Work Text:
Dazai couldn’t sleep.
It wasn’t an unusual thing for him. He’d often ended up playing some sort of game on his phone in the early hours of the morning, ignoring the alarm clock as it blinked daunting numbers at him through the dark in silent screaming red. The warmth of having two other people in the bed was a nice contrast to the dreaded long nights he’d spend alone with his own thoughts as a teen, but it didn’t quite take care of his insomnia.
That was where he was now. Nikolai’s arms wrapped around his waist in what was almost a death grip, Fyodor barely even on the bed at this point considering how precariously he was perched on the edge of the mattress—something he always seemed to do, although Dazai was yet to see him topple off (he anticipatedly awaited the day he would)—and that little pest of a rat burrowing around somewhere in the sheets. (Dazai could hear it. Why Fyodor refused to put it in its fucking cage at night was absolutely beyond him.)
He looked over at the clock. 4:38. God fucking dammit. It was basically breakfast.
“Oh, fuck it all, I’ll just go get coffee,” he mumbled to himself, swiping some of those weird green square things around on his screen. Candy crush was a curse upon the earth, and a drug he could not get enough of. “Stupid societal sleeping schedule requirements . . . why can’t I just sleep during the day, when I’m actually tired . . .”
“Mmdon’t.”
Dazai looked flatly down at Nikolai. “When did you wake up?”
“G'morning to you too,” Nikolai murmured, burying his face further into Dazai’s collarbone and tightening his arms around his waist. “Don’t get up . . . you’re warm . . .”
“I’m not your personal hot water bottle, Kolya.”
“Yes you are . . . and good hot water bottles don’t get up and leave the person they’re warming . . . so you have to stay . . .”
Sighing, Dazai made to pry away Nikolai’s grasp on him, only to be greeted with a displeased hum and a muttered remark about how he was being difficult.
“Kolya.”
“Hm.”
“You know, keeping someone captive against their will is illegal. I could call the police.”
Nikolai’s snicker was lost in the fabric of Dazai’s shirt. “Ha . . . hot water bottles don’t have hands . . . so they can’t call phone numbers . . .” He patted Dazai’s ribcage. “Checkmate . . .”
“You’re sleep-drunk,” Dazai said, deadpan.
“Oh, I always feel drunk anyway, what changed . . .” Nikolai said through a yawn.
Once again, Dazai made to move, but Nikolai was like a fucking wheel clamp on him. He sighed, suffering. “Hug Fedya if you want something to cling to so badly.”
“Oh, but he’s cold and foreboding . . . his skin is like ice . . . you’re warm, like . . .”
“I’d consider my skin to be quite normal,” came Fyodor’s voice—and oh, he was awake. Dazai really wasn’t surprised in the slightest. The guy slept like someone were gonna come and mug him in his sleep. He rolled over, tired eyes fixing onto Dazai. “Can’t sleep?”
“Oh, Fedya, Fedya,” Nikolai chirped happily, readjusting himself so that he could wrap himself around Fyodor instead. “Good morning.”
“What happened to cold and foreboding, skin like ice?” Dazai asked. (Really, he was grateful for the opportunity to slink off the mattress.)
Kissing the corner of Fyodor’s jaw aimlessly, Nikolai murmured, “Well, it just means he needs a bit of warming up . . . and you seem to have abandoned me, Osamu . . .”
Fyodor smoothed Nikolai’s hair out across the pillow, running his fingers through it. He’d be re-plaiting it for him in a few hours. (How he had the patience every morning was beyond Dazai, but it was a cute sight.) “I’m flattered to be second choice.”
“Now you know how I feel whenever I see you cuddled up with that fucking rat . . .”
Fyodor laughed. “Where is Rodya?” Without giving chance for a response, he clicked his tongue a few times, and the rat came tunnelling up through the duvet, taking his usual spot on Fyodor’s neck. “Ah, good morning to you too, little mouse,” he murmured, because he was a weirdo who talked to rats for some fucking reason.
“It’s not morning,” Nikolai insisted. “It’s like . . . half four . . .”
“. . . in the morning,” finished Dazai.
“No.”
“Yes, and I’m going downstairs.”
Nikolai seemed a little more awake now. “What are you going to do down there at half four?” he said bemusedly.
“Drink coffee,” Dazai said lamely. “And . . . catch up on emails,” he added, knowing full well he would not be doing that at all, and that he hadn’t opened his inbox in about a year.
“And you think coffee will help you sleep . . .?”
Dazai sighed. “I’ve given up on that dream . . .”
“You have work today, you know, darling,” Fyodor said quietly.
“I know.”
“At least give it another try.”
From where he’d sort of resigned himself to standing aimlessly beside the bed, Dazai stretched and sighed again. “It isn’t going to—”
“Oh wow! Whoopsie-daisy,” Nikolai interrupted performatively then, voice still a little groggy with sleep, as he freed one of his arms from around Fyodor to grab onto Dazai’s shirt sleeve and drag him right back down onto the mattress. Dazai landed with a surprised sound. “Oh, what a catastrophe. You’ve fallen. So glad there was this bed here to break it . . .”
“Kolya,” Dazai groaned as Nikolai’s stupid arm snaked back around his waist and pulled him abruptly closer.
“. . . might as well stay now . . .”
“I won’t be able to fall asleep . . .”
A duvet was cast over him. “Well, be a good little hot water bottle and help me fall back asleep then, why don’t you?” A condescending head-pat.
Although he sighed indignantly, Dazai didn’t try to make another break for it. Nikolai was very stubborn in these times.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” he murmured as he wriggled closer across the bed.
Nikolai kissed his forehead, and Dazai could feel his smile against his skin. “Whatever you say.”
When Dazai pulled out his phone again to go back on candy crush, Nikolai helpfully reached over to swipe a jelly bean into place before snatching the phone out of his hand and shoving it under his pillow. Dazai pretended he couldn’t easily have sneaked it back out and buried his face into Nikolai’s shoulder. Fyodor reached across to link their fingers together.
Perhaps the warmth of simply lying here was okay, anyway.
A fox barked somewhere outside. Rodya’s light weight padded across the sheets. The blinking numbers of the alarm clock became a red blur.
Before he knew it, Dazai was asleep.