Chapter Text
🂱🂱🂱
ACE OF HEARTS : the beginning of a new relationship
“Three of spades,” you muse, half lidded eyes flickering to your opponent, “Unlucky hand,”
Ranpo laughs, leaning down onto the table and returning your gaze with a ducked, sly countenance. Slim fingers beckon for another card before resuming the repetitive tapping onto the board in amusement, fingernails skating just centimeters from yours in practiced precision. There’s an underlying sense of entertainment dripping from the full of his irises as he drinks in your appearance, cigarette hanging loosely from upturned lips. He takes a drag of it before flashing you an arrogant smile, nimble fingers teasing the edge of the card before he flips it up and places it face down-- smoke slipping out from fanged canines. “You really think so?”
“I do,” you purr, nodding your head for the house to place another card in your square, “You’re an unlucky man when it comes to Baccarat, Ranpo Edogawa,”
A shiver slithers up his spine when you say his name, syllables falling off your tongue in sweet intonations as thick as honey. There’s a crack in his cocky composure, a heart which beats three times fast with each stolen glance at your stained lips. He falls back into his seat, appearing indifferent to your antics but you know better. You have Ranpo Edogawa wrapped around your finger. He pulls the cigarette from his lips, once more looking towards your elegant frame. “I know the outcome of this game better than you do,”
It’s your turn to laugh as you gesture for the house to flip the cards. She does, supplying Ranpo with a total value of eight points. A complete win. The private eye can’t hide his victorious grin as the crowd around you cheers at the five of hearts, pushing his shoulders and ruffling his hair encouragingly as if some of his luck will rub off on them. He’s expecting to watch your face fall in humiliation, perhaps have the pleasure of seeing your cheeks burn with color before you bury your expression in your hands. To have you tilt your jaw away from him and slide over the money. To hear you admit defeat from those ever-tempting cherry red lips. But you don’t falter in your nonchalant frame and the confident pass of your countenance. In fact, you seem apathetic. As if there's any possibility at all that you can score higher than him.
You can’t. It’s impossible . The chances of you pulling an ace from the deck to score a total value of nine points are ridiculous . A one in one hundred. You won’t be able to, can’t. Ranpo has calculated the odds. The next ace wouldn’t show up until seven plays later. There’s absolutely no reason for your wolfish smirk, but you remain conquerous in expression. As if you could possibly know what the play will be. The house flips your card.
For Ranpo Edogawa’s intellect to fail him is a one in a million chance, no, billion. There’s very seldom a time and place in which the detective feels as if a rug has been pulled from underneath him. Wide eyed and slack jawed. Because Ranpo ran the cards, he ran the plays, he ran the jitter and jerk of your fingers, every hint of a smile or frown, every movement of the cards and cower in your stature, every fluctuation of your tone. There is no way in which you should have won a game as predictable as Baccarat. Yet, you did.
The Ace of Hearts lays heavy against the table.
In all of his confusion, you manage to steal the cigarette from his dwindling fingers-- raising it to your lips and taking a slow drag. You exhale, blowing the smoke into his face as you thumb through your newly earned cash (three fourths of which came directly from Ranpo’s own silk-lined pockets). There’s a mischievous hint in your eyes as you stick the cigarette back in between his lips, tongue snaking over your lipstick as if to relish the taste. If he weren’t so irritated at his failure, the private eye might have kissed you then and there gulped (‘heat of the moment’ he concludes when thinking back, after all Ranpo Edogawa could never like someone so… so irritating) . He can taste whatever sickeningly sweet venomous concoction you were drinking beforehand and the bitter burn of your lipstick which sticks to the surface of his tongue and lashes eagerly at his teeth. The taste of it is so overwhelmingly you that it forces a blush to spark on his cheeks, searing his skin and consuming his ears.
“That’s how you play Baccarat, Detective,”