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The thing about Edogawa Ranpo was that he had a raging sugar addiction, emphasis on the raging, that was really only matched by what his sister Yosano referred to teasingly as his praise kink. The other thing about him was that, especially since his younger siblings were either too young to go out by themselves or too inclined to not do anything without being prodded into it, he expected that every time a member of the family did something sweets-related, he would either be brought along or something would be brought back for him. And the thing about ice cream is that it’s not exactly the sort of thing that can be brought back, but when Yosano cornered him, her arm firmly around their newest brother’s shoulder as he stared at her as if she were the Second Coming, and told him that she was taking Dazai out for ice cream and it was his job to keep Shachou off their backs until they got back.
“I’m not coming?” he asked.
Yosano rolled her eyes. “No, Ranpo, I told you we need someone to keep Shachou busy, and the babies can’t do it forever, they have to go to bed. Besides, I think Dazai needs ice cream after the time he’s had.”
Dazai’s eyes widened further, and he stared at Yosano in complete and utter adoration, and Ranpo felt a hot twinge of jealousy. Yosano was his sister first, even if she and Dazai had been raised--and probably fathered too--by the same man. It had always been the two of them, since back before Yosano even remembered , best friends and then practically twins. And now she was taking someone else for ice cream? It wasn’t fair!
“Come on , Ranpo,” Yosano said, and he really couldn’t ever say no to her, so he sighed and nodded.
“You need to bring something back for me, though,” he said, and she rolled her eyes and agreed.
After checking to make sure that the babies still had Shachou engaged--they did--Ranpo went to the laundry room (he wanted to go into Dazai and Doppo’s room and enact his vengeance there, but he could hear Doppo sobbing from inside and Ranpo was frankly terrible with comforting people, even if he’d been doing better by Yosano lately) and found all of Dazai’s clean clothes. The first order of business, he knew from Halloween last year, would be bleaching everything so that the dye would actually show up. Then Ranpo found the bottle of pink dye and absolutely went to town on Dazai’s clothes.
Was Dazai a traumatized kid? Yes. Should Ranpo, at sixteen, be mature enough that he was ok with his best friend taking their younger brother out to ice cream without him? Also yes. Did he care? No. They were getting ice cream without him . This was betrayal of the highest order...a betrayal that was forgiven the moment Yosano and Dazai came home and Yosano gave him a large bag of chocolate chips. It was four pounds , and he had no idea how she’d gotten it, and wow , Yosano was his favorite sister ever .
...Hopefully Dazai wouldn’t be too upset about his bright pink clothes.
Dazai was upset about his bright pink clothes. Dazai was upset about a lot of things, actually, but the clothes had jumped to the top of his list and he was out for revenge.
Ranpo regretted his choices, especially when he woke up and found that his hair was bright green.
“Who, me?” Dazai asked, innocently. “I would never !”
Ranpo almost pointed out the fact that the boy’s fingers were a slightly darker green than his hair, but Doppo was looking stubbornly, furiously protective and also starting to physically shield Dazai with his body, so Ranpo decided to get his revenge in another way.
Dazai walked in from another successfully unsuccessful day at school and a large bucket of glue fell on his head.
Every single picture in Ranpo’s room was replaced with one of Selena Gomez.
Dazai’s shoes were all replaced with high heels.
Ranpo’s pillows were stuffed with bananas.
A tripwire was set up in Dazai’s and Kunikida’s room that would play My Little Pony music once tripped. Kunikida needed to run upstairs to grab a pen, tripped on it, and twisted his ankle.
All of Ranpo’s candy was laced with laxatives.
“We need to put a stop to this,” Yosano said, pulling Doppo to the side after Dazai was sent to their room and Ranpo was perched very firmly on the toilet.
Doppo nodded. “This week has been terrible. What did Dazai do to start it, anyway?”
Yosano rolled her eyes. “After your fight last week, I got him out of the house to talk some sense into him and bought him some ice cream and Ranpo got jealous that I didn’t buy him any ice cream and dyed Dazai’s clothes pink.”
“Seriously? I didn’t think Ranpo was that petty,” Doppo said.
“I know, right? It’s insane!” Yosano groaned and tugged at her hair. “We need to get them to talk it out, or something . This latest one went way too far.”
Doppo nodded. “Maybe we could try to get Dazai to apologize, so Ranpo won’t retaliate?”
Yosano frowned. “I could definitely get him to apologize, but it won’t do anything if it isn’t sincere. They need to actually talk.”
Doppo frowned and nodded.
“Hey,” Yosano said. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“I can tell it isn’t nothing, Doppo.”
Doppo paused for a moment, taking a deep breath before speaking. “What happened between you guys, that night? How did you get him to like you?”
Yosano sighed. “Oh, Doppo…” she said softly, “that...that wasn’t actually me at all.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You know how my...guardian before Shachou was a horrible piece of work?” she asked.
“You’ve mentioned, yeah,” said Doppo. “The scum of the earth, right?”
“Right. Well...don’t tell anyone I told you this, but that scum of the earth? He had Dazai, too. And he...told him things about me. Frankly, at this point I think Dazai is more scared of me than he likes me, but I’m doing my best to change that. Don’t worry, he still likes you best.”
Doppo relaxed, looking relieved. “Ok, then, um, what if we bribed them with something to talk things out? Candy, maybe?”
“Maybe? I’m not sure if either of them are going to let it go that easily, now. Ranpo’s been poisoned and you twisted your ankle.”
Doppo frowned. “What does that have to do with any of this?”
“That was Dazai’s motivation for escalating this, clearly,” Yosano said. “Haven’t you noticed? He adores you.”
Doppo shook his head. “He barely tolerates me. But anyway, that’s not important right now. Maybe we could bribe Ranpo not to retaliate? Then Dazai wouldn’t have any reason to do something else.”
“No, they need to actually speak or any little thing could set it off again.” Yosano sighed.
“We could just lock them in a room together and not let them out until they’re no longer doing this prank war,” Doppo suggested.
“You know what,” Yosano said, “let’s do that. We’re doing that.”
Doppo nodded, and flipped open his Ideal planner. “What time will we do it?”
“After Ranpo’s recovered and is also in a better mood,” Yosano said, “so probably sometime tomorrow.”
“The babies will be at daycare from nine to three,” Doppo said. “If we can get off school during that, we could probably do it then.”
“Perfect,” Yosano told him. “And I’ll make sure Ranpo doesn’t do something he regrets later.”
Doppo nodded, looking worried. “Dazai will be alright, right?”
“Of course,” Yosano said. “Neither of us will let anything happen to him.”
Doppo flinched at every muffled shout from upstairs. Luckily, neither Dazai nor Ranpo yelled much; unluckily, seeing her younger brother any amount of fear or pain was totally unacceptable to Yosano. She made him cocoa and convinced him to tell her about his Ideals, and smiled when his face lit up as he explained the detailed schedules he drew for each day.
That was, until there was a large thump from upstairs, as if something heavy had fallen.
Doppo’s face went white as a sheet, reminiscent of a soldier (her soldier?) in a memory that danced away as soon as she reached for it, and bolted upstairs. Yosano ran after him--she didn’t think anyone had gotten hurt, but if anyone did need medical attention she had better be there.
When she got to the top of the stairs, the first thing she saw was a tripwire outside of the room. The second thing she saw was Doppo hugging Dazai as if he was about to lose him forever. The third thing she saw was Ranpo sitting on the floor, rubbing his foot, and laughing his head off.
“Do I even want to know?” she asked.
“I set this up as a last prank for Dazai, since I knew you would be putting your foot down soon,” Ranpo said, still snickering, “only I forgot I put it up, and tripped over it myself, and then Doppo came flying up here like a bat out of hell and started smothering Dazai with affection, and we all know how touch-starved Dazai is, so from what I can tell, he’s a perfect mixture of having the time of his life and wishing this wasn’t happening because he’s still half-convinced we’re going to throw him out.”
“Wow,” Yosano said, rolling her eyes. She glanced over at Dazai, who had indeed melted into the embrace and was hugging Doppo back, but still had an expression of discomfort on his face. “Are you sure we can’t just lock those two up in a room until they’ve sorted their shit out?”
“Nah, they aren’t as mature as me,” Ranpo said smugly. “They’d blunder all over it.”
“Says the idiot who started a prank war with a thirteen year old because he wasn’t taken out for ice cream after said thirteen year old had a mental fucking breakdown ?” Yosano asked.
Ranpo pouted. “Mean! So mean! It was a minor lapse in judgement!”
“Sure,” Yosano said, as Doppo hugged Dazai and Ranpo snapped a photo. “Sure.”