A/N: Yo folks, how goes it? Happy Valentine's Day, those of you celebrating, and to those of you not, Happy Thursday, because, well, why not? Either way, you get another chapter of Capt Mis. grins.
Now then. There are 2 massive notes before the chapter, one in the Words To Watch Out For section, and one in the More Of A Note Than Anything section. You don't necessarily have to read the one in the "Words" section, but I would recommend reading the one in the "More Of " section, to avoid confusion later, especially if you're familiar with Bruce Lee's films.
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DON'T READ IT AND THEN SEND ME A REVIEW/PM/ETC COMPLAINING THAT I FUCKED UP THE FILM TITLES, I'M GOING TO IGNORE YOU.
…I'm just sayin'.
Disclaimer: Like I really need to be reminded of that lamentable fact….
Words To Watch Out For:
Jeet Kune Do (also known as Jeet Kun Do, JKD, and since 2004, Jun Fan Jeet Kune Do): translates as "the Way of the Intercepting Fist" (eh…more or less). I don't have the proper words to explain it, so I'll leave that up to Bruce Lee, JKD's founder, with help from Wikipedia: "I have not invented a "new style," composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from "this" method or "that" method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see "ourselves". . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organized institution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don't, and that is that. There is no mystery about my style. My movements are simple, direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity. Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothing artificial about it. I always believe that the easy way is the right way. Jeet Kune-Do is simply the direct expression of one's feelings with the minimum of movements and energy. The closer to the true way of Kung Fu, the less wastage of expression there is. Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back."
Gung-Fu: according to the literature at my disposal, this is the (Cantonese) Chinese word for "Kung-fu."
More Of A Note Than Anything:
The Big Boss/Fist of Fury: Okay—stay with me on this one, 'cause it gets confusing. Older readers familiar with Bruce Lee's movies may know these 2 films in particular by other names: Fists of Fury (i.e., The Big Boss) and The Chinese Connection (i.e., Fist of Fury). When The Big Boss was sent to its American distributor, the plan was to re-title it The Chinese Connection, to invoke a comparison to The French Connection, which had come out prior and involved, as The Big Boss did, drug trafficking. Fist of Fury's title was going to remain almost exactly the same, except for the addition of an extra "s" so that it would become Fists of Fury. But something happened between the import from China to the US, and the names got switched, so that The Big Boss became Fists of Fury and Fist of Fury became The Chinese Connection. To this day, there is massive confusion between the two, although neurotic perfectionists (points to self for reference) refer to the 2 films by their original titles.
the (in)famous "saw-in-the-head" shot, The Big Boss: The Big Boss was Bruce Lee's bloodiest movie, and this shot is the most famous shot to never make it to the mainstream cut. The print is said to be lost, but 2 screenshots remain, one from about a 45 degree angle and the other from the side, which is more gruesome and which the more adventurous may see on the Wikipedia page concerning The Big Boss; I've posted the link on my profile page for easy access.
Captain Miserable Finds the Greener Grass
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Chapter Thirty-Eight: Of Sickness and Kung-Fu
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Kids were gross.
Especially when the kid in question was sick.
A particularly nasty-sounding sneeze had Saitou sending Eiji a grossed-out look through the doorway of the boy's room.
"Oi," he said, "stop gettin' snot everywhere."
The kid sniffled loudly, making his guardian groan in complete revulsion.
"Sorry," Eiji croaked.
"That is so fuckin' disgusting," Saitou muttered.
Eiji had been sick for three days now. He'd begun feeling unwell at school after waking up with a sore throat. He'd felt so bad that by midday, the school had called Tokio at the museum and she'd left early to pick the boy up and take him home. When Saitou had arrived later that evening, it had been to news that Eiji had the flu, and Tokio had made a shit ton of soup, as well as bought about a year's supply of medications and vitamins that she'd since spent a great deal of time trying to shove down the boy's throat, not that Eiji was cooperating (secretly, Saitou was on Eiji's side—he didn't remember a whole lot about being sick as a kid, since it had happened so infrequently, but he did remember that medicine always tasted like shit).
Since then, Saitou had obligingly switched his schedule to working nights so he could stay with Eiji during the day while Tokio was at the museum. Hijikata hadn't been happy with the request, and Okita and Shinomori hadn't been exactly thrilled either to lose their nights, but the former didn't mind enough to deny the request and the latter weren't stupid enough to complain in front of Saitou.
Well, Shinomori wasn't.
Eiji had spent the last three days pretty much sprawled out on the fold-out couch (Saitou sort of felt like a prick for not having bought the kid a real bed yet; that thing had to be horribly uncomfortable when you were healthy, never mind being sick and achy everywhere), ill and miserable…and grossing Saitou out.
"How is the flu grosser than blood and gunshot wounds and knife wounds?" Tokio had asked, incredulous.
"That's totally different," he'd replied, shuddering as another hacking cough rang out through the apartment.
Tokio rolled her eyes.
"Baby," she muttered.
"Snot is disgusting," he insisted.
"Uh-huh," she said, obviously not buying his theory that sickness and getting the shit shot out of you were two very different things on the scale of levels of disgusting. "Whatever you say, Hajime."
Currently, Saitou was sitting in a chair just outside Eiji's door, dutifully standing by should the boy require something, and also making sure Eiji was still alive. This he did mostly by asking if the kid was still alive after every bout of hacking, since he wanted to avoid direct contact with Eiji as much as possible. He kinda felt bad for his ward, because the little guy was sick as a dog and hating life, but the threat of nausea kept him from helping out as much as he could have.
Sick people were just not his thing.
Eiji let out another painful and nasty round of coughing that left Saitou feeling queasy.
"Oi," he called, once he was sure he was able to speak, "still alive?"
"Unfortunately," Eiji weakly replied.
Saitou sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, caught between the scolding of his conscience that he should do something, and the protestations of his stomach that he so totally did not want to go in there. On the floor next to Saitou's chair, Hachi was sprawled out, his head on Saitou's left foot, attention centered on Eiji's room. The puppy whined whenever Eiji coughed, obviously distressed, though Saitou didn't know if it was because the boy was sick or if it was because of the volume of the coughing.
"Hajime-oji?" Eiji asked, voice reedy and stuffy, from his room.
"Yeah?"
"This sucks."
"Yeah," Saitou agreed.
Eiji groaned in reply, and for the billionth time in three days, Saitou supposed he ought to be doing more to help the kid out.
But sick people were so…ick.
More coughing had Saitou cringing again, and Hachi whining pitifully, ears pressed down on top of his head.
…Eeww.
He sighed and reached down to pat the puppy's head, and tried to remember what his mother always did for him when he'd been sick as a boy, but that hadn't occurred very much; he vaguely remembered having the chicken pox in kindergarten, and having a head cold once or twice, but other than that, he hadn't missed much school as a kid.
And as an adult he'd never been sick. Hungover, maybe, but never sick.
It took a while, but eventually he decided that having something to take Eiji's mind off his illness might help, and nothing was better for that than a movie. So he muscled the TV and DVD player into Eiji's room and after some debate, popped Enter the Dragon in. Perhaps not the most age-appropriate viewing choice for a ten-year-old, but Saitou had been horrified to learn that Eiji had no idea who Bruce Lee was.
"'Who's that?'" Saitou had repeated, staring at his ward as if the boy had grown a second head. "Are you kidding me? You never heard of Bruce Lee?"
"Nope," Eiji croaked. "He some movie guy?"
"He was only the greatest martial artist to ever live! How the fuck have you not heard of Bruce Lee?!"
"He does martial arts? Like karate?" Eiji asked.
"Did martial arts—he died in 1973," Saitou corrected.
"You remember that?"
"I wasn't alive then. I was born later."
"Wow, you're old, Hajime-oji."
"Shut up, little jack-off," Saitou muttered, whacking the back of the boy's head, though without as much force as he would have usually employed. "And he didn't do karate, he practiced Jeet Kune Do."
"What's that?"
"A form of Chinese Gung-Fu that he created."
Eiji looked taken aback by this information.
"He made up a martial art?" he asked, surprised.
"Yeah, you're totally watching Enter the Dragon," Saitou decided.
And that was how Tokio found them when she got home: Saitou and Eiji and Hachi were on the fold-out couch, guardian and ward side by side and puppy curled up next to Eiji, watching Bruce Lee and Han the Villain try to outwit each other in the climactic final showdown in the Hall of Mirrors.
"What are you watching?" she asked.
"Shh—Bruce Lee," Eiji ordered without looking at her.
Tokio raised an eyebrow.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"Shh," Saitou ordered, also without looking at her.
She watched them, hands on her hips, for several moments, before going over to the TV and turning it off, then crossing her arms over her chest and turning back to them.
They were watching her in horror.
"You did not," Saitou said after a pregnant pause, "just turn off Enter the Dragon."
Tokio's expectant expression promptly morphed into one of outrage.
"Saitou Hajime! I can't believe you showed that movie to a ten-year-old!"
"He didn't know who Bruce Lee was!" Saitou protested.
"That movie is completely inappropriate for Eiji!" Tokio shot back.
"Oi, I fast forwarded through the inappropriate parts," Saitou immediately defended.
She sent him a flat look that told him just how much that information comforted her.
"Tokio-oba!" Eiji whined. "Come on! It was almost over!"
"See? He liked it," Saitou said.
"I don't care!" Tokio snapped, throwing her hands up into the air. "How could you be so irresponsible?!"
"I made sure he didn't see anything he shouldn't have," Saitou said.
"He shouldn't have seen any of it!"
"Oh come on! The worst that happened was that a couple women flashed their tits for like a second—"
"Hajime!" Tokio shouted, appalled.
"What?" he asked, "I fast forwarded through that part."
"He is not watching the end of that movie, and he certainly isn't going to see any of the others," Tokio declared, her voice leaving no room for argument, "or I will throw them all out."
Saitou stared at her in pure, unadulterated horror.
"The hell you'll throw them out!" he bellowed, standing. "That's a fuckin' deal breaker right there, woman! I'd let you use my Kurosawa DVDs for target practice before I'd let you toss out any of my Bruce Lee flicks!"
"And if you're smart, you won't turn that into a possibility," Tokio replied, completely unperturbed, before she turned and walked out of the room.
Hachi, who had been awakened by the arguing, leapt off the bed and trotted out after her, apparently intent on saying hello and getting petted by his mistress.
"Man," Eiji said after a moment. "She told you."
"She did not," Saitou grumbled, scowling. He looked over his shoulder at the boy. "You're watchin' Fist of Fury tomorrow when she's not here."
"What about the end of that one?" Eiji protested, gesturing to the blank TV.
"Yeah yeah, that one too," Saitou assured impatiently. "Just don't say anything about it, or I'll strangle you."
"Right," Eiji said with a nod, either unconcerned by or perhaps used to death threats by now.
"Long as we understand each other," Saitou muttered.
He left the boy's room and found Tokio in the kitchen, inspecting the soup on the stove, Hachi sitting next to her, tail wagging as he watched her.
"How much did Eiji have today?" she asked.
"A couple bowls," he said, hands in his jeans pockets. "Mostly he drank a lot of water."
"Hm," was her reply. She placed the lid back on the pot and looked over at him, then raised an eyebrow. "Shouldn't you be dressed for work?"
"Not going in," he said.
Both her eyebrows went up this time.
"Not going in?" she repeated. "Why not?"
"Enter the Dragon was on," he replied, as if that should have been obvious, and she sent him a flat, disapproving look.
"You own the DVD, Hajime."
"So what? It's Enter the Dragon—you sit down and watch it to the end when you see it. It's a rule. For all his movies." he added with authority.
She rolled her eyes and turned to the sink to start washing the dishes he'd ignored in lieu of Bruce Lee.
"You're demented," she muttered.
"Feh—you're a girl, you wouldn't understand it," he grumbled. "Although you should, having taken karate. How you have no appreciation for the martial arts after taking one for only your entire life, I can't begin to understand."
"I have plenty of appreciation for martial arts," she replied snootily. "I just object to Eiji seeing those movies."
"He has video games more violent than what we were watching!" Saitou protested indignantly.
"He most certainly does not," Tokio replied.
Saitou opened his mouth to contest that, but Tokio beat him to it:
"The answer is no, Hajime. This is not negotiable."
He sent her back a sour look.
"He didn't know who Bruce Lee was," he muttered, in a voice that would have been petulant coming from anyone else.
"Then you should have picked your movies more wisely," she returned. "I wouldn't have objected to the documentary—which I know for a fact that you have."
If he'd been fifteen, he would have hated her guts for being so damn reasonable—as it was, he was mildly annoyed with her for thinking of something that, in all truth, had completely slipped his mind.
Still, as Saitou had already decided his course of action, he shrugged it off and the evening went on as usual, ending on a very good note when he and Tokio went to bed later.
As that wasn't necessarily unusual, he didn't think anything of it, and was still in a fairly good mood when he got up the next morning.
It wasn't until he was sure Tokio was gone and would not be back that he realized exactly how devious the woman truly was.
When he went to retrieve both Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury, he found that the spots that they and all his other Bruce Lee flicks had so long adorned were empty. And had a heart attack:
"What the fuck?!" he exploded, frantically shoving aside DVDs, sure that he was just looking in the wrong place even though he knew he wasn't.
"What happened?" Eiji asked.
Saitou didn't answer—in fact, he hadn't heard the question, not in the full-blown panic he was in.
It took several minutes (and a lot of deep, even breathing) to calm down and examine things rationally. It was hard, though: he'd literally spent years building that collection, and finding copies of Bruce Lee's early films had been extremely difficult, time-consuming and expensive—finding them with Japanese subtitles had been almost impossible, even with Okita helping him.
He hadn't been kidding when he'd said he'd have sacrificed all of his Kurosawa films (another collection which had been lovingly built over the years) before he'd allow a single one of his Bruce Lee flicks to be touched.
"Tokio hid them," he said finally, struggling for rational behavior.
And that had better be what had happened, he thought darkly, fully ready to end the relationship if she'd gone through with her threat to toss the movies out.
He'd quit smoking for her, he'd try to be nice for her, he'd do anything for her—but he would not stand for her throwing out those movies.
"Where'd she hide 'em?" Eiji asked.
Listen to the boy, he told himself.
"Don't know," he said, rising slowly. "Aren't too many places to hide things around here."
"Want me to help?" Eiji offered, apparently realizing that his guardian was struggling not to have a nervous breakdown in front of him.
"Easier if I do it myself," Saitou replied evenly, beginning to really—finally—calm down, now that he had a plan of action.
"Sure?"
"Yeah—watch some cartoons or something while I look. Shouldn't take too long."
Eiji shrugged, then coughed into his fist.
"Okay," he croaked, reaching for the remote.
Saitou grabbed it and turned the TV on.
"Keep your microbes away from my remote," he ordered, sending his ward a baleful (and slightly grossed out) look.
Eiji sent him a dark look in return but didn't say anything.
Saitou found some cartoons that Eiji liked and left those on, then, with Hachi at his heels, began hunting for his beloved collection (he kept the remote in his back pocket). And he was right—it only took an hour and a half of diligent, painstaking—perhaps even a tad maniacal, to be entirely honest—searching to find the movies.
When he found them, his heart finally climbed down from the middle of his throat. And when he saw that Tokio had taken the time to place them in plastic bags before hiding them under the kitchen sink, behind the cleaning products, he was almost inclined to forgive her for taking about a decade off his life expectancy.
Almost.
But not really. Maybe in a few years from now, he'd consider it.
Like…fifty. That sounded like a nice, fair amount of time.
He had to lean his forehead against the counter edge for a few minutes, wondering if he was going to be sick from the relief; Hachi, perhaps noticing that he wasn't quite himself, leaned his head on Saitou's thigh in what he decided to take as a show of doggie moral support. Then, once he was sure he wasn't going to hurl, he gave Hachi's head a firm pat of thanks, and then carefully removed the movies from their hiding spot and opened the bags to meticulously check them over and make sure that they were all right.
And if that sounds a little obsessive…clearly, the reader has failed to grasp the soul-crushing severity of the situation.
"Found 'em," he called, as soon as he was assured that his collection had been unharmed.
"Sweet!" Eiji said, then coughed horribly loud, in a way that had Saitou rethinking the whole not-going-to-be-sick thing in a big way.
They saw the last minute and a half of Enter the Dragon, then began watching Fist of Fury, Hachi once more joining them on the fold-out couch, this time laying down between them. It was between the two movies that Saitou remembered he hadn't called Tokio to remind her to take her Pill, so he did then, and lied through his teeth about what they were doing. Then he put in Fist of Fury, and he and the dog and the boy settled in to watch Bruce Lee kick some more ass.
They were halfway through it when Hachi's head suddenly came up, and he looked out the door of Eiji's room toward the front door, ears pointed toward it. Saitou immediately paused the movie and turned off the TV for good measure, in case it was a certain Bruce Lee-opposing little executive who he was going to have a long discussion with tonight when she got home about hiding his things from him.
Hm. Perhaps fifty years wouldn't be quite enough time.
The door opened to reveal Okita, who walked in as if he lived there, shut the door and removed his shoes and left them on the rack in the entry before stepping up into the apartment and ambling over to Eiji's room.
And despite the fact that Saitou had known Okita for basically their entire lives, his friend's audacity still had the power to occasionally astound him.
"Who the fuck invited you, asshole?" Saitou demanded when Okita walked into Eiji's room.
"Nice to see you too," Okita dryly replied, leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.
"Who said you could just walk into my apartment?"
"Door was open," Okita said with a shrug.
"That's not an invitation you dipshit," Saitou snarled, irritated.
"Well lock your door next time."
"I don't lock my door when I'm here."
"Which is how I knew you were home," Okita concluded cheerfully, and Saitou seriously thought about chucking the remote at his idiot friend's head.
"Yo Eiji," Okita said with a smile for the boy, and Saitou suddenly smiled evilly.
"Oi, Eiji," Saitou said, before the kid could return the greeting.
"Yeah?"
"Cough on him."
Okita's smile froze on his face; Eiji sent his guardian an incredulous look.
"What?"
"Cough on him," Saitou repeated, taking sadistic delight in the panicked expression on Okita's face.
"He's sick?" Okita asked; none of them had heard why Saitou had suddenly decided to ask for them to be switched to night duty, not that it was out of the ordinary for Saitou to make these sorts of decisions and then not bother to explain himself to them.
"That's right," Saitou said with a wide smirk. "The flu."
Okita paled and backpedaled out of the room, calling Saitou every filthy name he could think of, and several he made up on the spot. Saitou filed away about six that impressed him, for later use (possibly against Okita himself), and enjoyed his friend's reaction.
"See why you shouldn't just walk into people's houses, ahou?" he called.
"You fucking suck!" Okita raged from the kitchen.
"I didn't even cough on him," Eiji said, bewildered, as he looked back over at his guardian.
Saitou patted him on the head.
"When the threat's effective enough, you don't have to do anything," he replied, turning the TV back on.
Unfortunately, he spoke too soon; when Okita realized they were watching Fist of Fury, he hurriedly joined them, bringing a chair from the table on which to make himself comfortable, and fashioning himself a mask out of towels as protection against Eiji's germs.
"You look like a fucking retard," Saitou told him for the tenth time, hoping to nag his friend into going away.
To no avail:
"Shh—Bruce Lee," Okita ordered, never taking his eyes from the screen.
So Saitou gave up, because he wanted to enjoy the movie and because he supposed that as long as Okita was being quiet, he could deal with him.
At the end of the movie, both men looked over at Eiji to gauge his reaction. Eiji looked at first Saitou, then Okita, then looked back over at the screen.
"That was so cool," he said finally, and Okita cackled behind his mask.
"He's one of us!" he declared, and Saitou eyed him balefully.
"Why am I friends with you?" he muttered.
"So that Jeet Kune Do he made," Eiji began, "is that what he was doin' in the movie?"
"What he was doing was a flashier version," Saitou replied, taking the DVD out of the player and returning it to its case. "Jeet Kune Do is a sort of anything goes form—you use whatever works, and most of the time what works is something really simple and uncomplicated. But simple and uncomplicated isn't as cool as something flashy, so you don't see a lot of practical moves in Kung-Fu movies."
"Like when he used the nun-chucks in Enter the Dragon?" Eiji asked and Saitou nodded, pleased the boy had recognized the difference.
"Bruce Lee is the most influential martial artist of the twentieth century," Okita informed him. "He was the one who popularized Kung-Fu movies in the west. Plus, he was just fuckin' amazing."
"He could send a 235 pound guy 15 feet back with his one inch punch," Saitou said. "And he was a small man."
"He could not," Eiji immediately said, his disbelief clear. "That's impossible."
"Oh ye of little faith!" Okita crowed. "You gotta show him the documentary with the '64 Long Beach Championship footage, Haji."
"After he eats lunch," Saitou decided.
The two told Eiji more about Bruce Lee while he ate his lunch, which is what led to Saitou eventually demonstrating the two-finger pushup that Bruce Lee was rather famous for.
"Okay, I believe you could probably do a one handed pushup. But on top of just usin' one hand, you only use two fingers? You can't do pushups with just your thumb and pointer finger," Eiji adamantly insisted. "You'd break 'em!"
"You can do it," Okita insisted. "You just have to know what you're doing. And train like a beast."
"You train for pushups?" Eiji asked derisively, and Saitou whacked the back of his head.
"Idiot," he said. "Use your head—you train your body to be as excellent as possible. Yeah being able to do two-finger pushups is cool, but that's not the point—the point is that you're capable of the discipline that kind of thing takes."
Eiji rubbed his head and glared at his guardian, but it didn't have bite behind it, which meant the boy was listening.
Okita grinned, clearly amused by the interaction. "It's about power," he continued, picking up where Saitou had left off. "Power of the body, and power of the mind."
"The martial arts aren't just physical. Your state of mind is as important as the state of your body, if not more so." Saitou agreed.
"'Using No Way As Way; Having No Limitation As Limitation'," Okita recited solemnly. "That's the essence of Jeet Kune Do."
"You're only as capable as you think you are," Saitou added. "If you think something's impossible, it is, because you've closed yourself off to that possibility."
Eiji eyed him with polite disbelief, so Saitou rolled his eyes, got down and proceeded to make the boy's eyes almost bulge out of his head when he did the two-finger pushups.
"How'd you do that?!" he practically yelled.
"'Having No Limitation as Limitation'," Okita quipped, amused. "Haji and me decided a long time ago that that was a philosophy we could live with. To that end, we tried to emulate Bruce, who lived by that, as much as possible. He's as close to perfection as we'll ever get in the martial arts world."
"So he was a master?" Eiji asked.
"Nope," Saitou said with a sigh, plopping down into a chair. "He considered himself a student-teacher. He believed that he would never know everything there is to know about the martial arts, and that he was constantly learning and sharing that knowledge with those willing to take it at more than just face value."
"And that is why Bruce Lee is the greatest martial artist who ever lived," Okita concluded.
Eiji considered the two of them for a long while, then asked,
"Can we see that documentary now?"
"Finish your soup," Saitou ordered. "And don't suck it down, you'll make yourself sick."
"He's already sick."
"Hurl, asshat," Saitou snapped in annoyance.
Okita stayed until the end of the documentary, when Saitou decided his friend had imposed on his hospitality (abrupt as it was) for long enough. He then stashed the movies in their hiding place, fed Eiji again, and ordered the boy to get some sleep, then attended to all the things he'd ignored all day, so Tokio wouldn't accuse him of slacking off (or worse, figure out that he'd done more than just search for and find his collection), when she got home.
She was later today than usual, as this was his day off, an arrangement which suited him fine; he was able to clean up and do the dishes and start dinner (soba) before she walked in.
"Hey," she called when the door opened. "I'm home."
"Hey," he replied, inspecting the soba. "Welcome home."
"How was it today?" she asked, and he heard her shuffling what sounded like a lot of crap in the entry.
"As well as can be expected," he replied, just as the sound of something heavy falling was heard. He slowly looked over his shoulder towards the entry, frowning. "The hell was that?"
"Oh, a bunch of crap Kamatari shoved on me today," Tokio replied, sounding annoyed and a little muffled. "Apparently, he couldn't be bothered to do his job."
"Feh—like that's so unusual," he muttered, and Tokio laughed.
She left the entry and padded into the apartment and straight to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and kissing him.
"Miss me?" she asked, smiling up at him.
"Sure," he said, and she rolled her eyes and kissed him again.
"Thanks," she replied, letting go of him to inspect what was on the stove.
He gave her butt a light swat that she ignored in favor of groaning:
"Oh gods—I desperately need to teach you how to cook."
"What?" he asked defensively. "You like soba."
"Yes, like—not crave," she said, replacing the lid on the pot.
"Feh," was all he had to say on that.
She turned back to him and held out her arms.
"Back?" he asked, and she nodded, so he obligingly lifted her up and cracked it for her, and she sighed contentedly and wrapped her arms around his waist once he set her down.
"You are such a weird woman," he informed her, and she laughed into his shirt front.
"It feels good," she said.
"Yeah but not enough for most women to ignore how gross the sound of bones cracking sounds to them."
She shrugged and let her head drop back to look up at him.
"How's Eiji doing?"
"Okay—he still grosses me out, though." he added, and she rolled her eyes.
"And he says I'm the weird one," she muttered.
"Oi," he said, raising an eyebrow. "More respect."
And deciding that this was as good an opening as any, he continued:
"And speaking of respect, may I enquire as to the reason—which I am sure you have ready for me—why my Bruce Lee collection is sitting under the sink in plastic bags?"
For a second she just stared up at him in complete shock—clearly, she hadn't been expecting him to discover her treachery quite this quickly. Then she asked,
"You found them?"
"Yes," he said, surprised at just how calm he was. "After the longest hour and a half of my life."
She looked dismayed.
"It only took you an hour and a half to find them?"
He sent her an incredulous look.
"Was I playing some twisted game I didn't know about?" he asked. "Whaddaya mean 'It only took you an hour and a half to find them'?! Do you have any idea what I went through? I thought you'd thrown them out!"
"Oh stop," she scoffed.
"Oi! It took me years to find all those movies!" he said, outraged.
"And you'd have tossed me out if I'd tossed them out?" she asked, clearly not believing him.
"Yes!"
"Hajime, that is completely juvenile," she said, rolling her eyes.
"I don't threaten to throw your shit out," he grumbled, glaring at her. "Even though I should, since more of it takes over the place everyday."
She raised an eyebrow.
"Are you likening me to bacteria?" she asked dryly.
"Since you shoved my Bruce Lee movies under the sink, then yes, I am," he snootily returned.
"You are a child," she muttered, rolling her eyes as she moved away from him, clearly irritated with him.
Which sort of irritated him, since he didn't really think she had an excuse to be irritated—if anyone did, as far as he was concerned, it was him.
"That collection took me years to put together, Tokio," he said.
"Yeah I heard you the first time," she replied in a disinterested tone, now going through the cupboard to grab bowls.
"Oi!" he snapped. "Look, I know you don't give a shit, but at least pretend, huh? Or do you really think I find every aspect of your life so fucking enthralling?"
She sent him a nasty look over one shoulder, then slammed the plates down on the counter and whipped the cabinet door shut.
"Fine, you want to get into a fight about DVDs? Bring it," she said, leaning back against the counter and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Fine—what the fuck were you thinking moving my shit from where it goes and hiding it from me?"
"I was thinking that Eiji, who is ten, should not be watching Bruce Lee's movies. They're not appropriate for someone his age."
"And I was watching Enter the Dragon with him and making sure he didn't see anything inappropriate."
"It's extremely violent—"
"Bullshit!"
Her glare deepened.
"I was talking," she snapped.
"Yeah, you were talking shit is what you were talking," he returned, turning off the burner so the pot of soba didn't boil over; if this went the way he was thinking it was going to go, they'd be dueling for a while.
"Oh I was talking shit?" she threw back. "And you weren't?"
"No," he snapped.
She sent him another one of those special looks she kept in reserve just for him—this one was the "You-are-so-full-of-it-that-it's-overflowing-out-of-you" one.
He hated that one.
"Okay, fine, this isn't a productive line of argument," he said abruptly. Then he glared at her: "You had no right to move and hide my shit."
She pursed her lips and eyed him in silence, and Saitou was cautiously hopeful that there was no way she was going to be able to worm her way out of this one, because if there was one thing they respected, it was each other's crap. As much as it made him twitch sometimes, when her things occasionally found their way into his things or otherwise out of their designated places, she was always good about righting the situation. And she had been especially good about putting anything of his that she used back where it belonged (And, as an added plus, she didn't try to use his razor, seemingly perfectly happy with her own).
It was one thing about her that he couldn't complain about, because things were never out of place long enough for him to.
"Fine," she said finally. "You're right. I had no right to move and hide your things from you."
Feh—point, me, he thought to himself with no small amount of satisfaction.
So maybe it wasn't exactly mature—he didn't win too many of these arguments. He was going to take every point he could get and treasure it.
"But I only did it because I know you," she continued, eyes narrowing.
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" he asked.
"If I'd just left them there you would have ignored what I'd said and showed them to Eiji anyway," she said.
Smart girl, he thought.
"If I'm watching the movies with him—" he began.
"Hajime that is not the point," she cut in.
"Then what is it?"
"I don't want Eiji seeing those movies. He's too young."
"I saw 'em when I was a kid," he pointed out.
"And you turned out just as normal as can be, didn't you?" she dryly replied.
"Low blow," he warned, and she rolled her eyes.
"Fine, sorry," she said. "But I still don't want him watching those movies. They're very violent."
He rolled his eyes.
"Tokio, come on—the shit that's on TV these days is more violent than any of those movies."
"The Big Boss has Bruce Lee brutally killing 20 men," she said flatly.
"But that saw-in-the-head shot isn't in there," he pointed out. Pause. "And it's more like 15 guys, if you want to be technical, not 20."
"Oh a five person difference!" she shot back. "And that saw-in-the-head shot isn't what I meant and you know it!"
"Oi, five dead bodies is a big difference," he defended. "And the saw-in-the-head shot would have been like the worst shot, from the pictures I've seen."
He decided not to remind her of the deaths of two of the Lee character's cousins at the hands of the villains, as she appeared to have forgotten that one of them had met his unfortunate end via a hatchet to the head—no use giving her more ammunition.
"He kills three men with an icepick!"
"All right, so I wouldn't show him that one, then," Saitou conceded, supposing he could see why she'd object to that film.
"He shouldn't be watching any of them," she said with heavy disapproval.
"Tokio—"
"Hajime, Eiji is ten-years-old. Those movies are not appropriate for a child. I don't care if you watch them, but Eiji seeing any of them is out of the question. It's bad enough that he saw Enter the Dragon."
He sent her a sour look.
"Well what about Game of Death?"
"No."
"Oh come on!"
"No! Look, the documentary is fine, but the movies—all of them—are off limits!"
He knew he wasn't going to win this one. Usually by now, he'd been able to wear her down, but she was being rather (frustratingly) unmovable on this, and he was starting to get tired of saying the same thing over again and getting nowhere.
"Fine," he grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Promise?" she asked, hands on her hips.
"Yeah, he won't see anymore of 'em," he muttered.
She sighed, then smiled at him.
"Thank you," she said.
"Uh-huh."
"Oh stop being a baby," she chided. "You just have to wait until he gets a little older. Then you can bond over violence all you want."
"We were not bonding over violence," he corrected. "I was educating the boy in martial arts excellence."
"Okay," she said, clearly not believing him.
He decided not to pursue it—it wasn't worth it.
She went to go check on the boy while he dished out dinner and set the table. While thus occupied, he heard the low murmur of conversation from the other room, which meant Eiji was awake now, and he silently hoped the boy would keep his trap shut about having seen Fist of Fury, or the child would not be living to see the end of his illness. He figured he could count on Eiji to be a tomb, though—kid had yet to let slip any of the things Saitou had done in his presence that Tokio would have objected to, had she been present. Granted, vows of silence usually required "prompting" on Saitou's part, but Eiji was starting to catch on.
Happily, it appeared this was one of those instances where Eiji knew to keep his mouth shut without needing to be told so, because when Tokio came back out, she only remarked that Eiji was looking a little better.
So he and Tokio sat down to have dinner together, and Eiji lived to see another day.
An acceptable end to an (overall) okay day.
XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX
Oh he should have seen this coming a mile away.
Hell, three miles away.
Saitou curled up into a miserable ball of diseased policeman on his side of the bed.
He was sick.
With the flu.
…Son of a bitch.
Vaguely, in the back of his mind, an outraged little voice demanded to know how in the hell this had happened, after he'd managed to avoid being sick for his entire adult life up to this point. It had been a source of pride for him, like his attendance record…which had also, rather recently, been given up on as a lost and utterly hopeless cause. He'd missed more days since he'd begun dating Tokio than he had in the whole nine—scratch that, ten—years he'd been with the MPD, and he'd been late more times than he'd ever been in his entire life, period; as a kid, he'd been infuriatingly punctual for everything, earning him the hatred of his peers and the adoration-mixed-with-vague-fear of his teachers.
Stood to reason that his clean bill of health was next on the list of qualities he was known for that Tokio was bound and determined to assassinate.
Well, that wasn't entirely fair—he didn't really mind her making him late for work in the mornings (and sometimes evenings), or her convincing him to take the day off (which didn't take a whole lot of convincing on her part, incidentally; a well-timed flash of thigh was usually enough). Hell, he pretty much asked to be distracted, and he didn't complain a damn bit while he was being distracted. So that was kind of his fault. Or was it? Because he was pretty sure she purposely used his known weaknesses (i.e., his fixation on her legs and ass and the whole ear-nibbling thing that still mortified him) against him, and come on now, honestly, a man could only take so much. And when Tokio was the one doing the distracting, well, Saitou knew his limits, and if he hadn't known them before meeting her, he'd been made blindingly clear of them since then.
The urge to throw up got harder to ignore, and Saitou wanted to curse, only he was pretty sure that 1) even opening his mouth to draw in the breath to do just that would prompt him to hurl, and 2) Tokio would wake up, and he wanted to delay that and hold onto his dignity as a man for as long as possible.
So instead, he uncurled himself from the fetal position and managed to get out of the bed without waking up Tokio. He also managed to get to the toilet without alerting either her or the boy that he was up, and by some wonderful miracle from possibly the very gods themselves, he was able to throw up and not draw any attention to himself. He tried to convince himself that this was exactly what he wanted.
The whiny-bitch part of himself he'd thought long dead, however, said otherwise.
Saitou tried to ignore it as best he could.
It took a very long time for him to get up the strength to go back to bed, which appalled him, to understate in the extreme. He felt like he was going to collapse any second, and for a guy who'd been doing two finger pushups only 48 hours before, it was one hell of a kick in the balls.
As it was, rinsing out his mouth felt like a reviled chore, and walking the few feet back to the bedroom felt like punishment; if he'd been less of a hard-ass, he might have wept in relief once he crawled back into bed and curled up into a ball under the sheets.
Maybe.
He must have drifted off eventually, because all of a sudden Tokio was curled up against his back, arms around him, asking him if he was all right, he felt too warm and was shaking.
"I'm fine," he said.
"You sound awful," she said, and he felt the bed shift behind him. Then she was leaning over him, her hair tickling the side of his neck. "Hajime? Are you okay?"
"I said I was fine," he grumbled, wincing when he heard how weak he sounded—shit.
She put a palm against his forehead, then moved it to his left cheek, then his right, then back to his forehead.
"You're too hot," she murmured, and he could just picture her frowning.
"Thanks for noticing," he said, in an attempt to convince her that he was so totally not about to die.
"I'm serious, ahou," she said, apparently finding his attempt at humor extremely unfunny. The bed shifted again, and then the lamp on her night table flicked on and she returned to his side; he was grateful his back was to her side, or he'd have been blinded on top of being diseased.
"Oh Hajime," she said in dismay, and he cracked an eye open and looked at her to find her watching him with wide, worried eyes. "Sweetheart you look terrible!"
"I just woke up, gimme a while," he replied.
She didn't pay any attention; she was brushing his bangs out of his eyes and using the sleeve of her sleep shirt to wipe his forehead and just generally fussing over him.
And in his secret, whiny-bitch little heart, he enjoyed every humiliating moment of it.
She got up and found the thermometer and shoved it into his mouth, then got a damp cloth and wiped his face. When she checked his temperature, her worried frown deepened.
"Your temperature's really high," she said, setting the thermometer on his bedside table, then setting a hand over his forehead. "When did you start feeling bad?"
"This morning," he answered, eyes closed—okay, this was actually sort of nice. A lot less ego-damaging than he'd been envisioning, anyway, so he decided he could live with this.
"Well why didn't you wake me up?" she asked, sounding hurt.
"You were asleep."
She sighed.
"Hajime, wake me up next time, okay? It could have been something serious—you could have died!"
"Ain't gonna be a nex' time," he slurred crankily.
She didn't say anything about that, though he thought he might have heard her sigh again, more softly.
"Okay, I'm going to get you some aspirin. Do you want anything else?"
"Turn off the light."
"Okay."
She crawled over and flicked the light off, and the room was once more bathed in darkness. He felt her lean over him and kiss his forehead, then murmur against his skin,
"I'll be back in a little bit, okay?"
"Uh-huh."
"Okay."
She was as good as her word, returning very soon with two aspirins and a glass of water. She also, despite his (feeble) protests, got back into the bed with him and snuggled with him, which was fine so long as no one knew about it and his reputation as an asshole was safe….
"Hajime-oji?" came a sleepy, ten-year-old voice from the doorway, and Saitou decided the gods' favor had expired. "Tokio-oba? It's late."
"Go back to sleep, honey," Tokio murmured. "No one's going anywhere today."
"We aren't?" Eiji asked, sounding surprised.
"Nope—we're playing hooky. So go ahead and sleep in, and I'll get up in a little while and make you something to eat, okay?"
"Cool," Eiji said, obviously approving this plan, and Saitou heard the boy pad back into his room and shut the door.
"He should go to school," he muttered. "He's well enough."
"One more day won't hurt," Tokio replied, smoothing his hair back. "It'll do him good to get the extra day—he didn't exactly sleep peacefully the whole time he was sick."
"Great," he said sarcastically, "I have so much to look forward to."
Tokio laughed quietly.
"My poor baby," she said softly, nuzzling him. "The next few days are going to suck so very much for you."
"Thanks for the encouragement." was his sour response.
She smiled against his skin and kissed his jaw.
"I'll try to remember to be more supportive," she assured. "Now go back to sleep, and I'll get you something in a little while."
Saitou spent his first sick day in almost two decades in bed, too exhausted and achy to move. He was extremely miserable, far more miserable than he could ever remember being.
That was when he decided that he just didn't do sickness in general, and his own sickness in particular.
Tokio was very good about keeping things in the apartment quiet so he'd be able to sleep, not that he really could; his back hurt too much for that, to the point that he actually made himself turn over to lie on his stomach because lying on his back felt like it was making it worse.
He was by turns freezing cold and suffocating, and the thought of food made him gag. His head hurt, and when the coughing started later on during the day, it got worse.
"How're you doing sweetheart?" Tokio asked quietly some time around three (he could tell by the angle of the sunlight creeping in from under the blinds). She crawled into bed with him and lightly rubbed his back.
"I want to die," he informed her, voice hoarse.
She made one of those inane feminine sounds of sympathy in the back of her throat.
"I'm sorry," she murmured. "Do you want me to get you something?"
"If I asked you to get my katana, would you?"
"I was thinking more along the lines of something to drink," Tokio said dryly.
"If it's poison, I'm all for it."
"Hajime," she said in disapproval. "Look, how about some tea? And maybe a little toast?"
Saitou gagged.
"No food," he insisted.
"You have to eat something," she protested.
"No food," he repeated.
She sighed.
"All right, no food," she agreed. "But you have to drink something."
"I guess tea's all right," he grumbled; his stomach churned in protest, but he didn't feel like arguing with Tokio when he felt like shit.
His odds of winning, which were iffy even when he was well, were low as hell now that he couldn't really concentrate.
The boy came in about then.
"Tokio-oba, you have any glue?"
"Glue?" Tokio asked curiously.
"Yeah." Eiji said with a nod.
"I don't think so," she said.
"Whaddaya need glue for?" Saitou asked.
"Something," Eiji said in that annoyingly vague way of children.
"Well obviously," Saitou replied, and would have rolled his eyes if he were feeling normal. "What is it?"
"Just something," Eiji mildly repeated, then looked at Tokio. "What about tape?"
"In the box under the bed where I keep the gift-wrap stuff," Tokio said.
"Okay," Eiji chirped, then got down on his hands and knees to drag the box out from under the bed.
Tokio and Saitou exchanged amused looks before Tokio crawled over to the edge and sat back on her heels to watch Eiji.
"Is what you're using the tape for a secret, Eiji-kun?" she asked with a grin.
"Not really," the boy's muffled voice replied. Saitou heard plastic rasp against carpet, and then Eiji's dark head bobbed up.
"So then tell me what it is," Tokio said with a slight whine.
Eiji grinned and shook his head, popping the lid on the plastic box open.
"You're so weird, Tokio-oba," he said, sounding amused.
Tokio pouted at him.
"Are not."
"Yuh-huh."
"Nuh-uh."
Eiji grabbed the tape then sauntered out of the room.
"Wonder what that's all about," Saitou said after a moment.
"Probably something for a girl he likes," Tokio mused thoughtfully, head cocked.
"Like what?" he asked.
Tokio shrugged. "Something that requires glue or tape, apparently," she replied. "Maybe a little card."
"A homemade card?" Saitou asked, raising an eyebrow. "He could just go out and buy one."
Tokio shrugged, smiling.
"When you really like someone you go all out," she said, reaching over and ruffling his hair. "Right?"
He shrugged, and she rolled her eyes.
"Jerk," she said affectionately.
Eiji returned a few minutes later, plopped the tape down into the plastic box, then snapped the lid back on and shoved it back under the bed.
"Thanks Tokio-oba," he said.
"You're welcome," Tokio said. She then grinned widely at the boy. "Can I see what you're makin'?" she asked.
"Nope," Eiji said breezily, sauntering out of the room again, and Tokio's jaw dropped; Saitou, despite the fact that he was going to be very unhappy later, laughed, at least up until he started coughing too much to keep laughing.
"Serves you right," she mumbled, sending him a baleful look, when he groaned and burrowed under the sheets to wallow in misery.
"Shut up," he said, voice muffled but clearly surly.
"Be nice or I won't take care of you," she warned, tone deceptively sweet.
"Feh," he sneered, then sneezed and groaned.
Tokio laughed, then tugged the sheets off of him and kissed his temple.
"I'll get you tea," she said, nuzzling him.
"Yeah," he said lamely.
She smiled, kissed his temple again, then left the room to get him the tea.
He was half asleep when she came back, Eiji with her.
"What's that?" he heard the boy ask.
"What's what?" Tokio asked.
"That box."
Saitou forced his eyes open and found Eiji kneeling down on the floor by his side of the bed, Tokio standing over the kid, watching him.
"Oi," Saitou rasped, and Tokio looked up at him and smiled.
"Hey sickie," she said. "I thought you were asleep."
"Half," he said.
"It's knives," Eiji said, popping up, awkwardly holding a large box. "Look-it—see?"
At first Saitou stared at the box and wondered what in the hell it was doing there. Then he remembered what they were doing there, and wondered if he'd be able to successfully plead insanity when he was charged with the brutal murder of his ward.
"What in the world are those doing there?" Tokio asked, looking perplexed.
"Uh-uh," Eiji replied, complete with shrug.
"That's weird," Tokio said, then looked over at Saitou, who was busy glaring at Eiji. "Hajime?" she asked, frowning. "What are you doing?"
"What'd I do?" Eiji asked warily, scooting back upon realizing his guardian was scowling at him—even though he knew Saitou was sick, moving out of the older man's reach was, by now, a reflex.
Saitou sighed—no use for it now.
"You remember those knives you liked? From that infomercial?" he asked Tokio wearily.
"Ye—oh!" Tokio's face lit up. "I knew they looked familiar!" She set the cup of tea down on the night table and bent over and examined the box, then looked over at Saitou, very obviously pleased with him. "You bought them for me?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted sourly. "I was waitin' to give 'em to you."
"For White Day?" she asked after a moment, apparently concluding that he'd been waiting for a holiday.
He didn't get the opportunity to correct her—or even reply, for that matter:
Eiji wrinkled his nose.
"You got Tokio-oba knives for White Day?" he asked, tone disdainful.
Saitou sent him a black look:
"You just wait until I can move again," he muttered.
The boy slumped down and appeared to be trying to hide behind the box.
Feh—like a box would stop Saitou.
"Well I love them," Tokio said, reaching over and taking the box from Eiji. "And I wouldn't have minded getting them for White Day at all—much better than candy."
Eiji considered his guardians for a moment, then shook his head.
"You guys are so weird," he said, sounding baffled.
"Shut up," Saitou grumbled, more for show than anything; if Tokio wanted to think he'd been planning to gift her with the knives for White Day, he wasn't about to contradict her (the truth was that he'd…er…sort of forgotten about them. A lot had happened since he'd ordered them, and knives were sort of low down on the list of priorities, in the grand scheme of things).
He was still going to get her the pralines for White Day, as Kamatari had advised many months ago, though.
"I guess when you slid the box back under the bed, you pushed it back too far and it pushed this one out enough for you to see," Tokio was saying to Eiji.
"He shoved the box under the bed," Saitou corrected. "If he'd slid it, the knives'd still be under there and you would have gotten them when you were supposed to."
"Oh so I got my present a little early," Tokio replied dismissively. "Besides, now you get soup."
"I do?" Saitou asked.
"Uh-huh—I'm going to try out my new knives." Tokio said cheerfully, the box under one arm. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you Hajime."
"You're welcome," he said, and she beamed at him, then turned and left the room.
"I still think it's weird to give a girl knives for White Day," Eiji muttered, rising.
"No one asked you," Saitou said, weakly dragging himself into a sitting position and grabbing the cup of tea off the night table with both hands.
"Geez—tou-chy," Eiji mumbled. "Sorry I ruined your present, Hajime-oji," he said after a moment, head bowed.
"Don't worry about it," Saitou said. "I've got something else I can give her."
Eiji eyed him from under his hair.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Saitou glared at him. "I'm still beating your ass for getting me sick, though."
"How is that my fault?" Eiji demanded, now looking at him with an incredulous expression on his face.
"I told you to keep your microbes to yourself, you little creep," Saitou shot back.
"It's not like I had a choice!"
"The hell you didn't!"
"I couldn't control my sneezing!"
"You didn't try to."
"I'm ten!"
"Don't pull that 'I'm ten' crap on me—you know that doesn't work."
"I'll tell Tokio-oba you're picking on me," Eiji warned.
Saitou sent him a smug look.
"I'm sick," he said haughtily. "Automatic immunity."
Eiji glared at him.
"Jerk," he mumbled.
"Go back to making your card for your little girlfriend," Saitou shot back.
Eiji immediately went red in the face.
"I do not have a girlfriend!" he bellowed, and Saitou smirked.
"But you are making a card for a girl?" he asked dryly, and Eiji's blush deepened.
"Sh…you shut up! What do you know anyway!" Eiji shot back, running out of the room.
Saitou smirked.
"Brats," he said, and was then seized by a particularly brutal round of hacking. "I'm definitely killing the little shit," he rasping, glaring at the doorway, when he was able to breathe again.
Kid wasn't going to live long enough to admit he didn't think girls had cooties, if Saitou had anything to say about it.
XoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoXoX
Preview of Chpt 39: Fish and Relatives:
Before Saitou was able to respond to that, his nephew launched himself at his uncle, and made excruciating contact with a very tender portion of the male anatomy.
"Hajime!" Tokio and Katsu yelled, horrified looks on their faces.
"Oh man, that hurrrrrt," Toshiaki said with a wince.
"Is he dead?" Eiji asked, expression appalled.
"I should be so lucky," Saitou was able to get out, sounding like he was about to cry.
Not that anyone would have blamed him.
---
Tokio's shriek ripped Saitou from dead sleep.
"What?" he snapped, sitting up and ready to kill whatever it was that was trespassing in his territory.
"Yo Haji," Katsu's husband cheerfully said, complete with smile and wave. "I was just askin' Tokio-san where the frying pan was."
Saitou stared at him.
"Get out," he said finally, his disbelief clear in his voice.
"Yeah, I'm gonna make break—"
"No asshat—I mean get out," Saitou interrupted. "As in, get out of our room."
---
"Uhm, well, I was brushing my teeth, you know? And—well—that is—your brother-in-law sort of…he, uh—came in while I was brushing my teeth and he—he—uhm, used the toilet?"
Saitou and Eiji blankly stared at her in silence for a few moments. Then Saitou asked,
"What?"
"Yeah," Tokio said with a nod, knowing that "What?" actually meant "Are you serious?"
"Gross," Eiji said, expression twisted in distaste.
"Yeah," Tokio agreed, her nod far more emphatic this time. "Very yeah."
----
"Why do you hate me?" Saitou asked despairingly.
"Oh stop," Katsu replied, rolling her eyes. "I don't hate you, you ahou."
"The fact that you brought your fucktard husband says different," Saitou muttered petulantly.
"Hajime, what was I supposed to do, leave him home?"
"Uhhh, duh?"