text; un: appleaday

[saudades]

hiiii everyone! you can call me dazai.

since we're all supposed to work together and get to know each other, i thought it would be fun to play a little icebreaker game that's popular on my earth ♥

it's called would you rather! the rules are pretty simple:

✦ post a hypothetical between two difficult choices
✦ have others choose between them, and offer their own hypotheticals in return
✦ go back and forth until you don't feel like playing anymore

noooormally, it'd be cheating to say something like both, or neither, but if you can come up with a really interesting alternative, i'll allow it~

feel free to respond to each other, as well! can't just let me go having all the fun, after all.

here's a few to get us started:

1) would you rather hurt someone to protect yourself, or get hurt protecting someone else?
2) would you rather be unable to have your favorite meal again, or be unable to get drunk again?
3) would you rather betray your boss or abandon your best friend?

[wdym these are weird questions, he's so normal. it's just a gaaaaame and definitely not a covert means of information gathering or anything. come on and play :)]

Comments

[messenger]

Is that... really what you think of Dean and me?

[ maybe it is catching. castiel can't stop thinking about what dazai said. the claims he made. living among humans is complicated. and perhaps dazai is right, that he should be more careful. keep some things closer to his chest. he just never considered—

what he was saying. ]

[saudades]

[It's a surprise, frankly. Dazai had considered that topic closed, a red stop sign planted directly in front of his face. Saying something in the first place had been unusual for him; he doesn't make it a habit, usually preferring to let others figure things out on their own or otherwise pulling strings from the background to engineer the outcomes he wants. He's only admonished Atsushi about his self-pity once, though he could come up with at least five things on the spot the boy would be well-served working on. A moment of sentimentality had driven him, the situation a little too reminiscent of Odasaku's, and he'd been rebuffed, dismissed. Dazai's tone is considerably chillier than it's been this entire time when he answers:]

If I were going to lie, I would've chosen one more useful to me. Or at least, funnier.

[messenger]

It's not funny to you?

[ everything seems to be funny to dazai. ]

I just... Never thought of it that way.

[ it seems, when he says this, that he means more than just about what dazai told him. his confusion encompasses many topics, broad and far reaching, and far too numerous to delve into now. or ever. he doubts his insecurities are really all that worth talking about. ]

[saudades]

Not especially.

[Here's the trick of it all; there's very little that stirs him in any way or other. He finds messing with people funny, but mostly just as something to do, fill the hours of a life he mostly finds monotonous and exhausting.

Joking, too, is a way to keep people from paying too close attention, a convenient layer of distance for his purposes. But even Dazai has lines he's not interested in crossing.]

You seemed quite unwilling to think about it at all, really.

[messenger]

Huh.

[ no? interesting. he'll keep that in mind. the things that stir castiel stir him deeply, but everything else — well, it's hard to say. obviously, he hasn't quite figured it out yet.

castiel snorts. his shoulder twitches into something that's almost a shrug. ]

Well, I was embarrassed.

[saudades]

[He hums, expression still impassive, closed off.]

Is that so. What a terribly human emotion -- you really are getting corrupted by us, hmm?

[messenger]

... Yes, it is, isn't it?

[ he hadn't realized at the time, or he might have stopped to reflect. he looks troubled, and then he shifts around to lift his bottle to his mouth again, emptying it of its last dregs. he leaves it on the floor with the rest (there's a small city of empty bottles growing around him. he's been popping back to the kwik stop every so often) before sitting up to grasp around for another — only to find he's all out. ]

Maybe I am. [ he makes a sound in the back of his throat. as though to say: of course. he's surrounded by empty bottles. what is this, if not corruption? ] But it was God who drove me to drink.

[saudades]

[That one is funny, actually, but Dazai doesn't laugh. He may or may not have taken a swig from his own, unfinished bottle, just out of spite.]

Or maybe you're just more human than you think. You must be aware how many of us have been driven to despair and even violence over Him, after all.

[messenger]

Yes, your crusades. Your holy wars. We helped with some of those, you know.

[ castiel watches dazai's alcohol with longing.

and then, abruptly, he's gone. he'll return a few minutes later with a fluttering of wings in the center of the room. holding two more bottles of jack, one in either hand. if he were more human, he might be better off. but who knows? who sets the score? who decides these things, but the being who he's already written off?

he wonders if what dazai said is really true. about him and dean. or if he would want it to be — if he would feel less empty, if it were. ]

You want one of these?

[saudades]

Wow. It must have been quite something for the people you guys killed to find out how meaningless their deaths were!

[Throwing your life away for the sake of a god that doesn't exist is one thing, but to find out the people who killed you were right to begin with, and not even have the benefit of oblivion from it? Sounds truly miserable. He prefers the ugliness of his own world. It's simpler. More honest, in a way.]

Sure, I'll take one.

[messenger]

... Yes. It must have been quite something.

[ he thought they were doing the right thing, at the time. well, of course he did. but now, knowing that god wasn't guiding their hand—? his voice is pained. he does nothing to disguise it.

he steps over, reaching to hand off the bottle. ]

[saudades]

[Dazai is pretty good at not touching people accidentally. His power necessitates being good at it, especially when he needed to operate more low-key. But Castiel is awkwardly angled on his couch, drunk, and Dazai isn't 100% sober, either, so when he's reaching out for that bottle, Castiel's wrist just barely brushes against a fingertip he didn't manage to move out of the way in time.

He wouldn't have even necessarily been concerned about such a brief contact, though; it's not immediately suspicious for a person to experience a fleeting instant of being suppressed or hollowed out as long as it disappears just as quick and they have no reason to justify the feeling, comfortably buzzed in a personal residence in broad daylight as they are.

But then Castiel falls over like a marionette with its strings cut, and Dazai can only really watch blankly as the bottle in the angel's hand pours out all over the floor, soaking both into the carpet and the poor angel's coat.]

...Ah? Oh dear.

[messenger]

[ it may be one of the most bizarre sensations he's ever felt in all his long life.

he hardly notices their fingers brushing, fingertips numbed by the ethyl alcohol in his bloodstream. there's the sliding by of their molecules. and then, already floating on the wave of ethanol that's soaked his vessel's liver, he feels his grip on his vessel give way. it's a kind of unraveling, his whole entire true form poured out into the air, invisible and flaring as sobriety slams into him like a truck.

the lights of the apartment building flicker, the lamps immediately nearby throwing bright, sizzling sparks onto the floor. their earpieces give twin whines of feedback, and the tv bursts into noisy, roaring, grey-and-white screened static, far louder than whatever setting dazai might have had it on before.

the entire display seems to scream: what the fuck? ]

[saudades]

[Dazai was going to try poking the body with a fork or something to see if it really was dead or something, but then all the electronics in the room start to go out of control, and Dazai is perceptive enough to realize after a moment what's going on here. So when Castiel said his body didn't even belong to him, he meant there was some kind of angel ability keeping him inside it, and Dazai being Dazai disconnected him the moment their skin touched.

Unfortunately, No Longer Human doesn't exactly work in reverse. If Castiel can't put himself back in his vessel now that Dazai isn't touching it, he is shit out of luck. He thinks about how to communicate with static-Castiel, before he comes up with an idea: taking his smartphone back out of his pocket from his failed attempt to initiate a selfie earlier, he uses the built-in flashlight to write out a message in Morse code:]

S-O-R-R-Y

C-A-N-T

T-O-U-C-H

[Look, writing entire sentences in morse code would be incredibly tedious, alright. A moment later, though, another message is flashed on the wall:]

I-D-E-A

[before he gestures to the television, then to the corpse in his living room, and pantomimes re-entering it ... which probably looks a little more lewd than intended, honestly, but there's only so much you can accomplish without verbal communication here.]

H-A-V-E
B-R-O-O-M
P-U-S-H
T-O
O-U-T-L-E-T
?

[He doesn't know how this works, okay. Maybe real-form Castiel can only move via electricity? If the corpse was close to a source it might be easier to jump back in.]

[messenger]

[ ah, morse! what a useful bit of human ingenuity to know in this situation — something in the distance groans faintly, maybe a generator or power converter or whatever sort of system is feeding electricity into this apartment complex straining under the weight of the increased load. nothing, castiel hopes, that anyone else will notice. he's making an effort to reign himself in, an effort so that the effect he has on the electrical system isn't any more pronounced than the effect your average thunder storm might cause. the last thing he wants is to break something and get noticed by aurora (though it occurs to him he might want to get noticed — another time). it isn't easy to keep himself localized to dazai's room, but that's what he does.

the lamp flickers. ]

I-S
I-T
S—

[ and then the bulb bursts in an explosion of hot sparks, raining twinkling shards of glass across the floor.

if castiel could, he would roll his eyes.

there's a pause. then the television begins switching channels, in place of the flashing light. ]

I-S
I-T
S-A-F-E

[ he means, his body — whatever dazai's ability does, he needs to know if it lingers. ]

[saudades]

[rip lamp. Dazai whistles lowly as it bursts; there's no doubt Castiel is suppressing his power, and he's admittedly a little curious just how much electricity the angel can create. But they must focus on the task at hand first, so:]

Y-E-S
C-A-N
G-O
B-A-C-K
A-N-Y-T-I-M-E

[It's a little tempting to tease him and drag this out, but he never actually meant to cause a problem on purpose this time, so he's not about to start one now. At least not until this is all cleared up, and he can explain better once they can both use their words out loud again.]

[messenger]

[ a faint tremor resonates through the building. there's an almost contemplative pause. and then the tv begins flipping channels again, writing out another message. ]

S-H-E-I-L-D
Y-O-U-R
E-Y-E-S

[ all at once, the room is illuminated as though from nothing, from nowhere. a shaft of light engulfs jimmy's limp body, another tremor vibrating through the building's frame as the faint sound of voices in all registers and timbers overlaps in sonorous whisper for just a moment— and then, cuts off. as the light begins to fade, castiel sits up from his limp slouch.

he give dazai a long look with a quirked eyebrow (exasperated, but not angry, a little curious) before standing to pick up the fallen bottle. when he sets it down, it's full again like it was never dropped, the stain gone from both the carpet and his coat. he glances at the glass embedded in the carpet fibers, makes a casual motion toward the lamp, and the glass is gone and the lamp is whole and shining with its dim little light again.

he can't heal anymore. he'd rather dazai not cut his feet.

attention no longer diverted, he looks back to the man with the strange power. ]

... Fascinating.