Work Text:
When Dazai shuffled over to the edge of his bed to check the clock, the time was 5:32. He sighed quietly, rolling onto his back and resting his eyes on the ceiling. Another sleepless night. That was no surprise. Well, he thought. Might as well organise my tunnels while I'm here. Let's see...
His brain was currently operating in seven tunnels - trains of thought, most people would call them, but that felt too straightforward and simple a name for the intricately-mapped and regulated routes that daily occupied Dazai's mind. The first was working on strategies for the mission he had predicted he was going to be sent on the next day - that one could stay; it was still working at maximum efficiency, and was sticking to the central topic just fine. The second was dwelling on ways to annoy Kunikida when he eventually got up and came into work. That one could stay, too, although with minor adjustments such as including a conditional into the coming to work clause.
He sorted through the other five in the same way. By the end of it, three had been kept, two tweaked, one rehauled, and one just plain scrapped. He decided to close his eyes again, just in case... Six tunnels was the closest he had got to a complete shut-down in months, so it seemed logical that if he was going to sleep at all, it would be now.
After exactly five hours - he spared a glance to the clock, which, unsurprisingly, said 10:32, exactly as he had predicted - he dragged himself out of bed. Kunikida wasn't going to annoy himself, and he doubted his not-so-loyal mentee would do him the favour of annoying the idealist for him.
"Good morning, everyone~" Dazai chirped as he walked through the ADA doors. He stopped for a moment on the threshold, fully prepared to fend off an infuriated Kunikida, but... the man seemed not to have noticed him arrive, sitting at his desk and typing away only 3% more furiously than he did on days when Dazai decided not to annoy him - in other words, when Dazai didn't show up to work. Which was 447% less than he would usually be on mornings when Dazai was as late as he was now. Hm.
He strolled up to his desk, and was about to sit down in the chair when he heard a startled hiss. He spun around and stared down at the seat.
What was a cat doing there? A fluffy, brown, oddly well-nourished and groomed, tabby cat, in fact... He took a cautious step closer.
It didn't look like Natsume - that was a good sign. He turned around to check the rest of the agency, and noticed the way they all ducked quickly back to their work, as if they had been watching him. He noted Atsushi... The cat couldn't be him either. And it wasn't ginger enough to be Chuuya - a possibility that rose surprisingly quickly to mind after that one incident where Chuuya really had been transformed to a cat.
Dazai looked back at the animal that was still sitting in his chair, and shrugged. The thing didn't give any signs of moving any time soon, so he just shoved it off and sit down in its place before it could jump back up.
What the genius hadn't accounted for - he put it down to his gross lack of sleep - was the cat deciding it might as well sit on him, since he was sitting on its chair. He certainly hadn't expected the brown ball of fur to actually look cute as it curled up on his lap and rolled its tail up to sleep.
With a sigh, he looked up for the last time to see if any of his coworkers were watching. They seemed to have all returned to their work, so Dazai reluctantly decided to let the cat be.
After half an hour or so, he surprised everyone by vehemently declaring - in these exact that words - that "I'm never, ever letting a cat near me during work hours again." Immediately, the more inquisitive members of the agency - namely, Atsushi, Kenji and the Tanizaki siblings - popped up to see what the problem was.
There was a moment of silence, before Atsushi finally plucked up the courage to ask, "Who are you, and what have you done with Dazai-san?"
"Whatever Dazai's doing, it's not worth watching," Kunikida called from across the room, not looking up from his work. "Everyone, back to work."
Dazai frowned. Something should probably be done about that. He fired up a fifteenth tunnel - they had increased since he had walked through the agency doors - to work out how to make Kunikida loosen up, if such a feat was even possible.
He hadn't accounted for Atsushi calling, "No, Kunikida-san, this is something you should definitely see for yourself." His beloved mentee, saying no to someone? And brought out by this - that was almost insulting.
That seemed to perk the idealist up. He came over, notebook in one hand, pushing his glasses up on his nose and he attempted to find out what the matter was. "Yes?"
"Okay, so, please don't have a heart attack," Atsushi said gently, stepping aside. "But-"
"Who are you, and what have you done with Dazai?" Kunikida roared, after seeing the few sheets of paper on Dazai's desk... Actually filled in.
By now, Fukuzawa had emerged from his office to find out what the commotion was about. He walked over to them. "What's going on? Kunikida?" He turned to the most responsible one of the group for answers.
"D-Dazai-" the poor man stammered out. He clutched his notebook tighter to his chest. Apparently it was too much for him, because he just ended up pointing to Dazai's desk.
Fukuzawa raised an eyebrow. "And this is...?"
A smug voice piped up from the other side of the room - Ranpo's, of course. "Dazai got too comfortable with Rakkī on his lap, and slipped into actually working without realising it." He beamed at the acknowledging nod Fukuzawa gave him, then went back to sucking his lollipop.
"Rakkī?" Fukuzawa looked round, his ears practically twitching at the promise of a cat. Spotting it on the floor, he bent down to scoop it up, looking down at it in his arms with a gentle smile. "Ah, so that's where you were... Living up to your name, I see."
He lifted his head again, seeming to remember the rest of the agency members still loitering. "Ah." He cleared his throat, shifting the cat gently into one arm. "Good work, Dazai-kun." With his free hand, he ruffled Dazai's hair. "The rest of you, back to work." He disappeared back into his office, Rakkī purring softly in his arms.
Dazai stared after him for a moment, eleven of his seventeen tunnels temporarily shutting down in shock. He... Fukuzawa ruffled his hair. Like a child. And what was that weird, soft warmth building in his chest?
He caught himself in the middle of a yawn, and found his legs moving as if on autopilot to his favourite couch. Suddenly, he was tired. Maybe it was a side-effect of the failure of eleven of his tunnels, but he had successfully rebooted all of them by now, and the drowsiness still remained.
As he flopped down onto the pillows, Kunikida called out from his desk, "Dazai, it's not lunch break yet." His voice, Dazai measured as being 17% open irritation, 21% repressed irritation, and 24% exhaustion, with the remaining 38% consisting of something the genius was too tired to try assessing.
"But Kunikidaaa," he whined in response, not opening his eyes (he'd closed them? He hadn't noticed). "I did my work!"
A sigh. And then, surprisingly, "Fine. But don't disturb anyone."
Dazai let himself smile slightly at that. His eyes stayed closed, and he rested quietly for a few minutes.
But after ten minutes - again, exactly - have passed without any signs of dropping off to sleep, he opened his eyes and sat up with a sigh. And a pout, in case anyone was watching.
"Kunikidaaaa," he whined again.
"What?" God bless the man, he still answers every time.
"I'm not falling asleeeep." He kicked his feet like a child having a tantrum.
Kunikida looked up for a moment to give him a withering look - 22% open, 16% repressed irritation - before something in the doorway seemed to catch his eye. Dazai almost missed the slight twitch of the idealist's lips before he sighed. "Another episode, Atsushi?"
Dazai followed his eyes to see a large white tiger slinking into the room. His face lit up. "Byakko!" He didn't, however, cross the room towards the tiger. Previous experiences had shown him just how jumpy Atsushi could become in that form, and he didn't want to become the victim of another slash-and-run from the anxious big cat.
His eyes drifted to Kunikida again, and he lifted an eyebrow in a silent question.
Kunikida paused his typing for a moment to explain, as the tiger took small, padded steps towards them. "I suppose it hasn't happened any other time you've been with us, given your tendency for slacking, but the boy's been having trouble controlling his ability lately. Yosano-sensei has informed me that it's a side effect of the pressure of his recent solo missions. She also said it's the most healthy way of relieving the stress - for now at least. In the meantime, please try to avoid him unless he approaches you on his own; he gets grumpy, and I would rather not have to deal with an ill-tempered tiger lad."
Dazai was on the edge of saying something cheeky in reply, when Byakko surprised him by walking right up to the arm of the couch that his head had been leaning against, and unceremoniously flopping down next to it as if he had been hit by a tranquilizer dart.
"Wha-" Dazai began, before Kunikida hastily shushed him. He stared at Byakko for a moment; the tiger had closed his eyes, curling himself up as Rakkī had on Dazai's lap, and was now chuffing quietly.
There was something... calming... about Byakko's chuffs. Very calming, actually. So calming that Dazai didn't notice as one by one, his tunnels began to power off. Sixteen... Fifteen...
Eight...
Seven...
Six...
He awoke with a start, to the sound of a large crash just outside the door. He sat up, instantly alert. A new, minor tunnel fired up to tell him a blanket and the smallest pillow he had ever seen had just fallen to the floor, but most of his eighteen focused on whatever was outside.
The eighteenth tunnel told him that the office population currently consisted of only him and Ranpo, and that Ranpo wasn't going to leave his desk - or his sweets - anytime soon, so Dazai got up instead to go and investigate.
Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn't Yosano chasing after a giggling Kenji, who was holding what might have been a perfect oyama magnolia tree before it had been smashed into a nearby wall.
Kenji bolted to the door, obviously not noticing Dazai standing in the way, and jumped into him. The tree fell to the floor, and the boy winced - Kunikida was not going to be happy about the amount of soil they'd have to clean up.
Kenji looked up at the man who was blocking his way, and smiled. "Dazai-san! This is for you," he said, pointing to the mess on the floor.
"Oh?" Dazai chuckled, used to Kenji's random spontaneous 'gifts' by now. "Thank you, Kenji-kun! I'll make sure to put it somewhere." He ruffled Kenji's hair. The boy beamed up at him, before scurrying off, probably to find Kyouka and tell her about it.
"He adores you, you know."
Dazai didn't need to turn around to recognise Yosano behind him - indulging her bad habit of trying to surprise people again. He gave a noncommittal hum.
She chuckled. "He does. Aside from his 'fancy hat man', you're his biggest role model."
"That slug? A role model?" Dazai scoffed. "A chihuahua would make a better role model. A real slug would! That chibi doesn't deserve Kenji-kun."
Though Yosano didn't laugh again, her amusement was audible enough in her voice. "You love the boy just as much as he loves you, admit it."
"Mmph." Dazai made a noncommittal noise. He was tired, so instead of scouting around the question and finding the answer surreptitiously as he usually did, he asked outright. "What's the point of this...?"
"Does there need to be a point in everything?" Receiving a look from Dazai, she rolled her eyes. "For everyone else's actions, I mean. Not all of us are creepy geniuses like you and Ranpo-kun. I swear, we're being overrun," she added as a side note.
Dazai's reply was automatic. " 'Overrun' would imply a majority takeover, and Ranpo and I make up 18.18% of the agency's population."
She snorted. "Exactly. But my 'point' was that you're good with kids, that's all. And adults-"
"Yosano-sensei! I never knew you were a good per-"
"-when you're not trying to manipulate, annoy, confuse, upset, anger, or mess with them," she finished evenly.
Dazai pouted. "I take it back."
"Like that means anything." She rolled her eyes, then looked around, and froze. A moment later, she spotted Kenji down the other end of the corridor. Her eyes widened. "Kenji-" Upon hearing his name, the boy promptly disappeared, leaving Yosano to give chase once more, and Dazai was left alone.
He watched after her for a moment before shrugging, and walking back into the office.
His plan was to direct himself back to his couch and lay there for the rest of the day - maybe sing his suicide song, since he hadn't filled his Annoy Kunikida quota of the day - but on entering the room, his attention was immediately diverted.
To his desk, of all places.
Because there, lying passively on top of it, without a care in the world, was... a crêpe?
A crêpe.
Dazai approached it cautiously. It wasn't wired, was it? Maybe it was laced. What with, he couldn't be bothered trying to figure out. The point was, it was obviously some sort of trap.
He inched towards it. I mean, it's a trap, he reasoned in his twentieth tunnel. And I want to die. Why wouldn't I approach it?
It totally didn't have anything to do with the fact that it seemed to be cherry-flavoured - his favourite. A fact that nobody knew except...
Dazai whirled around and marched over to Ranpo's desk. If you have a question, ask Ranpo, as the agency's saying went. He paid no attention to the fact that the detective was currently immersed in the pages of a large, neatly-typed manuscript; it looked like the work of a typewriter, which meant it was one from Ranpo's author friend, Poe. Which meant he could stand to have it on hold for a moment, because he was given a story weekly and Dazai's problem was much more important.
"Ranpo-san~" he trilled, leaning over the man's desk, supporting himself with his hands in the two convenient places absent of sweet wrappers.
Ranpo put up a hand. "One momen- It's the gardener." He opened a drawer and put the manuscript in it, muttering to himself as he did so. "14 pages, that's a record for Poe-kun... 2 pages after he was introduced, though, hm. Not so good."
Finally, he looked up. When he met Dazai's eyes, he smirked. "What?"
"Ranpo-san, tell me what's going oooon," Dazai whined. He didn't bother specifying the 'what', since Ranpo would obviously know.
The detective didn't disappoint.
"No."
Okay, maybe he did.
Dazai sighed. "I'll buy you some strawberry uirō from the shop down the street for you when you come back from your next case."
"It doesn't count if you steal Mr Fancy Hat's wallet for it," was all Ranpo said.
Dazai cursed mentally, and fired up a twenty-third tunnel specifically to deal with the problem. What could he use to barter? "Well how about-"
"Fine, sure, I'll tell you," Ranpo said with a chuckle. When Dazai only gaped at the sudden concession, he shrugged. "I'm in a good mood. And that's the whole point of today anyway."
"What...?"
Ranpo swiped his arm across his desk, effectively dooming the sweet wrappers to a long and painful life on the floor. He leaned forward on his elbows and looked up at Dazai with that signature smirk that never failed to coax out one of Dazai's own.
Dazai noted the detective's expression, and drew his deductions. This is either going to very bad, or very good. He raised his eyebrows. "What, no glasses?"
"It doesn't take Super Deduction to figure this one out." There it was, as predicted - that smug tone. The smirk grew, as well. "Don't tell me you couldn't figure it out?"
Dazai hummed. "Indulge me." Meanwhile, his brain was racing.
Kunikida hadn't lost it when he came in late... The president had 'let a cat go' that just happened to decide it liked his desk... Atsushi had called Byakko to help him sleep... He'd woken up with a tiny blanket and a pillow under his head, just about A6 paper size... Along with the various gifts, which he presumed they were...
"Mm. Fine." Ranpo leant back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head. He closed his eyes as if he had lost interest, but he continued. "Kunikida found your birthday when he was looking through your files. Everyone figured you didn't like it mentioned, since you've never pointed it out before, so they decided on this weird patch job birthday celebration."
Ranpo paused. "Now I'm tired. You could have done that yourself. Happy Birthday, I guess." And with that, he pulled his hat forward over his eyes, and seemed to go to sleep.
Dazai walked out of the office a few minutes later in a bit of a daze.
After all of the confusion of the day, he found his tunnels out of order, but instead of sorting them, he just booted up a new one. A temporary one, which really, coming from the No Longer Human ability user, shouldn't have taken up so much space.
Namely, how am I going to repay them?
He was still wondering about it when his phone rang minutes later. He picked it out of his pocket, checked the ID, and answered. "Hello there, slug~" he cooed. "Miss me that badly that you had to call?"
An eavesdropping passerby might have thought there was a dog on the other end, from the growl Chuuya gave in retaliation to his ex-partner's 'question'. Fitting. Dazai would've commented on it, had Chuuya not then surprised him by gathering himself and answering civilly, "That's not why I called."
"Oh?" Dazai was interested now. "Then why did you call, pray tell."
"I was going to say... I..."
When a moment passed without further elaboration, Dazai gave a small noise of encouragement.
Chuuya took a deep breath. "I... I don't really..." He hesitated.
Dazai, of course, took this opportunity to tease him. "Oh, has chibi's mental state regressed back to where his height is, hm? Is that why you're stumbling like a toddler over whatever this is?"
"You- I'm not doing this." Chuuya hang up.
Dazai let himself have a good laugh before he continued back to his house.
You know, he thought. This hasn't been such a bad day.