Work Text:
The house was more than just the one that Andre had picked out, and that was why Oda had chosen to go back to it.
Maybe if it had been in a different location, maybe if the backyard didn’t have a now-unlocked gate to Dazai’s house, maybe if Oda was slightly less certain that if Andre ever stepped foot on this street—in the neighborhood, even—again, he would have the wrath of an entire family of feral teenagers and adults on his back, he wouldn’t have gone back, would have tried his luck somewhere else, where Andre wouldn’t know where he was and he could start fresh.
But there was no possible way Andre would ever come back here—not as long as the Fukuzawa family lived in the area, and according to Dazai Fukuzawa Yukichi had built the house himself, with input from the eldest of his many children, and as such not only was it perfect for their purposes but the only way they’d leave would be if, according to Dazai, the entire family was murdered in the night by one of many enemies.
If it were anyone else, that would not have been reassuring; however, ever since he was a child Dazai had said incredibly disturbing things like that and thought nothing of it; as it stood, Oda understood that this was his attempt at being reassuring and allowed himself to be reassured. Surely, the similarities between Dazai’s description of how his family might die and the actual deaths of Oda’s siblings were just a coincidence.
Currently, Dazai was helping get rid of the wallpaper in the kitchen, blaring heavy metal in his headphones so loudly that Oda could hear faint strains of it from where he was pulling down his own strip of wallpaper across the room. There was a box filled with balled-up wallpaper already that they were going to burn, alongside anything else even slightly flammable that Oda wasn’t selling, which was pretty much all the furniture in the house: despite the fact that they still weren’t speaking, Ango had already sent Oda a credit card with a note saying that it was for him to buy any furniture or appliances or decorations or supplies he pleased, and Dazai had been talking Oda’s ear off about going shopping for those things after the trial ever since.
There would be an incredibly large and noxious bonfire sometime soon.
Suddenly, as he finished pulling down the strip of wallpaper and started on the next, his phone chimed. He put down the wallpaper and picked up his phone, angling its screen toward him so that it lit up again, revealing a text from his lawyer.
There was a set date for the trial, now that Andre was no longer getting mysteriously beat up every week in his cell and was in good enough physical condition to attend.
The trial date was set.
It would be in two weeks.
Fuck, Oda thought.
He supposed he shouldn’t have been too surprised. The trial had to happen eventually, after all, and things had been so good for so long. Dazai had made a nearly-complete recovery, enough to spend a couple hours each day in Oda’s house, and though Oda refused to let him help with any of the heavy lifting, Dazai was happy to yank down wallpaper and smash knicknacks of Andre’s with abandon. He’d started therapy, and his nightmares had begun to abate slightly, and…and things were good. Things were good.
He hoped that the trial wouldn’t change that any.
The shittiest thing about your best friend/platonic fiance being a workaholic was that, as soon as he was released from the hospital, he threw himself back into work with abandon, usually passing out on his own bed when he came back late, which was a fucking atrocity from Mizuki’s perspective. And then, when things were finally starting to settle back into a more normal rhythm and work was no longer two seconds away from exploding or whatever the hell Ango seemed to think would happen if he didn’t handle every single little thing that happened throughout the day, he got assigned to go on a work trip, which was a bunch of hot bullshit, but finally, when he finished unpacking after his return, he leaned against the kitchen wall and sighed, saying, “I think that’s the last of it for a while.”
“Oh, thank fuck ,” Mizuki said, shooting his suitcase an offended look behind his back. “Wanna get takeout, then?”
“Sure,” Ango said, leaving the suitcase against the wall and following Mizuki back to her bedroom and leaning against the doorway as she rifled through the takeout menu drawer. “What are you in the mood for?”
“Literally anything, I don’t give a fuck,” she said. “You?”
Ango hummed to himself. “Not curry,” he said after a moment. “Pizza, maybe?”
“Can’t you cook pizza?”
“Yes, but getting it as takeout will make you appreciate mine better next time Dazai comes over for dinner,” Ango pointed out. “Besides, I haven’t had anything properly greasy in weeks. I need to keep up appearances at the office, after all.”
“Don’t think our coworkers haven’t noticed the ring, by the way,” Mizuki said. “There’s a whole betting pool going as to what’s it about; I’m set to win nearly a thousand once you reveal that your long-time roommate proposed to you.”
Ango scoffed, and opened his mouth—probably to protest the fact that he would ever willingly reveal any personal information to his team—when she heard a sharp intake of breath and then, “Mizuki, why the fresh hell do you have a human bone on your dresser?”
Ah, fuck: he’d sworn. Ango rarely swore, which meant he was disturbed by the bone, which was deeply unfortunate for Mizuki, or would have been had she not had the fact that he’d gone off and willingly gotten himself kidnapped to hold over his head.
“It’s my trophy,” she replied. “Yanked it out of Gide’s shoulder when he came by looking for Odasaku.”
“And you were allowed to keep it?”
Mizuki smirked. “What, like the cops were going to say no to the government employee covered in blood who’d just yanked a bone out of a man’s arm?”
Ango winced. “When you put it like that, I suppose…what are you even going to do with it, though?”
“I’m bringing it to the trial,” she told him. “Might end up loaning it to Odasaku as a good luck charm, who knows?”
“You’re going to loan him his ex’s shoulder bone as a good luck charm ?” Ango said, aghast. “Are you insane?!”
Mizuki only laughed, pulling the pizza menu out of the drawer and darting past Ango into the kitchen. Ango followed her, of course, though he didn’t drop the subject until she suggested they order a pineapple and anchovy pizza, at which point Ango told her she was actually, literally insane if she thought either of them would eat that junk, and she laughed brightly and started up a proper argument over pizza toppings.
Life was good.