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Dazai Osamu understands the mafia. He understands the business of violence and all the senselessness and that the cold, thick liquid in his veins is not the same blood surging through those he passes in the street. In truth, understanding the mafia is the one thing he knows; he doesn't yet know, for example, how vast the world is, or how delicate a single touch can be. To him, the world outside the mafia is nothing but an other, a thing to compare his own existence to, to give it meaning. The refracted light laying flat across his hands has no substance, it is not real.
He sits slumped behind his desk, damp black curls tumbling over the tips of his ears like waves crashing onshore. Under the first morning rays of light his alabaster skin glimmers, and through the open window, the soft chirp of crickets mixes with the sweet, mellow scent of dawn.
He sees there's blood under his nails; tries to scrape it out; fails.
Sitting across the misty room, glancing up from his book, Oda Sakunosuke thinks he's never looked more beautiful.
Ever since the night Oda fought Gide and barely made it out with his life, Dazai knew he could never let the older man leave his sight. And Oda knows this. So here they are, quietly existing in each others company, though neither would ever acknowledge it in words. There simply is no way one could be without the other now. And words aren't needed to explain a thing such as this, Oda thinks.
So while Oda reads, Dazai stares ahead and the vacant, colourless wall stares right back. Visions of last night play in his mind, holding him transfixed. Visions of red, visions of death. He’s staring so intensely at nothing he appears to be searching for something, not even knowing himself what for but for something, but as if suddenly recognising his pursuit is so obviously pointless, he blinks. He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it between his teeth.
"Odasakuuu," he whines, "will you pass me a light?"
“Keep that up and it will kill you,” Oda murmurs softly, watching Dazai through the corner of his eye, though with a look of what one might call affection.
“Keep worrying about me and I’ll kill you,” Dazai grins, earning a short laugh from the other.
Oda decides not to argue - he knows it will do no good. The air is heavy with knowledge of the violence that had ensued earlier. Neither feel like addressing it, and Oda understands Dazai’s need to soothe his nerves. So he holds a flame to Dazai’s cigarette then leans against his desk and watches him.
As Dazai slowly breathes out, Oda watches him. Dazai's face seems to contort beneath the smoke escaping his fragile lips, and his dark eyes are just that - dark. Oda wonders what's going through his mind, wonders whether it's the same sense of emptiness in his own. A sense that there's something just so disappointingly wrong about his life. Guilt, exhaustion perhaps? Around them, the small office room looks bigger than ever with the climbing sun pouring her light through the window and claiming the blood-stained carpet as her own.
Then Dazai whispers something Oda has to strain to hear.
“Oda, what else is out there? When I die, will I be saved?"
It's a good question, Oda thinks, one he doesn't have an answer to. A sad smile demands its way onto his lips and he wishes he could reassure Dazai of eternity, warm him, soothe him, because Dazai looks smaller than ever.
"I want you to kill me. I want you to make me human."
Oda understands what he means; after all, how could he not?
So he pulls Dazai close by his coat and presses their lips together, softly. Dazai is held with a lightness he's never known - the only roughness to Oda's being is the callouses on his thumbs from too many years of balancing a gun between those delicate fingers. No, Oda is not rough, he is tenderness in every sense. Oda is kind. Oda is gentle.
There's a sense of things being blown apart; of all ideas, violence and non-violence, justifications, being torn to pieces; of only space. Then suddenly they know each other, and only each other, and Dazai knows this is what he’d been searching for - a connection, a position in space and time, nothing but a proof and witness to his existence. The emptiness within him suddenly seems filled; if only temporarily, he doesn’t care. He needs Oda and Oda needs him, and he could cry at the very thought.
The skin touching his own is pleasant and silky and embraces him like warmth from the ocean on a summer's day. Pulling back, Dazai breathes against Oda and wills so earnestly for the image to be committed to his memory. Sunlight gathers in his red, red hair and in his boundless eyes.
Heavenly, is what Dazai thinks: Oda can’t be of this earth. For this earth is death.
It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m okay. I'm alive.
A whisper: “One day, I’ll get us out of here. We can go anywhere you like. I’ll take you to the coast and to the mountains and it will be like this all the time, my love.”
Dazai wishes it can be true. No, he knows it can be true, because he knows Oda and nothing Oda ever says isn't true.
Then he's crying into Oda's shoulder, tears staining the older man's shirt and Oda holds him and kisses his face all over. He whimpers and sniffles quietly - it's okay, it's okay - and he thinks maybe he'd like to say something along the lines of:
"Oda Sakunosuke, I adore you. I worship your very being."
After all, who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? If he desires being taken within the circle of life, and have his senses proven and justified, if he wants to exist?
Should a man be denied such a simple pleasure?
We're okay