Title: Father Knows Best

Word Count: 752

Summary: Crazy like a fox.

A/N: Happy Daddy Day! In honor of the day, I introduce you all to a character who has yet to appear in Captain Mis, but whom I hope to include very soon. Enjoy!

Saitou Yuusuke wasn't as cracked as his youngest son thought he was.

Sure, he was a little goofy, but that goofiness was what had won Masu over, and Yuusuke wasn't about to knock something that had helped him land the best thing that had ever happened to him (besides, traditional courtship was rather boring, in his opinion—flowers and candy and dinner could only be so novel for so long).

Actually, he was quite sharp—it was amazing what acting a little distracted and not-all-there could get you. He acquired a wealth of information that he knew would have been impossible to get if he let the people around him know just how aware he actually was.

For example, he knew that his youngest son had dabbled in something dangerous when he'd been away from their fold. Because when his boy came back, Hajime wasn't quite the same. He'd always been a strange boy, quieter and a little chillier than his peers or the others in the family—but when he came back to them, the boy had ice in his veins. Yuusuke knew because he'd had ice in his veins once. He'd once worked for the government, and the Cold War era had been a strange and dangerous time. All manner of espionage and dastardliness had gone on, and he'd been in the thick of it for a long time. It was there he'd learned to cultivate the façade of cheerful, oblivious idiot that had (and still) fooled everyone, including his sweet, wonderful wife and her honorable and equally wonderful father.

But being back with the family and seeing them again thawed and melted most of that ice away. Not all of it, though. And Yuusuke knew the only cure for that was the same cure he'd taken: Hajime needed to find a sweet, wonderful girl and get married and have a bunch of kids.

Yaso had been a sweet, wonderful girl, but not for Hajime. She didn't fit the boy exactly right, didn't know how to deal with his oddness. Yuusuke had liked her fine—just not for his son.

And since he knew Hajime was a stubborn idiot, Yuusuke didn't say "Told you so," when the boy informed them that he'd gotten divorced. Instead, he tackled the boy to the ground and started one of their father-son "bonding" brawls that had taught Hajime how to be the unholy terror he was.

He waited a year before he decided to approach his son with the cure for the iciness that lingered in him. And because Hajime was Hajime and a prickly, private bastard, he went about it the best way he knew how—he acted like he didn't have any sense.

"You know what you need? A nice girl," he told the boy one weekend when his son had come to visit.

"The last nice girl I brought home didn't meet your standards, old man," Hajime growled irritably around his cigarette.

"Well you should have asked what they were before you brought her," he replied mildly. "Then we could have avoided all that."

"Feh."

"Don't 'feh' your father," he chided. "You're supposed to treat me with respect and reverence."

"Humoring lunatics is the proper response," Hajime shot back dryly. "Respect and reverence might encourage them."

"Any lunatic worth his straight jacket doesn't need encouragement," was Yuusuke's snooty reply.

Hajime groaned.

"Why do I talk to you?" he asked with a sigh.

"Because I'm your most venerable father and you're an ungrateful boy!" Yuusuke bellowed. "I try to impart my years of wisdom to you and you ignore it! You'll wish you'd paid attention when—"

"I'm gonna go see if Mom wants me to set the table," Hajime muttered, rising.

"Hajime! Listen to your father's wisdom!"

"Yeah yeah yeah," Hajime said, waving a hand over his shoulder in a dismissing gesture. "Whatever, old man."

Yuusuke wasn't at all offended. He only grinned and settled himself back down in his chair, smug with satisfaction.

Because eventually, his boy was going to replay the conversation in his head, and Yuusuke had already planted the seed. Now he just had to wait, and one day, if his son was as smart as Yuusuke knew he was, Hajime would do exactly as his father had prescribed and find himself a sweet, wonderful girl that could deal with his oddness.

And if Yuusuke had done his job as flawlessly as he knew he had, Hajime would think he'd thought it up all on his own.