Curate, connect, and discover
hey guys, remember the post i made two and a half hours ago about making a soukoku songfic (Feel Better by Penelope Scott) with Dazai's POV? well.. enjoy the 2k words!! edit: uploaded on ao3 and attached link!!
A nice pace—it was the best description Dazai could come up with whenever he asked himself to describe what sort of a life he was living now.
Not too slow like it was before joining the Detective Agency—he needed some action, but not as violent and urgent as his Port Mafia days.
But something prevented him from outright admitting that.
Sure, the usual hectic nature of the office was enough, and his co-workers were alright, but something felt off.
Dazai’s pen glided over the sheet, the ink melting into the page precisely as he directed the object to.
Precise. That was his life. Something he personally and perfectly curated it to. Of course, he was a genius, and with that came some useful methods to manipulate his surroundings to just what he preferred.
For some reason, he'd been doing the opposite as of late.
Likely to distance himself from the mafia. Obviously he continued to hide behind his mask, but his mannerisms were so much more genuine.
There was only one person he'd shown that side to before.
The grip on his pen tightened and his movements paused, making the ink pool over the specific spot and ruin the word that was previously placed.
His previous train of thought far gone, he shifted to a new line, and began to write, this time with less grace.
I don't wanna feel better
No one's ever gonna love me like that again
I don't wanna get over you
I wanna sit with you in bed
I don't wanna feel better
I'd give anything to miss you again
I don't wanna get over it
I wanna get under it instead
It felt as if his inner-consciousness was regularly at war with his brain. Thoughts of Hatrack somehow always seemed to invade and plague his mind.
Of course he could keep his mind hushed during the day and force himself to pay attention to work; but in the quiet confines of the night, however, the designated time he kept to truly tear his feelings and thoughts out as the room was darkened in solitude other than that lampshade…
The lampshade was nothing but a personification he created in his mind. The lampshade didn't actually care. No, the lampshade shouldn't care.
He hated that he wanted the lampshade to care, though.
…He was surprised at that particular thought. Was he healing like the lampshade told him so?
A book sits on top of clean and messy blankets
On a bed that fuckin' creaks at night when I get in it late
And late at night, I'm chugging Gatorade
And someone's breaking up when I crack up
Because I know I'll never know just what to say
Ever since he'd left the Port Mafia, all he had done was write. What else was there to do before joining the Agency?
So he wrote.
He filled out books with diary entries. Alongside keeping journals, he began to write poems.
Just like now.
He was honestly surprised how he hadn't done this earlier in his mafia days—it was so much easier to express his thoughts in writing than saying it out loud.
Of course he'd tried. He tried. He tried for him.
Eventually it's impossible to continue, even if the person deserves it.
I'm a communist, a terrorist, an MPDG thot
Or I'm a sad girl in a dorm room, living out the shady Christian plot of
Twilight or The Bible or The Lover by Duras
Or I'm just really fuckin' selfish and really fuckin' lost
It really felt as if he were in a reimagining of some cliché tragic romance, and only for him.
Surely Slug had forgotten all about him. And even if he hadn't, surely he'd have such an impression that, if Dazai’s name were brought up, he'd dismiss the topic with a scorn.
That certainly was the case. Dazai was never wrong in his calculations, after all.
…But, what did he think of that deduction?
But someone loved me, someone fucking loved me
Someone fucking loved me and I fuckin' loved them too
Goddamn it, I was worth something, I fuckin' learned something
I had my cake (I ate it, it ate me too and, God, no)
I don't wanna feel better
Some things always fascinated Dazai.
The fact that he could be the object of affection, for one.
Being so wasn't the same as respect; he had the respect of so many—Port Mafia members when he was still one, his co-workers in the Detective Agency, but to truly be the muse to one’s love and kindness?
His first thought would go to Odasaku. But that was familial.
His second thought made him wonder how he always managed to fucked things up.
We kept our liquor in a suitcase underneath my bed
And we drank it to go out or just stay in or to feel sad
But in a hot way, a way I'll fuckin' never have again
The sun has began to set
Of course Dazai and Slug knew each other as teenagers. And of course they’d drink anyway, because they'd done much more illegal shit than underage drinking.
Dazai drunk a lot. Alone, with his former friends, and even now with the adult members of the Agency—but nothing could meet the odd domesticity of him and Chibi cheering after a mission in his apartment.
Sometimes they drunk because of their shitty lives. Sometimes they drunk just because. Sometimes they drunk as an excuse to stay in his bedroom.
Sometimes they drunk to have something to blame as they awoke a day later in the bed unclothed.
The lamp flickered.
I'm a socialist, Marxist, libertarian slut
I am an awkward teenage virgin and I sort of kinda laugh a lot in bed
But other times, I cry or don't make noise at all
I'd give my life to have a room that feels that small
Dazai is known for his exaggerated expressions—it looked as if he wore his emotions on his sleeve.
It was all a mask, of course. Why would Dazai be that vulnerable voluntarily? Someone would have to force it out.
Someone had.
It felt as if it were yesterday, clinging onto his shirt and bunching it all up in his hands as Dazai buried his face into the shorter man’s neck at an awkward angle, sobbing uncontrollably.
Or sometimes they’d sit together in the comfortable silence.
It wasn't as if he didn't trust the Agency’s members and couldn't be as vulnerable with them because of it, but simply that only when all of them were combined did they equal to what he had with Chibi.
Would he really mind if he’d have to make a switch in spending time with him, than the ADA?
'Cause someone loved me, someone fucking loved me
Someone fucking loved me, I loved them too
Goddamn it, I was worth something, I fuckin' earned something
I have a right to die, a right to live, a right to choose, too
And God, no!
Of course I don't wanna feel better!
Can you fucking imagine?!
The concept of having a reason to live had always confused Dazai. It was possibly his biggest question in life which he usually never gave a second thought to.
Until, of course, the reason arrived. In full force.
Chibi’s reaction to Dazai simply staring at the vein he’d nicked too hard once—the frantic begging for Dazai to take things seriously, the panic in his eyes, a whole storm, not only in his irises, but visible on his face.
He sort of stopped.
He isn't aware why he doesn't go all out while trying out methods anymore.
…To think that blatantly false statement would mock his intellect, yet it was his own thought from his own mind.
He didn't need to think further, simply observing the pen going over the ruled lines in order.
No one's ever gonna love me like that again
I don't wanna get over it
I wanna rip the stars to shreds
I don't wanna feel better
Of course he'd had one night stands here and there in the aftermath of leaving the Mafia.
For him? It was good enough.
He knew it'd be fruitless to look for love, so obviously he wouldn't even bother trying.
Of course it hurt, of course it fuckin' hurt
It hurt like nothing in the world sometimes
That I was super scared, and we were all a train-wreck
And also somehow making it
I think I might've died there twice, and I would do it all again
Port Mafia had fucked him up.
No, to only write one sentence to describe what he had gone through would be an understatement.
The only reason he could even recognise that was because of a special few.
Slug, Odasaku, and now the Agency members. The Agency members who made him unknowingly recognise how easily an environment can be uncontrolling and non-manipulating.
But, despite the change in scenery, which was clearly doing wonders for his mental health—something felt wrong.
Off.
Sure, life at the mafia was terrible, but it felt home, because that was all Dazai knew once. And as the years passed upon his leaving, he came to the revelation that he'd go through with it all over again for him.
I'm a nihilist, a soldier, an OCD-machine
Or I'm a healthy baby-girl who traded sunshine for disease
But when my head hit my cheap pillow, I could tell I had a heart
And I wanna tear this fascist Milky Way apart
Being a weapon never bothered Dazai.
He never even had a reason to live, so when Mori came along, Dazai played his games.
Continuing his way of living with an attempt here and there—the usual. For him, the glass would always be half empty.
Or atleast supposed to.
Getting a reason to live is weird.
'Cause someone loved me, someone fuckin' loved me
All my filthy life I loved someone I barely knew
Goddamn it, I was worth something, I fuckin' learned something
And it felt better in my mouth than fresh warm food
Port Mafia was his entire life once.
And they were partners once.
For the important part of his life, Slug was all he knew. He knew and didn't at the same time.
Sure they told each other things, but it was always either the heaviest childhood trauma or an exchange of insults—no in between.
In spite of the insulting remarks, he felt so understood.
He actually felt as if he had worth.
It was a nice dynamic.
His frantic pace of writing practically turned to scribbles.
I guess I loved you, I guess I really loved you
All my filthy life I loved someone I barely knew
And now you're over there, and I'm way over here
What am I gonna do?
Guess he would admit it.
And he frankly, didn't care.
He didn't care that he'd lost his only chance. He didn't care if the one person who saw him for what he truly was, the one person who’d shown him love and affection in his own way, didn't care.
Good.
Chuuya would feel better without him.
He didn't care if Chuuya believed the opposite. He didn't care if Chuuya believed that having someone who cared about him would help him feel better.
If that truly were the case?
I don't wanna feel better
No one's ever gonna love me like that again
I don't wanna get over you
I wanna sit with you in bed
I don't wanna feel better
Somehow, his mind, his treacherous fucking mind, wanted the opposite. Not the calculating, rational one—no, the emotional one.
He wanted to get over him, he really did—but why would his hand write the opposite? Why did his subconscious steer his strokes in the other direction? Why had he done so the entire poem?
…He really did want to sit in bed with Chuuya one last time.