Work Text:
Handling Asanos: a not-so useful guide by Karasuma Tadaomi
Five months after they start dating, Gakuhou Asano asks Karasuma Tadaomi to marry him.
A year and eight months after they've first met, Gakuhou is across him with a ring box in his hands, and his teenage son (who has just stepped into the room and stopped short at the scene that awaited him) is innocuously sipping his tea.
Tadaomi doesn't even know how they got here.
Gakuhou had been his employer for the better part of a year, and he was a frustrating and shrewd one that sent Tadaomi through the shredder. They'd run into each other one month after the end of the world, and as societal propriety demanded, have gone for a coffee to catch up.
And Tadaomi liked women, he did. He'd liked Irina for a brief stint of time, and she was pretty and talented and bright, but she was practically a child compared to him. He had a girlfriend in college. He would have called himself straight, because he didn't think he liked men that way, but kissing a man was so wildly different from kissing a woman.
It was exciting, thrilling in a way that kissing a woman wouldn't be, something that made his heart beat fast and him want to glance over his shoulder every few seconds. And Gakuhou was taller than him, which was something Tadaomi had never encountered before, because he was rather tall for a guy such that even most women in heels didn't quite reach his height.
It was new, different, and Tadaomi wasn't much of a risk taker, but something from Irina must have been rubbing off on him, so he agrees to go back with Gakuhou that day.
And it just kept happening.
He doesn't know why he liked Gakuhou in the first place. The man was an asshole, and he was full of himself. He had terrible grey morals and a stupid face and he made Tadaomi endlessly frustrated.
He also made Tadaomi's heart race, and made his mind spin in circles, and Tadaomi was nervous around him in a way he wasn't nervous about anything else. At first it was the job, because everything Gakuhou said and did put the octopus' reveal at risk, and Gakuhou acted like a chess master with a master plan and Tadaomi just wanted to make sure the world didn't blow up. That was a terrible basis for a relationship, but the last time Tadaomi had butterflies was asking his last girlfriend out, so maybe something didn't translate well.
And then Gakuhou smiled at him and his shirt rode up when he stretched and they go for a jog together in the mornings, and Gakuhou absently comments on Tadaomi's hair and the state of world affairs and he asks Tadaomi what he thinks of breakfast. Maybe it's because Tadaomi used to live alone, and he didn't have to cook for anyone but himself and that his bed had always been cold when he gets into it by himself, when he went home to a quiet house and there wasn't already someone waiting for him to ask him how his day was.
Maybe it's all of that, or none of that.
Gakushuu hated Tadaomi for seven months.
Tadaomi remembers Gakuhou Asano has a fifteen year old son. It was a little hard to forget, considering their past history. He was in high school now, Kunugigaoka High, from which Gakuhou is no longer employed by. But Tadaomi doesn't think Gakuhou needed a job now, or in the future, really, not with the amount of money he currently has.
Tadaomi himself was monopolizing all the leave that the military has given him, and both he and Gakuhou agreed that it would be weird for Gakushuu to see them.
So of course Gakushuu walks in on them.
It's nothing explicit, not in the sitting room. Tadaomi and Gakuhou are standing very close with their faces together, and then the front door clicks open. They spring apart as quickly as possible but Gakushuu is standing there, one hand on the doorknob, an impassive expression on his face. He looks at Gakuhou, and then stares Tadaomi in the eyes for a beat, and then pivots on his heel and shuts (slams) the front door shut.
Tadaomi didn't know what to think of Gakushuu. He had an admittedly unsatisfactory view of him from what little they interacted through their last year of middle school, but that has been punctuated with 3-E's unsavory view of all things Main Campus (they were justified to have one.) Then again Tadaomi had disliked Gakuhou the same way, and now they were kissing in his house.
He also knows about Gakushuu from Gakuhou, from which whom would not shut up about his kid, and Tadaomi thought it was endearing. He has judgement on Gakuhou's parenting so he takes all that with a grain of salt, but it's apparent that Gakuhou cares about his son.
Tadaomi watches Gakuhou turn his phone over his hands and deliberates calling Gakushuu (that afternoon after Gakushuu walks in on them and then out). Tadaomi doesn't understand why Gakuhou wouldn't just call if he was so worried, but Gakuhou said that their relationship was complicated, and complicated was an apt word and not one that Tadaomi thinks should apply to an ideal father-and-son relationship. In the end Gakuhou calls Ren Sakakibara, Gakushuu's best friend, and Sakakibara tells him that Gakushuu is safe.
Their relationship (Tadaomi and Gakushuu) grows ever more rocky from there. Gakushuu is out more often than not, far later than the usual times that Tadaomi knows he comes home, and he catches Gakuhou staring at the clock with a furrow in his brow. Then Gakuhou asks him to come over one weekend, and Tadaomi asks "what about Gakushuu?" and Gakuhou says, "that's the point," and Tadaomi understands their relationship even less.
But Gakushuu runs into him again in the hallways of his own house, stares him down, and then suddenly he's coming home after school on time again.
Gakuhou was an odd man. He was refreshing out of a professional capacity, where he stretched his legs and unbuttoned his collar and didn't quite defend his words with the same bulletproof fervor as he did his contracts.
Something must have changed by the end of that year, because he is far more relaxed now. In their first coffee date he tells Tadaomi he had been wrong, although he used the phrase "less than ideal" and he says he had been "misunderstood about something". Then he tells Tadaomi why he went into teaching twenty odd years ago, and his eyes lit up in quite a way that made Tadaomi's breath catch.
After unemployment, Gakuhou became bored. He wasn't entirely unemployed, there was still a steady flow of (legal, he assures Tadaomi) income he had going for him. But he was bored, and Tadaomi was bored too, and so they began bored hookups.
Gakuhou had spent his college years in the states, so Tadaomi wouldn't exactly be the first guy he was with, but he was almost just as inexperienced in a bashful, experimental way. They both search on the internet, because they both do not like trying something new blindly, and it makes for awkward and funny conversation.
And Tadaomi wasn’t one to kiss and tell, but Irina caught him by the arm one day and tugged at his collar with a salacious look on her face, because Tadaomi was very badly trying to hide a hickey there. And then she shrieked and laughed and taught Tadaomi way too much information about doing it with a man, and then she said she was happy for him.
“I’m so glad you’re gay,” Irina says, and Tadaomi opens his mouth to correct her, but she bulldozes straight through him. “You were honestly ruining my self esteem, Tadaomi. I spent so long putting the works on you and you never even glanced in my direction, I thought I was losing my touch. Hey, if you thought I was bothering you - barking up the wrong tree and all that, why didn’t you just tell me you were gay?”
And sometime later Tadaomi was spending time at Gakuhou's house and he was spending more time outside of the bedroom than in. The first night he sees that there are three plates set at the dinner table (and it was Gakushuu who set the table, and Tadaomi really doesn't know what to feel about that) is when he thinks he and Gakuhou might be dating .
Tadaomi and Gakuhou get into their first fight because of Gakushuu.
Well, not because of Gakushuu, it wasn't a custody battle or anything like that. But they get into their first fight because of all the tension that has accumulated since middle school, all their clashing ideologies and past history, and Gakushuu kickstarted it.
Tadaomi hadn't even noticed, and when he did he felt so guilty afterwards. He had been surprised when Karma Akabane asks to meet him one day, and Tadaomi (he was back on his job at that time, so he was spending more nights over at the Asanos than days) meets him on a Saturday.
"I know you're with the ex-Principal now," Karma says, and he wrinkles his nose. Tadaomi's eyes widen, but then he remembers that Gakushuu and Karma are in the same class now, and Gakushuu has offhandedly mentioned Karma's name a few times.
"No one else in 3-E knows," Karma says. "That's not what I'm here to say."
Karma prefaces it by saying Gakushuu hadn't asked Karma to say any of this. Karma figured Tadaomi would have wanted to know. "Remember why I stopped being friends with Nagisa in the first place?" Karma says. "I felt a blood-lust from him that shocked me, and I distanced myself from him."
Tadaomi nods. He remembers the blood-lust.
And then he grows increasingly horrified (at himself, at Gakuhou) with each word Karma speaks.
Tadaomi is tall, and it was not his fault he was tall, but he had a few inches over Gakushuu and he stood too straight and stared Gakushuu straight on too much. Gakushuu did so too because he didn't look away but he hated it. Tadaomi talks too loud and too firm and he walked with definite heavy steps and it was not his fault he talked and walked like that because of his job but Gakushuu was wary when he heard someone around the corner. And Gakushuu was afraid of loud noises and people yelling and things flying by his face, even though he tried very hard to pretend he wasn't.
So that's why Gakushuu doesn't like you, Karma explains. "So this is me as his friend asking if you, could, you know, be less… formal. In the house. He'd never tell you this himself, he- hey where are you going?"
And then Tadaomi was pissed, so he paid for their meal and drove back and started to yell at Gakuhou. Then Gakuhou yelled back. And then Gakushuu came home and he ran past them into his room, and Tadaomi and Gakuhou became too overwhelmed to have a conversation so Tadaomi just left.
Two days later something must have happened because Tadaomi gets out of work and Gakushuu is waiting by his car in the parking lot. He looks up when Tadaomi approaches, (his colleagues hanging by the lobby area like nosy little birds.)
Gakushuu says, very coldly, "stay out of my life." He stalks off, head high, struts past his colleagues who give him wide berth, and they stare towards Tadaomi for answers. Tadaomi doesn't know what to say, and he certainly didn't expect that the Asano he wasn't dating would be the Asano to break his heart.
And then Gakuhou calls him in a panic because Gakushuu is nowhere to be found.
They don't quite make up yet, but they're there for each other. They call and call and call Gakushuu and he doesn't pick up, and finally Karma calls Tadaomi and tells him to stop calling because they'd finally convinced Gakushuu to get some sleep. And then Tadaomi slumps over the arm of the couch, relieved, and Gakuhou makes them both tea. His hands shake when he passes over the mug, and Tadaomi grabs it and rubs his fingers over Gakuhou's palm.
Gakuhou has a writer's hand. He has pursued other pursuits but he is first and foremost a scholar, and he has grooves in his fingers where one would rest a pen. Tadaomi has callouses the way he holds a gun and it's strange to hold someone's hand.
Tadaomi is guilty. He thinks he's overstepped because he is not part of the family and he does not understand how the Asanos work, and now Gakushuu has up and left. He thinks about when he cared more for his 3-E students and cared less of Gakuhou, and even less of the main campus. And worse still to Gakushuu, who had been fourteen at that time, and Tadaomi's only impressions of him were other fourteen year olds' acidic remarks. He thinks that he hadn't been very nice to Gakushuu at all.
Gakuhou (who'd been worryingly silent this entire time, and Tadaomi might have commented on it if he was not in his own thoughts) says, "I have… I have been trying to make amends. I tried speaking to him that day, after you left. We have spent too long sidestepping the landmines of the conversation…" Gakuhou hesitates, and looks away. "I suppose it must have been uncharacteristic of me to speak so forthcoming. He saw us yelling. He must have come to the conclusion that you coerced me to speak to him."
"Like I could force you to do anything," Tadaomi says.
"You could," Gakuhou says simply, and then looks away like he's embarrassed. Two words and one week and Tadaomi's heart pounds in his chest.
Tadaomi does not forgive Gakuhou until Gakushuu comes home. He is no longer mad at Gakuhou (he'd fully simmered down the third night Gakushuu is out) although he still thinks that Gakuhou has done wrong things. Neither of them want to talk about that now, and as much as Gakuhou does not speak about it, despite Karma's reassurance, Tadaomi sees his worry. As well as his frustration that there is a problem he is unable to solve.
Tadaomi reminds Gakuhou that his son is not a mathematical problem. There is no formula to decode him, there is no right answer (there are most certainly wrong answers) and there is no brute-force methodology out of this. Gakuhou looks ever more exasperated at that, but then he says that Tadaomi is right.
Gakushuu comes home after a week.
Tadaomi is in the sitting room when the front door opens. Gakuhou is in his study. Tadaomi quickly rises to his feet, but he does not know what to do or what to say.
Gakushuu is there, but Karma and Sakakibara are there too. Gakushuu does not glance at him, and Sakakibara gives him a cautious look as they walk around him and go up the stairs. Karma chooses to join Tadaomi on the couch.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Karma says. "This was a long time coming. It was not a conversation that could happen peacefully. I think it's good that you helped, get it out of the way."
Maybe Gakuhou needed someone. He lost his career and his family and the dream he worked for when he was younger. Maybe he hugs Tadaomi tight because he doesn't know what to do, because he doesn't know how to talk to his son and have the both of them emerge unscathed. And Gakushuu was all that Gakuhou had left, and Gakuhou had - very frankly - not been doing him well.
Gakuhou had made a lot of mistakes, but Tadaomi had lived and respected and grew fond of who he later found out to be was a serial killer. But people change and Gakuhou was trying to change, and criminals didn't deserve solitary confinement.
And maybe Tadaomi needed someone too. He had a job, but he'd been working and working and working and suddenly he'd taken a government-issued break and he had no idea what to do with his time. He could have never imagined himself with a baby on his hip or a toddler tugging at his arm, but that didn't mean he didn't want someone to call him Dad. (That, and he'd grown far too fond of the teenagers the past year.)
Gakushuu would probably never call him Dad in Tadaomi's lifetime. He didn't even call Gakuhou Dad.
Just like Tadaomi to get mixed up with things far too complicated.
It's a bit later when Tadaomi realizes that Irina had snuck Gakushuu's number from his phone when he was not paying attention and was religiously texting him. (Not that Tadaomi used Gakushuu's phone number for anything, other than that one time where he spam-called him a dozen times in five minutes.)
Tadaomi would be mad about his invasion of privacy but then he doesn't think he can be mad at all, because Gakushuu has his fingernails painted pink and Irina has her hair up in a messy bun they're both in the middle of the hall, pamphlets scattered everywhere, and they're huddled with a laptop screen giggling to high heaven.
And Tadaomi looks over their shoulders and sees that they are picking college classes. (?)
Gakushuu has two more years to go and Irina is starting that fall. She kicks her feet up in the air and says that she doesn't want to take statistics, she didn't even go through high school, she wouldn't know a single fundamental, and Gakushuu looks hilariously appalled.
"You're not aiming for easy As so take something new!" Gakushuu says. "Explore your options!" And they both ignore Tadaomi together.
Suddenly Irina is around a lot more often, and Gakushuu and her squabble over the kitchen stove over spice and herb combinations. And because they are not leaving Gakushuu alone at home, Tadaomi and Gakuhou find themselves going on date nights.
They watch a movie together once, and then they decide never to watch a movie outside again. Tadaomi is not a movie person, and neither is Gakuhou. They're fidgety the entire while, and they're grown men. Tadaomi can see giggling teenagers making out in the back of the movie theater. Half an hour into the movie (the protagonists are Already making out) they decide to cut their losses and abscond.
They went to a botanical garden once, and Tadaomi thinks he never wants to go to a botanical garden again. Not that he hates nature, but he's just not a plant person. Gakuhou is, as it seems, a plant person (he'd made the conscious decision a decade odd ago to have his classroom in the middle of a forest) and he talks Tadaomi's ear off about leaves. Which was cute, sure, and Tadaomi loves the guy, but he didn't know what to do with all his new knowledge about grasses. There were just some things he had to deal with when he had the equivalent of a walking encyclopedia for a-
(-wait, love? Oh boy.)
Sometimes they go back to Tadaomi's place, which makes Irina send him too many suggestive emojis, and Tadaomi puts his phone on silent. Sometimes Irina texts him and tells them she is taking Gakushuu out for a late night spin, so they go back to the Asanos' because the bathroom and bedroom is larger. Sometimes they return to the Asanos' and it's in the evening and the four of them end up watching the television together until someone (Gakushuu) falls asleep, and someone (Gakuhou) carries him up to bed. And then someone (Irina) nudges someone else (Tadaomi) and says something along the lines of, "aren't you enjoying domestic family life?"
So now his colleagues know that Tadaomi is dating a single father from the school he had to work at last year. It was a very long explanation. Tadaomi prepared to submit to his higher ups the receipts proving that he only started contacting Gakuhou non-professionally after the case closed. His superior has flipped open Gakuhou's file, stared at his photograph, flipped it close, and said, "him? Really?" (Everyone on the case knew Gakuhou and shuddered at his name.)
Tadaomi shrugs.
"You're weird, Karasuma."
Everyone in the office is needlessly invested in Gakushuu and his existence. They pepper Tadaomi with questions on what it is like being a step-dad with a step-son who hates him. Tadaomi says, "I'm not a step-dad!" And he doesn't bother to correct the "hate him" part.
And then one day Tadaomi leaves work and heads to the parking lot and Gakushuu is there again. He gets a shock of a flashback and he panics, and his colleagues poke their head out from round the corner.
"Hey," Gakushuu says.
"Hi," Tadaomi says, warily.
Gakushuu smiles, like he's laughing at Tadaomi. "Get in the car."
Tadaomi stares at the car. "My car?"
"Yes," Gakushuu says. "We're going somewhere."
Tadaomi is terrified.
Gakushuu makes him drive to the supermarket, where he makes Tadaomi shop for groceries and makes Tadaomi carry all the grocery bags. Then he makes him drive to a shopping mall and he makes Tadaomi try on too many jackets. And then Tadaomi drives them home, and Gakushuu skips off to his room (leaving Tadaomi to drag all the bags inside), and then Tadaomi steps into the sitting room slightly confused and happy and he sees Gakuhou staring at him with the most betrayed look on his face.
"What?" Tadaomi says.
Gakuhou holds out his phone and Tadaomi takes it. It's open to some social media app (all of which he knows Gakuhou has downloaded just to keep tabs on his son) and it's a post by Gakushuu. "Spending father's day with the better dad."
"Oh my god," Tadaomi says. "Wait, it's father's day? I thought it was out of the blue, but it was actually a nice- wait, are you actually mad at me? Kuho, babe-"
And now they're here.
"Marry me," goes (demands) Gakuhou.
Ba-dum, ba-dum, goes Tadaomi's heart.
Gakushuu sips his tea.
"Wait," Tadaomi says.
"What?" Gakuhou says.
(Tadaomi) "Wait, no, I-"
(Gakuhou) "No?!"
(Tadaomi) "No! I mean, wait! Gakushuu-"
(Gakushuu) "Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiip?"
(Tadaomi) "Gakushuu are you okay with this?"
(Gakuhou) "Are you interrupting my proposal to talk to my son-"
(Tadaomi) "Gakuhou, i love you, shut up . Gakushuu, are you-"
(Gakushuu) "Okay with this? Why are you asking me? I'm not the one proposing."
(Tadaomi) "But are you okay with this? Do you even want me around? I know it's- I know I'm not- I don't even know how you two communicate- did you guys talk before this or are-"
(Gakuhou) "I discuss-"
(Tadaomi) "No you don't-"
(Gakushuu) "This time, he did."
(Tadaomi) "Yeah?"
(Gakushuu) "Yeah."
(Tadaomi) "You're okay with me-"
(Gakushuu) "I'm not calling you dad."
(Tadaomi) "That's okay."
(Gakushuu) "The age difference between us is the same as the difference between you and my dad."
(Gakuhou) "Gakushuu Asano!"
(Tadaomi) "...why didn't I notice that until now?"
(Gakuhou) "Tadaomi!!!"
(Gakushuu) "Are you going to say yes or not?"
(Tadaomi) "Oh, oh! Yes."
(Gakuhou) "..."
(Tadaomi) "Sorry. I panicked."
And so they lived happy ever after, or something.
(All past members of 3-E are, understandably, horrified.)