Work Text:
The day, so far, has been agonizingly slow. No fun cases in sight. Not even any boring ones - Dazai would gladly take catching a cheating spouse or something equally dull. All that’s left to do in the office is paperwork, which, ew, no thanks.
He’s been sitting on the couch instead, headphones on and a gacha game open on his phone, trying and failing to get a limited edition character. Ranpo has him in his collection already, and Dazai needs him as well, otherwise Ranpo will hold it over his head forever.
But then again, Ranpo has a rich American boyfriend who doesn’t mind spending money to fund his gacha addiction. Dazai’s own boyfriend, although European instead, is also rich - however, he’s not keen on spending money on ‘stupid’ things like Dazai’s mobile games. Dazai thinks it awfully unfair of him.
Before long, Dazai gets bored of the game, so he takes out a book instead. In place of his suicide manual, he brought a novel he’d begun reading recently. Any time Yosano sees him with the Guide to Suicide, she sprays him with water like a misbehaving cat.
She’s trying to Pavlov him into getting better coping mechanisms. So far the results are mixed at best.
After about twenty minutes of idly doing nothing, there’s a light tremor in the building, but it eases off after a few seconds - maybe a minor earthquake. Nothing else happens, so Dazai chucks it up to that and keeps on reading.
He only notices someone approaches him when there’s a tap on his shoulder - looking up, it’s Atsushi, though he’d already known that from the hesitant pat he’d gotten. Kunikida is always so rough with poor little him. He should know Dazai is delicate, and needs to be handled with care.
Dazai smiles at his protege, swiftly removing his headphones - there’s no music playing in them anyway, but, well, it’s all part of the pretense.
After all, no one in the ADA knows he’s deaf.
It might seem miraculous, how no one realized it after two years of Dazai working there - he was trained to hide it, though. Thoroughly and extensively trained.
Mori had viewed it as nothing but a weakness - auditory stimuli are important in the arts of espionage, manipulation, negotiation. And weaknesses, naturally, have to be overcome. If they cannot, they must be hidden and made up for.
He’s had hearing aids for years, of course - it’d been the easiest way for Mori to ‘correct’ that fault of Dazai’s. Since, again, this is not supposed to be something anyone knows of, his are the invisible kind, completely inside his ear canal. He needs to charge them pretty much every night to be sure they don’t die on him in the middle of the work day, but they do their job, and do it well - obviously, Dazai is still very limited in what he hears, but the most important thing is he can hear what people are saying to him. Anything else, he can do without.
He knows JSL and several other sign languages, but Mori did make sure he can speak like any hearing person, clearly and in the right volume and tone, without any slurring, lisping, or speech impediments. Dazai was good at that - the fact his hearing loss had been gradual helped tremendously.
Unfortunately, Japanese is not an ideal language for lip-reading due to the nature of the articulation and phonetics, so that had been a bust. Dazai tried, he really did, but he can’t be a genius at everything - annoyingly, this had been one of the few things he just plainly sucks at. Mori tried it all, positive reinforcement to torture, but nothing made Dazai be able to lip-read.
So instead, Dazai had been taught the art of pretend.
Wearing headphones in situations when someone is likely to approach him from out of his line of sight, which makes them have to touch him or be in view to get his attention, like right now. Pretending to sleep, seemingly being caught up in work or a video game. Getting people pissed off, which usually makes them speak louder. Sometimes simply pretending he wasn’t listening because he didn’t feel like it.
And Dazai is good at it - he’s excellent at it. After all, it’s been over two years, and no one in the office knows - Dazai’s fairly sure even Ranpo has no idea (though he wouldn’t put money on it - the reason why Dazai likes Ranpo so much is he doesn’t share things unnecessarily, which means he’s not gonna rat Dazai out even if he knows).
It’s not like Dazai doesn’t trust his coworkers - it’s simply that hiding vulnerabilities is a habit he’s yet to break. He’s very slow to trust, and even when he does trust, keeping his cards close to his chest is perhaps the only survival instinct he has.
And by this point, after two entire years, why would he say anything? It’s never impaired his work in any way, which means it’s an inconsequential detail. He’d always chucked up his hearing in the ‘no big deal’ category - he’s doing just fine not acknowledging it. At best, everyone would’ve just shrugged it off, at worst, they’d pity him, and Dazai hates being pitied more than anything.
He’d gotten rusty, it seems. Somehow, he missed the first red flag, which is that the office is unusually quiet.
Dazai’s used to quiet, though - it’s his natural habitat, after all. There’s only soft, barely-there ambience of city life, but other than that, not much. He should’ve realized before he took the headphones off (back in the Mafia, he would’ve realized immediately). Yes, they dampen the noises considerably, but not to the extent of there being nothing; he made sure, when picking out a pair, that it’s one he can still hear through at least a bit.
He sees Atsushi speak, and can only hear muffled nonsense at best.
Chuuya had asked him once what the world sounds like when he doesn’t have the hearing aids in - the only way Dazai had found to describe it is what it must be like to hear with water in your ears, or on the bottom of a pool. There’s still sounds, at least for him, but they blend together into a strange symphony of nothing he can coherently understand or distinguish.
Atsushi is looking at him, understandably expecting a reply - all Dazai can do is blink, and curse his luck. His hearing aids must’ve ran out of battery.
“I’ll be right back,” he says with a smile, throwing the headphones onto the couch and swiftly walking past Atsushi, unaware if anyone is calling after him. He leaves the main office and rushes to lock himself in the bathroom.
The light doesn’t work, for some reason - at least there’s a window.
He pulls out one of the hearing aids - he recharges them every night, so they should be working fine, and they had in the morning, up until apparently they just stopped sometime after he’d abandoned his work to lounge on the couch. There’s nothing visibly wrong with the one he’s holding. Likely, the battery just randomly died despite being recharged. Happens sometimes - they’re quite old by now, so Dazai wouldn’t be surprised if they’re on their last legs.
Dazai has spare batteries in a little pocket on the inside of his coat for just that reason. Being paranoid pays off sometimes.
The replacement is a little annoying, because the damn things are so small, but eventually the old batteries are out, and Dazai has no qualms about throwing the useless things into the trashcan.
When he puts the aids back in, nothing really changes - but he is alone in the bathroom. There’s not much noise there to begin with.
“Okay,” he says to himself, and immediately sighs. He can’t hear himself. Great.
So it’s not the batteries. There’s something wrong with the aids themselves. He replaced both batteries, though - what are the chances that both of them broke at the exact same time? They’re not connected to each other in any way, so what the hell is up with that?
This is less than ideal, but still fine. He can just sneak out of work. The process of getting new hearing aids will take several weeks, though, with them having to be molded to the shape of his ear. He can’t exactly dodge work for so long now, can he? A day or two are fine, but he doesn’t exactly want to be fired. He happens to like his job, thank you very much.
He could fake a depressive episode, but the thought of lying about that makes his stomach turn. It doesn’t seem right, not when everyone is so understanding about his real episodes.
He’s thinking of how hard it’d be to infect himself with the flu when at once there’s feet in his line of sight, and someone’s shaking his shoulders. Yosano is speaking to him, Kunikida and Atsushi behind her, looking equally confused.
Right, there’s every chance someone spoke up from behind the door, knowing Dazai is in here. And no answer is rather concerning when Dazai is depressed, suicidal and has self-harming tendencies. People often check up on him if he takes too long in the bathroom (Chuuya had them start that particular trend, the overprotective shrimp).
The jig is up, then.
Dazai gets up, and he pulls out his phone, ignoring the way Yosano is looking visibly pissed off now. He doesn’t exactly like speaking when he can’t hear himself even if he’d been taught to do so, so he wants to write it in a notes app, or something.
His phone doesn’t want to turn on. Huh. And he can’t even ask about that.
Yosano, apparently, gave up on trying to reason with him or whatever she’d been doing, since she grabs him by the arm. Maybe she thinks he’s having some sort of dissociative episode, since she’d seen him have one once.
“I can’t hear you,” he says as she opens her mouth once again, cringing at having to control the exact volume of his own voice. “So, surprise, I’m deaf.”
He can see Kunikida scoff at that. Right. He does have a bit of a reputation for lying. A lot. About like... everything. So that’s probably not helping his cause very much.
Yosano talks to him again - he throws her a look instead. She starts gesturing, but he can’t really make out what she wants to tell him anyway. He decides the best course of action is to show the only real proof he has, and picks out the hearing aid out of one of his ears - they all look at him strangely, but then he waves it around, and extends his hand to Yosano. She takes it, and then takes a long look at it.
She still seems pissed. Maybe even more than before. Still gripping his wrist, she barks something at Kunikida and Atsushi, and drags him back to the office.
He’s got a feeling he’s in trouble.
────୨ৎ────
It’s a a nice, sunny day - it’s fucking lovely outside, summer in full swing, warm but not overwhelmingly so. A perfect day for Chuuya to take his boyfriend for a lunch date to a restaurant in the docks. It’s warm enough to be outside, and the breeze from the ports would make sure Dazai, insecure and always covering every single inch of his body, doesn’t overheat in his layers.
Of course something had to fucking go wrong - on his way to the Agency, all the traffic lights stop working. Amid the chaos, he’s glad he has a motorbike and doesn’t give a shit about breaking traffic laws - he maneuvers around the suckers stuck in all that calamity, and although he’s late (he’s driving slower than usual cause he doesn’t fancy getting hit with a car amidst the mess), it’s not by much.
The elevator in the Agency building doesn’t work, but Chuuya just chucks it to being an Agency thing - but none of the lights in the building work either. There must’ve been a power outage in the city, then - it would explain that and the traffic issues outside.
He doesn’t bother knocking at the Agency door - he’s more or less known to everyone there by now. They’ve stopped calling him ‘Fancy Hat’, and instead his new monicker here unfortunately is-
“Oi, Yosano, it’s Dazai’s man!”
Ugh. At least it’s not that bad - Tachihara keeps calling Dazai Chuuya’s ‘boytoy’. Chuuya would definitely murder someone if they dared to call him that. Dazai, on the other hand, said he likes the nickname, the weird fucker.
Chuuya raises a hand in greeting, and Edogawa returns it. Chuuya quite likes him - he’s on par with Dazai in terms of intelligence, which means Dazai has a conversation partner when he’s feeling restless. It’s good for him, since before that, his solution was a razor.
“Great, you’re here,” Yosano appears from the other side of the office - she doesn’t look too happy, and Chuuya is immediately on alert. Both cause that likely means there’s something wrong with Dazai, and Chuuya knows her. He’s not scared of her by any means, but she’s not one to mess with. “Since when is Dazai deaf?!”
“Since he was 10, more or less,” he replies. And then he realizes just what she’d asked. “Wait, you didn’t know?”
“No! He didn’t say a fucking thing!”
Chuuya wishes he could say that’s unbelievable - but it’s believable, alright. Dazai’s always been touchy about his hearing loss; when they were in the Mafia, he’d always rattle on about how it was a vulnerability and a weakness and all that crap about how if anyone knew he’d be dead ten times over.
Chuuya never understood why Dazai is so deadset about pretending he’s hearing when he’s not, until Dazai had told him (years after leaving the Mafia) about some of the teaching methods Mori had used on him, as well as the man’s overall stance on Dazai’s disability. Chuuya is Mafia, blood and soul, but the more Dazai opens up about his experiences there, the more details Chuuya adds into his plan to eventually murder the Boss.
Apparently Mori’s bullshit continues to live rent-free in his dumb head, since apparently he didn’t tell his new gang of law-abiding besties about being deaf. Chuuya will absolutely whack him for that.
“Right,” Chuuya sighs, “Where the fuck is he?”
Yosano nods towards the back, where the couch Chuuya knows Dazai likes to lounge on is. And there he is, glancing out the window, blissfully unaware, apparently. The weretiger kid is next to him, and he looks ten times more awkward than usual for some reason.
The kid spots him first, and tugs at Dazai’s sleeve. Dazai turns to look at him first, and then towards the room - towards Chuuya.
He’s pissed, but he can’t help but soften a little when Dazai beams at him with a smile.
Then Dazai signs the sign he chose as Chuuya’s name - small plus dog, and Chuuya is no longer feeling soft at all.
It’s weird that he’s signing, though. Usually, he prefers to talk when he has hearing aids on, and he pretty much only takes them off in the bath and to sleep.
“An ability user disabled all electronics in the area,” Yosano tells him. She’s standing right next to him, still as menacing as ever - Dazai seems to be well aware that she’s pissed at him, and he smiles sheepishly in her direction.
“So his hearing aids are fucked?”
“Mhm. Now imagine my amazement when I walk into the bathroom to see if he’s still alive, since I asked if he was okay in there like three times and he didn’t say a thing, and he gives me one of those, when not once for the entire two years had he said anything about any hearing loss.”
‘You’re in deep shit,’ Chuuya signs to his stupid boyfriend.
‘I love you,’ Dazai replies, because he’s a little shit.
“Yeah, as I said, he’s been deaf since he was a kid. It’s severe, he can’t hear pretty much anything clearly without having hearing aids on. No higher pitched sounds at all.”
“Why has he never mentioned that, then?” Dazai’s new partner asks, having materialized from somewhere around the office. Out of principle (not jealousy), Chuuya refuses to learn his name. “We woud’ve accommodated that accordingly!”
‘Why didn’t you fucking tell them?’ Chuuya asks Dazai.
‘What’s the point? I was fine.’
“He says he’s fine so there was no point,” Chuuya groans. “I guess- he never told anybody in the Mafia, cause Mori was a bitch about it, so maybe it stuck from then.”
“He told you,” the weretiger says, almost accusingly. Aw, the kid is jealous. Cute.
“I’m his partner,” Chuuya answers with a shrug. “How would I have his back if I didn’t know what to look out for?”
Chuuya had always been Dazai’s ears - aside JSL, they have dozens of nonverbal codes and methods of communication, and that included Chuuya subtly letting Dazai know anything that he’s missing out of the equation, be it during negotiations, or out on missions. Over time, Chuuya learned to be attuned to sounds more than the average person.
It saved their asses more than once - the ticking of a bomb is subtle enough Dazai would never hear it, hearing aids or not. Which just makes him even more pissed off at Dazai for not telling at least his new partner. How was that guy supposed to keep Dazai safe when he didn’t even know the most basic things about what Dazai needs?
Next to him, Yosano seems to share the sentiment.
“How come someone so smart is the dumbest motherfucker I’ve ever met?!”
See, this is why Chuuya likes her.
“Save it for when he can hear it,” Chuuya tells her. Both because Dazai deserves to have a proper scolding, and cause Chuuya doesn’t feel like playing interpreter for this clusterfuck.
‘You’re fucking stupid,’ Chuuya signs instead. ‘And I’m pissed off at you.’
‘No, you love me. You’re obsessed with me.’
‘No, you.’
“He’ll be useless for the rest of the day,” he turns to Yosano and Dazai’s partner. “I’mma take a wild guess and say none of you know JSL, so he won’t be able to talk with anybody, not until this shit is over and his hearing aids start working again.”
“That’s for the better,” the blond says. “I need to discuss this with the President. We don’t have a single accessibility option for him in place. There’s not even a parking space for disabilities!”
It’s kinda cute that Glasses is so worried about silly things like that - the two years prove Dazai doesn’t necessarily need anything changed, and he’ll probably hate the attention, but Chuuya can tell it’s his way of caring.
“And I’m having words with him as soon as we can,” Yosano scoffs. “I can’t fucking believe him. Two years! Two years and he never said a thing! He could’ve died a hundred times over out in the field!”
She glares at Dazai, who just waves at her with a smile, as if he can’t see that she’s seething in place. Sucks to be him, that cute face absolutely doesn’t seem to work on her.
“As if he cares,” Chuuya murmurs. “Well, I’m gonna take him home, I guess. You’re free to hound him about it tomorrow.” Though then his posture gets a little more defensive, and he glares at the rest of the people in the office, who’d all been eavesdropping. “Though if I hear a single fucking thing about him being treated differently, I’m gonna crush every single bone in your fucking bodies. Cool? Cool.”
He turns back to his useless boyfriend, and Dazai follows him without complaint.
────୨ৎ────
Chuuya gives him no time to even breathe before he starts yapping.
‘I understand why you didn’t tell them,’ he starts, ‘but it was stupid and reckless.’
‘I don’t like talking about it,’ Dazai rebuts - he wishes he could just turn his head and stop this conversation from happening, but Chuuya will just kick him. His stubborn boyfriend is not above taping Dazai to the bed just so he can’t escape a conversation. ‘And I was fine for the entire time, so why does anyone need to know? It’s not a big deal.’
‘You could’ve gotten hurt.’
‘I can get hurt any time anyway’
Chuuya gives him a look.
‘How can they protect you if they don’t know what to look out for?’
‘I don’t need protecting’
Really, Chuuya is so silly. He’d joined the Agency so he could protect people, not for others to protect him.
‘Get it through your stupid skull that people want you to stick around,’ is all Chuuya says before stalking off - to the kitchen to make lunch, most likely. Chuuya’d said the power outage and the issue with electronics is the works of an ability, and that ruined any plans they had for a lunch date.
Dazai pulls out his phone, already working since the ability apparently has a time limit. He’s not at all surprised to have several messages in his inbox.
Group chat: Trouble trio
Yosano Akiko: i can’t fucking believe you never said anything i’m so mad
Yosano Akiko: this should be in your medical records
Yosano Akiko: we’re talking about this
Yosano Akiko: & i’m not letting you out of my office tomorrow until we go over every single page of your records and making sure they’re CORRECT
Edogawa Ranpo: she’s right, it was exceptionally stupid
Edogawa Ranpo: but also good job, i had no idea
Yosano Akiko: DON’T PRAISE HIM FOR THAT
Email from: Kunikida Doppo
Re: Accessibility needs and parking space
Text message from: President
We’re looking into finding an interpreter to commission, if a situation like today ever arises again, since I wouldn’t want you to find yourself unable to talk to others. I understand that Nakahara knows sign language, so if you’re uncomfortable with the idea of a third party, you may ask him instead, and we won’t have any issues with him coming in to assist you.
There will definitely be quite a commotion about him tomorrow; no doubt the younger kids will be curious and ask all sorts of questions, Yosano will definitely smack him over the head, and Dazai will not be surprised if Kunikida calls for some weird meeting about accessibility and diversity and whatnot. But Dazai finds he doesn’t even mind that everyone knows something that he once considered his most guarded secret. He knows he can trust them all to have his back.
And he’s absolutely going to ask for that parking spot. Kunikida doesn't have to know that Dazai doesn't even have a driver's license.