Chapter Text
Taiga covers his face, hoping to God that his head would either burst open with all the noise or that someone would shut those fucking brats up before I shove something down their throats!!
“Tomo! Retsu!” The roar of the names being called one after another hardly made things better, “Stop bothering your sister!!”
Taiga almost wants to go up to their door and inform the loud family that it was the girl, Haya, that was the troublemaker.
“But, Dad! Haya pulled down the cord! There’s water everywhere!” Taiga is sure this was the younger brother, Retsu, who, out of all the three, was his favourite; he cowered and moved aside, and refused to enter the elevator when Taiga came around, so the kid was pretty neat.
“Retsu! Stop lying! Don’t bully your little sister!” His neighbour kept yelling, thudding around the apartment next door, and making more racquet than he has in the past week. Blearily, Taiga glances at the wall clock, willing the minute hand to move faster to the big six and then there would be peace. The voices zoned out as his eyes drowsily blinked shut, remaining close in blissfulness.
“Tōchan!!!” was the next bloody murder screams that had Taiga jump out of his bed, adrenaline pumping his veins, ready for the fight. “Tōchan!!!”
“What happened—no!! Haya, who did this?!” the father roared, probably turning to glare at the two innocent boys who had nothing to do with whatever had just happened. That girl, Haya, was a force to be reckoned with. “Who threw her bento down?!”
“Not me!” Retsu was quick to deny.
Taiga could not hear Tomo, the quietest of the family, and honestly, the one besides Haya he could not deal with. Taiga had yet to really meet their father—he’s had various, unwarranted episodes with the children, that he was debating to move every day—but he guesses that Tomo follows after the currently heavily growling man.
“Shaa,” the man lets out, and Taiga relaxes. Spilled bentō, huh? Too bad. Guess it’ll just be some bread from the cafeteria this time. “Just for that, Retsu, hand over your lunch to Haya, and you can reflect on what you’ve done.”
“What?! But I didn’t do anything!! She tripped all by herself!” while he was right, the grating treble of his voice made Taiga want to crawl back into his bed and throw his covers over his head. All he wanted was sleep; was that too much to ask for?
“Tomo, don’t take up for Retsu. We can’t keep coddling him. Think about what your mother would say!”
She would say, ‘You blind man, stop being played by your six year old daughter’, Taiga glared at the wall.
“Now come on, we’re leaving in five.” Whatever Retsu tried to say after this, fell on deaf ears—or maybe their father was deaf, because Taiga could hear every whining plea that I won’t survive today without food, tōchan! C’mon at least ¥500 for a melon bread!! and for some reason, he found himself heading to his own kitchen and staring blankly.
Taiga sighs, “What am I getting myself into?”
Daiki ushers the hellions out of the door, Tomo leading the march, with Haya close behind and Retsu slacking from focusing more on his pouting form than anything. The bag trotting his outdoor basketball repetitively hits the little thigh, but Retsu looks unconcerned, still glancing back over his shoulder in silent pleading. Daiki would have almost given in if it was not Retsu third strike of the day, and it had hardly started out for the Aomine family. Child rearing was so difficult, he sometimes wonders how he managed to raise them by himself (not including Satsuki’s coddling here and there, and the few—read: many—times his mother had to travel and be their nurse when sick).
Child care was a full time job and he had to worry about his rising police career, that surprisingly for the number of times he had to play hooky for his kids, he was steadily going up the ladder. Soon, he would hit the block known at the Detective’s Exam, and he is already wondering if he should surge forward and get it, only because it pays better. The downside, of course, would be the fact that he would hardly be at home and the possibility that he would be in constant exposure to danger. Either way was a tough choice.
Daiki watches as Tomo, the eldest child at thirteen, has already reached the elevator, holding onto Haya’s backpack to keep her in place. He frowned at the treatment, wondering for the umpteenth time that his boys teased and bullied the little girl too often for it to be healthy. He lengthens his stride to reach them first, outdoing Retsu in arriving to them.
Behind him, completely out of his concern, a door opens. He is too distracted to realise his neighbour, a man he has only seen on occasion lumbering like the dead back to his apartment, hardly catching eyes as they walked past each other. All he knows is the name on the plaque, that read Kagami Taiga. Or was it Daiga? Like, who names their children ‘Taiga’ for Kami-sama’s sake?!
Retsu, on the other hand, is completely frozen in shock when to his side, the neighbour’s door opens up and the blearily large towering redhead with a scowl a hundred times scarier than his father’s is looking at him, red eyes dark and narrowed. “Here,” the man says, making Retsu jump, holding the straps of his black backpack tighter, teeth on edge and shivering. The man is holding out a furoshiki that is neatly wrapped yotsu musubi style, the colourful prints on the cloth so out of place with its owner that it was probably the reason Retsu reached forward for the package.
“Um…” he did not know what to say. What should I do with this?!
The man growled out a low, “You could say thank you and eat all of it. Wash it before you return it.” And saying so, the man turned, letting the door close after him to lock automatically.
Retsu stared, blinking after him. “Huh?”
Daiki notices the furoshiki package immediately—no one but Tomo knew how to wrap it neatly, and Daiki had no time for that shit—but does not get to ask about its sudden appearance until later thatevening. In the meantime, though, he spends his time fussing and checking, and making all three children know exactly how mad he would be if they get into trouble at school for the rest of the week.
“I have to be at work without fail for the whole week,” he says, “You understand?” and the three, without fail, always nod. He knows they do it out of necessity not because they will follow what he has asked, but it appeases him enough to let them all out of the elevator and down the street, the bus nearing the stop for Haya. Tomo stands in line with the rest of the elderly women with their own kindergarten children, and one lone man who looks too at peace standing there, the visor of the baseball cap he wore askew creating a weird shadow at the side, smirking at the energetic boy who is trying to disrobe him with his exclamations of “We’ll play catch when I come back, right?!”
“’Morning,” Daiki mumbles to the bespectacled man who sends him a wry smile when he takes in the rushed appearance of Daiki.
“Hurrying as usual, Aomine-san?”
Daiki glared at the amused tone, turning to ignore the quip, watching as Tomo helped his sister up. Retsu was pouting at Haya’s back, but did not say any rude things to her yet, so Daiki glanced back at the other man. “Not as much as usual.”
“Is that so?” One hand was already directing the bounding young boy to the bus, scolding him only when he tripped on his face because he was not watching where he went. “Ei-chan, don’t forget to bring back your P.E. clothes, or no catch.”
“Hai, Shachou!” the little boy saluted, causing everyone in the vicinity to chuckle in supressed mirth while the father coloured.
“Just go and sit quickly!”
Tomo, at his now, was quietly chatting with Retsu, and Daiki took in how the newly turned teenager patted his younger brother’s head. “I wish you were nice to Haya like that,” Daiki mumbled, tugging at their bags to get them to move along. “I don’t know why you guys are so mean to her.”
The looks the boys gave him screamed on the level of ‘she had cooties’; Daiki laughed at their naivety.
When lunch rolled around, Retsu pulled out the ominous colourful furoshiki that the equally ominous neighbour had given him that morning. While his classmates pulled desks together to enjoy their meal, today, Retsu remained seated, apprehensive for an eleven year old, sweating with nervousness and anticipation.
Questions like ‘why did he give this to me?’ and ‘Does he hate me so much that he’s trying to poison me?!’and ‘I wonder what he put in…’ filled his little head. Breathing in deeply, preparing himself, he pulls at the knots and unties the cloth, and when the bland looking box appeared, the tension increased a hundred fold.
“This is it,” he mumbled to himself. Shaking dark skinned hands, so like the colour of his father, pushed the lid of the box to one side. Retsu leaned closer, holding his breath, and was surprised to see the absolutelynormal spread of rice to one side with bonito flakes randomly spread on top, kaarage pieces to one corner, two cocktail sausages that were in octopus-style, some green stalks that looked like warheads covered in a strip of some meat, and one lone chocolate wrapped in its shiny foil.
He blinked again.
With shaking hands, he picked up the kaarage, slowly bringing it to his mouth, chewed it like he was afraid he was going to swallow glass, and had an epiphany.
“So good~!” Clapping his hands together, Retsu mangled his grace, and dug in.
Taiga craned his neck back as he took in a deep breath of fresh laundry. A pleased smile filtered through, and at once, the past 48 hours of back-to-back work at the Firehouse disappeared at the unfolding of his back muscles. His shoulders too, tight and drawn back, were feeling light and supple, and he wants to do some stretches to warm up and head over to the street court two blocks away for the utmost blissful ending to his day off. He would drop by the groceries and pick up some more food to stock up, and then cook.
Taiga had his day planned perfectly.
So it was to say, when the doorbell rang, that he was a little confused. He could press the intercom and check who it was, but the chances of it being anyone besides the landlord was so low, Taiga could have been the only tenant in the building.
Which was his second mistake of the day.
The first, he thinks on opening the door, was giving the little brat Retsu food in the morning. His third and fourth were soon to follow, and by then, Kagami Taiga had made more mistakes in a span of a few hours, than he has ever made in his thirty-five years of living.
“You,” was all that he could say to the beaming countenance holding up the messily re-wrapped furoshiki.
“I washed it!” Retsu exclaimed. “Thank you for the meal!” He continues, “It was very delicious!”
Taiga nods, throat constricted, because despite working as a fireman for so many years, he still cannot talk to children without the fear of trampling them or worried that he would unintentionally make them cry, because how exactly do you stop them from crying?!
Retsu remains at the threshold, and tired of being stretched out to keep the door opened, Taiga sighs and asks, “What do you want?”
Retsu shakes his head, the little dark skinned boy still smiling. His beautiful brown eyes blink up at Taiga and he draws back in confusion.
“Teach me how to cook?”
And Taiga slams the door shut.
Daiki arrives home to an abject quietness that is unheard of in his household. He has a hand to his waist, only to realise he has no gun on his person, and that makes him even more frightened.
“Tomo?” He calls out, because the boy should be at home, with his siblings, but if he needs to be quiet, he needs to call out to the most logical one.
“Welcome back,” a disembodied voice greets him before Tomo appears, face set at a frown. “How was work?”
Diaki ignores the question, eyes darting around. “What’s happening? Why’s it so quiet?”
Amused, Tomo jerks his thumb into the house. “I don’t know, Retsu seems to be sad, and Haya thinks it’s her fault for taking his food in the morning.”
Daiki sighed, shoulders drooping. “He’s freaking six. Why’s he so melodramatic?!” Daiki heads on to get the boy’s mood straight, Tomo following.
“I don’t think it has anything to do with Haya,” Tomo glances at the furoshiki Daiki remembers seeing in the morning, and while he frowns at the recall, he is more concerned by the brooding eleven year old sitting at the dining table doing his homework, for once not sleeping on it and drooling. Haya too, sits quietly adjacent to him, drawing with jerky motions, occasionally glancing up at her brother with a worried furrow of tiny eyebrows.
“Retsu?” Daiki calls him.
Retsu lifts his head, a little widening of his eyes to show he was surprised his father came without him realising it, and it takes Daiki a few heartbeats to calm himself from running up to his son, gather him in his arms and tell him that he was forgiven for whatever it was that had happened. However, before he can push that aside and take on a domineering parental reprimanding stance, Retsu flies off his seat and into his arms.
Confused, Daiki hugs the boy into his stomach, staring at dark blue hair. “Retsu?” Is this a new form of apologising?
Retsu mumbles into his stomach, a weird fluttery feeling filling him, and Daiki has to cajole him into repeating it clearly. “Am I a bad person?”
Daiki blinked. “Hah?”
“Is that why people hate me?”
“I don’t know who told you that, but they’re wrong,” and fucking dead when I get my hands on them!
Retsu only tightens his hold around his waist.
“Retsu, talk to me buddy,” he says, forcing the boy to leave him as he comes to his eyelevel. Brown eyes that are already red and watering, cheeks wet from the instant flood of tears that are coming out for such tiny tear ducts, and Daiki is confused as to what to do. “Who said that to you, Retsu-chan?”
Retsu remained tight-lipped, now looking scared to say anything more, but clearly wanting to. He knew how Daiki got when he was mad, and he knew that he was slightly at fault for what he was about to say.
“I’m not going to get mad,” Daiki haggled, knowing it was one surefire way to get anyone one of them to talk. Tomo behind him snorted—teenagers—and Retsu sniffled.
“Kagami-san doesn’t like me,” Retsu said, voice small, rubbing his face from all the tears and snot flowing, “He slammed the door on my face.”
Daiki drew back. What? “Why…would he slam the door in your face? Why were you even at his place?” For the two years they lived next to each other, Daiki does not even remember introducing himself to the other man, evoking the distant memory of him trying but failing, and it was probably what caused such a rift between them. That and the fact that Daiki had other things to worry about than neighbours who were hardly around. Must be a host.
“I went to return the bentō and asked him to teach me to cook,” Daiki raised his eyebrows, “but he didn’t even take the box back and he didn’t even listen to my request.”
Daiki, raging mad now at the complete insensitiveness of the other male, grabbed the boy by his shoulders and said, “Let’s go show him, Retsu, not to mess with us Aomines!” On pass, Tomo handed the neatly wrapped furoshiki bentō and Retsu flew along with him as he headed out, hardly bothering to keep the door ajar to not be locked out, before he is already banging on the second door of their floor.
It is only after a few moments that the door pushes out, and a confused redhead stares out at the gathering Aomine family—Haya had run out before the door closed, leaving Tomo to grab a set of keys and head on after the troublesome thing—and soon, Taiga was with a varying facial expressed family of four.
“Yes?” Is the default reaction that gets Daiki mad enough to show a red flush to his skin. The accompanying red eyebrow to pops up makes him feel like the other is mocking him, but the eyes quickly dart down his chest. It is then that Daiki realises something; Kagami Taiga was shaking.
“…are you okay?”
A pointed finger is raised, and a whispered, “Is he okay? He’s oozing tears!”
Daiki glances down at Retsu, yes he is, and then back up. “Yea, you did this to him.”
“What?!” Taiga roars, because under no circumstances had he even touched the boy. All he did was—Taiga had an ‘ah-ha’ moment. “You mean that?! He accosted me!”
‘“What?!”’ This was echoed by the father-son complex, whom at the moment, looked alike in their fighting-stance. “When?!”
Daiki knew that Retsu was not a perfect son. He was adorable when he needed to be, but he was also as naughty as they came. Added to that, the little child accosting a man as huge as Kagami Taiga, was unheard of. He likes to think his children got their awesome genes from him, but even that was a little too far-fetched.
“You know,” Taiga vaguely moved his hand, “when he came by earlier. All expecting and, I don’t know, giving me that look, right there!” Taiga points when the awed look returns on Retsu’s face. Daiki bends over to see.
“You’re kidding me, right?” He asks, slowly looking up to glare at the idiot cowering from a child that would hardly come up to his chest, and was probably one-sixteenth of his size. “That’s not accosting. That’s the puppy-dog look. When he’s asking for something. Like your help.”
Taiga spluttered. “That’s even worse! And why should I help him?! We’re strangers!! You should be teaching your son to not walk up to strangers, you asshole!” As if realising what he said, a large hand smacked across his mouth, and red eyes lightened and widened.
Daiki tried to hold onto his laugh.
“Tōchan’s name is Daiki!” Haya inserted from his knee. One hand patted her head, proud of the little fighter, but she was just adding more horror to the redhead’s face.
Oh please just go away, Taiga was hoping the elder Aomine understood the signals, but the man who looked suspiciously too happy to be standing at his threshold, surrounded by minors like a shield, was looking him straight in the eye.
“How are you a stranger?”
Removing his hand to place it on his hip, Taiga growled. “Your son has no common sense whatsoever. He even took food from me in the morning without even questioning it!”
“Oh, right,” Daiki handed over the package. “Thanks for that.”
Subdued for a second at the change of pace, Taiga bowed his head, “Oh, it was no problem, just something quick—or not!” He snapped, grabbing the furoshiki more forcefully out of the dark skinned male’s hands. At this point, Daiki did bubble out a laugh. Darting quickly to the others, only Tomo had the decency to cover his mouth and look away.
Retsu, however, was beaming. Again. “Ne, ne, Kagami-san!” Taiga wearily looked at the boy. “You’re cooking was amazing!”
Wanting to stamp out these emotions he could not deal with, Taiga questioned, “How do you know it was me? It could have been my girlfriend.”
Retsu had the gall for an eleven year old to scoff at Taiga. If the boy’s father was not sending him strong waves of ‘You try to touch him and see’, Taiga would have been dangling Retsu by his flimsy t-shirt collar.
“Hey, bra-er, Retsu…kun,” Taiga flickered his eyes from Daiki to Retsu, “You should be careful of what you assume.”
“Yea, Retsu,” Daiki added, mouth easily shifting into a smirk, “Not all men are popular like your father.”
“Tōchan is handsome! I’m going to marry Tōchan when I grow up!” Haya enthused, unaware of the glare she was receiving. “Tōchan’s too cool!”
“Oh my Haya-chan knows her men!” Daiki cooed, completely ignoring everyone around him as he picked the girl up and cuddled her.
Taiga, unimpressed, gorund out, “Hey, you stupid father, are you done? Can I leave now?”
Daiki glared at him for his interruption. “Well, you haven’t really apologised and you haven’t really listened to Retsu’s demands.”
“What?! And again, why should I?!” Taiga demanded right back. Then suddenly, he stiffens, turning his head back, and says, “Wait, I’ve got something on the stove.” He leaves the Aomine family outside his apartment, door politely ajar, and heads to his kitchen. It is near bliss he feels when four pairs of eyes are not on him.
“Sorry for intruding!” comes a chorus from behind him.
Swirling in both fright and rage, Taiga is at his wits end. “What are you doing inside?! I didn’t invite you!”
“But it smells nice,” Retsu says, leaning forward and smelling the air like a little animal. Taiga takes a step back.
“Yea, and because of you, I can’t make dinner in fifteen minutes so that Haya can go to bed at eight.”
“Haya-chan has to have a bath, too, ne, Tōchan!” Haya squeels when Daiki picks her up and twirls her in the air.
“That’s right, Haya-chan has to have a bath too! Maybe Kagami-san would be so kind as to hurry up and feed us, right, when he’s taken so much of our time, and even made Retsu-nii cry.”
Haya curls up, lips trembling. “Kaga-chan made Retsu-nii cry,” she echoes.
Taiga sputters.
“And I’ve got homework to finish and chores left to do,” Tomo says, coming closer. “I’ll help set the table. Where are your plates and utensils?”
Taiga despairs, almost breaking down at the combined attacks from all four Aomines.
“Can I help in the kitchen?!” Retsu pipes up, eager all over again.
Taiga wails, “Who said I was feeding any of you guys?!”
If Taiga had to recall exactly when he made the first, biggest mistake in his life, it would have been that day when he refused to get off the bed after a long shift, at hearing the deep voice call out, “Kagami-san, we’re your new neighbours, Aomine Daiki. We’re just dropping by to greet you!”
If he had, he would have known to stay completely away from that family, and maybe not renew his tenancy contract, and not have spent the next two years consecutively suffering a migraine he did not need to, and then the next couple of months dancing to the tune of the Aomines and their sadistic mind controlling waves.
As it was, he is now fending off being the new attraction to one whimsical six-year old, the mentor to the child that does not fear burning his eyebrows off, the awkward solicitor in keeping Daiki off his teenage ass, and then the biggest job out of them: to be the target of all of Daiki’s frustrations.
But that, was a story for another time.
Author’s End Notes: This was supposed to be a very short piece where Taiga helps out the kid, and Daiki ends up taking cooking lessons from him, but things never pan out the way we want them to.
Now for the names, for those interested! :D
Tomo, as everyone should know by now, is “friend”. Or it’s one reading of just the sound. However, I was thinking of the kanji that means “similar”. I don’t know why, though, so excuse me.
In one of Aomine’s songs ‘Netsu no Kakera’, Netsu means passion or some such thing (I’m not hundred per cent, and it’s been a while, and my internet was down by the time I finished this, so yea…you may correct me if I’m wrong!) and Retsu can mean passionate or ardent, whichever floats your boat.
Haya has many meanings, but I was concentrating more on the “light” meaning (weight-wise).
Besides all that, I hope you enjoyed this!! X)