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Through careful persuasion, Fyodor is able to make Dazai lie down with him.
It's the type of share in which they find warmth devoid of body heat, the type where the heater has been broken and the room is near as cold as their skin. The sensation comes forgein to them both.
Fyodor's yielding words shiver with his voice, spilling into the darkness between them, and Dazai's fingers never brush the icy skin without taking from it.
This is how they share a space – sleeping back to back, as far away as possible, but on the same bed nonetheless.
Dazai stirs in his sleep, waking nervously and floating about in the depths of the night, sitting with his knees hugged to his chest watching Fyodor rest ever so unsoundly.
After Fyodor falls asleep, he is impossible to wake from – or maybe he refuses to face the moonlight and what is to be found beneath.
"Why are you all the way on the edge?"
Fyodor chuckles and rolls over to shoot Dazai a glance of exasperation, "You happen to be the one who said sharing a bed might help with the temperatures."
Dazai scoffs at that and purses his lips into a tight line. "This won't really be solving the issue, Fedya."
"You cannot possibly be freezing," Fyodor says, eyes narrow and far. The heating is broken and when it's cold enough for the pipes to freeze over, it is cold enough to wonder if the city has been cursed by the Gods, for Fyodor knows that the snow kills the freshly growing cherry blossoms.
He has long grown used to the warm springs of Yokohama and so he knows the cold will not subside, even if they are covered in blankets, even if they are wearing three layers of clothes.
"I'm not wearing my coat to bed," Dazai points out this nicety of theirs.
"You're not half as valetudinarian either," Fyodor remarks, eyes moving up Dazai's shoulders towards the exposed skin where his bandages loosen.
A small smile renders Dazai's face. His heart beats close to Fyodor's chest, far from his own in slow pumps.
It echoes through his ribcage. Equipped with a beating heart enclosing his humanity within, human he is. Even a contused cage still makes a human. Even this bruised and shallow heart's resilient ribs shield is still human as it heaves with every shaky inhale in timeless nanoseconds.
Even someone so set on dying, still has a human heart that pumps, bleeds and loves for him.
The city lights fall through the midwelling curtains, car lights cast over the room in stripes, across his face before they're swallowed by the darkness again. If the sun was more tangible, easier to grasp, Fyodor thinks he would hold it in between his hands until he burns.
He shivers slightly, the coolness of the hotel room corralling him without a breeze. It's enough to make Dazai turn around. His breath smells like rain on Fyodor's skin. Not frost, invigorating summer rain, tasting of flowers on his tongue.
They're silent for a split minute, enough so that Fyodor almost thinks Dazai fell asleep before him, but then the moon cuts through the room again. The bright lines dancing along Dazai's face are easy to focus on. He shifts and watches the light take new shapes in the dark, simply because he wills it.
"Do you believe this was meant to happen?" Dazai asks and his voice slashes through their space, much like the light. If Fyodor was able to pick the words from the sky, he would burn up and dissolve to dust in the frosting air. Nullified.
"Do I believe this was fate?"
"Willed by God."
The drapes billow with his breaths, then settle again.
"He wills everything in one way or another," is all Fyodor can say, the pulse at his throat almost audible.They have both taken pains to preserve a leisurely space between them, he thinks.
"Not like that," Dazai laughs, his breath feels warm on Fyodor's neck. It smells faintly of blood now, pungent and stingy, the only warm sensation between them. It makes him squeeze a little. "Do you think he's dying for this?"
"I think that's just us," Fyodor replies and feels Dazai hum in agreement.
"Yet here we are."
"Here we are," Fyodor concedes almost instantly. He stares at the dusty clock as it ticks, clicking from 0:43 to 0:44. He thinks about the ungodliness of the hours that remain before the break of dawn. For now the night guards them from the phosphorescence of the rising sun. How many hours has it been since he came to lie with a man? How long does he have before God opens his lidded eyes to a morning anew?
"Does that bother you, Fedya?"
Fyodor almost scoffs. He cannot recall the last time sin has been so apple-fresh as the ripe smell of summer air and spilled blood breathing harsh down his neck.
Parts of the sun still belong to the night, Icarus still hasn't woken from his ocean-bedded slumber.
"I am but a martyr," he replies quietly. "I die for sin every night."
"You are much too trusting," Dazai mutters, just as fondly. He is warm. Not blood warm, not warm like the sun, but heat on Fyodor's collarbones, beneath the wool of his cotton cloak. It's the most warmth Fyodor has felt since it started snowing in the middle of spring, since lamplights have been falling through the laced curtains and the clock on the grimy wall started ticking.
City lights wash over the bed again and this time, beneath his gloves, Fyodor's fingers prick as the upper layer of his skin burns away, leaving him perforated with a wince.
"Trust is not the same as faith, Dazai," Fyodor chuckles softly with the spark.
"Then," Dazai muses, voice drained and quiet. "Perhaps you are too faithful."
The sun still belongs to the night. Maybe Fyodor is enduring a sin; taking from the night with esurient hands, searching for warmth in the planetary cold of the riveting darkness he will wake to. Maybe it is selfish to reach for the sun.
He lies with a man – stares for the longest time, watching his light turn Dazai auburn then magnificent gold. His hand hovers over the flicker of flame, waiting for his sleeve to catch fire. How long will it take until he is set alight? He wonders if one touch would be enough to inflame an inferno.
Daedalus' voice is ringing in his ears, asking him: "Did you strip just to steal the devil's warmth?" Fyodor hears the words raining from above though they have never been spoken. Yet his skin is cold and the heat is devouring him whole.
He feels his own bruised heart beat in his chest and he wants to burn it up with those ravenous night lights illuminating the dark.
Fyodor takes a long drag from his cigarette, his tired plum-tone eyes drifting off into the distance. His mouth parts slightly as he watches the smoke trailing from between his lips curl up into the sky.
"Smoking won't do much good for your Nosophobia, Dostoevsky," Dazai notes as he slips from the shadows and Fyodor shrugs unbothered, blowing muddled smoke rings into nothingness.
They look down from the balcony, watching the cars appear and disappear, just flashing lights in the distance and the smell of gas fusing with smoke (the sound of tires screeching across the concrete as the sun rises over the city).
They are both silent and it is enough to fill the void, the noise of the city drumming in their ears. With the first rays of sunlight above them, Fyodor doesn't need a halo to glow. He burns into the Yokohama skyline, turning to look at Dazai who musters up a clammy grin.
There's cigarette ash on his sleeve and when Dazai turns to brush it off, Fyodor catches a bandaged wrist in gloved hands.
"How very careless of you," Dazai mutters, smiling as Fyodor tugs his fingers out of the grasp.
"You are much too careless with the life you've been given yourself."
"That's a lot like you to say," Dazai replies, laughter creating shimmering bubbles in the air. He looks unmade as ever; with his curls matted to his skin from sleep, his hair appears much darker in contrast to the white, melting snow across the streets.
Dazai raises his hand again, to brush the ash off Fyodor's face. On a simple instinct he holds, Fyodor closes his eyes at the touch, lids kissed by the sun. It should feel forgein, but it doesn't, for they have long been embedded into one another's spines.
After the ash falls, Dazai leaves his fingers on Fyodor's cheek for a minute, dead eyes staring into the feeding remains of the stars in the morning sky.
He pulls his hand up to meet Fyodor's jawline, fingers trailing along cold tile. With his eyes closed, halo against the skyline, Fyodor looks ethereal in the morning sun.
He smells strongly of smoke and Dazai quickly withdraws his palms before they start to burn.
Fyodor exhales, fumbling for another cigarette, meeting Dazai's gaze with his own. Their hearts beat in cold bodies, Dazai's fingers leave a blood stain on Fyodor's chin.
Fyodor gets the next cigarette, offering it to Dazai before lighting his own.
He flicks the lighter on and off, gloved hand raised to ignite the cigarette's spark for Dazai when he takes it between his lips. This hand isn't praying tonight, and when he closes his eyes to take another drag his fingers almost catch aflame.
The frost is still creeping through their veins and eating at Fyodor's consciousness, so out of practicality he and Dazai share the bed once more. It is the same as the night before.
Dazai still smells like spring, though his skin is ashen, scourged and abused by the godless bite of snow.
He tries to close his eyes and urges his body to rest within the minimal warmth provided by their shared body heat.
Fyodor does his best to ignore the burning of the city lights threatening to cut him and the soporific beating of Dazai's heart.
He prods at the overbearing silence with a thought that gives way to his words quickly, melting like ice with it.
"Your skin is sweltering," Fyodor remarks, quietly, voice trembling in their air, giving Dazai a thin smile.
Dazai is quick to reply, words accompanied by a shivering laugh, "Then you have never truly known warmth, Fedya."
"Peradventure," Fyodor tells him and lets a beat pass before filling the gaps of noise anew. "But you are alive, after all."
Dazai turns to face him, a dry smile sneaking up on his lips, one that is uncharacteristic and bold.
"The more you know," he says and Fyodor can't help but think him ungrateful, perhaps even crude to hide so cowardly from what is within him under the everlasting scheduled dark. After all, even a life so wasted has been given to him by God and Dazai is indebted before him forevermore.
Fyodor only ever thanks him for his right to be martyred, not ever his will to sin.
"Are you aware, Dostoevsky-kun," Dazai starts. Fyodor's face burns underneath the golden hue of his halo and because the break of day still belongs to the night his sin is still hidden from the Father's eyes. "That your skin is almost feverish to boot."
Dazai hums and Fyodor pleads for the words to withdraw. They don't. "Even corpses get hot with the sun," Dazai adds.
Fyodor restrains a chuckle. The urge to light a cigarette stirs in his stomach.
On their final night in the hiemal hotel room, the city lights cut through Dazai's wrists with such intensity that he bleeds out on the white sheets, leaving Fyodor with crimson on his hands.
Dazai dresses in layers of wool, thin woven fabric covering his arms and legs like silk.
"Careful, Fedya," Dazai jokes, if only to keep his thoughts from straying, sighing into the pillows with something like relief. "I am quite delicate, after all."
Fyodor's eyes flutter open, breathing in the toxic air as their consciousness melts into one for a moment.
He snorts, sleepily, laying back down, amused yet on the qui vive. "I'm perfectly headful of you, Dazai-kun," he replies, his skin catching the warmth of Dazai's breath; he can practically feel it on his face. "This results in your own bravado."
"I'm cautious more often than not," Dazai insists and Fyodor laughs, watching Dazai deflate his response.
"When might that be?"
"I have done my very best to let you sleep on the edge," Dazai complains and lets out an annoying sigh. "Are you not prided with faith?" He peers up at him.
"Whatever God requires is to be taken for word," Fyodor responds easily. Something tempts him to brush the matted hair out of Dazai's forehead. Even with his gloves as barrier he would not dare to give in. "The same can not be said about you."
Dazai blows at a loose curl. The brown stripe of hair gently falls back on his face and blocks his line of vision. Fyodor's skin pricks in expectation. He brushes the strand back, tentatively.
At the touch, Dazai's eyes shut, a pleased sigh caught in his mouth. He wraps his legs around Fyodor's torso and thighs, giving in to the feverish feeling of their alluring dance.
Careful not to confound Dazai in a single motion, Fyodor smoothes more strands down with his hands, the curls tangling between his fingers.
Just as easily as they have closed, Dazai's eyes open to blink up at him again. "Does God intend for this too?" Dazai asks, his words are such brutal candor, and so, so soothing to listen to.
Fyodor's hands untangle knots and wrap strands around the curvature of Dazai's ear, fingers fiddling with them in a way that is alert and raw – so unlike them.
"He might not have," Fyodor mutters, voice thick and lungs of smoke, breathing in the saline that clings to sunburned curls.
"Are you contravening your commandments, Dostoevsky?"
Fyodor swallows sour spit that tastes of poppies growing in the light. He can see it now. The way Icarus touches the sun and falls, his feathers painting the firmament with glittering street-greying flakes of snow.
He cannot help but wonder what happens to a God when he lies down with men who burn. If he sleeps with a man who lies in a potter's field, shines so bright under the rising sun that his skin feels like the hellfires, will he be forsaken to the devil in the eyes of God? And if Fyodor is but a demon, what happens when Dazai cuts himself on the black prickling thorns he has placed upon Fyodor's head (with not a single flower picked due to fear of a rose’s pricking wound)?
Fyodor thinks a man who can’t only touch the devil, but seeks to, will torrefy his white skin, feel the slashing of the thorns in his wake and catch fire.
Dazai's face pinches into that sharp, teasing kind of smile. His lips are the mirror the sun reflects from, his words syrupy and sacrilege, "Now, Fedya," he mutters, with that cutthroat, sour voice, "Surely this must be forbidden."
"You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price," Fyodor recites, gloved hand removing itself from Dazai's skin. "Can you afford this price?"
“I have nothing left to give,” Dazai answers, earnestly, offering himself willingly, religiously.
Fyodor lets out a hollow laugh, fingers chasing a drop of blood down Dazai's neck, his collarbones, and onto the bed. He shakes his hand, warnings fading away with his voice to make place for rosary bead prayers.
"Your life, Dazai-kun," he says, softly, with delicate precision, dragging his fingers over the red lines peeking from the rayon fabric wrapped around Dazai's wrists, applying pressure. "It's divine to gift."
He retracts his finger, eyes tearing Dazai apart as he stares through his chest.
"I will give it in whichever way I like best."
"In that case," Fyodor replies, his words steady this time around. "I can only hope you can afford to die a little death for me."
Fyodor can not ask for more.
To let Dazai push nails deep into his skin; needles draw stylized words of prayer.
To carve his sins onto his flesh in confession, preaching with the zeal of a convert, without heavenly Bliss to reward him for his endurance.
He has been given this bliss only once and it has been a miracle of virtue Fyodor does not find his worth of ‐ the source of his faith slowly cuts godly commandments down his spine as Dazai fingers scrape along his neck and he struggles to filter the voice of God through the words of sin spilling from his lips at once.
Dazai reaches for his face, pulling it down to meet his forehead. And Fyodor's hands come up for prayer, settling at his back; the bones sharp and defined.
The tips of his fingers are almost folding into the wounds. The blossoms of the rose crown Dazai has placed upon his head are already wilting away.
"God gave me you," is the answer to his blinding trust in his Savior, though Dazai is an ungodly gift.
When Dazai is not around to leave an imprint on Fyodor's unabating train of thought, his mind wanders to him regardless.
Bandaged wrists, bruised hand in glove, brown hair coming into his purview and the urge to hold the bones crushed. Fyodor is balancing on the edge of a knife, all that emotion just barely kept in check.
He thinks about Dazai more often than not, more than he would ever allow himself to admit, in order to create a coming of ease within him, an offering of peace. The slightest jostle might tip him into swivet; (one that only calms with Dazai's hands on his limbs.)
The shining city lights illuminated on his face make him look alive. His bony fingers tap against glass in an uneven rhythm.
What happens when he lies with a man? Maybe it is no riddle for Gods and maybe there is no answer the devil could give. Maybe this is the one question Fyodor will have to ask a human about, for it is their faith that defines his martyrdom.
A mere man is foolish, but he will not reprimand the way a saint does, he will offer Fyodor redemption, or drive him further into sin.
Fyodor bloodies his hands with what is dripping from Shibusawa's open throat.
Shibusawa is ice, not fire, and when Fyodor cuts through his skin and lays the palm of his hand flat against the wet, exposed nerves, he can only feel the cold.
It appears that labor is a more honorable craft than preaching, he thinks as Draconia falls.
The end isn't near, Dazai twitches beneath his boots, asking "Who is like God?" as the fog takes him.
The knife cuts through him as a mercy. The rest of him breaks for pleasure.
Outside the castle church bells are ringing in the morning. Fyodor stands silent amid the carcasses and admires his work.
The bodies are nothing much of a delight, Shibusawa's least of all. Even the memory of his beloved’s blood on his hands cannot touch Fyodor here. Greed is unforgiving. Lust is a much kinder impiety.
He considers the long grueling cross way ahead of him. Alone with his demons and the ghost of a man long gone. He will make place for Shibusawa someplace in his promised land, and in his prayers to be spoken. A gift for his treacherous beloved.
He inclines his head in reverence for the sacrifice made tonight, presses two fingers to his scarlet lips and removes an imaginary cigarette.
"God bless the earth," he mutters, watching a rose of frost fade into the air. "God bless us all."
“Is your god unforgiving?” Dazai asks in yet another motel room. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
This time, the air is misty. This time they do not share the warmth.
Fyodor's hands linger over Dazai's for longer than it is to his liking, running his thumb along the cold, dry knuckles. He thinks of his own knuckles, cracked like chestnuts and bleeding in the frost, when they take a life so easily.
Dazai's hair is twirled into knots, the tendrils of it clinging to his face with sweat.
Fyodor falls silent, his heartbeat slowing. Dark pupils reflect ever-inward as the glass gives way to ice.
"Death is His gift to you," says Fyodor. There must always be forgiveness in murder, a measure of mercy, otherwise it is an act of savagery. And Fyodor is not one to be cruel. "You're well aware of this, you ache for it," he states, finding a mild curiosity alit. "What brought this on?"
"Are you forgiving as well, Fedya?" Dazai asks again, with no regard to Fyodor's previous question, turning his quiz into something more selfish. His breath leaves trails in the cold air.
Fyodor tilts his head back, two gloved fingers pressed to his lips, eyebrows raised.
"More than He," Fyodor shrugs, his shadow a long, limber facette over Dazai. "For I will be named saint among men."
This makes Dazai snort, "Isn't that a devil’s speech?"
"If it was," Fyodor muses, eyes falling half closed, "My sin would be too colossal for God to redeem."
And maybe the idea appeals to him, Fyodor thinks, blood on his hands, blood from his beloved Christ. He longs to be selfish. Though it seems detestable under the light of day, it is but a pleasure in the dark.
He adjusts at the edge of the bed, keeping his distance from Dazai who is sitting up, crimson dripping from his wrists like he has been pierced with nails, blood trailing behind him.
Fyoror's fingertips thrum against his broken ribs, in the same place a knife has cut his synapse, setting something inside him free.
"The betrayal of Iscariot was willed, for God had to ordain the crucifixion," Fyodor explains, without a thought. "Alas I am but a necessary evil, a simple martyr."
Silence hugs the narrow walls, enclosing the room in gossamer-like gauze.
"Judas betrayed only Christ," Dazai says, keenly aware of Fyodor's eyes on him. His skin is hot with fever, always daring to outshine the stars; hands ready to set Fyodor to flame. "I will betray my lover. Forgiveness might come in handy."
Fyodor has not yet considered the way Dazai is breathing down his neck in the forsaken hours of dawn; sharing his cigarette when Fyodor forgets to be pure – when he asks himself what it means for them to lie together as men. They are neither wholly sinful nor blessed, godsend to slave for each other’s doom.
When he makes amendments, he will plead to God to show him what to make of the sweetness of the blood lingering on his lips and the brightness of the sun reflecting in Dazai's eyes.
Dazai fears neither God nor the devil. Fyodor thinks that may be blaspheme, but when his fingers rest on those tired limbs for too long, something tells him it is more deified than not. He will make a fine sacrifice, pure and without blemish.
How close to the sun can he lie without getting burned?
Fyodor may yet find out.
Dazai catches Fyodor staring every now and then, his hands are black with charcoal like the dark side of the moon.
The breeze catches his attention, as a soft wind hits his face and he daydreams about paradise in spring, Fyodor stares into the horizon, reaching for a glimpse of the sun only to be met with Dazai's eyes peeking at him.
"Is there something you would like?" Fyodor asks. He flicks the collected ash off the end of his cigarette and studies the burning tip before crushing it out with the heel of his boot.
Dazai is neither skilled in the art of subtlety nor the art of keeping quiet.
Fyodor typically quirks an eyebrow, as if studying him, eyes narrow and expression impossible to tell. Whether he finds Dazai to be amusing or dull, his eyes stay fixated, always observing, always alluring.
Usually then, Fyodor will await his response.
Today he hardly needs to. "Do you believe there will come salvation?"
Fyodor throws him a bemused look, the wind nips at his hair. He coaxes another cigarette out of the packet in his hands, placing it in his mouth in a delicate hold between his chapped lips.
"For who, that is, Dazai-kun?"
"All of them." Dazai watches, rapt, as Fyodor snaps a spark to life from the small lighter cupped in his hands and holds it up to the cigarette. His face is illuminated momentarily, then swallowed by shadows a second later.
Fyodor shrugs, tugging his hat further over his ears. "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."
Dazai lets out a laugh that is much more a cough. Fyodor flips open the packet and shakes out another cigarette anyway, which Dazai takes gingerly with two fingers. "Someone will have me killed before then."
"Are you referring to yourself?" Fyodor continues in the midst of an exhale that swirls the smoke up in the air between them. Dazai bites down his lips,
"You're beginning to cotton on." As he says this Fyodor's breath ghosts over the hand gripping the cigarette.
"That will be only," Fyodor flicks the lighter twice before he flares up a small flame, but once it's blazed to life it stays there, flickering over the paper. The base of the fire is a deep purplish blue and the white-orange tip dances in the breeze. "If I don’t do it myself."
"Well, it will certainly be a better place without me around," Dazai jokes as he takes his drag, looking at the horizon again, endlessly expanding far beyond the cityscape and into the nothingness that they were born from.
"It's never untimely to seek reclamation," Fyodor starts, but the smoke in his lungs both tickles and burns up his throat. He thinks about hell and salvational devils and himself, seemingly cursed as the most holy of them, yet still craving for sin.
He leans against the wall, looking out into the morning. "Maybe we have both yet to find it," Dazai says, amused.
"Yes," Fyodor has to agree. "Quite certainly."
"An act of suicide," He calls the virus, singing hosannas to infection, though he knows Dazai is but a reaper to him. He follows the white lines into their pitiless frostbite.
Violence needs something to sink its teeth into. Luckily they both have the outlet of sacrifice. Removed is the linen, the silk, the bandage all peeled off in a go. On the carved marriage bed, they sacrifice each other, in equal predicament of this mercy killing.
"Are you willing to make a contract with the devil?" Fyodor asks, a playful smirk on his lips.
Dazai laughs, vaguely Fyodor thinks he does not sound human, maybe more like the shadow of one. What a paradox he is.
"God makes no compromise."
"I suppose he does not," Fyodor affirms. "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."
Sacrifices are made in the absence of God. Each burning eye, reflecting the beloved, makes two between them. "That is why we turn to the devil."
"So what would you suggest, Dostoevsky?" Dazai asks, laughing a devil’s laugh again. "Would you like it to eat away my organs? Would you want my heart for yourself?"
Fyodor swallows. The red stripes on his skin remain perfectly painted, glistening in the bright spring sun. Wishing they will never fade, never pale, could be synonymous to his crave for immortality.
Fyodor glances at him; in his peripheral vision he can still detect a fleeting smile left on his lips. The Lamb will always bleed and the Wolf will always give it chase. If asked, Fyodor would call this devotion.
"Are you making an offering to me?" He looks up, like he was not the first to break the ice, a chuckle falling from his mouth. "Willingly?" Fyodor can only laugh. "You are not only death-seeking but death-loving."
"Are you declining?"
Fyodor turns to him on the tracks and he knows that a wolf cannot feast unless the lamb is willing to be the sacrificial one.
Holes in his back, bullet wounds an inexperienced hunter leaves on when he tries to kill a beast that is no beast at all. Blood floods the alleyway, God's house is not more than one of slaughter.
"People are," Fyodor says. "Sinfully stupid."