#day09

Everything was as always, Kunikida was bustling about, busy as ever. Atsushi was giving his best to type down his report, his fingers still not used to the keyboard. Tanizaki and Kyōka had headed out for a case, Yosano was locked away in her office and Dazai was lounging on the couch, humming some song you had a feeling you didn’t want to try to understand the lyrics to.

While you own fingers flew over the keyboard, you felt someone approach you from behind you, their shadow blocking the warm sun on your back, and a moment later arms wrapped around your shoulders, and a head dropped against your nape.

“What are you doing,” you sighed, looking up from your screen, trying to get a glimpse of the soft black hair that brushed against your cheek.

“Boooored,” Ranpo’s whiny voice sounded against your skin, his warm breath sending a shiver down your spine as he exhaled against your neck. “There’s nothing happening.”

“You’ve solved two cases in the past-” you glanced at the clock on your screen, “three and a half hours. I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

“I didn’t even leave the office,” Ranpo whined. “My brilliance is torturous. I cannot ever be satisfied.”

“Yes, torturous indeed,” you mumbled to yourself as Ranpo’s arms tightened around your body.

It didn’t bother you, that he was so physically affectionate, never had. He generally didn’t mind clinging onto people, but since you had joined the agency, you had become his new favourite person, it seemed.

In the first week alone, it had gone so far that Kunikida had asked when you would marry. In the years that had passed since then, it had become an usual occurrence that Ranpo would cling to you, or even pull you to sit in his lap when you were taking a break in the café below the office. And that meant a lot, considering it made it harder for him to get cake into his mouth. It had even become normal for him to share his sweets with you, which had surprised Fukuzawa enough the first time he had seen it, to choke on nothing.

Everyone else assumed, that that was it, that Ranpo simply liked having you around him, and you, with an angel’s patience took his platonic affection without ever getting angry at him for clearly overstepping any personal boundary there had ever been.

What the others didn’t know, was that it was anything but platonic. You weren’t sure when exactly it had started, him pulling you tighter against himself, your hands sneaking around his neck or into his hair, his lips no longer just breathing against the shell of your ear but kissing your nape or the junction of your shoulder. But it had happened, and now it was impossible to imagine falling asleep without him hugging you against him, clinging to you like a little koala.  

It was not necessarily a secret you had kept from the rest of the agency, and you were quite certain both Fukuzawa and Dazai had long caught onto your relationship with the master detective, but it also was not something you discussed with anyone. It was nobody’s business, and since Ranpo had been like this with you since the start, nobody paid it much mind.

Well, you paid it much mind, especially, when Ranpo kissing along your nape distracted you from your work.

“Ranpo…”

He hummed, blowing warm air against your skin, before pressing another kiss against your spine.

“You’re distracting me,” you told him, earning a kiss behind the ear this time. “I mean it, can you wait with this until I’m done here?”

“Don’t do that,” he whispered against your ear, his voice sounding almost wet as if he were about to cry.

“But-”

“Don’t send me away.”

Clicking your tongue, you pulled away from him enough, to look at his face. Indeed, his eyes were squeezed together like always, but a heartbreaking expression of sorrow was written all over his face. Heartbreaking, truly. And fake.

You gave him a stern look. “We have 30min until lunchbreak. You can wait that long.”

His devastated expression melted into the mischievous one you knew had been hidden underneath.

“But I’m bored! What will you have me do in those thirty minutes, I wonder?”

“Either you go and bother Dazai, or you find your self-restraint and behave,” you told him bluntly, a bluntness that was as fake as his sorrowful expression a few seconds ago. You could never be too strict with him, but you really wanted to finish the report before lunchbreak, mostly so you could spend it relaxing with him.

“Oh, how cruel you are,” he sighed dramatically, letting go of where he had still been clinging to your neck and walked over to his desk.

For a moment you really believed he was about to bother Dazai instead of you, or return to his own desk, when he grabbed his chair and pulled it next to you. As soon as he had sat down, he leant over, resting his forehead against your shoulder.

“You always need body contact, hm,” you asked, reaching up and running your hand through his hair before returning to typing out your report. “You’re so needy.”

Ranpo only hummed. You knew he needed this, the constant contact, the small touches, an ever-present reassurance that you wouldn’t leave him, that he wasn’t alone. The first time he had explained it to you, his fear that was buried so deep under his confidence that it never came to light unless he let it, the first time he had laid his soul bare for you to see, you had cried. You hadn’t minded his affection before, and ever since then, when you spent too much time in the same room with him without him touching you in some way or form, you got anxious yourself. So, feeling his heavy head rest against your shoulder now was as reassuring to you as it was to him.

Absentmindedly, eyes still fixed on the screen as your fingers continued typed, you turned your head and pressed a lingering kiss against Ranpo’s hair, as if trying to make up for making him wait. His hair smelled of chocolate and a hint of vanilla, and the strands were soft against your skin, making your smile.

“Did you just kiss Ranpo-san’s head?!” The screech was uttered by none other than that Atsushi.

Casually you looked up from your screen, over to the white-haired boy, who had jumped up, eyes as big as saucers and jaw hanging to the floor.

Shrugging with the one shoulder Ranpo had not occupied, you asked: “Do you also need a head-kiss?”

Ranpo against you shoulder protested at your offer: “Kisses are reserved for me!” while Dazai delightedly cackled from the couch: “You’re one of the quick one’s, hm, Atsushi-kun!”