Work Text:
Atsushi was curious about a lot of things. Like why Dazai always pushed all his work onto him when he was fully capable of doing it himself. Or why he always seemed to come into work late, or why his co-workers were so quick to brush off any worrying behaviour from Dazai, like all his suicide attempts.
…
Maybe he was just curious about Dazai. But who wasn’t! Despite him being in the agency for over a year and going through hell and back (quite literally) with them, he still wasn’t able to figure out Dazai.
But today Atsushi was curious about something much less distressing. Atsushi had noticed a small picture frame Dazai had placed on his desk sometime recently. He hadn’t been able to get a good look at what the picture placed in it was, but he’d tried to get a good glance whenever he went over to Dazai’s desk.
Dazai had finally left his desk unoccupied. He and Kunikida had gone out on a mission, pretty low stakes. They’d recently found a small scale gun smuggling ring that needed to be shut down, so they’d sent Dazai and Kunikida out to handle it.
Atsushi took this as the perfect chance to be nosy and snoop around Dazai’s desk for a minute (can you really blame him? He’s a detective after all, it's in his nature to be nosy). Dazai wouldn’t catch him in the act and Kunikida wasn’t there to yell at him for “invading Dazai’s privacy”.
Atsushi went up to Dazai’s desk to look at the picture in the frame. The frame was a basic rectangular frame made out of a dark copper wood. The picture was of Dazai holding a little girl with shoulder length brown hair, whose head had fallen on Dazai's shoulder as she fell asleep. The angle indicated Dazai had taken the picture himself briefly.
Atsushi very quickly put the picture frame back down and backed away from his desk.
Ranpo and Dazai:
Ranpo: Atsushi’s noticed the picture you put on your desk
Dazai: oh really
Dazai: what’d he think of it
Ranpo: he picked up the frame
Ranpo: looked at it for a moment
Ranpo: and then put it back down and quickly backed away from your desk
Dazai: lol
Dazai: i hope he asks me about it so i can also cause psychic damage to kunikida
“Dazai-san?”
Dazai looked up from his computer (which he hadn’t actually been doing anything at) when Atsushi spoke. It had been a couple days since Atsushi had finally taken a look at the picture frame on his desk, and he’d been waiting for the day he’d finally ask him about it. “Yes Atsushi-kun?”
“Uhm, I was just wondering… Who’s the little girl in the picture on your desk?” Atsushi nervously asked, hesitance seeping into his voice. Kunikida also (regretfully) looked up from his own computer, intrigued by what Atsushi was talking about as he hadn’t noticed the picture frame on Dazai’s desk, nor would he have exactly cared if he had noticed.
“Awfully nosy, aren’t you Atsushi-kun!” Dazai teased, continuing his sentence before Atsushi could splutter out his apologies, “if you must know, she's my daughter!”
If Kunikida had been holding a pen, it certainly would've been shattered by the force of the shock that went through him and Atsushi. Atsushi was rendered speechless, but Kunikida certainly wasn’t.
Dazai watched as Kunikida looked over at his desk and looked at the photo in the frame before beginning to aggressively question him.
“Dazai, you’re 23, why would you adopt a kid?!” Kunikida ranted, Dazai letting him go on for a few minutes before interrupting him.
“A bold assumption you’re making there kunikida! She’s fully related to me! Can’t you see the resemblance?” He grabbed the picture frame and held it up closer to Kunikida. Kunikida had to admit he could see the resemblance. The little girl was like a miniature version of Dazai.
But as Kunikida actually took the time to look at the picture, the girl looked as if she couldn’t be younger than 3. “But Dazai, she looks like she’s at least 3 years old!”
“She’s turning 5 in December!” Dazai very happily proclaimed, spinning around in his chair as he ignored the looks of stunned shock from his co-workers.
“But that would’ve made you 18 when she was born!”
“Putting good use to those ex math teacher skills there aren’t you, kunikida-kun!”
“Dazai-san, respectfully, who would want to have a kid with you?”
“Atsushi-kun! Your words wound me!” He dramatically leaned back in his chair and threw his hand against his forehead.
Kunikida rubbed the inner corners of his eyes in frustration, sighing as he looked back up at Dazai. “He has a point Dazai, you’re always flirting with every woman you see, who would be willing to have a child with you? Did the mother just drop the kid on you?”
“Of course not! We’ve been happily married for years!” Dazai joyfully beamed. For the third time in the past 15 minutes, Kunikida would’ve broken another pen had he been holding one. Kunikida decided he’d had enough of questioning Dazai for the day and went back to his work.
Atsushi had made the terrible decision of asking a single question about Dazai’s daughter.
“Oh I'm so glad you asked!” Dazai then began to go on and on about every little thing about her.
Maybe Atsushi should start being less curious, especially when it comes to Dazai.