#link goes to first chapter bc i figure out that i wasnt showing up in search bc of the links

[cyuya-nakahara]

You’re Insufferable (We’re Inseparable) - Ch4

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Dazai is nothing if not persistent.

Chapter 4: The Dog and the Hare

"Are you busy?" The question startled Chuuya as he emerged from the tearoom, and he looked to the side to see Dazai sitting against the wall beside the door, a book in hand and small bag beside him. He looked like he'd been there for hours. "What are you doing here?" He asked, sliding the door shut behind him. Dazai slipped a bookmark in his book's pages and closed it, setting it aside. He looked up to meet Chuuya's eye. "Waiting for you." He said honestly. "I was hoping you'd like to go to the park." Chuuya raised a brow and studied the other boy closely. "I'm not dressed for it." He said cautiously, gesturing at his kimono. "Kouyou would kill me if I ruined her clothes." Suddenly it clicked for Dazai that the ratty clothes Chuuya had worn on the mission were probably the only articles of clothing that Chuuya owned for himself, and he searched for a compromise. "We could sit in the tea garden." He suggested, gesturing in the general direction of Kouyou's gardens. "You could change into something more casual first." "Why do you keep trying to be around me?" Dazai jostled his bag. "I brought candy." It wasn't an answer, and the redhead wasn't impressed by the offer in the slightest, but to his own surprise— "Fine." He said flatly. A change of clothes later, Dazai and Chuuya found themselves sitting on a stone bench in Kouyou's garden, watching fish swim and leaves fall from the stresses of the breeze. They sat silently, listening to the wind in the pines. A silence stretched on for what seemed to be forever, but Chuuya finally broke it. "What are we doing out here?" He said bluntly, shattering the meditative atmosphere. His voice seemed tired and disillusioned, because he was. He couldn't fathom why Dazai had come here to meet him at all. "I just want to talk." The boy answered back. Dazai kicked his legs as he looked at the ground. "We started poorly. Pretend I don't know you." "That's not hard." Chuuya laughed and he continued, "I hardly know you at all." He spoke with a laugh but his words fell on a silent backdrop, ringing true for both of them. Everything they knew of each other was derived from a few short encounters and a great deal of assumptions. Chuuya, for example, knew the other boy was called Dazai. He knew he was always bandaged up in some way, and he knew he was cared for by the greasy man that had insulted him when he'd first been brought in. He knew he could neutralise gifts, and he knew he was a bit of a prick. He didn't know much else at all. And Dazai knew little more. He knew Chuuya's full name, and he knew Kouyou cared for him. He knew his gift manipulated gravity, and that he'd been living on the streets before the Mafia had found him. He knew the progression of roles he had in his short time in the Mafia thus far, and he knew a bit of Chuuya's tactical strengths. He knew that Kouyou didn't wish to cut  his hair for whatever reason, and assorted other bits of trivia without context or importance. Neither knew much of the other at all. "I think we should just start over." Dazai said, leaning on his unbroken arm. "Introduce yourself, like we never even met. I'll do the same." He looked at Chuuya, studying his face. Chuuya looked back, and then sighed. He still hadn't gotten any word on why the other kid cared so much, but there wasn't any harm here. "Nakahara Chuuya." He said hesitantly, unsure of what kind of game they were playing. "Dazai." The other responded. And then, like robot, continued: "I am gifted. My gift is 'No Longer Human', and it is that any gift I come into contact with is rendered null and void." He spoke almost mechanically, and Chuuya wondered how many times the brunet had said those exact words before. It was a weird way for him to introduce himself; Chuuya hadn't even thought to mention his ability. Dazai apparently hadn't thought to give his full name. It bugged him. "Mine is 'For the Tainted Sorrow'," he said, still not onboard with whatever Dazai was trying to do, "as you might recall, it manipulates gravity." "How does it work?" Chuuya scoffed. "I'm not telling you that. I know your 'no trust in the Mafia' deal and I don't know what you're up to. I'm not telling you anything in depth about my ability, no way, dude." Dazai nodded, unsurprised. "Okay." The two sat in an uncomfortable silence filled only by the bubbling of the pond for well over a minute before either spoke again. "'No Longer Human' is a gift of the highest priority and potency." Dazai explained without prompting, breaking the silence and looking at the ground. "It activates when I touch an ability in use, no matter what it is, how strong its effects may be, or if I want it to. My ability will always neutralise other gifts before they act on me." "You can't turn it off?" Chuuya asked, raising a brow. That was an idea that was foreign to him. His own ability was something he turned on and off at will with relative ease, and so was pretty much every other ability he'd ever encountered. Something he used when he needed it. It happened without warning sometimes, but he could stop it eventually. The way the other talked about this, though, was what Dazai had even really a gift? The way it was described, it seemed more like...an extra feature of his body. Like Dazai's body had dark hair and fair skin, and it neutralised abilities on contact. Gifts had always seemed like special skills to Chuuya. Controllable things. Things that could be harnessed and trained. "No." Dazai said simply. "Can you?" Chuuya had taken to pulling the leaves off of a nearby plant, amassing a small pile in his lap. "I'd thought everyone could." He mumbled. Dazai frowned. "I'm still not telling you anything about mine." Chuuya added, looking at Dazai as he fiddled with a leaf in his hand. The other boy nodded. "That's fair." Another long silence ensued, but Chuuya was the one to break it this time. "So uh," he started, trying to make new conversation without tripping over words, "you're...important huh? I mean, you're my age, right?" Dazai wasn't entirely following. "I turned 11 recently." He said flatly, eyes on the other. Chuuya bit his lip and leaned back on his hands. "So you must be important right? I was supposed to be your bodyguard or something, but you're just a kid. And Kouyou talks really nice about you too. What makes you so special? Kouyou says you're smart." "I suppose that's true." The conversation fell flat on its face and another silence ensued. Chuuya began tearing up the leaves in his lap. This exercise they were doing was pointless— they were exchanging info but were they actually getting anywhere? It was just small talk, and Chuuya wasn't keen on small talk. He wasn't particularly good at small talk, he didn't like small talk, and in his experience small talk didn't like him. He usually wound up saying something wrong, and depending on who he was talking to, that ranged from uncomfortable to disastrous. Dazai didn't seem like he'd be the disaster sort, but that didn't mean he wanted to chance it. "Look—" he said, tossing a leaf into the pond, "what do you want? Why do you keep trying to talk to me? Just tell me straight up, please." He looked at Dazai in earnest. He liked "straight up". He liked honest expressions and uncomplicated conversations. He liked to say what he thought, whenever possible, and he preferred when others did the same. It rarely worked out that way, but it was what he liked, and it was what he wanted from this conversation badly. Dazai, however, did not like "straight up". "We started off badly." Dazai said again, his voice as practiced and scripted as his talk of his ability. "I just want to be friends." "Have you ever actually made a friend?" The question came out before Chuuya even thought to think and he immediately bit down on his lip as the discomfort hit the atmosphere like an atom bomb. A silence grew and the silence was telling —Dazai, like himself, probably had not had many opportunities for that. Chuuya reached out to touch the other. "Hey dude, I haven't really either." He said apologetically, trying to ease the damage. The brunet looked down at his arm and stared, and a different expression slipped underneath the blank one he'd been wearing as he observed the redhead's arm that extended from his sleeve. Chuuya wasn't sure what that meant. It was weird but it didn't seem bad. He wasn't sure what changed, but this expression seemed...real, and Dazai looked like a person had come to take his body off autopilot. "Do you like sweets?" He asked, his eyes still fixed on Chuuya's skin as he changed topics entirely. Chuuya drew his arm back slowly. "What kind?" "I don't actually know." He confessed, but he got out his bag, pulling out a handful of hard wrapped candies. "I just stole a handful of whatever Mori had in his jar for Elise. I'm not actually allowed to have them." Chuuya grimaced at Mori's name. He took the hard candy from Dazai when it was handed to him, but he didn't dare to eat it. "Is this stuff even safe?" He asked. Dazai was already popping one into his mouth. "Probably —ugh, cinnamon." He took the candy right back out of his mouth and wrapped it back up while Chuuya continued to look at his like it might secretly be full of razors. Dazai selected a yellow one this time, confident that the flavour possibilities for that colour were safe, and slid it in his mouth. "These are Elise's." He reiterated, talking around the candy. "Mori likes her. And besides, poisoning a bowl of candy that he and Elise eat from on the off chance that I steal some to give to you is a method that's inefficient, unguaranteed, and not his style. The candies are almost certainly safe." Chuuya reluctantly put one in his mouth. Dazai clearly trusted his judgement on the matter enough to eat them. And if something happened, well, at least he wouldn't be in the hospital alone. "Why is Elise allowed to have them but you're not?" He asked, tucking the hard candy in his cheek and pulling his legs up onto the bench. He turned to sit sideways facing Dazai. Dazai shrugged. "He likes her better I guess; poor girl. Why won't Kouyou let you cut your hair?" He said the question easily but it dropped awkwardly and Chuuya frowned, confused. "I could if I wanted, she's not stopping me. I just like it long." Oh. "It's pretty." Dazai said as a weak save for the implication of his question. It wasn't a lie, though. "Thank you." Dazai paused, looking at the pond, and then at Chuuya, at his hair and his clothes. He looked like Kouyou's spitting image, and the brunet wondered what that felt like to him. Did he abhor it? Like it? Did he even know? He wouldn't ask. "Do you enjoy learning from her?" He asked instead. His question was vague, designed to try and get the information he wanted. Chuuya just threw another leaf into the pond and answered simply, "I hate tea." It was an understandable answer for the circumstances. The conversations went on, with vague questions and cautious answers, until the sun began to sink lower in the sky. And by the time that came...well, they weren't quite friendly, but they weren't hostile either. And something between them made it seem so hard for either to leave. "I have to go." Chuuya said, rising from the bench and extending a hand to the other. Dazai nodded. He should have returned home long ago. "I'll come again." He said, and took Chuuya's hand to help himself up.