Chrysanthemum Garden [Dazai x Reader] ✓

8. Your dream, my reason

My lack of familiarity with the thick mattress and the heap of summer bedsheets from years of sleeping between four wood planks forced me to sit up from bed in the middle of the night and hurtle my hand from the fort of sheets I had wrapped around me towards the bedside table.

In the vast darkness of my closed eyes, I sought the surface of the wooden bedside table to pull at the strings of the eye-patch that I had left on it before tucking myself into sleep, and adjusted it quickly over my eye, making sure that the straps were secure before I allowed myself to open the eye I had left uncovered.

I was unsure of the time, but the moon's dazzled light penetrating through the fabric of the closed curtains alluded that it may have been perhaps just a little past midnight and that in no time the brightness of the moon would call out to all werewolves and supernatural beings (those I often found illustrated in some of Father's books) who possessed the ability to sense its presence in the sky and the obligation to natter back at it.

I pushed myself up from the bed while seeking warmth from the sheets wrapped around my figure once the stinging chill of the room struck the bare skin of my exposed arms, and quietly roamed towards the window to jerk the curtains apart; the open-garden which centred the edifice of rooms was peacefully still, and the recently mowed lawn dancing with the courteous night breeze further illustrated the tranquillity of the scene.

One wrong move and such peace could cease to exist. That's why I was trusted to move about so freely behind these doors just like I once had been in the Mafia - because Dazai was here.

It was no longer subject of the question that his gift worked against mine, and in some sense, whenever the two of us held hands my ability could not manifest and gave me the freedom of falsely experiencing life as if I had no ability at all; it was through the brunet that my identity as an ordinary and non-cursed member of society flourished - with the simplicity of having fingers intertwined in a gesture which with others hinted at romantic dwellings - and with his ability, I felt safe from unintentionally increasing the count of arson-related offences I had always gone unpunished for.

But what if he disappeared?

As if controlled by primal instinct (aided with the agitation of insecurity and uneasiness), I paced for the door and swung it open, not taking into account that he may have been sleeping and that as a result of my abrupt movement he could've been disrupted from his slumber. But that didn't seem to be the case.

Despite only darkness being introduced to my sight, I could somehow make the still figure of Dazai's slim body draped comfortably on the couch (where he offered to sleep the night while I accommodated myself to a more "cosy and sleep-appropriate location"), and through the dimness of the room, I seemed to make out his conscious breathing patterns complying with the raising and lowering of his chest along with a pair of attentive eyes following the movement of my head as I tried to carefully analyse his figure in the dark.

'Unable to sleep, too?'

I nodded at his question but sighed once the idiocy of my gesture (in the darkness) struck me and compelled me to pronounce with a verbal affirmative.

The fabric of his clothes and the padding of the couch stirred and rubbed to suggest a change in posture, and soon I found my eye following the lurking of his shadow as his slender silhouette strolled towards the large windows to bring the curtains apart.

The shape of his thin arms was outlined by the moonlight before him, and the same brightness sketched short thin lines attached to his head to delineate the tangled knots of his hair. The blue-tinted contour of his body reminded me of the proportions often seen on infamous models who had their bodies spread across the cover of fashion magazines I often passed by while carrying out jobs for the Mafia; I would've undoubtedly guessed he may have been a model before joining the agency he claimed to work for, but I had evidence which related him to a much more familiar work base.