries to say, but his voice is slurred and weak. He’s desperately trying to stay conscious, you can tell, but he’s fighting a losing battle. “Will you be here in the morning?”

No.

You don’t want to say it, you think you’ve done enough damage for the night, but there’s no need. As soon as the words leave his mouth, Dazai is slumping over unconscious, head laying limp on your arm, lashes brushing his cheek. You sigh as your grip around him tightens before you adjust him in his arms to carry him back into the bed, laying him comfortably beneath the covers.

You don’t linger for long after that. After another hour or two passes and Dazai doesn’t wake up again, you make your way back into the bedroom, raising your hand to his face to brush away the dark locks in his eyes before cupping his cheek. Even in his sleep, he leans into your touch, and it makes your chest feel so agonizingly tight that you think you might be having a heart attack.

You lean down to press your lips to his forehead, to his nose, and then to his lips, indulging yourself one last time. Your forehead rests against his as you consider your words—there are a million things you’d like to say to him before you leave, but you don’t have nearly enough time to get them all off of your chest.

Instead, you tell him softly, “I hope you don’t remember any of this in the morning.” You don’t move your hand from where it’s caressing his cheek as you stand straight again, thumb drawing absent circles on his skin. Your voice is thick with emotion, eyes welling with tears that don’t spill over. “We’ll meet again one day.”

Dazai wakes up the next morning with a hangover so bad that he thinks he might die.

He sits up in bed and is instantly groaning, hand flying to his forehead as his brain throbs inside of his skull. He needs to figure out where he is—the last thing he remembers is…

The bar?

His eyes slide shut as he tries to think, but it only makes his head hurt more. He flops back onto the bed, arms splayed out. He still feels nauseous, he can feel it rising to his throat and he desperately does not want to throw up again—it’s one thing vomiting when he’s too drunk to remember, it’s an entirely different thing to vomit while he’s sober and conscious. 

Dazai thinks he might rather die. 

He lets out a heavy sigh as he begs the nausea to go away, breathing in and out deeply. He lifts his hand to brush a lock of hair away from where it’s tickling his ear and-

Ouch.

Dazai’s eyes fly open again, confused now, as he rips his hand away from where he’d touched his ear to stare up at the ceiling. He’s used to waking up with odd injuries after a night of blacking out at whatever bar will still have him, but his ear is a particularly strange place to be wounded, isn’t it?

Driven by curiosity now, he forces himself into a sitting position, and it’s only when he pushes himself out of bed, does he finally start to recognize the room he’s in. His lips part in a distinct mixture of shock and confusion as he looks around the room slowly, making his way over to the mirror.

The safehouse in Sakae?

His chest feels heavier instantly, and a tight feeling rises to his throat as he catches sight of an old jacket of yours draped on the desk chair, the one that had ripped during the last mission you went on together—just the way you left it the last time the two of you were here. A pair of his old dress shoes are lying haphazardly outside the closet door, he’s sure that if he peeks into the closet, all of your suits will be hanging there because you refused to share the closet with him so all of his spares are stuffed in the dresser. Dazai suddenly feels sick again and he doubts it’s from the hangover this time.

How did he get here?

He needs another drink desperately.

But first… Dazai leans over the dresser to look into the mirror—a bit dusty after so many months with no one stopping in—he lifts his hand to brush his hair behind and then-

What?

His jaw drops and his brows furrow, his fingers graze over where the top of his ear used to be, only to find the whole upper quarter of it missing. 

What the fuck? He mouths as he stares at the missing cartilage, and then he looks back around the room, and just as his eyes catch a trash bin that should be in the bathroom, his vision blurs, and his head is aching. He’s suddenly stumbling down an alley, he’s lying in a puddle of his own vomit, unable to stand up straight. He can hear someone approaching and he knows he should get up, find some dumpster or crevice to wait out the night until he’s sober enough to get the fuck out of the heart of the Mafia’s territory in Yokohama, but he can hardly move.

He can lift his head from the pavement just enough to-

Just enough to see you.

Dazai can hardly cope with the emotions that rattle his chest. Longing, because he’s missed you so terribly the past seven months. Disbelief, because you shot his fucking ear off. And… and Dazai isn’t quite sure what the other emotions are. They’re heavy and light at the same time, his chest feels bubbly but his ankles feel chained—it’s a weird mixture of hope and dread, he thinks, because the safehouse is eerily quiet, seemingly void of any life other than Dazai himself, but the chance that you might still be here…

“Will you be here in the morning?”

The faint memory of the last words he spoke before he passed out the last time rings through his head, and his feet drag against the ground as he forces himself to move from the bedroom into the main room of the safe house. His fingers hesitate against the wood of the door—scared that he’s going to open it and you won't be there, scared that he’s going to open it and you will be there. He doesn’t remember the things he said to you last night, but he knows that he’d been staring at old pictures the two of you took before he blacked out. He can hardly imagine the things he might’ve said to you when given the chance.

It takes all of his strength and all of his willpower to push open the door. 

It takes even more to actually step out of the bedroom.

The safe house is empty.

You’re nowhere to be found.

Dazai’s feet are moving before he’s fully even registered what’s happening.

He makes his way into the kitchen to rummage around for another bottle for him to drown away his sorrows, but he doesn’t pull out the untouched bottle of his favorite whiskey he knows is sitting in the cabinet—he goes straight for the wine fridge. He nearly shatters three bottles of whites before he finally gets his hands on your favorite red, the one you’d asked him to stock up in there for you three days before he left, knowing that the two of you had a mission coming up and you’d be celebrating here, as always. Not knowing that he’d have betrayed you by then. 

He struggles to uncork it, the frustration causing his headache to return with a vengeance. It takes an embarrassingly long amount of time for him to finally get the bottle open, but when he does, he brings it to his lips immediately, eyes sliding shut as he downs a few generous gulps.

The taste is familiar. Pleasant. It makes his heart ache with such an intense longing for you that it nearly makes him throw up.

He can almost imagine that he’s tasting it off of your lips instead.

He leans over the counter, elbows digging into the marble as he tries to push away the ugly feelings ripping apart his chest. He can’t. He never can. He hasn’t been able to since the day he left you behind seven months ago. He can only numb it.

With a hand closed around the neck of the bottle, Dazai slides down the cabinet to sit on the ground. His cheeks feel wet, but he doesn’t dare lift his hand to acknowledge the tears sliding down them.

Instead, he lifts the bottle to his lips again and drowns himself in the memories of you for another night. 

The High Cost of Living - Gojo’s side.

Please read Geto’s side first.

A world where Gojo knows of Kenjaku’s plan beforehand, and does something about it.