Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tonight, Dazai will kill himself.

That’s what Ranpo told him, pulling him aside during the work day, whispering it into his ear. His face was stone, and the way his voice was troubled, eyes open–

Oh.

Ranpo is telling the truth, isn’t he?

It’s easy to see how he reached that conclusion. Dazai’s been sullen lately, losing his playful demeanour, withdrawing from the office altogether. Kunikuda, the main victim of his regular antics, stifles his worry under mountains of work, but it’s plain to see his cloying worry through his sudden uptick in nagging. To Atsushi, the office feels empty without Dazai’s boisterous presence.

Tanizaki says, “Well, isn’t he always like this sometimes? You and Kyouka are new, so of course you’d be worried, but sometimes, he just gets into a mood. He’ll be back to normal any day now.” Naomi naturally agrees with anything her brother says, so there’s no point in asking.

Yosano hums thoughtfully, and tells him to be there for Dazai just like he’s always been. Similar to Tanizaki, she has the belief he’ll get out of this rut in his own time.

-- But Atsushi doesn’t agree. Not that he’s discounting their opinions, and he understands they’re coming from a place of lived experience, but as of late Dazai has been drifting further and further away from the land of the living, and Atsushi fears he will drown instead of coming back to shore.

So, it’s come to this. Atsushi climbs the stairs of the ADA building with a pounding heart and a million thoughts bouncing in his head. He knows Dazai likes looking over the city when he has too much to think about, and the latest conditions make it ripe for a suicide attempt, so he believes this is Dazai's pick of poison. That’s Atsushi - a huge worrywart at heart. He can picture it, in fact - him overlooking the sunset, shoes slipped off, a smile gracing his face. Arms stretched out like proffering a hug, and falling back.

The journey up seems to take forever, even though it's only a few flights of stairs. He reaches the door leading to the roof, the metal creaking under his hand as he turns the door handle.

“Dazai-san?” He calls.

The door opens inwards, so Dazai will see the door opening before Atsushi sees him. The last thing Atsushi wants is Dazai acting rashly from surprise. He keeps thinking of the worst. He hopes he is being paranoid - and surely he must be, acting off of assumptions and a terrible gut feeling that won’t leave him. But then again, Ranpo has never been wrong.

“Atsushi-kun,” Dazai answers, breathless. There he is, sitting on the roof, looking so minuscule as if he isn't one of the tallest men Atsushi knows.

And maybe because Atsushi’s dumb, or today his mind has decided to sprout whatever comes to mind, but he asks: “What are you doing?”

Dazai huffs a laugh, his shoulders shaking, “What does it look like I’m doing, Atsushi-kun?”

Atsushi doesn't answer his pointed question. He should've seen that one coming. Instead, he asks, “Can I come closer?”

Dazai sighs, swings his long legs inwards over the ledge, and pats next to him. “Join me.”

Atsushi can’t tell if he means it literally or more metaphorically but nonetheless he sits next to Dazai, who is trembling and missing his tan jacket. “Did you forget it’s getting colder?” Atsushi murmurs, his words turning into wisps of smoke in front of them. “Or did you want to freeze to death instead?”

Dazai blows a long exhale through pursed lips, causing his visible breath to spread out like cigar smoke. Not for the first time, Atsushi wonders if he used to smoke in the mafia. “Something like that.”

“I thought you didn’t want to die in pain.”

“Well,” Dazai sighs again, “plans change.”

“... are you going to die tonight?”

Dazai chuckles, amused by the bluntness of his question. “Do you think so?”

And he turns to look at Atsushi, his eyes sunken with a lack of sleep, bangs stringy with grease, and all of a sudden Atsushi feels like he’ll disappear if he looks away. It's a constant worry held by the agency, and it's been at the back of Atsushi’s mind since he found him in that oil drum on his first day. He wishes so fervently that Dazai won’t kill himself, that he’ll quit his suicide attempts - pretend or not - because he doesn’t think he could continue living himself if he lost Dazai amongst the sea of other grievances that he has carried throughout his life.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” is all Atsushi says, his tone deceptively light. He can taste tears at the back of his throat.

“Atsushi-kun won’t miss me forever,” Dazai reminds. “You’ll move on, along with everyone else. Kunikida probably wakes up every morning and scorns my ongoing existence.”

Atsushi grits his teeth, turning his head away from Dazai so he can't see his face, “But have you thought that I just don’t want you to leave?” At the end of his sentence his voice is thick with tears and his vision goes blurry. “Dazai-san was the one who helped me after I was kicked out, taught me, and-” he sniffs, “I wouldn't know what to do.” After you commit suicide.

“You’d live on without me,” Dazai says, as if it was that simple.

“You don’t know that!” Atsushi half yells, causing Dazai to fall silent. He plops his head into the crook of Atsushi’s neck, his hair brushing against his chin.

“You think that highly of me?” His tone half sardonic, half self scathing. But his hands make fists as if he craves the confirmation.

“Yes,” Atsushi answers, plain and simple. “Dazai-san likes to think of himself as someone worthless, but he doesn’t realize how much he’s helped me.”

Dazai huffs a laugh, his breath tickling Atsushi’s neck, so clearly pleased. “Oh, Atsushi-kun. What would I do without you?”

Again, Atsushi avoids answering. They both know it.

(die, probably.)

“Then don’t go.”

“It’s a bit hard to do that,” Dazai mumbles. Atsushi’s gaze drifts towards Dazai’s arms, and suddenly notices the lack of bandages. For the first time, he sees his bare arms, decorated by hyper-pigmented speed bumps running down his wrists, with layers of scabs and fresh wounds.

“Dazai-san,” he prompts, his voice rising without his notice, “did something happen…?”

The latest cuts are extremely recent, like - actively-bleeding-recent. Atsushi doesn’t know how he didn’t pick up on them earlier, considering how he can literally smell the iron. He supposes his focus was overly concentrated on Dazai himself, causing him to miss out on minute details such as these. Again, Atsushi rushes in without noticing the little details.

“No,” is Dazai’s immediate reply, but then he ameliorates it with: “Yes,” then decides on, “Something neither here nor there.”

“Give me something I can work with.”

“I don’t know much myself,” Dazai replies, resigned. He’s unusually physically affectionate today, Atsushi notes, but he suspects it's primarily because he’s trying to steal all of Atsushi’s body heat. Atsushi reluctantly wraps an arm around Dazai, pulling him closer.

“It’s just bad?”

“Yeah.”

Atsushi doesn’t reply. He doesn’t know how to help, how to support Dazai, but he suspects no one else knows how to either.

So he has to at least try, right?

“You can’t let Nakahara-san outlive you,” Atsushi says.

Dazai guffaws, loud and sharp, so humoured that he slaps his knee. “Oh my god, I think he’d have an aneurysm over you calling him fucking Nakahara-san.” And for a second, he plays along. “You’re right, he’d show up to my funeral just so he could laugh.”

Atsushi smiles. “And what about Kunikida-san?”

“What about him?”

“He’d have no one to torment him.”

“And naturally I’m the only one who can do so?”

Atsushi gives him a knowing look. Dazai tries his best at a guileless look, but they both know only Atsushi can truly pull it off.

Atsushi snuggles closer to Dazai, their sides flush, Atsushi leaning on top of Dazai’s head.

“And what about me?”

“You?”

Atsushi nods.

“Well, I’d guess that Atsushi-kun wouldn’t have the world’s best mentor to guide him, but it’s not like you need much guidance anymore.”

Atsushi shakes his head slightly, “No, not anymore.”

He feels Dazai’s head tilt to face him. “Then?” He asks, genuine in his curiosity, but Atsushi thinks he can already predict his answer. Rather, it’s the principle of actually saying it.

Atsushi speaks with a low voice, so quiet his words are as light as snowflakes. Dazai unintentionally leans in closer to listen, so as to not miss a single one.

“I’d miss you more than anything else in the world.”

Hesitance lingers in the air. Dazai inhales to start a sentence, but stops. Perhaps he doesn’t know what to say. For Dazai to be caught off guard like this, Atsushi knows, is rare. His unwitting confession carries the same weight Atlas did.

He hopes Yosano is right, that himself is enough. And maybe he’s lacking in some areas, but he knows he will learn how to be enough. To save Dazai like Dazai saved him, at a river, on the brink of death.

“Oh, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai whispers, and in that whisper there was a newfound vulnerability, its fragility rivalling an egg. “Really?”

“Yes.” And Atsushi pulls him even closer, so close that they were almost two, in the hopes that Dazai could hear his steadily beating heart, and know - yes, Atsushi is telling the truth.

Dazai does not speak, and neither does Atsushi, afraid that this arduously made peace will shatter from a single sound. The sky is darkening; the sun is going to sleep. Atsushi knows he should dress Dazai’s wounds, get them inside before the temperature drops further, but there is no time like the present. He will savour this moment for as long as he can before it evaporates into a memory.

They watch as the sun sets before them. The world can wait.

Chapter Text

Atsushi’s hand poised in front of Dazai’s dorm, heart in his throat, no plan in his head. He prays Yosano is right in her words, and that bringing just himself is enough.

.. Oh, and the ??? he brought, but that doesn’t count.

“Dazai-san?” He calls, rapping the door.

Nothing. Atsushi waits a few seconds to be polite, but when he finds himself raising his hand to knock again, rustling is heard from within.

“Dazai-san. I can hear you in there,” Atsushi says, stern.

The rustling stops as if it would make Atsushi turn away. He sighs, and internally apologizes to Dazai when he crouches down to the keyhole with a set of fashioned paper clips-turned-lockpicks.

Normally, if this were anyone else, they would not be able to unlock Dazai’s fuckery of a door lock - serrated spool pins with countermilling within, a few other weird pins, the handiwork of a Mafia-exclusive contact - but Atsushi has been through this rodeo a few times. Not that he’s a petty thief or anything, but he’s managed to pick up the skill over the past months. The look of surprise on Dazai’s face when Atsushi picked open his door for the first time was priceless.

“I’m coming in, in three, two, one–”

Atsushi pushes the door open. A wave of stagnant, rotting air hits him, causing him to gag reflexively. To put it simply: it’s the smell of depression. And it reeks. Trash covers the floor - bandages, food packaging, bottles. He worries about what he’ll see when he finds the man himself. If it weren’t for the fact that: 1. Atsushi has been here, 2. The dormitories are near identical to each other, Atsushi wouldn’t have been able to navigate around. How long has Dazai been living like this?

“I know you’re in here. Where are you?” Atsushi asks the open air. Normally, he’d bother with taking off his shoes, but with the amount of trash strewn on the floor, there’s no point.

A whisper. “Atsushi-kun?” It’s small and feeble and everything opposite of Dazai as a person.

“Yes, it’s me,” Atsushi replies, carefully stepping so he doesn’t crush an instant ramen cup. “Where are you?”

Dazai mumbles something unintelligible. Thankfully, due to the muffledness of his voice and the direction where it seems to be coming from, Atsushi can hazard a guess as to where he is.