Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

7. glass.

A/N: Trigger warning for self harm—Reader tries to self harm in this chapter but fails.

"Are you sure he lives here?"

You're near the port where a line of shipping containers are, their dented surfaces gleaming under the dim sunlight above. Abovehead are construction cranes; steel beams are hanging in the air, held up by thick rope. They wobble precariously in the gale that sends your hair afloat.

The seagulls squawk and swoop down steeply, submerging their beaks into the waters before triumphantly emerging with prey. You shiver in the autumn breeze that slithers above the waters.

"I know he does," Odasaku says. He raps his knuckles on one of the shipping container doors. "Dazai. Come out."

To your surprise, the door opens by a hitch before it fully swings open at the sight of Odasaku. There is a young man holding the door open, his bandaged face switching between you and your boyfriend. Darkness from within the shipping container spills out like liquid, oozing onto the cracks in the concrete floors.

"Odasaku? What're you doing here? Does Boss need me?"

"No. Mind if we come in?"

"Hey, I know you." He gestures towards you, and you quickly dip your head in a bow.

"Hey Dazai! I'm Odasaku's girlfriend now."

"You brought your girlfriend onto Port Mafia grounds?" The man sounds surprised. His eyes never leave your face, as though he was inspecting you closely for signs of deceit. He was effectively reading you. Odasaku blinks.

"I can take on whatever tries to hurt her."

"Still a dangerous prospect," Dazai says, before he sighs. "You better come in before she gets spotted."

"That's what we're here for. Can we come in?"

The three of you step into the shipping container. Inside is dark and murky. There is a dingy, thin mattress in the corner left of the box, with loose bandages strawn across the flooring. Some are stained with blood, some are yellowing with age. Dazai kicks them away with his shoe.

"Sit wherever you want." He shrugs, before he himself sits down on his mattress. You politely tuck in your legs as you take a seat on the cold floor.

"I wanted you to meet my girlfriend," Odasaku says.

"You couldn't do that when we all meet up at Bar Lupin?"

"You know I have night shifts at another bar." You pipe up helpfully, and Dazai finds that your eyes are gleaming in the dark, as though he was staring into a furnace glowing with (eye colour) flames. The bright vision of your eyes blur in the murky darkness of his so-called house. He sees you through his blood-soaked world, like the glowing figure of a Virgin Mary cult: cleansed and transparent in a dirty, filth clad world. He sees you, in this shipping container with its steel walls, and thinks you're the purest thing he's ever seen; not in an Angel/Whore sense, but more so the definition of the word lovely. Misery is a vacuum, one that Dazai's more than familiar with, as his twin clinging onto his side. Misery is a space without air. A suffocated dead place, an abode for the miserable. Misery is a tenement block, rooms like animal cages; sit over your own droppings, lie in your own human-like filth. A private hell. But he finds that he's wading through it like a fisherman through water, and it gives way to his legs instead of clinging onto him like oil to a seagull.

What was this feeling?

"Are you okay?" You wave a hand in front of him. Odasaku is leaning against the steel walls of the shipping container, staring outside where the sunlight streaked in.

"Yeah," Dazai says, his shoulders dropping from their tense state. "Just thinking."

A light drizzle. A drizzle that transforms into a torrent, before soaking your clothes by blowing the water into the shipping container.

You raise a hand and turn your palm upwards, so that it is facing the ceiling.

You're sitting by the bathtub, holding onto your soaked shirt by digging your nails into your arms. You're shivering. You're shaking, hair dipped into the overflowing bathtub. Water spills over and splashes onto the floor, undulating by your feet, before flatlining into calm translucent pools. You're staring into blank space with your heart aching; in the dry beds of your heart where blood once passionately flowed, you're learning to live without oxygen, dry-drowning with half of your body intact. You've sunk too low to make good decisions for yourself and that brings a sense of lightheaded freedom. Walking over the moon with no gravity. There is a sense of timelessness in your agony; you can't see the end of this lane.

You wish there was no love in your life. You can't look past the pain and appreciate the man that was once your husband and his dutifulness; all you can feel is the loss and the need to be reunited. You need him.

There are no clocks in misery, just an endless ticking. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali and his melting clocks.

Your hand drops onto your wrist and you find that you feel nothing. You are completely detached from yourself. You feel completely numb. You stand up and wobble to an unstable balance, walking through the hallways with damp feet into the living room. There you find a bottle of sake; you bring it back into the bathroom and—

CLACK!

—Smash it over the rim of the bathtub. Pieces of glass come flying out from the impact, and you drop the bottle. You pick up one of the pieces.

Should you?

Your eyes fill with tears.

Just as burn victims reach a plateau of pain, so do the emotionally wretched find grief is a high ground which they can survey the damage that has been done, clinically detached, like Dr. Frankenstein in his pursuit to create a living being, made of parts of the dead. Such was your degree of detachment.

You press the side of the glass against your wrist, but not hard enough to draw blood. Your shoulders shake and you find that it feels as though your heart's been turned inside out like a sock, crumbling underneath its own crumpled weight and set in stone in your ribcage. Your hands shake violently and the glass piece falls onto the ground with a sharp clatter. You bring your hands to your head and bury it in between the columns of your knees, muffling the horribly strangled noises you're making.

What were you doing?

"(First name)?" A faint voice calls from the living room. The door closes. Dazai draws closer, like advancing troops in a losing war. Your heart races and you snatch up the still-intact neck of the sake bottle, wielding it as though it would protect you from him. "Are you okay?"

"Don't come in," You warn, your voice shaking and cracking. Thick globules of tears were already making their way down your cheeks, rendering your voice into a fizzled out ember. "Don't come in."

"Are you okay?" His knuckles urgently knock against the wooden door. "Are you clothed?"

"Yes."

"I'm coming in." He opens the door and his eyes immediately widen at the sight. Shame washes over you. You charge at him.

"Get out!" You scream. "Get OUT!"

"What were you trying to do?" He asks, his eyes flickering quickly from the glass pieces by his feet to your wet face. "What were you trying to do?!"

He wretches the sake bottle from your hands and that's when you break down again, falling into pieces by his feet as you sob into your hands.

"Oh...(first name)," His voice falls into a lulling, soothing tone as he brings you into his arms. How gracefully did silk rot. He gathers you up in his arms and brings your face to his shoulder, where your tears soak into the bandages underneath his clothes. He laves a hand over the back of your head like a mother cat would do with her kit; a tender act that renders you utterly helpless in your violent despair. "I'm so sorry I didn't see this coming."

But Dazai thinks that when there was fire in your eyes did you look the most beautiful.