Disclaimer: Not mine.
Warning: This is yaoi. And silly, verging on crack.
Summary: Shiyuma is a family man. But he'd rather be out killing Soviets.
When Sena was eight, he named his mommy panda doll Sena-mama and his daddy panda doll Shou-papa, and Shiyuma decided Mihae had to be stopped.
"Dear," he said one day after dinner, when Sena had gone to the nearby park with Shougo, "I think maybe this is too far."
"You're being paranoid, Shi-chan," said Mihae. She knew he hated it when she called him that. "Frankly, I think Sena could do a lot worse than Shougo-kun."
"Shougo's a punk."
"Zenmei was a punk. Shougo is a nice boy."
"So you're all right with not having grandchildren?"
"They could adopt."
"You don't want grandchildren of your own?"
"Dear, you know that I always fall asleep after you and wake up before you."
Shiyuma changed strategies. "Shougo's grades are terrible."
"Only because he doesn't try."
"Is that the kind of boy you want for our Sena? One who doesn't try?"
"Shougo's very smart, Shi-chan. He scored in the top ten percentile on the practice high school entrance exam."
At ten? Shit. "That's even worse. Do you want our son to grow up with an inferiority complex?"
Mihae stopped folding laundry and turned to face Shiyuma. She didn't say anything, but she didn't have to, because the look on her face did it for her.
Shiyuma made a tactical retreat.
Shougo seemed to take his Mihae-appointed position of future son-in-law very seriously. He walked Sena home every day, and if he couldn't, he always called ahead to let them know. Once, when they both stayed after class until it was dark, Shougo even called from the pay phone and asked for someone to come and pick Sena up because he didn't think Sena "should be out after dark without an adult." Mihae swooned like a girl and Shiyuma ended up walking to the elementary school to pick up his son.
Sena himself seemed to have no problems with his mother's apparent plans for him.
"Sena," tried Shiyuma once, "don't you, er, want to make other friends?"
Sena shook his head. "Uh-uh."
Shiyuma's eye started to twitch. He put his hand over it. Sena gave him a strange look. "You should have lots of friends."
"Shou-nii is enough," said Sena firmly. "Shou-nii takes care of Sena."
Sena was talking in the third person? Why? "Has he…he hasn't said anything about getting married, has he?"
Sena shook his head. Shiyuma breathed a little easier, at least until Sena continued, "Shou-nii says Shou-nii and Sena should just live together for a while." Sena's voice took on a pedantic tone like he was repeating something he'd heard. "Rushing into a marriage is certain disaster. Wait and find happiness in patience."
His son was a fortune cookie. "That's…that's probably wise."
"Shou-nii is very smart."
Shiyuma was getting tired of hearing that. "But Sena, didn't you already promise Zenmei and Koumei and—" Jesus Christ, was he actually having to go back and count? "—Tesshou that you'd marry them?"
Sena didn't even look embarrassed. "Sena asked Shou-nii. Shou-nii says Sena shouldn't worry because Shou-nii will take care of it."
Shou-nii should be in Human Resources, was what Shiyuma was thinking. He'd never imagined a ten-year-old could come across as vaguely threatening by eight-year-old proxy.
Then Sena's expression faltered.
Somewhat apprehensively, he said, "Guri Guri would be really mad, though."
Who the fuck was Guri Guri? "I…I think Shougo can probably take him."
Sena frowned, but said, somewhat dubiously, "Un."
Shougo himself didn't behave in any particular way, other than being almost obsessively overprotective and inhumanly patient. If it bothered him to have an eight-year-old hanging off his arm, he didn't show it. He referred to Shiyuma as Uncle and Mihae as Aunt, and genuinely seemed to think of himself as Sena's oniisan.
Then Shiyuma looked closer.
He noticed little things. Like how Shougo seemed to intensely dislike anyone else coming physically close to Sena, though he never showed his displeasure except through a slight frown. Or how he was selective about who he let talk to Sena—girls were OK, boys Sena's size or smaller were all right, but anyone taller than Sena got a glare that sent the other brat running for cover. And how Shougo would always have an eye on Sena, whatever he was doing, wherever he was, to the point that it was almost disturbing to see in a ten-year-old.
Shiyuma couldn't make up his mind. Was Shougo an overprotective brother-figure or a controlling sociopath? Decisions, decisions.
"Shougo-kun," he said at one point, "don't you want to hang out with boys your own age?"
Shougo, who'd been waiting patiently for Sena to get his coat from his room, looked directly at him. "Uncle, I know what you're doing."
Don't pull a knife, Shiyuma told himself.
"Please don't worry," said Shougo. "I'll always take very good care of Sena."
What the fuck is wrong with you? Shiyuma wanted to shout. Instead he arranged his face into a mildly friendly expression and lifted his newspaper. "Very nice."
Problem was, Shiyuma couldn't really see a clear way out. Shougo's mother was a housewife and Shougo's father held a senior position in an IT company in that city, which made a job transfer difficult to engineer. Neither were there any close relatives living near any prestigious schools that offered scholarships. Shiyuma really didn't want to take a hit out on a ten-year-old, but he was running out of options.
"Shi-chan, just stop," Mihae told him. "You're going to give yourself another ulcer."
Finally, Shiyuma threw both caution and ulcer medicine to the wind. The weekend after he caught Sena introducing the panda doll family's new adopted Chinese babies, Shiyuma spent Saturday evening downing a bottle of Starka and hacking into the secure networks of Shougo's father's IT company's satellite branch in Sapporo. By one o'clock that morning, Shiyuma was praying to the porcelain god and the IT company's secure files were so fucked up that within hours a senior administrator from the home office was being indefinitely transferred over with no notice to do damage control and on-site monitoring.
Sena cried for days.
"I can't believe you," said Mihae to him at one point. "Look at what you've done! Sena's going to cry himself sick. And Shougo was devastated! Honestly, I'm almost ashamed of you!"
Shiyuma wanted to feel bad. He really did. But for some reason, all that came out was smug.
