#darktober

Laughter followed—low and sharp-edged.

Chuuya leaned in the doorway, coat slung across his shoulders, grin curling like smoke. “God help us. Two Dazais loose on the same trip? The forests are doomed.”

Even Akutagawa, half-shadow at the far end, hissed under his breath. “Pathetic.”

But none of them stopped him.

Dazai strolled out like he’d been waiting all night, bruised jaw catching the light, bolo tie clasp glinting at his throat, coat unbuttoned. He ignored the noise, the sidelong looks. Only paused when he saw you through the glass. His lips curled, smug and infuriating, before he slid into the passenger seat and leaned in to kiss you—slow, deliberate, enough to make the others mutter behind their hands.

“How can there be two of him?” someone whispered, like it was a curse.

And when their eyes flicked to you, the resemblance hit harder than they’d admitted before. You weren’t Mafia, weren’t armed, weren’t anything but ordinary. Yet the same crooked humor curved your smile, the same gleam of madness tilted your head. Two variations of the same riddle they’d never solve.

Dazai buckled in, stretching like a cat. His grin lingered, but his eyes slid shut in that way of his that looked like sleep but wasn’t—half-rest, half-watchfulness, one hand still loose on his thigh as though ready to move.

You caught the stares in the rearview and smirked. “What’s with the gawking? Do I have blood on me?”

He chuckled, leaning back, careless. “No. They just can’t fathom a woman foolish enough to marry me.”

“Semantics,” you shot back. “You say foolish, I say clinically insane.”

“Ah.” He turned toward you, eyes half-lidded, smile of a man who found beauty in the abyss. “We’re soulmates in diagnosis, then.”

The headlights flared, swallowing the building behind you. The Port Mafia receded in the mirror, silhouettes still framed in the doorway, shaking their heads like they’d just watched an omen walk out hand-in-hand.

Soon, the city blurred into a black forest road, headlights slicing pale ribbons through the trees. Dazai commandeered the radio, flipping stations until he found something obscure and crooning—an old French chanson you’d never heard.

“You’re setting the mood for our funeral already,” you teased, drumming your fingers on the wheel.

“Would you rather pop music? Shall we die to Taylor Swift?”

You snorted. “God, no. I’d haunt you forever if you did.”

“Promise?” He leaned closer, voice a mock whisper, teeth grazing the edge of your ear. That glint in his eyes was all hunger, the kind that wasn’t about flesh or pleasure but about how far someone would go with him.

You shoved him back lightly into his seat. “You really think it’s haunted?”

He sighed and settled back again, long legs bumping the glove compartment. “I certainly hope so. Imagine—our pre-wedding honeymoon photos made incredible by bloodied handprints on the walls. How romantic.”

“You’re deranged.”

“You too, my belladonna.”

The smile faded from your lips when the radio fizzled into static. The chanson warped, a shiver crawling up its spine before the channel went dead.

Dazai grinned, tapping the side of the dashboard like he’d orchestrated the whole thing. [Instead of conking out, his grin lingered, but his eyes closed briefly, body slumping in that way of his that looked like sleep but wasn’t—half-rest, half-watchfulness. He never stayed down for long.]

By the time the GPS claimed you’d arrived, the forest had eaten the road entirely. The cabin hunched at the end of a dirt path like it had grown there, its roof sagging under moss and shadow. One porch light burned weakly, more sepulchral than welcoming.

Dazai whistled low, rolling his shoulders as if waking fully now. “Charming.”

You turned the key in the ignition, cutting the engine. The silence that replaced it was too thick, too total.

You tried to laugh, but it snagged in your throat. “Perfect for our pre-wedding getaway.”

“Mm,” he agreed, unbuckling, “perfect for a disappearance.”

You grabbed your overnight bag from the trunk—the one with your clothes, his knife kit, and the bottle of whiskey he’d demanded you pack—and followed him up the creaking steps.

Inside, the cabin had the stale dampness of something locked too long. The floorboards whined under your weight, and the wallpaper peeled in curling strips at the corners. Someone had left a pile of split firewood by the hearth, but the logs were swollen with moisture, splotched grey at the ends.

Your hand found a dusty oil lamp on the table by the door. The bulbs overhead were dead, though an outlet in the corner hummed faintly—as if the place had power, but only in stuttering pulses.

You wrinkled your nose. “Romantic.”

Dazai only laughed, low and delighted, and plucked the lamp from your hands. “It’s perfect. Look at it—just the two of us, no witnesses, no cell reception. Exactly how I wanted you before the wedding.” He set the lamp down and caught your waist, spinning you once in a mock waltz before you could protest.

You leaned into him despite yourself. “Idiot.”

His hands slid lower, fingers splaying at your hips. “Your idiot,” he whispered against your ear. His cologne clung to your skin as he kissed your temple.

He let go after squeezing your ass for good measure.

You flicked the lamp on. Its glow wasn’t enough to erase the shadows, only pressed them deeper into the corners. It caught the glint in his eyes, though—mischief and something softer.

Dazai sprawled across the couch immediately, arms folded under his head, as though this were a honeymoon suite and not a ruin at the edge of nowhere. He pulled the bottle of whiskey from your bag, uncorked it, and took the first swig without asking, then extended it to you with a mock toast. “To our pre-wedding crime scene.”

You sat down next to him, clinked the bottle with your fingernail, and drank. “You’re terrible at romance.”

“I’m redefining it,” he said, shifting so his head dropped into your lap. He looked up at you upside-down, grinning. “We’re rewriting the manual.”

You shoved his face away.

“Movie?” he asked, unfazed, nodding toward the tiny TV on the cabinet, still lying with his head in your lap. His thumb traced slow circles against your knee.

You shrugged, fishing through the stack of dusty remotes left behind. “If the thing even works.”

“Then we’ll make our own movie.” He winked.

“Scandalous,” you said dryly, but your fingers slid into his hair, combing it back, the gesture automatic.

Miraculously, the old TV buzzed to life. A stack of cracked DVDs sat on the cabinet beside it—proof someone had holed up here once, long enough to need distractions.

The two of you curled together under a scratchy blanket, trading the bottle back and forth while some random action flick flickered across the screen. He rested his palm over your thigh, thumb idly stroking, his head tilted so his breath brushed your neck. Every time the hero onscreen did something absurd, you felt him shudder with silent laughter against your back.

It almost felt normal. Almost. Like two people about to be married, not two people who’d built a life around the abyss.

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your jaw, his hand already sliding beneath your shirt, closer to your nipples. “I waited all week to have you to myself.”

“You’re ridiculous.” But you turned your face and caught his mouth anyway, a soft, brief kiss that he chased for a second longer.

The TV screen crackled—not the movie, but the feed itself.

Static burst in jagged lines across the picture, the audio warping into a screech that made your teeth ache.

Then, as suddenly as it came, it cut back to normal.

You froze, glancing at Dazai.

He didn’t even blink. “Cabin chic,” he murmured, kissing your knuckles before taking another swig. His other hand kept inching higher, and you let yourself drown in sloppy, distracted kisses.

Then the lights flickered overhead.

The blanket felt too warm, too heavy.

Your chest thudded in sync with the faulty bulb’s buzz.

“Did you hear that?” you whispered when a faint thump echoed from upstairs.

Dazai smirked, brushing his thumb across your ribs. “Mice. Or demons. Either way, they’re paying rent.” His tone was easy, but his eyes flicked briefly toward the stairs before he pressed a kiss to the space below your ear like a promise.

Still, when the thump came again—deliberate, heavier this time—he sighed and rolled off the couch.

“Stay,” he muttered, already moving toward the stairs. The usual sway was there, but something in the set of his shoulders betrayed a flicker of tension.

You reached for him, but he slipped out of reach.

“Daz—”

“Don’t pout, belladonna. If there’s a monster upstairs, I’ll negotiate terms.” His grin flashed once, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes before the shadows swallowed him.

And then you were alone on the couch, lamp buzzing, TV frozen mid-frame, the thudding in your chest syncing with the sound in the walls.

Outside the room, the stairs groaned under Dazai’s weight as he moved further into the dark.

The cabin seemed to breathe with you. Every creak of timber was a lung expanding, every shift of wind against the windows a whisper.

For a moment, you swore you heard something upstairs that wasn’t his stride—a stagger, a scrape—but then silence.

Minutes stretched too long.

Then—footsteps again, descending.

“False alarm,” Dazai announced lightly, reappearing at the bottom of the stairs. His coat was half-off, his shirt loose. He carried nothing back with him, not even dust. His grin was casual, but the pause before it gave him away. “Our uninvited guest must’ve been the wind.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding.

He caught it instantly, grinning. “Oh? You were worried about me?”

“Of course, I’d prefer to die together, you know.” But your voice wavered.

He crossed back to you, kneeling by the couch, fingers brushing your wrists. His smile softened for just a flicker. “Pretty when you’re nervous.”

You scoffed, but the tension bled from your shoulders the moment his lips grazed your knuckles. Whatever was upstairs—real or imagined—it hadn’t followed him down.

“Come,” he murmured, brushing your wrists. “Let’s relocate to somewhere more comfortable.”

The upstairs bedroom was little better than the living room—peeling wallpaper, a crooked lamp—but the bed was broad enough, the sheets musty but clean. You fell into it together, whiskey on both your tongues, his bolo tie discarded across the nightstand.

When he pressed you down, he reached into his haphazardly thrown-away coat pocket and pulled out his phone.

You blinked. “Seriously?”

His grin widened. “For posterity.”

He angled the phone briefly, the red recording light glaring as his free hand skimmed over your collarbone, down to the swell of your breasts.

You tried to look away from the lens.

He flicked your nipple so hard your body jolted half out of frame.

“Look at me,” he murmured, voice all velvet drawl, fingers softly rubbing away the sting. “Show our future selves how obedient you are.”

You rolled your eyes but arched into his touch, wrists already sliding into the cuffs he’d hidden under the pillow.

They clicked home around the iron frame with a metallic bite.

You tugged once. Secure.

His eyes glittered in approval.

“Hands stay there. Eyes on the camera,” he said softly, almost lazily, but the edge in his tone left no room for argument. His thumb brushed your lower lip, bandages scraping faintly. “Open.”

You opened. He slid his thumb in slowly, rubbing it over your tongue as the little red light caught the glint of saliva.

“Good girl. Did you prep for the weekend like I told you to?”

You tried to answer, but his thumb pressed down, pinning your tongue.

He chuckled. “Nod if yes.”

You nodded.

His thumb left your mouth and trailed down. He set the phone against the nightstand, angled toward you, its lens blinking steadily.

His hand squeezed a handful of your waist, then ghosted over your clit without pressure, maddeningly faint.

The lens framed your parted lips, your shuddering stomach, his bandaged fingers between your thighs. For half a second the feed stuttered—your face lagging, a frame out of sync—then smoothed again.

“You’re already wet,” he mused, tired amusement in his voice.

“Makes things easier. I don’t feel like working you open tonight.”

The way he said it wasn’t cruel—it was bored, testing, like he wanted to see if you’d protest.

He leaned close to the camera, making sure the red light caught your face. “Say it. Say you’re ready for me.”

“I’m—ready,” you managed, voice breaking as his fingers circled your clit.

The cuffs bit into your wrists just enough to sting when you twisted against them, skin warm where the leather was. Dazai’s weight hovered above you like a threat he refused to deliver.

The red light blinked steadily, framing everything. You. Him. The storm thrumming against the cabin’s walls.

“Louder,” he murmured, thumb circling your clit with deliberate insufficiency, each movement just shy of enough to make you come apart. “Convince me.”

“I’m ready for you, Dazai.” The words tumbled out like confession, hoarse and frantic. “Please—fuck me, baby.”

A low hum answered you, not quite approval, not quite denial.

He shifted above you, shirt sliding off his shoulders.

His cock was already wet at the tip, a bead of pre-cum catching the light.

He stroked himself slowly, languid as if time bent around him, then slapped the slick head against the soft flesh of your stomach. The sound cracked through the quiet, wet and obscene, as deliberate as a signature.

“Beautiful,” he sighed, almost reverent. For a heartbeat, his eyes softened, as though the camera had disappeared and you were nothing but his—no games, no recording, no pose to hold.

But the lens on the nightstand never wavered. It lingered on the flat of your stomach, where the swell of him would soon rise beneath your skin. He gave himself another pump, lazy, almost careless, before murmuring, “Open your mouth.”

You leaned up without hesitation, wrists still bound above your head, body shifting against the mattress until his cock brushed your lips. The cuffs pulled taut as you moved, shoulders stretching uncomfortably, but not awkwardly—it was familiar, an ache you’d learned to savor.

Your tongue darted out, a first, teasing lap over the reddened tip. Salt bloomed across your taste buds, metallic and utterly him. His breathing caught, shallow, the camera catching the slight tilt of his body as your lips parted wider.

You took him deeper, sucking him down until your cheeks hollowed around him, saliva slicking your mouth and chin. His cock twitched against your tongue, and his exhale came low and shaky. On the nightstand, the feed glitched again—your face lagging a frame behind, your eyes caught mid-blink—before smoothing back to normal.

He steadied himself, gaze fixed not on the phone but on you, burning.

“Mm. Look at you,” he murmured, more to himself than to the recording.

The praise bled into a growl when you swirled your tongue in slow circles under the ridge of his head, then pushed forward until he nudged the back of your throat.

Your eyes watered as you gagged faintly around him, wrists tugging at the cuffs.

His laugh was quiet, frayed at the edges. “Greedy little thing. Don’t choke on me.”

You hummed around him in response, the vibration making him shudder. The sound of you was lewd—wet, messy, obscene—and it filled the cabin louder than the rain outside. His jaw tightened, grip faltering as you bobbed your head, nose brushing the skin of his pelvis each time you forced yourself deeper.

“Alright, my turn.” His voice came sharp, almost breaking. He pulled back, strings of spit catching at your lips and chin. The camera’s angle shifted slightly on the nightstand, catching your mouth raw and glistening, tongue pressed flat against your teeth as though begging for more. He groaned, thumb swiping a smear of saliva from your cheek.

Then he moved lower, the frame tilting as he positioned himself between your thighs.

You moaned shamelessly when the blunt head pressed against your soaked folds, the sound torn from you like a confession. His mouth opened in a long exhale, grip faltering as everything in him screamed to bury himself inside in one violent thrust. He didn’t.

He slid in slowly, stretching you open inch by inch, the camera juddering faintly on its stand as though it mirrored his restraint.

When he bottomed out, the shot tilted for a moment, his voice rough and low as he groaned through clenched teeth. He stayed buried to the hilt, knuckles white where he braced himself against the mattress, willing his body to stillness.

Your back arched violently, walls clenching tight around him, milking him with involuntary spasms. The sensation pulled a curse from his throat.

He gave you a minute to adjust, then leaned down, his mouth closing over your nipple. His teeth grazed the soft skin, tongue flicking in fast, taunting passes until your back bowed off the mattress, walls tightening around his cock again.

“Fuck,” he muttered against your chest.

Then he pushed up, reclaiming the phone in one hand. His other pressed to your hip, pinning you down as he began to thrust—slow, deliberate strokes that rolled your body up the bed, the cuffs rattling faintly against the headboard.

The frame shivered with each movement, catching your face in ragged close-ups: eyes rolling back, lips parted, arms pulled tight above your head. He angled lower, recording the slick drag of his cock as it disappeared inside you, thumb circling your clit with clinical precision.

“Eyes on me,” he ordered, voice steady despite the tremor in his breath. “Don’t look away. If you do, I stop.”

The cuffs bit deeper into your wrists as you strained, arching beneath him. The mattress squeaked under the slow, punishing rhythm of his thrusts. Each stroke rolled your hips upward, the weight of his body holding you open. Every movement, every ragged breath, was framed in his lens; the red light blinked steadily, recording the collapse of composure on both sides.

The feed glitched again—your face frozen a second too long, pupils blacker than they should have been—before the picture smoothed back to normal.

You obeyed his command, spreading wider when he murmured it, body trembling as the storm rattled the shutters outside. The lamp’s glow wavered in uneven gold, making the room look alive, breathing.

“Dazai—” Your voice cracked, half plea, half dare.

“Yes, my love?” His pace didn’t falter. The lens trembled in his grip, catching blurred snapshots of your thighs, your chest, the sheen of sweat along his jaw. “Say it louder.”

“Daz—don’t stop.” You sobbed, gasping his name again, louder this time, your head bumping against the pillow. He adjusted his weight without breaking rhythm, shifting you slightly.

One hand hooked behind your knee, dragging your leg higher until your ankle pressed against his shoulder. The change deepened his thrusts; he hit a spot that made your whole body jolt.

“Hold it there,” he instructed, voice roughening with strain. The phone on the nightstand kept its steady blink, catching flashes of skin and sweat. “Don’t drop your leg.”

Your wrists burned from the cuffs. The storm outside howled against the shutters, the lamp sputtered, and the TV downstairs clicked on with a burst of static. Neither of you stopped.

He lowered himself suddenly, bracing one hand on the mattress beside your head. His chest pressed to yours, bandages brushing your skin. He kissed you once, hard, swallowing a moan as your walls clenched around him.

Then, without warning, he pulled out and flipped you easily, your bound arms stretching above your head as he dragged your hips back to meet his. You ended up on your knees, face down against the mattress, wrists crossed, his hand still firm on your hip as he slid back into you from behind. The new angle was brutal, deeper; you keened into the sheets, back arching automatically.

“That’s it,” he rasped, phone tilted from the nightstand to catch the view of your ass backing onto him, the slick stretch of you taking him again and again. “Stay just like that. Don’t run from it.”

You tried to obey, but your knees slipped against the sheets. He caught you easily, dragging you upright until your back was flush with his chest, his cock still buried inside you. His free hand closed around your throat—not choking, just holding—guiding your head back against his shoulder.

“Eyes forward,” he said, angling the phone so the reflection in the dark window caught you both: your tear-streaked face, his mouth at your ear, the long line of your body trembling as he rolled his hips up into you. For an instant, the reflection lagged—a double image of you both—and then snapped back to normal.

When you came, your scream broke into a laugh, breathless, delirious, body clamping down around him. He grunted against your neck, almost a snarl, following you over the edge. The phone shook wildly where it rested, then tilted as he stayed inside, then pulled out, moving the lens down to show his cum spilling from your still-clenching hole, slick and obscene.

“Look how much you come,” he muttered, voice almost a growl now, his cock twitching as he pressed the phone closer to the mess between your thighs. “So obedient.”

You tried to close your legs, post-nut clarity flickering through the haze, but he pried your knees apart with one hand. “Keep them open,” he warned softly, thumb stroking the inside of your thigh. “Unless you want me to leave you like this. Unless you want to die celibate.”

His laugh was low, wrecked, almost tender. The storm rattled the shutters once more. The lamp flickered, then steadied. The image on the phone shook one last time before the recording cut to black.

Afterwards, he left you cuffed, sated, and flushed, the sheets cooling against your skin while he slipped into the bathroom. The sound of running water muffled everything, a domestic hiss trying to erase what had just happened.

You lay back against the pillows, wrists sore, limbs heavy. The afterglow should have anchored you, but something gnawed at the edges of it—like the sensation of being watched from behind glass.

The static hadn’t been the movie.

The TV had turned itself back on.

The faucet shut off.

Silence roared back in, heavy and damp, as though the air had thickened.

Then a sound: a knock from downstairs.

You froze. Not a creak. Not the house. A knock—deliberate, measured, polite in a way that made it worse.

“Dazai?” Your voice cracked the stillness, sharper than you intended.

“Yes?” he called back, voice muffled by the bathroom door.

The knock came again. Louder.

You strained against the cuffs, panic making you clumsy. “Someone’s at the door.”

Silence.

He emerged a moment later, towel slung around his neck, shirt half-buttoned, hair damp. He looked outwardly unbothered, but the faint curl of a smirk never reached his eyes. “Darling, the only someone here is me.”

As if to contradict him, the lamp flickered, sputtered, then went out entirely, plunging the room into a darkness broken only by the pale spill of moonlight through warped shutters.

Below, the knock had become a scraping sound. Not random—rhythmic. Something dragging along the floorboards.

Dazai stopped at the doorway, still holding the towel, but for the first time all night, his smile thinned. His head tilted slightly, as though he were listening for a code.

You saw it happen in his eyes—a subtle shift from lazy detachment to calculation. He stepped back into the room and crouched beside you, thumb brushing over your knuckles. His voice was a low murmur. “Don’t panic. We’ll wait it out together.”

But he didn’t stay still.

His gaze kept flicking to the window, then the hallway beyond the door. He was listening to the scrape, mapping it. His fingers brushed your wrist—testing the cuff, maybe considering unbuckling it, but then he hesitated.

“Stay quiet,” he mouthed, almost imperceptibly.

He rose and crossed the room in three silent steps, every movement different now—alert, predator-like. He picked up his phone, swiped, frowned. No signal. Not even an emergency bar.

Another scrape below. Then a faint thud, like something heavy brushing against the staircase wall.

Dazai’s head tilted again, jaw tight. “No footprints outside,” he whispered, almost to himself. “No car.” The corner of his mouth twitched at the absurdity, but the smile never reached his eyes.

The scraping stopped.

Then, from somewhere just beyond the doorframe, a sound like a long, dry breath.

Dazai took one slow step toward the door, barefoot, towel sliding from his neck. He pressed his ear against the wood. The hallway on the other side was black.

Nothing.

Then, softly, almost inside the wall: a single knock.

He flinched—just a microsecond, but you caught it. When he turned back to you, his face was its usual calm, but his eyes had gone darker.

“Get dressed,” he said, voice flat now. He bent to your wrists and worked the cuffs loose, glancing at the shadows under the door. “We’re not staying here tonight.”

“What is it?” you whispered.

He didn’t answer. His gaze flicked toward the window again, to the tree line beyond, pale branches swaying in the wind. They almost looked like antlers.

He stood, grabbed his coat, checked his pockets automatically. Gun, wallet, lighter. His movements were smooth, but there was a tension now—a man who’d already seen too much to laugh off creaking floors.

“Stay behind me,” he murmured, stepping back toward the door. “Whatever’s out there… it’s not here to knock.”

Downstairs, the scraping began again—slow, deliberate, like claws on wood.

You thought you saw something in the window reflection—just for a second. A tall, skeletal silhouette between the trees, unmoving.

Then the wind shifted, and it was gone.

Dazai’s hand tightened on the doorknob. “We’re leaving,” he said, though it sounded less like a command than a plea, less like a decision than a question whispered into the dark.

But your chest was heaving, your skin crawling with a tremor that wasn’t all fear. “There’s someone here,” you whispered.

“Yes,” he said softly, eyes locked on yours, voice as tender as it was lethal. “And it isn’t me.”

Your mouth opened, but no words came.

Finally, “What—”

“You heard them before I did.” He took a step toward you, his hand lifting—not threatening, but deliberate—fingers brushing your cheek, thumb pressing gently below your eye as though testing for fever. “You laughed when the TV turned on. You knew it wasn’t broken.”

You shook your head so hard the cuffs rattled against the headboard. “No—”

“You called the knocks before they happened.” His voice was velvet now, but velvet wrapped tight around a blade. “Darling… do you even know you’re doing it?”

Something deep inside you cracked, like ice splitting across a frozen river. The sound that tore from your chest wasn’t laughter, not really—it was too sharp, too raw, a laugh scraped bloody on the way out.

The cuffs snapped under your wrists as if they’d been made of paper. Metal clattered uselessly against the bedframe.

Dazai didn’t flinch, but you saw the flicker in his eyes: the realization that everything he had quietly suspected, every itch at the edges of his rational mind, was real—and worse, it had been sitting in bed with him all night.

You surged upward. Your hands found his throat, nails carving crescents into his skin. The strength in you wasn’t yours, wasn’t human—it was wild and alien, like a hunger wearing your body as a mask.

Your grin split too wide, your voice layered with something older than you. “Always,” you whispered, though your teeth gleamed too sharp in the moonlight.

His eyes widened—not with fear, but with recognition, and, beneath it, grief so naked it twisted your stomach even as you pinned him. “Ah,” he rasped against your grip, “so it was you all along.”

Your grip tightened, tendons straining in your hands, and his face began to flush red. You leaned closer, your breath metallic, your smile grotesque.

For the first time in years, Dazai fought without play, without the luxury of irony. There was no joke in him now, no mask of theatrical suicide. His hand darted to the nightstand, caught the jagged edge of the broken lamp, and he drove it—not wild but precise—into the wound he’d just opened in your ribs, once, twice, a third time.

Your laugh only grew, bubbling wet through your chest, streaking your teeth with blood. You staggered back, clutching the wound, eyes burning like embers in a dying fire.

He stood, chest heaving, blood slick across his hand and shirt. The lamp base was still in his grip, bent and splintered, dripping. He should have run. He knew he should have—but he couldn’t leave you, not yet, not like this.

You smiled at him again, weak but triumphant, and lunged. The force sent you both into the wall, his skull cracking against plaster, a burst of stars behind his eyes. For a second, he faltered. You smelled the victory in it.

But Dazai didn’t stay down. He twisted, slamming your body into the dresser hard enough to rattle the mirror from its screws. Wood splintered. Your nails raked across his cheek, tearing skin. He hissed, grabbed your jaw, shoved you back.

“Stop,” he demanded, voice breaking for the first time. “Stop, I said—”

You cackled, a sound more like an animal than a woman, sharp enough to pierce bone. Blood ran freely from your ribs, your mouth, but you didn’t slow.

He couldn’t stop you. He knew it.

He’d already lost you.

The realization carved something out of him, something he hadn’t even known he still had.

When the lamp came down again, it was with both hands, and this time he didn’t stop until your body sagged beneath him, until the grotesque smile eased, until the light drained from your eyes. He hit only where you were already bleeding, each strike calculated to end it, not to punish.

Just your lifeless ribs bleeding underneath him like they didn’t used to vibrate with suppressed laughter at his jokes.

For a long moment, he knelt over you, panting, blood and sweat dripping down his face. His hand shook where it still clutched the lamp. His throat ached from your nails. His chest ached worse.

He whispered it, hoarse, broken, to no one at all. “I never saw it coming.”

And yet, he didn’t leave you.

The police arrived hours later.

The storm had broken, leaving the cabin washed in red and blue strobes. They carried your body out on a stretcher, the white sheet already soaked through. The smell of blood clung to everything, metallic and sour, cutting even through the crisp night air.

Dazai gave his statement with the same dry calm he used when issuing Mafia orders, but there was a crack in it this time, an exhaustion that made the words drag. He told them the truth: his fiancée had snapped. He had defended himself. It was tragic, yes, but inevitable.

The uniformed officers exchanged looks over their notepads but their eyes kept flicking to the card in his wallet—the quiet proof of who employed him. Nobody wanted to press too hard with Mori’s leash looped around their throats.

Even so, they didn’t believe him.

One asked again how the cuffs had broken. Another why there were scratches on his chest if she’d been restrained. A third suggested, carefully, that maybe the story had gotten “jumbled” in the trauma.

Dazai didn’t flinch. He only rolled up his sleeve, showing the bruises in the shape of fingers around his throat. He pulled the collar of his shirt aside, revealing the deep gouges your nails had left, impossible to fake. He gestured toward the back of his head, where the swelling already pushed up beneath his damp hair.

“Do you think,” he asked evenly, “I bashed myself in the skull with a lamp for sympathy?”

They didn’t answer.

Hours passed. The cabin became a crime scene, yellow tape fluttering in the breeze, evidence bags crinkling. His wrists were cuffed—real ones this time, police-issue steel, cold and heavy. They questioned him again, again, and again. He gave the same answers, each time softer, his eyes duller.

Finally, just before dawn, they let him go. The bruises, the wounds, the broken furniture, the dragged blood trails—it was too much to explain away. They couldn’t prove his guilt.

But they didn’t clear him either.

His friends didn’t call. His coworkers avoided his gaze. When they did look at him, it wasn’t suspicion anymore but something colder: pity, the kind reserved for men who had slipped just far enough to remind everyone else it could happen to them too.

They didn’t clear him either—because even men under Mori’s leash could smell a lie when it reeked, and this one reeked too much to just be a victim.

No one said it outright, but he could see it in their eyes. They believed he’d done it. Not out of malice. Out of something worse—weakness, rage, the inevitable crack in the human mind.

He walked out of the station free, but with the taste of iron still in his mouth, his body aching in ways that wouldn’t fade. The bruises would heal. The eyes would not.

For the first time in years, Dazai wished the fight had ended differently—wished, almost, that he hadn’t won at all.

They patted his shoulder on the way out, sympathetic, unthinking. They didn’t question him further. Who would suspect otherwise? Who would believe anything else?

He returned to the city alone. The whispers in the Agency shifted, morphing from awe into pity. The kind that strips a man down to a shadow, the kind that hangs on your back heavier than a hand on your throat.

He ignored them. He always did.

That night, he sat on his bed with his phone in hand. The apartment was quiet, too quiet, the way cheap walls seem to swallow sound. He opened the camera app absently, angling it toward the ceiling to capture some scrawled notes.

The preview window froze him.

Behind his shoulder—just within the frame—stood her. Bloodied face, wrists torn raw, eyes wide and unblinking. Not alive. Not dead. Not gone.

He blinked. Closed the app. Opened it again.

She was still there.

Different angle, same result. Reflection in the window: her head tilted, her smile stretching too wide. Mirror above the dresser: her arms hooked across his shoulders, clinging, weightless but suffocating.

Every time.

Every lens.

Always smiling.

Always watching.

Always covered in her own blood.

For a long moment, he stared at the screen, his own reflection looking back at him—hollow, ruined—while she grinned over his shoulder like a secret finally exposed.

It looked exactly like the lag from the cabin feed—your face caught one frame behind, smile fixed too wide.

Dazai laughed once, hollow and bitter. “Guess I won’t be dying alone after all.”

The camera kept recording, steady, indifferent. Her face leaned closer to his in the frame, so close their features almost merged.

And the feed changed to static.

A/N: Well... that’s the haunted cabin trip. Now I need to know—what do you think happened in that final frame? Do you read it as horror possession, Dazai’s unraveling grief, or both? Please do let me know your thoughts; I want to see how many versions of “the truth” we end up with.

Darktober 2025 Masterlist | All Works Masterlist

The familiar sight of blood on the snow in front of you as you slowly blink your eyes causes your heart to race.

You can't help but jolt up from the ground, only for you to hiss out in pain and grab your side.

"Shit!" you hiss before you pull your hand away from your side to see your hand covered in blood.

That's when you remember what had happened.

You remember the demon that you were fighting, getting injured and the demon lunging at you as you laid there in the snow before Tomioka stopped the demon from getting to you before passing out.

At the thought of Tomioka, you look around frantically for a moment before you spot him still fighting the demon that had injured you.

Wanting to help him, even if you end up making your injury worse, you try to get to your feet, only for you to tumble back down.

"Fuck!" you hiss again as the pain from your wound courses through your body.

That's when you hear loud, quick footsteps coming right at you, causing you to look up and see the demon rushing right at you, its teeth gleaming in the moonlight.

"(L/N), look out!" You hear Tomioka shout as he chases after the demon, his sword above his head, ready to strike it down before it gets to you.

You quickly roll out of the way, wincing in pain from feeling the cold snow on your wound before looking up again, seeing Tomioka slice the demon's head off.

You can't help but let out a relieved sigh as you see the Demon dissolve into the air.

'Thank goodness...' you can't help but think as you slowly sit up so that you can get a better look at your wound.

The sound of Tomioka's footsteps coming closer a moment later causes you to look up.

"You alright?" he questions as he kneels down in front of you, his blue eyes landing on the blood on the snow next to you for a second before landing on your side where your haori is torn and bloodied.

"Yeah," you nod. "That bastard got a hit on me though." you wince.

"Is it deep?" he questions.

"Luckily no." you reply, your (e/c) eyes meeting his. "I should get back to Shinobu just in case though."

He nods in agreement before standing to his feet, all the while extending your hand to you for you to take.

You feel your cheeks burn for a moment as you take his hand and have him help you to your feet.

"Can't you walk by yourself?" He asks gently.

"I'll think so." You reply with a nod.

With that being said, you take a step forward only to stumble which causes Tomioka to catch you by the elbow, stopping you from falling to the ground.

"Here," Tomioka says to you, pulling your arm around his shoulders. "Let me help you."

"Thank you Tomioka." You smile as the two of you start walking.

"You're welcome." He nods, and you see a faint pink blush on his cheeks.

Satoru froze and turned to you the first time during the exchange, holding up his protected hands as to not touch anything. “You saw someone online do it, didn’t you?”

You fiddled with the folded cuff and tugged at the neck line which revealed your cleavage enough that Satoru could see the outline of your nipple. “No-well, yes- okay you got me! But please, I never ask for anything.”

So innocent with puppy eyes, Satoru saw them way too much. By now, he should have been immune to your charm and doe-eyed advances. Yet he wasn’t. How could he ever say no to you when you asked so nicely?

“You don’t, do you?”

“Nope.” There was that beautiful smile he admired and fawned over.

“Fine. I’ll do it just this once.”

Just once. This time, he'd be firm on this choice. He wouldn't bend to it again. Not at all.

Certainly not.

Despite the rules while Satoru worked, you kissed him and he allowed it. “Put the mask on- oh, and make sure you’re shirtless too.”

“Yes, your highness.”

Who was he kidding? You could ask him to kill any random person on the street and he'd do it. Of course he'd do it again just to see you smile.

“Perfect. I’ll be somewhere in the woods waiting for you. Don’t be too long.”

You shot out through the hallway leaving Satoru with his own thoughts and tender smile at your little quirks no other man could handle.

“And I thought the whole idea was you getting away from me…” Satoru scratched his nose along side his forearm to avoid getting blood on his face. “Now, where were we?”

The body was already dead, he was just carving it up to set the organs aside on ice for Shoko to pick up with her spare key.

“Oh yeah, eyeballs.” They popped out like pinballs, firm on his palm that would pop under his grasp if he squeezed too hard.

There was plenty blood to go around. He smeared some over his chest for good measure. You were into the oddest things, and in the woods of all places.

Maybe your screams for help would attract someone new? Satoru wondered just how far your voice would carry, screaming in the most feral way while he tore away at your clothes. Perhaps Satoru would have more fun slicing them of with the knife from the kitchen, and a fist full of your hair between his knuckles.

Of course you’d struggle, Satoru knew that your full strength was something he easily overwhelmed. It was what turned you on. What got you off quickly.

Satoru being forceful.

After putting the eyes in a bag on ice, he slipped out of his heavy duty gloves and left his office door locked for when Shoko came over.

The mask was just some Halloween thing he wore to last year’s party, Satoru was surprised you even found it.

He was covered in blood splatters.

He was shirtless.

He was getting increasingly horny.

A little blood went a long way on this mask sprayed for dramatic effect. His casual stroll from the kitchen knife block to the back door set him on one dark path when he noticed the quick flash of your cellphone light.

So easy.

Well, you did want to get caught.

Pulling the mask over his face, Satoru set off into the night, ready to get a taste of all this fuss over public sex in the woods while you begged him not to. Though deep down you wanted it more than ever.

"Ready or not, princess. Here I come."

<- Back to the prompts!

DISCLAIMER - I do not own any of the characters. This is a work of fan fiction and is absolutely not representative of the views or intentions of the original creator(s).

Also please don’t post any of my work, thank you!