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When Ranpo is seventeen, he steals a bottle of sake from Fukuzawa’s cabinet and climbs out of the fire escape.
He’s quiet about it; he makes sure he doesn’t wake Akiko, sleeping in the other room, and he scales the fire escape until he finds himself sitting on the edge of the roof, bottle in hand and cape around his shoulders fluttering in the wind.
He has no one to drink it with, but he thinks it’s going to help the bitterness that swells in his chest and threatens to drown him. It’s a thing people do, anyway, that he’s observed; they drink when they’re upset, they drink when they want to have fun, and they drink when they want to feel like people.
He doesn’t understand that, not really, but he is desperate and seventeen and grieving and the gentle light of the moon peering down, managing to push past the light pollution in the city, is like a caress, the stars as tears across his cheeks. Destiny, Ranpo thinks, staring up at the moon with a scowl despite its gentleness, is bullshit.
Fukuzawa isn’t in town tonight, anyway. He’s off on some mission somewhere else without Ranpo. He and Akiko are old enough to take care of themselves, but it’s their detective agency, shared. There’s no fucking reason that Fukuzawa should be going out of town for a case without them.
There’s no fucking reason that Fukuzawa should be going out of town this week.
But he is and Ranpo can’t change that and he isn’t going to call the man, so here he sits. The seal on the bottle is already broken, and Ranpo wonders if this is a rite of passage, of sorts, for the normal teenagers who go to high school and get good grades and have friends.
Ranpo never did like school, even when he actually had to attend. He thought the other kids were stupid and the curriculum simplistically stupid. His mother said he should go anyway, that it was good to socialize.
His mother was never around to enforce that, was she? She did then, but she can’t now.
Ranpo should laugh. He should. Instead, he finds that the sake tastes bitter as it goes down his throat and he hopes that, at least in this way, he can be like everyone else. He’d like to feel like a person again.
Lately, it feels like everything he does is doomed to fail. He can’t go to school because he can’t socialize, Fukuzawa won’t let him go on solo cases because he’s a danger, and Akiko doesn’t talk to him at breakfast because he made some dumb comments about her outfits. He can’t do anything right. He doesn’t know if that’s because he’s become wrong or if he was made wrong - if it was carved or genetic.
Ranpo truthfully doesn’t want to know.
He doesn’t know how long he sits there - holding the sake rather than drinking it, because it isn’t sweet enough for him, staring at a blurry moon and pretending there aren’t tears staining his cheeks.
He misses his mom. He wants his mom.
Whenever he felt like this, she could curl up in a blanket next to him and they would read stories together, the ones she’s written with mysteries that no one else could ever understand. She’d tell him that he was a smart cookie when he solved the mystery. She’d make hot chocolate and hold him.
And he’s here, tipsy on the roof of a building he doesn’t like with no one with him, staring at the moon and pretending the moon can coddle him.
He wishes he never went with Fukuzawa. He wishes he never left home. He wishes they weren’t dead.
Ranpo wishes for a lot of things. Being a genius doesn’t mean he can bring back the dead. He isn’t gifted like Akiko and Fukuzawa - he knows that.
Figured it out years ago, actually. Doesn’t say anything about it because it’s a state of mind thing - a time where he can focus rather than get distracted by all the blurry details - but his fake ability doesn’t mean he can fix time.
Time doesn’t heal wounds. It doesn’t go away.
His mom isn’t going to write mysteries anymore, Fukuzawa is out of town, Akiko is asleep, and Ranpo is so stupid for thinking that his grief will change any of that.
By the time he’s done with his moping, there’s little left in the sake bottle and he doesn’t feel any better. He feels weighed down, and the feeling of drowning is contained in both his head and the way he sluggishly moves his limbs.
He wishes he was dead, too. He wishes he were with his mother. He wishes Fukuzawa never gave in to him. He wishes - he wishes -
Before Ranpo can finish the thought, the phone in his pocket rings.
It startles him so much that he jumps, the bottle falling out of his hands and falling over the edge of the building; it shatters and the sound causes a chill to race up his spine at the sound, muttering curse after curse as he tries to fumble his phone out of his pocket.
He hates his phone. He hates a lot of things right now.
“What’d’ya want?” Ranpo hisses when he finally answers the call, his hands clammy despite the wind circulating through the air.
It’s Fukzuawa. Ranpo should’ve checked the caller ID before he answered. Fukuzawa would be disappointed in him. Fukuzawa is out of town. Fukuzawa is out of town on the most important week of the year.
What use is the man, anyway? If he’s going to leave, too?
“I was checking in,” Fukuzawa says calmly, and Ranpo makes a face of distaste. Fukuzawa shouldn’t be calm. Fukuzawa should know that there is a hurricane in Ranpo’s heart and head and stomach that he isn’t privy to. “I know you sometimes can’t sleep at this time of night.”
“I don’t need sleep,” Ranpo says - snaps - and his S gets slurred by his sentence and he’s drank more than he ever has in his life, and he hates Fukzuawa so fucking much.
Fukuzawa isn’t his dad. Fukuzawa isn’t anything like his dad. Fukuzawa pitied him. Ranpo hates pity.
“I see,” Fukuzawa says eventually. He sounds like he’s contemplating, always scared of saying the wrong thing, never a man to live in the moment even though the moment demands his presence and he shouldn’t be out of town. “Ranpo, where are you? I hear wind.”
“The apartment.” It isn’t home. It’s never been home. It’s never going to be home and Ranpo wants to crawl into his bed in his home and listen to the sound drone of the fan he’d kept in the corner and the movement of light from the transparent curtains that had filtered the street light out.
“Are you outside the apartment?” Fukuzawa asks, still calm, still calm and still not here.
Ranpo fumbles for a response, not wanting to be honest with him because he hates Fukuzawa and he’s tired and he’s drunk and - “Fuck you. Fuck you, stop talking to me.”
“Are you… drunk, Ranpo?”
“I told you to fuck off,” Ranpo repeats, but his resolve wavers, and he holds the phone tighter, and Fukuzawa should be here.
Fukuzawa shouldn’t have left. That’s what always happens, right? People leave?
The people that understand Ranpo always leave and then he is left alone, and the people that do not understand him either look at him like a freak or a God. He finds they’re the same. Freakish god. God-like freak.
Fukuzawa is gone and Ranpo kind of wants to throw himself off the roof, but he’s on the phone and it would be rude to do that when he’s on the phone.
(He wants to see his mom. He wants to see his mom so bad his chest hurts, and he’d carve out every single one of his ribs if he had to, he wants to see her. He never got to say goodbye. He never got to say anything.)
“You’re drunk,” Fukuzawa repeats, more certain this time, and Ranpo scowls at the notion. He doesn’t scold Ranpo for stealing his alcohol, though. “What’s wrong?”
“I hate you,” Ranpo says, the words rolling off his tongue and providing solace and comfort that they shouldn’t. “You should’ve - I don’t - I hate you. I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I -”
“Ranpo, enough.” Fukuzawa’s tone is stern enough that it cuts Ranpo off like a guilty child. “I called to check up on you, and I see now that it was needed.”
“You’re gone,” Ranpo pouts, and he might be crying again, and he doesn’t know, and his cheeks burn, and his nose hurts, and everything feels so much worse when he’s trapped in this spiral and Fukuzawa is gone.
Fukuzawa should’ve given up on him. Ranpo would be able to see his mom that way. He wants to see her.
His sobbing must be evident, but it’s not really sobbing, it’s silent crying with the addition of sniffles, and his throat gets all closed up and he sounds deafening to his own ears and he hates this.
“I’ll be home soon,” Fukuzawa says simply. “Stay on the line with me.”
Ranpo doesn’t want to do that. Ranpo wants to throw his phone and make it die with the bottle and he wants to scream and he can do none of those things, and Fukuzawa does not get it, and Fukuzawa is not his parent, and he shouldn’t have to listen to him.
But Fukuzawa is on the phone and his voice makes Ranpo’s heartbeat steady and Ranpo wants to curse and throw and hit and he doesn’t want to hang up because otherwise he might actually join his mom and he misses her so much it aches but -
But -
He doesn’t know.
Someone will be sad. It won’t be him. Someone.
“Ranpo,” Fukuzawa says, and it sounds like he’s at a train station. “Why are you up so late?”
“Don’t you know?” Ranpo spits, laughing, hysterical, and his nose hurts and his throat burns and this world is too much.
He understands why his parents left it.
Maybe he shouldn’t have drunk that sake.
Maybe, but it’s too late now. Story of his life.
“I…” Fukuzawa stumbles for the first time in their conversation, and it only makes Ranpo laugh harder, his lungs hurt, his face twisted and aching. “Ranpo, it’s been a -”
“Fuck you. Fuck you so much! There is one day, one week you need to be here and you - you aren’t! You left! You don’t leave Akiko like this!”
“I don’t know why you’re angry.” Maybe Fukuzawa sounds hurt. Maybe he deserves it. Maybe Ranpo shouldn’t be so cruel.
He is cruel, though, and he’s drunk, and he’s tired of living and tired of being left behind and maybe just once there will be someone to stay for him. Fukuzawa is not that someone.
“I’m - I’m angry,” Ranpo hiccups, cursing at the sound, “because you’re - you think you can save people when you’re so - so blind! Can’t you see that you’re never gonna atone when you’re - you’re busy failing with the people in front of you? Aren’t you sick of caring for lost causes? Aren’t you sick of leaving!”
“I’m on a case.” Oh. He’s hurt Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa’s answers are getting more curt and to the point.
Good.
He should’ve given up on Ranpo years ago.
“We’re supposed to go on cases together!” He sounds like a petulant child. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. He isn’t justified, but does he have to be?
For once in his life, can he be right without a reason?
“Why?” Fukuzawa asks simply, coldly, and Ranpo curls in on himself. Oh no. He’s going to make Fukuzawa leave.
Fukuzawa leaves but he comes back. The beginning half of their conversation is already a haze and Ranpo just wants it to be over. What it is, he doesn’t know.
“Why do I need to take you with me everywhere, Ranpo?” Fukuzawa says. “You’re throwing a tantrum, and you won’t tell me why. I can’t help if you don’t tell me what you need.”
“I need you to - to -” Ranpo’s words get twisted on his tongue, somewhere between I need you to be by my side and never leave and I need you to get the hell away from me for the rest of my sorry life.
Instead, Ranpo huffs, his irritation at his own fuck-ups apparent. “Just get the hell away from me and stay away!”
Please don’t leave me.
Please don’t leave me up here alone.
Please don’t hate me.
Fukuzawa says nothing.
Ranpo lets out what might be a scream of frustration, throwing the stupid fucking annoying phone over the roof. He watches it hit the wall of the building across from him and it gets crushed, and good riddance.
He hopes Fukuzawa is -
Is what?
Is hurting? He hopes Fukuzawa hurts as much as he does? He hopes that Fukuzawa hates himself as much as Ranpo does? He hopes that Fukuzawa leaves him alone?
It’s all dumb. He hates it all. It’s all beneath him but it’s not and if he’s such a fucking genius, why can’t he take everything apart and make it go away?
Ranpo scoots back from the ledge, just enough to bring his knees up to his chest like a child and cry there. It’s easier that way, and his tears are salty, and it’s windy enough to be uncomfortable and God he should get down and he doesn’t want to.
It’d wake Akiko.
He hates Fukuzawa, and he hates that Fukuzawa isn’t his dad, and he hates so many things, but he can’t hold any of that against her, and she really is lovely, and Ranpo is the one who needs constant support and reassurance and Fukuzawa is not here the one time that Ranpo wants him here -
In the end, he ends up sitting there long after the few tears he has dry up. It aches to breathe; it’ll ache more to uncurl and get down to bed. He can’t sleep, anyway. Doesn’t want to sleep.
It’s the only way he sees his parents, now, and their faces are starting to get blurry. It’s less like a dream and more like a nightmare lately. The blood splatter proves it.
He hits there long enough that the moon is obscured by clouds and it’s a matter of safety, his own, to stay.
When a hand touches his shoulder, Ranpo flinches so hard he’s forced to uncurl, kicking out at whoever dared touch -
“Fukuzawa,” Ranpo says, eyes wide, breathless, his hair partially obscuring his vision as he looks up at the man.
Fukuzawa looks as intimidating as he always does, and there is something like - like - Ranpo doesn’t know - in his eyes as he looks down at Ranpo, his hand still outstretched from where he’d touched his shoulder. “I… Ranpo. Don’t you think it’s time to go inside?”
“Get away from me,” Ranpo murmurs, but it lacks the heat it’s supposed to.
You came, he wants to say. You came back.
But the words get lodged in his throat and he’s hurled so many insults at Fukuzawa and they weren’t real, not really, and -
“Let’s go,” Fukuzawa says simply, and without prompting, he picks Ranpo up like a child. Like a child, and Ranpo should fight it, but he’s so tired. “I’m sorry,” Fukuzawa murmurs as he adjusts Ranpo, Ranpo’s arms held around his neck and his legs around the man’s waist.
It should be embarrassing to get held at his age, but it just - Ranpo feels small, and held, and he’s so fucking -
“I didn’t know the case would take that long,” Fukuzawa says, his walk slower due to adjusting to the added weight. He smells like fresh laundry. “I know what day it is. I’m sorry.”
Ranpo sniffles, his nose runny. He feels bad about wiping it on Fukuzawa’s yukata. Fukuzawa doesn’t complain. “I want to see her,” he says, delirious, desperate, because he misses them so badly, he wants - he wants so much that he can’t have. “And - and I want to have dinner with mom, and papa, and you, and - and I want to see them.”
“I know you do.” Fukuzawa is a steady weight, but his heartbeat is slightly too elevated to be calm when Ranpo presses his ear against the man’s chest. “I know.”
“Do you think she’d be proud of me?” Ranpo asks suddenly, his voice rising in pitch and volume as the question strikes him much like lightning.
Suddenly, he needs to know. Would she be proud of him? Would his mom like where he’s ended up? Would she like Fukuzawa? What would his papa think? Would he think Ranpo made it, that he finally got along with someone? Would he think Ranpo’s a disappointment?
“W -” Fukuzawa begins to ask, but cuts himself off as he pushes open the roof access door. “Yes, Ranpo. I think they’d both be proud. And I don’t know what they would want, but I, I want you to get some sleep. Do you think you can do that?”
“I’d rather die.” It’s not said with anger, it isn’t said with malice. It’s a statement. Ranpo would rather die than do almost anything right now if it meant he could see them again. Ranpo would rather die than live, and isn’t that a comforting thought?
(It’s not like his parents killed themselves, or anything. It’s not like they saw an outcome or a future where they survived and everything was so unfathomably bad that they had to kill themselves over it, that they had to leave their son, and Ranpo is selfish and he wants them back -)
Unfortunately, Fukuzawa only confirms it, because he knows, because he knows Ranpo better than anyone. “I know. I know you would, and I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want your sympathy.”
“Yet you need it nonetheless,” Fukuzawa murmurs. “Let me tell you that you deserve more, Ranpo. It’s late, you’re exhausted, and I wasn’t here. So let me right my wrong.”
Ranpo doesn’t say anything in response because he doesn’t know what he would say if he even could, and the motion of Fukuzawa walking down the stairs helps lull him into a daze, sleep that’s evaded him all week.
When Ranpo is conscious again, it’s barely, and he’s curled into Fukuzawa’s side in his bed, and his shoulders are shaking because his dreams have all been nightmares and it’s hard to want to stay alive when his mother so sweetly asks him to join her.
Fukuzawa simply runs his hands gently through Ranpo’s hair, shushing him, and Ranpo would be lying if he said it didn’t start making him cry again, and his head hurts - from crying or drinking he doesn’t know, and Fukuzawa is here.
Fukuzawa came back.
“The - the case, though,” Ranpo says, remarkably aware that his voice sounds horrible and broken and mangled.
Fukuzawa merely hums. Ranpo both wishes he could see his face and thanks God that he can’t. “It can be handled by other detectives, I’m sure.”
“B - but -”
“You’re my priority, Ranpo. You needed me here.”
“I didn’t - I -” And what comes to mind for Ranpo is the horrible things he said, I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate -
“It’s okay.” God, Ranpo wishes Fukuzawa wouldn’t say that. “Just rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Akiko wants to go to the mall tomorrow anyway, so I’ll let her run amuck if you stay and make breakfast with me.”
It means talking, it means unpacking, and Ranpo wants none of that. Still… Fukuzawa stayed. Doesn’t Ranpo owe him something? Weakly, he says, “Fine. If it’s crepes. I - I want crepes.”
“Strawberry crepes?”
“Strawberry crepes.”
When Ranpo falls asleep again, he falls asleep in Fukuzawa’s arms like a child, and he does not dream of flying high.
They still have things to talk about. Apologies to make, words to exchange, barbs to spit, but… Here, now, Ranpo wonders what it would have been like if his papa had ever done this; if it would feel as safe as when Fukuzawa does.