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The dinky little desk fan Aki’d bought did nothing to minimize the heat that sat still in the apartment, nor did opening every door and window, nor even Denji’s genius idea of sticking one's head in the freezer.
“A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-!” Power sighed into the rickety metal fan, flipping onto her back on the scratchy, plastic carpet. Her shirt billowed in the breeze as she whined to Denji, succumbing to her typical laziness. “Denji~! Get me a popsicle!”
After scraping around the ice-crusted interior of the freezer, Denji popped out, shaking ice crystals from his shaggy, blonde hair. “We only have ice cream sandwiches!” Power sat up, wiping some sweat from her brow, “Ugh! Whatever! Gimme one of those.” The wrappers crinkled in Denji’s sweaty hands as he plopped down next to her, leaning back on one of his hands and unwrapping his ice cream with the other.
“Hey, you have a Melona bar!”
“Mmhf. Yeah?”
“But you said we only had sandwiches!”
“But this one is mine ! Plus, jerks who eat all the good ice cream don’t deserve this kind of tasty stuff.”
“Gimmie that! You little-“
Power lunged towards Denji, trying to wrestle the popsicle out of his hand. All that could be heard in the apartment were wet, sweaty slipping sounds, interpolated very here and there by a cackle from Denji while he tried to catch drips from the stick (Meowy took care of any that got on his hands) or a string of curse words and rude remarks on behalf of Power.
This exchange was put to a screeching halt when the front door swung open and the two on the carpet froze like mice. It was Aki, casting his shadow on the carpet in front of them, bangs plastered to his forehead. It was too hot to be mad, not even at the green stain on the carpet or Power’s newly melted ice cream sandwich, still in the package and surely to still be eaten by her after being refrozen. Aki shut the door behind him hard, a wave of hot air sweeping through the apartment as he kicked off his shoes and plopped the shopping bag he was holding on the table.
The three residents of the Hayakawa household seemed to have a silent communication. Denji and Power, watching Aki intently, said, ‘Hey, hey! What’s in the bag?” And Aki sent back a, ‘If you wanna see, you better get your asses up.”
Aki couldn’t hold back a smile as Denji and Power’s faces lit up like little kids when they saw what he got.
“Woah!!! Ice cream!!”
Aki was hit by a storm of limbs and jumping and giggling and sweating and ‘Thank you, Aki!!’s, the two being too excited to tear into the treats. God, these are the kind of moments Aki really felt like a dad. “Alright, alright! You’re all sweaty! Let’s just sit down and dig into this stuff, ok? Before it melts!”
It was these kinds of domestic, fluffy moments Aki savored. This was why he went to work. This was why he cooked dinner every night. This was why he scrubbed Power’s shit from the toilet bowl. If it wasn’t for those two idiots, grinning faces covered with sticky, sweet goo, he would run somewhere far, far away and hide out somewhere in some rural area where he could spend all day in nature and catch his dinner in the river and take his baths in the streams. But he was thankful for them, oh how he was thankful for those two.
Aki always wanted a family. He always wanted that sense of stability- that closeness one gets from a family. Sure, what he had was far from typical, a twenty something grown man under the same roof as two teenage devils, but it was as close as he could probably get to one. It was the type of thing that that little orphan boy whose family was killed by a devil would dream about.
In fact, it was exactly what he dreamed about.
He would give Denji and Power what he never had. A family.