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The bell had tolled three times since Fyodor last turned a page.
He could still feel the hum of it in the rafters—the thick wooden bones of the tower settling around it like a cathedral bracing for collapse. Dust spiraled in the golden slats of early evening light, slow as ashfall, and the wind outside rattled the half-rotted slats of the louvers in rhythm with his own increasingly frayed patience.
The Bible lay open on the desk, Cyrillic print dense and familiar beneath his fingers. He had been reading aloud under his breath, tongue moving with mechanical precision over phrases he knew by rote, hoping the cadence alone might drown the sound of the devil beside him.
Dazai sprawled across the length of the mattress like a cat left to rot in the sun. His coat was long discarded somewhere by the door—already slumped from the nail where it hung like a dead thing—and his arms pillowed behind his head as he rocked one ankle idly over the other, shoes still on.
He had not yet spoken. That was the worst part.
Fyodor refused to look up. He could feel Dazai’s stare, like a smudge that refused to come off. No clear intent, no audible provocation. But parasitic, amused. A flare of something inhuman behind the eyes, too warm for a ghost and too hollow for a man.
Fyodor’s thumb held the corner of the page too tightly, the parchment crinkling slightly beneath the pad of it.
“You know,” Dazai said at last, voice drifting lazily toward him, “I’ve always liked watching you pretend to be holy.”
A pause of the breath, and then Fyodor resumed, keeping his eyes rigidly on the passages. “I do not pretend,” he said quietly.
Dazai hummed. “Mm. I stand corrected. Reading scripture with a hard-on—how devout of you.”
The corner of Fyodor’s mouth twitched.
It was a lie, of course. Dazai was not even looking at him—he couldn’t know—but the suggestion settled over Fyodor’s skin like heat, an intrusive flush he had not invited. Dazai had a way of dragging the sin out of him before it was even formed.
Fyodor finally lifted his eyes, and Dazai smiled. Just a little lift at the corners, smug and patient, as though he had been waiting all day for the moment Fyodor would break his own silence. His shirt was untucked. Wrinkled. A single button undone. There was a softness in his posture that should have read as harmless, but everything about him—every line of his body, every idle flick of his gaze—broadcast something unspeakable.
For a moment longer, Fyodor stared at him, then looked back to the page. “I have no interest in your games today,” he said.
“That’s alright,” Dazai replied, and Fyodor could hear the smile now, low and slow. “I’ll play enough for the both of us.”
Fyodor did not mark the precise moment Dazai stood. Only the change in weight on the mattress. The quiet groan of springs releasing their tension. The slight dull tap of shoes crossing the wooden floor.
He turned the page rather than look up—slowly, as though the act were deliberate, sacred. As though the thin column of scripture might anchor him. The margins blurred slightly; his focus snagged and drifted.
The sound of Dazai approaching was unhurried. A purposeful meander. Fyodor could hear the drag of fingers trailing along the nearby bookcase—catching at the frayed spines of volumes worn thin by candle smoke and years of rereading. A brief pause as Dazai peered at something he should not have been touching, then the soft clack of wood as he shut it again with casual disinterest.
Fyodor closed his eyes. Just for a moment.
“It always this cold in here?” Dazai mused from behind him now, somewhere by the back of the chair, as though he was not here far too often and did not already know the answer himself intimately. “Feels like it’s waiting to see who’ll shiver first.”
“I am comfortable,” Fyodor said.
“That’s not the same as warm.”
Another step. Fyodor could feel the air shift behind him—the light displacement of body heat or breath. The smell of him. Dust, faint sweat, something clean and ghost-sharp beneath it. Like antiseptic. Or blood. Fyodor did not try to place it.
“You ever thought,” Dazai continued, “about how many people died just so you could sit up here pretending you’ve earned stillness? Divinity?”
Fyodor’s fingers tightened on the edge of the page, breath thinning. “Have you?” he asked.
“Mm. Probably not enough.”
Silence settled between them again, jagged and full. Then: the scrape of Dazai’s heel nudging the floor beside the chair. He was circling now. Like a stray. No—like a wolf that had forgotten how to hunt, but remembered how to tease. Fyodor braced his elbow against the armrest and lifted a hand to his temple. The scripture swam before his eyes. He kept reading anyway. Anything not to look.
“You really do come here just to provoke me,” he said, softly.
Dazai’s voice dropped too. “Of course I do.”
Fyodor’s jaw clenched. He turned another page without seeing it.
Another step—closer. The space between them collapsed incrementally, like air being drained from a room. Fyodor could sense Dazai’s gaze raking across him, dissecting every motion, every inch of tension, every refusal to look back. He loathed how familiar the pattern had become. How ritualized it was—this slow humiliation of silence, this performance of composure while Dazai needled and unraveled without laying a hand on him.
It was not even lust, not exactly. Fyodor could have dismissed lust. Could have slotted it into some shallow moral schema and punished himself accordingly.
No—what Dazai brought was not so clean.
It was erosion. It was the steady hollowing-out of will, the slow yielding of sacred ground. The way Dazai’s presence turned resistance into spectacle and desire into something flayed and twitching, offered up raw.
“Still pretending?” Dazai asked, nearly in his ear now. “That you don’t want me?”
Fyodor looked up at last. Dazai was standing over him, one hand on the back of the chair, the other hanging loose at his side. His head tilted, haloed faintly by the attic light streaming through the slats. He smile had vanished as though it had never been there at all. Now his expression was inscrutable—watchful, curious. As though he wanted to see what Fyodor would do.
Fyodor gazed at him for a long moment. Then, finally, he closed the Bible with a softness and precision that spoke of restraint as much as reverence. The sound it made was quieter than breath.
“You mistake my weakness,” Fyodor said, as he always did, “for interest.”
Then, with the deliberate slowness of a predator, Dazai swung one leg over and straddled Fyodor’s lap without invitation, knees pressing to either side of the chair’s wooden arms, settling down like a weight Fyodor could not seem to shake.
“I don’t mistake anything about you,” Dazai said, voice low.
His hips sank, close. Their chests did not touch, but the heat between them did. Fyodor’s hands hovered in the air for a moment—uncertain, useless—then caught hard at Dazai’s hips as if to push him away, but failing to do it.
Dazai’s smile returned. Wider now. Almost triumphant. “See?” he murmured. “Warm, after all.”
Fyodor should have shoved him off. That was the first clear thought. Not holy fire or righteous rejection, not even fear. Just the cold, practical realization that this—this, again—was the moment to end it. That every indulgence afterward would be his fault.
But his grip tightened instead.
Dazai made a quiet, pleased sound in the back of his throat, dangerously close to a purr, and rolled his hips forward slightly—not grinding, not yet, but there, a breath away from indecency. His belt buckle tapped lightly against Fyodor’s abdomen.
Fyodor’s stomach turned, a low electric revulsion that bloomed behind his ribs and whispered: you have already given in.
“Say it, Fedya,” Dazai said, head tilted, lashes half-lowered. “Tell me to get off you.”
Fyodor said nothing.
“You’re not going to,” Dazai murmured, and he leaned in, his mouth brushing Fyodor’s like a taunt. “You never do.”
And that was true. Fyodor had pushed him away only to drag him closer. Had called him an abomination while tracing the ridge of his spine. Had looked at his mouth with loathing and parted his own all the same.
So he did now.
The kiss came sudden and hard. Fyodor caught Dazai’s nape in one hand, his other arm locking around his back, and dragged him in like something meant to be punished. Their teeth clicked, Dazai gasping and opening for him, too eager, too much, and Fyodor bit down on his lower lip hard enough to bruise.
Dazai moaned, a raw, startled, open sound, as though he had not expected the pain but welcomed it instantly. Fyodor despised how it jolted through him. Despised the weight of Dazai’s hips pressing harder against his own, the thin layer of friction between them suddenly very real.
He pulled back just far enough to speak, voice rough. “Harlot.”
Dazai’s eyes fluttered.
Another moan. Quieter this time, almost involuntary. His hands clutched at Fyodor’s shoulders like he couldn’t stay still, like something had cracked open and he was already trying to crawl inside it. He ducked down again, mouth dragging along Fyodor’s jaw to his throat, breath hot.
“Yeah, like that,” he whispered, almost laughing. “Talk to me, Fedya.”
“You’re pathetic,” Fyodor snapped, voice low, mouth still against Dazai’s temple. “You would rut against a priest if it meant you would get off faster.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Dazai murmured, and grinded down with intent.
Fyodor groaned, the sound escaping before he could trap it. His fingers sank deeper into Dazai’s hips—bones, thin fabric, heat. The sensation was unbearable in its specificity, the sharp-edged reminder that Dazai was hard already, and so was he.
“God abhors you,” Fyodor murmured, lips at his ear.
“I know,” Dazai breathed, and rocked again. “So do you. Doesn’t stop either of you.”
The motion of his hips turned rhythmic, slow at first, testing, then more deliberate as he found the right angle—grinding down against Fyodor with obscene precision, cock stiff beneath the layers of fabric and heat. Fyodor felt it through his own clothes, felt every shift and drag, every minute friction of rough fabric and damp breath.
His spine pressed back into the chair. It wasn’t even pleasure yet. Not properly. Just pressure. Just awareness. Just him, straddling Fyodor’s lap as if he had earned the right, as if he belonged there. Fyodor wanted to wrench him off. Tear him apart. Drag him down to his knees and strip the smugness from him with teeth.
Instead, he reached up and yanked Dazai’s head back by the hair, and Dazai whined. The sound was high and hot and wrecked.
“Fuck—yes,” he hissed, laughing through it.
His throat arched open, pale and exposed. Fyodor only stared—then let his mouth press coldly to the underside of Dazai’s jaw, not soft enough to pass for affection. He could feel the way Dazai shuddered, the way his hips stuttered and rolled again, harder now.
“Filthy,” Fyodor said, words nearly against his skin. “I could spit in your mouth and you would thank me.”
Dazai made a noise that sounded suspiciously like agreement. “Wouldn’t even be a brat about it,” he murmured, gasping between movements. “You could do anything—hah, anything—and I’d still be hard for you.”
Fyodor’s grip tightened in his hair.
Licentious, Dazai’s hips rocked again. Their clothes caught, rubbed, dragged—and it was unbearable, that friction. Too much and not enough. Fyodor felt himself grinding back now, against his will, his body betraying him in waves of desperate motion, breath breaking sharp through his nose.
“You should be ashamed,” he said, ragged.
“I am,” Dazai said immediately, like a confession. “Do it again.”
Fyodor wrenched his head to the side and bit his ear. The noise Dazai made was somewhere between a whimper and a whine, the sound strangled and wet. His whole body jerked and pressed harder into Fyodor’s, rutting like an animal now, like the only thing keeping him from coming was pressure and friction and Fyodor’s scorn.
And Dazai was so close. Fyodor could tell. Was disgusted with himself that they had done this enough times he could tell. Could feel the tension in him, the way his thighs trembled, the desperate stutter of his breath against Fyodor’s neck.
“Don’t you dare,” Fyodor hissed. “You’ll wait.”
Dazai laughed through a gasp. “Not—not gonna—can’t—”
“Wait.”
But Dazai shook his head, buried his face in Fyodor’s throat, and came with a moan that punched out of his chest like a sin being expelled. His hips jerked helplessly as he kept grinding, undone, lost in it, his moans raw and open. Fyodor felt the heat of it through both their clothes, felt the twitch and spill of Dazai’s cock as it soaked into the fabric between them.
He went limp a moment later—chest heaving, skin flushed, lips still open against Fyodor’s neck.
Then he started laughing.
Ruined. Breathless. Delighted. As though he had gotten exactly what he wanted.
“Fuck,” Dazai whispered. “You’re gonna come, too, huh, Fedya?”
Fyodor’s own hips were still moving, his breath hot in his throat, body coiled with need. He was already too close to stop.
He shoved Dazai back against his chest. His hand stayed tangled in Dazai’s hair, fist tight at the roots, forcing his head back again even as the wretched creature sagged boneless in his lap, oversensitive and trembling. Dazai whined, a broken sound, mouth falling open uselessly as Fyodor ground up into him with a sharp, punishing thrust.
“Do not relax,” Fyodor snapped. “I’m not finished with you.”
Breath hitching, Dazai laughed weakly. “God—you’re—mean.”
“You like it,” Fyodor said like a threat, and bit down on the side of Dazai’s throat hard enough to leave a mark.
The sound Dazai choked on was half-pain, half-pleasure, his hands clutching uselessly at Fyodor’s shoulders as his body shuddered again from the aftershocks. Fyodor felt it all—felt how sensitive Dazai was now, how every movement made him flinch and melt in equal measure. It only drove him harder.
Restraint snapping, the world narrowed to heat and friction and the dull, relentless drag of fabric. Fyodor’s hips moved with ruthless intent now, chasing the edge he had been denying since the moment Dazai walked through the door. His breath came harsh and uneven, teeth clenched.
“This is all you are,” he growled, voice breaking despite himself. “A body. A nuisance. Something that rubs and leaks and begs to be used.”
Dazai whimpered. Soft. Ruined. Perfect.
“Yeah,” he breathed, like agreement. Like devotion.
That did it.
Fyodor came with a sharp, strangled gasp, his body jerking hard against Dazai’s as the release tore through him—hot, humiliating, violent in its inevitability. He pressed Dazai down into it, holding him there, forcing him to feel every last shudder and twitch through their clothes as the tension bled out of him in waves.
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe.
The attic swam. The bell overhead groaned faintly as the wind shifted, the sound deep and hollow like a judgment being passed.
At last, Fyodor loosened his grip. Not because he wanted to. Because his fingers had gone numb.
Dazai slumped fully against him, boneless and warm, head lolling against Fyodor’s shoulder. His chest rose and fell in quick, shallow breaths, and he smelled of sweat and dust and sex—unmistakable, soaked through the thin barrier of their clothing.
After a few seconds, Dazai stirred. He tilted his head just enough to look at Fyodor out of the corner of his eye, lashes clumped, mouth still curved in that infuriating, lazy smile.“Told you,” he murmured. “Warm.”
Fyodor stared straight ahead.
His stomach churned. The disgust came rushing in all at once—hot and bitter and righteous. At Dazai. At himself. At the fact that it had happened again, exactly like this, without tenderness, without illusion, without anything Fyodor could pretend was accidental. He let his hands fall away from Dazai’s body as though it burned him.
“Get off me,” he said flatly.
Dazai laughed under his breath, slow and satisfied, like a cat stretching after a meal. But he neglected to move right away. He shifted, slightly, settling deeper into Fyodor’s lap like it was familiar now, like it fit. Tilted his head, cheek brushing Fyodor’s collarbone, lashes still low. The smile did not leave his mouth, but it dulled into something softer. Not content, exactly. Not even smug.
“You’re trembling,” Dazai said eventually, almost gently. “Should I be flattered?”
Fyodor’s jaw locked. His hands stayed still where they had dropped, resting at his sides like dead weight. He had not even realized he was shaking.
“I said, get off,” he repeated.
Giving a little hum, Dazai dragged his nose lightly against Fyodor’s throat in a way that felt like an apology and a provocation at once. “Might take that more seriously if I didn’t know you were still half-hard under me.”
Fyodor inhaled through his teeth. The temptation to shove him bodily to the floor bloomed sharp in his chest.
And he could. Easily. Dazai was thin like him, post-orgasm boneless and pliant. It would take nothing to shove him back and wipe the last ten minutes off the map with force.
But it was futile.
Because he had already let it happen. Because he had already pulled Dazai in, kissed him, spoken to him like that, climaxed beneath him—and no amount of punishment afterward could erase that fact. So instead he sat still, spine straight, face blank, and said:
“You are not real to me.”
Dazai blinked.
For a moment, something flickered behind his eyes. Like he knew what Fyodor was doing. Knew the shape of the blade being drawn but had already decided not to flinch from it.
“Mm,” he said. “Better than ‘I love you.’”
Fyodor turned his head sharply. Their eyes met.
“I would rather put a bullet through my own skull than feel anything for you.”
Dazai smiled again, slower this time. “You say that like it’s mutual.”
The attic air felt suddenly thinner. The light had faded to the color of bone, grey and grainy through the slats. Below, the city had quieted. Only the bell remained, a low, absent chime vibrating faintly through the floorboards.
They were both still wet. Both still hardening back into themselves. Dazai rolled his hips lazily once more, just enough to press the mess of their ruined crotches together, and Fyodor flinched.
“Mm,” Dazai murmured, breath hot against his neck. “Still warm.”
Fyodor shoved him.
Dazai yelped as he was pushed off the chair, landing with a thump against the floorboards and catching himself on his elbows, breathless and disheveled, hair a wreck, cheeks still flushed. His shirt stuck to him where he had come. He looked up at Fyodor with surprised eyes, panting—and then grinned.
“Was it something I said?”
Fyodor neglected to answer. He stood, silent and trembling, turned his back, and walked to the far side of the room. Wiped his hands on his trousers, cleaned himself up, undressed and redressed in something that did not reek of abomination and sin.
At the desk, he opened the Bible again with clean fingers and stared at the page. He did not read a single word.
The print bled and reformed. The text meant nothing. His eyes were too full of Dazai’s mouth.
The bell tolled once, low and distant.
And Dazai, from somewhere behind him, whistled the last line of an old Orthodox hymn—flat, wrong, off-key—just to watch him flinch.