FIC: Dollars' worth of fun [DOGS]

[expletives]

Title: Dollars' worth of fun
Author: Zero
Fandom: DOGS/DOGS:BULLETS&CARNAGE.
Rating: PG for nothing happening.
Pairings: Really no.
Genre: General? Slice-of-life? Vaguely humourous? I don't know.
Disclaimer: I don't own DOGS, and thank the gods for that.
Notes: Moar DOGS drabble! I'm liking these prompts. It's late, but it was fun. For the Day #3 prompt at monthastray

BUT FIRST, A HAIKU.


Pink and black spinning
blurs that giggle constantly.
Giovanni sighs.




A man sits naked in a laundromat.

This is incorrect. A man sits in his underwear in a laundromat, but this is solely because a short little old woman threatened to beat him with her purse, which happened to weigh about forty pounds. He can always leave his underwear to fester for another week.

In a squalid maze of concrete that passes for a city, in a crumbling little neighborhood, in a smoke stained laundromat in a filthy plastic chair, Badou Nails waits for his pants to get clean.

This, in itself, is hardly unusual. It happens every week. Sometimes twice, if somebody just happens to bleed on him on a Wednesday. He comes to this one most of the time because the other patrons are few and the small thin man behind the counter doesn't ask questions. Either people in the area do their laundry by hand, or they’re willing to forgo hygiene for safety. Children in this neighborhood don’t tend to last long.

Which is why Badou is mildy surprised when two small girls bounce into the room. They look familiar in a way he can’t place, and a niggling feeling at the back of his mind tells him that he doesn’t want to. The matching combinations of pink and black strike him as familiar, and somehow make him think of siblinghood.

But, decrepit as his memory might be from years of blunt force trauma, falling from great heights, more toxins than he can name, and more blunt force, he knows deep in his soul that his brother never wore a pink, fluffy dress.

Shrugging and leaning back to doze off once more (Badou Nails is the only specimen known to be able to sleep and smoke at the same time. Research will be conducted as soon funding arrives...), he put the two out of his mind.

They, it seemed, had other ideas.

“Hey, look! It’s Not-”

“-Not Quite Big Brother!”

A single eye cracked open.

“He’s almost as fun as Big Brother Haine!”

“Maybe he’ll play with us!”

With a grunt of surrender, Badou lifted himself back up, coming face to face with two yellow eyes an inch or two away from his face. Stifling a squeak of surprise, he looked at his options. He didn’t like normal kids, what was the upside to creepy, sentence-finishing ones? Besides, they mentioned Haine. Nobody who mentioned Haine to him had anything nice planned.

On the other hand, his clothes were still in the washer, and running across town in his boxers would only appeal to him after enough alchohol to choke a horse.

Or horse-mutant child, he thought grimly. Whatever you find in the city, nowadays.

The one in pink, standing to his left, squealed and shoved her face closer to his. “Will you play-”

“-Play with us, Sort Of Big Brother?” Finished the one on his right, wearing mostly black.

He grunted. “I thought it was ‘Not Quite Big Brother’.”

The two looked at each other quizzically. “It can be-”

“-Can be both! Or-”

“-Or something else!”

These two were giving him a headache.

The one in black threw her arms up. “So, will you play-”

“-Play with us?”

“Kind of Maybe Brother?” They finished in time, grinning from ear to ear.

Badou just grunted again. He stood up and turned around, trying to ignore the sounds of underage girls inspecting his underwear. He’d ruined people’s reputations on less evidence.

It was a little hard to take them seriously when their only comments were:

“Ooh, Noki, what’s this called?”

“It’s called blue, stupid!”

“That’s not nice, Noki! And I meant the pattern on top of it.”

“I’m sorry, Luki. It’s called plaid!”

“Plaid? But I thought it was called tartan?”

Reaching underneath his soaking pants to the curve of the washer, he pulled out a fistful of lost quarters and shut the machine again to get on with it’s job. Tar and blood don’t come out very easily.

He counted out two dollars, yellow and black eyes following each quarter as it dropped from his right to his left hand. Eight quarters in hand, he held it out to them.

"There. A buck for each of you. Now go away somewhere and find a dollar's worth of fun."

With joyful screeches they fell on his outstretched palm like magpies, snatching what the could and then running away.

"What do you want to do, Luki?"

"I don't know, Noki! What can we do-"

"-Do for a dollar? Well, we could-"

"-We could get candy, or change them for pennies-"

"-Pennies and throw them at stray cats, or-"

Badou allowed himself a smile as he closed his eye again, ready to slip back into a state of somewhat sleepiness. Their voices were high pitched and grating, but more important than that, they were receding.

"-Or we could do laundry!" Giggled Luki.

Badou's peaceful smirk dissolved.

"That's a great idea, Luki!" Noki exclaimed.

Badou stood up again, yanked open the washing machine, and grabbed his pants and shirt. Slinging them over his shoulder he marched from the laundromat, grumbling under his breath. The clothes were clean enough, he'd just let them drip dry. It was a far better prospect that dealing with these things for another half hour.

He didn't notice as he left that the girls were opening the washers and climbing into them, clothes still on.

Giovanni arrived an hour and a half later, to a floor covered in suds and and a quietly crying manager. Sighing to himself as the spinning girls laughed themselves sick, he made a mental note that this was the week that somebody, gods help them, would be teaching the Hardcore Twins how to do laundry. Notably, that doors are to be closed, and that clothes came off first.