parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

TWENTY SEVEN: THE CLOTHES.

Once you have changed yourself back into your mother's black mediaeval dress, you find out the horrible news that,

"I burnt down your chateau," Dazai casually says. His hands are in his coat pockets, the beige coat that swayed around his long legs like ribbons. On his face is a look of triumph, as if he has conquered the unconquerable, and you clutch the fang like it was a rosary protecting you from death.

"What?"

"I had to," He continues. "You would go back. It is a place that I can't go to. I'm haunted by your passive ability by your vampirism to conjure up nightmares under that chateau. So I did what anyone in love would do: burn the place where you might run away to."

"But..." You trail off, groping for words. At such a crass revelation, you were left speechless, staring at the man that seemed to have a much darker shadow than you did. As if his weight in the world was beginning to turn in his favour, and he was beginning to show his true colours. You swallow the lump in your throat and attempt a smile. "I wouldn't have. The chateau is just a place for me to stay."

"And I want you to stay with me," He says, walking towards you and embracing you. You lean your head against his shoulder, feeling your head spin at the news that the mansion that you have been staying in since the early 1900s is gone. Burnt to a crisp.

"What about Sakata's body? And the man in the backyard?"

"Don't worry. I took care of everything," His ambiguous answer left you blinking rapidly, before he followed it up with a, "All you have to do is be with me. That's your only responsibility now. I'll take care of us."

You swallow the growing lump in your throat, finding your mouth to be dry. He places his hand on the back of your head and draws you in closer until you are crushed to his figure, until it becomes unsure where he began and you started. It was as if he was desperately attempting to fuse you and him, to make sure what ran through his veins was you, instead of the arterial red liquid that was blood. He seemed insistent that you were what kept the world going for him, and your death would result in the abrupt end of everyone and everything, like time standing still. He would make sure those hands of the clock would keep turning, keep moving, stay alive–or else he would be pushed to the brink of insanity.

He's felt it before, insanity; it was lightheadedness with undertones of grief. He's felt it before, when you were in treatment and didn't know if your vampirism collaborated with Yosano's treatment. He's felt it before, when his dear friend died in his arms.

It was a terrifying experience.

He hugs you tighter, eyes wide and unblinking at the space before him. It was as if he was watching something play out in the space of his cranium, and the scene was brutal: the dying face of Odasaku, the blood that seeped out into his hands: uncomfortably warm and sticky.

"You can't ever leave me," He whispers. "I'll die. I'll die. You don't want me dead, do you?"

"Of course not, Dazai," You whisper back. "I don't want you to die. But–"

"There is no 'buts' when it comes to love, my darling," He gently chastises you, and you lick your lips out of anxiety.

"Maybe. But I just wanted to say that this was all very unnecessary," You conjure up a gentle smile when he pulls away from the hug. "I was never going to leave you. You're too...well, you and I fit together like jigsaw pieces. You're overreacting."

"I'm not," Dazai insists. You shake your head, slightly amused when he pouts, before he puts his arm around your shoulder and says, "Let's get going."

"Go where?"

"My place. Where else?"

"I want to see the chateau," You say. Dazai looks at you with something akin to curiosity. "I need to see it one last time."

"Sentimentality?" He asks.

You shrug. "Something like that."

"Fine by me," Dazai cheerily says, and calls a cab. You make sure not to trip over your own dress as you enter the cab, the cab driver's eyes widening at your grotesque, ancient beauty. He stammers over his words before pressing down on the accelerator to get the car going. Dazai hums, holding your hand over his lap, stroking the back of your hand with his fingers as though memorising the vein patterns that lay beneath the thin skin. And he was. He could, and would, spend hours just worshipping you, committing you to memory, as if any part of existence where you weren't there was an existence too painful to experience.

When the cab arrives at the front of the taxi, you crawl out of the suffocating, tiny vehicle with Dazai holding your hand. He pays the driver and watches it turn back and disappear. The brunette enters the forest. You follow him, and he navigates as if the forest was a simple chess board underneath his fingertips. The air held a twinge of burnt wood, but was overwhelmed by the fresh smell of foliage and the cries of the early bloomers of cicadas. You look up, finding one perched on the bark of a tree, singing its tiny heart out, until it paused for reprieve before another filled its place. Birds, hidden behind the waxy lacquer of the green summer leaves, chirped and sang to each other as they hopped from one twig to another. It was a closed circuit, where everything relayed messages from within the messages, and any perpetrator from the outside world would be met with silence.

"You see?" Dazai suddenly says, stopping as you bump into his back. "I've burnt it all down."

You look past him. The chateau, once magnificent and broken, was now a pile of stray and charred wooden planks. The stench of lighter fluid was strong and you crinkle your nose. You take a step forwards and crouch down, touching the wood, still warm from its inferno, and sigh.

"My chateau..." You murmur. "My place of permanence..."

He watches you run a hand lovingly on the charred piece of wood, soot staining your fingertips and he wishes you would touch him like that. Gently, as if he was a place of ruin, and you were deciphering him, understanding him, committing him to memory because he was gone. What a paradox he was: wanting to stay but wanting to be gone. 

But both had the common denominator of wanting your attention.

"Let's go," You say, standing up. You wipe your hand on your dress and smile a small smile at him. "You said you wanted to go to your place?"

Dazai nods, putting an arm around your waist. "Yep. Let's get going."

–

When he arrives back to his dorm room, you pause at the cleaned up place of his. It was as if this room was static for so long, awaiting for your arrival: an emptiness, a void, a silence hung in the air when you breathed it in. It seemingly held an untold story, or rather, a story that was waiting to be told, readying itself for you to unlock.

Let there be plot, you think to yourself. And it comes through in the form of a tray, carrying two glasses of barley tea. Ice cubes clink against the sides of the glass when he places it down on the stumpy-legged table.

"It's hot outside," Dazai says. "Usually I just drink it without it, but since it's now an 'us' rather than just an 'I', I decided to put ice cubes in."

"Thank you, Dazai," You raise a cup to your lips and take a sip. The barley tea felt grounding. "It's nice and cold."

"First course of action is to get you in civilian clothing," He says, pointing a finger at you playfully. "You look like something straight out of a Gothic film."

"Whatever pleases you," You mildly say, unfazed by his teasing. He stands up and goes into a room, before returning back into the living room holding fabric in his hands.

"Here, wear these," He says. "It might be oversized because they're mine, but still..."

"No former partner clothes for me to borrow?" You tease, and he shakes his head.

"It'll only be you. The rest of the world bores me terribly so," Dazai says, and you look at the clothes he has presented you with: A white button up alongside a pair of slacks, with white socks to go with it. You remember your mother's words: While it may be true that the lion cannot stop for the lamb, love mutilates the lion. Let the lion become a hybrid, let the lion lick the lamb.

"Let me change."