Sugar, Spice And Murder

3

Poe sat at his desk, reading letters from the few people he'd met in his life he'd consider his friends. Lewis's letter was half nonsense and riddles, the other half inquires of his well-being and how the project was doing, his brother doing his best to annotate what he can from the first half. James detailed a writer's convention he'd gone to over the weekend.

Poe settled with a pen and two sheets of paper to begin writing back. He'd finished writing the letter to Lewis, answering questions and just generally updating him on life, and was beginning a letter to James, reprimanding him for childish comments about some of his competitors mostly, when his phone rang. His first instinct was to ignore it. It was late at night and he hated phone calls to begin with. However, when he picked up the phone to decline, caller ID showed it was Ranpo. His brows furrowed in confusion. Ranpo never called, instead popping up wherever he was to talk to him or shooting him a quick text, but the latter happened rarely. Never did he call, well aware of Poe's distaste for phone etiquette.

So it must be an emergency.

He accepted the call and brought it up to his ear.

"Ranpo? Is there a problem?"

"Shit...Poe?" There was something off to his voice. If Poe wasn't mistaken, it sounded almost like fear. He sat ramrod straight in his chair.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm sorry, I meant to call...the president." There was a pause to Ranpo's words, as if he'd gone instinctively to a different word than what he usually called Fukuzawa to Poe.

"I don't mind. What happened?"

"...It's stupid," Ranpo said.

"I won't judge you, you never do me."

Ranpo was silent on the other end.

"'m scared of the dark. The power went out in the dorms."

"Okay," Poe said simply, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. "Can I help in some way?"

"Just stay on the phone? If that's okay? They'll get the power back on soon, I just don't want to feel alone."

"I can do that."

Poe looked at his letters as he waited for any cue from Ranpo. There appeared to be none, leaving this to be one of the very rare times Poe had to instigate a conversation.

"I got a couple letters in the mail today," Poe started. "A couple friends I have back in the states. One of them asked if I met anyone here. I told him about meeting you again."

"Oh?" Ranpo said, curious. "What did you say?"

"Told him about working with you, how fun it is. It's an eye opening experience seeing your brain work first hand."

"Really?" Ranpo said, and if Poe was more confident in being able to read him, he'd say the detective sounded a bit flustered. "Most people would say I'm annoying to work with, not that I'm fun."

"You're eccentric, sure, but I think that only makes you better at what you do. When you're confined to one way of thinking, unable to comb through all the possibilities you do in your head incredibly fast, you become blind to the other possibilities. Take my challenge back when I was in the guild. Despite having an unreliable point of view, you not only recognized that the protagonist was the murderer but that it was happening on a space station from the smallest of clues hidden inside the book that any lesser person may have overlooked because they were stuck in one way of thinking. Seeing you put together mysteries so well has motivated me to explore other avenues of mystery rather than follow the normal formula to such things."

Ranpo was silent and Poe feared for a moment that he might have overstepped.

"No one's ever phrased it like that," Ranpo said, "not that I've ever been particularly patient though. It's different with you and the Agency. Most of the time it would just piss people off and I wouldn't exactly take the high ground."

Poe lets out an undignified snort before smacking a hand over his face.

"Something funny?" Ranpo asked, voice amused.

"I don't think I've ever seen you be obedient and polite to anyone but your Agency's President, why would anyone think you'd cow your head to them when you're the smartest one there."

"I suppose you could say it's the first clue to their true intelligence level," Ranpo said, huffing his own laugh.

Poe leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, Karl moving from the back of the chair to wrap around his neck like a scarf.

"Seems the lights are back on," Ranpo said when his laughter ceased. "Thank you. For this. I appreciate you not making it a big thing."

"You do the same for me," Poe replied simply. "Want me to stay on for a little while longer or do you want to try to sleep."

"What about your sleep?" Ranpo laughed.

"I think you already know the answer to that," Poe huffed and leaned forward to pick up his pen again.

"You should sleep too, give that beautiful mind time to rest."

Poe squeaked at the comment.

"Oh so you can go on about my intelligence but I can't go on about yours?" Ranpo asked, clearly amused.

"It's not that impressive," Poe squeaked.

"You're not my rival and friend for nothing," Ranpo snickered. "Now go to sleep, good night!"

The phone abruptly hung up and Poe pulled the phone away from his ear before lightly ramming his forehead into his table. Karl chittered at him as he floundered to reposition himself. Poe groaned and buried his head in his hands.

Sleep evaded him after that, the words running through his head at impressive speeds even when he was groggily getting ready for work early the next morning on a few flimsy hours of sleep. When he got home from work there was a basket waiting for him in front of his front door with a collection of spicy and savory candy and snacks, a little note on them.

'For my rival~'

Karl was witness to his face growing impossibly red after inspecting the snacks, nudging his cheek.

"I didn't think he'd remember that I didn't like sweets," Poe said, words from last night running through his head again as he brought the basket into the house before finding a pillow to try to suffocate himself with.