parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

EPILOGUE: THE PARASITE.

His clothes are loose and baggy on you, but comfortable nonetheless, and they smell like him too. The sleeves of his white button up hangs off your hands, far too long for you, and Dazai resists the urge to squeeze you into his chest: A predatory vampire reduced to his little plaything, his little girlfriend.

He does just that.

"You look so cute, I just want to eat you up," Dazai squeezes you possessively in his arms, and you gasp at the sudden aggressiveness. But you give in with a smile, leaning your head against his chest. You hear the thump-thump-thump of his heart, beating rapidly as if your presence made it run like a horse in a jockey gamble. You giggle when he loosens his hold on you to look at you in your eyes, the corners of his eyes crinkling at the smile that was curving his lips. "You're going to be the death of me."

"Isn't it the other way around?" You jokingly say, and he laughs. A melodic noise that rings pleasantly in your ears.

"You're being smudged by me. Parts of you are being rubbed off by me," He says. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."

You let him hold you, his back against the wall as he turns on the television for mild background sounds. There was a war within Dazai, a secret war, a war that began with the desire to be so intertwined with you it would be impossible to be seen as a single entity. He would have to be addressed with you as well, as if separation meant death for him, like a parasite without its host. You're a reincarnation of his childhood-adolescent dreams: a deathly maiden, saving him from the meaningless void that was life.

He presses a kiss to your temple. A gentle kiss that held so much violence behind it: I will kill for you, if it necessitates it. You've become so soft and gentle around the edges, it was as if the adage of the lion and the lamb was reversed: the lamb has become a carnivore, and the lion a herbivore. It certainly didn't help the fact that Dazai says,

"I can't live with the fact that you'll outlive me one day," He says. "It's either we live together, or commit a lovely double suicide together."

A thinly veiled threat.

"It was human blood that made me immortal," You say, looking up at him. "I can drink animal blood instead from the butchers."

He takes your lips into his and murmurs a soft, 'open your mouth', to which you do, and he slips his tongue into your mouth. It glides over your molars, the corrugated surface of the top of your mouth, and he pricks the tip of his tongue with the pointed ends of your fangs.

Blood is drawn.

"Why'd you do that?" You pant for air when he pulls away, heat clouding your cheeks. He sucks on his own tongue, relishing in the taste of his own blood.

"Because you won't bite me."

"I can't. It's as if it's been engineered inside me to not bite you," You say. "It's not that I don't love you; it's because I love you I can't bite you."

Dazai hums, a slight smile on his lips as blood continues to trickle inside of his mouth. He kisses you again, and you feel yourself floating away, higher and higher into some place more ethereal than the tiny space of Dazai's dorm, until your body felt like an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in this world: a portrait where you and Dazai were immortalised in a kiss for all eternity.

"I am tortured by you," He says, whispering, clutching you tighter in his arms. "Before you, I never knew the difference between sacrifice and self-slaughter. But now...it's clear to me that you're all I need. You need me, just as I need you, right?"

"Yes."

He kisses your forehead. "Good, good."

"Does it bother you...that I'm not human?" You ask, tentatively. Dazai laughs, a guttural laugh that rattles his shoulders. He shakes his head.

"Not at all. A part of me is glad you're a monster...I've never felt truly human, you know," He says. "A human disqualification is what I've felt like all my life. Being with you affirmed the truth for me."

"And what's the truth?" You ask curiously.

He smiles. "That I'm a hypocrite for wanting to be with the rest of the world. It's so much less lonelier with you here."

You cradle his face. His pale, moony face, a face pretty enough to call lunatics alike to worship him. But you're the only one who's gotten this close. You're the closest anyone's gotten to him, in this way. All his life he's been living with a force field blocking him off from the rest of the world, and you have breached it, walking through the screens he has set up in a poor, desperate attempt to look like the rest of the world. "I'm a monster without a heart, and you're a human without a soul. We are the same."

"We are," Dazai says, playing with your fingers. Your clawed fingers, reduced to nothing but a play object for him now. Confessions of a monster, caught in the crossfires of love. "And I'm happy. For once, I'm happy."