Chapter Text
He’s dying.
Sakunosuke is dying. There’s a strong likelihood that the bullet’s shredded part of the ventricle it pierced, but all he can feel is his chest—tight, burning, burning up. If his eyes fall close, he’s not aware. They stay that way, even when Dazai’s hiss rakes over his ears, has him shuddering, even when the hand supporting his back slips away, fleeing from the exit wound sought out.
Dazai’s panic drenches the entire room; Sakunosuke breathes so he doesn’t suffocate, and rests in the soft peace of the darkness behind his eyelids. But he must be bleeding out rather quickly though because Dazai’s curses spill, then rush out, messy. Desperate.
He’s dying. Dazai’s already grieving.
So this is how it goes.
“Listen,” he rasps.
Dazai’s hair is surprisingly soft , he thinks distantly, with his fingers threaded through those curls, nails just resting against the surface of his scalp. The patch of Sakunosuke’s chest encircling the bullet like a safeguard is finally starting to sear. He draws a raggedy breath. Dazai’s grip tightens.
“You won’t find it...nothing beyond your expectation will appear...you will wander in darkness for eternity.”
There’s a new, different brand of pain in Dazai’s eyes now. Their friendship...he’s given Sakunosuke what might as well be a piece of him. Sakunosuke, only now, is telling Dazai that he hasn’t taken that trust at face value. That he’s learned Dazai. That he understands Dazai. It hurts to know that what should have been a beginning is only an ending. Dazai’s anguish is so very human.
“People live to save themselves.”
When Sakunosuke shot Gide, the sun was streaming through the windows. Now it’s fading too. Its warmth across his cheek is kind, loving.
“Be on the side that saves people. If both sides are the same, become a good man...neither good nor evil means much to you, I know...but that'd make you at least a little bit better...it’d be a little more beautiful.”
Dazai holds his gaze, steady, unwavering. Sakunosuke breathes. His shirt is soaked, oversaturated. Heat, hot and wet, dampening his abdomen. Time struggles to draw breath. Dazai’s gaze holds, still drinking him in. Sakunosuke shifts the fingers against Dazai’s cheek, searching for the bandages that have kept Dazai’s world dark for so long. His other fingers curl inward, a closed fist. He’s going to see the kids again. Has a friend by his side. Gets to say goodbye to. He has everything he needs right here.
“Of course I know.”
Dazai’s gaze holds.
It’s odd. There’s no one more important to Sakunosuke now. He’s quite sorry he can say that and still leave.
“I know better than anyone. Because I am your friend."
“Okay. I’ll do that.” Dazai murmurs.
When Sakunosuke’s fingers fall, he only knows that the sun is bleeding, and Dazai looks beautiful in the light.
Dazai has no memory of crying, but the front of his shirt is damp and his throat is sore, as if someone reached into him and ripped his heart out of his mouth, and the jagged thing tore his body up on its way out. He feels cold. One step forward, then another, and then another, onwards, down some road without an end.
There’s a pistol in his back pocket, with the dull weight of lives stolen. He’s killed with it countlessly, with shotguns, knives and switchblades, bobby pins and broken glass, his bare hands; he’s killed with them all. Subordinates have fallen near him, for him. But he’s never buried anyone, he’s never laid a comrade to the ground. He’s never had to say goodbye.
As he turns the curb, the tip of his shoe catches concrete and he stumbles, jolting his entire body. Why did he leave Odasaku.
Why did you have to go.
He trembles. Keeps walking.
The bar. The empty streets he’s passing and passed finally register as familiar, and when he lifts his head and searches for the bar’s sign, he sees it isn’t lit up. Gets closer and closer until the door bows to a touch he hardly knows is his.
The place is deserted, lit up by the low brass glow of the lights behind the counter where the stools are neat against, aligned, just the right distance from another. He hates the silence. (It’s not the same one as it was the last time he was here, with Odasaku, mourning a friendship, crossing a name off their minds to the tune of cheap rum and burning whiskey). His gaze snags on tall, full shelves, on foreign letters on labels of sleek, elegant glass. He thinks about drinking to Odasaku.
Thinks about drinking himself dead. Starts to count. One... sharp absinthe, that the bartender always said brought hallucinations. He sinks down to the floor and reclines, his back against the wall. The alcohol burns. He still feels so cold.
If he doesn’t die, maybe the bartender will kill him. Dazai can make it easy.
Two... tequila? Lemon’s been added for flavoring; stupid decision. He switches it for another one of the bottles he’d grabbed and situated next to his sitting person, and lifts the brim to his lips.
The bartender has his choice of bounties from rival mafia; could drop a tip through the phone, lean away, only when they paint his walls with Dazai’s blood. Or maybe he’ll kill Dazai himself. It’d be easy to set beer and bar alight and burn it down to ashes, to walk away and start a new life under a different name.
Three... vodka...his ears are thrumming.
Dazai wakes up. To nothing more than a pressing bladder, a throbbing pain dragging low in the back of his head, and a crick in his neck.
The bar is empty.
He’s alive. He’s alone.
Kind of wishes he were neither.
But. Dazai does not die. He gives it some consideration, serious thought of course, but nothing more than that. Not when he’s promised otherwise. Not after everything Odasaku has said and been.
Dazai trusts Odasaku. So he will live.
Sakunosuke's eyes flutter open.