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Atsushi is nervously pacing the hallway when Dazai gets to the office. All the while he’s stammering to himself, and it seems to worsen when he sees Dazai. He doesn’t want to add any more tension on his shoulders, so he offers a sincere smile and maybe some gentle words. Only, Dazai doesn’t get to speak at all because Atsushi beats him to it.
“Chuuya-san has amnesia!” he blurts out suddenly. His face turns red and tears begin to gather at the corner of his eyes.
“Oh.”
He doesn’t know what to think of it yet, but if they’ve already confirmed that he has memory loss then at least that means Chuuya is awake. Alive. Dazai’s chest eases, his shoulders begin to relax, and the panicked energy he’d been carrying since Atsushi called and said Akutagawa and Chuuya-san are receiving treatment from Yosano-sensei right now fades into a quiet thrum. He had expected something else. Something worse. After all, being in Yosano’s care has grave implications; this hallway has seen enough pacing to attest to that.
“It’s my fault!” Atsushi stammers. “Chuuya-san shielded me from the attack and then Akutagawa stepped in, and—well, there aren’t any broken bones, that’s for sure. Except for Akutagawa, and.”
“Did Chuuya hit his head?”
Atsushi laughs nervously. “No, he’s fine. Doesn’t even have a scratch on him. It’s just that… He got hit with an Ability that erases specific memories. Very specific memories. Like dates, events, even skills! Can you believe that?! And well, the Ability can also erase…”
“People.” Dazai finishes for him.
He already understands where this is going, and the way Atsushi is looking everywhere but him is proof enough that Chuuya’s memories of him have been wiped clean. He takes a moment to breathe and recalibrate himself, clenching and then unclenching his hands to see how he really feels about the situation, thinking of how he might react when he’s faced with a Chuuya that only sees him as a stranger.
“The Ability user seemed to know about Double Black and he tried to use you against Chuuya-san. The guy activated his Ability and then made his escape when we were distracted. We don’t know where he disappeared off to…” Atsushi must have found his silence intimidating, because he continues on, “I'm really sorry. It's all my fault."
"It's fine, Atsushi-kun. I don't blame you."
"Oh... Well... Are you okay? It’s alright to be upset about the situation, Dazai-san.”
It’s very thoughtful of Atsushi to empathize as much. Although he suspects it’s also because Chuuya has also cemented himself as Atsushi’s surrogate teacher alongside Dazai; it’s no wonder that he feels badly concerned for their relationship. Still, Dazai isn’t wholly upset at the situation like Atsushi is trying to say. He tries to follow the thread of fear inside his chest but that has long disappeared since confirming that Chuuya’s alive. There is residual anger at the assailant, but he also knows this is going to be an easy fix. No doubt the mafia or maybe even some members of the Agency are already hunting down the guy so Dazai could nullify the amnesia.
Besides, Chuuya will always be Chuuya even without his memories of Dazai. It’s a comforting thought.
“Is he awake now?” Dazai asks. “I’ll go in and see him, if he is.”
“Are… are you sure that’s a good idea? You’ll be okay?”
“You’ll never know, what if I annoy him into remembering me?”
“Yosano-sensei said not to overwhelm him with a lot of information,” Atsushi says nervously, “So maybe don’t do that?”
“We’ll be fine,” Dazai says airily before opening the door. Atsushi kind of looks like he wants to yank him back to the hallway. “Don’t worry about it too much!”
“You.”
Chuuya is looking straight at him, no doubt cataloguing Dazai. He does the same, looking for any other obvious injuries in case Atsushi had just been placating him earlier. It's a relief that the only thing amiss is his messy ponytail. Everything else though... Trust Chuuya to look astonishingly radiant even when confined to a clinic bed.
“This is him?” he asks Akutagawa, who is sitting on one of the clinic chairs and nursing his broken arm while texting with the other.
“Yes.” Akutagawa nods at Dazai’s way in greeting. “This is Dazai Osamu and you two have been married for three years already.”
“Is that right?" Chuuya looks back to Dazai. "Why aren’t you wearing a ring, then?”
Dazai smiles. He didn’t sound distrustful at all, just that he cannot help but offer a little challenge. It's rather unsurprising, and even makes him feel exasperatedly fond.
“I accidentally lost it a month after the ceremony during an assignment,” says Dazai before grabbing a seat for himself. “We decided to just get a tattoo, see?”
He points to the inside of his hand, and there, their wedding date on black ink decorating his ring finger. Chuuya traces the matching one on his own skin, and there’s a satisfied look on his face.
“I married a careless idiot for a husband, is that it?”
“As did I,” Dazai says automatically. “What kind of husband are you, getting hit with an Ability to specifically forget about me? If you wanted a divorce, you could have just said so!”
“Hah? You think I can’t commit to a permanent relationship, is that what you’re saying? Kind of husband are you, being so easily forgettable!”
“Might I remind you that last night you nearly forgot your own name because you kept moaning mine—”
“Dazai-san, I told you Yosano-sensei said—ah you know what, Akutagawa and I are just going to…” Atsushi looks at them both, at Akutagawa, and then at them again. “Alright, we'll give you two some privacy!”
“Lead the way jinko,” and they disappear with a quick snap of the door, the tips of their ears as red as rubies.
Chuuya huffs to himself, looking a little amused with the situation. “If you wanted them gone, you could have just asked politely rather than traumatize them like that.”
It’s amazing that even with his memories erased, Chuuya still could read him so easily. It must say a lot about the depth of their relationship and years ago it would have terrified Dazai, but now he simply lets the assurance settle over him like a warm blanket. He knows understanding him is not an easy feat either. People have countlessly told him how confusing and unreadable he can get, and even with all their complaints they never really took the effort to understand Dazai either. It’s as much not letting other people in as much as they never wanted to actually see Dazai.
Chuuya has always been different in his approach. Instead of getting put off he actually chose to exert the effort to figure out Dazai, and instead of running away when he saw the real Dazai, he still stayed.
“I don’t do polite,” he says with a grin. “I know Atsushi said you’re mostly fine but… Are you in pain anywhere else? Are you comfortable?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
“It’s my duty to worry about you, Chuuya.”
“You—” A flash of uncertainty crosses Chuuya’s face before he swallows his next words. And then very suddenly he says, “Dazai.”
Chuuya looks as if he’s tasting the foreign name on his mouth and reacquainting himself with the letters and syllables. “Osamu? Do I call you by your last name? Both felt right but I wasn’t sure.”
“You’ve been calling me Dazai since we met at fifteen. Osamu only recently, when we married.”
“Osamu.” He looks as if he liked the taste of this word better. “It's kind of stupid that they chose to erase my memory of you out of all the people I know. No offense.”
“None taken,” he says; it's a good observation and Dazai even wholeheartedly agrees. The Ability user might have concluded that getting rid of Chuuya’s memories of his own husband would bring the most pain and ruin. But this is Chuuya. He survived Dazai’s absence for four years without a single problem. Anyone with half a brain knows he’d go through a lot more trouble if he lost his memories of Mori or even of Kouyou.
The attacker could string along the entire Port Mafia with Chuuya as his winning hand. Mori could toy with Chuuya’s fragility. Kouyou could finally use that big sister act to its full potential. There are so many possibilities that could have happened; only that the person responsible is an outright idiot who has no talent for foresight. Dazai has half the mind to feel annoyed at the incompetence.
“I suppose they just wanted to personally hurt you,” Dazai says eventually. “Or they might have been targeting me, thinking I’d be hurt if you forgot about us.”
After all, it wouldn’t be the first time someone went after Chuuya for some form of gratuitous revenge against Dazai. There was the kidnapping incident just last month. A year ago it had been the woman with the mind controlling Ability. It’s even worse if they had to tally the amount of times someone went after Dazai just to spite the mafia executive. It never ended well for the other party but it’s definitely the worst part of being married to each other. Dazai could deal with the occasional moral disagreements between their organizations but the increasing frequency of sudden and unexplained disappearances and encounters with haughty Ability users is getting exhausting. Not to mention, the amount of times their dates have been ruined the past year is almost ridiculous.
“So you aren't heartbroken at all?” Chuuya crosses his arms across his chest, looking absolutely indignant. “Thought you said we’ve known each other since we were fifteen? That’s a decade down the drain! Akutagawa looked closer to tears. Atsushi literally cried! I’m this close to feeling disappointed in you.”
God, Dazai loves this idiot so much.
Feeling quite bold, he takes Chuuya’s hands in his. “I trust us. You’re you, even without your memories of me. That means you’re stubborn and you’ll do everything you can to remember me because you don’t like not knowing things. And I’m as stubborn as you, maybe even more so. So, if you still don’t get your memories back then I’ll just have to stick by your side more than I already do.”
Chuuya blushes faint pink, a total betrayal of his words. “You’re cheesy as shit. I should have just went with Kyouka to hunt down the guy rather than ask to meet with you, fuck.”
Dazai is startled and his heart does a little jump. Chuuya did look like he’s fit to go out and about on a mission, memory loss aside. Right now, he even looks impatient and quite loathsome to be stuck in bed when he could be beating up the guy who did this to him. Yet he’s here in Yosano’s clinic, admitting that he’d asked for Dazai to come. That he wanted his husband.
He’s pretty sure he’s the one blushing now.
“Yosano didn’t want to, you know?” he says. “She said it’d be stressful for me and depressing as shit for you. The idiot pair even agreed.”
“You disagreed with them,” he says rather than asks.
Chuuya looks at Dazai, eyebrow raised in a challenge. “You’re my husband, why would I hide shit from you? I don’t exactly remember what we did for our ceremony but marriages are the ‘in sickness and in health’ type of thing, regardless. Telling you something as important as this felt… right, I guess?”
“You trust me,” Dazai says and the words taste sweet in his tongue.
He’d never once doubted Chuuya’s faith in him, having seen the many evidence of it in the past years, but for this kind of truth to be put out like this in this context, that Chuuya trusts him even if he doesn’t completely know who Dazai is… It’s inexplicably heartwarming.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t.” Chuuya shrugs as if he didn’t just single-handedly crush and piece together Dazai’s heart with his words.
“You have good taste, after all.”
“Hah? No way. I have shit taste in men,” Chuuya says just to be petulant about it. He’s smiling though, and his eyes are in near-crescents. He even lets Dazai thread their hands together, as if his body recognizes him even after all that’s happened.
“I love you,” Dazai says before pressing a gentle kiss on Chuuya’s knuckles. “Between the two of us, I don’t say it enough but I think this is the perfect opportunity to remind you.”
And Chuuya doesn’t say it back—can’t when he’s at this state, but his eyes still soften and he gently squeezes Dazai’s hand in an act of tender devotion. It lets him know they’ll be alright.
Kyouka is scarily efficient as always that it doesn’t even take the whole day for her to bring the target back to the office. Unashamed, she admits she thought it’d been a more large-scale amnesia and was struck with fear that Chuuya also forgot about her. That explains how she practically volunteered for the job; she’d been so distraught that no one could talk her down.
It only takes a single touch on the man’s arm and No Longer Human dispels the Ability, almost anticlimactic in the way Chuuya simply reacts with a huff. Except he suddenly punches the guy square in the face and Kunikida is so startled that he nearly forgets to speak.
“We do not condone unnecessary violence in here! You know that!”
“Whatever,” says Chuuya. He gravitates towards Dazai, and like magnets their hands automatically find each other. “Get married and have several idiots target you and your partner, only then can you tell me to back off. Besides, he deserved it. See? Even Atsushi agrees.”
“Well, he did break Akutagawa’s arm,” says the boy earnestly.
Akutagawa, for his part, bristles at the sudden attention. “I have no need for your concern, jinko.”
“I meant it’s because I can’t fight you if you’re in a bad shape, idiot.”
Kunikida glares at everyone at large but in all honestly, it really has lost all its heat from all the on-again-off-again truce between the two organizations have been experiencing. In fact, it’d been happening so frequently that Dazai thinks they might as well set up a spare desk and locker just for Chuuya and Akutagawa, since they come here so often anyway.
“Alright, alright. Break it up.” Dazai chides them as one would talk to children. “You two did a great job today. Most of you, Akutagawa-kun.”
Chuuya had told him how Akutagawa used Rashoumon both as a shield and a weapon simultaneously—that while he was able to make a thick blanket of defense, he also used Rashoumon’s tendrils to chip away at the enemy’s defenses. It kept everyone safe and he dealt enough damage that surely contributed to slowing down the enemy. Dazai doubts Kyouka would have found them so easily if not for Akutagawa’s earlier efforts. It’s a sign that he is growing alongside his own Ability, and it wouldn’t surprise Dazai if one of these days Akutagawa is tasked to lead a battalion himself, but that’s an idea for another time.
“I only did what’s expected of me,” Akutagawa says as a matter of factly. He still turns a shade embarrassed when it’s Chuuya’s turn to compliment him though. How and when things changed to this, Dazai will never know.
“We’re leaving,” Akutagawa declares hurriedly and then, for reasons unknown to everyone else, drags an unsuspecting Atsushi with him. They could only hope no murder attempts would occur—today had been eventful enough.
“And I have to bring my husband home. He needs to rest,” says Dazai strategically. “I promise to take care of all the paperwork tomorrow!”
Chuuya groans. “Stop using me as an excuse!” Yet it’s also for show, and he lets Dazai maneuver him out of the office and lead them home.
But it isn't just an excuse and Dazai sticks true to his word. He feeds their cat, takes charge of dinner, and makes sure Chuuya’s wine cup is never empty. He hadn’t been lying earlier, when he said he rarely declares his love, but he tucks them neatly in his questions: Would you like to nap first while I cook? (I don’t want you to be exhausted), What music do you want me to put on? (I hope you’re comfortable), Do you feel better? (I do, because I know you’re safe).
Dazai knows he cannot ask a thing without giving himself away. And Chuuya must understand this too because while they’re passing the ladle back and forth, the sauce still simmering in the pan, “Do you think this is alright? Needs more salt? Pepper? Chuuya, should I add a splash of wine?” (I want this to be perfect for you), Chuuya laughs and says his name like it's his most favorite word.
“Osamu,” he says, “I love you too.”