Whumptober 2019 #21: Laced Drink
Summary: Another one of those days. Weeks. Years.
I wrote this in a few minutes. I'm sorry that it's so short but I was going to make it part of something else, and then I didn't. It's a stand-alone from the "several-prompts" story for Whumptober that I've been working on, which will continue next time!
A bottle chimed as it knocked against the others under the kitchen sink. Dazai looked emotionless at the quickly filling cabinet. He needed to take them to a recycle bin soon, but the will was never quite there. Also, it was embarrassing. It felt like people would look and judge him for having accumulated this amount of bottles before throwing them away in the first place. As if they knew how many (or few) days it had taken him to get through that amount of bottles.
So, he closed the cabinet again, hiding the problem for a different day. Maybe tomorrow. It was supposed to be sunny then. He might actually feel like going for a walk. Except… the sun meant more people outside. Today was probably better. It was raining cats and dogs, and according to the weather forecast, it would pick up during the night and turn into a small storm.
He stood and looked out the window for a moment. At the dim skies and grey streets, covered in fallen leaves and large oil-stained puddles. The wind sighing its exasperation with him, howling menacingly through the creeks under the windows. The thought of going outside was untempting, but getting inside and coiling in under his blanket after changing out of wet clothes, with a bottle of sake and a sodoku puzzle was pleasant.
But he really didn't want to go out. Just to put a pair of pants on felt like a day's work. There was also the dreaded possibility that he would meet one of his colleagues at the agency out there. The last thing he wanted was questions about where he had been the last week.
At home, drinking.
He had made a point of keeping his door locked and lights out. He slept during the day and drank his way through the night. His cellphone was off, the anxiety of missed calls and messages piling up being too much to bear.
No. Osamu Dazai didn't exist today. He didn't exist yesterday and not the day before, not the week before and probably wouldn't for another one. At some point, they would come looking for him. They already had, kinda. Knocks on his door would wake him up during the day, or remind him that it was time to go to bed in the morning.
These were the times Dazai hated that he had people caring for him. People who worried and wanted to help. Dazai didn't want it, he just wanted to deal with shit his own self-destructive way. He knew it was unhealthy and he knew what the alcohol did to his mind coming both in and out, but he was unable to care.
Being sober hurt too much. Hurt worse than the hangover in the morning, even if each and every time he woke up with a sore neck and a throbbing head, nauseous and dizzy, he promised himself that he'd cut down. That he was going to tell someone, who he could call whenever the urge became too much and talk him out of it. Just taking the damn sleeping pills Yosano had prescribed to him, that made him feel giggly and weird (which was sure to make him addicted to them and have yet another problem to get rid of) and go to sleep, instead of sitting in his bed and staring aimlessly through the wall- wanting and longing for the small increase of endorphins that would rush through him once he'd gotten a little bit of a buzz.
Yearning for the small smile that would tug at his lips when the floor became unsteady and colors turned a little brighter.
Why couldn't he feel like that sober?
Why did being sober not seem to bother anyone else, while he would feel empty and restless and like his existence was nothing more than meaningless?
He hadn't even realized that he was standing with another bottle of Genshu in his hand. It had a high percentage of alcohol, so maybe just one would do for tonight. As he had made a habit of, he didn't get a cup. He was too tired to do the dishes anyway. Instead, he threw one last glance to the cupboard that held his secrets, shrugged his shoulders, and decided to drink until he forgot about it.