Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

28. rooftop.

You're sitting in the bathtub, clear, cool water lapping at your naked body as you sway your hands in it. The tips of your fingers are wrinkled from the prolonged stay underwater, but you don't mind. You wash your face by gathering a handful of water, sighing at the coolness of it running down your cheeks.

In a harder time, you would have confused the water with your tears.

They say you can overcome your grief. But that is not true. You have not overcome anything. Every tear you've shed, every wail your throat's produced, every step you took in running as if that would allow you to run back into Odasaku's arms, every moment of terror when you thought of your kids—these live on inside of you, appearing in dreams and nightmares: distorted and mangled, what could have been, what couldn't have been manifesting before you. The past isn't gone. It isn't transcended or excised. It lives on inside of you: and that gives you a new perspective; you lived to experience liberation because of yourself and Dazai. That you learned freedom because you chose to forgive Odasaku for his untimely death.

Forgiveness isn't easy; that's why they have religions dedicated to their name. It is easier to form grudges, plan revenge. But revenge regresses the self. It takes you back into the past, and locks you in. It puts blood money over people's heads; makes them commodities in your mind. That they are not worth it other than the price of Odasaku's death. And that is a life that you do want to live in.

You hum a song as you stand up and begin to drain the water. You stand up and climb over the bathtub rim, grabbing a large white towel and wiping yourself down. You shrug on casual clothes and unlock the bathroom door.

"How was your bath?" Dazai asks, his face perking up at your presence.

"Good enough for you to not ask if I'm okay," You say, looking at the time. It had been 2 hours since you had been sitting in that bathtub, just like last time; but this time, you were a different person.

"Brings you back, huh," The brunette says. "We should get going."

"To the Agency, right? What're we supposed to do again?"

He grins. "Nothing. You want to sit on the rooftop with me?"

You cheekily grin back. "That sounds sick."

The two of you walk towards the Agency, taking your time as your hands are enclasped with each other. It is uncommon to see couples showing PDA in Japan; in fact, it was only seen in the younger generation. It was a taboo amongst adults.

But you don't care. The love Dazai has for you transcends social boundaries; goes beyond the human parameters of emotion. It is both sacred and dangerous. He touches you like you are in another world; his hold is tight and sees you, feels you.

"Hello Ranpo." You greet. The two of you have gotten close as friends after he had discovered your location in less than five seconds, effectively saving you before you were dismantled and tortured to death. The bespectacled male waves his hand at you, mouth full of candy.

"Yo, (last name)," He says. Then he pulls out something from his pocket and hands it to you. A FUJIYA lollipop. The plastic is wrinkled and you're more than sure the candy itself was a bit melted, but you take it anyway. "Have this."

"What's the special occasion? Did I do something to please the Candy Master?" You ask, peeling open the plastic. You stick the candy into your mouth: Strawberry.

"Congrats on moving on," He says. You should have known: he was smarter than you could ever imagine. Or maybe it was because you carried yourself differently than before. You would be hunched over and sluggishly bump past people's shoulders in your grief, but now you seemed to know where reality started and you began.

"Thanks," You say, muffled through the candy. You can feel Dazai giving your hand a quick squeeze. "Don't tell Kunikida, but we're going to the rooftop."

"Hopefully not to commit a double suicide," Yosano comments. "Dazai has a whole book about that in his locker."

"Now, now, now, let's not disclose what's in my locker," Dazai says, a teasing smile on his face. You turn to him.

"I thought you kept that book in our dorm," You say, confused. He smiles at you.

"I don't want such things in our shared space," He simply says, and you can feel heat prickle at your neck. Just how suave could he get? "Anyways, we'll be going!"

"Bye!" Ranpo waves at you as you take the lift to the rooftop. The door has a handle that you have to push in order to open, and it swings open with a loud cry.

It's early Autumn. At last the summer heat waned like a moon in her phases, apples swelling into ripeness, leaves darkening into brown before crackling off the branches, cool electric winds dashing past you, golden consciousness of the soil, the Earth breaking open to allow Persephone through into the Underground. You sit under September sunlight and breathe it all in.

You're sitting on the rooftop of the red Agency building, your legs splayed out and your hands behind your back, propping you up. You're staring up into the sun with your eyes closed, soaking it all in as though you were a sponge.

Dazai is lying down next to you. His coat has long been discarded, shrugged off and left into a pile beside his head. His hair is a tousled mess, like a dark halo around his head. He watches as the clouds pass by, slowly and methodically, before turning his head towards you.

You're casually suckling on the lollipop and, sensing Dazai's stare, turn to him.

"What's up?" You ask, taking the candy out of your mouth. Dazai chuckles.

"You always seem to know when I want to say something."

You wave the lollipop around. "It's like we're connected."

"I just wanted to say that I love you," He says. "I find peace in you."

"So do I," You comment. You turn your body so that you're facing him, leaning your head above his. Your hair falls as a curtain, entrapping him into your eyes. Your clear (eye colour) hues, sparkling and gleaming like a diamond refracting light from within, its chipped and sharpened corners glistering. "You want me down to the marrow."

"You're right, I do," Dazai says. He watches as you take the candy out of your mouth and dip your head, your lips grazing his. You close the distance and Dazai forgets about all the flowers in the world; their velvety petals couldn't come as close to the softness of your lips locked with his, the slight twinge of strawberry flooding his mouth. A nip on the lip that draws a single drop of blood. A pleasant sting. This is a kiss that he has dreamed of at night, out in the milky twilight, with so much longing that it made heaven sigh. He's received plenty of kisses from you, but each felt new every time, as if all he can do is relive your kisses like a VHS tape on repeat.

"I love you," You say. "I always think about you."

"I could not live apart from you," Dazai whispers. You lift your head up and his voice grows in volume. "I can't help it. All I can do is love you."

"Everything I do is simply in your name," You say, winking at him and sucking on the candy. It has been reduced to a stick at this point. "You're my everything."

He would run into your arms no matter the circumstance, even if he fell over and looked like a fool, even if he scraped his knee and blood welled on his skin, even if he went insane with prosopagnosia and couldn't recognize anyone's face, he would simply recognize you through your voice and the certain, special warmth of your arms.

He licks off the blood on his lip. He loves you, he thinks, he completely and totally loves you.