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So addictive, Dazai mused to himself as your head dozed on his bare, bandaged chest. Your barely clothed bodies were so hopelessly tangled up with each other, that it was a rather tedious matter to even try to pull you two apart, since the bed sheets that wrapped you both in warmth and intimacy was also too troublesome deal with.
The digital clock by your bedside read 7:39am, and Dazai didn’t really intend to get out of bed anytime soon. He watched your eyelids flutter as his mind droned on to wonder what you were dreaming about. Your left hand had its fingers strewn carelessly over his shoulder, while your right hand was clasped into his. You hated holding hands in bed when you two were snuggled up together, but Dazai liked it, so whenever the opportunity to lace his slender fingers into yours while you were sleeping presented itself, he took it, internally congratulating himself for how stealthy he was in his movements. In reality, you were just a very heavy sleeper.
His free hand made its way to your bare back and shook you gently to wake you up.
“I’m awake,” you mumbled groggily, and propped up your chin on his chest so you looked up at him, strands of hair scattered messily over your face. You didn’t bother trying to get your hand out of his, because this time, it felt kind of nice.
“Good morning,” his husky voice chimed quietly, “good sleep?”
“Yeah,” your eyes slowly closed again, making Dazai’s grin grow wider.
“Wake up, mon coeur,” Dazai dug his fingers through your hair and stroked through it, making you feel like curling up into his arms and dozing off… again.
But the way he mispronounced the first French term you’d taught him made your eyes open slightly, while a smile cracked through your lips.
“Shhhhh,” Dazai took out the hand he had placed in yours and flicked your forehead lightly before you could say anything. You closed your eyes again, grinning in pride for catching him off-guard for once. His sharp wit and high intellect was always something you admired, but his lack of ability to pronounce delicate words such as he had attempted to made you all the more attracted to him.
It had only been about a week since you two met anyway.
Dazai Osamu, presently a full-time Detective, and part-time womaniser, knew that his luck hadn’t struck out with the ladies. You were minding your own business at the bar, a dodgy one actually, and there he saw you and took the chance. The night you two spent together after that would usually be the last time Dazai ever looked at your pretty face, but for some reason, this was the fourth time he found himself stuck underneath the sheets with you.
And this man was terribly confused. So were you.
For Dazai, he preferred versatility when it came to women, and didn’t favour commitment in the least; he hated compromising his own morals, and that’s what he hated about you— the way you made him care too much about you, and the way he couldn’t fathom how your mind worked kept him from leaving you, too.
Everyday, his mind was usually fixated on the way your lips curled up to give him the most mysterious smile, or the way your body found refuge in his during the long nights you spent together. However, that did not compare to what complicated thoughts and feelings he was dealing with when it came to you. It was so maddening, so intricate, and so tiring, but each time he found his arms wrapped around your delicate waist or every time he let his lips press against yours, the burdens these feelings imposed on his heavy heart suddenly vanished into thin air.
For you, well, he was one of a kind. His strikingly handsome features and the way he licked his lips devilishly after each kiss in public made your heart roar with a type of passion, which deeply hurt your ego, but flamed it just as much. You never wanted to become this attached to someone, but this time, your feelings won its battle against your logic.
Though, you knew that this man treated his life without any sense of fragility or care, and you were a little too well-versed with what it felt to lose someone you love. So the thought of waking up without him in the world anymore weighed heavily in your heart everyday, but unfortunately, the daring side of you decided to stay with him, at the cost of the subtle despair looming into your bones, ready to seep into your heart if the worst happened.
He was like poison— the good kind: the kind in which you’d crave to bathe yourself in everyday. Despite how it would burn your skin and seep into your veins and bones with the sole intention to rot at them, you were so very addicted to it.
To make up for all the frustrating feelings that were building up in both of your chests and at the back of your skulls, you gradually picked up habits of spending more time alone together during the day, along with living in each other’s embrace at night, in desperate attempts to make these feelings go away somehow. But such a modus operandi was counterproductive.
So dealing with the concern that came with getting too involved with Dazai came in the form of conversing with him incessantly. You loved hearing him speak to you— the way he reached out every single opportunity to make you laugh or get you to retreat from your decluttered thoughts made letting him go now very difficult.
He always complained about how reserved you are, but eventually, he came to understand that that’s just how you were. Nonetheless, he did prompt you to speak about yourself, interests, and passions. Since no one usually asked you about such things, you had a light in your eyes whenever you spoke to him—a light which never seemed to fail to pierce through every single atom of despair and agony his usual thoughts carried.
You ignored him as he prodded you to wake up for the third time.
“Why are you so tired this morning?” Dazai asked, before a malicious grin took form on his lips, “was last night a bit too-”
Your finger travelled up to his, and he didn’t continue this sentence. He just laughed when he noticed how flustered you became as your cheeks reddened deeply.
This man really hurt your ego, but surprisingly, you didn’t mind.
You got up from his chest as he readjusted his position to lean on the bed frame. You placed yourself next to him and hugged your knees against your chest. The both of you had something on your mind.
“Tell me,” your voice broke the silence, “you could be with other partners right now, as many as you’d like… why did you stay with me?”
“Hm,” Dazai thought carefully, but came up with a simple answer, “why not?”
A ghost of a smile appeared on your lips as you wrestled with the complexity of this scenario.
“You could be with a partner who didn’t think about death and the ways he could achieve it everyday,” Dazai muttered lightheartedly, “why me?”
This question threw you into the deep, dark pit in your mind.
You didn’t believe in love, or any of those other beliefs which offered up a variety of counterfeit concepts in relation to optimism.
And it was because of your lack of empathy, you’ve always thought that you were a selfish person, since the same notion applied to everyone else, who desired to live according to their own benefit.
Then you met Dazai.
The one person you were a pathetic fool for. Little did you know, that it worked vice versa as well.
Selflessness was a hidden detail in the both of you, which only became uncovered for each other.
“Why not?” you imitated him, secretly trying to brush off this conversation altogether. But his hand travelled to the side of your face to caress your cheeks with its knuckles. Your eyes looked solemnly into his, and obliterated every single bit of loneliness he had stored in his headspace.
“What if I died?” Dazai questioned, his voice as fragile as a whisper, “You stayed at the cost of knowing how I constantly wish to leave this earth, but why? Wouldn’t it be…”
“Devastating?” you finished his sentence as your face inched closer to his; the look of resolve in your eyes seemed to intimidate him a little.
“Mm,” he nodded slowly, glancing down at your lips but back into your eyes.
“Death is a twisted game,” your lips parted in thoughtfulness as you picked out the right words to formulate your next few sentences, “isn’t it weird how people who want to live have more fragile lives than people who wish to die?”
He thought carefully and spoke up.
“Did you lose someone before?” he asked.
“Once… in a car accident. And you?” you replied, not really wanting to get into details.
“Yes,” his eyes were now revoked of any emotion and his hand retreated from your cheek to travel down to hold your hand tightly. You wanted to venture through the depths of his despair, but noticed that perhaps your soul would be drained of the little life you carried in it if you did. But it was worth a shot, right? You couldn’t take away his pain, but if you could experience it with him, just so that the burden would be easier for him to bear, you didn’t mind the consequences.
That’s where love discarded any kind of logic.
“He was a dear friend of mine,” his voice faltered, and his eyes broke away from yours. You could tell it wasn’t a phrase to be taken lightly.
“I’m sorry,” you said sympathetically, which snapped his gaze back onto you, “He must’ve meant a great deal to you.”
“Oh, yes,” he said calmly, but dismissed the focus of the conversation on himself and shifted it on to you, “was it a partner that you lost?”
“No… my brother actually,” you smiled bitterly, “I suppose your friend also had an undying interest in the concept of living?”
“Yes, yes. He was an enigma, but a good person, basically. His only goal was to make his life worth living. He cared for orphans and took an interest to writing. He didn’t like killing people,” Dazai chuckled to himself and pondered on your phrase for some time, “I don’t really understand people who like living.”
“Neither do I,” you said dreamily, whilst inching your face forwards to his, “There are people who simply live, people who want to live, and people who spend their lives waiting upon death… I suppose we’re just a couple of cynics.”
Dazai’s lips were now only a few inches away from yours. Something about your voice— your silky voice which had a raspy buzz to the ends of your sentences— made him ponder on giving up his own dreams in order to fulfil a life with you. That’s when his logic hastily came to stop his heart’s desires from consuming him further. Loving someone didn’t make sense at all, and would cost an individual a great deal of time, affection, and empathy. He didn’t want anything to do with it.
But the way your eyes glistened underneath the soft sunlight that was starting to pour through the open window… made the temptation of falling under love’s cruel grip so hard for him to resist.
“But I don’t think that’s true for a lot of people… the part where you said that… people who wish to die have a harder task of trying to achieve it,” Dazai said carefully, withdrawing from your lips as he tried to entice you to come closer to him instead, “Countless people have died by their own hands before, no?”
“Maybe it was because it was their time to rest,” you coo slowly, hands travelling by the sides of his neck into his hair, “Besides, their lives probably amounted to something worthwhile before they achieved something as beautiful as death.”
“So when will my life amount to something worthy of death?” he asked smoothly as his hands travelled down to lock onto your hips, with a type of reverence that made you think he was somehow uncomfortable with touching you. In truth, he just didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.
“That’s for you to find out,” you said, smiling, “Besides, I’m nothing more than your temporary paramour.”
“Mm…” his eyes held an immense void in them, which broke your heart into pieces.
Then your mind trailed back to this one truth you embedded in your own conscience: Life, people, and beliefs were just deceptive parts of one big facade, and you would understand why he was so tired of living in it.
But if the possibility to make him stay, just for a little longer, was ever apparent, you’d place your life in its pursuit, just to attain a reason to live for him to base his days upon.
But in any event, there was nothing you could do, except to be here with him: in the moment, for as long as he permitted.
“If you die, I’ll kill you,” you murmured playfully as his lips touched yours. You felt his breath tremble at the way you held his face. It was as if he was so scared, and confused. This only induced you to pull him closer to you… as if by doing so, you’d be able to stop him from falling off the deep end.
“You talk too much,” he said between kisses, smiling as his lips played with yours.
“You started it,” you say, finding yourself on his lap, with his hands on your waist, as he was pinned to the bedpost, “now, shut up and kiss me.”