Chapter Text
“You know what you need,” he says, voice a perfect mimicry of pensive as if he hasn’t been planning for the conversation to lead here the entire time like the manipulator they both know he is, “you should come with me to a rage room.”
“Dazai,” Sigma says slowly, leaning forward to look him in the eyes. “Do I look like that type of person.”
The bastard has the audacity to beam at them. “Yes!”
“Dazai.”
“Look,” he sighs. “You’re fucking yourself up with this. These notes – I wanna see them, by the way, I’m gonna compare them to what I think – are just stressing you out more. You’re literally one of the most stressed-out people I know, and I fucking know Kunikida. Just come with me to beat some shit up, okay?
“I don’t think you’d want to go beat people up,” he adds after a second, “but y’know. That’s an option, too.”
Sigma’s tired enough that they don’t even bother thinking about the consequences of giving someone like Dazai their carefully-recorded notes. He’s still looking at them, eyes wide and lips in an exaggerated pout, and despite all of their best wishes, the face is actually working on them. It’s kind of cute, which is disgusting all by itself.
“Fine, fuck you,” they sigh, because there’s really no point in arguing with him when he gets like this.
“Aww, thank you!”
Sigma stares down at the bat in their hands and deeply regrets everything that brought them to this moment. They should’ve never spoken to him in that police station.
The bat fits awkwardly in their hands – in fact, everything about this situation is awkward to them. They learned at an early age to never be too much, because a homeless middle schooler already is an easy target without taking into account everything else fucked up about them. To be loud is to put yourself in danger. To be angry without being able to back it up is death.
“Come on, Sigma,” Dazai chirps brightly. “Just hit something!”
It’s the sixth time he’s said it in the past two minutes, leaning on the stupid fucking bat over to grin at them, and for one moment Sigma wishes desperately to hit the smirk right off of him. They don’t believe Dazai would harm them – they’re certainly not important enough to be involved in whatever he gets up to – but frustration is a completely different matter.
And, well. They’re here already, aren’t they?
They barely have time to think about it before the bat whistles through the air, aimed towards his face.
He ducks with all of the experience of someone who spends their time getting into fights, and the bat finds its home in the screen of a mounted television, glass splintering out with a surprisingly satisfying crash.
“Wow,” Dazai says, staring at the shattered screen and raising a brow. “Should I be worried about falling asleep tonight?”
Sigma leans onto the bat, dizzy from exertion and panic alike. “Oh my god.”
They can still hear the sound from the impact, echoing in their ears, an explosion of what feels like everything in their entire fucking life, and the bat comes more easily to them this time, swinging it back up and around until a lamp topples to the ground, lightbulb dashed to pieces.
Distantly, somewhere beyond the blood rushing in their ears, they think they hear a long whistle of admiration. They can’t hear it. They can’t hear much beyond the sounds of every piece of furniture breaking upon impact, a wild and uncontrolled spirit possessing them.
Another lamp falls, and then the desk breaks in half, wood splintering and metal clattering against the stone floor. They keep going, eyes suspiciously blurry and sweat-slicked hair sticking to their face and to their eyes underneath the mask. There is no grace to any of their movements, but there is a relief, somehow.
When there is barely an object left untouched in the room, when existence comes rushing back to them, they finally stop, dropping the bat and then themself onto the ground in shock.
“Damn,” Dazai laughs, poking their shoulder. “Did that help?”
“What the fuck,” Sigma says absentmindedly. There’s metal stabbing into their leg, but it doesn’t feel particularly sharp and they’re not bleeding, so they don’t move. They don’t think they can at all, actually.
“Hey, you good?” he leans over, raising a brow. “Sigma. Heyyyyyy.”
Their fingers twitch, and they ball them up into fists in an attempt to stop themselves from shaking. “Oh my god.”
There’s a thud as Dazai drops down beside them, brows furrowed in what actually might be genuine, poking them again. “Girl are you there.”
“Yeah,” Sigma mumbles. Clears their throat, tries again. Why is their voice so hoarse? “Yeah, I’m fine. That was insane.”
“Definitely,” he nods, the slightest amount of tension unwinding from his shoulders. Was he – was he worried about them? That can’t be right. “Good idea or bad idea? Good, right?”
“Yeah,” they say, because apparently their vocabulary is near nonexistent now. Great for a literature major. “No, that was actually really helpful,” and then because they haven’t processed what just happened and therefore cannot be careful of what they’re saying, “this was… nice of you.”
Never mind how Dazai’s only ever sweet to people like the corner café’s waitress and that nice has likely never been used to describe him. Sigma isn’t going to lie to themselves and say that there’s a chance that he’s never killed anyone. He’s an addict at best, a psychopath at worst.
It’s rather impressive, actually, how quickly he flinches, entire body jerking in one sharp motion as he quickly rises to his feet and picks up his own bat. “The tv’s still kind of intact, mind if I break it?”
“No,” Sigma says slowly, trying to parse what that reaction means, slowly moving over to not be in his way.
He nods, beams at them, and tilts his body back, cocking the bat with him. It sails through the air in one clean arc, slamming straight through what remains of the screen and through the hard plastic and wires behind it.