Work Text:
The smell of pizza fills the ground floor of the dorm as Omi takes two pans out of the oven.
It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon; things are uncharacteristically peaceful as the younger members of the company are out by the river playing dodgeball. The only thing that can be heard is Itaru tapping away on his wireless controller, having brought out his gaming equipment to the living room earlier to introduce the rest of the dorm to the new installation of Knights of the Round.
Omi cuts the pizza up and places two slices on a plate. He brings along a can of soda as he passes by the fridge and sets the plate and can on the coffee table where Itaru’s feet are propped up.
“Hey, Itaru-san, I’ve got some snacks for you,” he says, glancing at the screen where the character Itaru is playing runs on an open field.
“Hell yeah, mana refill!” Itaru cheers, glancing at the plate before focusing right back on the screen.
Omi turns back to the kitchen and pulls off his apron to hang it on a hook. “I’m going to bring the other guys some drinks for a bit.”
He doesn’t get a response, but he hears the clicking of the controller buttons pause for a second then resume before Itaru moans and, with his mouth full, goes, “Omi, I want to marry you. Please take care of me for the rest of our lives.”
Omi stops in his tracks and it takes a couple of seconds before the deadpan voice registers in his mind fully.
“Oh, um,” he responds with an awkward chuckle. “I, uh… Thanks?”
Itaru doesn’t say anything. He’s back to hunting for enemies in the game.
Omi can’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the day.
“—but the money-grubbing yakuza never lets me get more than he thinks we need. I just wanted to try this sketchpad because it might help archive our designs more efficiently,” Yuki says to his phone.
He hears grunting from downstairs as he descends, says a quick goodbye to the person on the other end of his phone call, and loudly asks, “Citron, what the heck are you doing?” as he rounds the corner. He doesn’t need to see to know exactly who’s involved.
He doesn’t even really need an answer to the question either, but Citron trying to princess-carry Itaru—who is doing something on his own phone and cheering Citron on—while Muku takes a video would have simultaneously been the first and last thing on his mind.
“We’re, uh—“ Muku starts.
“Nevermind,” Yuki answers, his voice deadpan and exhausted. He continues in the direction of the kitchen, fully committed to not giving what’s going on more mental real estate.
Citron breathes through his teeth. “Will you not stay and shear for me, Yuki!”
“I would shear you myself, but I won’t get paid enough to buy a smart sketchpad,” he grumbles to himself as he sends off a text to Matsukawa about scanners. He turns to Muku, “Have fun though.”
“Thanks, Yuki!” Muku calls back to him as he crosses the threshold to the living room.
***
The following Monday, Yuki comes home to a convenience store plastic bag on his desk.
“Hey, hack!”
No response.
He sticks his head out the door.
“Tenma! Did you leave your trash on my table again?”
Still no response.
He heads back to his table and sees his name hastily scribbled on a note partially obscured by the plastic bag. It’s not the handwriting of anyone from the Summer troupe.
Curious, Yuki peeks into the plastic bag and finds a brown paper bag. He takes the paper bag out and unwraps it to find a smart sketchpad inside, the exact kind he was hoping to get—which is not cheap at all.
There is nothing else on the note with his name on it. Yuki upends the plastic bag just in case something else falls out.
A receipt for a bunch of junk food purchased at 12:51am falls out.
“Hey, Sakisaka. You guys not going home yet?”
Muku turns to see a classmate walking towards the school gate, where he and Yuki are chatting. “Oh, we’re waiting for our ride!”
“Oh, someone’s picking you both up today?”
Yuki checks his phone. “Yeah, he’s actually running a bit late. We’re running errands before we go home.”
The students chat for a minute more before a car stops right beside them. The window rolls down and Itaru gives a quick wave. “Yo.”
Muku grins, brightening up more than he already is. “Itaru-san!”
He and Yuki wave goodbye to their schoolmate before getting into the car.
Muku sits up front and struggles with the seatbelt. As he squeezes out a little panicked laugh, Yuki settles in the back and watches Itaru reach over to pull the stuck seatbelt and secure Muku in his seat, ruffling the teen’s pink hair as he pulls back and puts on his own seatbelt.
“Thanks, Itaru-san,” Muku says shyly.
“NP,” Itaru replies as he adjusts in his seat. “How’s school been? Did the cheat codes I taught you to memorize dates work?”
“Cheat codes?” Yuki asks.
“Itaru-san has been tutoring me with history lately,” Muku explains, his voice and expression going bright again. “It’s been really helpful!”
Itaru shrugs. “Just stuff you pick up in college. Comes with the XP.”
***
On the drive home from their errand, Muku talks about how Juza has been wanting to try madeleines from a café that they heard has just opened nearby, and how he’s excited to go with his cousins but their schedules haven’t been matching lately.
“What’s the place called again?” Itaru asks, his voice that usual tone of sounds-like-he’s-vaguely-interested-but-couldn’t-be-bothered-but-you-don’t-really-know-with-him. Muku tells him, and he gets a little noise of acknowledgement about it while Itaru fiddles with the GPS before they start talking about Overcooked! and having a dorm-wide video game event.
Yuki isn’t paying attention to the road because he’s organizing his Pinterest board for the coming season, but when he looks up he sees that they are driving into a parking space in front of a café. Muku is distracted, too, and doesn’t notice as he’s telling them about this prince-type character in his latest shoujo manga fixation who Itaru might look like if he changed his hairstyle. Itaru unbuckles his seatbelt and Muku does the same automatically, but he looks a little confused.
Yuki puts his phone down. “What are we doing?”
“Do we have something to do here? The errand list doesn’t say,” Muku follows up. He looks around the parking lot before furrowing his brow at the café. It seems he’s never been here before either.
Itaru opens the car door and steps out. The two boys follow suit as Itaru answers, “I just wanted to check it out. C’mon. I’ll treat you guys to some snacks.”
***
Juza greets them when they get home, having just arrived himself.
“Ah. Welcome home,” he says as he hangs his jacket up near the entrance.
“Juchan!” Muku calls to him excitedly, “We’ve got something for you!”
Itaru shrugs off his suit jacket and says, “Might be good to call everyone else, too.”
Muku turns to him. “Ah, you’re right!” He takes the shopping bags from Yuki.
Muttering his thanks, Yuki takes off his own shoes and picks them up while watching Itaru, who is fiddling on his phone one-handedly. Juza takes the shopping bags from Muku on their way to the kitchen as the latter calls out, “Everyone, we’ve got snacks!”
Itaru looks up from his phone when he hears Muku cheerfully say, “These are the madeleines we’ve been planning to try out, Juchan. The café was on our way home and Itaru-san drove there to—”
He goes back to his phone again and Yuki swears he sees a smile there before the Elite Swindler goes, “What do you mean someone ranked higher than me?! Banri, I am going to kill you!”
Omi and Yuki are learning embroidery together one morning when Yuki notices how quiet the dorm is. He says so to Omi.
“Taichi and Kazunari woke up early to learn skateboard tricks. It might be that?” Omi says as he pulls his needle down.
Yuki shakes his head. “There’s way too many noisy guys in this dorm. I don’t think those two leaving would be enough to make things this quiet.” He shows his work to Omi. “Does this look good? I tried to do a multicolored triangle for now since I thought it’d be a simple thing to start with.”
Omi looks up and nods. “Yeah, that looks pretty good! What are you using it for?”
Shrugging, the green-haired boy finishes off his embroidery. “Give it to the Trianglian, I guess? Oh!”
With a “hm?” from Omi, Yuki explains, “I haven’t heard him running around yet. I wonder if he’s still asleep.” He gets up to check.
The older of the two follows suit and says, “I’ll go with you. He’s helping me with the onigiri today so I wanted to ask him and the others about what they want in it.”
The two head to Kumon and Misumi’s room, only to find it empty. Just in time, Kumon arrives and finds them at the door.
“Hey, sewing club! What’s up?”
“Morning, Kumon,” Omi replies cheerfully.
Yuki cuts to the chase. “Where’s the Trianglian?”
“Oh, have you checked Itaru-san’s? I heard them talking about a game where you get to explore the world as a cat! I wanted to join them but I was really tired yesterday,” Kumon says, genuinely looking bummed about missing out on a game that involves cats and exploration.
“Eh? Itaru-san’s? They had a sleepover?” Omi seems puzzled at the idea of a sleepover in Itaru and Chikage’s room.
“Thanks,” Yuki says, “We’ll check there.”
Kumon salutes. “No problemo!”
“Ugh. How dare you have this much energy so early,” Yuki grumbles as he walks away, Omi waving bye to Kumon.
***
“Well, I didn’t expect this.”
“Mm-hm.”
“Isn’t that Penpen? Does that mean—”
“Yup. That’s Hisoka’s head under all those blankets.”
Omi peers into the room, still dark with the curtains drawn. He can’t see where Hisoka’s head is, even with Yuki pointing it out.
Yuki, on the other hand, has already stepped inside and has pulled the curtain open. The dust motes are disturbed by the movement, and with the sunlight, the scene becomes clearer to Omi.
Hisoka’s head, which really is buried underneath blankets, is tucked into Itaru’s side. Itaru himself looks like a starfish, his limbs everywhere, his arm conveniently in the space between Misumi’s head and neck. Misumi is also still asleep, pressed against Itaru despite being turned away. The three men are close enough to call what’s going on snuggling. There’s really no other way to look at it either.
For a bunch of adults, it’s actually ridiculously cute.
Omi can’t help but smile.
For his part, Yuki, who had his fists on his hips, fully prepared to wake the three, crosses his arms and keeps quiet instead. He then pulls out his phone and takes a bunch of photos.
Omi looks at him quizzically. “Relax, mom, these guys are un-blackmail-able.” The younger boy heads right back out the door, telling him, “I just thought Friendly McExtrovert would love to see this.”
It’s another weekend, and this time most of the members of the troupes are home.
There’s a ruckus in the living room where some of the boys are playing Overcooked!, with Muku teaching Sakuya the controls and Itaru, Yuki, Taichi, Kazunari and Banri watching.
Omi is setting snacks on the table with Juza and grinning to himself as he watches the boys game and make noise, remembering his own younger brothers back at home. Yuki gets up from the chair beside the couch to sit at the table and have a snack.
“These cupcakes are really good,” Yuki says around the bite he’s taken.
Omi sets down another tray on the table. “Juza made those. Great, aren’t they?” He seems prouder than the person who made them, with Juza blushing a bit and trying to look anywhere else but the two. He ends up bumping into the corner of the table and tripping.
Yuki rolls his eyes. “Take a compliment, Standard Gangster.”
Juza coughs out a quick “thanks” and says, “I’m…going to get more,” before disappearing into the kitchen.
Yuki turns his attention back to the group gaming on the couch. Banri, sitting in the corner of the couch beside Sakuya, has his feet up on the coffee table—something Sakyo would be mad about if he was around right now to see it—as he points out instructions that Sakuya seems to be forgetting or is too panicked to keep in mind. Kazunari is cheering from the other corner, beside Muku, and Taichi seems to have gone post-verbal as all he can do is panic-scream what Yuki assumes is what keyboard smashes sound like if spoken.
Itaru, leaning over Sakuya from behind the couch, is laughing and calmly telling Sakuya which buttons to press. Muku is doing the same, with his own words of encouragement.
Omi sits beside Yuki and picks up a cupcake for himself. “The snacks are all here, you guys.”
At the exact same time, the time in the game runs out, and they all simultaneously exclaim their different reactions, with Sakuya particularly disappointed at not scoring higher.
He frowns a bit, saying, “Sorry guys. I don’t think I’m good at gaming at all.”
Muku smiles at him. “It’s okay! It takes some time to learn to play the game. I was bad at it when I started out, too.”
Itaru leans a bit further from his position behind the couch and kisses the top of Sakuya’s head before ruffling his hair. “Don’t mind, it was a good start.” Sakuya looks up at him with a smile, like that just erased all the disappointment he felt.
Yuki blinks. He unconsciously looks to Omi, who catches his eye and wordlessly confirms that he saw that, too.
With everyone taking a break from the game to have some snacks, the table gets loud, multiple conversations going on from all directions. Itaru goes to get a drink for everyone from the kitchen with Juza’s help. Under all the layers of noise, Yuki asks Omi, “Is it just me or is the Elite Swindler actually really...affectionate?”
“I’m not sure if he’s aware of it himself, but he’s been really sweet and I’m still getting used to it,” Omi replies, folding up the cupcake wrapper and setting it on a corner of his plate.
Itaru returns with a tray of drinks for everyone and sets it in the middle of the table. Misumi, standing at one corner of the table, is fondly recalling the cat game that they played to the younger boys, and Itaru comes up behind him to rest his chin on his shoulder. Without missing a beat, Misumi brings one of his hands up to pet Itaru’s head, and the latter pulls on Misumi’s other hand to take a bite out of his cupcake.
Omi chuckles. Everyone else seems unbothered and unsurprised by the physical closeness and affection, and soon, Banri and Itaru end up trashtalking each other across the table as the others laugh and make jokes about the two.
Yuki puts a pin on the realization that this adult man, who’s a respectable office worker by day and useless gamer trash by night, is actually unnervingly kind and pays a crazy amount of attention to his friends. He joins the melee in the meantime, calls Banri a shallow delinquent and Itaru a dumpster-residing raccoon. Itaru asks if he could get a raccoon onesie made—”You know, like the punishment bunny suits?”—and everyone laughs.
That evening, Itaru goes back to his room later than he usually does. With Chikage out on a business trip the past few days, the room has gone back to the usual landfill, and he dreads thinking about having to clean it all up again. He keeps the lights off and pretends he doesn’t see anything for now.
Itaru flings himself onto his bed and hears something crumple. It’s a small handwritten note, with little designs from what he knows to be Muku and Kazunari’s joint sticker collection. The handwriting, however, is someone else’s.
I know it’s a couple of weeks late. Thanks for the sketchpad.
There’s a chibi drawing of him in a raccoon onesie under the words, and then more words under the doodle.
If you’re trying to get on everyone’s good sides by being sickeningly sweet, then it’s working. What a swindler.
Itaru sticks the note to the inside of his closet with sticky tack, between photos and other notes and cards he’s gotten from the others in the dorm, and the corners of Itaru’s eyes crinkle as he smiles.