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Throughout his life, Ranpo had only ever wished for miracles twice.
The first was after his parents died, when he wished for them to return or, at least, for his loneliness to be cured. The second was when his coworker came into the room with an added weight on his shoulders, and Ranpo saw the beginning of the decay of the life he knew. He had never cursed his ability to understand the situation as much as he did in that moment.
Akutagawa stood in the Agency’s doorway with a sour gaze and a dark look in his eye. He was standing nervously, tugging at his tie. Ranpo deduced easily that his ultimate goal, to save his sister, hadn’t been completed. More than that, he deduced how he’d been forced to become allies with the mafia’s White Reaper, because of course, after all that happened, the two were forced together yet again.
When Oda appeared at the doorway with a conflicted expression, a taller figure behind Akutagawa’s slightly shaking one, Ranpo’s heart dropped into his stomach.
Oda met Ranpo’s eyes from across the room, placing a hand on Akutagawa’s shoulder. Ranpo took his feet off his desk, wanting to stand, wanting to hug Oda to find some semblance of comfort with the realization of the path ahead, but he hesitated.
The boss of the Port Mafia had died.
The White Reaper of the Port Mafia was an omen of death. When the young man came to the Agency, along with the assassin girl and her quiet, inexpressive eyes, Ranpo almost wanted to tell them to get away from the life he knew. The mafia boss had sent them, after all, had caused them to go on the path that intersected with Ranpo's, so Ranpo felt justified in his need to feel like everything would be righted if the two of them left.
That wouldn’t help him at all, though, so Ranpo instead went over to Oda and sat next to him. He sat there, swinging his legs, as if there weren’t people around the world who want to destroy the newest member of the Armed Detective Agency and capture what the Port Mafia left for him.
Oda leaned closer with a small worried crease between his eyebrows. Ranpo’s heart thudded dully in his chest, as if his boyfriend were bringing it back to life. “Are you okay?” Oda said, hand reaching for Ranpo’s.
“The Port Mafia is going to reform itself,” Ranpo said lowly, addressing how Oda had known about the Port Mafia’s change in leader before the rest of them did, except for Akutagawa and Atsushi, who were exceptions to the rules anyway.
Oda hummed, and Ranpo entwined their fingers when nobody was looking. He could feel himself getting comforted by Oda’s very presence, a force that began to fill his head with sappy thoughts around a year ago, and only a year after Oda had joined the Agency. Oda had once lived for revenge in a way that nobody except Ranpo and the President knew, but now he'd become someone who cared for everyone. Who cared for Ranpo.
He had become a constant in Ranpo’s life, someone who took his eccentricities well and never thought of him as anything less than he was. He had come so far from the lost teenage assassin with cold eyes, just as Ranpo had gone from being a boy scared of the world to a detective who could do anything.
And Ranpo knew that he he could never replace him, even if he tried. He knew that any loss of Oda’s presence would be devastating. There would be no second chances for this. Ranpo couldn’t afford to let anyone come and take this life from them.
Oda wrote at night, as he always did. Meanwhile, Ranpo began to plan at night, in secret. He spent time trying to figure out the facts of their situation, the truth of the mafia boss, and everything else. The answers weren’t happy, and no plan fit to make everything better. Ranpo could feel his eyes drooping as he worked.
It made them quite a team, time falling away from them on the train as Oda led Ranpo to the Agency. Ranpo kept on glancing over at Oda, kept on feeling his eyes shutting against his will, and eventually he gave in, leaning against Oda’s shoulder for support. When he looked up through his sleepy eyes, he saw Oda smiling down at him, blue eyes content with their lives.
Days at the Agency became consumed with things to do; things that didn’t involve the Guild, which had recently announced it’s trip to Japan and became a threat looming on the horizon, or that involved any number of other groups with the potential to take down everything that Ranpo cared about. He knew he couldn’t do this on his own, but then again, what worth did he have if he couldn’t figure out how to keep Akutagawa and Atsushi’s secret, the book that could change fate, while still saving everyone?
Instead, they dealt with their new recruits, and boring crime scenes, and the quiet discord that new mafia boss Nakahara Chuuya was causing. In the day, Ranpo stole glances with Oda, stole candies from Kyouka, and stole yawns at the sites of more explosions and more dead bodies and more useless information. At night, he wrote like a madman, obsessed over saving everyone. A great detective who could discover the truth but couldn’t use it wasn’t so great, in the end. Ranpo had quickly discovered the implications of the White Reaper’s presence, but he couldn’t find a way out of this endless labyrinth.
Time was slipping through his fingers, and he began to spend his nights at Oda’s apartment watching Oda write, instead of trying to puzzle out the answers that he couldn’t get on his own. A part of him felt like a failure, but when he looked at how much Oda believed in him, in his ability to help all of them and to ask for help when he needed it, he couldn’t muster up the feeling.
Fukuzawa met with Ranpo about the Guild, and planning began in the daytime soon afterwards.
Oda was still lovely as always, and Ranpo, after leaving the President’s office and hearing the door shut heavily behind him, fell into his boyfriend’s arms. He was caught perfectly, arms wrapping around Oda, and Oda’s clothes smelled of something subtle and distinctly him with Ranpo's nose pressed up against the taller man. Tears brimmed in Ranpo’s eyes. Why did it have to come to this hopeless situation? Why? All he'd ever wanted was to be happy with Oda, but everything felt like it was going to fall apart.
Oda rubbed his back. “It was that hard to ask for help, huh?”
Ranpo didn’t reply, but he also didn’t pull away, despite knowing that others in the Agency were watching.
“Remember, it’s okay to ask for help,” Oda spoke softly so nobody else could hear, and his hands rubbed his back gently. His breath felt warm on Ranpo’s forehead, stirring his hair. “And if you feel lonely ever again, I’m here for you. We’re all here for you.”
“A great detective doesn’t feel lonely,” Ranpo mumbled. Oda’s chest shook with his quiet laughter, and Ranpo absorbed the feeling of happiness filling his chest, for one of the last times, perhaps, until he could find a path to the end, a way for them to be together once again. He felt the hopelessness and anger build up inside him, again, because he didn’t know how to save this. He pushed it aside, hoping desperately to savor the moment.
“Of course not,” Oda said, and Ranpo drank up the amusement in his tone.
Ranpo listened to Oda talk about his writing until he had figured out every detail, fixed every plot hole in the story, and filled in all the characters. And Ranpo realized, sitting on the couch, and hearing that voice, that he’d do anything in his power to protect it, and that included telling the truth to avoid more pain later. He swallowed.
“Are you happy?”
“I think so,” Oda replied, flipping another page over and looking up to smile at Ranpo. “I have a lot of things now that I never could have had before. I have you,” Ranpo could feel himself getting flustered, and pouted at Oda’s smile, “and I have the children, and the Agency… But I know that you’re leading up to something.”
“I am,” Ranpo sat up straighter, eyes opening and resisting the urge to pull out his glasses to see if they might make him a bit more confident. “Akutagawa and Atsushi have secrets that they got on the night that Atsushi left the Mafia, and they might spell out the destruction of everyone.” He paused. “I don’t know if I can stop it.”
Oda looked at him, and Ranpo felt every regret fill his bones.
“It’s about the Mafia’s former boss, correct?” Oda sounded almost resigned. Still, Ranpo could see the desperation inside of him, the spirit struggling to find a way to save everyone. Just as Ranpo had been. Oda, if nothing else, had overcome any ill will that he once harbored towards the world. “He spoke to me at the bar that night. He called me something weird. Odasaku.”
“I know.”
“…What he told Akutagawa and Atsushi will change everything, then. Something he planned out.”
“He just wanted you to live without pain, but if that causes pain for us…” Ranpo breathed in, gaze lowering so that he was glaring at the papers in Oda’s hands. He held back his emotions, even as they threatened to strangle him. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered harshly into the air between them.
Oda sighed, reaching out to put his hand over Ranpo’s. “I know.”
By the time the Guild was defeated, the fancy-hatted mafia boss had died. It left a sour taste in Ranpo’s mouth, a feeling of disgust and destruction, standing in the rubble by the coast. The Moby Dick was gone from the sky; though it didn’t look any different than before, the memories of the giant form of that monster, Lovecraft, rising out of the sea and catching the falling corpse of the gravity manipulator made Ranpo shudder.
Oda placed a hand on his shoulder. His other hand rested on Akutagawa’s, who was coughing into his palm. Atsushi stood back a few feet, with Kyouka beside him.
“They were looking for me,” Atsushi said. The others turned towards him, and his wide yellow-and-purple eyes betrayed the fear that the rest of his unmoved face wouldn’t. “It- it’s my fault that they came here, came here for the…” His eyes met Akutagawa’s.
Ranpo bit back the vile words he wanted to say, to tell the White Reaper that if he thought he was such a problem then he should go, leave, take the Book and move on, until the first dead Port Mafia Boss would be happy because at least then Oda wouldn’t be at risk of dying.
“It doesn’t matter,” Akutagawa rasped.
Kyouka nodded. “We can protect this city again,” she said.
Ranpo felt the pit in his heart open again, like an old wound that’d been reopened, and he clenched his fists tight enough to feel his nails dig into his palms. He wished that he could agree with Kyouka, he really did, because he liked her, and he liked the Agency, and he liked the city, and if Oda could change than so could the rest of the murderers in the Agency, but-
Ranpo stormed off silently with tears pricking at his eyes. Oda called for him, but Ranpo didn’t stop. Oda didn’t run after him, either, probably hoping to give him space, give him time, give him an opportunity to breathe, but Ranpo knew the truth. There were no miracles, not for members of a timeline that shouldn’t exist. There was no true path for them except the one where the old Port Mafia Boss got his way.
Everything faded away, because life itself was slipping through their fingers. Everything was falling away from them.
Akutagawa wasn’t someone that Ranpo had a lot of communication with.
“You know, don’t you,” he said, bluntly, to Ranpo, standing by Ranpo’s desk with his hands shoved into his coat pockets. His glare was directed at Ranpo’s desk. He never did like eye contact.
“What do I know?” Ranpo prompted, sulkily. How could Akutagawa not realize that Ranpo wasn’t the key to saving Yokohama—to saving all of them?
Akutagawa’s face didn’t change. His dark eyes stayed focused on the wooden furniture. “Don’t play dumb. You’re smart enough to understand.”
“Maybe I understand that you,” Ranpo snapped, suddenly intent on making Akutagawa leave, pointing in Akutagawa’s direction and moving with enough forcefulness that Akutagawa looked up, “pretend that you don’t have emotions, that you don’t care about anybody, but it’s obvious that you do anyway. You care about your sister, and you care about this city, and you care about Kyouka and even the White Reaper! You try to pretend but really you’re just pathetic! Go away!”
Akutagawa’s mouth pulled into a deep frown. His eyebrows creased.
Atsushi, in the background, flinched. When Ranpo looked over at the former White Reaper, the boy’s eyes were wide and staring. His jaw was clenched tightly, and Ranpo could see clearly what was wrong. He hated the understanding that he had of Atsushi's emotions, that he knew Atsushi's the fear of the old mafia boss was mixing with the fear of his childhood, the fear of being the White Reaper, with anger and sadness and a flood of emotions that Ranpo couldn’t fully understand, all present in one fearful look.
Atsushi was unused to the idea of someone like Akutagawa, who hid his emotions, caring about someone like him. But he was used to the idea of someone like Ranpo getting angry. Ranpo looked away. He really was too similar to the old mafia boss for comfort.
Oda made a quiet noise, from a couple desks away.
“Please calm down,” he said while standing up, and Ranpo, who hadn’t realized that he had also stood up while yelling at Akutagawa, sat down again as Oda briefly touched his shoulder. “Akutagawa… I understand that you want answers, and I promise you’ll get them, but for now the Guild is defeated, and that's all you need to know. And Atsushi,” Oda walked over to Atsushi and crouched beside his chair, even as Atsushi avoided his gaze.
Oda’s voice became quiet, subdued, trying to heal the damage that Ranpo had caused. To apologize for Ranpo’s unearned anger towards Akutagawa and to see if Atsushi needed help, as he always did for orphans. Ranpo sunk lower in his chair, and the finest dusting of guilt finally found him.
Atsushi, it seemed, would become yet another one of Oda’s kids, never to be lonely again. Ranpo looked at the two of them, in their corner of the office, and his heart felt heavy. He wasn’t sure if it could last, but at the very least, they deserved happiness. Just like anyone else.
Ranpo avoided everyone’s eyes for the rest of the day.
Atsushi looked overly serious, standing in the middle of the street and a few feet from a dead body. Akutagawa, meanwhile, standing next to him, looked utterly unbothered by Ranpo’s laughter as he proved the police officer wrong.
Akutagawa muttered something to Atsushi, about how “you’ll get used to it.”
“Aaah, now that that’s done, I’m hungry,” Ranpo finished, turning away from the body. He looked at Atsushi’s eyebrows, drawn down into a closed off expression, eyes nervously darting towards Akutagawa, and he sighed annoyedly. Though Oda had tried to help Atsushi, the fact that Ranpo had snapped at Akutagawa hadn’t changed. The fact that Ranpo had referred to Atsushi as the White Reaper hadn’t changed.
“What do you want?” Akutagawa said, lips thinning. “I’m not paying for your food, in case you’re wondering.”
“I wasn’t!” Ranpo called, putting his glasses back into his pocket as he lead the two of them away, not that he really knew where he was going. They’d find somewhere to eat along the way. “I brought you along so that I could,” he let air hiss between his teeth, remembering that Oda would want him to try, at least, “apologize to you. Sorry.”
Neither of the other two say anything, but Ranpo listened to how their footsteps made even noises on the pavement with the absence of people.
“I know about what the old mafia boss told you, or at least most of it. And I know that this isn’t the real timeline, just one created by the Book.” Ranpo clenched his jaw.
Atsushi sucked in a breath. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
Ranpo fell silent, not prepared to discuss with\ coworkers who thought he was brilliant that he wasn’t sure what to do when their timeline was created by some stranger with ulterior motives. Akutagawa coughed.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s not our timeline,” Akutagawa said, voice carefully emotionless. “We all care about our own lives. And we should be able to protect them.” Ranpo could tell how he was thinking about Ranpo’s earlier statement that he really did care about others, careful not to prove or disprove it; Ranpo stood by that, that Akutagawa cared. But it wasn’t pathetic, like he had said, because Ranpo was the same in pretending he cared less than he did.
“I don’t know if Dazai cared enough,” Atsushi murmured, voice almost lost in the wind blowing around them, and Ranpo looked back to see him looking at his feet and touching the place where small scars looped around his neck. He looked up to meet Ranpo’s gaze. “But I do. I want to fight for this timeline.”
“‘Cared enough’?” Akutagawa sounded bitter. “I suppose not. But we have the Book, don’t we?” He wasn’t looking at Ranpo, instead only directing his dark eyes in Atsushi’s direction. Atsushi touched the outside of his coat underneath which Ranpo knew the Book was hidden.
Ranpo felt a small, maybe minuscule space in his heart get healed by their blatant hope. Maybe misplaced hope, but faith in the world, and in someone who had left such a great responsibility to them.
“I think,” he kept his eyes closed and let the sun warm his face despite the feelings threatening to rise to the surface, “that the old mafia boss cared about this timeline for one person only, and he didn’t think about all the people that cared for that person other than himself, but he did care. Even just a little bit was enough. So I think he’s left some twisted way out of this situation for us, just to save him.”
He turned away from his younger colleagues before he could see their faces. Atsushi’s footsteps stopped for a moment of hesitation before he kept walking again.
Ranpo continued before either said anything more. “Now come on, I think I see a restaurant over there!”
“I’m getting my next book published,” Oda said, door closing behind him. Ranpo crunched on another chip, sitting at Oda’s table. Oda had gone out to see his kids and eat at the restaurant, but Ranpo already knew that he’d also been looking into publishing.
“Mmm,” he responded as Oda stepped forward.
Oda kissed him. Ranpo smiled softly into it, a celebratory thing for Oda’s next great achievement. Oda had been looking forward to this for years, since before he even joined the Agency two years previously.
“You taste like salt,” Oda said when he pulled away. Ranpo grinned up at him and grabbed another chip.
“You taste like curry.”
“Maybe so,” Oda smiled like sunlight, and it hit Ranpo, suddenly, that he’d never get anything like this again if everything went wrong.
There are all types of love in this world but never the same love twice. Where had Ranpo heard that? It was true, though, so very true. How would Ranpo find this exact warmth again, after all that was going to happen? How would he get by without sleepy days in Oda’s room, or holding his hand under the table in Agency meetings, or grinning at him when he solved a case?
How could Ranpo save the happiness that they deserved, if everything was going to be destroyed?
“I love you,” he told Oda, looking up at his boyfriend’s brilliance from his spot by the table. His heart felt like it was rising in his chest, like a hot air balloon that’d had it’s flame reignited. “I love you. I’ll save you. I’ll save everyone.”
“We’ll save everyone,” Oda said, and Ranpo wanted to believe it, with how determined Oda looked. He came closer to Ranpo, crouching and leaning until his forehead touched Ranpo’s. His breath was the steadiness that cured Ranpo’s faulty confidence, and everything fell into place.
If the old Mafia Boss Dazai wanted Oda to be happy, then Ranpo would have to take what the man had left for them and shape it into a weapon against all the forces outside of them. If they were left behind in a universe with the world out to get them, Ranpo would have to live his life to the fullest.
There was no miracle here, but there was love. Love for Oda, love for Ranpo, and love for the Agency. Ranpo would take the lives that the old mafia boss ruined, and perhaps, in the end, there would be a happy ending. And if it failed, then Ranpo could at least try for these brief glimpses at happiness.
Even if trying was all he could do.