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Consciousness returns to Ranpo slowly, like taffy left in the sun to melt.
His skin is like the candy wrapper. It’s keeping him from oozing too far off-course, keeping him tethered despite his helplessly scattered thoughts.
He draws a deep breath. It’s dark in that nothingness sort of way, where he knows he’s slowly coming back to his sense of existence. Time doesn’t exist here, in the space between “now” and “nothing”. The feeling isn’t quite like waking up from a dream, and it’s not the shock of awareness that usually follows the use of Yosano-san’s healing ability—
Yosano.
The Agency.
He needs to warn Atsushi about Fukuchi…
The aching pain follows immediately. It drowns out his building urgency, and the words on the tip of his tongue vanish. Each throb of his heart leaves starbursts dancing across the back of his eyelids. In the first calm moment he’d had to think through all of the tangled pieces, the full picture had come together so easily. It’s usually the simplest connection between events that rings true. Occam’s razor and scientific virtue. The only explanation had been laid before him, as his glasses perched on his nose and his lungs had filled with the smell of the open ocean.
They had walked right into Fukuchi’s waiting grasp— Ranpo had fallen into the enemy’s plot— and now…
His racing heartbeat starts to calm. The muscles remember the shock of a sword piercing him through the sternum. His breaths tremble; he can’t feel his chest. Bandages hold him together starting just beneath his collarbones, but he can’t feel the ache of their hold on his sides. It’s numb in a way that hurts in its wrongness. He can’t take a deeper breath, and everything is so heavy. Aches abound, but there’s no longer that piercing horrible pain.
The memory lingers, and his body panics when he can’t find the edge of that trauma.
Ranpo had turned to Atsushi on the ship. The words had formed on his lips as he stared into the kid’s soul. The salty gusts had thrown his long hair back into his face as he’d turned around. From the corner of his eye, fast as lightning, the shadowed mastermind had flinched.
Time doesn’t move in important moments like these. Objectively it marches along, apathetic to Ranpo’s mortal danger, but his nerves flashed faster. His instincts slowed his perception. It’s a well-documented phenomenon, and it’s been happening to Ranpo far too often ever since this whole mess with re-writing reality had begun.
From a hidden pocket in his shawl, he had opened a book.
He’s kept the small tome on him for weeks, ever since he had taken a stand against the Hunting Dogs and the world had labeled him as a terrorist. Edgar’s shy, crooked little smile had been so stupid. With his too-long bangs falling into his face, he’d held out the book to Ranpo.
Somehow, it’s that look in his eyes that Ranpo remembers with startling clarity. He hadn’t tried to convince Ranpo to hide away and wait. He hadn’t talked Ranpo out of challenging the impossible.
Edgar had understood, somehow usually did understand, and had handed him the smallest peace of mind.
“I will assist in any way I can, of course,” Edgar had said in his subdued American accent, “but in the times that I can’t, please take this.”
For times like this, when the enemy bends space and time and reality to pierce him through the heart. Although of course neither of them had quite anticipated these turn of events.
Edgar’s ability had engulfed him in the book as he’d reached for Atsushi. He remembers that now. Beyond the panic and the pain and the taffy-melted milliseconds that had passed, he can only hope that Atsushi got away. It’s such a strange thing, how a found family can make you forget that you’re about to die. How your own mortality is an afterthought when they could get hurt.
Love isn’t Ranpo’s favorite topic to ponder, not for the vagueness and overwhelming tide of his own heart, but it surely consumes him in moments so dire. It’s easier to remember the look on Edgar’s face. It’s easier to count the hairs on his unshaven jaw. It’s so much easier to fall into the throes of Edgar’s ability and let go of everything as blinding pain burns red in his vision.
To be spirited away with the black cat in the morgue.
The more Ranpo lays there, breathing in the cool air and re-collecting his senses, the more his thoughts turn over into redundant loops like that. A flash of the sunset over the bow of the cruise ship. The feeling of Edgar’s book in his pocket for days on-end. The smell of the backseat where he had confronted a flustered and panicked Oguri Mushitarou. The blood that pooled from Taneda’s orifices as he died in front of Ranpo.
A lock clicks in the silence. A door opens with a soft creak.
The change is enough to anchor Ranpo back into the present, to quell the raging images and feelings and memories clamoring for space. His next small inhale brings a clarity that he usually associates with his “ability”.
Slowly, carefully, Ranpo opens his eyes.
The room around him is cozy and garish. A dark wood banister cuts the walls into two: dark wallpaper on top of a forest green. The banisters match the dark wooden floors, although in the wave of dizziness that rushes over Ranpo, he can’t immediately identify the type of wood. The room is partially lit by a simple brass chandelier at the center of the ceiling, but the shape of the shadows and sunlight that dominate the space prove that his headboard is set against a large picture window. The panes intersect the floor and the wallpaper at off angles.
With another click, the door closes. Ranpo watches long, thin fingers linger on the round brass knob.
“When’s breakfast?” he asks Edgar’s familiar back. His voice cracks in the middle, and he’s acutely aware that he needs to drink some water to wash down the stale taste of sleep and dried blood from his tongue. Pancakes would do wonders for that predicament, actually. His stomach is in knots and too fluttery to feel hungry, but he doesn’t worry too much about it.
Edgar turns his head slightly, glancing out the window over his shoulder. His movements are slow and deliberate as he turns toward Ranpo.
Lethargic, in a way that Ranpo never sees him.
"I told you that if you were ever forced to use this story, you would owe me an apology."
Ranpo can see the exhaustion hanging off of Edgar’s shoulders like boulders. The man is always pale, but in the sunlight he looks nearly gray. His hair isn’t normally well-kept, but there’s a flat patch that leaves it more misshapen than usual. An arm crosses over his chest, playing for annoyance and failing. Ranpo can’t see his eyes, but he knows they’re hollow and dry.
With the hand that had lingered on the doorknob, Edgar haltingly reaches for Ranpo’s cheek with his index finger. His hesitation is preposterous, for the fact that he’s obviously the one who had patched Ranpo up. It’s another one of those little things that Ranpo doesn’t care to dwell on, how cute Edgar can be in his horribly awkward way.
The finger brushes against his cheek, so Ranpo gives him a little smirk.
"Is it alright if I thank you, instead?"
It’s a bit of a brazen attempt at distraction. Like with many things, Ranpo doesn’t remember Edgar saying that. He remembers the summer sun and the papers on his desk at the Agency and Karl pawing at Kunikida’s pens. He remembers how the book looked against Edgar’s fingers, how he’d fought against his instincts to open the volume and read another of Edgar’s mysteries. It hadn’t been too difficult, what with the world falling apart around them, but the urge had persisted nonetheless.
The notion itself is a bit silly, anyway. Edgar had insisted he have this safeguard, but he’s upset that Ranpo had to use it? Ridiculous. Ranpo would be a lifeless corpse on the deck of that luxury liner otherwise. The slow-motion memories threaten to return to the forefront of his thoughts, but he keeps the distraction at bay. It’s easy to focus on the present when Edgar is here, pretending to be braver than he really is.
Edgar’s split ends dance a bit as he sighs heavily. He drops it, like Ranpo had wanted. A dusting blush would have been a better reaction— Ranpo’s gratitude doesn’t come easily, after all— but the concession is a decent second.
The back of Edgar’s hand brushes at Ranpo’s temple, toying with greasy strands of hair, before Edgar gets to work pulling down the thin blanket and checking Ranpo’s bandages. The poking makes him flinch when Edgar finds a spot that isn’t as numb as the rest, and it tickles unexpectedly.
“This is your aunt’s house, then,” Ranpo fills the silence. “You’ve used bits and pieces in your other works.”
Edgar hums a soft noise, distracted by a yellowing patch of sweat drying at Ranpo’s sides.
“She lived near the fields. I’m sure the rest of the house is lovely.” Ranpo feels himself rambling.
“She died in this room, in reality,” Edgar says. “I remember it well enough to keep it well-stocked for any emergency. I can re-write the surgeons and the nurses and staff with clarity. It’s like being in Baltimore again, before they all succumbed.”
And there’s another thing that Ranpo doesn’t really care to dwell on: the way love never really leaves you. Even in the depths of fathomless grief, the most banal memories stay with you.
But even this is more than Ranpo needs to know about Muddy and Ginny, about Edgar’s life before writing and before finding his true calling in life. They’ll get there eventually, maybe, but Ranpo has never been the best at untangling his own feelings and emotions when they’re all bundled together and frayed and knotted. It’s better to take things as they are. To take steps forward instead of constantly reaching back into the past.
“Then, any news from—” he starts, but Edgar straightens and walks toward one of the antique cupboards against the wall on the other side of the room.
“I’m in touch with Ms. Montgomery and Sakaguchi Ango-san. I’m sorry, but we’re still waiting for your cohorts to make contact before we do anything.”
“It was Fukuchi,” Ranpo says evenly. “He tricked us all.”
Edgar hesitates on his way back to the bed, a bottle of water and a straw in hand, and nods.
“I’ll spread the word.”
At last Ranpo gets some water. He swishes it around in his mouth and immediately feels more human the more he drinks. It hits his empty stomach like a sack of potatoes. His appetite for those pancakes crescendoes, even though he knows Edgar wouldn’t think of how to get him some. He keeps the phantom taste of syrup and fluffy batter on his tongue to demand later.
There’s one more thing he needs to hear from Edgar. Before pancakes.
"Have you found him yet?"
Edgar startles, surprisingly. The reaction makes something spark behind Ranpo’s eyes.
“... Edgar, you know that I can only trust this to you, right?"
Red slowly fills the tips of Edgar’s ears before Ranpo’s eyes. The color is splotchy and ugly against Edgar’s death-like pallor. If Ranpo had the strength, he’d reach out and trace the color like paint across the uneven parts to blend it in. He doesn’t care to discern the reason for how the sight makes his lungs flutter and his fingertips itch.
"This time, I don't think your feelings on the matter are my primary motivation."
Oh?
Ranpo hums into his next sip of water, waiting. Teasing, despite everything.
When they had split up, after Edgar had handed him the book that brought him here and let him save Ranpo from dying, they’d both had their objectives. As effective as they are as a team, they’re both just as conniving when apart. The Agency has been Ranpo’s first priority, of course it has. It’s that bundle of feelings he accepts and doesn’t question, that love that keeps him grounded and real.
His second priority, his ask of Edgar, had been to save Oguri Mushitarou from the Decay of Angels. Occam’s razor and scientific virtue, no Super Deduction needed.
He wants to laugh a little as he replies. "I just think it's funny, the kind of person that catches your interest."
Edgar frowns. "And what sort of person is that?"
"The kind of person to best appreciate your everything, of course: a genius detective who can solve your every plot, and a skeptic who rejects your premises outright."
He’s laughing a little now, despite the aches and his raw throat and his own growing exhaustion. The sunlight has shifted outside without him noticing, and the window pane shadows cut across Edgar’s face now. He’s still blushing a little, trying his best to keep his expression neutral. He’s picking at his fingernails. His shoulders are inching toward his ears.
Ranpo is delighted.
"... Mushitarou-kun is someone I would like to know, if only just once,” Edgar mumbles. Beneath his anxious habits is a tiny flame of emotion. He’s tired and flustered and standing in the house that last felt anything like home to him. Ranpo almost wants to believe that Edgar could ooze into the floorboards with the weight of the emotions tumbling inside of him.
Sweet and sticky and melting in the sun.
"Mmhmm. But preferably more than once."
Edgar slowly brings his hands to his face. Hiding, but not denying.
Ranpo does love him. Together, they’re sure to render Mushitarou defenseless against their combined offense. Once they find him, and once they get to tease him again.
They’re an unbeatable team, after all.