illusion || YANDERE!BEAST!DAZAI OSAMU

five: rain.

"So," You swirl a glass of wine in your hand, your face propped up by the other, and stare at your boss sitting across the table. "Did you have something to talk about with me?"

"I just wanted to know more about our lovely secretary," Dazai responds, not touching his wine at all. Perhaps it wasn't his thing. You squint your eyes at him at that response, and he smiles with his eyes closed. He was like a room where the furniture was constantly shuffled, leaving you baffled and desperate for a pattern. But he was enigmatic, he was mysterious, he was ineffable; his internal clockwork was so different from others that it seemed inhumane. You look at the furniture: his singular eye, his lips, his nose, his hair, and then you're filled with a curious despair, convinced that they amounted to a riddle, a riddle that he opened his face to you to crack. "Nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"Not at all."

"It doesn't help that I think you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life."

You deadpan. "Many find me beautiful. Your words mean nothing, Dazai."

"My my, do I have competition?" He teases.

"You sure as hell do," You say, then with a coy smile that suggests a challenge, you say, "How will you be different from the other men that have tried courting me in the past?"

"I wonder," He hums, putting a hand to his chin. "I shall live for you, then."

You blink. "Isn't it supposed to be 'I will die for you'?"

"Death is an easy way out. Living is much harder, is it not? I find my existence an oxidising dream, where there is only air if I die. But for you, bella, I shall put myself through suffocation."

"Bella?" You echo. "Like, in Italian?"

"Yes and no," Dazai chirps. "Yes in the sense you're beautiful, but no in the sense it's an abbreviation of 'belladonna'."

"You mean the plant?"

"The plant with both lethal and healing properties," He says, smoothly. "In a way, you are both."

Your food arrives. You try to pass off the growing heat in your cheeks as the heat from your food, but you have to admit: Dazai had charm. You eat delicately, your mind swirling at the words that have just come out of Dazai's mouth. Everytime he spoke, it was as if you had to take a step back and untangle the knot that was the meaning behind his words. You had to process them; they lacked the plainess and logic that was imbued into every other normal person. But this was no normal person–this was your boss, the notorious Port Mafia boss.

Once you are finished with your meal and dessert arrives, you play with the slice of cheesecake with your silver fork.

"I am intrigued by you, (first name)," He says, pushing the dessert to the side. Dazai felt as if the plate was a barrier, even though he knew that the barrier came from his heart and not the tiny slice of cake. He laces his fingers together and tucks them under his chin, staring at you with the intensity of sparks spitting from an ignited lighter. "You who were turned off by the act of good from the Agency, you who couldn't fit in with the so-called 'good guys' and turned to the darkness. Why?"

"You're the Port Mafia boss. You should know what makes people tick."

He sighs. "Humans are so foolishly stupid. But you...you are an exception. I like you. You impress me in ways I never thought I could be."

You smile, a slight smile that is a kind of lacquered friendliness. "You're flattering me."

"Not flattering if it's the truth."

"Is that what you think that is? The truth?"

He chuckles. "I know it is."

"Besides, my case isn't new. Kyouka, was it? She turned away from the Agency, too."

He sighs. "Ah, Kyouka. She couldn't bear her crimes. So she returned. But her case is coming back home–you stepped onto foreign territory and staked it as your own."

"I guess," You say, shrugging in the process. "You make it sound more epic than it was."

"It was a great leap for you, wasn't it?" He ignores your comment and smiles, good-naturedly. "You trusted me."

"I trust you," You correct him. "Present tense."

Your voice seemed to slide out of your throat and expand, as though a balloon filled with light. Light poured from your throat; liquid gold, like the light of the sun on a dying evening, painting the skies varying shades of orange and yellow. He feels seen by your words: he felt actually seen. Dazai has, during the dark era of his pubescent years, been obsessed with the idea of vanishing whole–and a part of him still did, but your words vanquished those thoughts. You're a miracle, Dazai thinks, a goddamn miracle.

"What's my dear husband thinking about?"

Your question snaps Dazai of his reverie.

Dazai is sitting on the couch with a small lacquered sake cup in his hand, the transparent liquid wobbling in the concave disk of the cup. You're doing the same, but you're sitting by the window, where the large, sturdy marmoreal windowsill held you up. You turn your gaze back onto the rain falling outside, pattering against the glass like ghostly fingernails.

"Thinking of you," He says, truthfully.

"Think of me more and you won't be able to recognize me," You joke. "Like jamais vu."

He chuckles, downing the sake in his cup and putting it down on the glass coffee table. He then makes his way towards you, his scarf discarded on the leather surface of the couch like a red snake.

"Oh, I beg to differ," He puts an arm around your shoulder and watches the rain with you. It was as if the rain unloosened something soft and sentimental inside of him; but then again, he was always like this around you. His darling wife, his beautiful partner, the one he would choose over the entire Port Mafia. You were like a cavernous dream where abysses lay, and it was like witnessing a miracle every time he came across one of these abysses. "I would always recognize you. Anytime, in any universe, I would find you."

How painfully true those words were.

"You're too romantic for your own good," You say. "Is this how you treat every woman in your life?"

"Only you," Dazai says, laving a hand over your hair and smiling into your skin. "It'll only ever be you."

"Oh, you," You playfully push him away and giggle. "How's Gin? Has she settled in yet?"

"Why don't you go find out?" He says, stepping away to the side. "Oh, and while you're at it...Tell her that her brother has been successful in joining the Armed Detective Agency."

"Alright."

You put your sake cup down and kiss Dazai on the mouth, to which he deepens by pulling you closer. When you pull away it feels as if your tongue has been stolen from you, rendering you incapable of words; but it returns, slowly but surely, and you press another kiss to his cheek.

"See you at dinner, Dazai," You say over your shoulder, just as you close the door behind you. The door clicks shut and you head towards Gin's office.

Meanwhile, Dazai longingly stares where you have once sat, on the marble windowsill, sighing as he puts his hands in his coat pockets and staring outside. It was a bleak sight without you: fading shades of grey polluted the sky, the blurring blues of rain pouring down a sheet of water against the water, threatening to be let in. He tightens the bolt that kept the window shut then sits back on the couch.

"In any universe, huh?" Dazai says to himself, chuckling at his own words. "You're a sick, sick man, Dazai. You're a cruel man."

But even though he knows he's not the nicest of men, he can't see you with anyone but himself. It was as if the stars in the universe aligned and lit the path for him: He could see, but only with you. Your hand was designed to fit his, slot against his like a puzzle piece, your fingers created to lace with his slim ones. 

He has known you for several lifetimes, in differing universes. And that makes him cling onto you more than ever, dig his claws in you, sink his teeth into your nape like a lion taking a gazelle home.