Hatori missed pancakes.

Out of all the things he missed about being with the group Hatori would have to have said the pancakes. Or maybe just having someone make breakfast for him in general. Starting his day with a hot meal, or a cold one left in the microwave for him if he felt like sleeping in, was just…nice. Knowing that there would be hot food there waiting for him…and good company in the kitchen too. Someone to say good morning to him and stuff. Someone to ask how he slept. He hadn't had that…well since before joining Claw. After mom and dad died it had been one impersonal cafeteria meal after another. The group home. School. Then the various Claw Divisions and bases and HQs that he'd been assigned to. Cafeteria meals were the worst.

But the ones he made himself were the second worst.

"Come on…no. Why do you keep on burning?" asked Hatori as the fourth toaster pancake that he'd tried to make burned. He had no idea what he was doing wrong. He set it to high, that was too much, so he set it to medium…and that was still too much. He had already tried low but then his pancake just stayed frozen. He was never complaining about Shibata's cooking again…even if he did sometimes get distracted and forget to watch the stove. Nope. Cooking was harder than Hatori had ever imagined that it ever could have been….

And he wasn't even cooking!

He was just heating up Frozen pancakes…it should not have been this difficult. Even though the directions had all been in English….and his English was pretty bad….he wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing…he just had to make the rest of the process…cooperate. He turned the toaster over and shook it out over a plate. Even when it popped back up the pancake stayed stuck…maybe he should have tried the oven….

He watched it out of the corner of his eye.

Nope. Not happening. He was not going to burn this apartment down. He liked living. Fire…was not to be trusted. Nope. He'd stick to the toaster and the microwave…hey. Maybe he could try microwaving one of these…that could work. Either that or it was cold cereal again…he put the toaster down. Cold cereal actually sounded really good right about now. He reached up and brought the box down from the top of the fridge…it felt light…no matter. He put it down on the counter and then opened up the cabinet and…

No bowls.

The sink was full of ketchup encrusted dishes. Bowls, plates, forks, knives, spoons…apparently all the ones from the house. That…made sense. Nobody had done the dishes yet and they'd been here for over a week. Dishes had always been a Shibata thing….a lot of things had been a Shibata thing. For Suzuki it had been a Mob thing…so did that mean that they just…weren't going to have dishes anymore? Hatori…well he was bad at doing dishes. They'd always had a dishwasher when he'd been growing up and Shibata…well he liked things to be just so in his kitchen…and also Mob was crazy good with her telekinesis so it was just faster to let her do them…but now it was just him and Suzuki….

Time to wash some dishes.

He turned the tap on and ended up with the whole front of his hoodie soaked. Right…not enough room even for the water to flow. Maybe they could get some Awakened…there weren't any around. This was an asset gathering/business contact making mission not a Division or HQ visit. No Awakened…no Shibata…no Mob….no anyone. Just him and Suzuki.

A very mopey Suzuki.

Hatori could feel Suzuki moping. His aura was every fucking where. Living this close to him….there was no escape from it. Just…red. So much red. Red and yellow and just…Hatori oved Suzuki, he really did, but it was getting to be a lot. Even now. Hatori could feel him moping from his room to the bathroom. He had been moping all night and all day in this mopey cycle and…well he knew that he was starting to sound like Shimazaki….but it was just…weird….seeing Suzuki mope around like this. Usually when something went wrong he got all pissed off and shit, beat someone up, and then kept going…but now he had no one to beat up but himself.

Hatori turned the tap off.

Suzuki really had nobody to blame for this mess but himself. He should have been more careful. Hatori didn't think that any cheating had happened, he had been on the team scouring the internet for Suzuki's wife after all, if someone walked out on you and your kids then that was the end of it. He'd never had a wife, or even a girlfriend, or even had a girl interested in him, but he knew that if he'd ever had kids with someone and married them and then they just walked out on him then there wouldn't be any walking back in…and Suzuki's wife wasn't going to walk back in anyway.

Especially with this other kid he'd made.

That was…a thing that had happened. Suzuki has three kids now, not two, and…well Hatori…he had no idea how Mob and Sho felt about that. He was an only child and his dad would never have cheated on his mom anyway so…yeah. No secret siblings for him. Still…that must have been a betrayal…sort of. Having to keep a whole sibling a secret…and if Fukuda knew what was good for him then he had better not have been planning on coming out of hiding anytime soon. He was hiding, too, or at least his phone was…either way what he had done was pretty fucked up. More fucked up than what Suzuki did, in Hatori's opinion.

He wasn't sure if he got to have an opinion about this whole thing but if he did then his opinion was that Fukuda had done the most fucking up out of everywhere.

Ok. Fine. The guy didn't like Mob. How anyone couldn't like Mob Hatori would never know. She was the sweetest kid that he had ever met. True she could be a little overbearing, and nosy, but when you looked at who her dad was then she wasn't that bad. Fukuda for some reason didn't like her…and also he shipped her with Shimazaki….and Hatori…well in his opinion that was not a good look. Fukuda thinking about Mob and a guy twenty years older than her…and he had been weirdly ok with the idea of Hatori being into Mob…he threw up a little in his mouth. Yeah, if Hatori had been the type of guy to run his mouth he would have told Suzuki that it was weird that his best friend dedicated that much headspace to the idea of his twelve year old daughter sleeping with her adult friends and maybe that was something that someone needed to look into. Seriously. Fuck that guy for whatever weirdness he had going on with Mob and fuck him for taking Sho out of the fucking country without telling anyone and making the kid lie to everyone about where he was and what he was doing and that he was still in contact with his secret little sister. Seriously. Fukuda could go get fucked and Hatori…well he couldn't fight him but he could mess with him…put weird stuff in his amazon cart…fuck with his search history…tell Suzuki about whatever weirdness he must have had hidden someplace. Yeah…he could have done all of that…

But he had enough to do as it was.

Ok, so a bowl of cereal was off the table…he wondered what they were having for breakfast back with the group. Serizawa said that Shibata had been on this pancake kick since that was all that Suzuki's secret daughter wanted to eat. She was a cute kid, or at least she was cute on Mob's Instagram and Snapchat…which he knew looked incredibly weird and shady….but Mob was his friend and also she never posted anything weird…not like her one friend who Hatori would not be following no matter how many times Mob asked. Why a twelve year old needed Instagram followers was a question for another day. Still, good on Mob for making friends and good on Mob for bonding with her sister…and forgiving her brother. She'd been upset lately, Serizawa had said, but in true Mob fashion she had been trying not to show it. Poor kid…poor kids…he wished that he could have been there…even though there wasn't much that he could do…at least being over there had food….

He needed to get creative or he would starve and then who would like every single one of Mob's posts? Her other two followers?

Hatori went back over to the cabinets and looked around for something that could be used as a bowl…nothing. Not even pots and pans…well he'd used before when he'd tried to make actual food…he shook the box of cereal again. There was enough for one bowl in there….and they at least had plenty of milk….cool. This was happening. He'd always wanted to do this but mom and dad hadn't let him. It was a waste of milk and cereal, they'd said, and it made him look like a little barbarian. Well he was twenty one now and he could eat his cereal however he wanted to eat it.

Even by pouring milk directly into the box.

He was a grown man and he could do whatever he wanted and what he wanted to do was pour milk directly into a cereal box and have his breakfast that way…so that was what he did. Really, in the grand list of things that he'd done wrong in his life this was nothing. Nope. He'd done plenty of spying, corporate espionage, money laundering, evidence destroying, document tampering, market fixing, and also there was the matter of his secret hard drives he kept in his sock drawer. Yeah, he'd done a lot of weird stuff, wrong stuff, stuff that he should have been in jail for…so really he wasn't doing anything wrong.

And, also, this was truly the most efficient way to eat cereal.

He sat down at the island counter and dug into his cereal…even less in there then he'd imagined. This was that bland shit Suzuki ate. He might not have had a sense of taste…or at least a normal one. Hatori hadn't even known that they made extra plain oat loops but, apparently, the German people had found a way. At least his translator app had said that the box said extra plain oat loops. Hatori didn't know, his German was nonexistent. That was why he had been sticking to English labels. He could, at least, sort of get by in English. He couldn't wait until they got back to Japan…they had to get back eventually…right? Summer was usually their downtime…as close to downtime as they got. Summer was when Suzuki dealt with domestic business….and it still needed to be dealt with…so they had to go back eventually…

Right?

Hatori didn't know. He kept on eating his cereal. One day at a time. That was the only way to take it. Today was going to be more asset gathering for him and Suzuki. President Suzuki and Hatori-sama. He liked….well he shouldn't have liked it but he did. Respect was like a drug…well he'd done drugs and respect was better than drugs. Drugs…were the worst…and if there was one good thing about being away from the group it was that he didn't have to worry about Shimazaki trying to poison him again. That was a one day at a time thing…everything was a one day at a time thing. No point in planning for the future. When you worked for Claw the future was totally unpredictable.

So you'd better just get used to the ride.

"I will never get used to you." Said Suzuki. Hatori jumped. The bad thing about living so close to Suzuki…his aura was always right there in your face. It was like having Suzuki right there all the time, right next to him, and when he did end up right there next to him…well it made him jump. It also made him drop his box of cereal…Suzuki caught it without moving a muscle. Hatori could feel his aura…not a good feeling.

But, hey, at least he saved the cereal.

"Thanks." Said Hatori as he pulled his cereal box out of the air. Suzuki shook his head and sat beside him. the loaf of bread flew from the counter and rested down in front of him followed by the ketchup from the fridge. All the cabinet doors opened and Suzuki stared for a moment before pulled an empty cupcake tin from the cabinet…he had no idea why they had that…and he had no idea why Suzuki was pouring ketchup into it now…

Oh. Right. Ketchup bread again.

"What are you smiling at?" muttered Suzuki as he tore his bread into strips. His aura was close, now, and his eyes were downcast. He had bags under them….damn. He was going to be pissed off again today. He was always kind of pissed off but now he was tired…and all of that stuff with his kids…Hatori hoped that God had mercy on whatever poor bastard they were trying to recruit today.

"You're eating out of a cupcake tin, that's all." said Hatori. Suzuki looked down for a second and then went back to tearing up his bread. He tore the crust off when he was done making his dipping strips…it would have made more sense to rip the crusts off before he started…but Hatori wasn't about to tell Suzuki how to eat his ketchup bread.

"You're eating straight from the cereal box." Said Suzuki

"We're out of dishes." Said Hatori

"So do some, then." Said Suzuki. Hatori looked over at the stack of dished in the sink…and the puddle of water in front of it. Yeah…there was no way in hell he was going to be able to do those. It was physically impossible.

"I don't know how." Said Hatori. That was the truth. He had seen it done but he'd never done it…well it looked like they were eating out of cereal boxes and cupcake tins for the foreseeable future…or they could just live on takeout. That worked too.

"How do you not know how to do the dishes?" asked Suzuki

"We always had a dishwasher growing up and then after that I just…never had to do them, I guess. I either ate in the cafeteria or Shibata and Mob did them." Said Hatori. Suzuki's whole body tensed when he mentioned Mob. He braced himself. His eyes darted to the space under the island counter…he was too big to fit. He was way too big and…well Suzuki hadn't done anything to hurt him…but there was a first time for everything.

"…Shigeko is good at doing dishes." Said Suzuki

"Yeah, she is. Anyway, so what are we doing today?" asked Hatori. Mob was a sore subject…which made sense since she was Suzuki's favorite kid after all and she had thrown him out of the house and the group.

"Finding an asset…meeting some international contacts….the same thing we did before. Finish your breakfast." Said Suzuki before he dipped his bread in the ketchup. He even looked mopey while he ate his favorite meal…maybe the only thing that he knew how to make. Maybe one of them needed to learn how to cook…or maybe they just need to finish up here and go back. Suzuki wasn't planning on staying away from his kids forever….right?

How young was his youngest kid again?

Hatori wasn't going to ask…but he knew that it would be a while before she grew up and Suzuki could come back to Japan. It was so weird to see him run. This was Suzuki. He ran the most powerful cult in the world. He sent people to die in holes. He was the most powerful esper in the world. This was just so….weird. Seeing him like this. He wasn't going to ask everything that he wanted to ask. Suzuki may have been a mopey mess but he was still Suzuki.

Hatori knew better than to press his buttons.

"Afterwards you want to check out this game I found? It's a new 7800 game and-" said Hatori. Suzuki would never admit it but he loved videogames. He loved videogames almost as much as he loved his kids…one of his kids. Hatori had been trying and trying to get him out of this…whatever it was…and he was going to try again. He'd managed to find a bunch of new 7800 games, why people were so into the second worst Atari system ever he would never know, and he would gladly sit through it with Suzuki just to get him out of…this.

He hated it when people got like this.

Dad used to get like this when he and mom fought. They never fought in front of Hatori but he knew what it meant when they went to sit in the car with the music turned up really loud. He had no idea why they had even been fighting. Things had been great. They hadn't been poor, or starving, nobody had been out of work, neither of them drank, and they didn't hit each other…well there was no point in thinking about that now. They were long gone. No more sitting at his window trying to read their lips while they fought in the car…no more dad being all 'play by yourself, Nozomu' before he went to lay down on the couch. No more mom….

He hated it when his parents got like this.

"They haven't made games for that system since before you were born." Said Suzuki

"The Atari company hasn't but the fans have. Come on, it'll be fun-" said Hatori

"No thank you." Said Suzuki as he dipped another strip of bread in the cupcake tin. He sounded kind of down there…well that made sense….but also…he needed to fix this. He wondered what Fukuda would have done in this situation. He may have been an asshole, and he may have been weird when it came to Mob, but he had known Suzuki for most of their lives…he must have known what to do when Suzuki got like this…

Not that he was going to text him or anything, no he'd rather deal with Suzuki for the next thirty years than deal with Fukuda for even one more second.

"Well then do you want to play Pong again? Last time it was a draw-" said Hatori

"It wasn't a draw. It was three in the morning and I needed to end it….but no thank you. We have…too much to do." Said Suzuki

"What? The asset? That won't take all day." Said Hatori

"And then we have meetings…well I have meetings. You'll have to entertain yourself in my absence. Maybe you can learn to do the dishes. One of us should be able to…and I don't feel like it." Said Suzuki

"Well…you're older so you should do them." Said Hatori. He was pressing a button there….but not one of his serious ones. He knew that telling Suzuki what to do was dangerous ground….and also he was kind of sensitive about his age sometimes. He seemed fine, though, his aura didn't even flare. He just shrugged.

"Like you I never learned. My mother always did the dishes…and we had a dishwasher for my entire life as well…you're younger, you learn things more easily, and I have a lot to do today. Do the dishes." Said Suzuki

"But…there's no room." Said Hatori. Ok, maybe he just didn't feel like doing the dishes….it was such a boring chore! Even Mob complained about it and Mob never complained about anything. He didn't really want to have to scrub dried ketchup out of every single bowl, glass, mug, and plate in the house.

"So throw the dishes out and buy new ones." Said Suzuki with a shrug.

"What….really?" asked Hatori

"Yes. You have access to the slush fund…no…don't use the slush fund, actually. I have some policies I need pushed through the Japanese parliament. Use the living expenses fund…but don't drain it. Shigeko spends money like there's no tomorrow." Said Suzuki

"You're….letting me fuck with the money?" asked Hatori. He shouldn't have cursed, Suzuki winced there, but…wow. He got to fuck with the money! That was…well he moved money around all the time…but Suzuki was taking about his personal living expense money. That was…wow. A lot. Suzuki...had a lot of faith in him…

"Don't say fuck…but yes. You may. Just don't drain any of the accounts….and don't touch Fukuda's living account either…he may need it." Said Suzuki as he scraped his finger against the side of the cupcake tin. Hatori nodded. That was…well he would have loved to drain Fukuda's entire account…but he wasn't going to push Suzuki too far. This was already a lot.

"Sure thing. I'll get us some more dishes…disposable ones…and maybe some more food would be nice…and we're running low on clean clothes so I should find a cleaners…" said Hatori. The more things he thought needed doing the more things came to mind. They needed food and clothes and soap, he was running low on soap, and toothpaste would have been useful….and maybe they needed to clean…or find someone to clean for them….

"Thank you. Now get rid of those dishes….hold on." Said Suzuki. He reached out and…well now there was plenty of room in the sink…because he'd crushed the dirty dishes down to porcelain and metal…and glass….and now they had a sink full of broken glass to deal with…but…yay?

"Thanks….?" Asked Hatori

"You're welcome….it's about time somebody thanked me…" muttered Suzuki

"What?" asked Hatori

"Nothing….just…Fukuda didn't thank me when I did that…back when we lived together in university. There wasn't enough room in the sink and I suggested that we just throw everything out….so I made everything smaller and easier to manage. Fukuda did not see it my way and he slept with his back to me for almost a week." Said Suzuki. Hatori blinked. He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his sweater. He…well he had no idea what his glasses had to do with hearing…..but…wow. That was…he hadn't heard a Suzuki story in a while.

A Suzuki University story.

Hatori…was never going to university. He already had a job and shit so…there was no point. Still he knew that crazy shit happened in university. Suzuki and Fukuda doing crazy shit…damn. Serizawa would have loved this. He loved Suzuki's friendship stories…and also…well this was good. Suzuki was telling stories again….maybe he was finally coming out of this.

There. Hatori knew what he was doing.

"I didn't know you guys went to university together." Said Hatori. He knew, of course, that Suzuki had but….yeah. This was the best way to keep him talking. Suzuki shrugged and started to tear apart another piece of bread.

"I thought that I had. Well we did. We went to Tokyo University before you were born….it was an enjoyable time….it was usually an enjoyable time. I never want to live in such close quarters with Fukuda again. One room…is not enough for two people." Said Suzuki

"You guys shared a bedroom?" asked Hatori

"There was only one room….and a kitchen and a bathroom of course. But, yes, we shared a room for four years…." Said Suzuki. He trailed off there…and now he was mopier than ever…and of course he was. Damn it…right. Fukuda had betrayed him…and been weird with his daughter…so of course he would have been pissed off. Plus there was the whole thirty years of unrequited love between those two….yeah, Suzuki whisperer Hatori was not.

"Hey Suzuki, I'm really-" said Hatori

"It wasn't always so bad. I mean…we had been sharing a room for a time before that…at his home though. There had been more space…it took a while to get used to him…always being there. I got used to it and he got used to it…and we had good times. Putting the skeleton of Claw together…watching television…just…being together…it had been nice…and just….I don't want to talk about this anymore." Said Suzuki. He pushed the cupcake tin to the edge of the island counter and poked at the pile of bread on the table.

"Sorry." said Hatori

"About?" asked Suzuki

"Mentioning Fukuda. I mean…sorry. it's a sore spot for you and-" said Hatori

"Don't. Don't talk about him…I don't want to ever hear his name ever again. I…am done with breakfast now. Hatori, finish eating and put on a clean sweater. We're leaving." Said Suzuki. He got up and left a pile of ripped up bread, torn off crusts, and an empty ketchup smeared cupcake tin on the table. He didn't care. The mess didn't matter, Suzuki mattered, and right now…yeah. Hatori had made it all worse…but he'd have to try again tomorrow….and the next day…and the next day until Suzuki got better and they could go home already!

Because, really, eating cereal straight from the box had nothing on homemade pancakes.