Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ranpo has always been better with books than people.

He was quick to transition from picture books to chapter books, and all the adults cooed over what a precocious little man he was, he simply frowned and wished they would leave him be. Always asking what he was reading, as if they couldn’t read the title for themselves, trying to drag him into all the things they consider normal for boys his age, saying it’s only natural that he’ll like them. They never say it outright, but they think he’s unnatural the way he is.

He doesn’t like books with pictures. Doesn’t like cartoons, or movies with actors, either. They’re too bright, too many things to focus on, and they move too fast or too slow, and he feels this strange vertigo like he’s spinning out of control.

It’s better, he thinks, to be in control of the situation himself. Black ink against offwhite paper, a book tucked under his arm everywhere he goes. The pace is as quick as he can devour the words, or as slow as he can savor them.

What an incredible child he is. What an old soul. What a strange boy. He gets along better with adults, but prefers his own company to anyone else’s. His parents whisper about him behind his back and lie to his face. There’s a book on changeling myths that he checks out over and over again, until one day it disappears. He isn’t stupid; he knows what his parents did. What they say about him.

He tells himself he isn’t lonely. He lies.

It’s his eighteenth birthday when he just— leaves. His parents have told him all his life that he should be more grateful for all they’ve done for him, that when he’s an adult he’ll understand, but frankly, it’s bullshit. He’s an adult, and nothing has changed. He still likes candy and spends far too much time buried in mystery novels and can’t find his way around the city to save his life. He’s still him, never turned into the person they expected.

What the hell is growing up, anyways? No one ever told him, just bounced around the same old lies. He has all the options in the world, and he’s ready to take it on.

Except, uh, there are some problems. Several, actually. The main one being, he can’t take the train alone. He’s tried, but every time the blurs of rushing trains and changing signs and moving people are so much that he can’t, he can’t do anything more and so he cuts himself off until…

….it’s funny, he can’t really remember what he does. He can piece it together in retrospect from the state of his clothes and his phone and the people around him and the self inflicted scratches on his arms and chest, and he knows he’s capable of walking around and maybe asking for directions in that state, but his memory is completely blank. After one attempt that left him curled up in a dirty bathroom until half an hour after the last train had left, he gave up on public transit entirely.

So he can’t exactly move that far from home, even if the suitcases he’s packed are light enough to carry so long as he stops and takes breaks. Ranpo huffs, pulling the brim of his signature cap down lower to block out the busy street from his line of sight. He can already feel his hands trembling, and it’s hard to tell if it’s nerves or the constant bombardment of everything moving on the street. He shouldn’t have left during rush hour, but it was better than spending any longer. He’s got the legal documents he needs, and a bit of hoarded money and food to get him started.

Today is the first day of the rest of his life.

So it turns out that working in retail sucks. It really sucks, and leaves him drained every day, and the vest they force him to wear is itchy and leaves rashes unless he wears a turtleneck under it. But he’s got to keep a certain amount of hours to pay rent, at least until he can find himself a better job.

It’s boring there, and far too loud, and Ranpo’s customer service voice is abysmal. He hates liars, so why is he forced to be one? It’s pointless and a waste of everyone’s time to exchange pleasantries that no one really means. He’s quickly taken off the register and put in the back to stock shelves, but he can’t drive a forklift at all, and his arms are much too weak to carry anything.

Then he’s put on the loss prevention team, and he thinks maybe he can hold down a job after all. He’s got a keen eye for spotting crimes in progress, and while he can tell who’s doing it out of necessity and turns a blind eye more often than not, but he’s a master at catching the ones who do it out of boredom. Within his first month, he’s reduced losses more than anyone else, and gained a reputation as the department store’s secret weapon. Despite what people say about his appearance, Ranpo can be quite intimidating when he wants to.

There’s a small problem with his notoriety, though, compounded by his rather repetitive style of dressing: people are starting to recognize him. His presence is enough to scare off individuals and rookies, but when they start grouping up, he can’t be everywhere at once. He’ll track a lifter down to one end of the store, only to find that their partner has made away with their goods at the other end.

He starts experimenting with disguises, first simple things like clothing, then getting into it in earnest. Different hairstyles, methods of contouring and accessorizing, adjusting his gait and mannerisms, taking advantage of his knowledge on the human psyche and how best to manipulate it.

He’s not the best at it; he’s never had much of an eye for color, and his best disguises are just hoodies and slouchy hats, but he’s having fun. Even if it’s hard to find clothes that he can wear without them scraping against his skin, he likes the feeling of changing it up for a reason. And it gives him an excuse to wear sunglasses indoors, pretend he couldn’t find anything better, pretend he’s not closing his eyes against the harsh fluorescent lights that flicker in ways no one else seems to see. He’s good at his job, even if it’s still monotonous compared to the life he wants to live. He’s got enough money to live on, and for most people, that would be enough.

But Edogawa Ranpo is not like most people. So when he sees danger, he decides, why not? Maybe he’ll be able to do something more than confront disaffected teenage girls about their makeup theft.

It starts when he sees a customer with an unusually tall build and a stern composure, who isn’t a shoplifter but is making quite the suspicious purchase, who claims it’s for a construction project at home, but his nails tell another story. And the smudges on his hands— well. Those are interesting enough that Ranpo simply abandons his position at the store without notifying anyone, sheds the majority of his disguise in the break room, and follows the man at a distance. A few times he loses sight, but he picks up the trail quickly enough.

His heart is racing like he’s never felt before as he turns a final corner, and his quarry enters a small convenience shop with a ding. He’s really doing this. Edogawa Ranpo is a legal adult who just willingly skipped work because one of the customers is planning on committing a crime. He catches the door just before it swings closed and enters, looking around for the accompli— oh, there she is. No criminal record, he’d be willing to bet money on that, but the bluetooth device clipped to her ear would suggest that she’s been monitoring the situation.

Hm. He takes a moment to collect himself, assessing the room and picking out the targets. There’s a haughty looking man who’s dressed like he’s trying to blend in with the populace but hasn’t done so in years, and a silver haired man in traditional Japanese clothing who looks like he would rather eat asphalt than be referred to as common. Dignified, that’s the word. Not condescending, but old beyond his years. Ranpo feels a strange connection to this stranger, but he pushes it aside. He’s got a job to do, and for that, he pushes his way across the store, cutting straight through the sluggish line leading up to the cash register.

“Hey,” he complains to the silver haired man. “Can I borrow your phone to call someone? Mine doesn’t have any service.”

The man blinks, looking down at Ranpo as if he’s merely an unexpected distraction. “I really don’t lend my phone to strangers, young man.“

“It’s urgent, I promise. Here’s the number.” He holds up his smartphone, the notes app open to show a simple message: call the police. A crime is about to take place, and your client will be the target.

He’s taken aback— which is pretty much par for the course for anyone Ranpo interacts with, really— but recovers surprisingly quickly. “I’m afraid I don’t make exceptions, but I can pass a message along.” He whispers something into his client’s ear, and the man stiffens and begins tapping rapidly at his phone, hopefully texting the authorities.

“Okay. I guess I’ve got a couple minutes anyways.” He ambles off into the aisle, grabbing a pack of gummy worms, peach rings, some butterscotch hard candies, and a couple flashlights. He’s got enough practice stopping shoplifters that he knows all their tricks, enough to put them to good use. The silver haired man does watch him from time to time, but frankly, Ranpo isn’t a threat so much as he is a curiosity. And he knows the man can’t afford to waste much energy on him.

Ranpo grabs a bottle of ramune and makes sure to position himself behind the accomplice in line, as the disaffected cashier drinks coffee from a massive thermos in an attempt to stay awake for the rest of their shift.

And three, two…

“No sudden movements! Everyone on the ground, now, or I will shoot.”

Now, the game really begins, and Ranpo feels more alive than he has in his life.

The vast majority of the customers hit the ground when they see the gun, a few of them freezing in fear, a few more glancing towards the door. The silver haired man, though, extends one arm protectively across his client, like the ‘mom seatbelt’ Ranpo has heard about from fiction and other people’s moms. He’s in a fighting stance and only a second away from drawing his sword when Ranpo makes his move.

“Hey, you make more in a week than this store carries in total,” he says petulantly, pointing at the taller criminal. “So what’s a mobster doing here committing a petty theft when the amount of cash kept on hand is barely worth your time?”

He immediately turns his gun on Ranpo— no, on his accomplice, who Ranpo was crouched down hiding behind. “Did you seriously rat me out to this kid?”

Ranpo bristles at that— yeah, he may have a baby face, but he’s had it with people looking down on him for his age. “I figured it out myself,” he says casually, standing up and pushing his bangs back. Everyone’s eyes are on him, like this is a stage and he’s the sole performer, and he wants more, craves it all. “See, this robbery was never supposed to go right in the first place.”

“Sit the fuck down and no one gets hurt,” the man growls, pointing his gun at Ranpo. But his hand is shaking too much to be natural, and the safety is on.

“Oh, but someone’s supposed to get hurt. This was never a robbery, but an assassination disguised as robbery gone wrong. The police should be on their way now.”

“Then we’ll have to make this quick.” Faster than he can react, the accomplice— shit, he’d forgotten about her— wraps her arm around his neck, dragging him towards the door. 

Gunshots sound in the small space, and there’s a scream and a jumble of noises he can’t parse because her coat is scratchy wool pressed against his skin and it smells of sweat and there’s some kind of grimy oil on her hand and he can’t breathe and the lights spin and burn against his eyes and he’s clawing, clawing at something until his nose fills with the scent of copper and iron and something warm and sticky is dripping down his fingers and he can’t breathe and everything is going dark, fading— then nothing.

It isn’t until he’s tied up in the trunk of a moving car that he has the clarity of mind again to recognize that this means one of them was bleeding. Lucidity returns slowly, and with the pinpricks of pain like a constellation to guide the way, Ranpo realizes it was him. 

One of his fingernails is torn off, bits of wool fiber stuck in the ragged edge. He can feel the brushed polyester surface beneath him, rough and artificial. The sharp edges of a zip tie dig into his wrists and ankles; he remembers seeing that tall man buy them from the hardware section, holding up two clear plastic containers and comparing the length of the ties in each. The memory is so vivid in his head; that was the moment Ranpo made up his mind.

He took so many situations into account, but actually being in the midst of it is different. He can’t think clearly when everything is so much, couldn’t even protest as he was kidnapped. He can’t do this. Maybe it was stupid, to ever try and reach for anything more.

No. He’s not going to let himself think that way. Even if the reality is different than he’s expected, Ranpo is a natural born detective with an incredible intellect and breadth of knowledge. He’s read detective novels where the protagonist is captured so many times, and he can get out of this.

He is the protagonist of his own life, after all. It’s easier if he imagines himself as a book character; maybe one of Edgar Allan Poe’s detectives! He’s been following Poe’s novels since he was sixteen and found a self published mystery novel in the new arrivals section, and the writing flows in such an incredible way that he can devour the book in a single sitting and feel sated for hours.

With that in mind, Ranpo reaches up for one of the hair clips he’d used to pin back his bangs and tears off the rubber cap with his teeth, situating his hands so he can use it to wedge open the exposed mechanism of the zip tie. It takes him a few tries to get it, especially with the shaking of the car against the road, but he finally manages to get his hands free. His ankles come easier, and from there, he takes a minute to grab the gummy worms out of his pocket and tear open the package.

The sugar calms him, like usual, and he’s scraping the bottom of the empty bag before he knows it. He sticks it in his pocket and goes through half of his peach rings before wiping off his hands and continuing with his work. He’s not sure what will happen if he doesn’t, or maybe he does know, that there’s a good chance he’ll be killed in the mountains and his body will be dumped there because it’s a much harder crime to trace, especially for people who don’t have his skills.

There’s no easy mechanism on the inside to release the trunk, and when he lifts up the carpet to find the cable, it’s slick with he doesn’t even want to know what, and won’t budge. Curse his skinny arms. That leaves the tail light, then.

It’s difficult to reach in such a cramped space, but he does manage to pull out the flashlights from under his shirt. The largest one is heavy enough to use as a bludgeon, and so he does, wincing at the noise. Soon enough, though, it’s out of the way, and he presses his face towards the newly made opening, relishing the fresh air. He repeats the process on the other side, willing his eyes to adjust faster so he can actually see what’s out there. His range of vision is rather limited, but if he can just signal to someone and get rescued, then he’s home free.

He pokes the flashlight out the gap and starts signaling SOS, but this has the unfortunate side effect of keeping him from seeing anything outside other than the dizzying pattern and the purple spots flashing in his eyes. He can’t see out the other side, either; his arms aren’t long enough. So he just keeps on clicking, long and short bursts of light, and uses his free hand to get the peach rings out again. Right now, he’d give anything for some ramune.

The bottle he picked up earlier is long gone, probably dropped in the struggle, but it sticks in his mind now. He takes a moment of silence to mourn his fallen soda before something lands on top of the car with a thud, and the sound of rending metal shudders through the chassis. Ranpo barely pulls his arm back inside before he’s slammed against the side of the trunk, and the car swerves sharply and its front tires jump the curve.

He curls up into a ball to try and minimize the damage, but soon the car is gliding in a mostly straight line, scraping to a halt against the curb and screeching its protests. The driver is screeching too, a wordless cry of anger that quickly turns into a defeated growl. Then the click of handcuffs, and it’s over. He lets out a shaky breath, trying to regain some semblance of his usual composure.

The trunk swings open, and Ranpo blinks owlishly in the sudden light. 

Then looks at the silver haired man from earlier, and at the sword held loosely in the man’s hand, casual but ready to strike if the need arises.

“Hey, shouldn’t you be guarding your client?” Ranpo asks. 

“The police are questioning him currently. I figured I should make their jobs easier by finding you. But I need to ask: how did you know their plan?”

Ranpo sighs. He can’t explain it; what seems so painfully obvious to him is hidden from the rest of the world, and honestly, it’s really fucking frustrating to have to rewind through his whole thought process and try to convert it to something that other people can understand. “How do you know when it’s about to rain?” he asks instead, hopping out of the trunk and stretching his legs. “You can see it in the sky, you feel the air pressure change, the surrounding plants will react to the drop, and the air is just different. That’s what it’s like for crime. It’s easy, really. Same way I knew you were a bodyguard; it’s just deduction.”

“What exactly are you?” He asks warily.

Ranpo holds out a hand to shake. “Edogawa Ranpo, ace detective.” 

And that’s how it starts: the Armed Detective Agency.

Chapter Text

When Ranpo finds out he has an ability, everything just— clicks into place. The reason he felt so different from all the other kids, the reason his parents never really liked him, even the way he flaps his hands when he’s excited and stops talking when he’s stressed. They say ability users have statistically significant differences in their brain chemistry and structure, that they aren’t normal, and Ranpo finally understands why he’s always felt so alone.

Fukuzawa, as Ranpo learns the man’s name is, has an ability too: All Men Are Created Equal. It allows him to guide others in the use of their ability after fulfilling certain conditions; namely, risking their life for another person. Fortunately, Ranpo has already done that, which is good because he does not work well in the field. He can think on his feet, he can manipulate a conversation or stall for time, but the moment he gets in a physical altercation, he’s pretty much screwed.

He’s tried over and over to describe the feeling, and the best he can phrase it is an allergy to unwanted touch. Exposure therapy only makes it worse, and while he can deal with small amounts, he prefers to let Fukuzawa do the physical work while Ranpo does the deduction and strategizing.

It’s not that he thinks the older man is stupid— well, he does, but he thinks that about literally everyone. It’s not so much an insult as it is a lament that he’ll never have someone to match wits with, even if everyone seems to take it that way. The thing is, Fukuzawa is a perfectly competent bodyguard who earned his nickname for a reason. But combined with Ranpo’s skills, they’re an incredible team.

And somehow, his oddities make Ranpo feel more at home. Fukuzawa adores cats, to the point where he very nearly set up their office above a cat cafe, and it’s only when he sees the ridiculous price that he agrees to move to their current building. He carries dried fish in his clothes and has nearly mastered the art of communicating with cats. He’s got the body language down pat, and a small army of strays waits in the alleyway next to the office every day to be fed. And despite his appearance, he’s not actually that old— he was born with silver hair, one of the first clues that he was something more than usual.

He’s more of a family than the people Ranpo grew up with, and as they start taking in strays, that family grows. He has a little sister, and a few brothers, and when the office grows larger, there are a few secretaries and interns who are sort of like cousins to him. 

His parents call once, just once, to ask about a newspaper article they saw. He’d pried open a cold case and gotten quite a bit of media attention, and they ask if they can visit him. But how can he go back to the way things were? He’s living his life so genuinely now, he’s so happy this way, how can he face them?

“I’d prefer if you didn’t,” he says. They don’t call him again after that.

He’s twenty when he meets a man with gorgeous brown hair and an aura of confidence at a mystery competition, and he’s pretty sure he falls in love right then and there. He’s long since given up on the thought of someone who could match his intellect, but Poe is unmistakably like him, ostracized for the worlds in his head. They both see incredible things that no one can understand, but Poe can make them all understand. He can sort the words and phrases out into powerful lines to tug at emotions and play the mind like a fiddle. And his ability! And his writing, his writing… It’s enough to make Ranpo swoon.

Or at least, it would be, if he was the swooning type. He’s more of the type to flap his hands excitedly every time he sees a new book by the man who has been his favorite author ever since he was sixteen. He’s got so many things he wants to say! The fanboyish admiration for the paper bound words and the romantic feelings for the flesh and blood person in front of him are combining into something incredible, something so powerful he is lost in it.

He’s going to ask Poe’s number when he’s done with this case. That’s the first step to dating, right? He’ll ask Akiko when he’s done. He’s walking on clouds as he speeds his way through the mystery, explaining the basics of his deductions with extra dramatic flair.

Everyone is stunned, but that’s pretty usual. One of the event organizers asks him if he cheated, but he just laughs at that and asks her how her cat is doing after the surgery. She blinks, replies that he’s recovering well, and no one accuses him of cheating after that.

But when he tries to ask Poe out for dinner afterwards, his offer is turned down, almost violently. The other man is hiding behind his bangs, shaking with some emotion that Ranpo can’t parse.

“Haven’t you done enough?” Poe hisses at him.

Oh. Maybe it wasn’t going as well as he thought. Maybe...it’s better off for everyone if Ranpo just walks away. He wants to explain that he admires Poe’s skill, that he’d like to get to know him better and talk about murder while watching the ocean and learn the name of his pet raccoon and take him out on a long, meandering walk through this city, but he doesn’t.

He just...doesn’t.

Time passes, and for a while, Ranpo is happy. The Tanizaki siblings start working part time rather than just Junichirou interning, and a cheerful blonde boy from the countryside starts work in order to pay for a barn renovation and stays because he likes it.

And then Atsushi Nakajima arrives, breaking the years of relative peace with a crash.

It takes a while— longer than the rest of the agency, really— but eventually Ranpo warms up to him. His attachments are a double edged sword; he’d die for anyone he trusts, but Atsushi comes in with a bounty on his head and an ability he can’t control, putting everyone else in danger. But he proves himself more than willing to protect them all, and not long after that, Ranpo takes a look at him and decides, my family now. 

He figures out pretty quickly that Atsushi didn’t come from a good place. It’s not like Atsushi makes any attempt to hide it either; Ultra Deduction can’t find the specifics, but the way he hoards food and money like it’ll be taken away from him, the way he flinches at the sight of cages and chains, doesn’t tell a pretty story. He seems to have some kind of hallucinations, too; things he stares at that no one else can see, the thousand yard trauma stare Ranpo knows far too well.

He doesn’t tell anyone what he’s deduced— he doesn’t have the full story, and honestly if he was interested in sharing other people’s secrets he’d be running a blackmail mafia by now. Atsushi’s past is his own business, but at the very least, Ranpo tries to keep the worst of it from coming up. When the headmaster of his old orphanage is killed, he sends Atsushi that way with Tanizaki for moral support and a clue just in case he needs it, and in the cases that might hit too close to home, like human trafficking or child labor, he makes sure that his strategy outlines don’t place Atsushi close enough for anything to trigger a flashback.

It’s in his best interests if the people he cares about are safe, he tells himself. He doesn’t know how to comfort people, doesn’t know how to put the words together, but he can use the skills unique to him to protect his family.

When Ranpo finds out he doesn’t have an ability, everything just— falls apart. Suddenly he doesn’t have a reason, doesn’t have a justification for why he’s like this. It used to be

“Did you know?” he asks Yosano that night, voice breaking. He can find out the answer anytime he likes using his— his— no, he already knows the answer, he’s always known, but he needs to hear her say it.

“We all knew,” she admits, so softly.

“And you whispered behind my back?”

“What we did was wrong. There’s...really no excuse.”

“There’s no excuse for me either, then.” “I’m just a damaged person pretending I’m special.”

“You’re not damaged.”

“Yes, I am!” His voice cracks, and he hates how childish it makes him sound. He hates how everyone around him treated him like a child, patronizing him, looking down on him, and he was too blind to see it. “Normal people aren’t like this, Akiko. Normal people can take the train and understand their feelings easily and have friends who don’t treat them like a kid. Normal people don’t eat the same foods for a week because any other texture makes them want to throw up, and they don’t need to close their eyes to go grocery shopping because the lights hurt. They don’t feel dead inside when no one’s been murdered for a week, and they don’t make stupid, stupid mistakes like believing in the first person who ever calls them special.”

“That doesn’t make you damaged. Even if— ” She looks away. “Even if your mind doesn’t work the same way as everyone else’s, a deviation from the norm isn’t inherently bad.”

“Whatever.” He curls into himself even tighter, wishing he could disappear into nothing. “Just slice me open already, and fix me.”

“I can’t—“

“Do it, or I’ll do it myself.” Ranpo squeezes his eyes shut, waiting for a blow.

He feels the gentle whisper of the scalpel against his carotid artery, feels the blood leave him first in splatters and spurts and then oozing out, flowing away as his vision goes fuzzy and his fingers become numb and cold from blood loss.

He feels the moment his heart stops, and the moment it starts again and he’s dragged out of the darkness. He feels no different than before. If he’s not broken, if even that has been denied, then what is he?

What is he?

“I can’t fix what isn’t broken,” she says, tears in her eyes. “I can’t fundamentally change you with my ability. But you— your kindness— changed me forever when you welcomed me here. And I can’t ever repay that debt.”

“I can forgive that debt,” Ranpo says, holding her hand. His clothing is splattered with arterial blood. So is hers. It’s a strange thing to share, blood.

“Thank you.”

“But I can’t forgive— some things can’t— I don’t know,” he insists. “ I don’t know, Akiko. I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“You’re my big brother,” she says, but even that isn’t certain.

When he knows for certain that Yokohama is safe, Ranpo takes some time to— well, he’s not certain what he’s doing. Grieving, maybe? He wanders the streets for a while, watching people, knowing things he shouldn’t know but he does but he can’t, and appreciates anew the power of abilities. He’s an outsider again in a home, no, a prison of his own design.

Somehow, his feet bring him to the mansion where he saw Poe again, and on a whim, he knocks. It takes several minutes for the door to open—  there’s a clattering that sounds like someone stumbling about, and then the scratching of tiny raccoon claws, and finally footsteps leading to the unlatching of a truly impressive amount of locks. And on a steel doorframe, too; it’s quite an impressive setup, even if Ranpo’s usual logic is colored at the moment.

The door finally opens a crack, and Poe’s messy curls appear, his raccoon— Karl, Ranpo remembers— clambering on top.

“I suppose you’re here to arrest me,” he says softly, opening the door all the way and letting his arms hang loose at his sides. 

“Why would I do that?”

“Because—“ Poe stops at that, mouth frozen in a surprised o. “Because I tried to kill you and your friend and destroy your entire city?”

“You weren’t trying to kill me, you were seeking my approval,” Ranpo tells him confidently. “You could have hired an assassin six years ago, or had me shot the moment I entered that room. But you didn’t. You wrote an incredible mystery novel tailored to your knowledge of me, and offered up information that would brand you a traitor. Those aren’t the actions of a man with murderous intent.”

“Ah. I suppose I’ve been exposed once again by your ability.”

The words feel like ash on Ranpo’s tongue when he says, “I don’t have an ability. I thought I did, but they lied to me.”

“Oh dear,” Poe whispers. Karl chitters, echoing the sentiment perfectly. “Would you, er— if it’s not too presumptuous, would you like to come in so we can discuss this over tea?”

Poe’s house is quite cozy, surprisingly. Ranpo tries to keep himself from deducing too much, but he eventually gives up because the mystery is giving him a headache. Still. He wants to learn some things organically, wants secrets to be whispered between them in the twilight rather than dragged triumphantly from the darkness.

“Why did you cut your hair?” is the first thing Ranpo asks. He remembers Poe having a gorgeous side ponytail, remembers wanting to run his hands through it.

“I... suppose it was too much to take care of. My depression got worse, and at one point I simply snipped it all off.”

“I liked it. It was really pretty.”

“I— I didn’t think you noticed.”

“You were angry with me when I tried to speak to you.” Ranpo twists the teacup in his hand, wishing he'd asked for soda instead. “All this time, I never knew why.”

“I suppose I’d been a rather large fish in a very small pond, and your ability blew me out of the water. I thought, I thought you were being condescending.”

“No!” After all this time, it’s a relief to know what it was. “No, I’d admired your works for so long, and then I saw you in person and you were even more— ” Ranpo pauses, trying to find a word that encompasses everything he felt at the time.

“....what?” Poe reacts as people usually do when they can’t follow Ranpo’s logic. 

“Six years ago, I had a crush on you.”

“Oh,” Poe says softly. “ Oh. I’ve truly mucked things up, haven’t I?”

“Your position gave you the power to save Yokohama. Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t joined the Guild?”

“And what if I’d really helped them destroy the city and kill you?”

“Please. You’re good, but no one’s that good. Yokohama is my home, and that’s not going to happen.” He nudges Poe with one shoulder, trying to shake him out of his funk. “Stop fretting over hypotheticals. We’re here now, aren’t we?”

“I don’t understand why you seem to have forgiven me, though. You should hate me.”

“I’m not good at subtlety. I was trying to flirt back then, but I’ll just flat out say it: I want to take you out on a date.”

Poe turns several interesting shades of magenta. Ranpo waits. Karl chitters anxiously. The wind outside shakes the trees. Ranpo waits some more. Poe makes a noise not unlike the tea kettle. Karl sits in Poe’s lap. 

Lucky bastard. 

Finally, Poe finds his words. “I don’t— I had no idea— I. Um. Okay. How…?”

“How...to date?” He pauses, wishing he’d thought that far ahead. “Admittedly, I didn’t think I’d get this far.”

In the end, their date is a long walk along the pier, where they talk about anything and everything under the sun. Old cases, novels they’ve read, even their coworkers’ antics. And while the walk is quite long, that’s only if you’re referring to time rather than distance. Both of them have equally weak constitutions, and end up cutting their walk short to curl up on a bench together and watch the sunset.

“Hey,” Ranpo says suddenly, swinging his legs off the railing and staring at Poe upside down, “How come your hair always covers your eyes?”

“I’m, ah, actually autistic,” Poe says. “So, um— I don’t really like eye contact.”

“You too?” Eye contact, he means, but if, if there’s a reason for Ranpo being as unusual as he is even without an ability, he needs to look into this, needs to gather all the information in the world before him and sift through it. “I thought I was the only one.”

“I know! It’s just, people expect me to sustain looking in their eyes, but it’s— ” Poe makes a vague hand gesture, and Ranpo knows exactly what it means.

“Honestly? Most of the time, I don’t even have my eyes open because the world is so bright.” He swings his legs around to sit closer to Poe, and then a little bit closer after that.

“Especially the fluorescents, I hate those so much.”

“They flicker,” both of them say at the same time, and then stare at each other in awe.

“You see it too?”

“I hear it more than I see it,” Poe confesses. “You know how electronics make that low, sort of buzzing hum? It’s why i prefer to do my drafting on the typewriter. Well, that, and I like the noises it makes.”

“The clicking is so satisfying,” Ranpo agrees. “The electronics humming don’t bother me, but flickering lights do.”

“Fluorescents should be banned,” Poe says with an emphatic nod. “They make grocery shopping exceptionally draining.”

“Do you—“ Ranpo’s hands flap excitedly as he talks, “Do you buy the same thing every time?”

“Yes! I had to go online and stock up for life when they discontinued my toothpaste.”

The sun sinks deeper, and Karl yawns and curls up around Poe’s shoulders to take a nap. Poe starts infodumping about the care and keeping of raccoons, and Ranpo listens intently, caught up in his passion. He wants to drink in this moment, this feeling of belonging, and make it last forever.

Ranpo’s hand slips into Poe’s like it belongs there, and it feels like home.