Work Text:
Kenji was getting his tonsils out. Atsushi wasn’t quite sure why that was happening now, since he’d had strep throat for a week and he thought it was probably a bad idea to get surgery when you were sick, but he wasn’t a doctor and he wasn’t Shachou, so he wasn’t really in charge of it, anyway.
For Kenji’s tonsils to get out, Shachou took him to the hospital first thing on Saturday morning. Yosano was a resident there, or something--Dazai said it meant that she worked there to learn how to doctor, but Dazai also said that the sky was green every day at noon, and Atsushi had been outside at noon, and the sky was never green, so he wasn’t sure if Dazai was telling the truth about Yosano’s residency, and he didn’t want to ask Kunikida to make sure, because then Dazai would tease him, either for actually believing him or not actually believing him, neither of which was fun. But anyway, Yosano was a resident there, and so she’d managed to pull some strings and keep watch over Kenji, and meanwhile Ranpo had something going on with his job and Officer Minoura, and he hadn’t been home in a couple of days, so that left just Kunikida, Dazai, Atsushi, and Kyouka at home. Because Junichiro and Naomi were still gone. It had been months, and they were gone, and Atsushi still wasn’t used to it, which--it wasn’t fun. At all. He still sometimes set the table for ten instead of eight, and he’d seen Shachou and Yosano and Kunikida sometimes miscount all of them when they were out together, before shaking their heads and starting again, stopping at eight.
It wasn’t fair, but it was their life now and Atsushi had pretty much stopped crying about it--it was awful that they were gone, but it was mostly normal, now. They were all used to it, which wasn’t fun, but. It was the way things were. Atsushi didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, because Dazai was doing his best to start a food fight while Kunikida was out buying donuts, and Kyouka was apparently an expert food fighter, so now Dazai was laughing as Kyouka used a plastic spoon to sling yogurt into his hair.
“Atsushi! Defend me!” he called in between gasps of laughter.
“No! Atsushi! Help me bring Dazai down!” Kyouka shouted, hurriedly shoving her spoon into the container.
Atsushi debated between his two favorite people for a moment, before running to the refrigerator and grabbing a bowl of homemade Jello. “I’ll defend you, Dazai!” he shouted.
Dazai pumped his fist. “Yes! Fear us, Kyouka!”
Atsushi giggled and poured the rest of the Jello down the back of Dazai’s shirt. Dazai let out a high-pitched shriek and whirled around to face Atsushi.
“Why you little traitor! How could you, to me,
me,
your
favorite
brother--AAH!” Yogurt hit him in the face. “No! Both of you! Why?! Whyyyyyyyy…!”
Dazai sunk to the floor dramatically, fake-sobbing, as Atsushi and Kyouka pelted him with yogurt and bits of cold egg.
Then the kitchen door opened.
“What is going on here?” Kunikida exclaimed, staring at the mess.
“Kunikida! Defend my honor! Atsushi and Kyouka have brutally slain me!” Dazai called from the floor.
“Dazai started it!” Kyouka said quickly. Atsushi nodded along.
“I see,” Kunikida said slowly, pulling out his Ideal notebook and marking something down in it. He then turned and left the kitchen with the donuts. Atsushi and Kyouka exchanged nervous glances as the front door opened again and Dazai started snickering on the floor. Kyouka carefully picked up the last of the yogurt and dumped it on Dazai’s head as Kunikida reappeared in the doorway.
“Atsushi, Kyouka, I cannot believe you two,” he said sternly. “I left you here to keep an eye on Dazai and keep him out of trouble, and what happens?”
“Dazai threw toast at me first, though!” Kyouka protested.
“And you retaliated?”
“...Yes?”
“And, Atsushi, how did you get involved with this?”
Atsushi thought for a second. “...Enthusiastically,” he decided, since Kunikida probably wouldn’t be too mad, and since he and Kyouka were blaming the food fight on Dazai, it probably wasn’t the best idea to bring up the Jello thing.
“I see. You do realize the kitchen will need to be scrubbed down, right?” Kunikida said. “Would you like my help with that?”
“Yes please,” said Kyouka as Dazai’s snickering turned into cackling on the floor. Atsushi and Kyouka both glanced down at them as Kunikida pulled something from behind his back--and blasted them with water.
Atsushi shrieked and lept up on the table like a startled cat as Kyouka tried to haul Dazai up to use as a human shield. Dazai, however, just kept laughing and dodged out of the way of the water, grabbing strawberries off of the counter and pelting them at his siblings.
“This is war!” he shouted.
Kunikida was laughing too, and Kyouka’s eyes widened as she climbed up on the table and hissed in Atsushi’s ear, “They’re working together! I think they planned this!”
“No way!” Atsushi whispered back, before getting hit in the face with a spray of water.
Kyouka threw the remainder of her yogurt at Kunikida and pulled Atsushi behind a chair. “We need to take cover!”
An hour and a half later, the kitchen looked like a war zone and Kunikida was handing out sponges to each of his sopping wet, food-encrusted siblings.
“If we can get the kitchen spotless by 12:30, we can go out to lunch and then ice cream after, understand?” he said.
“Yeah!” Atsushi said. Kyouka nodded enthusiastically next to him.
“Aw, but Kunikida, you love cleaning so much, why would I ever want to take that joy from you?” Dazai asked.
“Are you going to take the joys of eating out and having ice cream from Atsushi and Kyouka?” Kunikida replied. Dazai pouted up at him, and Kunikida threw a sponge at his face. “Get cleaning.”
They did not actually get the kitchen cleaned by 12:30, but Kunikida didn’t seem too upset as he sent them upstairs to shower and then drove them to the restaurant.
“It’s because he planned for us to get done by one,” Dazai told Atsushi and Kyouka, leaning out of the front seat in a way that was probably, like, super dangerous if they were to get in a car crash--which was really the only way Dazai ever sat. Luckily, he wasn’t out the window this time, so Atsushi wasn’t too worried.
“I did not,” Kunikida snapped. “Stop telling them stories.”
“You did so, I read your Ideal,” Dazai shot back. “You wanted us to plan to be done by 12:30 and actually finish by 1:00, and then clean up and head out for lunch and ice cream so that the house is clean and quiet for when Shachou and Kenji get home.”
“Oh, Shachou and Kenji will be home soon?” Kyouka said. “We should be there to meet them.”
“They’ll be home at 1:27, and Kenji needs to rest,” Kunikida said. “We’re going to spend the day out, pick up Ranpo, and come home at dinnertime to see Shachou, and we can all say goodnight to Kenji, since he’s recovering from surgery.”
“He’ll be okay, though, right?” Atsushi said.
“He’s at Yosano’s hospital,” Dazai said. “Of course he’ll be okay. She’s the best doctor there is, you know.”
“Technically, she’s still a resident,” Kunikida corrected him.
“Doctor, resident, whatever. She’s still the best they’ve got,” Dazai said, slumping back into his prior position and fiddling with the radio. “We all know Yosano’s a medical genius.”
“It is true that neither of you will let us forget it--D azai Osamu if you put on that ridiculous song about unicorns I will throw you out the window without a second thought.”
“Would you really?” Dazai said hopefully.
Kunikida reached over without looking and smacked him.
At the ice cream parlor (which they entered, according to Dazai, right on the dot of Kunikida’s schedule), each of them were allowed a double-scoop cone. Atsushi and Kyouka were both pretty ecstatic about this--usually Shachou only let them have single scoops in kiddie cones, but Dazai had sworn them to secrecy and convinced Kunikida to step outside for long enough for them to each get a double-scooped waffle cone, which was awesome.
“You know, we’re going to have to watch them until the sugar high wears off,” Kunikida sighed at Dazai as he updated his Ideal.
Dazai shrugged back at him. “Yeah, but when the sugar crash hits, they’ll be plenty quiet for Kenji, so all we need to worry about is Ranpo and also not getting into a fight.”
“Bold of you to assume I can’t fight you completely silently,” Kunikida replied, waiting for his ink to dry to start on the next line.
Dazai pouted up at him. “But the silent treatment is for when you’re, like, actually mad at me!”
“I’m always actually mad at you,” Kunikida lied. “Also, texting is a thing that exists, you know.”
“It’s loud, though?” Dazai said.
“What? No it isn’t, it’s literally passing notes electronically.”
“It makes noises when they come through, text tones are a thing for a reason, Kunikida,” Dazai pointed out.
“Put your phone on silent, idiot, and that’ll solve the entire issue,” Kunikida told him.
“But that’s too hard and I wouldn’t be able to hear my awesome ringtones and text tones!” Dazai whined.
“And that would be a blessing,” Kunikida replied, closing his Ideal and tucking it away in his pocket. “Every time your phone goes off my ears start bleeding and I nearly burst into tears in the middle of science class.”
“We don’t even share a science class,” Dazai pointed out.
“That makes the fact that it makes me cry even more impressive on my end, then, doesn’t it?” Kunikida said.
Dazai stuck his tongue out at him. The ice cream was melting on it, and Kunikida looked away.
“That’s disgusting,” he said.
Dazai slurped the ice cream up. “Yep!” He sounded pleased with himself, of course. “Hey, I wonder if I could get Atsushi to do it too?”
Kunikida glanced over at their younger brother, happily eating ice cream and discussing cartoons with Kyouka. “Dazai Osamu, if you corrupt Atsushi even more than you already have, I’m selling you to the salt mines in Poland.”
“They’d send me back within the week,” Dazai said flippantly. “I belong to this family and you’re never ever getting rid of me.”
“Sadly.”
“Oh, it’s heartbreaking.”
“It really is.”
Kunikida and Dazai exchanged quick grins before Dazai snatched the cherry off of Kunikida’s ice cream and popped it in his mouth.
“Hey!” Kunikida exclaimed, and stole Dazai’s cherry in retribution.
Atsushi and Kyouka were half-asleep when the four siblings returned home. Ranpo, who had gotten a ride back some hours prior, simply smirked at them as Dazai made a silent show of struggling under the strain of carrying Atsushi, despite the fact that Kunikida was strong enough to carry both Atsushi and Kyouka at the same time and had, in fact, offered to do so multiple times. Ranpo smirked as if he knew about that--honestly, he probably did, nobody would put it past him--and didn’t make the single slightest offer of help, opting instead to take multiple pictures as Atsushi and Kyouka were brought upstairs and tucked into bed.
“You know,” Dazai whispered after they were done, “they’re almost cute like this.”
“Almost?” Kunikida replied. “Keep on talking like that and someone might think you have a soft spot for them.”
Dazai beamed at him, finger-combing Atsushi’s hair. “Nah, who would?”
Kunikida smiled back, rolling his eyes a little. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he whispered back. “Now come on, let’s get dinner.”