Work Text:
It was startling how comforting the wood smell permeating through the warm air of the Japanese-style country home could be. The floorboards creaked underneath his feet as the writer crossed the room, joining the chorus of bird song from the forest. He shifts the weight of hefty packs of paper and unopened packets of assorted writing instruments in his arms as his faithful companion crawls across his shoulders to get a better look of the room.
The animal was on alert more than usual, but his owner tentatively rationalized it as being in a new location.
“The aesthetics were just what I was looking for. Wouldn’t you agree, Karl?” Poe sets his things down on the desk before him, reaching up to briefly run his fingers through his raccoon friend’s fur. Karl, of course, doesn’t answer, but he likes to think that he would also appreciate how well the house matches the setting of his current work in progress.
He was planning on staying for only a month, using the time to gather the inspiration and experience he could put towards his book— a mystery taking place in a house like this one, consisting of spacious rooms and located by itself in the middle of the woods. He made a cursory glance at the partially-filled folder that held his character and half-finished plot outlines, starting to put himself into the mindset of the book’s protagonist and reaching for a pen so he could get to work when—
BANG!
The shriek Poe lets out at the sound is completely undignified, but luckily for him, only Karl and the birds are around to hear it.
(Or so he thought.)
“Tha-The— That was— inside?” he manages to stammer out, scrambling to pick up the things he had inadvertently knocked to the floor in his fright. Karl moved onto the desk, fur standing on end and his teeth bared at an unseen presence.
Fumbling with shaking hands, the writer manages to find a calligraphy pen among the mess, curling his fingers around it with a tight grip as he nervously shuffles to the door, peeking around the frame.
The hallway was long and dark, in contrast to the afternoon light filling the room behind him. He didn’t see anything, but nervous anticipation coiled in his stomach anyways as he ventured along the wall. It almost felt as if he was being watched, but since Karl was still in the other room.
A slight breeze blowing into his hair catches his attention as he passes a room with its door ajar. He looks inside, recognizing it from when he made his rounds to investigate the house upon his arrival. Poe takes a few tentative steps into the room, and—
Well, nothing seemed different from when he looked inside earlier, aside from one thing out of place. The guest room’s furniture took up most of the floor space, but it was undecorated, making it impersonal and missing some human touch to make it more inviting. But, as before, the bedspread is still unwrinkled, the chairs are aligned just so along the wall, and most importantly—
The window was open.
And there were multiple problems with that. The first of which being, he was absolutely sure it was locked shut before. And as if that wasn’t already concerning enough, it sat close to the ceiling. Poe had to rise onto the balls of his feet just to reach the edge so he could pull it closed again, latching it shut and pressing against the edge just to be absolutely sure it was sealed this time. A sigh escapes his lips as he lowers his arms and settles back onto his heels, and as he averts his gaze, his eyes land on a few tufts of something sticking out of a split in one of the wood panels.
Curious, the writer carefully plucks a tuft from the wall, holding it up to the light to get a better look at what he was holding. He twisted it between his fingers, noting the soft texture, and observing the raven-black color that seemed to glitter in the sunlight. He couldn’t immediately think of any creature with similar traits, at least nothing that could be realistically expected to have gotten in.
Just to be safe, he checks the room over for any other signs of the animal and, when he doesn’t find any, he slowly makes his way back to what was going to be his room for the next month, getting lost in the sound of soft footsteps on creaking wood, until the sound of something more concerning invades his ears—
The unfamiliar snarling of Karl.
Poe hears his pulse pounding in his ears as he rushes forward, skidding along the floor when he tried to stop too quickly and as a result grasping for the doorframe in desperation to pull himself into the room to ensure that no creature was harmed, regardless of whether it was wild or not.
Upon entering, he first sees the raccoon right where he left him— his fur still on end, his teeth bared in a growl at something— and his first response is to go to his companion to try and make him settle down.
He gently pets Karl, cooing to him in soothing words and smoothing down his fur with mixed success. His attention at least calms the animal enough for him to stop growling at whatever was aggravating him.
For a brief moment, relief bubbles from his chest now that things have calmed, until he notices something— well, more like the absence of something.
The folder, the culmination of all his hard work over the last few grueling weeks and sleepless nights, was nowhere in sight.
At first, he thought that perhaps it had been knocked to the floor, but a quick glance around the desk proved otherwise. It hadn’t fallen into the chair, it was nowhere on the desk’s surface, and he was about to check behind it to see if it had fallen into the crevice formed by the furniture and the wall but—
“Looking for something?”
—an unexpected guest making their presence known makes the writer whirl around, bracing himself against the desk as he looks for the new speaker. At first, he doesn’t see anyone, which is weird, because it sounded like they were right behind him, and then a large, sleek, black-furred tail swishes down from the rafters, light bouncing prettily off of it as two more join it. Poe feels his breath catch in his throat as he looks up, and he almost doesn’t believe what he sees.
A humanoid sat on one of the support beams running across the room. A playful yet sharp grin flashes back at him, coupled with shimmering emerald eyes that seem to see everything. A pair of pointed ears were poking out from messy hair, all the same color as the nine tails happily swishing behind the figure. Long, elegant fingers lightly drum against a familiar file, and Poe finally realizes—
“W-Why do you have my notes?” he blurts out.
“I figured I might as well help myself since it caught my eye…” The fox man drops down from his perch, brown yukata flowing behind him and sandals clicking against the floor. As the writer’s eyes follow the movement, he notices the lighter splotches in the pattern of the fabric. His brain is slow in processing the other’s words, and before he fully registers and responds—
“Making the protagonist’s own sister the killer, huh? Trying to go for the shock value?”
—he’s thrown for another loop.
“I didn’t write that down yet! How did you—?”
The fox man tosses the folder in Poe’s general direction with a flourish. While he scrambles to catch it and pick up the loose pages that flutter out, the other watches with a mischievous smile.
“Never underestimate the intellect of a kitsune!”
The writer put the folder back on the desk with slightly more force than necessary, the paper making a thick slap against the wood, loud enough that he catches the other’s ears twisting back at the sound.
“Who are you? And why did you break in?” Poe leans back against the desk, crossing his arms in front of his chest as he gives an accusing glare to the kitsune.
“I was bored and you seemed interesting,” he replies, his tone making it sound like the answer should have been obvious.
Poe lets out a sigh, dropping his head into his hands. He feels the weight and tug of Karl climbing back onto his shoulder, the raccoon crouching down to hiss at the uninvited guest.
“Your friend’s not very nice,” he notes.
“I can’t imagine why…” Poe muttered to himself. “You still haven’t told me who you are,” he adds, raising his voice a tad.
“The name’s Ranpo,” the kitsune points to Poe, flashing a confident smile, “and you’re my new entertainment! Consider yourself lucky!”
The writer would consider himself the opposite, but he had the nagging feeling that he’d have to just deal with having Ranpo around regardless of whether or not he actually wanted the company.
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True to his word, the kitsune had barged into Poe’s temporary home and made his own little space in it. It’s been just over a week since he’d arrived, and the other’s presence was… disruptive, to say the least.
Writing has been slow, slower than it would normally go when he was stuck on something. Every time he sits down to work on his drafts, it isn’t long before a certain fox comes to attempt to steal his attention away. Sometimes, the kitsune will simply start aggravating Karl, which means the writer has to stop and separate the two and stop any fight from happening. Other times, Ranpo decides to swipe his notes and hide them somewhere, saying he’ll give them back if Poe agrees to entertain him for a while. This usually results in Poe scouring the house for his notes for well over an hour, until he’s finally handed them with a big pout and drooping ears.
After his failed attempts to get attention, however, while Poe is writing away, he’ll hear the soft shuffling of something approaching from behind before he feels the weight of someone draping himself over him. And that was actually rather comforting, similar to having a weighted blanket— if they could breathe —until Ranpo started making grumpy whines and other noises of discontent.
But that solution was rather simple.
All Poe had to do was reach his nondominant hand up to the other’s head and gently comb his fingers through the messy hair, taking extra care to gently scratch behind the kitsune’s ears, and then the other erupts into a round of quiet purrs, the soft rumbles emanating from him turning out to be quite soothing. And it actually helped Poe focus on his writing better, so those times were, shockingly, the most productive.
(And if his guest’s presence and antics provided inspiration for his work? He couldn’t complain about it.)
But then there are nights like this one, where Poe has a hard time staying asleep, taunted by a fitful slumber and troubling visions in his sleep. The ones where he spends what feels like hours tossing and turning in bed just trying to get back to sleep.
The ones where he was dreading getting up in the morning since he’d have no energy to do so once the sun rose.
But at least he had someone there to distract him from the disquiet in his head.
Poe had his back turned when he felt the dip in the mattress as the kitsune slowly settled onto the bed. He slowly turns to look over the sea of tails until his eyes meet glittering green in the dark.
“Ranpo..?” He held back a wince at hearing his voice, still rough with sleep, moving to sit up. His movement is stopped when he sees the room suddenly flare with soft green light, and as he looks around, he sees dozens of tiny flames frolicking about. Normally he’d be much more concerned about such a thing, but he was running on way too little sleep to do anything else except flop back down onto his pillow with a heavy sigh.
“What are you doing?” he murmurs, lazily watching the shadows play and flicker lazily against the ceiling.
The kitsune’s smile is lopsided, lacking the sharpness Poe had grown used to seeing over the past week, and it makes him pause.
“Some kitsune use their fancy tricks to mesmerize people. Didn’t you know?”
“... No, I didn’t,” the writer said, his voice low. Watching the light play against the wood slats covering the walls, the way the shadows dance on the grain, it filled his head with a pleasant dizziness that made him sink further into the mattress.
“Mm… Well, consider this demonstration a favor.” At this point, Ranpo’s voice felt far away, and at this point he wasn’t entirely sure if he actually heard him or not.
As he drifted off into a dreamless sleep, he was almost sure that he heard the humming of a vaguely familiar song that he knew he’d never heard before, but he wouldn’t remember to ask about it by the time he woke up.
Recalling last night is a little harder that morning, as he’s greeted with the smell of freshly brewed tea and the presence of Karl peacefully curled next to his head. His eyes water when he opens them, squinting against the sunlight.
It poured in bright and clear into the room, hitting the trees in such a way that it split into beams that casted amorphous warm patches of white onto the floor.
A dark flicker on the edge of his vision brings the attention to the kitsune sitting at his bedside on the floor, looking up at him with a curious look. His arm was resting against his knee, hand propping up his head and ears pricked forward. His tails are curled around him, surrounding him in a bundle of raven-black.
As Poe sits up, the other turns his head to look at him, pressing a bowl into his hands.
“What’s this?” he asks, looking down at assorted fruit. “Did you get this for me?”
“Of course not!” Ranpo huffed, turning away and picking up a cup of tea. “I just got too much for myself and decided to give you the leftovers.” To avoid any further answers, he took a long drink, purposefully silencing himself.
Poe just stares at him in dumbfounded silence for a moment before smiling to himself. “Whatever you say, Ranpo.”
After that morning, the relationship between the two had warmed up considerably. The kitsune’s antics had become less frequent, though when he did start pulling tricks to get attention, Poe was much more receptive to giving the fox what he wanted.
(It’s not like he was getting much work done anyways, when this happened.)
It was more fun with his guest around, he decided. And Ranpo’s intellect certainly helped him build his narrative better than he would have alone. He kept trying to weave the mystery such that even the fox would be unable to figure it out until the protagonist discovered the truth in the novel, but he quickly learned that he shouldn’t underestimate his friend. At the very least, he was sure it would come as a surprise for the readers. It was the little victories that mattered.
Especially when he was running on less time than he felt he had.
Especially when the dates creep up faster the closer they get.
It was raining today. Next week, the month would be over, and Poe would have to pack his belongings and leave the house. He’d been stuck on what to do for the current scene he was drafting for days, and he wasn’t close to finishing anytime soon, or so he felt. He’d been bouncing between feeling accomplished with all the work he had done, feeling the steady thrum of alarm along his spine as he counted the rapidly dwindling days left before his self-imposed deadline, and wallowing in self-pity when he thought about how much he still had left to do before then.
Naturally, this led him to pace along the porch running along the front of the house, with Karl watching him from the wicker chair placed by the door for those who enjoy outdoor seating. The heavy scent of wet earth hung in the air, and the patter of raindrops against the roof and leaves. It would normally be a comforting scene to get lost in, but the rising swirl of dread in his chest was too overwhelming for the writer to pay much attention to it.
Letting out a whine with a feeling that teetered on the edge of desperation, he sits on the floor, burying his face into his hands.
“Ed-kun? Get a splinter again?”
Poe hears the telltale click of sandals against floorboards, then a pause in the steps, as Ranpo likely stopped to assess the situation. When he hears steps again, they’re softer and considerably slower. He feels the kitsune sit beside him, staying silent to give him time to gather his thoughts more coherently.
“What’s wrong?” the other’s voice is quieter this time, and when Poe looks up at him from his hands, his eyes seem gentler than usual.
He takes a deep breath, looking out into the trees.
“I’m running out of time,” he whispers, bunching the material of his pants in his hands. “I don’t know how I’ll get it all done, there’s just so much —”
“Ed-kun.”
The writer winces, even though the tone isn’t harsh, but it brings his attention back to his friend.
“It’s not the end of the world, ‘kay? So you put yourself on a time crunch, so what? That’s not healthy for you anyways.”
“But if I don’t get it done—”
“Then you’ll just have to work on it later. You’ve been working hard this whole time, you should relax for once.”
“Ranpo, I—”
He stops when he feels thick fur enveloping his body and the solid touch of arms around his middle.
“It’ll be okay.”
Poe lets out a shaky exhale that he felt like he’d been holding onto for far too long, sinking back against the other and settling into the warmth that came from him.
It was… pleasant.
Karl even hops down from where he had been watching, choosing to squirm his way through the mass of tails to curl into his owner’s lap.
The violent swirl calms into something more manageable, and he relaxes into Ranpo’s hold as his breath evens out. The rain seems to come down harder just as his mind finally quiets, and the dull roar of the downpour fills his mind instead of racing thoughts. He allows himself to savor the moment, closing his eyes and absentmindedly petting Karl’s fur.
It was peaceful, and something he could grow used to.
And would end up growing used to, as it turned out.
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He leans back in his chair with a sigh, feeling drained now that the line had thinned out. He flexed his hand, aching from all the books he’d signed in the last hour. He feels a weight on his shoulders, and he turns his head to see Karl, and just behind the raccoon he sees the face of a certain kitsune (disguised as a human, of course) smiling back at him.
“Working hard?” Ranpo asked.
“I’d hardly call writing my name multiple times ‘work,’ but I am exhausted.”
“You talked to a lot of people. That’s exhausting,” the kitsune grumbles, draping himself over the writer.
Poe leans his head back against the other’s shoulder, a small smile on his lips. “I kept receiving questions about who inspired the cunning fox character,” he murmurs. “They thought that he was a genius.”
His companion lets out a pleased hum, grinning to himself. “Well, I assume that’s because he is a genius.”
The writer shakes his head in fond exasperation, he reaches down to pull a box out from under the table.
“Aw, can’t you take a break for me?” Ranpo whines, pouting. Poe can almost see the ears drooping on his head, even though his attention was currently focused on pulling a stack of books from the container.
“I need to get more pre-signed books ready. There’s a lot of new readers today. You’ll get your time later, promise.”
The kitsune lets out a petulant sigh, but relents, settling for wrapping his arms around the other. Poe places a book on the table, smiling softly at the cover before opening it to put his signature inside. Once done, he places it to the side to join the previously dwindling pile of identical books, happily looking over the bright lettering of the title over the darker cover;
The Foxfire House.
He thought it was sweet, but when he revealed it to Ranpo, the kitsune called it corny. Was he right? Probably. Did he care about that? Only a little. (A lot.)