The four of them sat at the table enjoying the delicious meal Kellan had been preparing. Well all of them except for Tiza, he pushed his food around on his plate, not really hungry after what he had to witness earlier. Their dining room table was littered with dishes bursting with carbs, fats, and lean meats. Honestly, it looked delicious and Ryuji made a show of piling Tiza's plate high with food all the while commenting on each dish. Kellan's ears were a pleasant shade of red the entire time, the only tell that he was enjoying the praise from his spouse. Comments on the food weren't the only thing the other Omega talked about.
"So, Tiza, tell me where you're from. Somewhere European I assume?"
"Tiza what do you do for a living?"
"How long have you known Aosh?"
To those questions and a multitude of others, Tiza gave vague answers. Did Aosh's parents, or he should say parent because the Alpha didn't talk much, question all of Aosh's friends this much? At some point, Ryuji was appeased with the number of answers he had gotten and the dinner conversation returned to a normal one.
Aosh's family was quite odd, he thought. But he really didn't have a place to talk. His family was...dysfunctional at best.
What really struck him was how fast they went from sobbing over a dead fish to laughing and joking with each other over dinner. It had this morbid tinge to it that, although Tiza didn't mind it, was...well even Tiza knew it wasn't normal. And he didn't even have a baseline to what a normal family was.
Another weird thing was his parent's dynamic. A quiet reclusive Alpha and a loud ostentatious Omega. When he found out that the Omega was the company owner and head designer while the Alpha was a novelist Tiza was thrown for another loop. Ryuji was so proud of the fact that Kellan could stay home all day, do the housework and not have to worry about doing landscaping work, like some important husband doting on his fragile wife.
In all actuality Ryuji was an important person, he owned and ran a fucking company, but Kellan was anything but fragile at least in looks. The Alpha towered over both Omega's and was about as broad as his son.
It's like the gender roles were flipped and suddenly Aosh's existence made a lot more sense. Of course, he acted like no other Alpha Tiza has dealt with! The only Alpha figure he had in his life was the lapdog for an Omega! Aosh may as well be the world's first un-tainted Alpha. Tiza almost wanted to laugh at the thought. Like Aosh was some priceless treasure that should be protected.
"Tiza, sweetie, did you have pets as a kid?"
The sudden question shook Tiza out of the reverie he was in while poking at his food. While he was spacing out the conversation at the table had turned to the topic of Aosh's great grandmother.
Ryuji gave him a toothy smile just like Aosh would while he waited for an answer. The resemblance was almost uncanny.
"Pops!" Aosh exclaimed worriedly. Every time he asked Tiza about his childhood or his other family members the man would ignore him or say he preferred not to talk about it. Maybe he should have told his parents about Tiza's arrival ahead of time after all so that a question like that wasn't asked. The last thing he wanted was to offend the Omega.
"Oh hush! It's fine," waving his hand to dismiss his disruptive son Ryuji gazed at Tiza for an answer.
"Well...um no. To be honest, maybe that's why….Sorry, I'm just really confused about what just happened...the funeral and all.." his voice trailed off as he looked down at his plate.
Ryuji laughed.
"That makes sense, I would be too if I was you. I'm not surprised to hear you've never had a pet. I never had one either, but we are Omegas after all. It wouldn't make sense to let pets have pets huh?"
"Ryuji please." Kellan looked at his husband disapprovingly. Ryuji shrugged his shoulders.
"Hey that's how it used to be ya'know," he paused to shove some food in his mouth then continued, "Imf you're confused let Kellan exfplane."
Said Alpha rolled his eyes at the lack of manners his husband possessed. They were trying to impress the man and Ryuji had already asked him more questions than a game show host, made a rather crude comment, and was talking with his mouth full. Repressing the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, the Alpha tried to explain his husband's madness.
"Well you see Tiza, some of those koi fish out there in the pond were my grandmothers. She used to raise koi as pets and before she passed she left them to my mother and me. We had twenty when we moved them here, but with the environment change, many of them became stressed out and sick. Koi live rather long lives though so we weren't really surprised; my grandmother had been raising some of them a rather long time, since before I was born. When they would die we would bury them outback, but it was Ryuji's idea to grow flowers over their graves. Since then we've added a few but the oldest ones are basically family heirlooms at this point, the only thing remaining of my grandmother's work. It wasn't until we had Aosh that we started doing this little ceremony."
Ryuji giggled behind his glass of water and interjected.
"It's rather funny how the whole thing started, looking back at it now. Aosh loved those koi fish, he would just spend hours out there with them. He would play games with them, talk to them, I even saw him having little tea ceremonies with them one time! He's the one who named them all too! So when he saw one of them die for the first time, he cried and cried!"
"Pops," Aosh growled at the back of his throat. Ryuji continued undeterred.
"So, when we went to bury it, he cried even more. According to Aosh the only way you could bury a fish was to flush it down the toilet; I guess he had seen it on tv or something."
"Pops seriously!"
"When we told him that we couldn't do that he threw the biggest tantrum I had ever seen in my life, and I would know to because I was a fucking brat when I was a kid. Aosh never fought us on anything but that fish was just so important to him. Kellan and I couldn't take his screaming anymore so….so," Ryuji held his sides as he tried to hold back his laughter.
"Well, that's officially it. I hate my family. This is the worst. I think I could just die right now. Yep, I'll just suffocate myself in these mashed potatoes. Yep, that's good." Aosh held his beet-red face in his hands.
Ryuji lost it.
"We had to flush it down the toilet! It was like nine inches long! It broke the fucking toilet!! We had to go to the bathroom at the convenience store around the corner for a whole week!" the Omega cackled uncontrollably in his chair.
Tiza was literally at a loss for words. He looked at Aosh who was a blushing mess and to Kellan who was rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
"To make a long story short, Tiza, we do that ceremony in the bathroom because when the next fish died we couldn't afford another toilet, so it was a compromise we had made with Aosh."
"Now it serves its purpose to bring our loving son back home now and then, although we did have the pleasure of seeing him for two weeks in a row," Ryuji sighs, "I'm convinced that's why Violet died. The love of her life never comes back home anymore. She died of heartbreak." He teased.
Even with such a thorough explanation, it didn't make this whole ordeal any less weird. Suddenly Aosh got up from his seat, grabbed Tiza by the wrist, and dragged him out the backdoor.
"I think you overdid it again Ryu." Kellan sighed, getting up to clear the table.
Ryuji wiped a few tears from his eyes, a result of his laughing fit.
"Oh, he'll be fine. He deserves to get embarrassed in front of his boyfriend. It's punishment for being so secretive about his love life. Why what would you have done?"
"..."
"I would've told the third-grade beauty pageant story," the Alpha says carrying a stack of dirty dishes into the kitchen.
"Ah, Kellan you're worse than me!" exclaims the Omega following suit with some of the leftover food.