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Dazai stands by the side of the road, waiting to die. It’s somewhere in the early hours of the morning. The space between dawn and when people slip through the cracks of the known. He cuts a narrow figure against the expansive dark as he stands, not shivering, not shaking, just waiting.
When the man in the black car pulls up to him, he pretends not to notice it for a moment. Fyodor plays along. Rolls down the window and waits for him to slip a hand inside to unlock the door. Waits for him to wrap himself up in the web. Dazai chews at the skin of his lip, a bloody scab on the side of the road and gets in. If he can pretend his head is miles away and he does not know who this man is, does not know where he is going and what that will entail, he can feel a well manufactured animal fear creep up the back of his tongue and sour his death. He presses his forehead to the window, placidly watching the fields roll past, an occasional farm house cropping up to vanish in the next twisty turn of the car around the large hedges. Dull and pleasant, he is to Fyodor when they play this game. Fyodor has some music on, a low classical drag, and his mouth is terse, thick brows drawn in to form a mask of handsome calm. Dazai scrapes his cheekbone idly.
There’s a spot below his right socket, barely perceptible to the naked eye. It is a slight indent in the skin, the only visible mark of the intrusion when Dazai shattered his face and Mori pushed his brains back in. Fyodor kisses it when Dazai is sat on his couch. Leads him by the hand, nail bitten fingertips cupping his jaw, scratchy scabs against the soft skin of his white belly throat. He’d lost himself somewhere between crawling into the leather innards of the car and parking, blinked and he was inside.
It’s the same couch. It’s always the same room- well, it’s always laid out the same way. They play this game through nomadic explorations of nation-states. Flitting between borders, losing documents like playing cards. Where Dazai hides, winds himself among the unknowns of the world, Fyodor plucks him out and pins him to a board. Decorates the stage with his favorite props, affections he pretends not to have.
They are static, mausoleum-like in stillness. Thick embroidered blackout curtains, large mahogany furniture, heavy set and aching of times past. A single lamp glows in the corner, casting the room in a hazy orange-brown. Carefully, precisely, there is hardly a personal touch in the room to the untrained eye. A singular instance of Fyodor’s existence sits on the small writing desk- a bible and long black wooden rosary. Fyodor always touches the slight spot. Indent. Scar. Brand. He will caress it, kiss it, a careful mockery of affection they two are incapable of.
Fedya slips something into his tongue when he kisses him, mouth cold and foreign in its softness. Dazai swallows it without a second thought, leaning back in his seat and watches Fyodor’s face in the half-light. He is carved from marble, Dazai’s boy, sharp features, angular and beautiful. Inhuman, holy and with glittering eyes as he leans over Dazai and wraps a pianist’s hand around his neck.
‘What are you thinking about my dear?’ he whispers, voice hoarse.
Dazai hums, head rolling back.
‘Nosy,’ he chides, scraping a hand up his forearm, to where his second skin protects the vulnerable elder with all its cigarette burns, scalpel marks and his own handiwork. If Dazai desired, he could catalogue all those who touched his body by the scars they left. Fedya is the exception. For now. ‘What do you think, hm?’
Fyodor’s eyes glitter and he tilts his head, ignoring Dazai’s question.
‘Shall I?’ he whispers reverently, leaning closer, face half hidden in the dark as he tucks a thin finger under the bandages. Dazai shivers, a too human involuntary reflex. He bites his tongue.
‘I want to.’ He starts and stops. Maybe that’s where everything went wrong, always has- with those words: Dazai wants. Licking his lips, he tries again. ‘I want to-’ The words catch in his dry throat and he decides to blaze past them, Fyodor will understand.
‘I might start with my fingernails. Peel them back and snap them off.’ He croaks. Fyodor hums, face crooking into his neck and petting at Dazai’s hair. He continues.
‘Or maybe something more dramatic. Self flagellation?’
‘Fitting,’ Fyodor murmurs into his skin.
‘Only if you were there to patch me up, Fedya dear.’
‘Of course my darling,” Fyodor nibbles at the side of his mouth, shoving a warm hand up his button up to caress his ribs.
‘Seppuku?’ Dazai posits, head rolling back and letting his eyes slip closed.
‘Exquisite.’ Fyodor whispers reverently. He pulls back at Dazai’s silence.
‘Osamu,’ he begins, accent heavy, ‘what has stopped you?’
‘Awe,’ Dazai coos, ‘you want me dead that bad? I’m flattered.’
‘You should not be.’ Fyodor says thickly, eyes boring into his. ‘In that, I am not unique.’
Dazai grabs him by the back of his neck. Fyodor stares at him blankly and then Dazai is flat on the couch, belly up. Whatever he swallowed has begun to seep into the crevices in his skin. Drowsiness, blurred vision. The bitter taste on his tongue whispers its name to him and he shuts it out. It’s more fun to pretend like he cannot recite its title and classification if he so desires.
Dark hair, violet gaze over him and Dazai can almost pretend he is fourteen again. Fyodor does not touch him. It breaks the immersion. He rolls over, scraping his face onto the thick woolen blanket. Log walls watch him and Fyodor entangle in their game.
Fyodor climbs onto the couch, seating himself above and watching Dazai writhe. How old is he now? Nineteen? Almost twenty? His wrists ache. How long has he been doing this? Chuuya, poor sweet Chuuya must have torn apart their apartment in his absence and ripped the small impression of Dazai’s life on his own out of his chest. He won’t think about Chuuya. His wrists ache. Fyodor knows. Fyodor touches them, prods the wounds through the layers of bandage. He hadn’t stitched them up, laid on the bed of a nameless motel and waited to die. The bandage creeps into the gash and he shudders.
Fyodor grabs his neck. Dazai exhales slowly. Fyodor squeezes and he closes his eyes. His head sings as the blood rushes through his ears, winding patterns blooming on the backs of his eyelids. Dazai gasps slightly, parting his lips and finds he cannot draw breath, as Fyodor has pressed his mouth to his, breathing in his exhalation.
He chokes and Fyodor pulls away. Still, his hand stays, pressure lessening and Dazai cracks open an eye, vaguely making out Fyodor's head above him, chest heaving.
‘Don’t stop,’ he breathes, face flushed. Pink has crept up Fyodor's neck, staining his porcelain cheeks in a mild bloom. Dazai grins. Something heady is in Fyodor's gaze, something almost hungry. Does Fyodor know hunger like he does? A bony hand wraps around his throat again and Dazai laughs, giggles almost. Fyodor frowns and leans in again, cloaking them in the curtain of his hair. By his side, Dazai’s hands twitch, reaching up to grasp at the thick fabric of Fyodor’s antiquated sweater. It’s cute, too large and encompassing his frail frame. He can’t even remember what he’s wearing. Something comfortable and polite, maybe. Who knows.
Fyodor shifts on top of him, thighs bracketing his hips and Dazai realizes he has a flimsy pair of shorts on. He’s not sure when Fyodor slipped out of the dress pants he picked him up in, but what does it matter. Black creeps in the edges of his vision as Fyodor presses their foreheads together, biting at his upper lip as his hand squeezes tighter.
Dazai bucks under him, reflex trying to dislodge Fyodor and let air back into his lungs and Fyodor bites down harder, incisors drawing blood. It dribbles, hot and sticky into Dazai’s mouth and he lets out a strangled gasp. Fyodor grins into his mouth and pulls back, smearing blood over his lips.
Chest heaving, Fyodor watches him catch his breath, staring at his neck. Tomorrow there will be bruises. He finds the thought comforting. Dazai closes his eyes, the dark calming in the bright room. Fyodor hums above him and he feels him lean down again, nose brushing against his cheek and Fyodor kisses him with blood sticky lips. Groaning, Dazai rolls back his head and Fyodor claws at his neck, digging his nubs of nails into the sliver of exposed skin. When Fyodor stands, he follows, hand clutched loosely in the others. He leads him to the four poster bed, lifting the thickly embroidered sheets and letting Dazai slip in before rounding the other side, walking up to the lamp and stopping- all in one fluid movement. He likes that about him- his inhuman gestures of uninterrupted grace. Fyodor glances at Dazai before flicking it off. He still had blood on his mouth- Dazai’s blood, he shivers.
Unfortunately, dreadfully, Dazai loves him irrevocably. An all consuming, maddening ache- though he’s never been taught any other way. To him, love was always a careful dissection, inquiry into the nature of- a seeping insertion into the cracks of another until the skin sticks, tugs, tears. Fyodor’s eyes glimmer in the darkness as he gets into bed, lying careful next to Dazai to where they are not touching, hardly breathing, hardly moving. He is corpselike and beautiful in his stillness.
Dazai imagines them in parallel graves, tons of earth pressing down on him from above and all he can hear are Fyodor’s shallow breaths as the lack of air slowly suffocates them to death. He breathes. Lungs, catching on the edges of his ribcage tug at his breastbone as he splays a spindly hand over his sternum. His chest rises and falls still, somehow. Why hasn’t it frozen? Stuttered, shattered under the pressure? He keeps breathing. Cold fingers intertwine with his, pressing into the bone as Fyodor tucks a cold nose under his jawbone, nipping at where the skin smooths into his neck.
He stares up at the ceiling, staticky hums of blue and purple watching him and Fyodor entangle in their macabre dance. It’ll kill him one day, something licks into the back of his teeth. He thinks he’s okay with that. Is he okay with that? Fyodor would probably. Would probably. Hm. Fyodor’s raw tipped fingers find the edge of his collarbone and dig, pointedly into the too deep divot of his ochre clavicle. Does he feel it? Fyodor would, not in order.
Peel him apart, layer by layer.
Mount him on the wall.
Love him.
Put him back together and jump his heart.
Twist his hand all through his guts.
Scrape the insides of his bones, his rib cage, suck out the marrow for the dogs.
Restring his muscles into the shape of something- someone- less.
Embalm him. Paint his cheeks pasty and keep him in a box.
Bury him in the floorboards and pray over his corpse till the wood bends to his knees.
Love him.
Slice him into thin layers and paste them to glass, walk through them and touch his arteries, nerves.
Love him, the way he deserves.
It’s the thought that traces the outline of his skull as Fyodor settles into his side, hand falling over his clavicle, fingers tracing his throat. He whispers something into his hair. Hot, sticky breath on the side of Dazai’s neck and he has never felt so nauseous, so loved.