you can take my Soul, but never my Heart (omegaverse)

Chapter 16: shot in the dark

-eleven years ago-

Osamu Dazai is eleven years old on the summer afternoon that he climbs over the orphanage fence in a ratty blue jinbei and a pair of ill fitting slippers. It's far from the first time he's done it; he's been climbing this fence since he was seven. He likes the freedom that awaits him on the other side, but he always comes back, because at least there's a bed in the orphanage. At least there's a roof. At least, sometimes, the food is warm. He doesn't want to go through the pain of sleeping in the street.

He wanders, idly picking at the fresh cotton bandage on his right forearm that itches with the sweat beading under the summer heat. The cuts are still fresh, still stinging and bleeding, and the bandage itself is already getting bloodied. They won't give him clean ones to change them out until tomorrow, if he's lucky. He's already wasting the nurse's time with his cries for supposed attention.

(Attention is the last thing he wants, he tried to explain. He doesn't want to be seen at all. He doesn't even want to live.)

He finds a too-skinny Russian boy in the same blue clothes as him, though with an adult sized white ushanka over stringy black hair and an old winter coat. Unfitting for summer completely, yet he still has a slight shiver to his frame where he sits on the dirty ground in an alley, half hidden behind a dumpster.

Dazai crouches down next to him.

The boy hasn't presented yet; neither of them have. Yet Dazai can still pick up on notes of his scent; signs that he's likely going to be an alpha within the next few years. He smells of the freshness of falling snow and sour, rotting apples. Frigid and spoiled.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is staring at the cold, stiff corpse of a street dog.

"Can you identify a cause of death?" the boy asks. His voice is light, as if he's asking Dazai what he had for lunch today. His Japanese is thick with a Russian accent; the other kids often tease him for it. Dazai is the only one he really talks to anymore.

It's a game they play often. Dostoevsky will show him the corpse of a stray dog or a bird that flew too close or a rat that was lurking in the orphanage walls. He'll ask Dazai to find the cause of death, even though they're both very aware of what it is. Dostoevsky just wants to clean up his act. To refine his ability so he can control how his targets die, instead of simply tearing phantom, lethal gouges through them as if the air itself is made of razors.

Dazai inspects the dog as much as he can without touching the dirty thing. There's no blood, and no wounds aside from mange and scars that give way to the skin beneath patchy brown fur. "She looks like she's asleep."

Dostoevsky smiles. It's not kind. "It was fast. She didn't suffer. I ruined her brain. If anything, the last thing she felt was likely painless pleasure."

Dazai blinks, subtly leaning closer. "Could you do that to a person?"

He shrugs, though he's just being smug as his red-violet eyes raise to Dazai's face. "Probably."

"Then do it to me."

There's no hesitation to it. Dostoevsky raises a hand, fingers so pale they're nearly blinding. He rests his palm against Dazai's forehead, and those fingers dig into his scalp. His hand is cold, so cold, and there's a brief feeling of static that snaps up Dazai's spine and makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up, coming to a point like a spark of static electricity where their skin meets. A flash of white-blue nearly blinds them both. Dostoevsky pulls away; he's still smiling. Dazai could sob in frustration.

"Both of our gifts trigger with touch. I could never kill you."

Dazai looks at the dog again. He's so very jealous of her.