The Marionette • Chuuya X Reader

16: Antebellum

After many tosses and turns in your bed, you found the answer to one of your repeating questions.

What has Chuuya been doing to you?

When you've thought you've had the answer previously, it had turned out you didn't, but after rolling the question around in your head millions of times over in your dim-lit room, there's a point when you're describing the answer without giving it a label and you know it. Over and over, you wondered if there was simply something wrong with you. Every time you replayed the scenario of you and Chuuya so close in your room, you feel nauseous all over, your body grows hot with embarrassment, yet you want nothing more than to repeat it again and again. It's not the type of thing you usually fretted about, you don't feel anxious and restless when you lay and close your eyes and there is no disgust at any of the consequences inside you; you just feel the curiosity growing as your heart beats to his rhythm. That's when you realize there is nothing wrong with you that is causing any of this and the simple explanation you didn't want to give to yourself was that you like Chuuya differently than you've liked anyone else you've ever known.

However, you don't like it.

You don't like it because that means that what Chuuya has been doing to you is not his fault, nor is it something he could control. The way his compassion and humanity is different to other Port Mafia member has appealed to you, his confidence and power compelled you, his aesthetic leaving you in awe...it's all on your own heart, and for the first time in all your life, you feel proof that you do indeed have one capable of longing. All because of Chuuya. Or really, all because of your weakness towards him.

What if I had kissed him?

After eating and spending the majority of the evening resting with the lights off in your room as you had been told to after you fainted earlier, a frustration builds inside you the more you think about the simple what if. You aren't sure what it means to you and more than that, you aren't sure what you are supposed to do with the information you had just uncoded about yourself.

What would he have thought?

The rest you did get was filled of blurred dreams of Chuuya, his grip on your wrist, his eyes looking you up and down...

"...you're still mine at heart."

Woken up by a knock at your door, you can't shake away Dazai's words that had crawled out of your subconscious and echoed in your mind suddenly as soon as you thought of your feelings for Chuuya. You question the authenticity of them, repeating to yourself what Dazai had said about your heart still being his, adding that doubt of the reality of your situation.

Maybe it was a one time thing. Maybe there were too many emotions everywhere and what I thought I felt was a temporary consequence.

The knocking on your door continues until you let out a deep, nervous sigh as you open your door, extremely disappointed at who it is.

"Marionette, I need your assistance."

You look at Higuchi with a raised brow as she stands in front of you, a stern look on her face glazed with determination, her blonde hair in her usual bun, hair falling out from the front framing her face. Never had you been so quickly irritated by a person's presence as you had been with this woman, and you are sure it shows when you see growing discomfort on Higuchi's face.

Marionette.

That's who I am to everyone else.

"What is it."

"Akutagawa gave me the task of handing this note from executive Nakahara to you. It's related to a private mission of the Black Lizard...we need you to visit the site with me, there's someone we need interrogated but we can't bring them to headquarters. They are to be eliminated immediately after." She informs you, giving you a small folded white note as she talked, you opening it and reading Chuuya's elegant hand-writing with the instructions to provide assistance to Akutagawa and Higuchi as needed, pleading you to listen to them and follow orders technically coming indirectly from him.