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“I’m only nineteen…”
“And who here do you think is gonna get on your ass for underage drinking, exactly?”
Atsushi glances over to Chuuya, whose home he’s currently in. Right. He’s with a mafia executive, another mafioso, and an ex-mafia executive, who has drunkenly boasted to him in the past of his high tolerance being due to picking up drinking somewhere around sixteen. Silly him.
An arm is flung over his shoulder, and Dazai is grinning down at him. “You’re the one getting a late start, really. Besides, isn’t it best to get drunk for the first time with people you trust?” The innocent batting of his eyelashes almost gives Atsushi chills.
“Trust is a strong word,” he grumbles.
Chuuya laughs at Dazai’s theatrical pout, and Akutagawa coughs lightly. “I’m more curious to see if alcohol even will affect the weretiger.” Three pairs of eyes land on Akutagawa. “I’ve considered that his regeneration may negate the effects, is all.”
“Ignoring the part where you’ve previously thought about drinking with Atsushi-kun,” Dazai tilts his head. Akutagawa glances away. “You actually raise an interesting point.”
“What, he’s never been poisoned?”
Nervous that Chuuya’s going to suggest they try that out to see what happens, Atsushi cuts in. “No, thankfully. I guess testing that with alcohol is probably safer, though?”
“Not as fun, if you ask me, but it works.”
“I’m okay with being a little boring.”
So kicks off the strange evening in, with Dazai and Chuuya immediately arguing over what to start him off with, and the redhead yelling at his whatever-those-two-are for rifling through his cabinets, again. Personally, he doesn’t have much of an opinion, but two of them are opting for wine, and that’s enough of an endorsement for him. He swipes the glass Akutagawa has just set down, making eye contact with Dazai who had been campaigning for giving him whiskey first.
Bitter. Is it supposed to be this bitter? Do people really enjoy this?
He’s not sure what kind of face he’s making into the glass, but he’s being laughed at by the pair across from him. Seated to his side at the island counter, even Akutagawa smothers a chuckle into his hand. He flushes, embarrassed.
“You’re not supposed to take a big gulp like that,” Chuuya snorts, amusement apparent in his face.
“It’s the only way he knows how,” Dazai says.
Atsushi is pretty sure there’s an innuendo in there that Dazai is getting at, but Akutagawa saves him from that conversation.
“A sip,” he says, taking the glass back to demonstrate. He slides it back over by the stem.
He tries again, trying to focus on the wine itself, and not the dawning realization that they’re sharing a glass, or the anticipatory stares on him.
His nose twitches involuntarily. “It’s still bitter. For some reason I expected wine to be sweeter.”
This was apparently not the reaction they were expecting, judging by the raised brows aimed at him.
Grabbing the bottle to inspect the label, Chuuya mutters, “It’s a little dry, but it shouldn’t be that bad.”
“What I’m hearing is that it’s time for cocktails!” Dazai spins back to Chuuya’s cupboards for god knows what.
Glancing down at the glass still in his hand, he contemplates another try, before the bitterness lingering on his tongue makes itself known, and he sets it back down in front of Akutagawa.
“Margaritas?”
“Mm, I was thinking of leaning further into the sweet and going right for strawberry daiquiris.”
“Ooh, that sounds good.”
“Of course it does!”
Finishing off the small remainder of his wine, Akutagawa then leans over to mutter into Atsushi’s ear, “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”
Who’s going to need good luck again? Atsushi wants to ask. Dazai is flushed and can’t seem to stop laughing, mostly at Chuuya who’s even redder and practically hanging off of him as he rants about stinky fish that keep leeching off of him. Then there’s Akutagawa, slumped over the counter, a half empty daiquiri abandoned by one outstretched arm, and an equally half drunk Irish coffee—the other two suggested a hot drink to mix things up—still loosely grasped in the other hand.
He’s not really sure what being drunk is supposed to feel like, but he is pretty sure he’s the most sober one here, despite the one of each he himself had in full, some kind of sake, plus a margarita at Chuuya’s insistence. In fairness, Dazai had most of the bottle of sake himself. On top of everything else.
Chuuya cuts himself off abruptly as he seems to notice, or remember, the state Akutagawa is in. He squints. “Water,” is all he says, voice suddenly barely a mumble as he turns around with far less grace than Atsushi is used to seeing him move with.
“Food might have been a good idea,” Dazai adds with sarcastic cheer.
“Of course you didn’t eat before coming here,” he grumbles over the sound of the running tap.
His eyes shift between them. “The drinks were pretty filling on their own, weren’t they?” His hands fidget around his mug, uncertain if he should have even spoken up.
Returning to nudge the coffee out of Akutagawa’s hand to replace it with water, Chuuya gives Atsushi a long look. “The hell?” he settles on, spinning back to the sink to get another glass of water, which he downs half of on the spot. He then shoves it into Dazai’s hands, and looks back to Atsushi. “Are you even tipsy? You should be laid out flat on your ass by now.”
“Sorry?” Atsushi tries, shrugging. “I don’t know. I feel fine. I’d get a little warm, I think, but it passed pretty quickly. I’m… guessing that feeling persists longer, normally?”
Dazai cackles. “Oh, we have got to get you into a drinking contest with Yosano-sensei! I want to see you drink her under the table and not break a sweat.”
“Shut up,” Chuuya grunts, tapping the bottom of the glass Dazai is still holding. He dutifully takes a sip, and Chuuya rolls his eyes. “Wake Akutagawa up and get him to drink water,” he commands, pointing between him and Atsushi. “I’m gonna get us something to eat. That’ll help.”
Waking up Akutagawa entails him repeatedly almost knocking over each drink in his vicinity, a lot of grumbling, and Dazai’s flicking and poking and pinching of his face causing Akutagawa to first lean into, and then try to hide against Atsushi’s shoulder, arms wound around Atsushi’s arm.
“Aww, I didn’t know he’s a clingy drunk,” Dazai coos. Menacingly, somehow, Atsushi swears it is; if anyone could fawn over someone else in a menacing way, he supposes it would be Dazai. He’s going to hold onto those words though, because yes, Akutagawa is just drunk, and Atsushi happened to be the person on his opposite side, away from the annoyances.
Even after persuading him to drink some water, Atsushi still has to have an arm around him to keep him upright. The food cannot happen quickly enough for his sanity.
Chuuya’s improvised meal turns out to be some random vegetables thrown over rice. Far from fancy, but between that and the water, it’s apparently enough to mellow the others out. Atsushi, for one, simply isn’t about to turn down free, home cooked food, hastily made or no.
They migrate to Chuuya’s barely big enough sofa, and just when Atsushi, wedged between Akutagawa and Dazai, is convinced they’re all going to fall asleep on him, possibly literally in one case that he is not fixating on, Chuuya declares, “We should play a game.”
“Mario Kart!” Dazai demands.
“Mario Kart,” Chuuya nods, apparently thinking the same thing. Should that even be surprising anymore?
“Mario Kart?” Atsushi hesitantly asks.
The other two stare at him, and he can even feel Akutagawa squinting up at him from his place on his shoulder. Which he’s ignoring. Still.
Chuuya swats Dazai’s arm. “How does he not know what Mario Kart is?”
“How is that my fault?”
“I would’ve thought— No, y’know what, never mind. C’mon, tiger, you’re gonna learn today.”
“Just the two of us?”
“Do we need any more?”
He can’t hold back a smile at the familiar words, used for such a silly reason. He’d said it more as a joke, unsure if Akutagawa would humor him, or even recall it at this moment, but he said it back so reflexively, a natural response. In the dim room, Akutagawa’s eyes glint with the light of the character select screen.
Chuuya’s baffled voice cuts in, and Atsushi leans back in surprise, feeling awkward.
“You do know you can only play solo or in pairs, right? This is Double Dash. We went over this.”
“Shh,” Dazai presses a finger to Chuuya’s face. “They’re locking in. Give them a moment.”
Chuuya slaps his hand away, then elbows him in the side. “What the fuck does that even mean?”
Dazai sighs in disappointment, rubbing at the imminent bruise with a pout. “It means, Chuuya, that this is going to be really good.”
It’s bad.
Akutagawa is only barely recovered from being shit-faced, frankly, and Atsushi’s never played any racing game, let alone Mario Kart Double Dash. Needless to say, they lost. Dead last behind all the CPUs, while their superiors—in multiple respects, presently—loudly gloat as Bowser, driving, and Peach, ready with a spare shell, do victory laps.
By the time they drag Petey Piranha and Yoshi over the finish line for the last time, Atsushi thinks their cart should have just exploded, or maybe sunk into the sand for good.
“So, are you two ready for Peach Beach?”
“There’s more?!” Atsushi’s head whips to the side to stare at Dazai’s giddy face in abject horror.
“Oh, dear, sweet, Atsushi-kun,” he roughly pats his face. “That was just the first of four tracks in the first cup!”
Chuuya cackles. “And this is on baby mode, too!”
Atsushi groans. Propped up against his side, a still rather clingy, drunken Akutagawa jabs his leg with his controller with a sleepy glare.
In the end, the other three really do pass out on him. Or, Chuuya knocks out with his head thrown back, and Dazai, glancing over to Akutagawa lightly snoring on Atsushi’s shoulder since the start of this round, shrugs and wraps himself around Chuuya, legs over his lap, and seems content enough to rest for once as well.
In his sleep, Chuuya pulls Dazai closer before relaxing again. Atsushi looks back to the screen, away from them, moving as little as possible to avoid jostling his partner. Technically, they only finished the first track in the fourth cup, where he and Akutagawa lost to them, again. Like every other time. Though when Akutagawa first started to doze on him at the end of the second cup, Atsushi had taken over driving, and had managed to beat some of the CPUs a few times since.
He glances to the pair on his right, then down to their controllers, fallen and forgotten on the ground.
He could do something so funny for when everyone wakes up.
(When they do, Chuuya is outraged that Atsushi had stolen their win just because they’d passed out, and Dazai appears conflicted; agitated that they’d been made to lose even one cup, but proud that Atsushi would do something “so underhanded.”
None of that matters to him though, when Akutagawa, tired and nursing a hangover, can only just smother a laugh, still sticking close to his side.)