Work Text:
Atsushi wakes up to a clean and ordered apartment, a total contrary to the mess that it was before they had to leave it in a hurry.
“Kyouka” The curtains are open, and the light of the sun paints the whole place in oranges and yellows, Atsushi can tell that the sun will set soon.
“Yes Atsushi?” But aside from the lack of mess, the other notable difference is the great amount of sweet and floral scents that are all over the place.
“What is that?” He’s sure that right now the only reason as to why he’s able to smell it all in great detail is because he’s still a little bit on edge after their mission, his instincts still taking in and analyzing all of the detail both inside their apartment and outside.
“The basket?” And the thing that caught immediately his attention ever since awakening some minutes ago were the scents, and leaving his closet and following his nose he found the origin to be a big woven basket full of a lot of things sitting at the top of the table.
“Uh, Ranpo told me it was called a…mmm… a right! It’s a care package.”
Now with the name, Atsushi easily identifies the thing, he now remembers having read about them in a magazine that Naomi lend him, but if he remembers correctly they are supposed to be given as a gift right? Usually to sick people or as a way of thanking someone. So why?
“Who?” He approaches it and starts inspecting the contents, now that he has done Kyouka also approaches it and starts grabbing some.
“It was a gift from the people that we saved in yesterday’s mission.”
From a simple look, Atsushi can divide the contents inside into two categories; food and those related, (he has already seen several gift cards to coffee shops and the like), and personal care items, (scented soaps, body lotions, bath bombs, etc.) But he’s sure that once they go through all of the contents they’ll find other things.
“It’s big,” the basket is the biggest one he has seen, if he were to put it over a chair it would take all the space, “and there are a lot of things.” And size aside, it is also big downwards.
“I think that all of the parents of the kids that we helped collaborated.”
That must be it, Atsushi thinks, because as he keeps looking through the contents he recognizes some brands that his talks and shopping trips with Yosano have taught him are expensive.
There’s a part of him that revolts at the tough of the things going for him, but he’s quick to ignore it.
“Atsushi, look.”
Kyouka hands him a card that was hidden amongst all of the things, ‘The parents of the students of Yokohama elementary school send their thanks to our heroes Nakajima Atsushi. And Izumi Kyouka. Thank you for helping and saving our kids during the events of the red park attack.’ It reads.
“Uh, that’s nice of them.” I guess… Atsushi thinks, luckily Kyouka seems to feel and thinks the same as him.
Both of them move their eyes from the card to the basket, card, basket, card, basket… “Well,” he begins, “I think it would be better if we begin organizing all of this, I see a lot of foods and we better check if we need to refrigerate them before they spoil. I also see some gift cards for coffee shops, we should also check when they no longer are valid.”
For the next minutes, they start the process of taking out the kinds and start organizing them, there’s a point at which Atsushi begins to feel overwhelmed because they just keep taking and taking things pot, and they are already starting to pile up, and the basket is not even half-empty.
He decides to discard whatever he’s feeling and focuses once again on the task at hand, he grabs another of the soaps inside the basket and is about to put it in its pile.
“You keep doing that.”
Hovering over the pile his hands stops. “I keep doing what?”
“The thing with your nose, you keep sniffing the air.” Kyouka’s words register and he realizes that she’s right, no he realizes that his nose is a little squinted and twitching, trying to get a better hold of all of the scents and smells.
“Oh, I hadn’t even noticed it.”
He turns to look at Kyouka and there’s a look, in her eyes.
“What are you planning?”
Kyouka just smiles in return.
***
“It’s a soap.”
There had been a time in the one he had learned to hate darkness.
“Fruit and flowers.”
Darkness meant pain, it meant hunger, meant loneliness, meant…
“Roses, and I think, lavender?”
There are a lot of things that Atsushi was taught to hate before, the darkness, himself.
“And for the fruit, I think it is…”
Today there are some days in which he still hates them, he still can barely bring himself to stand them, now, there are still some days in which he wakes up in the middle of the night and the darkness of the closet isn’t one of familiarity and the feeling of belonging, sometimes, it’s still that basement.
“Strawberries!”
But those days are becoming less and less, and now it’s more common when he wakes up in the middle of the night, instead of thinking about the darkness that surrounds him, and what that signifies, instead he focuses and the sound of Kyouka’s breathing at the other side of the closed closet doors.
“Correct. Here, now this one will be next.”
And right now, darkness is nothing but the piece of fabric that Kyouka wrapped around his eyes, all so he wouldn’t have a chance at seeing what she was holding, and in that way, he was forced to guess basing himself on only what his nose told him.
“It’s, some mind of food, a cookie? No, it’s, it’s cake!”
Atsushi has no doubts, Kyouka probably got the idea from one of those animal videos that she likes to watch alongside Kenji.
“And it has, chocolate and vanilla, but there’s also something else.”
But there’s a part of him that has no trouble getting over being used as a glorified sniffer dog (or cat in his situation,) especially because it is for something that Kyouka asked him for.
“Some kind of citrus, it’s not orange, nor mandarin…”
And he knows that Kyouka being able to ask for things is something that she should be able to do with facility, something that she should be able to do with no bloody memories and dark nights attached to it.
“I think it is Pomelo? But I’m not that sure.”
And if for that to become a reality he needs to play along to Kyouka’s wants? Well, it’s not like he’s not enjoying their little game.
“Yes! Alright, next one!”