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Edogawa Ranpo, the greatest detective and most treasured member of the Armed Detective Agency, lover of all things sweet, and beloved boyfriend of one Edgar Allen Poe, hasn’t seen said boyfriend in about a week. Which normally and to anyone else, would be perfectly fine, but Ranpo isn’t anyone else; he simply wants to take his boyfriend, go to bed, cuddle, and eat sweets. That couldn’t be asking for too much now, could it?
Poe has been working on, surprise surprise, a novel. Quite a big one actually, so he kept it away from Ranpo as long as possible until he’d be satisfied enough to show him. And Ranpo spends most of his day at the Agency until he gets picked up by one of Poe’s drivers. They are two adults with adult jobs and responsibilities, so it should be expected that they don’t see each other all the time. But that’s no fun and Ranpo misses him. As the best Detective and self-proclaimed expert on all things Poe, he also knew the American had a tendency to overwork himself.
So today, after a quite frankly boring day at the Agency, Ranpo started working on a fool-proof plan to get Poe out of his study. He just needed Karl to help him bribe Poe out and Josephine, the lovely maid that she is, put everything remotely blanket- or pillow-like in the master bedroom. He got some extra chairs brought there as well. As soon as he arrived, his work could begin. Karl, the lucky raccoon who got to spend his days in the study with Poe, would bolt out when his feeding time arrived, which would lead Poe to try and catch him. Until then Ranpo had some time left.
Truth be told, Ranpo hasn’t built a pillow-fort in probably almost two decades, so he didn’t know how to approach it, but that hasn’t stopped him before! He arranged the chairs around, put blankets over it, and tried to hang them up to create a nice room. It was harder than he anticipated it, actually. When reaching to hang them up he fell on the bed and sometimes it would all fall together, so he would just walk around with a blanket draped over his shoulders.
He did have something, by the time Karl jumped into the room. The whole thing looked a bit unstable and crooked, but it hadn’t fallen apart yet! And there was enough room for two people to comfortably sit inside. There even was a little pillow specifically put for Karl to lie. Ranpo heard the worried exclaims of “Karl you can’t just run off!” before Poe peaked into the room.
“Tadaaaa!” Ranpo sprung up and stretched his arms out as if to show off his handiwork. There was a moment of silence as Poe seemed to take the scene in front of him in, so Ranpo continued “I, your dearest boyfriend and partner, have decided you’ve been cooped up in your study too much, so we’ll spend the rest of today and tomorrow in here!”
Poe jumped back at the sudden noise again and hurriedly said “I— I shall be right back!” and ran off again. Ranpo deflated from his earlier bravado at that —did Poe not like this gesture? Maybe he finally thought Ranpo too childish, too loud, too demanding. He wouldn’t be the first to turn him down after he figured out it was too much. Ranpo took a blanket and rolled it up around him, cursing himself all the while for not having the foresight to bring snacks, He was just too excited to build the Pillow-fort.
Just as Ranpo was ready to lose all hope, the door opened again, and Poe was standing there with an armful of different packs of sweets and chips. Behind him was once again Josephine with Karl’s own dinner in-hand. She was also carrying some fairy-lights.
“I do apologise for running off so suddenly, you simply startled me,” Poe started explaining as he dropped the various snacks he’d been carrying in front of Ranpo, “I hope these are sufficient as an apology.” He then quickly turned to Josephine as she put down Karl’s dinner. He grabbed the fairy-lights and kindly dismissed Josephine. She waved her hand goodbye as she left.
Ranpo studied Poe as he strung up the lights. He must want to add something to the fort, so both of them worked on it. As it turned out not only Ranpo, but he didn’t know himself how to do it well, so the lights were clumsily hanging around as they illuminated them. Ranpo felt a soft warmth in his chest at the simple gesture; this was not just his project, but theirs.
“Get down here already!” Ranpo yanked Poe down while he still tried to fiddle with the lights as if they weren’t hanging right. They weren’t, but it was perfect. He threw the blanket he covered himself with over Poe, so they shared it and cuddled into his side. It was nice, he missed this.
Before he fell asleep, Ranpo recognized himself lucky. He was looking forward to the time he’d spend with Poe.