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Ranpo had only been in Fukuzawa’s care for a grand total of three weeks, and it took even less time for Yukichi to realize that it was better to bring him along on errands than it was to leave him at the apartment unattended.
Fukuzawa’s apartment was plenty small and unexciting long before he had taken in a charge; it wasn’t like he had ever been expecting a roommate, let alone becoming guardian to an orphaned teenaged boy (and technically, he still wasn’t. Not officially). But even for a young, single, working man with a steady, well-paying job in Yokohama, his living space was equal parts compact and incomplex. He hasn’t many personal effects to speak of, he owns almost nothing with any sentimental value, he dresses practically and consistently, and so long as there was space between his kitchen island and a futon for his GO board, he never bothered needing anything that hadn’t been strictly essential, as a rule.
Ranpo had even less when they first met; a duffle bag of somewhat-ratty clothes, a toothbrush, a notebook, a handful of crumpled job applications, and all of two-hundred yen stuffed inside his coat pocket. The first evening they spent together, he had been too worn out from the crashing adrenaline of a gun to his head to unpack any of it, flopping down onto Fukuzawa’s futon without asking and falling asleep in the same dirty uniform he’d been wearing since they first met the day before. He confided in Fukuzawa over breakfast the next morning - rather loudly, and readily, as he so happened to be - that he thought the apartment was actually rather spacious, and Fukuzawa came to the fast conclusion that he’d probably never know anything more luxurious as far as his own living went, even while his parents had been alive.
It worked out better, initially, than he would have suspected it might, packing two people into a one-room lodge on the first floor of a building occupied mostly by other single individuals building their careers out of the city. Ranpo is loud, and clumsy, and he spends almost every waking moment glued to Yukichi’s side with bug-eyes and bated breath, but he doesn’t need anymore than Fukuzawa does, - other than his affinity for sweets and attention - so it sorts out, in an odd sort of way, sharing a “house”. He buys a second futon for the far wall, and they never bother with the arrangements past unpacking the pillows.
(Never-mind the fact that this earns Fukuzawa his first and only noise complaint, when Ranpo insists on smacking the newly-unwrapped cushions against the neighbors wall to “fluff them up” that night before bed.)
But boredom is Ranpo’s real curse. For all that he struggles to get along with others, telling them everything that they don’t want to hear and nothing that they do, opening his big fat mouth to criticize strangers and beg for bagged snack at the grocers’, one of the very first things that Fukuzawa learned about the boy was how dreadful he can become when he hasn’t got anything to keep busy with.
To say that it’s easy to wrangle a kid genius into staying ‘entertained’ would be a lie-
“Ranpo, don’t touch that.”
“The sign says ‘try me’! It’s not like I don’t already know what it does!”
“Then you don’t need to try it.”
“But see, this one is missing a screw! So that wheel is gonna pop off as soon as I pull the-“
“All the more reason to leave it be. You know what I’ve said about touching things.”
“But-“
“Ranpo.”
-because while their newfound partnership - companionship? mentorship? - keeps them both plenty busy and TOGETHER most of the time now, - that’s yet another reality that Fukuzawa is still getting used to - Ranpo is far too smart to play with crossword puzzles or sudoku or detective’s novels or the faded old mahjong set in Fukuzawa’s pantry.
He only made the mistake of leaving Ranpo alone at the apartment once. All he had to do was pick up a check; a payment he was due for a job a few months earlier from a woman who’d been down on her luck. He had pulled out the mahjong set, the sheet of instructions, and promised to be back by the hour. ‘It’s almost dark. Don’t go out. Keep the door locked.’ He couldn’t have been clearer. Ranpo had even bothered to look up from the middle of shuffling through the game tiles and sorting them by pairs to agree.
Fukuzawa came back to a dark, empty apartment, a mess of tiles scattered around the length of the kitchen leading to an overturned board, a cup of juice spilled over the front mat, and an open back window that had clearly been dislodged from the hinge.
Despite every appearance arguing otherwise, and the pounding in his skull that years behind the blade had always screamed ‘DANGER’, Ranpo had not been kidnapped. He had conquered a game of one-man mahjong, perfected the board, then dropped his cup in triumph, and taken the window out to pursue a stray dog wandering by the building so as to keep the door locked; ‘like he’d been asked to’. He had actually been quite proud of himself, at the idea that he had managed to fit through the window in the first place, and Fukuzawa was too busy contending with a very rare panic in his gut to argue that squeezing underneath and breaking the hinge doesn’t really count as ‘fitting’.
So Yukichi takes him along to the market now, no matter how short a trip.
“Selling broken toys is bad for business,” Ranpo grumbles, one pointer finger still horribly too close to the tiny wind-up train on the shelf of imported tchotchkes stacked together by the checkout counter. “I bet they didn’t even know it’s busted!”
“I’m sure they know now,” Fukuzawa replies, trying with all his might to keep his voice level when he glances at the young women counting his money behind the counter. She doesn’t look at Ranpo, but she seems a little nervous, as he goes about scrutinizing the kiddie toy display with hands that Fukuzawa knows are probably still plenty sticky from the icing on the sweet roll he’d gotten for breakfast.
The attendant sorts the banknotes into her register drawer. “I’ll be sure to take it off the shelf,” she says, offering an entirely uncertain smile, bless her.
“I can fix it-“ Ranpo insists.
“Ranpo.” Yukichi throws the glance his way.
“But I want to test my hypothesis first.”
Sucking a breath through his nose, Fukuzawa turns to face his charge completely. Eyes neutral, shoulders squared, he presses his lips together and picks his chin up higher. “Ranpo. Please.”
Fukuzawa has gotten very good, very quickly, at not raising his voice ever since he snapped when he’d finally caught up to Ranpo in the warehouse that night. Ranpo is a genius, that much is true, and it makes his circumstances special, that is undeniable. But he is still a boy. A child. And while Fukuzawa isn’t exactly an expert with children, he knows that children are always learning, genius or otherwise, to say nothing of the fact that Ranpo is particularly naive to everything but the inconspicuous. Yelling at him isn’t effective, nor is it fair, because Ranpo is TRYING, Fukuzawa knows that he’s trying. He means well, even when he gets distracted by toys and candies and cakes and candid comments meant to make a point that maybe doesn’t NEED to be made.
Instead, Yukichi settles for a look. A ‘I said no and I mean it’ look. A ‘knock it off or I’m putting the chips back’ look. A ‘now isn’t the time for this’ look. When Ranpo gets carried away, when he simply can’t help himself, and Fukuzawa needs to keep him in line. So far, it’s been working; Ranpo isn’t any more keen on getting in trouble than he is stupidity; he basks in the glow of a compliment and blushes a bright beet red whenever he realizes he’s being admonished, somewhere in between wanting the attention and trying so very hard to leave a good impression, whether than effort is entirely conscious or not.
(Not that Fukuzawa is the pitying type, but it makes him wonder how severe his past attempts to work with ‘adults’ actually were.)
Finally, thankfully, Ranpo drops his hand with a groan and something mumbled under his breath that Fukuzawa chooses not to hear, for both their sakes. The attendant has moved on to counting out his change and Ranpo’s gaze drifts almost instantly past Fukuzawa to watch her, then, if only to have something to do. The apparently broken wind-up train remains undisturbed on the checkout shelf.
Fukuzawa can’t help but think that this was never the sort of ‘life’ he imagined himself ‘protecting’ as a bodyguard.
“Four-twenty-nine back for you,” the attendant smiles, holding out coins and notes for him to take. “Would you like a bag, too?”
“Please,” Yukichi nods, fisting the change, and in his never ending battle to occupy the boy, he calls “Ranpo-“
But Ranpo is a full step ahead of him this time, reaching over the counter to grab a plastic bag from beside the register before the clerk ever has the chance to do her job. He shakes it open with more force than necessary, grinning at the flourish. They don’t have all that much in the way of groceries today, - fresh fruit, a handful of yoghurt cups, rice, strawberries, and a chocolate bar that Fukuzawa pointedly pretended he hadn’t seen Ranpo slip in with everything else - but he flattens out the bottom of the bag with his free hand as though he’s making extra room anyway.
“You know, your apple bin is looking a little bleak, too,” Ranpo informs the attendant at the same time that he tosses the yoghurts and rice into the bag. “You’re low, and what’s left now is mostly going to go bad by Monday. At least half of them were bruised.”
The attendant blinks.
Fukuzawa raises a brow.
“The apples I picked through will only last until Wednesday,” he goes on, stacking the container of strawberries carefully above the yoghurt. “Yoshimoto-sensei is using them to make me a pie because I found her cat for her. He was hiding in the gutter for our apartment building. Did you know a full-grown tabby can squeeze in a gutter pipe?” The assorted fruits make it next into the bag, and Ranpo slides them in haphazardly with the crook of his elbow against the counter. “But if anyone else goes shopping for apples today, it’s not gonna do them any good.”
The attendant blinks again, gaze flickering to Fukuzawa as if asking for help.
Ranpo is oblivious, but he clearly isn’t finished, either, nor has he circled back to the busted toy he so desperately wants to break, so Fukuzawa doesn’t say anything.
Finally, he pockets the lonely chocolate bar left on the checkout and grips both handles of the shopping bag closed. “I bet if you do a sale today on last week’s apples, you’ll be able to get rid of them. The bakers will use them. The café down the street has been out of strudel for a week,” his voice is laced with a hint of annoyance. “Then you can put out the fresh stuff. It’s Saturday, soooo… the truck will come at three. That gives you four hours still to clear out.”
Ranpo smiles, evidently very proud of himself as he hoists the groceries up to his shoulder. “Good luck!”
And then Ranpo makes for the door, without waiting for Fukuzawa to take his usual lead; trusting him to follow.
The attendant gawks after them both, Ranpo’s long-legged strides and Fukuzawa’s learned neutrality, and the fact that yes, the apples probably are a week old by now, and yes, the bin has been low since yesterday, and yes, the shipment from the farmland two towns over does arrive at three on Saturdays, and no, Ranpo doesn’t really have a reason to know any of that, but he knows it all nonetheless; because the grocery store is small, and Fukuzawa has come to the market strip by himself for as long as he’s been living full-time in Yokohama, and the young boy trailing behind him is still quite new to everyTHING just as much and he is new to everyONE.
“Have a good day,” Fukuzawa offers her by way of an explanation (or lack thereof), turning on his heel at the same time as the bell above the front door chimes to tell him that Ranpo is accidentally building a distance that Yukichi needs to close. “We’ll be back next week.”
He takes big steps towards the exit, past the row of checkout tills lining the wall in and out, before the attendant seemingly gets her wits about her. “R-Right! H-Have a great day!” she calls at his back. “T-Thank you!”
A wave of pride swells inside of Fukuzawa’s chest, pleasant and, as of late, increasingly familiar.
This is what it’s like so far, shopping with Ranpo.
Sometimes, it takes hours to run errands, and sometimes, it takes minutes. Sometimes, Ranpo wanders off and Fukuzawa is left scrambling, embarrassingly, trying to find him while worst-case-scenarios that he’ll never admit about kidnapped boys and guns to heads trigger a unique tunnel vision that he hasn’t last succumbed to since he was a child. Sometimes, Ranpo gets so caught up with people watching that it keeps him busy enough for Fukuzawa to get the shopping done without incident, and he’s already finished by the time Ranpo decides he’s ready to start dragging his feet to complain.
And sometimes, it’s today, when they haven’t had a job in a few days, and Ranpo is slow to wake up, so Fukuzawa lets him pick out a pastry on the way to the market just to get him out of bed a little faster. It’s a short run for the necessities, but the neighbor promised Ranpo a pie that he hasn’t stopped talking about, and half the market is closed on Sundays, so Fukuzawa figures they might as well make it productive; the grocer first, the pharmacy, the hardware store (because the hinge on the window is still broken, and the landlord certainly isn’t going to fix it). Fukuzawa carries the shopping list, because Ranpo misplaced it last weekend, and used the absence of proof to bargain for potato chips, even though Fukuzawa KNEW he hadn’t ever written that down.
It’s becoming a routine, of sorts, and Fukuzawa finds himself floating calmly through the mundanity of it.
The door-bell jingles for a second time when he follows Ranpo outside. The cool morning breeze brushes his face, leaves crunching underneath his feet, the loose scarf around his neck caught up in the lip of his overcoat. A thin stream of clouds block the sun from beating directly over his head. The market is still quiet, shoppers scattered about the road; the busyness that Fukuzawa has come to expect from a Saturday morning is in rare absence. An elderly couple links arms in front of the florist. The librarian sweeps the mat in front of a used bookshop. A young boy, five or six, maybe, tugs on his mother’s sleeve in front of the bakery, begging for a treat in the window, rocking back and forth on his heels.
Ranpo stands almost identically, rocking on his feet and all, in front of a peeling green bench across from the grocery store window, fiddling with the shopping bag.
Fukuzawa thinks that he appears even less patient than the other boy does.
(He also thinks, there’s something endearing about that.)
“We should really get moving, Fukuzawa-san,” Ranpo says, shifting the bag on his shoulder and looking thoroughly uninterested. He drops the bag onto the bench at his knees, rolling his neck, scratching the back of his head. “It’s gonna rain soon. I don’t really wanna get soaked.”
Yukichi grimaces, glancing back up at the sky. Sure, it’s cloudy, but it’s light, thick patches of bright blue in between. The sun is still out. “Rain?” he parrots, almost dumbly.
Ranpo buries his now free hand in his pocket, fishing out his candy prize not a moment later. “Yeah, rain. There wasn’t any wind when we went into the store,” he shrugs, falling back gracelessly onto the bench. Fukuzawa doesn’t miss the way he jolts when he collides, harsher than he may have meant to, with the probably-cold metal. “And the clouds are stacked. You know, like cumulus? Didn’t you notice?”
No, he didn’t. But he’s been having an easier time of keeping up with Ranpo the more time he’s spent with him, so maybe he should have, for observant as he already is. “I didn’t,” he says simply.
Ranpo shrugs again, fiddling with the chocolate package. “Well, I’m the brains, and you’re the muscle, so I guess that’s why you need me around,” he laughs, tugging at the corner of the wrapper that seems to be giving him some trouble. “You’d be lost without me! I bet you didn’t even notice the apples!”
There’s something about that remark that Fukuzawa doesn’t like. ‘Lost’ is a strong word, and yet he doesn’t find that Ranpo’s penchant for cockiness bothers him anymore. No, there’s something about the idea that Fukuzawa might be keeping him around because he ‘needs’ him, that makes him uncharacteristically uncomfortable. Maybe because that isn’t true. Maybe it’s because Ranpo hadn’t ever said anything quite like that before right now.
Yukichi thinks it sounds… wrong.
“No, I didn’t,” he says again, instead.
Fukuzawa tilts his head, glancing up at the sky one more time. He’s suddenly very aware of the wind that hadn’t been there before, and the clouds, clear as they may be, layered over one another like a warning above his shoulders.
“Ah well,” Ranpo glares at his still-confined candy bar and sticks out his tongue, fingers slipping against the wrapper. The adhesive must be strong. “It’s already noon, it’ll probably rain at one so we should probably hurry up.” He leans back against the bench, digging a fingernail into the wrapper to make a tear; the exact opposite of ‘hurrying up’. “Unless you’re gonna give me your coat if it starts pouring on us.”
Fukuzawa studies him for a moment, their morning suddenly rolling around in his head. ‘I guess that’s why you need me around’ plants itself, then, firmly into his skull. Like an itch he isn’t able to scratch. Ranpo is fully involved in his chocolate, now, finally managing to rip the top open and break off the first piece through the jagged hole of the shiny plastic prison. It’s not as if his nonchalance is anything new; as far as Fukuzawa is concerned, this is how Ranpo has always been. And yet he feels as though Ranpo should be bothered, by how easily he broaches the topic of being ‘needed’ like that. Like he’s fulfilling a use that Fukuzawa needs tended to. Like he’s isn’t living in Fukuzawa’s apartment and buying his groceries together.
Fukuzawa is bothered. Fukuzawa remembers being a child Ranpo’s age and never having yet worked for money a day in his life. He already had it. He didn’t need it. Fukuzawa spent his free time as a fourteen-year-old at the dojo, sparring with Gen’ichirō under a warm summer sun and sipping tea on wobbly tree branches in between, chatting idly about the future until the sun set and his mother expected him home. He was driven, he was disciplined, and he was stable. He had a home to go back to, a place that he knew he belonged. Fukuzawa grew up having a choice. He is not so naive to believe that every child grows up like that, but Ranpo…
Ranpo tells low-wage shop clerks that their toys are broken and their food is going bad even though he knows that the checkout attendant of all people isn’t going to be responsible for any of that; at best, she’ll let her manager know. Ranpo floats around flaunting his genius, smiling and bragging because he means it, because he’s trying to be helpful. Ranpo is fourteen-years-old and he’s protecting the world’s idiots, because he somehow manages to stay genuine, even when the world kills geniality quicker than it may first find a foothold.
Ranpo is so terribly carefree, so lofty, for all of his moving around from place to place, kicked out of one job, one school, then struggling to find the next. He knows better than anyone how impermanent life can be. Yet Ranpo gets bored in Fukuzawa’s apartment and plays with his mahjong and drinks his juice and breaks his window, all the while well-intentioned, but he shrinks under a scolding like a troubled toddler eager to please. And how, Fukuzawa wonders, does any of that really make him feel, that the fact that he gets away with nearly everything in spite of how easily Fukuzawa could kick him out at any time, doesn’t seem to clue him in to the idea that it’s so much more than a ‘need’ to have him around?
Maybe that’s the point. Does Ranpo feel as though he has a choice? Or is it the gradually evident reality that the only other ‘genuine’ Ranpo ever had was his parents’ protection?
Fukuzawa takes a deep breath, dips his chin, smoothes out his robes, and settles in the empty space next to Ranpo on the bench. The bench is somehow harder on his legs than he’d anticipated. Pinpricks of peeling green paint poke through the light fabric of his trousers into his legs, in that sort of ‘just there’ discomfort that’s more irritating than it is hurtful. He doesn’t really mind it either way.
“If we get rained on, you may have my coat,” he replies, shutting down the silence lapsing between them.
“Rw-eewy?” Ranpo asks, clearly a little bewildered, muffled by a mouthful of rapidly melting candy, too long spent in his pocket, fisted between his palms, that stains the corners of his lips. A spot of chocolate falls onto the neck of his cape, that probably won’t come out in the wash. “Don’t’chu ‘eed it?”
“It wouldn’t do to have you getting sick,” Fukuzawa slips a hand into one coat pocket, procuring a napkin that he’s had a recent habit of keeping on hand. “I’ll be lost without your help, won’t I?” Fukuzawa raises a brow, pauses, considers the napkin under his fingers. And then he smiles, just a little bit. Just enough that he’s sure Ranpo will notice. “And I want to keep my partner around. He’s important to me, after all.”
And, well, it just sort of slips out. Not that Yukichi tries to stop it.
(That’s what does it.)
Ranpo snaps his head up, opening his eyes wide. Face slack, arms falling into his lap, he levels Fukuzawa with a look that would have had him believing that he’s slapped him again, if he didn’t know any better. Dumbfounded, maybe. Disbelieving, most definitely.
Another moment of absolutely nothing but the breeze picking up and the inaudible chatter of the other shoppers passes. Fukuzawa holds the napkin out to Ranpo, who can only seem to swallow his mouthful and keeps staring. He does not take the napkin despite the chocolate that’s now dripping down to his chin. Fukuzawa sighs, reaching forward, and catches the chocolate in the napkin before it can fall onto his clothes and make more of a mess. Then, gently, carefully, he wipes it off of Ranpo’s cheek with the clean side, before dabbing up what he can of the stain settling on his cape. Ranpo cooperates, so unlike himself, gaze flickering to the other half of the candy still clutched between his hands, pressing his lips together.
Ranpo is speechless.
Suddenly, Yukichi worries that he’s gone too far. Living together or not, it’s only been a few weeks.
Fukuzawa folds the napkin in two, perhaps in a bit of a rush. “Besides, I don’t want you to miss your pie,” he goes on, hoping to call Ranpo back into the present. Hell, if he broke the boy more than he’s already scrambling to figure himself out, it’ll be on his hands. He tucks the half-used napkin into his sleeve; Ranpo will need it again any minute now. “I know you’ve been looking forward to it.”
“Do you mean that?” Ranpo asks him, quietly, seriously.
(Hopefully.)
Fukuzawa tilts his head. A question: mean what?
(Yes. All of it.)
“That I’m imp-! Buh-! That I can use your coat!” Ranpo blubbers over himself, red-faced and fiddling with the candy packaging, staring at his hands, Yukichi’s hands, their feet on the ground, the grocery bag on the bench; everywhere and everything but Fukuzawa’s face. “Because it’s going to pour!” He adds, not quite shouting, though Fukuzawa suspects he might start shouting if either one of them says the wrong thing. “The clouds behind the store are black!”
“Of course,” Fukuzawa nods, folding his hands in his lap. “I don’t mind.”
Ranpo glances back up to his face, brow furrowed, thinking and observing as he always seems to be. Fukuzawa lets him, schooling his expression into something that he hopes doesn’t betray the weight of the something unfamiliar (anxiety, he’ll realize at a later time) in his stomach. Whatever he’s looking for, whatever he finds, works some sort of miracle, though, because Ranpo brightens all at once, the blush fading from his nose and a smug little grin taking up the space across his cheeks where it belongs.
“Well then!” Ranpo smiles impossibly bigger, all teeth and pride. “You better not catch a cold either, ‘cause then I’LL have to do everything by myself! I mean, I know I’m the great detective around here, but every great detective needs a great assistant!” He wipes at the residue of chocolate clinging to the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Plus, you’re my bodyguard! So you have to be around to protect me! I am still just a kid, you know!”
Fukuzawa never wanted a partner. He never wanted a boss, or coworkers, or subordinates. He never wanted an organization to report to, or an office to work for. He didn’t want to have to take care of somebody else. Instead he had clients and contracts and the barrier of formality. He didn’t want to have to get close to somebody, only to watch them slip through his fingers when fate and the inevitability of human error took them away and left him with the guilt of the responsibility. He’s been working alone for what feels like a very long, long time, and he liked it that way. It was safer that way, more reliable that way. It was simple. He was simple. Life was simple, and it was quiet, uneventful, but it wasn’t so bad. It was consistent. Stable.
Ranpo is loud and he’s clumsy and he’s clingy. He bothers the neighbors and he breaks things, sometimes, and he wanders off and gets lost and Fukuzawa panics, which is something that Fukuzawa hasn’t had to contend with since he was himself, just a boy. To say nothing of the fact that taking in a child so young puts the utmost of dangerously precarious responsibilities, that he had spent nearly a decade trying to avoid, squarely on his shoulders all over again. If anything ever happens to Ranpo now, Fukuzawa will never be able to live with himself; not when Ranpo looks at him like ‘that’, like he trusts him, so completely, to just BE THERE. To be HERE, and STAY here.
But Ranpo fits nicely in his apartment. The noise fills the space. The mess feels more like a home. That sense of companionship that he hasn’t had since finding a friend in Gen’ichirō… it makes him feel… whole.
(And so maybe, just maybe, he’s become fond of having Ranpo around.)
“Of course,” Fukuzawa leans, too, against the back of the bench, corners of his mouth twitching almost imperceptibly. He’s sure Ranpo catches it this time, too. “I’ll try my best.”