To See You Again (Chuuya Nakahara x Reader x Dazai Osamu)

Chapter Twenty Six

Y/n had lasted a long time, nearly a year. With the anniversary and everything else on her mind, she had fallen back into her old ways. She stood now, a few blocks away from the Agency, looking out over the port, nursing the cigarette in her hand. She wasn't sure exactly what needed killing within her, but whatever it was, she needed it gone. It was keeping her from breathing more than any potential downfall of her lungs ever would.

She knew Dazai would be disappointed, that was why she hadn't just stepped outside the building the way she used to do when first at the Agency. He still managed to find her somehow, he always did. Y/n didn't even have to turn around to see who it was that had stopped behind her, she could feel it in her bones.

"Don't you have anywhere else to be?" she groaned.

"Not until four." Dazai shrugged in response, stepping up beside her.

Y/n took a drag from her cigarette, relishing in the bitter taste kissing her tongue.

"Come to reprimand me?" she asked, her words accompanied by a cloud of smoke and a bitter smile.

"You don't think I have the right to."

Y/n let out a short laugh, a subtle exhale through her nose. Nothing more and nothing less.

"You're so stubborn." Dazai sighed and Y/n turned to look at him. Her face was devoid of any emotion, she looked empty.

It wasn't the emptiness he'd seen in her as a child, it wasn't the rabid rage that bit at her tongue as in her days before the Agency. It was something different, made cold and clear with something other than anger. There was a grief there.

"And you're not?"

She was teasing him, even though her voice betrayed nothing at all Dazai could tell. 

"Winter is so clearly your season, you practically own it. I must admit, I enjoyed seeing you in the summer." Dazai mused.

"What, unhappy and too warm?"

"Sun kissed and youthful." he corrected.

"Yeah, right."

"You're sad."

She laughed, a real laugh this time. Not something half hearted, but full and incredulous.

"Wow, such an astute observation."

"What's going on?"

"Isn't everyone sad? Who says there is anything going on."

"Just a hunch."

She sighed, leaning forward on the rail. Her chin on her arms, she folded over herself.

"Can't run from it forever."

They fell into a comfortable silence, Dazai watching Y/n as she watched the harbor. 

"You're a dangerous one, Y/n." he suddenly announced.

"What do you mean?" she asked in response, her head tilted slightly to one side in intrigue.

"You're brutal. Darkly, delicately so."

Taken aback by his response, she lifted her head from her arms and her arms from the rail.

"The fuck is that supposed to mean."

Her lighter clicked a few times under her thumb. When the flame finally caught, winning out against the wind, she raised it to the end of the new cigarette held captive between her lips. Dazai watched her every movement with care, eyes fixed on her mouth as she withdrew the now lit cigarette from it, exhaling smoke. His senses were full of it, full of death, full of her.

"A sinner or a saint." Would he lose interest? "A sinner and a saint. You're beautiful." he said at last, his voice soft and gentle, mingling with the wind.

Y/n's eyes widened but she didn't dare to look over at him again. They stayed, fixed on some distant detail of the skyline.

"No I'm not." she shook her head as she spoke, "I'm too soaked in blood to be beautiful. You have your answer: I am a sinner. I always have been and no amount of trying will make me anything other. Just like you."

"You think I am a sinner?"

"I think you're blood soaked, blood bound, blood hungry."

"You like that word a lot."

"Blood?"

"Hungry."

Y/n sighed.

"I've been starving my whole life."

"For what?"

"Anything at all."

"Beauty is subjective." Dazai responded, changing the subject as easily as someone turns a page in a book, returning to the first half of what Y/n had said, "You get to decide what beauty means for you and I think you are lovely, blood and all. I always have."

Y/n scoffed, shaking her head again, a small, incredulous smile on her face.

"Is that why you are so insistent on my goodness? Looking for something lovely in the mess, a diamond in the rough so to speak? Trying to find the rose of an ember beneath the ashes?"

"No." Dazai said, not missing the way Y/n was watching him out of the corner of her eye, examining him. "The two have nothing to do with one another really."

"But you want me to change." Y/n pointed out, taking another drag from her cigarette, "If you think something is beautiful, wouldn't you want it to remain the same?"

"Beauty is change. Change is constant. You can't have one without the other. If the object of admiration was always the same, completely constant, it would become boring. There is nothing compelling about constants."

"Chuuya is a constant, he is compelling. I bared my life to him because I trusted he would stay and he did. He stayed, that consistency of character is compelling."

"You bared your life to him?" Y/n nodded, "But you wont to me." she nodded again. "Why?"

The question was simple in form, but weighed heavily in her hands.

"You're fickle." she responded, her voice sharp and old, "The only constant about you is your inconsistency. I can rely on Chuuya."

"And you can't rely on me?" 

Y/n didn't answer.

"You're always comparing us."

"Not on purpose. I have never really been close with anyone besides you two. You are both the only frames of reference I have. Besides, you're more similar than either of you would like to believe."

Dazai let out a light laugh.

"I supposed that is true." he smiled softly, "It can't be helped."

Y/n turned to face him fully now, putting her cigarette out on the bottom of her shoe and dropping the butt to the ground.

"What is it that you find beautiful?" 

"Moss I guess." She responded after a moments thought.

"Anything else?"

"And ivy. Crocuses are nice. The stars are lovely, and the snow, and-" he breath caught in her throat, the image of Chuuya leaning out over her balcony a few nights before rising to her minds eye. She saw him: windswept, a cigarette in hand, a casual smile. She remembered the way the snowflakes falling around them had rested gently on his hair before melting into it.

"And?" Dazai repeated, prompting her to continue.

Y/n shook her head, throwing the memory away.

"Nothing."