𝓪𝓷 𝓸𝓬𝓽𝓸𝓫𝓮𝓻 𝓵𝓾𝓵𝓵𝓪𝓫𝔂 | 𝘥𝘢𝘻𝘢𝘪 𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘶

𝓋. 𝓂𝒶𝓎

"I can't remember ever knowing anything else, Dazai," she admits softly, looking skyward. "My shadows have been my only constant companions. When I had nothing else, I had my darkness. It is not so easy to leave it behind even if I may want to."

"And do you?" he asks, tilting his head. "Want to leave, I mean."

(Name) hums. "Ask me again when you think I have healed enough to have more than just my shadows."

And that leads to his next question: "How do you heal, (Name)?"

It takes her a moment to answer, long enough to make him wonder if she's going to answer at all. But she does eventually. "I'm not sure, Dazai. People heal in different ways. Some ask for help, some shut the world out to not hurt even more, some even turn to the temporary relief of intoxicants to create the illusion of healing."

"Intoxicants like alcohol?" he wonders aloud. "I have tried that. It doesn't really work as well I'd like it to. I have yet to heal from anything."

Her hands finds his, slipping into his palm almost unnoticeably as she gives it a squeeze.

"If not today," she says, "maybe tomorrow." He stays quiet, unsure of how to respond to what he thinks might be hope, so she continues. "I think I'd like to heal by loving. To heal and to be healed in the process."

Her words make him chuckle, amusement dancing in his dark, dark eyes. "You do not belong in the Mafia, (Name)," he says again, tucking their joined hands into his pocket and stepping closer to make walking easier.

She snorts. "I haven't healed anything thus far, have I? There is nowhere else I could belong when my only talent is to bring harm on command."

"If not today, then maybe tomorrow, right?" he repeats. "We are still young."

Sighing, she drops her head on his shoulder for a moment, as though taking a break from carrying the weight of her thoughts and burdens. Dazai finds himself holding his breath at the heat permeating through his side and into his bones, filling him with a warmth he has not felt before.

"We are young," she agrees, "but we are already terrible." Raising her head, she addresses him, matter-of-fact when she says, "They call us monsters, you know."

He does know. On most days, he thinks the same if he chances across a mirror. Lately, however, he takes interest in finding a glimmer of his reflection in her-- fractured, hurting, lost, and darker than either of them ever wanted to be.

But she is light forced into the darkness, and he believes he is every bit of the demon he doesn't want to be.

"Yes, they do," he concedes, stopping on their path to some unknown destination to steal a moment and simply take her in, and to bask in this instance of tenderness and honesty she is prodding out of him by virtue of their similarity and simultaneous dissimalrity.

What's the term for people like them? Kindred spirits, was it?

Yes. It is amusing, however, to find a parallel of himself drawn in someone so bright and so haunted by the demons that dance at her very command. They are both lost, but in very different ways. And they are both hurting, in not so different ways.

How interesting.

Dazai's hand rises to rest against her cheek, thumb gliding across her skin with all the tenderness he can summon with his inexperience. "You wear blood well for someone so gentle," he murmurs to her, closer than he needs to be, inhaling the faint scent of gasoline and something earthy.

There are storms and chaos brewing under her skin, and he knows she is a self-contained hurricane. He thinks it's curious how easy she is to hold.
And he likes the way darkness feels against his skin, he decides as (Name)'s fingers curl around his hips with an ease that suggests they might simply be slotting into a place where they belong.