Like The Water Loves The Air (Chuuya x Reader)

Chapter Nine

"Why do you write so much about God?"

Y/n looked up from the notebook she was scribbling earnings in on the other side of the bar from Chuuya.

"I don't write about god."

"You write about nature as thought it is a god."

She straightened up. Chuuya couldn't help but admire the way the pen hung loosely between her fingers, as if it were an extension of her arm.

"I suppose I do." she said after a moment's thought, "I suppose it is. I haven't believed in god in a long time. Or, at least, not a good one."

"I am surprised to learn you ever did, honestly."

Y/n smiled. It was a dry smile, something lingered just beneath its cracked surface.

"Why did you stop believing."

"Going for all the big questions today, aren't you." Y/n sighed, "I stopped believing in god because he never gave me what I wanted."

Chuuya wasn't quite sure how to respond to that.

"Is that what he was supposed to do?" he managed at last, "Give you what you wanted?"

It was an uncharacteristically self centered line for the woman to let loose. Perhaps it was the lingering remnants of her malaise from the week before. Chuuya couldn't tell and so, Chuuya did what he had always done best with Y/n. Chuuya listened.

"No, I suppose not." Y/n hummed and her voice washed over him, "But if he was real, you would get out of life what you give. You would get out of other people what you give. Wouldn't you think?"

"So God has to be fair?"

"I don't know. I feel like he should be. I don't know much about god. That is, if he exists at all."

"Then how is nature a god?"

She shot him a sharp look, a grin stretching out softly against her face. Chuuya reveled in the way it crinkled the corners of her eyes.

"I never said nature was a god. Don't put your words in my mouth."

"Fine, whatever. What if nature was a god?"

Y/n seemed to like that question more. She hummed thoughtfully.

"Well, it would be held to different standards I should think. It is like the ancient Greeks and their gods. Each of them encapsulated every spect of their domain, the good and the bad. Take Hera, example. No one killed more infants than Hera and what was she? A goddess of mothers, of marriage, a protector of children. Nature is like that, not like a christian god."

Chuuya took a sip from his drink, turning back to the pages of his open book. It was one of hers. It was always one of hers.

"Which one are you reading?" Y/n asked, having already curled back over the notebook and resumed her scribbling.

Chuuya didn't have to check the cover to remember. It was his favorite book of hers, the first one he had ever read.

"The Maytrees."

"That's a sad one."

"It's one of the ones that is all about god."

"What makes you say that?"

She looked up once more and their eyes met. There was an earnestness to her in this moment, a yearning to understand exactly what was going through his head. Chuuya smiled.

"It's all about the ways the world can pull you."

"It's about age, growing old, and the nature of love." Y/n corrected.

"Isn't that the same thing?"

Y/n was silent for a moment before she spoke again.

"Have you given my question any thought."

Chuuya nodded.

"And?"

"Still working on it."

"Don't worry. If it's right, it will come to you."

Y/n hummed quietly to herself as she began putting the chairs up on top of the tables. It was closing time, Chuuya had left long ago. It intrigued her, the way he saw her work, her motivations. She hadn't realized she had been writing about god. Now that he had made mention of the idea, she couldn't get the thought that it was the truth out of her head.

Why had she stopped believing? What had been the final nail in the coffin? 

The usual response of the leaving of Yokohama didn't quite fit into this hole. No, she had stopped believing in god long before she left the city. Maybe, buried deep down in there, it was part of the reason she had had to leave in the first place.

Y/n lied to herself with fervor, as if it was a favorite obsession or pastime of hers. The more she told herself that the only reason she had left Yokohama had been a need to start her own life, a certain connecting of place and time, the more she just remembered how untrue such a statement was. She had been sixteen when she left, to start with. Sixteen was no time to start your own life, if you could help it.

All her life, Y/n had known the overhanging shadow. It hungered for her, it dragged her in. It beckoned with the kindest voice, the softest eyes. She had spent a long time learning how to recognize the rot behind the sugar. Truth telling had never been her forte, she left that to the soothsayers, the augers, the gods.

All her life, no one had ever been able to change the shadow's shape, make it lighter, smaller, except herself. She had tried other people, it didn't work half as well. They just didn't... get it. Chuuya did. Chuuya seemed to without even trying to. He felt like he was someone running from something as well.

He made her laugh. He cracked jokes, interrogated her deepest thoughts, he read her work. Read wasn't even the right word, no. Chuuya devoured it. He took the words from the page like he was a starved man and they were the last food on earth. He took the things she said the same way.

He had this way of cutting through things, of causing forgetfulness, of shining a light. It was infuriating to Y/n as much as she was grateful for it. She wasn't supposed to rely on anyone. She was supposed to be completely and entirely her own. She had tried love before. She hadn't liked it.

But what was she supposed to do? What on earth was she supposed to do when he spoke to her like that, smiled like that, had the audacity to sit across the bar from her looking like that? What was she supposed to do when he listened. It wasn't like anything else Y/n had ever experienced. If he was water, then she was sinking. She was sinking fast. Her hands scrambled for purchase on the sandy shore, she gasped her last few breaths. She thought about just letting go.

Y/n's hands itched to write, craved the scrawl of a pen on paper. For now, there was work to be done. It was closing time. These matters would have to wait until later.

----

The Maytrees is a real book and it is by Annie Dillard and everyone should read it. Thank you and goodnight. 

Also kids,, is it obvious I have not ever once believed in god or experienced religion?