The Marionette • Chuuya X Reader

19: Tousled

Drifting to sleep in Dazai's spare room, you feel nothing but serenity as you enter dreamless sleep, your exhaustion blocking out any troubles laying in your subconscious after barely surviving the encounter with Akutagawa and being forced to accept Dazai's help.

Before you had given in to your exhaustion, however, you had had to fight the urges buried in you after Dazai had told you ever so sweetly that he felt guilty for the pain he had caused you. Hearing that sparked a lot more emotion than you ever thought it would, and in response you had lifted a gentle hand to Dazai's face, pulling back his wavy hair away from his face from one side to get a proper look at the intentions hidden behind his eyes. There with the cool light of the moon taking away the usual gold of his warm brown eyes, you found nothing but genuineness reflecting in the pools of his irises. Of course, you know that while that's all you see now, Dazai is too unpredictable to completely trust the way you want to. Still, staring at him then, the both of you enveloped by the seclusion of his home, the silence of the city not allowing any misplaced sound interrupt, you wondered what it would feel to forgive him in the moment, to allow your curiosity to break free and just get a little closer...

But you didn't, because a part of you felt sick at the thought of giving in to such petty desires, so in the end you nodded and let him go, leaving you standing in the dark of the spare room until you laid down and fell asleep without another thought of your haunting problems, clouds covering up the moon and stars.

When you wake up, rain is pouring against the room windows, your eyes fluttering open to find the day in full swing as you groggily get out of bed with your whole body aching, very confused at first as to where you are and what is happening. It isn't until you look down at your bandaged hands that you get flashbacks from last night, a gasp escaping your body when you check the time and see it's just a few minutes past noon and you are still in Dazai's home.

I'm going to cause myself so much trouble...

You blame the rain clouds that hadn't allowed the sun to wake you up and your exhaustion which had tuned the noise out, but even then it was beginning to dawn on you that this was a big mistake. Either way, as you force your footwear back on and find your coat all cleaned from yesterday folded near your bed, nothing matters because you had completely overslept in the enemy's home and as far as you know, no one in the Port Mafia knows where you are.

Scrambling through your coat pockets for the phone given to you by Chuuya, you begin to panic when you can't find it only to hear Dazai walk in and watch it ring. By the time you notice and stare at his smirking face in confusion, the phone has stopped ringing and Dazai hands it back to you, laughing silently to himself at your frantic state.

"Chuuya's called you 3 times in the past few hours. Higuchi has been texting you non-stop too...you're quite popular aren't you? And here you were...sleeping. Did you sleep well at least?" He asks you cheerfully in the way one might if they knew that they were completely safe, unlike the rest in the room.

"Why didn't you wake me up?!" You demand as you scroll through all your missed messages, heart sinking when you see Chuuya's calls in an accusing red light, suddenly nervous about facing him again.

"You looked so peaceful. Besides, I went to work and just got back to check if you were still here. My colleagues were so curious as to what I was hiding-"

"Dazai. You need to take me back to the headquarters building."

"So soon?"