Chapter Text
“So what’s your deal with soulmates?”
Ranpo stops talking for the first time since he woke up and it feels like he’s missed a step on the stairs. Fukuzawa tries to replay the conversation up to this point in his mind. He’s pretty sure Ranpo had just finished going on at great length about the similarities between feathers and scales, one of many topics he'd covered as they ate their lunch at a diner near the day's job.
He grasps for a connection but, as he’s quickly learning to do, gives up and answers honestly.
“I don’t have one.”
Again, silence. It feels a stranger to him after only a few days in Ranpo’s presence. Ranpo stares. Fukuzawa can’t quite read his expression. Surprised, searching, something else. Worried? He can’t possibly be worried.
“...Huh?” Ranpo eventually replies. And he does sound a little worried, the way his voice lifts too high on the tail end of the question.
“It’s not uncommon, especially for those in my line of work.” And it was mandatory in his former profession. Certainly not something worthy of concern.
Ranpo blinks. He braces his hands on the table. His chair drags noisily against the floor as he rocks up and forward to lean over and squint into Fukuzawa’s eyes. Fukuzawa reluctantly submits to his analysis. Ranpo’s eyebrows draw together in an expression Fukuzawa hasn’t seen yet. Perplexed. He moves back just enough to wave his hand in front of Fukuzawa’s face. Fukuzawa flashes him an equally perplexed look at the gesture. He stops.
“Huh,” he says, dropping back into his seat. He picks at his food and looks, for a rare change, deep in thought.
Eventually he takes a breath. And sighs, long and exasperated and more than Fukuzawa thinks is called for. But his shoulders relax on the rush of air in a way that makes Fukuzawa realize they’d been tense all day. Relieved? Though Fukuzawa can’t often follow Ranpo’s thoughts, this is the first time in their acquaintance that he’s been difficult to read. Well, that’s not exactly true - this is the first time Ranpo hasn’t provided a running commentary that explains why he’s acting the way he is.
“You’re so complicated.” Ranpo pouts, but the pout quickly gives way to a little smile. “But I guess I’ll put up with you.”
Growing used to Ranpo’s covert style of affection, Fukuzawa only murmurs a wry “Thank you,” and returns to his food.
“There was a girl in my middle school without a string,” Ranpo says thoughtfully around a dumpling. He swallows before he continues, though Fukuzawa doubts it has anything to do with his frown over Ranpo talking with his mouth full. “She cried and cried when she finally understood what that meant. When she got older she’d say she didn’t have one the way you did.” He twirls his chopsticks in thought, glancing at Fukuzawa sideways. “You actually wish you had a soulmate, right?”
Fukuzawa can’t hold his gaze. He drops his eyes to his hands, his focus drawn to the bare skin at the base of his left ring finger. Ranpo has been cracking his soul open since they met, shining a light into every worn old wound long used to darkness. A part of him longs to hide this one - has longed to hide each of them away again, to suppress them until he’s numb to their ache once more.
“Yes,” he says quietly, like a secret.
Soulmate. The word still tastes of envy and hunger. When he was young and foolish and believed in wishes, he’d wished for one with all his being. Someone who understood him. Someone who was his, and he theirs.
He had told himself he was just tired of being used. Of being a thing to everyone around him. And he was - if he felt like facing it, being raised in a facility that trained him to kill without emotion likely created the loneliness he carried with him. But leaving the government had done nothing to quell it, even if it had made his life better in other ways. It wasn’t until he met Ranpo that he’d… well, actually, the hunger is starting to fade, now that he thinks about it.
“Thought so,” Ranpo sings, and rattles his glass over to drink from the straw.
Fukuzawa watches his thumb rub against the inside of his left ring finger. “I gather you have a soulmate.”
“Mmhm.”
“Do you know who it is?”
“Yep,” he pops the P with the moisture on his lips.
Fukuzawa blinks. He hadn’t expected Ranpo to know, it was just the next thing people were expected to ask.
“I’ll support you whenever you choose to be with them,” he says, meaning every word.
Ranpo only glances at him for a split second but Fukuzawa feels like he’s fallen into some sort of trap. Then Ranpo puts on an air of indifference, flipping greedily through the dessert menu for whatever sweets he’ll beg for today.
“‘Kay.”