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“Put that down!” Kunikida shouted, punctuating the sentence with his best attempt yet at wresting the bottle of bleach from Dazai’s hands.
“What are you, my mom?!” Dazai shouted back, sticking his tongue out in what was, admittedly, a childish fashion.
“I wouldn’t have to be–” a tug, “if you stopped–” another, “acting like a damn child!”
From the corner of his eye, Dazai spotted a gloved hand shoot up. “Uh, Kunikida–” Atsushi started, the fake-brave edge to his voice obvious. ”Um, I’ll be your kid if Dazai doesn’t want to!” Kunikida’s resistance against the bottle vanished as he dropped it to face Atsushi.
Now, where was his coffee mug?
“Atsushi, I am truly flattered.” Dazai knew that sentiment would not have been echoed had he been the one to propose it. If Kunikida adopted Atsushi, Dazai would simply have to be content with least favorite child. For now though, he would get to be content with celebrating victory by beginning to unscrew the lid on his wonderful new bringer of death. The moment his hands became occupied with something other than protecting it with his life, Kunikida snatched away the bottle and promptly began dumping its contents out onto the floor. “However, that would make you and Kyouka Dazai’s siblings, which is a fate I refuse to assign you.”
Atsushi cocked his head to the side like a cat asking for chin rubs. “Kyouka?”
“I think what Kunikida is trying to say–” Dazai took a moment to scoot away from the growing puddle of bleach, “is that you two are basically siblings already.”
Kunikida continued ruining Dazai’s gateway to heaven, standing fast in the middle of the alkaline pool like a child in a water fight who had got a little wet and immediately decided to jump in front of an active hose. For such a responsible man, he sure wasn’t worried about the state of his shoes, or the state of the tile for that matter.
“Oh.” Atsushi’s cheeks filled with a gentle pink tint. “Yeah… I guess we are!” He sat back down looking very pleased with himself. Dazai watched the last rivulets of bleach drip from the container.
Yosano coughed, drawing the attention to herself like a red carpet star gone ignored for, in her opinion, far too long. “If Kunikida’s the mom, then I’m the wine aunt.” Dazai would’ve bet his left kidney that in the second that followed she was taking a long draw of the mentioned substance to prove her point.
“Yosano! On company hours?” Dazai chided, continuing to wistfully sneak glances at the pool of cleaning product sucking color from company floors. That wine glass she was nursing would have been perfect for a nice serving of bleach. “Some people have no shame.”
“You have no shame!” Kunikida shouted, again.
On the other side of the Armed Detective Agency, Dazai watched Ranpo busy himself being a little bitch, (as he did). Creeping up on an amused Yosano he grabbed her shoulders from behind, earning an elbow to the stomach. He promptly emitted a sound like a tea kettle and staggered a few steps back. After another whine: You’re so mean Yosano!! He returned to his usual level of pep. “I wanna be the uncle!”
Yosano snorted; Dazai considered it. Siblings did quite suit the two of them.
“I think you’d make a much better child than uncle,” Yosano said.
“Ugh, and be Dazai’s brother? No thanks!” Ranpo made a face similar to Dazai’s earlier one of tongue-sticking. Jerk. It’s not like Dazai wanted to be his brother either.
But wait. If Ranpo and Yosano were his “mother”’s siblings, that would make Dazai’s grandparents their parents… and there was certainly a bit of platonic matchmaking he could do with that. Maybe even finally give Ranpo an opportunity to finalize that cute little dad thing with Fukuzawa.
Determined scribbling gave him something other than his new idea to focus on, so he abandoned that train of thought like a Chuuya. Now, what the hell was Kunikida writing down from this conversation?
Dazai attempted to peer over his shoulder (definitely not thinking about how his shoes were going to be ruined now that he’d stepped in the bleach puddle), but only managed to spot a few rudimentary stick figures before the man rudely snapped the book shut with a hackle raising smack.
If Dazai had learned anything today, it was that Kunikida couldn’t draw for shit.
But, more importantly: “Was that a family tree?”
“I’ve always wanted siblings,” Kunikida said, not answering the question whatsoever. He was just as bad at deflection as he was at drawing, which was perhaps the greatest example of the difference between mother and son. But no– none of that mattered. Dazai was stuck on the fact that Kunikida was an only child.
“Oh my god,” he started, clutching his head and pacing like a mad scientist who had just discovered the last ingredient to their secret formula. “Of course you’re an only child! Of course! Everything makes sense now!”
“What the hell are you talking about!?”
Dazai took Kunikida’s hands in his own, stared solemnly into the eyes of his partner in anti-crime. “Your deep seated intimacy issues and inability to take a joke must stem from the inherent solitude of being an only child. It’s the only explanation.” Kunikida blinked rapidly, like a shitty laptop trying to process whatever was just typed into the search bar. Distantly, Yosano and Ranpo bickered over the best type of sweetbread.
“Dazai,” Atsushi said, hesitant waver to his voice. “Aren’t you an only child?”
Hm.
He’s just going to pretend that joke didn’t backfire. “Mmm– not anymore! Now I have my lovely siblings, you and Kyouka~!”
Atsushi took a moment, thought about it, and blushed a little once more. “Yeah… I guess we are!” That poor child really shouldn’t be happy to have Dazai as a brother figure. Such a thing could only lead to disaster.
At the sound of what might have been a growl, (yes, an honest to god growl, Dazai fucking loved these people), Dazai turned back to Kunikida. If he had tried to commit suicide right then, he wasn’t sure if Kunikida would even stop him.
“Don’t you ever insult only children again.” He wrenched his hands from Dazai’s grasp, turning on his heel. “After all–”
But Kunikida never got to finish his sentence, instead becoming forcibly acquainted with the floor, taking a non-consensual belly flop into the pool of bleach still surrounding them.
From the other side of the room: “Oh my god– Mom, are you okay?”
A second of silence as Atsushi hurried over to the scene of the crime. Dazai held in a giggle. “I’ll live,” Kunikida groused, muffled by the tile floor. Dazai offered him a hand up, but he slapped it away in favor of struggling to his feet, suit fully drenched in bleach. His face, luckily, seemed to have fared better. “But Atsushi?”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t actually call me mom.”
“Oh– um, of course, I didn’t mean to–”
“I think,” Kunikida cut him off in a tone that could kill a man, (Atsushi made a sound more becoming of a small rodent than a tiger), “I’m going to go wash up before I get chemical burns.” Dazai suspected the tone had less to do with the “Mom” thing, and more to do with the bandaged hand doing a poor job of muffling Dazai’s laughter.
He found something else to focus on quick enough, a familiar squeak of The President’s office door alerting him Fukuzawa was right on time to miss the action as usual. Oh, right, the plan! How the universe loves him, handing him opportunities on a silver platter like this.
“Oh, hey Gramps!” Dazai greeted him. He giggled, when, as expected, Ranpo’s expression went through about three unplanned pregnancies and a divorce.
“Gramps? ” Fukuzawa’s eyes flicked between Kunikida’s escaping form and the drenched section of floor. “What’s going on in here?”
“Hey Dad,” Ranpo said, instead of answering the question at all. He did, however, offer a wave and a wince.
Dazai wished the whole world was always as quiet as the hush that followed. It was kind of like that anxious moment of doubt when two TV characters finally confessed and you were waiting to see if they would get together, if only the confession was less please-date-me and more please-be-my-adoptive-father. Dazai was halfway sure Ranpo already had the adoption papers ready and was just working up the guts to ask Fukuzawa, and fully sure that if he did offer the papers, the President would sign them without a word.
Dazai might have even said he was a little jealous of them, if he didn’t already have a terrific mother figure halfway down the hallway to the showers. A mother figure with possibly maybe a few chemical burns that were possibly maybe a little his fault, but still.
The President cleared his throat once. Twice. “Hello to you as well,” a pause. “Son.”
Dazai would have thrown confetti in the air if he had any, but he didn’t, so he settled for a few claps. “Wooo! Fucking finally!”
“Um,” Ranpo mumbled, uncharacteristically bashful in a way that Dazai was going to use against him forever. “Would you maybe possibly want,” he pulled a wad of papers from his pocket, “to sign these?”
Jesus christ, how long had he had those? Dazai was mostly joking about the adoption papers thing!
Fukuzawa nodded wordlessly, walked the rest of the distance of the room to sit beside him, and whipped out a pen.
Dazai fucking loved these people.