Work Text:
Summer vacation, for many people, was a time of respite from the monotony of school work and the stress tests and projects brought those who took them seriously. It was an opportunity to enjoy all the pleasantries the weather brought around. Flowers in full bloom, open pools, and sticky hands from melty ice cream. Truly, it was a season very few people disliked.
Ouma had originally asked if he could stay with Saihara over the break as a joke. He was going on and on about how his rich, influential parents were so boring, Shumai! Seriously, every time I go back there for vacation, they make me dress up and act all proper and go to all these parties just so they can brag about the fact that they have a son who goes to Hope’s Peak Academy! Doesn’t that just sound like torture? You can’t make me go back there, you just can’t, Saihara-chan! He threw in some fake tears for effect when Saihara gazed down at him with a very indecisive expression on his face, and the next thing he knew, he was packing his bags and traveling to the place where Saihara’s uncle lived. Admittedly, he was actually the one very hesitant to accept the invitation because he was leaving D.I.C.E. behind, but they all encouraged him to go for it. Staying with the Ultimate Detective and his family was better than couch surfing at the apartments of members who were old enough to own their own real estate, but it still made him anxious to be away from them for so long.
…He was slowly relaxing into the routine of staying with his totally not crush and his family, though.
Saihara’s uncle and his wife were incredibly nice. …Almost too nice. In all honesty, it took a lot of coaxing from the detective to even get him to try their food out of the fear that it was poisoned or something. And he certainly didn’t sleep alone for the first few nights, nevermind that it was a good excuse to cuddle with his Shumai. Ouma was surprised that Saihara didn’t even question why he acted this way. And his family didn’t bother to either. They were just so… kind? For no reason? Ouma was an intruder, practically. A stranger. And surely Saihara had told them all about his awful deeds back at the academy.
But they looked at him with not a hint of malice. They tolerated him when he kept Saihara up until two in the morning by making him watch Ouma play a game he had always wanted to but never got the chance to, laughing with him as he insulted the story and the graphics. When they were eventually caught, they took one look at Ouma’s wide, terrified eyes (even as he tried to mask his fear under rude comments about their own nephew keeping him up and being a bad influence) and simply sent them both to bed. The next day, they gave them both a light scolding and told them not to do it again. He was baffled, to say the least.
No one could just be so… compassionate and understanding right off the bat. He was used to angering and confusing people before they got to know him, and yet still pissing them off once they got close. There were times, on occasion, where even Saihara got somewhat upset with him. And yet, it didn’t matter what he did around the Ultimate Detective’s family. They accepted him like he was one of their own. Just what had Saihara told them to get them to act this way? He… didn’t deserve this treatment…
After spending a few weeks with them, he got to piece together the Saihara family situation a little better. None of them were exactly shy about what was going on with the detective’s parents, but the other boy hadn’t talked about it much at school. All he had known then was that Saihara didn’t live with them, instead being taken in by his uncle. But now he understood that it wasn’t because his mother and father were buried in the ground, like what was the case with himself. No, they were just “very busy people.” That made his eye twitch. Couldn’t they see how amazing their son was? What kind of shitty people were they to not even deign to visit their son during holidays? Apparently, the famous screenwriter and actor type. That information in and of itself didn’t surprise the boy. It was well known that many celebrities were awful if you knew them in real life. He was almost shocked to find out, though, that Saihara’s parents were no exception. The detective was so caring, so… so… adorably perfect in his own way! How could his parents be so awful?
It was immediately obvious to Ouma that, while his crush may sympathize with his… his… life-givers (parents felt too familiar for the situation described to him), the boy’s uncle and aunt did not feel the same way. While Saihara spoke of them with a melancholy expression, his uncle mentioned his relatives like they were the car that drove by on his way to the train station and splashed dirty water all over him. It was obvious by observing them that there were some unresolved tensions in the air. He was finding himself developing a disdain towards them just by bearing witness to the careful ways they avoided words like “hate” or “estranged” in front of the younger detective.
They had pulled him aside one night when Saihara had gone to get ready for bed and explained that it would be best not to bring up his life-givers often because of the pain associated with that topic. They were more honest about their feelings in front of Ouma than he had ever been with them, which took him off guard a little bit. It had been a few weeks since he had first become a guest in their house, so they were obviously used to his liar persona. However, he found himself wanting to be nothing but truthful with them in that moment. Unfortunately, that led him to saying something so, so cliché and so, so embarrassing.
“I’d never do anything to hurt Saihara-chan on purpose,” he had proclaimed after they had finished speaking. “And that’s the truth.” Of course, what good was it when he unintentionally did it, anyway? But he meant it with all his heart. Maybe it was the fact that they had been so gracious to him so far that had lured him into a sense of security. He was sure in the following days to be even more of a nuisance, especially to his crush, so they wouldn’t get the impression he had gone soft or anything, but his heart wasn’t in it. He could tell Saihara knew that too.
Fortunately, the situation quickly passed on, and a few days later, everything was back to normal, in Ouma’s mind, at least. The supreme leader proposed a walk to Saihara that the detective had taken him up on, so they spent the late afternoon hours before dinner strolling around the neighborhood and chatting like they had often done back at Hope’s Peak. He was just finishing up an epic story of a grand heist he had totally committed when they found themselves returning to the house where Sahara's family lived.
At first, Ouma didn’t realize the problem. He was too caught up in his story to notice that anything was different. But the second he looked over to gauge Saihara’s response to him mentioning that all along, a tall, handsome detective had been trailing him, he found his heart stutter to a stop in his chest.
He’d never forget the expression on Saihara’s face.
He looked like he was in physical agony. Like someone had just told him his aunt and uncle had perished while he was gone and Akamatsu had killed them. For a moment, he was worried that he might be critically injured but followed his gaze before he made any assumptions.
In the driveway of the house, an American limo that certainly hadn’t been there before was parked right next to the car that Ouma knew belonged to the boy’s uncle. He didn’t even need to be told who owned it. It screamed “look at me, I’m rich” in an honestly disgusting way. He couldn’t stop from a sneer overtaking his own face.
“Hey, Saihara-chan, do you want t-” He didn’t even get to finish his sentence before three figures popped out of the front door, bringing with them the sound of a heated argument.
“You can’t stop us from seeing our daughter!” the woman of the trio yelled back at Saihara’s uncle as he tried to push them out of the house. Ouma immediately cringed at the shrillness of her voice (he didn’t know there was a way to sound any worse than a Karen) and her blatant lack of regard for her son’s gender identity.
“I’m sorry,” Saihara’s uncle replied, sounding the most hostile Ouma had ever heard him despite his usage of cordial vocabulary. “We simply aren’t accepting any more visitors here at this time with Shuichi’s friend staying with us.” He would’ve felt bad that he was taking up space if he, one, couldn’t read through such a blatant lie and two, didn’t hate Saihara’s life-givers with a burning passion.
Both life-givers sputtered at this, talking over each other in nonsensical riff-raff he was starting to tune out. He simply turned to the quivering boy beside him and put his arms around his shoulders, pulling him flush against him despite their height difference. “Hey, Saihara-chan. Why don’t we-”
“Hey, you there!” someone called, interrupting him while he was talking to his Shumai for the second goddamn time. Slightly infuriated, he glared at Saihara’s male life-giver, who had been the one to call out to him. He wasn’t going to bother with a response, figuring those scum weren’t worth it, until they said something that made the boy in his arms wince violently. “Let our daughter go! You should know by your age that it’s inappropriate to have your hands on a young lady!” They had murmured something else about teenage delinquency, but Ouma didn’t much care for the insults they had to spew about himself. Just the fact they could bring so much despair to Saihara had his blood boiling.
He made to let go of the detective, but he immediately grabbed his sleeves and pulled his arms back with an almost undetectable whine. It would’ve melted his heart were it not under such an infuriating circumstance.
“Hey, Saihara-chan, it’s okay…” he murmured, trying very hard not to let his aggression slip. “I’m just going to take care of these assholes, alright? You don't have to come. Maybe you could go around the block to the park instead? I’ll go find you when they’re gone. Sound like a plan?”
He felt a small shift against his shoulder that felt like a nod, so he tried again to remove his arms. This time, Saihara didn’t try to prevent him, even though he did flinch when his arms retreated. Ouma wanted nothing more than to gather him back up in his arms and protect him that way, but he knew it was better to get Saihara away from the situation instead. He would deal with this, just like he said he would, then he could give Saihara all the hugs he wanted to.
With haste, the boy departed from his side and started making his way down the street in the direction that had just come from. However, his life-givers weren’t content with this turn of events and certainly weren’t going to give up without ensuring Ouma bring down the wrath of all nine rings of hell, apparently, for they shouted after their son, “Saihara Hikari, you get back here! No need to run away because of this awful boy!”
Ouma had no desire to ever know Saihara’s dead name. The only name he cared about was the one given to him on their first day of the academy together. He wished there were some device that could remove specific memories just so he could remove the knowledge of his dead name from his mind. The only circumstance he would willingly take the knowledge is if Saihara himself wanted him to have it, but judging by his quivering steps and the large grimace he made when his dead name was dropped, it was information given to him involuntarily.
He approached Saihara’s live-givers with poised steps, ones that were almost a little bouncy, conveying an air of innocence. That, coupled with the fact that Saihara’s life-givers were at least half a foot taller than him, he was the face of a sleazy teenager whose ego was surely larger than Jupiter and whose words were as hollow as a dead tree. Right?
“Heya, jackass one and jackass two,” he started, greeting them with a cheerful wave not befitting of his rude tone at all. “It’s come to my attention that you’ve been making a lot of ruckus. What seems to be the problem?”
Both life-givers bristled while Saihara’s uncle did his best to conceal his amusement behind them. “What do you mean!?” the female one screeched, her fake nails loudly clicking against her sunglasses as she pulled them up. “You were the one feeling up our daughter earl-”
“Son,” Ouma corrected, surprisingly polite. “I can’t help but notice you’ve been misgendering your son. Why is that? Surely it’s not that hard to remember the gender of your own child, no?”
“What’s all this nonsense about being a boy?” the male one asked, glancing back at Saihara’s uncle. “Has Hikari been going off about being a boy again? I thought we told her to stop that when she was younger.”
Ouma’s eye twitched noticeably as his fake grin increased in size. It was hurting his cheeks at this point, but he didn’t notice or care in the slightest. “Saihara Shuichi-chan is the manliest man I know and by far the most intelligent. You have an incredible son. The least you can do is acknowledge him more than once every two years and respect his pronouns and name.”
“Who are you to tell us what to do and what our daughter wants!? She knows better now than to go around pretending to be a boy!” the woman argued, stopping her heeled foot on the brick steps that led up to the house.
“His friend,” Ouma replied with infinite patience he did not possess, his heart not even panging with want as he simply referred to himself as Saihara’s friend. In this case, he was more than happy to have that title. “And you’ve got it all wrong. He’s not pretending. He is a boy. There is no dispute unless Saihara-chan himself claims otherwise.”
The two life-givers in front of him continued to spout angry nonsense he simply did not have the time for at this point. He needed to get them out of here before Saihara’s mental state grew more volatile from being alone. “Look, your son does not want to see you. I suggest you leave before I call the police on you for trespassing and being a general public nuisance.”
The pair only grew louder, insisting they had the right to see their child, until Ouma pulled out his phone, so done with their bullshit by that point. Silence fell, but it only stuck around for a few seconds before the two started up again with their same silly protests. He discreetly dialed the first seven numbers of Spade’s phone number, knowing that his third in command would pick up the phone before the second ring if it was his number. The two still didn’t seem to believe his "bluff" for even a second, so he made a show of dialing the last three numbers of the contact and exaggerated the movement of his finger pressing the dial button, quickly bringing the phone up to his ear. “Heya, operator-chan,” he drawled casually, internally smiling at Spade’s immediate confusion. “I believe I’m in what they call a ‘pickle.’ See, there’s these two people on the front lawn trying to force entry into my friend's uncle’s home and being very loud about it. I think I see the neighbors peeking outside of their windows as we speak.” He mimed looking over at a house and giggled a little to really sell the fact that someone had been peering out. “Would you mind sending an officer down to-”
“That won’t be necessary!” they suddenly cut in, likely knowing how large of a scandal it would be if either or both of them got arrested or were even seen with law enforcement in any sort of negative light. “We’ll just be leaving now.” Quickly hurrying down the sidewalk to the driveway, the two jumped in their car at lightning speed and, before he could follow them, waving the phone dramatically in his hand, they were down the street in a flash.
Returning to his conversation on the phone, he smiled, genuinely this time. “Nishishi, thanks, Spade-chan. I just needed to pretend to call 110 to get rid of these two assholes.”
The person on the other end of the line chuckled themselves. “No problem, boss. Let me know if you need anything else.”
“Of course!” the boy replied, starting to walk down the street where Saihara had long since disappeared. “I might need a favor later, so keep your ears peeled for that!”
“Uh, boss? I’m pretty sure it’s ey-”
He hung up before they could say anymore. Turning back to Saihara’s uncle, he pointed down the street and called out to him that he was going to find the younger detective. The man, who looked a little dazed, simply nodded.
It didn’t take Ouma long to reach the park as he skipped along the way, humming a tune all the while. Saihara was right where he expected him to be, sitting at the bottom of a small, yellow slide. The park was abandoned at this time of day, as many children had likely gone home to eat dinner.
Despite the fact that there was a twin slide right next to where the boy was sitting that he could’ve taken, he chose to plop himself down right on his crush’s lap, like it meant nothing at all. At the very least, it snapped the other out of his very intense-looking staring contest with the ground.
“Hey, hey, Saihara-chan! Just like I promised, I found you once I made those assholes disappear. I currently have King and Ace back at the house cleaning up their bodies! They’re just the best at that, you know? I’ve had them clean up at least a hundred bodies! Their record is ten minutes, so we should be good to head back relatively soon!”
Saihara didn’t even look up or refute his lie. He only pressed his head into Ouma’s chest and wrapped his arms around his waist. If the supreme leader felt his t-shirt getting damp, he didn’t dare say anything. He did, however, indulge in running his fingers through the detective’s hair, something he had only done during the first few days of their visit when the other was asleep.
He opted for the distraction method of comforting, retelling his “epic” anecdote from earlier with even more silly details thrown in, procuring a few giggles from his crush every now and then. Just hearing him laugh after how shitty his parents were being, pretending like they had some right to visit out of nowhere after years and then dare misgender and dead name their child, was a huge relief to Ouma.
“...And then they live happily ever after or some shit like that,” he concluded, earning one final snort from the boy in his arms and if that wasn’t just the cutest fucking sound ever, he didn’t know what was.
“Thanks, Ouma-kun,” the detective replied after a while, giving Ouma one final squeeze before letting go and taking his face out of his chest.
“What is my beloved thanking me for?” he asked, tilting his head to the side. “I was just venting by putting some bastards in their places. I didn’t do this for him.”
Saihara seemed to understand the underlying message of his words, shooting a smile his way before urging him to sit up. Ouma did so, quickly snatching the other’s hand to pull him up as well, accomplishing his goal of throwing off his balance, starting to break out into a sprint before he could get oriented.
“Wait! Ouma-kun!” he yelled, in a vain attempt to get the supreme leader to listen to him. Like Ouma ever listened to anyone.
Dinner went as it normally did. Like the situation earlier never even occurred at all. It was nice to see Saihara relax once no traces of his life-givers remained, as if Ouma would lie about something like that.
They parted soon after dinner, the boy walking boldly into the detective’s bedroom and sneaking out the window in full view of the owner of the room, like he couldn’t have just used the front door. He was on a mission to get Saihara some of his favorite ice cream (apparently boring vanilla made by some place a few blocks over), and he was using this opportunity to make a few phone calls about some dues that needed to be paid.
…And… if the world woke up the next morning to the second Ultimate Detective’s parents being canceled on Twitter, billboards across America vandalized to the point of unrecognition, and any physical paraphernalia of them being stolen off shelves… Well, that was no one’s business but his own.