Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

24. belladonna.

You're escorted to the infirmary of the Armed Detective Agency, where Yosano sits you down on a stool like she had done with your self-inflicted claw marks, and begins to work on you. She tuts everytime you flinch at the searing pain of isopropyl alcohol working against your wound.

"It's a deep one," She comments, throwing a blood soaked cotton wad into the bin. "But not deep enough to ensure stitches."

"But deep enough to leave a scar," You sigh, defeated. It wasn't that you were upset over the scar due to cosmetic issues, but the scar itself was proof that there were disastrous consequences to being affiliated with the Port Mafia. "That sucks."

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it," Yosano says. "You'll still look beautiful with it."

You wearily smile. "Are you flirting with me?"

"Who is flirting with my (first name)?" A playful voice hollers out, a mop of brown hair peeking into the infirmary. "Get back!"

"Leave us women be, Dazai," She sighs. "Honestly, men always want to poke their business in our business."

"So true." You playfully agree, and that makes Dazai whine in response.

"I saved your life and this is the treatment I get." He slides down the door frame in faux despair, and your lips crack into a smile.

"I'm joking," You say, standing up from the stool. You could hear a bruise echoing in your cheek where the Ace boss had slapped you, resonating in your head like a distant train horn. You wince at it. His face drops at that.

"They hurt you," Dazai murmurs, ushering you out of the infirmary. The Agency is mostly empty, with Kunikida typing up a report in the far corner of the office. His eyes were locked onto the screen, green eyes reflecting Kanji characters on his screen. "I can't have you hurt. I thought karma had caught up to me when they kidnapped you."

"You've outrun karma, then," You say. And you wanted to say that he could always hide behind you, that you were a sanctuary that he could call home: but the words clump in your throat and you just stand there looking up at him with words in your eyes, your hand holding his and leaning against the wall, begging him to understand you, untangle you and make sense of the trick of the cat's cradle.

And he seems to understand your silence, your scribble of words that are better left unsaid, as he takes you into his arms and holds you against his body. He doesn't feel real—everything feels surreal; you feel spongy. as if you could go through Dazai's body at any moment. The world had been turned upside down, you've had your fair share of Mafioso violence, and now it was no longer solid and dependable; it was porous and deceptive, with Dazai as your only post. And even was he becoming more and more difficult to detach from you, like he was fusing into you, drowning in your name gleefully, dying in your name.

He was starving. That itself was a fact. Growing up on violence made him think weaning on poison was a privilege. But he sees good in you, and he sees love and romanticism and everything beautiful in you, and he wanted to be fed with that kind of love until he couldn't take it anymore. Forgive me, he thinks to himself, digging you deeper into him, for the enormity of my hunger. He is a burning house, and you have entered it and assuaged the fires, trusting him to not burn you down; turning the key to lock the house so you never make it out of his heart.

He loves you. Oh God, he loves you. How will he make it out alive, when he's been entrenched in the antithesis of love his entire life?

You're the first to break from his embrace. And he already misses your warmth, his body itching like a maniac in withdrawal. "I want to go home."