Work Text:
“Close the door.”
A flurry of snow pirouettes across dusty wood floors. The white snowflakes dance along the walnut grain, fading into the night as they approach the fireplace. In front of the flames sits a slight figure, growing ever smaller as it curls around the ribbons of red and orange.
The silhouette doesn’t move when the floorboards in the entryway creak and groan, announcing the arrival of their visitor. The door slams shut, but no footsteps follow.
“Is that how you say hello now?” A sing-song voice contends with the stillness of the air. The figure in the fireplace remains unmoving.
“Why are you here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
The melodic voice grows louder, closer, without the accompaniment of footsteps. Even the tired cries of the floorboards have gone quiet.
“You didn’t come last year. Or the year before. Or… whatever, I don’t need to tell you ,” the figure says, becoming even more minuscule as it closes in on itself.
“This year is different.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” The visitor crafted in the chill of winter steps into the flickering glow of the fire. Her hair is as long and dark as the night, and the sun had set in her eyes nearly a decade before. Her skin mimics the snowflakes collecting on the windows - wrapped in white, cold to the touch.
She finds a seat next to the huddled mass of knitted wool and auburn hair. Peeking out from the blanket is a face colored by freckles and windburn.
She rocks into the shivering girl and hums, “Chuuya~ You’re not planning to pout all night are you?”
“I’m not pouting,” she huffs in return. “I’m cold and irritated, but I’m not pouting.”
“Awww, why is the chibi mad today?”
The dark haired woman reaches for the edge of the blanket with the hopes of claiming some of the warmth trapped inside, but she’s slapped away by a quick hand and a vexing glare.
“Knock it off, Dazai. You can’t just come in here uninvited and act like nothing’s changed.”
“Uninvited? As I recall, this place is half mine, chibi, so I don’t think I need an invitation.”
The mischief in Dazai’s smile falters as she awaits a snarky response that won’t come. It’s lodged in the back of Chuuya’s throat, trapped in between a clenched jaw and a hard swallow.
It doesn’t matter that the words never make it past her lips, Dazai can hear them clearly in the long, slow inhale. She can read them in the lashes laced together, levees that had been tested time and time again. Even in the monsoons of grief that tore their way through Chuuya year after year, they never burst. At least, not in front of Dazai they hadn’t.
That means less now that she’s been gone for so long and missed so much.
Written underneath every act of self-soothing is a question Chuuya wants to ask and one Dazai can’t answer.
“If you didn’t need an invitation, what were you waiting for?”
So Chuuya chooses quiet for herself rather than risking Dazai’s silence. For all the times she’d looked to the sky and prayed for an end to Dazai’s limitless chatter, there were few moments where she would give the world to hear even one word.
“What if I said I didn’t come alone?” Dazai grins as she undoes the buckle on her satchel. She moves slowly, intentionally, waiting for Chuuya’s curiosity to lure her out from her knitted veil.
When she’s certain she’s caught the redhead’s attention, she draws a small tin from her bag and slides it across the floor. Chuuya’s hands spring from the blanket and scoop the tin from the ground. When she pops the lid to peek inside, she’s hit with an intoxicating mix of cinnamon, ginger, and molasses.
“Did you…?” Chuuya finally turns to look at Dazai, and the firelight dances across her amber irises. In this light, she is every shade of warmth to be found in the Earth or sky.
“Maybe,” Dazai beams. Her chest swells with pride as a tenderly decorated gingerbread man is guillotined between her partner’s teeth.
“Shit,” the smaller girl curses, muffled by cheeks full of cookie. “They’re good.”
“Why do you sound so surprised?”
“I’ve literally never seen you bake before.”
“I’ve had a lot more free time the last few years.”
Taking advantage of the brief moment both of Chuuya’s hands are occupied, Dazai slips under the thick-knitted wool blanket and scoots in close. Her clothes are still wet from the snowfall and the other girl recoils from the damp contact. But she’s too deep in focus to fight off the chill.
In her hands, she’s holding two cookies - one with white icing piped across one eye, its arms, and its neck and the other with red frosting for hair and a messy scowl drawn on its face.
“Too much free time, if you ask me.” She decapitates the bandaged cookie with an unceremonious chomp .
“You’re just cranky because I finally hit 1000 Official Grievances I have with Chuuya.”
“You what?” The remainder of the ginger-zai cookie crumbles in her hand.
“Don’t act so impressed. I left off at 846.”
“You filed 154 new grievances with me in the last year?”
“Chuuya your rate of obnoxiousness is down. You should be happy!”
“I hate you so much.”
“But you missed me, right?” There’s a subtle crack in Dazai’s voice, any icy lake losing its strength under the twirling ice skaters above, that catches Chuuya off guard.
She nervously wipes her hands on the blanket, rubbing crumbs in between the fibers and telling herself she’d wash it tomorrow. “You already know the answer to that.”
Dazai does. And she understands why Chuuya won’t say it out loud. But the understanding doesn’t make it hurt any less. After years of isolation, both internal and external, she’s dying to hear that her absence wasn’t simply resented. She needs to hear that somebody wants to forgive her so that they can hold her again.
She wants Chuuya to want her the way she used to.
“Things are different now, Dazai. I don’t need you anymore.”
She tries to hide the way her ribs collapse and force her heart into her throat. It’s nothing she didn’t know, but she thought the6 could make it through the night, the longest night of the year, still playing pretend.
“But,” Chuuya continues, reaching out for Dazai’s hand. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want you by my side again. Will you stay here tonight?”
The fire seems to climb higher in the chimney, and the dusty wood sparkles in the warm light. Fragments of broken glass from rage’s past glitter like gold, and Dazai is speechless. The only thing she knows to do is to scoop her partner’s face in her hands and kiss her until she’s desperate for air again. Even then, she finds it near impossible to let go.
To hold something so fundamental to all she knew of tenderness and compassion in her hands again feels like nothing short of a miracle. It leaves her blind to the tear rolling down the far side of Chuuya’s face. This is the first time she can remember feeling truly loved by the girl she’d lay down her life to protect.
It’s not perfect, it’s not easy, but it’s essential. It’s the first light in the morning and the last deep breath before sleep. Like the bite of winter wind against dry skin, it’s all they know and all they will never understand.
Dazai pulls back for a moment to whisper something against Chuuya’s lips.
“There’s no ‘I’ in ‘safe house’, but there is an ‘us.”
“I hate you so goddamn much.”