Work Text:
When Poe had invited him to his home for a new piece he wrote, at first Ranpo didn’t think much of it. It was only a couple moments later that he realized how odd it actually was.
While he wasn’t the most extroverted person, Poe usually still made his way to the Agency whenever he had something to discuss. Sure, Ranpo had been to Poe’s home before but only after inviting himself in.
For Poe to be inviting him to a private spot wasn’t alarming, but it sure was odd.
Ranpo had Atsushi escort him to the other end of town. “I’m not sure how long this will take,” he had told Atsushi, “so you can go home. I’ll ask Poe to bring me back.”
“Are you gonna stay the night?” Atsushi asked.
Ranpo thought for a moment. It was already quite late outside, but depending on the piece’s mystery, this could take anywhere from minutes to hours. “I don’t think so, so I’ll see you tomorrow at the Agency.”
While Atsushi seemed a little concerned, he ultimately left Ranpo alone in front of Poe’s home.
Ranpo rang the doorbell, listening to the chime waiting for someone to open the door.
“You’re early!” The door swung open and Poe appeared behind it. “I wasn’t expecting you for another 20 minutes.”
Ranpo tilted his head. “You said eight,” he reminded Poe.
“That’s true,” Poe said, “but you have a habit of being late.”
“Well, you sounded stressed about it on the phone, so I assumed this was important to you.”
Poe stammered for a moment, not finding the words to form a sentence in the end. “Just come in,” he said, leading Ranpo into his office. “Take a seat. I made you some hot chocolate and bought some candy for you.”
“For me?” Ranpo sat down into the large armchair opposite the desk, a small table decked out in sweets. “I thought you had a novel for me, though?”
“It’s not quite long enough to be a novel,” Poe said as he brought his office chair from behind his desk. “I did spend a lot of time on it, though, as I always do when I write you something.”
“You wrote it for me?” Ranpo asked. “So it must be your best mystery yet.”
“Again, not quite.” Poe let out an embarrassed sigh. “However, it is a piece that’s very dear to me, as are you.”
Ranpo grabbed the mug of chocolate off the table. “Do you want to tell me about it or do you want me to go in knowing nothing?”
“I suppose I can tell you about it,” Poe said. “Despite being this short, this novella took me several months to write.” He turned to his bookshelf and pulled out a thin booklet, a couple dozen pages at most.
“It’s not a mystery and still you spent so much time on it?” Ranpo frowned. “I don’t know much about novels otherwise.”
“There you are mistaken, my dear Ranpo.” Poe looked down at the book in his hand. “There most certainly is a mystery for you to solve, but probably a trivial one for someone like you.” He lifted the book and covered his face. “There’s a good chance you won’t even think of it as a puzzle to solve.”
Ranpo found himself confused. A mystery to which he already might know the answer? “And you wrote it just for me? Why?”
“Because you’re my best friend, and I have important news for you.” He lowered the book again and put it on his lap. “The truth is… I am in love!”
Poe’s dramatic gestures did a great job of covering up Ranpo’s blank stare. Poe was in love? Why was Ranpo so bothered by that? There was no reason for him to even be surprised by that.
“Well, who’s that lucky person?”
Poe smiled. “That is for you to figure out,” he said. “I have laid out clues pointing at my beloved for you to decipher.”
Ranpo watched the book in Poe’s lap. A thin booklet, bound in black leather and decorated with gold lettering. It was quite fancy. Understandable, since it was dear to Poe.
“Well, then let me in! I’m sure I’ll have it figured out quickly.”
“That’s what I think,” Poe said. “Just to be sure, I provided you with all necessary things to stay there for a while.” He handed Ranpo the book. “The story begins like this: On a warm, sunny afternoon, the protagonist of our story awakens in a Victorian-era style living room, decorated with pictures of two young men.”
The young detective stepped closer to the largest of the frames, even though they all essentially told a similar story. One of the men Ranpo recognized. Clearly, it was Poe smiling like Ranpo had rarely seen before. The other man in the photographs had his face obscured in every one of the photos. The was the man whose identity Ranpo had to figure out.
On first instinct, Ranpo was ready to make a guess. Considering Poe wanted him to figure it out, it must be someone they both knew, which already limited the options significantly. On top of that, Poe had written into the first line that the person was a man.
Realistically, Ranpo could have probably figured it out if he stared at the photographs for long enough. A man in his mid-twenties, straight black hair underneath a brown cap. It looked just like… no, it couldn’t have been that person. Poe would never be in love with a person like that.
Ranpo shook off that thought and turned to the rest of the room. He was wearing his usual clothes and when he reached into his pocket, he felt his glasses in his pocket. He could use them and figure it out. No, perhaps he should give it an earnest try on his own first. Poe wrote this specifically for him, as a friend. As his best friend.
The room was decked out with everything one could want in a living room. A large, cozy sofa, a giant bookshelf with literature from all over the world, a massive window letting in floods of golden light. It was the perfect setting for a calm thinking session. It would be, if Ranpo liked thinking as much as he liked solving cases.
There must be other clues than just the pictures. Ranpo walked across the room, staring at the large bookcase. While there were loads of classic literature masterpieces, one of the books looked vastly different than the others. A thin booklet, with no writing on it. That seemed like something worth considering.
Ranpo pulled the booklet out of the shelf and opened the first page. Handwriting, probably a diary entry. Poe’s handwriting, presumably.
“My dearest-” the name was scribbled out “-, today, I still couldn’t tell you how I really feel.” Ranpo brought the booklet with him as he crossed the room. He wanted to see if he was locked in, and when he pressed down on the handle, he realized he wasn’t.
“I wish I had the courage to look you in the eyes when I tell you that you are the light of my life.” Ranpo left the living room and followed the hallway into the kitchen. On the counter sat pastries and candies, as well as a mug of steaming hot chocolate. Poe left it here for him to get comfortable.
“Alas, I will never be able to see your face when the realization overcomes you, and you realize I am madly in love with you.” Ranpo picked up the plate of sweets and the mug as he went back to the living room. He sat down on the sofa and continued reading.
“I have no doubt that by now, you will have figured it out, considering that you see yourself all around the room.” Poe expected the person to read this diary, or letter perhaps. And yet, he also wanted Ranpo to read the letter in full, else it wouldn’t be here.
“When you come back to face me, I hope my love will not be unrequited. I couldn’t bear to have ruined this special bond we came to have after years of rivalry.”
Ranpo stared at the writing. The answer was so obvious, yet so far. A sigh escaped his lips as he grabbed the mug and took a big sip. Perfectly sweet, a hint of cinnamon in the aftertaste. Just how Ranpo liked it. Poe knew him too well.
Everything fit too perfectly. There must be something Ranpo couldn’t see . He should search every area accessible to him. There was a finite space, nothing outside the window other than the golden sunset sky. Ranpo threw his feet up on the sofa and rested his head on his arm rest. He let out another sigh, a longer, more drawn out one, filling his entire body with a sense of disappointment. Poe said this was supposed to be easy! If it was easy, why did Ranpo not figure it out already?
More than that, Ranpo had not a single reasonable idea who it could be.
He finished the rest of his beverage and closed his eyes. Maybe something would come to his mind from the darkness. Maybe he could manifest an answer out of his subconscious. But in the end, all it did was make him fall asleep.
When he woke up, the sun no longer shined through the window, and the sky was no longer painted with the colors of a sunset. Poe had even written in dynamic weather and skies, almost like he expected Ranpo to stay in that world for longer than he said. Or perhaps, he was meant to come back at a later point, for nostalgia's sake.
Ranpo spent the entirety of the second day exploring the boundaries given to him. The only rooms unlocked were the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom. Everything else was locked off, with nothing to see behind the keyhole, and no keys anywhere in sight. He pulled at each and every book in the bookshelf, if there perhaps was a hidden mechanism, flipped through every one of them to look for hidden compartments , or marked passages that could be clues. He wasn’t sure why he thought there would be markings in the books. Poe was someone who valued books too much to deface them, even if it helped in creating the most masterful mystery known to mankind.
Poe must have been laughing at him from the real world. Laughing at Ranpo’s inability to see what was so obvious.
The day ended with Ranpo back on the sofa, frustrated by the day’s findings. The pictures around him taunting him into what could be reality. Why was he so upset at the pictures? He hated staring at them. He wished he could take them all down so he wouldn’t have to look at them anymore. At Poe and whoever could possibly make him that happy. It was Ranpo’s job to make Poe happy. He was the one who had to solve Poe’s mysteries and challenge him to improve. Likewise, Poe should only write stories for Ranpo and himself! Who else would be able to solve Poe’s best of the best anyway? If Poe poured his heart and soul into his works, Ranpo should be the only person capable of solving them!
What was that feeling? Whatever it was, Ranpo hated it. No, perhaps he didn’t hate it. Perhaps, he liked it a little too much. Was it… jealousy? He stared at the large framed picture opposite him. He was jealous of someone he didn’t know. Who was he jealous of? Why was he jealous of someone he didn’t know? Why was he jealous of someone he knew he couldn’t be jealous of..?
Ranpo squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them back up, he was in a different room. A dark room, Poe’s office. If he was back in the real world, then his suspicion must be correct. There was only one person it could be…
“Poe? I’m back!” He grabbed the book and left the office. He must be around somewhere, it was his home after all. “Hello?”
One of the doors swung open, and a disheveled Poe came storming out. “Oh, Ranpo, thank goodness. I thought something had happened to you.”
Ranpo crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I would have gotten out sooner if you hadn’t lied to me.”
“Lied?” Poe stared at him with wide open eyes. “What gave you the impression that I lied to you?”
“You should have told me from the start that you wrote a romance story, and that you simply modelled the characters after me and yourself. I went in assuming this was actually about you.”
Poe watched him. “Excuse me?” Poe pulled his robe taught - Ranpo probably caught him asleep. “What are you talking about?”
“That must be the truth,” Ranpo said. “There’s no way you would ever be in love with someone like me.”
Poe was left speechless, lips parted as if he were to say something but no words formed. Silence, unbearably long silence until Poe finally let out a drawn out sigh. “My dearest Ranpo, you are the smartest person I have ever been blessed with meeting-”
“I sure hope so.”
“Then tell me why you would ever say something as foolish.”
Now it was Ranpo’s turn to be left speechless. His body froze, but his body temperature rose. He stared at Poe, eyes widened as his brain wrapped around the idea that the person in front of him, Edgar Allan Poe, the only person to ever make Ranpo feel literal butterflies in his stomach, was in love with him? Genuinely? With no catch, no ifs, buts, and whens?
“But it seems I have misinterpreted our conversations. What I thought was a genuine spark between us must have just been your interest in my works-”
“No!” Ranpo exclaimed, grabbing onto Poe’s sleeve. “You go through all this trouble, writing a whole story for me just to confess to me, and I am that ungrateful and accuse you of lying to me… How am I supposed to show you that I like you too? Whatever I do, it’s gonna feel super lackluster!”
Poe watched him. “So you like me, too?”
“Of course I do!” Ranpo grabbed tighter onto the sleeve, nails digging into the fabric and probably into the arm underneath it. “Never in my life have I ever met someone who’s made me feel the way you do. I don’t even know how to explain what you make me feel, that’s how much I feel it! Every time you call me, I get so excited, it makes me mad!” He pulled the sleeve and with it the entirety of Poe, before he buried his face in Poe’s chest. “When I thought about you being in love with someone else, it made me so upset I couldn’t even think straight.”
Silence, for just a moment, before Poe let out a small laugh. “Well, who knew the greatest detective would be defeated by his own feelings?” He wrapped his arms around Ranpo, one hand on his back, the other stroking his hair. “Maybe I should have anticipated that.”
“I don’t like that you’re so relaxed about this,” Ranpo mumbled. “You’re supposed to be the anxious one.”
Poe smiled, the same smile that had been on the large photo print in the living room. “While that is true, with you, I just feel so much safer.”