Work Text:
Crimson. The color washed up the floor, producing a brief moment of justifiable curiosity at first glance, and a black out of horror and panic to the person plagued any further with such malady. A sympathetic hand reached down to the tragic scene and rested on top of the sickeningly pure white cloth that draped over the corpse, and fell and spread and ran into every direction of the crevices made in the red and brown brick patterned pavement underneath.
“I wonder what happened,” the owner of the hand muttered with a single breath. The boy who laid his emerald eyes over the scene stared, mouth widened, his hand smoothly rising up and over to place itself on his hip, his weight shifting from one foot to another. The boy laughed.
“Isn't that our job?” He explained his thoughts behind the curtain of words, his voice speaking clearly and concisely for his partner to listen to. “Well... To figure out what happened anyways. If we merely wondered what happened, then I suppose we would be no better than civilians.”
His apparent “partner” rose from the ground, turning a single accusatory foot in his direction. “If we had no civilians, we would have no laws or jobs Ranpo-kun.”
Ranpo extended his smile, replying eagerly. “If we had no laws, we'd have no crime.”
“.......Everything would be crime.. Every action a crime to humankind. Just no one to announce such things as being 'a crime'..Is that what you mean?” came the hesitant reply.
“Bingo!” Ranpo announced, spreading his arms out in the most sincerity that his comrade could hope him to have. “You truly are a wonderful detective Poe, but let me ask you something interesting.”
Footsteps sounded over the pavement, pausing at their intended destination. Exquisite emerald eyes made their way to another pair, hidden under curling depths of ebony hair, unblinking. An unbearably small yet increasingly loud feeling in the depth of Edgar's heart made itself instantly more noticeable as his friend approached. In some ways, you would expect this to be “love”.
Surely the tender glances that he and his partner exchanged had not gone unnoticed by him. Perhaps then, was it the deep conversations they had in the darkened corners of a hallway when the sun itself had not yet woken up? If not that, then was it the small habits he loved? The way the younger detective laid himself upside down across the sofa every evening to play Animal Crossing without fail. The way he would glide up and down every flight of stairs with the left foot first, even if it meant he had to take an extra step to correct his footwork mid-step.
No... This was not love. Don't misunderstand. It is in no possible way that I am saying that the boy was not smitten with his partner. But it was not love that he felt in his heart just then. Respect then? It was not fear. I could continue any amount of lengthy paragraph, filled word to word with information about what Edgar Allan Poe was feeling in the depths of his heart at that very moment. Yet information itself would be at a loss for words about this phenomenon. There is no conceivable way, even for Edgar himself to comprehend this feeling, but whatever the feeling was, it was there. It was there, and it was loud, and it would make itself heard.
An unintentional shuffle of his own feet brought Edgar back to reality, to where he had left off a few seconds ago, leading him spiraling off in his own stairway of thoughts to continue staring at his unfortunate love interest.
“What would you do,” Ranpo started, his body in every way unflinching. “If there was no law?”
Edgar stood in silence, mind speaking in tones and code more loudly than he could and would ever raise his voice to be.
His silence intrigued, or possibly even excited Ranpo, who took a step back and leaned on the thick wired trellis next to the corpse. Evading yet disregarding the pools of blood that oozed and dispersed around his feet.
“What.... Do you mean?” Edgar asked, firmly but unsure.
“You heard me.” The reply twisted back.
“Well.... Yes, but I don't think I understand.” Edgar returned, tilting his head away briefly. He had wished for an answer, an understanding of some kind as to what kind of nonsense Ranpo had expected him to babble out. And yet, as soon as he had turned his head he understood.
Any person that had the most slight, singular idea of what reactions that humans were capable of, yet that eluded that human's very conscience, would know that by the very stutter, the mere turning of his head just seconds prior, and the wide eyes that stayed unfocused on the horizon in a distant splotch of far off colors, that that person knew exactly what the sentence had meant.
Ranpo recognized the train of thought in his friend, and stayed appropriately silent in regard to Edgar's last sentence.
Edgar stopped, and pondered. A time so brief, so short as to offend the second hand winding of a clock, had passed before Edgar turned his head back to Ranpo.
He did indeed know what he had meant. In a world without law, can you truly say that you would be good? In a place where there is no scale, and no place to judge what is good, and what is bad, surely no one person could declare to have no ill desire. If temptation exists in a place with law, then no doubt it would be more prominent in one without. A single touch or beckon from the word itself could no doubt lead you to a spiraling destination of ill repute. Further contact still and you would likely never return from the path you pave with your own bloodied, tempted hands.
“I can't answer that. It's a trick question.”
Ranpo lifted his head, taking eyes from the murder scene before him, to the speaker in front. “Oh yeah?” He answered with another question. Not in any way to be rude, or to be a taunt, but simply because he knew Edgar wouldn't take it as such. He had every idea what would run through his head, and a still clear, but less detailed idea of what his answer would be.
Partnering with a person for any period of time, and Ranpo would have them figured out. Career? About 6 seconds. Relationship? A minute, for the most unclear. A lifestyle might take him a day if he didn't feel like attempting a proper deduction, and anything further couldn't take him any time at all. Then Poe. Something about the tall cloaked figure before him that eluded his mental grasp. His musings could end up being at best, a guess. Not because Poe was in some way different than others by habits or specifics. Given a request or simply the dire feeling of curiosity, and Ranpo could have and would have figured him out just the same. But he chose not to. A simple nod towards the ecstasy he couldn't help but feel when his partner was with him. He had no particular reason beyond that, and he didn't need to. He didn't care enough to.
Something about the mysterious shroud of Edgar that Ranpo himself had embedded into his own mind, that quite simply, did not exist. With him it could be anything and everything at all. Career? His partner, of course. Relationship? Ah, well that would be a hard one. Hope and reality could rip at Ranpo's heart in the never ending game of tug-of-war they were addicted to for all he cared, because he didn't expect it to happen. Not with him, and yet it didn't seem like he could love anyone else. Ranpo regarded that thought as a childish mentality of 'If I can't have it no one can', and sealed off every piece that hooked to that part of his mind and sunk him closer to his insanity with every added weight of the mention.
“There's no way of telling what someone would do. I can only hope that I would try to still follow the path of whatever “justice” might still exist in a world like that, but I really don't know.” Edgar paced, boots resounding over the solid clay-laden ground to the opposite end of the trellis that Ranpo gazed at him from. He pulled his head upward, relaxing his body against the thick wiry canvas that protruded unceremoniously from the ground and clawed it's way skyward, only to be dragged back down and secured to the very place it came from in a perfect arc by it's creators.
“It's in the same way that if you say that you're humble, you really aren't, yet if you say you aren't humble, every one tells you that you are.” Edgar sighed, connecting his head to his left shoulder to search for any relief his aching shoulders might be granted if completing the correct pattern of simplified actions. He felt Ranpo's stare on him, and turned his eyes to mirror the motion.
The two shadowed figures, dampening the moth covered street lights in random bursts of silhouetted silence, locked in a gaze of understanding. “Can I ask you something in exchange Ranpo-kun?” The taller shadow spoke. The warm, soft gaze of the street light and the piercing, all-knowing blue haze of the moon overhead radiated throughout the otherwise dusky garden hedges. Ink itself appeared to exist brighter than the scene before them. The thick, waning blood reflected and absorbed any of the elusive light it could grasp, transforming the light into any array of dancing, flickering shapes of obscure figures.
“Of course.”