twisted devotion || Yandere!DAZAI/READER

[12] The Parfait

A/N: In which Dazai is emotionally constipated and can't say I love you like a normal person but has to put it in Mafioso terms lol

XX

"It's a boiling day out," You say, still feeling the unforgiving heat of the summer burn into your skin like a tattoo. Even in the air-con air of the cafe you were in offered little reprieve; you ultimately resorted to peeling back your sleeves and fanning yourself with your hand, "Good god is it hot today."

"You got that right," Dazai is sprawled out in his chair with his sleeves tied back, bandages coming loose at the edges. His beige coat is thrown over the back of his chair, brown hair pulled back when he pushes his fingers through them. A few tresses fall over his forehead, but the rest remain slicked back with the damp moisture of the humidity outside, "It's unbearable. It's any wonder that the body didn't decompose faster than it already was."

You hum in agreement, before the conversation you had with the Doctor rises up in your head like smoke. "Say, Dazai...I had an interesting conversation earlier with Yosano."

"Hm?"

"She said you were," You lower your face and cup your mouth, furtively looking at the other customers with a quick glance to the side, "You worked for the Port Mafia a while back."

"Oh, that," He dismissively brushes his hand: whisk whisk, all of it an ancient, long gone relic of the past, "Everyone but Kunikida knows."

"Even the President?"

"Especially the President," He winks at you, before a flash of worry bolts through his gaze, "Are you perturbed by it?"

"Who wouldn't be?" You admit, leaning back on your seat, "But then again, she did say you guys don't associate with them anymore."

"I went off the map for two years to fully cut connections with them," Dazai says, "I don't associate myself with them anymore. My loyalties lie elsewhere."

"Yeah? Like the Agency, I hope."

"The Agency and you."

You blink, before pointing to your chest, "Me?"

"Of course. Of course it's you."

You're left speechless; he might as well have said he loved you.

The waitress comes by and delivers the chocolate parfait the two of you ordered before this conversation, oblivious and unaware of the tension building up between her two customers. There's an air of conspiracy between the two of you that's in the language of silence, being untangled by simple gestures such as staring at the eyes, to the lips, then to the eyes again. The waitress walks away without receiving a response from either of you.

You tentatively reach over and grab a small dessert spoon and push it into the ice-cream of the parfait.

"My loyalties lie within you too," You say, carefully observing his reaction through the curved surface of the parfait glass. He distorts and bends: an escape artist, through the glass; but you can still see the blooming devotion beginning to unfurl in his gaze like one of those time-lapse videos of a rose in full bloom. His emerald bolo tie shines as he shifts his body closer to yours from across the table, a smile growing prevalent on his delicate face.

"They do?"

"They do," You say. You take a bite of the ice-cream and the dessert melts on your hot tongue. Just as any suspicions you may have had reserved for this man, they all seem insignificant and minute to the brilliant smile on his face, melting like the parfait to his small mouth as he joyfully digs in.

XX

"You can just stay outside while I go in and pack my stuff," You say as he walks you to the hotel lobby, "It won't take a while, anyways."

"Of course," He smiles, "Don't keep me waiting."

"I won't."

He watches you leave and once you're out of sight, he lets out a sigh and leans against the wall. The admission of guilt from Yosano was yet another topic he had wanted to break to you slowly, but now that it was out of his control made the riotous insides of his heart pump faster and faster; he tries to take a cooling, calming breath by exhaling and inhaling slowly, and ends up having to closing his eyes and hiding in the shadows to escape any perceptive eyes that might condemn him for being vulnerable in public.

He loves you; that he admits too freely in a world where you could simply disappear with no trace you had ever existed. But it was true, after all. He loved you. Since he fell in love with you everything is transformed and filled with a serene sense of beauty: love is like an aroma, your perfume and flesh: like a current, your eyes swirling in a drunk-daze; like rain, your hair falling over him like a gentle shower of a placid afternoon.

But Dazai wonders what part of him you love. He knows he eludes explanation, he knows he is an escape artist to his own wrongdoings; what made him so lovable when he stands amongst his own ruins, like a vengeful God sending a blitzing lightning bolt to a tree, leaving nothing but crackling fire and splinters. He knows that under different lights did different forms of faces come out: a continuously shifting surface with no gravity behind its facade, like the surface of water, yet a water which is only a reflective skin and has neither depth or volume or temporal shadings. There were so many ripples of his faces; which one did you love?

"Which one do I love?" You echo as you exit the lobby. You're dragging two heavy grocery bags filled with clothes as you approach him, "Say that again, Dazai? I couldn't quite hear you."

"It was nothing," He giggles and waves it off, though his laugh diminishes when you look at him with a questioning, yet almost sorrowful look.

"I love whatever parts that make up you," You say, "Past, present, future. It doesn't matter to me which ones you decide to give to me today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow; what makes Dazai Dazai is your decision to choose which echo hits the hardest."

He's left speechless.

"My loyalties lie within you," You echo your previous statement, before breaking into a gentle smile. The sunset dresses you in gold and it drenches your smile with honey, the hum and hive of it all, moonglossed lips and eyelids—nearly enough to send Dazai to his knees and worship what beauty you held within you like a gravity that made you so beautiful, "I trust you, Dazai. Sincerely. Now let's go home."