Work Text:
Until his first few months at the Armed Detective Agency, Dazai found that he truly never knew stress. It hit him in the face like a truck.
Even though, objectively, his line of work—and tasks associated—had been much more stress-inducing and difficult during his days with the Port Mafia.
But really, subjectively, this was 10 times worse than the several times he had watched Yokohama plunge into darkness, death, and battle during his teenage years.
During the two years he’d been in hiding, his sense for what others were thinking or feeling started to dull and dwindle. Not completely, but he’d lacked enough human connection over those years that it was causing many minor inconveniences.
He didn’t know how much his new boss trusted him; therefore, he had no clue how much he could get away with. He probably did more work during those months than he did during the rest of his time in the agency leading up to his future imprisonment.
He also couldn’t gauge how much his coworkers had suspected about his past. Thankfully, he knew through the ongoing betting pool that they didn't know about his former occupation—he worries that he’d be thrown out if they knew. Or possibly even worse.
As much as he wanted to assure himself that nobody knew, there was one person who would be able to figure it out.
Ranpo Edogawa.
Dazai had started to become accustomed to everyone else in the agency, not fearing that they’d find out about his past. Ranpo, however? He avoided the man like the plague.
The rest of his coworkers, for the most part, weren’t a big problem.
He constantly pestered Kunikida, convinced him to buy him sweets and coffee in Cafe Uzumaki, and started suspecting that Kunikida might have taken an interest in him. Maybe just a little. Unfortunately, it wasn’t reciprocal.
As much as Dazai loved the idea of getting to domestically annoy Kunikida, he can’t bring himself to put that weight on Kunikida’s shoulders.
He’d occasionally—willingly—go on shopping trips with Yosano, and had started to get used to her presence. In terms of who's most likely to figure out his former occupation, she was the runner up after Ranpo. He felt a sense of strange familiarity with her, and he was sure that she may have felt the same.
He’d even occasionally watch movies or TV shows with Katai. Sometimes Kunikida would join in when his schedule was free.
Hell, he’d even occasionally sit with Fukuzawa in the man’s office, drink tea, and have a quick chat.
But Ranpo? Dazai hadn’t even attempted to get close with the man. Whenever he had to be in the man’s vicinity he felt his stomach drop, he felt his palms get sweaty, he felt his brain turn to mush. He would never admit to any of that though.
And Ranpo started catching on to this behavior.
It started as simply noticing that Dazai interacted with everyone else but him. He saw how Dazai would change routes to his desk, to the cafe, or even to the exit in order to put as much space between them as possible.
He saw it in how despite giving everyone else eye contact, Dazai couldn’t seem to look Ranpo in the eyes without looking like a rose had swallowed his head whole and left her red pigment on his cheeks and its thorns in his throat.
Unfortunately for Dazai, Ranpo was in charge of assigning cases when Fukuzawa was on leave for business, as Kunikida, although being Fukuzawa’s mentee, was still too new to detective work and still too reluctant to rely on others to be any good at delegating tasks just yet.
Which meant that he was able to get everyone else except him and Dazai out of the office. It felt much like a confrontation. And Dazai wasn’t stupid.
If he left the office, it would place far more suspicion on him, even if his impromptu exits had started popping up in the past few weeks, now comfortable enough with his job to do so.
Instead of leaving, he sat down on the couch, put some headphones on, and pretended to be zoning out and relaxing. This plan worked for about 30 minutes, until he felt a new presence emerge next to him.
A bit more than next to him—Ranpo had squeezed into the space in between Dazai’s thigh and the arm of the couch, causing Ranpo’s thigh to slightly overlap with Dazai’s. They both pretended not to notice.
“You’ve been avoiding me, haven’t you?”
“I’ve been avoiding everyone, actually, not just—”
Ranpo pressed his hand onto Dazai’s thigh, putting down half his body weight as he readjusted his posture.
Dazai felt his stomach drop. He couldn’t tell if it was from the confrontation or from that.
Maybe all along he’d been avoiding Ranpo because of what could be a workplace crush, and not because he was scared of the man finding out. He couldn’t tell which option he preferred.
“Nope, not buyin’ it.”
Ranpo leaned in a smidge closer.
“In fact, I have a huuuugeee suspicion!”
Dazai knew he was in for. He stared Ranpo straight in the eyes, for what seemed to be the first time ever. He looked like a deer in headlights, and Ranpo just looked back at him with his usual shit-eating grin.
Dazai couldn’t do this, he couldn’t even begin to plan on how to keep Ranpo quiet.
Ranpo, although sometimes unwilling to cooperate with his own organization, was loyal to the Armed Detective Agency. It was his home, its workers were his family, and it made him feel normal. If something, or someone, threatened that, he wouldn’t hesitate to make it known and let action be taken.
Does he bribe him? Threaten him? Gaslight him—no, gaslighting was off the table. Ranpo would never fall for that. And if he threatened the man, it would only confirm Ranpo’s conclusion.
He couldn’t even stop his heartrate from picking up, he felt drops of sweat starting to race down his face like the first few sprinkles of a monsoon.
“Do you accept bribes?”
“Bribes for what? Keeping it a secret? Hmmm…”
The detective gave it a thought.
“Well, I hadn’t really considered telling the agency…”
Ranpo’s voice quieted as he swung one of his legs over Dazai’s thighs and wrapped his arms loosely around his neck.
“If you kiss me, I won’t tell the Agency about your little crush on me!”
Huh…
That’s what Ranpo had taken from Dazai’s behavior during the past 3 months?
Dazai reached up to grab Ranpo’s jaw, moving his face away from his own.
“Are you crazy? I don’t have a crush on you! I’ve barely even talked to you or known you since I joined, why would I have developed feelings for you?”
Even as he tried to force out a sigh of relief, the sweat dripping down his face failed to cease. Which was weird, because his number one fear had just been disproven.
Ranpo moved his head back, standing up and walking over to his desk.
Grabbing a sucker from a tin on his desk and popping it into his mouth, he turned and faced Dazai as he jumped to sit on the hunk of wood and metal.
“Fine, I was just joking about you having to kiss me. But it's not like the rest of the agency doesn't already know! So come on and just fess up already!” Ranpo said, but they both knew that both of those claims were lies.
And Dazai’s heart was still pounding in his chest.
…
“..Fine, you can kiss me."
“No, no, if you want to share a kiss then you’ll have to come over here and give me one yourself. I won’t be against it if you decide not to and we just forget about this whole thing.”
Dazai groaned. Not that he had a crush on Ranpo, but would it really be so bad to kiss the man? He was just curious.
“Well, I’m not getting up from this couch, so unfor–ahem—fortunately, it looks like we'll just have to forget about this, or—” He stopped speaking before he got himself even more flustered, quick hearted, and sweaty.
“Or?”
“Or… ah just forget it.”
“No, no, you were gonna say something. Go ahead, I won’t judge.”
Dazai knew he’d lost. But god, he really wouldn’t mind Ranpo’s lips against his. He sighed in defeat.
“Orrr, we could meet 50/50? You come back over here, and I give you a kiss?”
“Hmm, I'll need to think about it.”
Dazai looked back up at Ranpo, not realizing that he’d averted his gaze in the first place. Ranpo’s partial-attempt-at-concealing-a-grin just made everything even worse.
“Please?” He’d spoken in the softest tone since he’d joined.
Ranpo pretended to think about an answer long enough to make Dazai even more flustered—if that was even possible—looking down at the floor and curling his index finger up to his lip.
He looked back up at Dazai. He shrugged.
If Ranpo was actually going to kiss him back, then surely he’d take the sucker out of his mouth first so as to not have either of them choke to death on it mid-kiss?
“Sure thing—” He said as he damn near cut himself off by bolting towards Dazai, returning to his former position of straddling his lap. He put his arms back around him, a bit less loosely than last time, and Dazai was all but shell shocked, slowly mimicking the hold Ranpo had on him with his own arms.
He hesitated for a bit too long.
“If you didn’t want to kiss me you could’ve just said so—AEGHK!”
Dazai’d flung himself towards Ranpo, toppling both of them to the floor, and, very gently with no rhythm, pressed his lips against Ranpo’s cheek. It almost didn’t even qualify as a peck.
Ranpo took a deep, disappointed breath.
“You don’t know how to kiss someone.” He spoke it as fact, because, quite frankly, it was.
Even Dazai couldn’t stop his heart from skipping a few beats. He couldn’t think of an excuse.
Ranpo removed the sucker from his mouth, took his free hand behind Dazai’s head, and pushed the poor guy’s head towards his own.
He guided the new detective as their lips pressed against each other, showing Dazai how to get into the rhythm by providing the rhythm itself.
He bit at his coworker’s lip, not enough to draw blood, but enough for Dazai's mouth to open up enough to taste the artificial blue raspberry flavoring as saliva was shared between them, causing Dazai to let out a concealed, low squeak.
Dazai lowered the rest of his body to the same level as their heads, straddling his senior’s waist as their chests became flush against one another.
Ranpo moved his hand from the back of Dazai’s head to the man’s shoulder, flipping him over and switching their positions, Ranpo now being above Dazai.
Not long after, Ranpo broke away from the kiss. Dazai let out a small whine.
Ranpo would’ve made a comment on how needy he was, had he not known that a couple of the other detectives were finsihed with their cade and just about to enter the lower floor of the building, and would be back up here within the next minute.
Dazai’s mouth is still open, aghast. He looked as though he’d ascended to heaven for that whole minute and never wanted to come back down to Earth.
“Our coworkers are back—” Ranpo took the sucker that was still in his hand and slipped it into Dazai’s mouth. “—You should get up off the floor before they realize what happened, yeah?” Dazai gave him an incredulous look.
As quickly as possible, Dazai got back up onto the couch, propping his legs up onto the arm of the couch. He took the stick of the sucker, swirling it around and sucking the flavor out of it as if nothing was off about the situation.
Ranpo turned to move back to his desk.
“Oh, right, one more thing before they come up the stairs.”
Dazai perked up, raising an eyebrow.
“You used to be a Port Mafia executive, right?"