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"Ow."
It comes from upstairs, drifting down into the basement from the open door. Shoutarou glances up from trying to decipher his companion's scribblings, leaning over to try and get a better look.
"Philip?" He calls.
"Ah, Shoutarou, I--"
Shoutarou clomps up the stairs, taking them two at a time, to find him hunched over, hand at his head and body contorted. He's holding on to one of those alligator clamps he puts in his hair, the ones that came free with the whiteboards, face scrunched up in an expression of pain.
Shoutarou coughs into his hand to hide his burst of laughter.
"Oi, oi, alright, let me just--"
"No," Philip says, twisting away. "It hurts."
"Don't be a baby," Shoutarou replies and there's a brief struggle as Shoutarou tries to get a hold on him and Philip yanks his head away.
"Ow," he howls, slapping a hand to his head and glaring in betrayal at both Shoutarou and the offending clip he's now holding in his hand, dangling a hank of forlorn dark hair.
"Uh," Shoutarou says as. "Well, it would have worked if you'd quit struggling." He scratches his head. "We could cut your hair if you'd like?"
Philip just gives him a withering look and whisks back into the basement.
He's in the super market a few days later, picking through half-ripe avocados and vaguely orange tomatoes when he sees a small display of hair clips. They're kind of. Well, the display is really pink with a picture of a smiling girl holding a lacy umbrella and a teddy bear, but they've already repeated the same issue three times now and Philip won't hold still long enough for Shoutarou to untangle him without coming out of it with a fistful of hair that winds up going everywhere, so. . . .
"Right," he says and stalks determinedly over to the display case, completely ignoring the weird looks he gets from the haggard parents and tired businesspeople populating the store.
"How cute!" the cashier exclaims when she rings up the ten sets of clips, all in various states of what he assumed was gender neutrality. "For your daughter?"
"Ha ha?!" Shoutarou replies. "No. What? No. I'm not-- No."
She tilts her head.
"Oh, your girlfriend, I'm sorry," she says and Shoutarou just stuffs them all into a bag and books it out of there as fast as he can.
"Here," he mumbles, thrusting the lot of them, dumped into a worn wooden box he found at an antiques shop on the way home, into Philip's hands as he emerges from the depths of the basement for dinner. Philip gives it a curious look and tilts it this way and that before opening it.
"Oh," he says, brows furrowing. "How fascinating. This one looks like a bear." He picks it up, inspecting it far closer than a little metal binder with pink lace and a felt bear warranted. He glances up at Shoutarou. "What are they for?"
"For your, you know," Shoutarou says, and makes a vague gesture at his hat-covered hair. Philip continues to stare at him, like he can see into his soul. "Look, just eat your eggs, okay," he says and sits down across from him, digging into his food so he can pretend he hasn't set up house with a looming stalker with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Who he apparently has enough affection for to buy him emasculating things in crowded stores, but whatever it's not like there's anyone else around to know.
"I'm home," Shoutarou murmurs under his breath, turned away to close the door behind him so no one can see his moving lips. His hand lingers on the door knob, but he takes a deep breath and turns to face the empty room, anyways.
"Ah?!"
The drawers are open, slid out of their place and knocked on their sides, their contents spilled out over the floor. His desk is a mess, his books scattered with his pens; one is hanging precariously over the edge, just about to tilt over, paused in suspenseful anticipation. The sitting room itself isn't much better, with the couch moved out of its place and everything shifted at least a handful of centimeters from where it was originally placed.
Philip is bent over in front of the desk, neck craned as he looks into the darkened space beneath it.
"Uhm?" Shoutarou says, to his crouched form. "What?"
"The bear came off," he says, not looking up. "I lost it."
"Oh, right, the bear," Shoutarou says, nodding, and turning away to leave him to it.
Wait, what?
"The bear?" He says, whipping back around to stare at him. "B-bear. Uh, which bear was this again?"
Philip sighs, and holds up his hand. Dangling from it is a small metal clip with a puff of lace attached to it and some kind of-- oh it's leftover glue.
"Oh," Shoutarou says. "That bear."
Huh. Well. Apparently Philip was attached to his gift. He looks away and coughs into his hand, definitely not smiling a little.
"Yes," Philip says and sticks his arm under the dusty desk.
"Well, it's your lucky day then," Shoutarou says and he runs his fingers over the brim of his hat. "You're got a hard-boiled detective on your case." He rolls up his sleeves, wrist twisting in a flourish and crosses over to him, swiping a flashlight off the desk. His hat nearly falls off when he drops down next to him, tilting his head to the side. He flips the switch on, aiming it into the darkness. "Right then, let's see what we've got here."
Three hours later and they have nothing to show for it but an even messier pile of tchotchkes and upended furniture.
"Philip," Shoutarou says, sitting on top of a pile of papers and a ruined box.
"What," Philip replies, sprawled out on his back on the bed, feet dangling off to touch the ground.
"Did you check the couch downstairs?"
"Oh!" Philip says, sitting up abruptly. "Of course! It was there before I went to bed, but gone when I woke!"
Shoutarou smacks a hand over his face, but trails after him as he races downstairs. Philip shoves his hand without ceremony or grace into the cracks of the couch, re-emerging with the missing felt covered bear. He holds in front of his face, inspecting it with a satisfied air.
"Oh-ho," Shouarou says, stroking his chin. "Not as dumb as I look, am I?"
"No, you're still of below average intelligence," Philip replies.
"Oi!"
"But you do seem to have a remarkable talent at finding things."
Shoutarou huffs and rolls out his shoulders.
"Of course," he says and points at him. "Now go wash your hands; the inside of that couch is disgusting."
"Hmm, but do we have any glue?"
"Oi, are you paying attention?!"
The stupid bear falls off three more times that week, and every time it's a treasure hunt and a barrage of twenty questions including: "What was the last thing you remember doing before it fell off?" "Did you look behind the dresser?" "Okay, if I was a bear where would I hide?" "Where were you at seven o'clock last night?" "ROAR. Did that help?" It's a weirdly bonding experience; the shared frustration of the search for something smaller than his toe-nail, but he's getting kind of frustrated with the whole situation.
"Ah, mou, again? Come on, Philip! We have a job to do, you know."
"I suppose I could try a different set for awhile," he says, though he sounds irate about the entire idea.
"Here," Shoutarou says, plopping a row of new clips down in front of him.
"Music notes," Philip says.
"There's nothing on them to fall off," Shoutarou replies and Philip spends the next seven hours learning to read music and humming completely out of tune. Shoutarou eventually stomps downstairs and throws a pillow at him, but it doesn't make him stop.
He thinks about buying him the ones with silk flowers, but then his stomach starts doing something weird when he imagines him wearing them and he leaves the store without a word, blushing violently for reasons he's not entirely clear on.
The ones with little airplanes are cute, though.
"Wait a minute," Philip says. Behind them, the Dopant's body drops to the floor, shifting back into human form and spitting out the memory. It shatters when it hits the ground and Philip directs their body to a shop window. Apparently his roommate has the attention span of a squirrel. Shoutarou sighs and dials up the police with their free hand as Philip pushes their face up to the glass. "Are those little hats? Shoutarou, these might be more convenient for you than wearing Narumi Soukichi's fedoras." He points, tapping the glass and yes those are tiny little hats in various colors stuck on metal bobby pins and no.
"No." He says and Philip huffs a sigh.
"You take an hour in the bathroom every morning styling your hair. I just think it would be more efficient--"
"I do not and no."
He comes back later and buys them anyways.
"You can wear them," he says, pointedly, putting them in between the blank pages of his book, forcing him to blink his way back into reality. He's still staring at them when Shoutarou stamps back up the stairs.
He wakes up the next morning to find the boss's hats not on their rack and his hair done up in an elaborate pattern with all six of the clips holding it in place.
"Philip," he roars, and chases him around the basement until he admits where he hid his hats, hair stiff and unnaturally still.
The cashier starts when he slams down the little box on top of the conveyer belt. It jingles enticingly before settling into smug silence.
"Er," he says, when she gives him a little glare, swiping it over the scanner with a little more aggressive force than is necessary. He feels bad. It's not her fault his roommate drives him crazy. "Thanks."
"Look," he says, setting down in front of him the box of 75 paper clamps, now with 10 extra FREE. "These ones don't have that little curly thing or those serrated teeth to get your hair stuck in, and they're cheap so if you lose them I can just buy you more, okay?"
"Oh," Philip says, after he's opened the box, eyes going wide. "Green, red, yellow, silver, blue and purple. Our colors."
"What," Shoutarou says, and looks over his shoulder. "Oh. Heh. Of course." He grins, patting himself mentally on the back for managing that without actually knowing what he was doing. "My hard-boiled detective work applies to all things. Remember that one, yeah?"
Philip just hmms, picking through the box, obviously not paying attention.
That first year they go through an entire box of the things, and Shoutarou keeps stepping on them until he learns not to go barefoot in the office anymore, but they don't lose the bear again and, well, it's not like he stops wearing the alligator clips, but at least sometimes he stops waking in the middle of the night when he's ripped his hair out tossing and turning and wearing those things.
And even though the Boss is gone, the office echoes now with more than silence and, well--
Shoutarou is counting it as a win.