In the Wake of Mishap

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When one excludes the act of sleeping from one's daily routine, irritability and enervated bodies are inevitable consequences.  One may notice dark circles under one's eyes, and a mind heavy with the weights of an eager need for slumber.  Eyes might close on their own—a fluttering to the beautiful midnight void. . . heads nodding, breathing soft.

This was where Dazai should have ended up.  But, of course, he had various ways of manoeuvring around basic human cognition.  He hadn't spoken to Chuuya in four days—and he also hadn't slept due to this. He had never realised that the one consecutive hour of sleep he had been getting each night was because of his interactions with his partner. Chuuya had always eased him—in battle, but also in moonlit bedrooms, by his lonesome, surrounded by his own shadows that wept in the dark.

Really, without Chuuya, Dazai kept to the moon for guidance these past few nights, as both were a symbol of the pull of poetic words on Earth.

It was the only thing willing to make his shadows dance and keep him company. He had no help from the sun, which had betrayed him by casting shadows over heights that were aiming for heaven. It burned his skin and revealed his scars. It left the feigned feeling of security because of its warmth and light.

But no, the moon was elegantly wicked. It promised the howl of predators, and warned of sickly crimes. It didn't lie—only alluded to what would awaken as it grew brighter. Dazai envied the way it encased the clouds of the night and still left them glowing. He yearned to possess such a beautiful form of control, in which he could keep someone happy under a benevolence he knew he wasn't capable of.

He thought momentarily about giving up control again, but the idea left his mind as quickly as it had come. It just wasn't an option for him. Even if he knew it would become a frequent afterthought at the end of the day, he refused to acknowledge its aching importance.

He lifted his eyes from the ground, an awareness consuming his body. As he walked closer to Mori's office, the presence of another engulfed his vivid senses. He knew the click click of those snobbishly expensive shoes more than he knew the scars which adorned his body. Of course Chuuya would be with the boss when he least needed him to.

He walked in, no hesitation present on the tips of his fingers as he closed the door behind him. Mori was seated on top of his desk, a playful façade he had established of himself to seem less threatening in the presence of someone so physically powerful. His hands rested behind him, at his sides, using them as support. His slender frame left distasteful trust, something so slim, it was hard to discover any true warmth that clung to his selfish bones. It terrified Dazai how similar they were.

But there were white and red differences between them, too. And Dazai had to keep reminding himself that Mori was Mori, and Dazai was something that he wasn't—although he wasn't even vaguely sure what that something was.

Chuuya sat across from him, legs draped over the chair elegantly, like a waterfall in a fairytale. He must have used his ability to sit down as fast as he did, and Dazai mused himself at the idea of him racing toward feigned comfort at the thought of Dazai addressing himself so casually and dismissively. Chuuya's hands were folded together, and he noticed the ends of his fingertips were white; a sign of pressure and awareness to the tension between the two men and the one something in the room.

The depths of his waters were perpetually rising, drowning more of his human, and letting the shadows of his fears float to the top. Dazai argued with himself that having such fears made him more human that anyone, but he could so easily slip into the darkness of them, and become his fears, that his argument never held firm ground.

He had to somehow drown his fears—tie a weight to them and force them to sink below the midnight zone, where they were too far and too blended with the depravity of what lurked so deep below.  And this had to begin with acting as arrogantly normal around Chuuya as he had always been.  Dazai wasn't one to have a strenuous time hiding how he truly felt under the layers of bandages that separated monster from child.  This had to be simple for him—it couldn't be any other way, or he wouldn't be himself.

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